saveyourassetsfirst3 |
- Is It Time To Avoid The Crowd?
- Top 5 Dividend Picks In The Dow Jones Select Dividend Index Fund
- SilverFuturist: Perth Mint on Fake Gold Bars
- Don’t Expect Too Much from Gold, says Van Eeden
- Time to Short AAPL – Not!
- Spanish Crisis Hurting Commodities (Again)
- “Do You Own Gold?” Ray Dalio at CFR: “Oh Yeah, I Do”
- Investor Gold Buying to Resume & Fed Doubling Their Balance Sheet AGAIN!
- Gold to Infinity & Beyond
- "Do You Own Gold?" Ray Dalio at CFR: "Oh Yeah, I Do"
- Now That’s a Divergence…
- Do You Own Gold? Ray Dalio at CFR: 'Oh Yeah, I Do'
- Bullion 'Still a Buy' as 'Alternative to Money'
- Ben Davies talks with King World News
- KWN Weekly Metals Wrap: 9.22.12
- Commodities Drop on Euro Crisis Fears, US Data Eyed
- Gerald Celente: World War III Is Underway
- Andy Hoffman: We Are at The Point of No Return
- Import Prices in U.S. Rose +0.7% in August as Energy Costs Jumped
- Project Funding in the Mining Sector
- How to Store Silver at Home
- The Cheeseburger Police
- The Rise of the Freeloaders
- Sept 24, 1869 : How Jim Fisk and Jay Gould profited handsomely from a massive short squeeze in Gold
- How to Buy Silver Online
- A Real Shocker: Gold Dinar - Islam and Future of Money
| Is It Time To Avoid The Crowd? Posted: 24 Sep 2012 01:00 PM PDT By Capt. Spaulding: "Avoid the crowd" should be one of the first rules for investors. Judging by the size of the throng that has been gathering for the past several weeks under the "things are getting better" banner, it may be time to head the other way and prepare for the possibility that things will get worse fairly soon. The VIX index is one market barometer that is giving off feel-good signals. It recently closed at about 14, some 66% below its year-ago level. That figure doesn't need much interpretation: investors are extraordinarily complacent about the level of risk in stock prices, a situation that should send a signal to everyone's inner contrarian. Another put-on-a Complete Story » |
| Top 5 Dividend Picks In The Dow Jones Select Dividend Index Fund Posted: 24 Sep 2012 11:38 AM PDT By Dividendinvestr: Investors in pursuit of sustainable top dividend yields can find investment ideas by browsing through the picks of different dividend indices, mutual funds, and exchange-traded funds. The iShares Dow Jones Select Dividend Index Fund (DVY) is one such fund, the first dividend-focused ETF that Barclays Global Investors (now part of BlackRock Inc.) brought to market in 2003. The fund seeks investment results that correspond generally to the price and yield performance, before fees and expenses, of the Dow Jones U.S. Select Dividend Index, which represents the leading U.S. stocks by dividend yield. The index consists of a hundred stocks that are selected based on their dividend yield, subject to screens for dividend growth rate, dividend payout ratio and average daily dollar trading volume. The iShares Dow Jones Select Dividend Index Fund has a high dividend yield of 4.0%. The fund assesses a management fee of 0.4%. A third of the Complete Story » |
| SilverFuturist: Perth Mint on Fake Gold Bars Posted: 24 Sep 2012 09:59 AM PDT In the retail market turnover of physical product is relatively high. This is because retail investors do tend to exhibit herding behaviour, which means when there is selling it usually overwhelms any retail buying demand at that point in time. from silverfuturist: "Even in the professional market, which deals in 400oz bars, there is a fair bit of turnover. While central bank holdings are quite stable, large bars held by private investors are traded and ownership changes often." http://www.perthmintbullion.com/us/blog/blog/12-03-26/Fake_Bars_-_The_Facts.aspx ~TVR |
| Don’t Expect Too Much from Gold, says Van Eeden Posted: 24 Sep 2012 09:51 AM PDT The reality for gold bulls may fall short of their expectations of ever-increasing prices that run ahead of gold supplies, says a self-described gold bug who forecast the initial run-up of gold at the turn of the century but who now finds himself in the bear camp for bullion. |
| Posted: 24 Sep 2012 07:52 AM PDT
from rickackerman.com: H.L. Mencken famously wrote that no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public. With kids lining up at Apple stores last week to buy the latest iPhone, mightn't that be a timely cue to short Apple shares for around $700? To us, at least, it seems pretty stupid to pay Apple's inflated prices when one can get a perfectly good, discounted Android phone from Samsung for half the price. And speaking of Samsung, we think Apple may have darkened its own karma when they sued their Korean competitor over a few trivial patents, extracting a billion dollar settlement (and never mind that, on appeal, Apple is seeking yet another $700 million from the same lawsuit). World-beating companies that pride themselves on innovation shouldn't have to sue the competition for billions of dollars over design features that any Carnegie Mellon or Pratt sophomore would have incorporated in a phone-display schemata. Keep on reading @ rickackerman.com |
| Spanish Crisis Hurting Commodities (Again) Posted: 24 Sep 2012 07:50 AM PDT
from goldmoney.com: Precious metal prices have dipped this morning. No prizes for guessing why: eurozone uncertainty, with increasing doubts among traders as to whether or not Spain will make a formal request for a bailout, and media reports of disagreement between France and Germany as to the best means of dealing with bailed out nations. France is unsurprisingly the good cop to Germany's bad cop, with French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault arguing that the Greeks should be given more leeway in meeting budget cut commitments. The euro slipped under the US$1.29 mark in trading for the first time since the Fed's QE3 announcement on September 13 – though has since recovered – while the Dollar Index is up 0.27% from Friday's close and heading back towards 80.00. A rising dollar (and falling US Treasury yields) are generally indicators of "risk off" moves on the part of hedge funds, which coincide with falls in the euro and commodity prices. Keep on reading @ goldmoney.com |
| “Do You Own Gold?” Ray Dalio at CFR: “Oh Yeah, I Do” Posted: 24 Sep 2012 07:49 AM PDT
from goldcore.com: Today's AM fix was USD 1,758.50, EUR 1,361.91, GBP 1,084.96 per ounce. Friday's AM fix was USD 1,773.75, EUR 1,361.28and GBP 1,089.19 per ounce. Silver is trading at $33.87/oz, €26.31/oz and £20.98/oz. Platinum is trading at $1,614.00/oz, palladium at $641.80/oz and rhodium at $1,150/oz. Gold climbed $4.70 or 0.27% in New York on Friday and closed at $1,773.10. Silver hit a high of $35.16 in New York on Friday, but it still finished with a loss of 0.29%. On the week, gold was up 0.08% while silver fell 0.3%. Keep on reading @ goldcore.com |
| Investor Gold Buying to Resume & Fed Doubling Their Balance Sheet AGAIN! Posted: 24 Sep 2012 07:46 AM PDT A leading precious metals consultancy, Thomson Reuters GFMS, has forecast that investors will buy record amounts of gold in the remainder of 2012. GFMS produces the benchmark supply and demand statistics for the gold market. GFMS forecasts that investors will purchase 973 tons of gold in the second half of 2012, more than during the wild gold market of the summer of 2011. This surge in demand for the yellow metal, GFMS says, will move gold above the $1850 an ounce level, not far from the record high of $1920 hit in September 2011. GFMS may be right. This past week, gold hit its high for this year at $1790 an ounce on the back of the various global stimulus plans launched by a number of countries around the globe. Primary among the recently announced stimulus plans was the Federal Reserve's QE3 or as some in the market have called it, QE infinity. Philip Klapwijk of GFMS said that, for the gold market, "QE3 has become talismanic". The Federal Reserve said it would purchase $40 billion a month in mortgage-backed securities indefinitely. In addition, the Fed will continue Operation Twist – the buying of longer-dated U.S. treasury notes and bonds. When all is totaled, the market is looking at about $85 billion a month in government bond purchases for an unlimited period of time. The main characteristic of QE3 that drives the gold market is the fact that the open-ended purchases of all of these Treasuries will be financed by money that does not yet exist! And it's not just about a fear of future inflation being ignited by all this money creation. It's a very logical move higher by gold based on recent history of Fed actions and gold prices. Even ignoring Operation Twist, the Fed will add $40 billion a month, or $480 billion a year, to its balance sheet. If one looks at the Fed's own website, you will see that it shows current assets of $2.8 trillion. Add $480 billion annually to that and in about five years the Fed's assets (the foundation of the money supply) will have nearly doubled. That is exactly what happened in the last five years too…the Fed's assets doubled. And in what should not be a surprise to gold investors, the price of gold also doubled! For the past decade or so, gold has tracked the increase in Federal Reserve's assets. Do not be shocked if that pattern continues over the next five or ten years too. Get my Trading Alerts and Pre-Market Analysis Videos EVERY DAY – www.TheGoldAndOilGuy.com Chris Vermeulen |
| Posted: 24 Sep 2012 07:31 AM PDT If gold is to maintain its run rate – and why wouldn't it – and if prices were to correlate with the size of the US monetary base, this would suggest that the gold price rally is also only roughly half way there. |
| "Do You Own Gold?" Ray Dalio at CFR: "Oh Yeah, I Do" Posted: 24 Sep 2012 07:18 AM PDT gold.ie |
| Posted: 24 Sep 2012 06:49 AM PDT
The notable factor for the major indices is the poor behavior of the Transports. In terms of Dow Theory divergence, it doesn't come much bigger than this:  click to enlarge The old school interpretation of Dow Theory takes divergence as a sign of invalidation. It is like the Magic 8 Ball equivalent of "Reply Hazy, Try Again Later." There are plenty of other reasons to have concern up here too: Stimulus anticipation was a known driver of this rally. But now that the stimulus is here, what's left? Promises for action are likely to fall short, especially as unemployment numbers and upside down homeowners show lackluster response to the Fed's efforts. We are potentially getting closer to "pushing on a string." When it becomes apparent the global economy is headed for a liquidity trap – in which more stimulus does not help – faith in the world's central banks will wane, replaced by anxiety at their impotence.  Crude oil is sending a global slowdown message. Copper, the traditional "metal with a PhD in economics," has become a manipulated form of Chinese currency as speculators hoard it in warehouses to borrow against for collateral. Crude oil, being a much larger and deeper market, is less prone to shenanigans at the margins – and the message isn't pretty. Corporate insider sells outnumber buys by a factor of 6 to 1 — something that's only happened 4 times since 2010. (Via Mike Santoli at Barron's.) S&P 500 short interest is at or near the lower end of its multi-year range, and AAPL is now approaching a valuation on par with MSFT and XOM combined – more than the market cap of Switzerland. (Via Bespoke Investment Group.) Previous QEs were implemented during market corrections and bouts of dollar strength, creating a rubber band / snapback effect. This latest QE, in addition to being subject to the law of diminishing returns, came at a time when equities were already overextended and the $USD was heavily oversold, creating the opposite of a snapback effect – more like a S T R E T C H. Intraday volatility for the major indices has been noticeably low for an extended period of time, with the VIX falling below 14. As bulls have noted, a decline in the VIX to extremely low levels does not always mean correction is imminent. But when you consider the time of year, the heightened concerns still flowing out of Europe and China (case in point), and the drivers for the present rally in the first place, risk seems elevated. Our trading book remains light and significantly short, though we do have some long setups added to the roster this week in the event of a grind higher. Shorts working well for us at moment include UPS, DDD, FCX and NXPI. Global slowdown continues to be a dominant theme… we don't count the bulls out but continue to see the most profit potential in catching follow through on a market correction over the next few weeks or so. All positions documented and time stamped in the Mercenary Live Feed. JS (jack@mercenarytrader.com)   p.s. Like this article? For more, visit our Knowledge Center! p.p.s. Sign up for our Hedge Fund Regulatory Alerts! p.p.s. follow us on Stocktwits & Twitter! @MercenaryJack and @MercenaryMike |
| Do You Own Gold? Ray Dalio at CFR: 'Oh Yeah, I Do' Posted: 24 Sep 2012 05:39 AM PDT Gold was off its seven-month high on Monday but the recent wave of central banks who started printing money and bond buying again is very supportive for the yellow metal and euro gold remains close to record highs |
| Bullion 'Still a Buy' as 'Alternative to Money' Posted: 24 Sep 2012 05:17 AM PDT Wholesale market gold bullion prices dropped to $1,757 an ounce Monday morning in London – 1.7% off a seven-month high hit briefly last Friday – as stocks, commodities and the euro also ticked lower and US Treasuries gained. |
| Ben Davies talks with King World News Posted: 24 Sep 2012 05:08 AM PDT
Ben Davies: Co-Founder & CEO of Hinde Capital – Ben is recognized as one of the top up and coming fund managers in the gold, silver and commodities arena. His interviews are considered a must hear for all KWN listeners. Ben is a regular on CNBC Europe and recent speaker at the London Gold Conference. Ben ran trading for RBS Greenwich Capital in London where he managed a macro portfolio. Ben Davies and Mark Mahaffey a former colleague from RBS Greenwich Capital, established Hinde Capital in early 2007, primarily to focus on the precious metals and the commodity sector. Listen to the Interview Now @ kingworldnews.com |
| KWN Weekly Metals Wrap: 9.22.12 Posted: 24 Sep 2012 05:05 AM PDT
The KWN Weekly Metals Wrap – We have added new segments to the KWN Weekly Metals Wrap covering gold, silver, trading and a plethora of other factors affecting the precious metals markets. I am giving King World News listeners globally access to what has long been my secret weapons in researching where gold and silver are headed directionally along with the COT Report. We Cover the Commitment of Traders Report in detail as well as a number of other factors which can influence the gold and silver market price action. Listen to the Interview Now @ kingworldnews.com |
| Commodities Drop on Euro Crisis Fears, US Data Eyed Posted: 24 Sep 2012 04:55 AM PDT Commodities are facing broad-based selling pressure overnight as broad-based risk aversion grips financial markets. Growth-geared crude oil and copper prices are following Asian shares lower while gold and silver are facing de-facto selling pressure . |
| Gerald Celente: World War III Is Underway Posted: 24 Sep 2012 03:07 AM PDT Gerald Celente of the Trends Journal believes the world is being taken to war because from usawatchdog: It's collapsing in front of our eyes. The numbers are there." Celente tells people to "buy gold and silver" to preserve wealth and says, "All around the world they are dumping dough into their economies to keep them going." Join Greg Hunter of USAWatchdog.com as he goes One-on-One with trends forecaster Gerald Celente. ~TVR |
| Andy Hoffman: We Are at The Point of No Return Posted: 24 Sep 2012 03:02 AM PDT Andy Hoffman joins SGT to discuss the end game for the United States and the world's reserve currency, the dollar. What the FED announced on September 12th has launched AmeriKa on a fascist path of destruction from which it may never recover. from sgtbull07: Part 1: We've Reached the Point of NO RETURN Part 2: There's Only ONE Way This Can End: CURRENCY COLLAPSE ~TVR |
| Import Prices in U.S. Rose +0.7% in August as Energy Costs Jumped Posted: 24 Sep 2012 02:44 AM PDT "Prices of goods imported into the U.S. rose in August for the first time in five months as the cost of petroleum surged." "The cost of goods and materials other than oil from abroad may be restrained as cooling markets from Europe to Asia limit demand for commodities like metals. Companies may find it difficult to pass along higher energy prices as consumers face limited job and income growth. 'The underlying picture on prices is generally subdued,' Sean Incremona, senior economist at 4Cast Inc. in New York, said before today's report. 'Most of the upside we're seeing recently is going to be due to oil prices…' "Against a backdrop of limited inflation, Federal Reserve policy makers will weigh additional accommodation to help bolster an economy that's weakened this year. Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and his colleagues at the central bank, (as they) may add to record monetary stimulus. 'As we assess the benefits and costs of alternative policy approaches, though, we must not lose sight of the daunting economic challenges that confront our nation,' Bernanke said August 31. 'The stagnation of the labor market in particular is a grave concern.' "Import prices minus fuel fell 0.5 percent in August from the same month last year, the first year-over-year decrease since November, 2009, today's figures showed. Including fuel, import costs dropped 2.2 percent in the 12 months ended in August. The import-price index is the first of three monthly price gauges from the Labor Department. Producer prices are due tomorrow and the consumer-price index on the following day. "The cost of imported fuel increased 4.1% in August from the prior month, the biggest gain since March." "U.S. consumers and businesses may soon feel the effects of higher food prices after the worst drought in the Midwest in 76 years. More expensive corn feed has ranchers sending more of their cattle to market, which means a smaller herd and higher prices early next year. "'Clearly with the drought, we expect that that could have an impact on food prices,' Kathee Tesija, executive vice president of merchandising for Minneapolis-based Target Corp., said on an August 15 earnings call. 'Haven't seen that yet, so I think that's probably still to come.' "At the same time, the value of the dollar has started to decline amid speculation the Fed will pursue a third round of so-called quantitative easing. Since reaching an intraday high this year on July 24, the Dollar Index (DXY), which Intercontinental Exchange Inc. uses to track the currency against that of six major trade partners including the euro and yen, has dropped about -5.2%. A decline in the dollar makes imported goods more expensive going forward. "Prices for imported automobiles and parts were unchanged in August after a +0.3 percent increase in the prior month, today's report showed. The cost of imported capital goods fell -0.1 percent from the previous month. The cost of imported goods from China was unchanged in August and up +0.8 percent over the past 12 months. "Imported goods from Japan were also unchanged, while the cost of products from the European Union decreased -0.4 percent. Goods from Mexico increased +0.1 percent. "U.S. export prices climbed +0.9% in August, the biggest increase since March 2011, today's report showed, after rising +0.4% the previous month. Prices of farm exports jumped +5.1% and those of non-farm goods increased +0.4%" -Michelle Jamrisko 9-12-12 Bloomberg.net Editor: Food prices are rising swiftly everywhere; especially beef, chicken and pork, on higher feed costs. One example: A canister of quality mixed nuts in our Big Box store jumped from $10 to $15 in just a few months. Who is kidding whom?
  This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Project Funding in the Mining Sector Posted: 24 Sep 2012 01:36 AM PDT It will be the miners who are still undervalued and have growth potential that will really benefit from this next round of QE and rising gold prices. Expect to hear more stories about investments coming to the mining sector. |
| Posted: 24 Sep 2012 12:17 AM PDT It is often said that silver bullion has no counter-party risk, and in a monetary sense, this is indeed true. Although silver bullion requires no counter-party to sustain its value, there is and always remains the very real threat of theft. |
| Posted: 23 Sep 2012 11:37 PM PDT Let's begin the week with a cynical thought experiment. It's really a conclusion about what's going on in the financial markets. And the conclusion is this: the value of financial assets and currencies is being deliberately crashed in order to transfer wealth from the public to a small group of global elites. Sounds crazy right? Maybe even cranky? Call the Cheeseburger Police! We'll get to them shortly. But first... The typical result of credit booms and busts is to transfer ownership of real assets and productive businesses from the public to the insiders. In our thought experiment, the Federal Reserve exists to make this happen in a way that doesn't alert to the public to what's really going on. The insiders - or anyone who knows how these things work - sell to the public in the mania phase. The panic and crash phase of a bust is when the public realises the game is up. Prices crash and liquidity disappears in the bust. Real assets and the share prices of real businesses are left lying around on the ground. If your money didn't get destroyed in the crash, all the good assets can be bought cheap. The end result is that the middle class ends up poorer and the financial/political elites end up owning all the good stuff. This happens time after time in financial markets. Productive assets are slowly accumulated by a small group while in real terms, incomes fall for the majority. Another way to think of this is as modern feudalism, but with better-dressed peasants who have iPhones. In the modern feudal world, you don't work the land. You work a keyboard, if you can find a job. And if you can't, the government will pay you a token wage to keep you from starving/working. The main improvement of the modern feudal system is that the King can't kill you extra-judicially. In the modern feudal system, only the Chief Executive has the power to deny you life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness via a drone strike. This reprieve from arbitrary death from above (the King) is probably the biggest improvement in modern feudalism. So far, the only people to be killed thusly are terrorists and unlucky strangers who don't vote in US elections. And to be fair, when it comes to subsistence, there are plenty of cheap calories in the modern world. People may be malnourished on modern food, but they won't starve. Worst case scenario, you eat your way into a food coma or some medical crisis. Up until now, being a financial serf was bearable. But something is different about the preceding boom and the current bust. When Internet stocks crashed, it was a wealth transfer. People lost money. But it wasn't real money anyway. It was the gains from the bubble, not capital saved for retirement. Besides, in response to the dot com crash the US Fed lowered interest rates. World monetary policy became synchronised. The result was a boom in all assets and in all places. Stocks, bonds, real estate, commodities...you name it. Nearly everything boomed. Now we get to the part that's different about this bust. This bust began in 2009. But the authorities soon discovered that things had become so complex and so large that a normal correction/wealth transfer was not possible. It's okay to pump up Internet stocks and then watch them crash. But you can't very well pump up the whole global financial system and then watch it crash can you? Can you? Well, yes, you could. But there would be a couple of unavoidable results. One result would be a global economic collapse. The system is interlinked now. A financial crash becomes an economic crash...the Greater Depression Ben Bernanke wants to avoid. But that's just the start. A financial crash means the end of the current global monetary system. US dollar devaluation played a key role in the credit boom. But it undermined the stability of the whole dollar system. You crash the system, you crash the dollar. What comes after the dollar? You can bet the people who benefit from the dollar system - the Fed - don't want to find out. But the most serious result of the system crash - and we're talking much more serious than Microsoft's blue screen of death - is that real people see their real lives really wiped out. When Middle Class savings are destroyed through stock market crashes, housing crashes, and inflation, people end up a lot poorer. And that's just the Middle Class. The people who went into the crash with even less come out of it worse than ever before. Let's end the thought experiment there. It can't be possible that anyone would wish for all those consequences of a system crash, could it? The only people who could wish for such a thing are the people who see it as a chance to build an anti-democratic global system from the ruins of the current one...a system with one government and one money and one rule of law which only applies to the governed and not the rule makers or money makers. That can't really be what they're after, can it? In any event, we will find out this week if coordinated central bank interventions from the Federal Reserve, the Bank of Japan, and the European Central Bank are enough to keep markets from crashing for a little longer. The central bankers are fighting a losing battle, we fear. When you look at the world's financial system as a series of geometric shapes, it's a giant wedge of credit supported by a tiny triangle of equity. In banking terms, there's only a small portion of real, quality collateral supporting a huge edifice of asset values. Sovereign government bonds used to count as quality collateral. But the debt crisis has changed perceptions of value and safety. What you have is a financial system supported by very few reliable, quality assets which aren't also someone else's obligation or promise to pay. So let's keep an eye on stocks and see how they hold up. Each new phase of money printing has packed a weaker punch. If the pattern holds, markets will be under pressure soon. And then we'll see if the financial crash is simply a pre-text for getting you to surrender your liberty as well as your money. But maybe we're just a bit gloomy because it's a Monday and we went to the Jimmy Buffett concert at the Palais last night. Jimmy Buffett concerts are usually lots of fun. They tend to be outside, when it's sunny and warm. Sometimes a lot of alcohol is involved. You hardly ever see anyone leaving a Buffett concert angry. Last night's show, however, was dominated by the spirit of the Cheeseburger Police. These are the people - you probably know some of them - who are determined to destroy any trace of fun in life by forcing their rules on everyone else. They were out in force last night at the Palais, refusing to let people stand and dance during the show. Granted, if you'd paid good money to see a show and someone stood up in front of you to sway drunkenly to 'Margaritaville', you might feel like you didn't get your money's worth. But we'd suggest you shouldn't go to a rock concert if you don't like people dancing and singing. Just a thought. What happened last night was sad. A group of colourfully dressed party goers (Parrott Heads) sat in the front row. They were merry. They were loud. They were on their feet. And that's where the trouble started. A concert-long struggle ensued in which the happy people - encouraged by Buffett on the stage - would stand up and dance during a song, only to be shushed down by the usher. The comedy/farce/tragedy reached its climax during the stirring rendition of 'Cheesburger in Paradise'. This time the little band of Pirates in the front row would not be stopped. They sang. They danced. They ignored the usher. And then! And then an angry middle-aged woman in the crowed, sitting several rows behind the Pirates, jumped out of her seat, stormed to the front row, lectured the merry men (and women) and made a lightning quick lunge for the banner. Buffett strummed and stared with bemusement and disbelief. Eventually even the newly deputised lieutenant in the Cheesburger posse gave up. Later, Buffett got everyone to their feet in a show of defiance. We're not exactly sure what it was in defiance of. Of not constantly being told when you can have fun, what you should do, or how you should behave. But everyone stood up and defied until the last verse of the song...and then sat right back down. Regards, Dan Denning From the Archives... The Sharks Amongst the School Bernankonomics 101 There's Going To Be a Fight The World's #1 Money Printer The Video That Started All the Controversy
|
| Posted: 23 Sep 2012 11:37 PM PDT We have met the zombies... and they are us! Mr Romney was offered a chance. He could have clarified his campaign. He could have stood up for something. He could have made history. In a private fundraising meeting he let it be known that zombies were sucking the life out of the nation. Almost half of US households don't pay taxes, he said. He implied that they were deadbeats who had become dependent on the government. The opinion mongers jumped all over him. Worse than a mortal sin, Mr Romney had committed a political 'gaffe'. But where was the gaffe? Not in what he said; it was true. But candidates are not supposed to say the truth; there was the gaffe. Doesn't he know that zombies vote? That's what David Brooks, in The New York Times, calls an "inept presidential campaign". Oh, for a candidate with a backbone! Oh, for one with a brain! We don't have any more information on the subject than we did last week. But we've had more time to think. And look. And what we see is a nation being smothered by zombies. They're everywhere. David Brooks again:
"In 1980, about 30% of Americans received some form of government benefits. Today, as Nicholas Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute has pointed out, about 49% do. Poor Mr Brooks is indignant. "Who are these freeloaders," he wants to know?
"Is it the Iraq war veteran who goes to the Veterans' Administration? Is it the student getting a loan to go to college? Is it the retiree on Security or Medicare?" We know what he's thinking. What kind of a fool would accuse these people of being freeloaders? Well, we're not sure. But they could all be zombies, living off the honest work of others. The war veteran at the VA; who pays? The student; will he pay back his loans? Did the retiree pay enough to cover his Social Security? His Medicare? And that's only a small part of the story. In addition, entire industries - with real workers producing real goods and services - have been taken over and corrupted by the feds. It's easy to point at the defence industry. It is a fat monster much more concerned with keeping the appropriations gravy train running than with actually protecting the country. The engineer working for Raytheon, for example, tries to do honest work... but his whole company has been turned into a zombie enterprise, a parasite on the rest of the economy. And the education industry too. Teachers do an honest day's work for an honest salary. But behind them is a zombie army of 'educators' - bureaucrats and bamboozlers whose real role is to suck money away from the productive economy. The same could be said about health care. Doctors, nurses, therapists - there are thousands and thousands of genuine, hardworking health care professionals. But the industry is also chock-a-block with zombie administrators, lawyers, regulators, controllers, bureaucracies and agencies. The cost of health care is through the roof - and now threatens to bankrupt the entire nation. But the health payoff is marginal... at best. Life expectancies in the US are about the same as in many other countries that spend only a fraction as much. Farmers! Many of them depend on subsidies - direct and indirect. Builders! What would they do if the feds let Fannie and Freddie collapse? Bankers! Ditto. Zombies to the left of us. Zombies to the right. And a zombie on every street corner when you're trying to get home. If only Mitt Romney had had the guts to say something. If only he had had the eyes to see something! The Fed offers to print an unlimited quantity of money. The Obama administration offers to create new jobs. But the real problem is zombies. The country is going broke trying to support them all - educators, administrators, lobbyists, lawyers, regulators, controllers, meddlers, government employees... people creating government paperwork... people doing the paperwork... ... and then there is the 49% getting direct benefits from the feds. And you can't mention it. Any discussion of the 'makers' and the 'takers' is considered heartlessly libertarian. And because you can't discuss it, you can't change it. Instead, the zombies get more of the nation's output every year... until the whole system collapses. That's a zombocracy. Regards, Bill Bonner From the Archives... The Sharks Amongst the School Bernankonomics 101 There's Going To Be a Fight The World's #1 Money Printer The Video That Started All the Controversy
|
| Sept 24, 1869 : How Jim Fisk and Jay Gould profited handsomely from a massive short squeeze in Gold Posted: 23 Sep 2012 11:00 PM PDT |
| Posted: 23 Sep 2012 11:00 PM PDT |
| A Real Shocker: Gold Dinar - Islam and Future of Money Posted: 23 Sep 2012 11:00 PM PDT |
| You are subscribed to email updates from Gold World News Flash 2 To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 | |
No comments:
Post a Comment