“the Swiss National Bank. As I said above, don’t forget there are still central banks deeply entrenched in QE and, beyond local government bonds, are buying foreign assets (in large amounts). Switzerland’s central bank has more freshly printed money to put to work every quarter, and has been increasing their allocation to equities dramatically–$80 billion of which is now (as of the end of the first quarter) in U.S. stocks! That’s a 29% bigger stake than they had at the end of 2016. The SNB is the world’s eighth biggest public investor.” (https://www.forbes.com/sites/bryanrich/2017/05/16/this-central-bank-owns-80-billion-worth-of-u-s-stocks/)
Technology & Culture:
Sorry to shatter some expectations, BitCoin will not make mankind “better” just as the iPhone not “automatically” made mankind “better”.
Technology can always be used for good or evil – the question is – will mankind be able to come up with a method of coming to intelligent informed decision as “a crowd of 10 billion”. (democracy tried to be such a method but now fails massively btw nowadays democracy has almost nothing to do with ancient Greek style democracy where only:
“citizens” (men with swords) were allowed to vote
it was voted on very direct concrete things like “should we go to war with Troja or not?” (black stone in the basket = no, white stone in the basket = yes, not almost obscure complex laws that nobody not even the politicians that vote on it understand)
Socrates said: only those that think deeply and rationally about things should be let near a vote
The BlockChain can be used for evil: NSA will create a “permanent” = unalterable record of every “fart” anyone ever did (total 1984 mass surveillance dictatorship) – “building perfect records of people’s lifes”
The BlockChain can be used for good: help mankind survive by adding biodiversity to financial monetary systems by providing an alternative to debt created FIAT.
The amount of Bitcoins are limited by math – but what does math stop from diving bitcoins into smaller and smaller bits? (Just the amount of 0.00000000001 post-dot-digits one’s computer can process (it is actually not so easy for some programming languages X-D to process very large or very small numbers))
Same as an iPhone / Android phone SHOULD have a flashlight that might help people not fall in holes at night, when the “main flashlight” (the MAIN FIAT CURRENCY) fails.
So YES bitcoin can help mankind survive – which we hope all agree on – is a good thing.
but things need to be taken further: as technology improve – culture should improve too
the character of mankind re-cultivating from greed lying cheating egoism to altruism less aggressive more cooperative more sustainable more sharing more fair way of survival IS HARD BUT POSSIBLE 🙂
the “traditional” US business model – highly fragile and unsustainable – let’s change!
USA healthcare system was broken before Corona, this is what a birth costs a US citizens even WITH health insurance: 🙈
“I know it’s cliche to say so, but this (private equity owned) hospital charging parents “$39.95″ to hold their newborn baby is a REALLY tight microcosm of capitalism.” (src: twitter.com)
this is how capitalism + reckless corrupt politicians KILL their own people
The Declaration of Independence – for it’s age of over 250 years – was and still is (!) GREAT AMAZING MASTER PIECE OF CULTURE AND CIVILIZATION.
A beacon of light in the middle ages.
Now it seems the corrupting forces of capitalistic have worked steady on going back in time to the middle ages (PLEASE NOT AGAIN!) (corruption -> collapse -> say hello to the middle ages, rebuild from ash and rubble)
when Trump prints $2Trillion new Dollars and hand them out IN SECRECY WITHOUT ANY conditions (to bail out wallstreet (“the cancer”) not mainstreet (the society/worker)) he makes a terrible mistake and just increased INBALANCE and DECREASED STABILITY
i expect Trump to step down in the next weeks for mishandling a massive crisis
Trump and other’s do not understand – they are not as important and mighty as they think – that without a rise in paychecks – without people working for it – money is worth NOTHING – it becomes paper without a function and purpose.
also:
Central Banks and
law makers
NEED TO REALIZE THAT ALTERNATIVES (biodiversity of monetary / cooperation systems = is good = more stable economy & society) ARE GOOD AND SHOULD BE ALLOWED
this also means: gov (of course should not over tax anybody) BUT NEEDS TO ALLOW/ACCEPT PAYMENT OF TAXES in many other currencies such as BitCoins
ALLOW ALTERNATIVES TO FIAT CURRENCIES OR RISK SOCIETY COLLAPSE
have killed the American Dream. (some are still fighting… like Elon Musk)
for me: it is a crisis of ignorance = STUPIDITY (not bliss) and lack of education
If you want to kill a country – kill it’s education system.
Because in a society full of idiots – what do you think will happen?
Shit will happen. A LOT OF SHIT.
USA… sorry to say but… unless USA can do the turnaround and become a beacon of light again – refugees will be the least problem – Nobody will want to move there anymore.
My sincere sympathy with the US Jills and Joes of mainstreet.
Mother nature is stronger than the US-president and capitalism – or any human made system.
Mother nature can snip with her fingers.
And that was it for species mankind.
Mankind has been arrogant.
The question is: Can mankind learn fast enough from it’s past mistakes – to evolve – to something truly educated – truly developed in spirit mind awareness intelligence and so on – or will mankind never take the leap?
And just implode as capitalism does over and over again.
Everyone thought (again like 1929) the wall street tower of Babylon would grow beyond the sky.
All those highly studied and trained economics and analysts made us believe – this system – that produced massive amounts of traumatized people and raped landscapes – is somehow “just” and “working great” and bringing prosperity and freedom to everyone.
(well it did work for some people for a few years – and yes – China’s move from communist dictatorship to communist capitalist dictatorship has allowed many poor people to earn some money and buy a fridge or a motorbike or whatever they wanted)
In the end – those highly studied economists, analysts bankers and lawyers are just follower of a very very bad religion called capitalistic egoism.
The money religion with it’s devastating effects on the human spirit.
It turns caring people into assholes.
And guess how fucked up the world will look then?
Especially Mr Trump and many private bankers who thought they are god or godlike.
Now mother nature shows them their limits.
Capitalism proofs to be the poker card house that implodes like a over inflated balloon at the slightest crisis.
Crises are part of capitalism, they say.
But crises are just shit, as shitty as Windows 95 was.
If someone told you: “Windows 95” is the best opreating system in the world and there will be no other operating system.
Well… then mankind would be doomed. X-D
(productivity of mankind would be severely hindered… i could not type this long text without frequent reboots crashes and loss of all data X-D)
Capitalism crashes all the time – the question is not if – but when.
The state / Bundesbank may no longer print cash money, the ECB / La Garde has this right.
La Garde is a studied Lawyer that took an internship in the US, worked at the IMF (a largely US institution).
How much innovation can you expect from a lawyer?
Not a lot.
Also: Who’s orders is she following? Who does she report to? I do not trust her – neither did i trust her Italian predecessor.
Analysts gain, scream out to politics/the state to fix the problems of capitalism:
The state can “steer” capitalism and society via taxes.
Unfortunately the EU and the US states have failed to do so (because they are big company lobby controlled) as can be seen on the matter of Tax Justice (see Amazon Apple and co.)
Billions lost due to tax evasion (source: 2016 Statista / EU Commission)
France: € 10.08 Billion
United Kingdom/GB/UK: 8.52 billion €
Germany: 7.22 Billion €
Spain: 3.19 Billion €
Sweden: 2.71 billion € (IKEA!)
Netherlands: € 2.04 Billion
Belgium: € 2.01 Billion
Italy: 1.73 Billion €
Total: 37.50 billion € for these 8 countries per year!
Cash (ECB) printing money helped get private banks back on their feet in 2008 (many large companies like GM have also received government loans), but can it help this time?
The Bloomberg analysts say: no. This time the economy has to be stimulated by the tax(facilitation)side.
However, since the states are still working on the debt reduction of the last crisis, they can no longer hold forth as debtors of a FIAT (it will be light/it will be money) system.
It is as feared that modern Turbo capitalism is a (Poker)House of Cards.
Built more on Profit madness than on reason.
Some even predict in 1970 the end of the FIAT Euro and FIAT USD and that now a US-EU Bitcoin Blockchain currency “the Phoenix” could come.
(the amount of Bitcoins is not arbitrarily multipliable, but you can divide a Bitcoin trillions of times… X-D)
The DMark, by the way-was one of the first FIAT (covered by the central bank without Gold) issued currencies.
Nobody thought this would work for a long time.
But it did, because people worked hard for the paper money, even if it was just paper.
Not Gold but the value of labour – that was what gave value to paper FIAT money.
We all wish that good ideas can be implemented, but FIAT money rarely arrives in the real economy.
Seen in this way, the private banks have dug their own grave.
Unfortunately, the Elon Musk is also now in a sense under the economic crisis, because a high oil price is good for the e-mobility Alternative.
This means that there has to be a money System, where each state makes suitable (completely different) rules for itself and is “the lender of last resort” and no more dependence on private banks and Banking can arise.
But so far it has been like this: that “the system” (ECB and also Merkel: “whatever it takes”) has supported the private banks. (except for Lehmann Bank, which the US State “symbolically” let go bankrupt, in Germany all banks were bailed out).
The analyses of some private banks in this case JPMorgan are absolutely self-glorifying: “you can give the rich the freshly printed FED and ECB money, they don’t spend it, if you give the poor 0% credit, they would spend the money and there would be an Inflation”
AHA.
But if the rich don’t spend the money, then the economy can’t get started either.
Absolutely stupid and short-sighted statement, an analyst who certainly deserves well at JPMorgan.
But you notice: it is not thought holistically.
Everyone just sees his perspective.
Part1: what can be done? possible solutions
New holistic systems must be conceived and implemented.
This can happen on countries and even county or city and village level.
But it should happen.
The governments of this planet – if they still have a spark of intelligence-should promote their citizens in it.
And yes: the system of government, democracy, also seems to be in a state not conducive to the population.
Here, too, new forms of government should be experimented with at the regional level.
What is not only clear since yesterday: the current form of democracy tends to make unwise to incompetent decisions and is driven by lobbyists, massively susceptible to corruption and not very innovative.
So: capitalism collapses on itself.
How often can it be repaired?
ECB FED BitCoin are NOT the solution but another step towards 1984 digital dictatorship.
Part2: auto translated article from:
Finanz-Szene.de:
by Christian Kirchner
13 March 2020
“Two things should be clear after yesterday.
First, markets, banks, Fintechs and, of course, the real economy are experiencing a new “Lehman Moment”.
Yesterday’s price reductions at Deutsche Bank (-18%), Commerzbank (-21%) or Wirecard (-18%), for example, cannot be explained by short-term exaggerations alone. Instead, they reflect the fact that public life and thus large parts of the economy could be paralyzed for weeks, if not months, because of the Corona Virus.
And secondly: In a world in which the American president is imposing an entry ban for people from all over continental Europe without prior consultations – in such a world, therefore, one should not count on an internationally coordinated anti-crisis policy. Neither in the fight against the Virus, nor in terms of helping the sick, nor in terms of any economic measures.
Which brings us to the banks.
Because: whether people like it or not, the Corona crisis is also a banking crisis. Which of course does not mean that a Deutsche Bank, a Commerzbank or a Sparkasse Hintertupfingen deserves the same solidarity as those directly affected by the Virus out there. And yet, what was already true in 2008: when the banks crash, then we all crash. Which is why we have to ask: what is to be done now so that this does not happen?
In any case, the struggle for existence has begun. After all, even if the capital and liquidity ratios may read well on paper, even if yesterday’S ECB easing measures are rather underestimated – whether the (German) banking industry would pass the real stress test that is now coming to it without external support, this can be doubted. Or to put it more clearly: anyone who earns hardly any money or even suffers severe losses at the peak of a business cycle and with record-low loan losses, simply has to reckon with the fact that he could get caught up in the crisis that is now unfolding.
Unless a miraculous”V” recovery begins, the banks and savings banks will soon have many loans flying around their ears. After all, complete industries such as aviation, tourism or the oil and gas industry are facing highly uncertain months. And the same applies to countless small and medium-sized companies in particularly affected areas such as gastronomy, Events, trade fair construction. Not to mention the losses on the stock market. Or the consequences for consumption.
Banks will have to write off securities holdings, customers will have completely different concerns than to give the banks commission business. Too dark a scenario? Perhaps. But the capital markets, with discounts of 20%, are pricing in just that within hours.
The history of the Corona Virus is the history of an underreaction in Europe. This is precisely what the German and European banking sectors cannot afford, namely an underreaction – because the potential consequences would be fatal. The banks are vital to the functioning of our economy. That is why we must be 100% sure that the banking system will work in the crisis we are currently being thrown into. Otherwise, a total economic standstill threatens.
Hoping for the best will not be enough. You have to expect the worst instead. In case of doubt, this can also mean the need to accept industry-wide liquidity support and capitalisation measures. Stigmatisation as in the Lehman era must not exist, nor must small states within the three pillars, i.e. private banks, savings banks and comrades. It is to be hoped that the politicians (even if they have completely different concerns at the moment) understand this. And that the banks themselves understand it.” auto translated from: https://finanz-szene.de/banking/diese-krise-ist-auch-eine-banken-krise-drum-whatever-it-takes/
Max does not tweet a lot, but constantly says he can be reached on twitter, so give it a try.
FED: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerome_Powell
