The parallels between 2008 and 2022 just keep getting stronger. 14 years ago, the collapse of Lehman Brothers sent a massive wave of panic through global financial markets and is widely considered to be the key event that plunged us into a horrifying financial crisis that we still talk about to this day. Well, now an even larger bank appears to be on the brink of collapse, and analysts all over the world are deeply concerned about what that will mean for the global financial system if it does fail.
Right now, Credit Suisse is one of the most important banks in the entire world. If you are not familiar with Credit Suisse, the following is some good background information that comes from Wikipedia…
Credit Suisse Group AG is a global investment bank and financial services firm founded and based in Switzerland. Headquartered in Zürich, it maintains offices in all major financial centers around the world and is one of the nine global “Bulge Bracket” banks providing services in investment banking, private banking, asset management, and shared services. It is known for strict bank–client confidentiality and banking secrecy. The Financial Stability Board considers it to be a global systemically important bank. Credit Suisse is also primary dealer and Forex counterparty of the FED .
Credit Suisse is truly one of the central hubs of the entire international banking system.
If it were to fail, the ripple effects would be felt very deeply in literally every nation on the planet.
Unfortunately, it is being reported that Credit Suisse could be “on the verge of collapse” and we are being warned that if it does collapse it could cause “a shock similar to that caused by the bankruptcy of the U.S. bank Lehman Brothers in September 2008”…
Speculation surrounding the future of the Swiss banking giant has been going on for several months in the markets, in business and political circles, as well as on social networks.
The No. 2 Swiss bank and one of the largest banks in the world is in deep trouble and is currently fighting for its survival. A negative outcome is likely to cause a shock similar to that caused by the bankruptcy of the U.S. bank Lehman Brothers in September 2008. This event triggered one of the most serious financial and economic crises since the Great Depression.
When Lehman Brothers collapsed in 2008, it had 639 billion dollars in assets.
In late 2022, Credit Suisse currently has 1.5 trillion dollars of assets under management.
— SG (@GhoshSubhag) October 2, 2022
The collapse of Credit Suisse would create a wave of panic that would be unlike anything that we have seen since the last financial crisis.
But new CEO Ulrich Koerner insists that everything is just fine…
There has been plenty of movement around Credit Suisse over the weekend. On Friday, CEO Ulrich Koerner sent around a memo saying that the bank had a “strong capital base and liquidity position”, whilst senior executives spent their weekend doing their best to reassure large clients, counterparties and investors, according to the Financial Times.
The memo from the CEO also noted that the bank was at a “critical moment” as it prepares for a restructuring, the details of which are the be revealed on October 27. Expectations are that some 5000 jobs could be cut, with assets sold off. Some analysts are saying it won’t be enough, however. According to a Bloomberg report, Credit Suisse is estimated to need a further $4 billion Swiss francs even after asset sales, to fund the restructuring, with a capital raise touted as the most likely option.
Are the markets buying what Koerner is selling?
Nope.
Credit Suisse credit default swaps just keep going the wrong direction, and that means that investors are starting to get really, really nervous…
Credit Suisse’s Credit Default Swaps, or CDS, a derivative instrument that allows an investor to swap their credit risk with another investor, surged on Friday, reflecting the market perception of increasing risk. It is now approaching the highs seen during the 2008 financial crisis, which saw U.S. investment bank Lehman Brothers go bankrupt.
Houston we have a problem. Market cap of $CS is now a rounding error. 35x leverage. This and Deutsche Bank…a canary in coal mine.
CDS on Credit Suisse now at GFC highs. #btc pic.twitter.com/cVTOavkBv2
— FOSS – #forthekids (@FossGregfoss) September 30, 2022
At this point, just about everyone can smell blood.
And it certainly isn’t going to take much to set off widespread hysteria.
Formal Announcement: pic.twitter.com/Pmygv369gq
— Rammity Capital (@RammityCap) October 1, 2022
This is such an ominous time for Europe. The EU is heading into the worst energy crisis that it has ever experienced, the bond market is starting to go bonkers, and now giant financial institutions such as Credit Suisse are being greatly shaken.
Martin Armstrong was recently interviewed by Greg Hunter, and he boldly declared that a “crisis in banking will start in Europe”…
So, could Europe suck the rest of the world down the tubes? Armstrong says, “Oh, absolutely. Europe is the problem. . . . The crisis in banking will start in Europe. . . . The debt is collapsing. They have no way to sustain themselves. The debt market over there is undermining the stability of all the banks. You have to understand that reserves are tied to government debt, and this is the perfect storm. Yes, the (U.S.) stock market will go down short term. We are not facing a 1929 event or a 90% fall here. . . . Europeans, probably by January of 2023, as this crisis in Ukraine escalates, anybody with half a brain is going to take whatever money they have and get it over here.”
I am not as optimistic about U.S. financial markets as Armstrong seems to be.
Yes, Europe is currently in worse shape, but things are starting to unravel quite rapidly here too.
In fact, we just witnessed the worst month for U.S. stocks since the very early days of the pandemic…
September was a horrible month for stocks. The Dow fell nearly 9%, its worst monthly drop since March 2020, when pandemic lockdowns started in the United States. The index ended Friday deeply in the red, too.
Overall, this is the very first time that the Dow Jones Industrial Average has been down for three quarters in a row since 2015.
And it is the very first time that the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq have been down for three quarters in a row since 2009.
A lot of people out there still seem to think that things will “return to normal” very soon, and unfortunately all of those people are very wrong.
The truth is that we are right on the precipice of the sort of historic meltdown that I have been relentlessly warning was coming.
Our leaders kicked the can down the road for a long time, but now they are running out of road.
A day of reckoning has arrived for Europe, and soon a day of reckoning will arrive for us as well.
So buckle your seatbelts, because we are in for a very bumpy ride.
***It is finally here! Michael’s new book entitled “7 Year Apocalypse” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.***
About the Author: My name is Michael and my brand new book entitled “7 Year Apocalypse” is now available on Amazon.com. In addition to my new book I have written five other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, “Get Prepared Now”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”. (#CommissionsEarned) When you purchase any of these books you help to support the work that I am doing, and one way that you can really help is by sending digital copies as gifts through Amazon to family and friends. Time is short, and I need help getting these warnings into the hands of as many people as possible.
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Article cross-posted from The Economic Collapse Blog.
Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.
