Posted on 02/14/2014 7:46:25 PM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
If you have been waiting for the "global economic crisis" to begin, just open up your eyes and look around. I know that most Americans tend to ignore what happens in the rest of the world because they consider it to be "irrelevant" to their daily lives, but the truth is that the massive economic problems that are currently sweeping across Europe, Asia and South America are going to be affecting all of us here in the U.S. very soon. Sadly, most of the big news organizations in this country seem to be more concerned about the fate of Justin Bieber's wax statue in Times Square than about the horrible financial nightmare that is gripping emerging markets all over the planet. After a brief period of relative calm, we are beginning to see signs of global financial instability that are unlike anything that we have witnessed since the financial crisis of 2008. As you will see below, the problems are not just isolated to a few countries. This is truly a global phenomenon.
Over the past few years, the Federal Reserve and other global central banks have inflated an unprecedented financial bubble with their reckless money printing. Much of this "hot money" poured into emerging markets all over the world. But now that the Federal Reserve has begun "tapering" quantitative easing, investors are taking this as a sign that the party is ending. Money is being pulled out of emerging markets all over the globe at a staggering pace and this is creating a tremendous amount of financial instability. In addition, the economic problems that have been steadily growing over the past few years in established economies throughout Europe and Asia just continue to escalate. The following are 20 signs that the global economic crisis is starting to catch fire...
#1 The unemployment rate in Greece has hit a brand new record high of 28 percent.
#2 The youth unemployment rate in Greece has hit a brand new record high of 64.1 percent.
#3 The percentage of bad loans in Italy is at an all-time record high.
#4 Italian industrial output declined again in December, and the Italian government is on the verge of collapse.
#5 The number of jobseekers in France has risen for 30 of the last 32 months, and at this point it has climbed to a new all-time record high.
#6 The total number of business failures in France in 2013 was even higher than in any year during the last financial crisis.
#7 It is being projected that housing prices in Spain will fall another 10 to 15 percent as their economic depression deepens.
#8 The economic and political turmoil in Turkey is spinning out of control. The government has resorted to blasting protesters with pepper spray and water cannons in a desperate attempt to restore order.
#9 It is being estimated that the inflation rate in Argentina is now over 40 percent, and the peso is absolutely collapsing.
#10 Gangs of armed bandits are roaming the streets in Venezuela as the economic chaos in that troubled nation continues to escalate.
#11 China appears to be very serious about deleveraging. The deflationary effects of this are going to be felt all over the planet. The following is an excerpt from Ambrose Evans-Pritchard's recent article entitled "World asleep as China tightens deflationary vice"...
China's Xi Jinping has cast the die. After weighing up the unappetising choice before him for a year, he has picked the lesser of two poisons.
The balance of evidence is that most powerful Chinese leader since Mao Zedong aims to prick China's $24 trillion credit bubble early in his 10-year term, rather than putting off the day of reckoning for yet another cycle.
This may be well-advised for China, but the rest of the world seems remarkably nonchalant over the implications.
#12 There was a significant debt default by a coal company in China last Friday...
A high-yield investment product backed by a loan to a debt-ridden coal company failed to repay investors when it matured last Friday, state media reported on Wednesday, in the latest sign of financial stress in China's shadow bank sector.
#13 Japan's Nikkei stock index has already fallen by 14 percent so far in 2014. That is a massive decline in just a month and a half.
#14 Ukraine continues to fall apart financially...
The worsening political and economic circumstances in Ukraine has prompted the Fitch Ratings agency to downgrade Ukrainian debt from B to a pre–default level CCC. This is lower than Greece, and Fitch warns of future financial instability.
#15 The unemployment rate in Australia has risen to the highest level in more than 10 years.
#16 The central bank of India is in a panic over the way that Federal Reserve tapering is effecting their financial system.
#17 The effects of Federal Reserve tapering are also being felt in Thailand...
In the wake of the US Federal Reserve tapering, emerging economies with deteriorating macroeconomic figures or visible political instability are being punished by skittish markets. Thailand is drifting towards both these tendencies.
#18 One of Ghana's most prominent economists says that the economy of Ghana will crash by June if something dramatic is not done.
#19 Yet another banker has mysteriously died during the prime years of his life. That makes five "suspicious banker deaths" in just the past two weeks alone.
#20 The behavior of the U.S. stock market continues to parallel the behavior of the U.S. stock market in 1929.
Yes, things don't look good right now, but it is important to keep in mind that this is just the beginning.
This is just the leading edge of the next great financial storm.
The next two years (2014 and 2015) are going to represent a major "turning point" for the global economy. By the end of 2015, things are going to look far different than they do today.
None of the problems that caused the last financial crisis have been fixed. Global debt levels have grown by 30 percent since the last financial crisis, and the too big to fail banks in the United States are 37 percent larger than they were back then and their behavior has become even more reckless than before.
As a result, we are going to get to go through another "2008-style crisis", but I believe that this next wave is going to be even worse than the previous one.
So hold on tight and get ready. We are going to be in for quite a bumpy ride.
Get my new book about the future of America: The Beginning of the End.
OBAMA!!! YES WE CAN!!! Just tax the wealthiest. Just pass amnesty. Just take over the medical industry. Just end the wars. Just give a little more power to government. Just squeeze that turnip a little more. Obama will protect us and lead the world through the darkness brought by individual liberty and capitalism.
Doesn’t everyone take $4,000,000 vacations and wear $12,000 dresses?
Preppers’ PING!!
One very needed preperation is to have a garden, and knowledge/experience on how to grow a complete diet for yourself and your family.
If things are as bad as everyone says, your food stocks will need replenishing long before this is over.
I can’t buy gold, but silver should work too. Main thing is to have shelter, water, food, medicine, ammo, barter items, and a garden.
Better get busy making some raised beds.
Did the seas levels respond yet, or are they still the same?
I guess what I’m trying to say is that if there’s a major economic/currency reset, Russia will still have oil and gas, China will still have 1/2 of the world’s industrial capacity, and they’ll still get most of their copper from Chile.
Things might not exactly be comfortable in those places, but it’s going to be paradise compared to what would happen here. We barely even feed ourselves at this point.
And the USA is sitting on the world's largest known supply of thorium-232, a nuclear element that we now know can be used as a nuclear fuel for a new, very safe nuclear reactor called the molten salt reactor (MSR). We have enough to generate electricity via MSR's the equivalent to the entire electrical output of the USA for several thousand years.
Thailand...?
A lot of people worldwide have been freed from job lock. Imagine the size of the global economic boom that will produce if Obama’s democrats are right for the first time in their lives.
Notice that leaders of the decline are the countries with Socialis t governments. The result will be either a drastic cut back in entitlement spending or revolution....... or perhaps both
“China is fine. Russia is fine”
Fine? Both of those countries are on the edge. China’s economy is a house of cards. If we quit spending they collapse.
Russia is dependent on oil, thats ALL they have. They’ll certainly go too.
A quick word about “economic collapse” disaster porn:
The collapse is baked in. Nothing can stop it now. Just as you could still go out to eat and catch a show in Berlin with the Red Army in East Prussia, so too can we pretend - but the die is cast.
What bugs me to no end is the “it’s the end of everything” rhetoric. Go watch “Downfall” and then grab a Google Earth view of the Potsdamer Platz in 2014.
It’s the end of a lot of things, for certain - but most of them are bad. What will be left are 1) Americans, and 2) A continent composed of arable land and abundant natural resources.
Cheer up. The best is yet to come.
“What will be left are 1) Americans, and 2) A continent composed of arable land and abundant natural resources.
Cheer up. The best is yet to come.”
Agreed! Now, we just have to dispose of a lot of politicians and we’ll be just fine!
For as much as this stuff unnerves me, planning ahead and knowing the basics and knowing a few local Americans that can, and WILL, pull a plow is comforting. :)
I read a lot. A whole lot. Naysayers abound. I remember pre-Y2K. Some yahoo on the radio kept preaching doom and gloom situations. Of course he was selling all the items to overcome the doom and gloom situations. My DW was becoming too interested in what he was selling. I told her that most of the people who made those predictions had something to sell. She finally saw the light.
What I am reading now are simply opinions, and of course we know what opinions are like. I don’t have a lot of book learning, and there are many things I just do not understand. I wonder a lot, but......
We are pretty well set up here. I still need to get a couple of buckets and a set of Berkeys. I’m not worried. I’ve lived a good life. “Regrets, I have a few, but then again, too few to mention”, and my personal theme song by Hank Jr., “I can skin a buck, I can run a trot line, and a country boy will survive.”
Well, I just used my last K-cup. Gotta drive 14 miles to the store. Ya’ll have a good one.
Bkmk
Good luck with feeding yourself from a small garden. I have a bit of a green thumb. Planted 20 shallots in a grow box just for a test. Got 37 shallots back. At the rate wife uses shallots, I would have needed a dozen grow boxes.
I love having a few tomatoe and bell pepper plants, maybe an eggplant or two, a couple of squash, a scattering of lettuce for the few months it will grow withouth bolting. But anyone that thinks they can grow their own food without acreage available is nuts!
If you think the SWHTF, stock up on freeze dried, etc.
Plan on snacking on the occasional liberal or looter.
“What I am reading now are simply opinions, and of course we know what opinions are like...”
There are facts that banks are failing and countries are failing. It’s a fact this country cannot pay its debt, and is only paying the interest on this debt and this debt is over 70% of our GNP. Opinions are what this means in terms of will our country fail and if so, when. My opinion is we won’t recognize this country as it used to be by the end of this year. People are already saying the country is not like it was a few years ago and this will keep happening.
I believe most people have already had to adjust their standard of living downward bit by bit. Such as, “I can buy a cheaper cut of meat”, I can move the thermostat up some in summer so the electric bill isn’t so high”, “Maybe “x” isn’t so bad so I won’t go to the doctor about “x””, etc.. These adjustments keep happening as we slide further into the abyss.
I don’t let this disturb me because I made preparations, I call it insurance, to ensure I will still have most of my standard of living no matter what happens. I’m also learning to grow food plants from seed. The food I grow is pure food grown without chemicals, not handled by anyone else, not shipped across the country to get to me, and I grow what I want to eat, not what is left in the produce section of a grocery store if produce stops being delivered to the store.
A person right now can make choices to become independent so he/she doesn’t have to depend on others to live.
“Good luck with feeding yourself from a small garden. But anyone that thinks they can grow their own food without acreage available is nuts!”
It’s not a choice between growing fresh food or buying stored long term food. Do both. A garden of any size is a fresh food addition to the stored long term food. Growing sprouts is another method of having fresh food to accompany long term stored food.
Heard a new term. Airponics knda like hydroponics but it without the soil. Simply spray the plant very frequently with water and fertilizer mix. Done right the growth rate is much faster then traditional soil.
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