Opinion: Stock-market crash of 2016

It’s time to start the countdown to the crash of 2016. Technology IPOs are in the lead, and with all that good news, it’s easy to understand why investors tune out, don’t want to hear the warnings, no countdown to the 2016 crash. But the crash of 2016 really is coming. Dead ahead. Maybe not till we get a bit closer to the presidential election cycle of 2016.

Theorists warn that we dodged a crash in 2012-2013, thanks to the Fed’s stimulus and cheap-money polities. Or rather delayed it, which adds more power to the next one. But we also know markets are typically up the third year of a presidency.

Jeremy Grantham’s already on record predicting that “around the presidential election or soon after, the market bubble will burst, as bubbles always do, and will revert to its trend value, around half of its peak or worse.” That will translate into the DJIA crashing from today’s 18,117 down 50% to about 9,000. Ouch, the Dow crashing all the way below 10,000.

Remember 1999. Just 16 years ago. Roaring hot “irrational exuberance.” Renewed stock market mania. Wall Street was hot. Stocks roaring. Back then investors demanded insane annual returns during the worldwide millennium celebrations: the top 19 mutual funds had 179% to 323% annual returns. Yes, dot-com stockholders expected 100% plus returns on zero revenues. Laughed at 30% index fund returns.

“The United States is more vulnerable today than ever before including during the Great Depression and the Civil War,” says Thom Hartmann, in “The Crash of 2016.” Why? “Because the pillars of democracy that once supported a booming middle class have been corrupted, and without them, America teeters on the verge of the next Great Crash.”

“The United States is in the midst of an economic implosion that could make the Great Depression look like child’s play,” warns Hartmann. His analysis is brutal, sees that “the facade of our once-great United States will soon disintegrate to reveal the rotting core where corporate and billionaire power and greed have replaced democratic infrastructure and governance.