Business

Submitted by John Rubino via DollarCollapse.com,

It’s unclear what China was thinking when it borrowed all those trillions to quadruple its capacity to make steel, cement and other basic industrial products. There’s no record of it checking in with the other countries that have such industries to see if a sudden surge of cheap imports was okay with them.

Turns out that it’s not. The US in particular seems to lack a sense of humor where the death of its steel industry is involved:

Several months ago, as Venezuela's hyperinflating, imploding economy was spinning in freefall, leading to the dramatic episodes of total social collapse such as those profiled in "Scenes From The Venezuela Apocalypse: "Countless Wounded" After 5,000 Loot Supermarket Looking For Food", we wrote that the country which recently had "run out of money to print its own money" was preparing to liquidate its remaining gold holdings to pay coming debt maturities.

Submitted by Mac Slavo via SHTFPlan.com,

If you haven’t heard yet, median home prices in the United States are on a tear having reached all-time highs in April. To boot, rental prices have gone insane, showing a year-over-year inflationary increase of 8%. On top of that, stock markets are rocketing back to their own all time highs based on the premise that the U.S. economy is seeing healthy growth. By all official accounts, it appears that we’re back on track.

Submitted by David Stockman via Contra Corner blog,

With the S&P closing at 2,099 on Friday, here - courtesy of Citi - is a reminder of the recent monthly highs in the S&P 500, all of which have managed to rise above 2,100 only to slide right back down again.

There is one more trading day in May, or as CitiFX' Brent Donnelly puts it, "here we go again."