If Donald Trump Is Impeached, You Should Expect The Mother Of All Stock Market Crashes To Happen

News that an impeachment inquiry is being initiated instantly sent stock prices tumbling on Tuesday, but that small jolt is nothing compared to what we will experience if Donald Trump is actually impeached.  Over the past couple of years we have seen a tremendous boom in stock prices, and one of the big reasons for that boom is the fact that the folks on Wall Street know that Trump is always going to be looking out for their best interests.  Trump understands that his chances of winning again in 2020 will be greatly enhanced if stock prices are rising and most Americans believe that we have a “booming economy”, and so he wants to do everything in his power to try to make those things happen.  That means that Trump’s short-term interests are perfectly aligned with Wall Street’s short-term interests, but things will shift dramatically if someone like Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders ends up in the White House.  Wall Street knows that they have a friend in Donald Trump, and losing that friend would potentially be absolutely devastating.

Needless to say, a lot of investors were unnerved on Tuesday when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that a formal impeachment inquiry is being initiated.  The following is an excerpt from Pelosi’s official remarks…

For the past several months, we have been investigating in our Committees and litigating in the courts, so the House can gather ‘all the relevant facts and consider whether to exercise its full Article I powers, including a constitutional power of the utmost gravity — approval of articles of impeachment.’

And this week, the President has admitted to asking the President of Ukraine to take actions which would benefit him politically. The action of – the actions of the Trump Presidency revealed the dishonorable fact of the President’s betrayal of his oath of office, betrayal of our national security, and betrayal of the integrity of our elections.

Therefore, today, I am announcing the House of Representatives is moving forward with an official impeachment inquiry. I am directing our six Committees to proceed with their investigations under that umbrella of impeachment inquiry.

The President must be held accountable. No one is above the law.

In the aftermath of that announcement, liberal celebrities all across America erupted in celebration.

But can Nancy Pelosi unilaterally declare the commencement of a formal impeachment inquiry without any sort of a vote?  According to Representative Doug Collins, she actually does not have that power…

In reaction to the Speaker’s announcement, Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.) tweeted, “Speaker Pelosi’s decree changes absolutely nothing. As I have been telling Chairman Nadler for weeks, merely claiming the House is conducting an impeachment inquiry doesn’t make it so. Until the full House votes to authorize an inquiry, nobody is conducting a formal inquiry.”

In any event, the Democrats are going to push ahead with their investigations, and they seem determined to dig up anything that they possibly can.

In response to Pelosi’s announcement, the White House issued a statement which accused congressional Democrats of being “in dereliction of their Constitutional duty”

‘In a far departure from all of the work and results of this President, House Democrats have destroyed any chances of legislative progress for the people of this country by continuing to focus all their energy on partisan political attacks. Their attacks on the President and his agenda are not only partisan and pathetic, they are in dereliction of their Constitutional duty,’ said White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham in a statement.

We shall see how everything plays out over the next few months, but at this point it seems fairly certain that we will see an impeachment vote on the floor of the House, and it also seems fairly certain that the vote will be split largely along party lines.

Because in this day and age the truth really doesn’t matter.  Even if there isn’t any evidence against Trump at all, most Democrats will vote to impeach because that is what they are expected to do.  And even if Trump is 100 percent guilty most Republicans will vote against impeachment because they would be afraid of being voted out of office by angry voters back home.

So in the end it will probably come down to what the Senate decides to do, and right now the Republicans are holding 53 seats.

Unfortunately for Trump, some of those 53 seats are held by very “moderate” Republicans that are not fans of Trump at all.

Sadly, the fate of the Trump presidency is likely to end up in the hands of a small group of deeply corrupt politicians that I wouldn’t trust to properly mop the floors in my local Dairy Queen.

With that in mind, I think that Trump fans definitely have reason for some pessimism.

Democrats are licking their chops at the prospect of impeaching Trump and then getting either Joe Biden or Elizabeth Warren into the White House following the next election.

Joe Biden would try to get along with Wall Street, but a Warren administration would be an absolute disaster for investors and right now she is surging in the polls.

Elizabeth Warren originally made a name for herself by attacking Wall Street.  Virtually all of her economic proposals would be bad news for the top 1 percent, and the fact that she is doing so well right now is just one of the factors that are currently unsettling the markets

For one, this time around it appears Democrats in the House have momentum toward beginning impeachment proceedings. Second, a formerly robust economic backdrop has given way to jitters about global growth and fears that the U.S. economy is nearing the end of a lengthy expansion. Less confident investors could be more jittery in the face of political headlines than was previously the case.

Also, impeachment proceedings could take center stage in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election, potentially damaging Trump’s re-election bid. Fears of a less business-friendly Democratic administration — amplified by the recent strength of Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who has moved ahead of Biden in some polls — could also be part of the mix, analysts said.

Of course the short-term health of Wall Street is not what we should really be concerned about.

At this moment, the entire global economy is plunging into a substantial downturn, and whoever wins in 2020 is going to have to face that reality.

And beyond that, we are facing long-term crisis after long-term crisis that none of our politicians really want to deal with, and in the end we are going to pay a great price for our short-term thinking.

But for the foreseeable future, the mainstream media is going to be obsessed with the political drama being played out in Washington.

And I know that most Republicans don’t want to hear this, but there is a very real chance that Donald Trump could be impeached by the House.

Then it will all come down to the Senate, and Trump’s fate will be in the hands of moderate Republicans such as Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Marco Rubio and Mitt Romney.

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. Of course the most important thing that we can share with people is the gospel of Jesus Christ, and if you would like to learn more about how you can become a Christian I would encourage you to read this article.

Why Are So Many Big Investors Positioning Themselves To Make Giant Amounts Of Money If The Stock Market Crashes?

I keep hearing from people that think that the stock market is going to crash by the end of the year.  Hopefully that will not happen, but the ridiculous stock prices that we are seeing right now certainly cannot last forever.  On Sunday, I was chatting with a friend that had just been to a financial conference.  He was quite surprised that one of the things being taught to the attendees of this conference was how to position themselves to make an enormous amount of money when the stock market crashes dramatically in the near future.  Markets tend to go down a lot faster than they go up, and so when the inevitable market crash does take place those that have made large bets against the market will make huge fortunes.  It happened in 2008, and it will happen again.  But it was unsettling to my friend Robert that there were so many people that were gleefully looking forward to this.

Of course some of the biggest names in the investing world are also anticipating a major downturn very soon.  I have previously written about how Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. is sitting on a pile of 86 billion dollars in cash right now.  Nobody ever knows exactly what Buffett is thinking, but it isn’t too hard to figure out that he plans to use those billions to buy up stocks for a song after a big market crash happens.

I have also previously written about many other big names throughout the financial world that are warning that a new financial crisis is imminent.  The last time I saw so many prominent investors sounding the alarm was just before the market crash of 2008, but most people didn’t listen that time around either.

And of course those that believe that a market crash is coming are doing a lot more than just talking about it.  According to Zero Hedge, there are now more short positions betting against the Russell 2000 than we have seen at any time in the last six years…

The Russell 2000 Index posted a 2.2% decline in May, its worst month since October, and it appears a large swath of investors is now betting it has further to fall.

As Bloomberg notes, hedge funds and other major speculators have a combined net short position of 73,030 contracts in the small-cap index’s futures, according to the latest data from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

Russell 2000 sentiment has sharply declined since January, when future contract positioning reached record bullishness. It’s now the most short since May 2011.

The last time investors were this short the Russell 2000, it fell by almost 30 percent.

Can we expect something similar this time?

We will just have to wait and see.

Meanwhile, there has also been a surge in the number of investors betting that we will soon see increased market volatility

As Bloomberg notes, with the VIX down more than 30% this year through the end of last week, investors have been using options to bet on volatility.

As the chart above shows, the volume of contracts wagering on a resurgence of market turmoil has reached its highest level since last February relative to those calling for a drop in price movements.

Because markets tend to go down much faster than they go up, most of those that bet on increased volatility are typically doing so because they believe that a stock market crash is coming very soon.

And it is also interesting to note that hedge funds are jumping into gold at a rate that we have not seen since 2007

Hedge funds are jumping back into gold.

Money managers boosted their long positions in U.S. futures by the most in almost a decade in the week ended May 23, Commodity Futures Trading Commission data show.

Gold is a safe haven asset, and it is a very good place to be during a major financial crisis.  So if hedge funds are anticipating that we are on the verge of a major market downturn, it would make sense for them to be piling into gold.

All of the moves that I have discussed above will end up looking quite foolish if stocks just keep going up and up and up.

But if the market crashes, those that have positioned themselves ahead of time will end up making a killing.

Today the stock market bears absolutely no resemblance to economic reality, but at some point that will change.  And with each passing day we just continue to get more bad economic news.

Yesterday, I showed that according to official U.S. government figures there are 102 million working age Americans that do not have a job right now.  Today, we got more confirmation that the U.S. economy is slowing down.  We learned that new vehicle sales fell on a year-over-year basis for the fifth month in a row in May, and we learned that factory orders and new orders for durable goods both declined last month.  And for a lot more numbers just like those, please see this article.

The U.S. economy is not “healthy” and it hasn’t been for a very long time.  Because we have shipped so many jobs overseas, manufacturing’s share of U.S. employment has fallen to an all-time record low.  The middle class is shrinking, and somewhere around two-thirds of the country is living paycheck to paycheck.  We have been able to maintain our national standard of living by going on the greatest debt binge of all time, but every additional dollar of debt that we take on makes our long-term outlook even worse.

Just because he is living in the White House does not mean that Donald Trump can automatically turn things around.  Without the help of Congress, he cannot cut taxes, repeal Obamacare, eliminate unnecessary federal agencies or implement many of the other items on his economic agenda.

And the truth is that because of the way that our system is structured, the Federal Reserve actually has much, much more power over the economy than Donald Trump does.  When the financial markets crash and we officially enter the next recession, most of the blame will be placed on Trump, but it won’t be his fault.  Instead, it will be primarily the Federal Reserve’s fault, and we need to educate the American people about this ahead of time.

What goes up must come down, and this irrational stock bubble has been living on borrowed time for quite a while now.

It isn’t going to take much to push things over the edge, and there are all sorts of candidates for what the next “trigger event” will be.

Marc Faber Issues A Stunning Warning That A Gigantic 50 Percent Stock Market Crash Could Be Coming

Danger Button - Public DomainAre we about to witness one of the largest stock market crashes in U.S. history?  Swiss investor Marc Faber is the publisher of the “Gloom, Boom & Doom Report”, and he has been a regular guest on CNBC for years.  And even though U.S. stocks have been setting new record high after new record high in recent weeks, he is warning that a massive stock market crash is in our very near future.  According to Faber, we could “easily” see the S&P 500 plunge all the way down to 1,100.  As I sit here writing this article, the S&P 500 is sitting at 2,181.74, so that would be a drop of cataclysmic proportions.  The following is an excerpt from a CNBC article that discussed the remarks that Faber made on their network on Monday…

The notoriously bearish Marc Faber is doubling down on his dire market view.

The editor and publisher of the Gloom, Boom & Doom Report said Monday on CNBC’s “Trading Nation” that stocks are likely to endure a gut-wrenching drop that would rival the greatest crashes in stock market history.

I think we can easily give back five years of capital gains, which would take the market down to around 1,100,” Faber said, referring to a level 50 percent below Monday’s closing on the S&P 500.

Of course Faber is far from alone in believing that the market is heading for hard times.  Just recently, I wrote about how legendary investor Jeffrey Gundlach is warning that “stocks should be down massively” and that he believes this is the time to “sell everything“.

And on Tuesday, Donald Trump told Fox News that the stock market is “a big bubble”

“If rates go up, you’re going to see something that’s not pretty,” the billionaire businessman told Fox News during a Tuesday morning phone interview. “It’s all a big bubble.”

Worries that the Fed has created a market bubble have shadowed the second-longest bull market in history as the central bank has kept its key rate near zero and expanded its balance sheet by $3.8 trillion in order to pump liquidity into the financial system.

Trump actually has a vested interest in seeing the stock market go down, because that would help his chances in November.

In a previous article on The Most Important News, I explained that the stock market has indicated who would win the presidential election 86 percent of the time since 1928.  During the final three months before election day, if the stock market goes up the incumbent party almost always wins.  But if the stock market goes down, the incumbent party almost always loses.  The only times this correlation has not held up since 1928 were in 1956, 1968 and 1980.

For the moment, the stock market is defying the laws of economics, and that is a very good thing for Hillary Clinton.  But if this bubble suddenly bursts and the market starts catching up with economic reality, that is going to turn out to be very favorable for Donald Trump.

And without a doubt, the fundamental economic numbers just continue to get worse.  Earlier today, we learned that productivity in the U.S. has now been falling for three quarters in a row

Productivity, a sore spot for the U.S. economy over the past few years, has now declined in three straight quarters, according to data released Tuesday.

Productivity in the second quarter unexpectedly fell 0.5%, well below expectations, the Labor Department said. Economists surveyed by MarketWatch had forecast a 0.3% gain in productivity in the quarter.

Productivity is down 0.4% from a year earlier, the first year-over-year decline since the second quarter of 2013.

On Tuesday we also learned that real estate sales in Las Vegas were down about 10 percent in July compared to the same period a year ago, and things are not looking so good in San Francisco either.  Just check out what has been going on at Twitter

Twitter is shaking up San Francisco. It’s the city’s 10th largest employer, and second largest tech employer, after Salesforce. But it hasn’t yet figured out, despite a decade of trying, how to make money. Last October, it announced that it would lay off 8% of its workforce. A couple of weeks ago, it reported a second-quarter net loss of $107 million along with disappointing user metrics and lousy projections. Its shares have lost 74% since their miracle-IPO-hype peak at the end of December 2014.

And now Twitter is dumping nearly one third of its total office space on the San Francisco sublease market.

Las Vegas and San Francisco are both prone to huge “booms” and “busts”.  So the fact that it appears that both cities are starting to move into the “bust” end of the cycle is a very ominous sign.

Conditions are changing, and now is the time to position yourself for the exceedingly challenging times that are coming.  As I end this article today, I want to share with you something written by Jim Quinn.  He recently went out to visit his son Kevin in Colorado for a couple of weeks, and the following is how he ended his article about that trip…

After spending a week in this stunning paradise, it’s tougher than you know to go back to my two and half hour daily round trip commute into the slums of West Philly. John Muir’s words were right 100 years ago and they are right today. I am losing precious days and my days are spent trying to make money. I’ve got responsibilities. I’ve got bills to pay. I’ve got kids to get through college. We’ve got aging parents to help. I work because I have to.

I’m not learning anything in this trivial world of distractions and iGadgets. I don’t fit into this materialistic society. I don’t do small talk. I have no patience for fools. I prefer solitude. If I can survive this despicable rat race for seven more years, I’ll be joining Kevin in Colorado and living the life I’d like to live. The sun is setting and time is slipping away. Those mountains are calling me home.

I can definitely identify with what Jim is going through, because I once experienced similar emotions.

To Jim and everyone else that hopes that someday in the future they will be able to live the lives that they would like to be living right now, I would say this…

Don’t put it off.

Seize the day and find a way to make your dreams a reality.

Things are rapidly changing in this country, and if you keep putting off the life you want to be living for too long it may end up slipping away for good.

September 2015 Sure Started Off With Quite A Bang, Eh?

Bang Explosion - Public DomainAfter enduring their worst August in 17 years, U.S. stocks are off to their worst start to a September in 13 years.  Just yesterday, I declared that we would be entering the “danger zone” this month, and it didn’t take long for the action to begin.  Historically, this month is the worst month of the year for stocks, and most of the biggest stock market crashes throughout our history have come in the fall.  On Tuesday, the Dow plunged another 469 points, and it is now down more than 10 percent from the peak of the market back in May.  That means that we have officially entered “correction” territory.  Asian stocks also crashed hard on Tuesday, so did European stocks, and the price of oil plummeted about 8 percent.  For a long time, there have been a lot of people out there that have been warning that a financial crisis would happen in the second half of 2015, and they are being proven right.  It is actually happening.

Of course there will be plenty of ups and downs still to come.  I cannot emphasize enough that we should fully expect waves of panic selling and waves of panic buying.  This always happens during any market crash.

For instance, just consider what happened when the tech bubble crashed.  The following analysis comes from Graham Summers

In a six month period, investors moved stocks down 19%, up 8%, then down 27%, then up 21%, then down 22%, then up 34%, then down 17%, then up 16%, then down 28%, then up 16%, and finally down 17%. Only at that point did stocks break their trendline for the bubble (the blue line) and it became obvious that the bubble had burst.

My point with all of this is that even when the bubble was both very specific AND obvious, the collapse was neither quick nor clean. There were several large 20%+ crashes, but overall, it was a roller coaster with jarring rallies that gradually wore its way down.

It was a full-blown market collapse, and yet there were moments when the market absolutely skyrocketed.

The same thing happened in 2008.  In fact, the best two days in stock market history were right in the middle of the last financial crisis.

So don’t be fooled by what happens on any one particular day.  Huge up days and huge down days are both red flags.

If the market is going to recover any time soon, what we need are nice quiet days without much volatility.  Unfortunately, that is not likely to happen any time soon because a tremendous amount of damage has already been done and some massive imbalances have already developed.  I like how Richard Smith put it recently…

Serious damage has been done to the financial markets in the past two weeks – very serious. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

No one should be kidding themselves that what’s happened in the past two weeks is just a little late summer blip – building up some energy to rally into the fall and winter. I’m not saying it couldn’t happen but it isn’t the odds play.

Everywhere I look, technical damage has been done – and it’s like nothing we’ve seen since 2008.

Yes, the mainstream media is telling everyone that they shouldn’t panic and that everything will be just fine, but those that study the charts for a living know what is really happening.  For months, I have been telling you over and over that things were setting up in textbook fashion for another financial crisis, and other experts have been seeing the exact same things that I have been seeing.  For example, just consider what Louise Yamada told CNBC

Looking at a chart of the S&P 500, Louise Yamada noted that momentum has been declining for four months, which by her work, is a “classic” sell signal.

“This is suggesting to me that we are looking at a bear market,” said Yamada said Tuesday on CNBC’s “Futures Now.” Yamada noted that the last two times the market saw a similar shift in momentum were in January 2008 and June 2000.

Right now, a lot of people are very confused about what to do.  Those that told them to buy stocks in the first place are telling them to buy even more stocks.  And of course the mainstream media is telling them that everything is going to be just wonderful after this “correction” runs its course.  But at the same time a lot of people have a gut feeling that things are about to get really bad.

Personally, I think that what John Hussman shared in his recent newsletter contains a lot of wisdom…

“If you’re taking more equity risk than you can actually tolerate if the market goes south, setting your portfolio right isn’t a market call – it’s just sound financial planning. It’s only fun to be reckless if you also turn out to be lucky. Market conditions are now more hostile than at any time since the 2007 peak. If you want to be speculating, and you can tolerate the outcome, then you’re not taking too much equity risk in the first place. But it’s one or the other. Can you tolerate a 40-55% market loss over the next 18 months or so? If not, take this opportunity to set things right. That’s not the worst-case scenario under present conditions; it’s actually the run-of-the-mill historical expectation.”

I also want to point out that we are now less than two weeks away from the end of the Shemitah year.

If you are still not familiar with the concept of the Shemitah year, please see my previous article entitled “The Shemitah: The Biblical Pattern Which Indicates That A Financial Collapse May Be Coming In 2015“.

Even though the stock market crashed in September 2001 at the end of a Shemitah year, and in September 2008 at the end of another Shemitah year, and it is crashing again in September 2015, somehow there are still people out there that do not think that this is real.

Well, I am here to tell you that this is very real.  But if you won’t listen to me, perhaps you will consider the findings of Israeli mathematician Thomas Pound.  The following comes from an outstanding piece that was just published by WND

After a friend told him about the seven-year Sabbatical cycle to the stock market, Pound again set out to see if the theory held up under statistical scrutiny.

Applying the same ANOVA test to the Shemitah cycle, Pound’s research revealed that the sabbatical years were the only group of years in which the market cycle averages consistent significant losses since 1871.

He also found that, in Shemitah years, the difference in loss was greater than that noted in professor Shiller’s decennial cycle.

“Statistically, it appears that the calendar years in which the Sabbatical year ends are worse than the other six years, and that difference is significant based on the data I have,” Pound told Breaking Israel News.

Look, I know that this may not fit with how you currently view the world.

The truth is that a whole bunch of weird stuff is about to happen that may not fit with how you currently view the world.

But if you honestly want to discover the truth, then you have got to go wherever the evidence ultimately leads you.

So what do you think about all of this?  Please feel free to join the discussion by posting a comment below…

Why Are So Many People Freaking Out About A Stock Market Crash In The Fall Of 2015?

Manhattan Stock Market Crash In 2015 - Public DomainIs the stock market going to crash by the end of 2015?  Of course stock market crashes are already happening in 23 different nations around the planet, but most Americans don’t really care about those markets.  The truth is that what matters to people in this country is the health of their own stock portfolios and retirement accounts.  There are a lot of people out there that are very afraid of what could happen if the money that they have worked so hard to save gets wiped out in a sudden financial collapse.  And right now there is an unprecedented amount of buzz about the potential for a giant stock market crash by the end of this calendar year.  In fact, I don’t think that I have ever seen more experts come out with bold predictions that a stock market crash will happen within a very specific period of time.

The following is a sampling of some of the experts that have made very bold proclamations about the rest of this year over the past few weeks.  Many of these individuals are putting their credibility on the line by proclaiming that a stock market crash is just around the corner…

-Tom McClellan says that we are heading for an “ugly decline” and that there will be “nothing good for bulls for the rest of the year”

Tom McClellan loves doing what financial advisers tell you not to do. He tries to time the financial markets — to the exact day, if his charts align just right.

At the moment, they are telling him to be bullish on the stock market for all of his trading time frames, including those that trade every few days, weeks and months. But bulls should be ready to flee, as soon as this week.

That’s because McClellan said his timing models suggest “THE” top in stocks will be hit some time between Aug. 20 and Aug. 26. He expects “nothing good for the bulls for the rest of the year,” he said in a phone interview with MarketWatch.

McClellan doesn’t have a strong view on how far stocks could fall, just that it will probably be an “ugly decline” lasting into early 2016.

-Harry Dent recently stated that we are just “weeks away” from a “global financial collapse“.

-Gerald Celente says that “the global economy has collapsed” and he is “predicting that we are going to see a global stock market crash before the end of the year“.

-Larry Edelson insists that he is “100% confident” that a global financial crisis will be triggered “within the next few months”…

On October 7, 2015, the first economic supercycle since 1929 will trigger a global financial crisis of epic proportions. It will bring Europe, Japan and the United States to their knees, sending nearly one billion human beings on a roller-coaster ride through hell for the next five years. A ride like no generation has ever seen. I am 100% confident it will hit within the next few months.”

-Jeff Berwick, the editor of the Dollar Vigilante, says that there is “enough going on in September to have me incredibly curious and concerned about what’s going to happen“.

-Egon von Greyerz recently explained that he fears “that this coming September – October all hell will break loose in the world economy and markets“.

-Even the mainstream media is issuing ominous warnings now.  Just a few days ago, one of the most important newspapers in the entire world published a major story about the coming crisis under this headline: “Doomsday clock for global market crash strikes one minute to midnight as central banks lose control“.

-The Bank for International Settlements and the IMF have jumped on the prediction bandwagon as well.  The following comes from a recent piece by Brandon Smith

The BIS warns that the world is currently defenseless against the next market crisis. I would point out that the BIS has a record of predicting economic crashes, including back in 2007 just before the derivatives and credit crisis began. This ability to foresee fiscal disasters is far more likely due to the fact that the BIS is the dominant force in global central banking and is the cause of crisis, rather than merely a predictor of crisis. That is to say, it is easy to predict disasters you yourself are about to initiate.

It is no mistake that the warnings from the BIS and the IMF tend to come too little too late, or that they are beginning to compose cautionary press releases today that sound much like what alternative analysts were saying a few years ago. The goal of these globalist organizations is not to help people prepare, only to set themselves up as Johnny-come-lately prognosticators so that after a collapse they can claim they warned us all, which can then be used as a rationalization for why they are the best people to administrate the economies of the planet as a whole.

So why are so many prominent voices now warning that a global financial crisis is imminent?

The answer is actually very simple.

A global financial crisis is imminent.

Back on June 25th, I issued a red alert for the last six months of 2015 before any of these other guys issued their warnings.

When I first issued my alert, things were still seemingly very calm in the financial world, and a lot of people out there thought that I was nuts.

Well, here we are just a couple of months later and all hell is breaking loose.  23 global stock markets are crashing, the price of oil has been imploding, a new currency war has erupted, industrial commodities are plunging just like they did prior to the market crash of 2008, a full-blown financial crisis has gripped South America with fear, and junk bonds are sending some very ominous signals.

In the U.S., things are beginning to slowly unravel.  The Dow was down another 162 points on Wednesday, and overall we are now down almost 1000 points from the peak of the market.  At this point, it isn’t going to take much to push us into a bear market.

So enjoy what is left of August.

September is right around the corner, and if the experts that I mentioned above are correct, then it is likely to be one wild month.

If History Is Any Indication, Junk Bonds And Copper Are Telling Us Exactly Where Stocks Are Heading Next

Stock Market - Public DomainYields on the riskiest junk bonds are absolutely soaring and the price of copper just hit a fresh six year low.  To most people, those pieces of financial news are meaningless.  But if you understand history, and you are aware of the patterns that immediately preceded previous stock market crashes, then you know how how huge both of those signs are.  During the summer of 2008, junk bond prices absolutely cratered as junk bond yields skyrocketed.  This was a very clear signal that financial markets were about to crash, and sure enough a couple of months later it happened.  Now the exact same thing is happening again.  The following comes from a Wall Street On Parade article that was posted on Tuesday entitled “Keep Your Eye on Junk Bonds: They’re Starting to Behave Like ‘08“…

According to data from Bloomberg, corporations have issued a stunning $9.3 trillion in bonds since the beginning of 2009. The major beneficiary of this debt binge has been the stock market rather than investment in modernizing the plant, equipment or new hires to make the company more competitive for the future. Bond proceeds frequently ended up buying back shares or boosting dividends, thus elevating the stock market on the back of heavier debt levels on corporate balance sheets.

Now, with commodity prices resuming their plunge and currency wars spreading, concerns of financial contagion are back in the markets and spreads on corporate bonds versus safer, more liquid instruments like U.S. Treasury notes, are widening in a fashion similar to the warning signs heading into the 2008 crash. The $2.2 trillion junk bond market (high-yield) as well as the investment grade market have seen spreads widen as outflows from Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) and bond funds pick up steam.

And right now we are seeing the most volatility in the junkiest of the junk bonds.

The following comes from Wolf Richter, and my jaw just about dropped to the floor when I first saw this…

This chart of yields at the riskiest end of the junk bond market – bonds rated CCC and below – shows what happened. These bonds have been selling off over the past 12 months, with exception of the sucker rally earlier this year, and their yields more than doubled from less than 7.9% in June a year ago to 16.2% by Thursday evening. And Thursday was a massacre:

riskiest junk bonds

On Thursday, yields jumped 2.6 percentage points, from 13.58% to 16.18%, as these junk bonds plunged. Those kinds of single-day vertigo-inducing sell-offs are rare in normal times, and there haven’t been any since the Financial Crisis.

Amazingly, the Federal Reserve is actually thinking about raising interest rates in this environment.

If that sounds like a really bad idea to you, that is because it is a really bad idea.

Raising interest rates would just add fuel to the fire of this junk bond rout.  DoubleLine Capital’s co-founder Jeffrey Gundlach agrees with me

To raise interest rates when junk bonds are nearly at a four-year low is a bad idea,” Gundlach said in a telephone interview.

Gundlach, widely followed for his prescient investment calls, said if the Fed begins raising interest rates in September, “it opens the lid on Pandora’s Box of a tightening cycle.”

Gundlach said the selling pressure in copper and commodity prices driven by worries over China’s growth outlook “should be a huge concern. It is the second-biggest economy in the world.”

Meanwhile, as Gundlach mentioned, the price of copper continues to plunge.

On Tuesday, it set a brand new six year low.  It is now the lowest that it has been since the days of the last financial crisis.

And as you can see from this excerpt from a recent Investment Research Dynamics article, the price of copper started crashing before the stock market crash of 2008…

I wanted to keep this simple and just look at what is considered perhaps the best barometer of global economic activity:

Copper Chart - Investment Research Dynamics

You’ll note that the price of copper is headed lower and is back to the price level where it was in the middle of 2008, right before the great financial collapse.  You’ll note that $3.6 trillion in Federal Reserve money printing – on top of trillions in Bank of Japan, ECB and People’s Bank of China money printing – has not been able to keep the price of copper from crashing again.

In case you haven’t figured it out by now, the global financial system is in real trouble.

Another sign that rough waters are ahead is the fact that global shipping has fallen into a dramatic slump.  The following comes from the Telegraph

World shipping has fallen into a deep slump over the late summer, dashing hopes of a quick recovery from the global trade recession earlier this year and heightening fears that the six-year economic expansion may be on its last legs.

Freight rates for container shipping from Asia to Europe fell by over 20pc in the second week of August, even though trade volumes should be picking up at this time of the year. The Shanghai Containerized Freight Index (SCFI) for routes to north European ports crashed by 23pc in five trading days.

Global economic activity is clearly slowing down, and there are 23 nations around the planet that are already experiencing stock market crashes.

The financial markets of the western world have not totally crashed just yet, but they are more leveraged and more vulnerable than ever.  The following comes from Zero Hedge

  • The REAL problem for the financial system is the bond bubble. In 2008 when the crisis hit it was $80 trillion. It has since grown to over $100 trillion.
  • The derivatives market that uses this bond bubble as collateral is over $555 trillion in size.
  • Many of the large multinational corporations, sovereign governments, and even municipalities have used derivatives to fake earnings and hide debt. NO ONE knows to what degree this has been the case, but given that 20% of corporate CFOs have admitted to faking earnings in the past, it’s likely a significant amount.
  • Corporations today are more leveraged than they were in 2007. As Stanley Druckenmiller noted recently, in 2007 corporate bonds were $3.5 trillion… today they are $7 trillion: an amount equal to nearly 50% of US GDP.
  • The Central Banks are now all leveraged at levels greater than or equal to where Lehman Brothers was when it imploded. The Fed is leveraged at 78 to 1. The ECB is leveraged at over 26 to 1. Lehman Brothers was leveraged at 30 to 1.
  • The Central Banks have no idea how to exit their strategies. Fed minutes released from 2009 show Janet Yellen was worried about how to exit when the Fed’s balance sheet was $1.3 trillion (back in 2009). Today it’s over $4.5 trillion.

As I explained during a recent interview with Kate Dalley of Fox News radio, what is coming should be obvious to anyone that is willing to look at the numbers honestly.

The global financial system is going to crash.

Yes, this crisis is going to take years to fully play out, but by the time it is all said and done it is going to be much worse than what we experienced back in 2008 and 2009.

So buckle up tight and hold on for your life, because we are in for one wild ride.

23 Nations Around The World Where Stock Market Crashes Are Already Happening

Globe Earth World Planet Ominous - Public DomainYou can stop waiting for a global financial crisis to happen.  The truth is that one is happening right now.  All over the world, stock markets are already crashing.  Most of these stock market crashes are occurring in nations that are known as “emerging markets”.  In recent years, developing countries in Asia, South America and Africa loaded up on lots of cheap loans that were denominated in U.S. dollars.  But now that the U.S. dollar has been surging, those borrowers are finding that it takes much more of their own local currencies to service those loans.  At the same time, prices are crashing for many of the commodities that those countries export.  The exact same kind of double whammy caused the Latin American debt crisis of the 1980s and the Asian financial crisis of the 1990s.

As you read this article, almost every single stock market in the world is down significantly from a record high that was set either earlier this year or late in 2014.  But even though stocks have been sliding in the western world, they haven’t completely collapsed just yet.

In much of the developing world, it is a very different story.  Emerging market currencies are crashing hard, recessions are starting, and equity prices are getting absolutely hammered.

Posted below is a list that I put together of 23 nations around the world where stock market crashes are already happening.  To see the stock market chart for each country, just click the link…

1. Malaysia

2. Brazil

3. Egypt

4. China

5. Indonesia

6. South Korea

7. Turkey

8. Chile

9. Colombia

10. Peru

11. Bulgaria

12. Greece

13. Poland

14. Serbia

15. Slovenia

16. Ukraine

17. Ghana

18. Kenya

19. Morocco

20. Nigeria

21. Singapore

22. Taiwan

23. Thailand

Of course this is just the beginning.  The western world is going to feel this kind of pain as well very soon.  I want to share with you an excerpt from an article that just appeared in the Telegraph entitled “Doomsday clock for global market crash strikes one minute to midnight as central banks lose control“.  You see, the Telegraph is not just one of the most important newspapers in the UK – it is truly one of the most important newspapers in the entire world.  When it speaks on financial matters, millions of people listen very carefully.  So for the Telegraph to declare that the countdown to a “global market crash” is “one minute to midnight” is a very, very big deal…

When the banking crisis crippled global markets seven years ago, central bankers stepped in as lenders of last resort. Profligate private-sector loans were moved on to the public-sector balance sheet and vast money-printing gave the global economy room to heal.

Time is now rapidly running out. From China to Brazil, the central banks have lost control and at the same time the global economy is grinding to a halt. It is only a matter of time before stock markets collapse under the weight of their lofty expectations and record valuations.

I encourage you to read the rest of that excellent article right here.  It contains lots of charts and graphs, and it discusses many of the exact same things that I have been hammering on for months.

When one of the newspapers of record for the entire planet starts sounding exactly like The Economic Collapse Blog, then you know that it is late in the game.

Others are sounding the alarm about an imminent global financial crash as well.  For example, just consider what Egon von Greyerz recently told King World News

Eric, I fear that this coming September – October all hell will break loose in the world economy and markets. A lot of factors point to that, both fundamental and technical indicators and this indicates that we could have a number of shocks this autumn.

Sadly, most investors will hold stocks, bonds and property and will see any decline in value as an opportunity. It will be a long time and a very big fall before they realize that the system will not help them this time because the central bankers have run out of ammunition to save the global financial system one more time. Yes, we will see more massive money printing, but it will just make things worse. And at some stage, which could be quite soon, real fear will set in, a fear of a magnitude the world has not experienced before.

Hmm – there is another example of someone talking about September.  It is funny how often that month keeps coming up.

And of course most of the major stock market crashes in U.S. history have been in the fall.  Just go back and take a look at what happened in 1929, 1987, 2001 and 2008.

The “smart money” has been pulling their money out of stocks for quite a while now, and at this point a lot of others have hopped on the bandwagon.  The following comes from CNBC

The flight of investor money from U.S. stocks has turned into a stampede.

In fact, the $78.7 billion leaving domestic equity-focused funds has been worse in 2015 than it was even during the financial crisis years, when the S&P 500 tumbled some 60 percent, according to data released Friday by Morningstar. The total is the highest since 1993.

Domestic equity funds surrendered $20.4 billion in July alone and have seen $158.6 billion in redemptions over the past 12 months. Even a strong flow of money into passively managed exchange-traded funds has been unable to offset the stream to the exit among retail investors, who generally focus more on mutual funds than ETFs.

A global financial crisis has already begun.

So those that were claiming that one would not happen in 2015 are already wrong.

Over the coming months we will find out how bad it will ultimately be.

Sometimes I get criticized for talking about these things.  There are a few people out there that don’t like all of the “doom and gloom” that I discuss on my website.  Apparently it is a bad thing to talk about the things that really matter and we should all just be “keeping up with the Kardashians” instead.

I consider myself just to be another watchman on the wall.  From our spots on the wall, watchmen such as myself all over the nation are sounding the alarm about what we clearly see coming.

If we saw what was coming and we did not warn the people, their blood would be on our hands.  But if we do warn the people, then we have done our duty.

Every day I just do the best that I can with what I have been given.  And there are many others just like me that are doing exactly the same thing.

Those that do not like the warning message are going to feel really stupid when things start falling apart all around them and they finally realize how wrong they truly were.

An Expert That Correctly Called The Last Two Stock Market Crashes Is Now Predicting Another One

Hussman ChartWhat I am about to share with you is quite stunning.  A well-respected financial expert that correctly predicted the last two stock market crashes is now warning that we are right on the verge of the next one.  John Hussman is a former professor of economics and international finance at the University of Michigan, and the information in his latest weekly market comment is staggering.  Since 1970, there have only been a handful of times when a combination of market signals that Hussman uses have indicated that a major market peak has been reached.  In 1972, 2000 and 2007 each of those peaks was followed by a dramatic stock market crash.  Now, for the first time since the last financial crisis, all four of those signals appeared once again during the week of July 17th.  If Hussman’s analysis is correct, this could very well mean that the next great stock market crash in the United States is imminent.

It was an excellent article by Jim Quinn of the Burning Platform that first alerted me to Hussman’s latest warning.  If you don’t follow Quinn’s work already, you should, because it is excellent.

When someone is repeatedly correct about the financial markets, we should all start paying attention.  Back in late 2007, Hussman warned us about what was coming in 2008, but most people did not listen.

Now he is sounding the alarm again.  According to Hussman, when there is a confluence of four key market indicators, that tells us that the market has peaked and is in danger of crashing.  The following comes from Newsmax

He cited the metric among the indicators that foreshadowed declines after peaks in 1972, 2000 and 2007:

*Less than 27 percent of investment advisers polled by Investors Intelligence who say they are bearish.

*Valuations measured by the Shiller price-to-earnings ratio are greater than 18 times.

*Less than 60 percent of S&P 500 stocks above their 200-day moving averages.

*Record high on a weekly closing basis.

The most recent warning was the week ended July 17, 2015,” Hussman said. “It’s often said that they don’t ring a bell at the top, and that’s true in many cycles. But it’s interesting that the same ‘ding’ has been heard at the most extreme peaks among them.”

It is quite rare for the market to set a new record high on a weekly closing basis and have more than 40 percent of stocks below their 200-day moving averages at the same time.  That is why a confluence of all these factors is fairly uncommon.  Hussman elaborated on this in his recent report

The remaining signals (record high on a weekly closing basis, fewer than 27% bears, Shiller P/E greater than 18, fewer than 60% of S&P 500 stocks above their 200-day average), are shown below. What’s interesting about these warnings is how closely they identified the precise market peak of each cycle. Internal divergences have to be fairly extensive for the S&P 500 to register a fresh overvalued, overbullish new high with more than 40% of its component stocks already falling – it’s evidently a rare indication of a last hurrah. The 1972 warning occurred on November 17, 1972, only 7 weeks and less than 4% from the final high before the market lost half its value. The 2000 warning occurred the week of March 24, 2000, marking the exact weekly high of that bull run. The 2007 instance spanned two consecutive weekly closing highs: October 5 and October 12. The final daily high of the S&P 500 was October 9 – right in between. The most recent warning was the week ended July 17, 2015.

The following is the chart that immediately followed the paragraph in his report that you just read…

Hussman Chart

When I first took a look at that chart I could hardly believe it.

It appears that Hussman’s signals are able to indicate major stock market crashes with stunning precision.

And considering the fact that we just hit a new “ding” for the first time since the last financial crisis, what Hussman is saying is more than just a little bit ominous.

According to Hussman this is not just a recent phenomenon either.  Even though advisory sentiment figures were not available back in 1929, he believes that his indicators would have given a signal that a market crash was imminent in August of that year as well

Though advisory sentiment figures aren’t available prior to the mid-1960’s, imputed data suggest that additional instances likely include the two consecutive weeks of August 19, 1929 and August 26, 1929. We can infer unfavorable market internals in that instance because we know that cumulative NYSE breadth was declining for months before the 1929 high. The week of the exact market peak would also be included except that stocks closed down that week after registering a final high on September 3, 1929. Another likely instance, based on imputed sentiment data, is the week of November 10, 1961, which was immediately followed by a market swoon into June 1962.

Of course the past is the past, and what has happened in the past will not necessarily happen in the future.

So is Hussman wrong this time?  With all of the other things that are happening in the financial world right now, I certainly would not bet against him.

Other financial professionals are concerned that a market crash could be imminent as well.  The following comes from a piece authored by Andrew Adams

More than 13% of stocks on the New York Stock Exchange are at 52-week lows, which is about 6 standard deviations above the average over the last three years (1.62%) and an extreme only seen one other time during said period (last October when the S&P 500 was percentage points away from a 10% correction).

This dichotomy has created what I believe to be the biggest question about the stock market right now – have we already experienced a stealth correction in the majority of stocks that will soon come to an end or will the market leaders finally succumb to the weight of the laggards and join in on the sell-off? The answer to this could end up being worth at least $2.2 trillion, which is how much money would essentially be wiped out of the stock market if we finally get the much-discussed 10% correction in the overall market (the total U.S. stock market capitalization was $22.5 trillion as of June 30, according to the Center for Research in Security Prices).

Sometimes, a picture is worth more than a thousand words.  I could share many more quotes from the “experts” about why they are concerned about a potential stock market collapse, but instead I want to share with you a “bonus chart” that Zero Hedge posted on Tuesday

Bonus Chart - Zero Hedge

Do you understand what that is saying?

In 2007 and 2008, junk bonds started crashing well before stocks did.

Now, we are witnessing a similar divergence.  If a similar pattern holds up this time, stocks have a long, long way to fall.

Like Hussman and so many others, I believe that a stock market crash and a new financial crisis are imminent.

The month of August is usually a slow month in the financial world, so hopefully we can get through it without too much chaos.  But once we roll into the months of September and October we will officially be in “the danger zone”.

Keep an eye on China, keep an eye on Europe, and keep listening for serious trouble at “too big to fail” banks all over the planet.

The next several months are going to be extremely significant, and we all need to be getting ready while we still can.