Archive for December 10th, 2011
European Banks: We’re Out of Collateral
Jim Cramer’s declaration of ‘we’re saved’ aside, Houston, we have a problem.
Senior analysts and traders warned of impending bank failures as a summit intended to solve the European crisis failed to deliver a solution that eased concerns over bank funding.
The European Central Bank admitted it had held meetings about providing emergency funding to the region’s struggling banks, however City figures said a “collateral crunch” was looming.
“If anyone thinks things are getting better then they simply don’t understand how severe the problems are. I think a major bank could fail within weeks,” said one London-based executive at a major global bank.
Many banks, including some French, Italian and Spanish lenders, have already run out of many of the acceptable forms of collateral such as US Treasuries and other liquid securities used to finance short-term loans and have been forced to resort to lending out their gold reserves to maintain access to dollar funding.
So, what precisely does this mean? It means that the banks one ability that they have used since 1659 to control people and governments, the ability to create money and control the quantity of it in our system, is nearly gone. How is this, you ask?
While it is popular vernacular to refer to what has been practiced by Ben Bernanke’s Federal Reserve and Central Banks across the world as ‘printing money,’ that is a misnomer. What they truly do, is issue DEBT. Our worldwide monetary system is based upon nothing but the issuance of DEBT. This means there has to be a BUYER of debt somewhere, some place, in order for money to either be printed (physically) or put into someone’s bank account electronically.
‘Printing’ or more accurately termed ‘raw printing’ is what happened in Weimar Germany and in Argentina. This is when governments just run a printing press with NO promise to pay ANYTHING at any time, merely for the sake of fooling people into continuing with commerce as usual. That doesn’t last very long, and we get the much feared monetary phenomenon of hyperinflation.
Make no mistake, bankers HATE hyperinflation above all else. Why? Because then the debts they hold are paid back by people in a currency worth nothing. While ‘deflation’ is what bankers rail against in public, it is far preferrable to hyperinflation for a banker. This is because at least in deflation, they (1) don’t get paid back in worthless dollars; and (2) they get to seize the underlying collateral which was pledged as a promise to pay in the future, and that collateral, while in the moment is undervalued, will only go UP in value in the future. Not a bad deal….if you’re a banker. So, make the public FEAR deflation, but be poised to loot the world when it happens. Ah yes, bankers. So clever.
So, what is occuring right now is that the original underlying collateral issued to create our existing money has been exhausted. There are only so many tangible assets on our planet. Pretty much everything not nailed down and much of what is nailed down has been pledged or encumbered by debt at some point in the past 400 years. This means, that debt creation has exceeded the planet’s capacity to produce. Assets cannot be created fast enough to keep up with the debt that has been created and must be serviced (interest must be paid on all debt, which interest is never created at the time of the original borrowing).
This means, that there’s no more collateral left for which anyone is willing to borrow to purchase. This in turn, means the banks can no longer create money. In fact, money is being destroyed at a rate exponential to that by which it was originally created. The system is essentially running in reverse….on steroids. All the recent mechanisms, bailouts and crazy schemes have all had ONE goal: SELL MORE DEBT TO CREATE MORE MONEY. The only way to sell debt is to find someone willing to buy. The only way to find someone to buy is to have collateral to pledge. There isn’t any more that anyone is willing to borrow to purchase.
This means the banks can no longer create money – unless of course, they’d like to order governments to print raw dollars (backed by nothing). This the banks will not do, for the reasons I outlined above. They have no desire to have the enormous debts they hold to be paid back with NOTHING. They’d much rather be able to seize whatever collateral that exists in hard, tangible assets.
People had better think long and hard about this for this is TRULY how our monetary system operates. It is in its most rudimentary definition, a Ponzi scheme. One that makes all others look like mere rounding errors. The entire system is based upon having to find another sucker to buy in to the debt peddling. I don’t know about you, but I can’t take on any more debt, nor do I have the inclination to do so.
This is truly the end of the road folks. Can it go on a little bit longer as they turn over couch cushions to find that last little place that might be able or willing to take on just a bit more debt? Sure. However, it won’t go on much longer because the bankers themselves have just told you the truth. The one little grain of truth that means anything: There is no more collateral. They used it all. Therefore, there can and will be no more debt-money creation.
Plan accordingly. Oh, and you’d be wise to follow the bankers’ own actions: the only things that are going to matter are hard, tangible assets which have value due to their practicable use (and one might take note that you can’t eat gold and it won’t put a roof over your head or protect you from violence).
If you’d like to read more about how our money = debt, you can visit Money As Debt and The Banking System, and of course, if you’d prefer to learn through video, visit FedUpUSA’s Educational Videos page. If you’d like to stop this insanity, support Bill Still for president. He’s the only one who will stop this. Everyone else would like it to continue, because this system is what keeps those in power, very wealthy and exempt from the very laws that they write.
They Don’t Even Bother Trying To Hide It Now
There comes a time when the rip-off schemes become so in your face that there is no longer any attempt to hide them with tricky 5,000 page contracts and inside deals (such as the CDO^2s that blew up in so many people’s faces — while the banks that created them designed them to do exactly that.)
This latest offering from the squid is such an example:
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) plans to issue four certificates of deposit linked to stocks as record low interest rates drive investor demand for the potentially higher-yielding CDs.
Why wouldn’t you just buy DIA (Diamonds) and be done with it? That’s an ETF that closely tracks the DOW and has very low expenses. If you want the risk of being in the market, then you should get both sides – the upside and the downside.
The problem is here:
The four-year CD tracks the monthly percentage change in the Dow, with gains capped at 1.5 percent to 2 percent and no floor on the declines. That means if the Dow advanced 5 percent, the monthly return would be recorded as no more than 2 percent, while a drop of the same amount would be taken in full.
In other words in the event of a big rally in the market on the month Goldman will keep much if not most of the profit. In the event of a big crash, you will eat the loss.
Why would anyone buy such a product? There’s no reason to do so, and if there’s any sort of fiduciary responsibility associated with the seller I’d love to see their argument justifying how this isn’t a raw violation of that responsibility.
Since this is listed as a “CD” I presume it falls under FDIC coverage if Goldman fails. That too is an interesting premise since these “devices” are put together by combining zeros (a form of bond) with derivatives to create a “synthetic” financial construct that should (in theory) always provide them with more cash flow than the “CD” pays (thus, in theory, it is always a winner for The Squid)
The obvious problem of course comes when the derivative counterparty can’t pay…..
The not-so-obvious problem is that in the derivative market for every winner there is a loser. So if Goldman is always the winner, who would be dumb enough to take an always-losing bet? Well, nobody once they figure it out, which means that somewhere there is likely a scheme in here much like the old CDO games — we just haven’t found it yet.
The FDIC is supposed to protect depositors, not firms that set up hinky derivative structures with depositor funds…..










