The Nifty & The Sensex Are Resting Upon Bank stocks-the collapse is imminent

Martin Weiss: The Chaos Theory At Work

It's the US and European Banks for now, but ultimately the global financial system will collapse. Then investors would question DV Rao's stupidity in lowering interest rates and encouraging unbridled lending to Real Estate, Durable and Automobile segments. But by then the over-owned SBI, PNB, BOB, BOI, HDFC, HDFC Bank, Kotak and a host of small NBFC type banks would have collapsed.

 

The nation's largest banks are so close to collapse and the world economy is coming unglued so rapidly, a major Wall Street meltdown is now imminent.

Specifically, it's now increasingly likely that virtually all of our forecasts of recent months could come to pass in a very short period of time, including ...

 

• Stock market crash: A swift plunge in stocks to about 5000 on the Dow, 500 on the S&P 500 and 900 on the Nasdaq ... or lower.

 

• Corporate bankruptcies: A chain reaction of Chapter 11 filings or federal takeovers, including not only General Motors and Chrysler, but also Ann Taylor, Best Buy, Jet Blue, Macy's, Saks Fifth Avenue, Sears, Toys "R" Us, U.S. Airways and even giants like Ford or General Electric.
  
  
• Megabank failures: Bankruptcies or nationalization not only of Citigroup and Bank of America, but also JPMorgan Chase and HSBC.
  
• Nationwide epidemic of small and medium-sized bank failures: Outright FDIC takeovers, with little prospect of nationalization.

 

• Insurance failures: State takeovers of companies like Ambac Assurance, Bankers Life and Casualty, Conseco, FGIC, Medical Liability Mutual, Mortgage Guaranty Insurance, Nuclear Electric Insurance, PMI Mortgage, Standard Life of Indiana and many others. (Our free guide also contains a more extensive list of insurers.)
  
  
• Cities and states: An epidemic of defaults by thousands of cities, states and other issuers of tax-exempt municipal bonds.
  
  
• Stock market shutdowns: Trading halts on major, big-cap stocks ... plus on-again, off-again exchange shutdowns, making it increasingly difficult for investors to liquidate their holdings at any price.
  
  
• Credit market deep freeze: A virtual shutdown in all debt markets except U.S. Treasuries. An avalanche of selling — and virtually no buyers — for corporate bonds, commercial paper, asset-backed securities, municipal bonds and all forms of bank loans.
  
  
• Government bond collapse: A steep decline in the price of medium-and long-term government securities, as the U.S. Treasury bids aggressively for scarce funds to finance a ballooning budget deficit.
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Shocking? Perhaps. Avoidable? No.

 

Nor am I alone in anticipating this rapid unraveling of the economy and financial markets. This past Friday, at a Columbia University dinner reported by Reuters ...

 

• George Soros said the financial system has effectively disintegrated, with the turbulence more severe than during the Great Depression and with the decline comparable to the fall of the Soviet Union, while ...
  
  
• Paul Volcker said he could not remember any time, even in the Great Depression, when things went down so fast and quite so uniformly around the world.
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Both recognize that we're in a new era of chaos. What's the landmark event that separates us from the past era of relative stability?

 

The collapse of Lehman was the final straw that punctured the already imploding bubble. And it was the first major domino that set off the chain reaction of events now careening out of control: The collapse of consumer credit markets ... surging unemployment ... and now, a new set of even larger financial failures looming.

 

The Raging Debate Right Now Is How To Prevent A Banking Collapse: To Nationalize Or Not To  Nationalize. But It's A Moot Point.

 

The fact is that the banking collapse has already occurred! Soon in many parts of Asia investors would be asking the same questions-why are SBI, BOB, BOI, PNB, Kotak, HDFC and HDFC Bank still standing, when the World around them has collapsed.

 

Investors will be fed the drivel that all these banks are adequately capitalised. But what the new RBI Governor is doing by artificially lowering interest rates is to feed the unproductive sectors of the economy..durables, housing and automobiles. Loans given out at the lowest possible rates in hard times suggest only one thing-the Indian Banks too would collapse, maybe over the next 6 to 12 months.