Posted on 11/25/2009 10:35:48 AM PST by FromLori
It's one of those numbers that's so unbelievable you have to actually think about it for a while... Within the next 12 months, the U.S. Treasury will have to refinance $2 trillion in short-term debt. And that's not counting any additional deficit spending, which is estimated to be around $1.5 trillion. Put the two numbers together. Then ask yourself, how in the world can the Treasury borrow $3.5 trillion in only one year? That's an amount equal to nearly 30% of our entire GDP. And we're the world's biggest economy. Where will the money come from?
How did we end up with so much short-term debt? Like most entities that have far too much debt - whether subprime borrowers, GM, Fannie, or GE - the U.S. Treasury has tried to minimize its interest burden by borrowing for short durations and then "rolling over" the loans when they come due. As they say on Wall Street, "a rolling debt collects no moss." What they mean is, as long as you can extend the debt, you have no problem. Unfortunately, that leads folks to take on ever greater amounts of debt… at ever shorter durations… at ever lower interest rates. Sooner or later, the creditors wake up and ask themselves: What are the chances I will ever actually be repaid? And that's when the trouble starts. Interest rates go up dramatically. Funding costs soar. The party is over. Bankruptcy is next.
When governments go bankrupt it's called "a default." Currency speculators figured out how to accurately predict when a country would default. Two well-known economists - Alan Greenspan and Pablo Guidotti - published the secret formula in a 1999 academic paper. That's why the formula is called the Greenspan-Guidotti rule. The rule states: To avoid a default, countries should maintain hard currency reserves equal to at least 100% of their short-term foreign debt maturities. The world's largest money management firm, PIMCO, explains the rule this way: "The minimum benchmark of reserves equal to at least 100% of short-term external debt is known as the Greenspan-Guidotti rule. Greenspan-Guidotti is perhaps the single concept of reserve adequacy that has the most adherents and empirical support."
The principle behind the rule is simple. If you can't pay off all of your foreign debts in the next 12 months, you're a terrible credit risk. Speculators are going to target your bonds and your currency, making it impossible to refinance your debts. A default is assured.
So how does America rank on the Greenspan-Guidotti scale? It's a guaranteed default. The U.S. holds gold, oil, and foreign currency in reserve. The U.S. has 8,133.5 metric tonnes of gold (it is the world's largest holder). That's 16,267,000 pounds. At current dollar values, it's worth around $300 billion. The U.S. strategic petroleum reserve shows a current total position of 725 million barrels. At current dollar prices, that's roughly $58 billion worth of oil. And according to the IMF, the U.S. has $136 billion in foreign currency reserves. So altogether... that's around $500 billion of reserves. Our short-term foreign debts are far bigger.
According to the U.S. Treasury, $2 trillion worth of debt will mature in the next 12 months. So looking only at short-term debt, we know the Treasury will have to finance at least $2 trillion worth of maturing debt in the next 12 months. That might not cause a crisis if we were still funding our national debt internally. But since 1985, we've been a net debtor to the world. Today, foreigners own 44% of all our debts, which means we owe foreign creditors at least $880 billion in the next 12 months - an amount far larger than our reserves.
Keep in mind, this only covers our existing debts. The Office of Management and Budget is predicting a $1.5 trillion budget deficit over the next year. That puts our total funding requirements on the order of $3.5 trillion over the next 12 months.
So… where will the money come from? Total domestic savings in the U.S. are only around $600 billion annually. Even if we all put every penny of our savings into U.S. Treasury debt, we're still going to come up nearly $3 trillion short. That's an annual funding requirement equal to roughly 40% of GDP. Where is the money going to come from? From our foreign creditors? Not according to Greenspan-Guidotti. And not according to the Indian or the Russian central bank, which have stopped buying Treasury bills and begun to buy enormous amounts of gold. The Indians bought 200 metric tonnes this month. Sources in Russia say the central bank there will double its gold reserves.
So where will the money come from? The printing press. The Federal Reserve has already monetized nearly $2 trillion worth of Treasury debt and mortgage debt. This weakens the value of the dollar and devalues our existing Treasury bonds. Sooner or later, our creditors will face a stark choice: Hold our bonds and continue to see the value diminish slowly, or try to escape to gold and see the value of their U.S. bonds plummet.
One thing they're not going to do is buy more of our debt. Which central banks will abandon the dollar next? Brazil, Korea, and Chile. These are the three largest central banks that own the least amount of gold. None own even 1% of their total reserves in gold.
I examined these issues in much greater detail in the most recent issue of my newsletter, Porter Stansberry's Investment Advisory, which we published last Friday. Coincidentally, the New York Times repeated our warnings - nearly word for word - in its paper today. (They didn't mention Greenspan-Guidotti, however... It's a real secret of international speculators.)
In the past empires would overextend and it would be financed with funny money, like what we’ve done with the federal reserve printing money out of thin air.
Eventually the government would crumble and outsiders would come in and take over the land.
Good thing we’re fighting them over there to blow what’s left of our treasure so the Chinese have less to to confiscate when they come with an overdue bill. (Or maybe it will be Mexico that annexes chunks of the Southwest?)
Who knows how it’s going to work with the global government the last of the dying Westerners are trying to set up?
Maybe you’ll feel better if you just keep repeating to yourself “America is too big to fail”.
Bookmark
ZERO ain't worried.
He has the keys to the money machine. He can print till hell freezes over. He can create jobs with the snap of one finger (The middle finger)
He can see 390 million new jobs by the end of the year. . . . . . . . . .
Happy to what is TIA?
No, I think we’re really screwed. Changing the House with 41 dems in the Senate really changes what? Revenue bills, but what about existing programs? You think upchuck shumer or turban durbin are going to change?
Depression and I think far more severe then the one they called the great depression.
Think about this -
WHY are they not allowing us to use our resources while they run up enormous debt?
Are they planning on simply turning over vast amounts of these resources to our creditors at some point?
If your bank is on the problem list you sure might want to do that.
So how do I protect myself?
My immediate concern, should the FDIC find itself short of cash, is that it will simply turn from dragging its feet on closing banks to dragging its feet on paying out depositor claims. This means that if you have money in a failed bank, it could be tied up for quite some time.
Here’s the advice I gave last year when I wrote about the FDIC:
Do not keep more than $100k in any one bank account (okay, no genius insight there…)
Always keep 1-2 months worth of basic living expenses, in cash, out of the bank but in a safe place. This way, if the banks close down, the ATMs aren’t working, and checks won’t clear, you’ll still be able to go on with things as the crisis gets resolved. And don’t worry; you won’t be losing much in the way of interest payments on that cash.
Be prepared to run, not walk, down to the bank to remove your funds if the bank looks like it’s going down. Being one step ahead of the legal machinery could save you a lot of anxiety, if not your money. Here I would keep a sharp eye on the bank’s stock price, because that will give you the earliest possible warning. The FDIC is notorious (and for good reason) for keeping mum about a troubled bank prior to seizing the assets.
All banks are NOT created equal. Only keep your money in a Blue Ribbon bank (as rated by Veribanc in their Blue Ribbon Report ) or in one that is rated “B+” or higher by TheStreet.com. If need be, separate your holdings across several banks to assure your risk is not overly concentrated. Also, just ask around – some banks play a riskier game than their local brethren, and knowing who’s who could be a real life saver.
Another great place to check on your bank is to see if it appears on this unofficial list of troubled banks maintained at Calculated Risk. If my banks were on that list (I use several, all highly rated, to spread the risk), I would switch to a different (highly rated, naturally) bank.
You might also want to read my prior report on the FDIC, because it covers the legal language from the FDI Act, which unequivocally states that depositors may only be paid from money that exists within the insurance fund (which is now depleted).
http://www.chrismartenson.com/blog/fdic-broke-now-what/25274
http://www.chrismartenson.com/martensonreport/how-safe-my-fdic-insured-bank-account
Maybe you’ll feel better if you just keep repeating to yourself “America is too big to fail”.
Chump change compared to the $50 trillion in assets we lost in the last year, or the $117 trillion in unfunded social security and medicare liabilities.
Everyone please watch ‘The Secret of Oz’ and share it with everyone you know.
This will likely be the most important documentary you ever watch.
The Secret of Oz’ has been banned by Amazon.
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=116825
This is the same guy who did ‘The Money Masters’ which if you haven’t already seen you should.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-515319560256183936#
here is a torrent download for it but, it would be preferable to support the filmmaker since this is such good and brave work.
http://www.mininova.org/tor/3157611
Please start sharing this with everyone you know.
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i’m no economist but, it seems that there are two things we could do to really turn around this disaster.
1. end the criminal Fed and enact our own Sovereign currency (see ‘Secret of Oz’) that isn’t debt based (no interest) controlled by the people through Congress (a better one that isn’t filled with Marxists)
2. enact a consumption based tax system like the Fairtax
www.fairtax.org
these two would cause so much of a positive change we could have a very bright future where right now we are on the edge of a disaster.
Bookmark
I don’t think any external group needs to “pull the plug” on the USSA. I think we’re in the middle of a suicide that probably can’t be stopped.
Subjugation, by our enemies.
Its sure does not work good.
Subjugation, by our enemies.
Its sure does not look good for us.
Also, the US has tax revenue even at current depression levels sufficient to pay rates of 20% and upward on its privately held debt (meaning, owned by somebody other than an arm of the government itself). As such, there is no danger whatever of a funding crisis that cannot be met by spending reductions. This is emphatically not the case for the third world countries that suffer actual debt defaults.
Our budget issues are purely questions of political will and not remotely questions of what we can afford as a nation. Again, this is not remotely the case with the various third world basket cases that get into trouble with external debt.
The nearest parallel to the US is, instead, Japan, which has much higher levels of debt compared to GDP, financed at vanishingly low interest rates. They have been in that situation for nearly 20 years now - without any default or any prospect of one. Instead they have had persistent deflation.
The article is yet another example of the blatant lies and stupidity tolerated anywhere as long as it sound doom-ee and damns the US. In the present ideological situation, everyone is an eager consumer of such twaddle - the right because it views it as an attack on the present administration, the left because it views it as an attack on American capitalism justifying socialist measures.
But twaddle is what it is...
They will be forced to inflate our way out.
Well, the Euro just crashed through $1.50 and $1.51 in the last few hours:
EUR/USD 1.5135 + 0.0171
Bless you sir, for the calm note of sanity.
Exactly right. Sadly...
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