Raoul Paul-The End

[charliebrown]

Re: Raoul Paul-The End

As I have said before, in our credit/money world your money is someone else's debt. Had the gvt not stepped in, AIG would have probably blown up. How many customers of AIG including insurance and annutiy holders would have valueless policies. Look inside your bond fund, money market fund etc, see how much is debt of finance companies and banks. Look into the pension system and see how much debt they are holding.

I'm not saying .gov did the right thing. With cross linking and counter parties etc, I don't think anyone knows who will actually take the haircut. It would not have just wiped out a few fat cat bond holders, grandma would get hurt too.

Regardless of whether they did the right thing or not. I'm angry that we have no one doing a perp walk right now. I'm also angry that we are not peeling back this onion one layer at a time right now so we don't have another hard choice to make in a few years when AFC II occurs.

[lektrode]

Re: Raoul Paul-The End

....Regardless of whether they did the right thing or not. I'm angry that we have no one doing a perp walk right now. I'm also angry that we are not peeling back this onion one layer at a time right now so we don't have another hard choice to make in a few years when AFC II occurs.

+1
thats the real kicker (for me and its NOT a 'partisan grudge' but i'll admit a bit of 'sensitivity', being a small-r type, along with the fact that MY income has cratered, leaves me feeling somewhat less than 'appreciative' of what we got out of the beltway the past few years)

the precedent was the S&L debacle 20+ years ago.
thousands of investigations, indictments, sentences.
(hell, even the enron and tyco scumbags went to jail)

this time?
Zip, ZILCH, NADA baybee

and like i said to Mr Dave, (D&G) i cant simply ignore the fact of who was in charge
and am simply astonished (disgusted, tho unsurprised) by the LACK of exposure of this issue, in the media (frontline, INSIDE JOB, 60minutes and matt taibbi/the stone excepted of course)

[debu]

Re: Raoul Paul-The End

I also believe that recovery from a convulsive crash that wipes out the debt that is the source of the problem will be far more rapid than anyone expects...

Will this be possible in the context of peak cheap oil which would seem to imply, to use the hoary term, the end of growth?

[ProdigyofZen]

Re: Raoul Paul-The End

EJ, you think there will be massive bans on trading? No short selling of bonds or stocks and bans on futures, CDS and options?

The scenario he describes is more a scenario where lead will be the most valuable thing we can own.

[doom&gloom]

Re: Raoul Paul-The End

No one WANTS ot know the thruth in DC. The pols want their money to keep flowing for elections, the perps wanna get away scot free, and the "system" cannot handle the truth that, no matter what the spin, the derivatives exposure and a real mark-2-market accounting would render every large bank in the western world insolvent. To prevent the last part from becoming public knowledge, the skeletons are swept under the rug and no reform happens.

What were those immortal words of Chuck Prince at Citi right before everything went sideways? Something about wanting to keep dancing...

Everyone is still trying to keep dancing, because when the music ends, there won;t be one less chair left to leave someone out, there will be no chairs for everyone and a bottomless pit below.

[Dave Stratman]

Re: Raoul Paul-The End

[QUOTE=charliebrown;230057]

As I have said before, in our credit/money world your money is someone else's debt. Had the gvt not stepped in, AIG would have probably blown up. How many customers of AIG including insurance and annutiy holders would have valueless policies. Look inside your bond fund, money market fund etc, see how much is debt of finance companies and banks. Look into the pension system and see how much debt they are holding.

Virtually all AIG's policies were without value, since it had only a small fraction of the capital necessary to cover losses. The time for the government to step in was not after AIG blew up but before. The "insurance" it offered was a sham. For the government to cover AIG's losses--which were not its policy-holders' losses but (potential) losses of Goldman Sachs--seems to me to reward moral hazard and very likely a criminal endeavour.

I'm not saying .gov did the right thing. With cross linking and counter parties etc, I don't think anyone knows who will actually take the haircut. It would not have just wiped out a few fat cat bond holders, grandma would get hurt too.

I appreciate this concern about who gets hurt, but clearly the government in this and related cases was acting not on behalf of grandma but of very powerful people--fat-cat bond holders. I would also argue that the interests of grandma and pension funds, annuity holders, etc., have hardly been served by the carnage that the government/FIRE collusion has wrought. Far from it. The financial and economic landscape has been devastated by their actions. But--and this is the point worth thinking about--their actions have devastated the landscape in a manner that serves the interests of the biggest players. Grandma has not been saved. She has been impoverished, while her children and her childrens' children have been bound with chains of debt and domination.

Regardless of whether they did the right thing or not. I'm angry that we have no one doing a perp walk right now. I'm also angry that we are not peeling back this onion one layer at a time right now so we don't have another hard choice to make in a few years when AFC II occurs.[/

I share your anger at the lack of a perp walk. But the situation is even worse than that. Not only are the criminals not in prison. They are still in charge! And, at last report, they continue the practices that created the "crisis" in the first place.

This is one of the several facts that leads me to believe that the international banking crisis was intentionally created by the most powerful banking and corporate circles and that it is achieving precisely the goals for which it was intended. It has facilitated the transfer of unimaginable quantities of public wealth from ordinary people to the richest few. It has created economic and social insecurity for a vast swathe of people in Europe and America, making them more controllable, and will continue to do so at an accelerating pace. It has justified the abrogation of even the appearance of democracy in some countries, and, I expect, will do so soon in others.

Warren Buffet famously said, "There is a class war going on, and my side, the rich class, is winning." I believe that the banking crisis is a strategic move by the rich class in the class war.

[Raz]

Re: Raoul Paul-The End

Okay, who seriously believes their "party" isn't a suck up to Wall Street?

Raise your hands kids so I beat you into submission accordingly.

+1.

Here's our apparent choice: (a) a corrupt, incompetant, empty suit, hard-left idealogue, or (b) Mr. F.I.R.E. economy himself, owned "free & clear" by the financial forces destoying our country.

I'm beginning to think Pee Wee Herman would do less damage than either of these guys.

[raja]

Re: Raoul Paul-The End

With the right leadership we'll be back in business in three to five years. I can give example after example of national economies that went from a virtual dead stop to booming in five years or less.

Yes . . . but those economies did not recover under the conditions of a global crash.

Again, too optimistic . . . .

[don]

Re: Raoul Paul-The End

+1.

Here's our apparent choice: (a) a corrupt, incompetant, empty suit, hard-left idealogue, or (b) Mr. F.I.R.E. economy himself, owned "free & clear" by the financial forces destoying our country.

I'm beginning to think Pee Wee Herman would do less damage than either of these guys.

I think it's even worse than that, Raz. Both "sides of the aisle" are pre-scripted, the pols themselves nothing but self-serving careerists devoid of any remotely personal position on anything of substance. The only exception are the Daddy Warbucks that want to be elected. They know their agenda.

[jpatter666]

Re: Raoul Paul-The End

+1.

Here's our apparent choice: (a) a corrupt, incompetant, empty suit, hard-left idealogue, or (b) Mr. F.I.R.E. economy himself, owned "free & clear" by the financial forces destoying our country.

I'm beginning to think Pee Wee Herman would do less damage than either of these guys.

Guess it's "the devil we know" or "the devil himself".

[think365]

Re: Raoul Paul-The End

Guess it's "the devil we know" or "the devil himself".

You rang?

ALBERT EDWARDS: HAHAHAHA, The Bulls Aren't Laughing Anymore, The Stock Market Will Collapse And All Hope Will Be Lost

Joe Weisenthal | May 31, 2012, 5:54 AM

In his latest note, SocGen's famously bearish Albert Edwards looks around at interest rates falling all over the place and Europe in chaos, and gives himself a good chest-beating, while mocking the equity bulls for yapping about how cheap stocks are.

He's clearly feeling pretty good about the way things are turning out, writing: "For 15 years we were told the West is nothing like Japan. We agree. It is worse!"

The whole thing is really captured here:

As 30y German Bund yields slide below 2% and rapidly converge towards Japanese rates, we have a taster of what is to come in the US and UK in the months ahead. We still see US 10y yields – even now making new all-time lows – falling below 1% as hard landings occur in China and the US. The secular equity valuation bear market began in 2000 and renewed global recession will be the trigger to catalyze the third, and hopefully final, gut-wrenching phase of valuation de-rating. Expect the S&P500 to decline decisively below its March 2009, 666 intra-day low. All hope will be crushed.

Our Ice Age thesis has been our roadmap for the macro events that we have witnessed over the last 15 years. Many have laughed at our views. But much to the chagrin of the cohorts of equity bulls in the industry, their beloved and supposedly ‘cheap’ equities have become cheaper and cheaper. They will get cheaper still before this is over. Mutatis mutandis for bond bears as yields continue to slide.

You can just hear his demonic HAHAHA reverberate through his words right now.
Clearly, the Japanification of western economies is a super-hot topic, as other charts from his fellow SocGeners note.

These were a pair that came out last night, comparing both equities and bonds in the U.S. and Europe to Japan.

SocGen

SocGen

Getting back to Edwards, while he thinks everything is a wreck, the one market he's somewhat intrigued with on the long side is Italy, owing to the fact that it's relatively under-indebted, and never had the huge bubble that plauged Spain.

[lektrode]

Re: Raoul Paul-The End

No one WANTS ot know the thruth in DC. ...

What were those immortal words of Chuck Prince at Citi right before everything went sideways? Something about wanting to keep dancing...

Everyone is still trying to keep dancing, because when the music ends, there won;t be one less chair left to leave someone out, there will be no chairs for everyone and a bottomless pit below.

ms peggy said it best:



personally i dont see the sitch as hopeless - WE JUST NEED REAL LEADERS, that _used_ to be called Statesmen

what we have now - mostly anyway - is a bunch of self-aggrandizing ego-stuffed empty suits
THAT ARE FAR MORE CONCERNED WITH THEIR OWN RE-ELECTIONS - and re-arranging the deck chairs - than anything remotely resembling 'leadership'

if there was, we would have seen, at the VERY LEAST, a BUDGET - but we have the left side of the aisle stuck in print/spend/tax mode and right side focused on drawing lines in the dirt

SOMEWHERE we need to compromise and IMHO we will need to BOTH raise taxes (or start charging user fees) and at the very least, slow the growth/rate of increases in spending - which are referred to as "cuts" ?

while we get BS/farcical 'tax cuts for the middle class' that cannibalize FICA 'contributions' ?
and then have to listen as they scream about the costs of entitlements?

i'll say it again: howz about simply rolling back expenditures, ACROSS THE BOARD - to simply match the level of revenue thats already coming in?

that and shutdown a bunch of overseas .mil bases - let the rest of the world pay for its own damn 'defense'

we need to repair OUR infrastructure, NOW, before its too late

and the ONLY way we're ever going to get REAL ACTION out of the beltway is

WHEN THEY NO LONGER HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT GETTING THEIR ASSES RE-ELECTED

TERM LIMITS *** N O W ***

[idianov]

Re: Raoul Paul-The End

Raoul Paul presentation on ZH lacks the depth, breadth, details and everything else that I happen to appreciate in EJ's work here on iTulip since 2006.

[Dave Stratman]

Re: Raoul Paul-The End

with ALL due Respect Mr Stratman, i'm not sure what the question is?

http://articles.latimes.com/2008/sep.../fi-polmoney23



and i would have to just guess here that those 'leaders' were from what state? and what party?

where's dc?
he'll no doubt want to 'keep me honest' here (which i appreciate, greatly)

while i'm not attempting to apologize for the idiots on the other side of the aisle, i cant ignore just who was running the show while it all happened.

Lektrode--Sorry to be so late in replying. The question is, What part of the crisis is real and what part is a scam. I'm convinced that the banking crisis and sovereign debt crisis is contrived--an instrument of policy. But there are other aspects of the situation that I don't know what to think about. The $700 trillion (?) in derivatives. Is that real? Is that something that has grown beyond all control and that the ruling elite are scared as hell about? Or is it another matter of policymaking? I really don't know how to think about these things. And what about the question of debt in general, private and public? There are people who say that capitalism, or any system based on interest-bearing debt, is bound to implode eventually, since the rate of interest owed in society eventually exceeds any possibility of repayment. Have we reached that point? Is this what's really going on--that the system has reached its limits, and the ruling class is desperately searching for a solution?--at our expense, to be sure, but in a real crisis?

If you or other iTulipers have ideas about these questions, I'd love to hear them.

On your other point, I agree with D&G. The beatings should begin forthwith.

[quatros]

Re: Raoul Paul-The End

There is a great deal about all this that I don't understand, but I guess the key question for me is the relationship between the "banking crisis" and the collapse in GDP and other cataclysmic events predicted here.

Roual Pal states that the 10 largest economies in the world have a total sovereign debt equal to 300% of world GDP. A substantial portion of that sovereign debt was incurred in the last few years through bank bailouts. My understanding from reading John Hussman is that these bailouts were quite unnecessary. The usual--and legal--way of dealing with insolvent banks is that FDIC replaces the management, uses shareholder and bondholder value to wipe out the bad debts, and sells the good debt to a solvent bank; not a penny of depositors' funds is lost in this procedure. Hussman claims that there was more than enough shareholder and bondholder value in the TBTF banks that this established procedure could have been followed; no depositors' funds would have been lost and taxpayers would not have spent a dime on it. The problem, as Hussman puts it, is simply that Congress has chosen to defend bank bondholders rather than American taxpayers. The same rape of the public on behalf of bankers is an international phenomenon. Hussman's latest column describes the current bailout of Bankia in Spain to the tune of nearly $24 billion.

If I am understanding all this correctly, the huge level of sovereign debt and the wave of sovereign defaults which Pal predicts are based on fraud, or at least corruption, on a nearly unimaginable scale. As Hussman points out, the phrase "bank failure" is used as a scare tactic. All it really means is that the bondholders of a bank are going to take a haircut--lose some money on their investment. Boo Hoo. These problems could have been dealt with in a way that would have left the public--and, presumably, the economies of various nations--unscathed. Instead The Powers That Be have chosen--and have persisted in choosing--to deal with problems that could have been easily contained in a manner that has blown them up to gigantic levels. According to TPTB, the only way to deal with these (artificial) problems is to dismantle social democracy in Europe, privatize vast amounts of public wealth, and impose austerity on ordinary people--to pay for the bankers' misdeeds.

Then there is the other part of the equation, the decline in GDP and the failure to make up the 7% output gap from the last recession. Is this also an artifact of social policy; that is, is it a function of the massive redistribution of wealth upwards that we have experienced over the past 40 years or so, so that there are too few people with the means to buy the products of the economy?
.
My question, I suppose, is, How much of this crisis is real, and what part of it? Am I missing something here, or are we being manipulated into accepting a scary future that is somewhat akin to enslavement?

If you develop the idea of a fractional monetary system and lend fiat currency to governments and are responsible for whatever ponzi banking schemes/scams ensue such as "central banks" and if you keep doing this for the better part of the last 300 hundred years under different experiments and your name happens to be Rothschild, you (and your cohorts) are on top of the world and you get paid first. No matter what. You own the governments! And the plebe -they think- simply should be thankful for the prosperity that has been born from this money replication.