financial crisis

Jim Rogers, chief executive of Rogers Holdings, warned this week that the United States is approaching another ruinous crisis worse than that of 2008.

"The debts that are in this country are skyrocketing," he said. "In the last three years the government has spent staggering amounts of money and the Federal Reserve is taking on staggering amounts of debt.

The US Congress and Obama administration are under pressure of the largest US banks who call for a deal to increase the country’s debt limit, saying that even a short default could be devastating for the financial markets and economy. Congress and the White House face the need to raise the US debt ceiling, which stands at $14,300 billion.

The deadline for America comes on May 16 and the Treasury department has said that in the absence of congressional action, the world’s largest economy could default by early July.

As US and UK prepare to release first quarter data next week many experts believe the reports will show very slack recovery of the two countries. The preliminary data on the US GDP will be reported on April 28, while Reuters believe it will be 2.0%.

Meantime, the UK will report its economic data on Wednesday. Economists believe that weak consumer demand will significantly impact the first-quarter report.

First quarter profit of Citigroup Inc dropped by 32% under pressure of decreasing loans and poor trading results.

While the third largest US bank has managed to avoid collapse in the financial crisis and stabilized it is still struggling to stay afloat.

The results were better than expected, which supported Citigroup's stock on a day when the U.S. equity market was falling. But like other big banks, the company's profit came mainly from dipping into money previously set aside to cover bad loans.

Wall Street was struck with another blow as last week Nasdaq OMX Group reported that it had found "suspicious files" on its U.S. computer servers which may mean they had been hacked. That was the latest damaging factor that even more deteriorated investors’ confidence that has been on a low level since last year’s “flash crash”.

The group said that there was no evidence hackers had accessed or acquired customer information or that its trading platforms were compromised.

The United States faces another financial crisis, says a governmental official. Phil Angelides, chairman of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC), said that the financial crisis that crippled the economy could happen again.

He blamed regulators for lacking backbone and corporate management for being imprudent. Angelides said it was "striking how little has changed" since the crisis came to a close.

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge James Peck brought a ruling that Bank of America Corp should return $500 million of deposits it seized from Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc shortly after Lehman's bankruptcy. The judge said that Bank of America violated federal law when it "brazenly" seized the deposits after having taken advantage of Lehman's weakened condition in the summer of 2008 in obtaining the money.

Nearly 50 investigations were launched by the Federal Insurance Corporation (FDIC) into the US banks that have failed since the start of the financial crisis, reports the Wall Street Journal.

The regulator is probing former executives, directors and employees at failed U.S. banks and is taking efforts to punish alleged recklessness, fraud and other criminal behavior, the Journal said.

According to the data provided in the research from the Equality and Human Rights Commission men are suffering heavier from the recession than women and young people are taking it worse than other people. The survey shows that the over-50s seem to dealing with the downturn better, maybe because they're prepared to be more flexible.

Besides, the survey found that disabled people with few qualifications are less likely to find the job now than in 1970s. Nearly 38% of low-qualified disabled men are working now, compared to 77 per cent in the '70s.

According to a forecast made by Nouriel Roubini, chairman at Roubini Global Economics, the world economy will suffer a "couple of financial crises over the next 10 years" as financial reforms are not going in the right direction and not enough is being done.

"Nothing has changed fundamentally. When the regulatory reform was passed by the U.S. Congress, my view is too little, too late," Roubini told CNBC Monday on the sidelines of the World Capital Markets Symposium in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Reports about positive gross domestic product readings and other relatively good readings of the economy condition are just disguising the true state of affairs which is Depression of the US economy, believes Gluskin Sheff economist David Rosenberg said Tuesday.

In his daily briefing to investors, Rosenberg said the Great Depression also had its high points, with a series of positive GDP reports and sharp stock market gains. But then as now, those signs of recovery were unsustainable and only provided a false sense of stability, said Rosenberg.

Charles Nenner, founder and president of Charles Nenner research, forecasts that the Dow Jones Industrial Average will lose about half of its value over the next couple of years as it follows a Nikkei-like pattern of several sharp rallies in an overall decline.

Marc Faber, the author of "The Gloom, Boom and Doom Report," told that with its continued printing of money the US Federal Reserve will create a “final crisis” that will annihilate the US economy once for all. And thus he urges the investors who keep to the same view to hold stocks instead of bonds in their portfolios. Meantime, analysts expect that the Fed will decide to re-start easing monetary policy, possibly by buying assets, as early as Aug. 10 when the next meeting over policy is scheduled.

Citi achieved the settlement with the US Securities and Exchange Commission under which Citigroup Inc will pay $75 million. The settlement comes after the SEC’s probe into the Citi’s failure to disclose subprime exposure to investors in 2007.

Apart from this SEC also charged Citi executive and a former chief financial officer of misrepresenting the bank's exposure, although not with intentional misconduct.

According to the reports by the German newspaper Welt am Sonntag the chief executive of Royal Bank of Scotland said that the ban aims to put the conditions in place for the British government to start selling its 83 percent stake in the bank next year. While the sale "won't be conducted in one go," it still should be started, believes Chief Executive Stephen Hester.

"But I would be disappointed if there would not be the first steps toward privatization next year," he added.