The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. – Benjamin Franklin
– Bankia Bailout Costs Rise Again, Now At €19 Billion, €4 Billion Increase Overnight (ZeroHedge, May 25, 2012):
Well under 24 hours ago we wrote, “As Bankia Bailout Costs Grow Exponentially, Is A Stealth Bank Run Taking Place” in which among other things, we listed the chronology of the Bankia bailout. To wit: “Note the following sequence of events, bolded numbers, and dates:
Read moreBankia Bailout Costs Now At €19 Billion, €4 Billion Increase Overnight!
YouTube Added: 03.05.2012
More from Gerald Celente:
– Big Bro ‘Genius’ Algorithms – Gerald Celente On Keiser Report
If Nostradamus were alive today, he’d have a hard time keeping up with Gerald Celente.
– New York PostWhen CNN wants to know about the Top Trends, we ask Gerald Celente.
– CNN Headline NewsThere’s not a better trend forecaster than Gerald Celente. The man knows what he’s talking about.
– CNBCThose who take their predictions seriously … consider the Trends Research Institute.
– The Wall Street JournalA network of 25 experts whose range of specialties would rival many university faculties.
– The Economist
Got PHYSICAL gold and silver?
Here is why:
Flashback:
– Greek Euro Exit: 60% Currency Devaluation, Default, Banking Sector Collapse
Here is what happened to Mexico:
– Hedge Fund Manager Kyle Bass Explains The New World Order (Panel Presentation):
???On Greece:
For those who think a 50% write-down on debt will fix Greece, you have lost your mind. It is only a full wipe-out of the non-TROIKA-owned debt that is the only mathematical way for Greece to have any chance.
…
Don’t believe these governments when they tell you everything is going to fine. The day before Mexico devalued by 60% they denied that they would ever devalue. They can and will never tell you the truth. Find your own numbers.
Here is what happened to Belarus:
– Belarus Devalues Its Currency By 56% Overnight, Against Every Currency Out There:
Luckily for those who held their “money” in the form of gold and silver, they just got an instantaneous 56% value preservation and a relative boost in their purchasing power with just one central bank announcement.
– Euro Officials Begin to Weigh Greek Exit as Euro Weakens (Blomberg, May 14, 2012):
Greece’s possible exit from the euro moved to the center of Europe’s financial-crisis debate, rattling markets as authorities in Athens struggled to form a government.
Meetings brokered by Greek President Karolos Papoulias were set to continue today after Syriza, the leading anti-bailout party, rejected a unity government following inconclusive elections May 6. That moved the country closer to a new vote, with at least five European central bankers broaching the once- taboo topic of its exit from the euro.
“We’re really getting to a denouement,” Michael O’Sullivan, head of portfolio strategy at Credit Suisse Private Banking, said today in a Bloomberg Television interview. “We’re getting to the part where a decision has to be made” on whether Greece leaves the 17-nation currency union, he said.
Euro finance ministers meeting today in Brussels may discuss the bailout for Greece, as well as the situation in Spain, where the government last week made a fourth attempt to clean up banks. Getting German Chancellor Angela Merkel to weaken her demand that debt cutting be the core of the crisis response will be a key objective of new French President Francois Hollande when the two meet tomorrow in Berlin.
– Why There Are No Jobs (Intel Hub, May 4, 2012):
What a week. On Tuesday the DOW finished the day at 13,279, its highest close since December 2007. In terms of the stock market, we’ve crossed the great divide…December 2007, remember, was pre-financial crisis.
In fact, it was nearly a year before Lehman Brothers vanished from the face of the earth and black swans relentlessly descended upon the LIBOR like common ravens upon fresh Southern California road kill. If you recall, when the sky was falling in late 2008, spread movements that were statistically not possible in a million years, somehow, happened every day.
Money market shares of the Reserve Primary Fund did the impossible…they broke the buck – falling to $0.97 cents a share. Still, while the stock market may be back to where it was over four years ago, the world is dramatically different…
For one thing, back in December of 2007 you could buy a 10-year Treasury Note yielding 4.23 percent. Today the 10-year Note Yields less than half that. Of course, December 2007 was before TARP, CPFF, MMIFF, TAF, ZIRP, QE, QE2, Operation Twist, and all sorts of other harebrained schemes were put into practice to “reflate” financial markets.
We never left crisis mode. Everything just got much worse.
See also:
– How The ECB Is Turning Spain Into Greece
– Spain CDS Surges Just Shy Of Record As Spanish Bank ECB Borrowings Go Parabolic
– Spain: The Ultimate Doomsday Presentation
– Next Up Spain: OpenEurope Looks At Spanish Banks’ Underprovisioned 20% In Toxic Loans
– Spain Has ‘Worse Problems Than Greece’: Analyst
– EU: EFSF & ESM … A Whole Lot Of Nothing!
– EURO GOVT-Spanish yields top 6 pct as debt crisis flares (Reuters, April 16, 2012):
* Spanish 10-year yields top 6 percent, contagion fears rise
* German 10-year Bund yields hit record lows
* Markets speculate ECB may resume bond-buying programme
LONDON, April 16 (Reuters) – Spanish 10-year government bond yields broke above 6 percent for the first time this year on Monday as concerns over the country’s ability to keep its finances under control pushed debt markets back into “crisis mode”.
Spanish yields were expected to rise further towards the panic-triggering 7 percent level beyond which debt costs are widely seen as unsustainable unless the European Central Bank resumes its bond purchases after a two-month break.
Yields on Germany’s benchmark 10-year Bund, viewed as the euro zone’s safest debt, hit a record low of 1.628 percent. The previous record was established in November 2011, at the height of the debt crisis before the ECB injected around 1 trillion euros of cheap three-year funds into the banking system.
“We’re back in full crisis mode,” Rabobank rate strategist Lyn Graham-Taylor said.
“It is looking more and more likely that Spain is going to have some form of a bailout. Assuming there is not an (ECB) intervention you would not see a cap on Spanish yields, they would just keep increasing.”
The latest blow to Spanish markets followed data on Friday that showed record borrowing by its banks from the ECB. Investors’ main fear is that banks parked most of the funds in domestic government debt, making them more vulnerable to sovereign stress.
Spain faces a test of investor confidence this week with an auction of two- and 10-year bonds on Thursday.
Spanish 10-year yields rose 16 basis points at 6.15 percent, five-year yields topped 5 percent, while two-year yields spiked to 3.70 percent, all 2012 highs.
Six percent is psychologically important for markets as the pace at which yields rise has accelerated on previous occasions when that level was broken. Beyond 7 percent, Greece, Portugal and Ireland struggled to raise cash in the market and were forced to seek financial aid.
Underlining investor fears, the cost of insuring Spanish debt against default hit a record high of $520,000 a year to buy $10 million of protection.
Next train ‘Ausschwitz’:
Flashback:
– Former governor Jesse Ventura Conspiracy Theory: Police State (And FEMA Concentration Camps) – Full Length Video
The videos down below are a MUST-SEE!
– America: A Government Out Of Control (ZeroHedge, April 8, 2012):
“A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have”
– Thomas JeffersonSomething odd and not quite as planned happened as America grew from its “City on a Hill” origins, on its way to becoming the world’s superpower: government grew. A lot. In fact, the government, which by definition does not create any wealth but merely reallocates it based on the whims of a select few, has transformed from a virtually invisible bystander in the economy, to the largest single employer, and a spending behemoth whose annual cash needs alone are nearly $4 trillion a year, and where tax revenues no longer cover even half the outflows. One can debate why this happened until one is blue in the face: the allures of encroaching central planning, the law of large numbers, and the corollary of corruption, inefficiency and greed, cheap credit, the transition to a welfare nanny state as America’s population grew older, sicker and lazier, you name it. The reality is that the reasons for government’s growth do not matter as much as realizing where we are, and deciding what has to be done: will America’s central planners be afforded ever more power to decide the fates of not only America’s population, but that of the world, or will the people reclaim the ideals that the founders of this once great country had when they set off on an experiment, which is now failing with every passing year?
As the following video created by New America Now, using content by Brandon Smith whose work has been featured extensively on the pages of Zero Hedge, notes, “we tend to view government as an inevitability of life, but the fact is government is not a force of nature. It is an imperfect creation of man and it can be dismantled by man just as easily as it can be established.” Unfortunately, the realization that absolute power corrupts absolutely, and absolute central planning leads to epic catastrophes without fail, seems a long way away: most seem content with their lot in life, with lies that their welfare money is safe, even as the future is plundered with greater fury and aggression every passing year, until one day the ability to transfer wealth (benefiting primarily the uber rich, to the detriment of the middle class which is pillaged on an hourly basis), from the future to the present is gone, manifesting in either a failed bond auction or hyperinflation. The timing or shape of the transition itself is irrelevant, what is certain is that America is now on collision course with certain collapse unless something changes. And one of the things that has to change for hope in the great American dream to be restored, is the role, composition and motivations of government, all of which have mutated to far beyond what anyone envisioned back in 1776. Because America is now saddled with a Government Out Of Control.
Watch the two clips below to understand just how and why we have gotten to where we are. Also watch it to, as rhetorically asked by the narrator, prompt us to question whether the government we now have is still useful to us and what kind of powers it should be allowed to wield.
Traitors!
YouTube Added: 25.03.2012
See also:
If Nostradamus were alive today, he’d have a hard time keeping up with Gerald Celente.
– New York PostWhen CNN wants to know about the Top Trends, we ask Gerald Celente.
– CNN Headline NewsThere’s not a better trend forecaster than Gerald Celente. The man knows what he’s talking about.
– CNBCThose who take their predictions seriously … consider the Trends Research Institute.
– The Wall Street JournalA network of 25 experts whose range of specialties would rival many university faculties.
– The Economist
This really is the Greatest Depression.
– Amidst the Deepest Slump since the Great Depression, Obama is Touting an “Economic Recovery” (Global Research, Mar 31, 2012):
While the United States remains mired in the deepest slump since the Great Depression, President Barack Obama is touting a modest improvement in employment over the past several months to boost his electoral prospects in November.
The three-month period from December through February has, according to the Labor Department, seen a net gain of 744,000 jobs, the largest for any three-month stretch since 2006. The official jobless rate has fallen from 9.1 percent in September to 8.3 percent in February.
It is necessary to place these gains within the context of the catastrophic collapse in employment that followed the Wall Street crash of 2008, which has left the US economy with 5 million fewer jobs than at the official start of the recession in December 2007. At the height of the crash, US businesses were cutting more than 744,000 jobs every month.
While the US economy added 335,000 net new manufacturing jobs in 2010 and 2011 combined, it lost 1.6 million manufacturing jobs between January 2008 and March 2009, a reduction of 10 percent. The current level of 12 million manufacturing jobs is down 7.5 million from its peak in 1979.
– ?Eurozone finance ministers must raise ONE TRILLION euro bailout for the ‘mother of all firewalls’ says OECD chief (Daily Mail, Mar 27, 2012):
The eurozone bailout fund should be increased to 1 trillion euros to provide ‘the mother of all firewalls’, the head of a leading international development body said today.
Angel Gurria, the secretary general of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), said eurozone finance ministers need to impress finance markets with the size of their rescue fund for indebted countries when they meet later this week.
– It’s Official – The Fed Is Now Buying European Government Bonds (ZeroHedge, March 27, 2012):
As if the ‘risk-less’ dollar-swaps the Fed has extended to any and every major central bank were not enough, William Dudley just unashamedly admitted that the Fed now holds ‘a very small amount of European Sovereign Debt’. Explaining this position, as Bloomberg notes:
- *DUDLEY: FED HOLDS OVERSEAS SOVEREIGN DEBT TO MANAGE RESERVES
- *DUDLEY: HIGH BAR FOR ADDITIONAL PURCHASES OF EUROPE DEBT
Dudley, testifying to a House panel, noted that he doesn’t see more efforts by the Fed to buffer the US from Europe’s tempests and believes European banks are deleveraging in an orderly manner. So not only is the US taxpayer bailing out Europe via the IMF (as we noted here a week ago using Greece as an intermediary) and the Fed is providing limitless USD swap lines but now we join the ECB in monetizing European government bonds – something we warned might happen back in December 2010. As for being a small amount – wasn’t MF Global’s holding relatively small too? And aren’t we getting a little full from all this buying?
Dudley, testifying to a House panel, noted that he doesn’t see more efforts by the Fed to buffer the US from Europe’s tempests and believes European banks are deleveraging in an orderly manner. So not only is the US taxpayer bailing out Europe via the IMF (as we noted here a week ago using Greece as an intermediary) and the Fed is providing limitless USD swap lines but now we join the ECB in monetizing European government bonds – something we warned might happen back in December 2010. As for being a small amount – wasn’t MF Global’s holding relatively small too? And aren’t we getting a little full from all this buying?
– Spain Has ‘Worse Problems Than Greece’: Analyst (MSNBC, Mar 13, 2012):
??Spain’s eye-wateringly high unemployment and the collapse of its real estate market mean that Spain has significantly worse problems than Greece and could threaten the euro zone’s new-found, albeit fragile stability, an analyst told CNBC.com Tuesday.
“Spain has very large downside risks and it needs to tread very carefully – Spain is in a very fragile situation. Its problems are significantly worse than Greece’s,” Sony Kapoor, managing director at international think tank Re-Define said.
– Is Ron Paul Taleb’s New Black Swan? (ZeroHedge, Mar 13, 2012):
While he does have some new philosophy (at X% off MSRP of course, coming to a Kindle near you) to preach, Nassim Taleb’s re-emergence from the darkness of the media spotlight starts with a bang: “I realized that something wrong is going on, and only one candidate ‘Ron Paul’ seems to have grasped the issues and is offering the right remedies“. He was given quite a lengthy period to proselytize as he outlines the Big Four problems he sees with the USA (and for that matter the world): Deficits (metastatic governments), The Fed, Militarism, and non-Bailouts (what is fragile should break early). As Ron Paul notes, “It’s an illusion that the USD can bailout the world”, Taleb makes many interesting, though a little murmur-some for our liking, points like “you don’t gamble with hyperinflation” and his comparison between the US and the Soviet Union will surely raise some headlines as he rants of the growing divide between public and private employees standards of living, our “need to do something drastic about it” and on Obama/Government and deficit reduction that “the whole thing is rotten“.
– Is The ECB Masking Accelerating Deposit Flight In Italy And Spain? (ZeroHedge, Mar 12, 2012)
– Frontrunning: March 12 (ZeroHedge, Mar 12, 2012):
– Oops: ECB Says Greek PSI Participation May Fall Short, As Troika Expects Third Greek Bailout (ZeroHedge, Mar 4, 2012):
Following up on Peter’s summary of the if-then conditional analyses to be conducted concurrently by various classes of Greek bondholders ahead of Thursday’s PSI deadline (even as Bingham is rapidly organizing a Greek ad hoc ‘holdout’ committee to stop the PSI), here is some news that may obviate pretty much everything, and goes back to our warning from January, namely that despite all the sturm und drang, media fanfare, and threats from former Goldman-cum-JPM bankers, the hedge funds will ‘just say no’ and courtesy of basis packages (yes, the fact that Greek CDS soared to a record 76 pts upfront on Friday indicates more buyers than sellers) hold out for par recoveries in court: they would be idiots (or have a gun at their head) not to do so. To wit from Bloomberg: “Greece may fail to garner enough investors to participate in a voluntary writedown of its debt, Der Spiegel magazine reported, citing unnamed officials at the European Central Bank. A second Greek bailout is partly tied to investors’ agreeing to the writedown by a March 8 deadline.” Remember that Germany has made it very, very, very explicit that if the PSI fails, the bailout is off… just as they have planned from the get go.
We will post the Spiegel article asap. And while we wait, here is something else very special from Spiegel:
Troika expects third rescue package for Greece
The billions from the second bailout did not even have arrived in Greece, since international inspectors already have a third payment required. According to SPIEGEL information is the so-called Troika believes that another 50 billion euros would be needed
– Scandal: Greece To Receive “Negative” Cash From “Second Bailout” As It Funds Insolvent European Banks (ZeroHedge, Feb. 22, 2012):
Earlier today, we learned the first stunner of the Greek bailout package, which courtesy of some convoluted transmission mechanisms would result in some, potentially quite many, Greek workers actually paying to retain their jobs: i.e., negative salaries. Now, having looked at the Eurogroup’s statement on the Greek bailout, we find another very creative use of “negative” numbers. And by creative we mean absolutely shocking and scandalous. First, as a reminder, even before the current bailout mechanism was in place, Greece barely saw 20% of any actual funding, with the bulk of the money going to European and Greek banks (of which the former ultimately also ended up funding the ECB and thus European banks). Furthermore, we already know that as part of the latest set of conditions of the second Greek bailout, an ‘Escrow Account” would be established: this is simply a means for Greek creditors to have a senior claims over any “bailout” cash that is actually disbursed for things such as, you know, a Greek bailout, where the money actually trickles down where it is most needed – the Greek citizens. Here is where it just got surreal. It turns out that not only will Greece not see a single penny from the Second Greek bailout, whose entire Use of Proceeds will be limited to funding debt interest and maturity payments, but the country will actually have to fund said escrow! You read that right: the Greek bailout #2 is nothing but a Greek-funded bailout of Europe’s insolvent banks... and the Greek constitution is about to be changed to reflect this!
– Shame on Europe for betraying Greece (Guardian, Feb. 14, 2012):
The behaviour of the EU states towards Greece is inexplicable in the terms in which the EU defines itself. It is, first and foremost, a failure of solidarity.
The “austerity package”, as the newspapers like to call it, seeks to impose on Greece terms that no people can accept. Even now the schools are running out of books. There were 40% cuts in the public health budget in 2010 – I can’t find the present figure. Greece’s EU “partners” are demanding a 32% cut in the minimum wage for those under 25, a 22% cut for the over 25s. Already unemployment for 15-24-year-olds is 48% – it will have risen considerably since then. Overall unemployment has increased to over 20%. The sacking of public sector workers will add to it. The recession predicted to follow the imposition of the package will cause unbearable levels of unemployment at every level.
In addition the “package” demands cuts to pensions and public service pay, wholesale privatisation of state assets – a fire-sale, since the global market is close to rock bottom – and cuts to public services including health, social welfare and education. The whole to be supervised by people other than the Greeks. An entire disciplinary and punishment system.
When we casually use a term like “bailout”, it is important to remember that it is not people who are being bailed out, or at least not the Greek people. The bailout will not save a single Greek life. The opposite is the case. What is being “bailed out” is the global financial system, including the banks, hedge funds and pension funds of the other EU member states, and it is the Greek people who are being ordered to pay – in money, time, physical pain, hopelessness and missed educational opportunities. The relatively neutral, even stoic, term “austerity”, is a gross insult to the Greek people. This is not austerity; at best it is callousness.
Read moreShame On Europe For Betraying And Raping Greece For Its Bankster Masters
– Greece spiralling into catastrophic depression (Independent, Feb. 15, 2012):
Greece is expecting to agree the terms of European leaders for a rescue package this evening as the country seeks to avoid a default on its international debts. But Greeks fear that the cuts, imposed on them in return for a €130bn bailout, is sending the country spiralling into a catastrophic depression.
– Greece won’t see a cent of the great bail-out (Telegraph, Feb.13, 2012):
Over the weekend, the Greek parliament voted to accept Europe’s latest demands for spending cuts and tax rises and other reforms and retrenchments. The aim was to make it marginally less implausible that Greece will pay back the hundreds of billions of euros that its neighbours are lending it. The alternative, we were told, was that it would become “ground zero” for a new financial meltdown, with its exit from the euro leading to social chaos within the country and economic chaos outside.
Read more‘Greece Won’t See A Cent Of The GREAT BAILOUT’ (Telegraph) … It’s All For The Banksters!
– The Cost Of The Combined Greek Bailout Just Rose To €320 Billion In Secured Debt, Or 136% Of Greek GDP (ZeroHedge, Feb. 2, 2012):
Some of our German readers may be laboring under the impression that following the €110 billion first Greek bailout agreed upon and executed in May 2010, the second Greek bailout would cost a “mere” €130 billion. Alas we have news for you – as of this morning, the formal cost of rescuing Greece for the adjusted adjusted adjusted second time has just risen to €145 billion, €175 billion, a whopping €210 billion, bringing the total explicit cost of all Greek bailout funds to date (and many more in store) to €320 billion. Which incidentally is a little more than Greek GDP (which however is declining rapidly) at 310 billion, only in dollars. So as of today, merely the ratio of the Greek DIP loan (Debtor In Possession, because Greece is after all broke) has reached a whopping ratio of 136% Debt to GDP. This excludes any standing debt which is for all intents and purposes worthless. This is secured debt, which means that if every dollar in assets generating one dollar in GDP were to be liquidated and Greece sold off entirely in part or whole to Goldman Sachs et al, there would still be a 36% shortfall to the Troika, EFSF, ECB and whoever else funds the DIP loan (i.e., European and US taxpayers)! Another way of putting this disturbing fact is that global bankers now have a priming lien on 136% of Greek GDP – the entire country and then some now officially belongs to the world banking syndicate. Consider that when evaluating Greek promises of reducing total debt to GDP to 120% in 2020, as it would mean wiping all existing “pre-petition debt” and paying off some of the DIP. Also keep in mind that Greece has roughly €240 billion in existing pre-petition debt, of which much will remain untouched as it is not held in Private hands (this is the debt which will see a major “haircut” – or not: all depends on the holdout lawsuits, the local vs non-local bonds and various other nuances discussed here). If you said this is beyond idiotic, you are right. It is not the impairment on the Greek “pre-petition’ debt that the market should be worried about – that clearly is 100% wiped out. It is how much the Troika DIP will have to charge off when the Greek 363 asset sale finally comes. This is also what Angela Merkel will say tomorrow when Greece shows up on its doorstep with the latest “revised” agreement from its parliament to take Europe’s money ahead of the March 20 D-Day. Because finally, after months (and to think we did the math for Die Frau back in July) Germany has done the math, and has reached the conclusion that letting Greece go is now the cheaper option.
So how do we get to the €210 billion number? Well, there is the €130 billion already “agreed” upon.
YouTube Added: 16.01.2012
Related info:
– Bloomberg News Eloquent Point-By-Point Response To Bernanke Criticism Of U.S. Bank-Rescue Coverage
– The Federal Reserve And The $16 Trillion Bankster Bailout
– Fed’s Once-Secret Data Released to Public (Bloomberg, Dec. 23, 2011):
Bloomberg News today released spreadsheets showing daily borrowing totals for 407 banks and companies that tapped Federal Reserve emergency programs during the 2007 to 2009 financial crisis. It’s the first time such data have been publicly available in this form.
To download a zip file of the spreadsheets, go to http://bit.ly/Bloomberg-Fed-Data. For an explanation of the files, see the one labeled “1a Fed Data Roadmap.”
The day-by-day, bank-by-bank numbers, culled from about 50,000 transactions the U.S. central bank made through seven facilities, formed the basis of a series of Bloomberg News articles this year about the largest financial bailout in history.
“Scholars can now examine the data and continue the analysis of the Fed’s crisis management,” said Allan H. Meltzer, a professor of political economy at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and the author of three books on the history of the U.S. central bank.
Read moreFederal Reserve’s Once-Secret Data Released to Public
