Thursday, June 30, 2011

Tim Geithner on US financial System is Ponzi

"If investors chose not to purchase a sufficient volume of new Treasury securities, the United States would be required to pay the principal on maturing debt, and not merely the interest, out of available cash. Yet the Treasury would be unable to make these principal payments without the continued confidence of market participants willing to buy new Treasury securities." Tim Geithner

This is full admission by our Treasury Secretary that the Us financial system is a Ponzi Scheme

http://demint.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=PressReleases&ContentRecord_id=7371d3a9-9435-4277-87ef-330fcf689087


Ultimate unraveling of a Ponzi scheme

The catch is that at some point one of these things will happen:

1. The promoter will vanish, taking all the remaining investment money (minus payouts to investors already made).

2. Since the scheme requires a continual stream of investments to fund higher returns, once investment slows down, the scheme will begin to collapse under its own weight as the promoter starts having problems paying the promised returns (the higher the returns, the greater the risk of the Ponzi scheme collapsing). Such liquidity crises often trigger panics, as more people start asking for their money, similar to a bank run.

3. External market forces, such as a sharp decline in the economy (e.g. Madoff and the market downturn of 2008), cause many investors to withdraw part or all of their funds; not necessarily due to loss of confidence in the investment, but simply due to underlying market fundamentals. In the case of Madoff, the fund could no longer appear normal after investors tried to withdraw $7 billion from the firm in late 2008 as part of the major worldwide market downturn affecting all investments.

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