A Day Of Crashes, Freezes, Bans, Closures and Collapses WorldWide – Just A Prelude Of What’s To Come

As readers know, we’ve been expecting a lot of craziness to occur in financial, economic and political systems… and we’ll be putting out a video elaborating on our predictions in the next few days.

But, it looks like we’re on the mark. Much of what happened recently may have just been coincidence, but it does seem like markets around the world are beginning to shake.

In the US, Wednesday started with United Airlines having a “computer problem” that saw their entire fleet grounded.  Then the Wall Street Journal’s website went offline.

At 11:32am the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) halted all trading due to a computer issue.

All this may have been unrelated, but it certainly got people’s attention. The NYSE was halted for most of the day before re-opening and eventually closing down 261 points (1.47%).

Speculation swirled about the shadowy hacker group, Anonymous, who put out this tweet last night:

Wonder if tomorrow is going to be bad for Wall Street…. we can only hope.

— Anonymous (@YourAnonNews) July 8, 2015

It is unclear whether or not Anonymous was just speculating on the US markets to crash based on what was happening in China. But one way or another it was a pretty good prediction.

Speaking of China, a massive crash is still underway which has the Shanghai Composite Index now down over 30% in the past two months. The Chinese version of NASDAQ, the ChiNext Index, has moved down over 42% in the past three weeks.

The Shanghai Stock Exchange (SSE) had risen from 2,200 a year ago to a high above 4,600 by May of this year.  This was fueled by a massive retail buying frenzy that saw over four million brokerage accounts opened in one week alone in June.

Ain’t market capitalism grand?

In reality, the Chinese securities marts had fallen prey to a government and central bank fueled unsustainable bubble. It shouldn’t be any surprise to see the SSE giving back a portion of the massive gains from the last year’s meteoric rise.

But, the Chinese government is panicking and has halted more than half the stocks on the SSE.  Now it’s banned stock sales by major shareholders for six months… of course only adding to the sense of panic.

The last time China had a massive stock market bubble, the  collapse began in October of 2007.  Less than a year later, the US stock market began its grinding crash.  So, in those terms, this is something to watch.

In the meantime, ominously, commodities are also plunging.   The spot price of iron-ore took its biggest one-day hit ever overnight, falling 10 percent to $44.59 a tonne. Prices were last at this level in May 2009.  Shares of iron-ore producers  BHP and Rio traded near yearly lows on Thursday.

The Chinese stock collapse has caused analysts to coin the term, “commodities contagion.” Incredibly,  “the steel price in China is now cheaper per tonne than cabbage.”

This note was one of many we received from sources:

“Life in Greece has gone straight downhill this week.

I do not want to sound like a “chicken little” BUT I predict if Tsipras does not comply [with the wishes of the] troika, there will be a military take over due to civil war!

Greece is running out of drugs (especially insulin and thyroid meds). There are now runs to the supermarkets and gasoline stations. Many private stores have closed or have ZERO customers daily. Even the Greek tourists are canceling trips to Greece. 36 international airlines refuse to deal with Greek tourist agencies. The pensioners are getting only $120 euros the last 10 days and are literally [crying] in the streets etc, etc.”

The Greek stock exchange has gone nowhere but down since the first leg of the latest socialist financial crisis in 2007. It’s dropped from over 5,000 to now less than 800.

The euro has also dropped throughout the last year from above $1.35 to near $1.10.

Recall, please, our regular coverage of bitcoin. Now sum up the recent market-based damage: The Shanghai market is down over 30% in the past two months; the Greek stock market is all-but-obliterated; the euro has dropped more than 18% in the last year and oil is down nearly 50% in recent months…

And people used to tell us they were wary of bitcoin because it is too volatile!

We’re probably about to find out what real volatility is over the next months. It could well be that this is just the beginning of what will be a march to full-on insanity toward fall.

And what will be the consequences? Such an evolving environment will leave many/most broke. Paper/fiat currencies, bonds and even most stocks will not hold their current value but gravitate toward their intrinsic value (the cost of the paper and printing).

TDV’s Senior Analyst, Ed Bugos sent a very well timed alert a week ago to go leveraged-short the Nasdaq that has already been paying off.  He’ll be updating subscribers again this evening (click here to subscribe).

We’ll also be releasing the July Issue of TDV in the next few days packed with a ton of information, analysis and recommendations on surviving what’s to come. It doesn’t look pretty.

And its going to get worse… a lot worse… before it gets better.

Comments, Questions or Hatemail Welcome Here…

Originally Appeared At The Dollar Vigilante