Blockchain Technology – What Is It and How Will It Change Your Life?

• Blockchain technology – What is it?
• Latest developments – Royal Mint Gold & CME, Goldman Sachs and Santander
• Why do we need it? It’s about value
• Blockchain is an extension of economics
• Blockchain allows us reduce uncertainty and risk
• How will it change your life?

For those of you who follow anything to do with blockchain and blockchain technology,  you will know that the space has had its ups and downs in the last couple of weeks.

The exciting news is that two major players in the gold market, the Royal Mint and CME Group have announced a blockchain-backed gold project, and the surprising news is that the R3CEV consortium is apparently under threat.

Britain next? Doctor’s outrage at ‘refugees pushing German hospitals to breaking point’

A refugee waits in a new refugee outpatient clinic in Leipzig, Germany

 

The female anaesthetist said the German health service has been completely overwhelmed by the influx of Muslim asylum-seekers who are REFUSING to be treated by female medics.

In a furious outburst the experienced doctor said hospitals simply cannot cope because so many of the migrants require treatments for diseases long since eradicated in Europe.

She also shockingly claimed migrant parents are abandoning their children at pharmacies across the country after being told that they have to pay a prescription charge for lifesaving drugs.

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.

There Will Be No 25-Year Depression

What we have here is not a failure of Capitalism, but a failure of experimenting with Socialism that is now resulting in the breakdown of society.

As geopolitical analyst and expert, JR Nyquist, once put it, America has fallen victim to Crony Capitalism, which is different than Capitalism itself.

 

How it all works in crony heaven – until it doesn’t anymore – via bastiatinstitute.org

 

 

Good and Bad News

Today, we have bad news and good news. The good news is that there will be no 25-year recession. Nor will there be a depression that will last the rest of our lifetimes.

The bad news: It will be much worse than that. On Monday, the Dow rose another 43 points. Gold seems to be working its way back to the $1,200 level, where it feels most comfortable.

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Old People Are Dead Wood

First, people are getting older. Especially in Europe and Japan, but also in China, Russia and the US. As we’ve described many times, as people get older, they change. They stop producing and begin consuming.

Deutsche Bank’s Ominous Warning: A “Perfect Storm” Is Coming In 2018

 

“We could now be at a crossroads,” warns Deutsche Bank in its annual default study report. As the ‘artificial bond market’ is exposed and yield curves flatten on Fed rate hikes so carry risk-reward is reduced and default cycles have often been linked to the ebbing and flowing of the YC through time with a fairly long lead/lag. With HY defaults having spent 12 of the last 13 years below their long-term average (with the last 5 years the lowest in modern history), “a perfect default storm could be created for 2018 if the Fed raises rates in 2015.”

Defaults will stay unusually low so long as current artificial conditions continue. However, as Deutshe Bank explains, the benign default environment of the last few years may be about to change…

J.P. Morgan’s Dimon warns next crisis will bring even more volatility

It’s not a matter of ‘if’, but ‘when’… and here’s your latest confirmation.

 

LONDON (MarketWatch) — You ain’t seen nothing yet, when it comes to market wreckage from a financial crisis, according to J.P. Morgan boss Jamie Dimon.

In his annual letter to shareholders, the bank’s chief executive warned “there will be another crisis” — and the market reaction could be even more volatile, because regulations are now tougher.

The Austrian Black Swan Claims Its First Foreign Casualty: German Duesselhyp Collapses, To Be Bailed Out

Precisely one week ago in “A Black Swan Lands In Southern Austria: The Ripple Effects Of “Mini-Greece Going Off In The Heartland Of Europe“, when analyzing the consequences of the collapse of Austria’s bad bank, we noted perhaps the biggest paradox of Europe’s emergency preparedness response to the Greek collapse and imminent expulsion from the Eurozone: namely that the biggest threat to German banks was no longer in some Mediterranean nation, but in its very own back yard. To wit:

Irony #2, and the biggest one of all: while German banks had spent the past 3 years preparing for the inevitable Grexit and offloading all their exposure to the now insolvent Greek state, it was a waterfall chain of events which started in Germany’s own “back yard”, courtesy of auditors who decided it was unnecessary to mark losses to market until it was far too late, and the immediate outcome is that one ninth of until recently Aaa/AAA-rated Austria is now also insolvent. And that is just the beginning.

Russia faces ‘perfect storm’ as reserves vanish and derivatives flash default warnings

BNP Paribas says Russia no longer has enough reserves to cover external debt and enters this crisis ‘twice as levered’ as it was before the Lehman crash

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Central bank data show that a blitz of currency intervention depleted reserves by $26bn in the two weeks to December 26, the fastest pace of erosion since the crisis in Ukraine erupted early last year.

Credit defaults swaps (CDS) measuring bankruptcy risk for Russia spiked violently on Tuesday, surging by 100 basis points to 630, before falling back slightly.

Markit says this implies a 32pc expectation of a sovereign default over the next five years, the highest since Western sanctions and crumbling oil prices combined to cripple the Russian economy.

Bill Gross Calls It: 2015 Is Going to Be Terrible

Bill Gross, bond king, ousted executive, self-styled poet of the markets, has a bold, depressing prediction for 2015, and he’s not couching it in any of his usual metaphor: “The good times are over,” he wrote in his January investment outlook note. By the end of 2015, he goes on, “there will be minus signs in front of returns for many asset classes.”

Gross is putting himself way out on a limb: Not one of Wall Street’s professional forecasters predict the S&P 500 will drop in 2015. Their average estimate calls for an 8.1 percent rise. And while the global economy looks weak, the U.S. has been heating up, with GDP up 5 percent in the third quarter.

Currency crisis at Chinese banks ‘could trigger global meltdown’

The growing problems in the Chinese banking system could spill over into a wider financial crisis, one of the most respected analysts of China’s lenders has warned.

Charlene Chu, a former senior analyst at Fitch in Beijing and now the head of Asian research at Autonomous Research, said the rapid expansion of foreign-currency borrowing meant a crisis in China’s financial system was becoming a bigger risk for international banks.

US taper risks fresh crisis, says Deutsche Bank

Deutsche Bank says policymakers have become so used to “throwing liquidity” at structural problems that asset prices had become distorted and risked triggering a fresh crisis

Scaling back the Federal Reserve’s massive bond-buying programme risks throwing the global economy into disarray next year, Deutsche Bank has warned, with lenders unable to cope with higher borrowing costs, despite stronger economic growth.

Declining Power

Admiral: U.S. submarine forces decline as forces of China, Russia, Iran advance undersea warfare capabilities

China, Russia, and Iran pose regional and strategic submarine threats and are building up undersea warfare capabilities as the Navy is cutting its submarine force by 30 percent, the admiral in charge of Pentagon submarine programs told Congress on Thursday.

Rear Adm. Richard Breckenridge, director of Navy undersea warfare programs, said the decline of U.S. submarines is placing a key U.S. military advantage at risk.

“Our adversaries are not standing still, and so even though we have an advantage and we have a lead, we can’t sit on our lead,” Breckenridge told a hearing of the House Armed Services seapower subcommittee.

How to Prepare Your Portfolio for Geopolitical Turmoil

Although both items need to be constantly looked at (50/50), the fundamental data lately is seemingly overriding the technical data. Observing geopolitics on a regular basis shows you the big picture where you can use inductive reasoning to hammer out the specifics in planning your future, be it from an investment standpoint or personal.

Had anyone asked back in January what kind of risks you thought might be giving financial markets a jolt by mid-year, odds are that you would have talked about the Federal Reserve’s intentions with respect to quantitative easing, the outlook for economic growth and whether S&P 500 companies are delivering the kind of earnings that analysts had been expecting.

Perhaps, given recent history, you might have thrown out an additional concern: That some unforeseen event in Spain or Italy might buffet the Eurozone and spill over into North American markets—after all, that has become an almost routine summertime occurrence.

Why is Soros Dumping His Position With Banks?

For more information on George Soros and his history, please see this link.

Everyone’s favorite billionaire investor is back in the spotlight, and this time he has a few people wondering what he’s up to.

Four Signs That We’re Back in Dangerous Bubble Territory

The United States is already experiencing a false recovery to begin with. While the Dow Jones might very well be going up, it’s quite a poor indicator of the economy’s overall health. Jobs are still being lost while entire sectors are propped up and subjugated through government bailouts. Meanwhile, the healthcare industry will soon be in shambles under the weight of heavy politics, law and regulation.

The next economic crash will hit harder than the last due to this current false recovery already being a mere sugar high from ‘quantitative easing’ and accounting tricks. Yet, the real crippling crash to worry about is likely to be the tsunami not seen after the markets already received the next hit. This is the one that will make the Geat Depression look like a Sundays picnic. The United States is not untouchable and is one significant event away from a total meltdown.

As the global equity and bond markets grind ever higher, abundant signs exist that we are once again living through an asset bubble – or rather a whole series of bubbles in a variety of markets. This makes this period quite interesting, but also quite dangerous.