All of a sudden the Fed got a little tougher. Perhaps the success of the hit movie Wonder Woman has inspired Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen to discard her prior timidity to show us how much monetary muscle she can flex when the time comes for action. Although the Fed’s decision this week to ...

Global macro economic data has been weak for many years, but there’s now a very real chance of a world-wide recession happening in 2017. Why? A dramatic and worsening shortfall in new credit creation. The world’s major central banks have, again, done the world an enormous disservice.  Instead o...

Gravity eventually overpowers financial fakery. When debt-asset bubbles expand at rates far above the expansion of earnings and real-world productive wealth, their collapse is inevitable. The Supernova model of financial collapse is one way to understand this. As I noted yesterday in Will the Crazy ...

Housing is hot again, but lately it’s been overshadowed by flashier bubbles in government debt, tech stocks and possibly cryptocurrencies. Still, the warning signs are spreading. Today’s Wall Street Journal, for instance, reports that homeowners are back to using their houses as ATMs: Homeowner...

By now everyone with an Internet connection is aware of the “ransomware” attack that shut down hundreds of thousands of computers over the weekend. The fact that the onslaught is just beginning — as the military-grade hacking tools developed by the NSA and recently leaked are weaponized by hac...

The UK’s Telegraph just published an analysis of global debt that pretty much sums up the coming crisis. Here’s an excerpt with a couple of the more hair-raising charts: Global debt explodes at ‘eye-watering’ pace to hit £170 trillion Global debt has climbed at an “eye-watering” pace o...

Economic data for February provided clear indications that the global economy is experiencing a broad recovery, with the major advanced economies growing close to or even above their estimated potential growth rates. This positive macroeconomic environment is providing a tailwind for equity markets...

In the past, I’ve warned about the coming Great Wealth Transfer.  But now we need to talk about it in the present tense, because it’s here. And it will only accelerate from here on out. The Rich will get richer at the expense of everybody else. This isn’t personal. It’s simply ...

It’s impossible to predict with certainty how much more insane our financial markets will get before an inevitable correction. But my personal bet is: A lot! For my reasons why, take a few minutes to watch the chapter on bubbles below from The Crash Course. For those who haven’t seen it ...

Picture this story on the front page of the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal: japantimes.co.jp/news/2017/01/06/national/social-issues/japan-academic-societies-propose-defining-elderly-aged-75-older. Hat Tip to Jeff Uscher of Japan Insider for the catch. Jeff notes that “As of September 20...

The world has gotten so used to ultra-low interest rates that even economists and money managers seem to be shocked by what happens when rates start creeping back towards normal levels. Some of the mini-bubbles that formed in an essentially free-money environment are now starting to leak. Notably: U...

I know it’s bad form to express sympathy for the people running the world’s central banks. But come on, they’re human beings in an impossible spot with no idea how to escape. The pain they feel is both intense and legitimate, and we should respond with at least a bit of empathy. Just kidding....

The pinnacle of the global financial system is warning that conditions are right for a “full-blown banking crisis” in China.  Since the last financial crisis, there has been a credit boom in China that is really unprecedented in world history.  At this point the total value of all outstanding ...

I’ve always thought that Shirley Yam of the South China Morning Post has a great nose for financial risk, and this shows in an article she published last week on mainland real estate. For anyone knowledgeable about the history of financial bubbles and crises, much of the following story will se...

Before the financial crisis erupted in the fall of 2008 the big four central banks of the world (US Fed, European Central Bank, Bank of Japan, and the Bank of England) had combined monetary reserves of roughly $3 trillion dollars. Fast forward to the present and their combined reserves have almost q...

One of the first results of Britain’s voting to leave the European Union was a sharply lower pound. Which means the UK is now winning the currency war. Henceforth its exports will be cheaper around the world, enabling its major companies to sell more stuff, make more money and hire more people. In...