Nomi Prins: Collusion! How Central Bankers Rigged the World

This article was originally published by Adam Taggart at PeakProsperity.com

Nomi Prins, Wall Street veteran turned financial industry reformist returns to the podcast this week to explain the findings within her new book Collusion: How Central Bankers Rigged The World.

Nomi has put together a timeline of exactly when and how the central banks have plundered the wealth of the masses since 2008, either directly or indirectly through the loss of purchasing power of the currencies they control:

The relationship between the Central Banks, the major ones — the Fed, Europe Central Bank, Bank of Japan — all the larger Central Banks in the world and their private banks was effectively, and is effectively, kept secret. The relationships they have with each other, a lot of it is secret; so you have to really dig in to it to find out what’s really going on.

What I did was dig into the documents that I could find and create a timeline. That’s why each chapter in each region starts in 2008. It works with Mexico, Brazil, Japan, China and Europe and juxtaposes that with what the Fed was doing at that time to see how that collusive behavior wound up happening. The secret-ness is in the relationships of the banks, where that money that was fabricated by these institutions actually went, and when — or if — it’s coming back.

The ‘cheat and deceiving’ part of that definition is also apparent: people have been cheated out of their futures from the standpoint of the central banks’ strategies. So when the Feds creates cheap money, companies and banks and countries borrow more from the future because it is so cheap and easy. This deceives many people into thinking that the economy is somehow therefore being helped by this strategy, which is in acutality an emergency strategy. It’s an emergency that’s gone on now for ten years.

Yes there have been some tweaks here and there — interest rates have gone up a little bit in the United States — but all in all, rates are still pretty much 0% on average globally and quantitative easing still exists. The books of the major Central Banks are as big as they were at their heights through this last ten-year period…and they’re still growing. Just look at Europe and Japan.

Look at the stock market. The stock market is really high right now in a lot of different places. Why is it so high? Because a lot of this money went into debt which was borrowed to buy corporate stock, to buy the stock of banks, or to buy the banks themselves. That’s a major form of manipulation and deception as well.

Why is JP Morgan’s stock going up? Is it just because JP Morgan is such a great bank and so helping? Well, no. It’s because it received a lot of help from the Federal Reserve. It funneled that help into its own shares, and it has continued to pay settlements and be fined on egregious activity against its own clients, which are many because it’s the largest bank in the United States among the largest banks in the world.

There are multiple points of cheating and deception that have been enabled or that occur because of Central Banks policies. Some of those policies are secret; but a lot of them are public. You just have to piece the documents and the timelines together.

Click the play button below to listen to Chris’ interview with Nomi Prins (41m:38s).

Stagflationary Crisis: Understanding The Cause Of America’s Ongoing Collapse

This report was originally published by Brandon Smith at Alt-Market.com

It is at times frustrating, but also interesting, to witness the progression of the mainstream’s awareness of economic crisis within the U.S. over the years. As an alternative economist, I have had the “privilege” of perching outside the financial narrative and observing our economy from a less biased position, and I have discovered a few things.

First, the mainstream economic media is approximately two to three years behind average alternative economists. At least, they don’t seem to acknowledge reality within our time frame. This may be deliberate (my suspicion) because the general public is not meant to know the truth until it is too late for them to react in a practical way to solve the problem. For example, it is a rather strange experience for me to see the term “stagflation” suddenly becoming a major buzzword in the MSM. It is almost everywhere in the past week ever since the last Federal Reserve meeting in which the central bank mentioned higher inflation pressures and removed references in its monthly statement to a “growing economy.”

For those unfamiliar with what stagflation is, it is essentially the loss of economic growth in numerous sectors coupled with a marked spike in consumer and manufacturing costs. In other words, prices keep going up while employment growth, wages, production, etc. decline.

I have been warning about a stagflationary crisis as the ultimate result of central bank bailouts and QE for many years. In 2011, I published an article titled ‘The Debt Deal Con: Is It Fooling Anyone?’ in which I predicted that the Fed would resort to a third round of quantitative easing (they did). This prediction was based on the fact that the previous two QE events had not resulted in the kind of results the central bankers were obviously looking for. At that time, the stock market remained a dubious mess on the verge of a renewed crash, the U.S. debt rating was about to be downgraded by S&P, true employment growth was dismal, etc. The Fed needed something spectacular to keep the system propped up, at least until they were ready to trigger the next stage of the collapse.

In that same article I also discussed the inevitable end result of this stimulus bonanza:  Stagflation.

QE3 was a dramatic con, along with Operation Twist. The Fed got exactly what it wanted — an unprecedented bull market rally in stocks and temporary stability in bond markets. As stocks jumped higher and higher despite all negative fundamental data, the mainstream simply regurgitated the fool’s narrative that a “recovery” was upon us. But now things are changing and no illusion lasts forever.

The second observation I have made is that central banking elites and their cronies tend to give warnings on great economic shifts, but only about a year before they occur. They do this for a few reasons. One, because they are the people that engineer these crisis events in the first place and it’s not very hard to predict a calamity you helped create. Two, because it makes them appear prophetic when they are not, while at the same time giving the public as little time as possible to prepare. And three, because it gives them plausible deniability when the crisis actually happens, because they can claim they “tried to warn us”, though unfortunately it was too late.

The Bank For International Settlements warned of the derivatives and credit crash in 2007, about a year before the disaster struck. In 2017, former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan warned of inevitable “stagflation not seen since the 1970s.” In later comments, he and others attributed this potential crisis to the policies of Donald Trump.

It is important to note that stagflation is entirely the fault of central bankers and not the presidency, though the White House has indeed aided the Fed in its efforts regardless of who sits in the Oval Office.

Years ago there was a rather idiotic battle between financial analysts over what the end result of the Fed’s massive stimulus measures would be. One side argued that deflation would be the outcome and that no amount of Fed printing would overtake the vast black hole of debt conjured by the derivatives implosion. The other side argued that the Fed would continue to print perpetually, resorting to QE4 or possibly “QE infinity” and negative interest rates as a means to stave off a market crash for decades (like Japan) while at the same time initiating a Weimar-style inflationary bonanza.

Both sides were wrong because they refused to acknowledge the third option — stagflation.

The Fed clearly found a way to direct inflationary pressures into certain parts of the economy while allowing deflationary pressures to weigh down other parts of the economy. They also are NOT sticking to their previous strategy of holding interest rates down while pumping up markets with talk of further QE.

Deflationary proponents used to sarcastically argue that if people really believed that inflation would be the consequence of Fed activities then they should jump into the housing market because they would make a mint on price increases. Well, this is exactly what has happened. Home prices have continued to surge despite all fundamentals, including dismal home buyer stats which hit an all time low in 2016 and have barely recovered since.

I use home prices as a prime example of stagflation because the housing market constitutes around 15 percent to 18 percent of total GDP in the U.S. Since items like food and fuel are not counted in the calculation of the CPI index, housing should be the next consideration. Signs of stagflation in housing are a sure indicator of stagflation in the rest of the economy.

The manner in which housing is calculated in the CPI and GDP is a bit odd, of course. Housing is not included in these stats in terms of home purchases annually. In fact, home purchases and improvements are treated by the Bureau of Labor Statistics as an “investment” and not as a consumer purchase, which means they are not considered a measure of inflation. However, home values in terms of their “rental cost and change in cost” are counted in CPI.

As we all know, rent prices across the country have been skyrocketing in the past few years along with home prices, while at the same time home buyers have dwindled and the millennial generation is staying at home with mom and dad rather than paying out monthly for homes and apartments. That is to say, in a normal economic environment fewer buyers should result in lower prices, but this is not what has happened. The question is, how has the Federal Reserve and QE contributed to this example of stagflation?

First, the Fed’s artificial support for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac after the derivatives debacle allowed for the continued propping up of the housing market when bad debt should have been allowed to cycle out of the system and house prices should have been allowed to fall.

Second, the Fed’s bailout funding of Fannie Mae directly benefited companies like Blackstone, which has become a partner with Fannie Mae and one of the largest buyers of homes in the country. Blackstone has not purchased tens of thousands of homes for resale, but for conversion into rentals. Blackstone’s vast purchases of single family homes has artificially boosted home values across the nation and given the false impression of a housing recovery that does not really exist.

Third, a very interesting discovery; while the central bank under Jerome Powell has become more and more aggressive in its balance sheet reductions, a move which has directly contributed to the recent decline in stock markets, there is one asset class that the Fed has been ADDING to its balance sheet — Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS).  These purchases tend to take place directly after older MBS have been allowed to roll over, meaning, the Fed is maintaining a relatively steady number of MBS while it is dumping other assets.

MBS represent around 40 percent of the Fed’s total balance sheet, and the Fed’s continued fiat support of the MBS market helps explain why home prices refuse to fall despite negative fundamentals. It is also interesting to me that the Fed has chosen to dump certain assets that appear to be causing a downward reaction in stock markets and other sectors while maintaining assets that keep housing prices high. It’s almost as if the Fed wants stagflation…

Finally, while the Fed’s interest rate hikes do not traditionally have a direct correlation to home mortgage rates, there is an indirect correlation. Fears of inflation sometimes ironically create inflation, and as the fed raises interest rates, mortgage rates tend to track. In 2018 mortgage rates have spiked, climbing 48 basis points since the beginning of the year.

This contributes to higher home prices as well a perceived rental values according to the CPI.

The source of almost every instability within our economy can be tracked straight back to the Federal Reserve and the “too-big-to-fail” corporations they bailed out after the credit crash. The current stagflationary development is no different. Stagflation will ultimately result in extreme price increases on necessary goods and services far beyond what we have already seen while the public’s ability to keep up with those prices will falter.

The fact that this issue is FINALLY hitting the mainstream should be concerning to everyone. For when a crisis development is discussed in the mainstream, it means we are on the verge of that crisis reaching its nexus. In June the Fed will raise interest rates yet again despite failing fundamentals. The Fed will continue to cite inflationary pressures, and the Fed will continue to cut its balance sheet. There is no room for delusion on this anymore. The Fed will not stop on its current path. In the meantime, central banks will continue to blame external forces such as trade wars and Trump era policies for stagflation while ignoring the trillions in fiat they have expertly poisoned our financial system with.

All bubbles collapse, but not all bubbles collapse in the exact same way. I believe the Fed has created a perfect storm of combined deflationary and inflationary factors; an economic bomb to surpass all economic bombs.

******

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You can contact Brandon Smith at: brandon@alt-market.com

After 8 long years of ultra-loose monetary policy from the Federal Reserve, it’s no secret that inflation is primed to soar. If your IRA or 401(k) is exposed to this threat, it’s critical to act now! That’s why thousands of Americans are moving their retirement into a Gold IRA. Learn how you can too with a free info kit on gold from Birch Gold Group. It reveals the little-known IRS Tax Law to move your IRA or 401(k) into gold. Click here to get your free Info Kit on Gold.

Analyst: Skyrocketing Debt Cannot Be Supported By Money Printing Forever

Something is eventually going to have to give.  The United State’s debt which has shot up over $21 trillion dollars cannot be sustained by printing money forever, says a financial analyst.

According to TeleTradeBel analyst Mikhail Grachev, the US debt, supported by the printing of dollars could be coming to an end. “From 2009 to 2014. The Fed was actively buying Treasuries as part of a quantitative easing policy (QE). After the QE was scrapped, the Fed continued to purchase the securities, only in smaller quantities. American legal entities and individuals have always been the third major buyer of debt. The growth of debt and the volume of issuance of securities was possible due to the continuous flow of liquidity from the Fed at zero interest rate. It has also supported the unrestrained growth of the American stock market,” Grachev told RT.

But the tides have now turned and the Federal Reserve has begun hiking interest rates citing a “strong” market. In fact,  interest rates are expected to increase to 3.75 percent by 2020, the analyst noted. The investors’ interest in treasuries began to decline and the yield automatically went up. This week, 10-year securities showed a yield of 3.018 percent. “This factor led to nervousness in the markets and raised a lot of questions,” Grachev says.

As other analysts have pointed out, rising interest rates and a $21 trillion debt present a problem. With the rising interest rate and Treasuries’ yields, the question of servicing the mounting debt could become a problem for the US economy, the analyst warns. “Although the economy of the US is great, even they don’t always have the extra money,” said Grachev. When the yields on the 10-Year US Treasury Note rise, it indicates that the demand for the American securities falls, Grachev explains.

“If the yield continues to grow, it can lead to a massive exodus of capital from Treasuries, and even result in the collapse of the world dollar financial system,” Grachev said. The analyst added that a dollar collapse seems far-fetched at the moment since the global economy is very dependent on the greenback. According to the expert, it is more likely that the dollar bubble will continue growing for the while, but a dollar collapse is all but imminent.

Investment Analyst: A HUGE Stock Market Crash Is Coming

Investment analyst and stock market guru Mark Mobius has been in the business a long time.  At 81-years-old, the market analyst says that a huge stock market correction is coming and it’s going to cause a crash and be painful for everyone.

According to Mobius, the former executive chairman at Templeton Emerging Markets, all the indicators now point to a great fall in the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones. “The consumer confidence is at an all-time high in the US, and it’s not a good sign,” he said. “The market looks to me to be waiting for a trigger that will cause it to tumble.”

Mobius continued saying, “I can see a 30 percent drop.” And he isn’t the only one warning of a massive crash.  Jim Roger’s latest prediction was that we were going to see “biggest crash in our lifetimes,” and possibly, very soon. One of the world’s richest men, Bill Gates, also said that a 2008-like financial crisis was a certainty.  Peter Schiff has also warned the next crash will be worse than the Great Depression.

“The bad news is, we are going to live through another Great Depression and it’s going to be very different. This will be in many ways, much much worse, than what people had to endure during the Great Depression,” Schiff says. “This is going to be a dollar crisis.” – Peter Schiff

And movement away from the United States dollar has already begun and Schiff has warned that those who don’t get out of the dollar will be wiped out.

Mobius, who is also a 40-year veteran investor and predicted the start of the bull market in 2009, warns that any drop could be strengthened by the increasing use of exchange-traded funds (ETFs), which account for nearly half of all trading in US stocks. The ETFs could cause further declines once markets fall. “You have computers and algorithms working 24/7 and that would basically create a snowball effect. There is no safety valve to prevent further falls, and that fall would escalate very quickly,” Mobius told the media. “ETFs represent so much of the market that they would make matters worse once markets start to tumble.”

But Mobius did say he’s not certain what the trigger will be that will cause the US stock market to crash horrifically. “You can’t predict what that event might be – perhaps a natural disaster or war with North Korea,” he said.

 

Syrian Conflict Is A Distraction From A Secret War

This report was originally published by Brandon Smith at Alt-Market.com

Back in March 2010 I published an article titled ‘Will Globalists Trigger Yet Another World War?’ under the pen name Giordano Bruno describing what I felt would be the most effective triggers for a new global conflict. In that article I pointed to Syria as the primary powder keg, followed in close second by Iran and Yemen. This was written well before the Syrian civil war was engineered by establishment interests. I focused on potential false flags that could be used as a rationale by the U.S. or Israel to invade the region, thereby giving Russia and China reason to retaliate, for the most part economically. Ultimately, this scenario would play out perfectly as a cover for the deliberate collapse of the U.S. dollar as the world reserve currency.

In August 2012 I reiterated my concerns in an article titled Syria And Iran Dominoes Lead To World War, right after the Syrian civil war began to gain momentum.

Needless to say, I have not changed my general thesis since those days; however, I would like to touch upon certain factors now that the dangers I examined in those articles are mostly coming to pass in 2018.

First, no hard evidence has been produced by western intelligence agencies to support the claim that Bashar Al Assad used chemical weapons against his own people. None. Therefore, there is no basis for the latest missile attacks on the regime. This same exact false flag tactic was attempted under the Obama administration to draw the U.S. people into open war in Syria, and it failed. Now the chemical weapon card is being played again, this time with a “conservative” president. The establishment must be hoping that Republicans will find excitement in becoming the war party so long after the Bush years.

As I queried the last time a chemical false flag was attempted, what exactly does Assad have to gain by initiating a chemical attack against innocent civilians when he has the tactical momentum and upper hand in the civil war?  The answer is nothing. The only people that have anything to gain by asserting such an attack, either real or fabricated, are people seeking to create chaos for their own benefit.

The insinuation of neocon warmonger John Bolton into the Trump cabinet suggests that the neocons are very much back in charge and that ongoing war is guaranteed. At this late stage in the game, it is unlikely that our government or any other government involved in the Syrian theater even cares to explain its actions. When establishment criminals no longer care if their criminality is transparent to the public, THEN it is time for a large scale societal collapse.

Second, each successive Trump involved theater, from the trade tariffs to international war tensions, has become progressively more dramatic, and I believe this is meant to hide the effects of the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet cuts and interest rate hikes. The real and secret war being waged is not against Syria or Syria’s allies, but against the American people and our economic stability.

In January of this year, I warned that central banks were preparing to enter into an accelerating process to deflate the massive market bubbles they created to prop up our fiscal system over the past several years. That process is indeed continuing, and each successive rate hike and balance sheet cut will act in a cumulative fashion. Meaning, central bankers are treating the global economy like an oversized Jenga tower, pulling blocks here and there until the system topples completely from lack of stability.

This latest event in Syria is yet another grand gesture of illusion, designed to provide cover for the banking cabal as they pull the plug on financial life support. It also is timed rather conveniently for the Fed’s next policy meeting on May 1-2. The meeting is likely to include yet another interest rate hike as well as a large reduction in the balance sheet, resulting in another sizable plunge in stocks. All negative moves in our manipulated markets will now be blamed on Trump administration activities as well as blamed on trade retaliations by eastern nations. The mainstream media will no longer discuss the reality that central banks are the true cause behind a systemic breakdown.

Third, the current pattern of events suggest there will be a joint economic retaliation by Russia and China. China has publicly admonished the U.S. government for its strike in Syria, and this is merely added to the increasing tensions over trade tariffs by Trump. Again, this is a perfect opportunity to undermine the U.S. economy, primarily through China and Russia initiating a dump of the dollar as the world reserve currency.

The dump of the dollar has already begun in a semi-covert fashion. China’s currency has been inducted into the IMF’s Special Drawing Rights basket system, and China has also launched the first international oil exchange that does not use the dollar as the petro-currency. What many people are ignoring is the fact that the shift away from the dollar is being championed and helped along by the globalists at the IMF itself.

An impending change in the global monetary framework is often referred to as the great “global economic reset” by IMF members like Christine Lagarde. This change will be facilitated by central banks as they sabotage their respective national economies through the creation and destruction of market bubbles. Ultimately, it will not be the Chinese Yuan that replaces the dollar as world reserve currency, but the SDR basket system, controlled by the IMF.

The question of how this can be done by the globalists without an unprecedented liquidity crisis often comes up. I’m not so sure they care if there is a liquidity crisis, at least for a short time. Yes, the U.S. dollar has some of the most liquid markets in the world, but it is wrong to assume the globalists will not sacrifice those markets in order to force the public into accepting one world centralization of monetary administration (the biggest and most important step in establishing global government).

People who argue that the dollar will never be demolished by the globalists cling to the false notion that there is no liquidity replacement for the dollar. In reality, there is a replacement — cyrptocurrencies and blockchain technology.

The IMF has recently applauded blockchain systems and crypto as a potential rejuvenating force in international money transactions. Far from being opposed to cryptocurrencies, global elitists have been piling into them with praise and with investment dollars.

The global economic reset is not about East versus West. It is not about trade wars and nationalism. No, the global reset is about banker centralization of assets and consolidation of power. Beyond that, it is about the public ACCEPTING the reset as necessary and “good” for society. Globalists want us to beg for their rule. When one understands this simple truth, all the current events and disasters of our era begin to make sense. Crisis is the quickest path to complacency and tyranny.

The Syrian quagmire is a path to engineered and guided calamity. Its effects will continue to leach into the economic world as an international excuse for a trade war tit-for-tat. Syria is a smoke and mirrors game.

The true war, a secret war, is being fought between liberty champions and lying globalists. For now it remains a cold war, a battle of principles and facts versus disinformation and fear. One day this war will become a hot one. Until that time, distractions will assail the public like a hailstorm. My hope is that we can educate enough people to see through the fog of this hidden war; enough people to come out the other side and change things for the better.

******

If you would like to support the publishing of articles like the one you have just read, visit our donations page here. We greatly appreciate your patronage.

You can contact Brandon Smith at: brandon@alt-market.com

After 8 long years of ultra-loose monetary policy from the Federal Reserve, it’s no secret that inflation is primed to soar. If your IRA or 401(k) is exposed to this threat, it’s critical to act now! That’s why thousands of Americans are moving their retirement into a Gold IRA. Learn how you can too with a free info kit on gold from Birch Gold Group. It reveals the little-known IRS Tax Law to move your IRA or 401(k) into gold. Click here to get your free Info Kit on Gold.

Doug Duncan: Even US Government Economists Predict Trouble Ahead

This report was originally published by Adam Taggart at PeakProsperity.com

Doug Duncan is not your average beltway economist.

The chief economist for Fannie Mae is surprisingly outspoken about the troublesome outlook for the US economy. He’s worried about the rising cost of debt service as outstanding credit continues to mount at the same time interest rates are starting to ratchet higher, too.

He predicts the US will enter recession within a year, concurrent with a topping out of America’s real estate market. It wouldn’t surprise him to see the stock market falter, too, as central banks around the world begin a coordinated tightening of monetary policy and — similar to the thoughts recently expressed within our podcast with Axel Merk — Doug expects Jerome Powell to be much more reluctant to intervene in attempt to support asset prices. Having met personally with Powell, Doug thinks the Fed is now happy to see some of the air come out of the Everything Bubble (just not too much and not too fast) — a market change from past Fed administrations:

Our forecast definitely sees slowing economic activity, particularly in the second half of ’19. Part of it has to do with the length of the expansion. Just because an expansion is long doesn’t mean it’s going to end; but they all have eventually ended, and this one is getting pretty old. I think if it’s not the second longest, it’s getting to be the second longest that we’ve ever had shortly.

The tax bill was viewed differently by different parties, but the capital markets initially took that — plus the $300 billion agreement to get past the expiration of government funding plus the budget agreement — they took all those things as inflationary. The tax bill itself has a lot of temporary provisions – some of them don’t expire for up to seven years – but some start expiring as soon as three years out. Like, on occasions, take actions today which they see having benefits up until that time of the expiration of those terms, plus the spending component – the $300 billion – also will likely take place in the next four quarters. That suggests that the second half of ’19 we may well see the impulse from those things starting to fade. And that will be happening at the same time as the Fed, if it does what it says its going to do, will be continuing its tightening(…)

So,what keeps me up at night? Well, I don’t like the idea that we have a debt to GDP ratio of 100 percent. I don’t think we’re Japan because we have a more entrepreneurial economy, not a mercantilist economy, but that doesn’t mean that debt doesn’t reduce your flexibility. It definitely reduces your flexibility, so it raises risks from that perspective.

The trade negotiations, obviously, are of a concern. Milton Freeman said a good free trade agreement can be written on one page. NAFTA was two thousand pages. It would be silly to suggest Trump doesn’t have a point that there’s not something in that two thousand pages that didn’t work against American interests. On the other hand, if you’re going to throw $150 billion of tariffs at the second largest economy in the world, you should expect a reaction. Those who read the history books and the Smoot Hawley tariffs and the Depression and have some understanding of the relationship between the two of those have to be a bit nervous. The Fed, I’m sure, is looking at that.

And the domestic economy, the thing that probably troubles me more than anything else is the decline in new business formation. It’s been underway for thirty years. I’ve got staff that are working just trying to understand that. There’s a couple reasons why I worry about that. I just make a comment about ours being an entrepreneurial economy which means it is ‘dynamic’ – people don’t care if the average income is higher than theirs if theirs is the median. If they expect that there’s an opportunity for them to grow and gain one of those high incomes, then they’re OK. But if they lose that hope, that leads us to some different possible political economy outcomes which I don’t view as particularly optimal.

But from a self-interested perspective — remember that we’re in the housing and new business formation space – it used to be the case that a when small business would start, it couldn’t afford to pay the same wage rate as a large business did because it didn’t have the scale or the output or that kind of thing. But what the worker who got the lower wage job also got was training on how to get to work on time, how to work a full day. They would pick up some skills and some behaviors that worked broadly in the employment market. Over time they would move up, and most of them would eventually get to the middle class and buy a house. That’s breaking down.

If that engine of growth for people has been cut off, then we could be facing a permanent underclass which carries a whole different set of connotations for a society which, to me, is pretty troubling.

Click the play button below to listen to Chris’ interview with Doug Duncan (45m:19s).

To read the transcript of this podcast, please click here.

Wolf Richter: The Era Of The Fed “Put” Is Over

This article was originally published by Adam Taggart at Peak Prosperity

To all those investors expecting the Fed to step in to backstop the recent weakness seen in the stock market, Wolf Richter warns: The cavalry isn’t coming.

After years of force-feeding too much liquidity into world markets, the central banking cartel is now aware of the Franken-markets it has created. And now with a new head at the US Federal Reserve, and soon at the ECB, central bankers have shifted their priority from supporting asset prices to now actively engineering lower prices.

They just don’t want prices to drop too far too fast.

Of course, the big question is: how much control do they really have? The situation may very quickly get out of their hands.

But the big takeaway is to expect lower prices across the board for nearly every “risk on” asset: stocks (including and especially the FANGS), corporate bonds and real estate. The Fed is working to reduce investor exuberance — and as many bloodied contrarian investors will warn you — Don’t fight the Fed:

Now we’re in an environment where we have an Everything Bubble, and even though there’s still a few central bankers out there that say that they can’t see the bubble, others have now acknowledged it. Of course they don’t call it a “bubble”; they say that prices are “elevated”. So they’re seeing this. In my opinion, a lot of the responses from the Fed are not really about inflation; they’re really about trying to avoid the asset bubble from getting any bigger. They’re trying to avoid a deflation of that asset bubble that could be very messy for the financial system.

Which is why they’re now tightening. Even though inflation by their measure is still relatively low and below target. And so they’re really not targeting inflation; I think they’re targeting asset prices. They’re trying to put a stop to the Everything Bubble out of fear that it might bring the financial system down again if this goes any further.

There’s debt behind this asset bubble, and this leverage is what’s risky. So I think the Fed is clearly, this time, on the side of targeting assets bubbles. Investors are asking if the stock market drops, if the Dow drops a thousand or two thousand or five thousand points, is the Fed going to step in and put a stop to it? And my gut feeling is, no, they won’t. They will let this run unless credit freezes up. They’re trying to bring these asset prices down somewhat. I think that’s the environment we’re in. We have bubbles everywhere, and now we have Central Banks trying to somehow save the system with minimum damage.

Of course we only have the central banks to blame for this situation. They wanted every investor to go way out on the risk branch, and pension funds have done that. And now, the price to be paid for that will be tremendous.  Most of these insolvent pension funds are state and municipal funds, so taxpayers may be at least partially responsible for picking that up.

This same will probably be true with corporate pension funds. We are seing companies that are going bankrupt, such as Remington, you know, they’re guaranteed to some extent by the Federal government and that, too, in the end, is probably going to require that the taxpayer will have to step in.

And as for the pain that rising interest rates will create, this is just the beginning. This has just started. After almost a decade of 0% interest rate policy we don’t know anymore what it’s like to look at many years of rising interest rates. Money will get a lot more expensive for a lot of companies. And those that have to roll over their debt, even if they’re not on LIBOR, if they have fixed rate debt they’ll have to roll that over eventually. And when they roll that over, they go from, you know, from a 4% percent coupon to maybe a 6% percent, 7% percent or 8% percent coupon.

As for housing, I think what we’ll see is not a dramatic selloff of double digit percentages that we had last time. I think we’ll see a long, drawn-out, much more difficult process. At first, it won’t even look like a sellout. I think on housing on a national basis, housing will continue to look strong even though the selloff will start in particular cities. You will have some cities that are turning around, but overall, nationwide the numbers are still stable. And so the Fed won’t even be worried about it because they’re looking at the nationwide numbers, and they’re saying, “Oh, it’s still okay, it’s just declining a little bit” or it’s “plateauing” whereas house pricing may be coming down pretty sharply in some of the most bubbly cities.

Click here to read the video transcript

Peter Schiff: We Are In A Bear Market, All News Is Bad News

After rallying on Friday, stocks tanked on Monday, dropping over 450 points. In fact, it was the worst first day of the second quarter since the Great Depression.

Stocks dove Wednesday as well on the heels of China’s announcement that they will intensify the trade war with more tariffs, according to most analysts.  But Peter Schiff, the financial guru who accurately predicted the 2008 recession has a different take.

According to Schiff’s blog, Schiff Gold, most analysts blamed the plunge on the escalating trade war, but Peter Schiff sees it quite a bit differently. He said it was just another bad day in a bear market. In fact, he said the market could have rallied because the Chinese response wasn’t as bad as it could have been. But when you’re in a bear market, all news is bad news.

Schiff says that the media’s talking heads are simply using the tariffs as an excuse. The real truth is that most people are in a selling mood. “Stocks are expensive. The bull market is over. It’s now a bear market. People want to get out. People are allocating out. Growth is slowing whether people want to acknowledge it or not,” said Schiff.

The media pundits are optimistic too; just like they were before the 2008 recession, said Schiff. “That’s what’s going on now. Nobody thinks there’s a problem. Everybody is optimistic. Everybody is bullish. So, when you see these classic signs that something is going wrong, you just ignore it.”

The bottom line is Schiff thinks the economy is going to tank (although he isn’t sure how soon that will occur) and the stock market is going to continue its bear run. But the Fed is not going to be able to come to the rescue this time around because of inflation. If it does try to launch more QE to bail out the stock market, it will completely tank the dollar.

When we do all that, the dollar is going to implode because everybody is going to know that the experiment failed. Everybody is going to know there is no way out of this box. There is no normalization of rates that is ever going to happen. Their balance sheet is never going to shrink. The balance sheet is going to grow permanently, which means this banana republic debt monetization. They can no longer pretend that they’re not doing the same things as South American banana republics. It’s a pure ‘we just print money to finance government spending,’ which is going to explode.

The national debt is an often overlooked aspect of the economy, but in truth, it will play a big role in an economic collapse and Schiff is sounding the alarms.

Bad News For The Economy: Some Have Stopped Paying Loans On Mobile Homes

Some people in the United States have stopped paying their loans on mobile homes. This is a bad sign for the economy as many no longer can afford the increase in interest rates.

According to a report by Yahoo Finance, the mobile home market is showing the first signs of stress.  The delinquency rate on mobile home loans has increased by 200 basis points, or 2 percentage points, over the past year, according to research cited by UBS. The 30-day-plus delinquency level is now about 5%, the highest level since 2005.

The increase in the number of struggling mobile-home borrowers suggests that a large chunk of these people haven’t benefitted from the economic growth of the past few years, despite the low unemployment level. For those living paycheck to paycheck, even the slightest increase in interest rates could force them to decide whether to eat or pay their loan on their home.

“We interpret this data to mean that these individuals have not largely benefitted from these macro-dynamics, and may also be disproportionately exposed to industries that have experienced compression — rather than expansion — in the current economic conditions, such as retail or some areas of energy extraction,” UBS said.

Although this is a warning sign for the economy, conventional single-family residential loan delinquencies haven’t seen a similar uptick. Instead, they are continuing their steady downward path through the post-recession recovery.  But many analysists would argue there was never actually a recovery. In 2016, Peter Schiff warned that we were in a false recovery: one that’s worse than a legitimate recession. 

“The real choice is not between recession now or recession later. It’s between a massive recession now, or an even more devastating one later … Now is the time to bite the bullet, endure the pain, and allow the wound to actually heal,” said Schiff, who accurately predicted the 2008 recession and says the recovery isn’t a real one.

Since 2009, all of the standard metrics for indicating a recovery have shown sub-par results. The only growth has occurred in asset prices. However, higher prices in stocks and bonds haven’t occurred because of upward pressure from a free market, but have been artificially inflated by easy borrowing and risky speculation. Consequently, the “recovery” we’re supposedly experiencing is as artificial as asset prices themselves. The next bubble that will have to burst is the Fed’s own fantasy it’s been selling investors. –Schiff Gold

The truth is, the US economy is stuck; raising rates will send the US into a recession, but keeping them the same will make the eventual pain of an economic crash much worse. “I agree with those who believe that rate hikes now will bring on a recession,” Peter Schiff stated in an article. “But I disagree that we should keep rates where they are … despite the short term pain that will surely follow, we need to raise rates now to break the addiction before it gets worse.”

But UBS did admit that losses will start to impact other debts as well, and likely soon. “We believe weakness in these two groups [lower and middle class] will drive higher credit losses at some stage over the next few years — particularly in credit card, installment, and student loans — with macroeconomic inflection from job growth to job loss as a likely catalyst,” UBS said.

Now is a great time to prepare for the economic collapse.  The economy won’t last forever being propped up by debt and Feds manipulation of the markets. But the good news is, prepping for the eventual collapse is made easy with the book titled The Prepper’s Blueprint.  It’s a great resource for those just starting out and for those who may have overlooked something.

Money pumping works — until it doesn’t

According to most economic experts, when an economy falls into a recession the central bank can pull it out of the slump by means of money pumping. This way of thinking implies that money pumping can somehow grow the economy. Indeed US historical evidence supposedly does show that easy money policy seems to work. For instance on average between 1970 and 2018 it took about 11 months before increases in money supply were followed by increases in the growth rate of industrial production.1

The question is how is this possible? After all if money printing can grow the economy then why don’t we print plenty of it to generate massive economic growth? By doing that, central banks could have created an everlasting prosperity for every individual on the planet.

For most commentators the arrival of a recession is due to unexpected events such as shocks that push the economy away from a trajectory of stable economic growth. Shocks weaken the economy, i.e., cause lower economic growth, so it is held.

A likely explanation lies in the fact that as a rule, a recession emerges in response to a decline in the growth rate of the money supply. Usually this takes place in response to a tighter stance of the central bank. Various activities that sprang up on the back of the previous strong money growth rate (usually as a result of loose central bank monetary policy) come under pressure.

These activities cannot support themselves — they survive because of the support that the increase in money supply provides. The increase in money diverts to them real wealth from wealth generating activities. Consequently, this weakens these activities, i.e., wealth-generating activities.

A tighter stance and a consequent fall in the growth rate of money undermines various nonproductive activities and this is what recession is all about. Given that, nonproductive activities cannot support themselves since they are not profitable, once the growth rate of money supply declines, these activities begin to deteriorate. (A fall in the money growth rate means that nonproductive activities access to various resources is curtailed.)

Recession then is not about a weakening in economic activity as such but about the liquidations of various nonproductive activities that sprang up on the back of an increase in money supply.

Why the GDP Framework Presents a Misleading Picture

Economic growth is presented by government statisticians in terms of monetary expenditure data such as gross domestic product (GDP) and industrial production. These indicators are designed along the line of thinking that spending equates with income — hence more spending leads to a higher national income and in turn to a higher economic growth.

On this logic, a tighter monetary stance by the Fed leads to a slower economic growth whilst increases in the money pumping produce higher economic growth. (A stronger growth rate of money supply leads to a stronger pace of expenditure.) In the GDP framework this leads to an increase in overall income in the economy and hence to a higher GDP growth rate.

We suggest that in reality the exact opposite actually takes place — printing more money weakens wealth generators’ ability to grow the economy while a decline in the money supply growth rate strengthens their ability to grow the economy. (Note that an increase in the money supply results in an exchange of nothing for something.)

Once the central bank raises the pace of money pumping in order to lift the economy from a recession this arrests the demise of various nonproductive activities. It also gives rise to new nonproductive activities.

The outcome of so-called economic growth in this case is nothing more than a strengthening of wealth-consumers at the expense of wealth-generators. All this undermines the process of wealth generation and weakens the true economic growth.

Real Wealth Funds Economic Activity

Irrespective whether an activity is productive or nonproductive, at any point in time the number and the size of all activities that can be undertaken is determined by the available amount of real wealth. From this, we can infer that the overall rate of increase in productive and nonproductive activities as a whole is set by the rate of expansion in the pool of real wealth.

Observe that this runs contrary to the GDP framework where the pace of monetary expenditure, i.e., money pumping sets the so-called economic growth. This however does not make much sense.

After all, individuals, whether in productive or nonproductive activities, must have access to real wealth in order to sustain their life and well-being. Note that money cannot sustain individuals, it can only fulfill the role of the medium of exchange.

According to Rothbard,

Money, per se, cannot be consumed and cannot be used directly as a producers’ good in the productive process. Money per se is therefore unproductive; it is dead stock and produces nothing.

As long as wealth producers can generate enough real wealth to support productive and nonproductive activities, easy monetary policies will appear to be successful. (Equivalently, loose fiscal policies are similar to money policy since they also impoverish wealth generators.)

Over time, a situation may emerge where there are not enough wealth generators left due to the persistent loose monetary and fiscal policies. (Wealth generators have been badly damaged by these repeated loose policies over time.) The implication of this is that the real wealth being generated may not be sufficient to support an increase in economic activity. Once this happens, the illusion of loose monetary policy is shattered — real economic growth must come under pressure.

The government’s attempt to boost the growth rate of GDP by raising its own expenditure is also going to fail if the supply of real wealth is dwindling. After all government activities also require real wealth. (Remember every activity irrespective of whether it is productive or nonproductive — must be funded). If the government were to persist with its aggressive stance, this will only make things much worse. (It will deprive funding from wealth generating activities.)

Likewise, if the Fed were to accelerate its monetary pumping while the pool of real wealth is declining this runs the risk of severely damaging further the pool of real wealth. Those commentators who subscribe to the view that the acceleration of money pumping here could fix things hold that something can be created out of nothing.

From this, we can deduce that there is no such thing as stimulatory policies that can grow the economy. Neither the Fed nor the government can grow the economy. All that stimulatory policies can do is to redistribute real wealth from wealth producers to nonproductive activities. These policies encourage consumption not supported by the wealth generating production.

Conclusions

So-called economic growth in response to loose policy simply mirrors the monetary expenditure growth rate and not true real economic growth. Since economic indicators such as GDP and industrial production reflect monetary expenditure, hence the more money pumped by the Fed, the larger the so-called economic growth is going to be. Over time however, a situation can emerge where there are not enough wealth generators left due to persistent loose monetary and fiscal policies which erodes their ability to generate real wealth. Consequently, the real wealth that is generated may not be large enough to support an increase in economic activity. In this situation neither loose monetary policy nor loose fiscal policy can “work.”

Via Mises Institute

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How Will Gold Prices Behave During The Next Economic Crisis?

This report was originally published by Brandon Smith at Alt-Market.com

It is generally well known in economic circles and in the general public that precious metals, including gold, tend to be the go-to investment during times of fiscal uncertainty. There is a good reason for this. Precious metals have foundation qualities that provide trade stability; these include inherent rarity (rather than artificially engineered rarity such as that associated with cryptocurrencies), tangibility (you can hold gold in your hand, and it is relatively difficult to destroy accidentally), and precious metals are easy to trade. Unless you are attempting to make transactions overseas, or in denominations of billions of dollars, precious metals are the most versatile, tangible trading platform in existence.

There are some limitations to metals, but the most commonly parroted criticisms of gold are in most cases incorrect. For example, consider the argument that the limited quantities of gold and silver stifle liquidity and create a trade environment where almost no one has currency to trade because so few people can get their hands on precious metals. This is a naive notion built upon a logical fallacy.

Gold backed paper currencies existed for centuries in tandem with the metals trade. Liquidity was rarely an issue, and when such events did occur, they were short lived. In fact, the last great liquidity crisis occurred in 1914, the same year the Federal Reserve began operations and the same year that WWI started. This crisis was, as always, practically fabricated by central banks around the globe. Benjamin Strong, the head of the New York Fed in 1914 and an agent of the JP Morgan syndicate, had interfered with the normal operations of gold flows into the U.S. and thus sabotaged the natural functions of the gold standard.

Central banks in Germany, France and England also applied influence to disrupt currency and gold flows, causing a global panic. This engineered disruption seemed to take place through conscious co-operation between central banks. Does any of this sound familiar?

For those who are interested, the history of the 1914 liquidity crisis is outlined in detail in the book ‘Lords Of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke The World’, by Liaquat Ahamed.

When gold and currency are tied together, gold prices tend to remain rather stable, as they are often set by the national treasury. In 1914, the price of gold was $20 per ounce and had maintained that approximate value for decades. To give some perspective on value, in 1914 the average house cost $3,500, or 175 ounces of gold.

But what happens when gold and national currencies become disjointed from each other? Take a look at the hyperinflationary crisis in Weimar Germany. The price of gold per ounce went from 170 marks to 87 trillion marks within five years! Over that same five year period, gold value in Germany had increased at almost TWICE the rate of inflation, indicating that gold not only kept up with the devaluing mark, but made anyone holding gold rather rich in the process.

This is a very important fact. The common argument against gold is that the metal is not really a wealth creating investment, but merely protects your buying power. As the Weimar crisis shows, this is not always the case. In some circumstances, often during times of economic disaster, precious metals can in fact generate more wealth than what you put into them.

Then there is the issue of government interference in gold markets and trade during crisis. As the Great Depression in the U.S. began to take hold, investors turned aggressively to gold and silver as a means to offset the crashing values of most other assets. In a highly controversial move in 1933, President Roosevelt outlawed the private ownership of gold bullion and set the price of gold at $35 per ounce.

Keynesian economists like Ben Bernanke often try to assert that the gold standard was the reason why interest rates had to be hiked as the depression was escalating, and that this was the cause of a greater crash. They are only half correct. Increased rates did indeed cause a larger and more prolonged crisis, but this had little to do with the gold standard.

Clearly, in 2008 the U.S. and most of the world was NOT on a gold standard, yet we suffered a very similar collapse in credit and equities as happened in the Great Depression. Also, there is no gold standard forcing the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates today, yet they are doing so despite escalating negative indicators in the real economy.

Whether or not this will cause an even more violent economic catastrophe remains to be seen, but Jerome Powell, the new Fed Chairman himself, warned in 2012 that this is exactly what could happen. Jerome Powell has stated in no uncertain terms that rate hikes will continue under his watch in 2018.

Central banks were the core institutions to blame for the Great Depression, not the gold standard, considering the fact that central banks did NOT follow a true classical gold standard exchange internationally, and instead tried to establish a global basket exchange system of multiple currencies and gold in what they called the “gold exchange standard”.

Add to this the unnecessary interest rate hikes as deflation was pummeling assets, and you have a perfect recipe for calamity. Even Ben Bernanke, in a 2002 speech to honor Milton Friedman, openly admitted that the Fed was the root cause of the prolonged economic carnage during the Great Depression:

“In short, according to Friedman and Schwartz, because of institutional changes and misguided doctrines, the banking panics of the Great Contraction were much more severe and widespread than would have normally occurred during a downturn.

Let me end my talk by abusing slightly my status as an official representative of the Federal Reserve. I would like to say to Milton and Anna: Regarding the Great Depression. You’re right, we did it. We’re very sorry. But thanks to you, we won’t do it again.”

The use of gold prohibition had mixed results. Obviously, it did not stop the freight train of the Great Depression. In fact it probably exacerbated difficulties in trade and savings. Black markets took over and precious metals were still highly sought after.

As far as the crash of 2008 is concerned (a crash which is still ongoing today), we all know what happened with gold markets. In the lead up to the crash, from 2004 to 2008, gold doubled in value. Then, after the initial crash from 2008 to 2012, it doubled again.

Despite predictions by mainstream economic naysayers, gold has not collapsed back down to pre-crash levels. In fact, gold has remained one of the most effective investment performers for years.

The question is, what happens next? Setting aside gold confiscation as a factor (a factor which I believe would be impossible to enforce in today’s markets), we can see that massive fiat stimulus as a means to artificially support a deflationary fiscal system, as well as central bank intervention in general, leads to collapse and a flight to hard assets like gold. Even with rising interest rates and the potential for a spike in the dollar index, if the rest of the economy is in steep decline, investors and others will still turn towards precious metals.

As I have mentioned in previous articles, the initial reaction of gold prices to faster interest rate hikes may be negative. That said, I do not believe gold will drop as dramatically as mainstream economists expect. Once higher interest rates kill the stock market bubble as well as the renewed housing and credit bubble, gold will skyrocket as one of the only asset classes with tangible real world value.

 

If you would like to support the publishing of articles like the one you have just read, visit our donations page here. We greatly appreciate your patronage.

You can contact Brandon Smith at: brandon@alt-market.com

After 8 long years of ultra-loose monetary policy from the Federal Reserve, it’s no secret that inflation is primed to soar. If your IRA or 401(k) is exposed to this threat, it’s critical to act now! That’s why thousands of Americans are moving their retirement into a Gold IRA. Learn how you can too with a free info kit on gold from Birch Gold Group. It reveals the little-known IRS Tax Law to move your IRA or 401(k) into gold. Click here to get your free Info Kit on Gold.

Trump Trade Wars A Perfect Smokescreen For A Market Crash

This article was originally published by Brandon Smith at Alt-Market.com

First, I would like to say that the timing of Donald Trump’s announcement on expansive trade tariffs is unusual if not impeccable. I say this only IF Trump’s plan was to benefit establishment globalists by giving them perfect cover for their continued demolition of the market bubbles that they have engineered since the crash of 2008.

If this was not his plan, then I am a bit bewildered by what he hopes to accomplish. It is certainly not the end of trade deficits and the return of American industry. But let’s explore the situation for a moment…

Trump is in my view a modern day Herbert Hoover. One of Hoover’s first actions as president in response to the crash of 1929 was to support increased tax cuts, primarily for corporations (this was then followed in 1932 by extensive tax increases in the midst of the depression, so let’s see what Trump does in the next couple of years).  Then, he instituted tariffs through the Smoot-Hawley Act. His hyperfocus on massive infrastructure spending resulted in U.S. debt expansion and did nothing to dig the U.S. out of its unemployment abyss. In fact, infrastructure projects like the Hoover Dam, which were launched in 1931, were not paid off for over 50 years. Hoover oversaw the beginning of the Great Depression and ended up as a single-term Republican president who paved the way socially for Franklin D. Roosevelt, an essential communist and perhaps the worst president in American history.

This is not to say Hoover was responsible for the Great Depression. That distinction goes to the Federal Reserve, which had artificially lowered interest rates and then suddenly raised them going into the economic downturn causing an aggressive bubble implosion (just like the central bank is doing right now). But Hoover did actually aid the Fed in their undermining of economic stability by pursuing policies which were poorly timed.

I’m hitting readers with all of this because I am growing rather tired of the contingent of Trump apologists in the liberty movement scrambling to defend every single Trump action no matter how illogical. These people should know better. Sorry, but Trump is not “playing 4D chess” against the globalists. His primary actions have only served so far to create a useful distraction away from the globalists.

The disturbing key to all of this is the fact that many of Trump’s policies are things that I and many others have argued for in the past. The problem is, he is implementing them out of order and with bad timing, which will only make such policies appear destructive in the end, rather than constructive.

In terms of the implementation of tariffs, the people who are defending this action at this time do not seem to understand the basics of international trade. Tariffs can only be enacted from a position of economic strength and resource development. This strength comes from internal self-sufficiency in production; meaning, in order for the U.S. to force a trade balance (which is what tariffs are supposed to do) the U.S. must have a strong industrial base and MUST be capable of producing most if not all necessary goods and goods in broad demand.

The fact is, U.S. manufacturing has been utterly outsourced by the very corporations Trump just gave a 10% tax cut to, and rebuilding that industrial base would take decades. Why? Because there are no incentives for corporations to bring manufacturing back.

As I already stated, Trump is instituting potentially solid policies but he is doing so out of order. Tax cuts for corporations should have been enacted only as an incentive for manufacturing jobs to be returned to America. Instead, corporations got tax cuts for absolutely nothing. And will those tax cuts go towards more jobs or innovation? Nope. They will be going to pay off unprecedented corporate debts, and stock buybacks, most of which were accrued through borrowing from the Federal Reserve.

Will this stock buyback bonanza even generate new highs in the Dow? Probably not. But I’ll explain why that is later.

If Trump had given tax incentives for corporations to bring manufacturing back into the U.S., and then given those corporations a few years to make the shift, only then would tariffs have been an effective action. But as the situation stands now, we have minimal tangible production in this country, and, historic debts held by the same overseas competitors that Trump is now seeking to “teach a lesson.”

Debt is the next issue which needs to be addressed before tariffs can ever be implemented in a practical way. In terms of national debt, rather than setting up a plan to reduce U.S. debt expenditures, Trump is increasing debt by reducing taxes while at the same time increasing spending. Trump did not take a hard stand on the debt ceiling debate as he originally claimed he would, and so, the debt train continues unabated.

Who is going to purchase this debt, I wonder? Over the past several years the largest buyer of U.S. treasury debt was the Federal Reserve through fiat money creation. Now, the Fed has tapered quantitative easing and is dumping their balance sheet at a rate faster than anyone expected. The Fed is pulling the plug on its artificial support of the economy.

The next largest buyers are major foreign central banks in countries like China, Japan and to some extent the supranational EU. If the debt buyers of last resort are now the very same countries Trump is seeking to enact tariffs over, how do you think this little theater will end? Yes, with a dump of U.S. treasury bonds and perhaps the dollar as world reserve by those nations.

But what about the U.S. consumer? Isn’t the consumer market in America so enticing that nations like China would “never dare” dump U.S. debt or the dollar? No, not really. If we are talking about a trade “war,” then a country like China, which has a vast manufacturing base and which has also been building up its own domestic consumer market, would be willing to make the sacrifice. America would be hurt far more by the threat of debt default and the loss of the dollar’s international buying power than China ever would be by the loss of American consumers. With tariffs being implemented, they may lose the American consumer anyway.

Our retail market is hardly as appetizing as it was 10 years ago given the decade of drudgery Americans have endured, with the largest number ever of working age citizens no longer participating in the jobs market, as well as real worker wages in continued decline while the American consumer is now more indebted than at any other time in history.

All of these negative effects are weighing down our economy while the Federal Reserve is quickly deflating the fraudulent markets that the establishment used during the Obama administration to argue that America was “in recovery.” Of course, alternative economists have known since the beginning that this was a lie, and that the only thing propping up the economy and stock markets was central bank manipulation.

The Fed under Jerome Powell has made it crystal clear that they WILL be raising interest rates and cutting the Fed balance sheet, perhaps more than their dot plots had indicated in the past. Without low rates and a steadily rising balance sheet we have already seen the results. Stocks in particular have gone crazy compared to the past few years, dumping nearly 10% one week, spiking about half that the next week. One thing is certain, the supposedly endless bull market induced by the Fed years ago is now over. Stocks are in heart attack mode.

It is no coincidence that the first two times the Fed reduced its balance sheet the Dow plunged over 1,000 points. The latest dump of $23 billion at the end of February resulted in a drop of around 1,500 points. It is too early in this process to know what the trend will be, but it seems to me that stocks are being steam valved down every month. With a marked decline just after a balance sheet dump, followed by a less impressive dead cat bounce the week after.

In the meantime, Trump’s “trade war” is now being blamed in the mainstream for the decline in stocks that the Fed is actually responsible for. As I have always said, Trump is the ideal scapegoat for the inevitable economic crisis the central bankers have staged. Trump’s tariffs might exacerbate the problem, just as Hoover’s policies did in the beginning of the Great Depression, but the blame rests squarely on the Federal Reserve and central banks around the world. Will the average person understand this dynamic once the dust settles on our financial system? Probably not.

So, to summarize, while Trump has indeed set in motion policies that conservatives in general tend to approve of, he has done so in an impractical way that will ultimately be blamed for a market crash the Fed created. If conservative ideals such as limited government and sovereign trade protection get the blame for an unprecedented economic crisis then this could sabotage conservatism for generations to come. If elections are still even a factor as this crisis unfolds, the chances of the public accepting a socialistic nightmare regime after Trump exits the White House are high. And, the banking elites that conjured the whole mess will escape once again without any punishment.

The question we must ask is this – Is Trump aware that his policies are creating a perfect distraction for those same banking elites? I believe we will know for certain the answer to that before 2018 is over.

***

If you would like to support the publishing of articles like the one you have just read, visit our donations page here. We greatly appreciate your patronage.

You can contact Brandon Smith at: brandon@alt-market.com

After 8 long years of ultra-loose monetary policy from the Federal Reserve, it’s no secret that inflation is primed to soar. If your IRA or 401(k) is exposed to this threat, it’s critical to act now! That’s why thousands of Americans are moving their retirement into a Gold IRA. Learn how you can too with a free info kit on gold from Birch Gold Group. It reveals the little-known IRS Tax Law to move your IRA or 401(k) into gold. Click here to get your free Info Kit on Gold.

Peter Schiff: ‘We Will Live Through Another Great Depression Which Will Be MUCH MUCH WORSE’

Financial guru, Peter Schiff, who accurately predicted the recession of 2008 says the problems we face now are even bigger. We will live through another Great Depression if Schiff is correct. And One of the main concerns is something very few dare to even mention or show a concern about: the national debt.

Schiff’s podcast from a few days ago highlights a very important problem with not only the economy as we know it but the mainstream media as well.  Unable to take their attention off gun control regulations for even a moment to focus on a much bigger concern, the national debt, the mainstream media is effectively trying to hide what’s coming down the pipe.  The lack of coverage seems to be spurring a lackadaisical attitude about the almost $21 trillion debt.

Let’s start at the beginning. Schiff begins his podcast talking about a book his father wrote; one of the only books to have been banned by the United States government. Yes, the US government banned a book titled “The Federal Mafia: How It Illegally Imposes And Unlawfully Collects Income Taxes” by Irwin Schiff in the “land of the free.”

“The bad news is, we are going to live through another Great Depression and it’s going to be very different. This will be in many ways, much much worse, than what people had to endure during the Great Depression,” Schiff says. “This is going to be a dollar crisis.”

“These hot inflation numbers that we’ve been getting are going to get a lot hotter…all this inflation that has been in the financial markets, in the stock markets, in the bond market, in the real estate market, everybody loved inflation when it was making you rich…the problem is going to be when it makes you poor. That’s when it starts showing up in the cost of living; all the things you need to buy end up being a lot more expensive.”

“When you are talking about the magnitude of the debt we have, that extra money [raising interest rates] is big. That’s going to be a big drain on the economy to the extent that we have to pay higher interest to international creditors…a lot of this phony GDP is coming from consumption, while the average American who is consuming is deeply in debt and they are going to impacted dramatically in the increase in the cost of servicing that debt…given how much debt we have, and how much debt is going to be marketed the massive increase in supply will argue for interest rates that are higher.”

“The Fed thinks they create economic growth…by [saying] ‘let’s jack up the stock market and then the economy’s going to grow and people are going to go out and spend more money.’ It’s actually doing damage.  If you create a bunch of phony wealth, and people end up spending money that they otherwise would have saved, you are undermining economic growth.”

“Everything the Fed has done has undermined real economic growth, that is why this coming collapse is going to be so devastating,” says Schiff. “It’s shrinking government that grows the economy.  When you make government smaller and you free up resources back into the private sector, that’s what grows the economy.”

 Schiff again suggests looking at gold as a way to protect yourself against the dollar’s collapse.

Prepping is often difficult and if you’ve just begun, a great resource is a book titled “The Prepper’s Blueprint.”

Ron Paul: ‘The Fed Is At A Crossroads…Crisis Is Coming’

The Fed has created a mountain of problems for everyone in the United States and every single solution that they come up with leads to even more problems. Ron Paul recently discussed what the Fed has done, how it tries to keep things going, and the inevitable economic crisis that is coming.

Ron Paul has been one of the few steadfast proponents of liberty, which is likely why he’s no longer associated with the government at all. In a recent video, Paul discussed the problems the Federal Reserve created and why their solutions will generate an economic crisis of epic proportions.

“They [The Fed] have a lot of power, but their main goal is to do central economic planning which always fails. It’s also a gimmick because they have meetings, they are supposed to have eight a year, and then there’s a big announcement…they come out and they make a statement and the chairman is interviewed, and then, later on, you get the minutes. It’s big fanfare. But I see it as mostly propaganda, just carrying a message. Getting it from the people who really run things, the deep state, and they get it out there. But it does have a lot of effect on the market. I actually believe that there are some people who know how fictitious the Fed really is and how inept it is, but still watch it because they know a lot of other people are going to pay attention…the deep state is not a part of the government, but they have a lot of influence.”

Paul went on to explain that often we are told it’s not right to criticize the Fed. But that will change.

“The next downturn, which I think will come soon, the Fed’s not going to get credit for getting us out of it. They didn’t get any credit for getting us out this last recession which we’re really, in many ways, still in…times are different. But times are getting much worse now. This next downturn is going to be a serious one and the Fed doesn’t have any magic whatsoever…central economic planning never works no matter how long they get away with it.”

And something we’ve heard from top financial experts such as Peter Schiff, Paul also says there’s a trend to ditch the dollar, which will lead to its collapse.

“I think it [the dollar value] is going to continue to erode on international exchange markets and this will hurt us because that’s also the reason that we see interest rates going up,” Paul says. “Peter Schiff is right,” Paul continued. This whole house of cards will come crashing down as interest rates rise.