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Nature losses to far exceed losses due to 'bank crisis'
The global economy is losing more money from the disappearance of forests than through the current banking crisis, according to an EU-commissioned study.
It puts the annual cost of forest loss at between $2 trillion and $5 trillion.
The figure comes from adding the value of the various services that forests perform, such as providing clean water and absorbing carbon dioxide.
The study, headed by a Deutsche Bank economist, parallels the Stern Review into the economics of climate change.
It has been discussed during many sessions here at the World Conservation Congress.
Some conservationists see it as a new way of persuading policymakers to fund nature protection rather than allowing the decline in ecosystems and species, highlighted in the release on Monday of the Red List of Threatened Species, to continue.
Capital losses
Speaking to BBC News on the fringes of the congress, study leader Pavan Sukhdev emphasised that the cost of natural decline dwarfs losses on the financial markets.
"It's not only greater but it's also continuous, it's been happening every year, year after year," he told BBC News.
"So whereas Wall Street by various calculations has to date lost, within the financial sector, $1-$1.5 trillion, the reality is that at today's rate we are losing natural capital at least between $2-$5 trillion every year."
The review that Mr Sukhdev leads, The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (Teeb), was initiated by Germany under its recent EU presidency, with the European Commission providing funding.
The first phase concluded in May when the team released its finding that forest decline could be costing about 7% of global GDP. The second phase will expand the scope to other natural systems.
Stern message
Key to understanding his conclusions is that as forests decline, nature stops providing services which it used to provide essentially for free.
So the human economy either has to provide them instead, perhaps through building reservoirs, building facilities to sequester carbon dioxide, or farming foods that were once naturally available.
Or we have to do without them; either way, there is a financial cost.
The Teeb calculations show that the cost falls disproportionately on the poor, because a greater part of their livelihood depends directly on the forest, especially in tropical regions.
The greatest cost to western nations would initially come through losing a natural absorber of the most important greenhouse gas.
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And that isn't only on a monetary scale. The loss of forests, natural carbon sinks, biodiversity, our oceans, and the ecosystems that depend on them will lose us as a species far more than $$$$$$. We will lose our very essence and our reason for being on this planet. We will lose the very breath of our Earth. To me, while the global markets struggle to maintain a tangible asset, let us not forget that our Earth and its sustainability is our most precious asset in more ways than just the tangible. And if we as a world community do not get truly serious about dealing with this loss within the next year it will not matter what happens on a global market. The loss to us otherwise will be even more catastrophic. The global economy is losing more money from the disappearance of forests than through the current banking crisis, according to an EU-... more -
Nature loss 'dwarfs bank crisis'
The current banking crisis is losing the global economy billions of pounds but the disappearance of our forrest dwarfs that amount.
The annual loss of forest loss is estimated to be between $2 and $5 tillion!!!
The figure comes from adding the value of the various services that forests perform, such as providing clean water and absorbing carbon dioxide.
Speaking to BBC News on the fringes of the congress, study leader Pavan Sukhdev states
"It's not only greater but it's also continuous, it's been happening every year, year after year," he told BBC News.
"So whereas Wall Street by various calculations has to date lost, within the financial sector, $1-$1.5 trillion, the reality is that at today's rate we are losing natural capital at least between $2-$5 trillion every year." The current banking crisis is losing the global economy billions of pounds but the disappearance of our forrest dwarfs that amount. ... more -
A glimmer of hope, but more boldness is needed to avert a global economic catastro...
CONFIDENCE is everything in finance. Until this week the politicians trying to tackle the credit crunch had done little to restore this essential ingredient. In America Congress dithered over the Bush administration’s $700 billion bail-out plan. In Europe governments have casually played beggar-my-neighbour politics, with countries launching deposit-guarantee schemes that destabilise banks elsewhere. This week, however, saw the first glimmers of a comprehensive global answer to the confidence gap.
One clear sign was an unprecedented co-ordinated interest-rate cut on October 8th by the world’s main central banks, including the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, the Bank of England and (officially a coincidence) the People’s Bank of China. Various continental European countries also set about recapitalising their banks. But the most astounding developments were in America and Britain. The Fed doubled the amount of money available to banks on a short-term basis to $900 billion and announced that it would buy unsecured commercial paper directly from corporate borrowers. More surprisingly, Gordon Brown’s government, hitherto the ditherer par excellence, produced the first systemic plan for dealing with the crisis, not just providing capital and short-term loans to banks but also offering to guarantee new debt for up to three years (see article). CONFIDENCE is everything in finance. Until this week the politicians trying to tackle the credit crunch had done little to restore thi... more -
Africa offers ray of hope in world of economic turmoil
Despite the persistence of Africa’s natural and man-made horrors, the latest trend is cheeringly positive
UNTIL the past few weeks of global turmoil, Africa’s doughty band of boosters were feeling they at last had something to smile about. After four decades of political and economic stagnation that kept most of their 800m-odd people in poverty and gloom, the continent’s 48 sub-Saharan countries have been growing for the past five years at a perky overall rate of 5% or so. If they maintain this pace or even bump it up a bit, Africa still has a chance of taking off. Now, with commodity prices likely to fall, world markets sure to shrivel and Western aid set to plateau or even dip, Africa, though more isolated from the global economy than other parts of the world, is bound to suffer from its ill breeze. But maybe not as badly. Once described by this newspaper, perhaps with undue harshness, as “the hopeless continent”, it could yet confound its legion of gloomsters and show that its oft-heralded renaissance is not just another false dawn prompted by the passing windfall of booming commodity prices, but the start of something solid and sustainable. Despite its manifold and persistent problems of lousy governments and erratic climates (see article), Africa has a chance of rising. Despite the persistence of Africa’s natural and man-made horrors, the latest trend is cheeringly positive ... more -
No Joint European Strategy On Banks
PARIS, Oct. 4 -- The leaders of Europe's four largest economic powers vowed Saturday to protect their banks from the continuing reverberations of the increasingly global financial crisis but could not agree on a common Europe-wide strategy.
Unlike the United States, which last week committed $700 billion in government money to shoring up Wall Street, Europe plans to continue dealing with its financial problems on a case-by-case basis. That approach, which has involved tens of billions of dollars at a step, is complicated by the transnational presence of so many large European financial institutions.
But the European leaders did call for a global economic summit by year's end aimed at revamping the international financial system, which is a legacy of a conference held at Bretton Woods, N.H., in the waning months of World War II.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Europe's most vocal advocate of a continent-wide response, announced that for now, he and the leaders of Britain, Germany and Italy agreed in four hours of discussions only that each country would use "its own means" to safeguard banks from collapse but would do so "in a coordinated way."
The outcome seemed to fall well short of the common policy that French and other officials had spoken of in recent days amid a rapid series of financial failures and a freezing up of the capital markets in Europe, which rival or by some measures exceed the size of the U.S. markets. The disunity in Europe also was apparent in complaints by some other countries that they were not even included in the discussion.
Failure to pursue a broader bailout reflected particularly strong opposition from Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain to any attempt at pooling resources for a Europe-wide fund to protect weak banks. Each government should handle its own banking problems, they said, because each country -- and even each bank -- has specific problems that must be dealt with in different ways.
Indeed, even as the leaders discussed restoring confidence in the banking system, news reports said Germany's $49 billion rescue last week of the Hypo Real Estate Bank may not have been enough and that a further injection of government cash is under discussion. Similarly, the governments of Belgium and Luxembourg were said to be in negotiations to buy up remains of the giant Fortis financial group in their countries, following up on the Netherlands' nationalization last week of Fortis operations there. The Fortis rescue demonstrated the transnational nature of Europe's financial problems.
The lack of common strategy among leaders of Europe's main economies at a time of crisis with direct effects on the well-being of their citizens suggested that the 27-nation European Union, while united in many ways, still has a long way to go before becoming the continent-wide economic and political authority it has set out to be. In addition, some of the grouping's smaller members chafed at being left out of Saturday's summit, with Finnish Finance Minister Jyrki Katainen calling the restricted invitation list "a very bad idea."
Seeking to reassure nervous Europeans, however, the four leaders described their summit as a demonstration of resolve to prevent further bank crashes, make sure depositors do not lose their savings and get money flowing through the choked financial system again for businesses and consumers.
"Today was expressed with great clarity the will of our countries to guarantee citizens' savings and preserve citizens' confidence in the banking system, which must continue to support the real economy," Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi of Italy told reporters.
"We jointly commit to ensure the soundness and stability of our banking and financial system and will take all the necessary measures to achieve this objective," a communique said. PARIS, Oct. 4 -- The leaders of Europe's four largest economic powers vowed Saturday to protect their banks from the continuing r... more -
Protests Lead Carmaker To Give Up Plant in India
NEW DELHI, Oct. 3 -- After months of violent demonstrations, Tata Motors, the Indian manufacturer of the world's cheapest car, will abandon its $350 million factory in West Bengal state.
The problem: protests by farmers who lost land in a deal that had been seen as a symbol of India's transition from agriculture to manufacturing and technology.
"Taking all things into account, mainly the well-being of our employees, the safety of our contractors and in fact our vendors also, we've taken the very regretful decision to move the Nano project out of West Bengal," Ratan Tata, chairman of Tata Group, said Friday.
From the start, farmers said the government had given them too little compensation and pressured them too hard to leave their land so Tata could build a 1,000-acre plant an hour's drive from Kolkata.
The state government recently offered farmers more-generous compensation and job guarantees in exchange for their land. But many continued to refuse the offer.
The factory has divided neighbors in the area's fertile potato- and cucumber-farming villages between those who were hopeful about the factory and those who mistrusted it.
Tata Motors has already been offered two other sites in neighboring states. The Nano, which is known in India as "the people's car," is a mini, golf-cartlike vehicle reminiscent of the Volkswagen Beetle. It was to roll out this month with a sticker price of $2,500.
As other Indian cities have boomed, Kolkata, formerly Calcutta, has remained in a bygone era. The area has sentimental ties to India's former Soviet ally. Hammer-and-sickle flags adorn Kolkata's coffeehouses and village tea shops.
Across India, land acquisition projects for about 92,000 acres -- estimated to be worth $54 billion -- are stalled by protests launched mainly by peasant farmers.
The plant at Singur was seen as an important test case for the world's biggest democracy. After Tata decided to abandon the project, pundits on television said the state's image with potential investors was now tainted.
Kolkata's famously left-wing intellectuals and celebrities were torn on the Tata issue, saying the case is symbolic of a society wrestling with its transformation.
Cricket star Sourav Ganguly recently tried to rally city youth in radio and magazine ads: "The Nano project will completely revolutionize the future of the youth. If this project goes elsewhere, the state will become a dark spot." NEW DELHI, Oct. 3 -- After months of violent demonstrations, Tata Motors, the Indian manufacturer of the world's cheapest car, wi... more -
Analysis: Palin gets back on track, but Biden wins debate
Highlights:
Fifty-one percent of debate watchers say Biden did best job, CNN poll says
Eighty-four percent of debate watchers said Palin did better than expected
Biden more likely to bring change, according to 53 percent of debate watchers Highlights: Fifty-one percent of debate watchers say Biden did best job, CNN poll says ... more -
Biden touts experience, Palin pushes 'maverick' record
Highlights:
Joe Biden, Sarah Palin debate change, "maverick" status
Both candidates get good reviews for their debate performances
VP candidates discuss economy, foreign policy, climate change
Biden tries to link McCain to Bush; Palin pushes record of reform Highlights: Joe Biden, Sarah Palin debate change, "maverick" status ... more -
Senate bailout vote puts pressure on House Republicans, aides say
Story Highlights:
Rep. Charles Rangel thinks "sweeteners" will smooth passage in House
Bailout package passed Senate 74-25 on Wednesday with bipartisan support
The bailout failed 228-205 on Monday in the House
President Bush urges the House to pass an "improved" bill Story Highlights: Rep. Charles Rangel thinks "sweeteners" will smooth passage in House ... more -
Europe Beginning to Realize Its Lenders Share in the Blame
Europe moved to shore up more teetering banks Wednesday, as officials struggled to answer a basic question: How did their highly regulated banks, many of them state-owned, get suckered by the same speculative investments that have flattened Wall Street? Europe moved to shore up more teetering banks Wednesday, as officials struggled to answer a basic question: How did their highly regul... more
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Race and the 2008 election
Here's some of the latest updates from RaceWire...
Alaskans of Color Feel Ignored by Palin
Thursday night, Gov. Sarah Palin will debate Sen. Joe Biden in the vice presidential debate, but many Alaskans of color argue that her record proves she is a “daughter of privilege, someone out of touch with the concerns of people of color, and a government official they’d like to see return to their state to face an investigation into allegations of abuse of power.” Black America Web.
Remittances to Mexico Reduced In Poor Economy
With an economic crisis and immigration on the decline, there is no surprise that Mexican immigrants’ remittances home have seen the largest drop since they started being recorded 12 years ago. Los Angeles Times.
Vote-scam Fliers in Philly’s Black Neighborhoods
“An anonymous flier circulating in African-American neighborhoods in North and West Philadelphia states that voters who are facing outstanding arrest warrants or who have unpaid traffic tickets may be arrested at the polls on Election Day.” Philadelphia Daily News.
Bloomberg Seeks a Third Term to Solve NYC Economic Issues
Despite a voter referendum for term limits, New York’s Mayor Bloomberg plans to seek reelection for a third term, and several lawyers and government watchdog groups said Wednesday they are mulling legal action to block any changes. Yahoo news. Here's some of the latest updates from RaceWire... Alaskans of Color Feel Ignored by Palin ... more -
Dramatic Spike in Sickdays Caused by Downturn: "can't come in today, I&#...
The credit crunch is proving bad for our physical as well as our financial well-being.
Companies are recording a dramatic leap in the number of workers off sick.
Personnel experts say constant worries over jobs, family finances and the global economy have weakened immune systems and led to flu and gastrointestinal complaints.
They also blame rising food prices for contributing to the mass sickness epidemic as cash-strapped shoppers switch to cheap food rather than more healthy fruit and veg.
Latest figures from leading absence management company FirstCare suggest more than 380,000 people are ringing in sick every day after being struck down by either flu-like symptoms or stomach problems.
Aaron Ross, managing director of FirstCare, said: 'The credit crunch is beginning to impact on our health and productivity.
'We have seen a steady growth in sickness rates over the last 10 days, and they have been going up and up for a while.
'We have not seen anything like this before, it is very, very unusual. We occasionally see a spike in absence related to a single event, which rapidly goes down, but this has not, and there is no indication it will do.'
FirstCare records absences and excuses given for employees of scores of companies including Coca Cola, British Gas and Britain's biggest employer, the NHS.
It says in the last 10 days the number of people phoning in sick with flu-like complaints has almost doubled, and those with gastrointestinal problems - like ulcers and irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) - have risen by a third.
Mr Ross said: 'This represents a significant loss of working time. We would expect to see seasonal trends of approximately 308 out of every 100,000 employees absent for flu like symptoms, but this has shot up to 585.
'For gastrointestinal problems, the average of 524 absentees per 100,000 staff has risen to a record level of 697.
'Stress has also gone through the roof in the last two months. Now people are feeling it in their pocket, they are worrying about their own jobs.'
Mapped across Britain's workforce, the figures suggest around 175,000 a day are calling in sick with flu-like symptoms, and more than 205,000 staying at home with gastrointestinal problems.
Mr Ross said: 'Such significant increases will no doubt have an effect on productivity, as well as putting strain on other staff. It is a nightmare for businesses who may be struggling in the current climate to lose employees.
'It is particularly interesting that we have seen a simultaneous increase in these two ailments as they are both linked to the immune system.
'Given the current economic climate, employees feel uncertain about the future, and this stress has an adverse effect on the immune system, making us more susceptible to coughs, colds, flu and gastrointestinal complaints.
'Our immune systems are also taking a hit as a result of the high cost of fresh fruit and vegetables. As employees feel the pinch at the checkout, fresh produce is increasingly substituted for less nutritious budget options.'
Mr Ross said the company first noticed the steady increase in illnesses surge after the collapse of Lehman Brothers bank.
He added: 'I think in the last 10 days the public have been made more aware of the sense of crisis in the financial system.
'After Lehman Brothers collapsed, with thousands of people threatened with the loss of their jobs, people started worrying about their own jobs.
'And those who are off sick may feel they are more likely to lose their jobs if redundancies have to be made, which can make them worse - there is a perpetual circle.' The credit crunch is proving bad for our physical as well as our financial well-being. ... more -
U.S. Mortgage Meltdown Video
U.S. Mortgage Meltdown Reported on CBS!!!!
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House Of Cards: The Mortgage Mess,
Since last summer, Americans have seen their investments shrink and their property values plummet. At the heart of the problem is something called the subprime mortgage crisis, which began back then and continues to ricochet through the economy.
It sounds complicated, but it's really fairly simple: banks lent hundreds of billions of dollars to homebuyers who can't pay them back. Wall Street took the risky debt, dressed it up as fancy securities, and sold it around the world as safe investments. If it sounds like a shell game or Ponzi scheme, in some ways it was a house of cards rife with corruption, greed, and negligence.
Real estate agent Kevin Moran gave Kroft a tour of the wreckage in one subdivision called "Weston Ranch," with block after block of vacant and abandoned houses.
"If you see a 'for sale' sign in this neighborhood that probably is a sign of distress, right?" Kroft asks.
"I would say that, yeah. Two out of three of all the sales are probably foreclosed properties, and/or people who are in distress," Moran explains.
The "for sale" signs and the overgrown lawns in Weston Ranch only show part of the picture. To get a real overview, you need to look at a map from Sean O’Toole's Web site, foreclosureradar.com, which tracks distressed properties in Stockton and other California communities.
"The light blue circles are folks that have gone into default. And that means that's the first step of the foreclosure process," O'Toole says, explaining how his maps color-code properties. "The dark blue is auction properties. And the red icons are properties that were sold at auction, had no bid, and therefore went back to the lender."
As of last week, there were 4,200 Stockton homes either in default or foreclosure; $1.4 billion in bad loans in just one California community, and it is far from over.
"Two months from now, what's this map gonna look like? How many of those light blues are gonna be red?" Kroft asks O'Toole.
"We'll probably see at least 60, 70 percent of these light blues turn red. And we'll see at least this many light blues again," O'Toole predicts.
Banks are auctioning off houses all over California and in South Florida, in Nevada, and in parts of Ohio and Texas, the result of a huge real estate bubble that began forming in Stockton back in 2003, when people priced out of the Bay Area and Silicon Valley discovered that you could buy a four-bedroom home there for just $230,000.
Developers started turning asparagus fields into subdivisions, and lenders handed out free money to anyone who wanted to buy.
"What do you mean by free money?" Kroft asks Jim Grant, the editor of "Grant's Interest Rate Observer" and one the country's foremost experts on credit markets.
"I mean free money. I mean you had to apply not to get a loan, almost. Sometimes you have to apply to get a loan, you almost had to apply not to get one," Grant says.
"When you opened your mailbox in 2004, 2005, you could barely -- people were pressing on you, if you were not institutionalized, all matters of schemes in which to expand your personal debt and mortgage debt. You could, and people did, borrow more than 100 percent of the price of a house with the most fragile of financial bonafides," Grant explains. Since last summer, Americans have seen their investments shrink and their property values plummet. At the heart of the problem is some... more -
The Elder Statesmen Speak - washingtonpost.com
As octogenarian white guys with high-level U.S. foreign policy experience go, Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft could not be more different. Brzezinski was born in Poland and Scowcroft in Utah. The former made his name as a professor at Harvard and Columbia, the latter as a general in the Air Force. Brzezinski became Jimmy Carter's national security adviser, and Scowcroft was Richard Nixon's military assistant before serving as national security adviser to Gerald Ford and George H. W. Bush. Today, Scowcroft is one of the Republican Party's elder statesmen in the foreign policy arena, while Brzezinski plays a similar role for the Democrats.
one might expect Brzezinski and Scowcroft to disagree vehemently about the challenges America faces abroad, the decisions that have shaped the nation's current travails and what the next president should do. Instead, they seem to see eye to eye on nearly every major foreign policy issue facing the United States. We know this because last spring Washington Post columnist David Ignatius sat down with both men for several days of wide-ranging discussion. America and the World is an edited transcript of their conversations. And, contrary to the operative assumption behind Sunday morning TV talk shows, it turns out that two wise interlocutors who concur can be as interesting and informative as experts with completely divergent views.
Brzezinski and Scowcroft largely agree is Iraq. When the idea of striking Iraq was first floated in the aftermath of 9/11, both voiced doubts about its wisdom. For Scowcroft, criticizing the invasion must have been particularly difficult, given his close ties to the Bush family. Nonetheless, he published a prescient article in the Wall Street Journal titled, "Don't Attack Saddam." In that August 2002 piece, Scowcroft warned that invading Iraq would "seriously jeopardize, if not destroy, the global counterterrorist campaign we have undertaken" and would be "very expensive -- with serious consequences for the U.S. and global economy." But in this book, Ignatius ably steers Scowcroft and Brzezinski beyond criticism of the decisions that led to war and toward consensus on what to do now: Exit slowly -- and only after a more stable regional context has been nurtured, especially by engaging Iran and reinvigorating the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians.
China, Russia and Europe, a central point they repeatedly make is that the United States must shed the bunker mentality that has infused its foreign policy since 9/11. According to Ignatius, both men want "to restore a confident, forward leaning America. . . . Their idea of a twenty-first century American superpower is a nation that reaches out to the world -- not to preach but to listen and cooperate and, where necessary, compel."
Brzezinski calls the global political awakening. "For the first time in history," he contends, "all of the world is politically activated . . . creating massive intolerance, impatience with inequality . . . jealousies, resentment, more rapid immigration." These demands for dignity and higher living standards (which governments often are unable to meet), coupled with the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, lead Brzezinski to observe ominously that "today, it's much easier to kill a million people than to govern a million restless, stirred-up, impatient people."
The conviction that globalization is spreading not just trade and technology, but also resentment and impatience, is cause "for flexibility, for openness, for a willingness to talk with friends and enemies alike," as Ignatius summarizes their views. Their advice is reminiscent of George W. Bush's remark in a 2000 presidential debate: "If we are an arrogant nation they will resent us. If we are a humble nation, but strong, they will welcome us." The next president would do well to heed their counsel but should not underestimate the difficulty of sticking to it. As octogenarian white guys with high-level U.S. foreign policy experience go, Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft could not be mor... more -
Smart Cash Flow Decisions for Unstable Times | What's Up with My Credit?
Small businesses, without ample capital reserves, are in the most precarious position during unstable economic times. Simultaneously, consumer cutbacks may already be reducing your reserves. Credit is no longer available for many potential borrowers, making access to cash extremely difficult.
A lack of liquidity (cash) has become so severe and widespread that excellent credit scores are required to purchase cars, secure small business loans, or borrow money for college. There is so little cash available that it's only being lent to those with the very best credit histories because banks can't afford to assume any additional risk. Unfortunately, years of negligent government oversight and the repeal of government regulations have resulted in the need for government intervention (now) to prevent our entire financial system from collapsing.
With opinions hovering at 99 percent against and 1 percent for, citizens are contacting Members of Congress strongly opposing the Treasury Department "bailout" plan. The truth about the credit crisis: no one has a clue whether the Treasury "bailout" will be effective or what will happen to the economy over the next week, month or year. We are living in a period of economic uncertainty.
We do know that a lack of regulations and oversight of the financial industry resulted in the mortgage meltdown, which has devolved into this credit crisis. There is a plea to allow the same greed motivated markets, which created the mess, to clean it up. This seems akin to believing a cabal of sloppy train engineers, who ran their trains off tracks into gullies, have the ability to get all the damaged cars back onto the tracks and functioning again while caring for the many injured passengers.
What can you do in the face of these uncertain times?
Audit your expenses. With the eye of the most dispassionate accountant, analyze your expenses. Look for places you can cut without diminishing the quality your customers or clients expect. There can be a tendency to say, "That's only $25.00 a month." or "This never runs more than $50.00 a month." When you're looking for ways to cut expenses, make a notation of all the large and small amounts that could be eliminated. Add them up. You might be surprised by the total.
Add a line of essentials. If your business does not supply essentials that people need during an economic downturn, can you add a line of products or services that will attract people who must take care of basic needs?
Engage in creative rebirth. When sales begin to drop, before your company faces instability, re-think your business. Evaluate your talents and the needs of your market. Talk to your customers about their primary needs today. It's much easier to re-direct your business focus before it tanks than to start over from scratch during a time of economic constriction.
Operate on a lean budget. While you might still be humming along as if there is no recession, it's likely the economic pinch will eventually hit your revenues. Plan for it.
Clean up unnecessary costs.
Pay off debt.
Build up cash reserves.
Delay capital expenses.
Look for opportunities to increase profitability.
Current projections indicate we will not see a widespread economic upturn until into 2010 or later. Businesses that figure out how to fulfill customer needs and eliminate unnecessary expenses during these challenging times will thrive their way through the downturn and soar into greater success when the economy improves. Small businesses, without ample capital reserves, are in the most precarious position during unstable economic times. Simultaneously,... more -
Asian markets fall on doubts about US bailout
TOKYO -- Asian stock markets fell Monday amid investors skepticism that the deal reached in Washington over a $700 billion bank bailout would quickly resolve the bad debt crisis.
Adding to concerns of further global financial contagion was news Sunday that Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg pledged more than euro11 billion ($16 billion) to Dutch-Belgian bank and insurance giant Fortis NV to keep it from insolvency.
"There's an increasing realization that the cleanup and the mending of all that's gone wrong is going to take an extended period to work through, and we're going to see an extended recovery period," said Jamie Spiteri, senior dealer at Shaw Stockbroking in Sydney. TOKYO -- Asian stock markets fell Monday amid investors skepticism that the deal reached in Washington over a $700 billion bank bailou... more -
As US financial collapse looms, UK financial crisis grows
I think it's really important that we don't lose sight that this is a global financial problem, and not just an isolated US problem, as this article shows. Even the UK is nationalizing major financial institutions now due to collapse fears, and yet I have not heard a single word about this in the US mainstream media this week. Why, and who really benefits when we don't connect all the dots?
From the article:
" Sept. 28 (Bloomberg) -- The U.K. government will step in to protect Bradford & Bingley Plc depositors, Treasury minister Yvette Cooper said, after a report some form of state take over of the British mortgage lender will occur.
``Depositors and ordinary savers must be properly protected, and they will be as part of the arrangements we'll set out,'' Cooper said in a British Broadcasting Corp. television interview. ``The government is stepping in. Financial stability has got to be protected, but so have ordinary savers.''
Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling will make a statement before 8 a.m. London time tomorrow outlining the government's plan, which the BBC said would include some form of nationalization. Ministers are working on other options including a partial government takeover, acquisition by a rival bank or a break up and purchase of assets by several buyers.
Bradford & Bingley, the nation's biggest lender to landlords, is the third major British bank to run into trouble since credit markets seized up around the globe last year. Its shares have fallen 93 percent this year. Northern Rock Plc was nationalized in February and HBOS Plc sold itself to Lloyds TSB Group Plc on Sept. 18."
Read the full story at the link.
Notice the lack of US coverage here:
http://news.google.com/news?q=Bradford+%26+Bingley&... I think it's really important that we don't lose sight that this is a global financial problem, and not just an isolated US ... more -
Relief agency fundraising stumbles
Aid groups wonder, are Americans too distracted, anxious to give?
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The crisis: A timeline
shocking series of events that forever changed the financial markets.v
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