re nr 3
A) the commercial banks are NOT overseen or regulated by the National Bank but by FINMA
http://www.finma.ch/d/beaufsichtigte...default-a.aspx
and to repeat it, it is only the SNB which can print CHF banknotes.

Commercial banks of course can keep back banknotes if they for whatever reason feel like it. It is THEIR decision.

While I am fully aware of the point that in the U.K., at least in the past, the Bank of England, the Royal Bank of Scotland, the Bank of Scotland and the Clydesdale Bank did / do print UK£ banknotes, but we here speak about Switzerland

The currently generally accepted meaning of the English phrase 'printing money' is covered extensively here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printing_money

Believe me, I DID really read it, but as finances/banking is not my forte I only partially understand it . What I however stated above remains unchanged as A) German is majority language in Switzerland, B) German is the defacto languague of the SNB and C) German is the language of the major newspapers (except LeTemps) and in German "money printing" clearly and only is the actual printing of banknotes. Your link also pointed to countries where the national banks (reserve banks, central banks, etc) control and regulate the commercial banks, something the SNB does NOT. So, as correct you may be in principle and in regard to realities elsewhere, here in CH it is different.

You of course may argue that things also in CH are subject to change. Right you are, as the fairly swift crumbling of many parts of the bank secrecy proves. But it is not that way. And add to this that also things elsewhere are subject to change. Just look at General Dufour. The cartography system of General Dufour is now in use worldwide. Some of his strategies he used here in 1847/48 have been copied by countless generals around the globe. He helped to build up the Red Cross with worldwide effects.

Do not forget that at least up to 1848, in fact partially even up to 1874, Cantonal banks printed their own currencies, even if the CHF already in 1848 became the currency of the union. So that we may see a time when the Cantonal Banks are to print CHF. The SVP may try this route in order to prevent CH from joining the € after the present crisis vanishes into history.

Michael Lewis has written 2 very good books about the finance industry, Liar's Poker & recently The Big Short. This article is promoting his latest book, but does have interest as a stand-alone piece: ‘Boomerang’: Surveying the wreckage of financial disaster

Now the bankers & financiers have overloaded Governments/CBs with the results of their bad bets, who will bail them out this time if & when things like the following go wrong?

[surprised at the mention of Switzerland in there]

I wonder if GS, JPM & MS are still holding the wrong end of these bets? History suggests that they will have offloaded them onto some mug pension fund manager, but if not...

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Why must we spend decades of our lives paying the bankers' interest on [debt|money|credit] that they magicked out of nothing but thin air?

Not so surprising if you read how they selected the countries:

Thanx for the link, BTW.

More news "Moody's decision yesterday to downgrade credit rating of 12 UK financial institutions"

Seem to be dark clouds in every direction yet brave people are still buying shares....

Interesting article on the BoE QE and what it might mean - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/f...this-time.html

And then there's these folks who are saying it might melt down in 'weeks' rather than months or years - http://www.creditwritedowns.com/2011...-meltdown.html

Interesting times.

it is actually trivially simple to solve the problem, once and forever. You only need to pass 2 laws..

a) banks cannot 'trade' with depositor's funds. i.e. bring back the Glass-Steagal act and separate commercial banking from investment banking and trading etc - no ifs and buts. Private capital will be free to gamble as it likes - as the old investment bank partnerships used to be.

b) taxpayer funds cannot be used to bail-out a profit making entity. EITHER an entity is 'systemically important' and therefore cannot be allowed to fail - in which case it is owned and run by the state, and may not work for profit. OR it is run for profit, and shareholders/creditors will then take their lumps in the free market like all other investors. No ifs or buts.

That will be the end of all financial crises... trouble is - it is not easy to pass these laws. Because banks/moneymen control the politicians.

But as throughout history, a crowd with pitchforks can make any amount of money irrelevant ...

Dexia bank bailed out by governments
Este (Austrian bank) announced heavy losses today due to exposure to peripheral eurozone countries including mortgage loans.

So it starts

Crowds and pitchforks .. the only way to stop this madness.

Anybody have a clue why LIBOR CHF 3 Month rate is slowly creeping up? Since beginning of this month it rose from 0.01 to 0.04%.

Everybody seems to think the ECB will cut their rate soon which is the opposite direction.

It appears that the smartest men in the room were the hedgies who bought Greek CDSs off Goldman at fractions of cents on the dollar.

It's pretty gobsmacking that an organisation with GS's unrivalled political influence, financial firepower and resultant insider information can somehow make a loss. They must have sold (and held) a boatload of unhedged CDSs.

they would be, if it was true.

GS is - much as I hate to admit it - smarter than that. Where do you read that they lost money from selling Greek CDS's??

As Nev likes to point out, the IBs et al operate in secret, so it's often necessary to speculate. It looks like Kyle Bass is smarter than Goldman because he:

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/447308.../#.Tp-6CXGGHTV
Apparently contributing towards leaving GS effectively net long $2,500,000,000 on European debt:
http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-...18-708133.html
I wonder how you hedge Greek CDS that you've sold, without offloading them?

Switzerland? Seriously..??


That's simple... you call AIG

It surprised me too. See Mark75's post #2145 - too big a banking sector.

It's especially alarming when you consider that in 2010, Goldman made a profit on every single trading day in the first quarter ... something which is statistically extremely unlikely and either indicates that they are mega-geniuses or have some other advantage that other players don't have.

(source: Zerohedge http://bit.ly/9o3RKa)

Therefore, when someone with their undoubted 'special ability' starts making losses, you know that the people who run the casino are losing control ... again.

Banking is literally a license to print money. Assuming you do your job right and do proper risk analysis before extending credit, it should be near impossible to make substantial losses due to your ability to leverage up a capital base many times.

The fact that the banking system managed to make such staggering losses that most of the big players had to be bailed out at massive expense to the public in 2008 (and kept on intensive financial care ever since) is an indicator that even being given the means to make yourself spectacularly rich by crunching numbers isn't enough to satisfy the greedy nature of the people running these organisations - they wanted to become obscenely rich.

Seems like the piggies didn't learn the lesson of the financial crisis - or rather, they learned that they could do anything they wanted no matter how stupid, risky and sometimes fraudulent, as someone else (the taxpayer) would pick up the tab for their mistakes and the authorities would look the other way as regards questionable activities.

I would suspect that we are now at the point where the nation states who unwisely rescued their banksters three years ago are now at the point where they cannot do it again without themselves going bust. In some cases, states have effectively gone bust thanks to socialising the banks losses - Ireland being a prime example.

a) their special ability appears to be mostly a combination of their incestuous links with (and influence over) government, and the monopoly power of the top investment banks in the US. If it really was superior skills and intelligence, then they would have been making money in the last quarter too.

b) Banking is indeed a license to print money. But much of what they did in the last 10 years was little to do with banking as you define it. The immense riches, and the downfall were mostly attributable to trading, speculation, market-making, structuring and in some cases outright fraud.

c) I'm not sure about the point you make with leverage. They need some to make money, of course. But too much is what kills most banks.

Hmmm, today the yield, or interest rate, on Italian ten-year bonds is up to 6.35%; 7% is bail out time!!

Italy will be leaving the Euro and EC.
They really have nothing to loose.

The UK would be better out of the EC for sure.
If Conservative want to win the next election for sure, Cameron just needs to announce that there will be a referendum within 6 months of the election if Conservative win. 75% of the UK people would vote OUT.

As I have said before, Germany will soon come to a halt and that is when the German people will tell their government they are not going to bail out these countries that have lied and mismanaged their economies.

We are just seeing the start of the financial crisis, we have really seen nothing yet.

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I do not have friends..........I have contingent liabilities