Happy 2016! World equity and commodity markets welcomed in the new year with a record-breaking crash. By now, most will have forgotten how bad it was; many more never heard it when it happened. In the first week of trading, the Dow Jones made history, falling a whopping 6.2 percent. The Standard & Poor’s 500...
Category: Uncategorized
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Trendpost
One big difference between the Crash of 1929 aftermath and the Panic of ’08: The Great Depression had bread lines and soup kitchens. You could see real poverty and deep despair. In the Great Recession, the long bread lines, poverty and despair have been covered over by food stamps, Section 8 housing and a number...
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Central banks shooting blanks
Throughout last year, I predicted the Federal Reserve wouldn’t raise rates by September and that it was unlikely to do anything to seriously rock the rate boat at all. That turned out to be accurate. On December 16, the Fed did raise rates — sort of. I say that because the Fed utilized the smallest...
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Trendpost
Last year, the trend was for rising volatility and the Fed and elite global central banks remaining in cheap money-supply mode with rates approaching, at, or below zero. This year, the trend is about markets falling while rates remain fairly close to zero. The Fed simply can’t act unilaterally on a hiking binge without contributing...
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The Last World War
With each passing day, drums of war beat louder and the list of countries joining the march to war grows longer. If trend lines drawn since the War on Terror launched by US President George W. Bush following 9/11 are not reversed, World War III will not only be a Top Trend of 2016, it may...
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Trend Forecast
Despite incontrovertible evidence of spreading wars and escalating global tensions, in the worlds of entertainment, politics and media, there is a deafening silence in the call for peace. From millennials to boomers, from New York to Shanghai, across age groups and around the world, not a peep about peace. Why? Is it because war, violence...
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Human Waves
Throughout 2016 and for years to come, millions of refugees will flee war-torn nations looking for safety. Millions of migrants will leave economically depressed countries looking for work. Trends are born, they grow, mature, reach old age and die. The Great Migration trend, born some five years ago, was ignored by the media and ridiculed...
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Trend Forecast
The “Not Welcome Here” debate will not only be an ongoing and contentious theme in the 2016 American Presidential Reality Show, but “how to stop the human waves from landing on foreign shores” will dominate politics and elections throughout Europe. In fact, so intense will the “protect the homeland, protect our people, preserve our nationality” movements...
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Global Recession
Happy Economic New Year! Wild equity market, currency and commodity price swings have become the new abnormal. Since money makes the world go around, follow the money. During the first six weeks of 2016, the global banking system got pounded. Bank shares in Europe fell 24 percent. Japan’s Topix Banks Index lost 21 percent. In the...
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Trend Forecast
The greatest financial scam in world history has inflated the largest debt/equity bubble in world history. While it is currently deflating, the precise time it will burst and how low the markets will go are difficult to forecast, considering the scope and depth of central-bank intervention and government/political maneuvering. At some point, however, a future round...