Why the Ultimate Collapse is Coming and How You Can Protect Your Wealth
E-Book, Englisch, 285 Seiten
ISBN: 978-3-7325-3082-3
Verlag: Bastei Lübbe
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Kein
It's no longer a question of whether the crash will happen, but when. All of the measures taken toward saving banks, national economies, and the euro boil down to the maximization of damages and state bankruptcy for Germany, for which case the expropriation of private citizens has long been in preparation. Government bonds, pension funds, life insurance policies and bank accounts - these are the things that will lose the most in a crash that should come sooner rather than later. Only then will the political and business sectors be open to making radical changes. When the crash comes, we'll need fast solutions!
In their e-book, economics experts and authors of three bestsellers Matthias Weik and Marc Friedrich thoroughly and clearly describe what has caused and who benefits from the crisis. But their predictions are not completely pessimistic when it comes to securing your wealth. The two financial strategists explain in simple terms how you can redistribute your money into tangible assets before the crash in order to keep your savings safe.
The book immediately made it onto Spiegel magazine’s bestseller list and has caused quite a stir. In this book, the authors correctly predicted the outcome of EU elections, the ECB’s interest rate cuts and negative interest rates for banks, and the lowering of the interest rate guaranteed by life insurers - just to name a few examples.
About the authors:
Matthias Weik studied international business in Australia where he completed his degree. He has dealt with the global economy and financial markets for over a decade. Matthias Weik earned his MBA as part of a work-study program while working for a German corporation. On professional and academic stays in South America, Asia and Australia, Matthias Weik gained deep insight into the world of international finance and economics. His two books co-authored with Marc Friedrich Der grösste Raubzug der Geschichte (English working title: "The Greatest Heist of All Time”) and Der Crash ist die Lösung (English: "The Crash Is the Solution”) are both Spiegel magazine bestsellers and No 1. Manager Magazine bestsellers as well as the most successful economics books in Germany in 2013 and 2014. In 2016 they published their third bestseller "Kapitalfehler" (English: "Capital error”).
Marc Friedrich studied international business administration and has focused intensely on the economy and financial markets. During a job assignment in Argentina, he witnessed a sovereign default first hand in 2001 and its devastating consequences. Marc Friedrich gained valuable work experience in the UK, Switzerland and the US. Together with Matthias Weik, Marc Friedrich holds seminars and lectures for companies, associations, foundations, at conferences, trade shows and at universities and colleges. The duo has been active in this field for several years now. Marc Friedrich and Matthias Weik are welcome economic experts and have made numerous appearances in recent years in print media and on radio and television programs.
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Weitere Infos & Material
1. The Crash That Was Inevitable
If we ask people whether “the financial crisis” is over, then the answer is generally always the same. Nobody thinks so. It doesn’t matter whether we talk to clients, business partners, or friends about it. It doesn’t matter if they are involved in financial transactions at work or not. It doesn’t matter if they know much about economics or not. Everyone’s gut feeling says that since 2008, we have been experiencing momentous changes. The international economy and global financial system are coming apart at the seams. Without a fundamental paradigm shift, we will continue to race towards the cliff’s edge with no working brakes. Everyone has the inkling that the crash will be massive, but only a few people can make a more informed guess as to when we will finally hit the ground. In this book, we analyze who is actually steering us, why they are driving like total nut, and where the road is potentially headed. And: how we can all win back control over the car we call money. Since 2008, crises have been our constant companion: the real estate crises in the USA, Spain, and Ireland, the Lehman Brothers crisis, the crisis in Cyprus, banking and finance scandals one after the other, out-of-control national debts, the Euro crisis, and at-risk candidates like Italy, Portugal, and even France. And Greece, over and over again: an economically and politically ailing nation altogether, with a desperate population that has been exhausted and demoralized by recessions, countless bailout packages, and calls for reform. In September 2015, when this book was written, Greece was rescued with its third bailout to the tune of 86 million euros and against all economic sense. Although this kind of bailout had already catastrophically failed twice, once again, the same useless medicine is being administered to the mortally ill patient. We can only shake our heads and think of this quote from Albert Einstein: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Currently, we can’t predict exactly what will happen to Greece, what the Greeks are going to have to further endure, what ideas the creditors at the IMF, ECB, EFSF & Co. will come up with, and what all of this is going to cost Europe’s taxpayers in the end. The only thing that’s clear is this: the greatest protraction of bankruptcy in history will continue. And despite whatever odd shortcuts are taken, the Hellenic Republic will end up being drip-fed by Europe for decades. And there’s more: ultimately, not one of the financial crises in the last seven years has ever been solved –quite the contrary. It’s becoming clearer and clearer that all of these so-called bailout packages are the problem and not the solution. And that they are becoming less and less effective with more and more questionable effects. This historically unique and apparently endless bailout orgy is already an unprecedented series of contract breaches, lies, and fraud. Do the owners and investors at failed banks actually have to bear the risks of their recklessness? Pfft! All one of the responsible parties has to do is shout “too big to fail,” and, right away, all of us taxpayers write them a check. No debt transfers between the euro states? For a while, this rule hasn’t been worth the paper it was written on. The European Central Bank as an independent monetary authority? It’s been mutated into a funding agency for government loans. In 2009 we watched one crisis conference convene after the other. 2015 doesn’t look any different, and nothing will change in the future, either. Each time, we were told that the banks, investment trusts or hedge funds had finally been cornered. That the banks would have to build up significantly more equity capital in order to offset the risks they take. That the super bonuses for finance managers were a thing of the past. And what has really happened? Basically nothing! Many banks now are doing even better than they were before the crisis. The less than modest goals for increasing capital quotas have been stretched out as far as into the year 2019. And yet, even those institutions with modest profits are already showering their top managers with fat premiums once again. Since the outbreak of the financial crisis in 2008 and especially since the summer of 2012, politicians have, together with the finance industry and the central banks, merely attacked the symptoms of the disease. The true causes of the crisis have not really been tackled. In doing so, they have massively accelerated the maximum economic damage at the cost of the general public – and democracy. Meanwhile, things that were once considered unthinkable have been done anyway in order to buy more time and drag the unsolved, seemingly permanent crisis further out into the future. Businesses and banks are being nationalized and citizens, shareholders, and depositors dispossessed. On top of everything, current laws are constantly being broken by those at the highest levels in order to keep the failed system on artificial life support. But the patient, i.e. the financial system, is in reality already clinically dead. The euro, destroyer of wealth
Unfortunately, much of what we predicted in early 2012 in our first book, Der größte Raubzug der Geschichte (English: The Greatest Heist of All Time), has already arrived with a momentum that surprised even us. Right now in certain countries, we are experiencing not only the biggest protraction of insolvency in the history of mankind, but also the largest political experiment with the central banks. Never before has there been as much money in the system as there is today. The balances of the reserve banks have taken on historical dimensions. And in reality, the euro has long since failed, because money that needs to be rescued is not really money at all! The economic numbers clearly show that the euro is ruining Europe and destroying our wealth! From a historical standpoint, the EU is a respectable Nobel Peace Prize winner, but in many European countries, the advent of the euro has brought record unemployment numbers along with it. Meanwhile, in nations such as Spain and Greece, half the population under the age of 25 cannot find work. Adult men and women and even families with children are forced to either move back in with parents and grandparents or leave their country. In those countries, a whole generation is being sacrificed for the sake of keeping a failed and politically motivated financial experiment alive. As diverse as their specific economic situations may be, Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, the USA, and Japan are all effectively bankrupt. We’ll go even further and count Italy, France, Spain, Croatia, and the Netherlands among the candidates for going broke, too. Before the European elections in May 2014, politicians from Helsinki to Rome, Lisbon and Warsaw held flowery and emotional speeches in which they lauded the European peace order and the undeniable advantages of transnational economic cooperation as blessings. But simultaneously, with their flagrant mistakes the same politicians create a volatile breeding ground for populists, nationalists, separatists, and extremists. The European elections and the elections in Greece, France, and Spain have more than confirmed our fears. Situations that resemble civil war, such as what was experienced in Athens in 2012, could threaten other states that are in crisis sooner or later. It doesn’t matter whether bailout banks are saved with government bonds (tax money) or bailin banks are rescued by their owners, stakeholders, and depositors. No matter what you call it, in the end it all means only one thing: the taxpaying citizens are all liable and must therefore pay for the banks’ gambles and losses. This clearly shows how desperate the situation is. For us economists, these ongoing attempts to solve the financial crisis and their devastating consequences come across like an endless horror film. Zero interest rates and speculation bubbles
That horror is intensified by the fact that for years, we have all been gradually expropriated by the central banks. In all important areas of commerce, the key interest rates are nearly at zero. The return on our savings, regardless of whether we drop them in a classic savings account or put them in government bonds or otherwise invest them, is almost without exception under the inflation rate. But if we temporarily overdraw our accounts then our banks demand excessive interest rates from us – even though the European Central Bank (ECB) has literally gifted them the money they are “working” with. Meanwhile, vast sums of this cheap money bounce around the world waiting for investment opportunities. This is how stock prices and, to an extent, real estate prices have reached record highs again and again. Current or recently burst speculation bubbles are simply replaced by new and bigger speculation bubbles. Thus, we are back to the cynical 2008 statement of former Citigroup CEO Chuck Prince, whom we already cited in our first book: “As long as the music is playing, you've got to get up and dance.” Sad news flash: the music is louder now than it was in 2008. And the banking moguls in New York, London and Frankfurt have long since returned to their debaucherous dancing and are getting paid bigger bonuses than ever before. That the world is sinking in debt in the meantime, that more and more nations are on the edge of bankruptcy, that the gap between the rich and the poor is ever-widening, that the middle class is gradually being wiped out, and that the social tensions are rising – unfortunately, our dancing...
