A Marines Disquisition
http://www.theinternationalforecaster.com
Showing posts with label The International Forecaster. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The International Forecaster. Show all posts
Friday, August 27, 2010
Saturday, August 7, 2010
Monday, August 2, 2010
Bob Chapman on Financial Survival with Melody Cedarstrom of Discount Gold & Silver August 2, 2010
CLICK HERE to Listen to Bob Chapman on Financial Surivival with Melody Cedarstrom of Discount Gold & Silver.
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Gold prices could range from $3,000 to $7,600 based on today’s rate of inflation. Silver will follow in lock step - Bob Chapman
http://theinternationalforecaster.com/International_Forecaster_Weekly/Accounting_for_the_Counterparties_in_the_Goldman_Sachs_Debacle
"These events are laying the groundwork for higher gold and silver prices, which will reflect the loss in buying power in all currencies, as they have over the past five years. Gold prices could range from $3,000 to $7,600 based on today’s rate of inflation. Silver will follow in lock step and could have an even more powerful move."
"These events are laying the groundwork for higher gold and silver prices, which will reflect the loss in buying power in all currencies, as they have over the past five years. Gold prices could range from $3,000 to $7,600 based on today’s rate of inflation. Silver will follow in lock step and could have an even more powerful move."
Monday, July 12, 2010
Friday, July 9, 2010
Thursday, July 8, 2010
Bob Chapman on Discount Gold and silver Trading 07 july 2010
Bob Chapman on Discount Gold and silver Trading 07 july 2010
Bob Chapman The EURO and the EU will break up and eventually everything will collapse excepte gold and Silver says Bob Chapman The International
Bob Chapman The EURO and the EU will break up and eventually everything will collapse excepte gold and Silver says Bob Chapman The International
Witness The Recent Gold Market Takedowns from Bob Chapman's The International Forecaster July 7 2010
Witness The Recent Gold Market Takedowns
A weekly excerpt from the subscription issue of The International Forecaster, taken from Bob Chapman's weekly publication. July 7 2010: whistleblowers, interesting IMF rules, an official war against gold, signs of weakening, a hole 8 million jobs deep, cuts and changes in european economy, solar energy getting money, possible northern Euro, a desire for corruption removed Glass-Steagall.
Recently we were again witness to three gold market takedowns. The first was engineered just prior to and into gold and silver options expiration. Then prior to the ETF GLD gold option expiry and the last manipulative attack commenced just prior to the dreadful unemployment housing and inventory statistics. This sort of action began in 1988 with the signing of the Executive Order by President Ronald Reagan entitled the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets,” ostensibly created to neutralize events such as the October 1987 collapse of the US stock market. Needless to say, that was not the real intention of the creation of such an order. As it has turned out the Treasury and the N.Y. Fed manipulates markets 24/7 worldwide, and they have a particular interest in the suppression of gold and silver prices; they being the antitheist of the US dollar. It should be noted that there were several times that the US Treasury and the privately owned Fed manipulated gold and silver prior to August 1988. We have found in 50 plus years of tracing this manipulative activity by the US government that it happens over and over again. There is no doubt in our minds that a great deal of what is done by government in gold and silver is done by the commercials, who privy to inside information go along for the ride. In the options operation prices are driven down for Comex options as well as GLD options, so that they expire out of the money and as well the perpetrators can cover some of their short positions. This is not difficult to execute, because other traders see what is going on and they get involved as well making the tasks easier.
This spring Andrew Maguire went public with a scam being pulled by JPMorgan Chase in the rigging of silver futures on the LBMA, an exchange similar to Comex in London. This caper was explained to the CFTC, Commodity Futures Trading Commission, months ahead of it occurring and they chose to do nothing about it. Making matters worse, when confronted with the evidence in public hearings, the CFTC didn’t want to hear about it. Maguire broke the story to others who confronted the CFTC who received lip service. The CFTC was forced to conduct a civil investigation and the Justice Department as well is conducting a criminal investigation, which we believe will go nowhere. Realizing that the CFTC, Justice, Morgan and the government are working together against the public in this matter, we are told by our sources that class action suits are being prepared and that the first one should be filed soon. It is a sad day for Americans when justice has to be forced from a corrupt government. In the end we will win but it will be a painful process.
We have found it interesting that the IMF prohibits members from tying their currencies to gold. All of you out there who believe the IMF’s, SDRs, Special Drawing Rights, will be gold backed are mistaken. This historical operating position was further proven when on August 15, 1971 the US closed the gold window. This was the advice Mr. Nixon received from Paul Volcker, who was an early member of the Trilateral Commission and is an Illuminist. Volcker has also been a leader against the US using gold in its monetary policy. Since 8/15/71 there has been an official war against gold by the elitists behind the curtain. It was that seminal event that essentially changed the future of America and the world. At that time US debt was just short of $500 billion. Today short-term debt is $14 trillion and long-term debt is $105 trillion. The engineer of the failure of the US banking system and the failure of the dollar and the rejection of it is at the feet of Mr. Volcker. What he has done to America at the behest of his Illuminist masters is reprehensible. That was eventually followed by the elimination of Glass Steagall and the looting and the collapse of our financial system. This is the result of the corruption of our system.
The result of this treachery is the coming with the complete collapse of the stock market and the end of real estate as an investment. The powers that be have destroyed a once great nation. Everywhere you look, budgets of towns, cities, counties, states and governments are in a shambles. The entire world is becoming their world. You have no doubt seen the elitists’ answer, which is we all switch to the SDR, another fiat currency, devalue all currencies versus the SDR and allow defaults among nations, just as we predicted would happen, although not in this particular way. The solutions being proffered are not solutions at all, only different methods of paying back the bankers and keeping them in business.
That keeps the leaders of the system solvent and throws the debt on the citizen. Mind you, these same bankers were the ones who destroyed our system – or better yet their system – in order to bring about world government. It should not be surprising that gold has been the investment leader.
The Illuminist bankers believe this time they are capable of shutting down the entire system and replacing it with S.D.R.s, so that they can control everything financial worldwide. This is what we have been telling the public for over 50 years and no one wanted to listen. We were called conspiracy theorists. We were dead on correct. The SDR is a stepping-stone to a world currency that can never work. Just look at the horrible results of the unnatural euro. The hunger for power, time after time, makes the rich and powerful become even more insane than they already are. G-8 is now G-20, part of the formation of amalgamation and the recognition of the failure of the euro and the EU as well. We find it ludicrous that the elitists want a broke IMF to fix the monetary system with an SDR. The same IMF that said they would never sell gold into the open market, yet that is what they are doing every day. Their plan is to back the SDR with taxes obtained from world citizens and a carbon tax. That is what the BP oil episode is all about. Don’t expect a gold or silver based currency, because that inhibits the bankers’ ability to own and run the system that has made them so rich and powerful. Sound money is something they never want to see again.
The idea of a Northern euro we believe is undoable. If the big debtors have to pay back their debt they’ll be in depression for 30 years. If they default they can return to their cheap domestic currencies, which would make their exports competitive. That Northern Union creditor group would be stuck with $2 trillion in bad paper. In addition we are very skeptical as to whether they have any gold left and if they do how much to back a new currency. The ECB probably sold off enough gold to suppress the gold price leaving the central bank with probably only 7% of the 15% they originally had. The ECB has the same situation that the Fed has, they are enveloped in debt - much of it sovereign debt. England and others have the same problem. The ECB continues to buy junk bonds because it has no choice but to do so.
These financial and economic matters are very perplexing and social and political issues complicate them. The theory of corporatist fascism, that is so prevalent in America today, has spawned an economic policy of centralism, debt and monopoly driven by the privately owned Federal Reserve, banking and Wall Street. The tune is borrow and go deeper into debt to the bankers until America is bankrupt. This last chapter will be kicked off with more taxes and more fiscal debt. This will be accompanie4d by massive unemployment and eventually a deflationary depression. The unemployment problem is being deliberately allowed to worsen both by the administration and Congress, which won’t address the real reasons our nation is in such a state of failure. What else can you call the loss of 5 million jobs from free trade, globalization, offshoring and outsourcing, which is still going on and the loss of 8.4 million via recession/depression. That is 13.4 million jobs supposedly being filled by a birth/death model and service and retail jobs with little remuneration. Those who control our government, politicians and our economy are about to kick Americans when they are down. Those who control government and their emissaries loathe capitalism and love collectivism. The average American so disgusts our controllers that, if they could they would remove 80% from society.
This has nothing to do with the fabricated left, right paradigm. This is straight forward dictatorship controlled from Wall Street. The president and most of Congress are pliable socialists only intent on enriching themselves. Today we have the centrally planned fascist variety. All finance, production and quality of good will be decided by executive fiat and commercial monopoly. It will be as the Marxists said it will be, each according to their ability and each according to his means. That means centralized management of everything including people. Everything will be done in the public interest, which in fact is by corporate interest. Risk taking will cease to be, and our economy will resemble those of FDR, Juan Peron, Adolph Hitler and Benito Mussolini. Everything that was fascist in the past was an economic and financial failure. The 1930s and 40s were an experiment, a trail run for what we have today. Two stimulus packages and trillions of dollars later few new permanent jobs have been created and all the subsidized money and credit has been transferred via debt from the people to corporate America to bail it out. This is part of the world of in reality. These people count on the public’s ignorance to pull these scams and impose tyranny. You should be doing something about that.
Last week was a telling one for the Dow, which fell 4.5%, S&P fell 5%, the Russell 2000 7.2% and the Nasdaq 100 6.09%. All technical barriers to the downside were broken. Cyclicals fell 8.1%; transports 7.2%; consumers 3.4%; utilities 2.2%; banks 8.6%; broker/dealers 7.8%; high tech 5.2%; semis 5.8%; Internets 6.2% and biotechs 6.8%. Gold bullion fell $44, the HUI 8.1% and the USDX fell 1.1% to 84.41 and the latter appears to be breaking down in its head and shoulders formation.
Two-year T-bills fell 1 bps to 0.59%; the 10-year notes fell 7 bps to 1.76% and the 10-year German bund fell 3 bps to 2.98%.
As housing sales both new and existing fell, Freddie Mac’s 30-year fixed rate mortgage fell 11 bps to 4.58%; the 15’s fell 9 bps to 4.04%; the one-year ARMs rose 3 bps to 3.80% and the 30-year fixed rate jumbo fell 2 bps to 5.50%. The massive inventory overhand continues to put downward pressure on the market and the resumption of falling prices should soon begin.
Fed credit declined $11.9 billion to $2,316 trillion. It is up 8.7% annualized and 16.6% YOY. Fed foreign holdings of Treasuries and Agencies increased $7.8 billion to a new record of $3.098 trillion. Custody holdings for foreign central banks have increased $142 billion YTD and 12% YOY.
M2, narrow, money supply rose $23.6 billion to $8.588 trillion YTD, it is up 1.9% and YOY 1.6%.
Total money market fund assets fell $5.6 billion to $2.812 trillion, YTD funds have fallen $481 billion. YOY it has fallen $851 billion, or 22.3%.
Total commercial paper was unchanged at $1.099 trillion. CP has declined $71.4 billion, or 12.2% annualized YTD, and was down $38 billion YOY, or 3.3%.
The post office wants to increase the price of a stamp by 2 cents to 46 cents starting in January. The agency has been battered by massive losses and declining mail volume and faces a financial crisis.
Postal officials announced a wide-ranging series of proposed price increases Tuesday, averaging about 5 percent, and covering first class, advertising mail, periodicals, packages and other services.
The request now goes to the independent Postal Rate Commission, which has 90 days to respond. If approved, the increase would take effect Jan. 2.
"The Postal Service faces a serious risk of financial insolvency," postal vice president Stephen M. Kearney said.
Kearney said the agency is facing a $7 billion loss in 2011. The rate increase will bring in an extra $2.5 billion, meaning it still faces a $4.7 billion loss.
The rate increase is part of a series of money-saving plans announced in March. These also include reducing mail deliveries to five days a week, closing offices and making other cuts in expenses. Congress must agree to eliminating deliveries on Saturdays.
Concern governments around the world are curtailing stimulus measures too soon spurred Barton Biggs to sell about half of his stock investments this week. Biggs, whose Traxis Partners LLC gained 38 percent in 2009 when he bought equities after the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index fell to a 12-year low, sold most of his U.S. technology holdings, he told Bloomberg Television yesterday.
Signs the U.S. economy is weakening convinced Traxis to reverse course as the S&P 500 posted a weekly slump of 5 percent, bringing its loss since April 23 to 16 percent. Biggs, 77, said yesterday he cut bullish bets by about half since June 29, when they made up 70 percent of his fund.
“I can change my mind very quickly,” Biggs, who manages $1.4 billion, said in a telephone interview following the Bloomberg Television appearance. “I’m not wildly bearish, but I don’t want to have a lot of risk at this point. I just want to have less exposure at a time like this.”
The withdrawal of government stimulus, including the U.S. Senate’s vote against extending unemployment benefits on June 30, may turn a “soft patch” into a recession, he said. The second recession in three years isn’t inevitable should “rational politicians” take action to avert it, he said.
Stocks in the U.S. have fallen nine times in 10 days, including yesterday when data on jobs and factory orders added to concern the economic rebound is slowing. On Bloomberg Television, Biggs said “policy mistakes” could curb the U.S. expansion in gross domestic product that’s forecast by economists to be 3.2 percent in 2010.
President Barack Obama today announced $1.85 billion in loan guarantees to Abengoa SA’s Abengoa Solar unit and Abound Solar Inc. to build sun-powered facilities in the U.S. that he said will create thousands of new jobs.
In his weekly address on the radio and Internet, Obama said the money from the Department of Energy will help the U.S. transition to a “clean energy economy” that creates hundreds of thousands of jobs in the future.
“We’re going to keep competing aggressively to make sure the jobs and industries of the future are taking root right here in America,” Obama said.
The loan guarantees will come from money in the $862 billion economic stimulus program enacted early last year. Obama announced the funding the day after government figures showed private employers adding fewer workers than forecast in June, reinforcing concerns the economic recovery will weaken.
“The recession from which we’re emerging has left us in a hole that’s about 8 million jobs deep,” Obama said. “And as I’ve said from the day I took office, it’s going to take months, even years, to dig our way out.”
Abengoa Solar, a unit of the Seville, Spain-based engineering company, will receive a $1.45 billion loan guarantee to build a solar-power plant in Arizona that will create 1,600 construction jobs and 85 permanent jobs, according to White House documents released in conjunction with Obama’s address.
The power plant will be the first of its kind in the U.S. and generate enough energy to power 70,000 homes, Obama said. [The same program was used in Spain and it was a total failure. The street hustler from Chicago is blowing smoke.]
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and then-New York Fed President Timothy Geithner told senators on April 3, 2008, that the tens of billions of dollars in “assets” the government agreed to purchase in the rescue of Bear Stearns Cos. were “investment-grade.” They didn’t share everything the Fed knew about the money.
The so-called assets included collateralized debt obligations and mortgage-backed bonds with names like HG-Coll Ltd. 2007-1A that were so distressed, more than $40 million already had been reduced to less than investment-grade by the time the central bankers testified. The government also became the owner of $16 billion of credit-default swaps, and taxpayers wound up guaranteeing high-yield, high-risk junk bonds.
By using its balance sheet to protect an investment bank against failure, the Fed took on the most credit risk in its 96- year history and increased the chance that Americans would be on the hook for billions of dollars as the central bank began insuring Wall Street firms against collapse. The Fed’s secrecy spurred legislation that will require government audits of the Fed bailouts and force the central bank to reveal recipients of emergency credit. [As you can see it is the duty of Mr. Bernanke as chairman of the Fed to lie about everything to the American public. This is why the Fed does not want to be audited. In the absence of an explanation we have to assume the bonds and swaps were purchased at par and are now probably worth 20 cents on the dollar.]
Once again and with greater force, Europe has snubbed its nose (and rightfully so) the Keynesian clowns in US academia and the Obama administration. Bloomberg reports Trichet Calls on EU Governments to Reduce Budget Deficits to Boost Growth.
European Central Bank President Jean- Claude Trichet pressed governments to trim their budget deficits, saying such action would boost economic growth by improving confidence of consumers and investors. “We are in a period where we have to manage budgets very tightly,” Trichet told journalists in Aix-en-Provence, France. “I have no problem with austerity, rigor. I call this good budgetary management.” Trichet said today that deficit reduction won’t choke growth and a failure to stem budget gaps would be equally risky for the recovery. “Confidence is key for growth, and if you cannot have confidence in the sustainability of the fiscal policies then you have no growth because you have no confidence,” he said. “The two things are complimentary.”
Germany to Reduce Deficit by 80 billion euros ($100 billion) over five years Reuters reports Germany plans to cut new borrowing in savings drive.
Germany plans to cut net new borrowing by some 80 billion euros ($100 billion) over five years, reducing supply of Europe's benchmark debt and adding pressure on other euro zone members to tighten their own public finances. The draft budget for 2011, which the cabinet plans to approve on Wednesday for ratification in parliament in November, will anchor a 34 billion euro reduction in new issuance over the next two years compared to earlier plans. The federal government also aims to cut spending to 307.4 billion euros next year, a 3.8-percent decrease from plans made before a "debt brake" law was passed in 2009, details of the draft made available to Reuters on Sunday showed. The budget is the latest chapter in Germany's drive to consolidate public finances, a move that has drawn criticism from some other large countries that say it is too early to withdraw support enacted during the financial crisis. Unions have promised stiff resistance and industrial action looks likely -- a threat that could rise as cuts in social services deepen and health care costs rise as planned. In addition, some politicians from within Merkel's ruling coalition say the measures are unfairly aimed at the poor, whose benefit cuts make up the largest part of the savings planned through 2014. Besides the spending cuts, the budget's planned reduction in new borrowing to 65.2 billion euros this year and 57.5 billion euros in 2011 will put the onus on other countries that share the euro currency to follow suit.
A weekly excerpt from the subscription issue of The International Forecaster, taken from Bob Chapman's weekly publication. July 7 2010: whistleblowers, interesting IMF rules, an official war against gold, signs of weakening, a hole 8 million jobs deep, cuts and changes in european economy, solar energy getting money, possible northern Euro, a desire for corruption removed Glass-Steagall.
Recently we were again witness to three gold market takedowns. The first was engineered just prior to and into gold and silver options expiration. Then prior to the ETF GLD gold option expiry and the last manipulative attack commenced just prior to the dreadful unemployment housing and inventory statistics. This sort of action began in 1988 with the signing of the Executive Order by President Ronald Reagan entitled the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets,” ostensibly created to neutralize events such as the October 1987 collapse of the US stock market. Needless to say, that was not the real intention of the creation of such an order. As it has turned out the Treasury and the N.Y. Fed manipulates markets 24/7 worldwide, and they have a particular interest in the suppression of gold and silver prices; they being the antitheist of the US dollar. It should be noted that there were several times that the US Treasury and the privately owned Fed manipulated gold and silver prior to August 1988. We have found in 50 plus years of tracing this manipulative activity by the US government that it happens over and over again. There is no doubt in our minds that a great deal of what is done by government in gold and silver is done by the commercials, who privy to inside information go along for the ride. In the options operation prices are driven down for Comex options as well as GLD options, so that they expire out of the money and as well the perpetrators can cover some of their short positions. This is not difficult to execute, because other traders see what is going on and they get involved as well making the tasks easier.
This spring Andrew Maguire went public with a scam being pulled by JPMorgan Chase in the rigging of silver futures on the LBMA, an exchange similar to Comex in London. This caper was explained to the CFTC, Commodity Futures Trading Commission, months ahead of it occurring and they chose to do nothing about it. Making matters worse, when confronted with the evidence in public hearings, the CFTC didn’t want to hear about it. Maguire broke the story to others who confronted the CFTC who received lip service. The CFTC was forced to conduct a civil investigation and the Justice Department as well is conducting a criminal investigation, which we believe will go nowhere. Realizing that the CFTC, Justice, Morgan and the government are working together against the public in this matter, we are told by our sources that class action suits are being prepared and that the first one should be filed soon. It is a sad day for Americans when justice has to be forced from a corrupt government. In the end we will win but it will be a painful process.
We have found it interesting that the IMF prohibits members from tying their currencies to gold. All of you out there who believe the IMF’s, SDRs, Special Drawing Rights, will be gold backed are mistaken. This historical operating position was further proven when on August 15, 1971 the US closed the gold window. This was the advice Mr. Nixon received from Paul Volcker, who was an early member of the Trilateral Commission and is an Illuminist. Volcker has also been a leader against the US using gold in its monetary policy. Since 8/15/71 there has been an official war against gold by the elitists behind the curtain. It was that seminal event that essentially changed the future of America and the world. At that time US debt was just short of $500 billion. Today short-term debt is $14 trillion and long-term debt is $105 trillion. The engineer of the failure of the US banking system and the failure of the dollar and the rejection of it is at the feet of Mr. Volcker. What he has done to America at the behest of his Illuminist masters is reprehensible. That was eventually followed by the elimination of Glass Steagall and the looting and the collapse of our financial system. This is the result of the corruption of our system.
The result of this treachery is the coming with the complete collapse of the stock market and the end of real estate as an investment. The powers that be have destroyed a once great nation. Everywhere you look, budgets of towns, cities, counties, states and governments are in a shambles. The entire world is becoming their world. You have no doubt seen the elitists’ answer, which is we all switch to the SDR, another fiat currency, devalue all currencies versus the SDR and allow defaults among nations, just as we predicted would happen, although not in this particular way. The solutions being proffered are not solutions at all, only different methods of paying back the bankers and keeping them in business.
That keeps the leaders of the system solvent and throws the debt on the citizen. Mind you, these same bankers were the ones who destroyed our system – or better yet their system – in order to bring about world government. It should not be surprising that gold has been the investment leader.
The Illuminist bankers believe this time they are capable of shutting down the entire system and replacing it with S.D.R.s, so that they can control everything financial worldwide. This is what we have been telling the public for over 50 years and no one wanted to listen. We were called conspiracy theorists. We were dead on correct. The SDR is a stepping-stone to a world currency that can never work. Just look at the horrible results of the unnatural euro. The hunger for power, time after time, makes the rich and powerful become even more insane than they already are. G-8 is now G-20, part of the formation of amalgamation and the recognition of the failure of the euro and the EU as well. We find it ludicrous that the elitists want a broke IMF to fix the monetary system with an SDR. The same IMF that said they would never sell gold into the open market, yet that is what they are doing every day. Their plan is to back the SDR with taxes obtained from world citizens and a carbon tax. That is what the BP oil episode is all about. Don’t expect a gold or silver based currency, because that inhibits the bankers’ ability to own and run the system that has made them so rich and powerful. Sound money is something they never want to see again.
The idea of a Northern euro we believe is undoable. If the big debtors have to pay back their debt they’ll be in depression for 30 years. If they default they can return to their cheap domestic currencies, which would make their exports competitive. That Northern Union creditor group would be stuck with $2 trillion in bad paper. In addition we are very skeptical as to whether they have any gold left and if they do how much to back a new currency. The ECB probably sold off enough gold to suppress the gold price leaving the central bank with probably only 7% of the 15% they originally had. The ECB has the same situation that the Fed has, they are enveloped in debt - much of it sovereign debt. England and others have the same problem. The ECB continues to buy junk bonds because it has no choice but to do so.
These financial and economic matters are very perplexing and social and political issues complicate them. The theory of corporatist fascism, that is so prevalent in America today, has spawned an economic policy of centralism, debt and monopoly driven by the privately owned Federal Reserve, banking and Wall Street. The tune is borrow and go deeper into debt to the bankers until America is bankrupt. This last chapter will be kicked off with more taxes and more fiscal debt. This will be accompanie4d by massive unemployment and eventually a deflationary depression. The unemployment problem is being deliberately allowed to worsen both by the administration and Congress, which won’t address the real reasons our nation is in such a state of failure. What else can you call the loss of 5 million jobs from free trade, globalization, offshoring and outsourcing, which is still going on and the loss of 8.4 million via recession/depression. That is 13.4 million jobs supposedly being filled by a birth/death model and service and retail jobs with little remuneration. Those who control our government, politicians and our economy are about to kick Americans when they are down. Those who control government and their emissaries loathe capitalism and love collectivism. The average American so disgusts our controllers that, if they could they would remove 80% from society.
This has nothing to do with the fabricated left, right paradigm. This is straight forward dictatorship controlled from Wall Street. The president and most of Congress are pliable socialists only intent on enriching themselves. Today we have the centrally planned fascist variety. All finance, production and quality of good will be decided by executive fiat and commercial monopoly. It will be as the Marxists said it will be, each according to their ability and each according to his means. That means centralized management of everything including people. Everything will be done in the public interest, which in fact is by corporate interest. Risk taking will cease to be, and our economy will resemble those of FDR, Juan Peron, Adolph Hitler and Benito Mussolini. Everything that was fascist in the past was an economic and financial failure. The 1930s and 40s were an experiment, a trail run for what we have today. Two stimulus packages and trillions of dollars later few new permanent jobs have been created and all the subsidized money and credit has been transferred via debt from the people to corporate America to bail it out. This is part of the world of in reality. These people count on the public’s ignorance to pull these scams and impose tyranny. You should be doing something about that.
Last week was a telling one for the Dow, which fell 4.5%, S&P fell 5%, the Russell 2000 7.2% and the Nasdaq 100 6.09%. All technical barriers to the downside were broken. Cyclicals fell 8.1%; transports 7.2%; consumers 3.4%; utilities 2.2%; banks 8.6%; broker/dealers 7.8%; high tech 5.2%; semis 5.8%; Internets 6.2% and biotechs 6.8%. Gold bullion fell $44, the HUI 8.1% and the USDX fell 1.1% to 84.41 and the latter appears to be breaking down in its head and shoulders formation.
Two-year T-bills fell 1 bps to 0.59%; the 10-year notes fell 7 bps to 1.76% and the 10-year German bund fell 3 bps to 2.98%.
As housing sales both new and existing fell, Freddie Mac’s 30-year fixed rate mortgage fell 11 bps to 4.58%; the 15’s fell 9 bps to 4.04%; the one-year ARMs rose 3 bps to 3.80% and the 30-year fixed rate jumbo fell 2 bps to 5.50%. The massive inventory overhand continues to put downward pressure on the market and the resumption of falling prices should soon begin.
Fed credit declined $11.9 billion to $2,316 trillion. It is up 8.7% annualized and 16.6% YOY. Fed foreign holdings of Treasuries and Agencies increased $7.8 billion to a new record of $3.098 trillion. Custody holdings for foreign central banks have increased $142 billion YTD and 12% YOY.
M2, narrow, money supply rose $23.6 billion to $8.588 trillion YTD, it is up 1.9% and YOY 1.6%.
Total money market fund assets fell $5.6 billion to $2.812 trillion, YTD funds have fallen $481 billion. YOY it has fallen $851 billion, or 22.3%.
Total commercial paper was unchanged at $1.099 trillion. CP has declined $71.4 billion, or 12.2% annualized YTD, and was down $38 billion YOY, or 3.3%.
The post office wants to increase the price of a stamp by 2 cents to 46 cents starting in January. The agency has been battered by massive losses and declining mail volume and faces a financial crisis.
Postal officials announced a wide-ranging series of proposed price increases Tuesday, averaging about 5 percent, and covering first class, advertising mail, periodicals, packages and other services.
The request now goes to the independent Postal Rate Commission, which has 90 days to respond. If approved, the increase would take effect Jan. 2.
"The Postal Service faces a serious risk of financial insolvency," postal vice president Stephen M. Kearney said.
Kearney said the agency is facing a $7 billion loss in 2011. The rate increase will bring in an extra $2.5 billion, meaning it still faces a $4.7 billion loss.
The rate increase is part of a series of money-saving plans announced in March. These also include reducing mail deliveries to five days a week, closing offices and making other cuts in expenses. Congress must agree to eliminating deliveries on Saturdays.
Concern governments around the world are curtailing stimulus measures too soon spurred Barton Biggs to sell about half of his stock investments this week. Biggs, whose Traxis Partners LLC gained 38 percent in 2009 when he bought equities after the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index fell to a 12-year low, sold most of his U.S. technology holdings, he told Bloomberg Television yesterday.
Signs the U.S. economy is weakening convinced Traxis to reverse course as the S&P 500 posted a weekly slump of 5 percent, bringing its loss since April 23 to 16 percent. Biggs, 77, said yesterday he cut bullish bets by about half since June 29, when they made up 70 percent of his fund.
“I can change my mind very quickly,” Biggs, who manages $1.4 billion, said in a telephone interview following the Bloomberg Television appearance. “I’m not wildly bearish, but I don’t want to have a lot of risk at this point. I just want to have less exposure at a time like this.”
The withdrawal of government stimulus, including the U.S. Senate’s vote against extending unemployment benefits on June 30, may turn a “soft patch” into a recession, he said. The second recession in three years isn’t inevitable should “rational politicians” take action to avert it, he said.
Stocks in the U.S. have fallen nine times in 10 days, including yesterday when data on jobs and factory orders added to concern the economic rebound is slowing. On Bloomberg Television, Biggs said “policy mistakes” could curb the U.S. expansion in gross domestic product that’s forecast by economists to be 3.2 percent in 2010.
President Barack Obama today announced $1.85 billion in loan guarantees to Abengoa SA’s Abengoa Solar unit and Abound Solar Inc. to build sun-powered facilities in the U.S. that he said will create thousands of new jobs.
In his weekly address on the radio and Internet, Obama said the money from the Department of Energy will help the U.S. transition to a “clean energy economy” that creates hundreds of thousands of jobs in the future.
“We’re going to keep competing aggressively to make sure the jobs and industries of the future are taking root right here in America,” Obama said.
The loan guarantees will come from money in the $862 billion economic stimulus program enacted early last year. Obama announced the funding the day after government figures showed private employers adding fewer workers than forecast in June, reinforcing concerns the economic recovery will weaken.
“The recession from which we’re emerging has left us in a hole that’s about 8 million jobs deep,” Obama said. “And as I’ve said from the day I took office, it’s going to take months, even years, to dig our way out.”
Abengoa Solar, a unit of the Seville, Spain-based engineering company, will receive a $1.45 billion loan guarantee to build a solar-power plant in Arizona that will create 1,600 construction jobs and 85 permanent jobs, according to White House documents released in conjunction with Obama’s address.
The power plant will be the first of its kind in the U.S. and generate enough energy to power 70,000 homes, Obama said. [The same program was used in Spain and it was a total failure. The street hustler from Chicago is blowing smoke.]
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and then-New York Fed President Timothy Geithner told senators on April 3, 2008, that the tens of billions of dollars in “assets” the government agreed to purchase in the rescue of Bear Stearns Cos. were “investment-grade.” They didn’t share everything the Fed knew about the money.
The so-called assets included collateralized debt obligations and mortgage-backed bonds with names like HG-Coll Ltd. 2007-1A that were so distressed, more than $40 million already had been reduced to less than investment-grade by the time the central bankers testified. The government also became the owner of $16 billion of credit-default swaps, and taxpayers wound up guaranteeing high-yield, high-risk junk bonds.
By using its balance sheet to protect an investment bank against failure, the Fed took on the most credit risk in its 96- year history and increased the chance that Americans would be on the hook for billions of dollars as the central bank began insuring Wall Street firms against collapse. The Fed’s secrecy spurred legislation that will require government audits of the Fed bailouts and force the central bank to reveal recipients of emergency credit. [As you can see it is the duty of Mr. Bernanke as chairman of the Fed to lie about everything to the American public. This is why the Fed does not want to be audited. In the absence of an explanation we have to assume the bonds and swaps were purchased at par and are now probably worth 20 cents on the dollar.]
Once again and with greater force, Europe has snubbed its nose (and rightfully so) the Keynesian clowns in US academia and the Obama administration. Bloomberg reports Trichet Calls on EU Governments to Reduce Budget Deficits to Boost Growth.
European Central Bank President Jean- Claude Trichet pressed governments to trim their budget deficits, saying such action would boost economic growth by improving confidence of consumers and investors. “We are in a period where we have to manage budgets very tightly,” Trichet told journalists in Aix-en-Provence, France. “I have no problem with austerity, rigor. I call this good budgetary management.” Trichet said today that deficit reduction won’t choke growth and a failure to stem budget gaps would be equally risky for the recovery. “Confidence is key for growth, and if you cannot have confidence in the sustainability of the fiscal policies then you have no growth because you have no confidence,” he said. “The two things are complimentary.”
Germany to Reduce Deficit by 80 billion euros ($100 billion) over five years Reuters reports Germany plans to cut new borrowing in savings drive.
Germany plans to cut net new borrowing by some 80 billion euros ($100 billion) over five years, reducing supply of Europe's benchmark debt and adding pressure on other euro zone members to tighten their own public finances. The draft budget for 2011, which the cabinet plans to approve on Wednesday for ratification in parliament in November, will anchor a 34 billion euro reduction in new issuance over the next two years compared to earlier plans. The federal government also aims to cut spending to 307.4 billion euros next year, a 3.8-percent decrease from plans made before a "debt brake" law was passed in 2009, details of the draft made available to Reuters on Sunday showed. The budget is the latest chapter in Germany's drive to consolidate public finances, a move that has drawn criticism from some other large countries that say it is too early to withdraw support enacted during the financial crisis. Unions have promised stiff resistance and industrial action looks likely -- a threat that could rise as cuts in social services deepen and health care costs rise as planned. In addition, some politicians from within Merkel's ruling coalition say the measures are unfairly aimed at the poor, whose benefit cuts make up the largest part of the savings planned through 2014. Besides the spending cuts, the budget's planned reduction in new borrowing to 65.2 billion euros this year and 57.5 billion euros in 2011 will put the onus on other countries that share the euro currency to follow suit.
Thursday, July 1, 2010
John Stadtmiller - June 29 2010- Robby Noel, Bob Chapman- Roundtable
Thursday, July 1, 2010Bob Chapman -John Stadtmiller - Robby Noel, Roundtable - June 29 2010
John Stadtmiller - June 29 2010- Robby Noel, Bob Chapman- Roundtable
Timestamps/Highlights
5:34
John says 32 states are officially bankrupt, Robby says 48 states are bankrupt. South Dakota was mentioned as one State not bankrupt.
10:39
The Fed will have to spend 2.5 Trillion to keep this going until the next election. Bob thinks the stock market will go to 6550 by the end of the year.
17:15
Consumer confidence numbers dropped from 62 to 52...that is a BIG drop.
18:51
Caller mentions a Citigroup circuit breaker occurring around 3:00pm ...it was for five minutes. Caller says plunge protection had to come in.
22:00
John reads Paul Krugman article , we are now in the early stages of the third depression. Bob comments on it.
31:50
Caller asks when the Middle East "will go up"...Bob says 2 to 3 weeks. John says gas could go to $6 or $7 on a temporary basis.
35:10
Israel is experiencing its worse public relations ever. There were some interesting comments from the Orthodox Jewish Community.
37:38
The relief wells that BP are drilling might work according to John.
42:35
Caller asks about the Fed ramping up the printing press...
48:32
Caller asks some questions on devaluation from a Canadian perspective.
64:00
Caller mentions the Rick Wiles/Matthew Simmons interview regarding the Gulf Oil Spill and asks questions about Mathew Simmons. Robby and Bob never heard of him...but John has. John allows the caller to give the website of Rick Wiles TruNews site where the interview can be downloaded from. Bob asks if Simmons is a proponent of peak oil (Simmons is).
Bob Chapman on Discount Gold & Silver Trading Radio June 28, 2010
"Gold & Silver prices are not going up because of inflation or hyperinflation. They are going up because no one trusts anyones debt anymore..." - Bob Chapman. The USDX is in a terrible head & shoulders formation and is about to go way down! the right hand shoulders is being broken down. Gold & Silver prices/stocks are going much higher.
Bob Chapman on the international forecaster of 26 june 2010 :"The foregoing events lead us to other manifestations of trouble, real trouble. For the past four years all currencies have fallen versus gold and silver. The US dollar has been falling for 11 years versus gold and silver. What gold is telling you is that the US, UK and European financial systems are on the way to collapse. The cover-up cannot go on and all the players know that. They are all living in the theater of the absurd. What politicians in all these countries are doing is what they are being told to do. If they do not do what they are told they will never hold public office or be a bureaucrat again. If what they do is serious enough they will be liquidated. What is happening financially, fiscally and monetarily is unnatural. There is absolutely no way the system can be fixed. If these politicians and their handlers believe this they are doomed. They have pulled this hundreds of times and each time they have been unsuccessful. This time will be a disaster for the Illuminists due to the Internet and talk radio. This time they will escape nothing. We live in a decadent, immoral financial system that has to fall. In this sort of environment only gold and silver can protect your assets."
Bob Chapman on the international forecaster of 26 june 2010 :"The foregoing events lead us to other manifestations of trouble, real trouble. For the past four years all currencies have fallen versus gold and silver. The US dollar has been falling for 11 years versus gold and silver. What gold is telling you is that the US, UK and European financial systems are on the way to collapse. The cover-up cannot go on and all the players know that. They are all living in the theater of the absurd. What politicians in all these countries are doing is what they are being told to do. If they do not do what they are told they will never hold public office or be a bureaucrat again. If what they do is serious enough they will be liquidated. What is happening financially, fiscally and monetarily is unnatural. There is absolutely no way the system can be fixed. If these politicians and their handlers believe this they are doomed. They have pulled this hundreds of times and each time they have been unsuccessful. This time will be a disaster for the Illuminists due to the Internet and talk radio. This time they will escape nothing. We live in a decadent, immoral financial system that has to fall. In this sort of environment only gold and silver can protect your assets."
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Please Read the entire thing this is important Struggling and Faltering to Manage Economic Recovery by Bob Chapman The International Forecaster June 3
Bob Chapman (click to read his bio)
http://www.theinternationalforecaster.com/International_Forecaster_Weekly/Struggling_and_Faltering_to_Manage_Economic_Recovery
No Austerity, full steam ahead, Faltering markets, threats to social stability, Europe struggling with PIIGS, No end in California, economic disasters in the making, an oil soaked letter in Louisiana, consumer spending is uninspiring,
Last week the Dow fell 2.9%; S&P 3.6%; the Russell 2000 3.3% and the Nasdaq 100 fell 3.9%. These numbers should make for a lower opening on Monday. Banks fell 1.7%; broker/dealers 2.2%; cyclicals 3.5%; transports 4.3%; consumers 4.1%; utilities 4.3%; high tech 4.6%; semis 5.2%; Internets 4.2% and biotechs 1.7%. Gold was unchanged; the HUI fell 0.2% and the USDX fell 0.4% to 85.32.
Two-year T-bills fell 8 bps to 0.61%; the 10-year notes fell 11 bps 3.11% and the 10-year German bund fell 12 bps to 2.61%.
The Freddie Mac fixed rate 30-year mortgage fell 6 bps to 4.69%, the lowest rate since 1971. The 15’s fell 7 bps to 4.13%. The one-year ARMs fell 5 bps to 3.77% and the 30-year jumbos fell 6 bps to 5.52%.
Fed credit rose $6.3 billion, up $108 billion YTD, or 10.1% and 16.6% YOY. Fed foreign holdings of Treasuries and Agency debt rose $10.1 billion to a new record of $3.090 trillion. Custody holdings for foreign central banks increased $135 billion YTD, or 9.5% annualized and YOY $326 billion, or 11.8%.
M2, narrow, money supply fell $37.5 billion to $8.564 trillion. It increased $52 billion YTD and YOY 1.4%.
Total money market fund assets rose $12 billion to $2.818 trillion. YTD they have fallen $476 billion, a one-year decline of $891 billion, or 24%.
The Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke tells us the American recovery is struggling because of European austerity. Does he really expect us to believe that? There is no question austerity in Europe will lead to a deflationary depression. Unemployment will rise quickly, which means major cuts in government spending and lessened revenues. Beside the public those affected the most will be towns, cities and states, many of which are on the edge of insolvency surprisingly even in Germany. The PIIGS unbelievably say their instability and debt is the result of the deflationary economic policies of the richer euro zone members. Germans and others are saving, agreeing to low salaries, producing more and not increasing debt. On the other hand the PIIGS and others were headed in the other direction. This is why the euro is doomed. After destroying their economies with one interest rate fits all, they are quick to blame others. Then again the bankers should never made the loans they did either. The result is deflationary depression, which is just getting underway. It is proper for Europe to use austerity, but it is a big mistake to raise taxes. That leaves little for the populace to spend to keep the economy going.
The US is determined to take the opposite tack. No austerity and full steam ahead. This in spite of the fact that the economy is faltering, especially in real estate, both residential and commercial. It is so bad that they have obscure government agencies buying mortgages. These new buyers plus Fannie, Freddie, Ginnie and FHA have been buying 95% of mortgages. Without massive stimulus and or Fed monetary expansion we will definitely see negative GDP growth in the last quarter of 2010. The indicators are in place and the tell tail signs of retrenchment abound. Wall Street is about to give up the ghost and see a test of the March 2009 lows. We are sure there will be rallies as the Fed unleashes trillions more in money and credit that as well will produce much higher inflation. This could produce $5,000 or more gold and a 5,000-point Dow.
As you are now well aware Fannie and Freddie are going to punish people who have stopped paying their mortgages, who can pay them, and who are paying other bills instead. This leaves lenders with foreclosures and much more inventory than they ever imagined. This additional problem will bring on the double dip that Wall Street and Washington so fear. As a result of this and other failures we are about to experience the worst economic collapse since 1348. The stock market is topping out readying itself for its most disastrous fall in history. The fall will be followed by years of depression, all of which has been deliberately created to bring the world economically and financially to its knees in an attempt to bring about world government by Illuminists. Some market analysts understand where the market is headed, but most who do understand, write and talk about the mundane observable trappings and not what the situation is really all about. We have several analysts talking about a market collapse. They do not talk about the real forces behind our misfortune. We recently watched an interview of a man who wrote about the Bush family. His only admission was that they were players in the game controlled by other forces, which he refused to mention. He wouldn’t say what they were up to and who they were. This shows you how terrified writers are who are confronted by the power of the Illuminists.
There are always these lone voices in the wilderness, which at best – some 15% of the populace – listens too. You had better listen this time because it could well cost you not only your assets, but your life, especially when another war is being prepared for you to engage in. Nothing is really as it seems to be and there are no coincidences. You are about to enter a world of chaos from which few will survive unscathed. A world of no banks, no public facilities, no food and rampaging gangs of desperate people. Unemployment of 50% and little law and order. Violence will be rife. This is not a pretty picture, but we have spared you the details. The world had better wake up fast so they’ll be prepared to deal with what is to come. If you were not aware of it the dark side really exists. We also want to remind you that for more than 20 years we have been almost totally right, and we have made some stupendous calls.
We are now entering the next to last phase of our journey. The wanton creation of wealth, inflation and perhaps hyperinflation, which will rob you of your assets. A stealth attack on what you have left by the people who control your government. Such monetary creation is the only way these people can keep the game going. They know it won’t last, but they proceed anyway. For awhile they’ll keep the multitudes at bay with extended unemployment and food stamps, but that will fade in time for lack of financial control, as the system begins to break down.
You already see all fiat currencies under fire, as is sovereign debt. Can it get any worse? Of course it can, and it will. Implosion is the word everyone is going to discover and understand. An event that cannot be hidden by zero interest rates and endless supplies of money and credit. That word implosion will describe what will happen as a result in the machinations of the Federal Reserve.
Now that you have seen a glimpse of your future we will move on to the deteriorating world that we now live in.
CNBC and the mainline media tells us all is well irrespective of a failing recovery, climbing unemployment, which has just recently been assisted by trillions of dollars in stimulus. The question is what comes next? More of the same, of course. There is no other avenue to pursue even though Mr. Bernanke knows such stimulus is not going to get the desired results. These players behind the scenes know history. They know what we know. They depend on 98% of the people not discovering what they and we know, and that is where this is all headed. The important people in Wall Street, banking, insurance and in transnational corporations know, but they are not about to tell you. The market doesn’t like what it sees, but it knows it cannot do much about it.
Americans are fighting back as millions have not made mortgage payments for a year and are living for free in their homes. As an antidote Washington is now considering charging them rent, something they should have done four years ago. If you add in the disaster that is commercial real estate, personal and corporate debt, and sovereign debt, you have an insolvable problem that can only end in great grief. The choice to expose Greece’s weaknesses from behind the scenes looks to be a fatal mistake. The elitists never envisioned the firestorm that the exposure has led too. Greece is about to explode, not because of the reduced socialist benefits, but because the people are finally realizing that they and others have been taken for a ride by the bankers and others behind the scenes and from within their own government. Discovery by the Greek people and others is not something the illuminists expected. They now are forced again to expedite their programs - when they have to do that they make mistakes, often-big mistakes, which gives us pursuers an advantage we could never hoped to have had. After their latest mistakes the bankers are scrambling to preserve the current system. It is not to be. There are far to many who now know what they are up too.
Europe is still struggling in an attempt to bailout the PIIGS, which if they take the loans they will live in financial bondage and depression for the next 30 years. We told the Greek people in a TV documentary last week to default, leave the euro, create the new drachma, lower taxes, make sure the rich pay their taxes, cut expenses in government by 30% and do not under any circumstances sell off any Greet assets, such as islands and utilities to foreign Illuminists for 20 cents on the dollar. The bankers created the money they lent out of thin air, so why should they be repaid. In addition they knew the risks and should have never made the loans in the fist place. The Illuminist-Bilderberg PM should be impeached for trying to destroy the country.
There is talk of a new northern euro to replace the current unit. Such a unit would need gold backing. Germany asked for the return of their gold from the US about a year ago. As far as we know they haven’t received it. The question then is, how do they back such a currency? France has sufficient gold, but they are in serious economic and financial trouble. We don’t think a northern euro is viable. Denmark is mentioned as a partner, a country that twice has rejected the euro. They also have serious problems. If the 5 PIIGS default how much bad debt will these nations be stuck with - $1 trillion or $2 trillion? That certainly is a salient factor in any new currency decision, and it is very possible default could become reality. Deficit reduction and austerity are not solutions without tax cuts. That is unless you want years and years of recession/depression. The public has to have money to spend to keep economies going. That isn’t a purge, but it is as close as you are going to get for the present.
Just headlines: "the audit board violates constitution, Supreme Court finds." As Reuters explains: "At stake in the case is how corporate America is audited and a key provision of the Sarbanes-Oxley corporate reform law adopted in 2002 in response to the Enron and WorldCom accounting scandals. If the Supreme Court strikes down the board, the ruling will put pressure on Congress to revisit the law, opening it up for potential changes in the reporting duties of companies." Then again, who even pretends we have remotely credible filings anymore? With FASB indefinitely locked in the basement and companies allowed to report their numbers on a mark-to-unicorn basis, it is all lies anyway.
Legislation to overhaul financial regulation will help curb risk-taking and boost capital buffers. What it won’t do is fundamentally reshape Wall Street’s biggest banks or prevent another crisis, analysts said. A deal reached by members of a House and Senate conference early this morning diluted provisions from the tougher Senate bill, limiting rather than prohibiting the ability of federally insured banks to trade derivatives and invest in hedge funds or private equity funds. Banks ‘dodged a bullet,’ said Raj Date, executive director for Cambridge Winter Inc.’s center for financial institutions policy. The overhaul, which still requires approval from the full Congress, won’t shrink banks deemed ‘too big to fail,’ leaving largely intact a U.S. financial industry dominated by six companies with a combined $9.4 trillion of assets. The changes also do little to solve the danger posed by leveraged companies reliant on fickle markets for funding, which can evaporate in a panic like the one that spread in late 2008.
Fannie Mae will temporarily deny new loans to borrowers who deliberately default and walk away from their homes. Borrowers who have the means to make mortgage payments and don’t work with lenders to restructure loans will be banned from obtaining new mortgages backed by Fannie Mae for seven years from the date of foreclosure, the company said. Fannie Mae, along Freddie Mac, own or guarantee more than half of the $10.7 trillion U.S. mortgage market.
Californians don’t see much evidence that the worst economic contraction since the Great Depression is coming to an end. Unemployment was 12.4% in May. Lawmakers gridlocked over how to close a $19 billion budget gap are weighing the termination of the main welfare program for 1.3 million poor families or borrowing more than $9 billion in the bond market. Far from rebounding, the Golden State, with a $1.8 trillion economy that’s larger than Russia’s, is sinking deeper into its financial funk. And it’s not alone. Even as the U.S. appears to be on the mend finances in Arizona, Illinois, New Jersey, New York and other states show few signs of improvement. Forty-six states face budget shortfalls that add up to $112 billion for the fiscal year ending next June, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. ‘States are going to have to cut back spending and raise taxes the same way Greece and Spain are,’ says Dean Baker, co- director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research.
May personal income rose 0.4%, the PCE price deflator rose 1.9% and April personal income was revised to 0.5% from 0.4%. Spending rose 0.2%, real disposable income rose 0.5% and savings rose to 4%.
The Chicago Fed Activity Index was 0.21, down from April’s 0.25 and way down from 0.32 expert estimates.
The June Dollar Fed Manufacturing Index was minus 4%, down from May’s 2.9% and a 3.2%expert estimate.
The Friday Night FDIC Follies made a repeat when three more banks closed to total 86 YTD. We could get close to 100 by the end of the year.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the housing-finance companies supported by U.S. taxpayers, should take advantage of demand for government-backed mortgage debt and sell their holdings, according to Pacific Investment Management Co.
“Since the government’s going to want to unwind them at some point anyway, why not do it at the best levels ever?” Scott Simon, the mortgage-bond head at Newport Beach, California-based Pimco, manager of the world’s biggest fixed- income fund, said in a telephone interview. “It’s good for taxpayers, good for stakeholders, good for everybody.”
The average price of the $5.2 trillion of so-called agency mortgage bonds guaranteed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac or federal agency Ginnie Mae rose last week to an all-time high of 106.3 cents on the dollar, according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch’s Mortgage Master Index. The Federal Reserve said today it would replace its contracts to take delivery of certain bonds with other debt, reflecting a lack of supply in the market.
Legislation to overhaul financial regulation will help curb risk-taking and boost capital buffers. What it won’t do is fundamentally reshape Wall Street’s biggest banks or prevent another crisis, analysts said.
A deal reached by members of a House and Senate conference early this morning diluted provisions from the tougher Senate bill, limiting rather than prohibiting the ability of federally insured banks to trade derivatives and invest in hedge funds or private equity funds.
Banks “dodged a bullet,” said Raj Date, executive director for Cambridge Winter Inc.’s center for financial institutions policy and a former Deutsche Bank AG executive. “This has to be a net positive.”
Hashed out almost two years after the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, the legislation shepherded by Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd and House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank places limits on potentially risky activities such as proprietary trading or over-the-counter derivatives and gives regulators new powers to seize and wind down large, complex institutions if needed.
For the last several months, Princeton professor Paul Krugman has become increasingly agitated about what he feels is a disastrous mistake in the making -- a sudden global obsession with "austerity" that will lead to spending cuts in many nations in Europe and, possibly, the United States.
Krugman believes that this is exactly the same mistake we made in 1937, when the country was beginning to emerge from the Great Depression. A sudden focus on austerity in 1937, it is widely believed, halted four years of strong growth and plunged the country back into recession, sending the unemployment rate soaring again.
In Krugman's view, the world should keep spending now, to offset the pain of the recession and high unemployment--and then start cutting back as soon as the economy is robustly healthy again.
Those concerned about the world's massive debt and deficits, however, have seized control of the public debate, and are scaring the world's governments into cutting back.
Californians don’t see much evidence that the worst economic contraction since the Great Depression is coming to an end.
Unemployment was 12.4 percent in May, 2.7 percentage points higher than the national rate. Lawmakers gridlocked over how to close a $19 billion budget gap are weighing the termination of the main welfare program for 1.3 million poor families or borrowing more than $9 billion in the bond market. California, tied with Illinois for the lowest credit rating of any state, is diverting a rising portion of tax revenue to service debt, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its August issue.
Far from rebounding, the Golden State, with a $1.8 trillion economy that’s larger than Russia’s, is sinking deeper into its financial funk. And it’s not alone.
Even as the U.S. appears to be on the mend gross domestic product has climbed three straight quarters -- finances in Arizona, Illinois, New Jersey, New York and other states show few signs of improvement. Forty-six states face budget shortfalls that add up to $112 billion for the fiscal year ending next June, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a Washington research institution. State spending is 12 percent of U.S. GDP.
Louisiana Economic Development Secretary Stephen Moret sent a letter to SBA Administrator Karen Mills complaining that the SBA is using its normal loan approval processes even though the circumstances are extraordinary, and that the agency is turning down far too many Louisiana businesses because of "credit concerns" or because they can't prove they'll be able to repay quickly.
Moret wrote that hundreds of the 21,000 claims filed with BP for losses due to the oil spill come from struggling small businesses, and most of them need the SBA loans to carry them through until they receive payment from BP.
But, he noted in the letter, SBA has informed him that 70 percent of those applicants have been denied.
Moret wrote that his office has been trying to work with SBA officials and was told that the federal agency could change its usual policy to soften underwriting guidelines and to consider the promise of future BP payments "in lieu of SBA's normal process for assessing credit history and repayment ability."
But that apparently hasn't happened. Moret noted that a similar process was used by SBA to help businesses after the Exxon Valdez tanker spill in Alaska in 1989.
SBA Assistant Secretary Jonathan Swain told The Times-Picayune that his agency typically approves more disaster loans as it goes along, and with a 30 percent approval rate now, SBA is already approaching its five-year average of 35 percent.
Uninspiring consumer income and spending data have pushed US stock futures ever so slightly into the red, as uneasiness over the US economic recovery lingers in the minds of investors. With less than 30 minutes before opening bell on Wall Street, all leading indices are nearly flat with the DOW off 0.06%.
Market sentiment remains fragile despite the weekend pledge by G20 leaders to reduce national deficits and debt. While waning off stimulus spending is looked upon highly by the investors, the fragility of the economic recovery is in the front of everyone’s mind with fresh austerity measures possible interfering with positive growth prospects. And as lackluster data continues to pour in from the US, investors are now questions the durability and pace of the recovery in the world’s largest economy with whispers of a double dip recession being heard more and more often.
Eight individuals were arrested Sunday for allegedly carrying out long-term, "deep-cover" assignments in the United States on behalf of the Russia, the Justice Department announced today. Two additional defendants were also arrested Sunday for allegedly participating in the same Russian intelligence program within the United States. Some of the Russians adopted Irish names in their spy work, including using the names Murphy and Foley.
Information they were seeking was pretty broad based but it included at least one report about gold. Moscow relayed back to the spies that the gold report was "very valuable" and reported that it was passed on to Russia's finance minister.
Also, according to the complaint, one spy, "Cynthia Murphy," was developing a relationship with a prominent New York financier. The financier is apparently a big political money raiser and has a close friend in the Cabinet.
The most interesting question is, of course, what kind of information could the spies have turned over about gold that Moscow deemed as "very valuable"? And let the guessing game begin as to who the "prominent New York financier" is.
It should also be noted that this decade long investigation was publicly revealed just days after Obama and Russian President Medvedev shared hamburgers together.
http://www.theinternationalforecaster.com/International_Forecaster_Weekly/Struggling_and_Faltering_to_Manage_Economic_Recovery
No Austerity, full steam ahead, Faltering markets, threats to social stability, Europe struggling with PIIGS, No end in California, economic disasters in the making, an oil soaked letter in Louisiana, consumer spending is uninspiring,
Last week the Dow fell 2.9%; S&P 3.6%; the Russell 2000 3.3% and the Nasdaq 100 fell 3.9%. These numbers should make for a lower opening on Monday. Banks fell 1.7%; broker/dealers 2.2%; cyclicals 3.5%; transports 4.3%; consumers 4.1%; utilities 4.3%; high tech 4.6%; semis 5.2%; Internets 4.2% and biotechs 1.7%. Gold was unchanged; the HUI fell 0.2% and the USDX fell 0.4% to 85.32.
Two-year T-bills fell 8 bps to 0.61%; the 10-year notes fell 11 bps 3.11% and the 10-year German bund fell 12 bps to 2.61%.
The Freddie Mac fixed rate 30-year mortgage fell 6 bps to 4.69%, the lowest rate since 1971. The 15’s fell 7 bps to 4.13%. The one-year ARMs fell 5 bps to 3.77% and the 30-year jumbos fell 6 bps to 5.52%.
Fed credit rose $6.3 billion, up $108 billion YTD, or 10.1% and 16.6% YOY. Fed foreign holdings of Treasuries and Agency debt rose $10.1 billion to a new record of $3.090 trillion. Custody holdings for foreign central banks increased $135 billion YTD, or 9.5% annualized and YOY $326 billion, or 11.8%.
M2, narrow, money supply fell $37.5 billion to $8.564 trillion. It increased $52 billion YTD and YOY 1.4%.
Total money market fund assets rose $12 billion to $2.818 trillion. YTD they have fallen $476 billion, a one-year decline of $891 billion, or 24%.
The Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke tells us the American recovery is struggling because of European austerity. Does he really expect us to believe that? There is no question austerity in Europe will lead to a deflationary depression. Unemployment will rise quickly, which means major cuts in government spending and lessened revenues. Beside the public those affected the most will be towns, cities and states, many of which are on the edge of insolvency surprisingly even in Germany. The PIIGS unbelievably say their instability and debt is the result of the deflationary economic policies of the richer euro zone members. Germans and others are saving, agreeing to low salaries, producing more and not increasing debt. On the other hand the PIIGS and others were headed in the other direction. This is why the euro is doomed. After destroying their economies with one interest rate fits all, they are quick to blame others. Then again the bankers should never made the loans they did either. The result is deflationary depression, which is just getting underway. It is proper for Europe to use austerity, but it is a big mistake to raise taxes. That leaves little for the populace to spend to keep the economy going.
The US is determined to take the opposite tack. No austerity and full steam ahead. This in spite of the fact that the economy is faltering, especially in real estate, both residential and commercial. It is so bad that they have obscure government agencies buying mortgages. These new buyers plus Fannie, Freddie, Ginnie and FHA have been buying 95% of mortgages. Without massive stimulus and or Fed monetary expansion we will definitely see negative GDP growth in the last quarter of 2010. The indicators are in place and the tell tail signs of retrenchment abound. Wall Street is about to give up the ghost and see a test of the March 2009 lows. We are sure there will be rallies as the Fed unleashes trillions more in money and credit that as well will produce much higher inflation. This could produce $5,000 or more gold and a 5,000-point Dow.
As you are now well aware Fannie and Freddie are going to punish people who have stopped paying their mortgages, who can pay them, and who are paying other bills instead. This leaves lenders with foreclosures and much more inventory than they ever imagined. This additional problem will bring on the double dip that Wall Street and Washington so fear. As a result of this and other failures we are about to experience the worst economic collapse since 1348. The stock market is topping out readying itself for its most disastrous fall in history. The fall will be followed by years of depression, all of which has been deliberately created to bring the world economically and financially to its knees in an attempt to bring about world government by Illuminists. Some market analysts understand where the market is headed, but most who do understand, write and talk about the mundane observable trappings and not what the situation is really all about. We have several analysts talking about a market collapse. They do not talk about the real forces behind our misfortune. We recently watched an interview of a man who wrote about the Bush family. His only admission was that they were players in the game controlled by other forces, which he refused to mention. He wouldn’t say what they were up to and who they were. This shows you how terrified writers are who are confronted by the power of the Illuminists.
There are always these lone voices in the wilderness, which at best – some 15% of the populace – listens too. You had better listen this time because it could well cost you not only your assets, but your life, especially when another war is being prepared for you to engage in. Nothing is really as it seems to be and there are no coincidences. You are about to enter a world of chaos from which few will survive unscathed. A world of no banks, no public facilities, no food and rampaging gangs of desperate people. Unemployment of 50% and little law and order. Violence will be rife. This is not a pretty picture, but we have spared you the details. The world had better wake up fast so they’ll be prepared to deal with what is to come. If you were not aware of it the dark side really exists. We also want to remind you that for more than 20 years we have been almost totally right, and we have made some stupendous calls.
We are now entering the next to last phase of our journey. The wanton creation of wealth, inflation and perhaps hyperinflation, which will rob you of your assets. A stealth attack on what you have left by the people who control your government. Such monetary creation is the only way these people can keep the game going. They know it won’t last, but they proceed anyway. For awhile they’ll keep the multitudes at bay with extended unemployment and food stamps, but that will fade in time for lack of financial control, as the system begins to break down.
You already see all fiat currencies under fire, as is sovereign debt. Can it get any worse? Of course it can, and it will. Implosion is the word everyone is going to discover and understand. An event that cannot be hidden by zero interest rates and endless supplies of money and credit. That word implosion will describe what will happen as a result in the machinations of the Federal Reserve.
Now that you have seen a glimpse of your future we will move on to the deteriorating world that we now live in.
CNBC and the mainline media tells us all is well irrespective of a failing recovery, climbing unemployment, which has just recently been assisted by trillions of dollars in stimulus. The question is what comes next? More of the same, of course. There is no other avenue to pursue even though Mr. Bernanke knows such stimulus is not going to get the desired results. These players behind the scenes know history. They know what we know. They depend on 98% of the people not discovering what they and we know, and that is where this is all headed. The important people in Wall Street, banking, insurance and in transnational corporations know, but they are not about to tell you. The market doesn’t like what it sees, but it knows it cannot do much about it.
Americans are fighting back as millions have not made mortgage payments for a year and are living for free in their homes. As an antidote Washington is now considering charging them rent, something they should have done four years ago. If you add in the disaster that is commercial real estate, personal and corporate debt, and sovereign debt, you have an insolvable problem that can only end in great grief. The choice to expose Greece’s weaknesses from behind the scenes looks to be a fatal mistake. The elitists never envisioned the firestorm that the exposure has led too. Greece is about to explode, not because of the reduced socialist benefits, but because the people are finally realizing that they and others have been taken for a ride by the bankers and others behind the scenes and from within their own government. Discovery by the Greek people and others is not something the illuminists expected. They now are forced again to expedite their programs - when they have to do that they make mistakes, often-big mistakes, which gives us pursuers an advantage we could never hoped to have had. After their latest mistakes the bankers are scrambling to preserve the current system. It is not to be. There are far to many who now know what they are up too.
Europe is still struggling in an attempt to bailout the PIIGS, which if they take the loans they will live in financial bondage and depression for the next 30 years. We told the Greek people in a TV documentary last week to default, leave the euro, create the new drachma, lower taxes, make sure the rich pay their taxes, cut expenses in government by 30% and do not under any circumstances sell off any Greet assets, such as islands and utilities to foreign Illuminists for 20 cents on the dollar. The bankers created the money they lent out of thin air, so why should they be repaid. In addition they knew the risks and should have never made the loans in the fist place. The Illuminist-Bilderberg PM should be impeached for trying to destroy the country.
There is talk of a new northern euro to replace the current unit. Such a unit would need gold backing. Germany asked for the return of their gold from the US about a year ago. As far as we know they haven’t received it. The question then is, how do they back such a currency? France has sufficient gold, but they are in serious economic and financial trouble. We don’t think a northern euro is viable. Denmark is mentioned as a partner, a country that twice has rejected the euro. They also have serious problems. If the 5 PIIGS default how much bad debt will these nations be stuck with - $1 trillion or $2 trillion? That certainly is a salient factor in any new currency decision, and it is very possible default could become reality. Deficit reduction and austerity are not solutions without tax cuts. That is unless you want years and years of recession/depression. The public has to have money to spend to keep economies going. That isn’t a purge, but it is as close as you are going to get for the present.
Just headlines: "the audit board violates constitution, Supreme Court finds." As Reuters explains: "At stake in the case is how corporate America is audited and a key provision of the Sarbanes-Oxley corporate reform law adopted in 2002 in response to the Enron and WorldCom accounting scandals. If the Supreme Court strikes down the board, the ruling will put pressure on Congress to revisit the law, opening it up for potential changes in the reporting duties of companies." Then again, who even pretends we have remotely credible filings anymore? With FASB indefinitely locked in the basement and companies allowed to report their numbers on a mark-to-unicorn basis, it is all lies anyway.
Legislation to overhaul financial regulation will help curb risk-taking and boost capital buffers. What it won’t do is fundamentally reshape Wall Street’s biggest banks or prevent another crisis, analysts said. A deal reached by members of a House and Senate conference early this morning diluted provisions from the tougher Senate bill, limiting rather than prohibiting the ability of federally insured banks to trade derivatives and invest in hedge funds or private equity funds. Banks ‘dodged a bullet,’ said Raj Date, executive director for Cambridge Winter Inc.’s center for financial institutions policy. The overhaul, which still requires approval from the full Congress, won’t shrink banks deemed ‘too big to fail,’ leaving largely intact a U.S. financial industry dominated by six companies with a combined $9.4 trillion of assets. The changes also do little to solve the danger posed by leveraged companies reliant on fickle markets for funding, which can evaporate in a panic like the one that spread in late 2008.
Fannie Mae will temporarily deny new loans to borrowers who deliberately default and walk away from their homes. Borrowers who have the means to make mortgage payments and don’t work with lenders to restructure loans will be banned from obtaining new mortgages backed by Fannie Mae for seven years from the date of foreclosure, the company said. Fannie Mae, along Freddie Mac, own or guarantee more than half of the $10.7 trillion U.S. mortgage market.
Californians don’t see much evidence that the worst economic contraction since the Great Depression is coming to an end. Unemployment was 12.4% in May. Lawmakers gridlocked over how to close a $19 billion budget gap are weighing the termination of the main welfare program for 1.3 million poor families or borrowing more than $9 billion in the bond market. Far from rebounding, the Golden State, with a $1.8 trillion economy that’s larger than Russia’s, is sinking deeper into its financial funk. And it’s not alone. Even as the U.S. appears to be on the mend finances in Arizona, Illinois, New Jersey, New York and other states show few signs of improvement. Forty-six states face budget shortfalls that add up to $112 billion for the fiscal year ending next June, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. ‘States are going to have to cut back spending and raise taxes the same way Greece and Spain are,’ says Dean Baker, co- director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research.
May personal income rose 0.4%, the PCE price deflator rose 1.9% and April personal income was revised to 0.5% from 0.4%. Spending rose 0.2%, real disposable income rose 0.5% and savings rose to 4%.
The Chicago Fed Activity Index was 0.21, down from April’s 0.25 and way down from 0.32 expert estimates.
The June Dollar Fed Manufacturing Index was minus 4%, down from May’s 2.9% and a 3.2%expert estimate.
The Friday Night FDIC Follies made a repeat when three more banks closed to total 86 YTD. We could get close to 100 by the end of the year.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the housing-finance companies supported by U.S. taxpayers, should take advantage of demand for government-backed mortgage debt and sell their holdings, according to Pacific Investment Management Co.
“Since the government’s going to want to unwind them at some point anyway, why not do it at the best levels ever?” Scott Simon, the mortgage-bond head at Newport Beach, California-based Pimco, manager of the world’s biggest fixed- income fund, said in a telephone interview. “It’s good for taxpayers, good for stakeholders, good for everybody.”
The average price of the $5.2 trillion of so-called agency mortgage bonds guaranteed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac or federal agency Ginnie Mae rose last week to an all-time high of 106.3 cents on the dollar, according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch’s Mortgage Master Index. The Federal Reserve said today it would replace its contracts to take delivery of certain bonds with other debt, reflecting a lack of supply in the market.
Legislation to overhaul financial regulation will help curb risk-taking and boost capital buffers. What it won’t do is fundamentally reshape Wall Street’s biggest banks or prevent another crisis, analysts said.
A deal reached by members of a House and Senate conference early this morning diluted provisions from the tougher Senate bill, limiting rather than prohibiting the ability of federally insured banks to trade derivatives and invest in hedge funds or private equity funds.
Banks “dodged a bullet,” said Raj Date, executive director for Cambridge Winter Inc.’s center for financial institutions policy and a former Deutsche Bank AG executive. “This has to be a net positive.”
Hashed out almost two years after the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, the legislation shepherded by Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd and House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank places limits on potentially risky activities such as proprietary trading or over-the-counter derivatives and gives regulators new powers to seize and wind down large, complex institutions if needed.
For the last several months, Princeton professor Paul Krugman has become increasingly agitated about what he feels is a disastrous mistake in the making -- a sudden global obsession with "austerity" that will lead to spending cuts in many nations in Europe and, possibly, the United States.
Krugman believes that this is exactly the same mistake we made in 1937, when the country was beginning to emerge from the Great Depression. A sudden focus on austerity in 1937, it is widely believed, halted four years of strong growth and plunged the country back into recession, sending the unemployment rate soaring again.
In Krugman's view, the world should keep spending now, to offset the pain of the recession and high unemployment--and then start cutting back as soon as the economy is robustly healthy again.
Those concerned about the world's massive debt and deficits, however, have seized control of the public debate, and are scaring the world's governments into cutting back.
Californians don’t see much evidence that the worst economic contraction since the Great Depression is coming to an end.
Unemployment was 12.4 percent in May, 2.7 percentage points higher than the national rate. Lawmakers gridlocked over how to close a $19 billion budget gap are weighing the termination of the main welfare program for 1.3 million poor families or borrowing more than $9 billion in the bond market. California, tied with Illinois for the lowest credit rating of any state, is diverting a rising portion of tax revenue to service debt, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its August issue.
Far from rebounding, the Golden State, with a $1.8 trillion economy that’s larger than Russia’s, is sinking deeper into its financial funk. And it’s not alone.
Even as the U.S. appears to be on the mend gross domestic product has climbed three straight quarters -- finances in Arizona, Illinois, New Jersey, New York and other states show few signs of improvement. Forty-six states face budget shortfalls that add up to $112 billion for the fiscal year ending next June, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a Washington research institution. State spending is 12 percent of U.S. GDP.
Louisiana Economic Development Secretary Stephen Moret sent a letter to SBA Administrator Karen Mills complaining that the SBA is using its normal loan approval processes even though the circumstances are extraordinary, and that the agency is turning down far too many Louisiana businesses because of "credit concerns" or because they can't prove they'll be able to repay quickly.
Moret wrote that hundreds of the 21,000 claims filed with BP for losses due to the oil spill come from struggling small businesses, and most of them need the SBA loans to carry them through until they receive payment from BP.
But, he noted in the letter, SBA has informed him that 70 percent of those applicants have been denied.
Moret wrote that his office has been trying to work with SBA officials and was told that the federal agency could change its usual policy to soften underwriting guidelines and to consider the promise of future BP payments "in lieu of SBA's normal process for assessing credit history and repayment ability."
But that apparently hasn't happened. Moret noted that a similar process was used by SBA to help businesses after the Exxon Valdez tanker spill in Alaska in 1989.
SBA Assistant Secretary Jonathan Swain told The Times-Picayune that his agency typically approves more disaster loans as it goes along, and with a 30 percent approval rate now, SBA is already approaching its five-year average of 35 percent.
Uninspiring consumer income and spending data have pushed US stock futures ever so slightly into the red, as uneasiness over the US economic recovery lingers in the minds of investors. With less than 30 minutes before opening bell on Wall Street, all leading indices are nearly flat with the DOW off 0.06%.
Market sentiment remains fragile despite the weekend pledge by G20 leaders to reduce national deficits and debt. While waning off stimulus spending is looked upon highly by the investors, the fragility of the economic recovery is in the front of everyone’s mind with fresh austerity measures possible interfering with positive growth prospects. And as lackluster data continues to pour in from the US, investors are now questions the durability and pace of the recovery in the world’s largest economy with whispers of a double dip recession being heard more and more often.
Eight individuals were arrested Sunday for allegedly carrying out long-term, "deep-cover" assignments in the United States on behalf of the Russia, the Justice Department announced today. Two additional defendants were also arrested Sunday for allegedly participating in the same Russian intelligence program within the United States. Some of the Russians adopted Irish names in their spy work, including using the names Murphy and Foley.
Information they were seeking was pretty broad based but it included at least one report about gold. Moscow relayed back to the spies that the gold report was "very valuable" and reported that it was passed on to Russia's finance minister.
Also, according to the complaint, one spy, "Cynthia Murphy," was developing a relationship with a prominent New York financier. The financier is apparently a big political money raiser and has a close friend in the Cabinet.
The most interesting question is, of course, what kind of information could the spies have turned over about gold that Moscow deemed as "very valuable"? And let the guessing game begin as to who the "prominent New York financier" is.
It should also be noted that this decade long investigation was publicly revealed just days after Obama and Russian President Medvedev shared hamburgers together.
Monday, June 28, 2010
The Secrets of Liquidity by Bob Chapman "The International Forecaster" June 26, 2010
http://www.theinternationalforecaster.com/International_Forecaster_Weekly/The_Secrets_of_Liquidity
Result of the end of fed pumping up the economy,Markets torn by zero interest rates, The finances of many states now dire, greater risks for recession and depression, the folly of bond yields, Baltic Dry Index drying up, more COLA for the folks, contracting out an entire city, Hardest Hit fund, Goldman Sachs was not alone, destroying markets Many investors wonder how are markets able to propel themselves back and forth as they do. How do corrections turn into rallies? The secret is liquidity and the question is where does it come from?
As you know the Fed up until 14 months ago increased what once was called M3 by 15% annually. Foreign major central banks did the same cutting back a couple of months sooner than the Fed. The Fed increased M3 for 5-1/2 years and the other central banks for about four years. Starting four years ago all currencies started falling versus gold. The US dollar started about ten years ago.
Contrary to what government officially has to say about inflation for the past 18 months the sources of liquidity, fiscal money creation by the debt route by the current administration has been $2.2 trillion. The Fed has added $1.2 trillion over that period, but we do not believe their figures for a moment. We believe the number is closer to $1.8 trillion. That is only for the purchase of MBS/CDOs from banks, Wall Street, insurance companies and other corporations. Then we have at least $500 billion in swap arrangements. Those funds were supposedly re-exchanged five months ago. Since then there has been another swap, but we cannot find out what the numbers are. Then there are zero interest rates, which force investors to seek more speculative returns. As an example, funds in money market funds have fallen about $1 trillion over the last 18 months. That is why bonds are at highs and the market can rally. Then there is the adding of liquidity by the Fed via the repo market. Finally, there has been the re-leveraging of banks, or at least the maintaining of 40to one leverage, and the re-leveraging of corporate balance sheets, sovereign wealth funds and hedge funds, although the numbers are tame versus two years ago. There you have it. The foregoing on a net basis is larger than what existed at the beginning of the credit crisis almost three years ago. New liquidity has been created to replace that which was lost. As a result gold and silver have appreciated in a big way over that period. We see no proclivity to end this massive onslaught. In spite of official figures real inflation is some 7% and that is why currencies keep losing value against gold, which is the only barometer to measure the real devaluation of currencies as a result of monetary and fiscal profligacy.
Markets are torn by near zero interest rates and risk aversion. A trillion have left money market funds over the past 16 months. Some have gone into bonds, junk bonds and into the market. You cannot have it both ways. Bonds cannot go higher and the market is very dangerous, especially with three quarters coming up with passable to bad results. Then there is the possibility of tax increases next year to accompany 19new taxes in the Medical Reform package. There is also the possible passage of Cap & Trade, which would double gas prices, illegal alien amnesty and government taxing or taking over your retirement plans. These issues are why it is so important to replace almost all the incumbents in November. Not to be treated lightly is the problems of sovereign debt. Not only for those 20 countries on the edge of insolvency, but for those who are owed the debt. There is an excellent chance 5 to 7 countries may leave the euro. The euro may then fade and the other 10 euro zone members may go back to their original currencies. It is any wonder gold is hitting new highs and silver is soon to follow. Gold is not rising to inflation and anticipated inflation, but because of unserviceable deteriorating debt worldwide. You cannot wait for the next crisis – you have to anticipate it. You have to be ahead of the curve and the crowd. Does anyone really believe bailouts and future bailouts and stimulus will solve anything? They haven’t up to now and they won’t in the future. They only make matters worse. What kind of insanity is it to have the Fed buy $1.2 trillion, that they admit too, of toxic MBS and 80% of Treasury issuance, with money created out of thin air? Small and medium-sized business cannot expand and hire new people. They supply 70% of all jobs. Government should be cutting taxes, not expanding them. They should be cutting costs and employees by 30% for starters.
Zero interest rates may fatten the profits of major manufacturers and transnational conglomerates, but it does little for anyone else, except Wall Street and banking. Interest rates on credit cards have risen, not fallen as banks fatten their bottom lines at the expense of the populace. That is why retail sales have fallen over the past two months and probably will continue to do so. A battle wages over M3. Some say it is negative, some say it is in double digits. We will certainly find out shortly. The housing stimulus and credit is now over and prices are falling. Unemployment is rising and risk taking is falling. Now that the dollar has had a large appreciation there is ample reason to believe it could well have a sharp correction. Those in the carry trades know that sovereign debt has a much greater degree of risk than in the past. That means more caution and less liquidity.
On the state level the financial situation is dire. Illinois sold $300 billion in Build America Bonds at a yield 40% higher than Treasuries. Worldwide credit is being bought judiciously. Greece and the other PIIGS have intractable problems, but so do the lenders who bought the toxic waste. As a result the cost of credit default swaps have risen substantially. States and countries in the euro zone cannot print money as the Fed and the ECB can. The market is nervous and it should be. We see major unavoidable trouble ahead, so watch out below.
As we predicted the risk of a double-dip recession /depression have risen substantially over the past two months. Retail, housing and employment are fading and fading fast. It points out that the US economy cannot function positively without massive stimulus. Bank credit is falling as well as individuals pay down debt. In addition exports are starting to fall in the face of a strong dollar, which gives the euro zone participants a 15% price advantage. This is a big price to pay to enrich Wall Street and take down the euro as the dollar’s competitor. We do not believe the dollar can maintain current levels, but damage will continue for another 6 to 12 months. Can you imagine the fallout with the euro at parity? Not only does Europe and the US have trouble, so does China that has to unravel bad bank debt domestically, a market fall that already is off some 25%, but worse they have to deflate a property bubble that will be very painful. De-leveraging for the US, Europe, China and Japan has really just begun and this is why a year or two from now there will be another meeting like the Smithsonian in the early 1970s, the Plaza Accord of 1985 and the Lourve Accord of 1987, where everyone will devalue, revalue, and default. An Illuminist jubilee. That could be triggered by a bond market collapse. A market that has been in a bull market for 29 years. Timing of events is very difficult. We could be off by one to five years. The point is bad – things are on the way, so prepare yourself.
The economy is beset with slowing retail sales, a plunging housing sector and falling credit usage. You might call this individual austerity. Consumer sentiment is consistent with recession. Job creation is negative as are loans to small and medium-sized businesses that create 70% of the jobs. The dollar’s strength is wreaking havoc for US exports, which had been improving.
Greece and Spain are in the soup prominently followed closely in the euro zone by Portugal, Ireland and Italy. China has seen a 9-month 25% fall in their stock market and they are facing a collapse in credit and in real estate.
We no longer consider the oil spill a major factor. It can be solved and turned off any time the Illuminists want to do so.
Politically, Israel has finally gone a step too far and Turkey finally realizes that the EU is never going to accept them due to religious reasons. Turkey is now in the Muslim block. That will be a problem for some of the pro-US-UK Muslim states in the Gulf in the future. Geopolitical risks abound and they are worsening along with sovereign debt problems.
Those who have been reaching for bond yields will eventually pay a very high price. The bond market is no longer a safe place to be, whether it is sovereign foreign bonds, corporates or US paper. The US still has 7% to 8% inflation that isn’t going to go away soon, and in all probability that inflation will soon worsen. Those 10% to 20% returns cannot continue indefinitely, as the US government manipulates the US bond markets. Who would want to buy Treasuries yielding from zero to 3.2% with real inflation of 7%, when you can own gold and silver coins and shares that are appreciating? We know most of the funds entering mutual funds are in bonds. These “boomers” who are the big buyers are looking for safety and will continue to do so. As you can see not as much money will be going into the stock market. In spite of losing money on bond holdings those in their 50s and upward are staying away from new market commitments. They want safety, or at least perceived safety, not capital appreciation, but capital preservation. The market on a net basis has been even for 11 years and that includes a bear market rally and a real estate boom. Incidentally during that period the gold and silver shares have done well. AEM from $5.00 to $83.50 presently $62.70 is a perfect example. The price of gold went from $252.00 to $1,265.00. This was one of our recommendations, but then again what do we know. We are not, and never will be on CNBC, because they cannot handle the truth, and they do not want the public to know the truth. Mind you, during those 11 years, the US government relentlessly suppressed the prices of gold, silver and the shares. They cannot do it indefinitely. Just last week equity funds saw an outflow of over $2.9 billion and bond funds saw an inflow of almost $5 billion.
New orders for long-lasting US manufactured goods fell for the first time in May in six months, off 1.1%, the sharpest drop since 8/09.
Weekly jobless claims were 457,000, off 19,000 from the previous week.
Issuance of commercial paper rose $15.4 billion to $1.099 trillion.
The Baltic Dry Index, a key indicator of future international trade activity, closed at 4,209 on May 26. In less than a month it collapsed to 2515, a 40% loss. This thing was the same as in the late spring of 2008, shortly before world equity and commodities markets collapsed. This is a big red flag.
The Census Bureau fired 243,000 people in June. When reported the total number is the one to watch. The contraction in June payrolls should be 250,000, a loss of 70,000 in June versus a gain of 431,000 in May. This could mean a 10% U3 in June.
July and August will see 330,737 job losses of census hires.
For months, both initial and continuing jobless claims have been revised higher for the previously reported week. This occurred again on Thursday when initial claims were revised up to 476,000 from 472k. This allowed the media and intractabulls to exaggerate the decline in this week’s claims (457k vs. 463k exp) – even though the odds tell us that they will probably be revised higher next week.
Continuing Claims are 4.548m, 4.550m exp; but the previous week is revised to 4.593m from 4.571m. Numerous pundits extolled the 2k decline in continuing claims while ignoring the 22k upward revision.
Senate Democrats abandoned on Thursday efforts to provide fresh aid to cash-strapped state governments and extend emergency unemployment benefits for millions of jobless workers, leaving in limbo President Obama's push for more spending to bolster the economy.
Emergency jobless benefits, which provide up to 99 weeks of income support, expired June 2. Since then, more than 1.2 million people have had their checks cut off, according to estimates by the Labor Department. That number is expected to rise to more than 2 million people by the time Congress returns from its weeklong break. Unless Congress acts, the program would phase out entirely by the end of October.
Since we’re stuck in a monetary system that allows a tiny private sector clique to control everything (business, government, military, non-profits, schools, families, etc) by putting everyone else in debt, we’ve been living in financial dictatorship for a long time. It has been a soft PR dictatorship of Hickey-Freeman suits and Sax 5th Avenue ties, Harvard pedigrees and fratboy schmarm. But hard dictatorship has been coming out of hiding for several years, especially since 2001. Not only can the money powers steal trillions from the masses to hand over to themselves, but they can suck the military into conquering poor countries that aren’t subject to their usury vortex system, build Homeland to spy on Americans.
The Richmond Fed manufacturing activity skid down in June. The reading showed a 3 points decline from 26 last May against the present 23 value. Sales revenues in the service sector performed the worst, with the index falling in May (from 8 to 5). June data showed retail sales revenues dropping to -1 from 0 in May.
The Housing Price Index released by the Office of Federal Reserve Housing Enterprise Oversight showed US home prices surged by 0.8% in April compared to a revised 0.1% in March, instead of the previously noted 0.3%. Despite Government tax credit programs favored the increase on prices, it is a positive factor to see the housing market picking up, which acts as a reliable indicator of the US economic situation.
US ABC/Washington Post Consumer Confidence up to -43 from -45 in the week of June 20.
For the first time in history, Congress will not allow an increase in the social security COLA (cost of living adjustment).
In fact, the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation predicts there may not be any COLA for the next three years. However, the per person monthly Medicare Insurance premium will be increased from the 2009 premium of $96.40 to $104.20 in 2010 and to $ 120.20 for the year 2011.
Let's send this to all seniors that you know--remind them not to vote for ANY incumbent senators and congressmen in the 2010 and the 2012 elections.
And don't forget - CONGRESS GAVE THEMSELVES A HEFTY PAY RAISE THIS YEAR. So who is watching out for you? Not Congress. Not Washington.
The city of Maywood will lay off all city employees and begin contracting police services with the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department effective July 1, officials said.
In addition to contracting with the Sheriff's Department, the Maywood City Council voted unanimously Monday night to lay off an estimated 100 employees and contract with neighboring Bell, which will handle other city services such as finance, records management, parks and recreation, street maintenance and others. Maywood will be billed about $50,833 monthly, which officials said will save $164,375 annually.
"We will become 100% a contracted city," said Angela Spaccia, Maywood's interim city manager.
Deputies from the East Los Angeles Sheriff's Station will begin patrolling the 1.2-square-mile city by the end of the month, said Capt. Bruce Fogarty of the Sheriff's Contract Law Enforcement Bureau. The annual cost of providing those services for the small city is estimated at $3.6 million, Fogarty said.
At a council meeting Monday night, city leaders said they were forced to dismantle the Police Department and lay off city workers because they lost insurance coverage as a result of excessive police claims filed against the department. They also blamed years of financial abuse and corruption from the previous council. "We're limited on our choices and limited on what we can do," Councilman Felipe Aguirre told the standing- room-only crowd.
We will have an overview on the financial reform package in the next issue. We do know banks will continue to handle foreign exchange, interest rate, and gold and silver swaps and to hedge their own risks. Cleared and uncleard commodities, agricultural, energy and equities swaps and credit would have to move to an affiliate within two years. Why were silver and gold exempted? We know why, so that the market manipulation could be continued. Congress is telling us they completely know the scam and are paying off the bankers and Wall Street. This they hope will continue the charade of fiat money and it won’t work.
The final on first quarter GDP was up 2.7%, of which 1.7% came from stimulus. That puts the second quarter at even to minus; third quarter at minus 1% to 2% and the fourth quarter minus 2% or more. Some recovery!
The ECRI leading indictor has collapsed to a 45 week low of minus 5.7. The most precipitous slide in 50 years.
The Fed’s next step over the next 2-1/2 years is to run and gun money and credit, as inflation becomes hyperinflation.
The former stimulus and the Fed’s purchase of $1.8 trillion in toxic assets and $200 billion in treasuries shows a net combined increase in money and credit of $2.8 trillion last year. During this year and the next two years there will be lots more. Weimar here we come. More unemployment, less income, less buying power from a falling dollar and rising gold and silver will follow.
For all the focus on the historic federal rescue of the banking industry, it is the government’s decision to seize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in September 2008 that reportedly is likely to cost taxpayers the most money. So far the tab stands at $145.9 billion and rising, the New York Times reports. The Congressional Budget Office has predicted that the final bill could reach $389 billion. Some analysts even estimate the total may reach $1 trillion, which Sean Egan, president of Egan-Jones Ratings, recently told Bloomberg is “a reasonable worst-case scenario." Egan told Bloomberg that the final tally could hit $1 trillion assuming a 20 percent loss on the companies' more than $5 trillion in loans and guarantees, similar to what other big mortgage companies, like Countrywide Financial, suffered. The two government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) now own more houses than there are in Seattle and are foreclosing on homeowners whose mortgages they guaranteed, the Times said.
Fannie and Freddie maintain the houses for a while, then resell them at a huge loss. In many cases, they also underwrite the new mortgage for the new buyer, generating even more bank fees taxpayers must ultimately absorb. On average, they recoup less than 60 percent of the amount borrowers failed to pay. Costs for selling a house generally are usually about $10,000. Fannie and Freddie hire people to clean up the foreclosed homes inside and out, replace missing appliances and maintain the properties until they are sold. The grass-mowing bill alone is more than $10 million per month; All told, the GSEs spent more than $1 billion on upkeep last year. “We may be behind many loans on the same street, so we believe that it’s in everyone’s best interest to aggressively do property maintenance,” said Chris Bowden, the Freddie Mac executive in charge of foreclosure sales. Short sales are a growing alternative to foreclosure. In the past, a short sale was an unusual alternative, one real estate agents rarely presented to sellers, realtor Erek Gass told the York Daily Report. “Now, they are common because of the devaluation of the housing market,” Gass says.
The Treasury Department awarded $1.5 billion to aid homeowners in California, Florida, and three other states with high foreclosure rates.
Under a program known as the Hardest-Hit Fund, Arizona, Michigan, and Nevada also will receive money, which will be distributed to state housing finance agencies, the Treasury said yesterday in a statement.
“These states have identified a number of innovative programs that will make a real difference in the lives of many homeowners facing foreclosure,’’ Herbert M. Allison Jr., the Treasury’s assistant secretary, said in the statement.
The program is estimated to help 90,000 people having difficulty paying their mortgages or living in homes that are worth less than the loans they secure.
Seventy-five percent of such homes are in the five states awarded aid, said Phyllis Caldwell, chief of the Treasury’s Homeownership Preservation Office. Half are in California, and Florida, Caldwell told reporters.
The hardest-hit fund is part of a mosaic of programs from the Obama administration to stop the spread of foreclosures, which are expected to climb to 4.5 million this year from 2.8 million in 2009, according to RealtyTrac Inc., an Irvine, Calif.,-based research firm.
The effort, which is funded from the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, aims to curb foreclosures and stabilize housing prices in communities with high concentrations of delinquent borrowers and states where much of the population lives in regions with 12 percent or higher unemployment.
The Census Bureau released the weekly payroll data for the week ending June 12th this morning (ht Bob_in_MA). If we subtract the number of temporary 2010 Census workers in the week containing the 12th of the month, from the same week for the previous month - this provides a close estimate for the impact of the Census hiring on payroll employment. The Census Bureau releases the actual number with the employment report.
The number of Census workers paid each week. The red labels are the weeks of the BLS
payroll survey. The Census payroll decreased from 573,779 for the week ending May 15th to 330,737 for the week ending June 12th. So my estimate for the impact of the Census on June payroll employment is minus 243 thousand (this will be close). The employment report will be released on July 2nd, and the headline number for June - including Census numbers - will almost certainly be negative. But a key number will be the hiring ex-Census (so we will add back the Census workers this month).
“Goldman Sachs wasn’t alone either in its astute “foreknowledge” of the collapse of BP’s stock value due to the Gulf disaster as BP’s own chief executive, Tony Hayward, sold about one-third of his shares weeks before this catastrophe began unfolding too.
But according to this FSB report the largest seller of BP stock in the weeks before this disaster occurred was the American investment company known as Vanguard who through two of their financial arms (Vanguard Windsor II Investor and Vanguard Windsor Investor) unloaded over 1.5 million shares of BP stock saving their investors hundreds of millions of dollars, chief among them President Obama.
For though little known by the American people, their President Obama holds all of his wealth in just two Vanguard funds, Vanguard 500 Index Fund where he has 3 accounts and the Vanguard FTSE Social Index Fund where he holds another 3 accounts, all six of which the FSB estimates will earn Obama nearly $8.5 million a year and which over 10 years will equal the staggering sum of $85 million.
The FSB further estimates in this report that through Obama’s 3 accounts in the Vanguard 500 Index Fund he stands to make another $100 million over the next 10 years as their largest stock holding is in the energy giant Exxon Mobil they believe will eventually acquire BP and all of their assets for what will be essentially a “rock bottom” price and which very predictably BP has hired Goldman Sachs to advise them on.
Important to note is that none of this wealth Obama, Goldman Sachs, and other American elites is acquiring would be possible without this disaster, all of whom, as the evidence shows, “somehow” knew what was going to happen before it actually did, including the US energy giant Halliburton who 2 weeks prior to this disaster just happened to purchase the World’s largest oil disaster service company Boots & Coots”.
How HFT Quote Stuffing Caused The Market Crash Of May 6, And Threatens To Destroy The Entire Market At Any Moment
On the subject of HFT systems, we were shocked to find cases where one exchange was sending an extremely high number of quotes for one stock in a single second -- as high as 5,000 quotes in 1 second! During May 6, there were hundreds of times that a single stock had over 1,000 quotes from one exchange in a single second. Even more disturbing, there doesn't seem to be any economic justification for this. In many of the cases, the bid/offer is well outside the National Best Bid/Offer (NBBO). We decided to analyze a handful of these cases in detail and graphed the sequential bid/offers to better understand them. What we discovered was even more bizarre and can only be evidence of either faulty programming, a virus or a manipulative device aimed at overloading the quotation system.
Result of the end of fed pumping up the economy,Markets torn by zero interest rates, The finances of many states now dire, greater risks for recession and depression, the folly of bond yields, Baltic Dry Index drying up, more COLA for the folks, contracting out an entire city, Hardest Hit fund, Goldman Sachs was not alone, destroying markets Many investors wonder how are markets able to propel themselves back and forth as they do. How do corrections turn into rallies? The secret is liquidity and the question is where does it come from?
As you know the Fed up until 14 months ago increased what once was called M3 by 15% annually. Foreign major central banks did the same cutting back a couple of months sooner than the Fed. The Fed increased M3 for 5-1/2 years and the other central banks for about four years. Starting four years ago all currencies started falling versus gold. The US dollar started about ten years ago.
Contrary to what government officially has to say about inflation for the past 18 months the sources of liquidity, fiscal money creation by the debt route by the current administration has been $2.2 trillion. The Fed has added $1.2 trillion over that period, but we do not believe their figures for a moment. We believe the number is closer to $1.8 trillion. That is only for the purchase of MBS/CDOs from banks, Wall Street, insurance companies and other corporations. Then we have at least $500 billion in swap arrangements. Those funds were supposedly re-exchanged five months ago. Since then there has been another swap, but we cannot find out what the numbers are. Then there are zero interest rates, which force investors to seek more speculative returns. As an example, funds in money market funds have fallen about $1 trillion over the last 18 months. That is why bonds are at highs and the market can rally. Then there is the adding of liquidity by the Fed via the repo market. Finally, there has been the re-leveraging of banks, or at least the maintaining of 40to one leverage, and the re-leveraging of corporate balance sheets, sovereign wealth funds and hedge funds, although the numbers are tame versus two years ago. There you have it. The foregoing on a net basis is larger than what existed at the beginning of the credit crisis almost three years ago. New liquidity has been created to replace that which was lost. As a result gold and silver have appreciated in a big way over that period. We see no proclivity to end this massive onslaught. In spite of official figures real inflation is some 7% and that is why currencies keep losing value against gold, which is the only barometer to measure the real devaluation of currencies as a result of monetary and fiscal profligacy.
Markets are torn by near zero interest rates and risk aversion. A trillion have left money market funds over the past 16 months. Some have gone into bonds, junk bonds and into the market. You cannot have it both ways. Bonds cannot go higher and the market is very dangerous, especially with three quarters coming up with passable to bad results. Then there is the possibility of tax increases next year to accompany 19new taxes in the Medical Reform package. There is also the possible passage of Cap & Trade, which would double gas prices, illegal alien amnesty and government taxing or taking over your retirement plans. These issues are why it is so important to replace almost all the incumbents in November. Not to be treated lightly is the problems of sovereign debt. Not only for those 20 countries on the edge of insolvency, but for those who are owed the debt. There is an excellent chance 5 to 7 countries may leave the euro. The euro may then fade and the other 10 euro zone members may go back to their original currencies. It is any wonder gold is hitting new highs and silver is soon to follow. Gold is not rising to inflation and anticipated inflation, but because of unserviceable deteriorating debt worldwide. You cannot wait for the next crisis – you have to anticipate it. You have to be ahead of the curve and the crowd. Does anyone really believe bailouts and future bailouts and stimulus will solve anything? They haven’t up to now and they won’t in the future. They only make matters worse. What kind of insanity is it to have the Fed buy $1.2 trillion, that they admit too, of toxic MBS and 80% of Treasury issuance, with money created out of thin air? Small and medium-sized business cannot expand and hire new people. They supply 70% of all jobs. Government should be cutting taxes, not expanding them. They should be cutting costs and employees by 30% for starters.
Zero interest rates may fatten the profits of major manufacturers and transnational conglomerates, but it does little for anyone else, except Wall Street and banking. Interest rates on credit cards have risen, not fallen as banks fatten their bottom lines at the expense of the populace. That is why retail sales have fallen over the past two months and probably will continue to do so. A battle wages over M3. Some say it is negative, some say it is in double digits. We will certainly find out shortly. The housing stimulus and credit is now over and prices are falling. Unemployment is rising and risk taking is falling. Now that the dollar has had a large appreciation there is ample reason to believe it could well have a sharp correction. Those in the carry trades know that sovereign debt has a much greater degree of risk than in the past. That means more caution and less liquidity.
On the state level the financial situation is dire. Illinois sold $300 billion in Build America Bonds at a yield 40% higher than Treasuries. Worldwide credit is being bought judiciously. Greece and the other PIIGS have intractable problems, but so do the lenders who bought the toxic waste. As a result the cost of credit default swaps have risen substantially. States and countries in the euro zone cannot print money as the Fed and the ECB can. The market is nervous and it should be. We see major unavoidable trouble ahead, so watch out below.
As we predicted the risk of a double-dip recession /depression have risen substantially over the past two months. Retail, housing and employment are fading and fading fast. It points out that the US economy cannot function positively without massive stimulus. Bank credit is falling as well as individuals pay down debt. In addition exports are starting to fall in the face of a strong dollar, which gives the euro zone participants a 15% price advantage. This is a big price to pay to enrich Wall Street and take down the euro as the dollar’s competitor. We do not believe the dollar can maintain current levels, but damage will continue for another 6 to 12 months. Can you imagine the fallout with the euro at parity? Not only does Europe and the US have trouble, so does China that has to unravel bad bank debt domestically, a market fall that already is off some 25%, but worse they have to deflate a property bubble that will be very painful. De-leveraging for the US, Europe, China and Japan has really just begun and this is why a year or two from now there will be another meeting like the Smithsonian in the early 1970s, the Plaza Accord of 1985 and the Lourve Accord of 1987, where everyone will devalue, revalue, and default. An Illuminist jubilee. That could be triggered by a bond market collapse. A market that has been in a bull market for 29 years. Timing of events is very difficult. We could be off by one to five years. The point is bad – things are on the way, so prepare yourself.
The economy is beset with slowing retail sales, a plunging housing sector and falling credit usage. You might call this individual austerity. Consumer sentiment is consistent with recession. Job creation is negative as are loans to small and medium-sized businesses that create 70% of the jobs. The dollar’s strength is wreaking havoc for US exports, which had been improving.
Greece and Spain are in the soup prominently followed closely in the euro zone by Portugal, Ireland and Italy. China has seen a 9-month 25% fall in their stock market and they are facing a collapse in credit and in real estate.
We no longer consider the oil spill a major factor. It can be solved and turned off any time the Illuminists want to do so.
Politically, Israel has finally gone a step too far and Turkey finally realizes that the EU is never going to accept them due to religious reasons. Turkey is now in the Muslim block. That will be a problem for some of the pro-US-UK Muslim states in the Gulf in the future. Geopolitical risks abound and they are worsening along with sovereign debt problems.
Those who have been reaching for bond yields will eventually pay a very high price. The bond market is no longer a safe place to be, whether it is sovereign foreign bonds, corporates or US paper. The US still has 7% to 8% inflation that isn’t going to go away soon, and in all probability that inflation will soon worsen. Those 10% to 20% returns cannot continue indefinitely, as the US government manipulates the US bond markets. Who would want to buy Treasuries yielding from zero to 3.2% with real inflation of 7%, when you can own gold and silver coins and shares that are appreciating? We know most of the funds entering mutual funds are in bonds. These “boomers” who are the big buyers are looking for safety and will continue to do so. As you can see not as much money will be going into the stock market. In spite of losing money on bond holdings those in their 50s and upward are staying away from new market commitments. They want safety, or at least perceived safety, not capital appreciation, but capital preservation. The market on a net basis has been even for 11 years and that includes a bear market rally and a real estate boom. Incidentally during that period the gold and silver shares have done well. AEM from $5.00 to $83.50 presently $62.70 is a perfect example. The price of gold went from $252.00 to $1,265.00. This was one of our recommendations, but then again what do we know. We are not, and never will be on CNBC, because they cannot handle the truth, and they do not want the public to know the truth. Mind you, during those 11 years, the US government relentlessly suppressed the prices of gold, silver and the shares. They cannot do it indefinitely. Just last week equity funds saw an outflow of over $2.9 billion and bond funds saw an inflow of almost $5 billion.
New orders for long-lasting US manufactured goods fell for the first time in May in six months, off 1.1%, the sharpest drop since 8/09.
Weekly jobless claims were 457,000, off 19,000 from the previous week.
Issuance of commercial paper rose $15.4 billion to $1.099 trillion.
The Baltic Dry Index, a key indicator of future international trade activity, closed at 4,209 on May 26. In less than a month it collapsed to 2515, a 40% loss. This thing was the same as in the late spring of 2008, shortly before world equity and commodities markets collapsed. This is a big red flag.
The Census Bureau fired 243,000 people in June. When reported the total number is the one to watch. The contraction in June payrolls should be 250,000, a loss of 70,000 in June versus a gain of 431,000 in May. This could mean a 10% U3 in June.
July and August will see 330,737 job losses of census hires.
For months, both initial and continuing jobless claims have been revised higher for the previously reported week. This occurred again on Thursday when initial claims were revised up to 476,000 from 472k. This allowed the media and intractabulls to exaggerate the decline in this week’s claims (457k vs. 463k exp) – even though the odds tell us that they will probably be revised higher next week.
Continuing Claims are 4.548m, 4.550m exp; but the previous week is revised to 4.593m from 4.571m. Numerous pundits extolled the 2k decline in continuing claims while ignoring the 22k upward revision.
Senate Democrats abandoned on Thursday efforts to provide fresh aid to cash-strapped state governments and extend emergency unemployment benefits for millions of jobless workers, leaving in limbo President Obama's push for more spending to bolster the economy.
Emergency jobless benefits, which provide up to 99 weeks of income support, expired June 2. Since then, more than 1.2 million people have had their checks cut off, according to estimates by the Labor Department. That number is expected to rise to more than 2 million people by the time Congress returns from its weeklong break. Unless Congress acts, the program would phase out entirely by the end of October.
Since we’re stuck in a monetary system that allows a tiny private sector clique to control everything (business, government, military, non-profits, schools, families, etc) by putting everyone else in debt, we’ve been living in financial dictatorship for a long time. It has been a soft PR dictatorship of Hickey-Freeman suits and Sax 5th Avenue ties, Harvard pedigrees and fratboy schmarm. But hard dictatorship has been coming out of hiding for several years, especially since 2001. Not only can the money powers steal trillions from the masses to hand over to themselves, but they can suck the military into conquering poor countries that aren’t subject to their usury vortex system, build Homeland to spy on Americans.
The Richmond Fed manufacturing activity skid down in June. The reading showed a 3 points decline from 26 last May against the present 23 value. Sales revenues in the service sector performed the worst, with the index falling in May (from 8 to 5). June data showed retail sales revenues dropping to -1 from 0 in May.
The Housing Price Index released by the Office of Federal Reserve Housing Enterprise Oversight showed US home prices surged by 0.8% in April compared to a revised 0.1% in March, instead of the previously noted 0.3%. Despite Government tax credit programs favored the increase on prices, it is a positive factor to see the housing market picking up, which acts as a reliable indicator of the US economic situation.
US ABC/Washington Post Consumer Confidence up to -43 from -45 in the week of June 20.
For the first time in history, Congress will not allow an increase in the social security COLA (cost of living adjustment).
In fact, the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation predicts there may not be any COLA for the next three years. However, the per person monthly Medicare Insurance premium will be increased from the 2009 premium of $96.40 to $104.20 in 2010 and to $ 120.20 for the year 2011.
Let's send this to all seniors that you know--remind them not to vote for ANY incumbent senators and congressmen in the 2010 and the 2012 elections.
And don't forget - CONGRESS GAVE THEMSELVES A HEFTY PAY RAISE THIS YEAR. So who is watching out for you? Not Congress. Not Washington.
The city of Maywood will lay off all city employees and begin contracting police services with the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department effective July 1, officials said.
In addition to contracting with the Sheriff's Department, the Maywood City Council voted unanimously Monday night to lay off an estimated 100 employees and contract with neighboring Bell, which will handle other city services such as finance, records management, parks and recreation, street maintenance and others. Maywood will be billed about $50,833 monthly, which officials said will save $164,375 annually.
"We will become 100% a contracted city," said Angela Spaccia, Maywood's interim city manager.
Deputies from the East Los Angeles Sheriff's Station will begin patrolling the 1.2-square-mile city by the end of the month, said Capt. Bruce Fogarty of the Sheriff's Contract Law Enforcement Bureau. The annual cost of providing those services for the small city is estimated at $3.6 million, Fogarty said.
At a council meeting Monday night, city leaders said they were forced to dismantle the Police Department and lay off city workers because they lost insurance coverage as a result of excessive police claims filed against the department. They also blamed years of financial abuse and corruption from the previous council. "We're limited on our choices and limited on what we can do," Councilman Felipe Aguirre told the standing- room-only crowd.
We will have an overview on the financial reform package in the next issue. We do know banks will continue to handle foreign exchange, interest rate, and gold and silver swaps and to hedge their own risks. Cleared and uncleard commodities, agricultural, energy and equities swaps and credit would have to move to an affiliate within two years. Why were silver and gold exempted? We know why, so that the market manipulation could be continued. Congress is telling us they completely know the scam and are paying off the bankers and Wall Street. This they hope will continue the charade of fiat money and it won’t work.
The final on first quarter GDP was up 2.7%, of which 1.7% came from stimulus. That puts the second quarter at even to minus; third quarter at minus 1% to 2% and the fourth quarter minus 2% or more. Some recovery!
The ECRI leading indictor has collapsed to a 45 week low of minus 5.7. The most precipitous slide in 50 years.
The Fed’s next step over the next 2-1/2 years is to run and gun money and credit, as inflation becomes hyperinflation.
The former stimulus and the Fed’s purchase of $1.8 trillion in toxic assets and $200 billion in treasuries shows a net combined increase in money and credit of $2.8 trillion last year. During this year and the next two years there will be lots more. Weimar here we come. More unemployment, less income, less buying power from a falling dollar and rising gold and silver will follow.
For all the focus on the historic federal rescue of the banking industry, it is the government’s decision to seize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in September 2008 that reportedly is likely to cost taxpayers the most money. So far the tab stands at $145.9 billion and rising, the New York Times reports. The Congressional Budget Office has predicted that the final bill could reach $389 billion. Some analysts even estimate the total may reach $1 trillion, which Sean Egan, president of Egan-Jones Ratings, recently told Bloomberg is “a reasonable worst-case scenario." Egan told Bloomberg that the final tally could hit $1 trillion assuming a 20 percent loss on the companies' more than $5 trillion in loans and guarantees, similar to what other big mortgage companies, like Countrywide Financial, suffered. The two government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) now own more houses than there are in Seattle and are foreclosing on homeowners whose mortgages they guaranteed, the Times said.
Fannie and Freddie maintain the houses for a while, then resell them at a huge loss. In many cases, they also underwrite the new mortgage for the new buyer, generating even more bank fees taxpayers must ultimately absorb. On average, they recoup less than 60 percent of the amount borrowers failed to pay. Costs for selling a house generally are usually about $10,000. Fannie and Freddie hire people to clean up the foreclosed homes inside and out, replace missing appliances and maintain the properties until they are sold. The grass-mowing bill alone is more than $10 million per month; All told, the GSEs spent more than $1 billion on upkeep last year. “We may be behind many loans on the same street, so we believe that it’s in everyone’s best interest to aggressively do property maintenance,” said Chris Bowden, the Freddie Mac executive in charge of foreclosure sales. Short sales are a growing alternative to foreclosure. In the past, a short sale was an unusual alternative, one real estate agents rarely presented to sellers, realtor Erek Gass told the York Daily Report. “Now, they are common because of the devaluation of the housing market,” Gass says.
The Treasury Department awarded $1.5 billion to aid homeowners in California, Florida, and three other states with high foreclosure rates.
Under a program known as the Hardest-Hit Fund, Arizona, Michigan, and Nevada also will receive money, which will be distributed to state housing finance agencies, the Treasury said yesterday in a statement.
“These states have identified a number of innovative programs that will make a real difference in the lives of many homeowners facing foreclosure,’’ Herbert M. Allison Jr., the Treasury’s assistant secretary, said in the statement.
The program is estimated to help 90,000 people having difficulty paying their mortgages or living in homes that are worth less than the loans they secure.
Seventy-five percent of such homes are in the five states awarded aid, said Phyllis Caldwell, chief of the Treasury’s Homeownership Preservation Office. Half are in California, and Florida, Caldwell told reporters.
The hardest-hit fund is part of a mosaic of programs from the Obama administration to stop the spread of foreclosures, which are expected to climb to 4.5 million this year from 2.8 million in 2009, according to RealtyTrac Inc., an Irvine, Calif.,-based research firm.
The effort, which is funded from the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, aims to curb foreclosures and stabilize housing prices in communities with high concentrations of delinquent borrowers and states where much of the population lives in regions with 12 percent or higher unemployment.
The Census Bureau released the weekly payroll data for the week ending June 12th this morning (ht Bob_in_MA). If we subtract the number of temporary 2010 Census workers in the week containing the 12th of the month, from the same week for the previous month - this provides a close estimate for the impact of the Census hiring on payroll employment. The Census Bureau releases the actual number with the employment report.
The number of Census workers paid each week. The red labels are the weeks of the BLS
payroll survey. The Census payroll decreased from 573,779 for the week ending May 15th to 330,737 for the week ending June 12th. So my estimate for the impact of the Census on June payroll employment is minus 243 thousand (this will be close). The employment report will be released on July 2nd, and the headline number for June - including Census numbers - will almost certainly be negative. But a key number will be the hiring ex-Census (so we will add back the Census workers this month).
“Goldman Sachs wasn’t alone either in its astute “foreknowledge” of the collapse of BP’s stock value due to the Gulf disaster as BP’s own chief executive, Tony Hayward, sold about one-third of his shares weeks before this catastrophe began unfolding too.
But according to this FSB report the largest seller of BP stock in the weeks before this disaster occurred was the American investment company known as Vanguard who through two of their financial arms (Vanguard Windsor II Investor and Vanguard Windsor Investor) unloaded over 1.5 million shares of BP stock saving their investors hundreds of millions of dollars, chief among them President Obama.
For though little known by the American people, their President Obama holds all of his wealth in just two Vanguard funds, Vanguard 500 Index Fund where he has 3 accounts and the Vanguard FTSE Social Index Fund where he holds another 3 accounts, all six of which the FSB estimates will earn Obama nearly $8.5 million a year and which over 10 years will equal the staggering sum of $85 million.
The FSB further estimates in this report that through Obama’s 3 accounts in the Vanguard 500 Index Fund he stands to make another $100 million over the next 10 years as their largest stock holding is in the energy giant Exxon Mobil they believe will eventually acquire BP and all of their assets for what will be essentially a “rock bottom” price and which very predictably BP has hired Goldman Sachs to advise them on.
Important to note is that none of this wealth Obama, Goldman Sachs, and other American elites is acquiring would be possible without this disaster, all of whom, as the evidence shows, “somehow” knew what was going to happen before it actually did, including the US energy giant Halliburton who 2 weeks prior to this disaster just happened to purchase the World’s largest oil disaster service company Boots & Coots”.
How HFT Quote Stuffing Caused The Market Crash Of May 6, And Threatens To Destroy The Entire Market At Any Moment
On the subject of HFT systems, we were shocked to find cases where one exchange was sending an extremely high number of quotes for one stock in a single second -- as high as 5,000 quotes in 1 second! During May 6, there were hundreds of times that a single stock had over 1,000 quotes from one exchange in a single second. Even more disturbing, there doesn't seem to be any economic justification for this. In many of the cases, the bid/offer is well outside the National Best Bid/Offer (NBBO). We decided to analyze a handful of these cases in detail and graphed the sequential bid/offers to better understand them. What we discovered was even more bizarre and can only be evidence of either faulty programming, a virus or a manipulative device aimed at overloading the quotation system.
Saturday, June 26, 2010
Central Banking in Crisis: Some Twenty Countries on the Verge of Insolvency Market Volatility as the Debt Implosion Continues by Bob Chapman
Central Banking in Crisis: Some Twenty Countries on the Verge of Insolvency
Market Volatility as the Debt Implosion Continues
by Bob Chapman The International Forecaster
Cycles were created for the accumulation of wealth. A boom occurs and you get wealthy from investments on the way up and even wealthier on the way down, because the elitists are controlling the supply of money and credit and interest rates. That is the real underlying mission of the Fed, which is owned by banking and Wall Street. All the power to control markets and create inflation and deflation lies with the Federal Reserve. Politicians do not create monetary policy, the Fed does. The politicians do as they are told. They know from time to time there will be economic pain, but the payoffs are so good they learn to live with it.
This time the damage is so bad that the Fed has been forced to monetize trillions of dollars of debt. The disease this time has spread to Europe with the ECB, using, quantitative easing by simply creating money out of thin air. That is something they said they would never do. The only real liquidity in Europe is emanating from the ECB and the Fed. We believe that eventually countries will fail, as Iceland has. You know all the possible victims. There are presently 20 of them including the US and UK . Three-card Monte games do not last forever. If liquidity is that scarce then where is the money coming from? The only place it could be coming from is the Fed. Not only is a $2 trillion bailout in process, but also as banks and thrift institutions fail stress tests some will be bailed out by being absorbed by other supposedly solvent institutions. When that option is gone then governments must bail them out. When the monetization hits the entire system collapses. After 50 or more years in this business we believe the system is definitely going to fold.
All the central banks involved are broke or virtually broke. If they are not broke why is their condition a big secret? The Bundesbank told Spain last week that we do not want stress test results made public. The reason obviously was because of the sad condition German banks are in and their penchant again to keep everything secret. These are the same people who want a one-world currency in the form of an SDR, which is worthless, because it has no backing. It is just another fiat currency. They all are in such bad shape they cannot even sterilize their interventions. The new trillions we see in the system in Europe and the US cannot be sterilized.
In England we see the Bank of England financing and monetizing the UK budget deficit. The alternative is financial collapse. The UK is in such terrible shape that they refused to partake in the almost $1 trillion bailout of the euro zone PIIGS. Recently the Fed bought $1.25 trillion in toxic waste and $800 billion in Treasury paper for over $2 trillion dollars. Adding to the incompetence and desperation, the ECB is buying the toxic debt of euro zone that are on the verge of bankruptcy. All entities are extending their debt buying programs with money they do not have and for people that can never pay the debt back. The central banks do not care as they save the financial institutions. The citizens are an afterthought. Not one of them wants to give up their power base. They don’t want to declare insolvency – they want the public to pay their debts. Weimar wasn’t much different, except it wasn’t caused by German greed, but by the vengeance of its enemies to bring about a war worse than the war to end all wars. This time it is propelled by greed and a quest for world government.
The result of all this is that some 20 major countries are on the edge of insolvency, not to mention scores of other countries. We see one funding crisis after another. Even major countries can’t sell their bonds even with higher than normal yields. Interest rates are close to zero. We suppose they could go into minus territory, where they would pay you to borrow money. Don’t laugh, it has happened more than once. It was also not uncommon to see negative lease rates, as countries engaged in the suppression of gold prices. Governments do anything they want. This same state of mind exists in increases in money and credit. Presently almost all governments are in trouble. If they haven’t made a dog’s breakfast out of their own economies they have bought bonds from those who have and stand to take stiff losses. Look at the euro zone’s almost $1 trillion bailout of the PIIGS. Do you really think those bonds will ever be paid off – we don’t. It is this concept of interconnectivity that as the players are finding out it is a disaster. How can solvent European countries even contemplate a $2 trillion bailout for nations that really do not care if the debt is ever paid off? That is how today’s world turns.
We fall back on a very important underlying concept and that is if you do not understand what is really going on behind the scenes you can never get the right answers and conclusions. People talk about cycles and super cycles as if they occurred out of nowhere. They all happen by design. As an example, the economy has improved, but that is because of $800 billion in stimulus and Fed spending. The growth that evolved was tepid at best. Now that the economy is trailing off, the stimulus having expended itself, and the question is what comes next? The only way to stave off recession/depression is to have another stimulus plan. That, of course, doesn’t affect the root causes - it just gains time.
In this debt parade we find it interesting that but for one source, we see no mention in the media of America ’s contribution, via the IMF, of some $60 billion. The frauds and criminality continue unabated. Nowhere do they tell you that among the biggest speculators were the banks that you are being forced to bailout.
Over this past year we have seen a stampede into corporate and Treasury bonds, at miniscule yields, due to the perception that bonds are safer. These investors are in for a big surprise as banks and other professionals start to factor in the risks involved, which throw off such poor returns. As the world economy runs out of stimulus and liquidity that has been chocked off by central banks, the realization will be that the prospects of countries and corporations have been severely diminished. GDP is falling and could in many countries, led by the US , should be negative for the last two quarters of the year and beyond. There is no safety in bonds, particularly municipals. Bonds are in a bubble, as many will soon discover. If income falls the ability to service bonds gets more difficult, both by government and corporations. While these myriad problems exist our Congress grovels before the political masters of Wall Street, banking, insurance, big Parma and transnational conglomerates. Pricing of risk is now impossible, which means risk rises exponentially. Eventually this reality will make credit harder to access as we move into the future.
What is important more than anything else are jobs and those who create them cannot easily borrow money. At the same time free trade, globalization, offshoring and outsourcing kill our jobs and fill the coffers of transnational conglomerates that keep their profits tax-free offshore. You cannot do that. While this transpires your Congress stuffs their pockets with cash from elitists who own them.
The troubles we see in Europe are but a reflection of what is going on worldwide. This leads us to the conclusion that Americans and others are being systematically betrayed by their legislators. – A problem that can be remedied in November by removing almost all of them.
The European rescue attempt will not work nor will phony, temporary stimulus, or increased issuance of money and credit. Do not forget as well that a great deal of that European debt is being held by US institutions. Expending volatility is on the way, as the debt implosion continues. Is it any wonder, as we predicted, gold and the shares are hitting new highs.
Stock and bond markets have no way to go but down. If you are not out of both, with the exception of gold and silver shares, you had better be. The big money, the professionals, are in a state of panic and that money has to go somewhere. Yes, you guessed it, and that is very bullish for gold and silver related assets. As an added incentive the dollar is in the process of completing a head and shoulders, which means the rally is over and the dollar is headed down. Even though the dollar decoupled from gold over a year ago, as we predicted, and probably only affects gold by some 20%, it is still gold bullish and not neutral or negative. Adding further fuel to the fire we predicted four years ago not only real estate would collapse and that foreclosures would wipe out trillions in real estate values, but that millions would walk away from their underwater homes. Homes where mortgages were greater than the home value. The first wave began two years ago, but we now see affected those with good to excellent credit who are defaulting because one or even two breadwinners have lost their jobs. Now we have those underwater that won’t sit with a wasting asset. Besides they realize this could now go on for years, perhaps two more years to the bottom of the market and many more before any semblance of normality is seen. They have now become about 13% of all defaults, up from 4% three years ago. Mortgage holders also see this as payback for the banks that caused the debacle and screwed the homeowner in the first place. Banks aided and abetted all kinds of fraud and no one has ever been charged, never mind sent to jail. The Fed and government also bailed out the banks and not the public and that has further incensed homeowners and others. It pays to be a crook. The banks are losing about $100 billion a year and that is funneled into the economy via other channels – another stimulus plan, that is because many no longer pay a mortgage or rent. In the next two years homes in negative equinity will rise from 25% to 50% to 60%. Lots of lenders are going under and that is the way it should be. It, of course, will be devastating for the economy.
Market Volatility as the Debt Implosion Continues
by Bob Chapman The International Forecaster
Cycles were created for the accumulation of wealth. A boom occurs and you get wealthy from investments on the way up and even wealthier on the way down, because the elitists are controlling the supply of money and credit and interest rates. That is the real underlying mission of the Fed, which is owned by banking and Wall Street. All the power to control markets and create inflation and deflation lies with the Federal Reserve. Politicians do not create monetary policy, the Fed does. The politicians do as they are told. They know from time to time there will be economic pain, but the payoffs are so good they learn to live with it.
This time the damage is so bad that the Fed has been forced to monetize trillions of dollars of debt. The disease this time has spread to Europe with the ECB, using, quantitative easing by simply creating money out of thin air. That is something they said they would never do. The only real liquidity in Europe is emanating from the ECB and the Fed. We believe that eventually countries will fail, as Iceland has. You know all the possible victims. There are presently 20 of them including the US and UK . Three-card Monte games do not last forever. If liquidity is that scarce then where is the money coming from? The only place it could be coming from is the Fed. Not only is a $2 trillion bailout in process, but also as banks and thrift institutions fail stress tests some will be bailed out by being absorbed by other supposedly solvent institutions. When that option is gone then governments must bail them out. When the monetization hits the entire system collapses. After 50 or more years in this business we believe the system is definitely going to fold.
All the central banks involved are broke or virtually broke. If they are not broke why is their condition a big secret? The Bundesbank told Spain last week that we do not want stress test results made public. The reason obviously was because of the sad condition German banks are in and their penchant again to keep everything secret. These are the same people who want a one-world currency in the form of an SDR, which is worthless, because it has no backing. It is just another fiat currency. They all are in such bad shape they cannot even sterilize their interventions. The new trillions we see in the system in Europe and the US cannot be sterilized.
In England we see the Bank of England financing and monetizing the UK budget deficit. The alternative is financial collapse. The UK is in such terrible shape that they refused to partake in the almost $1 trillion bailout of the euro zone PIIGS. Recently the Fed bought $1.25 trillion in toxic waste and $800 billion in Treasury paper for over $2 trillion dollars. Adding to the incompetence and desperation, the ECB is buying the toxic debt of euro zone that are on the verge of bankruptcy. All entities are extending their debt buying programs with money they do not have and for people that can never pay the debt back. The central banks do not care as they save the financial institutions. The citizens are an afterthought. Not one of them wants to give up their power base. They don’t want to declare insolvency – they want the public to pay their debts. Weimar wasn’t much different, except it wasn’t caused by German greed, but by the vengeance of its enemies to bring about a war worse than the war to end all wars. This time it is propelled by greed and a quest for world government.
The result of all this is that some 20 major countries are on the edge of insolvency, not to mention scores of other countries. We see one funding crisis after another. Even major countries can’t sell their bonds even with higher than normal yields. Interest rates are close to zero. We suppose they could go into minus territory, where they would pay you to borrow money. Don’t laugh, it has happened more than once. It was also not uncommon to see negative lease rates, as countries engaged in the suppression of gold prices. Governments do anything they want. This same state of mind exists in increases in money and credit. Presently almost all governments are in trouble. If they haven’t made a dog’s breakfast out of their own economies they have bought bonds from those who have and stand to take stiff losses. Look at the euro zone’s almost $1 trillion bailout of the PIIGS. Do you really think those bonds will ever be paid off – we don’t. It is this concept of interconnectivity that as the players are finding out it is a disaster. How can solvent European countries even contemplate a $2 trillion bailout for nations that really do not care if the debt is ever paid off? That is how today’s world turns.
We fall back on a very important underlying concept and that is if you do not understand what is really going on behind the scenes you can never get the right answers and conclusions. People talk about cycles and super cycles as if they occurred out of nowhere. They all happen by design. As an example, the economy has improved, but that is because of $800 billion in stimulus and Fed spending. The growth that evolved was tepid at best. Now that the economy is trailing off, the stimulus having expended itself, and the question is what comes next? The only way to stave off recession/depression is to have another stimulus plan. That, of course, doesn’t affect the root causes - it just gains time.
In this debt parade we find it interesting that but for one source, we see no mention in the media of America ’s contribution, via the IMF, of some $60 billion. The frauds and criminality continue unabated. Nowhere do they tell you that among the biggest speculators were the banks that you are being forced to bailout.
Over this past year we have seen a stampede into corporate and Treasury bonds, at miniscule yields, due to the perception that bonds are safer. These investors are in for a big surprise as banks and other professionals start to factor in the risks involved, which throw off such poor returns. As the world economy runs out of stimulus and liquidity that has been chocked off by central banks, the realization will be that the prospects of countries and corporations have been severely diminished. GDP is falling and could in many countries, led by the US , should be negative for the last two quarters of the year and beyond. There is no safety in bonds, particularly municipals. Bonds are in a bubble, as many will soon discover. If income falls the ability to service bonds gets more difficult, both by government and corporations. While these myriad problems exist our Congress grovels before the political masters of Wall Street, banking, insurance, big Parma and transnational conglomerates. Pricing of risk is now impossible, which means risk rises exponentially. Eventually this reality will make credit harder to access as we move into the future.
What is important more than anything else are jobs and those who create them cannot easily borrow money. At the same time free trade, globalization, offshoring and outsourcing kill our jobs and fill the coffers of transnational conglomerates that keep their profits tax-free offshore. You cannot do that. While this transpires your Congress stuffs their pockets with cash from elitists who own them.
The troubles we see in Europe are but a reflection of what is going on worldwide. This leads us to the conclusion that Americans and others are being systematically betrayed by their legislators. – A problem that can be remedied in November by removing almost all of them.
The European rescue attempt will not work nor will phony, temporary stimulus, or increased issuance of money and credit. Do not forget as well that a great deal of that European debt is being held by US institutions. Expending volatility is on the way, as the debt implosion continues. Is it any wonder, as we predicted, gold and the shares are hitting new highs.
Stock and bond markets have no way to go but down. If you are not out of both, with the exception of gold and silver shares, you had better be. The big money, the professionals, are in a state of panic and that money has to go somewhere. Yes, you guessed it, and that is very bullish for gold and silver related assets. As an added incentive the dollar is in the process of completing a head and shoulders, which means the rally is over and the dollar is headed down. Even though the dollar decoupled from gold over a year ago, as we predicted, and probably only affects gold by some 20%, it is still gold bullish and not neutral or negative. Adding further fuel to the fire we predicted four years ago not only real estate would collapse and that foreclosures would wipe out trillions in real estate values, but that millions would walk away from their underwater homes. Homes where mortgages were greater than the home value. The first wave began two years ago, but we now see affected those with good to excellent credit who are defaulting because one or even two breadwinners have lost their jobs. Now we have those underwater that won’t sit with a wasting asset. Besides they realize this could now go on for years, perhaps two more years to the bottom of the market and many more before any semblance of normality is seen. They have now become about 13% of all defaults, up from 4% three years ago. Mortgage holders also see this as payback for the banks that caused the debacle and screwed the homeowner in the first place. Banks aided and abetted all kinds of fraud and no one has ever been charged, never mind sent to jail. The Fed and government also bailed out the banks and not the public and that has further incensed homeowners and others. It pays to be a crook. The banks are losing about $100 billion a year and that is funneled into the economy via other channels – another stimulus plan, that is because many no longer pay a mortgage or rent. In the next two years homes in negative equinity will rise from 25% to 50% to 60%. Lots of lenders are going under and that is the way it should be. It, of course, will be devastating for the economy.
Thursday, June 24, 2010
"The End Of The Great Bailouts Is Approaching" by Bob Chapman "The International Forecaster" 6-23-10
http://www.theinternationalforecaster.com/International_Forecaster_Weekly/The_End_of_The_Great_Bailouts_is_Approaching
Broke central banks, UK must monetize or collapse, 20 major countries on the edge of insolvency, No way but down for the Stock markets, defaulting on bailout payments, Fed audit going through Senate, shrinkage of high-end properties, VAT coming.
The devastating results of Keynesianism didn’t take hold of the western world until after WWII. Cycles were created for the accumulation of wealth. A boom occurs and you get wealthy from investments on the way up and even wealthier on the way down, because the elitists are controlling the supply of money and credit and interest rates. That is the real underlying mission of the Fed, which is owned by banking and Wall Street. All the power to control markets and create inflation and deflation lies with the Federal Reserve. Politicians do not create monetary policy, the Fed does. The politicians do as they are told. They know from time to time there will be economic pain, but the payoffs are so good they learn to live with it.
This time the damage is so bad that the Fed has been forced to monetize trillions of dollars of debt. The disease this time has spread to Europe with the ECB, using, quantitative easing by simply creating money out of thin air. That is something they said they would never do. The only real liquidity in Europe is emanating from the ECB and the Fed. We believe that eventually countries will fail, as Iceland has. You know all the possible victims. There are presently 20 of them including the US and UK. Three-card Monte games do not last forever. If liquidity is that scarce then where is the money coming from? The only place it could be coming from is the Fed. Not only is a $2 trillion bailout in process, but also as banks and thrift institutions fail stress tests some will be bailed out by being absorbed by other supposedly solvent institutions. When that option is gone then governments must bail them out. When the monetization hits the entire system collapses. After 50 or more years in this business we believe the system is definitely going to fold.
All the central banks involved are broke or virtually broke. If they are not broke why is their condition a big secret? The Bundesbank told Spain last week that we do not want stress test results made public. The reason obviously was because of the sad condition German banks are in and their penchant again to keep everything secret. These are the same people who want a one-world currency in the form of an SDR, which is worthless, because it has no backing. It is just another fiat currency. They all are in such bad shape they cannot even sterilize their interventions. The new trillions we see in the system in Europe and the US cannot be sterilized. CLICK HERE to keep reading this article
Broke central banks, UK must monetize or collapse, 20 major countries on the edge of insolvency, No way but down for the Stock markets, defaulting on bailout payments, Fed audit going through Senate, shrinkage of high-end properties, VAT coming.
The devastating results of Keynesianism didn’t take hold of the western world until after WWII. Cycles were created for the accumulation of wealth. A boom occurs and you get wealthy from investments on the way up and even wealthier on the way down, because the elitists are controlling the supply of money and credit and interest rates. That is the real underlying mission of the Fed, which is owned by banking and Wall Street. All the power to control markets and create inflation and deflation lies with the Federal Reserve. Politicians do not create monetary policy, the Fed does. The politicians do as they are told. They know from time to time there will be economic pain, but the payoffs are so good they learn to live with it.
This time the damage is so bad that the Fed has been forced to monetize trillions of dollars of debt. The disease this time has spread to Europe with the ECB, using, quantitative easing by simply creating money out of thin air. That is something they said they would never do. The only real liquidity in Europe is emanating from the ECB and the Fed. We believe that eventually countries will fail, as Iceland has. You know all the possible victims. There are presently 20 of them including the US and UK. Three-card Monte games do not last forever. If liquidity is that scarce then where is the money coming from? The only place it could be coming from is the Fed. Not only is a $2 trillion bailout in process, but also as banks and thrift institutions fail stress tests some will be bailed out by being absorbed by other supposedly solvent institutions. When that option is gone then governments must bail them out. When the monetization hits the entire system collapses. After 50 or more years in this business we believe the system is definitely going to fold.
All the central banks involved are broke or virtually broke. If they are not broke why is their condition a big secret? The Bundesbank told Spain last week that we do not want stress test results made public. The reason obviously was because of the sad condition German banks are in and their penchant again to keep everything secret. These are the same people who want a one-world currency in the form of an SDR, which is worthless, because it has no backing. It is just another fiat currency. They all are in such bad shape they cannot even sterilize their interventions. The new trillions we see in the system in Europe and the US cannot be sterilized. CLICK HERE to keep reading this article
Bob Chapman "The International Forecaster" with Dr. Stan on The Liberty Radio 6-21-10
WTO will collapse says Bob Chapman
"All the central banks involved are broke or virtually broke. If they are not broke why is their condition a big secret? The Bundesbank told Spain last week that we do not want stress test results made public. The reason obviously was because of the sad condition German banks are in and their penchant again to keep everything secret. These are the same people who want a one-world currency in the form of an SDR, which is worthless, because it has no backing. It is just another fiat currency. They all are in such bad shape they cannot even sterilize their interventions. The new trillions we see in the system in Europe and the US cannot be sterilized." From The International Forecaster of 23 june 2010
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Bob Chapman "The International Forecaster" on the John Stadtmiller Show with Robby Noel
Budget director is leaving this summer, they might replace him with Laura Tyson. Congressional Budget office is saying 100 trillion in projected deficits.
Depression might last 10 or 20 years according to Bob if they raise taxes. The proverbial "Canary in the Coalmine" is California. When they fall, the rest will follow. In other states Billions might come out of pension funds.
Bob maintains that we still have a 1 1/2 years out yet. Obama is making mistakes that could backfire. Bob makes some other interesting observations. Arizona might move to not issue birth certificates to "anchor babies" (babies of illegal aliens).
Caller asks whats new with the E.U....Chapman says that Greece is getting closer to leaving the Euro and going back to the Drachma. What recourse do the German people have? There is tremendous dissent there especially with the increase of taxes there.
Half the Gulf is covered in oil and that is just what is visible. John mentions again about the methane gas and says the Gulf is dead. Bob wonders if the Gulf 'spill' will travel around the world...and calls it a false flag operation.
CLICK HERE for Mr. Robert Chapman bio also known as The International Forecaster.
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
"In this type of Enviroment Only Gold & Silver Can Protect Your Assets" - Bob Chapman on Discount Gold & Silver June 21, 2010
Skip ahead to 4:19 when Bob Chapman begins to speak. The International Forecaster on 16th June 2010 :"The foregoing events lead us to other manifestations of trouble, real trouble. For the past four years all currencies have fallen versus gold and silver. The US dollar has been falling for 11 years versus gold and silver. What gold is telling you is that the US, UK and European financial systems are on the way to collapse. The cover-up cannot go on and all the players know that. They are all living in the theater of the absurd. What politicians in all these countries are doing is what they are being told to do. If they do not do what they are told they will never hold public office or be a bureaucrat again. If what they do is serious enough they will be liquidated. What is happening financially, fiscally and monetarily is unnatural. There is absolutely no way the system can be fixed. If these politicians and their handlers believe this they are doomed. They have pulled this hundreds of times and each time they have been unsuccessful. This time will be a disaster for the Illuminists due to the Internet and talk radio. This time they will escape nothing. We live in a decadent, immoral financial system that has to fall. In this sort of environment only gold and silver can protect your assets."
Monday, June 21, 2010
Bob Chapman on The Power Hour June 21, 2010
Deutsch Bank is bankrupt.
Extract from The International Forecaster of 16 June 2010 :
"US Markets were it not for the Federal Reserves purchase of Treasury and Agency bonds the US would already be unable to raise funds to service debt and issue new debt, and it would already have descended into national bankruptcy. It is no wonder the Fed does not want to be audited. Through various artifices the Fed has been purchasing US treasury paper. No one knows how much, because when asked the Fed says it is a state secret. That is what all Americans love. A country run in secrecy. A privately owned corporation operating under the cover of secrecy, and protected by a Treasury Department, that is under the control of the Fed’s owners. How is that for an incestuous relationship? Government is desperately searching for more revenue to cover its massive deficit spending and to service existing mandatory programs. Taxes are being increased; some 19 new taxes, in the recently passed medical reform legislation. Unfortunately this isn’t enough. Of course, there is never enough."
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