BREAKING ECONOMIC NEWS:
HAS A NEW RECESSION BEGUN?
DATELINE: 04 August 2011: The Dow Jones Industrials plummeted today in the 9th worst single-day crash in history and the worst slide since the Great Recession began in 2008. Readers of Predictions for 2011, published in December of last year, are already aware that my oracle predicted a second great Recession could come in the first half of 2011. It also said things would begin lurching towards that recession around April and May. Those of you watching the smoke before today’s fire sale on Wall Street, such as Bert Dohman, President of the Dohman Capital Research Institute, started seeing the signs of a new recession in May and said as much today on this new “Black Thursday” in an interview for CNBC.
The signs in May were a string of devastating housing and employment reports indicating modest and fragile economic growth was flattening out. Then at the half year mark world stock markets, especially the Dow Jones, began a steady aggregate decline in earnings right at the time the effect of the QE2, the second “quantitative easing” by central banks was running out. This includes what the Federal Reserve tried to achieve by purchasing $600 billion of longer-term US Treasury securities. Supporters of Fed Chief Ben Bernanke believed the beaucoup billions of treasury bucks and yet again another printing marathon of dollars was responsible for a little stimulation of the sagging economy starting in December. However, by June Fed purchases ended and guess what? The economy started slipping. Add to that slide Washington DC’s deficit in leadership over a childish debate about the Debt Ceiling unsettling the world’s confidence. Add to these Greece on the verge of default. The Euro monetary union ready to break apart. Add to European financial woes Italy about to join Greece in a debt crisis. Unlike Greece, Italy’s economy, one of the largest in the EU, is too big to fail “or” be bailed out. All these factors have conspired to bring on something I have been warning since December 2008. That a second Recession, far worse, could come starting as early as October 2010 and no later than mid-year 2011, if serious and far-reaching bank reforms and Wall Street reforms did not fix what is a systemic cancer in the world economy.
Well… Here we are.
I will be watching the markets tomorrow (Friday 5 August 2011) and will then write a full article assessing what I already said in my prophecies for 2011 as well as share insight into the new era we have entered in 2011, which I define as a “Cold Depression.”
You can read my full chapter-long account about Cold Depressions by reading my book, click on Great Recession.
Now let us return to the article posted on 02 August:
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Friends,
I started writing this blog the moment the House of Representatives applauded themselves for the “great job” they did taking a Debt Ceiling Deal to the brink of the United States defaulting on its debt. Now, the political Left, the Right and Center legislators in Washington saw this bill confirmed by the US Senate this morning, 2 August 2011 — what would have been default doomsday, Debt-ster-geddon, or Econa-mageddon for the United States’ triple star credit rating. Now the House homies can applaud themselves with this bill that in ten years will prevent the US national debt from carbing up an extra $14 trillion dollars in ten years. Give’em a hand everybody. Now it will only increase just $12 trillion in ten years.
I feel like applauding Congress like some lone guy did at the end of the late-1960s TV comedy classing Laugh In. Up pops the little German helmeted comic in the South American jungle. He says, “Very interesting, but stoooopid.” Cut to the final credits and off camera, one hears a guy’s hands clapping too slowly, loudly and sarcastically. This applause is for you, Congress and President: clap… clap…… (pause) clap………
From a prophetic perspective, the three-ring circus of the House, the Senate and the 101st Senator who occupies the White House leading the executive branch from behind is another dire step in a long process towards a future I have been writing about for decades.
The Debt Ceiling Bill’s passing reminded me of an incident from 13 years earlier between the US government and myself over where all this is leading America to. Back in 1998 I got up at an ungodly hour here in the Pacific Northwest to phone in an interview for an afternoon show (GMT time) for a BBC radio station in London about my book Nostradamus: The Complete Prophecies. I strayed from Nostradamus to make a most memorable prediction that had my landline clicking with that telltale sign of wire tapping for the next six months.
No, Rupert Murdock’s people from Fleet Street did not tap my line. It was a low budget US government wiretap, because the expensive wiretaps do not click at all. You only know you are on one when your tapped phone connects with another tapped land line and then and they suddenly cancel each other out faster than a cell phone losing bars in the stony bowels of the Grand Canyon (“can you hear me now?” echo… echo…). The Bill Clinton clicker was replaced by a G.W. Bush higher-end wiretap that pulled the plug on my landline when I was talking to the publisher of Osho books.
Just a few years back on one of my regular appearances on Coast to Coast AM with George Noory the phone started clicking so bad we had to find a new land line during the commercials. When back on the air I publicly complained with tongue in cheek that my wiretap rating must have fallen at the CIA because we were back to the clickers. I recall adding that it was another example of government waste to put me on tap because intelligence servicers can freely drink to their hops content my intoxicating insights and barbs on this web site. All the CIA or smokin’ joint chiefs of staff or National Security folk can save the public some tax dollars and do what their operatives already do: tune into the radio, Discovery or History Channel for a Hogue fix or join my free newsletter, browse Hogueprophecy and/or purchase generously low priced e-Books full of future info.
But I digress…
The clicks first started tapping on my phone line in 1998 when I answered a BBC radio reporter’s question about Congress trying to impeach President Clinton for parking his dingy — or, apparently it was only his cigar — in the wrong dock.
“America’s democracy is adrift,” I recall saying, adding that if US Congress continues to descend into these unsubstantial debates or trivialize real issues laid before the country, then, we are heading for a bloody revolution in the streets of the United states sometime in the early decades of the 21st century.
Oops, say “bloody revolution.” Some robot hunter-gathering program must have picked up on that. The crickets from the CIA or FBI began creeping down your landline clicking away for more “bloody” talk. The threat phrase searching robots perhaps ignored the rest of what I said, that I am dead against such a bloody rebellion happening. That here at Hogueprophecy, I am working to prevent such a violent future happening by spelling out the present day’s consequences played out in the future. I am for a Jeffersonian, peaceful revolution in American politics; however I added in my BBC interview that if the trends of the 1990s did not change, bloody civil war and revolution in the streets of America was coming by the 2020s.
Forecasting the future of genius is hard, because intelligence is spontaneous and non-habitualized. Mediocrity, however, is much easer to presage.
Back on 15 July, I posted the first article about the Debt Ceiling. In it, I said the following, which is habitually accurate to the level of mediocre leadership coming currently from the Congress and the President about this Debt Ceiling crisis:
***
I believe we will kick this can of debt worms down a road in time, bouncing and clanging through and beyond the year 2012 into 2013. But Nostradamus has something to say about what will happen to your can of bean-counted economy if prompt and painful action — including tax hikes for everybody folks — is not forthcoming. Soon.
There is nothing nebulous this time in Nostradamus’ words, if this is about the fate of the global economy:
Les simulachres d’or & argent enflez,
Qu’apres le rapt au lac furent gettez
Au descouuert estaincts tous & troublez.
Au marbre escripz prescript intergetez.
The imitations of gold and silver will become inflated,
Which after the rape are thrown into the fire,
After discovering all is exhausted and dissipated by the debt,
All scripts and bonds are wiped out.
Nostradamus, (c. 1558)
Century 8 Quatrain 28
Les Propheites
***
Mediocrity has a problem with math. Two plus two trillion spending cuts in the next ten years does not equal “Four”-teen trillion in debt being paid off. It just lets the monster grow to $12 trillion in a decade. Today, the Congress and the aloof president kick this overflowing can of Wall Street speculated debt worms down history’s timeline trail, whilst running out of temporal road to fix it. The can bounces past the Mayan Chicken Little year of 2012, past the US election year. It lands on the doorstep of a new presidential term in early 2013. You will still have Obama for a second term, by the way. (If you want to know why and stop it from happening; or, if you want to see what you can do to make it happen, click on predictions).
Obama will still be struggling with his passive-aggressive leadership style — best exemplified by what was his once-conceitedly touted “leading from behind” style. Leading from behind will see him in 2013 trying to catch up with his destiny, probably facing a divided new US Congress.
It may not be divided in the old way: Democrats versus Republicans. My oracle begins to see shadows of a new two-party divide in Congress of 2013, between Republicans and Tea Partiers. This is in the shadows of possibility, but for the record, I begin seeing that future as possible where a diminished democrat presence in both houses of Congress may play moderate wedge or just sit on the sidelines of America’s right leaning evolution.
It is clear though that for now the Third Party revolution in Republican clothing moves forward. It has historically changed the debt debate in Washington. Tax reform and significant reductions of troops in foreign lands are coming in the latter half of this year. See forecasts for 2011.
At what a price in American confidence with government was this accomplished? The Tea Party’s victory comes at a time when Pew poles report 77 percent of the American public view all in Congress as spoiled children (their hyperbole, not mine). Only 17 percent view them as adults. Can a Tea Party Revolution thrive in such a climate of disdain for Congress when they now shape the debate, define what is GOP philosophy and share with weakened establishment Republicans, half of that Congress?
What is coming in the near future after 2 August 2011?
No solutions to debt crises. Real change we can believe in, real taking America back is all postponed by Donkeycrats, Dumbo-publicans and the latter’s coalition with a couple of Alices running for president in economic Wonderland, endorsed by sleepy door mice, march hares and mad hatters. (Hey Louis Carol. What indeed makes a ravin’ Palin like a writing desk? I there something in the tea…?)
In the shortfall between now and November, there will be deeper economic uncertainty. Everybody’s favorite Uncle Sam has put on a debt freak for a few months, but now with the vote passed like a kidney stone, Uncle Sammy seems to have found his lost marbles. Yet Uncle Sam’s economic credibility has been damaged in a way that no credit rater, making apologies like a wife of a drunk fallen off his wagon, can completely restore. We all hope it was just a binge of political madness and not a trend — economically speaking.
Astrological prophecy foresees a muddled economy waiting for the credit boom to be lowered. The economic world descends into insecurity. Uranus, the ruler of revolution, change or unexpected bad or good surprises is in retrograde in the progress-loving Sign of Aries. When Aries is moving backwards, he gets grumpy. He smolders, rages and it will have deep consequences. Look at plunging stocks on 2 August, another day in the longest down trend in Wall Street since the dark early days of the 2008 Recession. A lack of growth, employment and confidence has history lurching towards global economic stagnation in the months to come because of retrograde Uranus in Aries. This retreat in confidence will continue all the way to and beyond the Thanksgiving holiday in late November, the time slotted for a special congressional cost cutting committee (six senators and six House Representatives), charged by today’s Debt Ceiling Agreement, to actually pick and choose what trillions will be cut by Thanksgiving Turkey time, four months hence. Will it be defense spending? Will it be Social Security? Health care?
Congressional and presidential salaries??? (Nahhh…)
One might hope astrology forecasts progress in these talks coming in December, when Uranus moves direct course. But then there is that vast and invisible gravitas of the planet under which Uranus is cast in a spell of negative square aspect, Pluto, that ruler of age defining, mass minded regeneration or degeneration of civilizations which is in the early years of its long transit through big business Capricorn.
Nasty surprises are coming in November, because the special committee to advise what needs to be cut from government spending will apply Uranian “surprise” to Capricornian frictions of the planetary square. There will be back door taxation coming — what I would call passive agree-sive taxation embedded in the agreement coming from Congress today. A serious threat to corporate tax loopholes will be tendered rather than raising taxes. The president laid out his November demands today for revenue pain to be shared equally by the rich. Some may celebrate this, saying Obama stance today makes him look at least like the most adult person in Washington D.C. Others will gather up their loins on left and right preparing for the most partisan presidential campaign in history.
Uranus and Pluto right now are running backwards together in their transits of Aries and Capricorn, respectively, but that changes in September. Pluto will move forward and Uranus backward through the skies, starting a week or so before Comet Elenin makes its fourth line up with the Sun and Earth towards the end of September. (For more information on how Elenin lineups match major seismic events, like the March Japanese quake and tsunami, click on Comet Elenin.)
When forward progress retreats and collectively unconscious history advances, the disconnection between these two forces of change and history gape. The square becomes powerfully unstable. These planets when in squares are harbingers of great and unexpected earthquakes, both seismic in earth and tsunami wave. Earthquakes in politics and economics also happen. Brace yourselves for the Ides of September, when the next great quakes and crises in leadership come.
Speaking of Uranian surprises of a happier note, many of the legislators in Congress yesterday were applauding the return of Arizona Democrat Congresswoman Gabby Giffords to the House floor to cast her vote. She has made a near-miraculous recovery from being shot through the head by the kind of insanity too often holding a gun these days.
John Hogue
(Composition began after the House vote on 01 August. Published shortly after the Senate vote on 02 August 2011.)
PS–The most intense half of the year is ahead of us. Read what will happen:
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