Financial Intelligence Report
2/15/2017
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Not In My Life
Look around. What do you see? You see a very strange world. But not only is the world evolving, it's doing so at a pace that takes your breath away.
I'm not a spring chicken. In April I turn 60, which means I've been through some eerie times in my life. Vietnam, disco, Watergate, 9/11, you name it. But the changes that we've seen in the last 15 years, has completely obliterated any and all things that I thought was significant in the past. What are some of the things that shake me to the core about this current time?
The events of recent years: the invasive surveillance, the extremism reports, the civil unrest, the protests, the shootings, the bombings, the military exercises and active shooter drills, the color-coded alerts and threat assessments, the fusion centers, the transformation of local police into extensions of the military, the distribution of military equipment and weapons to local police forces, the government databases containing the names of patriots classed as dissidents and potential troublemakers.
The outright lying of the main stream media has always been a problem. But the push to twist and alter every statement to degrade Trump is off the charts. Their injection of race into every story is so over the top, that it's nauseous. And what about the Black lives Matter movement. How is okay for their leaders to incite hate, and call for shooting "white people?"
That's to say nothing of the current affairs of more than half our citizens. In recent polls, 40% of the people polled couldn't scrape up 400 bucks for an emergency. A Times poll a couple years ago found 51% had "no visible means to retire". Then of course there's the Robot revolution. Not to mention what could end up being a darn near extinction level event... Fukushima. Notice how the media isn't reporting on that? Every single day 300 tons of incredibly radioactive water flows into the Pacific. Day after day after day. They have no way to stop it.
Recently I've been talking about the push for the Cashless society. I mentioned on Sunday that there were two big reasons for it, "control/taxation and money" So, I thought the timing was pretty interesting when famous investor Jimmy Rodgers had this to say in the RT Tuesday....
The time will come when you won't be able to buy a cup of coffee without being traced, warns investment guru Jim Rogers. To control people, governments will increasingly seek to hunt down cash spending, he adds.
Governments are always looking out for themselves first, and it's the same old thing that has been going on for hundreds of years. The Indians recently did the same thing. They withdrew 86 percent of the currency in circulation, and they have now made it illegal to spend more than, I think it's about $4,000 in any cash transaction. In France you cannot use more than, I think it's a €1,000,"said Rogers in an interview with MacroVoices Podcast.
"Many countries are already doing this. Some states in the US you cannot make cash transactions above a certain amount. Governments love it. Then they can control you. If you want to go and buy a cup of coffee, they know how many you drink, where you buy them, etc., if they can all put it into electronic formats and they will. The world is all going electronic," the investor said.
According to Rogers, governments will claim they are doing it for the public good, not for themselves. "When it's done, the governments are going to be very, very happy they are going to say they're doing it for our own good, this is not them, this is for our good. That they're doing this, but it's coming, and it's going to be a whole different world in which we live. Probably we are not going to have as many freedoms as we have now even though we are already losing our freedoms at a significant pace," Rodgers told the radio.
This month, the European Commission proposed a bill targeting cash payments.
"Payments in cash are widely used in the financing of terrorist activities... In this context, the relevance of potential upper limits to cash payments could also be explored. Several Member States have in place prohibitions for cash payments above a specific threshold," said the Action Plan.
But interestingly enough, each and every one of the things I just mentioned, were in place before Mr. Trump became President. Now the question is, is he there to continue on the same path, or is he truly there to try and affect a real change?
One of the MOST startling aspects of the Trump Presidency isn't his brashness, or his outspokenness. Yes it's novel and quite fun to listen to. It isn't every day where you hear a President on Inauguration day call Washington a den of thieves, and a call to return America to the people. That's pretty fun stuff right there. But no...what surprises me the most is the divide amongst the so called "Alt-right" folks as to what this guy is there for.
Some think he's there to continue the Corporatist agenda, continue to wage unnecessary wars, continue to topple Governments we don't like and install puppets. Others think he's there because his back ground in working through Bankruptcies is going to be needed as the world goes through a necessary economic reset, complete with devaluations. Others believe he's a sacrificial lamb, put in place to be the fall guy when the wheels completely blow off this crippled debt ridden nation. For the first time in my nearly 30 years of snooping around in the "underground" news, there's NO agreement.
It's easy to see why. He says he wants to drain the swamp, then loads his cabinet with Goldman Sachs employees, well known for raping the masses via monetary shenanigans. He hasn't said word one about the 15 year old war in Afghanistan, something many military families were hoping for an end to. He said on the Campaign trail many times that NATO was obsolete, and shouldn't be sitting on Russia's doorstep. Yet despite Obama sending thousands of tanks and troops to Russia's borders, Trump hasn't called back a single rifleman. In fact they've sent more. And what's up with the tough stance concerning China's man made Islands in the South China Sea?
Even just yesterday, the Presidents press secretary Spicer said that Trump is being very tough on Russia and sent Nikki Haley to the UN to condemn Russia's involvement in Crimea. He said the President wants to work with Russia to solve deep problems, but wants Crimea returned? Well that's a problem folks. WE, the US of A fomented the coup in Ukraine. The citizens of Crimea were granted a vote, governed by the UN as to whether they wanted to be Russians or Ukrainians? They voted by 80% to return to the mother land. See why so many are having a problem trying to figure out if Trump is a stooge, or someone they can really back? Does Trump just not really know that WE fomented the troubles in Ukraine, or does he know and he is being throttled by the Military?
Trying to figure out just what on earth is going on, is going to be paramount to our future. Consider the stock market. Because of the push for lower taxes and less regulations, they've sent the market almost daily to all time new highs. So, does it just soar to DOW 30K? Or Is this the last gasp "blow off top" to a very expensive market?
I have said recently that this is "it". I truly believe that. I think that at this very moment, we are at a turning point in the US. All the globalism, all the Establishment, all the "one world order," is running smack into the wall of renewed Nationalism. Trump's stance on borders has emboldened the UK to embark on Brexit from the European Union. France is following along, as Marine LePen is gaining big traction. For the first time in over 20 years, the Globalists have been getting push back, and they're not happy. They're taking off the gloves and are willing to do "anything" to keep their agenda's in place.
As the next weeks roll out, we're going to need to pay attention to this war, and yes it is a war. There's a war going on between the globalists and the Nationalists. There's a war between the white hats and the black hats in intelligence. There's a war between the war mongers of the pentagon and the military complex, versus the peacemakers.
In all my life I've never seen what we're witness to right now. Never. All I can do is give you the facts as they appear, and then offer my opinions on what we can do about it. We've got a lot to talk about.
The Market...
You all heard it until you wanted to puke. Day after day for weeks I said "I still think we get our last hurrah rally, that pulls in the fence sitters and once they're all in, THEN they pull the rug and we head lower". I said it so much that even I hated it.
Well I think we're dead smack in it. How far it goes and how long it goes is now anyone's guess. There's no overhead resistances any more. They're in blue sky. This could run for two more months, this could end tomorrow. It really is that "iffy."
Which brings up the big picture questions that we're going to have to tackle over the coming weeks. It's not just a question of whether Trump can get his tax plans passed or his infrastructure plans acted on. There's the bigger, wider questions. Does the ECB continue to do 80 billion a month in QE? Does the Swiss National bank add to its 65 billion worth of US stock holdings? Does the Bank of Japan continue to inject so much money that they arrive at owning ¾ of all their index ETF's instead of just 50%?
Are companies going to continue to borrow at almost zero, and continue to buy up their own float? Are more companies going to sell corporate bonds to take in money and buy up their own stock? See, these are some of the shenanigans that have gotten this market to 20K. Do they continue and we see DOW 30K? What happens if they all decide to stop all this?
In my own personal accounts, I'm simply hitting for singles. I'm not instituting long term holds right now. Yes I have a few from months ago, but all in all, I'm playing short term trades. Why? Well ask any real old time market investor if it makes sense to start long term holds going into year 9 of a market expansion and they'll say no, you'd probably be looking to get out. Yet because of things like Central bank interventions, and the ECB literally buying tens of billions in corporate bonds, this expansion could continue. Confusing, no? Yes.
I said not long ago, that I can make the case for DOW 30K pretty easily. Let's suppose Trump cuts corporate taxes. ( despite the fact that a lot of companies don't pay any or just 5% or so) Just the announcement will have CFO's placing what "should" have been paid in taxes, right into the profits column. So "Earnings per share" would rise, and investors would buy. Then we could see the ECB change gears and not cut their QE and instead increase it. What if they went to 100 billion a month? That money has to go somewhere and it's been going to US equities. Then we could see the SNB up their US stock holdings. Think about it they print the money out of thin air and buy AAPL. Can't they just print more? They most surely can.
Are these things going to happen? Or should I say "continue" to happen? That's a very big question. Like wise I had said I can make the case for DOW 10K. That's just as easy. The ECB stops QE, the SNB starts selling US stocks instead of buying and Trump doesn't get his tax revisions and regulations dropped. Boom....just like that this market falls apart.
So before you consider taking on long term positions that you're just "going to hold through the dips" you have a lot of thinking to do. Dips can turn into sell offs and major corrections. I'm going to be dissecting these issues and sharing them with you. But right this second this feels an awful lot like the bubble madness of late 1999 and late 2007.
Let me end like this. The DOW and the S&P have hit all time new highs 7 times since just the inauguration. Not a single thing has changed as of yet, this is all "hope" for the future. It's our job to try and figure out if this has real legs that can truly continue, or indeed we're in the last Hurrah. One thing is certain, gaining 800 points since Feb. 2 is not sustainable for ever. Stay tuned and we'll discuss this more on Sunday.
