To be a prema-bear you need to have a credible dark cloud on the horizon to bring meaning to your life. To continue to make doom-laden prophesies can be exhausting if, day after day, things keep getting better.
The doomsters look pretty good for a few months in 2008, but now after 5 years of rally, they look pretty silly. Certainly listening to their sad song and keeping you money in cash and precious metals would have proved pretty financially costly when compared to a position post-crash, for recovery.
What is there to be doomy about now?
Long gone is the Euro crisis, even further in the past is the banking crisis that kicked off the depression in the west that has yet to extract its final barbs from the world economy.
There appears to remain little left to tip the world over into an abyss.
However, real crashes don’t come from the expected. While a few of us pundits may have predicted 2007-2008, the fact remains that it took most people sophisticated or otherwise by surprise. The world is never more bullish than at the top of a bull market.
We could be at the top of such a bull market now.
However what can topple us into another slump today.
Love them or loath them, the central banks of the world have reined back in the instability of the past few years. Even if you hate QE and predict it will create hyper-inflation and a tidal wave of economic disaster, there are few if any signs that there is any writing on the wall for that.
It is clear we are in the endgame of the long depression of 2008. Tapering says it all, the economy of the developed world is coming back.
Governments may be financially incontinent, may be incapable of doing anything but taxing and spending to infinity, but right now there is nothing to suggest they won’t be able to carry on digging bigger holes for the private sector to fill, for years to come.
So is there anything to worry about.
Sadly there is always something to go wrong. So if you want to keep a sharp eye on the horizon for threats what is the number 1 worry?
For me it is China.
Over the last few years we have sequentially seen bastions of command and control government suddenly and expectantly fold. The regimes of North Africa have been a case in point and as I write the uprising in Ukraine is a further case in point.
We are living in revolutionary times.
I is always said how stable China is and how the state is so overarching, organised and powerful that nothing can possible upset the applecart. It is emblematic of just how tight is state control that if you ask locals in passing if you think things can continue to run smoothly you will be met with nervous laughter and silence. Everything you will be assured is just wonderful.
Yes how stable is a country like China when a quarter of its rich have emigrated and another 50% are seriously considering to do likewise.
This is a sign that the smart of the smart Chinese consider their country a powder keg.
Now this is not a prediction of oncoming disaster, merely a flag for investors to keep an eye on the political stability of China. If China was to come unglued then we certainly would be looking at a major global economic crash.
As such if you need to spot a black spot of the sun, this is the one to look out for, because as the second biggest economy in the world and one of the most opaque and complicated China is one of the key risks to the worlds continued recovery.