Tag: Foreign Banks

Panama Papers

Note:  Sorry to say I am under the weather today……so I will be posting some of the drafts that I have saved….hopefully I will return to normal tomorrow.  chuq

The big story this week….that is if you are not one of those that sucks at the election tit……is the release of the so-called “Panama Papers”.

The MSM media makes sure that the world knows that someone close to Russia’s Putin is on the list and somehow don’t mention that so is the King of Saudi Arabia or a leader in the UAE or for that matter the PM of Ukraine…is that because these thieves are considered “allies” of the US?  How much of this cash is US taxpayers cash given as foreign aid?

The “Papers” have already cost the PM of Iceland his job….who will be next?

The “Panama Papers” are the largest leak in world history, revealing millions of documents related to the offshore accounts of politicians, former politicians, and billionaires around the world.

Despite much of the media’s focus on tax evasion as the primary theme of the Panama Papers story, which embarrassed governments are happy to adopt as the primary theme as well, the question is one of official corruption.

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) itself, which first published the data, says it reveals the holdings of “drug dealers, Mafia members, corrupt politicians and tax evaders–and wrongdoing galore.”

Source: Panama Papers Are About Government Corruption, Not ‘Tax Evasion’ – Hit & Run : Reason.com

Fed To Bailout Foreign Banks

The Federal Reserve agreed to provide $30 billion each to the central banks of Brazil, Mexico, South Korea and Singapore, expanding its effort to unfreeze money markets to emerging nations for the first time.

The Fed set up “liquidity swap facilities with the central banks of these four large systemically important economies” effective until April 30, the central bank said yesterday in a statement. The arrangements aim “to mitigate the spread of difficulties in obtaining U.S. dollar funding.”

“The swap lines will help unclog the liquidity pipeline and that action is boosting markets even more than” the Fed’s rate cut, said Venkatraman Anantha-Nageswaran, head of research at Bank Julius Baer & Co. in Singapore. “It’s a step in the right direction and prevents things from getting worse.”

The Fed announcement coincided with a decision by the International Monetary Fund to almost double borrowing limits for emerging market countries while waiving demands for economic austerity measures.

The Fed and IMF actions “show international resolve to support strong performing emerging-market economies adversely impacted by the current financial market turbulence,” U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said in a statement.

Emerging-market investors have created “massive demand for dollars and a reduction of liquidity in other currencies” by going back to investing in the U.S. currency, said David Spegel, head of emerging-market strategy at ING Financial Bank NV in New York.

The Fed swap lines “are designed to help restore liquidity so that a vicious negative spiral doesn’t occur,” he said.

“The Fed is there to support large emerging markets that have done their homework over the past several years like South Korea, Brazil, Singapore and Mexico,” said Alonso Cervera, a Latin America economist with Credit Suisse Group in New York. “These are large, relevant emerging countries that have followed responsible fiscal and monetary policies for the past several years and now are going through tough times.”

The Fed also created this week a $15 billion swap line with its New Zealand counterpart and removed limits this month on four existing swap lines, including one with the European Central Bank. The Fed set up a $10 billion arrangement with Australia’s central bank last month and then tripled it to $30 billion.

“The hoped-for result is that we don’t see the global financial crisis worsen still more,” said Lyle Gramley, a former Federal Reserve governor who is now senior economic adviser at Stanford Group Co. “The Fed is making dollars available to the central banks of these countries who are trying to meet the needs of their banking systems.”

What happened to Main Street?

Foreign Banks Get A Piece Of The Pie

In a change from the original proposal sent to Capitol Hill, foreign-based banks with big U.S. operations could qualify for the Treasury Department’s mortgage bailout, according to the fine print of an administration statement Saturday night.

The theory, according to a participant in the negotiations, is that if the goal is to solve a liquidity crisis, it makes no sense to exclude banks that do a lot of lending in the United States.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson confirmed the change on ABC’s “This Week,” telling George Stephanopoulos that coverage of foreign-based banks is “a distinction without a difference to the American people.”

“If a financial institution has business operations in the United States, hires people in the United States, if they are clogged with illiquid assets, they have the same impact on the American people as any other institution,” Paulson said.

“That’s a distinction without a difference to the American people. The key here is protecting the system. … We have a global financial system, and we are talking very aggressively with other countries around the world and encouraging them to do similar things, and I believe a number of them will. But, remember, this is about protecting the American people and protecting the taxpayers. and the American people don’t care who owns the financial institution. If the financial institution in this country has problems, it’ll have the same impact whether it’s the U.S. or foreign.”

House Democrats plan to insist on adding protections for homeowners facing foreclosure. They also want to add a measure to help homeowners facing bankruptcy and an executive compensation restriction designed to prevent golden parachutes for the heads of troubled institutions.

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), who was supportive of the bailout concept in a statement released Friday, believes that “whatever gets done in Congress has to protect Main Street,” senior adviser Stephanie Cutter said on MSNBC on Saturday.

On “Fox News Sunday,” Paulson told Chris Wallace that he would resist the Democrats’ desired limits on executive compensation.

As written on the Politic website.