The New CS Board

[jumanji0881]

It's all about the debt -

David Rosenberg: "We're Getting Closer To A Breaking Point" : https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/david-rosenberg-were-getting-closer-breaking-point

Excerpts:
And then, we have to assess how these massive deficits and debts are going to be regressed. At the peak of the last bubble in 2007, the level of global debt outstanding was $100 trillion. Here we are at the peak of the next bubble, 13 years later, and it’s over $200 trillion. It has more than doubled from bubble peak to bubble peak. This is a very unstable situation. That’s why we can’t have interest rates rise for any length of time or any meaningful degree. It’s because of the implications from a debt servicing standpoint, and the impact rising rates will have on economic growth, defaults and delinquencies and so forth.

Let me put it this way: The level of outstanding debt in the United States today at all levels of society, government, households, businesses, is just about $80 trillion. If the general level of interest rates goes up by 100 basis points and stays there, you’ve just pushed $800 billion or 4% of GDP into debt servicing. The US economy can’t really afford to have bond yields back up more than they already have.

All that is happening is that we are borrowing from future growth; that is the overriding story: Money spent on borrowed money from the government. So we are building up for a "fiscal cliff" of epic proportions in 2022, and very likely a renewed economic downturn

I own gold not to make a killing but as a ballast in the portfolio, a source of diversification and insurance policy against the gargantuan levels of outstanding liabilities. It’s a hedge against inflation, if we ever get it, and it’s also a hedge against deflation given these destabilizing financial imbalances we have. They’re not that apparent obviously when you look at the markets this year: The junkiest bonds have outperformed the most, and the junkiest stocks have outperformed the most. That’s how you know that we are in a speculative mania. So gold is an insurance policy against things going wrong, especially in a time when most asset markets are priced for perfection. You hope your house doesn't burn down, but you still have home insurance.