Posted on 10/05/2008 6:52:37 PM PDT by Lazamataz
We face extreme danger. Unless there is immediate intervention on every front by all the major powers acting in concert, we risk a disintegration of global finance within days. Nobody will be spared, unless they own gold bars.
Investors will learn today whether the Paulson bail-out - fattened to $850bn (£480bn) by Congress - can begin to halt the death spiral in the credit system. So far, the response looks terrible.
Germany is now in the hot seat. The collapse of a rescue deal for Hypo Real Estate on Saturday threatens a €400bn (£311bn) bankruptcy that nearly matches the Lehman Brothers debacle for sheer scale.
Chancellor Angela Merkel has been forced to pull her head out of the sand, guaranteeing all German savings, a day after she rebuked Ireland for doing much the same thing. Reality intrudes.
During the past week, we have tipped over the edge, into the middle of the abyss. Systemic collapse is in full train. The Netherlands has just rushed through a second, more sweeping nationalisation of Fortis. Ireland and Greece have had to rescue all their banks. Iceland is facing an Argentine denouement.
The US commercial paper market is closed. It shrank $95bn last week, and has lost $208bn in three weeks. The interbank lending market has seized up. There are almost no bids. It is a ghost market. Healthy companies cannot roll over debt. Some will have to sack staff today to stave off default.
As the unflappable Warren Buffett puts it, the credit freeze is “sucking blood” out of the economy. “In my adult lifetime, I don’t think I’ve ever seen people as fearful,” he said. We are fast approaching the point of no return. The only way out of this calamitous descent is “shock and awe” on a global scale, .....
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Are you the one who posted about the neighborhood deal a few days ago?
Whoever posted it said something like, “I have a deal with my neighbors. They stockpile food, and gold - I stockpile ammo.”
“When do you think I should inform them of our deal?”
Nope. Although we do have a fairly well equipped Neighborhood Watch. What we haven't done is tell anyone of the extent of our preparations.
We've been putting away all three, among other things.
One month it's a few silver rounds and a pile of ammo, next month it's a pile of silver rounds and some canned or dehydrated goods, the month after that it's...well you get the idea.
“When do you think I should inform them of our deal?”
Ok, that's kind of funny.
L
I ruined a keyboard, when I read it. LOL!
I love news that helps me sleep on a Sunday night./s
Welcome back. When I joined FR, you were one of the first posters that responded to my inane vanity. (blush) I'd never heard of a bunny with a pancake on its head before but I was schooled quite quickly.
Still here 5 1/2 years later. Glad you're back in the fold.
Not really. If there is no money here, then we are not buying Chinese made products. If there are no orders in China, the factories grind to a halt. Massive layoffs follow with millions of uneducated workers with nothing to do in the new cities. Civil unrest follows.
You don't just pull the stake out ten minutes later, and get up and walk away.
It's a massive financial M.I., they will be thumping the corpse with defibulators like crazy, but nothing is sure to work.
"There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as a result of a voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved."
---Ludwig Von Mises
“Several brokerage houses tumbled; blue-sky investment companies formed during the happy bull market days went to smash, disclosing miserable tales of rascality; over a thousand banks caved in during 1930, as a result of marking down both of real estate and of securities; and in December occurred the largest bank failure in American financial history, the fall of the ill-named Bank of the United States in New York.”
~~"Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920’s" by Fredrick Lewis Allen
“Gentlemen, I have had men watching you for a long time, and I am convinced that you have used the funds of the bank to speculate in the breadstuffs of the country. When you won, you divided the profits amongst you, and when you lost, you charged it to the bank. You tell me that if I take the deposits from the bank and annul its charter, I shall ruin ten thousand families. That may be true, gentlemen, but that is your sin! Should I let you go on, you will ruin fifty thousand families, and that would be my sin! You are a den of vipers and thieves. I intend to rout you out, and by the eternal God, I will rout you out.”
~~President Andrew Jackson
First the Germans scream and call us names when we say they have to join in to save the financial institutions. Now, a day late and a dollar short they will join forces, but of course they won't remember their own words and will blame us. LOL
Typical
I have to tell you, we don’t have a lot of money but tonight, after reading this string, my wife and I went out to the drug store and loaded up on $10,000 bars. Just to show you how intent we are, we are both diabetics.
This is a good time (Monday AM) to get to the bank and take out some cash. SUre, it's insured to 250K or whatever the new FDIC limit is, but that doesn't mean you will be allowed to take any out if there is a "bank holiday" which becomes increasingly possible. After the "bank holiday," you may find daily or weekly withdrawal limits, or a few zeros cut off of your account balance as we switch to "New Dollars."
Remember the first rule of bank runs: GET THERE FIRST.
I'm trying to get a fix on the divergence between the COMEX make-believe paper precious metal prices, the ETF prices, and real in-your-hand physical.
The FDIC has never been tested by a large run. It will probably provide “credit” versus dollars. Besides, if there is such a run then the dollar will tumble hard and inflation will skyrocket. Imagine the grocery store not taking credit or debit cards because there is no processing capability. Cash will be in demand and that will increase prices.
Yeah, everything is just fine! That little iceberg that scratched the ship last week didn’t even dent it. Let’s get back to the poker game.
I read this article and it was almost like reading something from The Onion.
Except, if it’s serious, it’s terrifying.
But they can't switch my Maples, or Krugerands... ;o)
Note to self: visit bank manana por la manana.
P.S. I was at a bank Saturday, a good, local bank that is as sound as a 2x4, and while there for 15 minutes several people where there inquiring if the ATM could do a several thousand dollar withdraw. Of course it can’t but these people were hesitant to use the teller. They went ahead and made cash withdraws of several thousand each using the teller and scurried out. I imagine not everyone will take out everything but I think a large amount will be and has been taken out.
No, but they will probably make it illegal (a class A felony_ to buy or sell with unregistered gold. Registered, taxed, and them probably turned in FDR style at some set price, maybe $1,000 New Dollars.
If you try to buck the new fiat system by using PMs for private purchases, expect to be an outlaw. Expect sting operations, snitch lines, etc.
The gold standard doesn't make sense to me. I could see an oil standard, a natural gas standard, a milk standard, a cereal standard, a meat standard, a fish standard, a car standard, an airplane standard, a clothing standard, etc. Gold is not useful for much beyond fillings and jewelry.
Actually no country is safe, especially developed ones. Some backwater countries may not be affected much, though.
Sometimes it pays to be out of loop.
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