On Thursday, Federal Reserve banksters announced another intervention in a series of market manipulations. The functioning of the markets have long been in the ICU, but now they’ve been euthanized.
Guggenheim’s Scott Minerd declared exactly what the Fed has done with its actions: “The Fed has made it clear that it will not tolerate prudent and responsible investing.”
Even the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board was forced to weigh in on this one: The Fed is “putting Wall Street ahead of companies across middle America” and it’s “protecting Wall Street first.”
Although many market analysts are appalled, I am not seeing too much about the ultimate end of the line and downgrades of U.S. Treasury credit and the U.S. dollar. There is an assumption that borrowing of trillions in deficits and backstops can be financed at sub 1 percent rates.
Another $2.3 trillion will be allocated to lard up on debt carcasses strewn across the land, namely new Special Purpose Vehicles to buy $500 billion of municipal bonds. It will also expand existing SPVs. There’s even a special program to buy junk bonds downgraded after March 22, the so-called “fallen angels.” It will buy junk bond ETFs (such as HYG), and small business PPP and CARES loans.
As these are non-recourse, in reality the Fed is taking no risk. It provides the financing. The Treasury (taxpayer or, more accurately, future generations saddled with debt via SPVs) will backstop all losses. If you are not up to snuff on how this works, a read of “Extra $2 Trillion Looted from Public Coffers to Replenish US Treasury’s Murky Exchange Stabilization Fund” is critical.
The Fed is just providing the financing for Treasury Secretary Mnuchin and Trumpenstein’s Rolodex (contact list). This is a defacto nationalization of a large swath of the financial “markets” based on no actual price discovery.
You see, the overriding issues is that there is a real non-cartoon world economy out there that that won’t be cured by a pump and dump.
There’s a bacon glut and a chicken wing glut
You have your mission…now execute it…. https://t.co/Il7uBJzwC1
— Michael Antonelli (@BullandBaird) April 9, 2020
For further reading:
For example, here’s the data for trading in the junk bonds of Ford. Do you not think some cronies in the corrupto Rolodex were tipped off on this pump-and-dump operation? When the Treasury enters this position at 80 (as the funds exit), and then the bonds crater to a more natural level, it is the American people who will take the loss. Classic example of privatizing gains and socializing losses.
As the Big D Depression unfolds, Fed machinations and front running are creating the most overvalued stock market ever. And this is before earnings are properly adjusted downward. We will get a taste of how unforgiving the Wall Street algos will be on earnings disasters soon enough.
Mnunchin himself chimed in on the lock down, stating he was hopeful it would be wrapped up by the end of May. That should be about right to finish phase one of the looting.
MNUCHIN: POSSIBLE U.S. ECONOMY COULD REOPEN BY END OF MAY, TOP 1% COULD OWN 99% OF EVERYTHING BY JUNE -AP
— Rudy Havenstein, making spirits bright. (@RudyHavenstein) April 9, 2020
Late May is six weeks from now. Two weeks ago, there was a record 3.3 million initial unemployment claims. Last week, there was an additional (upwardly revised) 6.875 million in initial claims. This week, another 6.606 million claims. That’s 16,781,000 claims, or 10 percent of the U.S. work force.
When the Society for Human Research Management surveyed American workers between March 12 and 16, they found that 60 percent of respondents would not be able to meet their basic financial needs, if we had a month or less of quarantine. Some are in even worse shape than that. One in five people said they would not be able to afford their rent, groceries and essential bills, like water and electricity, after a mere week of quarantine.
Last month, the Disaster Distress Helpline at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) saw an 891% increase in call volume compared to March 2019, according to a spokesman for the agency, which is part of the Department of Health and Human Services.
Wait until full-tilt Weimar kicks in. The Trojan Horse operation will be complete.
According to a report cited by the Wall Street Journal, just 69% of tenants paid any rent between April 1 and 5.
The National Multifamily Housing Council data comes from 13.4 million rental apartments analyzed by several real-estate data firms, including RealPage, Yardi and Entrata. The properties included are considered investment grade with a tenant base that may skew higher-income than the median renter.
The total number of loans in mortgage forbearance grew to 2.66% as of April 1; just one month ago, on March 2, the rate was 0.25%, or a 1,064% increase in just one month.
For loans backed by Ginnie Mae, which serves low- and moderate-income borrowers, the surge was much greater, with total loans in forbearance soaring to 4.25% from 0.19% one month ago.
Over the past two years, Ginnie Mae has guaranteed $583 billion of 30-year mortgages with FICO scores below 715, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. These will become more losses, and the U.S. Treasury will take the hit. Separately, the Federal Reserve holds a large portfolio of these securities.
The largest bank, JP Morgan, announced that when it comes to small business it would only make PPP business loans. As a reminder, there is one way that PPP loans are unique: They are guaranteed by the Treasury, which means that JPMorgan carries absolutely no risk when it issues the loan.
Worst case, the loan defaults and the bank issues a refund request to Uncle Sam, which then quickly makes JPM whole. Privatized gains, socialized losses. Get use to this in the American death spiral.
But there are other loans that flooded the system and are still flooding the system. They don’t have a government guarantee. They only have a loan-to-value. If the value of the underlying assets is virtually nil — as would be the case in a depression — it would mean a wave of defaults.
If indeed it is the case that JP Morgan is stepping away from the non-government backstopped lender market, expect all other banks to soon do the same. Other big and not-so-big U.S. banks — such as BofA, Citi and Wells Fargo — to follow just as quietly in JPM’s footsteps and halt loans to all small business across America due to fears of a default tsunami.
There’s a new Twitter feed on the site, on the posts pages. Start following us there as we will tweet details and events during these tumultuous times, especially when there’s far too much to cover in mere posts and stories curated from the Web. Twitter also allows for capsulized comments and retweets of other’s worthwhile commentary, which is now more necessary.
Remember Harry Vox?
https://youtu.be/wuOxG-rnj30
His old site is still up.
http://www.voxfux.com
I still have on my Kindle the “Ebola Pandemic Survival Guide: The Quick-And-Dirty Guide to Prepare and Survive,” by Laissez Faire. It cost me 99 cents in 2014. It promised to give me tips to increase my odds of surviving. I remember Alex Jones and Mike Adams were hyping the Ebola scare too. Very reminiscent of current articles with victim numbers, charts, graphs and maps, and scary quotes. One is by Dr. Anthony Fauci, then head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, now saying same kind of things for the CDC.
Good to know: “Ebola is survivable…It’s not a death sentence, per say. The current outbreak has killed roughly half of those who catch it.” Advises to stock extra N95 masks, nitrile gloves, toilet paper, hand sanitizer, etc. …and to stay calm, conscious and informed, though full-body Tyvek suits would probably sell out on Amazon.
In hindsight it looks to have been a small trial run for greater pandemics ahead. Quarantines and safe distancing seem to be something they thought up since 2014.
It’s amazing how fast the grocery stores got those big stickers they put on the floor every 6 feet to show customers where to stand and installed plastic partitions across the cashier areas in some stores.
Soviet style food shortages too come? You decide..
And isn’t this a coinkydink as Russ says that it is happening exactly one year after the Grand Solar Minimum destruction of farm and ranch lands in the mid-west what with all the snow and rain floods? Ice Age Farmer Channel is one of the best. thanks! (As far as I know though none of the ranchers or indoor hydroponics “farms” around here are closing or “selling out.”
With 10% (I’m sure that’s a low number) of the workforce out of work, and expecting to be unemployed for 6 more weeks (I’m sure that’s a low number also- many jobs won’t come back), I reckon that the most economically vulnerable people will become very desperate, and then you’ll see a large uptick in crime. This will further encourage people to “stay at home”… This whole damn situation is a cover for the real problem.. The banks. Think about it- everyone is looking for someone to blame for this, and no real solutions are posited. Meanwhile, the only “people” who can really help- the banks- have their hands in their pockets while they look at the sky, whistling Dixie. They act as if they can’t help, when the truth is that they simply don’t want to, as they salivate thinking about all the assets they’ll seize from the huddled masses. My plan, if I were president, would have been this: Any people affected by the work stoppages will not have to pay their rent or mortgages. If you have credit cards available for use, use them for your living expenses, you will not have to pay them back. I would also direct the banks to provide credit cards to the super poor who don’t have credit cards. I’d tell the usurious banks and their credit card companies that they’ll have to eat this cost. Then I would get a convertible limo ride through Dallas.
Watching today’s daily WH press conference clearly shows what a protean entity this phony CV crisis is! The constant allusions to studies, models, graphs, mitigations, and other propagandistic weapons shows just how ridiculous this whole ‘pandemic’ narrative is. A week ago we were on the verge of millions perishing before our eyes in what we were told could be the ‘darkest week’ in the history of humanity!
But a short paradigm shift is now upon us though the ‘strategic aims’ of 3-11 are here to stay! When the language changes, then objective changes will follow with it.
Now all of a sudden things aren’t so bad! The early models and estimates were ‘slightly off’ or the numbers of sick and dead is starting to ‘slow to a manageable rate’ where we can focus on ‘bringing our economy back.’ The tens-of-thousands of ventilators, masks, and other PPE that we needed so badly last week can now be used for storage, distributed to other states, or sold to foreign countries.
Just listening to Trump talk about how MILLIONS of more people would be dead on the streets and subways had we all not been ordered to ‘stay in place.’ Even the tense to his language has changed which is an indicator that they are going to pull us out of this ‘stage’ if you will and transition us to the next. Even on a couple of answers to reporters, Trump was talking like the ‘pandemic’ was over and that we just need to move on.
Now we will start to see the ‘cautiously optimistic’ approach as we start to ‘allow’ people to come out of their homes and businesses to re-open. The focus now will be on the vaccines and the new laws to ‘prevent this from ever happening again!’ But ‘the pandemic crisis’ just like the ‘war-on-terror’ is here to stay as the totalitarian-medical-police-state becomes even more apparent!
Excellent post. I can’t stand to watch or listen to these liars – it literally makes me nauseous.
Thanks for watching the WH Briefing so I don’t have to! – Excellent summary; however, I am not sure the dialing back will happen that quickly; I understand that schools here are definitely closed thru the end of the school year.
We have been here before over and over again with “climate change” – that crazy scientist James Hansen predicted before the US Congress in 1988 (an extremely hot and entirely anomalous summer) that the West Side Highway in NY City would be “under water” by 2018. Come 2018, it turns out to be either a “myth” that he had made such a prediction or that he was “essentially correct”
https://realclimatescience.com/2018/06/hansen-got-it-right/
(excellent site – do take a look, please)
Early in the century, the UN predicted “50 million climate refuges by 2010” – come 2010, try to find that content on the UN web site – not there – down the memory hole. There are many, many more examples – chronicled almost daily on the above site.
I think you are precisely correct – “here to stay”. 3-11 and 9-11 I like that! 9-11 was some sort of deep state, palace coup de etat (whatever side the US Office of Navel Intelligence was on, lost – they were the guys who took the missile hit at the Pentagon); 3-11 is not that but is and will be an equally watershed event.
We are just getting started.
You have to watch this video Russ! It was just a matter of time for information like this to come from the inside of a hospital. This is from an ICU nurse in my home state of Utah talking about how there is top-down pressure being applied to help cultivate the ‘[pandemic narrative’ and that it is seriously affecting everything from primary care to organ transplants.
Also, for those of you who grind away researching; read the multiple comments under the Dana Ashlie video I linked below by other health-care workers about their similar situations. None of this information is surprising to those of us who frequent WW, but if some of this info was ‘bitch-slapped’ into the face of some normies, you just might see an awakening taking place!…Welllll?…Maybe!!!
Hell,… Russ could put together an article just addressing comments by health-care workers who can’t/won’t come forward discussing how HIPPA laws are being completely trampled on to maintain this phony ‘pandemic narrative.’
I am blessed to have been spared the torment so many others have endured during the last few weeks. I don’t have a cable box, except during football season, and so I’ve missed any firsthand experience of the entire psycho circus. I live in an oasis of sanity. My neighbors know the score, and not a one of them has donned a mask during any of the frequent walks around the hood that we all enjoy.
I wasn’t sure what I would encounter, though, when I strapped on my helmet and threw my leg over the 88 this fine spring morning. Liquid thunder rumbled through the canyon as I passed the golf course. It was full, an encouraging sign. I swung into the beachfront, and every parking place was full! The restaurants were closed, but the Avila Grocery was open and doing a brisk business serving up tasty fish tacos.
I took my tacos down to the sand to eat, and the beach was covered with even tastier college trim working on their tans. Lord, give one more chance to be 19 again, just one more chance. I swear I won’t waste a minute studying this time!
Here in Avila Beach, fear, paranoia and Social Distancing are as dead as King Tut.. I saw hundreds of people, all having a good time, save for two mask-wearing dipshits who were likely from Los Angeles. It was a long Good Friday, and one which will live long in my memories.
I wish all readers of Winter Watch a happy Easter, and pray that God watch over them and their families in this time of troubles. The Children of Satan sit high atop their pale horse, and mock us during our holy days. We’ll beat them in the end, and the sun will shine for all our people, just as it did for me today.
thebullshitpoliceblog,
Those who combine words and phrases like they were born from a foundry come rarely these days! I love me some good prose and poetry and if you have some other ‘work’ worth taking a look at let me know! There seems to be some Holderlin-plasma running in your veins!
Yes – I agree – very well done – encouraging report.
First – TV – turn.it.off – it makes a very substantial difference sanity-wise.
Ah – but “fear, paranoia, social distancing … dead” ?? – I just don’t see that in NJ. – I figured you had to be in fly-over country – is there some correlation between the fear and % democratic voters? – But no you are in CA – single party (Dem) state.
Rather the opposite here – I think I see more gloves and masks every day – and lots of these are people walking alone outside in the fresh spring air – or in their vehicles. Social distancing is rigidly enforced – any violations evoke instant hostility.
I just wish I could get to where you “are” – but to be 19 again? … to live my entire life with my face in my device, subsisting on UBI, gobbling anti-depressant meds in this damned madhouse? … I don’t think so!
@regret left- So you are in NJ too?? I’m here in Central NJ and it’s crazy! I sometimes check in on that nextdoor.com (neighbor info swapping site) and they are totally brainwashed–I saw comments there where people were happy Murphy closed down the parks (they thought citizens who were going for bike rides during a pandemic were “bad” citizens). And I even see people going for walks together and keeping 6 feet apart!! Talk about mind-controlled sheep!! Well, it’s good to know there’s at least one other person in this state who knows what’s going on.
Yes, I don’t wish to be young again, more like wishing I was in my 90s and on my way out of this nightmare they are creating for us!!
Maybe, maybe – some people getting a clue – I saw three teenagers walking yesterday, not social distancing. City “Social Distance” placards perhaps vandalized – tossed behind bushes at least – I did one myself.
Perhaps more traffic on Rt78 this morning than last week. But these are mere pinpricks in the terrifying cloud of deception.
Your links have been excellent. Listened a full hour to Dr Kaufman on Friday – can’t find them now – so I repost below – highly recommended.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=46&v=4sHqJaSZvHs&feature=emb_title
I am in Union County.
Could there be another motive for the shutdown?
Just me spitballing… 5G is being rolled out…NOW.
5G technology allows for a giant leap forward in AUTOMATION in manufacturing and distribution. Not too hard to re-tool when you and your competitors are off line. Install 5G smart bots, and re-start without those expensive hourly employees…
(Or)
maybe the shut down creates openings in markets dominated by dinosaurs.
You deploy 5G tools and new techniques to become the market leader.
(Easy enough, if you knew the shutdown was coming beforehand, and you completed the build out, to be ready for the re-start) Shutdown means No need for brutal price war with Market Leaders running full tilt production, leveraging economies of scale (1 month ago).
Those advantages are gone.
The people orchestrating the shutdown are rational, and motivated by money and power….
I don’t get it, I read this exact same reply several days ago in response to something else here at winterwatch, as well as the reply directly below this comment. Something fishy here…