Wells Fargo: Technical Failure or Ruse to Cover Up Liquidity Shortage?

[Mister Imperceptible]

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/20 ... 810562002/

I hope you have a stuffed mason jar.

[jacob]

Technical failure on part of the bank.
Liquidity shortage on part of the twitterati losing their heads.

[Mister Imperceptible]

“Twitterati”

[Kriegsspiel]

There may have been a few liquidity overages as people pissed themselves in fear of hacks.

[Mister Imperceptible]

Plumbing leaks?.....

https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/19/business ... index.html

[fiby41]

Are there alternatives to the ACH?

We have NEFT which used to start transferring the backlog when the local bank branch servers came online on workdays. This was until Friday last week when it was stopped. It stands for national electronic funds transfer. From 16th December it now works 24/7.

For salary transfers RTGS Real time gross settlement is used.
IMPS immediate mobile payment system still exists but didn't catch on with what it's intended purpose was.

New entrants in this decade are UPI unified payments interface. You can get a email like address where people can send you money. Major players running these payment banks for cashbacks are Google Tez, amazon pay, flipkart's (Amazon's competitor in which Walmart has a stake) phone pe, paytm and half a dozen others.
Examples jacob@hdfc , mi@creditunion , fiby41@phonepe

[Mister Imperceptible]

I think what you have to be aware of is that the entire global monetary system is connected.

If one major exchange/transfer/payment system breaks down, they all break down. If a problem at the Federal Reserve causes ACH to stop working, my credit union will not have funds to withdraw.

[7Wannabe5]

Where would potatoes and meat rabbits fit on that chart?

[Mister Imperceptible]

At the bottom, with gold and silver.

Gold and silver are for when you have a surplus of potatoes and I have a surplus of meat rabbits but you do not want my surplus meat rabbits and I do not want your surplus of potatoes.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coincidence_of_wants

[7Wannabe5]

I recently read that even in very early human societies, debt plus a bit of interest was more popular than barter. So, if I wanted some of your meat rabbits and you didn't want anything I had at the moment, then I would just give you my word or token that I owed you meat rabbits in the future. In a hunting/gathering/simple-agricultural society debt payment in kind often made very good simple sense, because, for instance, I could breed one of the meat rabbits I received from you or next month I might be the one who has better luck at hunting. Also storage costs for an excess of real, especially living or rotting, goods could be quite high. The standard economic example is based on mythology.

IOW, it is not necessary for trading tokens to be of intrinsic value greater than that of poker chips or back of napkin IOUs for coincidence of wants to be immediately overcome in an environment of trust between individuals, no matter what the scale of trade.

[Mister Imperceptible]

I agree, but then we are introducing notions of honor, and when I recently came on the forums asking for a loan and made mention of honor, people referred to “honor” in quotations because they consider such a concept antiquated and ripe for mockery. They believe in the State and the institutions of the State, and the triumph of secular humanism and the destruction of community. Keep bailing out Wall Street forever and ever Amen, and worship at the alter of Warren Buffett.

Not to pick on anyone in particular, but we seem collectively to have a great deal of faith in the clearly failing and corrupt institutions, but then we mock traditional values that clearly are not worthless. “Telling the truth” for example. It seems more than anything that people are uncomfortable with the idea that we have been lied to, so they double down on what has been told to us.

Let’s see how that works out.

[Jason]

(@) MI

The idea of honor and it's corollary, shame, are endemic in older cultures, specifically those dating back to the feudal period. That is why in Japan you see corporate heads publicly bow in shame when found guilty of corporate malfeasance but in the US they become head of the treasury. It's just not transactional in the US. If I do recall, Seppia came to your defense while those such as myself mocked you. I don't think the relative geography is coincidental.

I once had a contract out between two parties - one side was Japanese the other was US. There was some type of issue. The US side couldn't understand why the Japanese side wouldn't sign. The Japanese side couldn't understand why the US would want them to sign as they said they would sign if the issue was resolved. The Japanese didn't want to sign if they couldn't honor the agreement. The US wanted them to sign in order to honor the agreement. I think that's what you encountered.

Maybe next time try a Japanese hedge fund as an experiment. See if I'm onto something.

[jacob]

@MI - One reason is that the average default rate on "modern honor" is north of 20%. There's a reason why the IRS won't allow one to deduct losses for loans made to family and friends. Arms-length transactions pretty much rules this era.

@Jason - Similar differences in contract perceptions exist between the US and Europe. In the US a signed contract is considered the final word on all future business relations. In Europe, it's considered the starting point for further relations and subject to negotiation even when signed. At least culturally.

[7Wannabe5]

Hmmm. I might suggest that the reason why we no longer subscribe to Code of Honor or other such "traditions" is not so much because the human species has grown in capacity for cynicism or falsehood, but because such a code was also very often enforced through very personal means of violence. In fact, the modern expert on the study of murder, Martin Daly, has suggested that one factor in higher murder rate in Southern vs. Northern U.S. is greater level of cultural Honor Code adherence.

Anyways, this line of though neatly aligns with another suggestion I was going to make which is that if/when you are choosing to hold gold over potatoes/meat-rabbits/whiskey/bargirls-for-hire and guns, you are assuming the existence of some others with these goods or services available for sale or lease. Obviously, in the modern (or post-post-modern) world, government backed currencies are also de facto gun-backed currencies. So, in order for holding gold to make sense, you have to imagine that you or those with whom you will trade in the interim (post-post-post-modern-apocalyptic decline/collapse world) do believe that somewhere at some point in the not-too-distant future there will be some sort of coherent reasonably large market on which gold will be sensibly traded as rare good. IOW, there's a pretty exacting level and duration of collapse for which gold as stash makes best sense. Actually, it works best if you in particular, or as a member of a particular small class of people, are currently in trouble, but society and the world economy as a whole are still well functioning.

[Mister Imperceptible]

I’m not even butthurt that people would not make the loan. Fortunately the credit union came thru. What irks me is societal and moral decay, and what’s more is that collectively we see this decay as something to celebrate. I used the word honor and I have to endure others putting it in quotation marks. I guess that’s my personal hang up/vulnerability.(*)

(*)The mortgage application process has also been frustrating because I seem to not be getting any credit whatsoever for living in my parents basement to pay off $150,000 of student loans. I made sacrifices and paid my debts and I feel like I’m being treated like someone untrustworthy. Meanwhile my peers live like frivolous jackasses and demand the government repay their loans, while Jamie Dimon defrauds the American people daily and gets paid millions and is loaned many more at 0%. What the fuck.

The trust we have in the system is based on the actions of politicians and bankers from over 100 years ago. The elites are basking under the trees planted by men from long ago.

I suppose on a global scale I have to consider myself an elite. But I am not content to merely bask.

@7

I could probably quote any number of articles, many posts by Tyler9k come to mind. The system does not have to collapse for gold to be useful. They just have to put dollar bills on the photocopying machine to try and paper over the bullshit mess they have made.

Gold vs meat rabbits/whiskey/guns is not an either-or, it is a yes-and.

[bigato]

Honor never existed as an intrinsic value in the vacuum. It only is recognized as currency insofar as it has as collaterals your and your family’s reputation, wellbeing and ultimately your lives, under the implicit threats of shaming, suffering. ostracizing and even death. Violence is a powerful motivator and collective power, directed by values, conventions and laws will almost always win over the power that can be mustered by almost any single individual alone. People are not so stupid when they trust the power of the collective even though the institutions may be failing.

[Jason]

The US itself is based on signed documents . No coincidence we say "Ok, just give me your John Hancock and we have a deal."

I do believe a mutual spit in the hand followed by a shake was honored in certain parts of the west in the 19th century when certain areas were technically just territories and not yet officially recognized as states. Thankfully that has changed otherwise I wouldn't agree to jack shit if that practice was still customary.

I don't think its coincidence that the country became enamored with Hamilton during this specific political climate. Going back in time when two politicians would defend their honor like that. Maybe it there's a draw in this impeachment thing, Nancy Pelosi and Donald Trump can just pace out twenty steps and unload on each other. Although I don't see either one hitting the other and then we just have Trump saying the Ukraine fucked with his gun and Nancy saying its worse punishment for him to live with her alive than be dead without her.

Back to MI, its just the basic "you owe the bank two late mortgage payments for your house, that's your problem. If you owe two late payments on your casino, thats our problem. You lose a bet on housing and cause your investment bank to collapse, that's everybody's problem."

[7Wannabe5]

What irks me is societal and moral decay,

I get that, but the thing is that there have always been people who were irked by societal and moral decay and looked back to a more golden or honorable or FITB age in the past, just like there have always been folks who err on the irrational side of optimism about the future and others who only concern themselves with getting enough beer and nookie today. Do you really believe, for instance, that the eras of McCarthy, "Peyton Place", Phineas Barnum, Moll Flanders, "Great Expectations" and/or almost every Sinclair Lewis novel were more honorable than today's world?

The system does not have the collapse for gold to be useful.

True. Just making point that it is not ultimate solution.

[Mister Imperceptible]

We can already see the globalists trying to stage the next post-crisis environment with the current fight in Virginia over Second Amendment sanctuaries. When the collapse they will have caused happens they will want another bail out and they want everyone defanged and easily controlled. The pitchforks were flaccid in 2008. Let’s see what happens in 2020.

[7Wannabe5]

Could go a number of different ways. The financial sector may find itself significantly nationalized rather than bailed out.