Economic Update: Prepare for an Equity Market Crash

The Trends Journal has been telling our subscribers for months that gold will skyrocket

NOTE TO READERS: The following is our weekly Economic Update — Market Overview found in this week’s issue of The Trends Journal. Consider subscribing here for in-depth, independent geopolitical and socioeconomic trends and trend forecasts that you won’t find anywhere else.

---

As forecast last month, we warned Trends Journal subscribers to prepare for an equity market crash.

We wrote, “With all indexes posting their second negative month in the past three, we warn Trends Journal subscribers that should equities continue their slump, a March crash at the scale of the 2000 dot-com bust will be on the near horizon.”

And in our 7 March 2023 Trends Journal we “warned that the stock market climate is ripe for March Madness 2023.” 

Here we are, just as we forecast, welcome to “March Madness”… the worst is yet to come. This is just the beginning of the global equity market and economic meltdown. 

In great detail—when the world united to fight the COVID War back in 2020 by printing countless trillions of dollars backed by nothing and printed on nothing and Central Bankster Bandits dramatically cut interest rates to artificially prop up the locked-down economies—we warned of spiking inflation and dire economic consequences.

On the U.S. inflation front, the Labor Department reported yesterday that the consumer price index increased 0.4 percent in February, putting the annual inflation rate at 6 percent.

Therefore, with inflation still high, the bet on The Street is that next week the Federal Reserve Crime Syndicate will raise interest rates 25 basis points.

Crime Syndicate? Yes.

By their deeds you shall know them.

Wall Street on Parade reported in detail on the Silvergate, Silicon Valley Bank, and other busts, it’s one big club and a dirty rigged game. 

“Last Wednesday, federally-insured Silvergate Bank announced that it was closing shop and liquidating. Its parent’s stock price (Silvergate Capital, ticker SI) had lost over 90 percent of its value over the prior year; it was under a Justice Department investigation for how it moved money for crypto-kingpin Sam Bankman-Fried’s house of frauds; and its depositors were fleeing. Oh – and by the way – its primary regulator was the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.

Last Friday, California state regulators closed Silicon Valley Bank and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) became the receiver. Its stock price had lost over 80 percent of its market value over the prior year; $150 billion of its $175 billion in deposits were uninsured, either because they exceeded the $250,000 FDIC cap and/or they were foreign deposits. The bank was effectively operating as a Wall Street IPO pipeline in drag as a federally-insured bank. The Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco had quietly been bailing it out – to the tune of $15 billion. Oh – and by the way – its primary regulator was the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. And while all of this hubris was occurring, the CEO of Silicon Valley Bank, Gregory Becker, was sitting on the Board of Directors of his regulator, the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.”

Attacking the “One big club, and you ain’t in it” Bankster charade, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren took a shot at Fed Head Jerome Powell, saying that his “actions to allow big banks like Silicon Valley Bank to boost their profits by loading up on risk directly contributed to these bank failures.”

Telling Powell to exit from the Fed’s review of the Silicon Valley Bank collapse, Warren said “For the Fed’s inquiry to have credibility, Powell must publicly and immediately recuse himself from this internal review. It’s appropriate for Vice Chair for Supervision [Michael S.] Barr to have the independence necessary to do his job.”

U.S. SAYS RUSSIA DOWNED DRONE

Following the bank collapses, Moody’s Investors Service revised its forecast on U.S. banking system to negative: “We have changed to negative from stable our outlook on the US banking system to reflect the rapid deterioration in the operating environment following deposit runs at Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), Silvergate Bank, and Signature Bank (SNY) and the failures of SVB and SNY.” 

The Game is Rigged

Over in Asia, with the shock of the bank failures rippling across the globe, The MSCI Asia Pacific index fell 2.3 percent. Down more than 9 percent from this year’s high recorded in January, Asia’s leading stock index wiped out all of its gains for the year.

Ever hear of the Plunge Protection Team?

Despite the dire warnings from Moody’s and our ongoing forecasts that the worst is yet to come and the Silicon banks going bust is just the tip of the mountains of debt that are about to collapse, equities in Europe spiked higher with the EU Stoxx 600 up 1.59 percent.  

And in the U.S., illustrating the idiocy of equity market reality, because their business future sucks and their Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the company would fire 10,000 employees, their shares spiked 6 percent. 

TREND FORECAST: As we have warned, the equity markets, and as evidenced by the Bankster Bandits in control, the game is rigged.

We had forecast last week that as equities continued to tank the Plunge Protection Team (a White Shoe Boy’s name for “market riggers”) would come to The Street’s rescue. We have also noted, they would temporarily rig the markets to go higher so the Bigs would sell their stocks at higher prices.  And once the equities hit the prices they need to either make more money or not lose a lot … the markets would descend into freefall after they bail out. 

TREND FORECAST: Capitalism is dead.  America is a cross between Communism, as evidenced by the police mandates imposed during the COVID War such as “No Jab, No Job, (See “COVID-19 is a ‘Police State Virus,” March 2020) and Fascism which is the merger of state and corporate power. 

On the fascism front, following the bank run on Silicon Valley Bank and the Signature Bank of New York, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and the Feds bailed out the millionaires and billionaires whose deposits well surpassed the Fed’s insurance policy of $250,000 per customer. 

And, obviously aware of his bank’s financial crisis, Greg Becker, the CEO of SVB, sold off $3.6 million of his bank shares less than two weeks before his bank collapsed.

Again, we note these facts to continue to illustrate, by the facts, the game is rigged for the Bigs.   

TREND FORECAST: Bank failures have just begun. We have long forecast, warned, and reported on the dire financial consequences of the Office Building Bust whereby owners of office buildings across the nation will default on bank loans as the occupancy rates stay well below pre-COVID War levels and tenants use less office space or do not renew leases. 

Further pressure will be exerted on the banks as the nation dives into recession and more people that are out of work and out of money default on loans.