Economic Collapse

India buys 200 tonnes of Gold from the IMF for 6.7 billion US Dollars. Thats more than 7 million ounces and half of the announced IMF gold sale of 400 tonnes. Who will buy the other 200 tonnes? My bet is China. Why are they doing this? They want to get rid of their US Dollars and into hard assets. Gold is the money of kings. Debt is the money of slaves. Just look at the rate of decline in foreign purchases of US debt: Read the rest of this entry »

Reuters reports:

U.S. authorities seized nine failed banks on Friday, the most in a single day since the financial crisis began and the latest stark sign that substantial parts of the nation’s banking industry are being crippled by bad loans.

The move brought the total number of failed banks in 2009 to 115 — their highest annual level since 1992 — with analysts expecting more to come. Among the lenders seized Friday was Los Angeles-based California National Bank, in what was the fourth-largest U.S. bank failure this year.

The largest institution to fail in the current financial crisis was Washington Mutual, which boasted $307 billion in assets when it was shuttered in September 2008.

U.S. Bancorp on Friday acquired the nine banks that had been held by FBOP Corp, picking up $18.4 billion in assets and $15.4 billion of deposits.

So another 15 billion to handle by the FDIC. They will need more funds very soon. From whom you ask? From you, dear taxpayer! This will be done through Bernankes printing press and you will pay for it through the further debasement of your currency. Trick or treat?

Rocky Vega of The Daily Reckoning took the effort to transcribe some quotes from a little video clip of Marc Faber, publisher of The Gloom, Boom, and Doom Report:

“There’s this huge debate between the inflationists and the deflationists… I belong more to the camp that looks at inflation and deflation from a different perspective. In the sense that in every system you can have some prices going down up and some prices going up. Say if you have a glut in consumer goods, then consumer goods prices can go up. But if you print money and have a zero interest rate, then home prices theoretically could go up, or stocks, or commodities. In any event your cash purchasing power goes down, that’s a symptom of deflation.”

“The worst investments in an inflationary period, when you print money and have large fiscal deficits are, of course, long term bonds and then cash. The best is to have foreign currency and commodities… also equities can protect you to some extent because they adjust upward as the currency goes down.”

“Regarding the dollar he says, “well, it will go to a value of exactly zero eventually.” When pressed for a timeline he explains, “Looking at Mr. Obama and his administration it should already be there, but I think it will take roughly ten years until people really realize that the fiscal position of the US is a complete disaster.”

My personal favorite from this clip:
On Bernanke: “He’s a money printer. He does that well.”

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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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.

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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Dear readers. This might be the biggest financial news to hit the Internet since Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers. I, and many other experts with far better understanding than I have, such as Catherine Austin Fitts and Krassimir Petrov, have been saying this for years: Oil will not be priced in US dollars for long. When the move away from the Petrodollar happens, the US Empire will fall. From The Independent:
Read the rest of this entry »