Worldwide Turmoil, Financial Upheaval and Cataclysm

When the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) of 2008 occurred, many including myself were shocked enough to start doing further investigation into the nuts and bolts of our modern financial system. My at-the-time-research led me to be long gold and short sydney property - in 2011. Here we are in 2015 and the result of that is pretty (painfully) clear to me. It's not just my timeframes which were screwy, it became obvious that most of the narrative I had collected was incorrect. Recently I've been exploring this dichotomy, but today I want to bring some definition to something that comes up in a lot of discussion - the idea that the GFC was simply just a dress researsal for something much bigger.

Giving this supposed event a name allows us to study it better, so I'm proposing the term 'Worldwide Turmoil, Financial Upheaval and Cataclysm' or WTFUC for short. We have a new poll running at the right hand side of the page here - I encourage you to vote in it because it's kind of unique - the poll will run for 20 years finishing in 2035 and (fingers crossed) I hope to be around to write a synopsis on the final results. If the blogger platform remains constant then you should always be able to change your vote over time, although it won't let me change the options. The poll allows you to nominate your expected timing for the WTFUC and the hope is that this helps us discuss our beliefs and expectations in a practical fashion (even as they may change over time).

The Wheels on the Bus go ...

Over lunch last week, the Australian branch of the Screwtape Files team got talking world matters. Big topic: 'How is it that the wheels have not yet fallen off?'. Here we are in 2015 and the horrific financial collapse and devastation predicted by many - take your pick of the massive smorgasboard of potential disaster: Armstrong's Big Bang 2015.75, Australian Property Crash, China Economy Collapse, Revaluation of Physical Gold, Hyperinflation, Global Derivatives failure, Grexit from Eurozone, Kondratieff Winter, Bond Bubble Busting (etc) ... all of these are big ticket items so the fact that none of them have yet come to pass in finality (despite appearing to be constantly on the brink) seems to indicate that Ben Bernanke and his ilk really have worked some magic, albeit arcane and unholy.