Well folks, you can't make this stuff up. The Federal Reserve is literally back to printing money. That's right. The days of quantitative tightening are over, The days of the money printer being roaring it on again are back.

and Bitcoin is a roaring on the news and sound that the Money printer is going Burger Again, you can't make this stuff up, but I'm about to tell you a lot of stuff that seems like it's made up. It's totally true. Let's go ahead and start with this straight from the Federal Reserve This right here shows you on the left side: the increase. The rapid increase in the Federal Reserve's balance sheet where we're moving up from a low of about four and a half trillion dollars all the way up to seven trillion dollars all the way up to nine trillion dollars of the Federal Reserves balance sheet.

In other words, it doubled through the pandemic thanks to all the stimulus and money printing. Remember, the FED prints the money digitally and then the treasury Department physically prints it or sends it out via stimulus checks or whatever. Anyway, those parts aside, look at what's happened over the last year. Since about April of 2022, we've started to see the Federal Reserve's balance sheet shrink and the Fed's been shrinking to the tune of about 90 billion dollars per month.

They started at about 45, slowly worked their way up to 90. So that's how you could see the slope of that curve actually getting steeper. To the downside, Right started off a little gradually and then they accelerate it. That is the quantitative tightening cycle where the FED is basically vacuuming money out of the economy.

So think about it like Luigi and Luigi's Mansion sucking up coins out of various different vases or vases or couches and carpets or whatever taking money out of the economy. That's to be contrasted with money printing where you're basically you know, helicopter moneying or making it rain with money, right? Take a look on the right side. What just happened? We moved down to about 8.3 trillion dollars of a Federal Reserve balance sheet and what just happened? We saw it pop right back up to 8.63 So about a 300 billion dollar injection of liquidity into the economy I Kid you not, but this is pretty remarkable. What I'm about to say.

You literally have a bank run happening right now. Where money is moving from companies like Charles Schwab who just lost 8.8 billion dollars in their money market accounts because people are fleeing uh Charles Schwab which was pretty surprising. Uh and uh, where did they run? Well, They ran over to the big Banks the Bank of America Wells Fargo Citigroup JPMorgan Chase people are consolidating into the top four Banks and uh, people are also leaving Banks like First Republic a smaller Regional Bank And what are the big Banks doing? In response to about uh, you know, 30 billion dollars having disappeared from First Republic or potentially more, the big banks have just turned around and taken about 30 billion dollars and injected it right back into First Republic. You can't make this up.

Wells Fargo Citigroup JP Morgan Goldman Sachs Morgan Stanley and various others just got together and said together, we're going to deposit 30 billion dollars at First Republic Which means if you were literally running away from the small Banks and putting it into the big Banks the big banks are like, let's just put some of it back into small Banks Now that is not a typical capitalistic move in my opinion that is driven by politics and the treasury Department probably on their knees begging the Big Banks to send some of the money back to the small Banks Now that's actually very interesting, but also concerning because after all, isn't that the job of the Federal Reserve The Federal Reserve was to open up their essentially Uh by the FED pivot loan facility to allow Banks to go to essentially the discount window and that's not actually what the program is called, but it's the same acronym. allow Banks to take their assets, their treasury bonds, mortgage-backed Securities, and whatever. And even though they've lost value, go to the Federal Reserve and say, hey, fed can I have money for this and they'll hand them basically something that's worth maybe sixty dollars. But the FED goes and says, well, eventually it'll be worth 100.

We'll give you a hundred bucks, right? So the Fed's supposed to provide liquidity to these Banks but apparently that's not enough. Apparently the treasury Department now wants big Banks to send a signal to markets that don't worry, we believe in the small Banks So much we're taking money from our own coffers and putting it into the small Banks Nobody believes that it's a big old clown move. It's a sign that things are actually much worse than they initially appear. But then again, that's no surprise when individuals much like in 2008 March of 2008 told us don't worry, these are just idiosyncratic risk which you kind of can't say that without spelling the first like four letters of idiot.

But anyway, idiosyncratic risks are a way of saying oh, this is that's just isolated to One Bank Yeah, this is the same thing they said in March of 2008. Oh, it's just it's just isolated to uh, bear Stearns And then what happens AIG Lehman Brothers Complete disaster and cluster F Many banks going bankrupt. Now that's actually part of a normal economic cycle. Banks are supposed to go bankrupt if they've had poor management practices.

and the whole point of having an FDIC Insurance limit of 250k is to protect people who have less than that amount of money. But be a wake-up call to those who have more than that amount of money in deposits to actually scrutinize the banks that they're in they're depositing their money into as a tool for preventing Banks from being YOLO risky with people's money. The whole point of an FDIC Insurance limit is to send the signal to banks that your depositors will be evaluating you to see whether or not they trust you enough to breach that limit. Of course, then people are like, oh, you can't require depositors to do that.

They're too stupid to do that. That's the socialistic point of view. Bail everyone out, Spread the pain. Oh, the banks are losing money or FDIC is losing money.

Well, let's just raise the fees at all other. Banks When some of them lose money, let's raise the fees everywhere. It's corporate socialism. It's corporate welfare.

But what's actually happening right now? And uh, where are some of the numbers? So what's interesting here is: the Federal Reserve has just lent out about 300 billion dollars to cash strap banks in just the last week, the holding companies that they set up for failed. Banks. The FDIC set up two holding companies. uh, has received about 143 billion dollars to pay their uninsured depositors out.

That's sort of the backstop of depositors, right? However, there were an additional 153 billion dollars borrowed from the Federal Reserve over this past week through the discount window. That's how you get that. QE Think about it. it's literally Banks Well, maybe it's not literally, but imagine this.

Okay, a banker walking up to a window at the Federal Reserve going hey man, I Need cash And the facts like here's your money bag Now the FED gets an IOU That IOU is an asset. Assets go on a balance sheet. So the bankers walk away with cash. The FED gets an IOU That IOU shows up right here on the Federal Reserve's balance sheet.

Now you might wonder. but wait a minute. Kevin Why does it work like that? Because didn't they just give away a bunch of cash? Not really, because they just created that cash out of thin air. That's why it's called a money printer.

That's why the Fed's balance sheet increases. So even though they're receiving an asset quote unquote worth a hundred dollars for every 100 of cash they're giving out, they're actually receiving an asset for giving away nothing. They're giving up funny money. They're giving up magic.

All the Federal Reserve does is change a number in a spreadsheet to digitally print money. Yes, that is legal. That is how the system works. It's remarkable.

But what's really remarkable is that on a typical week, you tend to see four to five billion dollars of money borrowed through this discount window. Okay, well, that totals to four times five. About 20 billion dollars a month being borrowed from the discount window, right? But wait a minute. The Federal Reserve is quantitatively tightening to the tune of 90 billion dollars a month.

Well, that's four and a half times as much as actually being borrowed from the discount window. So what happens? Well, the balance sheet goes down. Unless of course, you have a crazy week like you just had where people actually borrow 300 billion dollars. That's insane.

Not only is that insane, but now JP Morgan is suggesting that the Federal Reserve may actually be injecting up to two trillion dollars through the bank term funding program. That's the buy the effing Fed pivot acronym Btfp Bank term Funding Program That's the actual name. And JPMorgan thinks that the Btfp is actually not likely to just be a 125 billion dollar facility like they said it was JPMorgan thinks it could be as large as two trillion dollars. Now you might ask yourself, but wait a minute.

Kevin If they said it's 125 billion dollars, why is JP Morgan saying it could be two trillion dollars? Are we being lied to? Yes and no. So the reason you're not being lied to is because technically the facility is set up for 125 billion dollars. The way you're being lied to is via omission. Ordinarily, when the Federal Reserve sets up a facility like this, they say, look, we have a facility that has an authorization of spending 125 billion dollars now because we're the Fed, and we can give ourselves as much leverage as we want.

Ordinarily, we'll leverage that facility 10x, which that's what they did during Covid, which means 125 billion dollars is really like 1.2 trillion dollars. But in their last letter, that is the letter. The Federal Reserve established the Btfp program In the Federal Reserve actually removed any mention of how much they would leverage the facility, which on one hand suggests oh, maybe they're not going to use any Leverage No, if they weren't going to use any leverage, they would have told you they weren't going to use any leverage. What they did is actually removed mention of Leverage on purpose to conceal the actual likelihood that the problem that's really happening is so great that not only do you need to get life insurance in as little as five minutes, link down below.

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Not not only is it so bad, but the Federal Reserve is basically hiding how much they're leveraging. Uh, this facility to where JP Morgan believes they're hiding of this facility implies they might be leveraging this to the tune of 18 to 20 x. That is how JP Morgan and their analyst note believes the FED is actually willing to inject about two trillion dollars of liquidity into this disaster. Now, if you actually look at the chart, you can see if we're at 8.3 before the injection of liquidity and about 8.9 or you know, about a year ago.

Well, then that means if we add 2 trillion to 8.3 we'd actually run up to about 10.3 trillion. Which means the balance sheet at the FED would actually expand by the tune of somewhere around 1.2 trillion dollars above all of the quantitative tightening. So in other words, the money printers may be back on to a much larger degree than anybody actually realizes right now. That's what JP Morgan is saying.

So when you're hearing about that two trillion dollars and you're like, wait, I thought it was 125 billion dollar facility, this is how you're being misled. Now, it's unfortunate that the FED is not transparent about that, but then again, they probably have a reason for that. And the reason in all likelihood is, if people realized that the FED actually had to come out with two trillion dollars to save this banking crisis, people would lose their sh9t. People would freak out so damn badly that they would literally go to every single Regional Bank and say why do I have my money here? Why don't I just consolidate my money at the big Banks Which quite frankly, that is to some degree a form of capitalism.

Why work with the small business when you could get a cheaper deal at Amazon? Now, that is terrible for small businesses and that leads to a lot of job loss and call a consolidation and ultimately leads to the Big D word. No, Not yes, there's a coupon code linked down below that expires next week and then the price goes up for the amazing programs in building your wealth. No, the D word is deflation When you have consolidation amongst larger companies who could be much more efficient via economies of scale, you tend to have deflation now. Unfortunately, with that can come the loss of smaller business.

uh, flexibility. For example, in a New York Times article published yesterday, the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank has put a large strain on a lot of tech startups who are now facing significant increased scrutiny. not only from investors who are like, why the hell did you have so much money at risk with this smaller bank, but also lenders are like, yeah, you know, Silicon Valley Bank collapsed. We don't know that we want to actually lend you because you're a risky startup and so now you have this potentially other info disinflationary impetus of startups not having as much access to Capital anymore.

It's not just that, Silicon Valley Bank collapsed. But that means that all of the credit lines that they were giving willy-nilly to startups don't exist anymore. Now the debt is still owed by the people who borrowed. It's not like that disappears, but you can't borrow any more money.

Now you got to go to a different bank and borrow money for your startup. Well, where are you going to do that if you go, walk into a Jpn or a Bank of America or whatever you're like, hey man, I'm a money losing startup, Can I borrow 10 million dollars? They're going to laugh you out of the office because they actually have risk procedures that say we can't do this right now Some people are like, what do you mean risk procedures like don't the shareholders want risk procedures because you know they don't want to lose money and go bankrupt? No, Shareholders don't care. I mean ultimately, shareholders care when things go bad. But generally shareholders in aggregate.

Okay, this is no offense to any individual shareholders. It's just an aggregate. The only thing shareholders want is stunk go up. They don't care.

Uh, they will be completely blinded by risk mitigation. So so to suggest that oh well, Shareholders will somehow self-regulate a company is like complete. But anyway, So the Federal Reserve on top of this, by the way, uh, is now paying out so much money, uh, in bonds, uh that they are in repo facilities or whatever that they're holding. they're actually now losing more money than they're making.

Uh, this is called the remittances facility or or process where generally, when the Federal Reserve has excess money, they will, uh, distribute that money back to the treasury. Department That's generally what happens. Fed has more money, they distribute it to the treasury. Department However, that does not happen when the Federal Reserve has more expenses.

And you could see that via this chart right here. the Federal Reserve is actually substantially negative. Which means they're actually needing to borrow money or print it from the treasury. Department So they're either taking money from the treasury.

Department. or they're just printing more. Uh, given that we're knocking on the door of the debt ceiling, they're probably just printing more. And that's why you see the quantitative tightening cycle essentially come to a screeching halt.

Now Many people say, hey, wait a minute. Isn't this consistent with a Fed u-turn And in many ways it is. See, the Federal Reserve tends to panic once they break something and then they start injecting money and they turn the money printers on. They did that in 1987 and marked the bottom of the market.

They did that in March of 2003 and marked the bottom of the market. They did that in February of 2009 and marked the bottom of the market. They did that in December of 2018 and marked the bottom of the market. They did that in March of 2020.

Uh, during Covid and that marked the bottom of the market. Now that is not to be confused with a rate cut style pivot. Okay, rate cut pivot. Very different.

I've talked about that a million times before. just type into YouTube meet Kevin pivot I Really Don't want to go over that again? Uh, because that's that's different from from the FED Turning all the money printer on, turning it on heavily again. traditionally fed. turning the money printer on again and historically is a very good thing for the equities market.

And I think that's why stocks are actually somewhat happy over the last few days here. However, there's always the risk and these words are obviously very dangerous. There's always the risk that this time is different. We never know when what was historically true ends up no longer being true.

We just don't know. The reality is every recession is different. They just tend to rhyme right and generally when the money printer turns on, there's a great sign to buy generally and historically. Again, not to be confused with a rate cut or quote-unquote pivot.

So what else do we know? Well, the other thing that we know is obviously the Federal Reserve now suggests they're going to provide a review of Silicon Valley Bank By May 1st, Biden says he's going to call on Congress to pass more regulation. It's probably not going to happen. but more importantly, what are investors now saying about this? Panic Well, I think it's worth looking at what Bill Ackman has to say. this is a an interesting thread and I think we can add some details to this.

So let's go ahead and add some details. So Bill Ackman says secretary Yellen has apparently pushed the systemically important Banks to recycle some of the deposits they received from First Republic Bank back into First Republic Bank for 120 days. The result is that First Republic Bank default risk has now been spread to our largest banks now. I actually disagree with that I Think the treasury Department and the FED realize that they will print as much money is absolutely necessary to make sure the systemically important Banks survive I I If if that doesn't happen in the one percent Edge case scenario that that the big Banks actually fail without a bailout, we have bigger problems.

It probably means there's like nuclear war or something like that. Uh, and and don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I'm not advocating for this giant Ponzi of the American dollar that we have. The reality is at some point in the future, the dollar will be absolutely worthless and all currency will collapse because that's also what history has told us. No single currency has ever survived becoming worthless.

Not a single one. So it will happen. I Don't think it's going to happen this cycle. So I think we're going to be able to essentially still print our way out of this one.

But anyway, this so so this idea of default risk being spread to the largest bank to some degree. He's he's right. It's just the backstop is so large that I don't think that's actually so terrible. Uh, the point of this? These deposits going from the larger Banks to the smaller is just a tool to try to trick average Americans Who are like so does this mean I shouldn't withdraw my money from from Uh First Republic Bank Let me be very clear: you should not be at a small Bank above and beyond the FDIC Insurance limits and even if you're within those limits, would be a headache potentially to access your Capital if you had to wait to go through the receivership processes.

even though technically everybody was supposed to access their capital on Monday there are already reports and rumors on Twitter Uh, that a lot of people who have banks at Silicon Valley Bank cannot access their capital I Personally would not have a large portion of my money at a bank that is not too big to fail. Too big to fail. As a bank with over 250 billion dollars in assets under management, the top eight banks are the banks that go undergo the largest Fed stress tests and therefore basically get the Fed's blessing because the Fed's basically like hey, follow our rules we'll always bail you out nudge nudge, wink wink It's my take now. Some people are like oh, Kevin are you advocating for a bank? Grant no Obviously I Don't want the financial system to collapse, but I am advocating for being smart with your money.

and if there's a non-zero chance that you lose some of your money at a smaller institution, why would you take the risk Anyway, going back to: Bill Ackman Spreading the risk of financial contagion to achieve a false sense of confidence. He's right. this is trying to create a false sense of confidence. He's absolutely right about that.

It's trying to manipulate people into thinking well, everything must be good then. Oh, a systemically important Banks Would have never made this low return investment in deposits unless they were pressured to do so. Yeah, I Agree with them. The market has responded to this fictional vote of confidence with a 35 aftermarket decline in First Republic Bank Stock First Republic Bank is no.

Silicon Valley Bank It's well managed, well capitalized, blah blah blah. It's caught up in a bank run due to no fault of its own. It does not deserve to fail. Yeah.

I mean that might be true. We need a temporary system-wide deposit guarantee immediately until expanded and modernized. FDIC Insurance Systems are made widely available, you know. Bill Ackman has has a way of sort of pounding the table with things that we really need and and I think it could be argued that maybe some level of banking consolidation is actually normal and healthy.

Now that's not to say we only want four Banks an oligopoly of banks, but it is to suggest that maybe we we don't need ten thousand. Banks or five thousand banks in America Maybe we only need a hundred. There's still plenty of competition that way. Maybe you only need 50.

Do you need five thousand? I Don't think so. But anyway, the press release announcing the 30 billion dollars of deposits raised more questions than it answers. Lack of transparency caused Market participants to assume the worst. True I said before that hours matter we have allowed days to go by.

Half measures don't work when there is a crisis of confidence again. I Have no Investments long or short in the banking sector. Dude, nobody believes this guy. Yeah, that's mostly because people got very jaded during covet and hey, maybe maybe he's he's right.

I mean I don't think he's blatantly lying because I would just expose him to Too Much liability. Maybe he has no Investments long or short, but maybe maybe some of the companies is associated with do right? I I don't know. I'm not trying to be jaded to the point where I'm suggesting you know I don't trust everything Bill Ackman says. But let me just be clear.

I don't trust anything any anybody says. uh. Anyway, so I'm simply extremely concerned about the financial contagion risk spiraling out of control and causing a severe and causing severe economic damage and hardship. We need to stop this now.

we are beyond the point where the banks can solve the problem and we are hand in the hands of the government and Regulators Yikes. Well, that does not sound very exciting unfortunately. but the good news is you can still get 12 free Stocks by going to Metcaven.com free and signing up for Weeble or life insurance in as little as five minutes at Kevin.com Life or the programs on building your wealth link down below or Met Kevin.com join my opinion on some form of a conclusion to all of this is, well, a minimize your risk at Small Banks B Make as much money as you can by making it. You know, realizing that in a recession it's time to double or triple down, work as hard as possible, and make as much extra money as possible because you just can't guarantee that the revenue sources you previously have had will be there for you going forward much longer.

So you have to be very, very careful and astute in making as much money as you possibly can right now. In addition to that, I Think it's a great time to start considering uh, looking at the stock market as a potential opportunity in the event this is a Fed u-turn C I think it's a I don't know what letter I'm on anymore Anyway, I think there's a good opportunity to look into real estate Investments soon, probably within the next one to two quarters here and ultimately do I think that we're facing a larger economic contagion of bank failure for smaller Banks Yes, I Do for larger Banks Top probably 50 Unlikely Top Eight? Absolutely not. No. I Realize Silicon Valley Bank was a top 16 bank.

So don't get me wrong, there could be more collapses in the top 50, but that's why I Like the shelter. So to speak of the top eight, it's like if if a nuclear bomb was flying our way. whose bomb shelter would you rather go in? You know, think about it like, uh, uh, what's the the girl with the with the wolf do you want to go in? The Twig House the wood house or the brick house right? Which one's going to blow over? Uh, or which one's gonna have the most damage in in the case of economic. Fallout To stick with that example, well, I would venture to say the ones that are going to be most insulated are the big ones.

They get the thickest walls. So I I Don't think this disaster is as terrible as it seems. I Do not think this is the time the dollar collapses I Do think all of this is incredibly disinflationary. potentially even deflationary.

Uh. I I Think the artificial intelligence Revolution that we see over the next we're expect to see over the next 10 years here will be absolutely remarkable. Uh, now, Uh, I You know. Kathy Wood has sort of chimed in on this as well.

She argues that hey, well, if we had transparent cryptography, you know, basically cryptocurrency. Uh, that, uh, you know, was essentially not founded with funny money, we could potentially avoid this kind of craziness. Uh, that would probably be quite disinflationary since you wouldn't have the inflationary money printer. But uh, you know she makes a good point.

The debacle would not have been possible in a decentralized, transparent Audible and over collateralized crypto asset ecosystem. Now, I Personally take issue with this word right here. While in spirit, she is correct. It's important to remember that many brokerages dare I say like Finance say they're over collateralized, say they might have a billion dollars to back.

Uh, the Busd. Let's just say as a quick example, you know, let's say Busd has 900 million dollars in demands. but they have a billion dollars in cash that solely is over collateralized. But then if they use that same billion dollars to say 10 other coins with 900 million dollars or over collateralized, then that means in aggregate, they're actually 10x under collateralized.

They just sort of misled you into thinking they individually were overclocked. So that word when you hear over collateralized red flag should go up. But but in the true Spirit of the phrase over collateralized sheet, she is right that to some degree a crypto is a solution to Central points of failure and the opacity of of uh markets that we see today. She's not wrong about that.

So I think that's actually a a well put point. but again, I Don't think this cycle is the cycle where we have a severe contagion risks though. I Do think a lot of banks are at risk now. It is interesting to see Bitcoin up about 6.7 percent in my opinion.

Bitcoin is responding directly to the Money Printer being on again. This is what happened during Covet Money Printer Goldberg Guess what goes up stocks and Bitcoin So those are my thoughts and my conclusions on the banking crisis though apparently now Elizabeth Warren has asked if the Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank Executives would return the bonuses and salaries they earned in the last five years before their Banks collapsed. You know Elizabeth Warren says stuff to you know essentially create a very populist uproar. And and she's not wrong about asking the question.

but I always think it's interesting. like I wonder what it must be like to sit there and think what could I say that 99 of people are gonna love and then that's all you do is you sit there all day long thinking up ideas of what 99 of people are going to love. That's and I'm not saying to some degree there won't be clawbacks because I think there should be a lot of salaries and bonuses were paid right before banking collapses. Stocks were sold right before the banking collapses.

Does that mean it should go all the way back to employees five years ago? Probably not. But the extremeness is always something that uh gets attention. and I think that's what politicians like because it keeps them in office. So in other words, the nature of politics encourages extremeness.

but that's not necessarily actually good for our our our economy. Somebody here in the comments writes woke a hauntus Steve writes do you think with these small bank failures there will be more or less investment to expand productivity, increase goods and services Slash new technology. If less, it means lower economic growth. Yeah, so it actually does mean less.

Unfortunately, when smaller Banks fail, it means looser lending goes away and you end up with net net tighter lending. So yes, it does mean a slower economic growth and a greater likelihood of recession. And as if On Cue Steve replies and says I like lithium uh but but yes, yes uh so this this this is very very clearly uh. A result is that yes, economic output will slow with less lending.

and I think this is why it's so important to focus on PP pricing power style stocks that uh that are likely to receive investment uh and purchases at cash flow regardless of a marginally weaker economy. And when I say marginally, it's not to minimize. It's to say on the margins, right? Marginal analysis is looking at the margins if the economy slows for the bottom 50 percent. Yes, that in aggregate lowers GDP but it affects the bottom 50 more than it does the pricing power stocks that sell stuff goods and services to the top 50 right now.

Obviously none of this is exact and designed to be a science, but that is a thesis that I have and we shall see how it evolves.