Where is the global economy headed? Which equity markets will rise and fall? Will gold prices rebound, the dollar soar, euro tank, yuan be devalued? From Shanghai to Wall Street, markets worldwide were hit hard during a summer of equity turbulence not felt in years. While some indexes have rebounded to their 2015 highs, others...
2331 search results for: inflation
Dazed and confused
Manufactured angst over when — or if — the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates after its seven-year policy of keeping them at zero overlooks the fact that actions speak louder than overanalyzed words. ZIRP began as a so-called “emergency measure” to inject liquidity into the system (read: big banks) and stabilize the economy (read:...
Market Mayhem: Don’t blame China, “It’s the economy, stupid.”
By Gerald CelentePublisher, Trends Journal KINGSTON, NY, 26 August 2015 — Read the headlines. Listen to business-news broadcasts. Across the western world, financial fingers are pointing to China as the culprit for both sparking the global equity-market meltdown — and keeping it going. The first shot across the Dow — when it was trading some 2,000 points above Tuesday’s...
Bankism
The Forecast: Despite public rhetoric, bankism will grow in 2015 because the financial system is unstable and quantitative easing is not over. For solvency and reputational reasons, both central and private banks need, and will collaborate on, low rates for liquidity and to inflate asset prices. This will keep bond and stock prices propped up...
Price Wars
The Forecast: The formula is a simple one: Too much product is flooding the global marketplace, and there’s a chronic shortage of people with enough money to buy those products. Price wars will mark a new age of retail marketing. Who will be the winners and losers? And even as commodity prices decline in many...
Seven years of the rigging game
Bankism, or government and central-bank subsidization of the world’s flawed and fraudulent mega banks at the expense of entire populations, came to a head this year in Greece. On July 5, the Greek population voted ‘no’ to Troika policies that placed big-bank creditor demands for repayment of bailouts with heinous austerity terms above citizens’ needs...
Real costs of living
These official government inflation increases in 2014 — for 24 items that comprise a significant percentage of the household budget — incorporate “substitution” and “quality improvement” reductions made by the government. The actual increases, prior to these statistical manipulations, are higher.Food at home: 3.7%Food away from home: 3.0%Meat: 12.7%Fish and seafood: 5.6%Eggs: 10.7%Milk: 5.2%Fruits &...
Paper tiger, greedy dragon
To understand the insanity of China’s real estate bubble, imagine every state governor borrowing $10 billion from the federal government to build a city to suit his own vision. The result is China’s Ghost Cities — sprawling new cities with almost no one living or working in them. Many of these cities resemble a Las...
The grand manipulation
Americans are the most manipulated people in history. Since 2008, the economy has been manipulated for the benefit of a few oversized “banks too big to fail.” US foreign policy has been manipulated to serve the hegemonic agenda of a handful of neoconservatives. These manipulations have undercut the consumer basis of the US economy and have...
Depression, not deflation
Beginning in Economics 101, through graduate school and after 35 years as an analyst with a solid track record of forecasting global socioeconomic and geopolitical trends, never, ever did college professors, government heads, business leaders or central bankers promote the concept that falling prices are bad — and rising prices are good. In fact, the opposite...