GEAB N°63: Global Systemic Crisis – The Five Devastating Storms in Summer 2012 At The Heart of The World Geopolitical Swing!

• The US economy isn’t recovering. I do not believe the global economy will get better. Yes a few countries may do better but overall we are heading towards collapse and war!
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  GEAB N°63: Global Systemic Crisis – The Five Devastating Storms in Summer 2012 At The Heart of The World Geopolitical Swing! 
  by http://www.leap2020.eu/ 
  In its January 2012 issue, LEAP/E2020 signalled the current year as that of the world geopolitical swing. The first quarter 2012 has, to a large extent, started to establish that an era was in fact coming to an end with, in particular, the Russian and Chinese decisions to block any Western attempt at interference in Syria (1); their stated desire, associated with India (2) especially, to ignore or circumvent the oil embargo fixed by the United States and the EU (3) against Iran; the increasing tensions in relations between the United States and Israel (4); the acceleration of the policy of diversification out of the US Dollar led by China (5) and the BRICS (but also by Japan and Euroland (6)); the premise of change in Euroland’s political strategy at the time of the French electoral campaign (7); and the intensification of actions and statements fuelling the rising strength of trans-bloc commercial wars (8). In March 2012, we are far from March 2011 and the “hustling” of the UN by the USA/UK/France trio to attack Libya. March 2011 was still the unipolar world of after 1989. March 2012 is already the post-crisis multipolar world hesitating between confrontations and partnerships.
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  Thus, as anticipated by LEAP/E2020, the handling of the “Greek crisis” (9) has quickly caused the disappearance of the so-called “Euro crisis” from the media headlines and market participants’ concerns. The mass hysteria maintained by the Anglo-Saxon media and the Eurosceptics during the second half of 2011 on this subject hasn’t lasted long: Euroland is increasingly asserting itself as a sustainable structure (10); once again the Euro is in vogue in the markets and for emerging countries’ central banks (11), the Eurogroup/ECB functioned effectively and private investors will have to accept a haircut of up to 70% on their Greek assets, thus confirming LEAP/E2020’s 2010 anticipation which then spoke of a 50% haircut when almost no-one imagined such a possibility without a “catastrophe” signalling the end of the Euro (12). Ultimately, markets always yield to the law of the strongest… and the fear of losing more, whatever the students of ultra-liberalism may say. It’s a lesson which political leaders will jealously guard because there are other haircuts to come, in the United States, in Japan and in Europe. We will come back to this in this GEAB issue.
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  Contemporaneously, and that contributes to explaining the gentle euphoria which feeds the markets and many economic and financial players these last few months, due to it being an electoral year and from the need to make a good impression at all costs against a Eurozone which isn’t collapsing (13), the US financial media have given us a remake of the “green shoots” story from the beginning of 2010 and the “recovery” (14) from the beginning of 2011 in order to paint a picture of an America “exiting the crisis”. However, the United States at this beginning of 2012 really resembles a depressing scene painted by Edward Hopper (15) and not a glowing 60s chromo in the style of Andy Warhol. Just as in 2010 and 2011, the spring will for that matter be the moment of the return to the real world.
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  In this context all the more dangerous, as all the players are lulled by a dangerous illusion of a “return to normal”, in particular of the “restarting of the US economic engine” (16), LEAP/E2020 considers it necessary to alert its readers to the fact that summer 2012 will see the shattering of this illusion. In fact, we anticipate that summer 2012 will see the crystallization of five devastating shocks which are at the heart of the current process of world geopolitical swing. The black clouds which have been accumulating since the beginning of the crisis around economic and financial issues have now been joined by the dark clouds of geopolitical confrontation.
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  Therefore, in LEAP/E2020’s view, five devastating storms will mark the summer of 2012 and thus accelerate the process of world geopolitical swing:
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  . US relapse into recession against the background of European stagnation and BRICS slowdown
  . dead end for the central banks and interest rate increases
  . storm on the foreign exchange and Western sovereign debt markets
  . Iran, the war « too far »
  . new crash in the markets and financial institutions.
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  In this GEAB issue our team analyzes these five shocks of summer 2012 in detail. At the same time, in partnership with the Anticipolis Editions, we are publishing a new excerpt from the book by Sylvain Périfel and Philippe Schneider, “2015 – The great fall of Western real estate”, at the time of the French version going on sale; dealing with the prospects for the American residential real estate market.
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  Lastly, we give our monthly recommendations targeting gold, currencies, financial assets, stock exchanges and commodities in this number.

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