Chris

The idea that the very same economic forces that are currently plaguing Greece, et al., are somehow not relevant to the United States' circumstances does not hold water.  As goes the rest of the world, so goes the US. 

When we back up far enough, it is clear that money and debt are there to reflect and be in service to the production of real things by real people, not the other way around. With too much debt relative to production, it is the debt that will suffer. The same is true of money. Neither are magical substances; they are merely markers for real things. When they get out of balance with reality, they lose value, and sometimes even their entire meaning.

This report lays out the case that the US is irretrievably down the rabbit hole of deficits and debt, and that, even if there were endless natural resources of increasing quality available at this point, servicing the debt loads and liabilities of the nation will require both austerity and a pretty serious fall in living standards for most people.   read more »

Most of you are aware of the podcasts we run (nearly) weekly on the site.

 read more »

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Executive Summary

• The risk of cascading derivatives failures is the "nuclear option" scaring central planners into doing everything in their power to prop up the financial system
• The loss of small investors leaves market prices more vulnerable to the growing percentage of fickle, short-term, "hot money" trading systems
• Removal of China's 'deep pockets' from the EU and US credit markets could easily cause them to seize up
• Why currency devaluation via inflation still seems the likely endgame
• Recommendations for increasing your financial and personal resilience to this outcome

Part I: Worse Than 2008

If you have not yet read Part I, available free to all readers, please click here to read it first.

Part II: Get Ready For Worldwide Currency Devaluation

Derivatives

You'd think that after AIG blew up spectacularly and the Lehman unwinding choked on a hairball of tangled derivatives (that is still being picked apart) that the lesson would be learned and that derivatives would have been reduced in both size and complexity.

Unfortunately that lesson was not learned and we have to square up to the fact that derivatives are now roughly $100 trillion larger in aggregate than they were in 2009:

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Chris turns a year older today. If you have any birthday wishes to offer, feel free to do so here

cheers,

Adam & Chuck

 

It's not everyday that someone gets a simple thank you.  Mostly we hear critisism and negative comments because they are easy to focus on. 

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To my community:

This past Memorial Day weekend, users in a forum thread asked if perhaps recent forum topics and replies, as well as general comments elsewhere on the site, had gone off mission. I am delighted to have the opportunity to revisit the extremely important topic of what this site is about and what it is trying to achieve.

I've received a lot of emails on both sides of this issue, and several others recently (involving religion, for example) where some members of this community want to wade into these waters again.  Some call these waters "conspiracy theory," but I prefer the term "belief-oriented material," because that more broadly includes other disruptive subject areas that can drag us off mission.

There were several prominent reasons why we made the decision to not engage in belief-oriented material, the most important of which were that this material provoked emotional responses on both sides and that nobody could clearly articulate how engaging in such discussions helped anybody navigate towards action.

They were always more "heat" than "light," created rifts, and never caused anybody to change their minds, as far as I could tell.

Our mission here is to move people from awareness to understanding and then to actions.  The Crash Course breeds the initial awareness, and our conversations here (should) help move us into deeper understanding, with the goal being definitive action.  Unfortunately, as is true everywhere else on the Internet, belief-oriented topics seem only to derail our efforts.

We recently polled ourselves here at headquarters and came up with this assessment of our efforts:

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Open letter to Chris Martenson:

 

Thank you so much for putting the crash course together. I am glad that you have enjoyed success as your website is flourishing and you are gaining recognition in the blogosphere. The fact that zerohedge posts your articles from time to time is indicative of our success.

 read more »

Duration: 00:20:51 — File Size: 12.52 MB

Want to know what a seminar offered by Chris & Becca Martenson offers? Here they talk about the seminar in a 20 minute podcast that describes their approach, some of the things you will learn at the seminar, and the benefits of attending. We live in truly interesting times and your best hope for a vibrant future rests with your ability to connect with others so that you can share the load and make changes at your own pace and on your own terms.  read more »

Mish has written a blog post analyzing Chris's recent "The Sound of One Hand Clapping: What Deflationists May Be Missing" article.  I'm not advocating one side or the other here (I think both of them make good points).  Just enjoying the discussion/debate.  Here's an excerpt - click on the link in the first sentence for the entire article.

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In case you are wondering where the Two Beers With Steve podcast can be located, here's the link.

The topic was Inflation and Deflation.  We had a great time.

Have a listen.

Best,
Chris