In our continuing effort to educate even those who call themselves “experts” on the economy, we have to continue with the facts that the banksters, MSM, and dupes that call themselves legislators don’t want you to see or understand. We have, in recent past articles, shown you just the facts about the bailouts and now the bail-ins going on in the EU for what they are, just a huge transfer of public wealth to the hands a few elites in banking and the central banking system.
As we watch the economy continue to falter, and jobs vanish, don’t you wonder where all the so-called QE monies really went that were meant to stimulate the economy? Here we are, 5 years into this so-called recovery and unemployment in the US is still 7.6% and only 47% of Americans hold full time jobs. The number one employer is WalMart and the number two employer is Kelly Temp Services! In the EU, there is a 40% unemployment rate and people’s bank accounts are being raided without consent to supposedly prop up the banks (Bail-Ins). Government services are being slashed everywhere and still nothing seems to be improving.
Well, even though you are not supposed to understand this, let’s look at the Central Bank Practices and especially at the issue of banks’ reserves at the FED and other central banks in the world. This is a complex subject with much technical jargon that confuses a lot of people. Besides, don’t be surprised that your bank branch manager on Main Street as well as lecturers in finance and economics are also ignorant on this issue. In the case of the latter, this subject is hardly taught in universities. And this is the reason why the scam has not been exposed or understood. But, for those who have a basic idea of bank reserves and how this huge amount of “excess reserves” have been created by the FED, have you asked yourself, “Why have I not spotted this scam earlier?”
Many have been taken in by the propaganda that “excess reserves” is the means to encourage banks to extend credit (give out loans) to desperate borrowers who needed urgent funds to survive and to jump-start their businesses. This propaganda is grounded on the assumption that there is insufficient liquidity in the market. This assumption is misleading.
What are Excess Reserves? The latest figures obtained from the H.3 release from the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (the FED) shows excess reserves of about $1.794 trillion (data as of April 17, 2013)! This level of excess reserves is unprecedented and is the highest since reserves were legislated as a requirement.
Excess reserves are the surplus of reserves against deposits and certain other liabilities that depository institutions (collectively referred to as “banks”) hold above the statutory amounts that the FED requires in accordance with the law. The general requirement is that banks maintain reserves at least equal to ten percent of liabilities payable on demand. There is now data to show that as much as 50% of these “excess reserves” are held for United States banking offices of foreign banks.
Let me elaborate. Banks receives deposits from their customers which are inter-alia placed in current accounts (checking accounts) or time deposits (fixed deposit accounts) and which the customer can at any time withdraw from the bank. But, banking practice shows that at any one time, only a small fraction of customers would withdraw their deposits in full. So, there was no need for banks to keep all the deposits in their vaults to meet such a demand for payment. Laws were enacted to allow banks to keep in reserve a small amount of monies to meet such demands. That being the case – if only 10% reserves is all that is required according to banking regulations to meet repayment demands, why should there be such a huge amount of reserves, beyond the legal requirement of 10%?
Understand the fact that when a customer deposits monies in a bank, he is in law a “creditor” (he has loaned the monies to the bank) and the bank is a “debtor” (and he can use the money in any way at his absolute discretion, even to speculate). This is because the ownership of the money has been transferred to the bank. The money is no longer the money of the customer. It now belongs to the bank. And as long as the bank is solvent, and there is a demand for repayment of the deposit, the law of contract stipulates that the bank must repay together with the agreed interest that has accrued.
Now here is where, legally it gets interesting.. if at the time when demand for repayment is made, the bank is bankrupt (i.e. in a liquidation) then the depositor/customer in law is deemed an “unsecured creditor” and must join the queue of all unsecured creditors to share the proceeds of any remaining assets after all secured creditors have been paid. If there are no remaining assets, the depositors get zilch! That is why and as illustrated in the bank confiscation of deposits in Cyprus banks acting in concert with central banks can expropriate all customers’ deposits to pay their secured creditors. You catching on here?
How did the Excess Reserves balloon to a massive US$1.794 Trillion? The Fed’s overall balance sheet has expanded from about $909 billion before the crisis (i.e. before 2008) to about $3.3 trillion in 2013. Of the $2.4 trillion increase, approximately $1.8 trillion is excess reserves. Banks were up to their eyeballs in toxic assets (financial sewage) and they are drowning in this cesspool but for the rescue efforts of the FED and other central banks they would have sunk to the bottom of the cesspool.
The FED created trillions of money out of thin air by a digital entry in its books to purchase the toxic assets (financial sewage) in batches from the banks. The objective of QEs is to save the banks and to save the US Treasury from bankruptcy and not Joe Six-Pack. However, in this article we are focusing on the banks. So, let’s say that the banks HAVE OVER US$10 trillion of financial sewage AND WANT TO DISPOSE THEM WITHOUT AROUSING ANY ALARM. The monies flowed from the FED to the banks to purchase the financial sewage. The financial sewage is sucked into the FED’s financial vacuum. However the monies are not channeled to the banks’ branches in Main Street to be loaned out to Joe Six-Pack. It is re-routed back to the FED as “reserves”. When the reserves exceed the minimum 10% requirement, the excess is classified as “excess reserves.” This is merely a book entry! And adding insult and injury to Joe Six-Pack, interest of 0.25% is paid on the reserves (i.e. giving profits to the banks).
The banks are allowed to survive in spite of their massive frauds and other financial hanky-pankey. The banks are allowed to use digital technology (e.g. high-frequency trading) to corner the market and destroy Joe-Six-Pack. But, Joe-Six-Pack has to suffer the indignity of unemployment, foreclosures, reduced unemployment benefits, surviving on food-stamps, and other austerity measures. Starting to see the picture here and how this crap is how we are being fleeced like passive little lambs?
“The money flows from the FED to the Too Big To Fail (TBTF) Banksters to Buy Toxic Assets, which is sucked in by the FED’s Financial Vacuum, thereby cleansing the TBTF banks’ balance sheets. The money is then re-routed back to the FED as “excess reserves”.
The FED create monies out of thin air to bail-out the Too Big To Fail banks (TBTF banks) by purchasing their financial sewage (valued at book value as opposed to mark-to-market i.e. instead of paying only 10 cents on the dollar or less, the FED pays dollar for dollar) thereby removing the financial sewage from the balance sheet of the TBTF banks to reflect a “healthier” balance sheet as there are now less financial sewage in the banking system. And, because the TBTF banks are suffering losses, the FED pays 0.25% interest on the “excess reserves” created so as to generate easy profits for the TBTF banks for doing nothing at all. They are earning profits merely from a book-entry in the FED’s books!
The propaganda which I referred to earlier that such monies were meant to enable the TBTF banks to extend credit is therefore bullshit and a load of financial nonsense. So why are the so-called reputable economists at leading universities such as Harvard, Princeton, Cambridge, Oxford etc. touting this propaganda? In spite of all this past mismanagement, the practices by the TBTF banks is continuing unabated, including the so-called record profits declared by the TBTF banks and the huge bonuses given out to the bankers and their hire-lings. These practices are all just window dressing as long as the toxic assets are not marked-to-market and not declared as junk. If such assets are properly declared, the fiat money banking system would be staring at a bottomless black-hole of toxic assets and indebtedness! What’s worse is these same TBTF banks are still up to their eyeballs in toxic debt, such as derivatives, credit swaps, etc. In fact JP Morgan Chase alone has exposure more than twice the US GDP! JPMC is exposed just in interest rate derivatives at $45 TRILLION. Take a look at the Fed’s H.8 report to understand how bad it really is.
This has compounded the problem. After the Global Financial Tsunami, all the TBTF banks don’t have enough reserves to meet the withdrawal of deposits placed by customers before the crash. The TBTF banks don’t even have the requisite 10% reserves to meet these demand deposits (Old Deposits). However, banks are continuing to receive deposits from customers of which 10% of these deposits must be transferred to the FED as reserves. Data shows that customers’ deposits are at an all time high (since 2007), but bank lending is not keeping pace.
Banks are not lending out what they are entitled to do so for two reasons:
1) The banks are using a portion of the “New Deposits” to meet the liability of having to repay the “Old Deposits” in the system. This is because even the excess reserves (created under the QE) are insufficient to meet the demand for repayment of the Old Deposits. So, part of the current New Deposits would be utilized for that purpose. This is the Deposit Ponzi Scheme.
2) Banks are earning no risk profits from interests on “Excess Reserves” at the FED and are only willing to lend to credible borrowers. In the present economic climate, there are just too few credible customers. This is another reason why banks are not lending.
When QE stops, the FED would not be out on a limb because the monies used to purchase the financial sewage from the TBTF banks are still in the FED’s books. The Fed need only to have a reverse entry in it’s books after re-packaging the financial sewage INTO SOME NEW FORM OF FINANCIAL PRODUCT OR WHATEVER (which the TBTF banks are adept at doing before the crash and are still continuing to do so) and dumping them back to the banks and another generation of stupid investors at such time when and if the banks would have recovered. But with the TBTF banks continuing their same toxic practices unabated there is no recovery, ever. Further, with the bank’s unbridled right (sanctioned by law) to confiscate the customers’ deposits (now commonly referred as “Bail-In”) using the Cyprus template, banks have additional financial resources to continue with the plunder and financial rape of the public.
I hope this helps us understand that this unabated transfer of wealth ends with our economic enslavement. The public must be able to understand these fundamentals and demand the end to this fractional banking system and the end of the FED. Your congressmen and women are dupes in this game, as they really don’t understand and therefore do what they are told to do. Inform them WE GET IT and WE DON”T LIKE IT, AND IT MUST STOP NOW! Fire the Fed, break up the TBTF banks and return to pre-1913 banking system controlled by the US Treasury. WAKE UP! A special thanks to Matthias Chang of Global Research, who unknowingly contributed so much to this article.
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