Forgive me for this meandering. Ive been thinking about this all morning and wanted to put this on record somehow....
We've all heard about the problems Greece is having. In case you didn't know, Goldman-Sachs had secretly worked with the government of Greece last year to allow them to borrow billions of euros and skirt the EU requirements regarding this.
Just last week I read that Goldman-Sachs has helped Portugal with US dollar denominated bonds and today (3-22-2010) Portugal's debt rating was downgraded.
Greece has until late April or early June of this year to sell more bonds in order to pay bondholders for approximately 20 billion euros worth of bonds that will mature then. This is in addition to the 10 billion they need to sell in March just to stay afloat.
Think about that for a second.
Greece and to a certain extent, all of Europe has at most 45 days to "fix" Greece. The only long term solution is for Greece to drastically cut social programs and raise taxes but they will never do that willingly. They cannot single-handedly inflate the euro to ease their debt burden so they are really in a pickle so to speak.
Much more likely is an IMF bailout package for Greece being announced in the next few weeks, followed by one for Portugal and/or Italy, Spain, Ireland probably by mid summer. My guess is it will be either Portugal or Italy beginning in the next two months.
One common denominator behind all this is Goldman-Sachs.
Would it not be logical to assume that this company is working in collusion with the US government to wage financial war on Europe and Asia? That's what it sure looks like to me.
In the US we are not much better. In fact our rate of spending growth is the highest of any nation and we will be spending 13% of GDP or around 40% of all tax revenue on service of our federal debt by 2012 or 2013.
The US has just a few choices.
1) We can inflate our way out by making our current debts worth less and therefore easier to pay off. This is already happening.
2) We can raise taxes around 50% or more. There is already a growing anti tax movement in this country and this would be suicide politically so I consider this to be the absolute last resort.
3) We can cut social programs to the bone. To do an adequate job of this, Social Security and Medicare would literally have to cease to exist, in addition to massive cuts in welfare. This would not go over well for the millions of people in the US who enjoy 25 dollar a month subsidized rent. And with the recent passage of Obamacare, it certainly doesn't look like the US has any stomach for going down this path either.
There are other options such as confiscation. This was done in 1933 with gold but if it happens this time it will most likely be with retirement accounts such as IRAs, 401k's and 403b accounts. This has already been discussed believe it or not. The plan is to confiscate all these accounts, sell them for whatever they can get for them and "compensate" the original owners of the account with GRA's or "Guaranteed Retirement Accounts" which would be 100% invested in US treasury debt.
Concerning gold.
When India bought the 191 tons of gold from the IMF it really shocked the gold markets and sent gold to a new high.
Now suddenly China announces they don't want to buy the rest "because it would spook the markets and encourage speculation". My feeling on this is either the IMF will sell the gold quietly somewhere or in smaller amounts or maybe wont even sell it. It might interest you to know that the US government is buying gold at a unofficial rate of around 2,250,000 million ounces per year. That works out to around 76.9 tons per year. Back when the IMF said that they wanted to sell their gold didn't they say they wanted to complete the sale within 2.5 years? Well if you figure what was left after the sale to India, they have to sell around 77 tons per year to reach that goal....
Think about it. They have to sell an average of 77 tons a year and the US just happens to be buying 76.9 tons per year?
Anybody want to guess where the IMF gold is going?
We've all heard about the problems Greece is having. In case you didn't know, Goldman-Sachs had secretly worked with the government of Greece last year to allow them to borrow billions of euros and skirt the EU requirements regarding this.
Just last week I read that Goldman-Sachs has helped Portugal with US dollar denominated bonds and today (3-22-2010) Portugal's debt rating was downgraded.
Greece has until late April or early June of this year to sell more bonds in order to pay bondholders for approximately 20 billion euros worth of bonds that will mature then. This is in addition to the 10 billion they need to sell in March just to stay afloat.
Think about that for a second.
Greece and to a certain extent, all of Europe has at most 45 days to "fix" Greece. The only long term solution is for Greece to drastically cut social programs and raise taxes but they will never do that willingly. They cannot single-handedly inflate the euro to ease their debt burden so they are really in a pickle so to speak.
Much more likely is an IMF bailout package for Greece being announced in the next few weeks, followed by one for Portugal and/or Italy, Spain, Ireland probably by mid summer. My guess is it will be either Portugal or Italy beginning in the next two months.
One common denominator behind all this is Goldman-Sachs.
Would it not be logical to assume that this company is working in collusion with the US government to wage financial war on Europe and Asia? That's what it sure looks like to me.
In the US we are not much better. In fact our rate of spending growth is the highest of any nation and we will be spending 13% of GDP or around 40% of all tax revenue on service of our federal debt by 2012 or 2013.
The US has just a few choices.
1) We can inflate our way out by making our current debts worth less and therefore easier to pay off. This is already happening.
2) We can raise taxes around 50% or more. There is already a growing anti tax movement in this country and this would be suicide politically so I consider this to be the absolute last resort.
3) We can cut social programs to the bone. To do an adequate job of this, Social Security and Medicare would literally have to cease to exist, in addition to massive cuts in welfare. This would not go over well for the millions of people in the US who enjoy 25 dollar a month subsidized rent. And with the recent passage of Obamacare, it certainly doesn't look like the US has any stomach for going down this path either.
There are other options such as confiscation. This was done in 1933 with gold but if it happens this time it will most likely be with retirement accounts such as IRAs, 401k's and 403b accounts. This has already been discussed believe it or not. The plan is to confiscate all these accounts, sell them for whatever they can get for them and "compensate" the original owners of the account with GRA's or "Guaranteed Retirement Accounts" which would be 100% invested in US treasury debt.
Concerning gold.
When India bought the 191 tons of gold from the IMF it really shocked the gold markets and sent gold to a new high.
Now suddenly China announces they don't want to buy the rest "because it would spook the markets and encourage speculation". My feeling on this is either the IMF will sell the gold quietly somewhere or in smaller amounts or maybe wont even sell it. It might interest you to know that the US government is buying gold at a unofficial rate of around 2,250,000 million ounces per year. That works out to around 76.9 tons per year. Back when the IMF said that they wanted to sell their gold didn't they say they wanted to complete the sale within 2.5 years? Well if you figure what was left after the sale to India, they have to sell around 77 tons per year to reach that goal....
Think about it. They have to sell an average of 77 tons a year and the US just happens to be buying 76.9 tons per year?
Anybody want to guess where the IMF gold is going?
?
