April Drop Dead Date

[Eboard10]

Well technically, a correction in the markets is due in the next couple of months. Several economists have been talking about it and some of the technical analysis on the S&P 500 seems to point to that though they aren't predicting an full-out market crash. Will be interesting to see how this plays out.

 

[Tristan]

Upcoming Crash Will Be ‘Worse Than 2008’ Says Economist Peter Schiff

http://www.moneynews.com/StreetTalk/economy-2008-crash-schiff/2012/06/15/id/442489

A summary of what has happened in recent times of financial capitalism by Richard Peet:

http://monthlyreview.org/2011/12/01/contradictions-of-finance-capitalism

 

[griffin]

Read some articles about end of April massive bets (put options) indicating insiders know of a crash at that time. Must admit I don't fully understand how you bet for a falling economy and how that can make a person actual money, but anyway, here's one of the articles that mentions that:
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/do-wall-street-insiders-expect-something-really-big-to-happen-very-soon

I don't really understand how it works either. What caught my eye was that this sort of deal was done prior to 9-11 and made the dealers a lot of money. That suggests they had some sort of foreknowledge. So maybe that is the case here: there is foreknowledge. And if there is, then it must be something planned. However, as we know, the cosmos does have a way of interfering with the best laid plans of mice and men. So I guess we'll wait and see, though with awareness.

Well, the put options bought before 9-11 were precisely targeted against American Airlines and United Airlines, as well as Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley, large tenants in the WTC towers. Not to get sidetracked, but if I recall correctly the records of some of the transactions were held by Cantor Fitzgerald, a Wall Street trading firm that was devastated - as in nearly obliterated - when the WTC towers fell. However, the hard disk drive containing the records (and presumably the identities of the option buyers) was found in the rubble, amazingly enough, and sent to Germany for forensic data recovery. Months passed, then years, but whether the disk data was recovered and, if so, what it revealed, was never reported. The investigation simply faded away, as though it never even began, much like all the other opportunities and failed attempts to investigate 9-11 by the US government. It is suspected, however, that rogue elements within the CIA that knew of the 9-11 plot in advance took the opportunity to place these trades. After the fact, however, they never stepped up to claim those. Michael Ruppert wrote about this: http://www.hereinreality.com/insidertrading.html#.USJbNtd6Ofg .

The February 6 story at theeconomiccollapseblog.com suggests that this April derivatives play is a very sophisticated one:

"Last week somebody put on a call spread on the VIX using the April 20 and 25 puts. They bought 150,000 contracts for a net of $75 per contract. That is an $11,250,000 bet that the VIX will move over 20 over the next 60 days."

A call spread using put options is done as the reverse of using call options. Instead of buying the lower strike price and selling the higher strike price, one sells the lower strike price and buys the higher strike price. To add to the complexity, these are options on the VIX, which reflect the volatility expected by the market in the 30 days *after* the settlement date of the options. So the bet is that something will happen before the third Wednesday (not Friday) in April that causes S&P 500 option traders to expect volatility - movement in the S&P 500 index in either direction - to increase sharply in May. We can speculate about what kinds of events in the world or the markets might cause that.

 

[bngenoh]

Has anyone else gotten a message from their bank, notifying them of unavailability of online banking on March 2?

 

[QuantumLogic]

Has anyone else gotten a message from their bank, notifying them of unavailability of online banking on March 2?

No, but where I live there are signs up in many businesses which are open 24 hours that there is a scheduled power outage beginning midnight, March 2nd until 5AM(EST). I don't think it's related, but you never know. It will be interesting to see if anyone else reports something of this nature for this date. Did they say why online banking would not be available or how long the duration of unavailability is projected?

 

[Palinurus]

Has anyone else gotten a message from their bank, notifying them of unavailability of online banking on March 2?

No, but where I live there are signs up in many businesses which are open 24 hours that there is a scheduled power outage beginning midnight, March 2nd until 5AM(EST). I don't think it's related, but you never know. It will be interesting to see if anyone else reports something of this nature for this date. Did they say why online banking would not be available or how long the duration of unavailability is projected?

As I don't live in the USA I can only answer in general. From time to time I receive notice from my bank that the on line service will not be available for some specific period, mostly at night. Each and every time I got one of those they stated explicitly the reasons for it, mostly because of computer maintenance or something like that.

 

[Laura]

Something else to add to the data bits for "April Drop Dead Date": CNN tells me this morning that:

President Barack Obama signed an order triggering mandatory, government-wide spending cuts.

The cuts were included in a 2011 deal to raise the federal borrowing limit as an undesirable outcome if Congress failed to agree on a comprehensive deficit-reduction plan.

They amount to roughly 9% for a broad range of nondefense programs and 13% for the Pentagon over the rest of the current fiscal year, which ends on September 30. The full impact of the cuts isn't expected until April at the earliest.

 

[Eboard10]

Something else to add to the data bits for "April Drop Dead Date": CNN tells me this morning that:

President Barack Obama signed an order triggering mandatory, government-wide spending cuts.

The cuts were included in a 2011 deal to raise the federal borrowing limit as an undesirable outcome if Congress failed to agree on a comprehensive deficit-reduction plan.

They amount to roughly 9% for a broad range of nondefense programs and 13% for the Pentagon over the rest of the current fiscal year, which ends on September 30. The full impact of the cuts isn't expected until April at the earliest.

Yes, I've never bought into the whole sequestration thing. The US will never allow it's relentless war machine to scale down. So far they've been able to postpone the cuts but that can't go on forever so I wouldn't be surprised if they come up with something in order to justify their current military spending.

 

[LQB]

According to an article on zerohedge, the ratio of insider selling to buying has hit a monthly record of 50:1.

While retail is being told to buy-buy-buy, Biderman exclaims that "insiders at U.S. companies have bought the least amount of shares in any one month," and that the ratio of insider selling to buying is now 50-to-1 - a monthly record. "So far the mass delusion is holding."

 

[Kaigen]

Now we know what is going on here.

 

[hlat]

I want to add this speculation/thought.

Gold price was absolutely destroyed Friday and Monday. The Boston bombs may partly be cover/distraction from the gold drop and remove it from mainstream consciousness.

Smashing gold down may be a pre-emptive strike against it soaring in price when some big unknown event occurs.

However, the gold melt down was unstable and disorderly, showing yet another sign of possible failure of the world financial system and loss of control by them.

What happens if the electronic banking system goes down? No credit cards transactions. People would be left with paper money and metal coins.

 

[Dirgni]

What happens if the electronic banking system goes down? No credit cards transactions. People would be left with paper money and metal coins.

People are maybe lucky when there is still paper money and metal coins available. The money "vending machines" are also connected to electronic banking system. So its back to queues before bank counters; but these were not much in use lately at least here in Germany. Banks may just decide to close (Bank holiday)...

 

[hlat]

What happens if the electronic banking system goes down? No credit cards transactions. People would be left with paper money and metal coins.

People are maybe lucky when there is still paper money and metal coins available. The money "vending machines" are also connected to electronic banking system. So its back to queues before bank counters; but these were not much in use lately at least here in Germany. Banks may just decide to close (Bank holiday)...

If the electronic banking system went down, I don't think physical bank tellers in physical branches would be able to give out any money either. I think the banking system depends on electronic record keeping.

 

[griffin]

I want to add this speculation/thought.

Gold price was absolutely destroyed Friday and Monday. The Boston bombs may partly be cover/distraction from the gold drop and remove it from mainstream consciousness.

Smashing gold down may be a pre-emptive strike against it soaring in price when some big unknown event occurs.

However, the gold melt down was unstable and disorderly, showing yet another sign of possible failure of the world financial system and loss of control by them.

What happens if the electronic banking system goes down? No credit cards transactions. People would be left with paper money and metal coins.

Cyprus is being forced to sell something like 80% of its gold in order to raise several billion euros and partially pay off northern European banks, the ECB and IMF. It's convenient for the buyers if the price of gold takes a sharp dive just before Cyprus sells its gold, thus the downward pressure.

Germany also wants its gold returned from the US, and there's speculation that the US Fed doesn't have it on hand, as it were, so that is another reason for the price of gold to be manipulated down.

However, gold makes up rather small percentages of central banks' total assets, so it is no big deal in the larger scheme of international finance. What is worse is that deposit insurance doesn't exist any longer, after the confiscation of individuals' accounts in Cyprus and the MF Global scam in NY.

I'm not offering advice, but some folks regard the crash in the price of gold as a buying opportunity.

 

[hlat]

I want to add this speculation/thought.

Gold price was absolutely destroyed Friday and Monday. The Boston bombs may partly be cover/distraction from the gold drop and remove it from mainstream consciousness.

Smashing gold down may be a pre-emptive strike against it soaring in price when some big unknown event occurs.

However, the gold melt down was unstable and disorderly, showing yet another sign of possible failure of the world financial system and loss of control by them.

What happens if the electronic banking system goes down? No credit cards transactions. People would be left with paper money and metal coins.

Cyprus is being forced to sell something like 80% of its gold in order to raise several billion euros and partially pay off northern European banks, the ECB and IMF. It's convenient for the buyers if the price of gold takes a sharp dive just before Cyprus sells its gold, thus the downward pressure.

Germany also wants its gold returned from the US, and there's speculation that the US Fed doesn't have it on hand, as it were, so that is another reason for the price of gold to be manipulated down.

However, gold makes up rather small percentages of central banks' total assets, so it is no big deal in the larger scheme of international finance. What is worse is that deposit insurance doesn't exist any longer, after the confiscation of individuals' accounts in Cyprus and the MF Global scam in NY.

I'm not offering advice, but some folks regard the crash in the price of gold as a buying opportunity.

I counter that Cypress was not "forced to sell" but chose to sell. They had their choice to follow the IMF/ECB or not, and they made their choice.

I also think that the gold price is the biggest deal. I think a high gold price signals the failure of the global banking system, so they are desperate to keep it from getting high.