In this week's Off The Cuff podcast, Chris and John Rubino discuss:
- End-Of-Cycle Signals
- Long-standing trends are changing
- Big Trouble In Saudi Arabia
- Now a powderkeg with a short, lit fuse
- Central Bank Culpability
- It's scary how such powerful entities are so clueless
- Bitcoin Today, Gold Tomorrow
- Hot capital will seek trusted shelter when crisis arrives
In this podcast, John enumerates the growing number of market indicators he sees that suggest major trend changes are afoot in the economy. He believes the long-standing bull cycle, now at bubble-level extreme asset valuations, is set to reverse:
To put this in context, there's a lot of stuff going on that is typical of end-of-cycle financial behavior. For instance, in cycles you get an economy that grows and grows and grows and then it shows some signs of overheating, and we've got that now in some ways. Mortgage debt is now pretty close to the record level that it hit back in 2005-2006. Student loans are at a record level. Credit card debt is at a record level. Auto loans, of course, have surged, and they’ve blown through any previous records.
Usually when you see stuff like that start to happen, fraught in various parts of the financial markets, central banks get a little spooked and they start to tighten, which we're also seeing, at least in the U.S.