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2016 Is An Easy Year To Predict
Submitted by Raul Ilargi Meijer via The Automatic Earth blog,
No year is ever easy to predict, if only because if it were, that would take all the fun out of life. But still, predictions for 2016 look quite a bit easier than other years. This is because a whole bunch of irreversible things happened in 2015 that were not recognized for what they are, either intentionally or by ‘accident’. Things that will therefore now be forced to play out in 2016, when denial will no longer be an available option.
A year ago, I wrote 2014: The Year Propaganda Came Of Age, and though that was more about geopolitics, it might as well have dealt with the financial press. And that goes for 2015 at least as much. Mainstream western media are no more likely to tell you what’s real than Chinese state media are.
2015 should have been the year of China, and it was in a way, but the extent to which was clouded by Beijing’s insistence on made-up numbers (GDP growth of 7% against the backdrop of plummeting imports and exports, 45 months of falling producer prices and bad loans reaching 20%), by the western media’s insistence on copying these numbers, and by everyone’s fear of the economic and financial consequences of the ‘Great Fall of China‘.
2015 was also the year when deflation, closely linked -but by no means limited- to China, got a firm hold on the global economy. Denial and fear have restricted our understanding of this development just as much.
And while it should be obvious that 2015 was the year of refugees as well, that topic too has been twisted and turned until full public comprehension has become impossible. Both in the US and in Europe politicians pose for their voters loudly proclaiming that borders must be closed and refugees and migrants sent back to the places they’re fleeing due to our very own military interventions.
And that said politicians have the power to make that happen, the power to close borders to hundreds of thousands of fellow human beings arriving on their countries’ doorsteps. As if thousands of years of human mass migrations never occurred, and have no lessons to teach the present or the future.
The price of oil was a big story, and China plays the lead role in that story, even if again poorly understood. All the reports and opinions about OPEC plans and ‘tactics’ to squeeze US frackers are hollow, since neither OPEC as a whole nor its separate members have the luxury anymore to engage in tactical games; they’re all too squeezed by the demise of Chinese demand growth, if not demand, period.
Ever since 2008, the entire world economy has been kept afloat by the $25 trillion or so that China printed to build overleveraged overcapacity. And now that is gone, never to return. There is nowhere else left for our economies to turn for growth. Everyone counted on China to take them down the yellow brick road to la-la-land, forever. And then it didn’t happen.
What 2015 should have made clear, and did in a way but not nearly clear enough, is that the world economy is falling apart due to a Ponzi bubble of over-production, over-capacity, over-investment, over-borrowing, all of which was grossly overleveraged. And that this now is, for lack of a better word, over.
Most people who read this will have noticed the troubled waters investment funds -hedge funds, mutual funds, money market funds et al- have recently landed in. But perhaps not many understand what this means, and where it may lead. These things tend to be seen as incidents, as is anything that diverts attention away from the ‘recovery just around the corner’ narrative.
Not only do the losses and redemptions at investment funds drive these funds to the brink, everything they’ve invested in also tumbles. Add to this the fact that most of the investments are highly leveraged, which means that typically a loss of just a few percent can wipe out all of the principal, and a notion of the risks becomes clear.
Of course, since many of the funds hold the same or similar investments, we can add yet another risk factor: contagion. Things will blow up first where the risk is highest. Then everything else becomes riskier. Low interest rates have caused many parties to chase high yields -junk bonds-, and that’s where risks are highest.
This is the 2015 story of investment funds, and it will continue, and aggravate, in 2016. Ultra low interest rates drive economies into deflation and investors into ever riskier assets. This is a process of unavoidable deterioration, unstoppable until it has played out in full. A 0.25% rate hike won’t do anything to change that.
Why do interest rate hikes pose such a problem? Because ZIRP has invited if not beckoned everyone to be up to their necks in debt. The entire economy is being kept lopsidedly upright, Wile. E style, by debt. Asset prices, even as commodities have now begun to fall in serious fashion, still look sort of OK, but only until you start to look at the amount of leverage that’s pinning it all up.
Once you see that, you understand how fragile it all is. Go one step further, and it becomes clear that this exponentially growing ‘machinery‘ can only be ‘sustained’ by ever more debt and leverage. Until it no longer can.
Commodities prices have nowhere to go but down for a long time to come. These prices have been propped up by the illusionary expectations for Chinese growth and demand, and now that growth is gone. So, too, then, must the over-leveraged over-investments both in China and abroad.
Growth that was expected to be in double digits for years to come has shrunk to levels well below that ‘official’ 7%. China’s switch to a consumer driven economy is as much a fantasy as the western switch to a knowledge economy has proved to be. If you don’t actually produce things, you’re done. And producing for export markets is futile when there’s no-one left to spend in those markets.
Ergo, commodities, raw materials, the very building blocks of our economies, from oil all the way to steel, are caught in a fire sale. Everything must go! Eventually, commodities prices will more or less stabilize, but at much lower levels than they -still- are at present. That we will need to figure this out in 2016 instead of 2015 is our own fault. We could have been healing, but we’ve yet to face the pain.
Trying to guesstimate how low oil will go is a way of looking at things that seems very outdated. It’s interesting just about exclusively for people who ‘invest’ in the markets, but the reality is that the Fed, BoJ, PBoC and ECB have first made sure through QE and ZIRP/NIRP that there no longer are functioning markets, and they are now losing their relevance because of these very ‘policies’.
Price discovery has already started (oil, commodities), and central banks have benched themselves. They could only re-enter the game if they quit interfering in the markets, but they’re too afraid, all of them, of the consequences that might have, not even so much for their economies but for their TBTF banks.
Yellen’s rate hike will mean some extra profits for those same banks at the cost of the rest of the financial world, but with growth gone to not return for a very long time, and with deflation hitting everything in sight and then some, there is no pretty picture left.
And none of this is really hard to process or understand. It’s just that there’s these concerted efforts to keep you from understanding, that keep you believing in some miracle salvation effort. Which would, so goes the narrative, have to come from the same central banks and the same Wall Street banks that put everyone and their pet guinea pig as deep in debt as they are.
If you have been reading the Automatic Earth over the past 8 years and change, you know what this is about. There are a few, but unfortunately only a few, other sources that may have put you on the same trail.
I was impressed with the following earlier this month from David Stockman, Reagan’s Director of the Office of Management and Budget, who now seems to have firmly caught up with the deflation theme Nicole Foss and I have been warning about ever since we started writing – pre-TAE – at the Oil Drum 10 years ago. Stockman today says that we are entering an epic deflation and the world economy is actually going to shrink for the first time since the 1930s. (!)
The End Of The Bubble Finance Era
There has been so much over-investment in energy, mining, materials processing, manufacturing and warehousing that nothing new will be built for years to come. [..] .. there will be a severe curtailment in the production of mining and construction equipment, oilfield drilling rigs, heavy trucks and rail cars, bulk carriers and containerships, materials handling machinery and warehouse rigging, machine tools and chemical processing equipment and much, much more.
It’s good to see people finally acknowledging this. It’s still rare. But there’s another, again interlinked, development that is very poorly understood. Which is that in a debt deflation, the ‘money’ that appears to be real and present in leveraged investments more often than not doesn’t get pulled out of one ‘investment’ only to be put into another, it just goes POOF, it vanishes.
And though it may seem strange, conventional economics has a very hard time with that. In the eyes of that field, if you don’t spend your money, you must be saving it. The possibility of losing it altogether is not a viable option. Or, if you lose it, someone else must be gaining it, zero-sum style.
But that view ignores the entire ‘pyramid’ of leveraged loans and investments and commodity prices, which precisely because that pyramid contained no more than a few percentage points of ‘real collateral’ to underpin everything it kept afloat, should have been a red flag. Because this is the very essence of debt deflation.
Just one little example of how and why this happens comes from this Bloomberg item. The key word is ‘evaporates’:
$100 Billion Evaporates as World’s Worst Oil Major Plunges 90%
Colombia is nursing paper losses of more than $100 billion after its oil boom fell short of expectations, wiping out 90% of the value of what was once Latin America’s biggest company. From being the world’s fifth-most valuable oil producer at its zenith in 2012, worth more than BP, state-controlled Ecopetrol now ranks 38th. Its market capitalization has fallen to $14.5 billion, down from its peak of $136.7 billion. “They just haven’t found oil, it’s as simple as that,” Rupert Stebbings at Bancolombia said from Medellin. “The whole oil sector got massively over-bought, and people assumed that one day they’d hit an absolute gusher.”
2016 will be the year when a lot of ‘underlying wealth’ evaporates. Trillions of dollars already have in the commodities markets, but, again, our media don’t tell us about it, or at least they frame it in different terms. They use deflation to mean falling consumer prices, but then insist on calling falling prices at the pump a positive thing. Without recognizing to what extent those falling prices eat away at the entire economy, and at society at large.
To summarize for now: we have elected to deny and ignore what has happened to our economies, our societies and our lives in 2015, only to be forced to face all of it in 2016. That makes the year an easy one to predict. But there are of course a lot of other possible spokes and wheels and other things.
Any government that sees its nation slide down into a deep enough pit will always consider going to war. One or more central banks may opt for a Hail Mary helicopter ride. A volcano may erupt. But none of these things will prevent the bubbles we have blown from deflating. They may divert attention, they may delay the inevitable a bit more, sure. But bubbles never last.
I have a whole list of key words I wanted to use in this, but I think I’ll turn them into a separate article. The main point is you understand the gist of it all. There are no markets, and what has posed as markets is crumbling before our very eyes, inexorably. The best we can do is say ‘see you on the other side’, if we’re lucky.
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Peak paper.
Up. Again. BTFD. MOAR. etc...
Okay, I'm calling the top. Amazon just hit its goal and now has a P/E of 1000. Life has been fullfilled and we can all kick back and celebrate.
2016 - "Year of the Monkey [wrench]"
"I'm just the fly in the ointment Hans, pain in the @ss, Monkey in the wrench"
- John McClane (aka 'Roy Rogers')
The article makes a lot of sense. Totally Bullish for the US dollar.
I keep hearing this story, and how everybody is jumping on the short side. And I keep watching the market not go down. and I keep hearing about HFT, which is now laser-assisted. And I keep thinking - those motherfuckers behind the curtain will do anything, sacrifice anything, kill anyone, and create a shitload of turmoil before they'll give up power. And then I think, we will see massive war, "terrorism" and civil unrest before we ever see a reasonable P/E...
The market hasn't hit new highs since the Spring / early summer depending on what index you look at. Its all sideways with a trend down.
War/civil war should correlate with 'reasonable' PEs at a level >0.8. Fedcoats will, via Hobson's choice, sacrifice PE valuation to stay in control. So, yes, I expect war(s). But that will only accelerate the return of the 'reasonable' PE. Remember the 70s, where good companies traded at 6x forward earnings expectations? What $ figure would that suggest for APPL stock based on current consensus 2017 EPS?
"should correlate"? in the sense of ought to correlate? in other words: do you see a correlation between wars and any kind of prices? if yes, please tell, then I don't see that. I just read a lot of ZH comments hoping for moar woar so that moar... something happens, and it's not even clear to me what this something is supposed to be
evidence: oil in ISIS territory. it flows, regardless. as in "the spice will flow"
What's all the B.S. about "overcapacity?" Billions of people need and desire goods so I claim that there is no overcapacity. What we have is maldistribution of wealth.
I just hope the Left suffers from mass apoplexy from all the Trump coverage.
Trump just reveals the farce that our "elections" have become.
Plutocracy/Oligarchy 2016! 2+2=5. Your vote is useless.
Wonder why the guy would get involved in such a circus? Oh wait, forget it.
He's playing his part though. Many who left the plantation are coming back to hear him speak.
pods
So long as the ring of power exists, all men will covet it.
Voting is masturbation.
Without the happy ending.
Except the jizz winds up on your face, and it's not even yours.
Blow some benjamins up there @ the same time? A perfect 'money-shot'!
the monopolistic and fascist central banking,
'money', system and its political facades are crumbling.
people will see right through it in 2016.
More Than Eva Braun
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfX5yHjKAU4
.
time to come out of the bunker,
no moar war.
2016 will go down in history as the "Year that was".
I've been expecting it every year since 2009. This year? I dunno. It just seems to keep on going....zombie economy.
Until Social Security is abolished, there is no change.
Absolutely,,, That'll give them McD and kazillions of other part time workers and extra 6 dollars on their weekly 100 dollar check.
Good times are here again!
[KR854] Keiser Report: Why Not Public Bank?
http://www.maxkeiser.com/2015/12/kr854-keiser-report-why-not-public-bank/
Posted on December 26, 2015 by Stacy Herbert
Read more at http://www.maxkeiser.com/2015/12/kr854-keiser-report-why-not-public-bank...
public bank--like a utility. no usury.
One exist but is still under the Federal Reserve System. The Bank of North Dakota. Basically they do some direct lending but the real trick is that all the State and local Muni's deposit the tax dollars they collect in the bank. The bank then makes the loans based on those deposits using fractional reserve banking. The interest the bank collects from those loans is used to pay for public projects.
Em...here in Europe for every one politician saying "close the boarders" there is 1,000 shrieking the opposite...
In my own vessel state there is literally not a single policical actor pushing back against the rubbish spouted by the "refugee" kingpin Sutherland...who...I'm ashamed to say is Irish...
I read that paragraph twice then skipped the rest. Really strange that anyone could think that. The major political parties are allowing immigrants in everywhere, there wouldn't be an immigrant crisis otherwise..
What should the layman be investing in if the debt deflation narrative is true?
Cash, physical cash. And Xanxax, cause it ain't gonne be pretty.
pods
Small distiller. Some Magic Mushroom spores…. Weed and Poppy seeds.
Maybe I'm naive, but the Fed doesn't see this happening? Or is it so corrupt that the system will be changed by force, a la bailouts, debt forgiveness, etc. Seems like we are on a constant intervention cycle and that those in control grab more power everytime.
They already shot their wad.They knew they were only buying time.
Tick tock........
The FED has no more power than anyone else in terms of dealing with an exponential function.
Here is basically the job of the FED:
To allow enough credit to be created to let them keep milking the herd while trying not to allow it to spin out of control.
Then, they raise rates/withdraw liquidity a bit to clip those overleveraged, but make it just palatable enough so their necks do not get stretched.
Fine line though, because drunks do not like to hear "last call."
If they can allow debt to be expunged through default (and of course real property taken in repossession) then everything is good. They provide the rope, and when just enough people have fashioned a noose and slipped their necks into them, they raise rates enough to clip a small percentage, Then they lower rates to allow it to continue again.
Best gig ever invented if you have no conscience.
The problem is that the exponential function will overwhelm this system every time, because they can only clip a small percentage, so the corrections do not lead to debt loads decreasing in aggregate. If that happens, debt could evaporate out of control of everyone and the whole system goes boom.
pods
The problem with exponential in money systems is that the limit of 1/$ as $ goes to infinity is zero
The Fed needs you and as many other people as possible to be up to your necks in debt. You will then vote for politicians that keep the kind of Fed you and the govt are hooked on. i.e a Fed that will keep on supplying ever greater amounts of cheap credit.
The question is can you "fight the fed," aka ditch the credit?
Si se puede! No credit card/education/mortgage/vehicle/equipment debt. I want prices to tank so I can acquire more land and productive equipment. Fuck the Fedcoats. May they burn, SLOWLY, in Hell.
Other than my student loans (without which I would not have my career), I have no debt. I also don't have any hard assets. But yes, there's a titanic battle between debtors and creditors coming in the near future. Everyday people will get screwed again, but they vote for the policies that have bankrupted us, so screw the everyday people.
Your mind. It cannot be taxed, and can always be put to work producing after everything has been stolen.
I'm totally out of all markets and watching inflation eat my cash. Earning below the Fed's fictional 2% inflation target.
10 year annuities at 3% aren't looking too bad the way things are rolling. Hah.
No debt. House, as long as I pay taxes. Have metal, ammo, guns, food, fuel, stacked as well. Until shtf that stuff just sits though.
Wealth erosion sucks.
Paying off secured debt.
Bring it on,...bitchez !!!!!!!!1111111
I am tired of eating steak every night when I know its not REAL steak!!!
But the Matrix is telling your brain that it is juicy and delicious...
The new program is telling you that it's tube steak, and you can only suck.
Yet another year where things get a little worse than the year before. It becomes a little more difficult to deal with what is being said (Everything is Awesome) and what things are really like (pretty shitty).
And while this happens the farmers run around trying harder to keep the sheep in the pens.
So, expect moar wars, moar clampdowns on society, and generally a pretty shitty mood for most.
Other than that, things are gonna be just peachy.
pods
Moar censorship too. Last night I was searching these terms "Peyton Manning AND HGH" using duckduckgo and gurgle. I get millions of results yet none of them point to the original story done by Al Jazeera network.
I find that strange. In my opinion, compared to US "news" outfits, Al Jazeera is pretty good.
The matrix blocks Al Jazeera out.
Al Jazeera is too close to thesnackbar!
I'm glad to see an article like this posted because I'm really tired of hearing that money doesn't simply cease to exist but is somehow transfered from one asset/state to another as if it were subject to some physical law. Fractional reserve banking, from nothing to nothing. A plague that humanity can't seem to rid itself of.
Evaporate... I like that word, leveraged money is fake.. I like that concept, reality, meet Wall Street
There's really only one kind of money that will last - although predicting the timeline is very, very difficult, and there can be plenty of pain waiting for it to come good. Gold.
http://barlowscayman.blogspot.com/2012/12/how-to-buy-gold.html
Pretty good article, but I get a little tired of the, "we were the only ones telling you this" crap.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/war-terrorism-and-the-global-economic-crisi...
War, Terrorism and the Global Economic Crisis in 2015: Ninety-nine Interrelated Concepts
By Prof Michel Chossudovsky
Global Research, December 25, 2015
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/12/big-short-genius-says-another-crisis-is-coming.html#
How many financial crises will be allowed to happen before the public demands that their elected leaders do something about the criminals who are at the root of them at the Fed?
It is a certaintly that they will continue their policies until it is far too late. Next up, negative interest rates and more money printing.
Will Raul put his money where his mouth is?
The biggest risks about 2016 are geopolitical not financial. Political risks have skyrocketed in 2015.
But geopolitical impinges exogenously on financial; for sure!
2016 will be great. War will end. CD's will yield 5%. And QE will no longer be necessary. On top of that, there will be a full season of NFL without an injury.
Yup, and Brucey-Bruce Jenner will sprout wings and fly around . . . like a fairy!
Q1 2016 disinflation
Q2 2016 planetary Zimbabwefication begins in earnest.
Gideon Gono should be righteously pissed if he doesn't receive a Nobel prize for economics in 2016.
Big thanks for calling it a spade:
Disinflation, not Deflation!
I am sure of one thing..in the USA Obamacare is going to have costs that are double what they thought....all of these new immigrants are on the free side of Obamacare..and the costs are going to go thru the roof.....the politicians will try to hide it....and Obama is going to try to pass a bunch of new regulations that will cost huge amounts of money....for no results...and down we go...at some point the regs and expenses are just to much for the camel....
They don't give a fuck what you think. This is the final year of the first black president. And their fucking narrative is going to shut you - and all the republicans that did everything to stop him every day --- the fuck up. You see, when the year is done, he is going to be declared the greatest president ever. And you will be nothing but a tea bag racist pig.
That Omnibus spending bill just passed by the Repub didn't do much to stop Obama. Gave him and Demos everything they wanted. In fact even fuzzy Rushbo said "it's over".
Great summary of the how. The what is the clowards piven strategy for fundamental transformation of a nation's systems.
It will all go acording to plan....
"...The choice of the word “Federal” in the name of the bank thus seems to be a deliberate misnomer—designed to create the impression that it is a public entity. Indeed, misrepresentation of its ownership is not merely by implication or impression created by its name. More importantly, it is also officially and explicitly stated on its Website: “The Federal Reserve System fulfills its public mission as an independent entity within government. It is not owned by anyone and is not a private, profit-making institution” [1].
To unmask this blatant misrepresentation, the late Congressman Louis McFadden, Chairman of the House Banking and Currency Committee in the 1930s, described the Fed in the following words:
Some people think that the Federal Reserve Banks are United States Government institutions. They are private monopolies which prey upon the people of these United States for the benefit of themselves and their foreign customers; foreign and domestic speculators and swindlers; and rich and predatory money lenders."..
.
Who Owns the Federal Reserve Bank—and Why is It Shrouded in Myths and Mysteries?
By Prof. Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
Global Research, December 19, 2015
http://www.globalresearch.ca/who-owns-the-federal-reserve-bank-and-why-i...
Raul Ilargi Meijer
has LESS credibility than my dog's poop.
Upvote: For spelling his name right. Raul is very good at seeing the situation for what it is; it's not his fault if outcomes are twisted by central banks and political trickery.
I don't know anything about the guy but THIS ARTICLE is spot on!
All is well... https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=30yJ
2008, the year the mask fell from the face
of the fed.
If the Fed keeps tightening into this cycle, Yellen may go down like Hoover in the anals of history...
It'll all be awesome... til it ain't and won't be a problem,,, til it is.
Coming soon to your street corner -"will work for FOOD - Please no cash"
I'll know the Fedcoats are well and truly fucked when the homeless burn cash in the metal trashcans for heat.
So, we got through 2015 skating on thin ice that was cracking. Those who are still skating on the ice may not be so fortunate in 2016.
I think 2016 is when the "we're in an economic recovery" fairy tale begins to fall apart and economists start to accept and admit that we primed the pump with trillions in starter fluid but the engine just didn't start. I'd like to see a real economic recovery take hold in the USA, a recovery based on income growth not just cheap credit, 2016 would be a perfect time for that, as well.
That assumes that Obama doesn't stay and that Hillary Clinton isn't selected. Not that voting matters; it does not and hasn't for over a 100 years (think 1913).
We are a nation who has no moral principals to stand upon any longer; we put no value on human life, therefore on marriage and therefore on family, the very fabric of human societies. We are destined to fail because we have a foundation built upon sand and not the Rock.
Point o' Odor!!
No value on human life???
The abolition or non-use of the Death penalty proves you wrong. The jews, catholic church, and other anti-justice scum who control the Death penalty debate have decided that serial killers, multiple child rapists and pedophiles' lives are worth many millons of FRNs. each.
There are 'morals' in ths country. They're simply rotten ones.
Tet, Take Two
There are so many people, including a large part of my close family, who are counting on gold as a protection for their wealth. If commodoties take a serious hit, what is to stop the value of gold from plummeting, as well? Can it be that the large sucking of debt out of the economy (default) will raise the value of the dollar in the long term and thus result in a corresponding drop value in gold? Seeing that commodoties are going to take a hit always makes be doubt a gold strategy for wealth preservation. Why is gold more secure than stocks in a deflationary / default scenario?
The USD will rise and then vanish and be replaced with a hyper-inflated domestic dollar when the US looses "world reserve currency" status.
How long that takes is anyone's guess; it should have already happened, but with only markets that are tightly controlled; that control becomes easier as there are fewer and fewer players.
I do not think we have but five years left before the US is completely dismantled; maybe sooner. It is being dismantled by design and by divine judgment as well imo.
Time will bring death upon all of us and annihilation is a pipe-dream; we are eternal beings as our consciences bear witness. How will one stand before the Judge of all the world is the question each must answer and to be indifferent is to give an answer.
Always listen to posters to use the word 'thus' and you can't go wrong, but you, sir, have to STOP MAKING SENSE!!!
Gold, and silver, may well take a hit in a deflationary crunch. However, I have a hunch that they'll retain more value than many other assets. I'll admit it can be dangerous to bet your financial future on a hunch, but it's worked out pretty well for me thus far.
Peak paper isn't yet.I need to see the government send every man,woman and child at least $10 grand to spend and start forgiving credit card debt as well as give everyone another dollar bonus if they don't have debt,in order to get spending going.The government bailed out the banking sector but it hasn't filtered down to the real economy or to the average working person and they know it.That signal of direct government cheques to everyone in order to get the economy moving would see me buy gold and silver bigtime.That is one of the final danger signals before a reset in the monetary system.
You can't make any real money tradng unless the market fluctuates. Give me another 10 yrs of a yo-yo market, and I might be able to make up for the losses of 2007-8 with a cherry on top.
Let AMAZON rise and fall, the indexes do the same.
THAT's how a market like 2015 can make traders very very well off.
This country can be summed up in one event: Bruce Jenner pretending he's a woman, and the mass media and under 60 generations ridculously cheering him on for making 'fluid genderififcaton' mainstream, instead of mocking hiim merciilessly and consigning his private antics to the not worthy of comment wastebasket.
My prediction for 2016:
Hillary new president, Dow 19 500, Gold 800, unemployment 4.5%
That should be 14.5%
My prediction for 2016....
Many flavors of.... BOOM!
"Mainstream western media are no more likely to tell you what’s real than Chinese state media are."
Stopped reading there. Guy doesn't have a clue, which is probably why he's begging for shekels via paypal on his nothing website.
Sympathies lies with ZH style thinking - rigged markets, divorced from fundamentals, finally meet thier come-uppance. In a messy way 2016 is then the Great Reckoning or the Great Mean Reversion. The opposite view is one in which the status quo continues in spite of well observed tightening of global liquidity conditions, stronger dollar....What I find strange is anyone who has any confidence is predicting the timing of such a mean reversion. Why 2016 should the old rules matter? Why not 2017 or for that matter 2018 or 2019?