Ireland, UK, & USA May Need to Lower Living Standards
World Currencies Are Paper Backed By People’s Faith In Them
Ireland, the UK, and USA all had major news reports on their precarious financial conditions in the past couple of days:
Irish banking stocks lose over half their value
IRISH BANK stocks crashed in trading yesterday, losing at least half their market value, as investors panicked that their shareholdings would become worthless if the Government’s banking recapitalisation scheme does not go ahead in its proposed form.
AIB’s share price fell 58 per cent, Bank of Ireland plummeted almost 55 per cent, and Irish Life Permanent closed down 50 per cent after a day of trading characterised by panic among shareholders.
Fears abounded yesterday that AIB and Bank of Ireland would have to be nationalised by the Government alongside Anglo Irish Bank. One Dublin-based equities dealer reported that “complete panic” had gripped the stock market, while other dealers described the plummets in share prices as financial “carnage”.
The immediate trigger was the announcement of a new recapitalisation scheme by the British government that would see its preference shares in Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) converted into newly issued ordinary shares or “straight equity” which would dilute the value of existing shares.
Investors feared that the same step may have to be applied to AIB and Bank of Ireland in order to recapitalise them. Under the Government’s recapitalisation scheme announced in December, both banks were asked to raise €1 billion each. It now looks increasingly unlikely that they will be able to raise this capital themselves.
Meanwhile, the forecast by some banking analysts late last week that the nationalisation of Anglo Irish Bank would bring stability to the rest of the Irish banking system failed to materialise. One dealer described such a suggestion as evidence that people were “living in cloudcuckooland” when it comes to Irish banking.
It now appears that Anglo’s failure and the intervention by the Government has further damaged the reputation of the Irish banking sector among international investors and heightened the “country risk” for shareholders. http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/finance/2009/0120/1232059661975.html
Jeremy Warner: UK not drowning, only waving
Wednesday, 21 January 2009
Outlook Jim Rogers, former partner of George Soros and something of an investment guru in his own right, has again been sounding off about sterling and the UK economy, which he believes essentially finished. Sell sterling, he says. Sell all UK assets. The country is bankrupt. North Sea oil is all used up, and the financial services industry is now gone too. The country has nothing left to sell.
As if on cue, the pound took another hammering in foreign exchange markets yesterday, unnerved by the sheer scale of the latest bank rescue package and the growing realisation the crisis might end in nationalisation of one or more of the major high street banks.
No disrespect to Mr Rogers, but he’s not got this right. Nobody can say how far sterling might fall. Currency markets operate according to their own will, and the pound could yet devalue quite a bit further before it recovers.
Yet it has almost certainly already overshot fair value and will at some stage claw back some of its losses. I’m not sure I share the confidence expressed last night by Mervyn King, the Governor of the Bank of England, that the latest batch of policies to address the banking crisis “will eventually work”, but nor will they “bankrupt” the country, as some suggest.
Even if the Government eventually feels obliged to nationalise one or more of the major banks outright, national insolvency is a quite unlikely outcome. That’s not to underestimate the scale of the problem. Iceland has gone bust and Ireland appears perilously close to it. There is no reason to believe economies can remain immune to the death spiral of confidence that afflicts global capital markets simply because they are relatively large.
The world’s system is more and more clearly based upon people’s faith in their currencies, even though the governments that print them seem set on printing more of the currency–which ultimately can lead to it being recognized as worth less…
But though we may not be about to go bankrupt, we have to reconcile ourselves to a long and painful period of adjustment, involving rising taxes and declining relative living standards. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/comment/jeremy-warner/jeremy-warner-uk-not-drowning-only-waving-1452388.html
“I’ve found that credit losses could peak at a level of $3.6 trillion for U.S. institutions, half of them by banks and broker-dealers,” Roubini said at a conference in Dubai. “If that’s true, it means the U.S. banking system is effectively insolvent, because it starts with a capital of $1.4 trillion. This is a systemic banking crisis.”
Losses and write-downs at financial companies worldwide have risen to more than $1 trillion since the credit crisis began, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/01/20/business/roubini.4-412267.php
Decades ago, the late Herbert W. Armstrong warned that the time would come that the Anglo-American peoples would need to greatly lower their standards of living. Notice the following:
I warn you, PREPARE greatly to reduce your standard of living! Even GREATER punishments are to follow! (Armstrong HW. Prepare to Greatly Reduce Your Standard of Living. Plain Truth magazine, May 1983, p. 29).
Might we be close to the time that the standard of living for the Anglo-American peoples will be lowered?
World financial events indicate that this may now be so.
However, even worse things are expected.
A reader of this page sent in the following:
Since the end of WWII, Mr. Armstrong had long maintained that there would be a steady decline in the British Empire and today this is exactly what is happening (much of it behind the scenes). Now, just like then, American mainstream media has ignored his warning about that decline and his other assertions, just as the children of Israel had done in the days of the original prophets.
Lets look at one of the more recent and probably the most significant forecast Mr. Armstrong made in accordance to Scripture. In a sermon on July 7, 1984, the late Herbert W. Armstrong reported:
“And I can see now, the event that is going to trigger the formation of the reunification in Europe; the resurrection of the medieval Holy Roman Empire that we’ve been looking forward to that is prophesied to come…
But I believe that some event is going to happen suddenly just like out a blue sky that is going to shock the whole world and is going to cause the nations in Europe to realize they must unite! … Well now I think I can see what may be the very event that is going to trigger…that is the economic situation in the world…
The whole banking structure in the United States is a network all jointed together. But not only that, one nation has to deal with other nations and imports and exports. And so they have to have a means of transforming money from one nation to another. And so the banking structure is international and interwoven…
Now when the financial structure breaks down, all civilization is going to break down…”
That statement was made by Herbert W. Armstrong back in 1984 before the iron curtain came down. Less than a decade later the Soviets did fall, and in 1993 the European Union was formed. In 1999 that Union formed its own currency (albeit it only existed systematically), and in 2002 that currency officially was circulated, fully tangible and is today the currency of the 325 million citizen Eurozone, which consists of 16 nations (apart from the European Union proper).
From the beginning of the EU’s inception, the once vanquished and divided Germany has figured prominently. Also from the beginning Britain has only given lukewarm approval of the idea of an European Union, and is not a part of the all important Eurozone or the circulation of the Euro.
Now the United States of America is in trouble economically. If our nation cannot recover from its current economic crisis, there will be a massive void in the world economy, and Europe will exploit it. They have the consumer market force, the banking system and technical expertise to make it happen. What they don’t have is the cultural cohesion needed to come together as a solid unit. Likely their common religious roots will remedy that malady in the short term.
The Europeans are also interested in banding together militarily, especially given Russia’s agressive behavior lately. Because NATO was founded by the U.S., it will probably be disbanded, and a new independent military pact will be entered into. And for those who wonder about whether or not the EU will ultimately consist of 10 nations, I would urge you to look at the core of the EU, i.e., the Eurozone, where the Euro currency is in effect. I believe that the current economic situation in the U.S. will produce a leaner core of 10 Eurozone nations, because it is likely that the weakness in the American economy will expose the weakness of fringe economic elements in the European Union in general.
The other thing we should notice is this: the Eurozone is 325 million citizens, all bunched up on the second smallest continent in the world. The U.S. is 3.7 million square miles of territory and owes the world a great deal of debt that it cannot pay back. If our economy were to collapse, the only thing we have left to mitigate that debt is natural and HUMAN resources.
The statement Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong made in 1984 has proven more significant today than ever and gives anyone who reads it some insight into what we can expect to happen in the near future, namely the breakdown of our civilization as we know it. Now, more than ever, is the time to start believing in the authority of the bible, and believing the Church and ministry that has its roots in the tradition of the first man in recent history that God revealed his infallible Word to. We must repent and believe the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
The “human resources” he is referring to include making Anglo-Americans (excluding the Irish as they will likely be more aligned with Europe) slaves in the future (cf. Habakkuk 2:7-8).
The problems are that serious.
Perhaps I should close with the following scripture:
3 A prudent man foresees evil and hides himself, But the simple pass on and are punished. (Proverbs 22:3)
Are you truly prudent?
Some articles of possibly related interest may include:
Anglo – America in Prophecy & the Lost Tribes of Israel Are the Americans, Canadians, British, Scottish, Welsh, Australians, Anglo-Southern Africans, and New Zealanders descendants of Joseph? Where are the lost ten-tribes of Israel? Who are the lost tribes of Israel? Will God punish the U.S.A., Canada, United Kingdom, and other Anglo nations? Why might God allow them to be punished first?
Who Was Herbert W. Armstrong? How is He Viewed Today? Includes quotes from the 1973 edition of The Autobiography of Herbert W. Armstrong and explains how he is and should be viewed today.
15 Accusations and Truthful Responses About Herbert W. Armstrong He, even after his death, keeps being improperly maligned–here is the truth on these matters.
Barack Obama, Prophecy, and the Destruction of the United States Some claim that Barack Obama is the prophesied “son of Kenya”, based up an early 20th century writing.
Prophecy Obama: Prophecies of Barack Obama? Are there biblical and non-biblical prophecies about Barack Obama. Did Nostradamus predict Barack Obama dealing with the Antichrist? This is the longest and most detailed of the articles here related to prophecy and Barack Obama.
Does God Have a 6,000 Year Plan? What Year Does the 6,000 Years End? Was a 6000 year time allowed for humans to rule followed by a literal thousand year reign of Christ on Earth taught by the early Christians? When does the six thousand years of human rule end?
Can the Great Tribulation Begin in 2009, 2010, or 2011? Can the Great Tribulation begin today? When is the earliest that the Great Tribulation can begin? What is the Day of the Lord?
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