Submitted by Chris Martenson via PeakProsperity.com,
As we’ve been warning for quite a while (too long for my taste): the world’s grand experiment with debt has come to an end. And it’s now unraveling.
Just in the two weeks since the start of 2016, the US equity markets are down almost 10%. Their worst start to the year in history. Many other markets across the world are suffering worse.
We already noted the cycle-low Q4 GDP forecast by the Atlanta Fed, which in a release which came out just as the crashing US equity market closed revised the last quarter GDP to just 0.6%, which delay however according to the same Atlanta Fed was due to "nothing more nefarious than technical difficulties."
Wall Street experts have said that a big recession, far worse than the 2008 financial crisis, is due to hit this year. With the S&P 500 beginning 2016 with its worst performance ever, experts say 2016 holds chaos in currency, bond and equity markets on a global scale. Cnbc.com reports: This has prompted Wall Street apologists to come out in full force and try to explain why the chaos in global currencies and equities will not be a repeat of 2008. Nor do they want investors to believe this environment is commensurate with the dot-com bubble bursting.
Submitted by Raul Ilargi Meijer via The Automatic Earth blog,
The first thing that popped into our minds on Tuesday when WTI oil briefly broached $30 for its first $20 handle in many years, was that this should be triggering a Gawdawful amount of bets, $30 being such an obvious number. Which in turn would of necessity lead to a -brief- rise in prices.