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.)

David Lindorff – What’s Behind the Fed’s Decision to Raise Interest Rates in a Struggling Economy?

Much has been written and broadcast over the past few weeks in the financial media and the business pages of general-interest newspapers debating the wisdom of the decision in December by Fed Chair Janet Yellen and the Federal Reserve Board to raise interest rates for the first time in almost a decade. On one side of this debate are people …

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 …

“Future Economic Historians” Will Probably Call the Period That Began In 2007 “the LONGEST DEPRESSION”

Sure, last year was the first pre-election year stock market loss since the Great Depression.  And admittedly, this week was the worst opening week of any year … EVER. But that’s not the big news. The big news is that a prominent economist – University of California economics prof Brad DeLong – wrote today: Economist Joe Stiglitz warned back in …

Paul Craig Roberts – Update to BLS December Payroll Jobs Report: It is even worse than I reported

In my column on Friday I reported the unreported facts in the payroll jobs report. http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2016/01/08/another-fabricated-jobs-report-paul-craig-roberts-2/ If we choose to believe the report, it is really very bad news. Good middle class jobs are continuing to decline. The new jobs are jobs that pay considerably less and often are part-time jobs devoid of benefits. Moreover, the new jobs are going …

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 – …

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 …

PATRICIA COHEN – Over 50, Female and Jobless Even as Others Return to Work

The latest signs of an improving economy were good enough to help persuade the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates for the first time in nearly a decade. But the better job market is not good enough to land Chettie McAfee a job. Laid off at the start of the recession from the diagnostic testing firm in Seattle where she …

Larry Elliott – 2016 will be a year of living dangerously for the global economy

Economic forecasting is a mug’s game. One thing that has been learned from the financial crisis and Great Recession is that even those equipped with the most sophisticated models get it wrong, sometimes spectacularly. So it is with both humility and trepidation that I will try to fulfil a promise made last week and make predictions for what is going …

Nick Beams – World Socialist Web Site

After an initial rise following the decision by the US Federal Reserve to lift interest rates by 0.25 percentage points on Wednesday, stock markets around the world have experienced significant declines over the past two days. The biggest falls were in the United States, where the Dow was down by 368 points at the close of trade on Friday, a …