I am issuing an Alert tonight. After examining the data, I have come to the conclusion that the possibility of a European-centered systemic banking crisis is unacceptably high and that there are certain actions you should take.
For my new subscribers who may not already be aware of this, I will only send an Alert when I am personally moved to action, or would be if I were not already as prepared as I am. The point of an Alert is action. I do not wish to add to anxiety, especially unnecessarily. I take my responsibilities in this regard very seriously.
That said, tomorrow I am going to get more cash from the bank to hold in reserve until things clear up (or break down). The idea here is that cash will be a very useful commodity to hold and then deploy, should the banking system suffer some sort of a freeze-up for any length of time.
The risk now is that the Greece situation could spill over into Portugal, Italy, and Spain, if only because more people may wake up to the idea that these economies are just as incapable of servicing their outstanding debt as Greece. The warning signs are as ominous as any since the crisis began in August of 2007.
Here are a few of them:
Italian Bond Yields Flash Warning Signal
Nov 1, 2011
An early-warning indicator of yesterday’s market meltdown was Italian sovereign debt, which last week kept falling in price, and rising in yield, even as the Plan to Save the World goosed stock markets temporarily higher.
Italian bonds were trying to tell us something then, and maybe they’re trying to tell us something again today.
Ten-year Italian debt yields crossed 6% yesterday, into the danger zone between 6% and 7%, beyond which it will get really hard for Italy to service its debt.
They’re higher still today, with 10-year Italian bonds yielding 6.3% at last check, and about 45 basis points wider against relatively safe German bunds.
Maybe more troubling, shorter-dated yields are in some cases rising even harder, in effect starting to “flatten” the yield curve, always a sign of trouble ahead.
by former_user 
