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[This talk was delivered at the Mises Circle in New York City on September 14, 2012.]

The 20th century was the century of total war. Limitations on the scope of war, built up over many centuries, had already begun to break down in the 19th century, but they were altogether obliterated in the 20th. And of course the sheer amount of resources that centralized states could bring to bear in war, and the terrible new technologies of killing that became available to them, made the 20th a century of almost unimaginable horror.

It isn’t terribly often that people discuss the development of total war in tandem with the development of modern central banking, which — although antecedents existed long before — also came into its own in the 20th century. It’s no surprise that Ron Paul, the man in public life who has done more than anyone to break through the limits of what is permissible to say in polite society about both these things, has also been so insistent that the twin phenomena of war and central banking are linked. “It is no coincidence,” Dr. Paul said, “that the century of total war coincided with the century of central banking.”

He added:

If every American taxpayer had to submit an extra five or ten thousand dollars to the IRS this April to pay for the war, I’m quite certain it would end very quickly. The problem is that government finances war by borrowing and printing money, rather than presenting a bill directly in the form of higher taxes. When the costs are obscured, the question of whether any war is worth it becomes distorted.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Central Bank Issues Stunning Warning: “If The Entire System Collapses, Gold Will Be Needed To Start Over”

October 13, 2019

Central Bank Issues Stunning Warning: “If The Entire System Collapses, Gold Will Be Needed To Start Over”

It’s not just “tinfoil blogs” who (for the past 11 years) have been warning that a monetary reset is inevitable and the only viable fallback option once trust and faith in fiat is lost, is a gold standard (something which even Mark Carney hinted at recently): central banks are joining the doom parade now too.

An article published by the De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB), or Dutch Central Bank, has shocked many with its claim that “if the entire system collapses, the gold stock provides a collateral to start over.”

Wow

Dutch National Bank goes ‘Big Reset’:

‘Aandelen, obligaties en ander waardepapier: aan alles zit een risico [..] Als het hele systeem instort, biedt de goudvoorraad een onderpand om opnieuw te beginnen. Goud geeft vertrouwen in de kracht van de balans van de centrale bank’.

While gloomy predictions of a monetary reset are hardly new, they have traditionally been relegated to the fringe of mainstream financial thought – after all, as Mario Draghi stated on several occasions in recent years, the mere contemplation of a “doomsday scenario” is enough to create the self-fulfilling prophecy which materializes it. As such, it is stunning to see a mainstream financial institution open up about the superior value of limited supply, non-fiat, sound money assets. It is also hypocritical given the diametrically opposed Keynesian practices regularly engaged in by central banks and official institutions worldwide: after all, just a few months back, the IMF published a paper bashing Germany’s adoption of the gold standard in the 1870s as the catalyst for instability in the global monetary system.

Fast forward to today, when the Dutch Central Bank is admitting not only did gold not destabilize the monetary system, but it will be its only savior when everything crashes.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

In Memoriam: Reality

October 11, 2019

In Memoriam: Reality

The Golden Golem of Greatness shifted into mad bull overdrive for last night’s Minneapolis fan rally, cussing and bellowing at the picadors of the Left who have been sticking lances in his neck for three years. Decorum is not Mr. Trump’s strong suit, but then the bull is not sent into the ring to negotiate politely for his life. The narrative of the bullring is certain death. The bull must do what he can within his nature to dispute it.

It’s in Mr. Trump’s nature to act the part of a reality TV star, and, of course, it is the nature of reality TV shows to be unreal. That is perhaps the ruling paradox of life in the USA these days. Saturated in unreality, the spectators (also called “voters”) flounder through a relentless barrage of narratives aimed at confounding them, with the unreal expectation that they can make sense of unreal things. In a place like Minneapolis of an October evening, you can go see the Joker movie or take in the President’s rally — and come away with the same sense of hyper-unreality. We’re no longer the nation we pretend to be and we don’t know it. Jokers are wild and the joke’s on us.

So it goes in these dangerous autumn days of The Fourth Turning. Something’s got to give, and all indications are it will happen where few are looking at the moment: the sideshow of money and banking. When things start slip-sliding away over in that alternative universe, Mr. Trump will be propelled into the role he was cast for in 2016: bag-holder for economic collapse.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

After Unveiling ‘NotQE’, Fed Eases Liquidity Rules For Foreign Banks (Rescues Deutsche)

October 11, 2019

After Unveiling ‘NotQE’, Fed Eases Liquidity Rules For Foreign Banks (Rescues Deutsche)

Having cracked down on Deutsche Bank in the past, The Fed appears to be playing good-regulator/bad-regulator as The FT reports thatDeutsche is expected to benefit most from an imminent change in The Fed’s liquidity rules.

Specifically, US banking regulators have dropped an idea to subject local branches of foreign banks to tough new liquidity rules(forcing US branches of foreign banks to hold a minimum level of liquid assets to protect them from a cash crunch).

As The FT further details, people familiar with his thinking say Randal Quarles, the vice-chair for banking supervision at the Fed, accepts the banks’ argument that any liquidity rules on bank branches should only be imposed in conjunction with foreign regulators.

“Without some international agreement, we could have the situation where each country is trying to grab whatever isn’t nailed down if there is another scare.”

And Deutsche Bank benefits most (or rescued from major liquidity needs) since it has by far the largest assets in US branches…

Why would The Fed do this?

Simple, it cannot afford another Lehman-like move (or even the fear of one)…

The Ghost of Failed Banks Returns

September 30, 2019

THE GHOST OF FAILED BANKS RETURNS

Last week’s failure in the US repo market might have had something to do with Deutsche Bank’s disposal of its prime brokerage to BNP, bringing an unwelcome spotlight to the troubled bank and other foreign banks with prime brokerages in America. There are also worrying similarities between Germany’s Deutsche Bank today and Austria’s Credit-Anstalt in 1931, only the scale is far larger and additionally includes derivatives with a gross value of $50 trillion.

If the repo problem spreads, it could also raise questions over the synthetic ETF industry, whose cash and deposits may face escalating counterparty risks in some of the large banks and their prime brokerages. Managers of synthetic ETFs should be urgently re-evaluating their contractual relationships.

Whoever the repo failure involved, it is likely to prove a watershed moment, causing US bankers to more widely consider their exposure to counterparty risk and risky loans, particularly leveraged loans and their collateralised form in CLOs. The deterioration in global trade prospects, as well as the US economic outlook and the likelihood that reducing dollar interest rates to the zero bound will prove insufficient to reverse a decline, will take on a new relevance to their decisions.

Problems under the surface

Last week, something unusual happened: instead of the more normal reverse repurchase agreements, the Fed escalated its repurchase agreements (repos). For the avoidance of doubt, a reverse repo by the Fed involves the Fed borrowing money from commercial banks, secured by collateral held on its balance sheet, typically US Treasury bills. Reverse repos withdraw liquidity from the banking system. With a repo, the opposite happens: the Fed takes in collateral from the banking system and lends money against the collateral, injecting liquidity into the system. The use of reverse repos can be regarded as the Fed’s principal liquidity management tool when the banks have substantial reserves parked with the Fed, which is the case today.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Basel 3: A Revolution That Once Again No One Noticed

April 10, 2019

Basel 3: A Revolution That Once Again No One Noticed

By Aleksandr Khaldey
Translated by Ollie Richardson and Angelina Siard
cross posted with https://www.stalkerzone.org/basel-3-a-revolution-that-once-again-no-one-noticed/
source: http://www.iarex.ru/articles/65626.html

Real revolutions are taking place not on squares, but in the quiet of offices, and that’s why nobody noticed the world revolution that took place on March 29th 2019. Only a small wave passed across the periphery of the information field, and the momentum faded away because the situation was described in terms unclear to the masses.

No “Freedom, equality, brotherhood”, “Motherland or death”, or “Power to Councils, peace to the people, bread to the hungry, factories to the worker, and land to the farmers” – none of these masterpieces of world populism were used. And that’s why what happened was understood in Russia by only a few people. And they made such comments that the masses either did not fully listen to them or did not read up to the end. Or they did listen to the end, but didn’t understand anything.

But they should’ve, because the world changed so cardinally that it is indeed time for Nathan Rothschild, having crumpled a hat in his hand, to climb onto an armoured Rolls-Royce [a joke referencing what Lenin did – ed], and to shout from on top of it to all the Universe: “Comrades! The world revolution, the need for which revolutionaries spoke about for a long time, came true!” [paraphrasing what Lenin said – ed] And he would be completely right. It’s just that the results of the revolution will be implemented slowly, and that’s why they are imperceptible for the population. But the effects, nevertheless, will be soon seen by absolutely everyone, up to the last cook who even doesn’t seek to learn to govern the state soon.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Chapter 6: American, Won and Lost

March 25, 2019

CHAPTER 6: AMERICA, WON AND LOST.

After the United States gained its independence from Britain, it became powerful in the world in two very different ways: as an idea, and as a reality.

‘America the idea’ is a land of freedom and democracy, equality and opportunity, promoting these aspirations and values across the world.

‘America the reality’ is an international power. It was built on genocide and slavery. Today, a carefully managed monetary system allots wealth to those who do no productive work. In the wider world, America destabilizes popular governments, promotes tyrannies, creates dollars to purchase foreign resources for corporate exploitation and sponsors foreign wars to establish new bases of military and financial power.

For a long time ‘American the idea’ successfully camouflaged the activities of ‘America the reality’. Today the camouflage is wearing very thin indeed.

‘America the reality’ became stronger than ‘America the idea’ as the powers of money and corporate industry won out over the idealism and the good intentions of many of its ‘founding fathers’^[1] and of countless others. Central to this development was the adoption of British banking as a way of creating money.

The adoption of British banking by America has an interesting history. After Independence, the American elite opted for the method favoured by their old colonial masters and rejected homegrown approaches to money-creation, some of which had been both just and efficient (see below).

The new elite liked British banking for the same reason it was loved by the British parliament – because it favoured government power and private wealth. The collusion of finance and government power, via circulating credit, is a very resilient form of concentrated power, because although everyone can see the bad effects, few people understand how it works. Governments across the world have since adopted the method for the same reasons: to augment their own power, and to make it easy for their supporters to increase their own wealth.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

How Digital Banking Makes You More Vulnerable

February 15, 2019

A man takes part in a hacking contest during the Def Con hacker convention in Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S. on July 29, 2017. (Reuters/Steve Marcus)

How Digital Banking Makes You More Vulnerable

Banking – and bank robbery – have entered the digital age and all is not well.

Safes and vaults used to be how banks protected your money. Now the money completely accessible through your digital identity. But how safe is your digital identity?

Needless to say, banking has changed. Although managing financial assets, providing services and processing transactions remains retail financial institutions’ primary functions, they’re also charged with protecting the most prized and valuable assets of all: their customers’ digital identities. That would include yours as well as mine. They’re spending vast sums on it as well. Unfortunately, achieving total security is more of a challenge than paying interest on a CD or interest-bearing checking account.

Invasive Banking Laws Make You Vulnerable

One of the biggest changes in banking over the past decade or so is how much individual privacy has been eliminated. With various anti-money laundering laws and protocols put in place since the 9-11 Attacks, banks have been given new powers aimed at identifying sources of funds and recipients of financial transfers. Furthermore, strict limits on how you transfer or receive money – how much, how often, from whom or to and from where – have resulted in banks knowing more about their clients’ lives than ever before.

But that invasiveness has left clients’ identity incredibly vulnerable. In the past, some banks were slower in adopting client data security tools and protocols necessary to protect personal and corporate client identity details due to conflicting interests. And even those that did so couldn’t be certain that their efforts were successful. Even with the most sophisticated systems in place, that ambiguity remains today.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Chapter 4: Early Days

February 5, 2019

CHAPTER 4: EARLY DAYS.

The situation we are in today has evolved over many centuries. Economists had plenty of time and opportunity to comment – and comment they did. Only recently has it become highly controversial to notice that banks create money, let alone to discuss the implications.[1] This makes the comments of earlier economists particularly interesting – for their honesty and perceptiveness.

This chapter begins with economists commenting on the increasing power and influence of bank-credit. It finishes with a fascinating (and very modern) suggestion from 1707 of how money shouldbe created, fairly and realistically for the benefit of all. The proposal is similar to many reform proposals being put forward today.

Here are some features of bank-money that writers on economics were reacting to (some unfavourably, some favourably):

Bankers create more in ‘credit’ than they have in ‘cash’.
Their credit becomes money when it circulates in making payments.
When bank-credit becomes money, interest siphons money from working and productive people to wealthy and powerful people.^[2]
Money created by banks increases the powers of government and concentrates the power of capital in fewer and fewer hands.
Bank-credit feeds war, predatory nationalism and national debt.
Increased concentrations of power bring new moral values: neglecting justice in favour of social management, exploitation and direction from above.

For roughly two thousand years, from the days of Aristotle to the end of the Middle Ages, economists did not pretend to be ‘scientists’. First and foremost, they were moral philosophers. They wrote about money and power in relation to law and the morality of human well-being. Aristotle, for instance, believed that money should be a means of exchange, not allowed to ‘breed’ more money.^[3] Money, he said, is a human invention. We must be careful that it produces good, not evil.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Money: How Its Past Predicts Its Future

January 11, 2019

Money: How Its Past Predicts Its Future

What is money, where does it come from and more importantly where does it go?

At first glance, it might appear inexplicable and bizarre that our governments and our rulers have managed to keep their stronghold over the monetary system for 2000 years, especially when one thinks about the countless ways in which they abused that power and used their monopoly to the detriment of their own citizens. It was a mass delusion that facilitated this, a blind belief that they, and they alone, can be trusted with this vital task while looking out for our best interests as well. However, now, as mistrust against our rulers is justifiably deepening, it is becoming increasingly clear that only we as individuals can ensure our best interests and it is only a matter of time before the entire ill-founded edifice comes crumbling down.

To answer all these questions about money, we need to first understand its history — keeping in mind that those who don’t know history are condemned to repeat it. Everything started when people settled down and instead of living off nature they started adding value to it; this was the beginning of private property rights. In addition, men started to realize that some people are better at performing specific duties than others and thus set into motion what we today understand as the division of labor. This increased economic output and in general terms, everyone became better off. This transition in how work was performed in an economy made trade between individuals a necessity. Thus barter, or the exchange of real goods and services against other real goods and services, became commonplace. Barter also had its disadvantages, because it required what is known as a “double coincidence of wants” in order to function.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Does China Have Enough Gold to Move Toward Hard Currency?

November 20, 2018

Does China Have Enough Gold to Move Toward Hard Currency?

Are the Chinese Keynesian?

We can be reasonably certain that Chinese government officials approaching middle age have been heavily westernised through their education. Nowhere is this likely to matter more than in the fields of finance and economics. In these disciplines there is perhaps a division between them and the old guard, exemplified and fronted by President Xi. The grey-beards who guide the National Peoples Congress are aging, and the brightest and best of their successors understand economic analysis differently, having been tutored in Western universities.

It has not yet been a noticeable problem in the current, relatively stable economic and financial environment. Quiet evolution is rarely disruptive of the status quo, and so long as it reflects the changes in society generally, the machinery of government will chug on. But when (it is never “if”) the next global credit crisis develops, China’s ability to handle it could be badly compromised.

This article thinks through the next credit crisis from China’s point of view. Given early signals from the state of the credit cycle in America and from growing instability in global financial markets, the timing could be suddenly relevant. China must embrace sound money as her escape route from a disintegrating global fiat-money system, but to do so she will have to discard the neo-Keynesian economics of the West, which she has adopted as the mainspring of her own economic advancement.

With Western-educated economists imbedded in China’s administration, has China retained the collective nous to understand the flaws, limitations and dangers of the West’s fiat money system? Can she build on the benefits of the sound-money approach which led her to accumulate gold, and to encourage her citizens to do so as well?

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Global Banking Stocks Are Crashing Hard – Just Like They Did In 2008

October 23, 2018

Global Banking Stocks Are Crashing Hard – Just Like They Did In 2008

Global stocks are falling precipitously once again, and banking stocks are leading the way. If this reminds you of 2008, it should, because that is precisely what we witnessed back then. Banking stocks collapsed as fear gripped the marketplace, and ultimately many large global banks had to be bailed out either directly or indirectly by their national governments as they failed one after another. The health of the banking system is absolutely paramount, because the flow of money is our economic lifeblood. When the flow of money tightens up during a credit crunch, the consequences can be rapid and dramatic just like we witnessed in 2008.

So let’s keep a very close eye on banking stocks. Global systemically important bank stocks surged in the aftermath of Trump’s victory in 2016, but now they are absolutely plunging. They are now down a whopping 27 percent from the peak, and that puts them solidly in bear market territory.

U.S. banking stocks are not officially in bear market territory yet, but they are getting close. At this point, they are now down 17 percent from the peak…

Monday early afternoon, the US KBW Bank index, which tracks large US banks and serves as a benchmark for the banking sector, is down 2.5% at the moment. It has dropped 17% from its post-Financial Crisis high on January 29.

Of course European banking stocks are doing much worse. Right now they are down 27 percent from the peak and 23 percent from a year ago. The following comes from Wolf Richter…

But unlike their American brethren, the European banks have remained stuck in the miserable Financial Crisis mire – a financial crisis that in Europe was followed by the Euro Debt Crisis. The Stoxx 600 bank index, which covers major European banks, including our hero Deutsche Bank, has plunged 27% since February 29, 2018, and is down 23% from a year ago

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

More Italians Move Savings To Switzerland As Fears Of Banking “Doom Loop” Intensify

October 18, 2018

More Italians Move Savings To Switzerland As Fears Of Banking “Doom Loop” Intensify

With the euro weakening against the Swiss franc (recently trading at session lows of 1.14) and Italian stocks and bonds tumbling once again on reports that the European Commission is planning to reject the Italian draft budget plan submitted earlier this week – a repudiation of Italy’s populist leaders that was widely anticipated – the Telegraph’s Ambrose Evans-Pritchard offered a glimpse into how middle-class Italians are reacting to the deteriorating relationship between Italy and the EU, and its attendant impact on the country’s banks and capital markets. In a trend that’s eerily reminiscent of the banking run that precipitated the near-collapse of the Greek banking system (most recently in 2015), Italians are scrambling to convert their euros into Swiss francs and stash them across the country’s northern border with Switzerland.

Right now, the movement has mostly been limited to the wealthy. “The big players” have already gotten out…

The Swiss group Albacore Wealth Management told Italy’s Il Sole had received a wave of inquiries from Italians with €5m to €10m in liquid capital. The super-rich are already a step ahead. “The big fish have been organizing the expatriation of their wealth for some time,” it said.

…and those with between 200,000 euros and 300,000 euros in assets are moving more quickly, inspired by memories of desperate Greeks struggling with capital controls that restricted ATM withdrawals.

“There is fear creeping in,” said Massimo Gionso, head of family wealth managers CFO Sim in Milan.

“People are concerned that if we get into the same situation as Greece, they might find the banks are closed and they can take out only €50 a day from cash machines. They don’t want to risk it,” he told the Daily Telegraph.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Why the Fed Denied the Narrow Bank

September 18, 2018

WHY THE FED DENIED THE NARROW BANK

It’s not every day that a clear example showing the horrors of central planning comes along—the doublethink, the distortions, and the perverse incentives. It’s not every year that such an example occurs for monetary central planning. One came to the national attention this week.

A company called TNB applied for a Master Account with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Their application was denied. They have sued.

First, let’s consider TNB. It’s an acronym for The Narrow Bank. A so called narrow bank is a bank that does not engage in most of the activities of a regular bank. It simply takes in deposits and puts them in an account at the Fed. The Fed pays 1.95%, and a narrow bank would have low costs, so it could pass most of this to its depositors. This is pretty attractive, and without the real estate and commercial lending risks—not to mention derivatives exposure—it’s less risky than a regular bank. According to Bloomberg’s Matt Levine, saving accounts for large depositors average only 0.08% interest.

So it’s easy to see why many believe that the Fed’s reason to refuse an account to TNB is unsavory: to protecting the crony too-big-to-fail banks. That is a plausible explanation for sure, but there is much more.

The Bank: Spindled, Folded, and Mutilated

There has been a long, slow process—punctuated by big changes in responses to crises—of perverting the banks. Before the first world war, when a retailer received consumer goods he would sign a bill acknowledging delivery. Typically, he had 90 days to pay, which was enough time to sell the goods through to the consumer. The wholesaler could endorse this and pass it to his creditors. The bill traded at a discount to its face value.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

John Law and the Mississippi Bubble – 300 Years Later

September 9, 2018

John Law and the Mississippi Bubble – 300 Years Later

Most people are aware that historically there have been speculative bubbles. Some of them can even name a few – the South Sea bubble, tulips, and more recently dot-coms. Some historians can go even further, quoting the famous account by Charles Mackay of the South Sea bubble, the tulip mania and the Mississippi bubble, published in the mid-nineteenth century.

The most valuable bubble empirically for the purpose of our elucidation has to be the Mississippi bubble, whose central figure was John Law. Law, a Scotsman whose father’s profession was as a goldsmith and banker in Edinburgh, set up an inflation scheme in 1716 to rescue France’s finances. He proposed to the Regent for the infant Louis XIV a scheme that would be based on a new paper currency.

Law was a somewhat louche character, who in his Continental travels had spent his mornings studying finance and the principles of trade, and the evenings in the gaming-houses of Europe. He was a successful gambler, because of his ability to calculate odds.

Some similarities with the personality of Keynes two hundred years later are striking. Keynes was a mathematician first, and an economist second. Their approach was also similar: see a problem and try to find a solution, instead of seeing a problem and trying to understand why it existed before solving it. Both Law and Keynes felt that sound money was too restrictive for the enhancement of an economy.

Consequently, much of what Law proposed and then enacted in France rhymes with our neo-Keynesian world today. The difference, perhaps, is that when given the opportunity, Law seized it, and had ultimate financial and monetary power. He harnessed the roles of a central bank, monopolist in international trade, stock promoter and finance minister.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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