CrunchTimes

Each year the world’s elite like to meet up in a secret location and have a chat about the important issues of the day and the general direction of humanity

There has been no shortage of commentators and players willing to vouch that this is the worst financial crisis they have ever seen. Equally, there has been no shortage of bailout moves by the Federal Reserve–remedies that put “the Greenspan Put” to shame in their magnitude.
And yet the market meltdown continues, and the casualties continue [...]

Gretchen Morgenson reported this in an article called “Rescue Me: A Fed Bailout Crosses a Line” published in the New York Times (3/16/08): “For the government to print money at the expense of taxpayers as opposed to requiring or going about a receivership and wind-down of any insolvent institutions should be troubling to taxpayers and [...]

WASHINGTON — These days, your thoughts are worth 1.7 cents.
That’s what it costs the government to forge a penny, thanks to the rising price of metal. A nickel costs 10 cents. Congress has concluded that’s a pretty bad deal.
A House subcommittee chaired by Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., convened a hearing Tuesday on a proposal to [...]

Bear Stearns marks the moment when the global financial crisis went critical. Up until last Friday, it had been possible – just about – to believe that the worst was over and that things were about to get better. That pretence was stripped away when JP Morgan, at the behest of the Federal Reserve, stepped [...]

FEARS are growing that the US Federal Reserve may soon find itself short of the funds needed to continue propping up the nation’s financial system.
The central bank yesterday used its financial muscle to back the bail-out of the stricken Wall Street investment banking giant Bear Stearns, which will be taken over by rival JPMorgan Chase [...]

Financial experts issue dire warnings as Fed and Treasury continue to say they are “committed to a strong dollar”
Another prominent economist has warned that the bottom may soon drop out of the dollar completely as the currency hits fresh lows and continues to sink worldwide.
[ read article ]

Hardly anyone’s noticed, but the frenzy of safe-haven bond-buying has just pushed real yields on US Treasuries below zero.
http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article2797.html 
“Call it spite if you must. But if the world’s No.1 currency – and the world’s No.1 source of debt finance – both fail to outstrip inflation, investors will slowly go mad. Mad enough, in fact, to [...]

The last time gold touched $850 an ounce, the world was visibly spiralling out of control. Soviet tanks had just rolled into Afghanistan. The Mullahs had seized US hostages in Iran. Pax Americana was on the ropes, and so was capitalism. Inflation had reached 14 per cent in the United States.
The final spike in bullion [...]

As central banks continue to splash their cash over the system, so far to little effect, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard argues things are rapidly spiralling out of their control
Twenty billion dollars here, $20bn there, and a lush half-trillion from the European Central [...]