Wall Street’s big coronavirus mistake

© Reuters / Lucas Jackson

Source: RT News

The coronavirus has wreaked havoc on global stock markets, but this may just be the start of a much bigger economic crisis.

Investment professionals on Wall Street spend their days reading financial reports and looking at numbers flash on screens. These numbers record the moment-to-moment changes in the collective wisdom of markets about the value of stocks, bonds, commodities and a distressing array of derivative financial products.

From the comfort of the sealed caverns of Wall Street the actual physical and social world is just an abstraction to be quantified and analyzed. One of Wall Street's most prominent investment research and management firms released analysis that says the coronavirus won't be all that bad for the economy.

Analysts from Morningstar Inc.—which is actually headquartered in Chicago's cavernous downtown—say that this pandemic will be a "mild pandemic." I'm not sure how pandemics can be mild, but the analysts outline cases for "moderate" and "severe pandemics."

One of the things that gives these analysts such a sanguine view, particularly in the United States, is the country's advanced health care system which is "likely much more prepared for the taxing of our hospital system, as we appear to have a massive lead over other developed nations in the number of intensive care unit beds per citizen."

And yet, a first-hand report from a physician in those hospitals suggests that there will be very little room for severe corona virus cases in any hospital ICU. Those beds are already being used by patients and not just waiting empty. In all likelihood, hospitals will be quickly overwhelmed and forced to decide who gets critical live-saving treatment and who does not. The "who does not" number could be very large if the Italian experience is anything to go by.

  

The analysts do admit that lack of health insurance and paid sick leave will likely lead to higher infection rates in the United States than would otherwise be the case. Naturally, people without insurance will be reluctant to seek treatment, and those without paid sick leave may come to work even when ill in order to make enough money to pay their bills.

The surprisingly upbeat report is based on the idea of a return to business as usual. The assumption is that the coronavirus pandemic will not shatter confidence in our institutions which are so clearly incompetent and/or inadequate to the task of fighting this pandemic.

For the first two months of this year the US markets virtually ignored the growing dangers of a pandemic and assumed that any economic problems would be confined to China. In fact, even as infections spread like wildfire in China, market averages touched new highs. The idea that novel infectious diseases for which there is no treatment do not recognize national boundaries just didn't occur to most investors and investment advisors. Reality, however, began to sink in by late February and led to the historic stock market collapse.

Even now, a friend of mine who is retired reports that the week before last her investment advisor responded sharply when she called to dump half of her portfolio of stocks. The advisor won the argument saying that this is just a temporary slide, and that in the long term all will be well.

The political and social implications of the current meltdown seem lost on the Wall Street crowd. They cannot see that when all is said and done, it is unlikely that very many people will have faith in an advisor who tells them that stocks always return to previous levels and move higher. This will be an indirect result of shattered faith in government institutions that are supposed to protect us in such emergencies and shattered faith in an economic system that leaves so many without the means to respond to such a life-and-death situation.

Large-scale and dramatic rearrangements of our current system worldwide and in the United States are likely to come in the wake of the season of death that is upon us—and in the wake of the economic carnage that results from the breakdown of a system so vulnerable that a tiny virus could topple it at its base. That virus is now calling into question deeply held assumptions about basic security, protection, health care, and also economic and political arrangements that do not seem able to respond in ways that preserve life in the face of one of the most obvious and fundamental threats to it: epidemic infections.

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China to pass US as top economic superpower by 2016

 

In this picture taken on June 21, 2012 shows workers building a car on the Geely Motors assembly line in Cixi, 50km from Ningbo in China's Zhejiang province. (AFP Photo/Peter Parks)

Source: Russia Today

http://rt.com/usa/news/china-us-economic-economy-373/

America’s days of economic dominance aren’t over just yet, but one international thinktank says it might come sooner than once thought. According to one group, China will have the biggest world economy by 2016.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) out of Paris writes in a new report that China will be the world’s leading nation in terms of economy in just four years’ time, with other BRICs nations likely to usurp the current top dogs during the next few decades as well.

“The next 50 years will see major changes in country shares in world GDP,” the OECD report released this week reads. “On the basis of 2005 purchasing power parities (PPPs), China is projected to surpass the Euro Area in a year or so and the United States in a few more years, to become the largest economy in the world, and India is projected to surpass Japan in the next year or two and the Euro area in about 20 years.”

Additionally, the OECD predicts that China and India will together have a GDP that will beat out that of the G7 nations by as early as 2025, and by 2060 they expect Indian to out-perform the US on its own.

"As the largest and fastest-growing emerging countries fully assume a more prominent place in the global economy, we will face new challenges to ensure a prosperous and sustainable world for all. Education and productivity will be the main drivers of future growth, and should be policy priorities worldwide," said OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurria adds in an accompanying statement published with the report.

Asa Johansson, senior economist at the OECD, says, "It is quite a shift in the balance of economic power we are going to see in the future." According to projections published in the report, the United States’ share of the global gross domestic product will shrink to 18 percent in 2030, then 17 percent three decades later. Currently, the US is responsible for nearly a quarter, but by 2060, India is expected to have a slightly larger economy, generation 18 percent of the world’s GDP, as Japan and the Euro zone lose influence in international finances.

Last year, the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission predict that China’s yuan, or renminbi, could become the main reserve currency for the world economy within the next decade if it continues to rise up over the US dollar.

“Chinese economic dominance is more imminent and more broad-based – encompassing output, trade and currency – than is currently recognized,” economist Arvind Subramanian wrote last year. "By 2030, this dominance could resemble that of the United States in the 1970s and the United Kingdom around 1870. And this economic dominance will in turn elevate the renminbi to premier reserve currency status much sooner than currently expected.”

 

Federal Reserve downgrades US economy assessment

A pressman checks uncut sheets of $20 bills on July 12, 2012, at the US Bureau of Engraving (BEP) in Washington, DC

Source: Press TV

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2012/08/01/253945/fed-downgrades-us-economy-assessment/

The US Federal Reserve has downgraded its assessment of the country’s economy, saying the economic growth has slowed and US economy is losing strength.

"Economic activity decelerated somewhat over the first half of this year," the Federal Reserve announced after a two-day top-level meeting on Wednesday.

The interest rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) also said that it expected "economic growth to remain moderate over coming quarters and then to pick up very gradually."

"The unemployment rate will decline only slowly," it added.

The bank also downplayed glimmers of hope that the housing market is starting to rebound, saying "despite some further signs of improvement, the housing sector remains depressed."

Despite the disappointing news, no measures have been taken by government officials so far, and the Federal Reserve shied away from launching a fresh economic stimulus package.

Ryan Sweet of Moody's Analytics described the Fed's decision not to provide more stimulus or extend the timeframe for low rates as "a bit of (a) surprise move."

"There was a strong case for changing the rate guidance," he said, adding that "the odds of the Fed launching a third round of quantitative easing in September are lower."

The Panic of 1907 is Repeating in 2007

By: Stewart Brennan
World United News

North Americans need to prepare for the coming economic depression. It has already started in Great Britain, where thousands of people have been pulling their savings out of the “Northern Rock Bank”. The Economic depression designed and planned by the Central Banks of England and America could unfold in the next few weeks.

http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/index.php?WT.mc_n=070916sunday&storyID=8682

Great Britain’s Changeover to the Euro?

The Private Bankers in England have strategically placed information in the British press to make a run on a 5th place bank called the “Northern Rock Bank”.

The one thing that looks likely is the Private Banks will offer to absorb the “Northern Rock Bank” and then to guarantee it (what I call legal robbery)... Later on, as the economic picture begins to grow bleak by media propagation, the Private Banks could push England to accept a different currency such as the Euro for insurance and economic stability...if they offer a solution then you can be sure they will offer a warning such as "...if you don't accept this offer, the population could lose everything they have...

The run on the “Northern Rock Bank”, has been designed and carefully crafted by the Private Bankers, to scare everyone into a panic and make a run on the bank like the Morgan’s and Rockefeller’s did in “The Great Panic of 1907”.

Panic of 1907
Causes of the Great Depression

A New Currency?

In order to sell “A New Currency” to the public, the banks must threaten an economic depression first. The Private Banks will be quick to point out that a new currency is required if the people want to salvage what they own.

The economic crises in the USA, that has taken hold recently due to the vast amount of unpaid credit cards, a trade deficit with China, and the cost of war in Iraq and Afghanistan is a triple pronged catalyst to breaking the balloon economy and bringing about a stock crash, depression and eventually, a new currency.

The US Central Bank (The Federal Reserve) played this one perfectly because with the lack of money in the so-called, US treasury, (Owned and Loaned by the Central Bank) a full-scale economic depression will hit North America in 2007, 08. The Central Banks will again acquire vast amounts of wealth in the form of property, corporations and real estate. (The collateral signed over from borrowing money, and by the buying of deflated corporate stock.)

While everyone loses their money, homes, and businesses, the private banks will acquire it all, just like they did in “The Great Panic of 1907”, and “The Great Depression of 1929”.

Canada and Mexico depend heavily on the American economy so selling a new joint currency would present a smaller challenge in their prospective countries than selling it to the American people, hence an offer they cannot refuse.

In short, the central bank(s) will offer a solution to end the economic crisis and that solution will be a New Currency. We wont really have a choice because the central Bank of Canada and the Federal Reserve in the USA will publicly propose embracing it and most likely include Mexico with it. “North Americans” will be given the blah blah on how their new currency will save them from complete ruin…and POOF; A new ponzi pyramid scheme will be born, designed exactly like the one before it to send all the wealth to the top through compound interest...

Wealth is in Your Soul:

Remember that “Wealth” is in the human soul…wealth is in community, family, and friendships you have. Wealth is investing in yourself and self-discovery of your potential to take care of yourselves and those around you. Wealth is not the Euro, the dollar or the pound. Wealth is the quality within you. These qualities are the tools we have to fight back. Fight the good fight with an open mind and make your own choices. Removing difficult hurdles in life is very gratifying and the answer to, “What is my purpose in life”?

The purpose in life is to better yourself, have an open mind and not allow distraction from controlling interests. Keep your faith in peace.

Stewart