Back in mid-January, Grant Williams, Mike Maloney, Charles Hugh Smith, Chris Martenson and I sat down for an in-depth discussion on the dangerous distortions to financial markets and the global economy that central bank intervention is causing.
That video, titled WTF: What The Fed?!? was released soon after the US Federal Reserve had added $200 billion dollars to its balance sheet in Q4 2019. At the time, we worried so much liquidity being added to the system so quickly could recklessly exacerbate the extreme overvaluations in the markets, and further increase the instability of our over-indebted economy.
Little could we have guessed that a global pandemic would soon ensue, one that has seen the central banks collectively flood the world with an additional $4 trillion so far, with (much) more anticipated to come. Sure makes that $200 billion look pretty tiny now…
So, if this group of experts was highly concerned about systemic risk pre-coronavirus, what are they thinking now?
$Trillions in new fiat currency printed in less than 2 months. Over 36 million jobs lost. A Q1 GDP drop of -5% and a predicted Q2 drop of -42.8%. And that’s just in the US alone.
These are historically unprecedented developments on a Great Depression-level scale.
The impact of the economic production loss triggered by covid-19 will be painful and with us for years. How bad will it get? What should we expect next? And why are the current prices of financial assets so divorced from the reality of the destruction to the economy?
For these answers and more, watch this 2-minute trailer for WTF: What The Fed?!? Round 2:
And then click here to watch the full 80-minute video discussion.