Multiple readers have been watching the stock market's plunging numbers this morning and looking at where we ended for 2015, we are looking at a nearly 1,500 point drop since December 31, 2015 as shown in the two screen shots below. The first chart is from Google Finance where you can choose to see the chart within a time-frame, which I chose one month in order to highlight the ending figure for 2015.
The second comes from the investing.com page for Dow Jones. (The numbers fluctuate throughout the day, screencap taken on Friday, January 15, 2016 at 12:10pm - ET)
The last screen shot shows clearly how much stress the markets are under right this second with nearly everything seen in red, except for the S&P 500 VIX, via investors.com. (Again, these numbers will continue to fluctuate throughout the day)
Our readers have been calling it a "bloodbath," a trainwreck happening right before our very eyes.
While there is no doubt the Fed's "Plunge Protection Team" is working furiously to manipulate the market and stop this slow motion crash, if you take a step back and look at the other financial news coming out, showing a big picture of a not just markets under stress, but a global economy on the verge of a meltdown.
"Plunge Protection Team" was the nickname given to the Working Group by The Washington Post in 1997. The team was initially perceived by some to have been created solely to shore up the markets or even manipulate them. The team was created in response to the 1987 market crash. The team consists of the Secretary of the Treasury, the Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, the Chairman of the SEC and the Chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. (Source)
"The stock market crash of 1929 was not the sole cause of the Great Depression, but it did act to accelerate the global economic collapse of which it was also a symptom. By 1933, nearly half of America’s banks had failed, and unemployment was approaching 15 million people, or 30 percent of the workforce."
We are reminded in that piece that the laws and infrastructure are already in place for banks to legally raid depositors funds as part of their "bail-in," since they can no longer be bailed out.
Confiscating the customer deposits in Cyprus banks, it seems, was not a one-off, desperate idea of a few Eurozone “troika” officials scrambling to salvage their balance sheets. A joint paper by the US Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Bank of England dated December 10, 2012, shows that these plans have been long in the making; that they originated with the G20 Financial Stability Board in Basel, Switzerland (discussed earlier here); and that the result will be to deliver clear title to the banks of depositor funds.
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Although few depositors realize it, legally the bank owns the depositor’s funds as soon as they are put in the bank. Our money becomes the bank’s, and we become unsecured creditors holding IOUs or promises to pay.
ARE THEY ALREADY PREPARING FOR THE UNCOMING BAIL-INS?
While I have not seen any news on a reduction of limits on the amount of money that can be withdrawn from Automatic Teller Machines (ATMS) in the U.S., a strange thing happened the other day which makes us wonder if banking instututes aren't already feeling the pressure and preparing accordingly.
Stefan Stanford went to withdraw funds, less than he has withdrawn before, yet the ATM barred him withdrawing more than $200 despite having plenty of funds deposited and available. This happened at two different machines (one at the store and one at a bank's ATM), so it wasn't just a glitch and his Credit Union limit is listed at fives times the amount the ATMs allowed him.
TIME TO GET YOUR MONEY OUT OF THE BANK
As stated above, whether the crash happens now ot the FED is able to squeeze out more manipulations to postpone the eventual and inevitable crash, when it does happen things are going to move very fast. Remember that banks and the U.S. government have been preparing for this for years, as evidenced by the December 2014 reports of the U.S. government arranging to spend up to $200,000 on survival kits for bank employees at Bank of America, American Express Bank, BMO Financial Corp., Capitol One Financial Corporation, Citigroup, Inc., JPMorgan Chase, and Wells Fargo.
"Contracts for survival kits are usually made for the military, or law enforcement such as the FBI."
While no one wants to see a bank run which is exactly what will happen once economies begin to topple around the world, we would strongly suggest people start withdrawing what they can out of the bank, other than what is immediately needed for bills, keep the minimum amount in and stash their cash because when it all comes crashing down, it will be too late.
