Aftershock: Protect Yourself and Profit in the Next Global Financial Meltdown, 4th Edition

CHAPTER 1 This Recovery Is 100 Percent Fake Why the Aftershock Has Not Been Canceled

We open this fourth edition of Aftershock (2015) with the same chapter title we used in the third edition of Aftershock (2014) and in the second edition of The Aftershock Investor (2013). Notice a pattern? The so-called recovery was 100 percent fake back then and it's still fake today. Even if you've already read an earlier version of this chapter, you may want to take a look at it again. The updated evidence here that reveals the bogus “recovery” is just as compelling today as it was a few years ago. In fact, it's even more damning.

But don't expect many people to point it out. 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 really going on or tell you how to protect yourself. They either don't see what's coming or they don't want you to. With stocks hitting new highs and home prices rising, it's pretty easy for the “experts” to convince the public (and themselves) to think that all is well or soon will be. 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 ...