Monday, March 23, 2009

Spring Madness

I want to know why anyone especially the market was shocked by lasts weeks move to monetize 300 Billion dollars of U.S. debt?

It’s not as if many people like me aren’t screaming “The End is Nigh” and yet the market and people in general seem ignorant of the simple reality that new money to cover these massive stimulus and bailout packages must be either borrowed or created from nothing. They also seem oblivious to the idea that there is not an endless market for U.S debt ignoring the warnings of people like ex Comptroller General David Walker who spend his entire term of office pointlessly trying to convince a nation it was broke.

Last weeks announcement should not have been a surprise to anyone and more importantly neither should the next wave or forty waves of monetized debt that is destined to hit the market. This trend will come not only from the Fed but most of the worlds major central banks who can neither find enough suckers for their debt issues nor want to have their currency appreciate out or a normal trading range with their biggest customers.

This a wake up call for the many people who did not believe this moment would actually arise; you have been given fair warning that monetization, currency devaluation and inflation, instead of austerity are the chosen course for western nations. Now is the time to take any money you don’t want destroyed and place it in gold, silver, food, productive land, or some other real tangible asset. This is the very scenario that brought me to asset based investing several years ago and with this confirmation being so open and so blatant we can only expect that further moves to monetize debt will be fast and furious. You’ve been warned, Act!

Other stuff

In the too stupid to believe category the FDIC saw fit to criticize a Massachusetts bank that has managed to get through the recent credit crisis with no bad loans.

The bank, East Bridgewater Savings Bank was chastised for neither "lending enough" nor "promoting its loan products" enough.

Great time line, East Bridgewater savings gets shit upon on Tuesday, and then on Friday afternoon 5 financial institutions, 3 Banks and 2 Credit Unions fail, (FDIC numbers do not include credit unions) The people who run this small but sound bank should be held up as examples of good management not badgered for refusing to take unmanaged risk.

When I wrote The Great 2009 Bank die off on Feb 16 I noted 13 failures so far this year.
Since that time, a scant 5 weeks the tally has grown from 13 to 20 failed banks, and it’s only March people! We could easily hit the 80 failures I surmised earlier in the year


There is also some definite clumping of these bank failures, 3 Georgia, 3 Illinois, 3 California, 2 Florida and 2 Oregon, 10 of 20 failures in 5 states, with all but Georgia being in the top 10 foreclosure states.

Spring time warning.

I don’t care how secure you are with your little pile of gold and silver or that sweet job with benefits but you have to face the reality that very soon the shit is going to hit the fan at a velocity just short of warp 9. Be it civil unrest, dollar destruction, 30 % unemployment or simply the bankruptcy of major shipping or food processing companies, there are going to be major disruptions in the status quo. Take a little money a little time and put aside a little extra food and necessities. If you have the land and physical ability plant yourself a garden this spring and buy a book and the equipment for canning. While Silver and Gold are financial insurance, you can’t eat them and you can’t medicate your sick kids with them, so you should look to other aspects of your personal emergency plans.