International Forecaster: Pay Attention Because This is The Real Deal

Pay Attention Because This is The Real Deal

An excerpt from The International Forecaster. Published on Wednesdays and Saturdays.

April 3 2013: By now you are all familiar with Cyprus. Even if you don't understand global economics, the European Union, the concept of fractional banking, etc.... you have heard that because of too many bad bank debts, Cyprus has folded like a cheap camera. Our lives are completely built around the idea of TRUST in this system.

How fitting. I'm sitting here penning this during a Religious Holiday of such importance that hundreds of millions of people around the globe are looking to their spiritual leaders for guidance, and offering up prayer of all manner for the souls of mankind. Yet while Christianity observes the Christ "rising out of the grave", the global economy inches ever closer to laying down in it. Folks, it is truly fitting that you might be in a more spiritual mindset right now, because it is going to take some deep thinking to truly understand the implications of what is happening.

By now you are all familiar with Cyprus. Even if you don't understand global economics, the European Union, the concept of fractional banking, etc.... you have heard that because of too many bad bank debts, Cyprus has folded like a cheap camera. In doing so, to "get their bail out money" to save the criminal banks that screwed up the works in the first place, ordinary depositors are now going to be fleeced for anywhere between 10 and 40% of their money. So, we're going to start with what that means to all of you on a personal level.

Pay attention. This is the real deal, not some fluff piece to fill up pages.

If you're like most folk, you do your best to TRUST the system. We sort of have to we're married to it, joined at the hip to it. It has become so much a part of our lives that we don't give it a seconds thought. Consider the second you walk into your home.

You flip on a light switch and the lights come on. You don't even question it; you EXPECT it. But if you come home one dark night and flip that switch and nothing happens, then all hell breaks loose. Instantly you're confused, and probably angry. You try and find the flashlight you think you have somewhere. You find your way to the next switches and if they don't work you're heart starts to race. You look outside to see if the neighbors’ lights are on. If so, you feel "better" like you might have blown a circuit breaker. But if they're dark, you figure that "okay, a power outage, no big deal".

Yet you're life for the next moments to hours is going to be disrupted. No Television to watch what nonsense passes as entertainment. No computer to play Facebook on. No lights to let you read a magazine. So you fire up the cell phone and you feel somehow connected again.

Our lives are completely built around the idea of TRUST in this system. When you pull the handle on your faucet you believe 100% that water will come out. When you flick the switch or push the "on" button you expect lights to light. When you turn the knob on your gas range, you expect fire. Yet they don't magically appear, all that stuff comes from the "system". The power company, the gas company, the phone company, the water company, etc. If any one of those systems misfires, you're day is going to change course. The plans you had are going to be altered.

For the past 60 years or so, we've built that some exact trust in our banking "system". We don't think twice about it. We get a check, deposit in the Blah Blah Savings bank and go about our business. Then when we need those funds, we hit the ATM or write a check and absolutely expect the machine to crank out paper slips with photo's of dead Presidents on them. It isn't until something goes bump in the night, such as an ATM that's out of cash or some form of slip up that caused an overdraft that we even give banking the time of day. We just "expect" it to work.

Our lives are completely built around the idea of TRUST in this system.

Well it hasn't worked properly now for 35 years. Sure they paper it over, they make it look like all is well. They run commercials telling you how great the So and So bank is and how their advisors will set you up for a nice retirement plan. They offer you blenders and toasters and ipods to get you to open more accounts, deposit more money. They wear jackets and ties, nice dresses and pantsuits. Everything looks like it should. But it is an illusion. Everything is not good. In fact, it's rotten to the core.

We know what OUR banks did here in the States. They broke every law, and reduced themselves to the greedy maggots they are. They approved mortgages for dead people. Mortgages for people that couldn't pay it back in a million years. They bundled those lousy mortgages, got someone to call them "prime" investments and sold them to investors around the world. Meanwhile, because the banks knew they weren't worth spit, they went short those very instruments. Can you imagine the gall, the hubris? Sit with a client who runs a pension fund for firemen and sell him millions worth of that trash, telling him its as safe and sound an investment as he'll ever see, and meanwhile your boss is writing up short sale contracts on those same investments, knowing they're not worth whale poop. Yet they got away with it all and better yet, when all that poop hit the fan, they got bailed out with YOUR tax money.

It was the perfect example of the slime and crime I had screamed about for years. It was empirical evidence that I wasn't nuts, that the system was corrupt and that Gold and Silver were the only safe havens. Some listened, some didn't. But then something amazing happened. The US citizen became so dumbed down that despite nobodies like me telling them exactly how housing was a bubble, how it would implode, and how it would take down the banking system, the minute we bailed them out...people rushed right back to them.

Fast forward. Across the big pond they cobbled together something called the European Union, and they adopted the "Euro". The Euro is a common currency wherein 17 member states used the same currency, instead of the mishmash of Lira and drachma, and peso's and what have you they each used for decades. But like all banking, the rules were set up by a handful of people in far away places. We told you almost from its inception that it would not last, could not last. We were laughed at.

Called old fashioned. Yep, thanks for the compliment. I am old fashioned; it worked well for a lot of things.

Because criminal bankers in the US are no different from Criminal bankers in Europe, over there just like here, bankers ran amok. They placed huge bets on Greek debt and the bets went sour. They picked red, it came up black. So they were wiped out.

Insolvent. The EU rushed in with funds, ideas, schemes, and ways to kick the can down the road. But it was nothing more than putting fingers in the leaking dyke. Each day a new leak sprouted. Each day they'd have to print money, come up with a scheme, find a way to plug the hole. Why? Because of the dyke collapsed the grand experiment collapses. The "one world currency" experiment goes to hell in a handbag if they can't even make it work with just 17 member states. Well they have gotten desperate. Very desperate.

Cyprus is nothing. Cyprus is a tiny island country of 1K people. They produce less than the state of Vermont. But Cyprus was a banking "Hub". A huge banking business, willing to accept money from all corners of the globe, tax it little, and use it much. But when they made their own bad bets on Greek debt and it went sour, they had run out of ways to get the other members to pay for their crimes. In the US, we just begged Bernanke to print up a few trillion and the subservient smurf did just that. Papered it over. But in Cyprus, no one wanted to take the full hit. No, they'd need some "Cyprus skin in the game". Well it took a while, but they did what we said EVERY BANK WILL ULTIMATELY DO, they raided the depositors. At first they said they'd even raid the "insured" deposits under 100K Euro's, but I told you that wouldn't happen. They'd back off that, that was the test balloon. Watch the reaction; gauge the uprising. But they would indeed go after the uninsured deposits.

Now here's where you have to really pay attention folks. CNBC is as vile a creature as I've ever known. They will do anything to spin, twist and lie to you, to make it look like all is well. So, they did their best to downplay the Cyprus situation. They tried to tell everyone it wouldn't be a contagion. But then they said, (Michelle Cabrerra) that as a depositor you have to look at which banks you're putting your money in, you have to be careful. In a loose translation of a quote she said, "if you know all these banks are troubled, why would you put your money there?"

THAT IS WHAT I WANT TO FOCUS ON

See, we have a problem. You see our big banks? They're all insolvent. They all have derivative exposure tens of times more than they can cover. They all made bad bets, and they all have lousy paper hanging around. If they didn't, Bernanke wouldn't have to shovel 85 BILLION a month to them. So, Michelle... just where do you put your money? We built a system of banks, based on TRUST. Yet the EU just said, "to heck with that trust, if our banks get in trouble, we'll ask you to CONTRIBUTE to its liquidity." Did you get that? No, read it again. The EU is calling the act of raiding your deposits a "contribution" to the welfare of Cyprus.

Now, if you're Joey Blow in Spain, and you just saw the EU approve Cyprus to raid deposit money, tell me... what do you do if you happen to have more than 100K Euro's? Let's say your parents sold a home they had for 100 years and you now have a 300K Euro check in your hand. What do you do with it? I am NOT joking here folks. I am deadly serious. What do you do with it? If Cyprus banks can hit you for 20, 30, 40% of your deposits over 100K Euro, why not Spain’s? Or Italy's? Or Greece or Portugal? Ahh, the plot thickens. What they have done is destroy the TRUST. You cannot trust anyone.

This is the reason the typical person in the street here in the US is somehow bothered by this Cyprus news. They might not know a thing about global finance, but they understand that if you make a deposit, and the bank takes it, something's wrong. Oh yeah, something's big time wrong. Unfortunately Cyprus was nothing more than the "first shot". The test run. The trial balloon. And boy did it pass. When the Cyprus banks opened, the folks there acted civilly. Despite being told they could only take 300 of their OWN euro's, despite being told that they could only travel with 1000 Euro's, they lined up quietly and waited their turn at the bank windows. The elites must have been literally rolling on the floor with laughter. They raided peoples savings, they raided small business payroll, they raided foreign investors, and like lemmings, the folks lined up outside the banks to be abused some more.

Here in the states we have the FDIC. Well the fact is that it's broke. It has jack squat behind it. If something bad were to come around, they'd have to plead to Congress for more money to do their insurance bailouts. So, you're supposedly covered for deposits up to 250K in any one bank. What do you do if you have more? What bank do you turn to? If I want to take 4 million dollars and place it in a bank, where do I go? Everything over 250K is "fair game" now. What's to say that Citi or GS won't raid it like Cyprus has done? You'll hear all manner of BS telling you that this isn't Europe, this isn't Cyprus we have laws and all that blather. Yeah, we have laws ask the MF Global clients, ask the Sentinel clients. You'll hear all bout how great our laws are.

On Friday we closed out the Quarter with both the DOW and the S&P hitting new all time highs. During this week we saw consumer confidence fall, we saw PMI's fall, we saw housing sales fall, we saw no less than 6 economic reports miss expectations. Yet we hit all new highs. Even the man on the street, the guy who doesn't even follow the markets; feels that something odd is happening. Well that would be the understatement of the decade. Odd does not describe the madness we're witness to. They are pushing the market up because it is the ONLY thing they can control. They can't make a real housing recovery, they can't create jobs, they can't spur economic growth, all they can do is push the market higher.

On Thursday night, the metals markets want nuts. In a matter of a moment we saw insane price action, were even on something as slow moving as silver was up and down over a dollar. Many traders refused to sell the metal, as they couldn't even figure out what the spot price was. From Europe to the metals, to our stock market, to gun control, to food stamps, to North Korea, to Syria, to you name it, it feels like the wheels are beginning to come off. Control is being lost, and desperation is kicking in.
We are in some inning of the "end game". How far along, I do not know. It isn't every day that you have to try and decide just how close we are to global economic melt down. But face it, we're getting closer by the minute. Like each of you, I don't want any part of it. I want life to go on, get better and we all have a grand time. But it simply isn't that way. Very big and very ugly things are brewing all around the globe, and everyone had better understand that. Consider this for a minute....

Down in Durban, the "Brics" (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) just held an interesting meeting. They want to create an "infrastructure" bank, something that loosely rivals the IMF/World bank. While they didn't come away with a true brick and mortar bank ( yet) they laid the groundwork by creating a 100 billion dollar fund that they would use to help out developing countries that ran into trouble. Then they also cobbled together and agreement that is yet another huge blow to the US Supremacy.

They have decided that trade between the BRIC nations would be conducted in native currency, NOT the US dollar. Are you all getting this? They are so tired of US shenanigans that they are NOT using the supposed "global reserve currency" to facilitate trade. All around the globe, the whispers get louder "We don't want or need the US".

Add it all up. China, Russia, India, South Africa and dozens of others are buying up all the gold they can gather.

In Asia the Sino pacts are using local currencies instead of Dollars for trade. The Brics will use native currency for trade. In Europe, the absolute ground zero for centralized central bank control they're banks are in ruins and to fix it they'll just take citizen money. In the US, 48 million people need food stamps, Wal-Mart is our largest employer and wages have been stagnant for a decade. North Korea is rattling its sabres, as it has before, but this time it is different. We "knew" the old man. We knew his limits. We have no clue how whacked out his kid is. He might actually think he can win a nuclear exchange.

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