What Caused The Global Financial Crisis according to John Rubino

The Global Financial Crisis according to John Rubino

John Rubino is the author of How to Profit from the Coming Real Estate Bust. He manages DollarCollapse.com and writes for CFA Magazine.

1. Which FCIC View best represents the causes of the Financial Crisis?

Dissenting Views By Wallison

2. Which narrative presented by Douglas Elliott and Martin Baily of the Brookings Institute in Telling the Narrative of the Financial Crisis: Not Just a Housing Bubble best represents the causes of the Financial Crisis?

“Everyone” was at fault: Wall Street, the government, and our wider society.

3. I believe the Global Financial Crisis is ongoing and I project it will end in the year
2013 or beyond

4. What were the primary causes of the Global Financial Crisis?
We created a system based on central bank money creation and fractional reserve banking that was eventually guaranteed to build up unsustainable debts and then collapse. The process began in 1913 with the creation of the Fed, accelerated in 1971 with the abandonment of the gold standard, and finally crashed in 2000 with the bursting of the tech bubble. Since then the US has been actively trying to destroy the value of the dollar to decrease the cost of its debts. Viewed this way, the housing bubble was a logical outgrowth of the government's ongoing attempt to pump up asset values via money creation and a weaker dollar. It was just the latest in a series of mini bubbles within the larger dollar bubble. When the dollar bubble bursts it will sweep away most of the systems Americans now take for granted -- the global military empire, cradle-to-grave welfare, good public services. Savings will be vaporized and a whole generation impoverished. Very ugly decade coming.

5. What still should change as a result of the crisis?
Everything, since nothing was fixed by the crisis. The government still owns a printing press, the dollar is based on nothing, the military empire and the welfare state are still growing. Debt is so high that no fix is possible, only collapse and then rebuilding.

Compiled by Gary Karz, CFA
Host of InvestorHome

Global Financial Crisis Survey

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