Experts Fear a Stealth Crash Has Already Begun: “Risk is Flashing Red”
Mac Slavo
November 2nd, 2015
SHTFplan.com
It is more clear than ever that the Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing program will eventually bring destruction to the planet.
The world doubled down on risk after the 2008 crisis with nearly unlimited liquidity, and now debt is threatening to drown the global financial market. Cheap credit is about to saddle down those who got themselves overextended. Many private borrowers and states alike face default, bankruptcy and/or a failure to pay their obligations. Mathematically, the problem is just waiting to explode.
It is just a matter of when the music stops. But has it already?
Some are suggesting that things are already so bad that a crash has already set in, but without the headlines and fanfare.
This stealth crash is evidenced by conditions so bad they precipitate a chain reaction of further financial destruction. According to the London Guardian things are simply too far gone: “the debt levels are too high, productivity growth too weak and financial risks too threatening.”
Via the London Guardian:
A predicted global meltdown passed without event. But there are enough warning signs to suggest we are sleepwalking into another disaster
The 1st of October came and went without financial armageddon. Veteran forecaster Martin Armstrong, who accurately predicted the 1987 crash, used the same model to suggest that 1 October would be a major turning point for global markets. Some investors even put bets on it. But the passing of the predicted global crash is only good news to a point. Many indicators in global finance are pointing downwards – and some even think the crash has begun. Let’s assemble the evidence.
First, the unsustainable debt. Since 2007, the pile of debt in the world has grown by $57tn (£37tn). That’s a compound annual growth rate of 5.3%, significantly beating GDP. Debts have doubled in the so-called emerging markets, while rising by just over a third in the developed world.[…] What we’ve done with credit since the global crisis of 2008 is expand it faster than the economy – which can only be done rationally if we think the future is going to be much richer than the present.This summer, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) pointed out that certain major economies were seeing a sharp rise in debt-to-GDP ratios, which were well outside historic norms. In China, the rest of Asia and Brazil, private-sector borrowing has risen so quickly that BIS’s dashboard of risk is flashing red. In two thirds of all cases, red warnings such as this are followed by a major banking crisis within three years.The underlying cause of this debt glut is the $12tn of free or cheap money created by central banks since 2009, combined with near-zero interest rates. When the real price of money is close to zero, people borrow and worry about the consequences later.Oil collapsed first, in mid 2014, falling from $110 a barrel to $49 now, despite a slight rebound in the interim.
[…]
In short, as the BIS economists put it, this is “a world in which debt levels are too high, productivity growth too weak and financial risks too threatening”. It’s impossible to extrapolate from all this the date the crash will happen, or the form it will take.
The Rest…HERE
