In 2018, a very significant economic change occurred, which sealed the fate of the U.S. economy as well as some other economies around the globe. This change was the shift of central bank policy. The era of stimulus and artificial support of various markets, including stocks, is beginning to fade away as the Federal Reserve pursues policy tightening, including higher interest rates and larger cuts to its balance sheet.
As I predicted in September in my article ‘The Everything Bubble: When Will It Finally Crash?’, the crash accelerated in December, as the Fed raised interest rates to their neutral rate of inflation and increased balance sheet cuts to $50 billion per month.
It is important to note that when we speak of a crash in alternative economic circles, we are not only talking about stock markets. Mainstream economists often claim that stocks are a predictive indicator for the future health of the wider economy. This is incorrect. Stocks are actually a trailing indicator; they crash long after all other fundamentals have started to decline.
Housing markets have been plunging in terms of sales as well as prices. The Fed’s interest rate hikes are translating to much higher mortgage rates in the wake of overly inflated values and weaker consumer wages. Corporate buyers in real estate, which have been propping up the housing market for years, are now unable to continue life support. Corporate debt across the board is at all-time highs not seen since the crash of 2008, and with higher interest rates, borrowing cheap capital is no longer an option.
In November 2018, home sales posted the steepest decline in over 7 years.
Auto markets, another major indicator of economic stability, have been plunging in extreme fashion. Autos saw steep declines throughout the last half of 2018, once again as higher Fed interest rates killed easy credit ARM-style car loans.
U.S. credit is also drying up as investors pull capital from volatile markets and interest rates rise. Liquidity is disappearing, which means debt is becoming more expensive, or inaccessible to most people and businesses.
A false narrative is being presented in the mainstream on these circumstances – by both the media and central bankers. There has been a considerable amount of “jawboning” by economic authorities and mainstream analysts in an attempt to keep the public distracted from the economic crisis as well as keep the investment world engaged in trading with blinders on. With the propaganda going into overdrive, we must cut through the fog and mirrors and gauge the most important threats within the system and determine when they might escalate.
Make no mistake, as erratic and unstable as 2018 was, 2019 will be far worse.
This circular process of crisis-stimulus-crisis is one that that the central bank has used for over a century. Former Fed officials like Ben Bernanke and Alan Greenspan have openly admitted to central bank culpability for the Great Depression as well as the crash of 2008. Though, as they do this they also assert that they were “not aware at the time” of the greater danger. I don’t buy that for a second.
An even greater prize for banking elites is global centralization of economic authority, which is what I believe their goal is as the next engineered crash runs its course. As crisis leads to catastrophe, it will be institutions driven by globalism like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Bank for International Settlements (BIS) that step in to “save the day”.
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