This final report presents the assessment by the Group of Thirty’s Global Monitoring Committee of developments in the clearing and settlement arena since the publication of the G30 report, Global Clearing and Settlement: A Plan of Action, in January 2003. The report identifies places where progress is being made as well as areas where little or no progress is apparent. The G30 concludes that a great deal has already been achieved, but many recommendations require further work. The report notes that the clearing and settlement objectives and goals set out only three years ago remain achievable and, in many cases, are already being progressively implemented. It underscores that the improved infrastructure that would result from full implementation of the G30 recommendations would help enhance confidence in the markets themselves and ensure that the vision of a safer, more efficient global clearing and settlement system can be brought to fruition.

MAAA wrote:Innerflame - Happy Valentines to you as well AND Happy Chinese New Year to all my non gregorian friends! That is a very real and deep issue you bring up with the "majority of one" (im PM about this right now, in the next 15min, to not interrupt the flow of this thread and because its personal after all), something with which I am grappling, quite strongly in fact. The majority-of-one proposition must necessarily end in the deduction that there is no objective reality, hence I, and only I have dreamt everything into existence. Crazy? Maybe, but I am not a philosopher, just a MonkeySlave grown existentially tired of trying to make sense of it all and believing one day "things will fix themselves". They wont. I must fix them, we must fix them (those of you REAL people reading this forum).

In, I try to strictly adhere to finance and economics lest someone call me, or my ideas crazy. Therefore, I stick to NUMBERS and FACTS, as much as I can, so what I say can be taken seriously and to serve others as these two things have served in my own quest. When unravelling the mysteries of the financial and economic universe, we can probe and probe and probe level after level and we eventually encounter the basic definitions employed to build the discipline. Many of them are circuituous, unfounded, illusory or downright self-contradicting. What is missing is the HUMAN element (some of us call it "spiritual"). As a case in point:

Economic proposition (Rational ROBOT reaction):

Today's debt can ALWAYS be paid off with income from tomorrow, or money printed. "Technically correct", as long as today's status quo remains in place ad infinitum.

Equivalent proposition (My real HUMAN reaction)

To pay for today's spending, it is ok to enslave our children and their children I have CRIED deeply for days (cumulative) over this. And NOTHING makes me cry.


I say all this because the "right questions" dont have to be advanced financials in order to arrive at a financial truth.


@Delaine - I have not looked in depth at the Clearing and Settlement report, so cannot opine at the moment. Will take a look at it and get back to you.

The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right. It is truly enough said that a corporation has no conscience; but a corporation on conscientious men is a corporation with a conscience. Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents on injustice. A common and natural result of an undue respect for the law is, that you may see a file of soldiers, colonel, captain, corporal, privates, powder-monkeys, and all, marching in admirable order over hill and dale to the wars, against their wills, ay, against their common sense and consciences, which makes it very steep marching indeed, and produces a palpitation of the heart. They have no doubt that it is a damnable business in which they are concerned; they are all peaceably inclined. Now, what are they? Men at all? or small movable forts and magazines, at the service of some unscrupulous man in power? Visit the Navy Yard, and behold a marine, such a man as an American government can make, or such as it can make a man with its black arts — a mere shadow and reminiscence of humanity, a man laid out alive and standing, and already, as one may say, buried under arms with funeral accompaniment, though it may be,"Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note,
As his corse to the rampart we hurried;

Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot
O'er the grave where out hero was buried."