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China Proposes Unprecedented Nationalization Of Insolvent Companies: Banks Will Equitize Non-Performing Loans

March 10, 2016

China Proposes Unprecedented Nationalization Of Insolvent Companies: Banks Will Equitize Non-Performing Loans

In what may be the biggest news of the day, and certainly with far greater implications than whatever Mario Draghi will announce in a few hours when we will again witness the ECB doing not “whatever it takes” but “whatever it can do”, moments ago Reuters reported that China is preparing for an unprecedented overhaul in how it treats it trillions in non-performing loans.

Recall that as we first wrote last summer, and as subsequently Kyle Bass made it the centerpiece of his “short Yuan” investment thesis, the “neutron bomb” in the heart of China’s impaired financial system is the trillions – officially at $614 billion but realistically anywhere between 8% and 20% of China’s total $35 trillion in bank assets – in non-performing loans. It is the unknown treatment of these NPLs that has been the greatest threat to China’s just as vast deposit base amounting to well over $20 trillion, which has been the fundamental catalyst behind China’s record capital flight as depositors have been eager to move their savings as far from China’s domestic banks as possible.

As a result, conventional thinking such as that proposed by Bass, Ray Dalio, KKR and many others, speculated that China will have to devalue its currency in order to inflate away what is fundamentally an excess debt problem as the alternative is unleashing a massive debt default tsunami and “admitting” to the world just how insolvent China’s state-owned banks truly are, not to mention leading to the layoffs of tens of millions of workers by these zombie companies.

However, China now appears to be taking a surprisingly different track, and according to a Reuters report China’s central bank is preparing regulations that would allow commercial banks to swap non-performing loans of companies for stakes in those firms. Reuters sources said the release of a new document explaining the regulatory change was imminent.

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

HSBC Looks At “Life Below Zero,” Says “Helicopter Money” May Be The Only Savior

February 27, 2016

HSBC Looks At “Life Below Zero,” Says “Helicopter Money” May Be The Only Savior

In many ways, 2016 has been the year that the world woke up to how far down Krugman’s rabbit hole (trademark) DM central bankers have plunged in a largely futile effort to resuscitate global growth.

For whatever reason, Haruhiko Kuroda’s move into NIRP seemed to spark a heretofore unseen level of public debate about the drawbacks of negative rates. Indeed, NIRP became so prevalent in the public consciousness that celebrities began to discuss central bank policy on Twitter.

When we say “for whatever reason” we don’t mean that the public shouldn’t be concerned about NIRP. In fact, we mean the exact opposite. The ECB, the Nationalbank, the SNB, and the Riksbank have all been mired in ineffectual NIRP for quite sometime and the public seemed almost completely oblivious. Indeed, even the financial media treated this lunacy as though it were some kind of cute Keynesian experiment that could be safely confined to Europe which would serve as a testing ground for whether policies that fly in the face of the financial market equivalent of Newtonian physics could be implemented without the world suddenly imploding.

We imagine the fact that equity markets got off to such a volatile start to the year, combined with the fact that crude continued to plunge and at one point looked as though it might sink into the teens, led quite a few people to look towards the monetary Mount Olympus (where “gods” like Draghi, Yellen, and Kuroda intervene in human affairs when necessary to secure “desirable” economic outcomes) only to discover that not only has all the counter-cyclical maneuverability been exhausted, we’ve actually moved beyond the point where the ammo is gone into a realm where the negative rate mortgage is a reality.

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

An Escalating War on Cash

February 25, 2016

An Escalating War on Cash
On February 16th, The Washington Post printed the article, “It’s time to kill the $100 bill.” This came on the heels of a CNNMoney item, the day before, entitled “Death of the 500 euro bill getting closer.” The former cited a recent Harvard Kennedy School working paper, No. 52 by Senior Fellow Peter Sands, concluding that the abolition of high denomination notes would help deter “tax evasion, financial crime, terrorist finance and corruption.” In recent days, former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, ECB President Mario Draghi, and even the editorial board of the New York Times, came out in support of the elimination of large currency notes. Apart from the question as to why these calls are being raised now with such frequency, the larger issue is whether these moves are actually needed or if they merely a subterfuge for more complex economic manipulations by central banks to extend control over private wealth.
In early 2015, it was reported that Spain had already limited private cash transactions to 2,500 euros. Italy and France set limits of 1,000 euros. In France, all cash withdrawals in excess of 10,000 euros in a single month must be reported to government agencies. In the U.S., such limits are $10,000 per withdrawal. China, India and Sweden are among those with plans under way to eradicate cash.
On April 20, 2015, the Mises Institute reported that Chase, a subsidiary of JPMorgan Chase and a bailout recipient of some $25 billion (ProPublica, 2/22/16), had announced restrictions on its customers’ ability to use cash in the payment of credit cards, mortgages, equity lines and auto loans. Before that, on April 1, 2015, Chase, in concert with JPMorgan, updated its safe deposit box lease agreement to provide, “You agree not to store any cash or coins [including gold and silver] other than those found to have a collectible value.”

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

Draghi Lies Claiming withdrawing €500 note is for crime not Taxes

February 16, 2016

Draghi Lies Claiming withdrawing €500 note is for crime not Taxes 

The Hunt for Taxes

While Mario Draghi has denied that the European Central Bank would only withdraw its €500 highest-denomination banknote to combat crime, not to curb the use of paper money, you really cannot expect that he would tell the truth.  If he really told the truth, hew would set off a panic withdraw from banks.

The USA use to print $10,000 notes in 1934. The stopped with Roosevelt and the birth of Socialism to prevent people from storing cash to escape taxes. There was no excuse of terrorism or crime. Crime has actually declined. Draghi is simply engaging in political bullshit – deny the truth so you can quietly remove cash from society. Teddy Roosevelt even used recorded speeches for people to listen to during the election of 1912 to press the socialist agenda under the Progressive Party. The night of the election in 1932, there were rumors that Roosevelt would close the banks and devalue the dollar. Hoover begged him to come out and say he would not for the rumor set in motion a banking panic. Those with money withdrew it. Roosevelt came out the high of the election and lied to the public saying he would never do such a thing. In fact, if he told the truth, people would have poured into the banks and withdrew their deposits in gold. So he lied, and then demanded all gold be turned over to the Treasury, and then he devalued the dollar in 1934.

So never pat attention to the words of politicians or central bankers. They can never say what they will do for the public will act in a counter-trend move. Draghi is withdrawing the €500 notes for the same reason FDR stopped the Treasury from issuing high denomination notes – taxes; not crime nor terrorism. It has always been about money.€

Weekly Commentary: Draghi Ready to Fight

January 24, 2016

Weekly Commentary: Draghi Ready to Fight

A few Friday Bloomberg headlines: “Asian Stocks Jump by Most in Four Months on Stimulus Speculation;” “Japanese Stocks Surge by Most in Four Months as Bears Retreat;” “Hong Kong Dollar Jumps Most in 12 Years as Global Stocks Rally.” It was quite a week.

Back in early December I posited that Mario Draghi had evolved into the world’s most powerful central banker. I also stated my view that his inability to orchestrate a larger ECB QE program was likely an inflection point in the markets’ confidence in Draghi and central banking more generally. Mario’s not going down without a fight.

Global markets were too close to dislocating this week. Wednesday saw the S&P500 trade decisively below August lows. Japan’s Nikkei 225 Index sank to test November 2014 lows. Emerging stocks fell to six-year lows, with European equities at 13-month lows. Wednesday also saw WTI crude trade below $27 (sinking almost 7%), boosting y-t-d losses to 25%. Credit spreads were blowing out, and currency markets were increasingly disorderly. Early Thursday trading saw the Russian ruble down 5.3% (at a record low vs. dollar), with Brazil’s real also under intense pressure. The Hong Kong dollar peg was looking vulnerable. The VIX traded to the highest level since the August “flash crash,” while the Japanese yen traded to one-year highs (vs. $). De-risking/de-leveraging dynamics were quickly overwhelming global markets.

The Italian banking sector sank 7% Wednesday, pushing y-t-d losses above 20% (down 32% from 2015 highs). Fears of mounting bad loans and undercapitalization have been weighing on Italian and European bank shares and bonds. This week also saw a notable widening of sovereign spreads to bunds. Despite a post-Draghi narrowing of risk premiums, Italian spreads to bunds widened another seven bps this week, with Portuguese spreads blowing out 35 bps. A fragile European financial sector was rapidly succumbing to a deepening global financial crisis.

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

Can’t Argue With a Confident Man

December 12, 2015

CAN’T ARGUE WITH A CONFIDENT MAN

“I can say therefore with confidence – and without any complacency – that we will secure the return of inflation to 2% without undue delay, because we are currently deploying tools that we believe will achieve this, and because we can, in any case, deploy our tools further if that proves necessary.”

– Former Goldman Sachs employee and ECB President Mario Draghi, 4 December 2015.

“You have what degree of confidence in your ability to control this [inflation] ?”

“100%.”

– Ben Bernanke being interviewed on ’60 Minutes’, 5 December 2010.

“Do not arouse the wrath of the great and powerful Oz ! ..Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.”

– The Wizard of Oz.

In economics, the fancy-sounding ‘general equilibrium theory’ holds that in a complex economy, a set of prices exists that will result in an overall (general) equilibrium. This theory was brought to you in large part by the economist and idiot Léon Walras, whose principles only exist in the first place because he stole them from the world of physics.

But ‘general equilibrium theory’ is not the only economic theory addressing order, or the lack of it, in markets. George Soros advocates an alternative which he terms ‘reflexivity’:

“..financial markets can create inaccurate expectations and then change reality to accord with them. This is the opposite of the process described in textbooks and built into economic models, which always assume that financial expectations adapt to reality, not the other way round.”

Walras spent his last years lonely, bitter and afflicted by dementia. George Soros is a billionaire. Draw your own conclusions as to which of these theories is more likely to be correct.

 

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

Did Mario Draghi Just Leak The Bazooka? Two-Tiered NIRP System May Presage Big Rate Cut

November 25, 2015

Did Mario Draghi Just Leak The Bazooka? Two-Tiered NIRP System May Presage Big Rate Cut

Back in September (and on several subsequent occasions), we discussed the implications of a further cut to the ECB’s depo rate. A plunge further into NIRP-dom would have serious consequences for the Riksbank, the SNB, the Nationalbank, and the Norges Bank.

In world dominated by beggar-thy-neighbor monetary policy, one cut begets another in race to the bottom as everyone scrambles to, i) keep their currency from soaring and ii) keep the inflationary impulse alive.

As Barclays explained in great detail several months ago, another ECB depo rate cut would have an outsized effect of the franc:

A cut in the ECB’s deposit rate further into negative territory likely would have a significant impact on the EURCHF exchange rate and provoke a more immediate response from the SNB. Indeed, we expect that a cut in the ECB’s deposit rate may have a greater effect on EURCHF than on other EUR crosses. Switzerland applies its negative deposit rate to only a fraction of reserves, currently about 1/3rd of sight deposits by our calculation. In contrast, negative deposit rates apply to all reserves held at the ECB, Riksbank and Denmark’s Nationalbank. Consequently, a cut to the ECB’s deposit rate likely has a larger impact both on the economy and on the exchange rate than a proportionate cut by the SNB. 

Now, it appears Mario Draghi may be about to go the Swiss route by introducing a tiered system for the application of negative rates. As Reuters reports, “Euro zone central bank officials are considering options such as whether to stagger charges on banks hoarding cash ahead of the next European Central Bank meeting, according to officials.”

“Officials are discussing a split-level rate,” Reuters goes on to note, adding that the “contested step would impose a higher charge on banks depending on the amount of cash they deposit with the ECB.”

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

One Trader Loses It Over Draghi And Yellen’s Lies

October 29, 2015

One Trader Loses It Over Draghi And Yellen’s Lies

Epsilon Theory’s Ben Hunt is one of our favorite commentators and market analysts. He is a very rational, even-keeled and objective observer and trader of the capital markets, no matter how broken or centrally-planned they may be. Which is why we were disappointed to see that the two most recent appearances by the world’s foremost central-planners, Draghi and Yellen, managed to incense him as much as they did.

From Ben Hunt of Salient Partners (pdf)

Funny How?

I was watching the Draghi press conference the other week, and I had to turn off the TV. I found myself getting so … angry … not just at what Draghi was saying, but also the live blog reaction and the live market reaction, that I decided I was better off stepping back from the actual event and trying to figure out why I was having such a powerfully negative emotional reaction to the entire charade. It’s not the charade itself. I mean, if I were outraged by every inauthentic display of central banker “communication policy” and the media lapdog response, I’d be in some sort of permanent apoplectic fit. In fact, neither the central bankers nor the media even pretend any more that extraordinary monetary policy has any sort of material impact on the real economy, which I suppose is actually progress on the authenticity scale in a perverse sort of way.

I travel a lot speaking to investors and allocators of all sizes and political persuasions. I also read a lot from a wide variety of sources, also of all sizes and political persuasions. What I’m seeing and hearing on every issue that concerns capital markets and economics is not only an accelerated polarization of policy views between the left and the right (greater “distance” between the views), but also – and more troubling – a polarization (and in many cases a non-modal distribution) of policy views within the left and the right. The kicker: I think that this polarization is almost entirely driven by monetary policy and the power/wealth inequalities it creates.

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

 

Sweden Launches MOAR QE, As Krugman Paradise Quadruples Down After Dovish Draghi

October 28, 2015

Sweden Launches MOAR QE, As Krugman Paradise Quadruples Down After Dovish Draghi

Over the last six months, we’ve documented Sweden’s descent into the Keynesian Twilight Zone in great detail.

Once upon a time, the Riksbank actually tried to raise rates, only to be lambasted by a furious Paul Krugman who accused the central bank of unnecessarily transforming Sweden from “recovery rockstar” to deflationary deathtrap. Tragically, the Riksbank listened to Krugman and reversed course in 2011. Before you knew it, rates had plunged 35 basis points into NIRP-dom. Unemployment subsequently fell, but the promised lift in inflation didn’t quite pan out. Sweden did, however, get a massive housing bubble for their trouble:

h/t @auaurelija

Obviously, those charts beg the question of why in the world Sweden (or Denmark, or Norway for that matter… or hell, even the US) are trying to contend that there’s no inflationary impulse, but let’s leave that for another day.

As for the Riksbank’s QE program, things began to go awry during the summer when the central bank managed to buy such a large percentage of the stock of government bonds that market depth was affected, causing investors to reconsider the trade off between liquidity and the benefits of frontrunning central bank asset purchases. In short, government bond yields began to rise in what perhaps marked the first instance of QE actually breaking.

But that didn’t stop the Riksbank from doubling down and increasing their asset purchases just a week later.

Since then, it’s been touch and go, with Stefan Ingves looking warily south towards Frankfurt hoping Mario Draghi doesn’t do something that sends the krona soaring on the way to ushering in a deflationary impulse.

Well, that’s exactly what Draghi did last week when the ECB telegraphed either a further depo rate cut, an expansion of PSPP, or both in December. That pretty much sealed the deal for the Riksbank – either cut, expand QE, or concede defeat in the global currency wars.

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

Will this Manic Stock Market Rally End in Tears?

October 26, 2015

Will this Manic Stock Market Rally End in Tears?

Can the stock market completely ignore these changes and keep powering higher on the fumes of Mario Draghi’s promises?

Judging by October’s rocket launch, the stock market is back to where it should be, i.e. in rally mode. Yee-haw! All it took to keep the party going was another rate cut in China, another “whatever it takes” assurance from Mario Draghi and blowout earnings from a few tech giants.

So we seem to be right back we we’ve been for seven years: more central bank easing triggers more stock market mania, and stock buybacks and “earnings surprises” push stock valuations ever higher.

But a couple of things have changed recently:

1. China’s expansion has ground to a halt. China’s insatiable demand for commodities and capital has pulled the global economy’s cart for seven long years. Now that this demand is faltering, there is no equivalent economic/financial engine of demand to replace it.

2. Income for the bottom 90% in the developed world is stagnant/declining.The most basic assumption of central bank monetary policies since 2008 (QE, etc.) was that household income would rise as the economy recovered, enabling more household consumption/debt.

This has not turned out to be true: for a variety of structural reasons, income of the bottom 90% of households has actually declined since 2000 when adjusted for official inflation.

3. The “wealth effect” from boosting global stock and junk-bond markets has been very limited. The second basic assumption of central bank monetary policies since 2008 was that the rise in financial assets (stocks, bonds and real estate) would “trickle down” to households who would respond to the psychological sense of increasing wealth by borrowing and consuming more.

What actually happened was the assets of the bottom 90% were gutted in the crashes of 2000-02 and 2008-09 and in many cases never recovered.

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

Goldman Warns On Limits Of Central Bank Policy: “The Road To Hell Is Paved With Good Intentions”

September 25, 2015

Goldman Warns On Limits Of Central Bank Policy: “The Road To Hell Is Paved With Good Intentions”

Back in May, we noted that minutes from the ECB’s April 14-15 policy meeting seem to reveal that the central bank is either obtuse or else suffering from a frightening bout of willful ignorance. Here’s are the excerpts which led us to that assessment:

Since the Governing Council’s previous monetary policy meeting on 4-5 March 2015, the implementation of the ECB’s expanded asset purchase programme (APP) had had a significant impact on euro area financial markets, contributing to further declines in government bond yields.

A strong signal needed to be sent to euro area governments urging them to press ahead with structural reforms and to take measures to improve the business environment. Only with such complementary action could the full benefits of the monetary policy measures be reaped. 

Now obviously, implementing a €1.1 trillion program designed specifically to lower government borrowing costs is the exact opposite of sending a “strong signal” to policymakers regarding the absolute necessity of getting serious about fiscal rectitude. That is, if it does anything, PSPP discourages governments from reining in spending by artificially suppressing borrowing costs, which effectively robs the market of the ability to price government risk.

Well, as it turns out, even if the ECB doesn’t understand this, Mario Draghi’s former employer certainly does, because a new paper co-authored by Goldman’s Huw Pill and Alain Durre acknowledges the role central banks play in discouraging fiscal discipline. Here’s more from Bloomberg:

The unconventional monetary policies of central banks often face limits because they could end up hurting as well as helping economies.

That’s the warning of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. economists Huw Pill and Alain Durre in a paper prepared for the first annual MMF U.K. Monetary and Financial Policy Conference to be held in London on Friday.

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

 

World Is Now “More Exposed than Ever” to Explosive Dollar

September 15, 2015

World Is Now “More Exposed than Ever” to Explosive Dollar

One of the craziest financial creations on earth, available only near the peak of enormous credit bubbles when nothing can ever go wrong, became available this spring: 100-year bonds issued by governments or companies in emerging countries, in currencies they don’t control.

Yield hungry investors in developed markets who purposefully had been driven to near-insanity and drunken benightedness by the zero-interest-rate policies of central banks around the globe jumped on them. For them, it was the way to nirvana.

At the peak of Draghi’s QE hype in April, Mexico, which has a long history of debt crises, was able to sell €1.5 billion of 100-year bonds denominated in euros because yields were even lower in the Eurozone and bond fund managers there even more desperate and insane; at a ludicrously low yield to maturity of 4.2%.

Even more inexplicable was just how Petrobras, Brazil state-controlled oil company, was able to bamboozle investors on June 2 into buying its 100-year dollar-denominated bonds.

At the time, the company had just ended a five-month delay in releasing its financial statements. It’s tangled up in a horrendous corruption scandal that has reached the highest echelons of political power. It’s backed by the Brazilian government whose credit rating, as everyone had been expecting for months, was cut to junk last week by Standard and Poor’s. To top it off, Brazil has been facing a deep recession and a plunging currency, which makes paying off dollar-denominated debt prohibitively expensive.

And it renders that debt toxic.

Petrobras, whose credit rating was cut to junk the day after Brazil’s – though Moody’s had cut it to junk seven months ago – faces other, even bigger problems: over $130 billion in debt, the most of any oil company, and the terrific collapse in oil prices.

 

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

Both ECB And BOJ Warn More QE May Be Response To Chinese Currency War

August 13, 2015

Both ECB And BOJ Warn More QE May Be Response To Chinese Currency War

Minutes from the ECB’s most recent policy meeting reveal that Mario Draghi and company have a number of concerns about the pace of economic growth in the euroarea and about the outlook for inflation which, much to the governing council’s surprise, “remains unusually low.”

Board members also took note of increasingly volatile EGB markets and made special mention of the second bund VaR shock which took place at the first of June, something the central bank attributes to “overvaluation [and] one?way market positioning related to the public sector purchase programme.” In other words: “our bad.”

The bank gave itself the now customary pat on the back for the “success” of PSPP noting that the “moderate frontloading of purchases” (a reference to the effective expansion of QE that was leaked to a room full of hedge funds at an event in May) was going smoothly, other than the above-mentioned nasty bout of extreme volatility.

As for the economy and inflation, well, that’s not going so hot. “Overall, the recovery in the euro area was expected to remain moderate and gradual, which was considered disappointing from both a longer-term and an international perspective [while] consumer price inflation had remained unusually low.”

 Between that rather grim assessment and the comments cited above regarding volatility, one is certainly left to wonder what it is exactly about PSPP that’s going so “smoothly.”

But as interesting as all of that is (or isn’t), the most compelling comments were related to China. Here’s the excerpt:

In particular, financial developments in China could have a larger than expected adverse impact, given this country’s prominent role in global trade.

Consider that, and consider the following statement sent to Bloomberg by an adviser to Japanese PM Shinzo Abe:

 

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

UK Furious At Proposed €7 Billion Greek Ponzi-Perpetuating Bridge Loan

July 15, 2015

UK Furious At Proposed €7 Billion Greek Ponzi-Perpetuating Bridge Loan

The two most important stories out of Greece on Tuesday were: 1) the IMF’s leaked report on Greek debt sustainability, and 2) the race to secure between €7 and €12 billion in bridge financing to hold Greece over until the ESM gets off the ground.

Although a new program is in the works and should get the greenlight once Tsipras succeeds in forcing Greek lawmakers to legislate away their sovereignty and any semblance of pride they have left, Athens has bills that need paying, the most important of which comes due to the ECB (on its SMP holdings) on July 20. The Greeks must make the payment to Mario Draghi – otherwise the central would be compelled to interrupt the liquidity drip that’s keeping the Greek banking sector from collapsing altogether. There’s also the issue of public sector salaries and pension payments which Greeks would prefer to receive in euros as opposed to the IOUs suggested by German FinMin Wolfgang Schaeuble.

We outlined the options available for bridge financing on Tuesday morning, noting that all alternatives involve creditors effectively paying themselves either literally or in spirit or otherwise entail the perpetuation of some manner of ponzi scheme (i.e. allowing Greece to sell T-bills to Greek banks).

On Wednesday, the EU Commission decided to go the EFSM route and will look to tap €7 billion of the €11-12 billion that remains in the fund. The formal request by the EU Commission says the funds from the EFSM “aim to provide a bridge financing to allow Greece to face some urgent financial obligations until it starts receiving financial assistance under a new programme from the ESM [and] would safeguard financial stability in the Union and in the euro area.”

This isn’t as simple as it sounds. The EFSM was replaced by the ESM and wasn’t really supposed to be used again, so going back to the well is problematic from a political perspective. There are a number of issues here, but for the sake of brevity, here’s FT’s summary:

 

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

The Test Of Central Bank Omnipotence May Be Upon Us.

June 28, 2015

The Test Of Central Bank Omnipotence May Be Upon Us.

Suddenly what was discounted as a potential “isolated event” has come full circle to show just how contagious it may very well be. e.g., Greece.

Over the last few months the financial media has not only turned deaf ears to the drama, (out of boredom) they have also blindly discounted any contagion effects as “isolated” at best – relative periphery contagion at worst. In other words: Any and all problems can be contained, mitigated, or solved by none other than your friendly neighborhood Central Bank. After all, if you listen to the so-called “smart crowd” these bankers have powers even Zeus would envy.

So why worry about a little turmoil at the foot of Olympus? After all, the gods haven’t been seen nor heard from in millennia. Central Bankers give press conferences live and in person. Thunder vs a press conference? No contest in today’s role for proving omnipotence. All one needs to remember for proof is Mario Draghi’s now famous chortle of “having a bazooka and willing to use it.”

However, just as in any hero-worship endeavor one thing must remain constant or it all falls apart. Those that worship can never witness any event regardless of how minor: that the gods are not all that they portend to be. In other words: Allow just one moment of truth to be witnessed showing frailty instead of omnipotence – and the whole ruse falls regardless of the size and strength of the monuments and temples built to honor. For they will be abandoned. Sometimes slowly. At others: all at once. It doesn’t take much.

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

 

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