"America has become two separate countries divided by two religions. One worships man and gummit while the other worships God. One believes in worshiping and saving Ghia through a nebulous science called Global Warming or Climate Change or Weather Change or whatever will convince the followers it is true.
Hiding behind all those names is an all-powerful government ready to strip you of all your rights and privileges as well as most of the modern lifestyle. The warm and fuzzy polar bears would be replaced by draconian rule to minimize your individual choices for the good of the planet.
The other side worships God and believes the gummit that provides the least provides the best. It is a very optimistic philosophy which says God will provide and is in control of his creation. It believes if there are problems in the future such as Weather Change then man will adapt and invent to make things better and get to the other side through invention and innovation. They do not fall for every doomsday scare and wait to see proof before overreaction to a ridiculous theory which has no hard proof. ..............
Good stuff as good as it gets.
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A couple of days ago I started seeing more and more stuff on the FED and its latest grab for more and more power.
Seems ZH,Zerohedge, got into the act and came up with a really good piece that I used as a basis for some thoughts. they are here:
What if I told you that a private company handled much of the money that is now in circulation decides what interest rates to charge and how much money to put out into circulation.This company never gets a real audit and pretty much decides the fate of our economy and has for over one hundred years.
Sounds like a conspiracy tale.
As I like the say its only a conspiracy until its not.It’s called the FED.The Federal Reserve Bank.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Reserve here's a clip from the top:
As usual wiki gives us the leftist view of things and they forget,or leave out a few details.:
“The Federal Reserve System (also known as the Federal Reserve or simply the Fed) is the central banking system of the United States of America. It was created on December 23, 1913,(near midnight on Christmas eve when no one was looking,paying any attention, this thing would never have withstood the light of day) with the enactment of the Federal Reserve Act,(seems the Congress was getting paid off even way back then) after a series of financial panics,particularly the panic of 1907, led to the desire(in this case we are talking about the desire of certain Illuminati to control the money supply in the US which has ramifications worldwide) for central control(basically worldwide control) of the monetary system in order to alleviate financial crises.(or create them as the case may be) Over the years, events such as the Great Depression in the 1930s and the Great Recession during the 2000s have led to the expansion of the roles and responsibilities of the Federal Reserve System.”(what that means is the Fed through never having had a legitimate unbiased audit seeks even more power)
Continuing the wiki fairy tale of who the Fed is we see the following:
“The U.S. Congress established three key objectives(once again we are talking about a bill pushed through congress on Christmas eve when no one was particularly paying any attention to it at all) for monetary policy in the Federal Reserve Act:
1. Maximizing employment,(that only works under Republican presidents who are not part of the secret govt.—only Trump)
2. stabilizing prices,(not anyone’s job that should be the job of a free market) and
3. moderating long-term interest rates.(they are low now but look who is our potus)
The first two objectives are sometimes referred to as the Federal Reserve’s dual mandate.[13] It’s duties have expanded over the years,(code for they are sucking up more and more power over the world as time goes on) and currently also include supervising and regulating banks,(in other words they basically control the banks and in essence us to the extent that our homes are usually our biggest investments,debts and anchor around our ankles set by the FED) maintaining the stability(control) of the financial system, and providing financial services to depository institutions,(running the show) the U.S. government, and foreign official institutions.[14]
The Fed also conducts research into the economy and provides numerous publications, such as the Beige Book and the FRED database.”
Wiki goes on to tell about 12 regional Federal Reserve Banks of which 7 are members of the boards of governors and five:
here’s another clip from wiki:
“though only five bank presidents vote at a time (the president of the New York Fed and four others who rotate through one-year voting terms). There are also various advisory councils. Thus, the Federal Reserve System has both public and private components.[list 2] It has a structure unique among central banks, and is also unusual in that the United States Department of the Treasury, an entity outside of the central bank, prints the currency used.[22]”
Personally, I would love to know just how much real power the president of the NY Fed has.If I were one of the members of the five I might think twice before going against him,but then that’s just a guess.
Let's fast forward to yesterdays Zero Hedge piece on the fed.
ZH is a blog,website known for its financial resources of both the topics and the posters,some of these guys are really good.
Tyler Durden seems to have a hand in most stories and this one is no exception:
944 Trillion Reasons Why The Fed Is Quietly Bailing Out Hedge Funds
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/944-trillion-reasons-why-fed-quietly-bailing-out-hedge-funds here is a clip of Tylers open:
“On Friday, Minneapolis Fed president Neel Kashkari, who just two months earlier made a stunning proposal when he said that it was time for the Fed to pick up where the USSR left off and start redistributing wealth at least Kashkari chose the proper entity:
since the Fed has launched central planning across US capital markets, it would also be proper in the banana republic that the US has become, that the same Fed also decides who gets how much and the entire democracy/free enterprise/free market farce be skipped altogether) issued a challenge to “QE conspiracists” which apparently now also includes his FOMC colleague (and former Goldman Sachs co-worker), Robert Kaplan, in which he said “QE conspiracists can say this is all about balance sheet growth. Someone explain how swapping one short term risk free instrument (reserves) for another short term risk free instrument (t-bills) leads to equity repricing.
I don’t see it.”
The whole story about the repo market and hedge funds gets real complicated. First the “repo market” stands for “Repurchase market” where banks put up collateral and get loans at a cheap rate. The rest goes like this from ZH:
And since things are getting a bit fuzzy, let’s summarize here what we know:
"The repo crisis was the result of a liquidity shortfall at the “Top 4” banks, precipitated by JPMorgan’s drain of over $100BN in repo market liquidity (a wise move, which eventually forced the Fed to launch QE4, and helped JPM report its most profitable year on record, and which Elizabeth Warren shrieked about and vowed to investigate but ultimately did nothing at all)
The Fed addressed the “supply side” of the Sept repo crisis by injecting over $400BN in liquidity to replenish bank reserve levels, first via repo and then via T-Bill POMO, i.e., QE4.
The Fed has yet to address the “demand side” of the Sept repo crisis, namely the market transmission mechanism which is intermediated by hedge funds. And it is here that, as the WSJ reported, the Fed is currently contemplating providing liquidity directly to hedge funds to prevent a systemic collapse during the next repo crisis, whenever it may strike.
what ihttps://www.investopedia.com/terms/h/hedgefund.asps a hedge fund:
Here is a clip from investopedia:
“Hedge funds are alternative investments using pooled funds that employ different strategies to earn active return, or alpha, for their investors. Hedge funds may be aggressively managed or make use of derivatives and leverage in both domestic and international markets with the goal of generating high returns (either in an absolute sense or over a specified market benchmark).”
What are derivitives?
https://www.thebalance.com/what-are-derivatives-3305833
Here’s a clip describing a derivitive:
"A derivative is a financial contract that derives it's value from an underlying asset. The buyer agrees to purchase the asset on a specific date at a specific price.
Derivatives are often used for commodities, such as oil, gasoline, or gold. Another asset class is currencies, often the U.S. dollar. There are derivatives based on stocks or bonds. Still others use interest rates, such as the yield on the 10-year Treasury note.
The contract’s seller doesn’t have to own the underlying asset. He can fulfill the contract by giving the buyer enough money to buy the asset at the prevailing price. He can also give the buyer another derivative contract that offsets the value of the first. This makes derivatives much easier to trade than the asset itself.”
So what could go wrong? These derivitives are backed by solid assets or other assets! What is the problem? Why is the Fed getting involved in saving wayward banks again?
Evidently, there are some inherent risks in derivitives that we didn’t cover but do exist:
Here is another clip from the link:
“Four Risks of Derivatives Derivatives have four large risks:
1. The most dangerous is that it’s almost impossible to know any derivative’s real value. It’s based on the value of one or more underlying assets. Their complexity makes them difficult to price. That’s the reason mortgage-backed securities were so deadly to the economy. No one, not even the computer programmers who created them, knew what their price was when housing prices dropped. Banks had become unwilling to trade them because they couldn’t value them.
2.Another risk is also one of the things that makes them so attractive:
leverage.
For example, futures traders are only required to put 2% to 10% of the contract into a margin account to maintain ownership.(we are now taling aoubt legaligized and backed by others gambling) If the value of the underlying asset drops, they must add money to the margin account to maintain that percentage until the contract expires or is offset. If the commodity price keeps dropping, covering the margin account can lead to enormous losses. The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission Education Center provides a lot of information about derivatives.6
3.The third risk is their time restriction. It’s one thing to bet that gas prices will go up. It’s another thing entirely to try to predict exactly when that will happen.(only insiders would know,now we are into illegal trading?) No one who bought MBS thought housing prices would drop. The last time they did was the Great Depression. They also thought they were protected by CDS. The leverage involved meant that when losses occurred, they were magnified throughout the entire economy. Furthermore, they were unregulated and not sold on exchanges. That’s a risk unique to OTC derivatives.7
4.Last but not least is the potential for scams.
Bernie Madoff built his Ponzi scheme on derivatives. Fraud is rampant in the derivatives market. The CFTC advisory lists the latest scams in commodities futures.”
Back the the ZH piece and Tyler Durden’s summary:
Regulators, clearinghouses and central banks have published notes saying that clearinghouses are safe and the problems in the Swedish exchange in 2018 were due to one rogue trader.
But when the biggest clients of the clearinghouses, banks, say there is a problem, then I suspect they are right. I spent the Christmas period trying to prove that compression(increased risks) is dangerous, and the best nugget I could come from was from the biggest interest rate clearinghouse in the world, LCH.(London stock exchange group)
In a pamphlet on their website, pushing the benefits of “Compression with Swap Clear”, in the 12 months to October 2019, LCH did a record 944 trillion USD (11x world GDP) of compression. LCH also provide an estimate of the amount of capital this saved members (i.e. banks) under Basel III, a princely 37 million USD. To restate, USD 944 trillion of compression, yielded the banks USD 37 million of regulatory capital saving. (37 million is nothing compared to the risk of 944 trillion its a scam)
Which leads to the 944 trillion dollar question asked by the Horseman CIO: “If the banks are not benefiting, who is?”
His answer:
“Leverage funds with huge interest rate derivative positions.(huge investment funds who play fast and loose with interest rates) And who is on the hook if they blow up?(the bigger question) The big banks who are on the other side of the trade, as they would be forced to recapitalize the clearinghouses.”
In other words, if enough liquidity is drained, mutually assured destruction between funds and banks will almost instantly follow. And since banks are now aware of the risk and are trying to reduce their exposure, it is very hard if not impossible to see how this can be unwound “without triggering all the other bad financial structures and mal-investments that QE has produced.”
It also explains why the Fed had to get involved, if under the guise of saving the repo market, when in reality the Fed was once again bailing out the banks and levered funds that are facing trillions of dollars in losses should one clearinghouse go under, as the cascade of resulting events would lead to a domino effect where one counter-party after another failed, and one clearinghouse after another has to be bailed out, initially by banks, and ultimately by the Fed.” (one question i would have is if the FED get involved in bailing out banks doing risky financial manipulations will the FED now own these banks when they bail them out?)
So as we see with investors putting up as little as 2-10% of the money required,collateral, and then required to put up more if their derivitive goes the wrong way the potential for huge losses exists big time.!
Quite frankly, this is little more than hi-tech gambling that will soon be guaranteed by the FED since favored banks,too big to fail, are involved.Is the FED’s real motive to once and for all own the banks as well?
My question remains when do we audit the FED?
Very wordy piece that in the end says the value of stocks, bonds, cash, and derivatives is what the markets say it is and not a penny more or less. This holds for every commodity under the sun, including cars, houses, bread, grass seed...you name it.
I get a bank statement monthly from Fidelity Inv telling me what I own and the value of those holdings. I don’t have one stock certificate or Bond (not that it matters)just a piece of paper. It’s all about faith in our financial instruments that keeps everything going and once that faith is destroyed it all comes crashing down. The way to prevent loss of confidence is by keeping everything above board.
“is the FED’s real motive to once and for all own the banks as well?”
I must guess yes. Our 401ks and IRAs as well.
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Let me ask ........ who would do the audit of the FED?
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Actually, in essence, seems like it's not really too different from what was planned at the 1910 meeting at Jekyll Island and in the reports of the National Monetary Commission.