America Has To Come To Grips With The Fact It Is Bankrupt

Posted: February 14 2009

We have been fortunate enough to make some important calls over the past ten years. The top of the stock market in early April of 2000; the beginning of the gold bull market in June 2000; 9/11 in November ten months before it happened; the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars; the beginning of the real estate bubble; the top of that market in June of 2005; the beginning of the subprime fiasco in 2006 and the beginning of the commercial real estate freeze. We also forecast the terrible financial conditions facing states and the freezing up of insurance and the municipal bond market. We called the recession in February 2007 and told readers to get out of the market at 14,000. That’s with the exception of gold and silver and oil shares. The recession was right on schedule. The depression that began two weeks ago happened quicker than we had anticipated, but it is here and now.

We predicted a fall in consumption, which we estimate at 71% of GDP, a rise in savings, which is now 2.8%, and a fall in debt service not only in real estate, but also in loans and credit card loans. Massive losses continue probably some additional $40 trillion from just 9/08 to 12/09 alone in wealth destruction.

Those who follow and live off the Illuminist line favor a large, deep stimulus and if that doesn’t work than a bigger one in a year. What America needs is job growth, but that cannot happen in any meaningful way until we erect tariffs on goods and services. America has never been able too and will never be able to compete with cheap labor.

One of the solutions passed four years ago was the repatriation of profits from offshore tax havens by transnational Illuminist conglomerates. They returned $35 billion at a 5-1/4% tax rate instead of paying the normal 33%. Our Congress saw fit to reward their masters under the guise of creating jobs. Few if any jobs were created. It was just a giant money laundering exercise.

This solution is again running around Congress, only this time the amount is $550 billion at a 5% tax rate. A reward for the people who in part were responsible for the situation we now find ourselves in. We have a better idea. Let’s have legislation demanding the funds be repatriated and let’s charge normal taxation of 33% and force these ingrates to use the funds for job creation. We’d have taxes for our debt services and funds to get our nation underway again.

America has to come to grips with the fact it is bankrupt. We saw this in the early 1980s, and in the early 1990s and again in 2002-2003. Finally it is here again and moving bad assets off bank balance sheets isn’t going to work this time. This time the Illuminists have gone too far, and they are well aware of that. What we are experiencing has been done many times before in history and it has always been unsuccessful. The problem is that in the past these conspirators have been allowed to live on. This time it will be different.

The elitists have used the same destruction of capital in this depression as they did in the 1930s via a profligate, irresponsible monetary policy. That is endless and mindless increases of money and credit and zero interest rates. Falling interest rates usually cause a weaker dollar. The dollar has topped out of its rally and is making a slow downturn, which would have otherwise been quicker had not other major nations agreed to drop their rates to zero and increase money and credit as well. For the time being this cooperation is buying time for the international financial system and the dollar, but it is doomed to failure. The lowering of interest rates is not a cure for deflation, but poison for the economy and they reinforce deflation. It is interesting to note that under its Charter the Fed cannot be party to monetization of public debt under their charter, but they do so anyway, because Congress authorized it. That is the purchase of Treasury bonds in the open market and using them as collateral for its note and deposit liabilities after the fact. The bottom line is this forces capital to disappear into other investment avenues, such as gold. The dynamics of lower interest rates are continuing and totally injurious to the monetary structure. Throw in the bailouts and you’ve created a monster. That is why gold and silver is your only avenue of escape.

The point of no return was passed in June of 2002, and that is when the issuance of money and credit began to grow seriously. The result is the banking system is already in a state of collapse and the dollar is sure to follow. Looking back at monetary history we know that zero interest rates is pure insanity. The Fed, banking, and Wall Street know this and this helps us to conclude that none of this happed via incompetence or chance, but by deliberate intent.

In the early 1920s the Weimar Republic was hit by hyperinflation that lasted for several years. Germany, in moving into the 1930s, then experienced deflation.

We began deflation five years ago in 2004. That was kept under control with increases in money and credit. The Fed was joined about six months later by most central banks. The vast increases of money and credit continued along with monetization, so we should see the beginnings of hyperinflation soon. That should last at least 2-3 years. That will be followed by deflation and deeper depression. As the trillions in debt is liquidated it will be smothered by the hyperinflation and substantially higher gold and silver prices. The banking system has been broken. The dollar falls next versus other currencies and gold, then all currencies collapse versus gold.

What we are seeing in banking is no solution. The banks have to be purged and allowed to fail. Until that happens there will be no solution. Only a return to a gold standard can regain the confidence and trust of people worldwide. The concept of good and bad banks under present circumstances is ridiculous-moronic. The very concept is mad. Our situation is worse than in the 1930s or in the early 1990s in Scandinavia. The problem under our circumstances is that both banks are bad, because our currency is worthless without gold backing.

If we are correct, and we believe we are, the stimulus package and TARP, plus all the other bailouts are not going to work. This so-called solution is just more of the same, but more of it. When you stop to think of it how can a bankrupt nation with a fiat currency save a banking system that is bankrupt as well? The solution to this is a simple. Back the dollar with gold and set the official price at $2,000 an ounce, although it may be trading at $3,000 in the marketplace. The US Mint would then vastly increase the number of gold coins available for purchase. Of course if the treasury has little or no gold they cannot do this, and the whole system collapses. Otherwise, with gold backing, capital would flow to America. Such a currency would allow nominal interest rates and would draw users and prices would remain stable. Eventually all countries would do likewise, set a world gold standard, and tariffs that suited their circumstances. If a nation was short on gold or had none, they’d have to sell assets to others to accumulate gold.

If the forgoing is not adopted the world will continue to plunge into monetary chaos. Revolutions would take place as starvation and warfare stalked the land. We expect the worst, because no change has taken place in Washington. We have virtually the same purchased and compromised Congress. The President’s new advisors will bring about the same results we have seen over the past eight years. That is the grand push for a world currency and a world government. These are all the same characters along with banking and Wall Street that caused these problems in the first place and supposedly are finding solutions to our dilemma. In finality, if we do not take our government back from these evil, miscreants we are doomed. Your solution, as we have pointed out so often, is to prepare. Get rid of credit card debt. Purchase a water filter, freeze-dried and dehydrated foods, be able to defend your home and family, with extra assets buy gold and silver coins and shares. If you can, still try to save the system from within. If we cannot, you know what the alternative is.

Due to the pending stimulus package and another probably $2 trillion stimulus package in 2010, the bottom of the housing market won’t be hit until 2012 or even later. Moody’s has downgraded 2,446 different classes of RMBS, Residential Mortgage Backed Securities. ALT-A loans originated in the second half of 2007 will experience 25.5% losses of original balance, versus 23.9% of the first half of 2007 deals, 22.1% for the second half of 2006 and 17.1% for the first half of 2006 deals. The CDOs and SIVs are soon going to be written off and that could cost $2 trillion. It will take at least until 2017 to put a new credit system in place. It will take years beyond that for the Fed and the Treasury to sell off the toxic waste.

By the time next year’s stimulus package is unveiled, the Dow should be trading between 3,800 and 5,500. That is bad, but what is worse is that pension funds about 80% funded, will be 40% to 50% funded. We ask how do they pay the promised benefits? We don’t think they can and pensions could be cut 40 to 50 percent. We wrote about this six years ago and called it the pension bomb. On the municipal level the situation will be much worse. Some states, such as California, which is bankrupt, may not pay anything at all. Calpers and the other state fund are on the edge of insolvency.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s efforts to restore trust and confidence in our markets have fallen on deaf ears. We still do not know all of what he intends to do with $350 billion in TARP funds. What we do know for sure is that he wants to give financial firms as much of it as possible. He wants a repeat of TARP I, the theft of taxpayer funds to bail out his masters. His plan entails a price of $2.75 trillion and the ‘what he calls’ nationalization of the banking system, which in reality is the consolidation and further privatization of the banking system - a tight control by the privately owned Fed on as much of the banking system as possible.

The stimulus plan to create more debt to spend our way into prosperity is being passed simultaneously, as the decision on how TARP is to be spent.

First Mr. Geithner wants a $1 trillion “public private investment fundâ€