Capitol Hill Blue Forums Political Issues Finance, the economy & Economics Prediction

I am not an economist, nor do I pretend to be one on TV. Still, I will hazard a prediction regarding the US Stock Markets in the near term.

The worst is over, and there will be some positive movement in the market over the coming week. This will continue gradually until the consumer credit monster begins to rear its ugly defaulting head in the future. Far too many Americans are credit card hocked up to their necks, so this monster is coming, make no mistake about it. I cannot venture a guess as to how serious a problem it will be though. Much depends are whether the economy recovers quickly, which I do not think it will, although I believe it will recover somewhat steadily over the next several months.

The markets have been hammered much harder than fundamentals can justify. This is because confidence and fear still are playing into the Bear's hand, but there are indications that even small individual investors are beginning to comprehend there are values to be had presently. There is a tremendous amount of money sitting on the sidelines in liquid accounts presently, and a tepid upsurge will likely result in a gradual opening of the faucet in the market's direction.

It's a matter of personal risk aversion whether it's time for individuals to enter into the game again though. Things are going to be up and down for some time now. Many of the RR crowd have taken hard hits in their retirement accounts. I am not an exception. It looks as if I will have to come out of my semi-retired status and start seriously looking about for solid contract work, instead of picking up what intrigues me at low-balled prices. My family, both paternally and maternally has a history of long life. Even the members who have arrogantly ignored their personal health seem to live well into their 70's. The healthy ones usually have lived into their late 90s. I must assume that I too will live long, and do not desire to live as a pauper. It's OK though. One should never count their chickens before they hatch, nor consider money tied up in stock funds to be its present valuation.

Keep in mind that the bankruptcy rules change of a few years ago make it much more difficult for consumers to declare bankruptcy. The 2005 changes forces consumers into a "means test" which steers them into chapter 13, not chapter 7.

Sorry guys, I don't see much in the future that looks quite so rosy. Rick, I cannot really say that you contradicted yourself between sentences three and four but at the very least you illustrated the precise reason WHY the worst isn't actually over.
The worst isn't over simply because both consumer AND business credit IS a monster which has only JUST begun to do the Palin-Putin Thang.

I am not a derivates expert and I neither play one on TV nor have I ever even videotaped a live one in captivity, but from what I understand of the buggers, derivatives represent wagers (Vegas style) that predict an earnings product that just doesn't exist anymore. Further, most of the companies that sold underwriting of any kind on those predictions don't exist anymore either, but the bad paper still does and that paper sooner or later becomes payable on demand.
And the pile over there, that great big one, is estimated to be something on the order of 50 to 70 trillion dollars.
At some point the indebtedness of the government has loomed so large that it cannot even collect enough revenues to pay the interest on the debt.
That's a force of nature working, and nature, be it physical and tangible in an atmosphere or invisible and magnet like, will not tolerate an imbalance.
What's coming is like a chemical reaction or a mechanical event just as sure as a sodium pellet dropped in a beaker of water or a large mainspring snapping under a load.
The equal and opposite reaction causes collateral damage of one kind or another, either physical by acts of war, political-social, economic or all three.
I predict that at some point the Tres Sec has to declare a "Force Majeure" and that steps will be taken to suddenly or gradually demonitize the dollar and even cash currency in general.
Something corporate is going to quietly assume final, total control over our government as we now know it, and there will be a financial reckoning.
Things that will go relatively unnoticed at first, like the quiet move at the county level to privatize the water system in your local municipality.
After being conditioned to believe that the move was unavoidable due to other manufactured reasons the public will be forced to accept these changes but bit by bit the actual physical assets of your town and my town will be turned into items sold to the highest bidder who then resells them to investors who hold current debt instruments.
The attempted selloff of West Coast port operations in Long Beach, CA is just the start of a long chain of sales both large and small. The actual PIECES of America are now under new ownership.
And everything in that basket of municipal owned assets is going to cost a whole lot more than a lot of people can afford.

It's still possible to declare chapter 7 bankruptcy - but it's much more difficult. The 2005 laws were written which basically puts most consumers into chapter 13 where said "bankruptcy" is really a slow-pay debt payoff - which essentially you're paying the debt off at pennies on the dollar - but no complete charge-off's like in chapter 7 anymore for most consumers.

I'll soon be learning all the nuances of what's available in a Bankruptcy package for myself. I never imagined it would come to this but life is full of little surprises.
If the grits continue to hit the pan and splatter all over the stove, the next thing your gonna smell burning is millions of people defaulting on credit card debt they can no longer afford.

I happen to see an end to the DEBT STANDARD of Fiat Money and everything associated with it that supports the fiat economy. Today, our government uses very interesting calculating methods for economic indicators, most of which are distorted. For instance, if the government used the same methods during the Great Depression instead, our unemployment rate today would be calculated as 15% not 6%, and inflation would be nearly 12%. Of course, it is not in the government's interest to disclose such numbers. It is also important to realize a few things when comparing the deflationary depression of the 1930s, in fact any deflationary depression or recession prior to 1971 and the events that are occurring presently. The fact is the complete financial and economic institutional structure is 180 degrees from what it was during those periods, the entire dynamics of the economic substrate is completely different and the monetary system is now very different then it was during those previous deflationary depressions. All of these factors are, it seems, rarely taken into consideration by those who promote the idea that we are heading into an imminent deflationary period leading to a depression that will be equally as deflationary. While I believe that we will experience a deflationary mixture within the economy, the overall trend will be inflationary. What appears to be happening in many instances is that people look at certain sectors within the economy and point to depressed pricing structures developing and while that is true, such deflation does not preclude an over all trend toward an inflationary event or worse.

One of the interesting notions that are making its round once again is that during The Great Depression the Federal Reserve was not able to inflate during the crisis because prices were simply deflating much more rapid than the FED could counteract. While that is true to a degree during that period we must remember that there have been some very drastic transformations during the last 40 years in both the institutional and monetary framework of the Central Banking process, perhaps the most striking one is that during the 1930s, the monetary system was still on a gold-backed, partially fiat system, today that is no longer the case. Remember, money back by gold poses a very restrictive and narrow means of operation for any Central Bank, that’s the main reason so many Central Planners hate gold.

The FED has long been freed from the restrains that gold money placed upon it, especially the restrains it confronted during the deflationary Great Depression. It was restrained from inflating during that period because of the fundamental foundation of the monetary system of that period. There are no longer any such restrains that limit the ability of the FED to inflate to combat any deflationary pressure it sees in the economy. While I understand that those who see a deflationary depression on the horizon are coming from, the claim that because there has been excessive credit creation and therefore excessive debt, including massive defaults in the economy that the FED has reached a point in which they have effectively lost control over the money supply and that deflation is increasing faster than the FED so that it can now only “push the string” can inflate is erroneous. While it appears that there is indeed areas within the economy that will suffer from deflation, the response will be an unrestrained push by the FED to inflate on a massive scale, one that we are already beginning to witness.

Even if the banks cannot stimulate new loans, and therefore new bank-money [money created through the fractional reserve system], the FED, as we are beginning to see, will directly infuse and inflate liquidity into the system and take up the slack within the commercial and investment banking systems, side-stepping, as it were, the fractional reserve system of banking for a direct system of monetary inflation. Even many of the actions taken recently by the FED, the Treasury and the Central Banks of the world are all inflationary to the extreme; even the rise of the FDIC insurance limits on accounts is an inflationary measure that will eventually work its way into the general economy.

For decades the American Public has been told and reassured that the U.S. Banking System is safe, that the “Full Faith of the Government of the United States” backed not only the obligations of the government itself, but also insured depositors against overwhelming loss. The American People are already being rudely awakened, the scales are falling off of their eyes, or I should say that the scales are being ripped off of their eyes en-masse about the actual risk associated with this fraudulent fractional banking and fiat monetary system. They don’t understand it fully yet, but the façade is being ripped away by circumstances.

The continuation of bank failures will, if not stemmed by the FED, prove to be massively deflationary, but there is simply no way that the FED will allow an escalation of bank failure without first stepping in with yet another massive influx of Fiat Liquidity. The bailouts are far from over folks, and with those massive bailouts come massive and un-hindered inflation of the money supply. The problem is that by that time the confidence of the People in this phony system will have been cleansed away and will not easily be restored.

Perhaps few have realized it, but there has actually been a global permanent monetary crisis for decades, a balancing act on the edge of a razor blade between deflation and inflation, stability and instability. It is a system that has an inherent flaw within its very nature and we are forced by those playing this balancing act to endure this system of fluctuating rates that are simply used to manipulate wealth creation for those who are already wealthy, to increase the power of those politicians and central bankers who already have power. It is evident that those in our government are woefully ignorant of just what has been happening, what is happening and what will happen to this monetary system and the resulting economic and social disaster that will eventually express itself in the collapse of the entire global monetary system. We are however, on the very edge of a fundamental shift, one that can only have an eye-opening outcome. This shell-game that has been played, whether by actual intent or pure ignorance, is coming to an end.

John Maynard Keynes, the father of our Fiat Monetary System, pressed for an international paper unit that would fluctuate through an independent fiat monetary system around the world, well folks that is exactly what was implemented in 1971 when this country finally cut all ties between the currency and gold. You see, we have been operating under a global currency since 1971, you don’t have to wait for one to come, it has been here and it is called Total Fiat Money. While there was some talk by both the Fabian Socialist Keynes and the Communist Dexter White to use a unified paper currency called the “bancor” or the “unita”, it was concluded that the same thing could be achieved much easier if every country retained their “own” currency as long as each currency was Total Fiat so they could basically pyramid the expansion of the national currencies in a system that allowed total control over the economy and the global societies. So, we have a world currency whether we know it or recognize it or not and have had one for at least the last 37 years.

In this way, the Central Banks of the world could inflate together, create a massive Feudal System of Peonage on a global scale and maintain both political and social controls over the various populations of the world without very much restrain or limitations. The problem, of course, is that they appear to actually believe in the system that they created for these purposes. It appears that they believe so much that they don’t realize that the system they have placed so much of their faith and future into is one that is inherently flawed and will self-terminate. Fortunately, even with the global monetary system they created, they have not been able to wipe away the identity of individual countries, nor will they ever be able to do so, it is simply too strong within the hearts of people around the world. If anything, we are seeing a move for more independence within various peoples of the world, not less. The banking and political powers of the earth are now so tied into a system that is not only unstable, but is rapidly becoming an incoherent mess in their hands.

If you really want to read a truly shocking bit of information then please read, if you can find it, the 1970s "white paper" published by the CFR [Council on Foreign Relations] entitled "1980s Project". In it there is a description of what they called "Controlled Disintegration" which precisely laid out a plan to basically bring about a global economic crisis for the sole purpose of gaining far more control over the global market place and the population. The "1980s Project" included plans for implementing a form of world governing body that closely resembles that promoted by both Bertrand Russell and H.G. Wells. The CFR stated that this next step would be the largest undertaking in history.

Another work by the CFR was entitled "Alternatives to Monetary Disorder" in which a very detailed blueprint is laid out for the disruption and consolidation of economic forces in this and other countries. Now, there are also indications that there were some who feared that once this process began that it would move beyond their ability to control it, one such person was Alan Greenspan who expressed his concerns in a speech before several of the groups at a conference on Global Financial Infrastructure on May 7, 1998. Basically, Greenspan stated that "they" needed to understand the risks that the heretofore "controlled disintegration" could potentially move into a "uncontrolled disintegration" and no longer just the controlled one they had so carefully engineered.

I firmly believe that this current crisis is their little “controlled disintegration” and that it has gotten totally out of hand and moved into such a dangerous situation because it threatens not only to expose their crimes, but to completely destroy their power. In fact, judging from what Bernanke said a couple of weeks ago “We have lost control of the dollar” is an indication that their well-laid plans have gone awry and are dissolving before their eyes. Also, there are several things that seem to indicate they have indeed lost control over the entire system, they are grasping at straws, several straws in fact, so many that it appears that they are doing all they can to get some degree of control over the “ disintegration”.

The New World Order is falling apart before their eyes. I realize that there are some who don’t believe that, who believe that this panic is just another in a long list of strategies in the magic NWO tool box in order to impose their will on this country and the world, and indeed I think it may have started that way, but I see something very different happening. For decades they have used massive resources and worked extremely hard to impose this system on the world and while they have had definite successes in implementing their global system, they have also had failures and will have many more, so many in fact that they will be forced to surrender their plans for their Socialist Utopian Society. They were successful in the implementation of a global currency system, even with different currencies, they have raped the land and the People, they have herded the population into neat, controllable groups for convenience, taxed and regulated to maintain their political controls, but it is all coming to a very rapid and very destructive end.

Oh, Greger - I hope things turn around for you, and soon.

I have to admit that I share CS's inability to see rose -- I see more red. From the little I've been able to read/hear, I can't help but think we still don't know how big the problem really is. I've heard more than one financier/Wall Street/economist type admit to being flat-out scared.

At the same time I heard one of them say that Wall Street is all reputation, all appearance. So if these guys are not only scared, but so scared they'll admit to being scared - in public - I just have to believe there's more bad news on the way...

Not exactly a scientific evaluation, I know.

Jules, I don't think I'm anything like alone in this disaster.
That's why I brought up the credit card defaults in a thread labeled "Prediction" There were thousands and thousands of guys around here that made their livings building houses. I don't know what they are doing right now but I assure you it aint building houses. So the guys that worked in the drywall plants, and the guys that milled the lumber, the folks working in the plumbing warehouses and selling new appliances, the people that sold them all workshoes and tools and and haircuts and machinery are all putting their gas on credit cards so they can afford to get to work and that's if they still have jobs. If they don't they are loading the credit cards and hoping things will change.

Anybody have any positive predictions for me and the rest of the blue collar crowd?
I'm laying off three guys today when I get to work.
Their little faces are just so sad when you tell them they have to go home. "Call me after Christmas guys. Sometimes it picks up after the first."

My brothers (the oldest two) are grading contractors. I haven't talked to them about this.

My best to you, Greger. I hope it turns soon.

Maybe not scientific, Julia, but I think there's a whole lot of truth in it. Perception is reality, especially on Wall Street. Investors don't go around spouting doom and gloom, because doing so reduces their profits.

Back in the real world, we are coming to understand that TRILLIONS of dollars that were assumed to have existed in the marketplace just a few weeks ago are now assumed not to exist. That's a mighty big pile of fuel for a heck of a lot of commerce that is now eminently unlikely to happen, as the fuel's gone missing. Furthermore the mine from which the fuel was extracted has just been closed down, and it's pretty much a sure thing that no new source of fuel will be discovered in the foreseeable future that is nearly as productive.

Hold on to your hats, ladies and gentlemen. And while you're at it, grab your neighbor's hands too. We're all in this together, always have been, always will be. My prediction: there's going to be a whole lot more opportunities for each of us to demonstrate courage, compassion, thrift, and innovation in the coming weeks and months. That's the bright side.