Mammon: Your Gold and Silver Have Rusted

Mammon Ezekiel 28:16a "By the abundance of your trade You were internally filled with violence,... Psalms 49:12 But man in his pomp will not endure; He is like the beasts that perish. James 5:3 Your gold and your silver have rusted; and their rust will be a witness against you and will consume your flesh like fire. It is in the last days that you have stored up your treasure! Revelation 18:17a for in one hour such great wealth has been laid waste!'... Proverbs 16:16 How much better it is to get wisdom than gold! And to get understanding is to be chosen above silver. Europe tops US in stock market value FINANCIALTIMES of LONDON - By Tony Tassell - April 2, 2007 Europe has eclipsed the US in stock market value for the first time since the first world war in another sign of the slipping of the global dominance of American capital markets. - - - The rise of the euro against the dollar, growth of east European markets such as Russia and stock market outperformance spurred by improving profitability have seen Europe close a long-held gap with the US. Ian Harnett at Absolute Strategy Research, who identified the move, said this marked a “seismic shift” in markets. The last time Europe eclipsed the US in market capitalisation was likely to have been before the first world war, said Mike Staunton, stock-market historian at London Business School. The shift mirrors a trend in the debt world, where European activity has caught up, and in some cases overtaken the US. - - - - http://www.ft.com/cms/s/bf6a00e4-e14b-11db-bd73-000b5df10621,_i_rssPage=6700d4e4-6714-11da-a650-0000779e2340.html Corporate profits at all-time high FINANCIALTIMES of LONDON - By Chris Giles, Economics Editor - April 3, 2007 Corporate profitability rose to its historically highest level at the end of last year as manufacturing and service sector companies benefited from strong sales growth combined with lower energy prices and subdued wage pressures. Economists said soaring profitability in the fourth quarter augured well for business investment, underpinning the Bank of England’s strong growth forecast for this year. - - - - http://www.ft.com/cms/s/56c494c8-e213-11db-af9e-000b5df10621.html N.J. Pension Fund Endangered by Diverted Billions NEW YORK TIMES - By Mary Williams Walsh - April 4, 2007 In 2005, New Jersey put either $551 million, $56 million or nothing into its pension fund for teachers. All three figures appeared in various state documents — though the state now says that the actual amount was zero. The phantom contribution is just one indication that New Jersey has been diverting billions of dollars from its pension fund for state and local workers into other government purposes over the last 15 years, using a variety of unorthodox transactions authorized by the Legislature and by governors from both political parties. The state has long acknowledged that it has been putting less money into the pension fund than it should. But an analysis of its records by The New York Times shows that in many cases, New Jersey has overstated even what it has claimed to be contributing, sometimes by hundreds of millions of dollars. - - - - http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/04/nyregion/04pension.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin Top investor sees U.S. property crash REUTERS - By Elif Kaban - March 14, 2007 MOSCOW - Commodities investment guru Jim Rogers stepped into the U.S. subprime fray on Wednesday, predicting a real estate crash that would trigger defaults and spread contagion to emerging markets. "You can't believe how bad it's going to get before it gets any better," the prominent U.S. fund manager told Reuters by telephone from New York. "It's going to be a disaster for many people who don't have a clue about what happens when a real estate bubble pops. "It is going to be a huge mess," said Rogers, who has put his $15 million belle epoque mansion on Manhattan's Upper West Side on the market and is planning to move to Asia. Worries about losses in the U.S. mortgage market have sent stock prices falling in Asia and Europe, with shares in financial services companies falling the most. Some investors fear the problems of lenders who make subprime loans to people with weak credit histories are spreading to mainstream financial firms and will worsen the U.S. housing slowdown. "Real estate prices will go down 40-50 percent in bubble areas. There will be massive defaults. This time it'll be worse because we haven't had this kind of speculative buying in U.S. history," Rogers said. "When markets turn from bubble to reality, a lot of people get burned." The fund manager, who co-founded the Quantum Fund with billionaire investor George Soros in the 1970s and has focused on commodities since 1998, said the crisis would spread to emerging markets which he said now faced a prolonged bear run. "When you have a financial crisis, it reverberates in other financial markets, especially in those with speculative excess," he said. "Right now, there is huge speculative excess in emerging markets around the world. There will be a lot of money coming out of emerging markets. "I've sold out of emerging markets except for China," said Rogers, long a prominent China bull. Even in China, the world's fastest expanding economy, Rogers said stocks were overvalued and could go down 30-40 percent. But he added: "China is one of the few countries in the world where I'm willing to sit out a 30-40 percent decline." The last stock market bubble to burst was the dot-com craze which sparked a crash from March 2000 to October 2002. When the last bubble burst in Japan, said Rogers, stock prices went down 85 percent despite the country's high savings rate and huge balance of payment surplus. "This is the end of the liquidity party," said Rogers. "Some emerging markets will go down 80 percent, some will go down 50 percent. Some will most probably collapse." http://www.reuters.com/articlePrint?articleId=USL1470530620070314 U.S. Comptroller: Prescription Drug Bill 'May Be The Most Financially Irresponsible Law In 40 Years'; Bill Will Add $8 Trillion to Long-Term Medicare Obligations DRUDGE REPORT NEWS FLASH - March 1, 2007 That Could Already Bankrupt the U.S. The U.S. government's top accountant says the law that added a prescription drug benefit to Medicare may be the most financially irresponsible legislation passed since the 1960s. U.S. Comptroller General David Walker says Medicare -- barring vast reform to the program and the nation's healthcare system -- is already on course to possibly bankrupt the treasury and adding the prescription bill just makes the situation worse. Walker appears in a Steve Kroft report to be broadcast on 60 MINUTES Sunday, March 4 (7:00-8:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network. "The prescription drug bill is probably the most fiscally irresponsible piece of legislation since the 1960s," says Walker, "because we promise way more than we can afford to keep." He argues that the federal government would need to have $8 trillion today, invested at treasury rates, to cover the gap between what the program is expected to take in and what it is expected to cost over the next 75 years Ð and that is in addition to more than $20 trillion that will be needed to pay for other parts of Medicare. "We can't afford to keep the promises we've already made, much less to be piling on top of them," he tells Kroft. The problem is the baby boomers. The 78 million people born between 1946 and 1964 start becoming eligible for Social Security benefits next year. "They'll be eligible for Medicare just three years later and when those boomers start retiring en masse, then that will be a tsunami of spending that could swamp our ship of state if we don't get serious," says Walker. - - - - http://www.drudgereport.com/flash3.htm FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of religious, environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. 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