quote:

"When you look at the growth of global financial stocks as a proportion of global GDP, that is, of the goods and services we produce as a group of citizens and businesses around the world, you can clearly see why we are dealing with a world in which there seems to be no brake on speculation... There is a formidable spread between what we produce, and what is in what I call the 'Enter' economy, because in fact if we try to find those assets, it's just a matter of hitting 'Enter' on a computer and they are transferred from one place to another, from one currency to another, producing volatility such as has never been seen in the markets, as well as recurring crises where the stock markets rise and fall daily, creating a destruction of thousands of jobs, but also phenomenal profits which somebody carts off...

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Originally posted by Mara:

quote:

"When you look at the growth of global financial stocks as a proportion of global GDP, that is, of the goods and services we produce as a group of citizens and businesses around the world, you can clearly see why we are dealing with a world in which there seems to be no brake on speculation... There is a formidable spread between what we produce, and what is in what I call the 'Enter' economy, because in fact if we try to find those assets, it's just a matter of hitting 'Enter' on a computer and they are transferred from one place to another, from one currency to another, producing volatility such as has never been seen in the markets, as well as recurring crises where the stock markets rise and fall daily, creating a destruction of thousands of jobs, but also phenomenal profits which somebody carts off...

Although my grasp of Global Economics is minimal, I strongly believe that what this lady is saying is on the bark. The Global Financial Market is consistently being manipulated, massaged & milked by very savvy speculators who are creaming billions in either the BULL or Bear market by strategic hedging without adding any real values to anything. Gold drops a few dollars and somebody is making millions. Gold rise a few dollar, and the same people are making millions. Are they actually producing anything tangible?

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Originally posted by Rahmah bin Jabr:
Maraji, please note that these speculators also provide much needed liquidity to the markets.

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Originally posted by Henry:

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Originally posted by Rahmah bin Jabr:
Maraji, please note that these speculators also provide much needed liquidity to the markets.

You are describing the maintenance of a speculative bubble which is like a malignant tumor. It should not be "provided with much needed liquidity," it should be surgically removed. Instead, sovereign states should be generating credit on the model of the early USA, credit which would be channeled into productive investment rather than gambling. If that is done, the world economy has a fighting chance of recovery.

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Originally posted by Henry:
"Market volatility" is irrelevant to the health of the economy, because the markets, in their present unregulated form, don't invest in anything productive. Their relationship to the physical economy is purely parasitical. The IMF and related institutions are demanding that governments continue to suck the life out of the real economy, as is being done in the US and Europe, in order to bail out the bubble . This is a recipe for fascism. I'm glad that Argentina and a few other countries are saying no.

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Originally posted by Rahmah bin Jabr:
Maraji, please note that these speculators also provide much needed liquidity to the markets.

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Originally posted by Rahmah bin Jabr:


Its called LEVERAGE - and it cuts most ways. Maraji, please note that these speculators also provide much needed liquidity to the markets.

And I agree with you. The markets are manipulated by both governments and large institutions.

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Originally posted by Mara:

quote:

Originally posted by Rahmah bin Jabr:


Its called LEVERAGE - and it cuts most ways. Maraji, please note that these speculators also provide much needed liquidity to the markets.

And I agree with you. The markets are manipulated by both governments and large institutions.

I said my grasp of Global Economic is minimal but hat does not mean that I am so daft to believe that speculation and leverage produces any any tangible goods or assets for the economy other than filling the pockets of savvy and sophisticated speculators whose strategic bets & hedges are the root cause of the global meltdown.

quote:

Originally posted by Henry:
Argentine President Fernandez Blasts IMF, Speculation at U.N.

September 24, 2011 • 1:17AM

Argentine President Cristina Fernandez De Kirchner dedicated the first half of her 30-minute speech before the U.N. General Assembly on Sept. 21, to the global financial crisis. Although it fell short of a necessary call for Glass- Steagall, the speech attacked speculative finance and defended what Argentina itself had been able to accomplish after defaulting on its $160 billion debt in 2001. Given that everyone is now talking about the Argentine example, and whether or not there is "life after default," her speech was useful.

"Exactly eight years ago, in this same forum and from this same podium, the President of my country, Dr. Nestor Carlos Kirchner... stated that Argentina had fallen into default in 2001, and that it had levels of close to a quarter of the population out of work, and levels of indigence and poverty above 50%. He argued for the necessity, back at that time, of reforming the multilateral credit institutions, especially the International Monetary Fund...

"Over the last 8 years, Argentina has restructured its debt, reducing it from 160% of GDP to less than 30%. The levels of poverty and indigence have fallen to single digits, and we still have to continue fighting. We have an unemployment rate which is one of the lowest ever...

"In 2003, we dedicated 2% of our GDP to education and 5% to pay the debt. Today Argentina dedicates 6.47% of its GDP to education and 2% of its GDP to paying the debt...

"Argentina does not intend to present itself as a model or an example for anybody, but we do intend to reaffirm the need to formulate clear rules regarding the transfer of capital, regarding financial speculation...

"When you look at the growth of global financial stocks as a proportion of global GDP, that is, of the goods and services we produce as a group of citizens and businesses around the world, you can clearly see why we are dealing with a world in which there seems to be no brake on speculation... There is a formidable spread between what we produce, and what is in what I call the 'Enter' economy, because in fact if we try to find those assets, it's just a matter of hitting 'Enter' on a computer and they are transferred from one place to another, from one currency to another, producing volatility such as has never been seen in the markets, as well as recurring crises where the stock markets rise and fall daily, creating a destruction of thousands of jobs, but also phenomenal profits which somebody carts off...

"Unfortunately, we are in the same situation [as two years ago], because other than changes which I characterize as entirely cosmetic, nothing of substance has been done about needed regulation... And when these political transformations occur as a result of great economic crises, there are experiences that I won't mention, where totalitarianism has arisen many times during the 20th Century as a result of crises that have not been adequately solved based on politics."

source

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Originally posted by Henry:
Argentine President Slams IMF Murderous "Idiocy and Stubborness"

September 28, 2011 • 9:14AM

Speaking in Mendoza province Sept. 26, Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner scathingly attacked the insanity of the IMF's austerity policies, now being forced on Europe, as well as the arrogance of IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde, who announced last week that the Fund would not use data from INDEC, Argentina's official statistical agency, to assess the country's GDP and inflation rate, because the data was too "unreliable." Instead, Lagarde said, the Fund would get better data from "private consultants."

Not only did the IMF cause Argentina's 2001 crisis and default, Fernandez charged. Today, "in the midst of the most calamitous failure in recent memory...those directly responsible for Argentina's 2001 failure, and today's in Europe and the United States, are still trying to force the world to swallow the same medicine they gave us for a decade in order to ruin us! Such idiocy, such stubborness is inconceivable. How can they say that an economy will be reactivated and grow through austerity? This makes no sense!"

So the IMF is going to determine what's "reliable" in Argentina? Let it be known, Fernandez said, that our "economic policy decisions are made here in the Casa Rosada [Presidential Palace] and in the national Congress, here within our national institutions"—not in private consultancies or dictated by foreign financial agencies. In the 1980s and 1990s, the President recalled, Argentina's Congress bent over backwards to implement foreign dictates, "and the world still came crashing down; Argentina still came crashing down on us. So, with some mistakes, with some successes, we've learned that we, the Argentines, will determine our present, and above all, our and our children's future."

Fernandez was in Mendoza to inaugurate the expansion of the electricity grid, and in doing so, recalled that her late husband President Nestor Kirchner loved building infrastructure "because he maintained that this was progress." When you bring energy and electricity to regions that didn't have it, "you bring equality, sovereignty and federalism to places that had been ignored historically," the President emphasized. She recalled Nestor's first speech to the UN General Assembly in which he said that Argentina must be allowed to grow, because he didn't know of any dead people who could pay their debts. That, Fernandez said, "was a visionary metaphor for what's happening in the world today."

The Argentine President underscored that everything she and her husband have done has been aimed at "liberating" the Argentine people, but more particularly youth, leaving them "a better country...liberating them from misery, from failure, from frustration and from poverty....We are rebuilding that Argentina which had been wrenched from us and which we have recovered, not for ourselves, but for our young people, for our children and grandchildren, so they don't have to live through what we have had to live through."

quote:

Originally posted by Rahmah bin Jabr:

quote:

Originally posted by Henry:

quote:

Originally posted by Rahmah bin Jabr:
Maraji, please note that these speculators also provide much needed liquidity to the markets.

You are describing the maintenance of a speculative bubble which is like a malignant tumor. It should not be "provided with much needed liquidity," it should be surgically removed. Instead, sovereign states should be generating credit on the model of the early USA, credit which would be channeled into productive investment rather than gambling. If that is done, the world economy has a fighting chance of recovery.

The world economy will not recover unless politicians place financial prudence ahead of self preservation. Politicians avoiding making hard decisions, i.e. kicking the can down the road, is the cause of the recent market volatility and sorry state of the world's economy.

On a related note, it can also be argued that Guyana's VAT/taxation system diverts much needed resources from the development sector into the government coffers thereby stifling development.

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Originally posted by André:
Are the tiefin corrupt dictators who ran Argentina into the ground not responsible for the demise of the country? This would be like saying that Burnham was not at fault for Guyana's economic problems. The IMF is to be blamed.

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Originally posted by Henry:

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Originally posted by André:
Are the tiefin corrupt dictators who ran Argentina into the ground not responsible for the demise of the country? This would be like saying that Burnham was not at fault for Guyana's economic problems. The IMF is to be blamed.

Yes, the tiefin' corrupt dictators ran Argentina into the ground, and after that, Nestor Kirchner and CFK reversed the collapse, threw out the IMF, and made the country prosperous. Evidently you weren't paying attention, or your judgement was clouded by your moronic zeal to defend the IMF and related colonial institutions. You think like your avatar looks.

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Originally posted by André:
Am I defending the IMF? You obviously flunked English Comprehension 101 if that is what you gathered from what I wrote. Why not a word mentioned about the corrupt tiefin dictators who were running Argentina when they did to Argentina what Mugabe is doing to Zimbabwe today. I guess Mugabe bears not an ounce of blame for Zimbabwe's problems.

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Originally posted by Henry:

quote:

Originally posted by André:
Am I defending the IMF? You obviously flunked English Comprehension 101 if that is what you gathered from what I wrote. Why not a word mentioned about the corrupt tiefin dictators who were running Argentina when they did to Argentina what Mugabe is doing to Zimbabwe today. I guess Mugabe bears not an ounce of blame for Zimbabwe's problems.

In your enraged delirium, you seem to miss the essential points, which is that Kirchner and CFK were not the tiefin dictators who wrecked Argentina -- they came later -- and that the IMF usually gets along just fine with tiefin dictators so long as they make those interest payments on schedule. That's what Burnham's "import substitution" and related schemes were all about. Sober up, bhai.

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Originally posted by Henry:
Andre, perhaps the idea that an attractive woman is one of the world's most capable leaders does give you anxieties and make your manhood all droopy.

The tiefin dictators in Argentina gone, but the IMF is still trying to play its wretched games.