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Weekend Edition
Porter Stansberry: Why stocks are set to soar from here
Saturday, February 9, 2013
The stampede into stocks is about to begin.
Investors have been in cash and bonds and generally on the sidelines for a long time. But now, they're beginning to plow into stocks. While most of you consider this good news (as stock prices will surely move higher), I think it's bad news. Let me show you why…
Since the bear market of 2008 and 2009, fund inflows into stock-focused mutual funds have been weak to negative. Just look at our Stansberry's Investment Advisory money flow gauge, where we track the inflows to stock mutual funds in my newsletter each month.
When the line crosses above the "0" threshold, it means investors in the aggregate are pumping more dollars into these funds than they are withdrawing… When it's stuck below "0" – as it has been since the middle of 2011 – investors (in the aggregate) are pulling their money out of equities.
Month after month, we've seen people taking money out of stocks.
Inflows into bond funds, meanwhile, have been tremendous. And as a result, bond prices have set new records – especially lower-quality, high-yielding "junk bonds." There is no doubt that the Federal Reserve's decision to massively manipulate interest rates lower by plowing $50 billion a month into bonds has created an epic bubble.
Exchange-traded funds (ETFs) have now amassed more than $30 billion in junk bonds. Investors buy ETFs rather than directly buying bonds because they can do so faster and easier. They believe (wrongly) that these ETFs offer them more liquidity. They believe they will be able to sell if they need to. They're making a huge mistake.
The junk-bond market is the most accident-prone area of the capital markets. Liquidity can dry up overnight. Information on trading is opaque at best. And even bond prices themselves can be hard to find when the market is moving. If these funds were hit with redemptions, the market would simply freeze up. Prices would literally disappear. No bid. No buyers, anywhere.
Today, bonds held by these ETFs are already paying yields more than 2% lower than comparable bonds they don't hold. That means, they've bid up the prices on the bonds they've been buying because there's so little liquidity in that market. Average prices on junk bonds are now $105.60 – an all-time high.
I can't stress this enough… investing other people's money (what ETFs do) into high-yield junk bonds… when they're trading at record-high prices… in a market where you've already outbid yourself by 200 basis points (two percentage points)… is crazy. That's pretty much the most obvious bubble I've seen in my entire career. I don't know when that bubble will pop, but I know it will. It will be a true disaster when it does. And the trouble might already be starting.
Capital flows began favoring stocks over bonds late last year for the first time since 2009. Since November, roughly $100 billion has flowed into stock mutual funds (irrespective of withdrawals), including nearly $20 billion last week – the third-largest inflow week on record. During the same 10-week period, only $35 billion flowed into bond mutual funds.
There's no doubt that these new stock mutual fund inflows are pushing the stock market (particularly the large indexes) to new all-time highs. How do I know? About half of these inflows went directly into S&P 500 index funds. The S&P 500 is a market-cap-weighted index, which means the biggest stocks carry the most weight in the index.
You see, the S&P 500 was created by Standard and Poor's, a credit ratings agency. It created the index to help sell rating services to the biggest companies in America. And so, it gave the most weight in the index to the companies that were the most likely to use its credit ratings to sell bonds to investors. The point is, the index wasn't created to help individuals manage their money. That people use it to do so is, in my view, proof-positive of willful stupidity.
Investing in the index means most of your money will go into stocks that are already the biggest and most expensive… and more and more of your money will go into these stocks as other index investors continue to bid them higher and higher without any other consideration. It makes no sense.
And yet, about half the people buying mutual funds will only buy stocks this way. As these folks re-enter the equity markets, they will send stocks much higher. And because they do not understand the first thing about successfully investing in stocks… they will literally bid up the stocks that have already gone up the most.
I've been expecting stocks to go on a tear higher. It was inevitable, given the Federal Reserve's suicidal monetary policies. Recently, legendary value investor Seth Klarman did a great job of explaining why the Fed's policy is so dangerous. The quote below is from his annual letter to the investors in his Baupost hedge fund:
[Fed Chairman Ben] Bernanke and Draghi [the head of the European Central Bank] seem intent on buying back bonds indefinitely, whether or not their actions deliver an economic recovery and in spite of any unpleasant side effects. It is clear after four years and counting that their efforts have not delivered as predicted. Only a zealot would continue on with a plan that is not working and, in defiance of reason, massively expand it…
The greatest danger? How swiftly market participants have come to accept some actions as normal. What could possibly go wrong? Well, just about everything: markets distorted, future returns diminished, moral hazard snuffed out, new bubbles inflating, caution abandoned, inflation unleashed. When investors come to believe that downside tail risk has been extinguished, it emboldens them to pay higher prices, thereby accepting more risk with less return. [Emphasis added.]
Look at the chart below carefully. It shows you the core valuation metrics of the S&P 500 at the various recent highs and lows.
If you're new to investing in stocks, don't let this chart scare or intimidate you. It doesn't indicate that stocks are about to crash. It simply gives you a medium-term overview of real prices.
One of the hardest things for most investors to grasp is that nominal prices, whether for individual stocks or indexes (like the S&P 500) are meaningless. Over time, inflation will push nominal prices higher. So will real economic growth and increases to earnings. Thus, the only way to actually compare values over time is by using metrics like price-to-earnings (PE) or price-to-book-value (PB) ratios. Those numbers are displayed on this chart.
Back in 2000, stocks were in a huge bubble (just as I believe bonds are in a huge bubble today). They traded at almost 30 times earnings and for nearly five times book value. By the lows of 2009, those metrics were cut by roughly 75%. Stocks were trading at just 10 times earnings and a little more than one-and-a-half times book.
Simple question: Do you think you're more likely to do well buying a stock at 30 times earnings or at 10?
If you don't know the answer immediately, just think of it this way. Assume you were to buy the entire company. If you did, you could keep all the earnings yourself. If you bought in 2000, it would have taken you 30 years to recoup your investment, assuming earnings remained the same. By 2009, it would have only taken 10 years to recoup your investment, assuming earnings remained the same. See why it's important to buy stocks when they're cheap?
Today, the S&P 500 is basically at the same level it was in 2000 and at the top in 2007. Does that mean stocks are dangerously expensive? I don't think so. As you can see, stocks are trading for about 15 times earnings right now.
With the Fed pursuing its manic money printing and manipulating the bond market in this extreme way, I think Seth Klarman is right… Investors will come to believe that this magical money printing is going to solve all our problems. They will become more and more willing to pay higher prices for stocks. I think the inflows we're seeing right now are a sign of much bigger inflows to come. I believe the bubble in the bond market will spill over into the stock market in 2013.
Just understand… this will not end well. When the money printing finally stops, there will be hell to pay. The crashes of 2000/2001 and 2008/2009 will seem like minor blips. After all, by the time this thing really blows up, we could have record-setting bubbles in both stocks and corporate bonds.
But… for the kind of crash I expect to materialize, we're going to have a big run up in stocks first. Right now, they're not even overvalued. They're just not cheap anymore. On a valuation basis, I think stocks could easily double from here before we reach the final top I expect.
What does this mean for you? Well, I don't think it's time to sell. But I sure hope you've made some good investments already, as it's going to become extremely difficult to find reasonable values.
Most of you reading this will not heed this warning. But I believe it's my job to tell you what I'd want to know if our roles were reversed. So here it is…
At some point over the next 12-18 months, stocks will tear higher. Much higher. You'll be tempted to try and make a killing by buying stocks on margin or, even worse, buying naked call options… or perhaps putting too much money into the riskiest stocks you can find.
Don't do it. The foundations of this bull market are pure air. It will not last. If you're buying all the way up, you will get burned. For now, watch your trailing stops and enjoy the ride. But don't mistake this inflated market for a new, permanent prosperity. Others will, you can count on it. Don't follow them off the cliff.
Regards,
Porter Stansberry
Next Bubble and what can be done
Dear Reader,
Sitting right in front of us is the fattest, juiciest financial bubble that’s ever existed. When a pin hits that bubble, we’ll experience fallout like we’ve never seen before...
Violent 500-point daily moves up and down in the markets will be the “new normal.” Governments around the world will be called into question. Certain currencies will die. A lot of people will lose a lot of money. Social unrest will occur — maybe outside your front door.
Things you never imagined would happen may, indeed, happen...
Hello, I’m Bill Bonner. I’m the founder and chairman of Agora Publishing.
For over 30 years now, we’ve helped millions of people — from nearly every single country in the world — sidestep financial scams, traps and bubbles. Not only that, but we’ve shown them specific ideas for actually growing wealthy during uncertain times.
We’ve written New York Times best-selling books warning readers of the housing and currency crises. We’ve published over 55 financial newsletters showing readers specific ways to profit from gold, stocks, bonds and options. And we’ve hosted dozens of conferences around the world, bringing the world’s best financial thinkers and readers together to share their unique viewpoints on the world.
But that’s not why I created this short presentation for you today. Instead, I want to warn you of an enormous financial bubble that we’ve been watching for years. As you’ll see, it’s a bubble that’s just now starting to pop.
But even more than the warning, I want to introduce you to a colleague of mine who has developed an unusual, but very innovative, plan that may help you sidestep this new crisis.
Don’t worry... this plan isn’t about hoarding food, buying or maintaining a farm or joining any organized rally.
Instead, in one groundbreaking package, he’s found a way to alert you early to the major wealth-threatening and wealth-building trends... to offer you the freedom of turning off the nightly financial news... and to give you the confidence not to have to rely on others for moneymaking advice.
But before we get to his plan, it’s important that you understand the urgency of the crisis itself...
As I mentioned earlier, the fattest financial bubble the world has ever seen is about to pop. This bubble has created an enormous illusion of wealth. It’s allowed governments to create and sustain wars they can’t afford. It’s allowed people to buy fancy gadgets that their salaries alone couldn’t pay for.
When this new bubble bursts, it will change everything...
Thousands of pension and hedge fund managers will be thrown out on the street, forced to look for the next big thing. Small businesses will lose access to the vital credit markets, sending unemployment even higher. Central banks will do all types of dumb things to “save” the system. Governments and paper currencies will be called into question. Stocks will go wild. Retirement accounts will be destroyed.
We know with no certainty when this will happen. We have no crystal ball. But our guess is that when the history of the early 21st-century economy is finally written, the bursting of this financial bubble will have a special “tipping point” chapter — like the Hindenburg in the history of the zeppelin business or Little Bighorn in the life of Gen. George Armstrong Custer.
The recent extreme volatility in the stock market gives us a clue that we’re just now hearing popping sounds. Consider this...
In 2012 alone, the major governments around the world have $8 trillion in debt and interest coming due — a number so large that the average man on the street can’t possibly wrap his head around it...
It’s an amount so large that you could completely buy every single company on the Toronto Stock Exchange... pay a year's worth of the mortgage of every homeowner in America... repurchase every home that was foreclosed on in 2007 and 2008... and still not even be halfway to $8 trillion.
Here’s another way to think about it...
You already know what $100 looks like. Now here’s what a million dollars’ worth of $100 bills looks like. Here’s $1 billion. And finally, here’s a visualization of $1 trillion.
Multiply this by eight and you have the amount that major governments need to find a way to “roll over.” Worse still, that figure doesn’t count any new spending these governments do.
These mind-boggling figures are just one ingredient that’s been inflating this massive financial bubble.
Most people will be caught completely off-guard as this bubble begins to pop. They’ll be left looking in the rearview mirror, wondering why their retirement accounts have been cut in half. They’ll be angry when they lose their jobs. They’ll wonder why their money no longer buys things at reasonable prices.
You don’t have to suffer with everyone else. If you have a plan, I believe you’ll get through this crisis intact.
Remember, historic times — like these, with the financial bubble in the making we’re watching and waiting to see pop — call for historic and extreme measures.
If you understand the course of financial history, then you know that real fortunes can be made during times like these.
But you must have a plan. That’s where we can help...
At this point, I’d like to hand off the presentation to my longtime friend, Daily Reckoning co-creator, and co-author of our two New York Times best-selling financial forecast books, Addison Wiggin. He’ll walk you through the plan, step by step...
If nothing else, what he’ll show you will open your eyes to a radically new way to think about generating wealth. After his presentation, you’ll have the power and confidence to control your own future — just at the point when millions of others will likely suffer.
You’re in good hands. I promise you that...
Sincerely,
Bill Bonner,
Founder, Agora Publishing
No Good News
Inauguration Day: Pray that God Will Bless America
By Bob Bauman JD, Offshore and Asset Protection Editor
Fifty-seven times in American history the oath of office to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States" has been administered to a president, most usually in a ceremony at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C.
In the middle of the night Calvin Coolidge was sworn in by his father, a Vermont justice of the peace, by the light of an oil lamp. Lyndon Johnson took the oath in Air Force One on a Dallas airport runway as Jackie Kennedy watched wearing a suit stained with her late husband’s blood.
The first presidential inauguration I had the honor to attend on January 20, 1953, was that of Dwight D. Eisenhower of Kansas. His vice president was a young senator from California, Richard M. Nixon. At the time I was 15 years old, a newly appointed page in the U.S. House of Representatives.
The last inaugural I attended, as an elected member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Maryland, was on January 20, 1977, that of James Earl Carter, a peanut farmer from Georgia.
Today is Barack Obama’s big day, the start of his second term. But if his actions and demeanor since he narrowly won the 2012 election are any indication of what lies ahead, he has chosen to make this a rancorous, contentious, disturbing four years.
Obama claims his presidential hero (mine also) is Abraham Lincoln. Yet it was Lincoln who in June, 1858, warned us as a nation that: “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” While Lincoln spoke of slavery, today the very economic and political survival of America is at stake.
Union Not Division
Unlike Lincoln, President Obama seems determined to divide America.
As Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan wrote about Obama’s bitter attacks last week on Republicans and his opponents in general, the President seems to think: “No one has good faith but him. No one is sincere but him.”
One reasonably can think that this is the very moment for the president to try to unify our country, to unite Americans, not to foment dissention and bitterness.
Certainly Obama has no popular mandate for his arrogant “my way or the highway” or “I will not negotiate” attitude. He got 51.1% of the votes last November, the first president to be re-elected with less popular votes and less Electoral College votes than he got in his first term.
Mr. Obama barely retains the approval of a slim majority of Americans, 51%, according to a pre-inauguration poll by The New York Times and CBS News; that is down considerably from 62% soon after he took office in 2009.
Instead of preaching unity, President Obama has used the pre-inaugural period, as Peggy Noonan said, to show the “ depth of his disdain for the leaders of the other major party and, by inference, that party's voters, which is to say more or less half the country.”
Abraham Lincoln has always been in vogue with me, ever since my Aunt Louise gave me a biography about him for my 7th birthday. I read and re-read it and decide to become a Republican, a lawyer and go into politics. But the current Spielberg movie, Lincoln, suddenly has made the Great Emancipator momentarily noticeable to an American public woefully ignorant about much of our history.
So learn from Honest Abe. Instead of causing national dissention, perhaps the cool, self-contained constitutional law professor from Hawaii, Indonesia, Harvard and Chicago should follow the example of Lincoln’s great Second Inaugural Address.
When Lincoln spoke on the rainy East Front of the Capitol, the unfinished Dome above him, his assassin John Wilkes Booth stood only yards away in the crowd. Forty-one days after delivering the address, the president would be dead.
No doubt that day many expected a triumphant president would speak of the terrible war’s end and the coming Union victory, but Lincoln knew that with more than 600,000 dead, what was needed was a new era of reconciliation.
Lincoln kept it short, only 701 words, the second shortest of all such inaugural remarks, but as Lincoln scholar C.A. Tripp noted, he “surprised his audience by steeping his address in religious language…he invoked religion as a balm for a nation deeply divided.”
Lincoln closed his short speech with the immortal words of reconciliation and healing that are carved in the walls of the Lincoln Memorial in the nation’s capital, setting the tone for his plan for the nation’s Reconstruction.
With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.
Abraham Lincoln died, but his powerful words live on.
Four years ago almost to this day, I wrote an editorial entitled: “We Wish the New President and Our Nation Well.”
At that time, then president-elect Obama offered his opinion that "what's required is a new declaration of independence — from ideology and small thinking, prejudice and bigotry."
In the 2008 campaign the largely unknown Obama preached unity and hope. But we knew very little about what Mr. Obama's true political philosophy might be.
Now, after four years I think we can conclude that this president does indeed have an ideology all his own; a mixture of arrogance, disregard for the rule of law, an ultra- Keynesianism that ignores debt and deficits and policies that dabble in both socialism and fascism.
Is this un-America – or is this the New America?
I repeat what I said four years ago: We wish President Barack Obama well. In doing so we are wishing a brighter future for our troubled country and the world beyond. May God bless him and America.
Faithfully yours,
Bob Bauman
Chairman, Freedom Alliance
P.S. If you’re not happy with the way things are going… if you think the Federal Reserve is destroying the dollar… if you recognize the Obama Administration as being the least transparent in D.C.’s history… and that Wall Street will never change its greedy, policy manipulating ways – then Freedom Alliance is for you. For more on this and how to protect yourself in this brave new world, click here.
Related Reading:
Hoodwinking the American people by claiming they’re not really socialists is the game played by President Obama, the Democrats and too many Republicans. All these pygmy politicians, mainly interested in retaining their pitiful powers, are leading this great country to ruin.
Throughout our 15-year existence, the Sovereign Society has advised our members on how to establish offshore residence and obtain legal second passports and dual citizenship. We provide contact information for the qualified professionals who can assist you in acquiring second citizenship based on several factors
An argument over the likelihood of a zombie apocalypse becoming a reality ended with a woman getting shot in the back by her boyfriend.
http://gawker.com/5965883/man-shoots-girlfriend-in-the-back-for-not-taking-the-possibility-of-a-zombie-apocalypse-seriously
According to Nassau County Detective Lt. Raymond Cote, 26-year-old Jared Gurman of Long Island had an "ongoing debate" with his girlfriend Jessica Gelderman, 27, about whether AMC's The Walking Dead could play out in real life.
"He feels strongly about the possibility that some military mishap could occur. She thinks it's ridiculous," Cote told reporters. "She was not taking him seriously or taking the show as seriously as he does."
In the early hours of Monday morning, a text exchange between the two became heated, and Gelderman went to Gurman's apartment to calm him down.
However, Gurman, who greeted her with a .22 caliber assault rifle, refused her efforts to defuse the situation, and as soon as she entered the apartment, Gurman shot her in the back.
"Her injuries are a shattered rib, a pierced lung, a pierced diaphragm and she is in serious, but stable condition," Cote said, noting that Gurman drove Gelderman to the hospital himself.
Police arrested Gurman at the hospital and charged him with attempted second-degree murder.
[mug shot via NCPD via amNY]
Dumb and getting more so!
Financial Markets Panic, Euro Riots Rage,
While US Obsesses Over Gay Marriage.
Kingston, NY, 15 May 2012 — World stocks are registering double digit losses as worries grow that Greece may exit the single currency union. The escalating eurozone debt crisis and deepening economic slowdown in China are crashing commodity prices. After promising it would not bail out anymore banks, depression ravaged Spain is bailing out Bankia, it’s fourth largest lender. Day after day, week after week, massive citizen protests erupt in depression/recession ravaged cities across Europe.
On the geopolitical front, America expands its military involvement and drone strikes in Yemen. The civil war in Syria rages as “rebels” terrorize Damascus, killing scores and wounding hundreds. Rhetoric between China and the Philippines heats up over the tense territorial standoff in the South China Sea. Afghan troops kill more US/NATO troops. War in the Sudan, Iran/Israel nuclear standoff, more bombs blasting Baghdad … Bahrain, Egypt, Tunisia, all in turmoil.
On the economic front, as Trends Journal subscribers know, we have forecast each and every one of these trends: The Greek bailout would not work, the eurozone would splinter, banks would get more bailouts, austerity measures would inflame the masses, class warfare would escalate and China would falter.
Meanwhile, back in Dumbfukistan Economic turmoil and the devastating effect it would have on lives and livelihoods, geopolitical unrest, raging wars and wars in the making were put on the back burner as Barack Obama “made history” as the first President to support gay marriage.
Commandeering the headlines and the breaking news was his history-making declaration: “I think same-sex couples should be able to get married.” Day after day, hour after hour, US presstitutes reported the story with the a level of gravitas associated with sending a man to the moon, the fall of the Berlin Wall … and the death of Michael Jackson.
Splashed across the cover of Newsweek, under a glowing rainbow halo, was President Obama and the bold headline, “The First Gay President.” In editorials, on radio talk shows, cable TV, and in all the news that was fit to print, “experts,” “strategists,” pundits and media personalities waxed on, and on, debating why he did it, what it would mean, and how it would impact the November election.
There was Obama making the TV circuit, chatting up gay marriage with the women on “The View.” There he was, the President of the United States of America, the world Superpower, revealing how his decision had been, in part, shaped by his 14 and 11 year old daughters, who went to school with children who had gay parents. Who cared what Obama’s kids thought, or what the cast of politicians, preachers and “celebrities” endlessly interviewed by the media thought? (Click here for a typically stupid celebrity interview)
It was just another inane episode on “The Presidential Reality Show:” the issue of gay marriage had become a major national issue, in fact, it was the issue! And yet it worked! Each moment spent on gay marriage deflected the nation’s attention from everything that was consequential: US soldiers sacrificing life and limbs in futile ongoing wars while new futile wars were in the making; tens of millions of homes foreclosed, millions jobless and homeless; the nation in debt, consumers in debt and college grads drowning in debt … as the global economy comes under renewed attack. These are the real issues.
Why is there no outrage at this two-bit diversionary Presidential/pressititute tactic? Because this is what the nation has sunk to. From junk food to junk news, it’s all part of the dumbing-down of America.
You can count on the Trends Journal to bring you the real news, analyze the important facts and provide the sound forecasts needed to help you prepare, survive and prevail the critical times ahead.
Sincerely,
Gerald Celente
Déjà vu all over again in housing!
by Mike Larson
Friday, March 23, 2012 at 7:30am
In late 2009, just a few months before the 2010 spring selling season for homes got underway, the Philadelphia Housing Sector Index (HGX) started to move. The benchmark index of housing and construction-related stocks surged from around 90.55 in November to 132.53 in late April — a gain of 46 percent.
Investors and pundits hailed it as proof positive that the housing market was finally on the mend ... that blue skies and rainbows were here to stay! But what happened next? The index flopped and chopped around for a while ... then fell off the table. Ultimate loss through October for anyone who bought the hype? 39 percent!
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Internal Sponsorship
In late 2010, just a few months before the 2011 spring selling season, it happened again! The HGX rallied from 94 in late November to 121 in late February — a rise of 29 percent.
So did THAT signal a lasting turn for the housing market's fortunes? Er ... no! The index imploded 34 percent shortly thereafter.
And wouldn't you know it? Investors are at it again!
They've been buying housing stocks, construction stocks, home improvement retailers, cabinet and faucet makers, paint companies, and more like they're going out of style!
Stocks like Valspar (VAL), Sherwin-Williams (SHW), Stanley Black & Decker (SWK), A.O. Smith (AOS), Masco (MAS), Home Depot (HD) are putting even high-momentum Internet companies to shame with their recent gains!
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Internal Sponsorship
Me? I can't shake the feeling it's déjà vu all over again — and that the 2012 version of this annual rite is going to end badly too!
What the latest housing figures do —
and DON'T — show
Why is there so much optimism about these stocks and the housing market in general? I don't know if it's the fact it's 80 degrees in Chicago and New York City. I don't know if it's just the innate optimism that prevails on Wall Street, or the happy talk from housing company executives.
But whatever it is, it sure doesn't seem justified to me. We have undoubtedly seen some improvement from the depths of the 2007-2009 recession. Home sales, home construction activity, and builder optimism have taken a modest turn for the better.
The spike in housing-related stocks is on shaky ground.
But even with that slight improvement, housing starts remain a whopping 69 percent below their bubble peak! A key measure of home builder optimism is still down 61 percent. Existing home sales? They're off 37 percent. Home prices? Down 34 percent ... STILL!
More recently, we've seen mortgage rates shoot higher along with Treasury yields. That couldn't come at a worse time, considering we're entering the heart of the home selling season. Is that why the National Association of Home Builders confidence index just registered 28 in March, instead of rising to 30 as expected? Hmmm.
And what about housing starts? They slumped slightly to 698,000 in February instead of rising as expected. Moreover, single-family starts plunged 9.9 percent — the biggest drop in a year!
Unthinkable Poised to
Slam Wall Street by 2013
"The data is clear, 50% unemployment, a 90% stock market drop, and 100% annual inflation."
These were the prophetic words spoken to me recently by famed economist and New York Times best-selling author Robert Wiedemer, at a private dinner in Palm Beach, Fla.
I was skeptical of his claims at first, but then I saw the chilling evidence.
Click here to see the same disturbing charts Wiedemer showed me.
External Sponsorship
"Look out below" time for housing sector?
Sure looks like it to me!
Long story short: It's been a heck of a rally in the housing and construction sector. Some sector stocks are trading at all-time highs. Not 52-week highs, mind you. Highs they didn't even hit during the peak of the bubble — when home prices were rising at double-digit rates and construction activity was running at the fastest rate in U.S. history!
Does that make sense to you? Because it sure doesn't to me!
In fact, I believe the combination of that strong rally ... the recent rise in interest rates ... and the potential for activity to slow going forward will prove toxic to investors. If you own these stocks and have enjoyed the rally, I urge you to sell now.
I would also take gains off the table in other stock market sectors, something I've been doing in my services recently. If the recent housing strength fades, the economy will likely cool, and I don't believe the broad market is prepared for that.
Until next time,
Mike
For Gerald Celente's fans
2011 Trend Forecast Recap:
Top Trends 2012 Coming Soon
17 December 2011
We will soon be releasing our Top Trends 2012. There is very little in today’s headline news that was not in yesterday’s Trends Journal forecasts.
Successful trend tracking requires understanding where we are, how we got here and where we’re going. We are sending you this recap of last year’s Top Trends 2011 to remind you where we were a year ago, and also as a testimonial to the singular effectiveness of our Globalnomic® trend forecasting methodology.
Wake-Up Call
“Screw The People" blared the cover of the December 2010 issue of the Trends Journal, illustrating our forecast of the "Top 11 Trends of 2011" with the hand of Uncle Sam putting the screws to the average citizen.
A year later, it’s clear that no-holds-barred characterization couldn't have rung more true.
“History Before it Happens” – the motto of The Trends Journal – has happened!
“Empire America is on its deathbed," we wrote. “But in 2011, the politicians and the boosters are still chanting 'We're #1,’ even though the statistics tell a different tale. There was not a single recognized measure to support that hollow chant. Be it healthcare, education, longevity or working longer and vacationing less, the world's former quality-of-life leader no longer wins, places or shows. In a blink of the calendrical eye, the United States of America had gone from first world to borderline third world."
"The Decline of America trend is nowhere near bottom," we wrote, as the New Year approached, "and the worst is yet to come."
Today, “worse” has arrived – and worst is on its way.
A record 47 million Americans – one of every six people you see on streets lined with scores of vacant shops – are impoverished, according to government statistics. If you take into account those who are teetering on the edge of poverty, that figure almost doubles. This means nearly one-third of the American populace is struggling to achieve what they once considered their inalienable rights – putting food on their tables, gas in their cars, and heat in their homes.
As we near the beginning of 2012, what's even more frightening is that nearly one-quarter of all American children are living in poverty.
And as we enter a national election year, no candidate – from the pseudo-populist Barack Obama to Newt “Know-it-All” Gingrich, to corporate vulture Mitt "Mega-millionaire" Romney – speaks directly of a nation in decline.
Even as the country piles up more and more debt, the Washington Beltway is gridlocked … paralyzed in its perpetual political traffic jam.
Crack-Up 2011
Remember the election of 2010 and all the attendant media hype? The mid-term election that victorious Tea Partiers said would change the course of America?
Just a year later, the hype reads like pulp fiction while the reality sounds like a chorus from the old “Who” song, "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss."
As we wrote, “… that ‘momentous’ and ‘historic’ game-changing 2010 election meant essentially nothing – a shuffle of names and a change of clothes.”
On the economic front, the trend towards wealth concentration – I noted as far back as 1997 in my bestselling book, "Trends 2000" (Warner Books) – continues. The richest 1 percent of Americans now owns 70 percent of all financial assets.
Even the November 2011 “drop” in unemployment to a two-year low of 8.5 percent meant virtually nothing. The rate doesn't consider the new class of people that the Bush/Obama Administrations have created – the millions of permanently unemployed Americans who have been down so low so long they've stopped looking for work and aren't even counted as unemployed.
Crime Time
"2011 in America will be prime time for crime time," I warned readers in the "Top Trends 2011" issue.
Even gold, the one rock solid refuge I identified, fell victim to another one of our forecasts: Crime in high places.
The official street-level crime rate may have dropped, but bigger crimes are now being committed in higher places. Criminals are not just the desperate unemployed, stealing copper from anywhere they can find it (statues, gutters, plumbing from empty, foreclosed homes), or cyber criminals pulling off a record-setting 23,000 cyber crimes per month. Just as America's wealth has shifted into the hands of the very few, so too have the very few learned to steal that wealth.
There’s no better example of crime in high places than former US Senator and New Jersey Governor, Jon “I don’t know what happened to the money” Corzine. During his watch as CEO of MF Global, his company managed to raid some $1.2 billion of its customers’ segregated accounts to feed Corzine’s gambling habit. However, unlike common thieves, copper thieves and cyber crooks, Corzine – who claims he “didn’t intend to break rules" – has not been indicted or even accused of wrongdoing.
Screw the People
In the two-tier American justice system, the long arm of the law only reaches down to the low hanging fruit.
Swift justice is readily dealt out for small time “criminals.” From closing down lemonade stands operating without a license to sending in SWAT teams to bust raw foods cooperatives, in America, Justice means “just us!”
In America the 99 percent are subject to one set of rules, while the one percent who escape punishment by pleading no intention “to break rules,” are subject to another. Banks get slapped with slap-on-the-wrist fines for their billion dollar crimes, and, as in the case of Jon Corzine, no prison time.
Back in 1995, while writing “Trends 2000,” I declared, “America was not supposed to be a country where the rich grew richer and everyone else grew poorer,” and correctly predicted that the income disparity between the rich and the shrinking middle class and growing underclass would serve as a flashpoint.
In "Top Trends 2011," we specifically predicted, “As millions got wise to this income disparity … and governments further tilted an unlevel playing field to favor the Bigs,” Americans would take to the streets. And so they did. They called themselves “Occupy Wall Street.”
Students of the World Unite
During 2011, throughout Europe, during the Middle East’s Arab Spring, and from tiny community colleges to that hotbed of ‘60s radicalism, the University of California at Berkeley, hundreds of thousands of students, understanding they were being screwed by the system, took the street and occupied campuses. Their actions fulfilled another Trends Journal forecast, "Students of the World Unite."
Around the world, the call to action was essentially the same: Far too few had much too much, and far too many had much too little. In predicting the US uprisings several months in advance, we wrote in December 2010, "The well-publicized news of bank bailouts, billions in executive bonuses, and a spectrum of financial hardship – heaped upon those who could least afford them by those who could easily afford them – had the public seething ... especially the young.”
Crackdown on Liberty
Yet even while pseudo-populist, teleprompted President tries to co-opt the message of the Occupy Wall Street movement, local governments and police forces fulfill one more Trends Journal forecast: "Crackdown on Liberty."
"The United States government's assault on civil liberty has been underway for many years," we wrote in the December 2010 Trends Journal issue. "In the decade since 9/11, under the guise of protecting its citizens from terrorism, the government has steadily abrogated individual rights, compromising the very liberties it pretends to preserve."
As thousands of protestors occupied Wall Street and Main Streets across America, police department cameras recorded their every step. In New York City alone, more than 4,000 cameras monitored the marching, chanting throngs.
Banks – which now charge us to hold and spend our money – watch our every financial move, with customer tracking increasing "a hundred fold" since 9/11, according to an official banking industry description of the Patriot Act. The proverbial little old lady is x-rayed and strip-searched at airports. America has become a country of fear, not freedom.
And when America's secrets are revealed, as they were by WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange? The country that virtually invented freedom of the press wants to put him in jail.
Fortune in Food
In December 2010, The Trends Journal forecast that, even as the government makes it easier for huge corporations to capitalize on the organic food movement, more Americans are literally taking the food they eat into their own hands. And as we enter 2012, segments of Americans are putting their money where their mouth is.
"Around the world, chefs at high-end restaurants are forming alliances with local farms to provide the freshest foods, often grown at the direction of the chefs themselves," we wrote in December 2010, updating a trend I first forecast in March, 1994.
As an indication of that trend, the number of farmers’ markets grew 16 percent from 2009 to 2010. That growth continued this past year, with farmers' markets growing by an additional 17 percent across the country, for a total of 1,000 new markets. The demand for fresh food is so great that, even here in the cold Hudson Valley, markets are staying open in the winter to serve the demand for fresh food by local residents and top New York City restaurants… just as the Trends Journal forecast.
Alternative Energy
The December 2010 Trends Journal revealed that the most promising new technologies in alternative energy have nothing to do with polluting fossil fuels. They included: advanced hydrogen and water chemistries, low-energy nuclear reactions, magnet motors and solid-state devices – all technologies that release more energy than they consume.
The big energy news in 2011 was the oil and gas industry’s version of “The Emperor’s New Clothes” or “fracking” for natural gas. Even as evidence mounted that fracking – blasting millions of gallons of water, sand and toxic chemicals into the earth to free up the gas – pollutes drinking water and triggers earthquakes, the oil and gas industry continued to pump billions of dollars into what it calls the nation’s “energy future.” Despite well-organized opposition, politicians continue to trumpet the technology and roll back regulations to allow it, just as Bush and Cheney did to jump start it.
“Old habits,” as I observed, “die hard,” even if people and the earth die with them.
End of the World
To the disappointment of a vocal band of doomsayers, the world did not come to an end on 21 May 2011, as they predicted. However, according to believers in a Mayan Prophesy, "Doomsday" is scheduled to arrive on 21 December 2012.
But even though the world will not perish on December 21, “2012 represents a logical threshold date,” we observed, in the December 2010 Trends Journal.
“Considering the trends in place, and how they’re developing, some combination of economic and social chaos, environmental/nuclear catastrophe, medical crises, uncontrollable terrorism, and/or intensified military activity is close at hand,” we wrote.
Just reading that forecast evokes images of the chaos, catastrophes and crises that did occur in 2011: The Middle East revolutions of the Arab Spring, the nuclear meltdown of Fukushima Daiichi, Japan, and the near-doomsday dissolution/debt crises of the European Union are but three examples.
“Thus, it is with good reason that ‘Survivalism’ – and all that it entails – is a trend that will dominate the years to come,” we wrote.
Journalism 2.0
News flash: Aleksai Navalny, an imprisoned young Russian blogger and Twitterer with some 200,000 followers, will be “credited with mobilizing a generation of young Russians through social media, a leap much like the one that spawned Occupy Wall Street and youth uprisings across Europe this year.”
So reported The New York Times about the tens of thousands of Russians protesting their recent elections, the latest instance of what the Trends Journal said would be one of the most striking trends of 2011: “The new media kid on the block has grown up and is beating up Old Man news.”
From Egypt to Libya, and from Wall Street to the Kremlin, news was broken by ordinary citizens broadcasting second-by-second newsflashes via Twitter, Facebook, cell phones and the Internet. – not through traditional news organizations, which have been decimated by budget cuts and staff slashing.
“Journalism 2.0 is already proving impervious to insults and criticism,” we wrote in December 2010. “With its unparalleled reach across borders and language barriers, it has shown its power to influence and educate citizens in ways that terrify governments, and to disseminate information that would never be aired by the corporate media. Of the hundreds of trends we have forecast over three decades, few have had the potential to instigate such far-reaching effect.”
Cyberwars
As the Trends Journal forecast, Cyberwar – a prospect that once sounded like something out of science fiction – is now a fact of war. Recently, Iran proudly displayed a sleek, white U.S. drone that was used for spying on their country. Iran claims they were able to capture the Lockheed Martin RQ-170 by hacking into its security code.
As Deputy Secretary of Defense William Lynn III told the Council on Foreign Relations, “The cyber threat is here now, and the U.S. needs to confront it. Civilian critical infrastructure is also at risk. Computer-induced failure of our power grids, transportation system, or financial sector could lead to physical damage and economic disruption on a massive scale. Our intellectual property also stands to be taken. The defense industry has been targeted. Designs for key weapons systems have been stolen. The threat to intellectual property housed by our universities and companies is less dramatic than a cyber attack on our infrastructure. But it may over the long term be the most significant cyber threat we have.”
Cyberspace is, said Lynn in prophetic words quoted in the December 2010 Trends Journal, “the new domain of warfare.”
“This time,” we told the Trends Journal subscribers, “no one will be able to say they didn’t see it coming.”
If you really want to see what’s coming next, you’ll want to renew your Trends Journal subscription. The Top Trends 2012 will be out soon. Nowhere else will you be able read about “History Before it Happens.”
And, as a closing suggestion: there’s still time to give the future to your friends and family with a gift subscription to the Trends Journal.
Buon Natale, Happy Holidays, and a Happy New Year.
Sincerely,
Gerald Celente
Gerald Celente
This Trend Alert (see below) was sent out to subscribers on July 13th. Virtually everything in our analysis and forecasts was contrary to the general political/economic/media spin being spun at that time.
With the passage of just two weeks time, our observations and predictions have been confirmed. It is no idle boast to say that no publication or media outlet has been as consistently on-trend as the Trends Journal. If the Trends Journal is not a part of your information base, you are not getting the unvarnished big picture and are missing out on genuinely prescient insights into a tumultuous future.
As you may have noticed, we have been expanding our outreach and our presence. Once an 8-page newsletter, the Journal is now a substantial full-color magazine, illuminated by the unforgettable graphics of Anthony Freda and the fine art of Eugene Gregan. (But the subscription price remains the same!)
Beyond the printed word, subscribers have access to Gerald Celente’s take-no-prisoners “Trends in the News,” “Carlin’s Corner,” featuring George Carlin’s older and equally acerbic brother Patrick … and our new, completely original (only somewhat tongue-in-cheek) video feature, “Hans Himmler, America’s Favorite Nazi.” Check them out!
The Summer Trends Journal will be sent to subscribers next week. Its theme is FIGHT! For what? For your life, because that’s what at stake, even if you have not yet realized it.
Fight how? By joining the global movement that will truly bring power to the people through “Direct Democracy” … the very opposite of the sham many (especially those in government and the media) still call Democracy. It can be done!
Renew your subscription now and realize the fight is not yet over! The real fight is yet to come. But it needs your participation, and the participation of all those still capable of thinking and acting for themselves. Spread the word.
Sincerely,
John Anthony West
Executive Editor
PIIGS, PRESSTITUTES AND THE GLOBAL MELTDOWN
KINGSTON, NY, 13 July 2011 — “Read All About It!” You couldn’t not read all about it! The media was full of reports about how happy stock market days were here again. After a stormy start, June closed and July began with US benchmark indexes racking up their biggest weekly gains in two years on good news: the US manufacturing index had unexpectedly risen, and the beleaguered debt-burdened Greeks were bailed out yet again – piling un-payable new debt on top of un-payable old debt.
Yes, there was some concern, but, as The New York Times reported on June 25th, “Two years into the official recovery, the economy is still behaving like a plane taxiing indefinitely on the runway. Few economists are predicting an out-and-out return to recession … analysts generally expect the economy to pick up in the second half.”
The economists were forecasting strong job growth for June. But two weeks later, when the numbers came in, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that only 18,000 jobs had been created – not the 125,000 jobs projected … by those same economists who were also not “predicting an out-and-out return to recession.”
Accordingly, without missing a beat, the Times changed its tune – writing new words to replace the old words they would never be forced to eat:
Feeble Job Numbers Show
Recovery Starting to Stall
Defying Economists Forecast for Hiring,
Unemployment Creeps Up to 9.2%
For the second consecutive month, employers added scarcely any jobs in June, startling evidence that the economic recovery is stumbling … The government also revised downward the small gain for the previous month to 25,000 new jobs, less than half the original estimate. (The New York Times, 9 July 2011)
“Dismal Jobs Data Rock US Recovery” and “Worries Grow Over Jobs,” read the respective headlines in the Financial Times and Wall Street Journal on July 9th, dissipating the air of optimism that had recently rallied equity markets.
“Employment!” More than factory orders, GDP, corporate profits, retail sales, durable goods … employment was the one big number that counted. There was no way to spin the consequences of 18,000 mostly low paying health care and hospitality jobs into the hopeful message implied by the 125,000 jobs forecast by most economists.
The equation was simple; the more people out of work, the less they consume. And in the United States, where consumer spending accounts for an estimated 70 percent of the GDP, without increased consumer spending, the economy was again recession bound.
Virtually overnight, one dire employment report unraveled two years’ worth of government spin and media complicity. In April 2010, Vice President Joseph Biden promised, “we're going to be creating between 250,000 jobs a month and 500,000 jobs a month." And in August 2010, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner declared that the “actions we took at its height [of the crisis] to stimulate the economy helped arrest the freefall, preventing an even deeper collapse and putting the economy on the road to recovery.”
But almost a year later, talking on “Meet the Press,” two days after the devastating employment data was released, the new, revised Geithner forecast was, “Oh, I think it’s [the recovery] going to take a long time still. This is a very tough economy. And I think for a lot of people it’s going to be – it’s going to feel very hard, harder than anything they’ve experienced in their lifetime now, for some time to come.”
Like the Biden boast long-buried and un-exhumed, the Geithner statement, a direct contradiction of his former projection went unchallenged, given the usual free pass by the “Meet the Press” Presstitutes.
There was, and is, no “return to recession.” As The Trends Research Institute had been forecasting since the onset of the Great Recession and the “Panic of ’08,” all those "bold actions" proudly cited by Geithner were no more than financial Prozac – multi-trillion-dollar band aids, palliatives, placebos and cover-ups packaged as TARP, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, QE2, and so on. At best, the “bold actions” merely guided the Great Recession into a brief remission, and that is all.
Global Ponzi It was a cover-up, not a recovery. And while the US may have been the first, it was not the only nation to try to fraudulently finagle its way out of a crisis and into prosperity. Like the US bailouts, the Greek survival package – praised as an important stopgap success only last week – has neither guaranteed keeping the Greek banking system afloat nor guaranteed it won’t default.
Now Italy has caught the contagion. Fattest of the PIIGS (acronym for Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain) – the eurozone’s third largest economy – with its 120 percent public debt to GDP ratio, Italy is bleeding red ink all over its balance sheet. Borrowing more to service its debt load and imposing draconian austerity measures to reign in government spending will, at best, provide a respite from the financial crisis … or, at worst, foment a revolution. (See, “Off With Their Heads, 2.0, Trends Journal, Autumn 2010)
Then there’s China, who panicked when the “Panic of 08” blew out their export driven economy, and, like the West, used cheap credit and huge stimulus packages to prevent a major economic contraction. While China’s crisis differs from the West’s in that it has large currency reserves and its debt is homegrown and home-loaned, it’s still debt and has to be repaid.
And unlike the West, which pumped trillions into just keeping its economies afloat, the Chinese multi-trillion yuan infusions have created an immense, ready-to-pop property bubble. But this time, like the West, there will be no available fiscal or monetary government policies to re-inflate their faltering economy.
And as goes the US, Europe and China – so goes the rest of the world. From India to Israel, Brazil to Bangladesh, Chile to Russia, no nation will escape the economic fallout and few will escape the political consequences.
Yet, despite the widely available economic facts and the ample evidence of faulty forecasts and failed government policies, the mainstream media continues to sell the public the big lie. By providing cover for the politicians and financiers, the Presstitutes of the world – with their stable of “well respected” pundits – are accomplices in promoting the egregiously transparent cover-up as a “recovery.”
Trendpost: After descending to $1,480 less than two weeks ago, as this is written, gold is flirting with $1,600. We see this surge as a recognition of the greater financial and socioeconomic collapse we have been forecasting since the onset of the “Panic of ’08.” We hold to our forecast of “Gold $2,000,” and depending on how the coming crisis unfolds and the responses to it made by governments and central banks, $2,000 may prove but a temporary ceiling before climbing higher.
Keith Kohl
Editor, Energy and Capital
FWIW
By June 30, 2011, America will face its toughest decision in more than 200 years: Either declare our nation insolvent, or send the price of everything you buy through the roof.
The following document outlines precisely what you need to do to avoid the coming...
Dear reader,
Over the coming months, you'll have box seats to one event that guarantees to catastrophically alter the fabric of our nation.
As it unfolds, you'll witness the price of everything from oil and scrap metal to eggs and a loaf of bread inevitably skyrocket.
By winter, most people in America may have to chose between heating their homes and feeding their families.
Mail delivery will grind to a halt... schools and police stations will shut down... roads will go untreated... and as unemployment hits unthinkable levels, an enraged panic will take to the streets.
In a word, it will be chaos.
What's unfortunate is that Congress, the Treasury, the Fed, leaders of other nations, even the president of the United States knows it's coming. And they're keeping a tight lip.
They want to postpone the riots we've seen all across Europe and the Middle East from hitting our shores for as long as possible.
But as you'll see, we're already past the point of no return.
Hello. I'm Luke Burgess.
You probably know me from my articles in Wealth Daily or Energy & Capital, printed in dozens of languages and circulated through nearly one hundred countries around the world.
Several of which, I've personally traveled to, in order to meet with various CEOs, venture capitalists and major market movers.
You see, for the past six years, I've dedicated my life to mastering the global economic chess match — where the moves of yesterday and today will land us tomorrow...
And trust me, it's no easy task.
It entails knowing how the policies in America trickle into the stability or instability of other nations... why we suck up to countries that ultimately hate us... how the dollar works... why it's currently the world's reserve currency... and what will happen when its value plummets to zero...
I'm able to uncover the truth because unlike people in Washington and Wall Street, I have a firm understanding of economics.
In fact, because I'm not tied to political parties or corporate media, I've been able to perfectly time some of the best investments the markets have to offer.
This freedom has helped thousands of investors protect themselves from skyrocketing oil prices from 2005 through July 2008, when oil ran from $51 to more than $147 a barrel.
It also helped me vocally predict the housing crash and the fall of banks across the country like Lehman Bros and Bear Stearns.
And, most importantly, it helped me accurately find the right places for people to put their money to build wealth... instead of watching their savings evaporate as the rest of the market tanked.
Throughout this entire economic mess, investors following my advice have done nothing but compound their wealth.
As I write this, not a single position is down.
But listen, I didn't write this letter to brag... And I certainly have no interest in selling you some one-trick pony.
Instead, I simply wanted to point out that, unlike many pundits on TV or lawmakers in Congress, I am not guided to any biased point of view.
It gives me the freedom to report the full truth behind my findings. Sometimes, it leads me to shocking and unpopular conclusions.
This time, I spent the past several months and a small fortune researching the Fed's Quantitative Easing decisions — the effects of which are rapidly deteriorating our nation's stability each day — to warn as many people that I can possibly reach out to the only logical and terrifying conclusion...
I also want to show you the simple steps that I've personally taken to ensure that when the dust settles, my financial situation won't be in ruin.
I know that many of you might very well believe you're ahead of the game already...
After all, I'm sure that after oil prices first reached $147 a barrel, you've thought about what you will do if gas prices reached more than $10, $12, or $15 a gallon.
Or what you might do if, suddenly, the cost of clothing more than quadruples.
You might have even thought of your “bare essential” grocery list if food prices skyrocket, or how you'd handle ENRON-sized electricity bills.
Sure, you might stat carpooling to work or work fewer days. You might plan to only drive when you absolutely need to, skipping the family vacation. Perhaps your beat-up pair of shoes could last for another several years, until the treads are completely worn through...
Maybe you're thinking if food got too expensive, then you'd really start to watch what you ate, making sure to only feed yourself what's absolutely necessary. If you're not a coupon clipper now, you would be...
If electric bills surge, perhaps you'll completely shut off your air conditioning in the summer. Perhaps you'll find that you're going to bed earlier as the sun goes down, so you don't run as many lights...
But what would you do if all of these events happen all at once?
What if, with each passing week, the prices of EVERYTHING you need to maintain your lifestyle JUMPS...
And with no end in sight...
To top it off, your retirement savings — savings you've been scraping together throughout your entire life — simply couldn't keep up, even with the smartest portfolio.
And even worse, how do you think people not as well prepared might act, as life becomes so expensive that the only way to feed themselves is to steal, siphon, and scavenge?
It would all be thanks to the Fed's outright destruction of our dollar, in a desperate attempt to keep our country from defaulting under the weight of its own debt.
It's a situation that you might have thought was long off. But the sad reality is that a global systemic collapse — the likes of which have never been seen — has already started...
The National Inflation Association thinks it's right around the corner:
Even one of the most successful bond investors of all time sees it coming:
And this time, you don't need to study the Weimar Republic or Zimbabwe to see the effects of what happens and how the masses respond when inflation spikes...
All you need to do is tune into the news of virtually every other country.
The poorest ones, naturally were hit first. It started in Tunisia.
For what seems like ever, the people put up with high unemployment, political corruption that makes Blago look like a saint, and living conditions so low that most of us couldn't fathom. But in December 2010, a universal need pushed the people over the edge.
Thanks to recent skyrocketing inflation, the citizens could no longer afford to eat.
The middle class was starting to starve.
There's an old saying that's used to define the temperament of oppressed people: “Bread and Circuses”...
It dates back to just before the fall of the Roman Empire in 100 A.D., and is derived from the observation that people will put up with nearly all sorts of tyranny and injustice, so long as the mob has food and entertainment.
What's happening across the world is a result of their food becoming too expensive.
Feeling the same pain, just days after the first protests in Tunisia, the riot fever spread to Algeria — where protesters hit the streets, carrying signs that read “We Want Sugar!”
Next to fall, for the same reasons, was Egypt... Then Libya.
You get the point. You hear about it every day.
But what many in the mainstream press fail to realize, is that these protests and riots aren't simply because of a harsh dictator.
Anyone over the age of 30 knows that people like Gaddafi and Mubarak have been in power for decades.
No — what's pushing countries in the Middle East and North Africa over the line is the skyrocketing cost of food, thanks to rampant inflation.
And it's not just the prices of food, oil, gold, silver, and other popular commodities, either...
It's all of them. And it's world-wide.
Over the past year...
Corn is up 76%
Wheat is up 44%
Soybeans are up 24%
Sugar is up more than 55%
And the list goes on...
It's a similar story right now in India, as thousands risk their lives and take to the streets to show their disgust against rising food prices.
And in China, thanks to skyrocketing inflation, the Jasmine Revolution has ignited in at least 13 major cities.
All over the streets, the Wall Street Journal reports protesters carrying signs saying, “We want food!”
Inflation's so out of control that the BBC reports that regular citizens can't even afford basic vegetables.
The Chinese government is claiming to do all that it can to keep skyrocketing prices at bay. To combat the rising price of food, the Middle Kingdom's raised interest rates three times in the past four months, but with hardly any luck...
According to the National Inflation Association...
China this morning reported 4.9% price inflation for the month of February, exceeding analyst expectations of 4.8%. With China now mimicking the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and taking steps to artificially manipulate their consumer price index (CPI) numbers as low as possible, it is likely that real price inflation in China is now closer to 10%.
And things are only getting worse.
The military stepped in to stomp out the protesters. They're censoring information any way possible to keep the uprising from turning into an Egyptian-style revolution.
But it's too late. The rising prices have spread globally. And no one is safe.
All over Europe, governments are preparing for an uprising as inflation hits record levels, driving food prices and unemployment to new heights.
It's an out-of-control spiral that's destined to worsen. And if you don't think these massive riots, starvations, and all-out panic over the ability to afford something as basic as food can't happen to the United States...
Then You've Fallen for the Most Destructive Sleight of Hand of All Time
It's no secret that the U.S. dollar — or Federal Reserve Note — is the world's reserve currency. It's been that way since 1944, when the dollar was backed by gold...
A time when the United States held more than 50% of the world's gold reserves.
A time when the U.S. produced more than 55% of the entire world's manufactured goods.
Of course, times have changed...
Since 1971, our dollar hasn't been backed by anything other than the fact that it is the world's reserve currency.
Today, we only produce 27% of the world's manufactured goods. America also holds less than 25% of the world's gold reserves.
And on September 30th, 2011, our national debt will exceed more than 102% of our GDP.
Still, for now, everything from oil pumped in Nigeria to soybeans produced in Brazil is priced and traded in dollars.
An auto manufacturer in Korea importing steel from Japan must first convert Korean won into U.S. dollars, pay for the transaction in dollars, and the Japanese exporter — upon receiving the payment — must then convert the dollars into Japanese yen.
The need for dollars to buy international goods is the only thing that gives the dollar any strength at all.
And with an additional $80 billion flooding the money supply every month, the price of everything inevitably skyrockets...
It's a Mad Hatter monetary system that's literally crippling our very livelihoods.
And it's rapidly driving the middle class' and retiring baby boomers' purchasing power to poverty level.
Of course, the Fed — the guys who invented this Ponzi scheme — will never admit it.
In fact, recently Chairman Bernanke was asked on Capitol Hill if the Fed's policies were responsible for the skyrocketing costs of goods across the world...
He was quick to reply that higher prices have nothing to do with the Fed's pumping of more than $3.7 trillion into the global economy.
He states, “Clearly, what's happening [to food prices] is not a dollar effect. It's a growth effect.”
In other words, that's too bad that they can't eat... but it's not my problem. And to an extent, he's right...
So long as you don't drive a car, use electricity, heat your house, or need food to survive.
What Bernanke danced over, however, is that — thanks to the Fed's out-of-control policies — it's not just food prices that are surging.
It's commodity prices across the board — everything. In fact, over the past year...
Coal is up 33%
Gold is up 30%
Silver is up 118%
Oil is up 45%
Cotton is up 148%
Corn is up 76%
Wheat is up 44%
Rubber is up 86%
I could list these skyrocketing price increases for 20 minutes. The point is, these drastic price increases aren't due to a sudden surge in consumption.
Rather, it's the Fed's constant devaluation of your dollar — killing your purchasing power with each passing day.
You might not see it reflected in your grocery store right away. Marketers have been very clever at passing on these soaring costs to you in smaller packaging and fewer goods inside...
Tropicana orange juice reduced the volume of their containers from 64oz to 59oz
Ivory dish detergent went from a 30oz to a 24oz container
Kraft Singles dropped the amount of cheese in each package from 24 to 22 slices
Chicken of the Sea salmon reduced their content from 3oz to 2.6oz
Hebrew National franks reduced the size of each frank from 12oz to 11oz
Even your “1 pound” bag of coffee is now only ¾ of a pound
Again, I could go on all day. But the next time you're in the store, take a look at the weight and cost of virtually any item. Chances are, within a month or two, it's either going to be much more expensive, or the amount of goods in each package will get smaller... or both.
The truth is, if you want to take a real look at how the Fed's been causing skyrocketing inflation, all you need to do is take a quick look at the Thomson Reuters/Jefferies CRB Index.
Started in 1958, the index was created to accurately gage the health of commodities we use most often across the globe.
In order to keep it up to date, the number and type of commodities reflected in the index are constantly updated. It also takes into account which commodities we use most often.
And amazingly, since its inception, it's been used my traders and long-position investors as the most accurate reflector of real inflation and purchasing power. Its track record has been near perfect for over 54 years.
And since the second round of QE flooded the market the index has launched 15%!
Not surprisingly, the value of the dollar over the same period has also lost 10% of its value.
Read that again: The dollar's dropped 10% in value since the Fed began its second round of money pumping.
Meanwhile, wages and retirement benefits haven't budged. And as prices creep higher and higher, people are already taking to desperate measures.
Just over the past month, stories of otherwise everyday people are popping over the news, stealing heating oil from houses...
Siphoning gas tanks...
They've even reverted to stealing metals from buildings, air conditioning units and streetlights...
And it's only on the rise. But unlike last time, when commodity prices surged and crashed, there's no end in sight.
The Illusion of Wealth
You see, our entire system's been based on the illusion of wealth.
If you've watched, listened to, or even simply read highlights from presidential press conferences lately, you'll notice they've stricken a word from their vocabulary...
Recession.
Not once in the past several weeks has the administration used the term to describe our current economy. Instead, they've replaced it with recovery.
And with the first accusation that things aren't better yet, they'll instantly point out the strength of the Dow and other indexes across the financial spectrum as proof that what they're doing is working.
Sure. The Fed's made up “Quantitative Easing” and QE2 “worked”. Just take a look at what happened to the Dow:
It looks good... until you take a look at how our money supply's skyrocketed over the same period:
This isn't a coincidence.
The entire past two years of gains... the rise of the market from March 2009 until now... has been a result of little more than the Federal Reserve injecting $3.7 trillion into the system — out of thin air.
What you are witnessing isn't a recovery. For proof, all you need to do is look at the deteriorating situation happening to state and city governments since the first round of Quantitative Easing started.
Not a day goes by in this “recovery” in which another announcement hits the waves of cities and states in more and more financial trouble.
The New York Time reports:
Cities as varied as Duluth, Phoenix and Atchison, Kan., have had to cut back and, in some cases, make drastic reductions that affect the quality of life for their residents.
All over the country, parks are being sold, fees for routine services are going up and city workers are being laid off.
In fact, more than 92% of cities across the country are in serious financial trouble, and are already making some downright frightening cutbacks.
Camden, New Jersey — a city with one of the highest crime rates in the nation — was forced to lay off half of its police force. Law-abiding citizens are now either fleeing the crime-ridden community, or have decided to put the protection of their families into their own hands.
Colorado Springs, Colorado, recently shut off 1/3 of their street lights — and that was the easy part. The city also canceled trash removal in many public places and has asked citizens to volunteer to cut the grass at public parks. To top it off, they continue to layoff dozens of firefighters and police investigators. It even has the official police helicopters grounded; they're currently for sale on the Internet. Without the police to keep order, reports of violent crimes and looting are naturally soaring...
Baltimore, Maryland, isn't fairing much better. In June, 2010, the notorious city alerted more than 250 police officers and 90 firefighters that they were being laid off in a desperate attempt for the city to meet its skyrocketing deficits. In addition, the entire state has more than $19 billion in unfunded liabilities, making Maryland dwarf Wisconsin's budget shortfalls.
This year, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania's interest payments will be larger than the city's entire annual budget. And without federal funny money, it will be forced into bankruptcy.
In Menasha, Wisconsin, the city already hit the “reset” button and defaulted.
And in Michigan, a law is being passed that essentially declares financial martial law — giving the governor the power to declare a "financial emergency" in towns or school districts. He could then appoint a manager to fire local elected officials, break contracts, seize and sell assets, eliminate services, even eliminate whole cities or school districts without any public input.
You get the point.
What you're witnessing isn't a recovery; it's downright theft from an out-of-control government.
In fact, CNBC just reported that in the face of this “recovery” with so many people in financial turmoil, either from skyrocketing debts or unemployment, the cost of living has NEVER BEEN HIGHER!
The truth is, aside from major banks like Goldman Sachs, the only people profiting from this mess are a handful of very wealthy investors who knew it would happen and the major hell storm that lies ahead.
I'll show you exactly what these elites are doing in just a minute. And you're going to want to follow their advice to the 'T'. Because with Bernanke's $600 billion QE2 (that's already done more damage than we could have possible imagined) set to run out on June 30th, the Fed recently announced it was prepared to inject ANOTHER $11 TRILLION into the system!
Let me say that again...
The Federal Reserve has already agreed to inject into the system an additional eleven trillion dollars.
Just so that you could picture it a little better, $11 trillion is a stack of crisp $100 bills 7,465 miles high...
Or a stack of $1 bills that could reach 1/3 the way to the moon.
If that happens, you'll see our national debt skyrocket from the already unpayable $14 trillion to more than $25 trillion. The interest payments alone will be more than one trillion dollars every single year.
The situation isn't a unique one...
In February of 2006, in order to make the interest payments to the IMF, one country resorted to paying off their debt by simply printing their way out of it. The country's reserve bank was ordered to print trillions of dollars to buy foreign currency to pay off their debts.
The result of the extra currency pushed prices of consumer goods through the roof...
A few months later, to make up for skyrocketing costs, the government ordered trillions more to be printed to pay for salary increases to government employees. It was a desperate effort to help the people keep up with the surging costs of goods.
The pattern of printing their way out of debt created a rapid downward spiral.
Printed money surged food costs, so they printed more money so people could pay for the surging food costs, which only launched the costs of good higher.
And 18 months later, the government was forced to implement price controls that forced stores to sell goods at government controlled prices.
It lead to a nation in chaos, as people raced to load up on as much food as their money could buy before prices would increase just a week later.
The solution, according to the president, was to simply print MORE money.
All it took was three years for the currency to officially be declared useless. And the ONLY form of currency accepted — aside from a pure barter system — was trade by gold.
NO OTHER FORM OF MONEY WAS ACCEPTED.
The people painfully realized that gold, unlike fiat money, couldn't be printed out of thin air.
The country was Zimbabwe. And their run of hyper-inflation was hardly an isolated incident. Just take a look at these other countries that experienced the same pains in recent years...
Make no mistake — it can and will happen to us, too.
Other countries across the world already see it coming. They know that in order to even keep the government running for another day, we're already committed to a vicious cycle of printing our way to oblivion.
The last time we saw a serious inflationary crisis looming was in 1980.
Back then, Fed Chairman Paul Volcker was able to keep it from getting too out of control by raising the interest rates to an astonishing 21.5%.
Of course, back then we were also the world's largest creditor nation. Today, we're currently the largest debtor nation.
And with a national debt of more than $14 trillion, if Bernanke raised rates to 21.5%...
The interest we would have to pay on our debt would exceed $2.5 trillion.
It's a move that the American tax payers could never handle. And it's precisely why we're rapidly being forced to print our way out of our debt.
It's a situation that has other countries running from us screaming — even countries like China and Japan, formerly our biggest debt buyers, are calling it quits.
It's not just a theory or talk anymore. They want out.
Our good buddies in China don't want anything to do with us anymore. And while they've based their yuan on our dollar for decades, that relationship is rapidly coming to a close.
In fact, with each passing day, China is quietly implementing more and more steps that expand the yuan's use in cross border trade, in order to position the yuan as the world's next reserve currency.
They're already putting a halt to buying our debt at Treasury auctions.
Just about everyone has.
Over the years, the rule used to be that foreign central banks would be responsible for purchasing more than 50% of our debt at auctions; American investors would purchase about 40%; and the Fed would buy about 10%. But since the Fed started monetizing our debt, something terrifying has happened...
American investors no longer have any faith in the U.S. Dollar. In fact, according to a recent poll, most investors in America don't think we're even close to a recovery. And they're not even accounting for a single percentage of bonds purchased at auctions anymore.
In fact, the Fed alone is responsible for purchasing more than 70% of the Treasury Bills at auctions now.
That means that the rest of the world — countries that used to buy more than 50% of our Treasuries — now buy only 30%.
And that number is dropping by the month.
In other words, they know our reign is over. They're fed up. They're not buying our debt anymore.
And it's starting to create...
The Biggest “Run on the Bank” the World has Ever Seen
The talk is nothing new.
Nations holding our currency have been threatening to ditch our dollar since the 70s, when we first dropped the gold standard.
In fact, recently declassified documents from the Freedom of Information Act prove that even the Saudis promised to leave our dollar, if inflation started getting too high...
That's right — OPEC's gorilla threatened to ditch our dollar if inflation goes too high. And that threat is now being implemented...
It sounds unfathomable that we could be broadsided like this.
But the truth is, a few months ago, a group of the world's most powerful leaders met with the heads of OPEC — leaders from countries like China, Russia, Japan, and France made an interesting proposition...
In an effort to keep prices stable, they suggested the oil cartel ditch the devaluing dollar and instead move to a basket of currencies, a basket of currencies that would constantly be readjusted to keep its value stable.
The benefit to countries like Saudi Arabia meant that their purchasing power — and purchasing power of goods all over the world — would stabilize, instead of handing their fate over to America's monetary policy.
The meeting, which took place without any U.S. participation, went over all too well.
And if oil ditches the dollar... everything ditches the dollar.
Almost immediately after the meeting, with QE2 announced, the coup began:
But perhaps what's most shocking is the U.S. government, by slip of the tongue, admitted our dollar was doomed...
I know it's hard to believe.
Scratch that — it's downright shocking... But it's true.
As I write this, the IMF is rapidly in the process of printing as much as $34 trillion worth of their new international currency.
In fact, the National Inflation Association believes our dollar could come to an end under its own inflation at any minute...
You might think the government declaring martial law is a stretch. And I don't blame you. It's something I find terrifying.
But the sad truth is, in early 2011, the U.S. Army started a year-long war game called “Unified Quest 2011”.
According to a live CNBC broadcast, the goals of Unified Quest 2011 are to study and prepare for:
Large-scale economic breakdown inside of the United States
How the Army would keep and maintain order in the face of domestic civil unrest
How to deal with fragmented global power and drastically lowered budgets
Everyone knows that our whole economy is about to come crashing down...
Don't Fall into the Titanic's Cognitive Dissonance
Sadly, it seems 99.9% of citizens don't realize this crash has already started. Either that, or they're in complete denial... living as though we can keep adding to our debts and printing money to no end without consequence.
As it escalates, they'll be struck in disbelief, unprepared and unable to act quickly enough.
It's a defense mechanism our brains activate when reality becomes too overwhelming.
For example, on April 10th, 1912, the largest, most robust ocean liner of its time, the RMS Titanic, set out on its maiden voyage.
Thanks to White Star Line's advertisements of the ship claiming to have scores of fail safes and water-tight compartments, it was dubbed unsinkable. Required lifeboats on board were stripped to carry only about half of the passengers, and were there more for show than anything else...
Similar to the dollar today, it was pure faith in the shipbuilders' claims that convinced passengers and the Titanic's crew that it was the safest ship in history. One such passenger, Thomas Beattie, wrote:
“We are changing ships and are coming home in a new, unsinkable boat!”
Four days later, on the night of April 14th, 1,517 passengers would learn a hard lesson.
A little after 11:30pm, the ship hit the infamous iceberg, poking several holes into the ship's hull, far beneath the surface...
The next two hours defined three types of people:
The few who sprung into action and either jumped on lifeboats, or took whatever buoyant material they could find and made their own.
Those who knew they had to do something; but instead of working on anything productive, they panicked.
The majority that, after hearing the loud screeches and feeling the trembles, continued on with their evening plans, keeping full faith in the boat's ability to stay afloat.
Today, many people — on faith alone in the dollar and the U.S. economy — don't think it could fail.
They don't believe that, with 45 million Americans and on food stamps, city and state governments in more debt than they can pay off, and a federal government that's more than 14.5 trillion dollars in debt, the Fed's cycle of printing money is leading us on the path to a complete dollar collapse...
They think we're unsinkable.
Just like the holes ripping into the Titanic's hull, the writing is already on the wall.
And as our currency nears collapse and prices continue to skyrocket, you're going to see runs on grocery stores, gas stations, and retail outlets.
As it escalates, gangs of rioters will storm neighborhoods on a violent stealing spree like they did during Hurricane Katrina... only this it will be on a nation-wide scale.
Only a few people — those who saw it coming and took the right action — won't be left penniless.
The good news is that the entire process, while escalating by the day, won't happen overnight...
So while there's still time for you to act, let me show you a few simple steps that I — along with some of the country's richest investors — are taking.
What You Can Do to Protect Yourself from the Coming Collapse
First, let me warn you: If you are looking for ways to physically protect yourself and your family, you're going to have to research that one on your own...
Everyone's situation, location, and needs are different. In other words, there are simply too many variables at play to possibly cover it all.
For example, if you live in a city, you might want to reinforce your windows, upgrade a security system, or even buy a place far outside of the city in suburbia.
Or, if you already have a home in the country, you'll want to construct a strong, reinforced fence to keep any looters from easily accessing your home.
Regardless of your situation, until the dust settles, keeping at least three months' worth of food and first aid supplies on hand is virtually a given. You'll also want to make sure that you have access to fresh water and plenty of water purification supplies.
(Also, make sure that your water supply is NOT controlled by a city or regional sewer system, as it is virtually guaranteed that both the quality of the water and the supplies will rapidly diminish, if not completely shut down.)
You see, we're already getting into tangents and variables. And there are far greater survival experts than I who have published scores of books on the subject.
That being said, what I want to prepare you for is taking care of your finances. And I want to show you the simple steps that I've personally taken to make sure that you don't lose any money.
Don't worry if you're not already super wealthy... yet. These steps I lay out are easy enough that anyone can follow them to some amazing results.
In fact, I firmly believe that you could make a boatload of money in the years to come. But only if you act now.
If you chose to read this and then put it aside for a rainy day — when prices are already out of control — then it will be too late.
And the best part about taking the following steps? Even if I'm wrong, you'll be positioned to make incredible gains.
So what should you do?
The first and most obvious route many wealthy investors are taking is to stock up on rare physical metals like gold, silver, and palladium.
In Russia, eight of the ten richest people recently outright purchased entire gold mines.
In a state of absolute irony, George Soros — the man who previously called gold the “ultimate bubble” — just doubled his personal supply of the yellow metal.
And in a speech in New York, self-made bear-market billionaire John Paulson stressed that everyone should get into gold right now. His belief, as well as mine and many others' like Peter Schiff, is that gold prices are about to soar beyond $4,000 per ounce!
These investors, and many more, are rapidly buying gold by the ton... literally.
Of course, odds are that you aren't a billionaire... In fact, if you're like most people, you're struggling enough as it is just to keep your status quo.
You might have enough spare money to buy a couple of ounces of gold or some silver coins, but that's about it. And you're worried that you might need that spare money to cover rising costs of everyday goods down the road...
Fortunately, there's a smarter, faster, easier way to wealth and protecting your financial assets than simply owning physical metals.
People following the simple steps I'm going to lay out for you have already increased their wealth by more than 237% over the past four months.
As Roger Hunt writes:
“I did not believe in your ability to perform.
And I had to give you time to prove yourself.
THANKS!!! A MILLION!!!
For helping me to be on my way to becoming a millionaire!”
And as the dollar continues its decline, you're only going to make more money...
What I Want You to Do Right Now
As I mentioned, most of the wealthiest investors in the world have flocked to buying piles of physical precious metals. And it's a good move.
If you have the means, the more precious metals you can stock up on, the better off you are going to be. After all, the first time you are blessed with the opportunity to hold actual real gold coins in your own two hands will change your life.
Physical gold has been the solid monetary foundation of trade, commerce, and sustainable economic booms for almost all of human history.
Compare that to the brief time fiat money has been in circulation, and you'll see why precious metals are about to skyrocket even further...
In fact, I fully expect the prices of metals to skyrocket in the near future — especially after June 30th, when the Fed is left with no choice but to pump more money into the markets to keep the Dow looking healthy.
Overall, gold will easily break $4,000 per ounce. Silver could reach more than $150 per ounce. And that's just in the near term...
Again, no one is going to complain about that sort of asset protection.
But while the dollar still has ground, I'm showing everyone I know how to take full advantage of it through a handful of stocks positioned to pay investors several times the gains that their physical counterparts make.
Over the coming months, it could make you extremely wealthy... Just as it has already increased the wealth of other investors more than 237% since November.
You see, while the dollar deteriorates — driving precious metals prices higher — something else happens...
The profits — and share prices — of the companies exploring for and mining those metals takes off disproportionately higher.
And the reason is simple: It costs the same amount to extract these metals, regardless of how high the spot prices are.
For example, a deposit with 1 million ounces of gold could be mined at an operating cost of $200 per ounce, whether gold sells for $300, $500, $1,000 or $2,000 per ounce.
The only difference is the higher the price of the metal, the higher the company's profit margins go. And the higher the share price surges.
In other words, finding the right mining and exploration companies all but guarantees to hand you several times more money than you could ever make by simply buying the physical metals.
And after several months of close scrutiny and meeting with various CEOs, geologists, and on-the-ground miners, I've personally selected three that I'm urging everyone I know to get into right now.
So we don't waste any more time, I am going to rush you four special reports, detailing every single one of them...
Normally, each one would be valued at $65 apiece. But because we're on the cusp of such a catastrophic change in America, I want you to have each and every one of them, absolutely free of charge!
Here is what I'm giving you...
Report #1: My #1 Gold Stock for 2011
114 years ago, the Yukon Territory was home to the largest placer gold deposit in history. From all over the world, thousands of brave souls fought the relentless climate in order to claim their share of the 12.5 million ounces of the yellow metal, just laying on the surface.
Today, we know that placer gold only represent 1/10th of the entire deposit. And after several talks with the majority land owner, I'll show you one tiny company currently working on more than 140,000 acres in the region— making it the area's third largest land owner.
Even if it only comes out with a fraction of what's still in the ground, the deposit alone could possibly send the company's share price higher than 323% over the coming months. This is the one investment that you absolutely cannot afford to pass up!
Report #2: Stake Your Claim at Lake Superior's $1.9 Trillion Secret
You read that number right. According to the United States Geological Survey, there's more than $1.9 trillion worth of base and precious metals locked along the shores of Lake Superior.
This single location contains more than 50% of the entire earth's supply of platinum group metals — metals that, thanks to ever-increasing technology, we consume more of every single day.
Here's the summary:
15.6 billion pounds of nickel
501.4 billion pounds of copper
32.9 million ounces of platinum
37.4 million ounces of palladium
In this report, I'll show you who controls it and how it could triple your money over the coming months.
Report #3: Nevada's #1 Gold Stock for the Next 17 Months
You see people flocking to buy physical gold. There are commercials for it on virtually every television program and in every publication printed these days.
But what those gold dealers don't want you to know is that the right gold stocks could easily make you several times more money — without nearly as high of an investment — than owning physical gold.
And this location is no different... Right now, the company sits on an area that has been proven for decades to contain one of the nation's largest deposits of the yellow metal.
In this report, you'll see how easy it is to capitalize on and even leverage the skyrocketing gold prices — without having to lose a dime in dealer costs.
Again, I want you to have each of these reports, absolutely free of charge!
Why give it all away?
As I mentioned earlier, I am worried that millions of hard-working people are about to get broadsided as this inevitable inflation crisis unfolds. And I fully believe many of them are going to be left in complete financial ruin, leaning on the government for support.
Call it selfish, but I want to keep as many people as I can from needing taxpayer-funded, government assistance of any kind.
But at the end of the day, the choice is entirely yours. You can ignore the signs like so many did on the titanic and become a victim of the catastrophe, or you could be proactive and keep your financial future in your own hands...
With the reports I'm sending you, everything you need to steer clear of the dollar's meltdown will be at your disposal.
In addition, I'll also send you my special advisory, Underground Profits.
With each issue of Underground Profits, I scour the universe for junior mining stocks to uncover the biggest opportunities in the junior exploration and mining stock market.
Over the past several years, I've learned the ins and outs of the junior mining stock market; I know how it behaves and what broad trends to expect next.
I look for key indicators that ensure a successful junior mining stock investment: management, capital resources, project potential, share structure, political risk, promotional savvy, and others.
I also keep a close eye on other indicators most other analysts ignore — including insider and institutional buying, cross-market trends, and broad macroeconomic policies.
With my Underground Profits advisory newsletter, I can help you successfully navigate junior exploration and mining stock markets so that you can enjoy easily return double-... triple-... even quadruple-digit investment gains.
And I've got the investing experience and the portfolio success to back up this claim.
Take the Ultimate Investment Thrill Ride
I'd like to personally invite you today to join Underground Profits and learn how to protect yourself from the impending dollar collapse, by investing through the precious metals market.
When you do, I'll rush you my latest reports:
Report #1: My #1 Yukon Gold Stock for 2011
Report #2: Stake Your Claim at Lake Superior's $1.9 Trillion Secret
Report #3: Nevada's #1 Gold Stock for the Next 17 Months
Subscribe today and you'll also get:
Full member-only access to the Underground Profits website and archives with 24-hour portfolio availability
Updates covering market analysis, portfolio developments, and new recommendations
E-mail alerts on all active trades — I'll tell you exactly when to buy and when to sell
Exclusive Free Lifetime Subscription to the H & L Market Report written by Angel Publishing founders Brian Hicks and Bill Lowe (yours to keep even if you cancel)
In short, it's one-stop shopping for all the junior mineral stock investment advice you're going need.
And right now, I'm willing to offer you a year of this service — complete with your free reports — so that you can start making money today.
Agree to try out my new Underground Profits service today, and I'll let you take advantage of every recommendation, every update, every new story, absolutely risk free...
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No hidden fees, no fine print, no ifs, ands, or buts.
Remember, a service like this would usually go for hundreds of dollars... which is still a bargain, considering my readers routinely double and triple their money within just a few months of making their investment...
For Underground Profits to have the effect I want it to have, however, I'm dropping the annual subscription fee to just $49.
But to those who take advantage of this inaugural gold play right now, I'm extending a six-month, total satisfaction guarantee. I promise if within the next six months, you have any complaints at all about the service...
If you are unhappy — for any reason — with the performance of the stock or with your own returns...
Just call and I'll refund your $49 on the spot — no questions asked.
It's a promise that few would ever dare consider — but one I have no problem making, because I know that once you start profiting like I know you will, calling in to refund will be the last thing on your mind...
If anything, you'll be calling and writing to add to my stack of ecstatic reader responses.
But remember this: Opportunities like this one are rare for a reason.
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Don't wait until I make my next recommendation to start yourself on the path to long-term financial security...
Take your future into your hands today and test-drive Underground Profits — absolutely risk free.
Good Investing,
Luke Burgess
Investment Director, Underground Profits
Arab Spring + European Summer = World Winter of Discontent
KINGSTON, NY 25 May 2011 — The biggest news this past week was not the rape accusation scandal embroiling International Monetary Fund chief, Dominique Strauss-Kahn. It was not President Barack Obama’s much ballyhooed Middle East speech, nor was it the historic floods devastating the Mississippi flood plain.
But these were the stories that preoccupied the US press. Whereas all were certainly newsworthy – and a cut above the usual obsession with the purely titillating and violent – the most trend-significant story of all got scant, or no coverage from the mainstream media.
While the downfall of Strauss-Kahn shattered his hopes to run for the French Presidency, the repercussions would be mainly confined to France. His resignation from the IMF, however, would have limited consequences. A new chief will quickly be found to replace him, and regardless of the Strauss-Kahn rape verdict, the IMF will continue raping countries that are forced into accepting their “aid.”
As for Obama’s speech, it was essentially meaningless; many empty words and more vague, unfulfillable promises that will lead to no action of consequence.
Undoubtedly, the devastation wrought by the violent weather patterns will be felt severely by all those directly affected. The physical and emotional toll on the tens of thousands whose homes, businesses and livelihoods were destroyed is incalculable. Nevertheless, the consequences will impact mostly those directly affected while the spillover implications will only temporarily affect the national, and to a lesser extent, the global economy.
Trend Forecast: Should current weather patterns become more a norm than an anomaly, the socioeconomic consequences will prove long-term, far-reaching and disastrous. Farming, shipping, seafood, food supplies and petroleum refining will be among the foreseeable casualties, accompanied by massive population displacement. But the ensuing chain reaction (inflation, shortages, unemployment, etc.) will claim many other victims, which, at this time, are unquantifiable.
The 800 Pound Gorilla in the Press Room Strauss-Kahn, Obama’s speech, tornadoes and floods notwithstanding, the biggest news with the greatest implications was the story with the least coverage. If you watched the Sunday night network news (ABC, CBS, NBC, etc.) you wouldn’t have seen it. If you read the front page of The New York Times, America’s self-described “Paper of Record,” it wasn’t there either.
The most prominently placed story with the biggest photo, that was obviously intended to catch the reader's eye of the flagship Sunday edition, also bore testimony to what the Times considered the news most “fit to print”:
The Gossip Machine, Churning Out Cash Appetite for Dirt
Fuels a Growing, Round-the-Clock Industry
To satisfy the Times’s own insatiable “Appetite for Dirt” it devoted some 4000 words to an imbecilic, inconsequential, lowest common denominator, supermarket tabloid, junk news story on the growth industry of celebrity gossip. Spread across three pages and emphasized by eleven meaningless and superfluous color photos, the Times did what all the mainstream media characteristically do: hawked sleaze and justified it with the reasoning, “This is what the people want.”
Perhaps it was this lust for lust that accounted for the inability of the “Paper of Record” to recognize a megatrend-in-the-making that was already reshaping the global geopolitical landscape. To their credit, however, unlike the networks that ignored the story, the Times at least covered it. According it less than 500 words and relegating it to the Page 12 boondocks, its innocuous headline read: “Despite Ban, Protests Continue Before Spanish Vote.”
Anti-austerity/anti-big bank bailout protests had been sporadically erupting throughout Europe for over a year. But these Spanish demonstrations signaled a major turning point. It was the unrest and discontent in Europe that led us to forecast our “Off With Their Heads” trend that would lead to revolts and topple governments (Trends Journal, Autumn 2010).
But European unrest was overshadowed by the far more violent and widespread Middle East and North Africa uprisings of late 2010 and early 2011. Unlike the Europeans who still believed in the power of their vote, Arabs, with only autocrats, dictators and monarchs in control, had no ballot boxes to divert them. They knew that unless the system changed, nothing would change.
As I had forecast in the Trends Journal and repeated in media worldwide, it would only be a matter of time before Europeans would wake up to the same realization: the system had to change. What distinguished this latest round of Spanish protests from earlier ones in Europe was that very realization; no matter how many votes were dropped into the ballot box, the result would be essentially the same. All the shouting, demands, marches and strikes would accomplish nothing without a responsive government to address them – and this could not be achieved through the current system in which, despite the rhetoric, there was little difference between the major parties.
Trend Forecast: The massive bailouts of Greece and Ireland are already proven failures, and the Portuguese bailout will follow the same path: more debt, higher unemployment, draconian austerity measures imposed upon the people, and a wholesale sell-off of valuable public resources.
Spain, the UK and Italy are next in line to suffer the long-term consequences of the economic “Panic of ‘08” … that has been only temporarily assuaged by the trillions pumped in by the central banks to keep the financial system afloat.
Economic conditions will continue to deteriorate for most European nations. The worse they get, the louder and more heated the protests will become. Entrenched political parties, unwilling to make adequate concessions or yield power, will intensify their crackdown efforts.
The youth-inspired Spanish demonstrations, sit-ins and camp-outs will serve as a template for the equally disenfranchised youth of other countries. In the absence of an economic miracle, divine intervention … or a fulfilled Doomsday Prophesy (in which case all forecasts are off), expect protests to mount throughout the summer of 2011 and continue into 2012 and beyond.
One wild card that might derail the demonstrations, quiet the discontent and unite the people, would be one or several terror strikes in European cities. Considering NATO’s military actions against Libya, revenge attacks are a distinct possibility.
Gerald Celente Gerald Celentegcelente@trendsresearch.com
Special Trend Alert:
The 1st Great War of 21st Century Has Begun!
KINGSTON, NY 21 March 2011 — It is a bad science fiction movie written by mad political scientists.
Exactly eight years to the day that President George W. Bush took America and his “Coalition of the Willing” to war with Iraq, President Barack Obama has taken America and his “Broad Coalition” to war with Libya.
And just as the world was sold a “coalition of the willing” that was predominantly a fleeting alliance of the cajoled and the arm-twisted, the putatively “broad” Obama coalition consists primarily of America’s two cronies-in-war, the UK and France.
Only in a mad political science fiction movie could a President engaged in perpetuating two unjust, immoral, interminable and expensive wars begun by his predecessor, take his nation into yet another unjust, immoral, expensive and, in all likelihood, interminable war … and expect a happy ending!
Eight years of war in Iraq and 11 in Afghanistan has resolved nothing and served only to inflame anti-American sentiment around the world, drain the US treasury, kill and wound hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of innocent people and destroy the lives, limbs and souls of thousands of American troops.
Batting zero on the battle field, the mad political scientists have stepped up to the plate again. Despite nothing but failure, President Obama has decided, unilaterally, to squander still more American men and money in a war on Libya, promising that this time he won’t strike out.
In what could be a casting call for a mad sci-fi movie starring the Three Stooges, America’s newest Decider-in-Chief fights from the safety of the Oval Office while his equally battle-unscarred and chicken-hearted French and British counterparts, Nicolas “Sarko the American” Sarkozy and David (Eton/Oxford, what else?) Cameron lead the charge from the plush distance of the Palais de l'Élysée and 10 Downing Street.
What’s Next? Having accurately predicted, at their onsets, that the Afghan and Iraq wars would be failures, we now predict that war with Libya will not only be equally unsuccessful, but could have even graver global implications. Will Gaddafi fold without a fight? Or, faced by defeat and certain death, will he hit London, Paris, or New York with bio warfare, a dirty bomb or other tactic?
Absent a worst-case terror attack, even if the “broad coalition” overthrows and kills Qaddaifi, it will not amount to victory any more than executing Saddam Hussein and routing the Taliban has brought victory to Iraq and Afghanistan.
If it feels as though the world is spinning out of control, that’s because it is … and at breakneck speed! In just the past few months, revolution has engulfed the entire Middle East and North Africa. In just the past week a gigantic earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown has crippled Japan. And war, (under whatever guise; e.g., “humanitarian crisis” or “answering the call of a threatened people”) has been declared on Libya.
The trend to the “1st Great War of the 21st Century” is accelerating. Events are happening so quickly that it is nearly impossible for us to compile, absorb, analyze and distill the voluminous information in our Trend Alerts before they are eclipsed by the cascade of new events.
To keep you abreast of the breaking news and ahead of the trends, we are upgrading our popular Trends in the News videos to a bi-weekly Tuesday and Thursday regular feature – which will be expanded on a need-to-know basis. (www.trendsjournal.com)
We urge subscribers to log in this Tuesday for a Trends in the News special devoted to the opening salvos of the “1st Great War of the 21st Century” ... the War that no one else to date is either recognizing or daring to talk about.
It is in our Spring Trends Journal, now scheduled for mid April publication, where we will compile, absorb, analyze and distill the voluminous information. This edition represents a crucial episode in the “History of the Future” – a blow-by-blow build-up to war, rather than the mainstream media’s blah-by-blah coverage. Busy cheerleading the home team they are, even at this late stage, incapable of recognizing that the game ends with the 1st Great War of the 21st Century.
What will the War mean to you personally? What can YOU do to prepare yourself for what’s to come? What can be done to individually and collectively halt the march to war – or at least divert and mitigate the damage. The Spring Trends Journal will be devoted to exploring these and other issues in depth.
After 30 years of trend forecasting we can rightfully claim that no one gets it right as often as Gerald Celente and the Trends Journal. No one says it straighter than we do. To get your information “right” and “straight”, renew your subscription today! (Click here to renew).
Stoopid Humans
Posting this crap as if no one who matters will EVER see it
http://finance.yahoo.com/career-work/article/109267/6-career-killing-facebook-mistakes
Yeah...appeal to Hollywood when all else fails!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
http://www1.voanews.com/english/news/american-life/UN-Secretary-General-Appeals-to-Hollywood-California-Students--86020272.html
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