{"id":29317,"date":"2018-01-02T11:01:20","date_gmt":"2018-01-02T16:01:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=29317"},"modified":"2018-01-02T11:01:52","modified_gmt":"2018-01-02T16:01:52","slug":"forecast-2018-what-could-go-wrong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=29317","title":{"rendered":"Forecast 2018 \u2014 What Could Go Wrong?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"title-media-block\">\n<div class=\"post-title-wrap\">\n<h3 class=\"title\"><a title=\"Forecast 2018 \u2014 What Could Go Wrong?\" href=\"http:\/\/kunstler.com\/clusterfuck-nation\/forecast-2018-go-wrong\/\" rel=\"bookmark\">Forecast 2018 \u2014 What Could Go Wrong?<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"entry\">\n<div class=\"column column-01\">\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>Markets<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>If you take your cues from Consensus Trance Central \u2014 the cable news networks, <em>The New York Times<\/em>, <em>WashPost<\/em>, and <em>HuffPo<\/em> \u2014 Trump is all that ails this foundering empire. Well, Trump <em>and<\/em>Russia, since the Golden Golem of Greatness is in league with Vladimir Putin to loot the world, or something like that.<\/p>\n<p>Since I believe that the financial system is at the heart of today\u2019s meta-question (What Could Go Wrong?), it would be perhaps more to the point to ask: what has held this matrix of rackets together so long? After all, rackets are characterized by pervasive lying and fraud, meaning their operations don\u2019t add up. Things that don\u2019t comport with reality are generally prone to failure so sooner or later they have to implode.<\/p>\n<p>Financial markets have been surging supernaturally on \u201cliquidity\u201d since 2009 \u2014 and by \u201cliquidity\u201d I mean \u201cmoney\u201d (digital credit from thin air) supplied by the Federal Reserve, in rotation with the other sovereign central banks, BOE, ECB, BOJ, PBOC, from whence it pings \u2018round the world, wherever the lure of the main chance sparkles. Trillions wafted into the stock and bond markets, levitating them as a sort of stage-managed misdirection from the sickening spectacle of wobbling <em>real stuff<\/em> economies. In 2017, The Dow Jones Industrial Average recorded an astounding 5,000 point year-on-year upzoom, with 12 months of gains and no loser months, and a string of 71 record highs.<\/p>\n<p>America\u2019s central bank, the Federal Reserve, acted as if pumping up the stock markets was the only thing that mattered. The result was a Potemkin economy, a glittering Wall Street false-front with a landscape of \u201cflyover\u201d squalor and desolation behind.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Forecast 2018 \u2014 What Could Go Wrong? Markets If you take your cues from Consensus Trance Central \u2014 the cable news networks, The New York Times, WashPost, and HuffPo \u2014 Trump is all that ails this foundering empire. Well, Trump andRussia, since the Golden Golem of Greatness is in league with Vladimir Putin to loot [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,5],"tags":[14994,124,303,449,10693,3650],"class_list":["post-29317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-geopolitics","tag-14994","tag-central-banks","tag-fed","tag-james-howard-kunstler","tag-prediction","tag-us-federal-reserve"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29317"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29317\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29318,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29317\/revisions\/29318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}