Send this article to a friend: August |
We Are Being Warned That The Last Week Of August “Could Be Highly Volatile” For Global Financial Markets Are things about to break loose in a major way? At the end of last week, the trade war between the United States and China escalated dramatically, and investors all over the globe really started freaking out. Unfortunately, developments over the weekend have only made things worse, and that means that this could be a very “interesting” week for global financial markets. As I write this article, stock prices around the world are plunging, the price of gold is spiking and the Chinese yuan is crashing. There is clearly a lot of fear out there right now, and at this point even CNBC is warning that the last week of this month “could be highly volatile”…
Of course things can swing rapidly from moment to moment in this environment. President Trump could say something in a few hours that temporarily gives investors some hope, and that could cause markets to swing wildly upward for a little while. Everyone is on edge right now, and every piece of significant news is likely to cause gyrations in the marketplace. But overall the trend is clearly down. U.S. stocks have now fallen for four weeks in a row, and many are becoming deeply concerned about what September will bring. And for many U.S. businesses, this trade war has turned into a complete nightmare. Executives crave predictability, but now everywhere we look there is chaos, and this is causing a lot of headaches for business leaders…
Unfortunately, nobody can no longer deny that global economic activity is really starting to slow down. We just learned that global trade was down 1.4 percent in June from a year earlier, and that represented the largest decline that we have seen since the last financial crisis…
I have been using phrases like “since the last financial crisis” and “since the last recession” in almost every article recently. We are seeing so many things happen that we haven’t seen for a decade or longer, and yet most Americans still don’t seem to understand that we have a real crisis on our hands. If the U.S. and China were to mend their relationship and agree to a comprehensive trade deal, that would certainly help things. Unfortunately, that isn’t going to happen. In fact, both sides appear to be digging in even more. For example, the White House just told us that President Trump “regrets not raising the tariffs higher”…
And the Chinese are warning that we should not “underestimate the determination” of the Chinese people and that they will be the ones to “have the last laugh”…
As I have repeatedly warned, there isn’t going to be a trade deal before the 2020 presidential election. So that means that things are going to get progressively worse, and we need to be prepared for a lot of economic pain. At this point, even U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham is telling us that the American people are just going to have to “accept the pain that comes with standing up to China”…
Sadly, the truth is that the American people are not well equipped to deal with pain. We have been spoiled by decades of debt-fueled “prosperity”, and even a relatively minor economic downturn would result in a massive national temper tantrum. Right now our nation is a seething cauldron of anger and frustration, and the mainstream media is stirring the pot on a daily basis. It isn’t going to take much to spark an explosion, and this will especially be true the closer we get to the next presidential election. The season of “the perfect storm” is upon us, and what is coming next is going to be one of the most chaotic chapters in modern American history.
Michael Snyder is a nationally syndicated writer, media personality and political activist. He is the author of four books including The Beginning Of The End and Living A Life That Really Matters.
|
Send this article to a friend: