Canaries 'In Extremis'

Nobody “important” will admit it until after the election, but the resumption of the depression is at hand.

Most people’s strongest memory of the last financial crisis was the September 2008 bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers. However, thirteen months prior to that, August 2007, two Bear Stearns’ mortgage hedge funds went bankrupt. That was the bell tolling for the housing market, the mortgage securities market, and—because of the leverage and the interconnections—the global financial system itself. The Dow Jones Industrial Average would not make its high for another couple of months, but for those who knew what they were looking for, the Bear Stearns’ bankruptcies signaled the impending reversal in financial markets and the economy.

Sometimes one has to see the big picture, and sometimes looking at a host of smaller pictures is more worthwhile. While housing and mortgage finance were the epicenters of the last crisis, there will probably be no single identifiable catalyst for the next one. Not because there are no central-bank sponsored debt-driven bubbles out there, but because there are so many of them, all over the world. Multiple coal mine canaries are in extremis and they’re sending the same message as the Bear Stearns’ bankruptcies did.

If the US real economy is not already in a recession, it’s on the verge.

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