Gross Domestic Product

True, Germany has promised more than this in the form of its supposed contributions to various EU bailout funds, largely due to the fact that German banks are exposed to the PIIGS and other problem countries of Europe. However, at the end of the day, when it's time for ink to meet paper, Germany is unlikely to pick up the tab for this.

Even more bad news for Cyprus, which now has not only a depression to look forward to but a depressionary stagflation to boot. Bloomberg has ranked countries based on their risk of stagflation based on the following methodology: First, the average real Gross Domestic Product and average Consumer Price Index was calculated for each country from 2012 to 2014. Then the Stagflation Score was determined by multiplying average real GDP by average CPI if the average real GDP was negative or by dividing average real GDP by average CPI if the average real GDP was positive. The lower the score, the greater the risk of stagflation. The winner, or loser at the case may be? Cyprus was found to be most at risk of stagflation with a Stagflation Score of -4.733, followed by Portugal (-2.671), Italy (-2.133), Spain(-1.745) and Greece (-1.366). Switzerland was ranked least at risk with a score of (7.560), followed by China (2.612) and Japan (2.446).

• Berezovsky Died of Hanging Without Struggle, Police Say (BBG)
• BRICS Nations Plan New Bank to Bypass World Bank, IMF (BBG)
• China pledges more investments to Africa (FT)
• BOJ's Kuroda signals targeting longer-dated JGBs (Reuters)
• North Korea orders artillery to be combat ready, targeting U.S. bases (Reuters)
• Supreme Court to take up gay marriage for the first time (Reuters)
• U.S. Cracks Down on 'Forced' Insurance (WSJ)
• Japanese courts press Abe on electoral reform (FT)
• Vietnam accuses China of attack on fishermen in South China Sea (Reuters)
• Italy's High Court Overturns Knox Acquittal (WSJ)
• Facebook’s Zuckerberg Said to Explore Forming Political Group (BBG)

In other words, the ECB’s balance sheet, which backs up the entire EU banking system it essentially a work of fiction. Unless the ECB officials feel like admitting something is an asset or liability, it doesn’t exist.

It seems the European Union (IMF et al.) have decided that the route to crisis stabilization, just as we outlined here over a year ago and updated here, is through a wealth tax. However, as Handelsblatt reports, the gross distortions of wealth distribution among both core and peripheral nations (evident in the chasm between 'mean' and 'median' net assets - or wealth) makes some nations more 'capable' of 'giving' and as Commerzbank's chief economist notes, median wealth in Italy is EUR164,000 (as opposed to Austria's median of around EUR76,000 and mean of around EUR265,000) meaning that, in theory, Italy has no debt crisis (with net assets at 173% of GDP - significantly more than the Germans at 124%), "so it would make sense, in Italy a one-time property tax levy," he suggested. "A tax rate of 15% on financial assets would probably be enough to push the Italian government debt to below the critical level of 100 percent of gross domestic product." So there you have it, the 'new deal' in Europe, as we warned, is wealth taxes and testing the "capacity of Cypriots" appears to be the strawman on what the public will take before social unrest becomes intolerable.

When you get into too much debt, eventually really bad things start to happen.  This is a very painful lesson that southern Europe is learning right now, and it is a lesson that the United States will soon learn as well.  It simply is not possible to live way beyond your means forever.  You can do it for a while though, and politicians in the U.S. and in Europe keep trying to kick the can down the road and extend the party, but the truth is that debt is a very cruel master and at some point it inevitably catches up with you.  And when it catches up with you, the results can be absolutely devastating. Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal all tried to just slow down the rate at which their government debts were increasing, and look at what happened to their economies. I have always said that the next wave of the economic collapse would start in Europe and that is exactly what is happening.  So keep watching Europe.  What is happening to them will eventually happen to us.

They didn't see it coming last time either.  Back in 2007, President Bush, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and just about every prominent voice in the financial world were all predicting that we would experience tremendous economic prosperity well into the future.  In fact, as late as January 2008 Bernanke boldly declared that "the Federal Reserve is not currently forecasting a recession."  At the time, only the "doom and gloomers" were warning that everything was about to fall apart.  And of course we all know what happened.  But just a few short years later, history seems to be repeating itself. All of our "leaders" swear that everything is going to be okay.  You can believe them if you want, but denial is not just a river in Egypt, and another crash is inevitably coming.

While the people of France voted for a wealth distributing tax-the-rich Socialist President, it appears Francois Hollande is not living up to his electorate's hope for change as his policies are increasingly seen as simply more of the same as Sarkozy - “often the line is very fine between the two but Hollande must maintain the idea that he is more left wing.” Hollande’s popularity fell in February, leaving him the most unpopular French leader since 1981, a TNS-Sofres poll showed. More than two-thirds of the French and 44% of those who voted for him say they’re disappointed with him. It seems Socialism is not all it's cracked up to be as "the [European] obligation to cut deficits and spending and make reforms... exactly what Sarkozy had to deal with... annuls all measures Hollande wants to impose to boost jobs and growth." Hollande has restated his promise to reverse the unemployment trend and chanted his three mantras "constancy, endurance and hope," but, as Bloomberg notes, the last five opinion surveys have been disastrous for the self-proclaimed 'normal' president but have no fear as the 'old fuddy-duddy' is going back to the people in a charm offensive.

In a testament to just how euphoric stock markets are right now, James K. Glassman the co-author of the fabled Dow 36,000 — a book published in 1999 that claimed that stock prices could hit 36,000 by as soon as  2002 (and which quite understandably is now available for just 1 cent per copy) — has written a new column for Bloomberg View claiming that he might have been right all along... The uber-optimistic atmosphere permeating much of the financial press is frightening to me. The resurrection of the Dow 36,000 zombie is a symbolically significant event that likely signals much the same thing as it did first time around: a correction.

The last three recessions have all had mediocre recoveries of both output and employment. In this noteworthy clip, UCLA's Ed Leamer explains that changes in the manufacturing sector have changed the pattern of layoffs, recalls and hiring during recessions and recoveries. His point is that fiscal and monetary policy will not solve this problem as technological change has meant it is all output gains (productivity) with no input gains (hours worked or wages earned). Any task that is mundane, codifiable, or quantifiable, will be replaced by faraway foreigners, robots, or microprocessors with the implication that we need a workforce suited to the reality of the 21st century - an educational system that doesn't produce the human-equivalent of robots but creative problem-solving analytical thinkers. He concludes, "for those who do not directly compete with microprocessors, the standard of living has improved; for those relatively-unskilled, they're terribly struggling, with very few prospects." It's a sad situation.

Are we running out of time?  For the last several years, we have been living in a false bubble of hope that has been fueled by massive amounts of debt and bailout money.  This illusion of economic stability has convinced most people that the great economic crisis of 2008 was just an "aberration" and that now things are back to normal.  Unfortunately, that is not the case at all.  The truth is that the financial crash of 2008 was just the first wave of our economic troubles.  We have not even come close to recovering from that wave, and the next wave of the economic collapse is rapidly approaching.  Our economy is like a giant sand castle that has been built on a foundation of debt and toilet paper currency.  As each wave of the crisis hits us, the solutions that our leaders will present to us will involve even more debt and even more money printing.  And each time, those "solutions" will only make our problems even worse.  Right now, events are unfolding in Europe and in the United States that are pushing us toward the next major crisis moment.  I sincerely hope that we have some more time before the next crisis overwhelms us, but as you will see, time is rapidly running out. The following are 12 things that just happened that show the next wave of the economic collapse is almost here...

Italian debt jumped in 2012 to 127 percent of gross domestic product from 120.8 percent a year earlier. As Bloomberg notes, that's the most since 1924, when Mussolini won 64 percent of the popular vote in elections that opposition members said were marked by irregularities. While the only irregularities in the current election were the electorates dismissal of the status quo - as Monti’s policy mix prompted 25 percent of voters to back the anti-austerity stance of comedian-turned-politician Beppe Grillo’s Five Star Movement, which was the single most voted party in the country - it appears people have misunderstood the concept of austerity as spending has risen almost 3% in the last three years and taxes have not kept pace.

No, American Banks DON'T Need to Be Big to Compete with Bigger Foreign Rivals

What could go wrong with the housing 'recovery' in 2013? To answer this question, we need to understand that housing is the key component a middle class squeezed by historically high debt loads, stagnant incomes, and a net worth largely dependent on their home. In response, Central Planners have pulled out all the stops to reflate housing as the only available means to spark a broad-based “wealth effect” that would support higher spending and an expansion of household debt. This returns us to the key question: Are all these Central Planning interventions sustainable, or might they falter in 2013?  Once markets become dependent on intervention and support to price risk and assets, they are intrinsically vulnerable to any reduction in that support. Should these supports diminish or lose their effectiveness, it will be sink-or-swim for housing. Either organic demand rises without subsidies and lenders originate mortgages without agency guarantees, or the market could resume the fall in valuations Central Planning halted in 2009.