Aftershock: Protect Yourself and Profit in the Next Global Financial Meltdown, 3rd Edition

CHAPTER1

This Recovery Is 100 Percent Fake

WHY THE AFTERSHOCK HAS NOT BEEN CANCELED

We open this third edition of Aftershock in 2014 with the same first chapter we offered you in our last book, The Aftershock Investor, Second Edition, published in November 2013. Not everyone sees every book we write, and this particular chapter is just too important to miss. The economic cheerleaders and bubble-blind “experts” from whom most people get their financial news are simply not going to warn you about what is ahead or tell you what you need to know to protect yourself. If you've already read this chapter, please skip to Chapter 2. Otherwise, begin here.

With the U.S. stock markets hitting new highs, home prices rising, and so much “happy talk” in the media, it's easy to think that all is well or will be soon. The economy, they tell us, is in recovery, and the coming Aftershock, our critics say, has been canceled.

How wonderful that would be—if only it were true. But nothing has happened to change our minds about our earlier forecasts. In fact, current events fall in line pretty well with our previous analysis and predictions, dating back to our earliest books, America's Bubble Economy in 2006 and the first edition of Aftershock in 2009. From the beginning, we said that massive federal government support would keep the bubble economy going as long as possible. Through massive money printing and massive money borrowing, the stock, real estate, private debt, and consumer spending bubbles ...