Michael Snyder – Corporations Are Defaulting On Their Debts Like It’s 2008 All Over Again

The Dow closed above 18,000 on Monday for the first time since July.  Isn’t that great news?  I truly wish that it was.  If the Dow actually reflected economic reality, I could stop writing about “economic collapse” and start blogging about cats or football.  Unfortunately, the stock market and the economy are moving in two completely different directions right now.  …

Ariel Noyola Rodríguez – Where will the Next Global Economic Crisis Explode? Colossal Stock Market Losses in 2016

The year 2016 has hardly begun and the losses in different stock markets around the world care colossal: nearly 8 trillion US dollars during the first three weeks of January according to the calculations of the Bank of America Merrill Lynch. The Government of the United States made addicts of investment banks of policies of cheap credit. And now that …

Michael Snyder – What Really Happened In 2015, And What Is Coming In 2016…

A lot of people were expecting some really big things to happen in 2015, and most of them did not happen.  But what did happen?  It is my contention that a global financial crisis began during the second half of 2015, and it threatens to greatly accelerate as we enter 2016.  During the last six months of the year that …

Ernst Wolff – Pillaging the World. The History and Politics of the IMF

The following text is the forward to Ernst Wolff‘s book entitled : Pillaging the World. The History and Politics of the IMF, Tectum Verlag Marburg, www.tectum-verlag.de. The book is available in English and German. No other financial organization has affected the lives of the majority of the world’s population more profoundly over the past fifty years than the International Monetary …

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 …

Pam Martens and Russ Martens – Pull Back the Curtain on Exchange Traded Funds and Out Pop Wall Street Mega Banks

The selloff in junk bonds has rattled the markets and is raising questions about just who it is that is providing liquidity to the junk bond Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) — which have magically redeemed billions of dollars in withdrawals from retail investors while the underlying bonds in their portfolio are under severe stress in the broader marketplace. (Both a …

Bill Holter – More Market Instability? The Highly Leveraged Nature of our Financial System is Teetering

This week shapes up as one which could go down in the history books! Markets last week were tumultuous from weak equities, illiquid credit markets, FOREX markets in disarray and commodities hitting the skids …yet the Federal Reserve is intent on hiking rates? Have they taken this position because the markets are strong? Or because the economy …anywhere on the …

Rot Of Empire: Moody’s Downgrades Chicago To Junk Bond Status – Dave Kanzler

I thought junk bonds were ‘high risk – high return’ whereas I’d have thought Chicago was more ‘high risk – no return.   Not so much junk bonds, just junk. Reader comment from  “Mike” It’s doubtful that Warren Buffet’s Moody’s Investor Services will face the same wrath from Obama that Obama inflicted on S&P after S&P downgraded the U.S. Government debt rating …

Junk Bonds Are The New Haven Assets – Anchalee Worrachate Sally Bakewell Katie Linsell

The new fixed-income haven is, of all things, the market for junk bonds. With government bonds in Germany to Japan yielding less than nothing, money is pouring into exchange-traded funds that buy speculative-grade debt, traditionally the riskiest of fixed-income assets. The pace is staggering. So far this year, about $9 billion has flowed into the funds globally, a significant chunk …