No one knows if it's a hand grenade or a nuclear warhead...
The ramp up in Chinese debt accumulation has been a leading concern of investors for years. The average total debt of emerging market economies is 175% of GDP, and skyrocketing corporate non-financial debt has launched China far beyond that number.
The real question is: by how far?
The answer is disconcerting, as VisualCapitalist's Jeff Desjardins warns, because nobody really knows.
Submitted by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,
Last year, we covered a story coming out of Texas in which the state government was planning to institute a state-controlled "gold depository" that would allow individuals to store their gold in a presumably safe place outside the United States banking system.
Just days after Bank of America's equity team joined Goldman, JPM, Citi, UBS and pretty much every other bank (and Gartman) forecasting a market drop in the imminent future with a report laying out "Nine "Reasons To Worry" About A Big Market Drop", BofA's cross asset team led by chief investment strategist Michael Hartnett is out with some of his own words of "encouragement", to wit.
Billionaire George Soros has cut investment in US stocks by one-third and acquired a $264 million stake in Barrick Gold, the world’s biggest bullion producer. According to Bloomberg, the value of Soros Fund Management’s publicly disclosed holdings fell by 37 percent to $3.5 billion in the first quarter of 2016. RT reports: At the same time, Soros bought a 1.7 percent stake in Toronto-based Barrick Gold for $264 million, the biggest US holding in the company. “Gold is always a safe haven at times when risks for investors are escalating.
Submitted by StraightLineLogic.com's Robert Gore via The Burning Platform blog,
Economic depressions unfold slowly, which obscures their analysis, although they are simple to understand. Governments and central banks turn recessions into depressions, which are preceded by unsustainable expansions of debt untethered from the real economy. The reduction and resolution of excess debt takes time, and governments and central banks usually act counterproductively, retarding necessary adjustments and lengthening the adjustment, and consequently, the depression.