Image via WikipediaJim Willie
Numerous are the threats to the US Economy and US financial structures. Many are hidden threats, subtle challenges to undermine increasingly fragile support systems, planks, and cables that hold the system together.
The year 2011 will be when the system breaks in open visible fashion, when the explanations that justify it sound silly and baseless, when the entire bond world endures major crashes. All thing financial are inter-related.
Recall that in summer 2007, the professor occupying the US Federal Reserve claimed the subprime mortgage crisis was isolated. The Jackass countered with a claim that the bond market was suffering a crisis in absolute terms, where all bond markets were on the verge of fracture, perhaps globally.
In year 2008 the banking system in the Western world broke, fatally and irreparably in my view. In 2009, the solutions, the treatment, the official programs were all exaggerated for their effectiveness while banker welfare became a fixture. Neglect of the people on Main Street became policy.
In 2010, the system revealed it is still broken. The global monetary system after all rests atop the sovereign bond market. This year, it must fight off a collapse. Many are the hidden points of vulnerability. Gold & Silver will continue to be the great beneficiaries. Read more...
Image via WikipediaAs the incoming chairman of the House monetary policy subcommittee, Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) will hold the bully pulpit when it comes to the nation's money woes.
He's not wasting any time getting right to the heart of the matter.
The libertarian-leaning conservative has long been a critic of the US Federal Reserve and central banking as a whole, but this may be a new one: speaking with CNBC recently, Paul said he views the Fed as a "monopoly" that could benefit from the introduction of competition.
"We should start ending the Fed by allowing competition," he said. "I don't like the fact that they have monopoly control. It's a cartel: they print the money. The Constitution really doesn't give them that authority. The Constitution said that only gold and silver can be legal tender. I want to legalize competition and allow individual Americans to use gold and silver in competition, as money. Today if you do that, you can go to jail. More...
Diamond Rated - Best Financial Markets Analysis ArticleA love affair with silver is so natural. The fundamentals are astoundingly positive and bullish in price prospects. My basic argument has been repeated many times. Industry has countless uses for silver, significant demand. But industry has only miniscule isolated uses for gold, in trivial demand. So silver wins on the Demand side of the equation. Central banks own a huge amount of gold. They frequently sell it, even through their slippery surrogate the Intl Monetary Fund. Central banks own zero silver. So silver wins on the Supply side of the equation.
My motto is that gold fights the major political and financial war, but silver will ride in on a shiny white horse and take much larger spoils. That effect has already begun. Since the significant game changing FOMC meeting on September 21st, where the telegraph message delivered to the world financial markets was made by megaphone, the impact has been clear and stark. Compared to closing prices on September 21st versus October 29th, just five weeks, the silver price had risen from $20.64 to $24.56, up 19.0%. During the same timespan, the gold price had risen from $1274.30 to $1357.60, up 6.5%. My claim, a loose forecast often repeated, has been that the silver breakout gains would be at least double and possible triple the gold gains. We have seen exactly that in recent weeks.
An extremely fuzzy factor is the CFTC attention. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission is supposedly investigating the Big Four Banks for gigantic concentrated short positions in the silver market, for naked shorting of silver, and for collusion with other banks. Commissioner Bart Chilton has made a lot of noise, but has done next to nothing. Some find encouragement, an absurd notion in my view. Let me know when court injunctions are slapped at JPMorgan. Several class action lawsuits against JPMorgan have begun, also encouraging, but unclear on substance. They crop up every couple weeks, the latest citing a RICO aspect. Let me know when the full force of the USGovt regulatory bodies order JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, and Bank of America to liquidate even 10-20% of their short positions. Unless and until such action occurs, the CFTC chirping is just that, noise from the managerie of obedient pets who work on short leashes at the behest of bankers. Mail room clerks do not give orders or make demands to the executive suites, not now, not ever. The regulatory chiefs are mere squires to the bankers, and will follow orders, not give them. By the way, the Big Four positions are naked short positions in all likelihood.
They are immune from posting collateral, as required by the metals exchanges. So they routinely sell a stack of silver whenever the price moves have been made, like in the wee hours this Wednesday and very early at the New York open. Good Morning New York resulted in almost a full $1.00 drop in the silver price, undoubtedly another naked short raid before the QE decision by the US Federal Reserve and its statement. The full impact of the ambush decline was reversed by afternoon. Right before important events deemed negative nasty to the USDollar, the Big Four go wild with naked shorts, called ambushes. The evidence, the trails, the fingerprints are easily seen except by blind men, official gold industry wonks, and USGovt regulators. More...
Jim Willie Debate stirs on whether the financial structure of the USEconomy is broken irreparably. Debate stirs on whether actions taken in the last year or two have put the nation on a path that can even achieve stability, let alone recovery. Debate stirs on whether a pernicious and not so secret syndicate has taken control of the USGovt financial ministries, let alone be removed. Debate stirs on whether lack of US Federal Reserve audits and disclosure of their accounting is integral to sustaining the syndicate control as well as its probable egregious fraud. Debate stirs whether the nationalizations have actually enabled adoption of wrecked assets, have concealed executive ransacking, and have buried massive counterfeit of bonds. Debate stirs whether the mountainous federal deficits, the nationalizations of essentially Black Holes, and the endless war spending make deficit reduction a distant dream. Debate stirs on whether the gargantuan accumulation of USFed reserves will spill over to produce widespread price inflation. Debate stirs on why after causing the foundation failure of the US financial structure from Wall Street and the USFed offices, these institutions not only remain in power but demand greater power.
It is my contention that the US financial structures broke without any remote potential for repair and revival in the summer of 2007. The symptoms became obvious in the summer of 2008 to the slower observers with visible shock waves bathed in crisis. The reactions from shock waves have come since the autumn months of 2008. The system has broken, but the syndicate in control wishes to keep the music going, keep the machinery turning, keep the money flowing, so that they can continue the massive rackets, bury the frauds & counterfeit, cover their tracks, process the bad paper into USGovt coffers, continue to corner the printing press operations, continue to con the USCongress into granting more funds for Goldman Sachs to dictate dispensation secretly, and to continue the endless war whose rivers of blood are matched only by rivers of redirected private contractor fraudulent payments. Nobody seeks justice and prosecution for over $1 trillion in mortgage bond fraud. Nobody seeks to remove Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan from control posts at the USDept Treasury and USFed respectively. Nobody seeks even to locate the missing $50 billion from the Iraq Reconstruction Fund, or to announce the known location of the stolen $100 billion from the Madoff Ponzi Scheme (it aint $50B and they know its exact hiding place). Foreigners have been very busy since the autumn 2008, as they dismantle the levers, knock down the pillars, block the escape routes, yank the collateral from the paper marketplaces, and otherwise thwart the US-UK schemes.
To claim that the system can be put on proper stable footing is lunatic. To expect that the nation can be recalibrated so as to return to the Good Ole Days of US global dominance and leadership is lunatic. To urge that the economic signposts, megaphones, and billboards be once again guided by policies best described as Bubbly Economic Mythology is lunatic. Yet delusional Americans actually believe the dominant ship at sea can lead as flagship, when it has taken on more water than the Titanic. Since the autumn months of 2008, marred by the Lehman Brothers failure, marred by the Fannie Mae adoption, marred by the AIG adoption, punctuated by a shameful 0% interest rate policy (ZIRP) and a green light for limitless money creation (QE), the United States has lost any semblance of leadership. Instead, its leadership has earned scorn, criticism, and disrespect. The last people on the globe to comprehend the American condition of failure, corruption, and military aggression seem to be the Americans themselves, who live within the USDome of Perception. They suffer from perhaps the worst education levels in the industrialized world, coupled with a co-opted national news media network, clouded by the grandest drugstore medication in history. Debate stirs on whether the US actually controls its own news media. The US does not cover the global Paradigm Shift underway that will change its landscape radically.
The clearest conclusions center on almost nothing put on a sustainable viable course for the nation. Amplification and widened breadth of all that failed cannot serve as the core for revival or recovery, let alone stability. Yet such policies seem the only ones our hapless bank leaders are able to execute. It is a dog returning to gobble his vomit. It is akin to managers urging their worst workers to intensify their efforts, and to join the ranks of management. These Keynesians cannot admit that the central bank franchise model has failed, not to be resurrected. In my view, the debates, the foundations, and the reactions scream two major messages. 1) The system is out of control, with the drivers ramming down the accelerator for even more of everything that failed, for a locomotive within a monetary system based upon illegitimate money. 2) The USGovt finances are heading toward a recognized failure, identified by both a banking system bankrupt seizure and a USTreasury default. The nation cannot come to grips with the bold stark notion that foreigners control our fate, from their revolt against the USDollar as a global reserve currency, from their revolt in supplying additional credit to the USGovt and USEconomy. The reaction so far to crisis has been to rely more heavily upon the Printing Pre$, to monetize the debts, and to conceal such operations, all while permitting syndicates to operate with impunity. The revolving doors spin freely that fill job posts at the USDept Treasury, Wall Street firms, USGovt regulatory bodies, and key foundations, warranting charges of incest at best and corruption at worst. Things are out of control!
In fact, my forecast is for systemic failure. Its primary elements will be a failed US banking system (as in seizure) and a USTreasury Bond default (as in coerced restructure). Again, martial law and declaration of economic emergency will be the final solution. The prison camps will become debtor prisons and warehouses for illegals, maybe a processing plant for those who refuse virus vaccination. They are already constructed with over 200 ready for occupancy. Those in denial might become residents. They could also feature some dissidents, along with some writer analysts. Two years ago, my analysis regularly mentioned martial law and imposed order to handle the chaos from a disintegrated economy and insolvent dysfunctional banking system. Here we are in the present, when such forecasts do not sound so outrageous anymore. The Jackass has featured a string of seemingly outrageous forecasts that have come true. The US system is credit dependent, and credit will soon be cut off, in the next chapter of isolation. The Printing Pre$ is a temporary solution, en route to a failed state. The US leaders and citizens do not learn from history. They defy history amidst delusions of omnipotent power. See the Weimar Republic, which has gone global! Even Gore Vidal expects recognition of the Untied States having adopted communism. Even the World Bank led by yet another Goldman Sachs pupil warns the Untied States not to assume the USDollar will remain the unchallenged global reserve currency.
ABSENT A STRONG FOUNDATION
Widespread Insolvency is a major theme of the broken condition. The banks have assets and income grossly below their debts and liabilities. They must rely upon phony FASB accounting, which was the basis of the stock recovery beginning in April. They must bring fresh capital, lost as fast as it arrives. They now tell the public what their assets are worth, backwards to any market concept. The households are suffering from mortgage obligations even as housing prices continue to slide lower. With almost one third of American homeowners who hold mortgages operating with an underwater status, whereby their home loans exceed the home value, the army of consumers is more than hampered. Unlike the bankers, the households of America cannot just pound the table, engineer an absurd Stress Test, and declare they are solvent enough for equity extensions. The households line up for defaults and foreclosures instead. The smart ones demand that the bankers prove clear certified title of their property. See the Kansas MERS case that might serve as precedent to jam the gears of the bankers intending to seize homes in foreclosure. The bankers cannot prove they hold clear title. Such is the vagary of mortgage bond fraud, as it seeps to the surface.
The USGovt finances are in shambles, with $1800 billion in fiscal 2009 deficits, and easily $1300 billion to come in the next year. Take away the Printing Pre$ from the desperate delinquent devils running the USGovt finance ministries, and national debt default would take place within 60 days. The nation does not even contemplate budget surplus, but rather justifies yawning deficits and lies using lunatic forecasts. The industrial base is also largely depleted. The Chinese Most Favored Nation granted in 1999 set the stage for shipment of much of the US factories to China. In the process, the USEconomy replaced income with debt, all in the name of ‘Low Cost Solutions’ moronically. Corporate leaders in America reacted to heavy burdens of government regulations and higher taxes, even to rugged labor unions. Maybe their relocation decisions constituted betrayal, or maybe just reaction to onerous conditions that evolved over decades.
The Albatross of falling property prices, both residential and commercial, continues to hang around the neck of the USEconomy. The full impact of the commercial property decline has yet to be felt, more in delayed reaction. A queer factor comes into play with commercial mortgages and loans. Even if the majority of payments are current, even if most tenants pay rent on time, the loans tend not to be viable for refinance and rollover. The Loan-to-Value ratios are all horrible after a broad 30% to 40% property price decline. Banks require more equity. On the residential side, the Prime Option ARMortgages are lined up for the kill. It seems that payment of less than the required interest was not a good idea after all. It seems that leaving homeowners the option to build their loan balance when property prices fell was not a good idea after all. Now they face 100% to 200% monthly loan payment increases, all in the fine print unread years back. So liquidations and foreclosures will continue to come, complete with outsized bank losses. The Perpetuation of Loss is ensured by continued property foreclosures and liquidation. Despite all talk, the process continues. Despite the pain, the statistics continue to be mangled with a purposeful motive.
The Accounting Fraud for bank balance sheets and stock valuation runs like a cancerous streak throughout the financial sector. The best way to cover up fraud is with more fraud. The best way to cover up accounting chicanery is to have the USCongress bless it as legal, vital, and essential. Once the stock market rose for consecutive months, talk of phony accounting rules is forgotten, SINCE IT SUCCEEDED, even served as proof of recovery. What nonsense! A moral depravity has permeated not just the financial sector, but the public as well. They cry out from the corners laden with pain, but without specific targets. The end of the FASB relaxed rules is scheduled for January 1st. Let’s see if a compromised USCongress and corrupt Wall Street demand its extension. They obviously will. Furthermore, both Basel 2 and Basel 3 guidelines are ignored, since from outsiders. Ignore them at one’s own peril, as they gather as Enemies at the Gate among the USGovt creditors. Theirs might turn into an angry lynch mob. Foreign creditors are the #1 adversary to all things American right here, right now.
SUSTAINING FORCES
Numerous hidden forces sustain the current breakdown and hamper anything remotely resembling a recovery. The only thing in recovery is the banter, billboards, and propaganda. In fact, most praise of success comes from people who praise their own efforts, like USFed Chairman Bernhacky. His predecessor was also very accomplished at praising his own craft and alchemy. Sir Alan Greenspasm left the national banking system hanging over the precipice, from where it fell in a short time after passage of the mantle at his retirement. He believed his housing bubble saved America from disaster. He believed that credit derivatives offloaded risk. Little did he realize that the next disaster is always much greater than the saved previous one, when amplified credit and monetary ease are the solutions relied upon, all pure heresy. He lives now in London, and spends much time in Switzerland. These nations paid his secretive other paychecks. These nations are where his loyalty and all directives came from in my opinion. Many hidden forces will work to undermine the current efforts to instill a recovery to the USEconomy and a resuscitation of the US banking system. Bernhacky will soon realize that reliance upon the same toxin and formaldehyde to course through the increasingly cancerous bodies will produce even worse problems during the next crisis phase. It comes.
Numerous sustaining forces will contribute toward the inexorable path to systemic failure. It will begin with the relapse failure of the US banking system. Citigroup is facing real bankruptcy, whose numerous segments are underwater and growing worse. Bank of America is in a death spiral, whose CEO Ken Lewis departs amidst political and shareholder legal pressures. Wells Fargo is so dead that its true balance sheet makes a skeleton come to life, whose prime Option ARM and second mortgage exposure is monumental. Maybe Citigroup, BOA, and Wells will use USFed funds to acquire the entire US banking system and subject it to their brilliant acumen, leadership, and access to the corrupt money pits. Lock in those executive bonuses!
The hidden housing inventory will ensure that housing prices continue down for a couple more years. At best they will stabilize somewhat, but only if a monumental hidden housing inventory is permitted to accumulate. The big banks, the very same that abused mortgage bonds with leveraged instruments, own an outsized supply of foreclosed homes. What a fitting reward! They tend to release only a portion of this home supply, so as to permit some price stability as demand catches up. Lenders are reluctant to lend though, even while the foreclosure process continues. Job loss is the main driving factor, amidst household insolvency.
The Zero Interest Rate Policy is worn as a badge of shame to reflect central bank failure. It rewards savings not at all. It encourages the same speculation that produced bubbles to kill the banks and households. It encourages a Dollar Carry Trade, which ensures a pressured decline in the USDollar itself. The October Hat Trick Letter will discuss additional risks and dangerous consequences from the Dollar Carry Trade. Remember, Bernhacky assured the USCongress, the US conferences of economists, and the US people that the USFed would not resort to 0% rates. He did just that. In addition to powering with leverage the US$ exchange rate downward, this carry trade takes away a viable Exit Strategy for the USFed. Imagine Wall Street leveraged speculative machinery interrupting any potential lift in the official US interest rate! Recall that the USFed does take orders from the Wall Street syndicate. They selected him. They hired him. His job is to run the Printing Pre$ day and night, to invent new liquidity facilities, to preach solutions to the USCongress, to shut up, and to follow orders. In the last year, the USFed has acted like it is the entire banking system. What exactly is the exit doorway to take from that strategy?
Without hesitation, one can claim that No Meaningful Reform or Restructure has occurred. The US financial and economic structures continue to suffer from precisely the same problems that resulted in systemic breakdown in the autumn months of 2008. The difference now is that the previous high volume of acidic money is exceeded with higher volumes now. USGovt debts are now much higher. Lending institutions are less prone to lend now than one or two years ago. Commercial paper used not to flow at all, and now flows but with less volume and from fewer channels and with more USFed assistance than ever before. Innovative thought is totally suppressed, if not crushed. Advocates for a reformed system without paper fiat money are dismissed. The syndicate continues to ply its trade and to control the levers. But their work is frenzied, and they are sure to lose control.
No meaningful reform comes even to the hundreds of thousands of mortgage loans that undergo Home Loan Modification. They cannot alter the loan balances, since that would require alteration of the associated mortgage loans that rely upon income stream from loan payments. This is not acceptable, since it would reveal the pervasive bond fraud, the counterfeit bonds, and the duplicate usage of home loans in multiple mortgage bonds. So solutions come to toss billion$ at the big banks, without solution, an assuredly failed Top-Down approach that appeals to Wall Street. The extort the money and hide the paths of funds. Also, on the small business front, the restructure of the Small Business lender & insurer CIT failed to produce any meaningful revitalization. Its June debt restructure agreement with bond holders failed to stick. It now seeks a $5 billion loan as debtor in possession. A million businesses would be affected if CIT folded and was liquidated. We are told of a recovery in progress. Its roots are in propaganda, crowd control, and shaping of public opinion. George Orwell would smile and smirk from his 1984 address on Cemetery Lane.
No national initiative has come to bring back US industry to the US shores. No national initiative has come to retain businesses by means of reduced taxation and reduced regulatory burdens. No national initiative has come to remove from power those responsible for Wall Street bond fraud. No national initiative has come to even force a proper accounting to Wall Street firms or Fannie Mae or AIG. No national initiative has come to conduct a true autopsy of Lehman Brothers, like to see what assets they held, what hedge funds they sponsored, what counterfeit Fannie Mae bonds they were soon to toss onto the table, and whether JPMorgan did indeed pay off private Lehman accounts with the $138 billion in slush funds. The booty was handed to them at a bankruptcy court meeting held before dawn on an September Saturday morning. No national initiative has come to force disclosure of the TARP fund distribution, or to reveal what the USFed does with its trillion$ of created money. They destroyed the USDollar, and the victims enduring the crisis from inside the USDome need to know. Without hesitation, one can claim that all attempts to shine light on the financial sector and its ivory towers have been obstructed.
Two further factors ensure the sustained crisis in the USGovt finances, with certain continued contagion to the financial sector and the tangible economy. The Endless War with its increasingly less credible banter against terrorism drains the United States of funds, saps its national spirit, cripples its soldiers, and extends risk in countless ways. The USDollar and USTreasury Bond suffer from lost foreign confidence and faith. The real threat to national security lies in the finance sector rooted in Wall Street. Almost all talk about foreign threat is a grand distraction from the internal threat, even as incredibly grand fraud is committed in the name of patriotism. The Entrenched Financial Syndicate remains in power, controls all financial policy, directs funds from the Printing Pre$, influences the USCongress with slush contributions, controls regulatory body heads, engineers nationalizations of fraud-ridden financial firms, interferes with FBI investigations (see the GSax trading software), integrates with foreign policy, and provides segments to the US press networks. Fully 70% of US press network content comes from the USGovt and its myriad agencies with spokesmen and public relations offices.
FAILURE & DEFAULT ON THE HORIZON
Going hand in hand with the destructive 0% policy is the Hidden Monetization of USGovt Debt, clearly. The zero rate encourages new asset bubbles, like the historically unprecedented spectacular USTreasury bubble. USTBONDS MAKE THE FINAL BUBBLE. The zero rate enables new carry trades with no cost. The zero rate permits a private banker party to engage in their own corner carry trade, buying long-dated USTreasurys with free money while shorting the short-term USTBills. This acts like a money machine for bankers to restore their balance sheets. The only trouble is their balance sheets have a hemorrhage at work, with additional ongoing relentless credit portfolio losses. The accounting fraud can only mask the problem, which happens to grow worse with each passing month. With lost integrity from the 0% rate comes disdain for the monetary system generally and for the USDollar specifically, along with other major currencies locked near 0% also.
While the 0% official rate creates problems much like those that erupted in a crisis, the monetization of debt issuance signals to the entire world to abandon the USDollar. The monetization assures the death of the USDollar. It is Weimar revisited, but with more military might and far more arrogance. Megalomania gone awry results in catastrophe. Monetization represents back-door devious measures to stave off the disaster of bond auction failures. Monetization is a broken promise made to creditors, who must feel betrayed. Monetization is a vast undermine to the validity, value, and very authenticity of a currency. The government debt for the custodian to the global reserve currency is being monetized, thereby creating gigantic air pockets, and funding a carry trade. The most dangerous asset bubble on the planet right now is the USTreasury. It pays 0% on short maturities. What is next? The forced USGovt worker pension contribution to USTreasurys? How about all state workers too, in their pensions? Maybe eventually all 401k and IRA and Keough pension plans as well, in their pensions? Every citizen maybe support the USTreasurys in pensions, out of patriotism, for national security? With lost integrity from the monetization patterned schemes, comes fear of a repeated Weimar hyper-inflation episode.
What comes is the US bank system failure. The endless rounds of bank credit portfolio losses dictate it. The Stress Tests are soon to be discredited, less than one year after their farcical production. The leading losers will be commercial mortgages, prime Option ARMortgages, and credit card losses. Banks are not prepared, having inadequate Loan Loss Reserves, guarding their profits, denying their reserves, managing their stock prices. They deceive their share holders on continued portfolio risk. They try to shove all their garbage assets on the USFed and to Fannie Mae under the USGovt roof, amidst the shrill cries of ‘Too Big To Fail’ nonsense. A US bank system failure is coming. With lost integrity from the banking system, insolvent in its own core, supplanted in function by the USFed itself, lending so little as to force declines in the consumer credit funds, comes distrust of financial institutions generally.
Jim Willie CB is a statistical analyst in marketing research and retail forecasting. He holds a Ph.D. in Statistics. His career has stretched over 25 years. He aspires to thrive in the financial editor world, unencumbered by the limitations of economic credentials.
Written by J.S. Kim, the founder of SmartKnowledgeU™ and the evolutionary MoneyPing™ investment strategies. Kim charges USD $7,775.00 for a private consultation.
The Coming Blowback of Banking Fraud
The Double Dip Recession, or the “W” shaped recovery that a minority of economists, such as Joseph Stiglitz, is now stating as a strong possible outcome of this current rally, should not be discussed in the realm of economics but rather in the more apropos realm of financial fraud. The fact that the upleg of the “W” shaped recovery that is occurring now will inevitably crumble in spectacular fashion will not be a result of any free market principle, but rather the direct consequence of a fraudulent scheme executed by an elite global financial oligarchy, otherwise known as Central Banks. If the mission of this current manufactured leg-up in Western stock markets was to fool the world into believing that global economies are recovering, then clearly, up until this point, the mission has been a resounding success. For those unfamiliar with the term “blowback”, it's a CIA term that was first used in March 1954 to describe the unintended consequences of US government international activities kept secret from the American people.
Though this term has primarily been used to describe the consequences of covert military operations, “blowback” is an appropriate term to use to describe the coming consequences of banking fraud because the US government, US Federal Reserve, Wall Street, the US Treasury, and the Exchange Stabilization Fund have all engaged in domestic and international financial and monetary transactions that have been kept secret from the world, and that will have severe and negative consequences in the not so distant future. In fact, I predict that the blowback of these activities will not only exceed, but far exceed, the fallout the world experienced in 2008 at the prior apex of this current crisis. Most people today can not even fathom how bad the situation will become primarily because of all the secrecy that the banksters have engaged in – in US Treasury markets, the gold markets, the US dollar markets, agriculture commodities, stock markets, and financial markets – in hiding reality from the people.
In an article I wrote three months ago, on June 10, 2009, titled, “Can Rising Stock Markets Serve as a Confirmation of a Crashing Economy?”, I stated, “Whether I am right or wrong about US markets tanking by summer’s end/fall’s beginning, if [we] position [our] investment assets based upon an understanding of the fraudulent monetary system, [we] can still continue to create wealth.” While true, I was a bit early in raising the proposition of a stock market correction the month before; I amended my prediction in June upon realizing the breadth of the manipulation schemes occurring in Western stock markets. In today’s markets, only a complete investment novice would try to predict market behavior without accounting for the massive government intervention schemes and forays into stock markets as well as the computerized manipulation of daily trading volume. One of the main reasons, but not the only one, that I amended my target for the end of this rally this past June to the fall season is the fact that fall normally marks the return of much higher daily trading volume from the traditional summer lulls. Thus, it is a much more difficult proposition for Central Banks and computerized trading programs to manipulate a continued rise in stock markets in the face of higher daily trading volumes.
However, should daily trading volume remain surprisingly low or muted this fall, as is also a possibility, I have no doubt that this market rise can persist for an extended period longer before these false gains are eventually flushed away (but, of course, not before all US financial executives have had ample time to exit their positions quietly). In fact, the development of this false rally was the main topic of my article. The other scenario, one that includes a significant rise in daily trading volumes that trigger the start of a second massive decline in Western stock markets, would not surprise me either. It’s just a matter of observing the signs that forecast the waning efficacy of the fraudulent stimulus of Western markets (or for this matter, the fraudulent stimulus of Chinese stock markets too).
Remember that it is only the timing of this decline that I am uncertain of, but I am very certain that a significant decline of a shocking nature is coming. The last time I issued an adamant warning of a similar nature was on April 23, 2008, when again, the only issue about a market crash was timing, though the US S&P 500 index peaked just 18 business days after I wrote that article and proceeded to fall by more than 50%.
To truly gain more clarity regarding this recent Western stock market rally, consider a hypothetical scenario in which a person was kept ignorant of any action in the US stock markets for the entire previous six months. Instead, imagine that he or she was given the task of predicting US market behavior over the past six month period solely based upon cold, hard US financial and economic data stripped bare of any of the media-slanted headlines that perpetually spin bad economic data as positive or “less bad” than it truly is. Based upon the economic data produced from the last six months, what do you think this person would conclude? That stock markets have soared during this time or that they had crashed?
Of course, factor in the plethora of evidence about numerous PPT interventions to “save” markets during this time, and the strong US stock market rally no longer seems so illogical. But strip away any evidence of free-market manipulation and interference and in the face of true, undistorted economic data, our current market rally would be enormously puzzling. And this point alone should be sufficient to tell you how this rally will end. The inevitable conclusion of this rally isn’t just about the unsustainability of the massive bailout programs implemented by global Central Banks that have engineered this current market rally out of thin air, but its manifestation should trigger an investigation into the outright fraud committed by Wall Street, banking institutions, and Central Banks that has been aided and abetted by financial journalists.
For example, consider the following stories:
Demographers recently reported that Florida, the state known as the “mecca” for wealthy retirees in America, suffered its first population decline last year in more than 60 years, an event that delineates the collapse in wealth of American retirees and an event that is likely to repeat this year.
At the end of this past July, one of the largest ports in America, Long Beach, reported that the 20% year-over-year cargo business decline is among the sharpest since the Great Depression. This is not a trend specific to Long Beach. “It’s phenomenal how much things fell away even since December,” said Paul Bingham, managing director of global trade and transportation for IHS Global Insight, the business research firm that monitors North America’s biggest ports for the National Retail Federation.
As of September 4, 2009, shadowstats.com reported that unemployment in the US is now near 21% and is showing no signs of improving any time soon (when factoring in discouraged workers, part-time workers that can’t find full-time work, unemployed workers that have fallen off the unemployment roll, etc.). In fact, yesterday, Manpower’s Employment Outlook Survey reported that US employers’ hiring plans for the upcoming fourth quarter dropped to the lowest level in the history of its survey which dates back to 1962.
On August 15th, when BB&T (BBT) purchased failed US bank Colonial Bank, it wrote down Colonial Bank’s loans and real estate collateral by 37% and Colonial Bank’s construction loans by 67%. Yes, 67%! The severe markdowns of Colonial Bank’s assets should have set off warnings akin to a five-alarm fire among the financial media, but it did not, for the media increasingly caters to the interests of the elite bankers of this world at the cost of truth and freedom. If there are several things we can deduce from Colonial Bank’s failure, it is the following.
Though the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) refuses to disclose the names of the banks on its “watch list”, it can be safe to assume that a bank just does not go bankrupt overnight and that the process of going bankrupt can be predicted many months in advance by personnel with access to a bank's financial statements and knowledge of its true financial condition. In fact, various newspaper articles reported that Colonial Bank was in negotiations with the FDIC as early as March, 2009, yet not one time, did the FDIC force Colonial Bank to come clean regarding its true financial health before it finally shuttered the bank five months later.
The fact that the FDIC is spotting massive trouble in the American banking system and covering it up should be massively worrisome to Americans. Because revelations regarding the truth about a US bank’s health only seem to occur after it fails, the favored handling of American banks with kid gloves by the FDIC should immediately beg the question, “How many more US banks are legitimately bankrupt today and just operating on fumes?”
Personally, I would not be surprised if sometime within the next six months, a considerably larger US bank failure causes a massive ripple effect of much greater consequence. Banks that are currently struggling with unreported and covered-up deepening problems of loan delinquencies such as Wells Fargo (WFC), may be among the large banks that are candidates for future bankruptcy despite the public categorization of such institutions in the “too-big-to-fail” category. Unfortunately, Wells Fargo, from a political standpoint, does not have the “most favored bank” status of a Citigroup (C) or JP Morgan (JPM), two institutions deserving of bankruptcy but clearly favored by the US Federal Reserve and the US government.
When one considers the fact that all government or state produced economic statistics have been massively distorted towards the side of optimism and away from reality throughout this global financial crisis, one should be even more worried when the occasional sparse negative statistic is reported, for it is likely that these statistics too are misrepresenting the truth. Thus, in the face of all negative news that points to zero foundation and zero economic structural improvements, how has a multi-month stock market rally been able to spread across Asia, Europe and the US? Again, the answer is fraud, and thus should be analyzed through the prism of fraud and not the false prism of “economics”. There is no “economics” behind this latest global stock market rally, only fraud.
For many weeks in August, just four stocks accounted for as much as 40% of composite volume on the NYSE: Citigroup, Bank of America (BAC), Freddie Mac (FRE) and Fannie Mae (FNM). In early 2007, Citigroup, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac accounted for roughly 1% -3% of NYSE volume, a far cry from its recent 35%+ collective weight of the composite NYSE volume. Remember that this huge volume anomaly persisted not just for one day but for weeks on end during August. If Citigroup, Bank of America, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were a pharmaceutical collective that just discovered a cure for cancer and AIDS, then such volume anomalies would make sense. However, such massive trading volumes, as a percent of composite volume for the entire NYSE index, makes zero sense for companies, that for all intents and purposes, are on government bailout lifelines. It makes no sense, that is, unless massive free-market intervention is occurring in an attempt to save these firms.
Again, when viewed through the “fraud prism”, such activity makes complete sense. It is obvious that the “Rise of the Machines” has created markets that are now dominated by computerized high frequency trading programs that can execute trades as quickly as 0.5 milliseconds and have as their sole purpose the creation of short-term market distortions driven by statistical arbitrage that can be used to game the system and cheat their clients. Though this link describes how this scheme works in commodity markets for those that have been following the New York Stock Exchange, the use of high frequency trading programs to game the system at the expense of the retail investor has been glaringly obvious especially in the trading behavior exhibited this past summer.
The ironic part of this huge scam that has merely just re-inflated another massive stock market bubble is that the segment of the public that is so easily angered by government bailouts, billion dollar bonus plans for Wall Street executives and the chicanery of JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs (GS) (and justifiably so), are the very same people that so passively accept the mountain of lies that passes for financial reporting today (inexplicably so). It is ironic that this same collective of people, instead of rejecting this mountain of lies, continues to listen to their financial advisers at global commercial investment firms, even though these advisers are the same group of people that miserably failed to see the crash that started in the spring of 2008, when the factors behind the pullback back then was just as clear as the factors behind the future pullback that will occur in the near future. It is ironic that this same group of people continues to support, participate and fund a system that cares only about using their clients' money to lie, cheat and steal from them when a simple withdrawal of funds from the system is the antidote to ignorance-induced paralysis that will once again create massive crisis-induced losses in the future. Pulling one’s money from one’s current firm and switching to another firm that participates in this web of lies and deceit is not a solution either.
It is ironic that it is the same group of people that so readily accepts the Western media’s correct analysis of China’s stock market as a huge bubble through the lens of Austrian economic principles that simultaneously rejects any similar notion as applicable to US or UK stock markets, and instead, readily embraces heavily flawed and unsound Keynesian economic principles when evaluating Western stock markets. It is ironic that the same group of people that foolishly equates being “American” with blind support of the US stock market (i.e. “being bearish on the US market is un-American!”) is also completely ignorant of both the massive fraud that is perpetrated in US stock markets as well as the tenets of the US Constitution that sound great objections and warnings to the ruinous and foolish monetary policies that are implemented by bankers as their “solution” to our current economic crisis. And finally, the greatest irony of all is that the anger that brews inside those that have been tragically hurt by this crisis can coexist with the failure to recognize that it matters not in America if the President has the last name Clinton, Bush or Obama – that monetary and fiscal agenda inside the US for the last 17 years has not wavered nor changed one iota during this period of time because it was not these men that have been in charge of the economy but the men that manufactured these men’s rise to power and that control the US Federal Reserve and the world’s Central Banks, and thus the global monetary policy.
If one can not see the connection between Presidents, Prime Ministers and the banking families that rule Central Banks, one merely needs to open up a newspaper and follow their lives after they leave government office. It is not just a coincidence that ex-British Prime Minister Tony Blair, after leaving office, took a part-time consulting job with JP Morgan’s Jamie Dimon that reportedly pays him $5 million per year as well as another well-paid consulting position with Zurich Financial Services. In office, Mr. Blair was a consultant to the banking oligarchs in secret; out of office, he is free to be a consultant publicly. And one can be certain that current UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown and US President Barack Obama will be offered very considerable salaries and fees by the world’s top financial oligarchs as thanks for their current and past service to them once they leave office as well (especially Gordon Brown, for selling out his countrymen and selling more than half of England’s bank reserves to ensure that the financial oligarchs could maintain the US dollar as the de-facto international currency for 10 additional more years than it deserved to hold this status).
In the end, what is the most frustrating facet of these huge con games executed by the financial oligarchs is that the group of people that this article is most intended to help is often the group of people that will take most offense to this article and most steadfastly refuse to see the truth. Instead, they will only realize the truth when the economic future unfolds to the blueprint of those of us the media labels as “gloom and doomers” because we base our predictions on reality instead of fantasy and lies. Instead of labeling us as “gloom and doomers”, if the media at large ever conducted an unbiased analysis of the predictions of the “gloom and doomers” for the past 3 years, they would discover that the “gloom and doomers” have been spectacularly accurate in the majority of their calls while the financial demagogues they continually fawn over (that only serve the interests of the bankers) have been spectacularly wrong in the vast majority of their predictions. Yet, those that serve the international banking cartel with glowing and rosy predictions of economic recovery never suffer the negative consequences of being wrong all the time as the mass media all too happily continues to provide the largest public platform and the loudest voices to these people. Perhaps, if it is accurate to label “gloom and doomers” as realists, then one should label the optimists that make their calls based upon perpetrated fraud as banking shills and cogs in the investing machine, for their societal contribution of greatest significance is an opiate cocktail for the masses that is a mixture of deceit and lies mixed with unbridled optimism.
As they often say that life imitates art, I close my article today with a speech from the film “V for Vendetta” that is frighteningly relevant if you listen to this speech with a critical ear and replace the references to the war on terror in this speech with the current war the bankster fraudsters are committing against the people. A sound money backed by precious metals, can be the people’s liberation from this war. Anything that falls short of such a solution will be just another scam in an already long line of scams, of a solution sold to the masses, that in reality, is no solution at all.
While all manner of attention remains transfixed inside the United States on a remedy and recovery of its bank sector, once again Americans make dangerous assumptions. They tend to assume that the US Federal Reserve near 0% interest rates, Quantitative Easing (aka exploding Printing Pre$$ output), endless liquidity facilities (e.g. TALF), TARP funds (aka Wall Street slush fund), Stress Tests (rigged), bank stock sales (aided by FASB accounting fraud), bank carry trades (exploiting low short-term & higher long-term rates), and the passage of time can revive the US banking industry. They tend domestically to overlook the gradually worsening insolvency condition. Banks are bracing for a new wave of commercial mortgage losses, of prime Option ARMortgage losses, and credit card losses. The delinquency rate of prime Option ARMs is now higher than subprime home loans!!
Harken back to the summer 2007 when the hack USFed Chairman Bernanke called the bank crisis merely a subprime problem with upper limit potential for $200 billion in bank losses, and no risk of spilling over to the real USEconomy, and surely not the cause of any recession. Bernanke has understood next to nothing in advance, all forecasts hopelessly wrong, but is a great manager of the Printing Pre$$ Operation. So he is loved. This half blind man now is due for reappointment to USFed Chairman post, his past failure the qualifications for future service. The same is true of Treasury Secy Geithner, whose failure at the New York Fed was his qualification for current service. The approval of Bernanke is sure to cause a major rift with the Chinese credit masters. Their wishes and warnings have been ignored. Their vengeance is next.
The American perspective is almost always very limited in scope, due to chronic arrogance and delusions of grandeur. Their convenient parochial view tends to focus almost entirely within the United States, its bank leadership, its USFed monetary flexibility, its Wall Street syndicate influence, its federal tax latitude, its bank reserves management, and more. THE REAL THREAT TO US BANKS COMES FROM ENEMIES AT THE GATES, FOREIGN CREDITORS. The dangerous assumption made is that foreign creditors will remain firm and loyal. The arrogance extends from the continued belief that they have no choice, even if the trillion$ frauds on Wall Street occurred, even though such frauds were never prosecuted.
The real threat comes from foreign creditors who must contend with challenges greater than ever experienced, such as:
Shrinking or vanished trade surpluses during global slowdown
Their own financial systems in tatters (banks, stock & bonds, currencies)
Vast regional construction booms gone bust (e.g. Dubai)
Numerous nationwide housing bubbles gone bust
Gathering storm from the need to liquidate insolvent banks
Reserves erosion due to over-weight in US$-based bonds
Systemic problems extended from a generation of USDollar reliance.
UAE & CHINA
Take just two important examples, the Persian Gulf and China. Other regions bloated with USTreasurys exist, like Europe and Russia, eager to unload them in what soon could become a torrent. The regional construction boom in the Arab world has an epicenter in Dubai. Unfortunately, it has gone bust, and loudly so. If not for the prompt aid by Abu Dhabi bankers, a vast liquidation of Dubai would have embarrassed them in front of the world. Instead, a new threat comes. The Abu Dhabi rescue next must contend with an indigestion problem, as USTreasurys and likely other US$-based bonds are flooding their banking system. They might own a considerable batch of US bank stocks, soon to be dumped. Ambition led to a whiff of hubris, as fantastic architectural design led to large scope, seen in the skyscrapers and bridges. Not shown are the spectacular communities designed as trees with branches and leaf petals, many empty, busted, and without investment income. But they overdid it, and now must deal with corporate failures and liquidation challenges. But the Persian Gulf bank failures represent the clear and present threat. The outsized projects have yielded to outsized rescues and next outsized indigestion to handle the funds in ways so as to avoid a string of national bank failures. Vast liquidations come, word comes from contacts.
A bank panic in the Persian Gulf could ensue very soon, a back door threat. It would clearly have origins in the United Arab Emirates, spread to the entire Persian Gulf like to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and elsewhere. From this global toehold, the bank panic could then spread to London, New York, and points in Europe. The UAE bankers must manage their situation. They are loaded to the gills with USTreasurys, the main currency used in the liquidations and rescues local to the UAE. They also have pet stock accounts in big US banks. As further liquidations occur, avoidance of bank failures seems a remote prospect. Watch the enemies at the gates, outside looking in, in urgent need of dumping USTreasury Bonds and other US$-denominated securities.
China must contend with some unique problems. From 2000 to 2005, they insisted on a rigid currency structure of the Yuan pegged firmly to the USDollar. In doing so, they became the 51st state, yoked firmly to the USEconomy and subject completely to the USFed monetary policy. Yet they had no voting rights on USDollar policy. Ironically, now they do as chief creditor nation. Nobody thought twice about accumulation of Chinese debt to replace US income. It was the insane movement known as the ‘Low Cost Solution’ at the time, a policy that the great majority accepted as the next chapter of progress in the Globalization movement, a policy based in corporate abandonment of US shores. Some, like the Jackass and other analysts on some of these gold journal websites, gave loud warning of a time bomb in construction certain to explode down the road. We are now down the road, reaping the bitter rotten harvest of the latest Economic Myth chapter.
China is experiencing a 40%+ decline in export trade. They have a mammoth $550+ billion stimulus plan that might have run its course. They have banks that are failing on a low level. Their stimulus might have found its way as much to their Shanghai stock market as to bank lending. Their industrial expansion is primarily linked to global trade and the export markets. As much as they would like to generate internal demand, it cannot prevent over 1000 industrial plants from shutdown, already done. More are to come. They respond with Yuan-based swap facilities in numerous foreign lands, but that can only accomplish so much in export markets. China is actively attempting to diversify its reserves. The reality (not a joke) is that they are trying to cobble together 2000 different $1 billion deals to secure hard assets in exchange for USTreasury Bonds, enough to dump their $2000 billion US$-based hoard at risk. They are acquiring stakes in foreign mining firms, stakes in mining projects, and entire properties. They are cutting fewer but larger energy deals, which include development of infrastructure and communities. The inescapable fact of life is that China has embarked on an USTreasury dumping initiative. They are even acquiring industrial property in Europe, unloading up to $10 billion per month in USTBonds. This aids the Euro Central Bank, stuck with too much bad debt from its southern member nations. They are dealing with the impaired debt from PIGS nations by means of vast commercial and industrial property sales. Discounts are being seen for both the USDollar and British Pound Sterling.
Image via WikipediaJim Willie 
