The Looming Quadrillion Dollar Derivatives Tsunami, by Ellen Brown

Ellen Brown’s analysis of derivatives is one of the most intelligent articles we’ve read about the financial system since banks started blowing up. She’s nailed the biggest risk. From Brown at unz.com:

On Friday, March 10, Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) collapsed and was taken over by federal regulators. SVB was the 16th largest bank in the country and its bankruptcy was the second largest in U.S. history, following Washington Mutual in 2008. Despite its size, SVB was not a “systemically important financial institution” (SIFI) as defined in the Dodd-Frank Act, which requires insolvent SIFIs to “bail in” the money of their creditors to recapitalize themselves.

Technically, the cutoff for SIFIs is $250 billion in assets. However, the reason they are called “systemically important” is not their asset size but the fact that their failure could bring down the whole financial system. That designation comes chiefly from their exposure to derivatives, the global casino that is so highly interconnected that it is a “house of cards.” Pull out one card and the whole house collapses. SVB held $27.7 billion in derivatives, no small sum, but it is only .05% of the $55,387 billion ($55.387 trillion) held by JPMorgan, the largest U.S. derivatives bank.

SVB could be the canary in the coal mine foreshadowing the fate of other over-extended banks, but its collapse is not the sort of “systemic risk” predicted to trigger “contagion.” As reported by CNN:

Despite initial panic on Wall Street, analysts said SVB’s collapse is unlikely to set off the kind of domino effect that gripped the banking industry during the financial crisis.

“The system is as well-​capitalized and liquid as it has ever been,” Moody’s chief economist Mark Zandi said. “The banks that are now in trouble are much too small to be a meaningful threat to the broader system.”

No later than Monday morning, all insured depositors will have full access to their insured deposits, according to the FDIC. It will pay uninsured depositors an “advance dividend within the next week.”

Continue reading

4 responses to “The Looming Quadrillion Dollar Derivatives Tsunami, by Ellen Brown

  1. Pingback: The Looming Quadrillion Dollar Derivatives Tsunami | NC Renegades

  2. DWEEZIL THE WEASEL

    If and when the collapse happens, TPTB will just nationalize every pension fund in Amerika and it will all go into Treasury notes. I believe Argentina did the same thing years ago. It is still up and running. The sheeple, normies, and cucks will drink the Kool-Aid and life will lurch on. What say you, Robert?

    Like

    • All the pensions funds in the world valued at currently stated asset prices are a pittance compared to the notional value of the world’s debt, unfunded liabilities, and derivatives. When collapse occurs and the financial system implodes, governments gain nothing if worthless pension funds and their worthless assets are nationalized. The U.S. government and most others will be bankrupt. They will only be able to steal what remains of hard assets (once) and dwindling income streams (once), and unlike what Argentina has semi-successfully done for so long, they won’t be able to rely on kind strangers and idiot creditors. The Argentine solution only works when there is only a few Argentinas. The coming collapse will be global.

      Like

  3. “The system is as well-​capitalized and liquid as it has ever been,” Moody’s chief economist Mark Zandi said. “The banks that are now in trouble are much too small to be a meaningful threat to the broader system.”

    “Jimmy Cayne, there ‘s a call for you on the beige courtesy phone in the lobby. Paging Mr. Jimmy Cayne.”

    Like

Leave a comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.