Bank of International Settlements

In 2013 when he started dumping his Chinese property holdings he was being ridiculed and criticized. Everyone was bullish on China’s real estate market... and we know what happened next. It turns out you don’t want to bet against a man with a track record like Li Ka-shing's - the richest man in Asia. So when Li gets a second passport and creates a Plan B by restructuring his investment companies, moving his money and his assets far away to safe, stable locations so that no single government has control over him, it is perhaps time to pay attention.

If we review the events of 2014, it seems the situation has intensified: governments are still overwhelmed with debt, our fiat money system is unsupported, our central banks insist on accumulating debt and making money valueless. Will someone realize we have to pull the plug? And when we do, because it will happen whether we want it or not, how can we hedge against the damage that we will all be exposed to? Owning physical precious metals stored outside the banking system is a proven and essential form of monetary insurance against the uncertainties and negative surprises we see in our world today.

Every year, David Collum writes a detailed "Year in Review" synopsis full of keen perspective and plenty of wit. This year's is no exception. "I have not seen a year in which so many risks - some truly existential - piled up so quickly. Each risk has its own, often unknown, probability of morphing into a destructive force. It feels like we’re in the final throes of a geopolitical Game of Tetris as financial and political authorities race to place the pieces correctly. But the acceleration is palpable. The proximate trigger for pain and ultimately a collapse can be small, as anyone who’s ever stepped barefoot on a Lego knows..."

This is it, folks; this is the endgame right in front of our faces. The year of 2014 is the new 2007, with all the negative potential but 100 times more explosive going into 2015. Our nation has wallowed in slowly degrading financial conditions for years, hidden by fake economic statistics and manipulated stock prices. All of it has been a prelude to a much more frenetic and shocking event. We expect a hailstorm of geopolitical crises over the next year to provide cover for the shift away from the dollar. Ultimately, the death of the dollar will be hailed in the mainstream as a “good and necessary thing.” They will call it “karma.” They will call it “progress.” They will even call it “decentralization” and a success for the free market. But it will not feel like a positive development for the American public, who will suffer greatly as the dollar crumbles.

For the first time in almost 3 years, the 'market' is fighting the PBOC in the FX markets. The last month has seen USDCNY rise almost 9 handles to as high as 6.21 (the weakest CNY in 5 months). At the same time, the PBOC's official 'fix' of CNY has been strengthened to below 6.12 (the strongest CNY in 9-months) diverging by the most in six months from the market. "The market is staying cautious and even bearish on the China macro outlook," notes Morgan Stanley, but as HSBC explains, "China doesn't want to join the currency wars [and wants to stall any speculation on trend] and that explains the fix movement." Simply put, markets doubt the PBOC and believe it will eventually be dragged into the currency war or just fundamentally deteriorate enough to warrant capital flight.

"The highly abnormal is becoming uncomfortably normal... There is something vaguely troubling when the unthinkable becomes routine."

There is a saying that you don’t ring bells at the top. It’s not really true. Every time the market forms a major peak, at least in the last 15 years, there are usually a preponderance of signs of excessive speculation and leverage.

Throughout history, in most cases of economic collapse the societies in question believed they were financially invincible just before their disastrous fall. Rarely does anyone see the edge of the cliff or even the bottom of the abyss before it has swallowed a nation whole. This lack of foresight, however, is not entirely the fault of the public. It is, rather, a consequence caused by the manipulation of the fundamental information available to the public by governments and social gatekeepers.

And then there was the precious metals market: a market which all the Keynesian fanatic paper bugs said was immune from manipulation, be it of the central or commercial bank kind, even with every other market clearly exposed for perpetual rigging either by hedge funds, by prop desks, by HFTs, or central banks themselves. Sadly this too conspiracy theory just was crushed into the reality of conspiracy fact, when moments ago the FT reported that alongside admissions of rigging every other market, UBS - always the proverbial first rat in the coalmine, to mix and match metaphors- is about to "settle" allegations of gold and silver rigging. In other words: it admits it had rigged the gold and silver markets, without of course "admitting or denying" it did so.

"... the admissions of financial danger by internationalists, the sharp drop in stocks at the beginning of fall, the reversal of the political theater, and the fact that mainstream investors now recognize the illegitimacy of the markets yet continue with the scam anyway, signals the last gasp of the global economy. I expect increasing market instability from this point on, as well as numerous geopolitical distractions which will be blamed for the fiscal chaos. Needless to say, the coming storm is a deliberately engineered one, meant to achieve very specific goals, including a fearful and panicked populace, easy to manipulate as the system goes off the rails for the last time."

We have a modest proposal to the Bank of International Settlements, aka the "central banks' central bank": the next time you feel like warning the general public about: "low volatility everywhere" or that asset prices are at "elevated" level, that "it is hard to avoid the sense of a puzzling disconnect between the markets’ buoyancy and underlying economic developments globally", that "despite the euphoria in financial markets, investment remains weak" that "the temptation to go for shortcuts is simply too strong, even if these shortcuts lead nowhere" that "As each day goes by, it seems less and less likely central banks can now really do “whatever it takes”, maybe it should discuss its asset-bubble, volatility-crushing, impotent-central banking concerns with its Board of Directors first?

With a combined position of nearly $2 trillion in US government debt, against which they hold little or no capital buffer, US banks are now extremely vulnerable to a bond market sell-off.

• M&A Bubble is bursting: AbbVie Says It Reconsiders Merger Pact With Shire (WSJ)
• Winner of bad headline timing award: Spinoffs Could Set Stage for Next Merger Wave (BBG) - and now wait for the spinoffs getting pulled
• Record mortgage settlement pushes Bank of America into third-quarter loss (Reuters)
• Korea joins the Japan currency war: Bank of Korea Cuts Base Rate (WSJ)
• Double Irish’s Slow Death Leaves Google Executives Calm (BBG)
• Global Oil Glut Sends Prices Plunging (WSJ)
• Slow Rise in Prices Shows China’s Economy Is Still Struggling (WSJ)

The global debt levels have swollen to 200 year highs. Yep, 200 year highs!

There is a saying that you don’t ring bells at the top. It’s not really true. Every time the market forms a major peak, at least in the last 15 years, there are usually a preponderance of signs of excessive speculation and leverage.