(图) 联合早报
新加坡《联合早报》8月18日发表蔡良乾撰写的文章说，美国最会制裁别人，今天打了伊拉克，明天又要制裁伊朗和朝鲜，等一下又要对付缅甸……但是，美国难道没有做错事吗？美国做错事就不必受到制裁吗？不过，今天在美国独霸天下的局面下，谁来制裁美国？美资银行留下的这个烂摊子，谁来负责收拾？
文章摘录如下：
美国两次攻打和占领伊拉克，油价月前被炒到每桶将近150美元，没有油藏和储蓄，又不会理财的少数贫困国家接下来可能发生经济危机和动乱。
一年来，美国的次级房屋贷款风暴吹遍全球各大银行，英美的排队挤提和银根吃紧至今已挤倒了至少四家英美资银行，德国和丹麦个倒了一家。美国有些借贷过多而卖不出房屋的屋业发展商和资金周转不灵的建筑公司已经倒闭，金融业的展望和经济前景悲观，世界陷入经济大萧条并非不可能。
美国政府领导人已经公认这是30年代大萧条以来最严重的经济危机。新加坡大华银行行长黄祖耀说他从事银行业半个世纪以来，从没有看过这么严重的情况。世界各大银行至今到底已经输了到多少钱，总数到现在也还算不出来。(但据说涉及的数目可能达到万亿美元以上。)
全球次贷相关损失将高达1．2万亿美元 中新社发 徐彩霄 摄
下面一些各大银行至今已经公布的次级房贷亏损数字，足以参考：
美国花旗银行：407亿美元
瑞士联合银行：389亿
美林证券：317亿
汇丰银行：156亿
美国银行：149亿
摩根士丹利：126亿
皇家苏格兰银行：120亿
自从90年代初，柏林围墙被推倒和前苏维埃社会主义共和国联盟(苏联)解体后，全球已经失去东西方互相制衡的局面，美国在全球越来越横行霸道。在金融市场也是一样胡作非为，投资银行家把次级房贷包装成一篮篮的鸡蛋，推销到亚洲和欧洲的金融界。
发生事情后，这些银行打开这些外观美丽的鸡蛋篮后，才发现里面多是臭鸡蛋。这些臭鸡蛋被包装成对冲基金或各种名堂的投资工具，害惨了很多亚欧的银行和小户投资者，导致人心惶惶，纷纷要求换为现金，或抛售银行股票和排队挤提存款。
今年6月间，我在美国洛杉矶的南巴色地拿小住一个月，每天出外向不同街道散步时，都可以看到许多漂亮的独立式洋房挂有告示牌，预告周末为开放日——全都是在放盘要卖。
根据美国《商业周刊》的报道：今年第一季内，美国国内房屋市值下跌了3990亿美元。上一季度则下跌3550亿美元，可见美国房地产价值正像冰块一样在融化为水。
从2002年到2007年的房地产涨潮中，美国的房地产总值共增长了18万亿美元。因此，从高峰要下跌几万亿元是不奇怪的。
根据英国广播电台的报道，今年4月到6月的季度，被拍卖的美国房屋比去年同一季度增加了一倍。平均每171间房子，就有一间面临被拍卖的境地。同一资料显示：今年第二季度，美国共有74万间房屋被拍卖。
美国金融界的病毒早已经传染到世界各地，鼎鼎大名的贝史登投资银行被J.P.摩根贱价收购，美林证券和花旗银行前一阵几乎飘摇不定而紧急集资，瑞士联合银行和英国的巴克莱银行与皇家苏格兰银行都已陆续集资。参股的新股东，竟多是新加坡淡马锡控股和西亚产油国的主权基金，还有日本的大银行财团。
资本主义经济体系是以美国为盟主，美国更是许多金融衍生赌具(美其名为对冲基金)的发明者和这个大赌局的庄家。大小规则都是由美国的投资银行规定，连世界银行和美国央行联邦储备局都管不了或忽略了其崩盘后果的严重性。
回顾十年前东南亚诸国和亚洲四小龙发生经济风暴时，都要给世界银行和美国指指点点和被迫接受他们定下的诸多苛刻条件。十年养伤，刚刚复原不久，却又碰上这场环球性的信贷大风暴，真可怕！前者的规模跟这次的相比，简直是小巫见大巫。
但是，说来也真可笑：大家现在都怕庄家倒闭，而在想方设法扶住这个大伯公。尽管这个庄家已经欠下许多赌债，但赌徒们还是不得不让他坐庄，因为至今还没有人敢接手坐庄。
有一天，这个庄家完蛋的话，我们也必会被拖累。回顾1929年10月24日，纽约股市暴跌13%，几天后再狂跌11%。到了1932年的谷底时，股市价格已经掉去90%。这就是美国30年代的经济大萧条。到了1933年，美国的银行制度已经不能够操作。此后总共费了25年，纽约股市才回复到1929年的水平。
1997年，由两位诺贝尔经济奖得奖人创办的Long Term Credit Market 公司(简称LTCM)搞的对冲基金和衍生工具，赌输得太大而几乎倒闭。美国联储局暗地逼各大银行注资36亿美元，才拯救了这家由学术界精英和金融业奇才发起和合组的公司。美国联储局为了使市场恢复稳定，于1998年10月紧急减息。但是，该公司最后还是于2000年收盘。
上个世纪末的网际网络股市泡沫于2000年3月爆破时，美国自动报价指数(NASDAQ)指数渐渐向下滑坡，到了2002年10月，总共蒸发了78%。结果是，美国央行为了刺激经济，把利率从6.5%渐渐降低到1%。
在利率长期奇低的情况下，大家又开始投资和投机房地产，买了一栋又一栋，从小间变大间，消费人的债务雪球越滚绝大。银行争着赚取利息，总裁和经理为了表现和得到更多花红，耍尽花招抢生意和乱放贷，而至出现了很多“忍者”(Ninja)贷款。这里的Ninja是指： No Income, No Job and No Assets(没有收入，没有职业，没有资产的贷款人。)
这就是美国次级房贷的一点历史背景和原因。银行职员在推销这些新的贷款花样时，并没有好好地向顾客解说其缺点和坏处。结果是，贷款人两三年后才发现越还越多，许多小市民都背了还不清的屋债，最后倒账了事，结果是各大银行也发现自己一身是污泥。
最要命的是，美国人早已经把这些臭蛋包装过，变成各种美丽的对冲基金或投资基金，转卖到国外。这一下可就太过不仁不义了，更糟的是这些基金又被零售给世界各国的小户投资者，到头来倒霉的有很多是美国以外的人。这些基金的抵押品就是在美国的房地产。难道你能够去那里把屋子或砖块搬回家来吗？
总之，这笔糊涂账到什么时候才能理清，至今还是个未知数。后果会严重到什么地步也不容易说清楚，但是，油价和其他原产品涨价所带动的物价飞涨，已经造成通货膨胀加剧，民生会越来越困难。
美国最会制裁别人，今天打了伊拉克，明天又要制裁伊朗和朝鲜，等一下又要对付缅甸……但是，美国难道没有做错事吗？美国做错事就不必受到制裁吗？不过，今天在美国独霸天下的局面下，谁来制裁美国？美资银行留下的这个烂摊子，谁来负责收拾？
在这种不稳定的局面下投资股市和汇市，或任何基金，都要十分小心。千万不能拿退休的老本去当赌注。在经济展望难以预测的情况下，我们惟有独善其身，才能自保。
Monday, August 18, 2008
美国难道没有做错事吗? 谁来制裁美国？
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Seven reasons a 'good' depression beats a new Great Depression
Yes, a depression. Spelled: D-e-p-r-e-s-s-i-o-n. Wake up America, recessions don't work any more. Why?
Get serious folks. We had a 30-month recession not long ago. Eight years later the market's still barely at its 2000 peak, a loser. Worse, we're back in a new recession. But Washington politicians are keeping it a secret, feeding us doctored feel-good statistics as legendary political historian Kevin Phillips wrote in "Numbers Racket: Why the Economy is Worse Than We Know."
More from MarketWatch.com:
• Solutions for Today's Problems Might Come From the 1980s
• Eleven Reasons America Is the New Top Socialist Economy
• Oil Prices Can't Outrun the Long Arm of Supply and Demand
So we blindly refuse to bite the bullet and stop our out-of-control spiral into collapse. America needs a big wake-up call ... and it's coming soon, whether you like it or not!
Last November we posted "17 reasons America needs a recession." Today it's far worse, and getting worse still.
Most economists predict it'll take till 2010 to burn off our excess housing inventory. RGE Monitor say Fannie and Freddie bailouts aren't working; they'll soon be "profoundly insolvent" and need to be "nationalized." Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has no long-term plans, he's a caretaker, plugging holes, anxious to get back to Wall Street's money machine, running out the clock till he turns over the catastrophe he enflamed to a new bunch of politicians and their armies of 42,000 greedy lobbyists.
Lessons learned? Zero. Why? Wall Street, Washington and Corporate America are a one-trick pony with one narrow-minded strategy: Economic g-r-o-w-t-h, bull markets, megabonuses. In good times they tout "free markets." But when greed bombs, these big babies throw free market "principles" under the "Reagan Revolution" bus as their lobbyists go whining to Congress for megabillion taxpayer bailouts and access at the Fed casino's discount window to siphon off more taxpayer money. What hypocritical wimps!
Wall Street and its co-conspirators are doing such a miserable job, America needs a new strategy: Stop all the short-term "hole-plugging." Let go and let an old-fashioned "Good Depression" do the job that our happy-talking leaders refuse to do. Let it clean house and reawaken America to basic values. Otherwise a "Good Depression" will turn into a new "Great Depression."
Here are seven strong reasons favoring this alternative strategy:
1. Yes, an Honest Diagnosis: Soul Sickness in American Capitalism
America's problems are not the economy, not markets, nor even politics. The endless bickering campaign is distracting us from facing our real long-term problems. Yes, our economic pains are real, but they're just symptoms. Since 2000, America has seen a relentless, sickening overdose of bad news: stupidity, deceit, corruption and even evil behavior. Americans are n-u-m-b, suffering post-traumatic shock syndrome.
The real problem is our thinking, our brains -- something deep in our cosmic soul, says Jack Bogle's "The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism." We lost our values, our moral compass.
2. Yes, Time to Admit This Really Is Like the 1930's Great Depression
Comparing today with the Great Depression has become common sport. In a Newsweek special "Seeing Shades of the 1930s," Daniel Gross writes: 75 years ago "Wall Street, after two terms of a business-friendly Republican president, self-immolated on a pyre of greed, incompetence and excessive optimism."
Like Dr. Scott Peck says in "The Road Less Traveled:" "Life is a series of problems. Do we want to moan about them or solve them?" We need to grow up, stop whining, roll our sleeves up and solve real problems.
3. Yes, a Good Depression Would Reveal Self-Destruct Bubble-Thinking
In a recent Atlantic article "Irrational Exuberance" author Robert Shiller warns: "Bubbles are primarily social phenomena. Until we understand and address the psychology that fuels them, they're going to keep forming."
Housing inflated 85% in a decade: "Historically unprecedented ... no rational basis for it." Today there's a huge excess housing inventory, higher-credit mortgages are now in jeopardy, the write-offs are now projected at $2 trillion -- on top of a $3 trillion war, $10 trillion federal budget, and more.
Bubble-thinking is contagious; it will trigger a pandemic. Shiller says "few people seem immune to boom thinking. The recent bubble grew so large partly because the very people responsible for the financial system's oversight came to share the general public's rosy expectations."
Unfortunately our leaders are still ignoring the underlying problem: Nothing is being done about "our psychological vulnerability to bubble-thinking."
Shiller then warns of a new megameltdown: "We recently lived through two epidemics of excessive financial optimism. I believe we are close to a third episode, only this one will spread irrational pessimism and distrust -- not exuberance ... our economic problems will become much worse than they need to be, and our social problems will multiply."
4. Yes, a Good Depression Will Stir Outrage, Force Real Reforms
In a recent Wall Street Journal article, Jim Grant, Forbes columnist and respected editor of the Interest Rate Observer, framed his title as a question: "Why No Outrage?" Why? He notes: "Through history, outrageous financial behavior has been met with outrage. But today Wall Street's damaging recklessness has been met with near-silence, from a too tolerant populace."
Tolerant? No, n-u-m-b! "Human progress seems to be the likeliest culprit." Fear-driven, we prefer the devil we know to a new one. Yet while "Wall Street may be sweating to fill out this year's bonus pool," Grant worries that Wall Street will run "itself and the rest of the American financial system right over a cliff." A Good Depression brings outrage.
5. Yes, Good Depression Forces Wall Street to Think Outside the Box
In a great Bloomberg Markets feature, "No Easy Fix," we're told Wall Street's "profit formula has hit a wall ... Wall Street's money-making machine is broken and efforts to repair it after the biggest losses in history are likely to undermine profits for years to come."
Merrill Lynch is a good example: It is selling 615 million new shares, a 38% dilution, while hanging on to "$30.6 billion in crummy derivatives," says Dennis Berman in the Wall Street Journal. Merrill's stock is about half the 2004 price of $55. Merrill "needs to come up with $2.8 billion in new profit, not sales, to get back to its 2004 per share earnings levels. That's $43,000 in new profit for each of Merrill's 65,000 employees."
Unfortunately, Merrill's cash cows (off-balance sheet gimmicks, derivatives, repackaged asset-backed securitization) that made megabucks the past decade "have largely disappeared. That puts the burden on Merrill's old-line businesses -- brokerage, asset management and investment banking."
Solutions? Cut costs, steal market share or "gradually start to take on more risk on Merrill's trading desks, which produced the bulk of the $30 billion in losses the past 12 months."
Warning: Expect more desperate, high-risk and stupid moves: A new BusinessWeek report says Wall Street's already lobbying Congress to raid America's $2.3 trillion "pension honey pot." Warning: These are the same greed-is-good Gordon Gekkos that brought us the last two rapid-fire meltdowns. Stop them before they turn the next into a Great Depression.
6. Yes, a Good Depression Can Prevent America's Decline and Fall
In "The Price of Liberty: Paying for America's Wars," Robert Hormats, Goldman Sachs international vice chairman, traces America's wartime financing from the Revolutionary War to present. Today we're "relying on faith over experience, hoping that sustained growth will erase deficits and that the ballooning costs of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid will be manageable in the coming decades without difficult reforms."
Former U.S. Comptroller General David Walker put it in more ominous terms: "There are striking similarities between America's current situation and that of another great power from the past: Rome." They fell for three reasons "worth remembering: declining moral values and political civility at home, an overconfident and overextended military in foreign lands, and fiscal irresponsibility by the central government."
And Pulitzer Prize winning geographer Jared Diamond takes an even broader historical view in "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Succeed or Fail:" Many "civilizations share a sharp curve of decline. Indeed, a society's demise may begin only a decade or two after it reaches its peak population, wealth and power." He draws historical parallels with America in the past decade.
Warning: Wall Street's next meltdown won't be a mere statistical recession. Our monetary system, our financial system and our tax base are burning out. Like our overextended military, we are handicapped in our ability to face new threats, much as were Rome, the Mayans and other great civilizations.
More from Yahoo! Finance:
• How to Find and Understand Your Credit Score
• Is Wall Street's Research a Disaster?
• 25 Ways to Save More Each Month
Visit the Banking & Budgeting Center
7. Yes, a Good Depression Will Shock America's Warring Soul
President Bush said he's a "war president." The American economy is a war economy driven by our warring soul. We spend 54% of the tax dollar on war, 47% of the world's total military spending. A half century ago President Eisenhower warned of this "military industrial complex" that's running America into bankruptcy.
Today, our economy thrives on war and disasters, generating such "spectacular profits that many people around the world" are convinced America's "rich and powerful must be deliberately causing catastrophes so that they can exploit them" says Naomi Klein in "Shock Doctrine."
Klein's snapshot of Wall Street's soul is disturbing: "An economic system that requires constant growth, while bucking almost all serious attempts at environmental regulation, generates a steady stream of disasters all on its own, whether military, economical or financial. The appetite for easy, short profits offered by purely speculative investment has turned the stock, currency and real estate markets into crisis-creation machines"
Seven reasons a 'good' depression beats a new Great Depression
Yes, a depression. Spelled: D-e-p-r-e-s-s-i-o-n. Wake up America, recessions don't work any more. Why?
Get serious folks. We had a 30-month recession not long ago. Eight years later the market's still barely at its 2000 peak, a loser. Worse, we're back in a new recession. But Washington politicians are keeping it a secret, feeding us doctored feel-good statistics as legendary political historian Kevin Phillips wrote in "Numbers Racket: Why the Economy is Worse Than We Know."
More from MarketWatch.com:
• Solutions for Today's Problems Might Come From the 1980s
• Eleven Reasons America Is the New Top Socialist Economy
• Oil Prices Can't Outrun the Long Arm of Supply and Demand
So we blindly refuse to bite the bullet and stop our out-of-control spiral into collapse. America needs a big wake-up call ... and it's coming soon, whether you like it or not!
Last November we posted "17 reasons America needs a recession." Today it's far worse, and getting worse still.
Most economists predict it'll take till 2010 to burn off our excess housing inventory. RGE Monitor say Fannie and Freddie bailouts aren't working; they'll soon be "profoundly insolvent" and need to be "nationalized." Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has no long-term plans, he's a caretaker, plugging holes, anxious to get back to Wall Street's money machine, running out the clock till he turns over the catastrophe he enflamed to a new bunch of politicians and their armies of 42,000 greedy lobbyists.
Lessons learned? Zero. Why? Wall Street, Washington and Corporate America are a one-trick pony with one narrow-minded strategy: Economic g-r-o-w-t-h, bull markets, megabonuses. In good times they tout "free markets." But when greed bombs, these big babies throw free market "principles" under the "Reagan Revolution" bus as their lobbyists go whining to Congress for megabillion taxpayer bailouts and access at the Fed casino's discount window to siphon off more taxpayer money. What hypocritical wimps!
Wall Street and its co-conspirators are doing such a miserable job, America needs a new strategy: Stop all the short-term "hole-plugging." Let go and let an old-fashioned "Good Depression" do the job that our happy-talking leaders refuse to do. Let it clean house and reawaken America to basic values. Otherwise a "Good Depression" will turn into a new "Great Depression."
Here are seven strong reasons favoring this alternative strategy:
1. Yes, an Honest Diagnosis: Soul Sickness in American Capitalism
America's problems are not the economy, not markets, nor even politics. The endless bickering campaign is distracting us from facing our real long-term problems. Yes, our economic pains are real, but they're just symptoms. Since 2000, America has seen a relentless, sickening overdose of bad news: stupidity, deceit, corruption and even evil behavior. Americans are n-u-m-b, suffering post-traumatic shock syndrome.
The real problem is our thinking, our brains -- something deep in our cosmic soul, says Jack Bogle's "The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism." We lost our values, our moral compass.
2. Yes, Time to Admit This Really Is Like the 1930's Great Depression
Comparing today with the Great Depression has become common sport. In a Newsweek special "Seeing Shades of the 1930s," Daniel Gross writes: 75 years ago "Wall Street, after two terms of a business-friendly Republican president, self-immolated on a pyre of greed, incompetence and excessive optimism."
Like Dr. Scott Peck says in "The Road Less Traveled:" "Life is a series of problems. Do we want to moan about them or solve them?" We need to grow up, stop whining, roll our sleeves up and solve real problems.
3. Yes, a Good Depression Would Reveal Self-Destruct Bubble-Thinking
In a recent Atlantic article "Irrational Exuberance" author Robert Shiller warns: "Bubbles are primarily social phenomena. Until we understand and address the psychology that fuels them, they're going to keep forming."
Housing inflated 85% in a decade: "Historically unprecedented ... no rational basis for it." Today there's a huge excess housing inventory, higher-credit mortgages are now in jeopardy, the write-offs are now projected at $2 trillion -- on top of a $3 trillion war, $10 trillion federal budget, and more.
Bubble-thinking is contagious; it will trigger a pandemic. Shiller says "few people seem immune to boom thinking. The recent bubble grew so large partly because the very people responsible for the financial system's oversight came to share the general public's rosy expectations."
Unfortunately our leaders are still ignoring the underlying problem: Nothing is being done about "our psychological vulnerability to bubble-thinking."
Shiller then warns of a new megameltdown: "We recently lived through two epidemics of excessive financial optimism. I believe we are close to a third episode, only this one will spread irrational pessimism and distrust -- not exuberance ... our economic problems will become much worse than they need to be, and our social problems will multiply."
4. Yes, a Good Depression Will Stir Outrage, Force Real Reforms
In a recent Wall Street Journal article, Jim Grant, Forbes columnist and respected editor of the Interest Rate Observer, framed his title as a question: "Why No Outrage?" Why? He notes: "Through history, outrageous financial behavior has been met with outrage. But today Wall Street's damaging recklessness has been met with near-silence, from a too tolerant populace."
Tolerant? No, n-u-m-b! "Human progress seems to be the likeliest culprit." Fear-driven, we prefer the devil we know to a new one. Yet while "Wall Street may be sweating to fill out this year's bonus pool," Grant worries that Wall Street will run "itself and the rest of the American financial system right over a cliff." A Good Depression brings outrage.
5. Yes, Good Depression Forces Wall Street to Think Outside the Box
In a great Bloomberg Markets feature, "No Easy Fix," we're told Wall Street's "profit formula has hit a wall ... Wall Street's money-making machine is broken and efforts to repair it after the biggest losses in history are likely to undermine profits for years to come."
Merrill Lynch is a good example: It is selling 615 million new shares, a 38% dilution, while hanging on to "$30.6 billion in crummy derivatives," says Dennis Berman in the Wall Street Journal. Merrill's stock is about half the 2004 price of $55. Merrill "needs to come up with $2.8 billion in new profit, not sales, to get back to its 2004 per share earnings levels. That's $43,000 in new profit for each of Merrill's 65,000 employees."
Unfortunately, Merrill's cash cows (off-balance sheet gimmicks, derivatives, repackaged asset-backed securitization) that made megabucks the past decade "have largely disappeared. That puts the burden on Merrill's old-line businesses -- brokerage, asset management and investment banking."
Solutions? Cut costs, steal market share or "gradually start to take on more risk on Merrill's trading desks, which produced the bulk of the $30 billion in losses the past 12 months."
Warning: Expect more desperate, high-risk and stupid moves: A new BusinessWeek report says Wall Street's already lobbying Congress to raid America's $2.3 trillion "pension honey pot." Warning: These are the same greed-is-good Gordon Gekkos that brought us the last two rapid-fire meltdowns. Stop them before they turn the next into a Great Depression.
6. Yes, a Good Depression Can Prevent America's Decline and Fall
In "The Price of Liberty: Paying for America's Wars," Robert Hormats, Goldman Sachs international vice chairman, traces America's wartime financing from the Revolutionary War to present. Today we're "relying on faith over experience, hoping that sustained growth will erase deficits and that the ballooning costs of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid will be manageable in the coming decades without difficult reforms."
Former U.S. Comptroller General David Walker put it in more ominous terms: "There are striking similarities between America's current situation and that of another great power from the past: Rome." They fell for three reasons "worth remembering: declining moral values and political civility at home, an overconfident and overextended military in foreign lands, and fiscal irresponsibility by the central government."
And Pulitzer Prize winning geographer Jared Diamond takes an even broader historical view in "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Succeed or Fail:" Many "civilizations share a sharp curve of decline. Indeed, a society's demise may begin only a decade or two after it reaches its peak population, wealth and power." He draws historical parallels with America in the past decade.
Warning: Wall Street's next meltdown won't be a mere statistical recession. Our monetary system, our financial system and our tax base are burning out. Like our overextended military, we are handicapped in our ability to face new threats, much as were Rome, the Mayans and other great civilizations.
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7. Yes, a Good Depression Will Shock America's Warring Soul
President Bush said he's a "war president." The American economy is a war economy driven by our warring soul. We spend 54% of the tax dollar on war, 47% of the world's total military spending. A half century ago President Eisenhower warned of this "military industrial complex" that's running America into bankruptcy.
Today, our economy thrives on war and disasters, generating such "spectacular profits that many people around the world" are convinced America's "rich and powerful must be deliberately causing catastrophes so that they can exploit them" says Naomi Klein in "Shock Doctrine."
Klein's snapshot of Wall Street's soul is disturbing: "An economic system that requires constant growth, while bucking almost all serious attempts at environmental regulation, generates a steady stream of disasters all on its own, whether military, economical or financial. The appetite for easy, short profits offered by purely speculative investment has turned the stock, currency and real estate markets into crisis-creation machines"