Economic pressures

[Danny B]

Greece, Germany and a European war

The ECB did some stress tests for the banks and pronounced them "safe". Greece did a stress test on the EU banks and the banks were on the verge of vaporizing. The Europeans just couldn't understand that Tsipiris and Varoufakis were telling the truth and NOT just posturing. Europe stared into the abyss and decided that ANYTHING was better than what they saw. BEFORE the referendum, Merkel said that she was ready to make a deal. Previously, the Germans said that the referendum was illegal. How dare the Greeks resort to a democratic choice?

As the abyss got closer and darker, everybody CRAPPPED in their shorts.
The Greeks refused to be life-long serfs and voted NO.
"Brussels responded immediately. The European Commission states on its website that it respects the results of Greek referendum. European Council President Donald Tusk announced his plans plans to hold an extraordinary summit of Eurozone leaders on Tuesday evening."

Read more: Greeks Say 'No' to Deal With Creditors, With More Than 90% of Votes Counted / Sputnik International

First, the referendum was illegal and irrelevant. Now, they jump all over themselves to say that they will respect it. The "outing" of the IMF docs showing that either a yes vote or a no vote would still bring collapse without a debt haircut has made the bankers chose the lesser of 2 evils.
It's funny how economic suicide can change your perspective.
German FM: Greeks' Decision on Creditors' Proposals Needs to Be Accepted / Sputnik International

Paul Craig Roberts made it clear that America was trying to force NATO / Europe into war with Russia. America was leaning VERY heavily on the EU to hold on tightly to Greece. The NATO bases there could be used to try to lock away Russia's warm-water ports. This is also the reason for the mess in Crimea, trying to lock up Sevastopol. There is a Russian port in Syria that is currently unusable.
The neocons made all these obvious preparations to drag Europe into WW III. Greece and Turkey are pivotal to locking up Russia's warm water ports. (Bosporus)
Varoufakis is a master at game theory. He has to save Greece economically and pull Greece away from supporting NATO.
The Germans keep a blow-up church in Berlin to remind them just how bad war is. Bilderbuch Berlin - Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtnis-Kirche

The Germans are losing something like $ 120 billion a year enforcing Russian sanctions. They are being pushed towards war but, NOT blindly. There have been anti-FED demonstrations in Germany. Germany is occupied and garrisoned. Germany needs U.S. dollars to service dollar-denominated debt. Hopefully, they will chose financial collapse over war.

The bankers have long relied on ignorance to enable them to create wars. The current speed of information transmission is making that much more difficult. SOMEBODY will dig out hidden info. In this vid, SOMEBODY found a hidden subliminal message in an AARP advert.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFUCo__yJI8
Wars were often started by positioning troops to ensure the"security" of an area. Then, some provocation was created to get the ball rolling. This is currently in position on the india-Pakistan border. It is in place in Russia-Ukraine. The old formulae for provocation are not working so well. The troop commanders are calling BS. The soldiers are deserting.

In the civil arena, the police are catching on. The police in Madrid marched carrying a banner apologising to the Madrileños that they couldn't arrest those responsible,,, the bankers. Recently, some German police took off their helmets and joined the marchers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDcRD2vxHXM
Italian police also.

The PTB must create a critical mass of people to push the country into war. GOV has been caught in so many lies that it is difficult to generate enough citizen outrage at the "enemy" to start a war.
America has shipped a bunch of Warthogs to near the Russian border. If any weapon can start a war, this will do it. Hopefully, the Germans will block any little accidents.

[Danny B]

Greece exits the stage, China and oil enter

The Greek situation WILL stabilize. With China blowing up, the troika will do anything to hold back contagion in Europe. The ELA mechanism will ship truckloads of Euros to Greek ATMs. So, what is next?
OIL Fracking was done with junk / high-yield bonds. The producers did a lot of hedging to cover themselves. Their hedges are running out. Shale Drillers' Safety Net Is Vanishing - Bloomberg Business
Still, the price of oil drops. Tyler Durden Blog | Crude Carnage Continues - WTI Hits $55 Handle, Brent Tests $60 | Talkmarkets
The recession has cut demand. China was a BIG buyer of oil. With $ 1.5 trillion lost in the Chinese stock market in just a few days, they may cut back on oil purchases.
From June of 2014 to January of 2015; "America's 10 largest oil and natural gas companies have lost more than $200 billion combined since oil peaked in June, according to a CNNMoney analysis of FactSet data. "
The losses will continue until morale improves.

[Danny B]

Trillion Dollar Coin

The Germans are starting to catch on. If the European dominoes start to fall, Germany is on the hook for hundreds of $ billions. Why The Eurocrats Are Petrified——What The Falling Dominoes of ‘Grexit’ Look Like | David Stockman's Contra Corner

"In the 1970s, the Basel Committee discouraged governments from issuing money themselves or borrowing from their own central banks which issued it. Instead they were to borrow from “the market,” which generally meant borrowing from private banks. "
All this borrowing allowed a lot of churning and interest generation for the private banks. The U.S. congress gave up it's right to coin money to a group of private banks. The FED does the paper and congress just does coins.

The idea has magically appeared for congress to make coins to pay off the national debt and finance everything. The trillion dollar coin.
The Trillion Dollar Coin: Joke or Game-changer? | WEB OF DEBT BLOG " When it was proposed that the government bail itself out of its budget woes by minting a $1 trillion coin, the Federal Reserve said it would not accept the Treasury’s legal tender."
A trillion dollar coin would create legal tender but, not wealth.

Dick Eastman;
" Now back to Ellen Brown and the trillion dollar coin. Ms. Brown is an irresponsible echoer of flim-flam scams and there is no bigger scam -- no bigger power grab by organized crime, by Goldman-Sachs and the Financial Overlords, than the trillion dollar coin trick.
Let me explain it so you can understand what it is really about. In a step to give the president the power of an absolute Monarch so that he could better serve Goldman-Sachs, Morgan-Chase and all other merchant banker interests (the Rothschilds, Rockefellers etc., their trusts and holding companies etc.) and bypass Congress and representative government. They set up this scam by getting Congress to authorize what sounded very innocent -- a new "platinum" commemorative coin -- a simple thing that is done all the time, right? But to serve the scam there was no denomination of this coin established by the Congress in the legislation -- they failed their Constitutional responsibility of "regulating the value thereof" required of all money in the US.
So the Administration had a limited number of commemorative platinum coins (what they are made of is really irrelevant, the platinum was only there to help disguise the coins as coin collector and precious metals collectors special market commemorative coins). Once the legislation was passed the dirty deed was done. Now the president could mint, say ten coins and denominate them at will -- denominate them -- as the plan of the scam called for all along -- denominate them at $1 trillion US dollars per coin. This gives the president all the money he needs to run the Federal Government without Congress.
(Recall that the Founding Fathers sought a government of "checks and balances among the three divisions of Federal power, the administrative branch and the legislative and judicial branches -- and they wanted the president -- who was given many powers of a monarch while he is in office -- to be required to go to Congress for money for whatever projects (wars and police states and prison systems etc.) he wants to undertake.
Now all the president has to do is deposit his trillion dollar coins in the Fed -- and they exist, and they have been deposited -- and he can draw upon them for cash to fund any executive order he wishes -- because the disposal of the "few commemorative coins" is at his beck and call -- trillions that the president can spend for any war or any prison gulag or any intrusive system or any bribes and payoffs -- and this president has been making secret executive orders and has all of the multinational corporations with no loyalty whatsoever to the American people or its republic."

"I saw this immediately and argued -- but my voice carried nowhere -- people are afraid to pass around my messages -- even Youtube has taken down my seventy economics videos and no longer allows me to comment on other people's Youtubes. No "alternative media" people -- not even my old friends -- carry my articles any more. BUT ELLEN BROWN ADVOCATED A SUPER FED AND THE TRILLION DOLLAR COIN -"
"Organized crime rules supreme -- and they need lots of women on the stage talking about monetary reform -- because women are far less capable as a group of dealing with this kind of abstract reasoning about a complex multicausation subject "

[Danny B]

Battleground Greece and WW III

I THOUGHT that Greece would shuffle off stage-left. The Eurozone is blowing all to hell but, I though Greece would simmer for a while. It is not to be. There are huge problems in Europe;
https://farm1.staticflickr.com/520/1...8f016ec2_h.jpg
America is going to make the problems FAR worse. America is absolutely rabid about crushing Russia. Greece is against sanctions. Greece is considering throwing out NATO. America will try to crash Greece in the worst manner possible. "A putsch in Athens to save allied Greece from enemy Russia is in preparation by the US and Germany"
Nuland's Nemesis: Will Greece Be Destroyed to Save Her From Russia, Like Ukraine? | naked capitalism

Reportedly, neither Greece nor Europe have a chance.
"YANIS VAROUFAKIS, ECONOMICS, ATHENS UNIVERSITY: Well, the derailment of the train that is the eurozone, which started with Greece and then other carriages started leaving the tracks sequentially – Ireland, Portugal, now Spain – is continuing. And yesterday’s vote is not going to change that at all. All exuberance and celebrations are completely and utterly misplaced. I’m afraid that the eurozone and Europe is continuing along the path of the last two years of a cascade of errors, a comedy of errors. Just look at Spain, what is happening there today. Look at what is happening in Italy. Unless the logic or what passes as logic in the European approach to this crisis alters and alters fast, very soon the eurozone will be history."
Yanis Varoufakis: Greece is Finished | naked capitalism
"YANIS VAROUFAKIS: They cannot fix the Greek economy. The Greek economy is finished. The Greek economy is in a great, great depression. The growing social economy is in its long, long winter of discontent. There is no power, no force within the Greek economy, with Greek society that can avert – it’s like – imagine if we were in Ohio in 1931 and we were to ask: what can Ohio politicians do to get Ohio out of the Great Depression? The answer is nothing."

Varoufakis resigned immediately following the vote. The rest of the Syriza party had better not get on a plane. Paul Craig Roberts Warns Greek Government May Be Assassinated In This Crisis If They Pivot East To Stop World War III

If Tsipris nationalizes Greek banks to prevent a bail-in, he's a dead man.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-0...id-secure-deal
Sadly, things are moving so fast that it might not make a lot of difference.
http://investmentwatchblog.com/greec...-entire-world/
John Williams of Shadowstats has been one of the very most accurate people for years. NOBODY will quote him. http://investmentwatchblog.com/richa...edium=referral
If Syriza blocks bail-ins, the bondholders and stockholders will lose in a big way. This will make all sovereign debt suspect.
The neocons are rabid to contain Russia. They want to surround Russia with nukes. Tom Bearden has made it painfully clear that fusion bombs are antiquated. They may be good and dirty but, they are nothing compared to the energetic weapons and the precursor weapons.

EDIT: "There are no plans for an emergency meeting of euro zone finance ministers on Greece on Monday after Greeks voted overwhelmingly to reject the terms of a bailout deal with international creditors, a euro zone official said on Sunday.

Asked whether a meeting of the Eurogroup was planned for Monday, the official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters: "No way. (The ministers) would not know what to discuss."
http://www.investingchannel.com/arti...l#.VZs8SY9xiR9
This is a VERY bad sign. The constitution forbids saving Greece.
" The Bundestag is meeting to discuss how the German courts will rule on whether the European Central Bank (ECB) and the German government can bail out Greece and Portugal by buying the bonds of their governments directly, or whether the German Constitution prevents this. The European Union is having a similar discussion over what has become a constitutional crisis over whether the ECB should buy these government bonds.

The problem is that Germany and the EU are constitutionally blocked from doing this. Their banks have perpetuated the “road to serfdom” myth that a central bank runs the danger of fueling inflation if it creates money – in contrast to commercial banks, which supposedly run no such danger if they create money on their own computer keyboards. It is not considered inflationary for them to charge interest to the government, which then needs to pay by taxing the economy at large."
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/...n-america.html
They DO have something to discuss. Greece can't just flounder until the Ministers hash out a constitutional change. If starvation and suicide come to stalk Greeks, that will be the end of the "community" of European nations.

[Danny B]

From peasant to wage-slave

As agriculture was automated and mechanized, this freed up many people to work in other endeavors. These endeavors have now been automated and mechanized. This should have brought widespread price deflation. It was not to be. The money-masters absorbed our productivity. The West was a high wage-and-price economy. It crashed into a low-wage-and-price economy. The money masters are trying to preserve the price and credit structure after the wage structure has disintegrated.
They offer us BS jobs paid for with GOV money that we have to repay. It is becoming more apparent every day that we can't repay. If the industrial economy no longer has a niche for us, we must return to the subsistence agricultural economy. Poor but, better than starvation.
China rapidly moved 300 million self-sufficient peasants into the industrial economy. They now find that they must continue to provide work for them. They print money to keep them going. The bubble dynamics of printing money are starting to work against them. It would be safer for these Chinese to slip back into agriculture but, they are more likely to engage in a revolution.

The PTB can't generate much tax from a self-sufficient peasant. They needed to be coerced to abandon the lifestyle and the land.
"Perelman outlines the many different policies through which peasants were forced off the land—from the enactment of so-called Game Laws that prohibited peasants from hunting, to the destruction of the peasant productivity by fencing the commons into smaller lots—but by far the most interesting parts of the book are where you get to read Adam Smith’s proto-capitalist colleagues complaining and whining about how peasants are too independent and comfortable to be properly exploited, and trying to figure out how to force them to accept a life of wage slavery.

This pamphlet from the time captures the general attitude towards successful, self-sufficient peasant farmers:

The possession of a cow or two, with a hog, and a few geese, naturally exalts the peasant. . . . In sauntering after his cattle, he acquires a habit of indolence. Quarter, half, and occasionally whole days, are imperceptibly lost. Day labour becomes disgusting; the aversion in- creases by indulgence. And at length the sale of a half-fed calf, or hog, furnishes the means of adding intemperance to idleness."
YES, we all need to be working hard at producing surplus to be stolen by the idle rich. We can't have any idle poor.
"Yves here. In other words, a big part of the capitalist exercise is to find or create workers to exploit. Graeber has the story backwards. The moral fable (idleness is bad for the perp and putting him to work is thus a moral undertaking) was not, as Graeber suggests, because lazy people are proto-insurrectionists. It is that people who are self-sufficient and have time on their hands on top of that drove the early capitalists nuts. They were exploitable resources lying fallow, no different to them than a gold vein in the next hill that the numbnick farmer/owner was unwilling to mine because he liked the view and was perfectly content grazing sheep."
August 2013 Archives - naked capitalism
"So Americans have managed to wind up with the worst of all possible worlds. We’ve come to believe in the virtue of working hard, to believe the capitalist PR used to justify the enclosure movement and the reduction of independent peasants to wage slaves."
"Enclosure is considered one of the causes of the British Agricultural Revolution. Enclosed land was under control of the farmer who was free to adopt better farming practices. There was widespread agreement in contemporary accounts that profit making opportunities were better with enclosed land.[8] Following enclosure, crop yields and livestock output increased while at the same time labor productivity increased enough to create a surplus of labor. The increased labor supply is considered one of the causes of the Industrial Revolution.[9]"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclosure

"One thing that the historical record makes obviously clear is that Adam Smith and his laissez-faire buddies were a bunch of closet-case statists, who needed brutal government policies to whip the English peasantry into a good capitalistic workforce willing to accept wage slavery…

Yep, despite what you might have learned, the transition to a capitalistic society did not happen naturally or smoothly. See, English peasants didn’t want to give up their rural communal lifestyle, leave their land and go work for below-subsistence wages in ****tty, dangerous factories being set up by a new, rich class of landowning capitalists. And for good reason, too. Using Adam Smith’s own estimates of factory wages being paid at the time in Scotland, a factory-peasant would have to toil for more than three days to buy a pair of commercially produced shoes. Or they could make their own traditional brogues using their own leather in a matter of hours, and spend the rest of the time getting wasted on ale. It’s really not much of a choice, is it?…

Faced with a peasantry that didn’t feel like playing the role of slave, philosophers, economists, politicians, moralists and leading business figures began advocating for government action. Over time, they enacted a series of laws and measures designed to push peasants out of the old and into the new by destroying their traditional means of self-support."
August 2013 Archives - naked capitalism

OK, now that the manufacturing jobs are gone, what are the Statists going to offer? We have lost our consumptive ability at the same time that we have lost our jobs. They produce GOV mandates guaranteeing them the profits that we are incapable of providing. As profitability declines, wages and pensions are reduced or eliminated to preserve a bottom line that is no longer viable. Sooner or later, it will dawn on them that you can't reduce the buying power of the consumer without reducing the viability of profit-making companies. This will eventually take down both finance and GOV.

The centers of productivity are the cities. If productivity has deserted the cities, then, the people must also desert them and return to the land.
EDIT; The links won't work because they say bull feces in the title.
You'll have to search on .....naked capitalism + b-u-l-l-s-h-i-t jobs.

[Impulse]

This is great. The thing they are worried about is people becoming completely independent from the system. Because we are the ones running their system. We run their banks and their factories, shoot their guns and eat their food. They are parasites, but without a host, they are nothing.

[Danny B]

This is great. The thing they are worried about is people becoming completely independent from the system. Because we are the ones running their system. We run their banks and their factories, shoot their guns and eat their food. They are parasites, but without a host, they are nothing.

We also shoot their enemies.

[Danny B]

Very short time left for Greece

I'm posting a bit more Greece because it is so important.
"But one American hedge fund, Balyasny, yesterday warned investors that Greek banks were on the verge of running dry, leaving the country 48 hours from civil unrest."
"Amid warnings there were just five days left to save the Euro, European Council president Donald Tusk said: 'I have no doubt that this is the most critical moment in the history of the EU.

'The stark reality is that we only have five days left to find the ultimate agreement.'"
Read more: EU leaders to hold summit on the crisis after Barack Obama intervenes in talks | Daily Mail Online

Agoura Financial has warned that America will run out of paper money. Ron Paul has warned that the situation in Greece and Ukraine will come to America.
Kunstler is a doom-and-gloomer focused on energy shortages.
"One thing we ought to know: both sides in the current skirmish are fighting reality. The Germans foolishly insist that the Greek’s meet their debt obligations. The German’s are just pissing into the wind on that one, a hazardous business for a nation of beer drinkers. The Greeks insist on living the 20th century deluxe industrial age lifestyle, complete with 24/7 electricity, cheap groceries, cushy office jobs, early retirement, and plenty of walking-around money. They’ll be lucky if they land back in the 1800s, comfort-wise."
"The world’s banking system is mired in the unreality of so many unmeetable obligations, cooked books, three-card-monte swap gimmicks, interest rate euchres, secret arbitrages, market manipulation monkeyshines, and countless other cons, swindles, and hornswoggles that all the auditors ever born could not produce a coherent record of what has been wreaked in the life of this universe"
"What happens in the case of untenable complexity is that it tends to unravel fast and furiously. "
"The failure of the European experiment will be extremely demoralizing to the hopeful citizens of that continent, who emerged from the bloodbath of the early 20th century to become the world’s premier peaceful tourist theme park. I don’t know that they necessarily have to go back to fighting each other on battlefields with things that blow up and destroy human flesh, but they surely have to decentralize and re-fashion some kind of simpler, local way-of-life if they expect to remain civilized."
"Ukraine is about halfway back to being medieval with excellent potential to overshoot even that. The Euroland PIIG(F) nations don’t have the energy resources to extend Modernity, even if the banking system wasn’t terminally ill, and then on top of that they have the ethno-demographic quandary of creeping Muslimization — plus the additional flotillas of desperate boat people arriving daily.
America, count your blessings"
Welcome to Blackswansville | KUNSTLER
I don't think this URL will survive having the f-word removed. You have to search on,,,,Welcome to Blackswansville + Kunstler.

The economy of Greece has already shrunk 25%. Austerity just doesn't work. The ECB is saying that Greece has to put up more collateral. How about, the ports, airports, water systems, electric system, islands, etc.
There is a possibility that Greece will simply default and get re-capitalized by the BRICS bank. Either way, many Greeks will soon die. This will make Germany look very bad.

EDIT, no post on Greece would be complete without a few words from Benjamin Fulford.
"urthermore, other dominos have also begun to fall. In the fuss about Greece, much of the world’s attention has been diverted from the fact that another AMERICA subsidiary, the Nazi government in the Ukraine, has also missed a payment and gone bankrupt. Furthermore, the AMERICA Puerto Rico colony, known by many as the 51st US State, has also publicly said it will not be able to pay its debts.The new element to this is that the contagion has now spread to China, the largest creditor of the bankrupt AMERICA and thus the country that will be left holding the bag. Chinese stock markets plunged by 30% in the last weeks, driven by retail investor selling. The retail investors know first-hand the real Chinese economy is stumbling because they are not finding overseas buyers for their industrial products."

Benjamin Fulford: Top secret negotiations continue as Greek “No� vote pressures Western oligarchy to surrender » The Event Chronicle

EDIT; Because of various financial mechanisms, Greece may reach a default total of a half trillion Euros. Greece May Face Default Worth Half Trillion Euros in Two Weeks / Sputnik International
Greece is looking to Russia for help and Brussels does NOT like that. "Donald Tusk urged Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras to turn to friends for help but the president of the European Council did not specify who those were."

Read more: Tusk Urges Tsipras to 'Seek Help Among Friends, Not Enemies' / Sputnik International
Well, the certainly can't count Merkel as a friend,, nor Schauble. Greece can legitimately claim that they are bankrupt and declare Force Majeure If somebody were to come along afterwards and give them a boatload of money, they would start out debt-free.

[Danny B]

Failing liquidity,,, failing credit

ZIRP has been a total disaster for everyone. J.P. Morgan is claiming that they can't make money any more. JPMorgan Banker: "We Can't Make Money Anymore..." » The Event Chronicle
Greenspan made it clear that QE can't be used for more than about 6 months.
"That’s why Greenspan said that you can have your zero percent, but for only a few months. Then he warned that QE could only be done
as an emergency procedure, not for an extended period.

And we are seeing now QE in its 5th year, and we see how it’s permanent. And how ZIRP is permanent.

Read more at Jim Willie: That King Dollar Has Survived to 2015 is an Absolute Miracle
The shadow-banking-system is unregulated and stretched every dime. They have no remaining liquidity. Any downturn will be quite negative for them, "Insider Warns Credit Market is SHUTTING DOWN, $75 Trillion Implosion Looms"
Insider Warns Credit Market is SHUTTING DOWN, $75 Trillion Implosion Looms | SilverDoctors.com
As credit locks up, cash will have to take over. Stock up on beer and diesel fuel.

[Danny B]

Berserk algos, cyber attacks and holidays

Yep, you know what this post is about.
"Others found it very curious that trading on the NYSE was halted just after Chinese stocks had absolutely plummeted the night before. In fact, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index experienced the largest one day decline that we have witnessed since November 2008. "
" The New York Stock Exchange, United Airlines and the Wall Street Journal have all fallen victim to a series of massive technical glitches within hours of each other.

NYSE halted all trading for ‘technical reasons’ at 11:32am and only reopened at 3:10pm – but says the problem is an internal one and not the result of a cyberattack.

It comes as tens of thousands of United Airlines passengers were stranded at U.S. airports on Wednesday morning after all of the carrier’s flights were grounded nationwide due to a computer system glitch.

The Wall Street Journal was also left unable to publish after its systems came under attack and has been forced to switch to an alternative site design." What In The World Just Happened To The New York Stock Exchange? | SilverDoctors.com

Silver is being slammed at the same time that it is running out.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-0...nges-2015-lows

Gold And Silver Are Paper-Slammed – Is The System Collapsing?
The insiders have taken $ trillion positions in silver.
The margin calls from Hell are coming fast. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-0...in-calls-mount
The world is closing ranks against America.
Ufa - The Summit That Is Re-Making the World
The BRICS bank says that they can easily finance Brazil.
Obummer is filling his shorts with feces at the thought of NATO collapsing.
Bush and Cheney are being sued for starting the Iraq war and Cheney might be in the hot seat.
http://sputniknews.com/us/20150709/1024390321.html

Most stocks are traded by VERY similar algorithms. If "they" all get the same idea in the same millisecond, the markets goes berserk. The penultimate problem is that the exit door is VERY small. The normal "circuit breakers" in the stock exchange can be reset and tripped every millisecond.
The FED wanted to ensure that the market never went down. The punished any shorts that showed up over the last few years. With all the shorts out of action, there is NOBODY to buy when the price drops.
The algos are trying to squeeze out an ever-shrinking door.

The stock market took a HOLIDAY Other markets will soon be taking a holiday
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-0...re-weeks-ahead

[Danny B]

margin calls and gold bugs

One last detail for the gold bugs. When a broker sends a margin call to an investor, the investor must cough up enough cash so that the broker is covered with a high enough % of cash. This generally happens when stock values are falling. The investor must sell something to raise cash. If the market is falling, he is sure to lose money from a forced sale.
The fastest way to raise cash is to sell his gold. You must sell what you can, NOT what you want. As this gold enters the market, it forces down the price a bit. It is normal to see a price drop in gold when markets go crazy. This is short-lived.
Bernanke said that the FED holds gold just because of tradition. NOT so.
High Tech Guru George Gilder Demolishes A Critical Myth About The Gold Standard - Forbes

[Danny B]

stockman, Armstrong and prepping

David Stockman is in fine form. He says that the Greek referendum lit the fuse on the bomb under the ECB. It Is NOT Priced-In, Stupid! | David Stockman's Contra Corner
Martin Armstrong; " PLAN B should be an amount of cash that is enough to live on for at least one month if not three months insofar as basic essentials, not mortgages, etc. Effectively this is food money and gas for the car"
How Much Cash Should One Have Outside of the Banks? | Armstrong Economics
"Our corporate clients have increased their cash positions tremendously in preparation for 2015.75. They learned their lesson from 2007.15 and do not want to get caught in a liquidity crisis. Hence, they have increased their cash position albeit in banks."

Zero Hedge has a good article on why it is a good idea to prepp; "During the Great Depression, millions of people died of starvation and general poverty, despite the incredible number of people with rural survival knowledge. What do you think would happen to our effeminate; metrosexual; iPhone-addicted; lisping; limp-wristed; self-obsessed; Twitter-, texting-, video game-addled; La-Z-Boy-riding; overgrown-child culture in the event that another economic crisis even remotely similar were to occur? Yes, most of them would die, probably in a horrible fashion."
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-0...-cannon-fodder

The anti-preppers explain that preppers are all feeble minded conspiracy theorists that believe in ridiculous stuff like chemtrails; Be prepared for Preppers | Range Rover | Pique Newsmagazine | Whistler, CANADA
These people are going to provide a LOT of entertainment,,,sad but, entertaining.

EDIT; Armstrong, "Keep in mind: do not keep all of your money in one place. Keep a stock of cash outside the bank. Cash is recognizable for daily transactions, for now." The Lesson for the World Coming from Greece | Armstrong Economics
" We are facing terrible times ahead because socialism is completely collapsing. Government employees have lined their pockets, which is precisely the endgame and how Rome collapsed."

[Danny B]

Credit lockup,,, energy lockup

Armstrong said to keep cash at hand. Evidently, this would be necessitated by a disappearance of credit. Armstrong also calls for the collapse of the bond market. There are signs of strain in the bond market. "Issuance of investment-grade bonds had seized up for the seven trading days in a row prior to Tuesday! In the junk-bond market, no new issuance made it to market at all this week," U.S. Primary Bond Market Seized Up, Junk Bond Issuance Frozen, Chaos in China, Greece, Puerto Rico, Commodities Cited | Wolf Street

NASA, of all people has weighed in on the subject, "NASA-funded study: Over 32 advanced civilizations have collapsed before us, and we’re next in line"
NASA-funded study: Over 32 advanced civilizations have collapsed before us, and we’re next in line.
"Today’s system is just a 19th century model applied to a 21st century society. I mean– a room full of men making decisions about how much money to print? It’s so antiquated it’s almost comical."
"Empires Rise, they peak, they decline, they collapse, this is the cycle of history.

This historical pattern has formed and is already underway in many parts of the world, including the United States."

"Mentioning even the possibility, for example, that the US could default on its debt is met with so much scorn and contempt it would be safer to stand on the street corner warning about an alien invasion."
Yes, but, every gov has eventually defaulted. "It’s foolish to hold one’s life savings within the banking system of a heavily-indebted nation."
You must have confidence in GOV to have confidence in the economy,,, long term. The one common feature in every financial crisis

A lockup of the credit system would mean that nobody could transfer money to pay their bills. How are the farmers and power companies going to pay for fuel?

If you do a THOROUGH read of Pastor Lindsey Williams, you will see that the oil "barons" are DEFINITELY anti-socialism. Pastor Lindsey Williams Blog
Ron Paul is painfully clear about what is coming; An Exclusive With Ron Paul

OK, so the criminals in the District of Corruption NEED the cooperation of the oil barons who hate them sincerely for being socialists and / or criminals.
The oil barons made their money the old-fashioned way. They dug it up out of the ground. They profit 5.5 cents per gallon of finished product. They despise the bankers and politicians who have loaded up their business with taxes and parasitic drains.
The criminals/politicians have their major base of power in the cities. The cities are in the greatest danger from a lockup of the energy markets. Will the energy barons facilitate the flow of gas and oil to subsidize peace in the land of socialism? Gold and oil have always flowed in opposite directions. Will GOV confiscate gold from the bullion banks to ensure that oil and gas keep flowing? The U.S. oil majors lost $ 147 billion last year. Will they pump their brains out to get a big pile of confetti?
I don't think that this is going to have a happy ending.

[wayne.ct]

Will they? Won't they?

You give me things to think about. I like that. I think your questions are rhetorical, but my answers are still no, no and a qualified no.

I would phrase things like this. The energy barons and others that "have real assets" will not continue to do business as usual at a loss year after year. Self interest will eventually cause them to cut their expenses, lay off employees, etc. The GOV will confiscate their assets and destroy all productivity. Energy will become ever more costly and out of reach for more and more people. The cities will become intolerable. Crime and lawlessness will be more and more obvious in both the general population and government and also in the energy business and other business and industry. Trust in governments and business will decline. Like Ron Paul says, the currency will collapse in a currency crisis. GOV will take over businesses and not confiscate gold like they did in the past. That could include bullion banks. This is just my opinion, but I think they will execute a take over strategy because (I think history shows) it has been easier for governments to simply take charge of business and industry than it has been to round up assets from individuals, like making gold and diamonds illegal to possess. Beside, if they find you have any amount of money in your possession, they assume you are a criminal and take it anyway. I think the only hope you have to avoid the worst of the pain is avoid being a target, etc. etc.

[Danny B]

Monday crunch for Greece

"Greece debt crisis: EU summit cancelled as talks continue"
"France and others are pushing for a deal with Greece, while a group of sceptical countries led by Germany harbour grave reservations. "
Any deal has to be unanimous.
"The ministers have reportedly discussed in detail the option of easing Greece's debt burden as long as Athens enacts legislation immediately to reform taxation, pensions and administration. There will be no write-down of debt." The IMF said that there is NO possible solution without a debt writedown.
"Inflows of tourist cash means that there is still €2.75bn of liquidity available, enough to keep ATM machines stocked until Monday night. "
Crippled Greece yields to overwhelming power as deal looms - Telegraph

Yanis said that Greece is being waterboarded by Germany to keep France in line. Behind Germany’s refusal to grant Greece debt relief – Op-Ed in The Guardian | Yanis Varoufakis