01.18.20- What Will It Take to Get the Public
to Embrace Sound Money?
Brendan Brown

In the last decade, the combination of virulent asset price inflation and low reported consumer price inflation crippled sound money as a political force in the US and globally. In the new decade, a different balance between monetary inflation’s “terrible twins” — asset inflation and goods inflation — will create an opportunity for that force to regain strength. Crucial, however, will be how sound money advocacy evolves in the world of ideas and its success in forming an alliance with other causes that could win elections.

It is very likely that the deflationary nonmonetary influences of globalization and digitalization, which camouflaged the activity of the goods-inflation twin during the past decade, are already dissipating. Read More

01.17.20- The two best gifts to give your newborn child
Simon Black

A Japanese woman was surprised when Hong Kong Express Airways required her to take a pregnancy test before boarding her flight.

They made the poor woman sign a form indicating her body type was observed by staff to appear pregnant. The test proved she wasn’t.

The woman was traveling to Saipan, the largest island among the Northern Mariana Islands, a US territory.

Having a baby on the island gives the child automatic US citizenship. And in 2018, more tourists than residents gave birth on the Northern Mariana Islands. Read More

01.16.20- Debt and Inflation Are Bringing the Economy Down
Bill Bonner

BALTIMORE, MARYLAND – “Fed Adds $82 Billion to Financial Markets.” That’s the headline on page B12 of today’s Wall Street Journal, reporting on Tuesday’s Federal Reserve action. On Monday, the Fed added $60 billion.

This “repo madness” has been going on for four months.

It’s time to ask some questions…

From Theoretical to Desperate

Who is the biggest debtor in the world? Who is already scheduled to borrow another $20 trillion in the next 20 years? Read More

01.15.20- 7 Major Earth Changes That Are Happening Right Now
That Everyone Needs To Know About
Michael Snyder

There has never been a time in modern human history when our planet has been changing as rapidly as it is changing right now.  The sun is behaving very strangely, freakishly cold weather is breaking out all over the world, ocean temperatures continue to rise, volcanoes all over the globe are shooting ash miles into the air, Australia is experiencing the worst wildfires that they have ever seen, and the north magnetic pole has been moving at a pace that is deeply alarming scientists.  Could it be possible that all of this bizarre activity is leading up to some sort of a crescendo?

Sadly, most people don’t even realize what is happening, and that is because the mainstream media only emphasizes stories that fit with the particular narratives that they are currently pushing.

But it has gotten to the point where nobody can deny that really weird things are happening.  The following are 7 major earth changes that are happening right now that everyone needs to know about… Read More

01.14.20- Commercial Ammo: The Untold History of Springfield Armory and America’s Munitions Factories
Sam Jacobs

To understand how American citizens today can get their hands on ammo, which rolls off the same factory lines as those that supply the world’s largest militaries, it’s important to first understand how munitions technology developed. Starting in medieval Europe, on a battlefield where a mounted knight in armor could defeat almost any number of peasants, the development of more advanced and accurate ways to destroy enemy personnel and equipment by launching a projectile is one which combines trial and error, scientific ingenuity, and private enterprise. It’s a story of power and technology dating back to the 13th century, at the height of “the divine right of kings,” and tracks the subsequent diffusion of that power held by a chosen few as the individual became capable of breaking the state’s monopoly on violence.

The first recorded use of gunpowder appeared in Europe in 1247, although China had used gunpowder for centuries before that, mostly for fireworks. The cannon appeared nearly 100 years later in 1327, with a hand-sized version making its debut in 1364. The first ordnances were made of stone, and while it might have been theoretically possible for anyone to own one, this would have been outside the financial reach of anyone but the nobility. Read More

01.13.20- This Is What 'Diversity' Has Gotten You
Karl Denninger

You can't argue with the numbers.

The number of murders has gone up and down.  Note that the population of the United States has continually risen, so the number of murders, assuming that the rate per person remains the same, should be a continually-upsloping line growing at about 1% a year.

It isn't.  In fact the number of murder peaked around 1990.  It is materially lower now than then, despite all the screaming of the various scolds, and we're 20 years further down with more people in the nation.

However, what has changed is the clearance (that is, the number of people who murder and get caught) rate.

Why? Read More

01.11.20- Sanctuary Cities: A Battle Over the Second Amendment is Unfolding Across America
Dimitri Speck

The Second Amendment sanctuary city movement is growing and showing no signs of slowing down.

As Virginia’s new Democratic legislature promises gun control measures, the wives of National Guardsman are warning that impending gun legislation threatens to turn neighbor against neighbor.

As the 2020 Virginia legislative session began, Democratic Governor Ralph Northam and fellow Democrats continued their push for new gun control bills. In the months since a May 2019 shooting left 12 people dead and four others injured at a Virginia Beach municipal building, Democratic politicians have repeatedly expressed their desire to implement new restrictions such as universal background checks, a ban on certain weapons, and controversial red flag laws. Read More

01.10.20- Doug Casey on the Difference Between
a Whistleblower and a Rat
Doug Casey

International Man: There’s been a lot of talk from the political class about whistleblowers lately, but few have clearly defined what it means.

Webster’s defines a whistleblower as “one who reveals something covert or who informs against another.”

Doug, you’re a fan of using words correctly. What is your view on what a whistleblower is?

Doug Casey: The connotations surrounding the term “whistleblower” depend largely on who’s using it and the reason they’re using it. Let’s figure out the distinctions between a bunch of words that all mean the same thing—but have very different connotations.

In most contexts, a whistleblower is what school kids call a tattletale. Adults call them stoolpigeons, rats, finks, squealers, snitches, narcs, weasels, or the like. A whistleblower is not a good thing in normal society. Nobody likes an informer, even if they’re well-intentioned. Read More

01.09.20- Facts and Speculations – Next Decade
Gary Christenson

Breaking news: The impeachment circus continues, the trade deal is both off and on, tweets and Iran news move the market, S&P 500 Index hit new highs (thanks to central bank liquidity), and more of the same nonsense will unfortunately create more of the same.

WHAT HAPPENS TO PRICES NEXT DECADE—IN FIVE TO TEN YEARS?

What we know, think we know and speculation:

WHAT WE KNOW THAT HAS BEEN TRUE FOR MANY DECADES: Read More

01.08.20- Another Stupid War
Michael Krieger

All I wanted to do this week was work on part 2 of my localism series, but circumstances quickly got the best of me. The assassination of Iran’s top general Qassem Soleimani was an event of such historical significance, I feel obligated to detail my thoughts on what it means and how things unfold from here, especially given how much of a role geopolitics and questions of empire have played in my writings.

First off, we need to understand the U.S. is now at war with Iran. It’s an undeclared, insane and unconstitutional war, but it is war nonetheless. There is no world in which one government intentionally assassinates the top general of another government and that not be warfare. You can argue the U.S. and Iran were already engaged in low-level proxy wars, and that’s a fair assessment, but you can’t say we aren’t currently in a far more serious a state of war. We are. Read More

01.07.20- No, Jesus Wasn't a Socialist
Lawrence W. Reed

Christian charity, being voluntary and heartfelt, is utterly distinct from the compulsory, impersonal mandates of the state.

The claim that Jesus Christ was a socialist has become a popular refrain among liberals, even from some whose Christianity is lukewarm at best. But is there any truth in it?

That question cannot be answered without a reliable definition of socialism. A century ago, it was widely regarded as government ownership of the means of production. Jesus never once even hinted at that concept, let alone endorsed it. Yet the definition has changed over time. When the critiques of economists such as Ludwig von Mises, F. A. Hayek, and Milton Friedman demolished any intellectual case for the original form of socialism, and reality proved them to be devastatingly right, socialists shifted to another version: central planning of the economy. Read More

01.06.20- Our Real Existential Crisis - Extinction
Pat Buchanan

If Western elites were asked to name the greatest crisis facing mankind, climate change would win in a walk.

Thus did Time magazine pass over every world leader to name a Swedish teenage climate activist, Greta Thunberg, its person of the year.

On New Year’s Day, the headline over yet another story in The Washington Post admonished us anew: “A Lost Decade for Climate Action: We Can’t Afford A Repeat, Scientists Warn.”

“By the final year of the decade,” said the Post, “the planet had surpassed its 2010 temperature record five times.

“Hurricanes devastated New Jersey and Puerto Rico, and floods damaged the Midwest and Bangladesh. Southern Africa was gripped by a deadly drought. Australia and the Amazon are ablaze.”

On it went, echoing the endless reports on the perils of climate change to the planet we all inhabit. Read More

01.04.20- 3 Key Economic Trends to Keep Your Eye On in 2020
Peter Reagan

As we enter the year 2020 (and a new decade), it's important to keep in mind how long it has been since the last major recession started in the U.S. — more than 11 years now.

Since the economy generally operates in cycles, and the yield curve has already inverted, the next recession could be right around the corner. 

With that in mind, here are three "big picture" economic trends that you should keep an eye on in 2020: Read More

01.03.20- Iran, It’s Your Move – Trump’s Takedown Of Iranian General Qassim Suleimani Is Likely To Start A Global War
Michael Snyder

We just witnessed one of the most important deaths in the Middle East in decades.  Just hours ago, President Trump ordered the drone strike on Baghdad International Airport that killed Iranian Major General Qassim Suleimani and several other key officials.  Suleimani was the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Quds Force, but even more importantly he was a huge national hero in Iran.  To describe this killing as “seismic” would not do it justice.  U.S. Senator Chris Murphy says that Suleimani was “the second most powerful person in Iran”, and elsewhere he is being described as “the most influential Middle East military official for decades”.  This is a major victory for President Trump and the U.S. military, but it also makes it much, much less likely that we are going to be able to avoid a full-blown war with Iran. Read More

01.02.20- Understanding The Keys To Power Will be a Survival Requirement for the Coming Decade
Adam Taggart

The past decade was undoubtedly shaped by the policy adopted by the global central banking cartel to flood the world with massive amounts of liquidity (over $15 trillion) to “rescue” markets following the Great Financial Crisis.

It’s becoming increasingly clear who benefitted most from this: the ultra-rich

As $trillions flowed into financial assets pushing them higher every year throughout the twenty-teens, those who owned those assets — disproportionately the very rich — saw their wealth soar. Read More

01.01.20- I, Who Vowed to Never-Ever Short Stocks Again, Just Shorted the Entire Market
Wolf Richter

In my decades of looking at the stock market, there has never been a better setup. Exuberance is pandemic and sky-high. And even after today’s dip, the S&P 500 is up nearly 29% for the year, and the Nasdaq 35%, despite lackluster growth in the global economy, where many of the S&P 500 companies are getting the majority of their revenues.

Mega-weight in the indices, Apple, is a good example: shares soared 84% in the year, though its revenues ticked up only 2%. This is not a growth story. This is an exuberance story where nothing that happens in reality – such as lacking revenue growth – matters, as we’re now told by enthusiastic crowds everywhere.

Until just a couple of months ago, the touts were out there touting negative interest rates soon to come to the US and thus making stocks the only place to be. Those touts have now been run over by reality. Now they’re touting QE4 by the Fed, or whatever. And people were looking for any reason to buy. Read More

12.31.19- Nullify Government Tyranny: In 2020, Harness The Power Of Your Discontent
John Whitehead

“The people have the power, all we have to do is awaken that power in the people. The people are unaware. They’re not educated to realize that they have power. The system is so geared that everyone believes the government will fix everything. We are the government.” - John Lennon

Twenty years into the 21st century, and what do we have to show for it?

Government corruption, tyranny and abuse have propelled us at warp speed towards a full-blown police state in which egregious surveillance, roadside strip searches, police shootings of unarmed citizens, censorship, retaliatory arrests, the criminalization of lawful activities, warmongering, indefinite detentions, SWAT team raids, asset forfeiture, police brutality, profit-driven prisons, and pay-to-play politicians have become the new normal. Read More

12.30.19- UPDATED 12/28/19: Has The Sleeping Giant Awakened?
Al Benson Jr.

It seems the Democratic Legislature in the State of Virginia has decided that they will simply do away with the Second Amendment in that state. Oh, they will take sort of a Fabian approach and do it as gradually as they are forced to but there can be little doubt that’s their socialist intent. And they may well hope to be a bell weather for the rest of the country–sort of a “well, if we can do it so can you” sort of thing.

However, it seems that folks in many Virginia counties, particularly folks in rural counties are less than enthusiastic about the state legislature’s Fabian plan to do away with the Second Amendment.

It’s no secret that ultra, ultra liberal Michael Bloomberg, with all his millions, has been at work in Virginia and he seems to be taking credit for flipping the state legislature from red to deep, deep blue. And, of course, a state with a blue legislature means a state where the Second Amendment is automatically in jeopardy unless people wake up and realize what the game is and resist. As this point, that seems to be happening in Virginia, thanks be to God. Let’s hope that trend continues.  Read More

12.28.19- Jim Rickards Warns That Debt Tsunami Could Upend Economy
Peter Reagan

At some point, an economic problem deepens so much that the piper has to be paid. Both in the U.S. and globally, one of those problems appears to be mountains of debt.

Jim Rickards recently issued a dire proclamation about the global debt situation:

Current global debt levels are simply not sustainable. Debt actually is sustainable if the debt is used for projects with positive returns and if the economy supporting the debt is growing faster than the debt itself. But neither of those conditions applies today. Read More

12.27.19- “This is Going to be One for the Record Books”
Doug Casey

Just because society experiences turmoil doesn’t mean your personal life has to. And a depression doesn’t have to be depressing. Most of the real wealth in the world will still exist—it will just change ownership.

What is a depression?

We’re now at the tail end of a very long, but in many ways a very weak and artificial, economic expansion. At the same time we’ve had one of the strongest securities bull markets in history. Both are the result of trillions of new dollars created over the last decade. Right now very few people are willing to consider the possibility of tough times—let alone The Greater Depression.

But, perverse though it may seem, this is the very best time to think about it. The U.S. economy is a house of cards, built on quicksand, with a tsunami on the way. I urge everyone to read up on the topic. For now, I’ll only briefly touch on the nature of depressions. There are at least three good definitions of the term: Read More

12.26.19- Very Unusual Seismic Activity On The West Coast Has Some Experts Extremely Concerned About What Could Happen
Michael Snyder

The west coast never stops shaking, but lately the shaking has gone to an entirely new level, and this has many people deeply concerned about what may be coming.  Last summer, a series of alarming foreshocks immediately preceded the two historic quakes that shook the Ridgecrest area in southern California.  But those quakes were nothing compared to “the Big One” that scientists assure us is way overdue.  Someday an earthquake that is hundreds of times stronger will absolutely devastate the California coastline, and it may be arriving a lot sooner than many people think.  Farther north, the Cascadia subduction zone is a ticking time bomb that could literally unleash an unprecedented disaster at any moment.  What I am talking about is an event that will completely wipe out entire cities and that the region will never recover from.  As I have detailed repeatedly, authorities have warned us that “everything west of Interstate 5 will be toast” when an absolutely massive seismic event along the Cascadia subduction zone sends a gigantic tsunami sweeping inland.

And without a doubt, that day is coming. Read More

12.25.19- An End to the World as We Know It?
Philip Giraldi

At the end of the nineteenth century, Lord Palmerston stated what he thought was obvious, that “England has no eternal friends, England has no perpetual enemies, England has only eternal and perpetual interests.” Palmerston was saying that national interests should drive the relationships with foreigners. A nation will have amicable relations most of the time with some countries and difficult relations with some others, but the bottom line should always be what is beneficial for one’s own country and people.

If Palmerston were alive today and observing the relationship of the United States of America with the rest of the world, he might well find Washington to be an exception to his rule. The U.S., to be sure, has been adept at turning adversaries into enemies and disappointing friends, and it is all done with a glib assurance that doing so will somehow bring democracy and freedom to all. Indeed, either neoliberal democracy promotion or the neoconservative version of the same have been seen as an overriding and compelling interest during the past twenty years even though the policies themselves have been disastrous and have only damaged the real interests of the American people. Read More

12.24.18- Welcome To The Era Of Intensifying Chaos And New Weapons Of Conflict
Charles Hugh Smith

Geopolitics has moved from a slow-moving, relatively predictable chess match to rapidly evolving 3-D chess in which the rules keep changing in unpredictable ways.

A declining standard of living in the developed world, declining growth for the developed world and geopolitical jockeying for control of resources make for a highly combustible mix awaiting a spark: welcome to the era of intensifying chaos and the rapid advance of new weapons of conflict as ruling elites attempt to stamp out dissent and global powers pursue supremacy by whatever means are available.

Gordon Long and I discuss these dynamics in a new video The New Weapons of Conflict (28:30) that explores the drivers of increasing global chaos and a permanent state of intensifying conflict in both domestic (internal) and global (external) affairs. Read More

12.23.19- Sexual Perverts Are the New American Privileged Class
Paul Craig Roberts

The United Church of Christ in Ames, Iowa, for reasons unknown flew a LGBTQ flag/banner of sexual perversion. A 30 year old Hispanic immigrant took it down and burned it. For this “crime” he was sentenced to 16 years in prison!

In response to college kids or provocateurs burning the US flag during Vietnam War protests, the US Congress passed the 1968 Flag Act that permits those who burn or defile the US flag to be imprisoned, but not more than one year. What has happened to America that buring a flag of sexual perversion is 16 times more serious than burning the American flag? How can this be the case, and in a red state!?  Read More

12.21.19- Why America's Founders Didn't Want a Democracy
Gary M. Galles

When I took history and government in school, many critical issues were misrepresented, given short shrift, or even ignored entirely. And those lacunae undermined my ability to adequately understand many things. Randall Holcombe’s new book, Liberty in Peril: Democracy and Power in American History, fills in some very substantial gaps, particularly with regard to American constitutionalism and how it has morphed from protecting liberty to advancing democracy at the expense of liberty. It does so with a host of novel and important insights rather than the disinterest generated by the books I suffered through in school.  Read More

12.20.19- Skyrocketing Costs Will Pop All The Bubbles
Charles Hugh Smith

The reckoning is coming, and everyone who counted on "eternal growth of borrowing" to stave off the reckoning is in for a big surprise.

We've used a simple trick to keep the status quo from imploding for the past 11 years: borrow whatever it takes to keep paying the skyrocketing costs for housing, healthcare, college, childcare, government, permanent wars and so on.

The trick has worked because central banks pushed interest rates to zero, lowering the costs of borrowing more as costs continued spiraling higher.

But that trick has been used up. The next step--negative interest rates--has failed to spark the "growth" required to pay for insanely overpriced housing, healthcare, college, childcare, government, etc. Read More

12.19.19- The Crazy Events Of The Past Month
And What They Mean For 2020
Brandon Smith

In a world without constant manipulation and disinformation most economic and geopolitical events would happen spontaneously and randomly. Things would be more unexpected, but at least they would make life fascinating and interesting, and often there would be positive outcomes. Unfortunately, this is not the world we live in. Our world is highly micro-managed by global elites with a rather broad if not clichéd agenda. This makes most events highly predictable, as each event services a singular end game.

The only aspect of our system that is not predictable is timing. In the liberty movement we can predict with relative certainty future trends and outcomes, but one thing we have to consider is that the more effective we are at exposing the plans of the globalists the more they will attempt to either stall or expedite the timing of their agenda in the hopes of encouraging doubt and uncertainty. Read More

12.18.19- HUGE: Democrats rushing impeachment to obstruct bombshell investigations of billions in money laundering and kickbacks run by Obama officials
Mike Adams

The real story behind the Dems’ rush for impeachment has finally emerged. Thanks to investigatory work by Rudy Giuliani, we now know that prominent Democrats ran billions of dollars in money laundering, extortion and kickbacks through Ukraine, funneling cash to their own pockets through an elaborate network of shell companies and corporate fronts. (Source)

In essence, Rudy Giuliani, a former federal prosecutor, just uncovered the “Panama Papers” of the Democrat party.

As reported by The National Sentinel, here’s what he found:

— Ukrainian officials offered up six criminal cases involving Joe and Hunter Biden, including “money laundering;” Read More

12.17.19- Markets vs. Politics: Which Will It Be?
Brian Maher

No man can avoid politics. All are in siege.

No rival field of human enterprise can approach its ferocity. War is the extension of what by other means… in Mr. Carl von Clausewitz’s telling?

The answer is politics of course.

Today we file a scorching tort against politics.

Politics separates, divides, enrages, disrupts — as war itself.

Democratic politics offer no exception. Reduce electoral politics to its naked core… Read More

12.16.19- Bubbles Are Brutal
Chris Martenson

Nothing makes sense in their late stages

Asset bubbles are brutal.

The most difficult time to remain centered and focused is during their last stages as everyone around you is going nuts. Logic has been tossed out the window, sentiment is manic, and every narrative – the stories we hear and use to make sense of our world – is thoroughly ungrounded.

After a decade of price deformation — such as UBER being valued by the ““markets”” at $45 to $50 billion despite having no viable path for ever making a profit — it seems that practically everyone has lost the ability to perform even basic math or reality checks. Read More

12.14.19- Why We Should Worry About a New Global Currency War
William R. White

After five years of secular strength in the Dollar, the Trump administration seems intent to weaken its currency through unilateral measures. The possible implications should not be underestimated.

The expression «currency war» conjures up a scary 1930's image of competitive devaluations (against gold) designed to divert a larger part of globally stagnant demand to individual countries at the expense of others. Then – as today –, such fears have been exacerbated by the prospect of «trade wars» as well. 

However, the currency problems we have faced in recent decades have been different from those in the 1930’s in at least two important respects. Read More

12.13.19- Borrowing From Peter to Pay Paul…
Ellen Brown

…The Wall Street Ponzi Scheme Called Fractional Reserve Banking

Bernie Madoff showed us how it was done: you induce many investors to invest their money, promising steady above-market returns; and you deliver – at least on paper. When your clients check their accounts, they see that their investments have indeed increased by the promised amount. Anyone who opts to pull out of the game is paid promptly and in full. You can afford to pay because most players stay in, and new players are constantly coming in to replace those who drop out. The players who drop out are simply paid with the money coming in from new recruits. The scheme works until the market turns and many players want their money back at once. Then it’s game over: you have to admit that you don’t have the funds, and you are probably looking at jail time.  Read More

12.12.19- Lil’ Tyrone
The Federal Observer

Tyrone was having trouble in school; his teacher was always yelling at him, “You’re driving me crazy, Tyrone; can’t you learn anything?“

One day Tyrone’s mother came to school to see how he was doing.

The teacher told her honestly that her son was simply a disaster, getting very low marks, and that she had never had such an unmotivated and ignorant boy in her entire teaching career.

Tyrone’s mom, shocked at the feedback, withdrew her son from school and moved out of Detroit, relocating to Cleveland. 

Twenty-five years later, the teacher was diagnosed with severe cardiac disease and her doctors strongly advised her to have open heart surgery, which only surgeons at the Cleveland Clinic could perform. Read More

12.11.19- A History of Inflationary Money: From 1844 to Nixon
Alasdair Macleod

So that we can understand the financial and banking challenges ahead of us, this article provides an historical and technical background. But we must first get an important definition right, and that is the cause of the periodic cycle of boom and bust. The cycle of economic activity is not a trade or business cycle, but a credit cycle. It is caused by fractional reserve banking and by banks loaning money into existence. The effect on business is then observed but is not the underlying cause.

Modern banking has its roots in England’s Bank Charter Act of 1844, which led to the practice of loaning money into existence, commonly described as fractional reserve banking. Fractional reserve banking is defined as making loans and taking in customer deposits in quantities that are multiples of the bank’s own capital. Case law in the wake of the 1844 act, having more regard for the status quo as established precedent than for the fundamentals of property law, ruled that irregular deposits (deposits for safekeeping) were no different from a loan. Judge Lord Cottenham’s ruling in Foley v. Hill (1848) 2 HLC 28 is a judicial decision relating to the fundamental nature of a bank which held in effect that:

The money placed in the custody of the banker is to all intents and purposes, the money of the banker, to do with it as he pleases. He is guilty of no breach of trust in employing it. He is not answerable to the principal if he puts it into jeopardy, if he engages in haphazardous speculation. Read More

12.10.19- 6 Things We Learned from Prohibition
John Phelan

In a book on prohibitions, John Meadowcroft of King’s College in London offers several “generic lessons and implications” of the practice.

Just over 100 years ago (October 28, 1919), the National Prohibition Actbecame law. Better known as the Volstead Act, it outlawed the manufacture, transportation, and sale of alcoholic beverages in the United States.

Prohibition failed to end alcohol consumption and was repealed on December 5, 1933. In a book on prohibitions, John Meadowcroft of King’s College in London offers several “generic lessons and implications.” The United States’ experience with Prohibition illustrates them all. Read More

12.09.19-The Fed Could Be Setting Us Up for
Explosive Price Inflation
Peter Reagan

Until recently, Federal Reserve Chair Powell has maintained that the Fed will operate using a “symmetric 2% inflation target.”

Simply put, that means the Fed sees 2% inflation as a level that sustains economic growth without putting too much upward pressure on prices.

But it looks as though that whole idea may be set aside, at least for now, with the potential for inflation to start rising, and quickly.

In the bar graph below, you can see that the “official” rate of U.S. inflation currently sits at 1.8% and has fluctuated at or below 2.0% since January: Read More

12.07.19- Transferism, Not Socialism, Is the Drug Americans Are Hooked On
Dr. Antony Davies and James R. Harrigan

The United States has never had a meaningful socialist tradition or even a semi-serious socialist party. Socialism in the United States is a fringe movement at best and always has been. This makes the sudden acceptability of socialism all the more surprising. But with one avowed socialist, Bernie Sanders, campaigning for the presidency for a second time, and another, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, rising to national prominence from her post in the House of Representatives, American socialism is more mainstream now than at any point in our history.

Socialism Is a Response to Capitalism

Complicating matters, socialism exists entirely as a response to capitalism, as has been the case from the time Marx first put pen to paper. And as if that weren’t enough, the very usage of the terms “capitalism” and “socialism” has evolved past the point of clear meaning. Read More

12.06.19- The Meaning of Valuation
John P. Hussman, Ph.D.

Stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.
– Professor Irving Fisher, October 15, 1929

A New York Times article published the following day elaborated on Fisher’s comments:

“After discussing the rise in stock values during the past two years, Mr. Fisher declared realized and prospective increases in earnings, to a very large extent, had justified this rise, adding that ‘time will tell whether the increase will continue sufficiently to justify the present high level. I expect that it will… While I will not attempt to make any exact forecast, I do not feel that there will soon, if ever, be a fifty or sixty-point break below present levels such as Mr. Babson has predicted.’ While the tone of his address proper reflected a moderate optimism, in the informal questioning that followed Professor Fisher fell into an almost unqualified optimism. In reply to one question, he declared that he expected ‘to see the stock market a good deal higher than it is today, within a few months.’”Read More

12.05.19- The Most Wonderful Time of the Year? Not So Fast…
Nilus Mattive

The holiday season is often hailed as “the most wonderful time of the year”. For most that is true!

Filling your days with hot cocoa, classic movies, and the smell of pine trees, baking cookies, or logs burning on the fire, along with the company of friends and family to warm your heart can be festive indeed. But for some, especially those further north, the long, dark winter months can be dreadful, regardless of the joy surrounding them, if you suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder.

If you’ve never heard of Seasonal Affective Disorder, it’s a medical condition that affects the lives of millions of Americans. Seasonal Affective Disorder, more commonly known as S.A.D, or seasonal depression, is defined as a form of depression that is directly related to the change in seasons.

Bouts of Seasonal Affective Disorder begin and end at around the same points in time every year (meaning for most that symptoms begin in the late fall, and continue into the winter months, ending in spring). Read More

12.04.19- Central Bankers Have Declared War On Your Savings
Andrew Moran

They have fired all their unconventional rounds of bullets, from subzero interest rates to vast money-printing…

When any one of the plethora of bubbles burst – pick your poison – and the next financial crisis impacts Wall Street and Main Street, how will the central banks and federal governments react? They have fired all their unconventional rounds of bullets, from subzero interest rates to vast money-printing . One other proposal could conceivably be giving your deposits a haircut, much like what occurred in Cyprus following the recession. This dyspeptic vision is not hyperbole nor is it paranoia – the tariffs have raised the price of tinfoil! It is unfolding right now as our globalist overlords are executing, or at least entertaining, fiscal and monetary measures to confiscate your wealth – directly or indirectly. Read More

12.03.19- Death Wish
James Howard Kunstler

The early winter holidays are notorious for giving people the blues, but as the last Thanksgiving leftovers slide into the stockpot, the Democratic Party was put on suicide watch. Is the ghost of Jeffrey Epstein in charge? It’s a little late to call an exorcist. The gun pointed at the Democrats’ head now is a stubby little low-caliber weapon in the person of Jerrold Nadler, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, who has only grazed the party’s skull in two previous misfirings. The third time, the old saying goes, may be the charm.

When Mr. Nadler entertained Special Counsel Robert Mueller in July, he succeeded spectacularly in discrediting Mr. Mueller, and the inquisition he rode in on. It was the worst public demonstration of aphasia since William Jennings Bryan had a stroke at the Scopes Trial in 1925. Mr. Mueller’s pitiful performance detached the last sticky tendril of hope that his tortured report might avail to cast out the arch-demon in the White House. Even the Republicans on the dais seemed to feel sorry for him. True to his character as a schoolyard sap wearing a “kick me” sign on his back, Mr. Nadler just waddled away in a fog of bamboozlement, hitching his ants up to his sternum, to plot his next foolish move. Read More

12.02.19- See You on the Dark Side of the Moon
Jim Quinn

And if the cloud bursts thunder in your ear
You shout and no one seems to hear
And if the band you’re in starts playing different tunes
I’ll see you on the dark side of the moon

Brain Damage, Pink Floyd

And if the dam breaks open many years too soon
And if there is no room upon the hill
And if your head explodes with dark forebodings too
I’ll see you on the dark side of the moon

Brain Damage, Pink Floyd

Pink Floyd’s 1973 Dark Side of the Moon album is considered one of the greatest albums of all-time. It stayed on the Billboard 200 charts for 937 weeks. Roger Waters concept was for an album that dealt with things that “make people mad”. The Dark Side of the Moon’s themes include war, conflict, greed, the passage of time, death, and insanity, the latter inspired in part by former band member Syd Barrett’s worsening mental state. Read More

11.30.19- Two Easy Strategies to Pay Less Taxes
Robert Kiyosaki

Editor’s note: We hate to bear poor tidings this Saturday, but tax season is just around the corner. How can you reduce your tax bite? Today, “Rich Dad” Robert Kiyosaki shows you two strategies. Hint: the rich use them to take advantage of the tax code.

Dear Reader,

In the big picture of personal finance, there are four financial forces that cause most people to work hard and yet struggle financially. They are:

1. Taxes
2. Debt
3. Inflation
4. Retirement

Take a moment and reflect briefly on how much these four forces affect you personally. For example, how much do you pay in taxes?

Not only do we pay income tax, but also sales taxes, gasoline taxes, real estate taxes, and so forth. More important, to whom do our tax dollars go and for what causes? Read More

11.29.19- Happy Thanksgiving, America 2.0
Donald Jeffries

As we celebrate another Thanksgiving, between the turkey and the stuffing and the cranberries and the pie, it is an appropriate time for reflection.

Thanks to countless films and television shows, Americans have come to understand that Thanksgiving means having to tolerate your extended family members for a few hours. For some it represents a lone annual occasion for parents and children, or siblings, to be in the same physical location.

If one judges by our cultural depictions of the holiday, there are no families left in this country who don’t roll their eyes, sigh in exasperation or argue loudly over the holiday spreads. In the age of Trump, the squabbles are certain to be more fierce and unavoidable than ever before. Read More

11.28.19- Gun Sales Surge In October As 2020 Dems Unveil Gun Control Proposals
Zachary Stieber

Nearly 11 percent more guns were sold in the United States in October than a year ago, according to newly released data.

Roughly 1.2 million guns were sold this October, a 10.8 percent increase from Oct. 2018, according to Small Arms Analytics and Forecasting (pdf). The firm also estimated that about 1.1 million guns were sold in September, another increase of almost 11 percent from the same month last year.

The arms industry observer said it expects sales across 2019 to reach 14 million, past the 13.8 million guns sold in 2018 but below the estimates of 14.7 million sold in 2017 and 16.6 million sold in 2016. Read More

11.27.19- 5 More Signs That The Global Economy Is Careening Toward A Recession
Michael Snyder

The global economy is already in the worst distress that we have seen since 2008, and it appears that the global slowdown is actually picking up pace as we head into 2020. And this is happening even though central banks around the world have been cutting interest rates and pumping massive amounts of money into their respective financial systems. The central bankers appear to be losing control, and it certainly wouldn’t take much of a push for this new crisis to evolve into a complete and utter nightmare. The U.S. economy hasn’t been hit quite as hard as economies in Asia and Europe have been, but without a doubt things are slowing down here too. Corporate earnings have been falling quarter after quarter, auto loan delinquencies just hit a record high, the Cass Freight Index has declined for 11 consecutive months, and we just witnessed the largest drop for U.S. industrial production since 2009. Everywhere around us there is bad economic news, but most Americans are still completely oblivious to what is happening. Read More

11.26.19- Holiday Sales May Be Missing In Action
Dave Kranzler

I’m sure most of you are  inundated with “Black November,” “70% off” and “clearance” email promotions from the usual cast of brick/mortar/online chain retailers. It started with my inbox in October.   This is because retailers are terrified of what could be one of the worst holiday spending seasons in years.

The mainstream financial media, planted with soundbytes from Wall Street snakeoil salesmen, have already created this year’s “the dog ate my homework” excuse for poor holiday spending with the absurd notion that the period between Thanksgiving and Christmas is shorter this year.  Quite frankly, I would not be surprise if many households used Amazon’s Prime day and easy Amazon credit lines offered to buy holiday gifts early this year. Speaking of AMZN, it warned that its expected holiday sales would be lower than previous guidance.  And Home Depot lowered its Q4 revenue estimates for the second time in three months. Read More

11.25.19- The Greatest Swindle In American History... And How They'll Try It Again Soon
Jeff Thomas

International Man: Before 1913 there was no income tax, and the United States was a much freer country. Initially, the government sold the federal income tax to the American people as something only the rich would have to pay.

Jeff Thomas: Yes, exactly. It always begins this way. The average person is always happy to see the rich taken down a peg, so this makes the introduction of the concept of theft by the government more palatable. Once people have gotten used to the concept and accept it as being perfectly reasonable, then it’s time to begin to drop the bar as to who “the rich” are. Ultimately, the middle class are always the real target.

International Man: The top bracket in 1913 kicked in at $500,000 (equivalent to around $12 million today), and the tax rate for it was only 7%. The government taxed those making up to $20,000 (equivalent to around $475,000 today) at only 1% – that’s one percent. Read More

11.23.19- Princeton Study: The U.S. Is Not ‘Losing’ Its Democracy, It’s Already Long Gone
Arjun Walia

• The Facts:A Princeton University study found that the United States operates much more as an Oligarchy than as a Democracy.
  
  
• Reflect On:Can the current system be fixed or do we need to walk away from it to get what we really want?

The notion that citizens of the United States don’t actually live in a democracy has been picking up steam for decades, with scars from economic, social and political decay inflicting themselves ever more deeply into our psyches as the years move on. Read More

11.22.19- Who Knew 2 Cents Could Go So Far?
Simon Black

They keep chanting their “2 cent” mantra like a marketing slogan, deluding voters into believing that a small percentage of taxpayers can foot the bill…

About a week and a half ago I had a terrible sinus infection… I’m talking -really- bad. My sneezes were so ferocious that I half-expected the US Geological Survey to register them on the Richter Scale.

In the midst of all that misery, I became acutely interested in the health care plans of leading US Presidential contenders… and stayed up late at night when I couldn’t sleep combing through their solutions.

Most of all I was curious how they intended to pay for everything. Read More

11.21.19- The Antifederalists Were Eerily Prophetic
Gary M. Galles

What the Antifederalists predicted would be the results of the Constitution turned out to be true in most every respect.

Most school kids are left with the impression that the US Constitution was the inevitable follow-up to the Declaration of Independence and the war with King George. What they miss out on is the exciting debate that took place after the war and before the Constitution, a debate that concerned the dangers of creating a federal government at all.

The Antifederalist Movement

Everyone knows about the Federalists who pushed the Constitution. But far less known are the Antifederalists who warned with good reason against the creation of a new centralized government, and just after so much blood had been spilled getting rid of one. Read More

11.20.19- A Striking Collection of Duck-Like Features
John P. Hussman, Ph.D.

When I see a bird that walks like a duck and swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck.
– James Whitcomb Riley

One of the pitfalls of identifying market conditions using labels like “bull market” and “bear market” is that the accuracy of those labels can only be verified in hindsight. Early technical analysts like Charles Dow, Robert Rhea, and William Peter Hamilton tried to address that uncertainty by requiring various “confirmations” before applying those labels. For example, a new bull market isn’t “confirmed” in Dow Theory until both industrial stocks and transportation stocks experience an initial advance from market lows, followed by a moderate pullback, followed by both indices breaking above the highs of that initial advance. Read More

11.19.19- The Supreme Court and the Second Amendment:
Understanding the Court’s Landmark Decisions
Sam Jacobs

The Second Amendment is one of most fundamental provisions of the Bill of Rights, and one of the most fiercely debated. Since it was first put to paper, legal scholars, gun owners and anti-gun activists have engaged in an endless discussion over the meaning and scope of the Second Amendment, and for most of that time, gun owners have been on the losing side of the argument.

Time and again, the pro- and anti-gun factions of American society have appealed to the Supreme Court, the last judge of the law, for a resolution of their differences. Except in its earliest ruling on the Second Amendment, the Supreme Court held that American citizens had no inherent right to bear arms. According to the highest court in the land, the Second Amendment only protected the states’ right to maintain a militia, not an individual’s right to possess firearms. Read More

11.18.19- Entertaining Questions
James Howard Kunstler

Anyone who doubts that the Attorney General is dead serious about cleaning up the goddamned mess of sedition spawned by the Democratic Party, its agents in the permanent Washington bureaucracy, and its public relations arm in the news media, might invest a little time and attention in William Barr’s speech to the Federalist Society Friday evening. (Text of speech here and video here.)

Mr. Barr declared unambiguously and in plain English that “in waging a scorched earth, no-holds-barred war of ‘Resistance’ against this Administration, it is the Left that is engaged in the systematic shredding of norms and the undermining of the rule of law.” Is any part of that unclear? The confounded might take in this more detailed lesson in recent history from the speech:

Immediately after President Trump won election, opponents inaugurated what they called ‘the Resistance,’ and they rallied around an explicit strategy of using every tool and maneuver available to sabotage the functioning of his administration.  Now, ‘resistance’ is the language used to describe insurgency against rule imposed by an occupying military power. It obviously connotes that the government is not legitimate. This is a very dangerous — indeed incendiary — notion to import into the politics of a democratic republic.  What it means is that, instead of viewing themselves as the “loyal opposition,” as opposing parties have done in the past, they essentially see themselves as engaged in a war to cripple, by any means necessary, a duly elected government.” Read More

11.17.19- Yes, Taxation Is Theft
David Gordon

Libertarians think that taxation is theft. The government takes away part of your income and property by force. Your payments aren’t voluntary. If you think they are, try to withhold payment and see what happens.

An influential book by Liam Murphy and Thomas Nagel, The Myth of Ownership, tries to show that this view of taxation is wrong. Many people, they say, foolishly resent taxes. By what right does the government take away part of what we own? Isn’t this legalized theft? The government may claim that it needs the funds to provide essential social services: are the poor to be left to starve? But these assertions do not justify its policy of forcible seizure. Isn’t it up to each owner of property to decide what, if anything, he wishes to donate to charity and other good causes?

You might guess that the authors will respond, along conventional leftist lines, with a denial that property rights are absolute: you do not have the right to keep all that you own, if the government’s exactions are devoted to a good purpose. Quite the contrary, they adopt a much more radical stance. You are not giving away anything at all to the government when you pay taxes, since you own only what the laws say you do. Read More

11.15.19- Doug Casey on How the Homeless Crisis Could Soon Become an Epidemic
Doug Casey

International Man: There is a growing homeless crisis in liberal West Coast cities, including San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, and many others. People living on the street are overrunning these cities.

Residents must deal with human feces, syringes, disease, and filth every day. In some areas, it’s worse than the dirtiest slums of Brazil, Kenya, and India.

How did this happen?

Doug Casey: Well, taking a long-term view, I see it as part of the continuing decline of Western civilization.

The West has always been distinguished relative to the rest of the world by its order, its cleanliness, its respect for property rights. These things are all going by the wayside. We were a middle class society with “bourgeois” values, essentially Boy Scout virtues. But these things are now held in contempt, even while the middle class is being squeezed. “Ground between the millstones of taxation and inflation,” as the phrase attributed to Lenin puts it. Read More

11.14.19- John Adams on the Purpose of Government
Gary M. Galles

At a time when we often forget that liberty is both America’s rationale and its greatness, Americans would profit from Adams’s wisdom.

John Adams, who has become “virtually an asterisk in history books today,” in one writer’s words, is inadequately celebrated. He played a leading role in our revolution and the beginnings of constitutional government. He wrote a Stamp Act protest that became a model for other protests. He outlined principles of liberty for Americans on the cusp of independence.

He helped write the resolutions of May 10, 1776, declaring America independent, and defended the Declaration of Independence before Congress. He composed most of the Massachusetts Constitution, acclaimed for its bill of rights. His A Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States was often cited in the Constitutional Convention. Read More

11.13.19- How the Deep State Media Operate
Lawrence Sellin, Ph.D.

Few now doubt that the major U.S. media outlets, under the guise of journalism, function as political activists, saturating the airwaves and the internet with the talking points of the Democrat party.

There has long been liberal bias in the media, but deliberate efforts to undermine the traditional nonpartisan ideal of journalism took a giant leap forward with the 2007 founding of “Journolist.”

It was originally intended to be a gathering place for several hundred liberal journalists, academics and political activists to connect young writers to top sources, but Journolist quickly degenerated into the collusion and coordination for hackery and smears, as described by the Daily Caller: Read More

11.12.19- If Impeachment Fails, Will The Elite Crash The Economy In Order To Prevent Four More Years Of Trump?
Michael Snyder

By now, it is exceedingly obvious that the global elite absolutely hate Donald Trump.  No president in U.S. history has faced such a relentless assault by the corporate media, and there have been attempts to sabotage his presidency at every turn.  Miraculously, Trump has survived all of these attacks so far, but now the specter of impeachment looms large over his administration.  The Democrats have a solid majority in the U.S. House of Representatives, they are working quickly toward drafting articles of impeachment, and they actually hope to have Trump impeached by Christmas Day.  But in order to have Trump removed from office, 67 votes will be needed in the Senate, and right now Democrats only control 47 of those seats.  It was always going to be tough for Democrats to get 20 Republicans in the Senate to turn on Trump, but they have bungled this process so badly that they might not end up getting any at all.

That scenario will become even more likely if House Republicans stand solidly united behind Trump, and at this point even the Washington Post is admitting that there is a possibility “that not a single House Republican” will vote for the articles of impeachment… Read More

11.11.19- The Wounded Mind
Kingsley L. Dennis

There’s something fundamentally wrong with how the world is right now. Don’t you see it – feel it? We are a species with noble character, with a great spirit, and with a sacred soul. In our hearts we wish only for the betterment of all people; for love and justice and communion. And yet what we see going on in the world is nothing less than complete madness. We have to say it exactly as it is – there is a sickness going on and this pathogen is being perpetrated on a vast scale.

I propose the possibility for the existence of some kind of infection/invasion/contagion that produces a form of mental ‘madness’ that is so normalized within us that we hardly recognize its presence. That is, this ‘presence’ has embedded itself into our various forms of social conditioning (or perhaps even produces this conditioning) in order to veil its existence. This normalized madness then usurps genuine thinking patterns, with the result that when everyone shares the collective psychosis then the madness of the world appears to be a ‘normal feature’ of human civilization. And those people who are ‘awake’ to the genuine human spirit and mind are considered the crazies – the anomalies – as the following tale shows: Read More

11.09.19.- Plans for a global Dystopia
Alasdair Macleod

Global policy planners intend to deliver replacements for both dollar hegemony and fossil fuels. Plans may appear uncoordinated and in their early stages, but these issues are becoming increasingly linked.

A monetary reset incorporating state-sponsored cryptocurrencies will enable exchange controls to be introduced between nations by separating cross-border trade payments from domestic money circulation. The purpose will be to gain greater control over money and to direct its investment into green projects.

The OECD will build on current tax disclosures to make everyone’s income and capital known to governments and therefore readily taxable, money destined to kick-start economic growth. Under the guidance of supranational organisations, governments will redirect investment into green technology. The objective, particularly for Europeans, is to neutralise Russia’s increasing dominance of the global energy market by becoming carbon neutral by 2030. Read More

11.08.19- The Real Stock Market Is Declining
Dave Kranzler

The major stock indices – the Dow, SPX and Nasdaq –  have wafted up to all-time highs on a cloud of Central Bank printed money.  Interestingly, most of the stocks in all three indices are below to well below their all-time highs.  Breadth of the move is shockingly thin.  Very few stocks are responsible for pushing the indices higher. The Dow’s move last Friday, for instance, was primarily attributable to AAPL (by far the biggest contributor), MSFT, HD, UTX and JPM. Of those, only AAPL, UTX and JPM hit their all-time high on Friday.  MSFT and HD were close.

Many of the Dow stocks are down significantly this year. If you find this hard to believe, run the 1yr charts of the 30 Dow stocks. I’m certain the same is true for the SPX and Naz. Read More

11.07.19- An Obituary of the Western World
Paul Craig Roberts

During the course of my life I have watched the Western World abandon all of the values that made it successful. Despite all its crimes, and they are many, the Western World succeeded. Everyone wanted to be part of it, and it will be the demise of the Russians that they still do.

The Western World succeeded, because it believed in objective truth and searched for it. This resulted in scientific and technological discoveries, in architectural and artistic beauty, and in brilliant literature that educated the educatable into the human condition.

But objective truth is no longer acceptable in the Western Woke World, because it is contrary to the woke ideologies, such as there is no difference between men and women, that there are many genders and that men and women can be born into the wrong bodies, that hurt feelings are more important than empirical facts, that many subjects are not subject to examination or debate, because they offend emotive beliefs of feminists, people of color, Jews, the new transgendered species, and whoever else can make a claim of victimhood. Read More

11.06.19- Being a Modern Heretic
Donald Jeffries
It’s not easy going against the grain in any time period, in any society. In our present crumbling America, it may be more difficult than ever.

When you oppose both authoritarian political correctness, and the all-encompassing greed that has produced an unprecedented disparity of wealth, as I do, your prospects in all ways will be severely limited. Family and friends roll their eyes, at best, and at worst shun you. Prospective employers are not impressed.

It’s hard to enjoy anything when you’re a heretic. I should have been more thrilled than I was, as an old-time Washington Senators fan, to see the Nationals win the World Series. While I watched more baseball than I have in many years, and was happy over the victory, it was impossible to ignore the diminished level of play. This is probably even more the case with professional basketball and football. Since I can’t watch such a bad product in silence, I am not a popular guest at parties. Read More

11.05.19- How Far Will They Go?
James Howard Kunstler

CBS-News carried another bucket of muddy water for the coup team Sunday night with a lead 60 Minutes agit-prop story on Maria Butina, an ambitious Russian cutie who worked the American NRA circuit in the most public manner imaginable to make herself into a sex-bomb celebrity at the exact moment in history when the US Deep State wished to reinforce the fantasy, as Lesley Stahl put it, that “Russia was interfering in our electoral process.”

Of course, Ms. Stahl and her shifty producers left out half the story: how Maria Butina was manipulated by her FBI-handler and sometime-boyfriend, Patrick Byrne, the former Overstock.com CEO who had been employed by the Bureau over the years on other undercover assignments. They didn’t mention him or seek to understand his role in the operation. But they gave plenty of air-time to the DOJ lawyer, John C Demers, who prosecuted Ms. Butina, and never bothered to ask Demers why Butina was not charged with espionage — perhaps because nothing remotely like that occurred. Read More

11.04.19- 25 mind-blowing things that are likely to happen if the Dems succeed in removing Trump from office
Mike Adams

A coordinated, deep state attempt to remove Trump from office at any cost is now gaining steam. With the collusion of the deep state media, CIA operatives and anti-Trump tech giants that censor all truth, the deep state is hoping to crush democracy, destroy Trump and install Hillary Clinton as President of the United States in just the next few months.

Should they succeed in achieving a U.S. Senate conviction of Trump — which would remove him from office — here are 25 shocking, history-changing events we may see unfold.

Disclaimer: This author does not condone any of the actions outlined below. This is analysis, not a call for action. Many of the events described below involve mass executions and other horrific crimes. We hope to see none of this come to pass. Read More

11.02.19- Justice is Dead
Neal Ross

“Where’s the justice, where’s the law? Raise your healthy voice.” ~ Ted Nugent, Stormtroopin’ (1975)

The U.S. Department of Justice, commonly referred to as simply the Justice Department, is a subdivision of the Executive Branch of the government under the control and authority of the United States Attorney General. Their primary function is to ensure that the laws are upheld and that justice is served. (So what went wrong? ~ Ed.) 

The Constitution, as ratified in 1789, created neither the office of the Attorney General, nor the Department of Justice; both were established after the Constitution was ratified. The position of U.S. Attorney General was established shortly after the Constitution went into effect when Congress passed the Judiciary Act of 1789; which in my opinion was a horrendous mistake as it laid the foundation for a system in which federal courts and prosecutors could usurp the power and authority of the systems of justice of the individual States. Read More

11.01.19- A History of the 21st Century
Paul Craig Roberts

In the 1990s with the Soviet Union collapsed as a result of the communist hardliners’ arrest of Soviet President Gorbachev and Yeltsin serving as Washington’s puppet while Americans and Israelis looted Russia, the neoconservatives called for Washington to overthrow Middle Eastern governments. The neocon scenario for remaking the Middle East was set out prior to the events of September 11, 2001.  

The neoconservatives said that they needed “a new Pearl Harbor” in order to launch wars in the Middle East. The cover story was to bring democracy to the Middle East, but the real purpose was to remove governments in the way of Israeli expansion. 

Israel’s principal target was the water resources in southern Lebanon.  The Israeli Army had tried to occupy southern Lebanon but was sent fleeing back into Israel by the Hezbollah militia.  Israel concluded that it would use their American vassal to overthrow Iraq, Syria, and Iran, the governments that supplied the Hezbollah militia.  Once the American puppet had overthrown the resistance to Israel’s expansion, Hezbollah would have no financial or military backing and could safely be attacked by the Israeli army, a military force good only for killing unarmed Palestinian women and children. Read More

10.31.19- Individual Goodness Is the Antidote to Collective Turmoil
Bryan Hyde

In my day to day search for interesting and, hopefully, relevant content, there are a handful of discussion boards I visit.

The discussions span a wide range of interesting topics from history to how to cook a particular dish to where to find a good deal on wool socks to the best song of the 1960s. However, politics, by far, appears to be the most common driver of discussion.

I suspect it’s like this in many corners of the online world.

What caught my attention this past week was a post by a long-time and respected member of a gun-related discussion board. He announced that a heavy burden had been lifted from his shoulders and went on to explain that he had decided not to participate in any more political discussions.

As a recovering political junkie, this caught my attention. Read More

10.30.19- Have The Bankers And Politicians Taken America
to The End of Its Financial Rope?
Bill Sardi

What if you woke up this morning to hear news reports that the U.S GDP (gross domestic product) is in decline for the first time in decades?

The GDP is a number world economies use as a bellwether.  Where the U.S. economy goes, so goes the world.  (Given that the Post WW I & II rearrangement saw to it that the U.S. would have high incomes to produce a consumer economy and most of the rest of the world would be a supplier economy with low incomes to provide cheap products to the U.S.)

But a noted economist says the GDP has actually been flat for several years now, a fact that has remained hidden from the public. (GDP being the total value of goods produced and services provided in a country during one year.) Read More

10.29.19- Three things you didn’t know about the crash of 1929
Simon Black

October 28, 1929– 90 years ago today– is known as ‘Black Monday’ in financial circles.

The US stock market had peaked the previous month, on September 3, 1929, with the Dow Jones stock index reaching a record high of 381.

But throughout September and October, nervous investors began pulling their money out of the market.

And over a three day period in late October (including Black Monday), the market lost more than 30% of its value.

Ninety years later, I thought it would be prudent to look at three key insights from that historic crash, starting with: Read More

10.28.19- This Is What Worries Me
Charles Hugh Smith

In this disintegrative phase, people are increasingly indignant if their magical-thinking "solution" is challenged. 

It's practically un-American to confess you're worried.Can-do self-help and cheerfulness are expected, promoted and rewarded. So to say I'm profoundly worried about the state of the nation is to swim against the optimistic zeitgeist. 

Nonetheless, I'm worried, because I sense the long-wave/cycle disintegrative phase is gathering momentum. Though the timing and outcome are unknown, these phases end badly when people lose their ability to learn new ideas, experiment, cooperate and adapt.

As I've noted in previous posts, economic decline manifests as social and political decay. People are angry, easily inflamed, seeking scapegoats, hardening their own views, all of which manifest economic decline and insecurity. Read More

10.26.19- What You Think Is Controlled By What You Watch, And What You Watch Is Controlled By The Elite
Michael Snyder

Why do you believe what you believe?  Some people have a really solid answer to that question, but much of the population never thinks much about deeper questions such as this.  In fact, for most Americans it is simply easier to let others do their thinking for them.  Today, most of us spend multiple hours each day absorbing information through a screen, and most of the content that is fed to us through our televisions, phones, tablets and computers is controlled by the elite.  And if you allow anyone to feed information into your mind for several hours every day, it is going to have a dramatic impact on how you view the world.

When I was younger, one of my favorite movies was “The Matrix”, and I think that it is a really good metaphor for what is going on in our society today.  In the film, nearly the entire human population was plugged into a system which continuously fed a computer-generated reality into their minds that wasn’t real at all.  Later on, I eventually came to realize that we are willingly doing the same thing to ourselves.  Our personal interactions with one another are extremely limited, but we willingly “plug in” to the enormous matrix of news, information and entertainment that the elite have constructed for many hours each day. Read More

10.25.19- 55 Ways to Starve the Beast
Daisy Luther

A term coined in 1985 by an unnamed staffer of the Reagan administration was “Starve the Beast”.  This referred to a fiscally conservative political strategy to cut government spending by paying less in taxes.  So, in the original sense, “the Beast” was the government, and people were to starve said beast by spending less and using loopholes to pay less in taxes.

Now the Beast is a whole lot bigger.

These days the Beast has a lot more tentacles than just the government.

The system now consists of the government and all aspects of corporatism.  Big Agri, Big Pharma, Big Tech, Big Food, Big Banking, and Big Oil, to name a few.  It seems that now it’s the Beast that’s doing the starving, as small businesses close because they can’t compete with WalMart, bigger chains are run out of existence by Amazon, the family farm is on its way out because it can’t compete with the huge, subsidized mega-farms, and people are going bankrupt because they can’t pay the outrageous medical bills… Read More

10.24.19- The Pathocracy Of The Deep State: Tyranny At The Hands
Of A Psychopathic Government
John Whitehead

“Politicians are more likely than people in the general population to be sociopaths. I think you would find no expert in the field of sociopathy/psychopathy/antisocial personality disorder who would dispute this... That a small minority of human beings literally have no conscience was and is a bitter pill for our society to swallow — but it does explain a great many things, shamelessly deceitful political behavior being one.”

- Dr. Martha Stout, clinical psychologist and former instructor at Harvard Medical School

Twenty years ago, a newspaper headline asked the question: “What’s the difference between a politician and a psychopath?”

The answer, then and now, remains the same: None.

There is no difference between psychopaths and politicians. Read More

10.23.19- Central Bank Hints at a “Big Reset” and Reveals
a Possible Solution
Birch Gold Group

It’s not every day you hear a major financial institution hint at the possibility of the entire economic system collapsing.

The reason major financial institutions (and the mainstream financial media) shy away from a negative outlook on the economy is out of fear of triggering a kind of “self-fulfilling prophecy.” People stampeding to sell stocks and pull money out of banks could cause a vicious cycle of declines and losses.

And so these institutions tend to be positive, no matter what is really happening. But if a hungry bear is standing behind you in the woods, do you want to be “optimistic” and hope it isn’t there?

Maybe reality has finally started to sink in. Zero Hedge captured the stark state of the “system” by quoting an article from the Dutch Central Bank: Read More

10.22.19- The American Economy RIP
Paul Craig Roberts

“Permit me to issue and control the money of a nation, and I care not who makes its laws.”  —Mayer Anselm Rothschild, 1790

Thirty-eight years ago when I was in charge of United States domestic economic policy, the US Treasury and President Reagan believed that the purpose of economic policy was to serve the country, not Wall Street and the banks or the corporations or any of the various organized interest groups.  Our idea was that policy  could not be for this or that part of the economy.  It had to be for everyone.

This changed in the last year of the Reagan administration after I was gone.  The George H.W. Bush Republicans, who by then had taken over the Reagan administration, decided that economic policy had to serve the election of Bush as Reagan’s successor.  They created the “Plunge Protection Team,” consisting of the Treasury and the Federal Reserve.  Its purpose was to stand ready to intervene in financial markets and to support financial prices in the event of a stock market downturn for which the Bush Republicans had set themselves up to be blamed. Read More

10.21.19- Tulsi Gabbard: Canary in the Democratic Coal Mine
David Catron

The imminent demise of her presidential campaign portends disaster for her party.

For a sense of how divorced the Democrats are from mainstream America, the collapse of Tulsi Gabbard’s presidential campaign is instructive. Gabbard is a liberal who supports banning so-called assault weapons, raising the minimum wage to $15, free college tuition, etc. But her positions on abortion and health care are relatively moderate. Moreover, she is circumspect about impeachment, the only responsible position for a sitting congresswoman, and supports withdrawing American troops from Syria. Thus, her poll numbers are tanking. This is good news for Republicans. If a liberal like Tulsi Gabbard is too moderate for today’s Democrats, they have no chance of beating Trump in 2020. Read More

10.19.19- Still Think There’s No Inflation? Check Out
All The Affluent Renters
John Rubino

Generally speaking, if you can afford to buy a decent house you do it. Owning is viewed by most people to be both simpler (no worries about your landlord selling a rental out from under you) and a better financial deal. And of course there’s the status of home ownership. When you rent, people wonder why you can’t afford to buy. When you own, they view you as a higher class of neighbor. 

Yet a growing number of affluent Americans are now renting. From today’s Wall Street Journal: 

So You Make $100,000? It Still Might Not Be Enough to Buy a Home Read More

10.18.19- The 16th Amendment: How the U.S. Federal Income Tax Became D.C.'s Favorite Political Weapon
Sam Jacobs

The American Revolution was sparked in part by unjust taxation. After all, the colonists in Boston rebelled against Britain for imposing “taxation without representation,” and summarily tossed English tea into the harbor in protest in 1773.

Nowadays Americans collectively spend more than 6 billion hours each year filling out tax forms, keeping records, and learning new tax rules according to the Office of Management and Budget. Complying with the byzantine U.S. tax code is estimated to cost the American economy hundreds of billions of dollars annually – time and money that could otherwise be used for more productive activities like entrepreneurship and investment, or just more family and leisure time.

The majority of these six billion hours sacrificed by Americans to Washington each year goes to complying with a tax that didn’t even exist until 100 years ago – the federal income tax. Read More

10.17.19- China, The NBA, And The Massive Face of Globalism
Jon Rappoport

Let’s get one thing straight. The Chinese people, whether they appear happy or sad, support their government because they’re controlled. After generations of being beaten down, the population bows the head and bends the knee to slave masters. Call that freedom if you want to.

And if you really believe the situation in America is no better than the system in China, even with the amount of censorship alive and well in America, even with the rigging of this economy, try an experiment. Move to China and start publishing articles relentlessly critical of the government there. See what happens. Be sure to leave a copy of your last Will and Testament at home.

When the NBA commissioner and several players talk about loving their Chinese fans, they’re referring to victims of long-term terrorism. And if you press the NBA people on that point, they say, “We just want to play basketball, we just want the games.”

And they want the money. The Nike money, the Chinese money, the television money, the other merchandise money. More Chinese people than Americans watch the NBA playoffs on TV. Read More

10.16.19- Property Rights Are What Separate Humans from the Animal Kingdom
 Gary M. Galles

As someone who has studied public policy for decades, I have frequently been struck by how many people are so committed to their favorite ism or “answer” on an issue that they will ignore powerful contradictory analysis and evidence that is only a couple easy keystrokes away, or even when it is right in front of them.

A good example of this willful ignorance is the frequency with which opponents of capitalism reiterate dog-eat-dog, “survival of the fittest,” and jungle as descriptors when they open their cornucopia of calumny. Read More

10.15.19- We're in a permanent coup
Matt Taibbi

Americans might soon wish they just waited to vote their way out of the Trump era

I’ve lived through a few coups. They’re insane, random, and terrifying, like watching sports, except your political future depends on the score. 

The kickoff begins when a key official decides to buck the executive. From that moment, government becomes a high-speed head-counting exercise. Who’s got the power plant, the airport, the police in the capital? How many department chiefs are answering their phones? Who’s writing tonight’s newscast?

When the KGB in 1991 tried to reassume control of the crumbling Soviet Union by placing Mikhail Gorbachev under arrest and attempting to seize Moscow, logistics ruled. Boris Yeltsin’s crew drove to the Russian White House in ordinary cars, beating KGB coup plotters who were trying to reach the seat of Russian government in armored vehicles. A key moment came when one of Yeltsin’s men, Alexander Rutskoi – who two years later would himself lead a coup against Yeltsin – prevailed upon a Major in a tank unit to defy KGB orders and turn on the “criminals.” Read More

10.14.19- Will Social Security Be There for You? Status of the Social Security Trust Fund in Fiscal 2019
Wolf Richter

“Don’t rely on Social Security”: because inflation adjustments are punitively low, and benefits become more inadequate as you age.

The  Old-Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) Trust Fund – does not include the Disability Insurance (DI) Trust Fund – which closed the fiscal year 2019 at the end of September with a balance of $2.80 trillion, according to figures released by the Social Security Administration. This balance was up by $3 billion from September last year, but was down $16 billion from September 2017.

The balance tends to hit annual peaks in June. The all-time peak was in June 2017, at $2.846 trillion. In June 2018, the balance was down by $13 billion. In June 2019, the balance, at $2.834 trillion, was up $1 billion from a year earlier, but was still down $12 billion from the peak in June 2017. You get the drift: 2017 was a record year, 2018 was an alarming down-year, and 2019 has reversed the down-trend, but not by much: Read More

10.12.19- U.S. Marines reserve units activated for “emergency within the United States” which “will come with little warning” – cites “threats in the Homeland”
Mike Adams

(Natural News) BREAKING NEWS UPDATE concerning a directive involving the United States Marine Corps reserve units via MARADMINS number 550/19, signed on Oct. 3, 2019, authorized by Brigadier General Daniel L. Shipley, Director, Manpower Plans and Policy.

Notably, Brigadier General Daniel L. Shipley was nominated by President Trump for the rank of major general, according to a Jan. 16, 2019 Defense.gov press announcement. Before serving in his current role, Shipley served as the deputy director, Program Analysis and Evaluation, Department of Programs and Resources for the U.S. Marines.

This new order is summarized as, “MARINES ORDERED TO ACTIVE DUTY ISO DEFENSE SUPPORT OF CIVIL AUTHORITIES.” (The term “ISO” means In Support Of.”) (See full text of the order here.) Read More

10.11.19- Why you shouldn’t be able to drive to your bank
Simon Black

What is your favorite coffee shop or restaurant? Which doctor’s office and dentist do you prefer to go to?

I bet these are all within, say, 15 minutes of your home. That makes sense–who wants to drive three hours to get coffee, or take a plane to their dentist?

But what about your bank?

If you live in the USA or Europe, chances are, the banks in your neighborhood probably aren’t that great.

Europe in particular has a lot of problems; according to the European Banking Authority (one of the EU’s biggest financial regulators), the largest banks in Europe collectively lack more than 100 billion euros to meet minimum capital requirements. Read More

10.10.19- PG&E's Deliberate Blackouts
Joseph P. Farrell

Seriously, folks, I do not know why Nuttyfornians haven’t done a run on pitchforks and ropes, because I’ve never seen a state so lost in lunacy as that one. While San Francisco drowns in human poop and drug needles, the people in the state capital, the administrative center of the asylum, Scarymental , are worried about plastic straws and forcing people to get vaccinated.

But wait, there’s more insanity, and you knew it was coming: according to this article shared by C.V., deliberate brownouts and blackouts are coming from PG&E (Pacific Graft and Emoluments… er… I mean, Pacific Gas and Electric) during period of high fire risk:

PG&E: Massive power shut-off to hit 800,000 customers, could extend nearly a week

In case you missed it, read this one again:

Of the Bay Area’s nine counties, all but San Francisco was to be hit by the mass outage intended to stop trees from crashing into Pacific Gas and Electric Co. lines when fast, dry winds blow in after several months without sustained rainfall. Across the state, 34 counties will be affected, some starting in the early morning and others not until noon or later on Wednesday. (Emphasis added) Read More

10.09.19- Inflation Will Eliminate Excess Debt
Bill Bonner

“We’ll take inflation if necessary, but we can’t take unemployment.”

– Richard Nixon

YOUGHAL, IRELAND – Today, we come bearing glad tidings.

We’ve seen how both Trump and Warren, the Federal Reserve, Congress, Krugman, Summers, the powers that be, and all the ships at sea are committed to inflating our way out of the debt trap.

Just yesterday, Jerome Powell, top honcho at the Fed, reaffirmed the bank’s readiness to pitch in as needed. The Financial Times reports:

The Federal Reserve will soon resume purchases of short-term US Treasury bonds to expand its balance sheet in hopes of preventing a repeat of the recent disruption in overnight “repo” markets, chairman Jay Powell said on Tuesday. Read More

10.08.19- Following the Greater Depression on eBay
Jeff Thomas

I’m often asked how I see the warning signs that allow me to gauge the timing of the coming economic crisis.

Although careful research into an economy can result in a relatively accurate prognostication, the timing is always the most difficult aspect to pinpoint.

However, a good indicator is to track how others within the economy are surviving the situation. This tells us much more than their questionable claims that they’re doing just fine.

One very telling way to do this is to follow their extravagances. In prosperous times, they’re likely to buy expensive toys. Then, as they increasingly feel the pinch, they’ll sell off those toys first, before resorting to selling their more essential possessions. For example, someone will sell off his beloved sports car before he sells the more essential family SUV. Or he’ll get rid of the vacation house before he puts his primary home on the market. Read More

10.07.19- The Impeachment Waltz
Donald Jeffries

Let me confess; I would have supported the impeachment of almost every president since Lyndon B. Johnson.

Just in more recent years, both Reagan and George H.W. Bush could have been impeached over the October Surprise and Iran/Contra scandals. Bill Clinton could have impeached for many high crimes and misdemeanors, but the mass murder at Waco certainly stands out as an impeachable offense. Dubya could have been impeached for the “weapons of mass destruction” lie and the government stand down on September 11, 2001. Barack Obama assassinated an American citizen with a drone, bragged about it, and then killed his sixteen year old son a month later. I don’t recall any impeachment efforts over that. Read More

10.05.19- "I Love The Smell Of Malfeasance In The Morning"
James Howard Kunstler

Sometimes, if you open up a big enough gate and stand in the void, the gate will swing back and slap you on the ass — which is where serial bungler and arch-schlemiel Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) finds himself at the end of an exhausting week’s dissembling in the WhistleGate matter. Long about now, his reluctant partner in the latest impeachment gambit, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, must feel date-raped just a little bit as every unraveling thread in the story leads back to another exposed deception by Schiff, the Inspector Clouseau of impeachment politics.

Maybe reading an alt-reality version of the Trump-Zelensky phone transcript wasn’t such a hot idea after all, since he read into the record evidence of his own bad faith. What was at issue, of course, were the President’s words, and in substituting something demonstrably other than that, and placing it on the record, Rep. Schiff set up a prima facie case for dismissal of his own case against Mr. Trump. Any way you slice the stunt, it smells like malfeasance. Read More

20.04.29- The Huge & Terrifying US Dollar Beast
Thorsten Polleit

This is a perspective that those may wish to take into consideration who think the US dollar is about to collapse…

John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946) explains very well how to predict the winner of a beauty contest successfully. You must, he noted, think along the following lines: “(…) each competitor has to pick, not those faces which he himself finds prettiest, but those which he thinks likeliest to catch the fancy of the other competitors (…). It is not a case of choosing those which, to the best of use of one’s judgment, are really the prettiest, nor even those which average opinion genuinely thinks the prettiest. We have to reach the third degree where we devote our intelligences to anticipating what average opinion expects the average opinion to be.” Read More

10.03.19- America’s Perilous Path Of Wealth Distribution
macromon

Summary

• We illustrate the stark contrast in the growth of household wealth between the different percentile groups since Q1 2000
  
  
• The top 1% of households now hold more wealth than the bottom 90%
  
  
• The aggregate nominal wealth of the bottom 50% of households has fallen by almost 10 percent since 2000, from 3.4 percent of total household wealth to just 1.3 percent
  
  
• The share of the top 1% is now over 31 percent and has grown by over 165 percent since Q1 2000
  
  
• The average wealth per household of the bottom 50% has declined 25 percent in nominal terms and 50 percent in real purchasing power compared to the 1%’s increase of 118 percent and 50 percent, respectively
  
  
• The widening wealth gap is a major factor in the rise of populism in the U.S. and the debate over a wealth tax will be a central focus of the 2020 presidential election
  
  
• Asset inflation resulting from quantitative easing (QE) has contributed to the widening wealth gap
  
  
• Long pitchforks and water cannons Read More

09.02.19- Soviet Catastrophe Paints Grim Picture of America’s Future
Bill Bonner

YOUGHAL, IRELAND – We begin today with a bold prediction: Elizabeth Warren will be our next president. (Biden’s candidacy died in the Ukraine.)

If the stock market collapses before the next election, she will win in 2020. If it doesn’t, she may have to wait until 2024.

We take no joy in this prediction. Ms. Warren is a pigheaded, sanctimonious know-it-all, with all the wrong ideas about how an economy functions.

In that regard, she is little different from Donald Trump. But Ms. Warren has “plans” for everything. And as we will see, they are all bad. Read More

10.01.19- 11 Habits You Need to Break Before You’re Broke
Nilus Mattive

I’m all for treating myself to some of life’s luxuries, but I won’t splurge to the point where it starts to hurt my finances.

Sadly, for a lot of Americans the latter is true.

In fact, the average US adult spends $1,497 a month on nonessential items, according to a recent survey conducted by OnePoll. That’s roughly $18,000 a year on things we can all do without.

The survey revealed that the average person spends about $20 per month on coffee, as well as $209 on dinners at restaurants and $189 going out for drinks with friends.

Survey respondents said they spend an average of $91 per month for cable, in addition to $23 for streaming movies and TV shows. Music streaming services averaged $22 a month, while other apps added $23. Read More

09.30.19- Geoengineering Watch Global Alert News
Dane Wigington

View Video

09.28.19- It Is Time To Go: Over Half Of All California Voters
“Have Considered Leaving The State”
Michael Snyder

Why in the world does anyone still want to live in California?  Great weather and good paying jobs are the two biggest positives that residents often point out, but the high cost of living and the absolutely ridiculous housing prices often eat up all of the extra money that Californians think that they are making.  In fact, it was recently reported that it now takes approximately $350,000 a year to live a middle class lifestyle in the city of San Francisco.  If you have a ton of money, it can partially insulate you from the problems that are increasingly ravaging the state, but unless you never go out in public nothing is going to insulate you completely.  Cities all over the state are degenerating into drug-infested, crime-ridden hellholes that are literally being overrun by millions of rats. Read More

09.27.19- It’s impossible to know everything. Here’s the smartest way to be ignorant
Joe Jarvis

I spent 15 minutes reading tuna cans in the grocery store the other day. I could have spent hours if I decided to look up each type online.

Keeping the price in mind, I wanted a smaller variety of tuna to avoid high mercury content and something with few dangerous chemicals in the packaging.

Finally, I made a decent choice. A mid-price smaller variety of tuna.

I’m not really sure about the chemicals in the packaging… but one thing I read online suggests avoiding a can in favor of a plastic pouch.

Food is an information-overload minefield. Read More

09.26.19- This law allows hospitals to kidnap you for profit
Simon Black

An 89 year old man named Robert Allen was feeling depressed after Christmas.

He went to the emergency room, and told the doctor that he had thoughts of hurting himself. Using his powers under the Baker Act, the doctor sent Robert to a mental health facility called North Tampa Behavioral.

Florida’s Baker Act allows doctors, police, or judges to involuntarily commit patients to psychiatric hospitals for up to 72 hours if they show signs that they may hurt themselves or others.

But North Tampa Behavioral has a problem letting patients go.

Robert repeatedly told the facility he would like to leave. But after the three days, the hospital refused to release him.

This is actually illegal. Read More

09.25.19- What I learned from having my mind
manipulated this weekend
Simon Black

There are few times in life when you have the opportunity to witness a master at work… someone who is truly the best in the world at what they do.

Whether it’s the world’s greatest chef, a champion athlete, a master pianist, or even the guy who holds the world record for being able to recite the first 70,000 digits of Pi, it’s always exciting to see the best at work.

Apollo Robbins is the best in the world at what he does.

Apollo has been called a lot of things: magician, illusionist, mentalist, and even ‘gentleman thief’. But he’s best described as a master of the human mind… and unparalleled expert in manipulating it.

I’ll give you a great example—

Apollo was my personal guest at our annual Total Access meetup in Las Vegas over the weekend; and on Friday night during a cocktail reception, he wandered through the crowd performing various tricks to educate and entertain our members. Read More

09.24.19- Doug Casey on Why the State Is a “Parasite on Society”
Doug Casey

Allow me to say a few things that some of you may find shocking, offensive, or even incomprehensible. On the other hand, I suspect many or most of you may agree – but either haven’t crystallized your thoughts, or are hesitant to express them. I wonder if it will be safe to say them in another five years…

You’re likely aware that I’m a libertarian. But I’m actually more than a libertarian, I’m an anarcho-capitalist. In other words, I actually don’t believe in the right of the State to exist. Why not? The State isn’t a magical entity; it’s a parasite on society. Anything useful the State does could be, and would be, provided by entrepreneurs seeking a profit. And would be better and cheaper by virtue of that.

More important, the State represents institutionalized coercion. It has a monopoly of force, and that’s always extremely dangerous. As Mao Tse-tung, lately one of the world’s leading experts on government, said: “The power of the State comes out of a barrel of a gun.” The State is not your friend. Read More

09.23.19- How to Slice Your Cell Phone Bill in Half
Nomi Prins

Can you name any other cell phone providers other than AT&T, Verizon, Sprint or T-Mobile?

If you can’t, I don’t blame you. The ‘Big Four’ have dominated the mobile provider space for decades.

And with their dominance, they’ve been able to dictate the price of your monthly phone plan. The average starting price of an unlimited plan within the Big Four is now $68.75 a month.

Notice I said “starting” price. J.D. Power reports the average monthly cell phone bill last year was $157 up from $149 the year before. Read More

09.21.19- Ben Hunt: Prepare To Get Burned
Adam Taggart

Society is pretending its actions don't have consequences. It's badly mistaken...

History teaches us that there is no free lunch, reminds Dr. Ben Hunt, publisher of EpsilonTheory.com.

And science informs us that even the most simple systems become nearly impossible to predict or control with 100% precision as time and variables change.

But our society today is ignoring these lessons. It’s betting that the increasingly excessive distortions required to keep the status quo continuing will succeed, and come at no cost. Read Mor

09.20.19- The Greatest Threat to World Stability
No One Knows About
J. Kim

The absolute greatest threat to world stability is a threat that oddly receives virtually no publicity. It’s not nuclear arms, it’s not a US stock market crash, it’s not a global bond market crash and it’s not a real estate market crash. The greatest threat to world stability is one that originates within the realm of cyberwarfare. Before you state, “Yeah, I’ve heard that many times before” and dismiss this article, there is a very low probability that your understanding of the magnitude of this risk is anywhere near complete simply due to the fact that the great majority of people do not have a clear understanding of how much of their daily modern lives depend upon a functioning internet. There is a massive threat to all infrastructure that exists in virtually every modern nation in the world today, because of the invention of the Stuxnet virus by US and Israeli intelligence agencies that inadvertently spread around the world. Read More

09.19.19- Democracy Is a Scam
Bill Bonner

The news this week, so far, has focused on Saudi Arabia and the oil market.

Somebody launched an assault on a refinery. Immediately, a group called the “Houthis” claimed responsibility. And immediately, too, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that it was the fault of Iran… and U.S. President Trump said he was locked and loaded for a retaliation against someone.

Swamp Games

We bring this up only to show why democracy can’t work. And we mention it only to show why we are doomed… to which we will return in a minute. Read More

09.18.19- Financially Transmitted Diseases
Marin Katusa

I came up with Financially Transmitted Disease, or FTDTM for short, a couple of years ago.

It all happened when I was having dinner with some colleagues discussing quantitative easing (QE) and negative interest rate policy (NIRP).

NIRP will have the biggest impact on our global markets moving forward.

I believe this is a monetary policy stance that major central banks like the European Central Bank, most global Central banks in emerging markets and even the People’s Bank of China are going to take.

This form of monetary policy is going to fuel a bonanza of ultra-cheap money. Just take a fresh look at the countries that have negative rates in the table below… Read More

09.17.19- The Black Swan Is a Drone
Charles Hugh Smith

What was "possible" yesterday is now a low-cost proven capability, and the consequences are far from predictable.

Predictably, the mainstream media is serving up heaping portions of reassurances that the drone attacks on Saudi oil facilities are no big deal and full production will resume shortly. The obvious goal is to placate global markets fearful of an energy disruption that could tip a precarious global economy into recession.

The real impact isn't on short-term oil prices, it's on asymmetric warfare: the coordinated drone attack on Saudi oil facilities is a Black Swan event that is reverberating around the world, awakening copycats and exposing the impossibility of defending against low-cost drones of the sort anyone can buy. Read More

09.16.19- Tectonic Rumblings
James Howard Kunstler

The memory hole that appeared in America’s zeitgeist around 2016 is expanding like some evil cosmic rot. Things happen and then things unhappen and after a while it’s like they never happened. For instance, little seems to have happened all summer long with the matter known as RussiaGate, the attempt by high US government officials to overthrow the result of the 2016 election by pretending that Russia was trying to interfere in the 2016 election.

Quite a confection of lies and subterfuge. It apparently grew out of an effort at the highest levels of the Obama administration well before 2016 to run so-called intel operations against the perceived enemies of Mr. Obama’s foreign policy. One target was General Michael Flynn, who until 2014 had headed the Defense Intelligence Agency, which is devoted to military intel analysis. General Flynn was known to be unfavorably disposed to Mr. Obama’s deal to pay billions to Iran for a halt in that country’s nuclear weapons program. Read More

09.14.19- Everything I Know About Business I Learned From The Godfather
Robert Gore

As rich and powerful as the Godfather becomes, he never loses sight of the reciprocal strands of respect, obligation, honor, and loyalty due family, friends, fellow Sicilians, and the Catholic church. These are not ties that bind. They are bonds, sources of strength, foundational stones of his life and empire. Such bonds have bolstered the human race for most of its history. That they are now under sustained assault would strike Don Corleone as foolishness. Their proposed replacement would strike him as madness.

The family became the basic unit of human society not because men were a patriarchally oppressive conspiracy bent on enslaving their wives and children, but because it made the most sense. Humans reproduce, having filled the planet with almost eight billion of their kind. Women are vulnerable during pregnancy and when they’re caring for infants and children. Men are physically stronger and better able to provide sustenance and protection. A division of labor suggests itself. Women stay home and care for the children while men hunt mammoths, farm, tame fire, invent the wheel, propitiate the gods, battle enemy tribes, and other, equally exciting lines of work. Read More

09.13.19- Has America Become One of the Most Evil Nations
on the Entire Planet?
Michael Snyder

How will history remember us?  As Americans, we like to think that we are a light to the world and that other countries should be using us as a model for how to properly do things.  But the truth is that we have become unspeakably evil, and after reading this entire article I doubt that there will be anyone that will disagree with me.  And while it is certainly true that there are quite a few other nations that are also tremendously evil, none have fallen harder or faster then we have.  At one time America truly was “the hope of the world”, but now just about every form of wickedness that you can possibly imagine is exploding all around us, and very few of our national leaders seem to care. Read More

09.12.18- Tulsi Gabbard Suggests Government Is Run By A “Small Group Of Political Elite”
Joe Martino

Democratic candidate and congresswoman from Hawaii Tulsi Gabbard is an unconventional political figure in this upcoming election that has been turning heads. Whether it’s sharing truths about the Syrian war and the US arming terrorists or whether she was exposing establishment candidates like Kamala Harris, Gabbard is someone who many people are seeing as ‘the only viable Dem candidiate.’

But that doesn’t mean Gabbard has any chance at that spot because as we saw in 2016, the DNC is ready and willing to rig the election to favour controllable Deep State driven candidates like Biden and Harris. After all, WikiLeaks showed us this quite clearly when the DNC kicked Bernie out in favour of Hillary. Read More

09.11.19- Just when you think you own your own private property…
Simon Black

The year was 1967. Ronald Reagan had just become governor of California. Aretha Franklin was belting out R-E-S-P-E-C-T on the radio. Marxist revolutionary leader Che Guevara was captured and executed in Bolivia.

And a restaurant chain called The White Spot opened its newest location in Denver, Colorado.

It was a popular diner; the White Spot served pancakes and milkshakes to customers for decades, and ownership of the Denver location eventually changed hands when an entrepreneur named Tom Messina bought the diner in 1999.

He changed the name from the White Spot to Tom’s Diner, and he’s been serving Denver customers for the last 20 years.  Read More

09.10.19- 9/11 After 18 Years
Paaul Craig Roberts

I would appreciate hearing from readers whether they have come across a report in the print, TV, or NPR media of the highly professional four-year investigation of WTC Building 7’s demise.  The international team of civil engineers concluded that the official story of Building 7’s destruction is entirely false.  I reported their findings here.

I suspect that the expert report is already in the Memory Hole.  Popular Mechanics, Wikipedia and CNN cannot label a distinguished team of experts “conspiracy theorists.”  Therefore the presstitutes and assorted cover-up artists for the 9/11 false flag attack on the United States will simply act as if no such report exists. The vast majority of people in the world will never hear about the report. I doubt that the real perpetrators of 9/11 will even bother to hire their own team to “refute” the report as that would bring the report into the news, the last place the perpetrators want it to be.The 9/11 Commission report was not an investigation and ignored all forensic evidence. The NIST simulation of Building 7’s collapse was rigged to get the desired result.  The only real investigations have been done by private scientists, engineers, and architects.  They have found clear evidence of the use of nano-thermite in the destruction of the twin towers.  More than 100 First Responders have testified that they experienced a large number of explosions inside the towers, including a massive explosion in the sub-basement prior to the time the airliners are said to have hit the tower.  Numerous military and civilian pilots have said that the flight maneuvers involved in the WTC and Pentagon attacks are beyond their skills and most certainly beyond the skills of the alleged hijackers.  Wreckage of the airliners is surprisingly missing from impact sites.  And so on and so on. That Building 7 was a controlled demolition is no longer disputable.  Read More

09.09.19- Gun control is ‘NOT‘ the answer… Idiot control ‘IS‘ the only answer!
Jeffery Bennett

Interesting statistics!  The following jives with the research of Prof. Lott at the University of Chicago, who is a noted expert on gun laws and stats. ~ Ed.

There are 30,000 gun related deaths per year by firearms, and this number is not disputed. The U.S. population is 324,059,091 as of June 22, 2016. Do the math: 0.00925% of the population dies from gun related actions each year. Statistically speaking, this is insignificant! What is never told, however, is a breakdown of those 30,000 deaths, to put them in perspective as compared to other causes of death:

65% of those deaths are by suicide, which would never be prevented by gun laws.

15% are by law enforcement in the line of duty and justified.

17% are through criminal activity, gang and drug related or mentally ill persons – better known as gun violence.

3% are accidental discharge deaths. Read More

09.07.19- It’s The Pace Of Change That Kills You
Chris Martenson

And it has now sped up beyond our means to control it

A treasured member of my family is in the process of dying right now. She has lived a full, rich life; but her passing is a sad affair for us.

I’ve spent a lot of time recently with hospice workers. I’ve learned that they’re often asked by their patients, “How much time do I have left?”

While sometimes loathe to offer an answer, hospice staff can predict the timing of the end pretty accurately.

They do so by measuring by the changes they see. Or, more accurately, the pace of change in those changes. Read More

09.06.19- The king of Ponzi schemes was an amateur
compared to this
Joe Jarvis

Ten years ago, a man was forever separated from his $40,000 slippers.

Posing as an investment firm for decades, Bernie Madoff’s company defrauded thousands of investors out of their money.

In 2009 Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in prison for running the $64 billion Ponzi scheme.

That is considered the largest financial scam in US history, and the largest Ponzi scheme in world history… but that’s not exactly true.

The US government’s method of providing retirement benefits is an obvious Ponzi scheme.

Social Security depends on at least 2.8 workers to pay the benefits of every one retiree. Read More

09.05.19- Free-Riding Investors Set up Markets for a Major Collapse
James Rickards

Free riding is one of the oldest problems in economics and in society in general. Simply put, free riding describes a situation where one party takes the benefits of an economic condition without contributing anything to sustain that condition.

The best example is a parasite on an elephant. The parasite sucks the elephant’s blood to survive but contributes nothing to the elephant’s well-being.

A few parasites on an elephant are a harmless annoyance. But sooner or later the word spreads and more parasites arrive. After a while, the parasites begin to weaken the host elephant’s stamina, but the elephant carries on.  Read More

09.04.19- Truth is an Endangered Species
Paul Craig Roberts

Dear Readers, you have kept this website going longer than I had hoped.  It is a lot of work for me.  My columns and those of guests generate a lot of appreciation and also a lot of demonization and expressions of hatred toward me.  The slightest criticism of Israel labels one an anti-semite.  People who are aware understand that this word is so over-used that it has become meaningless, but the insouciant conclude that if you are labeled an anti-semite you are some kind of monster who wants to harm Jews.  If you point out the double-standards that white people suffer, you get branded a “racist white supremacist.” If you point out that #MeToo feminists are criminalizing heterosexual sexual attraction, you become a misogynist.  If you expose the official lies fed to the American people—Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, Assad’s use of chemical weapons, Iranian nukes, Russian invasion of Ukraine, 9/11, Gulf of Tonkin, and so on—you are dismissed as a “conspiracy theorist” who hates America.  Instead of seeing you as someone who is trying to rescue America, morons ask “If you hate America so much, why don’t you move to Russia?” or Iran, or China, or Venezuela, or to whatever is the demonized and attacked country that the moron believes is getting its just reward.  Read More

09.03.19- In Coming Currency Wars, Gold Is the Only Practical Way
to Preserve Buying Power
Tom Dyson

Failure is so important. We speak about success all the time. It is the ability to resist failure or use failure that often leads to greater success. I’ve met people who don’t want to try for fear of failing. 

– J.K. Rowling

OLD TOWN HOTEL, HANOI – This month, we are billionaires.

As longtime Diary readers know, a year ago, my ex-wife Kate and I packed up our things and left America. Then we converted our savings and investments into gold and silver. Since then, we’ve been traveling the world.

Because we didn’t have a job, we favored cheap countries where we wouldn’t have to spend much money.

We went to Eastern Europe. It’s cheap there. We went to Turkey. It’s very cheap there. We went to Egypt. They had a big currency devaluation in 2016. It’s cheap there. India’s currency is at an all-time low. It is cheap there. And so on.

We’re having a great adventure, we’ve bonded as a family, and we spend a fraction of what we used to spend in America. Read More

09.02.19- Mass Layoffs Are Back. Are You At Risk?
Adam Taggart

Millions are going to lose their jobs in the coming recession. Will you?

Imagine the following scene playing out at work tomorrow:

You arrive in the morning to find a note reading ‘HR wants to see you’. About what?, you wonder.

Seeing your HR manager already in the conference room with the door closed, you fidget as you wait. A knot begins to form in your stomach that gets tighter as the minutes tick by.

Suddenly, the door opens. A colleague stumbles out, looking ashen-faced. Then the HR manager’s head emerges, notices you and says “Ah, please come in”.

“I’m sorry to tell you that the company is letting you go,” she begins. “Sales have slumped and we simply can’t employ as many people. It’s nothing personal.”

And just like that, your job is gone. Read More

08.31.19- Trade War Tariffs to Hit U.S. Consumers and Retailers
Peter Reagan

U.S. consumers and retailers may not escape the next round of tariffs set to roll out on September 1. Turns out, they won’t be delayed until December as originally stated.

The new tariffs will be raised to 15% from 10% in response to China’s additional tariffs on $75 billion of American goods.

According to a Newsmax piece, POTUS said that “the $250 billion of goods and products already being taxed at 25% will see that rate hiked to 30% starting on Oct. 1.”

The National Retail Federation (NRF) is concerned, stating “tariffs have cost American small businesses, farmers, workers and families over $30 billion so far.” Read More

08.30.19- “Monster” Hurricane Dorian Is Projected To Be
“A Very Big Hurricane, Perhaps One Of The Biggest”
Michael Snyder

Well, that certainly escalated quickly.  On Wednesday we were told that Hurricane Dorian would only be a Category 3 storm when it hits the Florida coastline, but now we are being told that it will be a Category 4 storm.  Hurricane Dorian is rapidly gaining strength over very warm waters in the Atlantic Ocean, and the latest forecast has it making landfall somewhere along the east coast of Florida on Monday.  If it is officially a Category 4 storm when it arrives, it will be the most powerful storm to hit the east coast of Florida since Hurricane Andrew in 1992.  Dorian is being described as a “monster hurricane”, and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has already declared a state of emergency for all 67 counties in the state of Florida.

We will see how things develop over the next several days, but at this point it has become clear that Dorian has the potential to be an exceedingly dangerous storm.

In fact, President Trump himself is telling us that Dorian could be “perhaps one of the biggest” hurricanes that the U.S. has ever seen… Read More

08.29.19- How to become a billionaire in five easy steps
Simon Black

Every morning here in Puerto Rico, I wake up around 6am as the sun rises over the ocean in front of my house. And I pretty much head straight to the gym.

Once there, one of my favorite medieval torture devices is a fairly new exercise bike called a Peloton.

In case you haven’t used one before, a Peloton is like any other stationary exercise bike. You pedal a lot, and it sucks.

The key difference is that Peloton bikes are connected to the Internet, and the company live streams classes directly to the integrated monitor on your bike. Read More

08.28.19- The Next Recession Will Destroy Millennials
Annie Lowrey

Millennials are already in debt and without savings. After the next downturn, they’ll be in even bigger trouble.

The trade war is dragging on. The yield curve is inverting. Investors are fleeing to safety. Global growth is slowing. The stock market is dipping. The Millennials are screwed.

Recessions are never good for anyone. A sputtering economy means miserable financial, emotional, and physical-health consequences for everyone from infants to retirees. But the next one—if it happens, when it starts happening—stands to hit this much-maligned generation particularly hard. For adults between the ages of 22 and 38, after all, the last recession never really ended. Read More

08.27.19- Peter Schiff Compares Trade War to
“Battle at Little Bighorn”
Gage Skidmore

Political commentators are increasingly critical of U.S. trade policy, particularly tariffs and the trade war with China. Radio host Peter Schiff went so far as to compare U.S. trade policies to General Custer and the Battle of Little Bighorn. Meanwhile, some economic red flags seem to support their worries.

In today’s polarized political climate, there is one topic both the Left and the Right seem to agree on: the trade war with China is eventually going to hurt the average American.

Radio host Peter Schiff has been hammering on the economic dangers posed by tariffs for months. He even compared the resulting trade war with China to General Custer’s Last Stand.

“General George Custer met his doom charging into a battle he thought he could win against an opponent he did not understand. Based on [certain] views about the fast-emerging trade war with China, it looks to me that [the U.S.]…is charging into an economic version of Little Bighorn.

“By mistaking the real nature of international trade, the costs of tariffs, the effects of currency movements, and the supposed ease with which the United States could quickly re-establish itself as a low-cost manufacturer, [the U.S.] risks shredding the safety nets that have undergirded the U.S. economy for decades and plunging us into a war we are ill-equipped to fight.” Read More

08.26.19- Save The World By First Saving Yourself
Chris Martenson

We each have a role to play in how the world recovers from the coming crisis

At this point we can only ride out the consequences as the systems we depend on collapse and then ebb away — exposing that the structure of our modern way of life is really a just an edifice built of sand.

That may be true. But not necessarily.

I’m here with some good news today. There remains a multitude of options that each of us can and should do to prepare for what lies ahead. And in so doing, we can help to avert the worst of it, as well.

But only if enough of us try. Critical mass is key here.

Yes, the world is busy collapsing around us. That’s true. Read More

08.24.19- A Critical Threshold Has Just Been Crossed, And Things
Will NEVER Be The Same Again…
Michael Snyder

Just when things seemed to be settling down a little bit, our conflict with China has suddenly escalated to a dangerous new phase.  This is not simply just a “trade war” any longer, and our relationship with China will never be the same again.  As you will see below, President Trump just referred to Chinese President Xi Jinping as our “enemy”, and this is something that the Chinese are going to take extremely seriously.  In China, the national leader is a representation of the government as a whole, and the government as a whole is a representation of the entire county.  So to the Chinese people, what Trump just said will be interpreted as “the United States and China are now enemies”.  Of course for Trump everything would be forgiven tomorrow if the Chinese totally caved in to his demands and started saying all sorts of nice things about him, but for the Chinese what has transpired in recent months will be remembered for generations.  President Trump has insulted their national honor over and over again, and that sort of thing may not mean much to us here in the western world anymore, but over in China their sense of honor is central to who they are as a people.  After everything that has already been said and done, there will be no going back, and we are now facing a future in which the United States and China will be very bitter enemies. Read More

08.23.19- What a Nobel Peace Prize, the Federal Reserve, and endless war have in common
Joe Jarvis

It was ten years ago that Congressman Ron Paul released his book, End the Fed.

It immediately shot to number six on the New York Times Bestsellers list.

Paul’s message was that the Federal Reserve was created to bail out banks. It privatized profits for them and socialized losses for the rest of us.

He said the system works against us by killing competition among banks and hiding taxes through inflation. Read More

08.22.19- The “Hidden Tax” That Could Hurt Your Retirement Savings
Birch Gold Group

Retirees have enough potential problems to deal with when it comes to providing security for their retirement, including the disturbing fact that 42% of Americans may retire broke.

You can see in the GoBankingRates chart below that 61.6% of retirees have less than $100,000 saved for retirement, which is far from the amount some experts claim is needed on average:

But regardless of whether you have $10,000 or $1 million saved for retirement, there is another obstacle that all retirees will face. Read More

08.21.19- Something Stinks About The “Booming Economy” Narrative: J.C. Penny To Sell Used Clothes
Paul “Half Dollar” Eberhart

Apparently J.C. Penny didn’t get Trump’s “Consumers are in the best shape ever” memo…

J.C. Penny, yes, that same J.C. Penny that has been a staple, for decades, in malls throughout America, is getting into the business of selling used clothes.

Though they’ll probably call it something like, “pre-worn” because while it is true that used clothes are also “pre-owned”, I’m not to sure the auto industry will take too kindly to J.C. Penny’s hijacking of the euphemism?

Nonetheless, a primer, from President Trump: Read More

08.20.19- Censorship of Conservative Voices on the Internet is Virtual Book Burning
Justin O. Smith

Americans are currently in the midst of a virtual “book burning” akin to the ones we look back on in shame.

* Catholics torched the writings of Protestant reformer Martin Luther.

* The Nazis lit a towering bonfire of books by Jewish and leftist writers such as Franz Kafka, Sigmund Freud and Upton Sinclair.

* And many 1950s Americans, spurred by Senator Joseph McCarthy, hunted for pro-communism books to burn.

Today’s censorship tactics are largely aimed at conservative ideas, theses, reference books, historical accounts and philosophy in general. While I have always found most of my best pieces of conservative wisdom in physical hard-covered books, most of us are going online these days, where conservative principles, in their original form and as originally presented by their authors, are becoming increasingly harder to find, due to the Big Tech search engines giving preference to Marxist thought and scrubbing conservative thought from their sites. Read More

08.19.19- 'Con'-fidence
Sven Henrich

Markets are subject to a giant con game. The game of CONfidence. Confidence must be maintained under all circumstances or we’re heading into a global recession first and then a US recession to follow.

Consider the macro context here: Nine major economiesare either in recession or on the verge of it. This includes Germany, UK, Italy, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Singapore, South Korea, Russia. Everything else is slowing down hard. Yields are plummeting for a reason and once again the world is looking to central banks to bail everyone out and for stimulus programs to be launched to rescue a global economy that hasn’t been able to do without in 10 years. US consumers are holding the US economy up is the consensus as they keep spending for now, but already we saw a dip in confidence. Why? Trade tensions, political tensions, and yes, concerns that the longest business cycle may come to an end. Add scary stock market headlines and before you know it the consumer is holding back. Read More

08.27.29- Bubble Bubba Isn’t Doing Fine Anymore
David Haggith

Let’s take a look at how the average consumer is doing. I’ll call this typical consumer “Bubba” because I just read an article that claimed “Bubba’s doing better today than at any time since before the Korean War.” It disgusted me because I found it to be such a disingenuous set of lies wrapped in half-truths, all contrived to pacify the trickle-down peasants as that philosophy continues to short-change the middle class with its fake promise.

First of all, who cares about how Bubba was doing before the Korean War? That’s going back an awful long time to find a day the present could beat. It’s before my days, and I’m a grampa now. If you have to look back that far to find a time when Bubba wasn’t doing as “well” as he is today, you’re chasing a false narrative because working-class Bubba wasn’t even alive back then. Those pre-Korean-war Bubbas retired long ago, and frankly they are much better off today in retirement than today’s working Bubba. Read More

08.16.19- Inflation Rising: Consumer Goods Prices Increase by Most in Seven Years
Nathan McDonald

The trade wars are taking root, and finally the damage is starting to ripple through not only Wall Street, but Main Street as well, as inflation steadily ticks higher.

This comes on the heels of a rate cut last month, in which one of the reasons given by the Federal Reserve was because they believe inflation was too low.

It is laughable to think that this would be a motive, and it just goes to show the complete disregard that the Fed has for the average person on the street who works hard their entire lives and saves for retirement, just to see those savings slowly chipped away by an easy money policy.

The Federal Reserve has a 2% inflation target—a target that until recently they believed they would not reach. Read More

08.15.19- Major Recession Alarm Sounds
Brian Maher

Red, red, in every direction we turn today… red.

The Dow Jones shed 800 scarlet points on the day.

Percentage wise, both S&P and Nasdaq took similar whalings.

The S&P lost 86 points. And the Nasdaq… 242.

And so the market paid back all of yesterday’s trade-induced gains — with heaps of interest.

Worrying economic data drifting out of China and Germany were partly accountable.

Chinese industrial production growth has slackened to 4.8% year over year — its lowest rate since 2002.

And given China’s nearly infinite data-torturing capacities, we are confident the authentic number is lower yet.

Meantime, the economic engine of Europe has slipped into reverse. The latest German data revealed second-quarter GDP contracted 0.1%. Read More

08.14.19- The “R” Word Is Rearing Its Ugly Head
Mark Nestmann

It’s here, or at least nearly here. “It,” in this case, is another recession.

We can debate the causes – an escalating trade war between the US and China, too much dodgy debt, the end of the longest bull market in history, or perhaps all three.

But all the economic indicators tell us the recession we’ve anticipated for so long is finally here:

• The yield curve for US Treasury securities has been “inverted” since June. That means short-term yields are higher than long-term yields. Inversions indicate that investors are snapping up long-term bonds in the expectation that interest rates will fall. Since central banks typically lower interest rates in a recession, an inverted yield curve is considered one of the most accurate predictors of a recession. Indeed, the last five recessions in the US have all been preceded by an inverted yield curve. Read More

08.12.19- Isn’t it obvious? Jeffrey Epstein was murdered because dead men don’t talk (about the Clintons)
Mike Adams

This post won’t be lengthy. The story is so simple that everybody already knows what happened here.

Jeffrey Epstein was found dead in his jail cell at 7:30 am this morning, according to police. He was under “suicide watch,” which was of course a designation placed on him roughly two weeks ago to set up the back story for what just happened. Jeffrey Epstein was “arkancided” / murdered for the simple reason that dead men don’t talk. And Epstein had a lot to say that would have implicated Bill Clinton and dozens of high-profile global power brokers who happily raped young boys and girls that were provided by Epstein as part of his blackmail-based wealth creation scheme. Read More

08.10.19- To Avoid A Collapse Means Restoring Glass-Steagall
(Without The Green New Deal)
Matthew Ehret

With the recent discussion of the collapse of the western system of banking (and neo-liberal ‘post-truth’ values more generally) a serious overview of the post-WWII stripping down of nation states is in order. Over the past couple of weeks, various figures like France’s Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire and American Senator Elizabeth Warren have called for a re-organization of the banking system with Le Maire saying on July 13 that the Bretton Woods “has reached its limits”, and Warren stating on July 22 that “the country’s economic foundation is fragile. A single shock could bring it all down.” It is no secret that the western nations sit atop the largest financial bubble in human history with global derivatives estimated at $550 trillion to $1.2 quadrillion. Read More

08.09.19- Heading for civil war
Peter Skurkiss

Donald Trump's opponents are completely unhinged.  The hate and slander directed toward the president and his supporters is off the charts.  The vitriol comes not just from the Democratic Party, the media, and the world of entertainment, but also from a sizable proportion of the federal bureaucracy and many seemingly ordinary people.

The media coordinate this campaign and amplify the hate at every opportunity.  Media twist every event, be it big or small, into a criticism of the president.  The goal is always not just to present Trump in an unfavorable light, but to make him appear too loathsome for polite society.  And Trump is not the sole target of this demonization.  It is directed at his supporters, too.  Read More

08.08.19- The Middle Class is Getting Destroyed!
Mac Slavo

Youtuber Jeremiah Babe tells it like it is, and doesn’t mince his words.  The middle class is getting eviscerated and it’ll be so much worse once the economy comes crashing down again.

In his recent video, Babe says far too many Americans are staring the boogeyman in the face and yet they still ignore the “dangers that are coming with this [economic] collapse.” He added: “I’m absolutely dumbfounded by the lack of common sense here in America in regards to what is happening to this economy.”

While average people are continuing to relate the health of the overall economy to the stock market, they are missing the underlying currents and the destruction that is coming like a tsunami at all of us. So many are simply unwilling to prepare or have put themselves in a financial situation that makes it almost impossible to even begin.  But at some point, it’ll be too late to start… Read More

08.07.19- “Worst Year Ever”: The Chinese Ban On U.S. Agricultural Products Will Be A Death Blow For Countless U.S. Farms
Michael Snyder

U.S. farmers have never experienced a year quite like this.  During the first half of 2019, endless rain and unprecedented flooding were the major problems.  As a result of the incredibly wet conditions, millions of acres of prime farmland didn’t get planted at all, and tens of millions of other acres are going to yield a lot less than usual.  Even without anything else happening, we were going to see farm bankruptcies soar to absolutely crazy levels, but now the Chinese government is essentially cutting off U.S. agricultural imports.  This will greatly depress the prices that U.S. farmers get for their crops, and so many farmers that were still hoping to squeeze out a profit for this year will be hit with a loss instead.  Ultimately, the truth is that 2019 is going to be a death blow for countless U.S. farmers that were barely hanging on financially after a string of really tough years.  Many will leave the industry entirely and never go back to farming again, and our nation will be worse off because of it.  Read More

08.06.19- Why We’re Keeping Our “Crash Alert” Flag Up
Bill Bonner

POITOU, FRANCE – Watch out, Dear Reader, this could be a tough week for investors.

Investor’s Business Daily reports:

Dow Jones futures sold off sharply Sunday night, along with S&P 500 futures and Nasdaq futures, as China’s yuan tumbled to a record low. That follows a tough week for the current stock market rally as new Trump tariffs escalated the China trade war.

So far, the big, fat, ugly Dow has sat on the wall and stubbornly refused to tumble. But last week, Donald J. Trump gave Humpty a shove.

He turned up the Trade War Dial, from 1/2 retard to 3/4 retard. China retaliated with its own version of retard, cutting agricultural purchases from the U.S. and letting the yuan fall. Read More

08.05.19- Scarcity vs. abundance: How globalists enslave humanity by creating artificial scarcity in everything: Money, health, knowledge, energy and more
Mike Adams

How do evil globalists control the world and enslave humanity? By creating artificial scarcity in everything from energy to money to food.

Abundance is the enemy of globalist control. When people experience abundance, they become more self-reliant and realize they don’t need big centralized government to run their lives. Abundance leads to economic mobility and human dignity, and these must be crushed by globalists to keep humanity suppressed.

That’s why globalists — and all their corporate minions like Google and Twitter — go all-out to create an artificial scarcity that keeps nearly all human beings living in a cycle of complete subservience.  Read More

08.03.19- Fiscal Conservatism Is Dead. Republicans Killed It.
Josh Hammer

"There are two ways to conquer and enslave a nation. One is by the sword and the other is by debt." – John Adams

"Fiscal conservatism," R.I.P. And while the Democratic Party has been an aider and abettor of this untimely death since at least the presidency of Lyndon Johnson, it is the Republican Party — the purported partisan home for fiscal conservatism — that ought to be credited with the fatal coup de grâce.

Let's review.

The much-vaunted Tea Party movement that rose to prominence in 2009 – 2010 always was, as I put it three years ago, "internally compromised by its warring constitutionalist and populist factions." For a brief period of time, following the 2010 U.S. Senate primary victories of Mike Lee in Utah and Rand Paul in Kentucky, it seemed that genuine constitutionalism and debt-averse fiscal conservatism were on the ascendancy. In the summer of 2011, House Republicans managed to leverage control of one half of one-third of the federal government to force Senate Democrats and a breathtakingly leftist White House to compromise on real, meaningful spending reforms. The Budget Control Act of 2011 — and the so-called "sequestration" it wrought upon the federal fisc — capped discretionary spending over the ensuing ten-year period, resulting in roughly two trillion dollars in savings. Read More

08.02.19- America's Poverty Trap: How A Small Financial Setback Can Spiral Into An Inescapable Disaster
Daisy Luther

When you are living a financially fragile life, it seems like someone somewhere is trying to keep you poor. Why is it so hard to get ahead? Well, because the system is rigged against you when you’re living paycheck to paycheck with fee after fee after fee. Because what makes more sense than charging someone who already can’t pay their bills even more money?

Land of the Fee

First, there are the fees. We’ve written here about undisclosed fees that most people are being hit with, but bank fees are even worse.

If you bounce a payment by so much as a penny, then you are hit with a charge from your bank and most times, a charge from the business that was taking the payment from your account. Most banks charge anywhere from $25-$38.50 when you have non-sufficient funds for a payment. Businesses charge in the same range, so that means that if one payment goes awry, you can lose $50-$77 in the blink of an eye. Read More

08.01.19- How Real Mind Control Works
Brandon Smith

When people are confronted with the idea of “mind control” they often think of something out of television or film media; a lone prisoner tortured, chemically dazed and conditioned into a hollow zombie as his captors squeeze information from him or use him to complete a task he would not normally do or morally accept. And while there is actually some truth to this kind of Hollywood depiction, as is evidenced in the exposure of government programs like MK Ultra, the most insidious forms of mind control are far more subtle.

Governments and the elitists behind them do not necessarily need to physically cage, drug and brutalize people in order to influence how they behave. All they need to do is manage their perceptions, expectation and assumptions. This can be accomplished with large portions of the public, rather than one person at a time. Read More

07.31.19- Johnstone: How the Question "Who Benefits From This?" Can Change Your Life
Rich Winkel

“Cui bono?” is a phrase you’ll often see used on conspiracy-minded Youtube videos and discussion forums. It’s Latin for “Who benefits?”, and it refers to a perspective in legal analysis that the one who stands most to gain from a crime is often the perpetrator. It’s the “motive” part of “means, motive and opportunity“.

The term comes up in conspiracy circles a lot because motive is often the biggest plot hole in the official story promoted by the authorized narrative managers of the political/media class about a given event. The alleged Douma chemical attack last year, for example, had no discernible benefit to the Assad government whatsoever, but would have benefitted the cornered Al-Qaeda affiliates in the city by provoking air strikes from the west, so there remains a lot of skepticism from those who don’t automatically believe their government and the plutocratic media when they say that Damascus was responsible. Such skepticism is dismissively branded “conspiracy theory” by the establishment narrative managers, but it is fully justified.  Read More

07.30.19- What I Learned from Eating Candy
Nilus Mattive

I don’t remember exactly how old I was, but it was either late single digits or early doubles.

I was looking through the local newspaper and saw a big, bold ad. Or maybe my parents showed it to me… I can’t remember that part either.

What I do remember is what the ad said, and how exciting it was to me at the time: Topps, the famous baseball card and candy company, was looking for taste testers.

More specifically, they wanted children taste testers. It was a one-day job. You’d go there, taste some sweet stuff, and get paid to tell them what you thought.

My brain was reeling. Paid to taste candy! Are you kidding me???

This ended up being my first paid job. Read More

07.29.19- Boomer Retirement
Larry LaBorde

It happens if you live long enough. You finally get old enough for social security. Even though we are in our early 60’s and not planning to retire I was curious when my wife’s social security statement arrived in the mail. She glanced at it and then handed it to me.

Now I plan on working until the day I die. I just want to work less and less every year. Fortunately I am in a position where I can slow down, downshift a gear and not quit. I still want to work but I want to take more time off and travel a little more. Most people run at their jobs full speed until one day they just jump off (or are pushed off) the merry-go-round and all of a sudden find themselves unemployed. So even though I was not interested in signing up for social security any time soon; when my wife handed me her statement, it just happened to be a Saturday and I sat down in my study and read it carefully. Read More

07.27.19- Non-Profit Hospitals Are Making a Killing
Richard Menger

The annual cost of health care for the average American family hovers around $20,000. Premiums increase yearly, and this is a primary driver of why real wages for average Americans don’t seem to improve. Meanwhile, the CEO of non-profit Banner Health, based out of Arizona, raked in $21.6 million last year. Nearly half of the CEOs of America’s leading non-profit health systems made more than $2.5 million. Only eight of the 82 executives of non-profit companies earned less than $1 million.

These sorts of salaries amid the backdrop of struggling families would make even the most loyal believers in the free market pause—except this isn’t capitalism. This isn’t the market at work. It’s crony capitalism with the exploitation of market-related inefficiencies and rent-seeking behavior. Read More

07.26.19- How to Buy “the Next Amazon”
Jeff Brown

The date was May 15, 1997.

A small company founded in Bellevue, Washington was set to go public. With the modest ambition of selling books online, Amazon (AMZN) listed for just $18 a share.

We all know what happened next…

On a split-adjusted stock basis, Amazon rose from $1.50 per share to where it is trading today around $1,975 per share. That is an incredible 1,317 times your money, or a 131,567% return on investment. That turned every $1000 invested into more than $1.3 million.

The best part… every retail investor had an opportunity to “get in” on those investment returns. Anyone that had a brokerage account could have enjoyed those kinds of gains. Read More

07.25.19- Free-Riding Investors Set up Markets for a Major Collapse
Jim Rickards

Free riding is one of the oldest problems in economics and in society in general. Simply put, free riding describes a situation where one party takes the benefits of an economic condition without contributing anything to sustain that condition.

The best example is a parasite on an elephant. The parasite sucks the elephant’s blood to survive but contributes nothing to the elephant’s well-being.

A few parasites on an elephant are a harmless annoyance. But sooner or later the word spreads and more parasites arrive. After a while, the parasites begin to weaken the host elephant’s stamina, but the elephant carries on. Read More

07.24.19- California’s nuclear power plants found to be sitting on top of a massive supervolcano filled with 240 cubic miles of magma
Michael Snyder

We have raised an entire generation of Americans that have no respect for the law, and now we are reaping what we have sown.  I cannot even begin to tell you how alarmed I am by some of the videos that I have been watching lately.  As you will see below, all over the nation young people are brazenly flouting the law, obstructing and assaulting law enforcement officers, and committing criminal acts in large groups.  I think that “lawlessness” is perhaps the best word to describe what is happening, and many believe that what we have witnessed so far is just the beginning.  I have so much respect for the good law enforcement officers across the country that put their lives on the line day after day to protect all of us, but I wouldn’t want to be in their shoes at this point.  If you wonder why I would say such a thing, just consider what just happened in New York City…  Read More

07.23.19- Beware, the IRS is eyeing your inherited money
Bill Bischoff

One little-noticed tax grab is already on the table, and another waits in the wings

One of the perils of being well-off is the constant risk that the federal government and/or your friendly state and local tax collectors will figure out new and different ways to snatch more of your wealth. Especially wealth that you earned the old-fashioned way: by inheriting it. To raise your paranoia to the appropriate level, here are two new things to worry about. 

SECURE Act would eliminate big tax advantage for IRA beneficiaries

Few noticed when the House of Representatives in May overwhelming passed the imaginatively named “Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement (SECURE) Act of 2019.” The vote was 417-3. Senate passage was thought to be a mere formality — until Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) announced opposition, because the bill no longer includes a provision that would allow tax-free Section 529 college savings account withdrawals to cover homeschooling costs. Read More

07.22.19- Badly Screwed: The Elite Are Spitting in Your Face!
Tom Beck

For the past two months, I’ve sunk my mind into the subjects of income inequality and wealth inequality. It took me on a journey that included over 13 lengthy books, countless recorded lectures, and numerous all-nighters to finally articulate my main conclusion on the matter, based on the facts.

Bottom line: America’s politicians, wealthy businessmen, and CEOs do not, in their heart of hearts, give the slightest thought to the average person’s well-being.

There are laws that could be legislated, right here and right now, that would make life in America more equal and give opportunity to the poor and under-skilled to prosper. Read More

07.20.19- Trump's Fight With The Fed Over Interest Rates Is A Scripted Farce
Brandon Smith

There is a very bizarre narrative being circulated in the mainstream economic media and it goes a little something like this:

“The Federal Reserve has capitulated on liquidity tightening yet the US economy is “stronger than ever”, isn't that weird?”

There are a couple things wrong with this statement. First, the Fed has not yet capitulated on its tightening policy. In fact, we have been hearing since last November from the mainstream media and some alternative media that the Fed was going to lower its Fed Funds Rate and end monthly balance sheet cuts at “any moment”, yet several months later it still has not happened. Just last month the Fed cut another $38 billion in assets from its balance sheet; a move that was barely discussed in the mainstream because it does not fit with the prevailing delusion that the Fed has “already capitulated”. When the Fed cuts rates back significantly and the asset dumps stop, then and only then can anyone say with any authority that the Fed has ended its tightening cycle. Read More

07.19.19- The Greatest Hoax of All
Donald Jeffries

Fifty years ago, our government and its state-run media tell us, Americans sent men to the moon. Neil Armstrong said “One small step,” and all that, and the photographs of the event were startlingly clear. Well, except for all the shadow anomalies, and lack of stars in the sky, that is.

As a twelve year old, and a huge astronomy junkie, I followed the Apollo program nearly as closely as I memorized Major League Baseball batting averages. I knew all the astronauts’ names, and even had a favorite; Jim Lovell, who would head the ill-fated Apollo 13, denying him the honor of walking on the moon.

At the time, I remember being a bit disappointed. I guess I expected the kind of world-wide attention that was depicted in a film I liked as a child; 1964’s The First Men in the Moon. The reaction on Earth just seemed kind of subdued to me in contrast, considering it was the most monumental achievement in human history. Read More

07.18.19- Eugenics, Infertility & Population Growth CRISIS Part 5
Corey Lynn

Eugenics emerged with a bang in the early 1900s with a primary focus of controlling the population. What began as fairs and baby contests for the best pedigree and maintaining ancestral records to distinguish traits, evolved into a cesspool of genetic manipulations and infertility by the hands of scientists, “philanthropists” and the entire medical industry, whether some knew it or not. But that wasn’t enough for the masses – GMOs, big tech, geoengineering, and AI moved to the forefront to pick up the slack – and suddenly health began. declining everywhere.

• More than 170 foods have been reported to cause food allergies, and children’s allergies to food have increased 50% between 1997 and 2011.

• 60% of processed food consumed by Americans is genetically modified, while nearly 40% of American adults were obese in 2015-2016, up from 34% in 2007-2008.

Read More

07.17.19- Promise The Moon
Jeff Thomas

In the 2018 US general election, a spate of liberal candidates appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, each making dramatic promises for a more collectivist US.

Until the 2016 election, the US hadn’t seen many openly collectivist candidates since before World War II, but since the campaign that gave rise to avowed socialist Bernie Sanders, socialist candidates have appeared in abundance and have become “the other democrats.” They’re not only plentiful, but unapologetic in their socialist stance.

But why should this be? And, more importantly, where will it lead? Read More

07.16.19- The Next Industrial Revolution
Doug Casey

What you’re going to read in the next few minutes will be shocking and unbelievable. But it’s also factual and logical. That will make it upsetting and disturbing. Most people are at least vaguely aware of what’s happening. But very, very few are aware of its degree or the implications.

As you probably know, I believe times are about to get quite rough economically and politically. But, at the same time, I’m very optimistic about what’s happening in science and technology. So let me hazard some predictions. And break the old rule about how, if you predict an event will occur, to make sure you don’t predict its timing.

THE RECENT PAST

I was born just after the end of WW2. It was an idyllic era to be an American. The U.S. had more wealth than the rest of the world combined. Things were mellow at home as “Leave It to Beaver” in the ’50s transitioned into “California Girls” in the early ’60s. Read More

07.15.19- Eugenics, Infertility & Population Growth CRISIS Part 4
Corey Lynn

Eugenics is all about controlling the population. This is not a lost art – it is an evolved art that they have perfected. The U.S. population growth hit a historic 80-year low last year and the entire world population growth is on a downward spiral, particularly in western countries. This is due to a decrease in the number of births and an increase in the number of deaths, along with an infertility crisis. How did this happen?

• While the birth rate is declining, infertility is rapidly rising, immigration is climbing to be the “new replacement population” for the U.S. which has been projected to tip the scales after 2030.

• The U.S. birth rate has fallen to the lowest in 30 years, and men’s sperm count has reduced by 50% over the past 40 years in western countries.

• There is a direct link between the HPV vaccine and infertility rates, and since 1991 the birth rate for teenagers has declined 67%. Read More

07.13.19- Do You Truly Have Free Will?
 Chris Martenson

How we’re constantly at war with our biological programming

Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.

~ Carl Jung

I love that Jung quote.  I’ve used it generously in conversation, seminars and writings throughout the years.

Initially, I assumed that the “unconscious” he referred to the place in our brains where our experiences, beliefs and memories are undetectably stored.  You know, psychology stuff:  ego, subconscious, id. Old memories from childhood lurking beneath the conscious frame of reference, directing thoughts and coloring our current experiences. Read More

07.12.19- Eugenics, Infertility & Population Growth CRISIS Part 3
Corey Lynn

Since the dawn of eugenics, they’ve tried to trace the pedigree and traits of human beings so as to control the masses. Through DNA, they have not only accomplished this, they have extended a branch to the population to show off their ancestral trees. Much like in the days of pedigree fairs, people had no idea what they were signing up for.

• Bill Gates funded scientists to study 40,000 DNA samples from 23andMe and assessed genes having to do with preterm labor and God knows what else.

• Billionaires, government and big pharma are investing in biotechnology companies that transform cells and rewrite DNA, amassing the world’s largest stores of “usable” designer genetic code.

• 30 million Americans have already voluntarily submitted their DNA to the likes of 23andMe, Ancestry, MyHeritage, Genomelink and several others. Read More

07.11.19- Are White People Too Stupid To Survive?
Paul Craig Roberts

There is a strong case that they are.  Having been demonized for many years and intimidated from defending themselves, white people are now intentionally discriminated against by the racial “minorities” (actually vast world majorities) of the people they have been pressured to elevate above them.  Once the “oppressed” are put in charge by dumbshit whites, the whites are really oppressed.

Heterosexuals or straights are also demonized and bullied.  White males are portrayed as rapists, but no one is permitted to say that about the flood of illegal Third World migrants that have overrun Europe and the US.  When young white girls 10 years old are gang-raped by the migrants, it is “racist” to complain.  Everywhere in the Western world, what little is left of it, the political leaders have abandoned the white populations. We only have traitors.

No one anywhere in the Western World represents the white populations except demonized leaders like Marine Le Pen, who the French government wants to imprison.  As she represents French people, she is considered to be a Nazi. Read More

07.10.19- Major Red Flags Are Causing Many To Doubt Whether Justice Will Be Done In The Jeffrey Epstein Sex Scandal
Michael Snyder

It won’t just be Jeffrey Epstein that will be on trial in the months ahead.  As this scandal unfolds, the entire U.S. legal system will be on trial, and if justice does not prevail many Americans will lose faith in the system for good.  And of course the rest of the world will be watching too, and so what are they supposed to think about us if we are not able to put Epstein and all of his dirty friends in prison?  As I detailed in part three of this series, the evidence against Jeffrey Epstein and his partners in crime is mounting.  If Jeffrey Epstein is put behind bars that will be a step in the right direction, but it will not nearly be enough.  At this point it is exceedingly clear to everyone in America that many of Epstein’s famous friends also regularly had sex with underage girls, and they must be held accountable.  In my most recent book I talked about how fundamentally broken our current legal system is, but if federal prosecutors are able to nail Epstein and all of his elite friends that were involved in these sex crimes, I might have to reconsider my position.

However, at this point I am not holding my breath. Read More

07.09.19- Goodbye Dollar, It Was Nice Knowing You!
Philip Giraldi

The significance of the European move cannot be understated…

Over the past two years, the White House has initiated trade disputes, insulted allies and enemies alike, and withdrawn from or refused to ratify multinational treaties and agreements. It has also expanded the reach of its unilaterally imposed rules, forcing other nations to abide by its demands or face economic sanctions. While the stated Trump Administration intention has been to enter into new arrangements more favorable to the United States, the end result has been quite different, creating a broad consensus within the international community that Washington is unstable, not a reliable partner and cannot be trusted. This sentiment has, in turn, resulted in conversations among foreign governments regarding how to circumvent the American banking system, which is the primary offensive weapon apart from dropping bombs that Washington has to force compliance with its dictates.Read More

07.08.19- You Are Being Trolled
Dmitry Orlov

The world is on the brink of war, again. And again. And, yes, yet again. And then it’s not on the brink of war any more… but wait, there’s more! Of course there’s more, there always is. US aircraft carrier battle groups are steaming toward North Korea… or not. They are steaming about aimlessly, nowhere near North Korea, but in a very threatening manner. Then Trump and Kim Jong Un meet, get on great, sign a piece of paper that means nothing and part friends. Now the aircraft carriers are steaming about far less menacingly. Then Trump and Un meet again, to sign some other meaningless piece of paper, but then John Bolton shoots his mouth off and the deal is off. But Trump and Un continue to exchange love letters, so the bromance isn’t dead. In any case, war between the US and North Korea is not just unwinnable but unthinkable: South Korea’s capitol is within striking range of North Korean artillery and all US military bases in the region are within range of North Korean rockets. War with North Korea is definitely off. Executive summary: nothing happens. So, what was that all about? Read More

07.06.19- Eugenics, Infertility & Population Growth CRISIS part 1
Corey Lynn

Over 60,000 Americans were sterilized in the U.S., in the name of eugenics, but it didn’t end there. The phenomenon of men’s sperm declining by 50% and infertility in females rapidly rising – stumps no one – they just won’t tell you the truth.

• Over 60,000 Americans were sterilized in the name of eugenics and the Supreme Court law wasn’t repealed until the 1970s.

• The U.S. population growth hit a historic 80-year low in 2018 due to less births, while immigration continues to grow – projected to be the primary contributor after 2030.

• Nearly every western country has a historic low birth rate – media is silent.

• The Rockefellers worked with scientists, WHO, UNFPA, USAID, multiple governments, and others, to create anti-fertility vaccines that would sterilize both men and women on a mass scale, with research evolving into crops as well.

• DNA databases you voluntarily submit your DNA to are being used for scientific research, by law enforcement, and based on history – for eugenics.

• Over 60% of processed food Americans consume is genetically modified. Coincidentally, children have seen a 50% increase in food allergies since 2011, and obesity and health issues are rapidly rising. Read More

07.05.19- Central Banks Will Keep Easing "Until Parliaments And Palaces Burn"
Bill Blain

“There must be someway out of here, said the joker to the thief...”

Oh, what a beautiful morning… It’s a Friday in July, so I may as well have an off the wall rant! If you are stuck in the office, send me a mail and we can bemoan we’re not working from home in the back garden!

I was reading a note yesterday that we’re now into the second longest expansion in global economic history. The recovery has been slow and steady, reflecting the new normal, longer-for-longer expectations of the post 2008 crisis. Aren’t we the lucky ones? Despite the current geopolitical fears and global uncertainties our supportive central banks and diligent regulators are making sure we sleep soundly at night.. (Do I really have to say it? OK. US READERS: Sarcasm Alert) Read More

07.04.19- Rediscovering America: A Quiz For July 4th
Jason Stevens

Near the end of his life, Thomas Jefferson described the Declaration of Independence as “an expression of the American mind.” On Independence Day, Americans should remember not only the Founding Fathers and the Revolutionary War but, more important, the fundamental principles and ideals that created and sustain the nation.

The quiz below, from the Ashbrook Center at Ashland University in Ashland, Ohio, provides an opportunity for you to test your knowledge of the 4th of July and the Declaration of Independence.

1. On what day did the Second Continental Congress officially declare American independence from Great Britain? Hint: John Adams thought this day would be celebrated for generations as “the most memorable … in the history of America.” Read More

07.03.19- The Only Thing Worse Than The World Dying
Would Be If It Died Unseen And Unappreciated
Caitlin Johnstone

ABC News put an article out the other day titled “Was Tulsi Gabbard’s nuclear war warning during Democratic debate hyperbole, or all too real?“, which makes a surprisingly reasonable appraisal of just how close we all are to losing everything all at once.

It’s a mainstream media piece, so of course it ends with a couple of think tank denizens claiming that Gabbard’s dire warnings during the debate are hysterical nonsense, but the first half of the article quotes authorities on nuclear disarmament confirming that we may very well be as close to nuclear annihilation as we were at the height of the last cold war.

Gabbard’s claim during the Democratic debate that we are at greater risk of nuclear war than at any time in history is entirely reasonable given the relentless escalations against Russia that this administration has been mounting, and is a perspective shared by experts like leading US-Russia relations authority Stephen Cohen. Read More

07.02.19- AT&T Fires Up Sweat-Inducing 5G in “Sin City” With Plans for 20 More Despite Anticipating More Lawsuits
BN Frank

Last February, telecom executives gave congressional testimony that they could NOT provide any studies that prove that 5G technology is safe.

Unfortunately, plenty of research already proves it isn’t (see 1, 2, 3).

Not only that – cybersecurity experts, (see 1, 2), environmentalists (see 1, 2, 3) meteorologists, NASA, NOAA, the U.S. Navy, and utility companies have ALL warned that installing 5G everywhere could lead to widespread catastrophic events.

Regardless, AT&T is introducing 5G in more U.S. cities despite this  as well as growing 5G opposition and that Americans ARE NOT signing up for it where it’s already been installed.

Even ballsier, the company is doing this while fighting current lawsuits AND they are anticipating more lawsuits will follow.  Of course, all telecom companies have been anticipating lawsuits for awhile now. Read More

07.01.19- It's No Bitcoin: Facebook's Libra Currency Is Tied to Government Currencies
Ralph Fucetola

Nobel laureate F.A. Hayek was, as he says in the 1990 introduction to his Denationalization of Money: The Argument Refined, one of the chief “gold bugs” of the 20th century. And he reminded us, so long as politicians want to control money, gold-backed currency is essential to protect our liberty from the politics of inflation.

But his concern for money and market reached back to his earlier work, as noted in a number of articles posted in recent years at mises.org. As noted by Nikolay Gertchev:

In a series of five lectures delivered in 1937, and published under the title Monetary Nationalism and International Stability, Hayek offers an in-depth analysis of the main deficiencies of the present-day monetary system. In a nutshell, he identifies two factors that disrupt international economic relations: the fractional reserve commercial banks and the national central banks. The former are the primary source for the international transmission of the business cycles, while the attempts of the latter to correct the imbalances de facto amplify the resulting instability. Read More

06.29.19- Freedom and Liberty At Risk
Justin O. Smith

“Even under the best forms of government, those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.” ~ Thomas Jefferson

Anyone who listened to Presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren share her horror over states making gains in halting abortion understands that true liberty and individual rights, even states’ rights, mean nothing to the Democrats. Warren called for a federal law that codifies Roe v Wade, with the certain knowledge that the federal government treasury would be used to coerce states to fall in line, as has been done regarding so many other federal laws. 

Even at the local city and county governments, citizens witness elected officials, claiming to be “conservatives” — who think they know better than the people — go against the will of the people, just as the city council in Murfreesboro, TN and also Rutherford County council did recently when they voted a thirty-five percent and six percent tax increase respectively to pay for services and pay raises and to preserve a government “savings account”. Read More

06.28.19- Buy Gold, Sell Bonds
Michael Cannivet

As the first-half of 2019 draws to a close, investors have much to cheer about. A lot of money has been made across many asset classes.

If you're considering tweaking your strategy for the second-half of the year, I have four words for you: Buy gold, sell bonds.

Why Gold Is Attractive Again  

Gold has been dead money since 2011. But lately, it's showing signs of life again. Gold recently broke above an important resistance level at $1,350. Some technicians think this sets the stage for a run to $1,700. Read More

06.27.19- The Diminishing American Economy
Paul Craig Roberts

Since June 2009 Americans have lived in the false reality of a recovered economy.  Various fake news and manipulated statistics have been used to create this false impression.  However, indicators that really count have not supported the false picture and were ignored.

For example, it is normal in a recovering or expanding economy for the labor force participation rate to rise as people enter the work force to take advantage of the job opportunities.  During the decade of the long recovery, from June 2009 through May 2019, the labor force participation rate consistently fell from 65.7 to 62.8 percent. Read More

06.26.19- The Pain Of This New Economic Downturn Is Starting To Show Up All Over The Country
Michael Snyder

It is going to take a miracle for the U.S. economy to pull out of this tailspin, because the economic numbers are really starting to deteriorate very rapidly now.  On Tuesday we got some more new numbers, and they were just as bad as we thought they might be.  But even before today’s numbers all of the data were telling us the exact same thing.  The New York Fed’s Empire State manufacturing index just suffered the worst one month decline in U.S. history, Morgan Stanley’s Business Conditions Index just suffered the largest one month decline that we have ever seen, global trade numbers are the worst they have been since the last recession, and just last week I detailed the complete and utter “bloodbath” that we are witnessing in the U.S. trucking industry right now.  So considering what we already knew, it shouldn’t have been a surprise that new home sales in the U.S. were down a whopping 7.8 percent during the month of May…

Sales of new U.S. homes slumped 7.8% in May, as sales plunged in the pricier Northeastern and Western markets.

The Commerce Department said Tuesday that new homes sold at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 626,000 in May, down from 679,000 in April. During the first five months of the year, purchases of new homes have fallen 3.7% compared to the same period in 2018. Read More

06.25.19- No Inflation? A Day Trip To The Regional Amusement Park Costs A Family Of Four OVER $1,000 This Summer (2019)
Paul “Half Dollar” Eberhart

Cedar Point is the closest “day-trip” amusement park to where my family lives.

This is arguably the best amusement park in the nation in terms of the number/quality of thrill-rides/roller-coasters, and sure, this is subjective opinion, but I’m saying that as having gone to amusement parks all over the country for most of my life, including many in California, Florida, Georgia, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas, and In other states I’m sure I’m forgetting about because that data has not yet been de-fragmented in my brain, and by “most of my life”, I mean, I’ve gone to amusement parks as a kid, as a student, as a single, as a married fella, and as a family man.

It takes less than 2-hours to drive to this park, so it is possible to leave home, enter the park when it opens, stay until the park closes, and drive home, all in the same day, and that is exactly what we did on Saturday, as we always do when going to this particular park. Read More

06.24.19- Why Legal Cannabis Will Be Bigger Than Cryptos
Teeka Tiwari

Editor’s Note: Longtime readers may know Teeka Tiwari as a world-renowned cryptocurrency expert. He made his first crypto recommendation to his readers in April 2016, well before the crypto boom in 2017.

But Teeka has been diving deep into a new, booming industry – legal cannabis. He’s been flying all over the world… talking to the most important CEOs in the cannabis space. And, as he details below, he sees this industry as an even bigger play than cryptos…

While legal cannabis isn’t our usual beat at the Diary, we have a treat for dear readers interested in speculating in this new industry. Read on below as Teeka shows why there’s still time to get in on the ground floor of this lucrative trend… before it skyrockets. Read More

06.22.19- The Politics of Personality
Donald Jeffries

The election of Donald Trump planted a loud and divisive lightning rod into the middle of our political discourse. Everything in American politics now is channeled through this billionaire/reality TV star, and how one feels about him. It is not about issues now, not even the limited issues Americans are allowed to discuss.

The social justice warriors have won; all politics in this country are emotion driven now. There is no reasoning, no flexing of the intellect. It is all about how you feel,  and the larger, timeless principles America was founded upon have become irrelevant to a public that is basically ignorant of them anyway.

The laughable establishment “left” has collectively lost their minds. Just this week, they trotted out the trillionth or so example of “racism,” when they complained that weddings are “too white.” Can snow be next? The fact that these unbalanced, childish complaints are taken seriously tells us all we need to know about America today, and the disgraceful leaders we’ve allowed to destroy it. Read More

06.21.19- The Advent of Truth-Destroying Technology
Paul Craig Roberts

Tyler Durden on Zero Hedge reports that the ability to falsify reality is growing by leaps and bounds.  Thoughtless geeks have now developed technology that makes fake reality indistinguishable from real reality:

“I don’t think we’re well prepared at all. And I don’t think the public is aware of what’s coming,” said the Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. He was discussing the rapid advance of synthesis technology. This new artificial intelligence capability allows competent programmers to create audio and video of anyone, saying absolutely anything.

The creations are called “deepfakes” and however outrageous they may be, they’re virtually indistinguishable from the real thing.

No sooner had we adjusted to a world where our reality seemed fake, then things that are fake became our reality. Read More

06.20.19- An Examination Of The Leftist Cult And Their Religion
Brandon Smith

There is a common misconception among newer activists in the liberty movement that the idea of the “false left/right paradigm” means that there is no political spectrum; that the entire notion of left vs right is a fabrication. This is not exactly the case. When we talk about false paradigms in regards to politics (or geopolitics), what we are actually referring to is the elitist class, otherwise known as globalists, and the fact that they have no left or right political orientation. They do not care about Democrats or Republicans, they have no loyalty to either party. Their loyalty is to their own agenda, and they will exploit BOTH sides to get what they want whenever possible.

Beyond the globalists, average people do indeed fall on a political spectrum that could be broken down and simplified to a set of basic ideals or ideologies. On the left side of the spectrum we find the collectivists and socialists, who believe that society (the group) is vastly more important than the individual and that the actions of individuals must be strictly monitored and governed to prevent negative effects on the group. Read More

06.19.19- Americans Are Losing the Only Fight Worth Having
Bill Bonner

DUBAI – A man walks over the footbridge across an artificial lake in an artificial town. 

On the other side, he unrolls a mat, kneels, and bows in prayer, facing the Holy City of Mecca.

This morning at 6 a.m., it is already almost unbearably hot and humid.

Later in the day, the heat will intensify, reflecting off the glass and concrete towers all around. It will be about 105 degrees before noon.

Dubai is an improbable place for a modern city. And an improbable place for your editor…

Between the desert on one side and the Persian Gulf on the other, Dubai looks as though it might be swept away by one or the other at any moment. Read More

06.18.19- Gold Standard Coming Into View…US Must Adapt
Gold Trade Note
Jim Willie

A Perfect Storm is hitting the Gold market, with an internal factor (return to Quantitative Easing on steroids), an external factor (Shanghai Gold Exchange taking market share), and a systemic factor (Basel 3 Rule permitting Gold in account ratios). All three forces are positive in releasing Gold from the corrupt clutches of the Anglo-American banker organization. The Eastern Hemisphere has a planned coordinated and effective strategy to abandon the USDollar and to adopt the Gold Standard. It has happened first in the trade payment form, actually more like a global blossoming process. More progress can be inferred in its early stages. In the last ten years since the Lehman Brothers failure, all systems have undergone the same reckless treatment that the mortgage bonds endured. Slowly the realization is coming to the fore, stated by a few astute analysts. In the last decade, the US-UK bank management wing of the cabal has created the USTreasury Bond as the global subprime bond. This is the result of magnificent persistent QE abuse, hidden derivative activity to produce false bond demand, foreign dumping of USGovt debt securities, astonishing debt explosion, pilferage of foreign bond holdings, and wickedly false AAA debt rating. Read More

06.17.19- Waiting For The Black Swan
Chris Martenson

War with Iran would be the beginning of the end

Two more tankers were attacked near the Strait of Hormuz on Thursday morning  (6/13/19) in the Gulf of Oman, and if hostilities advance we could be facing a ‘black swan’ event. One that changes everything, and divides the world into ‘before’ and ‘after’ periods.

A lot of us are waiting for ‘something’ to happen. We know that there are too many unsustainable trends and practices running and we fall into the “let’s just rip the Band-Aid off” camp.   Some, like myself, have lost faith in the political leadership and institutions and doubt they retain any capacity to attend to anything more than their own selfish interests, let alone manage the difficult tasks ahead rooted as they are in systems theory and managing complexity.

So, let’s get on with it already.  Bring it on.  Black swans are welcome to those who feel a swift kick to the behind is sometimes needed to begin setting things straight. Read More

06.15.18- It’s Coming And It’s Going to SUCK
Karl Denninger

Those who believe there will never be another recession are flat-out insane.

The business cycle has never been repealed.  Every person who has predicted that someone has “conquered” it over the decades has been wrong.

Let me repeat that for emphasis: EVERY PERSON who has made such a prediction or claim through the last roughly 100 years HAS BEEN NOT ONLY WRONG THEY’VE BEEN DISASTROUSLY WRONG.

It won’t be different this time around.

What is different is that through the last 40 or so years we have allowed the Federal Government to run enormous and continuous, compounding deficits.  This has propped up asset markets to a tremendous degree but it has impoverished more than 90% of the population of the nation on a progressive and rapidly-increasing basis.  Like all exponential series it started small and while there were a few who raised an alarm about the behavior of the government and Fed they were not listened to since the immediate impact was too small to be considered serious. Read More

06.14.19- FAANG Companies Facing Impacts from Imminent Antitrust Probe
Birch Gold Group

On June 3, a total of $137 billion in market cap was wiped from existence in one day as, according to Wolf Richter, four of the infamous FAANG companies became targets of an imminent antitrust probe (emphasis ours):

It’s a rare moment in recent years that US government regulators are suddenly going after four tech and social media giants simultaneously – Facebook, Amazon, Google, and Apple. … The index dove 4.3% today, the biggest percentage decline since the infamous 4.6% drop on December 24, 2018. In terms of dollars, $137 billion in market capitalization was wiped out.

Reuters is calling it an “unprecedented, wide-ranging probe of some of the world’s largest companies.”

Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Apple are four companies part of a more comprehensive “FANGMAN” index put together by WolfStreet to monitor their market performance. Read More

06.13.19- How the Stock Market Actually Works
Rick Ackerman

Here is the best explanation I’ve seen to date of how the U.S. stock market works.  It is from John Jay, who posts regularly in the Rick’s Picks Forum: “The stock market is the primary bag-man the Federal Reserve uses to transfer the U.S. Dollars they create from thin air to the .01%.” Just so. When you consider how many hundreds of billions of dollars find their way into the pockets of the very rich when just a half-dozen mega-cap stocks rally sharply, you begin to understand how the U.S. economy actually works.

“Compare this to TARP,” writes Jay. “It was a check written directly to the .01% without a money laundering intermediary like the stock market.  You and I are like seagulls picking up the scraps after a killer whale pod consumes a school of herring. We can make a nice little living doing just that!” Read More

06.12.19- The American Bolsheviks Are Coming…
Bill Bonner

It’s coming. It’s happening.

Our dark fears and midnight tremors are coming to life. In the broad daylight.

The Bolsheviks are invading the suburbs and cities… and even the Corn Belt… all across America.

American Jackassery

Both Democrats and Republicans are turning to three-part programs – one part Soviet economic claptrap, one part Mussolini’s political bamboozle, and one part pure American jackassery.

Today, we begin the hard work of giving them the mockery they deserve. We only worry that we will run out of scorn and sarcasm before we are finished.

Politics is always and everywhere the enemy of civilization. It is the enemy, too, of economic progress. Most important, it is the enemy of dignity and clear thinking. Read More

06.11.19- Sometimes Things Turn
James Howard Kunstler

A February night in 1924, in a Manhattan concert hall owned by the Aeolian piano company… the wailing, warped, and flatted clarinet glissando that opens George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue announced the 20th century’s self-recognition that something new was up in the world, and especially in the USA. The composer tried to represent the stupendous energy of the maturing industrial culture in a symphonic cacophony with a core of the deepest tenderness — capturing all the wonder and grace of the moment. For America, everything was on the move. Love and power were in the air.

The idea that this was the American century stuck. The 1920s were a kind of hormonal rush of wonders and amazements. Radio, movies, airplanes, giant industries, electric power in farm houses, the dizzying rush of progress that welled up into a dangerous wave that broke over the world in economic depression, and then war in 1939 — by which time George Gershwin was gone at 38. Read More

06.10.19- Socialism Rises Due To The Great American
Economic Growth Myth
Lance Roberts

There is little denying the rise of “socialistic” ideas in the U.S. today. You can try and cover the stench by calling it “social democracy” but in the end, it’s still socialism.

Since 1775, millions of Americans have given their lives in defense of the American “idea.” The tyranny and oppression which arise from communism, socialism, and dictatorships have been a threat worthy of such sacrifice. I am sure those patriots who died to ensure the “American way of life” would be disheartened by the willingness of the up and coming generations adopt such ideals.

But such shouldn’t be a surprise. It is the cycle of all economic civilizations over time as we “forget our history” and become doomed to repeat. it.  Read More

06.08.19- The State of the Economy
Paul Craig Roberts

Support Your Website

Dear Readers: We live in a Matrix of Lies in which our awareness is controlled by the explanations we are given.  The control exercised over our awareness is universal.  It applies to every aspect of our existence.  In the article below I show that not only is our understanding of the economy controlled by manipulation of our minds, but also the markets themselves are controlled by official intervention.  

In brief, you can believe nothing that you are officially told.  If you desire truth, you must support the websites that are committed to truth.

The story line is going out that the economic boom is weakening and the Federal Reserve has to get the printing press running again.  The Fed uses the money to purchase bonds, which drives up the prices of bonds and lowers the interest rate.  The theory is that the lower interest rate encourages consumer spending and business investment and that this increase in consumer and business spending results in more output ad employment. Read More

06.07.19- How $30 Trillion Disappears…
Bill Bonner

Stocks went up on Tuesday and Wednesday – a total gain of 207 points for the Dow. Futures markets are predicting another up day today.

But the economy continues to sink. The longest expansion in U.S. history seems to be approaching its end. Here’s CNBC:

Job creation skidded to a near-halt in May in another sign that the U.S. economic momentum is slowing.

Companies added just 27,000 new positions during the month, according to a report Wednesday from payroll processing firm ADP and Moody’s Analytics that was well below Dow Jones estimates of 173,000.

The reading was the worst since around the time the economic expansion began and the jobs market bottomed in March 2010 with a loss of 113,000. Since then, the private payrolls count has increased by 21.3 million. Read More

06.06.19- The Trade War Is About To Become
An Economic World War III
Brandon Smith

For many years I have examined how wars of all types have been used by the money elite to distract the masses and maintain a certain level of influence over social and political systems. But war is not only a useful tool for keeping the status quo. Some wars, particularly world wars, are often catalyzed and exploited by those with a globalized agenda as a way to change the way civilizations function and think. The goal? To influence the masses to abandon their attachments to concepts like individualism, nationalism, free markets and sovereignty, and to embrace collectivism and total globalization.

That is to say, the ideals that globalization idealist hate get blamed for the wars they help start, then they introduce their centralized systems as a “solution” to the problems they created. The trade war situation will be no different. Read More

06.05.19- 32 Tips For Navigating A Society Full Of
Propaganda And Manipulation
J. Johnson

For as long as there has been human language, humans have been using it to manipulate one another. The fact that it is possible to skillfully weave a collection of symbolic mouth noises together in such a way as to extract favors, concessions, votes and consent from other humans has made manipulation so common that it now pervades our society from top to bottom, from personal relationships between two people to international relationships between government agencies and the public.

This has made it very difficult to figure out what’s going on, both in our lives and in the world. Here are some tips for navigating this complex manipulation-laden landscape, whether that be the manipulations you may encounter in your small-scale personal interactions or the large-scale manipulations which impact the entire world: Read More

06.04.19- The War On Truth
Paul Craig Roberts

“The ability of the owners of the political/media class to discredit and neutralize anyone who poses a threat to their interests simply by rearranging the narratives about them is one of the most destructive psychological weapons in their arsenal. The main reason it’s so hard to convince the public that they have been taken in by propaganda and smear campaigns is because for some stupid reason, one of the most shameful things anyone can do in our society is be fooled. If we are to overcome the narrative dominance of the powerful, it is essential that we find a way to shift that shame from those who have been fooled onto those who have been fooling them.”  — Caitlin Johnstone

Dear Readers:

This is my quarterly call for your donations.

This website originated on New Year’s Eve 2011.  I had enjoyed two months retirement before you called me back into action.  We are now well into the 8th year of my recall from retirement. Read More

06.03.19- Do We Face a Global Food Disaster?
F. William Engdahl

No, this is not at all an endorsement of the apocalyptic scenarios of AOC or that famous young Swedish climate expert, Greta. It is, however, a look at unusual weather disasters in several key growing regions from the USA to Australia, the Philippines and beyond that could dramatically affect food availability and prices in the coming year. That in turn could have major political implications depending on how the rest of the growing season develops.

USA Midwest Waterlogged

According to the latest May 20 report of the National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) of the US Department of Agriculture, corn and soybean crops are well behind the planting growth levels normal this time of the planting season. They report that only 49% of all planned corn acreage in the US has been planted compared with 78% at this time a year ago. Of that only 19% has yet emerged from the ground compared to 47% in May 2018. In terms of soybeans, barely 19% of crops have yet been planted compared with 53% a year before. Rice acreage planted is down to 73% compared to 92% a year ago in the six US rice-growing states. Of course, should weather dramatically improve the final harvest numbers could improve. Read More

06.01.19- These Are The ‘Good Old Days’
Chris Martenson

At tipping points like now, the steps we take in the present determine our future

Bill was 48 when his wife stunned him with a request for divorce. Right up until that moment, he’d thought everything was fine.

He’d been pouring all his energy into his work to provide a very comfortable life for his wife and 2 children. But she was unhappy and fell out of love while Bill wasn’t paying attention to matters at home. He’d taken her for granted and forgot to be present for the most important people in his life, and to be grateful in the moment.

After she was gone, Bill was filled with emptiness and regret. All he wanted was to get her back, but it was too late. The damage had been done. What he had before was now in the past. Read More

05.31.19- Globalists Only Need One More Major Event To Finish Sabotaging The Economy
Brandon Smith

As I predicted in my article 'Trump Trade Wars A Perfect Smokescreen For A Market Crash', published in March of 2018, as well as in my article 'The Trade War Distraction: Huawei And Linchpin Theory', published in December of 2018, the US/China trade dispute has escalated into an all out war with no end in sight. The claims of many analysts and skeptics a year ago that the trade war would be over quickly and that China would fold to US tariffs has been proven incorrect. The reason why these analysts got it so wrong centers primarily on their misunderstanding of the true purpose behind the events.

The goal of this war is NOT to balance the US trade deficit or pursue more fair circumstances for US exports and imports. The intention of the Trump Administration is NOT to fight back against Chinese “exploitation” of US markets, this kind of rhetoric is pure theater.  Nor is it Trump's intention to undermine globalist structures or agreements in order to bring back American manufacturing (a carrot that has been flaunted in front of American faces for a long time to lure them into supporting destructive policies such as dollar devaluation). On the contrary, the real purpose of Trump's trade war is to provide a distraction massive enough to cover for the controlled demolition of the US economy and parts of the global economy by globalists and the central banks they control. Read More

05.30.19- Why A “Safe Retirement” Is Becoming
Too Difficult to Obtain
Birch Gold Group

It used to be that you could save money for retirement, put some of it into Treasuries and/or CDs, and your “nest-egg” would be primed to give you retirement security.

That clear retirement path ended in 2000, according to John Mauldin in a recent SeekingAlpha article (emphasis ours):

Until 2000 or so, it was a simple matter to put all your savings in CDs, Treasury bonds, or tax-free muni bonds and generate a steady income. Better yet, you could do this with no risk, just by keeping your money in FDIC-insured banks. This is not possible today due to low rates.

Of course, saving money for retirement is not an easy task. But before 2000, the leverage you could gain from the “simple” plan Mauldin identified was greater. That leverage came from better interest rates that CDs and Treasuries provided. Read More

05.29.19- Monsanto is finally getting a taste of its own poison
Joe Jarvis

Monsanto is the quintessential evil corporation.

In the 1960s it created Agent Orange, a defoliant–hardcore weedkiller–which the USA used during the Vietnam war. The military sprayed vast swaths of the jungle causing horrible health effects like cancer and birth defects in American veterans and Vietnamese civilians exposed to the chemical.

Then Monsanto brought their products home to the USA and started dumping its poison on the homeland.

Glyphosate is the main ingredient in Roundup, widely used as a weed killer. Monsanto holds patents on gene edited varieties of crops modified to withstand the herbicide while weeds die around them. It is also used to kill wheat plants for easier harvesting.

This means that practically everyone in the USA who consumes mainstream food products is exposed to Roundup. Read More

05.28.19- Pain Is Inevitable; But Suffering Is Optional
Adam Taggart

How to avoid becoming collateral damage in the coming crash

Sometimes you really do find enlightenment at the top of the mountain.

I spent this week hiking in Montana’s Bitterroot mountain range, as a participant in the pilot run of a new personal-growth-through-adventure-travel startup.

In our group was a famous professional cyclist, who had been a superstar on the Tour de France for many years.

He has a fascinating life story, both on and off the bike. His tales of the super-human efforts required to prevail at the most elite level of this punishing sport are mind-blowing. Read More

05.27.19- The CPI Is Underrepresenting Food Inflation By 40%:
Here's The Proof
Tyler Durden

The "muzzle" on reported inflation has policymakers and analysts perplexed.

As Joseph Carson, former director of economic research at Alliance Bernstein writes in his follow up to a "New Working Theory on Inflation", numerous economic explanations and theories have been offered, and policymakers are considering making changes to their operating price-targeting framework. Yet, before any decisions are made policymakers should consider all of the factors that could be keeping a "muzzle" on published inflation.

Here are two:

First, a little more than 20 years ago the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) introduced a number of new measurement techniques in the estimation of consumer inflation (see Boskin Commission). So the current business cycle, which started in 2009, is the second consecutive cycle in which these new procedures have been employed. Read More

05.25.19- The Ongoing Destruction of the Minds of Children
Gary D. Barnett

There can be no greater stretch of arbitrary power than to seize children from their parents, teach them whatever the authorities decree they shall be taught, and expropriate from the parents the funds to pay for the procedure.
— Isabel Paterson

Compulsory schooling is a travesty. To call it education is absurd. Real education is lifelong learning as an individual, while compulsory public schooling is the indoctrination of children as a collective exercise to bring all down to the lowest level. Prisons called schools are simply the forced means to stifle individual brilliance while promoting sameness and monotony. The result of this brainwashing is meant to teach children to obey orders, and to be satisfied spending their lives in a virtual cage of ignorance, to never become entrepreneurs and dissenters. Read More

05.24.19- How to Survive the Journey Ahead:
A Graduation Message for a Terrifying Age
John W. Whitehead

“No matter who you are, no matter how strong you are, sooner or later, you'll face circumstances beyond your control.” — Cersei Lannister, Game of Thrones

Those coming of age today will face some of the greatest obstacles ever encountered by young people.

They will find themselves overtaxed, burdened with excessive college debt, and struggling to find worthwhile employment in a debt-ridden economy on the brink of implosion. Their privacy will be eviscerated by the surveillance state. They will be the subjects of a military empire constantly waging war against shadowy enemies and government agents armed to the teeth ready and able to lock down the country at a moment’s notice.

As such, they will find themselves forced to march in lockstep with a government that no longer exists to serve the people but which demands they be obedient slaves or suffer the consequences.

It’s a dismal prospect, isn’t it? Read More

05.23.19- Why Imminent Pension Crisis Reveals
a Grim Future for All Retirees
Birch Gold Group

Whether or not you’re relying on a pension for part of your retirement, there is a grim future on the horizon for retirees tied to the pensions’ demise.

John Mauldin shines a light on the math that seems to explain why public pensions aren’t living up to their task:

So, when we say a plan is “fully funded,” it may not be so if the assumptions are wrong. Almost all public pension funds assume investment returns somewhere around 7% (and some as high as 8%+). That’s highly unlikely due to the debt we’ve accumulated, and debt is a drag on future growth.

Setting aside the fact that “assuming” anything isn’t a good idea, public pensions are basing their calculations on the assumption of a 7% return, but Bloomberg reports they aren’t even close to hitting the mark (emphasis ours):

The median public fund, which typically has a fiscal year ending June 30, returned 3.25% for the three quarters through March 31, according to Wilshire Associates Trust Universe Comparison Service. Read More

05.22.19- Origins of the Deep State in North America Part III: What is the Fabian Society and to What End was it Created?
Matthew Ehret

Our first two installments have dealt with the origins of the Deep State in North America by reviewing the creation of the Rhodes Scholarship/Chatham House network at the end of the 19th century and the infiltration of indoctrinated scholars into every governing branch of western society. We traced the key players in this Oxford-based network who were formed with the intent of fulfilling the will of Cecil Rhodes to “form a church of the British Empire” and undo the effects of the American Revolution as a global phenomenon. We also saw how these networks worked closely with another early “think tank” called the Fabian Society in order to advance an agenda that required the destruction of the sovereign nation state system which had been founded upon the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia. This was exemplified by the 1999 “Chicago speech” of Fabian asset Tony Blair when he stated that the world must now embark upon a “post-Westphalian order” setting the stage for 9/11 and the new era of regime change that was soon unleashed. In the following report, we will look at the origins of the Fabian Society, by examining some of its founding members and governing philosophy. Read More

05.21.19- The Origins of the Deep State in North America Part 2: Milner’s Perversion Takes Over Canada
Matthew Ehret

Canada’s history has remained clouded in misinformation and outright lies for over 200 years, while basic truths which were once well understood by leading statesmen in Canada a century past are now treated as little more than myth or “conspiracy theory”. Yet as the above quote written by the pen of Lord Alfred Milner indicates, the crafting of the Canadian identity has been bought for the price of a national soul. The greatest obstacle to Canadian sovereignty today is found in the fact that Canada’s synthetic identity has been constructed over the past decades with the intention of obstructing the establishment upon this earth of a world of sovereign republics, which was and still is the outgrowth of the success of the American Revolution. To do so, we must investigate how the Anglo Dutch oligarchy has played through such institutions as the Rhodes Trust, Fabian Society, and Round Table Movement. These structures have played a key role in mis-shaping every key standard of economic, political, cultural and scientific behaviour which defines the Canadian System and associated identity to this day.

Part one of our story focused upon the creation of these institutions, and their methods of penetrating their networks throughout influential institutions of Canada from 1865 to 1943, and the evolution of the Round Table into the Royal Institute for International Affairs (RIIA) in 1919. American branches were created in 1920 with the Council on Foreign Relations and Institute of Pacific Relations, while a Canadian branch was established in 1928 with the Canadian Institute for International Affairs (CIIA). Key Canadian patriots resistant to the RIIA’s plans were also introduced in the form of “Laurier Liberals” O.D. Skelton and Ernest Lapointe, both of whom aided in influencing the highly malleable Prime Minister William Mackenzie King towards the Canadian nationalist cause, greater cooperation with American Patriots such as Franklin Roosevelt and away from the RIIA’s plans for world government under the League of Nations. With the mysterious deaths of Skelton and Lapointe in 1941, all such resistance melted away and Canadian foreign policy become fully infected by Rhodes Trust/ Fabian agents of the CIIA. Read More

05.20.19- The Origins of the Deep State in North America
Matthew Ehret

Part one: The Rise of the Round Table Movement and the Sad Case of Canada (1864-1945).

“Two systems are before the world; the one looks to increasing the proportion of persons and of capital engaged in trade and transportation, and therefore to diminishing the proportion engaged in producing commodities with which to trade, with necessarily diminished return to the labor of all; while the other looks to increasing the proportion engaged in the work of production, and diminishing that engaged in trade and transportation, with increased return to all, giving to the laborer good wages, and to the owner of capital good profits… One looks towards universal war; the other towards universal peace. One is the English system; the other we may be proud to call the American system, for it is the only one ever devised the tendency of which was that of elevating while equalizing the condition of man throughout the world.”

-Henry C. Carey (Lincoln’s advisor), Harmony of Interests, 1856 Read More

05.18.19- Trump's Last Stand
Peter Schiff

General George Custer met his doom charging into a battle he thought he could win, against an opponent he did not understand. Based on his views about the fast-emerging trade war with China, it looks to me that Donald Trump, another blonde with a very high opinion of himself, is charging into an economic version of the Little Bighorn. By mistaking the real nature of international trade, the costs of tariffs, the effects of currency movements, and the supposed ease with which the United States could quickly re-establish itself as a low-cost manufacturer, Trump risks shredding the safety nets that have undergirded the U.S. economy for decades and plunging us into a war we are ill-equipped to fight.

The prevailing view is that a trade war hurts both sides, but in a war of attrition, we can both outpunch and outlast the competition. Many argue that based on its smaller economy, the spotty performance of its stock market, and its vital need for American customers, China is in a weaker position. With our larger economy, surging stock market, strong currency, and prodigious borrowing capacity they believe that the U.S. can pressure China to capitulate, albeit with some short-term pain. Read More

05.17.19- The Darkness Rising - Twilight of
Those Who Would Be Gods
Jesse's Café Américain

The retail sales number came in rather badly this morning.

There is no real recovery. Just a papering over of the rot endemic to oligarchy.

Gold and silver are struggling at overhead resistance.  

Gold is much more interesting to watch here because of its nature as a safe haven. 

And of course its central role in the changes in the monetary regime which have been called currency wars.

Stocks have reached the 38.2% fibonacci retracement level. They may keep on reaching for 50%.

It is reported that JP Morgan is holding $2.3 trillion in stock derivatives, or roughly 2/3rds of the entire market.

Let's see how this charade plays out.  My general forecast is for pain. Read More

05.16.19- We Have 3 Years Before The National Debt "Death Spiral"
Mac Slavo

According to the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Debt Management, the U.S. government is just five years away from the point of no return.  With the national debt spiraling quickly out of control, there are only a few years left before every single dollar the government borrows will go toward funding interest payments on the national debt.

The Independent Blog said that the main takeaway from the Debt Management Office’s Fiscal Year 2019 Q1 Report, which featured the Office of Management and Budget’s latest projection of the U.S. government’s borrowing from the public, is shown in the chart below: Read More

05.15.19- The Economy Has Fundamentally Changed In The 21st Century... And Not For The Better
Charles Hugh Smith

The net result is we have an economy that's supposedly expanding smartly while our well-being and financial security are collapsing.

Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and other metrics of economic activity don't measure either broad-based prosperity or well-being. Elites skimming financialization profits by expanding corporate debt and issuing more loans to commoners while spending more on their lifestyles boosts GDP quite nicely while the security and well-being of the bottom 90% plummets.

Under the hood of "recovery" and a higher GDP, life has gotten harder and more insecure for the bottom 90%. The key is not to look just at wages (trending up, we're assured) or inflation (near-zero, we're assured) but at aspects of daily life (lived experience) that cannot be captured by conventional economic / financial attempts at quantifying the economy. Read More

05.14.19- 5 Memes… because if you can’t laugh about government, you’ll cry
Daily Bell Staff

Read More

05.13.19- The World To America: "You're Fired!"
Dmitry Orlov

Some ironies are just too precious to pass by. 

The 2016 US presidential elections gave us Donald Trump, a reality TV star whose famous tag line from his show “The Apprentice” was “You are fired!” Focus on this tag line; it is all that is important to this story. Some Trump Derangement Disorder sufferers might disagree. This is because they are laboring under certain misapprehensions: that the US is a democracy; or that it matters who is president. It isn’t and it doesn’t. By this point, the choice of president matters as much as the choice of conductor for the band that plays aboard a ship as it vanishes beneath the waves.

I have made these points continuously since before Trump got into office. Whether or not you think that Trump was actually elected, he did get in somehow, and there are reasons to believe that this had something to do with his wonderfully refreshing “You are fired!” tag line. It’s a fair guess that what motivated people to vote for him was their ardent wish that somebody would come along and fire all of the miscreants that infest Washington, DC and surrounding areas. Alas, that he couldn’t do. Figurehead leaders are never granted the authority to dismantle the political establishments that install them. But that is not to say that it can’t be done at all. Read More

05.11.19- A compound in pomegranates can trigger cancer cell death
Michelle Simmons

The interest in fruits rich in polyphenols has recently increased due to their cancer-fighting potential. In a study published in the journal Nutrition Research, a team of researchers from China found that a compound in pomegranates called punicalagin can fight against cancer by triggering cancer cell death.

A previous study carried out by the same researchers revealed that punicalagin induces autophagic cell death in papillary thyroid carcinoma cells. For the current study, the research team hypothesized that punicalagin triggers DNA damage associated with cell death because DNA damage was previously reported as an inducer of autophagy. Autophagy can encourage tumor suppression during cancer initiation and protect tumors during progression. Read More

05.10.19- "Get The Popcorn Ready" - Why The World's Most Bearish Hedge Fund Thinks The Biggest Crash Is Almost Here
Tyler Durden

Conventional investing wisdom would have you believe that anybody who has remained bearish on global markets since the financial crisis has not only lost a boatload of money, but has missed out on the opportunity to cash in on one of the most torrid bull markets in recent memory.

However, as Horseman Global's Russell Clark has proven over and over again, this simply isn't true. A few years back, we anointed Horseman with the title "The world's most bearish hedge fund" for a very simple reason:

Of all existing asset managers, Horseman may be the one with the biggest and longest net short position in history. Just look at the chart below, which shows that Clark's net exposure was (as of March) was a staggering -88.14%, with a gross short position of 160%. Read More

05.09.19- Border Crisis: Most Arrests In 12 Years; Over 168,000 Released Into US; Measles, Chickenpox Found
Tyler Durden

More than 168,000 illegal immigrants have been released into the US this fiscal year - a number sure to surge as the border crisis worsens, according to Nathalie R. Asher, acting chief of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement's deportation branch.

In Wednesday comments to Congress, Asher added that according to the results of a pilot program, 87% of released immigrants fail to show up for their court hearings, resulting in judges ordering them deported in absentia, according to the Washington Times, which adds that tracking them down has been a daunting task for officials. 

Nearly 110,000 were nabbed at the southwestern border in April, including nearly 100,000 caught by the Border Patrol trying to sneak into the U.S. The other 10,000 were encountered when they showed up at ports of entry demanding to be let in, despite lacking permission. -Washington Times Read More

05.08.19- Seven Laws of Investing
Gary Christenson

Lance Roberts listed James Montier’s 7-Immutable Lawsof Investing. They are:

1. Always insist on a margin of safety.
2. This time is never different.
3. Be patient and wait for the fat pitch.
4. Be contrarian.
5. Risk is the permanent loss of capital, never a number.
6. Be leery of leverage.
7. Never invest in something you don’t understand.

Those sensible rules apply to gold and silver. Read More

05.07.19- The Old World is Dying
Michael Krieger

Yesterday, Trump took to Twitter and unexpectedly threatened to raise tariffs on Chinese goods this coming Friday. This caught most people by surprise given incessant commentary over the past several months about how good trade talks were going and how close both sides were to signing a monumental deal. Although Trump’s tweet led to immediate turmoil in global financial markets, U.S. equities have gone up in a straight line since the market opened and are barely down as I write this. Investors appear to assume this is just theater meant make the U.S. public think he’s being tough, so that when he ultimately signs a largely meaningless sham deal with no teeth he can talk it up and pat himself on the back for being a brilliant negotiator. I’m not convinced this is correct, but it’s what markets seem to be pricing in. Either way, we’ll have answers soon enough.

More importantly, I continue to think the U.S. and China are on a major collision course irrespective of what happens with the trade deal. This charade will likely resolve either with no deal and an immediate dangerous ratcheting up of tensions, or we’ll get a deal so weak and irrelevant it’ll fail to fundamentally alter the U.S.-China economic relationship in any meaningful way, which was supposedly the whole point. Read More

05.06.19- Which SHTF situation is most likely to actually happen?
Zoey Sky

The prepping lifestyle can be overwhelming for most people but at its core, preppers prioritize readiness in all aspects of their lives. But amid all the talk about prepping skills, survival gear, and food supplies, how do you know which disaster event has the highest chance of occurring within your lifetime? (h/t to TheSurvivalistBlog.net)

How to prepare for possible SHTF events

For this article, an “SHTF” event is defined as “any event that upends your life” after it occurs, such as flooding in a major city. These events would be classified as major disasters or catastrophes, not personal emergencies. Read More

05.04.19- Why Does Time Seem Like It’s Speeding Up?
Truth Stream Media

Does constant exposure to digital technology change the way we perceive time?  I would have to agree with the following video from Truthstream Media and say yes.

When human attention is hyperfocused on a single point, all other environmental stimuli tends to be cut off. When we completely cut our experience off from our surroundings, this often makes us feel as though we are suffering from what is sometimes called "time loss".

Add to this the neverending quest for a new hit of dopamine that digital culture provides and you have a recipe for the mass warping of human brains. Read More

05.03.19- Covington Gives a Glimpse of Civil War Two
Matt Bracken

During the attempted electronic lynching of the Covington Catholic high school boys on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, the mask hiding the Left’s genocidal rage slipped and was momentarily visible. The reality of the confrontation was inverted 180 degrees by the duplicitous mainstream media so that a smiling white teenager was made to face the wrath of an Orwellian two-minute hate that stretched on for days, even after the factual record was corrected. Accelerated by social media, the virtual lynch mob called for, among other horrors, MAGA-hat-wearing teenage boys to be fed headfirst into wood chippers, or for them to be locked en-masse into their school and the school to be burned to the ground.

This hurricane of socially sanctioned racial fury did not arise spontaneously, but was the result of deliberate cultivation over the past few decades by the political Left, academia, the mainstream media, and the Hollywood entertainment elite. Entire books could be written laying out the many already familiar examples of the Left encouraging racial animosity against whites, but that is not my goal in writing this piece. Read More

05.02.19- Show Me the Real Money
Gary Christenson

Those circulating dollar bills, euros, pounds, and yen are DEBTS (notes) issued by central banks to extract wealth from citizens and the economy, dilute the purchasing power of the currency, and nourish the banking cartel.

I’ll show you real money. It looks like this:

Read More

05.01.19- How the Financialization Scam Works
Bill Bonner

YOUGHAL, IRELAND – Financialization is our subject…

What is it? How does it happen? Does it matter? Who cares?

Let’s begin with the last question: Who cares?

Answer: Nobody… until it blows up.

Fantasy World

Financialization creates a fantasy world… funded by a mis-priced, rigged credit market.

Here is how. Imagine that you are 12 years old and you set up a lemonade stand. You make lemonade. You sell it to passers-by for more than it costs you to make it. Read More

04.30.19- Tom Petty was Right
James Howard Kunstler

How to account for Americans being the most anxious, fearful, and stressed-out people among the supposedly advanced nations? Do we not live in the world’s greatest democratic utopia where dreams come true?

What if the dreaming part is actually driving us insane? What if we have engineered a society in which fantasy has so grotesquely over-run reality that coping with daily life is nearly impossible. What if an existence mediated by pixel screens large and small presents a virtual world more compelling than the real world and turns out to be a kind of contagious avoidance behavior — until reality is so fugitive that we can barely discern its colors and outlines beyond the screens?

You end up in a virtual world of advertising and agit-prop where manipulation is the primary driver of human activity. That is, a world where the idea of personal liberty (including any act of free thought) becomes a philosophical sick joke, whether you believe in the possibility of free will or not. You get a land full of college kids trained to think that coercion of others is the highest-and-best use of their time on earth — and that it represents “inclusion.” You get a news industry that makes its own reality, churning out narratives (i.e. constructed psychodramas) to excite numbed minds. You get politics that play out like a Deputy Dawg cartoon. You get a corporate tyranny of racketeering that herds spellbound citizens like so many sheep into chutes for shearing, not only of their money, but their autonomy, dignity, and finally their will to live.Read More

04.29.19- Wealthy Elitists Freak Out As Hordes Of Homeless People Take Over Their Neighborhoods All Over The West Coast
Michael Snyder

The elite are very “tolerant” of the homeless until they start showing up in their own neighborhoods.  Even though the mainstream media keeps telling us that the U.S. economy is “booming”, the number of Americans living on the streets continues to grow very rapidly, and this is particularly true in our major west coast cities.  More than half a million Americans will sleep on the streets of our cities tonight, and they need help, care and shelter.  Sadly, as economic conditions deteriorate that number is likely to double or even triple.  Of course many among the elite are all in favor of doing something for the homeless, as long as they don’t have to be anywhere around them.

For example, let’s talk about what is going on in Los Angeles.  No city on the west coast has a bigger problem with homelessness than L.A. does, and many in the homeless population enjoy camping out on the beautiful beaches in the L.A. area at night. Read More

04.27.19- No One Is Coming to Rescue You—Especially Not a Presidential Candidate
Brittany Hunter

No one is coming to help you, so you might as well stop waiting and start fixing your own life today.

We are only a few months into 2019, and already the 2020 presidential election season is well underway. Each week, it seems that more candidates are entering the race, especially in the Democratic field. And as the country cycles through its political flavors of the week, social media has become overrun by passionate posts that read more like stump speeches in support of a given candidate.

Nearly every single person has an opinion about who this country should be supporting. And nearly every single one of them believes that their lives will be significantly better, or worse, based on who occupies the White House. But this gives politicians far too much power. Read More

04.26.19- Nearly 102 Million Americans Do Not Have A Job Right Now – Worse Than At Any Point During The Last Recession
Michael Snyder

Wouldn’t it be horrible if the number of Americans without a job was higher today than it was during the Great Recession of 2008 and 2009?  Well, that is actually true.  As you will see below, nearly 102 million Americans do not have a job right now, and at no point during the last recession did that number ever surpass the 100 million mark.  Of course the U.S. population has grown a bit over the last decade, but as you will see below, the percentage of the population that is engaged in the labor force is only slightly above the depressingly low levels from the last recession.  Sadly, the truth is that the rosy employment statistics that you are getting from the mainstream media are manufactured using smoke and mirrors, and by the time you are done reading this article you will understand what is really going on. Read More

04.25.19- A horrible future awaits for anyone who
depends on government
Joe Jarvis

Lice, cockroaches, and root canals all have better approval ratings than Congress.

Congress controls government spending. And nine out of every ten people say the government doesn’t spend tax dollars wisely.

57% say tax rates are too high.

(But only 13% want to cut right to the heart of the issue and abolish the IRS.)

And whatever side of the aisle you’re on, the voters’ choice of President seems to be getting more ludicrous with each election cycle.

We all agree there is plenty to bitch about when it comes to the government. Read More

04.24.19- Here’s an easy way to tell if your bank is actually safe
Simon Black

March 15, 2013 was a pretty normal day in Cyprus. It was a Friday, and most people were looking forward to a relaxing weekend.

The next morning the entire nation woke up in horror. Their politicians had been up all night, negotiating with international lenders to provide an emergency loan to the country, and its banks.

It turned out that the banks in Cyprus were all insolvent; just like banks in the United States during the 2008 sub-prime crisis, banks in Cyprus had been making idiotic decisions with their customers’ hard-earned savings. Read More

04.23.19- Now who would have thought
it would be this simple to explain!
Jeffrey Bennett

The author, Rick Mathes, is a well-known leader in prison ministry. The man who walks with God always gets to his destination. If you have a pulse you have a purpose.

The Muslim religion is the fastest growing religion per capita in the U S, especially in the minority races. Not the Catholics, not the Mormons. Last month I attended my annual training session that’s required for maintaining my state prison security clearance. During the training session there was a presentation by 3 speakers representing the Roman Catholic, Protestant & Muslim faiths, who each explained their beliefs. 

I was particularly interested in what the Islamic Imam had to say. The Muslim gave a great presentation of the basics of Islam, complete with a video. Read More

04.22.19- The Best Case For Free Trade Is a Personal One
Sterling Terrell

Business is personal. And all barriers to trade are restrictions on personal freedom.

The best case for free trade—the best argument in favor of unbridled commerce—might be a personal one.

Let me explain.

People Can Easily Get Lost in Facts

In making the case for something, like most people, I want to lay out facts and logic. As soon as anyone starts talking about economics, I immediately fall back on my formal training.

People can easily get lost in the facts.

A free-trade debate means I need to explain absolute advantage and comparative advantage—and freedom. Read More

04.20.19- Are “Conspiracy Theories” Tearing Society Apart Or Saving Us From Destruction?
Brandon Smith

The phrase “conspiracy theory” is often used by establishment agencies, the mainstream media and useful idiots as a tool to dismiss legitimate evidence or viewpoints that disagree with their predetermined version of events. This method of propaganda was not always as widespread as it is today. The phrase was not “created” by the CIA, but it was in fact weaponized by them in the 1960's after the assassination of John F. Kennedy with the express purpose of shutting down rational debate.

CIA memo 1035-960, circulated within the CIA in 1967 and exposed through a freedom of information act request by the New York Times in 1976, outlines strategies the agency would use to shut down critics of the Warren Commission Report. Specifically, they suggested the accusation of “conspiracy” with negative connotations attached, predominantly in mainstream books and articles. This was indeed done through the CIA's many puppets in the media, and the concept of “conspiracy theory” as a pejorative was born. Read More

04.19.19- The House on Lake Minnetonka That Never Existed
Aaron Clarey

A Tale of Two Lakes 

Allow me to regale you with the tale of two lakes - Lake of the Isles and Lake Minnetonka.

Many years ago, when the Captain was but a wee corporal, he was attending the University of Minnesota- Minneapolis.  Close to the campus was "the lakes." "The lakes" included four lakes that were chained together and formed the "crown jewel" of the Minneapolis parks system.  These lakes were:

Cedar Lake
Lake of the Isles
Lake Calhoun, and
Lake Harriet.

These lakes served as the hub of nearly all outdoor summer activity in Minneapolis and to this day remain the most popular part of the Twin Cities to be during summer.  But of the four lakes "Lake of the Isles" was the most prestigious.  Here the "old money" captains of industry built their Minneapolis mansions in the 1880's and 1900's, and thus Lake of the Isles is perimetered by beautiful mansions and even some modern day ones as well. Read More

04.18.19- How to Make Your “Embarrassing” Investments Pay Off
Whitney Tilson

I’ve learned a lot of things over my 20-year career on Wall Street.

But perhaps nothing is as valuable as talking about investing with average folks. I call it the “cocktail-party indicator.”

Whether it’s your trainer at the gym, a neighbor who has never shown any interest in the markets, or the proverbial shoeshine guy… When you hear these folks talking about how much money they’ve made in bitcoin, 3D printing companies, or the latest hot IPO… run, don’t walk, the other way.

I’ve found, again and again, that when the least knowledgeable investors among all of the people I know are piling into whatever is hot, it’s usually very near the top of a bubble.

Today, I’ll give you another example of how you can use the sentiment of average investors to your benefit – instead of riding the bandwagon to disaster…

While the rest of the investment crowd is busy looking for the next way to get rich quick, I strongly suggest taking a different route.

I buy investments that are so hated, you would be embarrassed to say you own them at a cocktail party. Read More

04.17.19- Guess who ends up paying those taxes
meant only for the rich…
Joe Jarvis

Imagine starting a small business in the USA in 1875.

Imagine working for yourself, or building a company from scratch. With no corporate taxes, and no income taxes, you kept the full rewards of your risk and labor.

It’s not surprising that in about 100 years the United States went from non-existent, to having the largest economy in the world.

Unparalleled economic freedom helped create the industrial revolution which spurred legendary economic growth from 1870 through the turn of the century.

For most of the 19th century, the main source of tax revenue for the federal government was tariffs—taxes on imported goods.

But in 1913, everything changed. Read More

04.16.19- Japanified World Ahead
John Mauldin

Regular readers may have noticed me slowly losing confidence in the economy. Your impression is correct and there’s a good reason for it, as I will explain today. The facts have changed so my conclusions are changing, too.

I still think the economy is okay for now. I still see recession odds rising considerably in 2020. Maybe it will get pushed back another year or two, but at some point this growth phase will end, either in recession or an extended flat period (even flatter than the last decade, which says a lot). And I still think we are headed toward a global credit crisis I’ve dubbed The Great Reset.

What’s evolved is my judgment on the coming slowdown’s severity and duration. I think the rest of the world will enter a period something like Japan endured following 1990, and is still grappling with today. It won’t be the end of the world; Japan is still there, but the little growth it’s had was due mainly to exports. That won’t work when every major economy is in the same position. Read More

04.15.19- The Bull(y) Rally
Adam Taggart

Something unnatural is going on

"A bully is always a coward."

~ Thomas Chandler Haliburton

The current market rally is like a playground bully; shoving to the ground anyone in its path.

But like all bullies, the braggadocio belies an underlying cowardice.

Those in charge of the status quo must be absolutely terrified to resort to the unnatural lengths they are going to right now to keep the current rally intact. Read More

04.13.19- Trump Calls for New Quantitative Easing to Prop Up U.S. Economy
Stefan Gleason

As gold and silver markets continue in choppy trading this spring, bulls are hoping a dovish Fed will sink the dollar and lift the metals.

Now that the Federal Reserve is on “pause” – presumably for the rest of 2019 – perhaps investors can stop obsessing over interest rate decisions by central planners. Perhaps markets can finally trade based on actual market signals and underlying fundamentals. 

Perhaps ... not.

With 2020 election campaigns already underway, interest rate policy will be a political football in the months ahead. Incumbent administrations almost always favor lower interest rates heading into their re-election bids, and this one is no exception. Read More

04.12.19- World Faces "Uphill Battle" With Average IQ Of Just 82!
James Thompson

David Becker has released a new version of the World’s IQ. Each country has a score showing the cognitive abilities of their citizens, this being a blend of genetics and the environment of each country, particularly as regards education and health. The world’s global score is 82. This is 12th percentile rank on the Greenwich Mean Intelligence benchmark of IQ 100. As school teachers used to say in end of year reports: “Could do better”.

What does IQ 82 mean in practical terms? The account below gives the achievements as shown in Western economies, with free education and usually free healthcare, and will need to be adjusted for other economies, probably downwards to account for poorer educational systems and the burdens of ill health. Read More

04.11.19- Growing Public Pension Crisis an ‘Existential Financial Threat’
Emel Akan

WASHINGTON—Unfunded liabilities of nearly $6 trillion in state pension plans pose a significant risk to public workers, retirees, and taxpayers across the United States, according to a new study.

Almost every state struggles with massive unfunded pension obligations due to the “risky and uncaring attitudes” of lawmakers, according to a report released March 20 by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a conservative public-policy organization.

State pensions in the United States are funded at an average of 35 percent of what they should be, according to the report. And that means an average of $18,300 in unfunded pension obligations for every resident in the country.

“Pension liabilities are really the existential financial threat facing state and local governments today,” said Jonathan Williams, ALEC chief economist and vice president. Read More

04.10.19- ANOTHER “Bomb Cyclone” Will Bring More Flooding To Parts Of The Midwest That Were Hit By
A “1,000 Year Flood” Last Month
Michael Snyder

Less than a month after a “bomb cyclone” caused a “1,000 year flood” in the middle portion of the country, another “bomb cyclone” of similar strength is going to bring even more flooding to the High Plains and Upper Midwest.  According to meteorologists, it is being projected that this new “bomb cyclone” will be “similar in intensity and in snowfall” to the last one, and the latest forecast is calling for “more than 30 inches in some areas”.  The floods that we witnessed last month absolutely devastated communities throughout the region, and now it is going to happen again.  The middle part of our nation has literally never seen anything like this happen ever before, and this is easily the worst natural disaster to hit the United States since Hurricane Katrina.

Before I get into the details of the latest weather forecast, let’s review what we have witnessed so far.  “At least 1 million acres of U.S. farmland” were under water for at least 7 days last month, according to Agriculture Secretary Sunny Purdue “as many as a million calves” were lost in the flooding in the state of Nebraska alone, and hundreds of millions of dollars worth of crops were destroyed.  Thousands upon thousands of farmers were financially ruined, and thousands of farmers will not be able to plant any crops at all this year. Read More

04.09.19- The Curse of the Thinking Class
James Howard Kunstler

How might we account for the strange melding of neuroticism and dishonesty that has gripped America’s thinking class since the ascent of Donald Trump as an epically reviled figurehead on our ship of state? It all seems to come down to shame and failure.

There is, for instance, the failure of America’s leading economic viziers to arrest the collapse of the middle class — and with it, the disintegration of families — that more than anything produced the 2016 election result. What is a bigger emergency: the destruction of all those towns, cities, and lives in flyover-land, or the S & P stock index going down twenty points?

The choice made by the “experts” the past ten years is obvious: pump the financial markets at all costs by using dishonest policy interventions which they are smart enough to know will eventually blow up the banking system. They did it to preserve their reputations long enough to retire out of their jobs. The trouble is that the damage is now so extreme that when the time comes for them to apologize it will not be enough. They will lose their freedom and perhaps their heads. Read More

04.08.19- Why a Ruinous Deflation Is Coming
Rick Ackerman

I’ve been writing on deflation since the early-1990s, when I had the topic all to myself and was regarded as a voice on the lunatic fringe. Scary essays that I freelanced to Barron’s, the San Francisco Examiner and a number of other publications turned out to have been premature, but I’ve never doubted that the endgame for a global economy glutted by debt would be a deflationary collapse. Skeptics say the Government will make this impossible by simply revving up the printing presses, creating enough money to bail out ‘the system’ regardless of how many dollars it takes. Oh really? How would this work if, as is extremely likely, a state pension system goes bust?

Realize that 28 states have been growing their liabilities twice as fast as their economies, and that in the states that lead the pack — i.e., New Jersey, Illinois, Connecticut, New Hampshire and Kentucky  — accrued debts have been growing three to four times as fast as their respective economies. How long can that go on?  My guess is that Illinois, with a fiscally reckless Chicago to help bring it down, will be the first state to go belly-up.  Were the Federal government to come to the rescue, actual ‘helicopter money’ would be needed, since checks would have to go out every month to retirees so that they could meet recurring expenses. Read More

04.06.19- The Growing Opposition To Factual Knowledge
Dr. Paul Craig Roberts

News From Information Clearing House

I just heard from Tom Feeley:

“I have been unable to determine why the website has been  suspended, I have sent lots of, emails, telephone calls and faxes and have not received any response.

“The really frustrating thing is that I am locked out of the C panel and am unable to access files I need in order to migrate to another company’s servers. 

“It’s frustrating and infuriating that a company would treat a customer of 18 year  in such away, without warning.

“Thankfully, ICH supporters with tech abilities are assisting me and I hope that by Monday everything will be back to normal.” Read More

04.05.19- Read this if you believe that you will never need
a semi-automatic rifle.
Hedgeless Horseman

“Now this is the Law of the Jungle -- as old and as true as the sky;
And the Wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the Wolf that shall break it must die.
As the creeper that girdles the tree-trunk the Law runneth forward and back --
For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.”
― Rudyard Kipling

Day in and day out I observe that The Rule of Law is being eroded in America, especially the Highest Law of the Land, The Constitution of the United States and The Bill of Rights.  If you disagree with me, then maybe you simply do not know what it is that you are looking for, so you do not miss it.  Here is a list with four things to help you better see what exactly it is that we are slowly but surely losing.

1. Read, The Law, by Frédéric Bastiat.
   
   
2. Make a list of your natural rights.
   
   
3. Read, The Constitution of the United States and The Bill of Rights.
   
   
4. Read, Animal Farm, by George Orwell. Read More

04.04.19- US government’s net worth is now
NEGATIVE $75 TRILLION
Simon Black

Usually around the middle of February each year, the US Treasury Department releases an annual report of the federal government’s financial condition.

It’s called the Financial Report of the US Government… and it looks a lot like an annual report that you might see filed by a big company like Apple or Facebook.

Except that, unlike Apple and Facebook, the US government’s annual report is absolutely gruesome.

This year’s report is no exception, save for one humorous anecdote: they -just- released it. In other words, they’re a month and a half LATE (given that the report is typically released in mid-February).

I actually CALLED the Treasury Department myself in early March, asking when they would publish the report. Read More

04.03.19- Missouri bill will ban all federal gun-control laws
Fellowship Of The Minds

I thank God that our Founding Fathers, whose greatest fear was a tyrannical government, had the wisdom and foresight to institute curbs on government power in the form of numerous checks and balances.

One of those checks is the creation of a federal republic, in which the constituent geographic states have their separate powers — a founding principle that is enshrined in the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which spells out the powers of the constituent (geographical) states and of the people.

Unlike centralized polities like the UK and China wherein the central or national government holds all power, and whatever powers regional/local governments have are delegated to them, in a federation the powers of regional/local governments are not derived from the central government and, therefore, cannot be taken away by the central government. In the U.S. federal republic, as stipulated in the U.S. Constitution, it is the American people who grant separate powers to the federal government in Washington, D.C., and to the 50 state governments. Read More

04.02.19- Open the Age of Reason
Harley Schlanger

President Donald J. Trump presents the Medal of Honor to U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Travis W. Atkins Wednesday, March 27, 2019, in the East Room of the White House. (White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)

"There, in the stars, lies mankind's entry into the long-awaited Age of Reason, when our species sheds at last the cultural residue of the beast." — Lyndon LaRouche, 1985

In unveiling his five-year U.S. manned-Moon mission and succeeding international Moon-colonization and Moon-Mars missions when he did so, immediately after the collapse of the "Russiagate" coup against him one week ago, President Donald Trump acted exactly as Lyndon LaRouche might have advised him—if only LaRouche were still alive to see these signal victories for his ideas.

The British beast may have suffered a big setback, but it is still active and still working to shred the U.S. Constitution; we must go on to inflict its final defeat. But at just the same time, we must raise up the spirit and the standpoint of our fellow men and women, up to the level from which Earth's problems can be solved—and the level at which many of Earth's quarrels disappear. The level of the Solar System, and then of our Milky Way Galaxy which governs it. Read More

04.01.19- Here’s What Pops the “Everything Bubble”…
Nick Giambruno

As regular readers of the Diary already know, the Fed responded to the 2008 financial crisis with unprecedented amounts of easy money. It claimed it would “stimulate the economy.”

But as Bill has been showing you all week (catch up here, here, and here), all that “stimulation” did absolutely nothing for the real economy. All it did was push up the price of financial assets, specifically stocks and bonds.

The $3.7 trillion created by the Fed for its “quantitative easing” (QE) ended up creating not just a housing bubble, or a tech bubble, but an “everything bubble.”

And within the everything bubble, the bond market is the most warped part. It’s where the biggest distortions are.

And I believe it’s in danger of toppling… Read More

03.30.19- The Financial Panic of 2019?
Martin Armstrong

The distortion in the yield curve is building with tremendous force. There are vast bids for US 90-day T-Bills from around the world and no offers. The shortage in US government paper is now being reported to us from repo desks around the world. There is a MAJOR PANIC in to the dollar as emerging markets come under a financial crisis, in part, instigated by Turkey. The government simply trapped investors and refuses to allow transactions out of the Turkish lira. Turkey’s stand-off with investors has unnerved traders globally, pushing the world ever closer to a major FINANCIAL PANICcome this May 2019.

There is a major liquidity crisis brewing that could pop in May 2019. European Banks have loaded their portfolios with real estate loans thanks to quantitative easing and negative interest rates, and emerging market debt. Spanish banks are especially invested in Turkish debt where they hoped to get the highest yields expecting that the IMF would never let Turkey default. On top of this, banks have been lending to each other to also avoid parking money at the European Central Bank where they would be charged with a negative interest rate. Read More

03.29.19- How to Play The Game of Life & Go Into Extra Innings
Bill Sardi

Now you and your loved ones can play the game of life into extra innings and they aren’t going to have to send in a pinch runner for you, and you won’t be forced to retire and you can still hit home runs! 

Biologists just figured out how people living in developed countries are going to live 100 healthy years and the masses aren’t going to have to wait for some high-priced drug to achieve it. 

Despite precautions from university-based researchers not to forge ahead on their own and wait for anti-senescent (sen-ess-cent) drugs to be approved, longevity seekers have jumped on this newly understood longevity bandwagon, first by adoption of intermittent fasting (Dr. Jason Fung’s book THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO FASTING: HEAL YOUR BODY THROUGHT INTERMITTENT, ALTERNATE-DAY, AND EXTENDED FASTING is a best seller). Read More

03.28.19- Behind the Mueller Distraction… a Hellish Catastrophe
Bill Bonner

The last two years have been full of absurd distractions. The Mueller Report, for example – one big, fat, waste of time.

So were the trade wars… first with Canada and Mexico… and now with China. Lots of blah, blah… gumming and jawing…

And there was the “taking the knee”… which many people took seriously. And remember Stormy Daniels? And two summits with North Korea?

What was the point? Why the circus?

Headed to $40 Trillion

Let’s look at what is really going on.

First, the Trump administration increased military spending by $190 billion – practically every penny of which went to the insiders in Northern Virginia “defense” industries. Read More

03.27.19- For The Average Investor, The Next Bear Market
Will Likely Be The Last
Lance Roberts

Just recently Anna-Louise Jackson published an interesting article asking if “The Financial Crisis” still haunted your investing. To wit:

“This month marks the 10-year anniversary of the current bull market’s beginnings. Yet, many Americans remain reluctant to invest in the stock market, a scary hangover from the 2007-09 recession.

From October 2007 to March 2009, the S&P 500 plummeted nearly 57% and it took more than five years for the index to recover. But the share of Americans with money invested in the stock market still hasn’t returned to pre-recession levels, according to various studies. Read More

03.26.19- How the Perfect Prepper Plans Still Go Wrong
Daisy Luther

When a disaster strikes unexpectedly, there’s nearly always some kind of monkey wrench that causes your well-thought-out prepper plans to work less effectively than expected.  When describing the situation, the person says sheepishly, “Normally we wouldn’t have had X circumstance going on when it happened, and our preps would have worked just fine.”

Or, in the eloquent words of Mike Tyson, “Everyone’s got a plan ’til they get punched in the mouth.”

But, variables.

That’s just the thing. There is nearly always going to be a variable that doesn’t fall neatly into your imagined scenario. Your ability to roll with that is the truest test of your preps and indeed, your overall level of preparedness. It is more valid than any number of planned practice runs. Read More

03.25.19- France Is The Socialist Future We Should Dread
Veronique de Rugy

A lot of attention and ink are being poured these days in trying to explain to a generation of voters why socialism always fails. Not only does socialism always fail to deliver the economic goods; it is also a source of massive oppression and pain.

I get why so many are devoting such amounts of energy to this task. First, the likes of Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and few others have made the notion of socialism acceptable in some circles and even hip. Also, according to a poll from August, for the first time since Gallup has asked the question, more Democrats approve of socialism than of capitalism. Read More

03.23.19- 18 Statistics That Prove That America
Has Become An “Idiocracy”
Michael Snyder

What in the world has happened to us?  Once upon a time, America had the greatest system of education on the entire planet, and our people were sharp, capable and extremely well informed.  Sadly, none of those things are true anymore.  In 2006, Mike Judge made a movie entitled “Idiocracy” in which an individual of below average intelligence wakes up after being asleep for 500 years thanks to a military hibernation experiment.  When he wakes up, he quickly realizes that he is now the smartest man in America, and that is not a good thing.  The film became an instant classic, but when I originally watched it I thought that such a thing could never actually happen in this country.  Unfortunately, I was wrong.  Since 2006 our nation has been “dumbed down” at a pace that is absolutely staggering, and it is difficult to see a positive future if this trend continues. Read More

03.22.19- Government Warns Of Historic, Widespread Flooding “Through May” – Food Prices To Skyrocket
As 1000s Of Farms Are Destroyed
Mixhael Snyder

We have never seen catastrophic flooding like this, and the NOAA is now telling us that there will be more major flooding for at least two more months.  On Thursday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration warned that “historic, widespread flooding” would “continue through May”.  More than 90 percent of the upper Midwest and Great Plains is currently covered by an average of 10.7 inches of snow, and all of that snow is starting to melt.  That means that we are going to transition from one of the worst winters in modern history to a flood season that has already taken an apocalyptic turn for farmers all across America.  At this moment, millions of acres of farmland are already underwater.  Thousands of farmers are not going to be able to plant crops this year, and thousands of other farmers that have been financially ruined by the floods will never return to farming again.  This is already the worst agricultural disaster in modern American history, and it is going to get a whole lot worse. Read More

03.21.19- Social Security “Tipping Point” Could Be Arriving Faster
Thanks to Congress
Peter Reagan

The Social Security system is expected to have enormous financial pressures placed on its back for the next two decades.

If nothing is done, in 2034 the clock will be ticking for this and other entitlement programs like Medicare.

But a “tipping point” may be coming faster than most people think. Former Fed Chair Alan Greenspan had a prescription to offer in a recent Newsmax piece. There’s his “easier said than done” part:

The best way to solve this problem is to fund our benefits, get a balanced budget, and the system will work. Read More

03.20.19- A Recipe for Massive Government Spending
Peter Reagan

I try to avoid partisan politics in my analysis. And I never try to tell people how to vote or what they should think. I trust my readers to make their own judgments. But sometimes I can’t avoid partisan politics because they can have a major impact on markets and the economy.

Leading Democratic presidential hopefuls Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris and Bernie Sanders have expressed desires to increase income taxes to 70% or even 90% on the rich, impose “wealth taxes” on their net worth and impose estate taxes that are equally onerous when they die.

The result would be that working people would pay state and local income tax on their wages, super-high income taxes on interest and dividends and annual wealth taxes and whatever was left over would be confiscated when they die. Read More

03.19.19- How States/Empires Collapse in Four Easy Steps
Charles Hugh Smith

The promises cannot be met, and so society decays into warring elites and competing constituencies.

There is a grand, majestic tragedy in the inevitable collapse of once-thriving states and empires: it all seemed so permanent at its peak, so godlike in its power, and then slowly but surely, too many grandiose, unrealistic promises were made to too many elites and constituencies, and then as growth decays to stagnation, the only way to maintain the status quo is to appear to meet all the promises by creating money out of thin air, i.e. debauching the currency.

This political expediency works most wonderfully for a time: people don't realize the silver content of their coinage is being cut to near-zero, or there's nothing holding up the value of their currency but trickery and vague allusions to past glory. Read More

03.18.19- Internet Censorship and False Flag Fake wars
coming to a city near you
Global Intel Hub

Global Intel Hub 3/17/2019 (Zero Hedge Exclusive) -- This recent shooting in NZ was not just a 'shooting' it was a crossing of the Rubicon into a new sea of Orwellian fear and loathing.  As we explain in our book, NOTHING is as it seems.  Everything is about OPTICS and what really goes on is largely disregarded.  New Zealand is a testing ground:

For years New Zealand has been utilised by app developers, social media companies and software developers to test new technologies, but the risks and benefits for Kiwi consumers and businesses remain unclear. Ged Cann reports.  If you want to test it, come to New Zealand.  That's the mantra overseas, where New Zealand's advantages as a testing ground have been common knowledge in the international tech industry for decades, according to one world-wide developer. Read More

03.16.10- The Government’s Greatest Con Job
Peter Reagan

Yesterday we documented our personal frustrations with contemporary technology.

Today we file a protest against contemporary money.

We begin with the “evolution” of United States currency…

We refer you to this $10 bank note, dated 1928:

In those antique days, a fellow could march into a bank, hand the clerk a slip of paper as illustrated above and demand the denominated amount in gold coin.

The system imposed a hard discipline upon banks… and held inflation in checkmate.

Federal Reserve banks were required to keep a 35% reserve of “gold or lawful money” on hand, lest they make a liar of the United States Treasury secretary — in this case the Hon. Andrew William Mellon.

In effect, the private citizen bound the banking system in golden handcuffs.

But one Great Depression, one New Deal and one world war later… we come now to a 1950 $10 bank note: Read More

03.15.19- World War 3 Coming? Israel Is On The Brink Of War With Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria And Iran All At The Same Time
Peter Reagan

On Thursday, rockets were fired at Tel Aviv for the first time since 2014, and Israel responded by hammering Hamas with airstrikes.  This latest exchange has brought Israel closer to another war with Hamas than ever.  But as you will see below, Israel is also on the brink of war with Hezbollah, Syria and Iran.  And on top of everything else, the most pivotal election in Israel in many years is on April 9th.  If more rockets are fired at Tel Aviv, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cannot afford to look weak because that could cost him a lot of votes in this very tight election.  But he must walk a very fine line, because a military response that is seen as too harsh could potentially spark a major regional conflict.

Everyone knows that Israel is simply not going to tolerate rockets being fired at Tel Aviv, and so it was quite a shock to learn what had happened on Thursday.  The following comes from the Jerusalem Post… Read More

03.14.19- Why Do Some People Live Paycheck To Paycheck?
Tom Chatham

It is common place today to hear of people living paycheck to paycheck. If so many people are living so close to the edge one must ask why? There are many reasons why someone might be in financial distress but one looming question remains. If they lack sufficient funds to live as they do, why do they continue on that path?

It has become evident to me that many people live paycheck to paycheck because they choose to. It seems that many people today decide what standard of living they want and start living it. They get the home, car, clothes, jewelry and other items they view as their birthright. Then they try to find a job that will pay for it all. They are basically doing things ass backwards. 

In a normal world a person gets a job and builds a life around what they can afford. They live within their means in other words. This includes having sufficient funds for emergencies so they can continue on for a while if something happens to disrupt their income. This is the way most responsible people have always lived. Read More

03.13.19- Shoot Now Or Be Shoved In The Oven
Karl Denninger

The title of this article is not hyperbole.

Gene Sperling was just on CNBC saying that health care must be treated as a right and essentially deferring the debate as to how to pay for all of that -- and of course he trotted out the trope of a kid born with severe disabilities bankrupting his or her parents.

Health care is, today, almost 20% of our economy.  One dollar in five.

80% of that is stolen through fraud, felony, extortion, racketeering and anti-trust.  All of these are illegal and in the case of anti-trust have been illegal for almost 100 years.  There have been no changes to 15 USC Chapter 1 exempting medical providers, pharmaceutical firms or others involved in the supply of drugs, devices, implements, supplies and services to these laws. Read More

03.12.19- Civil War Would Erupt If “Green Deal” Socialists
Actually Get What They Want
Brandon Smith

In the months preceding the 2016 presidential election, I predicted a Trump election win but tried to temper expectations with the reality that there were multiple scenarios exploitable by globalists which could turn the conservative elation into confusion and chaos. Just after the election, I published an article titled 'Order Out Of Chaos: The Defeat Of The Left Comes With A Cost'. In that article I warned that the political Left, when confronted with failure, has displayed a habit of doubling or tripling down and becoming even more extreme in their rhetoric and policies. I also warned that this might influence the political Right to become more extreme in response.

This is the problem when attempting to explain the False Left/Right Paradigm to people who are new to the concept. Yes, at the top of the political pyramid, all the players support essentially the same policies of centralization and more power to the elites. But, at the bottom of the pyramid, there are numerous and legitimate divides among common citizens. The divides are real, not false, and it is these divides that the elites seek to exploit. Read More

03.11.19- Third Reich Redux: Don’t Say We Weren’t Warned
Erik Rush

As widely reported in the press and widely discussed on social media venues, a recent Harvard CAPS/Harris Poll survey indicated that nearly two-thirds of registered voters believe that the Democratic Party supports socialism; further, that a whopping 56 percent of those aged 18-24 and 48 percent of those aged 25-34 favor a “mostly socialist” system.

Now, for those who may be exclaiming that it’s time to put a fork in America “because we’re done,” the latter two stats are admittedly pretty worrisome, even if one factors in the unreliability of some polls due to selective sampling and subjective interpretation. The numbers in question are even up from those of a 2016 Harvard University survey of adults between the ages 18 and 29, which reported that 51 percent of these did not support capitalism, with only 33 percent stating that they supported socialism instead.

This is not entirely surprising, of course; since 2016, those in younger demographics have been subjected to an unprecedented degree of leftist propaganda aimed squarely at them. Then there’s the fact that many of those in the 18-24 group are necessarily mired in academia, which is lousy with agenda-driven leftists of every stripe. As we’ve seen over the last few years, it has become increasingly difficult for young adults to even function, let alone express dissenting political views, in the halls of higher education. Read More

03.09.19- There Will Be A Revolution: Bob Moriarty’s Stunning Prediction of a Global Battle to Replace Fiat Money
Lior Gantz

Revolution is ugly and messy, but it’s sometimes necessary when tyranny exists. Tyranny can take many forms, including economic tyranny, which is manifested through the monetary supply in today’s world. Getting back to the gold standard would require nothing less than a revolution, and one widely-regarded commentator is predicting that we’ll see a revolt on a global scale.

Wealth Research Group actually had the chance to speak with this daring individual, who happens to be none other than Mr. Bob Moriarty. He is the owner and publisher of the precious metal information and analysis portal 321Gold.com, as well as 321Energy.com, which covers the oil, gasoline, coal, natural gas, solar, wind, and nuclear energy markets.

Known far and wide as a true patriot and world-class aviator, Bob Moriarty had ferried general aviation aircraft all over the world for 15 years, including more than 240 over-the-water deliveries. Mr. Moriarty holds 14 International Aviation records, including Charles Lindbergh’s record for time between New York and Paris in two different categories. Read More

03.08.19- How To Earn an Income? What Do You Tell Your Kids?
Bill Sardi

Get good grades.  Get a good job.  Get a college education.  Work your way up the ladder.  You might become a millionaire.  But you are always relying on someone else determining how valuable you are.  According to the U.S. Debt Clock, in this land of capitalism and free enterprise, there are only 8,826,490 Americans out of a labor force of 156 million who are self employed and theoretically have no imposed cap on their income.

Most Americans live in debt.  The population can be divided by those who pay interest on their debt and those who collect that interest   Primarily the financial classes have the most wealth in the country because they receive interest payments and have been given near-free money to play with.  Most Americans work for someone else, even government itself, which may not be a bad idea since government issues the money.  In Illinois, State worker retirement funds are attempting to tap into private pension funds to meet their obligations. Socialism in practice. Read More

03.07.19- The Trade Deficit Continues To Explode, Factories Continue To Be Closed, And U.S. Jobs
Continue To Be Sent Overseas
Michael Snyder

The long-term trends that are gutting the U.S. economy continue to get even worse.  As you will see below, our goods trade deficit with the rest of the world hit a brand new record high in 2018, and most Americans simply do not understand why this is such a massive problem.  Every year, we buy far more from the rest of the world than they buy from us, and that means that the amount of money going out of the country far surpasses the amount that is coming in.  This constant outflow of cash is one of the reasons why we are unable to pay our bills, and so we have to keep begging the rest of the world to lend us our money back.  Needless to say, this is one of the big factors that has fueled our 22 trillion dollar national debt.  In addition, when we run absolutely massive trade deficits we lose factories and workers to other countries.  Since China joined the WTO in 2001, the United States has lost more than 60,000 factories.  As factories keep closing down, community after community is being gutted all across America, and without a doubt this is truly a major national crisis. Read More

03.06.19- 3 Top Cyber Security Threats and How To Protect Yourself Against Them
Sam Bocetta

The mass expansion of technology and global communication has made the world a smaller place. Never before has it been easier to speak with someone across the world in an instant. 

This information has its perks, but greater connectivity can open your data to everyone. The good news, there are ways to mitigate the risks and protect your data. 

The bad news is that black-hat techniques are always changing, so defensive measures must evolve as well. Cybersecurity threats are real and it’s up to us to know how to protect ourselves from them. Read More

03.05.19- Bannon Predicts 2019 Will Be “the most vitriolic year in American politics since before the Civil War”
Daisy Luther

Who can forget the hostility during the 2016 election? The battle between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump caused the ends of friendships, strained family relationships, and set the tone for an angry new “normal” in the United States. And Steve Bannon, who was in the thick of the fray, predicts that this next election will be even worse … and that the problems will start this year, in 2019.

If you’re not familiar with Bannon, he was formerly the executive chairman of Breitbart News, a conservative news website (and many say it’s not just conservative, but alt-right.) During the last election, Bannon left Breitbart to take on the role of chief executive of the Trump campaign. That role evolved into the position of chief strategist and senior counselor of the newly elected president.

Before we get any deeper into the article, let me preface it with the fact that I’m neither a Republican nor a Democrat. I was not satisfied with any of the candidates put forth during the previous election.  However, when Trump won, I vowed to cover all news about him fairly.

This article isn’t really about politics, though. It’s about people. Read More

03.04.19- Where Did AOC Get Her Sweet Potatoes?
Jeffrey A. Tucker

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was trying to explain to me that the world is going to melt, we are all going to die, and probably we shouldn’t be having any more children, but I was distracted by the dinner she was preparing on camera. She was carefully cutting sweet potatoes before putting them in the oven.

She put salt and pepper on them. Salt was once so rare that it was regarded as money. Ever try to go a day with zero salt? Nothing tastes right.  That was the history of humanity for about 150,000 years. Then we figured out how to produce and distribute salt to every table in the world. Now we throw around salt like it is nothing, and even complain that everything is too salty. Nice problem.

Sweet potatoes are not easy to cut, so she was using a large steel knife, made of a substance that only became commercially viable in the late 19th century. It took generations of metallurgists to figure out how to make steel reliably and affordably. Before steel, there were bodies of water you could not cross without a boat because no one knew how to make a boat. Read More

03.02.19- The Debt Accrued Through Dollar Hegemony Is Unpayable (Except In Hyperinflated Dollars)
Michael Doliner

The United States Entity lost the war in Iraq. That fact determines the Entity’s position in the Middle East today.

After having destroyed Saddam’s army and dispossessing the Sunnis in favor of the Shi’ites, after Abu Ghraib and it’s indelible pictures, after the total destruction of Fallujah, in short after a victory achieved with the utmost brutality, contempt and humiliation of Iraq and Iraqis, the Entity was in charge. Then the “insurgents” appeared. They put improvised explosive devices along the roads so, with a phone call, they could destroy patrols of the Entity. They made car bombs so that every vehicle approaching a check-point might spell doom. They donned suicide vests to blow themselves and any nearby Entity soldiers up. Entity soldiers couldn’t go into the streets. Every move they made could be their last. The enemy was everywhere and nowhere. These people would rather die then be ruled by these idiotic mechanized barbarians. Everything seemed peaceful, but at any moment, out of nowhere, they could be blown to pieces. Read More

03.01.19- Ginseng May Work Better Than Chemo and Radiation. Here’s How…
Sayer Ji

Known for thousands of years as a powerful tonic for health, new research reveals that ginseng and other cancer stem cell killing plants may provide highly effective treatments for cancer.

Cancer stem cells are one of the keys to understanding both the root cause(s) and the most appropriate treatment approaches for cancer.

As we have explored in previous writings, cancer stem cells have been identified to be at the heart of most cancer malignancies. These extraordinarily resilient and proliferative cells, while only making up a minority of cells within a tumor (about 1 in 1,000), are relatively immortal and resistant to conventional treatments. Read More

02.28.19- In Washington, Regime Change Is Truly and
Urgently Needed!
Andre Vltchek

I am surprised that no one else is saying it, writing it, shouting it at each and every corner:

It is not Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Iran that are in dire and crucial need of ‘regime change’. It is the United States of America, it is the entire European Union; in fact, the entire West.

And the situation is urgent.

The West has gone mad; it has gone so to speak, bananas; mental. And people there are too scared to even say it, to write about it.

One country after another is falling, being destroyed, antagonized, humiliated, impoverished. Entire continents are treated as if they were inhabited by irresponsible toddlers, who are being chased and disciplined by sadistic adults, with rulers and belts in their hands yelling with maniacal expressions on their faces: “Behave, do as we say, or else!” Read More

02.27.19- How to Truly Measure Standards of Living
Aaron Clarey

Economics has one goal in mind - to maximize standards of living.  This noble and never-ending goal sits at the heart of economics and has, by consequence, driven the majority of financial decisions made by government, corporations, academia, and other institutions (at least nominally anyway).  Our decisions are to get us out of poverty, increase our incomes, extend our lives, and drive towards the unattainable goal of unlimited wealth so that at some point in the future we attain a "Star-Trekkian" future where money is eliminated because wealth is infinite.  And it is in this pursuit of unlimited wealth, the economics profession has settled on a measure by which we measure standards of living today - GDP or "income" per capita. Read More

02.26.19- You Can't Stop The Cycle: The Next Few Years
Will Change Everything
Michael Krieger

2018’s valuation records are astounding in that they show the S&P 500 to be more fundamentally over-valued than it was at the prior two historic stock market valuation peaks in 1929 and 2000, bona fide speculative manias.

– From Crescat Capital’s recent investor letter

Cycles are perhaps the most natural and common occurrence in the universe. The planets orbit the sun, seasons change, day turns to night and night back to day, humans are born, grow old and die.

Some of these cycles are more pleasant to think about than others, but their consistent occurrence remains factually unassailable. Indeed, it could be said that a human life itself consists of an endless series of encounters with various cycles. Cycles of the natural world and cycles created by humans themselves. Human created cycles are the focal point of today’s piece. Read More

02.25.19- The Freedom Fairy
Jeff Thomas

For some time, it’s been apparent that the former “free world” countries (the US, EU, Canada, Australia, Japan, etc.) have been on a downward progression – socially, politically and economically.

But, in the last ten years, the awareness of this has become increasingly pronounced. With each successive year, more and more people recognise that all facets of life in these formerly great countries are heading in a decidedly negative direction.

At this point, even those who don’t understand the decline intellectually, feel in their gut that this is not going to end well. Further, they feel it all around them and sense that when the condition becomes critical, it won’t just affect others. When it reaches the crisis stage, they’ll find it right on their own doorstep.

The average person in each of these jurisdictions already no longer trusts either the media, big business or the government and feels that, somehow, they’re all in this together and that they, the electorate, will be the ones who will be the ultimate victims. Read More

02.23.19- Class Warfare
Doug Casey 

Justin’s note: Are billionaires bad?

Many Americans on the left are asking themselves this question. And Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – the Democrat’s new rising star – is certainly no exception. Just look at what AOC said in a recent interview.

It’s not to say someone like Bill Gates, for example, or Warren Buffett are immoral people. I do not believe that.

I do think a system that allows billionaires to exist when there are parts of Alabama where people are still getting ringworm because they don’t have access to public health is wrong.

AOC, of course, isn’t alone. Two weeks ago, The Huffington Post published a piece titled “Should Billionaires Even Exist?” The New York Times followed up a few days later when it ran a similar piece titled “Abolish Billionaires.” Read More

02.22.19- 12 Steps You Can Take if You Lose Your Job
Nilus Mattive

Losing your job is one of the most devastating life events both emotionally and financially.

Open the paper or do a quick Google search online and you’ll see all the recent corporate layoffs happening in America.

This month, General Motors said it was starting to hand pink slips to about 4,000 salaried workers in the latest round of restructuring.

In January, CNBC reported Verizon Media Group, formerly known as Oath, would be laying off 7% of its workforce, affecting approximately 800 employees. Buzzfeed, another media company, said it was cutting about 15%, or 250 of its employees. Read More

02.21.19- Plunder: An American Way of Life
Wolf Richter

Frederic Bastiat, a French economist and member of the French National Assembly, lived from 1801 to 1850. He had great admiration for our country, except for our two faults — slavery and tariffs. He said: “Look at the United States. There is no country in the world where the law is kept more within its proper domain: the protection of every person’s liberty and property.” If Bastiat were alive today, he would not have that same level of admiration. The U.S. has become what he fought against for most of his short life.

Bastiat observed that “when plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.” You might ask, “What did Bastiat mean by ‘plunder’?” Plunder is when someone forcibly takes the property of another. That’s private plunder. What he truly railed against was legalized plunder, and he told us how to identify it. He said: “See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime.” Read More

02.20.19- Greatest Bubbles of All Time
Growth to Retire

Economic bubbles are one of the most difficult events to spot of all. Thus very difficult to avoid, let alone do something about it. So why study them at all? History rarely repeats itself (at least not in the exact same way, with the exact same financial assets). 

On the other hand, we can extract some lessons from every bubble. Thus constructing some protocol for future guidance. Here I’ll write about 7 of the Greatest Bubbles of all time, and then highlight common aspects between them. 

If you like what you read, feel free to share it. Read More

02.19.19- Great Civilizations Aren’t Murdered, They Commit Suicide: The U.S.’s Likely Collapse
Mac Slavo

Historian Arnold Toynbee in his 12-volume magnum opus A Study of History was an exploration of the rise and fall of 28 different civilizations. Toynbee concluded that great civilizations don’t “get murdered,” rather, they kill themselves, and all the signs of a civilization collapse are here.

The Roman Empire, for example, was the victim of many ills including overexpansion, climatic change, environmental degradation, and poor leadership. But it was also brought to its knees when Rome was sacked by the Visigoths in 410 and the Vandals in 455.

Collapse is often quick and greatness provides no immunity. The Roman Empire covered 4.4 million sq km (1.9 million sq miles) in 390. Five years later, it had plummeted to 2 million sq km (770,000 sq miles). By 476, the empire’s reach was zero. –BBC  Read More

02.18.19- A gold backed alternative to the dollar may finally be here in the Iranian PayMon cryptocurrency
Ken Schortgen

Yesterday, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence severely chastised members of the European Union for defying Washington and for their plans to create an alternative to the SWIFT system.  Additionally, he threatened these nations with sanctions or worse if they continue to follow in their support of Iran and the JCPOA.

Yet ironically, Europe's defiance to the U.S. regarding the Iranian JCPOA could have triggered the final battle for dollar hegemony in the world as multiple nations within both Europe and Eurasia are being recruited to ditch the reserve currency for a new gold backed cryptocurrency replacement.

Iranians though are opening other creative fronts. Four banks – Bank Melli, Bank Mellat, Parsian Bank and Bank Pasargad – have developed a gold-backed cryptocurrency named PayMon, and negotiations are already advanced with the Europeans as well as Russia, Switzerland and South Africa to expand PayMon trading. Iranian officials are adamant that blockchain will be crucial to improve the nation’s economy. Read More

02.16.19- The Uncertainty Hiding in the Recent Market “Rally”
Birch Gold Group

If you look at the Dow year-to-date, you might think the market has rallied fairly well for the start of 2019. You might even think the uncertainty from 2018 was accounted for to some degree.

But not so fast. According to a recent report, Liz Ann-Sonders from Charles Schwab highlighted concerns about an imminent earnings recession.

Ann-Sonders said that an earnings recession – two straight quarters of year-over-year profit declines – is possible. It’s just not “something that the market is forecasting right now.”

She attributed the possibility of this recession to waning effects from last-year’s tax cuts. And over at MarketWatch, Mike Wilson from Morgan Stanley says their earnings recession call is playing out “faster than we thought.”

He also “downgraded S&P 500’s earnings-per-share growth target for the year to 1% from 4.3% and warned of a looming earnings recession.” Read More

02.15.19- The Democratic Party's Secret Attack On The Middle Class
Charles Kadlec

Democrats repeatedly claim their goal is to promote middle-class prosperity.  Yet, their policy of increased spending financed by higher taxes and rising debt are a direct threat to the middle-class standard of living and economic security.  That is the conclusion of new research I have just completed based on an analysis of state taxes, spending and debt policies and their economic consequences based on data provided by the Tax Foundation, Sales Tax Institute, U.S. Census Bureau, and the U.S. government.

States are a perfect laboratory for cutting through the political spin and observing the actual economic policies of the nation’s two major political parties, along with their consequences for the average American.  Democratic states – defined as those 18 states and District of Columbia won by the Democratic candidate for President in the 2000, 2004 and 2008 elections – are true to the Democratic Party’s rhetoric.

First, they spend more than the 22 states won by the Republican Presidential candidate in the past three elections and the 10 Swing states.  In 2011, state and local spending per capita in Democratic states averaged $11,742 – nearly 20% more than in Republican states and 27% more than in swing states.  Moreover, between 2000 and 2011, per capita spending in the Democratic states grew by 54% compared to only 21% in Republican states and 38% in swing states. Read More

02.14.19- Avoid the Financial Circus
Gary Christenson

From Dr. Maya Shetreat, MD:

“Don’t blame a clown for acting like a clown. Ask yourself why you keep going to the circus.”

THE WALL STREET CIRCUS DISTRACTS PEOPLE

Wall Street cheerleaders assure everyone stocks go up in the long term. Yes, they rise because the dollar is devalued every year, which they seldom discuss. Their cheerleaders avoid stating that corrections and crashes occur every five to ten years. Wall Street generates fees by encouraging individuals and pension funds to stay invested for the long term.

Bad advice from Neil Irwin as published in the New York Times—January 2019:

“If it all [stock market volatility and losses] makes you want to flee – or at least shift your 401(k) into cash – that’s understandable. It’s also a bad idea.”[Really? Ride it all the way down?] Read More

02.13.19- Trump Missed His Last Great Opportunity
Wolf Richter

Lies and Claptrap

No one wants to hear about the State of the Union speech (SOTUS). Full of bluff and bluster… lies and claptrap – all of them are best forgotten, and fast.

But we return to last week’s SOTUS, as to the site of a murder, not to bury the corpse but to praise him.

For there lies DJT… Donald John Trump… slain. Like Caesar, smitten in the Capitol, but by his own hand.

Our guess is that he will never rise again. A further guess is that he will take the nation down with him; we will look at those dots tomorrow.

The problem with his SOTUS was that it failed to mention anything that might be meaningful or helpful. That is, it avoided any mention of the real state of the union.

Who would report on a company and fail to mention that it was $22 trillion in debt… and was, at the time, losing money at the rate of approximately $100 billion per month… and that it had no plans – or even hope – of cutting its losses or heading off a monumental debt crisis? Read More

02.12.19- If This Isn’t Stock Market Manipulation,
Then I Don’t Know What Is
Jesse Felder

Executive teams have leveraged up their companies to record levels while paying record valuations for share buybacks…

There is a growing chorus surrounding the topic of stock buybacks and whether they should be banned. Most recently, Chuck Schumer and Bernie Sanders wrote a piece for the New York Times arguing that buybacks are nothing more than corporate self-indulgence that leads to long-term harm to both companies and the economy. This may be true and, with equity valuations at or near all-time highs, buybacks certainly appear uneconomic at current prices but this is no reason to ban them. Companies should be allowed to throw money down the drain if they so choose. It’s a free country, as they say. Read More

02.11.19- Dreams Die Hard
James Howard Kunsler

Somewhere between the fevered Zzzz’s of American Dreaming and the blinding shock of being “woke,” there is a recognition that an awful lot about contemporary life is not working and can’t go on. At the bottom of this discontent is the mistaken notion that the unwind of modernity can be arrested or mitigated by “smart” and “green” this-and-that.

The disappointment over it will be epic when we discover that the laws of physics override the bright ideas of politicians. America has been blowing green smoke up its own ass for years, promoting oxymorons such as “green skyscrapers” and “clean energy,” but the truth is we’re not going to run WalMart, Suburbia, DisneyWorld, and the interstate highway system on any combination of wind, solar, geothermal, recycled Fry-Max, and dark matter. We’re just running too much stuff at too great a scale for too many people. We’ve blown through the capital already and replaced it with IOUs that will never be honored, and we’re caught in an entropy trap of diminishing returns from all the work-arounds we’re desperately trying. Read More

02.09.19- Luciferianism: A Secular Look At A
Destructive Globalist Belief System
Brandon Smith

Over many years of investigating the mechanics of global events and the people behind them I have become perhaps a little obsessed with one particular subject – the source and motivations of evil. This fascination does not stem from a simple morbid curiosity, but a strategic need to understand an enemy. Much like an exterminator needs to understand the behavior of cockroaches to be effective, I seek to understand the behavior and nature of organized evil.

One very important fact that must first be made clear in people's minds is that evil does indeed exist. Establishment propaganda has spent immense time, effort and capital attempting to condition society into believing that evil is nothing more than a social construct – an opinion. Evil is supposedly in the eye of the beholder; a product of religious conditioning. This is a falsehood. Just like concepts of beauty, concepts of evil are actually inherent in our psyches from birth. The “eye of the beholder” is irrelevant. Read More

02.08.19- Telltale Signs Of Recession
Charles Hugh Smith

I'm seeing lifestyles that are out of stock and no longer available, even in China.

Though every recession is unique, all recessions manifest in similar ways in the real economy. By real economy, I mean the on-the-ground economy we observe with our own eyes, as opposed to the abstract statistical model reflected in official declarations of when recessions begin and end.

One characteristic that never makes it into the abstract statistical representation of recession is the light switch phenomenon: business suddenly dries up, as if someone turned a light switch off. This is especially visible in discretionary purchases, which include everything from smart phones to vehicles to eating out.

Other telltale signs of recession include: Read More

02.07.19- “The Value Of The Dollar Has No Guarantee Whatsoever”
Egon von Greyerz

The statement above is of course totally accurate for a country running budget and trade deficits for over half a century with a total debt, including unfunded liabilities, in the hundreds of trillions of dollars.

It could have been said today, but it actually dates back to August 1971 when the People’s Daily in China declared the beginning of the end for the monetary system of the capitalist world.

This prescient statement certainly has Cassandra characteristics. Cassandra was the princess of Troy who was given the gift to make prophecies that were true but no one believed. The Chinese government saw already 48 years ago that Nixon’s decision to end the gold backing of the dollar would be the end of the dollar and the Western monetary system. No one believed their prophecy at the time. But they are being proven right. Read More

02.06.19- CounterThink: How the Cancer Industry
Will DESTROY the New Cure for Cancer
Mike Adams

View Video

02.05.19- Home Sales to Get Even Uglier in Near Future
Wolf Richter

“Dripping down, down, down. Frustrating that the housing market is not recovering”: National Association of Realtors

What will home sales look like in January and February? Very, very lousy, according to pending home sales, a measure that counts how many contracts were signed. Contract signings run roughly one or two months ahead of when the sales close and are reported as sales. The measure of pending home sales for December projects actual home sales in January and February. To that tune, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) said that its Pending Home Sales Index for December fell to the lowest level since April 2014:

“It’s been dripping down, down, down,” NAR chief economist Lawrence Yun said in the interview. “Frustrating that the housing market is not recovering.” Read More

02.05.19- Home Sales to Get Even Uglier in Near Future
Wolf Richter

“Dripping down, down, down. Frustrating that the housing market is not recovering”: National Association of Realtors

What will home sales look like in January and February? Very, very lousy, according to pending home sales, a measure that counts how many contracts were signed. Contract signings run roughly one or two months ahead of when the sales close and are reported as sales. The measure of pending home sales for December projects actual home sales in January and February. To that tune, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) said that its Pending Home Sales Index for December fell to the lowest level since April 2014:

“It’s been dripping down, down, down,” NAR chief economist Lawrence Yun said in the interview. “Frustrating that the housing market is not recovering.” Read More

02.04.19- If You Are Warm Right Now, Thank Capitalism
Raymond Niles

Last night the temperature fell 3 degrees an hour. As I write this, it is negative 10 degrees outside. A “once in a generation” polar vortex has swept into the American Midwest from the Arctic.

I am lucky to be alive. It would take me just a couple of hours to die from hypothermia if I were outside in such weather. But I am not just alive, I am comfortable. It is a balmy 73 degrees in my home. I am relaxing by my gas fireplace that gives off a warm heat as gentle flames dance about and please my eye. I can hear the gentle whir of fans blowing heat around my living room, generated by my furnace. I write this on my comfortable sofa with a computer on my lap powered by electricity and fed information via the Internet, itself powered by electricity and glass-fiber conduits that carry information to me from computers and minds from across the earth.

My refrigerator is full. I went to the grocery store last night in my car that is powered by an internal combustion engine and fueled by gasoline, which was refined from petroleum that was pumped out of wells drilled in miles-long holes and transported in pipelines and rail cars and refined at complex and gargantuan refineries and made accessible to me via pumps placed at stations in convenient locations for me to use. I am eating an orange that was grown in Florida or Brazil thousands of miles away and transported to me by railroads and airplanes powered by jet engines. Read More

02.02.19- How Rich Is Rich?
Tyler Durden

With an ever-growing chorus of ‘soak the rich’ rising from the left-er of the leftists, it is becoming increasingly important to know what “rich” is – How much would you have to earn in a year in the U.S. before someone considered you rich?

Statista’s Niall McCarthy has the answer. According to a recent YouGov poll ,that depends heavily on you ask…

The research found that the American public considers an annual income between $90,000 and $100,000 necessary to be deemed rich. The fieldwork for the survey was carried out in September 2018 and it found that 76 percent of respondents think an annual income of $10,000 constitutes being poor.

That label gets shaken off once yearly earnings hit $30,000 with half of the population saying someone in this income category is neither rich nor poor. Read More

02.01.19- How Do You Beat The Bankers At Their Own Game?
Tom Chatham

Those that have been following events for several years know they are under attack by an enemy that has no face and means to do them great harm. Nothing less than their sovereignty and freedom is at stake. Absolute control over people and resources is the ultimate goal.

People need to understand that the bankers need to collapse everything and leave the population in want of resources and supplies. Just like after a natural disaster when the government shows up to provide help to those that have lost everything, the bankers want to show up after the population has lost everything in a collapse, to be their savior and gain control of everyone by offering resources in exchange for compliance. Read More

01.31.19- U.S.-China War May Be “Just A Shot Away”
Jim Rickards

I have warned repeatedly that currency wars and trade wars can lead to shooting wars. Both history and analysis support this thesis.

Currency wars do not exist all the time; they arise under certain conditions and persist until there is either systemic reform or systemic collapse. The conditions that give rise to currency wars are too much debt and too little growth.

In those circumstances, countries try to steal growth from trading partners by cheapening their currencies to promote exports and create export-related jobs.

The problem with currency wars is that they are zero-sum or negative-sum games. It is true that countries can obtain short-term relief by cheapening their currencies, but sooner than later, their trading partners also cheapen their currencies to regain the export advantage. Read More

01.30.19- So You Want to Get Rich: Focus on Human Capital
Charles Hugh Smith

Wealth is flowing to those who earn money from their human capital and enterprise. 

So you want to get rich: OK, what's the plan? If you ask youngsters how to get rich, many will respond by listing the professions the media focuses on: entertainment, actors/actresses, pro athletes, and maybe a few lionized inventors or CEOs. 

The media's glorification of the few at the top of these sectors masks the statistical reality that those who attain wealth in these pursuits number in the hundreds or perhaps thousands, not in the millions. As in a lottery, the odds of joining such a limited group are extremely low. 

There are 330 million Americans and 150 million people reporting income, so statistically, the odds of getting rich improve significantly if we focus on joining the ranks of the 11 million people who are getting rich from their human capital rather than on the few thousand people earning big bucks in music, film, sports, etc. Read More

01.29.19- Bunnies, Bombers and Butter
Gary Christenson

The welfare people and the warfare people control congress, appropriations, corruption and national policies. Implications are grim.

If a nation subsidizes butter, it will get more butter. The U.S. and most other western governments subsidize welfare and warfare. Those expenses inevitably increase and are inescapable, like the mathematics of debt.

The U.S. federal and state governments created a huge network of government programs, giveaways, entitlements and public assistance. The welfare people have increased the number and cost of those programs every decade. Giveaways will expand next decade when the U.S. elects a welfare-oriented politician as President. She will push for Universal Basic Income, Medicare for all, guaranteed jobs, free tuition, wealth taxes and more.

The symbol for the welfare people could be the Easter Bunny, who distributes free goodies.Read More

01.28.19- Feminism Is A Disease - And Masculinity Is The Cure
Brandon Smith

It seems these days like everyone and their genderfluid grandma has some “profound” insight into the minds and world of men. Men and masculinity are spoken of in the media with sharp tones of fear mixed with disdain, as if we are a dangerous aberrant genetic anomaly that needs to be studied under a special microscope that will protect the observer from being influenced by our vitriolic pheromones. The problem is, most of these “experts” on manhood are not men at all, or, their observations of male behavior are tainted with deep-seated resentments.  That is to say, they are hardly objective.

I recently came across an article by The Atlantic titled 'Psychology Has A Healthier Approach To Building Healthier Men'. Written around the same time as the embarrassing failure of Gillette's “Toxic Masculinity” ad campaign, I assume The Atlantic like many other mainstream media outlets was privy to this coming propaganda push and is attempting to rally the leftist troops to defend an ideological partner in crime. YouTube itself has even been aiding Gillette by removing dislikes from the video's vote count, which just goes to show that YouTube (owned by Google) is not a business but a propaganda machine, pure and simple. Read More

01.26.19- Toxic Masculinity and White Privilege
Doug Casey

Just a forewarning, this is one of the most controversial Conversations With Casey we’ve ever published. You might want to skip reading this one if you’re easily offended.

Justin: Doug, what did you think of that Gillette ad?

Doug: The first thing that came to mind was that, when I was a kid in the ’50s, Schick razors used to sponsor boxing on television. Boxing, ritualized unarmed combat, is about the height of masculinity. It was, logically, sponsored by a razor company.

Now, we have a razor company that’s saying that almost any kind of masculinity is toxic. It’s a complete turnaround, an inversion. And, just as an FYI, Schick has run ads making the same point. As have Dollar Shave Club and Harry’s – both of which are owned by major corporations. I never previously cared what kind of razor I used – never even noticed the brand. But I’m simply not going to buy their stuff from now on, simply because I refuse to support these despicable people even on the tiniest level. I suppose I’ll give Porter Stansberry’s OneBlade razor a second shot. It’s a great shave, just rather retro. Read More

01.25.19- Do This to Profit in a Bear Market
Jeff Clark

“Why on Earth,” a concerned reader asked recently, “would you even consider recommending buying any stock in a market you describe as bearish? After all, if the market is going to fall this year, then most stocks are going to fall with it…”

That’s a fair question. Most stocks are strongly correlated to the performance of the S&P 500. So, if the broad stock market falls in 2019 – as I’ve argued it will – then buying most stocks is going to be a mistake.

That seems logical. But it’s simplistic thinking.

You see, even in bear markets there are lots of chances to profit by buying stocks. Back in 2008, for example, one of the best-performing strategies was to simply wait on the sidelines until the stock market reached historically oversold conditions – where the proverbial rubber band was stretched about as far as possible to the downside – and then buy stocks in anticipation of an oversold bounce. Read More

01.24.19- Experts Uncertain About Social Security’s Future Prove One Thing is Certain
Birch Gold Group

A lot can happen between now and 2034. If you were to listen to a consensus from experts, you’d hear Social Security could run out of money in about 15 years.

This idea was recently addressed in a MarketWatch article, which included this potential result:

As most retirees and soon-to-retirees already know, Social Security is slated to run out of money in 2034 and, unless changes are made between now and then, beneficiaries beginning in that year will receive only 79% of what they otherwise would be owed.

But the article continues by highlighting the uncertainty behind this and other “consensus” predictions (emphasis ours):

To be sure, predicting what will come out of Congress in the next few months is an inexact science at best, much less the next 15 years.

The article features an interview with one (of many) experts on Social Security, Andy Landis, who worked at the Social Security Administration (SSA). In 1983, changes were enacted that, according to Landis, bring a certain perspective to expert predictions about Social Security. Read More

01.23.19- Three Ways the Government Shutdown forecasts a totally boring federal collapse
Joe Jarvis

Imagine: the federal government collapses, poof, gone.

Maybe it’s 2034, the date the government admits it can’t pay it’s $50 trillion Social Security bill.

Or maybe it’s earlier. The national debt is at almost $22 trillion, plus the massive everything-bubble created by the federal reserve money printing. Those don’t bode well for the future of the dollar.

It is inevitable that all this debt and the debasing of the US dollar will eventually hurt.

The longest government shutdown in history is a tiny preview, a little case study on what is coming when the federal government shuts down for good.

When it can’t pay its bills, when it runs out of cash flow, or when the US dollar has no value, what will happen? Read More

01.22.19- What Will Take the Place of America?
Phil Butler

The dog and pony show that is US leadership is an ongoing embarrassment for millions of American brought up to believe in excellence. Big talk, never-ending controversy, and mudslinging, and disastrous decisions on a daily basis have made a mockery of freedom and democracy. Trump-Russia, propaganda, and the rewriting history and truth are bigger threats than terrorism. Here’s another brief look at the mayhem from Washington. Here’s some food for those who think.

Investigative genius Gordon Duff wrote recently about the psychopathic killer, former Vice-President Dick Cheney in a piece about the indecency of Washington. Discussing a new film called “V-I-C-E,” which fries Cheney on the spit like a big fat hen, Duff encapsulates what mucky slime our nation’s capital is infested with the following passage:

“Cheney may well have been or well may still be the most powerful leader in America’s history, a history that is rocked with failure upon failure, an end to American power, an end to American honor, such as it is or was, an America whose cohesion at home and reputation around the world may well be irreparable.”Read More

01.21.19- C.S. Lewis Sounded the Alarm on
the Dangers of Progressivism
Benjamin Hutchinson

While most of us associate C.S. Lewis with theological literature, the renowned author sounded the siren against progressivism’s clear dangers not only to the political rights and liberties of man, but also to our very perception of the reality of mankind…

C.S. Lewis: World-renowned author, philosopher, theologian. Christian apologist. Mere mention of his name fills our minds with images of faith-based allegory, of lions, witches, and wardrobes, of rational defenses of the Christian faith.

But political commentator and staunch opponent of progressive ideals?

That’s not what we think of when we think of C.S. Lewis. Read More

01.19.19- The U.S. Economy and the Ponzi Scheme
Dr. Kal Kotecha

In a Ponzi scheme, money is taken from one source to pay for another, without actually having a real foundation or solid guaranteed future store of funds.  The initial returns generate excitement leading to more spending based mainly on reporting of false gains and the continuing propagation of unrealistic ideals.  At some point, the scheme loses its’ viability and fails to deliver as promised resulting in collapse and loss of funds, leaving victims’ scrambling to try to make up in some way for their losses.

The most famous Ponzi scheme of modern day was run by Bernie Madoff from New York City who managed to turn $5,000 saved from a lifeguarding job and installing sprinkler systems into nearly $65 billion of accounts.  During the run of the scheme he was able to amass an impressive list of clients including numerous celebrities and other well-known public figures.  Arvedlund, E. (2018).

His scheme was so elaborate and well-thought out that he was able to keep it running for over two decades while offering ten percent or higher returns.  In addition, his firm, Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities, at its’ peak was handling five percent of the trading volume on the New York Stock Exchange.  The scheme was exposed when his sons turned him in after he admitted to them that he was running a Ponzi scheme.  Subsequently, he was sentenced to 150 years in prison. Arvedlund, E. (2018). Read More

01.18.19-This problem is 10,000 times bigger than the border wall
Simon Black

We are in the midst of the longest government shutdown in history.

Don’t get me wrong, I like having the government shut down. As I’ve said before, I believe it is my moral duty to pay as little taxes as possible.

The government does some really stupid things with your tax dollars. I’d rather not pay for a $2 billion Obamacare website that doesn’t work, or to defend Congressmen against sexual assault allegations.

So, by starving the beast, I at least ensure they’re not squandering my money.

But I think it’s ridiculous that this government posturing is financially crippling the 800,000 government workers (and millions of contractors) who are now out of work – or being forced to work without pay.

To be fair, last night the president signed a law guaranteeing they would be paid for past work – a month into this fiasco. It’s a step in the right direction, as there’s a word for forcing people to work without pay – slavery. Read More

01.17.19- This New Market Could Make You a Fortune in 2019
E.B. Tucker

He stared down his opponents, with his eyes barely visible under the broad brim of a Stetson cowboy hat.

He had a rattlesnake with its jaw open and fangs exposed glued to the front of it. With a Texas drawl, he’d tell the other players how he had killed it himself.

At 6’4’’ and 170 pounds, Amarillo Slim was the greatest gambler to ever live. He made his first million in 1947 when he was only 19. His unforgettable look helped make poker a mainstream game around 20 years ago.

Slim was so good at poker, he said he was one of only four men who deserved to call themselves players. He won millions of dollars back when a million was considered serious money. He took pots from presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, Hustler magazine founder Larry Flint, and even drug lord Pablo Escobar. Read More

01.16.19- Where Will You Be Seated at
the Banquet of Consequences?
Charles Hugh Smith

To get a good seat at the banquet of consequences, the owner of capital has to shift his/her capital into scarce forms for which there is demand. 

The Banquet of Consequences is being laid out, and so the question is: where will you be seated? The answer depends on two dynamics I've mentioned many times: what types of capital you own and the asymmetries of our economy.

One set of asymmetries is the result of the system isn't broken, it's fixed, i.e. rigged to favor the few at the expense of the many. There are many manifestations of neofeudal asymmetry that divides neatly into two classes and two systems, the nobility and the serfs.

A rich kid caught with drugs gets a wrist-slap, a poor kid gets a tenner in the Drug Gulag.

Upper-middle class households are tax-donkeys, paying high taxes and getting few deductions, while mega-wealthy corporations and financiers enjoy offshore tax shelters of the kind exposed by the Panama Papers. Read More

01.15.19- Here’s What an American Economic Collapse Could Actually Look Like (And How It May Be a Lot Different Than Folks Expect)
Daisy Luther

When we think of “economic collapse” our imaginations usually lead us immediately to the desperation we’ve witnessed in places like Venezuela or Greece. We think of starvation, a complete lack of medical care, and waves of suicide by people who simply can’t survive. We imagine an apocalyptic societal breakdown that is immediately visible.

Here in America, I suspect the collapse is going to look a lot different than it has in these other countries…at least, at first. And in my description, it’s entirely likely you’ll see that many of these signs have been happening all around us for years.

It will be gradual.

The thing with collapses that we see in the media is that we are seeing the end results of events that have been slowly declining for years. Venezuela was one of the wealthiest countries in the world back until the mid-1980s, due to their rich oil reserves. Then oil prices collapsed and their fall began. It was actually several decades though before it was truly evident that the country was in trouble. Read More

01.14.19- Why I Will No Longer Recognize the Week
Aaron Clarey

One of the main problems with life is that to merely survive takes all (and more) of your youth.  That to just get by you need to work two jobs, double time it to earn yourself a degree, double time it again to pay off the associated debts, and then still double time it a third time to establish yourself in a career.  If you do it right and are frugal along the way, you inevitably "win" where you have the American dream, no debts, and an adequate retirement account.  You are free to live your life and you're lucky if this happens before 40.  If you're not frugal, succumbing to the marketing industry's propaganda to buy expensive cars and houses through debt, you merely damn the remainder of your life to double timing it forever, dying penniless, or perhaps like most boomers - in debt. Thankfully, the majority of my readers are in the previous group where we are either already there, or well on our way, ensuring we do not waste our lives. Read More

01.12.19- This Technology Will Be Bigger Than the Internet
Jeff Brown

Last October, a modified Toyota Prius drove itself 3,099 miles – from the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco to the George Washington Bridge in Manhattan.

There was a human in the driver’s seat, but he didn’t touch the steering wheel, gas, or brake pedals for the entire trip. The self-driving car drove itself the entire distance.

If any readers are curious about the trip, have a look at the time-lapse video of the entire coast-to-coast journey here.

This coast-to-coast, self-driving journey was the first of its kind. Yet it got little to no press.

But make no mistake, this is a remarkable achievement. This sort of trip wouldn’t have been possible even just a few years ago.

Today, I want to share with you the technology that made it possible, and show why it’s a trend that ought to be on every investor’s radar… Read More

01.11.19- The Recession Will Be Unevenly Distributed
Charles Hugh Smith

Those households, enterprises and organizations that have no debt, a very low cost basis and a highly flexible, adaptable structure will survive and even prosper.

The coming recession will be unevenly distributed, meaning that it will devastate many while leaving others relatively untouched. A few will actually do better in the recession than they did in the so-called "recovery."

I realize many of the concepts floated here are cryptic and need a fuller explanation: the impact of owning differing kinds of capital, fragmentation, asymmetry, opacity, etc. ( 2019: Fragmented, Unevenly Distributed, Asymmetric, Opaque).

These dynamics guarantee a highly uneven distribution of recessionary consequences and whatever rewards are generated will be reaped by a few. Read More

01.10.19- Here’s Where the Next Crisis Starts
Jim Rickards

The case for a pending financial collapse is well grounded. Financial crises occur on a regular basis including 1987, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2007-08. That averages out to about once every five years for the past thirty years. There has not been a financial crisis for ten years so the world is overdue. It’s also the case that each crisis is bigger than the one before and requires more intervention by the central banks.

The reason has to do with the system scale. In complex dynamic systems such as capital markets, risk is an exponential function of system scale. Increasing market scale correlates with exponentially larger market collapses.

This means a market panic far larger than the Panic of 2008.

Today, systemic risk is more dangerous than ever because the entire system is larger than before. Due to central bank intervention, total global debt has increased by about $150 trillion over the past 15 years. Too-big-to-fail banks are bigger than ever, have a larger percentage of the total assets of the banking system and have much larger derivatives books. Read More

01.09.19- The Last Act Crowns the Play
Hugo Salinas Price

For uncounted ages, the world's thinkers accepted, unquestioningly, the fact that human life is what it is, and cannot be changed: that its nature is unalterable.

Roman Emperor Constantine the Great (306 -337 AD) legalized Christianity but allowed the existence of other religions. Emperor Theodosius I made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire in 380 AD; other religions were considered foolish.

The  ancient view regarding the unalterable condition of earthly human life continued to prevail, but a new and powerful element was introduced into human life during the reigns of Constantine and Theodosius I: the element of Hope for humanity, the hope of eternal and blessed life after death for those who accepted Christ as their Savior.

The ancient view of human life as unalterable continued to prevail in Europe up until the "Renaissance of Learning" in the 16th Century. Read More

01.08.19- Our Politics Now: Up vs. Down, Not Left vs. Right
Brandon Weichert

If you were to view the evolution of politics in the West in traditional left versus right terms, you undoubtedly would see the political preferences of most people have shifted leftward.

Just look at how most Americans view federal spending: total government spending (federal, state, and local) accounts for 37.7 percent of the country’s overall gross domestic product. In other words, 37.7 percent of America’s economic growth is set to be generated by government spending (which is why Wall Street and other analysts worry about a government shutdown). There was a time—not long ago—in this country’s history when government spending was in the single-digits. But, those days are gone.

Why? 

Because the American people did not expect the government to do as much back then as they expect it to do today. But government spending is a two-way street. It is not merely corrupt politicians who have figured out that the path to power is through injudicious government handouts. Read More

01.07.19- Why Trump Must Legalize Pot
Nick Giambruno

Editor’s Note: Today, we turn to our weekend guest editor, Crisis Investing’s Nick Giambruno. Below, Nick shows why President Trump’s defining legacy likely won’t be an infrastructure boom or The Wall. It will be bringing legal pot to America.

Legal pot is a bit out of our wheelhouse here at the Diary. As Bill often says, his usual beat is money. But cannabis is now legal nationwide in Canada. It is expected to be lawful in Mexico starting this year. And a majority of Americans now favor legal pot. With all these forces converging, this is a trend that should be on every investor’s radar.

Longtime Diary readers know that I closely follow the legal cannabis market. For newer readers, just know that I’ve dedicated hundreds of man hours to investigating this new market. And all of my research is pointing to one conclusion: Cannabis will be legal nationwide, likely before the end of President Trump’s term. Read More

01.05.19- Tax Attorney: Social Security Participants About to be “Disenfranchised”
Bob Adelmann

If Rebecca Waiser is right, millions of Americans are about to be “disenfranchised”of their Social Security benefits. Waiser, a licensed tax attorney and certified financial planner writing for Fox Business, says the math is incontrovertible and irreversible.

According to the trustees running the program, Social Security will be forced to start cutting benefits by 2034, 15 years from now. According to Waiser the crisis will hit in three years.

Wrote Waiser:

Disenfranchisement ... is defined as the state of being deprived or a right or privilege ... [but, as] the Supreme Court ruled in the 1960 case Flemming v. Nestor ... the receipt of payments from the program is not a “right,” even where the participant had paid into the system for years. Read More

01.04.19- Markets are all about flows
Alasdair Macleod

This article looks at prospective supply and demand factors for financial assets in the New Year and beyond. Investors should take into account money flowing into and out of financial assets as well as stock flows, particularly escalating government bond issuance, which looks likely to accelerate significantly in the coming years. It adds up to the fundamental case for physical gold and silver.

At this time of year, the thoughtful soul considers prospects for markets. Pundits are laying out their forecasts, and they fall into two broad camps. There are brokers and fund managers who talk of value. Their income and assets under management depend on continually inflating prices. Then there are the pessimists, a ragbag of doom-mongers who sweepingly point to risks on a grand scale. The collapse of Italy, Deutsche Bank, China, Brexit… take your pick. Very few engage on the subject that really matters, and that is the underlying monetary flows into and out of financial markets. Read More

01.02.19- 2019 From a Fourth Turning Perspective
Jim Quinn

“An impasse over the federal budget reaches a stalemate. The president and Congress both refuse to back down, triggering a near-total government shutdown. The president declares emergency powers. Congress rescinds his authority. Dollar and bond prices plummet. The president threatens to stop Social Security checks. Congress refuses to raise the debt ceiling. Default looms. Wall Street panics.” – The Fourth Turning – Strauss & Howe

Strauss and Howe wrote their book in 1996. They were not trying to be prophets of doom, but observers of history able to connect events through human life cycles of 80 or so years. Using critical thinking skills and identifying the most likely triggers for crisis: debt, civic decay, and global disorder, they were able to anticipate scenarios which could drive the next crisis, which they warned would arrive in the mid-2000 decade. The scenario described above is fairly close to the current situation, driven by the showdown between Trump and the Democrats regarding the border wall. Read More

01.02.19- The World Known to Me Is Fading Away
Paul Craig Roberts

In a few hours it will be another new year, 2019. I can remember when 1984 seemed far in the future, both as a calendar date and George Orwell’s predicted dystopia, to which 9/11 and the digital revolution gave birth in the 21st century. Now I find myself 35 years past 1984 and a stranger in a strange land.

Over these holidays two occurrances brought the strangeness of the present time home to me.

One was the arrival of the memoir, From the Cast-Iron Shore (University of Notre Dame Press, 2019) by my friend and onetime colleague, Francis Oakley, an historian of the medieval era and past president of Williams College. The other was the report that a Japanese man had married a hologram.  Read More

01.01.19- Opinion: Roubini: President Trump is flirting with mutually assured economic destruction
Nouriel Roubini

Now that financial markets see the danger of the Trump presidency, the risk of a financial crisis and global recession has grown

NEW YORK (Project Syndicate) — Financial markets have finally awoken to the fact that Donald Trump is U.S. president. Given that the world has endured two years of reckless tweets and public statements by the world’s most powerful man, the obvious question is: what took so long? Read More

12.31.18- Guess What These Four Fastest Growing States
Have in Common…
Joe Jarvis

Keep the federal government shut down and let the states set policy.

“Non-essential” government workers… well then what the hell are they doing there?

Every penny of federal spending should be only the most absolutely crucial, necessary cent to keep the country’s most basic functions going…

I know, I know, I feel stupid just saying it. It would truly be better if everything was left up to markets–the people. I long for the day when no sector of the economy is violently monopolized, and funded via protection racket–security and courts included.

The whole thing is a farce, the system built to serve the elite. It’s disgusting that our tax dollars pay for a single politicians’, bureaucrats’, lobbyists’, or corporate cronies’ hors-d’oeuvres, let alone their salaries, kickbacks, bailouts… Read More

12.29.18- The Baby Boomer Survival Guide – Part 2
Bill Bonner

What is money really good for?

Money is our beat at the Diary. 

But money means nothing without philosophy. Beyond what we need to survive, money has no importance.

Is it good? Is it bad? It depends.

We need a simple philosophy to make sense of it – to guide us past the Gucci bags… past cable TV… and past the million-euro apartments of the 16th arrondissement in Paris.

Not that there’s anything wrong with them. But they are expensive.

And if you don’t have money, you need to be able to pass up luxury, gluttony, and self-indulgence with your nose in the air… not with your shoulders bent in defeat and self-disgust.

And for that, you need philosophy. Or at least aesthetics.

All people – unless they are saints or mental defectives – want to feel good about themselves. That is their primary aim in life and the only reason they are interested in money (save the minimal amount for survival). Read More

12.28.18- The Arrival Of The Credit Crisis
Alasdair Macleod

Those of us who closely follow the credit cycle should not be surprised by the current slide in equity markets. It was going to happen anyway. The timing had recently become apparent as well, and in early August I was able to write the following:

“The timing for the onset of the credit crisis looks like being any time from during the last quarter of 2018, only a few months away, to no later than mid-2019.” [i]

The crisis is arriving on cue and can be expected to evolve into something far nastier in the coming months. Corporate bond markets have seized up, giving us a signal it has indeed arrived. It is now time to consider how the credit crisis is likely to develop. It involves some guesswork, so we cannot do this with precision, but we can extrapolate from known basics to support some important conclusions. Read More

12.27.18- The Baby Boomer Survival Guide – Part 1
Bill Bonner

What should you do if you are running out of time and money?

This is the question we get from readers over 50… over 60… and sometimes, over 70.

We baby boomers were famously saying “Na… na… na… Live for today.” 

Now, it’s tomorrow. And many of us – often through no fault of our own – are having trouble making ends meet.

In the Diary, we write about the world of money – about economic policy and how it affects us.

But what if, in your world of money, you are running short? What should you do to get more?

Check under the seat cushions? Rob a bank? Read More

12.26.18- “The Worst Is Yet To Come Next Year”
Michael Snyder 

When talking heads on mainstream news networks are using phrases such as “the worst is yet to come next year”, that is a clear indication that a new financial crisis has arrived.  And that is an extremely bold statement to make considering that this is already the worst quarter for the stock market in 10 years, this is the worst December for stock prices since 1931, and we just experienced the worst Christmas Eve that Wall Street has ever seen.  So when Mark Jolley made the following statement during a recent guest appearance on CNBC, it definitely raised some eyebrows…

“I would love to be more optimistic but i just don’t see too many positives out there. I think the worst is yet to come next year, we’re still in the first half of a global equity bear market with more to come next year,” Mark Jolley, global strategist at CCB International Securities, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”

At this point last year, nobody on Wall Street was talking like this.

In fact, nobody was talking like this even four or five months ago.

But after three extremely painful months the outlook has completely changed, and a lot of market participants are really starting to freak out. Read More

12.25.18- The Greatest Gift For All
Paul Craig Roberts

Christmas Column 2018

Dear Donors, thank you for your support in 2018. Although you have kept me working yet another year, I find it encouraging that there are some Americans who can think independently and who want to know. As Margaret Mead said, it only takes a few determined people to change the world. Perhaps some of you will be those people.

My traditional Christmas column goes back to sometime in the 1990s when I was a newspaper columnist. It has been widely reprinted at home and abroad. Every year two or three readers write to educate me that religion is the source of wars and persecutions. These readers confuse religion with mankind’s abuse of institutions, religious or otherwise. The United States has democratic institutions and legal institutions to protect civil liberties. Nevertheless, we now have a police state. Shall I argue that democracy and civil liberty are the causes of police states? Read More

12.24.18- How to Barter for Survival (not just a list): 100+
Items to Barter in a Post-Collapse World (2018 Edition)
SurvivalWoman

Editor’s Note: This resource has been updated and revised for 2018.

Do you know how to barter?  In preparedness circles, the term barter is used a lot when describing a post SHTF situation when goods and services may no longer be available through normal channels.  According to Wikipedia, ”barter is a method of exchange by which goods or services are directly exchanged for other goods or services without using a medium of exchange, such as money”.

A lot of people think of bartering as something to do when they are down an out, perhaps unemployed, or low on cash.  But nothing could be further from the truth.  Bartering has been around for eons and is simply a smart way to acquire goods and services under the radar screen.

Today I would like to share some very simple tips for bartering as well as my own suggested list of items and skills that may be useful for barter in a post-collapse economy.Read More

12.22.18- Do you really have to go to work?
Joe Jarvis

Monday through Friday, 9-5, are work days. You commute to the office every day. And then you have the weekend off.

That’s how it has been for decades and decades, right? And before that Sunday was the only day off, and the hours were much longer.

These traditions began in factory settings when everything had to be standardized. It’s not like farmers were clocking in and punching out… they worked when there was work to do. Which was basically always.

But as we turn over to 2019, do we still need to work the five day work week? Do we still need to commute to the office? And should work even be hourly or even salary for most professions, or task-based? Read More

12.21.18- The History of Banking Control in the United States
Alain Pilote

The dictatorship of the bankers and their debt-money system are not limited to one country, but exist in every country in the world. They are working to keep their control tight, since one country freeing itself from this dictatorship and issuing its own interest- and debt-free currency, setting the example of what an honest system could be, would be enough to bring about the worldwide collapse of the bankers’ swindling debt-money system.

This fight of the International Financiers to install their fraudulent debt-money system has been particularly vicious in the United States of America since its very foundation, and historical facts show that several American statesmen were well aware of the dishonest money system the Financiers wanted to impose upon America and of all of its harmful effects. These statesmen were real patriots, who did all that they possibly could to maintain for the USA an honest money system, free from the control of the Financiers. The Financiers did everything in their power to keep in the dark this facet of the history of the United States, for fear that the example of these patriots might still be followed today. Here are some facts that the Financiers would like the population NOT to know… Read More

12.20.18- The 10 Daily Habits of Prepared People
Daisy Luther

For some people, preparedness is about the big things: the well-stocked retreat home, buying yet another firearm, or getting a super-fancy generator. While these things can certainly be classified as preparedness endeavors, it isn’t the expensive and dramatic gestures that make us truly prepared people.

The way prepared people spend their time before an emergency is the real key to survival, and this is something that no amount of money can buy.

It’s the small daily habits that become an innate part of our everyday lives – habits that may not even be noticeable to someone outside the lifestyle.

Real preppers, the ones you should look to for advice if you happen to be new to preparedness, are the ones who quietly conduct their daily lives with an eye towards readiness. Not only are these the qualities you should strive for yourself, but they are also the qualities that can help you to determine whether someone is the “real deal” or an armchair survivalist. Read More

12.19.18- Anything Goes!
Hugo Salinas Price

The disturbing fact regarding human life on planet Earth is that we are, all of us, and I include myself, living the life of lunatics, because we are all out of touch with Reality. I except from this condition, the few remaining tribes of primitive people living in the remote jungles of places such as Borneo, the Amazon river basin and other similar locations.

Some few humans, among whose small number I count myself,  know that this is our condition, but the vast majority of humanity are not aware of the dire situation in which we live.

One result of the collective insanity which prevails in our modern world is that it has allowed the very worst of the lunatics, possessed by destructive impulses, to rise to dominant positions in human societies.

Whether a few of us humans are aware of our deplorable condition of living out of touch with Reality – the definition of lunacy – or not, this is the situation in which we have to live.  Read More

12.18.18- I Can’t Afford to Live in this Private Community. And I Wish Everywhere Was Like This.
 Joe Jarvis

Private government is really nothing new.

And I don’t mean some arrangement between coercive government and “private” companies that make their money from government contracts.

That arrangement actually produces the inequality that people blame on free markets.

Notice how everyone is taxed. Yet the government spends the money enriching the government defense contractors, handing out subsidies to already rich oil companies, bailing out sub-par automakers and predatory bankers…

In contrast, private government is not coercive.

No one forces you to live in a neighborhood that charges a “tax” like a homeowners’ association fee. But when a government monopolized all the land, you have no choice but to pay the taxes they demand. Read More

12.17.18- Why Speculators Should Love the Crypto Crash
Greg Wilson

On February 12, 1827, financier George Brown hosted a meeting at his Baltimore home.

Joining him were 24 of the leading merchants of the day.

The topic: making Baltimore competitive on the Eastern Seaboard.

You see, New York had recently opened the Erie Canal… and it was a smashing success. Shipping prices decreased dramatically, and workers flocked to the state.

Other cities across the U.S. East Coast planned more canal construction. Baltimore merchants feared being left behind. Read More

12.15.18- Texas Judge Rules Obamacare Unconstitutional
Sean Moran

A Texas federal judge on Friday ruled that Obamacare violated the Constitution, likely pushing the ruling towards the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Judge Reed O’Connor, a U.S. District Judge for the Northern District of Texas appointed by former President George W. Bush, ruled that Obamacare violated the Constitution.

Twenty Republican state attorneys general brought the suit, Texas v. Azar, who asked the court to rule that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) violates the Constitution after Republicans managed to zero out Obamacare’s individual mandate penalty with the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act last year. The judge ruled that the law’s individual mandate violates the Constitution and therefore the entire ACA violates the Constitution.

Judge O’Connor acknowledged that health care is a “politically charged affair — inflaming emotions and testing civility.” Read More

12.15.18- What is the Deep Web and How Do You Get There in 2018?
Gary Stevens

The deep web and dark web are terms that have enjoyed plenty of headlines in recent years. You could conclude — wrongly, it turns out — that nothing exists in that seedy cyberalley except for deals that involve contract killing, illegal drugs, human trafficking, weapons, pornography and other not-so-nice products and services.

The Silk Road, a website synonymous with shady dealings, was shut down twice by the FBI and its founder, the Dread Pirate Roberts, also known as Ross Ulbricht, imprisoned for life.

The deep web and dark web aren’t the same thing, though. The dark web occupies only a fraction of the deep web. If you want to visit the deep web, you might already be there. It’s any place you go for content without a permanent URL — behind a paywall, password protected or dynamically generated. Read More

12.13.18- A Bad Moon Rising – Over Several Markets
Gary Christenson

John Fogerty (Credence Clearwater Revival) wrote “Bad Moon Rising” in 1969. The lyrics are relevant today.

“I see a bad moon a-rising (market correction/crash)

I see trouble on the way (inflation and war)

I see earthquakes and lightnin’ (defaults and bankruptcies)

I see bad times today” (polarized angry voters)

Jim Cramer of CNBC fame likes stocks. On Tuesday, October 23, before the DOW collapse of 608 on Wednesday, October 24, CNBC reported:

“Cramer advises patience, not panic, saying don’t dump stocks in this sell-off.” [Dow 10/23/18 – 25,191. Dow 12/10/18 – 24,423.]

“He added Tuesday’s session appears to be a ‘garden variety’ sell-off.”  Read More

12.12.18- A Crisis in the Making: Know Your Rights
or You Will Lose Them
John W. Whitehead

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”—Thomas Jefferson

We are approaching critical mass, the point at which all hell breaks loose.

The government is pushing us ever closer to a constitutional crisis.

What makes the outlook so much bleaker is the utter ignorance of the American people—and those who represent them—about their freedoms, history, and how the government is supposed to operate.

As Morris Berman points out in his book Dark Ages America, “70 percent of American adults cannot name their senators or congressmen; more than half don't know the actual number of senators, and nearly a quarter cannot name a single right guaranteed by the First Amendment. Sixty-three percent cannot name the three branches of government. Other studies reveal that uninformed or undecided voters often vote for the candidate whose name and packaging are the most powerful; color is apparently a major factor in their decision.” Read More

12.11.18- As Many as 8 Million Children Are Kidnapped and Trafficked Into Sex Slavery Every Year by Global Pedophile Network – of Which Many Politicians Are Members
Ethan Huff 

According to official statistics that you’ll never hear reported by the mainstream media, as many as 800,000 children in the United States, and eight million children globally, are being kidnapped and trafficked into sex slavery every single year as part of a massive pedophilia network that spans the entire world. And though it might not be comfortable to think about, many high-level politicians on both sides of aisle actively participate in, and partake of, this unimaginable evil.

Earlier this year, The International Tribunal for Natural Justice (ITNJ) met for three days to launch its Judicial Commission of Inquiry into Human Trafficking and Child Sex Abuse, the purpose of which is to investigate and bring to the forefront this prolific scourge of child sex abuse all around the world, much of it satanically ritualistic in nature.

One of the speakers at this event was Chief Counsel Robert David Steele, a former CIA officer who opened the Plenary Session of this first Judicial Commission of the Tribunal. He spoke about how child torture, child murder, and child organ harvesting are now “accepted” practice within the highest levels of government all across the globe, as well as within non-governmental organizations (NGOs), multinational corporations, academia, and “civil” society. Read More

12.10.18- Dow 10,000
Bill Bonner

BALTIMORE, MARYLAND – Trading continued yesterday… with stocks swinging lustily from tree to tree like drunken monkeys.

When the closing bell finally sounded, the Dow was down just 79 points. The monkeys were greatly relieved.

And today, the Fed sets up another drink. Here’s a headline from The Wall Street Journal:

Fed May Slow Rate Increase Pace

Our advice to readers: Relax… and enjoy the comedy show.

Buffett Indicator

Deutsche Bank reports that 89% of the world’s assets are in negative territory so far in 2018 – in dollar terms. Is this a buying opportunity?