Der USA Bären-Thread

der BoJ ebenso wie bei den vergeblichen Versuchen der Schweizer Nationalbank (vor einigen Monaten), den Franken-Anstieg zu stoppen.

Kein Wunder. Das auf den Devisenmärkten bewegte Volumen hat sich in den letzten Jahren verdoppelt (immer mehr Hebelgeschütze für Zocker), während die Finanzkraft der Notenbanken mehr oder weniger konstant geblieben ist. Deshalb kommen die Notenbanken kaum mehr gegenan. Nach jeder Intervention prügeln Horden von Zockern die Kurse sofort wieder auf das Vor-Interventions-Niveau runter (grüne Ovale). Je häufiger ihnen das gelingt, desto frecher bzw. respektloser werden sie.

Der Nikkei reagierte heute Nacht auf die neuerliche Yen-Stärke mit einer krassen Trendwende nach unten, nachdem er anfangs noch deutlich im Plus notiert hatte.

"173 Milliarden Euro Finanzmüll fanden heute endlich ein neues zu Hause, welches auch noch „FMS Wertmanagement“ genannt wird..."

Man hätte die Bad Bank statt "FMS Wertmanagement" passender "FMS Finanzschrott-Müllkippe auf Steuerzahlerkosten" nennen sollen.

173 Mrd. sind mehr als das Vierfache der jährlichen Kommunalsteueraufkommens Bayerns!

FTD - Das Kapital
Selektive Wahrnehmung an den Märkten

In Deutschland sind die Konsumumfragen derart rosig, dass der echte Konsum schon keine Rolle mehr spielt. In Amerika hingegen signalisieren nun auch die Firmenumfragen derart Übles, dass die Anleger plötzlich auf Bestätigung durch harte Daten pochen.

Die Anleger und die Ökonomen lieben Umfragewerte. Und die Umfragen unter den hiesigen Verbrauchern und Einzelhandelsfirmen zeichnen derzeit ein so hübsches Bild, dass harte Daten fast keine Rolle mehr spielen. Dass die realen Einzelhandelsumsätze im August zum zweiten Mal hintereinander gefallen sind (im Juni waren sie unverändert), ist dabei nicht mal besonders beunruhigend, erratisch, wie diese Zeitreihe ist. Dass der reale private Konsum in Deutschland im zweiten Quartal immer noch um 0,7 Prozent unterm Vorjahr lag, ist dagegen schon aussagekräftiger, wird aber kaum noch wahrgenommen.

Ausgeblendet wird auch gerne, dass der Konsum damit gerade mal um 2,7 Prozent höher ist als vor zehn Jahren. Auch das reale, um den Konsumdeflator bereinigte verfügbare Einkommen ist seither bloß um 4,9 Prozent gestiegen. Die monatlichen Nettolöhne und -gehälter je Arbeitnehmer liegen real sogar um fünf Prozent unter dem Stand von Mitte 1993. Das sollte man wissen, wenn man den Jubelchören lauscht.

Es stimmt zwar, dass die Bedingungen für die hiesige Binnenkonjunktur und damit für den Konsum schon wegen des Zinsumfelds und der Arbeitsmarktbelebung so günstig wie lange nicht mehr anmuten. Aber aus ökonomischer Sicht müsste der private Verbrauch ein paar Jahre lang mit Raten von drei Prozent wachsen, um Schwärmereien begründen zu können. So lange können die Anleger natürlich nicht warten, doch angesichts der außenwirtschaftlichen Unwägbarkeiten kommt die Wette auf den hiesigen Konsum auch einem Gang ins Spielkasino gleich. Das gilt jedenfalls dann, wenn es nicht lediglich um relative Stärke, sondern um absolute Rendite geht.

So zeigt sich JP Morgan bei der Auswertung der globalen Einkäuferindizes (PMI) inzwischen äußerst besorgt, weil das Verhältnis von Aufträgen zu Vorräten auf eine empfindliche Abkühlung der Industrie hindeutet. Das ist jene Kennzahl, welche die Bullen Anfang 2009 in Verzückung versetzt hatte. Jetzt will niemand etwas von diesen Umfragedetails wissen, ebenso wenig übrigens wie vom Ende des Höhenflugs des Bloomberg-PMI für den deutschen Einzelhandel.

Die Verschlechterung des globalen "PMI-Innenlebens" ist ja vor allem den USA geschuldet, wo der - saisonbereinigte - Bankkredit allein in der jüngsten Berichtswoche um 71,8 Mrd. Dollar gepurzelt ist. Und da das nominale BIP Amerikas nicht mal mehr dem Dreifachen des chinesischen entspricht, drückt man einfach fest die Augen zu - und blinzelt höchstens mal auf einen Klimaindex der GfK.

www.ftd.de/finanzen/maerkte/marktberichte/...ten/50178030.html
 

---

www.nytimes.com/2010/10/04/business/...src=me&ref=business

As many households and small businesses are being turned away by bank loan officers, large corporations are borrowing vast sums of money for next to nothing — simply because they can.
Companies like Microsoft  are raising billions of dollars by issuing bonds at ultra-low interest rates, but few of them are actually spending the money on new factories, equipment or jobs. Instead, they are stockpiling the cash until the economy improves.

The development presents something of a chicken-and-egg situation: Corporations keep saving, waiting for the economy to perk up — but the economy is unlikely to perk up if corporations keep saving.

This situation underscores the limits of Washington policy makers’ power to stimulate the economy. The Federal Reserve has held official interest rates near zero for almost two years, which allows corporations to sell bonds with only slightly higher returns — even below 1 percent. But most companies are not doing what the easy monetary policy was intended to get them to do: invest and create jobs.

The Fed’s low rates have in fact hurt many Americans, especially retirees whose incomes from savings have fallen substantially. Big companies like Johnson & Johnson, PepsiCo and I.B.M. seem to have been among the major beneficiaries.

“They are benefiting themselves by borrowing and keeping this cash, but it is not benefiting the economy yet,” .......

.....we regard the recent surge in investor optimism as a red light (see chart below), especially at a time when leading indicators are still pointing to economic weakness ahead. We note, for example, that while the headline ISM for the US slipped to 54.4 in September, the backlog of orders crashed well below the critical 50 level to 46.5. The last time this occurred was October 2007, just one month before ‘The Great Recession’ officially began!

The situation in Japan is even worse. Manufacturing output has now fallen for three months in a row. In September, both the headline PMI and the new orders component dropped below the critical 50 level. As well as Japan being the template for Ice Age events over recent years, we have long said that Japan is also a highly sensitive straw in the cyclical wind. And just as Japanese tech clearly led the Nasdaq bust in Q1 2000, the Japanese PMI typically leads the US ISM down into global recession.

ftalphaville.ft.com/blog/2010/10/04/359551/...r-market-resume/

www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/...in-near-depression.html

The IMF report – "Will It Hurt? Macroeconomic Effects of Fiscal Consolidation" – implicitly argues that austerity will do more damage than so far admitted.

Normally, tightening of 1pc of GDP in one country leads to a 0.5pc loss of growth after two years. It is another story when half the globe is in trouble and tightening in lockstep. Lost growth would be double if interest rates are already zero, and if everybody cuts spending at once.
"Not all countries can reduce the value of their currency and increase net exports at the same time," it said. Nobel economist Joe Stiglitz goes further, warning that damn may break altogether in parts of Europe, setting off a "death spiral".

The Fund said damage also doubles for states that cannot cut rates or devalue – think Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Greece, and Italy, all trapped in EMU at overvalued exchange rates.

"A fall in the value of the currency plays a key role in softening the impact. The result is consistent with standard Mundell-Fleming theory that fiscal multipliers are larger in economies with fixed exchange rate regimes." Exactly. ........

We are seeing a pattern – first in Ireland, now in Greece and Portugal – where cuts are failing to close the deficit as fast as hoped. Austerity itself is eroding tax revenues. Countries are chasing their own tail.

The rest of EMU is not going to help. France and Italy are cutting 1.6pc GDP next year. The German squeeze starts in earnest in 2011. ........The ECB is winding down its lending facilities for eurozone banks, regardless of the danger for Spanish, Portuguese, Irish, and Greek banks that have borrowed €362bn, or the danger for their governments. These banks have used the money to buy state bonds, playing the internal "carry trade" for extra yield. In other words, the ECB is chipping at the prop that holds up Southern Europe.

One has to conclude that the ECB is washing its hands of the PIGS, dumping the problem onto the fiscal authorities through the EU's €440bn rescue fund. That is courting fate.

www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/...-not-survive.html
The former chief economist of the World Bank and a Nobel prize winner also predicted that short-term speculators in the market could soon start putting pressure on Spain, which is struggling with a large deficit and high unemployment. Last week, Moody's cut the country's credit rating from AAA to Aa1.

The former adviser to President Bill Clinton also says that the banking sector has gone back to "business as usual" too quickly and that there are still risks of another financial crisis despite some improvements in regulation. .....

"The worry is that there is a wave of austerity building throughout Europe and even hitting America's shores," Mr Stiglitz said. "As so many countries cut back on spending prematurely, global aggregate demand will be lowered and growth will slow – even perhaps leading to a double-dip recession.

"America may have caused the global recession but Europe is now responding in kind."

Mr Stiglitz warned that Spain, similarly to Greece, was now in the speculators' sights.

"Under the rules of the game, Spain must now cut its spending, which will almost surely increase its unemployment rate still further," he said. "As its economy slows, the improvement in its fiscal position may be minimal.Spain may be entering the kind of death spiral that afflicted Argentina just a decade ago. It was only when Argentina broke its currency peg with the dollar that it started to grow and its deficit came down.

"At present, Spain has not been attacked by speculators, but it may be only a matter of time."

Turning to the euro, Mr Stiglitz said that the different needs of countries with high trade surpluses, particularly Germany, and those running deficits such as Ireland, Portugal and Greece, meant that the single currency was under intense pressure and may not survive. He suggests that one way to save the euro would be for Germany to leave the eurozone, so allowing the currency to devalue and help struggling countries with exports.

As many households and small businesses are being turned away by bank loan officers, large corporations are borrowing vast sums of money for next to nothing — simply because they can.

 

Companies like Microsoft are raising billions of dollars by issuing bonds at ultra-low interest rates, but few of them are actually spending the money on new factories, equipment or jobs. Instead, they are stockpiling the cash until the economy improves.

The development presents something of a chicken-and-egg situation: Corporations keep saving, waiting for the economy to perk up — but the economy is unlikely to perk up if corporations keep saving.

This situation underscores the limits of Washington policy makers’ power to stimulate the economy.

The Federal Reserve has held official interest rates near zero for almost two years, which allows corporations to sell bonds with only slightly higher returns — even below 1 percent.

 

But most companies are not doing what the easy monetary policy was intended to get them to do: invest and create jobs.

The Fed’s low rates have in fact hurt many Americans, especially retirees whose incomes from savings have fallen substantially.

Big companies like Johnson & Johnson , PepsiCo and I.B.M. seem to have been among the major beneficiaries.

“They are benefiting themselves by borrowing and keeping this cash, but it is not benefiting the economy yet,” said Dana Saporta, an economist at Credit Suisse in New York.

American corporations have been saving more money since the financial collapse of 2008.

But a recent rush of blue-chip bond offerings — including a $4.75 billion deal last month by Microsoft, one of the richest companies in the world — has put even more money in their coffers.

Corporations now sit atop a combined $1.6 trillion of cash, a figure equal to slightly more than 6 percent of their total assets. In the first quarter of this year it was 6.2 percent of assets, the highest level since 1964, when it was 6.4 percent.

When will they start spending that money — in particular, by hiring? That is part of what has become the great question of this long, jobless recovery: When will corporate America start to feel confident enough to put its cash to work, building factories and putting some of the nation’s 14.9 million unemployed to work?

Businesses are holding on to their protective cash cushions, worried perhaps that the economy could slip back into recession or at least grow too lethargically to make an investment worthwhile.

The nation’s corporations will be strong, well capitalized and ready to act aggressively when executives finally decide it is time to expand their businesses.

After running up sharply every quarter since mid-2008, the ratio of cash holdings to assets by corporations fell slightly for the first time in the second quarter of this year.

Although investment in factories and plants still languishes, companies have spent some money on investment in new equipment and software. That spending grew at an annualized rate of more than 20 percent in the first two quarters of this year.

But economists say that such investment is still below its peak before the financial crisis. In addition, many of the new machines and computers may be replacing older machines companies put off retiring in the recession.

Businesses are playing catch-up, and little expansion is occurring.

“They may actually be using this new investment to be more efficient and cut jobs,” said Michael Gapen, an economist at Barclays Capital. “The mix of signals right now is still telling corporations to sit tight and wait.”

Mr. Gapen said those signals included the direction of the housing market, the outcome of midterm election, the effects on the economy as the fiscal stimulus wears off and any changes in tax policy.

They are deciding, “Why don’t we just wait until the first quarter of next year?” he said.

The cheap money may be having yet another effect unintended by policy makers eager to cut the nation’s 9.6 percent unemployment rate.

Several of the corporations borrowing billions on bond markets are using the money to put their own financial house in order rather than to create jobs.

Microsoft said it was using some of its money to buy back shares, other companies are locking in longer-term borrowing, and some of the new borrowing is financing an increase in mergers and acquisitions.

All of this may enrich the corporations’ shareholders and cut company costs in the long run, but it does not necessarily lead to more jobs and it does not represent the big investments in growth that could fuel a sharp economic recovery for everyone.

“They are still holding on to more cash in the same way that Noah built the ark,” said David Rosenberg, chief economist at Gluskin Sheff & Associates in Toronto. “It is very telling.”

In the case of Microsoft’s bond offering, one factor might have been avoiding a big tax bill, said Richard J. Lane, who analyzes Microsoft for Moody’s.

 

If Microsoft had needed cash, it could have pulled some from its operations abroad, but “borrowing new money on the debt markets is now cheaper than bringing its own money back from overseas,” Mr. Lane said.

Microsoft’s offering was only its second; its first was last year. The second offering included three-year debt at an interest rate of 0.875, among the lowest on record for that type of borrowing.

According to the financial data provider Dealogic, United States companies have borrowed $488 billion on the American high-yield and investment grade bond markets so far this year, 7 percent more than businesses borrowed during all of 2009, and on track to at least match the $589 billion borrowed in the boom year in 2007, which was the highest on record.

Smaller companies continue to have trouble borrowing, and most of the new financing is limited to bigger corporations. Their borrowing spree is in contrast to America’s households, which continue to cut their debt and consumption.

Perhaps unsure of the recovery, like the corporations hoarding cash, Americans are saving far more than they have in years, and some economists fear that consumers’ frugality will further hobble growth.

One of the biggest corporations to borrow recently, the DuPont Company, said it was using the cheaper money to lock in borrowing over a longer period.

“The current low interest rate environment provides DuPont a great opportunity to refinance our long-term debt at lower rates,” it said in a statement.

Conditions have become so good that some companies are borrowing money they will not have to repay until the next century.

In August, the railroad Norfolk Southern Corporation borrowed $250 million in 100-year bonds at an annual rate of 5.95 percent.

Robin Chapman, a spokesman, said, “Opportunistic borrowing is a good way to characterize this.” He said that the company was seeing a “slow and steady pickup” in rail traffic but that any hiring the company was doing was to replace workers lost through attrition.

Other companies are borrowing to finance acquisitions. PepsiCo borrowed recently to help pay for the takeover of two bottling plants. Hertz borrowed $300 million for its bid to buy a rival car rental company, Dollar Thrifty .

Economists say it is rational for companies to seize the opportunity to borrow at low interest rates and to buy back shares.

But Guy LeBas, a fixed income strategist at Janney Montgomery Scott in Chicago, said, “It is not particularly beneficial for economic conditions.”

Die Gegner des umstrittenen Bahnprojekts Stuttgart 21 lassen nicht locker. Heute erwarten die Veranstalter rund 20 000 Menschen zur sogenannten Montagsdemonstration gegen das Milliardenvorhaben. Führende Ökonomen in Deutschland reagierten mit Unverständnis auf die Proteste. Sie warnten eindringlich vor einem Scheitern des Infrastrukturvorhabens.

http://www.handelsblatt.com/politik/deutschland/...uttgart-21;2666406

Denn überall im Lande stehen derzeit die Bagger still: Ob das Kohlekraftwerk Datteln, die Einlagerung von CO2 oder der Bau neuer Stromtrassen: Bürgerprotest ist zum Investitionshemmnis Nummer eins geworden. Stuttgart 21 ist nur das Symbol einer blockierten Republik.

Widerstand gegen S-21: Die blockierte Republik

theatralisch an. Stuttgart 21 ist sicher ein fragwürdiges Projekt. Insgesamt ist der Fortschrittswille in der deutschen Bevölkerung sehr gering. Rechtssicherheit ist für Großprojekte unabdingbar.

Nach meinem dafürhalten, verhalten sich die politisch Verantwortlichen auf allen Seiten unverantwortlich.

Der Protest und die Gegenstimmung in Deutschland sollte man aufgreifen und begreifen, wie wichtig es ist Sachverhalte offen und ehrlich zu erklären. Überraschungen erzeugen Misstrauen.

Permanent

Einer der langanhaltenden Prozesse, der schon vor der laufenden Krise begann und in den letzten Jahren eine Beschleunigung erfuhr, ist die Ausweitung des Defizits der Pensionskassen. Während sich die Sozialkassen in der BRD schon seit geraumer Zeit durch massive Steuerzuschüsse über Wasser halten, tauchen auch beim ehemals viel gerühmten -weil vermeintlich gedeckten – US-System klaffende Lücken auf. Diese sind – so ergab eine kürzlich veröffentlichte Studie des American Enterprise Institute – nicht nur groß, sondern werden in der offziellen Darstellung weitaus geringer als angemessen dargestellt. Während der letzte Punkt nicht wirklich überraschen kann, so ist die ermittelte Deckungslücke in der Tat beindruckend. Es handelt sich um [...]

bankhaus-rott.de/wordpress/

läuft in Deuschland absolut normal und bewegt sich fast wieder im Bereich von vor der Krise.

Einzelhandelsumsatz in jeweiligen Preisen, Originalwerte, Messzahlen 2005 = 100

www.destatis.de

 

Schaut man sich den aktuellen Euro bei 1,37 und geht ferner davon aus das die Zockerherde eben diesen in Richtung Lows bei 0,84 aus 2001 haben möchten, dann ergibt das einen Verlust von ca. 40% .

Setzt man z.B. den aktuellen S&P in dieses Verlustverhältnis zu eben besagten 40%, dann kommt man rechnerisch auf die Lows von ca. 700 aus 2009.

Also bissle komisch ist das schon, aber sowas bekommt man eben wenn nur noch Maschinen zocken und denen ist das relativ Wurscht:)

Market Commentary
Quantitative Wheezing
By Doug Kass, street.com

10/4/2010 12:00 PM EDT

 This blog post originally appeared on RealMoney Silver on Oct. 4 at 8:34 a.m. EDT.  Ten days ago, during my guest-hosting stint on CNBC's "Squawk Box," Appaloosa's David Tepper  made some very optimistic comments about the U.S. stock market and on  the domestic economy. In part, based on those remarks, equities embarked  on a sharp run up that began that Friday morning and has continued to  date.  

 Sometimes it's just that easy.... What did the Fed just tell  me? What did they say? They want economic growth. And they said, We want  economic growth, and we don't even care -- not only do we not care if  there's inflation but we want a little more inflation. Have they ever  said that before?... They want the market up. So, what am I-I'm gonna  say, No, Fed, I disagree with you?... Either the economy is going to get  better by itself in the next three months. And what assets are gonna do  well? You can guess the assets that are gonna do well. Stocks!... Or  the economy's not gonna pick up in the next three months, and the Fed is  going to come in with QE. And then what's gonna do well? Everything!...  Let's see. So what I got-I got two different situations. One, the  economy gets better by itself.... The other situation is the Fed comes  in with money.... You gotta love a put.... I gotta buy; I can't take the  chance of not being a little bit longer now.... That does not mean that  I'm going balls to the walls.... That's how easy it is right now.

  -- David Tepper, "Squawk Box" comments  

Let me begin by make one thing clear: We can admire our icons, but we can question and be in disagreement with them:

• I worshipped at the altar of Tiger Woods' golf game, but he moved down many pegs after the disclosure of his many trysts.
• I worshiped at the chess altar of Bobby Fischer, but his idiosyncratic behavior turned me off to him and to chess.
• I worship at the baseball altar of anything having to do with the  New York Yankees, but I disagreed with the manner in which Brian Cashman  and George Steinbrenner appeared to treat former manager Joe Torre,  when he was asked to take a pay cut following the 2007 season.
• I worship at the altar of Quentin Tarantino's movie productions.  While most of his body of work can be viewed as pure genius, I hated Kill Bill (both volumes).
• I worship at the altar of Julia Roberts' acting prowess, but her recent performance in Eat, Pray, Love (more like Sit, Watch, Groan!) was sententious, patronizing and saccharine.
• I worship at the music altar of the Grateful Dead, but I have  attended numerous Dead concerts in which Jerry Garcia was so stoned his  voice was unrecognizable.
• I worship at the political altar of President Obama, but, at times, I  have been critical of his policy and lack of focus regarding the need  for a transformative jobs program.
• I worship at the consumer advocacy altar of (my ex boss) Ralph Nader, but he never knew when to get off the stage and cost Vice President Al Gore the Presidency.
• I worship at the investment altar of Warren Buffett, but I shorted Berkshire Hathaway's   (BRK.A) shares in early 2008, based on the belief that his portfolio was too  skewed toward financials (an industry that that had lost their "moat"  feature), and I disagreed with the timeliness of his derivative short of  the S&P 500.
• Similarly, I continue to worship at the hedge fund altar of  Appaloosa's David Tepper, but this morning I want to question the  conclusion he made during his "Squawk Box" appearance that, if the  economy fails to recover up to expectations, the Federal Reserve will  embark on a successful QE 2 that will dutifully bring a rally in the  U.S. stock market.

Shock and Awe (QE 1) to Shucks and Aw (QE 2)?

• interest rates are already low
• absence of global cooperation in reflating
• weak confidence and uncertainty of policy
• bank loan demand and credit extension weak
• bank reserves are already plentiful
• increased suffering by the savers class
• QE 2 fails to address structural unemployment issue
• long-term costs considerable

  Fed officials are clueless about how quantitative easing is supposed  to impact the economy. They aren't even sure if it has any effect on the  economy.... The Bank of Japan tried quantitative easing to revive their  economy and avert deflation, but it didn't work....  Bernanke knew back in 1988 that quantitative easing doesn't work [Bernanke and Blinder research] . Yet, in recent years, he has been one of the biggest proponents of  the notion that if all else fails to revive economic growth and avert  deflation, QE will work.   -- Ed Yardeni  

The economic signs continue to point to the need for more quantitative  easing. (This view is generally agreed to by bulls and bears alike.)  

What is not agreed to is the likely effect of QE 2, especially when compared to the first round of quantitative easing.    

Will David Tepper be accurate, or will the "shock and awe" of QE 1 be  replaced by "shucks and aw" in QE 2, having very little incremental  benefit? (See Ed Yardeni's comments above.)

Last week, Credit Suisse's Andrew Garthwaite captures the consensus that  QE 2 will be implemented in November/December and that it will be  successful for the following reasons:

• By driving down real bond yields (which helps government  funding arithmetic, lowers the savings ratio and pushes up DCF  valuations of assets);
• Through the funds flow effect: it gives asset allocators money, which they partly invest in other assets;
   
• Via the currency: a weaker dollar forces other central banks  to adopt QE (Japan, U.K. and maybe eventually after a stronger euro the  ECB). This, of course, will eventually lead to a revaluation of  emerging-market currencies (which is what most policy makers in the  developed worlds desire) as GEM countries have an inflation backdrop  that will not permit them to participate in QE. (They either have to  accept an asset bubble or currency revaluation, probably a bit of both);
   
• Through psychology: the lower the bond yields, the more  fiscal tightening is postponed (as we have now seen with the likely  renewal of the Bush tax cuts).

I previously chimed in that there is little doubt that QE 2 will have  some positive influence but questioned the degree of its impact:

• It will pull the U.S. dollar still lower, serving to improve our  exports and slow down our imports and resulting in a more balanced trade  deficit.
• The yield curve will likely flatten further -- in theory, serving to encourage banks to lend.
• The consumer will continue to benefit by a further drop in mortgage rates as debt service ratios improve. Refinancing activity will also increase; a pickup in consumer spending could follow.
• Even though housing will continue to be haunted by an unsold shadow  inventory, lower mortgage rates raise the odds that the residential real  estate markets stabilize sooner and, with less pressure on home prices,  that consumer confidence might recover quicker.
• Real interest rates will drop further, so risk assets should theoretically gain in price.

The times, they appear to be a-changin', and the effect of QE 2 -- its ability to move the needle -- despite David Tepper's assurances, remains uncertain.   Back then, QE 1 was instituted at a very depressed level of worldwide  economic activity, during a period when market participants were fearful  of a financial collapse. Balance sheets were unstable, and funding was  problematic. There was unanimity of opinion (over here and over there)  that our financial institutions needed to be backstopped, and they were  by central bankers in a synchronized and coordinated global fashion.

  Everyone was "all in.    

Today, our financial markets are stabilized, credit and spreads and risk  markets are in far better shape, and our stock market is up violently  from the March 2009 lows.

  We needed (and got) stability two years ago, but today we need growth.

Today we have a broken domestic money multiplier, we suffer from structural unemployment,  interest rates are already at zero (and our savers' class continues to  suffer from policy), lackluster credit demand is lackluster, our  domestic banks hold large excess reserves but are reluctant to extend  credit in the face of economic, and regulatory uncertainty and the  housing market (price and activity) is losing some of its historical  correlation to interest rates (as it is haunted by a large shadow  inventory of unsold homes). Also, with the ECB not playing ball with  respect to a global coordination reflation program, not everyone is "all  in" today for QE 2.

 From my perch, it is growing increasingly hard to see QE 2 as a  significant needle mover and as a successful/meaningful follow-up to QE  1, but it is easy to see some intermediate-term fallout.  Dr. Bobby Marcin offered a negative and extreme view of QE 2 recently:

  [The Fed]  has pulled out their one trick pony named All-Ease-All-The-Time. The Fed insists this trick is panacea for the economy....

  [The Fed believes that]  asset speculation creates wealth and economic prosperity. Bernanke  believes currency debasement will create jobs, reflate housing, spike  financial assets.... And, it will accomplish this by only gently nudging  inflation up to 2%. What a joke.  

The next QE performance will create trillions of paper dollars and  create no jobs and minimal GDP growth and inflate no home prices. It  might goose financial assets a bit temporarily, but that seems to be the  ... end game.  

QE 2, however, will crush the dollar, hurt pension funds and savers,  spike inflation (especially in commodities) and distort market pricing  signals. And if it persists, will force investors out on the risk curve  and may initiate bubbles in bonds, stocks and commodities. Easy Al has  relinquished the circus ring to Bubble Ben.

 In an act of suspension of disbelief, the markets wants to applaud this  pony trick. How foolish. Printing money and inflating asset prices  creates no sustainable wealth or economic activity. It creates the  illusion of wealth and fosters major economic imbalances. That's our  problem today, yet the clowns running the circus don't understand that  sentence.  

Bobby's prose might appear inflammatory, but there are kernels of wisdom/truth contained in his rant.  Rather than a consensus-like response that QE 2 will be successful  economically and market-wise -- currently the U.S. stock market is  having a benign response to a weakening dollar (as it did in 1987) but  for how long?) -- I would offer some additional questions investors  should be asking:

1. What will the costs of QE 2 be?
2. At some point, shouldn't increased monetary intervention by the Fed  (and fiscal intervention by the government) cause market participants to  lower the market multiple as opposed to increasing it?
3. Isn't QE 2 simply reducing the quality of earnings and, similar to  Cash for Clunkers or the Homebuyer's Tax Credit, borrowing from future  growth?
4. How does QE 2 resolve the single-most headwind to growth, structural unemployment?
5. At the very least, at what point have the prospects for QE 2 been priced in?

The above issues and the uncertain impact that QE 2 will have on our  currency helps to explain the very public debate going on now among the  Fed members that we have witnessed over the last week. And it also helps  to explain why some of those members are encouraging an incremental  policy, not a "shock-and-awe" QE 2 but a "shucks and aw" QE 2.    

I....with respect to one of my icons/idols, Appaloosa's  David Tepper, I must respectfully take some exception to the certainty  of a salutary investment and economic consequence of QE 2 that Tepper  displayed in his remarks on "Squawk Box" -- namely, that investors will  win whether the economy strengthens or weakens and is followed up by QE  2.  

Heads investors win, tails investors win?

 At current stock prices, that is not a coin toss that I wish to bet on right now.

As some of the nation’s largest lenders have conceded that their foreclosure procedures might have been improperly handled, lawsuits have revealed myriad missteps in crucial documents.

The flawed practices that GMAC Mortgage, JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America have recently begun investigating are so prevalent, lawyers and legal experts say, that additional lenders and loan servicers are likely to halt foreclosure proceedings and may have to reconsider past evictions.

Problems emerging in courts across the nation are varied but all involve documents that must be submitted before foreclosures can proceed legally. Homeowners, lawyers and analysts have been citing such problems for the last few years, but it appears to have reached such intensity recently that banks are beginning to re-examine whether all of the foreclosure papers were prepared properly.

In some cases, documents have been signed by employees who say they have not verified crucial information like amounts owed by borrowers. Other problems involve questionable legal notarization of documents, in which, for example, the notarizations predate the actual preparation of documents — suggesting that signatures were never actually reviewed by a notary.

Other problems occurred when notarizations took place so far from where the documents were signed that it was highly unlikely that the notaries witnessed the signings, as the law requires.

On still other important documents, a single official’s name is signed in such radically different ways that some appear to be forgeries. Additional problems have emerged when multiple banks have all argued that they have the right to foreclose on the same property, a result of a murky trail of documentation and ownership.

There is no doubt that the enormous increase in foreclosures in recent years has strained the resources of lenders and their legal representatives, creating challenges that any institution might find overwhelming. According to the Mortgage Bankers Association, the percentage of loans that were delinquent by 90 days or more stood at 9.5 percent in the first quarter of 2010, up from 4 percent in the same period of 2008.

 

But analysts say that the wave of defaults still does not excuse lenders’ failures to meet their legal obligations before trying to remove defaulting borrowers from their homes.

“It reflects the hubris that as long as the money was going through the pipeline, these companies didn’t really have to make sure the documents were in order,” said Kathleen C. Engel, dean for intellectual life at Suffolk University Law School and an expert in mortgage law. “Suddenly they have a lot at stake, and playing fast and loose is going to be more costly than it was in the past.”

Attorneys general in at least six states, including Massachusetts, Iowa, Florida and Illinois, are investigating improper foreclosure practices. Last week, Jennifer Brunner, the secretary of state of Ohio, referred examples of what her office considers possible notary abuse by Chase Home Mortgage to federal prosecutors for investigation.

The implications are not yet clear for borrowers who have been evicted from their homes as a result of improper filings. But legal experts say that courts may impose sanctions on lenders or their representatives or may force banks to pay borrowers’ legal costs in these cases.

Judges may dismiss the foreclosures altogether, barring lenders from refiling and awarding the home to the borrower. That would create a loss for the lender or investor holding the note underlying the property. Almost certainly, lawyers say, lawsuits on behalf of borrowers will multiply.

In Florida, problems with foreclosure cases are especially acute. A recent sample of foreclosure cases in the 12th Judicial Circuit of Florida showed that 20 percent of those set for summary judgment involved deficient documents, according to chief judge Lee E. Haworth.

 

“We have sent repeated notices to law firms saying, ‘You are not following the rules, and if you don’t clean up your act, we are going to impose sanctions on you,’ ” Mr. Haworth said in an interview. “They say, ‘We’ll fix it, we’ll fix it, we’ll fix it.’ But they don’t.”

As a result, Mr. Haworth said, on Sept. 17, Harry Rapkin, a judge overseeing foreclosures in the district, dismissed 61 foreclosure cases. The plaintiffs can refile but they need to pay new filing fees, Mr. Haworth said.

The byzantine mortgage securitization process that helped inflate the housing bubble allowed home loans to change hands so many times before they were eventually pooled and sold to investors that it is now extremely difficult to track exactly which lenders have claims to a home.

Many lenders or loan servicers that begin the foreclosure process after a borrower defaults do not produce documentation proving that they have the legal right to foreclosure, known as standing.

As a substitute, the banks usually present affidavits attesting to ownership of the note signed by an employee of a legal services firm acting as an agent for the lender or loan servicer. Such affidavits allow foreclosures to proceed, but because they are often dubiously prepared, many questions have arisen about their validity.

Although lawyers for troubled borrowers have contended for years that banks in many cases have not properly documented their rights to foreclose, the issue erupted in mid-September when GMAC said it was halting foreclosure proceedings in 23 states because of problems with its legal practices. The move by GMAC followed testimony by an employee who signed affidavits for the lender; he said that he executed 400 of them each day without reading them or verifying that the information in them was correct.

JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America followed with similar announcements.

But these three large lenders are not the only companies employing people who have failed to verify crucial aspects of a foreclosure case, court documents show.

Last May, Herman John Kennerty, a loan administration manager in the default document group of Wells Fargo Mortgage, testified to lawyers representing a troubled borrower that he typically signed 50 to 150 foreclosure documents a day. In that case, in King County Superior Court in Seattle, he also stated that he did not independently verify the information to which he was attesting.

Wells Fargo did not respond to requests for comment.

In other cases, judges are finding that banks’ claims of standing in a foreclosure case can conflict with other evidence.

Last Thursday, Paul F. Isaacs, a judge in Bourbon County Circuit Court in Kentucky, reversed a ruling he had made in August giving Bank of New York Mellon the right to foreclose on a couple’s home. According to court filings, Mr. Isaacs had relied on the bank’s documentation that it said showed it held the note underlying the property in a trust. But after the borrowers supplied evidence indicating that the note may in fact reside in a different trust, the judge reversed himself. The court will revisit the matter soon.

Bank of New York said it was reviewing the ruling and could not comment.

Another problematic case involves a foreclosure action taken by Deutsche Bank against a borrower in the Bronx in New York. The bank says it has the right to foreclose because the mortgage was assigned to it on Oct. 15, 2009.

But according to court filings made by David B. Shaev, a lawyer at Shaev & Fleischman who represents the borrower, the assignment to Deutsche Bank is riddled with problems. First, the company that Deutsche said had assigned it the mortgage, the Sand Canyon Corporation, no longer had any rights to the underlying property when the transfer was supposed to have occurred.

Additional questions have arisen over the signature verifying an assignment of the mortgage. Court documents show that Tywanna Thomas, assistant vice president of American Home Mortgage Servicing, assigned the mortgage from Sand Canyon to Deutsche Bank in October 2009. On assignments of mortgages in other cases, Ms. Thomas’s signatures differ so wildly that it appears that three people signed the documents using Ms. Thomas’s name.

Given the differences in the signatures, Mr. Shaev filed court papers last July contending that the assignment is a sham, “prepared to create an appearance of a creditor as a real party in interest/standing, when in fact it is likely that the chain of title required in these matters was not performed, lost or both.”

Mr. Shaev also asked the judge overseeing the case, Shelley C. Chapman, to order Ms. Thomas to appear to answer questions the lawyer has raised.

John Gallagher, a spokesman for Deutsche Bank, which is trustee for the securitization that holds the note in this case, said companies servicing mortgage loans engaged the law firms that oversee foreclosure proceedings. “Loan servicers are obligated to adhere to all legal requirements,” he said, “and Deutsche Bank, as trustee, has consistently informed servicers that they are required to execute these actions in a proper and timely manner.”

Reached by phone on Saturday, Ms. Thomas declined to comment.

The United States Trustee, a unit of the Justice Department, is also weighing in on dubious court documents filed by lenders. Last January, it supported a request by Silvia Nuer, a borrower in foreclosure in the Bronx, for sanctions against JPMorgan Chase.

In testimony, a lawyer for Chase conceded that a law firm that had previously represented the bank, the Steven J. Baum firm of Buffalo, had filed inaccurate documents as it sought to take over the property from Ms. Nuer.

The Chase lawyer told a judge last January that his predecessors had combed through the chain of title on the property and could not find a proper assignment. The firm found “something didn’t happen that needed to be fixed,” he explained, and then, according to court documents, it prepared inaccurate documents to fill in the gaps.

The Baum firm did not return calls to comment.

A lawyer for the United States Trustee said that the Nuer case “does not represent an isolated example of misconduct by Chase in the Southern District of New York.”

Chase declined to comment.

“The servicers have it in their control to get the right documents and do this properly, but it is so much cheaper to run it through a foreclosure mill,” said Linda M. Tirelli, a lawyer in White Plains who represents Ms. Nuer in the case against Chase. “This is not about getting a free house for my client. It’s about a level playing field. If I submitted false documents like this to the court, I’d have my license handed to me.”

Companies like Microsoft are raising billions of dollars by issuing bonds at ultra-low interest rates, but few of them are actually spending the money on new factories, equipment or jobs. Instead, they are stockpiling the cash until the economy improves.

The development presents something of a chicken-and-egg situation: Corporations keep saving, waiting for the economy to perk up — but the economy is unlikely to perk up if corporations keep saving.

This situation underscores the limits of Washington policy makers’ power to stimulate the economy. The Federal Reserve has held official interest rates near zero for almost two years, which allows corporations to sell bonds with only slightly higher returns — even below 1 percent. But most companies are not doing what the easy monetary policy was intended to get them to do: invest and create jobs.

The Fed’s low rates have in fact hurt many Americans, especially retirees whose incomes from savings have fallen substantially. Big companies like Johnson & Johnson, PepsiCo and I.B.M. seem to have been among the major beneficiaries.

“They are benefiting themselves by borrowing and keeping this cash, but it is not benefiting the economy yet,” said Dana Saporta, an economist at Credit Suisse in New York.

American corporations have been saving more money since the financial collapse of 2008. But a recent rush of blue-chip bond offerings — including a $4.75 billion deal last month by Microsoft, one of the richest companies in the world — has put even more money in their coffers.

Corporations now sit atop a combined $1.6 trillion of cash, a figure equal to slightly more than 6 percent of their total assets. In the first quarter of this year it was 6.2 percent of assets, the highest level since 1964, when it was 6.4 percent.

When will they start spending that money — in particular, by hiring?

That is part of what has become the great question of this long, jobless recovery: When will corporate America start to feel confident enough to put its cash to work, building factories and putting some of the nation’s 14.9 million unemployed to work?

Businesses are holding on to their protective cash cushions , worried perhaps that the economy could slip back into recession or at least grow too lethargically to make an investment worthwhile.

The nation’s corporations will be strong, well capitalized and ready to act aggressively when executives finally decide it is time to expand their businesses.

After running up sharply every quarter since mid-2008, the ratio of cash holdings to assets by corporations fell slightly for the first time in the second quarter of this year.

Although investment in factories and plants still languishes, companies have spent some money on investment in new equipment and software. That spending grew at an annualized rate of more than 20 percent in the first two quarters of this year.

But economists say that such investment is still below its peak before the financial crisis.

In addition, many of the new machines and computers may be replacing older machines companies put off retiring in the recession. Businesses are playing catch-up, and little expansion is occurring.

“They may actually be using this new investment to be more efficient and cut jobs,” said Michael Gapen, an economist at Barclays Capital. “The mix of signals right now is still telling corporations to sit tight and wait.”

Mr. Gapen said those signals included the direction of the housing market, the outcome of midterm election, the effects on the economy as the fiscal stimulus wears off and any changes in tax policy.

They are deciding, “Why don’t we just wait until the first quarter of next year?” he said.

The cheap money may be having yet another effect unintended by policy makers eager to cut the nation’s 9.6 percent unemployment rate. Several of the corporations borrowing billions on bond markets are using the money to put their own financial house in order rather than to create jobs.

Microsoft said it was using some of its money to buy back shares, other companies are locking in longer-term borrowing, and some of the new borrowing is financing an increase in mergers and acquisitions.

All of this may enrich the corporations’ shareholders and cut company costs in the long run, but it does not necessarily lead to more jobs and it does not represent the big investments in growth that could fuel a sharp economic recovery for everyone.

“They are still holding on to more cash in the same way that Noah built the ark,” said David Rosenberg, chief economist at Gluskin Sheff & Associates in Toronto. “It is very telling.”

In the case of Microsoft’s bond offering, one factor might have been avoiding a big tax bill, said Richard J. Lane, who analyzes Microsoft for Moody’s. If Microsoft had needed cash, it could have pulled some from its operations abroad, but “borrowing new money on the debt markets is now cheaper than bringing its own money back from overseas,” Mr. Lane said.

Microsoft’s offering was only its second; its first was last year. The second offering included three-year debt at an interest rate of 0.875, among the lowest on record for that type of borrowing.

According to the financial data provider Dealogic, United States companies have borrowed $488 billion on the American high-yield and investment grade bond markets so far this year, 7 percent more than businesses borrowed during all of 2009, and on track to at least match the $589 billion borrowed in the boom year in 2007, which was the highest on record.

Smaller companies continue to have trouble borrowing, and most of the new financing is limited to bigger corporations.

Their borrowing spree is in contrast to America’s households, which continue to cut their debt and consumption. Perhaps unsure of the recovery, like the corporations hoarding cash, Americans are saving far more than they have in years, and some economists fear that consumers’ frugality will further hobble growth.

One of the biggest corporations to borrow recently, the DuPont Company, said it was using the cheaper money to lock in borrowing over a longer period.

“The current low interest rate environment provides DuPont a great opportunity to refinance our long-term debt at lower rates,” it said in a statement.

Conditions have become so good that some companies are borrowing money they will not have to repay until the next century. In August, the railroad Norfolk Southern Corporation borrowed $250 million in 100-year bonds at an annual rate of 5.95 percent.

Robin Chapman, a spokesman, said, “Opportunistic borrowing is a good way to characterize this.” He said that the company was seeing a “slow and steady pickup” in rail traffic but that any hiring the company was doing was to replace workers lost through attrition.

Other companies are borrowing to finance acquisitions. PepsiCo borrowed recently to help pay for the takeover of two bottling plants. Hertz borrowed $300 million for its bid to buy a rival car rental company, Dollar Thrifty.

Economists say it is rational for companies to seize the opportunity to borrow at low interest rates and to buy back shares. But Guy LeBas, a fixed income strategist at Janney Montgomery Scott in Chicago, said, “It is not particularly beneficial for economic conditions.”

www.nytimes.com/2010/10/04/business/04borrow.html

Im Verlauf des heutigen Handelstages habe ich mal ein paar Put-Warrants auf AXP an Land gezogen. Zum Handelsschluss lag dieser Wert 6,9 % niedriger als am Freitag.

Two decades after global competition drove the mines in this corner of Japan to extinction, Kosaka is again abuzz with talk of new riches.

 

The treasures are not copper or coal. They are rare-earth elements and other minerals that are crucial to many Japanese technologies and have so far come almost exclusively from China, the global leader in rare earth mining.

Recent problems with Chinese supplies of rare earths have sent Japanese traders and companies in search of alternative sources, creating opportunities for Kosaka.

This town’s hopes for a mining comeback lie not underground, but in what Japan refers to as urban mining — recycling the valuable metals and minerals from the country’s huge stockpiles of used electronics like cellphones and computers.

“We’ve literally discovered gold in cellphones,” said Tetsuzo Fuyushiba, a former land minister and now opposition party member, who visited here recently to survey Kosaka’s recycling plant.

Kosaka’s pursuits have become especially important for Japan in recent weeks. Late last month, amid a diplomatic spat with Tokyo, China started to block exports of certain rare earths to Japan.

The shipping ban was still in effect on Monday evening in Japan, an industry official said, though a trickle of shipments seemed to be seeping out as a result of uneven enforcement of the ban by customs officers at various ports. China has allowed exports of Chinese-made rare earth magnets and other rare earth products to Japan, but not semi-processed rare earth ores that would enable Japanese companies to make products.

The cutoff has caused hand-wringing at Japanese manufacturers, from giants like Toyota to tiny electronics makers, because the raw materials are crucial to products as diverse as hybrid electric cars, wind turbines and computer display screens.

Late last week, Japan’s trade minister, Akihiro Ohata, said he would ask the government to include a “rare earth strategy” in its supplementary budget for this year.

In Kosaka, Dowa Holdings, the company that mined here for over a century, has built a recycling plant whose 200-foot-tall furnace renders old electronics parts into a molten stew from which valuable metals and other minerals can be extracted. The salvaged parts come from around Japan and overseas, including the United States.

Besides gold, Dowa’s subsidiary, Kosaka Smelting and Refining, has so far successfully reclaimed rare metals like indium, used in liquid-crystal display screens, and antimony, used in silicon wafers for semiconductors.

The company is trying to develop ways to reclaim the harder-to-mine minerals included among the rare earths — like neodymium, a vital element in industrial batteries used in electric motors, and dysprosium, used in laser materials.

Although Japan is poor in natural resources, the National Institute for Materials Science, a government-affiliated research group, says that used electronics in Japan hold an estimated 300,000 tons of rare earths. Though that amount is tiny compared to reserves in China, which mines 93 percent of the world’s rare earth minerals, tapping these urban mines could help reduce Japan’s dependence on its neighbor, analysts say.

The global rare earth market is small by mining standards — just $1.5 billion last year, although its value is rising as prices have surged in response to Chinese restrictions on exports.

 

Concern over China’s hoarding of rare earths has also been spreading to the United States. Although China has not specifically blocked shipments to any place but Japan, it had already tightened its overall export quotas of the minerals, announcing in July that it would reduce them by 72 percent for the rest of the year.

Last Wednesday in Washington, the House of Representatives approved a bill authorizing research to address the supply of rare earths, saying the minerals were critical to energy, military and manufacturing technologies.

Japanese companies generally avoid discussing their mineral holdings. But experts say that some manufacturers have been stockpiling rare earths, building inventories ranging from a few months’ to a year’s worth. Last Friday, Mr. Ohata, the trade minister, said the government was considering starting a stockpile of rare earths as a buffer against trade interruptions.

Heightened interest in alternative sources has also been an impetus to plans to reopen or establish new rare earth mines in a handful of countries around the world, including South Africa, Australia and Canada, along with the United States, where Molycorp intends to expand a mine in Mountain Pass, Calif. The Japanese trading company Sojitz is negotiating the rights to a rare earth mine in Vietnam, while the industrial conglomerate Sumitomo plans to work with Kazakhstan’s government to recover rare earth elements from uranium ore residues.

Japan is also pushing for new manufacturing processes that do not require rare earths. Last week, the government-affiliated New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization, or N.E.D.O., announced that it had developed a motor for hybrid vehicles that used cheap and readily available ferrite magnets, instead of the rare earth magnets typically required.

Hitachi Metals, meanwhile, is working on a magnet that minimizes the use of rare earths by employing copper alloys.

“Japanese companies have become painfully aware of the risks of relying so greatly on China for strategic metals,” said Akio Shibata, chief representative at the Marubeni Research Institute in Tokyo.

He said Japanese industry might benefit from researching alternatives to rare earths and developing recycling methods, noting how the oil shocks of the 1970s helped eventually make Japan a leader in fuel-efficiency technologies.

Various players have tried to recycle rare earths and metals in Japan. Last year, Hitachi began to experiment to extract rare earths from magnets in old computer hard drives, though the company said the project was not expected to go into operation until 2013.

But it is Dowa, the company that has mined in Kosaka since 1884, that has emerged as the field’s early leader. And it could not come a moment too soon for this town of 6,000, which is littered with the remnants of its old ore mines: tunnels overgrown with weeds, old railroad tracks, and an abandoned bathhouse where miners once sponged off the grime from their long days underground.

The mines operated up to 1990, until a surging yen and international competition drove operations out of business. Now, portions of the old red-brick ore processing factories serve as part of Dowa’s recycling plant, which started fully operating two years ago.

“It is important for Japan to actively tap its urban mines,” said Kohmei Harada, a managing director at the National Institute of Materials Science, and an enthusiastic supporter of recycling efforts like the one in Kosaka. Apart from rare metals and earths, Mr. Harada estimates that about 6,800 tons of gold, or the equivalent of about 16 percent of the total reserves in the world’s gold mines, lie in used electronics in Japan.

 

“Japan’s economy has grown by gathering resources from around the world, and those resources are still with us, in one form or another,” he said.

But this form of recycling is an expensive and technically difficult process that is still being perfected.

At Dowa’s plant, computer chips and other vital parts from electronics are hacked into two-centimeter squares. This feedstock then must be smelted in a furnace that reaches 1,400 degrees Celsius before various minerals can be extracted. The factory processes 300 tons of materials a day, and each ton yields only about 150 grams of rare metals.

Though Dowa does not disclose the finances of its Kosaka recycling operations, the company says that after a year of operating at a low capacity, the factory now turns a profit. Over all, net income at Dowa Holdings, which deals in industrial metals and electronic materials, almost tripled in the quarter ending June 30, to 6.52 billion yen, or $78.2 million, as global industrial production rebounded.

As Dowa has turned its attention to rare earths, a priority is developing ways to render neodymium, which is used in powerful magnets. Its extraction has proved costly. Neodymium is found only in tiny quantities in parts used in the speakers of cellphones, for example, making it a challenge to collect meaningful amounts, said Utaro Sekiya, the manager of Dowa’s recycling plant.

Finding enough electronics parts to recycle has also grown more difficult for Dowa, which procures used gadgets from around the world. A growing number of countries, including the United States, are recognizing the value of holding onto old electronics. And China already bans the export of used computer motherboards and other discarded electronics parts.

“It’s about time Japan started paying more attention to recycling rare earths,” Mr. Sekiya said. “If we can become a leader in this field,” he said, “perhaps China will be the one coming to us to buy our technology.”

The Bank of Japan cut interest rates on Tuesday and pledged to keep rates at zero until prices are seen stable in a surprise move showing its concern that a strong yen and slowing growth are undermining a fragile economic recovery.

 

The central bank also decided to set up, as a temporary measure, a 35 trillion yen ($419 billion) pool of funds to buy or accept as collateral assets such as government bonds, commercial paper and asset-backed securities.

The decision to cut interest interest rates was made by a unanimous vote,

But board member Miyako Suda opposed including government bonds among the type of assets the BOJ could buy using its pool of funds.

Governor Masaaki Shirakawa will hold an embargoed news conference, with his comments expected to come out sometime after 4:15 p.m. local time.

The BOJ had kept interest rates at 0.1 percent since late 2008. In the wake of sharp gains in the yen it eased monetary policy last December by setting up a facility offering cheap funds to banks, which was expanded in March and in August.

The dollar jumped against the yen on the news,rising as high as 83.99 yen from about 83.50 yen beforehand.

The Nikkei  share average rose more than 1 percent after the decision while December JGB futures rose to around 143.77 from about 143.44 beforehand.

Sorge um die wirtschaftliche Zukunft

US-Defizit ängstigt Bernanke

US-Notenbankchef Ben Bernanke warnt vor den Folgen des ausufernden Haushaltsdefizits. Es stelle eine wachsende und reale Gefahr für die US-Wirtschaft dar.

US-Notenbank-Chef Ben Bernanke hat einen entschlossenen Kampf gegen das Haushaltsdefizit angemahnt. Zwar lasse die gegenwärtige Wirtschaftslage kaum Spielraum, um das Defizit in den nächsten ein bis zwei Jahren spürbar zu verringern, betonte er. Ein zu frühes Gegensteuern könnte sogar die konjunkturelle Erholung gefährden. #0000ff">(Durch die Politik der Notenbank ((QE)) wird das Defizit in der jetzigen Höhe erst ermöglicht. Ohne die Maßnahmen der FED wäre eine Kreditaufnahme, aufgrund steigender Zinsen, in in diesem Volumen unmöglich.)

"Doch mittel- und langfristig sieht die Geschichte anders aus", sagte Bernanke. "Wenn die gegenwärtige Politik fortgesetzt werden sollte..., dann begeben sich die Staatsfinanzen auf einen nicht nachhaltigen Pfad", warnte der Notenbankchef. "Wir sollten diese fiskalpolitischen Herausforderungen nicht unterschätzen." Wenn es nicht gelingen sollte, eine Antwort auf dieses Problem zu finden, würden die USA ihre wirtschaftliche Zukunft gefährden.

Der Chef der Fed forderte die politischen Verantwortlichen auf, einen "glaubhaften Plan" zum Schuldenabbau vorzulegen. Angesichts der Haushaltslage müsse die Politik sehr schwierige Entscheidungen treffen und Opfer bringen.

Europa als Vorbild

Bernanke schlug vor, dass der Kongress sich selbst strengere Haushalts- und Ausgabenregeln auferlegen sollte. Ein solcher Schritt wäre auch ein wichtiges Signal an die Bürger, dass der Kampf gegen das Haushaltsdefizit ernstgenommen werde. "Dies wäre gut für das Vertrauen", erklärte Bernanke. Er verwies dabei ausdrücklich auf die guten Erfahrungen europäischer Länder, in denen solche haushaltspolitischen Regeln festgeschrieben worden seien.

Im Haushaltsjahr 2008/2009 lag das Haushaltsdefizit der USA bei 1,42 Billionen Dollar , der höchste Wert seit Ende des Zweiten Weltkriegs und rund zehn Prozent der Bruttoinlandsproduktes (BIP). In den ersten elf Monaten des laufenden Haushaltsjahres, das im September endete, belief sich das Defizit auf 1,26 Billionen Dollar. Bis 2013 will die US-Regierung das Defizit auf 4,3 Prozent des BIP drücken.

Quelle: rts/AFP

Marc Faber betonte, dass die Schulden in den USA zwischen den Jahren 2000 und 2009 fünfmal schneller als das BIP gestiegen seien. 80 Prozent des US-Haushalts wäre verpflichtend, sodass diese Ausgaben nicht so einfach gekürzt werden können. Faber geht davon aus, dass die Realzinsen in den kommenden 10 Jahren nicht über null steigen werden. Die Verbraucher würden in den Konsum gezwungen. Noch immer betrüge der US-Konsum 20 Prozent vom Weltverbrauch. Als Symptom des Überkonsums gelte das US-Handelsbilanzdefizit. Die US-Geldpolitik sei extrem erfolgreich – in Asien. Der Ölverbrauch in den Schwellenländern übersteige mittlerweile den Ölverbrauch in den Industrieländern. 95% des Öls bezöge Asien von der arabischen Halbinsel. Faber hält das Tief von 666 Punkten im S&P 500 vom März 2009 für ein Langfristtief (nominal). Die US-Amerikaner haben bei den Kapitalinvestitionen im eigenen Land versagt.

http://www.wellenreiter-invest.de/...iterWoche/Wellenreiter101002.htm