Warren Buffett once said that derivatives are “financial weapons of mass destruction”, and that statement is more true today than it ever has been before. Recently, JP Morgan made national headlines when it announced that it was going to take a 2 billion dollar loss from derivatives trades gone bad. Well, it turns out that JP Morgan did not tell us the whole truth. As you will see later in this article, most analysts are estimating that the losses will eventually be far larger than 2 billion dollars. But no matter how bad things get for JP Morgan, it will not be allowed to fail. JP Morgan is the largest bank in the United States, so it is essentially the “granddaddy” of the too big to fail banks. If JP Morgan gets to the point where it is about to collapse, the U.S. government and the Federal Reserve will rush in to save it. Because of this “security blanket”, banks such as JP Morgan feel free to take outrageous risks. Today, JP Morgan has more exposure to derivatives than anyone else in the world. If they win, they win big. If they lose, U.S. taxpayers will be on the hook. Not only that, but thanks to Dodd-Frank, U.S. taxpayers are on the hook for bailing out the major derivatives clearinghouses if there is ever a major derivatives crisis. So when the derivatives market crashes (and it will) you and I will be left holding a gigantic bill.
Derivatives almost caused the complete collapse of insurance giant AIG back in 2008. But instead of learning our lessons, the derivatives bubble has gotten even larger since that time.
A Bloomberg article that was published last year contained a great quote from Mark Mobius about derivatives….
Mark Mobius, executive chairman of Templeton Asset Management’s emerging markets group, said another financial crisis is inevitable because the causes of the previous one haven’t been resolved.
“There is definitely going to be another financial crisis around the corner because we haven’t solved any of the things that caused the previous crisis,” Mobius said at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan in Tokyo today in response to a question about price swings. “Are the derivatives regulated? No. Are you still getting growth in derivatives? Yes.”
Never in the history of the world have we ever seen anything like this derivatives bubble.
But instead of getting it under control, we just allowed it to get bigger and bigger and bigger.
Now JP Morgan is in quite a bit of trouble. A recent Daily Finance article summarized how JP Morgan got into this mess….
Bruno Iksil, a trader working in the bank’s London office, placed a massive bet in the derivatives market. Derivatives “derive” their value from the value of an underlying asset, like stocks, bonds, currencies, or a market index. The specific type of derivative used in Iksil’s bet was a credit default swap index, known as “CDX.NA.IG.9.”
CDX.NA.IG.9 tracks a basket of corporate bonds. Iksil’s positions on the index were so big (one report put it at $100 billion) that they were moving the market and interfering with other traders’ positions. These annoyed traders — hedge-fund managers — dubbed Iksil “the London Whale” for his outsize bets.
So if the real number isn’t 2 billion dollars, how much will JP Morgan eventually lose?
Morgan Stanley says that the losses could eventually reach 5 billion dollars.
The Independent is reporting that the losses could eventually reach 7 billion dollars.
One author featured on Zero Hedge suggested that the losses could ultimately reach 20 billion dollars….
Simple: because it knew with 100% certainty that if things turn out very, very badly, that the taxpayer, via the Fed, would come to its rescue. Luckily, things turned out only 80% bad. Although it is not over yet: if credit spreads soar, assuming at $200 million DV01, and a 100 bps move, JPM could suffer a $20 billion loss when all is said and done. But hey: at least “net” is not “gross” and we know, just know, that the SEC will get involved and make sure something like this never happens again.
The truth is that nobody really knows. Everybody agrees that the losses will likely far exceed 2 billion dollars, but the real extent of the crisis will not be known until the trades play out.
According to the Huffington Post, JP Morgan recently sold 25 billion dollars of profitable securities to raise some cash. The profit on the sale of those securities will be somewhere in the neighborhood of a billion dollars.
A billion dollars will help, but it will not be nearly enough.
Many are interpreting this move as a sign of panic by JP Morgan.
Meanwhile, JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon continues to do quite well. In fact, his 23 million dollar pay package was recently approved by shareholders at an annual meeting.
Wouldn’t you like to do your job badly and still make 23 million dollars?
Right now, JP Morgan is essentially in a “staring contest” with those on the other side of the derivatives trades that went bad. This “staring contest” was described in a recent CNN article….
It’s clear from public data filed with The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation that JPMorgan Chase hasn’t sold any of its positions yet.The DTCC tracks trading activity and sizes of positions on the IG9 and other indexes, and there haven’t been any big moves since last week.
“Whatever the size was, it’s clearly not something that you can call one or two dealers and sell,” said Garth Friesen, a co-chief investment officer at AVM, a derivatives hedge fund that’s not involved in these trades.
As soon as it becomes clear that JPMorgan Chase is unwinding its position, it will be obvious to players on every major trading desk. Hedge funds will immediately start piling into that index and buying protection, driving up the bank’s losses.
Until then, it won’t cost the hedge funds much to sit and wait.
JP Morgan is desperately hoping that the markets move in their favor.
If the markets move against JP Morgan in a big way it could potentially be absolutely catastrophic for the biggest bank in America.
An excerpt from an email that Steve Quayle recently received from an anonymous international banking source contained some chilling analysis of the situation….
The derivative market that JPM plays in is the CDX.NA.IG.9, when factions within their London office (London Whale) made overly leveraged swaps, hedge funds smelled blood and so did a few banks. You see any moves that JPM does here on out exposes their weakness further. Which they can not afford any more exposure thus they are not buying back any more shares which is the equivalent of cutting an artery in a pool full of sharks. The strategy they are taking right now is to sit through the storm and ride it out as they can do nothing else for any action will make them even more vulnerable. They can not absorb hits in both JPM SLV and CDX.NA.IG.9. Inactivity is not something they want to do it is something they have to do. There is no other choice for them.
So what will happen if JP Morgan loses too much money?
Well, it will beg the U.S. government and the Federal Reserve for money and the U.S. government and the Federal Reserve will comply.
There is no way that they are going to let the largest bank in America fail.
In addition, as I mentioned earlier, Dodd-Frank has put U.S. taxpayers on the hook for future bailouts of derivatives clearinghouses. This was detailed in a recent Wall Street Journal article….
Little noticed is that on Tuesday Team Obama took its first formal steps toward putting taxpayers behind Wall Street derivatives trading — not behind banks that might make mistakes in derivatives markets, but behind the trading itself. Yes, the same crew that rails against the dangers of derivatives is quietly positioning these financial instruments directly above the taxpayer safety net.
One of the things that Dodd-Frank does is that it gives the Federal Reserve the power to provide “discount and borrowing privileges” to derivatives clearinghouses in the event of a major derivatives crisis.
This is what our politicians love to do.
They love to have the U.S. taxpayer guarantee everything.
Our politicians look at us as one giant insurance policy.
Apparently they believe that if anything in the financial world goes wrong that U.S. taxpayers should be the ones to clean up the mess.
But will we really have enough money to bail everyone out when the derivatives market crashes?
During an appearance on Meet The Press on Sunday, Jim Cramer of CNBC boldly predicted that “financial anarchy” is coming to Europe and that there will be “bank runs” in Spain and Italy in the next few weeks. This is very strong language for the most famous personality on the most watched financial news channel in the United States to be using. In fact, if Cramer is not careful, people will start accusing him of sounding just like The Economic Collapse Blog. It may not happen in “the next few weeks”, but the truth is that the European banking system is in a massive amount of trouble and if Greece does leave the euro it is going to cause a tremendous loss of confidence in banks in countries such as Spain, Italy and Portugal. There are already rumors that the “smart money” is pulling out of Spanish and Italian banks. So could we see some of these banks collapse? Would they get bailed out if they do collapse? It is so hard to predict exactly how “financial anarchy” will play out, but it is becoming increasingly clear that the European financial system is heading for a massive amount of pain.
Posted below is a clip of Jim Cramer making his bold predictions during his appearance on Meet The Press. He is obviously very, very disturbed about the direction that Europe is heading in….
But what is Europe supposed to do? Even though “austerity measures” have been implemented in many eurozone nations, the truth is that they are all still running up more debt. Are European nations just supposed to run up massive amounts of debt indefinitely and pretend that there will never been any consequences?
That is apparently what Barack Obama wants. During the G-8 summit that just concluded, Obama urged European leaders to pursue a “pro-growth” path.
Of course to Obama a “pro-growth” economic plan includes spending trillions of dollars that you do not have without any regard for what you are doing to future generations.
Germany has been trying to get the rest of the eurozone to move much closer to living within their means, but as the recent elections in France and Greece demonstrated, much of the rest of the eurozone is not too thrilled with the end of debt-fueled prosperity.
In Greece, the recent elections failed to produce a new government, so new elections will be held on June 17th.
Many EU politicians are trying to turn these upcoming elections into a referendum on whether Greece stays in the eurozone or not. If the next Greek government is willing to honor the austerity agreements that have been previously agreed to, then Greece will probably stay in the eurozone for a while longer. If the next Greek government is not willing to honor the austerity agreements that have been previously agreed to, then Greece will probably be forced out of the eurozone.
The following is what John Praveen, the chief investment strategist at Prudential International Investments Advisers, had to say about the political situation in Greece recently….
“If the pro-euro major parties fail to muster enough support to form a coalition and the radical left Syriza party and other anti-euro, anti-austerity parties secure a majority, the risk of a disorderly Greek exit from the Euro increases and could roil markets”
Right now, polls show the leading anti-austerity party, Syriza, doing very well. The leader of Syriza, Alexis Tsipras, has declared that he plans “to stop the experiment” with austerity and that what the rest of the eurozone has tried to do in Greece is a “crime against the Greek people“.
But the Germans do not see it that way. The Germans just want the Greeks to stop spending far more money than they bring in.
The Germans do not want to endlessly bail out the Greeks if the Greeks are not willing to show some financial discipline.
As we approach the June 17th elections, the financial markets are likely to be quite nervous. According to Art Hogan of Lazard Capital Partners, many investors are deeply concerned about how “sloppy” a great exit from the euro could be….
“Next week is only one of the four weeks we have to wait until the Greek election. Every utterance out of Greece makes us think about their [possible] exit and how sloppy that could be”
Most Greek citizens want to remain in the eurozone and most European politicians want Greece to remain in the eurozone, but it is looking increasingly likely as if that may not happen.
In fact, there are reports that preparations are rapidly being made for a Greek exit. According to Reuters, “contingency plans” for the printing of Greek drachmas have already been drawn up….
De La Rue (DLAR.L) has drawn up contingency plans to print drachma banknotes should Greece exit the euro and approach the British money printer, an industry source told Reuters on Friday.
And even EU officials are now acknowledging that plans for a Greek exit from the euro are being developed. The following is what EU Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht said during one recent interview….
“A year and a half ago, there may have been the danger of a domino effect,” he said, “but today there are, both within the European Central Bank and the European Commission, services that are working on emergency scenarios in case Greece doesn’t make it.”
When these kinds of things start to become public, that is a sign that officials really do not expect Greece to remain a part of the euro.
And Greece is rapidly beginning to run out of money. According to a recent Ekathimerini article, the Greek government is likely to run out of money at the end of June….
The public coffers are seen running dry at the end of June, but this will depend on two key factors. First, revenue collection: In the first 10 days of May, inflows were about 15 percent lower than projected but there are fears that the slide may reach 50 percent. The GAO will have a picture for the first 20 days on May 23, while the last three days of the month are considered crucial, when 1.5 billion euros of the month’s budgeted total of 3.6 billion are expected to flow in.
Second, whether the IMF and EFSF installments are disbursed: This is not certain, as the decision will be purely political for both providers and evidently partly linked to political developments. Earlier this month the eurozone approved a disbursement 1 billion short of the 5 billion euros that were expected.
If Greece runs out of money and if the rest of Europe cuts off the flow of euros, Greece would essentially be forced to leave the euro.
So the last half of June looks like it could potentially be a key moment for Greece.
Meanwhile, the Greek banking system is struggling to survive as hundreds of millions of euros get pulled out of it. The following is from a recent CNN article….
The Greek financial system is straining hard for cash.
Consumers and businesses are making massive withdrawals from Greece’s banks — leading to concern the beleaguered nation could be forced out of the eurozone by a banking crisis even before its government runs out of cash.
Deposits are the lifeblood of any bank, and Greeks pulled 800 million euros out of the banking system on Tuesday alone, the most recent day for which figures are available.
If Greece does leave the euro and the Greek banking system does collapse, that is going to be a clear signal that a similar scenario will be allowed to play out in other eurozone nations.
That is why Jim Cramer, myself and many others are warning that there could soon be bank runs all over the eurozone.
For example, the Telegraph has reported that wealthy individuals are starting to pull money out of Spanish banking giant Santander….
Customers with large deposits have started withdrawing cash from Santander, the bank has admitted, as it tried to reassure concerned members of the public that their money is safe.
Round and round we go. Where all this will stop nobody knows.
If Greece does end up leaving the euro, that could set off a chain of cascading events that could potentially be absolutely catastrophic.
And if the “house of cards” does come down in Europe, that is going to greatly destabilize the global derivatives market.
You see, the truth is that the global derivatives market is very delicately balanced. The assumption most firms make is that things are not going to deviate too much from what is considered “normal”.
If we do end up seeing “financial anarchy” in Europe, that is going to greatly destabilize the system and we could rapidly have a huge derivatives crisis on our hands.
And as we saw with JP Morgan recently, losses from derivatives can add up really fast.
Originally, we were told that the derivatives losses that JP Morgan experienced recently came to a total of only about 2 billion dollars.
Now, we are told that it could be a whole lot more than that. According to the Wall Street Journal, JP Morgan could end up losing about 5 billion dollars (or more) before it is all said and done….
J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. is struggling to extricate itself from disastrous wagers by traders such as the “London whale,” in a sign that the size of its bets could bog down the bank’s unwinding of the trades and deepen its losses by billions of dollars.
The nation’s largest bank has said publicly that its losses on the trades have surpassed $2 billion, and people familiar with the matter have said they could over time reach $5 billion.
And if Europe experiences a financial collapse, the losses experienced by U.S. firms could make that 5 billion dollars look like pocket change. The following is from a recent article by Graham Summers….
According to Reuters once you include Spain and Italy as well as Credit Default Swaps and indirect exposure to Europe, US banks have roughly $4 TRILLION in potential exposure to the EU.
To put that number in perspective, the entire US banking system is $12 trillion in size.
Interesting days are ahead my friends.
Let us hope for the best, but let us also prepare for the worst.
With each passing day, the banking crisis in Europe escalates. European banks are having their credit ratings downgraded in waves, bond yields are soaring and billions of euros are being pulled out of banks all across the eurozone. The situation in Europe is rapidly going from bad to worse. It is almost like watching air being let out of a balloon. The key to any financial system is confidence, and right now confidence in banks in Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal is declining at an alarming rate. When things hit the fan in Europe, it is going to be much safer to have your money in Swiss banks or German banks than in Greek banks, Spanish banks or Italian banks. Millions of people in Europe are starting to realize that a “euro” is not necessarily always going to be a “euro” and they are starting to panic. The Greek banking system is already on the verge of total collapse, and at this rate it is only a matter of time before we see some major Spanish and Italian banks start to fail. In fact it has already been announced that the fourth largest bank in Spain, Bankia, will be getting bailed out by the Spanish government. It is only a matter of time before we hear more announcements like this. Right now, events are moving so quickly in Europe that it is hard to keep up with them all. But this is what usually happens in the financial world. When things go well, it tends to happen over an extended period of time. When things fall apart, it tends to happen very rapidly.
And at the moment, things across the pond are moving at a pace that is absolutely breathtaking.
The following are 18 signs that the banking crisis in Europe has just gone from bad to worse….
#1 Moody’s has announced that it has downgraded the credit ratings of 16 Spanish banks. Included was Banco Santander, the largest bank in the eurozone.
#2 Shares of the fourth largest bank in Spain, Bankia, dropped 14 percent on Thursday.
#3 Overall, shares of Bankia have declined by 61 percent since last July.
#4 Shares of the largest bank in Italy, Unicredit, dropped by about 6 percent on Thursday.
#5 According to CNBC, a Spanish bond auction on Thursday went very poorly….
The Spanish Treasury had to pay around 5 percent to attract buyers of three- and four-year bonds. The longer-dated paper sold with a yield of 5.106 percent, way above the 3.374 percent the last time it was auctioned.
#10 According to a recent German documentary, financial records at the Ministry of Finance in Athens are being stored in garbage bags and shopping carts.
#11 The euro hit a 4 month low against the U.S. dollar on Thursday.
#13 The Spanish government is becoming increasingly concerned about the bad loans that are mounting at major Spanish banks. The following is from a recent Bloomberg article….
The government has asked lenders to increase provisions for bad debt by 54 billion euros ($70 billion) to 166 billion euros. That’s enough to cover losses of about 50 percent on loans to property developers and construction firms, according to the Bank of Spain. There wouldn’t be anything left for defaults on more than 1.4 trillion euros of home loans and corporate debt.
Taking those into account, banks would need to increase provisions by as much as five times what the government says, or 270 billion euros, according to estimates by the Centre for European Policy Studies, a Brussels-based research group. Plugging that hole would increase Spain’s public debt by almost 50 percent or force it to seek a bailout, following in the footsteps of Ireland, Greece and Portugal.
#14 Civil unrest is rising to dangerous levels in Italy. The Italian government has assigned bodyguards to 550 individuals and has increased security at about 14,000 locations in response to recent violence related to the economic crisis.
#15 Governments all over Europe are rapidly making preparations for a Greek exit from the euro. The following is from a recent article in the Guardian….
The British government is making urgent preparations to cope with the fallout of a possible Greek exit from the single currency, after the governor of the Bank of England, Sir Mervyn King, warned that Europe was “tearing itself apart”.
#16 According to CNBC, the banking crisis in Europe is beginning to affect global trade….
The euro zone debt crisis is affecting trade as companies shy away from dealing with firms and banks in countries deemed at risk of contagion, a senior banker said on Thursday.
#17 Moody’s downgraded the credit ratings of 26 Italian banks on Monday.
Newspapers all over the globe are speaking breathlessly of a potential Greek exit from the euro, but it is very unlikely to happen before the next Greek election on June 17th.
The rest of Europe is going to continue to financially support Greece until a new government takes power.
If the new government is willing to accept the previous bailout agreements, then financial support for Greece will continue.
If the new government is not willing to accept the previous bailout agreements, then financial support for Greece will stop.
Money is being pulled out of Greek banks at an alarming rate, and if something dramatic is not done quickly Greek banks are going to start dropping like flies. As I detailed yesterday, people do not want to be stuck with euros in Greek banks when Greece leaves the euro and converts back to the drachma. The fear is that all existing euros in Greek banks would be converted over to drachmas which would then rapidly lose value after the transition. So right now euros are being pulled out of Greek banks at a staggering pace. According to MSNBC, Greeks withdrew $894 million from Greek banks on Monday alone and a similar amount was withdrawn on Tuesday. But this is just an acceleration of a trend that has been going on for a couple of years. It has been reported that approximately a third of all Greek bank deposits were withdrawn between January 2010 and March 2012. So where has all of the cash for these withdrawals been coming from? Well, the European Central Bank has been providing liquidity for Greek banks, but now it has been reported that the ECB is going to stop providing liquidity to some Greek banks. It was not announced which Greek banks are being cut off. For now, the Greek Central Bank will continue to provide euros to those banks, but the Greek Central Bank will not be able to funnel euros into insolvent banks indefinitely.
This is a major move by the European Central Bank, and it is going to shake confidence in the Greek banking system even more.
There are already rumors that the Greek government is considering placing limits on bank withdrawals, and many Greeks will be tempted to go grab their money while they still can.
Once strict currency controls are put in place, the population is likely to respond very angrily. If people can’t get their money there is no telling what they might do.
We are reaching a critical moment. Many fear that a full-blown “bank panic” could happen at any time. The following is from a recent Forbes article….
The pressing problem isn’t a splintered legislature that may balk at delivering the reforms that the IMF and European Community are demanding in exchange for the next tranche of bailout money. It’s a disastrous, old-fashioned run-on-the bank. “For a year, Greeks have been sending their savings from Greek banks to foreign banks,” says Robert Aliber, retired professor of international economics from the University of Chicago. “Now, the flood has reached a crescendo.” Indeed on Monday alone, outflows from the Greek banks reached almost $900 million.
These banks would have collapsed already if not for the support of the European Central Bank and the Greek Central Bank. This was described in a recent blog post by Paul Krugman of the New York Times….
But where are the euros coming from? Basically, banks are borrowing them from the Greek central bank, which in turn must borrow them from the European Central Bank. The question then becomes how far the ECB is willing to go here; is it willing, in effect, to lend enough money to buy up the entire balance sheet of the Greek banking sector, given the likelihood that this sector will be left insolvent by Greek default?
Yet if the ECB says no more, Greek banks stop operating — and it’s hard to see how they can be restored to operation except by ditching the euro and using something else.
That is why the announcement that the ECB is cutting off funding was so dramatic. The ECB is starting to pull back and that is a very bad sign for the Greek banking system.
For the moment, the Greek Central Bank is continuing to support the Greek banks that the European Central Bank is no longer providing liquidity for. A Reuters article explained how this works….
The ECB only conducts its refinancing operations with solvent banks. Banks which fail to meet strict ECB rules but are deemed solvent by the national central bank (NCB) concerned can nonetheless go to their NCB for emergency liquidity assistance (ELA).
But this emergency liquidity assistance is not intended to be a long-term solution as a recent Wall Street Journal article noted….
The ECB’s emergency-lending facility isn’t intended as a long-term fix. National central banks must get approval each month that they want to let their banks access the facility from the ECB’s governing council, which can veto use of the program.
If Greece installs an antibailout government that reneges on its austerity promises, it would almost certainly be cut off from ECB funding.
The truth is that we are heading for a financial tragedy in Greece. If the flow of money out of Greek banks intensifies, the Greek banking system might not even be able to make it to the next election in June. This point was underscored in an article that was authored by renowned financial journalist Ambrose Evans-Pritchard….
Steen Jakobsen from Danske Bank said outflows are becoming unstoppable, not helped by open talk in EU circles of `technical’ plans for Greek withdrawal.
“This has a self-fulfilling prophecy built into it and I don’t think we can get to June. The fuse is burning and the only two options now are a controlled explosion where Germany steps in to ensure an orderly exit, or an uncontrolled explosion,” he said.
So what should we expect to see next?
Well, James Carney of CNBC says that he believes that it is inevitable that Greece is going to have to implement currency controls in order to slow the bleeding….
It looks increasingly likely that Greece will have to implement controls to prevent capital flight and a banking collapse. To my mind, the only real question is when this will occur.
The widespread talk about Greece possibly leaving the euro zone is likely to trigger withdrawal of bank deposits and other financial assets, by those who fear they might be redenominated into a drachma that would be worth far less than the euro.
The Greek government may soon announce a limit on the amount of money that can be withdrawn on a single day.
The Greek government may also soon announce a limit on the amount of money that can be moved out of the country.
Those would be dramatic steps to take, but if nothing is done we are likely to watch the Greek banking system die right in front of our eyes.
A Greek exit from the euro seems more likely with each passing day. Such an exit would have a devastating impact on the Greek economy, but it would also dramatically affect the rest of the globe as well. The following is from a recent article by Louise Armitstead….
The Institute of International Finance has estimated that the global cost of a Greek exit could hit €1trillion. When Argentina defaulted in 2001, foreign debtors lost around 70pc of their investments.
That is a big hit for such a little country.
So what would it cost the globe if Spain or Italy left the eurozone?
That is something to think about.
Meanwhile, the United States continues to steamroll down the same road that Greece has gone. According to the Republican Senate Budget Committee, the U.S. government is currently spending more money per person than Greece, Portugal, Italy or Spain does.
Unfortunately, most Americans are totally oblivious to all of this.
Instead of getting educated about the horrific financial crisis heading our way, most Americans would rather read about why Jennifer Lopez is leaving American Idol.
But those that are listening to the warnings will be prepared when the storm hits.
What was considered unthinkable a few months ago has now become probable. All over the globe there are headlines proclaiming that a Greek exit from the euro is now a real possibility. In fact, some of those headlines make it sound like it is practically inevitable. For example, Der Spiegel ran a front page story the other day with the following startling headline: “Acropolis, Adieu! Why Greece must leave the euro”. Many are saying that the euro will be stronger without Greece. They are saying things such as “a chain is only as strong as its weakest link” and they are claiming that financial markets are now far more prepared for a “Grexit” than they would have been two years ago. But the truth is that it really is naive to think that a Greek exit from the euro can be “managed” and that business will go on as usual afterwards. If Greece leaves the euro it will set a very dangerous precedent. The moment Greece exits the euro, investors all over the globe will be asking the following question: “Who is next?” Portugal, Italy and Spain would all see bond yields soar and they would all likely experience runs on their banks. It would only be a matter of time before more eurozone members would leave. In the end, the whole monetary union experiment would crumble.
2. Huge withdrawals from Spanish and Italian banks, as depositors try to move their money to Germany.
3a. Maybe, just possibly, de facto controls, with banks forbidden to transfer deposits out of country and limits on cash withdrawals.
3b. Alternatively, or maybe in tandem, huge draws on ECB credit to keep the banks from collapsing.
4a. Germany has a choice. Accept huge indirect public claims on Italy and Spain, plus a drastic revision of strategy — basically, to give Spain in particular any hope you need both guarantees on its debt to hold borrowing costs down and a higher eurozone inflation target to make relative price adjustment possible; or:
4b. End of the euro.
By itself, Greece cannot crash the eurozone. But the precedent that Greece is about to set could set forth a chain of events that may very well bring about the end of the eurozone.
If one country is allowed to leave the euro, that means that other countries will be allowed to leave the euro as well. This is the kind of uncertainty that drives financial markets crazy.
When the euro was initially created, monetary union was intended to be irreversible. There are no provisions for what happens if a member nation wants to leave the euro. It simply was not even conceived of at the time.
So we are really moving into uncharted territory. A recent Bloomberg article attempted to set forth some of the things that might happen if a Greek exit from the euro becomes a reality….
A Greek departure from the euro could trigger a default-inducing surge in bond yields, capital flight that might spread to other indebted states and a resultant series of bank runs. Although Greece accounts for 2 percent of the euro-area’s economic output, its exit would fragment a system of monetary union designed to be irreversible and might cause investors to raise the threat of withdrawal by other states.
In fact, yields on Spanish debt and Italian debt are already rising rapidly thanks to the bad news out of Greece in recent days.
What makes things worse is that a new government has still not formed in Greece. It looks like new elections may have to be held in June.
Meanwhile, the Greek government is rapidly running out of money. The following is from a Bank of America report that was released a few days ago….
“If no government is in place before June when the next installment (of loan money) from the European Union and International Monetary Fund is due, we estimate that Greece will run out of money sometime between the end of June and beginning of July, at which point a return to the drachma would seem inevitable”
In the recent Greek elections, parties that opposed the bailout agreements picked up huge gains. And opinion polls suggest that they will make even larger gains if another round of elections is held.
The Coalition of the Radical Left, also known as Syriza, surprised everyone by coming in second in the recent elections. Current polling shows that Syriza is likely to come in first if new elections are held.
The leader of Syriza, Alexis Tsipras, is passionately against the bailout agreements. He says that Greece can reject austerity because the rest of Europe will never kick Greece out of the eurozone. Tsipras believes that the rest of Europe must bail out Greece because the consequences of allowing Greece to go bankrupt and fall out of the eurozone would be far too high for the rest of Europe.
“Mr Schaeuble [Germany’s finance minister] is pretending to be the fearless cowboy on the radio, saying the euro is secure [against a Greek exit]. But there’s no way they will kick us out”
So Greece and Germany are playing a game of chicken.
Who will blink first?
Will either of them blink first?
Syriza is trying to convince the Greek people that they can reject austerity and stay in the euro. Syriza insists that the rest of Europe will provide the money that they need to pay their bills.
And most Greeks do actually want to stay in the euro. One recent poll found that 78.1 percent of all Greeks want Greece to remain in the eurozone.
But a majority of Greeks also do not want anymore austerity.
Unfortunately, it is not realistic for them to assume that they can have their cake and eat it too. If Greece does not continue to move toward a balanced budget, they will lose their aid money.
And if Greece loses that aid money, the consequences will be dramatic.
Outgoing deputy prime minister of Greece Theodoros Pangalos recently had the following to say about what would happen if Greece doesn’t get the bailout money that it needs….
“We will be in wild bankruptcy, out-of-control bankruptcy. The state will not be able to pay salaries and pensions. This is not recognised by the citizens. We have got until June before we run out of money.”
If Greece gets cut off and runs out of money, it will almost certainly be forced to go back to using the drachma. If that happens there will likely be a “bank holiday”, the borders will be secured to limit capital flight and new currency will be rapidly printed up. It would be a giant mess.
In fact, there are rumblings that the European financial system is already making preparations for all this. For example, a recent Reuters article had the following shock headline: “Banks prepare for the return of the drachma”
But a new drachma would almost certainly crash in value almost immediately as a recent article in the Telegraph described….
Most economists think that a new, free-floating drachma would immediately crash by up to 50 percent against the euro and other currencies, effectively halving the value of everyone’s savings and spelling catastrophe for those on fixed incomes, like pensioners.
A Greek economy that is already experiencing a depression would get even worse. The Greek economy has contracted by 8.5 percent over the past 12 months and the unemployment rate in Greece is up to 21.8 percent. It is hard to imagine what Greece is going to look like if things continue to fall apart.
But the consequences for the rest of Europe (and for the rest of the globe) would be dramatic as well. A Greek exit from the euro could be the next “Lehman Brothers moment” and could plunge the entire global financial system into another major crisis.
Unfortunately, at this point it is hard to imagine a scenario in which the eventual break up of the euro can be avoided.
Germany would have to become willing to bail out the rest of the eurozone indefinitely, and that simply is not going to happen.
So there is a lot of pessimism in the financial world right now. Nobody is quite sure what is going to happen next and the number of short positions is steadily rising as a recent CNN article detailed….
After staying quiet at the start of the year, the bears have come roaring back with a vengeance.
Short interest — a bet on stocks turning lower — topped 13 billion shares on the New York Stock Exchange at the end of last month. That’s up 4% from March and marks the highest level of the year.
If the eurozone is going to survive, Greece must stay a part of it.
Instead of removing the weakest link from the chain, the reality is that a Greek exit from the euro would end up shattering the chain.
Confidence is a funny thing. It can take decades to build but it can be lost in a single moment.
If Greece leaves the euro, investor confidence in the eurozone will be permanently damaged. And when investors get spooked they don’t behave rationally.
A common currency in Europe is not dead by any means, but this current manifestation is now operating on borrowed time.
As the eurozone crumbles, it is likely that Germany will simply pull the plug at some point and decide to start over.
So what do you think?
Do you think that I am right or do you think that I am wrong?
Please feel free to post a comment with your thoughts below….
When news broke of a 2 billion dollar trading loss by JP Morgan, much of the financial world was absolutely stunned. But the truth is that this is just the beginning. This is just a very small preview of what is going to happen when we see the collapse of the worldwide derivatives market. When most Americans think of Wall Street, they think of a bunch of stuffy bankers trading stocks and bonds. But over the past couple of decades it has evolved into much more than that. Today, Wall Street is the biggest casino in the entire world. When the “too big to fail” banks make good bets, they can make a lot of money. When they make bad bets, they can lose a lot of money, and that is exactly what just happened to JP Morgan. Their Chief Investment Office made a series of trades which turned out horribly, and it resulted in a loss of over 2 billion dollars over the past 40 days. But 2 billion dollars is small potatoes compared to the vast size of the global derivatives market. It has been estimated that the the notional value of all the derivatives in the world is somewhere between 600 trillion dollars and 1.5 quadrillion dollars. Nobody really knows the real amount, but when this derivatives bubble finally bursts there is not going to be nearly enough money on the entire planet to fix things.
Sadly, a lot of mainstream news reports are not even using the word “derivatives” when they discuss what just happened at JP Morgan. This morning I listened carefully as one reporter described the 2 billion dollar loss as simply a “bad bet”.
And perhaps that is easier for the American people to understand. JP Morgan made a series of really bad bets and during a conference call last night CEO Jamie Dimon admitted that the strategy was “flawed, complex, poorly reviewed, poorly executed and poorly monitored”.
The funny thing is that JP Morgan is considered to be much more “risk averse” than most other major Wall Street financial institutions are.
So if this kind of stuff is happening at JP Morgan, then what in the world is going on at some of these other places?
That is a really good question.
For those interested in the technical details of the 2 billion dollar loss, an article posted on CNBC described exactly how this loss happened….
The failed hedge likely involved a bet on the flattening of a credit derivative curve, part of the CDX family of investment grade credit indices, said two sources with knowledge of the industry, but not directly involved in the matter. JPMorgan was then caught by sharp moves at the long end of the bet, they said. The CDX index gives traders exposure to credit risk across a range of assets, and gets its value from a basket of individual credit derivatives.
In essence, JP Morgan made a series of bets which turned out very, very badly. This loss was so huge that it even caused members of Congress to take note. The following is from a statement that U.S. Senator Carl Levin issued a few hours after this news first broke….
“The enormous loss JPMorgan announced today is just the latest evidence that what banks call ‘hedges’ are often risky bets that so-called ‘too big to fail’ banks have no business making.”
Unfortunately, the losses from this trade may not be over yet. In fact, if things go very, very badly the losses could end up being much larger as a recent Zero Hedge article detailed….
Simple: because it knew with 100% certainty that if things turn out very, very badly, that the taxpayer, via the Fed, would come to its rescue. Luckily, things turned out only 80% bad. Although it is not over yet: if credit spreads soar, assuming at $200 million DV01, and a 100 bps move, JPM could suffer a $20 billion loss when all is said and done. But hey: at least “net” is not “gross” and we know, just know, that the SEC will get involved and make sure something like this never happens again.
And yes, the SEC has announced an “investigation” into this 2 billion dollar loss. But we all know that the SEC is basically useless. In recent years SEC employees have become known more for watching pornography in their Washington D.C. offices than for regulating Wall Street.
But what has become abundantly clear is that Wall Street is completely incapable of policing itself. This point was underscored in a recent commentary by Henry Blodget of Business Insider….
Wall Street can’t be trusted to manage—or even correctly assess—its own risks.
This is in part because, time and again, Wall Street has demonstrated that it doesn’t even KNOW what risks it is taking.
In short, Wall Street bankers are just a bunch of kids playing with dynamite.
There are two reasons for this, neither of which boil down to “stupidity.”
The first reason is that the gambling instruments the banks now use are mind-bogglingly complicated.Warren Buffett once described derivatives as “weapons of mass destruction.” And those weapons have gotten a lot more complex in the past few years.
The second reason is that Wall Street’s incentive structure is fundamentally flawed: Bankers get all of the upside for winning bets, and someone else—the government or shareholders—covers the downside.
The second reason is particularly insidious. The worst thing that can happen to a trader who blows a huge bet and demolishes his firm—literally the worst thing—is that he will get fired. Then he will immediately go get a job at a hedge fund and make more than he was making before he blew up the firm.
We never learned one of the basic lessons that we should have learned from the financial crisis of 2008.
Wall Street bankers take huge risks because the risk/reward ratio is all messed up.
If the bankers make huge bets and they win, then they win big.
If the bankers make huge bets and they lose, then the federal government uses taxpayer money to clean up the mess.
Under those kind of conditions, why not bet the farm?
Sadly, most Americans do not even know what derivatives are.
Most Americans have no idea that we are rapidly approaching a horrific derivatives crisis that is going to make 2008 look like a Sunday picnic.
According to the Comptroller of the Currency, the “too big to fail” banks have exposure to derivatives that is absolutely mind blowing. Just check out the following numbers from an official U.S. government report….
JPMorgan Chase – $70.1 Trillion
Citibank – $52.1 Trillion
Bank of America – $50.1 Trillion
Goldman Sachs – $44.2 Trillion
So a 2 billion dollar loss for JP Morgan is nothing compared to their total exposure of over 70 trillion dollars.
Overall, the 9 largest U.S. banks have a total of more than 200 trillion dollars of exposure to derivatives. That is approximately 3 times the size of the entire global economy.
It is hard for the average person on the street to begin to comprehend how immense this derivatives bubble is.
So let’s not make too much out of this 2 billion dollar loss by JP Morgan.
This is just chicken feed.
This is just a preview of coming attractions.
Soon enough the real problems with derivatives will begin, and when that happens it will shake the entire global financial system to the core.
If you enjoy watching financial doom, then you are quite likely to really enjoy the rest of 2012. Right now, red flags are popping up all over the place. Corporate insiders are selling off stock like there is no tomorrow, major economies all over Europe continue to implode, the IMF is warning that the eurozone could actually break up and there are signs of trouble at major banks all over the planet. Unfortunately, it looks like the period of relative stability that global financial markets have been enjoying is about to come to an end. A whole host of problems that have been festering just below the surface are starting to manifest, and we are beginning to see the ingredients for a “perfect storm” start to come together. The greatest global debt bubble in human history is showing signs that it is getting ready to burst, and when that happens the consequences are going to be absolutely horrific. Hopefully we still have at least a little bit more time before the global financial system implodes, but at this point it doesn’t look like anything is going to be able to stop the chaos that is on the horizon.
The following are 22 red flags that indicate that very serious doom is coming for global financial markets….
#1 According to CNN, the level of selling by insiders at corporations listed on the S&P 500 is the highest that it has been in almost a decade. Do those insiders know something that the rest of us do not?
#2 Home prices in the United States have fallen for six months in a row and are now down 35 percent from the peak of the housing market. The last time that home prices in the U.S. were this low was back in 2002.
#3 It is now being projected that the Greek economy will shrink by another 5 percent this year.
#4 Despite wave after wave of austerity measures, Greece is still going to have a budget deficit equivalent to about 7 percent of GDP in 2012.
#5 Interest rates on Italian and Spanish sovereign debt are rapidly rising. The following is from a recent RTE article….
Spain’s borrowing rate nearly doubled in a short-term debt auction as investors fretted over the euro zone’s determination to deal with its debts.
And Italy raised nearly €3.5 billion in a short-term bond sale today but at sharply higher interest rates amid fresh concerns over the euro zone outlook, the Bank of Italy said.
#6 The government of Spain recently announced that its 2011 budget deficit was much larger than originally projected and that it probably will not meet its budget targets for 2012 either.
#7 Amazingly, bad loans now make up 8.15 percent of all loans on the books of Spanish banks. That is the highest level in 18 years. The total value of all toxic loans in Spain is equivalent to approximately 13 percent of Spanish GDP.
#9 The Spanish government has announced a ban on all cash transactions larger than 2,500 euros. Many are interpreting this as a panic move.
#10 It is looking increasingly likely that a major bailout for Spain will be needed. The following is from a recent Reuters article….
Economic experts watching Spain don’t know how much money will be needed or precisely when, but some are near certain that Madrid will eventually seek a multi-billion euro bailout for its banks, and perhaps even for the state itself.
#11 Analysts at Moody’s Analytics are warning that Italy has now reached financially unsustainable territory….
“Italy is already out of fiscal space, in our estimate.” said Moody’s. “Its debt levels relative to GDP already exceed a manageable level. The manageable limit for Italian 10-year bond yields is estimated at 4.2pc. As of Wednesday, Italian 10-year yields were 5.46pc.”
#12 It is being projected that the Portuguese economy will shrink by 5.7 percent during 2012.
#13 There is even trouble in European nations that have been considered relatively stable up to this point. For example, the Dutch government collapsed on Monday after austerity talks broke down.
#14 The head of the IMF, Christine Lagarde, says that there are “dark clouds on the horizon” for the global economy.
#15 The top economist for the IMF, Olivier Blanchard, recently made this statement: “One has the feeling that at any moment, things could get very bad again.”
#16 A recent IMF report admitted that the current financial crisis could lead to the break up of the eurozone….
Under these circumstances, a break-up of the euro area could not be ruled out. The financial and real spillovers to other regions, especially emerging Europe, would likely be very large.
This could cause major political shocks that could aggravate economic stress to levels well above those after the Lehman collapse.
#17 George Soros is publicly declaring that the European Union could soon experience a collapse similar to what happened to the Soviet Union.
#18 A member of the European Parliament, Nigel Farage, stated during one recent interview that it is inevitable that some major banks in Europe will collapse….
There are going to be some serious banking collapses and the impact of that on some sovereign states, will be serious. I’m afraid we’ve gotten to a point where we really can’t stop this now. We’re beginning to reach a stage where however much false money you create, the problem becomes bigger than the people trying to solve it. We are very close to that point.
When I talk about the threats and the risk that this thing could wind up in some kind of rebellion, some sort of awful social cataclysm, they (other European politicians) are now very worried indeed. They will talk to you in private, but in public, nobody dares utter a word.
I think the deterioration, in the last two or three weeks, in the eurozone is very serious indeed. It’s the bond spreads in Italy and Spain. It’s the fact that youth unemployment is now over 50% in some of these Mediterranean countries.
It’s riot and disorder on the streets. And yet a month ago I was here and there was Herman Van Rumpuy telling us, ‘We’ve turned the corner. Everything is solved. There are no more problems with the eurozone.’ What a pack of jokers they look like.”
#19 The IMF is projecting that Japan will have a debt to GDP ratio of 256 percent by next year.
#20 Goldman Sachs is projecting that the S&P 500 will fall by about 11 percent by the end of 2012.
#21 Over the past six months, hundreds of prominent bankers have resigned all over the globe. Is there a reason why so many are suddenly leaving their posts?
#22 The 9 largest U.S. banks have a total of 228.72 trillion dollars of exposure to derivatives. That is approximately 3 times the size of the entire global economy. It is a financial bubble so immense in size that it is nearly impossible to fully comprehend how large it is.
The financial crisis of 2008 was just a warm up act for what is coming. The too big to fail banks are larger than ever, the governments of the western world are in far more debt than they were back then, and the entire global financial system is more unstable and more vulnerable than ever before.
But this time the epicenter of the financial crisis will be in Europe.
Outside of Europe, most people simply do not understand how truly nightmarish the European economic crisis really is.
Spain, Italy and Portugal are all heading for an economic depression and Greece is already in one.
The European Central Bank was able to kick the can down the road a little bit by expanding its balance sheet by about a trillion dollars over the last nine months, but the truth is that the underlying problems in Europe just continue to get worse and worse.
It truly is like watching a horrible car wreck happen in slow motion.
The good news is that there is still a little time to get yourself into a better position for the next financial crisis. Don’t leave yourself financially exposed to the next crash.
Sadly, just like back in 2008, most people will never even see this next crisis coming.
So do you have any other red flags to add to the list above? Please feel free to post a comment with your thoughts below….
The Democrats, the Republicans and especially Barack Obama promised that something would be done about the too big to fail banks so that they would never again be a threat to destroy our financial system. Well, those promises have not been kept and the too big to fail banks are now much bigger and much more powerful than ever. The assets of the five biggest U.S. banks were equivalent to about 43 percent of U.S. GDP before the financial crisis. Today, the assets of the five biggest U.S. banks are equivalent to about 56 percent of U.S. GDP. So if those banks were “too big to fail” before, then what are they now? They continue to gobble up smaller banks at a brisk pace, and they continue to pile up debt and risky investments as if a day of reckoning will never come. But of course a day of reckoning is coming, and when it arrives they will be expecting more bailouts just like they got the last time.
The size of these monolithic financial institutions is truly difficult to comprehend. They completely dominate our financial system and everywhere you look they are constantly absorbing more wealth and more power. The following comes from a recent Bloomberg article….
Five banks — JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), Bank of America Corp. (BAC), Citigroup Inc., Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC), and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. — held $8.5 trillion in assets at the end of 2011, equal to 56 percent of the U.S. economy, according to central bankers at the Federal Reserve.
Five years earlier, before the financial crisis, the largest banks’ assets amounted to 43 percent of U.S. output. The Big Five today are about twice as large as they were a decade ago relative to the economy
Despite all of the talk from the politicians, they just keep getting bigger and bigger and bigger.
So why isn’t anything ever done?
Well, one reason is because these gigantic financial entities funnel huge quantities of cash into political campaigns.
For example, Barack Obama gives nice speeches about the dangers of the too big to fail banks, but he is also more than happy to take their campaign contributions. Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup were all ranked among his top 10 donors during the 2008 campaign.
So do you really expect that Barack Obama is going to bite the hands that feed him?
Of course he is not going to do that.
The truth is that the Obama administration and the Federal Reserve have done everything they can to make life very comfortable for the big Wall Street banks.
During the last financial crisis, the too big to fail banks were absolutely showered with bailouts.
Meanwhile, hundreds of small and mid-size banks were allowed to die.
When representatives from those small and mid-size banks contacted the federal government for help, often they were told to try to find a larger bank that would be willing to buy them.
Sadly, the last financial crisis simply accelerated the consolidation of the banking industry in the United States that has been going on for several decades.
They were either purchased by bigger banks or they were allowed to go out of existence.
This banking consolidation trend has allowed the big Wall Street banks to absolutely explode in size.
Back in 1970, the 5 biggest U.S. banks held 17 percent of all U.S. banking industry assets.
Today, the 5 biggest U.S. banks hold 52 percent of all U.S. banking industry assets.
So where will this end?
That is a good question.
The funny thing is that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and other Fed officials keep giving speeches where they warn of the dangers of having banks that are “too big to fail”. For example, during a recent presentation to students at George Washington University, Bernanke made the following statement about the U.S. banking system….
“But clearly, it is something fundamentally wrong with a system in which some companies are ‘too big to fail.'”
So does that mean that Bernanke is against the too big to fail banks?
Of course not.
The truth is that he showered those banks with trillions of dollars in bailout money during the last financial crisis.
The amount of money in secret loans that some of the big Wall Street banks received from the Federal Reserve was absolutely staggering. The following figures come directly from a GAO report….
Citigroup – $2.513 trillion
Morgan Stanley – $2.041 trillion
Bank of America – $1.344 trillion
Goldman Sachs – $814 billion
JP Morgan Chase – $391 billion
Bernanke has shown that he is willing to move heaven and earth to protect those big banks.
So what did those banks do with all that money?
They certainly didn’t lend it to us. Lending to individuals and small businesses by those big banks actually went down immediately after those bailouts.
Instead, one thing that those banks did was they started putting massive amounts of money into commodities.
One of those commodities was food.
Over the past few years, big Wall Street banks have made huge amounts of money speculating on the price of food. This has caused food prices all over the globe to soar and it has caused tremendous hardship for hundreds of millions of families around the planet. The following is from a recent article in The Independent….
Speculation by large investment banks is driving up food prices for the world’s poorest people, tipping millions into hunger and poverty. Investment in food commodities by banks and hedge funds has risen from $65bn to $126bn (£41bn to £79bn) in the past five years, helping to push prices to 30-year highs and causing sharp price fluctuations that have little to do with the actual supply of food, says the United Nations’ leading expert on food.
Hedge funds, pension funds and investment banks such as Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Barclays Capital now dominate the food commodities markets, dwarfing the amount traded by actual food producers and buyers.
Can you imagine what kind of mindset it takes to do this?
Can you imagine taking food out of the mouths of hungry families on the other side of the world so that you and your fellow employees can pad your bonus checks?
It really is disgusting.
But that is the way the game is played.
It is set up so that the big guy will win and the little guy will lose.
The other day I wrote about how this is particularly true when it comes to our system of taxation.
Well, since that article I have discovered some new numbers that were just released by Citizens for Tax Justice. Some of the things that they have uncovered are absolutely amazing….
Between 2008 and 2011, Verizon made a total profit of $19.8 billion and yet paid an effective tax rate of -3.8%.
Between 2008 and 2011, General Electric made a total profit of $19.6 billion and yet paid an effective tax rate of -18.9%.
Between 2008 and 2011, Boeing made a total profit of $14.8 billion and yet paid an effective tax rate of -5.5%.
Between 2008 and 2011, Pacific Gas & Electric made a total profit of $6 billion and yet paid an effective tax rate of -8.4%.
So why should middle class families continue to be suffocated by outrageous tax rates when hugely profitable corporations such as General Electric are able to get away with paying nothing?
Our current tax system is an utter abomination and should be completely thrown out.
But as is the case with so many other things, our current system is going to persist because the “big guys” really enjoy the status quo and they are the ones that fund political campaigns.
It would be bad enough if the “big guys” were beating us on a level playing field.
But the truth is that the game has been dramatically tilted in their favor and they know that the politicians are going to take care of them whenever they need it.
So what is going to happen the next time the too big to fail banks get into trouble?
They will almost certainly get bailed out again.
Unfortunately, the big Wall Street banks continue to treat the financial system as if it was a gigantic casino. The derivatives bubble just continues to grow larger and larger, and it could burst and absolutely devastate the entire global financial system at any time.
According to the New York Times, the too big to fail banks have complete domination over derivatives trading. Every month a secret meeting that includes representatives from JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America and Citigroup is held in New York to coordinate their control over the derivatives marketplace. The following is how the New York Times describes those meetings….
On the third Wednesday of every month, the nine members of an elite Wall Street society gather in Midtown Manhattan.
The men share a common goal: to protect the interests of big banks in the vast market for derivatives, one of the most profitable — and controversial — fields in finance. They also share a common secret: The details of their meetings, even their identities, have been strictly confidential.
When the derivatives market fully implodes, there will not be enough money in the world to bail everyone out. According to the Comptroller of the Currency, the too big to fail banks have exposure to derivatives that is absolutely outrageous. Just check out the following numbers….
JPMorgan Chase – $70.1 Trillion
Citibank – $52.1 Trillion
Bank of America – $50.1 Trillion
Goldman Sachs – $44.2 Trillion
So what happens when that house of cards comes crashing down?
Well, those big banks will come crying to the federal government again.
They will want more bailouts.
They will claim that if we don’t give them the money that they need that the entire financial system will collapse.
And yes, if several of the too big to fail banks were to collapse all at once the consequences would be almost unimaginable.
But of course all of this could have been avoided if we would have made much wiser decisions upstream.
Our financial system is more vulnerable than it ever has been before, and the too big to fail banks just continue to grow.
The lessons from the financial crisis of 2008 have gone unheeded, and we are steamrolling toward an even greater crash.
Rampant silver manipulation? Rampant gold manipulation? Rampant LIBOR manipulation? Hiding MF Global client assets? These are all happening at JP Morgan according to an open letter reportedly written by an anonymous employee of the firm. The whistleblower also warns of a “cascading credit event being triggered” by derivatives related to Greek government debt. Unlike Greg Smith at Goldman Sachs, this whistleblower has chosen to remain anonymous for now. According to the letter, the whistleblower is still an employee of JP Morgan and has not resigned. But that does make it much more difficult to confirm what he is saying. With Greg Smith, we know exactly who he is and what he was doing at Goldman. As far as this anonymous whistleblower is concerned, all we have is this letter. So we must take it with a grain of salt. However, the information in this letter does agree with what whistleblowers such as Andrew Maguire have said in the past about silver manipulation by JP Morgan. And this letter does mention Greg Smith’s resignation from Goldman, so we know that it must have been written in the past few days. Hopefully this letter will cause authorities to take a much closer look at the crazy things that are going on over at JP Morgan and the other big Wall Street banks.
This anonymous letter was addressed to the CFTC, but unfortunately it looks like the CFTC has already chosen to ignore it.
The original letter from this anonymous whistleblower has already been taken down from the CFTC website. When you go there now, all you get is this message….
“The Comment Cannot Be Found. Please Return to the Previous Page and Try Again.”
Fortunately, there are many in the alternative media that copied this entire letter from the CFTC website.
The following is a copy of the original letter that the anonymous whistleblower from JP Morgan submitted to the CFTC….
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Dear CFTC Staff,
Hello, I am a current JPMorgan Chase employee. This is an open letter to all commissioners and regulators. I am emailing you today b/c I know of insider information that will be damning at best for JPMorgan Chase. I have decided to play the role of whistleblower b/c I no longer have faith and belief that what we are doing for society is bringing value to people. I am now under the opinion that we are actually putting hard working Americans unaware of what lays ahead at extreme market risk. This risk is unnecessary and will lead to wide-scale market collapse if not handled properly. With the release of Mr. Smith’s open letter to Goldman, I too would like to set the record straight for JPM as well. I have seen the disruptive behavior of superiors and no longer can say that I look up to employees at the ED/MD level here at JPM. Their smug exuberance and arrogance permeates the air just as pungently as rotting vegetables. They all know too well of the backdoor crony connections they share intimately with elected officials and with other institutions. It is apparent in everything they do, from the meager attempts to manipulate LIBOR, therefore controlling how almost all derivatives are priced to the inherit and fraudulent commodities manipulation. They too may have one day stood for something in the past in the client-employee relationship. Does anyone in today’s market really care about the protection of their client? From the ruthless and scandalous treatment of MF Global client asset funds to the excessive bonuses paid by companies with burgeoning liabilities. Yes, we at JPMorgan that are in the know are fearful of a cascading credit event being triggered in Greece as they have hidden derivatives in excess of $1 Trillion USD. We at JPMorgan own enough of these through counterparty risk and outright prop trading that our entire IB EDG space could be annihilated within a few short days. The last ten years has been market by inflexion point after inflexion point with the most notable coming in 2008 after the acquisition of Bear.
I wish to remain anonymous as of now as fear of termination mounts from what I am about to reveal. Robert Gottlieb is not my real name; however he is a trader that is involved in a lawsuit for manipulative trading while working with JPMorgan Chase. He was acquired during our Bear Stearns acquisition and is known to be the notorious person shorting in the silver future market from his trading space, along with Blythe Masters, his IB Global boss. However, with that said, we are manipulating the silver futures market and playing a smaller (but still massively manipulative) role in manipulating the gold futures market. We have a little over a 25% (give or take a percentage) position in the short market for silver futures and by your definition this denotes a larger position than for speculative purposes or for hedging and is beyond the line of manipulation.
On a side note, I do not work directly with accounts that would have been directly impacted by the MF Global fiasco but I have heard through other colleagues that we have involvement in the hiding of client assets from MF Global. This is another fraudulent effort on our part and constitutes theft. I urge you to forward that part of the investigation on to the respective authorities.
There is something else that you may find strange. During month-end December, we were all told by our managers that this was going to be a dismal year in terms of earnings and that we should not expect any bonuses or pay raises. Then come mid-late January it is made known that everyone received a pay raise and/or bonus, which is interesting b/c just a few weeks ago we were told that this was not likely and expected to be paid nothing in addition to base salary. January is right around the time we started increasing our short positions quite significantly again and this most recent crash in gold and silver during Bernanke’s speech on February 29th is of notable importance, as we along with 4 other major institutions, orchestrated the violent $100 drop in Gold and subsequent drops in silver.
As regulators of the free people of this country, I ask you to uphold the most important job in the world right now. That job is judge and overseer of all that is justice in the most sensitive of commodity markets. There are many middle-income people that invest in the physical assets of silver, gold, as well as mining stocks that are being financially impacted in a negative way b/c of our unscrupulous shorts in the precious metals commodity sector. If you read the COT with intent you will find that commercials (even though we have no business being in the commercial sector, which should be reserved for companies that truly produce the metal) are net short by a long shot in not only silver, but gold.
It is rather surprising that what should be well known liabilities on our balance sheet have not erupted into wider scale scrutinization. I call all honest and courageous JPMorgan employees to step up and fight the cronyism and wide-scale manipulation by reporting the truth. We are only helping reality come to light therefore allowing a real valuation of our banking industry which will give investors a chance to properly adjust without being totally wiped out. I will be contacting a lawyer shortly about this matter, as I believe no other whistleblower at JPMorgan has come forward yet. Our deepest secrets lie within the hands of honest employees and can be revealed through honest regulators that are willing to take a look inside one of America’s best kept secrets. Please do not allow this to turn into another Enron.
Kind Regards,
-The 1st Whistleblower of Many
———-
Another Enron?
If what this letter says is true, then the problems facing our financial system are more serious than most of us thought.
And the allegations of corruption at JP Morgan are absolutely shocking.
But this is not the first whistleblower to come forward to the CFTC with charges of rampant market manipulation by JP Morgan.
Back in 2010 I wrote about the stunning allegations that a former silver trader named Andrew Maguire presented to the CFTC. The following is an extended excerpt from that article….
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Back in November 2009, Andrew Maguire, a former Goldman Sachs silver trader in Goldman’s London office, contacted the CFTC’s Enforcement Division and reported the illegal manipulation of the silver market by traders at JPMorgan Chase.
Maguire told the CFTC how silver traders at JPMorgan Chase openly bragged about their exploits – including how they sent a signal to the market in advance so that other traders could make a profit during price suppression episodes.
Traders would recognize these signals and would make money shorting precious metals alongside JPMorgan Chase. Maguire explained to the CFTC how there would routinely be market manipulations at the time of option expiries, during non-farm payroll data releases, during commodities exchange contract rollovers, as well as at other times if it was deemed necessary.
On February 3rd, Maguire gave the CFTC a two day warning of a market manipulation event by email to Eliud Ramirez, who is a senior investigator for the CFTC’s Enforcement Division.
Maguire warned Ramirez that the price of precious metals would be suppressed upon the release of non-farm payroll data on February 5th. As the manipulation of the precious metals markets was unfolding on February 5th, Maguire sent additional emails to Ramirez explaining exactly what was going on.
And it wasn’t just that Maguire predicted that the price would be forced down. It was the level of precision that he was able to communicate to the CFTC that was the most stunning. He warned the CFTC that the price of silver was to be taken down regardless of what happened to the employment numbers and that the price of silver would end up below $15 per ounce. Over the next couple of days, the price of silver was indeed taken down from $16.17 per ounce down to a low of $14.62 per ounce.
Because of Maguire’s warning, the CFTC was able to watch a crime unfold, right in front of their eyes, in real time.
Basically, the CFTC is a government agency that appears to do next to nothing.
Another scandal involving JP Morgan has come out in recent days as well.
This one involves their credit card division. If you have a moments, you should really read the recent American Banker expose of credit card debt collection practices at JPMorgan Chase. It exposes some things that will absolutely blow your mind.
Linda Almonte, a former executive at JPMorgan Chase’s Credit Card Litigation Support Group, has revealed some incredible stuff regarding the debt collection practices at the company. Almonte says that she was shocked at what she saw when she began examining the details of a $200 million package of debt collection judgments to an outside debt collection agency….
Nearly half of the files her team sampled were missing proofs of judgment or other essential information, she wrote to colleagues. Even more worrisome, she alleged in her wrongful-termination suit, nearly a quarter of the files misstated how much the borrower owed.
In the “vast majority” of those instances, the actual debt was “lower that what Chase was representing,” her suit stated.
JPMorgan Chase issues food stamp debit cards in 26 U.S. states and the District of Columbia, and they actually want more Americans to go on food stamps so that they can make bigger profits from the division that issues them.
So now are you starting to understand why so many Americans are upset about the corruption on Wall Street?
This isn’t a “conservative issue” or a “liberal issue” – it is an American issue and the outrageous behavior of these firms has brought our financial system once again to the edge of disaster.
Over the past six months, more than 350 prominent executives have resigned from major banks and financial institutions all over the globe.
Is this a sign that the rats are fleeing a sinking ship?
Do they know something that we don’t?
What we do know is that the financial crisis in Greece is far from over and the European financial system is getting closer to a complete meltdown with each passing day.
Very few of the things that caused the financial crisis of 2008 were ever corrected and our financial system is even more vulnerable today than it was back then.
In the end, this entire pyramid of debt, leverage and corruption is going to come crashing down really hard, and the consequences are going to be absolutely catastrophic.
Warren Buffett once said that derivatives are “financial weapons of mass destruction”, and that statement is more true today than it ever has been before. Recently, JP Morgan made national headlines when it announced that it was going to take a 2 billion dollar loss from derivatives trades gone bad. Well, it turns out that JP Morgan did not tell us the whole truth. As you will see later in this article, most analysts are estimating that the losses will eventually be far larger than 2 billion dollars. But no matter how bad things get for JP Morgan, it will not be allowed to fail. JP Morgan is the largest bank in the United States, so it is essentially the “granddaddy” of the too big to fail banks. If JP Morgan gets to the point where it is about to collapse, the U.S. government and the Federal Reserve will rush in to save it. Because of this “security blanket”, banks such as JP Morgan feel free to take outrageous risks. Today, JP Morgan has more exposure to derivatives than anyone else in the world. If they win, they win big. If they lose, U.S. taxpayers will be on the hook. Not only that, but thanks to Dodd-Frank, U.S. taxpayers are on the hook for bailing out the major derivatives clearinghouses if there is ever a major derivatives crisis. So when the derivatives market crashes (and it will) you and I will be left holding a gigantic bill.
