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Time uses a picture of a young woman taking a selfie to demonstrate how fucked up our generation is
Why not use a picture of a 50 year old white male banker masturbating with mortgage papers into the mouth of a senator
Accurate.
(via eltigrechico)
Well that’s a big scary chart. Zerohedge pulled numbers on the biggest 25 banks in and it’s anything but reassuring:
With 9.283 Trillion in depositor funds, it would take only a .002% net shortfall in the banking system to completely exhaust the fund. Let’s assume the banks want to donate 10 years worth of contribution to the fund all at once, right now. That 145 billion would cover a 0.015% devaluation
So far we’ve only talked about the tiny blue bar and the little green bar. The big red bar is another animal entirely, and it’s time we addressed him.
In theory, funds deposited with a broker or in a bank are still your money. In practice, this is not really the case.
Both Knight Capital and MF Global have been caught with their hands in the customer cookie jar after they grabbed whatever funds they could to keep operating for just another day. In the case of MF Global it was a large burst right at the end, but at Knight Capital this was a systemic practice for years.
The problem, as Karl Denninger likes to say, is excessive leverage. In a low interest environment where bailouts are the norm for the largest institutions, there really is no reason to not bet big because if the screw-up is large enough, there’s always rescue waiting.
That scary red bar is the collected debts of those 25 largest banks, and it totals almost 300 trillion dollars, or about 32x total deposits.
I think the chart and numbers say it better than I ever could.
http://EndtheLie.com/2013/03/19/ensuring-bad-outcomes-what-cyprus-tells-us-about-the-world/#ixzz2O7UgIF9A
People still have no idea about this. Zero.
Moments before the entire world’s banking system collapses, do you guys think all the head bankers will get together in the City of London and sign out of this life by simultaneously saying, “Well, we had a good run, ol’ chaps” right before they down their hemlock spiked tea?
Why aren’t there RIOTS in Cypriot streets?
Cypriots, rise the fuck up and quit letting the banks steal all of your money.
Because most of the money that was stolen is from funds with over 100k in deposits. Most Cypriots don’t have that much money.
The people got most of their money stolen are Russian and other European millionaires and billionaires, a large number of which are “hiding”* money in off-shore accounts in Cyprus.
And that’s what Cyprus is relying on, they are hoping most people they take money from aren’t citizens, can’t vote or riot and won’t even speak up because they are “hiding”* that money.
*I don’t really believe that off-shore accounts and tax havens are “hiding” money. It’s YOUR property, you can do what you want with it.
(via the-coriolis-effect)
When was the last time you took a Wall Street bank to trial, asks Elizabeth Warren. I’ll save you some time: none of these government lawyers have.
Say what you want about Rep. Warren, but she does ask some tough and very much needed questions.
Matt Taibbi: After Laundering $800 Million in Drug Money, How Did HSBC Executives Avoid Jail? via Democracy Now!
“I was in court yesterday, in criminal court in Brooklyn. I saw somebody come out of—come into court who had just been overnight in jail for walking from one subway car to another in front of a policeman. You can do real time in jail in America for all kinds of ridiculous offenses, for taking up two subway seats in New York City, if you fall asleep in the subway. People go to jail for that all the time in this country, for having a marijuana stem in your pocket. There are 50,000 marijuana possession cases in New York City alone every year. And here we have a bank that laundered $800 million of drug money, and they can’t find a way to put anybody in jail for that. That sends an incredible message not just to the financial sector but to everybody. It’s an obvious, clear double standard, where one set of people gets to break the rules as much as they want and another set of people can’t break any rules at all without going to jail. And I just don’t see how they don’t see this problem.”
These job creators need a tax break.
“These actions are logical next steps in Citi’s transformation,” [chief executive Michael] Corbat said in a statement. “While we are committed to – and our strategy continues to leverage – our unparalleled global network and footprint, we have identified areas and products where our scale does not provide for meaningful returns.”
He then added, out of nowhere and without context, “I hate most human beings”. Weird.
Sooner or later, banks are going to have only two types of employees: Top-level executives and an IT staff. That’s where we are headed, banking is going to be 99% computerized, run by artificial intelligence and the profits-per-employee are going to near a billion dollars.
“One country refused to bail out its derelict banks and slash social spending amid the financial crisis. And guess what? Unlike the eurozone and the United States, it’s making a sturdy comeback.
Iceland’s stock market plunged 90 percent in 2008. Inflation reached 18 percent, unemployment shot up ninefold and its biggest banks failed. This was no recession. It was a full-blown depression.
Since then, the country has steadily improved. By September of this year, it repaid its IMF rescue loans ahead of schedule. Unemployment dropped by half and its economy will have grown by roughly 2.5 percent by the beginning of 2013.
So what’s Iceland’s secret? According to the editors at Bloomberg News, it’s a refusal to do what virtually every other nation that was pummeled by the crisis did: adopt policies of economic austerity.”
The Icelandic Revolution will not be televised.
Iceland isn’t exactly an AnCap paradise but they did what no one else had the balls to do in 2008, run their own country and control their own economy. Good on them.
(via reasonmagazine)
