Financial Crisis

Global Financial Markets Plunged Into Chaos As Italy Overwhelmingly Votes ‘No’

December 4, 2016December 4, 2016 by Michael

Italian voters have embraced the global trend of rejecting the established world order, but the “no” vote on Sunday has plunged global financial markets into a state of utter chaos. The euro has already fallen to a 20 month low, Italian government bonds are poised for a tremendous crash, and futures markets are indicating that both U.S. and European stock markets will be way down when they open on Monday. It is being projected that Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi’s referendum on constitutional reforms will be defeated by about 20 percentage points when all the votes have been counted, and Renzi has already announced that he plans to resign as a result. When new elections are held it looks like comedian Beppe Grillo’s Five-Star movement will come to power, and the European establishment is extremely alarmed at that prospect because Grillo wants to take Italy out of the eurozone. In the long run Italy would be much better off without the euro, but in the short-term the only thing propping up Italy’s failing banking system is support from Europe. Without that support, the 8th largest economy on the entire planet would already be in the midst of an unprecedented financial crisis.

I know that I said a lot in that first paragraph, but it is imperative that people understand how serious this crisis could quickly become.

This “no” vote virtually guarantees a major banking crisis for Italy, and many analysts fear that it could trigger a broader financial crisis all across the rest of the continent as well.

Just look at what has already happened. All of the votes haven’t even been counted yet, and the euro is absolutely plummeting…

The euro dropped 1.3 percent to $1.0505, falling below its 1 1/2-year low of $1.0518 touched late last month, and testing its key support levels where the currency has managed to rebound in the past couple of years.

A break below its 2015 March low of $1.0457 would send the currency to its lowest level since early 2003, opening a way for a test of $1, or parity against the dollar, a scenario which many market players now see as a real possibility.

In early 2014, there were times when one euro was trading for almost $1.40. For a very long time I have been warning that the euro was eventually heading for parity with the U.S. dollar, and now we are almost there.

Meanwhile, Italian government bonds are going to continue to crash following this election result. This is going to make it even more difficult for the Italian government to borrow money, and that will only aggravate their ongoing financial troubles.

But the big problem in Italy is the banks. At this moment there are eight banks in imminent danger of collapsing, and virtually all of the rest of them are in some stage of trouble. The following comes from a Bloomberg article about the crisis that Italian banks are facing right at this moment…

They’re burdened with a mountain of bad loans. Their stocks have cratered. And they have to operate in an economy prone to recession and political upheaval.

Signs have been mounting for months that Italy’s weakest lenders, and in particular Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena SpA, were sliding toward the precipice, threatening to reignite a broader crisis.

And we may get some news regarding the fate of Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena as early as Monday morning if what the Sydney Morning Herald is reporting is correct…

A last-gasp rescue for Monte dei Paschi di Siena, the world’s oldest surviving bank, has been thrown into doubt after reformist prime minister Matteo Renzi decisively lost a referendum on constitutional reform on Sunday.

MPS and advisers JPMorgan and Mediobanca will meet as early as Monday morning to decide whether to pull a plan to go ahead with a €5bn recapitalisation, the FT reports, citing people informed of the plan.

Senior bankers will decide whether to pursue their underwriting commitments or exercise their right to drop the transaction due to adverse market conditions, these people said. In the event the banks drop the capital plan, the Italian state is expected to nationalise the bank, say senior bankers.

If Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena fails, major banks all over Italy (and all over the rest of Europe) could start going down like dominoes.

So what were Italians voting on anyway?

Well, the truth is that the constitutional reforms that were proposed actually sound quite boring…

“The changes involve sharply reducing the size of one of the chambers of Parliament — the Senate — shifting its powers to the executive, and eliminating the Senate’s power to bring down government coalitions.

“The amendments also shift some powers now held by the regions to the central government, thereby reducing frequent and lengthy court battles between Rome and the regional governments.”

The reason why this vote was ultimately so important is because it became a referendum on Renzi’s administration. The fact that he announced in advance that he would resign if it did not get approved gave a tremendous amount of fuel to the opposition.

So now Beppe Grillo’s Five-Star Movement stands poised to come to power, and that could be very bad news for those that are hoping to hold the common currency together.

The following is how NPR recently summarized the main goals of the Five-Star Movement…

“It calls for a government-guaranteed, universal income, abolishing Italy’s fiscal commitments to the European Union and a referendum on Italy’s membership in the Euro — a prospect that could unravel the entire single currency Eurozone.”

If Italy chooses to leave the euro, it will probably mean the end of the common currency, and the continued existence of the entire European Union would be called into question.

So this vote on Sunday was huge. The Brexit had already done a tremendous amount of damage to the long-term prospects for the European Union, and now the crisis in Italy is sending political and financial shockwaves throughout the entire continent.

Over the next few weeks, keep a close eye on the euro and on Italian government bonds.

If they both continue to crash, that will be a sign that a major European financial crisis is now upon us.

And what happens in Europe definitely does not stay in Europe.

If Europe goes down, we are going to go down too.

At this point we still have almost a month left in 2016, but 2017 is already shaping up to be a very troubling year. As always, let us hope for the best, but let us also keep preparing for the worst.

Deutsche Bank Collapse: The Most Important Bank In Europe Is Facing A Major ‘Liquidity Event’

September 30, 2016September 30, 2016 by Michael

The largest and most important bank in the largest and most important economy in Europe is imploding right in front of our eyes. Deutsche Bank is the 11th biggest bank on the entire planet, and due to the enormous exposure to derivatives that it has, it has been called “the world’s most dangerous bank“. Over the past year, I have repeatedly warned that Deutsche Bank is heading for disaster and is a likely candidate to be “the next Lehman Brothers”. If you would like to review, you can do so here, here and here. On September 16th, the Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. Department of Justice wanted 14 billion dollars from Deutsche Bank to settle a case related to the mis-handling of mortgage-backed securities during the last financial crisis. As a result of that announcement, confidence in the bank has been greatly shaken, the stock price has fallen to record lows, and analysts are warning that Deutsche Bank may be facing a “liquidity event” unlike anything that we have seen since the collapse of Lehman Brothers back in 2008.

At one point on Friday, Deutsche Bank stock fell below the 10 euro mark for the first time ever before bouncing back a bit. A completely unverified rumor that was spreading on Twitter that claimed that Deutsche Bank would settle with the Department of Justice for only 5.4 billion dollars was the reason for the bounce.

But the size of the fine is not really the issue now. Shares of Deutsche Bank have fallen by more than half so far in 2016, and this latest episode seems to have been the final straw for the deeply troubled financial institution. Old sources of liquidity are being cut off, and nobody wants to be the idiot that offers Deutsche Bank a new source of liquidity at this point.

As a result, Deutsche Bank is potentially facing a “liquidity event” on a scale that we have not seen since the financial crisis of 2008. The following comes from Zero Hedge…

It is not solvency, or the lack of capital – a vague, synthetic, and usually quite arbitrary concept, determined by regulators – that kills a bank; it is – as Dick Fuld will tell anyone who bothers to listen – the loss of (access to) liquidity: cold, hard, fungible (something Jon Corzine knew all too well when he commingled and was caught) cash, that pushes a bank into its grave, usually quite rapidly: recall that it took Lehman just a few days for its stock to plunge from the high double digits to zero.

It is also liquidity, or rather concerns about it, that sent Deutsche Bank stock crashing to new all time lows earlier today: after all, the investing world already knew for nearly two weeks that its capitalization is insufficient. As we reported earlier this week, it was a report by Citigroup, among many other, that found how badly undercapitalized the German lender is, noting that DB’s “leverage ratio, at 3.4%, looks even worse relative to the 4.5% company target by 2018” and calculated that while he only models €2.9bn in litigation charges over 2H16-2017 – far less than the $14 billion settlement figure proposed by the DOJ – and includes a successful disposal of a 70% stake in Postbank at end-2017 for 0.4x book he still only reaches a CET 1 ratio of 11.6% by end-2018, meaning the bank would have a Tier 1 capital €3bn shortfall to the company target of 12.5%, and a leverage ratio of 3.9%, resulting in an €8bn shortfall to the target of 4.5%.

The more the stock price drops, the faster other financial institutions, investors and regular banking clients are going to want to pull their money out of Deutsche Bank. And every time there is news about people pulling money out of the bank, that is just going to drive the stock price even lower.

In other words, Deutsche Bank may be entering a death spiral that may be impossible to stop without a government bailout, and the German government has already stated that there will be no bailout for Deutsche Bank.

Banking customers have a total of approximately 566 billion euros deposited with the bank, and even if a small fraction of those clients start demanding their money back it is going to cause a major, major crunch.

Deutsche Bank CEO John Cryan attempted to calm nerves on Friday by releasing a memo to employees that blamed “speculators” for the decline in the stock price…

Instead of doing what many have correctly suggested he should be doing, namely focusing on ways to raise more capital for the undercapitalized Deutsche Bank in order to stem the slow (at first) liquidity leak, first thing this morning CEO John Cryan issued another morale-boosting note to employees of Deustche Bank who have been watching their stock price crash to another record low, dipping under €10 in early trading for the first time ever. In the memo the embattled CEO worryingly did what Dick Fuld and other chief executives did when they felt the situation slipping out of control, namely blaming evil “rumor-spreading” shorts, saying “our bank has become subject to speculation. Ongoing rumours are causing significant swings in our stock price. … Trust is the foundation of banking. Some forces in the markets are currently trying to damage this trust.”

Just as important, Cryan confirms the Bloomberg report that “a few of our hedge fund clients have reduced some activities with us. That is causing unjustified concerns.” As we explained last night, the concerns are very much justified if they spread to the biggest risk-factor for the German bank: its depositors, which collectively hold over €550 billion in liquidity-providing instruments.

If you would like to ready the full memo, you can do so right here.

One of the reasons why Deutsche Bank is considered to be so systemically “dangerous” is because it has 42 trillion euros worth of exposure to derivatives. That is an amount of money that is 14 times larger than the GDP of the entire nation of Germany.

Some firms that were derivatives clients of the bank have already gotten spooked and have moved their business to other institutions. It was this report from Bloomberg that really helped drive down the stock price of Deutsche Bank earlier this week…

The funds, a small subset of the more than 800 clients in the bank’s hedge fund business, have shifted part of their listed derivatives holdings to other firms this week, according to an internal bank document seen by Bloomberg News. Among them are Izzy Englander’s $34 billion Millennium Partners, Chris Rokos’s $4 billion Rokos Capital Management, and the $14 billion Capula Investment Management, said a person with knowledge of the situation who declined to be identified talking about confidential client matters.

“The issue here is now one of confidence,” said Chris Wheeler, a financial analyst with Atlantic Equities LLP in London.

So what comes next?

Monday is a banking holiday for Germany, so we may not see anything major happen until Tuesday.

An announcement of a major reduction in the Department of Justice fine may buy Deutsche Bank some time, but any reprieve would likely only be temporary.

What appears to be more likely is the scenario that Jeffrey Gundlach is suggesting…

But Jeffrey Gundlach, chief executive of DoubleLine Capital, said investors betting that Berlin would not rescue Deutsche could find themselves nursing big losses.

‘The market is going to push down Deutsche Bank until there is some recognition of support. They will get assistance, if need be,’ said Gundlach, who oversees more than $100 billion at Los Angeles-based DoubleLine.

It will be very interesting to see how desperate things become before the German government finally gives in to the pressure.

The complete and total collapse of Deutsche Bank would be an event many times more significant for the global financial system than the collapse of Lehman Brothers was. Global leaders simply cannot afford for such a thing to happen, but without serious intervention it appears that is precisely where we are heading.

Personally, I don’t know exactly what will happen next, but it will be fascinating to watch.

The Bank For International Settlements Warns That A Major Debt Meltdown In China Is Imminent

September 19, 2016September 19, 2016 by Michael

The pinnacle of the global financial system is warning that conditions are right for a “full-blown banking crisis” in China. Since the last financial crisis, there has been a credit boom in China that is really unprecedented in world history. At this point the total value of all outstanding loans in China has hit a grand total of more than 28 trillion dollars. That is essentially equivalent to the commercial banking systems of the United States and Japan combined. While it is true that government debt is under control in China, corporate debt is now 171 percent of GDP, and it is only a matter of time before that debt bubble horribly bursts. The situation in China has already grown so dire that the Bank for International Settlements is sounding the alarm…

A key gauge of credit vulnerability is now three times over the danger threshold and has continued to deteriorate, despite pledges by Chinese premier Li Keqiang to wean the economy off debt-driven growth before it is too late.

The Bank for International Settlements warned in its quarterly report that China’s “credit to GDP gap” has reached 30.1, the highest to date and in a different league altogether from any other major country tracked by the institution. It is also significantly higher than the scores in East Asia’s speculative boom on 1997 or in the US subprime bubble before the Lehman crisis.

Studies of earlier banking crises around the world over the last sixty years suggest that any score above ten requires careful monitoring.

If you are not familiar with the Bank for International Settlements, just think of it as the capstone of the worldwide financial pyramid. It wields enormous global power, and yet it is accountable to nobody. The following is a summary of how the Bank for International Settlements works that comes from one of my previous articles entitled “Who Controls The Money? An Unelected, Unaccountable Central Bank Of The World Secretly Does“…

An immensely powerful international organization that most people have never even heard of secretly controls the money supply of the entire globe. It is called the Bank for International Settlements, and it is the central bank of central banks. It is located in Basel, Switzerland, but it also has branches in Hong Kong and Mexico City. It is essentially an unelected, unaccountable central bank of the world that has complete immunity from taxation and from national laws. Even Wikipedia admits that “it is not accountable to any single national government.” The Bank for International Settlements was used to launder money for the Nazis during World War II, but these days the main purpose of the BIS is to guide and direct the centrally-planned global financial system. Today, 58 global central banks belong to the BIS, and it has far more power over how the U.S. economy (or any other economy for that matter) will perform over the course of the next year than any politician does. Every two months, the central bankers of the world gather in Basel for another “Global Economy Meeting”. During those meetings, decisions are made which affect every man, woman and child on the planet, and yet none of us have any say in what goes on. The Bank for International Settlements is an organization that was founded by the global elite and it operates for the benefit of the global elite, and it is intended to be one of the key cornerstones of the emerging one world economic system.

Normally the Bank for International Settlements is not prone to making extremely bold pronouncements, and so this warning about China seems a bit out of character.

Is something going on behind the scenes that we don’t know about?

Without a doubt, the global financial system is shakier and more vulnerable than most people would dare to imagine. Global central banks have been on the greatest money creation spree in recorded history, and interest rates have been pushed to ridiculously low levels.

If you can believe it, approximately 10 trillion dollars worth of bonds are trading at negative interest rates right now. This is completely and utterly irrational, and when this giant bond bubble finally explodes it is going to create a crisis unlike anything the world has ever seen before.

Just recently, Michael Pento of Pento Portfolio Strategies commented on this bubble…

He said the current financial conditions are “the most dangerous markets i have ever witnessed in my entire life – and i’ve been investing for over 25 years… The membrane has been stretched so wide and so tight that its about to burst.”

Pento believes that once the bond crash happens, it will trigger a cataclysmic wave of crashes throughout the entire global financial system…

Mr Pento has now warned that when policymakers signal they are set to stop buying, which will stop bond prices rising, there is going to be a devastating crash – not just in bond markets but across all investment assets.

He said: “When the bond market breaks, when that bubble bursts, it will wipe out every asset, everything will collapse together… I mean diamonds, sports cars, mutual funds, municipal bonds, fixed income, reits, collateralised loan obligations, stocks, bonds – even commodities – will collapse in tandem along with the bond bubble burst.”

Many had been anticipating that we would have already seen a major financial crash in 2016, but so far things have been pretty stable, and this has lulled many into a false sense of complacency.

But it is important to remember that we have seen corporate earnings fall for five quarters in a row, and it is expected to be six when the final numbers for the third quarter come in.

Never before in history have we had a stretch like this without major economic and financial consequences. The following comes from a recent Fortune article which referred to an earlier piece authored by Jim Bianco…

None of this, however, is apparent from how stock market indexes have been moving lately, which unlike the charts above have been going up and to the right. “Since 1947, every time profits fell this much, or for this long, a recession was either underway or about to begin,” writes Bianco. “The only exception was the middle of 1986 to early 1987.”

If you remember, there was a pretty important event that happened in 1987: A massive stock market crash that sapped close to 30% of the S&P 500’s value in just five days.

It is only a matter of time before this earnings recession takes a major bite out of Wall Street.

Stock prices can stay at irrationally high levels for quite a while, but history has shown that every bubble bursts eventually.

And when this bubble bursts, it is going to make 2008 look like a walk in the park.

Global Recession? The Canadian Economy Shrinks At The Fastest Pace Since The Last Financial Crisis

August 31, 2016August 31, 2016 by Michael

Things have not been this bad for the Canadian economy since the last global recession. During the second quarter of 2016, Canada’s GDP contracted at a 1.6 percent annualized rate. That was the worst number in seven years, and it was even worse than most analysts were projecting. This comes at a time when bad news is pouring in from all corners of the global economy. While things in the United States are still relatively stable for the moment, the same cannot be said for much of the rest of the planet. Canada in particular has been hit very hard by the collapse in oil prices, and the massive wildfire in northern Alberta back in May certainly did not help things. The following comes from the BBC…

The recent drop in GDP was larger than analysts had projected, but not far off the predicted 1.5% loss.

“[The figure] could have been worse, given the hit from the wildfire, and clearly confirms the disappointing downward trend in exports over the last few months,” said Sal Guatieri, senior economist at BMO Capital Markets.

In May, wildfires devastated the parts of northern Alberta where much of Canada’s oil and natural gas is produced.

For many years, high oil prices and booming exports enabled the Canadian economy to significantly outperform the U.S. economy. But now conditions have changed dramatically, and all of the economic bubbles up in Canada are starting to burst. This includes the housing bubble, as we have seen home sales in the hottest markets such as Vancouver drop through the floor late in the summer. In fact, it is being reported that home sales during the first two weeks of August in British Columbia were down a whopping 51 percent on a year over year basis.

Do you remember the housing bubble in the U.S. that helped fuel the last financial crisis? Well, a very similar bubble is now bursting up in Canada, and some investors have positioned themselves to make a tremendous amount of money when the whole thing comes violently crashing down. The following comes from Wolf Richter…

This summer, famed short seller Marc Cohodes came out of retirement (he now raises chickens on a farm in Sonoma County, CA, and sells the eggs for a fortune in San Francisco) and jumped into ring with a number of interviews on TV and in the print media, and this too rattled some nerves – largely because it hit home.

“I think it’s a money laundering-induced market,” he said as we reported at the time. “Where the local politicians, or the BC Liberals, are kept or in cahoots with the real estate brokers, developers, lawyers, that angle. And they have sought Chinese money to keep the market propped up and it won’t last,” he said. “China has capital controls on, and Vancouver has become the money laundering mecca of either the world or North America, and something is going to change and change drastically.”

If the price of oil does not rebound in a major way, the Canadian economy is going to continue to deeply struggle.

Meanwhile, one of the biggest economies in Africa is also shrinking. Nigeria is yet another oil-dependent economy that has fallen on really hard times, and during the latest quarter their GDP shrunk by 2.06 percent on an annualized basis…

Nigeria has slipped into recession, with the latest growth figures showing the economy contracted 2.06% between April and June.

The country has now seen two consecutive quarters of declining growth, the usual definition of recession.

Its vital oil industry has been hit by weaker global prices, according to the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics (NBS).

There are so many signs that indicate that the global economy has entered a new major downturn. Yes, the U.S. is doing better than almost everyone else for the moment, but this will not last indefinitely. Our planet is more interconnected than ever before, and just as we saw in 2008, big trouble on one side of the globe quickly affects the other side.

Today we also learned that the 7th largest container shipping company in the entire world has completely imploded. Total global trade has been declining for quite some time now, and it was inevitable that this sort of thing would start happening…

After years of relentless decline in the Baltic Dry index…

… today the largest casualty finally emerged on Wednesday when South Korea’s Hanjin Shipping, the country’s largest shipping firm and the world’s seventh-biggest container carrier, filed for court receivership after losing the support of its banks, leaving its assets frozen as ports from China to Spain denied access to its vessels.

Over in Europe, an emerging banking crisis continues to simmer just under the surface.

Most Americans are completely oblivious to the fact that major global financial problems could be just around the corner, but CNBC is reporting that banks over in Europe are “preparing for an economic nuclear winter situation”…

European banks, in particular, have had a very tough six months as the shock and volatility around Brexit sent banking stocks south. Major European banks like Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse saw their shares in free-fall after the referendum’s results were announced. In the U.K., RBS was the worst-hit, with its shares plunging by more than 30 percent since June 24.

The current uncertainty over when the U.K. will start the process of quitting the EU has banks on tenterhooks. But a source told CNBC that banks are “preparing for an economic nuclear winter situation.”

Speaking on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitive nature of the topic, a source from a major investment bank told CNBC that financial services firms have put together a strategy in place that takes into account the worst-case scenario that could happen by the end of this year.

So precisely what would an “economic nuclear winter” look like?

I don’t know, but it certainly does not sound good.

We should be thankful that things have been as calm and stable as they have been so far in 2016, but nobody should be fooled into thinking that our problems have been fixed.

The truth is that the global debt bubble is at an all-time high, the banks are being more reckless and are more vulnerable than ever before, and troubling economic numbers continue to pour in from all over the planet.

The stage is certainly set for the next major global economic crisis, and it isn’t going to take much to push the world over the edge.

European Banks Have Their Worst Two Day Stretch EVER As The Global Financial Crisis Intensifies

June 27, 2016June 27, 2016 by Michael

Over the last two trading days, European banks have lost 23 percent of their value. Let that number sink it for a bit. In just a two day stretch, nearly a quarter of the value of all European banks has been wiped out. I warned you that the Brexit vote “could change everything“, and that is precisely what has happened. Meanwhile, the Dow was down another 260 points on Monday as U.S. markets continue to be shaken as well. Overall, approximately three trillion dollars of global stock market wealth has been lost over the last two trading days. That is an all-time record, and any doubt that we have entered a new global financial crisis has now been completely eliminated.

But of course the biggest news on Monday was what happened to European banks. The Brexit vote has caused financial carnage for those institutions unlike anything that we have ever seen before. Just check out this chart from Zero Hedge…

I knew that things would be bad if the UK voted to leave the European Union, but I didn’t know that they would be this bad.

Prior to all of this, a whole bunch of “too big to fail” banks all over Europe were already in the process of imploding, and now this chaotic financial environment may push several of them into full-blown collapse mode simultaneously. Just consider the following commentary from Wolf Richter…

Healthy big banks would get over Brexit and the political turmoil it is spawning, particularly non-UK banks. But there are no healthy big banks in Europe. And non-UK banks are crashing just as hard, and some harder. This is about a banking crisis morphing into a financial crisis.

These bank stocks got crushed on Friday. And they got crushed again today. Italian banks have been reduced to penny stocks. Spanish banks are getting closer. Commerzbank, Germany’s second largest bank, and still partially owned by the German government as a consequence of the last bailout, is well on the way.

One institution that I have been warning about for months is German banking giant Deutsche Bank. On Monday, their stock fell another 5.77 percent to a fresh all-time closing low of 13.87. I have been convinced that Deutsche Bank is going to zero for a long time, but these days it seems in quite a hurry to get there.

Of course Deutsche Bank is far from alone. The following are other “too big to fail” European banks that have lost at least one-fifth of their value over the past two trading days…

-Barclays
-Royal Bank of Scotland
-Lloyds Banking Group
-Credit Suisse
-BNP Paribas
-Societe Generale
-UniCredit
-Intesa SanPaolo
-Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena
-Banco Santander
-CaixaBank

This is what a full-blown financial crisis looks like, and U.S. banks have been getting hit very hard too…

The Brexit contagion is spreading as USD liquidity and counterparty risk in the interconnected global financial system has reached US banks with Goldman at 3 year lows and BofA and Citi plunging over 12%. This happens just two days after the Fed released its latest stress test results finding that none of the 33 banks tested would need additional capital in case of a “severe” financial crisis. That conclusion may be tested soon.

Meanwhile, the British pound continues to get absolutely pummeled. As I write this, the GBP/USD is down to 1.32, and some are now warning that the British pound may hit parity with the U.S. dollar by the end of the year.

One of the reasons why I expect the British pound to continue to tumble is because the global elite have to show the British people that they made the wrong decision, and they need to scare off any other countries that would consider holding similar votes.

So it was no surprise that the elite had two of their major credit rating agencies downgrade the UK on Monday…

Two major rating agencies downgraded the United Kingdom’s credit rating on Monday.

S&P Global Ratings lowered the UK to AA from AAA, with a “negative” outlook. And, Fitch cut its rating to AA from AA+, with a negative outlook as well.

And as I mentioned yesterday, Bank of America and Goldman Sachs have already projected that the UK economy is heading into recession.

As much economic and financial pain as possible will be inflicted upon the British people, and meanwhile they will be bombarded by mainstream news stories telling them that they made a stupid decision.

Hopefully the British people will stand strong and will not give in to the pressure.

But of course it isn’t just the British people that will be feeling the pain. The Brexit vote has sent shockwaves all over the planet, and global investors are losing tremendous amounts of money. For instance, here in the United States approximately 1.3 trillion dollars of stock market wealth has been wiped out so far…

Brexit isn’t just a European problem after all. The United Kingdom’s decision to quit the European Union is costing U.S. investors a pretty penny.

U.S.-based companies in the broad Russell 3000, including online advertising company Alphabet (GOOGL), software maker Microsoft (MSFT) and global bank JPMorgan Chase (JPM), have suffered a collective loss of $1.3 trillion since Friday’s shocker from the United Kingdom, according to a USA TODAY analysis of data from S&P Global Market Intelligence.

Hopefully tomorrow will be better. It is very rare for global financial markets to crash for three days in a row, but it could happen. More likely, however, is that we will see some kind of temporary bounce as long as some really negative event doesn’t hit the news.

But let there be no doubt about what has just happened. The collapse of Lehman Brothers was the “trigger event” that really accelerated the crisis of 2008, and now it appears as though the Brexit vote will be the “trigger event” that greatly accelerates the crisis of 2016.

Global investors had already lost trillions over the past 12 months, and a full-blown financial implosion was going to happen no matter how the vote turned out, but thanks to British voters the fun and games have arrived early.

Unfortunately, only a very small fraction of the population understands just how bad things are going to get in the months ahead…

We Just Witnessed The Greatest One Day Global Stock Market Loss In World History

June 26, 2016June 26, 2016 by Michael

More stock market wealth was lost on Friday than on any other day in world history. As you will see below, global investors lost two trillion dollars on the day following the Brexit vote. And remember, this is on top of the trillions that global investors have already lost over the past 12 months. It is important to understand that the Brexit vote was not the beginning of a new crisis – it has simply accelerated a global financial crisis that started last year and that was already in the process of unfolding. As I noted on Friday, we have been waiting for “the next Lehman Brothers moment” that would really unleash fear and panic globally, and now we have it. The next six months should be absolutely fascinating to watch.

According to CNBC, the total amount of money lost on global stock markets on Friday surpassed anything that we had ever seen before, and that includes the darkest days of the financial crisis of 2008…

Worldwide markets hemorrhaged more than $2 trillion in paper wealth on Friday, according to data from S&P Global, the worst on record. For context, that figure eclipsed the whipsaw trading sessions of the 2008 financial crisis, according to S&P analyst Howard Silverblatt.

The prior one day sell-off record was $1.9 trillion back in September of 2008, Silverblatt noted. According to S&P’s Broad Market Index, combined market capitalization is currently worth nearly $42 trillion.

And of course many of the wealthiest individuals on the planet got absolutely hammered. According to Bloomberg, the 400 richest people in the world lost a total of $127.4 billion dollars on Friday…

The world’s 400 richest people lost $127.4 billion Friday as global equity markets reeled from the news that British voters elected to leave the European Union. The billionaires lost 3.2 percent of their total net worth, bringing the combined sum to $3.9 trillion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The biggest decline belonged to Europe’s richest person, Amancio Ortega, who lost more than $6 billion, while nine others dropped more than $1 billion, including Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Gerald Cavendish Grosvenor, the wealthiest person in the U.K.

Could you imagine losing a billion dollars on a single day?

I am sure that Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos are not shivering in their boots quite yet, but what if the markets keep on bleeding like they did in 2008?

On the other hand, globalist magnate George Soros made a ton of money on Friday because he had positioned himself for a Brexit ahead of time. The following comes from the London Independent…

The billionaire who predicted Brexit would bring about “Black Friday” and a crisis for the finances of ordinary people appears to have profited hugely from the UK’s surprise exit from the EU.

George Soros is widely known as the man who “broke” the Bank of England in 1992, when he bet against the pound and made a reported £1.5bn.

Although the exact amount Mr Soros has gained after Brexit is not known, public filings show he doubled his bets earlier this year that stocks would fall.

So what will happen on Monday when the markets reopen?

Personally, I don’t think that it will be as bad as Friday.

But I could be wrong.

In early trading, Dow futures, S&P 500 futures and Nasdaq futures are all down…

Dow futures fell by 90 points in early trading, while S&P 500 futures slipped 11 points, and NASDAQ futures dipped 24 points. Gold futures rose, in a reflection of sustained demand for safe-haven assets.

And at this moment, the British pound is getting absolutely crushed. It is down to 1.33, and I would expect to see it fall a lot lower in the weeks and months to come.

Why?

Well, the truth is that now that the British people have voted to leave the EU, the globalists have to make it as painful as possible on them in order to send a warning to other nations that may consider leaving. I think that a recent article by W. Ben Hunt explained this very well…

What’s next? From a game theory perspective, the EU and ECB need to crush the UK. It’s like the Greek debt negotiations … it was never about Greece, it was always about sending a signal that dissent and departure will not be tolerated to the countries that matter to the survival of the Eurozone (France, Italy, maybe Spain). Now they (and by “they” I mean the status quo politicians throughout the EU, not just Germany) are going to send that same signal to the same countries by hurting the UK any way they can, creating a Narrative that it’s economic death to leave the EU, much less the Eurozone. It’s not spite. It’s purely rational. It’s the smart move.

The elite need a crisis now in order to show everyone that globalism is the answer and not the problem. If the British people were allowed to thrive once they walked away, that would only encourage more countries to go down the exact same path. This is something that the elite are determined to avoid.

The Brexit vote has barely sunk in, and Bank of America and Goldman Sachs are already projecting a recession for the United Kingdom. Sadly, I believe that this is what we will see happen.

But it won’t just be the British that suffer.

On Friday, European banking stocks had their worst day ever. In particular, Deutsche Bank fell an astounding 17.49 percent to an all-time record closing low of 14.72. I have warned repeatedly about the implosion of Deutsche Bank, and this crisis could be the catalyst for it.

In addition, I have repeatedly warned about the slow-motion meltdown that is happening in Japan. On Friday, Japanese stocks lost 1286 points, and the yen surged in the exact opposite direction that the government is trying to send it…

Tokyo, we have a problem.

Last week, market tumult stemming from the U.K.’s vote to quit the European Union drove the British pound to its weakest levels in three decades.

Yet it also sent investors flocking to traditional safe haven assets like the U.S. dollar, gold and the yen, the latter surging against every major currency as the results of Brexit became clear: Dollar/yen spiked from a Thursday high near 107 to a two-year low near 99.

Just like in 2008, there will be days when global markets will be green. When that happens, it will not mean that the crisis is over.

If you follow my work closely, then you know that it is imperative to look at the bigger picture. Over the past 12 months, there have been some very nice market rallies around the world, but investors have still lost trillions of dollars overall.

What happens on any one particular day is not the story. Rather, the key is to focus on the long-term trends.

And without a doubt, this Brexit vote could be “the tipping point” that greatly accelerates our ongoing woes…

“Brexit is the biggest global monetary shock since 2008,” said David Beckworth, a scholar at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, in a blog post on Friday. “This could be the tipping point that turns the existing global slowdown of 2016 into a global recession.”

We were already dealing with a new global economic crisis without the Brexit vote. But what this does is it introduces an element of panic and fear that had been missing up until this current time.

And markets do not like panic and fear very much. In general, markets tend to go up when things are calm and predictable, and they tend to go down when chaos reigns.

Unfortunately, I believe that we are going to see quite a bit more chaos for the rest of 2016, and the trillions that were lost on Friday may turn out to be just the tip of the iceberg.

The Stock Market Crash Of 2016: Stocks Have Already Crashed In 6 Of The World’s 8 Largest Economies

June 16, 2016June 16, 2016 by Michael

Over the past 12 months, stock market investors around the planet have lost trillions of dollars. Since this time last June, stocks have crashed in 6 of the world’s 8 largest economies, and stocks in the other two are down as well. The charts that you are about to see are absolutely stunning, and they are clear evidence that a new global financial crisis has already begun. Of course it is true that we are still in the early chapters of this new crisis and that there is much, much more damage to be done, but let us not minimize the carnage that we have already witnessed.

In general, there have been three major waves of financial panic over the past 12 months. Late last August we saw the biggest financial shaking since the financial crisis of 2008, then in January and February there was an even bigger shaking, and now a third “wave” has begun in June. Not all areas around the globe have been affected equally by each wave, but without a doubt this new financial crisis is a global phenomenon.

The charts that I am about to show you come from Trading Economics. It is an absolutely indispensable website that is packed full of useful data, and I encourage everyone to check it out.

Let’s talk about China first. The Chinese economy is the second largest on the entire planet, and since this time last year Chinese stocks are down an astounding 40 percent…

As things have started to unravel in China, the Chinese have been selling off U.S. debt and U.S. stocks like crazy. The following comes from Bloomberg…

For the past year, Chinese selling of Treasuries has vexed investors and served as a gauge of the health of the world’s second-largest economy.

The People’s Bank of China, owner of the world’s biggest foreign-exchange reserves, burnt through 20 percent of its war chest since 2014, dumping about $250 billion of U.S. government debt and using the funds to support the yuan and stem capital outflows.

While China’s sales of Treasuries have slowed, its holdings of U.S. equities are now showing steep declines.

Unfortunately for China, their economy just continues to slow down, and George Soros is so alarmed by this and a potential “Brexit” that he has been selling off stocks and buying enormous amounts of gold in anticipation of an even bigger global downturn.

Japan has the third largest economy in the world, and over the past year Japanese stocks are down a total of 26 percent from the peak…

Personally, I have been extremely alarmed by what has been happening in Japan lately. Japanese stocks were down almost 500 points last night, and overall the Nikkei is down a whopping 1,800 points so far in June.

Of course the Japanese economy as a whole is essentially a basket case at this point. For a detailed analysis of this, please see my previous article entitled “Watch Japan – For All Is Not Well In The Land Of The Rising Sun“.

Germany has the fourth largest economy in the world, and over the past year their stocks have fallen 19 percent from the peak of the market…

The key thing to watch for in Germany are serious troubles at their biggest bank. I wrote a long article about the slow-motion implosion of Deutsche Bank last month, and just this week Deutsche Bank stock hit an all-time low.

The fifth largest economy on the planet belongs to the United Kingdom, and since last June their stocks have fallen about 13 percent…

One week from today, the “Brexit” vote will be held in the UK, and if they vote to leave the EU that could have very serious economic and financial implications for them and for the rest of Europe as well. For an in-depth look at this, please see my previous article entitled “June 23, 2016: The Brexit Vote Could Change EVERYTHING And Plunge Europe Into Financial Chaos“.

France has the sixth largest economy in the world, and over the past year French stocks are down 20 percent from the peak of the market…

The French economy is really struggling these days, and we have not heard much about it in the U.S. media, but there have been tremendous riots in major cities in France in recent weeks.

The seventh largest economy on our planet belongs to India. Even though India is facing some very serious economic problems, their stocks are doing okay for the moment. Even though stocks in India are down over the past 12 months, we have not seen a major financial crisis over there just yet.

But there is definitely a major crisis in the eighth largest economy in the world. Italian stocks are down a staggering 32 percent from the peak of the market. That means approximately a third of all stock market wealth in Italy is already gone…

Earlier this year, I wrote about the horrifying collapse of the Italian banking system that has greatly accelerated since the start of 2016. It looks like virtually all of their big banks will ultimately need to be bailed out, and this threatens to become a far bigger crisis than the crisis in Greece ever was.

And let us not leave off the ninth largest economy in the world. Not too long ago, CNN ran an article entitled “Brazil: Economic collapse worse than feared“. So not only are they admitting that the ninth largest economy on the globe is collapsing, they are also admitting that it is even worse than what the experts had anticipated.

So did I leave anyone off the list?

Ah yes, I haven’t even addressed what has been going on in the United States yet.

U.S. stocks did crash last August, but then they recovered.

Then they crashed again in January, but then they recovered again.

Now U.S. stocks have been taking another tumble here in June, but we are being assured that there is nothing to worry about.

Meanwhile, the underlying numbers for the U.S. economy just continue to get worse and worse and worse. If you have any doubt about this, please see the article that I posted yesterday entitled “15 Facts About The Imploding U.S. Economy That The Mainstream Media Doesn’t Want You To See“.

Hopefully this article will clear a lot of things up. In this piece, I have presented undeniable evidence that a new global financial crisis has begun over the past 12 months. We have not seen global stock declines of this nature since the great financial crisis of 2008, but much worse is still to come.

I would love to be wrong about that last part.

It would be wonderful if the worst was now behind us and good times for the global financial system were ahead.

Unfortunately, every single indicator that I am watching is telling me just the opposite.

*About the author: Michael Snyder is the founder and publisher of The Economic Collapse Blog. Michael’s controversial new book about Bible prophecy entitled “The Rapture Verdict” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.*

George Soros Is Preparing For Economic Collapse – Does He Know Something That You Don’t?

June 9, 2016 by Michael

Why is George Soros selling stocks, buying gold and making “a series of big, bearish investments”? If things stay relatively stable like they are right now, these moves will likely cost George Soros a tremendous amount of money. But if a major financial crisis is imminent, he stands to make obscene returns. So does George Soros know something that the rest of us do not? Could it be possible that he has spent too much time reading websites such as The Economic Collapse Blog? What are we to make of all of this?

The recent trading moves that Soros has made are so big and so bearish that they have even gotten the attention of the Wall Street Journal…

Worried about the outlook for the global economy and concerned that large market shifts may be at hand, the billionaire hedge-fund founder and philanthropist recently directed a series of big, bearish investments, according to people close to the matter.

Soros Fund Management LLC, which manages $30 billion for Mr. Soros and his family, sold stocks and bought gold and shares of gold miners, anticipating weakness in various markets. Investors often view gold as a haven during times of turmoil.

Hmmm – it sounds suspiciously like George Soros and Michael Snyder are on the exact same page as far as what is about to happen to the global economy.

You know that it is very late in the game when that starts happening…

One thing that George Soros is particularly concerned about that I haven’t been talking a lot about yet is the upcoming Brexit vote. If the United Kingdom leaves the EU (and hopefully they will), the short-term consequences for the European economy could potentially be absolutely catastrophic…

Mr. Soros also argues that there remains a good chance the European Union will collapse under the weight of the migration crisis, continuing challenges in Greece and a potential exit by the United Kingdom from the EU.

“If Britain leaves, it could unleash a general exodus, and the disintegration of the European Union will become practically unavoidable,” he said.

The Brexit vote will be held two weeks from today on June 23rd, and we shall be watching to see what happens.

But Soros is not just concerned about a potential Brexit. The economic slowdown in China also has him very worried, and so he has directed his firm to make extremely bearish wagers.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the last time Soros made these kinds of bearish moves was back in 2007, and it resulted in more than a billion dollars of gains for his company.

Of course Soros is not alone in his bearish outlook. In fact, Goldman Sachs has just warned that “there may be significant risk to the downside for the market”…

Goldman Sachs is getting nervous about stocks.

In a note to clients, equity strategist Christian Mueller-Glissmann outlined the firm’s fears that there may be significant risk to the downside for the market.

Ultimately, George Soros and Goldman Sachs are looking at the same economic data that I share with my readers on a daily basis.

As I have been documenting for months, almost every single economic indicator that you can possibly think of says that we are heading into a recession.

For instance, just today I was sent a piece by Mike Shedlock that showed that federal and state tax receipts are really slowing down just like they did just prior to the last two recessions…

US federal personal tax receipts receipts are falling fast. So is the Evercore ISI State Tax Survey.

The last two times the survey plunged this much, the US was already in recession.

Is it different this time?

And online job postings on LinkedIn have now been falling precipitously since February after 73 months in a row of growth…

After 73 consecutive months of year-over-year growth, online jobs postings have been in decline since February. May was by far the worst month since January 2009, down 285k from April and down 552k from a year ago.

Last week, the government issued the worst jobs report in nearly six years, and the energy industry continues to bleed good paying middle class jobs at a staggering rate. The following comes from oilprice.com…

That may seem counterintuitive in an industry that has been rapidly shedding workers, with more than 350,000 people laid off in the oil and gas industry worldwide.

Texas is one place feeling the pain. Around 99,000 direct and indirect jobs in the Lone Star state have been eliminated since prices collapsed two years ago, or about one third of the entire industry. In April alone there were about 6,300 people in oil and gas and supporting services that were handed pink slips. Employment in Texas’ oil sector is close to levels not seen since the aftermath of the financial crisis in 2009. “We’re still losing big chunks of jobs with each passing month,” Karr Ingham, an Amarillo-based economist, told The Houston Chronicle.

At this point it is so obvious that we have entered a new economic downturn that I don’t know how anyone can possibly deny it any longer.

Unfortunately, the reality of what is happening has not sunk in with the general population yet.

Just like 2008, people are feverishly racking up huge credit card balances even though we stand on the precipice of a major financial crisis…

American taxpayers are quick to criticize the federal government for its ever-increasing national debt, but a new study released Wednesday found taxpayers are also saddled with debt, and are likely to end 2016 with a record high $1 trillion in outstanding balances.

Wallethub, a site that recommends credit cards based on consumers’ needs, said that will be the highest amount of credit card debt on record, surpassing even the years during and before the Great Recession. The site said the record high was in 2008, when people owed $984.2 billion on their credit cards.

Will we ever learn?

This has got to be one of the worst possible times to be going into credit card debt.

Sadly, the “dumb money” will continue to act dumb and the “smart money” (such as George Soros) will continue to quietly position themselves to take advantage of the crisis that is already starting to unfold.

We can’t change what is happening to the economy, but we do have control over the choices that we make.

So I urge you to please make your choices wisely.

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