Global economic collapse this summer?

[New Nexus]

As the ?den of vipers? turn to cannibalism, this may get interesting, or not.

It's escalating. Following the resignation of Barclays' Chairman this morning, the government announced a twin probe into the Libor system and banking standards; and Bob Diamond (Barclays CEO) is threatening, according to the FT, to reveal potentially embarrassing details about Barclays' dealing with regulators if he comes under fire at a parliamentary hearing on Wednesday over Lie-borgate. Unlike his almost-namesake Jamie Dimon who suffered through the indignity of a congressional probing, Bob has gone all Mutually Assured Destruction with confrontational tactics that could further aggravate the fraught relations between the bank and the authorities. "If he is attacked, he will fight back" seems to be well understood and the key aspect - as we have pointed out - is that if this is pursued too vehemently then the whole house of cards could come down as [regulators and politicians] "likely knew perfectly well those rates were not the ones where banks were prepared to lend to each other". So much was made at the time of several of these short-term liquidity measures as indicative of 'no' stress to the ignorant investing public when credit market participants were well aware of the state of reality - perhaps it is worth a glance at the current levels of Lie-bor (especially relative to EUREPO and CDS curves) to get a sense of just what could happen if the truth was ever allowed out into the public eye. M.A.D. indeed.

ZH

[El Pibe]

Wow, does Popbitch do financial news now too?

[New Nexus]

Bob Diamond's resignation letter:

The big boys made me do it sir.

?Wonder who was pushing Barclays to manipulate its rate? Why none other than the English Fed. From BBG:

? BARCLAYS SAYS BANK OF ENGLAND CALLED ON OCT. 29, 2008 ON LIBOR

? BARCLAYS SAYS DIAMOND MADE NOTE OF CALL

? BARCLAYS SAYS DIAMOND RECEIVED CALL FROM PAUL TUCKER

? BARCLAYS SAYS TUCKER SAID `CERTAIN' BARCLAYS DIDN'T NEED ADVICE

? BARCLAYS SAYS TUCKER SAID DIDN'T ALWAYS NEED TO BE SO HIGH (Supposedly LIBOR)

? BARCLAYS SAYS DEL MISSIER CONCLUDED INSTRUCTION HAD BEEN GIVEN

? BARCLAYS SAYS DEL MISSIER TOLD RATE SETTERS TO LOWER RATES

In other words, a central banks was directly and indirectly involved in manipulating interest rates. Say it isn't so. Fast forward two months when the BOE's Tucker testifies that the Chairsatan made him do it.?

ZH

[Huguenot]

Copy and paste is the 'new' opinion

[Huguenot]

Quids, you've been arguing that the Euro is a bad thing for Greece because it doesn't allow them to devalue the Drachma to create competitive advantage.

What would devaluation have done to a fixed annuity? Sames as QE. You can't try and take the moral high ground here.

Besides,fixed annuities are silly tools anyway - with inflation at only 3% they'd be worth only half the original value 20 years into a retirement. The long term history on inflation already demonstrates that we're never at the level in the long term.

[New Nexus]

From Paul Mylchreest's latest Thunder Road Report

Death march: approaching a new financial system

If you are reading this, you are probably a member of what the sociologists would term middle class (albeit at the upper end). This is precisely the segment of society which is poised to come off worst from what is coming. Here is a very disturbing idea. As this crisis develops, if you are an equity portfolio manager and you want to outperform the market, you are going to have to position your portfolio so that it benefits most from your own wealth destruction and that of your family, friends and colleagues. Almost everybody is going to lose and there aren?t many places to hide. This is deeply unpleasant but you can blame the central planners. I?ve written about my own investing, e.g. gold and silver, equities in terms of Maslow?s Hierarchy of Needs, etc. In this Thunder Road Report (below) and going forward, I will discuss this middle class theme and highlight positions I have in individual stocks, etc. The only good thing that can come out of this is a rise in awareness. It?s just awful.

In government bonds, the natural inflow of funds is approaching the end of the road ? although there is probably one more short-lived and ?wrong-footing? move downwards in the yield on the 10-year US Treasury. Increasingly, the flow of funds into government bonds is merely a direct reflection of newly created liabilities (debt) on the balance sheets of central banks like the Fed, ECB and Bank of England. Long-term US Treasury bonds are in their highest ever supply and at their highest ever price/lowest ever yield. Just another example of our ?upside down? world.

Brief aside: besides (or maybe in conjunction with) inflation/currency devaluation, there is one other way the US could extinguish the Federal debt (US$15.8 trillion dollars when I just checked the real time national debt clock) just like that?gone! Used in isolation, almost nobody would suffer! And some people (probably less than 1%) would gain?and boy would they GAIN! Do you know what I?m talking about? Got any? Don?t know if it?ll happen, but at least it would cheer my wife up. She is still trying to work out how I could have forecast the Great Financial Crisis and made so little money out of it?

?You knew Fannie Mae was bust, you should have made millions.?

At least she didn?t add ?you idiot?. She?s nice like that.

Meanwhile the price of the only financial asset with zero counterparty risk in the biggest global debt crisis in history has been ?locked down? for months. There is a reason. It must move in volume to where there is an insufficient quantity prior to the denouement of the current financial system. A new system is coming with a bigger role for gold. You see ?the man? isn?t stupid, even if some of his acolytes are. He has a plan. But there?s one ?person? who could make things difficult for ?the man?, so he had to be brought ?onside? first.

Dr Kurt Richebacher was the publisher of ?The Richebacher Letter? until his death in 2007. Paul Volcker commented that:

?Sometimes I think that the job of central bankers is to prove Kurt Richeb?cher wrong.?

Ain?t going to happen. Richebacher himself sagely remarked that:

?The only cure for a bubble is to prevent it from developing.?

Well it?s far too late for this financial system. Ten years ago, before the debt bubble became catastrophic, the free market could have resolved this issue. But Greenspan, the ?Great Architect?, had to create yet another bubble in real estate and the ?point of no return? was left far behind.

Then the helicopter-flying monetary psychopath took over and he is creating the bubble to end all bubbles in MONEY itself.

Cue a great comment from Damon Vrabel in ?Harvard Lobotomies And The Disgrace Of The Economics Profession?:

?The truth is that economics has been designed to completely hide the monetary system that hovers above the economy. Economics assumes money is just a medium of exchange floating through the economy to facilitate a free market and generate wealth. At times that has been true, but today it?s probably the biggest lie of modern history.?

Let?s take most people?s current favourite ?safe haven?, the mighty United (Socialist) States of America. This is the chart of the debt in the economy (total Credit Market Debt Outstanding) since the current Kondratieff cycle began.

Imagine telling people that you?d set up a Ponzi scheme and asked them to invest in it. They?d be very offended that you could take them for being so stupid. But you only need to look out of the window, or in the mirror. Salaries, pensions, mortgages, savings, etc. are all paid in?MONEY. And nearly everybody is ?all-in.?

The Euro, or its purchasing power anyway, is clearly finished if they try to keep the system together, but what about the dollar?

The songwriter, Noel Gallagher, formerly of Oasis and now with his High Flying Birds, commented

that:

?There?s only one boy in this country who scares me and that?s Lee Mavers.?

Raoul Pal, of the Global Macro Investor, said in May 2012 that:

?All that is left (to buy) is the Dollar and Gold?

I f-----? love reading Raoul Pal?s stuff when I can get hold of it, which is incredibly difficult. He grew up (at least for a few years) near where I did and not far from Lee Mavers. I can?t recommend his work highly enough. I don?t disagree with him on much, but I do disagree with his view on the dollar (although he might be bullish on the dollar just from a trading perspective and he?s been right since May).

The two remaining ?sacred cows? preserving the US dollar as the world?s reserve currency are:

The belief that the Chinese will continue to buy US Treasuries; and

The US dollar will maintain its monopoly on world trade.

Regarding number one, the Chinese have been sellers since the end of July 2011 (note the date). With regard to number two, have you noticed how China has set up currency swaps with nearly all of its trading partners? Have you noticed how Iran has been excluded from the SWIFT system and has begun selling oil to some countries in currencies other than dollars?

China has been preparing for dollar devaluation for nearly a year now, but hardly anybody has noticed. While everybody frets about the Euro, the dismantling of the US dollar?s reserve currency status is occurring within plain sight. I think a deal was done between the US and China in late Summer or early Autumn of last year. Have you also noticed how Ben Bernanke has used just about every unconventional method of monetary policy he?d discussed in his earlier writings on preventing deflation?bar one big one? Dollar devaluation. Let me repeat that, dollar devaluation.

We are heading into a truly mega-financial crisis. This is (another) classic ?I hope I?m wrong, but?? report. I think the crisis is going to result in the transition to a new financial system as the current one implodes. Best guess is that it will be either happening, or perfectly obvious that it?s going to happen, within 6-12 months, i.e. within our investing time horizon.

This report connects a lot of dots and analyses each one of them. The dots include:

Dot - Loss of US AAA credit rating in August 2011

Dot - China lashes out at US ?addiction to debt?

Dot - Peak in Chinese holdings of US Treasuries

Dot - China starts selling US Treasuries

Dot - Surge in the gold price in August 2011 followed by steep decline

Dot - Lock down of the gold price (using ?paper gold?) ever since

Dot - Movement of large quantities of physical gold from London to Asia (notably China)

Dot - Collapse of MF Global

Dot - Radio silence on China being a currency manipulator

Dot - Exter?s Pyramid playing out in front of our eyes

Dot - Iran excluded from SWIFT system

Dot - BRICS countries signed the Master Agreement on Extending Credit Facility in Local Currency and the Multilateral Letter of Credit Confirmation Facility Agreement

Dot ? US granted China a 6-month extension on sanctions for buying Iranian oil (India already had one)

Dot - Revisiting Bernanke?s old speeches on deflation

Dot - Operation Twist

Dot - Comments by World Bank President, Robert Zoellick

Dot ? BIS proposal to upgrade gold to a zero risk weighted asset in line with sovereign debt as part of Basel III

Dot - Comments by Robert Rubin (?consigliere? to the elite)

Dot - Recent meeting between Kissinger and Wen Jiabao

Dot - Why debt deflation now would paradoxically precipitate hyper-inflation

Dot ? Demise of the middle class (theme)

Dot - Putting all of the above in the context of the fourth (and ongoing) price upwave of the last 1,000 years

Dot - How each of the three earlier price upwaves came to an end.

[????]

Huguenot Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> Quids, you've been arguing that the Euro is a bad

> thing for Greece because it doesn't allow them to

> devalue the Drachma to create competitive

> advantage.

>

> What would devaluation have done to a fixed

> annuity? Sames as QE. You can't try and take the

> moral high ground here.

>

> Besides,fixed annuities are silly tools anyway -

> with inflation at only 3% they'd be worth only

> half the original value 20 years into a

> retirement. The long term history on inflation

> already demonstrates that we're never at the level

> in the long term.

Greece needs to devalue because the German guilted Euro is about 30pc too high in value for its economic strenght ..it's in a completely false and unrealistic exchange rate thanks to the Euro (see also Italy and others). QE pushes up bond prices by increasing demand falsley, in the long term this is in theory counteracted when the bonds are sold off by govt and the 'cash' destroyed, but as bonds and gilts form the major part of annuity purchases because of their stability then anyone retiring during the QE phase gets a lifetime hit asa result of QE and that is no fun at all and they are not your 1pc. You we're talking rot. Moral high ground? You're having a laugh surely? I'm quite happy on the economic high ground.

[????]

PS don't get mw wrong Annuities are being proved shit products and private pensions a great big con, but QE is making this significantly worse so don't call people challenging it mugs as they are not and you are wrong.

[Ridgley]

If the middle earners and the lower paid in society, are continually being squeezed don?t be surprised if there is an uprising like the poll tax back in the day. The public knows that there has to be cuts but I am not sure how long the public can continue to be squeezed.

[New Nexus]

http://www.feasta.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Trade-Off1.pdf

[bsand]

Roubini says 2013 - enjoy the Olympics and the summer we'll be getting the tab soon.....http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/9408062/Nouriel-Roubini-sticks-to-perfect-storm-in-2013-prediction.html

[Huguenot]

Octopuses and football tournaments.

If you predict a financial storm every year, some years you're going to be right. It doesn't make you a genius.

Besides, his terms are so wooly that he could claim a financial storm every year since records began.

So what's his real contribution? Nothing but grist to the 'end of the world is nigh' mill.

[????]

Tick, tock, tick, tock, tick tock zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz