Posted on 02/06/2016 6:42:17 AM PST by SkyPilot
A pernicious cycle of collapsing commodities, corporate defaults, and currency wars loom over the global economy. Can anything stop it from unravelling?
A global recession is on the way. This truism of economics holds at any point in which the world is not in the grips of a contraction.
The real question is always when and how deep the upcoming downturn will be.
"The crash will come, but it would be nice if it came two years from now", Thomas Thygesen, head of economics at SEB told over 200 commodity investors and analysts in London last month.
His audience was rapt with unusual attention. They could be forgiven for thinking the slump had not already arrived.
Commodity prices have crashed by two thirds since their peaks in 2014. Oil has borne the brunt of the sell-off, suffering the worst price collapse in modern history. Brent crude has fallen from $115 a barrel in the summer of 2014, to just $27.70 in mid-January.
Plenty of investors sitting in the blue-lit, cavernous surrounds of Bloomberg's London HQ would have had their fingers burnt by the price capitulation.
"They tell you should start your presentations with a joke, but making jokes at a commodities seminar is hardly appropriate these days," Thygesen told his nervous audience.
Major oil price falls have a number of historical precedents. Today's glutted oil market is often compared to the crash of 1986, the last major episode over global over-supply. Back in the late 90s, a barrel of Brent crude fell to as low as $10 in the wake of the Asian financial crisis.
The S&P 500 trading pit at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
What amazes me that is so many people still refuse to acknowledge how bad it currently is, let alone acknowledge what is now on the horizon. This crash will be global, it will be horrible, and it will change world politics. It will alter the course of humanity. The only "solution" will be a world governing body, with the power to tax and regulate.
The consumer-driven economy is collapsing due to a lack of consumers with spending money; moving Third Worlders around between areas formerly inhabited by Westerners like pieces on a chessboard does nothing because too many of them are economically unproductive - they provide no benefit to the areas in which they land. Unemployed/unemployable people only serve to fill housing and classrooms; they don’t circulate “new” money in an economy or produce anything of value (except more offspring/customers).
Of course Obama, only yesterday, took credit for the “good economy.” He is in the dark closet, looking for the black hat that isn’t there.
The US pretty much gave up creating new money in the late 70s-early 80s and has relied on circulating disposable income ever since. Ask yourself when was the US Balance of Trade a major news item as in was back then?
Until those entitlements include free houses and cars for everyone 17 and up, they won’t drive any economic growth. While Welfarians are desirable customers because of their ignorance, immobility and fad-following, in the end they just don’t have much money to spend. Bodegas make a mint selling them more food than they need, but they aren’t lining up at car dealerships...
He is a sociopath - and intensely evil. I am convinced he is perfectly possessed (demonically).
The unemployment numbers released yesterday are as bogus as the happy talk that everything is fine or will get better soon.
When the BIG crash ultimately happens (and I don't know when, I thought it would have hit is hard last fall), there will be blood on the walls. And this time, there are no magic bullets and smoke and mirrors available.
I like the term "Welfarians." Is it yours? Can I borrow it?
“What amazes me that is so many people still refuse to acknowledge how bad it currently is,”
You and me both! Some people still seem to think that things are rosy. I suppose it is all part of the dumbing down of the population, people think that an age when you need a minimum of a bachelor degree to get a job that will barely support one person who is saddled with huge student loan debts is somehow better than an age when young people finished public high school and went to work and became married homeowners with children at twenty two. They think that people who spend a third or more of their gross income on rent but have a huge tv, a “smart” phone and internet are somehow better off than their great grandparents who had no tv, no phone etc. but lived in their own house on 100 acres and owed no one. They think that people who have a degree but can’t name the CENTURY of the American civil war are somehow better educated than great grandma who had a high school diploma even though they couldn’t pass great grandma’s eighth grade final.
What? Did you really say that? Google "quantitative easing".
I’ve been using it for a couple of weeks now, because I didn’t know how to describe people who are technically “American” but have no grasp of the history/culture of this country and are dependent on government wealth transfers through multiple generations. It crosses ethnic lines, and they are the Dems’ core constituency (as fodder for the education and poverty cartels that owns the Democratic Party). Their numbers are augmented by the “anchor baby” phenomenon and those breeding for cash/freebies; the offspring is technically “American”, but it stops there.
You may use it freely; I hope the concept spreads!
It’s possible the crash is over. Oil, precious metals, copper, etc may have bottomed out.
It all benefits hefge fund managers like George Soros.
If it's going to crash I hope it comes very soon, not two years from now. It needs to crash on Obama's watch.
It also benefits people administering the Welfarian populations (the education industry, owners of Section 8 properties, drug and alcohol vendors, etc.).
You’re right about the balance of trade figures being suppressed. Only Trump talks about it.
It’a done been crashed. The media just won’t report it until the GOP takes over.
There's the problem: the service sector doesn't create much wealth, and creating wealth is the only real growth.
When the Chinese buy the Chicago Stock Exchange it will be up up up ,LOL
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