Mainstream news outlets are already starting to use the phrase “economic collapse” to describe what is going on in some areas of our world right now. For many Americans this may seem a bit strange, but the truth is that the worldwide economic slowdown that began during the second half of last year is starting to get a lot worse. In this article, we are going to examine evidence of this from South America, Europe, Asia and North America. Once we are done, it should be obvious that there is absolutely no reason to be optimistic about the direction of the global economy right now. The warnings of so many prominent experts are now becoming a reality, and what we have witnessed so far are just the early chapters of a crushing economic crisis that will affect every man, woman and child in the entire world.
Let’s start with Brazil. It has the 7th largest economy on the entire planet, and it is already enduring its worst recession in 25 years. In fact, at the end of last year Goldman Sachs said that what was going on down there was actually a “depression“.
But now the crisis in Brazil has escalated significantly.
The only question now is whether Venezuela’s government or economy will completely collapse first.
Incumbents, after all, don’t tend to do too well when, according to the International Monetary Fund, their economy shrinks 10 percent one year, an additional 6 percent the next, and inflation explodes to 720 percent. It’s no wonder, then, that markets expect Venezuela to default on its debt in the very near future. The country is basically bankrupt.
Once again we see a very respected mainstream publication using the phrase “economic collapse” to describe what is happening in South America.
Meanwhile, over in Europe the collapse of the Italian banking system has entered a disturbing new chapter. Italy’s finance minister has called a meeting in Rome for Monday that will be focusing on a “last resort” bailout plan for the troubled banks…
Finance minister Pier Carlo Padoan has called a meeting in Rome on Monday with executives from Italy’s largest financial institutions to agree final details of a “last resort” bailout plan.
Yet on the eve of that gathering, concerns remain as to whether the plan will be sufficient to ringfence the weakest of Italy’s large banks, Monte dei Paschi di Siena, from contagion, according to people involved in the talks.
Italian bank shares have lost almost half their value so far this year amid investor worries over a €360bn pile of non-performing loans — equivalent to about a fifth of GDP. Lenders’ profitability has been hit by a crippling three-year recession.
As Italy descends into financial chaos, the rest of the continent better be paying attention.
Do you remember how hard it was for the rest of Europe to rescue Greece?
Well, Greece has the 44th largest economy on the planet.
Italy has the 8th.
It would be hard to overstate the seriousness of what is going on over in Europe, and it is not just Italy we are talking about. All over the continent major banks are in deep trouble, and the chairman of France’s second largest retail bank recently told reporters that “I am much more worried than I was in 2009“.
And there is very good reason for concern. On Sunday, we learned that a major “bail-in” had just been announced for one of Austria’s most prominent banks.
And then today, following a decision by the Austrian Banking Regulator, the Finanzmarktaufsicht or Financial Market Authority, Austria officially became the first European country to use a new law under the framework imposed by Bank the European Recovery and Resolution Directive to share losses of a failed bank with senior creditors as it slashed the value of debt owed by Heta Asset Resolution AG.null
‘France is totally bankrupt’: French jobs minister Michel Sapin embarrasses Francois Hollande with shocking statement on state of the country’s economy
Unexpected news came during a radio interview yesterday and calls into further question Hollande’s controversial ‘tax and spend’ policies.
France’s employment minister Michel Sapin has admitted the country is “totally bankrupt”.
The unexpected news came during a radio interview yesterday and is thought to have sent the country’s business leaders into a state of shock.
“There is a state but it is a totally bankrupt state,” Mr Sapin said. “That is why we had to put a deficit reduction plan in place, and nothing should make us turn away from that objective.”
Mr Sapin’s “totally bankrupt” statement is likely to cause huge embarrassment for President Francois Hollande, who will be left to undo the potential damage to his socialist government’s reputation.
Today, the Austrian Financial Market Authority (FMA) in its function as the resolution authority pursuant to the Bank Recovery and Resolution Act (BaSAG – Bundesgesetz über die Sanierung und Abwicklung von Banken) has issued the key features for the further steps for the resolution of HETA ASSET RESOLUTION AG. The most significant measures are:
a 100% bail-in for all subordinated liabilities,
a 53.98% bail-in, resulting in a 46.02% quota, for all eligible preferential liabilities,
the cancellation of all interest payments from 01.03.2015, when HETA was placed into resolution pursuant to BaSAG,
as well as a harmonisation of the maturities of all eligible liabilities to 31.12.2023.
According to the current resolution plan for HETA, the wind-down process should be concluded by 2020, although the repayment of all claims as well as the legally binding conclusion of all currently outstanding legal disputes will realistically only be concluded by the end of 2023. Only at that point will it be possible to finally distribute the assets and to liquidate the company.
The dominoes are starting to fall in Europe, and I would expect even bigger announcements in the weeks and months to come.
Over in Asia, economic chaos is beginning to prevail as well.
In China, the stock market is already down more than 40 percent from the peak, Chinese exports were down 25.4 percent on a year over year basis in February, and Chinese economic numbers overall have not been this poor since the depths of the last global recession.
At the same time, the Japanese economy is really struggling right now. As I wrote about the other day, Japanese GDP has shrunk for two out of the last three quarters, we just saw Japanese industrial production experience the biggest one month decline that we have witnessed since the tsunami of 2011, and business sentiment has fallen to a three year low. The Nikkei has dropped by about 5,000 points from where it was last summer, and some analysts believe that Japanese markets “are being destroyed” due to massive intervention by the Bank of Japan.
Here in the United States, we haven’t been hit quite as hard as the rest of the world just yet, but there are lots of very disturbing warning signs all around us.
We are about to get confirmation that earnings growth for America’s biggest companies was negative in the first quarter, compared to the same period a year ago.
Protecting yourself from a U.S. economic collapse is difficult. A catastrophic failure can happen without warning. In most crises, people survive through their knowledge, wits, and by helping each other. Make sure you understand basic economic concepts so you can see warning signs of instability. One of the first signs is a stock market crash. If it’s bad enough, a market crash can cause a recession.
Second, keep as many assets as liquid as possible so that you can withdraw them within a week. In addition to your regular job, make sure you have skills that you’d need in a traditional economy, such as farming, cooking, or repair.
Keep yourself in top physical shape. Know basic survival skills, such as self-defense, foraging, hunting, and starting a fire. Practice now with camping trips. If you can, move near a wildlife preserve in a temperate climate. That way, if a collapse occurs, you can live off the land in a relatively unpopulated area.
As for cash, it may not be useful in a total economic collapse because its value might be decimated. Stockpiles of gold bullion may not help because they would be difficult to transport if you needed to move quickly. In a severe collapse, they may not be accepted as currency. But it would be good to have a stash of $20 bills and gold coins, just in case. During many crisis situations, these are commonly accepted as bribes.
When aluminum giant Alcoa releases its results on Monday, it will mark the unofficial start of the heaviest reporting season for S&P 500 companies.
The final scoreboard is expected to show a 9.1% earnings drop for the quarter, according to FactSet senior earnings analyst John Butters.
If these projections turn out to be accurate, it will be the fourth quarter in a row of earnings declines. This is something that we never see outside of a recession.
And for a whole bunch more numbers which indicate that the U.S. economy is in very serious trouble.
Of course I am just another voice in the crowd when it comes to predicting that the U.S. economy is headed for rough times. For example, just check out what Societe Generale economist Albert Edwards is saying…
A tidal wave is coming to the US economy, according to Albert Edwards, and when it crashes it’s going to throw the economy into recession.
…the profit recession facing American corporations is going to lead to a collapse in corporate credit.
“Despite risk assets enjoying a few weeks in the sun our fail-safe recession indicator has stopped flashing amber and turned to red”
He continued:
Whole economy profits never normally fall this deeply without a recession unfolding. And with the US corporate sector up to its eyes in debt, the one asset class to be avoided — even more so than the ridiculously overvalued equity market — is US corporate debt. The economy will surely be swept away by a tidal wave of corporate default.
As you can see, it isn’t just one nation or one region of the world that we need to be concerned about.
Economic chaos is erupting literally all over the planet, and global leaders are starting to panic.
Unfortunately, they have had seven years to try to fix things since the last global recession, and they didn’t get the job done. Anyone that believes that by some miracle they will be able to pull us out of the fire this time and that everything will somehow be okay is simply engaged in wishful thinking.
Why is George Soros selling stocks, buying gold and making “a series of big, bearish investments”? If things stay relatively stable like they are right now, these moves will likely cost George Soros a tremendous amount of money. But if a major financial crisis is imminent, he stands to make obscene returns. So does George Soros know something that the rest of us do not?
The recent trading moves that Soros has made are so big and so bearish that they have even gotten the attention of the Wall Street Journal…
Worried about the outlook for the global economy and concerned that large market shifts may be at hand, the billionaire hedge-fund founder and philanthropist recently directed a series of big, bearish investments, according to people close to the matter.
Soros Fund Management LLC, which manages $30 billion for Mr. Soros and his family, sold stocks and bought gold and shares of gold miners, anticipating weakness in various markets. Investors often view gold as a haven during times of turmoil.
You know that it is very late in the game when that starts happening…
One thing that George Soros is particularly concerned about that I haven’t been talking a lot about yet is the upcoming Brexit vote. If the United Kingdom leaves the EU (and hopefully they will), the short-term consequences for the European economy could potentially be absolutely catastrophic…
Mr. Soros also argues that there remains a good chance the European Union will collapse under the weight of the migration crisis, continuing challenges in Greece and a potential exit by the United Kingdom from the EU.
“If Britain leaves, it could unleash a general exodus, and the disintegration of the European Union will become practically unavoidable,” he said.
The economic slowdown in China also has him very worried, and so he has directed his firm to make extremely bearish wagers.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the last time Soros made these kinds of bearish moves was back in 2007, and it resulted in more than a billion dollars of gains for his company.
Of course Soros is not alone in his bearish outlook. In fact, Goldman Sachs has just warned that “there may be significant risk to the downside for the market”…
Goldman Sachs is getting nervous about stocks.
In a note to clients, equity strategist Christian Mueller-Glissmann outlined the firm’s fears that there may be significant risk to the downside for the market.
Ultimately, George Soros and Goldman Sachs are looking at the same economic data that I share with my readers on a daily basis.
As I have been documenting for months, almost every single economic indicator that you can possibly think of says that we are heading into a recession.
For instance, just today I was sent a piece by Mike Shedlock that showed that federal and state tax receipts are really slowing down just like they did just prior to the last two recessions…
And online job postings on LinkedIn have now been falling precipitously since February after 73 months in a row of growth…
After 73 consecutive months of year-over-year growth, online jobs postings have been in decline since February. May was by far the worst month since January 2009, down 285k from April and down 552k from a year ago.
Last week, the government issued the worst jobs report in nearly six years, and the energy industry continues to bleed good paying middle class jobs at a staggering rate. The following comes from oilprice.com…
That may seem counterintuitive in an industry that has been rapidly shedding workers, with more than 350,000 people laid off in the oil and gas industry worldwide.
Texas is one place feeling the pain. Around 99,000 direct and indirect jobs in the Lone Star state have been eliminated since prices collapsed two years ago, or about one third of the entire industry. In April alone there were about 6,300 people in oil and gas and supporting services that were handed pink slips. Employment in Texas’ oil sector is close to levels not seen since the aftermath of the financial crisis in 2009. “We’re still losing big chunks of jobs with each passing month,” Karr Ingham, an Amarillo-based economist, told The Houston Chronicle.
At this point it is so obvious that we have entered a new economic downturn that I don’t know how anyone can possibly deny it any longer.
Unfortunately, the reality of what is happening has not sunk in with the general population yet.
Just like 2008, people are feverishly racking up huge credit card balances even though we stand on the precipice of a major financial crisis…
American taxpayers are quick to criticize the federal government for its ever-increasing national debt, but a new study released Wednesday found taxpayers are also saddled with debt, and are likely to end 2016 with a record high $1 trillion in outstanding balances.
Wallethub, a site that recommends credit cards based on consumers’ needs, said that will be the highest amount of credit card debt on record, surpassing even the years during and before the Great Recession. The site said the record high was in 2008, when people owed $984.2 billion on their credit cards.
Will we ever learn?
This has got to be one of the worst possible times to be going into credit card debt.
Sadly, the “dumb money” will continue to act dumb and the “smart money” (such as George Soros) will continue to quietly position themselves to take advantage of the crisis that is already starting to unfold.
We can’t change what is happening to the economy, but we do have control over the choices that we make.
So I urge you to please make your choices wisely.
If a U.S. economic collapse occurs, it will happen quickly.No one would predict it. That’s because the signs of imminent failure aredifficult to see.
Surviving an economic crisisis one thing, thriving and securing your wealth during it is a totallydifferent game. Fortunately, I had already done my research on that. So we putour knowledge together and created an economic disaster survival blueprint for our families that would handle bothsurvival and wealth protection. And we knew we had to warn unsuspectingAmericans of what is coming and share this vital knowledge with them. This ishow “Surviving the Final Bubble” was born: A blueprint to surviving and thrivingduring the coming Big Bank Derivatives collapse.
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Why should I can my own meat?
If you’ve ever tried to buy food in bulk but realized you don’t have nearlyenough freezer space, you’ll find that canning your own meat can be great forstorage. There’s no need for freezing orrefrigeration. Canning can also be great for when you want to giveaway food as gifts during the holidays.
When you are canning meat products remember these things.
Here’s just a glimpse of what you’ll find inside Carnivore’s Bible:
You’ll discover the ancient meat preservation method thatwill make your mouth water. Enjoying the delicious sweet-smoky taste of beef,pork, or link sausages for months to come… without ANY refrigeration,chemicals, preservatives, or additives!
And you can prepare everything in your back-yard (orbalcony) in one afternoon– I promise it will be more relaxing than taking theday off to go fishing.
You’ll also learn how to get rid of the toxic canned foodfrom the supermarket… and preserve your own healthy & deliciousvegetables and fruits. All you need is Granddad Bob’s secret canning trickto instantly kill bacteria and parasites…
“Ifyou are an ordinary person, then you can prepare yourself for war by moving to the countryside and building a farm, but you musttake guns with you, as the hordes of starving will be roaming. Also, eventhough the elite will have their safe havens and specialist shelters, they mustbe just as careful during the war as the ordinary civilians, because their shelters can still becompromised.”
*About the author: Michael Snyder is the founder and publisher of The Economic Collapse Blog. Michael’s controversial new book about Bible prophecy entitled “The Rapture Verdict” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.*