Wednesday, October 29, 2008

End of Lifestyle opinions: journalists embark on course of modesty

That the media, first of all newspapers, followed by magazines are
having to face the music and are in serious and increasing financial
problems themselves can be learned from the Google reader on the
right side.

Jack Shafer, media critic at Slate, noted the new trend coming from
them:
Good news from the coming depression
Journalists have discovered it!

It is a funny piece.

Sunday, October 26, 2008

Are financial offshore centres and tax havens going bust, melting down as well? Suspicious silence, non-reporting

While banks and financial institutions all over the
place are ran into serious problems and those problems
are known, reported on, there is an almost suspicious
silence emanating from tax havens.

Tiny as many of them might seem, they are global
players because of the huge assets and funds they
manage and have in their accounts.
There are two basic questions:
A) Have those banks and funds, etc. done better, were
they smarter, more prudent in their conduct? In which
case they would be some sort of positive provocation
to the rest of the financial world.
B) Or have they made the same mistakes and are melting
down just like the others? If that is the case this would
provide the answer to some presently unexplainable
occurrences in the stock markets globally, like forced
sell- offs and so on.

Such a crisis in tax havens would have some interesting
aspects. There are some of the proceeds of drug dealing
stored away, invested. Or Third World politicians are
known to invest all the embezzled money there. Thus one
or the other political scandal would follow in such a case.
And maybe one or the other scandal worthy of tabloid
reoporting and elaborating as well.

It would in any case require some rather old-fashioned
competent reporting, some knowledgeable guys who know
what they are talking about. Drug money of political money,
the proceeds from corruption, are of course stories that take
a longer time to figure out and give an adequate account.

Certainly are differences among those centres how they
handled banking, their legal requirements and so forth.

Here is an article from Jersey (it is possible to go from
the articles linked here to current articles on the following
newspapers, if interested):
Euro talks to protect finance

And here another one from Isle of Man:
The Manx Lads: It's Not Our Fault

Here is one from Guernsey:
Confidence in Guernsey will survive

And here one about the Vatican Bank:
Officials says deposits in Vatican Bank are safe
(The Catholic Church had some problems in
the past, a longer time ago, 1982.)

Update:
The Stanford - case brings the issues of sunny islands,
tax havens and more to the front again.
Here a summary so far in the Guardian:
We said, are you this guy ...

All that might be an excuse or reason to visit some of
the news media in the Carribbean directly (this affair
is leading to elections in Antigua, where the Prime Minister
called for elections in March)
The Nation Newspaper, Barbados

the: CaribWorldNews

and the Caribbean Net News

For the record: these are just some of the media in the
region.
As for the USA: there is a link to Silicon Alley Insider
on this blog. A rather new publications, they have their
own style of writing, relaxed, with a sense of humour, yet
professional - and always linking to sources (giving credit
to deserves credit) that is obviously gaining rapid
popularity.

Fancy some music after so much hard
reading? Here is Harry Belafonte: Island in the sun

Saturday, October 18, 2008

Financial thrillers by former City banker turned writer Linda Davies

Dealing with things financial and moneywise as knowledge-
able authors is obviously a trait of the Davies family.
We introduced "The History of Money" by Glyn Davies.
Daughter Linda Davies on her part wrote a couple
of financial thrillers. Instead of an unnecessary duplicate
introduction, a link here.

Somehow fitting to that we would to introduce
"DealBreaker", an online Wall Street tabloid.
It is, according to its definition, a specific tabloid
that includes Wall Street gossip and news about
people "who are to be considered innocent until
proven guilty".

Matching the themes we have chosen the film music
to the James Bond movie "Goldfinger"/ "Diamond are
forever", Shirley Bessey singing at the occasion.
hahaha

Re - inventing gun powder, money and banking by way of: The History of Money ; a book suggestion

The finance crisis and bank collapses brought with them
a number of questions. What the hell banks are good
for and needed in the first place, what it would be like
without banks. Or even more radically asking the
question: what would it be like if money would be
abolished. Karl Marx for instance wanted to have
money abolished. that's why the rubel was a real
paradoxon during the Communist period, when the
pircture of Marx, the one who decried its abolishment
was on the Rubel - bills.

One way to get a little bit deeper is reading the history
of money, how and why it evolved a long time ago.
A really proper book on that was written by Glyn
Davies. A link to a synopsis and Davies' biographie
here.

Sunday, October 12, 2008

Were media complicit in finance crisis? First shy confessions from insiders / journalists

Somebody suspecting the media of being complict in
this crisis and interested in related critique can turn
to Danny Schechter, US film maker and author of
several books.
Here an article from him in the Huffington Post in
Nov. 2007 which turns out to be accurate early
warning:
Media Complicit in "Shopapokalypse" as consumers
go wild


What is actually overdue are confessions from people
inside the media just like insiders from the finance
industry who tell it all. There would be a lot to tell
in any case.

The first inside criticism was published today, Oct. 13
in the Guardian:
"Why didn't the City journalists see the financial crisis
coming?"

Certainly there is more to come, has to come. As soon
as any such articles are found, they will pointed out
here.