For days after China shocked the world in August 2015, “devaluing” its currency seemingly out of nowhere, there was only confusion as to what had just happened. Going by nothing more than the mainstream media and economic narrative fed to it by central bankers and economists (redundant), you wouldn’t have known anything was wrong at all. Manipulating currency for an unfair advantage, probably.
The US economy was booming. The oil price crash that had similarly appeared out of nowhere was a good thing, they said, a tax cut-like effect that would only make the good times better. Never mind the appearance of “overseas turmoil”, that was someone else’s problem.
None of that was true, obviously, and if you were paying attention you could see it coming. There were warnings all over the place, consistent in their direction (deflation, not inflation) spreading throughout markets. CNY wasn’t an outlier, it was perfectly consistent. I wrote on August 14, 2015, just a few days after:
That does not mean, however, that all this is over; far from it. These tremors are warnings that the “dollar” system’s decay is reaching critical points. The mainstream will tender that this is really no big deal, just a tantrum of spoiled markets unwilling to easily treat the coming end of ZIRP and accommodation; that is simply and flat out false. There is a systemic liquidity problem that is and has been fatal, exposed to a greater degree by the continued withdrawal of eurodollar bank participation – the real “printing press.”
Just ten days later, on Monday, August 24, Wall Street flash crashed. It was, for that day, a gruesome session. True to form, the mainstream downplayed it. Here’s but one contemporary example.
Stock markets around the world recorded dramatic declines. It’s ugly. But before you panic, let’s put this in perspective. This is hardly the worst day ever for stocks. This pullback also comes after six years of stellar stock market gains.
