1,488 more years!
That’s right, who cares about JPM and their little $2Bn mistake when a new Mayan calendar has been discovered that goes all the way to the year 3,500? That kind of puts JPM’s loss in perspective as it’s only $1.34M per additional year to get back – hardly seems worth mentioning, does it?
I’m certainly not going to talk about it because it’s as silly as planning the end of the World around a calendar that was carved into a rock (and now we know they simply ran out of rock or 2012 would not have been the end). JPM MAKES $18Bn a year – much of it from trading. That trading is not without risk – so of course they will have the occasional loss. There is nothing about JPMs loss that indicates an industry-wide problem – other than highlighting the generally insane levels of risk that our TBTF Banksters take on a daily basis.
What we SHOULD be concerned about is systemic problems in TBTF Nations such as China, where April Industrial Production rose at the slowest pace since 2009, Retail Sales are also slowing and, worst of all, Fiscal Revenue grew at just 6.9%, down sharply from 18.7% in March. India’s Industrial Production fell 3.5% in March vs a 1.7% gain expected by “experts” like the idiots at JPM who bet on Global Markets making new highs in May and lost their assets. Meanwhile, the EC says the EU is in a “mild recession,” with the Eurozone GDP forecast to contract 0.3% this year and, hopefully, expand 1% next year while running a 3.2% deficit in 2012.
Contracting 0.3% while spending 3.2% more than you have is not a “mild recession” folks – it’s a catastrophe that is being paved over by tons of QE and other stimulus. Not like America, where our $1.4Tn deficit is close to 10% of our GDP and that’s how we can expand by 2% – see Europe, you just don’t know how to spend your way to prosperity!
Bernanke spoke to a group of senators yesterday about the potential harm to the economy from the expiration of several pro-growth policies, according to senators who attended the meeting. Bernanke discussed the scheduled end of programs including the Bush tax cuts, the payroll tax holiday and extended unemployment…
