The boom cannot continue indefinitely. There are two alternatives. Either the banks continue the credit expansion without restriction and thus cause constantly mounting price increases and an ever-growing orgy of speculation – which, as in all other cases of unlimited inflation, ends in a “crack-up boom” and in a collapse of the money and credit system. Or the banks stop before this point is reached, voluntarily renounce further credit expansion, and thus bring about the crisis. The depression follows in both instances – Ludwig Von Mises
I re-watched the movie “The Big Short” this past weekend. It’s worth watching twice if you are interested in learning about how corrupt the entire U.S. financial system is. Now, my guess is that a lot of viewers left the theatre after watching the movie thoroughly horrified by what was presented in understandable form to the typical “main street” American.
However, most are likely unaware that the original sources of corruption and fraud were never addressed. In fact, if anything, legislative “reforms” like Dodd-Frank did nothing more than enable the big banks to continue using derivatives and Ponzi-scheme financial structures as mechanisms to continue sucking wealth out of the system. Perhaps what’s most humiliating about this is that Obama Government and Congress blindly let former Goldman Sachs CEO, Henry Paulson, in his capacity as Secretary of Treasury give these banks an $800 billion blank check from the Taxpayers to continue on with their criminality.
The credit and derivatives problems are, in reality, are worse now than they were in the period leading up to the financial market collapse. The legislative “reforms” served two purposes: 1) allow the banks to continue their ways under the illusion that the problems were fixed; 2) provide the banks with accounting tools which enable them to better hide the fraud.
It was reported today that the Central States Pension Fund, which handles the retirement benefit programs for Teamster truck driver unions across several large States, has formally filed an application to cut benefits up to 60%. It stated that the fund would be empty by 2025 if the application is denied.
This reflects how catastrophically underfunded this pension fund was in the first place. And make no mistake, if you are covered by a large institutionalized pension fund, public or private, your fund is equally as underfunded – it just has not yet been affected but it will be sooner or later.
This begs the question: with the stock market at near-record levels and Treasury bond prices at all-time highs, how is it at all possible that these pension funds are still underfunded to this extent?
The truth lies in the fact that the entire U.S. financial system is one gigantic Ponzi scheme. The Shadow Truth podcast show presents another Market Update in which we discuss the fact that the U.S. financial system is a giant mirage that has been fabricated by the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Government. It’s not a question of IF the next financial market collapse will occur – it’s a question of WHEN:
I was on a flight from the UK to Denver a few weeks ago. The Big Short was one of the movies – It was listed under “comedy”! I kid you not.
Loved this show, just great. I agree the balancing act of rising shares& falling metal is harder & harder for tptb. Must be so many traders trying to convert share trades into metal ? Only my opinion but i think so…again great show.
Just whistling by the grave yard.
Rob Kirby is absolutely right – what he said to Greg Hunter on Friday.
Some of the wildest, wackiest events are happening now. (And no, not even referring to the theatrical show about the Saudi Arabia “28 Pages” & DISGUSTING MonsantObama stooping before EVIL Saudi royals again.)
But some of totally helter-skelter movements in gold to silver ratio few hours ago & the dumping of both metal paper contracts as a super-desperate move.
At this right, we aren’t seeing peacefully past the end of May. We haven’t even had the Bank of Japan moron Karuda show up & stick his both feet in his arse yet.
This morning’s in your face PM paper dump was perhaps the most blatantly desperate yet, and the FX intervention too ~ these stupid fucks are setting up a spectacular implosion
We have been living in a bizarro world for far too long to be able to guess what’s going to happen next. The way the stock market has been propped up, the way it has “miraculously” recovered from drops, I feel like the PPT is doing some serious buying to keep the house of cards from collapsing. Which begs the question – if TPTB are so powerful, how did the big drop in January occur at all? Was it a trial run to check market strength sans Fed intervention? If so, the trial ended horribly and the crack suppliers came back in full force to replenish the supplies of the addicts in the casino called the stock market.
For the past several weeks I have had the feeling that long metals is the way to go in this rigged up market scenario. I feel like the stock market will keep on going in “melt up” mode with metals also going up at the same time. Recent market action seems to vindicate that feeling. And, to paraphrase what someone said in the movie “The Big Short” – “to expect the markets to tank is to expect justice from an unjust world”. In a just world, the overinflated stock market would get punctured full of holes but we live in a most corrupt world.
It remains to be seen if TPTB will crush this run in metals as they have in the past, or actually give their blessings because the sector is the one undervalued avenue for the crack addicts who always need something fast and furious to satiate their appetite for record profits and out sized bonuses.
According to Rob Kirby, it’s the Exchange Stabilization Fund which is doing direct purchases in stock market. Not even ordinary “PPT”, we’re probably way past that point.
Rob Kirby also speculated that if China (and now Saudi Arabia) were to punitively dump US treasuries, Exchange Stabilization fund will most likely soak them up & be able to maintain a short duration pretense that nothing is broken with the US sovereign bond market & US Dollar. Meaning this may not cause an immediate inflection point. As is seen from the 10 year yield on US Treasuries not budging, even after China dumped so many treasuries since last August. Of course, mathematically it will have to lead to fractures. But the point is that fractures won’t necessarily be instantaneous, as most sane people had assumed for a long time.
The real breaking point will have to be failure to deliver physical precious metals. There is NOTHING the Exchange Stabilization Fund could possibly do to conjure up physical metals out of thin air.
“Which begs the question – if TPTB are so powerful, how did the big drop in January occur at all? Was it a trial run to check market strength sans Fed intervention?”
Oil was around 30 at the time…they hadn’t realized how much they had to prop that up yet.
Re: Public Pensions –
this from ILLANNOY…
Long read or a two hour listen but this is the bell weather of things to come folks. Well worth your time…..
http://www.upstream-ideas.com/ideas/atc-math-opinion-il-policys-ted-dabrowski-public-sector-salaries-pensions/