Economic Overviews

What is taking place around the world these days is analogous to the children's game of Musical Chairs, where everyone is happily going round and round at the beginning of the game but they all know that at some point soon the music will stop and those without a chair to sit in will be out of the game! I see PMs as being the chairs and, when the current financial music stops, those without PMs will be left holding nothing but paper money and history is full of examples of paper money suddenly becoming worthless!

Many of those who observe the daily news reports are beginning to figure out that they are being fed misinformation and that neither political party truly represents them or, for that matter, is even concerned for their welfare. Those folks are now navigating in the dark and, as the Great Unravelling progresses, they are being caught unawares and unable to even understand what has occurred, let alone take action to save themselves. [This article attempts to enlighten such individuals as to why such events are unfolding and what the eventual - inevitable - consequences will be for them unless they]..educate themselves and prepare an alternative life.

Do you share concerns about the world today, and the path we are headed on? Do you believe a total economic collapse is a real risk? Many would say it’s a concern but doubt it’s actually going to happen. It’s always been okay, so it probably always will be, is certainly the view that most of us hold. The thing is, though, that it hasn’t always been ok and it could easily happen again. Are you prepared for such an eventuality?

Gold has a long and impressive record of warning of trouble ahead in the global economy. It has usually been right in the past — and it is telling us right now that the outlook is much less secure than the market assumes. You ignore it at your peril.

The plunge in emerging markets that started this year has given us the Fragile Five (Indonesia, South Africa, Brazil, Turkey and India), courtesy of Morgan Stanley, because their big current-account deficits mean they are acutely vulnerable to a sudden exit of foreign capital. The trouble is, it isn't true. The next crisis will start, as did the last one, in one of the developed economies [and this time round] it is likely to come from one of these 5 countries:...

News out of Venezuela continues to be quite grim, pointing to further economic deterioration... Here is the the latest:

Most people deal in the present, rarely questioning the future beyond what they consider to be the very next event. The great majority of people...cannot imagine...a disastrous collapse as being in any way possible because surely, somehow, the governments of the world will fix things. The number of people whose eyes have been opened seems to be growing, however, and many of them are asking what the collapse will look like as it unfolds. What will the symptoms be? Here is how we see it.

Below is an infographic presenting a crash course in the need for, problems with, and benefits of, building the Keystone XL pipeline from Alberta through the American midwest to the refineries in Texas.

Some of the most respected prognosticators in the financial world are warning that what is coming in 2014 and beyond is going to shake America to the core. Many of the quotes that you are about to read are from individuals that actually predicted the sub-prime mortgage meltdown and the financial crisis of 2008 ahead of time so they have a track record of being right. Does that guarantee that they will be right about what is coming in 2014? Of course not. In fact, as you will see below, not all of them agree about exactly what is coming next but, without a doubt, all of their forecasts are quite ominous.

Households in the U.S., Europe and Japan may soon face fiscal shocks worse than any market crash. Powerful economic players are deciding that with an ever-deteriorating global fiscal outlook, conventional levels and methods of taxation will no longer suffice. Indebted governments may soon consider making weapons of mass wealth destruction , such as the IMF's one-off capital levy, Cyprus's bank deposit confiscation, or outright sovereign defaults, likelier by the day.