Tag: house of cards

A Mile-High House of Cards… 3 Ways to Protect Yourself Before Your Bank Collapses

Guest Post by Nick Giambruno

The Truth About Your Bank Deposits

It’s hard to think of a topic where following conventional wisdom is more dangerous than banking.

The general public and most financial experts accept as absolute truth that putting your money in a bank is safe and responsible. After all, the government insures your deposits, so if anything were to go wrong…

As a result, most people put more thought into the shoes they purchase than the bank they entrust with their life savings.

However, the banking system is a mile-high house of cards that could collapse anytime.

Here are three reasons why.

Reason #1: Government Deposit Insurance Is a False Sense of Security

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) insures bank deposits in the US.

When a bank fails, the FDIC pays depositors up to $250,000. The FDIC has a reserve of around $126 billion for this purpose.

Now, $126 billion is a lot of money. But, considering there are around $9.8 trillion in insured deposits in the US, $126 billion is just a drop in the bucket, around 1.3%, to be exact.

In other words, the FDIC’s reserve has around one penny for every dollar of deposits it insures.

It wouldn’t take much to wipe out the FDIC’s reserves. One large bank failure and the FDIC itself could go bust. Continue reading “A Mile-High House of Cards… 3 Ways to Protect Yourself Before Your Bank Collapses”

NO WAY OUT

I know there are many people out there who don’t watch the daily drivel emanating from their 72 inch HD boob tubes. I don’t blame them. Most of the shows on TV are dumbed down to the level of their audience of government educated zombies. The facebooking, twittering, texting, instagraming generation is too shallow, too self-consumed, and too intellectually lazy to connect the dots, understand symbolism or learn moral lessons from well written thought-provoking TV shows. But there have been a few exceptions over the last few years. Breaking Bad, House of Cards, and Walking Dead are intelligent, brilliantly scripted, morally ambiguous, psychologically stimulating TV shows challenging your understanding of how the world really works.

The Walking Dead is much more than a gory, mindless, teenage zombie flick. Personally, I find myself interpreting the imagery, metaphorical storylines, and morality lessons of Walking Dead within the larger context of cultural, political, and social decay rapidly consuming our society today. I don’t pretend to know the thought process or intent of the writers, but I see plot parallels symbolizing current day issues plaguing our empire of debt. Their mid-season opener was one of the most intense shocking episodes of the entire series. It was titled No Way Out, as the main characters appeared to be trapped in a no win situation with long odds and little hope of surviving.

From my vantage point I see four explicit types of characters inhabiting the world of the Walking Dead. There are the infected mindless zombies roaming the countryside in search of flesh to consume. They are oblivious to the world around them, unable to think, feel, or act human. They can be distracted and led in different directions by loud noises or other diversions. Then there are the still human zombies inhabiting the walled city of Alexandria who are sentient, thinking, frightened men and women, not prepared to face the harsh reality of an unfair brutal world and the consequences of not fighting the forces of evil. They cower behind their walls and hope for the best.

Continue reading “NO WAY OUT”

WHO NEEDS FUNDAMENTALS WHEN YOU HAVE THE FED

These two charts tell you all you need to know about how disconnected Wall Street is from reality. Corporate profits are tanking. Consumer spending is tanking. Inflation in the things you need to live your everyday life is rising. Real median household income lingers at levels from 25 years ago. Greece, Portugal, Italy, Spain and Ireland are more insolvent than they were three years ago. The EU is disintegrating. Japan is committing economic hara-kiri. China’s trillions of real estate mal-investment is going bust. The OPEC countries, along with Russia, Brazil and Mexico are seeing their economies destroyed by low priced oil.

The US shale oil boom is going bust rapidly. Without the $500 billion of subprime auto and student loan debt injected into the veins of the American debt drug addicts, the economy would officially be in recession. Instead, recession is only a fact of life for the 99%. This cannot be sustained. So it won’t. At this point, we don’t even need a trigger event. The house of cards is so high, it will tumble just due to its sheer size. Look out below.