Month: June 2013

17 posts
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Debt crunch intensifies China’s crisis

World financial markets have been rocked again in recent days. First came the US Fed’s announcement last Wednesday (19 June) that it could start to unwind its cheap credit policy of ‘quantitative easing’ by year-end. The following day financial markets were stunned as a liquidity crisis gripped China’s state-owned banking system, with major banks all but refusing to lend to each other. This ‘credit crunch’ reflects growing fears over the unsustainable surge in debt levels across the Chinese economy, and its growing reliance on the opaque and unregulated shadow banking sector.

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LGBTQ liberation in the US – more than putting a ring on it

Forty-four years ago at a gay bar in New York City’s Greenwich Village, a group of transsexuals, cross-dressers, drag queens, lesbians, and gay men fought back against their constant persecution by the New York Police Department and inadvertently started the modern fight for gay liberation. They would not believe the progress that queer people have made in the last 44 years!

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Bag men for the banks

The one section of the the establishment which has so far escaped scot-free are the auditing firms, in particular the “Big 4”, KPMG, PWC, Ernst & Young and Deloitte. These firms gave a clean bill of health to the banks as late as 2008.