BEIJING, Dec 29 (Reuters) - A small Chinese power generator on Tuesday rejected demands from a Goldman Sachs unit to pay for nearly $80 million lost on two oil hedging contracts, part of a long-running dispute over how China deals with derivatives losses.

Goldman Sachs (GS.N) was one of the foreign banks, along with Citigroup (C.N), Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley (MS.N), blamed by the state assets watchdog for providing "extremely complicated" and difficult to understand derivatives products. [ID:nPEK242617]

Peter North is a senior research fellow and lecturer at the University of Liverpool England. His book Money and Liberation published in 2007 by the University of Minnesota Press is a serious consideration of community currencies and exchange in the context of economic and monetary reform.

Last summer, Barack Obama vowed to crack down on banks and credit card companies by passing sweeping reforms to bar abusive practices. He was going to get tough with the malefactors of consumer credit. Well, today the Federal Reserve released new rules to "empower consumers." And how did the bankers, who spent at least $6.9 million on lobbying in just the first three quarters of last year, react?

They were overjoyed.

Here's the official press release from the American Bankers Association.

CONSUMERS TO BENEFIT FROM FED’S SWEEPING NEW CREDIT CARD RULES

Corporations, which control the levers of power in government and finance, promote and empower the psychologically maimed. Those who lack the capacity for empathy and who embrace the goals of the corporation—personal power and wealth—as the highest good succeed. Those who possess moral autonomy and individuality do not.

A lawsuit filed against investment bank Goldman Sachs by a shareholder alleges that the company spent more money on corporate bonuses than it earned in 2008. Shareholder Ken Brown's lawsuit is one of two suits filed against the company this week over its controversial decision to hand out billions of dollars in bonuses even after it was accused of playing a central role in the financial collapse of 2008 and receiving $10 billion in direct aid from the US government.

Readers: This is a relatively basic, though imo overly moderated, summary The author does not go to the level to declare that the details of the bail-out and the phony recovery were exactly that way because that is the way that the speculative finance sector wanted the process to be defined. Self congratulatory conceit is what was expressed in the recovery agenda and the economic ignorance of how real economies actually function is equally profound.

from the Huffington Post
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/08/ny-fed-aig-emails-spark-n_n_416...

A batch of internal emails showing that the New York Fed, at the time led by current Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, urged AIG to conceal certain terms of the company's bailout from the public is fueling a new round of anger from lawmakers.

The book being reviewed here is Money A Mirror Image of The Economy, the second edition, copyright 2009 by J. W. Smith. Somehow along the way, Joseph W. Smith decided that he could evade expectations of truth and accuracy by someone familiar with monetary reform and economic history. I expect that what few academics there are that have an established interest in this domain will simply ignore his nonsense. The positivistic material coming out of major name university economics departments is bad enough by the courtier service they provide.

The People's Bank of China released this statement by Zhou Xiaochuan, the central bank's governor, on March 23, 2009. It calls for replacing the dollar as the dominant world currency and creating "an international reserve currency that is disconnected from individual nations and is able to remain stable in the long run".

Readers: This report deserves special mention and the Milton Friedman Prize goes to Helicopter Ben Beranke and Timmy "the tax evader" Geithner for really bad economics, translated as in relative to the really deplorable management of the interests of our communities and homes. This bodes very very poorly for any kind of real economic recovery. Not only are the mega fraud perpetrators not being prosecuted but they are being rewarded and their tenures even in the face of massive failure are being extended. Wake Up America!!!!! Admin

By William K. Black

Introduction