HOW TO PLAY IT-Getting an early jump on year-end investing

" And yes, a crash is coming.

Bernanke can try to put it off for a while, but every action he takes is just making the eventual crash even worse.

And some in the financial community clearly recognize this.  For example, credit rating agency Egan-Jones downgraded the credit rating of the United States  to AA-  on Friday."

The following are 14 signs from around the globe that the world economy is getting weaker....

#1  Things in China do not look good right now.  The Shanghai Composite index fell to its lowest point  in over 3 years  earlier this week.  Will the S& P 500 soon follow suit?

#2  The Bank of Japan has resorted to yet another round of money printing  in a desperate attempt  to try to bolster the faltering Japanese economy....

In Asia, the Bank of Japan has long been manufacturing money out of thin air. It has just announced an eighth round of money printing to prop up the ailing Japanese economy. The Bank of Japan is to purchase 10 trillion yen of bonds to add further liquidity into the financial system. Now it has 80 trillion yen of bonds in its portfolio, equivalent to 20 per cent of Japan's gross domestic product.

#3  In Spain, violent demonstrations over the state of the Spanish economy just outside the national Parliament building in Madrid on Tuesday evening  made headlines all over the globe.  You can view video of police brutally beating young Spanish protesters during those demonstrations  right here.

#4  As unemployment hovers around the 25 percent mark, foraging through garbage bins for food has become so rampant in Spain that one city has actually started putting locks on supermarket garbage bins " as a public health precaution" .

#5  Despite all of the money printing that the ECB has been doing, the yield on 10 year Spanish bonds has risen back up  to about 6 percent  again.

#6  The economic protests in Greece are getting completely and totally out of control.  Just check out  this description  of the " Day of Rage" that took place in Greece earlier this week....

Police fired stun grenades and tear gas at protesters yesterday as tens of thousands poured into the streets of Athens as part of a nationwide strike to challenge a new round of austerity measures that are expected to cut wages, pensions and healthcare once again.

Dozens of youths, some masking their faces with helmets and T-shirts, hurled Molotov cocktails and rocks at police who fired back in an effort to scatter the angry crowds around the parliament building. More than 50,000 people are believed to have participated in the mass walk-out in Athens alone.

#7  The unemployment rate in France has risen for  16 months in a row  and is now the highest that it has been in over a decade.

#8  As I wrote about  recently, the number of unemployed workers in Italy has increased by  more than 37 percent  over the past year.

#9  New orders for durable goods in the United States fell by a whopping  13.2 percent  in August.  That was the largest decline that we have seen since the middle of the last recession (January 2009).

#10  According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, U.S. GDP only grew at a  1.3 percent  annual rate during the second quarter of 2012 as opposed to the 1.7 percent annual rate previously reported.

#11  The U.S. Postal Service is about to experience its  second financial default  in just the past two months....

The U.S. Postal Service will default this week on a $5.6 billion congressionally mandated obligation to pre-fund retiree health benefits, marking the second time in two months the cash-strapped agency has done this.

#12  It looks like General Motors  is on a path  that will lead to bankruptcy (again).

#13  According to a recent survey conducted by State Street Global Advisors,  71 percent  of " investors in a survey of 300 around the world, including the largest pension funds, asset managers and private banks, fear an imminent Lehman-like event."

#14  According to a recent survey of American CEOs by Business Roundtable, the number of CEOs that plan to eliminate jobs hasrisen significantly  from earlier this year....

The CEOs’ decline in confidence comes alongside a worsening employment outlook. Thirty-four percent of the 138 CEOs surveyed said in this quarter’s survey that they expected their companies to cut jobs in the next six months, compared to just 20 percent in the second quarter. Likewise, only 29 percent say they expect employment to grow in the next half year, down from 36 percent last quarter.

But the mainstream media in the United States would like us to believe that everything is getting better.

The mainstream media would like us to believe that  QE3  is going to stimulate lots of new hiring all over America, and they are greatly celebrating the fact that the S& P 500 hit  a five year high  on Thursday.

Well, those on Wall Street should celebrate this monetary " sugar high" while they still can.  Of course QE3 was going to cause stock prices to rise  in the short-term, but the reality of the matter is that QE3 is not going to do a thing to stop the financial markets from crashing when the time comes for them to crash.

Economies tend to flourish in a stable, predictable environment.  When you start recklessly printing money, it may help your economic numbers in the short-term, but it disrupts the stability of the system.

And once you have created a tremendous amount of instability, it is really, really hard to convince people that you can create stability once again.

When it comes to economics, confidence is one of the most important ingredients.  If people lose confidence in the system, it almost does not matter what else you do.

As I wrote about the other day, quantitative easing worked for  the Weimar Republic  for a little while, but in the end it resulted in total disaster.

It will also end in total disaster for us.

All over the globe financial authorities are playing all sorts of games in an attempt to keep the system functioning smoothly.  But these games are going to steadily undermine confidence in the system, and that is going to prove to be absolutely deadly.

Take advantage of this period of relative stability while you still can, because when it is gone it is not coming back.

Stock funds continue to bleed despite QE3