Five years of financial crisis through the eyes of Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, the Telegraph's international business editor, has followed the global financial crisis from the credit crunch to the eurozone debt crisis. Here is a selection of news and views from his stories, blogs and columns over the past five years. 

9 August, 2007: Dow crashes 387 as contagion spreads after the European Central Bank provides emergency liquidity to the credit markets for the first time since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, acting to prevent contagion from the US sub-prime mortgage slump spreading through the German, French, and Dutch banking systems.

Anybody who has been on holiday has come back to face a different world. It's the Wild West right now," said David Bloom, chief currency strategist at HSBC. "Investors can't decide whether we're looking at a fundamental crisis."

22 December, 2007: Crisis may make 1929 look a 'walk in the park'

The kind of upheaval observed in the international money markets over the past few months has never been witnessed in history," says Thomas Jordan, a Swiss central bank governor. "The sub-prime mortgage crisis hit a vital nerve of the international financial system."

Ambrose: The risk for Britain – as property buckles – is a twin banking and fiscal squeeze. The UK budget deficit is already 3 per cent of GDP at the peak of the economic cycle, shockingly out of line with its peers.

Maastricht rules may force the Government to raise taxes or slash spending into a recession. This way lies crucifixion. The UK current account deficit was 5.7 per cent of GDP in the second quarter, the highest in half a century. Gordon Brown has disarmed us on every front.

precious metals and productive land: Why dost thou whet thy knife so earnestly?

Simon Black, Oxford, England

Oxford is about an hour west of London by train, and if you’ve never been, I highly recommend it. On a per-capita basis, it’s one of the most cultured cities in the world, right up there with Vienna, London, New York, Paris, San Francisco, Chicago, Budapest, and Austin.

Walking down Cornmarket Street on a beautiful summer day, it’s common to pass opera singers and concert pianists plying their trade for crowds of tourists (which have become increasingly Chinese over the past few summers…)

Yesterday evening I attended an outstanding performance of Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice; if you’re unfamiliar with the play, the story is about a young Venetian nobleman named Bassanio who needs 3,000 gold ducats to woo a beautiful heiress. Having squandered his wealth, Bassanio approaches his friend Antonio for a loan.

Antonio is cash poor but asset rich, so he arranges to borrow the sum that his friend requires from a local Shylock. The Shylock agrees on the condition that he collects a pound of Antonio’s flesh in the event of default.

Needless to say, Antonio’s fortunes turn for the worst and he defaults on the debt owed – 3,000 ducats. The play climaxes with a court scene in which the Shylock seeks to enforce his bond and collect the pound of flesh from Antonio. (“Why dost thou whet thy knife so earnestly?”)

In the middle of the performance, I got curious about the sum. How much is 3,000 ducats in today’s money? A quick check on my phone gave me the answer.

A ducat’s weight is roughly 3.5 grams, or .11 troy ounces of gold weight… so 3,000 ducats is roughly $530,000 at today’s gold price.

In the context of the play, this amount makes sense; in other words, if one were to write an updated version of the play to today’s standards, substituting half a million dollars for 3,000 ducats would definitely fit the plot.

It’s an interesting example of how well gold has held its value; the play is over 400 years old

Obama considering implementing cybersecurity measures via executive action, bypassing Congress

By Madison Ruppert: According to John Brennan, the chief counterterrorism adviser to the White House, the Obama administration is currently considering stepping around both the House and Senate in order to force cybersecurity measures into place through his executive powers. (Right: John Brennan briefing Obama in the Oval Office in 2010 (Image credit: Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Unfortunately, our so-called representatives are making it incredibly easy for the Obama administration to continue to gobble up as much power as possible, evidenced by their move to actually vote away even more of their already dwindling power as you can see in the below video:

There have been many attempts to get cybersecurity legislation to pass, and it appears that there is a bit of a fight over if the power should be given to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) or to the military and National Security Agency (NSA).

One of the ways that Obama could impose cybersecurity mandates is through an executive order or perhaps even multiple orders, according to Brennan.

Greece Prints Euros To Stay Afloat, The ECB Approves, The Bundesbank Nods, No One Wants To Get Blamed For Kicking Greece Out

Wolf Richter: A lot of politicians in Germany, but also in other countries, issue zingers about a Greek exit from the Eurozone and the end of their patience. Yet those with decision-making power play for time. They want someone else to do the job. Suddenly Greece is out of money again. It would default on everything, from bonds held by central banks to internal obligations. On August 20. The day a €3.2 billion bond that had landed on the balance sheet of the European Central Bank would mature. Europe would be on vacation. It would be mayhem. And somebody would get blamed.

So who the heck had turned off the dang spigot? At first, it was the Troika—the austerity and bailout gang from the ECB, the EU, and the IMF. It was supposed to send Greece €31.2 billion in June. But during the election chaos, Greek politicians threatened to abandon structural reforms, reverse austerity measures already implemented, rehire laid-off workers....

The Troika got cold feet. Instead of sending the payment, it promised to send its inspectors. It would drag its feet and write reports. It would take till September—knowing that Greece wouldn’t make it past August 20. Then it let the firebrand politicians stew in their own juices.

It’s easy to blame the Troika, and it can take the heat. History searches for the person who is responsible. But the Troika doesn’t have one. It was designed that way: a combo of multi-layered, undemocratic structures. And the Troika inspectors, though despised in Greece, are career technocrats, not decision makers.

So Chancellor Angela Merkel became a substitute. Greek tabloids treated her like a Nazi heir, with Hitler mustache and all. But she’s not the decision maker in the Troika, though she is a contributor. And she—though still unwilling to water down the bailout memorandum—consistently stated that Greece should remain in the Eurozone. She doesn’t want to be blamed.

The real fraud here is the whole damn EU/Eurozone/ECB scam

A voice for the damned: Excuse me, but since when does a nation printing its own money constitutes fraud and some of you even deem it immoral? Are so into this system that you cannot see any other way of doing things? Even if this was done for centuries before the Fed and ECB were created?

The real fraud here is the whole damn EU/Eurozone/ECB scam which ends up stealing huge chunks of the national wealth of the nations and punp it to the black hole called banking system! The whole EU project is wrong, because it was designed to benefit the banking cartel and not countries and societies.
Now the act of printing fiat money via the ECB and selling that to the private banks which then sells it to the nations business is coming to an end. Countries and societies need to print their own money and return back to their real economies (even though you Friedman disciples dispute that societies don’t actually exist and state that the only real thing that really exists in reality is money, while nobody believes you).
To you europhiles everywhere, this story (Greece Prints Euros To Stay Afloat) is the absolute proof that the EU is crumbling down before your media blinded eyes. It is not happening because of the evil Greek mentality, but because of the way the EU and the Eurozone was built.

Yellow Brick Road: The Fed and A New Path to Debt Freedom

By rebellioustruths: In this special underground interview, Rebellious Truths joins Ellen Brown, author of Web of Debt and Chairman of the Public Banking Institute. In this mind-blowing exchange, Ellen Brown exposes buried truths, manipulations, and fallacies about our economy; truths vital to understanding how our money system really works. She also provides a simple solution to getting rid of our debt now and forever: we the people print the money, not the debt-based and privately owned Federal Reserve. Source

Evil Al-CIA-da Raw Milk!

From Occupying Wall Street To "Dying For Work"?

Submitted by Tyler Durden: Imagine you are driving to work this morning in Las Vegas (yes, you are one of the select few locals who has a job that does not involve relying on the strip's ever declining gambling revenues or flipping a house to John Paulson in the second, and far shorter, coming of the regional housing bubble, with poppage imminent), and you observe what appears to be a man who hung himself below a billboard saying "Dying for Work."

Confused, you continue, only to drive by another billboard with what seem to be a man hanging off, this one saying "Hope you're happy Wall St."

a personal plea for help from Japan

Michiharu Honda: Dear friends,

I’m writing with a personal plea for help from Japan. A nuclear inspector recently said that if Fukushima's Reactor Number 4 collapses, the spread of radiation would go way beyond Japan's borders and be truly catastrophic. But if the global community steps in now -- we have a chance to stop it. 

The reactor was damaged in last year's earthquake and tsunami, and now a pool of highly dangerous spent nuclear fuel is being held in it’s crumbling structure. Experts say if  another strong tremor collapses, the pool would emit such high radiation that my family and the 35 million people in Tokyo would be forced to evacuate, and it would contaminate the skies across the Pacific and into Asia. The Japanese government is failing to address the danger, but if enough of us call for an emergency plan from the UN and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), we can ensure the worst never happens.

The IAEA is meeting in Vienna in three weeks to discuss nuclear safety so we have to act now.   Click below to sign the petition and tell friends to join the call for action -- when we reach 100,000, our voices will be delivered straight to the IAEA meeting:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/stop_japans_nuclear_meltdown_global_new/?bImAqdb&v=17014

WAR ON TERROR - Deek Jackson

Piffling Fines for Pfizer charged with bribing overseas doctors

By Ronald D. Orol: Federal Regulators on Tuesday charged pharmaceutical giant Pfizer Inc. with allegedly bribing doctors and others employed by foreign governments in order to win business. The Securities and Exchange Commission alleges that Pfizer employees in eight countries including Bulgaria, China, Croatia and the Czech Republic, made "improper payments" to foreign officials to obtain regulatory approvals, sales, and increased prescriptions for the company's products. According to the SEC, Pfizer and Wyeth LLC, which Pfizer acquired in 2009, agreed to pay a piffling $45 million combined to settle their charges. In a parallel action, the Justice Department said Pfizer was fined only $15 million to resolve that agency's investigation. Source

Dark Pools and High-Frequency Drone Wars - Scott Patterson!

The US stock market fluctuated today, following a three day advance in equities. A rally in Hewlett Packard shares tempered the Dallas Federal Reserve President's remarks that an adequate stimulus is in place, Bloomberg reports. But how much of the market's fluctuations are driven by algorithms and high frequency trading? We ask Scott Patterson, author of Dark Pools.