Old Site Menu

Missive #51

Some unambiguous signals that the Shit has truly Hit The Fan, are listed below. This is from a good article Not Much Time Left… by Capitalist Eric (Not to be confused with Erik)

  • The FDIC has no more funds to insure banks accounts, and the Federal Goverment is unable to recapitalize the FDIC (for whatever reason)
  • The first “too big to fail” bank does fail, and the government cannot stop it with whatever tools they have available (this includes international banks such as Credit Suisse)
  • China halts all exports to the USA.
  • China, India or Saudi Arabia repudiate the use of the dollar for international trade.
  • Germany leaves the EU and/or NATO.
  • The US mint stops all sales of gold to private buyers.
  • The US government declares “martial law” in the USA.
  • The US government activates the National Emergencies executive orders where they take over everything, and the citizens are now slaves.

Monetary Tightening and U.S. Bank Fragility in 2023: Mark-to-Market Losses and Uninsured Depositor Runs? — A study by a group of economists: Erica Jiang, Gregor Matvos, Tomasz Piskorski, and Amit Seru. This is their Conclusion.

We provide a simple analysis of U.S. banks’ asset exposure to a recent rise in the interest rates with implications for financial stability. The U.S. banking system’s market value of assets is $2 trillion lower than suggested by their book value of assets. We show that these losses, combined with a large share of uninsured deposits at some U.S. banks can impair their stability. Even if only half of uninsured depositors decide to withdraw, almost 190 banks are at a potential risk of impairment to even insured depositors, with potentially $300 billion of insured deposits at risk. If uninsured deposit withdrawals cause even small fire sales, substantially more banks are at risk. Overall, these calculations suggest that recent declines in bank asset values significantly increased the fragility of the US banking system to uninsured depositors runs.

Ding, Dong, the Ban is Dead, or
Finally! A Bad Law Goes Down
By John Ross

Copyright 2004 by John Ross. Electronic reproduction of this article freely permitted provided it is reproduced in its entirety with attribution given.

 Today the ten-year “Assault Weapons” ban expired without being renewed.  Many news articles have featured much hand-wringing over this event.     

            The most important thing you need to know, and the thing scrupulously left out of almost every news report, is that the ban was all about appearance and not function.  It had nothing to do with real assault weapons, which are hand-held fully automatic military arms—machine guns. Machine guns have been illegal to own except under very special circumstances since 1934. The ban that just expired redefined the term “assault weapons” to mean guns that look a certain way. It was a ban on guns that only looked like military machine guns, but were not. The banned guns didn’t do anything special—they just looked “scary.”

            Whether anyone might want to own a gun that looks like a military arm should not be the government’s business. What’s next—a ban on the sale of olive drab paint to people who want to drive around in a military-looking vehicle instead of a bright red one?

            The Clinton “assault weapons” ban was one more slice-at-a-time example of incremental infringements on our rights. That Congress let this sham expire was clearly the right thing to do.

            What did the man who thinks he should be our next President have to say about this?  Listen:

So, tomorrow for the first time in 10 years, when a killer walks into a gun shop, when a terrorist goes to a gun show somewhere in America, when they want to purchase an AK- 47 or some other military assault weapon, they’re going to hear one word: ‘Sure.’

             Er…no.  What John Kerry should have said was:

So, tomorrow for the first time in 10 years, when a shooter walks into a gun shop, when a collector goes to a gun show somewhere in America, when they want to purchase a gun that looks exactly like an AK-47 or some other military assault weapon, but only fires one shot with each pull of the trigger, they will be able to.  They’re not going to be told, as they were for the last ten years, ‘No, we can’t sell you a new-production semiauto that looks like its full-auto military counterpart, you have to buy one that has a few different cosmetic features.’

            But that wouldn’t have been much of a sound bite, would it?

John Ross 9/13/2005

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *