The lead consensus at JP Morgan holds that the ECB will cut its deposit rate to -0.5% next month and then in June to -0.7%. European banks hold one trillion euros in non-performing loans, and Greece is once again a default threat. This is an open invitation for bank runs.

A gauge of deposit outflows are the Target-2 balances from the ECB. The following chart shows that Spanish and Italian banks have remained tapped into this scheme since the 2012 crisis. January’s numbers (when bank indexes fell out of bed) will be very revealing, if this surges.

Many creditors of Italian and Spanish banks were small savers chasing yield that were talked into buying subordinated bank bonds by their banksters.

Pari passou was used in the previous Greek debt restructuring, which means the Troika was spared the haircuts. That won’t be possible in the next round. If the Troika eats the loss, the tab will be sent to the German people long before any bankster sees it.

However, under the entrenched system of usury practiced by the Cabalists, debt forgiveness is a sin. This is why bail-ins and asset seizure policies are firmly in place. Ignore the 800-pound gorilla at your peril. Jewish historian Leon Poliakov provides the particulars:

“Without money, Jewry was inevitably doomed to extinction. Thus, the rabbis henceforth viewed financial oppressions, for example, the moratorium on repayment of debts to Jews … as on a par with massacres and expulsions, seeing in them a divine curse, a merited punishment from on high.” 

And it is not just banks that suffer from NIRP. German life insurers — an industry with more than 90 billion euros of annual premium income to pay out and close to $1 trillion in assets under management — are facing an existential crisis.

Although most attention has been focused on European and Chinese banks, the U.S. too-pig-to-fails look very dicey as well.