When the Crisis comes… Kick the Can Down the Road…

The Economic Collapse
October 28, 2011

Have you heard the good news?  Financial armageddon has been averted.  The economic collapse in Europe has been cancelled.  Everything is going to be okay.  Well, actually none of those statements is true, but news of the “debt deal” in Europe has set off a frenzy of irrational exuberance throughout the financial world anyway.  Newspapers all over the globe are declaring that the financial crisis in Europe is over.  Stock markets all over the world are soaring.

The Dow was up nearly 3 percent today, and this recent surge is helping the S&P 500 to have its best month since 1974.  Global financial markets are experiencing an explosion of optimism right now.  Yes, European leaders have been able to kick the can down the road for a few months and a total Greek default is not going to happen right now.  However, as you will see below, the core elements of this “debt deal” actually make a financial disaster in Europe even more likely in the future.

The two most important parts of the plan are a 50% “haircut” on Greek debt held by private investors and highly leveraging the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) to give it much more “firepower”.

Both of these elements are likely to cause significant problems down the road.  But most investors do not seem to have figured this out yet.  In fact, most investors seem to be buying into the hype that Europe’s problems have been solved.

There is a tremendous lack of critical thinking in the financial community today.  Just because politicians in Europe say that the crisis has been solved does not mean that the crisis has been solved.  But all over the world there are bold declarations that a great “breakthrough” has been achieved.  An article posted on USA Today is an example of this irrational exuberance….

 

Investors — at least for now — don’t have to worry about a financial collapse like the one in 2008, after Wall Street investment bank Lehman Bros. filed for bankruptcy, sparking a global financial crisis.

“Financial Armageddon seems to have been taken off the table,” says Mark Luschini, chief investment strategist at Janney Montgomery Scott.

Wow, doesn’t that sound great?

But now let’s look at the facts.

Read Full Article…

The Economy When Debt is Everywhere

International Forecaster

August 25 2010: Greece forced into a harsh reality, madness, next is Spain, Portugal and Italy to be sold to IMF servitude for decades, twenty countries now headed into bankruptcy, no relief from unemployment, reduced US GDP, a million jobs to be lost… nightmares for the economy ahead.

Debt is everywhere and it certainly is onerous. We all have heard about the sovereign debt crisis, the debt of Greece and the debts of Ireland, Spain, Portugal and Italy. During that process the euro fell from $1.50 to $1.187; which gave euro zone exporters quite an advantage. The euro has since rebounded to a high of $1.33 and for now settled in near $1.28. Business confidence is back, but in the meantime the next course of action is to be higher taxes and austerity. Even consumers believe things are not going to improve. They all probably see the advantages of a cheaper euro. Even the CDS premiums have disappeared, which means at least for now the crisis has been arrested with a Band-Aid called loans – loans that will take these countries years to repay accompanied by years of depression. As a result, Greece is on the edge of revolt.

As a result of austerity, imposed on Greece by its Illuminist led government, unemployment has hit 70% in some places. The country’s budget deficit has been reduced by 40%, truly draconian. Spending by government has been cut 10%, which is more than double what the EU and IMF has required. Bankruptcies abound and purchasing power and consumption have plunged. Consequently GDP has fallen 1.5% in the past quarter and tax revenue has fallen off a cliff. Companies, particularly in Perama and Piraeus still are sending ships to other locations for repairs, because Greek wage costs are still too high. In this world of free trade and globalization the cheapest wage gets the business. That means Greeks are going to have to work harder if they want employment. Experts say GDP will fall 4% this year, which will be severe, with 17% of shops in Athens already filing for bankruptcy.

Instead of this madness Greece’s leadership should have cut government spending by 30%, lowered taxes, defaulted fully or partially on their debt, left the euro and returned to a lower valued drachma. Now they’ll be in depression for years paying off bankers whose loans and bond purchases were professionally ill advised and the funds were created out of thin air.

These measures have the country in depression and there is no light at the end of the tunnel, as bankers clamor for their money. The worst is yet to come as bigger layoffs begin and prices on everything skyrocket.

Greece is on the edge of revolution and well it should be. This IMF imposed tyranny should never have been imposed in the manner in which it has been, crudely.

We haven’t seen the end of the Greek and euro crisis by a long shot and there is a good chance the reaction to such problems could easily spread to Spain, Portugal, Ireland and Italy.

Several months ago in Greece’s largest newspaper, as well as on Greek radio and television, we predicted these results and what is to follow. The answer is to get rid of your false leadership that is selling you into IMF servitude that will last for decades. Like Spain was a military training ground for Germany in the 1930s in preparation for WWII, Greece is being used as a training ground for world economic and financial subjugation as planned by the forces of darkness in its quest for total world domination.

The one-world creators of the euro are aghast at the path five of the 16 members have followed and particularly Greece. As we predicted ten years ago Greece and Italy should have never been allowed into the euro zone because they had cooked their books with the assistance of Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase. One interest rate can never fit all and you cannot have a monetary zone until you have a EU constitution voted for by the people.

Now Greek PM George Papandreou, Bilderberger and Illuminists, has invited Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa, one of the founding fathers of the euro to advise the country on its debt management. This certainly is by design, so that Greece will do exactly as Europe’s Illuminists want them to do, and, of course, the IMF as well. The question is how much more debt will be piled onto Greece’s shoulders to bail out European bankers? The first loan was for $141 billion and Greece’s ten-year bonds’ yields are still four times those of Germanys.

There is presently a giant sales job being used on the Greek people to accept Mr. Padoa-Schioppa as their savior. And, of course, a great deal is being made of the fact that he is saving Greece at his own expense – pro bono. We can assure your Europe’s elitists will make sure he is well compensated.

Ten-year Greek Treasury bonds yield 10.6%, whereas Germany’s ten-year bunds yield 2.27%, that is a difference of 8.33%. There is good reason for the giant gap. In fact Greece has never met Maastricht guidelines of public debt of 3% of GDP. No matter how you look at it Greece is headed for default and that was obvious from the beginning. All they are doing is piling on more debt. Default, total or partial, is the only solution. In that process the euro has to be abandoned.

There are those who believe the EU and the IMF have brought Greece time. That may be true, but the cost is depression that might last 30 years and the sale of Greek assets to pay back lenders, all of which will be sold to vulture elitists at $0.30 on the dollar. We also believe that within three years Greece’s debt will be $435 billion. How can Greece service that debt when they cannot service their present debt? That will put Greece into perpetual servitude to the bankers.

The euro and the EU have been failures in our estimation and now the Greek government calls in Mr. Padoa-Schioppa who crafted this failure.

This Padoa-Schioppa is little less than a sherpa, bureaucrat for European elitists.

What this is all about is saving Greece and the euro zone. In that process Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Italy along with Greece will be neutralized by unpayable debt. The elitists who run Europe know that such events could destroy the EU and they cannot let that happen.

As a result of Greece’s problems in the last five months to May, HSBC has lost 8% of their entire deposit base. The country is in dire financial straits, so there has been a flight of capital. As a result Greek lenders have had to borrow $123 billion in July alone. Portugal, Ireland and Spain have been big borrowers as well. In addition all these countries have falling tax revenue.

We have said from the beginning that Greece and its co-members are all in a death spiral. Austerity is not the only answer. Default is part of that equation.

Twenty countries are headed into bankruptcy and more will follow. That brings up the subject of state debt in the US. America has been in an inflationary depression for 18 months. States have been cutting back for two years, but the budget gaps are still there. The struggle continues as states continue layoffs and cuts. 2011 will be a terrible year and 80% of states expect deficits of more than $200 billion. 2012 looks even worse.

Federal aid could be close to being over, which means further cuts. This means those hit by the depression will lose vital services, and that will further negatively affect the economy. The combined deficits for this year and next could be as high as $300 billion. That means even more cuts and it also makes 2011 a more difficult year than 2010. Worse yet, there is no recovery and there never has been. That was $2.5 trillion created most of which ended up in the casino halls known as international markets. Those who expect tax revenues to rise and unemployment to fall will be very disappointed. We have to laugh at Treasury Secretary Geithner’s comments that the recovery is underway. As soon as he is done at Treasury he should apply for one of the cheerleading jobs at CNBC. Next we await his comments on the perfect head and shoulders technical formation, and breakdown, regarding the Dow and the USDX. The latter is the dollar index. That formation is the worst and denotes deep downside activity. At the moment the states are immediately in more trouble than the federal government.

There has been no relief from unemployment. The U3 may say 9-5/8%, but U6 is 16-5/8% and if you subtract the birth/death ratio, which is a fraud, you get 21-1/2%. This past week the numbers worsened. How can tax revenues rise with so many unemployed?

As unemployment worsens demand for social services, food stamps and Medicaid increases. 69-1/2% of GDP comes from consumers. How can growth occur when household wealth is diminishing? Not to speak of tax increases of 15% next year that our President and his party have promised us as wages and purchasing power fall. Then there will be an attempt to raid retirement benefits by government exchanging those benefits for government guaranteed annuities from an all but bankrupt government. Then there is the behind the scenes discussion for a national transaction tax of 1%. Does it get any worse? You wanted change, and you got it. If you do not throw all these incumbents out of office in November you are doomed. Someone has to tell us how these factors spell recovery.

34 states have announced deficits for 2011. These are doozies. They are the total shortfall as a percentage of the full year 2011 budget. Here are the worst: Nevada 54%; 41.5% from Illinois: New Jersey 38.3%; Arizona 36.6%; North Carolina 30.3%; Utah 30.2%; Connecticut 28.9%; Georgia 26.2%; Minnesota 26%; South Carolina 25.6%; Wisconsin 23.9%; California and Colorado at 21.6% and Florida at 20.2%.

For 2012 the worst are Illinois 52.3%; New York 37.3%; Nevada 36.7%; Mississippi 27.6%; California 25.7% and Minnesota 25%. How is that for incompetence? And, these numbers are going to get worse.

30 states have raised taxes, which could eventually lead to tax revolt. This leads as well to less service and less overall demand, less business and profits, which deepens the downturn. This is truly the worst of all worlds and it is nowhere near over. The federal government supplies about 40% of shortfalls, most of it for Medicaid – the rest goes into a state fund. Some of this assistance to some states ends this year and some by mid next year. Residents can then expect more service cuts and higher taxes. That will reduce GDP and cost perhaps 1 million jobs.

There you have it. This is the direction in which the states are headed. They made no preparations and are essentially buried. Next the administration intends to force pension and retirement plans to buy government securities and to fund federal work projects. This is like in Greece and in other European countries – this is the nightmare of all nightmares.

Last week the Dow fell 0.9%; S&P 0.7%; the Russell 2000 rose 0.2% and the Nasdaq 100 added 0.4%. Cyclicals lost 0.8%; transports added 0.2%; consumers fell 1.3%; utilities dipped 0.6%. High tech rose 2.2%; semis 1.6%; Internets rose 3.5% and biotechs fell 0.6%. gold bullion rose $12.00, the HUI gained 3.2% and the USDX rose 0.1% to 83.01.

Two year T-bills fell 2.5 bps to 0.485%, 10-year notes fell 6 bps to 2.62% and 10-year German bunds fell 12 bps to 2.27%.

Freddie Mac’s 30-year fixed rate mortgages fell 2 bps to 3.90%, one-year ARMs were unchanged at 3.53%, 15’s fell 2 bps to 3.90% and 30-year jumbos were unchanged at 5.37%.

Federal reserve credit fell $6.5 billion, up $82.6 billion YTD, or 5.9% annualized. Fed foreign holdings of Treasuries and Agencies jumped $11.4 billion to a record of $3.176 trillion. Custody holdings for foreign central banks have increased $221 billion YTD, or 11.8%, and YOY 12.9%.

M2, narrow money supply, rose $8.3 billion to $8.644. it is up $132 billion YTD, or 2.5% annualized, and YOY is 2.7%.

Total money market fund assets rose $4.1 billion to $2.826 trillion.

Nationalizing the U.S. mortgage- finance system would turn taxpayers into servants of the ‘housing investment and debt complex,’ according to David Stockman, a former head of the Office of Management and Budget.  This shift would complete a transformation that started during the 1970s, when federal housing subsidies were expanded, Stockman wrote… ‘All principled political opposition to Pimco-style crony capitalism has been extinguished,’ wrote Stockman, a senior managing director at Heartland Industrial Partners. ‘Indeed, the magnitude of the burden already created is staggering.’

July existing home sales were 3.83 million vs. the expert’s estimate of 4.67 million, as June was revised to 5.26 million from 5.37 million. That is the worst results since LBJ was in office. A 27% plunge from July and off 25% from July 2009.

The Richmond Fed Manufacturing Index fell to 11 in August from 16 in July.

Influential bond trader Bill Gross called on U.S. policymakers to implement a nationwide refinancing scheme that he argued will provide of a boost to the economy of between $50 billion to $60 billion.  In prepared remarks during a panel discussion to begin the Obama administration’s conference on the future of housing finance, Gross said he favors the consolidation of all the housing finance agencies into a single public entity fully backed by the government.  He said policymakers should quickly re-engineer a refinancing opportunity for all borrowers that are current with their payments and are included in the GSE’s securitized mortgages PIMCO’s proposal to introduce refinancing opportunities on a large scale, Gross said — where 5%, 6% and 7% mortgages are turned into 4% mortgages — will provide a stimulus of $50 billion to $60 billion in consumption as well as a potential lift of 5% to 10% in terms of housing prices. PIMCO also advocates a 100% public housing finance system, Gross said.

Demand for loans at the majority of lenders in the U.S. failed to rise last quarter even as banks eased standards for the first time since the credit crisis began, a Federal Reserve survey showed.  Banks eased standards and most terms on loans to businesses of all sizes. The Fed described the change as ‘a modest unwinding of the widespread tightening that occurred over the past few years.’ Credit standards for small firms were loosened for the first time since late 2006.

Taxpayers must cover at least a third of a $3 trillion bill for public employee pensions even if lawmakers eliminate cost-of-living increases and raise the retirement age, according to an academic study.  ‘Even if states uniformly eliminated generous early retirement deals and raised the retirement age to 74, the unfunded liability for promises already made would still be more than $1 trillion,’ Joshua D. Rauh, associate professor of finance at Northwestern University’s Kellogg Schoo said.

What deflation? Food prices jumped 3.9% in July according to the hokey CPI. They should be substantially higher in coming months.

Record increases in the price of food have kept the rate of inflation above 3pc…The average household will be hit hard and, although many branded goods companies have been able to absorb rising input costs, basics have increased dramatically, according to our own measure of inflation, the Real Cost of Living Index.

Fruit prices have risen by 10pc, fish is up 8pc, vegetables 5pc, while bread and cereal prices have risen by 3pc.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/investing/7955733/10-ways-to-profit-from-food-inflation.html

For years we have cited St. Louis Fed research that states ‘food inflation’ is a great predictor of future inflation. And food inflation in Asia, the economic engine of the world, is soaring. Deflation, according to academics and grand poobahs, is a decline in the general price level. This is not occurring in the USA.

As we keep averring, there is deflation of assets, income and living standards while most necessities of life are inflating. So US citizens are being squeezed because deflation of assets and inflation of necessities can coincide.

Inflation comes through the door and wisdom flies out of the window There’s no mystery about our inflationary problems – but to solve them we need to face up to some harsh realities.

CPI inflation has exceeded the Bank of England’s 2pc target for 43 of the past 52 months. The CPI remained at 3.1pc in July – forcing the Bank to pen yet another letter of explanatio. In the latest, released last week, Bank Governor Mervyn King invoked the spectre not of falling prices, but of 1970s- style price rises, warning of the dangers of “destructive high inflation”.

The Obama administration is grappling over how much to force private lenders to pay for apartments and homes for the poor as it presses ahead with a major overhaul of the government’s housing policy, officials said.

One option under consideration is simply to require mortgage lenders to provide a portion of their loans to affordable housing, essentially putting the burden on the private sector. Another idea being discussed is to put the onus on government agencies such as the Federal Housing Administration, which makes loans to borrowers who cannot afford to make a standard down payment.

A third choice would be a hybrid of private and public participation. For instance, the government could make private firms pay a fee into a federally administered fund that would subsidize affordable housing.

Anyone that asserts, or asserted over the past few years, that ‘we’re trying to save capitalism’ is either ignorant or deceitful. What solons are trying to save is the US welfare state.

This is why the US economy & financial system is comatose. The requisite restructuring of the economy and financial system would entail market-based solutions and not more government. This, of course, is anathema to liberals and crony capitalists – because they believe they know better than the market.

Businesses may have to start putting leases on their balance-sheets – WHEN you lease something you agree to pay for it bit by bit over time. So it is like incurring a debt, say the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) and America’s Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB). Therefore, it should be on your balance-sheet. This new rule, proposed on August 17th by the two regulators, has shocked companies everywhere. It is up for public comment until December, but could be enacted as soon as June next year.

Today, companies can opt either for a “capital lease”, which goes on the balance-sheet, or an “operating lease”, which does not. By labeling leases as “operating”, firms can appear less indebted than they really are a survey by PricewaterhouseCoopers, an accounting firm, found that it would add about 58% to the average company’s interest-bearing debt.

The American Banker: Reserve Releases Increasingly ‘Ridiculous’

Ask any prudential regulator if it is too soon for banks to be releasing loan-loss reserves, and the answer would be “Yes.” Make that, “Hell, yes.”

And yet in the second quarter, the biggest banks beefed up earnings by draining reserves.

“If you believe capital is too low, then this is sort of ridiculous,” said Bob Eisenbeis, a former Atlanta

Fed official who is now the chief monetary economist at Cumberland Advisors.

Interestingly, Tim Long, the chief national bank examiner at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, used the same word during an interview on the topic.

“For accountants to go in and say, ‘Well the recession is over, and now we want you to start making negative provisions,’ I think that is just absolutely ridiculous,” Long said. “We have got to get this loan- loss model fixed because every time we go into a recession we have the same thing.”

How does the Global Elite Conquer the World? Destroying Nation-States

Bilderberg hound Daniel Estulin describes how the globalists have historically managed to amass power.  Their modus operandi is to destroy countries or nation-states by ending their sovereignty, their economies, identities and liberty.  This is achieved through compartmentalization of their internal organizations and governments which legislate in favor of a policy of complete openness to foreign corporations -owned by the globalists-.  These corporations define the commercial, economic and financial policies for each country which in turn allows them to obtain complete control.

In a recent interview to Russia Today, Estulin explains that what the global elite want to do -through front groups like Bilderberg- is to form a Global Inc of sorts which is consolidated every time a new country crumbles.  Many of the collapses seen up until today correspond to massive debts owed to the banks, also controlled by the shadow masters.  Watch Daniel Estulin’s interview below.

G20: Banks must hold on to Cash for coming Crisis

The International Crime Syndicate, better known as the G20, determined at its last meeting that the collapse and consolidation of the global economy will begin around 2012 and finish in 2016 with the liquidation of all countries who are in debt with the IMF and the World Bank.

By Luis Miranda
The Real Agenda
June 29, 2010

Bankers and G20 members have direct and indirect ways to speak to the public. At the end of the latest G20 meeting in Toronto, both

From right to left: Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, UK Prime Minister David Cameron and U.S. President Barack Hussein Obama.

groups spoke very clearly about what they have in mind for the foreseeable future. First, they are all in the run to help the process of global consolidation. Second, they will extend the current depression by slowly cutting the available cash for lending. Third, they will continue their austerity programs in a country by country basis to slowly kill their economies and consolidate each nation. Fourth, now that they have robbed the people’s taxes through their rescue packages, they plan to rob shareholders by putting the burden of future rescues on them when the next crisis comes. Fifth, they are disingenuous or irresponsible by thinking that putting aside 130 billion pounds will create any security for the economy, given that only the derivative schemed debt ascends into the quadrillion of dollars. And lastly, they intend to seed and water the final implosion, which according to their communique, can come as soon as 2012.

If all these sounds confusing, please let me explain.

Let’s start by remembering that the G20, and mainly the G8 were the ones who caused the current financial crisis. They did it through their front companies e.g. banks, which implemented a series of corrupt schemes to bankrupt economies and whole countries through investment and betting into risky and sometimes nonexistent financial products e.g. derivatives. These schemes were allowed to exist given the fact that for the past two decades most of the regulations put in place to stop financial fraud were eliminated as an excuse to enable “free markets”. What deregulation effectively permitted was the creation of bogus investing plans which the banks later offered to countries, states and municipalities -often times through governments- and used them to acquire all their infrastructure and cash through the issuance of debt or fraudulent investment.

It has become clear that the G8 and the bankers are not interested in improving current economic conditions. They simply want to extend the crisis as long as they need to, in order to execute their final plan of global implosion. That is what emerges from the idea of cutting lending money and asking banks to hoard the cash for the next crisis, as the G20 communique says. Although 130 billion pounds is peanuts in comparison with the debt most G8 countries hold today, the action of keeping the cash in reserve paints a clear picture of what the ‘leaders’ have in mind. What they want is a slowly and painfully grind down the economies in order to cause the greatest damage. Such policy will assure them the consolidation of more resources before the final blow to the global economy is given.

One of the most important tools the bankers have used along the last 100 years is to create an artificial bubble of money abundance -Fiat money- in order to get the countries and the public to trust them. This is what many describe as economic booms. But given the fact that the global economy is based on debt and fractional reserve banking, the only goal the money bubbles had was to hook up the greatest amount of debt on consumers to then pull the cash off the markets. By doing this, the bankers accelerate their consolidation process. Along with the reduction in lending, G8 nations agreed to continue the austerity plans in each individual country. Austerity will be implanted on the working class by cutting services such as police, hospitals, school funding, and social programs. This will in turn cause civil unrest, which is what the bankers want in order to officially freely unleash their military and technological control grid. A preview of what this grid would look like was seen on the streets of Toronto during the last G20 meeting. It was also seen during Argentina’s collapse in 2001.

The infamous rescue packages glorified by the IMF and the World Bank as the best way to avoid a complete collapse of the global economy -which as explained before was caused by the bankers themselves- were the biggest transfer of money and resources in the history of the world. Only the United States gave the bankers around $25 trillion in tax payer money so Goldman Sachs, Iberia Bank, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America and others could pay their shareholders their chunk of the loot. See a complete list of what banks got the cash here. But those $25 trillion were not enough, of course. Germany for example, voted to give 66% of its annual revenue to the banks. Going by the G20′s communique it is clear they are planning another big collapse, possibly the last one. It is also clear they will have to rob someone else this time and that is what the bankers and the ‘leaders’ have said. They will stick the next rescue package to the banks’ shareholders -not to the big ones, though-. So if you have investments in any bank, it is advised to rescue yourself out of it before the new banking package comes along. Shamelessly, they will obligate the banks to hold billions so when the next crisis comes, taxpayers will not be burdened as if we don’t know those billions are the same they stole last 2009. Now that they consolidated and stabilized their fraudulent financial system, it won’t matter if other banks fail, because they are all covered.

The idea that 130 billion pounds is a safety net for a future crisis, or double dip recession as they like to call it, is preposterous. Derivative-produced debt is, depending who you ask, between $600 trillion and $1 quadrillion. According to Robert Chapman, from the theinternationalforecaster.com, buying derivatives is not investing.  It is gambling, insurance and high stakes bookmaking.  Derivatives create nothing.” According to the Bank of International Settlements, the derivative bubble has grown exponentially to a point where the amounts negotiated under this scheme has long surpassed the world’s GDP. “Derivative trades have grown exponentially, until now they are larger than the entire global economy.”Credit default swaps (CDS) is the most common form of derivatives. CDS are bets between two parties on whether or not a company will default on its bonds. They are indeed illegal insurance policies, with no requirement to hold any asset. CDS are used to increase profits by gambling on market changes.

The WEB of DEBT in which the current economy was built throughout the past 100 years was the tool used in a process to reverse everything humans achieved. It was not unintended however, as this was the mechanism the globalist bankers planned on using from the beginning. Every time the world experienced a financial crisis like in 1929-1933, the grip of control tightened more and more. The measures to avoid a total collapse, as we were told, were not such. They were simply ways to postpone the imminent collapse.  But the measures the bankers implemented cannot be used forever. Sooner rather than later something will give in. The step by step, ad hoc and non-holistic approach of Fed and Treasury to crisis management has been a failure. . . . [P]lugging and filling one hole at [a] time is useless when the entire system of levies is collapsing in the perfect financial storm of the century. A much more radical, holistic and systemic approach to crisis management is now necessary,” says professor Nouriel Roubini. founder of Roubini Global Economics.

After turning the global economy into a service-based system, where no quality products are manufactured; after driving developing countries into massive debt while collapsing the economies of the western world, the bankers are ready for their last move: a one last crisis. According to the G20 communique, its members must cut their deficits by 2013, a process that already started. This process is supposed to end in 2016, when the nations should have stabilized their deficits. Cutting and then stabilizing deficits means that debtor countries will have to find a way to pay their debts in full to the IMF and World Bank according to the conditions imposed by those entities. Every country that does not pay in full will be liquidated and their resources will be automatically transferred to the globalist bankers. Imagine what happened to Argentina, Greece and Iceland in the last decade, but instead of being those countries, the debtors will be the United States, Spain, Portugal, England and Germany.

$1.2 Quadrillion Derivatives Market Dwarfs World GDP

AOL Finance

One of the biggest risks to the world’s financial health is the $1.2 quadrillion derivatives market. It’s complex, it’s unregulated, and it ought to be of concern to world leaders that its notional value is 20 times the size of the world economy. But traders rule the roost — and as much as risk managers and regulators might want to limit that risk, they lack the power or knowledge to do so.

A quadrillion is a big number: 1,000 times a trillion. Yet according to one of the world’s leading derivatives experts, Paul Wilmott, who holds a doctorate in applied mathematics from Oxford University (and whose speaking voice sounds eerily like John Lennon’s), $1.2 quadrillion is the so-called notional value of the worldwide derivatives market. To put that in perspective, the world’s annual gross domestic product is between $50 trillion and $60 trillion.

To understand the concept of “notional value,” it’s useful to have an example. Let’s say you borrow $1 million to buy an apartment and the interest rate on that loan gets reset every six months. Meanwhile, you turn around and rent that apartment out at a monthly fixed rate. If all your expenses including interest are less than the rent, you make money. But if the interest and expenses get bigger than the rent, you lose.

You might be able to hedge this risk of a spike in interest rates by swapping that variable rate of interest for a fixed one. To do that you’d need to find a counter party who has an asset with a fixed rate of return who believed that interest rates were going to fall and was willing to swap his fixed rate for your variable one.

The actual cash amount of the interest rates swaps might be 1% of the $1 million debt, while that $1 million is the “notional” amount. Applying that same 1% to the $1.2 quadrillion derivatives market would leave a cash amount of the derivatives market of $12 trillion — far smaller, but still 20% of the world economy.

Getting a Handle on Derivatives Risk

How big is the risk to the world economy from these derivatives? According to Wilmott, it’s impossible to know unless you understand the details of the derivatives contracts. But since they’re unregulated and likely to remain so, it is hard to gauge the risk.

But Wilmott gives an example of an over-the-counter “customized” derivative that could be very risky indeed, and could also put its practitioners in a position of what he called “moral hazard.” Suppose Bank 1 (B1) and Bank 2 (B2) decide to hedge against the risk that Bank 3 (B3) and Bank 4 (B4) might fail to repay their debt to B1 and B2. To guard against that, B1 and B2 might hedge the risk through derivatives.

In so doing, B1 and B2 might buy a credit default swap (CDS) on B3 and B4 debt. The CDS would pay B1 and B2 if B3 and B4 failed to repay their loan. B1 and B2 might also bet on the decline in shares of B3 and B4 through a short sale.

At that point, any action that B1 and B2 might take to boost the odds that B3 and B4 might default would increase the value of their derivatives. That possibility might tempt B1 and B2 to take actions that would boost the odds of failure for B3 and B4. As I wrote back in September 2008 on DailyFinance’s sister site, BloggingStocks, this kind of behavior — in which hedge funds pulled their money out of banks whose stock they were shorting — may have contributed to the failures of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers.

It’s also the sort of conduct that makes it extremely difficult to estimate the risk of the derivatives market.

How Positive Feedback Loops Crash Markets

Another kind of market conduct that makes markets volatile is what Wilmott calls positive and negative feedback loops. These relatively bland-sounding terms mask some really scary behavior for investors who are not clued into it. Wilmott argues that a positive feedback loop contributed to the 22.6% crash in the Dow back in October 1987.

In the 1980s, a firm run by some former academics came up with the idea of portfolio insurance.

Their idea was that if investors are worried about their assets losing value, they can buy puts — the option to sell their investments at pre-determined prices. They can sell everything — which would be embarrassing if the market then started to rise — or they could sell a fixed proportion of their portfolio depending on the percentage decline in a particular stock market index.

This latter idea is portfolio insurance. If the Dow, for example, fell 3%; it might suggest that investors should sell 20% of their portfolio. And if the Dow fell 20%, it would indicate that investors should sell 100% of their portfolio.

That positive feedback loop — in which a stock price decline leads to more selling — boosts market volatility. Portfolio insurance causes more investors to sell as the market declines by, say 3%, which causes an even deeper plunge in the value of investors’ holdings. And that deeper decline leads to more selling. Before you know it, many investors are selling everything.

The portfolio insurance firm started off with $5 billion, but as its reputation spread, it ended up managing $50 billion. In 1987, that was a lot of money. So when that positive feedback loop got going, it took the Dow down 22.6% in a day.

The big problem back then was the absence of a sufficient number of traders using a negative feedback loop strategy. With a negative feedback loop, a trader would sell stocks as they rose and buy them as they declined. With a negative feedback loop strategy, volatility would be far lower.

Unfortunately, data on how much money has been going into negative and positive feedback loop strategies is not available. Therefore, it’s hard to know how the positive feedback loops have gained such a hold on the market.

But it is not hard to imagine that if a particular investor made huge amounts of money following a positive feedback loop strategy, other investors would hear about it and copy it. Moreover, the way traders get compensated suggests that it’s better for them to take more and more risk to replicate what their peers are doing.

Traders Make More Money By Following the Pack

There is a clear economic incentive for traders to follow what their peers are doing. According to Wilmott, to understand why, it helps to imagine a simplified example of a trading floor. Picture yourself as a new college graduate joining a bank’s trading floor with 100 traders. Those 100 traders each trade $10 million: They “win” if a coin toss lands on heads and “lose” if it lands on tails. But now imagine you’ve come up with a magic coin that has a 75% chance of landing on heads — you can make a better bet than the other 100 traders with their 50-50 coin.

You might think that the best strategy for you would be to bet your $10 million on that magic coin. But you’d be wrong. According to Wilmott, if the magic coin lands on a head but the other 100 traders flip tails, the bank loses $1 billion while you get a relatively paltry $10 million.

The best possible outcome for you is a 37.5% chance that everyone makes money (the 75% chance of you tossing heads multiplied by the 50% chance of the other traders getting a head). If instead, you use the same coin as everyone else on the floor, the probability of everyone getting a bonus rises to 50%.

When Traders Say ‘Jump,’ Risk Managers Ask ‘How High?’

Traders are a huge source of profit on Wall Street these days and they have an incentive to bet together and to bet big. According to Wilmott, traders get a bonus based on the one-year profits of those on their trading floor. If the trading floor makes big money, all the traders get a big bonus. And if it loses money, they get no bonus — but at least they don’t have to repay their capital providers for the losses.

Given that bonus structure, a trader is always better off risking $1 billion than $1 million. So if the trader, who is the king of the hill at the bank, asks a lowly risk manager to analyze how much risk the trader is taking, that risk manager is on the spot. If the risk manager comes back with a risk level that limits how big a bet the trader can take, the trader will demand that the risk manager recalculate the risk level lower so the trader can take the bigger bet.

Traders also manipulate their bonuses by assuming the existence of trading profits before they are actually realized. This happens when traders get involved with derivatives that will not unwind for 20 years.

Although the profits or losses on that trade have not been realized at the end of the first year, the bank will make an assumption about whether that trade made or lost money each year. Given the power traders wield, they can make the number come out positive so they can receive a hefty bonus — even though it is too early to tell what the real outcome of the trade will be.

How Trader Incentives Caused the CDO Bubble

Wilmott imagines that this greater incentive to follow the pack is what happened when many traders were piling into collateralized debt obligations. In Wilmott’s view, CDO risk managers who had analyzed a future scenario in which housing prices fell and interest rates rose would have concluded that the CDOs would become worthless under that scenario. He imagines that when notified of that possible outcome, CDO traders would have demanded that the risk managers shred that nasty scenario so they could keep trading more CDOs.

Incidentally, the traders who profited by going against the CDO crowd were lone wolves whose compensation did not depend on following the trading floor pack. This reinforces the idea that big bank compensation policies drive dangerous behavior that boosts market volatility.

What You Don’t Understand, You Can’t Properly Regulate

Wilmott believes that derivatives represent a risk of unknown proportions. But unless there is a change to trader compensation policies — one which would force traders to put their compensation at risk for the life of the derivative — then this risk could remain difficult to manage.

Unfortunately, he thinks that regulators aren’t in a good position to assess the risks of derivatives because they don’t understand them. Wilmott offers training in risk management. While traders and risk managers at banks and hedge funds have taken his course, regulators so far have not.

And if regulators don’t understand the risks in derivatives, chances are great that Congress does not understand them either.

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