A prominent European think tank contends that the Russian economy may be entering into a death spiral, driven by a combination of factors, including low energy prices, government mismanagement, a collapse in the Russian ruble’s value and Western sanctions.

According to RBS, the global financial markets are already showing signs of significant stress and the conditions are similar to those of the months before the Lehman crisis in 2008. Their advice is to ‘Sell everything’ and brace for a ‘cataclysmic year’!

If imports and exports are both falling, that means consumption is weak pretty much everywhere, and weak consumption means slow or negative growth which means lower corporate profits, which, if history is still a valid guide, means less valuable equities, so could it be that the markets are simply figuring this out and revaluing assets accordingly?

Don’t tie your fortune to a rising market – and I mean any kind of market anywhere on the globe. This is a time to think strategically, stay hedged and diversified, and avoid big directional bets. I think active and hedged management will be the place to be in the coming period. To quote the motto of House Stark in Game of Thrones, winter is coming...

The following are my best economic “guesses” for the coming year, based on the statistical and technical data trends, for the market, interest rates, the dollar, employment and the economy.

The top 14 investment banks ALL project that the S&P 500 will go up in 2016 with an average increase of 6.5%...This is understandable. A falling stock market is bad for business and these banks depend and thrive on the bullish excitement and expectations of their clients. However, we at Carden Capital, have adaptive strategies that can handle up and down markets, so we can tell it like it is, and in this case, we are highly confident that the projections of those 14 investment banks are going to be dead wrong. In fact, we are confident that the market will be down in 2016, and will enter into a corrective phase. With that introduction, we present to you the top 10 reasons the stock market will tank in 2016.

In this latest global financial crisis there’s no single catalyst. Instead, this time around a whole bunch of seemingly-unrelated things are unraveling all at once.

Today, I would like to share with you an outline and some suggestions to consider about general emergency preparedness. Our well being and the well being of our loved ones may depend on our preparedness in the times to come. Precious metals alone won't be enough to keep us safe from harm.

2016 is looking like the year in which all economic policies fail as they play out in an environment where all the other major economies are also rolling over and the U.S. Fed has just begun a tightening cycle. That makes 2016 a uniquely scary year.

In a dynamite interview, Richard Fisher, former president and CEO of the Federal Reserve of Dallas, gave what may be the biggest confession you’ll ever see and hear from a Federal Reserve insider: