krise – Page 2 – Modpress

Krise, hvilken krise? Her går det godt

Ja, selvfølgelig, nyhederne snakker dårligt nok om andet. Men sådan har det ikke altid været, synes jeg lige, jeg ville minde om. Billedet viser nedgangen i Japans økonomi 4. kvartal 2008 (hugget fra hr. Kommentar).

I Storbritannien er man tæt på 2 millioner arbejdsløse, et tal, man forventer vil stige til 10 i løbet af de næste måneder (ud af en befolkning på ca. 60 millioner mennesker).

Og i Danmark? I Danmark er hvert femte firma nu tæt på konkurs, som Politiken skriver:

Antallet af selskaber med usund økonomi er steget med næsten 30 procent på et år, viser tal fra kredit- og analysevirksomheden Experian – det tidligere RKI.

»Det er en stærkt bekymrende udvikling. Vi har ikke set så kraftig en stigning og så mange nødlidende virksomheder i mange år, så vi har langt fra mærket det sidste til krisen«, siger Experians kommunikationschef, Camilla Rose.

I international målestok er danske firmaer ekstraordinært hårdt ramt. Det viser en netop offentliggjort analyse fra det internationale kreditforsikringsselskab Atradius, der har sammenlignet antallet af konkurser i tredje kvartal 2008 med året før i en stribe vestlige lande.

Bare læs det hele. I må undskylde mig for bare at blive ved med at ride min kæphest, men hvis du har forstand på GNU/Linux (Ubuntu, OpenSUSE, Fedora, Gentoo, whatever) og open source/fri programmer, er det snart tid at overveje at begynde for dig selv, ikke mindst, hvis det job du har i forvejen er blandt dem, der ryger ud over kanten: I et konkurshærget og pengefattigt erhvervsliv tror jeg, at udsigten til at spare 10.000+ pr. arbejdsplads pr. år i softwarelicenser pludselig kan begynde at ligne en value proposition.

Link: Hvert femte firma er tæt på konkurs

Løsning på krisen: Lad folk trykke deres egne penge

Skribenten og miljøaktivisten George Monbiot opfordrer i dagens Guardian til, at man i stedet for de mange kæmpechecks til industrien og finanslivet lader lokalområder løfte sig selv ud af krisen ved at trykke deres egne penge:

In his book The Future of Money, Lietaer points out – as the government did yesterday – that in situations like ours everything grinds to a halt for want of money. But he also explains that there is no reason why this money should take the form of sterling or be issued by the banks. Money consists only of “an agreement within a community to use something as a medium of exchange”. The medium of exchange could be anything, as long as everyone who uses it trusts that everyone else will recognise its value. During the Great Depression, businesses in the United States issued rabbit tails, seashells and wooden discs as currency, as well as all manner of papers and metal tokens. In 1971, Jaime Lerner, the mayor of Curitiba in Brazil, kick-started the economy of the city and solved two major social problems by issuing currency in the form of bus tokens. People earned them by picking and sorting litter: thus cleaning the streets and acquiring the means to commute to work. Schemes like this helped Curitiba become one of the most prosperous cities in Brazil.

But the projects that have proved most effective were those inspired by the German economist Silvio Gessell, who became finance minister in Gustav Landauer’s doomed Bavarian republic. He proposed that communities seeking to rescue themselves from economic collapse should issue their own currency. To discourage people from hoarding it, they should impose a fee (called demurrage), which has the same effect as negative interest. The back of each banknote would contain 12 boxes. For the note to remain valid, the owner had to buy a stamp every month and stick it in one of the boxes. It would be withdrawn from circulation after a year. Money of this kind is called stamp scrip: a privately issued currency that becomes less valuable the longer you hold on to it.

One of the first places to experiment with this scheme was the small German town of Schwanenkirchen. In 1923, hyperinflation had caused a credit crunch of a different kind. A Dr Hebecker, owner of a coalmine in Schwanenkirchen, told his workers that if they wouldn’t accept the coal-backed stamp scrip he had invented – the Wara – he would have to close the mine. He promised to exchange it, in the first instance, for food. The scheme immediately took off. It saved both the mine and the town. It was soon adopted by 2,000 corporations across Germany.

Og penge er ultimativt blot et udtryk for de handlendes tillid til udstederen. Hvorfor holde fast i, at det skal være et statsmonopol? Det forekommer ikke logisk. Jeg er ikke økonom, men tanken om en økonomi suppleret med penge med begrænset levetid, som folk, organisationer og lokalområder virker som den rigtige måde at lade de ramte selv redde sig ud af finanskrisen – nedefra og op, ved selvforvaltning.

Link: If the state can’t save us, we need a licence to print our own money

Ebberød Bank

50.000 boligejere truet af gældsfælde, læser vi i Politiken. Hvorfor?

Jo, de har såmænd købt deres boliger på afdragsfrie lån. Nu hvor boligboblen er bristet og priserne rasler ned, sidder disse mennesker tilbage med et hus med mere gæld, end det er værd. Hvordan kom det så vidt?

Den eneste mening, der kan være i at købe et hus på afdragsfrie lån er, hvis huspriserne stiger: Hvis huspriserne stiger med 20% om året, fordobles de på ca. 4 år, og hvis en familie køber et hus til 3 millioner, kan de efter efter fire år sælge det til seks, give restgælden videre og stikke tre millioner i lommen.

Problemet er selvfølgelig, at uden nævneværdig inflation kan priserne ikke blive ved med at stige på den måde. Hvis priserne falder eller blot ikke stiger, er afdragsfrie lån økonomisk galimatias: Man kommer reelt aldrig til at eje sin bolig, men bor til leje hos kreditforeningen uden nogen af de fordele, der følger med ved at være lejer frem for ejer (og typisk til en væsentlig højere husleje).

Derfor virker det også noget hyklerisk, når administrerende direktør i Realkredit Danmark Sven Holm afviser, at banker og kreditforeninger skulle have noget ansvar i form af dårlige kreditvurderinger:

Administrerende direktør i Realkredit Danmark, Sven Holm, afviser, at boligejere er blevet lokket i uføre og har fået nogle afdragsfrie lån, som de i realiteten ikke har råd til at nedbringe. Alle skal have luft i økonomien til at afdrage på gælden, understreger han.

Men kreditvurderingen kan ikke tage højde for uforudsete begivenheder som f.eks. arbejdsløshed eller privat overforbrug, mener Sven Holm:

»Vi kigger på, om kunden vil være i stand til at betale et 30-årigt fastforrentet lån med afdrag. Men hvis han et splitsekund efter at have fået lånet, går ned og køber en ny BMW, så har vi ingen mulighed for at dæmme op over for det«.

Et “splitsekund”, ligefrem. Mig tykkes, den dårlige samvittighed stikker ud, et eller andet sted. Sandheden er vel nærmere, som enhver der har set kreditannoncer på TV de senere år er klar over, at forbrugerne er blevet lokket med afdragsfrie lån, og det i stor stil. Hvis formålet ikke har været at kapre kunder, der ellers ikke havde haft råd til at købe deres hus, eller som gerne ville have luft i økonomien til en BMW, må man gerne kalde mig Mads.

Banker og kreditforeninger har ganske enkelt lukreret på bølgen ligesom alle andre spekulanter – og det ganske rigtigt i nogle tilfælde på naive boligejeres bekostning.

En mindre pæn udlægning er, at pengeinstitutterne mæskede sig ved fadet sammen med de andre svin så længe det varede, og nu, hvor festen er forbi og boblen bristet, sidder pyramidespillets tabere tilbage med regningen – og samme pengeinstitutter spæner med lynets hast fra såvel det moralske som det økonomiske ansvar.

Opbyggeligt og lidet tillidsvækkende at se.

Ordbog for aktiemarkedet

Opdateret efter de seneste ugers skærmydsler:

CEO –Chief Embezzlement Officer.

CFO– Corporate Fraud Officer.

BULL MARKET — A random market movement causing an investor to mistake himself for a financial genius.

BEAR MARKET — A 6 to 18 month period when the kids get no allowance, the wife gets no jewelry, and the husband gets no sex.

VALUE INVESTING — The art of buying low and selling lower.

P/E RATIO — The percentage of investors wetting their pants as the market keeps crashing.

BROKER — What my broker has made me.

STANDARD & POOR — Your life in a nutshell.

STOCK ANALYST — Idiot who just downgraded your stock.

STOCK SPLIT — When your ex-wife and her lawyer split your assets equally between themselves.

FINANCIAL PLANNER — A guy whose phone ha s been disconnected.

MARKET CORRECTION — The day after you buy stocks.

CASH FLOW– The movement your money makes as it disappears down the toilet.

YAHOO — What you yell after selling it to some poor sucker for $240 per share.

WINDOWS — What you jump out of when you’re the sucker who bought Yahoo @ $240 per share.

INSTITUTIONAL INVESTOR — Past year investor who’s now locked up in a nuthouse.

PROFIT — An archaic word no longer in use.

The Big Bailout: Det er da godt, nogen tænker på almindelige mennesker også

Joseph Stiglitz i The Guardian:

We are told the patient needs a massive transfusion; but everyone can see that the patient is suffering from internal bleeding – in California, the number of foreclosures may already be outpacing voluntary sales. Yet nothing is being done to stem the haemorrhaging.

While the president says the economy faces the risk of economic meltdown, he threatens to veto a stimulus package that would create jobs – and he seems particularly adamant about a stimulus package that includes improved unemployment benefits. Traditionally, this is done when there is a threat of an economic downturn; if the downturn doesn’t materialise, it doesn’t cost anything. And while the administration and Wall Street promise this is just a temporary loan, not a bail-out, there was strong opposition to making the financial industry pay for any losses. Why would that be, if they are so sure that there won’t be losses?

Lad os redde Wall Street – men bedre sikring af de arbejdsløse, så vi ikke får så mange tvangsauktioner? The horror!

Link: Good day for democracy

Bailout eller ej: Krisen kradser i Middle America

Det er endnu for tidligt at sige, om Bushs kriseplan går igennem.

Men hvordan er effekten af boblen krisen og ophedningen i Main Street, det Middle America, alle politikerne bejler til og alle er klar til at røvrende, så snart det får chancen? Hvad siger manden på gaden i Chattanooga, Tennessee, eller Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania?

Tjah. I dagens Guardian rapporter Paul Harris fra Yonkers, New York:

Yonkers residents are preparing grimly for hard times ahead. The effects of the credit crunch, the failed bail-out plan and the seemingly endless news about collapsing banks, has people on Yonkers’ Main Street deeply fearful for the future.

“I am really, really worried,” said Ellen Mittman, a retiree. She feared for her credit cards and her savings and was already cutting back on her spending. “I have been stopping doing things. I don’t go out to dinner anymore. I don’t spend any more money on buying clothes. I am cutting back. Everyone is cutting back,” she said. “They have to pass something. I know they have to. But I blame Bush. I blame the deregulation. All they cared about was the fat cats.”

With the cable news channels blaring out doom and gloom and newspaper headlines detailing the latest predictions of collapse, many ordinary Americans are simply tightening their belts. That might be a prudent step, but it will hurt small businesses as consumer spending falls. Those businesses will need even more credit to survive. Yet with bank lending virtually frozen, that credit will be much harder to find. Businesses will start to close, jobs will be lost and consumer spending will tighten further. The cycle will begin again.

Link: ‘I blame Bush … all they cared about was the fat cats’

Krakkede investeringsfirmaer blev fritaget for kontrol

SEC svarer vel nærmest til det danske Børstilsyn, og SEC har altså bevidst vendt øjnene væk fra de største firmaers excesser:

As we learn this morning via Julie Satow of the NY Sun, special exemptions from the SEC are in large part responsible for the huge build up in financial sector leverage over the past 4 years — as well as the massive current unwind

Satow interviews the above quoted former SEC director, and he spits out the blunt truth: The current excess leverage now unwinding was the result of a purposeful SEC exemption given to five firms.

You read that right — the events of the past year are not a mere accident, but are the results of a conscious and willful SEC decision to allow these firms to legally violate existing net capital rules that, in the past 30 years, had limited broker dealers debt-to-net capital ratio to 12-to-1.

Instead, the 2004 exemption — given only to 5 firms — allowed them to lever up 30 and even 40 to 1.

Who were the five that received this special exemption? You won’t be surprised to learn that they were Goldman, ~~Merrill,~~ ~~Lehman,~~ ~~Bear Stearns,~~ and Morgan Stanley.

As Mr. Pickard points out that “The proof is in the pudding — three of the five broker-dealers have blown up.”

So while the SEC runs around reinstating short selling rules, and clueless pension fund managers mindlessly point to the wrong issue, we learn that it was the SEC who was in large part responsible for the reckless leverage that led to the current crisis.

You couldn’t make this stuff up if you tried.

Lad de store komme til fadet – skatteyderne tager skraldet, og fanden tager de bagerste. Sand risikovilje: Hvis jeg vinder, rydder jeg bordet, hvis jeg taber, kan vi dele i porten. Heads I win, tails the taxpayers lose, som Paul Krugman siger.

En passende mindesten over Bush-æraen. (Via Boing Boing)