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The only investor which seems to gain anything from this is Goldman Sachs, who will keep open its $2.3 billion loan in spite of the bankruptcy filing. CIT received a $4.5 billion dollar loan which will keep the company going during the bankruptcy proceedings and will not put the retailers at risk during the holiday season. CIT expects to emerge from this filing in a stronger position.

Many retailers have either gone out of business or cut back on their current operations as a result of the problems which CIT has had during the economic crisis. Retailers have depended on their support for factoring loans to purchase inventory. Many retailers, as a result are relying on their own money to keep their businesses open.

Once again this debate has surfaced, but now the President and a new Merchants Payment Coalition are taking this issue very seriously. The retailers and business owners want the priviledge of negotiating interchange fees with the banks.

In view of the recent new credit card Legislation, this issue will probably not go away. The Merchants Payment Coalition was formed to represent 2.7 million businesses and over 50 million employees in having a voice in the assesment of interchange rates. They claim to be helping to protect the interest of the consumer. The interchange rates are the rates that retailers and other business owners pay to accept credit cards at their establishment.

In addition to the Merchants Payment Coalition, President Obama and Representative Peter Welch of Vermont are conducting studies into the rates. This issue has been a long standing one with the retailers, who believe their rates are too high. The current economic crisis has hurt many businesses and the retailers feel lowering or at least being able to negotiate rates with the banks could help their sales.

Ananlysts have argued that if the banks are ordered to lower thir fees, the consumers could face rate higher rates and fees on their credit cards. Australia has gone through this process and consumers did not save any money as a result.

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Many more banks are slated to fail in the coming months because of defaults on real estate loans. It will not be easy to find private equity buyers as many are reluctant to take on the losses of these failed banks.

Out of the seventy-seven banks that have been closed, sixty-nine buyers have been found. The danger of exhausting the FDIC’s fund has caused Walter Buffet to comment on the need for the U.S. to cut back on the amounts of money it has been pumping into the economy to rescue it from economic disaster.

The U.S. spent $180.7 billion in July 2009, the most it has ever spent in one month in U.S. history. If the FDIC’s funding is exhausted, the U.S. will go to taxpayers to finance the FDIC’s loan sales and short-term obligations.

In view of France’s experience in establishing a bank and making John Law the owner, the U.S. must be mindful of not repeating France’s history and putting unscrupulous individuals in charge of these banks.

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Economic bubbles are not a new phenomenon. They have been occurring throughout history aand mankind never seems to learn the lesson associated with them. It seems people are prone to looking for a “pot of gold” at the end of the rainbow only to find out it was not what they thought. This was the case in the economic collapse of France caused by John Law in the eighteenth century.

The ten problem areas are: the Chinese economy, the “Green” bubble, the Gold bubble, the Federal Reserve bubble, the Trash (junk) bond bubble, the Education bubble, the Subprime bubble, the Life Insurance Securititation bubble, the Commercial Real Estate bubble and the Emerging Markets bubble.

It is interesting that the issue of increased gold prices is now an issue with the Chinese and Russian governments. The price of gold often increases when paper money is devalued by printing paper money.

It will be interesting to see how the Obama administration handles this challenge. We are fortunate that we have acces to research and technology which could help us out of this problem before it gets out of control.

I thought you might find this video interesting. I invite your comments.

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Since private investors tend to cut costs by eliminating jobs, unions are against private investors getting involved with acquiring distressed banks.

The involement of private investors would relieve the U.S. of their intervention in some of the failed banks earlier in this economic crisis. Warren Buffet recently made a statement that the U.S. “must address the massive amounts of monetary medicine that have been pumped into the financial system and now pose threats to the world’s largest economy and its currency.”

The federal deficit reached an all-time monthly high of $180.7 billion for the month of July 2009.

Nervous shoppers send July Sales South
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Restaurants often fail to update their computer viruses and other security systems. If you are an owner of a restaurant, it would be wise to investigate your system to make sure it is updated. Since identity theft continues to be a problem in the U.S., you as a buisness owner cannot afford to be negligent in this area.

These hackers used a device to tap into wireless processing and read the customer accounts as customers entered the stores.

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Germany and France are also showing growth, but not to the degree of the Asian countries. The U. S. on the other hand suffered a decline in growth for the second quarter as the Federal Reserve will pull back its intervention in the economic recovery soon.