ALARM at the economic turmoil in Europe intensified last night after the Government admitted preparations for the chaotic collapse of the euro were being “stepped up”.
Downing Street is understood to be embroiled in intensive “contingency planning” for Greece and possibly Italy, Spain and Portugal quitting the eurozone.
British banks have been urged by the City’s watchdog to brace themselves for the collapse of the single currency.
The Financial Services Authority warned that the unravelling of the 17-nation eurozone could wreak havoc on the UK banking system.
City sources said Hector Sants, chief executive of the FSA, made the plea at a crisis meeting with senior bosses from high street banks.
And, in a sign of growing panic, a senior French politician warned the crisis could trigger “the return to violent conflict” in Europe.
Alain Juppe, France’s foreign minister, added: “It could be the explosion of the European Union itself.”
As expected, the Fed has just bailed out the world once again:
FED, ECB, BOJ, BOE, SNB, BANK OF CANADA LOWER SWAP RATES – BBG
ECB, FED other major central bank to lower the pricing of existing USD liquidity swaps by 50BPS
And as we have been writing every single day, the worldwide dollar crunch is now confirmed:
At present, there is no need to offer liquidity in non-domestic currencies other than the U.S. dollar
And finally, a promise to bailout Bank of America when it hits $4.00 again:
U.S. financial institutions currently do not face difficulty obtaining liquidity in short-term funding markets. However, were conditions to deteriorate, the Federal Reserve has a range of tools available to provide an effective liquidity backstop for such institutions and is prepared to use these tools as needed to support financial stability and to promote the extension of credit to U.S. households and businesses.
This means that the global situation is far, far more dire than the talking heads have said. Luckily, when this step fails, which it will, Mars can always come and bail us out.
For release at 8:00 a.m. EDT
The Bank of Canada, the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan, the European Central Bank, the Federal Reserve, and the Swiss National Bank are today announcing coordinated actions to enhance their capacity to provide liquidity support to the global financial system. The purpose of these actions is to ease strains in financial markets and thereby mitigate the effects of such strains on the supply of credit to households and businesses and so help foster economic activity.
Quantitative easing = printing money = creating money out of thin air = increasing the money supply = inflation = hidden tax on monetary assets = theft!
For more information see this:
Stock market turmoil and record low interest rates have left workers nearing retirement with private pensions worth substantially less than those who finished work three years ago, new figures show.
Overall pension incomes are now 30% lower than they were three years ago when the government began attempts to boost the economy through quantitative easing, according to accountants PricewaterhouseCoopers.
Peter McDonald, a partner in the pension practice at PwC, warned that those retiring this year would be left “between a rock and a hard place”, forced to defer claiming a pension until the market picks up.
“Compared to only three years ago, a money purchase pension is now worth 30% less than it was,” he told the Telegraph.
With stock market turmoil set to continue and this week’s resumption of the Bank of England’s quantitative easing programme, injecting another £75bn of new money into the economy, annuity payouts are set to shrink further.
Quantitative easing = printing money = creating money out of thin air = increasing the money supply = inflation = hidden tax on monetary assets = theft!
Deficit spending and quantitative easing are policies designed to destroy the middle class and the poor and to benefit the elitists.
“When a country embarks on deficit financing and inflationism (Quantitative easing) you wipe out the middle class and wealth is transferred from the middle class and the poor to the rich.” - Ron Paul
“In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. … This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists’ tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statists’ antagonism toward the gold standard.” - Alan Greenspan
“By a continuing process of inflation (Quantitative easing), governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.” - John Maynard Keynes
‘The Mervy King’ ‘nuked’ the UK with quantitative easing before:
Sir Mervyn King was speaking after the decision by the Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee to put £75billion of newly created money into the economy in a desperate effort to stave off a new credit crisis and a UK recession.
Economists said the Bank’s decision to resume its quantitative easing [QE], or asset purchase programme, showed it was increasingly fearful for the economy, and predicted more such moves ahead.
Sir Mervyn said the Bank had been driven by growing signs of a global economic disaster.
“This is the most serious financial crisis we’ve seen, at least since the 1930s, if not ever. We’re having to deal with very unusual circumstances, but to act calmly to this and to do the right thing.”
Stocks surged in the U.S. and Europe early Thursday while Treasury prices tumbled on news of a coordinated easing by global central banks.
“The Governing Council of the European Central Bank has decided, in coordination with the Federal Reserve, the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan and the Swiss National Bank, to conduct three US dollar liquidity-providing operations with a maturity of approximately three months covering the end of the year,” the ECB said in a statement.
Translation: The world’s central bankers will provide as much money as necessary until year-end to stem a brewing funding crisis among European banks. The move follows a report yesterday that two European banks were unable to get short-term dollar funding in private markets and were forced to tap the ECB for $575 million.
In addition to the nationalization of his gold insutry, Chavez earlier also announced that he would recover virtually all gold that Venezuela hold abroad, starting with 99 tons of gold at the Bank of England.
As the WSJ reported earlier, “The Bank of England recently received a request from the Venezuelan government about transferring the 99 tons of gold Venezuela holds in the bank back to Venezuela, said a person familiar with the matter.
A spokesman from the Bank of England declined to comment whether Venezuela had any gold on deposit at the bank.” That’s great, but not really a gamechanger.
After all the BOE should have said gold. What could well be a gamechanger is that according to an update from Bloomberg, Venezuela has gold with, you guessed it, JP Morgan, Barclays, and Bank Of Nova Scotia. As most know, JPM is one of the 5 vault banks.
The fun begins if Chavez demands physical delivery of more than 10.6 tons of physical because as today’s CME update of metal depository statistics, JPM only has 338,303 ounces of registered gold in storage. Or roughly 10.6 tons.
A modest deposit of this size would cause some serious white hair at JPM as the bank scrambles to find the replacement gold, which has already been pledged about 100 times across the various paper markets.
Keep an eye on gold in the illiquid after hour market. The overdue scramble for delivery may be about to begin.
Low or no wage increases coupled with rising taxation and inflation mean most people’s purchasing power is set to suffer the biggest squeeze since the 1870s, a leading economist claims.
Roger Bootle’s bleak analysis follows similar views expressed earlier this year by Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England, but Mr Bootle – economic adviser to accountants Deloitte – goes even further.
Whereas Mr King said the redution in purchasing power was the worst since the 1920s, Mr Bootle reckons Britons have not suffered anything like it for nearly 150 years. He predicts that for the next year many members of the ‘squeezed middle’ and others will feel like ‘new Victorians’ as meagre increases in wages are insufficient to keep pace with rising taxes and prices.
Ted Kaufman
On Friday, free and efficient market champion Ted Kaufman, previously known for his stern crusade to rid the world of the HFT scourge, and all other market irregularities which unfortunately will stay with us until the next major market crash (and until the disbanding of the SEC following the terminal realization of its corrupt and utter worthlessness), held a hearing on the impact of the TARP on financial stability, no longer in his former position as a senator, but as Chairman of the Congressional TARP oversight panel. Witness included Simon Johnson, Joseph Stiglitz, Allan Meltzer, William Nelson (Deputy Director of Monetary Affairs, Federal Reserve), Damon Silvers (AFL-CIO Associate General Counsel), and others.
In typical Kaufman fashion, this no-nonsense hearing was one of the most informative and expository of all Wall Street evils to ever take place on the Hill. Which of course is why it received almost no coverage in the media. Below we present a full transcript of the entire hearing, together with select highlights.
The insights proffered by the panelists and the witnesses, while nothing new to those who have carefully followed the generational theft that has been occurring for two and a half years in plain view of everyone and shows no signs of stopping, are truly a MUST READ for virtually every citizen of America and the world: this transcript explains in great detail what absolute crime is, and why it will likely forever go unpunished.
‘The Mervy King’ ‘nuked’ the UK with quantitative easing before:
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![[Most Recent Quotes from www.kitco.com]](http://www.kitconet.com/charts/metals/silver/t24_ag_en_usoz_2.gif)
