URGENT🔴 Money Printing And The Coming Reset End Feb 2019 -Debt Crisis ,Bank Accounts

These billionaires are issuing terrifying warnings about global debt levels

We write a lot about global debt levels at Sovereign Man.

In fact, the very first Notes from the Field I ever wrote, in June 2009, was about how broke the US was… and the severe consequences that eventually face a nation that recklessly spends money it doesn’t have.

And debt has been a major theme in this publication ever since.

As you know, since the Great Financial Crisis in 2008, debt levels have only gotten worse. But not just for governments.

Sovereign debt, corporate debt and consumer debt are all at all-time highs.

The US government has $22 trillion of debt and is running $1 trillion+ deficits every year. There’s a record $15 trillion of corporate debt. And the US consumer has racked up around $4 trillion of debt (not including mortgages).

And you don’t have to take my word for it that this is all going to end badly…

Last week, one of the most respected hedge fund managers in the world came out with a warning scarier than anything we could have dreamed of.

Seth Klarman runs the $28 billion hedge fund, Baupost Group. The guy is famously secretive (and conservative). So the fact that he went out of his way to make this public statement means you should pay attention.

Also, Klarman’s fund is closed (he’s actually been returning money), so he’s not doing this to scare people into investing in his fund.

In a 22-page letter to his investors, Klarman warned that government debt levels, particularly in the US (where debt exceeds GDP), could lead to the next global financial crisis.

“The seeds of the next major financial crisis (or the one after that) may well be found in today’s sovereign debt levels,” he wrote.

In addition to debt levels, Klarman is worried about the increasing social unrest (something we’ve written about in detail) and the public’s inability to decipher who is telling the truth these days between politicians and the media… both of which make it difficult for a capitalist system to thrive.

Who knows what will ultimately bring the system crashing down, but let’s focus on the US government’s exploding deficits…

In 2018, the federal government’s deficit hit $1 trillion. But these are “good times,” with soaring asset prices, solid corporate profits and record-low unemployment.

What happens when a recession inevitably occurs. Our friend Jim Grant of Grant’s Interest Rate Observer, says the deficit will blow out to $2 trillion.

So, $22 trillion in the whole and a $1 trillion deficit in a good year. Not to mention, interest rates are rising, which means all of this debt is just getting more expensive.

Eventually, people will simply refuse to lend Uncle Sam any more money… because they know there’s no way they’ll be repaid.

And we’re already seeing signs of that.

According to the Wall Street Journal, in the first eight months of 2018, overseas buyers of US Treasurys only bought half the amount they did over the same period in 2017.

From Klarman:

“There is no way to know how much debt is too much, but America will inevitably reach an inflection point whereupon a suddenly more skeptical debt market will refuse to continue to lend to us at rates we can afford…”

And when fewer people want your bonds, that means it’s more expensive to borrow. But the government can’t afford to pay any more…

The government already spends 28% of its revenue just on interest (at a time when interest rates are near all-time lows).

Ultimately, Klarman believes the debt (along with the massive wealth disparity caused by a 10-year asset price boom) will lead to social unrest…

“It is not hard to imagine worsening social unrest among a generation that is falling behind economically and feels betrayed by a massive national debt that was incurred without any obvious benefit to them.”

Again, this isn’t Sovereign Man speaking… it’s a bespectacled hedge fund manager out of Boston.

Another line from Klarman that comes straight from Notes… “By the time such a crisis hits, it will likely be too late to get our house in order.”

But Klarman isn’t the only billionaire alerting the public right now…

At the recent Davos gathering, Ray Dalio, founder of the world’s largest hedge fund, said he thinks the next downturn will be worse than the Great Depression.

And like Klarman, Dalio says the problem comes down to too much debt…

“The biggest issue is that there is only so much one can squeeze out of a debt cycle and most countries are approaching those limits”.

The world is drowning in debt. And there’s no austerity measures in sight. In fact, a rising tide of socialist politicians want to explode government spending (paying for free healthcare, education and everything else under the sun).

We don’t know when this monetary experiment will end. The European Central Bank and Bank of Japan both essentially reneged on their plans to start tightening monetary policy. And yesterday, the Federal Reserve has signaled it will stop hiking rates.

Global central banks, it seems, have already given up on their weak attempts to tighten… fearing the economy wouldn’t hold up.

If they step back on the gas of QE, I believe that’s the point when people lose faith in fiat… and the US dollar specifically.

And while this all goes down, the central banks (who control the printing press) have been buying gold at the fastest pace in years. You may want to consider doing the same.

Gold is one of the few asset classes that hasn’t risen to absurd heights. But it may be coming back to life… the metal rallied to an eight-month high this week.

Apocalyptic Debt Crisis In America: 63 Of America’s Largest 75 Cities Are COMPLETELY BROKE

The debt crisis in the United States of America has reached apocalyptic proportions.  A new and horrifying report out details the reason why 63 of America’s largest cities are completely broke: debt and overspending.
According to a recent analysis of the 75 most populous cities in the United States, 63 of them can’t pay their bills and the total amount of unfunded debt among them is nearly $330 billion. Most of the debt is due to unfunded retiree benefits such as pension and health care costs.  That means those depending on that money, likely won’t see a dime of it. 
“This year, pension debt accounts for $189.1 billion, and other post-employment benefits (OPEB) – mainly retiree health care liabilities – totaled $139.2 billion,” the third annual “Financial State of the Cities” report produced by the Chicago-based research organization, Truth in Accounting (TIA), states. TIA is a nonprofit, politically unaffiliated organization composed of business, community, and academic leaders interested in improving government financial reporting.
“Many state and local governments are not in good shape, despite the economic and financial market recovery since 2009,” Bill Bergman, director of research at TIA, told Watchdog.org.
The top five cities in the worst financial shape are New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, Honolulu, and San Francisco. These cities, in addition to Dallas, Oakland, and Portland, all received “F” grades. In New York City, for example, only $4.7 billion has been set aside to fund $100.6 billion of promised retiree health care benefits. In Philadelphia, every taxpayer would have to pay $27,900 to cover the city’s debt. In San Francisco, it would cost $22,600 per taxpayer.

By the end of Fiscal Year 2017, 63 cities did not have enough money to pay all of their bills, the report states, meaning debts outweigh revenue. In order to appear to balance budgets, TIA notes, elected officials “have not included the true costs of the government in their budget calculations and have pushed costs onto future taxpayers.” –Hartford City News Times

To say that more simply: your children have been sold into debt slavery and owned by the governments; both local and federal. The government is officially punishing the unborn for their inability to handle money. What a time to be alive…
One major problem area TIA identifies is that city leaders are lying. (What a shock! A lying politician…) These political masters have acquired massive debts despite the balanced budget requirements imposed on them by scamming the public and enslaving them.
“Unfortunately, some elected officials have used portions of the money that is owed to pension funds to keep taxes low and pay for politically popular programs,” TIA states. “This is like charging earned benefits to a credit card without having the money to pay off the debt. Instead of funding promised benefits now, they have been charged to future taxpayers. Shifting the payment of employee benefits to future taxpayers allows the budget to appear balanced, while municipal debt is increasing.”
It’s only a matter of time until this system built on debt and theft comes crashing to the ground. How prepared are you?

Nomi says there are three flash-points the Davos crowd should be watching in 2019. Here are the details…Last week, the global elite descended private jets to their version of winter ski-camp – the lifestyles of the rich and powerful version.  The World Economic Forum’s (WEF) five-day annual networking extravaganza kicked off in the upscale ski resort town of Davos, Switzerland.

Every year, the powers-that-be join the WEF, select a theme, uniting some 3000 participants ranging from public office holders to private company executives to the few organizations that truly do help fix the world that they mess up.  This year’s theme is “Globalization 4.0”, or the digital revolution. The idea being, the potential tech take-over of jobs, and what wealthier countries are doing to lesser developed ones in the process.

While the topic might be focused on the future, the present is just as troubling, if not more so, than the future.   Such is the disconnect between real people and corporations.  That’s what the estimated 600,000 Swiss Franc membership to be a part of the WEF constellation gets you as a CEO at the Davos table.

Government leaders like German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro and Chinese Vice President, Wang Qishan are in attendance this week. Business leaders like Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and JPMorgan Chase CEO, Jamie Dimon will also take part in the festivities.

Yet, even though the various leaders will likely promote their achievements, what’s lurking behind the pristine snowcapped Alps, is a dark foreboding of a less secure world. Nearly every major forecast from around the world is projecting an economic slowdown. As one Bloomberg article reports, “companies are the most bearish since 2016 as economic data falls short of expectations and political risks mount amid an international trade war, U.S. government shutdown and Brexit.”

The list of non-attendees includes U.S. President Donald Trump, UK Prime Minister Theresa May and French President, Emmanuel Macron. They are too busy dealing with complex political problems in their own government institutions and domestic home fronts to make the trek.

Below is a breakdown of the three flashpoints that the Davos crowd should be watching in 2019:

Economic Growth Will Slow

Signs of slowing global economic growth are increasing. We’re seeing that in both smaller emerging market countries and larger, more complex ones. Weaker-than-anticipated data from the U.S., China, Japan and Europe are stoking worries about the worldwide outlook for 2019.

Many mainstream outlets are beginning to understand the turmoil ahead. Goldman Sachs, my old firm, is predicting an economic slowdown in the U.S. And the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has revised downward its 2019 U.S. growth prediction to 2.5% from 2.7% from 2018. It believes that the U.S. will be negatively impacted by the economic slowdowns of American trade partners and that the 2020 slowdown could be even “sharper” as a result.

The IMF also points to pressure from ongoing trade tensions between the U.S. and China and growing dysfunction between the U.S. and other major trading partners, such as Europe.

Because the world’s economies have become increasingly interdependent, problems in one economy can have widespread consequences. We learned this once before: the collapse of U.S.-based investment bank, Lehman Brothers, triggered a greater international banking crisis in 2008. That sort of connectivity has only grown. The reality is that we may now face even greater threats than forecast so far, which could lead to another financial or credit crisis.

It is likely that China could be ground zero for a global economic slowdown. Recent dataout of China indicates that much global GDP and trade activity that should normally be in the first quarter (Q1) of 2019 was pulled forward into Q4 2018 to “beat” the tariff increase.

It’s likely that the same phenomenon could happen in the U.S. If this trend does snowball, you should expect to see rapidly deteriorating economic numbers arriving in the months ahead.

Debt Burdens Will Worsen

No matter how you slice it, public, corporate and individual debt levels around the world are at historical extremes. Household debt figures from the New York Federal Reserve noted that U.S. household debt (which includes mortgage debt, auto debt and credit card debt) was hovering at around $13.5 trillion. That debt has risen for 17 straight quarters.

What is different this time is that current levels are higher than just before the 2008 financial crisis hit.

In addition, global debt reached $247 trillion in the first quarter of 2018. By mid-year, the global debt-to-GDP ratio had exceeded 318%. That means every dollar of growth cost more than three dollars of debt to produce.

After a decade of low interest rates, courtesy of the Fed and other central banks, the total value of non-financial global debt, both public and private, rose by 60% to hit a record high of $182 trillion.

In addition, the quality of that debt has continued to deteriorate. That sets the scene for a riskier environment. Over on Wall Street they are already disguising debt by stuffing smaller riskier, or “leveraged” loans into more complex securities. It’s the same disastrous formula that was applied in the 2008 subprime crisis.

Now, landmark institutions like Moody’s Investors Service and S&P Global are finally sounding the alarm on these leveraged loans and the Collateralized Loan Obligations (CLOs) that Wall Street is creating from them.

CLO issuance in the U.S. has risen by more than 60% since 2016. Unfortunately, it should come as no surprise that Wall Street is now proposing even looser standards on these risky securities. The idea is that the biggest banks on Wall Street can actively repackage risky leveraged loans into dodgy securities while the music is still playing.

If rates do rise, or economic growth deteriorates, so will these loans and the CLOs that contain them, potentially causing a new credit crisis this year. If the music stops, (or investors no longer want to buy the CLOs that Wall Street is selling) look out below.

Corporate Earnings Will Be Lower

With earnings season now underway, we can expect a lot of gaming of results in contrast to earlier reports and projections. What I learned from my time on Wall Street is that this is a standard dance that happens between financial analysts and corporations.

What you should know is that companies will always want to maximize share prices. There are several ways to do that. One way is for companies to buy their own shares, which we saw happen in record numbers recently. This process was aided by the savings from the Trump corporate tax cuts, as well as the artificial stimulus that was provided by the Fed through its easy money strategy.

Another way is to reduce earnings expectations, or fake out the markets. That way, even if earnings do fall, they look better than forecast, which gives shares a pop in response. However, that pop can be followed by a fall because of the lower earnings.

The third way is to simply do well as a business. In a slowing economic environment, however, that becomes harder to do. Plus, it’s even more difficult in today’s environment of geopolitical uncertainty, as a multitude of key elections take place around the world in the coming months.

These three concerns were central in conversation in Davos. Expect global markets to be alert to the comments coming from the Swiss mountain town. Severe dips and further volatility could be ahead if any gloomy rhetoric streams from the Davos gathering.

How Will the Fed React?

Ready to help, is the answer. This month, yet another top Federal Reserve official noted that economic growth could be slowing down. That would mean the Fed should, as Powell indicated, switch from its prior fixed plan of “gradually” raising interest rates to a more “ad-hoc approach.”

Indeed, Federal Reserve Bank of New York President John Williams, used Chairman Powell’s new buzz phrase, “data dependence,” to indicate that the Fed would be watching the economy more. While he didn’t say it explicitly, it has become largely clear that the markets are determining Fed policy.

Based on my own analysis, along with high-level meetings in DC, I see growing reasons to believe the Fed will back off its hawkish policy stance. As we continue to sound the alarm, there are now a myriad of reasons including trade wars, slowing global economic conditions and market volatility.

Traders are now assigning only a 15% chance of another rate hike by June. Just three months ago, those odds were 45%.

Watch for even more market volatility with upward movements coming from increasingly dovish statements released by the Fed and other central banks. Expect added downward outcomes from state of the global economy along with geo-political pressures.