by Jim Willie, GoldSeek:

The following Jackass forecasts listed within the article for this new year are fully consistent with the Hat Trick Letter analysis over the last few years. All are on the verge of occurrence. If even one quarter of these calls comes into reality, the world will become a better place. In the current year upon us, the following events will begin to take form in some path with recognized progress. The result will be truly frightening, as all known tenets are either swept aside or profoundly questioned. Many of the listed events have begun to take form with some initial progress. The magnificent event that occurred ten years ago has been called the Global Financial Crisis, centered and triggered by the Lehman Brothers failure as a firm. It was actually a suffocation event with killjob, whereby both Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan bought several $billion in Lehman mortgage bonds and never paid for them, thereby killing Lehman from a very severe sudden liquidity drain. What happened in 2007 (initial bust symptoms) and 2008 (final crisis unfolding) was horrible and quite devastating. What comes in 2018 in the systemic breakdown and global crisis will be triple in magnitude of damage and triple in breadth with range of extended wreckage. This year will see sovereign bonds enter failure, in an unprecedented manner. Watch the USGovt debt and a possible restructure event (technical default). This year will see entire national banking systems enter failure, in an unprecedented manner. Watch Italy for the bank runs and collapse. The crisis will lead to a global sense of foreboding, disorder, and growing panic.

This year will see the onset of the Gold Standard being installed, thus kicking the King Dollar and its reign of financial terror off the stage. Resistance will be enormous, but futile. Metal will dispose of paper. Three ancient empires in China, Russia, and Persia are cooperating to bring the Eurasian Trade Zone to life, in an unstoppable process. They will usher in the Gold Standard, first in trade payments, then in bank reserves, finally in currencies. The USDollar-based hegemony must be forced to yield one step at a time. Their cooperative efforts have made headlines for the past year in numerous developments and built platforms. The year 2017 set up the global stage with notable cracks, critical psychological damage to the current regimes, and significant progress in the Belt & Road initiative, the most important economic forum and conference table in a generation. The combination of the Shanghai RMB-Oil-Gold contracts form the most important financial construct in a generation, which will bring sunset to the Petro-Dollar defacto standard. The year 2018 will see the breakdown begin, work its magic in earnest, and work to alter the entire global power structure. It can be called the Global Financial RESET or the Global Paradigm Shift. It will wait no longer.

SYSTEMIC LEHMAN EVENT

The magnificent crisis that is unfolding in this new year has been given a name by the Jackass as the Systemic Lehman Global Breakdown Event. Since the Lehman failure, all insolvent structures have become more insolvent, fortified with more leverage, flushed with more funny money, and been kept in place as the power center for the USGovt istelf. The Wall Street banks stole the $700 billion in TARP Funds as a launching pad for sacking Washington DC in a grand fascist display. The broken silos of financial corruption have grabbed political powers, and written US legislation. In the last ten years, nothing has been fixed, or event attempted toward remedy. Nothing has been liquidated due to deep insolvency and rot. No amplified credit or monetary spigots have been turned off or even turned down. No power control rooms have been put to pasture and removed from the corrupt helm despite their failures. No economic development in the West has even been attempted. All the broken elements have been ramped up with bloated largesse. Wreck, wash, rinse, repeat, but with greater volume and emphasis, while the propaganda blasts on. What was seen in 2008 with Lehman failure will next be seen on a systemic level, since instead of remedy, the entire system has been subjected to same abuses that led to the mortgage finance and housing bust.

Instead, much more of the same bankrupt illicit and heretic practices have come in a grotesquely amplified form in a desperate set of gestures designed to sustain the power structure at the expense of the system’s integrity and viability. Instead, the central banks have gone completely insane, putting gigantic support mechanisms under the USGovt debt (and other sovereign debts), extending their massive support to the stock market, to the corporate bond market, and recently to the crude oil market. The distortions are beyond description. The malinvestment is historic. The rot is everywhere, just under the surface. Fake economic reports are the standard, with talk of sluggish growth universal. But the standard unfudgeable metrics like payroll tax withholdings, electricity usage, gasoline usage, freight volume, business failures, loan defaults, restaurant activity, even sporting event and auction attendance, all are down hard. The vicious economic recession might have endured for over ten consecutive years, alongside nasty price inflation. Witness the first American Depression but without recognition.

The banker elite, with the central bank helm and their big bank servile outposts, have elevated the systemic risk to levels never seen before on the globe. They have lashed the big banks together with derivatives, ready for common fate. They have unleashed unsterilized hyper monetary inflation for six years running, and called its heresy as good. They have linked together the financial markets to the sovereign bonds, making them dependent on easy money. They have institutionalized financial engineering, even though it proved a failed course ten years ago. They have permitted the USGovt debt to go out of control, far above the annual $1.0 trillion deficit admitted. They have obstructed any renewal of industrialization in the United States, lifting the annual trade deficit. They have seen fit to direct hidden $trillions to keep the bank derivatives active, like in producing phony USTreasury Bond demand when almost no demand exists. The Interest Rate Swap operated by the USDept Treasury and their multi-$trillion Exchange Stabilization Fund serves as the control panel run by the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain. It is all coming apart at the seams.

USTREASURY BOND AS TRIGGER

The thread to be pulled on the sweater will be the USTreasury Bond complex. It is the trigger, the fuse, the most crucial link, evident within the entire picture. For the last year, the the USTreasury Yield Curve has become much more flattened, a danger signal. Despite $trillions in bond support and official aid, the signal given is for economic recession even though all the markets are badly rigged. The Quantitative Easing is financial stimulus of the worst type, but in no way can it be called economic stimulus. The Money Velocity is so slow, that the body economic is giving off comotose signals, with urgent need of the intensive care. The Jackass has maintained for a few years running that the QE experiment kills capital, renders businesses as unprofitable, and will eventually wreck the economies. It is happening in recognized fashion. As the USTreasury Bonds falter, they will take down the US stock market and other sovereign bonds. We are on the verge to see a decline in the USDollar, the USGovt debt security, and the US stock market simultaneously. In recent decades such an unusual dire event has only occurred in 1979 and 1987. Add 2018 to the list, since it is coming. The demise of the Petro-Dollar along with the retirement of the USDollar as global currency reserve carry with them an extremely dangerous destructive and deadly sequence of events.

SAFE HAVEN IN PRECIOUS METALS

As the global financial crisis reaches a much higher level of criticality and destruction, complete with chaos and disorder, the entire paper financial asset concept will be called into question as it is subjected to severe valuation loss. The QE sick heretical experiment is coming to a conclusion, a bad one. It sustained the big Western banks which were severely insolvent in 2008, which would have entered financial failure if not for the amplified QE liquidity. The QE monetary policy was not for stimulus, but rather for avoiding multiple big power center financial failures in the big US banks. Lehman Brothers was chosen to die, so that the rest could go on life support and live as masters, at the expense of Main Street and the USEconomy. The QE has been in transition to Quantitative Tightening, first with interest rate hikes, and later with volume reduction in USTreasurys, even in bank derivatives. The sick fact of reality is that QE volumes had to double every couple years in volume in order to maintain the appearance of stability. Refer to Ponzi Scheme financial principles. As the financial structures falter, suffer damage, and begin to break down, watch the old reliable Gold & Silver safe havens benefit with fast rising prices. As the paper financial assets corrode, decline, and turn to confetti, the precious metals will be left standing while the debt-based financial markets break down under the weight of interrupted liquidity, debt suffociation, and failure. Patience over the last several years will be rewarded. In response to the annual money supply growth, like almost tripled in the last ten to fifteen years, the Gold price will respond, and make up for lost time. The Gold price as from historical norms keeps pace with monetary growth.This chapter will eventually be shown to be no different.

FORECAST EVENTS

Only a few of the listed events will arrive at completion in this calendar year, since the events are very complex, like their evolved faulty structures in breakdown. However, not to be dismayed, people should expect significant progress on almost all on the list. Some have already begun. Others are hinted at ignition. Several listed events will carry into 2019, as resistance continues in deadly defense. The Jackass did not call the previous report series the Global Money War Report without reason. It was a war, and the King Dollar will be seen this year as having lost the war. It is being de-throned. The Eastern superpowers are in full bore insurrection. They no longer wish to support the corrupted bloated USDollar which is used as predatory weapon. They wish to become committed to economic development, to infra-structure buildout, to commercial linkage, and to prosperity. They no longer subscribe to the Western methods of war, dominance, debt vassals, and poverty with a narcotics chaser and sexual perversion in extortion.

• China will roll out its RMB-Oil contract, supported by Russia, Iran, Saudi, in a direct challenge to the Petro-Dollar, shown its last legs.
• Eurasian Trade Zone will take solid form with newfound power, led by the Belt & Road Initiative, the AIIBank, and a Gold Standard taking form.
• Iran will resist the US sanctions with European support, resulting in US isolation from Europe.
• Germany will break the Russian sanctions, followed by France, as it declares its sovereignty with economic vitality the over-riding objective.

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