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Top Economist Says Global Imbalance Could Trigger WWIII

Top Economist Says Global Imbalance Could Trigger WWIII
Swiss America Research Department Alert:

richard duncan Who is Richard Duncan?
Since beginning his career as an equities analyst in Hong Kong in 1986, Richard has served as global head of investment strategy at ABN AMRO Asset Management in London, worked as a financial sector specialist for the World Bank in Washington D.C., and headed equity research departments for James Capel Securities and Salomon Brothers in Bangkok. He also worked as a consultant for the IMF in Thailand during the Asia Crisis. He is now chief economist at Blackhorse Asset Management in Singapore.

According to Forbes...
Richard Duncan - whose works have yet to gain widespread acceptance who provided a compelling diagnosis of the central problems as far back as 2003 in his book "The Dollar Crisis: Causes, Consequences, Cures. Duncan wrote a further volume in 2012 - "The New Depression: The Breakdown of the Paper Money Economy" - predicting an inevitable depression, and has now turned his attention to China, releasing a multi-part slide-show using the same analytical framework that informed his successful prediction of the 2007/8 crisis. The news is not good.

According to Bonner and Partners Inner Circle newsletter"¦
Is a Chinese "Pearl Harbor" Attack Coming? Standing at the podium was Richard Duncan, one of the world's top thinkers on credit cycles and how they drive the economy"¦ and author of three books on the crisis in fiat money. "What if China plunges into a depression?" began Richard"¦ "And what if that depression causes it to launch a Pearl Harbor-style military attack against America and its allies? This piqued our curiosity, so we decided to get the story from Mr. Duncan himself ...

According to Mr. Duncan's website "¦
The crisis in the global economy is a crisis of imbalances. The fundamental imbalance is that between global supply and global demand, with global demand limited by the income and purchasing power of the individuals who comprise the world's population. This imbalance developed when governments began "creating" money after the United States destroyed the Bretton Woods international monetary system in which money had been backed by gold.

When the link between money and gold was broken, an explosion of credit brought about an unprecedented expansion of industrial capacity around the world. For decades an equally astounding growth in consumer credit permitted the surging industrial capacity to be absorbed. In 2008, however, consumers buckled under their debt, defaulted and were cut off from additional credit.

Since 2008, governments have succeeded in absorbing global excess capacity by borrowing, creating and spending the equivalent of trillions of dollars. Should governments fail to continue to plug that gap, global supply will contract in a downward spiral of bank failures, factory closures, job destruction and deflation in a process replicating the Great Depression.

Only within this context of the imbalance between global supply and global demand can this crisis, the worldwide policy response to it, and the forces driving the relative value of all asset classes be understood. This website will build a comprehensive framework for understanding the imbalances that have brought the world to the brink of a New Great Depression. It is my belief that understanding will lead to reform and that reform will deliver sustainable prosperity.

In mid-January, I had the opportunity to meet Alan Greenspan and to ask him a question that I believe is of historic importance. If President Trump really does carry out his campaign promises to cut taxes, increase government spending and eliminate the US trade deficit, interest rates will spike, causing credit to contract, asset prices to crash and the economy to collapse back into a 2008-stlye recession - or worse.

Our Conclusions "¦
While most Americans are cheering the bold new economic and trade policies proposed by the Trump administration as a greatly needed breath of fresh air, it is vital to understand that these new policies also have a high likelihood of producing unintended consequences. Shrinking the U.S. trade deficit sounds good, but, as Mr. Duncan points out, if it also shrinks our exports that would hurt the U.S. economy.

The total combined U.S. government, corporate and personal debt has grown from $1 Trillion in 1964, to $64 Trillion today, according to Mr. Duncan. The combination of rising inflation and proposed new infrastructure spending could easily push the U.S. budget deficit up from $520B to over $800B this year, which will also drive interest rates upward. Mr. Trump's proposed 45% tariff on the roughly $500B of goods we import from China would immediately cause a big inflation spike, leading to an interest rate spike. Also bad news for middle class Americans.

Today the world economy hangs on what happens in China. If China sinks into a depression, Mr. Duncan believes it could threaten the rule of the Chinese Communist Party and lead us into a military conflict similar to the U.S. imposed oil embargo on Japan in 1941 that resulted in the Pearl Harbor attack.

Mr. Duncan's conclusion is that investors should have a broadly diversified portfolio which includes physical gold as wealth insurance. Swiss America Chairman Craig Smith strongly agrees with Mr. Duncan and believes a minimum of a 20% allocation to gold in your portfolio is needed to offset potential market loss from recession, inflation or even war. For thousands of years gold has faithfully served as "˜wealth insurance' during times of tumultuous change. Please take action before the next financial crisis results in a panic run to gold, which could easily send prices skyrocketing overnight.

Sources:
Richard Duncan bio https://www.richardduncaneconomics.com/about-richard-duncan/

Economist Who Predicted The Crash Says China's Hard Landing Began Last Year -Forbes http://www.forbes.com/sites/douglasbulloch/2016/06/13/chinas-hard-landing-began-in-2015-says-economist-who-predicted-the-crash/#4cefc255f489

Is a Chinese "Pearl Harbor" Attack Coming? -Bonnerandparters.com https://members.bonnerandpartners.com/is-a-chinese-pearl-harbor-attack-coming/

My Warning To Some Of The World's Largest Investment Managers https://www.richardduncaneconomics.com/blog/

China Where The Money Came From - Richard Duncan (20-min. video) https://vimeo.com/user20236372/review/164876485/546b42f445

What Happened To Gold? By Richard Duncan http://www.richdad.com/Resources/Rich-Dad-Financial-Education-Blog/april-2013/what-happened-to-gold.aspx?feed=RichDadNews

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