The G-7 global finance meeting failed to yield fresh ideas for spurring global growth.
The Finance ministers of the Group of Seven major economies ended a weekend meeting without agreement on a plan to revive global growth. Most of the G-7 governments favor official action to stimulate demand, but Germany is more conservative. Instead, finance ministers stressed the importance of varying action for each country.
They have ‘financially engineered’ many life times of public debt, without any success of getting us out of this ‘deflationary spiral’. They had anticipated that these funds provided to the banks would filter down to ‘Main Street’. They were expecting the private sector to spend -- but they have not.
The global central bankers have been struggling to convince businesses to invest in ‘capital spending’ and ‘raise wages’, but this has been a futile effort.
Companies and banks have engaged in ‘record profits’ thanks to ‘easy-money’ policies. The major economic problem is the lack of “aggregate demand”. There is no such demand that currently exist globally.
Apparently, the finance leaders of the Group of Seven Industrial Powers have still not learned from their ‘misjudgments’. We are once again doomed to repeat these same mistakes, over and over, again. The solution is not that of ‘monetary stimulus’, but rather of ‘fiscal stimulus’. There needs to be ‘structural reforms’ that should have been implemented years ago.
China’s economic contractions have finally caught up to the rest of the world. There was an unprecedented period of ‘rapid growth’ and development from the 1990s until 2011. It is now experiencing a ‘severe economic slowdown’, which has spread, spawning a new global financial crisis that is rippling throughout the world.
China brought 800 million of its citizens out of extreme poverty. The government is now shutting down overcapacity in its coal, steel and other heavy industries. Their huge debt and cash-flow problems are running throughout their local governments, state-owned enterprises and property sectors. There are outbreaks of speculating with their stock markets, and their currency and the corporate-bond markets have created a global financial ‘systemic risk’ within the banking sector.
It Is Time To WAKE UP!
Global financial markets are extremely ‘distorted’. Which spells danger for both investors and businesses since it is impossible to properly allocate ‘capital efficiently’ within this current economic and financial environment. The interventions from global Central Bankers and governments have created ‘economic chaos’ by leaving huge debt levels that is near impossible be able to be paid off.
With markets everywhere disrupted by this ‘financial engineering’, do any investors know where to place their money these days?
It is my belief, that the FED is boxed into a corner. It is not likely raise short-term interest rates, yet will be forced to implement QE 4 and/or NIRP in order to hold together the ‘economic house-of-cards’. Recent U.S. stock-market highs and those of 2008 both occurred under similar economic fundamentals that were rapidly deteriorating. Today, markets are displaying the exact same pattern that we experienced in 2008.
Investors pulled another $3.9 billion from U.S. based stock funds during the week that ended May 18, 2016. This new trend of ‘outflows’ has constantly persisted during most of this year.
Year-to-date outflows from U.S based stock funds now total $45 billion, which rivals the $50 billion in ‘outflows’ during all of 2011. The funds bled out more than $72 billion in 2008 -- the peak of the ‘financial crisis’. This is substantially due to mutual fund investors bailing out of domestic U.S. stocks.
The last ‘crisis’ struck uninformed investors without any warning. Consider yourself forewarned.
Concluding Thoughts
In short, Warning signs are ABUNDANT. And in the next couple articles I post I will paint a very clear picture for you to see for yourself. Stay Tuned.