GLOBAL FINANCIAL MELTDOWN

HOW THE ELITE DOMINATE THE WORLD – 
PART 1: DEBT AS A TOOL OF ENSLAVEMENT 

Throughout human history, those in the ruling class have found various ways to force those under them to work for their economic benefit.  But in our day and age, we are willingly enslaving ourselves.  The borrower is the servant of the lender, and there has never been more debt in our world than there is right now.  According to the Institute of International Finance, global debt has hit the  217 trillion dollar mark although other estimates would put this number far higher.  Of course everyone knows that our planet is drowning in debt, but most people never stop to consider who owns all of this debt.  This unprecedented debt bubble represents that greatest transfer of wealth in human history, and those that are being enriched are the extremely wealthy elitists at the very, very top of the food chain.

Did you know that  8 men now have as much wealth as the poorest 3.6 billion people living on the planet combined?

Every year, the gap between the planet’s ultra-wealthy and the poor just becomes greater and greater.  This is something that I have written about frequently, and the “financialization” of the global economy is playing a major role in this trend.

The entire global financial system is based on debt, and this debt-based system endlessly funnels the wealth of the world to the very, very top of the pyramid.

It has been said that Albert Einstein once made the following statement…
“Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it, earns it … he who doesn’t … pays it.”

Whether he actually made that statement or not, the reality of the matter is that it is quite true.  By getting all of the rest of us deep into debt, the elite can just sit back and slowly but surely become even wealthier over time.  Meanwhile, as the rest of us work endless hours to “pay our bills”, the truth is that we are spending our best years working to enrich someone else.

Much has been written about the men and women that control the world.  Whether you wish to call them “the elite”, “the establishment” or “the globalists”, the truth is that most of us understand who they are.  And how they control all of us is not some sort of giant conspiracy.  Ultimately, it is actually very simple.  Money is a form of social control, and by getting the rest of us into as much debt as possible they are able to get all of us to work for their economic benefit.

It starts at a very early age.  We greatly encourage our young people to go to college, and we tell them to not even worry about what it will cost.  We assure them that there will be great jobs available for them once they finish school and that they will have no problem paying off the student loans that they will accumulate.

Well, over the past 10 years student loan debt in the United States “has grown 250 percent” and is now sitting at an absolutely staggering grand total of 1.4 trillion dollars.  Millions of our young people are already entering the “real world” financially crippled, and many of them will literally spend decades paying off those debts. But that is just the beginning.

In order to get around in our society, virtually all of us need at least one vehicle, and auto loans are very easy to get these days.  I remember when auto loans were only made for four or five years at the most, but in 2017 it is quite common to find loans on new vehicles that stretch out for six or seven years. The total amount of auto loan debt in the United States has now surpassed a trillion dollars, and this very dangerous bubble just continues to grow.


If you want to own a home, that is going to mean even more debt.  In the old days, mortgages were commonly 10 years in length, but now 30 years is the standard. By the way, do you know where the term “mortgage” originally comes from?
If you go all the way back to the Latin, it actually means “death pledge”.


And now that most mortgages are for 30 years, many will continue making payments until they literally drop dead. Sadly, most Americans don’t even realize how much they are enriching those that are holding their mortgages.  For example, if you have a 30 year mortgage on a $300,000 home at 3.92 percent, you will end up making total payments of $510,640. Credit card debt is even more insidious.  Interest rates on credit card debt are often in the high double digits, and some consumers actually end up paying back several times as much as they originally borrowed.

According to the Federal Reserve, total credit card debt in the United States has also now surpassed the trillion dollar mark, and we are about to enter the time of year when Americans use their credit cards the most frequently. Overall, U.S. consumers are now nearly 13 trillion dollars in debt. As borrowers, we are servants of the lenders, and most of us don’t even consciously understand what has been done to us.

In Part I, I have focused on individual debt obligations, but tomorrow in Part II I am going to talk about how the elite use government debt to corporately enslave us.  All over the planet, national governments are drowning in debt, and this didn’t happen by accident.  The elite love to get governments into debt because it is a way to systematically transfer tremendous amounts of wealth from our pockets to their pockets.  This year alone, the U.S. government will pay somewhere around half a trillion dollars just in interest on the national debt.  That represents a whole lot of tax dollars that we aren’t getting any benefit from, and those on the receiving end are just becoming wealthier and wealthier.

In Part II we will also talk about how our debt-based system is literally designed to create a government debt spiral.  Once you understand this, the way that you view potential solutions completely changes.  If we ever want to get government debt “under control”, we have got to do away with this current system that was intended to enslave us by those that created it.

We spend so much time on the symptoms, but if we ever want permanent solutions we need to start addressing the root causes of our problems.  Debt is a tool of enslavement, and the fact that humanity is now more than 200 trillion dollars in debt should deeply alarm all of us.


HOW THE ELITE DOMINATE THE WORLD 
PART 2: 99.9% OF THE GLOBAL POPULATION LIVES IN A COUNTRY WITH A CENTRAL BANK 
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/category/banksters

Even though the nations of the world are very deeply divided on almost everything else, somehow virtually all of them have been convinced that central banking is the way to go.  Today, less than 0.1% of the population of the world lives in a country that does not have a central bank.  Do you think that there is any possible way that this is a coincidence?  And it is also not a coincidence that we are now facing the greatest debt bubble in the history of the world.  In Part I of this series, I discussed the fact that total global debt has reached 217 trillion dollars.  Once you understand that central banks are designed to create endless debt, and once you understand that 99.9% of the global population lives in a country that has a central bank, then it finally makes sense why we have accumulated so much debt.  The elite of the world use debt as a tool of enslavement, and central banking has allowed them to literally enslave the entire planet.

Some of you may not be familiar with how a “central bank” differs from a normal bank.  The following definition of a “central bank” comes from Wikipedia… A central bank, reserve bank, or monetary authority is an institution that manages a state’s currency, money supply, and interest rates. Central banks also usually oversee the commercial banking system of their respective countries. In contrast to a commercial bank, a central bank possesses a monopoly on increasing the monetary base in the state, and usually also prints the national currency,[1] which usually serves as the state’s legal tender.

Over the past 100 years or so, we have seen central banks steadily be established all over the planet.  At this point, there are just 8 very small nations that still do not have a central bank…
-Andorra
-Monaco
-Nauru
-Kiribati
-Tuvalu
-Palau
-Marshall Islands
-Federated States of Micronesia

When you add the populations of those 8 nations together, it comes to much less than 0.1% of the global population. But even though central banking is nearly universal, only a very small fraction of the global population can tell you how money is created.

Do you know where money comes from?
Here in the United States, most people just assume that the federal government creates money.  But that is not true at all.

Many are absolutely shocked when they discover that U.S. currency is actually borrowed
But why does our government (or any government for that matter) have to borrow money that is created by a central bank in the first place?

Why can’t governments just create money themselves?
Oops.  That is the big secret that nobody is supposed to talk about.

Theoretically, the U.S. government doesn’t actually have to borrow a single penny. Instead of borrowing money the Federal Reserve creates out of thin air, the federal government could just create money directly and spend it into circulation.  Yes, this could actually happen.  Back in 1963, President John F. Kennedy signed Executive Order 11110 which authorized the U.S. Treasury to issue debt-free “United States Notes” which were not created by the Federal Reserve.  These debt-free notes began to be issued, and you can still find them for sale on eBay today.  Unfortunately, President Kennedy was assassinated shortly after this executive order was issued, and the notes were not in production for long.

If we had ultimately fully adopted “United States Notes” and had phased out Federal Reserve notes, we would not be 20 trillion dollars in debt today.

The elite of the world love to get national governments deep into debt, because it enables them to enslave entire populations while making an obscene amount of money in the process.

Back in 1913, an insidious plan was rushed through Congress just before Christmas that was based on a blueprint that had been developed by very powerful Wall Street interests.  Author G. Edward Griffin did an extraordinary job of documenting how all of this happened in his book entitled “The Creature from Jekyll Island: A Second Look at the Federal Reserve”.  A central bank was established, and it was purposely designed to create a government debt spiral, and that is precisely what happened.

Since 1913, the size of the national debt has gotten more than 6,000 times larger, and the value of our dollar has declined by more than 98 percent.  Many conservatives are still under the illusion that we could get out of debt someday if we just grow the economy fast enough, but I have shown in another article that we have gotten to the point where this is mathematically impossible.

And most people are also operating under the false assumption that the Federal Reserve is part of the federal government.  But that is not accurate either.  The following comes from one of my previous articles…  There is often a lot of confusion about the Federal Reserve, because a lot of people think that it is simply an agency of the federal government. But of course that is not true at all. In fact, as Ron Paul likes to say, the Federal Reserve is about as “federal” as Federal Express is.

The Fed is an independent central bank that has even argued in court that it is not an agency of the federal government. Yes, the president appoints the leadership of the Fed, but the Fed and other central banks around the world have always fiercely guarded their “independence”. On the official Fed website, it is admitted that the 12 regional Federal Reserve banks are organized “much like private corporations”, and they very much operate like private entities. They even issue shares of stock to the private banks that own them.

In case you were wondering, the federal government has zero shares.  According to the U.S. Constitution, a private central banking cartel should not be issuing our currency.  In Article I, Section 8 of our Constitution, Congress is solely given the authority to “coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures”.

So why in the world has this authority been given to a central bank?
The truth is that we do not need a central bank.

From 1872 to 1913, there was no central bank and no income tax, and it turned out to be the greatest period of economic growth in all of U.S. history.

THE COMING BIG FREEZE
https://pro.agorafinancial.com/p/AWN_icenine_0117/LAWNT2BV/?s1=&s2=&s3=&h=true

AMERICAN PATRIOTS AND TRUTH SEEKERS JUST READ THE ARTICLE BELOW AND SHOUT AND CRY OUT LOUD BECAUSE YOUR NATION IS LIKE A TRAIN HEADING OVER THE GRAND CANYON AND YOU ARE HALF ASLEEP.  WAKE UP AND SMELL THE COFFEE THERE HAS BEEN A TAKEOVER OF YOUR COUNTRY AND THE ENDING OF THE STORY WILL BE THE END OF YOUR NATION. PERISH THE THOUGHT AND  GOOD NIGHT AMERICA.   

WHAT TO EXPECT IN 2018 - WITH SPECIAL GUEST 
Gerald Celente





CENTRAL BANKS PREPARE FOR END OF THE DOLLAR
G. Edward Griffin Interview






EXPOSING THE TRUTH ON THE REAL TICKING TIMEBOMB FUELLING DEBT BASED USURIOUS CAPITALISM MORPHING INTO GLOBAL TERROR CAPITALISM 
[color=#04029c]http://www.usdebtclock.org/ 
http://www.usdebtclock.org/world-debt-clock.html

 


“BIGGEST BUBBLE IN THE HISTORY OF MANKIND IS GOING TO BURST ” – RON PAUL 
https://news.goldcore.com/uk/gold-blog/biggest-bubble-in-the-history-of-mankind-is-going-to-burst-ron-paul

Look to the stock market and you’d assume Wall Street was doing just fine. The S&P 500 has come back to March highs, the Dow is back to positive for 2018, and the Nasdaq is at fresh records. It’s all built on shaky foundations, said longtime market bear and former Republican Congressman Ron Paul. This market is in the “biggest bubble in the history of mankind,” and when it bursts, it could cut the stock market in half, he told CNBC’s “Futures Now” Thursday.

“I see trouble ahead, and it originates with too much debt, too much spending,” Paul said.  

This isn’t the first time Paul has made such dire warnings. During a “Futures Now” appearance in August 2017, he predicted a 50 percent drop in the market, a call he has doubled down on a number of times since. Since that appearance, the S&P 500 has rallied 15 percent.  

Paul belongs to the Libertarian Party, a faction that emphasizes constrained government spending. He sees federal spending and monetary policy as dual forces inflating a market bubble.  “The Congress spending and the Federal Reserve manipulation of monetary policy and interest rates — debt is too big, the current account is in bad shape, foreign debt is bad and it’s not going to change,” he said.

Paul isn’t alone in his critique. A number of politicians have voiced concern over ballooning deficits, including current House Speaker Paul Ryan, who raised a warning on the nation’s debt in 2012. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that federal deficits will average $1.2 trillion a year from 2019 to 2028, according to its April economic outlook. Its 2018 deficit estimates rose by $242 billion over previous forecasts made in June 2017. The federal agency said the revision was mainly owing to lower projected revenues tied to tax reform.

“We have a president who likes to spend. He is not concerned about the deficit,” said Paul.

To Paul the decision-making arm of the Fed is equally at fault in creating a market bubble.

“The Fed will keep inflating, and that distorts things,” Paul continued. “Now they’re trying to unwind their balance sheet. I don’t think they’re going to get real far on that.”   The Fed is more than two years into its rate-hiking cycle. In conjunction with rate hikes, the Fed is also unloading assets from its balance sheet, which expanded to $4.5 trillion during its post-financial crisis quantitative-easing program.

Paul is not confident much will change to divert from the disaster he predicts.
“The government will keep spending, and the Fed will keep inflating, and that distorts things,” said Paul. “When you get into a situation like this, the debt has to be eliminated. You have to liquidate the debt and the malinvestment.”  Paul reiterated his call on Thursday for a potential 50 percent sell-off on the stock market.

THE USA AND NATO OUST CRISIS RIDDEN EU 

Manlio Dinucci

Global Research, July 05, 2018

https://www.globalresearch.ca/usa-nato-o...eu/5646504

Two summits, both in Brussels at a two-week interval, represent the status quo of the European situation. The meeting of the European Council on 28 June confirmed that the Union, founded on the interests of the economic and financial oligarchies, beginning with those of the greatest powers, is presently crumbling because of its conflicts of interest, which are not limited to the migrant question.

The North Atlantic Council – to be attended, on 10-11 July, by the heads of state and government of 22 EU countries (of a total of 28), members of the Alliance (with Great Britain leaving the Union) – will reinforce NATO under US command. President Donald Trumpwill therefore be holding the strongest cards at the bilateral Summit which is to be held five days later, on 16 July in Helsinki, with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Whatever the US President stipulates at the negotiating table, it will fundamentally affect the situation in Europe. The fact that the USA have never wanted a unified Europe as an equal ally is no secret to anyone. For more than 40 years, during the Cold War, they maintained Europe in subordination as the front line of the nuclear confrontation with the Soviet Union.

In 1991, when the Cold War was over, the United States feared that the European allies could question their leadership or decide that NATO was now obsolete, overtaken as it was by the new geopolitical situation. This is the reason for the strategic reorientation of NATO, still under US command, recognised by the Treaty of Maastricht as the “foundation for the defence” of the European Union, and also for its expansion towards the East, linking the former countries of the Warsaw Pact more to Washington than Brussels.

NATO is turning Europe into a Battlefield against Russia

During the wars waged after the end of the Cold War (Iraq, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq for the second time, Libya, Syria), the United States were pursuing secret deals with the greatest European powers (Great Britain, France, Germany) and sharing with them certain zones of influence, while from the other European states (including Italy) they obtained what they wanted without any substantial concessions. Washington’s main objective is not only to keep the European Union in a subordinate position, but even more so, to prevent the formation of an economic zone which could unite all of Europe, including Russia, by connecting to China with the developing “new Silk Road”. This has led to the new Cold War that was triggered in Europe in 2014 (during the Obama administration), and the economic sanctions and the escalation of NATO’s strategy against Russia.

The strategy of “divide and rule”, originally dressed up in the costumes of diplomacy, is now clear for all to see. When he met President Macron in April, Trump suggested that France should leave the European Union, offering him commercial conditions more advantageous than those of the EU. We do not know what is being decided in Paris. But it is significant that France launched a plan anticipating joint military operations with a group of EU countries, a plan made independently of the decision-making apparatus of the EU. The agreement was signed in Luxembourg, on 25 June, by France, Germany, Belgium, Denmark, Holland, Spain, Portugal, Estonia and the United Kingdom, which would therefore be able to participate even after its exit from the EU in March 2019.

The French Minister for Defence, Florence Parly, noted that Italy has not yet signed the agreement because of “a question of details, not substance”. In fact, the plan was approved by NATO, since it “completes and augments the rapidity of the armed forces of the Alliance”. And, as underlined the Italian Minister for Defence Elisabetta Trenta, because the “European Union must become a provider of security at the international level, and to do so, it must reinforce its cooperation with NATO”.

VIDEO https://www.globalresearch.ca/usa-nato-oust-crisis-ridden-eu/5646504
Source: PandoraTV

“BIGGEST BUBBLE IN THE HISTORY OF MANKIND IS GOING TO BURST ” – RON PAUL 

https://news.goldcore.com/uk/gold-blog/biggest-bubble-in-the-history-of-mankind-is-going-to-burst-ron-paul

Look to the stock market and you’d assume Wall Street was doing just fine. The S&P 500 has come back to March highs, the Dow is back to positive for 2018, and the Nasdaq is at fresh records. It’s all built on shaky foundations, said longtime market bear and former Republican Congressman Ron Paul. This market is in the “biggest bubble in the history of mankind,” and when it bursts, it could cut the stock market in half, he told CNBC’s “Futures Now” Thursday.

“I see trouble ahead, and it originates with too much debt, too much spending,” Paul said.  

This isn’t the first time Paul has made such dire warnings. During a “Futures Now” appearance in August 2017, he predicted a 50 percent drop in the market, a call he has doubled down on a number of times since. Since that appearance, the S&P 500 has rallied 15 percent.  

Paul belongs to the Libertarian Party, a faction that emphasizes constrained government spending. He sees federal spending and monetary policy as dual forces inflating a market bubble.  “The Congress spending and the Federal Reserve manipulation of monetary policy and interest rates — debt is too big, the current account is in bad shape, foreign debt is bad and it’s not going to change,” he said.

Paul isn’t alone in his critique. A number of politicians have voiced concern over ballooning deficits, including current House Speaker Paul Ryan, who raised a warning on the nation’s debt in 2012. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that federal deficits will average $1.2 trillion a year from 2019 to 2028, according to its April economic outlook. Its 2018 deficit estimates rose by $242 billion over previous forecasts made in June 2017. The federal agency said the revision was mainly owing to lower projected revenues tied to tax reform.

“We have a president who likes to spend. He is not concerned about the deficit,” said Paul.

To Paul the decision-making arm of the Fed is equally at fault in creating a market bubble.

“The Fed will keep inflating, and that distorts things,” Paul continued. “Now they’re trying to unwind their balance sheet. I don’t think they’re going to get real far on that.”   The Fed is more than two years into its rate-hiking cycle. In conjunction with rate hikes, the Fed is also unloading assets from its balance sheet, which expanded to $4.5 trillion during its post-financial crisis quantitative-easing program.

Paul is not confident much will change to divert from the disaster he predicts.
“The government will keep spending, and the Fed will keep inflating, and that distorts things,” said Paul. “When you get into a situation like this, the debt has to be eliminated. You have to liquidate the debt and the malinvestment.”  Paul reiterated his call on Thursday for a potential 50 percent sell-off on the stock market.










GOLDNOMICS PODCAST - GOLD, STOCKS, BONDS , BITCOIN IN 2018 EVERYTHING BUBBLE BURSTS ?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9N_fFvhsUE

GOLDNOMICS PODCAST IS THIS THE GREATEST STOCK MARKET BUBBLE IN HISTORY ?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVtcw_SNVJg

GOLDNOMICS PODCAST IS THE GOLD PRICE GOING GOING TO $10,000?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ky25JhKC8k4&feature=youtu.be

In this the third episode of the Goldnomics podcast we ask the question; “Is the gold price going to $10,000?”.
GoldCore CEO Stephen Flood and GoldCore's Research Director and world renowned precious metals commentator Mark O'Byrne in discussion with Dave Russell.

We discuss what will drive gold to new record highs over the coming months and years. We look at the dangerous developments in monetary policy and the geo-political tensions that make an allocation to gold a prudent move for your portfolio. 

As the “Everything Bubble” continues fuelled by the mainstream media and the effects of quantitative easing does this mean higher gold prices are on the horizon?  Cutting through the financial markets jargon and looking at the risks to your investment portfolio that aren't spoken about in the mainstream media.

Listen to the full episode or skip directly to one of the following discussion points:
1:07 Is the gold price going to $10,000 and when?
3:58 The 5 major driving factors that will be the key to driving gold prices higher.
4:39 What impact and influence will monetary policy play?
5:50 Why the debt to GDP ratio is crippling economies.
6:22 The dangerous trend that began with LTCM being bailed out by Wall Street.
6:55 Why you are now the lender of last resort for the banking system!
7:18 The little known fact that we are now in an era of bail-ins rather than bail-outs and what this means for your savings.
8:28 How bail-ins will impact small businesses and everyone that they employ. 
10:05 Why “money in the bank”, is no longer “as safe as houses”!
10:39 How the old wisdom of “Cash is King”, can quickly become; “Cash is Trash”!
12:08 How governments have snuck in the highly controversial bail-in laws under the radar. 
14:01 Why SMEs need to start to manage their exposure to banks just like large corporations. 
14:58 Why high-net-worth individuals and those that manage family money need to manage their exposure to the banking system, just like large corporations. 
15:05 Why higher interest rates are good for gold!
16:25 The interest rate environment that is not good for gold. 
18:18 The ongoing effect of quantitative easing and how it’s artificially inflating all asset prices.
19:50 Why gold is no longer being pushed higher by quantitative easing.
20:30 The compelling research from PWC that proves the wisdom of gold’s inclusion in your portfolio. 
22:29 Inflation, deflation and stagflation, where we are now and what it means for the gold price.
24:44 The inflationary and deflationary elastic band pressures in the economy. 
26:58 Geopolitical tensions are rising and sabre-rattling is getting louder. Life in the Trump era and the breaking down of old alliances. 
31:10 How to deflect attention – The Goebbels strategy!
33:45 The fault with the media and how they have let us down. 
34:37 James Steele of HSBC and the performance of gold during times of uncertainty and war. 
35:58 A new multipolar world emerging.
37:13 Why the basic fundamentals of supply and demand are very strong for gold. 
37:35 Elon Musk mining gold on mars!
39:18 Have the Germans copped on to this risk to the Euro that other countries are blindly ignoring. 
40:35 What underlies jewellery demand in Asia and the Middle East.  It’s not what you think. 
42:05 The increase in demand for segregated allocated gold and viewing gold as money. 
43:58 The continuing Central Bank demand for gold, is it set to increase further. 
44:50 These governments are encouraging their citizens to buy gold now!
46:35 Why we shouldn’t believe what these people say but instead watch what they do. 
47:10 The breaking down of trust between nations can be seen by this one move. 
47:30 What will happen to keep the gold price from appreciating anytime soon.
51:30 All gold is not equal.

THE NEXT GLOBAL FINANCIAL CRISIS IS INEVITABLE   

https://therealnews.com/stories/the-next-global-financial-crisis-is-inevitable-pt-1-2

https://therealnews.com/stories/the-next...ble-pt-1-2

It has been ten years since the last major financial crisis. With systemic deregulation undoing the safeguards, we are due for another crisis very one soon. Thomas Hanna, research director of the Democracy Collaborative’s Next System Project, says it is almost guaranteed

THE TRUTH ABOUT THE 2008 FINANCIAL MELTDOWN AND HOW IT CONTRIBUTED TO TRUMP’s RISE

August 3, 2018

What is the truth behind the 2008 Financial Collapse, why was no one prosecuted and how did Obama’s not prosecuting the “banksters” and strengthening Glass Steagal lead to Trump in the White House? Economist Bill Black joins us bring clarity to this mystery

https://therealnews.com/stories/the-trut...ise-pt-1-2

https://therealnews.com/stories/the-trut...ise-pt-2-2

RON PAUL: ECONOMIC PROGRESS UNDER TRUMP IS ILLUSION , CRASH COMING 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LnSLB4j3A4

10 YEARS SINCE LEHMAN BROTHERS BANKRUPTCY -  DID THE ECONOMY REALLY RECOVER ? 


September 19, 2018

The Lehman Brothers bankruptcy was the largest in U.S. history and unleashed a financial meltdown. The Banks were saved but not people’s debt, savings or homes. Michael Hudson looks at the economic instability that we continue to live in

Story Transcript

MARC STEINER: Welcome to The Real News Network. I’m Marc Steiner. Great to have you with us once again.

On September 15, 2008, the financial meltdown began with the bankruptcy of the Lehman Brothers. That was 10 years ago, obviously. The shock waves that hit the economy threw 9 million families out of their homes who could not afford to pay their rising mortgages. So Congress and the president in the 1990s, remember, killed Glass-Steagall, written in 1933 to save us from the excesses of the financial industry. And then Congress gave us Dodd-Frank in the wake of the 2008 crisis that bailed out Wall Street, but not America. And now Trump seems to continue the process with killing Dodd-Frank and completely turning over the keys to Wall Street.

Our guest today says in part we must wipe out debt and not bail out the banks. So with that, let me welcome back to Real News Michael Hudson, research professor of economics at the University of Missouri Kansas City, and a research associate at the Levy Economics Institute at Bard College. His latest book is J Is for Junk Economics. Michael, welcome, good to have you with us.

MICHAEL HUDSON: Good to be here.

MARC STEINER: So let’s start there, with this whole idea of what we did wrong in 2008, why we got it wrong, and what we should have done, from your perspective.

MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, you’re talking about September 15. And if you talked about last weekend, the 10-year anniversary, all that you read in The New York Times and other newspapers was a celebration. We did everything right. We bailed out the banks. There is very little discussion of the fact that this is a disaster for the economy. Nobody has related the fact that we bailed out the banks on their own terms to the fact the economy has not recovered. People talk about a recovery since 2008.

Just to put this whole issue in perspective, almost all of the growth in GDP which they look at is taken the form of higher bank earnings, which they call financial services, meaning penalty fees, late fees, and interest rates over and above the banks’ cost of funds; and rising rents that homeowners would have to pay themselves if they rented instead of owned their homes. And as you’ve had so many- you mentioned 9 million homeowners lost their homes. They now have rent. Rents are rising, debts are rising. The corporate debt, municipal debt, and student debt are way higher now than 2008.

And most of this is because of the way in which President Obama doublecrossed his voters and said, I’m not representing you, I’m representing my donors. And he invited the bankers to the White House and said, don’t worry, folks, I’m the only guy standing between you and the mob with pitchforks. Just like Hillary told Donald Trump supporters, the word that she used, she called his supporters the mob with pitchforks. And he stuck it to them.

In my book Killing the Host, you have Barney Frank saying that he got the agreement of Secretary of the Treasury Hank Paulson to write down the mortgages to the realistic charges; namely, number one, what the mortgage borrowers could afford out of their income, and number two, the carrying charge of the mortgage would be the going rent rate, which is what mortgages historically have tended to.
Obama said, no, I’m representing the bankers, not the debtors. And he appointed bank lobbyists such as Citibank’s Tim Geithner as Secretary of the Treasury. He basically followed everything that President Clinton’s Secretary of the Treasury Rubin recommended to him. He was handed the list of the people that we want to appoint. And he did it, washed his hands of it. And the terms of the bailout- instead of doing what normally happens in a crisis, writing down the debts, and writing off the bad savings and the bad loans as a counterpart to the debts- and instead of taking over the insolvent banks, he kept everything on the books.

There was a big argument in the administration. Surprisingly enough, the good guys were the Republicans in this. Sheila Bair was a Republican from the Midwest, and she said, look, Citibank is not only insolvent, it’s a basically a financial fraud organization. We should take it over. It doesn’t have any money. On the other hand- but Obama said, wait a minute, Geithner is a protege of Rubin, and he’s become head of Citigroup. We’ve got to bail out Citigroup. So what Obama did was take the banks that have been the most fraudulent, that have paid the largest amount of civil fines for financial fraud, and said, these are the banks we want to be the leaders. We’re going to make them the biggest banks, and we’re going to make them stronger. And we’re not going to forgive any loans. We’re going to leave the loans in place, unlike what’s happened for the last few hundred years and crashes.

And so this crash of 2008, it was not a crash of the banks. The banks were bailed out. The autonomy was left with all of the junk mortgages, all of the fraudulent debts. And then to further help the banks recover, the Federal Reserve came in and push quantitative easing, lowering the interest rates so much that banks could make an enormous, the widest profit they ever made in history, between the lending rate on mortgages, 5-6 percent; student loans, 9 percent; credit card loans, 11-29 percent; and the banks’ borrowing charge, which is 0.1 percent. The banks became an enormous problem profit centers, leading these stock market gains.
So they were bailed out. And over the weekend, the newspapers say, look at the wonderful success. The stock market’s up, the one percent are richer than ever before. Let’s look at the good side of things. And there is no analysis at all as to why the economy is not recovering, and whether this failure to recover is a backwash of the way in which the crisis was handled- by bailing out the banks, not the economy.

MARC STEINER: Let me take a step backwards here. First of all, very quickly for us, define quantitative easing.

MICHAEL HUDSON: Quantitative easing is when the Federal Reserve created $4.3 trillion of buying all of the bad debts and the bank assets and creating bank reserves. Essentially it’s like printing money. And it’s printing money, and you’ve heard the phrase ‘money-dropping helicopters.’ But the helicopters only fly over Wall Street. So the Federal Reserve created $4.3 billion on the accounts of the banks, and let the banks get through the fact that they’d made recklessly bad loans, they’ve made reckless losses. Sheila Bair, in her autobiography, wrote about how Citibank was the most mismanaged bank in America. Not quite as fraudulent as Countrywide is, or Bank of America, but simply incompetent by making bad gambles under Prince, who ran the thing. They were bailed out. They were subsidized.

MARC STEINER: Let’s talk a bit about what could have been the alternative. To me that’s what is a gripping story we never wrestled with, nor talk about very much. Right?

MICHAEL HUDSON: Isn’t that amazing. Over the weekend, not a single paper that I know said- there were many alternatives at the time. The alternative that was talked about mainly by Republicans was saying, OK, these mortgages were fraudulently written. That’s why the whole media were using the word ‘junk mortgages.’ They say, we should write down the mortgage to the ability of mortgager to pay, out of 25 percent of their income, or whatever. Or the carrying charge of their mortgage would be the same that they could rent. In other words, if someone’s paying $600 a month, or $1200 a month in mortgage payments, but for $600 a month they could rent out the identical house next door, you reduce the mortgage to the realistic value. Because the banks hired crooked appraisers and their own crooked firms to do false valuations on these loans they made in order to sell them the gullible people, like German [inaudible[

MARC STEINER: So in 2008, some Republicans, along with some economists who were to the left of Wall Street, were talking about bailing out people who were in debt, bailing out people whose mortgages were underwater. Dealing with the question of how much we’re charging for student loans, and kind of either putting a freeze on that, or writing them down. So let’s talk a bit about for a moment what was being proposed that was not paid attention to in 2008 that had to do with more- because one of the things you say, which is a pretty radical notion, which is we should have bailed out the debtors, and not the banks. So let’s start there. What does that mean, and how does that work?

MICHAEL HUDSON: Suppose you had taken the $4.3 trillion, and instead of giving it to the banks to lend out mainly to corporate raiders or to speculators, or to currency speculators, you would have used this $4.3 trillion to take over, buy all of the bad loans at a discount. They could have bought a-

MARC STEINER: Who’s ‘they’? Some of the federal government?

MICHAEL HUDSON: The federal government could have bought the junk mortgage loans in default for maybe a quarter of the value. Let’s say 25 percent, $25,000. This is essentially what Blackstone Realty did, and what private equity people did, buying the foreclosed properties. The governments could have bought from the banks their bad loans. And instead of foreclosing, they’d write down the loans to the realistic market price that the market was pricing the property and the loans at. The inflated housing prices would have been recalculated at the market rate. There would be a lower mortgage, there would be lower interest rates and no penalty payments.

And this $4.3 trillion could have spurred an enormous take off. It could have left the 9 million families that were evicted in place. It could have kept the housing prices low for the country. It could have kept the purchasing power of homeowners available to be spending on goods and services. And the economy would have recovered instead of stagnating. That wasn’t done because the financial sector was running the Democratic Party’s policy and politics, not the voters.

MARC STEINER: So I mean, but they’ve been doing this for a long time. I mean, whether it was President Bush or President Clinton, and going after pieces of Glass-Steagall and finally killing it and the rest, which you can talk about in a minute if we have time today. I mean, but the issue seems to me people would say to you in response, well, what about the banks? That’s where our money is. That’s how we get our loans. That’s who finances small businesses in our community. How can you not bail them out? How can they not be the centerpiece of this, along with us, whose homes are underwater?

MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, just about everybody who listens to this show has their bank accounts guaranteed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the FDIC. Sheila Bair was the head of the FDIC. She was leading the advocacy to take over the banks and essentially wipe out their stockholders, because they were holders in a fraudulent organization, wait out the bondholders, and in her autobiography she was opposed. She said, we could have taken over Citibank. Every insured depositor would have had their money.

MARC STEINER: What does it need to take over Citibank? What does it mean to take over the banks, what does that mean?

MICHAEL HUDSON: That means when there is, when the bank is insolvent, the government takes it over at a price that- to cover the deposits [inaudible] for the bondholders.

MARC STEINER: So one more time for us. So you’re saying- so taking over the banks would have guaranteed who, and not the bondholders?

MICHAEL HUDSON: It would have guaranteed the depositors. There was enough money in Citibank, even though it was crooked, even though it was incompetently managed, even though we know that it’s paid tens of billions of dollars for fraud. It would have wiped out the big speculators. But all of the depositors, the bread and butter users, would have been paid. The same for all the other banks. No depositor would have lost. But the bondholders would have lost, because other banks essentially would have used their money to pay the depositors and to stay in business, not pay the owners of the banks, who were owners of a crooked organization.

MARC STEINER: So where does the money come from, then, to invest in infrastructure, in new businesses, and whatever else has to be invested in?

MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, banks don’t invest- banks, that’s the myth. The pretense is that rescuing the banks rescued the economy. But the banks don’t make loans to the economy. Banks don’t make loans to fund factories. They don’t make loans for infrastructure. They make loans to buy assets already in place. They’re privatizing the structure to take it private, raise the rates the people have to pay. Essentially the same thing is taking over corporations. They won’t help a corporation put in more equipment and hire more people, but they’ll lend to a raider to break up a corporation, downsize the labor force, smash it up and leave it a bankrupt shell. That’s the financial management plan. That’s what they teach in business schools. And the idea that bailing out the banks helps the economy- the fact is that the economy today cannot recover without a bank failure, because if you-

MARC STEINER: Let me stop you right there, before we go on. Let’s examine that before we have to close. So what do you mean by that? What do you mean, the economy cannot let- without a bank failure? What does that mean?

MICHAEL HUDSON: That means that the banks hold the student loan debt, the mortgage debt, the credit card debt. If you leave all of this debt in place, people will have enough money after paying their monthly nut, after paying their banks, their mortgage payments, their housing payments, all of the monthly stuff, there’s not enough money to buy the goods and services that they produce anymore.

So the economy is shrinking. You’ve seen a lot of stories, international and national chains going out of business. You’ve seen whole streets of New York City being basically- half the stores are empty. Nobody’s in them. The economy’s not recovering, it’s limping along. And it’s what is called debt deflation. And again, my book Killing the Host describes how all of this was described in the 1930s. It’s a well-known phenomenon. But nobody talking about the rescue was saying, wait a minute, what was rescued was the volume of debt, instead of writing it down like you did in the 1930s.

So essentially we’re not in a recovery at all, and we can’t get into recovery until you write down the debt. Otherwise you’re going to have the economy looking like Greece. You’re going to have austerity. So basically we’re on an austerity budget now, not so much because of tax policy, but because of the debt overhead that is owed to the banks and other major creditors.

MARC STEINER: So we’re here talking to Michael Hudson, and it’s a fascinating conversation about what could have been, and what is not. We’re going to come right back to finish this conversation with Michael Hudson here on The Real News Network to briefly talk about what it is we can do, and where we are at this moment. Stay with us.

IS A NEW GLOBAL FINANCIAL CRISIS IMMINENT ?

September 23, 2018

Economists Mark Weisbrot and Gerald Epstein face off to discuss whether 10 years after the Lehman Brothers collapse and the Great Recession of 2008 we are about to see another major financial crisis  

Story Transcript

SHARMINI PERIES: It’s The Real News Network. I’m Sharmini Peries, coming to you from Baltimore.

Here at The Real News, we have been covering the ten-year anniversary of the great financial crisis of 2008. We are, of course, trying to pursue a series of analyses on the lessons learned from that momentous event. We are now turning today to look forward, looking at analysis of whether we can expect a repeat of that crisis in the foreseeable future. Now, some institutes, such as The Democracy Collaborative founded by Gar Alperovitz, recently issued a detailed analysis predicting that there will be another global financial crisis and that it will probably be even worse than the one that took place in 2008. In fact, they have a strategy lined up as far as what we should do when that crisis hit. It’s worth taking a look at, and we’ve done some interviews here on The Real News on that topic as well. So, do look that up.

Now, on the other hand of all of this, we have others, such as Dean Baker of the Center for Economic Policy and Research, who just published a paper titled, The United States is Not on the Brink of a Financial Crisis. And he and his colleague, Mark Weisbrot, were among the few economists who actually predicted the last crisis. So, joining me today to discuss these perspectives on the likelihood of another crisis are Professor Gerald Epstein and Mark Weisbrot. Jerry is co-director of the Political Economy Research Institute and professor of economics at UMass Amherst. Good to have you with us, Jerry.

GERALD EPSTEIN: Thanks, Sharmini. Hi Mark.

SHARMINI PERIES: And Mark is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C. He is the author of Failed: What the “Experts” Got Wrong about the Global Economy. Thank you both for joining us.

MARK WEISBROT: Thanks, Sharmini.

SHARMINI PERIES: I’m going to start off with letting each of you stake out your positions on this. So, let me start with you, Jerry, first. Is the U.S. and the global economy on the brink of a new financial crisis?

GERALD EPSTEIN: Well the brink’s a strong word. I think it’s hard for anybody to predict a brink. But I think there are worrying trends, both in the United States and in the global economy in terms of financial problems. Let me point out that economic historians have shown that there are financial crises somewhere in the world every seven or eight years throughout the history of capitalism. So, it’s unlikely that we’re not going to have other financial crises. I think the real question, of course, is whether we’re on the brink of a financial crisis of this severity and of the type we just saw in 2008. And those kinds of financial crises, historically, are actually quite rare.

So, it would be quite surprising if we were on the brink of a financial crisis like that. Now, what I think is that there are serious financial problems that are building up and that the policies undertaken after the last crisis were not sufficient to solve these problems. And in fact, many of them were just swept under the rug and not looked at at all. So, what are some of the of the disturbing trends? First of all, debt levels in the United States and in many parts of the world; business debt, household debt, et cetera, are at the highest levels we’ve ever seen as a share of GDP or national income. So, debt, which is a vulnerable factor in financial crises, is certainly way up there.

Second of all, a lot of the financial practices that contributed to the financial crisis are still going on; the writing of derivatives and collateralized debt obligations, the borrowing and lending by the shadow banking system. All of these things are going on and those have not stopped. So, I think there a lot of worrying trends, and perhaps the most worrying is that the financial regulators, particularly in the United States, under the sway of Trumpian economics and the Republican Party and the Wall Street-friendly Democrats, are dismantling a lot of the regulations that were put in place. And so, there’s not much of a cop on the block anymore. So, I think all of these things make it more likely that we’re going to have a serious financial crisis but saying we’re on the brink is probably too strong.

SHARMINI PERIES: All right. Mark, what’s your take on what Jerry just said, and as well as do you think we are on the brink of a new financial crisis?

MARK WEISBROT: Well, if the framework we’re looking at is the whole world, then we do already have financial crises in places like Argentina and Turkey. You have a big falloff in the emerging market stock index. And you have these crises resulting partly from the Federal Reserve raising interest rates here. This is similar to what you had when the Fed doubled the interest rates between 1994 and ’97. You had crises in Argentina, Brazil and Mexico, in Asia, including Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, South Korea. You had Russia as well in ’98. And so, all of this spread through the behavior of market participants who just looked around and picked the country they thought was going to be next and pulled out of there, caused the crisis by the sudden stop of capital flows.

So, something like could happen as the Fed continues to raise interest rates, especially for the more vulnerable countries, those that have a lot of debt. But again, some countries will be innocent bystanders and be sucked into it. And I think this is a real problem and it’s also a problem for the United States. The Federal Reserve has caused all of the recessions we’ve had in the United States, except for the last two, by raising interest rates. And if they continue to raise interest rates, as they’ve done five times since 2015 unnecessarily, they will eventually slow this economy and maybe push it into recession.

But if we’re talking about now, we’re comparing to the tenth anniversary of the last- the media calls it a financial crisis- but we compare it to the Great Recession, which I think is a better way to describe it, we’re not seeing any bubbles, for example, that could cause that. The housing bubble was very evident at the time. You had a huge runup of construction, and when that collapsed we lost four percentage points of U.S. GDP. And people were spending often at the increase in wealth, they were borrowing against their means. And they were spending, and the savings rate collapsed two and a half percent. I think it was a record low in 2005. And that was very evident as well.

And together, those two shocks, the collapse in the consumption that you got of the wealth effect of losing eight trillion dollars in housing wealth and the four percentage points of the GDP, that’s what caused the Great Recession. It wasn’t the result of the financial crisis, of any financial crisis. And I think that’s very important. That’s widely misunderstood throughout in the media, and as a result, I think people have a lot of misunderstandings about what to do going forward and where we are right now in terms of facing the threat of a Great Recession. And that’s not to dismiss what Jerry said about regulatory concerns and the fact that we didn’t fix a lot of what we needed to fix in terms of financial regulation. We don’t have any bubbles like the one that we had in 2006, 2007, or even like the stock market bubble that we had in 2000.

SHARMINI PERIES: All right. Now, it appears that both of you agrees that it is the nature of our economies, or capitalism, that there are crises in some part of the world somewhere at any given moment. Now, Leo Panitch has also written about this, he wrote a book called In and Out of Crisis. And as I mentioned off the top, Gar Alperovitz also predicts such crises is pending. Now to talk about it might happen or it is happening somewhere in the world like Argentina or what we experienced even in Turkey these past few months is one thing. But it’s another thing to be waiting in the United States and on the brink of that these kinds of crises may trigger another financial crisis in the U.S. Is there any possibility of that happening, Jerry?

GERALD EPSTEIN: Yeah, sure. I mean, let me respond to some things that Mark said. I certainly agree with a lot of what he said. But to step back a bit, we look historically at the causes of financial crises, there’s been a lot of research done on this by economic historians like Charles Kindleberger who wrote the great book, Manias, Panics, and Crashes, Hyman Minsky. More recently, a lot of empirical work done by economic historians like Alan Taylor, Moritz Schularick and others. And what’s pretty clear is that financial crises, and very serious ones, come in all varieties. Not all financial crises are started by bubbles. Bubbles, asset bubbles like we saw with the housing market and other stock market bubbles, or South Sea bubbles, tulip bubbles, these are all things that can start a financial crisis and have started financial crises.
But you can have pretty serious financial crises without bubbles, historically. And so, I think it’s not sufficient to say, as I think Mark suggested and maybe Dean has suggested, that, “Well, there’s no bubbles out there right now, so we can’t have a major financial crisis. That doesn’t necessarily follow if you look at the historical record. Financial crises are caused fundamentally by debt structures, or one of the main causes of financial crises is businesses and people and governments taking on a lot of debt and expectations feature income and revenues that don’t materialize for some reason or another. And it gets worse if the financial system buys and sells and insures these types of debt throughout the financial system.

And if one institution fails and if they’re complexly integrated with each other, then that can bring down more financial institutions and other institutions. And then, you have a big problem. And the problem now is that, perhaps Mark is right that we don’t have any obvious bubbles right now, that the global financial market has become incredibly interconnected with all kinds of derivatives, the same sorts we saw before and even more complex, the whole shadow banking system that isn’t regulated and we don’t know much about. This is generating lots of interconnectedness, lots of complexity. And so, there’s a lot of danger lurking in there and the absence of a bubble does not guarantee us the absence of a major financial crisis. So, I would be a little more worried than it sounds to me like Mark and perhaps Dean are.

SHARMINI PERIES: All right, Mark. Let me give you an opportunity to respond to Jerry.

MARK WEISBROT: Well, I’m not going to say it’s never going to happen some years from now if some large unsustainable debt burden were to grow, for example, in the business sector, then that would be a different story. But we don’t really have that now. And so, I think that there does have to be something. You can see if it’s a crisis that’s going to cause something like the Great Recession or the prior recession or any of the deep recessions prior to 2000, we would see it. The most likely cause of the next recession, if we’re looking ahead and just doing a baseline projection for right now, barring some real trade war, for example, is it is much more likely to be the Federal Reserve raising interest rates until it slows the economy enough to cause a recession. That’s what we’re looking at as the greatest threat right now.

There’s no financial imbalance of the sort, including the business sector borrowing. A lot of that was just borrowing because interest rates were very low, so corporations locked in debt at very low interest rates. It wasn’t borrowing because they were in trouble of any sort. So, these are not the material of crises. That doesn’t mean they won’t be three or four years from now, even further. But if we’re looking at it right now, you don’t have anything that we can point to as something that will cause a crisis in the foreseeable future other than, again, the threat of the Federal Reserve.

SHARMINI PERIES: Jerry?

GERALD EPSTEIN: Well, I hope you’re right. I think that would be a good thing. And it is true, I agree with you Mark, that the Federal Reserve excessively increasing interest rates is both unnecessary and dangerous from this regard. But let’s not forget- and you know this as well or better than I do, that in 1982, with the so-called Third World debt crisis, there weren’t any obvious signs of problems here in the United States. But unbeknownst to many of us, the thirteen major commercial banks in the U.S. were lending much more than their capital to a set of eight or nine developing countries. And when problems developed there, in Mexico and Argentina and so forth, that almost brought down the U.S. financial system.

So, the problems do not have to emanate from here to kick back and create a crisis here, because our financial institutions are at the center of the global financial system. Major interconnected problems that start elsewhere can boomerang back and affect our financial institutions. Now, the question then is what you’ve been writing about, and Dean and others, well if that happens, what should we do about it? Should we bail out the banks again and bail out the bankers? And that’s where the interesting question is. And I think that’s where the work by the Democracy Collaborative that you referred to is very interesting, because they’re saying no, we should nationalize the banks at that point and then move on from there. So, I agree with their perspective on that.

SHARMINI PERIES: So, Mark, how do you respond to Jerry’s argument that of course deregulation, combined with increasing, unpayable debt burdens make a crisis practically inevitable in spite of not having a bubble?

MARK WEISBROT: Well, it depends what you mean by inevitable. At some point, yeah, there is definitely a tendency, there’s a boom-bust, there’s a business cycle. And there are financial cycles as well, as Jerry referred to at the beginning, referring to Minsky and Kindleberger and others. You have cycles, of course. But the question is where we are right now, and there isn’t any unsustainable business that that would cause it. And in terms of the crisis coming from other countries and tanking the U.S. economy, I don’t see that. Jerry is absolutely right about the threat to major banks in the 1980s from the lending that they had. But I don’t see anything like that today.

In fact, I remember in the midst of the Asian financial crisis, Alan Greenspan made a statement. He said, “How long had the United States economy be an oasis in a sea of financial crises?” Something like that, saying that this would you know eventually hit the U.S. And it never did. In fact, the answer question was, the U.S. could continue to grow quite well until our own stock market bubble burst 2000. So, I think the structure of the world is different now than it was in the 80s, and even in the late 90s, of course, that was a series crisis to many countries; the Asian crisis, I mentioned Latin America and Russia. And the U.S. economy plowed through all the way and was not affected.

SHARMINI PERIES: All right, Jerry, we will have to leave it there soon, but let me give you the last word.

GERALD EPSTEIN: I think the major problem is that we don’t really have enough information to know whether Mark’s right or whether I’m right. I’d like to believe what Mark is saying, and Mark has done a lot of research on a lot of these topics. But a major problem with the lack of follow-up after the financial crisis is that the regulators and the banks and the financial markets are still shielding information from hedge funds, from private equity firms, from global security markets, the so-called shadow markets. We don’t know what dangers really are building up out there. And so, we need to demand to get this information so that we can make a more informed assessment.

SHARMINI PERIES: That triggers something. Jerry, the fact that even though we had Dodd Frank, half of the regulations that needed to be put in place from Dodd Frank was never done. And further, the Trump administration has come in and further deregulated the environment. Do you think these steps would trigger something that we should worry about?

GERALD EPSTEIN: Well, some of them could. I’m particularly thinking of something Michael Greenberger, who’s an expert on derivatives and has been writing about it at the INET website, among other places, talking about a very arcane loophole that has been exploited by the major writers of credit default swaps and other derivatives, so that they are now able to escape all regulation from Dodd Frank. And as we know, these credit default swaps and so forth are things that spread the collapse of the housing bubble through the financial system. So, now they’re able to build up all kinds of derivatives positions globally.

And I know that Michael Greenberger, who’s an expert on this, is quite worried that this is leading to the buildup of a lot of interconnected, complex risks in the global financial markets, just another example of how the ability to evade the rules of Dodd Frank and the absence of other rules in Dodd Frank, making it easy for them to hide risks around the global financial markets.

SHARMINI PERIES: All right, then. Mark, I have to get to respond to that before we can go.

MARK WEISBROT: Oh, well I- again, I don’t write off the idea that there will be future financial crises, and some of them could come from places we don’t see that clearly right now. But that sure wasn’t true in the last two major crises we had. Both of those were painfully visible for years before the bubbles burst. And again, I’m not saying all financial crises result from bubbles, but you could see it from the impact of the bubble. So, for example, you could see that the housing bubble was driving consumption in the U.S. and you could see all the signs that it really was a bubble, even though most of the media, almost all the media missed it entirely.

You could see that rents, for example, weren’t rising and vacancy rates were rising. You could see all of these things, they were big and obvious, and you could see the same thing in the stock market bubble that burst 2000. So, it is, again, it is possible that there are things we don’t see right now because of poor regulatory structures that will eventually become a visible problem, not just a visible problem, but a visible threat to the economy, a serious threat. All I’m saying is that those serious threats are not visible now.

SHARMINI PERIES: All right. That was Mark Weisbrot from the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C. And we were also joined by Professor Jerry Epstein from the Political Economy Research Institute at UMass Amherst. I thank you both for joining us today.

GERALD EPSTEIN: Thank you.
MARK WEISBROT: Thank you, Sharmini.
SHARMINI PERIES: And thank you for joining us here on The Real News Network.

THE UPSIDE DOWN WORLD WE ARE LIVING IN SHOWS THE IMPENDING POLITICAL CIVIL WAR IS BEING SHARPENED BY THE FALLOUT OF AFRICAN MIGRANTS ON THE SHORES OF EUROPE.  ARRIVING LIVE IF THEY ARE LUCKY ON LAND AND DROWNED AT THE BOTTOM OF THE MED IF THEY ARE UNLUCKY. 

5 STARS ARE SPOT ON HIGHLIGHTING THE ROLE OF HOW FRANCE CONTINUES ITS EXPLOITATION OF AFRICA. THE FRENCH NEED TO BE TAUGHT A LESSON IN CIVILISATION WHICH MEANS THEY SHOULD BE FORCED TO LEAVE  AFRICA AND ALLOW IT SELF DETERMINATION. 

FREE FREE FRANCOPHONE AFRICA.
 
JUSTICE ALSO MEANS REPARATIONS AND MORE FOCUS ON ITS RAPE OF AFRICA HEREWITH
   
WHY ITALY’s 5STARS ARE LECTURING FRANCE ON AFRICA 

https://www.politico.eu/article/italy-fr...nt-deaths/

Italy’s deputy PM Di Maio, who has already irked Paris by backing the Yellow Jackets, is now denouncing French colonialism. That impression was reinforced by support for the anti-French outbursts from Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, who said it is "legitimate to question the effectiveness of our foreign policies," and Foreign Minister Enzo Moavero Milanesi.

Gaddafi's gold

Di Maio was alluding to the CFA franc, two currencies used mainly by former French colonies in Africa that are pegged to the euro, with the financial backing of the French treasury. In exchange, the French treasury holds half the foreign currency of these 14 countries, which critics say hinders economic development. Vito Petrocelli, the 5Star president of the Italian Senate's foreign affairs committee, attempted to explain the rationale behind Di Maio's comments by referring to U.S. diplomatic cables from WikiLeaks. 

Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi was plotting to replace the CFA franc with a pan-African currency backed by Libyan gold, according to a leaked U.S. diplomatic cable from 2011. The invasion of Libya by Western allies put an end to that plan and destabilized the country, contributing to the migration chaos whose consequences have been mainly borne by Italy, he said.   "Luigi Di Maio had the courage to lift the veil of hypocrisy which hid the scandalous system of the CFA franc," said Petrocelli.

In reality, most migrants who arrive in Italy originate from countries such as Tunisia and Eritrea that don’t use the CFA franc. Among the top 10 countries of origin for refugees arriving by sea in Italy in 2018, Ivory Coast is the first country using the CFA franc to appear, at No. 8, according to UNHCR figures. Godwin Chukwu, founder of the Federation of the African Diaspora in Italy, said Italy should remember its own colonial past in Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Libya, adding: "Di Maio and Salvini cannot give lessons to France."

Chukwu cited Di Maio's promise to Italian voters that foreigners would not be eligible for the 5Stars' flagship campaign promise of a basic citizens' income. "Africa is here in Italy but the minister cares nothing for these poor people," he said.

For Raffaele Marchetti, professor of international relations at Rome’s Luiss University, the diplomatic spat between Rome and Paris is the result of long-term economic and military frictions between Italy and France that have been exacerbated by the immigration crisis.
On top of that, inflammatory language attracts votes, and ahead of May's European election the 5Stars are keen to burnish their anti-establishment credentials by taking a pop at capitalist institutions to win support from the left and take a hard stance on migration to gain favor with the right.  "Show voters you are dealing with migration and you will be rewarded," said Marchetti.

Karaoke night
With the 5Stars looking for potential allies in the European Parliament after the May election, attacking France's Africa policy is also a way of reaching out to the Yellow Jackets by showing a shared agenda: abolishing the CFA franc is one of the activists' demands.  Standing up to the French will also go down well with the domestic audience, said 5Star activist Massimo Lazzari. Di Maio "is trying to get back some votes we have lost," he said, adding that Italy has been too acquiescent with the major European powers in the past.

"We have to defend ourselves. France treats Italy as a colony, economically and illegally sending back child migrants. Previous governments allowed this to happen. We push back," said Lazzari.

"These comments will increase divisions with France and leave Italy more marginalized" — Raffaele Marchetti

While there may be short-term electoral gains, opposition parties point out the danger of running foreign policy like an election campaign. The situation is "getting out of hand," said former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi from the center-left Democratic Party: ‘The damage to the credibility of Italy and its relations with its historic friends is huge. Foreign policy is serious, it’s not amateur karaoke." Alessandro Alfieri, a Democratic Party senator on the foreign affairs committee, pointed out that France had supported Italy against the threat of EU sanctions over the 2019 budget. "We are witnessing a radical change in foreign policy, which betrays our national interests," he warned.

Long term, such attacks are likely to leave Italy more isolated in Europe. "These comments will increase divisions with France and leave Italy more marginalized," said Marchetti at Luiss University.

GLOBAL ECONOMY ON THE BRINK AS DAVOS CROWD PARTIES ON 

https://www.globalresearch.ca/global-economy-brink-davos-crowd-parties/5666277?utm_campaign=magnet&utm_source=article_page&utm_medium=related_articles

DAVOS ELITES FEAR THEY’RE ON A TOBOGGAN RIDE TO HELL

The global winners here in Switzerland aren’t so sure they’re up to the task of running the world anymore.

John Harris 
https://www.politico.eu/article/world-ec...e-to-hell/

At Davos, Switzerland every year the global capitalist elite gather to party…and to prepare for the year ahead. This year more than 1500 private jets will reportedly fly in. Thousands more of their underling staff will travel via business class to handle their personal, and corporate, logistics. Shielded from the media and the pubic, the big capitalists share views in back rooms and listen to experts on finance, government policy, technology, and the economy. The experts are especially probed to identify and explain the next ‘black swan’ or ‘gray rhino’ event about to erupt. Wealthy celebrities are invited to entertain them as well after evening dinner and cocktails. But the real networking goes on privately afterwards, in small groups or one on one, among the big capitalists themselves or in private meetings with heads of state, finance ministers, and central bank chairmen.

Typically each annual meeting has a theme. This year there are several: the slowing global economy, the fracturing of the international trade system, the growing levels of unsustainable debt everywhere, volatile financial asset markets with asset bubbles beginning to deflate, rising political instability and autocratic drift in both the advanced and emerging economies, accelerating income inequality worldwide—to mention just a short list.   On the eve of this year’s World Economic Forum gathering, some of the most powerful, wealthy, and more prescient capitalists have begun to speak out to their capitalist cousins, raising red flags about what they believe is an approaching crisis.

Ray Dalio, the billionaire who found and manages the world’s biggest hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates, warned that he and other investors had squeezed financial markets to such “levels where it is difficult to see where you can squeeze” further.  He publicly admitted in a Bloomberg News interview that, in the future profits will be low “for a very very long time”. The era of central banks providing free money, low rates, and excess liquidity have run their course, according to Dalio. He added the global economy is mired in dangerously high levels of debt, comparing it to the 1930s.

Paul Tudor Jones, another big finance capitalist, similarly warned of unsustainable debt levels—created by companies binging on cheap credit since 2009—that “could be systemically threatening”. Not just government debt. But especially corporate debt, where levels in the US alone have doubled to more than $9 trillion since 2009 (most of it high risk ‘junk bond’ and nearly as risky ‘BBB’ investment grade corporate bond debt).

Almost as worrisome, one might add, is the now more than $1 trillion leverage loan market debt in the US (i.e. loan equivalent of junk bonds). US household debt is also now approaching $15 trillion. And US national government debt, at $21 trillion, is about to surge over the next decade to $33 trillion due to the Trump 2018 tax cuts. And that’s not counting trillions more in US state and local government debt; or the tens of trillions of new dollarized debt undertaken by emerging market economies since 2010; or the $5 trillion in non-performing bank loans in Europe and Japan; or the even more private sector debt escalation in China.

Corporate debt levels are not alone the problem, however. Debt can rise so long as  financial asset prices and real profits do so—i.e. provide the cash flow available to service the debt. But when profits and asset prices (of stocks, bonds, derivatives, currency exchange rates, commodity futures, etc.) no longer rise, or start to turn down, then debt service (principal & interest) cannot be repaid. Defaults often follow, causing & investor confidence to slide. Real investment, employment, and household incomes thereafter collapse, and the real economy is dragged down in turn. The real decline further exacerbates the collapse of financial asset prices, and precipitates a mutual feedback of financial and real economic collapse.

And financial markets began to deflate in 2018; and it is now becoming increasingly clear that the real side of the global economy is slowing rapidly as well.  In February 2018 the first early warning appeared for financial markets. Stocks plunged in the US, Europe and even China. They temporarily recovered—a ‘dead cat bounce’ as they say before an even deeper decline in the fall. Then oil and commodity futures prices collapsed by 40% or more in late summer-early fall 2018. Stock markets followed again in October-December 2018 by 30-40% in US, China, Europe, and key emerging markets. Key merging market currencies—Argentina, Turkey, Indonesia, Brazil, South Africa—all fell precipitously as well. And housing prices from the UK to Australia to China to New York began to implode as the year ended.  In January 2019 stock markets recovered—i.e. a classic, short term, bull market recovery in what is today’s fundamentally long term global bear market.

Dalio’s and Jones’ worries by unsustainable debt and pending crisis have started to become real, in other words. Becoming real as well is evidence of emerging defaults, a critical phase that typically follows asset markets’ decline and slowing profits. In the US there’s the Sears default, with JCPenney in the wings. And the giant corporation, once the largest in the world, the General Electric Corp., slouching toward default. Its global profits slowing and stock price imploding, GE is now desperately selling off its best assets to raise cash to pay its excess debt. It’s not alone. Scores of energy companies involved in US shale oil and gas production are teetering on the brink.  In Europe, there’s deepening troubles at Deutschebank, and just about all the Italian banks, and UBS in Switzerland, and the Greek banks.  In Japan, there’s trillions of dollars in non-performing bank loans as well, which Japan’s central bank continues to cover up. And then there’s China, with more than $5 trillion in bad loans held by local governments, by shadow bankers, and by its state owned enterprises that the China central bank and government keep bailing out by issuing ‘trusted loans’ (i.e. equivalent of junk bonds in US).

‘Systemic Fragility in the Global Economy’: A Review of Global Stock Markets

Default cracks have begun to appear everywhere in the global economy, in other words, major indicators that the excess debt accumulation and financial bubbles of the past decade cannot be ‘serviced’ (principal-interest paid) and have begun to negatively impact the global economy.  What’s becoming clear is that the next crisis will not emerge from the housing sector with excess debt and price bubbles driven by subprime mortgage loans and related financial derivatives.  What’s more likely is that the next crisis will emerge from debt defaults and collapsing real investment by non-financial corporations.  Moreover, the tipping point is nearer than most in business or media will admit.

Trump’s 2018 tax cuts simply threw a veil over the real condition of corporate performance in the US this past year. The tax cuts provided a windfall, one time subsidy to corporations’ bottom line. It is estimated that US S&P 500 corporations’ profits were boosted 22% by the Trump windfall tax cuts alone. Since S&P 500 profits for 2018 were roughly 27%, it means actual profits were barely 5%.  That’s the real situation going into 2019—a condition that assures US stock markets, junk bond markets, and leveraged loan markets in particular will experience even greater contraction in 2019 than they did in 2018. The bubbles will continue to pop.

In the global economy, it is even more evident that by the end of 2019 it is likely there will be  recession in wide sectors of the real global economy amidst further asset markets’ price declines. In Europe, the growth engine of Germany is showing sure signs of slowing. Manufacturing and industrial production in the closing months of 2018 fell by 1.9%. After a GDP decline in the third quarter 2018, another fourth quarter 2018 German contraction will mean a technical recession. Equal to at least a third of all the Eurozone economy, as goes Germany goes Europe. France and Italy manufacturing are also contracting. Nearly having stagnated at 0.2% in the third quarter, the Europe economy in general may have slipped into recession already. And all that before the negative effects of a UK Brexit or an Italian banks’ implosion or deepening protests in France are further felt.

In emerging market economies, the steady rise of the US dollar in 2018 (driven by rising US central bank interest rates) devastated emerging market economies across the board. Rising dollar values translated into corresponding emerging market currency collapse. That triggered capital flight out of these economies, and their falling stock and bond markets in turn. To stem the outflow, their central banks raised interest rates, which precipitated deep recession in the real economy, while their collapsing currencies generated higher import prices and general inflation in their economies as well. That was the story from Argentina to Brazil to Turkey to South Africa and even to Asia in places.

The US halting of interest rate hikes in 2019 may relieve pressure on emerging market economies somewhat in 2019. But that easing will be more than offset by China’s 2019 economic slowdown now underway. In the second half of 2018 investment, consumer spending, and manufacturing all slowed markedly in China.  Officially at 6.6% for 2018, according to China statistics, China’s real economy is no doubt growing less than 6% due to the methods used to estimate growth in China. Its manufacturing began to contract in late 2018, and with it a significant slowdown in private investment and even consumer spending on autos and other durable goods.  China’s slowing will mean less demand for emerging market economies’ products and commodities, including oil and industrial metals. A respite for emerging market economies from the US dollar rising will thus be offset by China slowing.

When both financial asset markets and the real economy are together slowing it is a particularly strong ‘red flag’ warning for the economic road ahead.  And more contractions in stocks and other financial assets, together with slowing of manufacturing, housing, and GDP in Europe, US, and Japan in 2019, are likely which means trouble ahead in 2019.

Along with all the data increasingly pointing to financial asset deflation gaining a longer term foothold—and with real economy indicators like manufacturing, housing, GDP, exports as well now flashing red—there is also a growing list of political hotspots and potential ‘tail risks’ emerging in the global economy. Some of the ‘black swans’ are identifiable; some yet to be.

In the US, the government shutdown and the prospect of policy deadlock between the parties for two more years could qualify as a source of further economic disruption. In Europe, there are several ‘tail risks’: the Brexit situation coming to a head in April, the challenge to the Eurozone by the new Italian populist government, the chronic and deep street protests continuing in France, and the general rightward social and political drift throughout eastern Europe. In Latin America there’s the extremely repressive policies of Bolsonaro in Brazil and Macri in Argentina, which could end in mass public uprisings at some point.  In Asia, there’s corruption and scandals in Malaysia and India. And then there’s the US-trade war with China, which some factions in the US are trying to leverage to launch a new Cold War. Not least, there’s the potential collapse of negotiations between the US and North Korea that could lead to renewed threats of military conflict.  All these ‘political instabilities’ , given their number and scope, if left unresolved, or allowed to worsen, will have a further negative effect on business and consumer confidence—now already slowing rapidly—and in turn investment and therefore economic growth.

Ray Dalio’s and Tudor Jones’ warnings on the eve of Davos have been echoed by a growing list of capitalist notables and their government servants and echoes. IMF chairperson, Christine Lagarde, has been repeatedly declaring publicly that global trade and the economy are slowing.  Reflecting Europe in particular, where exports are even more critical to the economy, she has especially been warning about a potential severe US-China trade war disrupting the global trading system—and global economy in turn. The IMF has been issuing repeated downward adjustments of its global economic forecasts. So too has the World Bank. As have a growing number of big bank research departments, from Nomura Bank in Japan to UBS bank in Europe. Former US central bank chairs, Janet Yellen and Ben Bernanke, have also jumped in and have been raising red flags about the course of the US and global economies. Former Fed chair, Greenspan, has even declared the US is already on a recession path from which it can’t now extricate itself.

Given all the emerging corroborating data, the red flags and warnings about the current state of the global economy, and the growing global political uncertainties, the Dalios, the Jones, and others among the Davos crowd are especially worried this year.  On the eve of the Forum’s first day on January 23, 2019, a leading discussion topic among the cocktail parties is the buzz about the just leaked private newsletter from billionaire Seth Klarman, who heads one of the world’s biggest funds, the Baupost Group.  In his newsletter leaked to the New York Times, and widely circulated among early Davos crowd attendees, Klarman reportedly chides his readers-investors about not paying more attention to the social and political instabilities growing worldwide, about Trump’s direction which is “quite dangerous”, and the US in effect retreating from global leadership, leaving a dangerous vacuum behind. Investors have also become too complacent about global debt and risk levels now rising dangerously, he argues. It could all very well lead to a financial panic, he adds. The US in particular is at an ‘inflection point’. He ominously concludes, “By the time such a crisis hits, it will likely be too late to get our house in order”.

The recent statements by Dalio, Tudor Jones, Klarman, and the others reminds one of the last crisis and crash of 2008. When Charlie Prince, CEO of Citigroup, the biggest bank at the time, was asked after the crisis why he didn’t see it coming and do something to avoid the toxic mortgage-derivatives bomb and protect his investors and customers, Prince replied he did see it coming but could do nothing to stop it. His investors and customers demanded his bank continue—like the other banks were—investing in subprime mortgages, lending to shadow banks, selling risky derivatives and thereby continuing to make money for them, just as the other banks were doing. Charlie’s response why he did nothing to stop it or prepare was, ‘when you come to the dance, you have to dance’.

No doubt the Davos crowd will be partying and dancing over the next several days in their securely gated, posh Switzerland retreat. After all, the last ten years has increased their capital incomes by literally tens of trillions of dollars. And capitalists are driven by a mindless herd mentality once they’ve made money. They believe they can continue doing so forever. They believe the money music will never stop. One can only wonder, if they’ll be dancing later this year to the same song as Charlie’s in 2008.

Dr. Rasmus is author of the book, ‘Central Bankers at the End of Their Ropes: Monetary Policy and the Coming Depression’, Clarity Press, August 2017, and the forthcoming ‘The Scourge of Neoliberalism: US Policy from Reagan to Trump’, 2019. Jack hosts the Alternative Visions radio show on the Progressive Radio Network. 

GLOBAL ECONOMY TEETERS ON THE BRINK OF A RECESSION THAT WILL TRANSFORM GEO-POLITICS 

https://www.globalresearch.ca/global-eco...cs/5663830

As we approach 2019 the global economy teeters on the brink of yet another recession which will plunge geo-political relations into a period of great upheaval and rapid change. In 2019 global stock markets will continue to face unprecedented volatility and gigantic losses as the Ponzi scheme pumped up by the cartel of central banks comes crashing down. 

The central bank cartel of the U.S. Federal Reserve, European Central Bank, Bank of Japan, and Bank of England together with the Bank of China have flooded their national economies with astronomical sums of money since 2008 in an attempt to stave off collapse of the global financial system. Their money printing experiment has driven global debt from $177 trillion to over $277 trillion today while interest rates have been artificially suppressed enabling a wealth transfer to the 1% of historic proportions. This massive expansion of central bank balance sheets is illustrated below.

During this period global stock markets surged to new historic heights pumped up as they were by the financial heroin provided by the central bank cartel. The chart below clearly illustrates the correlation between the tremendous growth of the S&P 500 and the money printing by the central bank cartel.  Now the chickens are coming home to roost as the global economy slows down and the central bank cartel tries to end their money printing colloquially known as Quantitative Tightening. The withdrawal of this financial heroin is behind the collapse of global stock markets during 2018 that has wiped trillions off the values of a range of inflated assets.

There is a very clear correlation between the shrinking balance sheets of global central banks and the continuing crash of stock markets. The collapse of the stock values of globally systemic banks poses great dangers to the global economy. The central bank cartel policies of quantitative tightening, as they attempt to wean financial markets off their monetary heroin, are taking us towards a period of stagflation, reminiscent of the 1970s, which will usher in a period of depressed economic growth and rising inflation. Geo-political relations, as in the 1970s period of stagflation, will become even more unstable and volatile intensifying many current conflicts and threatening new wars between nations and military blocs.

The next world recession will pose severe challenges for the great powers as they jostle to maintain control over strategic raw materials, trade relationships and economic resources. Meanwhile, the great powers will struggle to cope with the devastating consequences of the collapse of inflated assets from bank failures to the return of mass unemployment. They will all face unprecedented social and political upheaval from their own citizens suffering from the effects of economic collapse.  One thing we can be sure of is that 2019 will be very different to 2018 and the years that have gone before as nations struggle to redefine their political and economic relations with one another.