We are nearing an endgame

I consider comments like these below from a high profile business executive (as reported by The Australian) as significant. You can be sure the smart money is now positioning itself.

THE world economy is on "life support", living beyond its means, with the threat of a cataclysmic shock within the next eight years, ABC chairman Maurice Newman warned yesterday. The former chairman of the Australian Securities Exchange, who is also a director of the Queensland Investment Corporation, said the Australian economy was better placed than many others to withstand the potential major shock to the world trade and financial system. But he warned that Australia had only a few years to get its economic house in order ...

"We are nearing an endgame, which I put at no more than eight years away, possibly less," he said. He warned that policy failures of governments, rising social costs and financial market volatility would "create a crisis" that would trigger "widespread trade and capital market dislocation". ...

But investors needed to prepare for the crisis by de-risking their portfolios and cleaning up their balance sheets. Australians needed to press their political leaders to make the economy more competitive.

Mr Newman predicted that the coming financial crisis could trigger an end to the role of the US dollar as the reserve currency of the world. He said it could be replaced by a system of International Monetary Fund drawing rights, which could be made up of a basket of currencies including the Chinese renminbi and gold.