whoop1995 said:

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Detmersdislocatedshoulder said:

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i am not 100% certain if this is the canary in the coal mine or not but what i can tell you is there is a day in the not to distant future where many americans will learn what the term bank bail in means and it will be to late.

it is all a mirage and when the derivative bubble pops this time it will take everything down with it.

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How do we avoid it? Metals, food, guns, ammo?

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Land and a source of water would be nice too.

Costco selling out of 1oz gold bars?

Someone asked about it on the earnings call, so it sounds like marketing bs. This looks like pr bull****, but who knows. Is this real issue? You or you seen people buying gold bars at Costco?

Stat Monitor Repairman said:

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Costco selling out of 1oz gold bars?

Someone asked about it on the earnings call, so it sounds like marketing bs. This looks like pr bull****, but who knows. Is this real issue? You or you seen people buying gold bars at Costco?

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it is online only, but I do know someone who bought one of these last time they were offered.

I think prior sales were region limited. This is the first time it is nationwide.

Stat Monitor Repairman said:

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Costco selling out of 1oz gold bars?

Someone asked about it on the earnings call, so it sounds like marketing bs. This looks like pr bull****, but who knows. Is this real issue? You or you seen people buying gold bars at Costco?

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I bought two a couple of weeks ago and they were shipped to my house. Always wanted one and with 4% cash back on the Costco card I figured why not. Gold did drop a bit today though so will be interesting how low it goes

Quote:

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Costco's website shows that members can purchase one-ounce bars of 24-karat gold from Rand Refinery for $1,949.99 or a one-ounce bar from PAMP Suisse for $1,979.99. Both items have a 4.9-star rating and can't be refunded or returned.

Costco customers who are fortunate enough to find the item can also earn 2% cash back on the purchase if they have an executive membership card.

As of Wednesday morning, one ounce of gold is priced at $1,919, according to Nasdaq.

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Costco selling 1oz gold bars at $8 below spot price with that 2% cash back.

Also keep in mind that some states charge sales tax on gold bullion and some don't.

What's this I'm seeing about UBS?

Stat Monitor Repairman said:

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What's this I'm seeing about UBS?

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nothing to see cusip numbers are changed or deleted frequently. or are they?

We head rumblings about Credit Suisse well before their collapse. The story fizzled out then came back. Not going to be shocked if UBS happens over the holidays.

50% of UBS's revenue comes from Wall Street.

All this still seems 'problematic.'

Somebody explain how this shakes out.

Stat Monitor Repairman said:

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All this still seems 'problematic.'

Somebody explain how this shakes out.

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when it shakes out it will be like the titanic.

Stat Monitor Repairman said:

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All this still seems 'problematic.'

Somebody explain how this shakes out.

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If they're held to maturity, don't they become realized?

How does it work out?

I've got a theory.

Why do so you think they are securitizing BTC?
They need more capital. /sarcasm, kinda

Ahh, gotcha. I had a brain fart on the interest changing value. Thanks.

4th qtr earnings reports are coming out for Big Banks this Friday. Hopefully, it is uneventful. With Dimond selling $140m of his own bank's stock this year, I get an uneasy feeling something is about to break badly in the banking sector.

We very well may keep gliding along like the feather in forest gump.

We've crossed into uncharted waters though.

Ain't no telling what we are likely to see.

TriAg2010 said:

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CDUB98 said:

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Stat Monitor Repairman said:

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All this still seems 'problematic.'

Somebody explain how this shakes out.

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If they're held to maturity, don't they become realized?

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No - as the bond gets closer to maturity its price will converge to its face value. The unrealized loss right now is a consequence of interest rates rising since the bond was issued, which means you would have to discount the bond from its face value in order to find a buyer if you wanted to sell the bond before maturity. The problem for banks who bought long-term bonds comes when they need to sell those bonds at a loss to cover short-term liabilities.

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Yep and selling before maturity is exactly what some will have to do when the CRE loan defaults start. There's lots of pressure on the fed to lower rates. Banks could probably be ok if there is no spike in commercial or personal loan defaults but CRE in particular looks to be in trouble.

Stat Monitor Repairman said:

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All this still seems 'problematic.'

Somebody explain how this shakes out.

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Given the rally in bonds in the fourth quarter, there should be large unrealized gains reported this time around.

Are there substantial paper losses for these banks in their bond portfolios? Yes. What this doesn't show is there is also even bigger losses in loan portfolios, especially banks with a big fixed rate book. But those things in of themselves don't mean anything other than banks make less money as deposits reprice upward and squeeze margin.

The piece that will sink a bank or the industry is if there's massive deposit run-off. Deposits run, banks have to meet those obligations, and once they run through cash they have to begin selling securities - thus realizing the loss and permanently reducing capital. Credit could also be an event, but credit generally doesn't strike all at once like deposit movements can.

Overall, I think banks are through the worst of it and potential cuts will only help alleviate the current pain.

ocling said:

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Are there substantial paper losses for these banks in their bond portfolios? Yes. What this doesn't show is there is also even bigger losses in loan portfolios, especially banks with a big fixed rate book. But those things in of themselves don't mean anything other than banks make less money as deposits reprice upward and squeeze margin.

The piece that will sink a bank or the industry is if there's massive deposit run-off. Deposits run, banks have to meet those obligations, and once they run through cash they have to begin selling securities - thus realizing the loss and permanently reducing capital. Credit could also be an event, but credit generally doesn't strike all at once like deposit movements can.

Overall, I think banks are through the worst of it and potential cuts will only help alleviate the current pain.

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Agreed and would add the banks need the yield curve to go back to a normal shape instead of being inverted. It has gotten better over the last half of last year but remains stubbornly inverted due to Fed policy.

And the entire last 9 months have been nothing but liquidity fueling. When it dries up, you better hope there's zero blips around the world. One little shock and the whole banking sector is at risk.

Heineken-Ashi said:

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And the entire last 9 months have been nothing but liquidity fueling. When it dries up, you better hope there's zero blips around the world. One little shock and the whole banking sector is at risk.

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Liquidity won't dry up. We are in the early innings of MMT. If there are problems, they are going to announce the latest and greatest emergency programs (I.e - Bank Term Funding Program 2.0), print, blow asset bubbles/fill holes in bank balance sheets, and print some more this year, especially in an election year. I never thought they'd be able to pull this crap off for as long as they have, yet here we are.....

If the Fed can keep printing, the gov't keeps passing continuing resolutions, and the media carries the "it's getting better narrative, it's transitory, wages are increasing", this will go on like the energizer bunny......

Monopoly when you want to keep playing just pull more money out of the box.

Zergling Rush said:

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I never thought they'd be able to pull this crap off for as long as they have, yet here we are.....

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I'm on the exact same page. It seems like the metrics and indicators that worked before don't mean as much now. It's almost like the system is working on some mix of extend & pretend and hope for lower rates. I would imagine BTFP is renewed/extended so I'm not real concerned about banks.

A few posters have pointed out liquidity and I think they're spot on. As long as there is balance sheet capacity, it doesn't seem like servicing costs mean as much as we thought they did. Michael Howell @ CrossBorder Capital is a good read when it comes to liquidity matters.

Zergling Rush said:

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Heineken-Ashi said:

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And the entire last 9 months have been nothing but liquidity fueling. When it dries up, you better hope there's zero blips around the world. One little shock and the whole banking sector is at risk.

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Liquidity won't dry up. We are in the early innings of MMT. If there are problems, they are going to announce the latest and greatest emergency programs (I.e - Bank Term Funding Program 2.0), print, blow asset bubbles/fill holes in bank balance sheets, and print some more this year, especially in an election year. I never thought they'd be able to pull this crap off for as long as they have, yet here we are.....

If the Fed can keep printing, the gov't keeps passing continuing resolutions, and the media carries the "it's getting better narrative, it's transitory, wages are increasing", this will go on like the energizer bunny......

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Everytime the FED has done that it has been during a recession or depression. And they usually only act after it's started or in the early to middle innings.

And their runway for doing it is not there. It would create inflation that makes 2022 look modest.

As always, in the back of my mind, that little crazy voice (one of many) keeps telling me that at some point this whole damn charade has to come crashing down.

Sims said:

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Zergling Rush said:

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I never thought they'd be able to pull this crap off for as long as they have, yet here we are.....

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I'm on the exact same page. It seems like the metrics and indicators that worked before don't mean as much now. It's almost like the system is working on some mix of extend & pretend and hope for lower rates. I would imagine BTFP is renewed/extended so I'm not real concerned about banks.

A few posters have pointed out liquidity and I think they're spot on. As long as there is balance sheet capacity, it doesn't seem like servicing costs mean as much as we thought they did. Michael Howell @ CrossBorder Capital is a good read when it comes to liquidity matters.

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Just because they launch liquidity into the system, whether through QE or RRP, doesn't mean the system is healthy. Last spring had just a handful of bank failures and the emergency levers they had to pull were only ones granted to them after 2008. You think they wanted to continue QT and have to pull the RRP lever if they could do QE or print? Why would this round of bank failures have a different gameplan than the last? Simple, they don't have the runway to act without admitting the system is unhealthy/ broken. And once they admit it (QE), the economy will already be heading down. And the gap between major events needing new liquidity will shrink.

If you haven't yet learned about bail ins, you better do your research. You better be damn sure your bank con stomach a banking crisis.

Heineken-Ashi said:

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If you haven't yet learned about bail ins, you better do your research. You better be damn sure your bank con stomach a banking crisis.

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Bank bail-ins are just the tip of the iceberg.....Read (or watch) this book at your own peril. It's pretty frightening how this is all playing out.


https://thegreattaking.com/read-online-or-download

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What is this book about? It is about the taking of collateral, all of it, the end game of this globally synchronous debt accumulation super cycle. This is being executed by long-planned, intelligent design, the audacity and scope of which is difficult for the mind to encompass. Included are all financial assets, all money on deposit at banks, all stocks and bonds, and hence, all underlying property of all public corporations, including all inventories, plant and equipment, land, mineral deposits, inventions and intellectual property. Privately owned personal and real property financed with any amount of debt will be similarly taken, as will the assets of privately owned businesses, which have been financed with debt. If even partially successful, this will be the greatest conquest and subjugation in world history.

In the Prologue of the book Webb paints a richly textured, autobiographical picture of his provenance as finance guru, obviously with exceptional intelligence and, it turned out, courage. His knowledge of finance and economics has been the result of long years of work in the field, but he recalls the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, before the start of his professional career, when he was a child, and what he calls (witnessing) the subsequent "industrial collapse" of the US in Cleveland, where the family lived, culminating in "the complete destruction of everything we had known" (p. vii). Before he gets into the details of his life....
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/great-taking-exposes-financial-end-game

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[url=https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/great-taking-exposes-financial-end-game][/url]

Heineken-Ashi said:

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Sims said:

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Zergling Rush said:

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I never thought they'd be able to pull this crap off for as long as they have, yet here we are.....

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I'm on the exact same page. It seems like the metrics and indicators that worked before don't mean as much now. It's almost like the system is working on some mix of extend & pretend and hope for lower rates. I would imagine BTFP is renewed/extended so I'm not real concerned about banks.

A few posters have pointed out liquidity and I think they're spot on. As long as there is balance sheet capacity, it doesn't seem like servicing costs mean as much as we thought they did. Michael Howell @ CrossBorder Capital is a good read when it comes to liquidity matters.

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Just because they launch liquidity into the system, whether through QE or RRP, doesn't mean the system is healthy. Last spring had just a handful of bank failures and the emergency levers they had to pull were only ones granted to them after 2008. You think they wanted to continue QT and have to pull the RRP lever if they could do QE or print? Why would this round of bank failures have a different gameplan than the last? Simple, they don't have the runway to act without admitting the system is unhealthy/ broken. And once they admit it (QE), the economy will already be heading down. And the gap between major events needing new liquidity will shrink.

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I agree it's broken from a technical standpoint when you think about in terms of an Austrian model. I don't think it changes the fact that the most advertised recession of 2023 never happened. The fundamentals said one thing and the financial markets and economy did another.

I think the thought that the reason is liquidity is accurate. It may be the last thing that works before it all blows up in the end but it's currently working.

At some point you just have to invest in the financial market / economy you have rather than the one you want.

CDUB98 said:

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As always, in the back of my mind, that little crazy voice (one of many) keeps telling me that at some point this whole damn charade has to come crashing down.

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hopefully 30 years from now when I'm already getting all my Social Security payments ...

any of you smart guys taking advantage of the situation by making investment moves?

I have no idea how to play this situation..

Sims said:

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At some point you just have to invest in the financial market / economy you have rather than the one you want.

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A lot of folks struggle with this.