Global Recession? The Canadian Economy Shrinks At The Fastest Pace Since The Last Financial Crisis - Michael Snyder THE ECONOMIC COLLAPSE BLOG

Global Recession? The Canadian Economy Shrinks At The Fastest Pace Since The Last Financial Crisis Posted: 31 Aug 2016   Michael Snyder  THE ECONOMIC COLLAPSE BLOG Things have not been this bad for the Canadian economy since the last global recession.  During the second quarter of 2016, Canada’s GDP contracted at a 1.6 percent annualized rate.  That was the worst number in seven years, and it was even worse than most analysts were projecting.  This comes at a time when bad news is pouring in from all corners of the global economy.   While things in the United States are still relatively stable for the moment, the same cannot be said for much of the rest of the planet.  Canada in particular has been hit very hard by the collapse in oil prices, and the massive wildfire in northern Alberta back in May certainly did not help things.  The following comes from the BBC… The recent drop in GDP was larger than analysts had projected, but not far off the predicted 1.5% loss. “[The figure] could have been worse, given the hit from the wildfire, and clearly confirms the disappointing downward trend in exports over the last few months,” said Sal Guatieri, senior economist at BMO Capital Markets. In May, wildfires devastated the parts of northern Alberta where much of Canada’s oil and natural gas is produced. For many years, high oil prices and booming exports enabled the Canadian economy to significantly outperform the U.S. economy.  But now conditions have changed dramatically, and all of the economic bubbles up in Canada are starting to burst.  This includes the housing bubble, as we have seen home sales in the hottest markets such as Vancouver drop through the floor late in the summer.  In fact, it is being reported that home sales during the first two weeks of August in British Columbia were down a whopping 51 percent on a year over year basis. Do you remember the housing bubble in the U.S. that helped fuel the last financial crisis?  Well, a very similar bubble is now bursting up in Canada, and some investors have positioned themselves to make a tremendous amount of money when the whole thing comes violently crashing down.  The following comes from Wolf Richter… This summer, famed short seller Marc Cohodes came out of retirement (he now raises chickens on a farm in Sonoma County, CA, and sells the eggs for a fortune in San Francisco) and jumped into ring with a number of interviews on TV and in the print media, and this too rattled some nerves – largely because it hit home. “I think it’s a money laundering-induced market,” he said as we reported at the time. “Where the local politicians, or the BC Liberals, are kept or in cahoots with the real estate brokers, developers, lawyers, that angle. And they have sought Chinese money to keep the market propped up and it won’t last,” he said. “China has capital controls on, and Vancouver has become the money laundering mecca of either the world or North America, and something is going to change and change drastically.” If the price of oil does not rebound in a major way, the Canadian economy is going to continue to deeply struggle. Meanwhile, one of the biggest economies in Africa is also shrinking.  Nigeria is yet another oil-dependent economy that has fallen on really hard times, and during the latest quarter their GDP shrunk by 2.06 percent on an annualized basis… Nigeria has slipped into recession, with the latest growth figures showing the economy contracted 2.06% between April and June. The country has now seen two consecutive quarters of declining growth, the usual definition of recession. Its vital oil industry has been hit by weaker global prices, according to the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics (NBS). There are so many signs that indicate that the global economy has entered a new major downturn.  Yes, the U.S. is doing better than almost everyone else for the moment, but this will not last indefinitely.  Our planet is more interconnected than ever before, and just as we saw in 2008, big trouble on one side of the globe quickly affects the other side. Today we also learned that the 7th largest container shipping company in the entire world has completely imploded.  Total global trade has been declining for quite some time now, and it was inevitable that this sort of thing would start happening… After years of relentless decline in the Baltic Dry index… … today the largest casualty finally emerged on Wednesday when South Korea’s Hanjin Shipping, the country’s largest shipping firm and the world’s seventh-biggest container carrier, filed for court receivership after losing the support of its banks, leaving its assets frozen as ports from China to Spain denied access to its vessels. Over in Europe, an emerging banking crisis continues to simmer just under the surface. Most Americans are completely oblivious to the fact that major global financial problems could be just around the corner, but CNBC is reporting that banks over in Europe are “preparing for an economic nuclear winter situation”… European banks, in particular, have had a very tough six months as the shock and volatility around Brexit sent banking stocks south. Major European banks like Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse saw their shares in free-fall after the referendum’s results were announced. In the U.K., RBS was the worst-hit, with its shares plunging by more than 30 percent since June 24. The current uncertainty over when the U.K. will start the process of quitting the EU has banks on tenterhooks. But a source told CNBC that banks are “preparing for an economic nuclear winter situation.” Speaking on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitive nature of the topic, a source from a major investment bank told CNBC that financial services firms have put together a strategy in place that takes into account the worst-case scenario that could happen by the end of this year. So precisely what would an “economic nuclear winter” look like? I don’t know, but it certainly does not sound good. We should be thankful that things have been as calm and stable as they have been so far in 2016, but nobody should be fooled into thinking that our problems have been fixed. The truth is that the global debt bubble is at an all-time high, the banks are being more reckless and are more vulnerable than ever before, and troubling economic numbers continue to pour in from all over the planet. The stage is certainly set for the next major global economic crisis, and it isn’t going to take much to push the world over the edge.

The Economic Collapse Of South America Is Well Underway - Michael Snyder THE ECONOMIC COLLAPSE

The Economic Collapse Of South America Is Well Underway Posted: 03 Mar 2016   Michael Snyder  THE ECONOMIC COLLAPSE The 7th largest economy on the entire planet is completely imploding.  I have written previously about the economic depression that is plaguing Brazil, but since my last article it has gotten much, much worse.  During 2015, Brazil’s economy shrank by 3.8 percent, but for the most recent quarter the decline was 5.89 percent on a year over year basis.  Unemployment is rising rapidly, the inflation rate is up over 10 percent, and Brazilian currency has lost 24 percent of its value compared to the U.S. dollar over the past 12 months. At this point, Brazil is already experiencing its longest economic downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s, and things are getting worse for ordinary Brazilians every single day.  The following comes from CNN… But with Brazil plunging into its worst recession in over two decades — hopes for a brighter future are fading. The Brazilian economy shrank 3.8% in 2015, according to government data published Thursday. That’s the biggest annual drop since 1990 and the country is in its longest recession since the 1930s. “I have never seen anything like this,” said Alves, 24, as he stood on his balcony overlooking Rocinha, a massive lower middle class neighborhood or favela in Rio de Janeiro where he grew up. “My parents would tell me about hard times, but today it is really tough. Prices are going up every day.” So how did this happen? Well, there are a couple of factors that are really hurting South American economies. Number one, during the “boom years” governments and businesses in South America absolutely gorged on debt.  Unfortunately, many of those loans were denominated in U.S. dollars, and now that the U.S. dollar has appreciated greatly against local South American currencies it is taking far more of those local currencies to service and pay back those debts. Number two, collapsing prices for oil and other commodities have been absolutely brutal for South American economies.  They rely very heavily on exporting commodities to the rest of the world, and so at the same time their debt problems are exploding they are getting a lot less money for the oil and industrial commodities that they are trying to sell to North America, Asia and Europe. I want you to pay close attention to the following chart and analysis from Zero Hedge.  As you can see, the economic problems in Brazil appear to be greatly accelerating… “The Brazilian economic downturn took a real turn for the worse in February,” according to Markit’s Composite PMI, which collapsed to record lows at 39.0. Despite a slightly less bad than expected GDP print this morning (still down a record 5.89% YoY), hope was quickly extinguished as PMIs showed economic activity continuing to contract at a record pace, job losses accelerating, and manufacturing’s collapse accelerating. As Market sums up, “With the global economy also showing signs of slowing, which will impact on external demand, it looks as if the downturn is set to continueto run its course in the coming months.”              GDP was a disaster (but better than expected)   And of course Brazil is not the only South American economy that is a basket case right now.  In fact, things in Venezuela are far worse.  In 2015, the Venezuelan economy shrunk by 10 percent, and the official rate of inflation was a staggering 181 percent. Could you imagine living in an economy with a 181 percent inflation rate?  As prices have escalated out of control, citizens have attempted to hoard basic supplies in advance, and this has resulted in food shortages that are absolutely frightening… Cardboard signs on the door warning of “No bread” have become increasingly common at Venezuelan bakeries. Venezuela gets 96 percent of its foreign currency from oil exports, and as crude prices have plunged, so have the country’s imports — among them wheat. The leftist government of President Nicolas Maduro has tightly controlled access to hard currency, and this has affected imports ranging from medicine to toilet paper. Now it is seriously affecting imports of wheat, which Venezuela does not grow. Add to this the soaring inflation rate — 181 percent in 2015, the world’s highest — and you see why customers are mainly interested in buying basic food items such as bread. Here in the United States, there are still people who doubt that an economic crisis is happening. But in Venezuela and Brazil there is no debate. Unfortunately, what is happening in Venezuela and Brazil is also slowly starting to happen to most of the rest of the planet as well.  It is just that they are a little farther down the road.  Economic and financial bubbles are bursting all over the world, and I like how author Vikram Mansharamani described this phenomenon during a recent interview with CNBC… Deflationary tides are lapping the shores of countries across the world and financial bubbles are set to burst everywhere, Vikram Mansharamani, a lecturer at Yale University, told CNBC on Thursday. “I think it all started with the China investment bubble that has burst and that brought with it commodities and that pushed deflation around the world and those ripples are landing on the shore of countries literally everywhere,” the high-profile author and academic said at the Global Financial Markets Forum in Abu Dhabi. And of course the evidence of what Mansharamani was talking about is all around us. Just this week we found out that Chinese state industries plan to lay off five to six million workers, U.S. factory orders have now fallen for 15 months in a row, and the corporate default rate in the United States has now risen above where it was at when Lehman Brothers collapsed. There are some people that would like to point to the fact that stocks have bounced back a bit over the past couple of weeks as evidence that the crisis is over. If they want to believe that, they should go ahead and believe that. Unfortunately, the truth is that the hard economic numbers that are coming in from all over the world tell us very clearly that global economic activity is slowing down significantly. A new global recession has already begun, and the pain that is already being felt all over the planet is just the beginning of what is coming.

Jonathan Cahn Says Mystery of Shemitah Has Been Confirmed - TROY ANDERSON CHARISMA NEWS

Jonathan Cahn says the media have identified the Shemitah of 2015 as the "worst year for the market since 2008." (Jim Bakker Show )

Jonathan Cahn Says Mystery of Shemitah Has Been Confirmed

1/7/2016 TROY ANDERSON  charisma news

Join us on our podcast each weekday for an interesting story, well told, from Charisma News. Listen at charismapodcastnetwork.com.

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Headlines that 2015 was the "worst year for the market since 2008," more market turmoil this week and concerns by financial experts about a possible global recession are a "striking confirmation of the Shemitah and its phenomenon," New York Times best-selling author Rabbi Jonathan Cahn told Charisma News.

This week, media outlets worldwide reported that 2015 was the worst year for the financial markets since the last Shemitah and the financial crisis of 2007-08, and financial forecasters raised concerns about the potential of a global recession beginning this year. In addition, the year opened with global markets dropping precipitously, a phenomenon that resumed Wednesday, according to news reports.

"It's the central revelation in The Mystery of the Shemitah," Cahn said about his book detailing a seven-year biblical cycle that marked numerous economic downturns. "The fact that this confirmation is now coming from the secular media is all the more striking. We've never had so many secular sources confirming the central thesis of the Shemitah."

Cahn's book, The Mystery of the Shemitah, details how each of the last seven Shemitahs since 1966 were marked by recessions or stock and bond market crashes. The Shemitah, or Sabbath year, is the seventh year of the seven-year agricultural cycle mandated by the Torah for the land of Israel. Cahn first introduced readers to the Shemitah in The Harbinger that described how it related to the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and subsequent historic stock market drops that year and in 2008.

Some people thought that there had to be an economic calamity in September, something The Mystery of the Shemitah never says. 

"Many got sidetracked by putting all their focus on September and on a single-day crash of Wall Street they believed had to take place on a set date," Cahn says. "I've cautioned from the beginning against date setting and the idea that anything had to take place on any date, season or in any year.

"But the predominant pattern of the book is not of a day crash that has to take place on a set day, but rather on a long-term crash or collapse of Wall Street, taking place over a period of months. And this is exactly what happened in the Shemitah of 2015. The market peaked in the spring and then began a long-term collapse over months into the summer. The effect of the Shemitah of 2015 was so great that by its end, it had wiped away $11 trillion dollars from world markets."

Another part of the template revealed in the book is that the effects of the Shemitah intensify as the year approaches the Hebrew month of Elul, or August and September.

"This, too, is exactly what took place in the Shemitah of 2015," Cahn says. "This year, Elul began on August 16. Less than 10 days after its start, the world would witness one of the greatest collapses in Wall Street history and, beyond that, in world history, with the onslaught of Black Monday.

"It is not that something had to happen this year, or that the phenomenon had to manifest in every cycle—but the fact is—it did. That phenomenon concerns a specific biblical seven-year cycle of financial, if not economic, downturn. And now, as we begin 2016, financial sites and news services all over the world are proclaiming that 2015 was the 'worst year for the market since 2008.' It's an extremely powerful confirmation. As 2008-2015 is exactly that—a seven-year cycle. And not just a seven-year cycle, but the specific seven-year cycle ordained in the Bible, the cycle of the biblical Shemitah."

Cahn's remarks come amid a stock market rout on Monday that saw market indexes drop hundreds of points, including a 582-point Nikkei Stock Average drop in Asia and a 276-point drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Meanwhile, financial experts have raised questions whether a global recession is beginning. "Could the Economy Tank in 2016?" a Politico headline asked. "Brazil Heads for the Worst Recession Since 1901, Economists Forecast," Bloomberg reported. 

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U.S. Dollar Has Already Caused A Global Recession... - MICHAEL SYNDER THE ECONOMIC COLLAPSE BLOG

The U.S. Dollar Has Already Caused A Global Recession And Now The Fed Is Going To Make It Worse

Posted: 22 Nov 2015 - MICHAEL SYNDER   THE ECONOMIC COLLAPSE BLOG

The 7th largest economy on the entire planet, Brazil, has been gripped by a horrifying recession, as has much of the rest of South America.  But it isn’t just South America that is experiencing a very serious economic downturn.  We have just learned that Japan (the third largest economy in the world) has lapsed into recession.  So has Canada.  So has Russia. 

The dominoes are starting to fall, and it looks like the global economic crisis that has already started is going to accelerate as we head into the end of the year.  At this point, global trade is already down about 8.4 percent for the year, and last week the Baltic Dry Shipping Index plummeted to a brand new all-time record low.  Unfortunately for all of us, the Federal Reserve is about to do something that will make this global economic slowdown even worse.

Throughout 2015, the U.S. dollar has been getting stronger.  That sounds like good news, but the truth is that it is not.  When the last financial crisis ended, emerging markets went on a debt binge unlike anything we have ever seen before.  But much of that debt was denominated in U.S. dollars, and now this is creating a massive problem.  As the U.S. dollar has risen, the prices that many of these emerging markets are getting for the commodities that they export have been declining. 

Meanwhile, it is taking much more of their own local currencies to pay back and service all of the debts that they have accumulated.  Similar conditions contributed to the Latin American debt crisis of the 1980s, the Asian currency crisis of the 1990s and the global financial crisis of 2008 and 2009.
Many Americans may be wondering when “the next economic crisis” will arrive, but nobody in Brazil is asking that question.  Thanks to the rising U.S. dollar, Brazil has already plunged into a very deep recession…

As Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff combats a slumping economy and corruption accusations, the country’s inflation surged above 10 percent while unemployment jumped to 7.9 percent, according to the latest official data. The dour state of affairs has Barclays forecasting a 4 percent economic contraction this year, followed by 3.3 percent shrinkage next year, the investment bank said in a research note last week.
The political and economic turmoil has recently driven the real, Brazil’s currency, to multiyear lows, a factor helping to stoke price pressures.

And as I mentioned above, Brazil is far from alone.  This is something that is happening all over the planet, and the process appears to be accelerating.  One of the places where this often first shows up is in the trade numbers.  The following comes from an article that was just posted by Zero Hedge…

“This market is looking like a disaster and the rates are a reflection of that,” warns one of the world’s largest shipbrokers, but while The Baltic Dry Freight Index gets all the headlines – having collapsed to all-time record lows this week – it is the spefics below that headline that are truly terrifying. At a time of typical seasonal strength for freight and thus global trade around the world, Reuters reports that spot rates for transporting containers from Asia to Northern Europe have crashed a stunning 70% in the last 3 weeks alone. This almost unprecedented divergence from seasonality has only occurred at this scale once before… 2008! “It is looking scary for the market and it doesn’t look like there is going to be any life in the market in the near term.”

Many “experts” seem mystified by all of this, but the explanation is very simple.
For years, global economic growth was fueled by cheap U.S. dollars.  But since the end of QE, the U.S. dollar has been surging, and according to Bloomberg it just hit a 12 year high…

The dollar traded near a seven-month high against the euro before the release of minutes of the Federal Reserve’s October meeting, when policy makers signaled the potential for an interest-rate increase this year.
A trade-weighted gauge of the greenback is at the highest in 12 years as Fed Chair Janet Yellen and other policy makers have made numerous pronouncements in the past month that it may be appropriate to boost rates from near zero at its Dec. 15-16 gathering. The probability the central bank will act next month has risen to 66 percent from 50 percent odds at the end of October.

But even though the wonks at the Federal Reserve supposedly know the damage that a strong dollar is already doing to the global economy, they seem poised to make things even worse by raising interest rates in December…

Most Federal Reserve policymakers agreed last month that the economy “could well” be strong enough in December to withstand the Fed’s first Interest rate hike in nearly a decade, according to minutes of its meeting Oct. 27-28.
The officials said global troubles had eased and a delay could increase market uncertainty and undermine confidence in the economy.
The meeting summary provides the clearest evidence yet that a majority of Fed policymakers are leaning toward raising the central bank’s benchmark rate next month, assuming the economy continues to progress.

Considering the tremendous amount of damage that has already been done to the global economy, this is one of the stupidest things that they could possibly do.

But it looks like they are going to do it anyway.

It has been said that those that refuse to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

And right now so many of the exact same patterns that we saw just before the great financial crisis of 2008 are playing out once again right in front of our eyes.

A lot of people out there seem to assume that once we got past the September/October time frame that we were officially out of “the danger zone”.

But that is not true at all.

The truth is that we have already entered a new global economic downturn that is rapidly accelerating, and the financial shaking that we witnessed in August was just a foreshock of what is coming next.

Let us hope that common sense prevails and the Fed chooses not to raise interest rates at their next meeting.
Because if they do, it will just make the global crisis that is now emerging much, much worse.

The Calm Before The Storm - THE ECONOMIC COLLAPSE - Michael Snyder

The Calm Before The Storm

Posted: 26 Oct 2015 THE ECONOMIC COLLAPSE - Michael Snyder

Have you noticed that things have gotten eerily quiet in the month of October?  After the chaos of late August and early September, many had anticipated that we would be dealing with a full-blown financial collapse by now, but instead we have entered a period of “dead calm” in which things have become exceedingly quiet in almost every way that you can possibly imagine.

Other “watchmen” that I highly respect have made the exact same observation.  Even though the economic numbers are screaming that we have entered a global recession, they aren’t really make any headline news.  A whole host of major financial institutions around the planet are currently in danger of collapsing and creating the next “Lehman Brothers moment”, but none of them has imploded just yet.  And of course Barack Obama seems bound and determined to start World War III.

On Monday, it was announced that he is sending a guided missile destroyer into Chinese waters in the South China Sea.  The Chinese have already stated that they might just start shooting if this happens, but Barack Obama doesn’t seem to care.  But until the shooting actually begins, that is not likely to upset the current tranquility that we are enjoying either.
To me, what we are experiencing at the moment would best be described as “the calm before the storm”.  If you are not familiar with this concept, this is how it is defined by How Stuff Works…

Have you ever spent an afternoon in the backyard, maybe grilling or enjoying a game of croquet, when suddenly you notice that everything goes quiet? The air seems still and calm — even the birds stop singing and quickly return to their nests.

After a few minutes, you feel a change in the air, and suddenly a line of clouds ominously appears on the horizon — clouds with a look that tells you they aren’t fooling around. You quickly dash in the house and narrowly miss the first fat raindrops that fall right before the downpour. At this moment, you might stop and ask yourself, “Why was it so calm and peaceful right before the storm hit?”

Like so many others, I believe that a great storm is coming, and yet right at this moment things seem so peaceful.

Unfortunately, this period of peace and quiet is not going to last for long, and most Americans know deep down that something is seriously wrong with our nation.  In fact, a new WND/Clout poll has found that 85.3 percent of all likely voters in the United States believe that our country is going in the wrong direction…

The poll found 92.6 percent of those who identified themselves as conservative believe the nation is on the wrong track. Among those who call themselves liberal, 90.9 percent said it is going the wrong direction.

 When asked what they think of the American economy after seven years of Obama’s leadership and economic policies, nearly 80 percent described it as “very fragile” or “somewhat fragile.”

Self-identified Democrats, Republicans, liberals and conservatives were in general agreement, with about 75 percent to 80 percent describing the economy as “somewhat fragile” or “very fragile.”

But even though we are steamrolling in the wrong direction, we haven’t suffered any incredibly serious consequences for it yet.

For the moment, this is allowing the mockers to have a field day.  They are fully confident that Barack Obama and the Federal Reserve knew what they were doing after all, and they are gleefully taunting those of us that have been warning of the great disaster that is heading our way.

However, those that are wise are getting prepared.

I think that we could all learn some lessons from what Overstock.com Chairman Jonathan Johnson is doing. The following is an extended excerpt from a recent Zero Hedge article…

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One week ago Johnson, who is also candidate for Utah governor, spoke at the United Precious Metals Association, or UPMA, which we first profiled a month ago, and which takes advantage of Utah’s special status allowing the it to use gold as legal tender, offering gold and silver-backed accounts. As a reminder, the UPMA takes Federal Reserve Notes (or paper dollars) which it then translates into golden dollars (or silver).

The golden dollars are based off the $50 one ounce gold coins produced by the Treasury of The United States. They are legal tender under the law and are protected as such.
What did Johnson tell the UPMA? Here are some choice quotes:

We are not big fans of Wall Street and we don’t trust them. We foresaw the financial crisis, we fought against the financial crisis that happened in 2008;we don’t trust the banks still and we foresee that with QE3, and QE4 and QE n that at some point there is going to be another significant financial crisis.

 So what do we do as a business so that we would be prepared when that happens. One thing that we do that is fairly unique: we have about $10 million in gold, mostly the small button-sized coins, that we keep outside of the banking system. We expect that when there is a financial crisis there will be a banking holiday. I don’t know if it will be 2 days, or 2 weeks, or 2 months. We have $10 million in gold and silver in denominations small enough that we can use for payroll. We want to be able to keep our employees paid, safe and our site up and running during a financial crisis.

We also happen to have three months of food supply for every employee that we can live on.

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Why would such a seemingly intelligent and successful CEO of a large Internet company do such things?

It is because he can see the writing on the wall.

This period of calm will not last.  A great storm is coming, and when it does arrive those that have not prepared for it are going to suffer tremendously.

Most people have no idea just how fragile our system really is.  Today, some of these “too big to fail” banks supposedly have trillions of dollars in assets, but if you want to withdraw $10,000 or more in cash you have got to give them 24 hours notice to get enough money…

This is just the beginning. As anyone can tell you, it’s all but impossible to move large amounts of money into cash in the US. Even the large banks will routinely ask you for 24 hours notice if you need $10,000 or more in cash. These are banks will TRILLIONS of dollars worth of assets on their books.

And with each passing day we see even more signs of the global economic slowdown that is emerging all around us.  For example, we just learned that the China Containerized Freight Index has dropped to the lowest level ever recorded.  China accounts for more global trade than anyone else, and so this is a very clear sign that global economic activity is slowing down dramatically…

By early July, the index dropped below 800 for the first time in its history, which started in 1998 when the index was set at 1,000. It soon recovered to about 850. And just when bouts of hope were rising that the worst was over, it plunged again and hit even lower levels.

The latest weekly reading dropped another 1.7% from the prior week to 752.21, the worst level ever. The CCFI is now 30% below where it had been in February this year and 25% below where it had been 17 years ago at its inception.

But for those that don’t want to believe that hard times are on the way, they can take comfort in the eerie period of calm that we are experiencing right now.

What they don’t realize is that this truly is “the calm before the storm”, and the global economic crisis that is ahead of us is going to be far beyond what most people ever dared to imagine was possible.