Epocalypse Now: The Economic Apocalypse is Here

Submitted by David Haggith
The Great Recession


From an epocalypse of another time By Dorothea Lange, Farm Security Administration / Office of War Information / Office of Emergency Management / Resettlement Administration [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons







The party in the bull pen is over





This isn’t your typical placid and merry December. Friday’s sell-off was the sharpest one-day plunge since September, and trading volume has been higher than usual in December as investors jockeyed to position themselves for the Fed’s anticipate rate rise. This is the feel of something big beginning to creep.






It looks like there’ll be no Christmas rally for stocks this year because the Federal Reserve turned off the free money … just in time for Christmas.


Santa Claws Offers Little Hope for a Christmas Rally



What market investors need to realize is that the critical importance of the Fed’s rate hike is not the meager quarter-of-a-percent rise in its interest target; it is the fact that the move off of the zero bound puts us back into the real world where bad news is now only bad news because bad news can no longer stave off the Fed’s first rate increase. That’s done.


What everyone is — or at least should be — starting to understand is that when this stock market crashes the market has no airbags. There will be wounded.

There are plenty of skeletons in the closet for Christmas:




Now that bad news is only bad news, stocks have finally begun to slide, including the high-tech stocks that were helping support the market when other stocks were falling. Now, every sector of the stock market is falling.


Look at those events and ask yourself, “Aren’t those the conditions under which central banks normally begin stimulus, not bring it to a close?” That ought to tell you a lot about where the Fed’s tightening is going to go, and the Fed cannot simply reverse course if things go from bad to worse because to do so would clearly be to admit its recovery was an immediate failure.

To do so would also require overcoming huge inertia the Fed must feel toward starting back down a course that it had such a hard time getting out of and which it so rejoiced to bring to an end. To do so, will also require overcoming the Fed’s denial, which causes it to really believe its program was a big success. To do so would also require Yellen to lose face for having just pronounced the economy sound like Ben Bernanke stated in 2008 when he saw no recession in sight.





Denial and a nearly religious belief in political-economic ideas of both parties, however, are hard to break. So, many will think I’m foolish to name something like this the “Epocalypse” and to claim that it has now begun. And the stock market, of course, will attempt rallies, maybe even a brief one for Christmas, as it loves to rally then anyway. If it does, it is nothing but a spurt of optimism cheered on by holiday feelings, the hope of getting some of that party spirit back that was shorted after two hours, and the lack of much economic news to go on today, leaving the market scouting around for a sense of direction in this fuzzy new world they are unaccustomed to. It probably won’t even have enough holding power to last the week. If it doesn’t rally at this generally upbeat time of year, which is usually a great time for the stock market, it really is going down fast.

I am willing to take the chance of people saying such things because I am fully certain proof that the US stock market crash began the day after December 16 and was triggered by the Fed’s change of course on December 16 will quickly become a fact of history. I think the Epocalypse will even be big enough to break through nearly everyone’s denial, and critics of this claim will have to stuff their words back in their mouths in a hurry.

Even afterward, some will still argue foolishly for their own ideas about how and why it happened; but they will believe no more in the Fed’s phony recovery, and they will soon enough be forced to realize the Fed delivered a bear at Christmas.




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19 thoughts on “Epocalypse Now: The Economic Apocalypse is Here”

    1. “Thankfully, law enforcement was able to intervene and thwart Lutchman’s deadly plans.” Haha..They created it.

      “Before Lutchman was arrested, the FBI says he recorded a video where he swore allegiance to ISIS and its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi,”

      Isn’t Abu Al- Bag-Daddy Obama’s Buddy he realeased from Gitmo his first year in office and is Now the Head of ISIS?

      Haha. Can’t make this stuff up

      Wordplay….Al Bag Daddy…

      1. Yeah, and isn’t Big Daddy actually a Mossad Oprrative in those pictures with John McCain ? Or am I confusing him with some other dirt bag ? The dumb USA citizens sure have been taken for one hell of a debt ride. Brainwashed to believe so many lies.

  1. The Epocalypse occured on Jan 1, 1965 when the 90% silver content was removed from dimes, quarters, halves and dollars. Back in the early 60s, my grandfather would go into the bank with a $20 bill and would come out with a mixed roll of Morgan and Peace Dollars minted between 1878 and 1935, some with beautiful rainbow toning. Good luck trying to do that today. If you invest in the stock market, well, let’s just say that it is paper/digital money. Someday it will be worth less than a 50 cent coupon off the cost of a box of GMO cereal.

    It has been a steady downhill ever since. A silver dime was basically worth the same, with the exception of numismatic value, between 1793 and 1964. That is a very long run (171 years) without severe inflation. It was great to be an American citizen between 1793 and 1964!

    1. Your confusing some of the various things that set us on a course toward the Epocalypse with the Epocalypse itself. Those are the days the first salvos were launched. These are the days they hit the earth. Not that there hasn’t been downhill since, but nothing compared to what is about to hit.

      1. Tangible assets will always be tangible, and useful, such as precious metals, real estate, tools, and knowledge. Intangible assets, such as paper, I O U S, stocks, bonds, derivatives, and digital money have a very short useful life.

        1. John,

          I agree with you. When they sucked all the Silver from our coins that was a moment.

          Can you imagine having a Silver dollar worth 5 Bucks? It’s only a Dollar, it’ says One Dollar on it.Thats why they did it. The dimes quarters and Even the Nickels are just TIN.

          1972 Brenton Woods solved this problem. Now its falling apart.

          Global Warming Taxes is one of the answers to solve this……….

        2. Recynd,
          Is Natural Gas Tangible or intangible?
          If It’s Tangible, I got a whole of it for you.
          When it gets really bad here it’s always Cold where it stays on the the ground and doesn’t expand and become lighter and blow away and my sinus feel really irritated and hurt.

          But yes, I think Energy is a Tangible as a product.

        3. In accounting we have tangible and intangible assets. IRS has come up with a gazillion rules and methods on how to depreciate and amortize these assets. The powers at that agency have the last word on what is what unless you want an audit. I know, this could thrill anyone to sleep.


          What about the still leaking gas in Porter Ranch? Is it a tangible asset blowing in the wind? Only IRS knows for sure.

        4. Electricity can’t be an asset in the sense John means the term. It is a product produced from assets like coal and gas and river water. But it is not the flowing stream, which will not go away in a financial crash, or a coal mine, or a gas well.

          The intangible assets he lists have a tangibility in the sense that they exist in time–but can cease to exist at any time, because they depend upon the financial matrix of the age we live in to exist.

          So you ask an interesting question. Electricity does not exist in time. You can buy its POTENTIAL existence. It’s not a real thing, like the coal that makes it possible, or the turbines chaining up the river. It’s not even a derivative of a real thing, like a bond fund, which represents real money someone invested once and is now being leveraged based upon who knows who’s credit worthiness.

          Electricity, once created, can’t be stored (well, very little of it can). Real resources are spent creating it, but then they’re gone, and so is the voltage.

          John can be proven wrong about paper assets: in the future they still may have value someone else might want to buy. But this minute’s electricity vanishes as quickly as it is created.

        5. I asked about electricity because, according to some (like Patrick Wood), we’re headed to a whole new economic system based upon energy. Maybe a new form of energy’s coming, but right now, electricity is king, and there’s a whole smart grid being set up (for water and natural gas, too), worldwide.

        6. Well, a solar panel can be considered an asset because it produces electricity, free and clear of the electric meter. The same can be said of a coal or wood stove, they can sure cook a meal and heat a house without being hooked up to the grid and the almighty meter, lol!

  2. What can we expect? A new carbon currency? Maybe a reset with a exo-cosmic alien market? We have to wait for the commercial real-estate bubble to explode, the derivative “flying economy” to land and the bank run. All of the quadrillion in toxic assets has to be monetized. So is Fannie and Freddie going to solve it with Connecticut Avenue Securities? Ha! Sounds like a Sandy Hook enterprise (LIBOR Round 2?). JP Morgan can’t find private risk investment for their exposure. Neither can the rest. The cream of the crop LTV aside. This is going to be the back breaker. Add the commodities freefall and the manipulations you have an unsustainable scheme. No duct tape left.
    Short of an economic boom due to war or global natural disaster I expect the collapse to take form before spring. You know they have something up their sleeves.

  3. The markets gyrations have much less to do with the feds puny rate bump and everything to do with the chaos and fall in europe and the euro. european investors are pouring their money into the us stock market as europe declines into oblivion, hastened by hoardes of immigrants. Even the german economic engine is faltering. The us apocalypse is coming, but still years away. One more thing, commodities are bottoming and will stage a resounding recovery in early 2016.

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