Executive Summary

• The central banks are the key players at this stage. When they fail, the system will fail.
• How today's Frankenmarkets are poised to collapse
• Where we see the most convincing signs that the global economy is now falling into recession
• Why we should expect bad times to lead to even worse decisions

If you have not yet read Part 1: We're Living In 'The Groundhog Show', available free to all readers, please click here to read it first.

The reason I still get angry and frustrated from time to time is because we’re just wasting very important time and resources that really ought to be dedicated to other pursuits.

As I watch the US electorate recklessly lurch from one emotional outrage to another, I truly wonder if this is really just the emergent outcome of how events spread virally — or if it’s not something more intentional and sinister. Is this all a program designed to keep people revved up but pointed in the wrong directions?

So if you find yourself increasingly feeling that things are really off track, that’s probably because you’ve also been paying close attention to the news. Whether by design or default, this doesn’t speak well to our ability to rally effectively to address the many massive predicaments society faces.

As an ex-Facebook executive said about the nefarious aspects of the social media phenomenon he helped to create, “No civil discourse, no cooperation, misinformation, mistruth; you are being programmed.”

That closely matches what I am seeing in the online world now. And it’s really unfortunate, because the stakes are so high. We really need to begin preparing for a very different future.   

Which is hard, if not nearly impossible to do in a fractured and polarized world such as the one that’s been emerging over the past few years.

The central banks are at the very center of it all.  The financial markets have taken on a new significance in the world and are now one of the prime, if not the prime, signaling mechanisms used by central planners to communicate with the world.

So it's critical to understand that the most important factor in play is…

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In this week's Off The Cuff podcast, Chris and John Rubino discuss:

• When Does The System Break?
  • When will (hyper)inflation become the greater risk?
• When Will The Central Banks Lose Control?
  • Their intervention is becoming increasingly desperate
• Recession & Debt Exhaustion
  • These are limits that can't be 'printed away' forever
• The Rise Of Authoritarianism
  • More countries are giving the State more power

One of the most frequent questions we're asked here at Peak Prosperity is: When does all this blow up? When do the sins of the past — rampant debt/deificit spending, monetary meddling, cronyism, lies & propaganda, resource despoilage — catch up with us and force a day of reckoning?

Well, in this week's podcast, Chris and John Rubino bravely attempt to answer. Their conclusions aren't pretty; it's better we be forewarned of the risks than slam into them blindly.

Click to listen to a sample of this Off the Cuff Podcast or Enroll today to access the full audio as well as all of PeakProsperity.com's other premium content.

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Executive Summary

• The limits to central bank money printing
• The key indicators signalling recession
• The growing fractures in the US economy & housing market, Europe, China & global trade
• Stepping out of the recession's path

If you have not yet read Part 1: Next Stop: Recession!, available free to all readers, please click here to read it first.

Here in early 2019 the central banks have already caved to the market’s December 2018 weakness by printing more money, softening their plans for reducing their balance sheets and delaying the already timid schedule for introducing new interest rate hikes.  They are panicking early and often and seem inordinately afraid of any sort of downturn in stock prices, which is a concerning matter in itself.

So our asterisk on this claim of ours that a recession has arrived is contained in the phrase “until and unless.”  Until and unless the central banks reignite their QE booster rockets, and do so in larger-than-ever quantities, and do so by giving money to the common people (not the banks), we think that the die is cast.  The recession has arrived. 

Perhaps we should introduce a second idea which is contained in the phrase “they can until they can’t.”  The central banks managed to get a bounce in the equity markets through a combination of easing financial conditions, as they say (i.e. throw more money to the markets), and jawboning. 

This was sufficient to get a relief bounce in equity and bond markets, but it did nothing to alter the many recession indicators we’ll track for you below.  The central banks can still move the markets with their words and deed.  Someday, perhaps soon, it will be shown they can’t.  They can move markets until they can’t.  Other such times of the central banks being overwhelmed by the movement of the market tides were in 2000 and 2008.

What sorts of things could or will swamp the levitating effects of money printing?  One is a full-blown recession that ends up crushing the various crevices that central banks cannot directly control via printing such as real estate, consumer sentiment, and zombie companies’ ability to meet debt payments.

Another is a deflationary event that sweeps across overleveraged debt markets and causes the very worst sort of damage to a debt-based money system built on leverage; a decline in the amount of credit outstanding from one period to the next.  In other words, another 2008-2009 type of event.

The central banks can control things until they can’t.  That’s what history says.  Perhaps something more fundamental has changed since that allows them more complete control than ever, and perhaps we should always have a few of our chips placed on that possibility, but otherwise it’s not different this time and the central banks will once again discover that credit bubbles are really fun on the way up and utterly destructive on the way down.

We think the next recession has arrived and that it’s going to be a real doozy in terms of creating financial market panic and losses.

Specifically, you need to watch out for…

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