The so-called greatest economic boom in history, which supposedly took place in the United States from the end of the early 1980's recession to 2007, was nothing but an exercise in inflation and voodoo finance. It was a smoke and mirrors bull market based on Alice in Wonderland economics. The air is now being let out of the balloon as the man behind the curtain, the Fed Chairmen of that era, mainly ardent Illuminist Paul Volcker, and especially Mr. Bubbles, bonehead Alan Greenspan, are now being revealed to us as the Great Oz, who in the fairytale movie turned out to be a carnival barker and balloon rider from Kansas. How utterly appropriate. So, how low will we now go? Will it be all the way down to the Dow 1,000 of the early 1970's? Will we ride our way down to the Dow 2,000 of the late 1980's? Or will it be down to the Dow 3,000 of the early 1990's? Already, the past 12 years of gains has gone up in smoke, and this is just the beginning.
During this so-called boom period, our industrial base was destroyed by free trade, globalization, off-shoring, outsourcing, and both legal and illegal immigration, and we went from being the greatest creditor nation on earth to being the greatest debtor nation on earth during the Bush-Clinton-Bush triple whammy! By what definition is that a boom?! A mighty nuclear wind, generated by the thermonuclear explosion of fraudulent weapons of mass financial destruction devised by the Puppet Masters who own Wall Street, has blown away the smoke and shattered the mirrors, laying bare the fraud and deceit perpetrated against the American public and the people of the world, a boom based on snake oil salesmanship by our government marionettes, corporate sociopaths and megalomaniacal, satanic trillionaire psychopaths, the Illuminati, who are sacrificing our economy, and other developed and emerging nation-state economies around the globe, on the alter of world government.
The tide of economic tomfoolery has gone out, and the fraud and malfeasance of our government, Wall Street and corporate America have been laid bare.
We have gone from a nation of well-paid factory workers and highly skilled machinists and sensible bankers, to hamburger flippers, Walmart greeters and flimflam men who peddle fraudulent toxic waste to unsuspecting financial institutions around the world. Our middle class is being systematically destroyed and impoverished by an economy based on money created out of thin air by a fiendish device called European-style, debt-based, fractional reserve banking, and the economy is now reverting back to where it came from -- from thin air -- as wealth is transferred from the hard-working public to a bunch of con-artists we euphemistically call bankers and financiers, via the stealth tax of inflation and outright investment fraud and market manipulation. Bubble after bubble has been blown up and busted by the policies of our malevolent Fed, a private banking organization, much of which is owned by foreigners, and run by a group of sharks, barracudas and piranhas who have been feeding on their ignorant American middle class sheople-fish in a feeding frenzy beyond description for almost a century. Our whole economy during the so-called boom period has been nothing but a sick joke. How do you like the punch line?
The fourth quarter produced a stupefying negative US GDP of -6.2% annualized. The so-called experts at the Bureau of Lying (Labor) Statistics told us it would not drop below a negative 3.8%. They only missed by 63%, yet another outstanding performance by our regulators as they continue their cover up of Illuminist machinations until such time as the Illuminati tell them to finally let the truth out to the sucker-dupe sheople. They just hit you right between the eyes. Yet our President, Barack "Nero Fiddled While Rome Burned" Obama, tells us he will cause our smoke and mirrors economy to recover, while reducing the budget deficit by half before the end of his first term in office. Mr. Obama, may we remind you that you have to have a thriving economy to bring an end to deficits? A minus 6.2% GDP, which is going to get even worse, is not exactly our idea of a thriving economy. Will it be our blown-to-bits industrial base, our debt-laden economy and government, our bankrupt citizens or our toxic waste derivatives and our totally insolvent zombie banks that bring us back to prosperity? So now, apparently, we have suddenly decided to return to the Alice in Wonderland economics of the so-called boom period, just based on his "hope" and "change, because the truth is too terrible to bear?"
Our miscreants in government have passed a stimulus that is miniscule in proportion to the problem as they worry about inflation, as well they should. Then they give equity injections to walking dead banks in an attempt to reanimate them, and wonder why the zombies won't lend the public any more money. Could it be that their balance sheets are also based on Alice in Wonderland accounting principles, and that the losses they have already accumulated have vaporized all their equity, even including the free-bees from the sheople taxpayers? How about letting the zombies go bankrupt, and giving equity injections to the healthy banks who stayed out of the fraud and rampant speculation of the other bankster gangsters. They at least are in a position to take on more risk, unlike the zombies. Of course, that would make sense, so we should under no circumstances do such a sensible thing. That might help our economy. After all, the idea is not to save our economy, but to destroy it, to bring us to our knees so we will accept world government.
All we know is, based on what we see our government, financiers and corporate transnational conglomerates doing, if you don't own gold, silver and their related assets, you will be financially annihilated and vaporized. Load up now, or bend over and prepare to get reamed!
As we reported a month ago, America has entered depression as has many other countries economies. Over the past 20 months half of the world’s wealth has been destroyed and we still are nowhere near the bottom and all that the monetary and fiscal authorities have tried to arrest, the financial and economic fall has been unsuccessful. Real assets have been in a small part destroyed but most of the damage has been in financial assets. In the end leverage always destroys its user. Governments, business and individuals have been in the biggest inflation of credit in history. As the use of credit recedes in the US economy, that engine of GDP, the consumer, cuts back on consumption and buying falls from 72% to 70% of GDP, heading toward the long-term mean of 64.5% and that needless to say means we have a long way to go in this depression. As the economy and living standards fall and unemployment rises the Obama administration, Congress, and the privately owned Federal Reserve are going to throw trillions of dollars more at the problem only to be again unsuccessful. The days of open-ended credit expansion are over. Banks are not going to return to their methods of business that got them into so much trouble. Making matters worse for the consumer, wages have been stagnant for years versus inflation due to free trade, globalization, offshoring and outsourcing. Wages cannot rise with output and sales because production has been sent offshore by our transnational elitist conglomerates, who then keep a good part of their profits offshore to avoid paying American taxes. The very heart has been ripped from the American economy and all that is left is a hollow shell. The profits from any resurgence in the economy will nature to these conglomerates not to the workers. Nothing has changed. There still is no response from Congress. In fact it is the furthest thing from their minds. They have been bought and paid for or compromised by the bankers and Wall Street.
The global financial structure has imploded and there is no way to fix it short of purging the system, which should have been done 20 months ago. It wasn’t done because there is another agenda and that is to bring the world economy to its knees so that the people of all nations will be forced to accept One-World Government. This just didn’t happen this way; it was planned to happen this way.
These internationalists in their quest for profits and power have made some serious malinvestments. That is borne out by the fact that this financial debacle has caused a quick major drop in production, and idled factories and workers worldwide. In China the major exporter for consumers worldwide – 20 million people – have lost their jobs and 65,000 factories have been shut down. Of course, stupidly China has devised a $678 billion stimulus plan that is doomed to failure just like the US version and other equally dumb versions. These results are the product of a ridiculous credit expansion since 1992, which went on unabated until 20 months ago. America was the biggest buyer, and the balance of payments deficit soared. It has eased some $300 billion over the last year, but it is still $677 billion, as America faces an on balance sheet deficit of some $2 trillion for fiscal 2009. As this unfolds tax revenues are plunging, creating an ever-larger deficit, which the administration believes will be $175 billion. This in the face of corporate tax revenues falling 44.3% yoy. It is very obvious that America has been financially and economically bankrupt – thanks to banks, Wall Street, some insurance companies and our Congress and Executive Brach.
As a result of where we are headed your lives are going to change dramatically. No more mall trips for a long time. Very little eating out. You will be cutting expenses to the bone. We are facing a new age, where titans of the past will become paupers, where people violently bring back constitutional government and where those who caused our world this terrible grief are legally punished for what they have done. The parasites will be removed.
In Mr. Obama’s first 100 days his performance record will fall close to 60% and by the end of October it will fall to 40%. The stimulus package is weak for 2008, only $185 billion, whereas in a Congressional election year $399 billion will be released. The $203 billion remainder will be spent over ten years. After ordering massive spending he has told us that he will balance the budget, all in the same breath. This man is either dumb or mad. We will soon find out which.
Merrill Lynch only lost $15.8 billion in the fourth quarter.
The US 5-year Treasury note yields 1.92% yet insurance on the bonds is 1%. That is more than half of the return. This is disastrous for the government.
The President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, Denis Lockhart says many banks are pretty heavily exposed to commercial real estate. It is also a big part of the securitization market. Thus, Lockhart says the state of commercial real estate concerns me. 2007 and 2008 were the years of residential real estate issues, and 2009 will be the year of commercial real estate problems. That is the one domestic item that keeps me up at night. $500 plus billion in loans are at risk.
We are seeing massive bad news as the financial and economic crisis accelerates with no real solutions in sight. The administration is vague and hesitant, which makes the situation fluid and untenable.
The president says the deficit will be $1.75 trillion in 2009. That is 12% of GDP, which is unheard of.
The list of problem banks soared to 252 in the fourth quarter, up 50% from 171 at the end of the third quarter. Banks reported losses of $26.2 billion in the fourth quarter versus a profit of $1 billion in the third quarter.
Asset quality shows no sign of improvement and there is no quick fix. Loan loss reserves will have to be increased, which will weight heavily on earnings.
JP Morgan Chase will cut 14,000 jobs of which 2,000 will be investment-banking jobs.
A move is afoot to have Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis investigated for fraud, corruption and incompetence.
One of the little secrets we see is that as a result of large dollar demand, which has arisen as a direct result of the de-leveraging process, central banks are actually defending their currencies. This means a drawdown of foreign exchange reserves, that is dollars and a reversal of the pre-summer 2008 pattern of reserve accumulation of US dollars. These foreign central banks are stopping the dollar from going higher by selling US dollars and buying their own domestic currencies.
Banking and hedge fund de-leveraging has generated significant US dollar demand. As that continues European banks will be dollar sellers to keep their currencies from falling further and at the same time produce local currency to defend against the onslaught of depression. The bottom line is banks need to either boost deposits or reduce assets to lessen their dependence on central bank financing. This is one of the reasons banks are not lending and have negative credit growth. Governments are furious and are discouraging their domestic banks from reducing the availability of credit domestically. Reduction in foreign currency assets, of which the US dollar makes up 64.5%, is the path of least resistance. These pressures will keep the dollar from appreciating further, but on the other hand, until the European banks have seen an uptrend, even a short-term one, the dollar will not correct downward in any meaningful way. That situation will work itself out over the year. That means as the year wears on the dollar will weaken against other currencies and next year it will plunge. All currencies will fall against gold. The dollar versus gold in 2009 could see between $1,200 and $2,000 an ounce. 2010 will be even more explosive as the dollar falls and gold rises further. One thing we do know is that the dollar will fall and that gold will appreciate. Gold will do what it is going to do as a safe haven no matter what the dollar tries to do. Fiat assets are now a thing of the past. From here on out it is only real money, gold and silver, that will count as people flee to the only real currency in the world.