Utter Global Colapse?

 Found this during my morning internet rounds...

(from: http://survivalacres.com/wordpress/?p=1211)

January 11, 2008

Legendary Funds Manager Julian Robertson Predicts Utter Global Collapse Stemming From Bursting of Property Bubble

In a recent interview on CNBC with Ron Insana, one of the “old-timer”funds manager, Julian Robertson, predicted “utter global collapse” as a consequence of the bursting of the world-wide property bubble.

Often called “Never Been Wrong Robertson”, the former head of Tiger Management (once the largest hedge fund in the world), is extremely worried about the speculative bubble in real estate.

Specifically, he is very worried about a world that is sustained by American consumer spending which is in turn 1/4 sustained by a property bubble. He predicts that 20 million people could lose their homes once the property bubble bursts.

Even more worrisome, he thinks central banks around the globe out of desperation will try to re-inflate the world economy with more liquidity that will create an inflationary spiral unseen in the economic history of mankind. “Where does it end?”, Insana asked Robertson. “Utter global collapse,” he answered. But not just economic collapse … collapse of epic proportions. Collapse and disintegration of all infrastructure, including government. Inflation will run into the double and triple digits. “Food production will fall. People will be carrying around U.S .dollars in wheelbarrows like Germany,” he said.

There will be “total collapse of public infrastructure. Total collapse of medical care systems. All public pension plans, Social Security will collapse. All corporate pension plans will collapse.”

“The American consumer is effectively now supporting the rest of the planet,” he continued. “Consumption rates in all other nations are falling, have fallen to the point that the tax revenues to governments, that the business and industries those nation states are providing is now a net negative number relative to total debt service and public cost, that this exists in virtually every nation state on the planet now.”

And for much of this “doom”, interestingly, he blames the Bush-Cheney “regime”. “They have now consolidated power and money on the planet to the maximum extent possible. The planet’s net liquidity, that is its, net free cash flow. Is now a negative number. The planet is not simply sinking into a sea of red ink; it is already sunk. The people just don’t realize it yet,” he said.

According to Robertson, “the Bush-Cheney regime is preparing the nation for transition from democracy into dictatorship because a dictatorship will be necessary to control, in 5 years time, food and water riots.” He said “the federal government, that part of Patriot II Act, the internal exile, that the government is going to have to build now huge detention compounds on federal lands, probably in the West where the land is available, to potentially house 50 million or more citizens that will be in financial ruin.”

In 10 years time, whoever is left will be effectively starting again, he said. “More importantly, and I’m trying to think how we imply this or how we express this to the people, what extraordinary times we are living in and how the destruction of the planet has been engineered by the Bushonian Cabal from 1980 to 1992, and then from 2001 to present, which has effectively destroyed the economic liquidity of the planet,” he said.

*original source on bottom of the above linked page.

 

Also found some interesting, although possibly dubious, information here: http://worldreports.org/news/120_updated_embargo_sanctions_took_effect_noon_est.

(excuse the caps, just copying & pasting here...)

I apologize for bringing up anything that has been disproved (and anything possibly too conspiracy theory like to be posted here), I just thought it was interesting regardless.  In any case, the first article I linked sounds more credible, so I suppose there's always that.  What do you think?

I wouldn’t lose too much sleep over this. Robertson made a lot of money in the 1990’s using high-risk investment strategies, but the article doesn’t mention that he was wiped out in 2000. Apparently, he’s aggressively playing the yield curve now and, not surprisingly, it’s working. It will continue to work until the Fed decides to tighten, at which point he’ll probably be wiped out again.

 

Someone always seems to be predicting utter global collapse, but it never seems to happen. We still have a ways to go in liquidating the housing bubble, and recent actions by the Fed, the Bush administration, and congress will only make it worse, but we’ll make it through and the world won’t end.