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Tips for Surviving the Second Phase of this Global Economic Crisis and Future Financial Armageddon
The two below videos pretty much sum up what I have to say so I will not add too much here other than the following couple of points. Number one, please note that while the first video is new, the second video below is a couple of years old and the contest giveaway promotion is no longer valid.
Secondly, for the minority of people out there that will continue to make the ridiculous assertion that the gloom and doomers are slowing the recovery of the economy with our persistent realistic take on the global economy, please note my following preemptive rebuttal. Firstly, I prefer the label “realist” as a more apropos label than “gloom and doomer”. Most of us that have remained realists for the past six years or so have a very public track record through public blog posts and public interviews. I guarantee that if you check our track records versus the so-called “professionals” and eternal, rose-colored tinted glass-wearing optimists like Paul Krugman, Nouriel Roubini, Barry Knapp (Barcalys Capital), Liz Ann Sonders (Charles Schwab), Abby Joseph Cohen (Goldman Sachs), Ben Bernanke etal, we have a far superior track record of being right at a very high percentage regarding our macro-economic calls while the aforementioned list has been wrong in nearly every single one of their incessant calls for stock & real estate market recoveries and employment statistics for six years straight.
Thirdly, for six years straight, the millions that follow and believe mainstream media’s outlook regarding the global economy have attributed gold and silver advocates’ positive outlook on gold and silver over this time frame to a desire to “sell our book.” However, I have never been a gold and silver dealer. Thus, the only ones that have benefited from my strong advocacy of gold and silver over the past decade have been my clients and independent bullion dealers with whom I have no connection nor from whom I receive even the slightest amount of commission. I have no “book to sell” in this regard.
In fact, from June 2007 until January 2012, my Crisis Investment Opportunities newsletter has returned a cumulative +202.22% to my clients versus the +45.15% return of the benchmark PHLX Gold/Silver Sector Index, and has outperformed the S&P 500, the FTSE 100 and the ASX 200 each by +216% to +232% during the same investment period. Thus, I prefer to view myself not as a “gloom and doomer” by any means but as a realist that attempts to construct as honest and realistic outlook of the global economy as possible so that my clients can take adequate and concrete measures to preserve and build real wealth given the still horrendous economic outlook for the next several years.
About the author: JS Kim is the Chief Investment Strategist & Founder of SmartKnowledgeU, a fiercely independent investment research & consulting firm dedicated to exposing the fraud of Wall Street and the best ways to invest in gold and silver.
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I look at it like this; maybe its that complex economies and human behaviours and habits have a LOT of momentum, especially when aided and abetted by cheap easy credit, and thus it takes a lot of stress and abuse for them to fundamentally change directions or trend to growth. We do know that nominally 'growth' has slowed or gone negative, in real-terms, since 2009.
Thus when it does finally collapse it will take 20 years or more to reverse the embedded trend momentum, and a lot of new easy credit to change attitudes and behaviours again, to develop the necessary confidence in stupid and unaffordable acts.
All the rest in between is noise.
At present therefore we're watching the attenuation of confidence by every new wave of debt shock.
Element,
Given the law of diminishing return on each additional layer of debt piled on, in the absence of real organic growth and with continual compound interest piling on in debtor economies, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to know TWENTY years is way too long to keep this thing levitating on paper printed debt w/o hard asset collateral.
Five years at most; and if the creditor BRIC/OIL nations revolt against PAx americana and USD petrodollar hegemony, even less!!
BTW : For there to be organic growth in debtor first world there has to be a CHEAP sustainable energy supply. The west cannot have growth both with a higher labour cost structure, a higher energy cost and additionally debt mountain interest to support. Impossible math.
You misunderstood me Falak:
"...it will take 20 years or more to reverse the embedded [i.e. slowing] trend momentum,
In other words the system is slowing, this will take at least twenty years to turn into growth and confidence again.
The US has been slowing for 40 years already!
That's how the US went from greatest creditor to greatest debtor during that time. Credit just papered over that trend.
Like I said, all the rest is noise.
Japan would disagree.
let them show the way...like for last twenty years...but, they had trade surpluses that contained their own mega debt; none of it owed to foreigners. Japan's trade balance will now be hit. All three first world pillars are thus in debt and with low growth prospects and the USA has CHRONIC deficits to boot, as will Eurozone if their collective growth rate tanks.
you are hyperconfused
Ignorance - its not just bliss, now its policy.
Sometimes it does indeed come off that way but I actually think he is on to something here. Setting aside the colorful prose I'll explain: You see, Pax Americana is the American Empire or sphere of influence which is largely socio-economic and militaristic. Kinda like Rome. As it is now clear that the Empire is collapsing, the bread and games need to accelerate to match the need for diversion.
Although the Rome comparison is overdone, I'd say that this one works.
RE; GeneMarchbanks
I believe you have articulated something profound, on which I would like to expand. The US is the guarantor of our current debt based socio-economic system. This guarantee is both implicit and explecit based on what it is needed at the time of need. Examples; FED potrodollar loans disguised as swaps. Given to all Western Central Banks as needed by an unelected entity and without the consent of the US Congress or public. Our Navy is the guarantor of OIL flow to all parts of the world. Price is currently not so much an issue as is UNINTERUPTED AVAILABILITY.
The empire functions not just of us, but for the whole world in its current socio economic configuration. A lot of people seem to miss this, and get trapped in the normal discussions of the function of money and markets as they apply to all counties except the US. It is this exception that keeps the kick the can process alive. No country in the world including China or Russia want to pull the plug on the current system. The only ones who are trying to do so is Iran.
The current world wide financial ponzi will continue as long as the FED is the financial guarantor of last resort and the Navy is the last resort guarantor of uninterupted oil flow to the rest of the world. If this dual US capability did not exist, the world power base would have to invent it.
One last point: As much as we critisize ourselves, we are still trusted by the rest of the world, not to exceed our shortcomings. Should this trust evaporate or we become unable to fullfill our duties as guarantor under our economic and military mandates then all bets are off on the present state of the empire.
+1, though I disagre on the motivations of Carthago and it's agriculture.
I mean Iran and it's oil.
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"we are still trusted by the rest of the world" well, yes, though it depends.
some part of the EU is devoted in anti-trust activities that should be done in the USA, for example.
and kidnapping alleged terrorists all over Europe was not that good a PR action...
explain ...my analogy stands, both on form as in substance.
Rome had many speculative spirals based on grain and real estate bubbles that always ended in debasement of money; as imperial costs of running Empire were constantly on the rise. In the decadent age of its Empire, aka 200 AD onwards, the Caesars used "panem et circenses" as expedient to distract the "feeble minded" plebes. Doesn't that remind you of something?
Bread and circuses - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Beati pauperes spiritu : Heureux les pauvres en esprit.
Source : Citations latines - Locutions Latines - Proverbes latins et Expressions latines - Page 1 sur un total de 2 pages. - Dicocitations ™ - citation
The novelty of our age relative to the Roman age is that whereas our Oligarchs show the same arrogant hubris, thanks to the Guttenberg press tradition since Renaissance days, now amplified by Internet in this day and age, we have a free press, more so on the Internet than in MSM; where Big Capital still contrives to control/muzzle public opinion.
So you think Christians were in bed with Romans? Hmmm.
After Constantine yes!
The thing is, how many centuries did that take? And we're not talking about a city-state like Rome, but a major world superpower. It will be three more generations, at least.
the debt pyramid won't last that long and..BRIC won't wait that long...In ten years China will have same GDP as USA. Rome was not a city it was the biggest Empire of its day. Roman legions controlled all major Gallic towns as Nort Africa and Spain and Dacia (Romania) upto Danube, as Egypt and Nile basin. And Phoenician states and Palestine, greece and turkey. Huge administration.
Not saying US dominance will end but it will be curtailed as the money line is vital to it. If it loses that its very difficult to stay top dog with huge debts.
Getting junked for an apt analogy?
Maybe there is a slight reading comprehension divide?
Good stuff today falak.
One must be having some sort of malfunction to not draw parallels to Rome here. Human nature really hasn't changed that much. It just can't turn on a dime - and a few thousand years is really just a blink of the eye. Hence, history does repeat. It moves in cycles.
Just as a continuation of the thought experiements that are conducted in open discussion here at ZH, I would offer the possibility that the timeframe of the "fall" could be inversely proportional to the magnitude of the problem. Part of this is technology. It is a game changer. Liquidity, solvency, etc. can be destroyed at the speed of light (push of a button). In many regions of the world we have reached incredible levels of social complexity that can be collapsed at the supply chain, energy grid, or even the banking system in a heartbeat. While so many systems seem robust, they all have an achilles heel in the sense of everything being so interdependant. None different than the couterparty exposure within the global banking system that is being so aggressively stemmed (in vain, as the system demands growth - which not obtained organically, will be gained synthetically at the cost of even greater leverage!).
I think we underestimate the acceleration of time factor with information and knowledge base now available.
What is also very typical inspite of this acceleration is that human nature has not changed in its knee jerk to fight the evidence against a massive trend; the Oligarchs always retrench time and time again into their castles, playing at King Knud (Canute) and ordering the waves to recede! Like current can kicking, a lot believe time works for them. The law of diminishing returns is something they won't admit even if the evidence is provided by the very instruments they, the financial/government oligarchs have themselves created.
Time travels faster as time is instant money now investable ALL over the world, and once it has writ the hand of wealth moves on. Only a new energy paradigm will solve sustainable growth in our first world construct; in maybe, twenty to thirty years. And debt mountain's compound interest rate won't wait that long.