The Home Game Has Arrived: Lessons from the 10th Asymmetric Threat Symposium

 

Last week I was privileged to attend the 10th Asymmetric Threat Symposium. It’s not the first of these I’ve attended but was clearly the best. Maybe the participants felt less restrained by politics and thus spoke more directly to the issues we truly face. Or maybe the quality of experts is rising. For whatever reason, the event was candid and sobering, even for me. The event was held near our nation’s capitol and was sponsored by CACI International, the Center for Security Policy, and ISW (Institute for the Study of War). The title:  What Does It Take to Protect America? Combatting Global Asymmetric Threats.

While the rules of the event require that comments be shared without attribution, I’m pleased to offer a recap for our readers. You can read the agenda and see information about prior versions at www.asymmetricthreat.net. The speakers and panelists were impressive. In fact, I counted 36 stars on the shoulders (Admirals and Generals) of about a dozen participants, both active and retired, not to mention academic and civilian experts.

There were many important points covered and I’ll recap just a few:

First, the question was asked and answered. Are we already at war?

Banks are preparing for an ‘economic nuclear winter’

Video available for viewing at the source.

 

The first half of 2016 has been a roller-coaster for financial markets. A combination of uncertainties surrounding the U.K.’s vote to leave the European Union and weaker-than-expected corporate earnings results across the region means a tough second half looms.

European banks, in particular, have had a very tough six months as the shock and volatility around Brexit sent banking stocks south. Major European banks like Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse saw their shares in free-fall after the referendum’s results were announced. In the U.K., RBS was the worst-hit, with its shares plunging by more than 30 percent since June 24.

The current uncertainty over when the U.K. will start the process of quitting the EU has banks on tenterhooks. But a source told CNBC that banks are “preparing for an economic nuclear winter situation.”

Citi: World economy seems trapped in ‘death spiral’

Please see the source for the video.

 

“The world appears to be trapped in a circular reference death spiral,” Citi strategists led by Jonathan Stubbs said in a report on Thursday.

“Stronger U.S. dollar, weaker oil/commodity prices, weaker world trade/petrodollar liquidity, weaker EM (and global growth)… and repeat. Ad infinitum, this would lead to Oilmageddon, a ‘significant and synchronized’ global recession and a proper modern-day equity bear market.”

Stubbs said that macro strategists at Citi forecast that the dollar would weaken in 2016 and that oil prices were likely bottoming, potentially providing some light at the end of the tunnel.

2016 – US dollar warning : the beautiful isolation of the « global reference currency »

Note for our readers — Following our monetary research work under the form of a surveillance of several months, our team is worried again about the US dollar. After a calming two year time, the dollar is heckled again within today’s new multi monetary world. Surprised by the conclusions of its own analyses, presented here below exclusively to you, our team of experts wishes to warn you, the GEAB readers, about the possible danger threatening the dollar. 2016 could very well be the year when the dollar wall will fall…

To explain the current financial turmoil, all official accusing fingers are pointing to a single guilty party: China, the ideal guilty player, the same way Greece and the euro currency were at their time. It is true that evidence seems to be on the side of those accusing fingers, due to the recently unstable Shanghai stock market and its low values.

Next financial crash is coming – and before we’ve fixed flaws from last one

In case you missed it last week:

 

The next financial crisis is coming, it’s a just a matter of time – and we haven’t finished fixing the flaws in the global system that were so brutally exposed by the last one.

That is the message from the International Monetary Fund’s latest Global Financial Stability report, which will make sobering reading for the finance ministers and central bankers gathered in Lima, Peru, for its annual meeting.

Currency War: Dragging the World Toward World War III

 

Echoes of 1934 are thundering with increasing intensity.

In 1934, United States President Franklin Delano Roosevelt outlawed the private ownership of gold. After confiscating billions in bullion, Roosevelt shocked the world by revaluing it. The cost for an ounce of gold, previously set at $20.67, was suddenly $35. Overnight, Roosevelt devalued the dollar by 69 percent.

The president told the country that it was a radical effort to stimulate America’s economy. A cheaper dollar would make America’s exports less expensive and help American companies sell more products to the rest of the world, he said. More money would flow into America, and more jobs would be created.

It did those things. And it also marched the world another giant step closer to war.

Global recession in next two years is ‘most likely’ scenario, says economist

Willem Buiter, chief economist at Citi and former Bank of England policymaker, warns China’s woes are set to spread

A “hard landing” for China is likely to plunge the world economy into recession in the next two years, Willem Buiter, chief global economist at Citigroup and a former Bank of England policymaker, has said.

As the Federal Reserve in Washington prepares to decide whether to defy warnings of economic fragility and push up interest rates next week, a research note by Citi’s experts warns of a 55% probability of global recession.

New China stock market plunge prompts global jitters

Another day, another slide. The CCP is running out of tricks in its bag and the endgame for the global financial system is almost near. As a previous article had stated, after China loses control, there’s no one else left to prop up the global economy and all will come down like a ton of bricks.

 

Devaluation of yuan and Beijing’s moves to halt shares sell-off fails to prevent biggest one-day fall in three weeks for Shanghai Composite Index

China’s Shanghai Composite Index plunged more than 6% in its biggest drop in three weeks, amid fears that the recent change in exchange rate policy may accelerate flows of capital out of China.

Say A Little Prayer

Monthly Investment Outlook from Bill Gross

I’m not what you would call a “prayerful” type of guy. Even at 30,000 feet, when the air gets rough, I never invoke the “God” word, settling instead for promising myself that if I ever get back to terra firma, I will never fly again, which I promptly forget days or even hours later. It’s not that I’m a non-believer in prayer’s ultimate destination, but more of a cynical take on why the Lord would hand out party favors to everyone that asked, or to those that asked most intently.

…

Funny, too I think, about how I learned two different versions of the Lord’s Prayer: one – the Protestant litany – spoke to “forgiving our debts as we forgive our debtors”; the other – maybe a more traditional Catholic influenced version – substituted “forgive our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” The differences never much bothered me as I prayed less and sinned more into my teenage years, but later I got to thinking about it as I entered the bond market and began to contemplate the odds of paying and being paid, or trespassing and being trespassed against with other people’s money. Given a chance, I thought I would infinitely prefer forgiving a trespasser as opposed to a debtor.

Greek turmoil set to shake global markets out of complacency as sell-off looms

A Greek exit from the euro is now a “base case” scenario for economists and is set to trigger a flight to safety for nervy investors

Financial markets were braced for their worst period of turmoil since the height of the eurozone crisis three years ago, after Greeks chose to overwhelmingly reject the bail-out terms of their creditors, throwing the country on a collision course with the eurozone.

The prolonged period of uncertainty is expected to roil European equities and see investors flock to safe haven assets such as US and German government bonds.

Why the Euro Is Heading for an Earthshaking Crisis

Because the article has so many good points, a majority of it will be left up, as has been done here in rare cases.

Courtesy of The Trumpet:

 

And why the euro is incompatible with democracy

European leaders are in a panic. Greece’s banks are closed. Experts warn the global economy is under threat. And it all hinges on Greece’s place in the eurozone.

Fears of rioting and mass panic, dormant since the Greek fires of 2008, are rising again.

It shows just how fragile the eurozone is. In April 2014, the Greek government was able to borrow money on the normal financial markets at the relatively high, but not appalling, rate of 4.95 percent. As far as lenders were concerned, the euro crisis was over. Greece was no longer dangling over the edge of a precipice. Instead, it could borrow money just like any other normal nation.

Greece could be forced to lock down savers’ cash as debt crisis worsens

Greece’s central bank has issued the clearest warning yet that the country is on course to default on its sovereign debt at the end of the month and crash out of the single currency, while finance ministers across Europe also confirmed they are making contingency plans for a messy ending to the crisis.

Athens is due to repay €1.6bn to the International Monetary Fund on 30 June but will be unable to do so unless its creditors release a €7.2bn bailout payment before then.

Greek debt crisis reaches ‘DEFCON 1’ as savers pull €400m in ONE DAY and markets plunge

PANIC has descended on Greece as the debt-stricken country careers out the eurozone – with savers pulling millions in cash while investors continue to flee financial markets.

The Greek Prime Minister today blasted Athens’ European Union creditors who he said were trying to “humiliate” and “strangle” Greece into making proposed spending cuts in return for bailout cash.

Alexis Tsipras confirmed that talks have completely stalled, with the two sides in total stalemate over austerity measures.

The Central Banks Are Losing Control Of The Financial Markets

Every great con game eventually comes to an end.  For years, global central banks have been manipulating the financial marketplace with their monetary voodoo.  Somehow, they have convinced investors around the world to invest tens of trillions of dollars into bonds that provide a return that is way under the real rate of inflation.  For quite a long time I have been insisting that this is highly irrational.  Why would any rational investor want to put money into investments that will make them poorer on a purchasing power basis in the long run?  And when any central bank initiates a policy of “quantitative easing”, any rational investor should immediately start demanding a higher rate of return on the bonds of that nation.  Creating money out of thin air and pumping into the financial system devalues all existing money and creates inflation.  Therefore, rational investors should respond by driving interest rates up.  Instead, central banks told everyone that interest rates would be forced down, and that is precisely what happened.  But now things have shifted.  Investors are starting to behave more rationally and the central banks are starting to lose control of the financial markets, and that is a very bad sign for the rest of 2015.

Disaster Is Inevitable When The Two Decade-Old Stock Bubble Bursts

 

Six years after the Global Financial Crisis, the U.S. stock market continues to soar to new heights with nary a pullback or correction. In this piece, I will explain why the stock market is experiencing a new bubble that is actually another wave of the bubble that has existed since the mid-1990s.

A two-decade old bubble? Yes, you’ve read that correctly. Most people will consider this assertion preposterous, but the facts don’t lie. Though the U.S. stock market has been experiencing a bubble for two decades, it will not last forever. I believe that the ultimate popping of this bubble will have terrifying consequences for both investors and the global economy that is tied so closely to the stock market.

The SP500 stock index has more than tripled since its low in 2009, but that doesn’t mean that we are out of the woods. On the contrary, this is the calm before the storm.