The next recession will sweep the Socialists into power

 

What I’m about to say may sound totally crazy at first. But keep reading, because I think you’ll agree that it’s dead-on accurate.

There’s a recession coming.

No, that’s not some Chicken Little “The Sky is Falling” statement. Far from it. It’s just a fact: economies and financial markets always go through boom and bust cycles.

There are good years and lean years, up years and down years.

Hidden Amongst the Furore: Synchronised Warnings From the BIS and the IMF

It has become a disconcerting trend that as geopolitical events intensify and keep a majority of people engaged in the latest outbreak of political theatre, the words of central bankers fall on increasingly deaf ears.

At a seminar of the European Stability Mechanism this month, Bank for International Settlements General Manager Agustin Carstens delivered a speech called, ‘Shelter from the Storm‘.

Ray Dalio: Losing ‘Reserve Status’ Would Lead To 30% Drop In The Dollar

 

During a live interview with Barry Ritholtz for his “Masters In Business” podcast on Monday, Bridgewater Associates CEO – who has been on a seemingly never-ending media tour to promote his new free e-book “A Template For Understanding Big Debt Crises” – once again expounded upon his “1937” markets thesis: That is, his theory that the US economy increasingly resembles the late-cycle dynamic from the 1930s where equity prices topped out as the Federal Reserve tightened monetary policy. Like the 1930s, the global economy is awash and debt, and populist politicians gaining power and influence in the West.

But more interesting than Dalio’s retread of his calls for a recession to begin some time during the next two years, he also repeated a claim he first made back in September, which has been getting more attention since BlackRock CEO Larry Fink said something similar earlier this month: That the US dollar’s days as the dominant global reserve currency are numbered.

Rickards: The Fed Is “Triple Tightening” Into Crisis

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If you have defective and obsolete models, you will produce incorrect analysis and bad policy every time. There’s no better example of this than the Federal Reserve.

The Fed uses equilibrium models to understand an economy that is not an equilibrium system; it’s a complex dynamic system.

The Fed uses the Phillips curve to understand the relationship between unemployment and inflation when 50 years of data say there is no fixed relationship.

The Fed uses “value at risk” modeling based on normally distributed events when the evidence is clear that the degree distribution of risk events is a power curve, not a normal or bell curve.

Disaster Awaits: National Debt Will Be 6 Times The Size Of The Economy

 

Even without changes to the current spending policy, the government’s spending is on an unsustainable path. By the time a child born in 2018 reaches retirement age, the United States national debt will be six times the size of the economy according to an analysis released this week.

Maduro admits failure: ‘No more whining . . . We need to make Venezuela’ (great again)

 

During a speech in which the power went out while he was on live television, Venezuela’s socialist president admitted his economic model has “failed.”

“The production models we’ve tried so far have failed and the responsibility is ours, mine and yours,” President Nicolas Maduro told his ruling PSUV party congress on July 30.

Prepare for a Chinese Maxi-devaluation

(Shutterstock)

 

The news is being dominated by breathless headlines about the new trade war between the U.S. and China. But this trade war has been brewing for years and came as no surprise to readers of my newsletter, Project Prophesy. In fact, the new trade war is simply a continuation of the currency wars that began in 2010.

I’ve warned for over a year that President Trump’s threats of tariffs should be taken seriously, while most of Wall Street discounted Trump’s talk as mere bluster. Now the trade wars are here as we expected, and they will get much worse before they are resolved.

Currency wars arise in a condition of too much debt and too little growth. Economic powers try to steal growth from their trading partners by devaluing their currencies to promote exports and import inflation.

Goldman Warns That Market Valuations Are at Their Highest Since 1900

 

• Returns likely to be lower across all assets in medium term
• Risk scenario sees inflation jump that ushers ‘fast pain’

A prolonged bull market across stocks, bonds and credit has left a measure of average valuation at the highest since 1900, a condition that at some point is going to translate into pain for investors, according to Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

War on Cash: A “Wider Cultural Change Agenda”

 

A certain Michael Andrew is the former global director of accounting at KPMG. He’s also the present generalissimo of Australia’s Black Economy Taskforce.

The stated mission of this “taskforce” sets it among the angels — to combat terrorism, narcotics, tax dodging.

Cash is of course the coin of these evil realms.

Don’t Be Fooled – The Federal Reserve Will Continue Rate Hikes Despite Crisis

 

Though stock markets in general are meaningless and indicate nothing in terms of the health of the economy they still function as a form of hypnosis, or a kind of Pavlovian mechanism; a tool that central bankers can use to keep a population servile and salivating at the ring of a bell. As I have mentioned in the past, the only two elements of the economy that the average person pays attention to in the slightest are the unemployment rate and the Dow. As long as the first is down and the second is up, they aren’t going to take a second look at the health of our financial system.

Have Bundesbank Agents Infiltrated the Fed?

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Germany’s central bank is the Bundesbank. Prior to the commencement of trading of the euro in January 1999, the Bundesbank conducted Germany’s monetary policy. The Bundesbank has a reputation for pursuing general price-level stability above all else. You might say that the Bundesbank has inflation phobia. The reason for this Bundesbank inflation phobia is the remembrance of the hyperinflation Germany experienced between World Wars I and II. Given the US central bank’s recent actions, it would almost seem that the Fed has developed inflation phobia too.

Jim Rickards: We’re Heading for War with North Korea

Click on the picture for the Bloomberg video interview.

 

Speaking with Bloomberg’s Betty Liu on gold, the geopolitical threat of North Korea and what to expect from the Federal Reserve financial expert Jim Rickards provided what his outlook shows for the months ahead.

The Bloomberg host began by asking Rickards why, with no current inflationary problems seen by most investors, he believed that gold was due for a major boom. The Strategic Intelligence editor started, “The reason in the first half [of the year] about 7.8% against enormous headwinds. The Fed has raised rates in December, March and again in June. [Now] we’re seeing disinflation, a slowing economy, a declining labor force. Everything looks like a recession and yet gold went up almost 8% in that environment. As we go forward, the Fed will always be the last to know.”

Peter Schiff Warns This One Event Will Wipe Out Entire Generations of Retirees

In an interview with GoldSeek on April 14, outspoken economist Peter Schiff issued a dire warning to investors.

According to Schiff, a new housing bubble, an overvalued stock market, and President Trump‘s proposed stimulus plan will send the U.S. into extreme panic at some point in the near future.

In fact, Schiff thinks these catalysts will combine to cause an “inflationary maelstrom” that will “wipe out entire generations of retirees” who have their nest eggs invested in the market.

Let’s take a look…

Trump Avoid Debt Crisis ? “Extremely Unlikely” – Rickards

Remember to keep an eye on March 15th as mentioned in a previous post, the poison pill left by the Obama administration where “everything will grind to a halt”.

 

The Congressional Budget Office, CBO, estimates that inflation and real GDP will each grow at about 2% per year in the coming ten years. This means that nominal GDP, which is the sum of real GDP plus inflation, will grow at about 4% per year. Since debt is incurred and paid in nominal terms, nominal GDP growth is the critical measure of the sustainability of U.S. debt.

 

Trump Avoid Debt Crisis ? “Extremely Unlikely” says Rickards

The upcoming March 15 U.S. debt ceiling deadline is something that is being largely ignored by markets and most media for now. Despite it being just 9 trading days away. This will change in the coming days and is one of the many reasons why we are bullish on gold.

James Rickards writing for the Daily Reckoning today looks at the important ‘next signal to watch’ and explains that Trump and his advisors believe they can avoid a debt crisis through higher than average growth.

China Would Outlast U.S. in Trade War, Billion-Dollar Fund Says

China would outlast the U.S. in a trade war, which is a “distinct possibility” next year after President-elect Donald Trump takes office, a commentator wrote in the $1 billion Pine River China Fund’s investor letter.

China’s government would be better placed than the U.S. to marshal state resources to cushion the impact on exporters, wrote James Wang, a City University of Hong Kong professor who pens a monthly commentary for the fund. Privately-owned Chinese exporters would be worse hit than state-controlled peers because they have less political clout in Beijing, he said.