The Global Debt Trap: How to Escape the Danger and Build a Fortune

"This is among the most valuable and insightful works on the financial crisis and its ultimate consequences ever published. If you want to protect and grow your wealth even in the worst of times, heed the authors' warnings and seriously consider their recommendations."
—Martin D. Weiss, New York Times bestselling author

The great debt crisis of recent years, prematurely declared “dead and buried” by government leaders on both sides of the Atlantic, has suddenly returned to haunt those same leaders where it hurts them the most—in their own sovereign debts.

Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, the UK and even the U.S. are caught in a global debt trap. For some governments, the only escape is to do the same things that an average household must do when it can’t make ends meet—sell off assets, slash spending, scrape for extra earnings, downsize, and make sacrifices. They are cutting healthcare and pensions for millions of citizens, laying off hundreds of thousands of government employees, or worse. For others, like the U.S., the primary response so far has been to run the money printing presses—all with untold consequences.

Thus, Claus Vogt and Ronald Leuchel’s book, THE GLOBAL DEBT TRAP: How to Escape the Danger and Build a Fortune (Wiley; Hardcover; December 2010; $29.95; ISBN 978-0-470-76723-8), with a foreword by New York Times bestselling author Martin D. Weiss, could not be more timely. In it, the authors explain what’s most likely to happen next and what the average investor-citizen can do—not only to survive the debt crisis but to actually use it to grow wealth.

In their 2005 German bestseller, Das Greenspan Dossier, the authors wrote that when the U.S. real estate bubble bursts, it would not only trigger a recession and a stock market crash, but would endanger the entire financial system, especially Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. With that one sentence, they precisely predicted the debt crisis that unfolded. Now, in THE GLOBAL DEBT TRAP, they predict the next phase.

However, the book is far more than an explanation of the causes and consequences of the global debt crisis. It is also a reader's roadmap to success in the wake of the unprecedented disasters and equally unprecedented government responses. It shows, with practical examples, how every crisis—even the current one—offers unusual opportunities for those who have prepared for it.

The authors ask and answer the most urgent questions of our time:

• Are countries like the U.S., the U.K, and Japan also vulnerable to a sovereign debt crisis?  
• What will be the immediate and ultimate consequences of “quantitative easing”—mass money printing by central banks? Will the “austerity” programs of some countries be enough?
• Will stocks be a good or bad hedge as governments respond to the global debt trap? What about real estate, gold and other asset classes?
• What will be the fate of money markets, long-term bonds, insurance policies and other income investments?
• Which markets offer the best return with the lowest risk in the world today?