Trends This Week – Populism is surging worldwide…but in America? – 09.09.16

Populist movements – real populist movements, not the “pop” populism trumped in the U.S. – are building momentum across the globe. Gerald Celente breaks down the reasons why and analyzes whether such movements can develop in America. He also explores how eight years of massive global central-bank quantitative easing and low-interest rate/cheap-money schemes have boosted equity markets, while dismal Gross Domestic Product, wage and productivity data prove central-bank policies have failed to generate true economic growth.

Joseph Stiglitz – Globalization and its New Discontents

NEW YORK – Fifteen years ago, I wrote a little book, entitled Globalization and its Discontents, describing growing opposition in the developing world to globalizing reforms. It seemed a mystery: people in developing countries had been told that globalization would increase overall wellbeing. So why had so many people become so hostile to it? Now, globalization’s opponents in the emerging markets and …

Jack Rasmus – Is the US Economy Heading for Recession?

Progressive Radio Network, May 01, 2016 This past week the U.S. government announced the country’s economy rose in the January-March 2016 at a mere 0.5 percent annual growth rate. Since the U.S., unlike other countries, estimates its GDP based on annual rates, that means for the first quarter 2016 the U.S. economy grew by barely 0.1 percent over the previous …

Alternative Visions – The Billionaires Behind The US Presidential Election – 02.19.16

In today’s show host, Jack Rasmus , focuses on who is providing the big money behind US presidential candidates—Rubio, Cruz, Bush, Clinton, and Trump. The names of the big right wing donors behind the Republicans candidates are noted, where they’ve made their billions and how much they’ve contributed. How the Clinton’s have amassed more than $110 million in assets since 2001, including more than $100million in speaking fees. Hillary’s billionaire contributors. The legal corruption of the US election system is explained, including ‘dark money’ from 501 (c) groups that hide their contributors. (see his blog, jackrasmus.com, for a more detailed analysis of ‘billionaires behind the US election’). Jack then digresses to comment on the recent death this past week of the right wing ideologue, Supreme Court justice, Antonin Scalia, whose legacy includes advancing the corruption of the US electoral system from Citizens United case to restricting voting rights, and limits on civil liberties of minorities. At the ‘top of the show’ Jack reviews the major economic developments of the past week, including actions by central banks in the Eurozone, Japan and China; prospects for a ‘deal’ on global oil prices between Russia and Saudi Arabia; and the negotiations in Brussels in progress between the UK’s prime minister, David Cameron, and the European Union on the coming June 2016 UK election to decide whether to ‘exit’ the EU or not. Jack concludes the show with a review of his late 2015 predictions of the ‘fault lines’ in the global financial system in China, Europe, Emerging Markets, and the US, which now appear to be emerging as predicted. (see his blog, jackrasmus.com, for a free chapter from his book, ‘Systemic Fragility in the Global Economy’, on why China will likely be the locus of the next financial crisis).

CHRIS MARTENSON – The Return of Crisis: Everywhere Banks are in Deep Trouble

Financial markets the world over are increasingly chaotic; either retreating or plunging. Our view remains that there’s a gigantic market crash in the coming future — one that has possibly started now. Our reason for expecting a market crash is simple: Bubbles always burst. Bubbles arise when asset prices inflate above what underlying incomes can sustain. Centuries ago, the Dutch woke …

Trends This Week – Keep your eye on the banking crisis – 02.10.16

Don’t the buy the media line that the volatility in global markets is all about oil. It’s not. Not even close. The fast-moving meltdown in those markets resulting in global recession is the eventual price world economies will pay for chronically injecting cheap money into the market for the last decade, artificially pumping up the economy and masking the spreading cancer below the surface. Now, six weeks into the new year, the mad swings in the markets will more and more center on the banks. Watch the banking crisis as it unfolds. Global stock indexes have plunged into bear territory, currencies are crashing – and as commodity prices tumble, resource-rich nations going broke are begging the World Bank and International Monetary Fund to bail them out. Neither “The Panic” nor the Global Recession, one of our Top Trends for 2016, will spare any country, large or small. We are looking at a Global Recession turning into a Global Depression. And when all measures fail to revive the economy – “they take you to war.”

War On Cash Escalates: China Readies Digital Currency, IMF Says “Extremely Beneficial”

Remember when Bitcoin and its digital currency cohorts were slammed by authorities and written off by the elite as worthless? Well now, as the war on cash escalates, officials from The IMF to China are seeing the opportunity to control the world’s money through virtual (cash-less) currencies. Just as we warned most recently here, state wealth control is the goal …

Alternative Visions – China Unwinding Stock Bubble and Its Contagion Effects – 01.15.16

Jack Rasmus continues analysis of China’s unwinding stock bubble and explains how it is connected to China currency devaluation, slowing real economy, and currency speculators in Hong Kong markets. How currency devaluation exacerbates stock decline and vice versa and how real economic slowing in China, now no more than 5% GDP annual growth, interacts with the other forces. China’s revolving bubbles, from property markets to entrusted loans and WMPS, to stock markets is explained. China’s $1trillion capital flight in 2015 and government policy makers spending of $500 billion to prop up stocks and currencies. How China’s massive credit-debt and liquidity buildup since 2009 is behind it all. And behind that the rise of shadow banks and the new global finance capital elite. Jack concludes with exploration of possible contagion effects from China’s continuing bubble unwind—on US corporate profits, stock investor contagion, on emerging market economies, and the parallel bubble deflation in global oil prices that continues. Jack concludes the global economy is moving faster now toward another financial crisis and global recession, which will be precipitated, he predicts, by China and then centered in emerging market economies. US and other advanced economies are far less prepared or able to contain the next crisis. (For deeper analysis, see Jack’s chapter 6 on China in his new book, ‘Systemic Fragility in the Global Economy’, January 2016, available from his blog at jackrasmus.com and on Amazon.)

Yelena Sukhoterina – 6 Shocking Reasons Why You Can Never Trust “Organic” from China

Multiple recent reports exposed conventional foods manufactured in China as fake and even toxic: scams involving rice that contains plastic, fake eggs made from chemicals and many food items containing high levels of arsenic. Now that country-of-origin labeling has been removed by Congress (for meat), and companies are struggling to find new sources of food to meet the growing demand for organics …

Larry Elliott – World Bank issues ‘perfect storm’ warning for 2016

The risk of the global economy being battered by a “perfect storm” in 2016 has been highlighted by the World Bank in a flagship report that warns that a synchronised slowdown in the biggest emerging markets could be intensified by a fresh bout of financial turmoil. The Bank said the possibility that Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – …