Will The EU’s Collapse Push The World Deeper Into The Great Depression II?
by ilene - May 17th, 2010 3:21 am
Will The EU’s Collapse Push The World Deeper Into The Great Depression II?
Courtesy of Timothy D. Naegele[1]
“For want of a nail . . . the kingdom was lost.”[2] Will Greece’s debt crisis lead to a Greek debt default and the collapse of the euro and an ensuing collapse of the 27-member European Union (or EU), and trigger the next round of crashes that will be described by economic historians decades from now as “the Great Depression II”?[3] The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife in Sarajevo, Serbia brought the tensions between Austria-Hungary and Serbia to a head. In turn, it is said this triggered a chain of international events that embroiled Russia and the major European powers; and World War I broke out in Europe.[4] Will Greece’s debt crisis set a series of events in motion that sends the world into a downward economic spiral of unfathomable proportions?
For years, I have wrestled with the question of whether the Europe would collapse economically, politically, socially and militarily. Sounds absurd, you say? The countries are too interwoven and mutually dependent now for that to happen, and at the very least they will muddle along, making the worst of the best situations, and achieving the lowest common denominator? The United States of Europe, they are not and never will be, but they have achieved a degree of cohesiveness that I never thought was likely years ago.
I believed jealousies and rivalries and, yes, the hatreds of the past would linger barely beneath the surface, coming unglued at the most inopportune times when it really mattered the most. When the chips were down, I felt the EU would splinter and fall apart; and that its participants and the world would write it off as a noble experiment that failed, much like the League of Nations. After all, its successor—the United Nations—is considered to be a colossal joke by Americans, many of whom would love to see it shipped to Europe, and its building on the East River in Manhattan bulldozed and turned into a park, or made into co-ops or condominiums.
The bitter hatreds of the past seem to have subsided in Europe though, and it has become a cultural melting pot, more and more. Airbus was the first tangible sign of economic integration that I never thought would…
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When Will China’s Bubble Burst?
by ilene - May 12th, 2010 5:12 pm
When Will China’s Bubble Burst?
Courtesy of Washington’s Blog
As Bloomberg notes, Marc Faber thinks China may crash in 9 to 12 months, and hedge fund manager Jim Chanos and Harvard University’s Kenneth Rogoff are also warning of a crash.
Nouriel Roubini told Bloomberg:
In China, where property prices rose at a record pace in April and consumer prices climbed at the fastest rate in 18 months, the economy faces the risk of a “significant slowdown,” Roubini said.
“China should be tightening monetary policy, increasing interest rates and let its currency appreciate over time,” he said. “They are too slow, they are not doing it fast enough.”
On April 20th, BusinessWeek wrote:
China’s Shanghai Composite Index may drop as much as 6 percent after breaching the 250-day moving average for the first time in a year, Shenyin & Wanguo Securities Co. said.
The benchmark gauge plunged 4.8 percent to 2,980.3 yesterday, the most in eight months, on concern government measures to curb real estate speculation will slow economic growth. The index may extend losses until reaching the next support level of 2,803…
Yesterday, Calculated Risk noted that the Shanghai composite is continuing down:
Keep an eye on the Shanghai index (in red). It appears China’s economy is slowing.
This graph shows the Shanghai SSE Composite Index and the S&P 500 (in blue).
The SSE Composite Index is at 2,622.67 mid-day – down about 300 points from 2 weeks ago.
[Click here for full chart]
Vincent Fernando notes that Beijing property prices are starting to fall rapidly (and that Shanghai is next), as China clamps down on the property bubble.
As MarketWatch notes:
China’s economy is teetering on the edge of a major slowdown … according to a noted China strategist.
David Roche, an economic and political analyst who manages the Hong Kong-based hedge fund Independent Strategy, says the world’s third-largest economy is now on the brink, faced with the inevitable reckoning that follows an extended bank-lending binge.
"We’ve got the beginnings of a credit-bubble collapse in China," said Roche, predicting the economy will likely cool from its stellar double-digit growth rate to a 6% annual expansion as a result.
While that may not sound bad, Roche believes the collateral damage from the cooling will be anything but mild, as the banking sector comes under pressure from cumulative
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China: Economic Catastrophe Unfolding
by ilene - June 20th, 2009 9:29 pm
China: Economic Catastrophe Unfolding
By Terence Doherty, guest author
Here’s some recent news about the real estate markets in China. I think it is fascinating watching how these things unfold. This proves once again that the lesson of history is that we don’t learn the lessons of history.
I predicted over 2 years ago that the Chinese stock markets would implode dramatically, much to everybody’s disbelief and skepticism. It began a few months sooner than I thought, but, that is exactly what has happened. Now for the last year or so, I have predicted that things will get VERY bad in the Chinese real estate markets over the next several years. Again, most people I have talked to about this (especially Chinese) have almost universally dismissed this notion as absurd.
But this is not just a guess. When you read these articles, you will see just some of the evidence that leads me to this conclusion. There are a lot of data on this, and most of it comes from statistics issued by various Chinese government agencies. But it is not advertised by the mainland press or TV. So, many Chinese are not at all aware, and think that everything will soon be wonderful, because that is pretty much what they constantly hear from the official media.
That is one thing I noticed immediately about China: there is a constant barrage everywhere you turn—-TV, advertisements, magazines, newspapers, billboards, etc.—-that essentially suggests that everything is wonderful and getting more wonderful all the time, and everybody is just happy, happy, happy, and China is getting better and better and stronger and stronger. I was really struck by this. It was like living in a never-ending infomercial. Maybe some go to China and are not very aware of this, but to me it was like a constant din.
Actually, at least some of this data is readily available on the mainland. But it requires digging. The official news agencies like Xinhua and the People’s Daily just keep repeating the same mindless mantra in endlessly varying ways every day: “Everything is good, there are only a few small little problems, but the Motherland is unstoppable and will just get mightier and mightier.” If the Falun Gong would just chant that mantra, they would get to keep their organs and they would have no more problems in China.
The news here…
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Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...
Ilene is editor and affiliate program
coordinator for PSW.