Financial Doomsday Clock “One Minute to Midnight”

[Binkie The Clown]

The hair-on-fire headline reads, in full: “Doomsday clock for global market crash strikes one minute to midnight as central banks lose control.” But here’s the thing — the headline does not appear in a hair-on-fire, Chicken-Little website such as (one might slanderously call) Zero Hedge, David Stockman’s Contra Corner, Wolf Street or (dare I append this name to the list of Titans?) The Daily Impact. It appears on the website of one of the world’s top mainstream newspapers, Britain’s The Daily Telegraph. And here’s the subhead: “China currency devaluation signals endgame leaving equity markets free to collapse under the weight of impossible expectations.”

Worried yet? Don’t be. It’s way too late.

One of the hair-on-fire websites (first clue: it’s name is The Economic Collapse Blog) lists 23 — count them, 23 — countries whose stock markets are crashing right now. The largest of them, of course, is China, whose markets have been imploding for two months. For most of that time the mainstream media has been murmuring assurances to the rest of us — it’s over, it’s stable now, it’s contained, it won’t affect us — while things got worse, faster, over a wider area.

More at THE LINK (Daily Impact)

[CrispyQ]

1. "...Money, real and imaginary..."

Well there you go, economies based on imaginary money.

on edit: A hybrid of Monopoly & RISK.

[hifiguy]

5. That Friedman-Rand hybrid has been the central organizing principle

of much of the world economy since Thatcher and Reagan were elected. They spread it across the world like a virulent plague, and like the plague, which reappeared as destructive as ever every ten years, the financial markets are now blowing up with a like frequency.

Monopoly money, endless greed, liar's poker as a business model and the world conquest goals of Risk.

Ain't no way to run a railroad, McGee.

Capitalism has to be brought ruthlessly to heelala Sweden and Denmark, or replaced entirely.

[orwell]

8. Money has always been imaginary...

...whether gold or paper.

That is the dirty little secret...

[clarice]

2. I'm afraid that might happen here.....

With all of this debt we have. Moved my entire stock portfolio to cash.

[GummyBearz]

3. A safe move I would say

I'm waiting with cash in my 401k to see exactly what happens in the near future. I know market timing is for suckers, I'm too young to be in cash, etc etc. That's all good advice for a typical market scenario. This is not a typical market scenario.

[clarice]

4. Agreed, I am not a "timing" investor either.......but

I did manage to sell at the top of the tech bubble. whew!!!

[SheilaT]

6. People have been predicting a total

global financial apocalypse for decades now.

The markets do go up, and the markets do go down, and sometimes times are better and sometimes they are worse. I have never bought the constant cries of impending doom, and by staying in the market (with the help of an excellent financial advisor) I have more money now than I've ever had.

[Binkie The Clown]

9. It's not WHAT "somebody" is predicting, but

WHO is doing the predicting that counts for more.

It's one thing to have some guy in his mom's basement blogging in his pyjamas, and quite another thing when more and more respected authorities on the subject start showing signs of alarm.

And it's one thing to run around shouting "The sky is falling", but it can be just as dangerous to sit back and complacently ignore all warning signs. With the simple facts of thermodynamics and unsustainability of capitalism as practised, the fact that the economy will crash is a given, just like the inevitability of the next big earthquake or tsunami. Pinpointing the exact time and place, however is not possible.

But to say, in effect "X has not happened yet, implies that x will never happen" can end up being disastrous. Rather like the person who claims to be immortal because "My own death has never happened. Never."

[SheilaT]

10. Lots of supposedly reputable market gurus of various sorts

have been making such predictions for a very long time. Not just obvious nut cases.

I'm singularly unimpressed.

[PearliePoo2]

7. Here's the UK Telegraph article

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/11805523/Doomsday-clock-for-global-market-crash-strikes-one-minute-to-midnight-as-central-banks-lose-control.html#disqus_thread

[reformist2]

11. The stock market will crash - it's inevitable. And we need to stop trying to pump it up.

We know that an inflated stock market only benefits the Top 1% - maybe the Top 10%. No one else has any significant amount of money there. And we've all figured out years ago that increasing asset prices on Wall Street never trickle down to the rest of us. Unless you're in the yacht polishing business, perhaps...

And it was always a bit of a mirage anyway - that mountain of money that made our 401K retirements look a little more secure will vanish the moment we as a nation shift from being net contributors to net withdraw-ers.