Financial Strategist Warns: “Eventually Someone’s Going to Get Stuck Holding This Massive Bomb on Their Hands”

Mac Slavo
May 3rd, 2014
SHTFplan.com

 

 

Given the state of affairs around the globe it’s no surprise that many people are looking for ways to diversify their wealth into crisis investments. Navigating through the oft manipulated economic and financial numbers can be a daunting task, especially because the world’s geo-political climate is a powder keg that’s primed to explode at any time.

What we know is that time is not on our side. What we don’t know is when the pin will finally get pulled and exactly how events will unfold once it happens.

In an effort to help us guide our outlook and understand the various levels upon which the global chess game is being played we often turn to Marin Katusa, Chief Financial Strategist at the well known research and advisory firm of Casey Research. As Marin notes, there is a lot of risk out there right now, and most people don’t see it.

History is replete with examples of people who ignored the early warning signs and bought into the hype, only to be left holding the bag when those on the inside track exited ahead of the collapse. Today is no different and there is no shortage of fools waiting to be parted from their money. Don’t be one of them.

Doug and I are firm believers that you’re either a contrarian or you’re a victim… it’s important to understand your own risks and your own time frame of investment… so that’s the first thing.

Don’t miss the following interview from Future Money Trends, where Marin explores a wide range of strategies designed to protect your wealth and well being.

Right now there are millions of people looking at their stock portfolios, 401k’s, and IRA’s with a huge smile on their faces. The Dow Jones is at all time highs, after all.

What they don’t realize is that they are likely invested in companies that are priced 100 or 500 times their actual earnings. It’s a huge risk that has backfired more times than we care to count.Look at the evaluations, utilities for example. We just published a report in our Energy Report saying what stocks to stay away from. Where a railway is getting 100 times earnings, a railway. That makes absolutely no sense, but it pays a 4% yield, it’s pretty safe. So people are over-paying by five times, I would argue even six times, for a 4% yield.That’s how desperate investors are for yield.But eventually someone’s going to get stuck holding this massive bomb on their hands. 

So I have to urge all viewers, as I’ve been doing to my subscribers, to be very careful, have trailing stops, and we’ve had an unbelievable market here…The key is to take profits, reduce your risks, mitigate your risks.Whether your personal approach to preparing for the coming calamity involves structuring your investments in a well diversified global stock portfolio or focuses more on a ‘preparedness pantry’ portfolio, the information Marin shares is key to understanding what investments to avoid, how to find the diamonds in the rough, and ways to insulate yourself against any number of worst-case scenarios.The important thing is, as Marin notes, to mitigate your risk. That means watching and understanding the complexities of the global economy, financial markets and investment capital flows, all of which are an essential aspect of the geo-political climate.If, for example, Russia and China stop investing in America’s debt then we may see the dollar collapse. They may simultaneously implement trade restrictions and hold on to their natural resources like oil, gas, uranium and gold. The obvious effect would be a massive spike in not only those resources, but other commodities like food which will skyrocket in tandem.It is for this reason that trend strategists like Marin Katusa and Doug Casey are accumulating crisis investments such Brazil Resources, precious metals, productive land, and a host of other assets being ignored by the majority of investors who find their “tips” via their favorite mainstream TV channel.The way to invest in these “crisis assets” depends on your means, capabilities and current portfolio. For some, especially those who have existing stock investments tied to retirement accounts, your choices are limited to either withdrawing your money with heavy penalties or positioning your holdings in advance in such a way that they will benefit when everything else goes under. For others, who shy away from stocks, bonds and currencies, looking to physical assets in these same sectors – food, energy, precious metals – will have similar results.The strategy to implement now is to avoid what’s hot at the company water cooler and invest in assets that will be worth something after this economic bomb detonates.Please Spread The Word And Share This Post

Read more at http://investmentwatchblog.com/financial-strategist-warns-eventually-someones-going-to-get-stuck-holding-this-massive-bomb-on-their-hands/#x5Leteb7UdDhprTy.99

The Number Of Working Age Americans Without A Job Has Risen By 27 MILLION Since 2000

By Michael Snyder

Did you know that there are nearly102 millionworking age Americans that do not have a job right now?  And 20 percent of all families in the United States do not have a single member that is employed.  So how in the world can the government claim that the unemployment rate has “dropped” to “6.3 percent”?  Well, it all comes down to how you define who is “unemployed”.  For example, last month the government moved another 988,000 Americans into the “not in the labor force” category.  According to the government, at this moment there are 9.75 million Americans that are “unemployed” and there are 92.02 million Americans that are “not in the labor force” for a grand total of 101.77 million working age Americans that do not have a job.  Back in April 2000, only 5.48 million Americans were unemployed and only 69.27 million Americans were “not in the labor force” for a grand total of 74.75 million Americans without a job.  That means that the number of working age Americans without a job has risen by 27 million since the year 2000.  Any way that you want to slice that, it is bad news.

Well, what about as a percentage of the population?

Has the percentage of working age Americans that have a job been increasing or decreasing?

As you can see from the chart posted below, the percentage of working age Americans with a job has been in a long-term downward trend.  As the year 2000 began, we were sitting at 64.6 percent.  By the time the great financial crisis of 2008 struck, we were hovering around 63 percent.  During the last recession, we fell dramatically to under 59 percent and we have stayed there ever since…

And the numbers behind this chart also show that employment in America did not increase last month.

In March, 58.9 percent of all working age Americans had a job.

In April, 58.9 percent of all working age Americans had a job.

Things are not getting worse (at least for the moment), but things are also definitely not getting better.

The month that Barack Obama entered the White House, we were in the midst of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression and only60.6 percent of all working age Americans had a job.

Since only 58.9 percent of all working age Americans have a job now, that means that the employment situation in America is still significantly worse than it was the day Barack Obama took office.

So don’t let anyone fool you with talk of an “employment recovery”.  It simply is not happening.  The official unemployment rate bears so little relation to economic reality at this point that it has essentially become meaningless.

Look, how in the world can we have an “unemployment rate” of just “6.3 percent” when 20 percent of all American families do n0t have a single member that is working?

Here is how that 20 percent figure was arrived at…

A family, as defined by the BLS, is a group of two or more people who live together and who are related by birth, adoption or marriage. In 2013, there were 80,445,000 families in the United States and in 16,127,000—or 20 percent–no one had a job.

So if one out of every five families is completely unemployed, then why is the official government unemployment rate not up at Great Depression era levels?

Could it be that the government is manipulating the numbers to make them look much better than they actually are?

Why don’t they just go ahead and get it over with?  They can just define every American that is not working as “not in the labor force” and then we can have “0.0 percent unemployment”.  Then we can all have a giant party and celebrate how wonderful the U.S. economy is.

And don’t be fooled by the “288,000 jobs” that were added to the U.S. economy last month.  For workers under the age of 55, the number of jobs actually dropped by a whopping 259,000.

If we were using honest numbers, the official unemployment rate would look a lot scarier.  John Williams of shadowstats.com has calculated that the unemployment rate should be about 23 percent.  I don’t think that is too far off.

Meanwhile, the quality of the jobs in our economy continues to go down.  The House Ways and Means Committee says that seven out of every eight jobs that have been “added” to the economy under Barack Obama have been part-time jobs.  But you can’t raise a family or plan a career around a part-time job.  To be honest, it is very hard for a single person to even survive on a part-time wage in this economic environment.

As the quality of our jobs goes down, so do our incomes.  The median household income has declined for five years in a row, and the middle class is falling apart.

Without middle class incomes, you can’t have a middle class.  Considering what we have been watching happen, it should be no surprise that the homeownership rate in the United States has dropped to the lowest levelin 19 years or that the number of Americans receiving money from the government each month exceeds the number of full-time workers in the private sector by more than 60 million.

For many more statistics like this, please see my previous article entitled “17 Facts To Show To Anyone That Believes That The U.S. Economy Is Just Fine“.

At a gut level, most Americans understand that things are much worse than they used to be.

The Pew Research Center recently asked people what “class” they consider themselves to be.  The results were shocking.

Back in 2008, only 25 percent of all Americans considered themselves to be “lower middle class” or “poor”.

Earlier this year, an astounding 40 percent of all Americans chose one of those designations.

We are in the midst of a long-term economic decline, and no amount of propaganda is going to change that.

But based on the “happy numbers” being trumpeted by the mainstream media, the Federal Reserve is slowly bringing their quantitative easing program to an end.

When quantitative easing is finally totally cut off, we shall see how the financial markets and the U.S. economy perform without artificial life support.

Personally, I don’t think that it is going to be pretty.

Implosion Of Housing Bubble 2 Hits Six Cities In The West

Wolf Richter www.testosteronepit.com  www.amazon.com/author/wolfrichter

“Homes in more than 1,000 cities and towns nationwide either already are, or soon will be, more expensive than ever,” Zillow reported gleefully the other day. “National home values have climbed year-over-year for 21 consecutive months, a steady march upward….”

Glorious recovery. Our phenomenal housing bubble that, when it blew up spectacularly, helped topple our financial system, threw the economy into the Great Recession, caused millions of jobs to evaporate, and made people swear up and down: never-ever again another housing bubble.

Steps in the Fed, and trillions of dollars get printed and handed to Wall Street, and asset prices become airborne, and Wall Street jumps into the housing market and buys up hundreds of thousands of vacant single-family homes, drives up prices, and armed with free money, shoves aside first-time buyers and others who would actually live in these homes, and turned them instead into rental units. Now in over 1,000 cities, prices are, or soon will be, as high as they were at the peak of the last housing bubble.

The difference? Last time, all that craziness was called a “bubble” with hindsight. This time, it’s called a “housing recovery.”

The result of this, as Zillow called it, “remarkable milestone”: real buyers who intend to live in these homes are falling by the wayside. Every week for months, mortgages to purchase homes have been between 10% and 15% below the same week in the prior year. In the latest week, they dropped 21%, the worst week I remember seeing. The number of refis has plunged even more, but that only ate into bank income statements and caused thousands of people to get laid off. Purchase mortgages, when they drop, decimate home sales.

Real Americans, rather than Wall Street, have been priced out of the housing market. Inflation has eaten into their wages. Many people can only find part-time work. Mortgage interest has risen from ridiculously low to just historically low [ Hot Air Hisses Out Of Housing Bubble 2.0: Even Two Middle-Class Incomes Aren’t Enough Anymore To Buy A Median Home].

So the rate of homeownership in the first quarter, after ticking up last year and triggering bouts of false hope, fell to 64.8%. The lowest level since 1995! It had peaked in Q2 2004 at 69.2%, a sign that even as the prior housing bubble was gaining steam, regular folks werealready priced out of the market. This ugly trajectory is the face of the “housing recovery” sans Wall Street:

And now history has become a Fed-induced rerun. It started in six until recently white-hot housing markets in Arizona and California – Phoenix, Ventura, Riverside, L.A., Sacramento, and San Diego – where home prices have skyrocketed to the point where few people can afford them. Electronic real-estate broker Redfin, which covers 19 metro areas around the country, explained the impact of “the double whammy” – rising prices and mortgage rates –this way:

Someone who purchased a $350,000 home in Riverside in March 2013 with a 20 percent down payment and a 30-year fixed rate of 3.4% would have a monthly mortgage payment of $1,241. But with prices up 19.6%, the same home would now cost $418,600. At the current mortgage rate of 4.33%, the monthly mortgage payment on that home is now $1,663, a 34% jump from a year ago.

And even a year ago, a family with two median incomes had to stretch to buy that house. Now, in these six markets, sales are plunging and inventories of houses for sale are soaring. A deadly mix.

In Phoenix, inventories were up 42.7% in March from prior year, but sales were down 17.4%. So sellers slashed prices to get rid of these homes. In Phoenix, the hardest hit of the bunch, 45% of the sellers cut their prices. That’s how it starts. Haven’t we been there before? For instance, at the beginning of the prior housing-bubble implosion? This is what that debacle looks like:

It didn’t look quite this terrible in 11 of the other markets that Redfin tracks: Austin, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Long Island, Philadelphia, Portland, San Francisco, San Jose, Seattle, and Washington, D.C. (due to “data anomalies,” Denver and Las Vegas were not included). Sales were still down, but so were inventories. When the last housing bubble imploded, it didn’t happen all at once across the country. In some cities, home prices peaked in early 2006; in San Francisco, they peaked in November 2007.

And what happened to the Wall Street investors who whipped the market into frenzy by deploying the Fed’s free money? Soaring prices are “eroding investor profit potential,” Redfin points out, and many have pulled back. As of year-end 2013, the percentage of investor purchases in these six markets dropped to 10.6% from 15.6% a year earlier. And since then, they’ve dropped even more. Easy come, easy go.

“Housing affordability is really taking a bite out of the market,” is how the chief economist for the California Association of Realtors explained the March home sales fiasco. “We haven’t seen this issue since 2007.” And so, the benchmarks established during the terrible implosion of the prior housing bubble are suddenly reappearing. Read…. Housing Bubble 2.0 Veers Elegantly Toward Housing Bust 2.0

David Quintieri This system of fraud will collapse

David Quintieri of The Money GPS joins me on the Prepper Recon Podcast today to give us an economics update. We talk about the misleading numbers and the fraud that will eventually collapse the global financial system.

Read more at http://investmentwatchblog.com/david-quintieri-this-system-of-fraud-will-collapse/#Mp388kVammc3p2qm.99

The disappearing labor force: Over 800K Americans drop out of labor force. Since end of recession, those not in the labor force has grown from 80 million to 92 million. Workers younger than 55 lost jobs in April.

It might have come as a surprise to many that the pumped up stock market had no rally from the big employment report last week. Why? The unemployment rate fell from 6.7 to 6.3 percent. One survey showed a big jump in jobs added. As is usually the case, the devil is in the details. The unemployment rate fell dramatically because more than 800K Americans dropped out of the labor force. That is right, nearly 1 million people dropped out of the labor force. So of course this will make the rate look better than expected. In fact, since the recession ended we have added 12 million Americans to the category of “not in the labor force” which trumps even demographic changes. We have discussed that many Americans have no economic means to even retire. What was also interesting in the report is that workers younger than 55 actually lost jobs in the April report. So it is no surprise that the stock market actually turned lower with the whopping jobs report after people dug into the data.

The shrinking labor force
One of the more stunning figures in the monthly BLS report was that 800K Americans dropped out of the labor force. This is how we were able to get such a big dip in the unemployment rate from 6.7 to 6.3 percent. That is a massive dip and puts us back to where we were in 2008. Those not in the labor force has increased by 12 million since the recession ended, or by 15 percent. This goes again even trends of retirement for older Americans.
The shrinking labor force is a big issue because it is putting a heavy burden on the young to support an aging population. Social Security, a program that is already fragile will need younger workers employed to make payments to those on it.
Take a look at the “not in the labor force” growth:

This is why after digging through the employment report, the drop in the unemployment rate was nothing more than having a giant amount of Americans not being counted in the labor force. Yet this is a trend that is ignored by the press. Yes, it is a trend since we have expanded this category from 80 million in 2008 when the recession ended to 92 million today. 92 million Americans that could be in the labor force are no longer in it.
Those not in the labor force has pushed the employment-population ratio to generational lows:

The last time we had such a low employment-population ratio was back in the 1980s. So take caution when evaluating the unemployment rate and the big drop we just experienced. As we have detailed carefully, the BLS doesn’t always paint a clear picture and that is why we have much more inflation in many areas versus what we are seeing reported.
No jobs for the young
Another detail in the latest jobs report shows that this recovery continues to put an unduly burden on the young. In fact, those under 55 actually saw a net loss of jobs:

This actually hit all young groups: the 16-19 age group saw jobs dip by 24K, those 20-24 saw jobs dip by 26K, and overall those under 55 saw jobs dip by 259K. This is a stark contrast to where the jobs were added. Under the establishment survey, the only category with job growth was those 55-69 where 174K jobs were added.
The bigger issue here is that many Americans are fully unprepared for retirement and financial strains will hit with rising healthcare costs and Social Security costs on current workers. This burden is going to fall on the young that are feeling the brunt of this economic Great Recession. They are growing up at a time of low wage employment, slashed benefits, and a safety net that is quickly being dismantled. The employment report did not garner any Wall Street bump because once the numbers were dissected, it wasn’t as positive as first thought. In fact, many are starting to realize that the unemployment rate may mean very little if you lose 800K and this is somehow the big reason for the rate dipping from 6.7 to 6.3 percent. Keep dropping people out of this figure and you can have an unemployment rate close to zero if you only measure a tiny portion of the population.
Just like with the owners’ equivalent of rent measure missing the housing bubble the first time around, the BLS has done nothing to fix the way they measure employment. So we will continue to deal with a shrinking labor force and a media that spins a wonderful unemployment rate even though those not in the labor force has jumped a stunning 12 million since the recession ended. What kind of economic recovery is this?

PHOTO AND SONG ESSAY ~~ THE GIANT REAWAKENS ON MAY DAY

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After a long and cold winter, the 99% finally ended their hibernation in New York … They went all out on May Day …

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Photos © by Bud Korotzer

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The following from Matt Weinstein …

The Hidden History of the Federal Reserve

A brand new special report from FTMDaily

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Welcome to this week’s podcast! On today’s program, Jerry Robinson shares a segment from our brand new report entitled, “The Hidden History of the Federal Reserve“. What exactly is the Federal Reserve? Well, it is not “federal” and it definitely does not hold any “reserves”. In fact, it is the central banking system in the United States whose job description includes setting monetary policy in the country. Monetary policy consists mainly of setting interest rate targets and bank reserve requirements. These tools allow the Federal Reserve to indirectly control the amount of money supply in the economy, and in turn, help provide “stability in the financial system” and “full employment and stable prices” (according to the Fed’s official website).
But what you will learn in today’s podcast is that the Federal Reserve has a dark history that led to its current form today. Many people do not realize that two other central banks were in place in the United States (and subsequently ended) before the Fed came into existence in the winter of 1913. So the Fed is actually the third attempt at central banking in the United States.
Furthermore, the real reason for the American Revolutionary war lies partly in the colonists’ efforts to escape the clutches of central banking in Britain. During the mid-18th century, Britain, who was suffering from a skyrocketing national debt, sought to outlaw the colonists’ currency (the Colonial Strip) and replace it with currency printed by the Bank of England. This, according to Benjamin Franklin, caused massive unemployment in America within only a year. Coupled with the heavy taxation Britain imposed upon the colonies, this monetary oppression led to the sparks that would eventually rise between the two nations, and the colonies successfully won independence from the heavy tyrannical hand of the British central banks (or so they thought).
Download the entire free report, The Hidden History of the Federal Reserve, by clicking here.

One Boston Fund key to Boston bombing hoax - Nathan Folks

Photo provided by Nathan Folks

Download audio file

Crisis actors, smoke bombs, fake blood and literal "smoke and mirrors" were all part of what was the false flag terrorist attack called the Boston Marathon Bombing. To anyone who saw the pictures and footage of fake blood, make- up artists and smiling “victims”. It was obvious that something was not right. For those involved in filmmaking and in the know the discrepancies were obvious. We spoke to famous Hollywood filmmaker, producer and director Nathan Folks about why he is certain the Boston Marathon Bombing was a false flag terrorist attack.

Hello, this is John Robles. I’m speaking with Mr. Nathan Folks, he is a well known US based film and TV director and producer. He is also one of the organizers of the Worldwide Wave of Action and a truth seeker. This is part 2 of a longer interview.

PART 1

Robles: Can you tell us more details about the Boston bombing? Who was behind it exactly and the scheme where they made millions of dollars, as many details as you can, I would appreciate it...

Folks: I think there needs to be an investigation into the One Boston Fund and the money that millions of people gave to that fund which was a complete fraud. And I think that people that are making money of this need to be investigated and by doing so I think the truth will come out. But I also believe that if you do a little bit of homework of who actually is running One Boston Fund that supported a lot of this, it goes right up the line to Homeland Security and the people that wrote books on this exact nature. I am not going to name names but it is all on the writing. It is all documents, it is all there, it is just no one wants to read it and admit it.

Robles: What was the connection with Sandy Hook? Because there was some connection to some crisis actors from Sandy Hook and some people that were funding the Boston fund.

Folks: Yeah, it is very evident that there is a family, a very specific family, I believe the name is Greenberg, that has been used several times in several different events: in Sandy Hook they were the crying parents of one of the deceased boys.

Well, the same woman, the same man they were both used in several different instances, in several different events that have taken place in the last several years and they use the crisis actors over and over. They pay them off once and you know... I won’t be surprised when Carlos Arredondo is another hero of another event...

Robles: And he was at Boston, he was the..

Folks: Carlos Arredondo was the man in a cowboy hat, he was the Boston hero by getting these non-bleeding two-legged-blown-off man to safety.

If they honestly believe that we all think that is real, then they have another thing coming because that is the biggest joke I have ever seen.

Robles: I remember I studied the photographs of him running through the streets and just the expressions on all of the people’s faces was enough to tell me something was wrong. I mean I remember there was all these people apparently laying on the road and I think...

Folks: Oh yeah. The production designers in the scenes, I mean the makeup artist is in the scene helping everyone and then all of a sudden she is injured, you know, there is pictures of her being injured at the end. I mean, it is just so unbelievably ridiculous that I don’t want this to happen again, I don’t want them to put the country through this again.

Robles: It wasn’t just the country it was the world? I mean, I’m sitting here in Moscow, this was a pretty big thing for us. I mean, we were reporting it all night.

Folks: Yeah, you are right, it is putting the country in chaos and it is wrong.

You know, I know a friend of mine that has kids in school and the kid in school; it traumatized her for months after Sandy Hook. You know, this is just wrong what they are doing. And for whatever reasons they are doing it, it has got to be stopped.

And it’s out and they are going to come after me and they are going to say: “Oh yes he has no remorse for people that have been killed and no remorse for the injured.”

And I want to say: “You know what? Prove it!”

I want to interview every doctor that was used in the Boston Bombing, I’d like to find out where that money really went for the One Boston Fund, I want them to prove it, you know.

If they are going to come out against me and start saying: “Oh, well he has no feelings for all these people that have been killed.”

Well, I put it back on them. The world know that this was a sham but no one wants to talk about it. But if they are going to come out and the they want to actually say: “This was real!”

Then I want them to come out and prove it other than these pictures or this media they put on the news. I want to see real proof, because that is what they make us do! Come up with real proof. Let’s see them come up with real proof.

Robles: Can you tell us about the Tsarnaev brothers, I’m sure they would like to see proof and their parents would and their father would and their mother would.

Folks: Well, in my opinion I think they were working with the FBI. I think that most of these incidences they are working with certain government companies, organizations.

I think they would like to see the proof too. I know that there were some lawsuits coming out against certain people that were blamed at first about the incident and I know why he is trying to sue, it is because his name was ruined in an event that never really happened.

So, I’d say: “You know what, join the lawsuit, prove to us and the world that this actually existed and then we will tell you how we really think.”

Robles: As a producer, as a professional with your professional acumen and with a cold professional eye you say: “Boston was a false flag attack organized by…?”

Folks: I believe it was organized by someone and I don’t know who.

You can only hope that the government is not involved. You can only hope that we are here doing the right thing, but for whatever the reason it was not real. And anyone in the film industry will back me up that it is very obvious how they edited it and cut and spliced that scene together.

Robles: The biggest evidence that it was false: what would you say that would be?

Folks: I would say that I would look at the One Boston Fund and I would find out where that money went and I would… You know they always say: “Follow the money”, well, I would follow the money.

I’d find out: each one of these people who got money from this situation; why they got money; what public relations firm based out of DC represented all these people (I think that is another “untying” of the rope if you will), and it is just all there, it is all there.

Robles: Why aren’t people screaming about this? Why isn’t there an outcry?

Folks: Because they are controlling the media and the Internet. Even if there is an outcry no one is going to hear it.

We’ve been subject to no more freedom of speech and our constitutional rights here have been eliminated, because I can tell you there are millions and millions of people, millions and millions of Americans that would not stand for this. And I think this is the first chance we have to start to build back any credibility that maybe we ever had.

I think the Bush Administration, after what they have done and the lives they’ve taken from the world, we have a lot of catching up and fixing to do.

I think love needs to be spread now and that is the only thing that really, I’m about.

Robles: I think the only way to restore any kind of credibility is to go after all those people who did all this, from the torture at Guantanamo to 9-11. I think even going back to the Kennedy Assassination which they continue to obfuscate…

Folks: These people need to be held liable for what they’ve done.

Robles: I was happy to hear Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov yesterday say that the US should be held accountable. They should take responsibility for the coup they organized in Ukraine. But that is another entire matter...

Can you tell us about the Worldwide Wave of Action, what that is about and then about your film? And if you’d like to comment on the current media (I don’t know what it is) "alternate reality" that the US has created regarding Ukraine.

Folks: First Run Entertainment is releasing and distributing a film that I’ve produced with a series of producers called: “The Prosecution of an American President” which goes back to the Bush Administration and lies that they told during that administration.

Vincent Bugliosi who: is reported as one of the top prosecutors in the world; who put Charles Manson away; who essentially wrote some of the best books of our time, is the star of this film, showing the evidence of how the Bush Administration lied to the people in order to convince everyone, including Congress, to go to war. And going to a sovereign nation that has never done anything to us and do it based on lies.

People don’t want to hear that but it is something that needs to be said and it needs to be faced and it will. It will eventually come out and people will eventually do something about it.

The time is now! The Worldwide Wave of Action is a campaign: anonymously many people have come together worldwide to promote positive change in the world and expose the truth and expose people that are run by evil companies and evil corporations and evil governments and…

You know, there is good in the world. And that good has to come out somewhere and it has to beat this evil! They have to fight! And the Worldwide Wave of Action is that campaign if the people let it happen.

Robles: Where can people find out more about it? Dates, times, whatever, and how to join?

Folks: People can join the Wave of Action, it’s www dot wave of action dot org and also my site which is www dot worldwide wave of action dot com. We will be launching a new website, right now it is just a temporary page but a new website will be coming out and we will have a lot more information how the world can help and help everyone come to the truth that we are all seeking.

Robles: Can I ask you a little bit of a personal question if you don’t mind?

Folks: Sure.

Robles: When I first talked to you, about a year ago, you sounded different, you sounded optimistic, you sounded younger, you sounded more innocent, now you sound a little “tired”. How has this affected you personally if you don’t mind me asking?

Folks: I can tell you that this last year, 2013, was pretty much an awakening for me on many levels. A lot of corporate and “other” situations that are happening, that I don’t know if they are related or not but…

When someone is sickened and put in the hospital and abused in certain ways; you are beaten down, but the only thing that it is really to me: I may be tired and I may be pretty much exhausted from working on all these things, but the fire is lit brighter and harder than it has ever been. Because now I see how much more this is important to the world and how the film “The Prosecution of an American President” (as well as the Worldwide Wave of Action) now, is more needed that it has ever been.

I was naïve a year ago. I was blinded by many things and as soon as these things came to light I saw what I needed to do, which was to step up and start making it different and doing it now because no one else seems to be doing it.

And the Worldwide Wave of Action I believe is that exactly: everyone around the world coming together to demand the truth and demand these people to be held responsible.

Robles: Ok, “we” are going to help you any way we can, we are going to get this out as much as we can. It was a great honor speaking with you. I really appreciate you. I know you are actually in real danger, so we will do our best to get this out as much as possible.

Folks: Great! Wonderful! Thank you.

Robles: I think the best thing you can do (and the best thing we can do for you) is publicize everything that you are saying and just for the listeners, one more time: you were really, seriously persecuted; you had to leave your home several times and stuff. I think you should write a book about that sometime.

Folks: Yeah, I think that after we can get everything else out,I can finally sit down and take the time to write something. I’d like to do that.

Robles: Is there anything you want to say about Boston to rap it up? The FBI agents that were killed, the Tsarnaev friend that was killed… Can you comment on those? Do you want to?

Folks: The peripheral people that were involved, we don’t know why they were killed, we don’t know if they were exposing the truth and then killed. I may not be alive tomorrow because I’m talking about it.

There are all these things that we don’t know, there are certain things we just don’t know. But one thing we do know is that there is something really, really smelly about this whole situation and it needs to exposed, it needs to be investigated, even as must as the JFK Assassination.

Robles: As a film producer… (last comment if you could about… a little off topic I’m sorry but) I’ve heard reports from people in the states, from people in Ukraine, from people in Europe, that they’ve watched television reports of tanks rolling through the streets of Kiev, etc. etc., stuff that we know is not happening. Is it possible in 2014 that they are fabricating all this news?

Folks: After Boston I could say that I’m almost positive that they are more than likely fabricating news to create a fear and design the outcome that they want.

When I say ‘they’ I mean the evil people that are pushing for wars and pushing for The Complex and pushing for everything that we are not about. And yeah, I don’t see that it would be above them to do something like that at this point! I think that they definitely have something to do with it.

Robles: It is a war not against terror but it is a war using terror, it is a war that is hyped-up “on” terror I think, and they are terrorizing the people.

Folks: It is now a war on freedom of speech, it is now a war on the media and it is a war on the world’s civil liberties and that is the real war we are fighting now.

Robles: Anything else you want to finish up with or?

Folks: No, I just think that if anybody wants to get involved, join the www.waveofaction.org or see my site at www.worldwidewaveofaction.com which will be a platform for the film that we are releasing and all new information that comes out about this situation .

Robles: Ok, thank you very much, Nathan, I really appreciate it.

Folks: Thank you, John! Thank you so much.

This is John Roles, you were listening to an interview with Nathan Folks, he is a well-known US film and TV director and producer. He is also the organizer of the Worldwide Wave of Action. You can find the rest of this interview on our website voiceofrussia.com. Thank you very much for listening! 

PART 1

^{Crisis actors being positioned and made up. Notice red paint. Blood is never such a bright red. Scene workers ignoring man with sticks attached to his amputated legs. No blood in area where his leg was apparently severed and what is supposed to be a bone is much too thin and straight to be a lower leg bone. The expression on his face is the most telling clue that something is wrong. Photo provided by Nathan Folks.}

Gold, The Petrodollar, & Why Putin is Laughing Off U.S. Sanctions

The Truth About Why OPEC Was Formed

Source: EPJ

David Henderson informs us during a speech at The Naval War College, in Newport, Rhode Island:

We all heard of OPEC in 1973 when they almost quadrupled the price of oil. But OPEC formed in 1960. Why? Because President Eisenhower had imposed import quotas on oil and given preference to Mexico, Venezuela and Canada. And so some of the – Algeria was one of them – I know there’s someone from Algeria here – and three other countries organized to essentially fight back. And then they gradually acquired members in the ’60s and early ’70s. So OPEC was an unintended consequence of US import quotas.

Here's Henderson on war and the ratchet effect:

 I was a senior economist with President Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisors, my office was an old, exotic-looking building called the Old Executive Office Building, now the Eisenhower Building, located right next to the White House, which is separated by a narrow driveway. It’s the place most people work when they say they work in the White House. It’s not literally true they do. I’ve started doing that, too. Oh, yeah, I used to work in the White House.

(LAUGHTER)

Being a curious type, I looked into the history of the building and found that when it was first built in about 1870, it housed the War Department, the State Department and the Navy Department. That means that that building, combined with the Treasury, which was on the other side of the White House and just a carbon copy, housed virtually all of government except the post office and the fledgling Department of Agriculture. That was the size of the US government.

Now what happened in between that led to such a massive growth of the federal government in a country that was justifiably celebrated as the Land of the Free? And by the way, let me just give you a couple of statistics. The federal government in those days spent roughly between 2% and 3% of GDP. Now, it spends approximately 21%.

So what happened? A large part of what happened was war. A huge amount of the new power that the government took on in the 20th century was power that it acquired during and due to war. When the wars ended, the power diminished but never back close to its prewar level.

Economic historian Robert Higgs, in his bookCrisis and Leviathan, was the first to point out this pattern, and he called it a “ratchet effect.”...we generally in America think of Prohibition as starting in 1920, two years after the war. Well, not quite. It started during the war. During the war, the government imposed price controls on wheat. As almost any economist can tell you, if you impose a price control below the free-market price, you get a shortage. And when you get a shortage, the government then puts itself in line to get the resources first, and when everyone else has what’s left, it’s very hard for them to justify making grain into alcohol. So under the Lever Act, they imposed Prohibition. They refused to allow grain to be made into alcohol.

Also, other federal powers grew during World War I. The US government, under Wilson, nationalized the railways. They gave it back into private hands at the end of the war but they controlled them more at the end of the war than they had before. We also had the first draft since the Civil War in the United States as a result.

Also, our tax system. We had started taxing income in 1913. The top tax rate was 7%. And it was on incomes that, translated into today’s dollars, would be over $7 million. By the end of the war, the top tax rate was 77%; 11 times. And although Secretary Mellon, the Treasury Secretary in the ’20s, brought the tax rate down, he never brought the top tax rate below 25%. And the bottom tax rate started at 1% and it went to 6%.

So a big part of the growth of government in the United States, the federal government of the United States, as I said, was due to war.

Egypt: Price rises across the board

Egyptians trying to cover their growing expenses are to shoulder yet more burdens as a result of the government’s plans to tighten the fiscal deficit by lowering expenses and increasing revenues.
This will be translated into cutting subsidies on energy, alone representing 20 per cent of the state budget, and increasing taxes.
While officials and many experts say the increases in prices will not affect the low-income brackets of the population, other commentators fear that prices could rise for all as a result of the changes.
Source and full piece: Al Ahram Weekly, 1 May 2014