Jim Willie

Golden Jackass

12th July, 2012

In recent public articles, the USTreasury Bond bubble was described, supported by Interest Rate Swaps to produce artificial demand and to create an illusion of a flight to safety in toxic USGovt Bonds. A Black Hole phenomenon was described, which will suck the capital life out of most assets, celebrate the USTBond rally, and accelerate the recession in the USEconomy. Numerous endgame signals were described, all alarming in their own right, not a single signal being from the realm of normalcy. Extreme danger is the warning. This week consider just a handful of danger signposts, all screaming loudly of systemic breakdown. They are all deeply disturbing signposts that complement the endgame signals with a scattered pox of symptoms on the landscape. The Jackass is firm and rigid in maintaining that ugly forecast made in late 2008, dismissed by many as foolish and off the mark. No longer. The USGovt debt default in the form of a massive forcible debt restructure is being considered by creditors in charge. The USEconomy is imploding, and Money Velocity is falling. The true protection in both an inflationary spiral and a deflationary spiral is GOLD. The current storm center has a mix of both, a fast rise in the monetary expansion coupled with a painful decline in the value of all things paper. Never overlook that home prices are a consequence of paper games, not the hard asset ploy. The USDollar is being pushed off its coveted throne as global reserve currency. A system based upon GOLD is coming, designed to manage trade settlement. The paper kings hope to impose a new and better paper bond vehicle, and a new and better paper banking depot, but they are failing miserably. They are on the extreme defensive. Their captains are cutting deals to stay out of prison. Justice might actually be served. Watch the LIBOR lawsuits, which will be a different kind of mushroom cloud.

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Paul Craig Roberts

Counterpunch

6th June, 2012

Ever since the beginning of the financial crisis and Quantitative Easing, the question has been before us:  How can the Federal Reserve maintain zero interest rates for banks and negative real interest rates for savers and bond holders when the US government is adding $1.5 trillion to the national debt every year via its budget deficits?  Not long ago the Fed announced that it was going to continue this policy for another 2 or 3 years. Indeed, the Fed is locked into the policy. Without the artificially low interest rates, the debt service on the national debt would be so large that it would raise questions about the US Treasury’s credit rating and the viability of the dollar, and the trillions of dollars in Interest Rate Swaps and other derivatives would come unglued.

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The unstoppable US economic spiral: Recession/depression/inflation

Excerpt GEAB N°60

Leap 2020

16th December, 2011

In fact, the United States ends 2011 in a state of weakness unmatched since the Civil War. They practice no significant leadership at international level. The confrontation between geopolitical blocs is sharpening and they find themselves confronted by almost all the world’s major players: China, Russia, Brazil (and in general almost all of South America) and now Euroland (1). Meanwhile, they cannot control unemployment where the true rate stagnates at around 20% against the backdrop of an unabated and unprecedented reduction in the labour force (which has now fallen to its 2001 level (2)).

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