God Bless Robert E. Lee

 

Was he not our greatest commander?

LSP

Bankster Wipeout?

The dominoes keep falling, SBX, Silvergate, SVB, Signature NY and on, with many bank stocks halting trading Monday morning after spectacular Stuka-like nosedives. The issue? 

Banks being heavily invested in US Government bonds, a safe have when interest rates are low, toxic underperformers  on the reverse side of an apparently risky coin. And lo and behold, interest rates have risen from near zero to approaching 5%, net result? 

Underwater balance sheets. You see, when interest rates rise bond prices go down leaving their owners subpar and scrambling for liquidity, cash. And that's hard to get when you're fire-selling assets and depositors are withdrawing funds for greener pastures.

Long story short, select banks were/are out of cash and got shut down. Woe to Oprah, Harry & Meghan and all the rest but that's not all. Has the entire financial sector become infected, is US Government debt effectively a toxic security?

Zerohedge thinks so, it's long but worth the read. Here's an excerpt:

Fifteen years later… after countless investigations, hearings, “stress test” rules, and new banking regulations to prevent another financial meltdown, we have just witnessed two large banks collapse in the United States of America – Signature Bank, and Silicon Valley Bank (SVB).

Now, banks do fail from time to time. But these circumstances are eerily similar to 2008… though the reality is much worse. I’ll explain:

1) US government bonds are the new “toxic security”

Silicon Valley Bank was no Lehman Brothers. Whereas Lehman bet almost ALL of its balance sheet on those risky mortgage bonds, SVB actually had a surprisingly conservative balance sheet.

According to the bank’s annual financial statements from December 31 of last year, SVB had $173 billion in customer deposits, yet “only” $74 billion in loans.

I know this sounds ridiculous, but banks typically loan out MOST of their depositors’ money. Wells Fargo, for example, recently reported $1.38 trillion in deposits. $955 billion of that is loaned out.

That means Wells Fargo has made loans with nearly 70% of its customer’s money, while SVB had a more conservative “loan-to-deposit ratio” of roughly 42%.

Point is, SVB did not fail because they were making a bunch of high-risk NINJA loans. Far from it.

SVB failed because they parked the majority of their depositors’ money ($119.9 billion) in US GOVERNMENT BONDS.

This is the really extraordinary part of this drama.

US government bonds are supposed to be the safest, most ‘risk free’ asset in the world. But that’s totally untrue, because even government bonds can lose value. And that’s exactly what happened.

Most of SVB’s portfolio was in long-term government bonds, like 10-year Treasury notes. And these have been extremely volatile.

In March 2020, for example, interest rates were so low that the Treasury Department sold some 10-year Treasury notes at yields as low as 0.08%.

But interest rates have increased so much since then; last week the 10-year Treasury yield was more than 4%. And this is an enormous difference.

If you’re not terribly familiar with the bond market, one of the most important things to understand is that bonds lose value as interest rates rise. And this is what happened to Silicon Valley Bank.

SVB loaded up on long-term government bonds when interest rates were much lower; the average weighted yield in their bond portfolio, in fact, was just 1.78%.

But interest rates have been rising rapidly. The same bonds that SVB bought 2-3 years ago at 1.78% now yield between 3.5% and 5%… meaning that SVB was sitting on steep losses.

They didn’t hide this fact.

Their 2022 annual report, published on January 19th of this year, showed about $15 billion in ‘unrealized losses’ on their government bonds. (I’ll come back to this.)

By comparison, SVB only had about $16 billion in total capital… so $15 billion in unrealized losses was enough to essentially wipe them out.

Again– these losses didn’t come from some mountain of crazy NINJA loans. SVB failed because they lost billions from US government bonds… which are the new toxic securities.

2) If SVB is insolvent, so is everyone else… including the Fed.

This is where the real fun starts. Because if SVB failed due to losses in its portfolio of government bonds, then pretty much every other institution is at risk too.

Our old favorite Wells Fargo, for example, recently reported $50 billion in unrealized losses on its bond portfolio. That’s a HUGE chunk of the bank’s capital, and it doesn’t include potential derivative losses either.

Anyone who has purchased long-term government bonds– banks, brokerages, large corporations, state and local governments, foreign institutions– are all sitting on enormous losses right now.

The FDIC (the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, i.e. the primary banking regulator in the United States) estimates unrealized losses among US banks at roughly $650 billion.

$650 billion in unrealized losses is similar in size to the total subprime losses in the United States back in 2008; and if interest rates keep rising, the losses will continue to increase.

What’s really ironic (and a bit comical) about this is that the FDIC is supposed to guarantee bank deposits.

In fact they manage a special fund called Deposit Insurance Fund, or DIF, to insure customer deposits at banks across the US– including the deposits at the now defunct Silicon Valley Bank.

But the DIF’s balance right now is only around $128 billion… versus $650 billion (and growing) unrealized losses in the banking system.

Here’s what really crazy, though: where does the DIF invest that $128 billion? In US government bonds! So even the FDIC is suffering unrealized losses in its insurance fund, which is supposed to bail out banks that fail from their unrealized losses.

You can’t make this stuff up, it’s ridiculous!

Now there’s one bank in particular I want to highlight that is incredibly exposed to major losses in its bond portfolio.

In fact last year this bank reported ‘unrealized losses’ of more than $330 billion against just $42 billion in capital… making this bank completely and totally insolvent.

I’m talking, of course, about the Federal Reserve… THE most important central bank in the world. It’s hopelessly insolvent, and FAR more broke than Silicon Valley Bank.

What could possibly go wrong?

 

In a word, everything. Note well, I’m talking, of course, about the Federal Reserve… THE most important central bank in the world. It’s hopelessly insolvent, and FAR more broke than Silicon Valley Bank.

Got that? Smart people are liquid (does this mean loading up your safe with gold, diamonds, silver topped canes, flawless emeralds, DOGE$, worthless fiat and ammo? -- Ed.) and thinking themselves fortunate on being upside Krugerrands. That said, maybe everything will work out just fine as Biden and the Genius Patrol reassured us this morning.

See you on the other side,

LSP

Cash is King - Nitty Gritty Dirt Band

 

Yes, the Compound's sound labs take time off to play requests and here's an awesome offering from Adrienne. Check out Cash, who is notoriously King.

Most especially awesome,

LSP

Bonnie Blue

 

This seems appropriate, right about now,

LSP

Behold The MounteBanks

 

Could it be that the rainbow will bring down the economy of the Western world? Oh dear, you know what they say, go woke, go broke. All very model risk.

And look at this crook, Joseph Gentile, not once but twice. Careless, what?

chimp out

Rumors that Oprah lost 500$b in uninsured SVB deposits are entirely unfounded and the same goes for everyone's favorite royal couple, Harry and Meghan. Oprah, we're told, had to be physically restrained when she learned of her loss.

clown and simperer

Getting wild, eh? And what can we say? Simpering clown mountebank The world cries.

 D List idiot and evil

She's not even Wallace,

LSP

Bank Run!

 

Is this the end of the world as we know it? Maybe, if you're an uninsured depositor with SVB (Silicon Valley Bank) which collapsed following a liquidity wipeout brought on by an underwater balance sheet and panic-stricken clients pulling their money out of the fiscal black hole. 

Long story short, SVB was out of cash and the FDIC called game over today and shut the bank down. Via Zerohedge:

Last week we detailed BofA's Michael Hartnett's warning that "The Fed will tighten until something breaks". Well, something just broke... SVB's collapse - the second biggest US bank failure in history - dominated any reaction to this morning's mixed bag from the BLS (hotter than expected earnings growth, rising unemployment (especially for Latinos), better than expected payrolls gains).

 

 

Things started off badly as SVB crashed 65% in the pre-market before being halted. SVB bonds were puking hard and when the FDIC headline hit, the bonds collapsed further... (and) A number of small/medium sized banks were clubbed like a baby seal...

 

 

So far that'd be PacWest Bancorp, Western Alliance Bancorp, First Republic Bank/CA, and Signature Bank/NY. Will the contagion spread? That'd depend on people waking up to find their banks, too, are heavily invested in, ahem, safe havens like T-Bills, which are great until interest rates rise and then they're not.

So let's see how this bizarrely sudden Lehman style fiscal implosion plays out. In the meanwhile, smart investors are going full on into ammunition companies, precious metal and DOGE$. OK, that last one's a long game and a good one.

Beware the Ides of March,

LSP

Apocalyptic Reflection

 

Ferocious rain whips against this old wooden house as thunder rumbles and lightning flashes apocalyptically across the night sky. What is it about Stations of the Cross on a Texan Thursday evening that brings this on. I don't know, I can't fathom the ways of our old enemy the Weather, but it seems appropriate to this evening's devotion.

After all, what is the crucifixion if not the seeming triumph of Antichrist and with that we're reminded of a bestial number, a threefold series of sixes. St. John casts light on infernal mathematics in his Gospel.

At the sixth hour Christ is met by the harlot at the well. Again at the sixth hour, the followers of Caiaphas the false prophet stamp themselves with the mark of the beast, crying out, "We have no king but Caesar." Then darkness falls upon the land at the sixth hour as Jesus hangs dying on Calvary.

There it is, 666 and the character of Antichrist spelled out, whorish infidelity, idolatrous irreligion, and the murderous extinction of life itself. Such is Satan's revolt against God and the serpent appeared to have won, but not so fast.

The Samaritan woman at the well repents and becomes a great evangelist and martyr, St. Photina, in receipt of living water. The false prophets are swept away and the darkness of the cross gives out to the light of Easter and the empty tomb. Life, light and truth win over the deathly night of the beast.

All this played out in Christ's life, setting the template, model, figure and type of the final battle between good and evil. Every day draws us closer to this point and with it the lines are ever more clearly drawn and distinct. Hasten to enlist on the right side of this divide.

In the meanwhile, thunder and lightning crash down with the very force of the Eschaton itself.

Here endeth the Lesson,

LSP

British Army Fail - Outta Ammo And Men

 

It was a force which went hand in hand, charge to charge in support of the greatest empire the world has perhaps ever seen, but now Britain's armed forces are a hollowed out shadow of their former selves. 

Reeling from decades of cuts, the once mighty British Army fields less than 76,000 persons and that number's due to decline to 73,000 by 2025. Of these, one all-arms battlegroup of 25,000, one division, is fit to fight. Except that they aren't, because Whitehall's mandarins have given all their ammo to the Ukraine.

According to the Daily Express, the UK's singular combat division would "run out of ammunition within a few days if required to fight." 

Within a few days. Still, not to worry, money's been allocated to rebuild the 2.5bn GBP worth of armaments given to Zelensky's regime by London. But guess what, thanks to asset stripping, aka industrial off-shoring, ammo replenishment will take around a decade to get to the troops.

What does this mean? Most obviously, a grievous security threat, and with it a gamble on several levels. Viz. Never again will we have to fight an industrial peer-to-peer war, allowing save a lot of money by adopting high-end, high-tech, smaller defense/offense solutions. 

Gone are the days when we needed actual factories producing hundreds of thousands of shells when one smart bomb will do. In short. We will never, ever have to fight another major war in Europe or, for that matter, anywhere else. 

The second wager is like unto the first. If we're called to fight a real war, we'll supply our proxies with arms and destroy our enemy economically until we win, which won't take long. 

You can almost picture nameless, unelected bureaucracies shaking hands on a budget well kept, after all, that welfare vote doesn't come cheap, and then... those dam Russkies arrive out of the East, firing thousands of shells a day, every day, going full WWI but with drones and hypersonic glide bombs. 

What then, your hand's been called and found wanting, your bluff's been called. So what next? You, the FORPOL reader, be the judge.

Arma Virumque,

LSP

People Of The Lie

 

Do you remember the worst threat to our nation's governance and self-determinant integrity since Pearl Harbor itself? Yes, of course you do, that heinous act of sedition, insurrection and attempted rebellion which took place on January 6, 2021 in Washington DC.

There they were, Proud Boys,  the Jamiroquai guy in a bison hat and many, many more, all daring to storm the Capitol building. It was like Fort Sumter all over again but maybe worse, the attempted overthrow of this great Constitutional Republic by literal, brazen Fascists. How dare they protest our famously free, fair, utterly uncorrupt electoral process and the very rule of law itself.

The literal, brazen, breathtaking temerity of it all, but unsurprising given that Trump is a Nazi Russian spy. Of course his handlers in the Kremlin would encourage their own benighted Red color revolution on his watch. So let's thank Rainbow Carbon Zero Gaia and the Uniparty that the agents of sedition were thwarted and now rot in jail.

Kyrie Eleison. What. A. Crock. Geobbels would be proud at the sheer PR, marketeer audacity of it all. Everyone knew they were lying and now we double know their deceit because Tucker's running the tapes. Will it matter, will anyone be held to account?

Don't hold your breath and in the meanwhile, people are locked up because of this lying, faked up, profiteering, arrogant, tyrannical, self-serving mendacity.

Isn't it illegal to hide exculpatory evidence? I tell you, their Father is Satan.

Hang 'em High,

LSP

Is This The Greatest Debate Ever?

 

Keen-eyed observers of Ost Front will be aware of DPR militia celebrity Igor Strelkov (Girkin) and Yevgeny Prigozhin, commander of Russia's increasingly infamous Wagner PMC. It seems, gentle readers, that the two don't get along.

Here's Strelkov calling for Prigozhin's removal:

The formation (Wagner) must be withdrawn to the rear for replenishment and reorganization, in order to subsequently be used in a more promising strategic direction to break through the front.

But to withdraw Prigozhin himself from the front and COMPLETELY remove him from the leadership of Wagner is urgently necessary. Since his political ambitions (multiplied by psychopathy, the organization of demonstrative war crimes, a tendency to shameless and in many respects false self-promotion and the spread of rotten "criminal concepts" to the armed forces) only harm both Wagner and the common cause of victory over Ukraine.

 

Whoa. Wagner's Jefe wasn't slow to fire back:

To discuss Strelkov, in my opinion, is simply indecent. All offers were made to him: to go to the front and work in PMC Wagner. If he wants, he can come to the council of commanders and ask to become head of the Wagner PMC. I agree with all his decisions... he sits and throws feces. Therefore, why should I comment? I do not offend girls. And the fact that Strelkov is a woman, is in my opinion, already clear to everyone.

 

What can we say, Gogol and Dostoevsky live on.  Dr. Snekotron sums up the exchange neatly:

Strelkov: "Society has standards, sir"

Prigozhin: "You're a woman"

Truly the greatest debate in modern times.

 

Here at the Compound we agree. In the meanwhile, the battle for the strategic hub of Bakhmut rages on. Wagner and friendlies have it in operational encirclement but haven't closed the noose. The Ukraine, apparently, continues to reinforce what appears to be a doomed position.

Your Pal,

LSP

US FORPOL

 

Sometimes an infovid's worth more than a thousand words. And, to be fair, it's always fun to post the Dead's awesome China Cat Sunflower. Rumours that Russia's run out of tanks, planes, missiles, men, computer chips, knives, washing machines and on were apparently premature.

look at this wicked greasy satan

But serious question, who's FORPOL better, Victoria Nuland or Russian strongman, Vladimir Putin?

See you at the Dorchester,

LSP

What A Beautiful Day

 

What a beautiful day, birds sing, dogs sleep, flags wave and the sun shines down from a clear blue sky as a drug dealing ice cream van rounds the corner. It's like Spring, and I've got the front door open to air out the Manse.

Blow out those cobwebs, LSP, and take full advantage of our ancient enemy, the Weather, being in some kind of armistice mode. Enjoy every second of this fresh, clean, country day before our old adversary the Climate decides to Change and go full superheated blast furnace eschaton on the tenacious citizens of North Central Texas.

You know what it's like, it gets so hot you think the air itself is going to ignite, one careless spark and all that dust goes thermobaric. Terrifying, but for now all is good, the sacrifice of the Mass was offered at the Missions, a pot of improv Thai curry's on the stove and all is well with this part of the world.

Who knows, maybe a shoot's in order for Monday, but let's see what tomorrow brings.

Your Old Pal,

LSP