the economic crash might just have begun in the US

[slow_dazzle]

It’s Official: The Crash of the U.S. Economy has begun This article on globalresearch is by Richard C Cook whose website is linked from it.

Read the scenarios at the end and ask yourselves if anything chimes. In fact, the whole article is full of predictions about economic collapse that were made some time ago. Maybe the chicken has come home to roost. If it has it's a big one.

[Wombaticus Rex]

Thanks for the heads-up. As weary as this stuff makes me, I'll still check it out -- it's like proclaiming the end of the world -- almost always wrong but it'll be right eventually.

[Gouda]

Just a few flagged items which I came across in a mere 15 minutes of randomly scanning some of today's financial news sites:


Goldman's Ready
http://www.forbes.com/home/opinions/200 ... oesus.html

Goldman Sachs is my alma mater and arguably the greatest investment bank in the world. So we stopped in the other day to inquire about how it intends to protect itself in a market meltdown, like the one on Oct. 19, 1987, or some unexpected global liquidity crisis.

(...)

Another special risk group looks at future disasters with, one hopes, small probabilities, like avian flu, a sharp oil spike or a nuclear bomb attack.

If all hell broke loose and Goldman's clients could not pay it a cent in compensation, the firm has sequestered its own Fort Knox, the so-called BONY box, more properly called the Global Core Excess Capital Account. The BONY box is named for the Bank of New York (nyse: BK - news - people ), where Goldman holds more than $50 billion in unencumbered government securities of the U.S., Germany, France and Japan--securities that could be instantly turned into hard cash.

(...)

No matter what scenarios the computers can test, though, some unforeseen problem could still knock these preparations into a crisis.

One possible nightmare on everyone's mind in Wall Street banks is the possibility that a dozen huge hedge funds with the same leveraged derivative positions could not unwind them. It would be Long-Term Capital Management times 12. Then, these hedge funds might not be able take care of their lines of credit from the banks, and the banks in turn would suffer accordingly. For now, it's just a nightmare. Let's hope we never have to test it.

Bernanke, Trichet Turn to BIS as Markets Ignore Risk
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid= ... refer=home

June 19 (Bloomberg) -- Six decades ago, the U.S. Treasury wanted to shut down the Bank for International Settlements, saying it helped finance the Nazis. Today, Jean-Claude Trichet and Ben S. Bernanke are transforming the organization into one of the world's most powerful networking clubs.

(...)

With hedge funds and private equity firms pumping record sums of money around the world economy, central bankers fret that investors are taking on too much risk. As a result, the bankers are increasingly turning to the Basel, Switzerland-based BIS, the oldest international financial institution, for research and advice, and to coordinate damage-control plans.

(...)

``The rapid development of global financial markets points toward the importance of strengthening the cooperation within the worldwide community of central banks,'' Malcolm Knight, 63, general manager of the BIS, said in an e-mailed response to questions.

(...)

``Markets are increasingly global, and central banks are not,'' said Willem Buiter, 57, a former member of the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee. ``So there's a huge vacuum to be filled.''

(...)

``The BIS has more influence than you might think,'' said Ernst Welteke, 64, who headed the Bundesbank between 1999 and 2004. ``It's a very informal exchange of opinions, which I found very important.''

(...)

Central bankers also get time to relax. At last year's annual gathering, policy makers crammed into the bar of the Basel Hilton to watch the World Cup soccer match between the Netherlands and Portugal, smoke cigars and exchange banter.

``There's a wonderful camaraderie among central bankers that means they really get to know each other very well,'' said Meyer, who sometimes represented Alan Greenspan during his time at the Fed between 1996 and 2002. Traveling to Basel ``was unbelievable fun.''

[Supreme] Court sides with Wall Street banks
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/ ... uisse.html

[Gouda does not weep for anyone investing in this system and losing, but the implications of further strengthening and insulation of Wall Street are great and affect us all in every conceivable way...]

WASHINGTON -- Investors who lost money when the dot-com bubble burst suffered a Supreme Court setback Monday, and the justices are poised to issue yet another important decision that could restrict shareholder lawsuits.

The court sided with Wall Street banks that were alleged to have conspired to drive up prices on about 900 newly issued stocks in the late 1990s.

(...)

Wall Street institutions in the case before the Supreme Court were Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC, formerly Credit Suisse First Boston LLC; Bear, Stearns & Co. Inc.; Citigroup Global Markets Inc.; Comerica Inc.; Deutsche Bank Securities Inc.; Fidelity Distributors Corp.; Fidelity Brokerage Services LLC; Fidelity Investments Institutional Services Co. Inc.; Goldman, Sachs & Co.; The Goldman Sachs Group Inc.; Janus Capital Management LLC; Lehman Brothers Inc.; Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith Inc.; Morgan Stanley & Co. Inc.; Robertson Stephens Inc.; Van Wagoner Capital Management Inc.; and Van Wagoner Funds, Inc.

The case is Credit Suisse v. Billing, 05-1157.