Thursday, December 3, 2009

"China now holds reserves of $2.3 trillion. It owns more US debt than anyone else.

China's savings sustain the US economy for better or worse. It is the financial equivalent of assured mutual destruction.

The Chinese underwrite America's lavish lifestyle.
Their family silver is kept in dollars.
One can not live without the other."


BBC News - World News America : Matt Frei's diary: Obama visits America's banker:

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

European Banks Growing Bigger. ~wild capitalism failing. Euro governments provided $5.3 trillion of aid to banks in 08 and 09.

15 European banks now have assets larger than their home economies. Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc’s assets ballooned 2,914 % in the 10 years through 08 as it made acquisitions, boosted trading and increased lending.

Edinburgh- based RBS spent $140 billion on takeovers during the period. that triggered the world’s biggest bank bailout- 45.5 billion-pound rescue of RBS.

Paris-based BNP Paribas, the world’s biggest bank by assets, increased its balance sheet by 59 percent to 2.29 trillion euros ($3.5 trillion)London-based Barclays jumped 55 percent to 1.55 trillion pounds ($2.6 trillion), or 108 percent of U.K. GDP.

Santander’s rose 30 percent to 1.08 trillion euros, about the size of Spain’s GDP.Britain, with an economy one-fifth the size of the U.S.’s, faces widening budget deficits, rising unemployment and increased taxes after four bank bailouts, including the 45.5 billion-pound rescue of RBS.”

Zurich-based UBS AG has reported 57.5 billion Swiss francs ($57.8 billion) of losses and writedowns since the credit crisis began, the most in Europe, and received a 6 billion-franc bailout from the Swiss government. The bank has reduced its assets by 37 percent since the start of 2007..

The five biggest U.S. lenders -- Bank of America Corp., JPMorgan Chase & Co., Citigroup Inc., Wells Fargo & Co. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. -- held $8.3 trillion in assets as of Sept. 30, an amount equal to about 60 percent of GDP and more than three times the $2.5 trillion in assets held by the top five financial companies in 1999.



European Banks Growing Bigger ‘Sowing the Seeds’ of Next Crisis - Bloomberg.com

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