"Looks like we are going to need a bigger boat!"
My appologies for mixing my movie metaphor. ;-)
Posted on 07/09/2012 11:28:26 AM PDT by Kartographer
"Dr. Doom" Nouriel Roubini, says the "perfect storm" scenario he forecast for the global economy earlier this year is unfolding right now as growth slows in the U.S., Europe as well as China.
In May, Roubini predicted four elements - stalling growth in the U.S., debt troubles in Europe, a slowdown in emerging markets, particularly China, and military conflict in Iran - would come together in to create a storm for the global economy in 2013.
(Excerpt) Read more at finance.yahoo.com ...
PING!
Well - has has been predicting gloom and doom since 2009 - eventually, he is going to be correct.
Maybe we SHOULD let Obama have four more years....
Correction his predicting started in 2008 and how was 2008?
—Well - has has been predicting gloom and doom since 2009 - eventually, he is going to be correct.—
To be fair, if one predicts something of this magnitude within an accuracy of five years I’ll be impressed. I started predicting it in 2008. I said it could get as bad or worse than the great depression. It sounded nutty.
It doesn’t any more. Many would argue it got worse already (and I believe it has barely started). Real estate has dropped more than it did during World Depression I (WDI). And WDII sees a lot more people who were trying to live off home equity than during WDI. Frankly, countries were a lot more solvent then. This time it is different and it is, fundamentally speaking, much, MUCH worse.
I have little doubt it will end in WWIII just as WDI ended in WWII.
“”Levitational force of policy easing can only temporarily lift asset prices as gravitational forces of weaker fundamentals dominate over time,” he said.”
Was he channeling Greenspan? “Levitational forces?!?”
I have a lot of respect for Roubini, because he started telling people that housing price appreciation was “unsustainable” as far back as 2005. He was considered a heretic then. He increased his warnings from 2006 into 2007, and people started saying he was a nutjob.
Then 2008 came along, and people said just what you’re saying here: “....eventually, he was going to be correct.”
Wrong.
Here’s what is actually happening:
Roubini’s predictions are based on sound analysis of what he sees in the debt markets and macro-economic conditions. The timing of his predictions is confounded by the central bankers of the world, who privately and quite quietly see the same problems coming, propping up the world’s asset classes and markets. Roubini’s error is in not understanding how manifestly corrupt the banking cartel is, nor how well they’ve captured the central bankers and political classes to do their bidding.
In this case, Roubini has been saying since late 2009 that:
a) the central bankers learned nothing (correct),
b) the large investment bankers have learned nothing (doubly correct)
c) that another financial implosion is coming, and it will be bigger, harder and longer than the 2008 implosion (which we’re probably sliding into now).
Roubini is, IMO, correct for the right reasons: the policy responses to the 2008 implosion have been exactly the wrong ones. In effect, we have “doubled down on stupid” and when central bankers and governments play stupid games, they win stupid prizes.
1st Mate: Rocks, dead ahead, Captain.
Captain Obama: I'll be in the lifeboats if you need me.............
It will be big and nasty. We don't just have a depression looming, the long-term trend on wheat prices is going up.
The cost of growing food is tied to the cost of oil (which is needed for driving tractors to making fertilizers and herbicides).
What happens when the cost of feeding the average Third World resident is more than his economic productivity, and the West can no longer afford to supply food aid?
—What happens when the cost of feeding the average Third World resident is more than his economic productivity, and the West can no longer afford to supply food aid?—
And the real question is, why can’t they grow their own food?
The answer to that question answers a lot of others, and explains a lot.
It is more than the cost of oil. It is catastrophic crop failures caused by extremely cold weather and drought. The Shelley area of Idaho lost 75% of the potato crop. They grow 95% of the world's potatoes. Michigan had an early Spring followed by a killing frost that wiped out 90% of the apple blossoms. I lost my apple blossoms in Idaho for the same reason. No apples coming this year. Argentina is having citrus frost losses.
I read something in 2006 that seems to make sense today. It said, not to be surprised by how long the government can keep this financial charade going. It has tremendous resources to throw at it and it will use them all before it’s over. The end will come but not as soon as we think.
They can grow some food, more or less. The problem is that modern farming takes intelligence and hard work. You get more crops with machinery. That means you need to be able to care for machinery and keep it in repair. You need to be able to understand modern techniques.
An intelligent modern farmer can probably get 10 times the yield from a given plot of land than a Third World subsistence farmer can. But he has little use for the help of an illiterate (and more importantly, very low IQ) Third World resident.
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