One simple chart to explain the defining problem of our times

Jon Alternative Media, Economy, Fiscal Policies, Geopolitics, Government, Market Commentary

London, England
[Editor’s note: Tim Price is a London-based wealth manager and editor ofPrice Value International.] ‘When sorrows come,’ wrote Shakespeare, ‘they come not single spies, but in battalions.’
True. And Jeremy Warner for the Daily Telegraph identifies ten such sorrows in his ‘ten biggest threats to the global economy’:
1) Geopolitical risk;
2) The threat of oil and gas price spikes;
3) A hard landing in China;
4) Normalization of monetary policy in the Anglo-Saxon economies;
5) Euro zone deflation;
6) ‘Secular stagnation’;
7) The size of the debt overhang;
8) Complacent markets;
9) House price bubbles;
10) Ageing populations.
We’ll start with point #7: the size of the debt overhang.
Since this was never addressed in the immediate aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis, it’s hardly a surprise to see the poison of debt continue to drip onto all things financial.
ALL German government paper out to three years, for example, now offers a negative yield. Investors must pay rent to the German government in order to buy its debt.

This post was published at Sovereign Man on October 13, 2014.