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A Global Monetary & Commodity Inferno of Nuclear Proportions

A GLOBAL MONETARY & COMMODITY INFERNO OF NUCLEAR PROPORTIONS

When the sh-t hits the global fan, it often does it at the optimal time for the maximum amount of damage and with the worst kind of sh-t to soil the world.

For years I have been clear that the world is reaching the end of an economic, financial and monetary era which will affect mankind catastrophically for decades.

The world will obviously blame Putin for the catastrophe which will hit every corner of our planet. But we must remember that neither Putin nor Covid is the reason for the economic cataclysm that we are now approaching.

These events are catalysts which will have a major effect because they are hitting a gigantic debt bubble of a magnitude that has never been seen before in history. And it obviously takes very little to prick this epic bubble.

What is unequivocal is that all currencies will finish the 100+ year fall to ZERO in the next few yearsIt is also crystal clear that all the asset bubbles – stocks, bonds and property – will implode at the same time leading to a long and deep depression.

We had the warning in 2006-9 but central banks ignored it and just added new worthless debt to existing worthless debt to create worthless debt squared – an obvious recipe for disaster.

So as is often typical for the end of an economic era, the catalyst is totally unexpected and worse than anyone could have forecast.

WAR CYCLES

Yes, I and a few others have pointed out that we are in a war cycle currently, and recent events have clearly confirmed this and hit the world with a vengeance.

Just as nobody paid any serious attention to the warning that the Great Financial Crisis in 2006-9 gave the world, few people have taken Putin’s warnings seriously since the 2014 Maidan revolution in Ukraine.

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

Fourth Turning 2022–Bad Moon Rising (Part 2)

FOURTH TURNING 2022 – BAD MOON RISING (PART 2)

In Part 1 of this article I laid out how the global elite have used this covid flu to manipulate the weak minded into a fear induced mass psychosis as a key element in their Great Reset plan to control the world and keep you technologically enslaved under lock and key. Now I will try to decipher how this mass hysteria might play out over the course of 2022 and beyond.

“Americans today fear that linearism (alias the American Dream) has run its course. Many would welcome some enlightenment about history’s patterns and rhythms, but today’s intellectual elites offer little that’s useful. Caught between the entropy of the chaoticists and the hubris of the linearists, the American people have lost their moorings.” – Strauss & Howe – The Fourth Turning

Federal Reserve Just Declared the American Dream is Dead for Most Americans

“The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.” ― George Orwell

The American Dream, where all Americans, no matter the circumstances of their birth, had a legitimate opportunity to live a better life than their parents, based upon their own intelligence, work ethic, and good fortune, is an illusion in today’s world. The ruling elite have stolen the wealth of the nation and its citizens. This was not an accident, but a plan implemented over many decades, accelerating after Nixon closed the gold window and opened the door to unlimited amounts of debt being created out of thin air and backed by nothing.

 

One of the Fed’s only mandates was to maintain a stable currency. Since its inception in 1913 to 2020, the USD had lost 96% of its purchasing power. The USD has lost 7.5% of its purchasing power since 2020, as Powell and his cronies have lost control of inflation.

Visualizing the Purchasing Power of the U.S. Dollar Over Time

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Central Banks Are Now in the Endgame

Central Banks Are Now in the Endgame

The $2 quadrillion debt bubble will be the central bank endgame

Central bankers were handed the Midas curse half a century ago. Midas turned everything that he touched into gold– even his own food. Exactly 50 years ago (15 Aug, 1971) central bankers were handed a much worse curse by Nixon. But instead of turning everything into gold, their curse was to turn all real assets, including gold, into worthless paper, creating the perfect setup for this central bank endgame.

Nixon had of course not studied history. Because if he had, he would have understood that his lie was $100s of trillions worse than the Watergate lies:

“THE EFFECT OF TODAY’S ACTION will be to stabilise the dollar”

Hmmmmmm!

As the chart below shows the dollar has lost 98% in real terms (GOLD) since 1971. Just a one hour history lesson would have taught Nixon that no currency has ever survived in history since all  leaders without fail have done what Nixon did.

Reminds me of the line in Pete Seeger’s song Where have all the flowers gone”:

“WHEN WILL YOU EVER LEARN, WHEN WILL YOU EVER LEARN?”

The fall of the dollar after Nixon eliminated Bretton Woods.

Well, they will never learn of course. History has taught the very few who are willing to listen that there is no exception.

Every single currency throughout history has been debased until it has reached ZERO as I outlined here.

It seems incomprehensible that presidents and central bankers have not learnt they will all play the role that their predecessors have, in destroying the nations currency.

With their arrogance, they are all obviously hoping that they can pass the baton on so that it won’t happen on their watch. And because most leaders have a relatively short reign in relation to the lifespan of a currency, they often escape even though guilty.

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

The Corporate Debt Bubble Is A Train Wreck In Slow Motion

The Corporate Debt Bubble Is A Train Wreck In Slow Motion

There are two subjects that the mainstream media seems specifically determined to avoid discussing these days when it comes to the economy – the first is the problem of falling global demand for goods and services; they absolutely refuse to acknowledge the fact that demand is going stagnant and will conjure all kinds of rationalizations to distract from the issue. The other subject is the debt bubble, the corporate debt bubble in particular.

These two factors alone guarantee a massive shock to the global economy and the US economy are built into the system, but I believe corporate debt is the key pillar of the false economy.  It has been utilized time and time again to keep the Everything Bubble from completely deflating, however, the fundamentals are starting to catch up to the fantasy.

For example, in terms of stock markets, which are now meaningless as an indicator of the health of the real economy, corporate stock buybacks have been the single most vital mechanism for inflation. Corporations buy their own stocks, often using cash borrowed from each other and from the Federal Reserve, in order to reduce the number of shares on the market and artificially boost the value of the remaining shares. This process is essentially legal manipulation of equities, and to be sure, it has been effective so far at keeping markets elevated.

The problem is that these same corporations are taking on more and more debt through interest payments in order to maintain the facade. Over the period of a decade, corporate debt has skyrocketed back to levels not seen since 2007, just before the credit crisis. The official corporate debt load now stands at over $10 trillion, and that’s not even counting derivatives exposure. 

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

The Global Debt Bubble Enters Its Blow-Off Stage

The Global Debt Bubble Enters Its Blow-Off Stage

People have been talking about a “debt bubble” for some years now. They’ve been right, of course, based on the combination of surging borrowing and plunging rates. But the bubble hasn’t stopped inflating, and recently it entered what certainsly looks like a terminal blow-off stage. Some highlights:

Though July, China’s total debt rose by $2 trillion, a year-over-year increase of 26%. And this month the Chinese government cut bank reserve requirements in an attempt to further rev up lending. 

In Japan, the junk bond market is being constrained by banks so desperate for yield that they’re lending directly to companies previously considered too risky. See Japan Junk Bond Market Hopes Crushed by Banks Hungry to Lend.

A recent week of corporate bond issuance was “the biggest weekly volume to hit global markets on record,” according to Dealogic. US investment-grade companies raised $72 billion across 45 deals, equaling the total issued in all of August. 

Numerous companies issued 30-year bonds with yields below 3%, which used to be the province of safe haven governments. Even Apple, which is sitting on an epic pile of cash, borrowed money. 

At the other end of the spectrum, junk bond issuer Restaurant Brands, which owns the Popeyes and Burger King chains, sold 8.5-year bonds with a coupon under 4%, a record low yield for a US junk issuer. 

In Europe sales of new bonds hit $1 trillion earlier than in any previous year. Fully a third of European investment-grade bonds (and some junk bonds) now trade with negative yields. And the ECB is expected to cut rates further at its upcoming meeting. 

Why is all this happening? Three reasons:

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

The True Size Of The U.S. National Debt, Including Unfunded Liabilities, Is 222 Trillion Dollars

The True Size Of The U.S. National Debt, Including Unfunded Liabilities, Is 222 Trillion Dollars

The United States is on a path to financial ruin, and everyone can see what is happening, but nobody can seem to come up with a way to stop it.  According to the U.S. Treasury, the federal government is currently 22 trillion dollars in debt, and that represents the single largest debt in the history of the planet.  Over the past decade, we have been adding to that debt at a rate of about 1.1 trillion dollars a year, and we will add more than a trillion dollars to that total once again this year.  But when you add in our unfunded liabilities, our long-term financial outlook as a nation looks downright apocalyptic.  According to Boston University economics professor Laurence Kotlikoff, the U.S. is currently facing 200 trillion dollars in unfunded liabilities, and when you add that number to our 22 trillion dollar debt, you get a grand total of 222 trillion dollars.

Of course we are never going to pay back all of this debt.

The truth is that we are just going to keep accumulating more debt until the system completely and utterly collapses.

And even though the federal government is the biggest offender, there are also others to blame for the mess that we find ourselves in.  State and local governments are more than 3 trillion dollars in debt, corporate debt has more than doubled since the last financial crisis, and U.S. consumers are more than 13 trillion dollars in debt.

When you add it all together, the total amount of debt in our society is well above 300 percent of GDP, and it keeps rising with each passing year.

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

How The Bubbles In Stocks And Corporate Bonds Will Burst

How The Bubbles In Stocks And Corporate Bonds Will Burst

As someone who has been warning heavily about dangerous bubbles in U.S. corporate bonds and stocks, people often ask me how and when I foresee these bubbles bursting. Here’s what I wrote a few months ago:

To put it simply, the U.S. corporate debt bubble will likely burst due to tightening monetary conditions, including rising interest rates. Loose monetary conditions are what created the corporate debt bubble in the first place, so the ending of those conditions will end the corporate debt bubble. Falling corporate bond prices and higher corporate bond yields will cause stock buybacks to come to a screeching halt, which will also pop the stock market bubble, creating a downward spiral. There are extreme consequences from central bank market-meddling and we are about to learn this lesson once again.

Interestingly, Zero Hedge tweeted a chart today of the LQD iShares Investment Grade Corporate Bond ETF saying that it was “about to break 7 year support: below it, the buybacks end.” That chart resonated with me, because it echos my warnings from a few months ago. I decided to recreate this chart with my own commentary on it. The 110 to 115 support zone is the key line in the sand to watch. If LQD closes below this zone in a convincing manner, it would likely foreshadow an even more powerful bond and stock market bust ahead.

Corporate Grade Bonds - LQD

Thanks to ultra-low corporate bond yields, U.S. corporations have engaged in a borrowing binge since the Global Financial Crisis. Total outstanding non-financial U.S. corporate debt is up by an incredible $2.5 trillion or 40 percent since its 2008 peakwhich was already a precariously high level to begin with.

Corporate Debt

U.S. corporate debt is now at an all-time high of over 45% of GDP, which is even worse than the levels reached during the dot-com bubble and U.S. housing and credit bubble:

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The Corporate Debt Bubble

The largest asset bubbles occur while economic growth and inflation remain positive, but subdued, for extended periods of time.  According to its dual mandate, the Federal Reserve focuses primarily on growth and price stability, and tends to ignore the creation of asset bubbles as long as economic activity is not running too hot and inflation is benign.  Historically, the Fed has not considered it a priority to prevent or pop asset bubbles, despite inadvertently enabling their creation through various policy measures.

During the inflation of asset bubbles, it is common for excess liquidity (easy money) to follow the path of least regulation outside of traditional regulated banking systems.  These channels are known as the shadow banking system or shadow lending markets where it is more profitable for both lenders and borrowers to transact due to lower costs and lax oversight.  During the last financial crisis, companies like Countrywide, New Century and even certain money market funds helped fill this role.  Unfortunately, the boom-time “innovations” which emerge around these shadow lending markets are not battle-tested, and often fail spectacularly when inevitably stressed.

Today, we here at Fox Capital believe a bubble highly vulnerable to collapse lies in the corporate debt market and the passive investment vehicles accompanying it.  While C&I lending from the traditional banking system has been healthy since the last crisis ended, the corporate bond market has absolutely exploded, tripling in size from the peak of the prior cycle in 2007.  As a direct result of the Fed’s zero interest rate policy, investors of all kinds were forced out on the risk curve, scrambling for yields attractive enough to meet their own obligations. Pension funds, endowments, insurance companies and retail investors (through ETF’s and bond funds) gorged on corporate debt for extra yield in a ZIRP world.

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

America Is Committing Suicide: Over The Past 12 Months, The U.S. National Debt Has Increased By 1.271 Trillion Dollars

America Is Committing Suicide: Over The Past 12 Months, The U.S. National Debt Has Increased By 1.271 Trillion Dollars

If we do not change course, our once great nation will be destroyed by a debt that has grown wildly out of control.  We are facing an unprecedented debt crisis that literally threatens to bring our country to an end, and yet our politicians are almost entirely silent on this issue in 2018.  In fact, Republicans and Democrats just worked together to pass another big, fat spending bill through Congress that is actually going to increase the pace at which we are going into debt.  What the Republicrats are doing is not just wrong.  To be honest, the truth is that they are committing crimes against humanity, and they are completely wiping out the very bright future that our children and our grandchildren were supposed to have.  How in the world is America supposed to be “great again” when we are buried in so much debt that future generations can never have any possible hope of getting free from it?

The fiscal year of the federal government goes from October 1st to September 30th.  During the fiscal year that just ended, the U.S. national debt increased by 1.271 trillion dollars

The federal debt increased by $1,271,158,167,126.72 in fiscal 2018, according to data released today by the Treasury.

The total federal debt started the fiscal year at $20,244,900,016,053.51 according to the Treasury, and finished the fiscal year at $21,516,058,183,180.23.

This is one of the reasons why I wanted to go to Washington.  Our current “representatives” are completely and utterly failing us.

Once upon a time, at least members of the Tea Party would stand up and say something, but these days nobody seems to care that America’s future is being systematically destroyed.

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

Destroying America: It Is Being Projected That The U.S. National Debt Will Hit 99 Trillion Dollars By 2048

Destroying America: It Is Being Projected That The U.S. National Debt Will Hit 99 Trillion Dollars By 2048

Temporary prosperity that is created by exploding levels of debt is not actually prosperity at all.  At this moment, the U.S. government is 21.4 trillion dollars in debt, and we have been adding an average of more than a trillion dollars a year to that debt since 2009.  And if we stay on the path that we are currently on, the trajectory of our debt will soon accelerate dramatically.  In fact, as you will see below, the Congressional Budget Office is now projecting that the U.S. national debt will reach 99 trillion dollars by 2048 if nothing changes.  Congressional Budget Office projections always tend to be overly optimistic, and so the reality will probably be much worse than that.  Of course we will never actually see the day when our national debt reaches 99 trillion dollars.  Our government (and our entire society along with it) will collapse long before we ever get to that point.  In our endless greed, we are literally destroying America, and emergency action must be taken immediately if we are to survive.

Debt always makes things seem better in the short-term, and it is always destructive in the long-term.

When we go into debt as a nation, we are literally stealing from the bright future that our children and our grandchildren were supposed to have.  Through the first 11 months of this fiscal year, the official U.S. budget deficit was $895,000,000,000, which means that we continue to steal more than 100 million dollars from future generations of Americans every single hour of every single day.

And it is important to remember that not all additions to the national debt are included in the official budget deficit.  One year ago, our national debt was sitting at 20.1 trillion dollars, and that means that we have added an astounding 1.3 trillion dollars to the debt over the past 12 months.

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

The 11th Hour: 8 Examples Of Mainstream Media Sources Warning Us Of Imminent Economic Disaster

The 11th Hour: 8 Examples Of Mainstream Media Sources Warning Us Of Imminent Economic Disaster

Are we on the verge of another great financial crisis, a devastating recession and a horrific implosion of the global debt bubble?  On my website I have been relentlessly warning my readers about the inevitable consequences of our very foolish actions, but now the mainstream media is beginning to sound just like The Economic Collapse Blog.  The coming crisis is so close now that a lot of them are starting to see it, and of course economic disaster is already a reality for much of the rest of the planet.  For years, the mainstream media told us that things would get better, and in a lot of ways we did see some improvement.  But now the tone of the mainstream media has become quite ominous, and that is definitely not a positive sign.  The following are 8 examples of mainstream media sources warning us of imminent economic disaster…

#1 Forbes: “Disaster Is Inevitable When America’s Stock Market Bubble Bursts”

As shown in this report, the U.S. stock market is currently trading at extremely precarious levels and it won’t take much to topple the whole house of cards. Once again, the Federal Reserve, which was responsible for creating the disastrous Dot-com bubble and housing bubble, has inflated yet another extremely dangerous bubble in its attempt to force the economy to grow after the Great Recession. History has proven time and time again that market meddling by central banks leads to massive market distortions and eventual crises. As a society, we have not learned the lessons that we were supposed to learn from 1999 and 2008, therefore we are doomed to repeat them.

The purpose of this report is to warn society of the path that we are on and the risks that we are facing.

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

The 11th Hour: 8 Examples Of Mainstream Media Sources Warning Us Of Imminent Economic Disaster

The 11th Hour: 8 Examples Of Mainstream Media Sources Warning Us Of Imminent Economic Disaster

Are we on the verge of another great financial crisis, a devastating recession and a horrific implosion of the global debt bubble?  On my website I have been relentlessly warning my readers about the inevitable consequences of our very foolish actions, but now the mainstream media is beginning to sound just like The Economic Collapse Blog.  The coming crisis is so close now that a lot of them are starting to see it, and of course economic disaster is already a reality for much of the rest of the planet.  For years, the mainstream media told us that things would get better, and in a lot of ways we did see some improvement.  But now the tone of the mainstream media has become quite ominous, and that is definitely not a positive sign.  The following are 8 examples of mainstream media sources warning us of imminent economic disaster…

#1 Forbes: “Disaster Is Inevitable When America’s Stock Market Bubble Bursts”

As shown in this report, the U.S. stock market is currently trading at extremely precarious levels and it won’t take much to topple the whole house of cards. Once again, the Federal Reserve, which was responsible for creating the disastrous Dot-com bubble and housing bubble, has inflated yet another extremely dangerous bubble in its attempt to force the economy to grow after the Great Recession. History has proven time and time again that market meddling by central banks leads to massive market distortions and eventual crises. As a society, we have not learned the lessons that we were supposed to learn from 1999 and 2008, therefore we are doomed to repeat them.

The purpose of this report is to warn society of the path that we are on and the risks that we are facing.

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

Major Currencies All Over The World Are In “Complete Meltdown” As The $63 Trillion EM Debt Bubble Implodes

Major Currencies All Over The World Are In “Complete Meltdown” As The $63 Trillion EM Debt Bubble Implodes

The wait for the next global financial crisis is over.  Major currencies all over the planet are in a “death spiral”, many global stock markets are crashing, and economic activity is beginning to decline at a stunning rate in quite a few nations.  Over the past 16 years, the emerging market debt bubble has grown from 9 trillion dollars to 63 trillion dollars.  Yes, you read that correctly.  Now that emerging market debt bubble is imploding, and as a result emerging market currencies all over the globe are in “complete meltdown”.  In fact, at least 20 different currencies have fallen by double-digit percentages against the U.S. dollar so far in 2018, and nobody is quite sure what is going to happen next.

You may be tempted to think that this must be a good thing for the United States since the value of the U.S. dollar has been rising, but it is not.

During the “boom years”, trillions of dollars were borrowed by emerging market economies, and a high percentage of those loans were denominated in U.S. dollars.  Now that their currencies are crashing, it is going to take much more local currency to service those U.S.-denominated debts, and a whole lot of them are going to start going bad.

That means that many financial institutions here in the United States and over in Europe are going to end up holding enormous piles of bad debt, and the losses could potentially be astronomical.

The dominoes are starting to fall, and even the mainstream media is admitting that what we are facing is really bad.  For example, the following comes from a CNBC article entitled “The emerging market crisis is back. And this time it’s serious”

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

You Should Fear the Emerging Market Debt Bubble

Global debt has ballooned since the financial crisis as central banks have distorted markets and fueled debt bubbles in particular.

A lot of the increase in global debt has come from emerging market (EM) economies, especially China. In fact, a record amount of EM debt has accumulated during the past decade, mostly in dollars. A large portion of that debt is therefore denominated in U.S. dollars.

That’s why I’ve long argued that the first shoe to drop in the next crisis would likely be EM debt.

Borrowing is not a problem when dollars are cheap. Low interest rates mean the cost of servicing that debt is low.

The problem starts when the Fed raises rates or the dollar strengthens, even temporarily. The more the dollar rises, the more EM currencies and related markets fall. Dollar-denominated debt then becomes too expensive to repay or service as the dollar rises relative to EM currencies. Before long default becomes the only viable option.

This situation becomes more dangerous than even asset bubbles because debt is required to be repaid on a set schedule. If a country misses a debt payment, it could set off a chain reaction of defaults.

That’s why an EM crisis could quickly become a global crisis. In today’s world of financial globalization, any remote crisis can become an international problem in seconds. That’s the reality of today’s markets. Obviously, it could also have major ramifications for your own finances and investments.

How did we get here?

Because of the Fed’s rate hike cycle and quantitative tightening (QT) stance, the dollar has become much stronger. The dollar has risen 6.8% since late January alone. And that’s put emerging markets under considerable pressure.

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

Bitcoin isn’t the bubble — the global financial system is

Bitcoin isn’t the bubble — the global financial system is

Bitcoin isn't the bubble — the global financial system is
© Getty Images

Pretty much every article you read about bitcoin in the mainstream press ends up in the same place. You may not hear it until the seventh or eighth paragraph, but eventually you’ll be told that the whole thing is nothing more than a modern day “tulip bubble.” The more creative types will also throw around the South Sea or Mississippi Bubble. You get the point. The consensus among the very smart experts is unanimous: bitcoin is clearly and indisputably a gigantic bubble that’s set to burst. I’ve been hearing this since the early days of getting involved in the space back in 2012. But I’m not convinced.

For one thing, bubbles don’t do what bitcoin has done since its inception in 2009. During my 10-year tenure on Wall Street, I saw several bubbles grow and then burst, and one thing you learn is that an actual bubble rises like crazy and then totally pops. It doesn’t come right back a couple of years later and soar again to a new price 10 times greater than the previous bubble’s high, which is what bitcoin has done after each one of its three or four previous “bubbles” burst.

That’s not a bubble, but something else entirely.

Let’s take the oil price in the middle of the last decade as an example of a real bubble. The price went on a historic and seemingly unstoppable run all the way to $150 per barrel in 2008. It then proceeded to burst in spectacular fashion just ahead of the financial crisis, plunging all the way back to $30 before rebounding. Ten years later and the price is still nowhere near that prior high, with it currently trading around $60. That’s what happens when a real bonafide bubble bursts. It stays below the prior high for decade at least, sometimes forever. The behavior of bitcoin since the “genesis block” has been completely different.

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

Olduvai IV: Courage
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Olduvai II: Exodus
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