Disclosure Statement

This policy is valid from 20 February 2011. http://harlemlook.net is a personal blog written and edited by me. This blog accepts forms of cash advertising, sponsorship, paid insertions or other forms of compensation.

The compensation received may influence the advertising content, topics or posts made in this blog. That content, advertising space or post may not always be identified as paid or sponsored content.

We are employed by or consult with: http://www.izea.com. To get your own policy, go to http://www.disclosurepolicy.org

Blog Archive

Wednesday, August 30

the bubble is bursting, they admit it@

Housing Bubble Going Down, and will Drag the Economy Down with It (210 words)

The decline of the housing bubble will have major effects on Americans spending habits in general. Since general savings rates have been going down for a long time, what will replace the housing bubble? Essentially nothing, it is irreplaceable. Housing prices, until the mid-1990s generally followed the Consumer Price Index. Then huge amounts of cheap credit were pumped into the housing market. This was done by the Federal Reserve through federally sponsored companies like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. They in turn bought the mortgage paper that was sold by the local bank.
Fannie Mae, etc. repackaged the mortgages as Mortgage Backed Securities (MBSs) and sold them all over the world. Homeowners were able to refinance their home at a lower mortgage rate and get extra cash. They could even refinance with cash back, turning their home into a giant ATM machine. With the decline in real estate prices, this will no longer be possible, since this is based in huge increases in home equity. This will affect consumer spending, driving it downward. Establishment commentators at Forbes Magazine, Business Week, Barrons, etc. have been looking for a replacement bubble, but haven’t been able to find it.
----------------------------------------30--------------------------------------------------------

Monday, August 28

Dear familypiggybank.com,

We are now linked. I publish your link:
http://www.familypiggybank.com

And you can publish my article about what to do when you go into debt!

Love, Howiecopywriter

Friday, August 25

If you don't like the economy --go offshore!

Tax Havens of the Caribbean – the Cayman Islands

Investors and corporations desiring to get away from SEC regulations, and US taxes can conduct business operations from the Caribbean, including the British Virgin Islands, the U.S. Virgin Islands, the Dutch Antilles, and the Cayman Islands. The banking sector of the Caymans contains 450 banks from 65 countries, and is the fifth largest banking centers in the world.
The Cayman Islands have never implemented income tax or corporate tax. This is as a form of “tax competition”, against all the taxing monetary authorities and governments all over the world. Places like the Cayman Islands play a key role in “globalization”, since they are a place where investment deals between corporations from many countries can be made without the interference of national sovereignty or tax law. Unlike their reputation as rogue centers for finance, they are connected to all the money-center banks in New York, Tokyo, London, and Hong Kong.
Over 650 Hedge funds were recently registered in the Cayman Islands, bringing the grand total of hedge funds there to over 7,000. Hedge funds routinely set up in this tax haven to attract investments and avoid taxes in the USA, Europe and other countries. Even U.S. Pension funds invest in Hedge Funds, through their shell companies to avoid paying taxes. Assets of the hedge fund sector exceed $1.3 trillion. Another $2.5 billion in pension funds from Japan were moved into hedge funds and similar investment vehicles recently. There were also over 2,000 mutual funds operating out of the Caymans. Financial regulation is administered by the Cayman Islands Monetary Authority. International pressure exists to improve the regulation of the securities and investment business. These questions were dealt with in discussions in a British parliamentary White Paper. Tax-treaties between the U.S. and Great Britain and the Netherlands are being revised to deal with such problems.
The Caymans took steps to improve anti-money-laundering measures, which got it removed from the NCCT, the Non-cooperating Countries and Territories list. The Cayman Islands have complained that they want to make sure there is a level playing field so the regulations that they must exchange tax information are applied to other well-known tax havens.
With the U.S. stock-markets going nowhere for several years, there has been a shift to non-traditional investment methods. The idea of the hedge fund is to be market neutral. It makes money by taking short and long positions in a variety of derivative instruments. They often use a lot of derivatives, such as options, calls, puts, warrants and so on. Many hedge funds in Europe are headquarted in the Cayman Islands, and are listed on the Dublin Ireland stock Exchange, while others use Luxembourg as their European base of operations.
Hedge Funds can get investments through a “Fund of Funds”, which allows smaller investors to have their funds pooled and be invested in a hedge fund. So instead of a minimum investment of $1 million, investors can join the Fund-of-Funds pool for as little as $25,000. This involves hedge funds fees, and a second layer of fees at the Fund of Funds level
its crazy

My Photo here

About globalization and the death of the economy

Firms in the Globalization Craze, and Bankruptcy Court


Bankruptcy has become the fashionable way for large U.S. corporations to shed most of their U.S. operations and their pension and health care obligations as well. This then created the condition where mega-cartel companies can be created on a global scale, like Mittal’s global steel empire. A General Motors (GM), Nissan- Renault merger
combination would be even worse. The Leveraged Buyout (LBO) and Mergers and Acquisitions (M & A) frenzy seem to be back. In the case of General Motors (GM), it had split off its auto parts division in 1999, and renamed it Delphi, just as Ford split off its parts division to create Visteon Corporation. Delphi is an independent company with close business ties to GM. In October 2005, it filed for bankruptcy. In the name of “shareholder values” its facilities in the U.S. are being largely shut down, and its pension and health care obligations, including to retirees, are being dumped on the Government’s PBGC and on GM. The PBGC, Pension Benefits Guarantee Corporation itself could be made broke.

According to New York bankruptcy court documents, the bankruptcy of Delphi was engineered and directed by the small boutique investment house, Rohatyn Inc., of Felix Rohatyn, formerly of Lazard Inc, and also with the help of Rothschild Inc. These companies have had experience with the bankruptcies of many Airlines, Steel Companies and other large industrial companies since the early 1980s. Felix Rohatyn is also famous for his heading of the New York City Municipal Assistance Corporation (Big Mac) in 1975. What happened in the case of the bankruptcy of Delphi, which is still winding its way through the courts, is the use of bankruptcy to dump a good chunk of its health care and pension obligations onto the Pension Benefits Guarantee Corporation and the U.S. Government. Delphi’s CEO Robert “Steve” Miller has been carrying out this plan before and after the bankruptcy.
The Delphi bankruptcy also allowed the auctioning off of millions of dollars of machine tool equipment from the auto parts plants, some of it in newer condition than may have been suspected. Who knows, they may even be being bought and sold, eventually wind up in Delphi’s overseas plants which are of a large number and growing. Steve Miller, as Delphi’s new CEO, acted to shut down U.S. operations, after the bankruptcy, representing the Debtor-In-Possession (DIP). He obtained credit of $2 billion from Chase and Citigroup to “restructure”, which gives these new creditors a strong degree of control of the bankrupt corporation.
Delphi is in effect dozens of companies. Its bankruptcy was of all the companies under its umbrella in the United States. In addition to its 37,000 U.S. workers as of June 2006, Delphi has 60,000 employees in Mexico and an additional 60,000 employees in other countries, for a total of 157,000 workers as of June. According to the current interpretation of U.S. bankruptcy law, Delphi’s U.S. bankruptcy proceeding is allowed to ignore the overseas operations and assets of Delphi’s foreign subsidiaries. How many assets and facilities were shipped overseas before the bankruptcy? This is unknown but even leading financial press, such as Business Week magazine of April 2006 have characterized these actions as “globalization by bankruptcy”.

Hey, isn't that neat! for more see http://www.larouchepub.com

Here are some of my new articles:

Tax Havens of the Caribbean – the Cayman Islands


Investors and corporations desiring to get away from SEC regulations, and US taxes can conduct business operations from the Caribbean, including the British Virgin Islands, the U.S. Virgin Islands, the Dutch Antilles, and the Cayman Islands. The banking sector of the Caymans contains 450 banks from 65 countries, and is the fifth largest banking centers in the world.
The Cayman Islands have never implemented income tax or corporate tax. This is as a form of “tax competition”, against all the taxing monetary authorities and governments all over the world. Places like the Cayman Islands play a key role in “globalization”, since they are a place where investment deals between corporations from many countries can be made without the interference of national sovereignty or tax law. Unlike their reputation as rogue centers for finance, they are connected to all the money-center banks in New York, Tokyo, London, and Hong Kong.
Over 650 Hedge funds were recently registered in the Cayman Islands, bringing the grand total of hedge funds there to over 7,000. Hedge funds routinely set up in this tax haven to attract investments and avoid taxes in the USA, Europe and other countries. Even U.S. Pension funds invest in Hedge Funds, through their shell companies to avoid paying taxes. Assets of the hedge fund sector exceed $1.3 trillion. Another $2.5 billion in pension funds from Japan were moved into hedge funds and similar investment vehicles recently. There were also over 2,000 mutual funds operating out of the Caymans. Financial regulation is administered by the Cayman Islands Monetary Authority. International pressure exists to improve the regulation of the securities and investment business. These questions were dealt with in discussions in a British parliamentary White Paper. Tax-treaties between the U.S. and Great Britain and the Netherlands are being revised to deal with such problems.
The Caymans took steps to improve anti-money-laundering measures, which got it removed from the NCCT, the Non-cooperating Countries and Territories list. The Cayman Islands have complained that they want to make sure there is a level playing field so the regulations that they must exchange tax information are applied to other well-known tax havens.
With the U.S. stock-markets going nowhere for several years, there has been a shift to non-traditional investment methods. The idea of the hedge fund is to be market neutral. It makes money by taking short and long positions in a variety of derivative instruments. They often use a lot of derivatives, such as options, calls, puts, warrants and so on. Many hedge funds in Europe are headquarted in the Cayman Islands, and are listed on the Dublin Ireland stock Exchange, while others use Luxembourg as their European base of operations.
Hedge Funds can get investments through a “Fund of Funds”, which allows smaller investors to have their funds pooled and be invested in a hedge fund. So instead of a minimum investment of $1 million, investors can join the Fund-of-Funds pool for as little as $25,000. This involves hedge funds fees, and a second layer of fees at the Fund of Funds level

howie the copywriter is a legal consultant with legal information for small businesses and Incorporation services at http://www.incparadise.com

It's me Howie the copywriters at legal information for small businesses and Incorporation services with http://www.legalformsguide.com and http://www.incparadise.com .