Imagine yourself. On September 24 2008 you get into a coma and in December 2008 you awake. Bit by bit you start to remember and realize things that happened. It's now, less than a week before x-mas when you start to walk, talk and come to consciousness again. It's a whole different world.
No, it's not the hilarious movie Goodbye Lenin. It's what happened in our times in the past months.
Now it's December 20 and the World is completely different. Some banks went bankrupt,
Obama won the American presidential election, worldwide economy collapsed, the worldwide automotive industry is almost broke, Iceland is on the brink of bankruptcy.
In the Netherlands Governmental intervention prevented 2 banks (ABNAMRO-bank and Fortis-bank), which had to become one bank, to fall. The USA, the European Union, other European nations, Russia, the far east all face a real recession.
In the USA Bernard Madoff, the founder and president of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities , told the police about his fraud in his brokerage firm. The media claims that it's a fraud as high as $50bn. I don't think so, it might be higher, much higher. Also this is probably not the only fraud which becomes obvious together with the fall of the financial system.
This financial crisis might somehow be good for the world economy. It shakes up real life and stresses the values that are really important: The fundamentals of the economy, not the derivative economy.
An example, and I tell you it's not a complaint; I invested € 20.000 in bonds which give a higher revenue when the reference price of the underlying stocks is going up. 2007 Was a profitable year, in 2008 however the bond plunged to 80 or less while 100 or higher is be profitable. Till 2012 I'll have bonds which don´t pay, after 2012 the underlying value will be payed. What, if my bank went broke? Hopefully the Government will support the backbones of the economy. I dislike derivatives as put and call options on company-stocks, specialized products like bonds which are linked to many stocks on invisible markets. It's all not so transparent as you think it is.
These fundamentals are a certain demand on the market and supply of that demand. In fact the demand-factor and supply-factor are the 2 things needed to create a market.
Of course nowadays we need money to trade. However we could do without.
Let's say we need a sound financial system as a ceteris paribus.
Problem is the world has no sound financial system. Regulators fail in many aspects. Banks fail in their task being transparent. According to George Soros in the crisis in global capitalism knowledge of fail-ability of an actor in economy is in certain way positive because it makes the actor aware of his position and the his need to change. (GS. warned the world in 1998 for an unstable (financial) future). A summary of the book.
In a situation of instability of the markets the Children's Investment Fund (CIF) claims in January 2007 that ABNAMRO-bank made to little profit for it's shareholders and other stakeholders. They urged a break-up or sale. This was the start of the Dutch banking crisis which affected all stakeholders. Even today almost 2 years after the carousel started. It's in the worst situation you can imagine.
The stock value plunged from € 5.= to € 0.93, banking personnel is not amused with the uncertain situation, banking customers are not amused with the bad prospectives for their banks whether it is ABNAMRO-bank or Fortis-bank and stock owners are not happy at all. So the theory of CIF didn't stand. All stakeholders are ripped or got away before the crisis started.
I wish you all a merry Christmas, a lot of lights and a fine X-mas tree. Let's celebrate life on earth because there is hope.
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