Bitcoin, the war on cash, Clif High, and the NSA's long range plans

[ZoSo925]

Just saw this headline just appear - Banks Shutter 1,700 Branches in Fastest Decline on Record

https://www.wsj.com/articles/banks-d...cks-1517826601

A while ago I was reading about people having issues with banks even accepting money. Even trying to get rolls of coins. One solution was to call the bank, rather then wasting time going.

[ThePythonicCow]

Posted by Paul (here)
Since the above chart was prepared, last week, the Ten Year Treasury (TNX) has jumped another 0.037% today, from 2.662% to to 2.699%.

The single most reliable indicator that I know of to mark the end of a stock and bond bubble is a collapse in the bond market, which shows up in these rising interest rates. The Ten Year Treasury (TNX) is perhaps the largest traded longer term bond in the world. If this rise continues, it will mark the beginning of the end of the largest financial and monetary bubble in (recorded) human history.

The Ten Year Treasury (TNX) continues to increase in yield, now up to 2.85%, meaning that it is further losing value.

Meanwhile, today, the US Stock Market lost further value. The S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial (DJIA) are both now down over 10% from their peaks of a couple of weeks ago.

The Volatility Index (VIX) has jumped from about 12 to about 33 in the same time frame.

These are all indicators of what could be the beginning of major market turmoil, which I expect will not lead to the (rather literally) "papering over" of the bankruptcy of the US Dollar system with Quantitative Easing (QE) and other financial shenanigans that we saw in the 2008 global debt crisis, but rather in the overt collapse of the US Dollar based world monetary system.

It does not surprise me that the overt phase of this collapse is happening at the same time as the overt phase of the Trump led exposure of portions (the Bush-Clinton-Obama crime syndicate and portions of their petro, narco, arms, uranium, war, toxic food, toxic water, toxic air, toxic medicines, and other fraudulent businesses) is becoming more visible to the public.

If the elite bastards can't baffle us with B.S. hitting the fan, then they crank up more sources of B.S. and more fans. There seems to be ample supplies of both B.S. and oscillating obfuscators (aka fans, aka lying news media.)

[Honesty]

...and a government shutdown to boot.

[Hervé]

Engineers of ‘max security’ nuke center busted trying to mine cryptocurrency on supercomputer

RT
Published time: 9 Feb, 2018 15:11
Edited time: 9 Feb, 2018 16:07
Get short URL

FILE PHOTO: A worker checks the fans on miners at the cryptocurrency farming operation © Christinne Muschi

A powerful supercomputer located at a Russian nuclear research facility in Sarov was reportedly targeted by a pair of engineers who wanted to use it to mine cryptocurrencies.

“There has been an attempt of unsanctioned use of workplace computing capacities for personal gain, including for so-called mining,” the press service of the Sarov nuclear weapons facility told Interfax on Friday. The statement said the employees involved have been arrested and are facing criminal charges.

The remarks, which didn’t provide further details about the case, came in response to reports on social media on Thursday saying the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) had busted two nuclear engineers. The men had apparently attempted to set up an internet connection on the top secret supercomputer in Sarov to use it for mining cryptocurrencies.

The Sarov facility, which is usually called Federal Nuclear Center, is Russia’s counterpart to the Los Alamos National Laboratory. It’s a historic developer of nuclear weapons that is still very much involved in keeping Russia’s arsenal ready and up-to-date.

The supercomputer was launched at the center in 2011 – becoming the country's most powerful at that time with the speed of 1 PFLOPS (10^15 floating-point operations per second). The reported plan was to boost the speed by four orders of magnitude and reach exascale computing by 2020, but it’s not clear how much progress has been made in that regard.

Hijacking computing devices and using them into cryptocurrency mining operations at the owner’s expense is an increasingly-profitable criminal business. All sorts of devices, including house appliance microprocessors, can be hacked to do that. Another popular option is to insert malicious code into a web page and have the browsing users’ computers run it. However, all such schemes require an internet connection to link with other nodes of a cryptocurrency infrastructure.


Related:
Cryptocurrency mining malware infects over 500,000 PCs with NSA exploit

Russian oil pipeline company says its computers were hacked to mine cryptocurrency

[ThePythonicCow]

Posted by Paul (here)
The Ten Year Treasury (TNX) continues to increase in yield, now up to 2.85%, meaning that it is further losing value.

Meanwhile, today, the US Stock Market lost further value. The S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial (DJIA) are both now down over 10% from their peaks of a couple of weeks ago.

The Volatility Index (VIX) has jumped from about 12 to about 33 in the same time frame.

These are all indicators of what could be the beginning of major market turmoil, which I expect will not lead to the (rather literally) "papering over" of the bankruptcy of the US Dollar system with Quantitative Easing (QE) and other financial shenanigans that we saw in the 2008 global debt crisis, but rather in the overt collapse of the US Dollar based world monetary system.

Thanks to a report over at the Hal Turner Radio Show, I have another indicator to add to this list. This is the FRED Interbank Loans, All Commercial Banks data from the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis

Notice the sharp drop, in the last point, at the right side of this chart. US Interbank Lending just cratered, from 68 at the end of December 2017, to 13 in the first week of January 2018.

Either this is some sort of transient statistical anomaly ... or we're hearing (viewing) the sound of the pre-placed demolition charges going off, as the (more or less) controlled demolition of the current US Reserve Dollar monetary system commences.

The classic way, time and time again, that the Banksters pump and dump the economic and financial (and in this case, monetary) markets is through credit ... extend increasing amounts of debt until the amount owed vastly exceeds what can be repaid at value, and then cut off the lending, forcing bankruptcies, fire sales, foreclosures, repossessions, and other such transfers of future resources and productivity into the hands of the Banksters and their associates, at pennies on the dollar.

The above FRED chart (apparently) shows the smoking gun of a massive credit freeze that commenced one month ago now.

[thalox]

so what I am reading is to not invest into crypto or stocks, but in silver and gold? what if i purchase say 35oz or so of gold will that still be the same as the kilo bars you speak of? Now i am confused. I have been reading about crypto for years and i see it popping up everywhere and now it has me even more skeptical. us minions seem to always be behind the curve from the elite. =(

[ThePythonicCow]

Posted by thalox (here)
so what I am reading is to not invest into crypto or stocks, but in silver and gold? what if i purchase say 35oz or so of gold will that still be the same as the kilo bars you speak of? Now i am confused. I have been reading about crypto for years and i see it popping up everywhere and now it has me even more skeptical. us minions seem to always be behind the curve from the elite. =(

Several questions here ...

My current guess is that Steve Keen (his Patreon page) is about the best analyst out there right now that I've seen ... but he's operating at a high enough level above where I operate that I haven't been able to relate what he's saying yet, in a way that others here on Avalon might find useful.

What Steve Keen is saying, in small part, is that we have what I call a debt-money system - money is lent into existence, using double entry bookkeeping. When you take out a loan at the bank, the bank doesn't lend you pre-existing money. Rather the bank makes two, counter-balancing entries in its ledger - deducting what it pays you, and adding what it expects to get back from your loan payments.

In such a system, fresh money depends on continued lending. When debt becomes too large compared to the ongoing economic activity, the debt payment burden becomes stifling, and moreover, the banks sooner or later cut back on further lending. All that leads to less money being available for ongoing economic activity ... and what's called a depression, recession, or such sets in. Whether that is deflationary or inflationary depends (in my view, not Steve Keen's view so far as I know) on whether the central bank "prints" money (as in former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke's "helicopter money"), or doesn't. Either way, the -value- in actual goods and services of what can be purchased declines. Whether that's because the average person has fewer Dollars (or whatever the currency unit is called), or because what Dollars they have are worth less, is secondary (in my view ... this aspect is my view, not Steve Keen's).

Gold and silver will tend, more or less, within a factor of perhaps ten, to maintain its value, as will other non-perishable essentials such as food and shelter (excluding housing caught in some sort of real estate bubble.) But the Dollar value of that gold, silver or food will depend (in my view) on how many Dollars are floating about.

Steve Keen is expecting a deflation in the US once it's Dollar is no longer the world's reserve currency and the banks cut back on lending, as there will be in his analysis fewer dollars in circulation, and thus dollars will be harder to come by. Anytime a nation gets too far into debt, unless it has a strong trade surplus (which the US certainly does NOT), that nation is on track for such a serious economic decline. The only place here that I would disagree with Steve Keen is that Keen expects deflation (money is harder to come by), whereas I figure that the central bank (US Federal Reserve, in concert with the US government, in this case, for you and me) could, when and if it chose to, "helicopter drop" a lot of money by some various sorts of social programs. But either way, the average person would be poorer. Whether a loaf of bread still cost $1 (say), but the average person only had half a dollar for bread, or whether people now had $10 they could spend on bread, but that loaf of bread now cost $20, either way the average person could only afford half a loaf of bread. Gold and silver would still buy about (give or take a factor of ten, historically) of bread.

I cannot imagine that we'll be returning to an actual gold and silver monetary system (well, not unless we also return to a level of civilization that fights wars with swords, muskets and cannons). We will remain on a debt-money system, so one way or another, the dynamics of debt-money systems, such as Steve Keen studies so well, will remain the relevant dynamics. However, as best as we can tell (trying to see past the immense fog of lies and deception on these matters) some fairly powerful and wealthy families, corporations and nations have some of their stake in gold and silver, so likely those precious metals won't become worthless (though sometimes they can be confiscated from us "little people.") One currently popular meme in gold bug circles is that silver will soon become substantially more valuable as a mineral resource for solar or other newer energy technology devices ... perhaps ... that might be worth betting some of one's savings on.

I also doubt that current crypto-currencies, such as Bitcoin or the major alt-coins of our time, will long endure. They are part of a "dot-com" like initial bubble, which has been funding and energizing the development and deployment of more serious applications of distributed ledger technologies into our financial, monetary, economic, legal, and other communication and coordination infrastructure. I already took a portion of my itsy-bitsy stash of crypto-currencies off the table, taking profits a couple of months ago. I have most of the remaining (that I can afford to lose entirely) currently betting on one more upward price spike sometime over the next few months, at which time (if that spike happens) I'll likely smile and take out most of the rest.

The keys in any case, during this monetary transition, include:

• Stay or get out of debt.
• Reduce expenses to less than income (happiness is a positive cash flow.)
• Don't count on stocks, bonds, retirement plans, insurance plans, bank deposits, ...
• Stay or get as healthy as you can.
• Stock up on non-perishable essentials.
• Get on, or remain on, good terms with your friends, neighbors and relatives (at least with those who are decent, honest, people.)

[ThePythonicCow]

Continuing a bit further on my thoughts after listening to and reading Steve Keen some more (from my Amazon purchases, I see that I've been reading his work for at least a decade now) ...

Steve Keen said recently that when a nation's debt gets too high (as is happening in several countries now), then those nations will not really recover, economically, until that excess debt is mostly wiped out.

Steve used to advocate for a debt jubilee, which in some ancient times was a decree by the King that eliminated significant portions of the unbearably high debt load within a nation, and often ushered in a new era of economic prosperity. But Steve has given up expecting that to happen, in our present times.

Steve Keen doesn't speculate, that I've noticed, as to how the excess debt burden will be removed this time. He's not expecting a debt jubilee, and he's not expecting hyperinflation, but rather he's expecting monetary deflation (money, such as the US Dollar and closely related currencies, gets scarce.)

I am expecting the debt load on the people, corporations, institutions, and governments to be dramatically reduced in the coming decade, and here's how I expect it to happen.

I do not expect it to be a single event, nor even a single shift, but rather I expect it to be a multi-phased, multi-faceted, unfolding, that we are already perhaps a decade into.

For each major category of debt, for each major category of lender, and for each major category of debtor, the sequence of events may be different, and the outcome, whether to the advantage of the lender or the debtor, may vary. These "debts" include corporate debt, government bonds, unfunded liabilities (promises that will often not be met) of governments, pension and insurance plans, mortgages, student loans, consumer debt, home equity, unrealized paper profits in stock markets, promised medical and other social services, ...

Eventually, one way or another, most of these "expectations of future value", and these "debt and tax obligations", will go bye the bye. The more powerful will be able to foreclose, repossess or "privatize" (as happened with Russian resources in the 1990's, and as is happening with US resources at present and ongoing -- cf Uranium One) on the future cash flows and resources of the indebted. The weaker will lose what they had, and become weaker and poorer. But new opportunities will arise, for some of those in the right place at the right time, to make gains in ways that matter to them.

All this is a bit abstract and obtuse.

Here's an example. The mortgage backed securities that were the pinnacle financial instrument of the "housing bubble" that ended in 2008 ended up on the books of the US Federal Reserve (the "Fed"). Those securities were, are, and will forever be, essentially worthless. Their original holders (big banks and the US Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac agencies) were allowed to "cash out". That moved those nearly worthless financial instruments to the Fed's books, but technically those instruments still exist.

Now that the Fed is "ending QE", meaning no longer renewing the US Treasury debt on its books, as that debt reaches term, the Fed will soon end up with a ten or twenty trillion US Dollar balance sheet that is full of worthless junk. I expect that this will be turned into a major financial story when it comes time to "end the Fed", and create a "reformed" central bank for the US for the next century. Essentially, the Fed has been participating in a decade long (so far) "debt jubilee", for these mortgage backed securities, and for US Treasury debt held by stronger nations (such as the Treasuries held by China, but not the Treasuries held by Saudi Arabia as part of the "Petro-Dollar" arrangement, nor those US Treasuries held by the Japanese Government Pension Investment Fund (GPIF) - the largest pension fund in the world). The Fed's Quantitative Easing "QE" is a (so far) decade long process enabling those privileged holders to "cash out", converting what will become worth less, or worth nothing, debt paper into real property, resources and infrastructure. Meanwhile, the Fed has swallowed a poison pill, that will result in its death and resurrection, in the coming decade.

A similar story, mutatis mutandis, will unfold for each major category of debt, for each major category of lender, and for each major category of debtor.

Since I am amongst the weak in this game, and I can only presume that my handful of readers are too, I can only suggest being like the small mammals, in the time of the great dinosaur extinction; that it's time to scurry about, looking for food and shelter, caring for each other, and staying out of trouble as best one can, trying to avoid being stepped on by a rampaging dinosaur. Such economic, financial, monetary and political resets happen frequently in recent times; most will make it through, many won't.

[ThePythonicCow]

Posted by Paul (here)
The keys in any case, during this monetary transition, include:

• Don't count on stocks, bonds, retirement plans, insurance plans, bank deposits, ...

Let me clarify this item.

I'm getting what I can from the stocks, bonds, retirement plans, insurance plans, bank deposits, cryptocurrencies and other such "financial" assets that I own, but like investing in any other asset that can, and may well soon, drastically collapse in value, I skim profits, diversify, and I continue to move what I can into the personal property (such as shelter, tools and computers), well being, or good health of myself and those near to me.

I continue to keep in mind what I might do, if this, that or the other "financial" asset of mine collapsed in value over night. I ask what I can do now, that I might wish I had done when I had the chance, were such to happen. This is a sort of "situational awareness", rather like a scout in enemy territory, staying ever aware of present or potential nearby dangers, though in this case, the situation is unfolding in a rather more complex, multi-dimensional, space.

My posts on the Web, here on Avalon for the last seven years, and on FreeRepublic.com and iTulip.com previously, are essentially me continuing to work out these details, in the fertile space of discussions with others of similar interests and diverse skills, experiences and insights.

[Foxie Loxie]

Just thinking out loud here.....as I understand things, wasn't it Kissinger who got the Petro-Dollar going? Does the fact that he had a meeting with POTUS recently mean anything in the realm of the World finances?

[ThePythonicCow]

Posted by Foxie Loxie (here)
Just thinking out loud here.....as I understand things, wasn't it Kissinger who got the Petro-Dollar going? Does the fact that he had a meeting with POTUS recently mean anything in the realm of the World finances?

Kissinger was the lead emissary for the Rockefellers to the Saudi's, initiating the Petro-Dollar, back in the 1970's. Kissinger continues to play at a high level. Likely his meeting(s) with Trump mean something ... not that they'll ever tell us what that was .

[thalox]

Posted by Paul (here)
Continuing a bit further on my thoughts after listening to and reading Steve Keen some more (from my Amazon purchases, I see that I've been reading his work for at least a decade now) ...

Steve Keen said recently that when a nation's debt gets too high (as is happening in several countries now), then those nations will not really recover, economically, until that excess debt is mostly wiped out.

Steve used to advocate for a debt jubilee, which in some ancient times was a decree by the King that eliminated significant portions of the unbearably high debt load within a nation, and often ushered in a new era of economic prosperity. But Steve has given up expecting that to happen, in our present times.

Steve Keen doesn't speculate, that I've noticed, as to how the excess debt burden will be removed this time. He's not expecting a debt jubilee, and he's not expecting hyperinflation, but rather he's expecting monetary deflation (money, such as the US Dollar and closely related currencies, gets scarce.)

I am expecting the debt load on the people, corporations, institutions, and governments to be dramatically reduced in the coming decade, and here's how I expect it to happen.

I do not expect it to be a single event, nor even a single shift, but rather I expect it to be a multi-phased, multi-faceted, unfolding, that we are already perhaps a decade into.

For each major category of debt, for each major category of lender, and for each major category of debtor, the sequence of events may be different, and the outcome, whether to the advantage of the lender or the debtor, may vary. These "debts" include corporate debt, government bonds, unfunded liabilities (promises that will often not be met) of governments, pension and insurance plans, mortgages, student loans, consumer debt, home equity, unrealized paper profits in stock markets, promised medical and other social services, ...

Eventually, one way or another, most of these "expectations of future value", and these "debt and tax obligations", will go bye the bye. The more powerful will be able to foreclose, repossess or "privatize" (as happened with Russian resources in the 1990's, and as is happening with US resources at present and ongoing -- cf Uranium One) on the future cash flows and resources of the indebted. The weaker will lose what they had, and become weaker and poorer. But new opportunities will arise, for some of those in the right place at the right time, to make gains in ways that matter to them.

All this is a bit abstract and obtuse.

Here's an example. The mortgage backed securities that were the pinnacle financial instrument of the "housing bubble" that ended in 2008 ended up on the books of the US Federal Reserve (the "Fed"). Those securities were, are, and will forever be, essentially worthless. Their original holders (big banks and the US Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac agencies) were allowed to "cash out". That moved those nearly worthless financial instruments to the Fed's books, but technically those instruments still exist.

Now that the Fed is "ending QE", meaning no longer renewing the US Treasury debt on its books, as that debt reaches term, the Fed will soon end up with a ten or twenty trillion US Dollar balance sheet that is full of worthless junk. I expect that this will be turned into a major financial story when it comes time to "end the Fed", and create a "reformed" central bank for the US for the next century. Essentially, the Fed has been participating in a decade long (so far) "debt jubilee", for these mortgage backed securities, and for US Treasury debt held by stronger nations (such as the Treasuries held by China, but not the Treasuries held by Saudi Arabia as part of the "Petro-Dollar" arrangement, nor those US Treasuries held by the Japanese Government Pension Investment Fund (GPIF) - the largest pension fund in the world). The Fed's Quantitative Easing "QE" is a (so far) decade long process enabling those privileged holders to "cash out", converting what will become worth less, or worth nothing, debt paper into real property, resources and infrastructure. Meanwhile, the Fed has swallowed a poison pill, that will result in its death and resurrection, in the coming decade.

A similar story, mutatis mutandis, will unfold for each major category of debt, for each major category of lender, and for each major category of debtor.

Since I am amongst the weak in this game, and I can only presume that my handful of readers are too, I can only suggest being like the small mammals, in the time of the great dinosaur extinction; that it's time to scurry about, looking for food and shelter, caring for each other, and staying out of trouble as best one can, trying to avoid being stepped on by a rampaging dinosaur. Such economic, financial, monetary and political resets happen frequently in recent times; most will make it through, many won't.

wow. eye opening. thanks for the information. what you have here is basically what i get out of this video here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZsD_AnGULM

this is a good 55 minute video of talking about what you just posted above.[COLOR="red"]

[ThePythonicCow]

Posted by thalox (here)
wow. eye opening. thanks for the information. what you have here is basically what i get out of this video here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZsD_AnGULM

this is a good 55 minute video of talking about what you just posted above.

Thanks for the kind words.

I no longer follow the analysis of Doug Casey of http://www.caseyresearch.com, nor the work of others of a similar vein. Doug is a long standing financial author and speculator, who is forever and a day "selling" a view familiar to gold bugs. If you listen to the end of that 55 minute interview with Bob Irish (of https://www.palmbeachgroup.com), you'll see that this video is a typical sales pitch for further research reports and materials.

Such analysis anticipates a return to "real" money based on gold and silver and hints of the potential for great wealth, just from holding these metals.

This analysis will highlight the excessive indebtedness of present times, but does not notice that the question of what "backs" money has long been replaced, by a "debt-money" system, in which banks create money and debt ex nihilo (out of nothing), as counter balancing entries in a double entry ledger. The banks will not let go of this privilege. National and even world reserve currencies may come and go, and the pretense of gold backing (by some gold you can't see or touch, supposedly in some central bank's or nation's vaults) may come and go ... but debt-money is here to stay.

In various other ways, I disagree with what Doug Casey says in this interview with Bob Irish, and Doug and with what other long standing gold bugs selling their wares and coins, all say in other such interviews and speeches.

We're not simply in a Dollar crash on the way to a return to gold backed money. We're in a complex transition of the world's debt-money system, as the excess debt, in so many and various forums, of the cycle that we're ending is bled off, in various ways, at various times, to the advantage of some and to the impoverishment, enslavement and even starvation of others.

This is a multi-decade process, that we are already well into, and such profit motivated sales pitches as this interview of Doug Casey may awaken a few who are just beginning to notice, but such pitches are a major obfuscator of what's really going on. The conspiracy theorist in me is not surprised that Doug Casey received his education at the Jesuit Georgetown University.

[thalox]

Posted by Paul (here)

Posted by thalox (here)
wow. eye opening. thanks for the information. what you have here is basically what i get out of this video here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZsD_AnGULM

this is a good 55 minute video of talking about what you just posted above.

Thanks for the kind words.

I no longer follow the analysis of Doug Casey of http://www.caseyresearch.com, nor the work of others of a similar vein. Doug is a long standing financial author and speculator, who is forever and a day "selling" a view familiar to gold bugs. If you listen to the end of that 55 minute interview with Bob Irish (of https://www.palmbeachgroup.com), you'll see that this video is a typical sales pitch for further research reports and materials.

Such analysis anticipates a return to "real" money based on gold and silver and hints of the potential for great wealth, just from holding these metals.

This analysis will highlight the excessive indebtedness of present times, but does not notice that the question of what "backs" money has long been replaced, by a "debt-money" system, in which banks create money and debt ex nihilo (out of nothing), as counter balancing entries in a double entry ledger. The banks will not let go of this privilege. National and even world reserve currencies may come and go, and the pretense of gold backing (by some gold you can't see or touch, supposedly in some central bank's or nation's vaults) may come and go ... but debt-money is here to stay.

In various other ways, I disagree with what Doug Casey says in this interview with Bob Irish, and Doug and with what other long standing gold bugs selling their wares and coins, all say in other such interviews and speeches.

We're not simply in a Dollar crash on the way to a return to gold backed money. We're in a complex transition of the world's debt-money system, as the excess debt, in so many and various forums, of the cycle that we're ending is bled off, in various ways, at various times, to the advantage of some and to the impoverishment, enslavement and even starvation of others.

This is a multi-decade process, that we are already well into, and such profit motivated sales pitches as this interview of Doug Casey may awaken a few who are just beginning to notice, but such pitches are a major obfuscator of what's really going on. The conspiracy theorist in me is not surprised that Doug Casey received his education at the Jesuit Georgetown University.

I agree. Once I saw the end with the pitch, i figured there was an agenda to sell something. I wouldnt say you are wrong in following ones education to find a bit where their minds go. Sometimes they get programmed in the Universities and not even know it. but how you listed off the following:

The keys in any case, during this monetary transition, include:
Stay or get out of debt.
Reduce expenses to less than income (happiness is a positive cash flow.)
Don't count on stocks, bonds, retirement plans, insurance plans, bank deposits, ...
Stay or get as healthy as you can.
Stock up on non-perishable essentials.
Get on, or remain on, good terms with your friends, neighbors and relatives (at least with those who are decent, honest, people.)

is basically what he said in the video as well minus the gold/silver pitch.

I did read something a few weeks back that the elite are looking to have whatever currency they decide to use backed by "the kilo gold bar" or something of the sorts.

I am a bit new in this new financial transitions. I was always told to get into stocks and bonds and I never did. I chose the gold and silver route. I am just now dabbling into crypto and hope I made a few good choices with some long "HODLs". I guess we will see in the future.

the list you gave above is a good list to follow. I am pretty much there. I would like to get into either stock trading or crypto trading but I am not sure if i have the skill for technical analysis just yet. To move through this financial debacle does make it a bit confusing and stressful. thats for sure.

As of now I am trying to weed through all the ICO and pump and dump type of coins. Stocks have never been my cup of tea anyways. I did always think that pure raw savings were where it was at but I cant save fast enough to get myself financially independent so I have decided to try my hands in the quicker financial web.

I do think that crypto is another way to get everyone ready for their full on controlled digital world currency. which one it is, i think is yet to be determined.

[ThePythonicCow]

Posted by Paul (here)
Here's an example. The mortgage backed securities that were the pinnacle financial instrument of the "housing bubble" that ended in 2008 ended up on the books of the US Federal Reserve (the "Fed"). Those securities were, are, and will forever be, essentially worthless. Their original holders (big banks and the US Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac agencies) were allowed to "cash out". That moved those nearly worthless financial instruments to the Fed's books, but technically those instruments still exist.

Now that the Fed is "ending QE", meaning no longer renewing the US Treasury debt on its books, as that debt reaches term, the Fed will soon end up with a ten or twenty trillion US Dollar balance sheet that is full of worthless junk.

It's not just the Fed that potentially has balance sheet problems.

It's also the European Central Bank (ECB) and the Bank of Japan (BOJ). Together (and I do believe that they work together) they have increased their balance sheets to some $16 trillion, and they "now, collectively, own 33 percent of all the world’s sovereign bonds (someone/something had to buy ‘em)."

This report comes from Douglas French douglasinvegas.com, using the following CNBC chart, and was reposted at mises.ca and investmentwatchblog.com.

The fundamental "safe assets" of our modern day debt-money monetary system, the "gold and silver" of our times, are the sovereign bonds of the major nations.

The FED, ECB and BOJ have become the buyer of last resort of these "safe assets", which have been increasing in nominal value (declining interest rates) for over 30 years. There is no buyer with deeper pockets that these three banks can sell to, and some of these "assets" are quite dodgy. The game of musical chairs, shuffling debt-paper back and forth, will come to an end someday.

That end might not be a singular "big bad crash", but rather an oscillation back and forth, punctuated by several crashes, between too much, and too little, currency (Dollars, Euros and Yen) to fund economic activity and debt payments, as the promises of future wealth (the value of stocks, bonds, pensions, promised social benefits, insurance plans, real estate appreciation, college degrees, mines, ports, infrastructure, pipelines, factories, farmland, water sources, ...) is ground down to what can actually be realized in goods and services.

[ThePythonicCow]

Posted by Paul (here)
That end might not be a singular "big bad crash", but rather an oscillation back and forth, punctuated by several crashes, between too much, and too little, currency (Dollars, Euros and Yen) to fund economic activity and debt payments, as the promises of future wealth (the value of stocks, bonds, pensions, promised social benefits, insurance plans, real estate appreciation, college degrees, mines, ports, infrastructure, pipelines, factories, farmland, water sources, ...) is ground down to what can actually be realized in goods and services.

Well, I always consider it a good sign when Brandon Smith more or less agrees with me. He's one of the sharpest knives in the drawer. I see now where he just posted, a few hours ago, a new article: Central Banks Will Let The Next Crash Happen

Brandon's article begins:

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If you have been following the public commentary from central banks around the world the past few months, you know that there has been a considerable change in tone compared to the last several years.

For example, officials at the European Central Bank are hinting at a taper of stimulus measures by September of this year and some EU economists are expecting a rate hike by December. The Bank of England has already started its own rate hike program and has warned of more hikes to come in the near term. The Bank of Canada is continuing with interest rate hikes and signaled more to come over the course of this year. The Bank of Japan has been cutting bond purchases, launching rumors that governor Haruhiko Kuroda will oversee the long overdue taper of Japan’s seemingly endless stimulus measures, which have now amounted to an official balance sheet of around $5 trillion.

This global trend of “fiscal tightening” is yet another piece of evidence indicating that central banks are NOT governed independently from one another, but that they act in concert with each other based on the same marching orders. That said, none of the trend reversals in other central banks compares to the vast shift in policy direction shown by the Federal Reserve.

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... and he concludes:

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The system is too far into debt and too far gone for infrastructure spending to make any difference in the economic outcome. Add to that the fact that Treasury yields are liable to continue their upward trajectory due to the increased deficit spending, putting more pressure on stocks.

Interestingly, Trump’s budget director has even admitted that the plan will lead to even faster increases in interest rates, and Fed officials have been using this as a partial rationale for why they plan to continue cutting off stimulus measures.

I think anyone with any sense can see the narrative that is building here. The Federal Reserve is going to let markets crumble in 2018. They are going to continue raising interest rates and reducing their balance sheet faster than originally expected. They will not step in when equities crash. And, they don’t really need to. Trump continues to set himself up as the perfect scapegoat for a bubble implosion that had to happen eventually anyway. Now, the central banks can sufficiently avoid any blame.

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If you enjoy reading Brandon Smith as much as I do, head on over there and give him a read.

[TargeT]

The Federal Reserve is going to let markets crumble in 2018

I'd say they will START to let the markets crumble.. I don't think fed policy will shift the economy that rapidly (IE, the crash won't be in 2018, I think it will be later)... That's assuming there's no collusion in the exchanges, a few moves there mixed with interest rate hikes and the lack of QE could rapidly change the situation.

[ThePythonicCow]

Posted by TargeT (here)
I'd say they will START to let the markets crumble.. I don't think fed policy will shift the economy that rapidly (IE, the crash won't be in 2018, I think it will be later)... That's assuming there's no collusion in the exchanges, a few moves there mixed with interest rate hikes and the lack of QE could rapidly change the situation.

For reasons I listed in my Post #325, above, I'm expecting the crashing to become obvious sooner rather than later.

However ... I've been predicting major crashing every year for at least a decade now, so best take my predictions with a shire sized salt lick .

[ThePythonicCow]

Posted by Paul (here)
That end might not be a singular "big bad crash", but rather an oscillation back and forth, punctuated by several crashes, between too much, and too little, currency (Dollars, Euros and Yen) to fund economic activity and debt payments, as the promises of future wealth (the value of stocks, bonds, pensions, promised social benefits, insurance plans, real estate appreciation, college degrees, mines, ports, infrastructure, pipelines, factories, farmland, water sources, ...) is ground down to what can actually be realized in goods and services.

And now another good writer and analyst, Charles Hugh Smith, agrees with this as well. In his latest article Our Approaching Winter of Discontent, reposted on Zerohedge here, Charles opens with these words:

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Thursday, February 15, 2018

Our Approaching Winter of Discontent

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The tragedy is so few act when the collapse is predictably inevitable, but not yet manifesting in daily life.

That chill you feel in the financial weather presages an unprecedented--and for most people, unexpectedly severe--winter of discontent. Rather than sugarcoat what's coming, let's speak plainly for a change: none of the promises that have been made to you will be kept.

This includes explicit promises to provide income security and healthcare entitlements, etc., and implicit promises that don't need to be stated: a currency that holds its value, high-functioning public infrastructure, etc.

Nearly "free" (to you) healthcare: no.

Generous public pensions: no.

Social Security with an equivalent purchasing power to the checks issued today: no.

As for the implicit promises:

A national currency that holds its value into the future: no.

High-functioning public infrastructure: maybe in a few places, but not something to be taken for granted everywhere.

A working democracy in which common citizens can affect change even if the power structure defends a dysfunctional and corrupt status quo: no.

A higher education system that prepares its graduates for secure jobs in the real-world economy: on average, no.

Cheap, abundant fossil fuels and electricity: during recessionary head-fakes, yes; but as a permanent entitlement: no.

High returns on conventional capital (the kind created and distributed by central banks): no.

A government that can borrow endless trillions of dollars with no impact on interest rates or the real economy: no.

Pay raises that keep up with real-world inflation: no.

Ever-rising corporate profits: no.

You get the idea: the status quo will be unable to keep the myriad promises made to the public, implicitly and explicitly.

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I suggest continuing to prepare, mentally, physically and spiritually.

[TargeT]

Might be a good time to step out of stocks/bonds and into more physical goods.... again (haha)..

I could use 3 Tesla Wall battery banks a lot more than stocks that will devalue rapidly when this dead cat bounce happens (today maybe? markets are back up again...)