The state of the world economy...

The Real State of the World Economy is Dire

By Egon von Greyerz

We are now back to the “green shoots” era of false hope and total misunderstanding of the real state of the world economy. There are minor tidbits of good news that combined with manipulated and seasonally adjusted economic figures are giving politicians worldwide reason for spreading their optimistic gospel of recovery that has nothing to do with reality.

A world based on debt

How can a world with $250 trillion of debt and over $1 quadrillion of worthless derivatives ever recover? Of course it can’t, especially since this is a world that is supported by legs of worthless printed paper money – legs that are just getting longer and more unstable by the day as trillions are added to the debt every year.

Wherever we turn Europe, USA, Japan and many other nations, the situation is totally beyond repair. But as I have said in recent interviews and articles, it is not just beyond repair but we are likely to be at the end of a major economic cycle that started at the end of the Dark Ages. I wrote about this already back in 2009 in my article “The Dark Years Are Here”. Major economic cycles take a long time to develop and if we are now at the beginning of a major downturn in the world economy, people living today will only experience the very beginning of the downturn. But sadly the beginning will be a major and very unpleasant upheaval that virtually nobody will escape.

We have had a century of false prosperity based on printed money and credit. In the last 100 years we have seen the creation of the Fed in the US (a central bank owned, created and controlled by private bankers) combined with fractional reserve banking (allowing banks to leverage 10 to 50 times), exploding government debt and a derivatives market of $1.4+ quadrillion. These are the principal reasons why the world economy has expanded in the last century and particularly in the last 40 years. These four extremely shaky legs, Central bank printing, Bank leverage, Government borrowing and Derivatives manufacturing have created a world of delusional wealth and illusory prosperity. Also, there is a total absence of moral and ethical values. We are in the final stages of an era of extreme decadence, an era that sadly cannot and will not have a happy ending.

Europe a hopeless case

But still, governments and the media are continuing to feed us with good news which bears no resemblance to the real state of the world economy. In Europe the Mediterranean countries are expanding their debt at exponential rates. Government debt to GDP of Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece is ranging from 100% to 180%. There are futile attempt at austerity but this only leads to lower growth and higher debts. There is sadly no way out for these countries whose population is suffering terribly. The best solution would be to leave the EU and the Euro, renege on the debts and devalue currencies. But the Eurocrats are unlikely to accept this and would rather add more debt and print more money, making the situation even worse...

Read the rest here:
http://goldswitzerland.com/the-real-state-of-the-world-economy-is-dire/