London Banker
"has been a central banker and securities markets regulator during a varied and interesting career in global financial markets" and is a very credible commentator IMO. From his
latest:
"Perhaps gold is being used as collateral for margin and cash liquidity, sold by counterparties to bring the price lower, leading to margin calls for even more. A crisis arising from a major default (Greece, Portugal, a huge bank) would force the price lower still, when the collateral would be exercised on default. Following on, the price might rocket again to enable the conspirators to seize outsize profits. Just a scenario, mind you! (Although, I note that Lehman's counterparties reported record profits through much of 2009.)
What is left of the global markets becomes a game of engineered survivor bias. Only those operating outside the law and with unlimited regulatory forbearance can win while the rest of us lose."Some may remember
my comments on FOFOA blog about how
"Bullion banks are like spiders in the center of a web. They can feel the twitching of the flies in the web and determine the mood of the market better than anyone else and often in advance of others."London Banker again:
"Their top down view of clients' trading and custody portfolios and cash positions and flows puts them in a position to exercise tyranny. They can game their clients, taking advantage of superior information, credit and liquidity to ramp or crash targeted markets as needed to precipitate a crisis."In other words, it is not just about avoiding debt (or its variant, leverage/derivatives) but also avoiding having most of your positions and trading with one bank.
Reading this stuff makes me comfortable that the Perth Mint will be one of the few left standing after all this is over. We don't engage in speculative trading/risk taking and the AAA rating means we don't have to beg and put up collateral with banks to be able to do the covering trades and other transactions necessary to keep the business running.
In the coming flight from risk, it won't just be about moving to cash (and hopefully many moving to precious metals), but it will also be about a flight to riskless/conservative counterparties. The problem for those looking to store precious metals is that at that point the Perth Mint is likely to run out of capacity - both in physical storage and also insurance (as we fully insure - few others do). All that will be left then is personal storage, which won't be a problem for those with small holdings. But for those with multi-million dollar holdings it will be tough as there aren't many non-bank fully insured custodians.
The lesson is to prepare now, which I'm sure all my readers have, as it is going to get nasty.