by
Adam Taggart
Podcast
by
charleshughsmith
Executive Summary
- How much have households, corporations, and the government combined deleveraged since 2008? (Barely at all.)
- Have our national debt-to-income ratios improved since 2008? (No, they've gotten worse.)
- Increasingly, unlevered assets will be sold to maintain the phantom value of levered assets.
- Ultimately, levered losses will need to be taken. Cash and cash equivalents will be in high demand as this happens.
Part I: The Pernicious Dynamics of Debt, Deleveraging, and Deflation
If you have not yet read Part I, available free to all readers, please click here to read it first.
Part II: The Deleveraging Pain Is Just Beginning
In Part I, we sought an understanding of the causal linkages between debt, deleveraging, and deflation. In Part II, we analyze the key data and charts to get a better understanding of how far deleveraging has to go.
The basic idea in deleveraging is that debt exceeds the value of the underlying asset—for example, a mortgage exceeds the value of the home. The difference must be made up with savings from income or from the sale of other assets, or the asset must be sold and the loss booked.
In the case of consumer and government debt, the underlying assets are, in effect, future income and future tax revenues. The student has no assets to sell to pay off a student loan; the loan was leveraged off future income. The same is true of government bonds. Though consumers often maintain that the goods they bought on credit have retained value, in many cases the market value of items bought on credit is far below the debt still to be paid.
The situation is thus dire for loans without underlying assets that can be sold. Cash to service these loans must be raised by selling other assets or by diverting income.
I see the forces of debt, deleveraging, deflation, and inflation (money-printing) as positive (self-reinforcing) and negative (countervailing) feedback loops; the interactions are complex and can oscillate in dynamic equilibrium until a crisis pushes the system firmly into disequilibrium.
The Deleveraging Pain Is Just Beginning
PREVIEW by charleshughsmithExecutive Summary
- How much have households, corporations, and the government combined deleveraged since 2008? (Barely at all.)
- Have our national debt-to-income ratios improved since 2008? (No, they've gotten worse.)
- Increasingly, unlevered assets will be sold to maintain the phantom value of levered assets.
- Ultimately, levered losses will need to be taken. Cash and cash equivalents will be in high demand as this happens.
Part I: The Pernicious Dynamics of Debt, Deleveraging, and Deflation
If you have not yet read Part I, available free to all readers, please click here to read it first.
Part II: The Deleveraging Pain Is Just Beginning
In Part I, we sought an understanding of the causal linkages between debt, deleveraging, and deflation. In Part II, we analyze the key data and charts to get a better understanding of how far deleveraging has to go.
The basic idea in deleveraging is that debt exceeds the value of the underlying asset—for example, a mortgage exceeds the value of the home. The difference must be made up with savings from income or from the sale of other assets, or the asset must be sold and the loss booked.
In the case of consumer and government debt, the underlying assets are, in effect, future income and future tax revenues. The student has no assets to sell to pay off a student loan; the loan was leveraged off future income. The same is true of government bonds. Though consumers often maintain that the goods they bought on credit have retained value, in many cases the market value of items bought on credit is far below the debt still to be paid.
The situation is thus dire for loans without underlying assets that can be sold. Cash to service these loans must be raised by selling other assets or by diverting income.
I see the forces of debt, deleveraging, deflation, and inflation (money-printing) as positive (self-reinforcing) and negative (countervailing) feedback loops; the interactions are complex and can oscillate in dynamic equilibrium until a crisis pushes the system firmly into disequilibrium.
by
Adam Taggart
It's been a frenetic couple of weeks.
Amidst the deterioration in Europe and the growing weakness in the US markets, in mid-May Chris issued the warning Get Ready: We're About to Have Another 2008-Style Crisis. Downside momentum has built since then, leading him to release a rare call to buy gold last week (which has since proved prescient in the immediate term) as well as a more-pointed report today to our enrolled members: Buckle Up – Market Breakdown In Progress.
It's times of heightened uncertainty like this where dislocating change has the potential to occur swiftly and sharply. Often events move much faster than people's ability to react appropriately to them. We've been recommending a defensive posture for investors for a long time now, but it's critical to adopt that position before the big market swings occur.
If you are going to keep money in the financial markets (stocks, bonds, etc.), you need to honestly ask yourself if you have the expertise and the bandwidth to intelligently and actively manage your investments throughout a coming period of potentially gut-wrenching volatility and uncertainty. If you know you don't or are uncertain, we can't stress enough the importance of working with a good financial advisor who will design and steward a prudent, risk-managed portfolio for you.
Attending to Your Financial Resiliency
by Adam TaggartIt's been a frenetic couple of weeks.
Amidst the deterioration in Europe and the growing weakness in the US markets, in mid-May Chris issued the warning Get Ready: We're About to Have Another 2008-Style Crisis. Downside momentum has built since then, leading him to release a rare call to buy gold last week (which has since proved prescient in the immediate term) as well as a more-pointed report today to our enrolled members: Buckle Up – Market Breakdown In Progress.
It's times of heightened uncertainty like this where dislocating change has the potential to occur swiftly and sharply. Often events move much faster than people's ability to react appropriately to them. We've been recommending a defensive posture for investors for a long time now, but it's critical to adopt that position before the big market swings occur.
If you are going to keep money in the financial markets (stocks, bonds, etc.), you need to honestly ask yourself if you have the expertise and the bandwidth to intelligently and actively manage your investments throughout a coming period of potentially gut-wrenching volatility and uncertainty. If you know you don't or are uncertain, we can't stress enough the importance of working with a good financial advisor who will design and steward a prudent, risk-managed portfolio for you.
by
Chris Martenson
Forty years ago, a group of researchers at MIT ran a study to address the question of how humans would adapt to the physical limitations of a finite planet. That study became the book Limits to Growth.
It should have been a starting point for a critical discussion at the national – or even global – level. It could have led to the birthing of many practical and then-implementable initiatives that mighthave brought our unsustainable demographic, industrial, and consumptive behavior under better control. But sadly, the book instead became a lightning rod for controversy. And decades later, the issues it warned of loom larger than ever.
In this interview, Chris discusses our collective failure to act on this book's message with Jorgen Randers, one of the authors of Limits to Growth and Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update as well as a new book, 2052: A Global Forecast for the Next Forty Years.
While there are some differences in opinion between Jorgen and Chris, particularly on the acuteness of our resource predicament, both agree that continuing to pursue the status quo will result in a poorer quality of life for most of the world's denizens. We increasingly appear to be facing a future shaped either by design or disaster, and unless we actively decide to intelligently change our behavior, the latter outcome will prevail.
Jorgen Randers: Our Species’ Biggest Risk is Our Lack of Coherent Long-Term Decision Making
by Chris MartensonForty years ago, a group of researchers at MIT ran a study to address the question of how humans would adapt to the physical limitations of a finite planet. That study became the book Limits to Growth.
It should have been a starting point for a critical discussion at the national – or even global – level. It could have led to the birthing of many practical and then-implementable initiatives that mighthave brought our unsustainable demographic, industrial, and consumptive behavior under better control. But sadly, the book instead became a lightning rod for controversy. And decades later, the issues it warned of loom larger than ever.
In this interview, Chris discusses our collective failure to act on this book's message with Jorgen Randers, one of the authors of Limits to Growth and Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update as well as a new book, 2052: A Global Forecast for the Next Forty Years.
While there are some differences in opinion between Jorgen and Chris, particularly on the acuteness of our resource predicament, both agree that continuing to pursue the status quo will result in a poorer quality of life for most of the world's denizens. We increasingly appear to be facing a future shaped either by design or disaster, and unless we actively decide to intelligently change our behavior, the latter outcome will prevail.
by
JW
by
Adam Taggart
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