We all know another recession is coming at some point.

Economies are cyclical. Bust always follows boom in the same way the moon follows the sun.

We very nearly had a recession in early 2016. I remain impressed how it was averted then by the application of tremendous amounts of newly-printed-from-thin-air money.  It took several trillions of dollars globally, but it worked (if we can call enabling the global economy to take on additional $trillions in debt that will never be repaid ‘working’)

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• Survey highlights tensions in public attitudes toward science
• The Han-opticon
• China Strikes $60 Billion of U.S. Goods in Growing Trade War
• The Age Of Flux
• Judge to Georgia voting officials: You’re terrible at digital security
• Is The Shale Slowdown Overblown?
• 2100, and the Fundamental Fallacy of Climate Change Predictions
• UN report identifies where global harvests will rise and fall by 2050

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In this week's Off The Cuff podcast, Chris and Charles Hugh Smith discuss:

• The Crashing Treasury Curve
  • Interest rates are on the move
• Get Ready For Interest Rates To Start Rising
  • The end of a 30-year downtrend
• When Rates Rise, Prices Will Fall
  • Bonds, stocks, housing — nearly everything
• What's Next For Bitcoin?
  • We're witnessing a historical moment

Charles and Chris discuss the implications to anticipate should interest rates indeed start rising. The quick summary? It will change everything…

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The cryptocurrency space is on fire.

Which is why we've lined up Peak Prosperity resident crypto expert Mark Rees to offer answers across the spectrum about Bitcoin, the other digital currencies, and the blockchain. He and Chris will roll up their sleeves to dive deep into a highly-interactive discussion of all things crypto in our upcoming webinar on Sunday January 7, 2018 at noon EST/9am PST.

The full event will last about an hour and half, and draw heavily from audience Q&A. So bring your most pressing questions — you'll be able to ask them directly to Mark and Chris.

To register for the event, click here.

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Executive Summary

• It's Time To Name The Guilty
• The Gross Global Mis-Pricing Of Risk
• The New Fed Looks Even Worse Than The Old
• What You Should Do To Prepare

If you have not yet read Part 1: You're Just Not Prepared For What’s Coming, available free to all readers, please click here to read it first.

So I just want to raise my hand here and say that I am in favor of handing out serious punishments to the central bankers who negligently placed all but a very tiny few directly into harm’s way, knowingly and maliciously.  They knew they were harming pensions, savers, retirees, the young, the poor and the middle-classes.   They knew what they were doing was harming an entire generation of young people, fostering a deeply unfair and ultimately dangers wealth and income gap, and backstopping bank losses even (especially?) when those banks did stupid things that deserved losses. 

Yet they insisted and they persisted.  And here we are, with the third set of bubbles in 20 years and the largest wealth and income gaps in all of history.  I say the people responsible should be held accountable.

This Time Is Going To Be Different?

When these bubbles burst, and trust me they will, the aftermath is going to be especially ugly.  Like all bubbles, we’ll discover that a vast amount of lending took place towards ideas and projects and in support of spending habits that really should not have been undertaken.

Credit bubbles always end up making a pile of loans to really derelict ideas.  This time is no different, except the scale is so much larger.  There are so many bright red warning lights that it’s difficult to figure out which ones to convey.

Like the charts above, each one of these next charts could easily be an entire meditation that, if deeply understood, would reveal the whole story.  So settle in, take a deep breath and please consider the following.

First up, we have this deeply shocking chart for which the data has only gotten more shocking in recent months…

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