Next Financial Crash Will Be “Worse Than the Great Depression” – “The U.S. Economy Is in so Much Worse Shape Than it Was a Decade Ago”

Desdemona Despair

By John Aidan Byrne
22 September 2018

(New York Post) – Ten years ago, it was too-easy credit that brought financial markets to their knees. Today, it could be a global debt of $247 trillion that causes the next crash.

After a decade of escalating US household debt brought on by low wages and the national debt more than doubling over the same time frame, to $21 trillion, debt could soon put the brakes on this economic recovery, analysts warn.

“We think the major economies are on the cusp of this turning into the worst recession we have seen in 10 years,” said Murray Gunn, head of global research at Elliott Wave International.

And in a note, he added: “Should the [US] economy start to shrink, and our analysis suggests that it will, the high nominal levels of debt will instantly become a very big issue.”

The economic stats:

• US household debt of $13.3 trillion now exceeds the 2008 peak. That’s due in part to mortgage lending, which is hovering near its decade-ago level of $9 trillion-plus.
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• Student loans outstanding have skyrocketed from $611 billion in 2008 to around $1.5 trillion today.
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• Auto loans, at nearly $1.25 trillion, have exceeded the 2008 total, while credit card balances are just as high now as before the Great Recession.
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• Meanwhile, global debt — a result of central bankers flooding economies with cheap money to lift them out of a funk — is now $247 trillion, up from $177 trillion in 2008. That is close to 2½ times the size of the global economy. [The $247 trillion estimate seems high. The highest number I’ve seen so far is $169 trillion, from McKinsey in September 2018. –Des]

“We won’t be able to call it a recession, it’s going to be worse than the Great Depression,” said economic commentator Peter Schiff, forecasting a major economic downturn as early as the tail end of the Trump presidency’s first term. “The US economy is in so much worse shape than it was a decade ago.” […]

“I think we are going to have a dollar crisis — you think the Turkish lira looks bad now, wait till you see when the dollar is imploding and we have a sovereign debt crisis in the US,” he told The Post. “The US government is going to be given a choice between defaulting on the debt, or else massive runaway inflation.”

Earlier this year, Goldman Sachs said the fiscal outlook for the US was “not good,” and could threaten the nation’s economic security during the next recession.

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Next crash will be ‘worse than the Great Depression’: experts