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UBS to repay Swiss government bailout loan

“The move draws a line under the Swiss government’s rescue of UBS nearly five years ago. At the time the country’s biggest bank faced collapse over more than $50 billion in losses on mortgage securities. The central bank’s fund was set up to bail out UBS at the height of the financial crisis. The government took a nine percent stake in UBS as part of the bailout comprising six billion francs of equity and a loan from the Swiss National Bank (SNB). UBS spun off $38.7 billion of risky assets into the fund. UBS last week announced its quarterly profit would exceed analysts’ expectations, even after paying $885 million to settle a lawsuit in the United States.” Continue reading →

Deutsche Bank to Cut Assets $332 Billion as Profit Slides

“Deutsche Bank AG (DBK), continental Europe’s biggest bank, said it will shrink its balance sheet by 250 billion euros ($332 billion), joining Barclays Plc (BARC) and UBS AG (UBSN) in seeking to comply with stricter capital rules. Deutsche Bank will reduce leverage by changing the way it accounts for derivatives and by winding down a 73 billion-euro portfolio of assets. Co-Chief Executive Officer Anshu Jain has been offloading riskier assets, firing staff and raising capital by selling shares as lingering doubts about the ability of Europe’s banks to withstand another financial crisis prompted regulators and shareholders to demand stronger finances.” Continue reading →

On the Ground in Cyprus with Doug Casey

“Cyprus is perhaps the best most-recent example of the actions that a desperate government can take—and why you need to internationalize your savings, yourself, your income, and your digital presence. As you are no doubt aware, earlier this year on a seemingly ordinary Saturday morning (when most people would least suspect it), the government of Cyprus swiftly closed the banks, imposed capital controls, and announced a confiscation of customer deposits. While these actions came as a surprise to many, it should not have. The actions of a desperate government usually follow a predictable pattern and can happen in any country.” Continue reading →

Large Depositors in Cyprus Lose 47.5% of Their Deposits. Good!

“If the principle of ‘depositor beware’ were allowed to spread across the world and down to every dollar or euro deposited, the world would then have something resembling a free market in banking. Every banker would know that a bank run on his bank could wipe it out at any time. Bankers would become far more careful with depositors’ money. Banking would become less inflationary. The world would be better off. The bankers in the rest of Europe are terrified that the ‘Cyprus solution’ will spread to their nations. That would place final authority in the hands of depositors. This thought terrifies bankers.” Continue reading →

5,000 Chinese factory workers strike over Indian takeover of American firm

“Cooper Tire and Rubber announced last month that it would be taken over by Apollo Tyres of India, making the combined group the seventh-largest such firm in the world. But thousands of staff at Cooper Chengshan, a joint venture in the eastern Chinese province of Shandong, have walked out in protest, the Xinhua news agency said late Tuesday. It is the latest incident to hit a foreign joint venture after Chinese workers held an American factory executive hostage for nearly a week in late June over a plan by his US-based medical supply company to lay off 30 workers.” Continue reading →

Copper theft ‘like an epidemic’ sweeping US

“An electrical power station in Wichita, Kan., or half a dozen middle-class homes in Morris Township, N.J. Even on a Utah highway construction site, crooks managed to abscond with six miles of copper wire. Those are just a handful of recent targets across the U.S. in the $1 billion business of copper theft. The five leading states for the thefts are Ohio, Texas, Georgia, California and Illinois, the NICB said. The FBI says copper theft is ‘threatening U.S. critical infrastructure by targeting electrical substations, cellular towers, telephone land lines, railroads, water wells, construction sites, and vacant homes for lucrative profits.'” Continue reading →

Art Basel takes art world by storm

“With private jets filling the air and lines of luxury limousines on the ready, deep-pocketed collectors from around the world have flocked to Switzerland this week for Art Basel, the biggest contemporary art fair on the planet. An estimated 110 private jets landed and took off from the Basel-Mulhouse airport, after 83 flew through there on Tuesday despite a strike that reduced the airport’s capacity and forced some wealthy patrons of the arts to change their travel plans. The art world appears to have bucked the global economic crisis, with income from global auction sales more than doubling since it hit bottom in 2009, passing eight billion euros last year.” Continue reading →

What we know thanks to Bradley Mannning’s leaks to WikiLeaks

“Bradley Manning, a 25-year-old US private, downloaded more than 700,000 classified documents from US military servers and passed them to WikiLeaks. The Guardian was one of several news organisations to publish a series of stories based on the contents of the files. Below are 10 of the most revelatory.” Continue reading →