Charles Hugh Smith

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Global Markets: It's Getting Ugly Out There

You’d have to be in full denial mode not to see that it’s getting ugly out there in global markets: currencies are melting down, trade and shipping are tanking, commodities are swooning and global stock markets are increasingly on central-bank life support.

Gordon Long and I recently discussed just how ugly it might get in a 28-minute video program.

One focus was Gordon’s forecast that the market may yet recover from its current downtrend and trace out a M Top: one more buy the dip rally that would then be followed by a bone-crushing downtrend as the wheels completely fall off the global “growth” story.

M-top9-15a

We also discussed a few of the most critical systemic sources of risk in global markets:

  1. There’s too much debt globally; public and private debt has skyrocketed since 2008.
  1. Mal-investment due to perverse incentives: corporations borrow money for stock buybacks rather than to invest in new productive capacity
  1. Stagnant income/revenues: households, companies and nations cannot support more debt
  1. The rise of high-frequency trading (HFT) has increased the odds of flash crashes and instability
  1. The rising U.S. dollar has triggered capital flight from emerging markets and China
  1. China’s economy is grinding to a halt, crushing demand for commodities and commodity-dependent economies
  1. Opaque banking: shadow banking in China, dark pools in offshore banking centers, etc. True totals of debt, leverage and the quality of collateral are all unknown
  1. Deteriorating collateral globally. How many of the 60 million empty “investment” flats in China can be sold in an illiquid marketplace with little demand for existing housing? What’s the real value of assets listed on U.S. balance sheets that are marked to fantasy?

We cover a lot of ground in this program.

It’s Getting Ugly Out There (28:20 video, with Gordon T. Long)

Regards,

Charles Hugh Smith
for The Daily Reckoning

P.S. Ever since my first summer job decades ago, I’ve been chasing financial security. Not win-the-lottery, Bill Gates riches (although it would be nice!), but simply a feeling of financial control. I want my financial worries to if not disappear at least be manageable and comprehensible.

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Even the basic concept “getting a job” has changed so radically that jobs–getting and keeping them, and the perceived lack of them–is the number one financial topic among friends, family and for that matter, complete strangers.

So I sat down and wrote this book: Get a Job, Build a Real Career and Defy a Bewildering Economy.

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I am proud of this book. It is the culmination of both my practical work experiences and my financial analysis, and it is a useful, practical, and clarifying read.

The Daily Reckoning