Debt & Deficits

When numbers get into the billions or trillions, they start to lose context. The U.S. national debt is one of those numbers. It currently sits at $19.5 trillion, which is actually such a large number that it is truly difficult for the average person to comprehend so today’s data visualization plots the U.S. national debt against everything from the assets managed by the world’s largest money managers, to the annual value of gold production.

We're hurdling toward a massive financial crisis, and all we have to show for it are financial asset bubbles destined to burst, and when they do, they'll wipe out the artificial wealth they've created for many decades in just a few years, as they did from late 1929 into late 1932!

I believe it is too late to reverse the tidal wave of our financial system’s failure that has been brewing for three decades now. As such, in the next few weeks, an election event will take place that I believe could trigger major volatility ending in a market crash - a speculator implosion.

Retail sales numbers for July came in at a disappointing 0.0% and, after backing out auto sales, retail sales actually declined by 0.3%. That's in spite of much lower gas prices and (supposedly) an improving job market so my guess is that American consumers are simply running into a brick wall of too much debt. This article suggests 9 companies that could prosper from such financially stressed-out consumers.

According to the New York Federal Reserve, 14% of the U.S. population lives in households that have “negative” wealth. In other words, these are households that have more debts piled up than assets, which puts their net worth in minus territory. In today’s chart, we compare the data on negative wealth households with the data on their positive counterparts. There are some obvious and stark contrasts.

The unwinding of the "Central Bank Bubble" will be worse than either the Dot.Com Bubble or the Housing Bubble. It seems like most investors continue to show apathy even with the warnings by us and quite a few others of the "unintended consequences" of the central banks doing things that have never been done before. Those investors are in good company because it appears to us that the leaders of the major central banks of the world do not have any idea of the "unintended consequences" either.

When growth becomes exponential the likelihood is that it won’t last and that there will a substantial move in the opposite direction. This article looks at the unsustainable trends in most asset classes, population numbers, inflation and credit growth and discusses the dire consequences that are most likely to unfold in the years to come as a result.

since we have had the biggest bubble in history over the last 100 years, the end game is likely to lead to the biggest implosion in history of the world economy and financial system.

The ramp up in Chinese debt accumulation has been a leading concern of investors for years. The average total debt of emerging market economies is 175% of GDP, and skyrocketing corporate non-financial debt has launched China far beyond that number. The real question is: by how far? The answer is disconcerting, because nobody really knows. In today’s chart, we look at various estimates to the size of China’s debt bomb, its payload, and what might spark the fuse. Words: 354

By enforcing negative interest rates and fighting a War on Cash, the government will create a huge underground currency market - and the ultimate underground currency will be gold and its sister metal, silver...[which] could cause gold to double or even triple in value.