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Acronym
TPTB - Definition by AcronymFinder
TPTB The Powers That Be
The jews have long claimed that they are the chosen people, hence, chosenites.Comment
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The CBs never did have a clue
The CBs have pumped liquidity into the upper loop for many years. Essentially, the lower loop can get by with just the money needed to facilitate production & consumption. All the extra money is JUST for the speculators. They buy up everything on a slim margin and re-sell it to the eventual end consumer. When our aggregate wages crashed, there just wasn't enough money circulating to keep all the speculators in business.
The CBs pumped in money to uphold the prices/values of everything that the lower loop of consumers buys. Money was pumped into everything EXCEPT wages. As consumption fell, the corporatocracy cut wages to maintain their profit margins. This lowered aggregate consumption even more.
Every time that the credit airplane threatens to fall out of the sky, the CB pumps in more liquidity. The States are trying to inflate away the pain of repaying debt. They (the Bozos) believed that monetary inflation would translate into system-wide inflation. Price inflation is running about 10%,,, depending on what you are paying for. The 95% of the lower loop take their diminishing paycheck (or welfare) and just buy essentials. The clowns at the FED never imagined that WAGE inflation was a necessary component of general inflation.
The stupefied PHDs at the FED are dumbfounded that they can't create general inflation in spite of the fact that the CBs have pumped in $100 trillion.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...nflation-calls
"Reflationists argue that trade is improving with the global economy and PPI pressures will keep building. With all the liquidity sloshing around after years of central bank support, it’s just a matter of time until wages and consumer prices head north as well, they say. Problem is, the latest data from around the world just aren’t following that script."
When did the feces-for-brains get the idea that wages would go up at the same time that automation was making huge inroads,,, at the same time, that Chinese were willing to work for $30 a month??
“With China’s construction engine likely to ease back over the coming months, the global reflation risks running out of runway.”
We're rattling sabers at China at the same time that the West depends on Chinese liquidity to keep things going.
6/06 How China’s biggest bank became Wall Street’s go-to shadow lender – Bloomberg What could possibly go wrong?
OK, so the FED created lots of debt money to keep the credit airplane aloft. They are slowly coming to the realization that the lower loop will never have the money to pay the FED. The credit airplane MUST have endless fresh money to make up for our endlessly lower wages. The other factor that affects aggregate American wages; Rense,The Real Unemployment Number - 102 Million
The FED assigns a number to their balance sheet. Who knows how accurate it is. Who knows how much was pumped in by the ESF and PPT? They claim that they are at $ 4 1/2 trillion. The FED bought up Treasuries because nobody else wanted them. They claim that various other States bought treasuries but, there is no reason to believe them. So, the FED is holding all these Treasury bonds and rolling them over. The FED wants to reduce their balance sheet and sell off the bonds rather than rolling them over.
In a general sense, the FED sells a bond and the buyer pays cash which diminishes the money supply.
"Cornerstone MacroLLC in Washington, expects the first cap to land at $10 billion, rising by $10 billion every three months before settling after 15 months at a steady state of $60 billion."
They expect to shrink the balance sheet by about $2 trillion.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...srnd=157390612
"steady state of $60 billion" Coincidentally $60 billion is how much Draghi is pumping into the Euro bond market to keep it from collapsing.
Each U.S. president has doubled the debt to keep the debt airplane flying. Can the FED shrink it's balance sheet at the same time that U.S. GOV needs ever-more money? This will come into focus when the debt-ceiling fight gets heated up.
6/06 Democrats toy with some debt limit hostage-taking of their own – NY Mag I'm sure that this will work out well when the time comes.
The CBs have bailed out the bond and stock markets but, they can't bail out everybody in trouble.
Your local drug pusher is doing what he does best,,,, creating addicts for profit, https://jonrappoport.wordpress.com/2...d-in-one-year/
Spanish banks have a big problem, Deposit Bail In Risk as Spanish Bank?s Stocks Crash - GoldCore Gold Bullion Dealer
Italian banks will crash the moment that Draghi cuts back on bond buying.Comment
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A Nobel prize winning economist, former chief economist and senior vice president of the World Bank, and chairman of the President’s council of economic advisers (Joseph Stiglitz) says that the International Monetary Fund and World Bank loan money to third world countries as a way to force them to open up their markets and resources for looting by the West.
Do central banks do something similar?
Central Banks Are Trojan Horses, Looting Their Host Nations
Are chosenites TPTB?Originally posted by Danny B View Post
AlComment
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Those you dare not criticise
You're asking a question that has a long answer. The owners and controllers of the FED are/have been almost entirely jewish.
The Federal Reserve - Zionist Jewish Private Bankers
The average jew is just like any other average person in the same culture. Everybody just wants to get along and be left alone. Yes, they claim that they are the chosen people. This claim is fairly common in many cultures.
What sets a portion of the jews apart is; the constant scheming and grabs for power. Even the Caesars complained about the scheming jews. They have been kicked out of thousands of cities, states regions, etc. There are always some of them who try to take over everything. The Eastern Roman Empire, head quartered in Constantinople did not allow jews to hold office, teach, or work in finance. That empire lasted for 1100 years until conquered by the Turkic invaders.
The big problem for the jews is that; their successes have attracted the zionists. Decades ago, Henry Ford wrote about the "international jews",,, those who have no roots and plunder anything they encounter.
http://www.whitehonor.com/InternationalJew.pdf
Ford distinguished the international jews from the average jew.
Theodor Herzyl is the spiritual father of modern day Israel. Here is what he dreamed of;
"I truly believe that even after we possess our land, Zionism will not
cease to be an ideal. For Zionism includes not only the yearning for a
plot of promised land legally acquired for our weary people, but also the
yearning for ethical and spiritual fulfillment"
Sadly, the jews got themselves real estate in a BAD neighborhood. They didn't acquire it legally. Ethical and spiritual fulfilment completely eludes them.
Herzyl's dream has turned into a nightmare. Israel is just a garrison surrounded with very high walls.
To secure independence, the fledgling state formed terror gangs to go around blowing up anything and everything. Their crowning achievement was when Rahm Emanuel's father and a group blew up the King David hotel and killed many of the British command. The British declared Palestine to be ungovernable. Without the British exercising some control, the terror gangs were free to engage in ethnic cleansing. The most infamous incident was at Der Yassim.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deir_Yassin_massacre
The terror gangs went house to house killing mostly women and children because the men were NOT present. This action and many others like it set the pattern for subsequent genocide.
Here are some modern-day headlines;
Deir Yassin Massacre Myth Resurfaced - Israel Today | Israel News
Book Review: The Myth of the Deir Yassin Massacre - Israel National ...
Historian Uri Milstein Debunks the Myths of Deir Yassin
A Mythical Massacre: Deir Yassin - Pre-Trib Research Center -
The "fighters" (including Menachin Begin) stacked up the bodies of the dead women and children for photo-ops.
The jews are starting to catch on that judaism has been hijacked by zionism,
Judaism is not Zionism
https://electronicintifada.net/conte...-zionism/12859
The current claim is that Ashkenazi jews are responsible for all the excesses of warring and power-mongering. I haven't read deeply into this.
The idea of international pillaging isn't solely the province of jews and/or international jews.... Though George Soros definitely gives them a bad name. John Perkins wrote about the international jackals. I imagine that there are all sorts of people besides jews that will pillage without ANY qualms.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confes...onomic_Hit_Man
The book has been updated to claim that the international jackals have now set their sights on the biggest prise of all, America.
http://www.yesmagazine.org/new-econo...cracy-20160318
The jews have been kicked out of MANY places. What about the Amish, the Menonites, The Jains, the Buddhists? Hopefully, the jews will throw off the yoke of zionism and be forego the dream of world conquest.
I've gone way off-topic but, it is background for our economic situation.Comment
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I found a good article that I want to excerpt generously.
"Total U.S. household debt was $12.73 trillion at the end of the first quarter of 2017, up $473 billion from a year ago"
So, we borrowed a 1/2 $trillion to make ends meet.
6/07 Australians curb spending as household debt balloons – Reuters
6/07 UK retail sales decline as households keep a lid on spending – Bloomberg
6/06 Trump’s America facing $13trln consumer debt hangover – Bloomberg
This is a PLASTIC house of cards.
"While population rose about 7% between 2007 and 2014, wages for most people have dropped about 5% during that time." This calls for more plastic.
"Financial stocks have collapsed." Let them eat plastic !
"Pending home sales also just tanked"
"With 935,758 unsold GM units collecting dust in dealer lots, this was the highest inventory number in 9.5 years, the highest since Nov. 2007, and, as Bunkley reminds us, “one month before the recession officially began.”
"That was April inventory. May’s inventory, just in, rose by another 30,000 vehicles. "
"The retail apocalypse grows: Not even halfway through 2017, closures of retail stores have doubled last year’s closures as of this time and already exceed the last peak in closures during the crash of 2008."
"The CAPE just hit thirty, matching the rarified atmosphere of stock prices when the 1929 crash happened! The only time stocks have ever been more overpriced was just before the dot-com crash." Just coincidence.
"the official US unemployment rate is now exactly at the nadir it has reached right before almost every recession the US has ever experienced:" coincidence
"famous hedge fund managers has said the Australian stock market and housing market are so insane he’s returning all of his investors’ money as there are no safe bets.)" Bet on beer!
"Eventually, the falling fundamentals will overwhelm the machines. They will click their last ratchet upward. When they do, I highly suspect these bots that have been designed by programmers who never knew anything but a bull market during their short careers will outbid each other all the way to the bottom unless some human wisely yanks the IT cord on New York Stock Exchange to stop the slaughter.
Even in that case, restarting the stock market the next day will be problematic with all the bots on line and ready to charge downhill in mutual electronic bewilderment."
"Once the Fed’s fake recovery fails, even as it is now crumbling all around us, the true depth of the Great Recession will become known and felt by all … except the 1%. The Fed is knocking the props out from under their own “recovery,”
Summer Storm Keeps Building as Second Dip of Great Recession Approaches | Zero Hedge
The FED is fighting a losing game. They can bail out some sectors but, NOT ALL. The consumer is up to her eyeballs in debt and living day-to-day on plastic.
"This morning’s big news is the Chinese announcement they would they would buy more US Treasuries as the Yuan stabilizes. From Bloomberg:
"China is prepared to increase its holdings of U.S. Treasuries under the right circumstances,"
The MSM STILL Won't Report This Huge Story
Both US Carriers Ordered OUT Of The Sea Of Japan
Trump Blinks - Pentagon Orders US Naval Armada Away
The Chinese cough up money,,, the navy turns around.
Albert Edwards writes about the financial "ice age".
"Investors Should Be Petrified" Of The Coming Ice Age: Here Are Albert Edwards' Scariest Charts | Zero Hedge
Other writers show good cause to believe that the fall in the numbers of 16---64 year old consumers is responsible for the contraction in the economy. Other writers show good cause to believe that the rising price of energy is responsible for the contraction in the economy. Time will tell.
"Only 8% of all money on planet earth is physical the rest consists of virtual accounting units. What we have for money today is merely a ‘accounting unit’. We have no real ‘thing’ as our money. Our accounting unit is virtual and lives within cyberspace. "
"This virtual unit is technically illegal as it has not been adjudicated within our American court system as constitutional legal tender. This unit is also unconstitutional as our Congress has not approved a VIRTUAL dollar ($1.00) for our economy. Our House Banking Committee has not approved virtual money and our Senate Banking Committee has not approved virtual money."
Our Money System Is Pure Fantasy! Here's Why - munKNEE dot.com
This is going to become very interesting in the coming default cascade.
Comment
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Which way will the FED go? Socialism, or muddle through
Most of the big-name investors claim that we will soon see a crash of the stock market; Barrage Of Billionaire Bears Predict Doom And Gloom, Refuse To Sell | Zero Hedge
Buffet has gone to cash. Many investors believe that the CB will pump up the stock market forever. I really have no idea. The FED is owned by jewish European bankers. Will they keep the party going? Will they crash the system to usher in one-world socialism? The jews have always endorsed and pushed socialism. Soros is doing his best to bring the blessings of socialism to the whole world.
Having a very good memory of the failures of socialism and communism, the East will NEVER endorse classical socialism. China is trying to take the best elements of State control and combine them with the best elements of free markets. We'll see.
If the East refuses to follow the enlightened path, there is no chance of world socialism. The Cloward-Piven "strategy" devised by the Chicago school of socialism calls for; crash the whole GOV by insatiable social-support demands. Illinois is well on it's way to a total crash. Marvellous socialism is supposed to rise up out of the ashes.
If the Western CBs do indeed plan to crash it all down to bring one-world GOV, they will find one-world GOV minus most of the world.
Like Chicago, they will find their credit cut off. So, will the CBs bring/allow a crash knowing that it will bring just a crash and NOT a perfect utopia OR, will they try to muddle through?
America the beautiful is now a third-world State by many measures, https://theintellectualist.co/study-...tion-citizens/
What happens when the cascade of default hits? How low will it go?
It is speculated that the PPT is pumping $200 billion a month into the stock market. "They" are hoping for a major trickle down effect. The default rate is picking up fast. How long can the CB pump money into the head while the body dies? The defaults are starting to take out the banks.
6/07 Santander buys struggling Spanish bank Popular for €1 – Telegraph
India is starting to take notice of the effects of automation;
Govt abandons goal of training 500 million people in new skills by 2022 - Livemint
Their GOV is in a fight with the Central bank, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...ia-to-cut-rate
Trump is soon to be in a fight with the FED. They plan to tighten. They need to make up for lost time of "no tightening" under obummer. Trump has lost most of his battles because nobody in the legislature is supporting him. The money battles in July will be the biggest and worst.Comment
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Solar and wind killing carbon and nuke
" Following rapid growth across the industry in 2016, the United States solar market added 2,044 megawatts of new capacity in the first quarter of 2017.
As installations grow, prices continue to fall to new lows, with utility-scale system prices dropping below the $1 per watt barrier for the first time,"
https://www.greentechmedia.com/artic...-pv-in-q1-2017
The death of oil is being much hyped.
https://medium.com/@sethmiller_59231...e-38b843bd4fe0
This reminds me of the time when word processors came into vogue. There were many predictions that the paper business would go out of business.
The oil industry is going to be forced to default eventually. This will wreck the financial industry that is so heavily invested in oil. The oil industry has a LOT of sunk costs that are not going to be valuable any more. This is even more true of the nuke industry.
6/08 Solar energy boom brings Indian manufacturers to financial collapse – Live Mint Iran and Russia are the low-cost oil producers. The solar panel industry is fleeing India because of the competition from China. The oil industry will do the same and ONLY flow to the low-cost producer.
Venezuela and Saudi can pump oil cheaply but, their enormous bureaucracy and benefits demand that they sell high.
The coal industry gives you a preview of what is coming for oil and nuke, Coal Mine Valued At $630 Million In 2011 Just Sold For One Dollar
Granted, oil is still a very important raw material.
Solar has grown beyond ALL expectations. "The “solar singularity” is the point where solar becomes so cheap in a majority of countries around the world that it is established as the default new power source." "Global solar demand rose a massive 45 percent to 74 gigawatts in 2016"
"wind power sector is that offshore wind power prices have dropped by almost half in the last few years"
https://www.greentechmedia.com/artic...energy-storage
The article has a lot to say about the falling cost of storage of electricity also.Comment
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Household debt
Student debt, "When Obama left office, they had one set of default figures, and subsequent to his departure another set were introduced and the figures were significantly higher. What is the real default rate? It’s likely that half of the loans are highly delinquent over 60 days or defaulted."
"what was interesting about their (Japan)bubble and real estate is that real estate prices became wildly inflated and they were issuing 100 year mortgages. If the person borrowing money died, his wife could inherit the mortgage and when she died the children would inherit. "
Financial Repression Authority
Household net worth, Household Net Worth Hits A Record $95 Trillion... There Is Just One Catch | Zero Hedge
"The share of families in debt (those whose total debt exceeded their total assets) remained almost unchanged between 1989 and 2007 and then increased by 50 percent between 2007 and 2013."
"And there is your recovery: the wealthy have never been wealthier, while half of America, some 50% of households, now own just 1% of the country's wealth, down from 3% in 1989, while America's poor have never been more in debt."
"The above is particularly topical at a time when either party is trying to take credit for the US recovery. Here, while previously Democrats, and now Republicans tout the US "income recovery" they may have forgotten about half of America,"
"What does it mean for the global economy to be “broken”? It means that its gains are going to the top. “Bad” growth. A rich man parks his money in a hedge fund. That creates quite literally nothing. A poor man educates his kids, creating jobs, trust, human capital, more intelligent citizens, and so on. So economies grind to a halt when gains flow only to the top. While “countries” are “getting richer”, that is a statistical abstraction. It’s truer to say that the rich within countries are getting richer faster than the poor, and so globally the eonomy is grinding to a halt."
https://medium.com/bad-words/hydra-c92a3e6c3a51
Much of the article is bunk.
Steve Keen, “Expenditure is what causes income,” he said. “Reducing expenditure also reduces income.”
“Expenditure is what causes income,” he said. “Reducing expenditure also reduces income.”
“Individuals can save (without a significant effect on national income), but if you extrapolate that to the whole economy, you are going to make a huge error.”
Similarly, the economist says the idea that the government can save by paying down the national debt is misleading.
“Believing that government saving will increase employment or growth is like believing the Earth sits at the centre of the universe”, he says.
All it does is destroy spending which would otherwise have created private sector incomes.
“If you don’t understand where income comes from, then it means you don’t understand economics, or the economy.”
"Professor Stephanie Kelton, economic advisor to Bernie Sanders and former Chief Economist of the US Senate Budget Committee says treating Federal Government as if it has to abide by the same rules as states and cities, let alone a household budget, demonstrates “a fundamental misunderstanding of the way currencies work”.
https://renegadeinc.com/cost-getting-wrong/
Keen and a few others argue for GOV to supply the money that the producing economy needs. The current, common arrangement is to supply money that the speculators need.
GOV created coco bonds To soften the crash of any bank. The Spanish bank crashed with blinding speed and the bonds never came into play. This same speed can be expected when the default cascade kicks off.
https://www.breakingviews.com/consid...drawing-board/
We've greatly surpassed the 2007 bubble. We're in the home stretch to surpass the 2000 bubble.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-0...e-closing-2000
So, if FED GOV does not issue debt-free money, the meltdown will continue to get worse. If FED GOV does issue debt-free money, the bankers will be out of business,,, to a great degree.
You can bet that congress will blow the whole system.Comment
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Britain and the election
The free market is millions and billions of people acting in their own best interests. Communism requires that the State control every facet of production and consumption instead of the individual. Armstrong makes the claim that; "the market is never wrong". Here is an interesting article on the attempts of Corbyn.
"Corbyn is a full blown neo-Marxist who would love to convert Britain to a modern version of Communism. Instead of guaranteed minimum wages, he wants maximum wage limits"
"This election illustrated the entire problem I have been warning about. We are facing a generational battle. Ironically, the youth do not quite realize that voting Labour was a vote for the very neo-Marxist policies that have created the crisis we have in pensions going forward. It has been this type of promising manna from heaven with assurances to make the rich pay for it. This is exactly the same policies of Hollande in France, which proved so disastrous"
"Since the computer has been warning that Sterling can fall back to the 1985 low at $1.03, it was hard to reconcile this with the polls calling for a major landslide for the Conservatives. This is Corbyn’s chance for the big time and you can expect he is going to really muddy the waters because he truly believes in Marx."
"The problem is the big numbers he hears that CEOs make is stock options typically more so than salary. Nevertheless, in his mind if everyone is reduced to the same wage, somehow that will solve everything. Nobody should earn more than he thinks is appropriate. "
"His policies would be the final straw that ends Britain as any type of financial capital whatsoever. With Corbyn in Britain and the EU insanity on the Continent who wants to outlaw short-selling, the pound will not survive even to be a hedge against the Euro."
"The real question is somehow the market is always correct and forecasts the future with extreme precision."
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/i...ng-parliament/
"What the youth have done looks very well like fulfilling what our computer has been projecting – the fall of the British pound long-term."
So, the Pound is toast. What about the Euro?
"ECB stops buying since it owns 40% of Eurozone sovereign debt, and (3) a compromise with Germany who is against surrendering the power to issue debt to Brussels. The policies of Merkel have been to maintain the single currency at all costs, but there will be no single debt."
"The central bank’s announcement kept important wording that its bond-buying stimulus program could be stepped up if the economic outlook worsens. This is not very likely, it is simply a statement of denial that the ECB is trapped and in trouble. The entire policy has utterly FAILED to stimulate the economy and has only kept governments on life-support. When the plug is pulled, will their heart stop? That all depends upon finding buyers of government debt to (1) take up the slack that the ECB was buying 40% of all debt and a greater proportion of new debt. Remove the biggest bidder, and you end up with a NO BID crisis."
NO ONE besides the Central Bank will buy GOV debt. In a general sense, sovereign debt was created to support socialism. The Eurozone is going to get a hard lesson that; you can't borrow money to support socialism. You can print it debt-free but, you can't borrow it.
In America, the CB created money to support wars,,, and then, the money was cycled through the economy to support socialism.
China is creating debt-free (essentially) money to support productivity. Will the Eurozone follow their lead when push comes to shove? When all confidence is lost in the sovereign bond market, will the ECB just print up what is needed? I suspect that is a "bridge too far".Comment
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Will the FED bring it all down OR not?
"central banks are now injecting a record $300 billion in liquidity per month, above the $200 billion which Deutsche Bank recently warned is a "red-line" indicator for risk assets."
"Central Banks Have Bought A Record $1.5 Trillion In Assets In 2017"
"Today BofA's Michael Hartnett provides an update on this number: he writes that central bank balance sheets have now grown to a record $15.1 trillion, up from $14.6 trillion in late April"
"Nothing Else Matters": Central Banks Have Bought A Record $1.5 Trillion In Assets In 2017 | Zero Hedge
So, how long can / will they keep this up? What would stop it,,, what could stop it?
The cash has moves into stocks, http://realinvestmentadvice.com/wp-c...els-060617.png
"This is the age old excuse why the current “bull market” rally is set to continue into the indefinite future."
"The higher the ratio, the more comfortable investors have become holding stocks; the lower the ratio, the more uncertainty there is in the market. Currently, with the ratio at the highest level on record there is little fear of holding stocks."
6/09 VIX crashes back to 24 year lows – Zero Hedge There is NO volatility because the CBs buy up everything in sight to uphold prices.
https://realinvestmentadvice.com/qt-liquidity-drain/
Artificial support like this can NEVER be withdrawn.
The CBs MUST maintain value but, can do nothing for growth, http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/defau...609_EOD4_0.jpg
The FANG stocks are the poster child for the economic recovery. EVERYBODY piled in. There are no returns for almost all of the S&P 500. Now, the FANGS are going down. http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/defau...70609_EOD3.jpg
6/09 Nasdaq drops 2% as tech stocks tank – CNBC
The CB can't do much for the consumer, 6/09 Credit card defaults surge most since financial crisis – Zero Hedge
The FED ended QE and everything fell. They can never end QE but, now, they are talking about shrinking their balance sheet.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-0...e-dismal-chart
6/08 ECB drops guidance on rate cuts in step toward stimulus exit – Bloomberg
6/08 Mario Draghi predicts faster growth, lower inflation – Guardian
They are ALL on drugs.
NOBODY can afford to cut off stimulus now.
6/09 Australian rooftop solar installs hit 93MW in May – Renew Economy
Wait, wait! What about all the oil they found around Coober Pedy?
6/08 TaaS, an illusion wrapped in a mirage inside a fantasy – Seeking Alpha
"an illusion wrapped in a mirage inside a fantasy " That could apply to a LOT of things today.
So, there is no volatility, NO fear. The CBs will pump in liquidity forever. Why are the FANGS falling?
Alex Jones predicts that the FED will bring it all down to stop Trump.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzZzJuj2wq4&t=306sComment
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The poison slowly spreads through the system
I found an excellent article on cryptocurrencies. Purportedly, Bitcoin has value because the number than can be mined is strictly limited.
BUT, "But let's not forget that there are over 700 cryptocurrencies, digital coins, and altcoins in existence today and there will be over 1,000 by the end of the year, so this argument (limited supply)will not hold in the test of time for the cryptocurrency ecosystem itself."
Cryptocurrencies: Intrinsic Value Boil Down
Jim Rogers, “Well, it’s interesting because these things always start where we’re not looking. In 2007, Iceland went broke.
People said, ‘Iceland? Is that a country? They have a market?’ And then Ireland went broke. And then Bear Stearns went broke. And Lehman Brothers went broke. They spiral like that.
Always happens where we’re not looking. I don’t know. It could be an American pension plan that goes broke and many of them are broke, as you know. It could be some country we’re not watching. It could be all sorts of things. It could be war. Unlikely to be war but it’s going to be something. ”
Jim Rogers Warns Next Crisis Will Be "Biggest In My Lifetime" | Zero Hedge
"Goldman Sachs tried to calculate China’s real debt load last year, and came up with 250% of GDP. And as Bloomberg reported in April, a rash of bankruptcies are unearthing hidden debt and suggesting that the true debt load in China’s corporate sector is much higher than previously believed.
What can be done once the crisis arrives? The Fed, with interest rates near zero and its balance sheet still swollen at $4.5 trillion, will probably be powerless to mitigate the fallout from the coming crisis, Rogers said"
"Springing forth from the financial turmoil, the political turmoil that ensues could topple governments, or lead to the demise of other venerated institutions, be they investment banks or universities."
“You’re going to see institutions that have been around for a long time - Lehman Brothers had been around over 150 years. Gone. Not even a memory for most people. You’re going to see a lot more of that next around, whether it’s museums or hospitals or universities or financial firms.”
"An inverted yield curve, which has correctly predicted the last seven recessions going back to the late 1960's, occurs when short-term interest rates yield more than longer-term rates. "
"And when asset bubbles are starved of that monetary fuel they burst. The severity of the recession depends on the intensity of the asset bubbles in existence prior to the inversion."
"The inversion and subsequent recession that began in the year 2000 caused NASDAQ stocks to plummet 80%. The next inversion engendered the Great Recession in which the S&P 500 dropped 50% "
"the yield curve should invert around the end of 2017. Market chaos and another brutal recession should soon follow."
http://www.24hgold.com/english/news-...ael+Pento&mk=1
"There will be unprecedented volatility between inflation and deflation cycles in the future due to these factors." http://i2.wp.com/armstrongeconomics....7/dfinf-cl.jpg
6/10 Illinois bonds fall as budget impasse pushes rating toward junk – Bloomberg When they fall to junk, all the funds will have to sell off Illinois bonds. Their charter does not allow them to invest in junk bonds. What does that imply for other States?
"The basic idea is that Schiff will be proven right in the end. Eventually a financial crisis in the US will see capital flee elsewhere. You see, his basic premise is correct. The US is in financial trouble for all sorts of reasons. But it remains the world’s financial safe haven. Any American crisis still leads to a surging dollar. For now."
"Greek GDP is around US$200 billion. The US state of Illinois is about four times the size. Their governments are both in dire financial straits for the same reason, but we only hear about Greece. I think Illinois will prove far more important to you in the end."
"Illinois hasn’t had a budget for two years. The governor of the state declared it to be a banana republic thanks to its government’s complete lack of credibility. Debt ratings agencies have downgraded Illinois bonds eight times in recent years. The state’s treasury is refusing to pay its basic bills, with the unpaid amount over US$14 billion."
"But Illinois’ debt-to-GDP ratio is below 20%. So what’s the problem? " " The state owes impossible amounts to former and future employees. But these aren’t counted in the official debt statistics."
"And there are states in even worse positions than Illinois. Three in particular – Massachusetts, Connecticut and New Jersey." "According to the Government Accountability Office, state tax revenue as a per cent of GDP won’t be back at 2007 levels until 2047!"
"In aggregate, the 564 state and local systems in the United States covered in this study reported $1.191 trillion in unfunded pension liabilities (net pension liabilities) under GASB 67 in FY 2014. This reflects total pension liabilities of $4.798 trillion"
"what is really going on is that the governments create a binding contract with their employees to loot – at some point in the future – the general taxation funds to cover the shortfalls on these contracts. How much looting is on the pensions liabilities? Take the unfunded liability estimate of $4.738 trillion. And consider that in 2014, total revenues collected by state and local governments stood at $1.487 trillion. Pensions deficits alone amount to 3.2 times the [governments’] income."
https://www.capitalandconflict.com/e...ces-in-the-us/
A bit more info on Illinois. "A federal judge has now intervened ordering the Comptroller to now prioritize who it pays. This is turning into the clash of titans – the epic battle between medical expenses that constantly rise regardless of the business cycle and state employees demanding pensions."
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/w...ncial-trouble/
"Banco Popular’s senior bond holders get their money back while shareholders and junior bonds get wiped out.
But it’s all a practice run for the main event – rescuing Italy’s banking system. The toxic real estate loans there dwarf Spain’s."
"shareholders and junior bonds get wiped out."
Every time that they pull something like this, other banking shareholders dump their shares. Then, the bank runs low on capital and,,,,, crashes for lack of liquidity.
"Illinois bonds fall as budget impasse pushes rating toward junk" So, what happens when the upcoming debt and budget battle goes to stalemate?Comment
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FED funds rate,, june 14 meeting... reinstatement of Glass-Steagall
ALL governments eventually default. Loaning money to the U.S. federal government is considered risk-free. Since it is risk-free, all other investments must reference off of the FED funds rate. Lowering the rate essentially pumps money into the economy. When the BRICs burst on the scene and killed out manufacturing base, Greenspan responded by lowering the rates to make up the difference ,,, the lack of money in the lower loop.
The lower loop continues to fall in discretionary spending. The consuming population continues to fall. Raising the prime rate is essentially deflationary because it removes "money" from circulating in the economy and attracts it to GOV bonds. The FED is scared witless (they are generally witless anyway) of deflation. Volker raised the rates to <21%> to combat inflation.
The FED lowers the prime rate to goose the economy. The economy has been "goosed' for several years now. Cheap money does NOT make up for lost jobs and lost wages.
The FED desperately wants to raise rates so the that,,, they can lower them in the next crash. Problem is; the last crash never ended. It just got put on "hold" by the money pumping.
June 14 is the next FED meeting. They are looking to raise rates. If they raise rates, this attracts capital from all over the world. The dollar goes up, This kills our exports AND screws every country that has dollar-denominated debt to repay. The U.S gets a cold and the rest of the world gets diarrhoea.
It also makes it more expensive for GOV to service sovereign debt. This puts Trump at loggerheads with the FED.
The FED can raise the prime rate but, this does not mean that the banks will raise rates. There has to be a demand for credit.
https://mises.org/library/why-fed-ca...at-it-wants-do
Here is payroll growth vs the FED funds rate; https://static.seekingalpha.com/uplo...-738037794.jpg
They can't effectively raise the cost of money when people are losing their jobs and income. https://seekingalpha.com/article/407...fed-funds-rate
"Next Wednesday, the Fed will likely press forward on its mission to raise rates and cut its balance sheet. But, assuming it makes this move (as widely expected), it will be the first time in 80 years it has pursued this kind of policy amidst such tumultuous economic conditions."
The Federal Reserve Hasn?t Enacted This Policy in 80 Years
The FED MUST increase the money supply by about 2% a year to supply liquidity for hordes of speculators that don't actually produce anything,,, but want to eat anyway.
The producing loop had a huge downturn to the FED had to print like crazy.
https://dailyreckoning.com/wp-conten...ive-Easing.jpg
In figuring out it's actions the FED uses the Taylor Rule to adjust interest rates. The Taylor rule takes into account the employment figures. The current employment figures used by the FED are comparable to a buffet served out of a cesspool. The FED has missed EVERY downturn and recession. They have some 200 PHDs working for them.
https://dailyreckoning.com/quantitative-tightening/
The FED is desperate to raise rates BUT, raising rates may very well set off the recession that they are preparing to cope with. The FED has killed interest-income. With a little lick, they can kill the markets too.
The upper loop has been generating boatloads of financial assets and they feel quite rich.
"The 200 bubble blown by Greenspan was bad, the next one by Bernanke was horrible, but this one by Yellen may well prove fatal. At least to entire financial markets, large institutions, and a few sovereigns.
It's essential to note that more than two-thirds of the net worth tracked in the above chart is now comprised of ‘financial assets.’ That is, paper claims on real things. "
Things started to crash in early 2016 and the CBs rode to the rescue. The price of rescues keeps going up and up.
http://media.peakprosperity.com/imag...2017-06-09.jpg
The stock market is going down and down in spite of all the money pumping. http://media.peakprosperity.com/imag...2017-06-09.jpg
EVERYTHING done to boost the economy has been done to support the speculators at the expense of the laborers.
https://www.peakprosperity.com/blog/...-gigantic-bust
The banks buy the politicians with OUR money and they all have a merry little party. They lose sight of the fact that the financial loop is nothing without the productive loop. The party eventually becomes totally corrupt with the politicians leading the way. The bankers can at least claim that they have a legitimate profession.
"I have often pointed out the fate of the city of Mainz. They had their technological boom with the invention of the printing press there. The politicians couldn’t wait to spend tax money assuming the business cycle would never end. So they spend the money before the taxes were due and borrowed against future tax revenues. The debt quickly became a Ponzi scheme issuing new debt to pay off the old as we are doing today. The interest kept rising so they just raised taxes. The rich began to leave and the city was quickly left with the people who didn’t really pay taxes. The bubble burst when they could not sell the next new issue of debt to pay off the last one. The city defaulted. The Pope excommunicated the politicians. And eventually the city was simply sacked and burned to the ground.
Politicians are the scourge of human society. They are the great destroyers of civilization and the instruments of war. "
"People champion gold standards as if this would solve anything. The common fault is not what we call money, it is always, and without exception, those who we put in charge of it."
" Illinois as of June 1, on a combination of a state government budget impasse and a seemingly unstoppable unfunded pension obligation that has now ballooned into at least a $130 billion shortfall. You better get out of the State before it is too late."
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/w...ncial-trouble/
"For 66 years the Glass-Steagall act reduced the risks in the banking system. Eight years after the act was repealed, the banking system blew up threatening the international economy. US taxpayers were forced to come up with $750 billion dollars, a sum much larger than the Pentagon’s budget, in order to bail out the banks. This huge sum was insufficient to do the job. The Federal Reserve had to step in and expand its balance sheet by $4 trillion in order to protect the solvency of banks"
"So, what we can say about the repeal of Glass-Steagall is that it turned a somewhat egalitarian democracy with a large middle class into the One Percent vs. the 99 percent. The repeal resulted in the destruction of the image of the United States as an open prosperous society."
Thank You Bill Clinton.
"So, where is there any democracy when the One Percent can cover their losses at the expense of the 99 Percent, which is what the repeal of Glass-Steagall guarantees?"
" was present when George Champion, former CEO and Chairman of Chase Manhattan Bank testified before the Senate Banking Committee against national branch banking. Champion said that it would result in the banks becoming too large and that the branches would suck savings out of local communities for investment in traded financial assets. Consequently, local communities would be faced with a dearth of loanable funds, and local businesses would die or not be born from lack of loanable funds.
I covered the story for Business Week. But despite the facts as laid out by the pre-eminent banker of our time, the palms had been greased, and the folly proceeded. "
"US Representatives Walter Jones and Marcy Kaptur and members of the House and staff on both sides of the aisle, along with former Goldman Sachs executive Nomi Prins and leaders of citizens’ groups, have arranged a briefing in the House of Representatives on June 14 about the importance of Glass-Steagall to the economic, political, and social stability of the United States. Let your representative know that you do not want the financial responsibility for the reckless financial practices of the big banks. "
http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2017...ica-will-fail/Comment
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Nobody knows what is going to blow first
The various CBs and States have bought up tons of stocks to maintain prices and drive down volatility. There are 315 Billion shares traded per trading day worldwide. Every time that and "important" stock starts to fall, the CBs step in. SO, the investors know that they can always sell to the CB. The CBs tend to buy & hold rather than churning to make a few cents.
Everyone and their cousin are claiming that stocks are going to crash. The CBs have upheld prices and killed volatility. As long as the CBs continue to pump in $300 billion a month, asset prices may very well stay up.
The S&P is firmly in lock step with the printing press, https://i1.wp.com/goldswitzerland.co...06%2C372&ssl=1
Who knows how long that can be maintained?
6/11 The five biggest tech stocks lost nearly $100 billion in value on Friday – CNBC
"Unsecured households, Auto loans and Student debts. Outstanding debt for each one of these categories exceeds $1 trillion and growing. But not only are the debts growing but so are bad debts. Eventually most of these debts will become bad debts with no chance of ever being repaid. Also, US corporate debt is growing and is up $8 trillion since 2010."
https://goldswitzerland.com/cassandr...anks-and-gold/
The resource economies have been especially hard. Canada, Australia, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, et al. Australia is particularly tied to the fortunes of China.
"The abrupt end to the commodities supercycle drove the RBA to join the global currency war. The mining-dependent nation’s economy was so debilitated that policy makers felt they had no choice but to ease financial conditions. In February 2015, after an 18-month honeymoon, the RBA reduced its official rate to 2.25 percent, marking the start of a cycle that ended last August with the fourth cut to a record low of 1.5 percent."
"Two resource-rich economies reacting similarly to body blows is intuitive enough. They eased the pressure on their given economies.
How they’ve landed in their current predicaments is less easy to explain. Propelled by soaring home prices from Sydney to Toronto to Melbourne to Vancouver, Australia’s household debt-to-income has hit a record 190 percent, the highest among developed nations; it is trailed closely by Canada, which has a 167 percent ratio.
To put this in perspective, at the peak of the housing bubble, debt-to-income in the U.S. peaked at 130 percent."
"Of course it’s acceptable to build infinitely high levels of debt -- as long as rates never rise. But then there's the inconvenient truth that when the price of the collateral backing those millions of subprime mortgages cratered, those irrelevant debt loads became relevant overnight."
"Some policy makers have begun to push back against the conventional stupidity. “Sometime between now and Armageddon, interest rates will go up,” warned Australia’s Treasury Secretary John Fraser on May 30."
"World Economic Forum, which said longevity and lackluster investment returns will viciously collude to create a $400 trillion retirement savings shortfall in 30 years’ time."
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/artic...levant-quickly
So, everybody took on debt in the good times and now, they don't know what to do about high debt loads,,, other than pray for continued low interest rates.
6/12 US Fed to raise rates despite sluggish economic data – Yahoo!
6/12 Baby boomers blame Millennials for perceived ills in economy – My Budget 360 The blame-game is just getting started.
6/12 Puerto Rico warns it may grab sales-taxes claimed by bondholders – Bloomberg This is the kind of action that will really spook debt holders.
6/12 Desperate retirees reach for yield – BaWerk Eventually, they will reach for the suicide pill.
SPEED KILLS !
6/12 Macron landslide amid record 50.2% abstentions: peak Macron already? – Mish
6/12 Osborne says Theresa May is a ‘dead woman walking’ – Guardian
6/12 Is another Spanish bank about to bite the dust? – Wolf Street
These are just a few examples of the blinding speed of change.
6/09 Drug overdoses now the leading killer of American adults under 50 – Zero Hedge The same is true for suicides in Japan.
"The derivatives are the black holes of financial engineering, and can easily consume all the physical wealth and all the money in the world, and still be bankrupt. Gordon Brown's demand of $500 billion for the IMF is enough to bankrupt several nations, but pitifully inadequate to deal with the derivatives. "
"It is time to lift the crushing weight of derivatives from the backs of humanity before the world economy and the major nations collapse into irreversible chaos and war, as seen during the 1930s."
"5) Derivatives are fictitious capital. No matter what type of derivative contract an investor buys, his money flows into the US credit market. As a result, while derivatives give investors the illusion of worth, they are in fact backed by the largest credit bubble in the history of mankind. Their real worth is zero (hence they are fictitious capital)."
http://www.24hgold.com/english/contr...ntributor=Gold
Italy; " Italy has one of the most indebted governments in the world. It’s borrowed over $2.4 trillion. Its debt-to-GDP ratio is north of 130%. (For comparison, the US debt-to-GDP ratio is 104%.)
But the situation is actually much worse.
GDP measures a country’s economic output. However, it’s highly misleading. Mainstream economists count government spending as a positive when calculating GDP. A more honest approach would count it as a big negative.
In Italy, government spending accounts for a whopping 50%-plus of GDP."
"You see, the European Central Bank (ECB) has been printing money to buy Italian government bonds hand over fist. Since 2008, the ECB and Italian banks have bought over 88% of Italian government debt, according to a recent study."
"talian government bonds are, without a doubt, in super-bubble territory. It won’t be long before a pin pricks this bubble and… pop.
That could happen soon.
Earlier this month, the credit rating agency Fitch downgraded Italy’s credit rating from BBB+ to BBB."
" If the ECB stops buying Italian government bonds, who will step up? The answer is nobody… Italian banks are already completely saturated with government bonds.
Germany wants the money printing to stop. Italy wants it to continue."
" Once the ECB—the only large buyer—steps away, Italian government bonds will crash and rates will soar.
Soon it will be impossible for the Italian government to finance itself.
Italian banks—which are already insolvent—will be decimated. They hold an estimated €235 billion worth of Italian government bonds. So the coming bond crash will pummel their balance sheets.
It’s shaping up to be a lovely train wreck."
" The Financial Times commented on what would happen if the EU were to collapse:
It would probably lead to the most violent economic shock in history, dwarfing the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy in 2008 and the 1929 Wall Street crash.
A crisis in Europe would send a lethal lightning rod through the world’s currency and stock markets."
This Super Bubble Is About to Pop | International Man
So, we're going to have a supernova, an ice age and a lightning rod,,, while flying blind, jacked up on monetary Viagra, through a casino loaded with debt-bombs.
This Super Bubble Is About to Pop | International ManComment
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Kunstler gets a post by himself
Kunstler is a registered Democrat and laments the decomposition of the party. In the beginning, he had NOTHING good to say about Trump. He ridiculed him and referred to him as the "golden golum of greatness. He now calls him the "President of the United States. Like many people, he has begun to focus on the state of the State that Trump has inherited. He is well aware of the state of depression and despair. Well aware of the desperation and resulting drug epidemic. Well aware of the incarceration rate and suicide rate.
"As our politicos creep deeper into a legalistic wilderness hunting for phantoms of Russian collusion, nobody pays attention to the most dangerous force in American life: the unraveling financialization of the economy.
Financialization is what happens when the people-in-charge “create” colossal sums of “money” out of nothing — by issuing loans, a.k.a. debt — and then cream off stupendous profits from the asset bubbles, interest rate arbitrages, and other opportunities for swindling that the artificial wealth presents. It was a kind of magic trick that produced monuments of concentrated personal wealth for a few and left the rest of the population drowning in obligations from a stolen future. The future is now upon us.
Financialization expressed itself in other interesting ways, for instance the amazing renovation of New York City (Brooklyn especially). It didn’t happen just because Generation X was repulsed by the boring suburbs it grew up in and longed for a life of artisanal cocktails. It happened because financialization concentrated immense wealth geographically in the very few places where its activities took place — not just New York but San Francisco, Washington, and Boston — and could support luxuries like craft food and brews.
Quite a bit of that wealth was extracted from asset-stripping the rest of America where financialization was absent, kind of a national distress sale of the fly-over places and the people in them. That dynamic, of course, produced the phenomenon of President Donald Trump, the distilled essence of all the economic distress “out there” and the rage it entailed. The people of Ohio, Indiana, and Wisconsin were left holding a big bag of nothing and they certainly noticed what had been done to them, though they had no idea what to do about it, except maybe try to escape the moment-by-moment pain of their ruined lives with powerful drugs.
And then, a champion presented himself, and promised to bring back the dimly remembered wonder years of post-war well-being — even though the world had changed utterly — and the poor suckers fell for it. Not to mention the fact that his opponent — the avaricious Hillary, with her hundreds of millions in ill-gotten wealth — was a very avatar of the financialization that had turned their lives to $hit. And then the woman called them “a basket of deplorables” for noticing what had happened to them.
And now the rather pathetic false promises of President Trump, the whole MAGA thing, is unraveling at exactly the same time that the financialized economy is entering its moment of final catastrophic phase-change. The monuments to wealth — especially the stock and bond portfolios and the presumed value of real estate investments — will surrender to a process you might call price-discovery-from-Hell, revealing their worth to be somewhere between little and nothing. The accumulated monstrous debts of persons, corporations, and sovereign societies, will be suddenly, shockingly, absolutely, and self-evidently unpayable, and the securities represented by them will be sucked into the kind of vortices of time/space depicted in movies about mummies and astronauts. And all of a sudden the avatars of that wealth will see their lives turn to $hit just like the moiling, Budweiser-gulping, oxycontin-addled deplorables in the flat, boring, parking lot wastelands of our ruined drive-in Utopia saw their lives rendered into a brown-and-yellow slurry draining clockwise down the toilet of history.
Nobody in power in this country is paying attention to how close we are to that epic moment — at least, they’re not talking about it. If the possibility of all that even occupies some remote corner of their brains, they surely don’t know how to prepare the citizenry for it, or what to do about it. The truth is that societies respond emergently to major crises like the imminent unraveling of our financialized economy, often in disorderly and surprising ways. I suppose we’ll just have to watch the nauseating spectacle play out, and in the meantime enjoy the Russian collusion melodrama for whatever it’s worth — probably more than a ticket to Wonder Woman or the new Tom Cruise Mummy movie."
The gutting of the industrial base caused by our low-wage competitors AND our penchant for shopping at Wal Mart started out in what is now called the "rust belt". As you well know, rust never sleeps. The corrosion of or industrial base is spreading and causing a corrosion of society.Comment
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