Great Unravelling

“The Great Unravelling” is when the financial markets unwind, often with an event such as a crash. American economist and New York (NY) Times columnist Paul Krugman popularized the term with his book, The Great Unravelling: From Boom to Bust in Three Scandalous Years (2003). The term was further popularized by the article “Emerging markets: The great unravelling” by James Kynge and Jonathan Wheatley, published in the Financial Times on April 1, 2015.
 
Jeff Thomas of Doug Casey’s International Man might have coined the term ‘Great Unraveling.” Thomas used the term in “11 Stages of the Crash.” (The website does not have a date, but Thomas stated that this article was from 1999.) Thomas wrote in October 2011:
 
“In 1999, I began to form a picture in my mind of what I termed ‘The Great Unraveling’ - a period in which the economies of the First World would collapse. I believed that it would not all happen with one great crash, but would occur in fits and starts, with the relevant governments artificially propping up their economies as events unfolded, with a series of band-aid solutions that would delay the inevitable, but ultimately, would worsen the outcome considerably. Hence the choice of the word, ‘unraveling.’”
   
 
Wikipedia: Paul Krugman
Paul Robin Krugman (born February 28, 1953) is an American economist, Professor of Economics and International Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, Centenary Professor at the London School of Economics, Distinguished Scholar at the Luxembourg Income Study Center at the CUNY Graduate Center, and a left-leaning op-ed columnist for The New York Times. In 2008, Krugman won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his contributions to New Trade Theory and New Economic Geography. According to the prize Committee, the prize was given for Krugman’s work explaining the patterns of international trade and the geographic concentration of wealth, by examining the effects of economies of scale and of consumer preferences for diverse goods and services.
 
Casey Research
Jeff Thomas
International Man
Independent Contributor Profile

Jeff Thomas is British and resides in the Caribbean. The son of an economist and historian, he learned early to be distrustful of governments as a general principle. Although he spent his career creating and developing businesses, for eight years, he penned a weekly newspaper column on the theme of limiting government.
 
Doug Casey’s International Man
(1999? No date is given.—ed.)
11 Stages of the Crash
by Jeff Thomas
With all the study and thought that are required to make sense out of how the Great Unraveling will play out, we seldom take time to think of what it will be like on the other side. Those of us who are, by nature, long-term thinkers and/or optimistic, have a vague picture in mind of a rebirth of libertarian thinking, and a vibrant economy. However, we tend not to think too much more about these hopes than that, because we are caught up in the Great Unraveling itself - a very time-consuming topic.
 
OCLC WorldCat record
The great unravelling : from boom to bust in three scandalous years
Author: Paul R Krugman
Publisher: London : Allen Lane, 2003.
Edition/Format:   Print book : English
Database: WorldCat
Summary:
Paul Krugman chronicles how the boom economy unravelled: how exuberance gave way to pessimism, how the age of corporate heroes gave way to corporate scandals, how fiscal responsibility collapsed.
 
Australian Broadcasting Corporation<


TV PROGRAM TRANSCRIPT
LOCATION: http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2004/s1064193.htm
Broadcast: 11/03/2004
Krugman calls on Bush to reign in the red
Reporter:
TONY JONES: Well, the US is not just labouring under a record trade deficit, there are warnings tonight that its budget deficit could precipitate a Latin American style financial crisis.
 
Influential economist Paul Krugman says the US will face a severe downturn before the end of the decade unless the $500 billion fiscal debt is rectified.

In his latest book, The Great Unravelling, the Princeton University economist is calling on President Bush to abandon his program of trillion dollar tax cuts, otherwise, he claims, there may not be enough funds to pay for the waves of baby boomers who will soon retire.
   
Doug Casey’s International Man
October 11, 2011
Making Sense Out of the Great Unraveling
by Jeff Thomas
In 1999, I began to form a picture in my mind of what I termed “The Great Unraveling” - a period in which the economies of the First World would collapse. I believed that it would not all happen with one great crash, but would occur in fits and starts, with the relevant governments artificially propping up their economies as events unfolded, with a series of band-aid solutions that would delay the inevitable, but ultimately, would worsen the outcome considerably. Hence the choice of the word, “unraveling.”
 
The Economist
Balkanised banking
The great unravelling
Bank supervisors are quietly forcing a deglobalisation of finance

Apr 20th 2013 | From the print edition
SOME on Wall Street casually call it the “anti-Deutsche Bank rule” because of its potential impact on Germany’s biggest bank. In truth, it should probably be known as the “anti-globalisation rule” for the chilling effect it may have on cross-border banking almost everywhere.
 
The Market Oracle
A Glimpse into the Coming Economic Collapse
Jan 18, 2014 - 10:04 AM GMT
By: Casey_Research
By Jeff Thomas, International Man
Beginning in 1999, we predicted a systemic economic collapse that would take place in the First World and would impact all other economies. We began to list some of the “dominoes” that would fall as the collapse evolved and described that the “Great Unravelling,” as we termed it, would take roughly ten years. At that time, we guesstimated that the first two of the dominoes, a real estate crash and subsequent stock market crash in the US, would begin in about 2005.
 
Financial Times
April 1, 2015 7:27 pm
Emerging markets: The great unravelling
James Kynge and Jonathan Wheatley
Developing economies are suffering their biggest capital outflows since the financial crisis
   
Rand Daily Mail (South Africa)
Emarging markets, emerging inequality
The rich getting richer applies just as much to nations as it does to people, especially those in power in business and politics

RON DERBY 13 APRIL 2015
(...)
The investment world is reading the emerging market story as something like the “great unravelling”, to borrow a phrase from the Financial Times. It’s alarmist, I know, but we do have our issues.