A run on BNP, Europe’s Financial Collapse begins in earnest

9/22/2011 Portland, Oregon - Pop in your mints…

While it was a rough day for equity markets everywhere, in light of what is occurring, they (the markets) were amazingly resilient.  A testimony to how fast the monetary spigots at the Central Banks are running.

There are two events that appear to be on a collision course with destiny today (No, neither of them is the NASA space junk hurtling towards the earth).  It feels as if the world is reaching a sort of inflection point in modern history.  Perhaps a great awakening is about to occur.  Will people’s faith in Central Banking finally be broken?

The colliding events are the Palestinian bid for official recognition by the United Nations, scheduled for tomorrow, and the emerging institutional bank run on BNP Paribas.

The Palestinian situation needs no further discussion.  It is clear to most that it is an explosive topic to which the bid for recognition threatens to detonate, much in the way the Israeli Declaration of Independence ignited war in Palestine in 1948.

The Institutional run on BNP Paribas is an event that is occurring as we write and it is unclear how it will play out.  Reggie Middleton at the BoomBustBlog, is chronicling this event in real time.  If you are interested, we highly recommend following the event there.


Real Money is fleeing the Continent!


We have read reports of Lloyds of London, the famous Insurance Marketplace, pulling a great deal of its deposits out of banks on the continent.  We have also read reports of Siemens pulling deposits and parking them directly at the ECB.

Then there was the report of the ECB making an emergency loan of $500 million US Dollars to an unidentified bank (read BNP) with similar loans to other institutions in the cue.  It is clear that the banking crisis in France is dwarfing the ability for the French government to deal with it.

There is no use pointing out the many lessons that society will learn from this, for only one is expedient at the moment.  That lesson is that digital bits on a computer screen or numbers on a bank statement are worthless if the counterparty cannot make good on their commitments.

The run on BNP will intensify the focus on Western Central Banks, which have balance sheets that make BNP, BAC, and all of the other large sinking banks look good by comparison.  This is important because a good part of the world is to some extent a counterparty to the Central Banks.

Need proof?  Open your wallet.  If you have US Dollars or Euros, you are a counterparty to (owed money by) the Federal Reserve or the ECB, whose management is currently buying every worthless paper asset on the planet with leverage that is unimaginable for mere mortals.

Dollar and Euros are about to become extremely hot potatoes, which makes trading them for potatoes, spuds, or anything real, a real good idea.

Let us pray for the peace of Jerusalem, and that tomorrow passes uneventfully on all fronts.
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 September 22, 2011

Copper Price per Lb: $3.45
Oil Price per Barrel:  $80.41

Corn Price per Bushel:  $6.50  
10 Yr US Treasury Bond:  1.72%
FED Target Rate:  0.08%  ON AUTOPILOT, THE FED IS DEAD!

Gold Price Per Ounce:  $1,736 PERMANENT UNCERTAINTY

MINT Perceived Target Rate*:  2.00%
Unemployment Rate:  9.1%
Inflation Rate (CPI):  0.4%!!!   UP UP UP!!!
Dow Jones Industrial Average:  10,734  

M1 Monetary Base:  $2,010,000,000,000 RED ALERT!!!
M2 Monetary Base:  $9,541,800,000,000 YIKES!!!!!!!

Markets go up, Slovenia goes down, Dissing the State, Embracing Anarchy

9/20/2011 Portland, Oregon - Pop in your mints…

The Stock market is absolutely resilient in the face of news ranging from bad to UGLY.  Presumably, the slow motion debt market collapse occurring in Europe is priced in, and it may be this very collapse that is driving money into US equities.  In the insane “debt is money” system, the money can only go so many places, and there is currently so much money sloshing around that it is a wonder everything isn’t going up in price.

Oh, wait, it is!  The CPI came in at 0.4% for August.  Nothing to write home about but at this pace the annual CPI could hit 5%, well above the FED’s 2% target.

And we haven’t seen anything yet.  Tomorrow, the Federal Reserve will meet and be expected to “do something.”  Lately, “do something” has meant that the FED offers to throw perfectly good Federal Reserve notes at various forms of bad paper issued by companies and governments who never intend to make good on them.

At this stage in the game, it is now a given that if perfectly willing market participants won’t buy the paper, surely the FED must do it.  “So what?” say you, “Let the FED waste its own money!”  If only it were that simple, fellow taxpayer.

Unfortunately, the FED’s money, by decree, is everybody’s money.  Every bad decision by the FED reduces the purchasing power of every dollar holder on the planet, making nearly all of us involuntary shareholders of this worthless enterprise, and management at the FED has been making some very bad decisions with very large sums for about four years now.

As a concerned involuntary shareholder of the FED we are compelled to offer the following unsolicited advice:  Why not just wait until January, when the 0% FED funds “trickle” their way down to Main Street?  Then things will really be interesting.  That is when the US Dollar in its present form will go the way of every other paper currency in the history of mankind. 

Fellow taxpayer, prudence demands that one make immediate plans to replace anything that depends upon the value of the US Dollar with something real.  By the time the FED gets around to doing it for you, by introducing a New Dollar, current inaction will have caused anyone with faith in the dollar to suffer horrendously tremendous losses in relative purchasing power.

Back in the rotting old world, to quote Nabokov, the Euro debacle just became more complicated as the Slovenian government failed a confidence vote.  The President is now left trying to cobble together a government and the rest of the Eurozone will presumably have to wait at least 30 days to get Slovenia’s approval for the next round of good money to be thrown at Greece.

It is useless to point out that the Eurozone governments, like their American counterparts, are simply throwing good money after bad.  As we have observed here before, throwing money at failing enterprises is their only solution.  Besides, they have banking interests to protect.  Soon they will be spreading propaganda that ATMs won’t spit out Euros and the world will end if the Greeks are not supported.
That may be true, but these unpleasant outcomes will eventually come to pass no matter what the Euro FEDs do.

This is how the State, which by definition can do nothing but destroy wealth, operates.  Western societies, and dare we say, the entire world are now beginning to suffocate under the weight of the current form of welfare/warfare state which exists to make promises on behalf of its productive citizens to its unproductive citizens.



Is Anarchy the Answer?

 Then, after enslaving the productive citizens, the State then makes promises to support the banking and military interests in order to ensure that the productive citizens remain enslaved.

At some point, each citizen decides that they are either better off becoming an unproductive citizen, working for the State taskmaster as a banker or provider of “security”, or fleeing beyond the State’s ability to enslave them.  Western society is quickly approaching the tipping point where a majority of its productive citizens will be forced to make this choice.

Faced with such facts, an intelligent fellow taxpayer such as yourself is surely asking (or should be asking, if we may prompt you), “Isn’t there a better way?”

In other words, is the State really necessary?  Today we read a brilliant essay on this very subject by Stefan Molyneux.  We encourage you to peruse it at your leisure.  You can see it by clicking on the link below:

The Stateless Society – An Examination of Alternatives

If you are limited on time, it is enough to say that Molyneux lays out compelling, logical arguments about how the free market would more effectively take care of the tasks which are currently relegated to the State.  Specifically, he examines three activities which pro-State apologists claim that the free market will not solve on its own, making the State’s existence a necessity:  Dispute Resolution, Collective Services, and Pollution.

After reading Molyneux’s arguments, it seems that now more than ever that embracing Anarchy is the answer to what ails society.

Much more than simply the answer, it is clear that the true chaos in not created by the Stateless Anarchist model, rather the present chaos is a product of entrusting the State with too much power.

How else can one explain how every present effort the Government uses to ”improve” its citizen’s lives serves to collectively impoverish them?

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 September 20, 2011

Copper Price per Lb: $3.76
Oil Price per Barrel:  $86.43

Corn Price per Bushel:  $6.90  
10 Yr US Treasury Bond:  1.94%
FED Target Rate:  0.09%  ON AUTOPILOT, THE FED IS DEAD!

Gold Price Per Ounce:  $1,805 PERMANENT UNCERTAINTY

MINT Perceived Target Rate*:  2.00%
Unemployment Rate:  9.1%
Inflation Rate (CPI):  0.4%!!!   UP UP UP!!!
Dow Jones Industrial Average:  11,409  

M1 Monetary Base:  $2,101,100,000,000 RED ALERT!!!
M2 Monetary Base:  $9,540,500,000,000 YIKES!!!!!!!

A taste of Autumn, Greece remains on the hot seat, the US budgets to end wars?

9/19/2011 Portland, Oregon - Pop in your mints…

We've had our first taste of autumn here in the Pacific Northwest.  We found ourselves strangely welcoming the overcast sky and constant humidity.  It is the type of weather that is pleasant for a month or two.  Unfortunately, we get about 8 months of it here which requires some sort of escape to the sun, either Hawaii or California, for it to remain tolerable.

But still, the first taste was sweet and provided a warm feeling that all was well with the world, despite constant reports to the contrary.  Fortunately for us, the sun looks as though it will return this week.

On the whitewashed shores of Greece, where the sun seems to perpetually shine, there is now intense pressure from which there seems to be no escape.  The Prime Minister was called back from a trip to the US after receiving an emergency call from the Finance Minister as he stopped over in London.  The poor chap had to be on a conference call with creditors and the troika and didn’t want to take the lashing alone.

As if to give the world a taste of things to come, the Greek Government passed an emergency property tax which is to be collected via the citizens’ electricity bill to help ensure compliance.  Apparently the folks at the electric company are not happy about adding tax collection to their duties and are pushing back on the order.

The Greeks never have been good at collecting taxes, either that or their citizens are especially adept at avoiding paying them.  Either way, the combination makes for low tax revenues which makes servicing public debt, well, difficult.

We offer a suggestion to the Greeks, privatize the electric company and then enact an enormous tax on consumption.  At least then the riots would be staged at the electric company and not at parliament.

Meanwhile, before departing for New York in perhaps the least understood yet most important peace-keeping mission the US will ever embark upon, President Obama gave yet another clinic on teleprompter reading during his speech on, what else, government finances.  His proposal was to save $1.5 Trillion over the next 10 years by in large part by ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Will Palestine become a UN Member?

We do not have any statistics, but we are willing to bet that this is not the first time that ending these wars has been proposed as a deficit reduction measure.  What is truly astonishing to almost every thinking person is that these two military adventures have continued for so long and have become such a drain on the public treasury  that ending them now would save $1 Trillion.

Less war, more money, what a novel idea!  It is as straightforward as it is unlikely to happen.

We sense that both this speech and bath time for Greek creditors will be interrupted by the Palestinian bid for statehood at the UN this week.  The Middle East has not seen a moment like this since Israel vied for statehood in 1949.  Let us pray that this moment passes in a peaceful manner

Stay tuned and Trust Jesus.

Stay Fresh!

David Mint

Email: davidminteconomics@gmail.com

Key Indicators for September 19, 2011

Copper Price per Lb: $3.79
Oil Price per Barrel:  $85.13

Corn Price per Bushel:  $6.92  
10 Yr US Treasury Bond:  1.94%
FED Target Rate:  0.09%  ON AUTOPILOT, THE FED IS DEAD!

Gold Price Per Ounce:  $1,779 PERMANENT UNCERTAINTY

MINT Perceived Target Rate*:  2.00%
Unemployment Rate:  9.1%
Inflation Rate (CPI):  0.4%!!!   UP UP UP!!!
Dow Jones Industrial Average:  11,401  TO THE MOON!!!

M1 Monetary Base:  $2,101,100,000,000 RED ALERT!!!
M2 Monetary Base:  $9,540,500,000,000 YIKES!!!!!!!