Quentin Fottrell – Most Americans have less than $1,000 in savings

Americans are living right on the edge — at least when it comes to financial planning. Approximately 62% of Americans have less than $1,000 in their savings accounts and 21% don’t even have a savings account, according to a new survey of more than 5,000 adults conducted this month by Google Consumer Survey forpersonal finance website GOBankingRates.com. “It’s worrisome that …

Financial Sense – Global Markets in 2016: Four Risks to Watch Out For

After an eventful 2015, where we witnessed the first US rate hike in 9 years, crude oil dropping to 6 year lows, a dramatic selloff in Chinese equity markets and an unexpected abandonment of the Swiss Franc-Euro currency cap, we head into 2016 with global markets on tenterhooks. In this article, we analyze the 4 most important risks that global …

Jack Rasmus – Central Banks Out of Control

The move raises critical questions about the global economy for 2016, already slowing significantly since 2014. Further global slowdown is now almost certain in 2016 – with global oil prices now in the mid-US$35 range and projected to go lower, with commodity prices globally still deflating, with Europe’s economy continuing barely growing and Japan’s in yet another recession, and with …

Michael Snyder – Financial Armageddon Approaches: U.S. Banks Have 247 Trillion Dollars Of Exposure To Derivatives

Did you know that there are 5 “too big to fail” banks in the United States that eachhave exposure to derivatives contracts that is in excess of 30 trillion dollars?  Overall, the biggest U.S. banks collectively have more than 247 trillion dollarsof exposure to derivatives contracts.  That is an amount of money that is more than 13 times the size of the U.S. national debt, and …

Peter Koenig – Are EU Country Central Banks “Illegally” Buying Government Bonds?

The following text is an English transcript (translation) of an RT Berlin Interview in German regarding an apparent secret agreement between the European Central Bank (ECB) and individual Euro countries’ central banks issuing large amounts of government bonds. The discovery flared up just before the FED raised its base interest rate by a quarter percent on 16 December 2015, signalling the …

Economic Update – Economic Lessons from 2015 – 12.20.15

Updates on FED’s interest rate hike, Peter Drucker on “like a business,” gun business, and oil economics. Response to question on whether it is China that is slowing the world economy. Major discussion of Greek and Spanish austerity politics and how major oil, banking and auto corporations proved why we can and must do better than capitalism

Alternative Visions – Global Currency Wars & Devaluations Poised to Accelerate in 2016 – 12.04.15

Jack Rasmus looks at yesterday’s decision by the European Central Bank to make token changes to its QE policies, Japan’s central bank rumors of more QE, and the US Federal Reserve’s imminent raising of interest rates later this month. Why the ECB did not go ‘all in’ to expand its QE? Reasons: waiting on US Fed to move first, weaken German opposition to a later big QE boost, and ‘holding its powder’ for possible worse deflation and EU economy in 2016. Japan waiting on both US and Europe. Meanwhile, US Fed caves in to political moves by Congress attacking it. Conclusion: more QE in 2016, more currency devaluation, more pain in emerging markets and slowing of US exports and manufacturing, and China need to devaluate further next year. Recent economic news of importance is reviewed: oil price glut to continue despite Vienna OPEC meeting; China’s Yuan approved by IMF as global currency, and Brazil’s economy now tipping over into depression. Jack concludes with latest review of US economic performance: manufacturing and exports contracting, business inventories excess and spending, US residential housing growth now spent and flattening, poor Xmas retail sales emerging, auto sales based on debt reaching peak, savings from gasoline price declines diverting to rents, education and health care price increases, and now service sector growth slowing rapidly. Next Week show theme: ‘Systemic Fragility in the Global Economy, Part 1’, as Jack reviews conclusions of his just published book.

It’s Our Money with Ellen Brown – Is Your Money Better Off in a Mattress? – 11.25.15

As European central banks employ negative interest rates (you pay the bank to keep your money) as well as all-digital currencies that give bankers virtually complete control over your access to it, this question is not silly. What are the bankers really up to? Ellen speaks with co-host Walt McRee about these developments and then talks with evolutionary economist and world-renowned futurist Hazel Henderson about how far afield economics has gone from its practical obligations to serve public interest. Matt Stannard discusses banker logic and negative interest, and common logic about the need for a basic income for everyone.

Simon Kennedy – Wall Street Is Running the World’s Central Banks

Wall Street is again leading to the corridors of central banks. From Minneapolis to Paris, investors and financiers are increasingly being hired to help set monetary policy less than a decade since the banking crisis roiled the world economy and chilled their public-sector employment prospects. Academic studies of historical voting records at central banks suggest the new trend may mean …

MIchael Hudson – How the U.S. Avoided Chronic Deflation by Relinquishing Monetary Control to Wall Street

The Eurozone today is going into the same deflationary situation that the U.S. did under Jackson’s destruction of the Second Bank, and the post-Civil War budget surpluses that deflated the economy. But whereas the Fed’s creation was designed to inflate the U.S. economy, Europe’s European Central Bank is designed to deflate it — in the interest of commercial banks in …