The Yield Curve Has Not Been This Flat In 10 Years, And Many Believe This Is A Sign That A Recession Is Imminent

By Michael Snyder

Whenever we see an inverted yield curve, a recession almost always follows, and that is why many analysts are deeply concerned that the yield curve is currently the flattest that it has been in about a decade.  In other words, according to one of the most reliable indicators that we have, we are closer to another recession than we have been at any point since the last financial crisis.  And when you combine this with all of the other indicators that are screaming that a new crisis is on the horizon, a very troubling picture emerges.  Hopefully this will turn out to be a false alarm, but it is looking more and more like big economic trouble is coming in 2018.

The professionals on Wall Street take the yield curve very, very seriously, and the fact that it has gotten so flat has many of them extremely concerned.  The following comes from Business Insider…

In the past, including before the Great Recession of 2007-2009, an inverted yield curve, where long-term interest rates fall below their short-term counterparts, has been a reliable predictor of recessions. The bond market is not there yet, but a sharp recent flattening of the yield curve has many in the markets watchful and concerned.

The US yield curve is now at its flattest in about 10 years — in other words, since around the time a major credit crunch of was gaining steam. The gap between two-year note yields and their 10-year counterparts has shrunk to just 0.63 percentage point, the narrowest since November 2007.

If the yield curve continues to get even flatter, it will spark widespread selling on Wall Street, and if it actually inverts that will set off total panic.

And with each passing day, even more of the “experts” are warning of imminent market trouble.  For example, just consider what Art Cashin told CNBC the other day…

Investors may want to take cover soon.

Art Cashin, UBS’ director of floor operations at the New York Stock Exchange, says a “split personality” is manifesting itself in the stock market, and it could hit Wall Street where it hurts at any moment.

“We’ve been setting record new highs, and often the breadth has been negative. We’ve had more declines than advances,” Cashin said Thursday on CNBC’s “Futures Now.”

When the financial markets finally do crash, it won’t exactly be a surprise.

In fact, we are way, way overdue for financial disaster.

Since the last financial crisis, we have been on the greatest debt binge in human history.  U.S. government debt has gone from $10 trillion to $20 trillion, corporate debt has doubled, and U.S. consumer debt has now risen to nearly $13 trillion.

Debt brings consumption from the future into the present, and so it increases short-term economic activity at the expense of long-term financial health.

But we simply cannot continue to grow debt much, much faster than the overall economy is growing.  I have never talked to anyone that believes that our debt binge is sustainable, and I doubt that I ever will.

The only reason why we have even gotten this far is because interest rates have been pushed to historically low levels.  If the average rate of interest on U.S. government debt even returned to the long-term average, we would be paying more than a trillion dollars a year in interest on the national debt and the game would be over.  Unprecedented intervention by the Federal Reserve and other global central banks has pushed interest rates way below the real rate of inflation, and that has bought us extra time.

But now the Federal Reserve and other global central banks are reversing course in unison, and global financial markets are already starting to decline.

The only way we can keep putting off the next financial crisis is if we continue our unprecedented debt binge and if global central banks continue to artificially prop up the financial markets.

Of course more debt and more central bank manipulation would just make the eventual financial disaster even worse, but that is what we are faced with at this point.

Most people simply don’t understand the gravity of the situation.  Nothing was ever fixed after the last financial crisis.  Instead, we went on the greatest debt binge that humanity has ever seen, and central banks started creating trillions of dollars out of thin air and recklessly injected that hot money into the financial system.

So now we are in the terminal phase of the largest financial bubble in human history, and there is no easy way out.

We basically have two choices.  We can have a horrific financial crisis now, or we can have one a little bit later.

Usually the choice is “later”, and that is why our leaders have been piling on the debt and global central banks have been recklessly creating money.

But it is inevitable that our bad choices will catch up with us eventually, and when that happens the pain that we are going to experience is going to be absolutely off the charts.

Credit to Economic Collapse

Bank of America: Flash Crash in 2018, War to Follow

In its analysis for the first half of 2018, Bank of America is warning investors of a “flash crash” the likes of 1987, 1994, 1998. And it warns that the central bank policies that have created the current conditions can’t be reversed, leading to an inevitable war to follow the crash.

In 1987, known as “Black Monday,” global stock markets lost huge portions of their valuations, ranging from 60 percent in New Zealand to 23 percent in the U.S. In 1994, the Great Bond Massacre saw global bond markets collapse, starting in the U.S. and Japan, resulting in treasury rates skyrocketing through the first nine months of the year.

In 1998, the Dow Jones Industrial Average saw its greatest single-day point loss of 512 points. The collapse was brought on by major financial crises involving the “emerging markets” in Russia, Thailand, and Poland.

The bearish outlook is based on large part because the investment script has been flipped from beginning to end of 2017. Going into the new year, the markets will be “positioning now long, not short; profit expectations high, not low; policy close to max stimulus; peak positioning, peak profits, peak policy stimulus means peak asset returns in 2018.”

The report strongly suggests the “tech bubble” is about to burst, if not in 2018, then early in 2019. It also hints at the very strong possibility of civil war, possibly boiling over into a global war, as a result of the very policies that have gotten us where we’re at.

The analysis strongly recommends buying gold now.
Credit to Trunews

A Warning to Prepare

It's now CRIMINAL to grow food in your own yard!

Is Global Rash of Mysterious Booms and Fireballs End-of-Days Announcement?

“Then a spirit carried me away, and behind me I heard a great roaring sound: ‘Blessed is the Presence of Hashem, in His place.’” Ezekiel 3:12 (The Israel Bible™)

(Shutterstock)

A wave of loud and inexplicable booms thundering in the skies over America and abroad coinciding with dramatic sightings of fireballs has NASA scientists scratching their heads, but Bible-based experts note that these events are explicitly described as preceding the Messiah and End-of-Days. 

Last Tuesday, an unmistakeable thundering ‘boom’ shook a wide swathe of northern Alabama at around 1:45 PM local time.

James Spann‏Verified account @spann

Home video during the "Bama Boom" today at 1:49 p.m. CST.... from Amy Phelps

0:43

8:46 PM - 14 Nov 2017

Though the boom was large enough to register on seismographs, geologists ruled out the possibility of a localized tremor. This left scientists to ponder two possibilities: either the Bama Boom, as it was dubbed, was an enormous sonic boom or it was the result of a meteor entering the atmosphere.

Inquiries with aviation authorities, civil and military, were fruitless, leading to the conclusion that the loud sound heard across seven counties was astronomically sourced.

NWS Birmingham

✔@NWSBirmingham

Re: loud boom heard: we do not see anything indicating large fire/smoke on radar or satellite; nothing on USGS indicating an earthquake. We don't have an answer, and can only hypothesize with you. 1) sonic boom from aircraft; 2) meteorite w/ current Leonid shower?

2:28 PM - Nov 14, 2017


NASA was clearly stymied, confirming the sonic disturbance but unable to offer an explanation for the phenomenon It speculated that the boom “could have been generated by a bolide, larger supersonic aircraft or a ground explosion.” A bolide is a large meteor that explodes in the atmosphere. Eyewitnesses reported a vapor trail, and NASA said that points to a meteor or aircraft, though none was reported to be in the area or detected at the time.

The Bama Boom wasn’t an isolated incident. One day later, residents in Idaho were shaken by a similar boom, and on Saturday, a boom was reported in Michigan. In fact, throughout the week there were reports of loud unexplained booms in Louisiana, Florida, and Texas. At the same time, booms were reported in other countries, including Russia and Denmark.

Loud and disturbing sounds are described in Jewish sources as being associated with the Messiah. Rabbi Yisroel ben Eliezer, often called the Baal Shem Tov, was an 18th century Jewish mystical rabbi who founded the Hasidic sect. Stories of him describe an incident on Yom Kippur in which his spirit went up to heaven and saw the Messiah “surrounded by a loud noise”. 

This was later explained by his great-grandson, Rabbi Nachman, who wrote that the unprecedented noise accompanying the arrival of the Messiah served a practical purpose. Rebbe Nachman noted that in the Talmud (oral law) it is stated that the Messiah will come by way of ‘distraction’. 

“The arrival of the Messiah will be sudden and surprising, accompanied by a loud noise that will cause everyone to stop what they are doing…so they may run to greet Him,” explained Rabbi Nachman.

This recent spate of aural phenomena coincides with a wave of fireball sightings, two of which were filmed over Phoenix last Tuesday night, just a few hours after the disturbing sound in Alabama.

NASA was a witness to these celestial events. Italian astronaut Paolo Nespoli, who is currently on board the International Space Station, filmed a fireball that flew over South Africa two weeks 

One fireball spotted over Finland last Thursday dramatically lit up the nighttime sky in what scientists described as “the glow of 100 moons”, which was accompanied by a substantial shock wave.

Rabbi Yosef Berger, the rabbi of King David’s Tomb on Mount Zion, pointed out that the scientists’ description of the fireball event conformed to the end-of-days prophecy in Zechariah.

But there shall be a continuous day—only Hashem knows when—of neither day nor night, and there shall be light at eventide. Zechariah 14:7

“The Zohar (the basis of Jewish esoteric learning) describes warring stars as accompanying the Messiah,” Rabbi Berger explained. “A large pillar of flame will also appear, as was seen by the Children of Israel in the desert.”

Rabbi Berger also pointed out that the prophet Joel prophesied astronomical phenomena as signalling the imminent arrival of the Messiah.

Before the great and terrible day of Hashem comes, I will set portents in the sky and on earth: Blood and fire and pillars of smoke. Joel 3:3

Despite the loud sounds and explosive fireballs, Rabbi Berger explained that like Elijah’s epiphany, this process will culminate quietly. 

After the earthquake—fire; but Hashem was not in the fire. And after the fire—a soft murmuring sound. I Kings 19:12

“This can be expected before Moshiach (Messiah),” Rabbi Berger said. “But in the end, the true meeting is not like that. It won’t be loud and flashy, but because of that, it will be much more powerful.”

Credit to breakingisraelnews.com
Read more at https://www.breakingisraelnews.com/98107/prophesied-sounds-messiah-heard-around-world-mysterious-booms/#kXSxQhwC537Qr61h.99

Massive"Booms" Around the Planet/As Earth Slows Rotation.

Socialism always promises heaven and gives hell...

In the early hours of Thursday, November 2, the Maduro regime certified its latest failure with what they promised would never happen: technical default. With his usual arrogance, Maduro issued a “decree” demanding “the refinancing and restructuring of the debt as of November 3.” That is, default.

The bad news for investors or high-yield hunters is that the likelihood of being swindled again is almost 100%.

Chavez once said “put me oil at zero and Venezuela will not suffer,” and Maduro stated that “a revolutionary government with economic power as the one I preside has plans to surpass any situation arising from any price of oil.”

Reality has now kicked in.

Venezuela was not destroyed by low oil prices, but by high socialism.

Socialism has led Venezuela to an unparalleled economic disaster . No, it’s not “the price of oil.” Venezuela is the only OPEC country that has fallen into default, depression, and hyperinflation. It’s not oil, it’s socialism.

The management disaster is spectacular and the greatest example of the devastating effect of socialism is the state-owned oil company. PdVSA, the national oil company, has gone from being one of the most efficient and profitable twenty years ago, to end up importing oil.

Although Venezuela has the largest reserves of crude oil in the world — 296 billion barrels — the country began importing oil last year. Its production is less than 2.7 million barrels per day, a drop of 20% in less than two decades, while the Chavez.Maduro regime multiplied its workforce by five, to 175,000 “workers”.

Brutal cost increases, spectacular worsening of production, collapse in margins and plundering of the cash to pay for subsidies led the company from being one of the most profitable and with the best balance sheet in the world to borrow more than 43 billion US dollars.

During the presidency of Maduro, the regime has led the country to hyperinflation, which already exceeds 2000% and a shortage of more than 80% in goods, while foreign currency reserves have plummeted 64%, the worst level in forty years.

This disaster is not because of low oil prices, it is a reflection of the reality of what socialism does. No oil producing country shows such atrocious figures, not even close.

In fact, if anything can be said about the fall in oil prices is that the vast majority of producing countries have managed it admirably, with GDP drops that ended being much lower than feared, keeping their reserves in foreign currency at comfortable levels, and adapting to the new reality quickly and efficiently. Almost all, except Venezuela.

The True Economic War in Venezuela: the Chavez-Maduro Regime Against the People

Venezuela had 12,700 private companies when Chávez took power, according to Conindustria. Today there is less than one-third of that figure. To the economic destruction, the regime added the assault on private property with expropriations of more than 690 companies in twelve years. Today, those expropriated companies are technically bankrupt and those that survive are zombies producing less than half of the figures prior to the confiscation.

As always happens in socialism, the first thing was to deny reality. “Investors should not worry about the debt repayments of 2017 and 2018,” said Rafael Ramírez. And indeed, they should not have worried. They should have panicked. One of the largest investment banks in the world, which bought $ 2.8 billion of bonds is now facing the false “restructuring” decreed by Maduro.

Maduro “decrees” restructuring as if it were a miracle. But it is another nail in the coffin of the regime. Economic destruction is not only not changing, it is getting worse.

Credit to Zero Hedge

A Closer Look Into How We Were Tricked Into Believing The Economy Has Recovered

Meanwhile In Sweden, Crime Hits All Time Highs

It appears President Trump, having warned that Sweden's huge intake of refugees would lead to "problems like they never thought possible," has been vindicated.

Following media mockery and Sweden's official Twitter account responding:

“Hey Don, this is @Sweden speaking! It’s nice of you to care, really, but don’t fall for the hype. Facts: We’re OK!”

And now nine months later, Trump's worst fears - and the lies of Swedish authorities - have been confirmed.

Bloomberg reports that the number of Swedes who were victims of crimes such as fraud and sexual offenses jumped to the highest level on record last year.

A survey by the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention showed that 15.6 percent of people suffered one or more offences against the person (defined in the survey as assault, threats, sexual offences, robbery, fraud or harassment) last year. That’s up from 13.3 percent in 2015 and the highest number recorded since the annual Swedish Crime Survey started in 2006.

The number of offences against individuals “was at a relatively stable level 2005 to 2014, at 11.3 percent to 13.1 percent, but the last two years show an increase,” the council said in the report published this week.

Now... what changed in the last two years in Europe? ...

The crimes “that have had the clearest development in the past few years are harassment, fraud and sexual offences,” the agency said.

Of the six types of offences against the person, five of six rose to their highest level on record last year. The number of assault cases reached its second-highest level.

“Young women aged between 16 and 24 is the group that’s most subject to sexual offences, with 14 percent of young women stating that they were victims of at least one such crime during 2016,” the council said.

“Among men in the same age group, 1.2 percent said they had been victims.”

And on the heels of that; buoyed by the stunning success of the It’s Ok To Be White campaign, Squawker reports that 4chan's infamous politically incorrect board has now seemingly moved on to their next example of expert level political trolling... taking aim at modern Sweden.

Operation Swedistan as users have taken to calling it, follows the usual 4chan strategy of attempting to trick extremist liberals into siding with a progressive cause that would seem ridiculous or even outright appalling to the average person.

In this case the goal is simple, convince Sweden to change its flag design. More specifically, to remove the Christian cross and install an Islamic crescent in its place.

To be clear, no one involved expects or or wants this to actually happen obviously. But if even one actual Swedish official is perceived to, for even for a moment actually consider implementing such a change. The hope is that will be enough to upset what the operations organizers refer to as the “left-leaning normie” masses.

A full rundown of the basic strategy can be seen here below.

A formal mass petition to the Swedish Prime Minister has also been launched sitting at over 2,300 signatures in less than 24 hours time already. Among other things it states the following.

“The Swedish flag is a constant reminder of our dark and oppressive past.Refugees and migrants are forced to live under its Christian Cross; a symbol of the Crusades and the slaughter of millions of innocent Islamic lives in Sweden’s past that makes them feel unwelcome and unsafe.

Sweden should be a safe space for everyone. As our outdated national symbol gradually becomes the banner of Xenophobic and racist extremist groups, we must think into the future. A future of peace, understanding and tolerance.”

We leave you with Sweden's new ambassador to Iceland's recent comments that sparked a major controversy after he warned that Sweden is "in the process of dismantling democracy" and could be on a slippery slope towards technocracy or a dictatorship.

Håkan Juholt, a former leader of the centre-left Social Democrat party and ambassador to Iceland since September, made the comments in an interview with the Svenska Dagbladet newspaper.

"How old is your son? Four?" he asks the reporter.

"When he is old he won't be living in a democracy but in a technocracy, or a dictatorship. It's sad as hell. I am sorry to say it, but I am 100 percent sure. We are in the process of dismantling democracy."

Later in the interview, he says:

"I don't think the threat is a dictatorship with tanks rolling on Sergel's Square (a well-known square in central Stockholm), but an expert rule where we do not let the citizens' values govern the country. Democracy is slipping through our fingers. Fewer people want to be elected, the parties are toning down their ideology.

Sure, I see a risk that it may become a dictatorship in the long run."

His brutal honesty in a diplomatic role appears to have ruffled more than a few feathers... much like President Trump's.

Credit to Zero Hedge