American Financial Meltdown? Troubled California Bank PacWest Craters 60% On Report It Is Seeking Buyers - Crisis Affects Other Banks

Financial stability - it's just an illusion (Picture: thumbs.dreamstime.com/

 

This morning  U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell openly lied to financial reporters during a  press conference stating without a hint of irony that the US banking system is "sound and resilient."

Ironically even as Powell was speaking the news broke that  another  bank collapse was on its say.

Shortly after the conference closed, Bloomberg reported that California-based bank, PacWest Bancorp., was weighing a range of strategic options, including a sale.

The Beverly Hills-based bank - whose financial conditions it appears has been far worse than the Fed, which had just hiked interest rates another 25bps (a quarter of one per cent,) calculated for - has been working with consultants and also been considering selling a huge slice of its business to raise capital according to Bloomberg. While it is open to an outright if the right offer (i.e. any offer,) comes along, , the company hasn’t yet started a formal auction process.

According to the report,  and similar to other recent bank collapses SVB and FRC, "a potential buyer would also have to potentially book a big loss marking down some of its loans, a spokesperson said."

the next regional bank collapse was on its say.

Shortly after the close, Bloomberg reported that another regional, California-based bank (of course), PacWest Bancorp., was weighing a range of strategic options, including a sale.

The Beverly Hills-based bank - whose financial conditions it appears has been far worse than the Fed, which just hiked another 25bps, thought - has been working with a financial adviser and has also been considering a breakup or a capital raise, according to Bloomberg sources. While it is open to a sale, the company hasn’t started a formal auction process.

According to the report,  and in a similar way to ,other recent bank collapses SVB and FRC, "a potential buyer would also have to potentially book a big loss marking down some of its loans, a spokesperson said."

Following publication of the Bloomberg report, PacWest - which had $28 billion in deposits at last check (far less as of this moment) and $44 billion in assets, saw its stock plunge more than 60% in the space of a few hours.

Earlier we reported that First Horizon tumbled as much as 40% after saying it and Toronto-Dominion Bank mutually agreed to terminate their merger agreement amid uncertainty around regulatory approvals.

Meanwhile, with the Fed still burying its head in the sand as an epic bank crisis hurtles towards the USA, Powell may be  hopeing that a avalanche of bank failures will make the Fed's job of sparking a recession, credit crisis and deflationary bust easier.

 

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UBS To Buy Credit Suisse With Guarantees From Swiss Government (but its not a bail out OK?)

After two days of playing table tennis with clients' savings and investments held by failed bank Credit Suisse, the price for acquisition by UBS (formerly Union Bank of Switzerland,) has been agreed at  CHF 3BN (US$3.25 billion), or 0.76 per share, meaning shareholders of Credit Suisse will receive 1 share in UBS for 22.48 shares in Credit Suisse. As part of the deal, the Swiss National Bank is offering a 100 billion-franc liquidity assistance to UBS while the government is granting a 9 billion-franc guarantee for likely losses on dodgy assets that are part of the deal. In effect this is a taxpayer-funded bailout (but don't call it that.)

Most significantly, however, the bank's entire AT1 tranche - some CHF16BN of Additioanal Tier 1 (AT1) bonds, a $275BN market - will be bailed in and written down to zero, to wit: "FINMA has determined that Credit Suisse’s Additional Tier 1 Capital (deriving from the issuance of Tier 1 Capital Notes) in the aggregate nominal amount of approximately CHF 16 billion will be written off to zero."

This wipe out bail-in will be the biggest loss yet for Europe’s $275 billion AT1 market, far eclipsing the approximately €1.35 billion loss suffered by junior bondholders of Spanish lender Banco Popular SA back in 2017, when it was absorbed by Banco Santander SA to avoid a collapse.

AT1 bonds were introduced in Europe in the wake of the 2014 global financial crisis to serve as a backstop when banks start to fail. They are designed to shift losses to bondholders or be converted into equity if a bank’s capital ratios fall below a viable level, effectively padding its balance sheet and allowing it to stay in business.

The bonds were by Friday already trading at levels usually reserved for companies about to go bust. A slice of the bank’s $1.65 billion note, issued less than a year ago, changed hands at about 35 cents on the dollar, according to trade reporting system Trace.

And while it may be counterintuitive, according to the Swiss bail-in regime, AT1 debt is above equity in the loss absorption waterfall.

All this is very vague and technical but what it means is that while the takeover is agreed in principle, the  deal may yet fall apart is, as banking industry insiders have warned, more nasties emerge as UBS auditors scrutinise the accounts of Credit Suisse. Once a paragon of banking integrity, Credit Suisse has been known to be in trouble for over a decade and has only stayed afloat this long due to certain creative accounting practices of dubious legality disguising the black holes in its balance sheet.

What is truly frightening is that many more banks are rumoured to be in similar or even worse trouble due to reckless lending during the years of insanely low interest rates.

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The Real Rate Of Inflation, USA, UK (Europe's is off the scale). The Global Economy Is Bankrupt.

What would happen if the real rate of inflation was revealed? The entire economy of the developed world, and the case for globalisation with it, would immediately collapse. Consider the immediate consequences to Social Security, interest rates and the cost of refinancing government debt (most of those three, five and ten year bonds governments issue each month to fund their current account deficit are rolled over rather than being paid off).

Unbiased private-sector efforts to calculate the real rate of inflation have yielded a rate for the USA of around 7% to 13% per year, depending on the locale, many times the official rate of around 1% per year. Figures calculated by Ed Butowsky of Peak Prosperity reveal what economically literate people have long suspected, that government economic statistics should be displayed on the 'fairy tales' shelf.

The cost of living for many British households is also close to four times the Government's published rate of inflation, while such figures as are available for other major European economies are simply irrational, the result of prointing money and claiming it represents GDP growth. GDP itself, the sacred cow of modern economics, is not a true measure of economic health.

Millions of families all around the developed world are experiencing inflation far beyond the official rate of 2.4 per cent, new research suggests.

The UK Government was recently accused of neglecting hard-up families as the research shatters the illusion that the Consumer Price Index - used by the Bank of England to set interest rates - represents the true cost of living as experienced by many households.

Pensioners are the hardest hit, with inflation rates of almost nine per cent, as record gas and electricity bills take a massive slice out of their budgets.

Both middle class and poor families are also shown to be experiencing inflation well above the national average, as the increased costs of household bills, food and other essentials erode their earnings.

The research, produced by Capital Economics (site available to subscribers only), reveals the enormous difference between the CPI and the inflation rates experienced by many families.

According to the study, pensioners' costs rose by 8.9 per cent in the 12 months to October.

Hard-up families, getting by on £20,000 a year, saw their costs increase by 4.6 per cent — almost twice the national average and well above the annual rate of wage increases, 3.9 per cent.

So what happens if the status quo accepted the reality of 7+% inflation? Here are a few of the consequences:

National Insurance and Social Security beneficiaries would demand annual increases of 7% or more instead of zero or near-zero annual increases. Social Security systems in the USA, Britain, the European Union and other advanced nations which already distributing more in benefit payments that is received in payroll related contributions, would immediately go deep in the red.

Governments claim past surpluses are ring fenced and have accumulated so much interest they will remain solvent for decades. The reality is that governments have blown the family fortune on universal benefits (to buy votes), foreign aid (to buy influence) obsolete and useless weapons systems (to buy testicular fortitude) and vanity projects (to buy a place in history). Thus they have to borrow every Dollar, Pound, Euro, to cover deficit spending by Social Security and other government departments by selling more Treasury bonds. And some governments are already in a situation where they have to borrow money just to pay the interest on existing borrowing.

Another consequence of admitting the real inflation rate would be Global investors demanding yields on Treasury bonds that are above the real rate of inflation. If inflation is running at 7%, then bond buyers would need to earn 8% per year just to earn a real return of 1%. At the moment the 'coupon value' (published rate) in 3.1% for US bonds, 3.5% for UK paper ranging up as high as 7.5% for Italian bonds and 8.6% for Greek bonds. Some Swiss bonds however carry a negative interest rate (bond holders pay the Swiss government for the privilege of holding its debt, betting that Swiss Frances will increase in value against other currencies. In other words the investors know governments are printing money to hide the true states of their economies.

Governments and central banks are only able to sustain their enormous deficit spending because interest rates and bond yields are near-zero or even below zero. This leads to another problem and another illustration of the lunacy of current economic policy. The near zero rates are not available you you and me, they are the rates governments lend money to banks in the hope of stimulating their national economies. But while governments need to borrow such vast sums to stay afloat, the banks simply lend back at three or more per cent the same money they have borrowed at half a per cent. Nice work if you can get it.

If governments suddenly had to pay 8% or more to roll over maturing government bonds, the cost of servicing the existing debt--never mind the cost of additional borrowing $400 b every year simply to fund overspends would rocket, squeezing out all other government spending and triggering massive deficits just to pay the ballooning interest on existing debt.

Bond yields of 8% and over would destroy the economic status quo which relies on massive government deficit spending.

Private-sector interest rates would also rise, crushing private borrowing. How many autos, trucks and homes would sell if buyers had to pay 8% interest on new loans? A lot less than are being sold at 1% interest auto loans or 3.5% mortgages.

Any serious decline in private and state borrowing would bring consumer spending on non - essentials to a near standstill; as my articles on The Baltic Dry exchange HERE and HERE explained, the quantity of manufactured goods moving around the world was and has remained disturbingly low. Recall that a very modest drop in new borrowing very nearly collapsed the global financial system in 2008-09, as the whole system depends on a permanently monstrous expansion of new borrowing to fund consumption, student loans, taxes, etc. As Steinbeck wrote in Chapter 5 of The Grapes Of Wrath, "The monster has to grow or else it dies, and if it is to grown the monster must be fed."

The reality is that real inflation stands at 7+% per year, and this reality must be hidden behind bogus official calculations of inflation. hiding it is an unsustainable policy however, already the number of economic alarm bells ringing out their warnings suggest a bigger crash than 2008 is on the way. Super-wealthy elites earning 10+% yields on stock, bond and real estate portfolios aren't particularly impacted by 7% inflation; their real wealth continues to expand nicely.

Ordinary savers, and people who rely solely on earnings and pensions however are seeing their standards of living and their aspirations evaporate.



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War On Cash Gathers Momentum - Germany Unveils Cash Controls

by Ian R Thorpe

Money laubdering: big business or a sign of bankers' paranoia

On Monday (1 February, 2016) just two days ago, Bloomberg called on the central banks of the world to “bring on a cashless future” in an Op-Ed that calls notes and coins "dirty, dangerous, unwieldy, and expensive."

We can imagine it would be quite easy to harm someone by firing large coins at them from a gun and terrorists could probably stuff an improvised explosive device with small coins rather than nails or nuts and bolts. And if somebody tried hard enough they could probably choke on a bank note. But cash dirty? No more so than the hundreds of things we must touch in public areas in the course of our daily lives. Unwieldy? Not compared to the lead boxes we will have to carry to ensure our contactless cards don't debit our accounts every time we go near a suitable reader. And expensive? Not to us, we buy an item for £$€1 and that's exactly what we pay for it.

So like me and my colleagues, you probably never thought of your cash in any of those ways, but increasingly, authorities and the powers that be seem determined to lay the groundwork for the abolition of what Bloomberg calls “antiquated” physical money.

We’ve documented the cash ban calls and moves on a number of occasions including, most recently, the one from DNB, Norway’s largest bank where executive Trond Bentestuen complained that although "there is approximately 50 billion kroner in circulation, the Norges Bank (Norway's Central Bank) can only account for 40 percent of its use."

That mean, Bentestuen says, that 60 percent of money usage is outside of any control." "We believe," he continues, "that is due to under-the-table money and laundering." He really does have limited imagination if he seriously thinks that is all people use cash for.

DNB backed up its executive by claiming that after identifying “many dangers and disadvantages” associated with cash, the bank has concluded 'it should be phased out'.

On Tuesday we got more evidence that the thieving banks around the world are preparing to create a cashless “utopia” in which systems will be implemented to enable them to plunder our hard earned to cover the disasters their reckless gamblings incurs. German finance magizine Handelsblatt reported (in a piece called "The Death of Cash) that the Social Democrats - the junior partner in Angela Merkel’s coalition government - have proposed a €5,000 limit on cash transactions and the elimination of the €500 note.

“Limits on cash transactions would discourage foreign criminals from coming here to launder money,” says a study published by the Social Democrats. "If sums over €5,000 have to pass through traceable bank transactions, laundering would be severely hampered," it adds.

Today (3 Feb, 2016), we learned via the news feeds that German Deputy Finance Minister Michael Meister had confirmed the government's support for the idea when he told reporters that Germany is proposing a pan - European ban on cash transactions over €5,000 to combat terrorism financing and money laundering.

“Since money laundering and terrorism financing are cross-border threats,” it makes sense to adopt a bloc-wide “solution”, but “if a European solution isn’t possible, Germany will move ahead on its own,” he added. Really Herr Meister. Why not just close your borders and stop criminals entering the country.

This sudden outbreak of money laundering comes at a rather convenient time for policy makers in Europe. Interest base rates are already sitting at -0.30% and are likely to be cut by an additional 10bps (one hundredths of one per cent) in March. But that’s not likely to halt the disinflationary impulse. European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi isn’t anywhere close to his inflation target and efforts to stimulate European economies have been totally ineffective.

What is needed is a revival of consumer spending and the gradual phasing out of cash is seen as a way of stripping the public of its economic autonomy. At present Central banks can only control interest rates down to a certain "lower bound". Once negative rates are passed on to depositors - as Swiss and Japanese banks have already done, for different reasons - people will have to pull their money out of the banks and spend it rather than pay the banks for gambling with it. The more negative rates go, the faster those withdrawals will be.

Ban cash and this problem is eliminated. In a cashless society with a government-managed digital currency there is no effective lower limit. If the economy isn’t doing what bureaucrats want it to do, they can simply make interest rates deeply negative, forcing would-be savers to become consumers by making them choose between spending or watching as the bank simply confiscates their money in negative interest.

As for that money laundering bollocks, if you want to know who is really behind it: US Department Of Justice helped cover up Big Banks money laundering for drug cartels


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A seaside market town in Norfolk may be less than 100 miles from the world's financial capital, London, , it may be the commercial centre of West Norfolk’ as the town website boasts, it may be home to 45,000 people — but there, unlike in London, cash is king.

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