beleggen Category

Adam Zyglis, The Buffalo News

From today people can lose their money at the same place where they lost their time: Facebook. The social network will be listed on Nasdaq stock exchange today. 

Foto: Geld

Hajo de Reijger, The Netherlands  

John Cole, The Scranton Times-Tribune 

The end of economic misery is in sight. George W. Bush is going to write a book on how to get America and the world growing again. According to the New York Times the former president, who turned a record U.S. budget surplus into a record deficit and got the Great Recession started, plans to 'publish a book outlining strategies for economic growth'.
Bush said that on Tuesday when he made a rare visit to Washington to defend his policy of promoting freedoms worldwide by bombing non christian countries until they are democratic.

Bush knows what he is talking about because under his watch GDP and employment posted their worst performance of any post-war president. Under Bush for the first time since 1945 household income went down. To conclude: Bush presided over the worst economy of the post-war era.

Pat Bagley, Salt Lake Tribune

I’ve never seen data that the Bush-taxcuts for the rich have actually created jobs in America. But my idea is, being a millionaire myself, that it doesn't. Millionairs can't eat or buy more than they already do. Some of that money goes to trips and houses abroad anywhay, and most goes to Wall Street or other stockmarkets where rich people know they can make money with money.

Yesterday the Senate voted on the the Buffett Rule, a bill promoted by President Obama that would make millionaires pay as much taxes as middle-class Americans. It got a small majority but thanks to a Republican filibuster it didn’t get the sixty votes needed to move on for discussion in the Senate. So American millionaires still pay less than their secretaries.

Pavel Constantin, Romania

The price of the shares of Bank of America’s fell 58 percent last year and now BofA is no longer America's biggest bank. The bank was also involved in a foreclosure scandal for which it paid 335 million dollars. How to reward that.

Big boss Brian Moynihan got a $7.5 million pay package, six times more than he received in 2010.

Arend Van Dam, politicalcartoons.com

Pavel Constantin, Romania

Look what happened with the barometer of the economy, the stockmarket, under this socialist president born in Kenia.

Yesterday the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed over the 13,000 points for the first time since May 2008 in the Bush years.

Wall Street is up over 56 pct since Barack Obama took office. 

This is how did the market did under the last three presidents.

President Obama has done 'irreparable harm to the economy', that is the opinion of Republican leader Trent Frank.
So it was not the useless wars of President Bush but President Obama. It were not the tax cuts and loopholes for the rich and corporations which never trickled down to average Americans but President Obama. It were not greedy bankers who under President Bush were allowed to sell useless products to people who couldn't afford them but President Obama.

Amazing that this terrible damage has lead to the highest level of corporate profits in the U.S. since 1950 last year. And that this harm has lead to a stockmarket hitting the 13.000 level for the first time since President Bush. Up from the lowest level of 6,626 for the DJIA on March 2009, right after the Bush years.

Goldline is a U.S. company that got rich by scaring people into buying gold. They made it big after they found the perfect man to scare Americans. Glenn Beck, the sick man who offered his weird message of doom and gloom on Fox News till he got dumped last year. Beck promoted Goldline shamelessly on his show. Of course he made millions doing it.

Now the LA court has concluded what many investors knew right away, Goldline is a fraudulous company. Goldline International has agreed to a court order to repay defrauded customers $4.5 million and change its business practices.

Goldline was essentially a scam. It preyed on fears of customers by telling them that the government could seize their gold and misled them into buying overpriced gold coins. It's customers paid 55 percent more than the actual value of the coins.

The company was heavily promoted on Fox News. That network was a good choice because that's where America's stupidest people meet. Ruthless Fox News hosts like Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and Mark Levin made millions by scamming their hapless viewers out of their savings. Even two former Republican presidential...

President Obama came up with the name: the Buffett Rule. A bill that is supported by conservative billionaire investor Warren Buffett. The bill requires millionaires to pay at least the same tax rate as their maids, 30 percent. Republicans call it class warfare. 
More rich Americans like Bill Gates and George Soros approve of the bill, though not the big sponsors of rightwing causes, the Koch Brothers. Investor Soros had this to say about it on CNN. This is a very good time to start debating the bill for the Democrats, because of the coming presidential elections in november this year:

ZAKARIA: What about taxes? Do you support President Obama’s proposal to increase taxes on the wealthy?

SOROS: Yes, I very much do so, because it’s the big boom, the super-bubble that resulted in a great increase in inequality. Not only do we have the after effect where we have slow growth one way or the other, but if you have better distribution of income, the average American will be better off.

Paresh Nath, The Khaleej Times, UAE  

Tom Janssen, The Netherlands

Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney biggest argument against President Obama is that he made the Great Bush Recession worse.
Is that true?

Economist's Alan S. Blinder and Mark Zandi had this to say about the economic policy and the stimulus of the Obama administration:

We find that its effects on real GDP, jobs, and inflation are huge, and probably averted what could have been called Great Depression 2.0. 

What's the use of financial instruments, build on financial instruments, build on...
Former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker: “I wish someone would give me one shred of neutral evidence that financial innovation has led to economic growth.” The evidence hasn't been presented yet. According to Volcker the last useful financial innovation was the ATM (= geldautomaat).

In essence banking is a very simple business. It's lending money with higher interest rate than you borrow it from others. So really a child can do the laundry. So why are bankers among the highest paid CEO's?
This is what a former Lehman Bros trader had to say in an article today in New York Magazine:

Many [on Wall Street] acknowledge that the bubble­-bust-bubble seesaw of the past decades isn’t the natural order of capitalism - and that the compensation arrangements just may have been a bit out of whack. “There’s no other industry where you could get paid so much for doing so little.” 

And this are the same bankers that are now financing the Mitt Romney campaign in the hope they can keep things as they were.
The Great Recession brought on by the...

Taylor Jones, El Nuevo Dia, Puerto Rico

Wall Street is not that fond of Barack Obama anymore it seems. In the election in 2008 Obama was funded heavily by Big Money from Wall Street but that's different now. Maybe President Obama is doing something right:

Over the course of the 2012 election, Obama's presidential campaign has received about one dollar in donations from the financial sector for every five dollars given to his top competitor, Mitt Romney, according to figures provided by the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP). During the final three months of 2011, however, the margin has widened dramatically.

Tom Janssen, The Netherlands

Arend Van Dam, politicalcartoons.com

Pavel Constantin, Romania