Most Popular
1. It’s a New Macro, the Gold Market Knows It, But Dead Men Walking Do Not (yet)- Gary_Tanashian
2.Stock Market Presidential Election Cycle Seasonal Trend Analysis - Nadeem_Walayat
3. Bitcoin S&P Pattern - Nadeem_Walayat
4.Nvidia Blow Off Top - Flying High like the Phoenix too Close to the Sun - Nadeem_Walayat
4.U.S. financial market’s “Weimar phase” impact to your fiat and digital assets - Raymond_Matison
5. How to Profit from the Global Warming ClImate Change Mega Death Trend - Part1 - Nadeem_Walayat
7.Bitcoin Gravy Train Trend Forecast 2024 - - Nadeem_Walayat
8.The Bond Trade and Interest Rates - Nadeem_Walayat
9.It’s Easy to Scream Stocks Bubble! - Stephen_McBride
10.Fed’s Next Intertest Rate Move might not align with popular consensus - Richard_Mills
Last 7 days
Nvidia Numero Uno in Count Down to President Donald Pump Election Victory - 5th Nov 24
Trump or Harris - Who Wins US Presidential Election 2024 Forecast Prediction - 5th Nov 24
Stock Market Brief in Count Down to US Election Result 2024 - 3rd Nov 24
Gold Stocks’ Winter Rally 2024 - 3rd Nov 24
Why Countdown to U.S. Recession is Underway - 3rd Nov 24
Stock Market Trend Forecast to Jan 2025 - 2nd Nov 24
President Donald PUMP Forecast to Win US Presidential Election 2024 - 1st Nov 24
At These Levels, Buying Silver Is Like Getting It At $5 In 2003 - 28th Oct 24
Nvidia Numero Uno Selling Shovels in the AI Gold Rush - 28th Oct 24
The Future of Online Casinos - 28th Oct 24
Panic in the Air As Stock Market Correction Delivers Deep Opps in AI Tech Stocks - 27th Oct 24
Stocks, Bitcoin, Crypto's Counting Down to President Donald Pump! - 27th Oct 24
UK Budget 2024 - What to do Before 30th Oct - Pensions and ISA's - 27th Oct 24
7 Days of Crypto Opportunities Starts NOW - 27th Oct 24
The Power Law in Venture Capital: How Visionary Investors Like Yuri Milner Have Shaped the Future - 27th Oct 24
This Points To Significantly Higher Silver Prices - 27th Oct 24
US House Prices Trend Forecast 2024 to 2026 - 11th Oct 24
US Housing Market Analysis - Immigration Drives House Prices Higher - 30th Sep 24
Stock Market October Correction - 30th Sep 24
The Folly of Tariffs and Trade Wars - 30th Sep 24
Gold: 5 principles to help you stay ahead of price turns - 30th Sep 24
The Everything Rally will Spark multi year Bull Market - 30th Sep 24
US FIXED MORTGAGES LIMITING SUPPLY - 23rd Sep 24
US Housing Market Free Equity - 23rd Sep 24
US Rate Cut FOMO In Stock Market Correction Window - 22nd Sep 24
US State Demographics - 22nd Sep 24
Gold and Silver Shine as the Fed Cuts Rates: What’s Next? - 22nd Sep 24
Stock Market Sentiment Speaks:Nothing Can Topple This Market - 22nd Sep 24
US Population Growth Rate - 17th Sep 24
Are Stocks Overheating? - 17th Sep 24
Sentiment Speaks: Silver Is At A Major Turning Point - 17th Sep 24
If The Stock Market Turn Quickly, How Bad Can Things Get? - 17th Sep 24
IMMIGRATION DRIVES HOUSE PRICES HIGHER - 12th Sep 24
Global Debt Bubble - 12th Sep 24
Gold’s Outlook CPI Data - 12th Sep 24

Market Oracle FREE Newsletter

How to Protect your Wealth by Investing in AI Tech Stocks

Economic Downturn an Historic Challenge for the New President

Politics / Recession 2008 - 2010 Dec 04, 2008 - 01:47 PM GMT

By: John_Browne

Politics Best Financial Markets Analysis ArticleAt long last it is official. Even the government's own statisticians now admit that we are in a recession. They have even concluded that it began in late 2007. How wonderfully candid of them!


To fight the downturn that it can no longer deny, the government has budgeted some $3 trillion to spend the economy out of recession. However, there is increasing evidence that the recession is deepening, just as we have forecast over the past year or so. It is now rumored that a further $8 trillion (some $25,000 dollars for every American man, woman and child) is being considered. Many people are worried and are beginning to wonder where it will all end.

But, as the saying goes, even the darkest cloud has a silver lining. Provided the incoming Obama Administration makes the right decisions, great opportunities lie ahead. The situation we face is terrible. Indeed, we believe that a full-blown depression in looming. Some may ask for the source of this pessimism given the relatively benign forecasts favored by most economists.

The answer lies in the range of our economic perspective. Perhaps arrogantly believing that the sophisticated modern economy lacks historical precedent, most economists and analysts look back only as far as World War II. Somehow it is assumed that 99% of recorded history offers no lessons for the modern world. This is naïve.

If we adopt a far longer-term perspective, we can find some parallels to the Bush-Greenspan bubble that we now see unwinding: the bursting of the South Seas bubble in 1720, and the Stock Market Crash of 1929. Both events led to unprecedented losses and took years to recover from. We believe that history will record 2008 as the year in which a decade long boom, which began with the tech boom of the late 1990's and continued with the real estate boom of the middle years of this decade, was finally pricked.

All three crashes were based, essentially, on massive, irrational, speculation. But the potential depression that will follow the most recent crash will face two problems not seen by the first two: massive leverage and institutional corruption.

Today, vast numbers of consumers are highly leveraged with credit card debt, auto loans, student loans, overdrafts and mortgage debt. In normal times, such levels would have been considered grossly imprudent. But the past 10 years have been anything but normal. Given that many of these consumers have scant ability to service the loans they have taken, the debt has been characterized as the "toxic waste" of the financial industry.

The banking system carefully hid most of this "toxic waste" within derivative structures and an abuse of off-balance sheet accounting to a degree that amounts to the greatest financial fraud in history.

The fraud was directly caused and tolerated by policy makers. In an effort to avoid healthy recessions and to perpetuate the good times, the Administration, under Bush and Greenspan, pumped trillions of unearned dollars into the world economy, laying the foundation for the unprecedented real estate and consumption booms of the 2000's.

In order to postpone and disguise the inevitable pain of America earning less than it was spending, Bush and Greenspan quietly depreciated the currency and borrowed massively.

Although the risks were systematically dismissed for years by the Government, banks and corporations, the horrors that result from the 'deleveraging' from such massive speculation, debt, leverage and fraud, are now dawning with ferocious intensity.

On the bright side, things may be so bad by January 20, 2009, and people so scared, that they will be prepared to accept policies, delivered by an outstanding level of oratory by President Obama, that they would have been totally unaccepted only months before.

We know that he has the skill. But if he also has the vision and the nerve, Obama may even be able to convince America to accept the excruciating pain necessary to restructure our economy and restore our national wealth. This must involve boosting production at the expense of excessive consumption.

It is a long shot, but at least it is a possibility that could end in a resurgence of American prosperity and power. Should Obama fail to seize this painful but historic chance, the markets will be left to deliver the inevitable pain. The credit rating on American debt will be cut and the U.S. dollar and markets will plummet, delivering a blow to the standard of living of most Americans that will threaten insurrection.

For a more in depth analysis of our financial problems and the inherent dangers they pose for the U.S. economy and U.S. dollar denominated investments, read Peter Schiff's new book For an updated look at his investment strategy order a copy of his just released book " The Little Book of Bull Moves in Bear Markets ." Click here to order your copy now .

For a look back at how Peter predicted our current problems read the 2007 bestseller " Crash Proof: How to Profit from the Coming Economic Collapse ." Click here to order a copy today .

By John Browne
Euro Pacific Capital
http://www.europac.net/

More importantly make sure to protect your wealth and preserve your purchasing power before it's too late. Discover the best way to buy gold at www.goldyoucanfold.com , download my free research report on the powerful case for investing in foreign equities available at www.researchreportone.com , and subscribe to my free, on-line investment newsletter at http://www.europac.net/newsletter/newsletter.asp

John Browne is the Senior Market Strategist for Euro Pacific Capital, Inc.  Mr. Brown is a distinguished former member of Britain's Parliament who served on the Treasury Select Committee, as Chairman of the Conservative Small Business Committee, and as a close associate of then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Among his many notable assignments, John served as a principal advisor to Mrs. Thatcher's government on issues related to the Soviet Union, and was the first to convince Thatcher of the growing stature of then Agriculture Minister Mikhail Gorbachev. As a partial result of Brown's advocacy, Thatcher famously pronounced that Gorbachev was a man the West "could do business with."  A graduate of the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, Britain's version of West Point and retired British army major, John served as a pilot, parachutist, and communications specialist in the elite Grenadiers of the Royal Guard.

John_Browne Archive

© 2005-2022 http://www.MarketOracle.co.uk - The Market Oracle is a FREE Daily Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting online publication.


Post Comment

Only logged in users are allowed to post comments. Register/ Log in