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.

Make Your Choice: Change By Pain Or Insight

This report was originally published by Chris Martenson at PeakProsperity.com

Most experienced investors know the four most dangerous words are: This time is different.

It never is.

And yet one of my key predictions here at Peak Prosperity is that The next twenty years will be completely unlike the last twenty years.

So am I saying that things really will be different this time?

Yes, I am. But to understand why, you have to look closely at the unprecedented moment in history in which we live, as well as how the Three E’s – the Economy, Energy and Environment – all tie together now in a way they never have before.

For those who prefer their conclusions right up front, the simplest summary I can provide is that everything we think we know about “how things work” is just plain wrong.

This explains why, among many other grotesque distortions, the stock and bond markets are spectacularly overpriced and overvalued right now.

This danger is important to be aware of because when things correct, as they inevitably must, the next crash will be incredibly damaging. It could be as profound as that which dethroned Spain as a world power, permanently.

Peak Prosperity user Gyurash put this risk in context within his comment to our recent podcast on Economics for Independent Thinkers:

The mention of Paul Volker was interesting. I remember listening to a lecture given by Mr. Volker played on public radio in the mid 80s. He talked about the Spanish empire in the 16th century and the easy money train they had coming from South American gold and silver. He said that although it seemed to create great wealth it also made for a false economy in Spain. In addition to creating price bubbles, the Spanish did not use it to build much of anything other than big villas, built by itinerant foreign labor by the way, so when the gold and silver flow slowed when the biggest mines were effectively depleted, their economy crashed so hard that it never recovered, even up to today.

(Source)

Delusional Thinking

What’s worse than wishful thinking? Delusional thinking.

The sort of ideas that harm rather than help those who hold them.

Of the many current policy delusions I could rail about, perhaps the greatest of them all is the quite-impossible belief that we can have infinite growth on a finite planet.

I know, I know, refuting this is so brain-dead easy to debunk that it seems pedestrian, if not childishly so, to raise it here again. It’s quite an impossible proposition.

Even the most cursory of reviews of mining data (just one of many possible examples), show that many critical ores and minerals are vastly more difficult and expensive to extract and bring to market than they were just a few decades ago. And the trendlines keep getting worse.

But let’s go through this once again, because it’s such an important point. For those of you already on my side of the boat, please bear with me. Perhaps something new will emerge for you on this next go around.

The Harsh Math

Exponential expansion requires not just some new minerals coming to market, but exponentially more.

It works out like this. Suppose that 100 units of copper were produced in year 1, and output (as demanded by economic growth) was expanding at a 3% rate. How long would it take for production to double? The answer is that after 24 years we’d find that 203 units were being produced. So a 3% growth rate means that it takes only 24 years to fully double production.

However, the more interesting fact is that over that same 24-year stretch, if we add up each year’s production into a cumulative total we discover that 3,546 units of copper had been produced. How much copper would you guess was produced over the prior 24-year stretch (the one that got us to 100 units in the first place)?

The answer is just 1775 units. In other words, half the amount produced during the next doubling. Going back further and adding up all of the doublings of copper production throughout all of history  we’d discover that each new doubling produced (and consumed) as much as the sum total of all the prior doubling periods combined.

You can prove this to yourself by looking at a doubling sequence such as 0.25, 0.5, 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32 etc. Note that 4 is larger than (0.25 + 0.5 + 1 + 2) and that 8 is larger than (0.25 + 0.5 + 1 + 2 + 4) and that 16 is larger than (0.25 + 0.5 + 1 + 2 + 4 + 8) and so on — into infinity.

Again, each new doubling involves an increase that is larger than the combined values of all the prior doublings in history.

For the visually-minded, here’s that same idea expressed in an image:

How Many More Doublings Can We Possibly Have From Here?

Only the most delusional would argue that we can dependably double our extraction of key natural resources forever.

Every two decades (or so), will we always be able to use twice as much farmland, twice as much fish in the sea, twice as much oil in the ground, as has been used before throughout all of human history?

Of course not. Planet Earth is a finite system.

This is why I claim that everything we think we know about “how things work” is wrong. Our entire economic and financial systems, their associated monetary models and their current financial asset prices, are predicated on the principle of continuous growth. And not just any sort of growth: Exponential growth. Predictable doubling — forever.

Look, it’s ridiculously easy to prove that there won’t always be twice as much copper (or nearly any other key natural resource) as has been extracted throughout all of prior human history. Things run out. They deplete. They become more dilute as the high grades are exploited first.

At some point, doubling becomes impossible. That’s when you’re past the point where half has been extracted and half still remains in the ground.  After that, there are exactly zero doubling periods remaining! That’s just elementary math.

Why care?

Because once the doubling periods are over, every single economic model and financial asset that is predicated on continuous expansion breaks. Our systems stop  steadily growing; and instead start increasingly shrinking.

This not a hard concept to grasp, intellectually, for most people with an open mind. But in practice, because it challenges our comfortable understanding of the world, because it collides with an entire Disney World of incompatible social belief systems, it’s pretty much impossible for the many people to even begin to wrestle with. Forget about a mainstream economist or central banker, whose salary requires them to adhere to the status quo.

The warning here is that we our deluding ourselves as a society. We are herding ourselves, lemming-like, straight towards the cliff ledge.

Think Critically!

Our mission here at PeakProsperity.com is to Create a World Worth Inheriting. While we help people make informed decisions to imbue their lives with greater abundance and satisfaction today, it’s our dedication to the long-term picture that shapes everything we do.

Very few voices are standing about waving their arms in the air like we are, warning of the approaching cliff. We’re aware that the point of no return might still be several decades out into the future, but we also realize that it could already be behind us. It’s nearly impossible to know right now given the complex system that is our planet — but given the existential risks involved, our opinion is that everyone should be mobilizing in response to this arriving (arrived?) crisis.

We often get labeled as narrow-minded “Malthusians”. Or accused of failing to account for human ingenuity. (Neither is accurate, we think.)

But in reality, we’re simply data driven. The facts are what they are. Logic is what it is.

And we get it. It’s both a factual and a logical nightmare for the infinite growth crowd that the earth is finite.

But as Einstein famously quipped:

And as you wrap your brain around the limits to growth, remember that you’re subject to the same comprehensive programming that envelops us all. The messaging that constantly reinforces the idea that endless growth is what we need, and what we can expect.

This programming is subtle, reassuring and ubiquitous; which makes it hard to resist. Here’s a prime example:

(Source)

To an economist like Bernanke, there are only virtuous expansions. Of course, the sort of expansion he refers to is exponential growth. Which is absolutely destined to fail in the long run (and now, maybe, the short).

And when that happens, the fallout will be spectacular and highly destructive to the hopes and dreams of literally billions of people.

Make Your Choice: Change By Pain Or Insight

What’s unclear to me is if there can be any meaningful recovery from this next crash, whenever it happens and however long it takes.

To return to the opening piece of this article, while I know that this time is different are dangerous words for investors to believe, the impending collision between delusional infinite growth thinking and resource limits and other realities will appear to the average observer like a gigantic change. But, in fact, it simply will mean that humans are subject to the same limits as any other life form on earth.

In other words, it really won’t be different this time.

In boy-meets-girl story form, the plot line of the natural process for all forms of life is:

1. organism finds tasty energy source


2. organism expands exponentially into that energy source


3. energy source dwindles even as organism continues into population overshoot, and then


4. happy times turn into tough times, and organism population plummets

Given that literally everything we hold dear and take for granted, such as well-stocked supermarkets, 24/7 electricity, and an appreciating retirement portfolio are all themselves dependent on an economic model that requires perpetual exponential expansion, several questions emerge.

How can I protect myself, my family and those I care about? How can I secure a prosperous future? What do I need to do to develop the right mental models and belief system to deal effectively with the coming challenges?

You can either address these questions head-on now, while the world still works the way we’re accustomed to. Or later, under crisis conditions.

We’ve learned that there are two ways that people change their beliefs and then their actions: by pain or by insight.

Most people go the pain route. And in the process, they waste a lot of valuable time that could have been spent constructively. It’s only after the heart attack, the divorce, the backing over the family dog while drunk—moments of extreme pain—that most people will begin to actively face the idea that they need to make different decisions in life.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. Part of the beauty of being human is that we can learn from observation, reflection and experience, and can adapt. Critical thinkers have this ability to change by insight. They use new information to put new behaviors into practice until those practices become new habits. And with better habits, we achieve better destinies.

So which route will you choose? Pain or insight?

The story told by the Three Es is loaded with the potential for plenty of painful moments over the next few decades. Sadly, a lot of people will not take precautionary steps far enough in advance to matter. They’re just not focusing on the risks right now. As a result, much of the world will be forced to change its behavior via the pain route.

Use this awareness as a sense of urgency to prepare now. To secure your future prosperity, as well as to help those regretting that they didn’t follow your lead.

In Part 2: Steps For Changing By Insight, we lay out our prescriptive guidance what what to do now, in a world saddled with record debts, and a debt-based system of money that itself is utterly and completely dependent on infinite expansion, where something’s got to give.

If you believe in eternal infinite growth, then sure, stay invested in stocks and bonds and go ahead and buy the dips.

But if you don’t, take steps today to change your life by insight, secure your future prosperity, and serve as a model for others.

Click here to read Part 2 of this report (free executive summary, enrollment required for full access)

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.

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.

$1.2 Trillion Asset Manager: Forget Volatility, The Real Financial Timebomb Is Public Pensions

This report was originally published by Tyler Durden at Zero Hedge

As we have reported over and over and over (and over, and over), public pensions are in deep, deep trouble.

In addition critical funding shortfalls (U.S. public pensions had just 71.8% of assets required to meet obligations as of June 2016), many of the country’s largest pensions have completely unrealistic target rates-of-return of 7% on average.

(Millman 2017 Public Pension Funding Study)

And while interest rates and therefore the cost of leverage has been at historic lows, and markets at historic highs (until they underwent a brief Vol-fib cardiac arrest last week), the question is what happens when the music stops, liquidity dries up, and economic contraction besets (or catch up to) the markets?

David Hunt, CEO of $1.2 trillion asset manager PGIM, is asking this exact question.

“If you were going to look for what’s the possible real crack in the financial architecture for the next crisis, rather than looking in the rearview mirror, pension funds would be on our list,” Hunt said in a Friday interview with Bloomberg, discussing what municipalities and states will do when local tax revenues decline and unemployment worsens. “So we’re worried about those pension obligations.”

PGIM, owned by New Jersey-based Prudential Financial, advises 147 of the 300 largest pension funds around the world. Hunt joined Prudential in 2011 after leaving McKinsey & Co., where he doubled assets under management, renamed the business PGIM, and bought a Deutsche Bank AG unit to expand in India.

In other words, he knows the business like the back of his hand.

Hunt said that corporate retirement funds typically outperform their public counterparts. To that end, one of the most difficult aspects of managing money for public plans, says Hunt, is the fact that lawmakers are promising unrealistic goals to retirees. As such, he has advised public-pension clients to stop seeking the highest returns, and “start doing what the corporate folks have long been doing, which is to find ways to minimize the deficit and to take risk gradually off the table.”

Of course, that will never happen, and instead pensions will soon be begging Credit Suisse to recreate the XIV just so they can go long.

The PGIM CEO also sees a shift in equities markets as fewer firms pursue IPO funding – instead opting for private equity. as Bloomberg notes, the number of publicly traded U.S. companies shrank from over 8,000 in 1996 to around 4,300 in 2016, according to Ernst & Young.

“More than any other period in our history we’re going to have companies that are owned by private equity rather than the public equity markets,” Hunt said. “The dynamism and growth of the economy is now more and more being captured privately and by institutions rather than actually available for you to own in your 401(k) account or for other public markets.”

One could almost say that as central banks nationalize the markets, leading to idiotic valuations, it is a handful of private capital holders who end up with all the gains. As for everyone else… well, you have all those “fully-funded”, non-timebomby pensions to look forward to.

Time to Cash In? (VIDEO)

As many of you know, the finesse of the Stock Market is to buy stocks when they are low, and then to sell them when they are high. It is quite akin to casino gambling.

“You gotta’ know when to hold ‘um . . .

Know when to fold ‘um . . .

Know when to walk away . . .

And know when to run!”

The problem with the latter, the casino form of gambling, is that while many players set for themselves a “losing limit” when they venture into such dark places as casinos, they seldom consider establishing an equally important “Winning Limit”. The same is True of the Stock Market of Today.

In a casino, one can surely see the logic in setting a “Loosing Limit”. For example, a player says to themself, “I shall bring $500 to play with, and once that is gone, I will quit.” Not bad advice to give yourself. Yet, what happens if you are successful with the $500 investment with which to gamble? What if you turn the $500 into $1000 or $1,500 ? How do you know when to quit while you are ahead?

This is why with both casino and stock market gambling, an all important “Winning Limit” must also be set in advance, and also adhered to with equal discipline as the “Loosing Limit”.

The one time I braved into a casino in Cairo, at a mere twenty years of age, I turned $20 into $220 in a relatively short amount of time at the Blackjack table. In quick order though, I became like Daffy Duck in the cartoon Diamond Mine, saying to myself, “If $200 . . . then why not $2000 !?!?” The “Losing Limit” I had set for myself was a mere $20. The lesson I forever learned, is that I should have also set a “Winning Limit”, of about $200 in this case. If it weren’t for my grandiose greed without a “winning limit”, I would have made TEN times my initial investment, if I had “cashed in” right before the crash. What happened, is that I eventually lost it all . . . perpetually trying to get back my “perceived losses” . . . because I did not set a “Winning Limit” to begin with, of about 400% above my initial investment.

As you can see from this morning’s screen shot of my computer’s OS daily financial overview, all of the major financial indicators are lower. Not that this, in and of itself, is of any significance, as the values of the stock market are constantly fluctuating, what is noteworthy though, is that one of the leading and most shrewd International Banks of the World, the “HSBC” (“Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation”), openly predicted a few days ago, that a Major Financial Crash is likely weeks away.

Six months ago, the “National Security Agency” (NSA) confidentially ran a cunning computer simulation program of the stock market called the “Elliot Wave Principle”, which concluded through their “Super-Computer-Modeling” (SCM), that there is an 88% chance of a financial crash in the imminent future! Normally, if a financial crash precedes a presidential election, the incumbent party (“democrats”, in this case) will loose the election. As there is no doubt that the “establishment” (the “democrats”, at this hour) are presently in control of the leadership of the US government, and that Trump and Sanders pose an equal threat to the “establishment” thereof, the likely scenario will be that the “Powers that Be” will do their very best to postpone a financial crash until after the election. Nevertheless, even the “Ruling Elite” cannot control everything. Which means that despite their best efforts, a financial crash might happen before the election. In either case, with a financial crash before the election, or one immediately after the election, you only have days or weeks to sell your stocks now, while they still have a relatively high value, as opposed to selling them after the crash, when a much greater loss will be incurred.

I have a dear and highly intelligent friend who says that the stock market always “eventually corrects itself”, in that “riding out” the crash cycles without selling stocks at a high value (though contradictory to the fundamental “Buy Low, Sell High” philosophy), will eventually pay off, in that all that all stock markets, in the two hundred history thereof, have eventually equalized thereafter.

I have to admit, my friend is right . . . with two notable exceptions . . .

1) The stock Market Crash of 1929

If you had enough wealth to ride out the lengthy Sixteen Year Cycle of the disastrous lows after 1929 Crash . . . then . . . yes . . . you would have eventually broken even . . . in about 1945 . . . After the Sixteen Years of deplorable lows of immense frugality.

2)  NOW, in the Near Future, “End Times” of the World

Many superior analysts, such as Retired Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, and Current Federal Reserve Chairman Janet Yellen, and the incredibly successful financial entrepreneur George Soros, have ALL said on the record recently, that a GLOBAL financial “Reset” is needed to wash away Insurmountable International Debt.

I have no doubt that they are RIGHT.

I am writing this article specifically for YOU.

That You will sell your stocks now to avoid future financial ruin.

If the world were running though its normal 200 year cycles of highs and lows, then I would say . . . “Go for it . . . Ride out the stock market highs and lows!”

Yet . . .

We are about to experience BIBLICAL moments in history . . .

My advise, if you trust Brother Bart’s Conspiracy Corner . . .

Is to CASH IN your stocks NOW, While there is still time . . .

You can then buy food, water, water filters, batteries, etc., with these limited and precious cash resources, while there is still time to do so, and cash is still of value, with which you can buy practical supplies from Walmart to survive the coming Biblical Collapse. After all, what is a “piece of paper”, whether it be “cash” or a “stock certificate”, compared to a tangible gallon of fresh drinking water or canned food? Even a sack full of gold, valued today at one million dollars, will be of ZERO value in comparison to a gallon of clean water and a bowl of cooked rice, when all electricity is turned off on the entire planet, and a sack of gold is a merely a beautiful paperweight.

What will likely happen, is that the stock market crash will occur RIGHT AFTER the coming November 8^th election, which both classified CIA and NSA polls have Trump winning 49% to 40%, with 11% going to “Third Parties”, in order to blame popular opinion (also know as “Democracy”, or the “deplorable unredeemable masses”), as instigating the economic crash, which the Elite have long controlled, and postponed to this very hour, in order to blame the foretold economic crash election on the majority, to which they are definitely opposed, pursuing instead the super-minority of “global elites”, to whom they slavently serve.

Be Warned My Beloved Brethren.

I will discuss all this, and much more, in this week’s episode of Conspiracy Corner News.

Just click on the Youtube link BELOW to watch . . .

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–Brother Bart-

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References

HSBC Warns of Impending Economic Crash

History of HSBC

Europe Prepares for “War” (Really Economic Crash)

“Gas Leak” Excuse to Stockpile Fuel

The Latest Saber Rattling

US Plans “Drill” to Climax AFTER Presidential Elections

“Elliott Wave Principle” Super-Computer Predicts Economic Crash

The post Time to Cash In? (VIDEO) appeared first on The Sleuth Journal.

The Yield Curve Has Not Been This Flat In 10 Years, And Many Believe This Is A Sign That A Recession Is Imminent

This article was originally published by Michael Snyder at The Economic Collapse

Whenever we see an inverted yield curve, a recession almost always follows, and that is why many analysts are deeply concerned that the yield curve is currently the flattest that it has been in about a decade. In other words, according to one of the most reliable indicators that we have, we are closer to another recession than we have been at any point since the last financial crisis. And when you combine this with all of the other indicators that are screaming that a new crisis is on the horizon, a very troubling picture emerges. Hopefully this will turn out to be a false alarm, but it is looking more and more like big economic trouble is coming in 2018.

The professionals on Wall Street take the yield curve very, very seriously, and the fact that it has gotten so flat has many of them extremely concerned. The following comes from Business Insider…

In the past, including before the Great Recession of 2007-2009, an inverted yield curve, where long-term interest rates fall below their short-term counterparts, has been a reliable predictor of recessions. The bond market is not there yet, but a sharp recent flattening of the yield curve has many in the markets watchful and concerned.

The US yield curve is now at its flattest in about 10 years — in other words, since around the time a major credit crunch of was gaining steam. The gap between two-year note yields and their 10-year counterparts has shrunk to just 0.63 percentage point, the narrowest since November 2007.

If the yield curve continues to get even flatter, it will spark widespread selling on Wall Street, and if it actually inverts that will set off total panic.

And with each passing day, even more of the “experts” are warning of imminent market trouble. For example, just consider what Art Cashin told CNBC the other day…

Investors may want to take cover soon.

Art Cashin, UBS’ director of floor operations at the New York Stock Exchange, says a “split personality” is manifesting itself in the stock market, and it could hit Wall Street where it hurts at any moment.

“We’ve been setting record new highs, and often the breadth has been negative. We’ve had more declines than advances,” Cashin said Thursday on CNBC’s “Futures Now.”

When the financial markets finally do crash, it won’t exactly be a surprise.

In fact, we are way, way overdue for financial disaster.

Since the last financial crisis, we have been on the greatest debt binge in human history. U.S. government debt has gone from $10 trillion to $20 trillion, corporate debt has doubled, and U.S. consumer debt has now risen to nearly $13 trillion.

Debt brings consumption from the future into the present, and so it increases short-term economic activity at the expense of long-term financial health.

But we simply cannot continue to grow debt much, much faster than the overall economy is growing. I have never talked to anyone that believes that our debt binge is sustainable, and I doubt that I ever will.

The only reason why we have even gotten this far is because interest rates have been pushed to historically low levels. If the average rate of interest on U.S. government debt even returned to the long-term average, we would be paying more than a trillion dollars a year in interest on the national debt and the game would be over. Unprecedented intervention by the Federal Reserve and other global central banks has pushed interest rates way below the real rate of inflation, and that has bought us extra time.

But now the Federal Reserve and other global central banks are reversing course in unison, and global financial markets are already starting to decline.

The only way we can keep putting off the next financial crisis is if we continue our unprecedented debt binge and if global central banks continue to artificially prop up the financial markets.

Of course more debt and more central bank manipulation would just make the eventual financial disaster even worse, but that is what we are faced with at this point.

Most people simply don’t understand the gravity of the situation. Nothing was ever fixed after the last financial crisis. Instead, we went on the greatest debt binge that humanity has ever seen, and central banks started creating trillions of dollars out of thin air and recklessly injected that hot money into the financial system.

So now we are in the terminal phase of the largest financial bubble in human history, and there is no easy way out.

We basically have two choices. We can have a horrific financial crisis now, or we can have one a little bit later.

Usually the choice is “later”, and that is why our leaders have been piling on the debt and global central banks have been recklessly creating money.

But it is inevitable that our bad choices will catch up with us eventually, and when that happens the pain that we are going to experience is going to be absolutely off the charts.

Michael Snyder is a Republican candidate for Congress in Idaho’s First Congressional District, and you can learn how you can get involved in the campaign on his official website. His new book entitled “Living A Life That Really Matters” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.

Michael T. Snyder is a graduate of the University of Florida law school and he worked as an attorney in the heart of Washington D.C. for a number of years.Today, Michael is best known for his work as the publisher of The Economic Collapse Blog and The American Dream. 

If you want to know what is coming and what you can do to prepare, read his latest book Get Prepared Now!: Why A Great Crisis Is Coming.

The Last Time These 3 Ominous Signals Appeared Simultaneously Was Just Before The Last Financial Crisis

This article was originally published by Michael Snyder at The Economic Collapse

We have not seen a “leadership reversal”, a “Hindenburg Omen” and a “Titanic Syndrome signal” all appear simultaneously since just before the last financial crisis. Does this mean that a stock market crash is imminent? Not necessarily, but as I have been writing about quite a bit recently, the markets are certainly primed for one. On Wednesday, the Dow fell another 138 points, and that represented the largest single day decline that we have seen since September. Much more importantly, the downward trend that has been developing over the past week appears to be accelerating. Just take a look at this chart. Could we be right on the precipice of a major move to the downside?

John Hussman certainly seems to think so. He is the one that pointed out that we have not seen this sort of a threefold sell signal since just before the last financial crisis. The following comes from Business Insider…

On Tuesday, the number of New York Stock Exchange companies setting new 52-week lows climbed above the number hitting new highs, representing a “leadership reversal” that Hussman says highlights the deterioration of market internals. Stocks also received confirmation of two bearish market-breadth readings known as the Hindenburg Omen and the Titanic Syndrome.

Hussman says these three readings haven’t occurred simultaneously since 2007, when the financial crisis was getting underway. It happened before that in 1999, right before the dot-com crash. That’s not very welcome company.

In fact, every time we have seen these three signals appear all at once there has been a market crash.

Will things be different this time?

We shall see.

If you are not familiar with a “Hindenburg Omen” or “the Titanic Syndrome”, here are a couple of pretty good concise definitions…

• Hindenburg Omen: A sell signal that occurs when NYSE new highs and new lows each exceed 2.8% of advances plus declines on the same day. On Tuesday, they totaled more than 3%.


• Titanic Syndrome: A sell signal triggered when NYSE 52-week lows outnumber 52-week highs within seven days of an all-time high in equities. Stocks most recently hit a record on November 8.

You can see the other times in recent decades when these three signals have appeared simultaneously on this chart right here.

Once again, past patterns do not guarantee that the same thing will happen in the future, but if the market does crash it should not surprise anyone.

10 days ago, I published an article entitled “The Federal Reserve Has Just Given Financial Markets The Greatest Sell Signal In Modern American History”. I pointed out that this stock market bubble was created by unprecedented central bank intervention, and now global central banks are reversing the process that created the bubble in unison. There is no possible way that stock prices can stay at these absolutely absurd levels without central bank help, and if global central banks stay on the sidelines a market decline would seem to be virtually inevitable.

Meanwhile, we are also witnessing a very alarming flattening of the yield curve…

Hogan said the market is nervous about the “flattening” difference between the 2-year yield and the 10-year Treasury yield, which have been moving closer together. The curve dipped to 68 basis points Tuesday, a 10-year low. Hogan said 70 has become a line in the sand, and when it falls below that traders get nervous.

A flattening curve can signal that the curve will invert, which historically means a recession is on the horizon.

If the yield curve does end up inverting, that will be a major red flag.

But the experts assure us that we have nothing to worry about.

For example, just check out what Karyn Cavanaugh of Voya Financial is saying…

“Now that the earnings season is wrapped up, markets are more beholden to macro data. Weakness in oil prices and skepticism about the passing of the tax bill are also weighing on sentiment,” said Karyn Cavanaugh, senior market strategist at Voya Financial.

Despite the drop on the day, major indexes remain within 1.5 percentage points of record levels.

“Any pullback at this stage should be viewed as an opportunity to buy, however. Earnings outlook for U.S. stocks, especially with the synchronized global growth environment is still good,” Cavanaugh said.

And U.S. consumers continue to pile on more debt as if there is no tomorrow. This week we learned that U.S. household debt has almost reached the 13 trillion dollar threshold…

Americans’ debt level rose during the third quarter, driven by an increase in mortgage loans, according to a Federal Reserve Bank of New York report published on Tuesday.

Total U.S. household debt was $12.96 trillion in the three months to September, up $116 billion from the prior three months. Debt levels were $605 billion higher than during the third quarter of 2016.

The fundamentals do not support this kind of irrational optimism.

What the fundamentals have been telling us is that in the absence of central bank support we should see the markets start to decline, and that it is quite likely that a painful recession is on the horizon.

As the next crisis erupts, the mainstream media is going to respond with shock and horror. But the only real surprise is that this ridiculous bubble lasted for as long as it did.

The truth is that a market decline is way overdue. If central banks had not pumped trillions upon trillions of dollars into the global financial system, there is no possible way that stock prices would have ever gotten so high, and now that the central banks are removing the artificial life support we shall see how the markets do on their own.

Michael Snyder is a Republican candidate for Congress in Idaho’s First Congressional District, and you can learn how you can get involved in the campaign on his official website. His new book entitled “Living A Life That Really Matters” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.

Michael T. Snyder is a graduate of the University of Florida law school and he worked as an attorney in the heart of Washington D.C. for a number of years.Today, Michael is best known for his work as the publisher of The Economic Collapse Blog and The American Dream. 

If you want to know what is coming and what you can do to prepare, read his latest book Get Prepared Now!: Why A Great Crisis Is Coming.