Depression Ahead

CIA Insider Warns: "25-Year Great Depression is About to Strike America" By MONEY MORNING STAFF REPORTS

You will want to remember this date May 23, 2015.According to one of the top minds in the U.S. Intelligence Community, that is when the United States will enter the darkest economic period in our nation's history.

A 25-year Great Depression. Does This Signal the End of the Dollar?  An alarming pattern has caused many in the Intelligence Community to secretly prepare for a "worst-case scenario."  And alarmingly, he and his colleagues believe the evidence they've uncovered proves this outcome is impossible to avoid.

In an exclusive interview with Money Morning, Jim Rickards, the CIA's Financial Threat and Asymmetric Warfare Advisor, has stepped forward to warn the American people that time is running out to prepare for this $100 trillion meltdown.

"Everybody knows we have a dangerous level of debt. Everybody knows the Fed has recklessly printed trillions of dollars. These are secrets to no one," he said.  "But all signs are now flashing bright red that our chickens are about to come home to roost."  During the discussion, Rickards shared a series of dangerous signals he fears reveals an economy that has reached a super critical state.

One of the signals the CIA is most concerned with is the Misery Index.  Decades back this unique warning sign was created for determining how close our country was to a social collapse. It simply adds the true inflation rate with the true unemployment rate. However, the Federal Reserve has repeatedly changed the way the Misery Index has been calculated over the years. Which Rickards believes is now being used to cover up the true scope of the problem.

"Today you rarely hear the government talk about the Misery Index with the public," Rickards said. "The reason is they may not want you to know the truth. And the truth is, the Misery Index has reached more dangerous levels than we saw prior to the Great Depression. This is a signal of a complex system that's about to collapse."

During the shocking interview Rickards revealed the 5 dangerous "flashpoints" the Intelligence Community is closely monitoring that they believe will unleash this catastrophe. And he also described how it would all unfold.

"I expect the first phase will appear as a nearly instantaneous 70% stock market crash. From the outside, nobody will see it coming." Rickards explained. "Once it becomes clear that it's not a flash crash - it's a systemic meltdown in the economy itself, that's when the gravity of the situation will sink in. And there will be no digging out from it.

"$100 trillion is a conservative estimate for the damage. A lot can happen over 25-years as our country struggles to recover from this."

Along with his CIA responsibilities, Jim Rickards has spent more than 3 decades on Wall Street as a leading international investment banker, hedge fund manager, and as the architect behind the technology nicknamed “the brains” of the NASDAQ.

This unique skillset has placed him at the center of some of the most important events in recent history. For instance, Rickards helped negotiate an end to the Iranian Hostage Crisis in the early 1980s. Then, in the late 1990s, despite being one of its most outspoken critics, the Federal Reserve called on him to step in to prevent a $1.25 trillion Wall Street meltdown during the Long Term Capital Management crisis. And after 9-11, the CIA tasked him with tracking down potential terrorist insider trading that took place prior to the attacks.

This led to him helping lead a sensitive operation called Project Prophecy.  The mission was to use the financial markets to predict pending national security threats from terrorists, rival nations, and from internal weaknesses lurking inside our economy.

The system he built through Project Prophecy proved its accuracy on August 7, 2006, when it detected the warning signs of an impending terrorist attack. Three days later, in London, a plot to blow up 10 U.S. passenger jets was thwarted. And 24 Pakistani extremists were arrested.

However, Rickards now warns that the next attack is going to come from within. And he is not alone in his fears. Recently, a sensitive report containing the consensus view of all 16 branches of the U.S. Intelligence Committee surfaced. It revealed that these agencies have already begun to jointly estimate the impact of "The fall of the dollar as the global reserve currency." And our reign as the leading superpower being annihilated in a way "equivalent to the end of the British Empire in the post-World War II period."

The nightmarish endgame presented in this report involved "a worldwide economic breakdown and an extended period of global anarchy." And Jim Rickards believes we can no longer stop this, we can only prepare for it.

"Look at it this way. Americans are standing at the bottom of a very tall mountain - Mt. Everest, Mt. Kilimanjaro...they look up and see an avalanche barreling down.  Determining the one snowflake that started this chaos shouldn't be our focus. Recognizing the severity of the situation and moving to safety should be," Rickards explained. The question we should all be asking ourselves now is "what if he's right?"

Editor's Note: Money Morning has released their exclusive interview with Jim Rickards to the public. And it's a must-see for every American who is concerned about our country and their financial security.  See Video:

http://moneymorning.com/ext/articles/rickards/25-year-great-depression.php?iris=254985