The time has now come for the year-end assessments and for the forecasts for 2013. Like it has already become customary, Danish investment bank Saxo Bank has published its "outrageous" forecasts for 2013.
They have been widely reproduced by the international and Romanian press. Unfortunately, the foreword of Steen Jakobsen, the chief-economist of the bank, was less popular.
"The macroeconomy has run out of ammunition to improve the sentiment in the markets", writes Jakobsen, and "we are only left with praying for a better future", as "we have been reduced to the status of observers of the actions of the central bank, like a horde of junkies waiting for the next liquidity injection".
After he writes that "we have a proforma capitalism, with a de facto totalitarianism", Jakobsen makes a request, probably addressed to the governments and central banks, "to get the free markets back".
Unfortunately, for now, Santa is unable to fulfill the wish of Steen Jakobsen. And he implicitly acknowledges this, because the return of the free markets is so "scandalous" that it hasn't found its place among the ten forecasts that strive to shock.
Closer to the reality in the field, Jim Rickards, the author of the book "Currency wars - the making of the next global crisis", sees an intensification of the actions of the central banks and governments to weaken their own currencies.
Rickards recently said for RT News that "Federal Reserve is in fact fighting against the economic depression. The leaders of the Fed do not use this word, but we need to admit that we have been in an economic depression since 2007". He means of course the new quantitative easing program launched by the American central bank. "But can the Fed reach its goals before people lose their confidence in the dollar?", he asks.
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