Lehman Brothers

Lately, more and more professional investment "advisors" and newsletter recommendations boil down to just one catalyst: wait for either Germany, the ECB or the Fed to step in, as usual, and bail the world out, because, well, they have to, and any additional thought is rendered moot as fundamental analysis is meaningless under central planning (plus it is actually more work than just repeating the same stuff over and over while charging $29.95/month for it). Of course, when these same snakeoil salesmen are asked the simple question: what if said bailout does not happen, or if it happens late (for the purposes of this exercise let's assume one is not a central bank that can print its own money, have an infinite balance sheet, and can afford to be wrong almost into perpetuity), they give a blank stare, start mumbling something and walk away, especially if one mentions Lehman brothers and the simple detail that, oh, it failed. Which is why if Ray Dalio, head of the world's largest hedge fund, is correct, it may time to summarily fire and stop subscribing to each and every broken record Oracle whose template is "X will bailout Y" for the simple reason that it is wrong.

Proposals from BIS, OCC and FDIC Would Reclassify Gold as a Tier 1 Asset

In a no-holds-barred interview with Bloomberg TV's Francine Lacqua, the increasingly droopy-faced George Soros remains as sprite-minded as ever in his clarifying thoughts on Europe. His diagnosis is spot on: "Basically there is an interrelated problem of the banking system and the excessive risk premium on sovereign debt - they are Siamese twins, tied together and you have to tackle both" and summarizes the forthcoming Summit 'fiasco' as fatal if the fiscal disagreements are not resolved (and as of this afternoon, we know Germany's constant position on this). His solution is unlikely to prove tenable in the short-term as he notes "Merkel has emerged as a strong leader", but "unfortunately, she has been leading Europe in the wrong direction". His extensive interview covers what Europe needs, the Bund bubble, GRexit, post-summit contagion, and Mario Monti's impotence.

Now that all know bank collapse is guaranteed, what assinine steps will be taken next?

Let’s consider Germany. According to Axel Weber, the former  head of Germany’s Central Bank, Germany is in fact sitting on a REAL Debt to GDP ratio of over 200%. This is Germany… with unfunded liabilities equal to over TWO times its current GDP.

Someday, it will go down in history as the first trial of the modern American mafia. Of course, you won't hear the recent financial corruption case, United States of America v. Carollo, Goldberg and Grimm, called anything like that. If you heard about it at all, you're probably either in the municipal bond business or married to an antitrust lawyer. Even then, all you probably heard was that a threesome of bit players on Wall Street got convicted of obscure antitrust violations in one of the most inscrutable, jargon-packed legal snoozefests since the government's massive case against Microsoft in the Nineties – not exactly the thrilling courtroom drama offered by the famed trials of old-school mobsters like Al Capone or Anthony "Tony Ducks" Corallo. But this just-completed trial in downtown New York against three faceless financial executives really was historic. Over 10 years in the making, the case allowed federal prosecutors to make public for the first time the astonishing inner workings of the reigning American crime syndicate, which now operates not out of Little Italy and Las Vegas, but out of Wall Street.

Why hasn't anyone realized that JPM actually had negative revenue growth despite muppet maven analyst proclamations of the contrary?

The middle class has a gut feeling they are being screwed by somebody, they just can’t figure out who to blame. The ultra-wealthy elite keep up an endless cacophony of propaganda and misinformation designed to confuse an increasingly uneducated and willfully ignorant public while blurring the facts for those educated few capable of understanding the truth. They have been able to keep the masses dumbed down through government run education; distracted by sports, reality TV, Facebook, internet porn, and igadgets; lured by mass media messages of materialism; and shackled with the chains of debt used to acquire the goods sold by mega-corporations. We’ve become a society oppressed by a small faction of ultra-wealthy masters served by millions of impoverished, uneducated, sedated slaves. But the slaves are getting restless and angry. The illegally generated wealth disparity chasm is growing so large that even the ideologue talking head representatives of the elite are having difficulty spinning it. Even uneducated rubes understand when they are getting pissed on.

All you need to read.

And since it's Mr. Moneybags, one "bonus" question for the readers regarding Maiden Lane fraud and the subsequent cover up when the GAO came a knockin'

As Predicted Last Year, The French and the Greeks Are In A Race For The Biggest Bank Run! Each stock showcased has led the drop as well...

Halfway into the year, my warnings on the FIRE sector are starting to come into there own. The first look, banks and bank stock analysts!

All you can read.

Nobody on the Buy Side wants to sue JPM, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley et al for securities fraud on the more problematic deals of the past decade.

In Bankia’s case all of this culminated in the bank receiving a €19 billion Euro bailout, the largest in Spain’s history. And for certain this amount of money will be increased dramatically: Bankia’s loan book is roughly €200 billion in size (1/5^th the size of Spain’s GDP) and I can assure you a major chunk of this is total and complete garbage. That’s not the problem however. The REAL problem is that Spain itself is broke and doesn’t have the money to prop this bank up…