Posted By thestatedtruth.com on August 16, 2010

The ECRI index is an important leading indicator. It has now fallen for 10 straight weeks.

There are three insurmountable problems in the US economy that are of a magnitude and gravity which can only be remedied by money printing:

• Federal and state deficits will soon escalate at an exponential rate. The US Federal debt has increased from $ 8 trillion in 2006 when Bernanke took office to soon $ 14 trillion. Many forecasts expect this debt to go up to nearer $ 20 trillion in the next 5 years. In our view it will be substantially higher. Add to that interest rates of 15% or higher and the American people will work just to pay taxes that don’t even cover the interest payments on the federal debt. This is why the US will either default or more likely print unlimited amounts of money.

• The real unemployment rate is now 22%. Since 2007 over 8 million Americans have lost their jobs and it will get a lot worse.  Non-farm unemployment in the 1930s reached 35% and we would expect this level to be reached in the next few years.

• The financial system is bankrupt. Banks are failing at a much faster rate than last year. To date circa 110 banks have failed. More seriously the assets of the failed banks are only worth an estimated 30-50% of their balance sheet value. Banks are valuing their toxic debt at phoney values with the blessing of the government. But even debt that today is considered safe will soon turn toxic with the consumer coming under enormous financial pressure. Add to that the OTC derivatives held by US banks of at least $ 400 trillion. A big percentage of these are worthless and there are virtually no reserves to cover potential losses.

Within the next few years, the three areas above are likely to result in the biggest money printing programme in world history and simultaneously lead the US (and many other countries) into the abyss.

Markets

There has probably never been a period in world history which has caused the amount of wealth destruction that we are likely to see in the next few years. If we are correct in our assumption that the West will see a correction of the excesses of the last circa 40 years but more probably of the last 200 years, since the start of the industrial revolution, we could see a total annihilation of the assets that have been fuelled by the credit bubbles. The spike in asset values in the last 100 years, which is unprecedented in history, is likely to be corrected by a waterfall which could start at any time. We will issue a separate report in the next 10 days covering our market predictions and the importance of physical gold for wealth preservation purposes.

16th August

Egon von Greyerz

Categories: Charts and Graphs, Commentary, Economy, Interest Rates, Bonds, National News, Real Estate, Wall Street, World News
Tags: