The EU is currently on crash watch. Its become a spectator sport with the ability to bet on it. Looking at the deteriorating situation of the PIIGS and understanding how this will impact the regional masters (France and Germany), the collapse of the EU is a matter of when, not if. Interest rates of the PIIGS debt is skyrocketing. Euro-scammers are trying to find ways to default on Greece's debt without actually calling it a default. They hope to avoid triggering a potential chain reaction of Credit Default Swaps and other derivitives that could take down the global financial system overnight. Good luck with that.
Civil unrest in Spain is starting to smell a lot like that of Egypt and Tunisia. The Spanish government banned the protests. In response, the people ignored them. Nothing says "you have become irrelevant" and "you only ever had power as long as we allowed you to have it" like a week of public protests that run 24/7. The Spanish government will soon have to make a choice: step down and let the Ponzi collapse or begin shooting its citizens like the criminal Syrian government has been doing. Every day that goes by in which the edicts of government are ignored emboldens the people. The emboldening brings increasing numbers of the more sheepish members of the herd into the mix. There is nothing that is so feared by government as a repressed people who suddenly taste freedom.
Spain's unrest seems to have rekindled unrest in Italy. The whole area (and in fact the whole world) is run by organized crime posing as government. The EU Tower of Babel is teetering. At the same time, China is over heating, the housing bubbles in Australia and Canada are rolling over (canaries in the coal mine of the coming collapse of the China bubble) and Japan is just plain old fashioned screwed. Here in America, the ECRI is predicting another global slowdown this summer.
Economic slowing is the seeds of unrest no matter where you live. What ECRI does is to watch the herd in an organized fashion and to make predictions based on what they see. Their track record is not perfect but it is pretty good.Of course, some of this is pretty easily predictable. When Bernanke was printing money from thin air and dropping it on the economy from a helicopter, the economy started bouncing. Unfortunately, so did gold and silver and gas and food prices. Now that he is trying to pull back on the stimulus it is very unlikely that the recovery will continue. The minute Bernanke puts the defib paddles down, the heart is going to weaken and stop. This time it will likely happen much more quickly than the last time. At some point the world is going to figure out that the heart is beyond saving and that's when the big global collapse will likely set in. Unfortunately, these things often follow the laws of exponential awakening. Most people think they will be OK until suddenly they are far from OK and there they sit, wondering what hit them and wondering what the heck to do next. I urge people not to allow themselves to end up in that position. Make some preparations. If they never get used then consider it an insurance premium paid with no claim made. The premiums are cheap right now. If the global economy threatens real collapse again then the premiums will go up dramatically. Complacency regarding this is just not a good Darwinian survival strategy right now.
When things begin to slow again, Bernanke will pull out the paddles for QE3 but I don't think it will work this time. Exponentially more stimulus is having exponentially lower positive effects. The global con is running very thin. I think as soon as the metals markets see another QE happening, the mad rush into gold and silver will be screaming loud and clear, "all global fiat currencies are fraudulent" and it will wipe away the remaining complacency from the herd. At that point I expect to see some real movement from the herd - some real fear - and quite possibly armed conflicts even in the USA.
Most people on the planet are still in denial. They are Madoff victims looking at their account statements and thinking themselves in good shape. They have made no provisions for the collapse of the debt Ponzi. They are just hoping for the best and planning nothing at all. They have been hypnotized into believing that government can and will save them should things go badly south. This is like cattle standing in front of the slaughter house hoping that the rancher which herded them there will save them from becoming steaks.
