Broken System

At the end of the day, everything the Fed has done has been focused on propping up a broken system. Eventually the Fed’s efforts will fail at which point so will the Fed (just as the last two Central Banks in the US failed). 

If structural reform is impossible as a result of lobbying (i.e. the political capture of governance and regulation) by vested interests that profit handsomely from these broken systems, collapse is the only "fix" left.

Vested interests are threatened by the losses generated by small financial fires, so these are systemically suppressed. As a result, the fallen deadwood piles ever higher, creating more fuel for the next random lightning strike to ignite. Once the deadwood piles high enough, the random lightning strike ignites a fire so fast-moving and so hot that it cannot be suppressed, and the entire financial system burns to the ground. So go ahead and keep defending the Status Quo as the best system possible, or believe Elites will keep suppressing fires forever because they're so powerful, or whatever excuse, rationalization or justification you prefer. It won't matter, because the firestorm won't respond to words, beliefs, ideological certainties, reassurances or official pronouncements. It will do what fires do, which is burn all available fuel until there's no fuel left to consume.

Goodbye ZIRP, hello NIRP. Today's decision by the ECB to officially lower the deposit facility rate to negative (as in you pay the bank to hold your deposits) is shocking, but not surprising: we previewed just this outcome precisely two years ago in "Europe's "Monetary Twilight Zone" Neutron Bomb: NIRP." Here is what we wrote in June 2012 about Europe's unprecedented NIRP monetary experiment.

There was much said in last week's primetime interview between Edward Snowden and NBC's Brian Williams. But perhaps more interesting than what was said in the one hour time-slot, was what was contained in the three extra hours of conversations that were not broadcast, such as Snowden's questioning of the American intelligence community’s inability to stop the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. One such segment, as transcribed by RT, involves the former NSA contractor's response to a question from Williams on how to prevent further attacks from Al Qaeda and other "non-traditional enemies" in which Snowden suggested that United States had the proper intelligence ahead of 9/11 but failed to act.

After years of being mocked by the establishment and the majority of the herd, today millions of "conspiracy theorists" can pat themselves on the back because this Pulitzer's for you. Well, technically it is for the Guardian and WaPo, since these were the media outlets that Edward Snowden picked to release his trove of whistleblowing treasures, which the Pulitzer committee decided were "worthy" of the prize for their "revelation of widespread secret surveillance by the National Security Agency, marked by authoritative and insightful reports that helped the public understand how the disclosures fit into the larger framework of national security."

We wonder: why does the truth about the broken system, as witnessed and experienced by individual employees, always wait until said employee is about to depart their employer or just after? Obviously that is rhetorical. However, it is worth mentioning, because in the latest such revelation, a retiring SEC trail attorney veteran, James Kidney, who had been with the agency since 1986 and retired this month, just crucified his now former employer for doing precisely all those thing that outside critics - notably Zero Hedge - have accused the most coopted, clueless, corrupt and criminal regulators of doing. Only he said it in a way that not even we could have phrased. The SEC has become “an agency that polices the broken windows on the street level and rarely goes to the penthouse floors,” Kidney said, according to a copy of his remarks obtained by Bloomberg News. “On the rare occasions when enforcement does go to the penthouse, good manners are paramount. Tough enforcement, risky enforcement, is subject to extensive negotiation and weakening.”

For a variety of reasons, the Federal Reserve is viewed by many as the financial Master of the Universe. Given how the media hangs on every pronouncement and the visible power of the Fed's policies to move markets, this view is understandable. But suppose rather than being masters of all things financial, the Fed was actually little more than a collection of incompetents trapped in a broken system that is beyond repair. Rather than Masters of the Universe, the Fed's governors are increasingly looking more like deer caught in the headlights of a transformation they cannot understand, much less control.

Moments ago, the Senate Banking Committee started a hearing on the topic of "Financial Stability And Data Security." We assume the topic discussed will be financial stability, the highly diluted final version of the Volcker Rule, Dodd Drank, the London Whale, and other things legislators have no understanding of. As such it will be a complete waste of time, and the only thing that can possibly force anyone to fix the broken system is the next systemic crash, one which the central banks, already all in with their bailout efforts, will be unable to resolve.

All the pundits who preach an economic recovery in the US always fall strangely silent when asked to share their thoughts on the following chart (taken from the St. Louis Fed), showing the annual change in real disposable income per capita in the US. What seems to stump them most is that aside from the 2012 year end aberration (due to accelerated distribution of dividends ahead of the 2013 tax hikes) is that in November the series finally posted its first Y/Y decline (-0.1%) since the Lehman collapse. But as the chart notes, the data is "per capita" and as everyone knows, under the New Normal, some "per capitas" are more equal than other "per capitas." Enter the billionaires. As Bloomberg summarizes, "The richest people on the planet got even richer in 2013, adding $524 billion to their collective net worth, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, a daily ranking of the world’s 300 wealthiest individuals. The aggregate net worth of the world’s top billionaires stood at $3.7 trillion at the market close on Dec. 31, according to the ranking. "The rich will keep getting richer in 2014," John Catsimatidis, the billionaire founder of real estate and energy conglomerate Red Apple Group Inc., said in a telephone interview from his New York office.

Earlier in the week, we detailed JPMorgan's attempt to create their own "web cash" alternative to Bitcoin (and Sberbank's talk of doing the same). However, as M-Cam details, following the failure of the first 154 'claims', JPMorgan issued a further 20 claims - which were summarily rejected (making JPMorgan 0-175 for approved claims). As they note, The United States Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO)’s handling of applications like JPMorgan’s ‘984 application ("Bitcoin Alternative") highlights the need to fix a broken system - patent applications of existing inventions need to be finally rejected and not be resurrected as zombies (no matter how powerful the claimant). Obviously, large financial institutions want in on the online alternative currency action. But they would be well advised to pursue novel and non?obvious approaches that do not duplicate existing commercial options with respect to a virtual medium of exchange.

Overnight, the WSJ reported a financial factoid well-known to regular readers: namely that as a result of a broken system that ever since the LTCM bailout has encouraged banks to become take on so much risk they become systematically important (as in their failure would "end capitalism as we know it"), and thus Too Big To Fail, there has been an unprecedented roll-up of existing financial institutions especially among the top, while the smaller, less "relevant", if far more prudent banks have been forced out of business. "The decline in bank numbers, from a peak of more than 18,000, has come almost entirely in the form of exits by banks with less than $100 million in assets, with the bulk occurring between 1984 and 2011. More than 10,000 banks left the industry during that period as a result of mergers, consolidations or failures, FDIC data show. About 17% of the banks collapsed."

The basic predicament we are in is that the current crop of leaders in the halls of monetary and political power do not appear to understand the dimensions of our situation. The mind-boggling part about all this is that it's not really all that hard to grasp. Our collective predicament is simply this: Nothing can grow forever. Sooner or later everything must cease growing or it will exhaust its environs and thereby destroy itself.  The Fed is busy doing everything in its considerable power to get credit (that is, debt) growing again so that we can get back to what they consider to be "normal." But the problem is -- or the predicament I should more accurately say -- is that the recent past was not normal.

Everybody in America wants health care - but most Americans seem to want someone else to pay for it.  In the United States today, the way that our system works is that the hard working, productive members of society pay for the health care of everyone else.  At least under socialism everyone gets the same benefits.  Our system of health care is a very twisted version of socialism where millions upon millions of very hard working people are forced to pay for the health care of others, but often can't afford to purchase decent health insurance for themselves. When you add it all up, the hard working, productive members of society are at least partially subsidizing the health care of well over half of all Americans while having to pay for their own health care at the same time. Needless to say, it isn't too hard to see who is getting the raw end of the deal.

When over four years ago we put together our "How To [Read/Tip Off] Zero Hedge Without Attracting The Interest Of [Human Resources/The Treasury/Black Helicopters]" Guide", many thought we were being paranoid. We weren't, as last week's revelations by Edward Snowden demonstrated to the entire world. And yet, besides those from the intelligence community, few realized just how deep the reach of the Turnkey Totalitarian Tyranny ("TTT" or the Orwellian Banana Republic) truly goes. So as the Snowden enthusiasm spreads and more and more insiders with intimate knowledge of the broken system step up to expose the unconstitutional actions and illegal deeds that occur each and every day in the dark corner of US society well on its route to inevitable dissolution (ref USSR and WB Yeats), the question arises: how to do it - How to leak information to the press and other distribution agents without tipping off the very espionage agency at the nexus of it all? Luckily while information may be intercepted at every electronic turn, it still is largely free (at least until the advent of the Internet kill switch). So for all you wannabe Snowdens out there, here from Wired's Nicholas Weaver, is the perfectly timed "The Whistleblower’s Guide to the Orwellian Galaxy: How to Leak to the Press", which should answer all the 30,000 foot-level questions...