To stay solvent banks are going to have to dramatically curtail lending. Shrinking credit and central bank debt monetization will drive the world into an inflationary depression. From Alasdair Macleod at goldmoney.com:
With price inflation rising out of control and interest rates rising strongly, the trading environment for commercial banks has fundamentally changed. With bad debts looming and bond prices in entrenched downtrends, procrastination is now the enemy of bankers.
We are at the beginning of The Great Unwind, and this article elaborates on my first article for Goldmoney on the subject published here.
The imperative for bankers to respond to these conditions overrides all other matters if their businesses are to survive these changed conditions. We are entering a cyclical downdraft of the bank credit cycle which promises to be cataclysmic. And the monetary policy planners at the central banks can do nothing to stop it.
After outlining the scale of the problems faced by each global systemically important bank, this article looks at the future for the $600 trillion derivatives mountain. It was born out of the long-term decline in interest rates from the mid-eighties, which ended last year. It is almost entirely distributed through banks and shadow banks.
The question to address is, what is the future for the derivative mountain, now that the long-term trend for falling interest rates is over? And what are the economic consequences?
If it’s you in the hot seat…
Imagine, for a moment, that you are the CEO of a commercial bank involved in lending to businesses and with profit centres acting in a range of financial activities. As CEO, you are answerable to the board of directors for the bank’s performance, and ultimately the bank’s shareholders for maintaining and advancing the value of their shares.
