Your Bank Ain’t Safe

Maybe we’re all factory workers now.  Remember the “information super-highway”?  Our lives are even colder, even more industrial now.  At least on a highway, you get to see glimpses of birds and trees – reality.  Today we get no such luxuries.  Through the wonders of the internet and social media, we now are perched before an ever-speeding, never-ending factory line of information.  There are so many topics skittering across our daily feed that it’s almost impossible to decide what’s relevant.  The information age has made information worthless and obfuscated importance. What to do?

Either we greatly limit the speed (and therefore quantity) of information passing before our eyes, risking we miss something or we turn off the factory line altogether and only allow certain items in.  But this isn’t a real fix.  It’ll just move you from a factory line to a department store floor of information.  No longer chained to the never-ending feed, you can browse more slowly, at your leisure, but you’re still damned to an informational mega-Walmart.  Sure, there are low, low, low prices, but your mental function hovers down there with those prices that just got slashed. Or you just could unplug altogether. 

But who wants to “go Amish”?  There’s a chant I bet we’ll never hear.  It has no ring to it.

Regardless, I advocate the second choice.  I’ll stay in mega-Walmart for now, hoping someone blasts a hole in the wall and lets some fresh air in.  But that’s so much dreaming because today I spied a top that is to-die-for in the form of a glorious story about the never-sexy credit default swaps. 

Kudos to the authors of this article who chose a shot of a babe in a bathtub to begin it.  You’ve gotta church up boring any way you can – and these folks certainly excel.  And lest you miss my point – boring, the ins and outs of CDOs and synthetic CDOs — is necessary if you want to understand where you, little fly, really stand in this – the freest country that ever were.  And here it is.

You’re below fly, actually.  You’re not a hop, nor a crawl.  You will never have wings.  Forget dreaming.  How would I know?  Well, Pam and Russ Martens so kindly explain in their latest article.  See https://wallstreetonparade.com/2020/01/the-doomsday-machine-returns-citibank-has-sold-protection-on-858-billion-of-credit-default-swaps/ 

Beginning quarter of 2019, the FDIC insurance fund amounted to $104.9 billion. This is that big HUGE fund that protects your money in the bank.  This is the never-ending, all-seeing insurance fund that leads banks to proudly tout “FDIC Insured” on their every glass door, drive-thru window, and ATM in the country.  For five thousand banks (not counting all their branches) in the United States there exists only $104.9 billion dollars in insurance monies.  Well…now that I think about it, that is a lot of money. 

But, wait.  Have you heard of Citigroup?  They’re the subject of the article I’m discussing.  They’re a big deal.  Back in the days of yon and yore, waaaaayyyy back in 2008 they got $45 billion in bailouts.  This was during that whole ‘bad economy’ thing.  Some bankers got in trouble and needed government help or something.  I don’t know.  It’s old news now. 

Still $45 billion.  That’s a lot.  Not $104.9 billion, but almost half.  Next the government guaranteed $300 billion of Citigroups’ bad assets.  Guaranteed as in, “You made a bad investment and we’ll make it good.”  Also the FDIC guaranteed another $31.75 billion of its debt, commercial paper and interbank deposits.  Wow.  Just one bank got $376.75 billion dollars.  Now that is more than the $104.9 billion FDIC insurance fund for the entire country. 

Oh, wait, there’s something else.  Between 2007 and 2010 the New York Federal Reserve secretly gave Citigroup another…wait for it…$2.5 trillion dollars.  Trillion.  Let it roll on your tongue.  Trillion.  It’s nice to say out loud.  You’re doing it now, aren’t you?

It’s so beautiful.  So clean.  One bank.

Millions of Americans.

But

One bank…

Millions of us…

Ok.  No more nonsense.  Let’s speak plainly.  The government does not care about you and your deposits.  It is a whore for banks and will do whatever they demand.  Banks own the United States government and will always get what is actually yours.

You can’t trust either of them and your money is not safe.