2008 warning signs flashing again across markets: credit squeeze, shadow banks, oil shock, rising unemployment. The smell is back. Private equity is already in trouble. The crisis is coming in April.

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The 2008 parallels aren’t subtle anymore. Let me lay them out:

✓ Credit bubble reversing
✓ Shadow banks gating investor redemptions
✓ Forced asset sales to raise cash
✓ Collateral getting marked down (JP Morgan just did this)
✓ Oil shock driving prices toward $100
✓ Central bankers focused on inflation, the wrong risk
✓ Rising unemployment nobody wants to acknowledge
✓ Officials saying it’s “contained”
✓ Fund managers swearing fundamentals are solid while refusing to return investor money

Every single one of these was present in 2007-2008.

Back then, the NBER didn’t call the recession until December 2008, 9 months after Bear Stearns, 2 months after Lehman.

The Fed was worried about inflation the entire time.

The ECB literally raised rates in July 2008. After Bear Stearns. Because oil was high.

They were staring at the wrong thing while the real crisis built underneath them.

Now does this mean a full 2008 repeat is inevitable? No.

The scale isn’t the same yet. But as Blankfein said, the range of outcomes smells a lot more like that than not. And every week the smell gets stronger.

I’m hosting a live webinar March 26 at 6PM ET. We’re going to go through where we are in this process, what’s changed, and what the market signals say about what’s coming.
https://eurodollar-university.com/home-page-web