The
biggest bank in the western world has just come out and declared that the
global economy is already in a recession. According to
British banking giant HSBC, global trade is down 8.4 percent so far this year, and
global GDP expressed in U.S. dollars is down 3.4 percent. So those
that are waiting for the next worldwide economic recession to begin can stop
waiting. It is officially here. As you will see below,
money is fleeing emerging markets at a blistering pace, major global banks are
stuck with huge loans that will never be repaid, and it looks like a very
significant worldwide credit crunch has begun. Just a few days ago, I
explained that the IMF, the UN, the BIS And Citibank were all warning that a major economic
crisis could be imminent. They arent just making this stuff
up out of thin air, but most Americans still seem to believe that everything is
going to be just fine. The level of blind faith in the system that most
people are demonstrating right now is absolutely astounding. (Read More....)
Why has Barack Obama airdropped 50
tons of ammunition into areas that moderate rebels in Syria supposedly
control? This is essentially the equivalent of poking the Russians
directly in the eyes. Much of this ammunition will end up in the hands of
those that the Russians are attempting to bomb into oblivion, and so to Russia
it appears that we are attempting to make their job much harder. And of
course the truth is that there arent really any moderate rebels in Syria at all. Nearly all of the groups that
are fighting are made up primarily of radical jihadists and/or hired
mercenaries. Personally, I dont see anyone over there that you could call the good guys. At the end of the
day, the U.S. supports just about anyone that wants to get rid of the Assad
regime, and the Russians are working very hard to keep Assad in power.
Just like the civil war in Ukraine, the conflict in Syria is in great danger of
being transformed into a proxy war between the United States and Russia, and
many fear that these conflicts could eventually be setting the stage for World
War III. (Read More....)
Now
that a major global recession has begun, you would expect major retailers like Wal-Mart
to run into trouble as consumer spending dries up, and that is precisely what
is happening. On Wednesday, shares of Wal-Mart experienced their largest
single day decline in 27 years after an extremely disappointing earnings projection
was released. The stock was down about 10 percent, which represented the
biggest plunge since January 1988. Over 21 billion dollars in shareholder
wealth was wiped out on Wednesday, and this was just the continuation of a very
bad year for Wal-Mart stockholders. Overall, shares had already declined
by 22 percent so far in 2015 before we even got to Wednesday. Here is
more on this stunning turn of events from Bloomberg
(Read More....)
The
warnings are getting louder. Is anybody listening? For months, I have
been documenting on my website how the global financial system is
absolutely primed for a crisis, and now some of the most important financial
institutions in the entire world are warning about the exact same thing.
For example, this week I was stunned to see that the Telegraph had published an
article with the following ominous headline: $3
trillion corporate credit crunch looms as debtors face day of reckoning, says
IMF.
And actually what we are heading for would more accurately be described as a credit freeze or a credit panic, but a credit crunch will definitely work for
now. The IMF is warning that the dangerous over-leveraging that we have been
witnessing threatens to unleash a wave of
defaults all across
the globe
(Read More....)
Warren
Buffett once referred to derivatives as financial weapons of mass
destruction, and it was inevitable that they would begin to
wreak havoc on our financial system at some point. While things may seem
somewhat calm on Wall Street at the moment, the truth is that a great deal of
trouble is bubbling just under the surface. As you will see below, something
happened in mid-September that required an unprecedented 405 billion dollar
surge of Treasury collateral into the repo market. I know that sounds very
complicated, so I will try to break it down more simply for you. It
appears that some very large institutions have started to get into a
significant amount of trouble because of all the reckless betting that they
have been doing. This is something that I have warned would happen over and over again. In fact, I have
written about it so much that my regular readers are probably sick of hearing
about it. But this is what is going to cause the meltdown of our
financial system. (Read More....)
What
would you do if the power grid went down and never came back up? One of
these days, and it could be a lot sooner than most people think, we will all
wake up in a country without electricity. And considering how utterly
dependent we have become on technology, that is a very frightening scenario to
consider. How would Americans react if nothing worked? Just imagine
a world where everything electronic is dead. I am talking about lights,
cell phones, computers, televisions, ATMs, heating and cooling systems, credit
card readers, gas pumps, cash registers, refrigerators, hospital equipment
etc. When the power goes out for a few hours, that can be a major
inconvenience, but what if it went out all over the nation and it didnt come back on for months
or even years? This is one of the greatest potential threats that the
United States is facing, and yet very few people are even talking about it. (Read More....)
The worst stock market crashes in
U.S. history have come during the month of October. There is just
something about this time of the year that seems to be conducive to financial
panic. For example, on October 28th, 1929 the biggest stock market crash
in U.S. history up until that time helped usher in the Great Depression of the
1930s. And the largest percentage crash in the history of the Dow Jones
Industrial Average by a very wide margin happened on October 19th, 1987.
Overall, 9 of the 16 largest single day percentage crashes that we have ever
seen happened during
the month of October. Of course that does not mean that something
will happen this October, but after what we just witnessed in September
we should all be on alert. (Read More....)