That scenario will become even more likely if House Republicans stand solidly united behind Trump, and at this point even the Washington Post is admitting that there is a possibility “that not a single House Republican” will vote for the articles of impeachment…

Congressional Republicans are sticking with their party leader in the face of thousands of pages of evidence showing President Trump leveraged foreign policy for political favors, raising the possibility that not a single House Republican will vote for his impeachment.

Of course it will only take a simple majority to impeach Trump in the House, and Democrats will be able to do that with no problem, but it appears that the effort to remove Trump will be completely dead when it gets to the Senate.

Yes, things could still change and this is a very fluid situation, but as things stand today it seems that Trump is safe.

So what are the elite going to do if impeachment fails?

They are facing the prospect that Trump could actually win again in 2020, and that would mean that he would remain in the White House until January 2025.

For many among the elite, such a scenario must be avoided at all costs.  And the quickest way to get the general public to turn on any president is for the economy to crumble.

This is one of the reasons why some prominent voices on the left have been openly wishing for a recession.  For example, just check out what Bill Maher said not too long ago…

“I’ve been saying for about two years that I hope we have a recession and people get mad at me,” said Maher, a multimillionaire who would likely be well insulated from a financial downturn.

“I’m just saying we can survive a recession,” he continued. “We’ve had 47 of them. We’ve had one every time there’s a Republican president! They don’t last forever, You know what lasts forever? Wiping out species!”

Maher is literally wishing for economic pain for more than 300 million Americans just so that another four years of Trump can be avoided.

That is how obsessed some of these radicals are with getting rid of Trump.

And without a doubt, the performance of the economy could be Trump’s Achilles heel.  Whenever any piece of good economic news comes out, he eagerly takes credit for it, and he has publicly warned that there will be an economic crash if a Democrat wins in 2020…

President Donald Trump predicted doom if he isn’t re-elected in 2020, saying that the economy would “CRASH” like it did during the Great Depression.

In a tweet Wednesday morning, the president called the crowded field of Democratic challengers “clowns” and compared the prospects of one of them winning to the stock market collapse of 1929.

Even though many Democrats on Wall Street absolutely hate Trump, it is undeniable that they have made out very well while he has been in the White House.  In fact, only three presidents have seen the stock market perform better during their first three years in office…

Stock market performance in first three years since Trump’s election, then, ranks fourth among the 14 elected presidents since Herbert Hoover. That’s pretty good! It’s worth noting, though, that there’s not a whole lot separating him from John F. Kennedy, Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush. A bad week or two, and he could easily fall to eighth place. On the other hand, falling to ninth would take some work, as would catching up to Dwight Eisenhower for third. Put into letter grades, I’d give the market’s performance since Trump’s election a solid B.

But what happens if the stock market crashes and the U.S. economy plunges into a deep recession in 2020?

Well, just as Trump has been getting credit for the good things that have happened in recent years, he would also get the blame if things got really bad.

Of course that wouldn’t actually be fair, because the truth is that the Federal Reserve actually has far more influence over the performance of the economy and the performance of the stock market than the president does.

But the general public does not understand these things.

When things really start to fall apart, people are going to blame whoever is in the White House, and since Trump was so eager to take credit when things were going good he won’t have any way to avoid the blame when things severely deteriorate.

So would the global elite really resort to “the nuclear option” of crashing the economy in order to prevent Trump from winning the next election?

You never know, but it is entirely possible.  Today, debt is the lifeblood of our economy, and if the big banks started to tighten up the flow of credit that would begin to slow down our economy immediately.  And as I noted yesterday, we are already starting to see banks deny loans to farmers in the middle of the country on a widespread basis.  The tighter that lenders become with their money, the worse that our economy will do, and this is something that we should be watching closely.

The stock market is also a potential flashpoint.  Right now, insiders are selling off their stocks “at the fastest pace in two decades”, and valuations are ridiculously inflated.  Companies that are losing giant mountains of money every single year are supposedly worth billions of dollars, and the market has been going up for so long that most investors have completely forgotten about 2008.  But at some point this entire charade is going to come crashing down, and it wouldn’t take very much of a “push” to make that happen.

There is an even bigger bubble in the bond market.  Today, there is 188 trillion dollars of debt in the global financial system, and those at the very top of the economic food chain control much of that debt.  Could it be possible that they would be willing to unleash a bit of chaos in order to achieve their political goals?

I don’t think that the global elite really want to go through a major crisis, but at this point for many of them just about anything is preferable to four more years of Trump.

We are less than two months away from 2020, and I truly believe that it will be the most chaotic year that any of us have seen in a very long time.

There are a lot of very powerful people that are absolutely determined to keep Trump from winning this upcoming election, and they would be willing to do just about anything in order to make that happen.

About the Author: I am a voice crying out for change in a society that generally seems content to stay asleep. My name is Michael Snyder and I am the publisher of The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and the articles that I publish on those sites are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the globe. I have written four books that are available on Amazon.com including The Beginning Of The End, Get Prepared Now, and Living A Life That Really Matters. (#CommissionsEarned) By purchasing those books you help to support my work. I always freely and happily allow others to republish my articles on their own websites, but due to government regulations I need those that republish my articles to include this “About the Author” section with each article. In order to comply with those government regulations, I need to tell you that the controversial opinions in this article are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of the websites where my work is republished. This article may contain opinions on political matters, but it is not intended to promote the candidacy of any particular political candidate. The material contained in this article is for general information purposes only, and readers should consult licensed professionals before making any legal, business, financial or health decisions. Those responding to this article by making comments are solely responsible for their viewpoints, and those viewpoints do not necessarily represent the viewpoints of Michael Snyder or the operators of the websites where my work is republished. I encourage you to follow me on social media on Facebook and Twitter, and any way that you can share these articles with others is a great help.

The post If Impeachment Fails, Will The Elite Crash The Economy In Order To Prevent Four More Years Of Trump? appeared first on The Economic Collapse.

Let’s start with a very simple example to help illustrate this.

When you go into credit card debt and you only make small payments each month, you can easily end up paying back more than double the amount of money that you originally borrowed.

So where does all that money go?

Well, of course it goes to the financial institution that you got your credit card from, and in turn that financial institution is owned by the global elite.

In essence, you willingly became a debt slave when you chose to go into credit card debt, and the hard work that it took to earn enough money to pay back that debt with interest ended up enriching others.

On a much larger scale, the same thing is happening to entire nations.

Today, the United States government is nearly 23 trillion dollars in debt.  In essence, we have been collectively enslaved, and we have been obligated to pay back all of that money with interest.  Of course at this point it is literally impossible for us to ever pay back all that debt, and every year we add another trillion dollars or so to the balance.  The global elite are now extracting more than 500 billion dollars in interest from this debt on an annual basis, and it is expected that number will greatly escalate in the years ahead.

It is not an accident that the Federal Reserve and the federal income tax were both instituted in 1913.  The Federal Reserve system was designed to create an endless debt spiral that would get the federal government in as much debt as possible, and since that time the size of our national debt has gotten more than 7000 times larger.  And the federal income tax was needed as the mechanism through which our wealth is transferred to the government to service all of this debt.

It is truly a deeply, deeply insidious system, and the American people should refuse to back any politician that does not favor shutting it down, but at this point this isn’t even a major political issue in our nation.

And of course the United States is far from alone.  Even though we can’t get the whole world to agree on much of anything, somehow virtually the entire planet has been convinced that debt-based central banking is the way to go.

In fact, at this point 99.9 percent of the population of the world lives in a country that has a central bank.

According to Wikipedia, there are only 9 very small nations that do not have a central bank at this point…

-Andorra
-Isle of Man
-Monaco
-Nauru
-Kiribati
-Tuvalu
-Palau
-Marshall Islands
-Federated States of Micronesia

If you combine the populations of all of those 9 nations together, it comes to much less than 0.1% of the total global population.

Do you think that this is just a coincidence?

The global elite do not want humanity to be free.  They want us to be in as much debt as possible so that we can make them richer.

When you realize how badly the game has been rigged, then a lot of things start to make a whole lot more sense.

For example, for those that understand how the system works it is certainly not surprising that the total amount of debt in the world has hit a new all-time record high of 188 trillion dollars…

The global debt load has surged to a new all-time record equivalent to more than double the world’s economic output, IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva warned Thursday.

While private sector borrowing accounts for the vast majority of the total, the rise puts governments and individuals at risk if the economy slows, she said.

“Global debt — both public and private — has reached an all-time high of $188 trillion. This amounts to about 230 percent of world output,” Georgieva said in a speech to open a two-day conference on debt.

That number has risen by 24 trillion dollars since 2016, and it is the biggest debt bubble that the world has ever seen by a very wide margin.

Of course at some point this debt bubble is going to burst in a global disaster of epic proportions, but meanwhile the global elite are going to continue to milk all of us for as long as they possibly can.

Here in the United States, we have been on the greatest debt binge in the history of our nation since the last financial crisis.  U.S. government debt has more than doubled, state and local government debt has ballooned to ridiculous proportions in much of the nation, corporate debt has doubled, student loan debt has more than doubled, auto loan debt just keeps hitting new record highs, and U.S. consumers are now 14 trillion dollars in debt.

Our mountain of debt has become so colossal that the only way to keep the game going is to borrow even more money, but by borrowing more money we make our enslavement even worse.

Meanwhile, those that are holding our debt just continue to live the high life as they laugh all the way to the bank.

About the Author: I am a voice crying out for change in a society that generally seems content to stay asleep. My name is Michael Snyder and I am the publisher of The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and the articles that I publish on those sites are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the globe. I have written four books that are available on Amazon.com including The Beginning Of The End, Get Prepared Now, and Living A Life That Really Matters. (#CommissionsEarned) By purchasing those books you help to support my work. I always freely and happily allow others to republish my articles on their own websites, but due to government regulations I need those that republish my articles to include this “About the Author” section with each article. In order to comply with those government regulations, I need to tell you that the controversial opinions in this article are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of the websites where my work is republished. This article may contain opinions on political matters, but it is not intended to promote the candidacy of any particular political candidate. The material contained in this article is for general information purposes only, and readers should consult licensed professionals before making any legal, business, financial or health decisions. Those responding to this article by making comments are solely responsible for their viewpoints, and those viewpoints do not necessarily represent the viewpoints of Michael Snyder or the operators of the websites where my work is republished. I encourage you to follow me on social media on Facebook and Twitter, and any way that you can share these articles with others is a great help.

The post Global Debt Is Up To $188,000,000,000,000 – This Is Officially The Biggest Debt Bubble The World Has Ever Seen appeared first on The Economic Collapse.

Unfortunately, the truth is that all is not well, and we continue to get more troubling economic news with each passing day.

In a desperate attempt to inject some vigor back into the U.S. economy, the Fed cut interest rates for the second month in a row on Wednesday…

For the second time in two months, the Federal Reserve on Wednesday agreed to press down on the economy’s accelerator to keep the 10-year-old expansion chugging along.

A divided Fed lowered its benchmark interest rate by another quarter percentage point to a range of 1.75% to 2% in an effort to stave off a possible recession triggered by a global economic slowdown and the U.S. trade war with China.

Of course this wasn’t enough to please President Trump, and shortly after the rate cut was announced he posted the following on Twitter…

Jay Powell and the Federal Reserve Fail Again. No “guts,” no sense, no vision! A terrible communicator!

Apparently Trump wanted an even larger rate cut with the promise of more rate cuts in the future, but if the U.S. economy really is in good shape we shouldn’t be having any rate cuts at all.  This was a panic move by the Fed, and they are going to find themselves very short on ammunition when things really start to get crazy.

And conducting overnight repurchase agreement operations for three days in a row also reeks of desperation.  If you are not familiar with the repo market, the following is how Yahoo News described the key role it plays for our financial system…

Financial institutions use money markets to borrow for very short periods, from one day to a year, a crucial function to keep the gears of the economy running.

In so-called repurchase or “repo” agreements, banks borrow by putting up assets like Treasury notes as collateral and then repay the loans with interest the following day.

In a fit of panic, the Fed injected $53,000,000,000 into the system on Tuesday and another $75,000,000,000 on Wednesday.

But it turns out that Wednesday’s injection wasn’t nearly large enough.  The following comes from Zero Hedge…

20 minutes after today’s repo operation began, it concluded and there was some bad news in it: as we feared, yesterday’s take up of the Fed’s repo operation which peaked at $53.2 billion has expanded substantially, and according to the Fed, today there was a whopping $80.05BN in bids submitted, an increase of $27 billion, or 50% more than yesterday.

It also meant that since the operation – which is capped at $75BN – was oversubscribed by over $5BN, that there was one or more participants who did not get up to €5 billion in the critical liquidity they needed, and that the Fed will see a chorus of demands by everyone (because like with the discount window, nobody will dare to be singled out) to either expand the size of its operations, implement a fixed operation and/or – most likely as per the ICAP note yesterday –  transition to permanent open market operations, i.e. QE

And then we learned that the Fed had announced that they were going to inject another $75,000,000,000 on Thursday.

This is utter insanity, and to many it is clear evidence that the Fed is losing control…

“This just doesn’t look good. You set your target. You’re the all-powerful Fed. You’re supposed to control it and you can’t on Fed day. It looks bad. This has been a tough run for Powell,” said Michael Schumacher, director, rate strategy, at Wells Fargo.

We haven’t seen anything like this since the financial crisis of 2008, and many are deeply concerned about what will happen as liquidity demands reach a peak as we approach the end of the month.

As our financial system continues to become increasingly unstable, is this sort of Fed intervention going to become a regular thing?

Of course there are some analysts that are already projecting that a massive new round of quantitative easing is inevitable at this point, and there is a very good chance that they are right.

Meanwhile, the “real economy” continues to deteriorate as well, and one new survey has found that a majority of U.S. CFOs now expect our economy to tumble into a new recession by the end of next year…

Chief financial officers in the United States have started to prepare themselves and their finances for a recession. For the first time in several years, economic uncertainty is now their lead concern, replacing worries about the difficulty of hiring and retaining talented workers.

According to CNN, 53 percent of chief financial officers expect the United States to enter a recession prior to the 2020 presidential election. That information was sourced from the Duke University/CFO Global Business Outlook survey released on Wednesday. And two-thirds predict a downturn by the end of next year.

Unfortunately, we may not have to wait that long, and according to John Williams of shadowstats.com if honest numbers were being used they would show that the U.S. economy is already in a recession right now.

For the moment, most Americans are still buying the narrative that everything is going to be just fine, but that will soon change.

The pace at which things are deteriorating is beginning to accelerate, and the Fed is going to have to hit the panic button many more times in the months ahead.

About the author: Michael Snyder is a nationally-syndicated writer, media personality and political activist. He is the author of four books including Get Prepared Now, The Beginning Of The End and Living A Life That Really Matters. His articles are originally published on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News. From there, his articles are republished on dozens of other prominent websites. If you would like to republish his articles, please feel free to do so. The more people that see this information the better, and we need to wake more people up while there is still time.

The post Why Does The Federal Reserve Keep Slamming The Panic Button Over And Over If Everything Is Okay? appeared first on The Economic Collapse.

The New York Federal Reserve Bank on Tuesday stepped into financial markets for the first time in more than a decade to keep interest rates in line with the Fed’s target.

Analysts say the operation appears to have been successful but it caused some jitters, coming as the Fed’s policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee opens a two-day meeting expected to produce a second cut in the benchmark lending rate.

This is essentially a form of “quantitative easing”, and many are concerned that this temporary intervention will not fix the larger problems that have resulted in this crisis.

And of course officials at the Fed probably never imagined that they would be intervening so soon, but they were compelled to make a move when interest rates started to spiral wildly out of control on Monday and Tuesday…

The rate on overnight repurchase agreements hit 5% on Monday, according to Refinitiv data. That’s up from 2.29% late last week and well above the target range set in July by the Federal Reserve, which is 2% to 2.25%. The surge continued Tuesday, with the overnight rate hitting a high of 10% before the NY Fed stepped in.

An “overnight repo operation” was hastily put together as interest rates soared, and it ultimately resulted in 53 billion dollars being injected into our financial system…

On Tuesday morning, the NY Fed launched what’s called an “overnight repo operation,” during which the central bank attempts to ease pressure in markets by purchasing Treasurys and other securities. The goal is to pump money into the system to keep borrowing costs from creeping above the Fed’s target range .

The first attempt by the NY Fed was canceled because of “technical difficulties.” Minutes later, the NY Fed successfully injected $53 billion into the system.

And guess what?

The Fed has already announced that they are going to do it again on Wednesday, and this time the goal will be to inject approximately 75 billion dollars into the system.

If that sounds absurd to you, that is because it is absurd.

Sadly, the truth is that our financial system is starting to show signs of serious distress for the first time in more than a decade, and nobody is quite sure what is going to happen next.

But everyone agrees that the Fed being forced to intervene in the marketplace is not a good sign.  In fact, one industry veteran said that it “is without a doubt one of the worst things that can happen”…

“If the plumbing doesn’t work, then it’s going to dramatically affect secondary trading of Treasuries. Which is the last thing they need when there’s massive issuance going on.

“This is without a doubt one of the worst things that can happen. In many respects it overshadows the Fed moving tomorrow, because if the plumbing doesn’t work everything starts to break down. Everything is predicated upon your getting a reasonable funding rate. Otherwise why would you buy this paper to begin with. If you’re funding your overnight position at 6 why would you buy a 10-year at 2?

And now that the Fed has begun to intervene, when will they be able to stop?

Will they have to keep doing it for the rest of the week?

And what happens if interest rates begin to go wild again next week or next month?

In essence, Pandora’s Box has now been opened, and things could get really crazy moving forward.  According to Zero Hedge, if this currently repo operation is not sufficient to calm things down, the Fed could soon formally launch a new quantitative easing program…

While the Fed did not disclose how many banks participated in the operation, it is safe to say it was a sizable number. Worse, the result from today’s unexpected repo operation, we can now conclude that in addition to $1.3 trillion in ‘excess reserves’, a Fed which is now cutting rates and will cut rates by 25bps tomorrow, the US financial system somehow found itself with a liquidity shortfall of $53 billion that almost paralyzed the interbank funding market.

Oh, and for those wondering why the Fed did a repo, the answer is simple: it did not want to launch QE just yet. But make no mistake, once repo is insufficient, the Fed will have no choice but to escalate to the next step which is open market purchases.

Which brings us to the bigger question of how long such overnight repos will satisfy the market, and how long before the next repo rate spike prompts the Fed to do the inevitable, and restart QE.

Of course quantitative easing is something that should never be done unless we have a major crisis on our hands, and with each passing day it is becoming clearer that the global economy is headed for enormous trouble.  In fact, we just received some more alarming news about global manufacturing…

The gloom of the world is centered around auto manufacturing, which is dragging on the global economy, fuelling fears that a worldwide trade recession has already begun.

The first domino to fall has been auto manufacturing, already hitting a near-record low in August, reported the Financial Times.

New data from IHS Markit global car industry purchasing managers’ index shows some of the sharpest declines across all sectors, not seen since 2009.

It is time to “batten down the hatches”, because rough weather is ahead.

Over and over again we keep seeing trouble signs that we haven’t seen since the last financial crisis, but most Americans still seem convinced that everything is going to be okay.

This move by the Fed is one of the biggest red flags yet, but I have a feeling that what we have seen so far is just the tip of the iceberg.

About the author: Michael Snyder is a nationally-syndicated writer, media personality and political activist. He is the author of four books including Get Prepared Now, The Beginning Of The End and Living A Life That Really Matters. His articles are originally published on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News. From there, his articles are republished on dozens of other prominent websites. If you would like to republish his articles, please feel free to do so. The more people that see this information the better, and we need to wake more people up while there is still time.

The post Major Red Flag: The Fed Shocks Everyone With An Emergency Intervention In The Repo Market For The First Time Since 2008 appeared first on The Economic Collapse.

Citing a more modest outlook for the economy, the Federal Reserve on Wednesday held interest rates steady and signaled it did not plan to raise rates at all this year and would bump them up just once in 2020, providing a road map for a sustained period of easy-money policy.

“The U.S. economy is in a good place,” Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said at a news conference, adding policymakers foresee “a modest slowdown, with overall conditions remaining favorable. We see no need to rush to judgment (by lifting or cutting rates).”

Admittedly, he did only say that it would be a “modest slowdown”, and so to most people that won’t sound that bad.

But this is the very first time that Powell has talked like this, and the truth is that the Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow model is currently forecasting that U.S. growth in the first quarter will be less than half a percent.  Fed officials are hoping that growth will be better in the second quarter, but there is also a very strong possibility that the economy will continue to decelerate.

Because the economy is entering a “slowdown”, the Federal Reserve announced on Wednesday that it does not anticipate any more interest rate hikes for the rest of the year.

Normally Wall Street would experience a huge surge of euphoria upon hearing such news, but stocks were actually down on Wednesday…

The Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 closed lower on Wednesday after the Federal Reserve’s latest monetary-policy announcement dragged Treasury yields lower, pushing bank shares down.

Goldman Sachs led the 30-stock Dow to end the day down 141.71 points at 25,745.67. The S&P 500 closed 0.3 percent lower at 2,824.23. The Nasdaq Composite eked out a gain, closing 0.1 percent higher at 7,728.97.

This certainly could not have been the reaction that the Federal Reserve was hoping for.

Could it be possible that bad news for the U.S. economy is no longer good news for Wall Street?

Without a doubt, we are witnessing a huge wave of pessimism in the business community right now.  Yesterday, I noted that Federal Express is talking as if a global recession had already started, and other corporate leaders are making similar statements.

For example, just consider what the CEO of banking giant UBS just said…

The head of UBS was among the latest to blame the world’s backdrop for weaker-than-expected results. CEO Ermotti told a conference in London on Wednesday that it “one of the worst first-quarter environments in recent history,” Reuters reported. The Swiss bank slashed another $300 million from 2019 costs after revenue at its investment bank plunged. Investment banking conditions are among the toughest seen in years, especially outside the U.S., he said.

And the CFO of BMW told investors on Wednesday that BMW’s earnings may be exposed to “additional risks” from the global economy in the months ahead…

“Depending on how conditions develop, our guidance may be subject to additional risks; in particular, the risk of a no-deal Brexit and ongoing developments in international trade policy,” CFO Nicolas Peter said in BMW’s quarterly earnings report Wednesday.

Last, but certainly not least, the co-CEO of Samsung just said that his company is anticipating “slowing growth in major economies” for the remainder of 2019…

“We are expecting many difficulties this year such as slowing growth in major economies and risks over global trade conflicts,” Samsung Co-Chief Executive Kinam Kim said.

Here in the United States, whoever is in the White House at the time usually gets most of the credit or most of the blame for how the economy is performing.

But the truth is that President Trump did not create the financial bubble that caused the boom on Wall Street.

The Federal Reserve did.

And President Trump is not going to be responsible when that bubble bursts either.

The Federal Reserve has far, far more control over the performance of the U.S. economy than either the president or Congress does.  And since the Federal Reserve was initially created in 1913, there have been 18 distinct recessions and/or depressions, and now we are heading into the 19th one.

If we want to finally get off this economic roller coaster ride permanently, we need to abolish the Federal Reserve.  But this isn’t even part of the national political discussion at this point.

However, that could soon change.  In the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2008, we witnessed a huge backlash against the Federal Reserve system.  Eventually that backlash subsided, but now that we are entering a new crisis, perhaps it is time to start dusting off all of those old “End the Fed” signs.

About the author: Michael Snyder is a nationally-syndicated writer, media personality and political activist. He is the author of four books including Get Prepared Now, The Beginning Of The End and Living A Life That Really Matters. His articles are originally published on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News. From there, his articles are republished on dozens of other prominent websites. If you would like to republish his articles, please feel free to do so. The more people that see this information the better, and we need to wake more people up while there is still time.

The post The Chair Of The Federal Reserve Just Used The Term “Slowdown” To Describe What Is Happening To The U.S. Economy appeared first on The Economic Collapse.

Early on Wednesday, Wall Street seemed to believe that the Federal Reserve would do the right thing, and the Dow was up nearly 400 points.  But then the announcement came, and the market began sinking dramatically.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 720 points in just two hours, and the Dow ended the day down a total of 351 points.  This is the lowest that the Dow has been all year, 60 percent of the stocks listed on the S&P 500 are in bear market territory, and at this point approximately four trillion dollars of stock market wealth has been wiped out.

We haven’t seen anything like this since the last financial crisis.  This is officially the worst quarter for the stock market since the fourth quarter of 2008, and it is the worst December that Wall Street has experienced since 1931.

It is insanity to raise interest rates when stocks are already crashing, but the Federal Reserve did it anyway.

They knew what kind of reaction this would cause on Wall Street and in other global markets, but that didn’t stop them.  The financial world is in utter turmoil, and this move by the Fed has definitely added fuel to the fire.

Could it be possible that they actually want a stock market crash?

Some are suggesting that the reason why the vote was unanimous was because they wanted to send a “strong signal” to President Trump.  He has been extremely critical of the Federal Reserve in recent weeks, and this could be a way for the Fed to show Trump who is really in charge.

They are calling this “the Trump economy”, but that is simply not true.  And when Barack Obama was in the White House, it wasn’t “the Obama economy” either.  Ultimately, it is the Federal Reserve that is running the economy, and they fiercely guard their independence and their authority.

President Trump knows that the only way that he is going to win in 2020 is if the economy is doing well, and he also understands that higher interest rates will slow the economy down.

So essentially the Federal Reserve has a tremendous amount of political power in their hands.

During the Obama era, the Fed pushed interest rates all the way to the floor and kept them there for many years.

But now the Federal Reserve has raised interest rates seven times since Donald Trump took office, and four of those rate hikes have been under current Fed Chair Jerome Powell.

Needless to say, it certainly doesn’t take a lot of imagination to figure out how Donald Trump is feeling about Powell at this moment.

For some reason I keep envisioning Trump walking into this presser and saying “Jay, you’re fired. I’m sorry, you’re fired.”

Then going to the podium and saying “Jay is a great person, has a beautiful wife, very smart man, but I will find someone who is going to do a great job.”

— GreekFire23 (@GreekFire23) December 19, 2018

Meanwhile, we continue to get more indications that the U.S. economy is heading for difficult times.  Just consider the following news about FedEx…

FedEx shares are plunging after what Morgan Stanley called a “jarring” cut to its annual forecasts, suggesting global growth is slowing far more than most expect – in fact, the bank hinted at the possibility of a “severe recession” unfolding – and prompting expectations of an “uber-dovish hike” by the Fed.

The global logistics bellwether slashed its outlook just three months after raising the view, reflecting an unexpected and abrupt change in the company’s view of the global economy amid rising trade tensions between the U.S. and China. Not only were the cuts were deeper than the Street expected according to Morgan Stanley analyst Ravi Shanker, but everyone is pointing to the following comment from the press release: “Global trade has slowed in recent months and leading indicators point to ongoing deceleration in global trade near-term.”

To see the term “severe recession” used in such a context is more than just a little bit alarming.

The last time the U.S. economy went through a recession, millions of Americans lost their jobs and we saw a wave of mortgage defaults unlike anything we had ever seen before in modern American history.

Are we about to go through something similar?

Earlier today, a CNN article also used the term “recession”, and it discussed the fact that investors now want big corporations to focus on paying down their debts instead of buying back shares of stock…

Fears of an economic slowdown — or even recession — have turned a spotlight on the debt that businesses piled up during the past decade, when borrowing costs were historically low.

For the first time since the Great Recession, investors want companies to prioritize paying down debt rather than investing in the future or share buybacks and dividends, according to a Bank of America Merrill Lynch survey of global fund managers.

But stock buybacks are one of the only things that has been propping up the stock market.  The only way for the bubble to continue is for corporations to go into dizzying amounts of debt in order to fund massive stock buybacks, because the Federal Reserve clearly does not intend to support the markets right now.

At least for the short-term, the Federal Reserve could have calmed the markets and encouraged economic activity by leaving interest rates alone.

In the end, they decided not to do that, and that makes one wonder what they are really trying to achieve.

About the author: Michael Snyder is a nationally-syndicated writer, media personality and political activist. He is the author of four books including Get Prepared Now, The Beginning Of The End and Living A Life That Really Matters.  His articles are originally published on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News.  From there, his articles are republished on dozens of other prominent websites.  If you would like to republish his articles, please feel free to do so.  The more people that see this information the better, and we need to wake more people up while there is still time.

The post Is The Federal Reserve Actually TRYING To Cause A Stock Market Crash? appeared first on The Economic Collapse.

“The Fed has been way too tight. They made a major blunder three months ago with raising the rates. It’s caused a deflation in commodity prices. And I will say this, David, if the Fed raises interest rates tomorrow they should all be fired for economic malpractice.”

If the Federal Reserve raises interest rates and indicates that more rate hikes are coming in 2019, it is quite likely that the markets will throw another huge temper tantrum.

But as Jim Cramer has noted, if the Federal Reserve make the right choice and leaves rates where they currently are, we could potentially see a significant market rally…

“Today was a dress rehearsal for the kind of rally we can get if the Fed does the right thing tomorrow and repudiates the idea that we need a series of rate hikes in 2019, not just one more tomorrow,” Cramer said Tuesday. “If we get the Fed on board, expect more positive action like we had this morning before the market gave up much of its gains.”

Unfortunately, there is a factor that is complicating things.

In recent weeks, President Trump has been extremely critical of the Federal Reserve and Fed Chair Jerome Powell.  If the Fed decides to leave interest rates where they are, that could be interpreted as them giving Trump exactly what he wants, and it is likely that they do not want to be viewed as siding with Trump.

This is yet another reason why we need to end the Fed.  The Fed has become just another player in the game of politics, and the truth is that the Federal Reserve is a deeply un-American institution.  Our founders intended for us to have a free market capitalist system, but instead we have an unelected panel of central planners setting our interest rates and running our economy.

Since the Federal Reserve was created in 1913, there have been 18 major economic downturns, and now we are heading into another one.  Central banking manipulation endlessly causes boom and bust cycles, and hopefully this time around the American people will finally decide that enough is enough.

As losses on Wall Street mount, hedge funds are starting to go down like dominoes, and that is going to cause huge problems for some of our largest financial institutions.  For example, we just found out that Citigroup could potentially lose 180 million dollars due to bad loans that it made to a prominent Asian hedge fund…

It’s not just hedge funds that are blowing up left and right: so are the banks that are lending them money.

Citigroup is facing losses of up to $180 million on loans made to an unnamed Asian hedge fund which saw major losses on its FX trades Bloomberg reports citing a person briefed on the matter. The hedge fund and Citi “are in discussions on the positions and how they should be valued” which is usually a bad sign as when it comes to FX the mark to market is, at least, instantaneous. Bloomberg adds that the situation is fluid and the eventual losses may end up being smaller depending on how the trades are unwound.

We haven’t seen anything like this in 10 years, and if the Fed raises interest rates this new financial crisis could begin to escalate quite rapidly.

At this point, even former Fed chair Alan Greenspan is urging investors to “run for cover”…

The former Federal Reserve chairman who famously warned more than two decades ago about “irrational exuberance” in the stock market doesn’t see equity prices going any higher than they are now.

“It would be very surprising to see it sort of stabilize here, and then take off,” Greenspan said in an interview with CNN anchor Julia Chatterley.

He added that markets could still go up further — but warned investors that the correction would be painful: “At the end of that run, run for cover.”

The markets were calmer on Tuesday because everyone was kind of waiting to see what the Fed would do on Wednesday.

The decision should be obvious, but unfortunately things are never that simple.

We live in very uncertain times, and the shaking of our financial system has begun.

About the author: Michael Snyder is a nationally-syndicated writer, media personality and political activist. He is the author of four books including Get Prepared Now, The Beginning Of The End and Living A Life That Really Matters.  His articles are originally published on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News.  From there, his articles are republished on dozens of other prominent websites.  If you would like to republish his articles, please feel free to do so.  The more people that see this information the better, and we need to wake more people up while there is still time.

The post Top Economist: “If The Fed Raises Interest Rates Tomorrow They Should All Be Fired For Economic Malpractice” appeared first on The Economic Collapse.

But in the short-term we should see some sort of bounce once the current wave of panic selling is exhausted.  During every major stock market crash in our history there have been days when the stock market has absolutely soared, and this crash will not be any exception.

If we do see a bounce on either Thursday or Friday, please don’t assume that the crash is over.  Most key technical levels have already been breached, and even a small piece of bad news can send stocks plunging once again.

On Wednesday there really wasn’t anything too unusual that happened, but stocks cratered anyway.  Here is a summary of the carnage…

-The Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted 608 points on Wednesday.

-The Dow is now down 7.1 percent for the month of October.

-The S&P 500 has now fallen for 13 of the last 15 trading days.

-The S&P 500 is now down 8.9 percent for the month of October.

-A whopping 70 percent of all S&P 500 stocks are already in correction territory.

-A third of all S&P 500 stocks are already in bear market territory.

-It was the worst day for the Nasdaq since 2011.

-The Nasdaq is now down 11.7 percent for the month of October.

-At this point, the Nasdaq has officially entered correction territory.

-The Russell 2000 is now down about 15 percent from the peak as it hurtles toward bear market territory.

-Over in Germany, Deutsche Bank closed at yet another record low as it teeters on the brink of disaster.

-Global systemically important bank stocks have now fallen a total of 30 percent from the peak of the market.

Hopefully things will stabilize for a while, but many experts are warning that things could get much worse from here…

The latest swoon, which knocked the S&P 500 down more than 3 percent Wednesday, signaled to many Wall Street pros that the decline was entering a new, more dangerous phase. There’s growing concern now that this decline is more than a garden variety pullback, or drop of 5 percent to 9.99 percent, and could morph into a drop of 10 percent of more for the broad market.

“With the big sell-off today, the market may have moved from pullback into correction territory,” says Nick Sargen, chief economist and senior investment advisor for Fort Washington Investment Advisors.

All it is going to take is one more really bad day for the Dow to push us officially into correction territory.  And once we breach that 10 percent threshold, that could set off another round of panic selling.

On Wednesday, the one piece of bad news that kind of rattled investors was the fact that new home sales plunged dramatically in September…

This is a disastrous print:

August’s 629k SAAR was revised drastically lower to 585k and September printed 553k (SAAR) massively missing expectations of 625k (SAAR) – plunging to the weakest since Dec 2016…

That is a 13.2% collapse YoY – the biggest drop since May 2011

Without a doubt, a 13 percent year over year decline is catastrophic, and this is starting to remind many people of the housing crash that we witnessed back in 2008.  Homebuilder stocks have been plummeting all month, and home prices are collapsing all over the nation.

In my previous article entitled “Why Are So Many People Talking About The Potential For A Stock Market Crash In October?”, I noted that this has been the month with the most market volatility ever since the Dow was first established.  Absent some kind of major event, the stock market usually gets kind of sleepy around Thanksgiving and does not really spring to life again until after the new year has begun.

Of course it is entirely possible that this year could be different.

We have entered a time when global events appear to be accelerating significantly.  Earlier today, bombs were mailed to major political leaders all over the United States.  In the Middle East, it looks like Israel and Hamas could go to war at any moment.  And we continue to see a rise in major seismic events – including three very large earthquakes that just hit the Cascadia Subduction Zone.

It truly does appear that the elements for a “perfect storm” are beginning to come together.  We have been enjoying a period of relative stability for so long that many Americans have allowed themselves to become lulled into a state of complacency.  That is a huge mistake, because all along we have been steamrolling toward disaster, and nothing has been done to alter our course.

Dark days are ahead my friends, and I strongly urge you to get ready.

About the author: Michael Snyder is a nationally syndicated writer, media personality and political activist. He is publisher of The Most Important News and the author of four books including The Beginning Of The End and Living A Life That Really Matters.

The Last Days Warrior Summit is the premier online event of 2018 for Christians, Conservatives and Patriots.  It is a premium members-only international event that will empower and equip you with the knowledge and tools that you need as global events begin to escalate dramatically.  The speaker list includes Michael Snyder, Mike Adams, Dave Daubenmire, Ray Gano, Dr. Daniel Daves, Gary Kah, Justus Knight, Doug Krieger, Lyn Leahz, Laura Maxwell and many more. Full summit access will begin on October 25th, and if you would like to register for this unprecedented event you can do so right here.

The post Stock Market Crash! The Dow Has Now Plunged 2,368 Points From The Peak Of The Market appeared first on The Economic Collapse.

And even though U.S. stocks are still outperforming the rest of the world, many are anticipating that the U.S. is definitely heading for a bear market as well.

According to Bank of America, 14 out of their 19 “bear market indicators” have now been triggered…

“Expect a long bout of volatility,” Bank of America strategists led by Savita Subramanian wrote in a report published on Sunday.

Bank of America keeps a running tally of “signposts” that signal looming bear market. The bad news is that 14 of these 19 indicators, or 74%, have been triggered. Two more were toppled earlier this month: the VIX volatility index (VIX) climbed above 20 and a growing number of Americans expect stocks to go up.

Of course not all 19 indicators need to be triggered in order for a bear market to happen.  These indicators are simply signposts, and what they are telling us is that big trouble could be brewing for the financial markets.

And Tuesday was certainly another chaotic day for Wall Street.  The Russell 2000 experienced another extremely disappointing day, and it is now officially red for the year…

Small-cap stocks erased all of their gains for the year on Tuesday, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average at one point was not be too far behind.

The Russell 2000, composed of publicly traded companies with a market capitalization between $300 million and about $2 billion, shed 0.8 percent on Tuesday, putting it into the red for 2018, down 0.6 percent.

The number of stocks that are at 52-week lows far outnumbers those that are at 52-week highs, but a handful of big name stocks has been keeping the market from plummeting too dramatically.

In the short-term, we should expect some more wild swings up and down, but meanwhile we continue to receive more troubling news about the real economy.

For example, we recently learned that existing home sales were down once again last month…

The metric of interest today is existing home sales. The reading came in at 5.15m units, which was well below the estimated 5.3m units and 4.1% below year ago levels. As the chart below shows, existing home sales have been falling all year long, and year-over-year growth rates have been mostly negative since September, 2017.

And auto sales are way down all over the country…

These things would not be happening if the economy was in good shape.

Every time the Federal Reserve goes through an interest rate hiking cycle it causes big problems for the economy, and this is something that President Trump alluded to during an interview with the Wall Street Journal…

In an interview Tuesday with The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Trump acknowledged the independence the Fed has long enjoyed in setting economic policy, while also making clear he was intentionally sending a direct message to Mr. Powell that he wanted lower interest rates.

“Every time we do something great, he raises the interest rates,” Mr. Trump said, adding that Mr. Powell “almost looks like he’s happy raising interest rates.” The president declined to elaborate, and a spokeswoman for the Fed declined to comment.

No matter what President Trump does, disaster is inevitable if the Federal Reserve continues to raise rates.  The Federal Reserve has far more control over the economy than Trump does, and that is why many of his supporters are hoping that Trump adopts Ron Paul’s “End the Fed” message for the 2020 presidential campaign.

Speaking of the Federal Reserve, former Fed chair Paul Volcker is saying that the U.S. is facing “a hell of a mess”…

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, who has reached legend status in the world of central banking, isn’t optimistic about current conditions.

When Volcker looks around now, he sees “a hell of a mess in every direction,” including a lack of basic respect for government institutions, a current Fed that seems to be following a completely arbitrary benchmark and a “swamp” in Washington run by plutocrats.

Without a doubt, it is most definitely true that we are facing “a hell of a mess”, but most Americans are entirely clueless about what is coming.

In the aftermath of the 2008 crisis, the economy stabilized and global central banks were able to inflate the biggest financial bubble in human history.

Once this bubble bursts, there won’t be a similar “recovery” this time around.

Along with the rest of the world, the U.S. is headed for an unprecedented period of chaos and pain.  We should be thankful for each day of relative stability that we are still able to enjoy, because time is rapidly running out.

About the author: Michael Snyder is a nationally syndicated writer, media personality and political activist. He is publisher of The Most Important News and the author of four books including The Beginning Of The End and Living A Life That Really Matters.

The Last Days Warrior Summit is the premier online event of 2018 for Christians, Conservatives and Patriots.  It is a premium members-only international event that will empower and equip you with the knowledge and tools that you need as global events begin to escalate dramatically.  The speaker list includes Michael Snyder, Mike Adams, Dave Daubenmire, Ray Gano, Dr. Daniel Daves, Gary Kah, Justus Knight, Doug Krieger, Lyn Leahz, Laura Maxwell and many more. Full summit access will begin on October 25th, and if you would like to register for this unprecedented event you can do so right here.

The post Teetering On The Brink Of Disaster: 14 Of 19 Bear Market Signals Have Now Been Triggered appeared first on The Economic Collapse.

After a very brief rally earlier in the week, stocks have been getting hammered again.  The S&P 500 has now fallen for 9 out of the last 11 trading sessions, and homebuilder stocks have now fallen for 19 of the last 22 trading sessions.  It was a “sea of red” on Thursday, and some of the stocks that are widely considered to be “economic bellwethers” were among those that got hit the hardest…

Several stocks seen as economic bellwethers fell sharply in the U.S., including United Rentals and Textron, which dropped at least 11 percent each. Snap-on and Caterpillar, meanwhile, fell 9.6 percent and 3.9 percent, respectively.

Hopefully we will see another bounce on Friday, but at this moment it looks like things could go either way.

But no matter what happens on Friday, many are convinced that the worst is yet to come, and here are some of the reasons…

China

Chinese stocks have fallen 12 percent so far this month, and overall they are down 26 percent over the last 12 months.

That means that China is now well into a bear market.

And history tells us that when Chinese stocks fall 10 percent or more within 30 days, that is usually very bad news for U.S. stocks.  The following comes from CNBC…

But a study by CNBC using analytics tool Kensho found that U.S. stocks are more often weaker when the declines in Chinese stocks are large. Over the past 10 years, when Shanghai stocks fell 10 percent or more in a 30-day period, the U.S. stock market was up only about 30 percent of the time, and the U.S. indexes all averaged significant declines.

For instance, the S&P 500 on average fell 4.8 percent when China was down 10 percent or more, and the Nasdaq was even worse with a loss of 5.3 percent.

The Chinese just had the worst quarter for economic growth since the first quarter of 2009, and many believe that is a huge sign of trouble for the global economy as a whole.

The Federal Reserve

In recent weeks I have been hammering the Federal Reserve over and over again, and they definitely deserve it.

The Fed is raising interest rates way too rapidly, and this is going to kill the economy and at some point it will inevitably cause a horrifying market crash.

And I am far from alone in criticizing the Fed.  For instance, just consider what CNBC’s Jim Cramer said about the Fed on Thursday…

Stocks tanked on Thursday because people are finally realizing that the Federal Reserve has the power to hurt stocks and slow the economy, CNBC’s Jim Cramer said after the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell more than 300 points.

“This is one of those moments where it’s dawning on people that maybe all the assurances that we don’t need to be afraid of the Fed are being proven to be totally bogus,” the “Mad Money” host said.

Every Fed rate hiking cycle since 1957 has ended in either a recession or a market crash, and this one won’t be any different.

Forced Selling

In this day and age, when markets start to plunge things can get out of hand very quickly thanks to all of the computer trading that starts to happen.

This is something that Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon says his firm is watching very closely…

Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon said Thursday that he believes part of October’s steep stock sell-off was the result of programmatic trading.

“There’s no question when you look at last week, some of the selling is the result of programmatic selling because as volatility goes up, some of these algorithms force people to sell,” Solomon told CNBC’s Wilfred Frost. “Market structure can, at times, contribute to volatility and one of the things that we’re spending a bunch of time thinking about at the firm is how changes in market structure over the course of the last 10 years will affect market activity.”

One key level to watch in the coming days is 25,000 on the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

That is a very important psychological level, and if this downturn successfully breaks through that barrier we could very quickly move toward 24,000 thanks to programmatic selling.

This current bull market has lasted for much longer than it should have, but now it appears that the bubble may have burst.

And once the bears take control, things could get bad for a very long time.  The following comes from investing expert Egon von Greyerz…

It now looks like the secular bull market in stocks is turning into a secular bear market that could last for several years if not decades. The stock market acts as a sentiment indicator for what happens in the real economy. No indicator is perfect and stock market moves will be exaggerated in both directions. It is now likely that the world is starting an economic downturn of epic proportions.

During previous market downturns over the past 10 years, there was still a lot of optimism on Wall Street.

But these days it seems like “doom and gloom” is the dominant theme in trading circles, and it won’t take too much to turn that “doom and gloom” into “fear and panic” as everyone races for the exits as quickly as they can…

About the author: Michael Snyder is a nationally syndicated writer, media personality and political activist. He is publisher of The Most Important News and the author of four books including The Beginning Of The End and Living A Life That Really Matters.

The Last Days Warrior Summit is the premier online event of 2018 for Christians, Conservatives and Patriots.  It is a premium-members only international event that will empower and equip you with the knowledge and tools that you need as global events begin to escalate dramatically.  The speaker list includes Michael Snyder, Mike Adams, Dave Daubenmire, Ray Gano, Dr. Daniel Daves, Gary Kah, Justus Knight, Doug Krieger, Lyn Leahz, Laura Maxwell and many more. Full summit access will begin on October 25th, and if you would like to register for this unprecedented event you can do so right here.

The post The Dow Has Fallen Nearly 1,500 Points From The Peak Of The Market, And Many Believe This “October Panic” Is Just Beginning… appeared first on The Economic Collapse.