Financial Meltdown and Black Swans – Myth or Reality?

“A black swan is the illustration of a cognitive bias (error in decision-making or of behaviour adopted when faced with a given situation).

If one encounters or observes only white swans, one will quickly deduce in error that all swans are white and that is what Europeans believed, for a long time, before making the discovery of the existence of black swans in Australia, in the 17^th century.

In point of fact, only the observation of all existing swans may give us the confirmation or invalidation that these are indeed still white but taking the time and means to observe all swans on Earth before confirming that they are all white is just not possible.                                    It is thus preferable to make the hasty assumption that they are white, in the expectation of seeing the theory dropped by the observation of a swan of another colour.

Thus we create arguments by starting off with incomplete information, which leads us ending-up with false certainties.”

What is the relevance of this story to the economy and your investments?

Quite simple really. Read on and observe the trend emerging.

- The University of Texas uses gold for its cash-flow….
Important information that has gone unnoticed is that the University of Texas has just invested approximately 1 billion of its cash-flow in gold. You will find below the article by Bloomberg.

The Board members see gold “just as another money but one which cannot be devalued by an additional printing of notes”.

Interestingly, they asked to take delivery of their gold – 6,643 gold bars,  which is stored in a New York vault because of the fear of a Comex paper gold scam.

It should be noted that this university also trains economists.
So what should one think of such a strategy?  Only that more and more private individuals and institutions are starting to have increasing doubts on the continuity of the global economic system in its current make-up. It also suggests that those in the know prefer hard physical assets to “paper promises”.
Yet “experts” previously thought that this was unimaginable and impossible!

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But that is not all. These last weeks have been exceptional in terms of alarm signals.

- Two year rates for Greece exceed 25% for the first time ever. It means that Greece is perhaps only a few days away from a re-scheduling of its debt over which inevitably world banks, starting with French banks, will ruffle a few feathers. For information purposes, it is the Crédit Agricole which is the most exposed to the Greek risk, with all banks being nevertheless concerned.
Yet “experts” previously thought that this was unimaginable and impossible!

- The monitoring of the US debt by the credit rating agency Standard and Poor’s,

For those who have not yet understood or who really do not wish to understand, the US economy remains the leading global economy. A US default in payment would lead the world into an economic chaos without precedent. Inveterate optimists tell us that they do not believe in it. The very same people who did not believe in a seism of a magnitude higher than 9, followed by a tsunami of more than 15 metres in height, coming to destroy 6 reactors of a nuclear plant… and which exposed a whole country to radiation if not making people tremble with fear over the prospect of the entire contamination of the Northern hemisphere.

Yet “experts” previously thought that this was unimaginable and impossible!

- So what else have we learnt? –  that the Morgan Stanley Bank has just made a voluntary default in payment of $3.3 billion on a 32 storey tower building which it owns in Tokyo. This repayment failure is significant because it was the largest of its kind in Japan and marked the latest fallout from a series of highly leveraged investments by Morgan Stanley, one of the most aggressive investors in worldwide property markets before the global financial crisis In short their loss seems of little importance to them because the value had plummeted and they just had to get rid of this building. What can be the motive of such a decision which is a historical first for this “venerable” institution?

Yet “experts” previously thought that this was unimaginable and impossible!

- To this we can add that CDSs (Credit Default Swaps) currently reflect an anticipation of cancellation of debt of some European countries able to reach 75% (CDSs act as “insurance” against the risk of bankruptcy).

Yet “experts” previously thought that this was unimaginable and impossible!

- And then there is China which wishes to diversify its foreign-exchange reserves and significantly reduce its holding in American dollars. Indeed, the depreciation of a currency is a means of refunding one’s debts only in devaluated monopoly currency. But it is done at the cost of the currency holder. Our Chinese friends no longer seem to want to be the guinea pigs and are looking to diversify into the Euro.

Yet “experts” previously thought that this was unimaginable and impossible!

- More dramatically, Mc Donald’s (the restaurant chain) launched a big campaign to recruit  50,000 jobs in a single day. Pathetic scenes showed to what extent the situation of many American families is disastrous. Almost 3 million people turned up to get work, some even camping the day before just to be sure of being interviewed. The situation simply turned to drama in Cleveland (see video below) when a crazed driver ran over 4 people in the car park!.

Yet “experts” previously thought that this was unimaginable and impossible!

- And finally, on a lighter note, after the initiative by ex-footballer Eric Cantona even Mayors are having a go, at least the Mayor of the city of Ghent in Belgium for one, who has just taken  the decision to withdraw his funds from two banks, namely Dexia and KBC, in order to protest against the policies of these two institutions and has invited all cities to follow his example…

Yet “experts” previously thought that this was unimaginable and impossible!

It is now obvious that more than ever before how vital it is to adopt a particularly defensive investment strategy.

I invite all private investors to take their potential profits out of the share market and to quit the financial markets. Particular caution is advised with regards to all the securities of insurance companies and banks.
A share in gold of approximately 10% of the total financial assets is to be seriously considered in order to protect one’s financial assets.
It is also strongly advised to get out of bond investments, except from a speculative point of view, starting first with Euro funds in life insurance contracts. These Euro funds are overwhelmingly made-up (approximately 75%) of sovereign debt, i.e. government bonds. Imagine how vulnerable they are to default and complete collapse.

… and remember this is NOT impossible, unimaginable or unthinkable – it is highly likely to the point of being inevitable.

I do not know if you have noticed, but I find that lately we can see more and more black swans.

Yet, as everyone knows, swans are white…. until proved otherwise.

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Financial Meltdown and Black Swans – Myth or Reality? was first posted on May 16, 2011 at 1:08 pm.
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