MacroScope

Attention Wall Street whistleblowers: your banking job might be at risk, but here's your shot at Hollywood stardom.

The Academy Award-winning filmmaker is looking for “brave” financial industry insiders to help him make his next film which will focus on the financial crisis – or what Moore calls “the biggest swindle in American history.”

“Based on those who have already contacted me, I believe there are a number of you who know "the real deal" about the abuses that have been happening. You have information that the American people need to hear, “ Moore said on his website.

He called on those working for banks, brokerage firms or insurance companies to “participate in the telling the greatest crime story ever told” by contacting him.

The director, who took on the gun lobby in Bowling for Columbine in 2002, the Bush administration in his controversial 2004 documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 and the U.S. healthcare system in his 2007 polemic Sicko, pledged to protect the identities of those who step forward.

It's the poorest country in Europe and its main export is alcohol but it can still beat the world's largest economy when it comes to financial muscle. Yes you've guessed it, Moldova trumps the United States in the Banker magazine's 2009 World Financial Health Index.

Caution is the watchword of the magazine's latest index, which is careful not to reward financial risk-taking. According to the Banker's new model, Moldova, Chile, Bolivia and Peru are less likely to be affected by the global financial storm than the U.S., UK or Japan.

Small is beautiful when it comes to debts and that's where Moldova wins. Its debt is $763 per capita, compared with the UK's $171,000. Its banks have only extended loans worth 35 percent of GDP, while in the mighty U.S., the figure's 230 percent.

If there's one thing you don't want to be, it's the next Iceland.

Since its currency, colossally indebted banking sector and economy collapsed in spectacular fashion in October, the country has become a byword for an economy that has truly hit the rocks.

Within weeks, banking problems and currency falls meant Hungary was being hyped as a "second Iceland", at least until a joint International Monetary Fund and European Union rescue package restored some stability.

Next to win the unwanted comparison was Ukraine.  Having lost at one stage half its value, the currency has somewhat stabilised -- although most foreign investors are very hesitant to hold Ukrainian assets again.  And like Iceland itself, Ukraine is now dependent on an IMF lifeline.

An old Chinese proverb states that it is better to take many small steps in the right direction than make a giant leap and fall back. Judging by the number of bank lending initiatives announced over the past three months, British policymakers are taking this to heart.

On Monday, Britain announced no fewer than eight measures to kickstart lending in its credit-starved economy. Despite pouring 37 billion pounds of public money into major banks last October and pledging hundreds of billions more in guarantees, the government had to admit it needed to take more credit risk off banks’ books.

Monday’s package is designed to be comprehensive.  It includes — amongst other things — a fund to allow the Bank of England to lend directly to businesses, a framework for boosting the money supply if needed, a guarantee scheme for asset-backed securities and the offer of insurance against potentially explosive losses.

    Are you an out-of-work banker looking for a new job with
some stability? Considered the drugs industry?

    Daniel Vasella, chief executive of Swiss pharmaceuticals
company Novartis, reckons his sector is a pretty good place
to work when compared to "mercenary" banking.

    "We are not in a banking industry, where they fire a
thousand investment bankers and then a year after they hire
a thousand investment bankers," Vasella told Reuters.

Charles Dallara knows he is not very popular these days. The head of the Institute of International Finance, a lobby group representing many of the world’s biggest banks, offered up some advice for Group of 20 heads of states gathering in Washington this weekend — along with a measure of humility.

“I’m not sure that a message from the global bankers is exactly what is on the top of their wish list to receive before the meeting, given the role that financial institutions have played in this crisis,” he said at a press conference.

Dallara’s group wants government to back off from the private sector as soon as the financial crisis permits, but bristled at suggestions that banks have not done enough to acknowledge their part in the crisis or accept the need for tighter regulation.

It probably isn’t a big surprise that banks are cracking down on consumer loans, but the Federal Reserve’s latest survey of senior loan officers turns up an interesting twist: consumer demand for loans is also falling dramatically.

The headline-grabbing figures read like a classic credit contraction. Nearly 60 percent of banks said they had tightened lending standards on credit card loans in the past three months, and 70 percent had done so on mortgages to “prime” borrowers with good credit histories.

Half of domestic banks said they had become either somewhat or much less willing to make consumer installment loans, up from 35 percent in the previous survey, for the largest percentage in more than two decades.

Anyone up for a $395 million Rodeo Drive shopping spree? 

Apparently the latest recipient of U.S. Treasury cash is the City National Bank in posh Beverly Hills.  According to the Los Angeles Times, the bank is taking part in the government’s $250 billion cash infusion and made no promises about how it would use the $395 million it’s getting.

The government funding “clearly enhances our financial capacity to make acquisitions and … to lend to a larger degree,” Russell Goldsmith, chief executive of City National Corp, told the newspaper.

About 20 banks are expected to announce soon that they’re getting government cash in exchange for preferred shares. Some members of Congress have complained that Treasury is handing over the money with too few strings attached, and they want stricter rules on how the banks must use the money.

U.S. senators want bankers to eat their broccoli before gorging on taxpayer bread.

The Senate Banking Committee took a Treasury Department official to task for committing $250 billion of the $700 bailout money to buy stakes in banks without getting any guarantees that those firms wouldn’t pocket the cash or use it for acquisitions.

“I remain especially concerned that, in the Treasury’s zeal to make the capital injection program easily digestible for the banks, we’re feeding them a little too much dessert and not making them eat enough of their vegetables,” says New York Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer.

With the U.S. approving a $700 billion Wall Street bailout and the UK offering up £88 billion to bolster its banks, you can be forgiven for forgetting about that pesky food crisis in the developing world that dominated the news a few months back.

But the issue is still very much alive in the corridors of the World Bank, which released on Saturday a report entitled Rising Food and Fuel Prices: addressing the risks to future generations .

While the report is quick to point out that people around the world are starving, there is also a sentiment that as rich countries scramble to fund their own bailouts, there will be cutbacks in humanitarian aid funding.