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Podcast

by Chris Martenson

Executive Summary

  • Why doing nothing is no longer an option
  • Our recommended steps to take for
    • Finances
    • Home
    • Personal Safety
    • Health
  • Plus: lots of links to related resources

If you have not yet read Part 1: You’re Likely A Lot Less Prepared For Crisis Than You Realize available free to all readers, please click here to read it first.

What To Do

Broken models and bad ideas eventually catch up with you. That day is coming. As to when, I clearly don’t know.

If there’s an outbreak of war with North Korea than that could easily precipitate the breakdown, especially if the conflict spreads across superpowers. That could happen at any time, so the lessons from the hurricanes is this; get ready now.

Barring some sort of kinetic follies, the farthest I can see things carrying on as they have is until 2019 or 2020 when the profound lack of investment in oil will show up as an oil supply shortfall that will result in much higher oil prices. Those higher prices will run smack into ~$250 trillion of global debt and ~4x that amount of un(der)funded liabilities. I covered that thesis in this report, which is worth a re-read (or a first read in case you haven’t already).

The global equity markets are floating along on a sea of liquidity which has allowed them to seriously depart from the underlying fundamentals and from any sense of risk. When neither fundamentals nor risk apply, you have a bubble on your hands.

Bubbles are always in search of a pin. None of us can predict what that pin might be, but it’s out there.

When the next downturn finally comes, it will be with the force of a hundred corrections denied. We’ll be falling from a much higher level of insanity and self-delusion. Once again we’ll discover that prosperity cannot be printed out of thin air. History doesn’t repeat, they say, but when it comes to bubbles it certainly does. They are always the same; they arise from too-easy credit.

Here’s what I think everybody should do, regardless of circumstances…

Crisis Preparation: What To Do
PREVIEW by Chris Martenson

Executive Summary

  • Why doing nothing is no longer an option
  • Our recommended steps to take for
    • Finances
    • Home
    • Personal Safety
    • Health
  • Plus: lots of links to related resources

If you have not yet read Part 1: You’re Likely A Lot Less Prepared For Crisis Than You Realize available free to all readers, please click here to read it first.

What To Do

Broken models and bad ideas eventually catch up with you. That day is coming. As to when, I clearly don’t know.

If there’s an outbreak of war with North Korea than that could easily precipitate the breakdown, especially if the conflict spreads across superpowers. That could happen at any time, so the lessons from the hurricanes is this; get ready now.

Barring some sort of kinetic follies, the farthest I can see things carrying on as they have is until 2019 or 2020 when the profound lack of investment in oil will show up as an oil supply shortfall that will result in much higher oil prices. Those higher prices will run smack into ~$250 trillion of global debt and ~4x that amount of un(der)funded liabilities. I covered that thesis in this report, which is worth a re-read (or a first read in case you haven’t already).

The global equity markets are floating along on a sea of liquidity which has allowed them to seriously depart from the underlying fundamentals and from any sense of risk. When neither fundamentals nor risk apply, you have a bubble on your hands.

Bubbles are always in search of a pin. None of us can predict what that pin might be, but it’s out there.

When the next downturn finally comes, it will be with the force of a hundred corrections denied. We’ll be falling from a much higher level of insanity and self-delusion. Once again we’ll discover that prosperity cannot be printed out of thin air. History doesn’t repeat, they say, but when it comes to bubbles it certainly does. They are always the same; they arise from too-easy credit.

Here’s what I think everybody should do, regardless of circumstances…

by charleshughsmith

Executive Summary

  • Is it better to hold cash in savings/checking accounts, or securities accounts?
  • Where will the dollar likely from here?
  • What will likely happen with retirement accounts?
  • Ways to diversify your cash risk

If you have not yet read Part 1: The Cardinal Sin Of Investing: Permanent Impairment Of Capital available free to all readers, please click here to read it first.

The Role Of Cash In The Informal Economy

In stagnating formal economies burdened by over-regulation, high taxes and financialization, one of the few bright spots for employment and entrepreneurism is the informal or cash economy.  The more stultified and elite-dominated the economy, the larger and more vibrant the informal economy.  In some highly regulated, high-tax European nations, up to 30% of the economic activity is underground/cash.

The elimination of central bank currency will not eliminate the informal economy. Rather, the participants in this sector will adopt non-central bank issued forms of cash—precious metals, coins, other nations’ paper money, perhaps even digital currencies such as bitcoin or its gold-linked cousins (Bitgold, etc.)

Those with little income often do not have bank accounts, as the fees are costly. Eliminating cash will hit the poor who earn money in the informal economy especially hard. Though the poor are essentially powerless in our influence-is-auctioned-to-the-highest-bidder system, this could change once the working poor who benefit from the cash economy are pushed even deeper into poverty by the banning of cash.

That might spark…

Smart Strategies For Building & Managing Your Cash Savings
PREVIEW by charleshughsmith

Executive Summary

  • Is it better to hold cash in savings/checking accounts, or securities accounts?
  • Where will the dollar likely from here?
  • What will likely happen with retirement accounts?
  • Ways to diversify your cash risk

If you have not yet read Part 1: The Cardinal Sin Of Investing: Permanent Impairment Of Capital available free to all readers, please click here to read it first.

The Role Of Cash In The Informal Economy

In stagnating formal economies burdened by over-regulation, high taxes and financialization, one of the few bright spots for employment and entrepreneurism is the informal or cash economy.  The more stultified and elite-dominated the economy, the larger and more vibrant the informal economy.  In some highly regulated, high-tax European nations, up to 30% of the economic activity is underground/cash.

The elimination of central bank currency will not eliminate the informal economy. Rather, the participants in this sector will adopt non-central bank issued forms of cash—precious metals, coins, other nations’ paper money, perhaps even digital currencies such as bitcoin or its gold-linked cousins (Bitgold, etc.)

Those with little income often do not have bank accounts, as the fees are costly. Eliminating cash will hit the poor who earn money in the informal economy especially hard. Though the poor are essentially powerless in our influence-is-auctioned-to-the-highest-bidder system, this could change once the working poor who benefit from the cash economy are pushed even deeper into poverty by the banning of cash.

That might spark…

by Chris Martenson

IMPORTANT NEWS

The live version of this webinar took place on Sep 13, 2017. It was excellent.

To purchase access to the replay video of the event for $25, click the blue button below:

 

or

Given that a month’s subscription to PeakProsperity.com is only $30, you may want to give serious consideration to enrolling instead. It’s only $5 more, and gives you access to the webinar PLUS all of the premium analysis, webinars, reports, podcasts, alerts and events that PeakProsperity.com has to offer. That’s a pretty screaming value for an additional five bucks.

In this webinar, featured experts Grant Williams and Lance Roberts dove deep into the structural fragility of today’s financial markets and the many reasons why economic growth will remain constrained for years to come.

The excessive build-up of debt in the system — and the absolute dependence on its continued expansion to keep the economy from imploding — is, of course, seen as the prime risk to future growth.

As Lance demonstrates here with several of his excellent charts, so much leverage has been taken on that its servicing is increasingly stealing capital that would otherwise go to savings, consumption and productive investment. Going forward, the demands of the debt service will simply result in less and less capital available left over to grow the economy:

As financial assets are (supposed to be) valued on future growth prospects, lower forecasted growth demands lower valuations. Grant calculates that, should the US see another decade of 2% average annual GDP growth (and it has averaged less than that over the past decade), stock prices should be roughly half of what they are today to be considered fairly valued:

And Lance builds further on this, explaining how this moribund growth, coupled with America’s aging demographic trend, will simply savage the nation’s (already troublesomely underfunded) pension and entitlement systems:

But there are a number of other destabilizing risks to fear beyond our terminal debt addiction. One that Grant believes is not getting enough attention right now is the de-dollarization trend becoming notably apparent across a number of America’s strategic trading partners:

To watch the full 1.5 hours of this excellent webinar, purchase it by clicking on the blue button above.

WATCH NOW: Dangerous Markets Webinar
PREVIEW by Chris Martenson

IMPORTANT NEWS

The live version of this webinar took place on Sep 13, 2017. It was excellent.

To purchase access to the replay video of the event for $25, click the blue button below:

 

or

Given that a month’s subscription to PeakProsperity.com is only $30, you may want to give serious consideration to enrolling instead. It’s only $5 more, and gives you access to the webinar PLUS all of the premium analysis, webinars, reports, podcasts, alerts and events that PeakProsperity.com has to offer. That’s a pretty screaming value for an additional five bucks.

In this webinar, featured experts Grant Williams and Lance Roberts dove deep into the structural fragility of today’s financial markets and the many reasons why economic growth will remain constrained for years to come.

The excessive build-up of debt in the system — and the absolute dependence on its continued expansion to keep the economy from imploding — is, of course, seen as the prime risk to future growth.

As Lance demonstrates here with several of his excellent charts, so much leverage has been taken on that its servicing is increasingly stealing capital that would otherwise go to savings, consumption and productive investment. Going forward, the demands of the debt service will simply result in less and less capital available left over to grow the economy:

As financial assets are (supposed to be) valued on future growth prospects, lower forecasted growth demands lower valuations. Grant calculates that, should the US see another decade of 2% average annual GDP growth (and it has averaged less than that over the past decade), stock prices should be roughly half of what they are today to be considered fairly valued:

And Lance builds further on this, explaining how this moribund growth, coupled with America’s aging demographic trend, will simply savage the nation’s (already troublesomely underfunded) pension and entitlement systems:

But there are a number of other destabilizing risks to fear beyond our terminal debt addiction. One that Grant believes is not getting enough attention right now is the de-dollarization trend becoming notably apparent across a number of America’s strategic trading partners:

To watch the full 1.5 hours of this excellent webinar, purchase it by clicking on the blue button above.

by Chris Martenson

Executive Summary

  • Controlled markets can't be controlled forever
  • Confidence is beginning to fail, even at the top
  • The leading indicators to monitor closely
  • The reason to get excited about gold & silver again

If you have not yet read Part 1: Who’s Going To Eat The Losses? available free to all readers, please click here to read it first.

As we recently covered in this week's special webinar, the geopolitical tensions across the world, alone, should have created some sort of ‘risk off’ response in the equity markets.  With China, Russia and North Korea all increasingly at odds with the US for a wide variety of reasons, it’s very hard to make a case that Everything is Awesome!

Instead, it’s very easy to make the case that the world is on the brink of a period of destructive trade wars, if not actual 'hot' wars. 

Again, that alone should be introducing some uncertainty, some ‘risk off’ behaviors by which we mean some sort of a selloff in equities. But that’s just not the case.

In fact, the current stock ramp-up is the second longest without even a 3% sell-off in all of US equity history.

It's my firm belief that these calm markets do not represent the collective wisdom of millions of independent traders and investors.  They are instead the result of both direct and indirect support of said markets by monetary authorities and their proxies. That is, the central banks and the big banks they actually represent and look out for. 

But this lack of volatility will have a very painful cost some day. No different than in a political crisis where an oppressed people finally rise up, the suppression of market volatility will spill over and…

How To Deal With Our Dangerous Markets And Failing Future
PREVIEW by Chris Martenson

Executive Summary

  • Controlled markets can't be controlled forever
  • Confidence is beginning to fail, even at the top
  • The leading indicators to monitor closely
  • The reason to get excited about gold & silver again

If you have not yet read Part 1: Who’s Going To Eat The Losses? available free to all readers, please click here to read it first.

As we recently covered in this week's special webinar, the geopolitical tensions across the world, alone, should have created some sort of ‘risk off’ response in the equity markets.  With China, Russia and North Korea all increasingly at odds with the US for a wide variety of reasons, it’s very hard to make a case that Everything is Awesome!

Instead, it’s very easy to make the case that the world is on the brink of a period of destructive trade wars, if not actual 'hot' wars. 

Again, that alone should be introducing some uncertainty, some ‘risk off’ behaviors by which we mean some sort of a selloff in equities. But that’s just not the case.

In fact, the current stock ramp-up is the second longest without even a 3% sell-off in all of US equity history.

It's my firm belief that these calm markets do not represent the collective wisdom of millions of independent traders and investors.  They are instead the result of both direct and indirect support of said markets by monetary authorities and their proxies. That is, the central banks and the big banks they actually represent and look out for. 

But this lack of volatility will have a very painful cost some day. No different than in a political crisis where an oppressed people finally rise up, the suppression of market volatility will spill over and…

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