Cataclysm
cataclysm, n. -- Syn. upheaval, disturbance, disaster, ...
Webster's New World Thesaurus, Third Edition

As You might have noticed I am always warning people for coming disasters and threats. I have been warning for the Soviet Union, Socialism in general, The Debt Crises and Bank Chrashes, defence of the fixed exchange rate, The European Single Currency and The emerging European Superstate.

Each of the things to the left are unpleasant.
It will be even worse if they happen to occur more or less at the same time...

A reasonable sequence can go like this: The dollar drops, the inflation goes up, the bonds go down, i.e. interest rates up, houseprices and stock market down, euro up, EU unemployment goes up and the EMU goes pop.

Rolf Englund
Stockholm, June 10, 2005
Have a nice day!

Sort of up-date

Bra film av Johan Norberg om finanskrisen, men utan svar
"Överdos - en film om nästa finanskris"
Rolf Englund blog 2010-05-04

US economic, military and political dominance is likely to decline over the next two decades
The National Intelligence Council (NIC) predicts China, India and Russia will increasingly challenge US influence.
It also says the dollar will no longer be the world's major currency, and food and water shortages will fuel conflict.
BBC 21 November 2008

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Is it possible for the vast mass of humanity to enjoy the living standards of today’s high-income countries?
This is, arguably, the biggest question confronting humanity in the 21st century.
Martin Wolf, Financial Times June 10 2008

Here is exactly what we are facing, right now:
Depression in the housing market;
retail inflation (due entirely to the price of oil and the plummeting dollar),
credit availability all but shut down, and today we discover that grain stores are at their lowest point since they began measuring in 1960: 53 days.
Michael Fox February 22, 2008

According to the CEO of Potash Corp., the Canadian fertilizer giant, if there is any disruption to this year’s grain harvest, the world will be facing famine in 2009.

And this is not a question of the rock-concert-for-third-world-countries famine, folks.

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Wake up to the dangers of a deepening crisis
The odds now favour a US recession that slows growth significantly on a global basis.
There is the risk that the adverse impacts will be felt for the rest of this decade and beyond.
In such an environment, economic policy needs to be governed by the clear and public recognition that restoring the normal functioning of the financial system and containing any damage its breakdown may do the real economy is the central macro-economic and financial challenge facing the US.
First, maintaining demand must be the over-arching macro-economic priority.
All of this may not be enough to avert a recession.
But it is much more than is under way right now.
Lawrence Summers, FT November 25 2007

The world economy can now look forward to confronting four ugly and partly interrelated shocks at the same time:
a US economy heading for the rocks, a rise in global inflation, a collapse in the dollar’s exchange rate and a credit market crisis.
Wolfgang Munchau, FT November 11 2007

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John Rubino 7/20/2007:
In “The Coming Collapse of the Dollar,” James Turk and I said this about the effect of a falling dollar on other countries:
The only reason Japan or Europe can generate even their current meager rates of growth is the willingness of U.S. consumers to buy their Hondas and BMWs.
As the dollar plunges, Japanese and European goods, priced in suddenly-appreciating currencies, will become prohibitively expensive for U.S. consumers, who will respond by buying U.S.-made alternatives or nothing at all.

Correctly interpreting this change in buying patterns as a threat to their vital export sectors, European and Japanese leaders will respond with the only weapon they have left: monetary inflation. They’ll cut interest rates and buy dollars with their currencies, flooding the world with euros and yen the way the U.S. now floods the world with dollars.

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The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other
Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century
book by James Howard Kunstler

See also: Det är långt kvar till 2010
Conundrum

"There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as a result of a voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved.
Ludwig von Mises

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The Greenspan Warnings
Nick Barisheff November 22, 2005

Derivatives Dangers In remarks to Congress in October, 1998

The Potential Drop in Asset Values, Jackson Hole, Wyoming on August 26, 2005

The Housing Bubble, Jackson Hole on August 27, 2005

The Coming Crisis in Social Security, US House of Representatives, February 11, 2004

Oil Supply Risks, Washington, D.C., October 15, 2004

The Rising Budget Deficit, US House of Representatives, July 20, 2005

Rising Long-Term Interest Rates, in Germany, November 19, 2004

The Record-High Current Account Deficit, US House of Representatives, February 11, 2004

Read more here

Cataclysm has never been far away from the thoughts of mortals,
as Simon Pearson recounts in A Brief History of The End of the World.
This is an entertaining, though superficial, romp through “end-time myths” from the Flood through the early Christian mystics to the visions of nuclear Armageddon that invaded our nightmares last century. Pearson marshals a convincing breadth of examples to show how pervasive this idea is, with some brief thoughts on why it may be such a deep-seated psychological need.
How climate change became a burning issue, Fiona Harvey, Financial Times, September 22 2006

The book at Amazon UK

I often feel like Cassandra
Cassandra was doomed to tell the truth, but never to be believed.

Austria-Hungary early became reconciled with Germany and joined the Three Emperors' League . At the Congress of Berlin (1878; see Berlin, Congress of ) Count Andrássy, the foreign minister, secured a mandate over Bosnia and Herzegovina . In 1879 he entered an alliance with Germany, joined also by Italy in 1882 (see Triple Alliance and Triple Entente ). The formation of the Triple Entente (France, England, Russia) to oppose this alliance led to the tense diplomatic situation that preceded World War I . The foreign policy of Graf von Aehrenthal led to the Bosnian crisis of 1908-9, and the reckless demands that his successor, Graf von Berchtold , made on Serbia after the assassination of Francis Ferdinand helped to precipitate the cataclysm.
Click for The Columbia Encyclopedia

Cataclysm! : Compelling Evidence of a Cosmic Catastrophe in 9500 B.C.
Click for Amazon