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“Deutsche Bank Poses The Greatest Risk To The Global Financial System”: IMF

“Deutsche Bank Poses The Greatest Risk To The Global Financial System”: IMF

Over three years ago we wrote “At $72.8 Trillion, Presenting The Bank With The Biggest Derivative Exposure In The World” in which we introduced a bank few until then had imagined was the riskiest in the world.

As we explained then “the bank with the single largest derivative exposure is not located in the US at all, but in the heart of Europe, and its name, as some may have guessed by now, is Deutsche Bank. The amount in question? €55,605,039,000,000. Which, converted into USD at the current EURUSD exchange rate amounts to $72,842,601,090,000….  Or roughly $2 trillion more than JPMorgan’s.”

So here we are three years later, when not only did Deutsche Bank just flunk the Fed’s stress test for the second year in a row, but moments ago in a far more damning analysis, none other than the IMF disclosed that Deutsche Bank poses the greatest systemic risk to the global financial system, explicitly stating that the German bank “appears to be the most important net contributor to systemic risks.”

Yes, the same bank whose stock price hit a record low just two days ago.

Here is the key section in the report:

Domestically, the largest German banks and insurance companies are highly interconnected. The highest degree of interconnectedness can be found between Allianz, Munich Re, Hannover Re, Deutsche Bank, Commerzbank and Aareal bank, with Allianz being the largest contributor to systemic risks among the publicly-traded German financials. Both Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank are the source of outward spillovers to most other publicly-listed banks and insurers. Given the likelihood of distress spillovers between banks and life insurers, close monitoring and continued systemic risk analysis by authorities is warranted. 

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

The Fed Sends a Frightening Letter to JPMorgan and Corporate Media Yawns

The Fed Sends a Frightening Letter to JPMorgan and Corporate Media Yawns

Jamie Dimon, Testifying Before the Senate Banking Committee on June 13, 2012

Jamie Dimon, Testifying Before the Senate Banking Committee on June 13, 2012 Over Massive Derivative Losses at the Depository Bank of JPMorgan Chase

Yesterday the Federal Reserve released a 19-page letter that it and the FDIC had issued to Jamie Dimon, the Chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, on April 12 as a result of its failure to present a credible plan for winding itself down if the bank failed. The letter carried frightening passages and large blocks of redacted material in critical areas, instilling in any careful reader a sense of panic about the U.S. financial system.

A rational observer of Wall Street’s serial hubris might have expected some key segments of this letter to make it into the business press. A mere eight years ago the United States experienced a complete meltdown of its financial system, leading to the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression. President Obama and regulators have been assuring us over these intervening eight years that things are under control as a result of the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation. But according to the letter the Fed and FDIC issued on April 12 to JPMorgan Chase, the country’s largest bank with over $2 trillion in assets and $51 trillion in notional amounts of derivatives, things are decidedly not under control.

At the top of page 11, the Federal regulators reveal that they have “identified a deficiency” in JPMorgan’s wind-down plan which if not properly addressed could “pose serious adverse effects to the financial stability of the United States.” Why didn’t JPMorgan’s Board of Directors or its legions of lawyers catch this?

It’s important to parse the phrasing of that sentence. The Federal regulators didn’t say JPMorgan could pose a threat to its shareholders or Wall Street or the markets. It said the potential threat was to “the financial stability of the United States.”

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

The Lock Down Has Begun: JP Morgan Restricts ATM Cash Withdrawals

The Lock Down Has Begun: JP Morgan Restricts ATM Cash Withdrawals

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Last month All News Pipeline warned that major banks were preparing to tighten the screws on American account holders starting April 1st.

It appears that the lock-down of cash has begun.

Citing criminal activity as a factor, JP Morgan is limiting cash withdrawals at ATM machines.

The bank said there doesn’t appear to be fraud involved. But partly due to heightened regulatory scrutiny, banks are paying more attention to large cash transfers that could be a sign of money laundering or other types of shady activity. Typically, the card-issuing bank sets withdrawal limits, not the bank owning the ATM.

The move by the largest bank in the U.S. doesn’t affect J.P. Morgan Chase’s own customers, whose maximum daily withdrawals are set depending on the client’s account type. The bank has seen high-dollar withdrawals at both new and old ATMs, said bank spokeswoman Patricia Wexler.

J.P. Morgan Chase’s change last month affects roughly 18,000 automated teller machines nationwide and followed an interim step earlier this year limiting noncustomer cash removals at $1,000 per transaction. The earlier move was made as a temporary fix while the bank could make software changes to roll out the more stringent daily limit, Ms. Wexler said.

She added that the bank “felt it was prudent to set withdrawal limits on all of our ATMs” after identifying some large cash withdrawals from noncustomers.

In 2015 we warned readers to divest some of their assets out of bank accounts for this very reason, noting that bank glitches and arbitrary holds would begin to affect more and more depositors. And while the recent move by JP Morgan Chase appears to only affect non-customers, a recent report indicates that the Justice Department has advised bank tellers nationwide to keep any eye out on cash transactions.

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

JPMorgan Just Sounded a $500 Million Alarm Bell On America’s Dying Oil Patch

JPMorgan Just Sounded a $500 Million Alarm Bell On America’s Dying Oil Patch

Back on January 14, we noted that JPMorgan did something they haven’t done in 22 quarters: the bank increased its loan loss provisions.

The “reserve build of ~$100mm [is] driven by $60mm in Oil & Gas and $26mm in Metals & Mining within the commercial banking group,” the bank said.

That led us to ask of JPMorgan the same thing we’ve asked of Wells Fargo, BofA, and every other TBTF that’s gotten itself overextended in America’s soon-to-be bankrupt O&G space: “if a regional bank like BOK Financial was slammed by just one loan (to what we can only assume was a smaller energy firm), where does the buck stop, and how many other regional, or even big, banks, are woefully underreserved in their exposure to energy loans?”

Most importantly, we said, are these follow up questions:

“How long before the impairments and charges currently targeting smaller firms finally shift to the bigger ones? And how underreserved is JPM for that eventuality?

Today, just over a month later, we got the answer ahead of JPM’s investor day, when JPMorgan said it will increase its reserves for oil and gas loans by 60% in Q1.

As you can see from the following slide, provisions will rise by $500 million from $815 million the bank had set aside as of the end of last year. Metals and mining reserves will also rise, by $100 million.

Note also that the bank says it may be forced to provision another $1.5 billion should crude prices stay at or near $25 for an extended period of time.

As is apparent from the chart, Dimon’s “fortress” balance sheet includes some $19 billion in HY O&G exposure. We’re anxious to see if the vaunted billionaire will dismiss the enormous writedowns that are invariably coming in the next few quarters as a “tempest in a teapot.”

We also wonder which bulge bracket bank will be the next to admit that it’s woefully underreserved for 2016’s inevitable crude carnage.

“Time To Panic”? Nigeria Begs World Bank For Massive Loan As Dollar Reserves Dry Up

“Time To Panic”? Nigeria Begs World Bank For Massive Loan As Dollar Reserves Dry Up

Having urged “don’t panic” just 4 short months ago, it appears Nigeria just did just that as the global dollar short squeeze forces the eight-month-old government of President Muhammadu Buhari to beg The World Bank and African Development Bank for $3.5bn in emergency loans to help fund a $15bn deficit in a budget heavy on public spending amid collapsing oil revenuesJust as we warned in December, the dollar shortage has arrived, perhaps now is time to panic after all.

In September, Nigerian central bank Governor Godwin Emefiele ruled out a naira devaluation on Thursday and told people not to panic about a government order which risks draining billions of dollars from the financial system.

In an interview with Reuters, Emefiele said he was ready to inject liquidity if needed into the interbank market, which dried up this week following the directive to government departments to move their funds from commercial banks into a “Treasury Single Account” (TSA) at the central bank.

The policy is part of new President Muhammadu Buhari’s drive to fight corruption, but analysts say it could suck up as much as 10 percent of banking sector deposits in Africa’s biggest economy – playing havoc with banks’ liquidity ratios.

With global oil prices tumbling, banks and companies are already struggling with the consequences of a dive in Nigeria’s energy revenues that has hit the naira currency and triggered flows of capital out of the country.

Then JP Morgan kicked Nigeria out of its influential Emerging Markets Bond Index last week due to restrictions that the central bank imposed on the currency market to support the naira and preserve its foreign exchange reserves.

Since taking office in May, Buhari has vowed to rein in Nigeria’s dependency on oil exports which account for 90 percent of foreign currency earnings.

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

JP Morgan And Citigroup Agree That The U.S. Economy Is Steamrolling Toward A Recession

JP Morgan And Citigroup Agree That The U.S. Economy Is Steamrolling Toward A Recession

Locomotive - Public DomainAs we approach the end of 2015, researchers at both JP Morgan and Citigroup agree that the probability that the U.S. economy will soon plunge into recession is rising.  Just last week, a member of the U.S. House of Representatives asked Janet Yellen about Citigroup’s assessment that there is a 65 percent chance that the United States will experience an economic recession in 2016.  You can read her answer below.  And just a few days ago, JP Morgan economists Michael Feroli, Daniel Silver, Jesse Edgerton, and Robert Mellman released a report in which they declared that “the probability of recession within three years” has risen to “an eye-catching 76%”

“Our longer-run indicators, however, continue to suggest an elevated risk that the expansion is nearing its end, and our preferred model now puts the probability of recession within three years at an eye-catching 76%.”

The good news is that the economists at JP Morgan believe that a recession will probably not hit us within the next six months.  But due to steadily weakening economic conditions, they are convinced that one is almost certain to strike within the next few years

“When we first wrote, only manufacturing sentiment was signaling an above-average probability of imminent recession,” they said. “But recent weakening in the Richmond Fed services survey and the ISM nonmanufacturing index have now pushed the nonmanufacturing sentiment probability up somewhat as well.”

In the short term, the note says that the 6-month likelihood is only 5%, but within a year it stands at 23%, in two years 48%, and in three years the “eye-popping” 76%.

To be honest, I believe that this assessment is far too optimistic, and it appears that researchers at Citigroup agree with me.  According to them, there is a 65 percent chance that the U.S. economy will plunge into recession by the end of next year.  Last week, Janet Yellen was asked about this during testimony before Congress

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

JP Morgan And Citigroup Agree That The U.S. Economy Is Steamrolling Toward A Recession

JP Morgan And Citigroup Agree That The U.S. Economy Is Steamrolling Toward A Recession

Locomotive - Public DomainAs we approach the end of 2015, researchers at both JP Morgan and Citigroup agree that the probability that the U.S. economy will soon plunge into recession is rising.  Just last week, a member of the U.S. House of Representatives asked Janet Yellen about Citigroup’s assessment that there is a 65 percent chance that the United States will experience an economic recession in 2016.  You can read her answer below.  And just a few days ago, JP Morgan economists Michael Feroli, Daniel Silver, Jesse Edgerton, and Robert Mellman released a report in which they declared that “the probability of recession within three years” has risen to “an eye-catching 76%”

“Our longer-run indicators, however, continue to suggest an elevated risk that the expansion is nearing its end, and our preferred model now puts the probability of recession within three years at an eye-catching 76%.”

The good news is that the economists at JP Morgan believe that a recession will probably not hit us within the next six months.  But due to steadily weakening economic conditions, they are convinced that one is almost certain to strike within the next few years

“When we first wrote, only manufacturing sentiment was signaling an above-average probability of imminent recession,” they said. “But recent weakening in the Richmond Fed services survey and the ISM nonmanufacturing index have now pushed the nonmanufacturing sentiment probability up somewhat as well.”

In the short term, the note says that the 6-month likelihood is only 5%, but within a year it stands at 23%, in two years 48%, and in three years the “eye-popping” 76%.

To be honest, I believe that this assessment is far too optimistic, and it appears that researchers at Citigroup agree with me.  According to them, there is a 65 percent chance that the U.S. economy will plunge into recession by the end of next year.  Last week, Janet Yellen was asked about this during testimony before Congress

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

Why This Feels Like a Depression for Most People

Why This Feels Like a Depression for Most People

“And the little screaming fact that sounds through all history: repression works only to strengthen and knit the repressed.”  John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

Everyone has seen the pictures of the unemployed waiting in soup lines during the Great Depression. When you try to tell a propaganda believing, willfully ignorant, mainstream media watching, math challenged consumer we are in the midst of a Greater Depression, they act as if you’ve lost your mind. They will immediately bluster about the 5.1% unemployment rate, record corporate profits, and stock market near all-time highs. The cognitive dissonance of these people is only exceeded by their inability to understand basic mathematical concepts.

The reason you don’t see huge lines of people waiting in soup lines during this Greater Depression is because the government has figured out how to disguise suffering through modern technology. During the height of the Great Depression in 1933, there were 12.8 million Americans unemployed. These were the men pictured in the soup lines. Today, there are 46 million Americans in an electronic soup kitchen line, as their food is distributed through EBT cards (with that angel of mercy JP Morgan reaping billions in profits by processing the transactions).

These 46 million people represent 14% of the U.S. population. There are 23 million households on food stamps in a nation of 123 million households. Therefore, 19% of all households in the U.S. are so poor, they require food assistance to survive. In 1933 there were approximately 126 million Americans living in 30 million households. The government didn’t keep official unemployment records until 1940, but the Department of Labor estimated 12.8 million people were unemployed during the worst year of the Great Depression or 24.9% of the labor force. By 1937 it had fallen to 14.3% or approximately 8 million people.

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

The Pentagon Creates Partnership with Apple to Develop Wearable Tech

The Pentagon Creates Partnership with Apple to Develop Wearable Tech

Screen Shot 2015-08-28 at 10.49.50 AM

Last week, in the post JP Morgan Hires Recently Retired U.S. General, Raymond T. Odierno, I made the following observation:

How can you ensure that the interests of TBTF Wall Street mega banks and the military-intelligence-industrial complex remain aligned? Create a revolving door of course.

Of course it’s much, much bigger than this. The genius of the current status quo system is that it has created a complicated and opaque interlocking system of crony partnerships and interdependencies between the government, mega corporations and academia so massive, wealthy and powerful it has become exceedingly difficult to challenge. This is precisely because almost everyone now depends on it for their paychecks.

Creating such corrupt networks often happens in the shadows, and in recent years has taken the form of “public-private partnerships” and secret trade deals such as the TTP, TTIP and TISA. This is how modern America operates in a nutshell, and it’s continued metastasis is rapidly destroying what’s left of freedom, common sense and free markets in this nation.

Moving along to today’s post, how free does it make you feel that the Department of Defense is partnering with 162 companies, universities and other groups to develop wearable technology? How independent can these companies and universities actually be when they are engaged in such schemes with the U.S. government. The answer is obvious: Not independent at all.

From NBC News:

The Pentagon is teaming up with Apple, Boeing, Harvard and others to develop high-tech sensory gear flexible enough to be worn by people or molded onto the outside of a jet. 

The rapid development of new technologies is forcing the Pentagon to seek partnerships with the private sector rather than developing its technology itself, defense officials say. 

“I’ve been pushing the Pentagon to think outside our five-sided box and invest in innovation here in Silicon Valley and in tech communities across the country,” Defense Secretary Ash Carter said in prepared remarks on Friday. 

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

 

 

 

“QE Benefits Mostly The Wealthy” JPMorgan Admits, And Lists 8 Ways ECB’s QE Will Hurt Everyone Else

“QE Benefits Mostly The Wealthy” JPMorgan Admits, And Lists 8 Ways ECB’s QE Will Hurt Everyone Else

Over the past 48 hours, the world has been bombarded with a relentless array of soundbites, originating either at the ECB, or – inexplicably – out of Greece, the place which has been explicitly isolated by Frankfurt, that the European Central Bank’s QE will benefit everyone.

Setting the record straight: it won’t, and not just in our own words which most are familiar with as we have been repeating them since 2009, but those of JPM’s Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou, who just said what has been painfully clear to all but the 99% ever since the start of QE, namely this: “The wealth effects that come with QE are not evenly distributing. The boost in equity and housing wealth is mostly benefiting their major owners, i.e. the wealthy.”

Thank you JPM. Now if only the central banks will also admit what we have been saying for 6 years, then there will be one less reason for us to continue existing.

And of course, even the benefits to those who stand to gain the most from QE are only temporary. Because the same asset prices which rise thanks to money printing are only transitory, and ultimately mean reverting. To wit: “It potentially creates asset bubbles by lowering asset yields by so much relative to historical norms, that an eventual return to normality will be accompanied with sharp price declines.”

So enjoy your music while it lasts dear 0.1%. Collateral eligible for monetization is becoming increasingly scarce and by our calculations there is about 2 years worth of runway left for G3 assets before central bank interventions in the private market result in a complete paralysis of virtually every asset class, and the end of capital markets as we know them.

As for everyone else, here is a list of 8 ways that the ECB’s QE will hurt, not help, by way of JP Morgan.

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

 

Is Citi The Next AIG: 70 Trillion Reasons Why Citigroup And Congress Scrambled To Pass The Swaps “Push-Out” Rule

Is Citi The Next AIG: 70 Trillion Reasons Why Citigroup And Congress Scrambled To Pass The Swaps “Push-Out” Rule

Earlier today, when we were conducting a routine check with the Office of the Currency Comptroller’s on the total notional amount of derivatives held at the Big 4 banks in the context of the “JPMorgan break up” story, we found something stunning: using the latest, just released Q3 OCC data, JPMorgan is no longer America’s undisputed derivatives king. Well, it still is at the HoldCo level, where it is number one in terms of notional derivatives with $65.5 trillion, but when one steps a level lower, namely the FDIC-insured commercial bank (the National Association or N.A.) level, something quite disturbing emerges. This:

As the chart above, which references Table 1 in the Q3 OCC report, shows Citigroup, or rather its FDIC-insuredCitibank National Association entity, just surpassed JPM and is now the biggest single holder of total derivatives in the US. Furthermore, as the charts below show, while every other bank was derisking its balance sheet, Citi not only increased its total derivative holdings by $1 trillion in Q2, but by a whopping, and perhaps even record, $9 trillion in the just concluded third quarter to $70.2 trillion!

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

 

The Cartel: How BP Got Insider Tips Through a Secret Chat Room – Bloomberg

The Cartel: How BP Got Insider Tips Through a Secret Chat Room – Bloomberg.

Halfway down a muddy, secluded road on marshland in suburban Essex sits Wharf Pool, a lake stocked with some of the biggest freshwater fish you will ever see.

A white sign with red lettering reads: “Private Syndicate: Strictly Members Only.” A metal gate, a barbed-wire fence and two CCTV cameras bar the way. Anglers hoping to spend time on the lake’s carefully tended banks must join a waiting list. Those who make it to the top pay a membership fee that buys them the chance to catch a carp that weighs more than a Jack Russell. There are hundreds of them swimming beneath the surface. It’s close to shooting fish in a barrel.

An hour away by train, in London’s financial district, the lake’s owners ply their trade. Wharf Pool was purchased for about 250,000 pounds ($388,000) in 2012 by Richard Usher, the former JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) trader at the center of a global investigation into corruption in the foreign-exchange market, and Andrew White, a currency trader at oil company BP Plc. (BP/)

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

The Rigging Triangle Exposed: The JPMorgan-British Petroleum-Bank Of England Cartel Full Frontal | Zero Hedge

The Rigging Triangle Exposed: The JPMorgan-British Petroleum-Bank Of England Cartel Full Frontal | Zero Hedge.

The name Dick Usher is familiar to regular readers: he was the head of spot foreign exchange for JPMorgan, and the bank’s alleged chief FX market manipulator, who was promptly fired after it was revealed that JPM was the bank coordinating the biggest FX rigging scheme in history, as initially revealed in “Another JPMorganite Busted For “Bandits’ Club” Market Manipulation.” Subsequent revelations – which would have been impossible without the tremendous reporting of Bloomberg’s Liam Vaughan – showed that JPM was not alone: as recent legal actions confirmed, virtually every single bank was also a keen FX rigging participant. However, the undisputed ringleader was always America’s largest bank, which would make sense: having a virtually unlimited balance sheet, JPM could outlast practically any margin call, and make money while its far smaller peers were closed out of trades… and existence.

But while the past year revealed that FX rigging was a just as pervasive, if not even more profitable industry for banks than the great Libor-fixing scandal (for details see “How To Rig FX Like A Pro “Bandit”, And Make Millions In The Process“), the conventional wisdom was that it involved almost exclusively bankers at the largest global banks including JPM, Goldman, Deutsche, Barclays, RBS, HSBC, and UBS.

Now, courtesy of some more brilliant reporting by Vaughan, we can finally link banks with the other two facets of what has emerged to be an unprecedented FX-rigging “triangle” cartel: private sector companies that have no direct banking operations yet who have intimate prop trading exposure, as well as central banks themselves.

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

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