Global Debt Hits $246 Trillion, 320% Of GDP, As Developing Debt Hits All Time HIgh

ZeroHedge, July 15, 2019 – Excerpts:

According to the latest IIF Global Debt Monitor released today, debt around the globe hit $246 trillion in Q1 2019, rising by $3 trillion in the quarter, and outpacing the rate of growth of the global economy as total debt/GDP rose to 320%

NEW Global Debt Monitor: Global debt hit $246T in Q1 2019, nearly 320% of GDP.

Debt by sector, Q1 2019 (as % of GDP):
🔹Households: 59.8%
🔹Non-financial corporates: 91.4%
🔹Gov’t: 87.2%
🔹Financial corporates: 80.8% pic.twitter.com/4Qu0ekvpZw — IIF (@IIF) July 15, 2019

[snip]

The IIF pointed out the obvious, namely that lower borrowing costs thanks to central banks’ monetary easing had encouraged countries to take on new debt. Amusingly, by doing so, this makes rising rates even more impossible as the world’s can barely support 100% debt of GDP, let alone 3x that.

[According to Sonja Gibbs the IIF’s managing director for global policy initiatives] “It’s almost Pavlovian. Rates go down and borrowing goes up. Once they are built up, debts are hard to pay down without diverting funds from other goals, whether that’s productive investment by companies or government spending.”

And that, in a nutshell, is why the world is doomed to a central-bank created boom-bust cycle, as once there is just too much debt, there will either by hyperinflation or a wave of global sovereign and corporate defaults.

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This will not end well. In fact, it will end in financial chaos and economic disaster.

There is a way to clean this mess up, at least for the United States.

The Leviticus 25 Plan is the most powerful and dynamic ‘ground-level’ debt elimination plan on the face of the earth, eliminating massive tracts of household and consumer debt, along with federal, state and local government debt.

The Leviticus 25 Plan, in fact, produces $465 billion in federal government budget surpluses in each of the first 5 years following activation. Source: https://leviticus25plan.org/2019/03/

The Leviticus 25 Plan is a dynamic economic initiative providing direct liquidity benefits for American families, while at the same time scaling back the role of government in managing and controlling the affairs of citizens.  It is a comprehensive plan with long-term economic and social benefits for citizens and government.

The inspiration for this plan is based upon Biblical principles set forth in the Book of Leviticus, principles tendering direct economic liberties to the people.

The Leviticus 25 Plan – An Economic Acceleration Plan for America

$75,000 per U.S. citizen – Leviticus 25 Plan 2020 (3348 downloads)

The Leviticus 25 Plan

Nomi Prins is a former managing director at Goldman-Sachs, a former Senior Managing Director at Bear Stearns, and a former senior strategist at Lehman Brothers and analyst at the Chase Manhattan Bank. She is currently an American author, journalist, and public speaker.

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Nomi Prins: Crony Capitalism & Corruption – An Entirely Rigged Political-Financial System

ZeroHedge 11/16/2015   –  Via Jesse’s Cafe Americain,

Too big to fail is a seven-year phenomenon created by the most powerful central banks to bolster the largest, most politically connected US and European banks. More than that, it’s a global concern predicated on that handful of private banks controlling too much market share and elite central banks infusing them with boatloads of cheap capital and other aid.

Synthetic bank and market subsidization disguised as ‘monetary policy’ has spawned artificial asset and debt bubbles – everywhere. The most rapacious speculative capital and associated risk flows from these power-players to the least protected, or least regulated, locales.

There is no such thing as isolated ‘Big Bank’ problems. Rather, complex products, risky practices, leverage and co-dependent transactions have contagion ramifications, particularly in emerging markets whose histories are already lined with disproportionate shares of debt, interest rate and currency related travails.

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Prins:  “I’m talking about an entirely rigged political-financial system.”

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It is time to get the system… “de-rigged.” It is time to ‘level the playing field.’

The mechanism: Granting U.S. citizens the same direct access to liquidity extensions that the Fed so generously provided to Wall Street’s financial sector: Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, State Street, JP Morgan, Merrill Lynch, AIG, Morgan Stanley, UBS, Barclays, Royal Bank of Scotland, and many others – during the great financial crisis years (2008 – 2010).

The Leviticus 25 Plan is a dynamic economic initiative providing direct liquidity benefits for American families, while at the same time scaling back the role of government in managing and controlling the affairs of citizens.  It is a comprehensive plan with long-term economic and social benefits for citizens and government.

The inspiration for this plan is based upon Biblical principles set forth in the Book of Leviticus, principles tendering direct economic liberties to the people.

The Leviticus 25 Plan – An Economic Acceleration Plan for America

$75,000 per U.S. citizen – Leviticus 25 Plan 2020 (3342 downloads)

“He who will not apply new remedies must expect new evils.” – Sir Francis Bacon

July 2019 quote: “Taxation has surrounded itself with doctrines of justification; it had to; no miscreant can carry on without a supporting philosophy. Until recent times this pilfering of private property sought to gain the approval of its victims by protesting the need for maintaining social services. The growing encroachments of the state upon property rights necessarily brought about a lowering of the general economy, resulting in disaffection, and now taxation is advocated as a means of alleviating this condition; we are now being taxed into betterment.”  – Frank Chodorov, “Socialism via Taxation” (1946)

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There is one bright, clean economic solution with the raw power to re-fire America’s free enterprise engines. It will generate massive new tax revenue growth and reduce government social spending obligations. It will restore financial health to ‘ground level’ American families and Main Street America.

There is no other plan like it anywhere in the world.

The Leviticus 25 Plan – An Economic Acceleration Plan for America

$75,000 per U.S. citizen – Leviticus 25 Plan 2020 (3336 downloads)

As the annual deficits begin to seriously ‘widen’ and the Federal government is forced to ‘float’ more paper, or ramp up its borrowing, there will evidently be a significant shortage of interested purchasers of that paper – at the target rates set by Treasury.

So…. the Federal Reserve will need to step in to ‘fill the gap.’ In other words, they will need to ‘create,’ out of thin air, new money. Lots of new money….

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The Daily Shot, Jun 2, 2019:

Rates: The Fed is expected to buy a great deal of Treasury bills as it resumes expanding its balance sheet.

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Escalating fiat currency creation by the Fed, and other Central Banks, is certain to erode the value of money. And that, over the long term, is a threat to liberty – everywhere.

“It is impossible to grasp the meaning of the idea of sound money if one does not realize that it was devised as an Instrument for the protection of civil liberties against despotic inroads on the part of governments.  Ideologically, it Belongs in the same class with political constitutions and bills of rights.”  – The Theory of Money and Credit (1912),         Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises

There is one economic acceleration plan that sets thing back in order. It eliminates vast amounts of public and private debt, balances the federal budget, and restores economic liberty for all Americans.

The Leviticus 25 Plan is a dynamic economic initiative providing direct liquidity benefits for American families, while at the same time scaling back the role of government in managing and controlling the affairs of citizens.  It is a comprehensive plan with long-term economic and social benefits for citizens and government.

The inspiration for this plan is based upon Biblical principles set forth in the Book of Leviticus, principles tendering direct economic liberties to the people.

The Leviticus 25 Plan – An Economic Acceleration Plan for America

$75,000 per U.S. citizen – Leviticus 25 Plan 2020 (3332 downloads)

Bloomberg’s Bob Ivry discovered, through an FOIA request, that the Federal Reserve had been running a “secretive bailout operation between March and December 2008, under which banks borrowed as much as $855 billion over the time frame for a rate as low as 0.01%.”

The Fed subsequently disclosed: “The Federal Reserve System conducted a series of single-tranche term repurchase agreements from March 2008 to December 2008 with the intention of mitigating heightened stress in funding markets.

These operations were conducted by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York with primary dealers as counterparties…this program helped to address liquidity pressures evident across a number of financing markets and supported the flow of credit to U.S. households and business.”   (Source: ZeroHedge 07/06/2011  – Fed Releases Details On Secret $855 Billion Single-Tra… )

The 5 heaviest borrowers were foreign banks – raking in a cool $593 billion:                Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, BNP Paribas, RBS and Barclays.

UBS Securities, LLC ($56.9 billion) was #6 on the list.

#7 Goldman Sachs received $53.4 billion – much of it borrowed at a rate of .01% (one basis point).
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The Fed ‘created’ various funding facilities during the financial crisis to bailout Wall Street’s financial market:
Term Auction Facility (TAF)
Commercial Paper Funding Facility (CPFF)
Primary Dealer’s Credit Facility (PDCF)
Term Securities Lending Facility (TSLF)
Asset-backed Commercial Paper Money Market Mutual Fund Liquidity Facility (AMLF)

Wall Street financial institutions also received massive liquidity transfusions at the Fed’s Discount Window (DW).

The one the Fed tried hard to keep out of the spotlight involved the “secret” single-tranche  OMO’s – through which they ‘ladled out’ a whopping $855 billion.

Again, the Fed deemed this necessary to mitigate the “heightened stress in funding markets” (translation: Wall Street’s leveraged speculation strategies got broad-sided by the great mortgage market default wave, and funding markets ‘seized up’).

In the Fed’s own words, the secret ST OMO program “helped to address liquidity pressures evident across a number of financing markets and supported the flow of credit to U.S. households and business” (translation: the biggest and mightiest financial institutions on Wall Street had suddenly developed gaping capital holes… many were on the verge of ‘going under’… and they needed a liquidity lifeline to survive).
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Fast forward to 2019. It is now time to “mitigate heightened stress” and to “address liquidity pressures” that have been experienced by American families over the past decade. It is time to grant U.S. citizens the same direct access to liquidity that was ‘”secretly” provided to major U.S. and foreign banks..

The Leviticus 25 Plan is a dynamic economic initiative providing direct liquidity benefits for American families, while at the same time scaling back the role of government in managing and controlling the affairs of citizens.  It is a comprehensive plan with long-term economic and social benefits for citizens and government.

The inspiration for this plan is based upon Biblical principles set forth in the Book of Leviticus, principles tendering direct economic liberties to the people.

The Leviticus 25 Plan – An Economic Acceleration Plan for America

$75,000 per U.S. citizen – Leviticus 25 Plan 2020 (3316 downloads)

Populist solutions for serious, mainstream issues are known to take root and blossom in an era when public policies have shifted dramatically in favor of government control over people’s lives, and unabashedly favor wealthy, politically-connected individuals and groups.

Populist fervor thrives when public policies have so distorted the economic and social landscapes that trust in government is lost.

William A. Galston (WSJ – Dec 16, 2014) summarized the hallmarks of the current populist wave several years ago:
Populist movements flourish when established leaders and parties fail to solve their countries’ most urgent problems. Throughout the market democracies, one problem dominates all others: the economic squeeze on working- and middle-class families. Neither the center-left nor the center-right has responded in ways that make sense to rank-and-file citizens. So they are looking elsewhere.

Populism offers many satisfactions. Its narrative is clear and easy to understand. It identifies villains—corrupt officials, unresponsive bureaucracies, arrogant elites, large corporations, giant banks…

It legitimizes outrage, the expression of which is one of the greatest human pleasures. It flatters the people, whose virtue and common sense, it claims, could set the country right if only rich and powerful forces didn’t stand in their way. “The humblest citizen in all the land,” declaimed William Jennings Bryan more than a century ago, “when clad in the armor of a righteous cause, is stronger than all the whole hosts of error that they”—the elites—“can bring.”

Populism is the politics of nostalgia. It appeals to a better time in the past….
The ills against which populists inveigh are rarely illusory. On the contrary: Populism typically gives voice to genuine grievances, and in so doing gains credibility and energy.

At the heart of the American dream is the promise of opportunity. But in the ABC/Washington Post survey conducted days before the 2014 midterm elections, 71% of Americans said the U.S. economic system generally favors the wealthy. Only 24% disagreed. The favors-the-wealthy super-majority included 54% of Republicans, 59% of conservatives, 64% of college graduates—and even 57% of those making more than $100,000 per year.
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Government leaders in America over the past several decades have failed to solve our nation’s most urgent problems,” both social and economic. The same can be said for the governments of many other nations around the world.

Governments have not “responded in ways that make sense to rank-and-file citizens.”

The Leviticus 25 Plan appeals to “virtue and common sense….its narrative is clear and easy to understand. It identifies villains – corrupt officials, unresponsive bureaucracies, arrogant elites, large corporations, giant banks…”

The Leviticus 25 Plan levels the playing field.  It grants individual citizens the same direct access to liquidity that was awarded to the likes of Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, UBS, Citigroup, Bank of America, State Street, Merrill Lynch, AIG, Deutsche Bank, Barclays, GE Capital, and many, many others during the financial crisis years of 2007-2010..

The Leviticus 25 Plan provides for massive debt relief and economic liberty for ‘ground level’ America. It unleashes the power of free-market dynamics and counters price and supply distortions that have thrived with government control over markets.

It generates massive government tax revenues – without raising taxes.  And it pays for itself over a 10-15 year period.

This is the only plan, anywhere, that restores order, and cleans up corruptive influences, and re-fires the engines of economic growth..

The Leviticus 25 Plan – An Economic Acceleration Plan for America

$75,000 per U.S. citizen – Leviticus 25 Plan 2020 (3315 downloads)

The gravy train stopped at Russia’s doorstep in the spring of 2015 to drop off $60 million in U.S. taxpayer dollars. Yes, this is the same Russia that annexed Crimea and invaded Ukraine. The same Russia that has been provoking Europe and the U.S. – and rattling its nuclear saber.

Fox News – April 9, 2015                                                                                                     UN paid Russian air charters hundreds of millions while Putin invaded Ukraine
Excerpts:
EXCLUSIVE: In the 14 months since Russian President Vladimir Putin annexed Crimea and sent proxy fighters to invade eastern Ukraine, Russian companies have won more than $212 million in United Nations contracts to ferry troops, supplies and equipment — on peacekeeping missions.

The tally amounts to nearly one-third — 32 percent — of the money U.N. headquarters has spent on peacekeeping air transport during that time, according to the U.N.’s procurement website.

The U.S. pays 28.4 percent of all U.N. peacekeeping expenses, so the Obama administration’s contribution to the Russian bottom line amounts to more than $60 million.
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America has been leaking out a lot of money over the last decade – to help bailout Ukraine, Greece, Egypt, and other financially stressed nations. And now we’re leaking $60 million in new money to Russia via obligatory deals they have with the U.N..

This is all on top of the trillions of dollars in direct cash transfers, discount window access, credit guarantees, and toxic asset purchases that our government and Federal Reserve employed to bail out Wall Street’s financial sector during the financial crisis 2008-09.

This asymmetrical largess has gone on long enough. It is now time to even things out and grant the same direct liquidity access for U.S. citizens that our government and the Federal Reserve have been providing to foreign nations and foreign banks..

The Leviticus 25 Plan is a powerful economic acceleration plan that restore financial health for American families, stimulates long-term economic growth and stability, and generates $465 billion budget surpluses at the federal level over each of its first five years of activation.

The Leviticus 25 Plan – An Economic Acceleration Plan for America

$75,000 per U.S. citizen – Leviticus 25 Plan 2020 (3308 downloads)

US Taxpayers Just Paid $780 Million To Fund The Latest Greece Bailout Tranche

ZeroHedge, July 8, 2011 – Excerpts:

“The IMF is delighted to announce that it just approved a €3.2 billion disbursement of cash for Greece, its fifth, as part of the €12 billion in money that Greece needs in order to continue operating in the months of July and August. And just for what purpose will this money be used, one may ask? Well, as explained a few weeks ago, in Greek Math: €12 Billion In, €18.2 Billion Out the entire amount will be promptly recycled by global financial institutions in the form of debt maturities and interest payments, which amount to €18.2 billion in the months of July and August.   

Simply said ECB, EU and IMF money in, money owed to bankers out. The kicker: 17.09% of the money coming from the IMF, comes from, that’s right dear US taxpayer, you (and since 21% of the quota contributions allocated to the IMF are deemed “non-usable”, the actual number funded by the US is likely much higher).   

But this plot has a bonus kicker: … the actual Greek debt is no longer owed by European banks to the extent it had been previously expected: a development that threatens to scuttle the entire second Greek bailout plan as currently proposed. So as the banks have been selling Greek debt, who has been buying?   

Mostly hedge funds… 

So to recap: US taxpayers have just paid out about $780 million of the $4.6 billion in order to fund interest owed to… hedge funds.“

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This begs the question: If the U.S. government can funnel U.S. tax-payer dollars to bailout Greece, to the tune of $780 million, in order to help Greece make their interest payments to … hedge funds, then should not U.S. citizen taxpayers receive that same direct access to liquidity to help Americans eliminate debt at the family level?

Answer: Yes.

The Leviticus 25 Plan is a dynamic economic initiative providing direct liquidity benefits for American families, while at the same time scaling back the role of government in managing and controlling the affairs of citizens.  It is a comprehensive plan with long-term economic and social benefits for citizens and government.

The inspiration for this plan is based upon Biblical principles set forth in the Book of Leviticus, principles tendering direct economic liberties to the people.

The Leviticus 25 Plan – An Economic Acceleration Plan for America

$75,000 per U.S. citizen – Leviticus 25 Plan 2020 (3304 downloads)

The Sounding Line, May 20, 2019: “Legendary trader, risk analyst, and author, Nassim Taleb, recently spoke with Yahoo Finance about his concerns over the swelling public debt.”

Nassim Taleb on ‘The Public Debt’ – Excerpts:

“The problem is centralization causes deficits. You can pretty much take that as a rule. Centralization lowers skin in the game… Whereas when you have decentralized communities, like in Switzerland, people are much more fiscally responsible because those who make decisions live in the community… We have a problem of agency between us and those supposed to represent our interests. They do not represent our interests, so they run deficits… So we need to have some kind of laws banning the government from deficits.”

As we noted here, in order to stop the growth in the national debt without raising taxes, the federal government would now have to eliminate all spending other than entitlements, emergency spending, and servicing the national debt. That would mean eliminating every single federal agency and the entire military. In fact, in 2018 just the interest expense on local, state, and federal debt amounted to 93% of all military spending, including off-budget emergency and oversees contingency spending. A record $9 trillion of federal debt will be maturing in the next four years.

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There is another way – An economic acceleration plan with powerful ‘decentralizing’ dynamics that generate enormous government cost savings and vigorous growth in tax revenues… and federal government budget surpluses.

There is no other economic plan in the world like it.

The Leviticus 25 Plan

“He who will not apply new remedies must expect new evils.” – Sir Francis Bacon

The Leviticus 25 Plan is a dynamic economic initiative providing direct liquidity benefits for American families, while at the same time scaling back the role of government in managing and controlling the affairs of citizens.  It is a comprehensive plan with long-term economic and social benefits for citizens and government.

The inspiration for this plan is based upon Biblical principles set forth in the Book of Leviticus, principles tendering direct economic liberties to the people.

The Leviticus 25 Plan – An Economic Acceleration Plan for America

$75,000 per U.S. citizen – Leviticus 25 Plan 2020 (3301 downloads)

Deutsche Bank, AG, along with numerous foreign banking interests with U.S. subsidiaries, enjoyed massive liquidity infusions, courtesy of the U.S. Federal Reserve, to help them deal with their faltering financial conditions and debt burdens during the great financial crisis 2007-2010.

Excerpts from:  Bloomberg  Nov 28, 2011:    

“Deutsche Bank AG, Germany’s biggest bank, navigated the financial crisis without capital injections from the German government. The Frankfurt-based bank, which in 2008 reported its first annual loss since World War II, wasn’t so shy about getting liquidity in secret from the U.S. Federal Reserve. The lender tapped the Fed for $66 billion on Nov. 6, 2008 — $28.2 billion from the Term Securities Lending Facility, $21.8 billion from single-tranche open market operations and $16 billion from the Term Auction Facility. John Gallagher, a Deutsche Bank spokesman, declined to say whether the bank took emergency loans during the crisis from other central banks, such as Germany’s Bundesbank.”

Peak amount of debt held on 11-6-2008:  $66B  

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During the two years leading into Deutsche Bank’s financial windfall from the U.S. Fed, it was also engaged in the “Sale of toxic securities leading up to the financial crisis” and a Libor Interest Rate Scam” which defrauded U.S. tax-paying citizens via excessive interest charges on municipal loans. Source: Deutsche Bank’s Five Biggest Scandals

“Deutsche Bank was one of a series of lenders guilty of selling and pooling toxic financial products in the lead-up to the 2007 and 2008 financial crisis.”

“The bank signed a $7.2 billion settlement with the US Department of Justice in 2017, after being accused of having sold investors bad mortgage-backed securities between 2005 and 2007…”

Deutsche Bank’s charges involved “espionage, money laundering and interest rate scams,” including:

1. Laundering Russian money – In 2017, Deutsche Bank was fined a total of $630 million (€553.5 million) by US and UK financial authorities over accusations of having laundered money out of Russia.

2. Libor interest rate scam – Deutsche Bank had already been fined a record $2.5 billion dollars bv US and British authorities for its role in an interest scam between 2003 and 2007.

The bank’s London subsidiary pleaded guilty to counts of criminal wire fraud, after it was accused of fixing interest rates like the London Interbank Offered Rate (Libor), used to price a hefty amount of loans and contracts across the world. 

3. “Violating U.S. economic sanctions” involving countries like Iran, Libya, Sudan

Fast-forward 11 years to May 8, 2019. Deutsche Bank is sinking hard. The Fed’s generous ‘bailout’ of this corrupt financial heavyweight was a total waste….

Chart accessed from: Gold Core, May 8, 2019

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If the U.S. Federal Reserve can transfuse the likes of Deutsche Bank with $66 billion in ‘secret liquidity funding’……….

Then U.S. citizens deserve nothing less than to be granted that same direct access to liquidity.

The Leviticus 25 Plan – An Economic Acceleration Plan for America

$75,000 per U.S. citizen – Leviticus 25 Plan 2020 (3298 downloads)