Economic Collapse

Just a few minutes ago the zFact.com National Debt Clock turned over to 12 trillion USD. As you all know, the total liabilities of the US is much much higher if you take Medicare och Medicaid etc into the picture.

Compare this to the counter on the left hand side on this page.

Since the Commercial Real Estate Mortgage bubble has begun to pop with the bankruptcy of Capmark that I wrote about yesterday I thought I’d give you some background to the events unfolding before our very eyes beginning now. These mortgages are given by lenders to companies building and operating commercial buildings such as malls, offices, hotels etc. With a declining economy these companies find it increasingly difficult to pay interest on their loans as income from rents keep falling. Consider these statistics from this month of October 2009 reported by facilitiesnet.com:

U.S. Office Vacancy Rates Continue Climb, But Are Slowing
“The office vacancy rate increased, by 60 basis points (bps), to 16.1 percent, at the end of the third quarter. Although this was the eighth consecutive quarter of rising vacancy rates, it was lower than the 80-bps increase in 2Q 2009 and was the slowest pace of increase since 4Q 2008.
The national industrial availability rate increased 50 bps to 13.5 percent in 3Q 2009. This result marks the 8th consecutive quarter of rising availability. The vast majority of industrial markets experienced rising availability, with 56 out of 61 major markets showing increases from the previous quarter.”

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The next big thing in the economic meltdown are the Commercial Real Estate Mortgages as many economists, like Gerald Celente of The Trends Research Institute, have been saying now for a long time, and as I wrote earlier:

First to default were the now (in)famous “sub-primes”. Defaulting now are the “primes” and the “alt-A’s”. Next up: “Commercial Real Estate Mortgages”.

Today, the biggest US Commercial Real Estate lender, Capmark filed for bankruptcy.

The US has been building commercial properties since the early 90s somewhere along the lines of 5 times the rate of population growth and up until today Capmark has been lending out money to about 2/3 of all building projects in the US. As you understand, this is a huge event.

The next big thing after this is of course all the derivates based on these loans like “Mortgage Backed Securities” etc. The derivatives bubble is currently about 20-30 times the global GDB depending on who you ask. Yes, in the Quadrillions. It’s such a huge number its almost impossible to grasp. This is one of the many reasons this blog is called “Economic Collapse”. We will need an Economic Paradigm Shift to get out of this one. The system we have now based on dept, fiat currency and Fractional Reserve Banking is proving not to work. Likely we will see an interesting line of events shaping from today and for the rest of the year. By early november the main stream news will probably start talking like they did one year ago when Lehman Brothers went bust. Hold on to your hats, folks, there is a storm coming. Interesting time to be alive…

If the Obama Administration decides that Capmark is too big to fail and bails this institution out, the Quantitative Easing program of the Federal Reserve has to gain momentum. This will further the downfall of the US Dollar, which will mean gold goes further up.

First to default were the now (in)famous “sub-primes”. Defaulting now are the “primes” and the “alt-A’s”. Next up: “Commercial Real Estate Mortgages”. On top of those: “Mortgage Backed Securities” and other derivatives of all kinds. So many different names for paper debt. Here are some stats from Bloomberg for the third quarter of 2009:

• 937,840 homes received a default or auction notice or were repossessed by banks, a 23% increase from a year earlier
• 1 of every 136 U.S. households received a filing, the highest quarterly rate on record
• A “shadow inventory” of 7 million properties are in the foreclosure process or likely to be seized, up from 1.27 million in 2005
• The pace of prime and so-called alt-A loan defaults is accelerating
• The delinquency rate (failure to pay) for prime loans rose to 6.41% in the second quarter from 6.06 percent
• The share of prime loans in foreclosure increased to 3% from 2.49%

Prime loans are those made to borrowers with the best credit records while alt-A loans are considered riskier because they were often granted without documenting the borrower’s income. “The best” borrowers are now incersingly defaulting as (official) unemployment in the US goes above 10%. Shadowstats.com puts that number at about 21%.

On the 14:th I wrote in response to a BBC report on Putins visit to Beijing, China:

“Yes, Medvedev and Jintao is moving away from the US dollar and will settle this 20-year-deal in their own currencies. You should also move away from fiat paper of the west and move into your own currency: gold. Be your own banker, as a friend of mine says.”

On the same day the Russian news outlet “RIA Novosti” quoted Putin on the topic:

“Yesterday, energy companies, in particular Gazprom, raised the question of using the national currency. We are ready to examine the possibility of selling energy resources for rubles, but our Chinese partners need rubles for that. We are also ready to sell for yuans,” Putin said.

Now that the Fed is buying almost all the Treasury bills since the demand from foreign buyers is almost gone, the only thing that keeps the US dollar from going down the tube is the petrodollar: Currently buyers of oil, natural gas and other commodities have to first buy US dollars to make their purchases. When these commodities are available in other currencies, the End of the Dollar is here.

I’ve been more busy than usual with projects and clients for a few days, so here’s a recap of what has been going on in the last few days:

A lot of things are happening on world currency markets right now. What we are seeing now is a move away from the US dollar, a diversifying by Central Banks as well a move into the only currency with no counter-party risk: gold. The Metal of Kings rose to a new high at 1.060 USD/Oz during the last trading days and today almost 1.070 for a few minutes. Here is a Gold chart from today (14 October 2009):
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This video post is almost a month old by now, but the content is timeless. Canadian economist professor Michel Chossudovsky is the author of “The Globalization of Poverty” and “America’s ‘War on Terrorism’”. He is also the Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization. In this video he sits down with The Corbett Report to discuss the real meaning of the “bank bailouts”. A very well summarized overview in just under 8 minutes.

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Here’s an interesting TV-interview with Max Keiser on the latest developments in The demise of the dollar released by The Independent that I’ve written about here at Mellgren.com. As I wrote earlier I believe the collapse of the US dollar will happen a lot faster than 2018 as The Independent suggests, and Max Keiser agrees on that as well:

Here’s a short radio interview with GATAs Bill Murphy on the latest developments in The demise of the dollar released by The Independent that I’ve written about here at Mellgren.com. Listen to Bill in your web browser or download this MP3-file.

Dear readers, interesting times to say the least. As stated in one of the most important articles in decades (discussed here on Mellgren.com), the denials from US media and officials are in, like clock-work:
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