UrbanSurvivalSkills received an e-mail from Hank asking if we had any information on the military replacing the M855 5.56x45mm standard issue round? Hank said he did not know what the name (designation) would be but had heard that this new round was much more powerful and accurate than the older cartridge currently in service.
UrbanMan Replies: Okay Hank, I pinged several old friends of mine and this is what they tell me:
There is a new round and it is called the M855 Enhanced Performance Round (EPR). I had not previously heard about it and my sources have not seen it, have not shot it, nor been issued it, but have heard about it.
Apparently it is a hotter round, well over 3,000 feet per second muzzle velocity, which also means the chamber pressures will be greater and the barrels will burn out faster. And just because a round is faster, it does not mean it is more accurate - in fact, when pushing the velocity issue and increasing chamber pressures, usually the accuracy suffers.
The accuracy claim may simply be a (surmised) enhanced hit probability at the longest ranges due to the higher velocity. But again, more than velocity factors in accuracy,....bullet weight, bullet design, rifling and rate of twist in the barrel, and several more factors are involved.
This new EPR round is supposed to be able to penetrate 3/8ths inch of steel at 400 meters. I am told that Special Operations will not be using this new round, but continues to use the old M855 62 grain (SS109) and a newer round called the SOST (for Special Operations Science and Technology) or sometimes called the OTMRP (for Open Tip Match Rear Penetrator) and goes by the Navy designation Mk318 MOD 0.
These new 5.56mm rounds are all designed and built at least partially due to widely believed and reported poor performance of M855 62 grain in soft tissue. Soldiers and Marines shooting skinnies with the M855 62 grain round would often experience over penetration meaning alot of the buller energy was leaving the target. Sometimes this is called an ice pick type of wound. And as you'll remember, stopping power is based somewhat on how much energy of the bullet strike stays in the target.
Rather than going to a different caliber, such as the excellent 6.8mm SPC, the military decided to minimze costs of re-barelling, new magazines, etc. and attempted to make a better round given the parameters of the 5.56 x 45mm cartridge.
For my 5.56mm (.223) guns, I'm happy with the variation of ammunition I have available for them. There are things more important than the bullet configuration or weight such as a person's ability with the firearm.
Monday, February 11, 2013
Saturday, February 9, 2013
Second American Civil War
This article, titled "Second American Civil War" came from a site called Crime File News and was sent to me for comment. I'll let this article stand until the end, then I will make my comments.
How the Impending Second American Civil War Will Play Out:
During the Clinton Administration tyranny came in the form of the 1994 ban on new sales and manufacturing of certain common firearms. They did not try and outlaw or confiscate the ones already possessed by Americans.
Soon there were two serious incidents of violent resistance. There was the Waco Branch Davidians standoff and massacre followed by the bombing of the Oklahoma Federal Building. The anger of millions of Americans boiled over they as removed an unprecedented Leftist members from Congress in the midterm elections.
Under the Obama Administration not only are the Leftists desperately trying to establish a far more restrictive gun ban they are now poised to seize the 401 K retirement accounts of millions of hard working Americans to prop up the Ponzi Scheme we call Social Security. Many Americans would consider this an act of war, at least the ones that have set aside savings for retirement.
The National Defense Authorization Act was obviously created to use against any Americans that disagree with the Obama Administration. When Conservative Americans begin to disappear it won’t come without serious retaliation.
Today’s America has never been so deeply divided. Instead of state borders, Americans are divided by the boundaries of the larger urban areas. The large Leftwing inner city urban areas are nearly all completely surrounded by Constitution loving Conservatives. Should a massive insurrection break out the large concentrated urban areas would be crushed in a hurry.
The inner-city entitlement addicted people have no self-reliance skills, internal food, and water or fuel sources. They are tightly concentrated in geographic areas. During an insurrection they’d soon be fighting among themselves for survival.
The suburban folks are somewhat more self-sufficient, and likely to have survival staples. They will be able to trap or shoot small game when normal food supplies are interrupted. The will also get support from others away from the cities.
Next we have the rural areas that are solidly self-sufficient and politically Conservative. They control nearly all of the nations food, fuel and water. Starving off the urban areas would be very easy. Additionally millions of well-trained military veterans live in these politically conservative areas. Needless to say there are no shortages of arms and bomb making resources throughout the vast areas of rural America. The population there has the skills and discipline to use them.
The federal government would watch the loyalty of the alphabet police and the military to the Obama Administration become seriously strained. Adolph Hitler insured loyalty by letting his upper echelon SS members keep a great deal of the spoils of their conquests. Will American law enforcement and military allow themselves to be similarly corrupted? Certainly some will.
Right now all over America, churches, VFW halls along with American Legion Halls are loaded with veterans and concerned Conservatives. Many of them have been quietly making contingent civil war plans.
Conservatives have stockpiled millions of weapons and billions of rounds of ammunition over the last four years. They can be counted upon to already have solid plans in place to disrupt federal government operations, the courts and wipe out any collaborating alphabet police.
State and local police will begin picking sides. This scenario would bring the greatest bloodbath this continent has ever seen. The large urban areas would fall hard along with their starving entitlement zombies.
Even with all of the technology it will be impossible for the urban areas to inflict significant damage to vast rural areas especially without food, water, arms and fuel.
The inner-city people have some handguns. The people in the rural areas have those too but they’re backed up with millions of rifles and shotguns. The arms, ammunition and military hardware manufactures are all located far from the Leftist controlled cities.
The American Leftists would soon beg Communist China to send their troops and military resources.
With any luck tyrannical Leftist leaders will be dangling from scaffolds everywhere before that happens. We must remember history, only three percent of American participated in the Revolutionary War. Determined Conservative Americans don’t have to accept government Tyranny. They just have to get serious and make Tyranny personally very expensive for rogue government politicians and their appointed bureaucrats.
UrbanMan's Comments:
"Soon there were two serious incidents of violent resistance. There was the Waco Branch Davidians standoff and massacre........" this makes it sound like the Branch Davidians sprung forth from the Clinton assault weapons ban. The Davidians were nothing more than weak minded people being controlled by a loser psychopath. The Government based it's warrant on feeble grounds that the legal AR-15 parts that the Davidians were buying were being converted to selective fire M-16 rifles. The ATF also fabricated documentation that the Davidians were operating a Meth lab therefore qualifying for military advisory and support assistance due to the drug nexus. While I'll cry no tears over people who abuse children or allow that they be abused, the Government was simply wrong at Waco on so many accounts. They paid a price as four ATF agents were killed during the warrant service attempt.
The Oklahoma bombing was not resistance to a tryanical government, it was out right murder.
"........Leftists desperately trying to establish a far more restrictive gun ban they are now poised to seize the 401 K retirement accounts of millions of hard working Americans to prop up the Ponzi Scheme we call Social Security." While liberal, left wing elements of the government are very obviously trying to establish a very restrictive gun ban - they pretty much succeded in the State of New York - there is nothing on the table in Congress or publically out of the White House to confiscate privately owned 401K plans. There is no use fanning these rumors until if/when it comes true.
"Right now all over America, churches, VFW halls along with American Legion Halls are loaded with veterans and concerned Conservatives. Many of them have been quietly making contingent civil war plans. " Wow, what a claim. I have never heard that from anyone. I would say while that many veterans and other people would give their lives rather than have freedoms taken away, pubic planning for civil war in churches and veterans groups is certainly not going on, and if it is, it is a small density effort.
My final comment is that this article was way over the top. With a Federal attempt to ban weapons and accessories like New York did, there would be 24 to 30 states nullifying those laws not to mention court challenges, etc. The current administration, certainly far left, knows this and would not trade their ability to govern, by pushing the anti-gun agenda too far. If they do, it will paralyze the rest of government for the next two years if not four.
How the Impending Second American Civil War Will Play Out:
During the Clinton Administration tyranny came in the form of the 1994 ban on new sales and manufacturing of certain common firearms. They did not try and outlaw or confiscate the ones already possessed by Americans.
Soon there were two serious incidents of violent resistance. There was the Waco Branch Davidians standoff and massacre followed by the bombing of the Oklahoma Federal Building. The anger of millions of Americans boiled over they as removed an unprecedented Leftist members from Congress in the midterm elections.
Under the Obama Administration not only are the Leftists desperately trying to establish a far more restrictive gun ban they are now poised to seize the 401 K retirement accounts of millions of hard working Americans to prop up the Ponzi Scheme we call Social Security. Many Americans would consider this an act of war, at least the ones that have set aside savings for retirement.
The National Defense Authorization Act was obviously created to use against any Americans that disagree with the Obama Administration. When Conservative Americans begin to disappear it won’t come without serious retaliation.
Today’s America has never been so deeply divided. Instead of state borders, Americans are divided by the boundaries of the larger urban areas. The large Leftwing inner city urban areas are nearly all completely surrounded by Constitution loving Conservatives. Should a massive insurrection break out the large concentrated urban areas would be crushed in a hurry.
The inner-city entitlement addicted people have no self-reliance skills, internal food, and water or fuel sources. They are tightly concentrated in geographic areas. During an insurrection they’d soon be fighting among themselves for survival.
The suburban folks are somewhat more self-sufficient, and likely to have survival staples. They will be able to trap or shoot small game when normal food supplies are interrupted. The will also get support from others away from the cities.
Next we have the rural areas that are solidly self-sufficient and politically Conservative. They control nearly all of the nations food, fuel and water. Starving off the urban areas would be very easy. Additionally millions of well-trained military veterans live in these politically conservative areas. Needless to say there are no shortages of arms and bomb making resources throughout the vast areas of rural America. The population there has the skills and discipline to use them.
The federal government would watch the loyalty of the alphabet police and the military to the Obama Administration become seriously strained. Adolph Hitler insured loyalty by letting his upper echelon SS members keep a great deal of the spoils of their conquests. Will American law enforcement and military allow themselves to be similarly corrupted? Certainly some will.
Right now all over America, churches, VFW halls along with American Legion Halls are loaded with veterans and concerned Conservatives. Many of them have been quietly making contingent civil war plans.
Conservatives have stockpiled millions of weapons and billions of rounds of ammunition over the last four years. They can be counted upon to already have solid plans in place to disrupt federal government operations, the courts and wipe out any collaborating alphabet police.
State and local police will begin picking sides. This scenario would bring the greatest bloodbath this continent has ever seen. The large urban areas would fall hard along with their starving entitlement zombies.
Even with all of the technology it will be impossible for the urban areas to inflict significant damage to vast rural areas especially without food, water, arms and fuel.
The inner-city people have some handguns. The people in the rural areas have those too but they’re backed up with millions of rifles and shotguns. The arms, ammunition and military hardware manufactures are all located far from the Leftist controlled cities.
The American Leftists would soon beg Communist China to send their troops and military resources.
With any luck tyrannical Leftist leaders will be dangling from scaffolds everywhere before that happens. We must remember history, only three percent of American participated in the Revolutionary War. Determined Conservative Americans don’t have to accept government Tyranny. They just have to get serious and make Tyranny personally very expensive for rogue government politicians and their appointed bureaucrats.
UrbanMan's Comments:
"Soon there were two serious incidents of violent resistance. There was the Waco Branch Davidians standoff and massacre........" this makes it sound like the Branch Davidians sprung forth from the Clinton assault weapons ban. The Davidians were nothing more than weak minded people being controlled by a loser psychopath. The Government based it's warrant on feeble grounds that the legal AR-15 parts that the Davidians were buying were being converted to selective fire M-16 rifles. The ATF also fabricated documentation that the Davidians were operating a Meth lab therefore qualifying for military advisory and support assistance due to the drug nexus. While I'll cry no tears over people who abuse children or allow that they be abused, the Government was simply wrong at Waco on so many accounts. They paid a price as four ATF agents were killed during the warrant service attempt.
The Oklahoma bombing was not resistance to a tryanical government, it was out right murder.
"........Leftists desperately trying to establish a far more restrictive gun ban they are now poised to seize the 401 K retirement accounts of millions of hard working Americans to prop up the Ponzi Scheme we call Social Security." While liberal, left wing elements of the government are very obviously trying to establish a very restrictive gun ban - they pretty much succeded in the State of New York - there is nothing on the table in Congress or publically out of the White House to confiscate privately owned 401K plans. There is no use fanning these rumors until if/when it comes true.
"Right now all over America, churches, VFW halls along with American Legion Halls are loaded with veterans and concerned Conservatives. Many of them have been quietly making contingent civil war plans. " Wow, what a claim. I have never heard that from anyone. I would say while that many veterans and other people would give their lives rather than have freedoms taken away, pubic planning for civil war in churches and veterans groups is certainly not going on, and if it is, it is a small density effort.
My final comment is that this article was way over the top. With a Federal attempt to ban weapons and accessories like New York did, there would be 24 to 30 states nullifying those laws not to mention court challenges, etc. The current administration, certainly far left, knows this and would not trade their ability to govern, by pushing the anti-gun agenda too far. If they do, it will paralyze the rest of government for the next two years if not four.
Thursday, February 7, 2013
Effects of Gun Ban Proposals
UrbanMan's comments: I have been getting report after, e-mail after Pm on the prices from all over. It is crazy. Good thing most of us, and those reading this, probably have plenty of both AR type rifles or something suitable for protection and enough ammunition to last. Some friends of mine from Arizona and Texas are telling me they can't buy .223 ammunition in any of the sporting good stores. Another told me P-magazines for AR's were going for $100 each,.....$100 each!! I bought mine for around $12 each. And yet another gent told me that AR prices at a gun show were $2,700 to $3,600. All because of some anti-constitutionalists want to take away our guns! Here is one account that was forwarded to me by a friend:
......AR15's went from $1000 to $3000 in a few hours. .223 caliber ammo went from $300 to $900 in the same time period. There is absolutely nothing left of any quality at the wholesale level. I mean zero. People are completely freaked out. I cannot tell you what it was like on my way out the door. Completely out of control.
I personally don't think anything will make it through the House or the Senate. This will be done via executive order. Legal or not. It will be challenged in court, but will have about the same outcome as the Health Care Bill challenge. I have been in the weapons industry for over 30 years now and never seen anything like this. I wonder about all of these people buying weapons, ammo, and magazines. I seriously doubt that many know how to effectively use them defensively, much less offensively. They just think they need them because someone told them that they are not going to be able to buy them anymore. Kind of like a Cabbage Patch Doll going on sale on Black Friday.
The powers that be have a game plan. Plain and simple. They cannot execute the game plan until we are disarmed. There are a series of steps that will take place to achieve that goal. They have already played many of those cards out behind the scenes unknown to most. Did you know that you cannot import a gun part or round of ammunition into this country that meets their description of "non-sporting' anymore? What does that mean? There are about a thousand more regulations in place that most have not a clue exist.
The next card to play is one that they are mulling around now. That will be the requirement that you register you weapon (assault or not) with them for your safety. No charge at first of course. Next will be ammunition (via taxes) and magazine control. After they get a handle on that, they will simply make it a Federal offense to own them. They will not come around and pick them up. That will be too dangerous. They will just prosecute you when they catch you with them. There will be a few people made example of and that will take care of the masses.
Some of this will be done via random road check points and routine traffic stops. The game plan will be executed by DHS, TSA and local law enforcement that agrees to comply. The FEDS will use the almighty dollar as a carrot to entice them to cooperate. Now the massive purchases of ammunition, arms and armored vehicles by DHS, TSA and the existence of those FEMA Camps should start to make more sense to you.
I often hear some say they will hide or bury their weapons. If you do that, you might as well not have one. It would be worthless then. I am starting to wonder how many of the NRA guys really mean what they say, "Pry it from my cold dead hands." I would venture to say that most would cut and run at the first sight of authority. Take that and the fact that we are completely unorganized and you will start to see that we are very vulnerable. Internet and telecommunication control starting make more sense to you now?
We are not quickly approaching uncharted waters, we are in them. Like I said before, you are going to have to decide whether you are a man (or woman) or not, just shortly. When I look around at most customers, I suspect that is typically not the case.
One has to spend a lot of time to decide whether or not to comply. End of story. This is my country, not theirs.
I think back a few years ago, when I was having dinner with a "seasoned" combat vet who was a gun ship pilot during the Vietnam War and he said something that has always stuck with me. "Give up your weapons and you are a dead man". The look in his eye and the tone of his voice always stuck with me.
I know what I think I have, but then I have not had to confront anyone that demanded that I disarm myself until now. Especially someone employed by my government with a gun and handcuffs. It does however; make me take another long look at a poster I have on the wall in my office of an unarmed person kneeling at the edge of a ditch filled with dead bodies during WWII being shot in the back of the head by a German Nazi officer.
Monday, February 4, 2013
Why the Collapse is Certain
While the following is a little bit of a long and some what technical read, it is the most concise article that I have read on why a Economic Collapse is a certainty.
December 15 2012: Some pretty ugly markets for 2013, our debts are too large to ever be paid, Europe's economy is terminal, Spain and Greece are basically in default, the complete breakdown of moral justice flys into high gear in the US, outright looting of the US Treasury going on, the new year will only bring us closer to the fiscal cliff and closer to going over it......this is the lead in from an article, called 2013 The Final Act, by Bob Rinear for the International Forecaster Weekly.
Mr. Rinear's view:
If you have been with us for any length of time you know that I've been claiming that 2013 will probably usher in some pretty ugly world markets. I've called it everything from a massive roll over to an outright crash. Naturally I have to have some "reason" to believe this, and I figure that today is as good as any to discuss the "why's" of it all.
Frankly I have no idea if the big crash will occur in 2013, 2014 ,2015 or what have you. No one truly knows the future. But, I do know that enough things are already in process that the big crash is a mathematical inevitability. We have gone over the edge, we can't walk it back. Now it's simply a matter of waiting on the Grand Finale.
So what is it that is so egregious, that we're going to be facing this economic implosion? The simple fact that you're reading our letter means you already understand the unsustainable debt loads we're under. You're smarter than the average person because frankly most people hear the word debt and shrug it off as some form of abstract concept. Well it is neither abstract nor ignorable. It is real, it has grown to outlandish proportions, and it cannot be repaid. Ever. The single greatest transfer of wealth the planet has ever seen is in full swing, it cannot be reversed and it will play out.
Some are simply too stupid to "get it". Yeah, I know that I'm not supposed to call someone stupid, but let’s just cut the air of PC for a while shall we? There are three subsets of folks when you are talking about the economic situation we all find ourselves in. The first class is either ignorant of the situation, or if they are aware of it, are just not smart enough to understand the ramifications. The next set knows full well what is really going on and have tried to secure themselves from the ravages of it. The final set, are those that "benefit immediately" from this situation, and don't give a rats ass about the consequences in the future. Most of our politicians fall into that category.
Let us consider Europe for a moment. The situation concerning Spain, Greece, Italy, Portugal and the other Club Med Countries is already terminal. There's no way to fix it. The relatively "good" economies such as Germany are being taxed to support the bad economies. As we speak there are more than 6 regions that want to "break away" from this nightmare. The Scots are holding a referendum to vote on the concept of breaking away from the UK and going their separate way. The cries to "stop the madness" will continue to rise and there's a very good possibility that Spain, Greece and possibly others will NOT be part of the Euro by the end of 2013. The great Socialist test tube experiment of joining 17 different "tribes" each with its own unique customs and languages, has indeed failed. Unfortunately, when it does dissolve, that will not be the end of the nightmare. See...the debts will still be there.
Spain has basically defaulted. Greece has defaulted. Yet to keep Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan from having to pay up on Credit default swaps, the ISDA has changed the language. They're calling it "collective and selective default" thus not requiring GS to have to pay up. Likewise they looked at Greece and said that because their bonds would have Salvage asset value, it’s not a default. Excuse me? When you create a Credit default swap, the deal goes like this... You want to buy Greek Bonds paying 7%, but you're afraid they might default and not pay you. So, you go to GS and buy a credit default swap. GS is basically selling you an insurance Policy. For a 1% "fee" they basically say that if Greece defaults, we'll make you whole. But you also have to agree to give GS the physical bonds. That's the "swap" part of the deal. GS gets the bonds because in any default there is some "salvage" value. Well, Spain and Greece have both defaulted and all the ISDA did was "fix it" so no one had to pay CDS payouts. How criminal does it get? Very.
So, part one of my theory of a pretty big market shake up is that the possibility of "Some - all" of the Euro zone to fly apart in 2013 is very real. Now, the ISDA (International Swaps and Derivatives Association, Inc.) has been able to keep their buddies at GS and JPM happy by not activating Credit default pay outs. But can they pull that off when the Euro dissolves? How many hundreds of billions are written against these bonds? If just "half" of them are forced to pay out, can GS and JPM find that much money? Does that spur another round of US bail outs because they're "too big to fail?" What I'm basically saying is that just because Europe is "way over there" and according to Jim Cramer "you don't shop at Europe".... their problems are rooted right here in the good ole US. Pension plans, Insurance companies and many other every day businesses have ties to Euro zone debt. Remember this in particular...if global activity causes the US interest rates to rise by just 3%, economic Armageddon would ensue. Yes you read that right. A 3% rise in interest rates implodes our entire system. Could the failure of Europe have that effect? It is possible.
Here in the US, we see something that can only be likened to as "get all you can while we're still solvent". The instance of outright fraud, the complete breakdown of moral justice is now in high gear. John Corzine took a billion dollars from Customers, money that was NEVER intended to be comingled with the firms’ money and lost it/stole it. He walks a free man, heck... he might even open another fund. Solindra was NEVER going to produce a single green product. Never. It was a shell company backed/owned by political "friends" that were given half a billion dollars and in less than a year, padlocked down. It was a scam, a complete "inside job". No charges, no one goes to jail. All in all, 26 supposedly "green" companies took taxpayer money, and folded like a cheap camera. Why did they need taxpayer money in the first place? Because they were scams. They could never attract private money because no one would lend to them. But hey, if you have a brother in law in Congress... then you get millions to play with and eventually steal.
PFG went belly up after regulators there found that just like MF GLobal (Corzine's outfit) they had mingled about 200 million worth of customer funds and lost it/blew it/stole it. Well it wasn't lost. It wasn't badly traded away. It was stolen in a Bernie Madoff like ponzi fashion.
Sentinel comes to mind next. After their customers sued in high court because Sentinel took customer money that by CONTRACT and by CHARTER had to be segregated. Kept separate...not mingled with the companies money for investment...Sentinel did just that. They comingled customer funds with their own, stole some, lost some, etc... But here's where the Concept of morality, justice and any believe in a rule of law goes right down the crapper... the Court sided with Sentinel. That's right and I wrote a lot about it when it happened. Our justice system is now made up of on the take criminals, not upholders of law and justice. They said that even though Sentinel promised not to co mingle customer funds with their own, doing it because they thought it would make the customers even more money was just a good intention gone wrong, nothing more. Are you kidding me?
So we have outright looting of the Treasury going on, and no one goes to jail. We have financial companies stealing customer funds and its swept under the rug. We have a judicial system that is now a farce, a bought and paid for circus. Shall I go on? You bet. Because our problems are no longer just "there's too much debt". Now our problems are considerably more wide spread.
Day after day we've had to endure all this talk about the fiscal cliff, and the bickering between the White House and the Congress. Please understand this... Cliff or no cliff, deal or no deal... the system will fail and fail horribly. Do NOT think that just because they reach some late hour deal that all is well and we can go on partying like it's 1999... it would be a colossal mistake. Yes we'd get a short term market boost on the news, but it doesn't fix or change anything. I repeat, our problems can NOT be fixed. ( Okay I take that back, yes our problems could be fixed if our Government did absolutely everything right...from opening all our lands to drilling and exploration, to getting rid of the insane laws of the EPA, to getting rid of the miles of red tape that stands in the way of opening something as insignificant as a lemonade stand, to opening 12 new refineries so we could have 2 dollar gas, to blah blah blah....as you see, it isn't going to happen).
This week, on Dec 11 and 12 the FOMC met concerning monetary policy. Remember folks, operation twist ends at the end of the year. If they had just let that expire, we would go from 80 billion a month being used to buy up treasuries and manipulate the interest rates... to "just" 40 billion. Well, just like a junkie needs ever more junk, credit markets need ever more bogus dollars. So, they announced they'd buy up 45 billion a month of Government paper, with money printed out of thin air. Just ponder that for a second. The 45 billion a month in QE4, which will go on top of the 40 billion a month in QE3.. we're talking about 85 billion a month which is $1.02 trillion a year. This is about a 14-15 trillion dollar economy and the FED is injecting one trillion straight into it...out of thin "AIR". 7% of our 14 trillion dollar economy is Bernanke's printing press. Can you say inflation? Can you say hyper inflation? Start practicing, its coming.
Consider something for a moment. Since Bernanke launched his ZIRP plan (Zero interest rate policy) We have seen an explosion in the amount of businesses that are using repo's and reverse repo's to create cash flow. In years gone by, a brokerage firm for instance, would deposit its customers account money in 90 day T bills. For instance in January of 2007, those notes were paying 5.1%. Most folks don't know this, but the bulk of most brokerage income was NOT generated by trading commissions. Nope, it was by buying reasonably safe 90 day Government paper. When Bernanke took rates to virtually zero, all these places had to scramble to come up with some way to replace that missing cash.
Well, as you all know, you don't get big returns without big risk. So, what most of these outfits have turned to is the repo/reverse repo market. Don't just think it was Corzine, or PFG or Sentinel. It's just about every bank, every brokerage, every insurance company, every union pension plan, etc. There are now so many derivatives and CDS's, that the exposure rates are mind boggling. You've seen me post the charts. JPM has "assets" of say 1.5 trillion. (customer deposits) but their exposure to derivatives is 48 Trillion. The leverage factor is insane. This goes for Citi and Goldman and Banc of America, etc etc etc. Consider for a moment Goldman Sachs. If you look at “assets on deposit” versus derivative exposure, they’re at a leverage rate of over 400 times. Am I to believe the world just continues along on its merry path and none of these over the counter derivatives go bump in the night?? Sorry, no can do.
What I'm saying is this... all of this junk is coming to a head. They can't hide it any more, they can't disguise it any more. One really big black swan event, one really crazy event and the cascade goes exponential. The problem however is that you cannot react to it. Consider this.. 77% of all trades now are "Algo's" meaning computers buying and selling to each other via high frequency trading. Virtually every one of those programs is written to go "no bid" in the event of a Black swan event. What do you do if one day something wicked has happened (lets just say an atomic bomb goes off)... in seconds the entire market would go no bid. You want to sell your shares/options/futures etc... but there's no bid. No one to buy them. What happens to all the CDS's, the Reverse repo's that are sitting on "off balance sheet" ledgers when something outside "normal" hits? The entire system will lock up, and fail.
We are there. We are 3 interest rate percent from a lockup. We are one black swan event from a lockup. We are one Eurozone disaster from a lock up. We are already AT the period where firms are sweeping customer accounts, to make up for bad bets, and many more will happen. Will all this happen in 2013? I don't know. But I do know that each and every day we march another inch closer to that swan, to that interest rate spike, to that "outside the bell curve" disaster. To the day YOUR money is no longer at your brokerage, it was stolen/lost. But unlike years gone by where you could call a human and find answers and solutions, now it's all computers. Algo's. Programs. My guess is that the market will start to sniff out these very real possibilities this coming year and begin fading off in advance of it.
So, what do you do? First off there's nothing perfect. I can't sit here and tell you that gold will make everything fine. I can't tell you silver will make everything fine. I can't say land, or cattle or trees or anything else will get you through this unscathed. But I feel fairly confident that you will be MUCH better off having your money in something physical, than in slips of paper with dead Presidents on them. I personally believe that having your "wealth" in gold, silver, property, weapons, ammo, trees, livestock, etc..is considerably better than having a computer entry at your bank. Think about it folks. Your supposed wealth is nothing more than computer digits. The MONEY is not there. Your bank does NOT have your money. Your mutual fund doesn't have your money. They've taken that money and bought swaps, repo's, sovereign debt, you name it. All you have in your possession is a statement that "says" you have "X" amount of money. But you really don't and neither do they. To me that's a very scary thing. One I don't like being part of in this bizarro economic atmosphere.
2013 has the ability to be very unsettled for all the reasons I just outlined. It might not all unfold in 2013, it could be 2014...but the point is this...it's coming. It cannot be stopped. As ugly as those words are, they are a mathematical certainty. Just like I learned after living through Sandy, being prepared is key. Get yourself prepared.
December 15 2012: Some pretty ugly markets for 2013, our debts are too large to ever be paid, Europe's economy is terminal, Spain and Greece are basically in default, the complete breakdown of moral justice flys into high gear in the US, outright looting of the US Treasury going on, the new year will only bring us closer to the fiscal cliff and closer to going over it......this is the lead in from an article, called 2013 The Final Act, by Bob Rinear for the International Forecaster Weekly.
Mr. Rinear's view:
If you have been with us for any length of time you know that I've been claiming that 2013 will probably usher in some pretty ugly world markets. I've called it everything from a massive roll over to an outright crash. Naturally I have to have some "reason" to believe this, and I figure that today is as good as any to discuss the "why's" of it all.
Frankly I have no idea if the big crash will occur in 2013, 2014 ,2015 or what have you. No one truly knows the future. But, I do know that enough things are already in process that the big crash is a mathematical inevitability. We have gone over the edge, we can't walk it back. Now it's simply a matter of waiting on the Grand Finale.
So what is it that is so egregious, that we're going to be facing this economic implosion? The simple fact that you're reading our letter means you already understand the unsustainable debt loads we're under. You're smarter than the average person because frankly most people hear the word debt and shrug it off as some form of abstract concept. Well it is neither abstract nor ignorable. It is real, it has grown to outlandish proportions, and it cannot be repaid. Ever. The single greatest transfer of wealth the planet has ever seen is in full swing, it cannot be reversed and it will play out.
Some are simply too stupid to "get it". Yeah, I know that I'm not supposed to call someone stupid, but let’s just cut the air of PC for a while shall we? There are three subsets of folks when you are talking about the economic situation we all find ourselves in. The first class is either ignorant of the situation, or if they are aware of it, are just not smart enough to understand the ramifications. The next set knows full well what is really going on and have tried to secure themselves from the ravages of it. The final set, are those that "benefit immediately" from this situation, and don't give a rats ass about the consequences in the future. Most of our politicians fall into that category.
Let us consider Europe for a moment. The situation concerning Spain, Greece, Italy, Portugal and the other Club Med Countries is already terminal. There's no way to fix it. The relatively "good" economies such as Germany are being taxed to support the bad economies. As we speak there are more than 6 regions that want to "break away" from this nightmare. The Scots are holding a referendum to vote on the concept of breaking away from the UK and going their separate way. The cries to "stop the madness" will continue to rise and there's a very good possibility that Spain, Greece and possibly others will NOT be part of the Euro by the end of 2013. The great Socialist test tube experiment of joining 17 different "tribes" each with its own unique customs and languages, has indeed failed. Unfortunately, when it does dissolve, that will not be the end of the nightmare. See...the debts will still be there.
Spain has basically defaulted. Greece has defaulted. Yet to keep Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan from having to pay up on Credit default swaps, the ISDA has changed the language. They're calling it "collective and selective default" thus not requiring GS to have to pay up. Likewise they looked at Greece and said that because their bonds would have Salvage asset value, it’s not a default. Excuse me? When you create a Credit default swap, the deal goes like this... You want to buy Greek Bonds paying 7%, but you're afraid they might default and not pay you. So, you go to GS and buy a credit default swap. GS is basically selling you an insurance Policy. For a 1% "fee" they basically say that if Greece defaults, we'll make you whole. But you also have to agree to give GS the physical bonds. That's the "swap" part of the deal. GS gets the bonds because in any default there is some "salvage" value. Well, Spain and Greece have both defaulted and all the ISDA did was "fix it" so no one had to pay CDS payouts. How criminal does it get? Very.
So, part one of my theory of a pretty big market shake up is that the possibility of "Some - all" of the Euro zone to fly apart in 2013 is very real. Now, the ISDA (International Swaps and Derivatives Association, Inc.) has been able to keep their buddies at GS and JPM happy by not activating Credit default pay outs. But can they pull that off when the Euro dissolves? How many hundreds of billions are written against these bonds? If just "half" of them are forced to pay out, can GS and JPM find that much money? Does that spur another round of US bail outs because they're "too big to fail?" What I'm basically saying is that just because Europe is "way over there" and according to Jim Cramer "you don't shop at Europe".... their problems are rooted right here in the good ole US. Pension plans, Insurance companies and many other every day businesses have ties to Euro zone debt. Remember this in particular...if global activity causes the US interest rates to rise by just 3%, economic Armageddon would ensue. Yes you read that right. A 3% rise in interest rates implodes our entire system. Could the failure of Europe have that effect? It is possible.
Here in the US, we see something that can only be likened to as "get all you can while we're still solvent". The instance of outright fraud, the complete breakdown of moral justice is now in high gear. John Corzine took a billion dollars from Customers, money that was NEVER intended to be comingled with the firms’ money and lost it/stole it. He walks a free man, heck... he might even open another fund. Solindra was NEVER going to produce a single green product. Never. It was a shell company backed/owned by political "friends" that were given half a billion dollars and in less than a year, padlocked down. It was a scam, a complete "inside job". No charges, no one goes to jail. All in all, 26 supposedly "green" companies took taxpayer money, and folded like a cheap camera. Why did they need taxpayer money in the first place? Because they were scams. They could never attract private money because no one would lend to them. But hey, if you have a brother in law in Congress... then you get millions to play with and eventually steal.
PFG went belly up after regulators there found that just like MF GLobal (Corzine's outfit) they had mingled about 200 million worth of customer funds and lost it/blew it/stole it. Well it wasn't lost. It wasn't badly traded away. It was stolen in a Bernie Madoff like ponzi fashion.
Sentinel comes to mind next. After their customers sued in high court because Sentinel took customer money that by CONTRACT and by CHARTER had to be segregated. Kept separate...not mingled with the companies money for investment...Sentinel did just that. They comingled customer funds with their own, stole some, lost some, etc... But here's where the Concept of morality, justice and any believe in a rule of law goes right down the crapper... the Court sided with Sentinel. That's right and I wrote a lot about it when it happened. Our justice system is now made up of on the take criminals, not upholders of law and justice. They said that even though Sentinel promised not to co mingle customer funds with their own, doing it because they thought it would make the customers even more money was just a good intention gone wrong, nothing more. Are you kidding me?
So we have outright looting of the Treasury going on, and no one goes to jail. We have financial companies stealing customer funds and its swept under the rug. We have a judicial system that is now a farce, a bought and paid for circus. Shall I go on? You bet. Because our problems are no longer just "there's too much debt". Now our problems are considerably more wide spread.
Day after day we've had to endure all this talk about the fiscal cliff, and the bickering between the White House and the Congress. Please understand this... Cliff or no cliff, deal or no deal... the system will fail and fail horribly. Do NOT think that just because they reach some late hour deal that all is well and we can go on partying like it's 1999... it would be a colossal mistake. Yes we'd get a short term market boost on the news, but it doesn't fix or change anything. I repeat, our problems can NOT be fixed. ( Okay I take that back, yes our problems could be fixed if our Government did absolutely everything right...from opening all our lands to drilling and exploration, to getting rid of the insane laws of the EPA, to getting rid of the miles of red tape that stands in the way of opening something as insignificant as a lemonade stand, to opening 12 new refineries so we could have 2 dollar gas, to blah blah blah....as you see, it isn't going to happen).
This week, on Dec 11 and 12 the FOMC met concerning monetary policy. Remember folks, operation twist ends at the end of the year. If they had just let that expire, we would go from 80 billion a month being used to buy up treasuries and manipulate the interest rates... to "just" 40 billion. Well, just like a junkie needs ever more junk, credit markets need ever more bogus dollars. So, they announced they'd buy up 45 billion a month of Government paper, with money printed out of thin air. Just ponder that for a second. The 45 billion a month in QE4, which will go on top of the 40 billion a month in QE3.. we're talking about 85 billion a month which is $1.02 trillion a year. This is about a 14-15 trillion dollar economy and the FED is injecting one trillion straight into it...out of thin "AIR". 7% of our 14 trillion dollar economy is Bernanke's printing press. Can you say inflation? Can you say hyper inflation? Start practicing, its coming.
Consider something for a moment. Since Bernanke launched his ZIRP plan (Zero interest rate policy) We have seen an explosion in the amount of businesses that are using repo's and reverse repo's to create cash flow. In years gone by, a brokerage firm for instance, would deposit its customers account money in 90 day T bills. For instance in January of 2007, those notes were paying 5.1%. Most folks don't know this, but the bulk of most brokerage income was NOT generated by trading commissions. Nope, it was by buying reasonably safe 90 day Government paper. When Bernanke took rates to virtually zero, all these places had to scramble to come up with some way to replace that missing cash.
Well, as you all know, you don't get big returns without big risk. So, what most of these outfits have turned to is the repo/reverse repo market. Don't just think it was Corzine, or PFG or Sentinel. It's just about every bank, every brokerage, every insurance company, every union pension plan, etc. There are now so many derivatives and CDS's, that the exposure rates are mind boggling. You've seen me post the charts. JPM has "assets" of say 1.5 trillion. (customer deposits) but their exposure to derivatives is 48 Trillion. The leverage factor is insane. This goes for Citi and Goldman and Banc of America, etc etc etc. Consider for a moment Goldman Sachs. If you look at “assets on deposit” versus derivative exposure, they’re at a leverage rate of over 400 times. Am I to believe the world just continues along on its merry path and none of these over the counter derivatives go bump in the night?? Sorry, no can do.
What I'm saying is this... all of this junk is coming to a head. They can't hide it any more, they can't disguise it any more. One really big black swan event, one really crazy event and the cascade goes exponential. The problem however is that you cannot react to it. Consider this.. 77% of all trades now are "Algo's" meaning computers buying and selling to each other via high frequency trading. Virtually every one of those programs is written to go "no bid" in the event of a Black swan event. What do you do if one day something wicked has happened (lets just say an atomic bomb goes off)... in seconds the entire market would go no bid. You want to sell your shares/options/futures etc... but there's no bid. No one to buy them. What happens to all the CDS's, the Reverse repo's that are sitting on "off balance sheet" ledgers when something outside "normal" hits? The entire system will lock up, and fail.
We are there. We are 3 interest rate percent from a lockup. We are one black swan event from a lockup. We are one Eurozone disaster from a lock up. We are already AT the period where firms are sweeping customer accounts, to make up for bad bets, and many more will happen. Will all this happen in 2013? I don't know. But I do know that each and every day we march another inch closer to that swan, to that interest rate spike, to that "outside the bell curve" disaster. To the day YOUR money is no longer at your brokerage, it was stolen/lost. But unlike years gone by where you could call a human and find answers and solutions, now it's all computers. Algo's. Programs. My guess is that the market will start to sniff out these very real possibilities this coming year and begin fading off in advance of it.
So, what do you do? First off there's nothing perfect. I can't sit here and tell you that gold will make everything fine. I can't tell you silver will make everything fine. I can't say land, or cattle or trees or anything else will get you through this unscathed. But I feel fairly confident that you will be MUCH better off having your money in something physical, than in slips of paper with dead Presidents on them. I personally believe that having your "wealth" in gold, silver, property, weapons, ammo, trees, livestock, etc..is considerably better than having a computer entry at your bank. Think about it folks. Your supposed wealth is nothing more than computer digits. The MONEY is not there. Your bank does NOT have your money. Your mutual fund doesn't have your money. They've taken that money and bought swaps, repo's, sovereign debt, you name it. All you have in your possession is a statement that "says" you have "X" amount of money. But you really don't and neither do they. To me that's a very scary thing. One I don't like being part of in this bizarro economic atmosphere.
2013 has the ability to be very unsettled for all the reasons I just outlined. It might not all unfold in 2013, it could be 2014...but the point is this...it's coming. It cannot be stopped. As ugly as those words are, they are a mathematical certainty. Just like I learned after living through Sandy, being prepared is key. Get yourself prepared.
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