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Is Ron Paul about to be proven right once again? For a very long time, Ron Paul has been one of my political heroes. His willingness to stand up for true constitutional values and to keep saying “no” to the Washington establishment over and over again won the hearts of millions of American voters, and I wish that there had been enough of us to send him to the White House either in 2008 or in 2012. To this day, I still wish that we could make his classic work entitled “End The Fed” required reading in every high school classroom in America. He was one of the few members of Congress that actually understood economics, and it is very sad that he has now retired from politics. With the enormous mess that Washington D.C. has become, we sure could use a lot more statesmen like him right now.

But even though he has retired from politics, Ron Paul is still speaking out about the most important issues of the day. And what he recently told CNBC is extremely ominous.

The following comes from a CNBC article entitled “Ron Paul: US is barreling towards a stock market drop of 50% or more, and there’s no way to prevent it”…

According to the former Republican Congressman from Texas, the recent jump in Treasury bond yields suggest the U.S. is barreling towards a potential recession and market meltdown at a faster and faster pace.

And, he sees no way to prevent it.

Of course lots of such predictions are flying around these days.

In fact, at this point even the IMF is warning of a “second Great Depression”.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Next Financial Crisis Is Right on Schedule (2019)

September 13, 2018

The Next Financial Crisis Is Right on Schedule (2019)

Neither small business nor the bottom 90% of households can afford this “best economy ever.”

After 10 years of unprecedented goosing, some of the real economy is finally overheating: costs are heating up, unemployment is at historic lows, small business optimism is high, and so on–all classic indicators that the top of this cycle is in.

Financial assets have been goosed to record highs in the everything bubble.Buy the dip has worked in stocks, bonds and real estate–what’s not to like?

Beneath the surface, the frantic goosing has planted seeds of financial crisis which have sprouted and are about to blossom with devastating effect. There are two related systems-level concepts which illuminate the coming crisis: the S-Curve and non-linear effects.

The S-Curve (illustrated below) is visible in both natural and human systems.The boost phase of rapid growth/adoption is followed by a linear phase of maturity in which growth/adoption slows as the dynamic has reached into the far corners of the audience / market: everybody already caught the cold, bought Apple stock, etc.

The linear stage of maturity is followed by a decline phase that’s non-linear.Linear means 1 unit of input yields 1 unit of output. Non-linear means 1 unit of input yields 100 unit of output. In the first case, moving 1 unit of snow clears a modest path. In the second case, moving 1 unit of snow unleashes an avalanche.

The previous two bubbles that topped/popped in 2000-01 and 2008-09 both exhibited non-linear dynamics that scared the bejabbers out of the central bank/state authorities accustomed to linear systems.

In a panic, former Fed chair Alan Greenspan pushed interest rates to historic lows to inflate another bubble, thus insuring the next bubble would manifest even greater non-linear devastation.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

ponents.

Weekly Commentary: Unassailable

September 1, 2018

Weekly Commentary: Unassailable

I’ve been here before and, candidly, it’s not much fun. Lodged in my mind this week was the brilliant quote from the 19th century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer: “All truth passes through three stages: First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as self-evident.”

It’s fascinating how it all works. Looking back, there was definitely a Bubble in 1999. Clearly, 2007 was one huge Bubble. Everything is obvious in hindsight, and most look back now and contend it was pretty conspicuous even at the time. Having toiled through both prolonged Bubble periods – arguing against deeply embedded bullish conventional wisdom – I can attest to the fact that the Bubble viewpoint was violently opposed at the late stages of both cycles.

I don’t feel I’m venturing out on a limb to predict that some years into the future the 2018 Bubble backdrop will be recalled as rather self-evident. Years of experimental “whatever it takes” global monetary stimulus (rates, QE and market manipulation) nurtured excess and imbalances on an unparalleled global scale. EM borrowed excessively, too much denominated in foreign (U.S. dollar!) currencies. The Federal Reserve (all central banks) held rates too low for much too long. Prices for virtually all asset classes were inflated to dangerous extremes.

The resulting Tech Bubble 2.0 dwarfed the earlier nineties version, culminating in a global technology arms race. China was a historic Bubble of reckless proportions. Protectionism and Trade wars were a scourge for markets and global growth. Unsound “money” fueled populism. In the end, the backdrop created a cauldron of deepening geopolitical animosities and flashpoints.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Weekly Commentary: Powell, Greenspan and Whatever it Takes

August 26, 2018

Weekly Commentary: Powell, Greenspan and Whatever it Takes

Fed Chairman Powell is in a tough spot, one made no easier now that he’s on the receiving end of disapproving presidential tweets. The global Bubble has begun to falter, which only exacerbates divergences between various markets and economies. The U.S. is booming, while China struggles and EM economies now stumble into the dark downside of an epic cycle. The U.S. economy and markets beckon for tighter financial conditions, while higher U.S. rates pose significant danger to fragile global markets already confronting a major tightening of financial conditions.

Powell played it safe in Jackson Hole. I imagine he’d have preferred to sit this one out. As such, his presentation was too heavy on rationalization and justification. The FOMC is trapped in Greenspan-style “baby steps,” and it is curious that the Fed Chairman would choose to praise Alan Greenspan for his nineties policy approach:

“Under Chairman Greenspan’s leadership, the committee converged on a risk-management strategy that can be distilled into a simple request: ‘Let’s wait one more meeting; if there are clearer signs of inflation, we will commence tightening.’ Meeting after meeting, the committee held off on rate increases while believing that signs of rising inflation would soon appear. And meeting after meeting, inflation gradually declined.”

If the Greenspan Fed had in fact adopted a “risk management strategy,” it was a failed attempt. It’s too easy these days to disregard the highly disruptive boom and bust cycles that have been prominent in U.S. and global markets (and economies) over recent decades. And here we are today, the Federal Reserve still accommodating Bubble Dynamics because of its failure to respond to financial developments and contain excess back in the nineties.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

If You Read Between The Lines, Global Economic Leaders Are Telling Us Exactly What Is Coming

August 22, 2018

If You Read Between The Lines, Global Economic Leaders Are Telling Us Exactly What Is Coming

Sometimes, a strongly-worded denial is the most damning evidence of all that something is seriously wrong. And when things start to really get crazy, “the spin” is often the exact opposite of the truth. In recent days we have seen a lot of troubling headlines and a lot of chaos in the global financial marketplace, but authorities continue to assure us that everything is going to be just fine. Of course we witnessed precisely the same thing just prior to the great financial crisis of 2008. Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke insisted that a recession was not coming, and we proceeded to plunge into the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. Is our society experiencing a similar state of denial about what is ahead of us here in 2018?

Let me give you a few examples of some recent things that global economic leaders have said, and what they really meant…

–Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk: “We are definitely not going bankrupt.”

Translation: “We are definitely going bankrupt.”

Tesla is a company that is supposedly worth 51 billion dollars, but the reality is that they are going to zero. They have been bleeding massive amounts of cash for years, and now a day of reckoning has finally arrived. A severe liquidity crunch has forced the company to delay payments or to ask for enormous discounts from suppliers, and many of those suppliers are now concerned that Tesla is on the verge of collapse…

Specifically, a recent survey sent privately by a well-regarded automotive supplier association to top executives, and seen by the WS , found that 18 of 22 respondents believe that Tesla is now a financial risk to their companies.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Ron Paul Warns That When The “Biggest Bubble In The History Of Mankind” Bursts It Could “Cut The Stock Market In Half”

July 16, 2018

Ron Paul Warns That When The “Biggest Bubble In The History Of Mankind” Bursts It Could “Cut The Stock Market In Half”

When this bubble finally bursts, will we witness the biggest stock market crash in U.S. history? “The bigger they come, the harder they fall” is a well used phrase, but I think that it is very appropriate in this case. From a low of 6,443.27 on March 6th, 2009, we have seen the Dow nearly quadruple in value since the last financial crisis. It has been a remarkable run, and it has lasted far longer than virtually any of the experts anticipated. But what goes up must come down eventually. This stock market bubble was almost entirely fueled by easy money from the Federal Reserve, and now that easy money has been cut off. The insiders can see the handwriting on the wall and they are getting out of the market at a pace that we haven’t seen since 2008. Could it be possible that the day of reckoning is finally at our door?

Of course we have been hearing warnings like this for a very long time. In fact, I have been warning about a market crash for a very long time. Just the other day, one of my readers insisted that if something was going to take place that “it would have happened by now”. In the Internet age, we have been trained to have very short attention spans, but financial bubbles don’t care about the length of our attention spans. They all inevitably come to a bitter end, but they don’t reach that end until they are good and ready.

And without a doubt we are on borrowed time, but meanwhile so many of us that are continually warning about what we are facing are getting a lot of heat for it.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

GOLD & SILVER: The Ultimate Hedge Against Everything That Is Wrong In The Markets

April 25, 2018

GOLD & SILVER: The Ultimate Hedge Against Everything That Is Wrong In The Markets

Today we are getting another whiff of what’s wrong in the markets. Currently, the Dow Jones Index is down over 500 points, and the NASDAQ is off by more than 100 points. Who knows where the markets will finally end up at the close of trading, but it really doesn’t matter. Markets aren’t valued in days or weeks; rather it takes months and years. So, be patient, and you will be rewarded with at least a 50% decline in the Dow Jones Index.

Unfortunately, a lot of traders, even some frustrated precious metals investors, forget about the STAGES OF A FINANCIAL BUBBLE. It seems like after about ten years, all memory of the 2008 Financial Meltdown has been all but forgotten. While I can understand the “This time is different” by the Mainstream Media, I have to get a kick reading comments by disenchanted precious metals investors who have been swayed by the rampant insanity in the markets.

So, let me publish the stages of a financial bubble to remind those who have either been brainwashed by the Mainstream Media or who have just forgotten the fundamentals:

If I had to make a reasonable guesstimate, I would imagine we are somewhere going down the Peak slope or close to the Denial Stage. However, once the Dow Jones Index falls below 20,000, we will know that the markets have entered into the Fear Stage. During the Fear Stage is when I see the price and demand for precious metals to increase. As we enter the Capitulation Stage, then we could experience precious metals demand like we have never seen before.

Let’s take a look at the current Dow Jones Index chart. As I mentioned in several articles and videos, nothing goes down in a straight line, and it will likely take 1-2 years before the Index reaches its lows. However, this will not be the Dow’s ultimate low.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Cryptos May Destabilise Fiat

November 16, 2017

CRYPTOS MAY DESTABILISE FIAT

The assumption in some quarters is that crypto-currencies will replace gold as money, or at least challenge it. This is an error borne out of a misunderstanding of catallactics, or the theory of exchange. It also ignores the fact that beyond a few European countries and North America, gold is firmly money in the minds of ordinary people. I wrote an article on this subject, explaining why cryptocurrencies are not a new form of money, here.

Anyone reading this article may wish to read my original article first, to understand the true status of cryptocurrencies. I concluded that cryptocurrencies are the purest form of financial bubble in the history of speculation, and will be of great theoretical interest to future generations, just as the phenomena of the Mississippi, South Sea, and tulip bubbles are to us today. I also wrote that

“It’s worth noting that all crypto-currencies together are worth $120bn, with bitcoin $55bn of that total. This is only a very small fraction of cash and deposits worldwide. Therefore, the point where new money to fuel the craze runs out does not appear to have been reached, and could have much further to go.”

That was in August, when bitcoin was about $3,000 against today’s price of more than double that. In the short-term, all sorts of dubious promoters are sending unsolicited invitations to buy, promising price gains of thousands per cent. It’s a fair bet these promoters own cryptocurrencies themselves, and are puffing their own interest. A failure of the innocent to take the bait in sufficient numbers could easily lead to a sharp correction.

We must look beyond that. This article will examine more closely the dynamics driving bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, and it concludes that rather than destabilise gold, if the craze continues it is far more likely to destabilise fiat currencies.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

An Accountant Smells a Rat – Peter Diekmeyer

October 2, 2017

An Accountant Smells a Rat – Peter Diekmeyer

Twenty years ago Doug Noland was so worried about imbalances surrounding the dot.com boom that he began to title his weekly reports “The Credit Bubble Bulletin. Years later, he warned the world about the impending 2008 crisis.

However a coming implosion, he says, could be the biggest yet.

“We are in a global finance bubble, which I call the grand-daddy of all bubbles,” said Noland. “Economists can’t see it. They can’t model money and credit. However, to those outside the system, the facts are increasingly clear.”

Noland points to inflating real estate, bond and equity prices as key causes for concern. According to the Federal Reserve’s September Z.1 Flow of Funds report, the value of US equities jumped $1.5 trillion during the second quarter to $42.2 trillion, a record 219% of GDP.

Noland’s Credit Bubble thesis

Noland may be right. A report by the International Institute of Finance released in June estimated that global government, business and personal debts totaled $217 trillion earlier this year. That’s more than three times (327%) higher than global economic output.

Adding to the complexity is the fact that not all debts are fully recorded. For example, according to a World Economic Forum study, the world’s six largest pension saving systems – the US, UK, Japan, Netherlands, Canada and Australia – are expected to experience a $224 trillion funding shortfall by 2050.

Noland’s warnings come during a time of exceptional public trust in governments, central banks, regulators and other institutions. Market volatility is trending at near record lows.

In June, Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen spoke for many when she said that she did not see a financial crisis occurring “in our lifetimes.”

Unburdened by “econometrics groupthink”

So why would Noland, who during his day job runs a tactical short book at McAlvany Wealth Management, see things that government, academic, and central bank economists don’t?

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Which Assets Are Most Likely to Survive the Inevitable “System Re-Set”?

February 9, 2017

Which Assets Are Most Likely to Survive the Inevitable “System Re-Set”?

Your skills, knowledge and social capital will emerge unscathed on the other side of the re-set wormhole. Your financial assets held in centrally controlled institutions will not.

Longtime correspondent C.A. recently asked a question every American household should be asking: which assets are most likely to survive the “system re-set” that is now inevitable? It’s a question of great import because not all assets are equal in terms of survivability in crisis, when the rules change without advance notice.

If you doubt the inevitability of a system implosion/re-set, please read Is America In A Bubble (And Can It Ever Return To “Normal”)? This brief essay presents charts that reveal a sobering economic reality: America is now dependent on multiple asset bubbles never popping–something history suggests is not possible.

It isn’t just a financial re-set that’s inevitable–it’s a political and social re-set as well. For more on why this is so, please consult my short book Why Our Status Quo Failed and Is Beyond Reform.

The charts below describe the key dynamics driving a system re-set. Earned income (wages) as a share of GDP has been falling for decades: this means labor is receiving a diminishing share of economic growth. Since costs and debt continue rising while incomes are declining or stagnating, this asymmetry eventually leads to insolvency.

The “fix” for insolvency has been higher debt and debt-based spending–in essence, borrowing from future income to fund more consumption today. But each unit of new debt is generating less economic activity/growth. This is called diminishing returns: eventually the costs of servicing the additional debt exceed the increasingly trivial gains.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Please Don’t Pop My Bubble!

June 24, 2016

Please Don’t Pop My Bubble!

So ride your bubble of choice up–stocks, bonds, housing, bat guano, take your pick–but it’s best to keep your thumb on the sell button.

One person’s bubble is another person’s “fair market value.” What is clearly an outrageously overvalued asset perched at nosebleed levels of central-bank fueled speculative euphoria is to the owner an asset at “fair market value.”

But beneath the euphoric confidence that valuations can only drift higher forever and ever is the latent fear that something could stick a pin in “my bubble”— that is, whatever bubblicious asset we happen to own and treasure as a source of our financial wealth could be popped, destroying not just our financial bubble but our psychological bubble of faith in permanent manias.

Consider housing prices, which are clearly in an echo-bubble of the Great Housing Bubble of 2000-2007. (Chart courtesy of Market Daily Briefing.)

The psychological underpinning of all bubbles and echo bubbles is on display here. In the first bubble, those benefiting from the stupendous price increases are not just euphoric at the surge in unearned wealth–they believe the hype with all their hearts and minds that the bubble is not a bubble at all, it’s all just “fair market value” at work.

In other words, the massive increase in unearned personal wealth is not just temporary good fortune–it is permanent, rational and deserved.

Alas, all bubbles, no matter how euphoric or long-lasting, eventually pop. All the certainties that seemed so obviously true and timeless to the believers melt into air, and their touching faith that the bubble valuations were permanent, rational and deserved dissipates in a wrenchingly painful reconciliation with reality.

The agonized cries of those watching their bubble-wealth vanish do not fall on deaf ears.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Bernanke’s New Helicopter Money Plan——-Sheer Destructive Lunacy

April 14, 2016

Bernanke’s New Helicopter Money Plan——-Sheer Destructive Lunacy

If you don’t think the current central bank driven economic and financial bubble is going to end badly, recall a crucial historical fact. To wit, the worldwide race of central banks to the zero bound and NIRP and their $10 trillion bond-buying spree during the last seven years was the brain child of Ben S Bernanke.

He’s the one who falsely insisted that Great Depression 2.0 was just around the corner in September 2008. Along with Goldman’s plenipotentiary at the US Treasury, Hank Paulson, it was Bernanke who stampeded the entirety of Washington into tossing out the window the whole rule book of sound money, fiscal rectitude and free market discipline.

In fact, there was no extraordinary crisis. The Lehman failure essentially triggered a self-contained leverage and liquidity bust in the canyons of Wall Street, and it would have burned out there had the Fed allowed money market interest rates to do their work. That is, to rise sufficiently to force into liquidation the gambling houses like Lehman, Goldman and Morgan Stanley that had loaded their balance sheets with trillions of illiquid or long-duration assets and funded them with cheap overnight money.

There would have been no significant spillover effect. The notions that the financial system was imploding into a black hole and that ATMs would have gone dark and money market funds failed are complete urban legends. They were concocted by Wall Street to panic Washington into massive intervention to save their stocks and partnership shares.

The same is true of the claim that corporate payrolls would have been missed for want of revolving credit availability and that the entirety of AIG had to be bailed out to the tune of $185 billion in order to protect insurance and annuity holders.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Federal Reserve Just Made Another Huge Mistake

January 28, 2016

The Federal Reserve Just Made Another Huge Mistake

As stocks continue to crash, you can blame the Federal Reserve, because the Fed is more responsible for creating the current financial bubble that we are living in than anyone else. When the Federal Reserve pushed interest rates all the way to the floor and injected lots of hot money into the financial markets during their quantitative easing programs, this pushed stock prices to wildly artificial levels. The only way that it would have been possible to keep stock prices at those wildly artificial levels would have been to keep interest rates ultra-low and to keep recklessly creating lots of new money. But now the Federal Reserve has ended quantitative easing and has embarked on a program of very slowly raising interest rates. This is going to have very severe consequences for the markets, but Janet Yellen doesn’t seem to care.

There is a reason why the financial world hangs on every single word that is issued by the Fed. That is because the massively inflated stock prices that we see today were a creation of the Fed and are completely dependent on the Fed for their continued existence.

Right now, stock prices are still 30 to 40 percent above what the economic fundamentals say that they should be based on historical averages. And if we are now plunging into a very deep recession as I contend, stock prices should probably fall by a total of more than 50 percent from where they are now.

The only way that stock prices could have ever gotten this disconnected from economic reality is with the help of the Federal Reserve. And since the U.S. dollar is the primary reserve currency of the entire planet, the actions of the Fed over the past few years have created stock market bubbles all over the globe.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Amazon And The Fantastic FANGs——A Bubblicious Breakfast Of Unicorns And Slippery Accounting

January 16, 2016

Amazon And The Fantastic FANGs——A Bubblicious Breakfast Of Unicorns And Slippery Accounting

At year end we posted a rant about the “Brobdingnagian” bubble embedded in Amazon’s market cap. On December 29th it was valued at $325 billion and had gained $180 billion or 55% of that towering figure in just the previous 12 months.

Self-evidently this was a flashing red warning signal that the end of the third great central bank fueled financial bubble of his century was near. AMZN and its three other FANG amigos had accounted for a $530 billion gain in market cap while the other 496 stocks in the S&P 500 had declined by an even larger amount.

That is, the apparently flat S&P 500 index of 2015 was hiding an incipient bear—–owing to a market narrowing action like none before. Compared to the Fabulous FANGs (Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google), the early 1970s Nifty Fifty of stock market lore paled into insignificance.

After the worst start to a year in history, some of the air has now been let out of the bubble. Amazon’s market cap is now down by $53 billion or 16% and the story has been roughly the same for the rest of the FANGs.

After Wednesday’s plunge, Goggle is now also down by $52 billion or 10%; Facebook is lower by $33 billion or 10%; and Netflix is off by $6 billion or 11%. In all, the FANGs have given back in eight trading days about $144 billion or 28% of their madcap gains during 2015.

AMZN Market Cap data by YCharts

Call that a start, but in the great scheme of things it doesn’t amount to much. Consider the case of Amazon. Its PE multiple on LTM net income of $328 million has dropped from 985X all the way to…….well, 829X!

Likewise, it’s now valued at 97X its $2.8 billion of LTM free cash flow compared to 117X at year end.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Weekly Commentary: Risk Off?

November 15, 2015

Weekly Commentary: Risk Off?

The “Granddaddy of All Bubbles” thesis rests upon the view that the world is in the midst of the precarious grand finale of a multi-decade global Credit and financial Bubble. When a Bubble bursts, system reflation requires an even larger fresh new Bubble. This has repeatedly been the case going back at least to the “decade of greed” late-eighties Bubble in the U.S. These days the world confronts the terminal Bubble phase partially because of the unprecedented scope of the China and EM Bubbles. It’s simply difficult to imagine another more far-reaching Bubble.

Also critical to the finale Bubble thesis is that the “global government finance Bubble” – encompassing unprecedented excesses in sovereign debt, central bank Credit and government market manipulation – has engulfed the very foundation of contemporary “money” and Credit. It’s again quite a challenge to envisage a new financial Bubble inflation cycle following a crisis of confidence at the heart of global finance.

As I’ve posited repeatedly, the global Bubble has been pierced. There’s more confirmation again this week. The collapse in commodities and EM currencies along with the faltering Chinese financial Bubble mark an historic inflection point. Global policymakers have gone to incredible measures to stabilize market, financial and economic backdrops. Yet reflationary measures will continue to only further destabilize.

When policy-induced “risk on” is overpowering global securities markets, fragilities remain well concealed (and my prognosis appears ridiculous). Fragilities, however, swiftly manifest with the reappearance of “risk off.” Rather quickly securities markets demonstrate their proclivity for illiquidity and so-called “flash crashes.” So after an unsettled week in global markets, the critical issue is whether “risk on” is giving way to “risk off” dynamics.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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