Gene's Footnotes

PLEASE LISTEN: Standsbury lecture

2012-02-11T12:41:00.000-05:00

As I have noted, I am winding down this particular blog. Its done what it can. It has even focused my own concerns. If you do nothing else regarding your safety, please listen to the lecture below.

As a farewell gift, please accept the accompanying lecture by Porter Standsbury.

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It does not matter who you are or what you are up to. This lecture is about financial and, perhaps, physical survival in the very near term. Yes, near term. Porter even mentions what I have written about: the normalcy bias. That is the inertia of the human mind that something new will not happen, even as you get into a cattle car. Once reality clicks all the clever investment you may have will be rendered meaningless, unless they are puts. There will be a new normalcy, very Grecian in flavor.

Remember, I told you to buy silver at $11 and peanut butter. Indeed, it is a good time to buy more. Consider I may be on to something.

The lecture is long and requires attention, though it is brilliantly simple to follow. A pencil in hand would be a good idea. Much of it, you have heard from me for years, but this presentation puts is all in one place. I can say no more, nor criticize the outlook presented. You don't need to buy anything. (I am guessing the 4th investment is diamonds).

I noted in 2009 how the stock markets in the economic collapse tracked nearly to the day the Great Depression. It sill does and there is cliff directly in front of us. (In Standsbury) More than a technical offering a technical prognosis, the lecture reviews the death of our dollar and the con game in Washington - one that will end in an instant as draconian measures will become law.

It is the Depression on steroids. (He notes the Shadow Statistics find our unemployment rate is now 22.5%. The statistics game in D.C. is to lull us into complacency as the traps are being set. There have been no increases in Social Security benefits for three years because the government see no inflation.)

The army has already been given the authority to patrol our streets and arrest us. We have concentration camps. Republicans, by the way, voted FOR these items. A conspiracy theory? You decide.

You want to stay clear of riots and rioters, some of whom are already being primed as provocateurs - the Wall Street useful idiots. Nothing, nothing I have warned against or that is in the lecture is untrue. All you hear from D.C. and the major D.C. outlets is pretty much a lie, in that subtle spin regarding essential statistics is an absolute lie.

The end comes the day after the government cannot sell Treasury Bills - other countries have decided they do not need to put up with further theft in the form of inflation (the devaluation of the dollar, not the cost of peanut butter). That day, the music stops AND you have no chair to sit in. Get out of the game now.

The U.S. dollar is finished as the world's currency. PERFECT VIDEO. Other nations are already organizing its replacement. Soros continues his slaughter. By itself this reduces our standard of living by a estimated 25%. Those exposed to large mortgages and stocks could be cleaned out. (But, if you can, get a fixed mortgage right now.)

A temporary dictator who did not indulge in Keynesian fantasy could fix things, then ask us for a contributions. Add that to the coming oil and gas revenues, especially once Obama is gone, we might survive. In a healthy family, everyone will contribute to the household, but we have a boarding house run by the Artful Dodger. No one will trust the current government; no one will consider it their ally. It is either your pusher or a sneak thief, but it is not family.

We have, in the presidency, a socialist follower of Alinsky who has been trained to collapse the system, this is no theory, so a central government can take control. So, if we decided to stop using services and contribute money to the common crisis, the government would steal the new money and transfer it to friends and constituents.

Therefore, I see no possibility of salvation. The government will commit suicide and the death will blamed on "capitalists," those people who brought you the highest standard of living in history. Say good bye to your retirement funds, your extra car, and, for many, your home. If you are over 70 years of age, just go die, please, but you could get free contraceptive pills.

If you want to protest this theft, the army will be waiting. If you think this cannot happen, why was the posse comitatus repealed New Year's Eve? That condition was the norm. Why are there concentration camps? Are they normal?

There is no advantage to pointing out our dull populace voted in the conman of the conmen; indeed, the GOP leaders are nearly as bad. The whole crowd is poisoning us. It is better that I urge you to get out to political meetings and clubs, now, today, to replace the incumbent statists. Run for the school board. There are no more spectators in this game.

There is work to be had to correct what we have ignored.

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Finally, I have arranged a way for you to lend a Canadian company (I am a partner) as much money as you like. You will get a horrible interest, so we can easily cover it, BUT THE ASSET WILL BE IN CANADIAN FUNDs and will be out of the reach ands scope of our government, unlike your 401(k) or IRA. You can still pay tax on your interest and remain legal.

If the world were not about to change, the loan would be stupid. You have decide what tis about to happen.

Let me know, if you are interested in making a loan. I am working on writing up a term sheet.

Penultimate Aloah

2012-02-02T19:36:00.000-05:00

I am going to end all this blog stuff, soon. In addition to too much legal work, there is too much going on in this country.

Cassandra's dilemma shadows me, as it has become pointless to point at the obvious. So, I will organize some sort of farewell, close Facebook (not that I use it), stop using Gmail, and Google. If you are unaware why, there you go. You better look into it.

A few things to consider:

1. Our lovely government again (OLGA, I made this up) has instituted a mortgage tax. Yes, a federal tax on new mortgages. This will depress prices, of course. This is the beginning. This crap passes quietly through Congress while we all talk about the Giants destroying New England.

2. Predators fly over Manhattan.

3. There are dozens of concentration camps already in existence under the misnamed FEMA. They are complete with inward-facing barbed wire, so they are not for friendly use, and are on rail road lines.

4. As of 12/31, the Army can come and arrest you and hide you. Bye bye

5. The two recent bills aimed at controlling the Internet, the last bastion of free speech, were shouted down by the likes of Wiki etc., but a few months ago Obama secretly signed a treaty that is going around designed to control the Internet (oh, it is supposed to be about intellectual property.) In the America I remember, treaties were ratified by the Senate, but, of course this Senate is a combination of Marxist and simpletons in both parties.

6. The GOP candidates are statists who have no idea what a "conservative" is. They are, essentially, despicable people behind false smiles. They play handball on the Fox channel. All establishment - statist control. So, you have statist collectivism on the left and statist collectivism, but cheaper, on the right.

7. The GOP is promoting Jindal and Rubio for VP. BOth are not naturally born citizens - take your Constitution and shove it. McCain wasn't either, when you find the real facts. So, both parties are ends justifies the means gangs.

8. Etc Etc. There is a daily barrage of insults to freedom and those who see it merely sit around and simmer waiting for the elections, if they happen, of course. As it is, the leftist are planning a violent year, they are pushing for violence that requires troops to quell. Now that the troops can act in the country.

9. Worst of all peanut butter is going to sky rocket.

10. The UN is creating a policy where nations agree to unify food, air, and water into one controlling entity. The Codex Alimentarius is still around.

11. Buffet can do all the insider trading he likes, along with Soros. GE gets contracts build stupid things. Green energy companys take billions in cash and declare bankruptcy. The EPA is blocking the pipeline from Canada so we will not have 40,000 new jobs and energy independence.

All is purposefully chaos designed to tighten the strangle hold on all of us. Go Giants.

So, anyone who sees what is going on, doesn't need me. Anyone who cannot, won't. It is better to concentrate on grass roots elections and exit routes. In the past few years, you have suffered through my calls to arms and you should likely see that I am usually right. So, why not go along with me. It can't hurt and it could save.

I will get a gun pretty soon, sad to say. If you want to get cash out of the country you can lend to a company I partly own in Canada.

Note: My hysteria about inflation was premature, since China has floated its currency and is now in an inflation cycle. So, you have until after the election until all hell breaks loose. The inflation will, then, drop in for a decade or so. Dump that cash. Once you hear OLGA could not sell many treasury bonds at an auction, fill your gas tank.

Gene

Price inflation starts

2012-01-30T18:58:00.000-05:00

The government reports unemployment is under 8% and there is not inflation (Social Security payments remain flat for the second year.)

A quick check in:

*According to the World Bank, the global price of food has risen 36% over the past 12 months.

*The commodity price of wheat has approximately doubled since last summer.

*The commodity price of corn has also about doubled since last summer.

*The commodity price of soybeans is up about 50% since last June.

*The commodity price of orange juice has doubled since 2009.

Think about these numbers! These are astronomical or, at least, they used to be in the "normal" times. We are just starting and you may not really notice what is going on.

Sooner or later, you will listen to me and buy a box of peanut butter. If you can, buy some extra gas and fill up your oil tank at the end of the season. I don't think the decrease in American demand will overcome the deterioration of the dollar.

Update on Iowa, etc

2012-01-27T15:05:00.000-05:00

You remember the Iowa straw poll? The one Romney won, oh, lost to Santorum.

The latest report is the returns from Ames, Iowa were lost. Eight precincts vanished. Ames, by the way, is Paul's stronghold, at about 50% in the polls. In addition, there were 131 precincts with erroneous counts. Of note, the delegates have not been selected; I am thinking delegates will be very annoyed.

The next four states to pick delegates will come quickly and they are all caucus states.

Media coverage will ratchet up regarding the Virginia contest on Super Tuesday. This race will be the ultimate non-Romney (Paul) goes one-on-one with Romney. Where do conservatives go? I expect Paul may win. Especially, if he is constantly beat up. This is large state with 37 delegates.

Apparently, and who can figure these things out, Santorum and Gingrich are mathematically unable to win. They are not in several states. Gingrich purposely avoided Missouri.

Final tidbit. Delegates are released after one vote at the Republican Convention. Now, that will be interesting. Just like the old days, as I expect we will not see a winner on the first ballot.

I can can visualize the floor rallys, now.

Semper Paratus

2012-01-26T22:03:00.000-05:00

Geroge Soros agrees with me. Physical survival is the mandate for the near future. He posits a "brutal" clampdown on American liberty.

Generally, Soros generally says the opposite of what he is doing, such as announcing last year he is selling gold. He says things to divert criticism, however, the recent concern goes beyond general hustling. Saying survival is key, now, is quite a new thing for him to opine. Then again, he may be laying groundwork for a future denial of culpability. You decide; however, recognize the level of published concern.

Return to the Article

January 26, 2012

Slouching Toward Armageddon with George Soros

Neil Snyder

George Soros, the billionaire investor and funder of radical leftist causes around the globe, believes that the world is going to hell in a handbasket, and this time I agree with him. That's not to say that Soros isn't interested in making more money. It simply means that he thinks the likelihood of global chaos and the concomitant violence that it will engender is greater than the likelihood of making fast money in gold, for instance, which he considers to be the ultimate bubble.

In The Daily Beast, John Arlidge wrote:

Has the great short seller [George Soros] gone soft? Well, yes. Sitting in his 33rd-floor corner office high above Seventh Avenue in New York, preparing for his trip to Davos, he is more concerned with surviving than staying rich. 'At times like these, survival is the most important thing,' he says, peering through his owlish glasses and brushing wisps of gray hair off his forehead. He doesn't just mean it's time to protect your assets. He means it's time to stave off disaster. As he sees it, the world faces one of the most dangerous periods of modern history-a period of 'evil.' Europe is confronting a descent into chaos and conflict. In America he predicts riots on the streets that will lead to a brutal clampdown that will dramatically curtail civil liberties. The global economic system could even collapse altogether.

I'm a realist, not a hysterical conspiracy theorist looking for boogiemen around every corner, and like Soros, what I see chills me to the bone. For instance,

China is on the rise economically and militarily, and Chinese leaders are anxious to solidify their country's position as a global power. That means eventual conflict with existing global powers that has the potential to result in bloodshed.

Russia is back from the brink after having abandoned radical socialism in favor of pseudo-capitalism, and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin wants to play an important part in global geopolitics. Per usual, he is positioning Russia to engage the West -- especially in the Middle East.

Turkey and Iran have grand designs for achieving hegemony over the Middle East and re-establishing the Ottoman and Persian Empires, respectively. Both countries can't succeed, and the battle to determine which country wins is just getting underway.

North Africa is a powder keg, with Islamists on the verge of taking complete control economically and militarily. Given their suicidal tendencies, that is not a harbinger of good things to come.

Europe is in total chaos. The eurozone that was supposed to position Europe to compete effectively with the United States and China, in particular, is coming unglued as country after country comes to grips with the reality that the European style of socialism can't be sustained.

Latin America is becoming a political sinkhole, with the likes of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez taking control and doing their utmost to infect the world with Cold War-era populism/socialism.

The United States is in the early stages of class warfare that has the potential to turn ugly in a heartbeat, and President Obama is stoking the fires of hate and envy with his rhetoric and his policy maneuvers in hopes of being re-elected.

Last but not least, Islamists are ascending around the world, and Jewish people in general and Israel in particular are their immediate targets. Islamists have made it clear that they want to rule the world and impose sharia law, and they haven't been shy about saying that their first order of business is to eliminate Israel.

We are in the throes of a breakdown of the existing world order and a global struggle to determine what comes next. Will it be a totalitarian Islamist world under sharia law -- a one-world caliphate, if you will? Will it be a resurgence of Western political philosophies and liberal democracy? Will it be a world governed by global economic and military powerhouse nations such as China and the United States? Will it be a strengthened United Nations with taxing and enforcement powers? No one knows for sure what will happen next, but these things are certain: political vacuums don't last for long, and historically, wars have decided what world order eventually comes into existence.

Under these conditions, Soros' concern about survival makes perfect sense. The first order of business is not to see how much gold and silver, for example, you can accumulate before you die. Job One is to stay alive. In practical terms, that means two things:

1. You need food to eat and water to drink, and

2. You need weapons and ammunition to protect you and your family in case the worst happens.

I'm being very candid, so I want to remind you once again that I am not part of the lunatic fringe. I'm simply examining the evidence, trying to make sense of what is happening, and preparing for what looks like a realistic scenario -- something that could actually happen.

Let me be perfectly clear. I am not suggesting that you should sell everything you own and buy guns, ammunition, and non-perishable food items, but I am suggesting that you should begin to accumulate all of the things that I just mentioned as though they were a part of your investment portfolio. You need enough food and water to keep you and your family alive in case violence erupts and the channels of distribution for foodstuffs are disrupted. You need guns that you can use in case you and your family are attacked and you are forced to defend yourself. You also need to know how to use them. You need enough ammunition to fend off a mob in a prolonged engagement in case you and your family are attacked, because guns are of no value without ammunition.

Again, I'm not betting on the worst-case scenario, and I'm not saying that it is inevitable, but I am cognizant of reality, and I'm preparing for what could happen. Proverbs 22:3 says, "The prudent sees the evil and hides himself, but the naive go on, and are punished for it." A wise man prepares for what might happen. That's what I'm doing, and I suggest that you do the same thing.

Neil Snyder is a chaired professor emeritus at the University of Virginia. His blog, SnyderTalk.com, is posted daily. His latest book is titled If You Voted for Obama in 2008 to Prove You're Not a Racist, You Need to Vote for Someone Else in 2012 to Prove You're Not an Idiot.

Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/01/slouching_toward_armageddon_with_george_soros.html at January 26, 2012 - 08:52:38 PM CST

Grab a rock near the edge

2012-01-24T11:22:00.000-05:00

The WLI indicator seems the precise indicator to the movement of S&P, or stocks in general. One must allow for emotional reactions, of course, but the trends are dead on. The WLI, World Leading Indicators, is from the Economic Cycle Research Institute.

The WLI has already hit the -10 level of past recessions. It did so in a fast run down. To the left is the 2008 financial meltdown. Then the WLI went to -30! One can project without any brains, at all, that the green line is coming down (after suckers buy stuff.) Of interest, is mid 2009, it looks like the GDP and PR kept the S&P up. This makes sense after the wipe out of 2008. Things seemed better. Look at the GDP now.

Then, there is

Chips companies live in cycles, but the month by month and average changes indicate a large cycle. Another green line that will fall.

Another item to consider is the combined North American rail volume of last week, compared to a year earlier is down 4.%! Trailers and containers on the rails is down 8.8%!

The ECRI (graphs above) has projected a recession is inevitable.

The coming recession, of course, will not be a "normal" cyclical one, as we are watching Europe collapse in slow motion, China is having difficulty, and our president transfers your children's money and blocks the 40,000 jobs of the Keystone XL pipeline. Sometime, in the not distant future, our money will begin its inevitable decline and our interest rate, accordingly, will rise. At that point, foreign investors stop buying our Treasury Bills (last warning) and the emperor will be standing in the parade, suddenly aware he has no clothes.

I have mentioned ways to defend yourself. It is now "post time." Doing nothing may result in extreme loss. If you insist upon keeping your 401k and IRA, then find investments that are removed from the U.S. Dollar. You may not be able to as the government wanted to keep your money prisoner, in the self-dealing hands of Wall Street. You are paying much of those big bonuses that anger you.

If you can, liberate your money and use it to buy solid property - a solid future.

World Snapshot

2012-01-20T10:43:00.000-05:00

In a CBS MarketWatch piece today you will find a warning of big shot Gary Shilling. Shilling is great on the downside.

He notes, among other items, that Europe entered a recession last quarter, that Germany had a negative GDP last quarter, and that China is scurrying around as it sees trouble ahead (however, it is a drop in growth rather than a negative).

2012 was projected as one a major world-wide recession where the U.S. will not have as extensive a recession as one matching the U.S. in 2008.

I captured the chart below to simply catch what is going on. The ETF's listed represent, almost exactly, major stock exchanges. It is a very good snapshot. It is like understanding your golf swing by seeing it in stop action rather than trying to judge it by one good drive.

Symbol	Price	Change	52-Wk
USA (SPY)	130.77	+1.11%	+3.08%
S. Africa (EZA)	65.18	+3.21%	-6.03%
Canada (EWC)	27.63	+1.25%	-10.43%
S. Korea (EWY)	55.21	+1.64%	-10.90%
Lat.America (ILF)	46.28	+2.82%	-11.45%
China (FXI)	38.32	+1.86%	-11.70%
Singapore (EWS)	11.78	+1.38%	-12.37%
Japan (EWJ)	9.26	+1.20%	-15.45%
Israel (ISL)	13.45	+0.90%	-17.87%
Taiwan (EWT)	12.33	+1.48%	-18.11%
India (IFN)	21.61	+1.12%	-30.98%
Russia (TRF)	14.70	+1.94%	-43.29%

The point of the exercise is to show, first, a current happy face in most markets, then, second, a horror face for the last 52 weeks.

In the U.S. the media promotes a happy face. Gee, things look good. (Not to worry even if Kodak is bankrupt and Google fell 8% yesterday upon a large profit drop.)

A quick look at the rest of the world demonstrates why the U.S. market was up. Where else are you going to go?

As it turns out, money will find somewhere else to live when the neighborhood is on fire. It will leave when the administration promoted future inflation begins. Smart money will just leave; sleepy American money will devalue as it also loses principal in a 401k.

When you see a Treasury Bill auction generally ignored (and the last one was not a happy face), it is time to get out of the boat, buy ammunition, and store peanut butter. Of course, the government runs a Ponzi scheme and they buy the bills to con others into thinking there is no problem. What eventually wins is the interest rate vs. risk (including inflation.)

When the music stops and everyone sits down, the your money (in dollars) will be left standing. It is inevitable. It is planned. On a really bad day, you will not be able to go into a bank, ATM, or other Big-Brother controlled financial system. (VP elect Biden predicted this was likely back in 2008!)

A typical trick, at this point, has been to revalue the currency without warning.

Recall the epigram about those who do not study history....

An Argument for the Ron Paul counterrevolution

2012-01-13T13:40:00.000-05:00

A long essay: take the time to read it when you are able.

So much for my goal of short pieces, but this is important

An excerpt from They Though They Were Free, The Germans From 1933 to 1945, Milton Meyer:

But Then It Was Too Late

"What no one seemed to notice," said a colleague of mine, a philologist, "was the ever widening gap, after 1933, between the government and the people. Just think how very wide this gap was to begin with, here in Germany. And it became always wider. You know, it doesn’t make people close to their government to be told that this is a people’s government, a true democracy, or to be enrolled in civilian defense, or even to vote. All this has little, really nothing, to do with knowing one is governing.

"What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could not understand it, it could not be released because of national security. And their sense of identification with Hitler, their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it...

"To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it—please try to believe me—unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us had ever had occasion to develop. Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, ‘regretted,’ that, unless one were detached from the whole process from the beginning, unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these ‘little measures’ that no ‘patriotic German’ could resent must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head.

"How is this to be avoided, among ordinary men, even highly educated ordinary men? Frankly, I do not know. I do not see, even now. Many, many times since it all happened I have pondered that pair of great maxims, Principiis obsta and Finem respice—‘Resist the beginnings’ and ‘Consider the end.’ But one must foresee the end in order to resist, or even see, the beginnings. One must foresee the end clearly and certainly and how is this to be done, by ordinary men or even by extraordinary men? Things might have. And everyone counts on that might.

"Your ‘little men,’ your Nazi friends, were not against National Socialism in principle. Men like me, who were, are the greater offenders, not because we knew better (that would be too much to say) but because we sensed better....

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Principiis obsta — Resist the beginnings

Finem respice — Consider the end.

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I titled this entry with reference to Ron Paul and what I call the counterrevolution, as we have already lost the nation to a long-term subversive revolution.

I am not a Paulist with respect to the election game. There is a marginal chance he will be the GOP candidate, thought the year is shaping up in an interesting way, and Paul knows that. The cry of "electability" is inane; it is a cry against theory in favor of mob rule. It is a dismissal of republic in favor of democracy - the end of our nation.

It is better the power structures realize they better adapt to the people rather than assuming the people will choose sides in the election game. They realize this by losing their own voters. Only then, do the "leaders" deign to pay attention to the masses.

Paul would be amazed if he actually won - he is leading a philosophical movement. It is important we all understand why he is doing that.

I am a Paulist with respect to the strategic push in the campaign: a cry that we had better return to the Constitution and the decentralized government. The cry is finally being understood - no one knows if it is in time. Any GOP candidate who merely cuts the government around its edges is a useful idiot who will carry us all down.

Analogies hardly work anymore. Let us try this: your entire house is on fire, your garage is on fire and there are explosive chemicals in there. You have a choice: vote for a neighbor who insists the right thing to do is cancel you insurance or a neighbor who thinks you should move your car. Voting to move the car is a fool's vote, a Hobson's choice that is silly.

The distress over Paul's "foreign policy" is a symptom of how we have been trained to react with fear - the ultimate tool of control. Paul says the Congress must declare war and the President act upon that direction. This is our law, but to say that is somehow "kooky." There is no legal argument offered, just a reaction found in fear - kill the enemy before they kill us, whoever you say they are. We ignore the fact that we cannot afford anything, let along wars all over the world, because we convinced we are in a survival scenario.

Paul is perfectly happy with signing alliances with foreign friends, the correct tradition, but we are trained that the President can do what he wants. Both parties claim the authority given to the president to act under the War Powers Act is unconstitutional - both parties use it. The process of law must precede the obtaining of a desired result. Merely justifying means to reach an end is tyranny.

Of note, Paul has said the current leader of the Mosad and his predecessor do not think Israel under an existential threat. On the other hand, our media makes a clear understanding impossible. At the same time, we are told that we need to arm (or something) to defend an Israel by having them take our money to buy our arms, as we tell them, and leftists leaders in government dislike them as the evil doers of the world.

The Story of Your Enslavement

As a people, we are being used by the Muslims, leftists, and oligarchs. Recall a blog entry of two or three years ago where I noted the jailed "Jackal" wrote in an article the left must align itself with the Muslim terrorists for the time being. Do you see the ongoing game?

Our enemies use our presence in their lands and our blundering actions as a way to increase their power, which, in turn, result in our being told we need to ratchet up our foreign interference, without that ever being identified. It is a vague notion of hyper-vigilance. This point-counterpoint is the history of man and, I suppose, America was not vigilant in keeping our nation a republic, so we have entered the flow of warlord history. We have a minor chance of waking up.

We are serfs being told the Muslims threaten us, so we go off on righteous crusades. This, in turn, results, as in the past, in active animosity layered on cultural and religious jingoism. The traditional war of the crusades turned into centuries of anger because of the leaders of the crusades had little to do with God. God was for the serf to believe in as they died on the battlefields.

Follow the spiral of reactions: the "end" is a police state and never-ending war. We went through this with the false crusade against Russia. My proof of this is Michael Moore's film Canadian Bacon.

I just removed a section concerning Russia and the United States and the use of escalating fear on both sides to control people, history, business. Too long. As President Nixon pointed Russia's underlying goal for hundreds of hears was to create a buffer zone around itself. It did and we reacted by placing armored divisions in Europe. The Russian leaders were not communists, they were oligarchs protecting power by manipulating people's fear.

The U.S. is controlled by the "military industrial complex" as described by President Eisenhower. It is also under the control of oligarchs using leftists. (A democratic socialist Congressman recently said Obama was not a socialist, he was a neo-liberal oligarch, which is new term to me, but I understand it.) The complex fanned the fear as well. The two sides played a game of ping pong - serving fear to one another. Of course, both sides actually took forceful and deadly actions, but those were tactics in a bigger game.

Russia agreed to remove its missiles from Cuba, if we removed them from its border in Turkey. That was the desired result. They won and we fell into a self-congratulating prattle about staring them down. Few even know we pulled our missiles which were on the doorstep of Russia. We assumed we were so cowboy that Russia backed down. I should mention the oligarchy relies on the media.

The use of fear continues. The Arabs use it as a cultural gesture, such as Iraq making believe they had weapons of mass destruction. This is a stupid gambit where the enemy is vastly larger and well-trained in reacting to fear. Iraq did use gas, of course. You can't discount dictators - a major problem.

You will notice, these days, we take seemingly insane actions against foreign nations and "terrorists" which now means anyone the government decides it does not like. We have recently put a few troops in Australia now to defend.....?????

The founders completely understood how oligarchs take control: fear, monetary policy, and centralization. We have lost the simple understanding of the Constitution an how it protected us from all assaults. We accept imperial actions of a government that is aloof. A government that is intent on dumbing down the people and ignoring the Constitution.

I will curtail this thread, here, and merely plead that you listen to Paul and understand what he is saying. It is profound, logically consistent, and is likely our last hope. As for the election - focus on state and school board elections. This is where the counterrevolution must take place. If you motivate people to take back their school boards in an election, the other races will take care of themselves.

Over dramatic? Reread the excerpt about Nazi Germany.

Old Farts

2012-01-11T14:53:00.000-05:00

I have been away in Canada and then busy after returning. I will add blogs from time to time, hereon. My 2010 mission it to be terse. Where there is a detailed logic to apply, I will link to places where people are sufficiently in agreement with me; hence, generally correct.

So, now to digest an important economic factor: old farts. Click the title to see the foundational observations in Seeking Alpha.

• The wealth gap between those under 35 and people over 65 is at an all time high of 46 to 1. (The last I saw, it now takes fewer than 3 workers to support 1 Social Security beneficiary. Clearly, this system, as it is, is done though the socialists in charge have no idea what this means, if they even care.)

• In Japan, 33-60% (depending on the survey) of Japanese youth between the ages of 25-34 either do not work or marginally survives on low wage jobs. The social contract to care for seniors cannot be met. A yen crisis is looming as this impasse will be cured by the hand of reality.

• Assets will be sold off to meet estate requirements adding to the supply of "expensive" property, that is, property that the young cannot afford.

• Assets will be sold off by older people not interested in watching inflation and confiscation steal the results of a lifetime of work and investment. (Even selling at an apparent "loss," will not matter where there is a significant profit over time. Normal rules of economic patters will be distorted.

• The liquidation era will alter economic models. For example, the liquidation may be the reason people have continued to buy treasury bills though they are not a good investment in the traditional sense which gives a false sense of security.

The supply of homes available will continue to expand, prices go down, real estate tax follow, government "employees" will be fired, etc etc.

Banks will want to lower borrowing rates, but eventually inflation will prevent that. This will cause housing prices to drop quickly as a selling fear takes control of the gloated market. Few people will qualify to borrow. etc.

Assets freed from homes, 401k accounts, and stocks will find new homes, but will not be "investments" designed to take a risk in order to produce new capital; they will be put into passive income vehicles, gold and silver, or foreign investments at a rate not seen before in the United States. The wealth of the nation will concern itself with a shrinking pie while looking to the shrinking worker pool to fund social security. The Obama people will cause a transfer of wealth, but in a way not intended nor understood.

Of course, money being returned into real estate and hard savings may be a good thing in the long run, but it will cause a shudder in our economic structure.

So, as formal lawyers will add at the end of a warning letter: "...govern yourselves accordingly"

Is this real?

2011-12-18T12:43:00.000-05:00

If this photo does not come out (I cut and pasted and it seems ok) then go to the web site.

Agenda 21: TIme to defund the U.N.

2011-12-18T12:27:00.000-05:00

Agenda 21, Comrade, a driving force behind the the seemingly bizarre actions of the federal government. VIDEO

Web site.

Recall, I mentioned recently Obama has setup a committee to regulate rural land. On that committee is Homeland Security and the FCC. This is clearly to make sure people do as they are told and there is no disagreement aired.

Watch for the attack on the Intent to heat up and watch to see the GOP leadership is part of the movement.

Buffett unplugged

2011-12-12T09:59:00.000-05:00

Consensus: Warren Buffet is the greatest of stock pickers; solar energy is good.

Recent Headline: "Buffett Makes a Big Bet on Solar."

Behind the Propaganda:

Berkshire Hathaway, via MidAmerican Energy, bought a $2 billion California solar plant that is breaking ground.

MidAmerican agreed to buy a solar because of government regulation:

1. because it started in 2011, it will qualify for some $600 million in tax credits.

2. reacting to state mandates, a California firm has already signed a 25-year contract that will pay MidAmerican between two and four times today's going rate for electricity. (Just another example of why we have a "green" push to create scarcity.)

Two years ago, as I reported here, Buffet sold Berkshire's portion of a company that a few days later announce it had tanked. Buffer was on the Board of Directors. He has not been questioned, let alone prosecuted for insider trading.

Now you see why he says nice things about Obama, when called for, as in agreeing those with large "incomes" should pay more taxes.

His adjusted income tax rate was 11% last year.

Buffet's salary, which the left is focused upon, is $100,000 per year. Buffet's capital gains and dividends run about $62,000,000,000. That is reduced to about half by charity and, one assumes, losses.

You and I have very few adjustments to our salaries and they are under attack.

Bottom Line: Oligarchy

-------------------

Our media whips up false arguments over Republican vs. Democrat. There is no difference when you look at the leadership. We are played for chumps, then taxed. Socialists are used; conservatives are used. The ruling class is paid well.

The tendency toward oligarchy has not changed in human history except that our founders understood the danger and in the Constitution built us a castle to defend.

We are now permitting others, under wonderful labels and flags, to take down the castle. No, we are supporting the dismantling as useful partisans. Remember the Communist view of WWI: two bayonets facing one another with peasants on both ends. The oligarchs were fretting over champagne.

The media and parties do not engage Ron Paul for he merely resorts to a Constitutional basis to determine the power of the federal government; that discussion would raise his classic concerns among the people. The false complexity presented to us by the oligarchy is meant to weaken the people's control

Review of "Dying of Money"

2011-12-09T08:57:00.000-05:00

Below is a review of Dying of Money, a quintessential study you cannot afford, by Pipa Malmgren, founder of Principalis

Poke around Pipa's site; she is is an insider, mostly listening, but inside.

Dying of Money by Jens O. Parssons

As I have travelled around the world, I have found that serious investors, who really do their homework, have dusted off one of the best books on inflation that has ever been produced: Jens O Parsson’s “Dying of Money: Lessons of the Great German and American Inflations”. It is now selling for $239 USD on Amazon but an original edition is on Amazon at $749 USD. It is almost impossible to find at a reasonable price. Perhaps the inflated price tells us something about the inflation pressures building in the system?

Parsson reminds us that inflation happens the same way every single time. A speculative bubble bursts so government floods the system with money. This makes asset prices rise (stock markets always explode before the inflation becomes apparent). The velocity of money stays at zero for a prolonged period and then, suddenly, it explodes. This makes the stock market go up even more as confidence come back. Everybody notices asset prices rising and loves it. Nobody notices the fact that costs start rising faster.

{Have to interject. Does this sound familiar, right now?}

Margins get crushed – corporate and personal. The acid erosion of inflation starts to bite and the stock market collapses except this time the government cannot throw money at the problem because of the inflation. So, the market is forced to deal with the bad investment decisions that led to the initial speculative bubble. The inflation prolongs the day of reckoning but does not eliminate it.

Perhaps the single most powerful idea he presents is that Inflation does not fix deflation. It’s a bit like love: the opposite of love is not hate. It is indifference. Adding hate does not make the situation better. Instead it leads to volatile swings of emotion. In love you might start to say “I love you” and I hate you”. In markets we find episodes of inflation history preoccupy policymakers in the same dialogue every time: “deal with the deflation””deal with the inflation”. When this happened in the 1970’s it was called “Stop Go Policy”. Buckle your seat belts because that’s the road we are now on!

The trends of the past and present are interwoven. There is nothing new under the sun, as Terence wrote. We merely change our hats and sunglasses. The questions as what to do is interesting, but not academic.

One can point out that gold has recently settled 6%; but, is it safe from confiscation if you buy? Probably not, the way we are going. You could have it in a European account if you have sizable assets and want to keep it that way. Junk silver is great for the rest of us.

George Soros, and you can rely on his public statements as being the opposite of what is true, but sometimes he may actually say something not self-serving, advises investing Africa and predicts money will flow there in the future.

The problem is security, of course. Big money can merely buy countries, I suppose. So, think land, guns, peanut butter.

Big Brother Today

2011-12-07T09:18:00.000-05:00

Barack Hussein Obama has made an executive order to take control of the rural land. While we get distracted by politics and economics, Obama continues on his central control of our lives.

Must WATCH

The show is grating as it sounds like a poor sports commentary show, but pay attention to the early part.

Why is Homeland Security and the FCC on a new committee to govern the use of rural land?

Antarctic melt: my car didn't do it

2011-12-06T13:30:00.000-05:00

Rod send me a link to WattsUpWithThat.com a blog written by some guy with too much time on his hands who thinks it is important to object to the, well, crap presented as global warming. I can't imagine someone being so ticked off.

Watts is going through the latest leaked true believer emails that are far more unprofessional than the first. Watts is uncontrollable in his zeal and anger at the scientific treason he sees. I get two or three emails a day! I figure if I link to him, half my day will be free. I noted that his blog has had 97 million hits.

Below is a report of a finding, rather than anger at pseudo scientists. I like this finding as it agrees with me. The Canadians have already published this view regarding the Artic Sea. Damn deniers. Click on the headline to go to site. It is worth keeping, but I am not sure about the daily emails.

You will recall I went through all this stuff two years ago using real NASA and NOAH information, not that filtered through true believers.

Tropical sea temperatures influence melting in Antarctica

Accelerated melting of two fast-moving outlet glaciers that drain Antarctic ice into the Amundsen Sea Embayment is likely the result, in part, of an increase in sea-surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific Ocean, according to new University of Washington research.

Higher-than-normal sea-level pressure north of the Amundsen Sea sets up westerly winds that push surface water away from the glaciers and allow warmer deep water to rise to the surface under the edges of the glaciers, said Eric Steig, a UW professor of Earth and space sciences.

“This part of Antarctica is affected by what’s happening on the rest of the planet, in particular the tropical Pacific,” he said.

The research involves the Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, two of the five largest glaciers in Antarctica. Those two glaciers are important because they drain a large portion of the ice sheet. As they melt from below, they also gain speed, draining the ice sheet faster and contributing to sea level rise. Eventually that could lead to global sea level rise of as much as 6 feet, though that would take hundreds to thousands of years, Steig said.

NASA scientists recently documented that a section of the Pine Island Glacier the size of New York City had begun breaking off into a huge iceberg. Steig noted that such an event is normal and scientists were fortunate to be on hand to record it on film. Neither that event nor the new UW findings clearly link thinning Antarctic ice to human causes.

But Steig’s research shows that unusual winds in this area are linked to changes far away, in the tropical Pacific Ocean. Warmer-than-usual sea-surface temperatures, especially in the central tropics, lead to changes in atmospheric circulation that influence conditions near the Antarctic coast line. Recent decades have been exceptionally warm in the tropics, he said, and to whatever extent unusual conditions in the tropical Pacific can be attributed to human activities, unusual conditions in Antarctica also can be attributed to those causes.

He noted that sea-surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific last showed significant warming in the 1940s, and the impact in the Amundsen Sea area then was probably comparable to what has been observed recently. That suggests that the 1940s tropical warming could have started the changes in the Amundsen Sea ice shelves that are being observed now, he said.

Steig presents his findings Tuesday (Dec. 6) at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. In another presentation Wednesday, he will discuss evidence from ice cores on the history of Antarctic climate in the last century.

He emphasized that natural variations in tropical sea-surface temperatures associated with the El Niño Southern Oscillation play a significant role. The 1990s were notably different from all other decades in the tropics, with two major El Niño events offset by only minor La Niña events.

“The point is that if you want to predict what’s going to happen in the next fifty, one-hundred, one-thousand years in Antarctica, you have to pay attention to what’s happening elsewhere,” he said. “The tropics are where there is a large source of uncertainty.”

Oligarchy: Soros and Obama

2011-12-02T11:14:00.000-05:00

George Soros Helped Craft Stimulus Then Invested in Companies Benefiting

by Wynton Hall

Billionaire George Soros gave advice and direction on how President Obama should allocate so-called “stimulus” money in a series of regular private meetings and consultations with White House senior advisers even as Soros was making investments in areas affected by the stimulus program.

It’s just one more revelation featured in the blockbuster new book that continues to rock Washington,Throw Them All Out, authored by Breitbart News editor Peter Schweizer.

Mr. Soros met with Mr. Obama’s top economist on February 25, 2009 and twice more with senior officials in the Old Executive Office Building on March 24^th and 25^th as the stimulus plan was being crafted. Later, Mr. Soros also participated in discussions on financial reform.

Then, in the first quarter of 2009, Mr. Soros went on a stock buying spree in companies that ultimately benefited from the federal stimulus.

Soros doubled his holdings in medical manufacturer Hologic, a company that benefited from stimulus spending on medical systems
Soros tripled his holdings in fiber channel and software maker Emulus, a company that wound up scoring a large amount of federal funds going to infrastructure spending
Soros bought 210,000 shares in Cisco Systems, which came up big in the stimulus lottery
Soros also bought Extreme Networks, which, months later, said it was expanding broadband to rural America “as part of President Obama’s broadband strategy”
Soros bought 1.5 million shares in American Electric Power, a company Mr. Obama gave $1 billion to in June 2009
Soros bought shares in utility company Ameren, which bagged a $540 million Department of Energy loan
Soros bought 250,000 shares of Public Service Enterprise Group, 500,000 shares of NRG Energy, and almost a million shares of Entergy—all companies that came up winners in the Department of Energy taxpayer giveaway that produced the Solyndra debacle
Soros bought into BioFuel Energy, a company that benefitted when the EPA announced a regulation on ethanol
Soros bought Powerspan in April 2009. Just weeks later, the clean-energy company landed $100 million from the Department of Energy
In the second quarter of 2009, Soros bought education technology giant Blackboard, which became a big recipient of education stimulus money
Soros also bought Burlington Northern Santa Fe and CSX, both beneficiaries of Mr. Obama’s plans for revitalizing the railroads
Soros bought Cognizant Technology Solutions, which scored stimulus funds in education and health care technology
Soros also bought 300,000 shares of Constellation Energy Group and 4.6 million shares of Covanta, both of which landed taxpayers’ money through the stimulus, the former of which bagged $200 million

Not Making This Up

2011-11-30T17:27:00.000-05:00

A real seminar announcement from the ethical Penn State:

An Ethical Critique of the Climate Science Disinformation CampaignDear Attendees of COP-17:
On Tuesday, November 29th, in a seminar organized by Penn State University and the University of Washington on the ethical dimensions of climate change join us to look at two issues.
One, an ethical analysis of the climate change disinformation campaign. We will examine whether this is a new kind of crime against humanity?
Second, we will look at the piratical significance for negotiations in Durban if climate change is understood to create human rights violations. Tuesday, November 29th, 1PM – 5PM,The University of Kwazulu-Natal,Howard College Campus Howard College Lecture Theater

Donald A. Brown
Associate Professor Environmental Ethics, Science, and Law,
Director,Collaborative Program on Ethical Dimensions of Climate Change, Rock Ethics Institute,
Penn State University
126 Willard,
University Park, Pa, 16802
717-802-xxxx (cell); 814-865-xxxx (office)
dab57@psu.xxxx

Throw open the window and yell, "I'm mad as hell and I won't take it anymore."

I think I may be part of the disinformation campaign and these idiots are going to meet over mineral water to determine if I am guilty of a crime against humanity, something like covering up child abuse or lying about scientific findings. Who knows, the UN may indict me.

Seriously, this preposterous positioning should now be crystal clear as fraudulent or crazy. Most of what is passed around for science is exactly the same only hidden behind, what the lying scientists call it, a "fudge" factor.

Now, consider what inbred gibberish you hear from the brand name schools along these same lines.

Bernholtz Line: we have passed into the danger zone

2011-11-28T19:04:00.000-05:00

Readers already know that I am recommending a slow panic on a personal level and activism on the political level. To my mind, it is certain that we are in for a hard fall that breaks through the floor.

The only way to stop it would be to elect a Tea Party Congress and a President not afraid of using a scalpel. I do not think Messers. Gingrich and Romney are smart enough to be vicious. Perhaps, I am wrong. Once that happens and the scalpels are out, then a one-time tax and/or a voluntary contribution would be make sense, but not if the spenders are still in power. Who wants to give money to a junkie?

Peter Bernholz (Professor Emeritus of Economics in the Center for Economics and Business, University of Basel, University of Switzerland) seems to be the man to quote these days. His take, see below, is that in the 12 largest hyperinflationary events, the alarms sound when a government crosses the Bernholtz "line" which is when governmental debt is 40% of its expenditures. The U.S. passed that line last year. We are at 42% and rising. Japan is in its eighth year, the music is about to stop, and there is no chair left. I read an analysis that Japan will have a good 2012 because it is responding to the nuclear disaster. Short sighted.

In the meantime, the Democrats want to increase taxes so they can increase expenditures. They say the Tea Party people are mean. The GOP elite nod their heads in the back. The dementia of European socialism has hit the U.S. with a powerful force. It seems the new purpose of government is to pay money to people. The demented continue on a path even though they see is has never worked. [There is the concurrent argument that collapse is the intent of the left.]

We have a marriage that is going bad. Dad has three jobs and sees the credit card bills exceed his ability to pay, hence the interest rates will go up as his credit worthiness goes down. Mom is mentally ill and spends her life buying things so the kids will like her. She goes to lunch with her friends wearing her new clothes. They all live in a fancy house with a 40% mortgage. Mom hides her credit card bills.

The children and Mom think Dad is mean and selfish. There is no solution in asking Mom to show some logic, she is ill. Children are children. So, Dad has to act boldly even if his actions are hated. Dad is working toward a heart attack and has to deal with the situation.

Below, is a good starting point:

...The first question anyone will ask is: why doesn't the US simply cut spending? While this is probably the correct solution, it is the least politically desirable. As we've witnessed throughout Europe, austerity leads to massive social unrest. Any politician who takes money away from special interest groups and government departments is putting a target on his/her back. [So, we need to put one on their back if the refuse.]
The chart below is the kingpin of this article in that it demonstrates the growing connection between votes and government spending. Fully 60% of government spending is a form of social welfare that is paid to the individual citizen. In other words, the government needs to keep making more and more of these payments to keep constituents happy. The US government has backed itself into a corner.
Hyperinflation is a political issue. It happens when a government is forced to spend money it doesn't have. And when it can no longer borrow to fill the gap, it turns to the printing presses. Once the cycle has started, it becomes self-reinforcing. Based on research by Peter Bernholz we are dangerously close to that tipping point:
There have been 28 episodes of hyperinflation of national economies in the 20th century, with 20 occurring after 1980. Peter Bernholz (Professor Emeritus of Economics in the Center for Economics and Business (WWZ) at the University of Basel, Switzerland) has spent his career examining the intertwined worlds of politics and economics with special attention given to money. In his most recent book, Monetary Regimes and Inflation: History, Economic and Political Relationships, Bernholz analyzes the 12 largest episodes of hyperinflations – all of which were caused by financing huge public budget deficits through money creation. His conclusion: the tipping point for hyperinflation occurs when the government’s deficit exceed 40% of its expenditures.
Hyperinflation is the child of fiscal policy, and monetary policy is the plug that fills the fiscal holes. The hyperinflationary wheels are set in motion, but it's not too late to change course. I think that until restraints on spending are evident the bull case for gold (and other metals such as silver (SLV), platinum (PPLT) and palladium (PALL)) remains intact.
Bottom line, when a government can't control spending the risks of hyperinflation rise and the case for owning gold strengthens.

The there is a difference to the current challenges. The GDP can no longer overcome the governments taxation and regulation, so the massive jump in Gross Federal Debt is met with an inverted GDP, not a rebounding one. Why? One reason is that the governmental expense is to buy votes with social programs, not feed the economy. One result it the government hands out money then immediately acts to water it down. [Yes, prices inflation is rampant, though the government does not track food and fuel so it reports everything is fine.]

Bretton Woods agreement - when Nixon ended the gold standard. This enabled the US to run budget deficits to pay for wars and growing entitlements.

History has repeatedly shown that when politicians have few restrictions they will spend until a country is bankrupt. Today, one of every three dollars that is spent by the US government must be borrowed.

Ron Paul

2011-11-18T19:30:00.001-05:00

Here is a link to a long speech by Ron Paul in 2008. LINK

He is exactly right about the Constitution, the states, individual freedom, and the natural tendency of people toward tyranny. I recommend you watch, even if it is on and off.

Early on, he said that once a person is aware of the reasons behind revolution to save the republic, he has a moral obligation to act, unlike those who are not aware.

Those who have been programmed by the mockery of Paul or who believe his foreign policy is crazy, a common Republican viewpoint as he is a threat to the establishment, take the time to see who he really is.

His thoughts are those of our founders and we have been so weaned away from personal responsibility that he can be mocked, but ... listen

Snapshot of American Opinion

2011-11-18T14:23:00.000-05:00

I am depositing here the headlines from Rasmussen Reports. The headlines alone demonstrate the country is not as advertised by major media. What is interesting is the nature of the questions.

In any event, we see the dichotomy between the oligarchy and the people. The people are getting information outside TV and the NYT, so the media control is drying up. Obama is moving to control the Internet, but he will not have any success in time for the next election. If the FCC decided to exercise control next year, the public reaction would be massive. Politicians are smart about politics, so unless they are in a desperate mode, they will not make a Hitlerian move at this time.

BTW I use Rasmussen because it is very accurate. It beat every other poll in the 2008 election.

G

Most Recent Releases

November 18, 2011

New High: 65% Oppose Automatic Citizenship for Children Born Here to Illegal Immigrants

77% Have Unfavorable Opinion of Freddie Mac, 73% Say Same of Fannie Mae

Will Obama's Foreign Policy Wins Lead to a Win Next Year?: A Commentary By Thomas F. Schaller

Florida Senate: Mack (R) 43%, Nelson (D) 39%

November 17, 2011

43% Have Put Off Medical Procedures To Save Money

Iowa: Gingrich 32%, Romney 19%, Cain 13%

Obama 45%, Bachmann 33%

69% Say Federal Government Lacks Authority To Force Purchase of Health Insurance

59% Say Government Bailouts Were Bad For America

Obama Has a Knack for Ticking off America's Friends By Michael Barone

Clean Energy Worth the Political Muck By Froma Harrop

November 16, 2011

18% Say U.S. Heading In Right Direction

Michigan: President Tied With Generic Republican

60% Put Border Control Ahead of Legalizing Undocumented Workers

27% Want President to Act Alone on Jobs, 63% Say Work With Congress

Voters Want Taxes Simpler but Not Flat

An Important New Book: A Commentary by Tony Blankley

90% Say They're Paying More For Groceries Compared To A Year Ago

November 15, 2011

Election 2012: Obama 45%, Generic Republican 44%

Confidence in U.S. Banks Dips to New Low

Election 2012: Obama 46%, Cain 36%

81% Express Concern That Europe’s Financial Problems Will Drag Down U.S. Economy

58% Expect More Partisanship in Washington, D.C.

The Angst in Giving Thanks By Froma Harrop

November 14, 2011

Generic Congressional Ballot: Republicans 41%, Democrats 41%

Generic Republican Leads Obama in Pennsylvania

Election 2012: Obama 50%, Gingrich 38%

38% Favor U.S. Military Action If Diplomacy Fails to Stop Iran's Nuclear Program, 35% Oppose

54% Favor Repeal of Health Care Reform Law

Tea Partiers, Like Peaceniks, Upset Political Order: A Commentary By Michael Barone

30% Have Favorable Opinion of Paterno, 51% Unfavorable

November 13, 2011

60% Favor Considering Spending Cuts in Every Government Program

72% Have Grown Children Living With Them Or Knows Someone Who Does

November 12, 2011

64% Favor Jailing Sex Offenders Indefinitely If Necessary

What They Told Us: Reviewing Last Week’s Key Polls

November 11, 2011

Obama Trails Generic Republican in Ohio

Missouri 2012: Romney 45%, Obama 42%

Election 2012: Obama 43%, Romney 42%

Just 25% Have Favorable Opinion of Rick Perry

86% Give U.S. Military Positive Marks

Mindless -- But Always Talking Loud By Joe Conason

November 10, 2011

46% Say U.S. and Allies Winning War on Terror

Missouri Senate: McCaskill Bid for Reelection a Toss-Up

In Florida, Obama Trails Generic Republican by Six

PSU Gets Poor Marks for Initial Handling of Sex Abuse Reports

Defining Poverty in the Land of Plenty: A Commentary by Froma Harrop

Most Believe Reporters Publish Damaging Info First, Check Facts Later

November 9, 2011

17% Say U.S. Heading In Right Direction

Florida Primary: Cain 30%, Romney 24%, Gingrich 19%

Obama 48%, Cain 37%

51% Now Say Allegations Against Cain Likely to Be Serious and True

24% Think Stimulus Plan Reduced Unemployment, 30% Say It Added to Problem

GOP Primary Deadlock? By Tony Blankley

November 8, 2011

Election 2012: Generic Republican 46%, Obama 42%

36% of Workers Expect To Make More Money Next Year

California: Obama 45%, Generic Republican 41%

Obama 44%, Perry 35%

Voters Are Angry, Especially at Congress and Bailed-Out Banks

Andy Rooney Was Really Real: A Commentary By Froma Harrop

Just 33% Confident They’ll Get All Their Promised Medicare Benefits

November 7, 2011

Generic Congressional Ballot: Republicans 44%, Democrats 37%

Obama 44%, Gingrich 38%

New Low: 35% of Workers Plan on Staying At Current Company for More Than Five Years

36% Say Wall Street Protesters Represent Views of Mainstream America, 44% Disagree

New Low: 39% Favor Tougher Prosecution for Hate Crime Suspects

Can Cain Keep Flouting the Cardinal Rules of Politics? By Michael Barone

November 6, 2011

51% Still Think Obama's More Liberal Than They Are

November 5, 2011

Quintessential Example of America's Subversives

2011-11-17T10:34:00.000-05:00

Below is a quote from a Tea Party email. You will find the quintessential example of what is wrong with the country.

In one person, Elizabeth Warren, you find the amalgam of the subversives: rich, academic, brand school, elitist, and pandering to the socialistic impulses of the masses. Warren gave up a $600,000 a year job teaching one class to be an operative for President Obama. She is interesting in that her background starts out normally. She studied to be a speech pathologist, then went to Rutgers law school. Upon graduation, she worked from home writing wills until she got a teaching job at Rutgers.

She kept on teaching bagging FIVE law school jobs and wound up advising Harry Reid on the idiotic bail outs. I am sure she is a knowledgeable bankruptcy lawyer, but that does not mean she is supposed to create bankrupts in the same way a criminal lawyer does not promote crime.

She is somehow (probably waiver in the Obamacare act, see below) a federal employee, now, running for the governorship of Massachusetts in 2012 with leftist endorsements:

EMILY's List, the nation's largest resource for women in politics [who must support abortion,] has endorsed Warren saying, "Elizabeth is a champion for progressive values and a fighter for the middle class".^[35] She has also drawn strong support [from the Democratic fund raising organization] ActBlue.^[36]

Our major challenge in this era is piercing the veil of corporate stupidity of fellow voters. The academics have done their job in creating a generation of clods. As I noted previously, the current younger generation is the FIRST in our history where their reading level is lower than their parents. Rent the old version of the film, The Time Machine and wait for the Eloi. At the left is our hero talking to a future version of a drone of Occupy the City. (The British "Wall St.")

We should required a simple test before one can be a voter. Say:

1. "What happened in the U.S. during the early 1860s?"

2. "Circle what does not belong: The President, The House, The Senate, The Federal Reserve, All belong."

3. True or False: The Constitution established the powers and rights of the states.

You figure, one wrong and you get an expense paid emigration holiday to Greece.

...Elizabeth Warren explained that the rich are people who build factories but aren't grateful enough to pay their fair share...
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau refused a Freedom of Information Act request to release her salary, but we do have the salary ranges for two assistant directors of sub-offices at the CFPB.
The Assistant Director at the Office of Financial Empowerment, whose job is "developing and implementing policy and programs that empower low and moderate income and underserved consumers to make better informed financial decisions" has a salary range of 185,000 to 247,000 dollars.
The Assistant Director at the Office of Older Americans, (apparently senior citizens is now politically incorrect) also has a salary range of 160,000 to 235,000 dollars ... and his or her job involves "Working with the Associate Director and Deputy Associate Director of Consumer Education and Engagement, as well as senior leaders from across CFPB."...
Just how many senior leaders, directors, associate directors and deputy associate directors are there at a single consumer agency? When you find out let me know. But the CFPB has offices in four major cities, pays relocation costs and promises "a highly competitive compensation and benefits package."
...Here's a hint, the Dodd-Frank bill didn't just establish the CFPB, it also created the Office of Financial Research with a neat little caveat exempting them from pay schedule limitations
"COMPENSATION- The Director, in consultation with the Chairperson, shall fix, adjust, and administer the pay for all employees of the Office, without regard to chapter 51 or subchapter III of chapter 53 of title 5, United States Code, relating to classification of positions and General Schedule pay rates."
In case you happened to miss that, it was only somewhere around the 1000th page under Section 152 D (2 ) right behind the case reading, "Beware of the Barney." It's an ironic note in a bill that fusses a bit about executive compensation when they're private sector executives, but creates an organization with open ended salaries for government employees.
Oh and if you're still worried whether Elizabeth Warren has enough to eat, her Harvard salary was around 632,000 dollars. Her workload? Teaching a class on contract law twice a week. It's not exactly shoveling coal in a coal mine. Class warfare it turns out is a game for the rich.

Crisis mode is now, crisis is later

2011-11-16T14:40:00.000-05:00

From a stock company news article. I have been going on about this for some time, so I thought a third party's take would help, as it agrees with me. Send this around, especially to anyone in Congress. The White House is useless. They want a collapse, as you must see by now. The current debt "negotiation" is a joke. See the pig below. More than that, the Democrats want a failure so they can say Republicans are "do nothing" and want to starve children. The country? Oh, please. Grow up, we are talking about politics, not the real world.
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Europe Still Headed For An Epic Financial Collapse

28 comments | November 10, 2011 | includes: DRR, ERO, EU, EUO, FXE, ULE, URR

Oh, how the mighty have fallen. In just a matter of days, two of Europe's most venerable leaders have been toppled. George Papandreou was the third member of the Papandreou dynasty to be prime minister of Greece. Silvio Berlusconi had dominated Italian politics for nearly two decades. But now they are both heading out the door and the international media have been reporting on their resignations with the kind of enthusiasm that is normally reserved for sporting events. "Down goes Papandreou! Down goes Berlusconi!" If you didn't know better, you would almost be tempted to think that some of the recent news reports were describing a boxing match.

But this is what happens when debt problems spiral out of control. It is the leaders who take the fall. So will the resignations of Papandreou and Berlusconi help anything? Of course not. Europe is still headed for a financial collapse of epic proportions...

The yield on 10 year Italian bonds (probably the most important financial number in the world at the moment) is now up to 6.95% [after going over 7%- Ed.]. Never before in the euro era has the yield on Italian bonds been as high as we have seen this week. So why is this important? Well, the reality is that Italy simply cannot afford to service its massive national debt when yields are this high.

We are officially in the danger zone. Carl Weinberg, the chief economist at High Frequency Economics, recently said the following about what would happen if Italian bond yields go up into the 8% to 10% range: If it has to pay those yields to finance itself, Italy is dead, and the sovereign crisis just blew up.

So watch that number very carefully over the next few months. Italy is being called "too big to fail, too big to save". There is no way that Europe can afford to let Italy crash, but there is also no way that the rest of Europe can put together enough money for a full scale bailout of Italy...

Many believe that the departure of Berlusconi is going to pave the way for brutal austerity measures to be imposed on the Italian people.

Suddenly, it very much feels like we are watching a replay of what has happened in Greece over the past couple of years. Just check out the following excerpt from a recent article in the London Evening Standard:

The Italians feel they've been humiliated by having to accept that monitors from the IMF will be arriving in the country this week to oversee a rise in pension ages, a sell-off of state assets and new rules to make jobs less secure.

...The Italians are definitely going to agree to some pretty significant budget cuts. But if bond yields keep rising, they are going to wipe out all of the savings from the budget cuts and then some. This is why I keep preaching about the horror of the U.S. national debt over and over and over. If you don't deal with it when you can, eventually interest rates rise to unbearable levels and a horror show quickly unfolds.

Anyway, right now Italy has a debt to GDP ratio of 118%. If it keeps expanding that debt it is going to result in a financial nightmare, but if they try to implement strict austerity measures it is also going to result in a financial nightmare. They are damned if they do and they are damned if they don't.

...Greece is a financial basket case, and unless someone gives them gigantic piles of money for free that is going to continue to be the case. A year ago, the yield on 2 year Greek bonds was a bit above 10%. Today, the yield on 2 year Greek bonds is over 100%. If you want to see what a financial meltdown looks like, just check out what is happening in Greece.

The rest of Europe is in panic mode too. For example, France is desperate to keep its AAA credit rating. In an article for the Telegraph, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard described the austerity measures that France is implementing in an attempt to head off a debt crisis of their own:

The belt-tightening plan -- the second package since August, taking total cuts to €112bn -- include a 5pc super-tax on big firms, a rise in VAT on restaurants and construction, and cuts on pensions, schools, health, and welfare. It is the latest squeeze in a relentless campaign of fiscal tightening across the eurozone.

In the end, all of this is too little, too late. Europe is heading for a date with destiny. They have spent themselves into oblivion and now they are going to pay the price. Some members of the financial community fear that a full-blown crisis could erupt at any moment. For example, according to Business Insider, Colin Tan of Deutsche Bank recently said that he believes that it is possible that "we could be in full crisis mode" by the time the week ends...The situation with Italy feels increasingly like one that has little chance of materially improving until some extreme pressure is put on someone to act. It may not come to a head this week but the signs are not good that we can avoid an extreme situation emerging soon.

For those of you that are freaking out about now, don't worry too much. A full-blown crisis is not going to happen this week. But time is running out. And when Europe comes apart, it is going to have a dramatic impact on the United States as well.

According to an article in the Financial Post, the Federal Reserve made the following statement in a report about a survey that it just released:

About one-half of domestic bank respondents, mostly large banks, indicated that they make loans or extend credit lines to European banks or their affiliates or subsidiaries

Big U.S. banks have a lot of exposure to European debt and to European banks. When the financial dominoes start to fall, a lot of those dominoes are going to be in the United States. One of the biggest dangers to be concerned about are all of the credit default swap contracts that U.S. banks have written on European debt. Just check out what a recent article posted on the website of MSNBC had to say about that:

U.S. banks have written about $400 billion in CDS contracts on European sovereign debt, according to the Bank for International Settlements. Those payouts would be triggered if Greece or Italy defaults. Because financial institutions are not required to report their CDS holdings, little is known about which banks or investment firms are on the hook, and for how much.

As I have written about previously, there is a very good chance that the world could be facing a massive derivatives crisis at some point in the next five to ten years. If you hear the news talk about a "problem with derivatives" or a "derivatives crisis" then you will want to pay very close attention. Over the past 30 years, the global financial system has constructed a gigantic mountain of debt, risk and leverage unlike anything the world has ever seen before. At some point the whole thing is going to come crashing down. When it does, it is going to affect the entire globe. A huge storm is coming. Get prepared while you can.

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You may as well make some money with this knowledge. Even in a "mode" currencies will spike and dip. When things turn ugly, the stock market will be like remind us of musical chairs.

Last Chance

2011-11-11T10:41:00.000-05:00

Listen to the following link.

It is an ad to sell a financial service. That said, you do not have to buy anything to get the point. (Some is free) Listen to what Mr. Lombardi has predicted for the last ten years. He nailed every major move before it happened; most likely you dismissed any such projections as whacko (I am just licking wounds.) The fat days are over and the fat can't believe it.

If you have a plan, you don't need his service - just think!

Graph of Real US GDP

percent per year

I have gone on ad nauseum as to what to do and will not add to this entry. Simply: dollar, no; fixed loans, yes; stocks, no - unless they go up with inflation; bonds, absolutely no.

If you want to hedge against a collapse, not convinced but worried, buy some ETFs betting against the dollarand/or market.

Note, for a short while, the dollar will do well as Euro money comes in. Personally, I am betting my little stake against the Euro. After a serious move, I will be against the dollar. Holding money in a bank is deadly.

Coffee and peanut butter, hell yes.

I think I am going to drop by the local coin shop and buy junk silver as I have extra cash.

Below is a hard copy of the talk, but it is easily digested following along. Please listen. There is no excuse to dismiss the concern of collapse. None. More than listening, share this blog.

Most of us are prisoners of inertia. We go to work, go home, eat, go to work. This is fine if you have no debt, gold, and a solid income source. Almost NO ONE fits this category.

Not much I can add, I just wish to urge seriousness. You ignore the coming problem at the risk of your family, your property, and yourself.

Gene
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Mr. Lombardi: "The U.S. is technically bankrupt..."

So, Congress gave the president, who, as I have been saying for three years, intends this collapse, more money to spend. He has won his objective of destroying our economy. Next, his goal is socialism, he thinks, so we have rioting in the streets now by dilettantes. Of course, he is being used by the fascists and he probably thinks he is more powerful than they. Hitler worked with the fascists.

There is no will in Congress to act to prevent the effort to collapse our system. They do not even see it. When they do, it will be too late. Take care of your own, now, and vote every statist, socialist, Marxist, vague "liberal," and imbecile running dog out of office next year, at every level. It will be too late to stop the slide, but the worst thing is to have an FDR making things worse doing the exact wrong things. (Another blog to come.)

His first five predictions have already come true!

Critical Warning Number Six

Fail to heed this final warning at your own risk!

Dear Reader:

Something very big will happen in America within the next 180 days.

It will be more devastating than the credit crisis of 2008.

For most people, it will hit them like a brick wall.

It will touch Americans harder and deeper than anything else we’ve seen since the Great Depression.

I feel so strongly about the critical warning I’m about to give you, I’ve decided to document it in this audio-video presentation. And I’ve labeled this a controversial video, because most people will not like what I have to say…they will find it hard to believe until they see all the facts as I present them.

My name is Michael Lombardi. You may have heard of me. Maybe you are one of the hundreds of thousand of investors who get my daily Profit Confidential column.

Or maybe you’ve heard of my company, Lombardi Publishing Corporation. I started it back in 1986. It’s served over one million customers in 141 countries since then.

Over the past decade, I’ve been widely recognized as the predictor of five major economic events.

Here they are for you in black and white:

In 2002, I started advising my readers to buy gold-related investments. Gold bullion sold for less than $300 an ounce back then. In fact, in 2002, I put all of my retirement money, and all of my wife’s, in gold-related investments. I’ve been pushing gold for almost 10 years now.

In 2006, I begged my readers to get out of the housing market. I have nothing to hide. This is the exact e-mail alert I sent to my readers on March 1, 2006:

“The proof the party is over in the U.S. housing market could not be clearer to me.The price action of the new-home builder stocks is telling the true story—these stocks are falling in price daily and the media is not picking it up. The latecomers to the U.S. housing market may end up looking like the latecomers to the tech-stock rally that ended so abruptly in 1999.”

Remember, I wrote the above in 2006 when the last thing on people’s minds were declining real estate prices.

In late 2006, I started predicting that the U.S. economy would be in a recession in late 2007. Here’s what I said back on November 13, 2006:

“It’s disappointing more hasn’t been written on the popular financial sites and in the newspapers about the real threat of a recession happening in 2007. I want my readers to be fully aware of my economic opinion: I wouldn’t be surprised to see the U.S. economy in a recession sometime in 2007. In fact, I expect it.”

Again, I wrote this back in late 2006—and everyone thought I was way off…until the actual recession hit.

By the spring of 2007, I was giving dire warnings to my readers about the economy. On March 22, 2007, I sent this e-mail dispatch to my readers:

“Over the past few weeks I’ve written about subprime lenders and how their demise will hurt the U.S. housing market, the economy and the stock market. There’s no escaping the carnage headed our way because the housing market and subprime business are falling apart. The worst of our problems, because of the easy money made available to borrowers, which fueled the housing boom that peaked in 2005, have yet to arrive.”

I was warning about the severe global recession we experienced in 2008 and 2009 long before anyone else.

And I totally predicted the 2008 economic massacre that later become simply labeled the “credit crisis.” On November 29, 2007, I wrote my followers:

“The Dow Jones Industrial Average, the S&P 500 and the other major stock market indices finished yesterday with the best two-day showing since 2002. I’m looking at the market rally of the past two days as a classic stock market bear trap. As the economy gets closer to contraction, 2008 will likely be a most challenging economic year for Americans.”

Years after I wrote the above, it was widely recognized that October 2007 was the top for the stock market. And, yes, 2008 was the worst year for the U.S. economy since the Great Depression.

Finally, I correctly predicted the crash in the stock market of 2008 and early 2009. I even wrote an obituary on the stock market in the fall of 2008 that made me somewhat of a forecasting legend:

Here’s what I e-mail-blasted to over 100,000 people on October 6, 2008:

“A Stock Market’s Obituary: It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. After a strong and courageous battle, the Dow Jones fell victim to a credit crisis and finally succumbed on Friday, October 3, 2008, when it fell decisively below the mid-point between its 2002 low and its 2007 high.”

The Dow Jones Industrial fell approximately 40% after I wrote this now famous “Stock Market Obituary,” finally hitting bottom on March 9, 2009, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average hit 6,440.

Then…at the depth of the dark days of March 2009, I sent an e-mail alert to my thousands of readers and told them to “jump into the stock market with both feet. “

I turned bullish on stocks in March of 2009 and rode the bear market rally from 6,440 on March 9, 2009, to 12,876 on May 2, 2011—a gain of 99%. On May 2, 2011 I told my readers a stock market crash was headed our way. From May 2, 2011 to October 4, 2011, the Dow Jones Industrials fell 2,472 points.

To recap my big five predictions that all came true, I:

Told my readers to get into gold in 2002;
Told them to get out of the housing market in 2006;
Predicted the recession of late 2007;
Told my readers to get out of stocks in the fall of 2008; and
Told my readers to get back into stocks in March of 2009.

I didn’t spend the last five minutes of your time telling you about my five key predictions so I could pat myself on the back. Far from it.

In fact, I’m a humble person who prefers a low-key profile. I have a Master’s Degree in International Finance from one of Europe's oldest universities. Most importantly, I’m a successful businessman with a deep love of economic analysis and the stock market.

What I’m about to tell you, my prediction number six, which is about to happen, is so off the wall, so controversial, I didn’t want you to think it was coming from some kind of quack. It’s coming from someone with a proven track record at making economic and financial forecasts.

Let’s fast forward to November of 2011, where we are today.

The economy is slowing dramatically. The unemployment rate in America is going up, not down. Manufacturing is growing at its worst pace in 12 months. Consumer spending, which accounts for 70% of U.S. GDP, is drying up. A glut of foreclosed homes still overhangs the housing market.

The United States is on the cusp of falling back into a recession. Some will call it a new recession. I will call it “Recession Part II.” But this is not the real problem.

While my colleagues will dance around the issue, while other economists will not utter the words, I will put it in writing:

“The U.S. is technically bankrupt.”

Our budget deficit this year will be $1.3 trillion. Our official national debt exceeds $14.5 trillion and this past summer Congress gave the Obama Administration permission to increase our debt to $16.4 trillion. Our unofficial national debt, when you take into account unfunded liabilities and entitlement to our citizens, is closer to $100 trillion.

By the end of this decade, according to the White House’s own prediction, the official national debt will surpass $20.0 trillion—not including off-balance-sheet items like old-age security, Medicare, and other government promises to its citizens.

And there’s also hidden government guarantees not on the government books…

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac own or guarantee half the residential mortgages in America. Who owns both of these companies now? Why, it’s the U.S. government. They “censured” both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac on September 7, 2008.

In effect, the government either owns or guarantees half the outstanding residential mortgages in this country. According to data compiler CoreLogic Inc., 5.67 million home mortgages in the U.S. were either in the foreclosure process or delinquent last month, exposing our government to even more losses.

Politician after politician has failed to reduce government spending. Their belief is that spending more money will fix the economic problem. Well, they’ve spent trillions since 2008 and our economic problems are about to get worse.

The U.S. government and the politicians that run it are addicted to spending more money than the government takes in. If we look at it conservatively, and only look at the government’s “official” figures, by the end of this decade, our national debt will be about 150% of our GDP—about the same level it was after World War II.

Why we’ll never get out of this hole

After World War II, America became a superpower. Our manufacturing base grew dramatically; the industrialized revolution was so great that the American dollar replaced gold as the reserve currency of other world central banks. There was a U.S. job boom.

Today, what do we have in America to carry us into the next boom? Nothing. The Internet isn’t creating jobs. Manufacturing, it’s gone to Mexico, India and China. I doubt George Washington ever envisioned a future where Americans would be suffering so much. It’s embarrassing, but true: Over 44 million people in this country are using some form of food stamps! (Source: National Inflation Association)

America, the Empire, is history. The Standard & Poor's downgrading of the U.S.'s credit rating this past August 5th, 2011 is just the beginning.

Going back in time a little…

In an e-mail blast to thousands of my followers on July 21, 2005, I said,

“The U.S. lowered interest rates in 2004 to their lowest level in 46 years. And what did Americans do with their access to easy money? They borrowed and borrowed some more, investing the borrowed money into real estate. Looking ahead, perhaps the Fed’s actions (of 2004) will one day be regarded as one of the most costly errors committed by it or any other banking system in the last 75 years.”

I was exactly right.

Artificially low interest rates are actually causing us harm

Interest rates have remained so low for so long that inflation will become a serious problem for America in the months and years ahead. With the price of gold having risen 500% in less than a decade, gold is screaming, “inflation ahead!”

How does the government and an economy deal with inflation? Inflation is dealt with via higher interest rates. Mark my words: The artificially low interest rate policies of the past few years will come to hurt us in the form of hyper-inflation and sharply higher interest rates.

It will get worse

My prediction is not only that we are headed into Recession Part II—my prediction is that this next recession will also be much worse than the 2007-2008 recession and that it will hit as deep as the Great Depression.

You see…

Our government has no money left to bail us out during the next recession. The government is over-extended—if it was a business, it would be bankrupt right now.

The Federal Reserve has kept the economy alive the past two years by keeping its printing presses running overtime.

Let’s face two important facts.

The Fed can’t lower interest rates below the zero they are at today. The more money the Fed prints, the greater the risk of inflation, and the higher long-term interest rates will eventually move, stifling the economy.

Let’s move to the stock market

Did you know there is a striking similarity between the years 1934-1937 and 2008-2011?

Look at these facts:

The stock market crashes in 1929. Eighty years later, in 2008, it does the same thing.

The bear market rally that started in October 1934 lasted until August 1937—35 months—and took the Dow Jones Industrial Average from a level of 90 to 185, a gain of 106%. The Dow Jones then plummeted and didn’t recover until seven years later, 1944.

So similar it’s frightening: The bear market rally that started in March 2009 has lasted 32 months so far and has resulted in the Dow Jones Industrials rising close to 100%.

If the current bear market rally follows the same path as the bear market rally of 1934 to 1937, we have about three to six months left before the next phase of this bear market gets underway, ultimately bringing stock prices below their March 2009 lows.

This time around, for reasons I’ve just explained, the after-effects of the next leg of the bear market could be much worse than the Great Depression.

At this point, I assume you are sitting there, watching and listening to this audio-video presentation and saying, “Okay, Michael, what you say is stark and frightening. But it makes sense, the way you’ve laid out the facts.”

“So what do I do as an investor and
consumer to protect myself?”

The good news is that you could protect yourself from the economic devastation headed our way over the next six months. The better news is that, if you position your portfolio properly, starting today, you could actually make money during the next devastating down leg of this economy, while others struggle like never before.

Here are my five core beliefs about what’s headed our way and how I plan to actually profit from them.

1. The devaluation of the U.S. dollar that started in early
2009 will accelerate as the U.S. economy deteriorates.

After World War II, our government did a masterful job at convincing foreign central banks they should have U.S. dollars as their reserves instead of gold bullion. Today, 70% of world central banks have adopted the U.S. dollar as their official reserve currency.

As the value of the greenback erodes under a mountain of debt and coming rapid inflation, courtesy of too many dollars in the financial system (thank you, Federal Reserve), foreigners will be dumping dollars and moving away from a system where the greenback is the official reserve currency.

Chart courtesy of www.StockCharts.com

Shorting U.S. dollars is too risky and complicated for most of my readers. But there is a simple, easier way to make money as the U.S. dollar continues to devalue. There is an ETF you can buy that goes up when the U.S. dollar declines in value.

This ETF is in the currency that I believe will rise the most against the U.S. dollar over the next two years. No, it’s not gold. It’s a fiat currency that is up close to 30% against the U.S. dollar over the past 24 months. It’s a currency of one of the economically strongest countries in the world.

You put your money in this ETF, sit back, do nothing, and watch the value of the U.S. dollar fall as inflation and the national debt rise, and just watch this investment rise in value as the months go by.

My analysts have recently completed a research report called The ETF Set to Skyrocket in Price as the Devaluation of the U.S. Dollar Continues. We have hundreds of hours invested in researching, compiling and writing this report. My company plans to sell this report for $95. You can get it for free.

2. Gold prices will continue to rise.

When we look at the price of gold bullion today in inflation adjusted terms, it would need to be trading at $2,250 an ounce to be equal to its January 1980 price high of $850 an ounce.

But my public predictions about where gold prices are headed have been much higher. I’m expecting gold to trade at $3,000 before the bull market in the yellow metal is over.

Chart courtesy of www.StockCharts.com

Here’s an important fact I want you to be aware of:

After reaching an all-time record high of $1,921 an ounce on September 6, 2011, gold bullion prices have fallen back.

But we’ve been down this road many times before! In early 2003, the price of gold bullion fell 16%; in the summer of 2006 the price of gold fell 21%; from the spring to the fall of 2008 gold prices fell 28%; in the spring of 2009 gold prices fell 15%-- and each time the price of gold bullion recovered and moved higher by year’s end.

In fact, for 11 years running the price of gold bullion has closed each year higher in price than it started the year. The recent weakness in gold bullion prices (more like a correction in an ongoing bull market) is a tremendous opportunity for smart investors.

I’m a big bull on gold. Rising inflation, a debasing U.S. dollar, out-of-control government spending, and a currency printing press that never seems to stop will continue to push the price of gold higher.

But when I look at gold, if it moves from $1,700 or $1,800 to $3,000 an ounce over the next five years, as I expect it to, my gain will be close to 100%—as an investment, that’s not enough for me. I’m gunning for much bigger profits than that.

The big winners of the gold bull market will ultimately be the gold mining stocks. Look at this way. If a gold company’s cost to produce one ounce of gold is $900, at a price of $1,800, they are making a 100% profit. But, at price of $3,000, they are making a profit of 233%—and the stock market will reward the stock by multiples of 233%.

I’ve found a security that goes up in value when the stock prices of junior and senior gold producers rise. We started following it at $30; it trades at $60 today. If gold bullion prices go to only $2,500, this security could triple in price to $180.

My analysts have recently completed a research report called Single Best Leveraged Play for the Gold Bull Market. We have hundreds of hours invested in researching, compiling and writing this report. My company plans to sell this report for $95. You can get it for free.

3. The euro is as done as the U.S. dollar.

I’m blessed to be able to visit Europe once or twice a year to check on the economies of various European countries. Let me tell you firsthand, things are much, much worse in Europe than we read in the mainstream media.

On October 27, 2011, the euro zone leaders said they would bail out Greece, with European banks taking a 50% haircut off the value of their loans to Greece. This means Greece has technically defaulted on its debt. I believe Spain is next. Italy is not far behind.

Austerity measures are a difficult sell in Europe. This summer, Greek police needed to use tear gas to disperse 20,000 protesters at Greece’s Parliament House, as citizens demonstrated against the government’s wage cuts and tax increases. By October 19, the organized protests grew to 70,000 people strong.

Every morning, I wake up and ask this one question: when will Germany come to its senses and pull out of the euro? After all, Germany is the only real engine of the European Economic Community. Greece’s GDP…it’s less than 10% of Germany’s GDP.

Source: The Wall Street Journal, Sept 15, 2011

The euro has declined steadily against the U.S. dollar. I actually envision a time when the richer European countries will tire of bailing out the poorer European countries (it’s actually happening right now), when each country will just go back to its own currency. Ultimately, the euro will die, and with it the economies of the weaker European countries: Greece, Spain and Italy.

There’s a stock you can buy that goes up in value as the euro declines in value. The stock currently trades under $18—I see a $30 price tag on it this year.

My analysts have recently completed a research report called Making Money from the Sovereign Debt Crisis: How to Achieve Massive Profit from the Collapse of the Euro.We have hundreds of hours invested in researching, compiling and writing this report. My company plans to sell this report for $95. You can get it for free.

4. Inflation will become a real problem in America.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the consumer price index (“CPI”) is running at 3.9% per year.

While few are talking about it, inflation is a real problem in America. That’s what the rise in gold price has all been about: Gold is screaming: “Higher inflation ahead!”

Thanks to years of monetary policies that promoted artificially low interest rates and printing presses churning out dollars in overtime mode, hyperinflation and American sovereign debt issues will become the biggest obstacles for the United States for the remainder of this decade and well into the next decade.

After falling for 30-years, short-term interest rates are bottoming out. The long-term 10-year U.S. Treasury, it’s yielding a pathetic 2%-- a 50-year low. All cycles come to end. And I believe we are near the end of a long-term down cycle in interest rates.

While it may difficult to see today, and as crazy as it may sound, the government will be forced to raise interest rates to fend off inflation—just like it did in the early 1980s..

Higher interest rates will also put the proverbial remaining nails in the coffin known as the U.S. housing market.

Now you see why I said at the very beginning of this presentation that it’s not for the faint of heart. Imagine our government, the economy, housing prices and the stock market all collapsing at the same time?

But, for smart investors, there is more than just hope. As history has shown us, where there is fear, there is also profit.

We’re just putting the finishing touches on a special report that reveals an ETF that rises in value when interest rates rise. It’s called Inflation Hedge: Serious Profits from the New Multi-Year Trend of Higher Interest Rates. We have hundreds of hours invested in research, compiling and writing this report. My company plans to sell this report for $95. You can get it for free.

5. The stock market will ultimately test its lows of March 2009,
bringing the Dow Jones down 46% from where it sits today.

Yes, this is my final core belief: The bear market rally in stocks will lose steam somewhere in the next three to six months and move straight down to test its March 2009 lows.

Phase One of a bear market brings stock prices down sharply. That’s what happened when the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell from 14,164 in October 2007 to 6,440 on March 9, 2009—a tumble of 54%.

Phase Two of a bear market is when the bear lures investors back into stocks. The bear gives investors and analysts the false sense that the economy is improving and it’s okay to own stocks again. That’s where we are today. The bear did a masterful job at convincing investors to own stocks again…and, presto, the Dow Jones got back to 12,000.

But the bear market is getting old and “long in the tooth” as they say. If I compare this bear market rally to the 35-month bear market rally of October 1934 to August 1937, we have about three to six months left before Phase Three of this bear market gets underway—ultimately bringing stock prices below their March 2009 lows.

How am I going to make money from this? Easy: I’m not going to short the market, because that’s too risky for most of my readers. I’m not going to buy put options, because they are too short in nature for Phase Three of the bear market.

What I plan to do is to buy a stock that goes up in price when the stock market falls. The stock is very liquid, it trades on a major American exchange, and it has already jumped to $26 from $20 in the past 60 days. If the market tanks like I believe it will, this stock will easily move to $100, maybe even $125.

My analysts have recently completed a research report called Lombardi’s Secret Stock That Goes up When the Stock Market Goes Down. We have hundreds of hours invested in researching, compiling and writing this report. My company plans to sell this report for $95. You can get it for free.

Putting it all together

At this point, you’re probably saying: “Okay, Michael. Everything you’ve said so far makes sense. Now, how do I get my hands on these five new reports you and your analysts have just completed?

The ETF Set to Skyrocket in Price as the Devaluation of the U.S. Dollar Continues

Single Best Leveraged Play for the Gold Bull Market

Making Money from the Sovereign Debt Crisis: How to Achieve Massive Profit from the Collapse of the Euro

Inflation Hedge: Serious Profits from the New Multi-Year Trend of Higher Interest Rates

Lombardi’s Secret Stock That Goes up When the Stock Market Goes Down

Well, dear reader, I’m not going to sell them to you. I’m going to gift them to you. All five of them, yours free, and in your hands via e-mail within 48 hours!

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New Socialist Republic of North America

2011-11-05T16:34:00.000-05:00

I hear from time to time that my socio-political concerns are overblown. Just two years ago, I was a harmless a nut job. I got rolled eyes when I mentioned that I did not like Obama because of his socialism. Back then, socialist agents, let alone the idea of subversives taking down our government, was silly to Americans who were more interested in iPads.

Most people, now, as they watch the destruction of our social fabric through governmental interference, understand that we do have a Nigerian Candidate. Or, is it Indonesian Candidate?

I offer a little article below as a primer on how some of your fellow citizens can go along with killing you and destroying your culture. Take the time to read all this stuff, though such activity may be subversive. The article below should be read slowly with a pencil.

GUS HALL:

Our country requires a Communist Party which is the vanguard of the proletariat: the advanced, class conscious section with the capacity to lead the fight to overthrow bourgeois exploitation and construct socialism. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, in the Communist Manifesto, theoretically substantiated the Marxist party’s vanguard role.

Modern day leftist, who are mostly uneducated about what sort of leftist they are, are religious zealots whose god is the state and heaven is a state on earth defined in their image of happyland. Since they do not believe in a god, in an after life, all their actions and thoughts have an underpinning of morbid fear and pointlessness. Hence, they are driven to find their heaven on earth no matter who they kill along the way. They are driven to actions designed to suppress fear and offer some measure of immortality, at least in their heads.

The statist zealots see individuals only as breeders, users, and taxpayers. [Of course, behind the idiot zealots are the Stalinists, the gang lords, for want of a better term, who use the system for their own wealth. See Bureaucratic Collectivism, Joseph Carter, 1941]. Their fanciful state does not concern itself with resources, only with giving resources to favored partisans. Being ignorant of how the world works, they assume the state just exists and has all sorts of money to "redistribute."

Anyway, here is the conclusion of a blog I just read.

A problem with Marxism in general is its ignorance of linear algebra. The whole concept of dialectical struggle seems ignorant of multivariate optimization theory.

.
The article made sense so I added the conclusion in order to confuse everyone. I suppose the point being made is that Marxists are foolishly asking people to adopt a system that is economically inferior, making people poorer. It is more likely that people will not want to do that and the capitalist system will morph, when pressured, so that it can change in order to survive.

In reality, there are no pure Marxists. As in America, there are gangsters who con people with socio-babble. They do not ask anyone anything, once in power, merely take away individual freedom, lest people select an new capitalism. There are also dolts who think it is meaningful to wear he image of murderer and rapist, Che Guevera. These zealots can be dangerous.

===

From the American Thinker:

The Revolutionary Communist Party's Little Yellow Book

By Peter Wilson

Four days after the first occupiers arrived on Wall Street in September, the Harvard Crimson student newspaper offered editorial space to a Maoist fringe group called the Revolutionary Communist Party. The article by RCP spokesman Ray Lotta urged replacing the U.S. Constitution with the Constitution of the New Socialist Republic in North America, which has been published as a 91-page book with a yellow cover. [And, by name is meant to include Canada and Mexico.]

The RCP is not an underground organization. RCP Chairman Bob Avakian, the author of the Constitution, is in exile in Paris, but the RCP openly operates Revolution Bookstores in sixteen American cities, including Cambridge, Berkeley, New York, and Seattle, and is the publisher of Revolution magazine. Recently they were involved in creating the radical organizations Not in our Name and World Can't Wait, and according to Discover the Networks, the RCP played an instrumental role in sparking the 1992 Los Angeles riots.

The Socialist Constitution is a disturbing read, breathtaking in the brutality of the totalitarian measures proposed, a trip down the rabbit hole of the twisted American Communist mind. A few salient points from Chairman Bob's Little Yellow Book are outlined below:

1. Violent Overthrow of the U.S. Government. We read on the first page of the Constitution:

In order to bring this new socialist state into being, it would be necessary to thoroughly defeat, dismantle and abolish the capitalist-imperialist state of the USA; and this in turn would only become possible with the development of a profound and acute crisis in society and the emergence of a revolutionary people, in the millions and millions, who have the leadership of a revolutionary communist vanguard and are conscious of the need for revolutionary change and determined to fight for it.

When Avakian talks about the "fight," he doesn't mean winning hearts and minds through education, persuasion and protest marches; he means armed struggle and the violent overthrow of the U.S. government with "armed forces and militia."

Sedition seems so old-fashioned, but doesn't this qualify?

2. Opening the "dungeons." Further evidence of the violent nature of the Communist Revolution:

[W]ith the advance of that revolutionary struggle, as territory was increasingly wrenched from the control of the imperialists, growing numbers of people who had been imprisoned under the rule of those imperialists came under the jurisdiction of the advancing revolutionary forces.

These prisoners would then be re-educated to "become conscious partisans of the revolutionary cause."

Thankfully, Avakian writes, "the right to employment and income is guaranteed...[and] 'common crime' has ceased to be a major social problem." Prisons are still required however for fat cat bankers and other enemies of the state who commit "political crimes," i.e., resisting the Revolution.

3. Autonomy for "minority and formerly oppressed nationalities."

African-Americans have the right to vote on the creation of an autonomous region comprising "the southern part of the former imperialist United States of America." This decision will be made by a special vote, in which only African-Americans are eligible to participate. The African-American population of the southern states is around 35 million out of 115 million. Thus 80 million southerners will be displaced or disenfranchised.
The same conditions hold for Mexican-Americans in "what was the southwest region of the former United States of America," and in other cities and regions with significant black or Hispanic populations. I hope Sean Penn and Susan Sarandon have been taking Spanish lessons.
Native Americans will be granted autonomy with "the necessary territories but also the resources." All oppressed peoples are equal but some are less equal than others and require "special assistance and support."

Avakian accuses Amerikkka of racism, but advocates the establishment of segregated, overtly racist regions.

4. Special Tribunals: Continuing the tradition of the French and Russian revolutions, and the Khmer Rouge regime, "special Tribunals" will be "established to preside in cases of war crimes and other crimes against humanity" committed by "former members and functionaries of the ruling class of the imperialist USA and its state and government apparatus." These enemies of the state will "be imprisoned or otherwise deprived of rights and liberties." The death penalty will be prohibited "once such circumstances of extraordinary emergency have been overcome." No word about whether public guillotines will be set up for Wall Street bankers and government officials.

We read further that "those who played a leading role in opposing the revolution" will not be "accorded citizenship" and will be "deprived of the right to vote."

5. Prohibition of capitalism. Section 2: "The private ownership of means of production and other capital, and the hiring of wage labor by owners of private capital, shall be prohibited."

Section 5: "Means of production, and other private capital and wealth of the former capitalist-imperialist ruling class of the United States of America, shall be expropriated, without compensation, and converted into state/public property."

The power to abolish private property is absolute. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

6. Immigration: Chairman Bob abhors the "xenophobic and fascist anti-immigrant atmosphere" of the imperialistic USA. He will grant citizenship to everyone currently living here, with the exception of capitalist enemies of the state. The Socialist Republic however is not an open borders state. Immigrants who apply for asylum "must follow the relevant laws and procedures which have been established" and must "pledge to act in compliance with the [Socialist] Constitution." This is more restrictive than our current immigration laws, although it might be irrelevant since Communist countries never have to worry about excessive immigration into their hellholes.

American Communists and other assorted collectivists have spent decades hiding their true agendas under more palatable names like progressivism, socialism, cultural Marxism, anti-globalism, multiculturalism and global warming activism. Marxists like Saul Alinsky and Antonio Gramsci recognized that American soil was not fertile ground for Communism, and counseled a secretive strategy of gradual subversion from within, what Gramsci called "the long march through the institutions." It is therefore jolting to see Communists advocating for Communism without dissimulating their true intent. No doubt they expect that after decades of anti-capitalist, anti-American curriculum in schools and universities, and similar views in the press and pop culture, the long march has paid off, and the time for revolution has arrived.

Ray Lotta has made appearances at Occupy Wall Street, but it doesn't appear that the RCP instigated or plays a leadership role in the demonstrations. It is disturbing however to imagine the Occupiers -- better described as the 1% than the 99% -- nodding their heads in agreement with the Socialist Constitution's most radical proposals, assuming that the key tenets could be condensed to 140 characters or scribbled on placards. Groups like the Revolutionary Communist Party can damage our country, but one hopes that despite years of indoctrination, a majority of Americans will continue to reject the ideas in this evil manifesto.

Something positive

2011-11-04T14:07:00.000-05:00

I was listening to a TV interview, CNBC's early morning show, with an old-time New Yorker. He was sitting with Ron Baron who was hosting today's conference at Lincoln Center. Mr. Baron, who explained in 1974 his net worth turned positive and is now a guru of Wall Street, deferred to his old friend who spoke plainly about core aspects of life. I immediately felt comfortable with Kenneth Langone. I grew up with New Yorkers who did not have "Harvard" tattoos or speak in politically correct gibberish or jargon.

When asked, in a humorous manner, if he were a "one percenter" he asked, in return, why he was being demoted? His history is typical of the evil rich. His family were immigrants who did not go to school, but made sure their little boy strove for knowledge.

Ken Langone noted the Wall Street occupiers was they were children in adult bodies. No malice or humor, a simple observation. (Greg informs me that an analysis of all those arrested in New York revealed their stated homes are in a generic neighborhood with homes valued at $550,000. I can see why they want to take down the fat cats.)

Langone is bullish on America, a nice comment, but pending the next election which will set the course one way or another as to what happens to the nation. He made some early money buying Home Depot when it was first issued, but said the new regulations make it impossible for a similar company to form because new companies cannot copy the evil Home Depot that were cheeky enough to turn employees into shareholders. OMG: evil capitalists!

I am used to being depressed by our failing nation, but I reached my threshold when Langone mentioned that this current young generation is the first in the history of the United States whose literacy level is less than their parents. At that point, I had to return to laundry and gladly did so. I am not surprised, but, blood pressure requires turning off the news.

Just this afternoon, however, I was looking at various electric pianos online and saw a link in a piano store's website to a performance by ten year old Jordan Adams, a "customer." Below, find his ad hoc performance of Chopin. Jordan is our future, I hope.

If the email version of this blog entry has no photo, it may play anyway, but I recommend going to my site to watch.

American Socialist Subversives

2011-10-26T17:44:00.000-05:00

There is a local party that actually won some posts last election. It is important to realize the Working Famlies Party is funded by George Soros and is a blatantly socialist organization hiding behind a touchy feely front.

Please pass this around our area so people realize who the people behind the curtain really are.

Please note a recent ad on Craig's List:

FIGHT TO HOLD WALLSTREET ACCOUNTABLE NOW! MAKE A DIFFERNENCE GET PAID!

Date: 2011-09-26, 5:09PM EDT
Reply to: job-fvgsu-2618821815@craigslist.org ^{[Errors when replying to ads?]}

The Working Families Party (WFP) (www.workingfamiliesparty.org) is New York's most energetic, independent and progressive political party. Formed in 1998 by a grassroots coalition of community organizations, neighborhood activists, and labor unions, we came together to build a society that works for all of us, not just Wall Street CEOs and the well-connected. WFP is independent from corporate and government funding and in-addition we are community based; community funded and equally uninfluenced by both major parties. Our agenda focuses on economic and social justice, corporate accountability, job creation, environmental protection, and investment in education and healthcare.

For the past twelve years the WFP has been at the fore front of progressive politics,

Leading the fight and helping to frame the debate. The WFP has a proud record of fighting for issues that matter and has been instrumental in implementing key pieces of legislation such as Raising New York's Minimum Wage, Enacting Living Wage Laws, Creating Thousands of Jobs In the Green Economy, Passing Healthcare Reforms on the Local Level, Fighting for Affordable Housing, Keeping Tuition Costs Low, A Progressive Tax Code, Reliable/Cost Effective Public Transit System, Public Financing Of Elections and Corporate Accountability . In addition, we have an unapologetic stance on supporting and pushing good candidates to enact progressive legislation

The WFP is seeking immediate hires.

You must be an energetic communicator, with a passion for social and economic justice.

Only outgoing, articulate dedicated, determined candidates will be considered for the positions.

For those candidates that qualify WFP offers substantial paid-training provided by senior leadership, on varied issues such as: advocacy, public speaking, mobilizing, fundraising, networking and organizing. We invest in passionate people with excellent communication skills and a full benefits package is offered to those candidates that qualify. In addition, there is opportunity for advancement and travel to our satellite chapters and out of state affiliates.

This is not a policy job! Through direct action you will be shaping NY state politics for the next 20 years.

If you care about New York and want to help educate and mobilize around legislative campaigns-then we look forward to hearing from you!

"We're organizing in communities around New York State -- but we don't hire people to Occupy Wall Street. Then again, if you believe the laughable conspiracy theories from Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh, this is probably the wrong job for you anyway."

Apply at http://www.workingfamiliesparty.org/jobs/.

Compensation: $350-$650 A Week Depending On Responsibility & Length Of Time On Staff
Principals only. Recruiters, please don't contact this job poster.
Please, no phone calls about this job!
Please do not contact job poster about other services, products or commercial interests.

PostingID: 2618821815

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Your bank account

2011-10-26T09:39:00.000-05:00

Think of a witty image here, if I were not

using Verizon/Samsung services.  I think

a guy pushing a wheelbarrow of cash would work.

The M2 supply -- that is the money in circulation plus travelers checks, savings, and small time deposits -- is $9.3 trillion on a seasonally adjusted basis, according to the Federal Reserve.
 
The U.S. has 8,133 tons of gold worth about $477 billion. In order to cover the M2 supply

1. the gold price would need to hit $35,000 OR

2. the government would have to drain $8 trillion out of the system OR

3. the U.S. would have to buy almost all the 165,000 tons of gold in the world, including jewelry.

---

We are living in an illusory world of paper based on an unthinking trust. Maybe it is in everyone's best interest to not see the Emperor is naked, but once it is clear that he is, little remains. Talk about a run. [a good spot for a funny streaker photo]

U.S. companies reported some good profits, but recall they are firing employees which provides more profit until you run out of inventory and orders. Major companies are restructuring this quarter. Apple and Amazon reported disappointing returns. Besides, the profits are in dollars. We are doubling down on our illusion of money. Also, after time, you get to sense the media con when it is turned on. It is on. I should add that the various exchanges have PR rooms that release news to talking heads and editors. The information is supplied to the PR offices from floor traders - duh.

Consider retrenching, hard assets, food, barter, and so on. It can't hurt.

I recently bet on the Euro failing. This is as a sure bet as I have ever made. I may have gotten in the day before the turn. [Want in: EUO which gives your 2x your money as the Euro declines - or takes it, if you guess wrong.]

Europe is finger pointing and playing PR, like our White House. This is not a plan. Greece is insolvent; Germany has a quiet plan to leave the Euro; Italy and Spain are on the edge. A major French bank has collapsed after recently passing its "stress test." Stalling makes things worse. It is like pulling off a huge band aid slowly, stopping when it hurts. Without governments, resetting moves quickly and punishes the stupid and greedy, but in a fascist environment, the government works for big money folks.

We are talking about sovereign defaults, not company failures.

U.S. banks are exposed to derivative loss from Europe; no one outside the banks know the extent of this exposure, but it understood that it is huge.

Bye Bye Miss American Pie, eventually

2011-10-17T12:02:00.000-05:00

I read today in CNN business that the Euro is destined to move upward because Germany and France will save Greece. Of course, they point out this is true as after the recent puppet show in Europe, it is clear the nice leaders of France and Germany can solve things.

CNN thought only a devaluation in the U.S. would hurt the Euro. This being CNN you can be sure it is intentionally incorrect as insiders are using CNN readers as suckers.

I figured I would get another opinion, as this blog is about doubting consensus opinion.

Lehman Event in Europe (Greek Default)

Submitted by Phoenix Capital Research on 10/11/2011 11:15 -0400

So nationalization is now the name of the Game in Europe. Indeed, we've now seen three European banks nationalized in the last few days... and France has announced a plan to nationalize 2-3 banks "just in case."

If you'll recall, we tried similar plans in the US with Fannie and Freddie, AIG, and other firms in 2008. That situation didn't work out too well. Indeed, looking back on it, things really started to implode right around the time we started nationalizing companies.

Meanwhile Sarkozy and Merkel continue to make "plans" for what to do... The reality is they have no plans other than throwing money at Europe's banks and the PIIGS.

All they're doing is playing for time while they prepare for a Greek default. Indeed, German officials recently told the Telegraph that a "hard" default for Greece is coming which will feature investors taking a 60% "haircut" on their investments in Greek bonds.

Click here to read more about this.

In plain terms, we're fast approaching the "Lehman" event for 2011. However, this time around, instead of a bank going under, it's going to be Greece's sovereign debt.

Consider the Belgian bank Dexia which just went under... it only had 5.4 billion euros' exposure to Greek debt.

Well, French, German, UK and US exposure to Greece is north of $165 billion. And those same countries have $2.6 TRILLION in exposure to PIIGS debt in total.

So suffice to say that when Greece defaults (and it will) we're going to enter a very very interesting time. Indeed, this will be the Crisis to which 2008 was just the warm-up.

You see, 2008 was caused by toxic debts on private bank balance sheets. Today, thanks to US Federal Reserve and other Central Banks' moves, these toxic debts have moved onto the PUBLIC's balance sheet.

So this time around, the market collapse is ALSO going to feature the bond bubble bursting, sovereign defaults (including eventually the US), MAJOR bank failures (Bank of America?), bank holidays, government shutdowns, civil unrest, and food shortages.

If you have yet to prepare yourself for what’s coming, now is the time to do so. Whether it’s by moving to cash and bullion, opening some shorts, or simply getting out of the markets altogether, now is the time to be preparing for what’s coming (remember, stocks took six months to bottom after Lehman… and that was when the Fed still had some bullets left to combat the collapse).

Removing individual freedom.

2011-10-16T08:24:00.000-05:00

I have talked about the provincial medical systems of Canada. I wrote about the Englishman who could not get his leg reset in order to back to work because the state would not pay for it as he continued to smoke, but here is a different glimpse into our happy socialist future.

Irene, living in Toronto who recently was driven to reacquire her U.S. citizenship in time to see us move to the left of everyone, and I were conversing about guns and protection, a common thought, these days, as you will see if you hang around a Walmart hunting section, when she mentioned even with a legal gun you can't shoot someone who is threatening you on your property. I wrote that in New York, one that person is in your house, you can shoot them with immunity. Can it be otherwise in Canada?

Yes, ever so sadly, even if someone comes into your house or business and harms you. In this jurisdiction a business man with small grocery store fought a burglar, tied the burglar up and held burglar til police came. Store owner was charged with kidnapping. No kidding. That's where we are now in wonderful post modern Ontario.

Perhaps, you can see the point of the insane political activity we are witnessing. It is all geared to control people through their own philosophical desire to permit the views of others and, yes, there are people behind it. They are a long way up the ladder and the are not politicians, ultimately, they use politicians, who are so easy to be bought.

It just struck me that the theme of "O Canada," a pleasant anthem one can both remember and sing, strikes a philosophical discord for the individual. The frame of reference is subtle, but revealing. It seems very old-Europe/British:

O CANADA

O Canada! Our home and native land
True patriot love in all thy sons command.
With glowing hearts we see thee rise
The true north, strong and free
From far and wide, O Canada
We stand on guard for thee.
God keep our land glorious and free
O Canada! We stand on guard for thee
O Canada! We stand on guard for thee.

If you don't see what I am saying, permit me to add the final stanza because we do not sing it and you will read it without standing with your hat over your heart. Understand what (a few) people are singing about:

Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved home and the war's desolation!
Blest with victory and peace, may the heav'n rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: "In God is our trust."
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

The difference is, Do you belong to and work for a country or is it an embodiment of free people? There is a real difference.

Andrew K Dart

2011-10-12T08:20:00.000-05:00

I am publishing an emal I received.

Please read it and follow the site. We have a resource, here, that is well-done and Mr. Dart is thoroughly aware of what is happening. He is aware and not asking for money to share his information.

As you will see in the letter, those of us concerned about a reality of false information have to stop preaching to the choir. Last year, we ran the Irregulars as a way to reach out to reward the man whose change of vote passed Obamacare. We used a pyramidical email structure. Today, our goal, individually and collectively, must be to reach those we know who are ambivalent. Their vague thought patters could imprison us all.

Perhaps mail a link to this blog. The key is to be active. Perhaps, we can organize a structure to reach out, but right now being a concerned person can't hurt. After all, one of your friends or family is probably in need of remedial assistance.

Oh, the image is one of Cassandra. I am not sure why she was being torn away from a statue in Pompeii. Link to an account of her myth.
--------------

Dear Mr. Cunningham,

Thank you for your message and the positive feedback about my web site. Your comments are greatly appreciated, and because the whole operation is free of advertising, compliments from readers are my greatest reward.

Once in a while I may also get a message from someone who disagrees with *everything* I've said, and although that is informative, there is just no way to respond to someone like that.

You are correct in your assessment that I'm preaching to the choir, by and large, and most of my web site's visitors are just looking for confirmation or reinforcement of their opinions. By searching for my own name on the internet, I have also discovered that some groups on the far left point to me as an example of a right-wing fool. That's flattering.

In maintaining my web site, one of my goals is to counteract selective news reporting and to keep important events from disappearing down the media memory hole. For example, the governor of North Carolina recently suggested that the 2012 elections should be suspended. Naturally she kicked up a cloud of opposition, and the story soon faded from the headlines (in the few news outlets that mentioned it at all), but we must never forget that the idea came up, and it was a Democrat who brought it up.

My web site serves only to sound the alarm. The solutions to our country's problems, in my opinion, would be too "extreme" for our current crop of politicians to implement, as they would have to include such things as a complete turnover in Congress (term limits) and having the military patrol and enforce our border with Mexico (rather than living confortably in Japan or Germany).

Deeper than that, the people of our country are hopelessly divided into two groups: The producers and the sponges. A huge fraction of the population is living on government checks, and there's no way they will ever vote to cut themselves off. To put it another way, as long as the sponges are allowed to vote, the ratio of sponges to producers will increase -- and yet the ratio is already too high to suddenly prohibit them from voting, even if the Constitution would allow such a change. (The Constitution does not authorize direct payments to individuals, as far as I can tell, but nobody cares about that.)

The second deepest root is that both political parties constantly work to expand the government and, no matter which party is in power, no federal agencies are ever disbanded and dissolved. Several major government operations have run out of things to do, yet they soak up billions of dollars every year. Two examples are NASA and the EPA. A few years ago I tried to assemble a list of all the federal departments, bureaus, institutes, commissions, and so on, and it soon became apparent that there's no way for one person to find them all. You can see my list at

http://www.akdart.com/gov1.html

Congratulations on helping to get Chris Gibson into the House of Representatives. A quick Google search showed me his district. Incidentally, Albany, NY, is the farthest I've ever been away from home. (My parents lived in New York until the 1940's, on a farm outside of Hamilton. Fortunately they moved to Texas before I was born. The farm life is wonderful, I'm sure, but I don't like snow.)

You are quite correct: Sleepwalking is a dangerous thing.

Have a great day!

Andrew K. Dart

akdart.com

The Real World

2011-10-11T08:54:00.000-05:00

“The market place is a crime and punishment world, and this Federal Reserve credit expansion is the greatest monetary crime of all time. Accordingly, the punishment will be far and away the greatest punishment of all time.” -

John Exeter, Gold Newsletter June, 1987 and James U. Blanchard III Golden Insights

Investment Advisor Roger Weiland:

...The better advice we can offer is to expect nothing from these situations and hope for the best. Take care of family and friends, invest in hard assets and daily necessities and soundly cut back your standard of living. We all have things we can do without and would probably be the better for it. Be careful out there. Control risk first but work at enjoying the simpler things in life.

More than ever, it is important to take immediate necessary precautions to protect yourself and your families and friends. Traders and investors should be buying precious metals and select shares right now. (Bullish on gold and silver.)

Inflation in China is 10% - 35% depending on where you are. (It's a big place.) The Chinese economy needs 25,000,000 jobs per year to break even, so it uses slave labor. Do not worry too much about China's economic prowess. Worry about its military action which are aggressive, to say the lease. Taiwan may be an explosion point, that is, if we have a president who will stand by it.

Germany has lent its weak sisters in Europe nearly 1 trillion dollars. Greece is scheduled to implode soon and will withdraw from the Euro. In 2006 Switzerland went off the gold standard, so it is now dissolving. It is no longer the world's safe currency. Iceland has decided not to pay creditors. They are pissed. England made austerity cuts which caused the cockroaches to flood into the street. There is mass self-deception in Europe. At least, we are panicing.

More than 28% of U.S. homeowners owed more than their properties were worth. Prices will not recover until 2020.

The derivative scams continue and this time the breath and extension has been worse than before the Lehman crash.

There has been no reduction in spending in the U.S. and the drunks in office want more booze. That is their solution: take more from the productive. The democrats look to 55% of the nation being public employees, there being 44 million food stamp recipients, and, of course, the socialist unions. Once they get 15 million illegal aliens voting they will not have to suspend elections.

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As I publish this, there has been a show of bravado in Europe to announce they will definitely do something. They do not know what, nor how.

I am a suspicious investor. To me, this PR show was to do what it did - lift the markets as the talking heads have something positive to say.

Once stocks are up and things seems stable, the people not really in Wall Street will sell and transfer their crap to the lemmings. This is known as "distribution," but you can think of it as watering your stock, look that one up, or fraud, if you apply logic. Watch gold and the Euro.

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Governments at work Dept.: If we paid our doctors when we visited or monthly, life would be cheaper and much simpler. There is a deadly price for bureaucrats to pretend they are professionals.

as reported in the WSJ:

...Physicians have been dealing with the 18,000 codes of International Classification of Disease (ICD 9), coding their patients’ diagnoses, and the tests and procedures done, all for the convenience of the government and third parties. Now there will be ICD-10, with 140,000 codes, 70,000 for diagnoses, and the rest for procedures. It’s laughably absurd. Is there a code for “Driven insane by ICD-10 codes?”....

Special Edition: Worst Financial Crisis In History

2011-10-07T11:45:00.000-05:00

The TIME IS AT HAND. If the images did not translate to email, go to the web site.

I have to admit most people don't take me seriously because I do not seem capable of diplomacy regarding survival, but it is time to rethink that if you have not prepared. Read the article and watch the video. This is not me talking. Further, we are not immune to what happens in Europe. The politicians of the world after WWII made sure we were all linked together. This is the downside of that linkage.

Have cash on hand, some junk silver, wood if you burn it, and food. Money in the bank is a waste. It looses value every day and will collapse soon. Interest rates at a bank are a cruel joke - you are losing every day. Even if you do not have much, take most of it and prepare. Silver and food will always be worth something.

The adventurous could start with an EFT against the EURO, as it is going to collapse. EUO

A winding down would take a little time after an initial cascade. People caught in that cascade are going to loose personal wealth. There is nothing tricky, now, just imagine 1930 and what you needed then. If all remains well, you can laugh at me. If....

Gene

Financial Crisis

World facing worst financial crisis in history, Bank of England Governor says

The world is facing the worst financial crisis since at least the 1930s “if not ever”, the Governor of the Bank of England said last night.

Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England Photo: PAUL GROVER

By James Kirkup

10:00PM BST 06 Oct 2011

837 Comments

Sir Mervyn King was speaking after the decision by the Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee to put £75billion of newly created money into the economy in a desperate effort to stave off a new credit crisis and a UK recession.

Economists said the Bank’s decision to resume its quantitative easing [QE], or asset purchase programme, showed it was increasingly fearful for the economy, and predicted more such moves ahead.

Sir Mervyn said the Bank had been driven by growing signs of a global economic disaster.

“This is the most serious financial crisis we’ve seen, at least since the 1930s, if not ever. We’re having to deal with very unusual circumstances, but to act calmly to this and to do the right thing.”

Announcing its decision, the Bank said that the eurozone debt crisis was creating “severe strains in bank funding markets and financial markets”.

The Monetary Policy Committee [MPC] also said that the inflation-driven “squeeze on households’ real incomes” and the Government’s programme of spending cuts will “continue to weigh on domestic spending” for some time to come.

The “deterioration in the outlook” meant more QE was justified, the Bank said.

Financial experts said the committee’s actions would be a “Titanic” disaster for pensioners, savers and workers approaching retirement. Sir Mervyn suggested that was a price worth paying to save the economy from recession.

Under QE, the Bank electronically creates new money which it then uses to buy assets such as government bonds, or gilts, from banks. In theory, the banks then use the cash they gain to increase their lending to businesses and individuals.

By increasing the demand for gilts, QE pushes down the interest rate yields paid to holders of these and other bonds. Critics of the policy say it pushes up inflation and drives down sterling.

The National Association of Pension Funds yesterday called for urgent talks with ministers to address the negative impact of lower gilt yields on pension funds. Joanne Segars, its chief executive, said QE makes it more expensive for employers to provide pensions and will weaken the funding of schemes as their deficits increase. “All this will put additional pressure on employers at a time when they are facing a bleak economic situation,” she said.

Ros Altman, of Saga, said the latest round of QE was “a Titanic disaster” that would increase pensioner poverty. As well as fuelling inflation, she said, falling bond yields would make annuities more expensive, “giving new retirees much less pension income for their money and leaving them permanently poorer in retirement”.

The MPC also voted to keep the Bank Rate at its historic low of 0.5 per cent, another decision that hurts savers. Yesterday, protesters outside the Bank’s headquarters smashed a giant piggy bank to symbolise the situation of pensioners and others forced to raid savings to keep up with the rising cost of living.

Asked about the plight of savers, Sir Mervyn said it was more important to support the wider economy than to support them. He suggested that savers would not be helped by deliberately pushing the British economy into recession. Yesterday’s decision was the first move on QE since 2009, during the global credit crisis, when the Bank injected £200 billion into the economy.

Some analysts believe that this round of QE could be less effective than the previous one, forcing the Bank to create even more money this time.

Michael Saunders of Citigroup, forecast that there could be as much as £225 billion more QE by next year. “I think they will do lots more QE,” he said. “It’s both that the economy is weak but also that the MPC’s view is that QE is not a very powerful tool, or rather it takes a large amount of QE to have much effect on the economy.”

The Bank is supposed to keep inflation near a target of 2 per cent. Inflation now stands at 4.5 per cent, and the Bank admitted it is likely to hit 5 per cent as soon as this month. The Bank’s own research shows that as well as stimulating the economy, QE pushes up prices.

Sir Mervyn insisted that yesterday’s move was still consistent with the 2 per cent inflation target, saying that the slowing economy means inflation could actually fall below that mark “by the end of next year or in 2013”.

The Governor insisted that the MPC’s decisions had been the correct response to events. “The world economy has slowed, America has slowed, China has slowed, and of course particularly the European economy has slowed,” he said. “The world has changed and so has the right policy response.”

City traders took heart from the Bank’s move to boost growth, with the FTSE 100 rising 3.7 per cent to 5,29, its biggest two-day gain since 2008.

The Bank’s decision came after mounting political pressure from ministers worried that Sir Mervyn was not reacting urgently enough to the darkening global economic outlook.

George Osborne, the Chancellor, welcomed the Bank’s move, saying: “The evidence shows that it [QE] will help keep interest rates down and boost demand and that will be a help for British families.”

Old Commies Just Fade Away

2011-10-04T09:31:00.001-05:00

About the same time as Borders Bookstores were in death throws, one of its featured "historians" died. There is some symmetry, isn't there?

Yes, I speak of the great scholar Howard Zinn, whose textbook-like fiction of the history of the United States (for "The People") outlives Borders and Zinn. This "history" contains no footnotes or citations, of course, those being the tools of white, capitalist males. He made up for stream-of-consciousness story by making it easy for historians from Cornell and Harvard to read without moving their lips.

As you see below, Noam Chomsky, a well-known Canadian Communist connected to Harvard, objected to the statements in the file as mostly false. Of course, he is admitting he knew Zinn fairly well.

The clever Communists are dying off and replaced with clods standing around Wall Street not knowing why they have been drawn there, so they have to meet to figure out what they are protesting. Clods, however, gather into clumps. You never know what aimless clumps can do. Marxist exist to gather useful clumps. From the masses of clumps comes a need for a beloved farmer.

The meeting to figure out why they are protesting reminds me of the Democrats passing the Obama health insurance bill so they could read it.

Oh yes, yesterday, a protester admitted to a radio interviewer that he wanted to destroy capitalism. There was actually a follow up question (one reporter to be fired), "What would you replace it with?" There was a moments pause when a voice yelled: "Don't use the word, man. Don't use the word."

From Pajamas Media:

Howard Zinn’s FBI Files: What It Reveals

August 5, 2010 - 10:17 am - by Ron Radosh

Page 1 of 2 Next -> View as Single Page

The announcement last week by the FBI that it was releasing the FBI files of the late radical historian, Howard Zinn, was not met with universal acclaim. In fact, many leftists were enraged. Typical was the reaction of Noam Chomsky, who was quoted by writer Clark Merrefield. Zinn’s files, Chomsky said, were “mostly a mixture of things that they’ve picked up here and there which is mostly false, things they’ve gotten from informants that are mostly false. We took for granted that obviously we were being monitored by the FBI.” For Chomsky, anything coming from the FBI obviously has to, by definition, be lies.

The most recent comment from the ranks of the Left is by frequent Nation writer Chris Hedges, whose column in Bob Scheer’s inappropriately named Truthdig reflects the most common take on Zinn’s work by liberal/left intellectuals. Hedges writes how he used Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States as a text for the American history class he was giving to prison inmates. “We’ve been lied to,” students would comment at the end of class. He assigned Zinn’s work because he says it opened the “eyes of young, mostly African-Americans to their own history and the structures that perpetuate misery for the poor and gluttony and privilege for the elite.” (Wonder no more about why so much of the American underclass get a bad education.)

So what is in these files? First, the FBI had evidence that Zinn was a member of the Communist Party of the United States, and lied about his membership when being interviewed by FBI agents. The first file on the subject appeared in March of 1949, when an informant noted “that he (ZINN) is a Communist Party member and attends meetings five days a week.” Zinn was then employed by the American Labor Party, which itself gives credence to the informant’s report. By that date, the ALP — created in the early forties to give NYC labor a left-wing ballot on which to vote for FDR — had been taken over lock, stock and barrel by the CP. It never would have hired non-Party members as full-time employees.

Another informant described Zinn as a “person with some authority” in the CP group to which they belonged. Zinn, he said, taught a course for his comrades on “basic Marxism.” On June 12, 1957, another informant told the Bureau that when he was transferred to the Williamsburgh branch of the Party in 1949, “HOWARD ZINN was already a member of that section.” It was his impression that “ZINN was not a new member, but had been in the CP for some time.”

Zinn, however, denied he was a Communist when questioned by the FBI in 1953. It is important to note here that unlike those who testified before Congressional investigating committees, Zinn was not under oath. The reason Zinn denied his membership was the same as that for other Communists. The Party instructed them not to, even when asked to testify before committees like HUAC. As some of the Hollywood Ten members revealed years after their own investigations, if they said they were Reds, that would only prove that the Red-baiters were right when they called them Communists! It would undermine their pose as good liberals, who were only taking pro-Soviet positions because they genuinely believed in them, not because it was the Party line.

And this is precisely the pose Zinn took to the agents who questioned him in 1953. Zinn “acknowledged that perhaps his activities in the past had opened him to charges that he was associated with the CP as a member; however,” he told the FBI, “he was not. … He stated that he was a liberal and perhaps some people would consider him to be a ‘leftist.’”

He admitted that he participated in the work of groups that had been considered CP fronts — in fact, he belonged to and worked in scores of them, not just one or two; “but his participation was motivated by his belief that in this country people had the right to believe, think and act according to their own ideals.” He went on to note that if he had knowledge of anyone who sought to overthrow the U.S. government by force or violence, he would advise the Bureau. Zinn added that “he would advise the FBI if he observed persons committing acts of sabotage or espionage against the Government.” He also declared that he “would defend this country in the event of war against any enemy including the Soviet Union.”