By Michael Snyder, on December
12th, 2013
These are all experts (below).
Yet not one of them mentioned the elephant in the room:
The 'tapering' of quantitative easing, the most dangerous monetary policy ever
undertaken anywhere.
Fears of inflation, which had been delayed so far, will force the Fed to taper
off on money printing and then interest rates will eventually increase with the
shortage of liquidity.
This will reduce lending and make it more expensive. For the US government,
depending on the prime rate, that could be a total disaster (even collapse, as
one expert predicted)--but also the best thing that could possibly happen,
because it would force us to stop throwing money away. Welfare and other social
entitlements will slow down considerably. People who can't find work will do
desperate things. There will not be enough police to control the upheavals. But
eventually, competitive capitalism could be reset.
For business, which is already in the doldrums, we can expect things to slow
down even more.
But some good things may also come of this, such as a return to common sense
values.
These are exciting, if frightening, times.
Buckle up!
Don Hank
By Michael Snyder, on December
12th, 2013
Yet not one
of them mentioned the elephant in the room:
The 'tapering' of quantitative easing, the most dangerous monetary policy ever
undertaken anywhere.
Fears of inflation, which had been delayed so far, will force the Fed to taper
off on money printing and then interest rates will eventually increase with the
shortage of liquidity.
This will reduce lending and make it more expensive. For the US government,
depending on the prime rate, that could be a total disaster (even collapse, as
one expert predicted)--but also the best thing that could possibly happen,
because it would force us to stop throwing money away. Welfare and other social
entitlements will slow down considerably. People who can't find work will do
desperate things. There will not be enough police to control the upheavals. But
eventually, competitive capitalism could be reset.
For business, which is already in the doldrums, we can expect things to slow
down even more.
But some good things may also come of this, such as a return to common sense
values.
These are exciting, if frightening, times.
Observations by our friend Don Hank
Buckle up!
Don Hank
Some
of the most respected prognosticators in the financial world are warning that
what is coming in 2014 and beyond is going to shake America to the core. Many
of the quotes that you are about to read are from individuals that actually
predicted the subprime mortgage meltdown and the financial crisis of 2008 ahead
of time. So they have a track record of being right. Does that guarantee that
they will be right about what is coming in 2014? Of course not. In fact, as
you will see below, not all of them agree about exactly what is coming next.
But without a doubt, all of their forecasts are quite ominous. The following
are quotes from Harry Dent, Marc Faber, Gerald Celente, Mike Maloney, Jim Rogers
and nine other respected economic experts about what they believe is coming in
2014 and beyond...
-Harry
Dent, author of The Great Depression Ahead:
"Our best long-term and intermediate cycles suggest another slowdown and stock
crash accelerating between very early 2014 and early 2015, and possibly lasting
well into 2015 or even 2016. The worst economic trends due to demographics will
hit between 2014 and 2019. The U.S. economy is likely to suffer a minor or major
crash by early 2015 and another between late 2017 and late 2019 or early 2020 at
the latest."
-Marc
Faber, editor
and publisher of the Gloom, Boom & Doom Report:
"You have to say that we are again in a massive financial bubble in bonds, in
equities, in [other] asset prices that have gone up dramatically."
-Gerald
Celente:
"Any self-respecting adult that hears McConnell, Reid, Boehner, Ryan, one after
another, and buys this baloney… they deserve what they get.
And as for the international scene… the whole thing is collapsing.
That’s our forecast.
We are saying that by the second quarter of 2014, we expect the bottom to fall
out… or something to divert our attention as it falls out."
-Mike
Maloney, host of Hidden Secrets of Money:
"I think the crash of 2008 was just a speed bump on the way to the main event…
the consequences are gonna be horrific… the rest of the decade will bring
us the greatest financial calamity in history."
-Jim
Rogers:
"You saw what happened in 2008-2009, which was worse than the previous economic
setback because the debt was so much higher. Well now the debt is staggeringly
much higher, and so the next economic problem, whenever it happens and whatever
causes it, is going to be worse than in the past, because we have these
unbelievable levels of debt, and unbelievable levels of money printing all over
the world. Be worried and get prepared. Now it [a collapse] may not happen until
2016 or something, I have no idea when it’s going to happen, but when it comes,
be careful."
-Lindsey
Williams:
"There is going to be a global currency reset."
-CLSA's
Russell Napier:
"We are on the eve of a deflationary shock which will likely reduce equity
valuations from very high to very low levels."
-Oaktree
Capital's Howard Marks:
"Certainly risk tolerance has been increasing of late; high returns on risky
assets have encouraged more of the same; and the markets are becoming more
heated. The bottom line varies from sector to sector, but I have no doubt
that markets are riskier than at any other time since the depths of the crisis
in late 2008 (for credit) or early 2009 (for equities), and they are becoming
more so."
-Financial
editor Jeff Berwick: "If they allow interest rates to rise,
it will effectively make the U.S. government bankrupt and insolvent, and it
would make the U.S. government collapse. . . . They are preparing for a major
societal collapse. It is obvious and it will happen, and it will be very scary
and very dangerous."
-Michael
Pento,
founder of Pento Portfolio
Strategies:
"Disappointingly, it is much more probable that the government has brought us
out of the Great Recession, only to set us up for the Greater Depression, which
lies just on the other side of interest rate normalization."
-Boston
University Economics Professor Laurence Kotlikoff:
"Eventually somebody recognizes this and starts dumping the bonds, and interest
rates go up, and inflation takes off, and we're off to the races."
-Mexican
Billionaire Hugo Salinas Price:
"I think we are going to see a series of bankruptcies. I
think the rise in interest rates is the fatal sign which is going to ignite a
derivatives crisis. This is going to bring down the derivatives system (and
the financial system).
There are (over) one quadrillion dollars of derivatives and
most of them are related to interest rates. The spiking of interest rates in
the United States may set that off. What is going to happen in the world is
eventually we are going to come to a moment where there is going to be massive
bankruptcies around the globe."
-Robert
Shiller, one of the winners of the 2013 Nobel prize for economics:
"I'm not sounding the alarm yet. But in many countries the stock price levels
are high, and in many real estate markets prices have risen sharply...that could
end badly."
-David
Stockman, former
Director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Ronald Reagan:
"We have a massive bubble everywhere, from Japan, to China, Europe, to the UK.
As a result of this, I think world financial markets are extremely dangerous,
unstable, and subject to serious trouble and dislocation in the future."
And certainly there are already signs that the U.S. economy is slowing down as
we head into the final weeks of 2013. For example, on Thursday we learned that
the number of initial claims for unemployment benefits increased by 68,000 last
week to a disturbingly high total of
368,000.
That was the largest increase that we have seen in more than a year.
In addition, as I wrote about
the other day,
rail traffic is way down right now. In fact, for the week ending November 30th,
U.S. rail traffic was
down 16.3 percent
from the same week one year earlier. That is a very important indicator that
economic activity is getting slower.
And we continue to get more evidence that the middle class
is being steadily eroded
and that poverty in America is rapidly growing. For example, a
survey that was just released
found that requests for food assistance and the level of homelessness have both
risen significantly in major U.S. cities over the past year...
A survey of 25 American cities, including many of the nation's largest, showed yearly increases in food aid and homelessness.
The cities, located throughout 18 states, saw requests for emergency food aid rise by an average of seven percent compared with the previous period a year earlier, according to the US Conference of Mayors study, published Wednesday.
All but four cities reported an increase in demand for assistance between the period of September 2012 through August 2013.
Unfortunately,
if the economic experts quoted above are correct, this is just the beginning of
our problems.
The next wave of the economic collapse is rapidly approaching, and things are
going to get much worse than this.
So what do you think?
Which of the individuals quoted above do you think are right on the money and
which ones do you think are way off base?
Please feel free to share what you think by posting a comment below...
