Economic Predictions for Summer 2016: The Epocalypse Keeps Crashing

Brexit — the second major landslide in the Year of the Epocalypse — has bankers all over the world scrambling to pick up and prop up their crumbled facades this week. This is one more jolt in the developing global economic collapse that I predicted for 2016.

The ground of an entire nation just dropped several feet. Aftershocks from a drop that size will be felt frequently throughout the summer and to some extent for years to come.

As I’ve said before, US politicians will find it increasingly difficult this year to keep shoring up the US economy until the end of the election cycle. This collapse just made things a lot worse for them. Brexits, Grexits and other exits, oil defaults, job decay, manufacturing malaise and a host of other planet-sized problems are piling up so fast that it will become almost impossible to hold off collapse much longer as global problems press in on the US and other nations.

 

Entire nations are now making for the exits

 

Near the start of 2016, I described the anti-establishment forces that were shaping up to define the year ahead and the impact those nationally divisive forces would have on the world’s banking system this year:

 

The resources of all nations and their central banks are just too depleted to handle such a massive rupture of the global economy as we saw in 2008. Yet, this one is appearing that it could be far greater because it is developing all over the world simultaneously. The capacity of nations and their banks is fully taken up by huge monstrous national debts and balance sheets that have swelled beyond anything anyone would have imagined a decade ago.

At the same time, the people of all nations are fatigued from years of hearing about recession. In nations like Greece this is true at a level that is already explosive. If a recession like the Great Recession happens now, it will deplete all hopes because of all the talk of recovery that proved false after the last recession. They will have scaled the mountain — or tried to — only to find themselves shaken to the bottom again. Who would have faith in the central bankers to save the economy this time when all their plans to save it from the last recessionary period blew up in their faces?

Anger, albeit late in coming, is showing itself in US elections this round in the form of a movement in both parties away from the establishment. Who believes, however, that newly elected officials could find a solution once the central banks are proven to have failed? In moving away from the establishment, Democrats are moving further left and Republicans further right. There is little likelihood of agreement on a solution, especially one profound enough to right the entire world. (“Hell Week for the Global Economy“)

 

Later in May, I focused on the immigration tensions that were amplifying the anti-establishment discontent in Europe and here at home:

 

We don’t know what will happen with a Brexit or whether a Grexit will raise its ugly head again or whether immigration tensions will spontaneously combust in Europe … but I think the frying pan will certainly be sizzling this summer to cook up the last of the market’s bully beef for the bears to feast upon.

The increasingly scarce market bulls are dead cattle walking thanks to zombie economics. (“Zombie Economy Soon to Have its Zombie Epocalypse“)

 

In other words, I wouldn’t bet back then on exactly what national breakaway would happen first in the EU, but was certain national tensions would heat up to where Europe started falling apart this summer, particularly over immigration tensions. The falling apart began right on cue. One cannot always see what section of land will give way first, but one can certainly see that so many pieces are ready to give way that collapse is certain and imminent.

 

Banks and bankers are trembling all over the world

 

To sum up where we are now now, I’ll turn to former Fed Chair Allan Greenspan who said that the Brexit event “may be just the tip of the iceberg” for Europe’s problems. When asked what he meant by that, he responded with the following:

 

This is the worst period I recall since I’ve been in public service. There’s nothing like it, including the crisis — remember October 19th, 1987, when the Dow went down by a record amount 23 percent? That I thought was the bottom of all potential problems. This has a corrosive effect that will not go away….

This problem that’s causing the British problem is far more widespread. Fundamentally, what we are looking at is a massive slowing in the rate of real of incomes across the whole European spectrum…. Real incomes are not going anywhere, and that is creating a serious political problem, which is not easy to resolve….

I think the euro currency is the immediate problem… There’s this whole movement toward European political integration…. The euro area was a major step in that direction, and it’s failing. Greece is in real serious trouble. It is not going to continue in the euro very much longer, irrespective of what’s going on currently. (CNBC)

 

While Greenspan was one of the absent-minded architects of the Great Recession with his rabid debt-expansion policies, I quote him because he is speaking against his own longtime centrist bias when he claims that Grexit is certain for its own reasons and that the euro “is failing.”

In other words, if even Greenspan says Europe is falling apart and the euro “is failing,” it must be bad. He’s a centrist saying the center is not holding. It’s not the nature of a central banker — even a former one — to be alarmist by saying an entire economic zone run by his comrades, which he has applauded, is now collapsing into chaos.

Don Quijones, an editor of Wolf Street, adds a note to Greenspan’s candid observations:

 

Another serious problem (on which Greenspan was somewhat less forthcoming) is Europe’s swelling ranks of heavily leveraged, scantily capitalized, bad-loan bedeviled, zombified banks. It was they whose stocks plunged the most [on Friday]….

The prophets of Project Fear reaped what they’d sown, as financial carnage spread across global markets on news that a slim majority of British voters had done the unthinkable by drowning out the relentless doomsaying and voting to leave the European Union. The pound sterling plunged 8% against the dollar, to $1.37, its lowest level in three decades. The euro fell 1.93%, in itself a huge one-day move for a major currency. UK stocks surrendered over 3% of their value. But that was nothing compared to the havoc unleashed in other European stock markets….

In Spain and Italy: the IBEX 35 plummeted 12.3% and the FTSE MIB 12.5%. It was their worst day on record. The UK economy may be in for a hellishly bumpy ride in the months and years ahead, but the fact that London’s FTSE 100 was Europe’s least worst performing stock market on this day of all days suggests that Europe’s biggest financial risks probably lie elsewhere. And that is in euro land, in particular on its southern flank….

The shares of Italy’s biggest bank (and global systemically important institution), Unicredit, slid more than 23% on Friday. They are down 59% since January. The stock of Banco Populare, Italy’s fifth biggest bank, also lost 23% on Friday and is down over 80% since the beginning of this year. The fourth biggest institution, the perpetually failing Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena whose loss-making derivatives bets were made under Mario Draghi’s watch as Bank of Italy’s governor, fell by 16.5%. (Wolf Street)

 

Spain’s banks suffered as badly as Italy’s, with Bankia shares losing 20% of their value. Spain’s largest bank, Santander, already suffering heavy losses from its operations in Brazil, also lost 20% of its value overnight, as did a third mega bank in Spain, Sabadell. Expect to see more major bank bailouts in Europe.

In the UK, Barclay’s shares plunged 20.5%. HSBC dropped 9%, and the Royal Bank of Scotland fell off a cliff, taking a 27.5% pounding.

 

Mood in the restaurants and coffee shops in the high-rise banking hub of Canary Wharf, home to JPMorgan, Citi , HSBC and Barclays, was sober and contemplative, with job security fears rising to levels unseen since the 2008 financial crisis. Major investment banks have already warned they could move thousands of jobs elsewhere if Britain opts out of the EU, while the European Central Bank has signaled it could force euro trading out of London, the world’s largest foreign exchange market….

“We’ll have a crash and big layoffs,” a senior investment banker at a U.S. bank told Reuters….

“This is the biggest vote in my lifetime. Black Wednesday and the impact of Lehman Brothers collapsing – these other big events don’t even compare in magnitude to this,” said Mark Boleat, Chairman of the City of London’s Policy and Resources Committee…. “We are just beginning to think through what will have to happen legally and it is massive, absolutely massive….

Leave’s victory [Brexit’s victory] has delivered one of the biggest market shocks of all time … Panic may not be too strong a word,” Joe Rundle, Head of Trading at ETX Capital said. (Newsmax)

 

Bankers are shaking in their hip waders as they congregate in a swamp full of alligators.

As individual bankers bemoaned what they see as a crushing shock, central banks ran in for emergency rescues. The Bank of England offered a quarter of a trillion pounds plus substantial access to foreign currencies, promising additional measures as required. The US Federal Reserve assured the entire world it was standing by to supplement liquidity through its swap lines with global funding markets. The ECB said it would provide additional liquidity to protect euro stability, and the People’s Bank of China assured other nations it would maintain a stable yuan (though on Monday, China weakened the yuan by its most since the big sell-off last August). Even neutral Switzerland ran to the rescue.

 

In a rare move for a major central bank, the Swiss National Bank openly intervened in currency markets to weaken the safe-haven franc, promising to do even more if needed. (Newsmax)

 

The Epocalypse is here

 

Seattle_-_House_damaged_in_Perkins_Lane_landslide,_1954We have now entered a global period of bailouts heaping up against the back of earlier bailouts and attempted recovery coming on the back of already failed recovery. Why? Because it is all the same Great Recession, and as I’ve maintained since I began this blog several years ago the “recovery” is nothing but a prop under the Great Recession’s monstrous belly. That prop, I said would fail this year, and we would slide into the abyss of an economic apocalypse in a series of jolting plunges and rallies.

As I quoted David Stockman in an earlier article,

 

At long last the tyranny of the global financial elite has been slammed good and hard. You can count on them to attempt another central bank based shock and awe campaign to halt and reverse the current sell-off, but it won’t be credible, sustainable or maybe even possible….

The central bankers and their compatriots … have well and truly over-played their hand. They have created a tissue of financial lies; an affront to the very laws of markets, sound money and capitalist prosperity…. So there will be payback, clawback and traumatic deflation of the bubbles. Plenty of it, as far as the eye can see….

 

When I say “the Epocalypse is here” or “the end is here,” I don’t mean we are now on the final leg down or that there will be no leveling off or no rally — that its finished. Heck, the central bankers aren’t going to give up the show that easily, and this is an election year in the US where they can expect totally subservient assistance from establishment politicians on both sides of congress. The majority of elected politicians clearly deplore the possibility that Donald Trump could not only be proven right about economic collapse but could be hoisted to a success big enough to give him a political mandate to tear the establishment apart in 2017!

What I mean when I claim “the end is here” is that this is one more enormous jolt like we saw in January that is a part of the end. We are, in other words, going through the end. I’ve consistently stated the Epocalypse will take, at least, a year and half to find its bottom; so it is far from over. This is just the beginning of the end.

Each of these jolts does huge damage to the global economy, weakens banks and central banks and other corporations in substantial ways, and takes us further into the Epocalypse. This one is massive to such a degree that its damage to the establishment will only be discovered over a period of weeks or more likely months. Along the way, we also have smaller jolts like we saw when I quoted Dennis Gartman as saying a month ago:

 

The Bulls and the Bears left scratching their heads and wondering aloud, “What the hell just happened?” …Yesterday was our worst day of the year thus far, as that which we were long of fell and that which we were short of closed unchanged…. Yesterday was a disaster which we wish to put behind us. (Zero Hedge)

 

By “Epocalypse” I mean an economic collapse on the scale of things predicted in The Apocalypse (i.e. on the same scale as biblically prophesied disasters in the Book of Revelation). The “Epocalypse” is my name for our second and deeper plunge into the belly of the Great Recession — a drop so great it will make the first slump look like it was just a dress rehearsal for the real show.

I am sure many bulls who were long on Brexit are feeling the sizzle of the frying pan in the summer heat now as they try to recover from foolhardy long positions. Those were just the first ones who didn’t listen, and they just lost over two trillion dollars. The price of continuing to bet on the bull will grow worse each time something hits. You’re going to smell a lot more barbecued bull this summer … and beyond:

A few major banks that were already stressed will likely fail in the months ahead because Brexit added more stress than they can absorb. That will probably mean more bailouts, but the populace is not inclined to accept any more bailouts, so that will mean more civil unrest if bailouts happen.

National economies that were already crumbling like Greece, Brazil, Italy, Spain and France, will fall faster. As a result, other parts of the Eurozone will likely break off like icebergs in the summer heat. They may not announce their break from the EU this summer, but you’ll see major cracks form around their circumference.

Areas of marginal economic weakness will develop visible fault lines and experience serious tremors. In the US that would include jolts to jobs and wages, more falloff in GDP, increasing social unrest, increasing corporate collapse.

In the midst of that there will likely be periods of calm created by massive central bank infusions. You’ll see central banks invent new tricks that even they didn’t know they could come up with … out of desperation to save their “recoveries.” Those eddies of calm that run as counter currents to the main flow of events may beguile some rosy-eyed optimists into thinking the earth has stabilized, but it hasn’t and it won’t, and those beguiled will be hurt just as many were massively hurt by this jolt. As soon as you think the earth is steady, the next nation will fall.

The calm between January and Brexit was longer than I expected between legs down, and the expected intervening rally went twice as high as I thought it would, but this is an election year. Regardless of the extended pause, global economic breakdown is continuing along the fault lines where I’ve indicated it would and in the year when I said things would all come apart, and the scale of Brexit is as huge as I said each leg of our journey into the Epocalypse will be.

The journey into our decline has now resumed. Each part that gives way makes all the other parts weaker and their own collapse more certain and more imminent. It’s going to be a summer filled with aftershocks.

You cannot stop this collapse, nor can you talk it into happening with negativity either. It is going to happen because it has to happen. It has inevitability all over it. Economic structures that should never have been created in the first place are giving way in what will become total structural failure. They are giving way because of their own flawed design:

  • You cannot create mountains of enduring wealth by carving out caverns of debt beneath them.
  • You cannot create stable economies by focusing all the benefits toward the rich industrialists and hoping they will trickle down to create demand later.
  • You cannot deplete your nation’s treasure with endless wars around the world by putting the wars of budget and beguiling yourself to think that means there was no cost to your own greatness.
  • You cannot cram people from divergent cultures together by the millions without creating huge social costs that become economic costs.
  • You cannot bail out rich bankers without creating moral hazard that entices them to repeat their sins.
  • You cannot centrally manage economies in a way that benefits the periphery.

 

My list could be bigger. The earthquake has happened. The aftershocks will come. And then there is autumn, the time called “fall” because many things will.

 

What happens to the EU as a result of the Epocalypse?

 

This last part is a longer-term outlook than just 2016, and is added as an afterthought. Rather than loosen their bonds to become more democratic and less centralized in order to keep dissatisfied states from pulling out, I think the EU’s most powerful states crave power enough that they would choose to close ranks and tighten their agreement for more highly centralized power, letting those states that demand more localized authority fall away. Tightening the squeeze is certainly the approach Germany chose when Greece considered pulling out. It seems to be the German way.

If other states start to follow Britain’s lead, the EU may consolidate into a smaller, more tight-knit European superstate, which may hope to dominate the nations that pull out. I say that because Germany and France have a long-standing intense clench on power that already dominates the EU. They also share a Franco-Germanic history that may incline them to believe they can aggregate power around themselves, and those who are fundamentally seeking greater centralized power don’t become more democratic just so the center of a larger enterprise can hold.

The splintering of nations away from the center would make it easier for the centrists that remain to tighten their grip in response to create a state that has less breadth but more intensity. Merkel, certainly, does not seem inclined to loosen the reins she holds.

 

Books to read during the Epocalypse:

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22 Comments

  1. Ping from Chris P:

    Dave thought you might have some great insights after the 4th of July and the FBI putting the rule of law to rest for the rest on the 5th.

    • Ping from Knave_Dave:

      I’ve been unplugged on vacation and just got back. What has the FBI done this time? You mean the apparent slowdown of FBI cases being brought against inside traders in New York due to court restraints, or was there other bigger news I missed while deliberately avoiding the news for the past few days?

      —David

      • Ping from Chris P:

        Dave
        Glad you got a vacation in. It is good to step away from the computer screen and take a break for sure. I was referring to the Clinton, Comey saga and how he took the rule of law he was supposed to uphold and trashed it in front of us all. I enjoy your skills with the keyboard and was hoping to see something.

        On another note have you seen the Italian banks and real estate funds in the UK? Getting a little warm over there. I would have to say all the central banker money from Brexit has caused the PM run up.

        Make sure you ease back into the real world after being on vacation, it can be tough coming back into this world to fast.
        Chris

  2. Ping from cdndmf:

    “You cannot bail out rich bankers without creating moral hazard that entices them to repeat their sins” This is, I believe, the least observed and most important aspect of the Great Bailout. I assume you invoke the words, “moral” and “sin” for poetic reasons, but the jist I see is that some people benefited mightily from gaming the system, and instead of being punished, they were all left in position. This doesn’t just ‘entice’ another round of criminal activity, it guarantees it (See: the growing sub-prime auto-loan mess. Coincidence that auto- finance was an area left untouched by Dodd-Frank? I think not). What robber doesn’t rob again if instead of jail time, they collect a bonus? Great insights as always, Dave.

  3. Ping from Craig Mouldey:

    These discussions with point/counter point are important. I often gleen important perspectives from others such as yourself. We agree about the arrogance of these internationalists. I also agree that they are not God. They may have a plan, but that doesn’t mean they will succeed. They are very good at playing both sides and causing chaos, then offering the solution.
    Having said that, conspiracy does exist. Eisenhower and Kennedy both believe such. Kennedy said there was a conspiracy to enslave every person and he intended to expose it. He also gave his ‘monolithic conspiracy’ speech. I’ve had deep interest in such since 2008 but recently have been pulling back a lot. In various forums there is too much of ‘It’s the royal family who are reptilians and eat children and the Jesuits and Zionists. And it starts to appear to me that somebody comes along and spews the most monstrous slander with no proof and then this simply gets repeated over and over as if it is fact. And now I take the position that God appears not to take kindly to slander so give proof or shut up. It all is becoming such a distraction from things we may be able to do something about.
    I really enjoy your articles and agree with just about all your views. In a few cases I agree but with a slightly different nuance.

    • Ping from Knave_Dave:

      No problem whatsoever with the different nuance and variety of points of view. I just generally find that conspiracy theories are a distraction, as you say. They require enormous effort to sort through and, in the end, they don’t get me any further toward understanding what is most likely to happen than simply looking at what is being done and evaluating where it is most likely to go and seeing what trends are actually happening. In fact, i think I get further than I would by looking into conspiracy theories only because there are so many blind allies that turn out to be dead-ends that one has to chase down there in hopes of ascertaining which theory is correct.

      I don’t doubt that there are conspiracies at some level, but it is time-consuming to evaluate them. (I mean, why wouldn’t the world’s richest bankers get together and lay out strategies that serve their best interest? If those strategies are not shared with the public that is completely involved with the financial system and even go against what would be the public’s will, that makes them, by definition, conspiracies.) I also think I have more credibility by not going into conspiracy theories and just staying with economic evaluation and trend evaluation. Without knowing what is behind what is happening, I can still see where that which is happening is going to go. (I.e., I can predict with certainty that the present recovery will fail miserably, whether that is by design or contrary to what the designer’s want. Either way, it still goes down because it cannot work. Economic laws will not allow it to work on a sustainable basis. The conspiracy theories don’t help me get there.)

      –David

    • Ping from Delving Eye:

      Uh, no.

      Dave, not sure if this is a sign of your broadening readership (good! :D), but you probably want to delete this phisher (bad :^/).

  4. Ping from Craig Mouldey:

    Yes, this mess has been propped up longer than I thought it could. It is going to come down though. Because those controllers want it to come down. Interesting take on this and Brexit from Brandon Smith. I have to agree the bankers and their minions expected a leave vote. They will work it into their long term plans. I can see each of the points presented in this article but didn’t tie it all together like Smith has. Until all countries can take control of their financial system away from these internationalists the march to a global prison will continue.
    http://www.alt-market.com/articles/2937-brexit-aftermath-heres-what-will-happen-next

    • Ping from Knave_Dave:

      Hi Craig. I’m not inclined to be as conspiratorial as that — to think that everything that happens is always by design. I think all central bankers made every public effort they could to try to talk the Brits out of voting for Brexit. I think they have no control over the outcome of a public vote (as in I don’t believe the vote was rigged or that they have mind control); therefore, they have always to work with what is handed to them.

      So, Brexit, in my view is a back flow — a counter force — and such things will always arise against major plans of any kind, including the centralizing, power-conglomerating aspirations of bankers. (Just because central money planners have one thing in mind that suits their own greedy interests doesn’t mean they have absolute power to steer the public in that direction.) Now they have to deal with it.

      Soros did all he could to speak against Brexit (so it doesn’t make sense to me that he was actually for it), and he supposedly lost money this time on the pound (where he made his fortune last time). However, like most seasoned investors, he hedged his bets and did well on his hedges. (As everyone knew the vote was going to be a close call, why wouldn’t he hedge his bets?) I think he spoke so strongly against it because it has all kinds of capacity to get in the way of his own centralized European goals, but he’s wise enough to know you don’t make a fortune by assuming the public will follow you own aspirations. So, he planned an exit strategy of his own to do well even if the Brits voted for their exit strategy.

      Cameron put it to a referendum because he faced a strong public desire to pull away and a lot of Tory rebellion an rebellion from some other parties over how things were going with the EU. He believed he could convince the people to stay and THEN he’d have a mandate for staying (against those Tory forces within his party and other forces), and he did EVERYTHING he could think of to persuade the people to vote to remain in the EU; but he failed. (Even central planners and elitists don’t always win against the masses.) If Brexit was really what he wanted, he paid a heavy price to get what he wanted since Brexit also meant his own resignation.

      It doesn’t make sense to me that Soros, Cameron, the IMF, the Fed and the president of the United States would have used so MANY scare tactics and made so many public speeches against pulling out of the European Union if they really wanted the Brits to pull out as part of their plan for tightening the circle.

      Their only reason to campaign intensely against what they secretly wanted would be to provide cover by pretending they want unification to include the UK while hoping that a pull-out would actually further their unification plans. That doesn’t make sense to me. If pulling out is really what served them best and they were just pretending they wanted the Brits in, they would have to estimate that all bets were in favor of a pull out to such a high degree that, even if they did their best to speak against a pull out (to cover their intentions), the pullout would still win. They’d have to have the omniscience of gods to know that was going to work out since no one really knows how the masses will vote. That would be a high-risk roll of the dice with their global ambitions to say, “Let’s do all we can against Brexit, knowing the people will vote the opposite of the way we lean, and that way they’ll think THEY control how things are going even as they do exactly what we want.”

      So, I think Brexit is a countervailing force that is too risk for them to want, BUT I am certain the EU centrists have contingency plans to make this work, too. (Any smart centrist plans for all likely contingencies to make them work as best they can, even if they are setbacks.)

      So, one of my economic predictions for 2016 is that EU power brokers now switch to plan B, which would be to step up the speed of centralization now that the UK is out of the way. (Before, they had to try to work with the UK, but that plan appeared best to all, even though it was a slower path, because it meant a wider power base in Europe. Now they move to a much swifter path toward a narrower but more concentrated power base. It is not as though the Germans could ever automatically rule the UK out with all of its huge European influence; so, they had to work with it up to this point.

      –David

      • Ping from Craig Mouldey:

        Your comments as to why Cameron called for the referendum is fair although I don’t think it is any great sacrifice for him to resign. I’m sure he has his golden parachute. What I am sure of, even as you indicated with Soros covering his bets, the power brokers have also done so with this vote. Regardless of which way it goes they have plan A or plan B. They now have their patsy to blame for the chaos they are going to release. There is also this developing narrative with finger pointing and condemnation towards conservatives, Christians as being racist bigots who are responsible for any acts of terror and any other calamity that will arrive. It’s all our fault they will say.
        I certainly support the vote the Brits took. It was a choice they had to make. Until the ones controlling the financial system are removed trouble will continue. Wasn’t it Myer Rothschild who said give me control of a countries money and I care not who makes the laws?

        • Ping from Knave_Dave:

          As the afterthought in my article notes, I certainly think that is how they will play it, too. The contingency plan will be to blame a crash of all their ideas on Brexit.

          I don’t go along with the conspirators who think they planned a crash. That would be planning to look as stupid as possible to the entire world. I think they did what they did in their own stupefied belief in the virtues of central planning. They think they can manage an economy better than a free market, or they, at least, know they can manage the flow of money from any economy into their own pockets that way. I think they believe in their recovery and think they’re pretty smart and so write books telling us what heroes they are.

          HOWEVER, now that their recovery is failing, they are in a desperate situation of people rebelling against them (as seen in Trumps successes, Bernie Sanders successes and the major success of Brexit). Therefore, my prediction is that the best way for them to play this is to use it as the scapegoat they need for their own failures. (While they undoubtedly try to steer the world, their central planning is always doomed to fall because it is the nature of central planning to fail.) They will now say the economy crashed because of Brexit. (They already laid the groundwork for using Brexit that way if it happened.) They will say, just as the article you presented says, that the economy failed because of those who went against their central management, and they will move toward more centralization now that they don’t have to try to fit the Brits into their plans.

          But I don’t think they have the ability to control the outcomes. They are now facing increasing public resentment because their greed has driven so much of the money into their own hands that the masses are moving toward revolt. The battle is on! The Brits were first to throw down the gauntlet. Bravo for them. (However, many of them are centrists, too. The majority that voted against retaining EU membership was a pretty narrow margin. Two percent of the vote swinging the other way would have completely reversed the results.

          –David

  5. Ping from steve jones:

    Hey Dave
    They’ve kept that game going longer than anyone could reasonably expect. I know the usual suspects in the non-mainstream media have been proven wrong, year after year. I’d been keeping a weather eye on all theses cranks for years. It was only Dec 2015 (which coincided with no more wage slavery for me) that I awoke, and became absolutely convinced that this thing is coming down, and I went all in physical Ag/Au. (Dumb luck may have found me enter at about the bottom.) This was only after off-grid and self-sufficiency investments, which I had already made for reasons separate to Epocalypse.
    Every now and then I have doubts, “how can I be so arrogant to think it will actually manifest itself, this year, the year I woke up”? Your posts (and those from Dave Stockman, Bill Holter, Rob Kirby et. al.) provide great confirmation bias…. Then again even, if the elites some how manage to paper (literally) over this, at the end of the day, I figure the Shanghai physical now has my back with regards to my systemic CDFs – the ones with no counter party risk!

    • Ping from Knave_Dave:

      Interesting that you became convinced of December 2015. Back in late Oct/early Nov. I became convinced the Fed would raise rates at its December meeting and the first leg downward would begin as soon as the Fed did that. I thought the stock market would shoot upward immediately after Fed lift-off (in euphoria that the big date was out of the way and the sky didn’t fall) and then settle down and finally fall off a cliff shortly thereafter as new market dynamics started to replace the bad-news-is-good news anomaly that had replaced normal thinking during the zero-bound years … and that is what happened. I expected a rally, but the rally went higher and longer than I thought it would. The total collapse, I said would require a number of legs down over a period of probably a year and half. That is because central banks will do all they can to jack up and patch along their recovery as it fails. They are not going to just give up and walk away. Many of the stock-market rallies along the way will be nothing but short-lived bursts of false hope each time central banks or politicians do something. But, we need to keep in mind that the stock market is not by any means the same thing as the economy. The economy will be suffering more and more, even if the stock market has rallies.

      Welcome to the blog, Steve.

      –David

  6. Ping from Alleged Comment:

    They will now be eve MORE determined to bring the EU back and Germany shall be its leader.

    • Ping from Knave_Dave:

      … unless there is pushback against Merkel from other EU members who are upset with her for bringing all of this upon them by amping up her immigration policy. I’m sure that policy tipped the balance by the 4% margin that won the Brexit vote. Like you, though, I think the greatest likelihood is that, after the dust settles, the EU circles the wagons to form a more centralized superstate because that is certainly the direction Germany wants to go, and Britain was its brake on some of that.

  7. Ping from Screw_Globalism:

    Hopefully , the beginning of the end for the House of Rothschild !! Soros , Greenspan et al are part of the Cartel’s leadership , with direct ties to Baron Jacob ( which is Hebrew for ” deceiver ” appropriately enough !! ) More people are waking up !!

  8. Ping from Lincoln:

    Jun 27, 2016 Brexit is a Gift for Janet Yellen’s Fed Policy by Peter Schiff on CNBC 6/24/2016

    https://youtu.be/ilUGZ09pE1s

  9. Ping from Craig Mouldey:

    I’ve already read that the EU wants to impose tighter political integration sooner rather than later. But now that the cat is out of the bag quite a few other members are also clamouring to have their voices heard via referendum. I suspect it will break up with some countries having alliances with some others. I actually don’t see Germany and France being aligned. They are competitors. I think Germany will align with Turkey for one and that is likely to develop into something really nasty. We’ve seen this type of alliance before with the same players. It gets real messy.

    • Ping from Knave_Dave:

      Yeah, I’m inclined to think that, as some nations pare themselves off (if they do), that Germany certainly will try to hold together as much of the EU as it can and that will become an enriched mixture. Already the biggest possible change has been decided because if the UK follows through with the divorce, the UK was rally THE primary voice against Germany’s tendency to centralize more and more power in the EU and away from the member states. The UK had a lot of sway because of its many strengths (including its economic and military clout) and alliances. With the UK gone, Germany will have much less resistance. So, you may see, as you say, other members carve themselves off and tighten alliances with the UK in order to preserve some strength and see the EU become more concentrated. On the other hand, if Brexit causes a lot of financial wreckage, that may scare all other members away from thoughts of separating.

  10. Ping from Donald Sergent:

    too big to fail. Its a mantra. Unfortunately its not true. Ultimately, the coda is “too big to bail.”

  11. Ping from Donald Sergent:

    So, then, isn’t this how empires fall- bit by bit, pieces fall off, and then the looters ask “what happened? It all looked so solid.”

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