G20: US$ Funeral, US Failed Debtor

By Jim Willie CB    Apr 2 2009 4:48PM

MAJOR GLOBAL TURNING POINT

Perhaps it was a grand error of judgment to host the G20 Meeting in London. The epicenter of the financial hegemony, corruption, hidden agency influence, and financial market destruction has clearly been the United States and the United Kingdom working in tandem. So great risk comes with the hosting of this meeting in London. The British Empire, aka Great Britain, is the site of the most devastating economic and banking ruin in a century, on a scale much larger than Iceland, but with a certain hand in the Iceland downfall. Millions of British citizens are angry, worried, and justifiably so. Their economists, bankers, and government leaders have presided over at best a severe national decline that must withstand diverse reform and reconstruction, and over at worst a national failure of state that must endure a collapse before any conceivable reconstruction. The decline if not collapse in the UK seemed for a time to lag that of the US, but lately events have accelerated inside the harrowed United Kingdom. The United States has the advantage of just printing trillion$ and floating about for a bit much like a derelict vessel with feigned movement!

Certainly it was a grand error of judgment at the February Davos Global Economic Forum for President Obama not to attend. He used extremely bad judgment in sending Timothy Geithner as his diminutive envoy, the Treasury Secretary who serves Goldman Sachs. Obama took harsh criticism for skipping an opportunity to meet with certain heads of state in attendance, key banking and industrial leaders. He could have met Russian leaders Putin and Medvedev, who truly stole the entire Davos show. My guess is that Obama was deeply intimidated at the Davos prospect, was busy assembling a staff, but had no choice now. The chorus of criticism, if not revolt against the US$, has grown deafening. The US$-based global financial structure is broken, without any doubt irrevocably. The last to notice are the USGovt and US banking stewards, who are busily looting still.

There are 20 members of the G20 organization. These include the finance ministers and central bank governors of the following countries: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States. The 20th member is the European Union, which is represented by the rotating presidency and its European Central Bank. In addition to these 20 members, the following forums and institutions participate in G20 Meetings: International Monetary Fund, World Bank, Intl Monetary & Financial Committee, Development Committee of the IMF & World Bank. For the past decade or more, it is well understood and well documented how the IMF and World Bank are each riddled with US security agency non-bankers, complete with associated covert activity. Some accuse them of routine operations that include criminal behavior, including violence. See “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man” by John Perkins (2004).

These many G20 nations are all too familiar with the hardball games played by the IMF and World Bank. They keenly have observed for the last seven months some historical events in WashingtonDC and New York City. They must be aghast at the parade of funding for failed companies, fraudulent bonds, and hidden black holes of credit derivatives. They must be aghast at the parade of criminal fraud cases, led by Madoff and other deep fraud. They must be aghast at the parade of Wall Street henchmen still in charge of dispensing USGovt funds, and who continue to sit in regulatory offices and law enforcement offices. In my view, this G20 Meeting is a global financial turning point of historical implications and importance, a funeral event. Creditor nations sense deep risk of loss from their giant savings accounts, as the risk lingers during continued US power positioning. It marks the beginning of a magnificent change, one to topple the US-UK hegemony that has been inflicted upon the world for almost a generation. There are even reports of certain bodies at the G20 Meeting accepting evidence, data, and testimony in return for immunity from prosecution of US financial syndicate criminal behavior spanning over almost 30 years. They must be USTreasury Bond creditors. Risks for syndicate retaliation are acute. The April Hat Trick Letter will cover further details, but they are sketchy.

USDOLLAR STATUS QUO GONE

The initial comments and press conference so far at this early preliminary point do not impress anyone. UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown and US President Barack Obama initiated events with a press conference. Another between Obama and Russian President Dmitri Medvedev is in progress. So far, the US leadership seems unaware that it has failed before, during, and after the crisis began. Nothing has changed on the power structure inside the USGovt, nor the controlled funnel of hundreds of billion$ in funds. The US president does not seem to understand that the global financial system designed atop the USDollar has broken irretrievably, and must be scrapped, not adjusted. For several months, the US Federal Reserve has been doubling duty as a virtual US banking system. For the past several years, a Shadow Banking System has operated without regulatory oversight, which is so deeply engrained with corruption that one cannot adequately describe its depth of depravity to commoners. Yet the US president acts as though the US remains in the dominant position in global finance, when the entire world has rejected its catbird seat post. THE UNITED STATES NO LONGER SITS IN THE PREMIER POSITION. That is precisely why so much conflict has come and will continue to come. The G20 London Meeting is a funeral.

Why is the G20 Meeting a turning point? First of all because the US$-based global financial structure is broken. In plain words, the USDollar is totally broken as the global reserve currency, fully discredited, and the anchor dragging down the national banking systems in scores of countries. Also, because the Elite G7 or G8 Meetings, where the banking power has been greedily and maliciously and jealously guarded, is replete with bank leaders whose countries are crippled by insolvent banks and outsized national debts. Who owns the largest portion of the G8 national debts? The G20 countries, the developing nations, the upstarts who up to now have owned zero voice in global banking, PERIOD!  The global forces toward deep change have never been greater. Thus a turning point. Creditors have the option of simply refusing to purchase any more USTreasury Bond debt. To a great extent, that is what is occurring right now. The US responded last week, as its Federal Reserve announced $1050 billion in monetized USTreasury Bond and USAgency Mortgage Bond purchases. At least $1 trillion will be printed for monetized bond purpose each and every quarter from here onward, as is my forecast. The USGovt will destroy the credibility of the USDollar, but at least offer lifeblood to the crippled USEconomy, at the cost of upcoming price inflation. The United Kingdom has no such privilege. They suffered an important Gilt Bond failed auction last week, one which brought great embarrassment upon them.

Last week, China was highlighted at turning the global USDollar tables. They have begun to displace the US$ within their domestic banking system, in favor of the Chinese yuan. Actually, they will soon be issuing Chinese Govt debt securities denominated in yuan currency. Doing so involves wave after wave of conversion of USTBond securities into cash, then conversion further in to Yuan Debt securities, which still need a new name. How about Dragon Bonds for a name??? The Chinese will then wear and presumably use the great currency boot, since all economies that wish to purchase Chinese products must purchase Chinese Govt bonds!!!

The Chinese are also leading a movement to create an Emergency Fund for the Assn of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), one which will assist in defense of any hotmoney attacks against a smaller Asian nation. In 1997, the Asian Meltdown was triggered by hotmoney attacks waged against Thailand and South Korea. My personal belief is that the Emergency Fund will blossom into a pan-Asian Regional Bond Fund for economic development. The Asian-only fund will essentially serve as a gigantic regional savings account, free from Western control and pressures, independent from Western currency risk, and operate as a regional economic development fund.

The latest big currency news is between the central banks of China and Argentina. They reached an agreement for a three-year, $10 billion currency swap, disclosed by the Chinese Central Bank Governor Zhou Xiaochuan. One can rest assured that their USTreasury Bonds will supply the funds. The move follows swap accords between China and Indonesia, South Korea, Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Belarus. The agreement broadens Argentina’s access to foreign currency reserves in order to achieve stability. Argentina was excluded last autumn 2008 from the USDollar Swap Facility program created by the USFed for emerging markets, which were designed to aid Brazil and Mexico. Watch Venezuela and Iran be next for Chinese swap stations. One can conclude that China is expanding its stations globally for creating the Chinese yuan as a global reserve currency in competition with the USDollar. See the Bloomberg story (CLICK HERE).

Strange but meaningful additional challenges have come, these centered upon the Intl Monetary Fund. For years, the IMF has granted loans denominated not in USDollars but in Special Drawing Rights, which often function within various currency denominations, if not a basket of such currencies. The SDR formally is an international reserve asset already in usage. The SDR has been put in focus, if not under the microscope lately. Russia has formally suggested that the IMF be used to establish a new global currency system, to replace the defunct and broken USDollar system, and to use the SDRights as a new formal basket for global banking and commercial settlements. My belief is that Russia has used the concept as a straw man, just to place emphasis away from the USDollar. Once accepted, the concept can morph to another new currency suddenly. China has endorsed the SDR concept raised by Russia as well, to gain credibility.

My view has been consistent for months. Unless and until the foreign creditor nations distance themselves from a US$-based banking and commercial system, they run enormous risks. Their banking system, their financial markets, their economies, their standard of living, even their political stability, will all remain at chronic heightened risk. Alternatives are extraordinarily difficult, challenging, and daunting to design, construct, and implement. A system built after World War II was perverted in profound manner when in 1971 Nixon abrogated the Bretton Woods Accord in a single betrayal stroke. That maneuver was one of the most important violations of a treaty in modern history. It perversely invited all major economic nations of the world to join in managing free money off a printing press, of course with inherent risk.

CREDITORS DEMAND BANK POWER

For many years recently, the G20 Meeting has served as a forum for paying mere lipservice to the raft of foreign creditor nations. They have been enlisted by the G7 and G8 countries to continue to purchase USTreasury Bonds, UK Gilts, even German Bunds. They have been invited to invest in US, British, and European companies, and to become partners in major international commodity supply corporations, including energy firms. HOWEVER, THESE EMERGING NATIONS, THESE CREDITOR NATIONS, THESE SMALLER LESS POWERFUL NATIONS, WHICH COINCIDENTALLY DO NOT HAVE MILITARY FORCES OF THEIR OWN, HAVE NO GLOBAL BANKING POWER, HAVE NEVER HAD ANY GLOBAL BANKING POWER, BUT NOW ARE DEMANDING GLOBAL BANKING POWER. Such is the revolution triggered in London this week.

For the last decade, China has been given an insult at G7 and G8 Meetings of finance ministers. They have been guests, who essentially sit in the hallway quietly until invited to enter for briefing sessions. The largest creditor nation in the world must sit in the hall while debtor bankers make decisions, issue orders, change structural procedures, and pretend to be in charge. Never in financial history have debtors remained in power, and this is no exception.

Creditor nations demand a more solid reliable global reserve currency, or currencies. They demand some hard asset component to the new reserve currency to be installed, like one backed by a basket that includes at least gold and crude oil. This would be sufficient to lift the gold price substantially, far above its current range, and far higher than a mere $1000 per ounce. The Chinese are the clear spearhead, uninhibited by US threats. The crowning blow against the USDollar supremacy will come when Persian Gulf nations install a new hard asset currency. At that time, one quarter of the world will pay for crude oil in a hard asset currency with a gold component. That is a spike in the heart for the USDollar founded in a unipolar world. The G20 Meeting intends to make the statement that the unipolar world is dead on the financial stage. That is their agenda. The US agenda is to preserve the system through reform.

US MUST ACCEPT ROLE AS DEBTOR

The clear challenge facing the G20 Meeting is to bring awareness to the United States that the system is broken, that the US is no longer dictating policy, and that the US must integrate many more countries into important global banking bodies. However, much bigger tasks come. The United States must accept that the USDollar can no longer function as before, cannot serve as the primary and only global reserve currency, and must share reserve currency status with other regionally crucial currencies. The new multi-polar currency world must be hatched and launched. Defiance and stubbornness by the USGovt can no longer be tolerated. The United States admits to operating a Shadow Banking System that is abhorrent to any credible or justifiable system. If the USGovt does not cooperate with alternative global reserve currency usage, then it will be bypassed, with associated cost. That cost will be lost respect, lost creditor cooperation, and certain economic consequences within the USEconomy. If not careful and cooperative, the US will find itself increasingly isolated, which is precisely my forecast. This direction is consistent with a clear move toward the Third World, where credit shortages and supply shortages and poverty persist.

The quintessential problem, plainly stated, is the United States Govt leaders and officials insist on sitting apart from the debtor nations. They must join the debtors, and be treated in similar fashion. They must accept terms dictated to them. They must accept and endure a much lower standard of living. They must institute policies to rebuild the industrial base of the USEconomy. They must write off trillion$ in bad debt, including some USTreasury debt. They must liquidate failed banks and corporations that are not in the least functional or competitive. They must redirect priorities away from military and defense, and toward capital formation, industrial production, and job creation, even if initially at prison facilities. The entire economic structure and financial structure has suffered a death experience, one not properly acknowledged. Some compare its challenge to putting Humpty Dumpty back together from broken shell fragments. The analogy fits. My analysis has frequently described over the last two to three years the deep risk of internal dynamics called vicious cycles with nasty feedback loops. We are witnessing them now in full force. Job cuts, home foreclosures, and retail shutdowns result in feedback loops. And Geithner wants the power to kill whichever financial firms he sees fit? Things are careening downhill. Foreign creditors harbor growing gold accounts and wish for price structures to properly reflect their value.

GOLD, THE USDOLLAR & MINING STOCKS

The USDollar DX index has been struggling again. After the major news announcement about the $1050 billion in US$-based bond monetization, the buck fell hard. Unless foreign currency rivals do the same, and on as large a scale, the US$ will be vulnerable. My forecast is for the US$ to monetize its debt much more than any other government and associated central bank, an order of magnitude more. Surely the British, Swiss, Japanese, and Germans will continue to stimulate and rescue, even monetize some debt, but nothing will compare to the magnitude of the USGovt debt being monetized, certain to be as regular as unbridled. Notice that the 86 level offers resistance from both past selling pressure and the 50-day moving average. A second (double top) failure erodes confidence to a great extent. Each hefty decline from the top (in orange ovals) inflicts great technical damage, undercutting US$ confidence. Confidence reigns supreme in the age of fiat currency without basis, now bone dry. Notice also that the moving averages in blue, red, green are finally flattening out, indicative of a topping pattern. The Gold-Dollar linkage has been somewhat vague and tenuous in recent weeks. However, if the USDollar index falls, the benefit to the gold price will be unmistakable. My expectation is that after a brief period when other nations announce their rescues and stimulus plans in detail, and the US falls further into the abyss, a panic will begin to sell the US$-based assets, a panic that will turn into an utter rout. The erosion and exposure process has entered full swing.

The gold price has been quiet for a month. An old adage of technical chart analysis claims the longer a price consolidates, the greater will be its move when it breaks out of its defined (if not managed) range. The gold price is forming the Right Side Handle to a reversal pattern shaped as a Cup & Handle. Strength is being built for the upward assault. Its top is 980-1000, and its bottom is 710-725. Its target is in the 1250-1300 range, stated before and still in effect as a target. The entire G20 Meeting is negative for the USDollar and positive for gold.

What an optimistic looking HUI mining stock index finally! Watch for continued closes above the 325 mark, which signals firm price above the recent range. The 350 level will provide the next resistance. Once cleared, it is off to the races to challenge last year’s highs. Notice the bullish indicator, as the 50-day moving average (in blue) crossed above the 100-day moving average (in red). The reversal off autumn lows has repaired itself. Momentum aids in breaking above resistance, as new momentum has been achieved and made apparent.

CREDIT CRISIS AUTOPSY

Here is fine piece of analytic work from a friend named Trace Mayer. He comes to the gold community with a different slant and background. He has a law scholar with emphasis on the Constitution, especially how it applies to the gold and currency topics. In his e-book entitled “The Great Credit Contraction” one can read about the historical significance of a crisis that will surely reshape the world. The global economy is built on an illusion currency that is evaporating before our very eyes. This book is an autopsy of the current worldwide systems and begins with financial history, discusses the current great deflationary credit contraction, projects the future environment, and concludes with suggestions on how to generate and preserve wealth in this challenging time. An appendix analyzes important topics. (CLICK HERE TO ORDER)

Jim Willie CB
Editor of the "HAT TRICK LETTER"
Hat Trick Letter

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Jim Willie CB is a statistical analyst in marketing research and retail forecasting. He holds a PhD in Statistics. His career has stretched over 24 years. He aspires to thrive in the financial editor world, unencumbered by the limitations of economic credentials. Visit his free website to find articles from topflight authors at  www.GoldenJackass.com . For personal questions about subscriptions, contact him at JimWillieCB@aol.com