USD is dead: China caps its dollar holdings & plans crude oil futures priced in yuan

China’s central bank has said it no longer sees any benefit in increasing its $3.66 trillion foreign currency reserves – already the world’s largest. China will cap its purchases of US dollars in an effort to limit the depreciation of the yuan.
“It’s no longer in China’s favor to accumulate foreign-exchange reserves,” Bloomberg quoted Yi Gang, a deputy governor at the central bank as saying Tuesday.
Decreasing the influence of the dollar and other currencies is a step closer to reaching China’s 2015 goal to “float” its currency and according to the People’s Bank of China will help the everyday Chinese citizen.
Between July and September 2013 China’s increased its foreign – currency holdings by $166 billion, boosting it to the world’s highest of $3.66 trillion. This is also more that the Gross domestic product of Germany – the Europe’s biggest economy, Bloomberg reports.
This will “basically” end the interference of foreign currency in the Chinese market, and widen the yuan’s daily trading range.
The move also provides a buffer to China from future US Federal Reserve stimulus tapering, which, even just as it looms, has had severe ripple effects on emerging market currencies in Brazil and India.
Tuesday minutes from the Fed’s policy meeting said it could start tapering its monthly $85 billion bonds purchases in the “coming months”, if the job market improves further. Fed members also weighed the possibility of slowing the purchases even without clear evidence of a strengthening job market. The news sent Asian stocks lower on Thursday, Japan an exception.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng shed 0.7 percent to 23,539.83 and China’s Shanghai Composite decreased 1.1 percent to 2,183.50.
Once the yuan is set to free float, international transactions will be carried out in the Chinese currency, and it will become common in global trade, in league with the euro and dollar.
The Chinese yuan currently is the 13th most-used currency in the world for international payments.
The yuan has been dubbed a “hermit currency”, isolating itself from foreign investment and setting its own rules, but is now slowly entering world currency markets.

China’s planned crude oil futures may be priced in yuan – SHFE

The Shanghai Futures Exchange (SHFE) may price its crude oil futures contract in yuan and use medium sour crude as its benchmark, its chairman said on Thursday, adding that the bourse is speeding up preparatory work to secure regulatory approvals.
China, which overtook the United States as the world’s top oil importer in September, hopes the contract will become a benchmark in Asia and has said it would allow foreign investors to trade in the contract without setting up a local subsidiary.
“China is the only country in the world that is a major crude producer, consumer and a big importer. It has all the necessary conditions to establish a successful crude oil futures contract,” Yang Maijun, SHFE chairman, said at an industry conference.

Yang’s presentation slides at the conference stated that the draft proposal is for the contract to be denominated in yuan and use the type of medium sour crude that China most commonly imports.
Industry participants with direct knowledge of the plan have said the contract would be priced in the yuan, otherwise known as the renminbi, and the U.S. dollar. Yang would not say whether yuan pricing was only for Chinese investors.
“The yuan has become more international and more recognised by the financial market,” Chen Bo, Chinese trading firm Unipec’s executive general manager, told Reuters.
“I don’t think it would be unacceptable for the world to use the renminbi for commodities trading.”
The contract pricing will exclude custom tariffs and value-added tax and allow for physical delivery in bonded storage areas, Yang said.
The SHFE is awaiting Beijing’s final approval to launch the contract. That may come soon as the bourse has set up an international energy trading platform in the Shanghai free-trade zone, which is touted as a testing ground for China’s financial reforms, especially on yuan convertability and interest rates.
The SHFE has previously said the contract has support from China’s top economic planner, the National Development and Reform Commission, the State Administration of Foreign Exchange and the China Securities Regulatory Commission.
A successful launch could pave the way for the opening of other Chinese commodities futures to more foreign investment.

How Wall Street Bled Detroit Dry

Detroit’s emergency manager Kevyn Orr has testified in court over the city’s filing for bankruptcy (Photo: Rebecca Cook/Reuters)Shady Wall Street dealings and massive corporate subsidies are responsible for Detroit’s financial nosedive, not worker and retiree pensions, a report published Wednesday reveals.
Released by Wallace Turbeville, a former Goldman Sachs investment banker who now works for the think tank Demos, the study takes aim at Detroit emergency manager Kevyn Orr’s claims that workers and retirees are to blame for Detroit’s shortfall.
“To say the pension fund killed the city, it’s like if you were stabbed, strangled and blown up, did you die from the strangling?” Turbeville said, according to The Huffington Post. “That’s why I find this whole thing illogical, except for the fact somebody didn’t like pensions.”
Turbeville singles out Detroit’s risky financial dealings with big banks as “a great threat to the city.” In 2005 and 2006, the city financed its $1.6 billion in debt through a series of complex swap deals with “hidden risks.” The report explains,

The deals included provisions that would allow the banks to terminate the swaps under specified conditions and collect termination payments, which would entitle the banks to immediate payment of all projected future value of the swaps to the bank counterparties. Such conditions included a credit rating downgrade of the city to a level below “investment grade,” appointment of an emergency manager to run the city and failure of the city to make timely payments.

Turbeville states, “These swap deals were particularly ill-suited for a city like Detroit, which had been hovering on the edge of a credit rating downgrade for years… A strong case can be made that the banks that sold these swaps may have breached their ethical, and possibly legal, obligations to the city in executing these deals.”
Furthermore, massive tax subsidies to corporations—which climbed as high as $20 million annually—were a “burden on city revenues at a time when it was particularly damaging,” the report finds. These revenues were further depleted by unemployment and depopulation connected the Great Recession. This coincided with a reduction of Michigan state sharing of revenue.
Contrary to widespread belief, Detroit’s overall spending is not the culprit behind the city’s shortfall and in fact decreased 38 percent since the Great Recession. Rather, it was declining revenue, “exacerbated by complicated Wall Street deals,” that threatened Detroit’s ability to pay its expenses, the study finds.
The report accuses Orr of grossly inflating Detroit’s alleged $18 billion in debt to accelerate the push for bankruptcy filings. “While emergency manager Kevyn Orr has focused on cutting retiree benefits and reducing the city’s long-term liabilities to address the crisis, an analysis of the city’s finances reveals that his efforts are inappropriate and, in important ways, not rooted in fact,” the report concludes.
The study comes as Detroit’s bankruptcy case makes its way through the courts. Orr has been slammed by unions for forcing through bankruptcy proceedings with the support of Michigan Governor Rick Snyder in a bid to subvert local democratic process and state law. Orr has been blasted for gutting public services and diverting public dollars to pay off the big banks largely responsible for the city’s financial spiral while threatening workers’ hard-earned pensions.
_____________________
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.
Source: Common Dreams
Distributed by RINF Alternative News

China Announces That It Is Going To Stop Stockpiling U.S. Dollars

By Michael Snyder

China just dropped an absolute bombshell, but it was almost entirely ignored by the mainstream media in the United States.  The central bank of China has decided that it is “no longer in China’s favor to accumulate foreign-exchange reserves”.  During the third quarter of 2013, China’s foreign-exchange reserves were valued at approximately$3.66 trillion.  And of course the biggest chunk of that was made up of U.S. dollars.  For years, China has been accumulating dollars and working hard to keep the value of the dollar up and the value of the yuan down.  One of the goals has been to make Chinese products less expensive in the international marketplace.  But now China has announced that the time has come for it to stop stockpiling U.S. dollars.  And if that does indeed turn out to be the case, than many U.S. analysts are suggesting that China could also soon stop buying any more U.S. debt.  Needless to say, all of this would be very bad for the United States.

For years, China has been systematically propping up the value of the U.S. dollar and keeping the value of the yuan artificially low.  This has resulted in a massive flood of super cheap products from across the Pacific that U.S. consumers have been eagerly gobbling up.

For example, have you ever gone into a dollar store and wondered how anyone could possibly make a profit by making those products and selling them for just one dollar?

Well, the truth is that when you flip those products over you will find that almost all of them have been made outside of the United States.  In fact, the words “made in China” are probably the most common words in your entire household if you are anything like the typical American.

Thanks to the massively unbalanced trade that we have had with China, tens of thousands of our businesses, millions of our jobs and trillions of our dollars have left this country and gone over to China.

And now China has apparently decided that there is not much gutting of our economy left to do and that it is time to let the dollar collapse.  As I mentioned above, China has announced that it is going to stop stockpiling foreign-exchange reserves…

The People’s Bank of China said the country does not benefit any more from increases in its foreign-currency holdings, adding to signs policy makers will rein in dollar purchases that limit the yuan’s appreciation.

“It’s no longer in China’s favor to accumulate foreign-exchange reserves,” Yi Gang, a deputy governor at the central bank, said in a speech organized by China Economists 50 Forum at Tsinghua University yesterday. The monetary authority will “basically” end normal intervention in the currency market and broaden the yuan’s daily trading range, Governor Zhou Xiaochuan wrote in an article in a guidebook explaining reforms outlined last week following a Communist Party meeting. Neither Yi nor Zhou gave a timeframe for any changes.

It isn’t going to happen overnight, but the value of the U.S. dollar is going to start to go down, and all of that cheap stuff that you are used to buying at Wal-Mart and the dollar store is going to become a lot more expensive.

But of even more importance is what this latest move by China could mean for U.S. government debt.  As most Americans have heard, we are heavily dependent on foreign nations such as China lending us money.  Right now, China owns nearly 1.3 trillion dollars of our debt.  Unfortunately, as CNBC is noting, if China is going to quit stockpiling our dollars than it is likely that they will stop stockpiling our debt as well…

Analysts see this as the PBoC hinting that it will let its currency fluctuate, without intervention, thus negating the need for holding large reserves of the dollar. And if the dollar is no longer needed, then it could look to curb its purchases of dollar-denominated assets like U.S. Treasurys.

“If they are looking to reduce these purchases going forward then, yes, you’d have to look at who the marginal buyer would be,” Richard McGuire, a senior rate strategist at Rabobank told CNBC in an interview.

“Together, with the Federal Reserve tapering its bond purchases, it has the potential to add to the bearish long-term outlook on U.S. Treasurys.”

So who is going to buy all of our debt?

That is a very good question.

If the Federal Reserve starts tapering bond purchases and China quits buying our debt, who is going to fill the void?

If there is significantly less demand for government bonds, that will cause interest rates to rise dramatically.  And if interest rates rise dramatically from where they are now, that will set off the kind of nightmare scenario that I keep talking about.

In a previous article entitled “How China Can Cause The Death Of The Dollar And The Entire U.S. Financial System“, I described how China could single-handedly cause immense devastation to the U.S. economy.

China accounts for more global trade that anyone else does, and they also own more of our debt than any other nation does.  If China starts dumping our dollars and our debt, much of the rest of the planet would likely follow suit and we would be in for a world of hurt.

And just this week there was another major announcement which indicates that China is getting ready to make a major move against the U.S. dollar.  According to Reuters, crude oil futures may soon be priced in yuan on the Shanghai Futures Exchange…

The Shanghai Futures Exchange (SHFE) may price its crude oil futures contract in yuan and use medium sour crude as its benchmark, its chairman said on Thursday, adding that the bourse is speeding up preparatory work to secure regulatory approvals.

China, which overtook the United States as the world’s top oil importer in September, hopes the contract will become a benchmark in Asia and has said it would allow foreign investors to trade in the contract without setting up a local subsidiary.

If that actually happens, that will be absolutely huge.

China is the number one importer of oil in the world, and it was only a matter of time before they started to openly challenge the petrodollar.

But even I didn’t think that we would see anything like this so quickly.

The world is changing, and most Americans have absolutely no idea what this is going to mean for them.  As demand for the U.S. dollar and U.S. debt goes down, the things that we buy at the store will cost a lot more, our standard of living will go down and it will become a lot more expensive for everyone (including the U.S. government) to borrow money.

Unfortunately, there isn’t much that can be done about any of this at this point.  When it comes to economics, China has been playing chess while the United States has been playing checkers.  And now decades of very, very foolish decisions are starting to catch up with us.

The false prosperity that most Americans are enjoying today will soon start disappearing, and most of them will have no idea why it is happening.

The years ahead are going to be very challenging, and so I hope that you are getting ready for them.

Evans Says Bond Buying May Total More Than $1.5 Trillion And Now We’re Over $17.2 Trillion In Debt

Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago President Charles Evans, a voter on policy this year, said the Fed may buy a total of $1.5 trillion in bonds in a program that started in January 2013 to ensure steady employment gains.

“Given the current conditions, I won’t be surprised if it is $1.5 trillion,” Evans, a consistent supporter of record stimulus, said in a speech today in Chicago. “It could be a little more than that.”

The Federal Open Market Committee pledged last month to press on with $85 billion in monthly bond buying until seeing substantial improvement in the outlook for the labor market. While U.S. employers in October added 204,000 workers, the Fed probably won’t taper its purchases until a March 18-19 policy meeting, according to the median of 32 economist estimates in a Bloomberg News survey Nov. 8.

“Now it looks like we are going on longer at the full $85 billion pace,” Evans said to reporters. “I had said it was likely to be about $1.25 trillion several months ago.”

The Fed should be careful not to prematurely reduce bond purchases because it’s not certain labor market improvements are sustainable, Evans said.

“I am not in a hurry myself to reduce the flow of purchases,” he said. “I’d rather wait just a little bit longer and have more confidence.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-19/fed-s-evans-says-bond-buying-may-total-more-than-1-5-trillion.html

Now Over $17.2 Trillion In Debt

Current	Debt Held by the Public	Intragovernmental Holdings	Total Public Debt Outstanding
11/19/2013	12,245,151,541,443.78	4,955,573,829,153.78	17,200,725,370,597.5

http://www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/debt/current

ObamaCare: The Neutron Bomb That Will Decimate the U.S. Economy

by Charles Hugh-Smith

ObamaCare will act as a neutron bomb on the U.S. economy for systemic reasons.

Longtime readers know I have repeatedly explained why healthcare, i.e. sickcare, will bankrupt the nation. ObamaCare simply speeds up the coming collapse. Here are two of the dozens of entries I’ve written on sickcare:
America’s Hidden 8% VAT: Sickcare (May 10, 2012)
Can Chronic Ill-Health Bring Down Great Nations? Yes It Can, Yes It Will (November 23, 2011)

I have also explained why ObamaCare’s “fixes” are simulacra reforms that don’t even address the systemic costs arising from the cartel-fiefdom structure of sickcare:
Why “Healthcare Reform” Is Not Reform, Part I (December 28, 2009)
Why “Healthcare Reform” Is Not Reform, Part II (December 29, 2009)

Sickcare is unsustainable for a number of interlocking reasons: defensive medicine in response to a broken malpractice system; opaque pricing; quasi-monopolies/cartels; systemic disconnect of health from food, diet and fitness; fraud and paperwork consume at least 40% of all sickcare funds; fee-for-service in a cartel system; employers being responsible for healthcare, and a fundamental absence of competition and transparency.

Please glance at these charts to see how the U.S. healthcare costs are double those of competing nations on a per capita basis. Japan provides care for a mere 36% per person of what the U.S. spends–yet millions of Americans remain uninsured or underinsured.

If you set out to design a corrupt, inefficient, wasteful, unfair, deranged and unreformable system, you would arrive at U.S. healthcare/ObamaCare.

ObamaCare ignores the structural causes of our ill-health:

86% of Workers Are Obese or Have Other Health Issue Just 1 in 7 U.S. workers is of normal weight without a chronic health problem.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), i.e. ObamaCare, is a neutron bomb for employment. A neutron bomb is an enhanced-radiation thermonuclear weapon that famously leaves buildings, autos, etc. intact but kills all the people, even those inside buildings. vehicles, etc.

ObamaCare will act as a neutron bomb on the U.S. economy for these systemic reasons:

1. It is immensely complex, and already-marginalized small business owners will shed employees or simply close rather than have to figure out what all those thousands of pages of regulations and statutes mean to the survival of their business.

2. ObamaCare’s primary mechanisms of lowering costs, insurance exchanges and technocratic selection of “best care practices,” do nothing to change the systemic flaws of sickcare.

Many other commentators have already outlined how ObamaCare is driving employers to replace fulltime workers with part-time workers to avoid having to pay outrageously expensive monthly healthcare insurance premiums.

I see this response as a Corporate-America strategy. Corporate America has the human resources infrastructure and financial heft to figure out compliance and exploit loopholes in the insanely complex law. Small business has neither the infrastructure nor the financial resources. Small business owners will rely on the same cartels that are currently providing insurance for guidance, and of course the ObamaCare offerings will suit the financial needs of sickcare cartels.

Once small business owners see the costs of their options, some may opt to pay the penalties and others may follow the corporate strategy of turning each fulltime job into two part-time jobs to avoid paying for coverage or penalties, but many will choose instead to call it quits: either downsize to a one-person/one-household business with no employees at all, or sell/close the enterprise and escape the burdens.

What the lobbyists and attorneys who wrote the Obamacare monstrosity do not understand (because they have no exposure to or experience in the real economy) is the fragility of most small businesses: costs keep rising but revenues are stagnant. The mental and financial stresses keep rising, and ObamaCare does nothing to mitigate either source of stress.

The inside-the-Beltway types who crafted this mess have no idea of the pressures facing legitimate (non-black-market) business in America, corporate and small business alike.

ObamaCare offers even more incentives for Corporate America to offshore operations, and it provides powerful incentives to millions of marginal small businesses to shut down or shed all employees.

I am not alone in simply not wanting to waste the time, money and energy required to understand the new law and its various impacts on my business. We will cling to our already insanely expensive private healthcare insurance, one of the few that has been grandfathered in: new self-employed entrepreneurs won’t be able to buy the absurdly costly policy we have–they will be offered a range of even worse deals, with higher costs and less coverage.

 

3. Perhaps most cruelly, the bronze level of ObamaCare–the “affordable” care–is a mirage, a simulacra of insurance rather than actual insurance. Bronze level ObamaCare features deductables of around $6,000. In other words, you have to spend $6,000 before your insurance kicks in.

In an economy in which two-thirds of all households live paycheck to paycheck, this is the equivalent of no insurance. High-income sickcare lobbyists and millionaire politicos may look at $6,000 as no big deal, but for households with little savings or credit, that might as well be $60,000.

4. As many others have pointed out, the income levels that divide receiving a Federal subsidy from not receiving a subsidy are begging to be gamed. If $62,000 is the line in the sand that qualifies your household for a hefty subsidy on health insurance, the incentives to adjust earnings to fall just below $62,000 (or whatever the number is for the locale and household size) are immense.

People respond to the incentives and disincentives they are presented with, perverse or otherwise. The lobbyists, toadies and apparatchiks who wrote and passed ObamaCare could not have stuffed the bill with more perverse incentives if they had set out with that as their primary goal.

The neutron bomb has gone off, unseen by politicos and the Elites who wrote the bill. It is already undercutting fulltime employment, and it will soon add momentum to the free-fall erosion of small business growth and employment.

The strip malls and office parks will still be standing; there just won’t be many employees in them.

Of related interest:

About Your $3.16 a Day Healthcare Insurance Plan… (February 21, 2013) MirageCare

What If ObamaCare, Too Big To Fail Banks and the State Are All the Wrong Sized Unit?(February 25, 2013)

Fed Money Never Destined For ‘Real Economy’ And The Federal Reserve Is The Main Cause Of The Boom-And-Bust Economy

Fed Money Never Destined For ‘Real Economy’ Just Lining Pockets Of Rich Friends.

http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000219936

Ron Paul: “The Federal Reserve Is The Main Cause Of The Boom-And-Bust Economy”

 

In an updated edition of “Texas Straight Talk”, former Texas congressmanRon Paul noted this week that, “The federal reserve is the main cause of the boom-and-bust economy,” and by, “manipulating the money supply and the interest rate, Federal Reserve polices create inflation and thereby erode the value of the currency.”

Ron went on to note that, “Since the Federal Reserve opened its doors one hundred years ago, the dollar has lost over 95 percent of its purchasing power —that’s right, today you need $23.70 to buy what one dollar bought in 1913!”

Ron’s full commentary, published on behalf of The Foundation for Rational Economics & Education, is shown below:

—

Federal Reserve Steals From the Poor and Gives to the Rich 
By: Ron Paul

Last Thursday the Senate Banking Committee held hearings on Janet Yellen’s nomination as Federal Reserve Board Chairman. As expected, Ms. Yellen indicated that she would continue the Fed’s “quantitative easing” (QE) polices, despite QE’s failure to improve the economy. Coincidentally, two days before the Yellen hearings, Andrew Huszar, an ex-Fed official, publicly apologized to the American people for his role in QE. Mr. Huszar called QE “the greatest backdoor Wall Street bailout of all time.”

…

http://bullmarketthinking.com/ron-paul-the-federal-reserve-is-the-main-cause-of-the-boom-and-bust-economy/

Timing the Collapse: Ron Paul Says Watch the Petrodollar

“The chaos that one day will ensue from our 35-year experiment with worldwide fiat money will require a return to money of real value. We will know that day is approaching when oil-producing countries demand gold, or its equivalent, for their oil rather than dollars or euros. The sooner the better.” (emphasis mine)

~ Ron Paul, 2006

What Ron Paul is referring to here is the petrodollar system. It’s one of the main pillars that’s been holding up the US dollar’s status as the world’s premier reserve currency since the breakdown of Bretton Woods.

Paul is essentially saying that, if we want to better understand the answer to the elusive question of “When will the fiat US dollar collapse?“, we have to watch the petrodollar system and the factors affecting it.

http://www.internationalman.com/78-global-perspectives/1047-timing-the-collapse-ron-paul-says-watch-the-petrodollar#

A Global War on Savers

http://dailyreckoning.com/a-global-war-on-savers/

The US Dollar Is Now In The Process Of Collapsing And It Will Eventually Lose The Reserve Status Of The World

The US dollar is now in the process of collapsing. It will eventually lose the reserve status of the world. China has taken the first step to remove the US dollar as the reserve currency by broadcasting to the world that it does not see the benefit of holding the dollar any more. China decided to take it one step further by saying that they may price crude in the yuan. The central bankers/US Government are pushing the false flag event and are preparing for what is about to hit every American. This event will be much worse than 911, it will be so horrific that people will be crying in the streets.

China Announces That It Is Going To Stop Stockpiling U.S. Dollars

China just dropped an absolute bombshell, but it was almost entirely ignored by the mainstream media in the United States.  The central bank of China has decided that it is “no longer in China’s favor to accumulate foreign-exchange reserves”.  During the third quarter of 2013, China’s foreign-exchange reserves were valued at approximately$3.66 trillion.  And of course the biggest chunk of that was made up of U.S. dollars.  For years, China has been accumulating dollars and working hard to keep the value of the dollar up and the value of the yuan down.  One of the goals has been to make Chinese products less expensive in the international marketplace.  But now China has announced that the time has come for it to stop stockpiling U.S. dollars.  And if that does indeed turn out to be the case, than many U.S. analysts are suggesting that China could also soon stop buying any more U.S. debt.  Needless to say, all of this would be very bad for the United States.

For years, China has been systematically propping up the value of the U.S. dollar and keeping the value of the yuan artificially low.  This has resulted in a massive flood of super cheap products from across the Pacific that U.S. consumers have been eagerly gobbling up.

For example, have you ever gone into a dollar store and wondered how anyone could possibly make a profit by making those products and selling them for just one dollar?

…

And now China has apparently decided that there is not much gutting of our economy left to do and that it is time to let the dollar collapse.  As I mentioned above, China has announced that it is going to stop stockpiling foreign-exchange reserves…

The People’s Bank of China said the country does not benefit any more from increases in its foreign-currency holdings, adding to signs policy makers will rein in dollar purchases that limit the yuan’s appreciation.

“It’s no longer in China’s favor to accumulate foreign-exchange reserves,” Yi Gang, a deputy governor at the central bank, said in a speech organized by China Economists 50 Forum at Tsinghua University yesterday. The monetary authority will “basically” end normal intervention in the currency market and broaden the yuan’s daily trading range, Governor Zhou Xiaochuan wrote in an article in a guidebook explaining reforms outlined last week following a Communist Party meeting. Neither Yi nor Zhou gave a timeframe for any changes.

It isn’t going to happen overnight, but the value of the U.S. dollar is going to start to go down, and all of that cheap stuff that you are used to buying at Wal-Mart and the dollar store is going to become a lot more expensive.

http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/china-announces-that-it-is-going-to-stop-stockpiling-u-s-dollars

The Money Changers Serenade: A New Bankers’ Plot to Steal Your Deposits

A Warburg in-law financed Woodrow Wilson’s presidential campaign. Part of the reward was Wilson’s appointment of Paul Warburg to the first Federal Reserve Board. The symbiotic relationship between presidents and bankers has continued ever since. The same small clique continues to wield financial power. Geithner’s career is illustrative. In the 1980s, Geithner worked for Kissinger Associates. In the mid to late 1990s, Geithner served as a deputy assistant Treasury secretary. Under Rubin and Summers he moved up to undersecretary of the Treasury.
From the Treasury he went to the Council on Foreign Relations and from there to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). From there he was appointed president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, where he worked to make banks more profitable by allowing higher ratios of debt to capital, thus contributing to the financial crisis.
Geithner arranged the sale of the failed Wall Street firm of Bear Stearns, helped with the taxpayer bailout of AIG, and rejected saving Lehman Brothers from bankruptcy in order to create the crisis atmosphere needed to more fully subordinate US economic policy to the needs of the few large banks.
Rubin, a 26-year veteran of Goldman Sachs, was rewarded by Citibank for his service to the banks while Treasury Secretary with a $50 million compensation package in 2008 and $126,000,000 between 1999 and 2009.

When a person becomes a Treasury official it is made clear that the choice is between serving the banks and becoming rich or trying to serve the public and becoming poor. Few make the latter choice.
As MIchael Hudson has informed us, the goal of the financial sector has always been to convert all income, from corporate profits to government tax revenues, to the service of debt. From the bankers standpoint, the more debt the richer the bankers. Rubin, Summers, Paulson, Geithner, and now banker Treasury Secretary Jack Lew faithfully serve this goal.
The Federal Reserve describes its policy of Quantitative Easing — the creation of new money with which the Fed purchases Treasury debt and mortgage backed securities — as a low interest rate policy in order to stimulate employment and economic growth. Economists and the financial media have parroted this cover story.
In contrast, I have exposed QE as a scheme for pumping profits into the banks and boosting their balance sheets. The real purpose of QE is to drive up the prices of the debt-related derivatives on the banks’ books, thus keeping the banks with solvent balance sheets.
Writing in the Wall Street Journal (“Confessions of a Quantitative Easer,” November 11, 2013), Andrew Huszar confirms my explanation to be the correct one. Huszar is the Federal Reserve official who implemented the policy of QE. He resigned when he realized that the real purposes of QE was to drive up the prices of the banks’ holdings of debt instruments, to provide the banks with trillions of dollars at zero cost with which to lend and speculate, and to provide the banks with “fat commissions from brokering most of the Fed’s QE transactions.” (See:

) This vast con game remains unrecognized by Congress and the public. At the IMF Research Conference on November 8, 2013, former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers presented a plan to expand the con game.
Summers says that it is not enough merely to give the banks interest free money. More should be done for the banks. Instead of being paid interest on their bank deposits, people should be penalized for keeping their money in banks instead of spending it.
To sell this new rip-off scheme, Summers has conjured up an explanation based on the crude and discredited Keynesianism of the 1940s that explained the Great Depression as a problem caused by too much savings. Instead of spending their money, people hoarded it, thus causing aggregate demand and employment to fall.
Summers says that today the problem of too much saving has reappeared. The centerpiece of his argument is “the natural interest rate,” defined as the interest rate at which full employment is established by the equality of saving with investment. If people save more than investors invest, the saved money will not find its way back into the economy, and output and employment will fall.
Summers notes that despite a zero real rate of interest, there is still substantial unemployment. In other words, not even a zero rate of interest can reduce saving to the level of investment, thus frustrating a full employment recovery. Summers concludes that the natural rate of interest has become negative and is stuck below zero.
How to fix this? The way to fix it, Summers says, is to charge people for saving money. To avoid the charges, people would spend the money, thus reducing savings to the level of investment and restoring full employment.
Summers acknowledges that the problem with his solution is that people would take their money out of banks and hoard it in cash holdings. In other words, the cash form of money provides consumers with a freedom to save that holds down consumption and prevents full employment.
Summers has a fix for this: eliminate the freedom by imposing a cashless society where the only money is electronic. As electronic money cannot be hoarded except in bank deposits, penalties can be imposed that force unproductive savings into consumption.
Summers’ scheme, of course, is a harebrained one. With governments running huge deficits, who would purchase bonds at negative interest rates? How would pension and retirement funds operate? Would they also be subject to an annual percentage confiscation?
We know that the response of consumers to the long term decline in real median family income, to the loss of jobs from labor arbitrage across national borders (jobs offshoring), to rising homelessness, to cuts in the social safety net, to the transformation of their full time jobs to part time jobs (employers’ response to Obamacare), has been to reduce their savings rate. Indeed, few have any savings at all. The US personal saving rate is currently 2 percentage points, about 30%, below the long term average. Retired people, unable to earn any interest on their savings from the Fed’s zero interest rate policy, are being forced to draw down their savings in order to pay their bills.
Moreover, it is unclear whether the savings rate is an accurate measure or merely a residual of other calculations. With so many people having to draw down their savings, I wouldn’t be surprised if an accurate measure showed the personal savings rate to be negative.
But for Summers the plight of the consumer is not the problem. The problem is the profits of the banks. Summers has the solution, and the establishment, including Paul Krugman, is applauding it. Once the economy officially turns down again, watch out.

Source: Global Research
Distributed by RINF Alternative News

Have a Merry DeGrowth Christmas–Boycott Black Friday

by Charles Hugh-Smith

The “aggregate demand is God” Keynesian Cargo Cult fetish of focusing on holiday sales is worse than meaningless–it is profoundly misleading.

Counting on strong holiday retail sales to “boost the economy” is like eating triple-paddy cheeseburgers and fries to lose weight. The last thing a debt-dependent economy needs is more borrowing to buy excess consumption, and the last thing an economy that imports most of the junk being purchased needs is empty-headed economists declaring that the purchase of more low-quality, mostly needless junk is anything other than a waste of money and resources.

 

Since most of the junk (and it is junk–most Americans have either forgotten what actual quality is or they have never experienced it) is made overseas, the “boost” to the economy generated by rampant charge-card consumption flows to only one slice of the the U.S. economy: corporate profits.

U.S.-based global corporations skim most of the profits made when junk is made overseas; how much profit do you think the Chinese and Taiwanese suppliers of the iPad and iPhone components make? If you guessed 1%-2% of their part of the cost, you’re right. So if a $300 device costs $100 to actually manufacture in China, the Chinese suppliers make a dollar or two. Apple skims about $100 and the distribution/retail channels skim the other $100.

I have covered this dynamic in depth over the years: for example:

Trade with China: Making Out Like a Bandit (March 30, 2006)Much of China’s manufacturing is owned and managed by foreign corporations. In effect, the companies aren’t Chinese at all; only the workers are Chinese.

Trade and “Trade War” with China: Who Benefits? (October 5, 2010)

In effect, Black Friday is not about “deals,” it’s about padding already record-high corporate profits with excess consumption of 1) junk 2) needless stuff.

Please, Santa, Let This Be the Last Christmas in America (that’s supposed to “save” the U.S. economy) (November 23, 2010):

 

The propaganda machine is cranking up to announce that a 2% increase in holiday retail sales means the U.S. economy is off and running. Santa, please, please, please order your reindeer to stomp the life out of the idiotic fantasy that Americans buying a few billion dollars more needless junk from China is any sort of evidence that the U.S. economy is “growing at a healthy clip.”The entire retail sector is 7.9% of the GDP compared to a 21.4% share for the FIRE tranch (finance, insurance and real estate) of the economy.

Santa, you have my deep gratitude if you could jam the propaganda machine so that this is the last Christmas in America where trivial retail sales are hyped as the bellwether for the $16 trillion U.S. economy.

The “aggregate demand is God” Keynesian Cargo Cult fetish of focusing on holiday sales is worse than meaningless–it is profoundly misleading. What the economy needs is not more mindless debt-based consumption (the “aggregate demand” that the cargo cult sees as a “folk cure” for everything that’s wrong with the economy) but the exact opposite: paying down debt, reducing the share of the national income skimmed by a parastic banking sector, a boycott of low-quality junk (i.e. 90% of what’s bought on Black Friday) and an evolution beyond a model of “growth” that’s dependent on ever-rising debt and consumption of needless junk made overseas to benefit Corporate America’s bulging bottom line.

If you missed my recent entry on the Degrowth movement in Europe, please check it out: Degrowth, Anti-Consumerism and Peak Consumption (May 9, 2013)

The anti-consumerism Degrowth movement is gaining visibility and adherents in Europe. Degrowth (French: décroissance, Spanish: decrecimiento, Italian: decrescita) recognizes that the mindless expansion of mindless consumption fueled by credit and financialization is qualitatively and quantitatively different from positive growth.

 

Degrowth is based on a number of principles:1. Consumerism is psychological/spiritual junk food (French: malbouffe) that actively reduces well-being (bien-etre) rather than increases it.

2. Better rather than more: well-being is increased by everything that cannot be commoditized by a market economy or financialized by a cartel-state financial machine– friendship, family, community, self-cultivation–rather than by acquiring more. The goal of economic and social growth should be better, not more. On a national scale, the cancerous-growth measured by gross domestic product (GDP) should be replaced with gross domestic happiness/ gross nation happiness (GNH).

3. A recognition that resources are not infinite, despite claims to the contrary. Even if fossil fuels were infinite and low-cost (cheerleaders never mention the external costs), fisheries, soil and fresh water are not. For one example of many:China Is Plundering the Planet’s Seas (The Atlantic). Indeed, all the evidence suggests that access to cheap energy only speeds up the depletion and despoliation of every other resource.

4. The unsustainability of consumerist consumption dependent on resource depletion and financialization (i.e. the endless expansion of credit and phantom collateral).

5. The diminishing returns on consumption. Investing in clean air and water, public transit, universally accessible knowledge/information–these forms of consumption yield high returns in public health, affordable mobility, etc. Buying clothing to wear once or twice and then throw away does not.

The investment in the rule of law, public infrastructure and universal access to clean air, water and education moves nations from developing to developed and greatly improves the material lives of the residents. Beyond this, consumption of resources offers diminishing returns up to a point of social/spiritual/ psychological derangement. Consumption beyond this point actively reduces well-being.

6. The failure of neoliberal capitalism and communism alike in their pursuit of growth at any cost.

Both the religion of growth and its Cargo Cult enablers are merely superficial facades masking the real force: the expansion of global finance via financialization. Expanding capital, profits and power is the key agenda, and the quasi-religion of growth is just the public-relations narrative that mesmerizes the debt-serfs, political toadies and media sycophants.

What does Degrowth mean in practical terms? Use the thing until it cannot be repaired. Don’t ditch the mobile phone, auto, dress or digital device until it can no longer repaired. Buy local rather than than global-corporate whenever feasible. Crave less, need less, want less, resist the brainwashing of 24/7 marketing. Learn to become a person who does not need corporate-status signifiers for a sense of identity.

What if Progress requires less consumption, less debt, less shopping-gives-me-meaning?

A DeGrowth Christmas does not mean a “no gift” Christmas: it means either making gifts, regifting (making a gift of something that is perfectly usable or in many cases, still in the box), giving an experience (i.e. time with someone), or (at least in my opinion) giving a well-made tool or book that leverages new skills or new understanding.

Does excess consumption really add that much to our lives? Goodness gracious, people, look in the closets of America–they’re stuffed to the gills with clothing, shoes, sporting goods, etc. etc. etc. Even “poor people” have endless gadgets, multiple TV sets, etc. etc. Look at the storage units crammed with excess everything.

There’s a new documentary on DeGrowth: GrowthBusters: Hooked on Growth; free screenings are being held on Black Friday in select cities.

1:39 minute video on the documentary: Attack of the Zombie Shoppers.

Of related interest:

The Last Christmas in America (December 23, 2010)

Retailer demands $3,500 from author of bad review

It's difficult to fathom how a legitimate business could act this way: A Utah woman, Jen Palmer, several years ago wrote a negative online review about trinket retailer KlearGear and the company responded by attempting to enforce against her what just might be the most despicable terms of service ever imagined.
From an Electronic Frontier Foundation blog post:

It's a terrifying story: Palmer's husband placed an order for her with KlearGear that never arrived. She got a refund, and after being unable to contact the site's customer service representative, left a negative review of her experience on Ripoffreport.com.

Three years later, Palmer received an email demanding $3,500 dollars for violating KlearGear's Non-Disparagement Clause (which reads):
"In an effort to ensure fair and honest public feedback, and to prevent the publishing of libelous content in any form, your acceptance of this sales contract prohibits you from taking any action that negatively impacts KlearGear.com, its reputation, products, services, management or employees.
"Should you violate this clause, as determined by KlearGear.com in its sole discretion, you will be provided a seventy-two (72) hour opportunity to retract the content in question. If the content remains, in whole or in part, you will immediately be billed $3,500.00 USD for legal fees and court costs until such complete costs are determined in litigation. Should these charges remain unpaid for 30 calendar days from the billing date, your unpaid invoice will be forwarded to our third party collection firm and will be reported to consumer credit reporting agencies until paid."

Translation: Don't you dare say anything bad about us. And, if you do, your choices are to pay us $3,500 or we'll ruin your credit. The Palmers didn't pay. KlearGear ruined their credit.
I am not a lawyer, unlike Ken White, lead blogger and founder of Popehat, who writes of the KlearGear shakedown clause:

KlearGear's non-disparagement clause is a contemptible, unethical, and un-American. I say that whether or not KlearGear is defrauding customers by citing the clause to customers who didn't even agree to it. You should not - you cannot - trust a company that hides in its small print a clause saying you can't criticize it for bad service. Only a dishonest and amoral company would insert such a clause into its terms of use. Only amoral and dishonest people, deserving of our contempt - owners, officers, employees, and company lawyers - would create and attempt to enforce such language.

White's entire analysis is well worth reading.
Meanwhile, KlearGear has reportedly retreated to a social-media bunker - its Twitter account now designated private. (They've also not responded to my email.) And John Biggs at TechCrunch summaries the likely fallout facing the retailer:

This is pretty damning for a company that has a revenue of $47 million catering to an audience of cubicle dwellers and, presumably, Internet users. Like GoDaddy before them, social media behavior in the face of negative press can make or break a company. By retreating the company has essentially destroyed its own Internet reputation and, in honesty, I'm glad. These sorts of stories - company gets burned for being mean - are short-lived but important and each instance is a white paper in itself on how not to do business. In short, when you're cornered apologize and make it right instead of committing business suicide.

Are they really goners? A message on the company's site this morning puts on a brave face (I mean the text, not the goofy kid):

But I'm guessing that the Internet isn't quite done passing  judgment and that fulfilling orders promptly will be the least of KlearGear's concerns.

Corporate Espionage and the Secret War Against Citizen Activism

Walmart is one of many corporations confirmed to have conducted espionage against non-profit organizations (Photo: Reuters)A chilling report released Wednesday unveils the well-funded and shadowy world of corporate espionage of social justice organizations, through infiltration, intrusion, spying, wiretaps and more.
According to the study by the Center for Corporate Policy—a project of the Ralph Nader-affiliated Essential Action, today’s ‘Pinkerton Thugs’ are staffed by former law enforcement, CIA, NSA, FBI and military employees, funded by some of the biggest-name corporations in the world, and backed by highly-secretive investigative firms that operate as a shadow CIA for the private sector.
Titled Spooky Business, the 53-page study pieces together nearly 20 years of information exposing this hidden wing of the private sector, which its author Gary Rustin says “is just the tip of the iceberg.” While targets run the gambit, from anti-war to workers’ rights groups to environmental organizations, they appear to have one thing in common: they are perceived as a threat to the corporate bottom-line.
“The key finding of the report is that corporations are conducting espionage against nonprofit organizations,” said Rustin in an interview with Common Dreams. “This is entirely veiled in secrecy and is a threat to an active citizenry, democracy, and the right to privacy.”
Numerous case studies show that multinational corporations, trade associations and big banks have attempted to or actively conducted acts of espionage. This includes (but is not limited to) the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Walmart, Monsanto, Bank of America, Dow Chemical, Kraft, Coca-Cola, Chevron, Burger King, McDonald’s, Shell, BP, BAE, Sasol, Brown & Williamson and E.ON.

A report summary states, “The most prevalent tactic appears to be infiltration by posing a volunteer or journalist, to obtain information from a nonprofit. But corporations have been linked to many other human, physical and electronic espionage tactics against nonprofits.”
Numerous case studies provide snapshots of corporate espionage:

• Throughout the 1990s, Greenpeace organized a campaign against chlorine use in the manufacturing of paper. In response, Dow hired private firms that dug through Greenpeace’s trash and recycling to access internal documents; posed as volunteers to spy on the office; conducted wiretap surveillance of the Greenpeace office; and stole confidential information from the organization.
• In 2010, journalist Mary Cuddehe revealed that the private investigative firm Kroll had attempted to recruit her to pose as a journalist while actually spying for Chevron in Ecuador. At the time, the massive oil company was fighting a multi-billion dollar fine for an oil spill around oil around Lago Agrio, Ecuador.
• In 2006, Walmart sent an employee to infiltrate and secretly wire a meeting of Up Against the Wal in Fayetteville, Arkansas.
• In 2011, French utility Électricité de France was charged $2 million for hacking into the computer network of the French Greenpeace chapter.

Rustin says that the fragmentary evidence available suggests that over the past two decades, there has been an escalation of corporate espionage. “Yet the entire subject is still largely hidden by corporations and subcontractors,” he said. “You can talk about the tip of the iceberg, but what’s happening in the iceberg itself is a lot harder to say.”
Yet, interviews with intelligence experts suggest the world of corporate espionage is vast. “The private sector has virtually all the same techniques as the government,” said Jack Devine, a 32-year veteran of the CIA, and former acting director of its foreign operations, interviewed for the report.
“It’s wrong that corporations can spy with near impunity,” said Rustin. “People don’t lose right to privacy because they disagree with policies of corporations.”
_____________________
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.
Source: Common Dreams
Distributed by RINF Alternative News

COMEX Halts Gold Trading Twice In One Day After $200 Million Sell Trades

by GoldCore

Today’s AM fix was USD 1,248.50, EUR 929.64 and GBP 775.76 per ounce.
Yesterday’s AM fix was USD 1,271.50, EUR 939.69 and GBP 787.11 per ounce.

Gold fell $28.70 or 2.25% yesterday, closing at $1,244.70/oz. Silver slid $0.47 or 2.31% closing at $19.85/oz. Platinum dropped $22.80 or 1.6% to $1,389.00/oz, while palladium fell $9.75 or 1.4% to $708.25/oz.

Gold was trading near four month lows today after its biggest drop in seven weeks yesterday. Another bout of peculiar concentrated selling led to Comex halting trading in December gold futures twice yesterday, the fourth time in less than 3 months.

Gold in U.S. Dollars  and Suspensions Of COMEX Gold Trading – 3 Month (Bloomberg)

Minutes of the Fed’s October policy meeting suggested that the Fed may start scaling back the U.S. central bank’s $85 billion in monthly asset purchases at one of the next few meetings and this may have exacerbated the sell off. ‘Taper’ speculation remains rife despite the increasing likelihood of no taper due to the very fragile state of the U.S. economy.

Gold trading on Comex was interrupted twice, according to Nanex, which provides exchange data and summarizes high frequency trading activity. Thus, trading of gold futures were suspended twice yesterday and four times in the last three months as trading was also suspended on September 12, October 11, and now, November 20.

Nanex reported that about 1,500 gold futures contracts traded in one second at 6:26:40 a.m. Eastern time on Wednesday, triggering a $10 drop in prices and a 20 second trading halt.

Damon Leavell, a spokesman for the exchange said trading was halted at 6:26:41 a.m. New York time, for about 20 seconds. The December contract fell about $11 in less than a minute before trading was suspended.

Leavell declined to comment on the size of the trade that led to the halt. The “stop-logic” mechanism gives traders the opportunity to provide additional liquidity and prevent excessive price movements.

Immediately after the release of the Fed minutes, came another burst of selling which led to gold futures being suspended for another 20 seconds. The second bout of concentrated selling is believed to have been even more than 1,500 contracts. Each contract is worth 100 ounces so 1,500 contracts is worth nearly $200 million.

Myra Saefong of Dow Jones Marketwatch wrote on her blog that, “sudden drops in gold prices and temporary trading halts in gold futures on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange seem to be becoming the norm”.

The timing was interesting as it came a day after news that Britain’s financial regulator is looking into whether gold benchmarks could have been rigged. The Financial Conduct Authority has launched a preliminary review into the issue, a person familiar with the matter told Bloomberg.

It is believed the London gold fixing is one of the important benchmarks being investigated for rigging. The London AM Fix determines the spot price for physical gold and is set twice daily by a panel of five banks. Zero Hedge suggested that the price falls on the COMEX yesterday may have been due to official intervention, possibly by the Bank of International Settlements.

Gold in U.S. Dollars, 1 Year – (Bloomberg)

Some entity appeared determined to get the gold price lower and they succeeded – for now.

The peculiar trading action in gold again yesterday suggests that certain banks may be manipulating the gold price in the same way that they rigged LIBOR and are alleged to have rigged foreign exchange markets. If so, a key question is, are they manipulating prices purely for profit motives or is there an official sanction for such intervention as alleged by GATA for many years now and by Zero Hedge recently.

The bottom line is that such trading action makes traders on the COMEX very nervous to go long and prevents gold getting some momentum and animal spirits.

However, while price manipulations work in the short term, in the long term gold prices will be dictated by the real world forces of physical supply and demand forgold coins, bars and jewellery. The smart money is fading out the considerable noise regarding volatile intraday price falls and focussing on gold’s importance as a long term diversification in a portfolio.

Investment Pyramid – (GoldCore)

It remains prudent to ignore this short term noise and day to day volatility and focus on gold’s importance as financial insurance and a vital diversification for all investors and savers today.

Support at $1,250/oz has been breached and gold is vulnerable of a fall to test support at $1,200/oz and the June 28th low of $1,180/oz.

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Philippines Armed Forces to build pier, harbor near Spratlys

Source: ABS
See also: PLA: ‘China should take more Philippine territory’

MANILA – The Armed Forces of the Philippines plan to build a pier and harbor at a naval base in Palawan, the island province closest to the disputed Spratly Islands in the South China Sea, according to officials and a defense document.
Military officials confirmed Wednesday to reporters the plan to build “pier, harbor and support facilities” in Oyster Bay — the navy’s shipyard directly facing the South China Sea.
The project will cost around 313 million pesos (around $7.29 million), according to the document.
The Department of National Defense and the Armed Forces of the Philippines have invited companies to bid on the project from Dec. 2.
Commodore Natalio Abinuman, commander of the Philippine Naval Forces West in Ulugan Bay in Puerto Princesa, said the project, when completed, will boost the Philippine territorial defense, adding the existing pier, harbor and facilities in Oyster Bay are dilapidated.
“We need this new port to refuel our ships…(and) to improve the support system for our ships that are deployed in the South China Sea,” Abinuman said.
Lt. Cheryl Tindog, spokeswoman for the military’s Western Command based in Palawan, also said the new facility will “improve our capability in terms of territorial defense…(and) internal security operations.”
“Whether there is an emerging threat or none, I think the improvement of the facilities of our naval forces is just, especially those that are involved in our territorial integrity (operations).”
She said the navy has long been planning to upgrade the decades-old facilities in Oyster Bay. “We are very happy that the improvement of our facilities is materializing now,” she told reporters.
Manila and Washington are negotiating a new agreement to grant the U.S. military “expanded access” to Philippine airfields and ports, specifically for “servicing and maintenance,” including refueling and repair of U.S. aircraft and warships.
Philippine and U.S. officials have been silent about the details of the negotiations, but sources said Oyster Bay, a cove nestled in mangrove forests and limestone cliffs, is among the facilities that will be made accessible to the U.S. military.
China has territorial and maritime disputes with the Philippines over islands, shoals, cays and reefs in the South China Sea and has acted “assertively” in the area in recent years, alarming the Philippines and claimants Vietnam, Taiwan, Malaysia and Brunei.
The United States has repeatedly said it will not take sides in the various disputes, while urging claimants to resolve their differences peacefully.
The Philippines’ 1987 Constitution bans permanent foreign military basing on its soil, but the United States maintains strong security ties with the Philippines through a 1951 mutual defense treaty.
In 1998, Washington and Manila forged a visiting forces agreement, paving the way for increased military cooperation under the 1951 treaty.
Under the pact, the United States conducts ship visits to Philippine ports and resumes large combined military exercises with Philippine forces.