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Today 40 year veteran, Don Coxe, told King World News “...the amounts involved are at mind-boggling levels,” in terms of what is needed for Europe’s governments and banks. Coxe, who is Global Strategy Advisor to BMO ($538 billion in assets), also said that European banks, “...have borrowed huge amounts of money, in dollars, under currency swap arrangements,” and “if banks start to go down, we know from 2008, when banks start to crumble, then the whole system falls.” Here is what Coxe had to say about the ongoing crisis: “Well, first of all we’ve got to stop using ‘billions’ because if there is going to be a fund that works, it’s going to have a ‘T’ (for trillions) on it. We are dealing with some very big numbers in the sense that Italy, although it’s not that big of an economy, it’s got the third largest amount of bond debt outstanding.” Don Coxe continues: “So Italy’s situation is truly serious because they also have a short duration on their debt. If you were holding a three...

This chart, better than any we have seen so far, summarizes just how much has been injected already to preserve the Eurozone from collapse. This is what is known as a sunk cost, because last time we checked (and just as we explained back in March at the market highs when everyone was euphoric that Europe is now fixed) nothing has been fixed, and Europe is one 'rogue' democratic vote away from an EMU exit, and thus oblivion (or so they said last year, now everyone is prepared for a Greek departure, or so they say now, expect for the Greeks of course - they go straight to the 10th circle of hell and do not pass go). The truth is that by the time the status quo finishes its extend and pretend game, which incidentally has only one real outcome, the €2 trillion spent to date, will be orders of magnitude higher... Original source

On the heels of the release of the Fed statement and the Bernanke press conference, today King World News interviewed Bill Fleckenstein, President of Fleckenstein Capital, to get his take on the situation. Fleckenstein told KWN the economy will roll over, Europe will go into the abyss and the Fed will be forced to ease. He also described the Fed as “idiots” and said they are completely wrong about what they are saying: “Let’s take a step back for a second. Who are these people? They’re the same idiots that never saw anything coming. So whatever they think they see or whatever they want to talk about is meaningless because they are probably wrong about what they think.” Bill Fleckenstein continues: “For this five minutes they think the economy is okay, and it isn’t. They seem to think Europe’s kind of okay, and it’s not. So the next thing you know they will have to realize they are not so right about being sanguine and then they will have to do a U-turn. How is that any d...

A plan has been laid out to help Greece and the worldwide ponzi continue to print money and pile on debt, but by no means is the deal complete. Those who’s actions a deal is dependent on are: Private investors holding Greek debt: The Institute of International Finance (IIF) is supposedly representative of private investors and the IIF will have a full committee review the details and make a decision. However, the IIF does not bind all private investors to an agreement. Gaining 95% of private investors to accept write down of 53.5% on the face value of Greek government bonds is what’s being deemed acceptable for the agreement to pass. Here’s more on the role of the private investors at CNN Money . European Union members: Per CNBC - Analysts at Nomura Securities questioned whether Finland and Denmark in particular would sign on. “The fact that the agreement was reached is a positive development in that it prevents an immediate disorderly default,” Nomura said. “However, th...

The regime of drastic cuts has tipped the economy into a violent downward spiral. They thought that private industry would muddle through as the state went through the austerity mincer. What the EU-IMF "Troika" did not fully understand is how many firms were really part of the state in disguise. "The Greek government outsources everything," said one official with close knowledge of the events. Faced with the guillotine, the state first slashed procurement contracts and then stopped paying its bills altogether. The government is now €7bn (£5.8bn) in arrears to private companies, including €3bn in unpaid VAT refunds for exporters. It is why business has borne the brunt of the fiscal squeeze, suffering 450,000 job losses, and why Greece's unemployment has soared to 21pc. At the same time the banking system seized up. More than €60bn of deposits were withdrawn. By November, no Greek bank could issue a letter of credit accepted anywhere in the world, with calam...

The Romanian government collapsed Monday after weeks of protests over biting cuts meant to keep outside funding flowing to the troubled nation. Prime Minister Emil Boc said he and his Cabinet were resigning “to defuse political and social tension,” the Associated Press reported. Opposition leaders are calling on President Traian Basescu to step down as well. Crin Antonescu, who heads the opposition Liberal Party, called it “the most corrupt, incompetent and lying government” since the 1989 revolt against communism, the report said. Austerity has become the watchword in Europe, where governments have been cutting back and trying to rein in debt to help restore faith in the battered euro currency. Spain, for example, crafted a nearly $20-billion package of cuts and tax increases and even cut back on puentes , an extra vacation day slipped in when holidays fall on a Tuesday or Thursday to make a long weekend, Lauren Frayer reported for The Times. Such austerity cuts are oft...

Standard & Poor's is expected to cut the credit ratings of Italy, Spain and Portugal by two notches and downgrade France and Austria by one notch, according to several reports. At the same time, S&P is expected to spare Germany, the Netherlands, Finland and Luxembourg in its long-awaited adjustment of euro zone sovereign ratings. The French newspaper Les Echos reported the expected downgrades, and France's finance minister confirmed that his country would be downgraded one notch from its triple-A debt rating. An Italian news agency has also reported that the Italian government has been notified of an imminent downgrade by S&P. An announcement is expected to come around 4:30 pm ET, after the US stock market has closed. "Remain alert tonight when U.S. markets close," one euro zone source told Reuters. US stocks slumped in reaction, though were well off their lows, while European shares closed lower. In December, S&P placed the ratings of 15...

John Clarke and Bryan Dawe calculate the cost of the European debt crisis - A comedy routine. It may seemed hilarious but this is actually what's happening. Without all the financial jargon, any layman can understand what is happening to the current economy crisis.

And it means more than is apparent. This post is adapted from analysis which appeared in The Strategic Planning Group . Mario, relax . . . So yesterday, the European Central Bank (ECB) doled out €489 ($639) billion in loans to the European banking sector. Why’d they do it? ‘Cause Europe’s banks are broke: That is, if all the crap they collectively hold on their books were marked to market, their liabilities would be greater than their assets. American banks shouldn’t smirk: The only reason they aren’t declared bankrupt for the same reason is because of the suspension of FASB 157 back in March 2009. The ECB lent out the €489 billion against any and all collateral the European banks would put up. In exchange for this collateral—no matter how damaged—the banks got 1% loans, which is not merely free money but essentially subsidized money: Eurozone inflation is around 3%, and except for German and Dutch debt, all sovereign bonds are yielding more than 3%. Thus a 1%-in...

Kyle Bass, the Dallas-based hedge fund manager who said in 2009 that governments would default within three years, said Greek, Portuguese and Spanish depositors will withdraw money from banks in the coming months. “Just as Latvians ran to the ATMs this weekend, so will depositors all over peripheral Europe in the months ahead,” Bass, who runs Hayman Capital Management LP, said in an investor letter. “Deposits are now declining at an accelerated pace. What’s surprising is that it hasn’t happened much sooner.” In Greece, business and household bank deposits have slumped 26 percent in the past two years to 176 billion euros ($229 billion), and fell in October by the most since the nation joined the euro, according to the Bank of Greece. There were 2.24 trillion euros of overnight deposits with euro-region financial institutions at the end of September, down from 2.26 trillion in July, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Latvians pulled about $54 million from local Swedbank AB a...

In this letter to investors written by Kyle Bass of Hayman Capital Management. He talks about what he thinks may lie ahead for Europe and Japan. Hayman_Nov2011

Italian Welfare Minister Elsa Fornero broke down in tears and was about to announce to the Italian people that they will put an end to inflation indexing on all but the lowest pension bands, a move that will mean an effective income cut for many pensioners. She was unable to say the word "sacrifici" or sacrifice. In which the new Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti took over and said the word "sacrifici". The Italian people will suffer because the Italian politicians ran wild borrowing billions to continue their spending habits. Because of these borrowings which was encouraged by the banks, the Italian debt went to astronomical levels that the Italian people will now have to pay off. This is another bailout of banks where the people will suffer and the banks get their money back even if they were the ones who encouraged the risky lending.

With investors wondering where the next major move is for gold and silver, today King World News interviewed four decade veteran, John Hathaway, the prolific manager of the Tocqueville Gold Fund. Many investors are on edge, waiting for a resolution to the European problem. Hathaway had this to say about what central planners face today, “Oh, it’s terrible, it’s really terrible. Then answer to all of these issues, in terms of what they are proposing, is austerity. Well that’s fine if you are a technocrat like the new head of Greece or the new head of the European Central Bank or the new guy in Italy. I mean these guys are all technocrats.” John Hathaway continues: “But I think they’ve got six months before people start to get very restive with their medicine of tightening government spending, cutting back on entitlements and all that kind of thing. I think if you want to have a bet that they don’t have as much time as they need, you should have some gold. What I expect (out ...

Gerald Celente on the Tom and Todd show on November 30, 2011. From the interview he said: The European crisis is not ending. All they did was print more digital money not worth the paper it's not printed on. And that's why you see gold prices go up yesterday $35 an ounce because the smart money knows it. Everyone I know in Europe and Greece has gotten their money out of the banks. As a matter of facts, the banks has gotten their money out of the banks. Gerald Celente tells it like it is.

In this video Chris Martenson - economic analyst at http://chrismartenson.com and author of The Crash Course and James Turk, Director of the GoldMoney Foundation talk about the problems facing the eurozone as well as the global economy. Chris Martenson points out that the whole world simply has too much debt. This is why he believes that there won't be a real solution to the euro crisis. The big question will rather be who will take losses on the debt, which can't possibly be repaid. The lack of political leadership and unwillingness to accept reality is contributing to this crisis. Additionally, the monetary tools central banks have traditionally used to revive economies are starting to show less and less effect. In Martenson's view, the financial sector has become way to large and interlinked across borders, so that a default by one country could bring down the whole financial systems, because credit default swaps would get triggered and could bring down the writers of th...

The stock market is up big time today. The Dow Jones is up 400 points as of this writing. The major central banks agreed to ease the strains in the European credit markets. The Federal Reserve agreed to provide cheaper dollar funding to the European Central Bank which can then provide cheaper dollar loans to European banks. We're not going to see an end to any money printing anytime soon.

SocGen has released its much anticipated Multi Asset Portfolio Scenario/Strategy guide titled simply enough "Patience: bad news will become good news" where, as the insightful can guess, the French bank makes the simple case that the worse things get, the stronger the response by global central banks will be. Here is the key quote for those worried that : "A major liquidity crisis should not occur this time, as we think we are on the eve of major QE in the UK, US and (a bit) later on in the EZ." We don't disagree and if there is anything that can send BAC higher it will be the announcement of QE3. Of course, BAC will first drop to a $2-3 handle so question is who has the balance sheet to hold on to the falling knife. The next question is "How big will QE3 be"? Well, according to SocGen, the Fed will preannounce it in the January 2012 FOMC statement, the monetization will last from March 2012 until the end of the year, and will buy a total of $600 billi...

Belgium downgraded by S&P from AA+ to AA. Outlook negative Hungary downgraded to junk by Moody's Italian 10 year bonds rise above 7% Bloomberg: Record Gold Hoard Spurs Bullish Bets Billionaire Eric Sprott Asking Silver Producers to Save in Silver

Alessio Rastani, the controversial trader who was interviewed on the BBC saying Goldman Sachs owns the world posted this on his Facebook account recently. I have no idea of it's true, but it could be something. UNCONFIRMED: Two of the world's largest financial institutions are on the brink of collapse - one of them facing bankruptcy by end of January 2012. Both of these firms are heavily exposed to JUNK EUROPEAN DEBT and they are classed as TBTF. Inside sources say that a THIRD bank is also involved - and the third bank is NOT based in Greece, Spain or Italy - but in the UK. The systemic risk posed by this UK firm is estimated as MF Global x 10 - placing many hedge funds at huge risk.