"Disaster Scenario" Comes Into Focus in Financial Markets

We have more news today coming from the choppy financial markets.  The headlines with words like, "disaster", "collapse", "alarmed', 'slumping' and "tumbling" seem to be coming on a daily basis now.  We continue to look on in amazement and wonder how this global financial market, put together by greedy, evil men spread across the entire world and connected by wires and 0's in cyber-space can POSSIBLY stay together much longer.

Slumping commodity prices, a disappointing U.S. retail sales number and the World Bank's cut to its 2015 global growth forecast triggered a flight from "risk" assets Wednesday morning. In recent trading, the Dow was down nearly 1% while commodity prices hit a 12-year low as copper suffered its biggest drop in six years. On the flip side, U.S. Treasury yields fell to record levels and gold prices rose as traders searched for "safe havens."

The 0.9% drop in December U.S. retail sales was particularly troubling in the context of the World Bank cutting its 2015 global growth forecast to 3% vs. 3.4% previously. The U.S. is shaping up to be the globe's main engine of growth as the year starts, which itself "does not make for a rosy outlook for the world," as the World Bank's chief economist told The WSJ. But the bullish case for the U.S. rests in large part on hopes 2015 will mark a rebound for U.S. consumer spending amid signs of an improving job market, albeit without much wage growth; Wednesday's retail sales figure challenges those assumptions.

The 0.9% drop in overall U.S. retail sales was much worse than expected, but not shocking because falling gas prices were expected to hit the headline figure. But a 0.3% drop in retail sales excluding autos and gas was wildly off the consensus for a rise of 0.5%.

"What was not expected was broad based weakness spread through nine of the thirteen major retail categories," writes Dan Greenhaus, chief strategist at BTIG. "Importantly, core retail sales – which matter for GDP estimates, declined by 0.4% whereas expectations were looking for an increase of 0.4%. Needless to say, that is a terrible miss."

Again, combined with slumping commodity prices -- an indication of the global economy's weakness -- that 'terrible miss' makes it much more challenging to make a bullish case for stocks. 

"The change of direction here [in the global economy] is alarming when combined with the steady fall in commodity prices, deflation pretty much everywhere...combined with everybody has had it with central bank intervention," Henry Blodget tells me in the accompanying video. "There is no political will to do anything. If we are headed for trouble globally it's going to be tough to do anything."

That is the "disaster scenario," according to Blodget who admittedly has been early (and wrong thus far) in forecasting doom for the stock market. But equity valuations are stretched on a historic basis and, as noted here, trends for S&P 500 earnings growth and capEx spending for 2015 are already under severe pressure amid devastation in the energy sector, the flattening yield curve hitting financials and the strong dollar hitting all U.S. multinationals, notably tech.

Here;  http://finance.yahoo.com/news/-doomdsay-scenario--comes-into-focus-as-stocks--commodities-slump-151108219.html

Traders are "looking for safe havens".....good luck with that!  We know for a FACT that investors (people just like you and me) have poured BILLIONS of dollars into what they believe are safe havens...but are actually LOADED WITH RISK.  When things tank, and they will because they always do, people will be amazed at how much value will be lost in something they thought was safe. Remember 2008?

Friends, this whole scenario reminds me of another story in the Bible when men thought they could put together a project so fantastic that they wouldn't need God for anything!  They could shape their own destinies and be masters of their own domain!!

Their project was called The Tower of Babel.

Genesis 11
5 But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. 6 The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”

8 So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. 9 That is why it was called Babel—because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth.

The world today is certainly as Godless as it was in those days AFTER THE FLOOD.  It doesn't take men long, even after witnessing God's amazing power, to fall back into hedonism, greed and lust.

When Christ comes down and snatches His bride out of Satan's clutches, this current financial Tower of Babel will most certainly come crashing down.  It's guaranteed.  And no doubt the people will be scattered as they scramble around wondering what just happened and looking anywhere and everywhere for someone who has answers!

So where is our "safe haven"?

Hat tip to Mick L.