IMF Confirms Global #Economy Crashing

IMF Says World is at Risk of 'Economic Derailment'

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has warned that the global economy faces a growing "risk of economic derailment" and must take steps to boost global demand.

David Lipton, second in command at the IMF, outlined some of these risks in a speech to the National Association for Business Economics in Washington on Tuesday.

"The IMF's latest reading of the global economy shows once again a weakening baseline," he said. "We are clearly at a delicate juncture." 

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http://www.bbc.com/news/business-35761017

Oregon To Be First U.S. State To Ban Coal-Fired Power  

Coal provides about a third of Oregon's electricity, but most of it is imported from Utah, Montana and Wyoming. The state only has one operating coal-fired power plant, the 36-year-old Boardman facility supplying about 550 megawatts, but it is due to shut down by 2020.

State Republicans criticized the bill as leading to higher electricity costs for households but Pacific Power, a large Oregon utility, answered that the move to renewables would only raise costs by less than 1 percent by 2030, the newspaper said. The other major utility in the state, Portland General Electric, also backed the deal.

The Seeds of Destruction  

Economists (like me) take a wider perspective. We tend to focus on markets as aggregates rather than on individual firms. We also see government as an economic actor in its own right, providing public goods and other essentials that markets don’t because of externalities and market failure. We know the “logic” of government leads it to overreach, but most of us don’t imagine that we can live without it

How oil price volatility explains these uncertain times  

Recently it occurred to me that the wave pool provides a metaphor for a complex, but disquieting phenomena that I've have been writing about at Oil-price.net for some time now -for previous articles see 2010, 2011, 2013 and 2015.

For anyone who has read one of these pieces you'll know how I have described that every three to four years volatility in the price of oil surges upwards as if spurred by an unseen wave machine.

China's Export Slump Shows Growth Push Hinges on Local Demand

China’s export slump deepened in February, highlighting the challenge for policy makers seeking to keep the economy humming at home while trade acts as a brake on growth.

The week-long Chinese new year holidays fell in February this year, closing factories and curbing shipments. That saw exports tumble 25.4 percent in U.S. dollar terms from a year earlier, the biggest decline since May 2009. Imports extended a streak of declines to 16 months, slumping 13.8 percent, leaving a trade surplus of $32.6 billion. 

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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-08/china-export-slump-shows-growth-push-depends-on-domestic-demand

www.firstfinancialinsights.blogspot.com

Post Crash Alert: Devastated Pension Plans Adding To Global Woes, & More #News

Did Global Stock Market Meltdown Hurt UK Pension Schemes?

The ‘Black Monday' stock market turmoil on 24 August saw the FTSE 100 index plummet 14% below its peak of almost 7,000 points in February.

Investors across the globe began panic selling stocks, particularly in commodities, amid fears of the much anticipated growth slowdown in China.

While about £96bn was wiped off share values in the UK blue chip index, the Dow fell 1,000 points on opening and the Shanghai Composite experienced total losses of 35% since June.

Hymans Robertson put the total pain for UK defined benefit (DB) schemes at a staggering £30bn surge in aggregate deficits in a day, as equities values and bond yields headed south. 

Commentators are divided on whether the event was merely a market correction or an indication of more chaos to come.

But what many agree on is the fact that China is no longer the world's economic growth engine, posing the question of where future investment returns will come from.

How China's economic slowdown could weigh on the rest of the world 

In the year to July, China's customs agency reports that imports from Australia are down by $15bn dollars on the same period last year - a loss which is already equal to 1% of Australia's GDP, and many other countries stand to lose out to similar degrees. China's imports overall are down by 14.6% over 2015. Find out what happens if this decline continues for the rest of the year - or worsens - and how that loss compares to each country's GDP

Deflationary Collapse Ahead?

Eventually, even at near zero interest rates, the amount of debt becomes too high, relative to income. Governments become afraid of adding more debt. Young people find student loans so burdensome that they put off buying homes and cars. The economic “pump” that used to result from rising wages and rising debt slows, slowing the growth of the world economy. With slow economic growth comes low demand for commodities that are used to make homes, cars, factories, and other goods. This slow economic growth is what brings the persistent trend toward low commodity prices experienced in recent years.

The Amazing Harbinger of the Dow's 531-Point Slide 

A strange thing happened fifteen minutes after stock markets opened for regular trading on Friday, August 21, 2015. At least some people on the nationally prominent MarketWatch website were privileged to see in advance what would prove to be the full-day losses for both the Dow Jones Industrial Average (INDU) and the Standard & Poors 500 (SPX) indices. This harbinger or revelation of what was to come occurred six hours and fifteen minutes before the market's close. The uncanny trend projections, or perhaps target prices, were made available while the Dow was down about 180 points -- more than 350 points above its astonishing Friday close.

What If The "Crash" Is as Rigged as Everything Else? 

There is an almost touching faith that markets are rigged when they loft higher, but unrigged when they crash. Who's to say this crash isn't rigged? A few things about this "crash" (11% decline from all time highs now qualifies as a "crash") don't pass the sniff test.

Australia 'sleepwalking into a mess' 

"Unless we recognise that, and recognise that the productivity challenge and the fiscal challenge are intimately linked, and we have to deal with both of them, then we will go on continuing to repeat the mistakes that we've been making and that will get us into a situation that none of us want to be in."

Dr Parkinson earlier told a room of more than 90 corporate, community and academic leaders that productivity reform could not be detached from fiscal reform.

China  Meltdown So Large That Losses Eclipsed BRICS  Peers 

Take the combined size of all stocks traded in Brazil, Russia, India and South Africa, multiply by two, and you'll get a sense of how much China's market value has slumped since the meltdown started. Shanghai-listed equities erased $5 trillion since reaching a seven-year high in June, half their value, as margin traders closed out bullish bets and concern deepened that valuations were unjustified by the weak economic outlook. 

The four other countries in the BRICS universe have a combined market capitalisation of $2.8 trillion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. 

Learning Success: 

APPLY Tips From The Best

Sir Richard Branson, Virgin Group – Anyone who owns more than 400 companies and is worth billions of dollars is clearly doing many things right. I admire Richard Branson’s tenacity, and I admire his personal brand

ALERT - 23 Stock Market Crashes Are Now Occurring, & More

23 Nations Around The World Where Stock Market Crashes Are Already Happening

You can stop waiting for a global financial crisis to happen.  The truth is that one is happening right now.  All over the world, stock markets are already crashing.  Most of these stock market crashes are occurring in nations that are known as “emerging markets”.  In recent years, developing countries in Asia, South America and Africa loaded up on lots of cheap loans that were denominated in U.S. dollars.  But now that the U.S. dollar has been surging, those borrowers are finding that it takes much more of their own local currencies to service those loans.  At the same time, prices are crashing for many of the commodities that those countries export.  The exact same kind of double whammy caused the Latin American debt crisis of the 1980s and the Asian financial crisis of the 1990s.

As you read this article, almost every single stock market in the world is down significantly from a record high that was set either earlier this year or late in 2014.  But even though stocks have been sliding in the western world, they haven’t completely collapsed just yet.

Morgan Stanley's Fragile Five Swells To Troubled 10 In Selloff

Forget the “Fragile Five.” These days, strategists at Morgan Stanley are worried about what could be called the “Troubled Ten.”

That’s how many nations they say are particularly at risk since China devalued the yuan. While the analysts haven’t used the term themselves, it’s as good a description as any for the currencies -- from the Brazilian real to Peru’s sol and South Korea’s won -- which have trading ties making them susceptible to a slowdown in the world’s second-biggest economy.

“It’s all about vulnerability,” said Hans Redeker, the London-based global head of foreign-exchange strategy at Morgan Stanley. “Major victims of the policy change this time are currencies of countries with high export exposure and export competitiveness with China.”

Ten Years Later, the “Halliburton Loophole” and America’s Dirty Fracking Boom

Bush explicitly exempted fracking operations from key provisions of the Safe Drinking Water Act. These exemptions from a fundamental environmental protection law provided the oil and gas industry the immunity to develop a highly polluting process on a grand national scale.

Cheap solar in India sounds death knell for coal imports, Australia’s included

Solar pricing is now cheaper than new imported thermal coal-fired power plants.  Thus it is irrational to build another power plant fuelled by imported coal. The death knell for the seaborne traded coal industry has sounded.

What We Don’t Know Will Hurt Us: 

Ignorance In The Information Age 

When discussing what makes a difference in the health of

 Canadians, we tend to think first of the health care system. 

Doctors and hospitals, physiotherapists and pharmacies;

 these things are important. But they are far less important 

than other elements of people’s lives. 

Is the Economy Ready for Higher 

Interest Rates? 

Low interest rates act as a boost to the economy; they spur 

lending and encourage spending capital. Higher interest

 rates do the opposite; they suppress lending, and encourage 

saving — both of which slow an economy.

In other words, if rates were to lift off in a fragile economy,

 one like we have, it could cause a greater collapse than the

 financial crisis because the few people who are spending

 now would stop and sock their wealth away in savings to 

enjoy the higher rates.

Looking Back

Why Southeast Asia's Boom Is A Bubble-Driven Illusion

Since the Global Financial Crisis, Southeast Asia has been one of the world’s few bright spots for economic growth and investment returns. With its relatively young population of 600 million and its growing middle class, Southeast Asia has been the scene of a modern-day gold rush as international companies clamor to get a piece of the action. Unfortunately, my research has found that much of this region’s growth in recent years has been driven by ballooning credit and asset bubbles – a pattern that is also occurring in numerous emerging economies across the globe.

In the past few months, I have published reports about the growing bubbles inSingapore, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, and Indonesia, and I will use this report to explain the region’s economic bubble as a whole. My five Southeast Asian country reports have generated quite a bit of interest and controversy, and were read nearly 1.3 million times, and were publicly denied by the central banks of Singapore, Malaysia, and the Philippines.

Learning Success: 

APPLY Tips From The Best

Larry Page,  Google – 


Larry Page is another example of a businessperson who can persevere any challenge. Larry and his company have faced much criticism and received ample praise over the years for his company’s actions. But in the midst of the storm, he has never let what others think sway him from pursuing the course for his company that he considers the best.

Top Weekly Ideas and Insights

An Inconvenient Truth

"Battle For Oil" 

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EXISTENTIAL REALITY 

"Coming To The End Of Oil Age"

 - Looking Beyond The Brink -