Month: March 2020

Authored by Jim Quinn via The Burning Platform blog,

“People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.”

– Alan Moore – V for Vendetta

“Authority, when first detecting chaos at its heels, will entertain the vilest schemes to save its orderly facade.”

– Alan Moore – V for Vendetta

I wrote an article called V for Vendetta – 2011 just over nine years ago on the day after the Tucson shooting where congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and eighteen others were shot by a psychologically disturbed lunatic, with six dying. At the time, I thought of the scene from the V for Vendetta movie where someone did something stupid and all hell broke loose. I expected a similar result from this act, but those in control of our society were successfully able to put a cork in the bottle, preserving their façade of order.

We learned shortly thereafter, through the patriotic efforts of Edward Snowden and Julian Assange, how the government was using the vilest of schemes to surveil every American through their abuse of the Patriot Act. The government has become and enemy of the people.

It is interesting to go back and view my conclusion from nine years ago and assess its accuracy as of today:

“This country has not reached the level of control and fear seen in Orwell’s 1984 and V for Vendetta, yet. We are moving relentlessly in that direction. Surveillance, monitoring, spying, censorship, secret prisons, predator drones, and conforming to state rules and regulations put citizens further under the thumb of an all-powerful state. The freedom to dissent, the freedom to be left alone, the freedom to speak out against injustice, the freedom to disagree with your government, and the freedom to present your ideas without fear of retribution or penalty are essential in a democratic society.

The next phase of this Fourth Turning will surely include another downward spiral in financial markets as un-payable debts accumulate to a tipping point level. When ATM machines stop spitting out twenties, food shelves are bare and gas stations are shuttered, social chaos will ensue. The government will react with further command and control measures. In V For Vendetta, the government creates a terrorist incident in order to gain unquestioned control over the population. Americans will need to be more vigilant than they have been over the last ten years in keeping an eye on their government.”

In light of what has happened in 2020 thus far, I’d say my fears have been realized, with more downside to come. I was deeply concerned about the surveillance state, on par with Orwell’s 1984, two years before Snowden made his revelations public. The country has been in a downward spiral since the government used the 9/11 fear and panic to ram through a 300-page pre-written piece of legislation to further take away our Constitutional rights and put vastly more power and control into the hands of uncontrolled psychopaths operating in the shadows of government halls.

Those in charge never let a crisis go to waste. 9/11 was used to pass the Patriot Act and initiate nineteen years of declared and undeclared wars in the Middle East to create chaos, empower Israel, and abscond with the oil of sovereign countries.

The 2008/2009 crisis, created by the Fed and their Wall Street banker proprietors, was used by the powers that be to abscond with trillions in national wealth, while further enslaving senior citizens in poverty and forcing the working middle class further into debt servitude. Bernanke, Yellen, Geithner and a myriad of other banker flunkies have been richly rewarded for their traitorous actions by their Wall Street brethren, with tens of millions in compensation for their duty and honor to the cabal.

The men who created the 2008/2009 global financial collapse through their mortgage fraud scheme, used fear and panic in the markets to force the feckless pathetic bought off congress apparatchiks to pass TARP and dozens of other ridiculous “bailout bankers” schemes to provide a façade of recovery. There was never a recovery. The unpayable debt was papered over with trillions more of unpayable debt, until something snapped in September 2019.

The first half of this twenty year, or so, Fourth Turning was ushered in by the 2008/2009 financial collapse and the subsequent disastrous solutions implemented by the ruling class in order to preserve their wealth, power and control. The taxpayer bailout of Wall Street should have been called NO BANKER LEFT BEHIND. The mind-boggling amount of debt issued over the last decade in order to rectify a problem created by issuing a previously mind-boggling amount of unpayable debt over the previous decade has become so large, the average person can’t comprehend the implications or consequences.

The masses have been indoctrinated through government schools and propagandized by the captured corporate media to such an extent, they have been convinced abnormality and pillaging by the ruling class are both normal and acceptable. The world added $90 trillion of debt between 2000 and 2008, over a 100% increase. Bernanke, Yellen, Powell and their other central bank co-conspirators said hold my beer and added another $90 trillion since the first debt created crisis. The Himalayan mountain of debt now stands at $253 trillion, or 322% of global GDP. Rogoff and Reinhart proved countries whose debt surpass 90% of GDP always proceed towards crisis and currency debasement.

Even John Maynard Keynes knew countries should run surpluses during good times, so they could run deficits during the bad times. Our glorious financial and political leaders seemed to have skipped that chapter in their economics textbooks. So, under the tutelage of Bernanke, Yellen, Powell, Bush, Obama, and Trump the country has added $12 trillion to the national debt, $3 trillion of corporate (junk) debt to buy back stock, a few trillion in credit card, auto, mortgage and student loan debt, all while the Fed was feeding the Wall Street parasites with zero interest rates and buying $4 trillion of their worthless assets (aka QE). This was all done while we were supposedly experiencing the longest economic boom in history and the stock market confirmed the boom by rising 400% to all-time highs in February of 2020. All’s well that ends well. Right?

It seems debt can’t buy happiness in the long run. This economy and stock market have been bugs in search of a windshield for a long time. Longer than I ever thought possible. But, as some bright financial minds have said, that which is unsustainable will not be sustained. The critical thinking financial people I trust knew something went screwy deep in the recesses of the opaque banking system sometime in September when the overnight repo rates soared to 10%.

I know 99.99% of Americans have no idea what an overnight repo is, let alone care about them. But Wall Street bankers and connected billionaire hedge fund managers cared, because Powell and his flunkies bailed them out every night from their bad trades and extreme risk taking. As we entered the fateful year of 2020, years of poisonous sludge was clogging the gears, and another financial collapse was imminent. What a fortuitous time for a global pandemic.

This is when things began to get interesting. There have been so many earth shattering events in the last two months it’s almost impossible to assess the current situation with any semblance of certitude. I believe I’m being lied to by virtually everyone. I know for a fact I’m being lied to by the Fed, Wall Street billionaire titans, the fake news media, corrupt politicians, the Chinese dictator, most people on social media and the blithering idiot talking heads on CNBC.

If almost everyone is lying, how can someone decipher the truth? The best way to untangle falsehood from truth is to follow the money. Just as the monied interests and Deep State didn’t let a crisis go to waste after 9/11 and the 2008/2009 Wall Street created collapse, they are again taking advantage of the distress and panic caused by the Chinese coronavirus to once again plunder the American public while assuring them it’s in their best interest.

“When the institutions of money rule the world, it is perhaps inevitable that the interests of money will take precedence over the interests of people. What we are experiencing might best be described as a case of money colonizing life. To accept this absurd distortion of human institutions and purpose should be considered nothing less than an act of collective, suicidal insanity.”

 – David Korten

Collective suicidal insanity is the perfect description for what has happened in the last two weeks. There is no doubt the world is experiencing a health crisis not seen since the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic. It is estimated 20 to 50 million people died during that pandemic, with approximately 600,000 succumbing in the U.S., or .57% of the population. A similar death rate from this pandemic would total 1.9 million people in the U.S.

As of today, there have been 140,000 confirmed cases and approximately 2,400 deaths. Over the coming weeks there will be hundreds of thousands more cases and thousands of additional deaths. That is a depressing and sorrowful fact. But the death count is going to be drastically lower than the 1918 total, during which the country continued to function and slog forward.

A judicious thinking individual might wonder why the Swine Flu epidemic of 2009, which is estimated to have infected 61 million Americans and killed 12,000 to 18,000, did not require a countrywide lockdown resulting in a second Great Depression. Maybe it was because the ruling class already had the ongoing financial crisis as their logic to use panic and fear in achieving their plundering objectives. Did anyone really notice we experienced a global pandemic in 2009?

Our very own CDC “experts” tell us the country has already experienced 38 to 54 million flu infections since October, with a half million hospitalizations, and at least 24,000 deaths, so why weren’t our hospitals overwhelmed? I know this is a serious virus, but the scare tactics being utilized by our overseers, corrupt politicians and their corporate media propaganda outlets is beyond excessive, and reveals a far more nefarious purpose.

Did we need to purposely create a global depression in order to defeat this virus? Will the benefits outweigh the cost? Is this health crisis being used by the monied interest swine to again gorge themselves at the taxpayer trough, robbing the public, while persuading them it’s for their advantage? The “conspiracy theorists” among us, who have been proven correct time after time over the last decade, know the answers to these questions. This is a controlled demolition by the powers that be as cover for their fraud, criminal schemes, and looting of the national treasure.

“To rob the public, we must first deceive it. The trick consists in persuading the public that the theft is for its advantage; and by this means inducing it to accept, in exchange for its property, services which are fictitious, and often worse.”

 – Frederic Bastiat

Only in a suicide cult, which our country has become, would the majority support and cheer for a corporate lobbyist written $2.2 trillion 873-page windfall to bankers, connected mega-corporations, and every special interest imaginable. This doesn’t even account for the $4 trillion of secret payoffs and behind the scenes shenanigans of the Federal Reserve, as they do their part to support their banker owners once again. And just to make sure none of their despicable acts will see the light of day, the ruling class slipped in little clause titled:

SEC. 4009. TEMPORARY GOVERNMENT IN THE SUNSHINE ACT RELIEF. 

The provision authorizes the Federal Reserve Board and other such officials to meet in secret without any oversight constraints. Who needs transparency from the privately owned organization who controls our currency, interest rates, banking regulation and is most responsible for the third financial collapse in the last two decades? And why should we worry that Goldman alum Mnuchin was given a $500 billion slush fund to use as he wishes? I’m sure he’s going to use it to help the local restaurant owner down the block.

I’m outraged we’ve let this happen again. All they needed to do was crash the stock market by 32% in a few weeks, while having their propaganda machine media predicting millions of deaths, and scaring the nation into shuttering our entire economy. The oppressors once again have succeeded in convincing us they know best and are working for our best interests.

We’ve shirked responsibility for our own lives by believing the very same people who didn’t see the crisis coming, weren’t prepared, and have failed miserably to centrally control the situation. We’ve given them the power over our lives and we are being led towards the slaughterhouse. It was our choice. We let fear overcome reason and courage.

“Since mankind’s dawn, a handful of oppressors have accepted the responsibility over our lives that we should have accepted for ourselves. By doing so, they took our power. By doing nothing, we gave it away. We’ve seen where their way leads, through camps and wars, towards the slaughterhouse.” 

– Alan Moore, V for Vendetta

The egotism and hubris of the ruling class has no limits, as they quarantine themselves in one of their six mansions or on one of their yachts, eating caviar and drinking champagne, paying their lobbyists to ensure they get a big hunk of the $2.2 trillion stimulus pie, while the average Joe and Jane get a couple thousand bucks to pay one month’s rent and buy some ramen noodles to sustain themselves through the coming military lockdown.

Don’t look now but you’ve been screwed again. The Wall Street bankers are again able to borrow at 0%, while charging you 17% on your ever-increasing credit card balance. Why aren’t these scumbag bankers announcing a three-month moratorium on credit card and mortgage payments, with no interest accruing? Because their goal is to further enslave you in debt, while enriching themselves. They will run patriotic commercials, while sticking a red white and blue dildo up your ass.

In Part Two of this article I will examine the parallels between our current situation and the favorite anarchist/libertarian film V for Vendetta. I address both the disturbing aspects and the hopeful aspects of the film in relation to what the future holds.

*  *  *

The corrupt establishment will do anything to suppress sites like the Burning Platform from revealing the truth. The corporate media does this by demonetizing sites like mine by blackballing the site from advertising revenue. If you get value from this site, please keep it running with a donation.

Twitter has deleted two tweets from Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro on Sunday in which he challenged the need for social distancing and urged citizens to keep the country going.

In one tweet, Bolsonaro posted a video in which he mixed with supporters on the streets of Brasilia – which Twitter says contradicted public health information from official sources and could put people at greater risk of transmitting the Chinese coronavirus, according to Yahoo! News.

In one of the deleted videos, Bolsonaro tells a street vendor, “What I have been hearing from people is that they want to work.”

“What I have said from the beginning is that ‘we are going to be careful, the over-65s stay at home,‘” he said.

“We just can’t stand still, there is fear because if you don’t die of the disease, you starve,” the vendor is seen telling Bolsonaro, who responds: “You’re not going to die!“

In another video, the president calls for a “return to normality,” questioning quarantine measures imposed by governors and some mayors across the giant South American country as an effective containment measure against the virus.

“If it continues like this, with the amount of unemployment what we will have later is a very serious problem that will take years to be resolved,” he said of the isolation measures. –Yahoo! News

“Some people want me to shut up, follow the protocols,” said Bolsonaro. “How many times does the doctor not follow the protocol?”

“Let’s face the virus with reality. It is life, we must all die one day,” he added.

The Brazilian leader has often described COVID-19 as “a flu,” while advocating for the reopening of schools and shops – with a recommendation for those over the age of 60 self-isolate.

Diametrically opposed to Bolsonaro is Brazilian Health Minister Luiz Henrique Mandetta, who highlighted the importance of containment on Saturday.

Twitter has also deleted a tweet by Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani in which he quoted conservative influencer Charlie Kirk – who claimed that hydroxychloroquine “in at least three international tests was found 100% effective in treating the coronavirus.”

Twitter spox confirms to me that both @RudyGiuliani and @charliekirk11’s accounts were “temporarily locked for violating the Twitter Rules regarding COVID-19 misinformation.”

— Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy) March 28, 2020

 

Authored by Michael Snyder via The End of The American Dream blog,

All of a sudden, people all over the country are very afraid of travelers from New York, Louisiana and other COVID-19 “hotspots” across the nation.  In fact, as you will see below, some states are now trying to intercept travelers from other states and force them into quarantine.  Measures that would have been unthinkable just a few short weeks ago have now become a reality, and things are likely to get even crazier in the days ahead.  If this pandemic is causing this much fear already even though less than 3,000 Americans have died so far, what will the level of fear be if 30,000 or 300,000 Americans die?

Unfortunately, many experts are now warning that the death toll will eventually get very high in this country.  For example, on Sunday Dr. Anthony Fauci told CNN that he expects to see more than 100,000 deaths in the U.S. alone…

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top expert on infectious diseases, predicted Sunday that the United States will end up with “millions” of cases of coronavirus and up to 200,000 deaths by the time the pandemic ends, though he cautioned that any projection of mortality statistics could “easily” end up being wrong.

“Looking at what we’re seeing now, I would say between 100,000-200,000 [deaths],” Fauci said in an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

This virus spreads so easily from person to person, and once it gets loose in a city it can spread like wildfire.

Right now, New York City is being hit harder than anywhere else in the country.  At this point close to 700 members of the NYPD have tested positive for the virus, and the public transportation system is being flooded with calls from sick employees…

The MTA’s 24-hour hot line for workers with coronavirus symptoms is constantly crashing because it’s being flooded with calls — and higher-ups are bracing for a mass sickout, transit insiders told The Post.

Bus and subway employees already called out sick at three times the normal rate last week, prompting the MTA to dramatically reduce service.

Overall, the death toll in New York has reached nearly 1,000, and many believe that what we have seen so far is just the beginning.

Needless to say, hospitals are rapidly being overwhelmed, and basic medical supplies are being used up fast.

Fortunately, a lot of outside help is coming in.  On Sunday, I was greatly encouraged to learn that Samaritan’s Purse is actually putting up a field hospital in Central Park…

Dozens of people worked in a drizzle to erect the facility for an expected influx of COVID-19 patients at the epicenter of the US coronavirus pandemic.

Samaritan’s Purse, a US-based Christian global relief agency, is setting up the hospital on the park’s East Meadow lawn, where workers in face masks unloaded a white tarp and other equipment on the grass. The site is right across from one of the facilities in the Mount Sinai hospital group.

But as other states have watched the nightmare that is currently unfolding in New York, they have become greatly alarmed, and some have even taken measures to try to prevent New Yorkers from spreading the virus to their communities.

Beginning on Friday, authorities in Rhode Island started stopping vehicles “with New York plates”, and any New Yorkers that were discovered were forced into “14 days of self-quarantine”…

Rhode Island police began stopping cars with New York plates Friday. On Saturday, the National Guard will help them conduct house-to-house searches to find people who traveled from New York and demand 14 days of self-quarantine.

“Right now we have a pinpointed risk,” Governor Gina Raimondo said. “That risk is called New York City.”

When New York Governor Andrew Cuomo found out about this, he went ballistic, because it specifically discriminated against citizens of his state.

So Rhode Island Governor Gina Raimondo later expanded the directive to include anybody coming into Rhode Island from any other state…

Gov. Gina Raimondo instead has expanded the order to include ‘any person’ coming to Rhode Island from another state to ‘immediately self-quarantine for 14 days’.

The directive, signed late Saturday, does not apply to health workers or those working in public safety. It reads: ‘Any person coming to Rhode Island from another state for a non-work-related purpose must immediately self-quarantine for 14 days.’

Of course Rhode Island is basically the size of a postage stamp, and so not that many people are too worried about what they are doing.

But Florida is a much bigger deal.

Florida has already been forcing anyone flying in from New York to self-quarantine for 14 days, and on Friday Governor Ron DeSantis expanded that directive to include anyone traveling into the state from Louisiana…

New Orleans is experiencing a coronavirus surge of more than 1,000 infections linked to the Mardi Gras celebration in February, sending Louisiana’s total number of cases past 3,300 as of Saturday. DeSantis wants to intercept any Louisiana travelers from “seeding” the virus in Florida.

It’s about a three-hour drive from New Orleans to Pensacola, Florida, and panhandle officials had expressed concerns to him about travelers fleeing the Bayou State and carrying the virus into Florida.

In fact, a highway checkpoint has already been set up on Interstate 10 so that police can monitor who is coming into the state…

“Look, we’re either trying to fight this virus or we are not,” DeSantis said of his plan that includes a checkpoint on Interstate 10 at the Alabama line and National Guard members greeting travelers from the New York City area at airports.

In the days ahead, more states may start implementing such measures.

So if you are still not where you want to be to ride out this pandemic, you need to get there as quickly as possible.

We still don’t know how bad this crisis is going to become.  It may fizzle out with just a few hundred thousand deaths globally, or we may end up with a nightmare scenario in which millions die.

We just don’t know yet.

But those that are running things are starting to act like we are facing a worst case scenario, and that should deeply alarm us all.

For instance, I was quite surprised to learn that officials from U.S. Northern Command have isolated themselves inside the giant Cheyenne Mountain facility in Colorado…

‘To ensure that we can defend the homeland despite this pandemic, our command and control watch teams here in the headquarters split into multiple shifts and portions of our watch team began working from Cheyenne Mountain Air Force Station, creating a third team at an alternate location as well,’ Air Force General Terrence O’Shaughnessy, head of U.S. Northern Command and NORAD, said during a Facebook Live town hall with those under his command.

Perhaps such a move is warranted during a time of great crisis, but what really got my attention was the following statement that O’Shaughnessy made…

‘My primary concern was … are we going to have the space inside the mountain for everybody who wants to move in there, and I’m not at liberty to discuss who’s moving in there,’ O’Shaughnessy added.

Ummm, what?

Apparently so many people were clamoring to get inside Cheyenne Mountain Air Force Station that he was concerned that there wouldn’t be room for them all?

I don’t like the sound of that at all.

We live in very strange times, and they are about to get even stranger.

I hope that you are somewhere safe, and I hope that you are well stocked up for the long, dark months that are ahead of us.

One week after the Fed expanded its “bazooka” by launching a “nuclear bomb” in the words of Paul Tudor Jones , at fixed income capital markets which it has now effectively nationalized by monetizing or backstopping pretty much everything, some signs of thaw are starting to emerge in the all important commercial paper market, where the spread to 3M USD OIS is finally starting to tighten, coming in by 60bps overnight.

But while the move will be welcomed by companies in dire need of short-term funding, it is nowhere near enough to unfreeze the broader commercial paper market, with the spread still precipitously high even for those companies that have access to commercial paper, which is why most companies continue drawing down on revolvers.

As we reported over the weekend, according to JPMorgan calculations, aggregate corporate revolver drawdowns represent 77% of the total facilities, with JPM noting that the total amount of borrowing by companies is likely significantly greater than this, well above 80%, as it only reflects disclosed amounts by large companies, and there are likely undisclosed borrowings by middle market companies.

In nominal terms, this means that corporates that have tapped banks for funding has risen further to a record $208 billion on Thursday, up $15 billion from $193 billion on Wednesday and $112BN on Sunday. That’s right: nearly $100 billion in liquidity was drained from banks in the past week; is there any wonder the FTA/OIS has barely eased indicating continued tensions in the interbank funding market.

Yet the bigger problem remains: with banks already pressed for liquidity, they are suffering a modern-day “bank run”, where instead of depositors pulling their money, corporations are drawing down on revolvers at unprecedented levels, something we first described three weeks ago “Banking Crisis Imminent? Companies Scramble To Draw Down Revolvers.”

Of course, at the end of the day, liquidity is liquidity, and banks are starting to fear when and if this revolver run will ever end, and just how much liquidity they need to provision, especially since many of these companies will have to file for bankruptcy in the coming months, sticking banks with a pre-petition claim (albeit secured).

As a result, and as Bloomberg reports, the biggest U.S. banks have been quietly discouraging some of America’s safest borrowers from tapping existing credit lines amid record corporate drawdowns on lending facilities.

To banks, this tidal wave of revolver demands is a two-edged sword. On one hand it impacts their profit margins, on the other it jeopardizes their overall liquidity levels:

as Bloomberg notes, investment-grade revolvers, “especially those financed in the heyday of the bull market,” are a low margin business, and some even lose money. The justification is that they help cement relationships with clients who will in turn stick with the lenders for more expensive capital-markets or advisory needs. While this is fine under normal circumstances when the facilities are sporadically used, “with so many companies suddenly seeking cash anywhere they can get it, they’re now threatening to make a dent in banks’ bottom lines.“

The second issue is more nuances: while Bloomberg claims that the drawdown wave “is not an issue of liquidity for Wall Street” we disagree vehemently, and as proof of strained bank liqidity we merely highlight the fact that after $12 trillion in monetary and fiscal stimulus has been injected, it has failed to tighten the critical FRA/OIS spread which remains at crisis levels.

The good news is that at least some corporations – those who have the most alternatives – are willing to oblige bank requests, turning instead to new, pricier term loans or revolving credit lines rather than tapping existing ones. “McDonald’s  last week raised and drew a $1 billion short-term facility at a higher cost than an existing untapped revolver” Bloomberg notes, adding that while rationales will vary from borrower to borrower, analysts agree that for most, staying in the good graces of lenders amid a looming recession is important.

The bad news is that most companies remain locked out of other liquidity conduits – be they new credit facilities, or commercial paper – and are thus forced to keep drawing down on existing lines of credit, which puts bankers – especially relationship bankers – in a very tough spot.

“The banker is coming at it trying to manage two things — the relationship profitability and their portfolio of risks and assets,” said Howard Mason, head of financials research at Renaissance Macro Research. “Bankers have some cards to play because they can talk to their clients that have undrawn credit lines. The sense is that there’s a relationship involved so relationship pricing and good will applies.”

Meanwhile, as banks quietly scramble to raise liquidity of their own – because, again, liquidity is always and everywhere fungible – U.S. financial institutions have sold almost $50 billion of bonds over the past two weeks to bolster their coffers, ironically even as corporate bankers are advising companies not to hoard cash unless they urgently need it. Some are even telling certain clients to hold off on seeking new financing to avoid over-stressing a system already stretched to its limits operationally as bankers are inundated with requests while stuck at home due to the coronavirus pandemic.

“The banks are open but if everybody asks at the same time then it’s going to be difficult from a balance sheet perspective,” Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Arnold Kakuda said in an interview.

Kinda like the whole fractional reserve concept: banks have money in theory… as long as not all of their depositors demand to withdraw money at the same time. With revolvers, it more or less the same thing.

“The corporate banker doesn’t want everybody to take a hot shower at the same time in the house,” said Marc Zenner, a former co-head of corporate finance advisory at JPMorgan Chase & Co. “They want to use their capital where it’s most beneficial.”

Amusingly, even McDonald – right after it signed a new revolver – immediately tapped the full $1 billion as a “precautionary measure” to reinforce its cash position, the company said in a regulatory disclosure Thursday. It also priced $3.5 billion of bonds last week as part of its broader liquidity management strategy.

In short, it’s a liquidity free for all, and the bottom line is simple: those bigger companies that still have access to liquidity will survive; those that are cut off, will fail, giving the bigger companies even greater market share, and crushing the small and medium businesses across America.

As a result, the prevailing thinking across corporate America is is “it’s ‘better safe than sorry,” said Jesse Rosenthal, an analyst at CreditSights Inc. “They might believe with all their hearts that the bank has all the liquidity they need, but it’s just fiduciary duty, due diligence, and prudence in a totally unprecedented situation.” Ironically, we reported last week that a bankrupt energy company, EP Energy, listed a trolling risk factor in its annual report, in which the company mused that it may be challenged if one or more of its lender banks collapsed.

Meanwhile, confirming that this latest freakout is all about liquidity, bankers are now including provisions in new deals that ensure they’ll be among the first to be paid back when companies regain access to more conventional sources of financing, according to Bloomberg sources.

And for those insisting on drawing down revolvers now, Renaissance Macro’s Mason says banks will ultimately seek to recoup the costs down the line.

“The message to corporate clients is, ‘you can continue to do this, but we are looking at profitability on a relationship business, so if we don’t make our hurdles here we need to make them somewhere else,’” Mason said. Of course, those companies which have already drawn down on their revolvers and/or have anything to do with the energy sector… see you after you emerge from Chapter 11.