02.25.20- Your Doctor and Your Guns
You are at the pediatrician’s office for a routine well child visit. Maybe you just moved to a new town. The nurse hands you the standard paperwork with the questionnaire pertaining to your child’s health. You start filling out the form and right there . . . question number 14 . . . “Do you have a gun in the home?” It’s right after the question about swimming pools and right before the one about household cleaner storage. What do you answer? First, the presence of this question is no accident. In the 1980s and 1990s professional medical organizations declared a culture war on gun ownership. This includes the American Medical Association, American College of Physicians and the American Academy of Pediatricians. Read More |
02.24.20- US Biowarfare Act Author: Studies Confirm Coronavirus Weaponized!
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02.22.20- Is There Any Place Safe Left To Live?
Has the entire country gone mad? Is there any place left where liberty, privacy, self-reliance, and the ability to garden, fish, hunt, build, and protect one’s hearth and home is still possible? Renowned editor of the World Affairs Brief, and author of Strategic Relocation, and The Secure Home, Joel Skousen, returns to Finance and Liberty / Reluctant Preppers to give us a critical update on the changing socio-political landscape of our nation, and the focus areas on new concern to those seeking a private, secure location for a safe homestead. Read More |
02.21.20- Omens, Portents, Karma and the Mandate of Heaven
What makes humans unique among social mammals? Some say humor, I would nominate superstition: regardless of how hard we promote our rationality and logic, humanity continues to sense portents and omens in events and feel the intangible tug of karma: the consequences of past actions that we arrogantly thought we’d escaped forever. Michael Snyder recently compiled a list of peculiarities that are raising eyebrows around the globe: One, sure, two, not that unusual, three, well things happen in threes, but ten disturbances and we’re only six weeks into 2020? 10 ‘Plagues’ That Are Hitting Our Planet Simultaneously (Zero Hedge) As the saying has it, Nature Bats Last, and maybe arrogant, destructive humanity’s war on Nature is about to get its comeuppance. Maybe overdosing hundreds of millions of chickens and pigs to knock down bacteria in overcrowded conditions has finally generated a karmic blowback via bird and swine viruses. Read More |
02.20.20- The Lessons We Have Learned From The Coronavirus
Refusing to examine the dark side of life and its dangers has become a staple of our society, to the point that it has given birth to a kind of religious cult. Naive optimism has become a virtue, a misplaced form of faith that encourages people to remain oblivious in the face of adversity. And the more precarious our system becomes, the more these people see unicorns and rainbows. It is truly bizarre. Read More |
02.19.20- The Betrayal Of The Elites
We need institutions, including families, associations, churches, corporations, trade unions, political parties, professions such as law and medicine, as well as the formal institutions of government such as Congress, the presidency, and the courts. They are, as Levin puts it, “the durable forms of our common life.” They serve purposes or missions, like educating the young, resolving disputes, or defending the country. They give life meaning by assigning roles, teaching self-control, and enforcing standards. In the process, they form the character of those who participate in them. But we no longer trust them. What went wrong? Read More |
02.18.20- Why Covid-19 Demands Our Full Attention
There’s a reason we’ve re-directed so much of our attention towards reporting on and trying to understand the novel coronavirus (covid-19) that originated in Wuhan, China in December. The heart of our approach is to be “systems thinkers.”
We don’t see the economy as a closed ecosystem to be analyzed and understood all on its own. It’s connected to energy flows, especially oil. So we investigate those, too, with an eye towards working out how fossil fuels’ eventual dwindling will impact an economic system that is utterly dependent on perpetual growth. Read More |
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Consider the following:
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02.15.20- White People Are Being Erased
Those Americans empowered by “white privilege” who are still a demographic majority are too scared and too intimidated to open their mouths or use their pocketbooks to protest their demonization and marginalization. Facebook and Twitter will drop them, denying them their virtual existence. Indoctrinated and mindless white friends will shun them as racist, anti-semitic white supremacists. Twenty-eight US states will fire them if state employed and deny them contracts if their protests have anything to do with Israel. Deserted and isolated on social media, their life will be over. This is what “white privilege” means. Throughout the Western world truth is out of favor. Indeed, truth is objectionable. It offends Identity Politics, feminism, the Israel Lobby, the military/security complex, Monsanto/Bayer, the extractive industries, the pharmaceutical industry, the “woke people,” the transgendered and every other interest that desires to be unaccountable and free of criticism. Read More |
02.14.20- The Necessity of Questioning Mass Media Journalism
A couple of weeks ago, I started blogging, having traveled to two different Asian nations and having observed the precautions people were taking in crowded areas, and having spoken to friends that live in China, my suspicions that the coronavirus was much more serious than being implied by official State reported data. Initially, when I conveyed these suspicions, I received quite a bit of pushback from people and heard accusations that I was just contributing to the hysteria, even though I additionally conveyed my belief that there was a good deal of real hysteria being reported on pure speculation from other nations’ reporters outside of the Asian continent, and that this hysteria should be largely ignored as click-bait rubbish. Read More |
02.13.20- Hackers Attacking Retirement Savings
Unfortunately, this nightmare scenario is happening more and more often as hackers become more creative and use more sophisticated methods. According to an article on MarketWatch, "Hackers are targeting new types of financial accounts — such as customer rewards programs and retirement plans, according to the 2019 Identity Fraud Study from Javelin Strategy & Research." Read More |
02.12.20- If Only Economics Was as Easy as Rocket Science
Economics Is Difficult After all, we have successfully sent rockets to many places in our planetary neighborhood, demonstrating a tolerable ability to solve enough of the relevant problems, yet many economic policies impose more harm than help. And the more one tries to control, the more the information and implementation issues undermine the possibility—much less the probability—of effectiveness. Read More |
02.11.20- A Most Convenient Virus
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02.10.20- In The Bubble: Trump's Presidency Reveals
The awakening for many Americans could be compared to that of actor Jim Carrey’s character in the 1998 film “The Truman Show”. In that narrative, the unsuspecting star of a global reality television program came to the realization his entire worldview was formed within a bubble; a literal bubble that generated bubblevision in Carrey’s character as all of those around (and above) him performed right on cue. Truly, it feels like that now in America. The times have become surreal. And there is a great percentage of Americans who still live within the bubble. They are everywhere: In the workplace, in schools and colleges and at restaurants and in bars. They vigorously debate each other on who would make a better president between Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Andrew Yang, or Joe Biden. They LOVE the fact that Trump was impeached and consider Adam Schiff, Nancy Pelosi, and the Devil’s butler (Chuck Schumer) to be American heroes. Read More |
02.08.20- Welcome to the Bullshit Economy The story of Shadow, makers of the app that utterly failed to deliver in Iowa, is a perfect example of the bullshit economy. In one sense, the Iowa caucus debacle will last just a couple of news cycles. We have the data on paper, tabulated in front of tens of thousands of witnesses, and it merely needs to be collated. Eventually it will, and though the damage to the news cycle is irreparable—Joe Biden’s disappointing outcome has been diluted in particular—the process will go on with an accurate count. Caucuses are horrible and probably a dead letter, but for different reasons than the delayed count; the real problems arise from the electoral college–style distortions between the initial percentages and the final delegates, and the tacit vote suppression from forcing people to attend a two-hour meeting on a weeknight when they might be working. Read More |
02.07.20- The Height Of Idiocy
I’m not a fortune teller. In fact, the only things anybody knows about predicting – even if you gussy the concept up by calling it “forecasting” – are 1.) Predict often and 2.) Never give both the time and the event. The worst offenders are those who pretend they know where the economy’s headed. Statistics – so often the basis of conjecture with regard to the economy – are so subject to interpretation, and so easy to take out of context, that most of the time they’re best used as fodder for cocktail party conversations. Still, as potentially wrong-headed and tendentious as the subject is, “the economy” is occasionally worth talking about simply to establish a clear point of view. Read More |
02.06.20- Pandemic, Lies and Videos
When we look back on this moment from the vantage of history, what will we think? Will we think how obvious it was that the coronavirus deaths in China were in the tens of thousands rather than the hundreds claimed by authorities? Will we think how obvious it was that the virus would spread around the globe, wreaking havoc on the global economy and social order, even as the authorities claimed only a handful of cases had arisen outside China? Read More |
02.05.20- Are you prepared for the contagion?
I have to admit, a “pandemic” was low on my list of possible sparks, but after thinking it through, a pandemic is a financial disaster. Yes it is a human disaster and many will die, but the odds of dying from the virus are and will remain quite low. The real problem is what the human response will be. I say this because we live in a world of just in time inventory AND production. We also live in a financial world with more debt and financial leverage (and thus monthly debt service) than ever before. So much so that even a small hiccup (which this does not appear to be) where business slows and contracts will be enough to quickly default some credits. The problem is not the initial defaults, rather, it is the “contagion” throughout the system because our world is so inter connected (globalism). Read More |
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Human consciousness begins in the womb. Unborn babies have memories, emotions and experiences that some people even remember. Consciousness exists in human babies long before the day of birth, at which point the child is nearly ten months old, not nine as is typically misstated by most people. This is why in Eastern cultures, a child is considered to be one year old at the moment of birth. Read More |
02.03.20- Our Kardashian Culture
Bryant was a great basketball player, one of the best in NBA history. He was also accused of raping a nineteen year old hotel worker in 2003. Like all celebrities and wealthy people, Bryant escaped punishment and later settled out of court. The mainstream media broke a time-honored tradition at the time, by disclosing the name of the victim, and questioned her character and motivations in several biased, inflammatory reports. At the last minute, she abruptly decided not to testify, and Bryant avoided a trial. In the eyes of a reasonable person, Kobe Bryant’s eventual admission of sexual contact with his accuser, without acknowledging any guilt, defined him as being significantly less than heroic. Following the helicopter crash on January 26, 2020, which also tragically took the lives of his thirteen year old daughter and eight others, accolades and tributes fit for royalty came forth, mostly via Twitter, which is the national Town Crier for America 2.0. Read More |
02.01.20- More on the Coronavirus... a Real Simulation
But now, there's an even more uncanny resemblance between "simulation" and "reality", and a big thanks to all who found and shared this: Read More |
01.31.20- Savings vs. Money: Which Is More Important?
Following this logic, one could also establish that increases in money supply are beneficial to the entire process of capital formation and economic growth. (Note: increases in money supply result in increases in monetary income and this, for a given consumer outlay, implies an increase in savings). Read More |
01.30.20- A Date and Time for “Financial Armageddon?”
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01.29.20- Some Thoughts on Democracy and China
Today, Democracy has become the only accepted political system. All others are considered outrageous. This circumstance did not come about by itself, that is to say, in the course of a normal change in the flow of opinion among the nations of the world. The United States was founded as a “Republic” not a “Democracy”. (Hardly anyone remembers that this was the theme of Bob Welch, founder of the “John Birch Society” back in the 1950’s.) Among those responsible for confusing the population of the USA into the acceptance of “Democracy”, we must point a finger at Franklin Delano Roosevelt, President of the USA from 1933 to 1945. Read More |
01.28.20- How screwed up is the pension system
“If you sacrifice your retirement savings to send your child to college, you’re making a huge mistake.” Read More |
01.27.20- The Things We Believe That are Untrue
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01.25.20- Coronavirus Is Worse Than You've Been Told: Scientist Explains
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Literally, anyone can claim the new refugee status. This will essentially open US borders for good. Now the left has combined open borders with junk science to create climate refugees. Read More |
01.23.20- IMF warns of new ‘Great Depression’, Russia ahead of the curve due to increased cash & gold reserves
Kristalina Georgieva isn’t any sort of conspiracy theorist; she’s the head of the International Monetary Fund. And when she warns that the global economy risks another “Great Depression,” you would think everyone would listen. Read More |
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01.21.20- This IS Tomorrow: Gun Control Is A Tool Of Socialism
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01.20.20- Remarks on the US/China “Trade Deal”
The purpose of tariffs is to protect domestic producers from foreign competition by raising the price of imported goods. What Trump, his administration, and the financial press did not understand is that at least half of the US trade deficit with China is the offshored goods produced in China by such corporations as Apple, Nike, and Levi. The offshored production of US global corporations counts as imports when they are brought into the US to be sold to Americans. Thus, the cost of the tariffs were falling on US corporations and US consumers. Read More |
01.18.20- What Will It Take to Get the Public
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01.17.20- The two best gifts to give your newborn child
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
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
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 |
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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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Thus did Time magazine pass over every world leader to name a Swedish teenage climate activist, Greta Thunberg, its person of the year.
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
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
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01.02.20- Understanding The Keys To Power Will be a Survival Requirement for the Coming Decade
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
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12.31.19- Nullify Government Tyranny: In 2020, Harness The Power Of Your Discontent
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?
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
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”
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
And without a doubt, that day is coming. Read More |
12.25.19- An End to the World as We Know It?
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
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
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
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12.20.19- Skyrocketing Costs Will Pop All The Bubbles
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
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 |
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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:
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12.17.19- Markets vs. Politics: Which Will It Be?
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
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
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…
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
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12.11.19- A History of Inflationary Money: From 1844 to Nixon
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:
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12.10.19- 6 Things We Learned from Prohibition
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
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
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
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…
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
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
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
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
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:
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
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
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
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11.26.19- Holiday Sales May Be Missing In Action
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: 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
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11.22.19- Who Knew 2 Cents Could Go So Far?
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
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
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:
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
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:
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11.17.19- Yes, Taxation Is Theft
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
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 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
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 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
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11.09.19.- Plans for a global Dystopia
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
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
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 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?
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 |
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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
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
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
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
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
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
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10.26.19- What You Think Is Controlled By What You Watch, And What You Watch Is Controlled By The Elite
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
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
- 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
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
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
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
Yet a growing number of affluent Americans are now renting. From today’s Wall Street Journal:
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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
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
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
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
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 |
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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
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
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:
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10.09.19- Inflation Will Eliminate Excess Debt
– 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:
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10.08.19- Following the Greater Depression on eBay
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
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"
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
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
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09.02.19- Soviet Catastrophe Paints Grim Picture of America’s Future
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10.01.19- 11 Habits You Need to Break Before You’re Broke
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
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09.28.19- It Is Time To Go: Over Half Of All California Voters
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09.27.19- It’s impossible to know everything. Here’s the smartest way to be ignorant
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
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
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”
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
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
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
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09.19.19- Democracy Is a Scam
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 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
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
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
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09.13.19- Has America Become One of the Most Evil Nations
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09.12.18- Tulsi Gabbard Suggests Government Is Run By A “Small Group Of Political Elite”
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…
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
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!
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:
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09.07.19- It’s The Pace Of Change That Kills You
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
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
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
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09.03.19- In Coming Currency Wars, Gold Is the Only Practical Way
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?
Imagine the following scene playing out at work tomorrow:
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08.31.19- Trade War Tariffs to Hit U.S. Consumers and Retailers
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
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
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
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
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.
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08.26.19- Save The World By First Saving Yourself
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08.24.19- A Critical Threshold Has Just Been Crossed, And Things
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08.23.19- What a Nobel Peace Prize, the Federal Reserve, and endless war have in common
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
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
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
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
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
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
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08.15.19- Major Recession Alarm Sounds
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
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:
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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
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08.09.19- Heading for civil war
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!
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
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08.06.19- Why We’re Keeping Our “Crash Alert” Flag Up
Investor’s Business Daily reports:
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 |
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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.
"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
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
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
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
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
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
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”
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
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
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07.23.19- Beware, the IRS is eyeing your inherited money
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!
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
“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
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
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07.17.19- Promise The Moon
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
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
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07.13.19- Do You Truly Have Free Will?
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
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07.11.19- Are White People Too Stupid To Survive?
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
However, at this point I am not holding my breath. Read More |
07.09.19- Goodbye Dollar, It Was Nice Knowing You!
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
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07.06.19- Eugenics, Infertility & Population Growth CRISIS part 1
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07.05.19- Central Banks Will Keep Easing "Until Parliaments And Palaces Burn"
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
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
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 |
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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
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:
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06.29.19- Freedom and Liberty At Risk
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
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
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
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)
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
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
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
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06.20.19- An Examination Of The Leftist Cult And Their Religion
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
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
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06.17.19- Waiting For The Black Swan
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
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
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06.13.19- How the Stock Market Actually Works
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06.12.19- The American Bolsheviks Are Coming…
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
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
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
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…
But the economy continues to sink. The longest expansion in U.S. history seems to be approaching its end. Here’s CNBC:
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06.06.19- The Trade War Is About To Become
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
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
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?
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’
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
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05.30.19- Why A “Safe Retirement” Is Becoming
That clear retirement path ended in 2000, according to John Mauldin in a recent SeekingAlpha article (emphasis ours):
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
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
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%:
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
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: 
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
John Mauldin shines a light on the math that seems to explain why public pensions aren’t living up to their task:
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):
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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?
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05.21.19- The Origins of the Deep State in North America Part 2: Milner’s Perversion Takes Over Canada
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
“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
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
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05.16.19- We Have 3 Years Before The National Debt "Death Spiral"
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
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
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05.13.19- The World To America: "You're Fired!"
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
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
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
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05.08.19- Seven Laws of Investing
Those sensible rules apply to gold and silver. Read More |
05.07.19- The Old World is Dying
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?
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?
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
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
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05.01.19- How the Financialization Scam Works
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
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
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
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
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04.25.19- A horrible future awaits for anyone who
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
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
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
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?
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
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
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04.17.19- Guess who ends up paying those taxes
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
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
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
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!
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’
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
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
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
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
I just heard from Tom Feeley:
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04.05.19- Read this if you believe that you will never need
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.
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04.04.19- US government’s net worth is now
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
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
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”…
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?
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
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03.28.19- Behind the Mueller Distraction… a Hellish Catastrophe
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
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
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
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
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03.22.19- Government Warns Of Historic, Widespread Flooding “Through May” – Food Prices To Skyrocket
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03.21.19- Social Security “Tipping Point” Could Be Arriving Faster
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:
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03.20.19- A Recipe for Massive Government Spending
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
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
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03.16.10- The Government’s Greatest Con Job
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 |
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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?
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
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
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
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 |
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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?
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
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03.06.19- 3 Top Cyber Security Threats and How To Protect Yourself Against Them
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”
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03.04.19- Where Did AOC Get Her Sweet Potatoes?
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)
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…
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
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
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02.26.19- You Can't Stop The Cycle: The Next Few Years
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
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
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.
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
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
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
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
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02.18.19- A gold backed alternative to the dollar may finally be here in the Iranian PayMon cryptocurrency
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”
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
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
THE WALL STREET CIRCUS DISTRACTS PEOPLEWall 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:
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02.13.19- Trump Missed His Last Great Opportunity
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,
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
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02.09.19- Luciferianism: A Secular Look At A
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
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”
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 |
02.05.19- Home Sales to Get Even Uglier in Near Future
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
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
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?
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?
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”
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
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
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
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
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
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01.24.19- Experts Uncertain About Social Security’s Future Prove One Thing is Certain
This idea was recently addressed in a MarketWatch article, which included this potential result:
But the article continues by highlighting the uncertainty behind this and other “consensus” predictions (emphasis ours):
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
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?
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:
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01.21.19- C.S. Lewis Sounded the Alarm on
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
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
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
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 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 |
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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
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01.12.19- This Technology Will Be Bigger Than the Internet
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
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
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
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
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
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”
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:
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01.04.19- Markets are all about flows
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01.02.19- 2019 From a Fourth Turning Perspective
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
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
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
“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
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
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12.27.18- The Baby Boomer Survival Guide – Part 1
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”
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
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+
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?
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
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
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!
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.
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
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12.15.18- Texas Judge Rules Obamacare Unconstitutional
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?
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
Jim Cramer of CNBC fame likes stocks. On Tuesday, October 23, before the DOW collapse of 608 on Wednesday, October 24, CNBC reported:
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12.12.18- A Crisis in the Making: Know Your Rights
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 |
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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
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:
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? Presidential economic advisor Larry Kudlow must think so. This is what he told Fox News recently:
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12.08.18- What to Do When the Market Goes “Nuts”
Jeff’s insights are different from our usual Diary essays. But with the S&P 500 plunging in Q4, Jeff believes there’s never been a better time to be a trader. Below, he shares how he makes money when the stock market goes a little crazy… According to the efficient market hypothesis, there’s nothing insane going on in the stock market. Stock prices reflect all of the currently available information and investors’ analysis of that information. Hogwash. In the long term, I’ll agree that markets are efficient, investors are rational, and stock prices generally end up where they are logically supposed to. In the short term, though, the market is nuts. Fear and Greed Read More |
12.07.18- Things Change, But Not Always For The Better
Knowing that these cycles occur can give a person an idea of what to prepare for in the future. We know that the national debt doubles about every 8 years. We know that the economy goes into a recession every 6 to 8 years. We know that the FED manipulates the economy with money printing and interest rates. We know politicians spend money we don’t have to get reelected. We know from history that these things eventually cause problems that we must deal with as individuals. When we realize these things we can make plans to deal with these problems before they happen and limit the affects they have on us. The problem is that most people do not see these things coming because they are kept occupied with other trivial things and they have short memories. Then when these disruptions occur they are caught seemingly unaware and suffer for it. To be aware is to be prepared. Read More |
12.06.18- "Too Perfect to be Natural": Those Strange Seismic Waves
Strange seismic event detected in Wellington ‘too perfect’ to be natural Now, ponder, for a moment, the utter strangeness of these paragraphs: Read More |
12.05.18- Is An Offshore Account Safe?
Jamie Virjhof, Relationship Manager of Weber Hartmann Virjhof & Partners Ltd. recently interviewed me and addressed those concerns. I have permission to share it with our readers. Is International Diversification really necessary? Dennis Miller’s recent article, “Should Investors Have Money Offshore?” raised the ever-important question whether you can really trust the government. Dennis elaborated how the government does not always have the best interest of their people in mind. This was one of the reasons why he decided to bring some of his wealth offshore. Read More |
12.04.18- Another Serious Real Interest Rate Fallacy
To visualize this problem, let’s make an analogy to someone who inherits a family farm. There are two approaches to making a living from a farm. In the first—we’ll call this investing—Farmer Brown determines how to produce the greatest amount of food at the least cost. He increases production of milk from his herd, and apples from his orchard. In the other approach—we’ll call this liquidating—Liquidator Larry sells off the farm, bit by bit. The back 40 acres can be sold to a developer of high-end condos. The apple trees can be chopped down, because cabinets made of fruitwood are hip in high-end condos. The barn can be torn down, because those condos need flooring. Wood planks from old barns is really cool. Read More |
12.03.18- How “Laziness” Can Make You Wealthy
– From Principles of Wealth, by Mark Ford The unpaid bills are stacked next to the unwashed dishes. You’ve been short about $1,200 per month since the divorce. You need something to fill that income gap – some sort of money-making scheme that’s feasible, flexible, and profitable. It can’t be a financial investment because you’ve got no savings. What’s there to do? Before going to sleep, you check your email. You see an ad, but before you delete it, you notice something about extra income. “What the hell?” you ask. You decide to give it a try. Read More |
12.01.18- How to Profit From Trade War Hysteria
…Apple (AAPL). Apple sells the wildly popular iPhone, iPad, and MacBook. It’s one of the most recognized companies on the planet. It was the world’s most valuable publicly traded company until Microsoft (MSFT) overtook it on Monday. So how did a company this powerful get caught up in the trade war? Simple. On Monday, President Trump threatened to introduce a 10% tariff on consumer electronic products made in China. This would impact the iPhone and other Apple products… Read More |
11.30.18- Rothschild rule ends after 250 years; new era to begin
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11.28.18- The Best Stock Investors: Dead People
But you don’t have to guess. Because you don’t make money in the stock market from short-term moves. You’ll guess wrong as often as right, and you’ll end up getting nowhere. It’s the big, long-term moves that make a difference. And the trouble is, sometimes, those moves last longer than we do. Timing for Dummies Our “Timing for Dummies” model calls for buying stocks when you can get the Dow for less than five ounces of gold (it’s currently about 20)… and selling stocks when the price goes over 15 ounces of gold. Otherwise, you just wait. In gold. Read More |
11.27.18- End This Madness
But I am not powerless, even in my moments of weakness when I feel a bit lonely in the realization that far too many Americans are not concerned, as much as they should be over these developments. Although I may still suffer over the suffering of others, I know a better way than the “fundamental transformation” of America and “Democratic” Socialism exists for Us all; having things has never been so important to me as having Quality of Life and Liberty, and I intend to fight ’til my last dying gasp to keep this America, I love so well, on a path towards the greatest Freedom and Liberty for All. Read More |
11.26.18- Thoughts From The Precipice
As you already know, things are unraveling. The narratives of the past are being revealed as false and fraudulent — even harmful. For example, the fallacy of pursuing “ever more” growth. Growth up to a point is beneficial, but it turns self-destructive when it exceeds what available resources can sustain. As it is practiced, economic growth as pursued around the world today is now destructive. If we continue on our current trajectory, it will become fatal. It already has for an increasing scope of the natural world. Beauty is being ruined. The complex web of life is being shredded. Species loss is accelerating. This kind of damage is essentially permanent. Read More |
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And I find it kinda funny, I find it kinda sad The haunting Gary Jules version of the Tears for Fears’ Mad World speaks to me in these tumultuous mad times. It must speak to many others, as the music video has been viewed over 132 million times. The melancholy video is shot from the top of an urban school building in a decaying decrepit bleak neighborhood with school children creating various figures on the concrete pavement below. The camera pans slowly to Gary Jules singing on the rooftop and captures the concrete jungle of non-descript architecture, identical office towers, gray cookie cutter apartment complexes, and a world devoid of joy and vibrancy. Read More |
11.23.18- The Assassination of Bitcoin
As Bill reported last week, central banks are toying with the idea of launching a bank-backed cryptocurrency. Dan believes that outcome is all but assured. Only one thing stands in the way… bitcoin. The collapse of bitcoin – down 68% year to date and 78% from its all-time high of $20,000, set in December 2017, when it traded at $4,200.22 earlier this week – may have a perfectly normal explanation. It’s a bubble that popped. Or it’s happened before and is nothing to worry about. As my colleagues have shown their readers in the last week, bitcoin dropped 94% in 2010, 94% in 2011, 85% from 2013 to 2015, and 76% in a three-month period alone in 2013. Read More |
11.22.18- How Not to be a Turkey on Thanksgiving
The farmer comes every day to feed the turkey and feed him well. He provides free accommodations: a nice yard to peck around in, water, shelter from predators. From the turkey’s perspective, a week before Thanksgiving, life has never been better. Nassim Nicholas Taleb explains “The Great Turkey Problem” in his book Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder. Read More |
11.21.18- An Odor of Perfidy
Of course, she’s not a serious candidate because too many people recognize her naked corruption, and she’s carrying so much noisome baggage that her entourage looks like one of those garbage truck convoys hauling New York’s trash to flyover country. Prosecutors don’t even have to search very hard for evidence of her misdeeds. It’s smeared all over the swamp-scape in the established facts about the Steele Dossier and its engineered journey through the highest levels of the FBI and Department of Justice, and the wild machinations that ensued when the cast of characters in those places scrambled to cover their asses following the debacle of Hillary’s election loss. Read More |
11.20.18- The globalist plan to exterminate humanity begins now:
This plan is under way now due to two very important developments: #1) The rise of robotic systems that can replace human labor, eliminating the need for a world of impoverished human workers whose only reason for existence — from the point of view of the globalists — was to be exploited for cheap labor and manipulated votes. Read More |
11.19.18- Soaring Health-Care Costs Forced This Family to Choose Who Can Stay Insured
Then, in 2012, Maribel discovered she had breast cancer. “Your world comes crumbling down,” David says. Maribel had a double mastectomy, paid for by the insurance David obtained through his job, a small welding business with fewer than a dozen employees. Read More |
11.17.18- Potential Impacts of the Midterm Elections
This may have several important impacts on your retirement over the next two years (and beyond, depending on policy adjustments). These potential impacts could be crucial because the economic foundation they influence appears to be on shaky ground. In a peer-reviewed paper from the Indiana Legal Studies department, four authors collaborated and published an alarming discovery (emphasis ours):
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11.16.18- Does Any of This Make Sense?
We rarely ask "does this make any sense?" of things that are widely accepted as beneficial-- or if not beneficial, "the way it is," i.e. it can't be changed by non-elite (i.e. the bottom 99.5%) efforts. Of the vast array of things that don't make sense, let's start with borrowing from future income to spend more today. This is of course the entire foundation of consumer economies such as the U.S.: the number of households which buy a car or house with cash is near-zero, unless 1) they just sold a bubble-valuation house and paid off their mortgage in escrow or 2) they earned wealth via fiscal prudence, i.e. the avoidance of debt and the exultation of saving. Debt has this peculiar characteristic: it has to be paid back with interest.Depending on the rate of interest and the length of the loan, this translates into a mind-numbing reality: borrowing $100 can cost $200 once interest is factored in. Read More |
11.15.18- Scum vs. Scum
Menendez has a voting record as sordid as most Democrats’. He supported the $716 billion military spending bill, along with 85 percent of his fellow Senate Democrats. He signed a letter, along with other Democratic leaders, calling for steps to extradite Julian Assange to stand trial in the United States. The senator, the ranking member of the Foreign Relations Committee, is owned by the lobby for Israel—a country that routinely and massively interferes in our elections—and supported moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem. He helped cause the 2008 global financial crisis by voting to revoke Glass-Steagall, the Depression-era law enacted to create a firewall between commercial and investment banks. Read More |
11.14.18- Nikola Tesla’s Wireless Energy Dream Is Going Mainstream
Wireless power technology recently became popular with its application in charging wireless-capable devices, (such as a smartphone) via a Powermat interface. There is one company currently building out a true wireless power supply without the need for an intermediary “pad,” which could develop into an investment opportunity of a lifetime if it or another company successfully launches an IPO, not to mention the upstream manufacturing interface components. I will get to that later. The exploration of wireless power brings to mind a man made famous for attempting to build it first, Nikola Tesla. A great down-to-Earth source for detailed information about his life is available at the Nikola Tesla Museum, located in Belgrade, Serbia. In case you are too young, living under a rock, or born into a tribe that’s remote from civilization, here is a brief summary of Nikola’s good work on Earth. Read More |
11.13.18- Reading the Second Amendment
Is this sentence so hard to understand? Apparently so. Even some of its defenders don’t like how it is worded because it allegedly breeds misunderstanding. But the Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights is indeed a well-crafted sentence. By that, I mean that its syntax permits only one reasonable interpretation of the authors’ meaning, namely, that the people’s individual right to be armed ought to be respected and that the resulting armed populace will be secure against tyranny, invasion, and crime. Someone completely ignorant of the 18th-century American political debates but familiar with the English language should be able to make out the meaning easily. Read More |
11.12.18- How to Survive the “Deep State”
Maybe you’re thinking you should get behind somebody like Ron Paul (I didn’t say Rand Paul), should such a person materialize. That would be futile. Here’s what would happen in the totally impossible scenario that this person was elected and tried to act like a Lee Kuan Yew or an Augusto Pinochet against the Deep State: First, there would be a “sit-down” with the top dogs of the Praetorian agencies and a bunch of Pentagon officers to explain the way things work. Read More |
11.10.18- It’s a Fraud. A Pyramid scheme. A Ponzi scheme.
Modern banking system creates money faster than our hearts beat. However, they make it so complex & unintelligible that none but they alone, understand it. All economies work pretty much the same way but since most of the global transactions use US dollar, making it the majority of the world’s currency, I will exemplify the US system. Read More |
11.09.18- What Do We Make Of The Midterm Election?
Looking at this CNN map–it seems that except for thin areas of the northeast and west coasts and hispanic and black enclaves in the southwest and south, the country overwhelmingly voted Republican. In my opinion, flyover America voted Republican because the “deplorables” want to defend Trump. They want to defend him for two reasons. One is that he spoke to their economic plight caused by the US corporations exporting their jobs, leaving the American workforce and middle class hard-strapped. The other is that the adoption of Identity Politics by the Democratic Party has made the Democrats the party that hates white people—especially white heterosexual males who are defined as the victimizer of minorities, homosexuals, and women. It takes a really stupid white person to vote for Democrats who see white people as the problem. Read More |
11.08.18- America, the Tyranny of the Stupid
Then, when time and time again, no such plan materializes, and it is demonstrated that America has blundered into a diplomatic, economic or military morass, for some unknown reason, a “reset” occurs, and the wrong assumptions are again made. At every level, humanity errs in assuming that those in command are there because of talent and worth or that, because America is so wealthy and powerful, that its people are such because of moral and intellectual superiority. Read More |
11.07.18- How do we keep getting dragged into this
Little more than a bare-knuckle boxing match. If you were to suddenly catch a glimpse of such a fight, you would see real blood, real punches, swollen lips, black eyes, and a final knockout. It looks like a real spontaneous fight. But the match was planned, set up, with rules and parameters. That’s an election. Except that it is shoved in all of our faces, while they lie and tell us it wasn’t a planned fight. Not interested in seeing the blood and gore? Not interested in watching two people beat each other to a pulp? You can turn off the boxing match, but good luck avoiding election coverage. Read More |
11.06.18- Are You Prepared For Lockdown? How To Stay Safe When All Hell Breaks Loose In America
Pretending that it isn’t happening or hoping to hug it out is not a rational response to the chaos that is coming. I know that some cling to their misguided views on the way the world works with the ferocity of a mother bear protecting cubs, but for the rest of us, there’s this thing called reality. When we accept it, we can prepare for it. People near the border are quite reasonably concerned that if thousands of immigrants push through our border illegally, they and their families could be at risk. People in other parts of the country are concerned about the aftermath of whatever happens when these people arrive at the border. Regardless of what occurs, somebody is going to be unhappy. Add in the fiercely-fought midterm elections and the threat of civil unrest is high. Read More |
11.05.18- The Fourth Turning and the War of the Worlds
The paragraph above captures everything that has happened, is happening, and will happen during this Fourth Turning. It was written over two decades ago, but no one can deny its accuracy regarding our present situation. The spark was a financial crash. The response to the financial crash by the financial and governmental entities, along with their Deep State co-conspirators who created the financial collapse due to their greed and malfeasance, led to the incomprehensible election of Donald Trump, as the deplorables in flyover country evoked revenge upon the corrupt establishment. Read More |
11.03.18- This Radical Proposal for Social Security Underscores Its Desperate Future
But the economic crisis that started in 2008 shed critical light on Greenspan’s economic policy. He’s 92 now, and as he promotes a new book, he’s sharing some rather radical economic ideas. In a recent Barron’s interview, he opines on the bleak outlook for U.S. entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare, indicating that he views such programs — at least in their current state — as an “anchor” on U.S. economic growth. Read More |
11.02.18- Politicians Are Creating
I have explained several times that the bulk of investment capital is tied up in two primary sectors – (1) government bonds and (2) real estate. Because of income taxes, real estate has offered a way to make money in capital gains without having to pay income taxes. Money has looked to park in real estate around the world for many various different reasons as in Italy it was the escape from inheritance taxes as well as banks or in Vancouver to gain a foothold for residency fleeing Hong Kong. In Australia, there was the Super Annuation Fund which allowed people to use retirement funds for real estate. People spend more when they believe that they have big profits in their home. Read More |
11.01.18- Shock Claim: The Media Is Reporting That Some In The 2nd Migrant Caravan Have “Guns” And “Bombs”
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10.31.18- Is America Finished?
Americans are now so polarized that they “no longer share basic sympathies and trust, because they no longer regard each other as worthy of equal consideration.” Codevilla blames the progressives and their attitude of moral superiority, but his explanation is independent of who is to blame. I blame both sides. The Constitution and our civil liberties took a major hit from the “conservative” Republican regime of George W. Bush. The consequence has been to weaponize government for use against the domestic adversary. In other words, unity has departed us. The absence of unity makes it easy for the ruling oligarchy to achieve its material interests at the expense of the welfare of the American people. Indeed, it is amazing to find progressives aligned with the military/security complex to block Trump from normalizing relations with Russia. Read More |
10.30.18- A Perfect Storm Is Brewing
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10.29.18- End of the World – Part Two
REVIEW FROM PART ONE:
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10.27.18- What a bunch of idiots
A few days ago the creator of the most famous consumer ‘credit score’ in the United States announced a major overhaul in how it rates borrowers. Consumers live and die by this ‘FICO score’. A high FICO score means that it’s easy to obtain loans at lower interest rates. And a bad FICO score (in theory) means that you have a history of not paying your debts… hence making it difficult to obtain loans. Well it turns out there are tens of millions of people in the US who either don’t have FICO scores at all (i.e. NO credit history), or they have BAD credit. So FICO decided that they would reinvent the way they calculate the scores– giving a big boost to people with bad credit. Virtually overnight, people who have a history of not paying their bills will immediately be deemed creditworthy. And poof… they’ll have access to more debt than ever before. Read More |
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“CNN’s New York Headquarters Evacuated After Suspicious Package Found,” reports Mediaite.com. Similar “pipe bombs” were also reportedly mailed to Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and George Soros. “The CNN bureau at Columbus Circle in new York City was evacuated Wednesday morning after mailroom workers found a suspicious device,” reports The Gateway Pundit. “The bomb scare comes on the heels of suspected IEDs mailed to the home former President Obama in Washington, D.C. and the New York state homes of former President Clinton Clinton and major Democratic Party donor George Soros this morning.” Read More |
10.25.18- Will there ever be a "freedom loving" majority? And do we even need there to be?
People like to romanticize a time when America was more wholesome… when everyone got along and put petty differences aside to fight wars and such. A time when political campaigns were more civil… like in the Presidential election of 1800. That was when a pro-Adams newspaper said that “murder, robbery, rape, adultery and incest will openly be taught and practiced,” if Jefferson was elected. And the Jefferson supporters responded by claiming that Adams was more like a hermaphrodite than a man or woman. Read More |
10.24.18- The Average Stock Is Overvalued Somewhere Between Tremendously And Enormously
With all of that, my firm is having little success finding solid companies at attractive valuations. Don’t just take my word for it. Take a look at several charts, below, that show the magnitude of the stock market’s overvaluation and, more importantly, put it into historical context. Read More |
10.23.18- Weaker Dollar Helps Set Silver Prices for a Breakout
Why silver prices are set for a breakout as the dollar falls With gold having recaptured much of its losses earlier this month, silver could be next in line for a breakout on the back of a weaker dollar reports Money Morning. As columnist Peter Krauth notes, silver moved as the stock market went through a tailspin and ultimately ended higher at $14.28 an ounce. But the metal’s reaction to the weakening of the dollar was even more notable, as a fall in the DXY allowed it to close last Thursday at $14.56 an ounce. By Monday, silver was trading at $14.67.Read More |
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In particular, Limbaugh talked about what it would take for hundreds and thousands of people to make such a long journey on foot, and through a number of countries after the caravan originated in Honduras. Where would the migrants sleep? How would they eat? Where would their water come from? He also discussed issues like personal hygiene; where would they shower or bathe? Where would they go to the bathroom? Read More |
10.20.18- End of the World – Part One
An estimate of risk versus reward based on an analysis of current information is more useful. Assessment: The 2018-2020 risk for most asset classes, such as stocks, bonds, corporate debt, and real estate is high while the potential reward in those asset classes is low. Gold and silver are opposite. Their long-term risk is low (September 2018) and their long-term potential reward is huge. Read More |
10.19.18- How to Make a Fortune in the Gold-Backed Crypto Revolution
We estimate only one in 10,000 gold investors knows this secret. And yet… it could help you take a tiny stake and pocket a huge payday. And as Nick shares below in today’s Dispatch, this is just the tip of the iceberg… It’s time to make your move today. For thousands of years, gold has been the safe-haven asset. No government can easily confiscate, nationalize, freeze, or devalue it at the drop of a hat. It’s simply the best way to preserve wealth over the long term. Now, with the advent of cryptocurrencies and decentralized blockchain technology, people have a complementary tool for advancing their financial freedom. In recent months, dozens of gold-backed digital currencies have started to sprout up. In a world dominated by constantly depreciating government fiat currencies, I think gold-backed digital currencies are a convenient way for ordinary people to protect their wealth. Let’s take a step back and look at how it all started…Read More |
10.18.18- 4 Ways the Skyrocketing Budget Deficit Could Wreck Your Retirement
Investopedia defines a budget deficit when “expenses exceed revenue and it is an indicator of financial health.” Referring to the U.S. they added “Accrued government deficits form the national debt.” According to an official statement released by Steve Mnuchin and Mick Mulvaney at the Treasury, the FY 2018 budget deficit rose 17% over the previous period to $779 billion. In the same statement, they noted this was “$70 billion less than forecast in the FY 2019 mid-session review.” Even so, it remains the largest deficit since 2012 ($1 trillion). Mulvaney commented on spending in a CNBC article: America’s booming economy will create increased government revenues… But this fiscal picture is a blunt warning to Congress of the dire consequences of irresponsible and unnecessary spending…Read More |
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But for the moment, global financial markets seem to have settled down a bit. U.S. markets were down on Monday, but there wasn’t that much volatility. Once again, it was tech stocks that got hit the hardest… Read More |
10.16.18- UN Climate Change Report: A Choice between “Mad Max and Hunger Games”
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) this week released a special report detailing all the ways climate change is predicted to wreak havoc on humans. The report is about 800 pages long, so I’ll offer a summary to save you some time:
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10.15.18- International relations: the calm before the storm?
The current situation – extending from the Russian response to the destruction of its Ilyuchin-20 to the US mid-term elections on 6 November – is uncertain. All the protagonists of the war in Syria are waiting to see whether the White House will be able to pursue its policy of breaking away from the current international order, or if Congress will become the opposition and immediately trigger the process for the destitution of President Trump. Read More |
10.13.18- The Last Rebels: 25 Things We Did as Kids That Would Get Someone Arrested Today
Here’s the problem with all of this babying: it creates a society of weenies. There won’t be more rebels because this generation has been frightened into submission and apathy through a deliberately orchestrated culture of fear. No one will have faced adventure and lived to greatly embroider the story Kids are brainwashed – yes, brainwashed – into believing that the mere thought of a gun means you’re a psychotic killer waiting for a place to rampage. They are terrified to do anything when they aren’t wrapped up with helmets, knee pads, wrist guards, and other protective gear. Read More |
10.12.18- Dow 40,000 is coming, but only after ‘a large panic event’ passes, analyst warns
Back in January 2016, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, +0.15%was trading around the 16,000 level, Yves Lamoureux, president of macroeconomic research firm Lamoureux & Co., said the blue-chip index would topple 25,000 within three or four years. It didn’t take that long. Now, with the Dow clinging to a 500-point cushion above that milestone, Lamoureux is standing firmly behind another bullish call: Dow 40,000. Oh, but there’s a catch.
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10.11.18- The Human Drive for Inequality
After the invention of the telephone in the mid- to late-1800s, innovators produced great accomplishments as they strived to improve the technology to In 1913 (the same ominous year in which the Federal Reserve Act was created, destroying the foundations of the free market), American Telephone & Telegraph cronied its way into a government-created telecommunication monopoly that lasted for 70 years. And during that time, telephone innovation stopped cold. Our phones were wired permanently to the wall. Oh, and they weren’t our phones. Read More |
10.10.18- The Cracks In The Market’s Floor Grow Wider
The yield on the 10-yr Treasury has broken out, hitting its highest level since July 2011: By the end of June 2011, the Fed had only reached its half-way mark in money printing. It was shortly thereafter that the Fed had implemented its “operation twist.” Operation twist consisted of selling the Fed’s short term holdings and using the proceeds plus extra printed money to buy Treasuries at the long-end of the curve – primarily 10-yr bonds. That program is what drove the 10-yr bond yield from 3.40% in July 2011 to as low as 1.33% by mid-2016. At one point the Fed owned more than 50% of all outstanding 10-yr Treasuries. The Fed’s massive money hyper-stimulated the housing and auto markets. Read More |
10.09.18- The Biggest Threat to US National Security Is the US Government
Jonathan H. Adler, Professor at Case Western University School of Law, noted, regarding George W. Bush’s secret policy for the NSA to access everyone’s phone-records, that “The metadata collection program is constitutional (at least according to Judge Kavanaugh),” and he presented Judge Kavanaugh’s entire published opinion on that. Kavanaugh’s opinion stated that the 4th Amendment to the US Constitution could be shoved aside because he thinks that the ‘national security’ of the United States is more important than the Constitution. Kavanaugh wrote:
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10.08.18- With corruption like this, it’s no wonder so many pension funds are insolvent
Vicki Fuller, the former head of New York’s $209 billion fund, now earns $275,000 per year working part time for a natural gas group called The Williams Companies– good work if you can get it. It’s noteworthy that when Ms. Fuller ran her state pension fund, she invested $110 million of taxpayer money to buy bonds issued by none other than The Williams Companies. Bear in mind that Moody’s, the credit rating agency, downgraded Williams’ financial outlook to “negative” because of the company’s high leverage and risk. The fund that Ms. Fuller managed also voted in favor of huge, multi-million dollar pay packages for senior executives of The Williams Companies even though the stock price was dropping. Read More |
10.07.18- Ask yourself: Why are there no prescription medications without horrific side effects?
Due almost entirely to these nasty eating habits, about 200 million Americans seek medical doctors to prescribe them chemical-filled pills to kill the pain, quell the hypertension, reduce the inflammation, unclog the clots, numb the anxiety, and nullify the depression. Read More |
10.06.18- Think You're Prepared For The Next Crisis? Think Again.
Scottish poet Robert Burns aptly penned the famous phrase: “The best laid schemes o' mice an' men/Gang aft a-gley.” (commonly adapted as "The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.") How right he was. History has shown time and time again that the only 100% predictable outcome to any given strategy is that, when implemented, things will not go 100% according to plan. Read More |
10.05.18- The World Is Quietly Decoupling From the U.S. – And No One Is Paying Attention
This delusion has also recently bled into parts of the alternative economic movement, with some analysts hoping that the Trump Administration will somehow reverse several decades of central bank sabotage in only four to eight years. However, this thinking requires a person to completely ignore the prevailing trend. Years before there was ever an inkling of a trade war, multiple nations were establishing bilateral agreements that would cut the dollar out of trade. China has been a leader in this effort, despite it being one of the largest buyers of U.S. Treasury debt and dollar reserves since the 2008 crash. In the past few years, these bilateral deals have been growing in scope, starting small and then expanding into massive agreements on raw commodities. China and Russia are a perfect example of the de-dollarization trend, with the two nations forming a trade alliance on natural gas as far back as 2014. That agreement, which is expected to start boosting imports to China this year, removes the need for dollars as a reserve mechanism for international purchases. Read More |
10.04.18- The Tyranny of the U.S. Dollar
There’s a paradox at the heart of global finance. The U.S. share of the world economy has drifted lower for decades, and now President Trump is retreating from the American chief executive’s traditional role as Leader of the Free World. Yet the U.S. dollar remains, as the saying goes, almighty. “American exceptionalism has never been this stark,” Ruchir Sharma, head of emerging markets and chief global strategist for Morgan Stanley Investment Management, said at a Council on Foreign Relations symposium on Sept. 24. By the latest tally of the European Central Bank, America’s currency makes up two-thirds of international debt and a like share of global reserve holdings. Oil and gold are priced in dollars, not euros or yen. When Somali pirates hold up ships at sea, it’s dollars they demand. And threats to be cut off from the dollar-based global payments system strike terror into the likes of Iran, North Korea, and Russia. It’s no exaggeration to say that the dollar’s primacy is at least as valuable to the U.S. as a couple of aircraft carrier strike groups. Read More |
10.03.18- How America Can Free Itself From Wall Street
Wall Street banks triggered a credit crisis in 2008-09 that wiped out over $19 trillion in household wealth, turned some 10 million families out of their homes and cost almost 9 million jobs in the U.S. alone. Yet the banks were bailed out without penalty, while defrauded home buyers were left without recourse or compensation. The banks made a killing on interest rate swaps with cities and states across the country, after a compliant and accommodating Federal Reserve dropped interest rates nearly to zero. Attempts to renegotiate these deals have failed. In Los Angeles, the City Council was forced to reduce the city’s budget by 19 percent following the banking crisis, slashing essential services, while Wall Street has not budged on the $4.9 million it claims annually from the city on its swaps. Wall Street banks are now collecting more from Los Angeles just in fees than it has available to fix its ailing roads. Read More |
10.02.18- Imaginary Monsters and the Uses of Chaos
One element of the story is clear, though. The Democratic party, in the absence of real monsters to slay, has become the party devoted to sowing chaos, mainly by inventing new, imaginary monsters using the machinery of politics, the way the Catholic Church manufactured monsters of heresy during the Spanish Inquisition in its attempt to regulate “belief.” “I believe her” is the new totalitarian rallying cry, conveniently disposing of any obligation to establish the facts of any ambiguous matter. It was stealthily inserted in our national life during the Obama years, when Title IX “guidelines” originally written to correct imbalances in college sports funding for men and women were extended to adjudicate sexual encounters on campus. The result was the setting up of officially sanctioned kangaroo courts where due process was thrown out the window — by people who have should have known better: college presidents, deans, and faculty. That experiment produced not a few spectacular injustices, such as the Duke Lacrosse team fake rape fiasco, the University of Virginia fake rape fraternity incident, and the Columbia University “Mattress Girl” saga — all cases eventuating in punishing lawsuits against the institutions that allowed them to spin out of control. Read More |
19.01.18- Empire of Lies: Are ‘We the People’ Useful Idiots in the Digital Age?
“Who needs direct repression,” asked philosopher Slavoj Zizek, “when one can convince the chicken to walk freely into the slaughterhouse?” In an Orwellian age where war equals peace, surveillance equals safety, and tolerance equals intolerance of uncomfortable truths and politically incorrect ideas, “we the people” have gotten very good at walking freely into the slaughterhouse, all the while convincing ourselves that the prison walls enclosing us within the American police state are there for our protection. Read More |
09.29.18- Gold Investors: It Is Time for a Logic Lesson
The Transitive Quality of Equality states that "if a = b and b = c, then a = c." The Transitive Quality of Gold Pricing is "if I buy gold based upon demand and supply, and demand and supply have no bearing upon price, then I am buying gold with no concern for price," which is total insanity. We have seen in the past 30 years how the Crimex banks are able to use the paper markets to influence not only near-term demand but also long-term supply. By suppressing price, they are now influencing supply with no better confirmation than the paucity of new BIG gold discoveries since the 1990s. Read More |
09.28.29- Investors Have Fallen Into a False Sense of Security
Then markets were turned upside down in a matter of days. Major stock market indexes fell over 11%, a technical correction, from Feb. 2–8, 2018, just five trading days. The CBOE Volatility Index, commonly known as the “VIX,” surged from 14.51 to 49.21 in an even shorter period from Feb. 2–6. The last time the VIX has been at those levels was late August 2015 in the aftermath of the Chinese shock devaluation of the yuan when U.S. stocks also fell 11% in two weeks. Investors were suddenly frightened and there was nowhere to hide from the storm. Read More |
09.27.18- The Real Reason the Government Won’t Hold Big Tech Accountable
The government is coming to regulate them. Someone leaked a draft of an executive order from President Trump. It calls on various agencies to use all current laws to look into possible anticompetitive practices by Facebook and Google. In fact, the EU already fined Google $5 billion in July for “abusing the market dominance of Android.” And now they’ve set their sights on how Amazon uses customer and seller data. Elizabeth Warren wants to force Amazon to choose between providing a platform for sellers and selling goods. Echoing European Union regulators, she says Amazon has an unfair advantage by competing against the same sellers it collects information from on its platform. Read More |
09.26.18- Insider Selling Soars: Fastest Pace Of September Sales
One month later, TrimTabs is out with a follow up monthly report which finds even more of the same: according to the investment research company, the "best-informed market participants" are selling their own stocks at the fastest pace in September in the past decade, even as stock buyback announcements have hit record levels. Read More |
09.25.18- TECH ALERT: Big Bucks From “Blood Valley”
And along with it went the recording studio which a famous rock band had booked for a free session the next day. The members of the band watched in horror as the flames leapt into the night sky. It was 1971 and the fire in the sky and the smoke that hung over the waters of a nearby lake would soon inspire the band’s most famous song. As some of you might have already guessed, the band was Deep Purple and the song was Smoke on the Water. That song’s iconic bass riff motivated me into picking up the guitar, and even made me harbor thoughts of a career on stage… My rock star aspirations were short-lived. However, thanks to scientists from the University of Washington, Microsoft and Twist Bioscience, that song could soon live on forever… Literally. Read More |
09.24.18- These Three Items Will Be Hit The Hardest Thanks To Trump’s Tariffs
By now, hopefully, Americans have put two and two together and figured out that it isn’t the Chinese government that will pay for Trump’s tariffs, but the Chinese consumer. Much like the American government will not pay for China’s tariffs, it will be the American consumer. Those costs are passed on directly to the public in the form of higher cost of goods. And if you’re looking for a new vacuum or tires, or maybe you’d like to upgrade your computer, expect much higher prices immediately. Read More |
09.22.18- "The News Just Ain't The News No More"
Those of us who were alive before the meteoric rise of the hardware and software of ‘social’ media may be able to relate a little more and better than those who were not, but even that is not a given. There are plenty people over 20, over 30, that make one think: what did you do before you had that magic machine? When you walk down the street talking to some friend, or looking at what your friends wrote on Facebook, do you ever think about what you did in such situations before the machine came into your life? Read More |
09.21.18- There’s a New Crash Coming
Donald Trump is the epitome of irrational exuberance. You might remember that phrase from the 1990s. Alan Greenspan, the head of the Federal Reserve at the time, was describing how the tech boom was creating a bubble by generating enthusiasm way out of proportion to the actual value of the new companies. Such an unwarranted economic boom was hardly something new, so it was easy to predict what would happen next. Periods of irrational exuberance — whether the dot-com expansion, Dutch tulipmania in the 17th century, or the housing bubble in America of the 2000s — have always led to a sudden crash and a serious hangover. And now, here we go again. Read More |
09.20.18- The Donald in Wonderland
Once upon a time, there was a little-known energy company called Enron. In its 16-year life, it went from being dubbed America’s most innovative company by Fortune Magazine to being the poster child of American corporate deceit. Using a classic recipe for book-cooking, Enron ended up in bankruptcy with jail time for those involved. Its shareholders lost $74 billionin the four years leading up to its bankruptcy in 2001. A decade ago, the flameout of my former employer, Lehman Brothers, the global financial firm, proved far more devastating, contributing as it did to a series of events that ignited a global financial meltdown. Americans lost an estimated $12.8 trillion in the havoc. Despite the differing scales of those disasters, there was a common thread: both companies used financial tricks to make themselves appear so much healthier than they actually were. They both faked the numbers, thanks to off-the-books or offshore mechanisms and eluded investigations... until they collapsed. Read More |
09.19.18- Leave Home
The simple (and tragic) answer to this question is that there is no such solution. The two objectives are mutually exclusive. Throughout the ages, whenever an empire has begun its inevitable collapse, no country has ever woken up and reversed the process. In every case, the government rides the decline to the bottom. And, along the way, a series of policies is invariably undertaken to save those in government in the downward rush. These policies are always at the expense of the populace. Invariably, as the decline worsens, governments drag out the same policies that all other failing empires have implemented before them: Devaluation of currency, default on debt, increased warfare, creation of a police state and, finally, the looting of all those citizens who have even a modicum of wealth. The question is not whether we like our home country as it presently is, but whether we’re prepared to accept what it’s about to become. Read More |
09.18.18- “Lehman - Ten Years Later”
2008 had already had more than its share of financial turmoil. In the months leading up to 9/15/2008, Bear Stearns, Fannie/Freddie, and AIG had already had major blowouts. The stock markets were very itchy and everyone was on edge. Most who worked in the industry knew it was just a matter of time until something much more systemic took place. Up until this time, the contagion had been mostly limited to the US, with some minor external collateral damage. We were both heavily involved in the financial/economic landscape at this time. Andy was running his investment advisory and economic consultancy firm and Graham was a strategy analyst for a major G7 central bank. We had already both come to independent conclusions that this was going to be a long emergency as coined by James Kunstler. This was not going to be a 3 or 6-month event and then it would be roses and cherries and cream for the whole world. Read More |
09.17.18- What Keeps Them Up at Night
The tenth anniversary of the Wall Street created financial catastrophe brought back some bittersweet memories this week. I wrote my first articles during the summer/fall of 2008 for Seeking Alpha. They included: Is The U.S Banking System Safe? (Aug 2008), The Great Consumer Crash of 2009 (Aug 2008), Looming Financial Catastrophe: A Real Inconvenient Truth (Aug 2008), Is Wachovia the Worst Run Bank in America (Sept 2008), The U.S. on the Precipice (Sept 2008), On Board the U.S.S. Titanic (Sept 2008), Our Coming Depression (Oct 2008), among others. I was pumping out 5,000 word articles every 2 or 3 days. Read More |
09.15.18- California’s War on the U.S. Dollar
Californians have historically been on the cutting edge of social and political change. Whether it was protesting the Vietnam War or advocating for free speech or civil rights, California has always been among the first states to get involved. And it’s on the front lines once again. Its opponent: the federal government. The latest battle is over fuel efficiency rules for cars. The Trump administration wants to strip California of its right to set its own air quality rules. California isn’t backing down, though. It says the proposal “is contrary to the facts and the law.” And it’s looking to change its rules to make any federal changes null and void. California attorney general Xavier Becerra said, “We’re going to do everything we must do to continue to move forward rather than backslide.” In fact, California has already threatened to sue the federal government. There’s a lot at stake. Read More |
09.14.18- America’s False History
Griffin’s book is a humdinger and will certainly upset brainwashed American super-patriots, but it throughly documents how Washington’s aggression toward other lands is covered up by politicians, media, and court historians with moral verbiage. In my view the hubris, arrogance, and ignorance of “American exceptionism” has the world locked on a trajectory to its extinction in nuclear Armageddon. Curtin points out that Griffin makes an extraordinary mistake, unusual for a scholar as careful as Griffin, in his assessment of President John F. Kennedy. President Kennedy was the president who tried to move America’s trajectory off of its demonic path and was murdered by his own government for his attempt. But as I have said, none of us knows everything. We often have to rely on others, and others, also, make mistakes. Read More |
09.13.18- Pandemic scare brewing as cabal faces doom
The pandemic scare comes as the execution of U.S. Senator John McCain sent shock waves through Khazarian mafia ranks, who are now activating all their resources in a desperate move to save themselves. Thus, this pandemic scare may be something like a schoolboy calling in a bomb threat to his school in order to avoid an exam he is going to fail. However, it is also possible the U.S. military-industrial establishment may be preparing a pandemic scare as a cover to stop all airline flights worldwide in order to prevent Khazarian mafia from escaping, as over 51,000 sealed indictments begin to be acted upon. Read More |
09.12.18- The World Is Ganging up Against the Dollar
As the U.S. wields the dollar weapon more frequently, the rest of the world works harder to shun the dollar completely. I’ve been warning for years about efforts of nations like Russia and China to escape what they call “dollar hegemony” and create a new financial system that does not depend on the dollar and helps them get out from under dollar-based economic sanctions. These efforts are only increasing. Read More |
09.11.18- How to Purge the Rot From American Finance
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09.10.18- Why Most Investors Fail to Beat “The Market”
But Chris Mayer, Bill’s ace stock picker, doesn’t see what all the fuss is about. As today’s guest editor, he shows readers how to look past the headlines and aim at the bigger picture. You probably keep hearing about how this bull market is now the longest on record. To me, it’s an interesting tidbit, but it doesn’t really mean much. For one thing, we don’t own “the market” – which, in these contexts, usually means the S&P 500 Index. We own individual stocks. As I always like to remind people, the ups and downs of those stocks can be very different from those of “the market.” Read More |
09.08.18- The pension crisis is bigger than the world’s
As you probably know, pensions are giant pools of capital responsible for paying out retirement benefits to workers. And right now many pension funds around the world simply don’t have enough assets to cover the retirement obligations they owe to millions of workers. In the US alone, federal, state, and local governments, pensions are about $7 TRILLION short of the funding they need to pay out all the benefits they’ve promised. (** And that doesn’t include another $49 trillion in unfunded Social Security obligations…) Read More |
09.07.18- The 10 most important lessons in finance
Jim is the editor of Grant’s Interest Rate Observer – one of the most-respected and followed financial publications in the world. In his 35 years writing Grant’s, Jim has seen a financial cycle or two. And he’s amassed a network of many of the most important people on Wall Street (who often share their insights in his publication). We’re excited to share a special piece from Jim in Notes today about the 10 most important lessons he’s learned in his 35 years in financial markets. It’s a bit long, so we’ll publish the first half today and the rest tomorrow. Read More |
09.06.18- Amazon is Far More Dangerous and Powerful Than You Want to Admit
– From my November 15, 2017 post: Amazon Poses a Serious Threat to Freedom and Free Markets Today’s post should be seen as an update to last year’s article referenced above. In the months that have followed, I’ve been consistently frustrated by the lack of interest when it comes to the dangers presented by Amazon and its richest man in the world ($165 billion as of last count) CEO Jeff Bezos. The following Twitter exchange is a good example of what I mean: Read More |
09.05.18- How People Become Easily Controlled By Tyrants
This is a very complex issue, but I’ll break it down as best as I’m able… The Psychology Of The Tyrant To come to terms with how tyrants control society, we must first examine how the mind of a tyrant operates, because these people do not in most cases think the way average human beings think. It is one of the few cases in which I would encourage people to “otherize” another group. Tyrants are psychologically abnormal to such an extreme that is is difficult to classify them as human. Read More |
09.04.18- The Terrifying Paintings by ArtificiaI Intelligence
And its one hell of a mutilated abortion. Words that spring to mind: monstrous, from hell, distorted, terrifying, soulless… Its like self-portraits of a family of aristocrats if they were each and every one of them a soul-sucking demon. If this is what Artificial Intelligence has to offer in terms of art, if these images are the seeds of that future, count me out. A French art collective, selling these little monsters at Christie’s for beaucoup bucks, fine. But I can’t tell.This collection is called Obvious. Obviously what? Obviously a horror show? Read More |
09.03.18- Progressives: The Real World vs. Neverland
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09.01.18- Forget who takes the mid-terms: Here’s how to personally repeal Obamacare
Back in 2010, Congress and President Obama completely overhauled the US healthcare system with the “Affordable” Care Act (aka Obamacare). Their intention was to provide all US citizens with access to healthcare. But, the result of government interference in markets was – surprise – rising costs and lower quality service. Over the past several years, politicians have paid lip service to abolishing Obamacare. Even with a Republican-controlled House and Senate in 2017 and 2018, Congress couldn’t issue a repeal. And now, US midterms elections are looming. Read More |
08.31.18- Economic Doom Returns: Emerging Market Currencies Collapse To Record Lows As Global Financial Chaos Accelerates
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08.30.18- Making It in the United States:
Only a handful of politicians and media members are talking about issues affecting the day-to-day lives of people. Americans care about things such as obtaining health insurance, earning a decent wage, buying a home, and sending their kids to college. On the surface, it seems like the United States has turned the corner. Unemployment has now fallen to 4.1% which is actually below what economists call the “natural rate of unemployment”. But beyond this number, Americans still face many challenges. The truth is that we are in for a world of hurt if another recession hits us and we could be due for one soon after almost nine years without one. The recent bipartisan deregulation of banks, Donald Trump’s trade war threats, increasing debt loads, and declining savings by households all point to a potential recession soon. Read More |
08.29.19- Evade Market Weakness in the Summer by
In the last issue of Seasonal Insights we have talked to you about biotech and pharmaceutical companies as industries that withstand the traditional summer weakness in stock markets. Six weeks ago, we have shown that gold is an asset one can purchase in the summer months to offset this phenomenon. Warning: don’t let the media mesmerize you in the summer months – the stocks of media companies are a veritable seasonal minefield in August to October. [PT] Naturally, investors also have the option to use traditional patterns in a different way. In this issue we will show you how a distinct seasonal pattern which generates recurring losses represents an opportunity to profit by going short. Let us take a closer look at the media sector, which is traditionally performing very poorly in the month of August. Read More |
08.28.18- How the Socialism of Imperial Rome Ushered in Feudalism
The state had long since owned most quarries, salt deposits, and mines; now it forbade the export of salt, iron, gold, wine, grain, or oil from Italy, and strictly regulated the importation of these articles. It went on to control establishments producing for the army, the bureaucracy, or the court. In munition factories, textile mills, and bakeries the government required a minimum product, bought this at its own price, and made the associations of manufacturers responsible for carrying out orders and specifications. If this procedure proved inadequate, it completely nationalized these factories and manned them with labor bound to the job. Read More |
08.27.18- Most Americans Don’t Understand This Problem…
Though he was wealthy and didn’t need to, he said he liked the work because it reminded him that no matter how rich you are, you’re never too good to get your hands dirty. He also liked gardening because it was a metaphor for how he saw the world. “Building something beautiful takes much toil and patience,” he said. “You cannot rush gardening. You must plant well, understand what you’re doing, and pull all weeds up by their root.” Explaining further he said, “Many people want to quickly identify problems in their life and then cut them down. The problem is that, like a weed, they never dig up the root. So, later the same problem comes up. In life and in money, you must understand the root of your problems.” Several years ago, I read a great article by Barbara Kiviat entitled “The Case Against Home Ownership,” published in TIME magazine. In that article, Ms. Kiviat rightly identifies, in so many words, that the myth of your house being an asset has contributed greatly to our current financial crisis. Read More |
08.25.18- Services Rendered
The diner understands that he’s not obligated to order anything that he doesn’t want to receive, but that, for whatever he does order, he must pay the price on the menu. The subtotal is printed in large type on the charge slip. He may then decide whether or not the service he received was of particular value to him. Diners typically choose to pay somewhere between 10% and 20%, depending on the value they feel they’ve received. But the receipt above differs from the norm. After the “Tip” line, another line exists for “Voluntary Tax.” This is a very special coffee shop. In this shop, the owners and servers pay no involuntary tax and therefore, no tax is passed on to the diner. In this coffee shop, the diner decides what level of tax he feels he should pay his government, in accordance with what he feels his government’s contribution has been to his meal. Read More |
08.24.18- Why Do People Assign Value to Paper Money?
Following the view of Plato and Aristotle, economists regard the acceptance of money as an historical fact introduced by the government decree.1 It is government decree, so it is argued, that makes a particular thing accepted as the general medium of the exchange, i.e., money. In his writings, Carl Menger raised doubts about the soundness of the view that the origin of money is a government proclamation. Read More |
08.23.18- Why You Should Forget School and Let Kids Play
Seriously, it took the American Academy of Pediatrics to let us know that? Better yet, the doctors now recommend that parents even get involved in playing with their children, especially before they turn two.
It is great that they are getting this right, but it really shouldn’t take an Academy of doctors to know this. It should be pretty intuitive. Kids automatically run around, play, and make up games when left alone. So I suppose the only surprising part to some people should be that sometimes, you should leave your kid alone. Read More |
08.22.18- Most People Struggle Financially Because
Yet we hear countless stories about the multi-million dollar athlete who is homeless 10 years later. Or the guy who won the lottery only to soon find himself penniless. It’s not how much money you make. But how much money you keep. I cringe whenever I hear people ask me how to get rich quicker, or where they should start. I often hear, “I need to make more money.” I hate hearing any of that, because more money will often not solve the problem. In fact, it may compound the problem. Money often puts a spotlight on what we don’t know. That is why, all too often, a person who comes into a sudden windfall of cash—an inheritance, a pay raise, or lottery winnings—soon returns to the same financial mess, if not worse, than the mess they were in before. Read More |
08.21.18- How to Protect Your Money from Financial Warfare
I would put Russia, China, Iran, North Korea and a few others at the top of the list. Russia and China at the top of the list but Iran certainly has good cyber-warfare capability. They’re employing what they call Cyber Brigades that spend all their time basically hacking into the critical infrastructure systems I described above. It’s a good bet that all of these systems have already been penetrated. No one can beat the U.S. in a conventional war right now. China, especially, is catching up, but it’s not ready at this time. That’s why they’re focusing on attacking America’s critical infrastructure vulnerabilities. Read More |
08.20.18- The Telltale Signs of Imperial Decline
Check which signs of Imperial decline you see around you: The hubris of an increasingly incestuous and out-of-touch leadership; dismaying extremes of wealth inequality; self-serving, avaricious Elites; rising dependency of the lower classes on free Bread and Circuses provided by a government careening toward insolvency due to stagnating tax revenues and vast over-reach--let's stop there to catch our breath. Check, check, check and check. Sir John Glubb listed a few others in his seminal essay on the end of empiresThe Fate of Empires, what might be called the dynamics of decadence: Read More |
08.18.18- The West Continues to Rot at the Core as it Obsesses Over the Short-term
This is not to say that it does not have a purpose, because undoubtedly it does. This cannot and will not be denied, except by those who identify themselves as having anarchist traits. Yet, it is still a farce. It is corrupt, it is short-sighted and it is riddled with problems. But in our “semi” capitalistic system, it is what we have. And we have to make the best of it. This, however, does not stop us from striving to improve it. In fact, I believe this should be a major goal of Western society as a whole. The stock market, in tandem with the free market, has led to the most powerful economic engine this world has ever seen. Even if it is now riddled with disease, it is and will be for the foreseeable future a juggernaut in the economic landscape. We should constantly strive to weed out corruption within the system and work towards improving the function of the markets as a whole. However, one issue that has once again been pushed to the forefront is the fact that Western markets are incredibly short sighted. Read More |
08.17.18- Turkey: A Glimpse of America’s Future
This week, we began looking at Turkey, but only because Donald Trump sent an extraordinary tweet last Friday. In it, the president broke with tradition and common sense in a remarkable way. He used a crash in the Turkish lira to justify a new attack in the trade war. Instead of soothing words that might have calmed the crisis situation, his tweet made it worse. And instead of coming to the aid of an ally in difficulty, he piled on. We had never previously spent even two minutes thinking about Turkey or its finances. But then, after the president roused our curiosity, we saw what we think was a glimpse of the future. Read More |
08.16.18- A traditional plant native to Thailand effectively manages obesity, according to new study
For the study, researchers from Suranaree University of Technology in Thailand derived the extract of broken bones from the fruit pods of the plant. They looked at the effects of broken bones plant extract on the adipogenic and biomolecular change in 3T3-L1 adipocytes. They used the cell line 3T3-L1 to establish the potential toxic effects of broken bones plantextract during adipogenesis, the differentiation of pre-adipocytes into adipocytes. In addition, the researchers analyzed the inhibitory effect of broken bones plantextract on lipid accumulation in 3T3-L1 cells. They also assessed the chemical components of broken bones plantextract derived from the fruit pods of the plant. Read More |
08.15.18- Generation Z: The Intolerant Ones
Generation Z is racially diverse, increasingly secular, and very much online. Non-Hispanic whites make up just over half of this cohort, compared with 72 percent of Baby Boomers. In religious terms, 13 percent of Generation Z identifies as atheist, compared with only 7 percent of millennials. And according to a 2015 Pew report, 92 percent of teens access the internet daily and 73 percent have access to a smartphone. Born in 1997 or later, Generation Z was too young to form a coherent memory of the September 11th terror attacks. They have no memory of a pre-9/11 world or a time when the U.S. didn’t have a military presence in Afghanistan. Many are too young to remember a time before smartphones. Apple released the iPhone in 2007, and by 2012, more than half of all Americans owned a smartphone. Read More |
08.14.18- The Law As Weapon
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08.13.18- Pater Familias
In the award wining series, Downton Abby, the pater familias of that family, Lord Grantham, loses a great deal of money on a single investment and is horrified that he will be the one to lose the family estate and bring shame to generations that came before him. The oldest family business in the world was Kongo Gumi in Japan. They built and repaired temples since 578 and went bankrupt in 2006 after 1428 years of continuous operation due to excess debt. While I do not know the details of the bankruptcy I would have not have wanted to be the pater familias at the time of that bankruptcy – especially in a society that so greatly values family honor. Read More |
08.11.18- Experts Warn That The “Scariest”
Doug Ramsey, the chief investment officer at Leuthold Group, is one of those that is sounding the alarm. Unlike price to earnings ratios, price to sales ratios are very hard to manipulate, and he has pointed out that price to sales ratios are higher than we have ever witnessed before. Read More |
08.10.18- This Time Is Different — No, Really
The wise man remembers. The fool forgets. The wise man listens. The fool talks. He ignores both the living and the dead… the immemorial dead, whose whispers carry the distilled wisdom of history. No — this time is different, comes the fool’s eternal cry. The past is of no use to me. Rising economic interdependence had rendered war obsolete, argued the foolish author of The Great Illusion in 1909. Read More |
08.09.18- Students Say 'Young Democratic Socialists Of America'
The YDSA National Coordinating Committee has two “Co-Chairs” and four “at -large” members, all of whom are elected annually at the organization’s Summer Convention. The Committee oversees “activities, fundraising, publications, education, general political direction, and coalition work” of YDSA chapters nationwide. Read More |
08.08.18- Even Lefties Get it… Today’s Housing Bubble
We are too some of those 3.5 million views. Of course not many of us also enjoyed that same day’s obvious record high volume, $100 gold market intervention swing. But we digress, to the reflated, now larger housing bubble ongoing. Unlike the previous housing bubble of yore (the 2007 version). These now humbled, left ideologues can also see the writing clear on the wall. Read More |
08.07.18- Welcome to Bad Faith
When this big glob of shit hit the Internet fan, The Times’s HR department cranked out the pathetically lame explanation that Ms. Jeong was merely “mirroring” or “counter-trolling” malicious tweets she had received over the years, “imitating the rhetoric of her harassers.” That left the old newspaper and its readers gratified for a day or too… until a whole new bale of Sarah Jeong tweets was discovered dissing The New York Times and virtually all of its other op-ed writers in the most opprobrious terms. Read More |
08.06.18- Here's Why 3D-Printing Guns Are A Win For World Peace And A Potential Death Blow To Tyranny
For generations, advocates of private gun ownership have been fighting exhaustively through political channels to protect their right to keep and bear arms. Gun owners even have one of the strongest lobby groups in Washington, the highly disappointing NRA. Yet over the years, gun rights continue to diminish in America, despite the constant political campaigns by the NRA and politicians that claim to support gun rights. However, in the past few years, one guy with a good idea has managed to do more to protect gun rights than the NRA has in decades of political involvement. Cody Wilson is the founder of “Defense Distributed” and the “Wikiweapon” project, which allows anyone with a 3D printer to create their own untraceable gun in the privacy of their own home. Read More |
08.04.18- Here’s What the “Doom Index” Is Telling Us Now…
The index is monitored by the able Joe Withrow. As Joe will show you below, after reaching our “extreme warning” level earlier this year, the Doom Index has cooled off. But that’s only half of the story. Read on… Today, we check in on our Doom Index reading for the second quarter of 2018. Regular Diary readers will remember that the Doom Index is made up of 11 key indicators. These indicators track the health of both the Main Street and Wall Street economies. [For a full review of the Doom Index, go here.] After reviewing all the data from Q2, here are the results… The Good News For the second quarter of this year – from the start of April through the end of June – the Doom Index level is at 6. That’s down from 7, where the Doom Index ranked for Q1. Read More |
08.03.18- Conservatives Banned From Social Media? Here's What They Can Do About It
However, in the wake of the social justice cult frenzy some companies have decided that ideology is more important than profit, and most of these companies are deeply involved in various forms of media. Some people will argue that the media has always been leftist in its orientation and that this trend is nothing new. But, I think it is clear to anyone who has worked in countering mainstream media disinformation that something is very different today. Conservatives are being “cleansed” from participation in these communications platforms, and conservative ideals are being erased or misrepresented on a massive scale. Not long ago, media companies at least pretended to be “fair and balanced” by tolerating a certain level of participation by conservatives. No longer. Read More |
08.02.18- FALSE FLAG WARNING: ‘Perfect Storm’
(Natural News) Today I’ve posted an urgent warning video, which you can see in full, below. This video — which would have been banned by YouTube and Facebook — is available exclusively on REAL.video. It explains that Aug. 4 is shaping up to be a “perfect storm” false flag event, where deaths are staged in order to blame conservative Americans and sway public opinion for the upcoming mid-term elections. While we hope no such events ever take place, this weekend is a prime target for anti-America forces to stage precisely such a crisis. What’s the motivation behind it? If Democrats gain a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives, they promise to impeach President Trump — an act that would likely set off a nationwide civil war. By staging events that allow them to blame Trump supporters for violence or deaths, they hope to sway public opinion against conservatives and “steal” the mid-term elections. Read More |
08.01.18- COURT DOCS: SPLC Co-Founder Accused of Trying to Molest Step-Daughter With Sex Toy
It has now been exposed that the organization is awash in pedophilia. George Clooney and his wife recently contributed $1,000,000 the the SPLC. Please take note of the number of Ashkenazi Jews that control the organization. The SPLC is an enemy of the Republic. - JSB The SPLC is known for doling out questionable “hate group” labels. A recently-uncovered court document from the divorce proceedings of a prominent Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) figure alleges horrific conduct on behalf of one of the most influential lawyers in America. Read More |
07.31.18- An Illustrated Glossary of Cryptocurrency Slang |
07.30.18- Why Americans Are About To Experience
It appears that the "short-term" part has now arrived, because after several rounds of tit-for-tat tariffs and retaliations between the US and China, American consumers are about to be hit with sharply higher prices as tariffs on industrial metals put pressure on U.S. manufacturers. In May, President Trump imposed steel and aluminum tariffs on the EU, Canada, and Mexico to help preserve America’s manufacturing base. The response: steel and aluminum prices have risen 33% and 11% respectively since the beginning of the year, as manufacturers began to price in the tariffs. Read More |
07.28.18- The Treasonous Democratic Party
In this one TV broadcast - Carlson shows that the Democrats have gone far beyond “lying through their teeth political partisanship” into deranged hatred of President Trump and the American people who elected him. The Democrats’ insane hatred of “Trump deplorables” has firmly allied the Democrats with the corrupt military/security complex in a plot to overthrow the elected President of the United States. Carlson presents the former heads of US intelligence in the corrupt Obama regime accusing President Trump of treason against the United States for trying to normalize relations with Russia and endangering the United States for trying to make peace. Read More |
07.27.18- Valuing Gold In A World Awash With Dollars
In this article I point to the pressures on the Fed to moderate monetary policy, but that will only affect the timing of the next cyclical credit crisis. That is going to happen anyway, triggered by the Fed or even a foreign central bank. In the very short term, a tendency to moderate monetary policy might allow the gold price to recover from its recent battering. Unlike the last credit crisis when the dollar rose sharply in a general panic for safety, on the next crisis, the dollar is likely to fall substantially. The reason is that foreign ownership of dollar investments (typically in US Treasuries) appears greatly overextended, and an additional $4 trillion of liquidity is in the wrong (non-US) hands. This is likely to be unloaded during a general credit crisis, driving the dollar lower. Read More |
07.26.18- Get Ready for the “100-Year Flood”
From the Black Death in the 14th century to the Thirty Years’ War in the 17th century to the world wars of the 20th century, gold has been a reliable store of wealth. There is no reason to believe that such existential events are no longer a danger. Below is a copy of Albrecht Dürer’s woodcut titled The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1498). That title is a reference to the New Testament Book of Revelation 6:1-8. Conventionally the horsemen are called Conquest, War, Famine and Death, but those names are subject to scholarly debate. The “Famine” passage refers literally to high prices for food, which could also be taken as a reference to financial ruin through inflation. Read More |
07.25.18- The Lonely Road of the Free Thinker
Definition is the opposite of free thought in that it is definite, distinct, or clearly outlined. There is no need to think about it since it is a distinctly defined concept. It is not to say definition and form is a bad thing because form does exist in some way or another, but for society to evolve, transcending definitional thinking is the essential key to growth. The problem is that society often gets fixated in the present paradigm of definition, which has a current set of rules, parameters, and accepted ways of thinking. The truth is always thought of in regard to how it applies to the here and now paradigm of accepted truth, not what truth might have looked like in the past or how it might look in the future. People are very conditioned and afraid to question the currently accepted truths. Going against group-think often leads to social isolation, ridicule and even physical harm on some issues. Accepting the current truths of the current paradigm is a much safer and comfortable existence for any human being. Read More |
07.24.18- The Imperial Naivete of the American Public
Whether it's stated or not, one source of the inchoate outrage triggered by Russian-sourced purchases of adverts on Facebook in 2016 (i.e. "meddling in our election") is the sense that the U.S. is sacrosanct due to our innate moral goodness and our Imperial Project: never mind that the intelligence agencies of all great powers (including the U.S.) meddle in the domestic affairs and elections of other nations, including those of allies as well as geopolitical rivals-- no other great power should ever meddle with U.S. domestic affairs and elections. In effect, meddling in the domestic affairs and elections of other nations is the raison d'etre of all great power intelligence agencies: It's Time for a Little Perspective on Russia (Current Affairs) Read More |
07.23.18- What Happened To Our Country? These Are Not Our Values, This Isn’t Who We Are
As they like to declare over there in East Virginia, let me be clear. There are rational people who consider themselves either liberal or conservative. There are irrational people who are used as a broad brush to categorize them all. Not every liberal is a progressive socialist. Not every conservative is a white supremacist. There are conservatives more liberal than self-identified liberals. There are liberals more conservative than self-identified conservatives. I would say the same about self-identified Democrats and Republicans except with each passing day, that nom de plume is becoming more meaningless. Read More |
07.21.18- Four Obvious Areas for Improvement in America
That was the slogan used by then-presidential candidate Donald Trump and it propelled him to the most powerful and coveted job in the world – commander in chief of the United States. However, since Trump’s inauguration there has been much blustering and many unpopular policies that don’t seem to have been made with the promise of making America great again. While the United States makes worldwide news for the President’s tweets, other countries are implementing changes that are benefitting their citizens and helping to change the world positively. Read More |
07.20.18- Russiagate Is Constructed of Pure Bullshit, No Facts
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07.19.18- What the Origins of Money Teaches Us About Spontaneous Order
Imagine Sandy, a farmer in the Midwest, produces wheat, which she expects to exchange for barley. Two problems arise at this point. First, she needs to find a barley producer with whom to barter her products. This problem can be easily overcome if Sandy goes to a market where another farmer (let’s call him Billy) sells barley. Since both products are harvested during the same time of the year, the exchange would easily take place. Read More |
07.18.18- Our Rules of the Game: US Constitution
It’s indeed a “dark moment” for those who’ve for decades used the courts to accomplish what would have been impossible through federal and state legislatures — such as same-sex marriage, abortion and preferences with regard to race and sex. With this Supreme Court pick — and possibly another during his term — President Trump can return us to the Framers’ vision of the judiciary — a vision that’s held in contempt by many liberals and conservatives. Read More |
07.17.18- The Trade War Is Already Having A Huge Impact On The U.S. Economy
The U.S. is China’s second-biggest source of soybeans at 34% of the imports, after Brazil, which ships 53%. The staple is used to make cooking oil and seasoning, and soybean meal is found in pig feed. Now the tariffs have taken the bottom out of U.S. soybean prices, delivering a gut punch to farmers like Tim Bardole. He was already $100,000 in the red last year due to a yearslong slump in cereal prices, and the current predicament has driven him into a corner. “I’m not sure if I can get a loan from the bank to finance our next year’s crop,” said Bardole. Read More |
07.16.18- Complete Idiocy Engulfs The U.S.
The first time I watched this I thought it was a joke – product of National Lampoon. Then the reality of it hit me like a ton of bricks. Is this really a productive use of Congressional time? The entire U.S. system is hurling toward a debt-induced financial and economic apocalypse. At the same time the Deep State, using Trump as its hand-puppet, is alienating the U.S. from the EU/NATO, this country’s last remaining allies. The “trade war” is nothing more than the Deep State’s set-up for a military war. The dollar is being removed by China as the reserve currency, which will in turn take away the power enjoyed the elitists running the U.S. since Bretton Woods. If you are unsure how this story ends, take another look at history. Read More |
07.14.18- Hope and Change Are At Hand
Which raises an interesting question: if President Donald Trump’s most winning personal feature is that magnificent golden hair-do, why doesn’t he (or his family) get out of the pain-in-the-ass hotel business, with all its construction and maintenance issues and dirty sheets, and just put out shampoo? He is obviously adept at Twitter marketing and surely scores high in global brand recognition. Read More |
07.13.18- Public Pensions: The Ultimate Ponzi Scheme
They've promised full pensions to their workers. But they aren't putting aside enough money — or generating high enough returns — to fulfill those future obligations. Soon, they'll have to cannibalize current workers' pension contributions to pay retirees. Young and middle-aged government employees will likely never receive the retirement benefits they're counting on. It's too late to prevent this crisis. But there's still time to mitigate the financial fallout — by trimming benefits, raising contributions, and transitioning younger employees to 401(k)s and other defined-contribution plans. Most importantly, it's time to recognize that government officials are too short-sighted and underqualified to manage public pensions. For decades, politicians have underfunded public pensions. They've decided to spend tax revenues today, rather than set them aside for future pension liabilities. Read More |
07.12.18- The Uncivil Civil War: Economic and Market Implications of Political Transformation
The Times They Are A-Changin’ – Bob Dylan America’s populace is politically divided in a way that has not been seen in decades. The growing rift is rapidly changing the landscape in Washington D.C. and has major implications for the nation. Amazingly, as voters from different parties espouse views that are worlds apart, they share a strikingly similar message. This article considers the juxtaposition of colliding worldviews and the unified message that voters across the political spectrum are sending. While many investors are aware of the political change afoot, it seems that very few have considered how said changes might affect the economy and financial markets. In this article, we share some of our thoughts and encourage you to give the topic more consideration going forward. Given the importance of the subject, this article will likely be the first of several discussing the intersection of politics and markets. Read More |
07.11.18- Globalists Are Telling Us Exactly What Disasters They’re Planning For The Economy
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07.10.18- America Is Now A 3rd World Nation
Dividing the Earth's nations into 1st, 2nd and 3rd world has fallen out of favor;apparently it offended sensibilities. It has been replaced by the politically correct developed and developing nations, a terminology which suggests all developing nations are on the pathway to developed-nation status. What's been lost in jettisoning the 1st, 2nd and 3rd world categories is the distinction between developing (2nd world) and dysfunctional states (3rd world), states we now label "failed states." But 3rd World implied something quite different from "failed state": failed state refers to a failed government of a nation-state, i.e. a government which no longer fulfills the minimum duties of a functional state: basic security, rule of law, etc. Read More |
07.09.18- Survival of the Richest
I’ve never liked talking about the future. The Q&A sessions always end up more like parlor games, where I’m asked to opine on the latest technology buzzwords as if they were ticker symbols for potential investments: blockchain, 3D printing, CRISPR. The audiences are rarely interested in learning about these technologies or their potential impacts beyond the binary choice of whether or not to invest in them. But money talks, so I took the gig. After I arrived, I was ushered into what I thought was the green room. But instead of being wired with a microphone or taken to a stage, I just sat there at a plain round table as my audience was brought to me: five super-wealthy guys?—?yes, all men?—?from the upper echelon of the hedge fund world. After a bit of small talk, I realized they had no interest in the information I had prepared about the future of technology. They had come with questions of their own. Read More |
07.07.18- Summer of Tough Love
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07.06.18- Here’s a great example of a company using Blockchain to solve a real problem
I thought this would be important given that most of the noise in the crypto space these days is still almost invariably focused on the Bitcoin price. A quick Google search for “Bitcoin” reveals headlines from CNBC to Fortune Magazine, all about whether or not Bitcoin can come out of its price slump: “Wall Street’s Tom Lee cuts his year-end bitcoin price target by about 20%”, and “3 Bullish Signs Return For Bitcoin” Similarly, “Blockchain” and “DLT” news is generally dominated by reports about various government policies:“Spain’s Securities Regulator Undertakes a Blockchain Pilot” Read More |
07.05.18- Would the Founding Fathers Recognize Modern America?
Time and growth produce changes in institutions, too. Sometimes, they merely get bigger and older. Sometimes, they go through a metamorphosis and change into something very different. We recently moved back to France for the summer. We lived here for nearly 20 years… and still have a house in the country, to which we retire every summer. Here, we find our old friends and acquaintances… our old clothes and shoes… our tools and workshop… our tractor… and our favorite office. And what a pleasure… there, on the table next to the bed, was a copy of Michel De Jaeghere’s great book, Les Derniers Jours: La Fin de l’Empire Romain d’Occident (The Last Days: The End of the Roman Empire in the West). Read More |
07.04.18- Economic Collapse 101: Food Americans Ate To Stay Alive During The Great Depression
(Natural News) The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic downturn that began in 1929 and continued until about 1939. It affected North America, Europe, and other industrialized areas of the world. It was the most serious economic tragedy ever experienced by the industrialized Western world in modern history. The full burden of the economic crisis fell squarely on the shoulders of the nation’s working class. They struggled badly for their survival during this most difficult period, which led them to find a number of ways to put food on the table. The following Great Depression foods helped them live from day to day when nothing else was available. Read More |
07.03.18- A Turn for the Worse
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07.02.18- How to Create Your Own Personal Gold Standard and Currency Reserve
And only for the last 47 years has the world largely moved away from the gold standard. It is easy to feel like we are on top of the world in 2018. Technology has never been better or more easily accessible. The standard of living is rapidly rising. But does that mean we should dispense with 5,000 years of monetary policy which led us to where we are today?
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Libertarian? Conservative? Classic Liberal? Leftivists don’t just believe you’re a bad person — they WANT to believe it
I’m not a social media person, but a few days ago, I posted my very first comment on Instagram, in response to a woman whose site I had read for years. Enraged by the border story, she had just posted an Instagram ordering those who didn’t see the world her way to take a hike. It puzzled me at first. Hers is not a political site – far from it. And though she claimed she didn’t care about likes, I know that she has struggled for years with the classic insecurity bloggers often face when confronted with the popularity contest that is the Internet. She was posting in order to vent — and to let others know that she was, unlike half the country, kind, good-hearted and moral. Read More |
06.29.18- How to Survive the Civil Unrest That’s Coming to America
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06.28.18- Media Creates Caricatures of Political Parties.
Or at least, we hate what we think the other team stands for. A poll asked Democrats and Republicans to estimate statistics about the other party. The answers we pure caricatures. For example, Republicans thought that 38% of Democrats were gay. That’s about twice as many gay people as actually exist in the USA by most estimates. Actually, only about 6% of Democrats are gay. Read More |
06.27.18- The Danger Is Real: We Need a New Declaration of Independence for Modern Times
Imagine living in a country where armed soldiers crash through doors to arrest and imprison citizens merely for criticizing government officials. Imagine that in this very same country, you’re watched all the time, and if you look even a little bit suspicious, the police stop and frisk you or pull you over to search you on the off chance you’re doing something illegal. Keep in mind that if you have a firearm of any kind while in this country, it may get you arrested and, in some circumstances, shot by police. If you’re thinking this sounds like America today, you wouldn’t be far wrong. Read More |
06.26.18- Things Just Went Nuclear In Our Trade War With China, And A Giant Shockwave Is About To Hit The U.S. Economy
Many had hoped that President Trump would settle down after the initial salvos in this new trade war, but instead on Sunday evening we learned that he has decided to go nuclear. The following comes from CNBC… Read More |
06.25.18- The Entire Western World Lives In Cognitive Dissonance
Let us begin with the family separation issue. The separation of children from immigrant/refugee/asylum parents has caused such public outcry that President Trump has backed off his policy and signed an executive order terminating family separation. The horror of children locked up in warehouses operated by private businesses making a profit off of US taxpayers, while parents are prosecuted for illegal entry, woke even self-satisfied “exceptional and indispensable” Americans out of their stupor. It is a mystery that the Trump regime chose to discredit its border enforcement policy by separating families. Perhaps the policy was intended to deter illegal immigration by sending the message that if you come to America your children will be taken from you. Read More |
06.23.18- Social Security benefits buy 34 percent less than in 2000, study shows
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06.22.18- The Dumbing Down of America Is Deliberate and Deadly
Is America getting dumber? Is this presumption even measurable? The answer to both questions is an unqualified yes! In a related to vein to the purpose of this website, could this happen by design because controlling a population is made infinitely easier if the population is dumbed down. Some would even go as far as to say that the process of dumbing America down is not only real, but it is deadly. Read More |
06.21.18- I Remember When America Was A Free Country
Your flight ticket was good at any airline. If something happened to your flight or you missed it, you could use the ticket on another airline going to the same place. On international flights you were permitted two free stopovers prior to your destination. If you were going to Athens, Greece, for example, you could first visit Paris and then Rome. It worked both ways, over and back. So one air ticket, six cities. I can remember when you could enter a Manhatten office building without having to show an ID, be looked up on a list, and cleared in, and when you could check in a hotel without an ID and paid your bill when you checked out, with cash if you preferred. The only evidence of your name was the one you gave when you checked in. Cars didn’t beep at you and neither did appliances nor construction machinery. The world was a quieter, less noise-disturbed place. Read More |
06.20.18- John McAfee Says He's No Longer Pitching ICOs "Due To SEC Threats"
McAfee, who hasn't been affiliated with his namesake company since 1994 and lost most of a fortune once worth $100 million in the years since the crisis, was at one point pitching a new ICO every day. And since before last year's boom, McAfee has been a regular on the cryptocurrency conference circuit and is part of what Bloomberg calls "a vast network of social media influences" who have helped ICOs raise billions. In his characteristic voice, McAfee said the SEC had warned him about recommending ICOs, forcing him to step aside, despite declaring the treatment "unjust." Read More |
06.19.18- A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall
As the Federal Reserve kicked off its second round of quantitative easing in the aftermath of the Great Financial Crisis, hedge fund manager David Tepper predicted that nearly all assets would rise tremendously in response. "The Fed just announced: We want economic growth, and we don't care if there's inflation... have they ever said that before?" He then famously uttered the line "You gotta love a put", referring to the Fed's declared willingness to print $trillions to backstop the economy and financial makets. Nine years later we see that Tepper was right, likely even more so than he realized at the time. Read More |
06.18.18- Americans Need Plain Sight: The IG Report Hides the Truth
The five-hundred page IG Report was released on June 14th 2018, and it barely scrapes the surface of previous known acts of sedition and espionage, if not treason. It doesn’t really address anything that the American people were not already aware had occurred. I made note of the Peter Strzok and Lisa Page texts in January 2018, just as the IG Report recently did. Read More |
06.16.18- 7 Huge Mistakes Real Estate Investors Make
You can predict the returns! Having said that, your ROI forecasts are only as good as the numbers you start with. Here are the seven of the most common mistakes real estate investors make when running their numbers — and how to avoid them for a perfect win record in your investing. We’ll start with numbers that affect all real estate investors, then narrow our focus to rental investors and cash-flow forecasting. Read More |
06.15.18- Currencies – Truth and Confidence
Restate this for global currencies and it becomes:
WHAT LIES? There have been many. Examples specific to the United States: President Lyndon Johnson: In 1965, after decades of excessive government expenditures which caused rising consumer price inflation and rising gold and silver prices, Johnson removed silver from U.S. coins. He stated,
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06.14.18- Clock is Now “3 Minutes to Midnight” on Social Security and Medicare Benefits
In it, the financial data indicates that both Medicare and Social Security could start “riding off into the sunset” sometime within the next two decades. This is mainly due to the addition of millions of retirees aged 65 and older and reducing the average number of taxpayers that support each retiree on Medicare and Social Security. The financial pressure on the system may bankrupt it in the near future. When we reported on this in December of 2017, the Peter G. Peterson Foundation revealed the two points of data that illustrated this stark reality: Read More |
06.13.18- The most successful investor in modern history is selling… here’s what it means for you
Yes, drywall… as in, the building material that’s used for interior construction. Drywall, also known as wallboard, is manufactured from rehydrated gypsum to produce a calcium sulfate plaster, that’s later mixed with mildew-resistant foaming agent. . . hello? Are you still there? Seriously, though, in this particular case, drywall is a big deal. I’ll explain. The largest distributor of wallboard in the United States is a company called USG. USG is quite large– the company has been around for more than a century and generates billions of dollars in revenue. (Its shares trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol USG.) Read More |
06.12.18- Last Exit to the Road Less Traveled
Rachael Carson, Silent Spring What’s important to keep in mind in this quote from Rachael Carson’s 56-year-old warning shot over the bow of corporate civilization is that there are two roads being traveled now. We are no longer at a fork. The fork is half-a-century behind us. The goal is not to get the superhighway to somehow re-route itself and follow the path less traveled. It can’t. The superhighway will, and must, continue accelerating in its inevitable direction, simply because the greed and power of the people driving that highway will not allow them to alter course. But if there is any truth to Rachael Carson’s warning (and there seems to be growing evidence of it) the other path—the Road Less Traveled—will become the surviving branch of our evolutionary diagram. The present goal, therefore, should be to create as many exits from the superhighway as possible—and to encourage and enable as many people as possible to take those exits to explore and follow the other path. Read More |
06.11.18- The Clock Is Ticking: "Modern Slaves Are Not In Chains, They're In Debt"
What can be added to the happiness of a man who is in health, out of debt, and has a clear conscience? - Adam Smith There are no shortcuts when it comes to getting out of debt. - Dave Ramsey Modern slaves are not in chains, they are in debt. - Anonymous |
06.09.18- Feeling Isolated?
If you answered "no" to these questions, you're not an outlier. In fact, the #1 most commonly-reported complaint we hear from Peak Prosperity readers is that they feel alone and isolated when it comes to the warnings delivered in The Crash Course. The end of economic growth. Declining net energy. Accelerating resource depletion. These are MASSIVE existential threats to our way of life -- to our species' survival, even. Most PPers can't comprehend why *everyone* isn't obessively talking about these dangers. Read More |
06.08.18- Are You The Fish?
The basic idea here is that you need to know your opponents. You need to understand their strengths and weaknesses. You need to know what type of edge you have over them. And if you can’t figure out what advantage you have over the other players… Or if you can’t figure out who the weak players at the table are… Then you’re in big trouble! In markets there’s a similar dynamic… If you’re going to be successful in the market, you often have to be different from most other investors. Read More |
06.07.18- Cognitive Dissonance Will Not Save America From the Collapse of the Dollar
The Inevitable End I recently received that dreaded call “rush to the hospital, she only has a short time left, hurry!” So, you arrive at the hospital and the person hangs on, and hangs on, but everyone knows the final outcome is inevitable. The next day arrives and the person is still with us. And then like a thief in the night, our friend finally slipped away and went to be with the Lord. This is what the economy will soon do. I do not know if it will be next month, next year but I know we do not have five years. This economy is going to die. Why? Because the lifeblood of the economy has been withdrawn. Read More |
06.06.18- When They Shall Say “Peace And Safety”: Polls Show Americans Are The Most Optimistic They Have Been
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06.05.18- Ten Ways the Democratic Northern Hemisphere Nations Became the Orwellian West
For example, “Newspeak” represented the language of mind control, whereas “crimethink”, “thoughtcrime”, and “crimeface”manifested as transgressions against the state. Guilty citizens were captured by the “Thought Police”, and the ultimate punishment consisted of “vaporization”; which eliminated every last vestige of a person’s existence. Read More |
06.04.18- “Teen Culture” is the New Imperialism,  You know how missionaries used to run around the globe forcing everyone to be a Christian? And in the process, they destroyed native cultures and traditions?
Well, the same thing is happening today with Western “teen culture.” It is being exported around the world with disastrous effects. Manufacturing Adolescence Preindustrial societies mostly exhibit a continuum from childhood to adulthood. There is generally no random cut off age where suddenly teens are given rights and expected to become adults. Children seamlessly and gradually integrate into adulthood, with puberty rites being the only major benchmark. Read More |
06.02.18- Calling All Broke Millennials: Vermont Will Give You $10,000 To Move There And Work From Home
Governor Phil Scott approved the legislation on Wednesday (May 30) in hopes to bottom out the rapidly shrinking tax base, and, of course, sucker in those heavily indebted millennials from large cities. According to the Vermont House of Representatives, the “Remote Worker Grant Program” will start on January 01, 2019, and will cover a variety of business-related expenses of a worker’s transition to the state, including relocation services, computer software and hardware, broadband access or upgrade, and membership in a co-working or similar space expenses. Read More |
06.01.18- ‘Three Wise Men’ Warn Crash Coming, Own Gold
The men who have recently warned are Jim Rogers (video below), Martin Armstrong (blog below) and Tony Robbins (video below). Each come from somewhat different backgrounds and are respected experts in their respective fields. Each has different views in terms of asset allocation and how best to weather the coming financial storm but all are united in believing that gold will act as a wealth preservation tool and will likely rise in value when other assets fall. Read More |
Barely into the New Year, 2020 vision has brought many revelations into better focus, making several ongoing observations perfectly clear. Although there are those who’ve been watching the dots of The Matrix assemble into the big picture for decades now, the election of Donald Trump has increasingly exposed what was hidden in plain sight for so long.
Earlier this week I blogged about the mysterious coronavirus outbreak in Communist China. I pointed out that in addition to the fact that the virus may have been stolen and weaponized by Chinese spies inside of Canada's National Micriobiology Laboratory, there is an additional "coincidence" in that the outbreak appears to have occurred during the height of the Chinese lunar new year, when many people in China travel.
Conventional wisdom holds that savings is the amount of money left after monetary income was used for consumer outlays. Hence, for a given outlay, an increase in money income implies more savings and thus more funding for investment. This in turn sets the platform for higher economic growth.
Pete H. — a reader — gives us a good, round piece of his mind: 
Wise Aristotle placed “Democracy” in the category of “Worst Possible Political System”, some 2,300 years ago.
Late last year, the investment management giant Morningstar published a report concluding that most people can either save money for retirement, or save money for their kids’ education… but NOT both. They make the economic realities very clear: parents have to choose between their own future, or their children’s future. And one of the report’s lead authors went on to say that the RIGHT choice– the ONLY choice– is to choose your retirement over your kids:
I’ve often spoken of, in this blog, in the many things we believe that are untrue. For example, many financial metrics in which we blindly believe, reported by the mainstream news, like inflation, GDP and unemployment statistics are patently false and not even close to being reflective of reality. This holds true not just in the financial world but also extends to many other beliefs that have been sold to us as facts in the academic setting, but simply are not facts. The things we believe that are untrue, depending on our critical thinking skills, may range from nearly all of, to the majority of, to the minority of our beliefs. Even societal constructs like institutional academics as the only viable choice for education can be a construct in which we believe that is patently not the best option for us. .jpg)
The United Nations ruled that “climate refugees” cannot be returned back to their home countries. This ruling forces the United States to allow all Central Americans into our country.
Last week, the IMF issued a stark warning about the global economy. While most large Western states are vulnerable to a new crisis, Russia has prepared its defenses.
The environmental extremists continue to chant their monotonous mantra about the “existential threat” of man-made global warming, or climate change. Indeed, the climate is changing, and it has been changing for nearly four billion years. They recently began using an (apparently autistic) teenager as their spokes-mouth. Like all leftists they talk a good line, assuring us that they care deeply for wildlife, nature, clean air and water, etc. But it has long been obvious that their pretended concern for the environment is merely a cover for their real agenda, which is the impoverishment, enslavement, and eventual extermination of the human race. They are the ultimate “againsters,” people who pretend to be in favor of some noble-sounding cause, but who are really not for anything, only against. 
The first thing to understand is that it is not a trade deal. It is Trump backing off his tariffs when he discovered that the tarrifs fall on US goods and American consumers, not on China. Trump is covering his retraction by calling it a trade deal. China’s part of the deal is to agree to purchase the US goods that it already intended to purchase.
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.
A Japanese woman was surprised when Hong Kong Express Airways required her to take a pregnancy test before boarding her flight.
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.
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 
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 
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.
At some point, an economic problem deepens so much that the piper has to be paid. Both in 
Nearly 11 percent more 
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.
International Man:
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…
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.
The retail sales number came in rather badly this morning.
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.
I’ve learned a lot of things over my 20-year career on Wall Street.
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.
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”.
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.
Less than a month after a “bomb cyclone” caused a 
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?
Usually around the middle of February each year, the US Treasury Department releases an annual report of the federal government’s financial condition.
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.
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! 
The last two years have been full of absurd distractions. The Mueller Report, for example – one big, fat, waste of time.
When a disaster strikes unexpectedly, there’s nearly always some kind of monkey wrench that causes your 
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.
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. 
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 
The Social Security system is expected to have enormous financial pressures 
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.
Global Intel Hub
Yesterday we documented our personal frustrations with contemporary technology.
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?
The title of this article is not hyperbole.
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 
Last night the temperature fell 3 degrees an hour. As I write this, it is negative 10 degrees outside. A “once in a generation” 
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?
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.
I have warned repeatedly that currency wars and trade wars can lead to shooting wars. Both history and analysis support this thesis.
Wealth is flowing to those who earn money from their human capital and enterprise. 
The welfare people and the warfare people control congress, appropriations, corruption and national policies. Implications are grim.
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.
Editor’s Note: This resource has been updated and revised for 2018.
It is a bit of an alienating experience for one to see the nation of his birth and the principles of our ancestors under constant assault, from foreigners and people born here who are amerikkans rather than Americans. I refer to those Muslims who desire Sharia law, the Black Muslims who simply hate America, LaRaza with its Hispanic communists and conquerors who want to reclaim the Southwest for Mexico, the communist Democrat Party that seeks the eradication of our Founding Principles and the destruction of our Constitution and Republic, and those communist proletarians, the TAKERS, who seek their upkeep and livelihood at the expense of the U.S. taxpayer. 
I suspect there’s a hidden agenda behind the announcement in The Wall Street Journal op-ed by former Hillary Clinton aide Mark Penn that the Ole Gray Mare is actually eyeing another run for the White House in 2020. No, it’s not just that she would like to be president, as she averred on video last week in a weak moment, or that she has decided late in life to go full Bolshevik policy-wise. It is to establish her in the public mind as a serious candidate so that when she is indicted a hue-and-cry will arise that the move is a purely political act of revenge by the wicked Trump.
The bigger they come, the harder they fall. Currently, we are in the terminal phase of an “everything bubble” which has had ten years to grow. It is the biggest financial bubble that our country has ever seen, and experts are warning that when it finally bursts we will experience an economic downturn that is even worse than the Great Depression of the 1930s. Of course many of us in the alternative media have been warning about what is coming for quite some time, but now even many in the mainstream media have jumped on the bandwagon. The Economist is one of the most prominent globalist mouthpieces in the entire world, and so I was stunned when I came across one of their articles earlier today that was entitled 
With all of the ridiculous new regulations, coddling, and societal mores that seem to be the norm these days, it’s a miracle those of us over 30 survived our childhoods.
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At the Foundation for Economic Education Conference (FEECON) in 2017, I met Bill Frezza. He’s been teaching a critical lesson about equality, learned from the horrors of the AT&T telephone monopoly. What follows, I mostly learned from him.
A dictatorship does not represent the public but only 
Last week, the head of a New York state pension fund found herself a new job.
The reason there are no prescription medications available today where the side effects aren’t worse than the ailment being treated is because Big Pharma will not treat or heal anything without creating several new issues that keep their “customers for life” coming back for more. Most Americans do not want to stop eating junk food, fast food, corporate franchise restaurant food, microwaveable food, prepared food bar “stuff,” and “diet” food that’s mostly chock full of synthetic sweeteners, GMOs and MSG.
Blind faith in the U.S. dollar is perhaps one of the most crippling disabilities economists have in gauging our economic future. Historically speaking, fiat currencies are essentially animals with very short lives, and world reserve currencies are even more prone to an early death. But, for some reason, the notion that the dollar is vulnerable at all to the same fate is deemed ridiculous by the mainstream.
A few weeks ago, 
The Governor of Vermont has introduced an unusual 
‘Three wise men’ are warning that the next financial crash is coming and that one of the ways to protect and grow wealth in the coming crash will be to own gold.