Too Big To Fail

• Fighting erupts in Ukraine as crash investigators arrive (Reuters)
• Russian Billionaires in ‘Horror’ as Putin Risks Isolation (BBG)
• Israel kills militants entering from Gaza, death toll tops 500 (Reuters)
• The other Gaza: In violent weekend, at least 40 people shot in Chicago (Reuters)
• Barclays Dark Pool Drew Early Alarms (WSJ)
• Finance Industry Bonus Hit in Poll as Revenue Disappoints (BBG)
• Severstal to Sell North American Units (WSJ)
• Yum, McDonald's apologize as new China food scandal brews (Reuters)
• Yellen Wage Gauges Blurred by Boomer-Millennial Workforce Shift (BBG)
• Ukraine Offers to Hand Over Malaysia Airlines Probe to Dutch (WSJ)

"The system we have now is one in which the Fed decides, through a Politburo of planners sitting in Washington, how much liquidity is necessary, what the interest rate should be, what the unemployment rate should be, and what economic growth should be. There is no honest pricing left at all anywhere in the world because central banks everywhere manipulate and rig the price of all financial assets. We can’t even analyze the economy in the traditional sense anymore because so much of it depends not on market forces, but on the whims of people at the Fed."

We live in a world that is becoming increasingly unstable, and people need to understand that the period of relative stability that we are enjoying right now is extremely vulnerable and will not last long. The following are 18 signs that the global economic crisis is accelerating as we enter the last half of 2014...

The bottom line is the Fed can only keep the machine duct-taped together by suppressing the market's pricing of risk. Suppressing the market's ability to price risk is throwing common-sense fiscal caution to the winds; when risk arises from its drugged slumber despite the Fed's best efforts to eliminate it, we will all reap what the Fed has sown.

Well, at least someone gets it. While just about every other central bank on the planet is giving everyone two thumbs up on the economy, the deputy chair of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (Lim Hng Kiang) said last night at a dinner that “an uneasy calm seems to have settled in markets” and that “we remain in uncharted waters.” It was quite surprising to see such pointed language from a central banking official. Mr. Lim jabbed at the “obvious” risks and said there would be “bumps on the road” ahead.

The American financial establishment has an incredible ability to celebrate the inconsequential while ignoring the vital. Last week, while the Wall Street Journal pondered how the Fed may set interest rates three to four years in the future (an exercise that David Stockman rightly compared to debating how many angels could dance on the head of a pin), the media almost completely ignored one of the most chilling pieces of financial news that I have ever seen. According to a small story in the Financial Times, some Fed officials would like to require retail owners of bond mutual funds to pay an "exit fee" to liquidate their positions. Come again? That such a policy would even be considered tells us much about the current fragility of our bond market and the collective insanity of layers of unnecessary regulation.

The damage done by Central Planning has yet to come home to roost. Six years into the Grand Experiment--that Central Planners can pick winners who just happen to be their cronies--the chickens of consequence are still making their way home. And when they finally come home to roost, we will all discover that the economy is much more fragile than advertised by the Central Planners and their media toadies.

• Obama to tout manufacturing gains, highlight economic progress (Reuters)
• Iraq Gunmen Attack North of Baghdad as Obama Weighs Plan (BBG)
• Chinese Regulators Block Shipping Alliance Abandoned Deal (WSJ)
• Russian $8.2 Trillion Oil Trove Locked Without U.S. Tech (BBG)
• Ukrainian forces, rebels clash near Russian border (Reuters)
• M&A talk lifts stocks, Iraq tensions ease slightly (Reuters)
• Wealthy Clintons Use Trusts to Limit Estate Tax They Back (BBG)
• Argentina vows to service debt despite new legal blow (Reuters)
• Allergan's Bitter Pill for Morgan Stanley (WSJ)
• Islamists kill 50 in Kenya, some during World Cup screening (Reuters)
• American Express Revs Up Pursuit of the Masses (WSJ)

The numbers that you are about to see are likely to shock you. They prove that the global financial Ponzi scheme is far more extensive than most people would ever dare to imagine. The truth is that our financial system is little more than a giant pyramid scheme that is based on debt and paper promises. It is literally a miracle that it has survived for so long without collapsing already. But at some point a day of reckoning is coming, and when it arrives it is going to be the most painful financial crisis the world has ever seen.

"The responsibility of any central bank is price stability. I was at the helm at that time. Price stability is two percent inflation, which we can’t closely control anyway. They ought to make sure that they are making policies that are convincing to the public and to the markets that they’re not going to tolerate inflation... The responsibility of the government is to have a stable currency. This kind of stuff that you’re being taught at Princeton disturbs me. Your teachers must be telling you that if you’ve got expected inflation, then everybody adjusts and then it’s OK. Is that what they’re telling you? Where did the question come from?"

Timothy Geithner is likely to go down in American history as one of the most dangerous, destructive cronies to have ever wielded government power. The man is so completely and totally full of shit it’s almost impossible not to notice. The last thing we’d ever want to do in our free time is read a lengthy book filled with Geithner lies and propaganda, so we owe a large debt of gratitude to former Congressional staffer Matt Stoller for doing it for us. Stoller simply tears Geither apart limb from limb, detailing obvious lies about the financial crisis, and even more interestingly, Geithner’s bizarre bio, replete with mysterious and inexplicable promotions into positions of power..."Geithner is at heart a grifter, a petty con artist with the right manners and breeding to lie at the top echelons of American finance..."

The core strategy of central states and banks to fix the Global Financial Meltdown of 2008 was to buy time: take extraordinary emergency monetary and regulatory measures to save the parasitic too big to fail banking sector and the rest of the crony-capitalist Wall Street parasites, and initiate an unprecedented transfer of wealth from savers and Main Street to the banks and Wall Street via zero-interest rates and credit funneled to the very players who caused the crisis. The idea was that the system would "heal itself" if authorities simply "bought time" by saving the financial sector from its own predation. The terrible irony in the official strategy of "buying time so the financial system can heal itself" is the policies prohibit healing and guarantee the next financial crisis will be greater in magnitude than the last one.

Has the next major economic downturn already started? The way that you would answer that question would probably depend on where you live. If you live in New York City, or the suburbs of Washington D.C., or you work for one of the big tech firms in the San Francisco area, you would probably respond to such a question by saying of course not. In those areas, the economy is doing great and prices for high end homes are still booming. But in most of the rest of the nation, evidence continues to mount that the next recession has already begun for the poor and the middle class.

"Unbridled faith in financial markets prior to the crisis and the recent demonstrations of corruption ... has eroded social capital. An unstable dynamic of declining trust in the financial system and growing exclusivity of capitalism threatens.... Capitalism must reassess bankers' sense of self."

After the crisis, many expected that the blameworthy would be punished or at the least be required to return their ill-gotten gains—but they weren’t, and they didn’t. Many thought that those who were injured would be made whole, but most weren’t. And many hoped that there would be a restoration of the financial safety rules to ensure that industry leaders could no longer gamble the equity of their firms to the point of ruin. This didn’t happen, but it’s not too late. It is useful, then, to identify the persistent myths about the causes of the financial crisis and the resulting Dodd-Frank reform legislation and related implementation...."Plenty of people saw it coming, and said so. The problem wasn’t seeing, it was listening."