What no one really grasps in all this is that the global currency and credit system has literally gone its own way and has removed itself from the direct control of any human agency whatsoever. Participants pretend that their actions have influence, but it is really a charade.
This
has become Adam Smith's invisible hand with a vengeance. Of course
those at the top of the credit bubble get to play king maker, but
they are also in no meaningful form of control beyond managing their
own appetites. Just how long such a group can sustain this remains
to be seen and unfortunately well tested.
Recall
that sitting on top of this monster, each day you have a massive pool
of available credit to put out somewhere and somehow. Sheer size
makes investigation and quality pretty chancy. Worse every time you
get something right, you are expected to repeat. Good luck on all
that.
12 Numbers About The Global Financial Ponzi Scheme That Should Be Burned Into Your Brain
By
Michael Snyder, on June 11th, 2014
The
numbers that you are about to see are likely to shock you. They
prove that the global financial Ponzi scheme is far more extensive
than most people would ever dare to imagine. As you will see
below, the total amount of debt in the world is now more than three
times greater than global GDP. In other words, you could take
every single good and service produced on the entire planet this
year, next year and the year after that and it still would not be
enough to pay off all the debt. But even that number pales in
comparison to the exposure that big global banks have to derivatives
contracts. It is hard to put into words how reckless they have
been. At the low end of the estimates, the total exposure that
global banks have to derivatives contracts is 710 trillion dollars.
That is an amount of money that is almost unimaginable. And the
reality of the matter is that there is really not all that much
actual "money" in circulation today. In fact, as you
will read about below, there is only a little bit more than a
trillion dollars of U.S. currency that you can actually hold in your
hands in existence. If we all went out and tried to close our
bank accounts and investment portfolios all at once, that would
create a major league crisis. The truth is that our financial
system is little more than a giant pyramid scheme that is based on
debt and paper promises. It is literally a miracle that it has
survived for so long without collapsing already.
When
Americans think about the financial crisis that we are facing, the
largest number that they usually can think of is the size of the U.S.
national debt. And at over 17 trillion dollars, it truly is
massive. But it is actually the 2nd-smallest number on the list
below. The following are 12 numbers about the global financial
Ponzi scheme that should be burned into your brain...
-$1,280,000,000,000 -
Most people are really surprised when they hear this number.
Right now, there is only 1.28 trillion dollars worth of U.S. currency
floating around out there.
-$17,555,165,805,212.27 -
This is the size of the U.S. national debt. It has grown by
more than 10 trillion dollars over the past ten years.
-$32,000,000,000,000 -
This is the total amount of money that the global elite have stashed
in offshore banks (that we know about).
-$59,398,590,000,000 -
This is the total amount of debt (government, corporate, consumer,
etc.) in the U.S. financial system. 40 years ago, this number
was just a little bit above 2 trillion dollars.
-$75,000,000,000,000 -
This is approximately the total exposure that German banking giant
Deutsche Bank has to derivatives contracts.
-$100,000,000,000,000 -
This is the total amount of government debt in the entire world.
This amount has grown by $30 trillion just since mid-2007.
-$223,300,000,000,000 -
This is the approximate size of the total amount of debt in the
entire world.
-$236,637,271,000,000 -
According to the U.S. government, this is the total exposure that the
top 25 banks in the United States have to derivatives contracts.
But those banks only have total assets of about 9.4 trillion dollars
combined. In other words, the exposure of our largest banks to
derivatives outweighs their total assets by a ratio of about 25 to 1.
-$710,000,000,000,000
to $1,500,000,000,000,000 -
The estimates of the total notional value of all global derivatives
contracts generally fall within this range. At the high end of
the range, the ratio of derivatives exposure to global GDP is about
21 to 1.
Most
people tend to assume that the "authorities" have fixed
whatever caused the financial world to almost end back in 2008, but
that is not the case at all.
In
fact, the total amount of government debt around the globe has grown
by about 40 percent since then, and the "too big to fail banks"
have collectively gotten 37
percent larger
since then.
Our
"authorities" didn't fix anything. All they did was
reinflate the bubble and kick the can down the road for a little
while.
I
don't know how anyone can take an honest look at the numbers and not
come to the conclusion that this is completely and totally
unsustainable.
How
much debt can the global financial system take before it utterly
collapses?
How
recklessly can the big banks behave before the house of cards that
they have constructed implodes underneath them?
For
the moment, everything seems fine. Stock markets around the
world have been setting record highs and credit is flowing like wine.
But
at some point a day of reckoning is coming, and when it arrives it is
going to be the most painful financial crisis the world has ever
seen.
If
you plan on getting ready before it strikes, now is the time to do
so.
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