The Crash of 2015: Now Arriving at Gates 3,7,12,19…..

[Binkie The Clown]

From The Daily Impact:

If the world economy were an airline, what we’d be seeing now is hundreds of late and cancelled flights, missing airplanes, bankruptcies, thousands of staff layoffs and millions of unhappy customers. (Whoa, that was supposed to be a metaphor!) If we were in a hub airport of this airline, every incoming flight would be a tattered, smoking airplane with flat tires and bullet holes bearing more bad news from shell-shocked passengers. Some examples:

International Arrivals:

From China: The Shanghai Composite Index lost 13.4 percent of its value in July. That’s more than a correction and would have been a crash if the government had not a) halted trading in half the stocks listed, b) forbade the selling of large blocks of shares, and c) bought most of the shares that were sold. To say that these measures are not working (except that they have temporarily frozen the crash at gunpoint) is an understatement. The Chinese Crash of 2015 is well under way. [See: Peak Insanity: Chinese Brokers Now Selling Margin Loan-Backed Securities, and “China’s Hard Landing Suddenly Gets a Lot Rougher,” among many others.

---SNIP---

The post goes on to discuss the food riots in Venezuela, the demise of the U.S. Fracking companies, fudged unemployment figures, and other symptoms of the approaching trouble.

[brooklynite]

1. I'm not changing a thing...

We will continue our regular program of investing (401(k)s, IRAs, taxable accounts) in a balanced allocation of stock, bond and commodity index funds. If some values go down, that'll mean we'll have more shares in hand when they go back up.

Panicking will accomplish nothing.

[jeff47]

2. Panicking with your 401k if you are not near retirement would be bad.

But there's also an election coming up. If we are entering or are in the depths of a major recession when November 2016 rolls around, that will be very bad for the Democratic candidate.

Doesn't matter if the recession is caused by China or anything completely out of the candidate's (or government's) control. Bad economic times are bad for the incumbent party.

Carter and Bush the elder lost to the economy as much as to their opponents. Heck, the start of the dot-com bust probably cost Gore a couple percent, and that would have swung the election in his favor.

[haikugal]

8. Then we'd better get Bernie in there with some common sense, strong spined congress critters!

I think people have started to realize how the system is set up to benefit those at the top regardless the direction the economy goes. We're the ones who lose, they're the ones who profit.

Thanks for the OP.

[Rex]

3. Banksters would like to thank all those little people for the endless revenue stream

at pennies on the dollar at the last global crash...oh wait...banksters would like to thank all those future little people that will give them a good revenue stream at pennies on the dollar.

Wall Street is a great tool for the 1%. And it makes some of those other people some money too!

[Dawgs]

4. If all of the crashes that have been predicted actually happened we would be a 3rd world country.

Ask Thom Hartmann, whose been predicting a crash in the stock market for over six years now. I guess he figures that one year he'll get it right, so why not keep trying.

[whatthehey]

7. Well he's not as bad as Kunstler, who has been shiiling Dow 3000 for as long as I recall

along with Northian Y2K paranoia and a bizarre association between tattoos and the death of civilization.

[closeupready]

5. Crashes generally happen in October. We're not even midway through August.

I'm not panicking yet.

[hfojvt]

12. are you sure it is not October now?

I could have sworn I saw Halloween candy at the stores.

[jeff47]

6. I'm not sure about one part of their analysis.

From Washington: In each jobs report the government insists that the unemployment rate is stable and job creation is improving. Look a little further and you see that each month, the number of people leaving the labor force is far larger than the number of jobs created; and that the number of jobs vanishing each month is rising fast; the number of jobs cut in the US in July, 106,000, was the highest monthly total since 2011 and up 136% from the previous month, 125% year-to-year.

Yeah....the boomers are retiring.

[hfojvt]

14. not sure that works though

They say 106,000 jobs were cut in July (and then throw in some fairly meaningless statistics (like a bump from month to month or year to year means - a TREND!!) (it could be, but need more background than just two stats))

Anyway, what did the report say something like +200,000 jobs. And then 300,000 people left the labor force? Well, what happened to their jobs after they left? Instead of a smaller labor force, there should still be 300,000 jobs.

Everything is kind of on a delay though, so that may make the difference. For example, my department head retired perhaps six weeks ago, and her job still has not been filled. May not be filled for another month or two, and if it is filled by the #2 guy (which seems to be the prediction that it will be) then it will still be even more months before HIS old job is filled.

Unfortunately though, there is also the example of M. When she retired after about twenty years, they filled her full time position with temps.

I suppose then by the time those jobs are filled, even more people are retiring. Theoretically that should make it a good time for job seekers.

[jeff47]

15. Only if those jobs still need to be done.

For a trivial example, a boomer that retires is no longer stopping by Starbucks to pick up their morning coffee. If they are not replaced by a Millennial now buying that cup of coffee, then the "job" of one cup of coffee no longer needs to be done.

Yeah, lame example, but what I could come up with in 10 seconds.

Anyway, a reduction in the number of workers has been expected to start around now for the last ~40 years. That was the cause of the panic over Social Security that lead to the Greenspan commission.

So we can't really assume that "fewer workers means the economy is crashing". This article makes that assumption.

[hfojvt]

16. seems to me that the jobs will typically still need to be done

unless the company is shrinking, which would be a sign of a bad economy.

I think of the retirements in my own organization - a local parks and recs department. Over the last 8 years

Department head
Head janitor
pool director
morning cashier
department head
pool manager

I have also sort of semi-retired twice, going from full time to part time in 2006 and then again (a little bit less voluntarily) last September.

All those jobs needed to be filled, although the cashier position was filled, like the previous evening cashier position - with temps.

There may be a momentary loss of some local consumer demand while those positions are being filled, and even afterwards, since when I took the head janitor position I was likely paid less than my predecessor. That's probably true of all the other replacements too, although not, oddly enough, true of the person who replaced me as head janitor.

I cannot believe a loss of even $10,000 in demand is going to impact local jobs, although multiple retirements in the community would add up, plus there is the delay in filling the position. But eventually they get filled, even if with temps. A temp job means more spending money for somebody, after all. Kind of a loss to the community though that the city eliminated those two full time positions, but the budget has been tight now for a decade or more.

[BKH70041]

9. There's going to be a downturn.

We haven't bottomed out yet. It'll take another 18 months before we start to see small glimpses of the light of day as far as the market.

[liberal N proud]

10. OMG!

?

[BillZBubb]

11. It is almost impossible to find a time when there aren't "approaching signs of trouble".

Will the crash of the Chinese stock market cause a global meltdown? I doubt it. Most of the damage will be restricted to China as outsiders own very little Chinese equity. China certainly won't go belly up since they've got tremendous financial reserves. Plus, the Chinese market has been soaring for some time and a large correction was bound to happen.

To me the most worrisome problem is that governments and international monetary and banking interests still push austerity as the answer to economic trouble. And the voters in those countries mostly agree. That is exactly the wrong approach and could easily turn a global slowdown into a worldwide depression.

[louis-t]

13. 2015? I thought Ron Paul postponed it

until 2016. You know, so's he could sell more crap on his website.

[former9thward]

17. The Shanghai Composite Index is up 19% since Jan. 1.

Hardly a crash. Doing quite well compared to the U.S. market.