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Policymakers "just don't get it." Excess and hope define their agenda. So does turning a blind eye to fraud and grand theft.
Housing is a key economic indicator. Chapman sees 20% lower prices over the next three years and foreclosed inventory levels reaching 10 million homes. As consumers reduce debt and increase savings, retail sales will fall. State-sponsored austerity's exacerbating their problems.
Watch France's spring presidential elections. Frontrunner Francois Hollande and Front National's Marine Le Pen favor dumping the euro and EU. Of course, following through if elected is another matter, but their views reflect growing dissolution with a doomed system. They want out before it happens.
Greece's crisis is worse now than two years ago. Portugal's replicating it. Ireland, Italy, Spain, Belgium and other European economies are disasters waiting to happen. The entire continent's weak. No wonder two-thirds of Germans want Deutschemarks back. They're printed just in case. So are French Francs.
Policymakers meet and solve nothing. The Fed's pumping trillions into Europe. Its "Ponzi scheme widens and deepens." Sovereign debt's being downgraded. Rolling it over's accomplished with $1 trillion in Fed loaned swaps to the ECB. It lends to banks. They use borrowed funds to purchase sovereign debt.
Perpetual credit creation's unsustainable. Central banks know it. Nonetheless, with no alternative, they continue bad policy, assuring big trouble when it comes. Chapman thinks the current excess will last another year or so. Bankers know fixing the system requires purging it.
Strategy involves delaying day of reckoning time as long as possible. When it arrives, their power will wane. A Eurozone January policy meeting was postponed until end of February for lack of real solutions. European leaders "are hanging on for dear life."
Problems are minimized or covered up. All solutions chosen are stopgaps that won't work. All they do is buy time for eventual greater trouble. Chapman says world leaders "have been on a fool's errand for many years. Looting the world and controlling it wasn't enough."
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