Chapman: ‘There Is No Question Now That the Game Is Over’

 

Bob Chapman doesn’t mince words in his most recent report Crisis And Collapse Unfortunate but Inevitable:

The euro zone foisted one interest rate fits all, all on countries that should have never had the same interest rates as say Germany. We talked about both these issues 14 years ago, but as usual, no one was listening. From the very beginning the EU and the euro zone were doomed. Both are going to now begin the process of disintegration, as both are a failure. The six countries will go bankrupt, as will the banks. That will dislodge England and push it into bankruptcy and that in turn will force the US to follow. That may be the catalyst that forces a meeting of all nations to revalue, devalue and multilaterally default, hopefully such a meeting will occur long before this stage is reached. There is no question now that the game is over. The question now is when?

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Workers have become a form of inventory just like widgets. For years now companies have laid off and rehired workers at will, keeping the expensive worker participation to a minimum. If you use total figures and include discouraged workers the unemployed are 20.6 million, up 483,000 in June. We do not see stimulus 3 coming from Congress, so we expect unemployment to resume its relentless rise upward from 22.6%. Mind you unemployment reflects $1.7 trillion in stimulus 1 and 2, and QE 1 and QE 2, which takes us well over 44 trillion. All those injections did was to bail out the financial sector and government. As we know our President tells us the administration created three million jobs, at a cost of $266,000 per job. That is hardly something to write home about.

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Year-on-year in the municipal sector 450,000 workers are going to lose their jobs, because many of these entities are close to broke. They and the states want more money from the federal government, which it doesn’t have to give.

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If the Fed does not inject $850 billion into the economy we are looking at a minus 3% to 5% in GDP. That is in addition to buying $1.7 trillion in treasuries and other associated toxic waste.

The newest recession began a few months ago, or should we say downturn in an inflationary depression. There will be no recovery this year or next without $850 billion additional being thrown into the economy. No 3.5% growth. Perhaps a minus 4% if we are lucky. That should put unemployment close to 25% by 2012.

They may pretend like everything is fine and dandy but the facts are clear: Everyone is broke.

Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Italy, Spain and the UK are broke.

The US government is broke.

The American people are broke.

When 25% of the people have no income coming in and prices for basic goods continue to rise, there will be no upward movement in the economy. Consumers cannot spend, because they have nothing left – their incomes have been eliminated and so too has their credit.

The only hope for growth is more easing by the Fed and more stimulus from Congress, but even that is masking the problem. We may see positive GDP growth as a result, as we have “officially” seen in recent quarters, but this is strictly a mathematical result of rising inflation and increased government sector spending.

It does not mean that there is job creation or traditional consumer spending and economic growth.

The mathematics of this makes our eventual economic destruction an inevitable reality. There is simply no way to stop it.

Hat tip John Rolls

http://www.shtfplan.com/forecasting/chapman-there-is-no-question-now-that-the-game-is-over_07202011