Housing and Hedge Funds  28/06/2007

We’re all for helping distressed borrowers. And we accept government’s role, if necessary, to avert a financial collapse. But in the end, intervention on behalf of Wall Street would be an outrage, because Wall Street — abetted by lax federal regulation — is largely to blame for this fiasco. Wall Street firms encouraged the issuance of risky loans to troubled borrowers and then reaped a windfall by packaging them as investments for hedge fund clients.

And yet, the possibility of economywide problems from further Bear Stearns-like debacles is real. The Bear Stearns funds, like many others, borrowed big to invest in subprime loans. Investing with borrowed money juices returns in hot markets and magnifies losses in down markets, making losers out of lenders as well as equity investors...

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New York Times

GEAB N°65 - Contents

- Published on May 16, 2012 -

Global systemic crisis / Second half of 2012 – Convergence of four explosive factors: Banks-Stock Exchanges-Pensions-Debts
Whilst waiting for Euroland to equip itself, by the end of 2012, with a medium to long term common political, economic and social project, especially following the election of the new French president François Hollande, anticipated many months ago by LEAP/E2020, players will remain prisoners of the short-term reflexes related to the sudden Greek political tremors, the uncertainties over Euroland governance and to the risks in public debts… (page 2)
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Which languages must your child learn to be useful to him in twenty years ? Anticipation of the principal intra-European and world common languages in a 2030 timframe
Beyond its cultural interest LEAP/E2020 has created this anticipation as a tool to aid decision-making, individual (parents for the education of their children) as much as collective (public education institutions, universities, states, international businesses). Individual and joint strategies as regards language teaching are long term processes needing fundamental choices to be made almost a generation in advance… (page 11)
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Strategic and operational recommendations
. Currencies-Gold: Stay on course
. Pensions: Preserving one’s capital
. Stock Exchanges: Last exit before chaos
. Banks: Maximum distrust
. Government bonds: The trap is closing (page 21)
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The GlobalEurometre - Results & Analysis
The majority of respondents believing that their country’s major banks could go bankrupt by the end of 2012 has risen to 66% this month (versus 61% last month)… (page 23)
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