“The parallels to today’s fiat money system operated in the US by the Federal Reserve are stark. Just as the first world war cut Britain and Germany off from their classical gold standard, America’s spending spree of the 1960s, particularly in respect of financing the Vietnam war led the US to print more dollars than could be redeemed for gold at the rate of $35 per ounce. Thus, in 1971 Nixon closed the gold window and ever since then, the dollar has been based on fiat rather than on sound money.
“Today, whenever policy makers desire economic growth and high employment, their solution is simply to print money. This of course was ultimately Hitler’s economic solution.
“This printed money however does little else in the long term aside from creating the kind of economic bubble which ultimately lead to Germany invading other countries for their resources.
“Debt is dangerous because inevitably, the market will call the bluff of the money printers. It happened with Germany’s MEFO scam and it will eventually happen to the United States.”
“The U.S. Federal Reserve’s balance sheet could end up between $3.8 trillion (3.1 trillion pounds) and $4.7 trillion by 2025, according to projections collected by the New York Fed…
“To keep control of rates, officials will eventually have to start buying bonds again and building up bank reserves. The latest estimates are based on multiple scenarios of how quickly parts of the Fed’s liabilities will grow…”
US manufacturing PMI was 49.1 for August, weaker than all the forecasts. And the new orders index was down at 47.2:
“The stress for the beleaguered oil firms keeps growing, as they struggle to cushion debt, find new ways to earn and refinance existing financial burdens.
“The once-thriving shale industry has been under strict monitoring by Wall Street observers in the last 18 months, adding more pressure for the companies as investor interest continues to fade following years of dismal profits due to failure to meet the cost of capital with oil prices dropping to $60 per barrel.”
https://en.businesstimes.cn/articles/118173/20190904/us-oil-us-shale-wti-bankruptcy.htm
“The Chinese people think President Donald Trump’s comments on the trade war between the world’s two largest economies are “perplexing and exhausting,” a state-run television anchor said Tuesday…
“Additional duties on products, such as smartphones and laptops, are set to go into place Dec. 15.”
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/03/china-finds-trump-perplexing-on-trade-war-china-tv-host-liu-xin.html
“HNA Group’s cash pile shrank 20 times faster than its debts, indicating that pressure is building for one of China’s most indebted conglomerates to speed up asset sales.
“Cash, equivalents and short-term investments as of the end of June tumbled 61 per cent from a year earlier…”
“Hong Kong is on the verge of a recession as its private sector activity plunged to a decade-low in August amid an escalating trade war and its worst political crisis in decades.
“The business survey, released on Wednesday, noted “the steepest deterioration in the health of the private sector since February 2009”, adding that spreading pessimism had seen business confidence slump to its lowest on record.”
“India’s shadow banks are getting increasingly squeezed by a crisis of confidence at home, forcing them to cough up more for funds overseas. And that’s just for the lucky ones.
“The non-bank financing companies have struggled to raise as much abroad this year, as defaults in India’s credit market spread after a shock failure by major shadow lender IL&FS Group last year.”
“[India]s] BSE benchmark Sensex crashed nearly 770 points and the NSE Nifty tumbled over 225 points on September 3 due to panic sell-offs across the board as investors fretted over deepening economic crisis and ever-lasting global trade tussle.
“A slew of recent macroeconomic data on GDP, core sectors and auto sales are pointing towards a deepening economic rout in the country.”
“Lebanon’s political leaders declared what they called an economic state of emergency Monday following a meeting aimed at finding a solution to the country’s economic crisis, raising concerns that more taxes will be imposed. Lebanon has one of the world’s highest public debts in the world…”
https://www.egyptindependent.com/lebanese-officials-declare-state-of-economic-emergency/
“Zimbabwean public sector doctors went on strike on Tuesday for the second time in less than a year to demand a further salary increase amid soaring living costs, as President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s government struggles with a deteriorating economy… Zimbabwe is mired in its worst economic crisis in a decade, with triple-digit inflation, rolling power cuts and shortages of U.S. dollars, basic goods, medicines and fuel.”
“Chile’s central bank cut its benchmark interest rate to a nine-year low, and hinted on more reductions, in a bid to stimulate an economy that has been caught between a global trade war and weakening domestic demand.”
“Australia’s economy grew at its slowest annual pace since the financial crisis in the second quarter, dragged down by weak consumer spending and a sharp contraction in housing construction to a pace well below that needed to put a dent in unemployment.”
“The contraction in the U.K. construction industry gathered pace in August as increased political uncertainty saw new orders fall at fastest pace in more than ten years.”
“Copper is often looked to as an indicator of global economic health, due to its wide-spread use across most homes and economic sectors. Its ability to signal economic growth and downturns alike led to the term Doctor Copper.”
https://smallcaps.com.au/doctor-copper-hints-potential-recession-sluggish-economic-growth/
““The current downturn in the global manufacturing sector was extended to a fourth month in August. New orders contracted at the joint-fastest rate in nearly seven years, led by the steepest reduction in international trade volumes since late-2012.
“The outlook also darkened, with business optimism dropping to its lowest level since it was first tracked by the survey in July 2012…
“Over half of the nations covered by the survey had a PMI reading below the 50.0 mark… Manufacturing employment declined for the fourth successive month in August.”
https://www.markiteconomics.com/Public/Home/PressRelease/2490067923764e919331f511e7a4ba64
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Not all ‘debt’ is ‘bad’?
“The source of financing most correlated with investment is long term debt. The correlation between I and dLTD is 0.79… These correlations confirm the impression … that debt plays a key role in accommodating year-by-year variation in investment.”
(Eugene F. Fama and Kenneth R. French, 1999, p. 1954)
http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/2012/03/29/krugman-on-or-maybe-off-keen/comment-page-1/ comments
“Above all, Werner uses the relatively recent technique of Granger Causality analysis to show that investment credit creation is the predictive egg that precedes the subsequent chickens of growth, and thus provides calculations of the predictive causality about how bank-generated finance can create real growth or speculative asset bubbles. “
http://www.amazon.co.uk/product-reviews/0765610493/ref=acr_search_hist_5?ie=UTF8&filterBy=addFiveStar&showViewpoints=0
“Credit and growth
Werner (1992, 1997, 2005, 2011b), using Japanese data, shows that credit for GDP transactions explains nominal GDP well over several decades, while alternative explanatory variables (including interest rates and money supply) are eliminated in a reduction from a general to the parsimonious specific model.” P23.
Prof. R. A. Werner believes that the ‘man-made problem’ was the issuing of the ‘wrong’ type of credit. There is ‘productive’ and ‘unproductive’ credit.
“Importantly for our disaggregated quantity equation, credit creation can be disaggregated, as we can obtain and analyse information about who obtains loans and what use they are put to. Sectoral loan data provide us with information about the direction of purchasing power – something deposit aggregates cannot tell us. By institutional analysis and the use of such disaggregated credit data it can be determined, at least approximately, what share of purchasing power is primarily spent on ‘real’ transactions that are part of GDP and which part is primarily used for financial transactions. Further, transactions contributing to GDP can be divided into ‘productive’ ones that have a lower risk, as they generate income streams to service them (they can thus be referred to as sustainable or productive), and those that do not increase productivity or the stock of goods and services. Data availability is dependent on central bank publication of such data. The identification of transactions that are part of GDP and those that are not is more straight-forward, simply following the NIA rules.”
http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/339271/1/Werner_IRFA_QTC_2012.pdf