We’re Going Into the Greatest Depression: “They Will Not Be Able To Pull Off the Stimulus Game Again”

Look around and you can’t miss it.
The world is on the brink… politically, economically, financially, monetarily, and militarily.
Events are accelerating. Over the last decade trend forecaster Gerald Celente has been blaring the alarms.
If you’ve been paying attention, then you’ve heard them. You know we’re going under.
And this time they’re not going to be able to stop it.

It will be worse than the panic of ’08.  It will be deeper.  It will be more painful and there’s a reason why… because they will not be able to pull off the stimulus game again.
Everybody got hip to it and it didn’t work. You read even the Financial times, the major media, CNBC, Bloomberg… everyone will now admit that the stimulus only bought borrowed time. So the stimulus game doesn’t work anymore, and the governments are so in debt they can’t have the fiscal policy. So you have no monetary policy and you have no fiscal policy to stimulate the economy.
We’re going into the Greatest Depression.
But they will try to boost it some way. And that’s when I believe gold and silver prices will again skyrocket. They can stay low, I believe, for another several months… even a year. But I don’t see them staying down forever.
I don’t give financial advice. I’m a long term buyer and a long term holder of gold.
Why would I want this digital paper not worth the paper it’s not printed on?
And number two on this whole area of gold and the economy… I believe they’re going to take us to war just like they did during the Great Depression. When all else fails they take you to war and we’re hearing the war drums beating louder and louder throughout the middle east as the middle east is collapsing.
…Hey, great job that Noble Peace Prize winner Obama did…

Full Interview with Gerald Celente and Greg Hunter via USA Watchdog:

Multiple Government Agencies Are Keeping Records Of Your Credit Card Transactions

by Michael Snyder

Were you under the impression that your credit card transactions are private?  If so, I am sorry to burst your bubble.  As you will see below, there are actually multiple government agencies that are gathering and storing records of your credit card transactions.  And in turn, those government agencies share that information with other government agencies that want it.  So if you are making a purchase that you don’t want anyone to know about, don’t use a credit card.  This is one of the reasons why the government hates cash so much.  It is just so hard to track.  In this day and age, the federal government seems to be absolutely obsessed with gathering as much information about all of us as it possibly can.  But there is one big problem.  What they are doing directly violates the U.S. Constitution.  For those that are not familiar with it, the following is what the Fourth Amendment actually says: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”  Unfortunately, the Fourth Amendment is essentially dead at this point.  The federal government is investigating all of us and gathering information on all of us all day, every day without end.
Many Americans have never even heard of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, but Judicial Watch has discovered that they are spending millions of dollars to collect and analyze our financial transactions…

Judicial Watch announced today that it has obtained records from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) revealing that the agency has spent millions of dollars for the warrantless collection and analysis of Americans’ financial transactions. The documents also reveal that CFPB contractors may be required to share the information with “additional government entities.”

Judicial Watch was able to obtain some absolutely shocking documents thanks to a Freedom of Information Act request that it filed in April.  The following is a summary of some of the things those documents show…

• Overlapping contracts with multiple credit reporting agencies and accounting firms to gather, store, and share credit card data as shown in the task list of a contract with Argus Information & Advisory Services LLC worth $2.9 million

• An “indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity” contract with Experian worth up to $8,426,650 to track daily consumer habits of select individuals without their awareness or consent

• $4,951,333 for software and instruction paid to Deloitte Consulting LLP

• A provision stipulating that “The contractor recognizes that, in performing this requirement, the Contractor may obtain access to non-public, confidential information, Personally Identifiable Information (PII), or proprietary information.”

• A stipulation that “The Contractor may be required to share credit card data collected from the Banks with additional government entities as directed by the Contracting Officer’s Representative (COR).”

How do you feel about the fact that the government has contracts with “multiple credit reporting agencies and accounting firms to gather, store, and share credit card data”?
How do you feel about the fact that your credit card data and other “non-public, confidential information” may be shared with “additional government entities”?
Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton put it very well when he said that this “warrantless collection of the private financial information of millions of Americans is mind-blowing.  Is there anything that this administration thinks it can’t do?”
But of course the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is not the only one keeping records of your credit card transactions.
We have also recently learned that the NSA is doing it too.  The following is from a recent Time Magazine article…

Networks are most likely giving the government “metadata.” That is, the credit card issuers could provide the NSA details such as an account or card number, where and when a purchase was made, and for how much. Even though the exact items purchased aren’t revealed, Brian Krebs, who blogs atKrebsOnSecurity.com, says “merchant category codes” in such data give clues about what was bought.
If the NSA is collecting data at the processor level, “at that point the transaction gets cleared and posts to an account, so, yes, you can track it down to a person,” Aufsesser says.

The NSA conceivably could — and probably would — be able get the names of individual account holders from banks issuing credit cards. ”I don’t see how you would anonymize it,” says Al Pascual, senior analyst for security, risk and fraud for Javelin Strategy & Research.

We are rapidly becoming a “Big Brother society” where the government tracks virtually every move that we make.
And don’t think that you can escape this by not using credit cards or by staying off of the Internet.  The truth is that we are being tracked in hundreds of different ways.
For example, have you heard of automated license plate readers?
They are being installed on police vehicles all over the nation, and the amount of information that they are gathering on all of us is frightening.
A computer security consultant named Michael Katz-Lacabe asked the city of San Leandro, California for a record of every time that these license plate readers had scanned his vehicle, and what he discovered absolutely stunned him…

The paperback-size device, installed on the outside of police cars, can log thousands of license plates in an eight-hour patrol shift. Katz-Lacabe said it had photographed his two cars on 112 occasions, including one image from 2009 that shows him and his daughters stepping out of his Toyota Prius in their driveway.
That photograph, Katz-Lacabe said, made him “frightened and concerned about the magnitude of police surveillance and data collection.” The single patrol car in San Leandro equipped with a plate reader had logged his car once a week on average, photographing his license plate and documenting the time and location.
At a rapid pace, and mostly hidden from the public, police agencies throughout California have been collecting millions of records on drivers and feeding them to intelligence fusion centers operated by local, state and federal law enforcement.

Most Americans do not even know that these devices exist, but they have been “collecting millions of records” and feeding them into law enforcement databases all over the nation.
In San Diego alone, more than 36 million license plate scans have been fed into a regional database just since 2010…

In San Diego, 13 federal and local law enforcement agencies have compiled more than 36 million license-plate scans in a regional database since 2010 with the help of federal homeland security grants. The San Diego Association of Governments maintains the database. Like the Northern California database, the San Diego system retains the data for between one and two years.
“License-plate data is clearly identifiable to specific individuals,” said Lee Tien, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “This is like having your barcode tracked.”

Is this the kind of society that we want to become?
Do we really want the police to be taking millions of photographs of us?
Do we really want all of our financial transactions to be fed directly into federal databases?
Do we really want the government to track every phone call we make and every email we send?
As I wrote about recently, it has been documented that literallythousands of companies have been handing over customer data to the NSA.
Is this the kind of legacy that we want to leave for our children and our grandchildren?
Fortunately, it appears that at least some Americans are waking up to all of this.
According to a brand new Rasmussen survey, 56 percent of likely voters in the United States now believe that the federal government is a threat to individual rights…

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 56% of Likely U.S. Voters now consider the federal government a threat to individual rights rather than a protector of those rights. That’s up 10 points from 46% in December.
While 54% of liberal voters consider the feds to be a protector of individual rights, 78% of conservatives and 49% of moderates see the government as a threat.
Overall, only 30% believe the feds today are a protector of individual rights. Fourteen percent (14%) are undecided. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

If the American people do not stand up and demand change, the people that are constantly violating our privacy are going to continue to do so.
Sadly, the vast majority of the politicians in both major political parties seem to think that there is nothing wrong with the status quo.  So I wouldn’t expect any major changes in the short-term.  But hopefully government surveillance will start to become such a major issue with the American people that the politicians will be forced to start addressing it.

Former Reagan White House Budget Director: This Isn’t Going to End Well. The Fed Has Painted Itself Into A Corner. It’s Violated Every Rule Of Sound Money That Ever Existed. All Interest Rates Are Manipulated. The Yield Curve Is Artificial…

David Stockman The Fed Created a Bubble Machine – Global Economic Crisis

Has the Federal Reserve’s ultra-easy money ZIRP policies destroyed honest market price discovery and inflated a massive asset bubble? Outspoken former Reagan White House budget director David Stockman thinks so and believes the Fed has created a massive bubble. He sounds off on the Fed and the huge financial challenges we face in the months and years ahead.
http://www.realclearmarkets.com/video/2013/06/27/stockman_this_isnt_going_to_end_well.html
David Stockman’s Non-Recovery Part 5: Peak Debt And The Wages Of Keynesian Sin

In the final section of this five-part series (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4) on the dismal reality behind the non-recovery, David Stockman explains what lies ahead. He details in his new book ‘The Great Deformation’, that the mainstream notion that there is a choice between fiscal austerity and fiscal stimulus is wishful thinking. It does not recognize that owing to the triumph of crony capitalism and printing-press money America has become a failed state fiscally. What lies ahead is a continuous, mad-cap cycling back and forth – virtually on an odd-even day basis – between deficit cutting and fiscal stimulus to the GDP. As Stockman notes, the proximate cause of this recession waiting to happen is the federal government’s unfolding encounter with Peak Debt. The latter is not a magical statistical point such as a federal debt ratio of 100 percent of GDP, but a condition of permanent crisis - “no viable economy can survive on chronic fiscal deficits nor can it fail to save at a sufficient rate to fund a healthy level of investment in productive capital assets. The blithe assumption to the contrary which animates current policy rests on self-serving clichés such as “deficits don’t matter” and the Chinese savings glut.” So the American economy faces a long twilight of no growth, rising taxes, and brutally intensifying fiscal conflict. These are the wages of five decades of Keynesian sin – the price of abandoning financial discipline.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-06-23/david-stockmans-non-recovery-part-5-peak-debt-and-wages-keynesian-sin
Is the U.S. Facing the Mother of All Bubbles?
http://www.realclear.com/markets/2013/06/28/is_the_us_facing_the_mother_of_all_bubbles__2079.html

Is The U.S. Facing The Mother of All Bubbles?

In today’s “Single Best Chart,” Bloomberg’s Scarlet Fu displays the alarming gap between GDP and the Fed funds rate that suggests a coming bubble. The disconcerting chart comes from Kit Juckes, Global Head of Currency Strategy at Societe Generale. Juckes notes that each of the last three significant financial bubbles in the last thirty years has been fueled by the Fed keeping interest rates below the economy’s nominal growth rate.

68 Senators Vote to Create Incentive for Employers to Hire Amnestied Immigrants Over U.S. Citizens

The immigration bill passed by the Senate Thursday afternoon would give some employers a financial incentive to employ "registered provisional immigrants" (illegal immigrants granted legal status) instead of U.S. citizens.

As the Washington Examiner's Philip Klein recently reported: "Under Obamacare, businesses with over 50 workers that employ American citizens without offering them qualifying health insurance could be subject to fines of up to $3,000 per worker. But because newly legalized immigrants wouldn’t be eligible for subsidies on the Obamacare exchanges until after they become citizens – at least 13 years under the Senate bill – businesses could avoid such fines by hiring the new immigrants instead."
On Tuesday, THE WEEKLY STANDARD asked five U.S. senators about this problem, and none of them knew if it was a problem. "We're trying to solve that right now. I don't know if that's been solved," Senator Max Baucus of Montana (chief author of Obamacare) told THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
"I don't know. I'd have to look at it closely," said Senator Bob Casey of Pennsylvania. "I just haven't read it that closely to know."

Gold-Squeeze In India Stokes Silver Demand

Jeff Nielson: There was more mind-blowing news this week in bullion markets. This is to be contrasted with the deluge of shrill, gold-bashing propaganda being cranked out by the Corporate Media at maximum decibels. As usual (these days); the news centers on India’s bullion markets.
As has been mentioned in numerous previous commentaries; Indian bullion-buyers are notoriously price-conscious. So the recent, unprecedented rape committed in the paper-gold and paper-silver markets has been nothing less than a dinner-bell “chime” for Pavlov’s Dogs.
Gold and silver on sale…at (literally) once-in-a-lifetime-prices.
As reported by many commentators within the sector; gold demand (i.e. demand for real gold) in India has been nothing less than insatiable. This is despite a six-month propaganda blitz by the banking cabal to try to steer Indians into the fraudulent, paper-called-gold market.
The complete failure of that propaganda campaign has prompted a rapid-fire series of what can only be termed “desperation measures” within India. First the Indian government jacked-up import duties on gold. Then (in a world which runs on credit) it prohibited any of the Indian bullion banks from importing gold on credit.
Now we have the most-outrageous move yet:
The All-India Gems and Jewellery Trade Federation (GJF) has asked its members not to sell gold coins and bars to curb imports of the precious metal, and help the government reduce the current account deficit…
This move is effective July 1^st. As has been previously explained; there is no “current account deficit” in India resulting from the importing of gold (which is a currency). This is all just an accounting sham. Thus all these moves are aimed squarely at suppressing gold demand in India – blatant restraint of trade, targeting only precious metals.
The increasing desperation is the product of staggering numbers on Indian gold imports. How large are the numbers? We’re no longer quite sure. After reporting massive imports of over 142 tonnes in the month of April; it was originally reported that India’s gold imports exploded to 262 tonnes in the month of May.
This was followed by a near-immediate retraction; with India’s finance ministry (supposedly) claiming it had “made a mistake” in reporting its own gold imports, and the correct number was ‘only’ 162 tonnes. A “typo”? In an official, government release? Are we to believe that in a nation of more than 750 million people that the Indian government can’t find anyone to proof-read its own, official press releases?
While we must suspect that Indians actually imported over 400 tonnes of gold in the months of April and May alone; for the sake of argument, let’s accept the propaganda. India imported more than 300 tonnes of gold in April and May. And with the desperation-measures just being escalated again; we can expect another large number for June’s imports (or perhaps another large lie?).
Regular readers will clearly remember the news trumpeted previously that central bank gold-buying has soared to “all-time records”. Even at record levels; these banks are expected to collectively import less than 600 tonnes of gold all year.
This is still an enormous number. Previously, the central banks were able to squash the gold market for many years; primarily as a result of central banks dumping 500 tonnes per year onto the market. Then there is Indian gold-buying.
Even at the suspicious, lower figures; this puts the Indian gold market on an annual pace of importing close to 2,000 tonnes per year. Total, annual global mine production is less than 3,000 tonnes. And with the banksters’ scorched-Earth attacks on the mining companies; supply will almost certainly start falling next year – if not already this year.
Then there is China. None of the gold produced by China ever leaves the country. The Chinese government scoops up every ounce, and China is the world’s leading gold-producer. That takes global mine-supply down to around 2,000 tonnes – meaning Indian gold-buyers alone could soak-up every available ounce of gold mined each year.
Then there are the Chinese gold-buyers (separate from the government of China). China’s population of 1 ¼ billion imported nearly 400 tonnes of gold in the first quarter; but more than half of those imports came in the month of March alone – and this was before the banksters slammed bullion prices in April.
Second quarter numbers aren’t available yet; but it would not be unreasonable to expect double the first quarter numbers (given the numbers we have seen in India). That would put China’s market on pace to equal or even surpass India’s gold imports. However, even if we anticipate a ‘mere’ 50% increase in China’s gold imports in the second quarter; we are left with the following parameters.
By themselves; China and India’s 2 billion residents are now importing gold at a pace of roughly 4,000 tonnes per year (or higher); in a world with only a little more than 2,000 tonnes of annual mine-supply. Note that by no means does this represent “total demand” in these markets. These are merely the incremental quantities of gold which must be brought into these markets to satisfy (rabid) domestic demand.
The lying banksters and lying drones in the Corporate Media call this a “bear market”. If the U.S. government was forced to greatly restrict sales of U.S. Treasuries “due to overwhelming demand”; obviously these same liars/hypocrites would not call that a “bear market”.
But this is certainly not the only market-shattering news out of India. We get this from Gold Core:
…While India imported 1,900 tonnes of silver in 2012, in the first five months of 2013 alone, imports have touched 2,400 tonnes.
According to industry estimates, silver imports during the January-March quarter stood at 760 tonnes. Imports shot up 720 tonnes in April alone, and in May, they further swelled by 920 tonnes.
Where will Indian silver imports go from here? Fans of the Law of Unintended Consequences can answer that question. As India’s market-Nazis make it more and more difficult and more and more expensive for the Indian people to store their wealth in gold while bankster-shorting makes silver cheaper and cheaper; what will India’s ¾ of a billion people do? They will buy even more silver.
At this point, readers of my own, most-recent commentary may start getting excited (Surging Silver Sentiment Signals Spiral):
…In 2011 as the silver market was spiking to its short-term peak; total silver demand in India spiked along with it – all the way up to over 4,400 tonnes. When the silver market sagged in 2012 following the banksters great silver massacre; Indian demand fell with it, declining to a little over 3,200 tonnes in 2012.
…when sentiment in the Indian silver market took off, not only did demand spike but silver imports went absolutely ballistic. When India was consuming 4,400 tonnes of silver in 2011; more than 90% of that silver was imported silver – i.e. coming out of global inventories. Even at short-term highs in price; Indians were hoarding not selling their own silver.
The message here is clear, and two-fold. First of all, India’s silver market has clearly turned. The bankster market-rigging has taken the price too low – and ignited the appetites of the world’s most-rabid (and value-conscious) bullion-buyers. Secondly, in a rising market (which must result from such relentless draw-downs in inventories); Indians will be only buyers of silver. In thisgigantic bullion market (containing much of the world’s remaining stockpile of silver) there will be little-to-no “scrap” selling.
So as the government of India ‘puts the screws’ to Indian gold-buyers (with the Western banking cabal nodding its approval from the shadows); the only possible consequence is to create an equal if not larger stampede by Indians into silver.
Between the “laws” of supply-and-demand and Unintended Consequences; the (lawless) banksters are about to get a lesson in law. The lesson is this: simply because you’re able to violate laws with impunity (by being based in a nation with no respect for the Rule of Law) does not mean that laws cease to exist.
We can’t prevent this financial Crime Syndicate from taking their (fraudulent) paper-prices to any arbitrary number they desire. They cannot prevent the rabid demand for real metal which this will incite not merely in India and China, but much of the world.
Driving these markets to (inventory) default and/or Decoupling can only result in an even more-radical boomerang higher in prices…one way or another. Despite all the paper-fraud, these remain (real) “physical” markets, where actions have consequences.
This article is brought to you courtesy of Jeff Nielson From Bullion Bulls Canada.

WARNING: The Process of QE-Driven Bubble Bursting Has Began

Global Derivatives Market Has Already Suffered A Staggering $300 Trillion of Losses, Fed Lost $151 Billion in Bond Values, Gold Drops Below $1,200, Smart Money Is Heading For The Exits!!!

Jim Rogers: “This Is Too Insane–And I’m Afraid We’re All Going To Suffer For The Rest Of This Decade”
When asked about the explosive riots occurring in Brazil, Jim warned to prepare for much more, in that, “This is the first time in history where you’ve had all the central banks in the world printing money at the same time. Europe, Japan, America, and the UK, all, are frantically trying to debase their currencies…I’m afraid that in the end, we’re all going to suffer perhaps, worse then we ever have, with inflation, currency turmoil, and higher interest rates. As I say, this has never happened before, it’s never been a good policy in the long run, so I’m afraid we’re all going to suffer for the rest of this decade from this crazy, crazy money printing.”
http://bullmarketthinking.com/jim-rogers-this-is-too-insane-and-im-afraid-were-all-going-to-suffer-for-the-rest-of-this-decade/
$300 Trillion In Derivatives Losses To Lead Gold’s Rebound
Today Egon von Greyerz warned King World News that the global derivatives market has already suffered a staggering $300 trillion of losses.  These massive derivatives losses, which are being hidden from the public, will help lead the rebound in gold as it begins the next of its bull market.  Below is what Greyerz, who is founder of Matterhorn Asset Management out of Switzerland, had to say in this powerful interview.
Greyerz:  “A few years ago when the problems in Greece started, it was found that the Goldman Sachs had helped them to hide the real truth of their economy by a major derivatives positions.
Now we’ve found out that Italy has done exactly the same thing.  They took out derivatives in order to meet euro criteria back in the late 1990s.  They had a total of $31 billion of derivatives and now they are finding that at least $8 billion of that is worthless.  That’s about 30% of the entire position….
http://kingworldnews.com/…/2013/6/28_$300_Trillion_In_Derivatives_Losses_To_Lead_Golds_Rebound.html

Smart Money has been heading for the exits.

Paulson: Why Is the Fed the Only Game in Town?
…The markets have experienced a broad selloff since Fed Chairman Ben Bernanketold Congress last week the central bank could reduce its $85 billion in monthly purchases of Treasurys and agency mortgages this year. But to Paulson, it seems the selloff came as no surprise.
“When you have a big, ugly problem, there’s never going to be a neat, elegant solution that is totally painless or without a cost and to me it’s just completely unrealistic to assume that those programs could be phased out without some market volatility and some pain,” Paulson told CNBC’s Maria Bartiromo on “Closing Bell.” “Market participants, some of them, are addicted to these abnormally low interest rates.”
http://www.cnbc.com/id/100849121

Gold extends rout, drops below $1,200 an ounce

….And the pressure didn’t let up in electronic trade, with the contract dipping as low as $1,196.10 before changing hands in recent action at $1,201.10. Gold hadn’t traded below $1,200 an ounce since August 2010, according to FactSet.

Gold might continue to fall as real interest rates — the return on bonds minus inflation — continue to rise.

“Already our measure of global real interest rates…was rising [in] early April, with this having shown a strong negative correlation with gold over the longer term,” said Simon Smith, chief economist at FxPro in London.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/gold-prices-claw-higher-after-nearly-4-thrashing-2013-06-27?link=MW_latest_news

BofA: ‘GOLD BEARS BEWARE’

If you’ve been betting on gold this year, watching it fall day after day – including a few spectacular crashes, like the one we’ve seen over the past few trading sessions – has probably not been fun.

ThinkorswimClick to enlarge.

As the daily candlestick chart at right shows, the shiny yellow metal hasn’t spent many days in the green.
Today, the price of an ounce of gold dropped below $1200 for the first time since August 2010, hitting a low of $1196.10 this afternoon before bouncing back to current levels just above $1200.
BofA Merrill Lynch technical strategist MacNeil Curry argues today in a note to clients that “further gold downside [is] limited.”
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/bofa-merrill-lynch-gold-bears-beware-2013-6#ixzz2XVsZKC23
Fed Has Lost $151 Billion in Bond Values
The Federal Reserve has lost at least $151 billion over the last seven weeks due to falling values of its $3.3 trillion bond portfolio, Fortune estimates.
And that could end up costing taxpayers. 
Because estimating the value of the Fed’s bond portfolio is tricky, its $151 billion figure could be off, Fortune admits.
http://www.moneynews.com/Economy/Fed-Treasurys-bonds-losses/2013/06/28/id/512432#ixzz2XVspccUn
BOND MARKET LIQUIDATION: Bond Funds Hit With Biggest Outflows Ever This Week

BofAML Global Research, EPFR Global
Apparently this was the week where the rush for the exits in the bond market really hit a crescendo.
In the week ended June 26, investors pulled a record $23.3 billion from bond funds. And it was a record across every type of fund: emerging markets, high yield, investment grade, and mortgage-backed securities funds all saw their largest weekly outflows ever.
Bond funds shrank by 0.9% this week, marking the second-largest weekly loss on record in terms of assets under management.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/weekly-epfr-fund-flows-data-june-26-2013-6#ixzz2XW03Kvph

Deutsche Bank’s LaVorgna: Fed May Hike Rates Sooner Than You Expect 
The Federal Reserve may hike rates sooner than you think. In fact, Joe LaVorgna, chief U.S. economist at Deutsche Bank, predicts the central bank will start increasing rates as soon as next summer.
http://www.moneynews.com/FinanceNews/LaVorgna-Fed-rates-jobless/2013/06/28/id/512433
Next Major Crash Is Here – Gold Is The Major Indicator – MAJOR PLAYER ABOUT TO FALL – Cities Can’t Sell Their Muni Bonds – The World Is Suddenly On Brink of Severe Cash Crunch
http://investmentwatchblog.com/next-major-crash-is-here-gold-is-the-major-indicator-major-player-about-to-fall-cities-cant-sell-their-muni-bonds-the-world-is-suddenly-on-brink-of-severe-cash-crunch-more-money-pri/

Fed’s Jeremy Stein Full Speech In Which A “Hypothetical” September Taper Is Announced
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 06/28/2013 – 08:10
The first of three Fed speeches is out, and as expected, it contains nothing new save for the ongoing barage of stock market battering for daring to sell on last week’s Bernanke warnings that the Fed’s monthly flow is set to begin tapering in September. It continues to be as if the Fed is shocked to learn that nothing else matters in this “economy” and, of course, “market” than what the Fed will do and say.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-06-28/feds-jeremy-stein-full-speech

Rick Santelli: Europe's Road to Insolvency

Pawn Star Owner Rick Harrison: Govts. Screw Up Currencies

U.S. watchdog raps Pentagon for buying aircraft for Afghan unit

28 Jun 2013 A government watchdog criticized the Pentagon on Friday for forging ahead with controversial helicopter purchases from a Russian arms dealer despite warnings the Afghan special forces unit due to receive the aircraft could not fly or maintain them. The watchdog – the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction – urged the Pentagon to suspend the $553 million Russian arms deal as well as a $218 million contract for 18 planes from a U.S. firm until plans were in place to fully recruit and train the Afghan special forces unit. The Pentagon was already under fire for agreeing this month to buy 30 additional Mi-17 helicopters from the Russian arms dealer, Rosoboronexport. That company is a major supplier of weapons to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who is battling ‘rebels’ trying to overthrow his government

New Bank of America whistle-blower emerges: More customer abuse secrets

Bank of America whistle-blower details latest scheme to abuse homeowners, evade settlement rules and pocket cash

By David Dayen

Last week, I detailed bombshell revelations from Bank of America whistle-blowers, in which former employees of the bank detailed systematic fraud and deceptive practices inside their loan modification department — including bonuses and Target gift cards for staff who racked up foreclosures.
Now, another new lawsuit, featuring a separate whistle-blower, contains additional remarkable revelations – and may shed light on Bank of America’s strategy in getting out from under the mountain of legal exposure and costs in which it now finds itself. Simply put, the bank seeks to pocket quick cash and evade practices set forth in major settlements – by cashing out of the subprime mortgage servicing business. The result would be to leave struggling homeowners back at square one, with even fewer protections to avoid foreclosure.
First, some background. Over the past year, non-bank servicers like Nationstar and Ocwen have been buying up servicing rights to millions of mortgages, gradually positioning themselves to become the biggest companies in the space. These non-bank servicers, which process monthly payments and deal with foreclosures but do not originate loans, have an asset not available to their big bank colleagues: They haven’t yet been officially caught scamming customers. Therefore, they are not a party to the various servicer settlements brought by state and federal regulators, and they need not submit to those settlement guidelines. This includes rules like establishing a single point of contact for borrowers, stopping foreclosure operations when a modification is in process (ending what is known as “dual track”) and facilitating proper payment processing.
All of this has come to a head in a class-action lawsuit filed by Leonard Law Office in Massachusetts against Green Tree Servicing, a non-bank servicer based in St. Paul, Minn. As detailed by an insider at Bank of America in a packet of documents, in January 2013, BofA sold servicing rights to 650,000 mortgages (worth $93 billion) to the parent company for Green Tree.

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Like Nationstar and Ocwen, Green Tree is not part of any servicing settlements, nor do they have to abide by any guidelines set by those agreements, even though the loans they purchased were subject to those guidelines when they were in the hands of BofA. Moreover, as a non-bank servicer, Green Tree has traditionally had less stringent oversight from federal regulators, though the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is fixing to change that.
Of course, servicers like Green Tree, Nationstar and Ocwen have terrible reputations as among the worst servicers in the country (worse than Bank of America, if you can imagine that). Among the charges Leonard Law Office made against Green Tree were claims that the servicer imposed illegal fees to process any kind of payment; failed to process mailed payments on time; harassed borrowers by calling them at all hours of the night and using abusive language to try to collect on debts; and delayed or denied timely modifications. These practices violate such federal laws as the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, the Telephone Consumer Protections Act, and others. Complaints about Green Tree’s practices litter theInternet.
And some complaints have gone to court, like the case of a Florida widow who claimed that Green Tree debt collectors called her husband, as well as his co-workers and relatives, nine times a day about a mortgage debt. Nationstar and Ocwen have seen their share of complaints as well. One innovative Ocwen scam involves sending homeowners a check for $3.50, and claiming that cashing the check automatically enrolls the customer in an appliance insurance plan, which costs $54.95 a month.
Here’s where Bank of America comes in. According to a bank insider, this is part of a deliberate effort to flip the servicing rights for a quick buck and get out from under the scrutiny of the various settlements. “Brian Moynihan, Ron Sturzenegger and Tony Meola are well aware of the reputations of these servicers,” says the insider, referring to Bank of America’s CEO and two high-level executives. “Ron is a dealmaker, not an operations guy. He was brought in to sell the stuff.”
Sturzenegger runs Bank of America’s Legacy Asset Servicing Division, $1 trillion or so of the shakiest loans at the bank.  By selling off servicing rights, suddenly the bank doesn’t have to comply with settlement practices, nor do they have to increase staff for compliance purposes. So not only do they get some ready cash, they lower their labor costs.
Sturzenegger worked with Meola, the executive of Fulfillment Operations, to put together the “Bulk Transfer Program,” selling off these mostly delinquent loans to disreputable servicers like Green Tree and Nationstar (the more reputable ones didn’t want any part of them). But they only sold the “subservicing” rights. Non-bank servicers like Green Tree service the loans, but Bank of America held onto the so-called master servicing rights. This means that the bank still gets some of the profits from servicing the loans, and none of the responsibility to comply with settlements. Bank of America added a million-plus current loans to the mix of shakier loans to sweeten the pot for the subservicers.
In the most damning charge, the insider noted that, “It may mean that any modification currently in process with BAC (Bank of America) will not be recognized and the borrower will proceed into foreclosure.” This is almost certainly true, and it’s a very common practice. Servicers who purchase servicing rights are not obligated to follow through on prior agreements with homeowners on loan modifications that have not yet been made permanent. So the homeowner, who thought they were well on their way to saving their home, instead has to start all over with a new servicer.
Here’s one example from a former Bank of America customer in Puget Sound, Wash., whose switch to Green Tree voided his short sale and put him back in modification hell. Even if the borrower was getting special treatment because of a natural disaster like Hurricane Sandy, that treatment would be voided once the new subservicer entered the picture. The Fitch rating agency has recognized the danger of selling off distressed servicing rights to these non-bank operations, saying in a research note that “the growth and outsized scale of larger nonbank servicers may pose challenges to a potential orderly transfer of servicing.” Struggling homeowners will bear the brunt of these challenges.
Once Charles Giannotti, a friend of Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan, found out that his servicing transferred to Nationstar, he emailed in a fit of rage. “Are you aware of the fact that your bank is turning its customers over to a processor that based on the complaints posted appears to not only lack basic competency but also poor customer service?” Giannotti fumed. This set off a flood of CYA emails within the bank from senior executives, responding to Moynihan’s queries about the scheme.
Regardless of how Bank of America resolves this situation, the damage to homeowners has already been done. Homeowners don’t get to choose their servicer – they just get passed around at the whim of big mortgage companies. And every time the servicing rights get transferred, they have to deal with a whole new set of practices. If they were fighting foreclosure at the time of the switch, then they have to start over, under typically disadvantageous circumstances. And that’s especially true when their new servicer sits outside the glare of strict oversight.
Bank of America’s reputation is already unsalvageable. But avoiding requirements they were forced to make to homeowners to compensate for an initial round of illegal practices, by selling the servicing rights off to fly-by-night organizations that specialize in abusing customers, just about takes the cake. And they’re profiting from it, too.

David Dayen is a freelance writer based in Los Angeles, CA. Follow him on Twitter at @ddayen.

Gold price plunges ahead of mining tax vote

LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL

No industry is immune from the ebb and flow of the economy, and as a result, no tax is, either.
Take gold. The price of the precious metal has plunged more than 37 percent from its record high of $1,920 per ounce 20 months ago. It has slipped more than $73 over the past two days alone to a three-year low of $1,201.20. That’s bad news for Nevada, the nation’s top gold-producing state and the world’s fourth-largest producer of the resource. It’s also bad news for advocates of higher taxes on the mining industry.
The 2013 Legislature made no substantive changes to the state’s tax structure, save for one: Senate Joint Resolution 15, which would abolish the state constitution’s tax cap on the mining industry. If voters approve the amendment next year, the 2015 Legislature would have the authority to reset the mining tax, currently a maximum of 5 percent of the net proceeds of minerals. It’s a de facto income tax because mining companies are allowed to deduct their expenses, including extraction, processing, marketing and delivery.
The industry was an inviting political target during the depths of the Great Recession because skyrocketing gold prices made mining companies big bucks, while most other Nevada businesses suffered. SJR15 passed both the 2011 and 2013 sessions, setting up next year’s vote and a statewide debate over mining’s tax bill and whether it should change.
This state’s champions for more and higher taxes claim Nevada has long needed a more stable structure that prevents revenues from crashing during economic downturns. It’s an impossible goal. Whether you tax income, sales, gross receipts or property, collections will fluctuate based on market changes and consumer responses to them.
No Nevada industry has been subjected to more booms and busts than mining. If the goal of raising taxes is to “stabilize” the state’s tax base, then mining’s levy won’t help much. From 2000 to 2011, the price of gold shot up more than 500 percent. This year alone, it has lost a quarter of its value.
Last week, Barrick Gold Corp., the world’s largest gold mining company, announced it was eliminating about 40 jobs in Nevada and 100 at its Toronto headquarters in response to falling gold prices. It’s a small reduction, to be sure — Barrick has about 4,500 employees in Nevada — but if gold prices keep tumbling, Nevada can expect less investment and more job losses in the northern part of the state, and less tax revenue for schools and social services.
No one is immune from hard times. No industry can provide Nevada with a sure thing. And no tax can provide governments with forever-predictable levels of revenue. Giving the Legislature the authority to set mining taxes is one issue. Whether those taxes should go up when gold prices are free-falling is another issue entirely. Voters and lawmakers would be wise to remember that next year when debating taxes on mining.

Paycheck to paycheck and food stamp to food stamp

Source: My Budget 360


The markets are pulling back dramatically because the Fed sneezed.  The Fed essentially said they would begin tapering off their experiments in quantitative easing by pulling back their bond purchases from $85 billion a month to $65 billion.  That is it.  Not a shocking revelation.  So why then are the markets plunging on this news?  The entire market is being driven by artificial stimulus that is largely helping the top one percent in society.  This is a primary reason on how we can have a peak in stocks while we have a peak in food stamp usage all at the same time.  A large part of the recovery has been fabricated by giving banks access to trillions of dollars in easy debt via the monetizing machinery while the working public has to grovel for any crumbs that are left over after the banks have their feast.  The Fed merely hinting at pulling back is slamming the market because many financial institutions gorging at the trough of low rates are sensing the 135 percent rally in stocks is coming to a close.

The financial market delusion
You can tell how delusional the market has become when you see ads like this:

Dow at 60,000?  Really?  How is that going to happen when many working and middle class families are seeing their incomes decline?  Most families do not have any sizable amount of money in the casino known as the stock market.  The Fed has essentially monetized debt to an unprecedented degree and that is why their balance sheet looks like this:

$3.3 trillion.  And this isn’t made up of clean securities but a mixture of oddities that banks have stuffed into the Fed as some kind of bad bank.  Freeing up bank balance sheets has allowed these institutions to gamble once again in the stock market but also to crowd out regular families in the real estate game which used to be a relatively safe investment before the financialization of America took place as Wall Street has now swooped into markets in Arizona and Las Vegas creating another bubble in these and many other markets.
The bond markets of course have gone haywire with this minor announcement:

The problem with the Fed’s dance is that it needs to be an infinite dance.  The entire pyramid was built on low rates.  Any hint that rates will be rising will send ripples through this entire weak edifice.  By the way, interest rates are still near historical lows yet the stock market is facing its first real shock in a long time because much of this system is built on perpetually low rates.  Risk has been mispriced for many years.
The Fed has been holding the Fed funds rate artificially low for many years.  This combined with aggressive QE actions has pulled the 30 year fixed rate mortgage to all-time lows:

How sustainable was that?  Well we are already seeing what happens when you build an entire financial pyramid on unsustainably low rates.  It isn’t like the public has been benefitting from this either.  Most Americans are still facing tight credit conditions as the deleveraging continues in the household sector:

All the while the Fed balloons their own balance sheet and gives easy access to banks.  In a system where access to debt is wealth, those with political connections like the banks will win.  The rush to convert debt into real assets has been happening for years now with Wall Street buying rental property, high priced homes in key locations, collectibles, and other items for the one percent.  Yet this was done with the implicit backing of the Fed that with their actions has hurt the income growth of most Americans.  In essence, the Fed has facilitated the biggest banking bailout in history with no vote in Congress.
Many think they can dance with the Fed on this poorly built pyramid.  Many are now realizing that without low rates, the new financial paradigm is unsustainable.

Pay firms to ration electricity use says National Grid as government insists the 'lights will stay on' despite blackout Britain warnings

The National Grid has suggested large consumers could be asked to decrease use between 16:00 and 20:00 on weekdays in the winter

Didcot power station which closed this year

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The electricity network owner National Grid has suggested that shops and factories could be paid to ration electricity amid increased fears over the likelihood of nationwide power blackouts.

The National Grid has suggested large consumers could be asked to decrease use between 16:00 and 20:00 on weekdays in the winter.
The network owner was responding to warnings from the regulator Ofgem that the risk of blackouts had doubled in less than a year because ageing power stations were not being replaced.
However the government has dismissed the proposals and insisted that the lights would stay on.
Energy Minister Michael Fallon told BBC 2's Newsnight: "I can assure you the lights are not going to go out."
He said: "The latest assessment has shown that the position is slightly worse than the previous assessment last year and they have got to make sure, the regulator Ofgem, has got to make sure, with all the tools at its disposal, bringing some mothball plants back in action, it has got to make sure that the lights stay on and they will."
A Department of Energy and Climate Change spokesman added: "If necessary, steps such as bringing mothballed plant back online will ensure we have enough power in the short term. Power is not going to be rationed and businesses are not going to be forced to switch off.
"A capacity market will ensure we have enough power in the longer term."
Yesterday Ofgem warned that the risk of Britain suffering a major power blackout will rise significantly towards the middle of the decade as ageing generators retire from service.
The regulator said the margin of supply capacity over demand could narrow to between 2 per cent and 5 per cent by 2015 and 2016.
Previous estimates suggested that electricity supply capacity would fall to 4% at its lowest.
If capacity were to reduce to 2% it would increase the risk of blackouts towards the middle of the decade.
Ofgem said the findings "illustrates the need for the timely implementation of the Department of Energy and Climate Change's capacity market".
"The risk to electricity supplies is projected to increase from the current near zero levels, although Ofgem does not consider disruption to supplies is imminent or likely, providing the industry manages the problem effectively."
Ofgem also highlighted uncertainty around supply and demand for electricity.

 

Gold rush 2013 style has Dubai scrambling

There is not enough space on airlines flying in to Dubai to meet the rapidly rising demand for physical gold in the emirate since the price plunged to record lows this week.

The price drop led to a rush of buyers for Dubai gold from the Middle East, South East Asia, the Balkans, Turkey and parts of Europe according to Tarek El Mdaka, the managing director of Kaloti Gold in Dubai.

"I cannot find a place for transporting gold on Emirates, on BA on Swiss Airlines this weekend," Mr El Mdaka said.

"I am shipping in one-and-a-half to two tonnes of gold every day and it is going straight out."

Mr El Mdaka added that gold is in such short supply in Dubai that he is able to charge a US$3 premium per ounce.

"In the last week or so that has gone up from $1.25, $1.50 to $1.75. But now it is $3. We are really squeezed."

Physical gold from Dubai has been selling strongly since the price of the yellow metal first plunged in April.

But this week it has taken another historic tumble, creating a buying opportunity for small- time investors looking for gold bars, coins and bullion.

Yesterday the price edged up a little with the spot price rising 0.5% in early trading to $1,232 an ounce.

On Wednesday, however, it fell 4%to $1,221.80, the lowest price in three years, capping a 12% decline in the past eight trading sessions.

Some parts of the Dubai market are not so buoyant as those in which Kaloti operates, however.

Gerhard Schubert, the head of precious metals trading at Emirates NBD said that grades of gold known as 995, which would ordinarily be sold into the Indian market, are currently stuck in Dubai.

The Indian government has implemented import restrictions that have been backed up by the All India Gems and Jewellery Trade Federation in an effort to shore up the tumbling rupee.

"A lot of India's gold comes in from Dubai and all of that is stuck here right now," Mr Schubert said.

Mr El Mdaka, who does not sell into the Indian market, agreed.

"The squeeze on physical gold in India would have a big effect on Dubai.

Luckily though, there is a lot of demand coming from the rest of the world to soak it up," he said.

James Grant: Fed Can't Just Do 'A Little' QE, Has Less Control Than Many Believe

New EU Plan Will Make Every Bank Account In Europe Vulnerable To Cyprus-Style Wealth Confiscation

Michael Snyder
The Economic Collapse
Did you actually believe that they were not going to use the precedent that they set in Cyprus?  On Thursday, EU finance ministers agreed to a shocking new plan that will make every bank account in Europe vulnerable to Cyprus-style bail-ins.  In other words, the wealth confiscation that we just witnessed in Cyprus will now be used as a template for future bank failures all over Europe.  That means that if you have a bank account in Europe, you could wake up some morning and every penny in that account over 100,000 euros could be gone.
That is exactly what happened in Cyprus, and now EU officials plan to do the same thing all over Europe.  For quite a while EU officials insisted that Cyprus was a “special case”, but now we see that was a lie.  International outrage over what happened in Cyprus has died down, and now they are pushing forward with what they probably had planned all along.  But why have they chosen this specific moment to implement such a plan?  Are they anticipating that we will see a wave of bank failures soon?  Do they know something that they aren’t telling us?
Amazingly, this announcement received very little notice in the international media.  The fact that bank account confiscation will now be a permanent part of the plan to bail out troubled banks in Europe should have made headline news all over the globe.  The following is how CNN described the plan…

European Union finance ministers approved a plan Thursday for dealing with future bank bailouts, forcing bondholders and shareholders to take the hit for bank rescues ahead of taxpayers.
The new framework requires bondholders, shareholders and large depositors with over 100,000 euros to be first to suffer losses when banks fail. Depositors with less than 100,000 euros will be protected. Taxpayer funds would be used only as a last resort.

According to this new plan, bondholders will be the first to be required to “contribute” when a bank bailout is necessary.
Do you want to guess what that is going to do to the price of European bank bonds?
Shareholders of the bank will be the next in line to get hit when a bank bailout happens.
After that, they will go after those that have more than 100,000 euros in their bank accounts.
EU officials say that such a plan is needed because bailing out banks with taxpayer money was creating too many problems…

The European Union spent the equivalent of a third of its economic output on saving its banks between 2008 and 2011, using taxpayer cash but struggling to contain the crisis and – in the case of Ireland – almost bankrupting the country.
But a bailout of Cyprus in March that forced losses on depositors marked a harsher approach that can now, following Thursday’s agreement, be replicated elsewhere.

Oh wonderful – the “Cyprus solution” can now be “replicated” everywhere in Europe.
This plan will now be submitted to the European Parliament for final approval.  The goal is to have this plan finalized by the end of this year.
If you have a bank account in Europe with over 100,000 euros in it, get your money out now.
I am not sure how else to say it.
In Cyprus, there were retirees and small businesses that lost hundreds of thousands of euros overnight.
Do not let that happen to you.
And without a doubt, we are going to see a lot of banks fail in Europe over the next few years.  This will especially be true once the next great financial crisis strikes.
But even though we haven’t even gotten to the next great financial crisis yet, the economic depression in Europe just continues to get even worse.  Just consider these facts…
-Car sales in Europe have hit a 20 year low.
-Overall, the unemployment rate in the eurozone is sitting at 12.2 percent.  That is a brand new all-time record high.
-An average of 134 retail outlets are shutting down in Italy every single day.  Overall, 224,000 retail establishments have closed down in Italy since 2008.
-It is being projected that Italy will need to ask for an EU bailout within 6 months.
-Consumer confidence in France has dropped to an all-time low.
-The unemployment rate in France is up to 10.4 percent.  That is the highest that it has been in 15 years.
-Government is now responsible for 57 percent of all economic output in France.
-In May, household lending in Europe declined at the fastest pace in 11 months.
-During the first quarter, disposable income in the UK declined at the fastest pace in 25 years.
-It is being projected that the unemployment rate in Spain will hit 28.5 percent next year.
-Just a few years ago, the percentage of bad loans in Spain was under 2 percent.  Now it is sitting at 10.87 percent.
-The national debt in Spain has grown by 19.1 percent over the past 12 months alone.
-The Greek government says that the Greek economy will shrink by 4.5 percent this year.
-It is being projected that the unemployment rate in Greece will rise to30 percent in 2014.
And it certainly does not help that China has essentially declared a trade war on Europe.  That is not going to help struggling European industries at all.
I hope that more Americans will start paying attention to what is happening in Europe.  The crippling economic problems that are sweeping across that continent will come here too.
And at some point there is a very good chance that we will also see Cyprus-style bank account confiscation in this country.
So don’t put all of your eggs in one basket.  It is good to have your assets spread around a bunch of different places.  That makes it much harder for them to be wiped out all at once.
What we are watching in Europe right now is really unprecedented in modern times.  They are declaring open season on large bank deposits.  In the end, a lot of people in Europe are going to lose a lot of money.
Make sure that you are not one of them.

Report: Former NJ. Gov. Jon Corzine Slapped with Civil Charges Over MF Global's Collapse

Federal agency sues Corzine over failure of MF Global
Published June 27, 2013 | Associated Press
Federal regulators are accusing former New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine of failing to properly manage MF Global, which misused customer funds before its 2011 collapse.
A civil lawsuit by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission seeks to ban Corzine from trading in the futures market and demands he pay unspecified penalties.
The lawsuit said Corzine bore responsibility for MF Global's unlawful acts because he directly or indirectly controlled the company and its holdings and "either did not act in good faith or knowingly induced these violations."
"He also failed to supervise diligently the activities of MF Global's officers, employees and agents.
Corzine has disputed the allegations by the CFTC, which regulated MF Global.
The regulator also filed civil charges against Edith O'Brien, the firm's former assistant treasurer.
About $1.2 billion in customer funds disappeared. Most of the money has been returned. MF Global has also agreed to pay a $100 million penalty as part of a settlement.
New York-based MF Global sought bankruptcy protection after a disastrous bet on European countries' debt. Its $41 billion bankruptcy was eighth-largest in U.S. history.

The Necessity of Disillusionment

 The experience of disillusionment is one that is common to all.  It is safe to say that at some time or another, every human being has had the experience of believing in something that turned out not to be true.  The initial shock that comes when one’s perception of the world is revealed to be at odds with the hard facts of reality can range anywhere from mild disappointment to a feeling of overwhelming psychological trauma.
Whatever the degree of deception, the realization that one has been believing in a lie is a painful experience, not only psychologically but physically as well.  Like a punch to the stomach, it can feel like one’s breath has been taken away.  And because our beliefs about the world are interconnected with other beliefs fixed in our brains, the destruction of one belief can often lead to a cascade of collapse of many others.

“Nothing is more sad than the death of an illusion.” 
~ Arthur Koestler

When a person is confronted with facts that contradict currently held belief systems, they have one of two choices.  The first choice is to go into denial mode by rejecting the facts as being untrue in order to prop up their chosen belief system and continue living as before.  The second choice is to accept the new data and try and reconstruct a new internal paradigm or map of reality that accommodates the new information, which may mean putting into question all other beliefs associated with the old model.
The second choice is difficult and takes a great deal of strength in order to let go of one’s preconceived ideas and accept the new and factual data.  The first choice is easy because it requires no effort, pain, sadness, or reordering of one’s life or values.  It is also more comfortable, and because humans generally prefer comfort over pain, the first choice is often the default option.
The exact moment when a person becomes aware of facts that go against what is believed to be true, they experience what psychologists call cognitive dissonance; it is that tense, uncomfortable sensation that what one sees is so out of sync with what one already believes to be true, that the mind instantly rejects it, even when the facts are plain and indisputable.
It is in this moment of experiencing cognitive dissonance (you can recognize it by the tension and discomfort that triggers a “knee-jerk” reaction) that the crucial battle for truth over fiction takes place.  If a person can muster the awareness and strength of will to not give in and take the comfortable route by immediately dismissing the facts outright, and hold the conflicting information in their minds while consciously experiencing the negative feelings associated with cognitive dissonance, the resulting liberation can be transformational.  It has to be experienced to be believed!

“If we only knew what Illusion is, we would then know the opposite: what Truth is.  This Truth would liberate us from slavery.” ~ Boris Mouravieff

The interesting thing about our tendency to stick with old belief systems, even when faced with hard evidence to the contrary, is the neuro-chemical reward factor.  Scientific studies have shown that when experiencing cognitive dissonance (the tension and stress produced when presented with facts that undermine one’s normal perception of reality), the decision (knee-jerk reaction) to ignore the factual data and sweep any contradictory evidence under the rug causes the brain to release certain chemicals, making us feel happy and safe again.
So, if believing in an illusion makes us feel safe, happy and comfortable, and any contradictory evidence causes us pain, disorientation and sadness, what possible motivation is there to consciously choose to go through the process of disillusionment?
Answer:  The love and desire for Truth.
Humans by nature are a curious sort and, for the most part, want to know the truth about things.  This love and desire for Truth is why we like puzzles and mystery novels: because of the satisfaction that comes with learning something new.  The thrill of discovery, the joy in being amazed and the excitement of finding solutions to complex problems are all strong motivators for people to seek out new and unconventional modes of thinking.
It is only when this process of discovery conflicts with our already entrenched world view that the difficulties of accepting new information manifest.  At the same time, no one likes being lied to; no one enjoys being taken advantage of or being played for a fool or turned into a chump.  So when we discover that we have been deceived by people we trust, the sense of hurt and betrayal that accompanies this realization can be devastating.
….

No Virginia, there is NO Santa Claus

Take the Saint Nicholas myth for example.  No one would likely criticize or admonish a preschool aged child for believing in Santa Claus.  But replace the child with a full grown adult who insists that Santa Claus is real, and that person would likely be considered delusional or insane.
Many children can remember how hurt they felt when they first learned that Santa Claus wasn’t real; the sense of utter betrayal that all the people they loved and trusted spent so much time and energy every Christmas propping up the illusion of this magical man in a red felt suit who travelled across the world in a sleigh pulled by flying reindeer, delivering presents to every child in only one night; even the television, newspapers and radio personalities are in on the deception!
Apologists will say that whatever negative psychological imprinting resulting from this harmless little deception is worth it because, if only for a short while, little children were actually enabled to believe in magic.  But what does the child actually learn from this?  They learn in a hard and painful way that there is really no magic in this world and people who are supposed to guide you and act as role models can’t be trusted.
Now ask yourself, as an adult, would you prefer to believe in lies and fairy tales, or would you rather know the truth?  Deep down, it is likely that most of us feel glad that we know the truth about Santa Claus, even though the initial realization may have caused some sadness and pain.  Our understanding of Christmas is now all about the spirit of giving and sharing (and hard work in order to be able to do so) rather than an egocentric expectation of having every wish granted with no effort.  Our appreciation of the holiday is deeper and richer and we gain more satisfaction from giving than getting (or should). The point is that disillusionment, no matter how uncomfortable at the time, leads us towards to the truth.  We are wiser and deeper and more satisfied for it.  It helps us grow up and become closer to being free agents in our world.
Believing in illusions is akin to a form of slavery that keeps us disconnected from the real world, and from each other.
An interesting and effective allegory is to consider the human nervous system as a kind of computer hardware.  Each of us is born with a basic operating system, heartbeat, digestion, breathing, etc.  Then, depending upon the circumstances of our birth, the software installed as we grow up is as varied as there are people on the planet.  And in some cases, there can be enormous software conflicts, viruses, and even software that doesn’t run properly on the system.
What this means is that our parents’ belief systems become our own, whether it be religion, politics, socio-economic status, or favourite sports team.  Our national identity is forged by the place we happened to be born.  All our likes and dislikes, passions and prejudices, biases and beliefs, are inculcated into us by our family, peers, education, media and society.  We are, effectively, a product of a roll of the geographical dice.  The entire landscape of our minds is a product of external forces.  There are hardly any thoughts inside us that are truly unique and our own.

“Our greatest illusion is to believe that we are what we think ourselves to be.” ~ H.F. Amiel

Take a set of adopted twins for example.  One is adopted by, and raised in, an American fundamentalist conservative Christian family.  The other is adopted by, and raised in, an Iraqi fundamentalist conservative Muslim family.  When they both turn 21, they join their respective country’s military and one day find themselves at war, face to face, as bitter ideological enemies, each ready to kill the other, each thinking the other is a savage and less than human.
What really separates these two twin brothers other than the software installed in their brains as they were growing up?  Raised together, by either family, there would be the possibility of love, understanding and support between them.  And neither family can be declared to be “right” and in possession of the “Truth” because they, too, are products of their familial, social, national programming.
This is how our programming, our illusory belief systems keep us enslaved and at odds with our fellow humans.  And it is only by following our strong desire for the truth, confronting these programmed beliefs within us and consciously suffering the pain and despair of disillusionment that we have any hope of becoming free of the lies that bind us to discord and destruction.
….

Objective Reality

The world IS a certain way, of this there can be no doubt.  Truth exists, but perhaps would be better described as objective reality.  Things happen.  There are causes and effects.  Some things happen that are never observed which can lead to other things happening that are observed.  Some things happen that are observed and cause other things to happen that are not observed.  Philosophers, physicists, theologians, and ordinary people have thought and argued about causality and acausality for as long as humans have been self-aware.  What we need to fix firmly in our minds is the fact that things that are observed can only be observed within the physical limitations of the observer, and those limitations can include a strong tendency to understand what they perceive one way or another according to the beliefs installed by socio-cultural programming.
Humans, for example, have five basic senses; sight, sound, smell, taste and touch.  As perceptive as these senses can be, they are limited to a certain range, and can never take in the whole picture.  Certain wavelengths of light are beyond the scope of the human eye, as certain frequencies of sound are beyond the range of the human ear.  Studies have shown that even these basic senses can be programmed!
Considering the very narrow field of sensory perception in relation to what scientific instruments indicate actually exists, it can be safely argued that humans know very little of objective reality indeed!  Still, objective reality does exist out there, and the more you can see, the more prepared you are to respond intelligently and, as a freer agent, to what IS.  With practice and sharing of information from other perspectives, we can tune our minds to see more objectively and this, in itself, is a worthy goal.
Imagine the following hypothetical scenario… A car veers off the road in the middle of the night and crashes into a tree, killing the driver, the only occupant in the car.  There can be numerous possible explanations for the event, but because the only witness is deceased, we can never know with 100% certainty exactly what happened and why.
We can speculate that perhaps alcohol, fatigue or some medical condition was responsible, that the driver swerved to avoid an animal, hit a slippery patch, or many other possible scenarios might account for the accident.
Forensic experts arriving on the scene to assess the situation can piece together the many possible clues that would explain the crash.  Using their knowledge and expertise to examine the facts left behind, they may come to a reasonable conclusion as to the possible cause of the event, but even then can only guess at the real cause given a certain degree of probability of being true.  The driver may have alcohol in the blood.  But that may not be the reason for the crash; it may have been a mechanical failure or swerving to avoid an animal crossing the road.
The objective reality of the situation, what actually happened at the time of the crash, will never be known for certain and we have to accept that this is the case with most of what we know about our reality.  However, the more facts obtained increases the probability of a correct interpretation, though it is important to always keep in mind that probabilities are not certainties, and should not be substituted for the truth.  Searching for the truth means accepting probabilities, approximations, and always remaining open to new information.
The problem of becoming more attuned to objective reality gets bigger when we factor in the programmed software in our brains that acts as a filter or distorted lens by which we perceive the world.  Our belief systems and prior life experience can alter the way that everyday life events are interpreted, making us react in ways we are not even conscious of; and very often, these reactions can harm us or those we love.  What we don’t know about our minds and our world can hurt us!
Take for example a new boss with red hair hired to take over a group of office workers.  One of the workers had a nasty red-headed gym teacher in high school who had humiliated her in front of the other students.  Another of the workers had a kind red-headed gym teacher who helped her develop a love of sports that she continues to practice to this day.  Both workers have an immediate impression of their new boss, one very positive and the other extremely negative.  Neither is aware of the reasons why the new boss invokes such strong feelings, but their future relationship with the new boss, their work performance and employment satisfaction are going to be greatly affected.
Our minds do this all the time.  Every minute of every day we experience the world through a distorted lens of entrenched beliefs and past history, while the objective reality of the situation, the truth, for the most part, remains elusive.
Of course this problem is only a problem so as long as we are unaware of it.  Once we gain the knowledge of how our minds work, we can consciously strive to see any situation for what it is, gather facts, apply this insight to all we have learned and experienced, assess reality based on probabilities, and most importantly, share what we have learned with others.  It is by sharing with each other our own unique and particular point of view, and really listening to others when they share theirs, that we can broaden our horizons and come closer to understanding the objective reality of any event or situation.
Remember the Indian parable of the blind men and the elephant?
“Six blind men were asked to determine what an elephant looked like by feeling different parts of the elephant’s body.  The blind man who feels a leg says the elephant is like a tree trunk; the one who feels the tail says the elephant is like a rope; the one who feels the trunk says the elephant is like a snake; the one who feels the ear says the elephant is like a hand fan; the one who feels the belly says the elephant is like a wall; and the one who feels the tusk says the elephant is like a spear.”
Each of the men is experiencing their own subjective reality of the elephant, but by sharing information with each other, together they can come closer to seeing the objective reality of the elephant.  You may not be able to see the whole thing yourself, on your own, but you can create a much better mind-map with good feedback from others that you take into account.
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The Big Seven Illusions of our time

So, now that we have a better understanding of how the belief systems and past history in our minds can colour and/or distort completely our interpretations of the world, now that we know we can only accurately assess our reality in terms of probabilities based on factual data, and now that we know that sharing of data with others gets us closer to understanding objective reality, we can then turn to the final and most important part of this essay; the necessity of conscious disillusionment.
If we desire to know the truth about our world, we must be willing to suffer.  It is imperative that we be able to look at the facts, as they are, hold them in our minds, no matter how unpleasant or painful they may be, understand the consequences of what it would mean if they are true and — in some instances — rearrange our lives accordingly.
The process of choosing disillusionment as a remedy to subjectivity and a desire for truth is a form of conscious suffering.  We enter this process willingly, knowing that the final result will be worth the temporary pain and sadness, because we know that the truth, only the truth, shall set us free from these controls placed upon us from birth, without our free choice.
What I will present here are probably the seven biggest illusions commonly held by most people in the world.  This list has been created after years of work, research, and feedback from many others, so it’s not just a list that is made up based on the preferred illusions of a single individual or small group of individuals.  Even though the reader may find themselves in agreement with one or two, it is likely that something in this list is going to rub you the wrong way.  That will be because some things on the list go against the mass programming of your socio-cultural milieu that you have absorbed as your own beliefs about what is or is not true.
You may find yourself railing against several of the ideas presented here and that is understandable.  You may experience an instantaneous aversion to a few of these proposed illusions, where a voice in your head screams “preposterous, ridiculous, blasphemous!”  That is good also, as it is part of the process.  Remember; no pain, no gain.  What you need to keep always in mind is that mass beliefs are generally created by an elite ruling class for THEIR benefit, not yours.  Remember that those at the top of the heap will always promote what keeps them at the top.
Suffering helps us grow, it’s how we learn our lessons and become wiser human beings.  We must stumble and fall before we can walk and run.  We must try our hardest and fail many times before we can succeed.  We must know the pain of rejection, heartbreak and betrayal, before we can truly learn how to love.
Here is a proposal for a simple experiment that you can do silently while reading this list: No matter what your first reaction is to any of these seven ideas, try for a moment to not immediately reject them and sweep them under the rug.  Try to avoid the tendency to come up with arguments to dispute them.  This automatic reaction, however normal, is a product of our already ingrained belief systems railing against possible growth.  Things ingrained don’t like to be changed and will fight tooth and nail to uphold the status quo.
What is being asked of you is to, if only for a few moments, sit with the idea in your mind as if it were true.  Be conscious of your inner state while doing this experiment.  How do you feel inside?  What questions does it raise?  Ask yourself what it would mean for your life if the statement were true?  How many other of your beliefs about the world are interconnected with it, and what else would have to change in order to accept it?  And lastly, what would you do about it?  Then, after considering all this, do some research on the subject and come to your own conclusions.
So, let’s begin…

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1) The illusion of free will

This illusion is a tough one for most people to accept because it seems to go against the very obvious experience of day to day living.  We all make thousands of seemingly innocuous choices every day, and we are all under the impression that we are free in making these choices.  And in some sense it is true, but the important thing to keep in mind is that the choices people make are a product of their environmental programming and are therefore limited by the confines of what is available as ‘acceptable choices’.  Combine this with the fact (previously discussed) about how our brains are programmed with certain belief systems due to geographical location and peer group influences that determine how and what we choose, and the picture is rather grim for ‘free will’.
The example of the failed New Year’s resolution will provide some insight.  Most everyone has had the experience of declaring that they wish to make a certain change in their life, and no matter how determined they are at the time of making that declaration may find themselves later doing exactly what they said they would no longer do, or not doing what they set out to do.  The reason for this is due to the fact that inside our brains exist multiple different programs, each with their own motivation and agenda.  Depending on which program is running at the time, the choices that one makes can vary.  The program that ‘chooses’ to start a new diet is influenced by the fact that it is thought to be good, in our society, to go on that diet and that the New Year is the time to make a positive life decision.  So, making that resolution feels good at the time it is made.  But then, after all that New Year’s reinforcement has faded away, other programs become more dominant, such as “I worked hard all day and I deserve an extra bowl of ice-cream with Oreo cookies.” Or: “I’m really stressed lately and I NEED some comfort!” Or “It’s my 40th birthday, I can have 3 pieces of cake if I want!” Obviously, if there are a number of these types of programs that get triggered throughout the subsequent days, weeks and months, the initial resolution at the beginning of the year will become gradually buried.  You see, each of these programs has its own justification and can take over and run our operating system any time the requisite external stimulus gets it going.  It could even be said that these program loops, little belief systems, are different ‘personalities’ or parts of the total self.  One ‘I’ resolves to eat healthily all year because, at that moment, it feels good to make this decision; a second ‘I’ has learned that it is normal in life to reward the self with food, and it feels really good, too!  A third ‘I’ has learned within the family and culture, that food is for comfort: “Have a little of this, it will make you feel better…”  A fourth ‘I’ is distressed by growing older and knows that some extra cake will light up all the feel-good neurons and help to forget that life is passing and success is still elusive.
Our minds are literally not our own, they are the result of a myriad of conflicting desires and motivations, with each voice screaming to be heard and taking charge when the situation allows.  So, combine this litany of competing desires with programmed belief systems telling us what to think and do and it’s not too much of a stretch to imagine that we are not truly free at all.  The reality is, we are machines, merely reacting to things and not acting from a real center of gravity.
Before rejecting this supposition, try to sit for a moment with the awareness that you are not free, that you are a machine, merely reacting to your environment like a programmed automaton.  How does this make you feel?  Are you willing to accept the possible premise that we are all prisoners of our own belief systems, that our minds are not our own nor in control of any decision we seem to make freely?  And if this were true, what could you do about it?
Perhaps it is more accurate to say that free will is something that can be gained over time with awareness, discipline, diligence, determination, discernment, strength and knowledge.  Once we become aware of how our minds are enslaved by embedded programs and the presence of competing personalities, we can then strive to grow our will so that the choices we make are truly free and based on an understanding of objective reality.
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2) The illusion that there is “good in every person”

Some people are just plain evil, through and through, born that way, and there is nothing anyone can do to change that fact.  They are called psychopaths and have been estimated to make up at least 1% of the general population, with some researchers suggesting the number may be as high as 15%.  This means that between 1 in every 100 and one in every 7 people you meet is a pure psychopath.  Think about it.  If you know 100 people, then odds are that you know or have had an encounter with a psychopath, and possibly many more.  With the higher percentage, if you know 7 people, one of them could be a psychopath.  Those are scary numbers.
The illusion that “there is some good in everyone” is favoured by many wide-eyed optimists, naive new-agers, or kind-hearted religious folk, whose tendency towards compassion and forgiveness can be a recipe for disaster both for themselves and those they love.  They believe that these types of people are just maladjusted, misunderstood individuals with a bad childhood who can be rehabilitated or cured with love, or therapy or, at worst, a period of incarceration to “learn their lesson.”  Nothing could be further from the truth.
Far from being the insane monsters and serial killers depicted in popular culture, these often seemingly respectable ‘people’ are well aware of their peculiar temperament, and use it knowingly to prey on others.  They have been described as charismatic, charming, confident, glib, superficial, arrogant, opinionated, domineering and cocky, but they can also play the role of pitiful, downtrodden, luckless and hapless waifs.  Psychopaths are pathological liars and their relationships with other people are defined by manipulation and exploitation whether accomplished via overt or covert dominance.  They are born this way and will die this way, and no amount of understanding or intervention can change this fact.
A likely genetic abnormality leaves these social predators without a conscience.  They have no ability to feel compassion or empathy for others.  They quickly learn the conscience-based societal conventions shared between normal humans, which they see as a weakness, then use our capacity for natural emotional responses against us in their reptilian desire for power and control.
They also learn to recognize others of their ‘type’ and use their lack of conscience to lie, cheat, steal, manipulate, betray and/or bully their way into positions of power within many organizations and institutions.  It is safe to say that a large majority of those at the very top of many political, religious, educational, medical, military, media and corporate entities are psychopaths.  This is a sad and unavoidable fact of life in our reality today, and can account for most of the world’s problems including, war, oppression, poverty, exploitation and starvation.
So, how do these assertions make you feel?  Do you know, or have had experience with, someone who never seems to learn from their mistakes, who appears to enjoy or participate in the suffering of animals and other people?  Have you ever had an encounter with someone who could lie easily and effortlessly, who deliberately tried to undermine your work or feelings, who would literally do anything to advance their own self-interest, even at the expense of other people, without a second thought or moment of regret?
Accepting for a moment the idea that psychopaths are real and prevalent in our society, what would you do about it?  How would it change the ways in which you see the words and actions of our so-called ‘leaders’ when they talk of peace while waging war?  What other beliefs that you hold about humanity are challenged by temporarily accepting this premise?  And what does it say about the people who coined the term “all men are created equal?”  Again, a few hours of internet research can literally save you a lifetime of pain, or your life, or the life of someone you love.  That is assuming that you, unlike psychopaths, are capable of loving at least one other person.
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3) The illusion of democracy

This illusion is a big one, and is intimately connected with the preceding one.  From the moment of birth, in the Western world, this lie is repeated constantly and endlessly without pause by our parents, teachers, peers, government institutions and media.  This lie is so pervasive and ingrained that to question it seems absurd.  Unfortunately, the truth is that real democracy has never existed and is only purveyed as an ideology by those in power to keep the masses enslaved while believing that they are free.  Like a mental prison with invisible bars, the illusion that we have a choice about who will lead us as head of state is orchestrated and manipulated from beginning to end.  For the controllers, the outcome is never in doubt.  Power will do anything to ensure its continued control.
Like the bread and circuses of ancient Rome, these pseudo so-called ‘elections’ are staged every four years or so to engage the populace in meaningless activity and reinforce the notion among the masses that their vote actually counts for something.  The reality is that the game is rigged, and always has been.  There is no choice when all you have to choose from is two sides of the same coin: psychopaths in power advocating one ideology or another.  It’s like giving a dehydrated person who is dying of thirst the choice between only Coke or Pepsi, where water doesn’t even enter the equation.  And like these artificially flavoured carbonated sugar drinks, the artificial choice in politics today is just as toxic.
The reality is that whoever is at the helm of either political party vying for power is irrelevant.  The fact that they have made it to the finals means that they have long been bought and paid for by the multinational corporate military-industrial complex, which has the funds and influence to make sure their interests are the interests of the candidates on both sides of the political spectrum.  Whether Democrat or Republican, Conservative or Liberal, Socialist or Nationalist, you can bet that those at the top of their particular party have long been vetted and approved by their corporate masters.  Because psychopaths have the requisite lack of empathy to do whatever it takes to rapidly ascend into positions of power, there is a high probability that whoever’s name is on the ballot, that individual does not have your best interests at heart.  Whatever your political persuasion, know that voting is a waste of time and energy.  Nothing will change and the status quo will remain.
Now, before your mind has a chance to come up with its myriad of reasons why this cannot possibly be true, please try for a moment to sit with this idea inside your head as if it were real.  What if your vote never counted for anything?  What if all the debates and hoopla running up to election day were just a ruse designed to keep you enthralled?  How does this make you feel?  How much time have you spent arguing with your friends and neighbours about such and such a political candidate or policy?  How does this information change your views on those running for positions of power?  And next time an election rolls around, what will you do about it?  What can be done about it?  What are the options?
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4) The illusion of 9/11

The official story of 9/11 is a myth.  The traumatic events of September 11, 2001 were planned, orchestrated, financed and carried out by elements of the American and Israeli secret service, perhaps with the full knowledge, complicity and participation of the political ruling elite of the time.  This fact is beyond dispute as any careful research into the available data will confirm.
Boeing 757s do not disappear into 18-foot holes leaving no trace of wreckage.  Buildings on fire do not suddenly collapse and free-fall within seconds into their own footprint without help from previously planted explosives or other high-technology devices.  The idea that 19 so-called “hijackers” with almost zero flying experience and armed with only box cutters could infiltrate and outwit the largest, strongest and most sophisticated defense system on the planet is laughable and absurd.
This official conspiracy theory put out by the government and supported by the mainstream media regarding the events of 9/11 belongs in a book of fairy tales along with Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy.  Yet people continue to believe the propaganda over the obvious facts.  This is the one illusion that pretty much goes without saying.  A little research and the ability to look at the data from an open-minded, non-emotional viewpoint is usually enough to dispel this illusion completely.  But “non-emotional” is the key word here and, on the topic of 9-11, it is very difficult to escape the emotional program that was implanted into you in the days and weeks following 9-11 via a deliberate and cunning series of psychological ploys well known from the researches of cognitive science.  In other words, if you believe the 9-11 government conspiracy theory, you have been Transmarginally Inhibited, in the terminology of Ivan Pavlov.
Unfortunately, because this illusion is ingrained and intertwined with so many other similar belief systems, it remains one of the most difficult and painful to overcome.  What does it say about the country we are so proud of, the institutions and values we hold so dear, if our leaders would knowingly and deliberately murder their own citizens in the pursuit of some hegemonic agenda?  How many other beliefs would have to collapse in order for you to accept this reality?  Your government not only lies to you, steals from you and serves only to manipulate and control you, it also cares so little about you that they would murder you without hesitation if it would benefit them.  How does that make you feel?  Are you even a little angry yet?  You, your family, friends, co-workers and fellow citizens mean nothing to them.  We — the masses — exist only as statistics and stepping stones or obstacles to their agendas.  We are merely bags of meat to be used and discarded at will.  That is the reality.
And now that you know, what are you going to do about it?
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5) The illusion of the well-balanced diet

Most everything experts tell you about eating a healthy diet is wrong and there is a reason that it is wrong: your psychopathic leaders do not want you to be healthy because it is easier to control you when you are sick and cannot think clearly.  They also want to get all your money to put in their own pockets by selling you drugs that are unlikely to make you well and very likely to kill you.
Regarding diet, the truth is that saturated animal fat is the ideal fuel for the human body.  Eating fat helps you lose weight, sleep soundly and think and perform better.  Organic pork, beef, lamb, chicken and fish, the fattier the better, should be part of every meal.  Cholesterol and salt are beneficial and necessary for optimum health.  The ideal diet consists of 70% saturated fat and 30% protein with a maximum limit of 70 grams of carbohydrates per day.
Vegetables [can] contain lectins and other anti-nutrients that are bad for you.  Gluten (wheat protein), casein (milk protein), soy products and refined white sugar are all toxic to the human body.  This means that all breads, pastas, wraps, sauces, grains, yogurts, cheeses, ice creams, candies, chocolates and other processed foods are literally making you ill, obese, diabetic, inflamed, shortening your lifespan and diminishing the quality of your life.
Now, before you reject these ideas right away, take a moment to observe how these statements make you feel.  What does it say about all those medical experts who promote a low-fat lifestyle for good health?  If the above premise were true, wouldn’t you be angry with them for lying to you about so much for so long?  What other beliefs do you hold that are associated with diet and health have to be modified in order to accept the premise above?
Take a look in your refrigerator and cupboard.  What would you have to throw away if these statements were accurate?  What changes would you make for the well being of yourself and your family if you knew that everything you thought about diet was the exact opposite of what was actually true?  Would you be willing to suffer through the loss of these illusions in order to know the objective reality of what it means to eat well and be healthy?  A few hours of internet research into the assertions above may literally save your life, the life and health of someone you love, possibly your own children, and contribute to regenerating the entire ecosystem of the planet.  Do you love them enough to expend some effort to really dig for the Truth on this topic?
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6) The illusion of linear time

There is no beginning and there is no end.  The universe did not just all of a sudden start from nothing, nor will it abruptly come to end in nothing.  Life did not start at the moment of birth, nor will it end at the moment of death.  Everything is cyclical, repeating over and over in limitless combinations and permutations, forever in eternity.  We are born, we die, we are born, we die, we are born, we die, we are born… and so it goes.
The human experiential life cycle is full of lessons that are meant to be learned.  We will keep repeating this pattern until all these lessons are learned, and then perhaps move on to learn other lessons.  The universe is the perfect school and gives everything required in order to grow, for as long as we need.  This truth has been known and shared by mystics, seers, philosophers and shamans throughout history.
This truth has also been corrupted and turned on its head by mainstream science and religion to keep humankind bound either to the material plane on one hand or the promise of heaven on the other.  Science would tell us that the universe began with the ‘Big Bang’.  Where there was a void before, everything appeared at once out of nothing.  Religion would have us believe that the universe began with “the word” issued by God.  Where there was a void before, everything appeared at once out of nothing.  What God was doing before “the word”, and how long he was doing it for, is anybody’s guess.
The point is that both the creationist view and the materialist/evolutionist view are different versions of the same illusion, that everything started at one point in the distant past and came into being from essentially nothing.  And like the false dichotomy in the left/right political spectrum, the choice between mainstream science and mainstream religion are two sides of the same illusory coin.  Neither is a true nor accurate representation of the reality we live in.  Notice that both versions of this “belief” — Big Bang and Divine Creation — require you to believe just because they say so, against your own natural observations that everything in life is cyclical.
Consciousness, in all its different forms and manifestations, is the driving force of nature.  It is our — and the universe’s — raison d’etre.  Consciousness is expressed through the vehicle of physical existence from the smallest particle to the large human brain.  Evolution is a by-product of consciousness and not the other way around.
Whether you are an atheist who firmly believes that all life comes to an end at the point of death, or a church-going fundamentalist who believes that Jesus is waiting for you in heaven after you die, it is likely you will be disappointed.  The reality is that we’ve been fed a lie about the real repeating nature of the consciousness experiential cycle in order to keep us blind to the truth.  There is no afterlife in heaven as imagined by the true believers and we did not evolve from single-celled organisms by random, mindless chance, only to be extinguished forever after one short lifetime.
We are here to learn as much as possible about objective reality, the way things actually are and not how we wish or believe them to be.  The best way to start seeing reality objectively is to challenge and let go of these preconceived illusions and belief systems promulgated by popular scientific and religious institutions.
This same illusion also applies to the idea of cyclical global catastrophes.  Many differing cultural and religious belief systems have some sort of apocalyptic or end of the world scenario as part of their mythos.  This is no accident, for this archetype exists precisely because the earth, in all its history, has undergone many such drastic global changes that were perceived by people of the time as the literal end of the world.
From Plato’s destruction of Atlantis to Noah’s Ark to the Biblical battle of Armageddon, these myths persist because they relate to actual ancient historical events preserved in time by the telling and passing on of stories from one generation to another.  The earth has gone through and will continue to go through periodic upheavals, marked by plague-bearing cometary bombardments, extreme weather, volcanic and seismic activity, all resulting in the death of a large majority of the population.  But the world — and life — is not going to end, nor is the Cosmos going to blink out in the Big Crunch.
Endings and beginnings are cyclical.  They happen over and over again whenever the human population reaches a point where its current numbers and destructive activity are no longer sustainable.  It’s almost as if the universe knows when its limit is reached and acts in such a way to restore balance. (That is a thought that should give everyone pause!)
The important point to keep in mind is the fact that, despite these recurring global cataclysms and loss of life on a global scale, the world did not come to an end during those times and time itself did not stop.  Even after a civilization, more technically advanced than our own, was essentially wiped out and bombed back to the stone age by the Cosmic Balancer, life went on and will continue to do so when it happens again.
And it will happen again, very soon, in fact.  You can take that to the bank.  All the conditions that are recorded to have preceded prior destructions are currently in place on our planet, so it is extremely unlikely that the human race will escape what falls on any population in Nature that destroys its environment.  Certainly, some will survive; it is during such times that Natural Selection plays its destined part; those who see and know, are prepared; as it was in the days of Noah…
So, try for a moment to accept the possibility that life on this planet as we presently know it is essentially doomed, that upwards of 90% of the human population will probably be dead within 5 years.  How does that make you feel?  How much real value do all your material possessions have now?  How would the accuracy of this assertion cause a rearrangement of your priorities and lifestyle?  Most importantly, how would you act and what would you tell your friends and family if you knew that a majority of human life on this planet was about to be obliterated?
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7) The illusion that human beings are at the top of the food chain

Every living thing eats something in order to survive.  Plants take up nutrients from the soil and energy from the sun.  Single-celled organisms feed on chemicals from their environment.  Some animals eat vegetation, others prey on smaller animals.  Animals die and become food for smaller organisms.  The balance of nature is based on endless consumption and assimilation of physical matter into energy in an ever repeating cycle.
It is often mistakenly assumed that human beings are at the top of the food chain, given that they feed on lower consciousness animals and plant life, are equipped with advanced technology and are not the usual prey of wild predatory animals.  But is it so much of a stretch to imagine that, if everything in nature feeds on everything else, there might exist a type of being that feeds on us as well?
Like the cows in the stockyard who are unaware that they serve as food for humans, humans too are unaware that they are also kept in psychological pens to be served as food for other beings that exist beyond the range of our normal perceptual apparatus.  I realise that this proposition sounds like something from a science fiction novel, but the facts are such that, although these beings can normally neither be seen or heard under everyday conditions, their presence can be detected by the footprints they leave behind.
The alien greys, UFO abductions, biblical miracles, bigfoot, chucacabra, mothmen, monsters, faeries, demons, ghosts and other supernatural and cryptozoological beings are but the shadows and remnants of this hyper-dimensional world in which our own reality is embedded.  In this larger realm, it seems that there are beings who may literally feed off the energy emanated by human beings.  The evidence suggests that they prefer negative emotional energy and go out of their way to elicit these emotions in humans in order to absorb/consume them and thereby live.
Perhaps this last illusion is just too much for the average person to accept as it is just too far outside the normal range of human experience.  However, I am not expecting you to believe with certainty the truth of this premise.  All I am asking is that you accept the possibility that it might be true and hold it momentarily in your mind, then be aware of how this information makes you feel.
What if all the wars, disease, famine, strife, anger, hate and pain in this world were orchestrated deliberately, or at least opportunistically exploited, in order to nourish a type of evil negative beings whose ‘life purpose’ is to farm, harvest and feed on ordinary human beings and who therefore have strong motive to keep this information hidden from their food source?
This last illusion is the biggest and perhaps most important one of all, for it is the root of all the others.  This is the big ultimate secret that those in the upper echelons of power are intimately aware of, but most desperate to keep hidden, because if the truth of this state of affairs was understood and accepted by a majority of human beings, then they would no longer hold any power over us.  Knowing such a truth, or even just contemplating such to be true while you observe things happening around you, means you can keep your eyes open for its manifestations in your life experiences and take effective counter-measures.  That is, knowing the Truth can make you free.
The psychopathic elite who sit atop the pyramids of power on our planet are the tools by which these ‘paranormal beings’, let’s call them, act upon our reality.  They are likely in some form of communication with each other.  Slaves who remain unaware of masters who keep them imprisoned are no threat to the slave owners, especially when they can effectively hypnotize their slaves into believing that they are free.  But knowledge is power and the slaves who become aware of their imprisonment can then organize themselves to find a way to free themselves.
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Conclusion

It is advantageous to imagine the universe as a self aware system, and that we are conscious beings who experience reality as part of the universe’s way of perceiving itself.  Animals and plants who have a different form of conscious awareness than humans have little difficulty perceiving the world objectively.  They intuitively know what foods are safe to eat, where to find shelter, and to react appropriately in the face of danger.  Humans on the other hand exist as a myriad of competing desires, clinging to their illusory belief systems and are thus largely responsible for the sad and sorry state of the planet in the present time.
The best way to restore balance to the planet and heal the wounds of humanity first and foremost, would be for its human population to begin the long and painful process of conscious disillusionment.  We, as a species, need desperately to put aside our cultural conditioning and begin to see the universe objectively, as it really is, in all its terrors and joys, not just how we wish or believe it to be.
Even though the process of ridding ourselves of illusions is guaranteed to be psychologically and even physically painful, and it may seem that everything we hold dear is to be taken away from us, this process is necessary.  There is no other way.  We have lived as slaves to psychopaths in power for too long.  We need to stand up and take back our freedom.  There are more of us than there are of them, and our ignorance is their power.  But we must first consciously choose to see reality as it is and the universe as a self aware system — of which we are a part — will ultimately reward us for our struggle and sacrifice.
And now that you know, what are you going to do about it?

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