By | 1 Comment
Concerns about an imminent bank crash were further fueled today by news that HSBC are restricting the amount of cash that customers can withdraw from their own bank accounts. Customers were told that without proof of the intended use of their own money, HSBC would refuse to release it. This, and other worrying signs point to a possible financial crash in the near future.
HSBC Collapse
HSBC is scrambling to manage a seemingly terminal liquidity crisis (a lack of hard cash) that could see the bank become the next Northern Rock – and trigger a bank crash. The analyst’s advice is for shareholders to sell HSBC investments, and for customers to move their accounts elsewhere before the crash.
This from the Telegraph:
Forensic Asia on Tuesday began its coverage of Britain’s largest banking group with a ‘sell’ recommendation, warning the lender had between $63.6bn (£38.7bn) and $92.3bn of “questionable assets” on its balance sheet, ranging from loan loss reserves and accrued interest to deferred tax assets, defined benefit pension schemes and opaque Level 3 assets.
Citing a report by the BBC’s MoneyBox Program, HSBC customers are withdrawingn cash from their accounts, simply because HSBC would not release the funds. Customers were told to make a bank transfer instead, unless they supplied documentation showing the planned use of their money. Stephen Cotton tried a withdrawal and told the program:
“When we presented them with the withdrawal slip, they declined to give us the money because we could not provide them with a satisfactory explanation for what the money was for. They wanted a letter from the person involved.”Mr Cotton says the staff refused to tell him how much he could have: “So I wrote out a few slips. I said, ‘Can I have £5,000?’ They said no. I said, ‘Can I have £4,000?’ They said no. And then I wrote one out for £3,000 and they said, ‘OK, we’ll give you that.’ “He asked if he could return later that day to withdraw another £3,000, but he was told he could not do the same thing twice in one day.As this was not a change to the Terms and Conditions of your bank account we had no need to pre-notify customers of the change”He wrote to complain to HSBC about the new rules and also that he had not been informed of any change.The bank said it did not have to tell him. “As this was not a change to the Terms and Conditions of your bank account, we had no need to pre-notify customers of the change,” HSBC wrote.
Mr Cotton is not alone, while other customers are seeking to withdraw cash amounts over £3,000 are they facing the same obstacles. While HSBC argues that their customer’s well being comes first, the story simply doesn’t add up. Customer identification is required for large withdrawals, not a customer’s intentions – a person’s cash is theirs to withdraw and place wherever they wish to so. Instead, HSBC has been found to have a capitalized upon a black hole (gap between actual cash and obligations) of $80bn. The message is simple, get your money out now.
The Gold Rush
The major banks and financial super powers appear to be preparing for an impending crisis, while pretending that the economic situation is improving.
There is a gold rush underway, with Banks and institutions frantically buying up as much gold reserves as they can, stoking fears that confidence in currency is at an all-time low. Recently, banks like HSBC and JP Morgan, and countries such as the US, Germany and China have joined the gold rush, making vast purchases of stocks.
Investment analysts at Seeking Alpha have been monitoring the strange activity on the COMEX, stating:
Another Bank Crash? Why?
The US dollar is a fiat currency (so are the pound sterling, the euro and most other major currencies). This means that it’s monopoly money. There are no gold reserves that its values are imbedded into, it’s simply made up. So how does money get made? A private, for profit central bank prints it and lends it to the government (or other banks) at an interest rate. So the Central Bank prints $100, and gives it to the government on the basis that it returns $101. You may have already spotted the first flaw in this process. The additional $1 can only come from the Central Bank. There is never enough money. The second issue is that all money is debt.
This used to be the way pretty much all of the money in circulation came to be. That is, until Investment and Retail Banks got tired of this monopoly on debt based currency, and kicked off the commercial money supply. You might assume that when you take out a loan or other form of credit, a bank gives you that money from its reserves, and you then pay back that loan to the Bank at a given interest rate – the Bank making its profit on the interest rate. You would be wrong. The Bank simply creates that loan on a computer screen. Let’s say you are granted a loan for $100,000. The moment that loan is approved and $100k is entered on the computer – that promise from you to the bank creates $100k for the bank, in that instant. This ledger entry alone creates the $100k, from nothing. Today, over 97% of all money that exists, is made this way.
This is what drove the dodgy lending practises that created the last crisis. But since then, the failure to regulate the markets means that while bailouts hit public services and the real economy – banks were free to continue the same behaviour, bringing the next crash.
The world’s second richest man, Warren Buffet warned us in 2003 that the derivatives market was ‘devised by madmen’ and a ‘weapon of mass destruction’ and we have only seen the first blast in this debt apocalypse.
The news that should have us all worried is: the derivatives market contains $700trn of these debts yet to implode.
Global GDP stands at $69.4trn a year. This means that (primarily) Wall Street and the City of London have run up phantom paper debts of more than ten times of the annual earnings of the entire planet.
Not only can the Bankers not pay it back, the combined earning power of the earth could not pay it back in less than ten years if every last cent of our productive power went solely to pay off this debt.
This is why answering the issues with our currencies, our banking practices and economic system are not theoretical or academic – they are a matter of our very survival.
Source:
http://iacknowledge.net/
No comments:
Post a Comment