Citi’s Robert Buckland is out with the must read report of the weekend, especially for all the optimists who believe that despite the ongoing depression (and as many have demonstrated, all the talk about a double dip is moot, as America has never left the depression, or as Rosie calls it a period of prolonged economic subpar activity: the latest NFP number merely reinforces the theme of economic deterioration), and despite the 17 weeks in retail equity outflows (which would be a contrarian signal if there was hope that retail would ever feel safe enough to return in stocks. After nearly 5 months of no change in trend, the debate can be put to rest, if at least for 2010) there is still hope. There very well may not be – Citi has just pronounced the “Equity Cult” dead: “It has taken 10 years, and two 50% bear markets, to reverse this cult. European and Japanese equities are already trading on dividend yields above government bond yields. US equities are almost there as well. An immediate reincarnation of the equity cult seems unlikely. Global corporates, especially the mega-caps,  rushed to exploit cheap financing as the equity cult inflated. They have been slow to redeem equity now that the cult has deflated. Equity oversupply remains a drag on share prices.” And as more and more companies and investors shift to a de-equitization theme, the trendline in allocation for the US pension assets will soon revert to that seen when the “Equity Cult” began, or roughly 20% of all assets, with bonds taking on an ever greater precedence of asset allocation (incidentally the UK is already back to the equity/debt relative investment levels of the early 1960s). What does this mean for capital flows? “A reduction in equity holdings back to pre-1959 levels (around 20% of total assets) would indicate considerable selling pressure to come. For US private sector pension funds alone, that would imply a further $1900bn reduction in equity weightings. The evidence suggests that there could still be considerable institutional selling to come.”

So let’s recap what the medium- and long-term trends for the market are:

• $2 trillion in equity sales from pension funds alone as capital flows normalize now that the “Equity Cult” is dead
• A seemingly endless push into fixed income by an aging demographic meaning billions more in ongoing monthly domestic stock mutual fund redemptions
• Hedge funds which are underperforming the market massively, and which will see an explosion in redemption letters as the end of Q3 approaches
• An inevitable change in the tax regime over the next 4-5 months, which as Guggenheim pointed out, will force investors to sell billions in stock to catch a sunsetting beneficial capital gains tax.

And yet what happens – the market surges on a negative NFP number that was negative but better by a factor of noise, compared to whisper expectation, as robotic traders pick up on the positive feedback loops to take the market higher one more time as soon everything collapses.

For all those who believe in 17x forward P/Es (expecting a 20% rise in corprate earnings in 2011 with a flat GDP indicates a serious overdoes on medicinal hopium) – Good luck chasing the bouncing ball.

For all those others, who feel like micturating upon the grave of the “Equity Cult” here are the highlights from the Citi report.

Bond vs Equities – Then and Now (this will be familiar to all those who have read Albert Edwards’ recent pieces):

In July, global equities rebounded despite continued falls in government bond yields. This defied the strongly positive relationship between equities and bond yields seen since 2000. Many equity investors worry that this decoupling will be resolved by the bond markets being proven “right”. The implications of this are worrying — the last time US treasury yields were down at these levels, the S&P (currently 1050) was nearer 800.

We have pointed out that equities actually have a decent track record when these decouplings have occurred in the past1. Certainly Citi’s equity and bond market forecasts suggest that this current breakdown in the relationship is more likely to be resolved through rising bond yields than falling equity prices. However, we also understand that many investors think we will be proven wrong.

We can’t help but suspect that this hot debate about the relative attractions of bonds against equities — whether one is pricing in the double dip but the other is not, whether one is pricing in deflation but the other is not — is mere froth on top of a much more profound reassessment of the merits of the two asset classes. In particular, has the “cult of the equity” been replaced by the “cult of the bond”? To answer this we first take a look at the origins of the cult of the equity.

The rise of the cult of the equity is reflected in institutional asset allocations. Figure 3 shows the weighting of US private sector pension funds in equities and fixed income as derived from the Fed’s Flow of Funds data. Back in 1952, US private sector pension funds held just 17% of their assets in equities compared to 67% in fixed interest. Over the next 50 years, these weightings reversed — at the peak in 2006, the same funds held 69% in equities and 18% in fixed interest. Of course, some of the increase in equities will reflect the outperformance over the period.

The picture looks similar in the UK (Figure 4). Back in 1962, ONS data suggest that UK pension funds held more in bonds than equities. That reversed in the 1960s, as equity weightings increased aggressively. At the peak in the early 1990s, UK pension funds held 76% of assets in equities compared to just 12% in bonds. It seems that UK pension funds embraced the cult of the equity more enthusiastically than their US counterparts, perhaps as a result of a desire to buy equities as a hedge against the UK’s more significant inflation problems.

We can also see the rise (and fall) of the equity cult in mutual fund flows. Figure 5 shows US mutual fund equity inflows going back to 1984. These peaked above $300bn in 2000. European fund inflows peaked in the same year at €180bn (Figure 6). US equity inflows recovered as markets rallied in 2003-07. European equity inflows did not.

Why the cult is now dead?

It seems that the cult of the equity began in the late 1950s. Why? Many justifications have been put forward. Most obviously, the 1950s marked the beginning of a welcome period of peace and prosperity following a tumultuous 50 years that included two world wars and a major economic depression.

The rise in equity weightings coincided with Markowitz’s first considerations of modern portfolio theory. This promoted the belief that a well-diversified equity portfolio could achieve superior returns while helping to reduce risk. It was clearly the view of George Ross Goobey, manager of the Imperial Tobacco pension fund who was generally perceived to be the godfather of the cult of the equity in the UK. Ross Goobey liquidated his entire fixed interest portfolio in the 1950s and invested the proceeds in equities. This was highly controversial at the time — he was banned from teaching students at the UK Institute of Actuaries.

Other factors may have helped to promote the cult of the equity. Most pension funds were relatively immature back in the 1950s, so giving them a better ability to absorb short-term equity volatility in search of longer-term returns. Equities were seen as a good match against the wage-driven liabilities of defined benefit pension schemes. Equities offered a decent inflation hedge long before index-linked bonds were ever invented. This characteristic was particularly attractive in the 1970s and 1980s. The list of academic justifications goes on and on.

Performance-chasers

But perhaps most convincing is the argument that the cult of the equity was the product of a period of spectacular  outperformance from the asset class. This became self-fulfilling. Pension funds bought more and more equities because they kept outperforming. Insurance companies (except in the US, where their exposure to equities has been limited by law) and retail  investors couldn’t resist the same trade. Figure 7 shows the annual returns from US equities and government bonds divided into decades since the 1920s. We also show the annual returns for the total period.

Since 1920, even including the dreadful experience of the last decade, US equities have generated a healthy annual return of 10.9% compared to a bond return of 6.1%. The most spectacular equity performance (especially relative to bonds) was not in the roaring 1920s, 1980s or 1990s, but in the 1950s. Perhaps this is what brought investor attention back to equities. It took  many years for the wounds of the 1929 crash to heal — US equities only managed to regain their pre-1929 crash levels in 1954. But from there, a new 40-year love affair with equities began. The 1970s were tricky, but equities did no worse than bonds. Indeed, by the end of the 1990s, the long-term outperformance of equities over bonds looked truly spectacular. $100 invested in US equities in 1950 would have been worth $58,380 at the end of 1999 versus $1,651 in treasuries. Those two numbers probably say more about the cult of the equity than any long academic study.

Why Is There A Cult Switch?

The evidence suggests that the cult of the equity began in the 1950s and peaked in the late 1990s — that’s a 40-year bull market. Since then, it seems that the investor love affair with equities has soured.

Many of arguments associated with the cult of the equity have since come under attack. Inflation seems much less of a problem. Equities have never been particularly good at hedging inflation anyway, and now index-linked bonds can do a much better job. The long duration of the equity asset class becomes less desirable for pension funds as populations mature and retirement dates approach. Defined contribution investors (where the individual takes the risk) may be less willing to tolerate volatile equity returns than the old defined benefit plans (where the employer takes the risk).

But most importantly, it is dreadful returns that are increasingly putting investors off equities. Since the end of 1999, global equities have returned just 4% in total. Not only have equity returns been trivial, but the volatility has been brutal. Having two 50% bear markets in one decade is enough to test the patience of the most determined equity cultist. Just as strong returns helped to build the cult of the equity in the 1950s, so weak returns are tearing it down now.

Investor appetite for global equities is falling. Figure 3 shows that in 2009 US private sector pension funds held 55% of total assets in equities compared to 70% in 2006. Figure 4 suggests that UK pension funds cut their equity weighting to 39% in 2009, down from the 76% high in 1993. The 2009 rebound in equity prices has helped to reverse some of this decline in equity weightings, but most investor intention surveys suggest that the secular reduction in equity weightings is likely to continue.

How much worse will it get?

How far could this go? A reduction in equity holdings back to pre-1959 levels (around 20% of total assets) would indicate considerable selling pressure to come. For US private sector pension funds alone, that would imply a further $1900bn reduction in equity weightings. The story looks similar amongst retail investors. Equity inflows into US mutual funds have not recovered from the 2007-09 bear market (Figure 5). European equity inflows never recovered from the 2000-03 bear market (Figure 6).

The evidence suggests that there could still be considerable institutional selling to come. Developed market pension funds have cut their equity weightings from peaks but there is still a long way before they get back down to pre-cult levels. For a broader global comparison, we look at the 2010 Towers Watson Global Pensions Assets Survey (Figure 8). Given different data samples, this might not correspond with the long-term historical data series that we have already shown for the US and UK, but it is a useful guide to regional variations.

What does Japan teach us?

Japan may be a useful guide to an unwinding equity cult. According to Towers Watson, in 1998 Japanese pension funds held 55% in equities, still remarkably high given the dire performance of the Japanese market through the decade. Japanese pension funds now hold 36% of total assets in equities and that number seems likely to head lower. Bonds have been the key beneficiaries of equity outlflows. Elsewhere in the world, Australian pension funds have a high equity weighting although our local strategists have argued that the compulsory superannuation fund structure has embedded the equity culture more firmly than in other parts of the world. Continental European funds are already firmly tilted away from equities towards bonds, so the scope for further equity outflows might be more limited.

Emerging Markets remain one bright area amidst the gloom. Figure 9 shows annual global equity inflows as measured by EPFR. This confirms the sorry state of developed market inflows, but it also shows that the appetite for Emerging Markets equities has been much more robust.

The cult is dead. Long-live the cult

As the cult of the equity fades, it is being a replaced by a new cult of the bond. It is argued that bonds are more appropriate in a world where deflation, not inflation, is the main threat. Liability Driven Investing (LDI) advocates usually promote the liability-matching benefits of bonds over equities. Ageing populations would seem to favour bonds over equities — most “lifestyle” pension schemes automatically switch equities into bonds as a worker approaches retirement age. Perhaps most importantly, bonds have handsomely outperformed equities in the past decade. Since 2000, global equities have returned 4% (0.3% per year), while global government bonds have returned 103% (6.9% per year). The list of factors favouring bonds is as long as that favouring equities back in the 1990s.

These arguments are reflected in rising pension fund bond weightings (Figure 3 and Figure 4). We can also see that mutual fund inflows now favour bonds, although not yet as consistently and heavily as they favoured equities in the late 1990s (Figure 5 and Figure 6).

But even if there is no bond cult, the stock chasing era is over: Conclusion

Of course we can (and will) carry on arguing about whether bonds or equities will be proven “right” after the recent decoupling. We can (and will) carry on arguing about the likelihood of a double-dip in the global economy. We can (and will) carry on arguing about whether the developed world is heading into a Japan-style deflationary spiral. Each outcome should have meaningful implications for the direction of global equity and bond prices.

However, we can’t help wondering if this misses the point. With the notable exception of Emerging Markets, what is really going on is a long-term shift in investor appetite for equities and bonds. It will take more than the avoidance of a double-dip to turn the equity outflows around. Sure equity prices would probably rise in the short term if that were to happen, but a sustainable rerating could only be achieved if investors were to be attracted back to the asset class. Although likely to be painful in the short run, an inflation-inspired global bond sell-off would probably offer the best chance of that happening. That still seems pretty unlikely for now.

The Citi view on the outlook for the global economy could be best described as “uninspiring, but not disastrous”. But rather than furiously arguing about whether that view is right and if it is already reflected in share prices, perhaps we would be better served by accepting that, from a valuation perspective, it is what it is. For all sorts of reasons, both cyclical and structural, equities are likely to remain “cheap” against bonds for some time yet.

So it is what it is. Investors are unlikely to pile back into global equities any time soon. It looks like they are likely to sell weightings down and move further into bonds. This is convenient for government bond issuers given that they have such vast amounts of bonds to sell. Equity and bond valuations will continue to reflect these flows. Maybe global equities can move higher with rising profits but, outside Emerging Markets, the prospect of a 1980/90s-style rerating still seems a very long way off.

Indeed, it is what it is: you can’t fund a trillion dollar bond bubble, and see equity allocations at the same time. There is a reason why Albert Edwards sees the S&P in the 400 range: you can’t have an increasingly more frugal investors buying both, and you can’t have central banks buying everything without risking a completel collapse in the faith of all currencies. In retrospect, it is really simple. There are those who believe they are immaculate daytraders, and believe they can make money chasing everything dip in stocks. We wish we had their skill. Since we don’t we would rather put our bet on where the age old adage of follow the money says stocks willl end up going. And that is much, much lower.

Full must read report.

The End Of A Cult

Many observers to the wild gyrations, deep contortions, extreme measures, and other bizarre activity in the government and banking arenas are suffering from severe confusion. The public is alarmed, even frightened, by the sequence of events, without much benefit of comprehension of what is happening or which clans are in control. The degree of deception hit a peak during the TARP Fund creation and disbursement, done behind private closed doors for the replenishment of sacred preferred stock, that bridge between corporate bonds and stock equity. The deception hit a very high pitch with the financial titan failures, the entire string of them. It has never stopped since.

The economic data and promising forecasts (mere marketing group propaganda) featured Green Shoots, Jobless Recovery, and the totally vacant Second Half Recovery that is useful every initial six months to sway the ignorant masses. Just what is happening is difficult to describe succinctly. But the main description reads like an obituary. The most recent and visible distortion is not of price inflation, which has zoomed at 7% annually for a couple years, but rather the Institute of Supply Mgmt. The ISM index has somehow registered a slight increase from July to August, despite almost every single regional index faltering badly. See the careening Philly Fed, from plus 5.1 to minus 7.7 in the latest month. They ignore the weak components and present a distorted aggregate, much like retail sales.

The US banking sector died in September 2008. It has not acted like a credit distribution apparatus in two years. The US Federal Reserve has served almost the complete function, filling the gap like with the decaying commercial paper market. Its several dozen liquidity facilities testify to its urgent need to act as banking system substitute, since the real portion lies in the morgue. The major 100 banks in the US are almost without exception insolvent, and thus do not lend. Sure, they boast a positive book value, but only after given permission to use phony FASB accounting rules. They can declare their assets at any value they wish. In fact, on many debt securities, they actually declare unrealized losses as gains. See the Credit Value Adjustment scheme, an utter travesty and shameful practice mocked by accounting professors. The FDIC came out this week to announce the Q2 list of problem banks went from 775 in number to 829, from Q1. Hardly evidence of a recovery. The USEconomy suffers from a credit strangulation since the banking system at the upper levels is dead, simply stated. The main thrust of the limp activity is monetary creation, banker welfare, absurd programs, and war spending. The more money the clownish hapless awkward leaders throw at the problem, the more the Gold price will rise. Each quantum policy step lifts the potential Gold price another $1000 per ounce.

This article is an attempt to briefly describe what is happening to the United States, from an aerial perspective, regarding the foremost poorly told events, better description of critical event factors, the lost generation of industry, the official investment by the USGovt in profound failure, the confusion from broadening collectivism, the absence of a solution toward restructure and remedy, and what actual solution might include. The popular debate once centered on the banks too big to permit a failure, but that debate became distracted by the flow of events. Only liquidation of the biggest banks can enable a recovery, period!! Of course, the process is complicated, especially politically. Actually, it is more than political, since the big banks control the USGovt. The response reaction from gold & silver will give loud messages to systemic failure, as money is wasted, invested in failure, and directed to the elite troughs. One can argue that no remedy or restructure is even attempted!!

REAL STORY BEHIND FOUR FAILURES

The Bear Stearns episode was the prelude to the failure story, the opening act, the clue for the death of the US banking sector. Its story was a mere partial truth, one that avoided all the inner circle rivalries and hate relationships. The firm did not participate in the general rescue program for LongTerm Capital Mgmt in 1998. It was singled out for execution, a kill at a later date.The Bear Stearns failure was a murder execution for its long gold position and short USDollar position, if truth be told. Wall Street never enjoys or benefits from telling the truth. Deception is its calling card. The Gold price was prevented from finding a much higher legitimate value, from continued control after Bear Stearns was removed from the clique.

The American Intl Group episode was disguised from its true nature as a Goldman Sachs bailout. In fact, the record has been somewhat clearly told that the AIG nationalization enabled GSax to be first in line for credit default contract redemptions, at full price. They saved $11 billion in the nationalization and butting in line. There are advantages to acting as the USDept Treasury administrator. Many other big banks had favorable redemptions on similar insurance contracts. The wreckage of the entire US banking sector was thus covered up from the insurance perspective, preventing a credit derivative blowup. The Gold price did not react from a failure motive, as much as a perceived systemic risk motive. The over $100 billion in covered losses to AIG so far is just the beginning of investment in failure. The USGovt is managing the credit derivatives from under its rickety broken rotten wing. But Gold does react to the waste of money, the debasement of money, and not so much from inflation entering the system. That comes later.

The Fannie Mae episode was one best described as averting either a mortgage bond default or a severe jump in mortgage rates emanating from the sewage treatment plant. In pulling off the nationalization of the wretch, the Wall Street controllers thus placated a crucial angry mortgage creditor. China had been selling all summer long in 2008 its Fannie Mae and other GSE bonds. China forced the USGovt hand as they made it explicit from nationalization. Rumors had been flying in late 2007 and early 2008 that China was accumulating USAgency Mortgage Bonds as part of some contract toward colonization. No more! The USGovt guarantee was implicit but soon made more explicit. The $170 odd billion in covered losses so far is just the beginning of investment in failure. But Gold does react to the waste of money, the debasement of money, and not so much from inflation entering the system. That comes later.

Lehman Brothers was an unwilling sacrificial lamb for its prominence in the mortgage arena. They were an important player that got in the way. The Lehman killjob created a dustup distraction in which JPMorgan was funded $138 billion in a grand reload with USGovt money, to maintain its commodity stranglehold. They were running low on funds to defend the system and to keep America strong, the envy of the world, the beacon of hope. Also, Lehman owned a significant silver position that had gone out of control, in danger of being the object of a critical short covering event that would have rendered huge damage to JPMorgan.Therefore, JPMorgan took it over and assumed its responsibility. They drove the silver price down from $19 to $10 in the ensuing months, with no objection, criticism, or suspicion of impropriety from regulators, legal authorities, or anybody residing in South Manhattan. However, the Silver price returned to face the same $20 level, which it will easily overcome and penetrate in the next few months. Smart investors bought the silver offered at discounted price for several consecutive months.

INVESTMENT IN FAILURE

For vivid indications of failure, notice the slide into recession even after 20 months of near 0% official interest rate. The USFed has no more weapons except the Printing Pre$$, which it will reluctantly use, perhaps somewhat aware of the dire immediate consequences. Central bankers are soiling their skivvies, in utter fear. For vivid indications of failure, notice that the housing sector and commercial property sector do not respond to record low mortgage rates. The average 30-year mortgage rate across the land stands at 4.40%, silly low but uselessly low. Refinance is not an option, given the valuation declines in loan collateral. The ultimate problem is insolvency laced like cancer throughout the entire system, from housing, to households, to banks, to government fiscal situation, even to industry (long gone). The USFed cannot treat insolvency. Only liquidation can. The human toll has been great, from chronic joblessness, to mortgage delinquencies, to home foreclosures, to lost pensions, to vanished financial security. For vivid indications of failure, notice the 2.5% to 2.6% long bond yield in USTreasurys, the last bubble. The US bankers who have run the land for two decades have run out of asset bubbles to blow. Each growth period of 5 to 7 years has been driven by the next asset bubble in sequence, not industrial development or output. Money is being ruined at a rapid rate, and precious metals indicate the pace and severity. As the great bond bubble dissipates from whatever pinprick, the gold rally will move from quiet bullish to monster bullish, complete with a skyrocket event. In the next phase, do not be surprised to see the Gold price rise over $100 on a single day. The financial networks will be bug-eyed and speechless.

Plain language works best at this point. The USGovt, as demonstrated by its nationalizations, big bank rescues, grand aid packages (car industry), and support of extreme measures, has invested heavily in failure, fraud, and banker elite welfare otherwise called pillage. They also has invested in sacred wars at great cost. The USGovt has not invested much at all in business, jobs, family, and life. The flimsy shallow vacant home loan programs exemplify the lack of support and aid for the public. In fact, an argument can be made that the government and banking leadership (tightly twisted together) have contempt for the People. The current administration features a return of failed policy makers, as seen in Robert Rubin, the modern day Rasputin in control of puppet strings. His past failures qualified him for near total banking policy control. As a result, the public harbors growing resentment from the inequality of bailouts and benign neglect to households. The failure to individuals is stark with pink slips and job loss. As long as weekly jobless claims exceed 450 to 470 thousand, nobody will give much credence to any USGovt verbage about a recovery. Failure is in the wind.

GOLDEN RESPONSE TO FAILURE

The failure pertains to the US financial sector in its entirety, from banking system to credit market. The failure is exacerbated by wasted expenditures toward what are called rescues and stimulus, but is actually banker welfare payouts, their toxic bond redemption, and nationalization of failed entities. Worse, the key nationalized firms are laced with $trillion fraud. Fannie Mae remains the central clearing house for several $trillion fraud schemes. In the wake of failure has come round after round of badly spent funds. It is hard to call it money when it pours off the Printing Pre$$ without recourse, without disclosure, and without accountability. Naked bond shorting, failures to deliver bond sales, and extreme interest rate swap enforcement made for a witch’s brew of grand market interference, ruin, and fraud. A prevailing sentiment persists. The consensus lunatic misguided notion is that when the volume of stimulus and rescues is sufficiently higher than a certain threshold level, that recovery follows, especially after a certain period of time. Almost no thinking takes place. The leaders are simply throwing money at the problem and crisis, responding to the next critical focal points. Never has policy been so absent, misguided, and bereft of the thought process. We are witnessing a syndicate in survival mode, in a desperate quest to save the system they exploit so thoroughly.

In response, the Gold price potential rises as USGovt funds are wasted without any path to remedy or recovery. The extreme usage of the Printing Pre$$ in the next round of Quantitative Easing, dubbed QE2, will set up crippling explosions. Each round of stimulus or bank rescue or Dollar Swap Facility setup actually puts the potential Gold price another $1000 higher. The future years will see at least $3000 Gold price, all in time. The 1980 peak Gold price, adjusted by an accurate price inflation accounting, like the Shadow Govt Statistics series, is more like $7000 per ounce. My $3000 forecast figure is a conservative number. Anyone who disputes and challenges this forecast, must provide evidence that remedy, restructure, and reform are anywhere present in the current landscape. They are not. Money is being created and wasted at a colossal pace, and while it is wasted, the Gold price in increasingly debased US$ terms rises.

Favorable upcoming months for the Gold price are finally upon us, especially September. We are at its doorstep of a strong season. A major upward thrust is likely as a holiday present before January. The pattern is even stronger with silver. The month of September is especially strong, almost twice as much gusto packed into it as any other month, the next being December and January. In a five-month stretch, three of the 12 best months are lined up, directly ahead. Last year, the 2009 gold price jumped from $950 to $1200 between late August and end December. Expect something similar this year. Also, institutions like the JPMorgan monster queen might face a date with the guillotine in their silver trading desks. If the ultra-strong seasonality for silver does not catapult its price over $20 by January, it will be a big surprise.

SUPERIORITY OF GOLD AMONG COMMODITIES

Prepare for a breakout in the Gold price, fully forecasted, fully forewarned. A tremendous upleg move comes. The consolidation between the $1065 and $1250 prices has taken nine months. The range between $1175 and $1250 has been tighter in the last two months. A big move is indicated, as the seasons offer a firm wind from behind. Notice the MACD crossover, as moving averages are aligned nicely, but calmly, certainly forcefully. A global recognition of monetary system breakdown is in progress. The QE2 launch, complete with further ruinous debasement of money, is imminent. The unexpected effect that will take inept myopic central bankers off guard is the powerful rise in the Gold price. It foretells of the next powerful phase of the financial crisis that has been covered in detail in the Hat Trick Letter, gory detail. Dan Norcini, the gold, currency, and commodity analyst, put it so well. He said,“What we are witnessing is the death throes of a debt based monetary system, of which those presiding over it apparently have come to believe their own delusions. The US public is learning what our grandfathers learned as a result of the Great Depression. Debt is something to be avoided, not heaped up and accumulated… Yet, all of this is lost upon the monetary lords who have their noses so close to the ground sniffing out the scent that they cannot see that the path ahead leads off the edge of an abyss, from which there is no escape.”

The Gold & Silver charts are both bullish, but in different ways. Gold is lifting off a base, while silver has surged upward out of a pause pattern, as described last week. Distrust for the monetary system has gone global. Gold & Silver are accepted as reserve assets, the best safe haven not tied to counter-party debt risk. Watch the Gold/Oil Ratio, which is poised to rise noticeably. Gold is the commodity king, namely it is money. The worldwide recession will keep the crude oil price subdued until the USTreasury bubble pops. Then, at that time, several major commodity hedges will jump in price, rendering a cost shock to the USEconomy. It is broken to the core, broken at the foundation, broken from grotesque imbalances, broken from vast pervasive insolvency. An inflationary depression lies dead ahead! Notice the recognition of Gold, its distinction as the king of commodities. The usual accepted hedge against the USDollar in Wall Street and London accounts has traditionally been crude oil.

After the severe damage done to sovereign debt in Europe, a wave comes steeped in crisis. Governments erroneously believe that they can inflate their way out of the crisis that has roots firmly connected to debt inflation. This is folly, as they will learn. Notice the King Gold, which is out-performing crude oil. The Gold/Oil Ratio has turned up strongly since the spring months.Deflation Knuckleheads will find they made serious analytic errors, when they grouped King Gold with the commodities. What folly. Gold is money, and money is becoming scarce. The current monetary system is debt in denominated form. The ratio will rise toward 20:1 in the coming months. The USEconomy in struggle, clear deterioration, even possible collapse, will keep the energy prices down generally. The global monetary virus outbreak will lift the Gold price to the heavens.

FROZEN REACTION FROM POLICY

Much of the business sector is frozen. Executives and managers are frozen in inaction from inability to anticipate what comes next. The landscape of regulations and official programs is too rapid, unpredictable, and illogical. We see stupid stuff like Clunker Car Programs. We see disruptive stuff like the Health Care Program. We see unpredictable stuff like the Home Purchase Credit Program. We see uncertainty, like with the home tax credit return. The biggest obstacle to business seems to be the Health Program monstrosity. It forces higher costs upon businesses while officials claim the exact opposite. Nowhere is the confusion greater than the housing and mortgage finance markets. Investors are front running the bond trade, with anticipation of USGovt monetization of more USTreasury Bonds and more USAgency Mortgage Bonds. The prospect of QE2 has brought about a perception that lower mortgage rates could come, and continue to come. The business sector cannot readily hire in this uncertain illogical environment in flux, where leadership is constantly being questioned. The home buyer demand was drawn forward, leaving a late summer and autumn vacuum. See the 27% decline in existing July home sales. The investment community is buying the USGovt guaranteed bonds, ahead of the QE2 launch. Investment in business equipment and capital formation is nearly non-existent. The USEconomy is frozen by erratic policy. In fact, the Gross Domestic Product is negative, once 3% is subtracted from the official downward revised 1.6% growth in 2Q2010. The subtraction is required for entrance into the world of reality, where hedonic and other productivity fudges must be removed.

A GENERATION OF LOST INDUSTRY

This is not a lost decade upcoming. The United States has suffered an entire generation of lost industry from its systematic dismantling, forfeit, and abandonment. The migration of industry began with Japan and the Pacific Rim in the 1980 decade. It continued in the 1990 decade, along with the NAFTA experiment with Mexico. Those border factories were removed with the advent of China. It culminated in the 2000 decade, with the death blow from the Chinese industrial expansion, often dubbed the Low Cost Solution. The entire generation, especially since the Chinese climax, replaced US factory income with service sector income, which included the finance sector from mortgage processing, credit derivatives, leveraged structured finance, and other financial engineering vehicles & structures. The emphasis on clean industry and sophisticated economical development was nothing more than a deceptive billboard to conceal the near total devotion to and dependence upon inflation for economic growth, which backfired and killed the system. The financial engineering offered no legitimate advancement to the society, and certainly not to the USEconomy, except the automatic teller machine, an observation made by former USFed Chairman Paul Volcker. His tenure was ended by the way, as a result of vicious rumors of a cancer debilitation, completely false stories spread by proponents of Alan Greenspan, a syndicate priest of high order. The Greenspan Era justified the virtues of risk offloaded in credit securities, hailed the sophistication of the system, and heaped praise upon each other’s priests, right before the system collapsed from a flimsy and fraudulent foundation, leveraged inflation engines, and absent industry.

THE SOLUTION IS SIMPLE

The secret to a legitimate solution is easy. The big banks must write down their credit portfolios, and accept deep losses. If that results in liquidation, so be it!! Accounting fraud is not a substitute for restructure. Nor is dispatching badly impaired assets to the USFed, whose by all accounts is a Bad Bank Repository. Debate continues on the need to create a bad bank for dead assets, when the USFed is precisely that bank. Toxic assets held by the big banks must be liquidated. The phony propped credit markets must be permitted to fail, and to find proper value via equilibrium processes. Nowhere is equilibrium sought, as everywhere it is avoided. The USGovt should exit and quit the game of stimulus, intervention, and market distortion. The USGovt is delaying the inevitable. The financial markets should seek their bottoms for clearing supply. The bank leaders must be liquidated, removed from power, and face some prosecution. The Too Big To Fail premise must be rejected. The Zombie Big Banks threaten the entire system. If truth be told, they control the leadership of the USGovt itself. Dead entities control the USGovt, lodged in a stranglehold!!

CONSTIPATION WHEN NO LIQUIDATION

This is remarkably simple economics analysis. Without substantial liquidation of the badly impaired assets held in tremendous volume within the big banks, further credit constipation will be the mainstay fixture. That asset clog includes the vast bank owned properties from home foreclosures. The REO count rises about 50 thousand homes per month, a figure roughly double from the January level. Without major liquidation initiatives, expect continued Zombie Big Banks cluttering space. Without major liquidation initiatives, expect continued demands from the Zombies for large tracts of money. Without major liquidation initiatives, expect continued $trillion fraud schemes with Fannie Mae as nexus. Without major liquidation initiatives, expect escalated growth of the USTreasury Bond bubble. In plain terms, the economic landscape and credit system cannot recover without the plowing under of the Big Banks. However, they control the USGovt, its finance ministry in the USDept Treasury, and the USDollar Printing Pre$$ itself. The big banks will NOT order their own death warrant, and face the financial gallows. To think otherwise, even for the national good, is folly. It is like asking a heavily armed bank thief in the middle of a crowded lobby, holding a few dozen hostages, to shoot himself in the head instead, for the good of the people. The credit engines of the USEconomy will not fire much at all unless the big banks are liquidated, or at least much of their balance sheets is liquidated. That would expose their deep insolvency and potentially lead to their failure. A run on those banks by depositors, and a ruinous sale of their corporate bonds by investors, would ensure the big banks death. They belong in the morgue, for the national good. Capitalism demands their plowing under to unleash hidden potential.

The ball & chain dragging down and keeping down the big banks is the housing market. The downward force of gravity is visible in the falling home prices. The deteriorating USEconomy still pulls down the monetary platform, as the credit portfolios are directly attached to the ball & chain. The USEconomy was given the appearance of growth from the housing bubble between years 2002 and 2006. Its asset bubble formed a foundation for the majority of the USEconomy, and whose accompanying mortgage finance bubble provided the liquidity to the system. In fact, the entire boom & bust served as vivid indisputable evidence that the home is not a tangible asset, but rather a financial asset, an abused asset. The mortgage foreclosure process is the final proof. The true tangible assets are crude oil and precious metals. Other commodities will be sacrificed in wholesale form in order to purchase energy and precious metals. Energy is needed for commercial survival, while gold is needed as bonafide safe haven for money.

GOVT DILEMMA

The USGovt finds itself managing a mangled menagerie of frozen fixtures, most of which are totally broken. It is the great investor in failure and fraud. Its actions cover up the fraud, from policy taken in full collusion. Should the leaders give orders that result in formal suicide ceremony of the big banks, a US version of harikari? Should the props be removed and force a USTreasury default? A default will occur anyway in my view, since it is only delayed. The USTreasury default will come as a result of trade war isolation, USDollar vicious cycles in USGovt deficit monetization, a massive sudden USDollar devaluation, or the USFed resignation from its Congressional contract amidst $1 trillion losses. Expect all the above in combination, each linked. The USFed already has compiled close to half a $1 trillion loss on its balance sheet.

A grand game of chicken by the USGovt and Wall Street control panel is taking place. All official plans are predicated upon an economic recovery in the United States. A great fan blows fake acidic money into the bankers trough, but the monetary system erodes as its pillars suffer continued gradual deep damage. The new debt, delivered as fresh paper, acts like acid on the capital base of the entire USEconomy. As described in previous articles, the United States possesses the worst economists in the world. They have no concept of capital formation, no concept of what constitutes money, no concept of legitimate income, and no willingness to liquidate the toxic assets that prevent a restructure and recovery. The big hairball in the system is the big banks. The American public cannot survive on a limited credit diet due to big bank hairballs clogging the system.

HEIGHTENED RISK OF USTREASURY BUBBLE

A growing risk is palpable of migration away from USTBonds. It could come very soon. After the housing & mortgage twin bubbles and consequent bust, the last asset bubble has a little more ways to go. The last asset bubble is the USTreasury Bond, the entire complex. In fact, the bubble extends to the Fannie Mae bonds as well, since under USGovt guarantee. Perhaps a 2.0% long bond yield will be the sentinel signal to abandon and sell, setting up a bond bust. An extreme risk is present for the next important event to frighten the horses that prop USTBonds. What will be the rattlesnake in the sand? Foreign creditor sales in volume? A ramped up trade war? Harsh criticism for improper USDollar printing in monetization schemes, finally in the open? Recognition of a $1 trillion tab in war spending? A river of hyper-inflation is lodged in the USTBond dam, whose walls are nothing more than paper reeds held together by bad verbal glue, uttered by bank leaders who increasingly lack credibility.

Witness the failed central bank franchise system, and USFed Chairman Bernanke without any tools left. Witness the systemic failure of the USEconomy (and Mexico too). All USFed recovery scenarios depend upon a USEconomic recovery, which itself is completely dependent upon a US housing market recovery and a US banking system recovery. No recovery will come, since no Big Bank liquidation will be permitted. Therefore the USFed will walk the pirate plank to a great death of insolvency and ruin, which will spawn a USTreasury default, my forecast made two years ago. It is more certain than ever before. The safe haven is gold & silver. The USTreasury Bond grand dissipation, the long bust process, will catapult the Gold price toward $3000, and suddenly. The gold community will find great amusement in watching the reaction to the naysayers and critics, except the world will change into something hardly recognizable. It will turn into an ugly version of Mad Max, the movie. Shortages and crises will abound. Chaos will reign. A form of darkness will befall the earth.

Mainstream America is finally getting to know the billionaire brothers backing the libertarian movement, thanks to a pair of dueling profiles inNew York and The New Yorker. Now that we’ve heard about their charitable giving, David’s 240-foot mega-yacht and role as patrons of the Tea Party movement, it’s time to ask a more serious question: How libertarian are they?

The short answer…not very.

Charles and David Koch, the secretive billionaire brothers who own Koch Industries, the largest private oil company in America, have spent millions bankrolling free-market think tanks and pro-business politicians in order, as David Koch has put it, “to minimize the role of government, to maximize the role of private economy and to maximize personal freedoms.” But a closer look at their dealings reveals that for the past 35 years the brothers have never shied away from using government subsidies to maximize their own profits, even while endeavoring to limit government spending on anything else.

[CLICK TO SEE THE 7 WAYS THE KOCHS BENEFIT FROM GOVERNMENT LARGESSE.]

In 1977, Charles Koch founded the Cato Institute, an influential libertarian think tank, with the aim of injecting free-market ideas into the mainstream. The Kochs would go on to establish and fund a vast network of overlapping think tanks, institutes, foundations, media outlets, and lobby groups that would vilify centralized government and promote laissez-faire capitalism as the only route to economic prosperity. The Mercatus Center, Americans for Prosperity, Reason Magazine, the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation are just a few of the right-wing organizations that run on Koch cash today.

Koch Industries is America’s second-largest private corporation, with revenue of $100 billion in 2009, and 80,000 employees in 60 countries. According to Charles Koch, Koch Industries has grown 2,000-fold since he took over from his dad in 1967, transforming a middling oil transportation and refinement operation into a corporate mini-state involved in oil, petrochemicals, paper, agriculture and financial services.

Seventy-four-year-old Charles G. Koch, who runs the company from a compound in Wichita, Kansas, has attributed the company’s success to an unshakable belief in the power of the free-markets—a belief that he says can be traced back to an “intellectual epiphany” he experienced at a conference more than 40 years ago. There, Koch realized that free-market economics were an objective reality “as immutable as the laws that work in science,” he explained in 2006.

In its recent profile, the New Yorker called Charles and David Koch “the primary underwriters of hard-line libertarian politics in America.” But the magazine failed to mention that their free market philanthropy belies the immense profit they have made from corporate welfare.

IN DEPTH: An illustrated history of the Koch Bros.’ socialist links and penchant for government handouts.

Kazakhstan mayor hangs himself. Interfax-Kazakhstan, 31 Aug. 10: “The head of the Yereymentau town in Kazakstan’s Aqmola Region, Murat Abdulin, has hanged himself in his own garage . . . no suicide note was found.”  URL n/a.

Finally, some happy news for all the bankers who have been living in fear lately of how the new financial regulations – also known as the Dodd-Frank Legislation – will affect their business. I’m proud to announce: Problem solved!

It was Morgan Stanley who put me on the track to this brilliant solution a couple of weeks ago when they announced the launching of its first UCITSIII Fund on the Firm’s FundLogic trading  platform.

Since then, I’ve discovered that all the big US, and all global non-European, banks are doing the exact same thing.

They are in practice outsourcing their investment bank activity to Europe.

The new financial regulations in both US and EU are aimed at traditionalhedge funds (who have been blamed for everything from causing the financial meltdown to climate change) and the well-known tax heavens – also known as offshore banking.

But the financial industry seems to have found an alternative in EU’s UCITS III Funds. (Undertakings for Collective Investments in TransferableSecurities).

And the alternative is about to get even better with the introduction of UCITS IV in 2011.

In fact, it’s so good that several financial institutions are bringing their offshore accounts from places like Calman Island and Bermuda onshore – inside the EU area.

A collective investment fund may apply for UCITS status in order to allow EU-wide marketing.

UCITS’ are a set of European Union directives that aim to allow collective investment schemes to operate freely throughout the EU on the basis of a single authorization from one member state.

In practice many EU member nations have imposed additional regulatory requirements that have impeded free operation with the effect of protecting local asset managers.

In other words; the EU countries are now competing to offer the funds the best possible framework, with as few regulations as possible.

At the moment Ireland and Luxembourg is leading the race.

Morgan Stanley’s UCITS III Fund will be managed by by P.Schoenfeld Asset Management LP (PSAM) in Ireland.

Shahzad Sadique, Executive Director and Head of FundLogic at Morgan Stanley says in a statement: “We are seeing a huge level of interest from investors to access alternative asset manager expertise through UCITS Funds and are delighted that PSAM has partnered with Morgan Stanley. We are currently seeking regulatory approval for a number of funds managed by leading alternative asset managers and look forward to launching more UCITS funds on FundLogic in the next few months.”

Full story here from ZeroHedge. Ebola-hedge-funds have now morphed into a more virulent (but EU-acceptable) form. Wheeeeeeeeeeee!

Assets managed by European UCITS III funds have increased to $52.3 billion over the last two years. These special purpose vehicles are about to kill the traditional hedge fund industry, and are emerging as the new generation of sophisticated investment strategies.

“Using cautious estimates, projections for 2012 indicate that over €8,000 billion will be invested in UCITS products, an increase of 60% – from €5,000 billion at end 2007.”

Mostly Illegal

UCITS III Funds are illegal to offer and sell in the US and most other countries around the world, except within the 30 countries connected to the European Economic Area (EEA).

The idea behind the UCITS is to create a single market in transferable securities across the EU. With a larger market the economies of scale will reduce costs for investment managers which can be passed on toconsumers.

However, many asset managers are using UCITS as a main channel for globalizing their businesses with considerable interest outside the EU and as far out as Asia and South America.

UCITS III Funds   is the second version of the EU Commission’s directive outlining a framework for investment funds suitable for marketing to retail investors and has standardized rules for authorization, supervision, structure and activities of collective investment undertakings in the EEA and so to enable them to be distributed throughout the EEA.

This significantly enlarges the range of investment instruments that could be used, notably allowing use of derivatives.

It makes it possible for hedge fund managers to launch versions of their strategies in a UCITS version so many more investors can access them.

According to the EU directives, a UCITS fund must be open-ended, liquid, well-diversified, invest only in certain “eligible” assets (i.e. quoted securities, money market instruments, deposits, certain derivatives and units in other UCITS) and can only employ limited leverage.

Examples of Financial Derivative Instruments that can be used:

• CFDs: Under UCITS III rules, the manager can be long up to 100% in directly held equity securities and short up to 100% using stock specific derivatives such as contracts for difference (CFDs) or stock specific futures. Therefore, the fund can be leveraged up to 100% of NAV.

• Total Return Swaps: This involves investing in a portfolio and swapping its return through a total return swap for a return that is related to a reference basket (or index). Examples of a suitable reference basket could be an equity long/short strategy or a commodity index. This structure is ideal for managers that find the restrictions of the previous option too onerous as the reference basket itself does not have to comply fully with the UCITS rules.

• Credit Default Swaps: CDS can be used in a number of ways in fixed income strategies, for example hedging exposures and buy/write protection, or playing the basis between the CDS and underlying corporate spreads.

* Certificates (either individually or in a series) can also be used within the UCITS III framework to replicate the risk/return profile of FOHFs. Alternatively, a UCITS eligible index can be created to replicate all of the underlying hedge fund strategies; the index needs to meet the UCITS criteria of eligibility though.

With any of the techniques mentioned, distribution is paramount to global take-up of UCITS III, and has become the most dominant channels for cross-border sales of UCITS funds, owned by third-party distributors and open architecture platforms.

Hedge fund managers, sitting in a larger asset management company with existing mutual fund platforms, are ideally positioned to distribute UCITS III funds offerings, benefiting from access to a wider spectrum of clients.

Road to Freedom

Because the UCITS lies outside the scope of the European draft Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive, which is likely to impact unregulated offshore hedge funds in yet undefined ways, this is potentially beneficial as the AIFM Directive is likely to impose constraints on European investors investing in third-country funds, and most likely include those domiciled in offshore jurisdictions such as Cayman Islands and Bermuda.

However, Morgan Stanley is not one of the pioneers in this area.

Last month it emerged the world’s third largest hedge fund, Paulson & Co, is coming to Europe.

Founder John Paulson, who made a 589% and 351% profit in his two Credit Opportunities hedge funds on the US subprime collapse, is making himself available via a UCITS fund later this year.

But neither Paulson is the first to make his skills available to retail investors via funds domiciled inside Europe.

Others are bringing Caribbean-based product onshore because of the EU’s plans to regulate hedge funds in such a way that non-EU managers, including Paulson, and offshore funds, would be barred from taking money from European investors.

One way for such managers to get around this is launching portfolios in Europe.

Marshall Wace is shifting all its Cayman Islands portfolios to Europe.

Rival Majedie Asset Management did so, too.

Gartmore and RWC Partners will make regulated variants of every offshore fund they launch now, too.

Investors seem increasingly to opt for onshore funds where one is available.

However, Dalton Strategic Partnership has drawn a line in the Caribbean sand, and is taking steps specifically focused on keeping offshore fund clients.

The European UCITS long/short fund of Dalton Strategic Partnership grew from €4m at launch in February to €50m now, during which assets in its Melchior European hedge fund stayed static, for example.

Similar stories are told at Man Group for AHL, RWC Partners for US equities funds and Gartmore for various portfolios.

The transparency, liquidity and regulatory oversight required in a UCITS addresses investor concerns in a post-Madoff, post-credit 2008 crunch environment.

However, the regulation allows an even greater risk taking, in fact, it encourages greater risks.

Dalton’s onshore funds will double the risk-taking appetite of Melchior.

Magnus Spence, partner, explains:

“We are differentiating the products one from another, and need to recognize and meet the different needs of investors in offshore hedge funds and UCITS III hedge funds. Investors in UCITS hedge funds tend to seek lower-risk strategies, which typically offer return targets of between 5% and 10% per year.”

“In contrast, many traditional investors in offshore hedge funds are prepared to accept a considerably higher level of investment risk in return for performance greater than 10%.”

What Dalton’s latest move shows is that not everyone is so keen on “on-shoring” after all.

Barclay’s are among the big banks who still offer offshore products to its clients, now within the UCITS framework:

“The Structured UCITS Funds for Offshore Bonds range allows investors access to a leading range of Funds, all approved under the EU UCITS III Directive. A UCITS III fund refers to any collective investment scheme set up under the UCITS Directive of 1985, as modified by the amending proposal of 2001. As the UCITS Directive is a pan-European directive, the main benefit of UCITS III is that it makes it easier to passport and market such funds throughout Europe. UCITS III allows funds to invest in a wide range of financial instruments, opening up the range of investment strategies available to fund managers,” Barclay’s write on their website.

Adding: “Our Fund range is developed by our asset class neutral structuring team. Our team creates innovative products across asset classes – developing solutions to help clients achieve optimal asset allocation as well as manage risk. Our team specializes in delivering quantitative asset allocation strategies within a UCITS III compliant fund format.”

Read the full post at The Swapper:

Another ridiculous market reaction following the ADP read today, when the AUDJPY initially dropped, only to see every deranged Japanese housewife, and anyone else with an FX account plough into it taking full advantage of 50x+ leverage to spook remaining weak short hands out. The catalyst: good news is good news, bad news is better news, as, just like Bank of America which just threw in the towel (more in a post momentarily), any incremental economic snapshot now means either more QE by the Fed or more QE by the Fed (and other CBs). We are back to the regime where dollar weakness is good for risk (especially beta>5.0 risk, meaning all the empty chatterboxes whose only strategy is to lever up on beta and pray will be out in full force on CNBC today). Incidentally, just as we expected, and right on cue, the Hungarian central bank said that the surging CHF poses “risks from the aspect of Hungarian economy’s growth prospects, and that the weakening HUFCHF is causing higher than expected loan losses in bank sector.” Define zero sum.

http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/imageroot/AUDJPY%209.1_0.jpg

Of course, all this means is that fundamentals are pushed even further into the background, as the only thing that matters is which global bank can print bigger, faster, more. To wit: the USDCHF just cut through the bidside like butter, reaching the lowest levels seen since December 2009. So yes – 24 hours in which the US can gloat, then everyone will move from one side of the boat to the other, as the SNB finally says enough. Obviously, that will also be a risk positive, as yet another bank joins the debasement parade.

http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/imageroot/USDCHF%209.1_0.jpg

And yes, all those expecting this latest round of imminent central bank intervention (which is the only thing that matters anymore) to push gold lower, feel free to wait. Which is precisely why the LBMA decided to throw a gentle little intervention party 5 minutes ago in which it took away the entire bid side in gold. Enjoy the chart below of a perfectly and orderly JPM take down.

http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/imageroot/GOLD%209.1_0.jpg

Readers of my articles will recall that I have warned as far back as December 2006, that the global banks will collapse when the Financial Tsunami hits the global economy in 2007. And as they say, the rest is history.

Quantitative Easing (QE I) spearheaded by the Chairman of Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke delayed the inevitable demise of the fiat shadow money banking system slightly over 18 months.

http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/images/2010/Aug/1930-bear-market.jpg

That is why in November of 2009, I was so confident to warn my readers that by the end of the first quarter of 2010 at the earliest or by the second quarter of 2010 at the latest, the global economy will go into a tailspin. The recent alarm that the US economy has slowed down and in the words of Bernanke “the recent pace of growth is less vigorous than we expected” has all but vindicated my analysis. He warned that the outlook is uncertain and the economy “remains vulnerable to unexpected developments”.

Obviously, Bernanke’s words do not reveal the full extent of the fear that has gripped central bankers and the financial elites that assembled at the annual gathering at Jackson Hole, Wyoming. But, you can take it from me that they are very afraid.

Why?

Let me be plain and blunt. The “unexpected developments” Bernanke referred to is the collapse of the global banks. This is FED speak and to those in the loop, this is the dire warning.

So many renowned economists have misdiagnosed the objective and consequences of quantitative easing. Central bankers’ scribes and the global mass media hoodwinked the people by saying that QE will enable the banks to lend monies to cash-starved companies and jump start the economy. The low interest rate regime would encourage all and sundry to borrow, consume and invest.

This was the fairy tale.

Then, there were some economists who were worried that as a result of the FED’s printing press (electronic or otherwise) working overtime, hyper-inflation would set in soon after.

But nothing happened. The multiplier effect of fractional reserve banking did not take off. Bank lending in fact stalled.

Why?

What happened?

Let me explain in simple terms step by step.

1) All the global banks were up to their eye-balls in toxic assets. All the AAA mortgage-backed securities etc. were in fact JUNK. But in the balance sheets of the banks and their special purpose vehicles (SPVs), they were stated to be worth US$ TRILLIONS.

2) The collapse of Lehman Bros and AIG exposed this ugly truth. All the global banks had liabilities in the US$ Trillions. They were all INSOLVENT. The central banks the world over conspired and agreed not to reveal the total liabilities of the global banks as that would cause a run on these banks, as happened in the case of Northern Rock in the U.K.

3) A devious scheme was devised by the FED, led by Bernanke to assist the global banks to unload systematically and in tranches the toxic assets so as to allow the banks to comply with RESERVE REQUIREMENTS under the fractional reserve banking system, and to continue their banking business. This is the essence of the bailout of the global banks by central bankers.

4) This devious scheme was effected by the FED’s quantitative easing (QE) – the purchase of toxic assets from the banks. The FED created “money out of thin air” and used that “money” to buy the toxic assets at face or book value from the banks, notwithstanding they were all junks and at the most, worth maybe ten cents to the dollar. Now, the FED is “loaded” with toxic assets once owned by the global banks. But these banks cannot declare and or admit to this state of affairs. Hence, this financial charade.

5) If we are to follow simple logic, the exercise would result in the global banks flushed with cash to enable them to lend to desperate consumers and cash-starved businesses. But the money did not go out as loans. Where did the money go?

6) It went back to the FED as reserves, and since the FED bought US$ trillions worth of toxic wastes, the “money” (it was merely book entries in the Fed’s books) that these global banks had were treated as “Excess Reserves”. This is a misnomer because it gave the ILLUSION that the banks are cash-rich and under the fractional reserve system would be able to lend out trillions worth of loans. But they did not. Why?

7) Because the global banks still have US$ trillions worth of toxic wastes in their balance sheets. They are still insolvent under the fractional reserve banking laws. The public must not be aware of this as otherwise, it would trigger a massive run on all the global banks!

Bernanke, the US Treasury and the global central bankers were all praying and hoping that given time (their estimation was 12 to 18 months) the housing market would recover and asset prices would resume to the levels before the crisis. .

Let me explain: A House was sold for say US$500,000. Borrower has a mortgage of US$450,000 or more. The house is now worth US$200,000 or less. Multiply this by the millions of houses sold between 2000 and 2008 and you will appreciate the extent of the financial black-hole. There is no way that any of the global banks can get out of this gigantic mess. And there is also no way that the FED and the global central bankers through QE can continue to buy such toxic wastes without showing their hands and exposing the lie that these banks are solvent.

It is my estimation that they have to QE up to US$20 trillion at the minimum. The FED and no central banker would dare “create such an amount of money out of thin air” without arousing the suspicions and or panic of sovereign creditors, investors and depositors. It is as good as declaring officially that all the banks are BANKRUPT.

9) But there is no other solution in the short and middle term except another bout of quantitative easing, QE II. Given the above caveat, QE II cannot exceed the amount of the previous QE without opening the proverbial Pandora Box.

10) But it is also a given that the FED will embark on QE II, as under the fractional reserve banking system, if the FED does not purchase additional toxic wastes, the global banks (faced with mounting foreclosures, etc.) will fall short of their reserve requirements.

11) You will also recall that the FED at the height of the crisis announced that interest will be paid on the so-called “excess reserves” of the global banks, thus enabling these banks to “earn” interest. So what we have is a merry-go-round of monies moving from the right pocket to the left pocket at the click of the computer mouse. The FED creates money, uses it to buy toxic assets, and the same money is then returned to the FED by the global banks to earn interest. By this fiction of QE, banks are flushed with cash which enable them to earn interest. Is it any wonder that these banks have declared record profits?

12) The global banks get rid of some of their toxic wastes at full value and at no costs, and get paid for unloading the toxic wastes via interest payments. Additionally, some of the “monies” are used by these banks to purchase US Treasuries (which also pay interests) which in turn allows the US Treasury to continue its deficit spending. THIS IS THE BAILOUT RIP OFF of the century.

Now that you fully understand this SCAM, it is left to be seen how the FED will get away with the next round of quantitative easing – QE II.

Obviously, the FED and the other central banks are hoping that in time, asset prices will recover and resume their previous values before the crisis. This is a fantasy. QE II will fail just as QE I failed to save the banks.

The patient is in intensive care and is for all intent and purposes brain dead, although the heart is still pumping albeit faintly. The Too Big To Fail Banks cannot be rescued and must be allowed to be liquidated. It will be painful, but it is necessary before there is recovery. This is a given.

Warning:

When the ball hits the ceiling fan, sometime early 2011 at the earliest, there will be massive bank runs.

I expect that the FED and other central banks will pre-empt such a run and will do the following:

1) Disallow cash withdrawals from banks beyond a certain amount, say US$1,000 per day; 2) Disallow cash transactions up to a certain amount, say US$10,000 for certain transactions; 3) Transactions (investments) for metals (gold and silver) will be restricted; 4) Worst-case scenario – the confiscation of gold AS HAPPENED IN WORLD WAR II. 5) Imposition of capital controls etc.; 6) Legislations that will compel most daily commercial transactions to be conducted through Debit and or Credit Cards; 7) Legislations to make it a criminal offence for any contraventions of the above.

Solution:

Maintain a bank balance sufficient to enable you to comply with the above potential impositions.

Start diversifying your assets away from dollar assets. Have foreign currencies in sufficient quantities in those jurisdictions where the above anticipated impositions are least likely to be implemented.

CONCLUSION

There will be a financial tsunami (round two) the likes of which the world has never seen.

Global banks will collapse!

Be ready.

Have economists made themselves irrelevant?  If you have any doubts, have a look at the current issue of themagazine, International Economy, a slick publication endorsed by former Federal Reserve chairmen Paul Volcker and Alan Greenspan, by Jean-Claude Trichet, president of the European Central Bank, by former Secretary of State George Shultz, and by the New York Times and Washington Post, both of which declare the magazine to be “ahead of the curve.”

The main feature of the current issue is “The Great Stimulus Debate.” Is the Obama fiscal stimulus helping the economy or hindering it?

Princeton economics professor and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman and Moody’s Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi represent the Keynesian view that government deficit spending is needed to lift the economy out of recession. Zandi declares that thanks to the fiscal stimulus, “The economy has made enormous progress since early 2009,” an opinion shared by the President’s Council of Economic Advisors and the Congressional Budget Office.

The opposite view, associated with Harvard economics professor Robert Barro and with European  economists, such as Francesco Giavazzi and Marco Pagano and the European Central Bank, is that government budget surpluses achieved by cutting government spending spur the economy by reducing the ratio of debt to Gross Domestic Product. This is the “let them eat cake school of economics.”

Barro says that fiscal stimulus has no effect, because people anticipate the future tax increases implied by government deficits and increase their personal savings to offset the added government debt. Giavazzi and Pagano reason that since fiscal stimulus does not expand the economy, fiscal austerity consisting of higher taxes and reduced government spending could be the cure for unemployment.

If one overlooks the real world and the need of life for sustenance, one can become engrossed in this debate. However, the minute one looks out the window upon the world, one realizes that cutting Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, and housing subsidies when 15 million Americans have lost jobs, medical coverage, and homes is a certain path to death by starvation, curable diseases, and exposure, and the loss of the productive labor inputs from 15 million people. Although some proponents of this anti-Keynesian policy deny that it results in social upheaval, Gerald Celente’s observation is closer to the mark: “When people have nothing left to lose, they lose it.”

The Krugman Keynesian school is just as deluded.  Neither side in “The Great Stimulus Debate” has a clue that the problem for the U.S. is that a large chunk of U.S. GDP and the jobs, incomes, and careers associated with it, have been moved offshore and given to Chinese, Indians, and others with low wage rates. Profits have soared on Wall Street, while job prospects for the middle class have been eliminated.

The offshoring of American jobs resulted from (1) Wall Street pressures for “higher shareholder returns,” that is, for more profits, and from (2) no-think economists, such as the ones engaged in the debate over fiscal stimulus, who mistakenly associated globalism with free trade instead of with its antithesis–the pursuit of lowest factor cost abroad or absolute advantage, the opposite of comparative advantage, which is the basis for free trade theory. Even Krugman, who has some credentials as a trade theorist  has fallen for the equation of globalism with free trade.

As economists assume, incorrectly according to the latest trade theory by Ralph Gomory and William Baumol, that free trade is always mutually beneficial, economists have failed to examine the devastatingly harmful effects of offshoring. The more intelligent among them who point it out are dismissed as “protectionists.”

The reason fiscal stimulus cannot rescue the U.S. economy has nothing to do with the difference between Barro and Krugman. It has to do with the fact that a large percentage of high-productivity, high-value-added jobs and the middle class incomes and careers associated with them have been given to foreigners. What used to be U.S. GDP is now Chinese, Indian, and other country GDP.

When the jobs have been shipped overseas, fiscal stimulus does not call workers back to work in order to meet the rising consumer demand. If fiscal stimulus has any effect, it stimulates employment in China and India.

The “let them eat cake school” is equally off the mark. As investment, research, development, etc., have been moved offshore, cutting entitlements simply drives the domestic population deeper in the ground. Americans cannot pay their mortgages, car payments, tuition, utility bills, or for that matter, any bill, based on Chinese and Indian pay scales. Therefore, Americans are priced out of the labor market and become dependencies of the federal budget. “Fiscal  consolidation” means writing off large numbers of humans.

During the Great Depression, many wage and salary earners were new members of the labor force arriving from family farms, where many parents and grandparents still supported themselves. When their city jobs disappeared, many could return to the farm.

Today farming is in the hands of agri-business. There are no farms to which the unemployed can return.

The “let them eat cake school” never mentions the one point in its favor.  The U.S., with all its huffed up power and importance, depends on the U.S. dollar as reserve currency. It is this role of the dollar that allows America to pay for its imports in its own currency. For a country whose trade is as unbalanced as  America’s, this privilege is what keeps the country afloat.

The threats to the dollar’s role are the budget and trade deficits. Both are so large and have accumulated for so long that the prospect of making good on them has evaporated. As I have written for a number of years, the U.S. is so dependent on the dollar as reserve currency that it must have as its main policy goal to preserve that role.

Otherwise, the U.S., an import-dependent country, will be unable to pay for its excess of imports over its exports.

“Fiscal consolidation,” the new term for austerity, could save the dollar. However, unless starvation, homelessness and social upheaval are the goals, the austerity must fall on the military budget. America cannot afford its multi-trillion dollar wars that serve only to enrich those invested in the armaments industries. The U.S. cannot afford the neoconservative dream of world hegemony and a conquered Middle East open to Israeli colonization.

Is anyone surprised that not a single proponent of the “let them eat cake school” mentions cutting military spending?  Entitlements, despite the fact that they are paid for by earmarked taxes and have been in surplus since the Reagan administration, are always what economists put on the chopping bloc.

Where do the two schools stand on inflation vs. deflation? We don’t have to worry. Martin Feldstein, one of America’s pre-eminent economist says: “The good news is that investors should worry about neither.” His explanation epitomizes the insouciance of American economists.

Feldstein says that there cannot be inflation because of the high rate of unemployment and the low rate of capacity utilization. Thus, “there is little upward pressure on wages and prices in the United States.” Moreover, “the recent rise in the value of the dollar relative to the euro and British pound helps by reducing import costs.”

As for deflation, no risk there either. The huge deficits prevent deflation, “so the good news is that the possibility of significant inflation or deflation during the next few years is low on the list of economic risks faced by the U.S. economy and by financial investors.”

What we have in front of us is an unaware economics profession. There may be some initial period of deflation as stock and housing prices decline with the economy, which is headed down and not up.  The deflation will be short lived, because as the government’s deficit rises with the declining economy, the prospect of financing a $2 trillion annual deficit evaporates once individual investors have completed their flight from the stock market into “safe” government bonds, once the hyped Greek, Spanish, and Irish crises have driven investors out of euros into dollars, and once the banks’ excess reserves created by the bailout have been used up in the purchase of Treasuries.

Then what finances the deficit? Don’t look for an answer from either side of The Great Stimulus Debate. They haven’t a clue despite the fact that the answer is obvious.

The Federal Reserve will monetize the federal government deficit. The result will be high inflation, possibly hyper-inflation and high unemployment simultaneously.

The no-think economics establishment has no policy response for economic armageddon, assuming they are even capable of recognizing it.

Economists who have spent their professional lives rationalizing “globalism” as good for America have no idea of the disaster that they have wrought.

Paul Farrell’s take on Jeremy Grantham’s recent essay Seven Lean Years (previously posted on Zero Hedge) is amusing in that his conclusion is that should Obama get reelected, his entire tenure will have been occupied by fixing the problems of a 30 year credit bubble, and if anything end up with the worst rating of all time, as the citizens’ anger is focused on him as the one source of all evil. “Add seven years to the handoff from Bush to Obama in early 2009 and you get no recovery till 2016. Get it? No recovery till the end of Obama’s second term, assuming he’s reelected — a big if.” Also, Farrell pisses all over the recent catastrophic Geithner NYT oped essay, which praised the imminent recovery which merely turned out to be the grand entrance into the double dip: “In his recent newsletter, “Seven Lean Years Revisited,” Grantham tells us why expecting a summer of recovery was unrealistic, why America must prepare for a long recovery. Grantham details 10 reasons: “The negatives that are likely to hamper the global developed economy.” Sorry, but this recovery will take till 2016.”

For those who have not had a chance to read the original Grantham writings, here is Farrell’s attempt to convince you that Grantham is spot on:

But should you believe Grantham? Yes. First: Like Joseph, Grantham’s earlier forecasts were dead on. About two years before Wall Street’s 2008 meltdown Grantham saw: “The First Truly Global Bubble: From Indian antiquities to modern Chinese art; from land in Panama to Mayfair; from forestry, infrastructure, and the junkiest bonds to mundane blue chips; it’s bubble time. … The bursting of the bubble will be across all countries and all assets … no similar global event has occurred before.”

Second: The Motley Fools’ Matt Argersinger went back to the dot-com crash of 2000: Grantham “looked out 10 years and predicted the S&P 500 would underperform cash.” Bull’s-eye: The S&P 500 peaked at 11,722; it’s now around 10,000. Factor in inflation: Wall Street’s lost 20% of your retirement since 2000. Yes, Wall Street’s a big loser.

Third: What’s ahead for the seven lean years? Wall Street will keep losing. Argersinger: “Grantham predicts below-average economic growth, anemic corporate-profit margins, and other severe obstacles for the stock market. Over the next seven years … U.S. stocks as a group will deliver annualized real returns between 1.1% and 2.9%. That’s less than you might get putting your money in a CD.”

Also, for those who believe they stand to win something in the Wall Street casino, think again:

Warning: You’d be a fool to trust your money with Wall Street during the seven lean years till 2016. Another 20% will vanish.

Fourth: Why will Wall Street kill the recovery, keep driving us deeper into a ditch till 2016? Last year Grantham asked: “Why is it that several dozen people saw this crisis coming for years? It seemed so inevitable and so merciless, and yet the bosses of Merrill Lynch and Citi, even Treasury Secretary [Henry] Paulson and Fed Chairman [Ben] Bernanke, none of them seemed to see it coming.” The Pharaoh listened to Joseph. Our leaders are deaf.

Yet for all those still too busy to read the collected thoughts of Jeremy, here is the Cliff notes version, courtesy of Farrell:

Here’s my Reader’s Digest version of Grantham’s 10 handicaps that will “hamper the global developed economy, drag it out for seven lean years,” forcing Americans into a painfully long, game-changing period of austerity and civil unrest. You can read his original at GMO.com:

1. Too much consumer debt; increased savings, spending drops

“We’ve stopped adding consumer debt, but the improvement is minimal. It would take at least seven years of steady reduction to reach a more normal level. Anything more rapid than that would make it nearly impossible for the economy to grow. More stimulus adds government debt, already a problem. But debt reduction in a fragile economy runs the risk of causing a severe economic decline. This dilemma may prove to be the central economic policy choice of our time. Not an easy choice. And no way that this process will be pleasant or quick.”

2. Banks off-loaded trillions of toxic debt, increasing federal debt

“The most frightening aspect of the seven-lean-year scenario is that dangerously excessive financial system debt was moved across, with additions, to become dangerously excessive government debt, with levels of debt-to-GDP not seen outside wartime. The cure seems more like a stay of execution.”

3. Stimulus failing, housing crashed, no appreciation, confidence lost

“The artificial lift to consumers’ confidence from steadily rising house prices is long gone, unlikely to return soon, reducing our confidence in the nest eggs we thought we could count on for retirement. Further house-prices declines are more than a 50/50 bet. No more shot in the arm from construction. Stock prices are stagnant. These changed attitudes will last for years.”

4. Banks undercapitalized, overleveraged; more trouble ahead

“Wall Street may have passed its point of maximum stress, but very bad things may lie ahead in Europe. Leverage and the chances of further write-downs leave banks undercapitalized, reluctant to lend. Unhealthy growth in America’s GDP caused by previous rapid increases in the size of the financial sector has also disappeared, hopefully will stay gone.”

5. State/local governments squeezed, tax revenues down 30%

“Runaway costs: average salaries and pensions went far above private sector in 15 years, now run into the brick wall of reduced taxes. Real estate taxes are down over 30%, unlikely to bounce back soon. The legal need to stay balanced means painful cost-cutting, putting pressure on an economy with few stimulus options left. A double dip would make it worse.”

6. High unemployment; few tricks left to stimulate jobs

“Unemployment is high, suffering from the loss of kickers related to asset bubbles. The economy appears to have an oddly hard time producing enough jobs to get ahead of the natural yearly increases in the work force. Consumer confidence and corporate investing suffer.”

7. America’s trade imbalances are killing the dollar, our economy

“America must stop running large trade imbalances, they destabilize the economy. In a world growing nervous about the quality of sovereign debt, these debt levels have exploded. Adding new foreign debts adds risk and doubts to the system, threatening the dollar. Just as adding surpluses threatens the Chinese. The trick, though, is to reduce these imbalances so that the process does not reduce global growth. Rebalancing will not be quick, easy, or painless.”

8. European governments crashing; incompetent management

“Europe suffers from incompetent management. Spain, Greece, Portugal, Ireland, and Italy allowed local competitiveness of manufactured goods to become 20% or more uncompetitive with Germany. The banking crisis was not the problem, so it’ll never be easy to solve with a fixed currency. Unfortunately, Europe’s problems are now part of America’s seven lean years, guaranteeing slower than normal GDP growth and a long workout period.”

9. Global loss of confidence in all currencies, including the dollar

“Rising levels of sovereign debt and problems facing the euro bloc and Japan are creating a loss of confidence in faith-based currencies. The world economy is a fragile system that will increasingly limit governments’ choices in dealing with low growth and excessive credit.”

10. Aging populations; rising Medicare, Social Security costs

“Possibly most important of all, widespread overcommitments to pensions and health benefits is a long-term problem overlapping with the seven-year workout, making the ’seven lean years’ even tougher. Developed nations are aging, need more medical attention. Treatment costs are increasing, and are hard to limit or ration. No choice, hunker down, wait for a crisis.”

Bottom line: America’s facing seven lean years, a long, game-changing, painful recovery till 2016. But let’s end on that positive note the Motley Fool’s Argersinger promises: In spite of the dark forecast, there’s a “silver lining, the saving grace Grantham calls it. The stock market might turn out to be a loser, but that won’t be the case for ‘high-quality’ U.S. stocks. Grantham thinks elite stocks are poised to return as much as 10% a year or better.”

Argersinger put it this way: “Grantham doesn’t detail what he means, but I think it’s safe to assume he’s talking about large companies that have strong balance sheets, sustainable competitive advantages, stable or growing profit margins, and opportunities for growth,” even in “seven lean years.”

He picks seven stocks “that might make Grantham’s cut.” All are based on “the following criteria: Large-cap stock, at least $20 billion in market size; high profitability, an average operating margin of 15% or higher over the past five years; strong balance sheet, a debt-to-equity ratio of less than 50%; a dividend, not necessarily for yield but as a measure of financial strength.” Solid picking criteria.

Hardly another serious plague to society is associated with more hypocrisy and erroneous assumptions than the drug business. So Lars Schall talked with Catherine Austin Fitts, who explains the real deal: “It’s a very old business. It goes back to the question of how you control the most territory with the fewest players as possible.”

Catherine Austin Fitts is a graduate from the University of Pennsylvania (BA) and the Wharton School (MBA). At the Chinese University of Hong Kong she studied Mandarin. She served as a managing director and member of the board of the Wall Street investment bank Dillon, Read & Co, Inc. (now part of UBS). Later, she was Assistant Secretary of Housing and Federal Housing Commissioner at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) during the presidency of George Herbert Walker Bush. As such, she was responsible for the operations of the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), the largest mortgage insurance fund of the world.

After leaving the Bush Administration, Fitts founded The Hamilton Securities Group, Inc., an investment bank and financial software developer named after the first U.S. Secretary of Treasury, Alexander Hamilton. In 1996, she and her successful company became targets of a vicious, longlasting “qui tam lawsuit”, that resulted in the closing of Hamilton Securities.[1] Fitts was ultimately successful in Court of Claims litigation asserting that the government had no right to withhold monies owed to Hamilton.

In the years afterwards, Fitts spoke publicly about the degree of fraud endemic in the federal mortgage operations, trillions missing from government agencies and the connections to drug trafficking and “black budgets.”[2] Moreover, with her mentioned expertise, she was one of the first to warn of an approaching housing bubble. Her prediction that the ”strong dollar policy” would lead to a weakened federal credit is currently being proven correct.

Fitts is the president of Solari, Inc., publisher of “The Solari Report” (www.solari.com), and managing member of Solari Investment Advisory Services, LLC. She serves on the board of directors of the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee, GATA (www.gata.org), and writes “The Real Deal” column for Scoop Media in New Zealand (www.scoop.co.nz).

Catherine Austin Fitts lives in Tennessee, U.S.A.

The following interview was conducted, while she sat in her car and drove across the U.S.-state of Montana.

Can we do the interview, although you’re behind the wheel now?

Yes, I’m on the Interstate and it’s straight, there’s nothing to do except holding the course.

And Montana has a rather flat landscape, correct?

At this moment it is very flat.

Shall we start then?

Sure, go ahead.

Okay Ms. Fitts: in your highly impressive e-book “Dillon, Read & Co. Inc. and the Aristocracy of Stock Profits” you mention as a prime factor that governs our lives on planet earth for roughly the last 500 years “the central banking-warfare investment model.” Can you describe to us at the beginning of this interview some of the essential characteristics, rationales and goals of that “model”?

“The central banking-warfare investment model” is really a control model, through which a small group of people can control the most resources on the most profitable basis. Essentially what happens is: Central banks print money and then the military makes sure that other parties accept it and that the financial system continues to have liquidity. The question many people ask with regards to a fiat currency, which is a paper currency, is: Why would anybody take paper, which has no value? They take the paper, because it’s part of the enforcement and military supervision, if you will, of the network that is printing the money. The system has created a fantastically profitable way of controlling large populations and access to resources very cheaply.

Let’s say for a second that Mr. Global is in charge of “the central banking-warfare investment model”: Mr. Global prints money and then people take that paper and give him in essence what he needs to buy up and control the national resources. The population is dependent on his paper and then he controls all the real things. Also through the military, he can steal whatever he wants. And organized crime is a very important component as well, because it can be expansive to drop an army and to occupy a place. If he can take over a place and buy that place with the place’s own money, it’s much more efficient, and that’s where the drug business traditionally comes in. It’s basically part of a model for controlling a territory with huge resources in the cheapest way possible.

One aspect of the model, that you have just described, is to attract and launder a lot of “liquid cash flow” through the American financial system that is generated by drug trafficking. The UN-chief on drugs, Antonio Maria Costa, stated something interesting in that respect last year. He said:

“In the second half of 2008, liquidity was the banking system’s main problem and hence liquid capital became an important factor … Inter-bank loans were funded by money that originated from the drugs trade and other illegal activities … There were signs that some banks were rescued that way.”[3]

He said moreover, that drug money is by “now a part of the official system” as if this was something new. What do you think about these “revelations”?

I think that the drug business is a very old model. For the North-American continent I would take it all the way back to the Opium Wars with China, though I think it certainly goes back longer than that. But when the British Empire almost went broke trading with the Chinese, the way the Britons fought back was by smuggling opium into China that they were growing in India.

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