Holidays Are Enjoyable

So don't fret, you'll get out of debt.

Hedging Along

December 21 – Financial Times (Saskia Scholtes):

“Hedge funds are scrutinising their levels of exposure to bank defaults, in a telling reversal of conventional risk management concerns. While bank exposure to the hedge funds they trade with has been in sharp focus since the 1998 collapse of Long Term Capital Management, a run of record-breaking losses and bailouts in banking has hedge funds re-examining how much they can be hurt by a bank collapse… In this environment, some hedge funds have found they are more exposed to the risk of bank failure because they agreed to trading terms that did not require banks to post collateral against certain derivatives trades, said Lauren Tiegland-Hunt, managing partner at law firm Tiegland-Hunt. ‘When the credit crunch took hold, many firms were surprised to discover they had entered ‘one-way’ collateral agreements that not only left money on the table, but also left them exposed to increased counter-party credit risk,’ she said. ‘In the current era of falling credit ratings and banks announcing huge...writedowns, this kind of risk is a real and pressing concern.’”

Recession and China

Our economic system is going towards the perfect storm. The sub-prime mortgage disaster, the maxing out of credit cards, a dismal forecast in consumer spending, and the Fed fighting the credit crunch, recession cannot be far behind.

We might be lucky if it's only a recession.

On the contrary, we could get the kind of economic collapse that will make the last depression look like a tea party.

With friends like China, who needs enemies? China, a prime creditor, could call in some of this debt if they wanted to be mean.

Dial-a-Flight

Finding cheap flights to USA and especially New York can be impossible during the holidays. Flights to Washington this holiday season are not better. Don’t spend your time looking for special holiday offers! Dial-a-flight can help meet all your international travel needs. The holiday of your dreams might be just around the corner. A one site stop for flights and more. You’ll be glad you chose to refer to dial-a-flight when you’re relaxing in the hotel spa thinking about how you’ll use dial-a-flight next. Tailor made holidays are just a click away.

Virtual Money Numbers

Money today is just a "virtual number" in the bank computer.

Created by bankers in order to get the real tangible asset (Gold, Platinum, Palladiun and other metals in their vault, Oil in their bunker, LNG in their tank farm etc), and those produced the tangible got just number which depend whether or not they recognized/accepted that "number" to be transfer from bank computer to other bank computer or not if they said no then those of the "accumulated virtual number" mean nothing.

An example is China Petroleum Co bidding for US Union Oil Co that has offered to buy the shares is higher up against Chevron. The US government decided not to give the company to China Petroleum by mentioning Union Oil is strategic assets. Even this bidding was through a market process.