This past week was filled with geopolitics 24/7 until Friday,
when they finally spilled all over the markets. The
market action was extremely ominous in my opinion and especially the
last hour into the close. Very shortly I believe we will be faced
with huge market “gaps” which will be the topic for tomorrow, today let’s
discuss how the current geopolitical situation will detonate the leverage.
It’s not as if the geopolitical situation wasn’t already hot enough before
the Greek vote, now the world has a polarizing event to deal with. This
past week was a sparring match between the Syriza party of Greece and the EU,
a line in the sand has now been drawn, Feb. 28. Before looking at all
of the sides being chosen and alliances being formed, it is important to
understand that “lines in the sand” are a very VERY bad thing indeed
…especially when we are talking about “nations”. Drawing a line in the
sand and placing a date on it means someone must lose face on one side or the
other. Don’t get me wrong, one way or the other Greece will implode
financially, it will open the floodgates for other weak southern European
nations and ultimately destroy the Eurozone as we know it, but, now there is
a hard date for all of this to occur by. A Greek failure or exit will
also set off a derivatives chain reaction, this is what I believe Friday’s
market action was portending.
The Euro/Greek fracas is not all there is, there is much more including
the Russia/China/India meeting and the Russia/Iran allegiance, I
will bring them in later, for now, let’s focus on Greece since the
Eurozone has now declared them the “firing pin”. Greece is a financial
wreck. They have national debt at a rate of 175% of GDP and rising,
especially as GDP continues to collapse. They also experienced bank
runs by the public over the last several weeks and saw outflows of more than
10% of total deposits. Their stock and bond markets crashed this week
as interest rates approached 20%, Greece will mathematically go down one way
or the other.
Over the next 25 days, some “philosophical” decisions will need to be
made, none of them will be pleasant. In a nutshell, Greece wants its
debt balances lowered in a “haircut fashion”, the ECB cannot agree to this as
they would then have to admit losses and no longer be able to price Greek
debt at the ridiculous price of “par”. The Troika wants to offer 7
billion euros as an extension package to prolong the game, Mr. Tsipras flat
out rejected this on Friday (thus the market action) and does not want to
accept it, he is steadfast in lowering the amounts owed rather than taking
more handouts and increasing the debt balances.
This is a true showdown and one where no matter what happens, no one wins
because the losses have already taken place. Greece has already
borrowed too much and cannot pay it back so the losses are already in place
whether admitted and acknowledged or not. Please understand that Greek
bonds act as “collateral” within the derivatives daisy chain. Any write
down or write off will be considered a “default trigger” where margin calls
are issued to an already illiquid and under capitalized derivatives
chain. The financial system is in a position where calling a spade
a spade will cause the roof to cave in, not calling it a spade and ignoring
the reality is the only thing keeping the game alive to this point!
Enter Mr. Putin and the Russians, they have offered aid to Greece should
they turn East. This would be a disaster for Europe herself as the
next question would be “who’s next?”. The bottom line is this, as I
said “the losses have already taken place”, are they recognized now or
later? One last point about Greece, should they lean East, but stay as
a member of the Eurozone and NATO, they can now veto any sanctions the U.S.
would like to place on Russia …ironic in a very dark way don’t you
think? Greece would be a huge win for Russia in so many ways and
an even bigger loss for the West in every fashion imaginable.
China, Russia and India will meet on Monday in Beijing, can you
imagine what will be discussed? Especially after Mr. Obama
just visited India last week? Will it go something like
“whatever they offered you is either not best for you …or an outright
deception”? Will India be offered a spot at the Eastern monetary table,
the future “big” table if you will? Are they being given a
heads up on any timing issues or even requested to lower their gold tariffs
to put a further squeeze on Western vaults? Interesting stuff!
Switching to the Middle East but again including Russia and by extension
China, Iran and Russia seem to be dancing partners! This has very big
ramifications when you look at it from the religious/allegiance
standpoint. Iran is Shia which means they have a natural allegiance
toward Syria, Russia also has reason to back Syria as they do not want to see
a pipeline built as competition to their own gas. Just a week back,
Russia and Iran signed a military agreement, Russia is also discussing
constructing nuclear plants within Iran. Iran has also been
invited to join Russia’s new clearing system which will compete (be
an alternative to) with the SWIFT system. All BIG news and now
coming day after day after day.
Before wrapping up, we should mention that China has ratcheted up her imports
of gold. The final two weeks of January were 70 tons and 71 tons.
Should this be their new run rate, they will be importing 40% more gold
annually than the world produces. Why? Why are they ramping up
imports just now? My personal guess is they know something is about to
happen and want everything they can get their hands on as fast as they
can. To put this in perspective, in just two weeks, China has
imported six times more gold than the COMEX even claims to have as
deliverable inventory! In my opinion, COMEX will very shortly be
relegated into irrelevance as they simply do not have the product available
for delivery. A “two tier market” will result and it is very possible
to see large down days on the COMEX and huge up days in physical metal as
traders begin to understand the true dichotomy between paper gold and
physical gold.
We have watched over the last several months as countries jockey for
position. Allegiances of trade, military and finance have been created
and “sides” are being chosen. The key to understand here is that those
announcing deals have nearly ALL been toward the East and away from the
West. Clearly, gold is also moving to the East from the West.
Once the sides are fully chosen, who do you believe will be making the rules?
“Gold” and whomever owns it will have a voice, got gold?
To finish, I believe Friday’s closing action is merely a preview to “gap”
openings in all directions one day in the near future. The world
has been in the process of choosing sides for several years and it is
now coming to a head. Many deals and alliances have been
formed and in case you had not noticed, the West, led by the U.S. is
losing influence as each new deal is signed. This is because the
world wants fairness in trade, they want true and real settlement which has
not been the case since 1971. We are moving toward gold being
remonetized into the financial system because this is what the world is
demanding. Below, and capitalized because it is so very true, is a
quote from my mentor which sums up the attitudes of most, if not the
entire world excluding Britain and the U.S. Please read this several times
and let it sink in thoroughly because this quote will be the basis for
what I write tomorrow.
“THEY KNOW MONEY TO BE…..’GOLD’. THIS FUNDAMENTAL DIFFERENCE
REVOLVES AROUND WHAT HAS BEEN PROVEN OVER AND OVER AGAIN….THAT BANKER
ALCHEMY IN WHAT EVER FORM, QE OR OTHER WISE, IS NOTHING BUT THEFT….
BASED ON A FUNDAMENTAL LIE….NO MATTER WHAT GOD THEY WORSHIP, GOLD IS THEIR
ONE AND ONLY BINDING AGENT, BECAUSE; GOLD IS MONEY YOU CAN
TRUST”!