The Brexit Vote

‘Currency Crash’ Drives British Pound To A 31 Year Low As Deutsche Bank Sinks To The Lowest Level Ever

July 6, 2016July 6, 2016 by Michael

The fallout from the Brexit vote continues to rock the European financial system. On Wednesday, the British pound dropped to a fresh 31 year low as confidence in the currency continues to plummet. At one point it had fallen as low as $1.2796 before rebounding a bit. As I write this, it is still sitting at just $1.293. Meanwhile, the problems for the biggest banks in Europe just continue to mount. At one point on Wednesday Credit Suisse hit an all-time record low, and German banking giant Deutsche Bank closed the day at an all-time record closing low of 12.93. Overall, Europe’s Stoxx 600 Bank Index closed at the lowest level in almost five years. What we are watching is a full-blown financial meltdown in Europe, but because it is not personally affecting them yet, most Americans are not paying any attention to it.

The collapse of the British pound that we have seen since the Brexit vote has been nothing short of breathtaking. In fact, CNN says that this “is what a currency crash looks like”…

This is what a currency crash looks like. The pound has slumped to $1.28, its lowest level in more than three decades.

Investors are dumping the pound following Britain’s vote to leave the European Union on June 23. The pound has dropped roughly 15% since the referendum day, when it reached $1.50.

After appearing to stabilize, the pound resumed its decline this week after three big asset management firms halted withdrawals from real estate investment funds.

Of course this is likely only just the beginning. There are some analysts that are suggesting that the British pound could eventually hit parity with the U.S. dollar at some point. We are seeing seismic shifts on the foreign exchange market right now, and this is going to affect trillions of dollars worth of currency-related derivatives. It will be exceedingly interesting to see how all of this plays out.

Meanwhile, Deutsche Bank continues to get absolutely hammered.

If the biggest and most important bank in Germany is not completely imploding, then why does the stock price continue to crash time after time?

Since the start of 2016, the value of Deutsche Bank has fallen by half, and many have pointed out that the trajectory that it is on is very, very similar to Lehman Brothers in 2008.

My regular readers are probably sick and tired of hearing me warn about Deutsche Bank, so today I will let someone else do it. According to an article that was just published by the BBC, Deutsche Bank is now “the most dangerous bank in the world”…

Deutsche Bank shares hit a new record low today. It’s value has halved since the beginning of the year.

So is it now the most dangerous bank in the world?

According to the International Monetary Fund – yes.

Last week, the IMF said that, of the banks big enough to bring the financial system crashing down, Deutsche Bank was the riskiest. Not only that, Deutsche Bank’s US unit was one of only two of 33 big banks to fail tests of financial strength set by the US central bank earlier this year.

At this point Deutsche Bank is scrambling to raise cash to stave off an imminent implosion. Just today, I came across a report about how they plan to sell at least a billion dollars worth of shipping loans in order to bring in some much needed funds. Many of the steps that they are taking are reminiscent of what Lehman Brothers tried to do just prior to their collapse, and that alone should tell you something.

At the same time all of this is going on, things in Italy just continue to get even worse. As of this moment, approximately 17 percent of all bank loans held by Italian banks are considered to be “non-performing”. In other words, they are absolutely swamped by bad debts. At the height of the 2008 crisis, only about 5 percent of the loans held by U.S. banks were bad. So what we are watching unfold in Italy right now could definitely be described as “cataclysmic”.

Since the Brexit vote, Italian banks have been hit harder than anyone else. The following comes from CNN…

Shares in Italy’s Banca Monte Dei Paschi Di Siena have crashed 45% in 10 days, forcing regulators to temporarily ban short-selling in the stock. The bank has been given until Friday to come up with a plan to reduce its bad loans by 40% by 2018.

It’s not alone. Other Italian bank stocks have fallen by about 30% since June 23, when the U.K. voted to leave the European Union. Italian officials are trying to find ways to shore up the country’s financial system.

Italian banks have been choking on bad debt for years, but the U.K. vote has thrown their problems into sharp relief.

Personally, I have been amazed that the European financial system has been able to hold it together for this long. A total collapse was inevitable, but I really thought that it would have started before now. Up until this time we have seen small crisis after small crisis, but in 2016 the full-blown meltdown has finally arrived.

And this growing crisis in Europe is going to have a dramatic impact on the entire planet. Everywhere you look the economic fundamentals are getting worse, and if you won’t believe me, perhaps you will believe this editorial by Tim Quast on CNBC…

The bottom line is that the fundamentals of the economy and market don’t look good: Whoever you’re listening to — the Federal Reserve, to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, to the International Monetary Fund — hoary heads of the dismal science see deepening malaise worsened by the Brexit, creaky European banks, possible copycat flight from the euro zone — even a slowdown for the U.S.

Can a market characterized by declining money flows, weakening fundamentals and arbitrage that has posted no material gain in over 18 months gather steam? Anything is possible. But it’s not a sound conclusion.

Whenever I post an article about Europe, it tends to get significantly less response than many of my other articles do.

But I hope that my fellow Americans will start paying attention to this growing crisis, because it is going to deeply affect all of us.

What is happening to the European financial system right now is truly history in the making, and I believe that it is going to be one of the biggest news stories of the second half of 2016.

European Banks Have Their Worst Two Day Stretch EVER As The Global Financial Crisis Intensifies

June 27, 2016June 27, 2016 by Michael

Over the last two trading days, European banks have lost 23 percent of their value. Let that number sink it for a bit. In just a two day stretch, nearly a quarter of the value of all European banks has been wiped out. I warned you that the Brexit vote “could change everything“, and that is precisely what has happened. Meanwhile, the Dow was down another 260 points on Monday as U.S. markets continue to be shaken as well. Overall, approximately three trillion dollars of global stock market wealth has been lost over the last two trading days. That is an all-time record, and any doubt that we have entered a new global financial crisis has now been completely eliminated.

But of course the biggest news on Monday was what happened to European banks. The Brexit vote has caused financial carnage for those institutions unlike anything that we have ever seen before. Just check out this chart from Zero Hedge…

I knew that things would be bad if the UK voted to leave the European Union, but I didn’t know that they would be this bad.

Prior to all of this, a whole bunch of “too big to fail” banks all over Europe were already in the process of imploding, and now this chaotic financial environment may push several of them into full-blown collapse mode simultaneously. Just consider the following commentary from Wolf Richter…

Healthy big banks would get over Brexit and the political turmoil it is spawning, particularly non-UK banks. But there are no healthy big banks in Europe. And non-UK banks are crashing just as hard, and some harder. This is about a banking crisis morphing into a financial crisis.

These bank stocks got crushed on Friday. And they got crushed again today. Italian banks have been reduced to penny stocks. Spanish banks are getting closer. Commerzbank, Germany’s second largest bank, and still partially owned by the German government as a consequence of the last bailout, is well on the way.

One institution that I have been warning about for months is German banking giant Deutsche Bank. On Monday, their stock fell another 5.77 percent to a fresh all-time closing low of 13.87. I have been convinced that Deutsche Bank is going to zero for a long time, but these days it seems in quite a hurry to get there.

Of course Deutsche Bank is far from alone. The following are other “too big to fail” European banks that have lost at least one-fifth of their value over the past two trading days…

-Barclays
-Royal Bank of Scotland
-Lloyds Banking Group
-Credit Suisse
-BNP Paribas
-Societe Generale
-UniCredit
-Intesa SanPaolo
-Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena
-Banco Santander
-CaixaBank

This is what a full-blown financial crisis looks like, and U.S. banks have been getting hit very hard too…

The Brexit contagion is spreading as USD liquidity and counterparty risk in the interconnected global financial system has reached US banks with Goldman at 3 year lows and BofA and Citi plunging over 12%. This happens just two days after the Fed released its latest stress test results finding that none of the 33 banks tested would need additional capital in case of a “severe” financial crisis. That conclusion may be tested soon.

Meanwhile, the British pound continues to get absolutely pummeled. As I write this, the GBP/USD is down to 1.32, and some are now warning that the British pound may hit parity with the U.S. dollar by the end of the year.

One of the reasons why I expect the British pound to continue to tumble is because the global elite have to show the British people that they made the wrong decision, and they need to scare off any other countries that would consider holding similar votes.

So it was no surprise that the elite had two of their major credit rating agencies downgrade the UK on Monday…

Two major rating agencies downgraded the United Kingdom’s credit rating on Monday.

S&P Global Ratings lowered the UK to AA from AAA, with a “negative” outlook. And, Fitch cut its rating to AA from AA+, with a negative outlook as well.

And as I mentioned yesterday, Bank of America and Goldman Sachs have already projected that the UK economy is heading into recession.

As much economic and financial pain as possible will be inflicted upon the British people, and meanwhile they will be bombarded by mainstream news stories telling them that they made a stupid decision.

Hopefully the British people will stand strong and will not give in to the pressure.

But of course it isn’t just the British people that will be feeling the pain. The Brexit vote has sent shockwaves all over the planet, and global investors are losing tremendous amounts of money. For instance, here in the United States approximately 1.3 trillion dollars of stock market wealth has been wiped out so far…

Brexit isn’t just a European problem after all. The United Kingdom’s decision to quit the European Union is costing U.S. investors a pretty penny.

U.S.-based companies in the broad Russell 3000, including online advertising company Alphabet (GOOGL), software maker Microsoft (MSFT) and global bank JPMorgan Chase (JPM), have suffered a collective loss of $1.3 trillion since Friday’s shocker from the United Kingdom, according to a USA TODAY analysis of data from S&P Global Market Intelligence.

Hopefully tomorrow will be better. It is very rare for global financial markets to crash for three days in a row, but it could happen. More likely, however, is that we will see some kind of temporary bounce as long as some really negative event doesn’t hit the news.

But let there be no doubt about what has just happened. The collapse of Lehman Brothers was the “trigger event” that really accelerated the crisis of 2008, and now it appears as though the Brexit vote will be the “trigger event” that greatly accelerates the crisis of 2016.

Global investors had already lost trillions over the past 12 months, and a full-blown financial implosion was going to happen no matter how the vote turned out, but thanks to British voters the fun and games have arrived early.

Unfortunately, only a very small fraction of the population understands just how bad things are going to get in the months ahead…

We Just Witnessed The Greatest One Day Global Stock Market Loss In World History

June 26, 2016June 26, 2016 by Michael

More stock market wealth was lost on Friday than on any other day in world history. As you will see below, global investors lost two trillion dollars on the day following the Brexit vote. And remember, this is on top of the trillions that global investors have already lost over the past 12 months. It is important to understand that the Brexit vote was not the beginning of a new crisis – it has simply accelerated a global financial crisis that started last year and that was already in the process of unfolding. As I noted on Friday, we have been waiting for “the next Lehman Brothers moment” that would really unleash fear and panic globally, and now we have it. The next six months should be absolutely fascinating to watch.

According to CNBC, the total amount of money lost on global stock markets on Friday surpassed anything that we had ever seen before, and that includes the darkest days of the financial crisis of 2008…

Worldwide markets hemorrhaged more than $2 trillion in paper wealth on Friday, according to data from S&P Global, the worst on record. For context, that figure eclipsed the whipsaw trading sessions of the 2008 financial crisis, according to S&P analyst Howard Silverblatt.

The prior one day sell-off record was $1.9 trillion back in September of 2008, Silverblatt noted. According to S&P’s Broad Market Index, combined market capitalization is currently worth nearly $42 trillion.

And of course many of the wealthiest individuals on the planet got absolutely hammered. According to Bloomberg, the 400 richest people in the world lost a total of $127.4 billion dollars on Friday…

The world’s 400 richest people lost $127.4 billion Friday as global equity markets reeled from the news that British voters elected to leave the European Union. The billionaires lost 3.2 percent of their total net worth, bringing the combined sum to $3.9 trillion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The biggest decline belonged to Europe’s richest person, Amancio Ortega, who lost more than $6 billion, while nine others dropped more than $1 billion, including Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Gerald Cavendish Grosvenor, the wealthiest person in the U.K.

Could you imagine losing a billion dollars on a single day?

I am sure that Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos are not shivering in their boots quite yet, but what if the markets keep on bleeding like they did in 2008?

On the other hand, globalist magnate George Soros made a ton of money on Friday because he had positioned himself for a Brexit ahead of time. The following comes from the London Independent…

The billionaire who predicted Brexit would bring about “Black Friday” and a crisis for the finances of ordinary people appears to have profited hugely from the UK’s surprise exit from the EU.

George Soros is widely known as the man who “broke” the Bank of England in 1992, when he bet against the pound and made a reported £1.5bn.

Although the exact amount Mr Soros has gained after Brexit is not known, public filings show he doubled his bets earlier this year that stocks would fall.

So what will happen on Monday when the markets reopen?

Personally, I don’t think that it will be as bad as Friday.

But I could be wrong.

In early trading, Dow futures, S&P 500 futures and Nasdaq futures are all down…

Dow futures fell by 90 points in early trading, while S&P 500 futures slipped 11 points, and NASDAQ futures dipped 24 points. Gold futures rose, in a reflection of sustained demand for safe-haven assets.

And at this moment, the British pound is getting absolutely crushed. It is down to 1.33, and I would expect to see it fall a lot lower in the weeks and months to come.

Why?

Well, the truth is that now that the British people have voted to leave the EU, the globalists have to make it as painful as possible on them in order to send a warning to other nations that may consider leaving. I think that a recent article by W. Ben Hunt explained this very well…

What’s next? From a game theory perspective, the EU and ECB need to crush the UK. It’s like the Greek debt negotiations … it was never about Greece, it was always about sending a signal that dissent and departure will not be tolerated to the countries that matter to the survival of the Eurozone (France, Italy, maybe Spain). Now they (and by “they” I mean the status quo politicians throughout the EU, not just Germany) are going to send that same signal to the same countries by hurting the UK any way they can, creating a Narrative that it’s economic death to leave the EU, much less the Eurozone. It’s not spite. It’s purely rational. It’s the smart move.

The elite need a crisis now in order to show everyone that globalism is the answer and not the problem. If the British people were allowed to thrive once they walked away, that would only encourage more countries to go down the exact same path. This is something that the elite are determined to avoid.

The Brexit vote has barely sunk in, and Bank of America and Goldman Sachs are already projecting a recession for the United Kingdom. Sadly, I believe that this is what we will see happen.

But it won’t just be the British that suffer.

On Friday, European banking stocks had their worst day ever. In particular, Deutsche Bank fell an astounding 17.49 percent to an all-time record closing low of 14.72. I have warned repeatedly about the implosion of Deutsche Bank, and this crisis could be the catalyst for it.

In addition, I have repeatedly warned about the slow-motion meltdown that is happening in Japan. On Friday, Japanese stocks lost 1286 points, and the yen surged in the exact opposite direction that the government is trying to send it…

Tokyo, we have a problem.

Last week, market tumult stemming from the U.K.’s vote to quit the European Union drove the British pound to its weakest levels in three decades.

Yet it also sent investors flocking to traditional safe haven assets like the U.S. dollar, gold and the yen, the latter surging against every major currency as the results of Brexit became clear: Dollar/yen spiked from a Thursday high near 107 to a two-year low near 99.

Just like in 2008, there will be days when global markets will be green. When that happens, it will not mean that the crisis is over.

If you follow my work closely, then you know that it is imperative to look at the bigger picture. Over the past 12 months, there have been some very nice market rallies around the world, but investors have still lost trillions of dollars overall.

What happens on any one particular day is not the story. Rather, the key is to focus on the long-term trends.

And without a doubt, this Brexit vote could be “the tipping point” that greatly accelerates our ongoing woes…

“Brexit is the biggest global monetary shock since 2008,” said David Beckworth, a scholar at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, in a blog post on Friday. “This could be the tipping point that turns the existing global slowdown of 2016 into a global recession.”

We were already dealing with a new global economic crisis without the Brexit vote. But what this does is it introduces an element of panic and fear that had been missing up until this current time.

And markets do not like panic and fear very much. In general, markets tend to go up when things are calm and predictable, and they tend to go down when chaos reigns.

Unfortunately, I believe that we are going to see quite a bit more chaos for the rest of 2016, and the trillions that were lost on Friday may turn out to be just the tip of the iceberg.