The Fed is running what amounts to a gigantic kiting scheme

Author: markw  //  Category: Finance

Karl Denninger
“Yes We Will (Have A Depression)”
Where we had a few investment banks running at 30:1 leverage, we now have our Fed running at fifty to one! The Fed is running what amounts to a gigantic kiting scheme where it borrows $500 billion (the “supplemental Treasury program”) from various foreign and domestic sources then loans that money out to the same domestic and foreign sources who settle those trades! As further evidence of this game we have an enormous number of “fails to deliver” in Treasuries. Why would there be a fail to deliver unless the person who sold it doesn’t have it? That’s the essence of a kiting scheme - you’re effectively counterfeiting, because you’re writing a draft that you can’t settle.

This is showing up in the Treasury market, where “fails” reached an aggregate five trillion dollars in October. We’re headed for another Depression folks and I no longer consider the actions that are being taken by our government to be “mistakes” - at this point they must be classified as knowing and intentional acts, depending on you, the public, being too ignorant of how banking and finance work to figure it out and demand that they stop it. More

If you’re wondering how bad it can get, and how fast, read this:

“Overnight, people lost their savings. Prices are soaring. Once-crowded restaurants are almost empty. Banks are rationing foreign currency, and companies are finding it dauntingly difficult to do business abroad. Inflation is at 16 percent and rising. People have stopped traveling overseas. The local currency, the krona, was 65 to the dollar a year ago; now it is 130. Companies are slashing salaries, reducing workers’ hours and, in some instances, embarking on mass layoffs.

“No country has ever crashed as quickly and as badly in peacetime,” said Jon Danielsson, an economist with the London School of Economics. “

Sphere: Related Content

Tags: , , , , , ,

Leave a Reply