It’s Looking A Lot Like 2008 Now

The comments above & below is an edited and abridged synopsis of an article by Chris Martenson

Economic and market conditions are eerily like they were in late 2007/early 2008. Back then, everything was going well. Home prices were soaring. Jobs were plentiful.

The cultural marketing machine was proclaiming that a new era of permanent prosperity had dawned, thanks to the steady leadership of Alan Greenspan, and later Ben Bernanke.

Only a small cadre was singing a different tune, warning that a painful reckoning in the financial system was approaching fast.

Martenson discusses the Fed’s ‘reign of terror;’ one of Greenspan’s biggest sins while at the helm of the Fed (allowing banks to implement sweep accounts for retail deposit accounts), and how it is 2007/2008 all over again.

In closing he says: Assume the crash position. The perfect storm of crash triggers is here (rising interest rates, a fast-weakening dollar, a return of volatility to the markets after a decade of absence, rising oil prices), and it’s time to decide whether the recent drop in the Dow is the start of a 2008-style market melt-down or worse.

These are distorted, deformed and liquidity-addicted markets. They’ve become entirely too dependent on continued largesse from the central banks. That is now ending, and when so many years of extreme market manipulation finally gives way, the losses will be enormous.

The chief concern of any prudent investor right now should be: How do I avoid being collateral damage in the coming reckoning?