Monthly Archives: November 2011

Commentary

Bank run in socialist Europe begins

5 Comments
Europe: Annual Budget Deficit as % of GDP
Europe: Annual Budget Deficit as % of GDP

From CNBC.

Excerpt:

Money-market funds in the United States have quite dramatically slammed shut their lending windows to European banks. According to the Economist, Fitch estimates U.S. money market funds have withdrawn 42 percent of their money from European banks in general.

And for France that number is even higher — 69 percent. European money-market funds are also getting in on the act.

Bond issuance by banks has seized up because buyers have gone on strike.

From the Economist’s Free Exchange Blog:

In the third quarter bonds issues by European banks only reached 15 percent of the amount they raised over the same period in the past two years, reckon analysts at Citi Group. It is unlikely that European banks have sold many more bonds since.

Corporate depositors are also pulling their cash.

Free Exchange:

“We are starting to witness signs that corporates are withdrawing deposits from banks in Spain, Italy, France and Belgium,” an analyst at Citi Group wrote in a recent report. “This is a worrying development.”

And there are troubling signs that banks are even running out of collateral to back their borrowings from the European Central Bank .

So far the liquidity of the European Central Bank (ECB) has kept the system alive. Only one large European bank, Dexia, has collapsed because of a funding shortage. Yet what happens if banks run out of collateral to borrow against?

And from the leftist New York Times.

Excerpt:

The flight from European sovereign debt and banks has spanned the globe. European institutions like the Royal Bank of Scotland and pension funds in the Netherlands have been heavy sellers in recent days. And earlier this month, Kokusai Asset Management in Japan unloaded nearly $1 billion in Italian debt.

At the same time, American institutions are pulling back on loans to even the sturdiest banks in Europe. When a $300 million certificate of deposit held by Vanguard’s $114 billion Prime Money Market Fund from Rabobank in the Netherlands came due on Nov. 9, Vanguard decided to let the loan expire and move the money out of Europe. Rabobank enjoys a AAA-credit rating and is considered one of the strongest banks in the world.

American money market funds, long a key supplier of dollars to European banks through short-term loans, have also become nervous. Fund managers have cut their holdings of notes issued by euro zone banks by $261 billion from around its peak in May, a 54 percent drop, according to JPMorgan Chase research.

This is really disturbing. I wonder if any of my economics-minded commenters can explain to me what happens when there is a run on banks. I am guessing that there will be some rioting over benefits as austerity measures are imposed, and interest rates will go up.

News

Liberal media silent as ESCR pioneer Geron halts ESCR research

5 Comments

Here’s the story from CBS News.

Excerpt:

The company doing the first government-approved test of embryonic stem cell therapy is discontinuing further stem cell work, a move with stark implications for a field offering hope of future medicines for conditions with inadequate or no current treatments.

Geron Corp., a pioneer in stem cell research that has been testing a spinal cord injury treatment, said late Monday that it’s halting development of its stem cell programs to conserve funds. It is seeking partners to take on the programs’ assets and is laying off much of its staff.

[…]The company is eliminating 66 full-time jobs, or 38 percent of its staff, a process that will bring about $8 million in costs— about $5 million in the current quarter and about $3 million in the first half of 2012.

Now consider this article in the Weekly Standard by Wesley J. Smith. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

For years, the media touted the promise of embryonic stem cells. Year after year, Geron Corporation announced that its embryonic stem cell treatment for acute spinal cord injury would receive FDA approval “next year” for human testing. And year after year, the media dutifully informed readers and viewers that cures were imminent. When the FDA finally did approve a tiny human trial for 10 patients in January 2009, the news exploded around the world. This was it: The era of embryonic stem cell therapy had arrived!

Not exactly. Last week, Geron issued a terse statement announcing it was not only canceling the study, but abandoning the embryonic stem cell field altogether for financial reasons.

You would think Geron’s failure would be very big news. Instead, it turns out that the mainstream media pay attention only when embryonic stem cell research seems to be succeeding—so far, almost exclusively in animal studies. When, as here, it crashes and burns, it is scarcely news at all.

[M]ost of the same news outlets that gave Geron star treatment when it was heralding supposed breakthroughs provided only muted coverage of the company’s retreat into producing anti-cancer drugs.

The Los Angeles Times may be the most egregious offender. A chronic booster of Geron’s embryonic stem cell research, it reported the FDA’s approval of a human trial on January 24, 2009, in a story that began, “Ushering in a new era in medicine .  .  . ” The paper stayed on the story. In October 2010, it reported that the first patient had received an injection, then a few days later it ran a feature about the study under the headline “Hope for Spinal Cord Patients.” During the same period, however, the paper did not report the encouraging results of early human trials of treatments for spinal cord injury developed using adult stem cells.

Then last May, the Times celebrated the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine’s $25 million loan to support Geron’s study, noting that the company’s stem cell product had performed as hoped in rat -studies. Yet the day after Geron’s embryonic stem cell research unit was laid off, the Times couldn’t find the space to print the story, though the following day a blog entry ran on the Times website.

The vast majority (all?) of medical successes with stem cell research have come from ethical adult stem-cell research. Adult stem cell research does not kill unborn children. And that’s why it doesn’t draw funding from pro-abortion politicians or get positive coverage by pro-abortion media outlets. The politics is driving the science – just like with global warming research and alternative energy funding.

Related posts

Videos

Which companies discriminate against supporters of traditional marriage?

6 Comments

Here’s a video in which Frank Turek explains how he was firfed by Cisco and Bank of America for supporting traditional marriage.

This video got me thinking – which companies would support firing people who support traditional marriage?

The Human Rights Campaign

You may have seen a logo on car bumpers that feature a yellow equal sign on a purple background. That logo is the logo of the Human Rights Campaign, which opposes traditional marriage and believes that children do not deserve to grow up with their biological mother or biological father. They also believe in firing people who support traditional marriage, as we shall see below.

Here is an example of what the Human Rights Campaign does to people who support traditional marriage.

Story from the magazine Down East.

Excerpt:

Larry Grard admits he had “a lapse in judgment.” But Grard – who’s been a reporter for thirty-five years, the last eighteen of them at the Morning Sentinel in Waterville – says the e-mail he sent from his personal account to a national gay rights group shouldn’t have been grounds for his dismissal.

Grard was fired by Bill Thompson, editor of the Sentinel and its sister paper the Kennebec Journal in Augusta, shortly after the Nov. 3 election in which Maine voters repealed a same-sex marriage law approved by the Legislature. Grard said he arrived at work the morning after the vote to find an e-mailed press release from the Human Rights Campaign in Washington, D.C., that blamed the outcome of the balloting on hatred of gays.

Grard, who said he’d gotten no sleep the night before, used his own e-mail to send a response. “They said the Yes-on-1 people were haters. I’m a Christian. I take offense at that,” he said. “I e-mailed them back and said basically, ‘We’re not the ones doing the hating. You’re the ones doing the hating.’

“I sent the same message in his face he sent in mine.”

Grard thought his response was anonymous, but it turned out to be anything but. One week later, he was summoned to Thompson’s office. He was told that Trevor Thomas, deputy communications director of the Human Rights Campaign, had Googled his name, discovered he was a reporter, and was demanding Grard be fired. According to Grard, Thompson said, “There’s no wiggle room.”

He was immediately dismissed.

[…]The week after Grard was fired, he said, his wife, Lisa, who wrote a biweekly food column for the Sentinel as a freelancer, received an e-mail informing her that her work would no longer be needed.

That’s what the Human Rights Campaign does.

Companies that support the Human Rights Campaign

I found a list of companies on the Human Rights Campaign web site that are also strongly oppose traditional marriage. Presumably, these are the companies that would fire people who support a child’s right to grow up with a mother and a father.

Platinum Partners:

  • American Airlines
  • Citi
  • Microsoft
  • Nationwide Insurance
  • VPI Pet Insurance

Gold Partners:

  • Bank of America
  • Deloitte
  • Ernst & Young LLP
  • Lexus
  • Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams
  • Prudential

Silver Partners:

  • Beaulieu Vineyard
  • BP
  • Caesars Entertainment
  • Chevron
  • Google
  • MGM Mirage
  • Nike
Bronze Partners:
  • Chase
  • Cox Enterprises
  • Cunard
  • Dell
  • Goldman Sachs
  • IBM
  • Macy’s Inc.
  • MetLife
  • Morgan Stanley
  • Orbitz
  • Paul Hastings
  • PwC
  • Replacements, Ltd.
  • Shell
  • Starbucks
  • TD Bank
  • Tylenol PM
And you can find the full listing of companies that promote discrimination against traditional marriage on the Human Rights Campaign web site. I notice that they have about 1 million people who like them on Facebook and 85 thousand Twitter followers.
Comments to this post will be strictly moderated in light of Obama’s signing of the hate crimes bill which prohibits free speech on controversial issues.