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Short Term Problems, Long Term Disasters

Short Term Problems, Long Term Disasters

In the coming days we will ultimately see very many problems and disasters that take many by surprise. This article is not to diminish the potential severity of these coming events but to help you realize the more important aspects of these events.

If you are on the ocean and your boat gets a hole in it, you will likely sink eventually if you cannot prevent the boat from filling with water. That event in itself may seem like a disaster at the time but when taken in context with other events taking place, how serious is that hole?

The future will provide you with many events that you must navigate and to do so you must be able to see them clearly for what they are and determine which is the most dangerous. The question soon becomes, what requires more attention, the hole in the boat, the circling shark or the tidal wave heading in your direction?

My dad once had a boat he worked in called a Mckee craft, it is like a larger version of a Boston whaler. This type of boat is built in a special way. It is fiberglass inside and outside but in between these two fiberglass layers is a layer of Styrofoam. This gives this type of boat a lot of buoyancy to the point that you can literally fill it with water until water runs over the sides and it will not completely sink. You can even cut it into pieces and the pieces will float. It is like a boat with its own built in life preserver.

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Cash Withdrawal Limits and “Bank Holidays” Coming

Cash Withdrawal Limits and “Bank Holidays” Coming

  • Concerns that next crisis may be imminent
  • Bail-ins, withdrawal limits and negative interest rates may be imposed
  • FT proposes a ban on “barbarous relic” cash
  • Central banks would have people “completely under their control” – Bonner
  • Gold in safe jurisdictions will again protect wealth

Collapsing commodities prices, erratic market turmoil and the bursting of Chinese bubbles are leading to a crisis in confidence in the economic system across the globe. The long-expected crisis to which the global financial and systemic crisis in 2008 may have been a mere prelude may be upon us.

monopoly

Governments have no appetite for further bailouts. The EU states have passed legislation which will make the banks or rather unfortunate and unsuspecting depositors liable for the bank’s lending and speculative profligacy.

It is claimed that this is to “protect” the taxpayer. In reality it will likely lead to bail-ins – the confiscation of deposits. It is likely that that in a crisis within the banking system this bail-in mechanism would be imposed on an impromptu “bank holiday”  followed by limits on cash withdrawals as were applied in Cyprus and more recently to depositors in Greece.

As has been pointed out by many other analysts, the unelected powers-that-be have used all their conventional weaponry to stave off the consequences of their irresponsible ultra loose monetary policies and massive buildup of debt globally – the largest ever seen in the history of the world.

Global Debt Levels since 2000

The typical response to a crisis has been to slash rates from somewhere around 6% – the historic post war norm in the west – to between 0% and 1%. This has stored up an even crisis in the future – the question is not if we have another crisis but when.

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A Lesson From the Greek Crisis: Safe Deposit Boxes Are Not Safe

A Lesson From the Greek Crisis: Safe Deposit Boxes Are Not Safe

Last week the Greek government imposed capital controls to prevent cash from escaping from the Greek banking system, which is on the brink of collapse.  These repressive financial measures, which were invented by “Hitler’s banker” Hjalmar Schacht in the 1930s, include the closing of banks,  limiting cash withdrawals from ATMs to 60 euros ($67) per day, and the banning of all money transfers via credit and debit cards to accounts held in foreign countries.  Despite these Draconian controls, Greek banks continue to hemorrhage cash and, after yesterday’s referendum, it is probable that the daily limit on withdrawals from ATMs will be tightened.  Worse yet, the reeling Greek public suffered another shock yesterday when Deputy Finance Minister Nadia Valavani revealed to Greek television that the government and banks had already agreed that people would also not be allowed to withdraw cash from safe deposit boxes for as long as the controls were in place.  This may be part of a fallback plan if theECB ends its bailout of the Greek banks.  The government with the banks’ connivance would seize the cash euros stored in these boxes and compensate their lessees by crediting an equal sum of euros to their increasingly inaccessible checking deposits.  The cash would then be fed into ATMs to postpone the day of reckoning for Greece’s zombie fractional-reserve banks.

Bank woes

In the meantime, the market has been working to provide a private, nonbank alternative for Greeks to safely store cash.  In Dublin, Ireland enterprising diamond dealer Seamus Fahy, who owns Merrion Vaults, is offering a 15% discount for Greeks who are able to evade the fascist capital controls and smuggle their cash out of the country.  

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The Greek Bank Holiday: This is What an Economic Collapse Looks Like

The Greek Bank Holiday: This is What an Economic Collapse Looks Like

A “bank holiday” sounds like such an innocuous thing, doesn’t it?  Playful, a well-deserved rest, maybe even fun. If you’d like to learn more about the fun of such a holiday, look no further than the streets of Greece, where people have been informed the banks will be closed for the next week.

Why?

Because the European Central Bank has stopped sending in the money that was keeping the Greek financial system afloat. Had people been able to go to the bank and withdraw their money, the banks would be unable to function. So, the banks said, “Nope, you can have $60 if you want to wait in line for long enough to get it.”

Yes, you’re understanding this correctly: the banks are keeping afloat using the money from people’s accounts. The Greek stock markets did not reopen today. This is a last-ditch effort from the Greek government to prevent total economic collapse.

The situation there is dire, and much like Venezuela, it’s a case study for anyone who believes that an economic collapse of our own financial system is imminent here in America.

We need to pay attention to what’s going on in Greece. This is what a real economic collapse looks like. It isn’t a Mad Max scenario or a scene from some other post-apocalyptic movie.

It’s quiet desperation, long lines, and a sick feeling in the pit of your stomach as you wonder how you’ll feed your kids and keep a roof over their heads. It’s the discovery that you thought you had been doing the right thing financially, but you were deceived. It’s the realization that everything you worked for your whole life is gone.

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And So It Begins – Greek Banks Get Shut Down For A Week And A ‘Grexit’ Is Now Probable

And So It Begins – Greek Banks Get Shut Down For A Week And A ‘Grexit’ Is Now Probable

Greece Financial MeltdownIs this the beginning of the end for the eurozone?  For years, European officials have been trying to “fix Greece”, but nothing has worked.  Now a worst case scenario is rapidly unfolding, and a “Grexit” has become more likely than not.  On Sunday, the European Central Bank announced that it was not going to provide any more emergency support for Greek banks.  But that was the only thing keeping them alive.  In order to prevent total chaos, Greek banks have been shut down for at least a week.  ATMs are still open, but it is being reported that daily withdrawals will be limited to 60 euros.  Of course nobody knows for sure if or when the banks will reopen after this “bank holiday” is over, so needless to say average Greek citizens are pretty freaked out right about now.  In addition, the stock market in Greece is not going to open on Monday either.  This is what a national financial meltdown looks like, and the nightmare that has been unleashed in Greece will soon start spreading to much of the rest of Europe.

This reminds me so much of what happened in Cyprus.  Up until the very last minute, politicians were promising everyone that their money was perfectly safe, and then the hammer was brought down.

The exact same pattern is playing out in Greece.  For example, just check out what one very prominent Greek politician said on television on Saturday

“Citizens should not be scared, there is no blackmail,” Panos Kammenos, head of the government’s coalition ally, told local television. “The banks won’t shut, the ATMs will (have cash). All this is exaggeration,” he said.

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Signs Of Financial Turmoil In Europe, China And The United States

Signs Of Financial Turmoil In Europe, China And The United States

As we move toward the second half of 2015, signs of financial turmoil are appearing all over the globe.  In Greece, a full blown bank run is happening right now.  Approximately 2 billion euros were pulled out of Greek banks in just the past three days, Barclays says that capital controls are “imminent” unless a debt deal is struck, and there are reports that preparations are being made for a “bank holiday” in Greece.  Meanwhile, Chinese stocks are absolutely crashing.  The Shanghai Composite Index was down more than 13 percent this week alone.  That was the largest one week decline since the collapse of Lehman Brothers.  In the U.S., stocks aren’t crashing yet, but we just witnessed one of the largest one week outflows of capital from the bond markets that we have ever witnessed.  Slowly but surely, we are starting to see the smart money head for the exits.  As one Swedish fund manager put it recently, everyone wants “to avoid being caught on the wrong side of markets once the herd realizes stocks are over-valued“.

I don’t think that most people understand how serious things have gotten already.  In Greece, so much money has been pulled out of the banks that the European Central Bank admits that Greek banks may not be able to open on Monday

The European Central Bank told a meeting of euro zone finance ministers on Thursday that it was not sure if Greek banks, which have been suffering large daily deposit outflows, would be able to open on Monday, officials with knowledge of the talks said.

Greek savers have withdrawn about 2 billion euros from banks over the past three days, with outflows accelerating rapidly since talks between the government and its creditors collapsed at the weekend, banking sources told Reuters.

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The European “Template” For Dealing With Crises: Freezing Accounts, Bank Holidays, and Capital Controls…

The European “Template” For Dealing With Crises: Freezing Accounts, Bank Holidays, and Capital Controls…

More and more analysts are beginning to take note of the “War on Cash.” However, they’re missing the fact that the actual template for what’s coming to the US first appeared in Europe back in 2012.

Back in March of 2012, when the EU Crisis first began to spin out of control, then Prime Minister of France Nicolas Sarkozy openly called for the renegotiation of the Schengen Treaty: the treaty that established the 26-nation EU as a “borderless” entity in which individuals could move from one country to another with little difficulty and which also made trade among EU members easier.

France was not alone either. A few months later, both France and Germany proposed imposing border controls in June of that same year.

A Vote of No Confidence in Europe

Germany and France’s joint proposal to allow Schengen-zone countries to temporarily reintroduce border controls as a means of last resort might sound harmless. But doing so would damage one of the strongest symbols of European unity and perhaps even contribute to the EU’s demise.

Germany and France are serious this time. During next week’s meeting of European Union interior ministers, the two countries plan to start a discussion about reintroducing national border controls within the Schengen zone. According to the German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung, German Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich and his French counterpart, Claude Guéant, have formulated a letter to their colleagues in which they call for governments to once again be allowed to control their borders as “an ultima ratio” — that is, measure of last resort — “and for a limited period of time.” They reportedly go on to recommend 30-days for the period.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/german-and-french-proposal-for-border-controls-endangers-european-unity-a-828815.html

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