Global Stocks Enter Bear Market: One-Fifth Of All Worldwide Stock Market Wealth Is Already Gone

It’s official – global stocks have entered a bear market.  On Wednesday, we learned that the MSCI All-Country World Index has fallen a total of more than 20 percent from the peak of the market.  So that means that roughly one-fifth of all the stock market wealth in the entire world has already been wiped out.  How much more is it going to take before everyone will finally admit that we have a major financial crisis on our hands?  30 percent?  40 percent?  This new round of chaos began last night in Asia.  Japanese stocks were down more than 600 points and Hong Kong was down more than 700 points.  The nightmare continued to roll on when Europe opened, and European stocks ended up down about 3.2 percent when the markets over there finally closed.  In the U.S., it looked like it was going to be a truly historic day for a while there.  At one point the Dow had fallen 566 points, but a curious rebound resulted in a loss of only 249 points for the day.

As bad as things are in the U.S. right now, the truth is that we still have a long way to go to catch up with the rest of the planet.  Around the world, many major stock indexes are already down more than 30 or 40 percent.  Overall, the MSCI All-Country World Index is now down 20 percent, which officially puts us in bear market territory…

The MSCI All-Country World Index, which measures major developed and emerging markets, fell into a bear market Wednesday, with its decline from early last year now totaling more than 20 percent.

A plunge in U.S. stocks, which caused the Dow Jones industrial average to decline by more than 400 points at one point, pushed the global index into bear territory at midmorning during New York trading.

Japan fell into a bear market as well as the Nikkei 225 index dropped 3.7 percent Wednesday, bringing its total pullback to 22 percent from its high in June.

Much of this chaos is being driven by the price of oil.  On Wednesday the price of U.S. oil dropped below 28 dollars a barrel for a while, and as I write this article Brent crude is still below 28 dollars a barrel.

As energy prices continue to plummet, this is putting a tremendous amount of pressure on junk bonds.  On Wednesday JNK actually dipped beneath 32.00 for a time before rebounding at the end of the day.  I expect to see junk bonds continue to crash during the days ahead as investors feverishly race for the exits.

And of course global economic fundamentals continue to deteriorate as well.  Global trade is absolutely imploding and shipping rates have fallen to unprecedented levels.  If you can believe it, Bloomberg is reporting that it is now actually cheaper to rent a 1,100 foot merchant vessel than it is to rent a Ferrari…

Rates for Capesize-class ships plummeted 92 percent since August to $1,563 a day amid slowing growth in China. That’s less than a third of the daily rate of 3,950 pounds ($5,597) to rent a Ferrari F40, the price of which has also fallen slightly in the past few years, according to Nick Hardwick, founder of supercarexperiences.com. The Baltic Exchange’s rates reflect the cost of hiring the vessel but not fuel costs. Ships burn about 35 metric tons a day, implying a cost of about $4,000 at present prices, data compiled by Bloomberg show.

I could hardly believe that when I first read it.

But this is the kind of thing that we would expect to see happen when the greatest financial bubble in world history bursts.

The 200 trillion dollar global debt pyramid is now collapsing all around us, and the former chief economist of the Bank for International Settlements is warning that we could soon be facing “an avalanche of bankruptcies”…

The global financial system has become dangerously unstable and faces an avalanche of bankruptcies that will test social and political stability, a leading monetary theorist has warned.

“The situation is worse than it was in 2007. Our macroeconomic ammunition to fight downturns is essentially all used up,” said William White, the Swiss-based chairman of the OECD’s review committee and former chief economist of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS).

Of course it is a little late in the game to be warning us about this now.

At this point there is very little that can be done to stop the collapse that is already happening.

White went on to tell the Telegraph that things are going to become “uncomfortable for a lot of people who think they own assets that are worth something”…

“It will become obvious in the next recession that many of these debts will never be serviced or repaid, and this will be uncomfortable for a lot of people who think they own assets that are worth something,” he told The Telegraph on the eve of the World Economic Forum in Davos.

For years, I have been warning that the global financial system is an incredibly shaky house of cards, and now we have finally reached the endgame.

But the mainstream media in the United States is telling everyone not to panic.  Instead of a time to sell, the mainstream media is urging people to jump in and take advantage of all of the “great deals” in the stock market right now.  I really like what Mike Adams of Natural News had to say about what we are seeing…

The pathetically stupid and dishonest financial media is desperately running stories right now to maintain false faith in the markets, even while their own people are behind the scenes selling like mad. As long as they can keep the public believing in the “faith” of never-ending cheap money, they can bail out their own positions to suckers and fools who think a tiny dip in a massively overvalued, fraudulent market is a “buying opportunity.”

Watch for desperate headlines from propaganda financial outlets (such as MarketWatch.com) like, “10 reasons you shouldn’t sell” or “The upside potential of the market is HUGE!” These are psychological operations to try to persuade people that the collapse they’re seeing in global markets isn’t actually happening.

The financial chaos that has erupted in recent weeks has really caught a lot of people by surprise, but my readers knew that it was coming well in advance.

For months, I have been warning about this exact kind of scenario.

The deflationary financial meltdown that started during the last six months of 2015 is now making headlines all over the planet, and what we have experienced so far is just the tip of the iceberg.

The bears have gotten out of their cages, and global investors are running for cover.  Nobody is exactly sure what is going to happen tomorrow, but without a doubt the entire world will be watching.

Credit to Economic Collapse

Turkish border on brink of becoming a Russian warfront?

Turkey is "closely watching" Russian troop movements in Syria near its border, a government source in Ankara said on Friday, after reports that Russian servicemen had deployed in the Syrian border town of Qamishli.

Britain-based monitor the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights had said that Russia had sent a number of engineers to Qamishli to strengthen the runway and increase the capacity of an airport just south of the town.

Russia's reported move into Qamishli comes as Ankara and Moscow are experiencing their biggest crisis in years over the shooting down of a Russian war plane by Turkey on November 24.

Observers have said that Russia, which has for years been at loggerheads with Turkey over the Syrian conflict, may want to refit the airport as a Russian base, as happened in Hmeimim in Latakia province.

Qamishli lies just south of the Turkish border town of Nusaybin.

"I can say that Turkey is closely watching every military movement on its borders and especially the border with Syria," the government source told AFP, asking not to be named.

Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Tugrul Turkes said in parliament on Thursday that he did not see any threat in Russia's movements on the border.

"We are aware of Russia's movements. Russia's movements in Qamishli cannot constitute a threat for Turkey, which is a member of NATO."

But the Turkish army has already reinforced security by digging trenches in the border zone, the Hurriyet daily said. Top Russian military officials, including figures from the GRU military intelligence service, had already visited Qamishli, it added.

The Kremlin and Iran are the chief remaining allies of President Bashar al-Assad who Turkey wants to see ousted as the key to ending Syria's almost five year civil war.

Kurdish militia have established control over much over the northern Syrian border region in the past months after pushing out Islamic State (ISIS) jihadists.

But Ankara accuses the PYD of being the Syrian branch of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and has been alarmed by an apparent tightening of ties between Moscow and the Kurds after the plane downing.

AFP contributed to this report.

Credit to Arutz Sheva

After sandstorm, Israel braces for mega snowstorm

Israel is still recovering from the major sandstorm that hit on Monday, bringing with it dust particulates and air pollution for at least two days, but now the country is facing a new storm replete with snow, thunder, howling winds and all the rest of the bells and whistles.

The storm is to start building on Saturday morning, with local rain anticipated from the north of the country to the northern Negev, even as temperatures drop. Thunderstorms are predicted, and there are flood warnings in the Judean Desert and Dead Sea region, with a possibility of snow on Mount Hermon, Israel's only ski site.

Then on Sunday things will take a turn for the worse, as gale-force winds of 60 kilometers per hour (37 mph) with bursts of 90 kilometers per hour (56 mph) beat down on Israel, and the sea will roil in waves up to eight meters (26 feet) in height.

Snow is to come cascading down on Mount Hermon, the Golan Heights, as well as the mountainous regions in the center of the country, such as in Samaria and the Hevron region. Light snow is also possible in Jerusalem.

A cold wave of air from Russia apparently is the culprit behind Sunday's stormy fluctuations, and will bring with it hail and thunderstorms in addition to rains from the north to the Negev.

Temperatures in Tzfat (Safed) in the north are to drop as low as 3° C (37° F), Jerusalem 4° C (39° F), while the coast will remain slightly warmer, as Haifa and Tel Aviv are predicted to hit a maximum temperature of 12° C (53° F).

Then on Monday the rains will continue to fall, although they will be focused more on the center of the country and the south. The winds will die down gradually, although the temperature will remain bitingly cold. Snow may fall, mainly on the peaks in the mountainous regions, with sleet possibly coming down on Jerusalem.



Credit to israel national news

The Coming Hell Storm In Amerika

“It is not the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of the fight in the dog”

This axiom is soon going to be put to the test in the United States. In any upcoming civil conflict, the American people will be outnumbered by foreign troops and Artificially Intelligent Robots and other high tech devices designed to destroy any rebellion. The Russians could be coming down our chimneys this year. With the Russians and the Chinese gaining a foothold in the Middle East, the isolation of our allies by Putin’s superior strategies, and  the soon-t0-be-collapsing economy. The Ammon Bundy situation, if handled poorly by the feds, could result in violence so widespread that it makes Ferguson look like a walk in the proverbial part. Fifteen percent of the farmers will be leaving the business this year and this will leave America with a significant food shortage in a country where a quarter of the people are routinely hungry. Navy Seals are training for martial law and they have been told to view the public as their enemy. The Baltic Dry Index is going down faster than a submarine with screen doors. America will soon become Amerika.

Everything you have known or have owned will soon change and/or be ripped from your grasp. The world is being turned upside down as we comfortably watch from our sofas. Meanwhile, the NFL playoffs are on this Sunday. Gerald Celente likes to say that when people lose everything, they lose it. We are about to witness the true meaning of these words.

This Administration Has Been Preparing for Civil Unrest for Years

You are the terrorist and DHS has been practicing.

Who are the massive amounts of DHS acquired bullets for?

Do you remember when DHS accumulated 2.2 billion rounds of ammunition as well as 27oo armored personnel carriers? Do you remember all the pictures, videos and related documents which showed Russians training at places like Fort Carson, or were training inside of DHS vehicles, or in the Smoky Mountains outside of Gatlinburg, TN? Do you remember the articles I have written about how Obama has compromised the defenses of Alaska,

This picture and depicts Russian soldiers at Ft. Carson. The Russians and other foreign troops (e.g. Germans, Canadians, Danes) were part of Jade Helm. They are here to carry out the mission should American troops stand down.

thus, making them vulnerable to being overrun by a Russian invasion. Do you remember how I detailed, in several articles how the Russians had a significant military presence at the North Pole and Obama has done nothing to negate any of this. I am certain that many of you recall how I predicted that Germany will one day leave NATO and turn to Germany. We are witnessing this in real time with each trade agreement Germany signs with Russia. What does it all mean? It means that America is about to get clobbered, first at home with serious civil unrest which will likely grow into revolutionary status. And later, China and Russia have been given all that they need by this administration to destroy America in a single day. If you wonder why America is not mentioned in the final days in Revelations, you may be witnessing the reasons why.

Is Civil Disobedience, Or Revolution, America’s Only Viable Option?

I certainly pray that widespread violence will not become the order of the day. While some of the 280+ command level officers fired by Obama are privately informing many of us in the media about the current state of affairs, they are not on the record.  Other than self-preservation, the major reason why these former military commanders are not on the record is because some of them are reportedly involved in planning a guerrilla war against the occupation forces commanded by this administration under the auspices of DHS. One of  my sources state that the coming civil war will be a guerrilla war and it will be prolonged. Another former General has told me that the American people do not have the stomach for guerrilla war and that majority of our people will lay down like sheep and be slaughtered. The latter point will be addressed in a future article. This article deals with an analysis of the means of forcible resistance, available to the American people, from which to resist the tyrannical takeover of the United States government by the banksters and their minions.

What do you think? As you read the beginning of the article with a mention of all the grievances in the first few paragraphs, I can see how many think that major internal conflict is going to be visited upon this country, which will be followed by World War III with Russia and China.

Conclusion

The next article will address what kind of conflict will take place and what your likely role would be in this potential scenario. In the meantime, about all any of us can do is to pray for calm leadership and that peace will be maintained.

Credit to Common Sense

Winter Storm "Jonas" Blizzard Of Biblical Proportions

Italy Races To Defuse €200 Billion Bad Loan Time Bomb With "Bad Bank"

When Portugal “surprised” senior Novo Banco bondholders with a €2 billion bail-in late last month, the market got an unwelcome reminder that euro periphery banks are far from “solid.”

Novo was supposed to house the “good” assets salvaged from the wreckage of failed lender Banco Espirito Santo, but as it turned out, a lot of those “good” assets were actually bad, and Novo ended up needing to plug a €1.4 billion hole. Initially, the plan was to sell assets but seizing €2 billion from bondholders ended up being a whole lot easier and far more efficient.

News of the bail-in came just a week after Lisbon announced that a second bank - Banif - would need state aid after running out of cash to repay a previous cash injection from the government.

As we head into the weekend, periphery banks are back in the spotlight, only this time in Italy where PM Matteo Renzi is scrambling to put the finishing touches on a plan to guarantee hundreds of billions of NPLs sitting on the books of Italian banks.

Talks with the EU Commission “have already dragged on for two years,” FT notes and need to be concluded over the next few days lest “the whole initiative should collapse.”

Of course Renzi missed what amounted to a deadline on “fixing” the problem under the old rules governing bank resolutions. 

One reason the Novo Banco and Banif bail-in and bailout (respectively) were pushed through in what appeared to be a kind of haphazard, ad hoc fashion was because new rules came into effect on January 1 that would have put uninsured depositors on the hook for losses. The same rules require 8% “of a bank’s liabilities to be wiped out before public money can be used,” FT adds.

In short, creditors at Italy’s banks would need to take a hit before Renzi’s government would be allowed to extend state aid. That is unless Italy can devise some kind of end-around, which is precisely what Renzi is attempting to do now.

“Even if approved, the scheme will not be a panacea for the problems afflicting the banks because Italy will have had to limit the impact of the scheme significantly to comply with EU state aid rules,” FT goes on to note. “While previous discussions had focused on the setting up of a sector-wide bad bank, Italy has now shifted to proposing a lighter-touch guarantee system in an attempt to avoid it being designated by the commission as state aid.”

So “state aid” that isn’t “state aid.” Got it.

"Even if we reach a deal over the weekend it would not be decisive... (the bad bank) should have been done before the new rules came into force,” Renzi said on Thursday, acknowledging that Italy may have missed its window.

Shares in Italian banks have been in a veritable death spiral of late but got a bit of respite on Thursday as news of the potential deal crossed the wires. “The situation is much less serious than the market thinks,” Renzi said, in what is perhaps the surest sign yet that things are indeed very serious. He added that his economy minister is "working miracles" to solve the banking sector's €200 billion euro bad loan problem.

"The recent turbulence around some Italian banks shows that our credit system – solid and strong thanks to Italians’ extraordinarily high household savings – still needs consolidation in order for there to be fewer but stronger banks," the PM wrote in an op-ed for The Guardian. "When the market speaks, as it has done in recent days, it is right that bank executives and shareholders comprehend the need for serious and swift intervention." 

Shares of Monte Paschi - the world's oldest bank - surged 43% yesterday but as Bloomberg's Mark Cudmore notes, the stock is still worth less than 1% of its 2007 peak value.

On Friday, things seemed to be moving towards an agreement. "[We're] working as quickly as we can and we have been working on a continuous basis for months to reach an agreement with the Commission," Italian FinMin Pier Carlo Padoan said in Davos.

• ITALY, EU DISCUSSING PRICING OF GUARANTEES: PADOAN
• ITALY’S TALKS WITH EU ON BAD BANK DOWN TO ‘DETAILS’: PADOAN

So why is the EU suddenly willing to concede to the plan, Cudmore asks? Well first because this is all unfolding against a backdrop of record low interest rates. If rates were to ever rise (chuckle) then these sour loans would turn even sour-er-er. 

Additionally, you might recall that one of the biggest stumbling blocks for Europe during the sovereign debt crisis was the link between the banks and sovereigns. Governments depended on domestic banks to buy their debt, but as borrowing costs rose, the banks took a hit on their government bonds, inhibiting their ability to continuously finance government deficits, creating a decisively negative feedback loop that very nearly drove the PIIGS to the brink of implosion. Well three and a half years after "whatever it takes" and Italy is still sitting on a debt pile that amounts to 133% of GDP. If the banks are saddled with €200 billion in bad loans, they may not be able or willing to roll that debt, which sets the stage for Italian borrowing costs to rise.

Commenting on the EU's about face, Cudmore notes that "the authorities’ ability to change their mind as the situation evolves may temporarily help reassure the markets, but ultimately it could shake confidence in the euro."

Right. And Italy's beleaguered banks aren't out of the woods yet. “I wouldn’t say it is over,” Francesco Galietti, an analyst at Policy Sonar in Rome told The Guardian. “Everyone is giving the government some extra hours to come up with a solution. Once there is a solution, it will either stabilise the situation or things will come sharply down.”

Credit to Zero Hedge

The U.S. Is At The Center Of The Global Economic Meltdown

While the economic implosion progresses this year, there will be considerable misdirection and disinformation as to the true nature of what is taking place. As I have outlined in the past, the masses were so ill informed by the mainstream media during the Great Depression that most people had no idea they were actually in the midst of an “official” depression until years after it began. The chorus of economic journalists of the day made sure to argue consistently that recovery was “right around the corner.” Our current depression has been no different, but something is about to change.

Unlike the Great Depression, social crisis will eventually eclipse economic crisis in the U.S. That is to say, our society today is so unequipped to deal with a financial collapse that the event will inevitably trigger cultural upheaval and violent internal conflict. In the 1930s, nearly 50% of the American population was rural. Farmers made up 21% of the labor force. Today, only 20% of the population is rural. Less than 2% work in farming and agriculture. That’s a rather dramatic shift from a more independent and knowledgeable land-utilizing society to a far more helpless and hapless consumer-based system.

What’s the bottom line? About 80% of the current population in the U.S. is more than likely inexperienced in any meaningful form of food production and self-reliance.

The rationale for lying to the public is certainly there. Economic and political officials could argue that to reveal the truth of our fiscal situation would result in utter panic and immediate social breakdown. When 80% of the citizenry is completely unprepared for a decline in the mainstream grid, a loss of savings through falling equities and a loss of buying power through currency destruction, their first response to such dangers would be predictably uncivilized.

Of course, the powers-that-be are not really interested in protecting the American people from themselves. They are interested only in positioning their own finances and resources in the most advantageous investments while using our loss and fear to extract more centralization, more control and more consent. Thus, the hiding of economic decline is enacted because the decline itself is useful to the elites.

And just to be clear for those who buy into the propaganda, the U.S. is indeed in a speedy decline.

In 'Lies You Will Hear As The Economic Collapse Progresses', published in summer of last year, I predicted that “Chinese contagion” would be used as the scapegoat for the downturn in order to hide the true source: American wealth destruction. Today, as the Dow and other markets plummet and oil markets tank due to falling demand and glut inventories, all we seem to hear from the mainstream talking heads and the people who parrot them in various forums is that the U.S. is the “only stable economy by comparison” and the rest of the world (mainly China) is a poison to our otherwise exemplary financial health. This is delusional fiction.

The U.S. is the No. 1 consumer market in the world with a 29% overall share and a 21% share in energy usage, despite having only 5 percent of the world’s total population. If there is a global slowdown in consumption, manufacturing, exports and imports, then the first place to look should be America.

Trucking freight in the U.S. is in steep decline, with freight companies pointing to a “glut in inventories” and a fall in demand as the culprit.

Morgan Stanley’s freight transportation update indicates a collapse in freight demand worse than that seen during 2009.

The Baltic Dry Index, a measure of global freight rates and thus a measure of global demand for shipping of raw materials, has collapsed to even more dismal historic lows. Hucksters in the mainstream continue to push the lie that the fall in the BDI is due to an “overabundance of new ships.” However, the CEO of A.P. Moeller-Maersk, the world’s largest shipping line, put that nonsense to rest when he admitted in November that “global growth is slowing down” and “[t]rade is currently significantly weaker than it normally would be under the growth forecasts we see.”

Maersk ties the decline in global shipping to a FALL IN DEMAND, not an increase in shipping fleets.

This point is driven home when one examines the real-time MarineTraffic map, which tracks all cargo ships around the world. For the past few weeks, the map has remained almost completely inactive with the vast majority of the world’s cargo ships sitting idle in port, not traveling across oceans to deliver goods. The reality is, global demand has fallen down a black hole, and the U.S. is at the top of the list in terms of crashing consumer markets.

To drive the point home even further, the U.S. is by far the world’s largest petroleum consumer. Therefore, any sizable collapse in global oil demand would have to be predicated in large part on a fall in American consumption. Oil inventories are now overflowing, indicating an unheard-of crash in energy use and purchasing.

U.S. petroleum consumption was actually lower in 2014 than it was in 1997 and 25% lower than earlier projections predicted. A large part of this reduction in gas use has been attributed to fewer vehicle miles traveled. Though oil markets have seen massive price cuts, the lack of demand continued through 2015.

This collapse in consumption is reflected partially in newly adjusted 4th quarter GDP forecasts by the Federal Reserve, which are now slashed down to 0.7%.  And remember, Fed and government calculate GDP stats by counting government spending of taxpayer money as "production" or "commerce".  They also count parasitic programs like Obamacare towards GDP as well.  If one were to remove government spending of taxpayer funds from the equation, real GDP would be far in the negative.  That is to say, if the fake numbers are this bad, then the real numbers must be horrendous.

And finally, let’s talk about Wal-Mart. There is a good reason why mainstream pundits are attempting to marginalize Wal-Mart’s sudden announcement of 269 store closures, 154 of them within the U.S. with at least 10,000 employees being laid off. Admitting weakness in Wal-Mart means admitting weakness in the U.S. economy, and they don’t want to do that.

Wal-Mart is America’s largest retailer and largest employer. In 2014, Wal-Mart announced a sweeping plan to essentially crush neighborhood grocery markets with its Wal-Mart Express stores, building hundreds within months. Today, those Wal-Mart Express stores are being shut down in droves, along with some supercenters. Their top business model lasted around a year before it was abandoned.

Some in the mainstream argue that this is not necessarily a sign of economic decline because Wal-Mart claims it will be building 200 to 240 new stores worldwide by 2017. This is interesting to me because Wal-Mart just suffered its steepest stock drop in 27 years on reports that projected sales will fall by 6% to 12% for the next two years.

It would seem to me highly unlikely that Wal-Mart would close 154 stores in the U.S. (269 stores worldwide) and then open 240 other stores during a projected steep crash in sales that caused the worst stock trend in the company’s history. I think it far more likely that Wal-Mart executives are attempting to appease shareholders with expansion promises they do not plan to keep.

I am going to call it here and now and predict that most of these store sites will never see construction and that Wal-Mart will continue to make cuts, either with store closings, employee layoffs or both.

As the above data indicates, global demand is disintegrating; and the U.S. is a core driver.

The best way to sweep all these negative indicators under the rug is to fabricate some grand idea of outside threats and fiscal dominoes. It is much easier for Americans to believe our country is being battered from without rather than destroyed from within.

Does China have considerable fiscal issues including debt bubble issues? Absolutely. Is this a catalyst for global collapse? No. China’s problems are many but if there is a first “domino” in the chain, then the U.S. economy claims that distinction.

China is the largest exporter in the world, not the largest consumer. If anything, a crash in China’s economy is only a REFLECTION of an underlying collapse in U.S. demand for Chinese goods (among others). That is to say, the mainstream dullards have it backward; a crash in China is a herald of a larger collapse in U.S. markets. A crash in China is a symptom of the greater fiscal disease in America. The U.S. is the primary cause; it is not the victim of Chinese contagion. And the crisis in the U.S. will ultimately be far worse by comparison.

I wrote in 'What Fresh Horror Awaits The Economy After Fed Rate Hike?', published before Christmas:

"Market turmoil is a guarantee given the fact that banks and corporations have been utterly reliant on near-zero interest rates and free overnight lending from the Fed. They have been using these no-cost and low-cost loans primarily for stock buybacks, purchasing back their own stocks and reducing the number of shares on the market, thereby artificially elevating the value of the remaining shares and driving up the market as a whole. Now that near-zero lending is over, these banks and corporations will not be able to afford constant overnight borrowing, and the buybacks will cease. Thus, stock markets will crash in the near term.

This process has already begun with increased volatility leading up to and after the Fed rate hike. Watch for far more erratic stock movements (300 to 500 points or more) up and down taking place more frequently, with the overall trend leading down into the 15,000-point range for the Dow in the first two quarters of 2016. Extraordinary but short lived positive increases in the markets will occur at times (Christmas and New Year’s tend to result in positive rallies), but shock rallies are just as much a sign of volatility and instability as shock crashes."

Markets moved immediately into crash territory after the new year began. This was an easy prediction to make and one that I have been reiterating for months — just as the timing of the Fed rate hike was an easy prediction to make, based on the Fed’s history of deliberately increasing instability through bad policy as the economy moves into deflationary spirals. The Fed did it during the Great Depression and is doing it again today.

It is no coincidence that global markets began to tank after the first Fed rate hike; no-cost overnight lending to banks and corporations was the key to maintaining equities in a relatively static position.  As the U.S. loses momentum, the world loses momentum.  As the Fed ends outright stimulation and manipulation, the house of cards falls.

I have said it many times and I’ll say it yet again: If you think the Fed’s motivation is to prolong or protect the U.S. economy and currency, then you will never understand why it takes the policy actions it does. If you understand and accept the fact that the Fed is a saboteur working carefully and incrementally toward the destruction of the U.S. to make way for a new globally centralized system, everything falls into place.

To summarize, the U.S. economy as we know it is not slated to survive the next few years.Read my article 'The Economic Endgame Explained' for more in-depth information on why a collapse is being engineered and what the openly admitted goal is, including the referenced 1988 article from The Economist titled “Get Ready A World Currency In 2018,” which outlines the plan for a reduction of the dollar and the U.S. system in order to make way for a global basket reserve currency (Special Drawing Rights).

It is astonishingly foolish to assume that even though the U.S. has held the title of king of global consumption share for decades, that our economy is somehow not a primary faulty part in the sputtering global economic engine.  Economies are falling because demand is falling.   Demand is falling because Americans are not buying.  Americans are not buying because Americans are broke. Americans are broke because central bank policy has created an environment of wealth destruction. This wealth destruction in the U.S. has been ongoing, but only now is it becoming truly visible.  The volatility we see in developing nations is paltry compared to the financial chaos we now face.  Anyone who attempts to dismiss the dangers of a U.S. breakdown or the threat to the unprepared public is either an idiot, or they are trying to divert and distract you from reality. The coming months will undoubtedly verify this.

Credit to Zero Hedge