Financial topics

[John]

Dear Trevor,

> The latest report of mass incidents have it at close to 200,000
> for 2011. That's an almost unimaginable number.

Can you tell me where you've seen this figure? I haven't seen
any numbers above 100,000.

John

[Higgenbotham]

What else can he say? He's got to put the best spin possible on things, particularly since he is up for reelection this year. He's got a decent chance of losing, especially with France's downgrade. Of course, some are saying this not because of politics but because they have to convince themselves that we will somehow avoid what's coming, avoid a crash, even when the evidence says otherwise.

Yes, as well as, possibly, the 6 month point from the crash. 6 months after the October 1929 crash, people apparently wanted Hoover to say something reassuring, so he was invited to an important meeting and he said something reassuring. 6 months after the August 2011 crash, we also see that people wanted Sarkozy to say something reassuring, so he did. And, likewise, it seems the overall response to Obama's reassurances in The State of the Union were positive from all directions.

I think anytime a leader is called on to make such a statement, the statement will be quite predictable. But it's the fact that the herd wanted that type of statement, when they wanted it and how they reacted that seems repetitious, historically speaking.

[John]

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/th ... 60940.html

[Higgenbotham]

If the United States does enter a Fifth Turning, I could certainly see civil unrest and low-scale terrorism that would make whatever the Tea Party or Occupy Wall Street is currently doing look tame in comparison. An interesting wild card would be China if it also enters a Fifth Turning: does it try to pick a fight with the West, or does it simply devolve into civil war? If it devolves into civil war without picking a fight with the West, I think that there is a good chance that there would be, as the Fifth Turning in the United States wears on, an eventual effort to "declare war on all the civil unrest" in the United States in a manner that is somewhat like a pseudo–civil war occurring, which finally provides a regeneracy event for the United States. It would certainly be a fascinating but quite unnerving scenario, although probably far less worse than a nuclear war breaking out. —Best regards, Marc

It seems as if the world has hit a wall, where either nuclear war breaks out, which is unacceptable, or something like the above scenario takes place. Gorbachev, on the 20th anniversary of Chernobyl, stated that, having observed the effects of the Chernobyl meltdown themselves, that the former Soviets were of the opinion that nuclear war is not survivable for anybody. I'll see if I can find that piece. In the civil unrest/low-scale terrorism scenario, I can imagine opposing countries or blocks of countries forming, for example, "Anonymous-like" cells, or other cells that replicate the opponent's known internal dissenters, then doing attacks that appear to come from those internal dissenters, so as to stir the pot. The Chinese may see an advantage in that, as their external wall is harder to penetrate than ours. It would be similar to the 9-11 attacks except that the foreign terrorists would not be identifiable, and would appear to be domestic. It's possible that they might even find a way to use espionage to gain knowledge of a known plot, such as the OK City bombing, and perform a simultaneous attack, using the domestic plotter as a stooge.

Gorbachev piece, which seems even more important since the Fukushima meltdown.
http://www.project-syndicate.org/commen ... v3/English

[Trevor]

Can you tell me where you've seen this figure? I haven't seen
any numbers above 100,000.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-0 ... udget.html

[Trevor]

As an appeasement to China, perhaps "mass incidents" can be made a new Olympic sport for the Summer Olympics, to net the country a lot of extra gold....

But seriously, if war with China breaks out, I'm personally looking at a longer horizon for it starting, due to the likely ability of the Fed to intervene much more in the global economy, but I do acknowledge that we're surely in a Fourth Turning in North America, Europe, and China. —Best regards, Marc

They're doing everything they can, but at this point, injecting a couple trillion dollars isn't going to do much. Nothing would prevent what's going to happen, but if the banks and all the other business stopped the fraud they were committing and learned their lesson from it, it would at least help reduce the severity. Unfortunately, they haven't; they're still creating trillions and trillions in Credit derivative, meaning that they haven't learned, confident that if they get into trouble again, they can be bailed out. Alternately, they just may not care if they cause a depression because they think they can walk away with their money before it happens.

As for China, at this point, they don't even have to have negative growth for things to completely fall apart. Just having things slow down could be enough. Their one-child policy makes things worse, both for them and for us.

[John]

> I am "challenged" when it comes to all of this finance business. I
> ride the short bus, if you will. I would like more information on
> all of the "toxic assets" that are still out there
> pending. Mr. Xenakis mentions this often but everytime he does, I
> wonder......when does all of this actually hit? I mean, say, if we
> are playing cards and I am called, I have to lay my cards down. Is
> there some trigger or some rule within the financial system thay
> would require all of these assets to be "called"? Like, when do
> the investors/creditors or whomever actually have to fall on that
> sword? How long can known toxic assets stay alive?

> If, it is possible to be "called", this would seem to me to be a
> vital piece of G.D. theory would it not? (again, my education is
> limited and my question is badly worded, so if this has already
> been answered, I do apologize)

Many of the toxic assets are collateralized debt obligations (CDOs)
backed by residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS). These CDO
securities are supposed to receive, each month, a fraction of all the
mortgage payments made by homeowners who took out the mortgage loans
backing the RMBSs that are used in the CDOs.

If the homeowners stop making payments, then the banks holding the
CDOs simply stop receiving that money each month. That makes the CDO
securities worthless. However, the bank can just keep the CDOs in
their portfolios, pretend that they haven't lost any value at all, and
then make up the lost revenue in other ways. For example, they can
charge 30% interest on credit cards, and reward themselves with
million dollar bonuses for doing so.

Meanwhile, the CDOs appear on their balance sheets as valuable assets.
A person investing in Citibank will look at their balance sheet and
see these CDOs as huge assets, but won't know that they're really
worthless, since they aren't generating any income.

So the banks can go on for a long time, pretending that the CDOs have
value, until some crisis occurs where they actually have to convert
the CDOs to cash.

The banks are defrauding the public, investors, and stockholders. In
addition, banks are required to have a certain amount of money in
"reserve," in the form of cash or AAA-rated securities, in case
there's a run on the bank or other emergency occurs. These worthless
CDOs are being used as "AAA-rated securities" to satisfy the reserve
requirements.

The whole thing is incredibly, sleazy and illegal, but it's ok
in today's Gen-X culture of fraud and extortion.

In the 2007-8 time frame, there was a lot of press about the fact that
the slice and dicing process that created the CDOs made it unclear
who actually held the mortgage note that the original homeowner signed.
It turned out that most of the mortgage notes were held by Deutsche
Bank, much to everyone's surprise.

Here's an article that was just posted today that indicates that
Deutsche Bank is now being accused of fraud and is being sued
for creating fraudulent CDOs.

The SEC is investigating Deutsche Bank as well. Since the Justice
Dept. and the SEC normally refuse to investigate or prosecute any of
the crimes that caused the financial crisis, I can only conclude that
it's easier for the CDC to investigate and prosecute a German bank.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/bus ... 12,00.html

John

[Trevor]

So essentially, they're a ticking time bomb just waiting to go off. So what would make them have to convert all of these CDOs into cash? I do remember hearing something about many banks having to write-down many of their CDOs in 2007 and 2008. Would they be affected by what's going on in Europe?

[John]

Dear Trevor,

> So essentially, they're a ticking time bomb just waiting to go
> off. So what would make them have to convert all of these CDOs
> into cash? I do remember hearing something about many banks having
> to write-down many of their CDOs in 2007 and 2008. Would they be
> affected by what's going on in Europe?

Europe is stuck with plenty of CDOs, but they have another problem
as well -- worthless Greek bonds.



http://www.spiegel.de/international/eur ... 15,00.html

John

[Trevor]

The question is: how many Credit Default Swaps are there for Greek bonds? I've heard estimates as low as 2 billion to as high as 100 billion. Certainly many of the investors who bought their bonds over the past three years purchased them, considering how risky they were getting.

Once they default, it's going to hit a lot of banks and investment firms very hard. Some may not be able to survive.