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All of By Michael Snyder |
April 3, 2013 |
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What would you do if all of the
money in your bank account suddenly disappeared in a single
moment? If you had not kept any paper records, which most
Americans do not, it would be exceedingly difficult to prove
to the bank that you actually had any money in the bank.
If you don’t think that
something like this could ever happen in the United States,
you might want to think again. Cyber attacks against major
banks in the United States are becoming more powerful and
more sophisticated with each passing month. In fact, major
U.S. bank websites have been offline for a total of
249 hours over the
past six weeks. And just last month, thousands upon
thousands of Chase customers logged into their bank accounts
only to discover that their balances had all been
reset to zero.Anyone that would want to
cause complete and total economic chaos in the United States
could accomplish it very easily by wiping out all of our
bank account records. So please do not keep all of your
money in a single bank, and from now on please keep a paper
copy of all of your bank account statements. At some point
it is likely that one of these cyber attacks will cause
permanent damage to our banking system, and you want to be
protected.The mainstream media has
generally been very quiet about the massive cyber attacks
against our major banks, but behind the scenes authorities
are truly alarmed. They don’t know how to stop these
attacks, and they just keep getting more intense and more
sophisticated.Could you imagine how you
would feel if you logged in to your bank account and all of
your money was gone? That is exactly what happened to some
Chase customers last month. The following is from a recent
CNET article…“JP Morgan Chase denied
this evening that it had suffered a hack that many
customers claimed had suddenly reduced their checking
account balances to zero.“After discovering the
apparently empty accounts via the Internet or mobile
devices, many Chase banking customers turned to Twitter
to express their frustration and show screen shots of
zero balances. Other users were greeted with messages
that their bank account balances were unavailable.”But this was most definitely
not an isolated incident. That same article noted that
Chase and many of our other large banks have had their
websites taken down for extended periods of time lately…“Customers’ suspicions
about a possible security breach are natural, with the
zero balances appearing less than a week after a massive
distributed-denial-of-service attack
rendered Chase’s Web sites useless for many hours.
Customers trying to use the site’s tools were instead
greeted with a note that the site was “temporarily
down.”“Hackers have ratcheted
up their assaults on financial institutions in recent
months, using DDoS attacks to take down Wells Fargo,
Bank of America, Chase, Citigroup, HSBC, and others.”In fact, as I mentioned
above, major U.S. bank websites have been offline for an
astounding 249 hours over the last six
weeks alone. The attacks just keep getting larger and bank
officials are becoming very alarmed about the power of these
cyber attacks. The following is from an article that was
posted
on CNBC this week…“Major U.S. bank websites
have been offline a total of 249 hours in the past six
weeks, perhaps the clearest indication yet that American
companies are prime targets in an unrelenting, global
cyber conflict.“The heavier-than-usual
outages are the result of a remarkable, sustained attack
that began seven months ago and repeatedly knocks banks
offline for hours at a time, frustrating consumers and
bank security professionals alike.‘”Literally, these banks
are just in war rooms, sitting at controls trying to
stop (the attacks),’ said Avivah Litan, a bank security
analyst with Gartner Group, a consulting firm. ‘The
frightening thing is (the attackers) are not using as
much resources as they have on call. The attacks could
be bigger.”‘So who is behind these
attacks?Some are blaming Chinese
hackers, others believe that Iran is behind the attacks, and
yet others are convinced that it is the work of Islamic
terrorists.It is kind of frightening
that they cannot positively identify who is behind these
attacks. Whoever it is, they sure do seem to have a
tremendous amount of resources and they are very
sophisticated.And in the future, it may not
be hackers on the other side of the globe that are attacking
our banks. In fact, if someone wanted to “recapitalize the
banks”, all they would have to do is wipe out all of our
bank account records (including all backup records).
Suddenly trillions of dollars of “unsecured liabilities”
(that is what our bank accounts are) would be wiped out and
the banks would suddenly be solvent again.Anyone that could not produce
evidence that they actually had money in the banks would be
in a lot of trouble. It would be the largest single wealth
transfer in the history of the world, and it would throw the
U.S. economy into utter chaos. This is a scenario that I am
exploring in my new novel which will be coming out later
this month.In addition, there is the
constant threat that a massive EMP burst could fry all of
our electronics (including the banking records), but
that is a topic that I have covered
in a previous article.And of course another way
that your bank account could be wiped out in a single moment
is if the government decides to “legally” steal it. We just
witnessed this happen
in Cyprus. In February, the Central Bank of Cyprus
swore that such a thing could never possibly happen, but
then one month later it did happen. The politicians will
lie to your face until the very day comes when they steal
your money.Sadly, a very similar thing
could easily happen in the United States someday. As I
wrote about
yesterday, the big banks are making incredibly reckless
bets with
our money. When those bets go bad, our money could very
well be used to cover those bets.One way this could be
accomplished is by using a practice known as “rehypothecation”.
It sounds complicated, but it really isn’t. Basically, the
banks use money that clients have entrusted to them to cover
their own gambling debts. This is how rehypothecaton is
defined
by Investopedia…“The practice by banks
and brokers of using, for their own purposes, assets
that have been posted as collateral by their clients.”An excellent article
by Jeff Nielson detailed how this could result in the
big banks grabbing our money when their trillions of dollars
of reckless bets go bad…1) “Our banking
regulators knowingly allow financial institutions to
engage in recklessly misleading (if not outright
fraudulent) contracts with their clients, through the
use of complex ‘small print’ in their account contracts
with clients.2) “The three largest
U.S. ‘banks’ by deposit (JP Morgan, Bank of America,
Citigroup) have made bets in their own rigged casino,
which total well in excess of $100 trillion, an amount
which completely dwarfs their total, combined deposits
(and assets).3) “A large portion of
those bets occur in the $60+ trillion credit default
swap market. Pay-outs in these markets can (and do)
exceed 300
times the amount of the original bet. It is bets in
this market which blew
up AIG, requiring more than $150 billion in
immediate government aid.4) “Following the Crash
of 08; these same banks mooched a package of hand-outs,
tax-breaks and guarantees (i.e. future hand-outs) from
the Bush regime in excess of $15 trillion, the last time
their gambling debts went bad on them and all of these
banks have been allowed to dramatically increase the
total amount of their gambling since then.5) “It would take only a
minor change in the gambling contracts in which these
bankers engage to allow their creditors to seize funds
out of ordinary bank accounts.6) “The existing language
for the bank accounts of these U.S. banks is possibly
already so vague (and prejudicial to clients) that it
would allow these banks to reinterpret the terms of
these bank accounts and allow rehypothecation
to be used to rob the holders of ordinary bank accounts,
people who themselves make no ‘bets’ in markets
whatsoever. Alternately, customers could be blitzed with
an offer for ‘new and improved’ bank accounts, where
terms allowing rehypothecation are slipped into
the contract, with the banks knowing that the
regulators will do nothing to warn account-holders of
the gigantic risk they are taking.”But we are all covered by
deposit insurance, right? That is what the people of Cyprus
thought too.As we just saw in Cyprus,
when there is a “banking crisis” sometimes government steps
in and suddenly changes all of the rules overnight even
though the vast majority of the population is against it.Hopefully you can see that no
bank account will ever truly be “safe” ever again. Your
money may be safe today, and your money may be there next
week, but someday it could disappear in a single moment.And the general public is
definitely starting to lose faith in the banking system.
Google searches for the term “bank
run” have been absolutely spiking recently. Just
check out this chart which shows that searches for “bank
run” are now the highest that they have ever been.So what should we all do to
protect ourselves?As I mentioned earlier,
it is important to not have all of your money in one bank,
and from now on you will want to permanently
keep paper copies of all of your bank account
statements.Someday you may need those
statements in order to prove that you actually had money in
the bank.Our world is becoming
increasingly unstable, and at some point financial disaster
is going to strike. By taking prudent precautions now,
hopefully you will be able to minimize the damage to your
family.
Previous articles by
Michael Snyder
The Obama
Administration Promotes More Illegal Immigration! Why?
Rise Of The Droids: Will Robots
Eventually Steal all of Our Jobs?
Social Decay + Illegal Immigration
+ Poverty = Open War On The Streets Of America
America Is Being Systematically
Transformed Into A Totalitarian Society
Cities Degenerating into
Gang-Infested War Zones
“China Cities and Special
Economic Zones All Over America?
22 Signs That Voter Fraud
is Out of Control and the Election was a Scam
55 Facts
About The Debt And U.S. Government Finance
37 Facts
About How Cruel This Economy Has Been To Millions
Posted with
permission from Michael @
The Economic Collapse
and
