22/11/11 - 17 Quotes About The Coming Global Financial Collapse That Will Make Your Hair Stand Up

Is the world on the verge of another massive global financial collapse?  Yes.  The western world is drowning in an ocean of debt unlike anything the world has ever seen before, and our financial markets are gigantic casinos that are dependent on huge mountains of risk and leverage remaining very stable.  In the end, this house of cards that has been built on a foundation of sand is going to come crashing down in a horrifying manner.  Usually in this column I go on and on about why things will soon get much worse.  But today I am going to take a bit of a break.  Today, I am going to let some of the top financial professionals in the world tell you why things will soon get much worse.  Many of the quotes that you are about to read just might make the hair on the back of your neck stand up.  Most people out there have no idea what is about to happen.  Most people out there are working hard and are busy preparing for the holidays and they are hopeful that the economy will turn around soon.  But that is not going to happen.  We are heading for another major global financial collapse, and when it happens the U.S. economy is going to get even worse.

The epicenter for the coming global financial collapse is almost certainly going to be in Europe.  As you will see below, financial professionals all over the world are sounding the alarm about Europe.  It is a disaster that everyone can see coming but that nobody seems to be able to prevent.

Of course the failure of the "supercommittee" in the United States certainly is not helping matters.  There is already talk that we may soon see another downgrade for U.S. debt.  It is hard to even describe how incompetent the U.S. Congress is.

There is a tremendous lack of leadership both in the United States and in Europe right now.  The financial world is more interconnected than ever before, and when the financial dominoes start to fall it is going to take a miracle to keep a complete and total disaster from unfolding.

So when the time comes, who is going to step forward and provide that leadership?

That is a really, really good question.

Right now, panic and fear are spreading like wildfire in the financial world and nobody knows for sure what is going to happen next.

But one thing is for certain.  Pessimism is growing stronger by the day.

The following are 17 quotes about the coming global financial collapse that will make your hair stand up....

#1 Credit Suisse's Fixed Income Research unit: "We seem to have entered the last days of the euro as we currently know it. That doesn’t make a break-up very likely, but it does mean some extraordinary things will almost certainly need to happen – probably by mid-January – to prevent the progressive closure of all the euro zone sovereign bond markets, potentially accompanied by escalating runs on even the strongest banks."

#2 Willem Buiter, chief economist at Citigroup: "Time is running out fast.  I think we have maybe a few months -- it could be weeks, it could be days -- before there is a material risk of a fundamentally unnecessary default by a country like Spain or Italy which would be a financial catastrophe dragging the European banking system and North America with it."

#3 Jim Reid of Deutsche Bank: "If you don't think Merkel's tone will change then our investment advice is to dig a hole in the ground and hide."

#4 David Rosenberg, a senior economist at Gluskin Sheff in Toronto: "Lenders are finding it difficult to finance their day-to-day operations with short-term funding. This is a lot like 2008 but with more twists."

#5 Christian Stracke, the head of credit research for Pimco: "This is just a repeat of what we saw in 2008, when everyone wanted to see toxic assets off the banks’ balance sheets"

#6 Paul Krugman of the New York Times: "At this point I’d guess soaring rates on Italian debt leading to a gigantic bank run, both because of solvency fears about Italian banks given a default and because of fear that Italy will end up leaving the euro. This then leads to emergency bank closing, and once that happens, a decision to drop the euro and install the new lira. Next stop, France."

#7 Paul Hickey of Bespoke Investment Group: "More and more, we are hearing anecdotal comments from individual and professionals that this is the most difficult environment they have ever experienced as the market is like a fish flopping around after being taken out of the water."

#8 Bob Janjuah of Nomura International: "Germany appears to be adamant that full political and fiscal integration over the next decade (nothing substantive will happen over the short term, in my view) is the only option, and ECB monetisation is no longer possible. I really think it is that clear and simple. And if I am wrong, and the ECB does a U-turn and agrees to unlimited monetisation, I will simply wait for the inevitable knee-jerk rally to fade before reloading my short risk positions. Even if Germany and the ECB somehow agree to unlimited monetisation I believe it will do nothing to fix the insolvency and lack of growth in the eurozone. It will just result in a major destruction of the ECB‟s balance sheet which will force an ECB recap. At that point, I think Germany and its northern partners would walk away. Markets always want short, sharp, simple solutions."

#9 Dan Akerson, CEO of General Motors: "The ’08 recession, which was a credit bubble that manifested itself through primarily the real estate market, that was a serious stress....This is much more serious."

#10 Francesco Garzarelli of Goldman Sachs: "Pressures on Euro area sovereign bond markets have progressively intensified and spread like a wildfire."

#11 Jim Rogers: "In 2002 it was bad, in 2008 it was worse and 2012 or 2013 is going to be worse still – be careful"

#12 Dr. Pippa Malmgren, the President and founder of Principalis Asset Management who once worked in the White House as an adviser to President Bush: "Market forces are increasingly determining what the options are and foreclosing on options policymakers thought they had. One option which is now under discussion involves permitting a country to temporarily leave the Euro, return to its native currency, devalue, commit to returning to the Euro at a better debt to GDP ratio, a better exchange rate and a better growth trajectory and yet not sacrifice its EU membership. I would like to say for the record that this is precisely the thought process that I expected to evolve,but when I proposed this possibility back in 2009, and again in September 2010, I had a 100% response from clients and others that this was “impossible” and many felt it was “ridiculous”. They may be right but this is the current state of the discussion. The Handelsblatt in Germany has reported this conversation, but wrongly assumes that the country that will exit is Germany. I think that Germany will have to exit if the Southern European states do not. Germany’s preference is to stay in the Euro and have the others drop out. The problem has been the Germans could not convince the others to walk away. But, now, market pressures are forcing someone to leave. Germany is pushing for that someone to be Italy. They hope that this would be a one off exception, not to be repeated by any other country. Obviously, though, if Italy leaves the Euro and reverts to Lira then the markets will immediately and forcefully attack Spain, Portugal and even whatever is left  of the already savaged Greeks. These countries will not be able to compete against a devalued Greece or Italy when it come to tourism or even infrastructure. But, the principal target will be France. The three largest French banks have roughly 450 billion Euros of exposure to Italian debt. So, further sovereign defaults are certainly inevitable, but that is true under any scenario. Growth and austerity will not do the trick, as ZeroHedge rightly points out. Ultimately, I will not be at all surprised to see Europe’s banking system shut for days while the losses and payments issues are worked out. People forget that the term “bank holiday” was invented in the 1930’s when the banks were shut for exactly the same reason."

#13 Daniel Clifton, a policy strategist with Strategas Research Partners on the potential for more downgrades of U.S. debt: "We would expect further downgrades, a first downgrade from Moody’s and Fitch and possibly a second downgrade from S&P."

#14 Warren Buffett on the problems in the eurozone: "The system as presently designed has revealed a major flaw. And that flaw won’t be corrected just by words. Europe will either have to come closer together or there will have to be some other rearrangement because this system is not working"

#15 David Kostin, equity strategist for Goldman Sachs: "The wide range of possible outcomes on both the super committee process and the unstable political economy in Europe drives our view that investors should assume the worst while hoping for the best."

#16 Mark Mobius, the head of the emerging markets desk at Templeton Asset Management: "There is definitely going to be another financial crisis around the corner"

#17 Gerald Celente, founder of The Trends Research Institute: "The whole system is going down. Pull your money out your Fidelity account, your Scwhab accout, and your ETFs."

Are you starting to get the picture?

When so many top financial professionals are freaking out like this, perhaps the rest of us should start paying attention.

They are telling us that "time is running out".

They are telling us that "there is definitely going to be another financial crisis".

They are telling us that this "is going to be worse" than 2008.

They are telling us that "the whole system is going down".

Yes, a devastating financial collapse really is coming.  Just like in 2008, it will seem like the "end of the world" while it is happening, but it won't be.  It will severely damage our financial system and our economy, but it will not finish us off.

Think of it this way.  When you build a sand castle at the beach, it doesn't get totally wiped out by the first wave or the second wave that hits it.  Each wave does significant damage, but the destruction of your sand castle is a process.

It is the same thing with the U.S. economy.  We once had the most incredible economic machine that the world has ever seen.  It is constantly being guttedand the financial crisis of 2008 hit us really hard, but we are still doing okay.

After this next financial crisis we will be in even worse shape.  But we will still be breathing.

More "waves" will come after this next financial crisis.  If we continue on the road that we are on, our economy will progressively get worse and worse.

Not everyone will agree with this analysis, and that is okay.  In the end, time will reveal the truth to all of us.

Right now, we all need to get ready for the next wave that is about to hit us.  A lot of people are going to lose their jobs over the next few years.  Hopefully you are prepared for that.

17/11/11 - The next financial crisis will be ‘hellish’ warns asset manager

    

November 17, 2011 – WASHINGTON - “There is definitely going to be another financial crisis around the corner,” says hedge fund legend Mark Mobius, “because we haven’t solved any of the things that caused the previous crisis.” We’re raising our alert status for the next financial crisis. We already raised it last week after spreads on U.S. credit default swaps started blowing out. We raised it again after seeing the remarks of Mr. Mobius, chief of the $50 billion emerging markets desk at Templeton Asset Management. Speaking in Tokyo, he pointed to derivatives, the financial hairball of futures, options, and swaps in which nearly all the world’s major banks are tangled up. Estimates on the amount of derivatives out there worldwide vary. An oft-heard estimate is $600 trillion. That squares with Mobius’ guess of 10 times the world’s annual GDP. “Are the derivatives regulated?” asks Mobius. “No. Are you still getting growth in derivatives? Yes.” In other words, something along the lines of securitized mortgages is lurking out there, ready to trigger another crisis as in 2007-08. And what of the derivatives sitting on the balance sheet of the Federal Reserve? Here’s another factor behind our heightened state of alert. “Through quantitative easing efforts alone,” says Euro Pacific Capital’s Michael Pento, “Ben Bernanke has added $1.8 trillion of longer-term GSE debt and mortgage-backed securities (MBS).” Think about that for a moment. The Fed’s entire balance sheet totaled around $800 billion before the 2008 crash, nearly all of it Treasuries. Now the Fed holds more than double that amount in mortgage derivatives alone, junk that the banks needed to clear off their own balance sheets. “As the size of the Fed’s balance sheet ballooned,” continues Mr. Pento, “the dollar amount of capital held at the Fed has remained fairly constant. Today, the Fed has $52.5 billion of capital backing a $2.7 trillion balance sheet. “Prior to the bursting of the credit bubble, the public was shocked to learn that our biggest investment banks were levered 30-to-1. When asset values fell, those banks were quickly wiped out. But now the Fed is holding many of the same types of assets and is levered 51-to-1! If the value of their portfolio were to fall by just 2%, the Fed itself would be wiped out.” -Yahoo

14/11/11 - Former British PM Tony Blair warns of catastrophe if Eurozone collapses

November 14, 2011 – LONDON – Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair warned on Sunday that the collapse of the euro would be “catastrophic” and urged Europe to move fast to support the currency. Blair said European leaders faced “very difficult and painful” choices and a “long-term framework of credibility” was needed to see off the crisis. Speaking following the resignation of Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi on Saturday, Blair said there had “never been a tougher time to be a leader than right now.” But he said the “whole weight” of European institutions – including the European Central Bank – must get behind the euro if it was to survive. He told BBC TVthat economies had to align and that “the myth that the Italian and German economies were the same – that 10-year myth has now evaporated.” Measures required to bring stability to the euro would be painful, he warned, but added: “If the single currency broke up, it would be catastrophic.” Blair, who was premier for a decade until 2007, was also asked if his former finance minister Gordon Brown had been right to push hard for Britain to stay out of the euro when Labour was in power. “He was right, although I would also say by the way, I was never in favor of doing it unless the economics were right,” Blair replied. British Prime Minister David Cameron will meet German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin on Friday for talks on the euro’s difficulties and the economy. Cameron said on Friday there was still “a big question mark” over the future of the Eurozone and stressed it was not in Britain’s interests for the single currency to break up but the government is “preparing for every eventuality.” –Channel News Asia

9/10/11 - Financial Meltdown: The men who crashed the world – video

(c) Al Jazeera 2011 – Part 1

(c) Al Jazeera 2011 – Part 2

4/10/11 - Alex Jones Goes Apesh*t, Sweating And Panting: Globalist Banking Cartel Hijack Occupy Wall Street

Alex Jones will gives a special broadcast today on the Occupy Wall Street protests that have been swelling for weeks. His worst concerns have been confirmed about the true nature of who has been steering the demonstrations.

4/10/11 - Economic Doomsday: World's Experts Predict 'Total Disaster'

Earthquakes, hurricanes, tsunamis, nuclear meltdowns...all fade into insignificance compared to the coming whirlwind of financial Armageddon many of the world's top experts see directly ahead.

Economic Doomsday some are calling it. And now—they say—it's literally unavoidable. Starvation, collapse and death on an Apocalyptic scale.

Will it be as bad as the Great Depression or World War Two? Worse, say many economists. Those events were a walk in the park compared to the total economic collapse coming to scores of countries.

Fed Chairman Bernanke's monetary policy a 'complete failure'

What to expect

The world's financial experts...they almost sound like conspiracy theorists, but these are some of the most respected financial insiders.

Here's what they expect during 2012: civil wars breaking out all over the planet; currencies collapsing into worthless paper; and roving bands of desperate, violent thugs willing to maim or murder for gold, silver—or even cans of beans.

In essence, anarchy will be breaking out all over as governments desperately respond with tyrannical martial law attempting to restore a semblance of order to masses of frightened, starving citizens.

Widespread food and water shortages are expected and food and energy prices will soar.

Remember everyone celebrating the arrival of the Millennium? People wanting to put the upheavals of the 20th Century behind them? Welcome to the 21st Century.

Find the tallest building and jump off?

Although none of the experts are advising jumping off buildings, they don't have much advice about anything. Some are at a loss over what to do with their own portfolios let alone any assets others might have. That's because they predict almost everything will plummet:

Real estate: think it's bad? It'll get worse, they warn.

Stocks: the Dow was below 1,000 in 1982. It can reach that again say market pundits.

Bonds: may look good on the surface, but with highly inflated, illusory values they'll be about as worthless as paper currency. They might be good as pretty wallpaper, for those that happen to still live in dwellings with walls.

Banks: many more will fail including some of the largest in the world. Same goes for some of the top insurance companies.

Annuities: although the principal is guaranteed, the currency they're based on is not. If it takes a barrel of dollars to purchase a loaf of bread, think what the "money" in an annuity will be worth. That's right, almost nothing.

         This time the sky IS falling

The 12 disciples of Doom

Here are just twelve of the thousands of financial experts that are predicting the worse case scenario is really going to happen this time. No Chicken Little among them—the sky IS falling.

Ann Barnhardt: The head of Barnhardt Capital Management, Inc.: "It's over. There is no coming back from this. The only thing that can happen is a total and complete collapse of EVERYTHING we now know, and humanity starts from scratch. And if you think that this collapse is going to play out without one hell of a big hot war, you are sadly, sadly mistaken."

Gerald Celente: Trends Research guru to Fortune 1000 companies, Celente's accurately forecasted hundreds of social, business, consumer, environmental, economic, political, entertainment, and technology trends over the decades. What does he see on the immediate horizon? "America is in for a Great Depression and riots by 2012."

Stefan Homburg: Dynamic leader of Germany's Institute for Public Finance: "The Euro is nearing its ugly end. A collapse of the monetary union now appears unavoidable."

And when Europe collapses, America, Russia, and China will soon follow.

George Soros: Evil genius to some, just insightful and hard-nosed to others, Soros says: "Financial markets are driving the world towards another Great Depression with incalculable political consequences. The authorities, particularly in Europe, have lost control of the situation."

And Soros always puts his money where his mouth is...he's dumped Europe's sovereign debt, calling it poison.

Mohammed El-Erian: The PIMCO CEO sees: "These are all signs of an institutional run on French banks. If it persists, the banks would have no choice but to delver their balance sheets in a very drastic and disorderly fashion...Europe would thus be thrown into a full-blown banking crisis that aggravates the sovereign debt trap, renders certain another economic recession, and significantly worsens the outlook for the global economy."

Since he spoke those words the crisis has accelerated.

Attila Szalay-Berzeviczy: the global head of securities services at UniCredit SpA (Italy's largest bank): "The only remaining question is how many days the hopeless rearguard action of European governments and the European Central Bank can keep up Greece’s spirits."

Nigel Farage: An EU Parliament Member: "I think the worst in the financial system is yet to come, a possible cataclysm and if that happens the gold price could go (higher) to a number that we simply cannot, at this moment, even imagine."

Carl Weinberg: Respected chief economist at High Frequency Economics: "At this point, our base case is that Greece will default within weeks."

Most economists agree that when Greece fails Italy, Spain, Portugal—and maybe France—will also collapse.

Alan Brazil: A top Goldman Sachs strategist thinks, "Solving a debt problem with more debt has not solved the underlying problem. In the US, Treasury debt growth financed the US consumer but has not had enough of an impact on job growth. Can the US continue to depreciate the world’s base currency?"

The short answer is No.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Brazil believes that "as much as $1 trillion in capital may be needed to shore up European banks; that small businesses in the U.S., a past driver of job production, are still languishing; and that China's growth may not be sustainable."

Josef Ackerman: One of the top, most savvy bankers in the world and CEO of Deutsche Bank: "It is an open secret that numerous European banks would not survive having to revalue sovereign debt held on the banking book at market levels."

Which is something that is happening even as this is written.

Alastair Newton: A world-renown strategist for the giant Nomura Securities, London office: "We believe that we are just about to enter a critical period for the Eurozone and that the threat of some sort of break-up between now and year-end is greater than it has been at any time since the start of the crisis."

Lakshman Achuthan: With ECRI: "When I call a recession...that means that process is starting to feed on itself, which means that you can yell and scream and you can write a big check, but it's not going to stop."

Falling dominoes

Financial experts across 60 countries are publicly warning of the impending global financial disaster. The world's politicians—and the governments they run—have painted their economies into a corner after decades of mismanagement and now there's no safe place to hide.

The dominoes will fall like this: the European Economic Union (EEU) has run out of options. Servicing debt with debt is a losing proposition. It's like flapping your arms wildly after you've fallen off the edge of the Grand Canyon.

The EEU's demise will cause the cracks in America to widen until everything tumbles into the gaping pit.

Massive trade disruption and lack of revenue will cause the Eastern European, the Russian Federation and Chinese economies to collapse.

Africa will become a seething hellhole and Australasia will fall as well. Another warning sign: New Zealand just had its sovereign debt downgraded.

Dead

Most of the world is broke. Dead broke. The stage after being dead broke is just dead.

Countries that are self-sufficient in the Southern Hemisphere might fare better—among them Chile, Brazil and Peru. The irony is not lost there, however, as just several decades ago Brazil had a shaky economy hovering near the bottom of the world's economies.

Yet if the dominoes do fall, Brazil may emerge as the "last man standing" and the world's new superpower.

For more on this story see Prophets Of Doom: 12 Shocking Quotes From Insiders About The Horrific Economic Crisis That Is Almost Here.

3/10/11 - World markets fall as fears grow that Greece will miss deficit targets

Fears are growing that Greece will miss its deficit targets despite plans to axe 30,000 civil service jobs by the end of the year.The Greek cabinet will meet today to finalise details of drastic cuts aimed at saving £6.9billion so it can receive the final installment of its 2010 bail out.
Concerns that Greece faces a worse-than-expected recession saw the FTSE open 2.5 per cent down and Asian markets also fell sharply in - with Japan's Nikkei losing 2.3 per cent.
The parliament meeting follows three days of talks with Greece's creditors - the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund about a government proposal that the civil service cuts will come mainly from placing staff nearing retirement age on 'reserve,' or suspending them at reduced pay.
State workers who make up a fifth of the Greek workforce are guaranteed jobs for life under a constitution that bans firing government employees in virtually all circumstances. Read More

3/10/11 - Eurozone crisis: there are no miracles in Greek tragedies

Just before the roof fell in on Kweku Adoboli, the UBS trader whose “miscalculations” cost his bank $2.3 billion, he posted a message on Facebook: “I need a miracle.” Keep an eye out for something similar from George Papandreou, Greece’s prime minister, who has been telling us: “Let everyone be certain, Greece will not default, we will not let it default.” Nothing short of a supernatural event is now required for that promise to be met – the Greek bubble is about to pop.

There are similarities between Mr Adoboli’s flame-out and Greece’s imminent bankruptcy: failure of regulation, credulity of investors and a desperation to throw good money after bad. The difference, however, is scale. UBS’s losses are shocking but manageable. By contrast, when Greece repudiates all, or even part, of its 370 billion euros of debt, the foundations of the single currency will crack and many bystanders will be hurt.

Financial pain will be accompanied by the political humiliation of European Union leaders and their apologists in the commentariat who boasted that such an outcome was impossible because there was the “necessary will” to prevent it occurring.

The fallacy at the heart of this crisis is that every financial problem has a political solution. If only. Yet the Brussels elite and its co-conspirators at the IMF continue to promise that by “doing all it takes” they will, somehow, defy indefinitely economic gravity. This illusion of political primacy is perpetuated because a confession of impotence would not only undermine the worth of those in power but also expose the euro’s fatal flaw: monetary union without fiscal union is a marriage that weds the prudent to the profligate with no control over the latter’s spending. more

2/10/11 - Revolution Is Happening In The USA

Basically highlighting the economic plight taking hold of the country, the protesters of the 'Occupy Wall Street' Movement are seeking to introduce the factors behind the plight.

One of the posts on the Occupy Wall Street website reads: “We are unions, students, teachers, veterans, first responders, families, the unemployed and underemployed. We are all races, sexes and creeds. We are the majority. We are the 99 percent. And we will no longer be silent.”

The protesters have targeted the Wall Street because they want “to create a national narrative and have it be known how the states are taking state revenues that are being funneled to banks and corporations and then you layer on top of that the fact that they're not obligated to pay their fair share of taxes, and so that's billions and billions of dollars that could be put toward job creation and creating solutions to the housing crisis,” Rachel Laforest, the executive director of the Right to the City Alliance has told ABC News.

It is very painful to see that the middle-class Americans who have been reduced to abject poverty should now swallow their pride and capitulate to any humiliating position as they have lost their veritable status.

The protests are reaching other states as well. American activists are going to begin “Occupy Los Angeles” in solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street protests. Similar protests are taking place in Chicago and other major states. Although some cynics have tried to downplay the protests in New York and reduce them to sheer acts of protests by loafers, the truth is that they have already expressed their intention for these protests: they feel deceived by a system which has allowed Wall Street to wallow in its avarice and cause a financial meltdown and virtually shut down the country's economy. The demands of the protesters are gradually coming to light as they are being more organized. One of the innovative measures adopted by the protesters was the launching of a new Tumblr blog called “We Are the 99 Percent” in reference to the fact that 99 percent of Americans are experiencing economic hardship while only one percent are in possession of an ideal life. The blog features a series of handwritten notes regarding different economic hardships including debt, unemployment, lack of health insurance and few available jobs. It clearly and painfully states:

We are the 99 percent. We are getting kicked out of our homes. We are forced to choose between groceries and rent. We are denied quality medical care. We are suffering from environmental pollution. We are working long hours for little pay and no rights, if we're working at all. We are getting nothing while the other 1 percent is getting everything. We are the 99 percent.

2/10/11 - Prophets Of Doom: 12 Shocking Quotes From Insiders About The Horrific Economic Crisis That Is Almost Here

We are getting so close to a financial collapse in Europe that you can almost hear the debt bubbles popping.  All across the western world, governments and major banks are rapidly becoming insolvent.  So far, the powers that be are keeping all of the balls in the air by throwing around lots of bailout money.  But now the political will for more bailouts is drying up and the number of troubled entities seems to grow by the day.  Right now the western world is facing a debt crisis that is absolutely unprecedented in world history.  Europe has had a tremendously difficult time just trying to keep Greece afloat, and several much larger European countries are now on the verge of a major financial crisis.  In addition, there is a growing number of very large financial institutions all over the western world that are also rapidly approaching a day of reckoning.  The global financial system is a sea or red ink, and when we get to the point where there are hundreds of ships going under how is it going to be possible to bail all of them out?  The quotes that you are about to read show that quite a few top financial and political insiders know that things cannot hold together much longer and that a horrific economic crisis is coming.  We built the global financial system on a foundation of debt, leverage and risk and now this house of cards that we have created is about to come tumbling down.
A lot of people in politics and in the financial world know what is about to happen.  Once in a while they will even be quite candid about it with the media.
As I have written about previously, Europe is on the verge of a financial collapse.  If things go really badly, things could totally fall apart in a few weeks.  But more likely it will be a few more months until the juggling act ends.
Right now, the banking system in Europe is coming apart at the seams.  Because the global financial system is so interconnected today, when major European banks start to fail it is going to have a cascading effect across the United States and Asia as well.
The financial crisis of 2008 plunged us into the deepest recession since the Great Depression.
The next financial crisis could potentially hit the world even harder.
The following are 12 shocking quotes from insiders that are warning about the horrific economic crisis that is almost here....
#1 George Soros: "Financial markets are driving the world towards another Great Depression with incalculable political consequences. The authorities, particularly in Europe, have lost control of the situation."
#2 PIMCO CEO Mohammed El-Erian: "These are all signs of an institutional run on French banks. If it persists, the banks would have no choice but to delever their balance sheets in a very drastic and disorderly fashion. Retail depositors would get edgy and be tempted to follow trading and institutional clients through the exit doors. Europe would thus be thrown into a full-blown banking crisis that aggravates the sovereign debt trap, renders certain another economic recession, and significantly worsens the outlook for the global economy."
#3 Attila Szalay-Berzeviczy, global head of securities services at UniCredit SpA (Italy's largest bank): "The only remaining question is how many days the hopeless rearguard action of European governments and the European Central Bank can keep up Greece’s spirits."
#4 Stefan Homburg, the head of Germany's Institute for Public Finance: "The euro is nearing its ugly end. A collapse of monetary union now appears unavoidable."
#5 EU Parliament Member Nigel Farage: "I think the worst in the financial system is yet to come, a possible cataclysm and if that happens the gold price could go (higher) to a number that we simply cannot, at this moment, even imagine."
#6 Carl Weinberg, the chief economist at High Frequency Economics: "At this point, our base case is that Greece will default within weeks."
#7 Goldman Sachs strategist Alan Brazil: "Solving a debt problem with more debt has not solved the underlying problem. In the US, Treasury debt growth financed the US consumer but has not had enough of an impact on job growth. Can the US continue to depreciate the world’s base currency?"
#8 International Labour Organization director general Juan Somavia recently stated that total unemployment could "increase by some 20m to a total of 40m in G20 countries" by the end of 2012.
#9 Deutsche Bank CEO Josef Ackerman: "It is an open secret that numerous European banks would not survive having to revalue sovereign debt held on the banking book at market levels."
#10 Alastair Newton, a strategist for Nomura Securities in London: "We believe that we are just about to enter a critical period for the eurozone and that the threat of some sort of break-up between now and year-end is greater than it has been at any time since the start of the crisis"
#11 Ann Barnhardt, head of Barnhardt Capital Management, Inc.: "It's over. There is no coming back from this. The only thing that can happen is a total and complete collapse of EVERYTHING we now know, and humanity starts from scratch. And if you think that this collapse is going to play out without one hell of a big hot war, you are sadly, sadly mistaken."
#12 Lakshman Achuthan of ECRI: "When I call a recession...that means that process is starting to feed on itself, which means that you can yell and scream and you can write a big check, but it's not going to stop."
*****
In my opinion, the epicenter of the "next wave" of the financial collapse is going to be in Europe.  But that does not mean that the United States is going to be okay.  The reality is that the United States never recovered from the last recession and there are already a lot of signs that we are getting ready to enter another major recession.  A major financial collapse in Europe would just accelerate our plunge into a new economic crisis.
If you want to read something that will really freak you out, you should check out what Dr. Philippa Malmgren is saying.  Dr. Philippa Malmgren is the President and founder of Principalis Asset Management.  She is also a former member of the Bush economic team. You can find her bioright here.
Malmgren is claiming that Germany is seriously considering bringing back the Deutschmark.  In fact, she claims that Germany is very busy printing new currency up.  In a list of things that we could see happen over the next few months, she included the following....

"The Germans announce they are re-introducing the Deutschmark. They have already ordered the new currency and asked that the printers hurry up."

This is quite a claim for someone to be making.  You would think that someone that used to work in the White House would not make such a claim unless it was based on something solid.
If Germany did decide to leave the euro, you would see an implosion of the euro that would be truly historic.
But as I have written about previously, it should not surprise anyone that the end of the euro is being talked about because the euro simply does not work.
The only way that the euro would have had a chance of working is if all of the governments using the euro would have kept debt levels very low.
Unfortunately, the financial systems of the western world are designed to push governments into high levels of debt.
The truth is that the euro was doomed from the very beginning.
Now we are approaching a day of reckoning.  We have been living in the greatest debt bubble in the history of the world, but the bubble is ending.  There are several ways that the powers that be could handle this, but all of them will lead to greater financial instability.
In the end, we will see that the debt-fueled prosperity that the western world has been enjoying for decades was just an illusion.
Debt is a very cruel master.  It will almost always bring more pain and suffering than you anticipated.
It is easy to get into debt, but it can be very difficult to get out of debt.
There is no way that the western world can unwind this debt spiral easily.
The only way that another massive economic crisis can be put off for even a little while would be for the powers that be to "kick the can down the road" a little farther by creating even more debt.
But in the end, you can never solve a debt problem with more debt.
The next several years are going to be an incredibly clear illustration of why debt is bad.
When the dominoes start to fall, we are going to witness a financial avalanche which is going to destroy the finances of millions of people.
You might want to try to get out of the way while you still can.