Big Trouble Brewing

Wednesday, October 12, 2011
By Paul Martin

by Chris Martenson
ZeroHedge.com
10/12/2011

I do not toss around the idea of a market crash lightly. If you’ve been following me long enough, you know that only in very rare instances do I issue a cautionary Alert (I’ve only issued four since my website launched in 2008), and I am generally not given to hyperbole.

Let’s be clear: I’m not issuing an Alert at this time. But I am concerned that a materially adverse disruption to the financial markets is increasingly likely in the near future.

Perhaps a definition will be helpful as we begin. A ‘market crash’ is an event where there are no bids to meet a wall of selling. The actual amount of the percentage decline is less important to note than the amount of chaos, or loss of control, that a given market experiences. Some like to say that a market downdraft requires a decline of 10%, or maybe even 15% or 20% (or more), in order to qualify as a ‘crash.’ For me, the key factor is not so much the amount of the decline, but the pace of the decline.

With perhaps a quadrillion US dollars of hyper-interconnected derivatives outstanding — that’s the notional value, but who really knows what the real number is? — an orderly market is essential for knowing whether or not the counterparty to one’s trade is solvent. During periods of intense price swings in the market, such things are simply not knowable, and spawn the fear and paralysis that really define a market crash.

The Next Market Crash

The Rest…HERE

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