Central banks clearly want inflation and fear deflation and will, therefore, find a way to create the inflation they want resulting in gold prices somewhere between $3,000 and $4,500 by 2025.

The government needed a safe place for Chinese people to put their savings to work but the stock market turned out not to be that safe. Now the government may have to hold off on some painful reforms to keep confidence and consumption up and cash flowing through the economy and provide more time for China's 3 bubbles to pop to the country's detriment.

Looking at hard data from the bond market can help with the assessment of recession probabilities. So what is the current Treasury yield spread suggesting is the probability of a recession this year?

The fuse on the global debt bomb has been lit. We are now officially in the crisis to which the 2008 meltdown was just the warm up. Here's why.

This isn't the time to listen to those leading politicians, economists and pundits who say we're not in a bubble and we're finally seeing a sustainable recovery. We're not. Central banks can't keep this bubble going forever... [Instead,] you need to prepare for another across-the-board bubble burst and the deepest downturn since the Great Depression, with deflation, not inflation, and this time, in spite of what others such as Jeff Clark might tell you, Gold will not be your defense, it will be your downfall. Here's why.

Earnings may be a consideration when investing in the stock market, but whether you make money or not depends on the extent of monetary inflation. The rate of inflation has been twice that of the gains seen in the Dow Jones since 1920 but currently, while Wall Street may be seeing a “bull market”, the inflation adjusted returns investors receive from rising share prices aren’t compensating them for the decline in purchasing power the dollars their profits are denominated in. [Let me explain further.]

A currency war is a battle, supposedly an economic policy to cheapen a country's currency compared to that of others, to promote exports but the real reason, the one that’s less talked about, is that countries actually want to import inflation - a way of creating monetary ease and importing inflation. Let me explain.

Investment “rules” that were relevant for a century are obsolete. They were based on a world where economies grew, people’s standard of living increased and outcomes tomorrow better than today. Arguably each of these conditions will not hold in the future but if they don't, neither do the rules of thumb that guided investing last century. These guiding principles developed and worked in a world that that no longer exists but applying them in the future will result in devastating financial outcomes. [Let me explain.] Words: 1261

Take a moment to read these introductions to a number of articles about the trials and tribulations of the economic miracle of China. It is most likely you will find a number of them well worth your time to read and reflect upon.

In the financial world at this very moment, we have 8 different "weather systems" that are all developing in real time. If several of the more powerful components were to converge – and reinforce each other – then we could very rapidly reach the point of greatest financial instability that the world has seen since 2008.