Bloomberg is back and presents updated data on International Reserves held by Central Banks, excluding gold, as of Friday, January 8, 2016, after a hiatus on this information since December 11, 2015 (for reasons unexplained).

The data for Friday, January 8, 2016 are shocking, as expected: Total International Reserves held by Central Banks, excluding gold, expressed in US dollars, amount to $11.032 Trillion dollars as of that date.

The decrease in Reserves thus amounts to precisely $1 Trillion dollars, as of January 8, 2016. This gigantic fall, of 8.31% of the maximum amount of Reserves – $12.032 Trillion dollars recorded on August 1, 2014 – took place over the course of only 17 months, whereas the growth of Reserves to its maximum figure took some 70 years, roughly since the end of WW II.

The fall in International Reserves is a clear indicator of a world-wide economic slump, which will become a severe depression.

It would be much easier to stop the flow of water over Niagara Falls, than to halt the contraction in International Reserves.

World liquidation has set in. The Piper must be paid. Growth is gone. This will be story in this epic year 2016.

There is a One Trillion Dollar Question: What entity or entities have purchased – for cash – the $1 Trillion dollars worth of Government Bonds that the central banks of the world have sold off in the course of the past 17 months?

What discount on the value of the Bonds did the purchaser or purchasers of the Bonds apply? If there was no discount, why so?

$1 Trillion dollars’ worth of Government Bonds has disappeared from the books of the world’s central bankers, sold by them for cash. WHO DID THE BUYING? On what Balance Sheets do the acquired $1 Trillion dollars of Bonds now rest?

Are the parties to these gigantic transactions to remain unknown? And what happens to the world’s confidence in its financial system, when $1 Trillion dollars’ worth of Bonds, and counting, just magically turn into cash?