What if Deutsche Bank Derivatives Bubble suddenly Implodes into a Financial Black Hole https://youtu.be/-MHQENdSK2k

What if Deutsche Bank Derivatives Bubble suddenly Implodes into a Financial Black Hole https://youtu.be/-MHQENdSK2k

Deutsche Bank Derivatives Bubble suddenly Imploding into a Financial Black Hole Deutsche Bank is to Germany is what Wells Fargo is to the US .it just does not stop at one scandal, there is another and another and another. Today, Deutsche Bank was convicted of derivatives transactions in Italy. An Italian court convicted 13 former bankers from Deutsche Bank, Nomura, and Monte dei Paschi di Siena on Friday over derivative transactions that prosecutors say helped MPS the world’s oldest bank conceal huge losses. The verdict also ordered the seizure of 64 million euros, about $70.5 million, from Deutsche Bank and 88 million euros from Nomura as part of the sentence. Monte dei Paschi reached a settlement of 10.6 million euros with the court in 2016. The case centers on two controversial derivatives deals, known as Alexandria and Santorini, that Nomura and Deutsche Bank arranged for Monte dei Paschi in 2009. Prosecutors said the deals helped Monte Dei Paschi, which was founded in 1472 and is Italy’s fourth-biggest lender, hide more than 2 billion euros of losses it racked up after the costly acquisition of a smaller rival in 2008. Monte dei Paschi’s managers were accused of colluding with Deutsche Bank and Nomura bankers to hide losses at the Italian lender by using complex derivatives trades, dubbed Santorini, and Alexandria, that led to a misrepresentation of its finances between 2008 and 2012. Deutsche bank should be allowed to collapse; they're a failed venture, it's not in the capitalist system to save failed businesses and the consequences for the common man from paying those bailouts have been catastrophic. Welcome to The Atlantis Report. Europe's biggest investment bank Deutsche Bank is technically bankrupt.And of course for everyone who knows Deutsche bank is the bank for derivatives trading. We are talking about derivatives contracts in the value range of quadrillions of dollars — not millions, not billions, not trillions of quadrillions. And derivatives contracts are at the very core outright gambling. Deutsche Bank is in big trouble. If its bankruptcy becomes true, it will be the end of the financial system as we know it. And as the big banks are highly leveraged, and they are interdependent. If one major bank fails, a lot of others are going to fall like dominoes. Deutsche Bank could not collapse without causing a domino effect and taking with it the whole financial system. it's also a harbinger of a bigger problem with European banks in general and the Italian bank in particular, which are loaded with trillions of euros in non-performing bank loans . They haven't been able to shed since the crisis of 2008 and subsequent eurozone double-dip recession of 2011. The European banks and insurers have lost dramatic amounts of ground with only one still ranking in the top 20 globally by market value .compared with six before the financial crisis. Deutsche Bank president Carl von Rohr said before yesterday at Bloomberg's Future of Finance conference in Frankfurt: while challenges abound from an erratic trade war to Brexit to unrest in Hong Kong and Chile they pale in comparison with the headwinds for banks from low and negative rates he said. Germany should at least sue the FED for its gold back, which she idiotically stored in the US. The US has, so far, refused to return the gold, has even barred the Germans from taking a look at it to make sure it's still there. It isn't. It's gone - and your guess is a good as mine as to whose bankers it might have been squirreled away. Global Investor Jim Rogers said about Deutsche Bank in a recent interview: If you look at its balance sheet, you will see it has huge, staggering debts both on balance sheet and off-balance sheet, which means their debts that they don’t reveal directly. It probably will survive if it has support, but otherwise, we all are going to have a huge problem in the next couple of years. I’ve told you before: you should be very worried. In the western world, the world is going to have a lot of problems in the next couple of years. Be worried! Then the EU would disintegrate, because Germany would no longer be able to support it, would not want to support it. A lot of other people would start bailing out; many banks in Europe have problems. And if Deutsche Bank has to fail – that is the end of it. In 1931, when one of the largest banks in Europe failed, it led to the Great Depression and, eventually, WWII. Be worried! Germany has been rightly telling everybody not to bail out their banks, but if they have to bail out their banks suddenly, then other countries will be furious, and the politicians will have a field day. the banking sector is having a rough time, according to the McKinsey report. One in three banks threatened to disappear in the coming months . Conscious of the stakes, the banks have already begun their process of rationalization, and the potion is bitter. In 10 years 2008 to 2018 already 600,000 banking jobs have been lost in eurozone alone. Deutsche Bank has announced this summer that it will cut 18,000 jobs worldwide by 2022 as part of a seven-point four billion restructuring plan. It started with the bad loan problem of the public sector banks having a spillover effect in terms of public perception on private sector banks. However, the image of private banks among investors and the public took a real hit. According to McKinsey banking institutions have no choice but to refocus their activity on certain trades just like Deutsche bank which will close down almost all of its equity-related activities . As the Fed was carrying out hundreds of billions of dollars in emergency loan operations on Wall Street for the second week in a row; the first such operations since the financial crisis . Deutsche Bank's headquarters office in Frankfurt Germany was being raided by police for the second time in less than a year . That's not the sort of thing that inspires confidence among depositors to keep their money in any bank. Deutsche Bank has been a constant headache for the US financial system because it is heavily intertwined via derivatives with the big banks on Wall Street, including JP Morgan Citigroup Goldman Sachs Morgan Stanley and Bank of America. It has become the dark cloud on the horizon in the same way Citigroup cast a negative pall in the early days of the financial crisis of 2008. It's not a good omen that Citigroup stock eventually went to 99 cents, and the bank received the largest taxpayer and Federal Reserve bailout in US history. The Fed alone secretly pumped 2.5 trillion dollars in revolving loans into Citigroup from December 2007 to the middle of 2010. The latest raids in Deutsche Bank occurred on September 24th and 25th and was related to the 220 billion dollar money laundering probe of Danske Bank; Denmark's largest lender . Deutsche Bank served as a correspondent bank to Danske Bank in Estonia branch, where the laundering is alleged to have occurred.As the raid was proceeding. Former Head of Danske Bank in Estonia Is Found Dead in Suicide . The body of Aivar Rehe, who previously ran the Estonia business of Danske Bank was discovered by police . Mr. Rehe’s death is another twist in the money-laundering scandal, which prompted a criminal investigation and forced Danske Bank, Denmark’s largest lender, to withdraw from Estonia and other Baltic countries. In Estonian Ray a has been questioned by prosecutors and was considered a key witness in the probe his death focused renewed attention on money-laundering allegations that have tainted the previously upright image of Scandinavian banking; led to official investigations in Sweden, Germany and the United States; and even threatened the economies of the Baltic countries. his death is being called an apparent suicide by European media. on the day the police raid started at Deutsche Bank. the Federal Reserve Bank of New York offered thirty billion dollars in 14-day emergency term loans, and had demand for more than twice that amount .that led the New York Fed to increase its subsequent 14-day term loans from 30 billion to 60 billion dollars. later in the week, the feds overnight repo loans were offered every day last week were also increased from 75 billion per day to 100 billion per day. Deutsche Bank has been in slow-motion collapse as a result of its serial crime charges .while international regulators have failed to address the fact that it's a counterparty to 49 trillion dollars national face value in derivatives according to its 2018 annual report, and thus presents systemic risk throughout the global financial system. Its similarities to Citigroup in 2008 are mind-numbing; given a decade of political talk about how risk has been reined in on Wall Street . The Deutsche Bank's social media team has caused a Twitter storm after moving to deny a story published by Zero Hedge that it was on the verge of collapse. likening Deutsche Bank's travails to that of Lehman Brothers before its collapse. The Zero Hedge stake presented the giant German Bank as a zombie institution on the brink of catastrophic ruination that would bring down the entire financial system. All the more remarkable then to see Deutsche Bank social media team deigning to issue a rebuttal which served only to add a sheen of legitimacy to the Zero Hedge article. Just like we witnessed with Lehman Brothers, there's always an effort to maintain the charade until the very last minute . This led to a collective outpouring from the libertarian Twitter fringe. It is strange that a bank is out commenting on an article like that. German financial services giant Deutsche Bank is one of the largest and most important economic institutions in the world; mainly due to self-imposed scandals. The bank is now having to take drastic measures to stay afloat. Investors everywhere should note that if such a critical piece of the too-big-to-fail banking system falters. It could trigger another global economic collapse and stock market crash. More precisely, the financial system has already collapsed years ago and has since been artificially kept running. Of course, there will come the point when these artificial measures are exhausted, and the financial system will finally shut down. Unfortunately, like it or not, we're all its creditors, and so everyone's bank accounts are cleared and closed overnight. All pensions, life insurances, social security payments, and savings disappear when the markets collapse. Food doesn't get transported, life changes: see the bad thing now. In short, greed has killed the west. We are all now going to pay a hefty price. It probably won’t affect the super-rich as most have remote houses away for when civil disobedience begins on a level unseen before. This is possible as the middle class is under distress, and once the impoverished and middle class meet on the same pain; then this will be the end of the system as we know it. Don't count on bailouts this time. Bail-ins are possible, namely taking of depositors funds. The Current system unsustainable .should Deutsche Bank collapse or not? In fact, the sooner this happens, the better. Debts must be eliminated. With this mega collapse, the new structure of world power will be introduced. Until recently, the US had two unique assets - US Dollar and military. Both assets in tatters now. US dominance has gone forever. The US as we knew it till recently gone too. What the US did under Obama was to use taxpayer dollars to bail out our banks. After partying, and giving the CEOs substantial bonuses, they also gave large donations to the DNC for Hillary's future coronation, and to continue Obama's protection for both the institution as well as the bankers who are considered too big to fail. If the countries in Europe think the US is their friend, they are kidding themselves. Military expansionism by the US and weakening Europe's economy makes global hegemony so much easier. Obama gave the banks in the US a very slight slap on their wrists, and no one was held accountable. But European banks, now that is something else. The EU puppets finally realize the US doesn't consider them friends, more like employees. The World financial system is at the point of collapse regardless of Deutsche Bank. Deutsche Bank's failure will only speed it up. It won't be the leading cause of it. RIP Deutsche Bank, RIP the US, RIP old world order. Hello, new world.

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DUBAI's Global Downturn Is Starting !! -- UAE , Dubai 2020 Recession https://youtu.be/uPZLeusOYLo

DUBAI's Global Downturn Is Starting !! -- UAE , Dubai 2020 Recession https://youtu.be/uPZLeusOYLo

DUBAI's Global Downturn Is Starting !! -- UAE , Dubai 2020 Recession Sentiment soured further in the United Arab Emirates as a gauge of business conditions in the second-largest Gulf economy slumped to an eight-year low. In an echo of disputes that have roiled global trade, sales to foreign customers posted a “weaker upturn” and new orders stagnated in the U.A.E. in August, according to IHS Markit. Its Purchasing Managers’ Index dropped to 51.6 from 55.1 in July, declining for a third month and edging close to the threshold of 50 that separates contraction from growth. Fears of a global downturn are deepening as signs of a manufacturing slump have emerged from Europe to Asia. Domestic competitive pressures are compounding the outlook for the U.A.E., a federation of seven emirates that includes oil-rich Abu Dhabi and tourism and trade hub Dubai. Dubai, beautiful, full of potentials and the land of economic advances. Or was it a long time ago. Dubai's economy has been growing so little in the past decade that many believe it can’t be even called growth. Surveys show that the economy has seen a 1.94 percent growth in 2018 which was Dubai’s slowest pace since 2009 when the economy crashed due to a debt crisis. A big part of Dubai’s economy is focused on tourism and international business services. These two sectors have been hurt by a rough patch amid a fall in the real estate market. Experts say a weakening external backdrop, a strong US dollar and the ongoing correction in the property market are headwinds for a number of vital sectors. Property prices in Dubai have fallen by more than a quarter from their peak in 2014. It is expected that the prices fall 5 to 10 percent in the near future as a result of a continued gap between supply and demand. What happened in 2009 that still haunts the sheikdom? Collapsing property prices put Dubai in a debt crisis, so to tackle the situation, Dubai asked a 20 billion dollar bailout from oil-rich Abu Dhabi. After that, Dubai’s GDP grew at 4.8 percent in 2013 before starting to decline and the drop accelerated last year after the property sector slumped and the number of tourists stagnated. The UAE needs to attract 20 million tourists each year to make ends meet. But official figures indicate that in the past two years, the number of tourists stood at just under 16 million and in the first half of 2019, Dubai welcomed 8.3 million visitors. Standard and Poor's say the slowdown that started in 2014 is forecasted to carry on through 2022 due to low oil prices, fallout from the US-China trade war and political turmoil. These days Dubai faces high public debt amounting to around 124 billion dollars or 108 percent of gross domestic product. This debt is divided between the government and state-linked companies. The government has recently announced a series of initiatives to boost growth and S&P says it expects Dubai's economy to pick up to 2.4 percent this year, largely due to the completion of projects related to the international trade exhibition Expo 2020. But at the same time, it says the growth is unlikely to stay high since a trade war between China and the US is killing the economy across the world. Lower regional demand due to the US-imposed sanctions on neighboring Iran is another factor. It will have a negative impact on transit trade which is an important contributor to Dubai's economy. A slowdown in Dubai's economy since 2014 is forecast to carry on through 2022 due to low oil prices, fallout from the US-China trade war and political turmoil, Standard and Poor's said Tuesday. Growth in the Middle East's most diversified economy has also been impacted by a deterioration in the key real estate and tourism sectors, the international ratings agency said in a report. Dubai faces high public debt amounting to around $124 billion, or 108 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), divided between the government and state-linked companies, the report said. The emirate's GDP grew at just 1.94 percent last year, its lowest since 2010 when the city state was still recovering from the impact of the global financial crisis and defaulting on its debt. S&P said it expected Dubai's economy to pick up to 2.4 percent this year, largely due to the completion of projects related to the international trade exhibition Expo 2020 opening in October next year. After the Expo, growth will then moderate to 2 percent through 2022, it said. The trade war between the United States and China, and lower regional demand due to sanctions on neighboring Iran, are likely to slow transit trade, an important contributor to the Dubai economy, S&P said. Dubai's GDP grew at 4.8 percent in 2013 before starting to decline and the drop accelerated last year after the property sector slumped and the number of tourists stagnated. The city-state, one of seven sheikhdoms that make up the UAE, had expected to attract 20 million visitors annually by 2020 when it hosts the 6-month Expo. But in the past 2 years, the number of tourists stood at just under 16 million and in the first half of 2019, Dubai welcomed 8.3 million visitors, according to official figures. The property market, which contributes some seven percent to GDP, has been in a downturn since mid-2014, with sale and rent prices shedding a third of their values. Dubai ruler and UAE Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashed on Monday formed a committee to regulate the oversupplied real estate market. During the past year, the emirate has taken a raft of measures to boost the domestic economy and lure foreign investors by easing residency and business rules, including allowing full ownership of businesses by foreigners outside free trade zones. The emirate draws 70 percent of its revenues from fees on a host of transactions, some 24 percent from taxes and profits of government companies, and just 6 percent from oil.

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As Inflation Grinch Hurts Households A Tsunami of Fake Money to hit The Markets ! https://youtu.be/Rkv1_9AvbDE

As Inflation Grinch Hurts Households A Tsunami of Fake Money to hit The Markets ! https://youtu.be/Rkv1_9AvbDE

A Tsunami of Fake Money about to hit The Markets !!-- Economic Collapse -- Stock Market Crash . 4K A Tsunami of Fake Money about to hit The Markets !! When an econo-financial world based on never-ending credit meets the reality of suspicion about inability to repay debt, all bets are off. Last week saw the end of the beginning of a crisis of liquidity in credit-driven capitalism in the United States. This week, more information is available to confirm our fears. As we head towards the tidying of balance sheets at the year-end, more tartan paint salesmen are about to become IPOs on already squeamish markets. The signs are not good . later on Wednesday morning, when in an "unexpected" move, the Federal Reserve expanded the size of its two dollar funding operations, the overnight and term repo, from $75 Billion to $100 Billion, and from $30 Billion to $60 Billion heading into quarter-end, effectively injecting up to $250 billion in funding ($30 Billion in already concluded term repo as well as two $60 Billion term repos yet to come, together with the $100 Billion overnight repo, assuming full allottment on all operations, for a grand total of $250 Billion ). This is getting worse. Remember, this started with 53 Billion last week. We’re now up to 139 Billion and we haven’t heard the overnight number yet (30+60+49). Sure, it could have been worse today, but the trend is still going up, not down. The spike in the repo rate might have a technical explanation: a misjudgement was made in the Fed’s money market operations. Even so, two conclusions can be drawn: managing the money markets is becoming harder and from now on banks will be studying each other’s creditworthiness to a greater degree than before. Those people, who struggle with the minutiae of money markets and that includes most professionals, should focus on the causes and not the symptoms. Financial markets have recovered from each downturn since 1980, because interest rates have been cut to new lows. Post-2008 they were cut to near zero or below zero in all major economies. In response to a new financial crisis they cannot go any lower. Central banks will look for new ways to replicate or broaden Quantitative Easing. (At some point governments will simply see repression as an easier option). Then there is the problem of ‘risk-free’ assets becoming risky assets. Financial markets assume that the probability of major governments such as the US or UK defaulting is zero. These governments are entering the next downturn with debt roughly twice the levels proportionate to GDP that were seen in 2008. This liquidity problem is a signal that trading desks are loaded up on inventory and can't get rid of it. Repo is done out of a need for cash. If you own all of your securities (i.e. a long only, no leverage mutual fund) you have no need to "repo" your securities - you're earning interest every night so why would you want to 'repo' your securities where you are paying interest for that overnight loan (securities lending is another animal). So, it is those that 'lever-up' and need the cash for settlement purposes on securities they've bought with borrowed money that need to utilize the repo desk. With this in mind, as we continue to see this need to obtain cash (again, needed to settle other securities purchases) it shows these firms don't have the capital to add more inventory to, what appears to be, a bloated inventory. No comes the fun part: the Treasury is about to auction 3's, 10's and 30 year bonds. If I am correct (again, I could be wrong), the Fed realizes securities firms don't have the shelf space to take down a good portion of these auctions. If there isn't enough retail/institutional demand it would lead to not only a crappy auction but major concerns to the street that there is now no backstop, at all, to any sell off. At which point everyone will want to be the first one thru the door and sell immediately . . . but to whom? If there isn't enough liquidity in the repo market to finance their positions, the firms would be unable to increase their inventory. We all saw repo shut down on the 2008 crisis. Wall St runs on money. . .OVERNIGHT money. They lever up in order to inventory securities for trading. If they can't get overnight money they can't purchase securities. And if they can't unload what they have, it means the buy side isn't taking on more either. It seems too convenient that the Fed has specifically mentioned stepping in for a long enough timeframe to see how the auction shakes out. Begs the question. Are these supposed overnight loans (REPOS) really being paid back in 24 hours and collateral returned, or is demand decreasing because these are actually stealth POMOs where the FED has actually kept the collateral and issued money on a long term basis. Certainly could explain the decline in loan applications. Maybe if the FED's balance sheet reporting is honest, we may soon discover it has somehow increased net month. Or maybe this all disappears like the other 21 trillion . It's Friday. no liquidity shortage on Fridays, only booze shortage needs to be fixed.

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10 Years of QE turned our Economy & Society into a Speculative Casino https://youtu.be/E8YNuPtYV70

10 Years of QE turned our Economy & Society into a Speculative Casino https://youtu.be/E8YNuPtYV70

How to Prepare & Survive Recession 2020 -- Economic Collapse -- Stock Market Crash The U.S. economy needs a re-set if it is to lift all boats, and the sooner the re-set occurs, the sooner we can dispense with all the cronyist intervention, self-serving manipulation and exploitive distortion that's turned our economy and society into a speculative casino that only benefits a few insiders and those who know how to rig the game in their favor. Most people are ill-equipped for recession, never mind Depression or Collapse. The secret to riding out a recession is no debt. Trump will be tweeting about amazing new economic data, a winning trade agreement with China right around the corner, incredible jobs numbers, super-mega worker productivity and corporate profits just as the FED's trading desk swings into high gear to buy up billions of dollars worth of US corporate stock and bonds! There is NO economy; there is only market manipulation. Realistically, it's too late for most debtors. We have at best a matter of months before the shit hits the fan. If you haven't ferreted away a few years worth of savings by now and vacated major population centers, you're unlikely to survive the Reset. Zombie corporations and local governments that have been insolvent in all but name will finally go bankrupt, clearing the system of their dead weight. Economies supporting zombie entities are sacrificing their capital to keep insiders afloat, which leaves less capital to invest in increasing productivity, which is the only way to increase broad-based wealth. The Everything Bubble will finally pop, stripping the system of phantom speculative wealth and fictitious capital. Price discovery will once again be possible, as all the central bank-inflated bubbles will deflate and real demand and supply will set the price of assets. Once central banks have been revealed as powerless, the quasi-religious belief in their omnipotence will dissipate, and people will finally start dealing with the Gilded Age excesses of the past 20 years. Common sense limits on financial predation and trickery will gather support, and tricks like corporate buybacks will be outlawed or restricted. If capital can't earn a low-risk return, then it can't flow to productive uses.Once central bank manipulation fails, capital might demand a yield, and in doing so, it will start a beneficial cycle in which speculation will no longer be enabled and rewarded by zero-interest rates or negative rates. Only those enterprises and households with productive uses for borrowed capital will reckon the interest costs are worth the risk of taking on debt. The bloated, parasitic banking sector will implode, and what's left of it will return to its proper role, a thin, regulated sector of the economy stripped of political power. All the cartels and monopolies that depend on debt will implode: banking, higher education, and ultimately national defense and sickcare, which depend on federal borrowing to fund their predatory pricing. The U.S. economy needs a re-set if it is to lift all boats, and the sooner the re-set occurs, the sooner we can dispense with all the cronyist intervention, self-serving manipulation and exploitive distortion that's turned our economy and society into a speculative casino that only benefits a few insiders and those who know how to rig the game in their favor. A profoundly shattering recession requires patience, fortitude and an awareness that the sacrifices demanded will be worth the pain if we rid our society of at least the top layer of financial and political parasites and predators that have corrupted our economy, our governance and our society. Does anyone really think The Everything Bubble can just keep inflating forever ! Surely nobody is that deluded. When the multitudes of the massive bubbles burst - the pain and sorrow will be Biblical for the common man and family. Not only are we facing the financial-economic debacle to eclipse those of the last several hundred years, this will unfold simultaneously with a grand solar minimum. The combination will be lethal for large swaths of humanity. Deep poverty and plummeting food production can only thin the human herd by hundreds of millions. Or some billions. Now, if that scenario doesn't have you rock-hard or dripping wet, allow one more factor to seal the record book. During prolonged privation, the stress of surviving intertwined Armageddons will ply havoc on immune defenses. Historically this is the time of rampant disease and pandemics. Factor in the unforeseen, such as the mutation of avian flu to human-to-human transmissibility, you have humanity reduced to pockets, ala "The Stand". 1/3 population may die in the process . And 1/2 the others will become so degraded, that it will resemble the Dark Ages . The Gigantic Sucking Sound is the Capital Destruction of the Western World Economies . Party on like it is the 476 - Fall of the Western Roman Empire . When the bubble pops, I do not see how in this fragmented society the center will hold. With the center gone, the supply chains break. Then all hell breaks loose. I have come up with a top 10 ways to survive the coming 2020 recession. #1. Take care of your health. Exercise. Eat healthy. #2. Stay out of debt. Live beneath your means. #3. Keep learning. Learn new skills. Learn how to fix and build things yourself. Invest in yourself. #4. Realize that government (at all levels) will lie to you. Government will not take care of you. Government will take everything you have if it means they stay in power one day longer. #5. Save. Buy a little gold and silver. Bitcoin if you must. But realize that this is just a little insurance and not much else. #6. Stay far away from bubbles. Hard to do when friends and relatives are getting "rich" and think you the fool . #7. Relationships are worth far more than "stuff." Families are worth way more than "stuff." Good friends are worth more than stuff. #8. Enjoy life. It doesn't take lots of money. #9. Learn how to shoot safely and have at least one gun. Even if you think you will never touch it again. #10. Be part of "something" bigger than yourself such as a Church or a volunteer organization that actually help people. All the issues we see today are the same issues seen over the last 2000 years.

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Inevitable Recession Coming this Winter - Prepare https://youtu.be/ACB_XZoEFcA

Inevitable Recession Coming this Winter - Prepare https://youtu.be/ACB_XZoEFcA

How to Prepare for a Recession various indicators in the economy are pointing to the signs that an inevitable recession is coming which has been at the center of financial news for over the last few months . As a result of this there's been a spike in recession fears throughout the nation . So what do you do when the recession happens, and how can you prepare now . I’ll tell you what most people will do. Now, in the good times, they’re going to “enjoy it while it lasts” they’ll rack up credit card debt, car loans, mortgages, and student loans. Why save money when debt is so cheap and easy to get? Besides, times are good. They “optimistically” ignore the possibility of a decline. For millennials especially, the “good times” are all they’ve ever known. One day soon, these people will be in for a shock. That nice stable job suddenly looks a lot less stable. The payments start coming due on those loans, and it becomes a lot harder to get new loans. They begin to default. They begin to sell off assets to make ends meet. Not a fun time. I’ve decided not to allow myself to be in that position. As a product of “the system”, I’ve made a lot of the mistakes that you’re supposed to make along the way. I spent what I made, sometimes more. I racked up some credit card debt, financed a car, and of course, took out tens of thousands of dollars of student loans for an economics degree that didn’t even teach me how to benefit from economic cycles. I’ve taken jobs I hated that paid me next to nothing because I didn’t think there were any other options. I’ve put money into 401k plans, but that was the extent of my investing. I had a few thousand in a savings account, but not enough for any real peace of mind or opportunities. As I mentioned above, I’ve been making improvements lately, but there’s still a long way to go. My plan to prepare for the next recession is as follow . #1.Financial security. This is the first priority, and I define it, first as getting completely out of debt. The student loans and car loans are paid off. Now there’s just the credit cards left, and those should be taken care of by the end of this year if I stick to my aggressive payoff schedule. #2. Cash reserves. Next, build up a large cash cushion in the bank. Several months or more of living expenses in case something unexpected happens. But this is more than just insurance against failure, it’s also a stash of “dry powder.” In a recession, things get cheap, and I need to be prepared to take advantage. Besides, things bother you a lot less when you have cash in the money. #3. Preserve value. Your investments are going to lose value. Maybe a lot of it. First of all, don’t be stupid and sell at the bottom. Second, once I have a bit of cash socked away, I plan to convert some of it into something more inflation resistant. Precious metals are the obvious choice, but there are others. I’m not to this stage yet, and I still need to do more research. #4. Diversify income sources. I could easily have listed this first. If your income is totally dependent on a job, even a good job, you’re taking a huge gamble. People talk about side hustles. Now is a good time to get started. I’ve been neglecting this for a long time, but I have a few things in progress and am always looking for more ideas to work on. The more income sources you have, the better. Basically, my attitude right now is to take advantage while times are good. And I don’t mean buying useless shit ... It has never been easier to start a business or side hustle. Remember all those people racking up credit card debt? They can use it to pay for your product or service. If you need investor funding (try to avoid this if you can, profit is always better), it has never been easier to get. If you need another job, you can probably find one. If you ask your boss for a raise, you’ll probably get it. Do everything you can NOW to increase your income as much as possible. People talk about building great, sustainable business empires, and that’s a worthy goal, but now is the time to grab money. Be a bit unsustainable in terms of effort. Don’t do anything illegal or unethical , this will backfire on you. And then there’s the other side of the equation . Expenses. Keep them as low as possible. Again, this can be unsustainable for now. You want increase that cushion and reduce debt as fast as possible. Skip the $8 coffees an don’t upgrade your SUV this year. Always spend less than you make. Consider selling off some of your old stuff you don’t need NOW. Prices are going to crater on a lot of this stuff when the market shifts. Take your cash off the table now. People think of economic downturns as a universally bad thing, but this is only the case for the unprepared. By planning ahead and organizing your life intelligently, it can actually be a huge buying opportunity for those who can survive the immediate negative effects. This was The Atlantis Report . Please like . share . and subscribe . Thank you ...

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This is the Root of the American Economic Problems https://youtu.be/VaYBgcMBqAI

This is the Root of the American Economic Problems https://youtu.be/VaYBgcMBqAI

Money The American Nightmare A magnificent overview of America’s economic difficulties that succinctly points out the root of the problem: the Federal Reserve. Time to end it. Welcome to The Atlantis Report . What made America great was the fact that the average Joe could work hard and provide for his family. It was called the American Dream. But somewhere along the way something went wrong, and the dream became a nightmare. The biggest culprit in the death of the American Dream is the US Federal Government. In general, when a government stays put and does not infringe on the personal and financial lives of its people, one can almost bet that things will remain pretty stable. However, sooner or later a Government becomes a Frankensteinian operation that must feed its Gargantuan creature called Bureaucracy. And the only way to feed that giant monster is with money, which then becomes the State’s obsession since it can never have enough. Soon the State’s relationship with the citizenry it was meant to serve becomes exactly like that of a two-bit Mafia don with its coerced victims: “I want my cut. Capisce?” Eventually the State’s obsession with money trickles down to every stratum of society. As Newton’s third law of motion proved, for every action there is systematically an equal reaction accompanied by opposite reactions no one expected. And that’s what went wrong in America. As the money obsession spread, money morphed from a means to an end to the end of all means, with terrible consequences. The purpose or the end of money has become money itself. As a result, all responsibility has been thrown out the window. The problem began at the Federal level when the US Government (USG) allowed the Federal Reserve System to come into existence, without any Congressional oversight and without Constitutional Ratification. The Fed – as it is called – is a private institution disguised as Federal that creates money out of thin air. Its primary purpose is to enrich its secret and not so secret members via unlimited money printing. Its secondary purpose is to feed the USG’s gargantuan operations – at the right interest rate, of course. Hence to the Fed money is its own end. It creates money to get money. And the reason it is so is because the con-artists who control it via their private banks made it so. The robber Barons of old used money as a means to develop the United States by creating infrastructures and industries. But not today. Our contemporary robbers only want money for money’s sake. They create money with no worth (i.e., with no gold or silver to back it up) and give it the veneer of value through various money market instruments. The Fed is an ungodly printing machine of fiat money or paper money solely at the disposal of irresponsible money-addicted monsters who can never accumulate enough. When a mom and pop business takes roots, its purpose is to take care of the family. Its end is noble. However, as mega corporations displace the majority of the mom and pop businesses throughout the US, their only purpose becomes the satisfaction of their greedy shareholders who apparently can never get enough profit. Thus profit becomes the ungodly god. If there is not enough of it, employees who depend on their jobs to care for their families are laid off without any sense of responsibility or mercy, while CEOs still get to cash their multi-million dollar paychecks – salaries that could easily be reduced and redistributed to keep more employees on board until a recovery. In truth, these CEOs need a Heart Adjustment. The bottom line is no longer the family’s well-being, but the profit margin of corporations and the padded bank accounts of their executives. Though there are many good Americans throughout the land who still espouse good old fashioned morality, there are also many who embrace greed as their primary end in life. Greed is an ungodly cancer that plunges those who harbor it into moral and spiritual bankruptcy. Strangely, it’s not just the rich and the super rich who are infected with its virus. Millions of Americans want money the easy way, just like the Fed. If you doubt it, then go to to a place where they sell that government-controlled monopoly scam called Lottery, and take a gander at that long line of folks hoping to win their ticket to unlimited money printing. Greed can be the poor or middle class man’s obsession as well. And that’s why credit cards have also been made readily available, thanks to the Fed’s “largesse.” The idea is to drive people into high interest debt which they accumulate purchasing trifles they don’t really need. So the indebted juggle many jobs, not to feed their families, but to pay off their irresponsible debts and further enrich greedy banksters. At the Federal level the aftermaths are numerous. #1) Inflation. Before the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913, there was barely any inflation (except mostly during times of war and conflict). However, following the Fed’s money printing addiction or Q.E. (Quantitative Easing), change in prices skyrocketed – get ready for a $10 loaf of bread soon. The Fed’s incessant and irresponsible money printing, or QE ad infinitum, has debased the currency and vaulted the cost of living through the roof, and the average family can only struggle to make ends meet. #2) Taxes. To pay the shysters at the Fed who convinced the USG bureaucracy to borrow from them, Federal Income Taxes began their reign of terror, even though in 1895 the US Supreme Court ruled that the Income Tax was unconstitutional. Consequently, in 1913 – the same year the Fed was founded, no coincidence there – Congress, according to Tax Foundation, passed “the 16th Amendment to the Constitution (which) made the income tax a permanent fixture in the U.S. tax system. The amendment gave Congress legal authority to tax income and resulted in a revenue law that taxed incomes of both individuals and corporations.” However, according to some experts, said Amendment was not properly ratified by all 50 states and therefore is invalid. No surprise or coincidence there either. In other words, the USG created a problem called the Fed which they squarely laid at the feet of the American people. In so doing, the USG continually extracts pounds after pounds of flesh from American families, and in the process turns Shylock into a Saint. See Was Shylock a Jew? #3) Wars. To encourage the USG to borrow more money, the secret members of the Fed coerced it into various wars, which in turn caused the Income Tax to rise significantly along with inflation, thereby imposing an even greater burden on the American people. “Almost all wars, in a hundred years or so, have been paid for through inflation, that is debasing the currency,” explained Ron Paul. #4) Corruption. As the Fed befouled the members of the USG and Congress through bribe and coercion, mega businesses and groups of the super rich also began exerting their influence by buying their way in. It is no wonder that almost every federal agency (i.e., FDA, EPA, etc.) has also become corrupt, pimping for the likes of Big Pharma, Monsanto, etc. without any regard for how their decisions affect the well being of American families. “ (America) is just an oligarchy with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nominations for President or being elected President. And the same thing applies to governors, and U.S. Senators and Congress members,” revealed former President Jimmy Carter. Supra-billionaire George Soros said in Open Society: Reforming Global Capitalism Reconsidered that, “Individual states and national populations should not be allowed to govern their own economic affairs – instead, this process will be accomplished by a global financial elite.” Oh, really? #5) Unemployment. Mega Corporations bribed Congress to pass various International Trade Agreements that siphoned thousands upon thousands of manufacturing jobs out of America. These companies then conveniently shipped these jobs overseas in order to pad their bottom line using cheap labor, which could have been found in the US if inflation created by the Fed did not cause costs to skyrocket. #6) Police State. In order to keep the Fed and Big Business in control of the USG, a Police State has been erected to keep the sheeple docile. It has become so bad that the People’s Representatives even vote against the will of the people they supposedly represent, not feigning so much as a modicum of care for the wishes of their constituents. Said disposition has firmly trickled down to cops who have turned savagely wild on those they have sworn to protect and serve. So how come the American people keep voting back in office all these so-called Representatives of the People? Maybe the American people are not to blame. Maybe the computers tallying the votes are rigged. #1 . The Financial chaos. It’s been an ongoing problem in the American household for quite some time. Samuel J. Gerdano, executive director of the American Bankruptcy Institute, said: “A combination of economic stress, including high debt loads, rising unemployment and unsustainable mortgage burdens, left many consumers with little choice but to seek the financial relief of bankruptcy. “Consumer filing totals have fluctuated over the past decade as there have been changes in law in addition to the housing and financial downturns. The year 2005 saw a high mark of 2 million consumer bankruptcies.” So what did Congress do to corner the consumer and favor the bankers? It enacted the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act, which tightened requirements for filing. “Consumer filings then dropped to 600,000 in 2006, but then rose each year until they registered over 1.5 million filings in 2010 amidst the housing and financial downturns,” further explained Gerdano. #2 . The Family chaos. The family unit in America is fast disintegrating. The causes are numerous: lack of jobs, debt that causes stress, breakdown of moral principles, the constant pursuit of the dollar above family relationships, etc. These cause marital friction and then divorce. It is estimated that close to 50% of couples who get married end up calling it quits. The obsessive pursuit of money for money’s sake has failed America. From the moment said objective was set in motion, America was doomed. To an individual a noble purpose is important, and equally as significant are a Corporation’s goal and a Government’s mission. If the object of any entity is money above everything else, sooner or later a breakdown will materialize. For example, the reason the Godfather movie series was a success was because of one simple factor. In the midst of all its crimes and conspiracies to commit more crimes, the heart of the storyline (its objective) was family – you don’t mess with the family and you don’t betray the family. Everything the head of the Corleone clan did was to protect and provide for his family, which he saw as his main purpose and duty – though we by no means approve of his immoral methods of achieving success, something the storytellers made sure he paid dearly for and something the Don himself no longer wanted to rely on. The strength of The Godfather’s family unit and the might of its Patriarch – especially in the midst of a women’s lib movement trying to unseat man from his God-given role within his family – were what really stirred and still stirs the endearment cinephiles all over the world feel for the series, even if most people don’t realize why they love it so. These powerful undertows resonated loudly, and together with masterful filmmaking and acting catapulted the movies amongst America’s top classics and consolidated their enduring appeal. Check your TV listings, they’re always showing somewhere. Not too shabby for a mostly made-in-the-70s movie series. What other flicks – especially made during that period – can claim that? It’s time for America (and most of the world that follows America’s lead) to go back to the basics. It’s time to rediscover mankind’s true objectives. It’s time for God and His laws, loving patriarchal family, and purposeful responsibility. In other words, money needs to be redefined as a refrained and practical means to these ends, while the intrinsic value it once possessed (with precious metals) needs to be reinstated. However, for Money to ever recover its worth we must end the Fed. “The love of money is the root of all evil.” 1 Timothy 6:10 The pursuit of Money above everything else has even trickled down in the Church, where the relentless quest for earthly riches has replaced the truth of God’s Word and His plan for the family.

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We are Entering a Monetary Black Hole that will Meltdown the Global Economy https://youtu.be/hGhduMuLOUw

We are Entering a Monetary Black Hole that will Meltdown the Global Economy https://youtu.be/hGhduMuLOUw

Negative Rates The Monetary Black Hole that will Meltdown The Global Economy 4K We are in the midst of a strange economic experiment; Negative Interest Rates. Negative interest rates mean that there is no saving only consumption. The result is that we use up our planet, recklessly, at an ever-increasing rate. There is a NIL value placed on any resource. Immediate exploitation of everything pays. Lower interest rates will destroy savers, banks, and the economy in the medium to long term. And eventually, kill The US Dollar. Two percent annual inflation theft rate wasn't enough. Now they aim to skim an additional two percent via negative interest rates. Banker avarice knows no bounds. Negative rates. Just another way to scam American people. The crooks will be the only ones knowing what is going on. Negative Rates equals Credit Freeze; Monetary Contraction; Economic Collapse; Depression; Currency Reset. Elites Own it All. END THE FED NOW . Welcome to The Atlantis Report. President Donald Trump has suggested the Federal Reserve should bring interest rates below zero. Trump is a big fan of low-interest rates. In fact, he has called on the U.S. Federal Reserve to take rates into negative territory, just like Germany or Japan. In theory, the banks would pay you to borrow money. But savers would also have to pay a bank to keep their money there. But what does that even mean? Will you be paid for taking out a loan? In September of 2019. US President Donald Trump posted a strange tweet that started with the following sentence: The Federal Reserve should get our interest rates down to zero or less, and we should Then begin to refinance our debt. Trump even went so far as to praise Germany's zero percent. Then he went even further on Twitter, referring to the Fed as "boneheads." But what if Trump got what he wished for? What if interest rates were actually zero, or negative, like Sweden or Japan. What if instead of a bank paying you to hold your money, you theoretically had to pay the bank to keep it there. It could happen with negative interest rates. So what exactly are negative interest rates? Interest rates are generally thought of as the cost of borrowing money. Central banks raise interest rates to cool off an economy that's close to overheating. Zero or negative interest rates, on the other hand, are seen as a way to stimulate an economy. In theory, negative rates force banks to lend more. But it doesn't always work that way. Instead, negative rates can actually have the opposite effect. They can squeeze profits so much that financial institutions actually lend less. They can also have an impact on government funding. For example, Germany's economy is on the verge of a recession, so it lowered interest rates to -0.31 percent, which means investors could be charged for keeping their money in the bank. But the country still needs to fund the government. So in August 2019, Germany attempted to sell 2 billion euros worth of 30-year bonds, which would mature in 2050, and they had a negative yield. As a result. Investors only bought 869 million euros worth with a yield of -0.11 percent. In other words, investors will, in theory, pay to have the German government hold their money. Anybody who owns this bond throughout its full life is guaranteed to lose money, and they're guaranteed to lose money over a period of 30 years. Now, what this is telling us really is that anybody who thinks that this is a good investment that is factoring in an extremely bleak economic outlook. You're talking about no growth, no inflation for the next three decades. In the end, the German government was forced to buy the remaining bonds itself, which could push down interest rates even further. At the same time, the European Central Bank, or ECB, has continued on its own negative rate path. The ECB recently lowered its primary deposit rate to -0.5 percent, a ten basis point cut. It also reintroduced quantitative easing as a means to try to stimulate the economy. Negative yields and low-interest rates in Europe have also had another effect. They've driven investors to the U.S. The bond market in search of safer investments with a yield. Negative rates cause uncertainty in the markets. Many experts believe negative rates in Europe have only had a modest impact on Europe's growth. While it lowered the cost to borrow money, it didn't do anything to increase the demand for goods. As a result, businesses didn't invest. Lowering rates even further could put the entire global financial system at risk. Negative rates cause a decrease in margins, which decreases profitability for banks, and that can cause a bump in fees for loans, including home mortgages. They also make it more difficult for countries' institutional investors to find appropriate opportunities for clients. If markets shift, bondholders seeking gains in price rather than yield could get stuck holding too much risk. Germany's negative interest rates have dramatically pushed up prices. Recently, traders paid the equivalent of $195.87 for $100 and 20-year German bonds, which translates into a negative technical yield of 0.386 Percent. Former Fed chief Alan Greenspan has said that he doesn't believe negative interest rates in the US ; It would be that big of a deal. But others disagree, saying negative rates can be a trap, that they may not boost flagging economies and can even become the norm. And that hurts banks, savers and companies in the long run. It is the financial sector, the banks, the insurance companies, the pensions, the security settlement is all structured, invented on one assumption: positive interest rates. Limited reserves. Marginal reserves. Everything is on favorable interest rates. You take those away, and now the investment decision loses your money in a negative interest rate world. The banking system doesn't work. Pensions don't work. The European system works because we in the US, the reserve currency, are still positive. Banks like Deutsche Bank are restructuring their entire worldwide reserve system to invest in US Dollars; because they've got positive yields. If we go down that road and go negative yields with them and cut everybody off from positive. I think the financial system is at severe stress at that point. There's also a concern that negative rates encourage governments to borrow more without fear for growing debt until the rates go up, and the bill comes due. Meanwhile, trade wars have taken their toll on the global economy, and there's a growing concern because rates are so low now, the next recession could force the Fed's hand. Then negative rates could be the only alternative. Larry Summers, former Treasury secretary under President Bill Clinton, says that once rates go negative, it could be challenging to get out, and the global financial system could get stuck. The great concern is with what I've called the monetary black hole. Those zero rates appear to be where we're stuck in Europe and Japan. We're one recession away from a situation of that kind. It's a very different world when everyone's stuck at zero interest rates. We've got to think about the stabilization policy. Institutions are going to have to think about their investment policy in a very different world, in a very different way when we have a black hole, zero interest rate world. Negative rates provide little relief. Clearly, the negative rates have not really been helpful to spur the economy in some of these markets. And we'll have just to see how it plays out. But this negative rate dynamic continues to have investors searching for yield. And I think that's a trend that's going to continue because not only there are a lot of negative rates. If you look at this stack of debt products out there, there is not that much inventory that's yielding over 5 percent. So on the one hand, you have a lot of negative rates and on the other side, not a lot of places where you can find yield. Negative rates will eventually make their way to the United States. I think eventually it will come here to the United States. It may happen sooner rather than later. However, in the United States, beyond the Federal Reserve, the government would have to take a lot of steps in changing tax laws or regulatory laws, and particularly how to deal with cash hoarding to really have negative rates dip very far. So Trump may get his wish of zero or negative rates, but the economic slowdown that led to them would dampen the president's prospects of re-election. And the end result could be even worse for the U.S. Economy. If we go negative rates in the United States, it will virtually destroy the banking system as it is doing in Europe as we speak. That would be a major, major crisis. There'll be consequences, in the long term, for negative rates as an experiment. The joke is that financial institutes intentionally don't talk about how quantitative easing actually results in increasing the wealth gap. We're running on borrowed time . It's just a race to get as much money as possible before the depression that's guaranteed to happen. Baby boomers and other people close to retirement need stability, which means the place where their pension funds are invested in are the government bonds. If interest rates go, negative the government bond rate will follow negative resulting in pension funds having to dig into their principal balance to make good on required payouts or to invest heavily into higher-risk assets like stocks, which is not the place you want to be when a stable source of income is the goal. We're already seeing overvaluation of the stock market due to the inflow of baby boomer cash since government bonds could not yield good returns for about a decade. This all together results in a stock market environment driven by speculation rather than by valuation based on PE ratio or other profit-based analysis. Other countries, which have a government-funded pension, are protected from this inflow of pension fund cash into their respective stock markets since their pension funds are derived from tax revenue. #1. - Negative interest rates squeeze profit margins of banks, and as profitability falls, lending activities suffer. #2. - Negative interest rates create zombie corporations. #3. - Negative interest rates kill the incentives to invest in productivity. #4. - Negative interest rates also corrupt the role of time-preference. So, What negative rates do is seriously impair the profitability of the banking sector, foster the creation of “undead” companies, kill productivity growth, and deform financial relationships. #5- Negative interest rates take away the ground principle of capitalism, namely capital formation. Without capital formation trough positive rates, insurance companies, and pension funds have to invest in much riskier assets that are bound to blow up. Rob Kirby says that US dollar negative interest rates are impossible since the derivative market is all in dollars, and 80% are interest rate swaps. The fixed-rate payer receives Libor floating rate. If the floating rate is negative, the fixed-rate payer both pays a fixed rate, and if the floating rate goes negative, pays that as well. That contract will never be written once the floating rate is negative and that the banking market would disappear. My take is since these shenanigans are responsible for the bulk of US dollars fractionally expanded overseas, the trade would collapse as the medium of exchange would be in critically short supply and/or the dollar would cease as being the reserve currency. If the US moves it's interest rates down to match Europe; It trashes the dollar. No way in hell I'm paying a bank to hold my money. I will hoard cash and silver instead. Money for a few debts for everyone else. "There are no free men in a credit nation." Lower interest rates will destroy savers, banks, and the economy in the medium to long term. This was The Atlantis Report. Please Like. Share. And Subscribe. Thank You.

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All Currencies are going to Collapse according to Jim Rickards https://youtu.be/-ToLWZZnTqo

All Currencies are going to Collapse according to Jim Rickards https://youtu.be/-ToLWZZnTqo

Why don't we simply Print Money to pay off US Debt? Have you ever wondered why countries can't just print more money to off their debts. or to feed the homeless or fix unemployment, or any other issue for that matter. The short answer can be summed up in just one word... inflation. Inflation is defined as "a persistent, substantial rise in the general level of prices related to an increase in the volume of money and resulting in the loss of value of the currency. Technically we could potentially resolve our debt problem in that way, but it would lead to much bigger problems. Primarily, it would result in hyperinflation .With trillion new US dollars in international hands and over a trillion of that in China alone--a dramatic increase in national income everywhere except the US. That income spike would cause aggregate demand for goods purchasable in US Dollar to soar. Merchants would naturally respond by increasing the price of their goods, re-stabilizing the real value of the dollar. The consequences of such a series of events would be catastrophic. The purchasing power of the dollar would decrease enormously. This would place strain on American buyers who now have to pay more for goods without the higher income that China has received and thus cause a recession that would dwarf that of 2008. Unemployment would spike, as many firms would find it advantageous to migrate to China and elsewhere where there is new demand for their products. Meanwhile, the People's Bank of China, for one, would be pissed because, even though they now have more dollars than they did before, those dollars aren't worth nearly as much as when they sold that debt to the US. Whereas before $1.3 trillion could have bought China, say, 200 aircraft carriers , after inflation of this magnitude , it might only buy them 20. And we know that China's in this for the aircraft carriers. They would begrudgingly buy those 20 carriers and haul them across the Pacific to vent their frustrations against our now-decrepit Treasury in person. Meanwhile, we'd be firing bows and arrows from canoes like those island people that went to war with the US in that British movie. Doomsday scenarios aside, we would end up with two major problems (among others, for sure): a devastating recession and a diplomatic fallout with China (and other servicers of US debt). Basically, the dollar is only valuable if it's scarce, because we use it to procure scarce resources. When it's no longer scarce, its no longer transitive as a currency and has no value. So, in reality, the reason that other countries would no longer lend us money if we freely printed our own is because the exchange rate between the dollar and any other currency would approach zero, leaving banks and merchants with nothing to gain by transacting in US dollars. There would be no incentive for nations to produce anything of real value, rendering the concept of GDP meaningless. Furthermore, if we could resolve debt by just printing bills, there would be nothing to prevent other countries/central banks from doing so--and you would end up in a world full of meaningless currency. Money is nothing but a record or a sticker of total goods and services produced in an economy. Therefore money can be printed only at the same rate as an economy (GDP) is growing. So if US GDP grows at 3%, US can print 3% extra dollars. However if money supply exceeds GDP growth, there is double entry of goods and services produced so a particular good/service is counted twice but can only be delivered once. Its quite obvious that the 2 potential suitors for the good produced once but counted twice will be engaged in a furious bidding war which will drive the price of the good produced once but counted twice. Ultimately you will have a balanced equation where on one side there will be extra currency printed (above the normal rate of GDP growth) and on other side you will have extra price you have to pay for that good. So if you don't print money if your GDP is growing, you face a depression ,but if you print money in excess of your GDP growth, you face higher inflation which leads to demand shortfall causing job losses. This condition is called stagflation which is worse than depression. In depression jobs are hard to come by but prices remain low. In stagflation, you have few jobs but prices remain high as all the excess printed currency is still in circulation. The US has some leeway as US dollar is global reserve currency . So The US can print dollars slightly in excess of its annual GDP growth but this will reduce US debt by few 10s of billions every year when theoretically the US needs 100s of billions every year to reduce its debt. The best way forward is to refinance the debt and push for higher growth every year and pay back over a period of several decades but such a scenario is susceptible to black swan events like wars, recessions etc. Now, if a country gets into financial trouble, it may have to default on its debt, which basically means you won't get your money back. But the US is generally considered an extremely risk-free investment because the US dollar is the most widely used and most trust-worthy currency in the world. It's even written into the Constitution that the United States cannot default on its debt. I'll leave you with this final thought and what I think is possibly the best way to sum up why governments can't just print off unlimited amounts of money : "If money grew on trees, it would be as valuable as leaves" .

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The American Economy enters in Panic Mode https://youtu.be/C9X9-iQuCk8

The American Economy enters in Panic Mode https://youtu.be/C9X9-iQuCk8

with QE4ever The FED enters in Panic Mode as the Repo Madness Continues -- Economic Collapse Debt service is about $500 Billion in 2019; the deficit is right about $1 Trillion. The US government is borrowing money to pay the interest on the Debt. A standard definition of Bankruptcy. And, it's during what is called an Economic Expansion. The only source of funds that could pay off part of the Debt, maybe a 1/3 of the $22 Trillion, is, to tell the truth about the Mortgage-Backed Security mess. Cleaning up that mess may have cost a few $Trillion - but many more $Trillions were made "on the way up" - via fraud. The US gov. has a legit reason to claw back some of those Credit Derivative profits, but it would involve seizing the wealth of a demographic that is obviously given preference in US society - Jewish Bankers. Since the US gov. doesn't have the stomach for that, they have no options but to print digitally. Welcome to The Atlantis Report. It's no longer just me using terms like "Armageddon, crisis, devastating, chaos, Great Depression;" it's leaders of the world's most noble and conservative central banks! The big banking squeeze that began in September never went away. In fact, repo auctions last week looked worse than ever, in spite of the Fed's launching of QE4ever. With a new $60 billion a month in permanent re-inflation of money supply pouring back into the economy now, the Fed still has found itself back to where it began in September with its repo operations becoming hugely oversubscribed, meaning it has more takers than what it is offering to give. Dealers submitted $52 billion in securities for two-week "loans" of new temporary money this past week against the Fed's offer to do $35B worth. The question here is who has access to Repo, and where does the money go?? The repeating issue of a dollar shortage in overseas demand comes to the front. And it may be nothing more than Turkey dollar debt and the invasion of Syria. On a larger scale it goes to China, thats' Doug Nolands read, the Fed is not simply liquifying US markets he is pumping global markets. Why? The usual signs of credit tightness are not there, LIBOR has been steady lower. So no cracks in the system they are frantically patching? May just be the dollar markets reacting. It's a one-day creation of new money in the system until they roll it over and over again, as they are doing. So, the one day, added only $75 billion ever since that repo began. "Only." Sheesh. That was not enough, however, so they upped it to $120 billion that they now keep rolling over indefinitely. Because those one-day repos do not aggregate (just as you say they do not), the Fed added a repo operation with a fourteen-day term, and they have up to three of those running at the same time because they do one or two fo those operations a week. They set that at $30 billion per operation; so, at any given time, the term repos were adding another $90 billion in aggregate into the monetary system. That was not enough, so they upped it to $60 billion per term repo, which means at any given time the term repos are adding $180 billion into the monetary system in addition to the $120 billion added by the constantly rolling-over overnight repos for a total of $300 billion in new money in the system at any given time since all these operations began. That was not enough, so they started $60 billion per month in permanent QE which they claim is not QE simply because they are doing it at the short end of the interest curve to uninvert the curve, which, of course, is utter nonsense because it is still new money created out of nothing that goes into the monetary system. Since this would be QE4, if they were calling it QE, I'm going with the term QE4ever because we have already seen they have NO capacity ever to remove this from their balance sheet. Therefore, it does monetize the US debt as permanent new money created out of nothing to buy government bonds. It is technically QE since it expands the FED's balance sheet. Would it unwind the repo's then it would be QT since it decreases the balance sheet? In the end, it is just a twist by the FED, because they have too. Bernanke lied under oath that it was not monetizing the Debt since they would unwind it once the economy was stable again. Well, they proved that to be impossible. Returning to QE would instantly prove to the market that it would be QE4ever and send the long end rates spiking and the Dollar crashing. So they come up with this, but of course, it is just REPO in perpetuity. In the meantime: the three month - 10-year yield spread up from 15 bp this morning to 20 bp now. So it looks like markets already start to move, specifically the long end. The FED can't undo the tightening by starting QE again. The FED was able to pull off the increase of its balance sheet because it promised it was only a temporary fix, which would be unwound when the economy was stable again. Investors believed that, and therefore the Dollar didn't crash. Now they are beginning that the FED can never go back without deflating the financial markets and the economy. This, by definition, means that inflation expectations will be revised, and the long end of the bond market will shoot up. This will blow op the junk part of the bond market (and very likely the triple B part), and it is game over. Also, the increase in the 30 years will blow up the housing market. As of this morning, the 10-year yield is up another four bp to 1.84% and the 30 years to, to 2,33%. Spread three month-10 years up to 15bp. The FED is stuck; they can try to prevent the wheels from falling off. But they have no idea how long they will succeed in that. That is why it is now an unrecoverable disaster. We have to keep compounding the Debt by half a trillion each year just to maintain interests payments, AND that half a trillion in interest has to increase each year by the interest on the additional Debt we take out each year to make the interest payments! And that is where we are with nearly record-low rates. So, the whole government would blow up if rates rise, which is why the Fed is forced to keep them low and to go back and stay with QE in order to keep monetizing the government debt (while claiming, of course, that it is not doing that as monetizing the Debt is illegal in the US). What a charade! And nearly everyone goes along with it and doesn't even question it because they don't want to deal with the question.

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The Entire Global Financial World has indeed Gone Mad https://youtu.be/MjyJm5-kxgk

The Entire Global Financial World has indeed Gone Mad https://youtu.be/MjyJm5-kxgk

Recession 2020-- The World Has Gone Mad & The System is Broken - Ray Dalio The entire global financial world has indeed gone mad and is in totally uncharted waters. The personal debt, dollar, and government debt bubbles have yet to burst, but we are definitely getting closer each, and every day, the central banks of the world continue to print more "fake" money instead of tackling the problem head-on with spending cuts and raising taxes. Negative interest rates, $23,000,000,000,000 US national debt, crypto currencies, on and on. Anybody who thinks they know exactly how this will play out is either lying or has something to sell you. Welcome to The Atlantis Report. Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater Associates, the largest hedge fund in the world, his net worth, equals to $18.7 billion. Only a few days ago he stated that the world just got mad and the system is broken. Ray Dalio wrote on his LinkedIn timetable: Money is free for those who are creditworthy because the investors who are giving it to them are willing to get back less than they give. More specifically, investors lending to those who are creditworthy will accept very low or negative interest rates and won’t require having their principal paid back for the foreseeable future. They are doing this because they have an enormous amount of money to invest that has been, and continues to be, pushed on them by central banks that are buying financial assets in their futile attempts to push economic activity and inflation up. The reason that this money that is being sold on investors isn’t driving growth and inflation much higher is that the investors who are getting it want to invest it rather than spend it. This dynamic is creating a “pushing on a string” dynamic that had happened many times before in history (though not in our lifetimes) and was thoroughly explained in my book Principles for Navigating Big Debt Crises. As a result of this dynamic, the prices of financial assets have gone way up, and the future expected returns had gone way down while economic growth and inflation remain sluggish. Those significant price rises and the resulting low expected returns are not just right for bonds; they are equally valid for equities, private equity, and venture capital, though these assets’ low expected returns are not as apparent as they are for bond investments because these equity-like investments don’t have stated profits the way bonds do. As a result, their expected returns are left to investors’ imaginations. Because investors have so much money to invest and because of past success stories of stocks of revolutionary technology companies doing so well, more companies than at any time since the dot-com bubble don’t have to make profits or even have clear paths to making profits to sell their stock because they can instead sell their dreams to those investors who are flush with money and borrowing power. There is now so much money wanting to buy these dreams that in some cases venture capital investors are pushing money onto startups that don’t want more money because they already have more than enough; but the investors are threatening to harm these companies by providing enormous support to their startup competitors if they don’t take the money. This pushing of money onto investors is understandable because these investment managers, especially venture capital and private equity investment managers, now have large piles of committed and uninvested cash that they need to invest in order to meet their promises to their clients and collect their fees. At the same time, massive government deficits exist and will almost certainly increase substantially, which will require vast amounts of more debt to be sold by governments—costs that cannot naturally be absorbed without driving up interest rates at a time when an interest rate rise would be devastating for markets and economies because the world is so leveraged long. Where will the money come from to buy these bonds and fund these deficits? It will almost certainly come from central banks, which will buy the debt that is produced with freshly printed money. This whole dynamic in which sound finance is being thrown out the window will continue and probably accelerate, especially in the reserve currency countries and their currencies—i.e., in the US, Europe, and Japan, and in the dollar, euro, and yen. At the same time, pension and healthcare liability payments will increasingly becoming due, while many of those who are obligated to pay them don’t have enough money to meet their obligations. Right now, many pension funds that have investments that are intended to meet their pension obligations use assumed returns that are agreed to with their regulators. They are typically much higher (around 7%) than the market returns that are built into the pricing and that are likely to be produced. As a result, many of those who have an obligation to deliver the money to pay these pensions are unlikely to have enough money to meet their requirements. Those who are recipients of these benefits and expecting these commitments to be adhered to are typically teachers and other government employees who are also being squeezed by budget cuts. They are unlikely to accept having their benefits cut quietly. While pension obligations at least have some funding, most healthcare obligations are funded on a pay-as-you-go basis, and because of the shifting demographics in which fewer earners are having to support a larger population of baby boomers needing healthcare, there isn’t enough money to fund these obligations either. Since there isn’t enough money to fund these pension and healthcare obligations, there will likely be an ugly battle to determine how much of the gap will be bridged by 1) cutting benefits, 2) raising taxes, and 3) printing money (which would have to be done at the federal level and pass to those at the state level who need it). This will exacerbate the wealth gap battle. While none of these three paths are good, printing money is the most natural path because it is the most hidden way of creating a wealth transfer, and it tends to make asset prices rise. After all, debt and other financial obligations that are denominated in the amount of money owed only require the debtors to deliver money; because there are no limitations made on the amounts of money that can be printed or the value of that money, it is the most natural path. The significant risk of this path is that it threatens the viability of the three major world reserve currencies as a viable store holds of wealth. At the same time, if policymakers can’t monetize these obligations, then the rich/poor battle over how much expenses should be cut and how much taxes should be raised will be much worse. As a result, wealthy capitalists will increasingly move to places in which the wealth gaps and conflicts are less severe, and government officials in those losing these big taxpayers will frequently try to find ways to trap them. At the same time, as money is virtually free for those who have money and creditworthiness, it is almost unavailable to those who don’t have money and solvency, which contributes to the rising wealth, opportunity, and political gaps. Also contributing to these gaps are the technological advances that investors and the entrepreneurs that I previously mentioned are excited by in the ways I described, and that also replace workers with machines. Because the “trickle-down” process of having money at the top trickle down to workers and others by improving their earnings and creditworthiness is not working, the system of making capitalism work well for most people is broken. This set of circumstances is unsustainable and certainly can no longer be pushed as it has been sold since 2008. That is why I believe that the world is approaching a significant paradigm shift. The American Financial System is no longer able to offer much, if anything, to the sheep. The creature from Jekyll Island. We, the people, have been gamed since 1913. Fiat currency and the fed are there to steal from the people. It's rigged, and beyond mad. As George Carlin said, "...it's a big club, and you ain't in it." Only someone like Ray Dalio has the guts to say the truth openly, that the Reserve currencies are being depreciated by the overprinting and unaffordable (un-funded) government spending plans. Game of Monopoly has better restraint than these central banks and governments! The Ponzi debt scheme (quantitive easing) and inflation will eventually lead to loss of trust in the financial reserve currencies. When countries stop exclusively using it to do trade, as the BRIC countries already have, and other people find alternate currencies like Bitcoin, history may repeat itself, leading to the collapse of the system as it stands, leading to some newer "reserve currency." The ECB, along with other central banks, are seriously fearing their survival and want to prevent these independent digital currencies because THEY can't manipulate them. After we decoupled from the Gold reserve in the '70s, the so-called reserve currency group countries have been printing money and spending recklessly. Why? Why not? We have a perverse electoral system that allows politicians to spend on services and tax cuts, not from savings from the current generations, but instead from the future generations who can't vote or aren't even born yet. Surely that is the enslavement of the children and unborn, I hear you say! Well, yes, it is, but most people don't know or maybe don't want to know. These future generations don't get a choice on whether they want to take on the debt to pay for these services. By the time they are old enough to vote, they too will be promised services from their children's future. In short, we are living in a world where very few people are mature enough to take on responsibility for these things, be it on a personal, national, or global level. Telling the truth and solving the root causes of the problems just doesn't win the votes. Imagine you could buy things for free without having actually to pay for it in a real tangible manner! That is what the reserve currency countries have been doing for a while now, printing trillions centrally, passing this currency off to the government as debt; which the financial institutions buy from the government as Bonds, against which they can now leverage and borrow vast amounts of money to flush the markets. #1) The government can now provide services which it can't really afford. # 2) The Banks can lend money in a leveraged manner to everyone to spend. #3) The government can call this GDP growth (but its just a more significant debt). #4) The debts get pushed into the future for someone else to pay (just like the environmental debts). #5) Currency is printed even more rampantly to create inflation to reduce the past debt, And the cycle goes on and on and on. So who looses? In the short run, no one (that was in the '70s and '80s), in the midterm the middle class (2007 to 2011), in the long term everyone (at the next crash) as it will wipe wealth and create opportunity gaps, causing mistrust of the financial systems and governments. In the late 1930s, politicians used that fear and pain to incite racial haterade and division. This is reflected in our current global far-right politics and the rise of nationism and undercurrent racism. Currently, there are three options: #1) Pay down the debt; people and governments spend less and live within their means. As if, not likely. #2) Print more money and devalue the currency until someone calls the pyramid debt scam a scam. Not likely, as too many people are on the gravy train. Any item worth less tomorrow than today is not a preserve of wealth, and currencies are just that, they become worthless over time due to this fake money printing. #3) The children of middle and lower class earning families (ie, us) will be used to leverage debt further into the future, and if any country calls for the abolishment of central currencies, political and military might will be used to ower throw them. This is most likely, The reserve currency nations bully the non-reserve currency into insolvency or force them to sell their national resources, like oil, when they print their way out of debt (quantitive easing), but when they do its entirely correct? Only a unicorn and lots of fairy dust can solve this problem, but I guess we the ordinary people will have to work our way out of our debts, while those who are in elite echelons will print the governments' debts away and take a fat cut for this creative ("or what others may call fraudulent") solution.

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IRA, 401K, Pensions, Social Security & Demographic time bomb -- Retirement Crisis Looming !! https://youtu.be/C3XyHX70fPw

Retirement Crisis Looming -- IRA, 401K, Pensions, Social Security, Demographic Time Bomb !! Social Security is 14 years short of insolvency; pensions are largely underfunded and in sharp decline, and personal savings are at historic lows. We predict a national crisis in public sector pensions within the next decade that will leave state and local governments bankrupt and taxpayers on the hook for trillions of dollars. The pension crisis is the most significant single theme of our generation. Welcome to The Atlantis Report. Social Security is expected to be insolvent in 2033. In 1950, there were 16.5 workers for every Social Security beneficiary. Today, there are less than three workers paying in for each recipient. Company-sponsored pensions have been in rapid decrease since the 1980s. Today, less than one out of every five private-sector employees has a pension. As a group, American workers are evaluated to be $6.6 TRILLION short of what they need to retire comfortably. 10,000 Baby boomers are reaching “retirement age” every day. Forty percent of Baby boomers anticipate to work “until they drop.” Demographics are the biggest story of our time. And it's all about the story of the baby boomer generation. This was the largest generation of people the world had ever known in the wealthiest countries and across the globe. Now, that generation drove all of the macroeconomic forces that we come to recognize as usual. When they first came into the labor force back in the 1970s when they 20 or so years old, what they did was they bid up the demand for goods. Because if you think about it, a record number of people came in to buy their first suits, their first house, their first car, their first table, their first chair. Everything was new. That demand created a tremendous problem for the world to address, and it created the inflationary environment of the '80s. Yes, there were monetary grounds behind that, as well. But really, a lot of it was driven by demographics. Now, as that generation moved through their lifetimes, they had a particular set of behavior patterns that impacted the financial world first and foremost. The main one is the fact that after the Second World War, that young generation decided they didn't want to be their parents, as nearly everybody does. And they said, we don't want to be austere. Their parents had lived through two world wars. What they wanted to do was spend. They wanted to be free of the shackles of the things that their parents had had in the past. So what happened was Wall Street, being smart as ever, came up with this genius idea. It was the pension plan. Now, pension plans had existed for a long time before. But really, this is where the pension plan became everything. Wall Street fed them a story. The story was simple. You don't need to save as much money as your parents. You don't need to spend or save 20% of your income. What you need to do is give it to us. We're the smart guys, and we'll turn into more money. And that means you'll have more money to spend. So that started the most significant stock market boom in all of recorded history. Now, the other thing that happened is as consumption became a more substantial part of the economy-- and that was driven by government policy as well-- as the baby boomers were offered another piece of magic from Wall Street. They were provided credit. So in the '80s, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher basically allowed credit to be available to everybody. So suddenly, the credit boom took off. So there we have two monetary booms happening at the same time. The baby boomers have stopped saving, have given a little bit of money from their 401(k)s to Wall Street that starts accumulating quickly. Their income has also then gone into credit, the servicing of credit to buy more and more goods. That trend continued for a long time. The trend of consumption within the US economy continues to this day. It's massively outsized because of this credit boom. That meant that Wall Street became outsized too. It was taking the money from the pension system, and investing that-- or speculating with it-- and also making money from the credit side. Now, that all ended in a complete blow-up that happened in 2008. But why did 2000 happen? Well, interestingly enough, that's when the first baby boomers started retiring. When they began retiring, suddenly there were some sellers of stocks. Before that, everybody had been buying stocks every single month in their 401(k). Buying-the-dip mentality became the key thing for the world. But the problem is now we're facing the demographic time bomb. You see, the returns in financial markets weren't quite as good as the snake oil salesman on Wall Street told everybody. And that was a problem. It's kind of like a Ponzi scheme. The first people to get out made all the returns. The last people to get out get nothing. And that's the real issue. The real question is all of this is coming to a head because everybody is about to retire. Currently, we're retiring at about 3.9 million in America alone, baby boomers. And it goes up in a straight line all the way through to 2027. What we've got is more and more people, every year, retiring. That is an extraordinary state of affairs, because retirees have a different behavior pattern than the average person. The average retirement age is currently around 64 in America. And this year, the average baby boomer is 64. It's telling us the average person is destined to retire this year. But the real question is here is who can afford to retire. You see, if we look at the retirement age of Americans, the actual retirement age is going up. And those who haven't retired, they're deciding that they're going to have to work longer too. You see, the real issue here is that people can't afford to retire. So they have to extend retirement-- either expected or current retirement dates-- out into the future. It's this problem of not being able to afford retirement that is creating the problems we've got today. The other way you can look at this is when we look at the labor force participation rate of the people above 65 years old. Oddly, the 65-year-olds have been coming back into the labor force at a record rate. They're competing for jobs with millennials and others. This is an odd state of affairs. And, again, it is driven by the issue of these baby boomers having far too much debt to retire and not enough savings. The US average pension benefits are $23,000 a year. But there's a bit of an issue because disposable income per capita is $44,000 a year. Now, the ideal retirement income that these people want obviously matches their disposable income, which is about $44,000 to $45,000 a year. But really, when you impute from their savings, what they really get is another $9,000. So their total benefits are about $31,000 versus their needs of about $45,000. This is a huge problem. There's a 30% shortfall in their savings. And that has to come out of consumption. Almost half of the American workers have less than $10,000 in savings. Americans who make it to age 65 today can expect to live roughly 18 years more. That’s six years longer than Americans who made it to age 65 in 1940. Working Americans are, as a matter of fact, “going backward” – the first time since Social Security was passed in the throes of the Great Depression. Most Americans who were middle class when they were working all their lives are going to be poor or near-poor retirees. We’re going to have gigantic descending mobility. That you’re a middle class all your life, and you now find yourself to be really in a chronic state of want and distress about finances. And it gets worse as you get older. And Social Security – what was meant to be a backstop to keep people from falling into poverty in old age – is on the edge insolvency by 2033, according to the program’s own administrators. Social Security is not only bankrupt, but it’s also bankrupting future generations, says Laurence Kotlikoff, author of The Clash of Generations and a professor of economics at Boston University. “We’re not measuring what we’re doing to our kids. We’re not talking about who’s going to pay for a different generation’s benefits,” Kotlikoff says. “Most Americans who were middle class when they were working all their lives are going to be poor or near-poor retirees. Too many people are just not saving enough. The problem is these people are benefiting from one of the most significant shifts the world has ever seen-- life expectancy. Life expectancy, although it dropped a couple of years running recently in the US, is rising. So life expectancy in America, and across the world, is in an exponential trend higher. It is going higher and higher every single year. Obviously, the last couple of years were the opiate epidemic saw a bit of a pullback. But generally, the average American doesn't know how long they're going to live for. It's going to be longer than they thought. You see, not knowing how long you're going to live for changes your behavior pattern. It means that you start pushing out your retirement date because you don't have enough money to retire. Because if you've moved your life expectancy in five years, well then you need a lot more money. In a low-interest-rate environment, it becomes almost impossible to generate the income, so you're drawing down on capital very, very rapidly. After 2000 and 2008, the world hasn't generated enough returns. So what they've done is taken the most amount of risk possible. Typically, if you're about to retire, you should be increasing your fixed income allocation to guarantee your future retirement income. However, behaviorally speaking, if you don't have a high enough income to retire on, you have a kind of shit-or- bust scenario. What you have to do is take that risk. That risk, for American, is buying real estate, and they did that in droves back in the 2000s. Now, they got burned in that, and they don't have much net worth left in that any longer. So the real driver of net worth has been the equity market. The equity market is the only driver of net worth going forwards, and this has meant that people have doubled up their bets and tripled up their bets. They have this bet directly inequities, and they have this bet in their pension plans. The pension plans themselves have record holding of equities versus fixed income. They also have record risk in terms of credit. Private equity, venture capital, hedge funds, they all have equity-like returns. They're risk-seeking investments. And they're doing this because nobody can fund their retirement. It's the same story at government level. It's the same story at defined benefit pension level. And it's the same story for households and their 401(k)s. Corporate pension plans, they're all the same. Nobody has enough money to fund retirements. So everybody is taking the maximum risk. Now, in a rising equity market, this kind of makes sense. You're clawing back some of the ability to retire. But if things change, the picture gets a little bit worse. You see, the one bet people are making is they're actually putting the maximum allocation in all of recorded history, across the entire system, into risk-seeking, equity-like assets when equity valuations are off the charts. When we look at the chart of the median price revenue of the S&P 500, we can see it's at all times, ridiculous, record highs. We have an extraordinarily overvalued market. Now what's the worst thing about this is that there is a record over the weight of equities. Nobody has owned this many equities or equity-like instruments-- risk-seeking instruments-- ever before when the valuation is so high. That is a dangerous setup. The real problem here is it's all about the business cycle. The business cycle, as you know, ebbs and flows. It's relatively predictable-- within some boundaries. But what happens is a peaking, the booming economy eventually gives way to a recession. And they come along periodically-- every 4 to 8 years. Now what's interesting about this expansion is this is the second-equal, longest expansion in all economic history. And by next month or the month after, this will be the second-longest outright. So what that tells you is there is a probability that this expansion has to end at some point. Could it roll on for another couple of years, 2 or 3 years? Of course, it could. Could this end up being the longest ever expansion? Of course, it can. The point being is the clock is ticking, and it's moving towards the next recession. There are a lot of reasons why we have a retirement crisis, from artificially repressed interest rates to an over-reliance on government pensions. The real problem is much more fundamental: The basic idea behind government provided pensions is what makes it unstable: You don't pay taxes for YOUR retirement. You pay taxes for SOMEONE who is in retirement right now! Instead of investing in real assets that contribute to the capital stock over the decades, we transfer wealth and hope the demographics will work out. This is beyond foolish. It worked out great when it started out when the population had few old people, and everyone had kids. Today; Not so much. We could be incredibly rich today, with a far more productive economy, and the size of the next generations would be far less critical. Time to master the art of minimalism before it is too late. Do what you have to in order to put aside as close to 100% of you or your spouse's yearly income while you have the financial portion of parental responsibility. Plan to retire under the minimalism you will have accustomed yourself to and reaping the rewards of putting away for earlier retirement. That is the simple route which only you or the unforeseen can frustrate. Pay for everything in cash. Buy used if you have to. You can always upgrade when your ship comes in. Don't totally trust anyone else with your money. Check and double-check everything. Buy land. Plant a garden. Learn to cook from scratch. Learn to sew, make things yourself, repair, and maintain things. Set it up to live off-grid in case you need it. Protect your health in case you need to work longer. Live within your means. Learn to barter. The Amish have it figured out. They insure themselves, and they don't rely on the government for anything. They help each other out. They can do most things for themselves. There is no such thing as retirement anymore... corporations, banks, and politicians steal all the money and keep you working until you die. No one will ever do anything about it, so... enjoy slavery! Lessons learned: #1) you won’t be young forever. #2) live within your means. #3) save at least 15% of your income starting at age 25. #4) don’t go into debt, and if you made that mistake, pay it off. #5) pay off your house. #6) retire well. This Was The Atlantis Report. 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The Financial Armageddon Economic Collapse Blog tracks trends and forecasts , futurists , visionaries , free investigative journalists , researchers , Whistelblowers , truthers and many more