On this edition of the Keiser Report, Max and co-host Stacy Herbert look at the latest scandals of filling black holes of debt with austerity plans and imperial plans. In the second half of the show, Max talks to Cedric de Serigny of the School of Economic Warfare in Paris about rating agencies and financial terrorism.

 

The world has issued a lot of debt in the past two years fighting the Great Recession. According to FT, Spanish banks borrowed €85.6bn ($105.7bn) from the ECB last month - this was double the amount lent to them before the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008 and 16.5 per cent of net eurozone loans offered by the central bank - this is nothing but a sign of a run on Spanish banks. California lawmakers will not meet their deadline on Tuesday for approving a state budget, which requires closing a shortfall of more than $19 billion, a spokeswoman for the state Senate's top officer said. 61% underfunded Illinois Teachers Pension Fund goes for broke, becomes next AIG-In-Waiting by selling billions in CDS. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will be delisted from the New York Stock Exchange next month, the government said today - so what is the "future direction" of the two companies which so far have cost taxpayers $145 billion, and could cost hundreds of billions more - nobody knows. Britain's debt levels rising faster than expected. Swiss private-bank debt is seven times GDP. In Japan, government debt has soared to 190% of GDP from 50% in the mid-1990s, hitting an estimated $10 trillion in 2009. In America, national governments will issue an estimated $4.5 trillion in debt this year, the U.S. has allowed the total federal debt to balloon by more than 50% since 2006 to $13 trillion.

Until now, the planet has issued really too much debt. It should be blatantly obvious to anyone that the promise of repayment cannot be kept.