The Fed's Board of Governors are now playing "Nearer, My God, to Thee" as our economy, the USS Titanic, quickly sinks into an ocean of money and credit which the Fed created to fuel speculation, to create frothy asset bubbles and to cover up the long gash ripped into the hull of the USS Titanic by free trade, globalization, off-shoring and outsourcing... And when the USS Titanic goes down, as planned by the despicable Illuminati, just about everyone, including most of the evil Illuminati themselves, are going down with it as the whole financial world gets turned upside down, with the political and social worlds becoming topsy-turvy on a global basis shortly thereafter. The Illuminati had meant to make a stealth attack on the USS Titanic, but it has quickly turned into a suicide mission that will suck them all down with it!
It seems fitting that many of these Illuminists will get to play financial suicide bombers seeing as how they have funded the suicide bombers of Islamic terrorism that have been used to create and to justify the phony "War on Terror" to scare Americans into giving up their precious constitutional freedoms which our Founding Fathers tried to guaranty and enshrine in the US Constitution. Our Founding Fathers succeeded in placing many of our cherished freedoms in the Constitution, but our bought-and-paid-for government simply ignores its terms while the ignorant sheeple yawn as if the abandonment of our Constitution were some sort of ho-hum event! After all, why should they object? They have no clue what the Constitution says! Most have never even read a single sentence from the world-renowned document that everyone likes to talk about but that few seem to understand or appreciate. Rather than put up a fuss and light a fire under Congress and under our Orwellian Presidential Administration, by requesting, nay demanding, that they act in accordance with the terms of the Constitution, the sheeple prefer to drink beer and watch sports on their large-screen televisions which they have recently purchased with refinanced ARM home mortgage loans secured by their home ATM machines (which they could not afford in the first place) based on bogus home-bubble values that have been confirmed by totally fraudulent appraisals and then bundled together and given an equally bogus AAA rating by deceitful rating agencies before being sold to dupe clients by shark-finned securities dealers for totally outrageous fees! True to their name, the dopey sheeple are just like sheep being led to the slaughterhouse that have no idea what is coming until they are shot or bludgeoned to death, at which point it is a tad late to speak up or to do anything about it.
The derivative securities known as "toxic waste" that are in the process of taking down the entire worldwide financial system and that were created by the obtuse "financial engineering" efforts of the halfwit Illuminists who came up with this scheme, were characterized by Warren Buffet some years ago as "financial weapons of mass destruction." The mortgage-backed securities known as MBS's, which took on various forms such as CDO's, CMO's, SIV's and other subprime, and now Alt-A and prime, alphabet derivatives, form the part of the WMD arsenal known as "neutron bombs."
That is because the assets used to secure these neutron bomb derivatives remain standing after they explode, but the investors which own them are vaporized by the explosion. And now the Fed is acting as the general contractor for the massive salvage operation, as the balance sheets of the banks, investment banks and brokerage houses continue to deteriorate due to neutron bomb detonations and psychopathic levels of leverage which have been notably attained by hedge funds with the help of wild-eyed bankers and which are inherent in the fractional reserve banking system itself, a system which amounts to little more than a classic Ponzi scheme. The "Perfect Storm" is developing rapidly as the Fed sets the stage for the financially oriented remake of the movie by that name starring George Clooney. There are three major factors that are coming together that are going to raise the payload of these neutron bombs to a level such that nothing will survive the Daisy Chain of mega-explosions that are on the horizon. Those three factors are a hyperinflationary recession, elevated interest rates of the double digit variety and ever-decreasing home values resulting from massive defaults and foreclosures. These are the main areas where the "financial engineers" grossly underestimated the potential for trouble that might cause their derivative creations to fail. These three factors all feed on one another and are going to whip up a storm powerful enough to propel the US and large parts of the world into the greatest economic depression of all time.
Here is an example of how these three factors, as well as other factors, feed on one another under the current scenario. The unaffordable rate resets on ARM's and declining home values encourage mortgage defaults and erode collateral values on mortgage-backed derivatives, which lead to asset devaluations and resulting bank insolvencies as well as a tightening of credit and increases in interest rates to remove risk and to compensate for increased risk, respectively, which in turn leads to a decrease in demand for homes due to fewer qualified buyers and higher loan costs, which prevents current homeowners from trading up, which causes declines in homebuilding and employment in the building trades and in businesses that benefit from the homebuilding business, which then reduces wages and consumer demand, which fuels recessionary forces, which causes the Fed to lower interest rates and expand money and credit to avoid a recession, which in turn fuels inflation as the money supply expands exponentially, which further erodes real wages and consumer spending, which further reduces the demand for housing and the number of qualified buyers and which further fuels the recession and erodes real estate values, causing the Fed to expand the supply of money and credit and to lower rates even more, resulting in ever-greater inflation to the point where the Fed must raise rates to stop us from becoming the next Weimar republic, which increases the cost of doing business and decimates corporate profits while increasing the cost of owning a home and causing further price reductions for real estate, which decreases demand for real estate, increases loan defaults and further fuels the ever-deepening recession, which causes the stock markets to crash and burn, and on, and on, and on, ad nauseam.
This is where we are headed, and until the failures are allowed to happen and the system is cleansed, it will only continue to get worse. The longer and harder the Fed tries to prevent a recession, the longer and deeper the resulting depression. And if the Fed tries to put all the losses onto the backs of taxpayers, this will ignite hyperinflation and the whole country will implode like the Weimar Republic did and there will be a revolution, which the Illuminists will not survive. They have completely blown their plans. Their own greed and hunger for power has destroyed them.
Note how carefully the Administration and Congress are to avoid, minimize and/or delay implementing any bailout schemes that smack of major moral hazard as we come up for elections. The reprobates in our government are trying to keep the economy from imploding by use of the Fed and its profligate supply of money and credit, the PPT and its despicable manipulations that make a mockery out of so-called "free markets" and a stimulus plan that they hope will give the economy a shot in the arm to keep it alive long enough to get past elections. That is because they want to reelect incumbents so that the ingrained and rampant corruption of our bought-off and/or compromised government officials can continue on with business as usual. That is why we recommend getting rid of all incumbents and limiting terms of office. The non-stop institutionalized corruption will continue as long as incumbents are allowed to continue in power. The new people will be corrupted too, but it will take some time do this and in the meantime we might actually get them to do something which actually benefits US citizens. We can assure you that all the major bailouts that involve high levels of moral hazard will accelerate after elections, so get rid of all incumbents who are already talking about buying toxic waste and writing down mortgage principal, much of it at taxpayer expense as they have the Federal Reserve, the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, the Federal Housing Administration, and GSE's Freddie and Fannie nationalize the despicable, greed-induced and needless fruits of fraud that Wall Street has vilely perpetrated against investors worldwide. Everything we hear from Wall Street is a request to bail them out after they have destroyed our country and probably the worldwide financial system along with it.
This is the most despicable group of businessmen and politicians ever assembled in the history of the world that we have running our government and our financial system. They are traitors all with few exceptions. And the financial devastation that has occurred on their watch, even that which is just showing on the surface, is worse than anything we have ever seen in over 50 years of following and/or commenting on financial markets. The truth that lies beneath is far worse than any of us can even imagine in our worst nightmares, and has already become an unstoppable juggernaut that the Fed and all the central banks of the world are powerless to prevent. Only gold, silver, commodities and their related stocks have the capability to save you from the forthcoming devastation from a hyperinflationary recession. And only gold coins and bullion, stored food, weapons and ammunition will be of any use in the upcoming destruction of America that will be wreaked by the coming Very Large Depression.
The Bear Stearns, JP Morgan Chase, Federal Reserve scam continues to dominate the financial news. What we see is a Fed, in collusion and conspiracy, with Morgan, overstepping its legal boundaries and going beyond providing liquidity to the banking system and attempting to ensure the solvency of a non-bank entity. That was a $30 billion non-recourse loan to JP Morgan Chase, secured by he worst part of Bear’s mortgage debt. Morgan has received a subsidy from the Fed at public expense. If this is how the US government and the Fed are going to operate in a democratic, free-market society, we might just as well put a swastika on our flag.
The Fed has overstepped its legal boundaries and few seem to care. The Fed was not acting to save a bank, but to enrich Morgan. We call it grand theft. Congress can do this, but the privately owned Fed cannot. Incidentally, Morgan is the largest Fed shareholder. The loan falls outside of Section 13-3 of he Act, because it is not a loan to Bear or Morgan. Bear is no longer a business entity under this agreement. If the fiction that this is a loan to Morgan were true, Morgan would be obligated to pay it back. The only point at which the value of the collateral would become an issue would be in the event that Morgan itself were to fail. No, this is not a loan. This is a put option granted by the Fed to Morgan on a basket of toxic securities. It is not legal. We expect in time the loan will not be repaid and the Fed will sell off the collateral at a loss. The Fed cannot lose because they created the credit for the loan out of thin air. This is how the Illuminists control America and many other countries.
As Chris Whalen, managing director of Intuitional Risk Analytics bluntly put it: even at $10.00 a share, the JPM buyout of BS stinks to high heaven because of the conflicted role played by the Fed.” The Fed says they did not set the price. They did not care what the price was. Morgan set the price – if you can call it that. The Fed says Bear was headed for bankruptcy and we don’t believe that for one second. The reason Bear’s officers and directors went along with the program is that they did not want to take any risk of bankruptcy. That is because they had just received billions of dollars in bonuses. Why didn’t the Fed inform Bear that they were going to open the discount window to Goldman, Lehman, Morgan and others? If Bear was in trouble why didn’t the Fed offer $30 billion directly to Bear? Obviously the Fed wanted Bear out of business and wanted Morgan to be the new owner for a pittance. In order to seal the deal in complicity with Bear players, Morgan bought 39.5% of Bear in order for Morgan to ensure that it would have close to a majority of the votes to approve the deal. That agreement completely disregards NYSE rules that prevent anyone from buying more than 20% of a company without a shareholder vote. Other parts of the deal are equally obnoxious and stretch the rules, or disregards years of precedent in Delaware, where both banks are incorporated.
It should interest you that a week ago former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker told Business Week, “If you have a closely integrated world economy with free trade and free movement of capital, the logical complement of that is a global currency.” We are happy to let Mr. Volcker know that we do not want free trade and globalization, nor do we want a world currency.
Credit default swaps on countrywide fell 70 BPS to 295 BP’s and Lloyds TSB in London dropped a record 48 points to 77 BPS. Benchmark credit indexes in the US and Europe fell to the lowest since the start of February.
The Chicago Fed national Activity Index was -1.04 in February, down from -0.8% in January. All four broad categories of indicators made negative contributions to the index in February. The index is clearly at recession levels.
Years from now bank analyst Meredith Whitney with Oppenheimer & Co. will be recognized as the catalyst that brought down the Illuminist banking conspiracy. Ms. Whitney set a low on Citigroup of $16.00. When we shorted Citi long ago our goal was $12.00, so we were pretty close. It is just she arrived a couple of years later than we did. She predicted a loss of $0.28. The stock is around $22.00. We put our short on at $44.10. We hope you all participated.
The MBA mortgage purchase applications index was up 10.6% in the 3/21 week. The 30-year fixed rate mortgage was 5.74%.
Shareholders of Bear Stearns have asked a judge to issue a temporary restraining order on the stock in an effort to gain a buyout price higher than $10.00 a share. Michigan’s pension plans are also considering emergency court action.
Wall Street, banking and the financial sector gets more repulsive with each passing day. These supposedly titans of laissez-faire solutions are standing first in line for a government-taxpayer bailout. These are the same crowd that did not want regulations. That made them rich beyond imagination. Now as losses mount and the future is very clouded, most are crying for government intervention to save them. This is the result of self regulation, which in fact never really existed. All their frauds and reckless lending are coming back to haunt the Street and the bankers. All the frauds are becoming visible thus, the call goes out to all those they have purchased in Congress and the White House to save them and their billions of dollars stolen from the people. This time they have gone a step too far.
It is not in everyone’s interest to bail out the banks and investment banks, nor those who were defrauded by these entities and the rating services. Those who created the criminal monstrosity are demanding they get bailed out. If we don’t bail them out they threaten us with the collapse of the financial system. As Von Mises said in these circumstances the system has to be purged and what a wonderful time to do it. Millions of Americans are losing their homes - multi-billionaire bankers want a bail out - how ludicrous. It is about time bankers paid the price for their evil deeds.