Special Guest: Ellen Brown – Founder of the Public Banking Institute, Author and Lawyer

Ellen Brown has written to popular books on banking, is the founder of the Public Banking Institute and ran for California State Treasurer in the last election. She knows a thing or two about banking. What she has to say is no pretty.

BANKING IS IN WORSE SHAPE

1. Loans for small business is harder to get,
2. Big Banks are lending less,
3. Big Banks have more derivatives than ever with 98% controlled by the big 4,
4. Small to Medium size banks are having more difficulties making loans because of Dodd-Frank and Basel III. (Rules which favor big banks).

The rules are effectively competitively disadvantaging the small to medium sized banks in favor of the banks who got us into the financial crisis in the first place and have the lobbyists to secure favorable advantages. It is the smaller to medium sized banks that have traditionally funded small business growth and innovation in America.

STEALTH BAIL-IN VERSUS BAIL-OUT PROVISIONS

In 2010 the congress moved to stop future bailouts but brought in “bailins”. In the future if the big banks fail due to risky loans they will be forced to recapitalize themselves but with unsecured creditor funds. This means using depositor funds who are the largest unsecured creditor class of the banks. The public is generally unaware of this shift.

“Cyprus-style confiscation of depositor funds has been called the “new normal.” Bail-in policies are appearing in multiple countries directing failing TBTF banks to convert the funds of “unsecured creditors” into capital; and those creditors, it turns out, include ordinary depositors. Even “secured” creditors, including state and local governments, may be at risk. Derivatives have “super-priority” status in bankruptcy, and Dodd-Frank precludes further taxpayer bailouts. In a big derivatives bust, there may be no collateral left for the creditors who are next in line. 

WHY NEGATIVE NOMINAL BOND YIELDS?

Ellen suggests that the reason we are seeing $5T in Sovereign Bonds now trading with negative nominal yields is because the larger banks need them for collateral in the Repo market. The Fed has reduced the availability of bonds and the banks need the bonds for leverage. They simply don’t mind paying a small price to obtain the lending leverage.

PROFITS IN DERIVATIVES

As Citigroup CEO Chuck Prince so infamously cited prior to the 2008 Financial Crisis, “you have to get up and dance while the music is playing!” Today Ellen believes the pursuit of yields and use of derivatives is about short term profits with little regard to the longer term issues where depositors will be on the financial hook. The banks senior secured debt holders now receiving large interest fees will once again be protected. Shareholders, depositors and those lower on the capital structure will be the losers.

OTHER SUBJECTS

• The secretive issues with the stealth TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership),
• Campaign finance, big money and running for public office,
• A public bank solutions and the North Dakota model,
• Coming Infrastructure spending,

…. and much more in this 32 minute video.

Disclaimer: The views or opinions expressed in this blog post may or may not be representative of the views or opinions of the Financial Repression Authority.

LINK HERE to the Article

Disclaimer: The views or opinions expressed in this blog post may or may not be representative of the views or opinions of the Financial Repression Authority.

Webinar with Sprott’s John Embry (the Special Guest), Conquer Change’s Robert Ian, Financial Survival Network’s Kerry Lutz, and Financial Repression Authority’s Gordon T Long.

Disclaimer: The views or opinions expressed in this blog post may or may not be representative of the views or opinions of the Financial Repression Authority.

Webinar with Sprott’s Rick Rule (the Special Guest), Conquer Change’s Robert Ian, Financial Survival Network’s Kerry Lutz, and Financial Repression Authority’s Gordon T Long.

Disclaimer: The views or opinions expressed in this blog post may or may not be representative of the views or opinions of the Financial Repression Authority.

Graham Summers on the war on cash – part of financial repression .. identifies a Federal Reserve paper written back about 15 years ago calling to do away with cash entirely .. the idea proposed was to implement a “carry tax” on physical cash using an expiration date if depositors are not willing to spend the money .. “The idea here is that since it costs relatively little to store physical cash (the cost of buying a safe), the Fed should be permitted to ‘tax’ physical cash to force cash holders to spend it (put it back into the banking system) or invest it .. The way this would work is that the cash would have some kind of magnetic strip that would record the date that it was withdrawn. Whenever the bill was finally deposited in a bank again, the receiving bank would use this data to deduct a certain percentage of the bill’s value as a ‘tax’ for holding it .. The Fed has declared a War on Cash, and a ‘carry tax’ is coming.”

LINK HERE to the Article & Paper

Disclaimer: The views or opinions expressed in this blog post may or may not be representative of the views or opinions of the Financial Repression Authority.

– Euro banks no more stable now than in run-up to financial crisis crash
– Banks in France, Spain, Italy are “highly vulnerable to failure”
– Low quality bank equity not sufficient to withstand shock
– Risk to system “enormously underestimated”
– Investor deposits at risk of “bail-ins” – financial repression

LINK HERE to the Article

Disclaimer: The views or opinions expressed in this blog post may or may not be representative of the views or opinions of the Financial Repression Authority.

FinancialSurvivalNetwork.com and FinancialRepressionAuthority.com present: LIBERTY MASTERMIND LIVE WEBINAR. Join Kerry Lutz, Gordon Long and Robert Ian (ConquerChange.com) as they interview renowned financial and precious metals experts JOHN EMBRY and RICK RULE. Mr. Embry is Chief Portfolio Strategist at Sprott Asset Management and
Mr. Rule is Chairman of Sprott U.S. Holdings. This LIVE event will feature up-to-the-minute analysis of the markets with a discussion of current events/trends including the War on Cash, Financial Repression, Gold and Silver, and YOUR QUESTIONS.

This Webinar is presented by the Liberty Mastermind Symposium and is sponsored by:

FinancialRepressionAuthority.com – Macroprudential Policy Advisors – educating investors globally in understanding the challenges of investment and protection in the unfolding Era of Financial Repression.

FinancialSurvivalNetwork.com – Helping you survive and thrive in the new economy.

LINK HERE TO REGISTER NOW

Disclaimer: The views or opinions expressed in this blog post may or may not be representative of the views or opinions of the Financial Repression Authority.

Mark Nestmann essay focuses on the war on cash, offers helpful suggestions to investors & savers .. Here is Nestmann’s advice:
1. draw down bank reserves & accumulate cash – document the withdrawals to prove the legal origin of the cash in the future
2. make sure you get newly issued bills because more than 95% of circulating bills are tainted with drug residues which under U.S. law allows the cash to be confiscated
3. convert a portion of assets in banks or in cash to gold – store it outside of the banking system
4. keep the assets you maintain in banks which are strong to avoid the coming bail-ins
5. consider putting some assets into electronic-based currencies [like Bitcoin, BitGold etc.]

LINK HERE to the Article

Disclaimer: The views or opinions expressed in this blog post may or may not be representative of the views or opinions of the Financial Repression Authority.

Special Guest: Mark Thornton PhD – Senior Fellow Mises Institute

ACCUMULATION OF DEBT

Debt levels are now at critical levels:

• Excess accumulation of debt has become a critical burden to the productive capacity of the global economy,
• Significant levels of global investment is presently malinvestment,
• Excess global capacity has been used to produce none-productive assets,
• Lack of Price Discovery and Mispricing of Risk are distorting economies and investment behavior,
• Many parts of the economy are fragile and a recssion is now knocking on the door of the US,
• …. and more

AUSTRIAN PRESCRIPTION

• The Federal Reserve needs to get out of the interest rate markets and allow the markets to work properly,
• The Federal Government needs to balance budgets and cut back spending tremendously,
• The Government needs to signal to markets particpants that they are not going to see their taxes increased significantly,
• The Government needs to demonstrate they are going to do something about the national debt and unfunded liabilities.

These policy positions would begin to incent investment very quickly.

The Central Problem is Unsound Money

FINANCIAL REPRESSION

“A financial scam of the government over the private economy … It is aimed at taking advantage of their citizens, savers and investors.“

Government authorities are:

• Printing money,
• Issuing enormous amounts of debt,
• Suppressing interest rates,

.. all with the intention of exploiting the worker and inflating the value of the goods they buy, as wages fail to keep up. Savers are now receiving negative real rates of returns which is the government extracting resources for themselves at the expense of the common man.

WAGING WAR ON SAVERS

WINNERS: The policies of Financial Repression help:

• Banks
• Large Corporations,
• Government,
• Large Borrowers,

LOSERS: The losers are:

• Savers,
• Consumers,
• Producers,
• Laborers,
• Entrepreneurs

POLICIES: The world wide economy is suffering as a result of the policies which include:

• Inflation,
• Zero Interest Rates
• Quantitative Easing,
• Heavy Regulation (Healthcare and Banks)

This is an enormous problem in the modern context.

Disclaimer: The views or opinions expressed in this blog post may or may not be representative of the views or opinions of the Financial Repression Authority.

The war on cash is an unintended consequence of the financial repression macroprudential policy of the zero or negative interest rates .. if your bank is charging you interest on your bank deposit, why not just get your money & leave it under your mattress at 0% (higher) yields? – so governments & central banks are likely to attempt to abolish cash to eliminate this action .. what will be the effect on gold? – Russell Napier: “In such a world, zero-yielding gold would be a high-yielding instrument. If the authorities ever sought to restrict access to banknotes, then gold would suddenly find itself enfranchised as money for the first time in many decades. So, given the scale of these competing forces, it is just too early to say what might happen to the gold price, but the allure of gold will grow the more it becomes clear that central bank fiat has failed and the age of government fiat is dawning .. The time is ever nearer when the price of gold will rise in an era of deflation. In due course, though no time soon, the full force of government fiat will engineer a reflation, albeit one replete with the misallocations of savings and capital so beloved by the bureaucrat. Then the PhD standard, in which the value of money is linked only to the words of the over-educated, will have ended. The gold price will rise even further, ‘And the words that are used for to get the ship confused will not be understood as they’re spoken, for the chains of the sea will have busted in the night’. And that’s ‘The hour when the ship comes in.’”

LINK HERE to the Article

Disclaimer: The views or opinions expressed in this blog post may or may not be representative of the views or opinions of the Financial Repression Authority.

Special Guest: Jim Puplava – Founder, President & CEO, PFS Group

SPECIAL GUEST: JIM PUPLAVA is the Founder, President & CEO of PFS Group. He is also the chief author and host for the Financial Sense Newshour. Puplava’s website at financialsense.com was named a “supersite for alternative investing” by The Globe and Mail, Canada’s largest-circulation national newspaper.

Jim Puplava was one of the first researchers to go public with the concept of Financial Repression and the Financial Repression Authority wants to recognize him for this. After studying the writings of Rogoff & Reinhart, Jim Puplava identified shortly after the Financial Crisis the fact that policies of Financial Repression had been used after WWII with success and began writing and talking about them. He was a long voice on the subject.

The difference today and the previous situation after WWII is:

The US is n o longer on Gold Standard (we now have a Global Fiat based currency system),

1. Most developed economies have record Debt-to-GDP levels,
2. We now have record levels of Derivative and Securitization which didn’t exist after WWII,
3. Globalization has changed the level of financial interconnections and dependency.

FINANCIAL REPRESSION

Jim Puplava suggests:

“Financial Repression in essence is a tax on savers! Savers are getting real negative interest rates (before taxes). The work of Keynes advocated robbing savers to the advantage of the government. The losers are savers while the winners are debtors and the government”

PUBLIC IS UNKNOWINGLY CONTRIBUTING TO FINANCIAL REPRESSION

The stock market has seen a net $60-$80B go into the stock market since the rally began after the financial crisis. “The vast majority of individuals have been going into bond funds which by the way is part of the plan of Financial Suppression”.

“Most investors have gone through two bear markets in the last decade where stocks lost 45%. They are now closer to retirement than they used to be and don’t want to go through that again!”

As such they missed out on a historic market rally. “If they had held the course they would be ahead. The vast majority of people kept their money in savings because the headlines were scary.”

“The media did an exceptionally poor job of explaining what was going on in the financial markets. Instead of telling people they needed to capture or take advantage of what Financial Repression was putting into place. Financial Repression supports growth type assets like stocks and commodities (initially coming out of 2009). This is how you re-capture (the prior market draw-downs). That is not what happened.”

A BROAD RANGING DISCUSSION

The broad ranging discussion in the 35 minute interview include:

• Market drivers of Corporate Buybacks and broad Central Bank buying,
• Outlook for bond rates,
• Why Warren Buffet has 90% of his investments in equities,
• The scope of taxation on savings and what it means to future retirement planning,
• Economic growth and top line growth is not there so corporations are doing “rational allocation of capital”. This is presently driving corporate policy.
• Fiscal Policy is missing from the governments economic agenda,
• Critically important is the impact of demographics and changing Millennial buying patterns,
• Financial Repression will likely go on for a couple more years before it inevitably breaks.
• …. and more

Disclaimer: The views or opinions expressed in this blog post may or may not be representative of the views or opinions of the Financial Repression Authority.

International Man’s Nick Giambruno & Mises’ Joe Salerno .. the financial repression of ring-fencing regulations is intensifying in the war on physical cash .. the goal to eliminate the use of hand-to-hand currency, so that governments can document & control every transaction .. one way this war is being fought is by making it illegal to pay in cash above a certain threshold:

Joe Salerno: The War on Cash is the attempt by governments to phase cash out of their economies. Governments hate cash because they hate the financial privacy cash makes possible. And they prefer that you keep your money in a bank to help prop up an unsound fractional reserve banking system .. The War on Cash reflects the desperation of governments .. it really says that they are bankrupt, both literally, in the sense that they can’t pay what they’ve promised, and intellectually.

LINK HERE to the Article

Disclaimer: The views or opinions expressed in this blog post may or may not be representative of the views or opinions of the Financial Repression Authority.

LINK HERE to Source Article

Its Happening Everywhere there are Financial Problems – Nowhere Else?

The central banks are … planning drastic restrictions on cash itself. They see moving to electronic money will:

1. Eliminate the underground economy,
2. Prevent a banking crisis.

FRANCE

France passed another Draconian new law that from the police parissummer of 2015 it will now impose cash requirements dramatically trying to eliminate cash by force.

French citizens and tourists will then only be allowed a limited amount of physical money. They have financial police searching people on trains just passing through France to see if they are transporting cash, which they will now seize.

Meanwhile, the new French Elite are moving in this very same direction. Piketty wants to just take everyone’s money who has more than he does. Nobody stands on the side of freedom or on restraining the corruption within government. The problem always turns against the people for we are the cause of the fiscal mismanagement of government that never has enough for themselves.

GREECE

In Greece a drastic reduction in cash is also being discussed in light of the economic crisis. Now any bill over €70 should be payable only by check or credit card – it will be illegal to pay in cash. The German Baader Bank founded in Munich expects formally to abolish the cash to enforce negative interest rates on accounts that is really taxation on whatever money you still have left after taxes.

EUROPE

There is a growing assumption that the negative interest rate world (tax on cash) is likely to increase dramatically in Europe in particular since it is socialism that is collapsing. Government in Brussels is unlikely to yield power and their line of thinking cannot lead to any solution. The negative interest rate concept is making its way into the United States at J.P. Morgan where they will charge a fee on excess cash on deposit starting May 1st, 2015. Asset holdings of cash with a tax or a fee in the amount of the negative interest rate seems to be underway even in Switzerland.

People can’t pull cash out of their bank accounts – for political reasons, because they’ve lost confidence in the bank, or because “bail-ins” are enacted – if cash is banned.

The Financial Times argued last year that central banks would be the real winners from a cashless society:

Central bankers, after all, have had an explicit interest in introducing e-money from the moment the global financial crisis began…

The introduction of a cashless society empowers central banks greatly. A cashless society, after all, not only makes things like negative interest rates possible, it transfers absolute control of the money supply to the central bank, mostly by turning it into a universal banker that competes directly with private banks for public deposits. All digital deposits become base money.

Disclaimer: The views or opinions expressed in this blog post may or may not be representative of the views or opinions of the Financial Repression Authority.

Dr Pippa Malmgren, a former U.S. Plunge Protection Team member, explains how governments fudge price inflation numbers .. It’s one of the pillars of financial repression – obfuscation.

Disclaimer: The views or opinions expressed in this blog post may or may not be representative of the views or opinions of the Financial Repression Authority.

Allianz website to help navigate the risks in the unfolding era of financial repression ..  how to find new opportunities & combat new risks in a rising-rate, slow-growth environment.

LINK HERE to the Article

Disclaimer: The views or opinions expressed in this blog post may or may not be representative of the views or opinions of the Financial Repression Authority.

Special Guest: Richard Duncan – Macro Watch

FINANCIAL REPRESSION

“The Polices that come under the heading of Financial Repression I look at s policies that were necessary once the global bubble began to implode in 2008. The policies the Government, the Fed, the US Treasury, and Central Banks around the world have been putting in place are emergency measures just to try and prevent the next Great Depression from occurring. When you add all these measures together it has become to be known as what is called Financial Repression. I don’t think the policy makers consider don’t review it as repressing anything. They view it as measures that are absolutely crucial to keep the global economy from absolutely imploding. While there are some unpleasant side effects, (like savers not earnings enough money to retire), they view the alternatives as complete economic breakdown which would be far, far worse!”

“Policy makers consider these policies as the bare minimum to prevent the global crisis from becoming the Great Depression – Part II!”

A GLOBAL BUBBLE

“We have a global bubble which started to pop in 2008, but the policy response of trillions of dollars of budget deficit, financed with trillions of dollars of new fiat money creation has succeeded in keeping the global bubble inflated. We still have a massive bubble who’s natural tendency is to deflate. In order to keep it from deflating into the Great Depression policy makers have continued to inject more credit! This is what Quantitative Easing is all about.”

GOVERNMENT NOW “MANAGES THE ECONOMY”

Richard Duncan’s basic premise is that the government has been managing the economy since at least WWII and to make money investors must anticipate what the government is going to do next. As such he uses a framework to monitor liquidity and credit growth to see how they will impact the economy and force the government into what must be done to continue to manage the growth of the economy.

The broad ranging discussion includes:

• Developed Economies Stealth Strategy of Government “Debt Cancellation”
• The Potential of a Recession in 2015 /2016,
• Expectations of a QE4
• Reasons for $5T of Global Bonds trading at Negative Nominal Rates,
• Global Deflation as a result of Globalization and the resulting Global Over-Production,
• …. and more

Disclaimer: The views or opinions expressed in this blog post may or may not be representative of the views or opinions of the Financial Repression Authority.

Allianz Global Investors (Allianz GI) using the following strategies to address investing in the era of financial repression: equity long/short, merger arbitrage, options trading, commodities, volatility, global macro, absolute return bonds, private debt, infrastructure debt & infrastructure equity .. Global Chief Investment Officer & Co-Head at Allianz GI Andreas Utermann: “In an environment of financial repression, characterised by much lower future expected returns from the beta element of all asset classes, these strategies can help investors capture alpha.”

LINK HERE to the Article

Disclaimer: The views or opinions expressed in this blog post may or may not be representative of the views or opinions of the Financial Repression Authority.

LINK HERE to the Article

Disclaimer: The views or opinions expressed in this blog post may or may not be representative of the views or opinions of the Financial Repression Authority.

In our complex financial world of securities, derivatives, counterparty agreement and rehypothecation of the collateral of assets under management virtually no one has the actual physical share certificates of stocks or other assets held by their custodial financial investment firm.

LINK HERE to Reference

In the case of MF Global, some investors were locked out of their accounts and couldn’t trade their positions for weeks. As a result many of them incurred massive losses.

Disclaimer: The views or opinions expressed in this blog post may or may not be representative of the views or opinions of the Financial Repression Authority.

Special Guest: Egon von Greyerz – Founder & Chairman

RISK & WEALTH PRESERVATION

UNDERSTANDING RISK & WEALTH PRESERVATION

“Wealth Preservation is absolutely critical for the coming years, or even decades and was we set up a special division within Matterhorn Asset Management called GoldSwitzerland to assist investors. We store primarily Gold and Silver outside the banking system in ultra secure vaults in Zurich and the Swiss Alps (which is both the largest and most secure gold vault in the world) along with Singapore and Hong Kong with clients in over 40 countries which includes individuals, family offices as well as institutional clients.”

“We intentionally remove ourselves from counter-party risk. We facilitate the investment in precious metals for investors but the metals are held in the name of the investors and therefore they can go to any of the vaults directly (even without our assistance). GoldSwitzerland is the only company in the world that offers this facility where clients have numbered bars in their own name where they can go directly to the vault to inspect them or withdraw them directly.”

UNPRECEDENTED GLOBAL RISK

“I believe the world is in a bigger mess than I have seen going back in history! The risks are absolutely unprecedented with virtually every major economy now bankrupt. Japan in my view will not survive as an economy and will ‘sink down into the Pacific Ocean’. They are living on borrowed time and sadly at some point in time the Japanese economy will implode. Additionally we have massive problems in China where borrowing has been increased by $20T in the last few years. Europe has no solution to Greece and the Euro is the biggest problem to the world. You add to these Economic risks those of Geo-Political risk and risk is immense!”

“The Black Swans are everywhere and at some point one of them will land somewhere.”

WHY GOLD AS INSURANCE?

“Throughout history gold is the only money that has actually survived. No other form of currency has survived.

VOLTAIRE: “Paper money eventually returns to it’s intrinsic value of zero!”

MARK TWAIN: “Investors should worry about the return of their investment and not on the return on their investment!”

“I am not a gold bug. It is just that we decided in 2002 the world was in a mess and it was going to be in a bigger mess. Therefore people needed to invest directly in gold outside the banking system and preferably outside their own country of residence.”

THIS COMPREHENSIVE 35 MINUTE VIDEO COVERS MANY ASPECTS OF PRECIOUS METALS INVESTING

…. WHICH ONLY ONE OF THE WORLD’S LEADING EXPERTS CAN OFFER

• Paper markets are manipulated,
• Central Banks do not have the gold they say they have because of leasing contracts,
• Produced and refiners are at maximum production based on demand,
• Meanwhile, Gold is trading at or near its cash cost,
• The more government mis-manage the economy, the more important gold becomes,
• … and much more

Disclaimer: The views or opinions expressed in this blog post may or may not be representative of the views or opinions of the Financial Repression Authority.