You are welcome. You managed to put an idea into my head.

Yes I did. She got the least amount of votes.

Unfortunately gradually letting air out of bubble balloons is not what we do well. We still have many more quantitative pumps to go, and a 'wonderful' trade deal with China will be announced that in reality is little to nothing different, and I am sure folks will spend their deficit fueled tax refunds early next year. But I am convinced that by next year this time, this world is going to be a lot worse off. The general public just don't care, and nothing will be done to fix it, until there is no other way. Only then will reality set in.

The United States Treasury Secretary, Steve Mnuchin, released a statement about banking liquidity on Christmas Eve that to should send chills up the spines of those familiar with the Great Recession of 2008. To me a bank is liquid when it can convert assets to cash. And to me there lies the problem, they can't when there is no bid. The banks don't trust each other because they don't know who has derivative positions against whom.

Per Steve Mnuchin >
>Secretary Mnuchin conducted a series of calls today with the CEOs of the nations six largest banks: Brian Moynihan, Bank of America; Michael Corbat, Citi; David Solomon, Goldman Sachs; Jamie Dimon, JP Morgan Chase; James Gorman, Morgan Stanley; Tim Sloan, Wells Fargo.

The CEOs confirmed that they have ample liquidity available for lending to consumers, business markets, and all other market operations. That simply is not true. These banks sold their bundled debt to what I call the shadow banking system of which most are mutual funds and insurance companies. They don't want that bundled debt back, but it won't be long now before they will have to take it back. Either that or the Fed will have to come in with another quantitative easing program. The Fed under Powell is not going to do that. To me the weak link here is Deutsche Bank and a number of big insurance companies. In 2008 it was AIG and Lehman Brothers.

What is not being said here is that there already was a 2018 liquidity crisis that no one heard of, and Deutsche Bank is at the center of it. It has everything to do with short derivatives on bad loans.

The reason why this topic should be so concerning is because banking liquidity was at the heart of the massive 2008 financial crisis. Lehman Brothers, founded in 1850, filed for bankruptcy in 2008 after the endless amount of subprime mortgages they owned blew up on their balance sheet. The Lehman collapse kicked off a chain reaction that nearly destroyed the global economy. Because so much of our lending is concentrated among few major banks, the entities who Lehman owed money to faced their own liquidity crisis, for Lehman’s bankruptcy destroyed assets and made them less liquid, thus Lehman stopped making debt payments they had anticipated. This is why congress passed the $750 billion TARP bill in 2008 (Troubled Assets Relief Program), because Wall Street showed themselves to be so interconnected, that all it took was one bankruptcy to stop the lending between America’s largest banks. That is because they didn't trust each other. No bank knows who has what derivative positions against whom.

The day after Mnuchin sent out the “all is well” statement, CNBC reported that despite Mnuchin’s headline being “the banks all confirmed ample liquidity,” the call was not about liquidity at all. I agree with CNBC.

Munchin's calls were about a check-in with the executives on Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, the government shutdown, trade war, and most important that the banks act as one unit to keep the financial market markets from falling off a cliff. On the day after Christmas they all acted together. To me they basically bought the market by buying it on the short side.

I am happy that the Secretary of the Treasury sees problems that the rest of the market is missing. Not only did he consult with the biggest banks, but he is talking to all of the financial regulators on Christmas Eve.

Fact is investors just yanked more money out of mutual funds than at any point since the financial crisis https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-12-26/mutual-fund-outflows-surge-to-56-billion-most-since-2008. For every seller there has to be a buyer. What really gets me is in what the Fed is doing. To put it bluntly, they are Quantitative Easing QE the QT Quantitative Tightening. In other words everything is done to keep the debt bubble growing for it can not be allowed to implode.

Trump's Tweet >
> @realDonaldTrump
The only problem our economy has is the Fed. They don’t have a feel for the Market, they don’t understand necessary Trade Wars or Strong Dollars or even Democrat Shutdowns over Borders. The Fed is like a powerful golfer who can’t score because he has no touch - he can’t putt!

This president will blame everybody but himself. He started the trade wars with China, and blames them for the 70% of our imports made by American entities in China. Blames Obama for doubling the debt, and at the rate he is going he will do even better then that. Let's face it, we all live off of debt, be it in one form or another. The problem is somebody has to hold it as an investment (so called.)

Trump has been attacking the Fed for a while now (because he owes money to his creditors on interest payments and every time the Fed raises rates, he has to pay more.) The fact is that we have had one of the longest bull markets ever, seems to have finally run out of ability to borrow more because there is a lack of buyers for that debt. China can't buy our debt anymore, because it is not in their interest to do so, for our debt is at risk of default.

What really gets me is that Trump of all people wants the Fed to stop raising rates, when the Fed is not even raising rates. The Fed is raising what the Fed pays for overnight deposits in order to increase reserves to increase the debt bubble. It is those rates on deposits in the Fed that determines the interest rates.

Good post.^
The globalists will never really win or ever be in complete charge, because they are only operating on the field of thought. Their methods are never the real truth, thus all we have left is a continuation of the process of evolving of humanity. Periods of (that is coming) oppression followed by periods of some freedom, followed by periods of more oppression, and so on. Yet always a bit better than the last time. I'm sure the serfs of today are much better off than the serfs of the past feudal system as experienced in England. It is the timeline of humanity trudging laboriously on the experience being experienced. The very progression of values most of us exist on.

Now that I don't milk cows anymore, I got more time for deep thinking. Looking at all past financial bubbles, one can see that they are created to be shorted. Same applies to the financial bubble we live in today. All balloons or tires will go flat over time. On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone is zero.

The irony that quantitative money for Wall Street has been good for Wall Street but not for Main Street should not be lost on any one. Why is Main Street on what remains to be to this date, the the worst postwar economic recovery in US history. It is because the too big to fail banks are in fact a failure to this country. Right now the to big to fail banks can't wait to short stocks and bonds. Right now they want to raise interest rates to short their own financial markets and the Fang stocks. Just look at what happened today. Ever more shares in long position are being traded for shares in short position. Why? Because it turns out that 70% of what we import from China is made by American corporations operating in China. Made in China means made in China of which 70% is from our very own manufactures who have exported our manufacturing base to China. Guess what is about to happen to the coming earnings in 2019 from those entities operating in China? By this time next year, our financial well being is going to be a lot worse.

This reminds me when Trump companies were listed on Wall Street. Those shares went from over $30+ a share to $0.30+ a share. The house made all kinds of money on those shares in short position. Almost all penny stock entities raise money by issuing shares in short position. Now it is even happening on all major stock exchanges. All made possible by the removal of the Glass Steagall Act, In 1933, in the wake of the 1929 stock market crash and during a nationwide commercial bank failure and the Great Depression, two members of Congress put their names on what was known today as the Glass-Steagall Act. This act separated investment and commercial banking activities. At the time, like now "improper banking activity," or what was then overzealous commercial bank involvement in stock market investment, was the main culprit of the financial crash. All of this is all about to happen again for the very same reason, just that now it is in a more modern form as in so called financialization which is another word for presdigious (SP?) of distinction screwing.

Never in all history of mankind are we so unprepared. Just a little self sufficiency is going to go a long way in the future. Debt is not a nutritional food source. Debt is not a home to live in. Debt is not a vehicle to drive with.

I have no idea who this Charles is.

Just the opposite is true. They are not paid to figure it out. They are paid to make sure we the people don't figure it out. They are there to work for people who have money, not those that don't. Just look at what Trump is doing. The truth of the matter is that basically everyone wants to enrich themselves, even if it means at the expense of somebody else. The trick is to learn to create your own credit, lend it to yourself, which enables you to make the payments to yourself, thus the first payment makes the second payment and the second payment makes the third payment and so on. There is no way in hell that our elected so called representatives are going to help people to help themselves. There is no money in it for them.

A little bit off subject here = ever since I changed my profile to charge to get to know me, I am having a lot better luck. I finally figured it out that this website is basically a commercial website, and to have any luck, one has to flow with it, not against it. Same applies to what the elected representatives are doing. They don't do nothing unless there is something in it for them, even if it means destroying the country financially. That is what they are doing. That is not what we elected them to do.

John Galt is a character in Ayn Rand's novel Atlas Shrugged (1957). Although he is not identified by name until the last third of the novel, he is the object of its often-repeated question "Who is John Galt?" and of the quest to discover the answer.

To me right now John Galt so called is our secretary of the Treasury who made his money as a so called investment banker so called, which is just another term for legal looting by blowing bubbles that get shorted. Right now the money is made on the short side. Hopefully this will be short term, but I have this feeling it is going to be long term. Hopefully they can just cut the US$ value in half to reduce the value of our debt, and then continue the debt scheme like we have been for decades.

There is an endless list of concerns, be it China's slowing growth, the EU slowdown, trade wars, the president berating the Fed, a slow down in the US economy, and so on. We know China and the EU are struggling, but now the markets are in panic mode because the US economy is also struggling. The US real economy keeps contracting, while debt keeps increasing, thus global capital markets are in the sell mode. Making things worse is the turmoil in Washington. Investors are losing faith because Trump is turning into the type of president many always feared he would be: unrestrained and unpredictable. Trump loves to use fear mongering to show how tough he is, but ends up making a fool of himself instead. Why can't we fix what is broken? Total debt on the books is north of $80 Trillion in the USA alone, and there is $2.7 Trillion available to pay it with, and half of that is overseas.

The status quo has a simple fix for every financial crisis.

1. create credit out of thin air

2. lend the credit out as if it was money in the form of an IOU and just add it to the debt pile.

The way these status quo entities increase their wealth and income is to lend this thin air credit or near free money to commoners at much higher rates of interest. Borrow from central banks at 1% and lend it to you at 4.5%, 7% or even 19% or more. What's not to like?

If a bank is insolvent, it can borrow money at 1% from central banks. If John and Jane Blow are insolvent, the only loan they can get is a high interest loan, if they can get any credit (loan) at all.

Making rich people richer doesn't fix what's broken, it only makes the problems worse. SO WHY CAN'T WE FIX WHAT'S BROKEN ?

It's a question that deserves an answer.

To me, any meaningful systemic reform threatens the entrenched, self-serving interest/elite which have an incentive to squash or water down any reform that threatens their monopoly, benefits, etc.

It's far cheaper in cash and political capital to block something then it is to push through a reform that reduces the skims and scams of entrenched, self-serving interests.

Entrenched, self-serving elites are disconnected from the real world of the commoners; they live in protective bubbles, from you-can't-fire-me job security to gold-plated healthcare to generous pensions, access to central bank credit lines-- all of which is unavailable to the commoners. As a result, they do not grasp the real problems.

The corporate media and the social media giants are entrenched interests, and so it serves their interests to ceaselessly promote the status quo.

As long as workers and materials are available and the money is added in a way that reaches consumers, adding money will create the demand necessary to prompt producers to create more supply. Supply and demand will rise together and prices will remain stable. The reverse is also true. If demand (money) is not increased, supply and GDP will not go up. New demand needs to precede new supply.

When it comes right down to it, banks are supposed to be entities that compete with each other in the making of loans in a process that supplies liquidity to the economy. Instead the banks are making too many bad loans from thin air credit that get bundled into AAA securities and sold to the public in mutual funds or some other entity for it is very profitable for the bank as long as they can sell the loan before it goes bad. Right now, way too many AAA rated securities are being repriced to a much lower price to compensate for the risk that many of these loans will be defaulted on. How have we gotten to this point where banks lend out thin air credit as if it was money by turning it into an IOU, then sell it to the public for them to take the loss. Why is it that a home owner can't short his house, but a financial entity can by shorting the security the loan is bundled into?

The SOLUTION to our financial problems is simple. Bring honest money into circulation in debt free form. Why can't we do that? WHY CAN'T WE FIX WHAT IS BROKEN? Right now the debt **** is hitting the fan, and nobody is doing nothing to solve it.

Texting to a woman profile that is really a man. Texting a profile with a white picture of an elderly lady that turns out to be black and 30 years younger.

I agree they have no place here, but I would not call them horrible human beings, for most are just an internet construct.

I am not allowed to say what I would like to say. I really don't care if they remove my post, but what is going on here is un-American. Just look at the so called list of people who have viewed me. At least 9 out of 10 do not exist in physical form as shown on the picture.

That has happened to me, but I have found out that they simply re-appear with a different picture, city, state or country. It turns out that once they have a certain amount of responses, be it 1 or 10 or more, they just remove the profile bring in a new one with a different picture, city, state or country.

I agree that there are members on here that deactivate before logging off. Most of the time but not all of the time they re-appear with a different picture and city, state or country.

Yes, for you are still married. Basically you are looking for a new squeeze while still married.
Sometimes things just don't work out. Then the question becomes what to do about it. Fix it or not to fix it. I know of many couples who simply stay married because all of their equity is in the house. They even sleep in different bedrooms. The truth is they are more married to their jobs then each other, but need a place to sleep. Both incomes are needed to pay the mortgage and household bills. It is not easy to split a house, but one can split where one lives in that house.
If I was you I would talk to your wife, and then try to have a more open marriage, where you and your wife make it ok to flirt and be flirted with, as long as that is as far as it goes. They say practice makes perfect, so try it on each other.

Now that Trump is president, I like the idea that Mulvaney will become his chief of staff. Trump needs all the help he can get and then some. The question is will Trump listen to reason. We will soon see...., but most Americans are not going to like what his new chief of staff wants to do. But I kind of agree with it, but it needs modifications. His idea of self reliance is a plus to me. He wants to cut the cost of Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid and has a plan for doing so. It actually makes sense, but most people will never agree with me.

The Democrats will have little trouble to undo what Walker of Wisconsin signed into law if they are serious about it. The trouble is they are not, and that is why it passed in the first place.

When you write a post and take the curser (arrow) out of the post reply box and then back in, you get a double post that takes more time to post when you hit the post reply button.

Having the forums on here is going increase the need for bandwith and maintenance and costs associated with the two.

I am going to get flake for this, but if I was management, I would take the Quote part out, and I would take out the automatic viewed my profile profiles that are not real. I realize that will reduce traffic, but I think it will be short lived. Your biggest problem here is way too many real profiles leave because they are attacked by the fakes.

This site is very addicting, especially for people who spent more then 5 hours a day on here.

To find what does not exist

"If the people were to ever find out what we have done, we would be chased down the streets and lynched."
George H. W. Bush

Right now the Bush and Clinton people are in control of the Trump presidency.