MF Global Hearings move to the Senate: Bombs dropping left and right amongst the deaf

12/13/2011 Portland, Oregon - Pop in your mints…

Today the Agricultural committee of the US Senate played host to what has become the political and financial spectacle of the year:  The Hearings on the MF Global collapse.  We have equated these hearings to professional wrestling.  While high in entertainment value, the spectators are left to wonder how much of it is real and how much of the action is staged.

Today, Jon Corzine, MF Global’s former CEO, the ultimate insider who has become the poster boy for the corporate and political corruption that seems to rule the day, was joined by Bradley Abelow, former President and COO of MF Global and Henri Steenkamp, who is still acting as the firm’s CFO.

You can watch the sad spectacle on C-SPAN at the following link: http://www.c-span.org/Events/Senate-Looks-into-MF-Global-Bankruptcy/10737426222/

Jon Corzine takes a thumb to the eye at MF Global’s Wrestlmania

It appears that the addition of two more members of MF Global’s senior management team was intended to give the illusion that there may be more information forthcoming at this hearing than at the earlier hearing held by the House Agricultural Committee.  That illusion was quickly dispelled as soon as each of them opened their mouths.

In summary, they are very, very sorry.  They are aware that this situation has undermined confidence in the markets.  They do not know where the $1.2 billion of missing client funds are.  They are pretty sure that the funds went missing from their treasury group, where the funds are held.

Strangely, the Patriot Act of 2001, in addition to steamrolling the US Constitution, included provisions which required every banking institution in the US to “know their customer,” which in practice means that no transfer from US accounts could have taken place without the authorities being able to quickly track who the money went to.  This provision, which on its face would make theft and money laundering in US Financial institutions impossible, makes “not knowing” who the money went to an untenable defense.

Nonetheless, Corzine and his cohorts stated again and again that they have no idea where it went.

The only revelation, apart from the names of a few MF Global employees who were offered as sacrificial lambs before the inquisition style questioning, was that the CFO of North American division was apparently on vacation when the funds went missing. 

They never mentioned whether or not this individual had returned.

Corzine went as far to say that nothing he said, such as “I don’t care where you get the money, we have to make this margin call,” for example, “should have been construed” as permission to transfer client funds into MF Global operating accounts and then out to counterparties.  He is obviously slipping towards a plea and hoping to do time with his Goldman buddies at a posh jail in Manhattan.

By the end of the morning, nothing that was said, either by a member of the Senate or former MF Global executive, served to instill any measure of confidence.

The afternoon, however, looked promising.  The regulators who were on the case and had their noses close to the ground were set to testify.  CME Group Executive Chairman Terrence Duffy, MF Global Trustee James Giddens and CFTC Commissioner Jill Sommers sat down before the committee and took the obligatory oath.

Mr. Giddens lead off, restating the obvious.  He is in charge of ensuring that MF Global assets are liquidated and that the proceeds distributed to the creditors based on the criteria laid out in the US Bankruptcy code.  He would later state that efforts to recover assets abroad had been blocked by sovereign governments (those across the Atlantic), who are likely protecting their banks from what would be a devastating clawback of funds.

Then, just as we thought that the afternoon would be a snoozefest, Mr. Duffy of the CME Group dropped a bombshell.  In his opening remarks, he stated that he was “in the room” when a CME employee was on the phone with an MF Global employee who stated that Mr. Corzine had direct knowledge that client funds were missing (or in industry parlance, “loaned out”) well before the weekend of October 31^st.

This directly contradicted Mr. Corzine’s testimony under oath in which he stated that he had “no knowledge” of the missing client funds until that fateful weekend.

Et tu, Brute?

The diversion only lasted for a moment.  The committee then proceeded to flagellate Mr. Duffy and the CME Group for defending the idea that their exchanges can properly self regulate themselves.

Mrs. Sommers of the CFTC was then flagellated by the committee for the failure of the government agency to regulate entities such as the CME Group and MF Global which are supposed to, if we understand correctly, self regulate themselves.

As today’s chapter of the spectacle came to a close, there were more questions than answers.  Like the old WWF, no scores were permanently settled and we will have to tune in Friday to see how the next stage in this drama unfolds.  It promises to be exciting, as the committee includes none other than Ron Paul (R-TX), the one man in Congress who may actually understand what happened.

The Witness list for Friday can be found here.

For those who have not been following, the MF Global situation is extremely important because a number of things that investors have been able to count on have been called into question.  A brief list of these now invalid assumptions:

-          Client funds are properly segregated from a brokerage company’s operating funds.

-          Exchanges such as the CME Group will backstop (make whole) clients in the event that one of their approved brokerage firms goes bankrupt.

-          Exchanges will halt trading in the event of a bankruptcy until any missing client funds can be accounted for and that trades from customers of the bankrupt brokerage can be executed.

-          Once a brokerage firm declares bankruptcy, all assets must be handed immediately over to a trustee who from that moment on has a fiduciary duty to sell the bankrupt firms assets to the highest bidder to satisfy as many creditors as possible.

-          Regulatory agencies such as the CFTC have controls and monitoring in place which will prevent clients from suffering losses if a brokerage firm misappropriates their funds.

-          Sarbanes Oxley has effectively eliminated corporate fraud.

-          The commodity exchanges, such as the CME Group, can effectively self regulate.

-          Theft is illegal.

Every day which passes in which there is not a full recovery of the client funds held by MF Global adds to the list of questions.  And every day that passes serves to call further into question the ability of all brokerage houses, exchanges, and government regulators to make good on their promises.

The MF Global situation is not simply about the bankruptcy of a large brokerage, it is about whether or not the rule of law can be trusted to operate in the financial markets of the United States of America.

For all of the bankruptcies and bank seizures that have occurred in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, in most cases there has been confidence that the framework of the markets could be trusted, and that the myriad of regulatory entities which are supposed to make Capitalism safe for all have everyting under control.

After MF Global, one has to question whether any asset, paper or physical, entrusted to a financial institution is safe.

In related news, Mr. Giddens (the MF Global Trustee above) announced today that JP Morgan would be probed in the MF Global investigation.

This can only serve to further disrupt futures markets.  Is the end of the current system nigh?

Stay tuned and Trust Jesus.

Stay Fresh!

David Mint

Email: davidminteconomics@gmail.com

P.S.  For more ideas and commentary please check out The Mint at http://www.davidmint.com/

Key Indicators for December 13, 2011

Copper Price per Lb: $3.43
Oil Price per Barrel:  $100.02

Corn Price per Bushel:  $5.88  
10 Yr US Treasury Bond:  1.96%
FED Target Rate:  0.07%  ON AUTOPILOT, THE FED IS DEAD!

Gold Price Per Ounce:  $1,632 PERMANENT UNCERTAINTY

MINT Perceived Target Rate*:  2.00%
Unemployment Rate:  8.6%
Inflation Rate (CPI):  -0.1%
Dow Jones Industrial Average:  11,995  

M1 Monetary Base:  $2,255,500,000,000 RED ALERT!!!  THE ANIMALS ARE LEAVING THE ZOO!!!
M2 Monetary Base:  $9,623,700,000,000 YIKES UP $1 Trillion in one year!!!!!!!

The benefits of Decentralized power, Rumblings of QE3, the clock is ticking on the currency regime

12/12/2011 Portland, Oregon - Pop in your mints…

 

There is something strangely satisfying about sitting around a large indoor fire just feet away from the Christmas tree with family.  In those moments, one can partake of all that is right with the world.  It occurred to us that we all strive for these moments yet at times they can seem elusive.  Eternity is placed in our hearts, and time on earth seems to be in short supply.

 

As such, we must use it wisely.

 

We have been extolling the benefits of what we have been calling True Capitalism.  True Capitalism is what we here at The Mint humbly offer as the solution to what currently ails the world.  There is one byproduct of True Capitalism, a radical respect of life and property, which is often overlooked and is perhaps “central” to the advantage that it has over every other conceivable construct of society:

 

True Capitalism works to decentralize power.

 

In other words, it naturally evens the playing field by removing unfair advantages realized by some at the expense of others.

 

But isn't that what Government is supposed to do?  Of course it is!  However, governments circa 2011 are in the middle of an unprecedented power grab.  This centralization of power, they say, is necessary in order to homogenize life as we know it and to help everything run smoothly.

Even if this were possible, there is a fundamental problem created by the centralization of power which is without resolution.  In layman's terms, it makes for an easy target.

When we see the word target, your mind may conjure up images of vulnerability of a military attack.  However, what we have in mind is much more dangerous.  An army of lobbyists.

Herein lies the weakness of centralized power.  However good its intentions, it will constantly be under attack and subsequent influence of groups who desire this centralized power for their own benefit.  Repelling these attacks is expensive.  Succumbing to them, as is more often the case, will bankrupt a nation.

Governing is not cheap, and there are no economies of scale in it.  Rather, the larger it is, the less efficient it becomes.  Does this sound familiar?  This is what we have now thanks to the Might Makes Right ideology by which we are ruled.

Enter True Capitalism.

 

In a Truly Capitalistic system, the cost of the nation state drops to zero, for the nation state as we know it would cease to exist.  Does this mean that there will be not be a need for governance?  No, on the contrary, the roles which we now attribute to government will be carried out by any number of organizations.  Governance, in general, would increase, yet it would cost less!

How is this possible?  Voluntary governmental bodies are generally more responsive and efficient, in large part because the cost of governance falls directly to those individuals who desire to pay for it.

 

Governance has value, and its value can and is be properly set on an open market.  The phenomenon of corporations and persons choosing to reside in low tax venues represents a conscious choice of where and by whom one prefers to be governed by those individuals.

 

In the west, the value of the brand of government provided in the US and Europe is dropping along with its bond prices.  The fact that nations issue bonds is proof of two things:  That their service oriented businesses are failing and that they will be increasingly reliant upon their ability to forcefully relieve their citizens of their assets (commonly known as taxation) to continue operations.

 

In other words, they will rely on their Might, the use of force, to justify their “right” to govern.

 

This untenable “Might Makes Right” system that can only operate as long as people believe that the aggressor has absolute power over them.  This is why countries have flags and dictatorships have the image of the dictator plastered everywhere.  This is why people are being forced into the current banking system, taught to rely upon it, and subsequently shut out of it.

 

This is a reason why Modern Central Banking and the Corporations that have sprung up around the Central Banks are man’s greatest disaster.

 

Once the currency and banking systems of Europe and America are completely broken down, people’s blind faith in the currency and its issuer will be destroyed.  The currency regime will then quickly disintegrate

 

The Federal Reserve will likely allude to QE3 to the tune of $1 trillion dollars today in a desperate attempt to keep the currency regime afloat.

The clock is ticking on these failed monetary experiments. 

Do you know where your money is?

 

Stay tuned and Trust Jesus.

Stay Fresh!

David Mint

 

Email: davidminteconomics@gmail.com

 

P.S.  For more ideas and commentary please check out The Mint at www.davidmint.com

 

Key Indicators for December 12, 2011

Copper Price per Lb: $3.46
Oil Price per Barrel:  $97.83

Corn Price per Bushel:  $5.85  
10 Yr US Treasury Bond:  2.01%
FED Target Rate:  0.07%  ON AUTOPILOT, THE FED IS DEAD!

Gold Price Per Ounce:  $1,665 PERMANENT UNCERTAINTY

MINT Perceived Target Rate*:  2.00%
Unemployment Rate:  8.6%
Inflation Rate (CPI):  -0.1%
Dow Jones Industrial Average:  12,021  

M1 Monetary Base:  $2,255,500,000,000 RED ALERT!!!  THE ANIMALS ARE LEAVING THE ZOO!!!
M2 Monetary Base:  $9,623,700,000,000 YIKES UP $1 Trillion in one year!!!!!!!

EU Treaty Exposes English and French Differences

12/9/2011 Portland, Oregon - Pop in your mints… As many are aware, the EU ramrod "save the currency" treaty was quickly accepted by the countries who are all in on the Euro, while those who saw that drinking the Euro koolaid was likely to kill them, namely England, rejected the treaty.

For us, this exposed the fundamental differences in the English and those on the continent.

One of these differences being that the French tend to think of children as innocents who become corrupted as they age (which is why they are more apt to tolerate the immoral shenanigans of their governing class more than the Brits or Americans do), the English understand that children, as much as adults, are capable of both good and evil at any age. They hope for the best and, at their best, prepare for the worst. This is why the French could not believe the premise of the Lord of the Flies. Why were these children portrayed as being aggressive to each other?

While this observation is neither here nor there, we leave you with the French and English leaders as they interacted at the EU summit.

Stay tuned and Trust Jesus.

Stay Fresh! David Mint

Email: davidminteconomics@gmail.com

P.S. For more ideas and commentary please check out The Mint at http://www.davidmint.com/

Key Indicators for December 9, 2011

Copper Price per Lb: $3.57
Oil Price per Barrel: $99.41
Corn Price per Bushel: $5.85
10 Yr US Treasury Bond: 2.05%
FED Target Rate: 0.07% ON AUTOPILOT, THE FED IS DEAD!
Gold Price Per Ounce: $1,711 PERMANENT UNCERTAINTY
MINT Perceived Target Rate*: 2.00%
Unemployment Rate: 8.6%
Inflation Rate (CPI): -0.1%
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 12,184
M1 Monetary Base: $2,255,500,000,000 RED ALERT!!! THE ANIMALS ARE LEAVING THE ZOO!!!
M2 Monetary Base: $9,623,700,000,000 YIKES UP $1 Trillion in one year!!!!!!!

John Corzine Testifies to a Congressional Panel on MF Global Collapse

12/7/2011 Portland, Oregon - Pop in your mints…

Today the world witnessed one of the most surreal spectacles that we can imagine.  John Corzine, former CEO of MF Global, the Primary Dealer which went bankrupt on October 31st and is now missing $1.2 billion of client funds, was called on to testify by a group of men in the US Congress who are trying to understand what went wrong and how they can prevent it from occuring again.

You can see the agonizing hearing in all of its glory by clicking the link below.  Our humble observations:

1.  Neither Mr. Corzine or Congress said anything that should give any measure of confidence to participants in the global financial markets.

2.  Mr. Corzine is sorry this happened.

3.  One of the members of the panel stated the obvious "we got to find that money."  Understatement of the year.

4.  Mr. Corzine is so confident that the client funds will be recovered that he mumbled, after being pressed by a member of the panel, that he and the other executives would personally reimburse clients in the event that it wasn't (NOT!)

5.  Questions about the Federal Reserve's ability to properly vet firms who are qualified to be Primary Dealers.

We didn't know whether to laugh or cry.  Mr. Corzine looked like a large elf from the camera angle and the members of congress, in most cases, sounded less than up to the task of understanding what happened, much less being able to craft legislation which would prevent a similar event in the future.

It was like watching political professional wrestling.  The entertainment value was fairly high, excitement filled the room, but it left you wondering if what you saw was real or simply scripted and well acted by all involved.

All in all, it was a synopsis of the level corruption and ignorance that grace the halls of power in America circa 2011.

See the entire sorry spectacle courtesy of C-Span:  http://www.c-span.org/Events/Fmr-Senator-Corzine-to-Testify-in-MF-Global-Investigation/10737426111-1/

Perhaps now the Farmer and the Cowman will befriend each other, grab their pitchforks, and storm capital hill until their $1.2 billion is returned.

Stay tuned and Trust Jesus.

Stay Fresh!

David Mint

Email: davidminteconomics@gmail.com

P.S.  For more ideas and commentary please check out The Mint at www.davidmint.com

Key Indicators for December 8, 2011

Copper Price per Lb: $3.49
Oil Price per Barrel:  $98.57
Corn Price per Bushel:  $5.90   10 Yr US Treasury Bond:  1.97% FED Target Rate:  0.08%  ON AUTOPILOT, THE FED IS DEAD!
Gold Price Per Ounce:  $1,706 PERMANENT UNCERTAINTY
MINT Perceived Target Rate*:  2.00%
Unemployment Rate:  8.6%
Inflation Rate (CPI):  -0.1%
Dow Jones Industrial Average:  11,998  
M1 Monetary Base:  $2,255,500,000,000 RED ALERT!!!  THE ANIMALS ARE LEAVING THE ZOO!!!M2 Monetary Base:  $9,623,700,000,000 YIKES UP $1 Trillion in one year!!!!!!!

Losing even blind faith in the Euro and USD, remembering Pearl Harbor

12/7/2011 Portland, Oregon - Pop in your mints…

Today we continue to watch the relative calm in both the stock and bond markets with our jaw hanging just inches from the floor.  In our estimation, the calm, or homeostasis, is perhaps the only thing that is completely inexplicable under the current state of affairs.

Just what is that state of affairs, you ask?  A few off the top of our head:

-          Downgrades or the threat of downgrades to nearly every sovereign bond on the planet

-          A resulting dearth of quality assets to be used as collateral in the financial system

-          A debt based economy collectively attempting to live within its means

-          The resulting collapse of the debt based economy

-          An imminent war in Persia

But these are simply large events that are leading to a great number of small decisions which are in turn causing more unforeseen large scale events, etc.  The result being that, much to the chagrin of the financial authorities, a majority of the world is embracing frugality.

A quick recap for those are joining us for the first time, the powers that be, the current currency regime, rely on an ever expanding amount of debt in order to continue to function.  It is a system that is based on trust and blind faith, for it offers nothing of lasting value.

In the short term, the system, if functioning properly, allows a great deal of power to be centralized.  It also encourages, albeit indirectly, nearly every sort of vice and shuns virtue.  The system tends to reward bad behavior and to promote into leadership those who are least likely to possess a moral compass.

The system is no longer functioning as designed.  The reach of the currency regime is shrinking and will continue to shrink until the only ones who maintain faith in it are the most morally decrepit individuals and institutions on the planet.  They will continue to trade their increasingly worthless paper until they realize that they are simply shuffling paper amongst themselves, long after they have completely lost any semblance of control that they had on the situation.

Much of this paper shuffling is running through the stock and bond markets, and seemingly these markets are calm.  However, the illusion of stability is being maintained at the cost of trillions of new dollars and Euros being created which are rapidly losing value against anything tangible.

In the United States, the dollar will begin to significantly deteriorate sometime in March, according to our crude calculations.  The Euro, whose handlers have been late to start the game of shameless currency debasement, is more likely to implode with the European banking system as they gag on the sewage of assets that are on their balance sheets.

The great irony of the current currency regime is that a currency which has attempted to maintain its value will become extinct, shunned for one whose value is plummeting.

The Euro and US Dollar are showing the world the two paths that a currency regime can follow to destruction.  It will be interesting to see which car ceases to operate first, the motor that runs out of gas or the one that has its gas tank overflow and goes up in flames.

Either way the economy, which is the motor of the vehicle in the metaphor we have just jumped to, is currently being retooled to run on another type of combustible, one that will last much longer than the current blend of currency gasoline which is nothing more than flammable vapors.  If the currency, and the assets which back it have real value, the economic motor will be allowed to run at a more even pace.

Gold and Silver, ready or not, here we come.  Until then, the economy is sputtering and running on fumes.

Pearl Harbor

We cannot let today pass without a few brief words about Pearl Harbor.  Like 9/11, Pearl Harbor served as a national wake-up call.  Both served as the justifications for the largest military actions and suppressions of freedom (which seem to go hand in hand) that America has known. 


The explosion of the USS Shaw during the attack on Pearl Harbor, courtesy of the US National Archives


As this day that lives in infamy passes, we pause to honor those who perished in these events and the subsequent military actions which occurred as a result of these events.  May they rest in peace, and may mankind learn to avoid the suffering and sacrifices they had to endure at all costs.

War is not necessary and must be undertaken only after every other attempt to engage and deter an aggressor has been exhausted.  It is an act of desperation, not a form of economic stimulus, and it troubles us that the widespread loss of life and property has been referred to as the force which lifted the US out of the great depression.

Those who hold to such a theory are not only following an indefensible logic, they are hurling the ultimate insult to men and women who have fought to defend Freedom throughout history.  For any “stimulus” which has been observed is not the result of the decision of a politician to go to war, rather, it is a result their tireless efforts and indomitable spirits which lifted this and many other countries from the ashes of war.

We pray that more of these heroic efforts and indomitable spirits will not be squandered in Persia.

Stay tuned and Trust Jesus.

Stay Fresh!

David Mint

Email: davidminteconomics@gmail.com

P.S.  For more ideas and commentary please check out The Mint at http://www.davidmint.com/

Key Indicators for December 7, 2011

Copper Price per Lb: $3.53
Oil Price per Barrel:  $100.51

Corn Price per Bushel:  $5.82  
10 Yr US Treasury Bond:  2.12%
FED Target Rate:  0.08%  ON AUTOPILOT, THE FED IS DEAD!

Gold Price Per Ounce:  $1,742 PERMANENT UNCERTAINTY

MINT Perceived Target Rate*:  2.00%
Unemployment Rate:  8.6%
Inflation Rate (CPI):  -0.1%
Dow Jones Industrial Average:  12,020  

M1 Monetary Base:  $2,155,200,000,000 RED ALERT!!!  THE ANIMALS ARE LEAVING THE ZOO!!!
M2 Monetary Base:  $9,627,300,000,000 YIKES UP $1 Trillion in one year!!!!!!!

The First of December: A poem, a memory, and a lesson

12/1/2011 Portland, Oregon - Pop in your mints…

The first of December has come.  Contrary to “political” belief, the first of December would have arrived even if the large European bank which caused all the global fake money shuffling amongst western Central Banks to occur yesterday had been allowed to fail.

Nature cares not whether a man or woman in New York or Frankfurt raise a finger to populate a spreadsheet with a number representing something that does not exist but as a figment of the popular imagination.  The sun would have set and a great majority of the world would have been none the wiser, and likely better off.

Make no mistake, the actions taken by Central Banks are made for the benefit of very few to the detriment of a great many.  For this reason, we have called it Man’s Greatest Catastrophe.

The first of December always brings with it a fond memory from our youth here at The Mint. 

Some 20 years ago we were in the midst of our junior year of high school.  Like many our age, we preferred hanging out with friends to completing our assigned homework.  A winter’s evening of that year found us doing the former while ignoring the latter.

On that particular evening, however, we were concerned.  We had to write a poem for a class in which we were struggling the next day.  At the time, it seemed a monumental task, made all the more impossible by leaving the task to the last minute. 

We shared the dilemma with our friends that evening as we were excusing ourselves early in order to work on the poem at home.

A dear friend of our spoke up:  “What does the poem need to be about?”

“Nature,” we replied.

“Hang on a minute,” replied our friend as he gathered pencil and paper and began to write.  Within five minutes, he handed me the draft of a poem and said, “There, now you can stick around a bit longer!”

We were stunned, not only at the unselfishness of our friend, but at the eloquent words which he came up with in such a brief time.  Our teacher, failing to see the genius and beauty in the poem, gave a merely average grade and forced us to revise and extend it.  The subsequent revision, as we recall, severely diluted the beauty of the original five stanzas and attempted to resolve something that was better left to the reader to resolve.

Courtesy of Wildlifearchives.com

Like so many things in life, an abundance of solutions robs people of the opportunity to think for themselves.  Between television, sermons, university lectures, and government policies, life is diminished for many by listening to the voices of men in place of the sacred dialogue between a man and his God.

Our friend’s poem allowed for this dialogue.

We hope to one day be able to locate the manuscript of his masterpiece to share it with you.  It is appropriately titled “The First of December” and is a moving description of a wintry scene witnessed by a man who is soon caught up in the wonder of it all.  He then abruptly realizes that all that he is witnessing is occurring and will continue to occur, without his intervention, long after he is gone.

The realization humbles him.

We leave you with the last stanza which is forever etched in our memory:

“Now I must go,
But I’ll always remember,
Life in the cold,
On the first of December”

Stay tuned and Trust Jesus.

Stay Fresh!

David Mint

Email: davidminteconomics@gmail.com

P.S.  For more ideas and commentary please check out The Mint at http://www.davidmint.com/

Key Indicators for December 1, 2011

Copper Price per Lb: $3.53
Oil Price per Barrel:  $100.14

Corn Price per Bushel:  $5.95  
10 Yr US Treasury Bond:  2.12%
FED Target Rate:  0.08%  ON AUTOPILOT, THE FED IS DEAD!

Gold Price Per Ounce:  $1,744 PERMANENT UNCERTAINTY

MINT Perceived Target Rate*:  2.00%
Unemployment Rate:  9.0%
Inflation Rate (CPI):  -0.1%
Dow Jones Industrial Average:  12,020  

M1 Monetary Base:  $2,155,200,000,000 RED ALERT!!!  THE ANIMALS ARE LEAVING THE ZOO!!!
M2 Monetary Base:  $9,627,300,000,000 YIKES UP $1 Trillion in one year!!!!!!!

Central Banks Coordinate USD Funding actions, the final act of currency homogenization is underway

11/30/2011 Portland, Oregon - Pop in your mints…

Living on the West Coast, there are two things which we take for granted here at The Mint.  First, that viewing Twitter is the quickest way to take a pulse of what is going on in the financial world.  Second, that we are, by virtue of our location, jumping into the financial news of the day when it is half over in New York and finished in Europe, allowing us not only to see the news but also the effect of the news on these markets.

With these two givens, we often pen our thoughts as a sort of digestion (or indigestion, as the case may be) of the events which are currently unfolding.  Such is the case today.

The Final Act

We’d barely had time to collect our scattered thoughts as news came that the final act of the tragedy that is the world’s financial system circa 2011 appears to be underway.  This morning, numerous tweets announcing that coordinated action amongst western central banks, specifically the Federal Reserve and its counterparts in Canada, Japan, Switzerland, and England, had been taken.  The action was taken to rush a fresh supply of cheap US Dollars to the ECB in time for the ECB to prevent a major European bank from imploding today.

Our guess is that the yet unnamed bank is BNP Paribas and by extension its many counterparties.  Any large French bank would be a candidate and we are just guessing that it would be the le grand chat.

The USD got torpedoed in today's coordinated action

As further evidence of the final act being underway, we see that the Federal Reserve suspended its POMO (Permanent Open Market Operation) for today until December 2^nd.  Not coincidentally, this latest operation was to withdraw liquidity from the US dollar system on a day on which apparently the system was calling for more.

To simplify what has happened for our fellow taxpayers we offer the following executive summary: 
Today is the final day of a calendar month, a day when accounts must be settled.  A large bank in the Euro zone did not have enough US Dollars with which to pay back its short term loans to other banks.  It turned to the ECB, which did not have enough US Dollars to backstop the large bank.  The ECB, then turned to the Federal Reserve, which quickly shifted gears from suck to blow and confirmed, once again, that it will print money any time there is a liquidity crunch, anywhere in the western world.

The FED will now wait until the dust settles on December 2^nd to see how much liquidity it can withdraw from the system without imploding it.  To them we say: good luck.

As longsuffering Mint readers are already aware, a debt based currency regime, which is erroneously referred to as a monetary system, relies on the infinite creation of debt along with its continued acceptance in place of money proper in order for the game to continue.  Once either of those conditions ceases to exist, it indicates that a majority no longer have confidence in the currency regime.  In other words, the currency regime has failed.

The western central banks appear to momentarily have their streams crossed, and in a pointless effort to homogenize interest (and by extension foreign exchange) rates, will increasingly take this sort of “coordinated action” until their currencies act and trade as one. 

A JP Morgan note on this most recent coordinated action highlights the fact that the Federal Reserve not only will lend dollars to these Central Banks at a discount, the foreign Central Banks will in turn lend their respective currencies to the Federal Reserve at a discount on demand.  This gives further credence to the fact that the system has already failed and is in retreat, with the Central Banks themselves left passing their currencies and credits amongst themselves and their member banks.

Once this is homogenization process is complete; a severe devaluation of the homogenized currency will take place which will leave any holder or the homogenized currency(s) as a savings device substantially poorer and the holders of real assets better off on a relative basis.

However, on balance, the world as a whole grows poorer every day that the centralized currency regime is allowed to continue its violently enforced monopoly on currency issuance.

Money proper was never meant to be centralized and controlled by a single entity, and the current system which engenders this centralization is exploding before our very eyes.  Yet it will not go without a fight.  Recent events in the Middle East and Iran indicate that yet another physical fight to expand this failed system may be at hand.

It is a further expression of the Might Makes Right ideology, and it is time to pray for the peace of Israel.
Stay tuned and Trust Jesus.

Stay Fresh!

David Mint

Email: davidminteconomics@gmail.com

P.S.  For more ideas and commentary please check out The Mint at http://www.davidmint.com/

Key Indicators for November 30, 2011

Copper Price per Lb: $3.56
Oil Price per Barrel:  $100.17

Corn Price per Bushel:  $6.01  
10 Yr US Treasury Bond:  2.07%
FED Target Rate:  0.08%  ON AUTOPILOT, THE FED IS DEAD!

Gold Price Per Ounce:  $1,747 PERMANENT UNCERTAINTY

MINT Perceived Target Rate*:  2.00%
Unemployment Rate:  9.0%
Inflation Rate (CPI):  -0.1%
Dow Jones Industrial Average:  12,046  

M1 Monetary Base:  $2,095,600,000,000 RED ALERT!!!  THE ANIMALS ARE LEAVING THE ZOO!!!
M2 Monetary Base:  $9,664,500,000,000 YIKES UP $1 Trillion in one year!!!!!!!

Rockaway Beach, Jaca, and the illusion of Market Homeostasis

11/29/2011 Portland, Oregon - Pop in your mints…

We are back from a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday spent with family in lovely Rockaway Beach, Oregon.  Rockaway Beach is a gem of a town on the Oregon coast which straddles Rock Creek as it descends from the Coastal Range and violently collides with the Pacific Ocean.

We were fortunate to awake each morning with a front row seat to this raging battle.  At low tide, the creek appeared to make headway as it made its final run into the great unknown.  The beach was immense and inviting, and seagulls roamed the sands to find what the sea had left behind as an appetizer.

At high tide, the sea was angry.  The creek’s advances were violently thrust back again and again as the full weight of the Pacific came in against it.  The beach and its inhabitants disappeared and we were glad to be looking down on the raging waves from the third floor of the townhouse.

We now understand why navigating the mouth of the Columbia River was a fool’s game for centuries.
The central Oregon coast is unique.  It is never quite warm enough, no matter what time of year one visits, to be a suitable substitute for the tropics.  Nor is it ever quite cool enough to be easily categorized as Nordic.  It permanently exists in a state somewhere between these two extremes.

The State of Oregon declared the entire coast a state highway in 1913 and affirmed the beaches as public lands via passage of the Oregon Beach Bill in 1967.  These two actions have kept the coast both accessible to the public and in generally pristine condition. 

Essentially, these are no private beaches in Oregon   For this, we are grateful, as the coast may be one of the most peaceful and photogenic places on the planet.

A stunning sunset at Rockaway Beach

Our time in sleepy Rockaway Beach was pleasant.  Apart from seven miles of coastline, the town has a park and a number of antique and craft dealers.  On Friday evening we were treated to the annual town Christmas tree decorating and lighting ceremony along with an old fashioned sing-a-long led by the school choir.

Songbooks and cookies were passed around and the choir took requests from the crowd.  The last time we experienced such an expression of civic merry making was in the mountain town of Jaca in Aragon.  As we arrived in Jaca, it was dark and persons were flocking to the green in front of the Castle of San Pedro.  They appeared to jump at our car as if from nowhere.

A Family enjoying Rockaway Beach, Oregon

Once settled in to our accommodations, we joined them and were invited to a sing-a-long in the early autumn evening in the Spanish Pyrenees.  But that is a story for another day.  We are having a hard enough time returning from our vacation bliss.  If we reminisce on our time in Spain we may be on permanent vacation.

Homeostasis?

We love the word homeostasis.  It is a complicated way of saying that an organism, or in our case, an economic system, is in balance, in touch with its inner Chi.  We think of a frog sitting on a log, slowly breathing.  Perhaps it is an image burned into our minds by a biology text we once read.  Whatever images the word conjures in your mind, fellow taxpayer, it is unlikely to trigger a flight or fight response.

We seem to have returned from the raging coastline to a market which appears to have achieved a sort of homeostasis.  The rise and fall of equities, many times over 200 points a day as measured by the Dow, should evoke a fight of flight response from market participants.  Yet now commentators and participants barely blink an eye at such moves. 

After trillions of dollars of stimulus, dozens of government bailouts and guarantees, and collectively learning to think the unthinkable, the market must finally be achieving equilibrium, right?

Oh fellow taxpayer, if only it were true.  Unfortunately, the very perception that the market may be at homeostasis may be the indication that we are at an intermission before the dramatic final act of the play in which we all find ourselves unwilling participants, gets underway.

In the final act, the sovereign debt debacle that first appeared in Greece and is now enveloping France and perhaps Germany finds its way across the ocean to the United States of America.  At that point, the US will succeed where Europe, until now, has failed.

As the financial world trains its binoculars on the equity and bond market indicators, they will continue to declare that all is well, the homeostasis that the American authorities so desire will appear to have been achieved.  US bond yields will remain steady and the equity indices will steadily rise.  Even housing may begin to march forward after its long slumber.

No, the US will not default in the traditional way, as Europe is on the verge of doing.  In fact, perceptive fellow taxpayers will quickly point out that the US has been in the process of defaulting for some time now via quantitative easing (QE).

In markets as in a biological system, all of the actors are always pursuing a state of homeostasis.  Yet the rub of homeostasis is that it is impossible to achieve by unilateral force.  It is something that must collectively be achieved.  It is something that only Anarchy, the absence of the State, can bring about.

The final act of this play will be the ultimate display of unilateral force.  In an increasingly desperate attempt to keep bond and equity indices steady, the Federal Reserve will lose control of the currency in what historians will call a hyperinflationary blow off.

Then modern Central Banking, Western Governments, the warfare/welfare state, and all of its grotesque machinations will take a bow and exit stage left…or they will jump off the stage and attack the crowd.
Come to think of it, we may just leave after this intermission.

Stay tuned and Trust Jesus.

Stay Fresh!

David Mint

Email: davidminteconomics@gmail.com

P.S.  For more ideas and commentary please check out The Mint at http://www.davidmint.com/

Key Indicators for November 29, 2011

Copper Price per Lb: $3.38
Oil Price per Barrel:  $99.34

Corn Price per Bushel:  $5.98  
10 Yr US Treasury Bond:  2.00%
FED Target Rate:  0.08%  ON AUTOPILOT, THE FED IS DEAD!

Gold Price Per Ounce:  $1,715 PERMANENT UNCERTAINTY

MINT Perceived Target Rate*:  2.00%
Unemployment Rate:  9.0%
Inflation Rate (CPI):  -0.1%
Dow Jones Industrial Average:  11,556  

M1 Monetary Base:  $2,095,600,000,000 RED ALERT!!!  THE ANIMALS ARE LEAVING THE ZOO!!!
M2 Monetary Base:  $9,664,500,000,000 YIKES UP $1 Trillion in one year!!!!!!!