The progression of world events unfolds in accordance with the anticipations mapped out by LEAP/E2020 during these last few quarters. Euroland has finally come out from its political torpor and short-termism since François Hollande’s election (1) as France’s president and the Greeks have just confirmed their willingness to resolve their problems within Euroland (2) thus contradicting all the Anglo-Saxon media and Euro sceptics’ “forecasts”. From now on, Euroland (in fact the EU minus the United Kingdom) will therefore be able to move forward and create a true project of political integration, economic efficiency and democratization over the 2012-2016 period as LEAP/E2020 anticipated last February (GEAB N°62. It’s positive news but, for the coming six-month periods, this “second Renaissance” of the European project (3) will really be the only good news at world level.
All the other components of the global situation are in fact pointed in a negative, even catastrophic, direction. Here again, the main media are starting to echo a long-standing situation anticipated by our team for summer 2012. Indeed, in one form or another, more often on the inside pages than in big headlines (monopolized for months by Greece and the Euro (4)), one now finds the following 13 topics:
1. Global recession (no engine of growth anywhere / end of the myth of the “US recovery”) (5)
2. Growing insolvency of the Western banking and financial system and henceforth partially recognized as such
3. Growing frailty of key financial assets such as sovereign debts, real estate and CDSs underpinning the world’s major banks’ balance sheets
4. Fall off in international trade (6)
5. Geopolitical tensions (in particular in the Middle East) approaching the point of a regional explosion
6. Lasting global geopolitical blockage at the UN
7. Rapid collapse of the whole of the Western asset-backed retirement system (7)
8. Growing political divisions within the world’s “monolithic” powers (USA, China, Russia)
9. Lack of “miracle” solutions as in 2008 /2009, because of the growing impotence of many of the major Western central banks (Fed, BoE, BoJ) and States’ indebtedness
10. Credibility in freefall for all countries having to assume the double load of public and excessive private debt (8)
11. Inability to control/slow down the advance of mass and long-term unemployment
12. Failure of monetarist and financial stimulus policies such as “pure” austerity policies
13. Quasi-systematic ineffectiveness henceforth of the alternative or recent international closed groups, G20, G8, Rio+20, WTO,… on all the key topics of what is no longer in fact a world agenda absent any consensus: economy, finances, environment, conflict resolution, fight against poverty…
Major indices (stock exchanges and oil) in May 2012 – Source: MarketWatch, 06/2012
According to LEAP/E2020, and in accordance with its already timeworn anticipations, just like Franck Biancheri from 2010 in his book “The World Crisis: The path to the World Afterwards”, this second half of 2012 well really mark a major inflection point of the global systemic crisis and the answers to it.
In fact, it will be characterized by an event which is very simple to understand: if, today, Euroland is able to address this period in a promising fashion (9), it’s because, these last few years, it has gone through a crisis of an intensity and depth unequalled since the beginning of the European construction project after the Second World War (10). From the end of this summer all the other world powers, led by the United States (11), will have to face an identical process. It’s at this cost, and only at this cost, that they will subsequently, in a few years, be able to start a slow recovery towards the light.
But today, after having tried all means of delaying the payment on the due date, the hour of payment arrives. And, as with everything, the ability to put off the inevitable comes at a high price, namely the bigger shock of adjusting to the new reality. In fact, it’s a question of the endgame for the world of before the crisis. The seven blasts of the trumpets of Jericho marking the September October 2012 period will cause the “Dollar Wall’s” last sections and the walls which have protected the world as we know it since 1945 to collapse.
The shock of the autumn 2008 will seem like a small summer storm compared to what will affect planet in several months.
In fact LEAP/E2020 has never seen the chronological convergence of such a series of explosive and so fundamental factors (economy, finances, geopolitical…) since 2006, the start of its work on the global systemic crisis. Logically, in our modest attempt to regularly publish a “crisis weather forecast”, we must therefore give our readers a “Red Alert” because the upcoming events which are readying themselves to shake the world system next September/ October belong to this category.