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Posts Tagged ‘Ben Bernanke’

Jim Kunstler: Legitimacy Dwindles

Posted by kandylini on December 23, 2008

From his blog, Clusterfuck Nation. Pretty humorous, although I disagree that any kind of revolution is on the horizon.

Zounds! Public sentiment toward the accelerating economic fiasco has shifted, seemingly overnight, from a mood of nauseated amazement to one of panicked grievance as the United States moves closer to an apparent comprehensive collapse — and so ill-timed, wouldn’t you know it, to coincide with the annual rigors of Santa Claus. The tipping point seems to be the Bernie Madoff $50 billion Ponzi scandal, which represents the grossest failure of authority and hence legitimacy in finance to date in as much as Mr. Madoff was a former chairman of the NASDAQ, for godsake. It’s like discovering that Ben Bernanke is running a meth lab inside the Federal Reserve. And out in the heartland, of course, there is the spectacle of Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich trying to desperately dodge a racketeering rap behind an implausible hairdo.

What seems to spook people now is the possibility that everybody in charge of everything is a fraud or a crook. Legitimacy has left the system. Not even the the legions of Obama are immune as his reliance on Wall Street capos Robert Rubin, Tim Geithner, and Larry Summers seem tainted by the same reckless thinking that brought on the fiasco. His pick last week for chief of the SEC, Mary Shapiro, is already being dissed as a shill for the Big Bank status quo. In a few days we’ll discover what kind of bonuses are being ladled out by the remaining Wall Street banks with TARP money and a new chorus of howls will ring out.

This is very dangerous territory. In dollar terms, the numbers being applied to the various problems are so colossal — trillions! — that the death of our currency seems assured. And in defiance of congress’s express intentions, none of the TARP “money” has been applied to its targeted purpose of buying up “toxic” (i.e. fraudulent) securities hidden in the vaults of banks, pension funds, and municipal portfolios.

George W, Bush’s personal bailout of General Motors and Chrysler is designed solely to postpone their bankruptcy and mass job layoffs until after the holidays. Otherwise, the $17.4 billion will probably be used by the companies to underwrite the extensive legal work required for the moment they must declare bankruptcy — when Mr. Obama is in the White House. Meanwhile, the President-elect has ramped up his job-creation target overnight from two to three million, and some observers are catching a whiff of Soviet-style economic engineering (“…we pretend to work and they pretend to pay us….”).

The years since Jimmy Carter have produced an astoundingly flaccid public, sunk in various addictions and distractions, but this is about to change. The darkling mood of political protest and violent activism that saturated my own young adult years is scudding up again on the horizon. Mr. Obama’s pick for attorney general, the mild-looking Eric Holder, may be the key figure in the early months of the new government. If he doesn’t commence some aggressive investigations and prosecutions — beginning with Henry Paulson for insider trading when he was in charge of Goldman Sachs and shorting his own company’s mortgage-backed securities — then the whole Obama enterprise could fall under suspicion of illegitimacy. The bums who ran the US banking sector into a ditch have to account for their turpitudes. They can’t be allowed to hide under a TARP.

Unfortunately, the legal system, and probably the legislative system, will be so buried in procedural bullshit from the unwind of countless enterprises and institutions, and the sorting out of the remnants, that it remains to be seen whether this generation of people-in-charge can even embark on a fresh start of anything connected to real everyday life in America. All this is starting to alarm the tattered residue of the middle classes, and from here it’s a very short path to them being really pissed off.

When legitimacy erodes, anything goes. Nothing is respected including rules and personalities. The center doesn’t hold and the new vacuum there is a tumultuous place. The same crisis of authority and legitimacy is spreading from nation to nation now. Soon, China will contend with a discontented army of the unemployed. Greece has been in an uproar for two weeks. Belgium’s government just collapsed. Trade barriers are going up. Exports are falling away. The world’s energy markets are not immune to these disorders. I would expect problems with the currently seamless supply lines that bring America two-thirds of the oil we use. Even a mild disruption of oil supplies could attach an anvil to the ankle of an economy already falling off a cliff.

Right now, the overwhelming sentiment is to get this country back to where we were, say, ten years ago, when everything was humming nicely: Clinton nostalgia. We’re definitely not gong back there, though. It’s an idle wish. And any set of policies designed to lead in that direction will prove very disappointing. Our destination is a land of much smaller-scaled local economies. We could retain our federal ties if the federal government can scale back appropriately from the bloated, feckless enterprise it has become. Otherwise, it might only get in the way and make matters worse, and the public in one region or another of North America might reach a decision that they are better off without it. That would be what’s called a revolution.

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What MUST Be Done To Avoid Financial Destruction

Posted by kandylini on November 22, 2008

By: Jim Sinclair November 22, 2008

My Dear Extended Family,

Things are now “Out of Control.”

This international financial crisis is now out of control as the world asks if the USA has two presidents, one president or no president at all.

It would appear that Paulson is in financial control with Bernanke as his second.

I warned you by personal email long before the statement was proven totally correct that “This is it.” That was followed by “This is it, and it is now.” Many people laughed it off.

This is it, and it is now.
Now it is out of control.
Now we enter the Collapse of Confidence period.
Then we begin the Weimar Experience.

It has all hit the fan, and still the absolute majority have no clue. The OTC derivative dealers broke the system into millions of pieces of glass. This broken glass cannot be put back together.

It is heart rending to see a picture of GM autoworkers holding a prayer meeting for their retirement funds. The retirement money was never funded. It is a lost hope. This is another responsibility the government has undertaken that is going to go wild.

Those of you still in freeze frame are headed for lines around your bank. Your bank will likely be acquired by another bank that also is in deep trouble.

The US dollar, like a leaderless company, will lose its respect and therefore value.

In order of importance the following MUST be done unless you want to be one of the suffering masses that will be all too visible this winter:

1. You must have your assets held anywhere they are in true custodial-ship accounts. That type of account at a bank or broker states clearly that the assets held there are not on the balance sheet of the host financial entity. Those assets are clearly segregated in your name. This must be reviewed by counsel to be sure you have what you think you have. Don’t cheap out. All you have is depending on the validity of true custodial-ship accounts.

You cannot know all the banks are broke, however I feel ALL banks are broke because finance is an intertwined system that if visible would look like a spider’s web. Problems on the top will materialize all along the web. Therefore the singular most important step you must take is the establishment of a true custodial-ship account.

Do not assume you have this type of account unless a competent attorney reviews the account papers.

2. I am extremely concerned about those of you who persist in holding certificates for gold rather than holding the actual metal either delivered to you or held for you in a true custodial-ship type account. The scams out there in gold are plentiful. The only way to avoid these scams absolutely is to have your gold in your own possession.

Every other means of holding gold is steps away from perfection. Some will be ok, but many will not.

3. Why would anyone fail to either take paper certificates or order their financial agent to make direct registration book entry at the transfer agent? In most cases you only have until year-end to accomplish this strategy.

4. Withdraw from ETFs.

5. If you carelessly keep large assets with your broker you are as mad as a hatter. The FDIC DOES NOT have the money to guarantee all they are undertaking. Withdraw excess money constantly from any net broker. If you are so stubborn that you think you can trade to insure yourself when your funds are not making money while still getting your money that counts you are nuts. Admit to yourself you are nothing more than a gambling addict in a downward spiral.

6. Leave no gold or coins with any coin dealer.

7. If you can withdraw from your corporate retirement plan do it.

8. Withdraw from credit unions.

9. Withdraw from all money market instruments.

10. This is it.

11. It is now.

12. It is out of control NOW.

The next two months are going to be shocking, but nothing compared to what you will have to experience in 2009.

Respectfully yours,
Jim

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Tired of The Crash?

Posted by kandylini on November 20, 2008

Source: Karl Denninger’s The Market Ticker.

The market and economy will not stop falling apart until:

  1. Paulson is fired and his policies cease.
  2. We have transparency in balance sheets – for every firm on the exchange. No exceptions. All Level 3 asset mark models and assets identified – period.
  3. Bernanke withdraws all his alphabet soup programs or is removed from office and his successor does, and the “crowding out” in the credit markets ceases.

Its that simple, and all three must happen before we will see any sort of sustainable bottom put in.

This doesn’t mean we can’t have “rip your face off” rallies – we both can and will.

But the market and economy will not bottom until the three things above are done, and the only way that is going to happen is when you make it happen.

That’s right. Your 401k is a 201k (and will soon be a 41k) because you (collectively) sat on your butts last October when I started running petitions and because we have managed to garner only 50-odd people at protests.

There should be hundreds of thousands.

There should be general strikes – people who simply refuse to go to work, en-masse, across the nation.

There should have not been one Congressman or woman who voted for the bailout returned to office.

Bottom line: You have and are consenting to this economic depression – and make no mistake, that is exactly what the credit markets are saying we are entering right now.

Remember that more than a year ago Subprime Mortgage Bonds forecast a total meltdown in that industry, and that nearly all of the companies in that space would go bankrupt. We were told that this sort of “Armageddon” scenario would not and could not occur, and that the credit market was playing “histrionics”. A number of so-called “smart money” investors (Wilbur Ross anyone?) stepped in and bought these supposedly-undervalued instruments – and promptly got slaughtered when the actual performance was worse than the credit markets were forecasting.

The credit market was right and those who said it couldn’t happen were wrong.

Now the credit market is saying that we are going to have more defaults than happened during The Great Depression. That is, it is forecasting a Greater Depression that worse than the 1930s. The TNX (10 year yield) is threatening to break three percent, down another 6% (!) this morning to 3.16%. The bottom going back as far as my charts extend is 3.07%. Almost there.

The 13 Week T-Bill (IRX) stands at 0.1%, which is for all intents and purposes zero. The Effective Fed Funds trading rate has been between 0.2 and 0.3% since the last putative rate cut to 1% – that is, effectively zero.

Corporate AAA commercial mortgage spreads are at extreme wides, standing at over 700 bips; added to reference this means that super senior AAA commercial mortgages now yield more than 10%. Given the level of credit enhancement in these deals this forecasts default rates of more than thirty percent in this space. Similar extreme spreads are found among both the “high grade” and “high yield” corporate bond markets.

The credit market is telling you that we are headed for an S&P 500 trading at three hundred and a DOW at under three thousand. That we are headed for unemployment north of 20% on the U6 (broad) measure, and GDP contraction of twenty percent cumulatively from top to bottom.

That’s one person in five in the US without a job, deflation of 20% cumulatively or more in prices, over 2 million businesses going bankrupt in the next three years, and literal starvation and privation – all across America. No part of this nation will be spared.

The market callers are all saying all this is impossible.

Even though every thing the credit market has forecast thus far since this problem began has been not only proved correct but conservative; that is, if you bought believing that it would not be as bad as the credit market is forecasting, you have had your head handed to you.

So who are you going to listen to?

Ben Bernanke (“we won’t have a recession”) and Hank Paulson (“the economy is fundamentally strong”), along with all the market “callers” on CNBC, who have been wrong every single time for more than 18 months?

Or the credit market which has been right 100% of the time thus far since this crisis began?

Welcome to The Greater Depression, and make sure you remember that the blame for this event belongs to Congress, Henry Paulson, Ben Bernanke, and of course….. you, since you have failed to insist and force your government (and yes, its your government, just as its my government) to stop these clowns.

We will get out of this when – and only when – you stop believing that you can “have a pony”, “a chicken in every pot”, “economic stimulus”, and “free credit for everyone.”

Only when we the people (collectively) are either all bankrupted or we come to our senses and demand that the fraudsters be locked up and the bad debt purged by default will the system clear and both the economy and market find a sustainable bottom.

Those are the only two choices folks, and right now, you’re choosing bankruptcy and Depression for all.

Posted in Politics, economy | Tagged: , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Debt Rattle, October 25 2008: Ass Clowns

Posted by kandylini on October 25, 2008

Source: The Automatic Earth.

If there’s one reassuring light flickering in this collapsing tunnel, it must be that you have the courage and audacity to leave control of the rescue and repair of our economic systems in the hands of the same ass clowns who confidently led you into that tunnel.

That takes guts. Still, I’m not quite sure what the reasoning behind it is. People like Greenspan, Bernanke, Paulson and Gordon Brown have either consistently missed out on a zillion signs that something was going awfully awry, or they have consistently lied to your face.

What makes you think that they will either start recognizing the $800 trillion gorilla now, or that they will all of a sudden begin to tell the truth? Wouldn’t it make sense to quiz them on what exactly it is they know about the matters at hand, and/or hook them up to a polygraph for a while?

Every single member of the power gang will tell everyone willing to listen that none of what is going wrong at the moment could have been foreseen. That is something we know to be a load of bull; yours truly, and many others, have been warning for years that it would come to this. Still, you leave the steering wheel in the hands of a rag tag bunch of incompetent liars. As I said, it’s brave, but I can’t figure out how it would be smart too.

And it’s of course not just on the level of governments, houses of representatives and central banks that insincere stupidity rules. Every citizen of the western world can be confident to have lost around 30% of their retirement savings at this point at the hand of fund managers. Every town, county and state is losing money fast. Not only through decreasing tax revenues, what’s likely to be an even harder blow are the losses through bad investments by fund managers.

The most ironic thing of all will be that while you lose your jobs and your homes, the ass clown gang will either keep theirs or leave with golden handshakes and huge retirement benefits. You might want to think about that, and you might want to stop taking it all lying down.

A large number of clowns knew very well what was going on, and did indeed foresee much of it. The rest are dumb followers. Letting that very group now handle the issues makes you a dumb follower too.

They are spending trillions of dollars of your money on schemes that are guaranteed to fail and misfire; if they had the capacities needed to solve the problems, then there would be no such problems in the first place. It’s either that, or they have intentionally designed and caused them. That’s the only two options there are.

It’s time to look at all the ass clowns through the prism of our legal systems, to hold them accountable for any and all intentional mismanagement of the public’s interests. If it turns out they are merely stupid and ignorant, you fire them, since you don’t want borderline cuckoos to manage your affairs. If they are not stupid, they’ve been lying, and should go to jail.

Start out by challenging the claims that none of the mayhem could have been foreseen; we know it could have been, because it was. Start with that, and then take it from there. That is what the judiciary branches of democratic societies are for, and if the laws of the land are not properly applied, there no longer is a democracy. It really is that simple.

Oh, and I have a little math question. The IMF has $200 billion in funds. It uses $2 billion on Iceland’s 300.000 citizens. Pakistan has 175 million people. What’s missing in this picture?

Seriously, though, the billions that will go to Pakistan are going to make life very hard over there. The IMF and World Bank mafia is taking over the entire control over the nation’s finances, in a version of economic martial law that looks all too familiar to those who know what happened in South America, Asia and Russia in the past five decades. Pakistan will become the new test lab for the disaster doctrine of the world’s top ass clowns. You have been warned.

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FLASHBACK: Crashing Money Supply Numbers Signal Depression

Posted by kandylini on October 9, 2008

Source: EconomicPolicyJournal.com.

It is now clear that Ben Bernanke has no clue as to how to control the money supply.

We have been commenting in recent weeks regarding the slowdown in money supply. It has been growing at approximately 2.5% (M2SA) over the last three months on an annualized basis, earlier this year it was growing at double digit rates. This is a dramatic downturn. The numbers out yesterday show no end to the money growth slowdown, in fact, three month annualized growth (M2SA) has dipped further to 2.2.%.

While there is a lot to be said for a no growth money supply that results in a recession to clear the system, the Fed doesn’t believe this and neither does Bernanke. They are eternal money pumpers, who consistently want to prop up the economy and never have a recession. Thus, it is truly bizarre that they would allow money growth to collapse. They simply have their eye on the wrong ball. They are watching the Fed Funds rate and believe they are providing huge amounts of liquidity to the system because of the 2.0% Fed Funds target. But the fact that money supply at this target rate is not climbing suggests that the real interest rates must be lower.

Indeed, the actions of M1 suggest this is exactly the case. Since what is climbing is M1. Three month annualized M1SA is growing at 5.8%. And what is exploding is demand deposit money (a part of M1). Three month annualized demand deposits are growing at 9.5%. This suggests there is huge fear in the system, and depositors prefer keeping their money in demand deposits as opposed to M2 components such as saving accounts and retail money market funds, which are displaying no growth. Clearly, this situation tells you that depositors prefer what they perceive is safety over yield.

Only a much lower interest rate would reverse the current situation, or perhaps non-sterilized loans and purchases of bank collateral provided by those using the Term Auction Facility. If this isn’t done soon then the economy and stock market will worsen by leaps and bounds, including a major eye opening stock market crash.

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Ben Bernanke’s Hush Money

Posted by kandylini on July 27, 2008

By Gary North, Lew Rockwell.

The bailout of IndyMac’s depositors will probably deplete 10% of the FDIC’s reserves.

Congress will back up the FDIC if the FDIC ever (1) runs out of T-bills to sell (2) to raise money (3) to pay off depositors of insolvent banks. But where will Congress get this money? From the Federal Reserve System, if lenders will not fork over the money.

The Federal Reserve System backs up Congress. This is the heart of the threat to the solvency of the dollar.

The $4 billion that the FDIC will pay to a handful of depositors at IndyMac is hush money. It is paid to them to silence every other depositor in the country. “Don’t spread rumors about any insolvent bank.” Why not? “Because, in a fractionally reserved system, all of them are technically insolvent.” They are all borrowed short and lent long.

NO PANIC . . . YET

The failure of IndyMac this month was unique. We have not seen a bank failure this large since 1984. In one sense, this reminded the general public that individual banks can go bankrupt.

The most common reason for bankruptcy is that the bank has lent money to purchasers of real estate, which is a long-term debt, yet depositors have the right to withdraw money at any time. The bank is lent long and borrowed short. Yet this is true of every bank. The ones that get caught, which is a rare event, have merely indulged in long-term lending more than the average bank.

The failure of an individual bank does not produce mass panic any longer. It has been so long since Americans have seen a bank run that they pay no attention to a rare bank failure. Because the FDIC presently does have sufficient reserves in Treasury debt to sell and compensate depositors, depositors around the country are not tempted to go to their bank and demand currency.

The fact that the FDIC could cover the deposits of no more than a dozen banks the size of IndyMac does not disturb them.

They know nothing about the FDIC, other than the crucial fact: the United States government stands behind it. The government will re-capitalize the FDIC.

The experts who really do understand the nature of the bank deposit insurance program, as incarnated by the FDIC, know that the Federal Reserve System in turn stands behind the Federal government. So, there is no question that individual depositors in individual banks will be bailed out by the FDIC directly, or by the United States government through the FDIC if the FDIC runs out of T-bills to sell.

What will happen when the Federal Reserve System runs out of Treasury debt to sell or swap? It has unloaded almost 40% of its holdings since last December.

When that day comes, a lot of geese will get cooked.

TWO KINDS OF BANK FAILURES

There is an enormous difference – a literally life-and-death difference – between individual bank failures and a systemic banking failure. I do not believe we are facing a systemic banking failure. But we are facing more individual bank failures.

Americans have seen very few bank failures ever since the establishment of the FDIC in 1934. Depositors trust the FDIC to intervene and protect the money in their bank accounts. They do not withdraw currency from their accounts in a banking crisis because they believe that the FDIC will intervene to protect them. This confidence has kept almost all American banks from experiencing bank runs since 1934.

This is the most important of all “moral hazards.” A moral hazard is the expected subsidy from the government to protect investors from a major collapse that their own stupidity and greed has caused. All the talk by Ben Bernanke or anyone else about trying to avoid moral hazard is propaganda for the rubes. Moral hazard is at the bottom of the banking system, beginning with the Federal Reserve Act of 1913.

The entire banking system rests on this premise: the banking system must be saved from bad investment decisions of reckless bankers whose banks go bankrupt, thereby causing doubts about the solvency of an entire system that is borrowed short and lent long, a system built on a lie: “We will pay you interest by lending out your deposit, but everyone can get his money back at any time.” This lie is more widely believed than even this one: “Of course I will still respect you in the morning.”

The FDIC was set up to use government money, if required, to protect bankers against two groups: (1) depositors, (2) foolhardy rival bankers who go bust. Bankers fear depositors’ decisions to withdraw currency, thereby imploding the fractionally reserved banking system. They fear busted banks because of the potential domino effect: “all fall down.”

WITHDRAWAL AND RE-DEPOSIT

When an individual withdraws currency from his bank account, he reverses the expansion process of fractional reserve banking. For every paper dollar that an individual deposits, the banking system as a whole multiplies the quantity of money by nine to one. It may multiply it even more if this deposit is not in an urban bank. Similarly, when a person withdraws currency from his bank, and does not redeposit it, the banking system contracts the deposits by nine to one.

Who withdraws currency from a bank? You and I withdraw currency from ATMs, but we intend to spend this currency. Whenever we spend it, it winds up in the cash drawer of a retail company. The company at the end of the day deposits this currency into its bank. So, the banking system as a whole does not experience contraction. The money supply therefore does not contract.

The only contraction that is permanent is the contraction of currency withdrawn from a local bank and then sent to relatives outside the United States. When this is done, there is a permanent contraction of digital money in the banking system. But this rate of withdrawal is fairly constant, and so the banking system does not contract unexpectedly. This process actually reduces the rate of monetary inflation and the rate of price inflation in the United States. Immigrants send money to their relatives, and American consumers find that imported goods are paid for in effect by pieces of paper with Presidents’ pictures on them. Foreigners do not use the money to buy American goods, leaving prices lower in the United States than they otherwise would have been.

The banking system as a whole is not threatened by individual bank failures. The money that a failed bank has lent out does not disappear when the lending bank fails. It remains in circulation. The money that depositors might otherwise have lost is returned to them by the FDIC. So, individual bank failures do not alter the total money supply.

Those few individuals who deposited more than $100,000 in accounts at a local bank that fails will lose most of their money above $100,000. They have learned their lesson through IndyMac. It is likely that wealthy depositors have already taken steps by now to defend themselves against further bank failures. They have spread the money around. If not, they are slow learners.

THE REAL THREAT

The problem with individual bank failures is not the threat of a collapsing banking system. The problem is that bank failures send a message to depositors: the economy is being managed by people who do not have good economic judgment. Depositors begin to distrust the economy as a whole. It is not that they distrust the banking system as a whole. There is nothing they can do individually to pull the plug on the banking system as a whole, other than withdrawing all of their money from the bank and sending it abroad to people they barely know. This is not going to happen.

The threat to the banking system is that failed banks are a yellow flag to consumers. It warns them that the economy as a whole is at risk. Bank failures testify to the incompetence of supposed experts who manage the public’s money. When the average investor begins to lose confidence in the money managers, they may decide that discretion is the better part of valor. At some point, he will call his pension fund or stock mutual fund and tell the person at the other end of the line to sell the stocks. He will have to buy something, and what he will buy will be short-term money market instruments. He may also buy U.S. Treasury bonds.

The problem with this is that long-term money, meaning long-term capital to be used in long-term projects, will become less available. The government will spend any money that the public invests in Treasury debt. Businesses will find that it is more difficult to gain access to long-term capital. This will slow the rate of economic growth in the United States. This will remove the engine of economic growth. By moving their money out of the private sector, and especially out of equities, investors will contract the overall economy.

It is not that individual bank failures threaten the banking system as a whole. The banking system as a whole is a gigantic cartel, and this cartel has as its protector the Federal Reserve System. The Federal Reserve System is legally allowed to monetize anything it wants to monetize. It can buy any asset, and it can create the money to buy this asset.

The Federal Reserve can intervene to save individual banks, or large financial institutions. Not only can it do this, it is doing it on a constant basis. At some point, it will not be able to do this without monetizing assets that it cannot offset by the sale of existing Treasury debt in its possession. Beginning in December 2007, the Federal Reserve System has sold Treasury debt whenever it has increased its purchase of questionable assets that it has bought from banks and large financial institutions. It has unloaded about 40% of its holdings of liquid Treasury debt. This has kept it from inflating the money supply at a dramatic rate.

At some point, it will run out of Treasury debt to sell to the general public in order to offset the increase of its purchase of questionable assets held by the financial system. At that point, the great inflation will begin.

This could be a year away. This could be a month away. All we know is this: when the Federal Reserve system runs out of Treasury debt to sell, its purchase of all assets will be inflationary. The banking system as a whole is protected. What is not protected is the purchasing power of the dollar.

In order to guarantee the survival of the banking system as a whole, the existing legal structure has created an enormous risk factor: the destruction of the dollar. Legal solvency can be maintained by the banking system as a whole, but this legal solvency comes at a price: the threat of the insolvency of the dollar itself.

This has always been true. The public has never thought this through. It is beyond the voters’ comprehension. Congress, which has authorized the legislation that has led to this system ever since passing the Federal Reserve Act in late December, 1913, has also not thought about the implications of this system of guaranteed legal solvency for the banking system. But the insolvency of the dollar is the ultimate implication of the legal structure of today’s fractionally reserved banking cartel.

The major threat to the banking system is from outside the banking system. The major threat is the insolvency of a major company that has guaranteed the bonds of private corporations and agency bonds of the United States government, such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. These supposed guarantees have made possible the system of bond portfolios that can be broken up into 125 levels of risk, with appropriate rates of return on each of the slices. The system is so complex that no one understands it.

Hedge funds have invested in these assets, called collateralized mortgage obligations. They have borrowed from banks to buy them. The leverage of the hedge fund system is enormous. It is probably a hundred to one. The guarantees against loss that undergird the financial system are guarantees made by organizations that cannot possibly fulfill their contracts during an anomalous event, such as an attack on Iran by the Israeli air force. When the promises cannot be fulfilled, interest rates will rise for all American bonds except those of the United States Treasury. This will trigger additional demands placed on the guarantors of these contracts, which will threaten the solvency of the bond system.

At that point, bank capital will collapse as a result of the losses that the banks have sustained because they lent hedge funds money to invest in the bonds. The collapse of the Carlyle Capital Corp. earlier this year took less than a week. It was borrowed at least 32 to one by ten major banks of the United States. Those banks lost 100% of these their investment in one week.

When banks lose capital, they must either find new investors, or else they must reduce their loans. When they reduce their loans, they refuse to roll over existing lines of credit to American corporations. This is the major threat to the system. It is not a threat of the bankruptcy of the banks; it is the threat of the reduction of lines of credit to American corporations – corporations that are dependent on these lines of credit.

In a financial panic, American investors will move from corporate bonds and stocks and put their money in Treasury debt. This threatens the solvency, not simply of individual banks, but of individual corporations that are dependent upon lines of credit issued by specific banks. American corporations are not dependent on the banking system as a whole. They are dependent on continuing lines of credit from specific banks. They do not have time to renegotiate loans with other banks. They have to meet their payrolls. This will become increasingly difficult to do in the environment created by constant reports of individual failures of specific banks.

This is the famous and widely denied crowding-out effect. The Federal government’s debt certificates are trusted; the private capital markets are less trusted. In order for the private capital markets to continue to operate in such a hostile environment, they will have to offer greater economic returns than Treasury debt. It will become more expensive for private companies to attract long-term investment, precisely because individual banks are failing.

Obviously, the companies would all fail if the banking system as a whole collapsed. The entire society’s existence would be at risk if the entire banking system collapsed. There is no a safe hedge against such a scenario. The division of labor would collapse. Cities would not be resupplied with goods. It would be like all the disaster movies combined. It would take only a matter of weeks for the death rate to jump. So, anyone who talks about the collapse of the banking system who has not retreated to a small farm located 100 miles from a major city does not take seriously his own scenario.

The problem is not the collapse of the banking system as a whole. The problem is the crowding out by government, especially the Federal government, of capital that would otherwise have gone into the private sector. The threat is the long-term erosion of confidence in the private capital markets.

This is not a minor threat. This is a major threat. It threatens the long-term growth of the American economy. It threatens the long-term growth of an economy which is heavily indebted to foreign investors. When foreign investors perceive that growth has stopped, they are going to cease lending money to Americans to sustain their present patterns of consumption. The dollar will fall. The price of imported goods will increase. The public will have to readjust its household budgets. When the public must readjust spending patterns, the result is recession. In a major readjustment of their budgets, the result is a deep depression. We have not seen this since the 1930s.

When we read of more bank failures, we will grow more nervous. It is not that tens of millions of depositors will go down to their banks and take out currency. A few million people may do this to a limited extent, but most people will not. This is because they do not have sufficient reserves in their bank accounts to enable them to take out $1000 in currency and not use that money to spend on household bills. So, they won’t do this. (You probably should.)

The long-run effectiveness of withdrawing currency to protect yourself from a complete collapse is essentially useless. You cannot buy much in a complete collapse. Most things are produced and delivered based on bank credit. We are hooked.

The likelihood of the complete collapse of banks is extremely low. It could happen, but it is highly unlikely. What is likely in a scenario of failing banks is the increasing loss of public confidence in the private capital markets. When that happens, the rush to buy Treasury debt, which means the rush to hand over our economic future is to the United States Congress, will lead to the de-capitalization of the private companies that increase our standard of living.

THE REAL PRICE OF BANK GUARANTEES

The public has encouraged the United States government to protect voters from unexpected bank failures. Congress has complied. The banking cartel has welcomed this cooperation. The Federal Reserve System has inflated. The dollar has depreciated by 95% since 1914. This is a result of the creation of the Federal Reserve System, which was created in the name of stable money. In other words, it is one more example of Ludwig von Mises’ rule: whenever the government interferes with the market, the result will be the opposite of what the legislators said they intended to achieve.

The greater the threat to the individual banks’ solvency, the louder the public will demand additional government intervention. Congress will respond. The result will be the creation of a set of conditions in which the Federal Reserve System will have to monetize the overleveraged hedge fund system which has grown up over the last decade. It will find that it must monetize so much, so fast, on all sides, that it will not be able to offset the creation of new money by the sale of existing Treasury debt.

Bernanke has done his best to keep the helicopter full of fiat money from having to take off and do its work. But he cannot resist the demands of Congress once it is clear the public that a series of bank bankruptcies is threatening the public’s confidence in the economy as a whole. The banks are protected. The purchasing power of the United States dollar is not.

Eventually, Bernanke’s hush money helicopter will fly.

So, we face a recession. We also face bankruptcies of overleveraged small banks like IndyMac. But the large banks are far more leveraged than the public understands. They have lent huge chunks of their capital to hedge funds that are leveraged 100 to one. A 1% move opposite to what a hedge fund has expected can wipe out 100% of a 100-to-one fund’s equity. It can be insolvent faster than you can say Carlyle Capital Corporation.

Warren Buffett says that the stages of the investment cycle is managed by three successive groups: first, the innovators; second, the imitators; third, the idiots. We are well into stage three.

CONCLUSION

In 1998, a weekend intervention by the President of the New York Federal Reserve Bank got a dozen banks to pony up $3.6 billion of new loans to keep the insolvent Long Term Capital Management hedge fund. The fund was leveraged 30 to one and would have to sell off $125 billion in assets at a loss. Since much of the portfolio was in assets that had fallen to zero – defaulted Russian bonds – this would be painful. Sales of the liquid assets would have tanked the international bond market. The bailout gave the banks time to sell the still-marketable assets over the next two years.

Now the hedge funds are international. The obligations are in the trillions.

Who can bail out a large busted fund now? The banks are in hock to all of them, and one of them can bring down the system.

Bernanke will need a lot of hush money.

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Party Games: ‘Pass the Parcel’ of Collapsing Dollars

Posted by kandylini on July 4, 2008

Source: Sam Mathid, 321 Gold.

There is a game of ‘Pass the Parcel’ happening in the world at the moment. The ‘parcel’ is filled with U.S. dollars. Just like little children at a birthday party, the governments who are holding vast reserves in the form of US paper dollars, are full of apprehension and nervous giggling lest they be left holding the ‘parcel’. They are jiggling the parcel up and down and frantically trying to pass it on to the government sitting next to them. The general hubbub is almost drowned by the din of bursting balloons.

The problem in the real world of course is that there are many, many parcels of U.S. dollars in the hands of foreign governments, and they are all trying to pass them to each other. No one wants the parcel they already have, let alone the one in the hands of the government sitting next to them. They all want to avoid being left with a vast wad of cash which they strongly suspect will end up not only worthless, but making them look like complete mugs.

All are hoping against hope that the storm will pass. All fear to be the first to start selling in large amounts, yet simultaneously fear to be the last. Each is regularly divesting itself of tiny amounts. As fast as they do manage to dump a part of their parcel those dollars head back to the U.S.. U.S. exports will start to look good for a while which will reflect the desperate desire to exchange the dollars for something, anything.

All money must eventually head back to the country of its issuance. That is the only way ultimately that value can be realized. Now is the time for that value to be realized, whilst there still is any. The trillions of U.S.$’s in the world are returning home. As that money washes up into the US economy so it will continue to drive U.S. domestic prices higher and higher, placing ever greater strain on the economy, which is already at breaking point.

The period wherein the U.S. dollar was the official reserve currency of the western world is now over. That will neither be announced nor admitted by any government until they have finally dumped the dollars that they own. It is in everyone’s interest to maintain the facade, at the moment. In reality they want almost anything except U.S.$’s in their reserves.

Bernanke must dramatically raise interest rates to strengthen the U.S. dollar, that is a MUST. Of course that will mean the collapse of the whole U.S. real estate market within a month. That would lead to the absurd and sad situation of millions of empty houses within sight of millions of families living in cars and tents. Such an interest rise would take a Volcker on steroids which Bernanke most certainly is not, so of course he hasn’t raised interest rates, and he won’t.

His whole education and training make him more inclined to again drop interest rates in a forlorn attempt to re-start money flow into the asset area of the economy. Too late he has been disabused of some of his Ivory Tower notions and now knows that won’t work any longer either. ‘Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me’. Dropping interest rates would also precipitate a panicked flight from the U.S. dollar which would see a faster flood of ever more worthless dollars turning up in the supermarket and energy area of the domestic economy. No matter what Bernanke does or doesn’t do, the chickens are coming home to roost.

It is unlikely to be the Chinese or any of the other major holders of U.S. dollars who precipitate mass selling. They have so many that they would crash the currency just by opening their mouths. They also are damned if they do and damned if they don’t. It will more likely come out of left field and be one of the smaller holders. Maybe one of the Arab mini-states will take the chance that they can dump all their dollars without anyone noticing. The likelihood is that it would be immediately noticed. Everyone has their beady eyes on everyone else at the moment. The awareness that the ‘big dump’ had started would lead to a stampede. How would the Fed handle that… print more dollars… tinker with interest rates?

Obviously, not selling at the moment is seen by the major holders of U.S. dollars as an option, albeit an enforced one. Becoming a buyer most definitely is not an option. Along with the game of ‘Pass the Parcel’ there is another concurrent game being played called ‘First to Blink’. The government who blinks first and tries to dump their wad at below market price just might win, immediately followed by everyone else losing. There may be some reservations about being the first seller, but there will be none about the desire to avoid being the last seller.

The unpleasant truth is that the mutually agreed selling truce is occasioned by the fact that there are no buyers of the amounts needing to be sold. All would dump their dollars now if they could, the fact that they would like to, but cannot, speaks loudly and eloquently of the problem.

Thus Bernanke will continue to procrastinate and do nothing with interest rates. It is the sanest approach, as it is the approach most likely to put off the inevitable for a while longer. Procrastination is contagious, which at this point may be a good thing. Any decision to do something will end in complete disaster as it forces the governments playing pass the parcel to blink and also do something. Whatever they do would be very bad for the U.S. dollar and curtains for the U.S. economy. For many decades there has been a very ugly reality underneath the attractive veneer of confidence in the U.S.$ and economy. That veneer of confidence has now completely gone. What lies exposed is not a pretty sight.

The only hope for America is that those governments holding U.S.$’s will continue to hold them even though they are quite aware that they will at best drift down in value, and at worst collapse. It is a conspiracy of silence aimed at maintaining the status quo. I will hold mine and pretend that they are still valuable if you will do the same. All governments are using the borrowed time as best as possible to prepare their economies for the coming collapse of America. The U.S.$ will continue to be a currency for as long as that tacit agreement holds.

The End of the Party

I wonder how Bernanke is sleeping at the moment? I also wonder whether he and Paulson are personally buying gold and silver and secreting it away. Everyone who truly understands the situation has a survival plan. I find it hard to believe that Bernanke and Paulson still do not understand the real situation. Maybe they believe the government will look after them… maybe it will. What is for certain though is that the government will not look after Main Street. As always the common herd is pencilled in to foot the bill for this disaster. The bill is far larger for each household than each household owns in total assets. If it is any consolation the banks will go down as well.

For those who have not already lost everything, there is right now, possibly, one final chance to remove their capital from the cesspit that comprises the U.S. financial markets and exchange pseudo investments for real money… namely gold and silver. Not the paper variety of options or futures, but bullion. All paper is now suspect.

Even stock in mining companies is now suspect due to the vast amounts of naked short selling that has taken place. Many ‘owners’ of mining stock are going to find out, too late, that the statements of stock ownership in their filing cabinet are worthless. There are publicly listed companies on the major U.S. exchanges that have more stock sold than legally exists, a lot more. The situation on the minor boards is even more dire. An unknown at this time number of ‘owners’ of stock are going to find out too late that they in fact own fraudulently printed paper worth precisely zero.

Criminality in the U.S. financial markets is rampant and all pervasive. Corruption exists from the top to the bottom. A blind eye is turned by the regulators because they are afraid that to expose it now would topple the whole system. That gives an indication of how large the corruption is. It is the return of the Wild West (WW2), and at this point, the outlaws are running the show. Marshall Elliot Spitzer was the guy who rode into town on a white horse. He was almost immediately gunned down. Is there anyone else out there who will publicly challenge what is happening… preferably someone who doesn’t mind going home to his wife at the end of the day?

Naked short selling is a great example of the type of ‘mal-investment’ created by showering a financial system with cash and credit and calling it economic growth. The past has, and the future will, show a direct parallel between the size of the inflation and the size of the ensuing criminality. What has been exposed so far is just the tip of the iceberg.

The economies of the world are on a knife’s edge and we can but cross our fingers for the ’system’ to hold together a while longer. The best hope is for a long, meandering collapse, much along the lines of the last 37 years, but at a greatly increased pace. It will end up with not just both parents being forced to work to survive, but the children as well. That will probably be spun as ‘Children’s Liberation’.

America no longer has even the appearance of an expanding economy because the world will no longer lend the money to finance it. That is because they know now, as they should have known years ago, that the U.S. cannot hope to ever pay back the money that it has been borrowing.

The worst case scenario is for a sudden and calamitous fall with no time to adjust. The end result over whatever time frame it happens will be very unpleasant. It will be a profound shock for most people who have been conditioned to believe that whatever happens the government will look after them.

A Party Bag For Everyone

The transition from fear to panic when it comes will be remarkably fast. One moment people will be just sitting there eating their Prozac, the next they will have a party bag in their lap. Inside the party bag will be a parcel which has finally found its way to its real home. At that point the contents of the parcel will be exposed for what it really always was under our current banking system… debt… vast, unpayable debt.

***

The brilliant Professor Emeritus Antal Fekete is conducting a seminar in Canberra, Australia from the 11th to the 14th November this year. Meet and hear one of the giants of our age. Bookings for the seminar can be made through:

feketeaustralia@yahoo.com

I attended Professor Fekete’s seminar in Hungary in August of last year and to say that it was memorable is an understatement.

Jul 2, 2008
Sam Mathid
email: sammathid@yahoo.com

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Bob Chapman: Dollar Diving

Posted by kandylini on June 21, 2008

Source: The International Forecaster.

Dollar to fall to metals in upcoming rallies, rate hikes soon wont be able to fix economic problems, real inflation understated for years, USDX contracts plummet,why arent people fleeing from the stock market… Exchange Traded Funds are a disaster, losses from global write downs, Fed still invited to intervene in spite of failures

The dollar has once again collapsed. Get ready for the next dollar debacle and the coming rally in gold and silver which have just broken out. The elitists have lost all credibility. The would-be lords of the universe have told so many pathological lies that no one “in the know” believes anything emanating from the forked tongues of Buck-Busting, Bear-Bashing, Big-Ben Bernanke and Hanky Panky Paulson. If our Fed Head and Treasury Secretary had been characters in the Walt Disney movie entitled “Pinocchio,” their noses would have quickly grown to lengths that could have been wrapped around the earth’s equator several times. God would have had to reverse the earth’s rotation to extricate them.

Wall Street tells us the odds favor two quarter percent rate hikes to the Fed funds rate by the end of the year. We ask whether that would be before or after the economy collapses? If before, the Fed’s rate hikes will destroy what is left of our economy, and the dollar will collapse, thereby erasing any benefits from the rate hikes. If after, you will see rate cuts instead of rate hikes as the Fed attempts to save the fraudsters on Wall Street who are not even remotely close to recovering from the credit-crunch despite what the elitists might tell you to the contrary. We ask who the morons are that make up these odds, and what planet they come from. They give aliens a bad name. These index predictions are just another form of jaw-boning and disinformation.

As soon as the economy starts its final descent into Davy Jones’ Locker, which is likely to occur in the very near future, the Fed and the US Treasury will unceremoniously toss the so-called “strong dollar” policy into the nearest financial dumpster in order to save the economy and the fraudsters. Accompanying the “strong dollar” policy on its way to the dumpster will be the next round of derivative toxic waste that is on its way courtesy of the upcoming surge in fallout from tanking real estate markets in a process that will see the Fed blow what remains of its general collateral in exchange for such waste. Once the Fed’s general collateral is exhausted, we will be ushered into a new hyperinflationary era characterized by direct monetization of US treasuries to fund our deficits and to absorb more toxic waste as it continues to pour down on elitist financial institutions like Niagara Falls.

A few measly quarter percent cuts will do absolutely nothing to slow the acceleration of inflation, especially if the Fed keeps the M3 at current levels. Only a double-digit Fed funds rate and greatly reduced M3 could have any eventual and meaningful impact on the inflation that is built into the system for at minimum the next year and one half at levels in the area of 15% to 18%, and even then the impact will not be felt until the current baked-in inflation has run its course. Direct monetization of treasuries to replenish Fed collateral and to absorb our growing deficits will put inflation beyond the point of no return, as will the breaking of OPEC dollar pegs.

As you can see, there is no way that any of the proposed diminutive rate hikes will have a positive impact on the economy, on the dollar or on the balance sheets of the fraudsters. Therefore, there will not be any rate hikes. Any increase in the Fed funds rate would be accompanied by an economic catastrophe of epic proportions that would occur as a direct result of the raising of that rate. Any rate hike would take a year to a year and a half to have an impact on inflation. By the time the anticipated Fed rate hikes could have any kind of impact whatsoever, the economy will already be in a state of rampant hyperinflation, and would be well on its way to depression, far too late to save the dollar or the economy. Ergo, the new elitist motto will soon become: “Damn the inflation, full greed ahead!”

The Fed’s and the government’s lies about inflation and other economic statistics have trapped them in an impossible situation. For instance, because they have tremendously understated official inflation for so long, they cannot impose a plausible solution to fight actual inflation. Any meaningful action they might take to give people relief by lowering the level of actual inflation must be scaled down to match what they are saying about official inflation and would therefore be totally ineffective and pointless. The same scenario holds true for other economic issues as well.

As if to accentuate the collapse of the dollar, open interest on the USDX plummeted on Wednesday by a gargantuan 20,461 contracts, from 46,665 to 26,204. This also means that since last week Tuesday, when open interest was boosted by the PPT by a huge 14,393 contracts to a total of 52,520 contracts to boost the dollar and to make it look as though Big Ben really meant business about the buck, the open interest has been cut by half, with a total of 26,316 contracts having been liquidated over the course of the past week.

The last time this kind of a breakdown in USDX open interest occurred was on December 19, 2007, when open interest dropped a whopping 22,966 contracts, from 57,389 to 34,423, when the spot USDX stood at 77.587. The spot USDX then plummeted to a double bottom of 71.459 on March 17 and 71.329 on April 22, before rebounding to a recent closing high of 74.146 on June 13. This week Friday, June 20, the spot USDX has already dropped to 73.030 from its recent closing high of only a week ago as the collapse of the dollar got underway once again. Between December 19 and June 13, the closing high for the spot USDX was 77.794 set on December 20, while the all-time low was set at 70.698 on March 17. If that pattern is followed again, we could be looking at a dollar breakdown to the low to mid-67 area. Then again, we could be looking at a total collapse as hyperinflation and severe recession continue to eat away at what is left of our hapless economy. Gold and silver are headed for outer space.

We further note that as of Friday, there were 25,382 USDX futures contracts for September, 2,362 for December and only a handful for later months. There certainly does not appear to be much interest in the “strong dollar” after September, which is when the supposed rate hikes are “expected” to occur.

Gee, we wonder if it could be that traders don’t believe Ben-the-Bear-Killer and Hanky Panky about the “strong dollar” policy and have a sneaking suspicion that post-election America will mark the start of the final bloodbath that will destroy the real estate, stock, bond and derivatives markets along with the US and world economies? Royal Bank of Scotland has warned of the potential for a full-fledged crash in global stock and credit markets over the next three months as inflation voraciously consumes and destroys everything in its path worldwide. Morgan Stanley has predicted a “catastrophic event” in world currency markets during the coming months as occurred in 1992 due to opposing views between the Fed and the ECB about what to do about monetary policy and inflation and due to imbalances in the ECB itself. Both RBS and MS are elitist insiders high in the food chain of Illuminist companies. They know what is coming.

The ECB is history no matter what Trichet does. If he hikes to fight inflation, the weaker members will be destroyed. If he cuts to save the weaker members, Germany, the strongest member that is carrying virtually the whole Euro Zone economy, will bolt, and the EU will be shattered by hyperinflation. Germany is the holder of most of the Euro Zone’s surplus dollar forex reserves which are being destroyed by inflation. Then on top of losing purchasing power with respect to its dollar forex, Germany’s citizens are fed up with inflation from a euro they view as being too weak and the vast majority of them want the Deutsche Mark back. Germans are savers and they resent having their savings destroyed by a weak euro as their wages stagnate. Germany may soon join Ireland in their political rejection of the EU and its Lisbon Treaty. Adding to Trichet’s woes is the fact that if he hikes rates, and the Fed does not follow through with its jaw-boning about rate increases, which they won’t, the damage to the weaker EU members will be accelerated as their exports become more expensive in the US on account of the resulting much stronger euro versus the dollar. That would make them less competitive in the US and in nation’s with currencies pegged to the dollar, forcing them into tighter competition with domestic companies and with other foreign exporters of goods to the US and to other dollar-pegged economies, thereby increasing their growing trade deficits to intolerable levels. Nothing could be more positive for the US than the break-up of the EU, which will delay the evil Illuminati’s plans for a one-world government for over half a century.

In reviewing the movement of the yen versus the Dow, we are astounded that every human being drawing breath on the face of our planet and that every business entity with offices located anywhere on the globe are not fleeing in terror from the general stock and bond markets along with their related derivatives. The last time the Dow closed below 12,000 (11,972.85), on March 17, the yen stood at 96.88 yen per dollar and 152.731 yen per euro. On Friday, the Dow closed below 12,000 (11,842.69) with the yen at 107.42 yen per dollar and 167.855 yen per euro. So despite yen weakness in the range of 10 yen per dollar and 15 yen per euro, the stock markets have gone nowhere. If that doesn’t freaking scare you, nothing will. The carry trade can no longer carry the markets. The de-leveraging from the credit-crunch, the destruction of corporate profits, stagnant consumer spending despite the stimulus, outrageous energy and food prices, the ongoing real estate debacle, the monetary profligacy of the Fed, wars for profit and eternal deficits in our budget, our trade balance and our current account are simply too much for the markets to absorb, even with the help of the PPT. We are headed much lower. We are 100 to 200 Dow points from a total catastrophe. If gold and silver start to rally and the PPT crashes the markets with yen-hits to drain liquidity, it will be all over but the crying for stock markets worldwide.

The real catastrophe comes when elevated levels of risk push rates up despite what the Fed does with its funds rate. LIBOR is up 1% despite the Fed’s lower rates and this affects mortgages, credit cards, student loans and a host of other variable rate loans that are tied to LIBOR. Higher real rates of interest will destroy principal values for corporate bonds and treasuries that are already way underwater on account of rampant inflation, and that inflation will administer the coup de grace to bonds and treasuries as everyone flees to the only real money – gold and silver. When the towel is finally thrown in on the bond and treasury markets and all that money migrates into commodities, and especially into gold and silver, you will see gold and silver move in ways you never thought possible that will delight you with shock and awe as all the money in the world pours into the tiny precious metals markets and their related shares. Already, some mainstream analysts are calling for gold prices to rise to $5,000 an ounce and beyond as investors decimated by miniscule returns in the face of hyperinflation seek to protect themselves. This latest prediction came from Schroder Investment Management Ltd., which oversees $277 billion of assets globally.

This week, the PPT tried to blow out the specs’ protective derivatives by driving stocks up at the beginning of expiration week for stock index and other options. The specs struck back once again like clockwork and pounded stocks into the ground, racking up huge gains to fund the coming precious metals rally. The PPT continues to press specs who are short oil to protect metals positions, and this is partly why oil keeps dropping and popping on short squeezes that are explained away with all kinds of jaw-boning pretexts in the fane-stream media. The elitists have driven oil up while metals were suppressed to use it as a suppressive counterbalance against precious metals. This will backfire as everyone exits oil and takes their proceeds into the gold and silver pits. Stark, raving fear and the need for a safe haven from tanking markets and rampaging inflation will take over where oil left off. Resource stocks will greatly benefit from lower energy costs as oil gets tanked to hit the next metals rally, so its time to LOAD UP!!! The bottoms are in and its up, up and away!

Don’t worry, be happy. The fact that the ETF’s are a disaster due to the piles of gold and silver they have put into elitists hands for naked-shorting, leasing and swapping against the owners of those piles, and due to the diversion of funds away from producers’ shares, is nothing to worry about. Just convert your worthless paper (ETF shares, mint certificates and leveraged futures) into physical gold and silver bullion and then take possession of it. The elitists have unwittingly drawn many into knowledge about the gold and silver markets who otherwise might have stayed clear with their ETF machinations. We can turn their ETF gambit against them! Although you have been incorrectly instructed as to how to invest in gold and silver, that is what we are here for, to tell you how to do it right. The elitists have built their position on a house of cards. Their weakness is their lack of physical gold and silver in deliverable form. If you push them, their house of cards will collapse. Only a little push is necessary. Just empty out the COMEX cupboards and the dealers vaults by taking possession, avoid the casino leverage and we can take over the markets. Then you can gamble with impunity. Fabulous fortunes will be made. If you are not sure who you can trust, call us, we’ll tell you. We’ve been in this for 50 years. You should also consider joining Jim Sinclair’s battle against naked shorting. He has some great ideas about exposing these reprobates who are stealing from us. When people find out who they are, they will be ruined and their reputations will be destroyed. You must get proactive. Do not be lazy and keep your gold and silver in paper form, unless you are buying resource stocks, which are now dirt cheap. Holders of resource stocks will be the big winners when all is said and done. The whole reason we are now in the predicament we are in is because our citizens swill beer, view meaningless sports games and watch inane television programs while their country, their economy and their freedoms fall down around their ears! Do not be like them! Go after that gold and silver like your life depends on it, because it does!!!

Regional banks are now getting hit with defaults. Huntington Bankshares, National City and Sun Trust have as much as 20% of their loans in home equity loans. The FDIC says total outstanding home equity loans total about $625 billion.

The ABC/Washington Post consumer confidence index rose 1-point last week.

The rumor is that Lehman may have to cut 20% of its workforce.

Commercial real estate investment fell 69.5% in the first four months of 2008 yoy. That is $48.2 billion versus $157.8 billion.

The quarterly CEO Economic Outlook Index fell 5-points to 74.5 in the 2nd quarter, its lowest since 10/03. They see 2008 GDP up 1.3% not 1.5%.

We stated some time ago that the losses from global write-downs and losses from the credit crisis would reach $2 trillion. John Paulson says they will reach $1.3 trillion. Finally there is someone in our league in the securities business who is willing to tell it like it is. He sees no sign of stabilization. He manages $33 billion, returned 12% ytd May and last year his fund was up 6-fold. The GAO, the Government Accounting Office, has backed Boeing’s protest against the US Air Force, and its award of a $35 billion contract to Northrop Grumman-Airbus to begin replacing Stratotankers.

The MBA, Mortgage Bankers Association, purchase index for homes fell 4.3% and their market index fell 8.7%.

Another startling revelation is that the Fed doesn’t follow normal accounting rules, rather it creates and writes its own as it goes along. Picture an accounting system where a bank never had to recognize losses on any security it holds, as long as it continues holding them. That, too, is the Fed’s policy.

Now that the Fed has taken on Bear Stearns’ toxic garbage and may have to take on more garbage in its auction exchanges of Treasuries for junk, the Fed could become a bottomless pit for garbage. In addition, the Fed’s Board of Governors can change the rules anytime it wants.

The Fed has taken on $30 billion of Bear’s bonds probably worth on average $0.40 on the dollar. To put that in perspective, the Fed’s total capital was $40.4 billion as of 6/11/08. JP Morgan Chase will lend the Fed $1 billion to absorb any losses, which is laughable. Morgan is the Fed’s biggest shareholder, so they have a sweetheart deal. If there are losses they will never be taken. They can be held on the books indefinitely at cost, never being marked to market. If they followed FASB’s rules they would have to recognize a charge against net income whenever the securities declined in value.

This is a joke and this is how the Illuminists control our banking system and our lives and reap enormous profits. This is pure accounting trickery to avoid losses.

We want to see this manual, which is held in secret. We want exposure to what the Fed is doing. A reporter asked for one under the Freedom of Information Act, received it 18-days later, so redacted it was near useless.

How can anyone have any confidence in the privately owned Fed when such things go on?

What we do know now is that the Fed is lying about almost everything it does. That considered, Congress should disband the Fed and turn operations over to the US Treasury.

The risks associated with the vast, unregulated market for credit default swaps played a crucial role in the bailout – assassination of Bear Stearns, or at least that is the excuse to further enrich JP Morgan Chase, largest shareholder in the Fed.

The question now is will MBIA, the big bond insurance company, renege on a promise to shore up a crucial unit with $900 million in capital. We do not think so. They have written $137 billion in swaps, privately traded insurance contracts. In addition, MBIA insures $670 billion in municipal bonds and mortgage-related securities. We do not see how they can survive and if we are right, many bondholders will lose billions. Losses look to be $14 billion presently. The company no longer has an AAA rating.

House prices fell again in San Diego County in May, with the median reaching its lowest level, $380,000, since 9/03. That is down 23% yoy. The peak was in 11/05 at $517,500. That puts prices down 26.5%. We predict San Diego, dependent on the area, will fall 40% to 60%. As we forecasted April’s slightly higher prices were misleading. New homes and condos have gotten hit the worst. May sales fell 51% in those two categories. Resale homes fell 3% by comparison. Builders dumbly refuse to stop building.

Sales of bank-owned homes made up 36% of all resale purchases. Re-sales of single-family homes fell 3% yoy, but prices of re-sales fell hard from $557,000 to $420,000 yoy.

In the first half of 2008, 36% of buyers got jumbo loans in May – only 17% did.

The correction for San Diego, which led the charge upward several years ago, is 40% to 50% from the bottom. That will take place over the next two years.

Fifth Third Bancorp, Ohio’s second biggest bank, cut its dividend from $0.44 to $0.15 and must raise $2 billion.

National City Bank, Key and Fifth Third have more than $65 billion in additional losses. We forecast this would spread to banks all over the country. Do not have more than $100,000 in any bank account.

Office Max will eliminate 2,700 management positions.

The CFTC said the oil market was ripe for illegal manipulative activity, and imposed limits of the speculative positions on some trades made on overseas exchanges, particularly in London. All large trades would be reported to the CFTC.

The Confidence Board’s Leading Index rose 0.1% in May, matching April’s gain.

Phoenix based real estate lender Mortgages, Ltd. will lay off 17 of their 43 employees. They have halted making new loans in commercial real estate.

Weekly jobless claims fell 5,000 to 381,000. The 4-week average of initial claims rose 3,250 to 375,250.

If you can believe this, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson wants the Fed, which caused all of our monetary, financial and economic problems, to intervene in the workings of Wall Street firms to protect the financial system that they destroyed. They would step in to avert events that pose unacceptable systemic risk. What this really means is that the Fed will further nationalize the financial industry via consolidation in a true fascist manner. The Fed has neither the statutory authority nor the mandate to anticipate and deal with risks across our entire financial system. This is a power grab, plain and simple. This takeover has been in the works for well over a year. The Fed wants to extend its open discount window and auctions beyond September when they expire, so they can stop a bankrupt system from collapsing. The loans will be extended and Wall Street and the banks can gamble and speculate to their hearts content.

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Bob Chapman: What Really Drives The Markets

Posted by kandylini on June 11, 2008

Source: Bob Chapman’s The International Forecaster.

Constant manipulations, not much strength left in the dollar, fear of inflation, Fed hiding data, offers excuses, toxic waste derivatives in the balance, the worst is not behind us, precious metals suppression

Commentators cannot yet wrap their minds around what really drives our markets. Not only are our various stock, bond, derivative and commodity markets no longer free due to their 24/7 molestation at the hands of the PPT [Working Group on Financial Markets aka Plunge Protection Team], they are manipulated in diabolical ways to hide the destruction of our economy, and also to throw people off the trail of cause and effect. Take the recent dollar rally for example. Everyone seems to think that the dollar is rising based on statements from Fed Head Bernanke that he is worried about inflation and that this might mean future Fed actions will support the dollar. No one who is informed really believes this. The true cause of the dollar rally was a gargantuan increase of 14,393 contracts of open interest in USDX futures in one day, this Tuesday.

This had “PPT” written all over it, and resulted in a single day increase in open interest of 37.35% from 38,127 contracts to 52,520 contracts, the highest level of open interest since March 18, almost three months ago. This was the true cause of the dollar rally. Ben’s comments were just a pretense to give credence to the dollar rally and to throw people off the trail of the real culprit, the PPT, that was behind the phony dollar rally. The PPT is the only market “fundamental” lending strength to the dollar. And the phony dollar rally, supposedly based on Helicopter Ben’s phony jaw-boning, was used to justify the PPT’s sales and leasing of gold and silver as well as their naked-shorting of resource stocks which sent gold down by 26+ dollars per ounce and the HUI down by 25+ points, all in a single day. This was not normal market action, this was PPT-manipulated action.

While we are certain that Ben is worried about inflation, he is worried about saving the Wall Street fraudsters even more, and this despite the fact that these fraudsters, who acted under the direction and supervision of the Illuminati, are responsible for all the current market predicaments. That is, of course, because Uncle Ben is one of them, and takes his marching orders from the head Illuminists, just like Mr. Bubbles, Alan Greenspan, did during his tenure as Fed Head. The Fed is worried only about Illuminist insiders. They could care less about non-insiders, like the sheople, who can starve and go bankrupt and lose their homes for all they care. Basically, Ali Baba will now attempt to save his Forty Thieves.

If everyone is so worried about the dollar, then why has the Department of Commerce recently decided to discontinue publishing its reports on foreign investment data, citing funding limitations as the reason? Gee, isn’t that the same reasoning we heard from the Fed for its discontinuance of the M3 report? Apparently, the government is expecting an avalanche of foreign investment similar to the avalanche of money and credit that the continued publication of M3 would have exposed. But such an avalanche would not be anticipated if the dollar were about to be substantially strengthened. Instead, the discontinuance of the foreign investment report clues us into the reality that our dollars are about to be flushed down the toilet, a fact which is well known to insiders, and which is especially well known to those who own large piles of those dollars, like China, Japan, Russia, Saudi Arabia and other big dollar forex holders.

These large dollar forex owners, at least those who are Illuminist insiders, have probably just been given the word by the Illuminati that the destruction of the dollar is imminent, and they will all now desperately attempt to transform their paper holdings into tangible real assets before the axe falls on the dollar and it plummets to new lows.

Once the forex insiders start their move, the non-insiders will jump on the bandwagon to avoid getting screwed, and the dollar will drop so fast it will make your head spin, as will the dramatic rise in inflation that will result as all those exported dollars make their way back to our domestic economy. It’s going to get really ugly for the dollar once that process commences. The timing is hard to predict, but our guess would be that this process will start in earnest after the November elections, assuming we have them. The government wants to cover up the resulting huge influx of foreign capital because they do not want you to know, until it is too late to do anything about it, that they are going to trash the dollar to make way for the Amero and the North American Union as a regional stepping stone to a one-world currency and a one-world government.

We can assure you that Buck-Busting-Ben will do just that as soon as the next debacle hits for the Wall Street fraudsters who engineered the subprime debacle. He’ll lower interest rates again sooner than you can say “rate cut” when this next round arrives, which is why he decided to stop at two percent. He knows that much worse problems are coming down the line, and that the next time the system could irreparably implode if he has nothing left to work with. What he probably does not know for sure, yet, is that the next round of real estate problems will destroy the system, will turn the dollar into a carry trade currency and will wipe out what is left of the Fed’s general collateral, meaning that all remaining Fed-owned treasuries will have to be loaned out in exchange for toxic waste to keep the system from imploding.

The fraudsters on Wall Street have still only written off less than half of their current losses and even greater losses are on the way as the next round of real estate foreclosures, which will include jumbo, negative amortization, Pick-a-Pay loans, make their way into the statistics. There are hundreds of billions worth of toxic waste derivatives being held in off-balance sheet VIE’s (Variable Interest Entities). This is toxic waste that the fane-stream media has not told you about yet and that is still waiting to find its way back to bank balance sheets as SIV’s (Structured Investment Vehicles) give way to VIE’s as the debacle du jour. This transpires as suicidal builders continue to increase new home inventories in the face of rising commodity prices, plummeting real estate prices and glutted used and new home inventories. And then there are the people who are getting ever more backward on their equity at the rate of 14% per annum according to Case-Schiller, a situation sure to accelerate the number of borrowers who chose to default and send their “jingle mail” to the bank.

First time buyers have been cut off from purchasing homes by more stringent credit and down payment requirements and by an increasing sense that they will get in much cheaper if they wait. They are the ones who start out most closing chains of interlinked sales, which means that people who currently own their own homes can not move up or find a buyer if they have to leave the area. The entire real estate market is in a complete lock-up which will get worse as real interest rates continue to rise with the increased risk that comes in the wake of each new default debacle, such as defaults in consumer debt like credit cards, car loans and student loans, to name but a few. Those who think the worst is behind us are either in denial or live on another planet.

Let’s take a look at what is happening to the last great bastion of American middle class wealth, which is of course their real estate. Their stocks and bonds and pension funds have already been pulverized. Now they watch as their home prices plummet at the rate of 14% per annum, while inflation rages at over 12%, thereby reducing what remains of their real estate value after real estate market losses are applied. Let’s assume that at the beginning of 2007, you had a home worth one million. Three years from now, at the beginning of 2010, in terms of 2007 dollars, you would only have purchasing power of 405,224 dollars left out of your real estate nest egg that was worth 1,000,000 dollars in the year 2007, calculated as follows: $1,000,000 x the cube of (1 – .14 – .12) or .74 cubed. That 26% haircut each year could become much worse if inflation or housing take a turn for the worse, which is very likely, especially in the case of inflation which should reach 18% or more during 2009. Now you see where you are headed, and this has been by the design of your government, Wall Street and corporate America under the direction of the Illuminati. Even worse losses are possible than those illustrated, depending on how all the various debacles turn out. You are looking at a blood bath beyond your wildest imagination. So load up on gold, silver and their related shares or prepare to get taken to the cleaners in Locksley Hall.

Note how the cartel’s Illuminists are trying to run up oil while suppressing gold. They want oil to be a counterbalance to gold instead of being a supporter of gold. The next time you see substantial dollar weakness, you can count on oil to drop like a rock, if only temporarily, to put a hit on gold. The PPT’s blowout of oil shorts that were being used by specs to protect gold positions and that pushed oil up dramatically by forcing massive short-covering, has quickly run its course and oil has settled back down again to keep pressure on the metals after the shorts were destroyed. Also, note how massive continuing manipulations of silver and resource stocks, which are fairly small markets overall, are being used by the PPT to portray a situation of non-confirmation for gold. Silver is getting leased to death through negative short-term lease rates and resource stocks are getting pounded by naked-shorting. This will keep the metals subdued until the next debacle hits, which will be bank failures and much higher inflation statistics, coupled with more real estate fallout and possible credit default swap problems. The cartel is now so short on silver that they are illegally rationing Silver Eagles to dealers and starving the public demand so they do not have to go into the silver market and run the price up. Welcome to corporatist, fascist America.

To give you some idea of how desperate the general stock markets have become, let’s look at the yen’s movement versus the Dow. When the Dow closed at 13,020.83 on May 6, the yen closed at 104.54 yen per dollar and 162.539 yen per euro. On Tuesday, June 10, with the Dow at 12,289.76, the yen closed at 107.19 yen per dollar and 165.855 yen per euro. Not even the carry traders can keep these hapless markets up, and we suspect that there is heavy de-leveraging going on. Note how gold and silver, which usually benefit from a weaker yen, have been unable to take advantage of this current expression of yen weakness, which shows you how rampant the suppression of precious metals is right now. The stock market situation has gone from scary to outright frightening. Do not go anywhere near the general stock markets, unless you like losing lots of money

Our president informed us this past week that all is well with our economy. He must live in a different world than we do. The evidence of recession is everywhere as families try their best to preserve their purchasing power. We are told inflation is some 4%. The shoppers know this is untrue as they struggle in a world of hyperinflation. Their dollar is losing buying power against almost every world currency. There are tent cities stretching across our land in parking lots and in parks, a legacy of our Federal Reserve, a private corporation legislated long ago in 1913 for the further enrichment of our Illuminist elite, so that they may rule our lives. Wages are stagnant, a benefit of unbridled legal and illegal immigration, free trade, globalization, offshoring and outsourcing as the elitist transnational conglomerates destroy our economy and our culture. We are facing an economy comparative to 1930, where eventually one-third of our population will be living like beasts in tent cities. Were it not for the creation of more than $1 trillion in money and credit to the financial industry our economy would have already collapsed – eventually it will. Our dollar is being supported by foreign central banks and in the end they will own all of our assets. As the dollar collapses further these creditors will demand everything we own.

Wall Street, corporate America, our media, the Federal Reserve and our government tells us the worst is over. This is only the beginning of the beginning. Stocks and bonds are falling and markets in municipals, corporate bonds, CDOs, SIVs and ABSs are virtually frozen. Wall Street profits are falling by two-thirds and we are just getting underway. Over the next few years at least 300 of American banks will fail, along with millions of businesses. Unemployment now at 14% will rise to 35%. Yes, it is going to be that bad. Housing will continue to collapse, as will commercial real estate, which is already virtually frozen. What does it tell you when government has to bring 35 bank bankruptcy specialists out of retirement, some of whom are in the 80s, to sort out the coming banking collapse?

The commodity market and gold and silver are booming just as we forecast. As a result, raw material costs have skyrocketed adding to the pull of inflation. If corporations do not pass along these added costs to the consumer, profits will collapse and layoffs will ensue. If profits fall share prices will fall and the whole stock market will fall.

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The Fed’s Strong Dollar Policy

Posted by kandylini on June 6, 2008

By: Peter Schiff, Gold Seek.

Ever since Robert Rubin began the tradition in the mid-1990s, it has been a significant element of the Treasury Secretary’s job description to continuously state that a strong dollar is in the national interest. It is widely regarded that such utterances, if repeated often enough, can constitute the sum total of what is still laughingly known as the nation’s “strong dollar policy.”

Over the past two generations, the American government has launched many failed campaigns. To name just a few, there has been the war on drugs, the war on poverty, and the continued attempts to improve education. But the strong dollar policy must be seen as the poster child for all failed Federal policies. However, many in the market took cheer that the policy is now being greatly expanded. In an unprecedented move, the Fed Chairman is now adding his voice to the chorus and using the same rhetoric previously used by Treasury alone. That’s two people saying the words…not just one. A double barrel strong dollar policy!

As the administration is so fond of saying, a nation’s currency reflects the underlying strength of its economy, and in that sense can be seen as a nation’s economic report card. In truth, a strong currency is in the interest of every nation, just as good grades are in the interest of every student. Using this basic analogy, a flunking student cannot improve his grades by simply telling his parents, teachers, and fellow students that he has adopted a “straight A policy.” If his words are not accompanied by a change in actual behavior, whereby he stops cutting class, and starts studying more, his new policy is unlikely to achieve results. So long as his bad habits persist, the policy will not be any more effective simply because one of his friends chimes in.

In his speech this past Tuesday, Ben Bernanke finally admitted that the weakness in the dollar was contributing to both higher inflation and elevated inflation expectations. This stands in stark contrast to his recent testimony in front of the House Banking Committee, where in response to a question asked by Congressman Ron Paul, he confidently declared that the weakness of the dollar only effected Americans who travel abroad. It is amazing how little attention this complete reversal received.

The media of course wasted no time in declaring that Bernanke’s speech heralded the opening of a new front in the campaign against the falling dollar. For example, CNBC’s Larry Kudlow proclaimed that Bernanke had endorsed “King Dollar” (someone needs to remind Kudlow that the king has long since abdicated his throne) and the network ran an entire segment on how to profit from the new dollar rally. All of this because Bernanke merely mentioned the dollar, acknowledged its effects on inflation, and expressed concern for its plight. As far as the media and Wall Street are concerned, words without action are enough. Too bad that’s not the way things work here on the planet Earth.

The real take away from Bernanke’s comment is not that the dollar is about to rally, but that it is now more likely to sink even lower. I believe the main reason Bernanke has refrained from mentioning the dollar in the past is that he did not want to be put in a position of actually having to do something about its decline. He is now so fearful of an imminent dollar collapse that he must have felt compelled to throw down the gauntlet despite his fear that someone might actually pick it up.

My guess is that currency traders will ultimately see this as an act of desperation. When the dollar keeps falling a chorus will swell to demand that the Fed put teeth in its new policy. If Bernanke does nothing the world will finally see a naked emperor and the dollar’s decline will turn into a rout. If, on the other hand, the Fed raises rates to defend the dollar, and only a short term bounce results, then all remaining confidence in the Fed’s ability to support the dollar will evaporate as well. This is probably Bernanke’s greatest fear and is likely the main reason he waited so long before mentioning the dollar. The fact that he felt compelled to do so now likely means he knows the game is coming to an end. Got gold?

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