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I have been watching the news in the past few months about the rapid decline of Deutsche Bank in Germany. The bank’s stock has fallen by a third this year, and last month the S&P threatened to downgrade its credit rating if the bank did not make serious improvements.
CEO John Cryan was ousted on April 8.
Even so, the bank has changed little over the past few years, perhaps thinking that it is too big to fail or too powerful to receive a downgrade from S&P. Last month the bank announced that it would get rid of 1000 employees (out of 100,000). Obviously, that was not enough, so now they say they are planning to get rid of 10,000 more employees.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-05-23/deutsche-bank-fire-10000-employees-1-every-10
“So far investors remain unconvinced the plan will work, and as a result the bank’s shares have fallen by nearly a third this year, making DB stock one of the worst performing European stocks, and at its lowest since a crisis of confidence hit the bank in late 2016….
“Separately, Bloomberg report that the bank is about to "retreat from a swathe of equities markets across the world, including some on its own doorstep in Europe."
In other words, they plan to dump many of their investments in stocks or bonds in both Europe and the US. If it does that, we can expect to see a downturn in the stock markets worldwide.
But a downgrade in their credit rating means that the bank’s costs will increase. That’s how it works. When a bank starts to get shaky, they lose their high credit rating, which just makes things worse. Their profits tumble, stock prices fall further, and then their credit is reduced further. If it continues, it could become a death spiral.
If Deutsche Bank fails, it could be another Lehman Brothers moment like we had in September of 2008. In fact, it would be far bigger, considering their $46 trillion exposure to derivatives. Whatever happens, we should pay attention to this, because if the bank fails, it would certainly spread around the world.
Remember that when Lehman Brothers failed, we were told that they had to bail out the banks because it threatened to bring down the entire world’s economic order. Deutsche Bank is potentially an even bigger problem, and many doubt that even the German government would not have the resources to bail it out.
This has the potential of being the defining moment for the Babylonian system itself.