Category: Aggregated

With their entire international financial system crumbling around them, in “the biggest financial crisis in modern history,” as Lyndon LaRouche called it, the only thing that the bankrupt predators of Wall Street and the City of London can think of, is how to get their next financial fix of bailout funds.

The desperate calls for responding to what they call “Black Monday” with massive additional quantitative easing (QE), are quite explicit. Larry Elliott, writing in the Guardian today, admitted that the problem is that

“For the last seven years, they [the markets] have been given regular doses of strong and dangerous narcotics. The threat that the drugs will no longer be available has resulted in severe withdrawal symptoms… The markets have been pumped full of stimulants in the form of quantitative easing.”

What to do? Well, more of the same, of course! Elliott suggests that “the Fed might need to provide more stimulus… contemplate further rounds of QE, even though that amounts to doubling the dosage for drugs that become less effective every time they are administered.”

The rest of the financial press, such as London’s FT Alphaville, says pretty much the same thing: “We’ve long felt that the only thing preventing another financial crisis has been extraordinary central bank liquidity and general interventions from the global authorities, which we still expect to continue for a long while yet.”

Last night and today, major central bank and related stock-purchasing interventions across the trans-Atlantic sector, apparently provided enough numbing agent to allow the European market and U.S. futures market to post moderate gains for most of today, though there was a rush for the doors in the last hour of U.S trading, ending in further losses. China’s Shanghai index, fell another 7.6% on Tuesday, as the financial press continued to protest that Chinese authorities are not stepping in with the kind of bailout that the speculators want. China did lower benchmark interest rates by .25% today to 4.6%, and also dropped the reserve ratio by 0.5% to 16%.

Just in time for the systemic meltdown, the financial junkies will hold their annual meeting at Jackson Hole, Wyoming, later this week, Aug. 27-29. The world’s central bankers will gather there, and the key speech will be given by Fed vice chairman Stanley Fischer on Aug. 29. Fed chair Janet Yellen will not be attending this year.