Posted on 01/07/2010 4:15:35 PM PST by blam
2010 Gathering Giant Economic and Financial Storm Clouds
Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2010
Jan 07, 2010 - 12:17 AM
By: Jim Willie CB
The year 2008 bore my mark as the year the system broke. A public article addressed the issues, laid out before the breakdown occurred in September of that year. The consequences for the many failures, the desperate nationalizations, the hasty scrambles to put financial sewage under USGovt ownership, the realization of TARP as a vast slush fund for illegitimate bank rescues, the official monetization plans put forth to prevent bond implosions, and much more occurred in the year 2009 as a recognized aftermath. Here we are in 2010 and the threats must again be laid out.
A prelude was offered in an mid-December article entitled "Full Circle of Govt Debt Default" (CLICK HERE) where a global sovereign debt ruin in vicious circle was displayed the sequence that started in the Untied States and will end in the Untied States. Rather than make specific forecasts of extreme events, a list is presented much like a smorgasbord. The odds are 100:1 in favor at least one extreme event occurring in this current calendar year in my view. The odds are very high in favor of several events taking place this year.
The key here is that a great many extremely damaging and highly disruptive events loom like giant gathering storm clouds that meet, complete with lightning displays. More terrestrial types might consider that a great many land mine explosives lie in the wide pathways ahead. At least a few extreme craters will be formed. A few financial edifices will be toppled. Great changes come, especially to the global power structures. This time around, the stakes are bigger, and entire nations will face debt failure and national realignment. The ripple effects will reshape the global financial system.
The blind, the deficient, and the compromised fail to fully appreciate and detect the meaning of the Dubai debt default or the Iceland financial failure. They actually believe these busts have been dealt with by the very strength of the capitalist system. These default failures signify a continuation of the credit market crisis that never went away. Instead, accounting fraud was legalized. Instead, bloated bank toxic balance sheets were permitted. Instead, sovereign debt finance by monetary expansion was endorsed, i.e. monetization. Instead, stock equity sales to the nitwits incapable of reading balance sheets was widespread. Instead, broader statistical gimmickry of economic data was installed. Not a single meaningful reform has taken place on US soil, which guarantees the continuation of the credit crisis is assured.
No substantial reduction of US home loan balance sheets. No return of US manufacturing. No liquidation of dead US banks. No removal of Goldman Sachs from control of the USDept Treasury. No disclosure of US Federal Reserve disbursements of over $1 trillion. No steps to restore the Glass Steagall Act to create firewalls between the financial sectors. No effort to prosecute for $trillion bond fraud. No initiative to bring to light the deep criminal lace to Fannie Mae and AIG, now protected under USGovt aegis. No attempt to rein in military spending and endless wars. No movement to create a monetary system with a currency other than the current debt denominated $20 bill coupons. Instead, with much greater force, enthusiasm, and recklessness, the financial system hurtled deeper into the Weimar chambers of commerce. Worse, most steps simply apply greater doses of precisely what caused the problems with debt overload and excessive monetary expansion. Worse doubly, most reforms grant even more power to those responsible for the breakdowns and fraud perpetration. The Untied States is being recognized internationally as a rogue nation moving headlong toward communism, run by powerful syndicates, whose most prominent foreign policy is explained by military hardware.
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JPMorgan is object of persistent rumors of gigantic credit derivative losses: The slowly rising USTreasury Bond long-term yield would cause deep painful losses to JPMorgan. Their abuse of Interest Rate Swap contracts becomes a topic of debate. The monetization of USTreasurys becomes a topic of debate. The ability for the USGovt to control its deficits and auxiliary (hidden) losses becomes a topic of debate. Even bond fraud within JPM hallowed halls becomes a topic of debate. To cover the losses, monetary inflation grows out of control, and a USDollar decline ensues, taking the DX dollar index below the 70 level. (chance: 40%)Only 40%?
"Food prices soar in the US: The divergence between official crop forecasts would clash with the reality of crop failures and profound shortages this summer. Being the greatest food production source, the US crisis spreads globally. The deCarbonnel threat is realized, as foreign nations sell US$-based assets in order to finance food supply purchases. China enters the fray as a buyer of distressed farm property, amidst accusations of carpetbagger. (chance: 80%)
No making use of our oil reserves which would reduce foreign dependency,
No creation of new jobs but instead an acceptance of a high unemployment rate as the new norm.
Global Food Crisis 2010 Means Financial Armageddon
"The 2010 Food Crisis is different. It is THE CRISIS. The one that makes all doomsday scenarios come true. The government bailouts and central bank interventions, which have held the financial world together during the last two years, will be powerless to prevent the 2010 Food Crisis from bringing the global financial system to its knees."
How many economic gloom n’ doom, “we’re all gonna die, financially”, bull sh*t articles need to be posted here?
Apocalypse now. If history is anything, it is a guide to the probability that the same or similar actions lead to the similar sort of outcome.
The market collapse of 1929, and the Great Depression which is concluded to have resulted from that singular event, are linked in people’s minds, but for the wrong reasons. Sure, the market crash set the stage. It was the Federal government’s response to those events that caused the long slow-motion train wreck that was the Great Depression. Herbert Hoover was long perceived as a “do-nothing” President, but in fact, he drew up many of the basic schemes that were later introduced as part of the “New Deal” under FDR.
Had FDR done nothing at all, just let the various banks go bust and the capitalists go bankrupt, the situation would have corrected itself by 1935. But FDR, ever the great admirer of the “Corporate State” of Benito Mussolini, saw this as an opportunity to do a little “social engineering” on a more grand scale. So he set about “fixing” tings, and declaring a whole new set of secular “rights”, with which we are cursed today. What was only a very serious recession got turned into a full-blown depression, and went through a double-dip in 1938, when the country was even worse off than it was in 1933.
The greatest scheme of all was selling the country Social Security, which was primarily a tax scheme, collecting a
“payroll tax” half from the employer, half from the employee, for a fictional “old-age” retirement they never expected to pay out very much on. In essence, the collection of this revenue became a huge “slush fund” that was “borrowed” against to fund a great number of other schemes that had nothing to do with old age, disability, survivors, or retirement. Supposedly these receipts were to be kept separate from the general revenue, but in fact, the commingling of the funds started almost immediately. The “reserves” in the Social Security fund were drawn down by taking the funds and handing back an IOU, that bore little if any interest return. A tax increase that was not called a tax increase.
Health insurance is now at the same stage that Social Security was in 1935, that is, a scheme in the making, which seemed to be almost innocuous at the start. But provisions were built in that assured that any revenues the government received ostensibly to fund the program, would be diverted to other purposes long before any payout of the program proceeded, just as is now being done in the name of “health insurance reform”.
We are being set up, not for the first part of the New Deal, but the second wave of the Great Depression, finally broken only by the economic effects of the full employment of the Second World War.
War is a very inefficient way of achieving full employment.
Conservatives generally don't favor censorship.
It's what's in the daily news. I ignore the UFO threads because I don't like them, I suggest you ignore these threads...it's obvious you don't like them.
I'm 66 years old and we're in the worst economic conditions of a lifetime (maybe in the history of the country) and I intend to stay abreast of and learn all I can about the situation.
I will not stick my head in the sand and pretend everything is okay. Many have offered helpful opinions and insightful advice. If you have something to offer, please join in...otherwise, ignore these threads.
DITTO. I am 52 years old, and this financial meltdown had done more damage to US economy than 9/11 and all challenges of the past. Worst, this was a self inflicted diseaster. It is better to prepare for the worst, and if the worst does not happen, we simply pull back from our preparations. On the other hand, not having any preparation and the worst happens, that individual is in a world of hurt. Every American need to be familiar with the worst case scenarios and have some preparations set aside just in case. I think the feds and banks ability to stall the crisis is a blessing in disguise for the ones who have not done anything to set food, water, ammo, guns and precious metals aside. The government has provided you time to catch up on getting those items. Early 2010 may be your last chance.
blam.....I’m on my 79th orbit of the Sun and I lived thru the 1930 - 1941 depression.. My recollection was that we were ‘poor’, but so was everyone else, so we didn’t ‘feel’ poor. Dad worked a couple days a week and we got by. I remember one day when he came home from work (he ran a large, four color printing press), and announced that he got a raise...to 60 cents/ hour. I thought, wow, a penny a minute. That was something. How times change. Jim
PS Govmt. (zero) is making the same mistakes now as H. Hoover, FDR, and govmt. made back then, prolonging the carnage.
We’ll all have more orbits, I think the Govt. will de value the dollar, maybe up to say 75%. They have huge debts to re finance,This year. Interest rates are close to 1% now. They have shot their wad. The world won’t buy our debt, We have to pay it. Banks like B of A think they are to big to fail, that the US govt will bail them out for ever, It’s a toxic mix, with NO adults in the room
It convinced me that I wasn't going to be a farmer and worked very hard and did well, I retired at age 50 from a chip-making career and my only child has a PhD in physics. I credit these successes to the 'steeling' my family received during those depression years.
Economics / Economic Recovery
Jan 07, 2010 - 01:59 PM
By: Mike Whitney
There's no denying that the economy is getting better, but will it last? Many economists don't think so, including experts at opposite ends of the ideological spectrum, like Paul Krugman and Martin Feldstein.
They think the economy will begin to fizzle sometime in the latter part of 2010 when Obama's $787 billion fiscal stimulus runs out and consumers are forced to pick up the slack in demand.
That's a safe bet, too, considering that unemployment will still be somewhere in the neighborhood of 9 percent and households will still be digging out from the $13 trillion they lost during the crisis. And the fact that the Fed is planning to end its quantitative easing (QE) program in early April, doesn't help either.
That will just suck more liquidity out of the system and push long-term interest rates higher. When that happens, housing prices will fall, inventory will rise, and a surge in foreclosures will put more pressure on the banks balance sheets.
That's why the pros are so glum, because they know the economy needs a second dose of stimulus to stay on track, but the politicos are dead-set against it.
Congress is afraid of the backlash from voters in the upcoming midterm elections. They'd rather drive the economy back into recession then risk losing their jobs.
Despite the propaganda in the media, stimulus works. In fact, Goldman Sachs attributes all of last quarter's (positive) growth to Obama's stimulus. Here's how Nobel prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz sums it up in his China Daily article "Harsh lessons we may need to learn again"
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The Illinois economy isn't shrinking quite as fast as it was a few months ago. I guess that means it is getting better..
I wish I could get my girlfriend to understand that.
It is about to shrink some more. Looks like furloughs and layoffs are going to happen for state and university workers..
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