You can't force incredibly frightened consumers, seeing mounting job losses, drastically falling home values, incredibly shrinking retirement portfolios, sticky high prices on medical expenses, taxes and food - to spend money. They will cut way back on everything but the bare essentials, and even cut back on those. You'll see seniors cutting pills in half, and you'll see people driving less, bundling up inside their homes and turning the thermostat down, and parents moving in with their grown children and young adults moving back with their parents.
You can't force scared shitless businesses to stop laying off workers, expand (let alone not shrink) cap ex spending, and do anything and everything else to conserve cash for the storm that we're experiencing.
Finally, you can't force banks to loan money, when they have no faith that the new loans won't turn into the same toxic sludge they're currently in the process of trying to clear from their balance sheets (courtesy of taxpayers the world over), AND WHEN THERE IS NO SECONDARY MARKET FOR SUCH PAPER, WHEN SUCH PAPER COULD HAVE BEEN SOLD THE SAME DAY THE LOANS WERE MADE IN YEARS PAST.
England, Spain, Germany, Japan, China, Brazil, Australia, Italy, Ireland, Russia, Canada, the U.S. - all will be crushed.
Gold will not provide any hedge.
Good luck to everyone. The Mayans may have known things we didn't think they were capable of knowing, after all...
You can't force scared shitless businesses to stop laying off workers, expand (let alone not shrink) cap ex spending, and do anything and everything else to conserve cash for the storm that we're experiencing.
Finally, you can't force banks to loan money, when they have no faith that the new loans won't turn into the same toxic sludge they're currently in the process of trying to clear from their balance sheets (courtesy of taxpayers the world over), AND WHEN THERE IS NO SECONDARY MARKET FOR SUCH PAPER, WHEN SUCH PAPER COULD HAVE BEEN SOLD THE SAME DAY THE LOANS WERE MADE IN YEARS PAST.
England, Spain, Germany, Japan, China, Brazil, Australia, Italy, Ireland, Russia, Canada, the U.S. - all will be crushed.
Gold will not provide any hedge.
Good luck to everyone. The Mayans may have known things we didn't think they were capable of knowing, after all...