Now We Know the Real Reasons For the Credit "Crisis"

Clif Droke
Safe Haven
Monday, April 7, 2008

I've purposely kept my comments concerning the credit crisis at a minimum since it began dominating the daily news headline. My reasoning for this is because I knew the crisis was overblown and overstated in the press and that there had to be a very good reason for it. The only problem is I didn't know exactly what the reason was.

Time tells all, however, and I knew that sooner or later the truth must out!

One thing experience has taught is that every notable market crash, panic, bear market or financial crisis is the result of careful planning and forethought by the monetary authorities. With trillions of dollars at stake, nothing happens without their tacit or explicit approval and there is simply no such thing as a crisis that happens by "coincidence." For happenstance to be allowed to run its course in with trillions in derivates out there would be certain death for the financial system. As the economist Dr. Stuart Crane was fond of saying, "Things [in the monetary world] don't just happen to happen. They happen because they were planned to happen."

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Another thing Dr. Crane used to say was that you can always tell the underlying reason for any crisis by waiting to see what the results of that crisis are. In the final analysis, the results, as he pointed out, are in what the crisis fomenters expected to yield as the fruit of their labors. And it's no coincidence that in every case, a financial crisis always yields the following results:

1.) Greater consolidation within the banking and financial industry with the smaller players being merged into the bigger players, or else swept away;
2.) Greater regulator powers for the monetary authorities.

There has never been an exception to this outcome in the history of U.S. financial crises.

Well, lo and behold, the results of this latest financial crisis are starting to become apparent. The following news article was published over the weekend and it points very conclusively to one of the main reasons for the late crisis. I quote the following article in part:

Treasury Dept. Seeks New U.S. Power to Keep Markets Stable

By Edmund L. Andrews

WASHINGTON -- The Treasury Department will propose on Monday that Congress give the Federal Reserve broad authority to oversee financial market stability, in effect allowing it to send SWAT teams into any corner of the industry or any institution that might pose a risk to the overall system.

The proposal is part of a sweeping blueprint to overhaul the country's hodge-podge of regulatory agencies, which many specialists say failed to recognize rampant excesses in mortgage lending until after they triggered what is now the worst financial calamity in decades.

According to a summary provided by the administration, the plan would consolidate what is now an alphabet soup of banking and securities regulators into a trio of overseers responsible for everything from banks and brokerage firms to hedge funds and private equity firms.

While the plan could expose Wall Street investment banks and hedge funds to greater scrutiny, it avoids a call for tighter regulation. The plan would not rein in practices that have been implicated in the housing and mortgage meltdown, like packaging risky subprime loans into securities carrying AAA ratings.

The Fed would also be given some authority over Wall Street firms but only when an investment bank's practices posed a threat to the financial system over all."

Full article here.

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