I wanted to add an additional article that I found to the discussion of free-market capitalism and its role in the current economic crisis. This comes from Yaron Brook and Don Watkins via the a href="http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=index"Ayn Rand Institue/a. Ayn Rand is the author of classic novels such as Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead, and Anthem. br /br /br /strongStop Blaming Capitalism for Government Failuresbr /By /stronga href="http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=media_YaronBrook"strongYaron Brook/strong/astrong and /stronga href="http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=media_DonWatkins"strongDon Watkins/strong/abr /br /br /Speaking of the financial crisis, French president Nicolas Sarkozy recently said, “Laissez-faire is finished. The all-powerful market that always knows best is finished.”br /br /Sarkozy was echoing the views of many, including president-elect Obama, who assume that the financial crisis was caused by free markets--by “unbridled greed” unleashed by decades of deregulation and a “hands off” approach to the economy. And given this premise, the solution, they say, is obvious. To solve this crisis and ...

The G20 Summit was first proposed by the UK and France during the first waves of the global economic meltdown. It was long anticipated as a coming together of the major nations in the world to discuss necessary changes to help better regulate international finance, attempt to help stabilize the current turbulent markets, and discuss ways to have additional oversight on the international playing field.

After unprecedented global cooperation of bank bailouts and stimulus packages during the crisis, there was much debate about the outcome of the summit this past weekend. Unfortunately, world markets reflect a relatively negative viewpoint of the outcome– falling multiple percentage points in Europe (-2.4% UK, -3.35% Germany, -3.3% France), the Middle East (approx. -1.0% in Israel, Kenya, and Egypt, and 6% in Saudi Arabia), and mixed returns in Asia (+3/4% in Japan,

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Gold’s peak price came at 3:00 a.m. Thursday morning New York time…while the thinly traded Hong Kong market was open…and less than half an hour before the London open.

This time gold got sold off on the London a.m. fix. There was a spike bottom a few dollars below the $700 mark at 9:00 a.m. in New York. From there, gold rose quickly to about $726 right through the London p.m. fix…before running into the ‘usual suspects’ at the London close. There was huge price volatility yesterday, with inter-day price swings of $20 or $30…unheard of only months ago.

Then there’s silver. The silver low came at precisely the same time as gold’s…no surprise there. Silver really took off at the London p.m. gold fix. Its high for the day occurred at the London close. Then either JPMorgan (NYSE:JPM) or HSBC, USA hammered the price. Thursday was a hugely

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Will November’s emergency global financial summit result in a “new global financial order”? European leaders are pressing for a fundamental change in the US-centric monetary system. Jason Simpkins says a similar crisis meeting in 1944 gave birth to the Bretton Woods gold standard. But there are reasons to doubt such a major reform this time around.

This from Money Morning:

The leaders of 20 of the world’s most developed nations, the G20, will convene in Washington D.C. on Nov. 15 for an emergency financial summit considered by many to be the 21st century version of the Bretton Woods initiative of 1944. This will be the first chance for European leaders – many of whom blame the current financial contagion on U.S. free market capitalism run – to press for an overhaul of a global financial system the United States has dominated for more than 60 years.

The summit will

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Concerned about the recent decline in stock prices, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, yesterday (Tuesday) called for the creation of European sovereign wealth funds. The funds would be virtual carbon copies of the state-owned investment vehicles that have sprung up from Beijing to Abu Dhabi to disperse their respective nations’ cash reserves in foreign assets.

Addressing the European Parliament, President Sarkozy implored his European contemporaries to embrace the current period of economic upheaval as an opportunity to restructure the global financial system. According to the Daily Telegraph, he also articulated the concern of many Western authorities that sovereign wealth funds, located primarily in Asia and the Middle East, could use their massive cash reserves to scoop up key foreign assets at extraordinarily low valuations.

“Stock markets are at historic lows. I do not want European citizens to wake up a few months from now and discover that European companies belong to

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Governments across Europe yesterday (Monday) took the first step in a new, coordinated effort to subvert the widening credit crisis and restore functionality to the markets by guaranteeing new debt and using taxpayer money to bail out troubled lenders all over the continent. The sweeping actions followed a pact reached Sunday by members of the European Union, most notably the United Kingdom, Germany, and France. “The steps taken in Europe are very positive,” billionaire investor George Soros told Bloomberg News. “The European governments have got religion and realized this is a serious problem they have to address.” The British government, which last week unveiled its own $87 billion bailout plan, spent $64 billion (37 billion pounds) for controlling stakes in three U.K. banks: The Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC (RBS), HBOS PLC (OTC: HBOOY), and Lloyds TSB Group ...

French Hedge Fund Guide1 Page Guide to Hedge Funds in FranceHere is a short collection of articles on the hedge fund industry in France. I am always looking for more valuable online tools and resources to add to these geographical hedge fund guides to the hedge fund industry. If you have a white paper or PowerPoint that I can include here please send me an email and I will post it for everyone's benefit.Great in depth, thorough overview of hedge funds by the Bank of FranceFrance's alternative investment industry has taken a major step forward with the approval by the Autorité des Marchés Financiers, of the first funds under a regime known as ARIA EL. The French acronym stands for Agréé à Règles d'Investissement Allégées, à ...

Major indices around the world plunged yesterday (Monday), as the credit crisis picked up momentum in Europe and markets in Asia began bracing for a deep recessionary environment in the West.

Well, according to the latest estimate from France's national statistics office INSEE, the French economy contracted in Q3 2008, if that is the case I am left asking myself which of the big four eurozone economies could possibly be expected to have expanded in the July to September period. Certainly not the Spanish one, which while not technically in recession yet (you need to consecutive quarters of negative growth to classify as being in recession) can hardly have expanded. The German economy almost certainly contracted, and while the Italian one could sneak a surprise "horses-nose" expansion (given the low level it had reached in the 2nd quarter) I think it is unlikely. So here we go - recession in the eurozone.France's gross domestic product probably shrank by 0.1 percent in the third quarter after a contraction of 0.3 percent in the three months through June, according to the ...

by Edward Hugh: BarcelonaWell, it's official, or at least its as near official as it's going to get at this point: the Eurozone is in its first recession. And how do I know this? Well Frankfurt-based Financial Times European economy correspondent Ralph Atkins told me it was, in this article last Tuesday. Joking aside, this line-judge ruling (we will remember the eurozone doesn't have an official referee with the authority to call recessions like the US NBER) from Ralph is significant, both due to the fact that he is about as plugged-in as it is possible to get - without, that is, electrocuting yourself on all that high voltage cable knocking about over there - to mainsteam ECB thinking over on Kaiserstrasse, and also because he has been one of the most stalwart journalistic defenders of the idea that the German economy was finally - after many ...