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Bank of England deputy governor warned banks they could
collapse 'before Christmas' - (www.telegraph.co.uk)
Bank of England officials
were so concerned about the potential for a financial crisis late last year
they took the extraordinary step of warning the entire banking system could
collapse “before Christmas”. Paul Tucker, the deputy governor of the Bank of England, told an October meeting of
the chief executives of Britain’s largest banks that there was a serious chance
none of their businesses would survive to the end of the year. “Gentlemen, you
could all be out of business by Christmas,” Mr Tucker said in a stark warning
to the bank chiefs, according to three sources present at the meeting. The
revelation of Mr Tucker’s remarkable warning shows the depth of fear among
senior officials over the havoc the collapse of the eurozone would wreak on the
British financial system.
Feds
Are Garnishing Social Security Benefits From Retirees Who Can't Pay Back
Student Loans - (www.businessinsider.com)
While most attention in the
ongoing student debt crisis narrative has focused on new graduates, it turns
out the federal government has been quietly targeting a different group of
debtors: retirees. The Treasury Department has been withholding as much as
15 percent of Social Security benefits from "a rapidly growing number of
Social Security recipients who have fallen behind on federal student
loans," Smart Money's Annamaria
Andriotis reports: From January through August 6, the government reduced
the size of roughly 115,000 retirees' Social Security checks on those grounds.
That's nearly double the pace of the department's enforcement in 2011; it's up
from around 60,000 cases in all of 2007 and just 6 cases in 2000...
National parks face severe funding crunch - (www.washingtonpost.com) After more than a decade of
scrimping and deferring maintenance and construction projects — and absorbing a
6 percent budget cut in the past two years — the signs of strain are
beginning to surface at national parks across the country. The
469-mile Blue Ridge Parkway, which curves along the
spine of the easternmost range of the Appalachian Mountains in Virginia and
North Carolina, has a $385 million backlog of projects, mainly in road
maintenance, and has been unable to fill 75 vacant positions since 2003. For
the past three years, New Mexico’s Bandelier National Monument has lacked the
money to hire a specialist to protect its archaeological ruins and
resources.
Banks Use $1.77 Trillion to Double Treasury Purchases - (www.bloomberg.com) The gap between U.S. bank
deposits and loans is growing at the fastest pace in two years, providing
lenders with more funds to buy bonds and temper the biggest sell-off in
Treasuries since 2010. As deposits increased 3.3 percent to $8.88 trillion in
the two months ended July 31, business lending rose 0.7 percent to $7.11
trillion, Federal Reserve data show. The record
gap of $1.77 trillion has expanded 15 percent since May, the biggest
similar-period gain since July, 2010. Banks have already bought $136.4 billion in Treasury and
government agency debt this year, more than double the $62.6 billion in all of
2011, pushing their holdings to an all-time high of $1.84 trillion.
Euro Crisis Revving Up Again �
Fasten Your Seatbelts – (www.cnbc.com) The markets have been starved
of euro zone news for several weeks, but as politicians and traders return to their
desks over the next couple of weeks, the crisis is set to return to the fore
again. August has so far been dominated by the Olympics,
with little news from the single currency area that the merest eyebrow-raise
from European Central Bank (ECB) (explain
this) President Mario Draghi has moved markets. With weak
trading volumes, every interview with a euro zone policymaker is pored over and
has the potential to send markets up or down. “With the people who normally
stir the pot on the euro crisis off on holiday, there are fewer uncertainties
on a daily basis about what will happen next and when,” Carl Weinberg, chief
economist at High Frequency Economics, wrote in a research note. “Despite a
month of remission, Euroland’s financial sector vulnerabilities remain
unaddressed.”
Greek, German foreign ministers meet as high-stakes diplomacy
over Greek euro future kicks off - (www.washingtonpost.com)
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