Warning: The Next Crash is Taking Shape

 By Shlomo Maital

     In the children’s fable, a boy cried “Wolf! Wolf!” in jest – until, when there really was a wolf, nobody came to help. Economists seem to be like that boy. We are always crying “wolf!”.   Problem is, sometimes, not always, the wolf does come.

     Writing in the New York Times, Ruchir Sharma, chief global strategist of Morgan Stanley Investment Management (a Wall Street insider for sure) sounds a thousand warning bells. When an insider cries Wolf!, we should listen.

       Here is why.

      “Central banks adopted zero to negative interest rates and provided huge amounts of cash” after the 2008 crisis. Result: “global financial assets are worth over $250 trillion, up from $12 trillion in 1980, or more than 3 times global GDP.” …”The ocean of money in financial markets is so large, it’s possible that ripples on its surface could trigger the next big downturn.”

       Suppose, just suppose, as North Korea and the US square off, global financial markets fall by 10%. That implies paper losses of $25 trillion, or half again as large as the United States’ annual GDP. That could trigger widespread panic.

         Why have asset prices risen so dramatically? Because when you get to borrow free money, you are tempted to do something, anything, with it —   even when returns are low. At long last, central banks are beginning to worry about what they’ve done – create a new bubble. As Sharma notes, “asset prices from stocks to real estate have never been this expensive simultaneously.” Clue that it’s a bubble? Of course.

         Since WWII, there have been 88 recessions – and 62 of them followed a stock or housing bubble or both. So a financial crash will inevitably bring an economic crisis.

       Does anyone else agree that the wolf is on the way?   Philip Inman, The Guardian, does. He notes that the US Federal Reserve is now starting to sell its $4 trillion in bonds, bought in order to pump money into the system. In other words – soak up some of the mountain of money it created. This will require the US Treasury to raise more in tax, Inman notes. Why? If the Treasury can’t sell bonds, it has to raise taxes.  But baby boomers everywhere, those who have grown wealthy, simply refuse to pay the taxes needed to keep their governments afloat. And the Trump administration is hell-bent on lowering taxes, not raising them.   The baby boomers are “offloading the problem to younger lower-income groups, who now must borrow excessively just to make ends meet”.  

     It’s a recipe for big trouble, which now includes a war between the generations – when once, we old fellows used to try to make things better for the younger kids, and now we seem to be working hard to make them worse. And I haven’t even mentioned climate change.  

     “There is growing evidence of a slide into outright deflation even ahead of the next recession…”, notes a financial analyst, Albert Edwards. He thinks the US will soon slide into recession. And Trump is about to appoint five new Fed governors, all of whom want less regulation and less government.  

       I know a fairly wealthy investor, highly savvy, who is pulling his investments out of the US and putting them into Europe, of all places. Problem is, in a global crisis, there is no safe haven.

       These are dangerous times.   Everyone should set aside a bit extra for rainy days, and prepare at least mentally for a new global crisis.