The Federal Reserve’s transformation of the biggest U.S. banks into a collective mechanism for collapsing the American physical economy, is picking up pace. The clearest indicator: Loans and leases by the entire U.S. banking system – overwhelmingly dominated by 10 of the biggest banks with three-quarters of assets and deposits – are now falling more and more rapidly from already extremely low levels.
The most recent flow-of-funds report from the Federal Reserve itself, on June 16, 2021 shows that “loans and leases in bank credit” in the banking system, at $10.339 trillion, had dropped by $500 billion since May 2020. In May 2020 they had already fallen by $150 billion from May 2019. This mocks the hoopla over the “Payroll Protection Program” loan program in 2020 which was supposed to let small and medium-sized firms avoid laying off their employees during the pandemic collapse of economic activity.
