What the SVB collapse says to me about the state of the world economy and its currencies.

SVB needed money, so it sold government bonds which had lost value due to higher interest rates. As such, this sale resulted in a loss to the bank of billions of dollars, and it sill needed money.

So it tried to find a buyer for the bank, but there were no takers.

When word got out that this was going on, there was a run on the bank, and it got shut down. All within 48 hours or so.

Then another bank got shut down.

But the reaction by the Biden admin is where it gets interesting. They swear that the lifeline they are throwing depositors is not a bailout. Oh no, couldn't have that. They're initially using FDIC insurance money, which is insurance paid for by banks when they join the FDIC.

But that fund doesn't have enough, clearly. So the Biden admin has created a new program, a new program that LENDS MONEY TO BANKS.

And where will this money come from? They'll print it! Digitally, that is, but they'll create it out of thin air. Doesn't this sound familiar?

First of all, whether or not taxpayers are footing the bill initially is a moot point. We'll all pay for this in one way or another, and it's just pumping more money into the economy which will increase inflation pressure. In other words, there are vast segments of the economy that are 'empty', that have little or no intrinsic value. This bank is an example, but rather than letting it die a natural death, the govt. is pumping money into it, the argument being that if it were to die, it would start a chain reaction and multiple other banks would fail.

Why? If a bank is healthy, why should it fail?

It wouldn't. If a bank is healthy, a run on the bank would not kill it. So what this all demonstrates to me is that the govt. knows that most if not all these banks are essentially worthless. They took money for savings (to vastly oversimplify) that they no longer have.

It's a mess and it's been a mess at least since the late 70's, and the US keeps patching things up by raising the debt limit and printing money. It can't go on.

So now the govt. is raising interest rates to try to decrease inflation, inflation caused by money creation, while at the same time they are printing money to give banks who are suffering from the raising of rates! It's a total shit show.

But what it really demonstrates is how this is all just a house of cards, or smoke and mirrors. Our currency is hollow. The US is over 31 TRILLION dollars in debt. How is that possible? So pretty much any action they take (or don't) will send ripples through this house and cards will begin falling. SVB was one card, a canary, and the US responded like it always does, by bailing it out by printing more money, the very thing that got us in the trouble in the first place!

Meanwhile, numerous other banks are teetering. Switzerland bailed out Credit Suisse, but what's more interesting is what happened with First Republic. First Republic secures $30 billion rescue from large banks. Major banks decided to bail it out. What does that tell you? It tells me that The big boys are feeling the heat and will hand over 30 Billion dollars to keep a bank afloat.

This isn't going away. You can't have the leading economy in the world be 30 TRILLION in debt and just turn it around on a dime. It's a no win situation. There's no way out of this without serious pain of some sort. For now, the US keeps pushing that pain away with fake money, like a heroin addict. Good for another day.

Silicon Valley Bank: Global bank stocks slump despite Biden reassurances

As part of their moves to restore confidence, regulators also unveiled a new way to give banks access to emergency funds.

The Federal Reserve said it would offer assistance through a new Bank Term Funding Program, making it easier for banks to borrow from it in a crisis.

President Joe Biden said the American people could have "confidence that their bank deposits will be there when they need them".

First of all, there's no fucking way that a Bank Term Funding Program was somehow created overnight... on a fucking weekend. That's absurd. They're either lying, meaning that it hasn't been created but it will be, maybe, or they're lying, meaning they had this ready to go for just this sort of situation.

I'm guessing the latter.

And what does it do? It raises US debt. It keeps sick banks afloat. And we pay for it.

Excellent analysis. So where is this heading? Is this something you can see China trying to exploit?

For sure China would much rather fight an economic war than a normal one - it's more Sun Tzu.

Oh I'm sure China is loving this. And they hold a lot of cards in the form of US debt that they can call in whenever they want to, but that wouldn't do their economy any good.

On a different note, check this video out. Start watching at about 1:20.

It's an amazing exchange. Yellen pretty much says that they'll bail out whoever they wish, period, and that they'll only bail out large banks, letting smaller banks to die off.

Right now, this is resulting in people fleeing small, community banks and putting their money in the big banks, further centralizing control. She admits that.

Watched the Janet Yellen video - you're right, that's frightening - if you're a big bank with powerful investors, you'll get bailed out - if you're not, you won't. Though you'll still have to contribute to bailing out the big boys. At least she spoke frankly!

That guy Lankford asking the questions - wouldn't mind having him as my lawyer - he wasn't letting her off the hook at all. At the end he makes the point (which she agrees with) that under Yellen's scheme, large Chinese-state investors (of which there was at least one in the silicon valley bank collapse) will get made-whole while normal US citizens who have their money in a small community bank will get black-holed.

It sounds like a strategy to counter the de-centralization movement. That's definitely the result, only question is whether its deliberate tactic or not.

It sounds like a strategy to counter the de-centralization movement. That's definitely the result, only question is whether its deliberate tactic or not.

That's a good question. I've seen comments somewhere that suggested this was an intentional move to centralize banking so as to make it easier to transition to a central bank digital currency (CBDC). I'm not sure I agree, but I suppose it's possible. A third possibility is that they bumbled their way into this mess and now see it as an opportunity to centralize.

Here's an interesting story:

Central banks to boost flow of US dollars amid market unease

It would seem to support the push for centralization. A few snippets:

Six central banks, including the Bank of England, announced they would boost the flow of US dollars through the global financial system.

In a statement the Bank of England, Bank of Japan, Bank of Canada, the European Central Bank, US Federal Reserve and Swiss National Bank launched the co-ordinated action to "enhance the provision of liquidity".

Translation for the bolded: to give, oh, I'm sorry, lend money to banks. Not people, mind you.

Instead of borrowing on the open market, British banks will be able to go direct to the Bank of England, and it will borrow from the US Federal Reserve.

It will work in the same way for banks in the eurozone, Canada, Japan, Switzerland and the US.

Banks will be able to access this funding on a daily basis.

Wow. So the US is effectively pumping money directly into the world central banks. I guess it has to to protect its debt, by, incidentally, adding more debt. They'll call it loans, but they're printing money to lend it, and somebody will pay for that.

The arrangement, adopted during the 2008 financial crisis and the Covid pandemic, will start on Monday and continue until "at least through the end of April", the Bank of England said.

So, business as usual. Interest rates are raised for those of us who want to buy a house or just live on credit card, but for the big boys, hey, nod and wink.

The fear is less about the direct impact of problems at Credit Suisse or Silicon Valley Bank, but instead that a set of common factors are affecting some other institutions. For example non-insured deposits pouring out of some institutions and into larger ones at incredible speed, without anyone visiting a branch, thanks to technology, and influenced by social media commentary. There has also been an uncertain response by some regulators.

And there's the centralizing factor.

A third possibility is that they bumbled their way into this mess and now see it as an opportunity to centralize.

That's the Covid scenario - assuming it wasn't a deliberate release (which we don't know for sure coz there's been no open investigation): an accidental release (due to bound-to-happen-fuck-ups of their own making), which was then seen as an opportunity to power-grab.

Of course it's not over. When you have a world economy based on credit and debt with collapsing currencies, shit's going to happen.

Deutsche Bank Collapse Risk Grows As Experts Wait for Next 'Domino to Fall'

"We are still on edge waiting for another domino to fall, and Deutsche is clearly the next one on everyone's minds (fairly or unfairly)," Chris Beauchamp, chief market analyst at IG Group, told Reuters. "Looks like the banking crisis hasn't been entirely put to bed."

But what's happening with Deutsche Bank? This article tries to explain it, but clearly there are things happening behind the scenes that aren't making it into the press.

Deutsche Bank Should Disclose Its Current Liquidity Levels To Investors

This is telling:

Nothing new, in particular, came out about Deutsche Bank today. It is not as if market participants only discovered today that Deutsche Bank has a long history of weak risk controls and a list of scandals rivaling Credit Suisse.

So it's an ongoing risk that is coming to fruition.

What investors should be monitoring for all banks is how liquid they are, that, is whether they can pay all their obligations when they come due. It is difficult, if not impossible to know, how liquid Deutsche Bank is right now.

How liquid they are, i.e., how much wealth do they actually have in hand, either cash or something they can turn into cash immediately. The problem is not with the cash the banks are holding, even though it's losing value by the hour to inflation, it's other liquid assets like bonds and equities that can only be turned into cash at a loss right now.

According to Deutsche Bank’s Basel III Pillar III Risk Disclosures, as of the end of December 2022, Deutsche Bank’s Liquidity Coverage Ratio was 135%, higher than the minimum requirement of 100%. The figure tells us that at that end of 2022, Deutsche Bank had enough high-quality liquid assets such as cash, money market instruments, and unencumbered investment grade bonds, to cover net cash outflows in periods of stress.

Maybe that's where the problem is. WTF are money market instruments? Well, here's a definition:

Money market instruments are securities that provide businesses, banks, and the government with large amounts of low-cost capital for a short time. The period is overnight or a few days, weeks, or even months, but always less than a year. The financial markets meet longer-term cash needs.

So, it's credit, i.e., the ability to take on more debt. And bonds, they have bonds, in a market that isn't bond friendly. So they have cash, but we don't know how much, the ability to borrow more money short term, and bonds that can be sold at a loss. Great.

Unlike Silicon Valley Bank, Deutsche Bank has a diversity of funding sources such as retail and corporate deposits from different geographies, short-term and medium-term credit lines, as well as access to wholesale funding. Stable sources of funding are always important, especially right now.

OK, so they have deposits from a more diverse set of stakeholders, depositors that can demand their money at any time, and access to more credit, or debt. So... what do they have?

What Deutsche Bank should be doing right now is disclosing granular information about its current liquidity levels, sources of funding, and capital ratios.

Don't hold your breath.

Here's a good summary of what happened to SVB

I'm appreciating this thread as an explainer of what's going on with the banking crisis. It has the hallmarks of something that bubbles away & we're kinda aware of it, but not the extent ... then it inexorably swamps everything. Probably the same pattern as every great crash in history.

Interestingly, from watching the video you posted, SVB had its most profitable year on record in 2021! Due to Covid. Amazing how quick it went from there to collapsing.

I'm leaving the info collation on the banks up to Dan, but this is a tangent thought: i can see a parallel between a major bank bail-out & the bail-out of THE Experts over Covid.

They both fall into that too big to fail category. The rationale in bailing out depositors in big banks (over small ones) is to prevent the spread of contagion through the system. We could end up with a run on banks generally & total collapse of our house-of-cards economy. As Dan pointed out, the main lever for doing that is to print more money.

The same thing happened with Covid. A major THE Science cohort fucked-up by engineering then allowing Covid to be released (one way or another) - namely EcoHealth Alliance(Daszak)/WIV(Shi Zheng-li). But instead of letting this group crash & burn, it was decided that they needed to be bailed out to prevent contagion spreading through an increasingly centralized THE Experts system.

Scientists/health experts/security experts have long enjoyed a high-level of trust from the public, which has enabled them to operate without accountability - we don't really know what they're up to, but we trust them to do the right thing. Trust is the magic ingredient. It keeps their work hidden behind a curtain, & lets them get on with their secret real world work of shaping the future - for all of us. So the absolute last thing you need is a run on Trust.

This run-on-trust is what was at stake when an engineered coronavirus got loose. A global-trust-meltdown simply could not be allowed to happen. A slightly discordant note i noticed when researching the Prox-O pangolin paper was that head-author, Kristian Andersen, hated Peter Daszak - he thought he was a fool - but he swallowed that contempt in order to save his arse - coz he knew of the contagion ramifications. As with the banking crisis, it also provided a golden opportunity to further centralize operations.

Whereas in the case of a major bank collapse, the govt may choose to print more money to paper over the problem, in the case of a major science Org fucking up, the method is to print info-BS - hence the media's involvement. This potential contagion is not limited to the science community - it can spread all the way through the whole expert system that underpins established world order, so all big players are easily persuaded to get on board.

It remains to be seen how it will work out in the end. Will that run-on-trust be shored-up, or will it all come crashing down in the end? Personally, my trust in THE Experts, which i used to have, is now stone-cold dead. I see signs of that spreading through the community, but i also see signs of it being swept under the carpet with the we've all moved on sentiment taking hold.

At the end of the day, it will likely boil down to economics, which makes the banking crisis one to watch. If people can continue on in a relatively economically stable path then concerns over the origin of Covid will probably diminish as they get back to concentrating on their work, family, entertainment fare ...

But if that economic stability goes, then that will signal brown-corduroys time for our global handlers.

Excellent post. I think the comparison is a valid and accurate one. I'd add that this umbrella, unnamed (until now) force used by the GODS, that being the THE Experts system you've called them out on, also covers banking. We see the talking heads in the media daily telling us what happened, why, and how they'll make it right for the good of us all.

The same thing happened with Covid. A major THE Science cohort fucked-up by engineering then allowing Covid to be released (one way or another) - namely EcoHealth Alliance(Daszak)/WIV(Shi Zheng-li). But instead of letting this group crash & burn, it was decided that they needed to be bailed out to prevent contagion spreading through an increasingly centralized THE Experts system.

This is such a good point. They covered for them not just because of covid and related scandals, but because of how the acknowledgement of the failure of these world class Experts would negatively impact our trust in ALL The Experts. Scientists are right up there with priests of another age (and we know how they've been brought down to earth). If we lost faith in The Experts, in Scientists especially, how are we to be controlled?

Scientists/health experts/security experts have long enjoyed a high-level of trust from the public, which has enabled them to operate without accountability - we don't really know what they're up to, but we trust them to do the right thing. Trust is the magic ingredient. It keeps their work hidden behind a curtain, & lets them get on with their secret real world work of shaping the future - for all of us. So the absolute last thing you need is a run on Trust.

Exactly. We can never understand the science, we're told, so we just have to trust them. This is happening with AI now.

Whereas in the case of a major bank collapse, the govt may choose to print more money to paper over the problem, in the case of a major science Org fucking up, the method is to print info-BS - hence the media's involvement. This potential contagion is not limited to the science community - it can spread all the way through the whole expert system that underpins established world order, so all big players are easily persuaded to get on board.

Another excellent point. In Expert land, a meltdown is handled with BS rather than printing money. It's actually far more frightening, particularly when AI is employed to manipulate our thinking. The Algorithm plays a big part in all this.

It remains to be seen how it will work out in the end. Will that run-on-trust be shored-up, or will it all come crashing down in the end? Personally, my trust in THE Experts, which i used to have, is now stone-cold dead. I see signs of that spreading through the community, but i also see signs of it being swept under the carpet with the we've all moved on sentiment taking hold.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure you nailed it with the latter. It will be swept under the rug, forgotten, yesterday's news. I have students, middle school students, in Japan, who don't even know the US dropped atomic bombs on Japan. They don't even know anything about WWII. OK, they will learn it eventually, one hopes, but you'd think that would be pretty important knowledge to have. I bet they've heard that people have been to the moon. Which of those two events involves human development that has the greatest potential to end civilization?

An example of how short our memory of a society is, at least in the US, is school shootings. Nobody gives a shit, really. Nobody is demonstrating. Biden said in his limp-ass, slurred comments that we need to do more to protect our schools. Wow. That's powerful.

2008, millions of Americans lost their homes, their jobs, while corporations bought up the cheap, foreclosed properties and doubled the rents on the new, larger class of renters, and nobody, nobody responsible for the mess was put on trial. All forgotten.

So, yeah, any hope of distrust taking hold is misguided, I'm afraid. The GODS, the Algorithm, they're too good at what they do.

I'm encouraged by what I see in France regarding the retirement age. You posted on this recently. Now THERE is meaningful action.

At the end of the day, it will likely boil down to economics, which makes the banking crisis one to watch. If people can continue on in a relatively economically stable path then concerns over the origin of Covid will probably diminish as they get back to concentrating on their work, family, entertainment fare ...

But if that economic stability goes, then that will signal brown-corduroys time for our global handlers.

That's exactly right. A chicken in every pot and all that. As long as the balance of discomfort and fear is maintained, i.e., the fear of taking action outweighs the discomfort one is experiencing, then nothing will change. The Algorithm has been very good at using social fear, the fear of embarrassment, of banishment, a fear stronger than that of death from what I've read, the Algorithm uses that fear to control action. In France, there's enough social support for protest that people go for it. In the US, that's been controlled very well. Groups protest, sure, but they're small. Dare you question the origin of covid? Or worse yet, vaccines? My God. You're toast.

Here's an engaging interview in which the guest, Whitney Webb, discusses her prediction of a cyber attack on the banking system within the next 1-2 years, an attack orchestrated by the banks themselves as a means to get out of the mess they're in. "We didn't lose all your money, we were attacked!"

She also predicts that in addition to this serving to give the banks an out, it will also serve to herald in digital money, the loss of privacy, and the lockdown of the Internet. She's done some incredibly strong reporting.

Interview: https://youtu.be/BlfZ91Pot-w

Her site: https://unlimitedhangout.com/

Interview: https://youtu.be/BlfZ91Pot-w

Her site: https://unlimitedhangout.com/

I watched the video - they're just like us in terms of the themes they discuss, only younger, & better!

I seem to recall Whitney Webb is associated with Johnny Vedmore, the guy who contacted us about our research on Sir Jeremy Farrar. Ok, a quick search says they were together, but had a falling out.

The cyber-attack makes a lot of sense - it's something we've touched on before with discussions about the vulnerability of the internet - how easily it can be taken away. We've seen a lot of examples of this before where ORG-GODS orchestrate a crisis in order to create a demand for their products as well as to tighten the centralization noose. Covid being the most recent one.

You could easily imagine a scenario where a 9-11 magnitude cyber-attack is used to justify an end to online anonymity & the introduction of CBDCs. I can envisage an internet blackout for a period of time & a return to (MSM) TV as the only news source. Then, in order to re-access the internet, you would have to comply with whatever Globo-control measures are chosen to be rolled-out.

As we've noted with cyber-attacks before, the orgs being hacked don't really give a shit if all their customers' data is hacked - it's now being presented as 'normal'. They'd care if they lost the data completely, but if a copy of it is stolen, then that's not a great concern, we've still got the precious stuff. In fact the more hacks the better coz then you can say 'Well, look, it's happening to everyone!' whilst same time creating an invisible, uncatchable scapegoat which can be used to justify whatever you want.

I guess the irony is that cash is the least vulnerable to a cyber-attack - don't know how govs are gonna explain their way around that - likely they won't bother coz, due to the crisis, now will not be the right time to talk about it. In fact, if there's no internet, or even stricter censorship than we've already got, then you simply won't be able to talk about it.

I watched the video - they're just like us in terms of the themes they discuss, only younger, & better!

That was one of my reactions. "She's just a kid!" Which of course is nonsense. She's in her mid 30's I think.

I seem to recall Whitney Webb is associated with Johnny Vedmore, the guy who contacted us about our research on Sir Jeremy Farrar. Ok, a quick search says they were together, but had a falling out.

I thought Vedmore's name sounded familiar!

You could easily imagine a scenario where a 9-11 magnitude cyber-attack is used to justify an end to online anonymity & the introduction of CBDCs. I can envisage an internet blackout for a period of time & a return to (MSM) TV as the only news source. Then, in order to re-access the internet, you would have to comply with whatever Globo-control measures are chosen to be rolled-out.

Yes, it would have to be something on the 9-11 scale to get people to fall in line, and they would.

I guess the irony is that cash is the least vulnerable to a cyber-attack - don't know how govs are gonna explain their way around that - likely they won't bother coz, due to the crisis, now will not be the right time to talk about it. In fact, if there's no internet, or even stricter censorship than we've already got, then you simply won't be able to talk about it.

I think I saw one interview with her in which she touched on the fact that a straightforward CBDC would be implemented in the more authoritarian countries (China, Russia, Venezuela, etc.) because, well, they can, but that it will look like something else in places like the US. China is already rolling out their CBDC and has been testing it for some time.

Her point was that a lot of people in the US have already been primed to resist a CBDC, so it will be one layer removed from a CBDC but it will still use a CBDC to settle transactions. I think her prediction is that tokens will be proved directly from big banks, and transactions using those tokens will be settled with the US CBDC, sort of like banknote transactions, when we were still on the gold standard, were settled between banks in physical gold.

It will still be entirely programmable and traceable. Regardless, you're right, cash is really the only sort of kind of anonymous form of money we have, but the can easily clamp down on that. Try taking more than 8K or so out of a US bank in cash and see what happens! (Or depositing.)

Whitney Webb exhorts people to start 'prepping' for a major cyber-attack by getting off mainstream platforms - what advice could you share on that point in terms of 'open-source' options?

I'm curious about Linux as a way to store documents.

Whitney Webb exhorts people to start 'prepping' for a major cyber-attack by getting off mainstream platforms - what advice could you share on that point in terms of 'open-source' options?

That's a good question. Part of the conundrum is we don't know to what extent they'll shut down open-source or decetralized platforms, which they'll be able to do (but maybe not entirely with decetralization.)

For example, since that Nazi pig guy took over Twitter, a lot of people have been navigating to a Mastodon instance. Mastodon is open source and decetralized, in a sense (not truly as each instance exists on a server), but the Man could still take it down an a whack-a-mole fashion by taking individual instances (servers) offline if they 'endanger' the, well, Man.

Duck-duck-go is a good open-source alternative to Google. Firefox is a good browser for privacy because it now uses the 'containers' approach which allows you to sandbox a site to a specific container, meaning that site won't be able to see what you've been doing outside that container.

But it all comes back to the ISP level control. The Man will be able to shut down or control whatever he wants. Individually, this will be done via your ISP, which is your doorway and ticket to the Internet -- that's how he will control you personally. Controlling sites and such will be done largely via DNS, which will basically take domain names down, but he could also attack the ISP of any offending server.

It will be interesting to see what happens to Bitcoin. It's international and doesn't rely on any one server or domain name, so it will be nearly impossible for the Man to take down entirely, but he can scare the shit out of people from using it with threat of jail time and use all sorts of other methods. The other thing that might happen is that banks may actually embrace Bitcoin as a gold replacement or at least something to have on their books for sake of diversification, in which case it could be left alone but will then become a tool for the Man rather than one against him.

One thing to keep in mind, and this is a biggy -- the Internet protocol is free, open-source, and implementable on any community level. As I think I've point out before, you can create your own internet in your community given the essential hardware (you already have it) and software (Linux, Apache server, etc., all free). It's not hard, and you can block the Man. You can decide who is on your internet. Then, if only one person on your internet can somehow connect to the next community over, boom, you've just connected your two community's internets (probably should be called intranets), and your network has grown. It's organic.

I'm curious about Linux as a way to store documents.

I highly recommend Linux, but it is a learning curve. If you're interested, my advice would be to take an old, unused computer if you have one and install it on that. Let me know if you're ready to take that leap and I'll post simplified instructions. All the info is online, but there's so much info that it's sometimes frustrating, particularly at first. We get used to whatever OS we use and using a new one is always frustrating. I get severely frustrated with Windows when I have to use it at work.

I have a bunch of backup protocols I use, combined with encryption. My routine involves muliple external drives that I've amassed over the years, a couple different cloud services, and tools like rclone and rsync, which come with Linux.

Regarding cloud services, we get back to our conundrum. If there is no cloud, well...

I encrypt everything important when putting in on the cloud, even when a service says it encrypts everything on the client side and can't see your shit. OK, well, maybe they can't.

One service that I use for big stuff like movies is Storj, but it's not user friendly, at all. It's super cheap, and it's entirely decentralized storage, so in theory it can't be taken down as easily as some others, but that's assuming you have Internet. Still, I find their approach interesting.

But really for cloud storage I don't think it matters too much, really, as long as everything is encrypted. Cryptomator seems to be a popular, open-source, user-friendly tool. I don't use it just because I've set everything up using different methods, but I think it seems like a good option.

Good post with useful info. I don't have an old computer, but thinking to buy a back-up soon. If things do go south in Taiwan, i'm assuming computers & phones will become almost unprocurable.