Home » Posts tagged 'economiccollapseblog' (Page 7)
Tag Archives: economiccollapseblog
We Have Never Seen Global Trade Collapse This Dramatically Outside Of A Major Recession
We Have Never Seen Global Trade Collapse This Dramatically Outside Of A Major Recession
If you have been watching for the next major global economic downturn, you can now stop waiting, because it has officially arrived. Never before in history has global trade collapsed this dramatically outside of a major worldwide recession. And this makes perfect sense – when global economic activity is increasing there is more demand for goods and services around the world, and when global economic activity is decreasing there is less demand for goods and services around the world. So far this year, global trade is down about 8.4 percent, and over the past 30 days the Baltic Dry Index has been absolutely plummeting. A month ago it was sitting at a reading of 809, but now it has fallen all the way to 628. However, it is when you look at the trade numbers for specific countries that the numbers become particularly startling.
Just within the last few days, new trade numbers have come out of China. China accounts for approximately one-fifth of all global factory exports, and for many years Chinese export growth has helped fuel the overall global economy.
But now Chinese exports are falling. In October, Chinese exports were down 6.9 percent compared to a year ago. That follows a decline of 3.7 percent in September.
The numbers for Chinese imports are even worse. Chinese imports in October were down 18.8 percent compared to a year ago after falling 20.4 percent in September. China’s growing middle class was supposed to help lead a global economic recovery, but that simply is not happening.
The following chart from Zero Hedge shows just how dramatic these latest numbers are compared to what we are accustomed to witnessing. As you can see, the only time Chinese trade numbers have been this bad for this long was during the major global recession of 2008 and 2009…
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Former Reagan Administration Official Warns That Financial Disaster Is Dead Ahead
Former Reagan Administration Official Warns That Financial Disaster Is Dead Ahead
Why won’t the American people listen to the warnings? David Stockman was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1977 to 1981, and he served as the Director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Ronald Reagan from 1981 to 1985. These days, he is running a website called “Contra Corner” which I highly recommend that you check out. Stockman believes that a global “debt super-cycle” that has been building for decades is now bursting, and he is convinced that the consequences for the U.S. and for the rest of the planet will be absolutely catastrophic. His findings are very consistent with what I have been writing about on The Economic Collapse Blog, and if Stockman is correct the times ahead of us are going to be exceedingly painful.
But right now, most people don’t seem to be in the mood to listen to these types of warnings. Even though there is a mountain of evidence that the global economy has already plunged into recession, U.S. stocks had a great month in October, and so most Americans seem to think that the crisis has passed.
Of course the truth is that the stock market is not an accurate barometer of the economy and it never has been. Back in 2008, almost everything else started to go downhill before stocks did, and the same thing is happening once again. In a recent article, Stockman explained that stocks are surging to absolutely ridiculous levels even though corporate earnings are actually way down…
At this point, 75% of S&P 500 companies have reported Q3 results, and earnings are coming in at $93.80 per share on an LTM basis. That happens to be 7.4% below the peak $106 per share reported last September, and means that the market today is valuing these shrinking profits at a spritely 22.49X PE ratio.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Why Is This Happening? Unprecedented Flooding Has Hit The U.S. Within The Last 30 Days
Why Is This Happening? Unprecedented Flooding Has Hit The U.S. Within The Last 30 Days
Over the past 30 days, major floods have hit the east coast, the west coast and now the middle part of the country. So why is this happening? Why is the U.S. being hit by so many catastrophic weather events all of a sudden? During the past month flooding has caused billions of dollars in damage, and in many areas the clean up is going to take well into next year. Some pundits are blaming El Nino, but others are pointing to other potential reasons for why this may be happening. Let’s start by taking a look at some of the biggest flood events that have happened over the past 30 days…
Hurricane Joaquin never made landfall on the east coast, but moisture from the storm had a tremendous impact – particularly in South Carolina. In fact, the governor of the state said that the region had not seen that type of rain “in a thousand years”…
“We haven’t had this level of rain in the low-country in a thousand years — that’s how big this is,” said South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley. Days of record rainfall and catastrophic flooding left at least seventeen people dead in South Carolina and two dead in North Carolina, Oct. 6, 2015. Thirteen dams have failed.
It would be very difficult to overstate the amount of damage that was caused by this storm. Some officials are estimating that the total amount of economic damage done “will probably be in the billions of dollars”…
The rains may have stopped in South Carolina, but the danger and the work to rebuild are far from over.
“I believe that things will get worse before they get better,” Columbia Mayor Steve Benjamin told reporters Monday.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Superyacht Getaway Subs And Luxury Bomb Shelters: The Elite Are The Most Paranoid Preppers Of All
Superyacht Getaway Subs And Luxury Bomb Shelters: The Elite Are The Most Paranoid Preppers Of All
When it comes to “prepping”, many among the elite take things to an entirely different level. As you will see below, the elite are willing to pay big money for cutting edge home security measures, luxury bomb shelters and superyacht getaway submarines. Some of the things that the elite are demanding for their own protection go beyond even what we would see in a James Bond film, and serving the prepping needs of the elite has become a multi-billion dollar business. Meanwhile, the media outlets that the elite own continue to mock the rest of us for getting prepared. All the time we see headlines like this one that appeared in a major American news source: “Preppers: Meet the paranoid Americans awaiting the apocalypse“. Well, if we are paranoid for setting aside some extra food and supplies for the future, what does that make the people that you will read about in this article?
The elite live in a world that is completely different from the world that you and I live in. In wealthy enclaves of major global cities such as London, elitists are willing to shell out massive amounts of money to ensure that everyone else is kept out. The following comes from an article that was just published a few hours ago by the London Evening Standard entitled “The paranoid world of London’s super-rich: DNA-laced security mist and superyacht getaway submarines“…
Business is booming because billionaires are a paranoid bunch. Take one who recently moved to Mayfair. ‘He wanted everything, from protection from cyber hacking through to physical intrusion and kidnapping,’ says Bond Gunning. ‘We ended up installing fingerprint-activated locks for family members and programmable keys for staff that limit the time they are allowed into the property and the rooms they are able to enter and exit.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Expert That Correctly Predicted Market Moves In July, August And September Says Stocks Will Crash In November
Expert That Correctly Predicted Market Moves In July, August And September Says Stocks Will Crash In November
When someone is right over and over and over, eventually people start paying attention. Personally, I have learned to tune out the “forecasts” of most “economic experts” out there. As an attorney, I was trained to be skeptical, and I have found that most forecasts about what the financial markets are going to do are not worth the paper they are printed on. However, once in a while something comes along that really gets my attention. Over the past few days, I have seen a number of references to the remarkable forecasts of Bo Polny of Gold 2020 Forecast. In recent months he has correctly predicted that U.S. stocks would begin to drop in July, that there would be a huge plunge in August and that that the month of September would be rather uneventful. Now he is saying that he expects “November to be a complete meltdown on the U.S. and world markets”. Just because he has been right in the past does not guarantee that he will be correct this time around, but lots of people (like me) are starting to pay attention.
So how does Polny come to his conclusions? Well, he uses something that most of us hated when we were in school – mathematics. The following comes from the Daily Sheeple…
Cyclical analyst Bo Polny of Gold 2020 Forecast utilizes advanced mathematical formulas and years of cyclical analysis to make forecasts about global stock markets. In late July he noted that U.S. stock markets had hit a top and that investors should prepare for a rapid down-move in the Dow Jones and other indexes. As we now know, that prediction has come to pass.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
20 Reasons Why All The People That Quit Prepping After September Are Dead Wrong
20 Reasons Why All The People That Quit Prepping After September Are Dead Wrong
Millions of Americans were gearing up for some huge event to happen in September, but the world didn’t end and now many of them have given up entirely on prepping. Of course the truth is that some absolutely earth-shattering events did take place last month, but because September did not play out exactly as some were anticipating, a lot of people feel very let down. My contacts in the emergency food industry tell me that sales have dropped off dramatically, and yesterday I was told by someone that I trust that the same is true for those that sell precious metals. But this should not be happening. What we witnessed in August and September was just the warm up act, and all of the numbers are absolutely screaming at us that we are right on track for a major global crisis. In this article I am going to focus on economic and financial issues, but there are so many other things going on around the planet right now that threaten to throw our world into turmoil. Anyone that thinks that it is safe to “relax” now is simply not paying attention. The following are 20 reasons why all the people that quit prepping after September are dead wrong…
#1 U.S. exports are down 11 percent for the year so far. The only other times they have fallen this dramatically since the turn of the century were during the last two recessions.
#2 Since March, the amount of stuff being shipped by truck, rail and air inside the United States has been falling every single month on a year over year basis. This is a clear indication that economic activity is really slowing down.
#3 Wholesale sales in the U.S. have fallen to the lowest level since the last recession.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Global Trade Is Collapsing As The Worldwide Economic Recession Deepens
Global Trade Is Collapsing As The Worldwide Economic Recession Deepens
When the global economy is doing well, the amount of stuff that is imported and exported around the world goes up, and when the global economy is in recession, the amount of stuff that is imported and exported around the world goes down. It is just basic economics. Governments around the world have become very adept at manipulating other measures of economic activity such as GDP, but the trade numbers are more difficult to fudge. Today, China accounts for more global trade than anyone else on the entire planet, and we have just learned that Chinese exports and Chinese imports are both collapsing right now. But this is just part of a larger trend. As I discussed the other day, British banking giant HSBC has reported that total global trade is down 8.4 percent so far in 2015, and global GDP expressed in U.S. dollars is down 3.4 percent. The only other times global trade has plummeted this much has been during other global recessions, and it appears that this new downturn is only just beginning.
For many years, China has been leading the revolution in global trade. But now we are witnessing something that is almost unprecedented. Chinese exports are falling, and Chinese imports are absolutely imploding…
Growth of exports from China has been dropping relentlessly, for years. Now this “growth” has actually turned negative. In September, exports were down 3.7% from a year earlier, the “inevitable fallout from China’s unsustainable and poorly executed credit splurge,” as Thomson Reuters’ Alpha Nowputs it. Most of these exports are manufactured goods that are shipped by container to the rest of the world.
And imports into China – a mix of bulk and containerized freight – have been plunging: down 20.4% in September from a year earlier, after at a 13.8% drop in August.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Moving Toward A One World Government, A One World Economy And A One World Religion
Moving Toward A One World Government, A One World Economy And A One World Religion
The global elite have never been closer to their goal of a united world. Thanks to a series of interlocking treaties and international agreements, the governance of this planet is increasingly becoming globalized and centralized, but most people don’t seem alarmed by this at all. In the past 30 days, we have seen some of the biggest steps toward a one world government, a one world economy and a one world religion that we have ever witnessed, but these events have sparked very little public discussion or debate. So please share this article with as many people as you can. We need to wake people up about this before it is too late.
From September 25th to September 27th, the United Nations launched a “new universal agenda” for humanity. Those are not my words, they actually come directly out of the core document for this new agenda. The Pope traveled to New York City to give the address that kicked off this conference, thus giving his considerable endorsement to this new plan. Virtually every nation on the entire planet willingly signed up for the 17 goals that are included in this plan, but this stunning turn of events made very few international headlines.
The United Nations is promising that if we all work together that we can turn our planet into some kind of “utopia”, but the truth is that all of this talk about “unity” masks a very insidious agenda. The following comes from a recent piece by Paul McGuire, the author of a groundbreaking new book entitled “The Babylon Code”…
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Wal-Mart’s Worst Stock Crash In 27 Years Is Another Sign That The Economy Is Rapidly Falling Apart
Wal-Mart’s Worst Stock Crash In 27 Years Is Another Sign That The Economy Is Rapidly Falling Apart
Now that a major global recession has begun, you would expect major retailers like Wal-Mart to run into trouble as consumer spending dries up, and that is precisely what is happening. On Wednesday, shares of Wal-Mart experienced their largest single day decline in 27 years after an extremely disappointing earnings projection was released. The stock was down about 10 percent, which represented the biggest plunge since January 1988. Over 21 billion dollars in shareholder wealth was wiped out on Wednesday, and this was just the continuation of a very bad year for Wal-Mart stockholders. Overall, shares had already declined by 22 percent so far in 2015 before we even got to Wednesday. Here is more on this stunning turn of events from Bloomberg…
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. suffered its worst stock decline in more than 27 years after predicting a drop in annual profit, underscoring the giant retailer’s struggles to reignite growth.
Earnings will decrease 6 percent to 12 percent in fiscal 2017, which ends in January of that year, the Bentonville, Arkansas-based company said at its investor day on Wednesday. Analysts had estimated a gain of 4 percent on average, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
If it was just Wal-Mart that was having trouble, that would be bad enough. But the truth is that signs that the U.S. economy has entered another major downturn are popping up all around us. Just consider the following list of economic indicators that Graham Summers recently put out…
The Fed has now kept interest rates at zero for 81 months.
This is the longest period in the history of the Fed’s existence, lasting longer than even the 1938-1942 period of ZIRP.
And the US economy is moving back into recession. Consider that…
1) Industrial production fell five months straight in the first half of 2015. This has never happened outside of a recession.
2) Merchant Wholesalers’ Sales are in recession territory.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The Numbers Say That A Major Global Recession Has Already Begun
The Numbers Say That A Major Global Recession Has Already Begun
The biggest bank in the western world has just come out and declared that the global economy is “already in a recession”. According to British banking giant HSBC, global trade is down 8.4 percent so far this year, and global GDP expressed in U.S. dollars is down 3.4 percent. So those that are waiting for the next worldwide economic recession to begin can stop waiting. It is officially here. As you will see below, money is fleeing emerging markets at a blistering pace, major global banks are stuck with huge loans that will never be repaid, and it looks like a very significant worldwide credit crunch has begun. Just a few days ago, I explained that the IMF, the UN, the BIS And Citibank were all warning that a major economic crisis could be imminent. They aren’t just making this stuff up out of thin air, but most Americans still seem to believe that everything is going to be just fine. The level of blind faith in the system that most people are demonstrating right now is absolutely astounding.
The numbers say that the global economy has not been in this bad shape since the devastating recession that shook the world in 2008 and 2009. According to HSBC, “we are already in a dollar recession”…
Global trade is also declining at an alarming pace. According to the latest data available in June the year on year change is -8.4%. To find periods of equivalent declines we only really find recessionary periods. This is an interesting point. On one metric we are already in a recession. As can be seen in Chart 3 on the following page, global GDP expressed in US dollars is already negative to the tune of USD 1,37trn or -3.4%. That is, we are already in a dollar recession.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Is Barack Obama Actually TRYING To Start World War III?
Is Barack Obama Actually TRYING To Start World War III?
Why has Barack Obama airdropped 50 tons of ammunition into areas that “moderate rebels” in Syria supposedly control? This is essentially the equivalent of poking the Russians directly in the eyes. Much of this ammunition will end up in the hands of those that the Russians are attempting to bomb into oblivion, and so to Russia it appears that we are attempting to make their job much harder. And of course the truth is that there aren’t really any “moderate rebels” in Syria at all. Nearly all of the groups that are fighting are made up primarily of radical jihadists and/or hired mercenaries. Personally, I don’t see anyone over there that you could call “the good guys”. At the end of the day, the U.S. supports just about anyone that wants to get rid of the Assad regime, and the Russians are working very hard to keep Assad in power. Just like the civil war in Ukraine, the conflict in Syria is in great danger of being transformed into a proxy war between the United States and Russia, and many fear that these conflicts could eventually be setting the stage for World War III.
The ferocity of Russian airstrikes in Syria has surprised observers all over the planet, and over the past couple of days these airstrikes have been extended to include some new areas…
Russian Air Forces have extended the range of their airstrikes on Islamic State positions in Syria to four provinces, focusing primarily on demolishing fortified installations and eliminating supply bases and the terrorists’ infrastructure.
Over the last 24 hours Russian aircraft have attacked terrorist positions in the Hama, Idlib, Latakia and Raqqa provinces of Syria. In total, 64 sorties targeted 63 Islamic State installations, among them 53 fortified zones, 7 arms depots, 4 training camps and a command post.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Why Are The IMF, The UN, The BIS And Citibank All Warning That An Economic Crisis Could Be Imminent?
Why Are The IMF, The UN, The BIS And Citibank All Warning That An Economic Crisis Could Be Imminent?
The warnings are getting louder. Is anybody listening? For months, I have been documenting on my website how the global financial system is absolutely primed for a crisis, and now some of the most important financial institutions in the entire world are warning about the exact same thing. For example, this week I was stunned to see that the Telegraph had published an article with the following ominous headline: “$3 trillion corporate credit crunch looms as debtors face day of reckoning, says IMF“. And actually what we are heading for would more accurately be described as a “credit freeze” or a “credit panic”, but a “credit crunch” will definitely work for now. The IMF is warning that the “dangerous over-leveraging” that we have been witnessing “threatens to unleash a wave of defaults” all across the globe…
Governments and central banks risk tipping the world into a fresh financial crisis, the International Monetary Fund has warned, as it called time on a corporate debt binge in the developing world.
Emerging market companies have “over-borrowed” by $3 trillion in the last decade, reflecting a quadrupling of private sector debt between 2004 and 2014, found the IMF’s Global Financial Stability Report.
This dangerous over-leveraging now threatens to unleash a wave of defaults that will imperil an already weak global economy, said stark findings from the IMF’s twice yearly report.
The IMF is actually telling the truth in this instance. We are in the midst of the greatest debt bubble the world has ever seen, and it is a monumental threat to the global financial system.
But even though we know about this threat, that doesn’t mean that we can do anything about it at this point or stop what is about to happen.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Global Financial Meltdown Coming? Clear Signs That The Great Derivatives Crisis Has Now Begun
Global Financial Meltdown Coming? Clear Signs That The Great Derivatives Crisis Has Now Begun
Warren Buffett once referred to derivatives as “financial weapons of mass destruction“, and it was inevitable that they would begin to wreak havoc on our financial system at some point. While things may seem somewhat calm on Wall Street at the moment, the truth is that a great deal of trouble is bubbling just under the surface. As you will see below, something happened in mid-September that required an unprecedented 405 billion dollar surge of Treasury collateral into the repo market. I know – that sounds very complicated, so I will try to break it down more simply for you. It appears that some very large institutions have started to get into a significant amount of trouble because of all the reckless betting that they have been doing. This is something that I have warned would happen over and over again. In fact, I have written about it so much that my regular readers are probably sick of hearing about it. But this is what is going to cause the meltdown of our financial system.
Many out there get upset when I compare derivatives trading to gambling, and perhaps it would be more accurate to describe most derivatives as a form of insurance. The big financial institutions assure us that they have passed off most of the risk on these contracts to others and so there is no reason to worry according to them.
Well, personally I don’t buy their explanations, and a lot of others don’t either. On a very basic, primitive level, derivatives trading is gambling. This is a point that Jeff Nielson made very eloquently in a piece that he recently published…
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Electromagnetic Pulse: One Day We Will Wake Up In An America Without Electricity And Society Will Totally Break Down
Electromagnetic Pulse: One Day We Will Wake Up In An America Without Electricity And Society Will Totally Break Down
What would you do if the power grid went down and never came back up? One of these days, and it could be a lot sooner than most people think, we will all wake up in a country without electricity. And considering how utterly dependent we have become on technology, that is a very frightening scenario to consider. How would Americans react if nothing worked? Just imagine a world where everything electronic is dead. I am talking about lights, cell phones, computers, televisions, ATMs, heating and cooling systems, credit card readers, gas pumps, cash registers, refrigerators, hospital equipment etc. When the power goes out for a few hours, that can be a major inconvenience, but what if it went out all over the nation and it didn’t come back on for months or even years? This is one of the greatest potential threats that the United States is facing, and yet very few people are even talking about it.
An electromagnetic pulse attack could potentially send our nation back to the 1800s in a single moment, but very few of us are equipped to handle life without technology. Tech guru John McAfee recently wrote an article in which he expressed his belief that 90 percent of the population would be dead within 2 years of such an attack…
Experts agree that an all out cyber attack, beginning with an EMP (electromagnetic pulse) attack on our electronic infrastructure, would wipe out 90% of the human population of this country within two years of the attack. That means the death of 270 million people within 24 months after the attack.
You may think that is an unreasonably high estimate, but it turns out that it is the exact same number that the EMP Commission used in their report to Congress back in 2008…
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Stock Market Crash October 2015? 9 Of The 16 Largest Crashes In History Have Come This Month
Stock Market Crash October 2015? 9 Of The 16 Largest Crashes In History Have Come This Month
The worst stock market crashes in U.S. history have come during the month of October. There is just something about this time of the year that seems to be conducive to financial panic. For example, on October 28th, 1929 the biggest stock market crash in U.S. history up until that time helped usher in the Great Depression of the 1930s. And the largest percentage crash in the history of the Dow Jones Industrial Average by a very wide margin happened on October 19th, 1987. Overall, 9 of the 16 largest single day percentage crashes that we have ever seen happened during the month of October. Of course that does not mean that something will happen this October, but after what we just witnessed in September we should all be on alert.
Clearly, there is a tremendous amount of momentum toward the downside right now. As you can see from the chart below, all of the gains for the Dow since the end of the 2013 calendar year have already been wiped out…
And as I wrote about just the other day, last quarter we witnessed the loss of 11 trillion dollars in “paper wealth” on stock markets all over the planet. The following comes from Justin Spittler…
The S&P 500 fell 8%… and so did the Dow and the NASDAQ. It was the worst quarter for U.S. stocks since 2011.
Stocks around the world dropped too. The MSCI All-Country World Index, which tracks 85% of global stocks, also had its worst quarter since 2011. The STOXX Europe 600 Index, which tracks 600 of Europe’s largest companies, fell 10%. It was the worst quarter for European stocks since 2011 as well.
China’s Shanghai Composite fell 28% last quarter, its largest quarterly decline in seven years. The MSCI Emerging Markets Index fell 19%. It was the worst quarterly decline for emerging market stocks in four years.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
