The Fed's Bailout Of Europe Continues With Record $237 Billion Injected Into Foreign Banks In Past Month

Last weekend Zero Hedge once again broke the news that just like back in June 2011, when as part of the launch of QE2 we demonstrated that all the incremental cash resulting form the $600 billion surge in the Fed's excess reserves, had gone not to domestically-chartered US banks,but to subsidiaries of foreign banks operating on US soil. 

To be sure, various other secondary outlets picked up on the story without proper attribution, most notably the WSJ, which cited a Stone McCarthy report adding the caveat that "interpreting the data released by the Federal Reserve is a bit challenging" and also adding the usual incorrect attempts at interpretation for why this is happening. 

To the contrary:interpreting the data is quite simple, which is why we made an explicit prediction: 'We urge readers to check the weekly status of the H.8 when it comes out every Friday night, and specifically line item 25 on page 18, as we have a sinking feeling that as the Fed creates $85 billion in reserves every month... it will do just one thing: hand the cash right over straight to still hopelessly insolvent European banks." So with Friday having come and gone, we did just the check we suggested. As the chart below shows, we were right.

Another way of showing what has happened: in the past 4 weeks, the Fed has injected a record $237 billion of cash into foreign banks with access to the Fed's excess reserves: a number greater than both the cash influx surge seen after the Lehman collapse, and faster and more acute than the massive build up of cash during the spring and summer of 2011 when all the Fed's brand new QE2 cash was once again, solely used to overfund European bank cash.

Another way of showing precisely what we said would happen, and whatis happening: in the past month, as $237 billion in cash was being handed over by Ben Bernanke to foreign banks, cash to both small and large domestically-chartered banks declined.

The result is that of the record $1.8 trillion in cash sloshing within the US financial system (consisting of US and foreign banks), a record $955 billion, or 52.6% of total is now allocated to foreign banks.

Do we know that the cash in the US financial system is purely a result of the latest open-ended QE? Yes we do, because as the chart below shows, every dollar change in excess reserves created by the Fed is tracked tick by tick by the total amount of cash held by US and foreign banks. And as the yellow area - foreign bank cash - in chart further shows, all the cash generated by QEternity has gone straight to foreign banks.

Another way of showing this correlation: the change in excess reserves vs just the change in cash assets held by foreign banks. There is no doubt on which banks' balance sheets the Fed's "excess reserves" are appearing as cash.

Finally, as a reminder there was a second part in our forecast as to what these European banks will do with this fresh prop-trade funding cash courtesy of Bernanke - they will "push the EURUSD higher, until, as in the summer of 2011 it goes far too high, crushes German, and any other net European exports, and precipitates yet another wholesale bailout of Europe by the global central bankers. Just as the Fed did in 2011."

Sure enough, it required the intervention of none other than Mario Draghi last Thursday to stop the massive, sharp ascent in the EUR in the past two months, which as we showed in the morning before the ECB's announcement on Thursday, had resulted the EUR surge by over 10% on trade-weighted terms. The reason for this intervention: to prevent the collapse of what little is left of Europe's export economy. However, unlike previously, now that Japan is also actively crushing its own currency to promote its exports over those from Germany and France, things will be just a little bit more acute as everyone scramble to be the exporter of only resort to what little import demand remains in a world where everyone is desperate to grow their trade balance through currency manipulation.

So whether European banks will continue buying the EURUSD, or redirect their Fed-cash into purchasing the ES outright, or invest in other even riskier assets, remains unknown.

What is, however, known beyond a reasonable doubt is that at least through this point, the sole beneficiary of the Fed's open-ended quantitative easing which launched in September of 2012, and which was supposed to help lower US unemployment and raise inflation (it will certainly succeed in that eventually, and what a smashing success it will be), are once again solely foreign - read almost exclusively European - banks.

Zero Hedge

Navy doesn´t have the money to refuel the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln

The aircraft carriers USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN-69), USS George H.W. Bush (CVN-77), USS Enterprise (CVN-65), USS Harry S. Truman (CVN-75), and USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) are in port at Naval Station Norfolk, Va. US Navy Photo

The U.S. Navy will delay the refueling of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) for an unknown period because of the uncertain fiscal environment due to the ongoing legislative struggle, the service told Congress in a Friday message obtained by USNI News.

Lincoln was scheduled to be moved to Huntington Ingalls Industries’ (HII) Newport News Shipyard later this month to begin the 4-year refueling and complex overhaul (RCOH) of the ship.

“This delay is due to uncertainty in the Fiscal Year 2013 appropriations bill, both in the timing and funding level available for the first full year of the contract,” the message said.
“CVN-72 will remain at Norfolk Naval Base where the ships force personnel will continue to conduct routine maintenance until sufficient funding is received for the initial execution of the RCOH.”

Rep. J. Randy Forbes (R-Va.) chairman of the House Armed Services Seapower subcommittee released a statement denouncing the need for decision.

Forbes called the delay, “another example of how these reckless and irresponsible defense cuts in Washington will have a long-term impact on the Navy’s ability to perform its missions. Not only will the Lincoln be delayed in returning to the Fleet, but this decision will also affect the USS Enterprise (CVN-65) defueling, the USS George Washington (CVN-73) RCOH, and future carrier readiness.”

The move by the navy is the second this week involving funding for carriers. On Wednesday it announced it would delay the deployment of the USS Harry S. Truman (CVN-75) to the Middle East do to the ongoing budget strife bringing the total number of carriers in U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) to one until funding normalizes.

“Canceling and deferring maintenance creates a significant backlog of deferred maintenance and affects future year schedules and cost, as well as future readiness,” said Lt. Courtney Hillson, a Navy spokesperson.
“The fiscal uncertainty created by not having an appropriations bill — and the measures we are forced to take as a result, place significant stress on an already strained force and undermines the stability of a fragile industrial base.”

The delay in the RCOH for the Lincoln translates into a carrier that will be undeployable for the foreseeable future. It is ‘not possible to restore,’ the carrier to active service without the $3.3 billion overhaul, Hillson said.

Under the current Continuing Resolution (CR), the Navy is $1.5 billion short on its accounts. Combined with coming sequestration in March the number grows to $9 billon for FY 2013, according to Navy documents.

The Navy had budgeted $92 million for the Lincoln refueling in its FY 2012 budget.

Each Nimitz-class carrier undergoes a refueling and complete overhaul at the halfway point in its 50-year service life.

HII said the company is, “disappointed with this turn of events,” and said the delay, “is the direct result of the lack of a defense appropriations bill,” HII spokesperson Christie Miller said in a statement.

“This is not a cancellation of the Lincoln’s RCOH at Newport News Shipbuilding,” Miller said.
“We intend to continue our efforts on the ship at the Navy base in Norfolk and will work to make as much progress as possible, as efficiently as possible, prior to its arrival.”

USNI News

EU no better than a banana republic

Tattoo calls for help when you fall

A new high tech tattoo may soon be your saving grace the next time you fall ill.

Woven of gold and silk, this temporary skin embossing could detect things like bacterial infections and let others know you’re sick.

This is the brainchild of Princeton professor Michael McAlpine, who recently received a grant through his university to expedite his research and make antenna tattoos a reality.

The engineering professor says he got the idea while reading about a woman who suddenly had an asthma attack at a grocery store.

‘She couldn’t breathe enough to tell first-responders what was wrong, but she had a tattoo on her arm that said she had asthma,’ McAlpine told Times of Trenton. ‘I thought, if she can have a passive tattoo that says “I have asthma,” why not have an active tattoo that can continuously track your health?’



Razor thin: Only one atom thick, the substance graphene was used in creating tooth tattoos. They have since switched to gold and silk for the skin tattoos

McAlpine’s hope is that, now that he has grant funding, he will soon be testing his invention in hospitals.

He also hopes to lengthen the time the tattoo’s antenna, which can wash off with water, will stay on the body.

And this isn’t the first time McAlpine has thought up novel ways to detect disease in the body.

Last year, he and his team of researchers reported they’d found a way to test’s one’s breath for evidence of disease.

By placing a super thin form of carbon called graphene along with disease sensing peptides on a strip and ‘tattooing’ it onto teeth, they were able to detect infection and transit the data it to medical personnel.

It seems that McAlpine and his team have now taken their ‘tooth tattoo’ a step further and are exploring new and more innovative ways to put their research to use.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2275997/Tattoo-calls-help-fall-ill-researchers-believe-coming-arm-near-soon.html#ixzz2KQDzUGcX

You only think you know what's coming...EXO-VATICANA (Part No.12)

Legendary Broadcaster Noah Hutchings’ UFO Encounter

Dr. Noah Hutchings, president of Southwest Radio Ministries in Oklahoma City, has been in Christian broadcasting for more than sixty years. He has written over a hundred books and booklets covering Bible commentary and prophetic topics and has led mission tours to the continents of Asia, Europe, South America, and Africa, as well as the Middle East. What many may not know is, like Tom Horn and Gary Stearman, he, too, is a Christian who witnessed firsthand what some today call UFOs. We asked him to send us a short report of what he saw and when, and he happily replied:

In 1939 I lived with my family on a farm in SE Oklahoma, five miles south of Hugo, the county seat. At the time I was 15 years old. I daily rode the school bus at a pick up point about one half mile east of my home. I would usually cut across a short cut to and from the bus stop through a semi-wooded pasture.

One evening in, what I remember was October, as I was walking through the pasture toward my home, the sun was just setting. As I glanced northward past a grove of trees, an intense bright and glowing object suddenly ascended over the woods into the sky. About three seconds later as I watched, another object rose up and followed the same trajectory, followed by a third object a few seconds later doing the same. Then all three objects, radiating orange, white, and blue, lined up to form a triangle in the sky.

I sat down until it was dark and watched waiting to see if they would move. Later I walked the short distance to my home where my mother had saved supper for me. After eating, I rushed back to see if the three objects were still up in the sky, but they were gone.

At the time I was 15 years old, but there are some events in life so dramatic or beyond the ordinary that you never forget them. This was one of those incidents.

Years later, in 1942, I was called for Army duty in World War II. After basic training in Field Artillery Fire Direction I was sent overseas to New Caledonia for assignment. I was checking out a new radar to detect and identify all aircraft within fifty miles of our port. Attached to the radar unit were cables leading to sixteen anti-aircraft guns that could land a 90 mm shell in the lap of a Japanese fighter pilot at 12,000 feet. About half way through World War II, the Japanese converted all their military aircraft into Kamikaze planes, and the land based 90s were not effective in anti-Kamikaze attacks. I was thrown a set of firing tables for the 90s and spent the rest of the war supervising field artillery operations for the First Calvary Armored Division.

In the 18 months I operated a radar system I kept in mind the three objects I had seen on a late afternoon in 1939. However, I never picked up another thing in the sky that I could not identify, including a pelican that had swallowed a piece of gum from one of the ships that had been thrown overboard with the garbage. But no UFOs.

I remain convinced that the three objects I saw suddenly rising swiftly into the sky in 1939 [were] something beyond the identification and scientific knowledge of that time, or even today.… I think we have to consider seriously many of the seemingly reliable reports of UFO activity today, especially that of five retired Air force officers ^[ii]who testified of the problems with UFOs during their service years.

Whether UFOs are something out of another dimension or angelic visitors from heavenly places is something that someday will be determined.

Dr. Walter Martin Had Time to Snap a Pictureof the UFO

Broadcaster, debater, and lecturer Dr. Walter Martin was a recognized Christian apologist who passed away in 1989. He pioneered organizations in the Christian counterculture movement including the Christian Research Institute in 1960 for Christian apologetics. Martin’s colleagues included well-known radio Bible teacher Donald Grey Barnhouse; noted lawyer, professor, and Lutheran theologian John Warwick Montgomery; and founder of the Koinonia House ministry based in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, Dr. Chuck Missler. But, as with Tom Horn, Gary Stearman, and Noah Hutchings, most people probably do not know that the cult-buster also had a UFO encounter. In fact, he and his partner even had time to take a clear picture of it as it hung suspended above a seminary. From a portion of his 1970s UFO presentation, we transcribed the following short excerpt:

I possess, and it has been printed, the only color picture of a UFO, taken at an altitude of eight hundred feet, on a clear day in New Jersey, hovering near a seminary. And this particular one [the UFO picture], generally, I blow up on a wall about ten by fifteen feet so people can see it…and we have blown up large pictures of it…is of a circular ship with opaque windows circling it. Its dimensions, as far as we were able to determine, figure about fifty to seventy-five feet across and at least fifty feet thick. It made no noise whatsoever; it was bluish-grey in color. It hovered and then lazily took off, straight up over the mountains. My assistant took the picture with a 35-millimeter camera on a clear day. And that picture was used on the front cover of a national publication as the first “bonafide UFO sighting, verified by unimpeachable sources.” After all, seminary professors would hardly be lying about Unidentified Flying Objects [sounds of audience laughing]. Particularly since my assistant who took the picture didn’t believe they existed until he took the picture. Now, he is a firm believer in the existence of Unidentified Flying Objects…

The question in my mind is not “what,” but “who.” I know what they are. Hynek knows what they are [Dr. Josef Allen Hynek was a United States astronomer, professor, and lead scientific adviser for UFO studies undertaken by the US Air Force under Project Sign, Project Grudge, and Project Blue Book]. The United States government knows what they are. The Soviet government knows what they are.… They are some form of extremely sophisticated aircraft, not made by any government occupying territory on our Earth that we know of… [Dr. Martin went on to explain his belief about the “who” that is piloting UFOs. He concluded they are demonic agents of deception].

The Difference between UFO Sightings and Alien Abduction

Because efforts have been made in some circles to renounce all unexplainable UFO activity as demonic and/or lump this phenomenon together with so-called alien abduction, we have listed below the current evolution of UFO encounter “types” as first developed by J. Allen Hynek and then revised in succeeding years:

1)      Close Encounters of the First Kind (CEI) involve “visual” sightings of an Unidentified Flying Object.

2)      Close Encounters of the Second Kind (CEII) include visual plus physical traces such as burned spots on the ground, radiation, strange markings, or wreckage debris appropriate for investigation.

3)      Close Encounters of the Third Kind (CEIII) involve sightings of the UFO “occupants” near the UFO.

4)      Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind (CEIV) include a human abducted by a UFO or its occupants (this was not included in Hynek’s original scale).

5)      Close Encounters of the Fifth Kind (CEV), developed by Steven M. Greer’s Center for the Study of Extraterrestrial Intelligence (CSETI) group, are described as “joint, bilateral contact events produced through the conscious, voluntary, and proactive human-initiated or cooperative communication with extraterrestrial intelligence.”^[iv]

6)      Close Encounters of the Sixth Kind (CEVI) are described as “UFO incidents that cause direct injury or death.”^[v]

7)      Close Encounters of the Seventh Kind (CEVII) involve abduction for the purpose of mingling human and extraterrestrial “DNA” to produce a hybrid.

“Close Encounters of the First Kind” is how we would describe the testimonies of Tom and Nita Horn, Gary Stearman, Noah Hutchings, and Walter Martin. They saw something that appeared to be solid, operated under what appeared to be intelligent control, yet defied identification and behaved in ways inconsistent with physical laws of the universe as we understand them. The UFOs could have been good, evil, or neither, but they were extraordinary, whatever they were.

For Tom Horn, the question over “what” and “who” UFOs and aliens are began a long time ago.

In fact, it dates back to his childhood. He was not yet a teenager when his father, Clarence, a Korean War veteran and territory officer in the state of Arizona, came home one day very excited. He’d been deer hunting not too far from Snowflake, Arizona. This was an area that Clarence loved to travel to, if for no other reason than that the man loved to drive (as anybody who knew him would testify, especially his kids), including along the Salt River Canyon into Payson and on up into the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest. He’d stop at every little town along the way, including Show Low, an early settlement town named after a famous poker player. On this particular trip, Clarence had parked in the woods and was on foot, following an animal trail near Snowflake that he was very familiar with. He headed toward a waterhole that antelope, elk, and mule deer (his target) were known to habit, and that’s when he came across something that had not been there before: several large, near-perfect, spherical craters, perhaps twenty feet across and eight feet deep. The mysterious cavities were so precise that it looked as if an enormous, white-hot ball had pushed them into the rock, and the finish on the walls was sealed so perfectly that rainwater filled the orbs. The sides of the holes were slick, not like they would have been if explosives had been used to create them (or somehow if gigantic drilling equipment had been lowered by a military transport helicopter into the remote location without disturbing the natural habitat or leaving behind signs of commercial or military activity), and each “pool” contained deer that had fallen in and drowned while attempting to drink the water.

Clarence took pictures of the obscure holes, had them developed, and showed them to the family. Tom remembers being especially impressed. Clarence also reported the finding to the police department where he worked and led a representative of the Army Corps of Engineers to the location. The origin of the puzzling craters was never determined, including by locals who frequented the area and thought they had appeared overnight. The Corps of Engineers also could not determine how the holes were made or what they could have been for. The Phoenix Gazette ran an article called “Mysterious Mountain Holes” about the discovery, reprinting photographs of Clarence kneeling beside the orbs with his 30-06 hunting rifle, and not long afterward, the Corps dynamited the pools so they would fill with rocks and protect the wildlife. About the same time, Tom’s “crazy” aunt who lived next door to his family and whom nobody paid attention to was petrified by what she claimed was a dish-shaped object hovering above their home. But as they all knew, she was “nuts,” so that, for a while, seemed to be the end of the story. 

One of the holes Clarence Horn found. Bend in old
picture distorts perfect circular pattern at top.

Officer Clarence Horn in the late ’50s–early ’60s

However, years later, something else happened near the site. On November 5, 1975, along the northeastern ridge of the same mountain range, Travis Walton stepped out of his pick-up to look at a mysterious, glowing object. While a crew of loggers waited nearby, Travis approached the UFO and was jolted by a blast of inexplicable energy. As his companions fled in terror, Travis was taken aboard the alien spacecraft and subjected to a variety of physical examinations. His story, Fire in the Sky, became a motion picture. It reports what’s considered to be the best documented account of a UFO abduction ever recorded. Is Travis Walton’s story true? Was there a connection between the Walton UFO and the mysterious mountain holes? Travis wanted to know, and once gave Horn his business card in Roswell, New Mexico, and asked him to call. Horn never did, but now, for the first time ever, Tom will be disclosing in Exo-Vaticana part of what legendary American radio broadcaster, Paul Harvey, used to call “the rest of the story.”

Throughout the first two decades of his public ministry, and to the largest extent since, Tom Horn has held this secret. It involves a mystery concerning his family that he could neither understand nor talk about. What Tom could not have known, of course, was what would follow his father's discovery: a series of disturbing events in his family that would crystallize something so preternatural and improbable that it nearly defied incredulity. In fact, it would have been easy for him to dismiss it all as too fantastic to be real... that is, if it had not been for the detectives, federal employees and attorneys, a vanished nuclear physicist from Los Alamos, Stephen Spielberg, and even a recording oftheir voice and a picture of one of them that would follow.

Raidersnewsupdate.com

EU Calls For Syria Political Transition Without Assad

BRUSSELS, February 8 (RIA Novosti) – EU leaders called for a political transition in the crisis-hit Syria on Friday but said they see no role of President Bashar al-Assad in the process.

“[European Council] expresses its support for the Syrian population's aspirations and for the Syrian National Coalition as legitimate representatives of the Syrian people, and stresses the need for a political transition towards a future without Assad and his illegitimate regime,” the Council said in a statement outlining its conclusions of the two-day summit in Brussels.

The bloc's 27 leaders called for “an immediate end to violence” in Syria and expressed “concern over the widespread and systematic violations of human rights and international humanitarian law, for which the Assad regime carries the primary responsibility.”

Syria has been locked in an increasingly bloody civil war since demonstrations broke out against President Assad in March 2011. According to UN estimates, at least 60,000 people have been killed in the conflict.

RIANovosti

Venezuela devalues currency by 32%

Venezuela has cut the value of its currency against the US dollar by 32%, in an effort to boost its economy.

The widely expected measure ramps up the official exchange rate of the bolivar from 4.3 to 6.3 per US dollar.

It was announced after Vice-President Nicolas Maduro's return from Cuba, where he said President Hugo Chavez gave him instructions on the economy.

The leader has not been seen or heard in public since December, when he went to Havana for cancer treatment.

This is the fifth devaluation of the bolivar since Hugo Chavez' administration started controlling the exchange rate, in 2003.

The previous devaluation was in 2010.

Experts have long considered the bolivar overvalued and the move came as no surprise in the oil-based economy.

As oil exports are calculated in US dollars, a weaker bolivar should mean more cash for the government.

Strict controls to prevent currency going out of the country mean that dollars are normally hard to get in Venezuela, but in recent times this situation had become acute, says the BBC's Sarah Grainger, in Caracas.

Dollars have been trading at four times the official rate on the black market.'Campaign money'

In a country that largely depends on food imports, the scarcity of dollars also led to shortages of products such as sugar and flour.

The new exchange rate is expected to address this situation.

But the measure is also expected to have an impact on the inflation, which has already been climbing.

The leader of the opposition, Henrique Caprilles, criticised on Twitter the fact that the government announced the devaluation on Carnival Friday in South America.

The opposition says the government has waited until after the elections to take the necessary steps in the economy.

"They've spent the money on the campaign, corruption and presents overseas," wrote Mr Caprilles, who lost the presidential elections to Mr Chavez last year.

Mr Chavez went to Cuba on 8 December to treat an undisclosed cancer and has not been seen or heard from since.

Mr Maduro recently said the president was "battling on" and had entered a new stage of treatment, after successfully finishing the post-operative phase.

BBC