by Pam Martens and Russ Martens, Wall St On Parade:
Yesterday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average took a tumble of 361 points by the closing bell. Numerous headlines attributed the big decline to a weakening economy in China. But the actual trigger for angst among traders was a headline at 5:30 a.m. EDT yesterday at CNBC. The headline read: “Fitch warns it may be forced to downgrade dozens of banks, including JPMorgan Chase.”
JPMorgan Chase is not just the biggest bank in the United States in terms of assets and deposits. It is the biggest bank in terms of its derivative exposure. According to the federal regulator of national banks (those operating across state lines), the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), as of March 31, 2023, JPMorgan Chase Bank had assets of $3.2 trillion and derivative exposure of more than $59 trillion notional (face amount).
Precious metals expert and financial writer Bill Holter says there is a long list of financial trouble coming to America sooner than later. There is the commercial real estate implosion, rising interest rates, an exploding federal budget, banana republic political problems, but the at the top of the list is the monster unpayable debt problem and the soon-to-be failing U.S. dollar. Holter says, “You can’t have a third of the federal taxes paid out in interest, and that number is only going to grow over time. . . . If the markets would not collapse ahead of time, which they certainly will, but if they did not, we would get to the point where the interest would eat up all the tax receipts. That is a mathematical impossibility. We’re broke. On the other side of it, we have two rules of law. We have one rule of law if you are a liar from the left and another rule of law if you are a conservative and you don’t support the bull crap rules they are putting out there. . . . This is an illustration that this country has already become a banana republic. The problem with that is the dollar issued by this country is the world’s reserve currency. It’s a huge problem.”
