Most readers are familiar with the fable of “The Goose That Laid The Golden Eggs”, or at very least, are familiar with the metaphor which was the moral of that fable: one should never kill a goose that lays golden eggs. Such advice seems obvious to the point of being simplistic, and yet it is wisdom which has not merely survived, but has been enshrined in the form of a fable.

It wasn't just China's long overdue crash last night. In addition to the Shanghai Composite suffering its biggest plunge since August 2009, there has been a sharp slide in the USDJPY which has broken its uptrend to +∞ (and hyperinflation), and around the time Chinese gamblers were panicking, the FX pair tumbled under 120, although since then the 120 tractor beam has been activated. Elsewhere, the Athens stock exchange is also crashing by over 10% this morning on the heels of news that the Greek government has accelerated the process to elect the next president and possibly, a rerun of the drama from the summer of 2012 when the Eurozone was hanging by a thread when Tsipras almost won the presidential vote and killed the world's most artificial and insolvent monetary union. And finally, the crude plunge appears to have finally caught up with ground zero, with ADX General Index in Abu Dhabi plunging 3.5%, also poised for the biggest drop since 2009. In fact the only thing that isn't crashing (at least not this moment), is Brent, which did drop to new 5 year lows earlier under $66, but has since staged a feeble rebound.

As investors we are all trapped within a horrifying bubble. We must play the hand we’ve been dealt, however bad it is. But there are now growing signs of end-of-bubble instability. The system does not appear remotely sound. You can be for gold, or you can be for paper, but you cannot possibly be for both. It may soon be time to take a stand. Beware appearances in an unhinged financial system, because they can be dangerously deceptive.

"My Helicopters Are Ready. You Will All Be Trillionaires." Must see chart of gold in German marks from 1918 to 1923. The Fed - "Silently robbing your purchasing power since 1913 ... "

History may not repeat but it sure does rhyme. Mike Maloney has studied monetary and financial breakdowns throughout history and concludes that there's nothing new or different happening this time, except its global and far more massive than any other time in history. Worse, there are echoes of 1911 where a series of diplomatic blunders and national pride and intransigence combined to create the still largely inexplicable start to WW I. 

"... we seem to have miscalculated..."

The Federal Reserve and its owners print and party, while the rest of us work and weep..................

Things for Ukraine are going from bad to worse. As the central bank reported overnight, the country's foreign-currency (and gold reserves) dropped by over 21% in one month, to under $10 billion in November for the first time in nearly a decade due to large payments for debt and gas, from $12.6 billion to $9.966 billion.

Money is stored labor. Labor is part of human life. To devalue money is to debase life itself.

Money is stored labor.  Labor is part of human life.  To devalue money is to debase life itself.

"Gold is the world’s most persistent bubble: 6,000 years old and going strong" - Citigroup's Willem Buiter.

Dear Willem, thank you for that valiant effort. After reading a few thousands words of shallow propaganda we understand your "confusion": our advice, if you want to understand what gold really is, read the following from Kyle Bass: "Buying gold is just buying a put against the idiocy of the political cycle. It's That Simple." Because if there is a bubble that is even bigger and longer than the "6000-year-old gold bubble" it is that of human corruption, greed, and idiocy. And that doesn't even include the stupidity of those who don't grasp this simple truth.

"This last 1900 point Dow Jones push upwards - and the Ebola events leading into it - it was so orchestrated and heightened at critical points but the ascent and push straight up in price, and sideways nonreaction after was completely unlike anything I've seen before.   After going up for a record-breaking amount of time the last five or so years, in a nonlinear exponential mania type of ascent, there should normally be tremendous volatility that follows... After this year and especially this last 1900 point Dow run up in October, and post non-reaction, that I am 100 percent confident that that one buyer is our own Federal Reserve or other central banks with a goal to "stimulate" our economy by directly buying stock index futures."

The financial system is lurching towards the next round of the Great Crisis that began in 2007.

Kuroda has fired the shot that looks likely to trigger the next phase of the crazy monetary experiment we’ve all been living in for the last five years. Unfortunately, the next phase is where things start to get nasty. Just because equity markets cheered the latest sugar rush he guaranteed them should not make smart investors lower their guard — quite the opposite, in fact. Colonel Kuroda has gone up-country into the Heart of Darkness, and all we can do is await the Apocalypse now.

Throughout history there have always been major shifts in the global financial system. Reserve currencies change. The way people engage in commerce changes. The rules of the game change. This time is no different. And we’re currently experiencing the early stages of yet another historic shift.