2016

Financial, Economic and Social Mood Update (December 1, 2016) The Dow Jones 30 Industrials Index reached a new record nominal high of 19,225 on November 30, 2016. It will likely rise to about 20,000 before crashing in a very major way. The global bond market has already commenced its decline, and the currency markets have become much more active (and volatile) as well. The US Dollar is the ultimate global bubble and will likely be the final market to collapse to the ground – after the collapse of the bond, stock, commodity, real property and consumer products markets. On November 8, 2016 the USA partook in the massive populist wave which is encompassing much of the world by electing the political outsider Donald J. Trump to be the 45th President of these United States. Examples of similar populist politics can be seen in Europe – in the UK vote to leave the European Union, in Hungary (95 percent of the Hungarian electorate rejecting the EU policy of open immigration from the Islamic countries), in Poland, Moldova, Ukraine and the Baltic countries (nationalist governments less than friendly toward Russia), in Russia itself (suffering under western economic sanctions but 80 percent in favor of President Vladimir Putin), and in numerous other European countries where nationalist parties are upsetting the post-World War 2 balance of power (in the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Italy, Germany and the 5 countries of Scandinavia). Populism & nationalism are also evident in Asia – in the Philippines (the new “tilt” toward China & Russia, the huge war on illegal drugs), in China (leading the most massive economic charge in history to develop Eurasia), in Japan (she has the 4th largest navy on earth), in Iran (asserting her power in the Persian Gulf and the Middle East), in Turkey (seeking…

Financial, Economic and Social Mood Update (November 1, 2016) The Dow Jones 30 Industrials Index reached a new nominal high value on August 15, 2016 and this record is still in place – the index remains about 800 points below the record as of November 1, 2016. There is a need to rise above the chatter and the nonsense of the body politic in much of the world and assess where we now are and where we are going in the near future. Much (but not all) of the formerly industrialized world is in decline – this is evident in the per capita GDP rankings which I discussed in last month’s update. The USA is on the cusp of becoming a de facto Third World country. The overwhelming majority of Americans are recipients or so-called “beneficiaries” of a massive socialist welfare state. They are being supported or held up by a tiny minority of Americans who still support the US economy financially, by artificially low interest rates, by artificially high bond prices, by artificially high corporate stock prices, and by an artificially highly valued US Dollar which is still the number one global reserve currency since 1944. None of this will endure much longer. Most of the inland US states already resemble a Third World country – income levels, demographic implosion and real property values (or the lack thereof) reflect this fact. Canada is considerably more affluent and better off than the USA on a per capita basis. Much of Latin America is something of a global backwater – it does not partake in the economic boom currently enveloping much of Asia and Africa. Mainland China has become and will continue to become the ancient global superpower which she used to be. Much of Asia, Africa, the former USSR, Europe…

Financial, Economic and Social Mood Update (October 1, 2016) The Dow Jones 30 Industrial Index and the S&P 500 Index both made new record nominal highs on August 15, 2016. Our world is constantly in a state of change. Where is it going right now – where do its leaders want it to go, where do its people want it to go, and is there a difference between the two? The infamous “leaders” at the top of the so-called “New World Order” have been pushing for more supra-national governmental organizations and ultimately for a one-world government. They seek less democracy, more uniformity, more government bureaucracy, more socialism for the masses, the elimination of the middle class and more privilege and power for an extremely tiny upper class, i.e., for themselves. Socialism and government welfare benefit programs are a means of “dumbing down” the masses, to make them dependent upon the leadership and to prevent them from altering their social status, i.e. from advancing into the middle class and ultimately into the upper class. The first attempt at global government came in the form of the League of Nations after World War One in 1918. The impetus for this body was to prevent another destructive world war. It obviously failed in that attempt, and since the end of World War Two in 1945 it has been replaced by the United Nations – much more enduring than the League of Nations, but limited in its effectiveness. The most advanced form of a regional supra-national government has been the European Union, which has created an entirely new level of government bureaucracy complete with policy-making authority, a supra-national parliament in Strassburg (French spelling = Strasbourg) and a vast central authority in Brussels. The impetus behind the EU was, once again, to avoid destructive wars…

Financial, Economic and Social Mood Update (September 4, 2016) The Dow Jones 30 Industrial Index and the S&P 500 Index both made new record nominal highs on August 15, 2016. The global bond market is on the cusp of what will likely be its most massive crash in recorded history – interest rates and yields are at artificially low levels (about 30 percent of global sovereign debt is actually trading at negative yields) and the next major historical wave should take interest rates in the industrialized world beyond levels last seen in 1981 and 1982 – in other words, well into double digits. The largest monetary investment in recorded human history is now actively being led from Mainland China. The Chinese refer to this as the “Silk Road” and/or as the “One Belt, one Road” project. The money committed thus far equals US $1.4 TRILLION, involving 64 member countries (mostly in East Asia, South Asia, Central Asia, the former USSR, and in Europe) with 40 percent of world GDP and 60 percent of the global human population. China is busy building roads, high speed rail networks, deep water shipping ports, and transportation pipelines for crude oil and natural gas which lead from 63 other countries into China. China itself already ranks number one in population (19 percent of the world total) and number one in PPP GDP (18 percent of the world total ahead of either the EU or the USA). China is the number one manufacturing nation in the world – fully half of all physical goods produced in the world today come from Mainland China. All of this is the fruit of the change in Chinese leadership which took place in 1976. China’s next major geopolitical goal is to change or to replace the Bretton Woods system which…