Monday, May 2, 2016

THE CENTRAL BANKING PRISONER’S DILEMMA: FED FREEZES, BOJ STAMMERS, DOLLAR DROPS 2% OVERNIGHT

The Central Banking Prisoner's Dilemma Fed Freezes, BoJ Stammers, Dollar Spikes Lower Overnight - The Dollar Vigilante
In today’s communist-style, centrally planned world, when big central bankers meet and make decisions, no matter how small, markets quake and currencies shake. And that’s what just happened.
Bankers at both the Federal Reserve and the Bank of Japan met in the last 12 hours to decide where they would take monetary policy next. But when they sat down to make decisions, they were faced with a classic prisoner’s dilemma: Options were precluded. There was a lot they wanted to do but little they could do.
Both the Fed and the Bank of Japan (BoJ) and the European Central Bank (ECB) as well, want to debase their respective currencies. But each wants the other to take the plunge first.
The Fed has been the least reluctant to announce easing in the past. And even Wednesday, after moving toward a tightening stance, the Fed remains vocal about potential loosening. The ECB and BoJ are more circumspect.
BoJ governor Haruhiko Kuroda’s is standing pat – thus betting a stronger yen won’t damage business momentum. He’s obviously hoping a recovering US economy will generate a tighter US monetary policy and reduce the strength of the yen.
But Kuroda’s decision moved the yen up hard against the dollar – by some two percent overnight. Japanese equities sold off as well as investors were disappointed about the lack of near-term stimulus on the part of the BoJ.
The prisoner’s dilemma: Kuroda is reluctant to debase too obviously. Same with Mario Draghi at the ECB.  It’s bizarre to watch them prostrate and wiggle… like a really bad poker game played by awkward teenage girls hoping the other folds first.  It’s no surprise for us, however.
What just happened to international currency and equity markets – specifically the dollar and yen – is predictable if you understand the forces at work throughout the West and in Asia too. In fact, I have been saying since 2009 that the Fed would never raise rates significantly again (0.25% is not significant).  After seven years, Yellen finally raised rates a whopping 0.25% last December and I said that was probably the extent of it.  And so far, again, I’ve been right.
Basically, the plan is to continue to pound the dollar. And as the dollar debases, that gives other central banks wiggle room to debase their currencies as well.
This Jubilee year especially, it’s all downhill for paper currency. Less and less value. And that’s why I wrote that Yellen wasn’t going to raise rates. And, yes, as you know, the Fed has just announced it is too scared to increase rates by another 0.25% or it may implode the entire financial and monetary system.
TDV’s Senior Analyst, Ed Bugos, has made a number of accurate predictions of his own. He wrote an alert to subscribers earlier this week that the BoJ would not ease further. Bingo.  That just happened… and surprised a lot of people.  Not us though.  As a result, Ed’s recently purchased Yen currency options are way up overnight while the dollar is crashing.  More big gains for TDV subscribers (subscribe to TDV Premium here for all of Ed’s picks)… this is actually starting to get ridiculous how much we are profiting from this whole stupid system.
The US dollar is at the beginning of a new bear market. The foreign central banks don’t want to see it because that will mean they will have to inflate more in order to stay competitive with exports.
The ECB and BoJ are happy to talk up monetary inflation while not really initiating it. This makes their currencies undervalued.  The upshot is that the ECB and the BoJ are going to stand pat in the near term, as they have before. Thus the undervalued yen and euro will climb while the US dollar gets a double whammy. The Fed is not tightening and other central banks aren’t loosening. It’s a dead man’s standoff.  And, that inevitably weakens the dollar.
Once the US dollar breaks even further lower, you can look for other central banks to begin to ease. Each bankster wants the other’s currency to go first for political and professional reasons. But they’re all going down sooner or later. And metals are going up.
Who else, of all the analysts out there, has been saying gold, silver, mining stocks and bitcoin were headed higher for the last six months?  Ahem.
Bitcoin has doubled.  Gold mining stocks have skyrocketed.  Gold had its best quarter in seven years last quarter.  And silver is now breaking out.
But, this is just the beginning.  By the time this is all over no one will believe they didn’t see it coming.
“You mean to tell me, grandpa, that when you were younger the world was ruled by a secretive cabal, people thought money was paper and the only thing investors thought was important was what some people in a secret boardroom decided?”
“Yes, kiddo.  We couldn’t believe it either.  But that’s why we are so rich now.  Here’s 0.1 bitcoin and an ounce of gold, go buy yourself an NFL franchise.”
Am I fantasizing just a tad?  Yes, maybe.
But while I’m at it, let’s hope that this current prisoner’s dilemma of the central bankers ends up with them all behind bars.

Why Apple’s Nosedive is No Surprise


Apple is one of the most glorified companies in the world. Yet, as of April 27, it’s the Dow’s worst performer for 2016. Were you surprised by the nosedive in the tech giant’s share price? See how EWI subscribers were prepared, and find out how you can be ready for the next big move.

Gold And Silver – A Clarion Alarm Call For All Paper Assets

Perhaps the most successful Ponzi scheme of all has been the Rothschild-led takeover and sapping of the entire United States since the American Civil War that started in 1861.  The final stages were set with the not-so-lawfully-passed but fully implemented Federal Reserve Act on 23 December 1913.  The fact that it purportedly passed two days before Christmas, when the custom was for no legislation to be enacted, while most politicians were en route or already home for the holidays, and the main opponents for this specific Act were indeed absent when the vote was made before a select skeleton group that stayed in Washington to ensure “passage” of the Act, this was all a huge red flag that was kept hidden from the public.
The Federal Reserve Act gave the Rothschild bankers the control of all money issued in the United States, giving renewed life to Amshel Rothschild’s famously portentous words:
” Give me control of a nation’s money supply, and I care not who makes it’s laws.”
 The trap was set.
In 1933, with FDR’s declared banking holiday, it was game, set, match.   The purpose of the bank holiday was to shut down the entire US bank system and have it reopen fully
under control of the Federal Reserve System, itself controlled by foreign bankers and not at all a part of the United States government.  Another hidden fact kept from the public.
Why was this not-so-slight-of-hand necessary?  The bankers forced this country into bankruptcy, and the entire United States, all assets, all levels of government, from the president on down, were totally owned by the bankers.  If you do not think this was not
without  decades of planning, go back to the passage of the 14th Amendment, adopted on 19 July 1868.  It states that the public debt cannot be challenged, [the international bankers planned on shoving as much debt down the throats of the public that contuse to this day, and counting, and it created the de facto US citizen of the de facto United States  where all Rights were replaced with privileges.  All Americans were relegated to serf status, almost all without the slightest clue, and even more so to this very day.
During the first half of the 20th century, the international bankers stole virtually all of the available silver and gold from the US.  That has always been the Rothschild plan, and it is still carried out today: Libya, Greece, Ukraine, London, Venezuela, Brazil, everywhere.
Why?
Rothschild has always known that there is no other form of true money than silver and gold, and it has been why each and every country in debt to the globalists was forced to give up whatever gold and silver that country had, in return for mountains of fiat debt.
What are the two assets most in demand in the world, bar any other asset, and yet has been purposefully kept at their lowest price relatively possible?  Of course, gold and silver.
Why?
Gold and silver are money.  There are no other substitutes, unless people are willing to be duped into believing otherwise, and history proves people are infinitely willing to be shorn like sheep, and not just financially, either.  Freedoms are gladly forfeited, inferior schooling is widely accepted.  Governments that are supposed to serve the people have turned the tables so that people serve the government.  The governmental tape worm is in the process of consuming its collective hosts.  You can stick a fork in the United States.  It is done, as a viable country.
The European Union, the brainchild of the CIA and deep state within the US from as far back as the 1950s, is another unhealthy situation, worse even than this country.  All former European countries are run by government heads totally subservient to the globalists.  Those that run Europe are unelected, unaccountable, highly paid globalist sycophants.  One of the sorriest and most disappointing examples has been Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany by title, globalist puppet in day-to-day actions, leading her country into ruin.
The point of this backdrop information is to serve to explain why the price of gold has not responded to the natural laws of supply and demand.  Those natural laws have been displaced by the unnatural rulings of the globalist moneychangers.  Just as no fiat currency has survived over the past 5,000 years of financial history, the current globalist-dominated fiat paper system is coming apart at the seams, doomed to fail, but at such a huge expense and toll on unsuspecting people.
It is important to always remember an ounce of gold or silver does not ever change.  What changes is the [falsely]perceived [worthless]”value” of fiat paper currencies.  The ounce of gold that is constant recently cost $1,100 fiat “dollars”.  Now, it takes nearly $1,300 fiat “dollars” to purchase that same ounce.  The worthless fiat paper is losing value relative to gold.  Soon, it will continue to take more and more of those fiat pieces of paper to exchange for the constant 1 ounce of gold.  The same is true of silver.
We stopped trying to explain the phony pricing of PMs in terms of China, Russia, and India buying as much gold as possible, the record demand for silver rounds and gold coins purchased voraciously by the public, mines [supply] shutting down, etc.   None of these legitimate demand factors had any impact on the pricing of either metal.
The only thing that mattered was the war-like United States wrecking the entire Middle East in the game to control oil and gas, trying to cut out Russia as the main supplier of energy to Europe.  All other countries in Europe, Africa, South America were subject to US financial wars that destroyed each country forced to take on debt that could never be repaid.  These countries were then subject to being controlled by the IMF, and their natural resources taken over by mostly US corporations, all under globalist control.
The world’s stock markets are surviving on political fumes, again financially muscled by globalist central bankers.  This form of paper assets is getting closer to another 2008 nosedive from which recovery will be unlikely.  Those who [unwisely]choose to own paper assets of any kind, especially in the stock market and digital currency held in banks, are being given a clarion alarm call by gold and silver that your time has reached its expiration date.
Neither China nor Russia will come in and save the day with their tonnes and tonnes of gold.  China will never back its Yuan with gold.  Russia is not in a position to establish a world reserve currency.  Both countries are backers of the IMF.  China just had its Yuan become a part of the SDR basket.  Guess what the globalists have planned for their next step in their One World Order world domination?
The SDR [Special Drawing Rights].  Another trap has already been set.
If you do not own and personally hold physical gold and silver, the odds of your current wealth surviving the next disaster are close to nil.  For the past few years, we have been advocating the purchase of physical gold and silver, at any price, and especially at these once in a lifetime remaining bargain prices.
Whatever the globalists have planned, it does not include your financial well-being.  It is literally each man and woman for themselves.  Take heed.
Here is an excellent view on how we see charts:
Those who have knowledge don’t predict. Those who predict don’t have knowledge – Lao Tzu, 6th century BC poet.
Unlike so many who have been “predicting” a bull move has started in gold and silver over the past few years, always wrong, based on subsequent lower lows, we use charts to read developing market activity in the form of price and volume, and we follow what the market
has to say based on those inputs.
The gold:silver ratio has come in from the 84:1 area to 72:1, with silver outperforming gold.  We expect this ratio to continue to favor silver to the point of reaching 40:1, and
potentially still lower than that.  15:1 used to be a long-standing relationship, so beyond
the ratio favoring silver, it is pure guesswork as to how far it will contract.
For anyone unfamiliar with what the ratio means, at 84:1, it takes 84 ounces of silver to exchange for one ounce of gold.  Now near 72:1, it only takes 72 ounces of silver for a single ounce of gold.  This means the price of silver is doing better than the price of gold.  Given a choice between the two metals, silver represents a better buy for potential gain than gold, although both will still rise in value.
Silver has been impressive in its ability to sustain gains with very little give-back, to date, in the current rally underway.  April has been a breakout month for silver that has been long-awaited by so many.
GC M 30 Apr 16 

The weekly chart is equally as impressive in performance.  The 18+ area has been long-standing resistance, and price has finally arrived to begin mounting a challenge that should be overcome, in time.  One can never know how a market will develop, so we will just have to wait to see how price responds to that important resistance area, and respond accordingly.
SI W 30 Apr 16
Once price broke through the 16 level, it showed a degree of strength not seen for the past few years, and this is an important change in market behavior.  With a proven trend established, it becomes easier [relatively speaking] to select entry points to establish new positions in the paper market.
By contrast, the physical silver market has always been a simple buy and hold.
SI D 30 Apr 16
The implications of price/volume behavior can sometimes only be known after the fact, which is never too late because now one has a greater level of certain knowledge.  The spike in volume for March could have been sellers overwhelming buyers, and a correction lower would soon follow.  There was no correction.  What the volume tells us then is that buyers were the most active, taking everything available sellers could offer, and that is why price rallied so strongly.
What has been gained from the after-the-fact observation is knowledge that buyers are now in greater control of the market than sellers.  This gives a boost in confidence that the up trend will continue, and purchases made in the direction of the trend have a greater probability of gain over loss.
GC M 30 Apr 16
Here is an example of not knowing for certain how price will develop, next week.  Gold is at resistance, but the question is, was last week’s rally out of a congestion TR [Trading Range], a breakout to the upside and strong gains will follow immediately?  Or will the resistance area put a temporary stop on the rally and generate consolidation or even a reaction lower?
Let the market declare itself, and then follow accordingly.
GC W 30 Apr
This is a really interesting chart.  The sideways correction for over two months was relatively weak, and weak reactions almost always lead to higher prices.  Additionally, as noted on the chart, the sideways TR is also a potential base from which gold could launch much higher, having already started last Thursday and Friday.  Either way, the developing market activity is showing positive signs not seen for the past few years, and this spells opportunity.
GC D 30 Apr 16

LIES, LIES AND OMG, MORE LIES

It’s that time of year again. It’s open enrollment for health plans at my employer. They are biggest employer in Philly and have the most leverage possible with the insurance companies. They have such good leverage that my premiums are going up “only” 9.8% this year for a basic HMO plan. Based on what I hear from others, I should be thankful for just a 9.8% increase.
This isn’t a new development. Since I’ve been tracking all my expenditures using Quicken since 1991, I know exactly what my annual health insurance costs have been every year. Obamacare was passed in 2009 and began to be implemented in 2010. Obama declared that families could expect $2,500 of savings per year. I know for a fact my annual medical expenses were $2,000 higher in 2015 than they were in 2010.
The lies of the government and their minions at the BLS are revealed to anyone who cares to open their eyes. The BLS reported inflation rates for health insurance since 2010 is beyond laughable. They must have triple seasonally adjusted, massaged, and tweaked these figures to arrive at the absurdly false inflation figures they are feeding to the sheeple. These are the reported inflation figures for health insurance since 2010:
2010 – (4.0%)
2011 – 5.6%
2012 – 10.6%
2013 – 0.9%
2014 – (0.8%)
2015 – 3.7%
According to the BLS, and built into their CPI calculation, your health insurance premiums have gone up by about 16% over the last six years. Now for the smell test. I have worked for a large employer with excellent healthcare benefits over that entire time span. My health insurance premiums have risen by 65% since Obamacare was passed. And that doesn’t capture the whole picture.
I had no deductible in 2010. I now have an individual deductible of $1,200 and a family deductible of $2,400. My co-pay back in 2010 was $15. Today it is $25. So my out of pocket expenses have risen too. I estimate I can add another 15% of increase due to these changes. Therefore, I’ve experienced 80% inflation in my health insurance expenses versus the BLS lie of 16%.
In case you weren’t paying attention, the BEA reported the latest GDP lie yesterday. According to these government drones, the economy grew by a whopping 0.5% in the first quarter. As you may or may not know, this figure is adjusted for inflation. Our beloved BLS propagandists assure us that inflation has been running at a microscopic 0.9% over the last twelve months. Does anyone who is not a halfwit or Ivy League educated economist actually believe that tripe?
As most people know, 67% of GDP is based upon consumer spending in our debt financed land of plenty. It seems the more you have to pay due to Obamacare, the higher GDP goes. The more you pay for rent the higher GDP goes. The more you pay for gas, heat, and food, the higher GDP goes. Isn’t government accounting grand? The government systematically under-reports your true inflation, while pushing the monetary and fiscal policies which drive your actual living expenses ever higher, and then tells you the economy has never been better. They love the Big Lie.
The utter falsehood of the BLS presented inflation statistics is clearly apparent in the comparison between what is happening in the real world of housing versus their excel spreadsheet models. The BLS declares rents are rising at a 3.2% annual rate. In the real world they are rising at an 8% annual rate. There appears to be a slight discrepancy. Do you think the market is lying or the government? The average monthly rent is now $870, an all-time high – up 24% since 2012. The BLS says rents are only up 10.8% since 2012. Do you believe your landlord or the BLS?
The ridiculously conceived owners equivalent rent is supposed to capture home price inflation. This BLS rigged black box also accounts for the largest single weighting in the CPI calculation. Nothing like a made up number to give the BLS the most ability to manipulate the truth. The Case Shiller home price index, based upon real prices in real markets shows that home prices are up 22.7% since 2012 due to the Federal Reserve/Wall Street scheme/scam. You have the government/establishment artificially jacking up home prices to fix the Wall Street balance sheets and then you have the government drones falsifying inflation data to show home prices only going up by 10% since 2012.
You have the government agency tasked with reporting accurate inflation data under-reporting rent and home price inflation by over 100%. Not exactly a rounding error. And the list goes on. In the real world of gas prices, we’ve seen a 30% increase in the price to fill up our vehicles since February. According to our fantasy loving friends at the BLS, gas prices have fallen by 10.8% over this time frame. Could they be a bigger joke?
Actually, yes they can. They are reporting natural gas prices falling 0.8% in the last month, when in the real world natural gas prices have skyrocketed by over 13%.
NATURAL GAS
Aren’t you glad none of your clothes are made of cotton?
COTTON
According to the Bureau of Lies & Scams food prices have not risen one penny in the last three months. Over the last year they report a barely evident 0.8% increase in food prices. I find that quite amusing, as I do the regular grocery shopping in our house and I do not see flat food prices. Even with cutting out overpriced beef, my weekly grocery bill is at least 5% higher than last year. The real world prices of some major food items below, blows a hole in the fake data being presented by the BLS.
CORN
SOYBEANS
COCOA
SUGAR
I don’t know about the rest of the world, but food, housing, gasoline, utilities, and healthcare make up a huge portion of my budget. And those prices are rising at a 5% to 10% clip on an annual basis today. Janet Yellen is worried about deflation and is keeping interest rates near 0%. Is she lying or is she really that stupid and disconnected from the real world? I’d suggest we follow George Carlin’s advice.

Gold and Currency Markets Expose U.S. Recovery Myth

Rally In Gold Stocks Hitting First Big Challenge

A key index of gold stocks is hitting its first level of major potential resistance since its false breakdown to all-time lows in January.
Flashback to January 26 of this year. The PHLX Gold/Silver Index, or XAU – the longest running index of gold stocks – was recovering from its breakdown earlier in the month to all-time lows. That day, the XAU was testing the breakdown level around $43. Our Chart Of The Day and accompanying post linked above queried “Will this test of the breakdown level lead to a false breakdown, or the start of a new leg down?” Well, 3 months and over 100% later, that answer couldn’t be more clear.
image
The question now is “How far will the post-false breakdown rally go?” Fast forward to today and, in our view, the rally in the XAU is hitting its biggest challenge yet in terms of potential resistance on it chart. Consider the levels of consequence near the $86 level as laid out on the chart below:
  1. The underside of the broken post-2000 Up trendline
  2. The post-2011 Down trendline
  3. The 23.6% Fibonacci Retracement of 2010-2016 Decline
  4. The October 2014 breakdown level that led to an acceleration of the cyclical post-2010 decline. This “pivot” level also represented the triple lows in 2013-2014 and subsequent test in January 2015.
image
The XAU traded above this resistance today, reaching nearly $88 before closing at $86.90. Is that enough to signal a breakout of this resistance? Not in our view. It will take a much more decisive move above $86 to convince us that it has overcome the resistance. This is due in part to the variability of these lines of resistance, considering their long-term nature, especially the post-2000 Up trendline.
Furthermore, it would be much healthier and constructive to see the XAU consolidate near these levels a bit longer to “digest” the 100%+ gain of the past 3 months. By running straight through these levels after almost no pause (~6 days) when it is so extended, the XAU runs the risk of exhaustion and a failed breakout. That action could lead to a more prolonged and damaging pullback than if it simply consolidated for a bit longer before breaking out.
Regardless of how things transpire, in our view, above roughly $86 in the XAU appears to be bullish, opening up potential upside to above $110 as the next level of resistance. Below $86 and the index could struggle. Again, this wouldn’t necessarily be a terrible thing if the XAU consolidated its recent gains before launching the next leg higher. Roughly the $70 level may be the best level of support below should the XAU pause here.
The last time we mentioned that gold stocks may be at an important juncture, they went on to rally over 100%. While this juncture may not be as critical, it could be the biggest test yet in the impressive gold stock rally.

This chart of the U.S. economy should scare you

From Zero Hedge:
In the following chart we can see net debt growth skyrocketing nearly 30% y/y, while EBITDA (cash flow) has been contracting for the past year. In fact, as SocGen shows below, the difference in the growth rate between these two most critical data series is now over 35% – the biggest negative differential in recent history.
Of course, every finance 101 student knows that a firm which has to borrow more cash than it is able to produce from its core operations is not a sustainable business model, and yet today’s CFOs, pundits and central bankers do not.
And the next question is: what happens if the Fed does raise rates, what happens to the feasibility of these companies servicing the debt while also spending on R&D and CapEx (assuming there is any), and who can only afford the rising interest expense as a result of ever smaller interest rates? The answer is, first, massive cost cutting, i.e. layoffs, which would be a poetic way for the Fed’s disastrous policies to be reintroduced to the real economy… and then, more to the point, mass defaults.

Why We're So Unhealthy

That America is in the throes of a systemic health crisis can no longer be denied.According to the U.S. Department of Health And Human Services, more than two-thirds (68.8 percent) of adults are overweight or obese.  (Overweight is typically defined as a body-mass index (BMI) of 25 or higher. A BMI of 24.9 is not exactly featherweight; I would have to add 30 pounds to reach a BMI of 24.9. )
The health risks of being overweight or obese include:
  • type 2 diabetes
  • heart disease
  • high blood pressure
  • nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (excess fat and inflammation in the liver of people who drink little or no alcohol)
  • osteoarthritis (a health problem causing pain, swelling, and stiffness in one or more joints)
  • some types of cancer: breast, colon, endometrial (related to the uterine lining), and kidney
  • stroke
Since the early 1960s, the prevalence of obesity among adults more than doubled, increasing from 13.4 to 35.7 percent in U.S. adults age 20 and older.  (Source)
The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) reported in 2015 that roughly half of all adult Americans are diabetic or prediabetic (also called metabolic syndrome).
If we add up everyone in America who is either suffering from or at risk of lifestyle-related diseases such as heart disease, diabetes and lifestyle-related types of cancer, it’s clear this is an unprecedented national health crisis that has no easy or cheap medical fix.
Why have we become so unhealthy? The answers come thick and fast: we are more sedentary as most work is now white-collar; the foods low-income people can afford are unhealthy; children now spend time playing digital games rather than playing outside; serving sizes of sodas and other high-calorie/low nutrition beverages have ballooned; people buy more convenience and fast foods and prepare fewer meals at home, and so on.
Two things are clear: there is no one solution to the epidemic of lifestyle-related diseases. Limiting sodas in schools and demanding better labeling of food are examples of reforms that are well-intended, but have so far had little effect on the expanding waistlines of Americans or their ill-health.
The second is expressed by the Chinese proverb: “Diseases enter through the mouth,” i.e. disease is a result of what we eat and drink. Since what we eat has an enormous impact on our health, if we want to tackle our health crisis in a manner that get results, we must start with what we eat and how our food is grown, processed and prepared.
Once we start examining our diet, we have to examine where our food comes from, how it is grown/raised and how it is processed for consumers.
A second Chinese proverb explains why we must start with diet: “When you’re thirsty, it’s too late to dig a well.”  If we want to avoid lifestyle illnesses, we must start pursuing a new way of growing and preparing food now, not after we’re already ill.
The long lists of contributory factors to our growing ill-health distract us from the real source of our national health crisis: our food/illness/healthcare system is sick, and so it’s no wonder we’re sick, too.  The only possible result of our unhealthy food/illness/healthcare care system is ill-health.  

Understanding the Food / Illness / Healthcare System

To understand why this is so, we must start with the fact that we live in a highly centralized government/private-sector system that limits our choices to maximize the profits of corporate cartels: Big Agriculture, Big Oil/Ag Chemicals, Big GMO seeds (Monsanto et al.), Big Processed Foods, Big Supermarkets, Big Fast Food, Big Healthcare (what I have called sickcare for many years, because profits flow not from keeping us healthy via prevention but from keeping us alive when we’re suffering from chronic lifestyle illnesses) and last but not least Big Pharma, which is happy to provide medications that costs tens of thousands of dollars per patient per year to address the symptoms of lifestyle diseases rather than the causes, which trace back to what we eat and how we live.
Once you hear an alternative account of how we could be raising food and delivering it to consumers to prepare at home, you grasp the sickening stranglehold Corporate America and government agencies have on our food, diet and the resulting epidemic of ill-health.
I was fortunate to attend a permaculture conference, 'Better Soil, Better Food...A Better World' at Tara Firma Farms in Petaluma, California this past weekend that Adam Taggart (co-founder of Peak Prosperity) was responsible for producing. Joel Salatin (author of nine books, including Everything I Want To Do Is Illegal: War Stories from the Local Food Front and head farmer at Polyface Farms, Virginia), Paul Kaiser (Singing Frogs Farm, Sonoma, California), Toby Hemenway (author of Gaia's Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture, 2nd Edition), and Robb Wolf (author of The Paleo Solution: The Original Human Diet) were on hand to explain the connections between the way our food is grown, processed and distributed and our ill-health.
Though these connections are common sense—we all know about garbage in, garbage out—the linkage between our extractive, monoculture agriculture and all the other subsystems of food and health remains opaque to most Americans.

Centralized Systems Are Hijacked By Those Who Profit Most From Them

Centralized systems are inevitably hijacked by vested interests in a way that is simply not possible in highly decentralized systems.  Powerful vested interests rig centralized systems to protect and extend their privileges and profits.  This dynamic is a positive (self-reinforcing) feedback loop: the greater the centralization, the greater the influence of vested interests, who increase the centralization that benefits them.
Though it is poorly understood by conventional economists and political scientists, centralization makes it inevitable that the interests that benefit most from centralization (corporations) will serve their self-interests by gaining control of centralized power via lobbying and political contributions.
Once entrenched interests have purchased influence over politicians and regulatory agencies, they use the power of centralized government to limit competition by erecting regulatory barriers.  The regulatory system is soon approving whatever reaps the most profit for the big corporations and restricting alternatives to corporate products.
Before centralized federal and state government agencies and big corporations became dominant, decentralized family-owned farms and grocery stores were the norm. Anyone seeking to control the entire sector faced an essentially impossible task.
Now, a handful of corporations control key sectors of the food/healthcare complex: seeds, chemical fertilizers, processing of food into consumer products, distribution to consumers via grocery chains and the fast-food industry, and the healthcare/pharmaceutical sectors.
This concentration of power over our food and health is presented as the lowest-cost and most efficient system possible: concentrated ownership and control, we’re told, enables vast economies of scale that lower the cost to consumers. While this might be true of grains, it is not true of healthcare.  And since food and health are causally connected, we have to considerthe total system costs: not just the cost at the grocery store or fast-food outlet, but the eventual costs of low-quality food and an unhealthy diet.  
Once we consider total system costs, we have to include healthcare: the American healthcare system is the most expensive per capita on the planet, over-delivering costly (and often questionable or needless) tests, procedures and medications, and under-delivering affordable preventative care and well-being.
While it’s impossible to break out the eventual system costs of poor diet, the preponderance of lifestyle-related diseases that end up being treated suggest the percentage of healthcare related to diet and lifestyle (fitness, sufficient sleep, etc.) is substantial:
Though the mainstream media paints skyrocketing healthcare costs as the result of costly new technologies and drugs, the unspoken reality is that higher costs also reflect cartels being able to raise prices without fear of competition and the declining health of Americans.
The food/illness/healthcare system is not a conspiracy; it is a self-organizing system driven by the goal of maximizing profit and eliminating competition. The two are related, of course; the most effective way to maintain high prices and reap big profits is to eliminate competitors and consumer choice.
Big Pharma doesn’t ask the fast-food cartel to make its food unhealthy so its customers will need pricey medications to control the resulting lifestyle illnesses down the road; the fast-food cartel chooses the lowest-priced (and thus lowest quality) ingredients and processes to maximize its own profits.
The full consequences of the food/illness/healthcare system take decades to manifest. Humans respond to price (buy what’s cheapest) and what triggers the reward centers of the brain (consume sugar, fat, salt).  It’s remarkably easy to exploit these short-term factors to sell unhealthy food and meals whose lifetime costs are still years or decades in the future.
The same can be said of our extractive system of monoculture agriculture.  Though touted as the most efficient system for growing food in the world, monoculture depends heavily on cheap fuel, cheap chemical fertilizers and pesticides/herbicides, cheap transportation and ignoring the eventual cost of losses in soil and soil quality.
I’ll share one small example that illustrates the hidden costs of our corporate-dominated system.
Last summer we drove to a Central Valley (Calif.) farm county for the annual county fair, a staple of rural life we enjoy.  To reach the town, we took a two-lane county lane. On a sharp curve in the road, hundreds of ripe tomatoes lay on the pavement and shoulder. It didn’t take much to see what had happened; as heavily loaded harvest trucks made the turn, tomatoes had spilled onto the roadway.
We stopped and picked up some of the fallen tomatoes. They were red Roma tomatoes, and they were still firm, undamaged by the impact of cascading ten feet from the trucks.  The fields nearby were already plowed under, bare dirt as far as the eye could see.
Though the naked eye could not possibly discern the consequences of this monoculture mode of growing tomatoes, studies have found that each acre of tilled bare soil loses tons of topsoil to erosion of wind and rain every year.
As for the nutritional content of the tomatoes: as an experiment, we took some of the fallen tomatoes home to see if they ever ripened enough to become soft. They never did; they remained hard and tasteless, even in a bowl of fruit that naturally emitted ripening ethylene.
What was the nutritional content of this tasteless product of monoculture? Only a lab test could tell, but it was a good bet the nutritional content was as poor as the taste.
These indestructible tasteless tomatoes were undoubtedly bred to become tomato sauce in some distant processing plant, bound for wholesalers and retailers who end up taking most of the consumers’ dollar:

It Doesn’t Have To Be This Way

It doesn’t have to be this way. Regenerative agricultural practices actually build soils rather than strip-mining them. Consumer-supported agriculture (CSA) cuts out the corporate middlemen and delivers high-quality food directly to consumers.
If we consider that Americans throw away 40% of all food they purchase, it’s not hard to see another option: waste nothing and spend the savings on higher quality food.
High-quality vegetables can be grown in cities, lowering cost and raising access (see: A guerilla gardener in South Central L.A.)
My time this past weekend with Joel Salatin, Toby Hemenway and the folks from Singing Frogs Farm was filled with compelling yet practical steps each of us can and should take in our lives to take more control over our health -- in ways that are easy, enjoyable and result in big improvements to our quality of life
In Part 2: Take Control: If You Don't, Who Will? I share the most important of these takeaways and detail ways to opt out of our matrix of ill health and extractive systems. There's a lot of room for optimism here to make great improvements in our lives with steps that feel life-enhancing rather than sacrifices. The real question is not Why did we let the system get this bad?, it's rather Why shouldn't we start embracing these very accessible solutions immediately?
Click here to read Part 2 of this report (free executive summary, enrollment required for full access)

PM Fund Manager Has A Sore Neck From Looking Up at the Metals… “This Thing Could Get OUT OF CONTROL to the Upside Quickly!”


With Gold, Silver, & the Miners Continuing to Break Out to the Upside, PM Fund Manager Dave Kranzler Joined the Show, Discussing:
1. “Last Ditch Effort” – The Blatant Act of Manipulation That Marked The Bottom
2. Where’s The Pullback? Will Gold & Silver Give Investors An Opportunity to BTFD, Or Will PMs Simply Continue to Scream Higher?
3. With Everyone Waiting On the Sidelines For a Pull Back to Join the New Gold & Silver Bull- I
4. 2-3 Baggers Since January- Just Getting Started?
5. “This Thing Could Get OUT OF CONTROL to the Upside Quickly!”

ALERT: Helicopter Money Via Federal Reserve Coming

Here come personal income and spending …

The latest report on personal income and spending is set for release at 8:30 a.m. ET.
Economists forecast the data from the Commerce Department to show that personal income rose 0.3% in March, while spending increased 0.2%, according to Bloomberg. 
The report will also include data on personal consumption expenditures (PCE), a key way to gauge the level of consumer spending within the US economy. It’s also the Federal Reserve’s preferred way to measure inflation, and the year-on-year gain in core PCE will be closely watched by economists. 
The forecast for core PCE, which excludes volatile food and gas costs, is a 0.1% gain month-on-month, and 1.6% year-on-year, a drop from 1.7% in the prior month. 
Including these costs, the PCE deflator is estimated at 0.1% mont-on-month, and 0.8% year-on-year. 

Silver Set for a Big Run! New 52-Week High Just Made! – Gary Christenson Interview


00:30 Gary Christenson Introduction
01:30 How Far can Silver Price Rise in 2016? & Modern History of Silver’s Prices
05:00 Could See $40, $50 Silver by End of 2016!
06:40 Silver Demand for Investment
08:00 Shanghai Gold Price Fix Helped Gold/Silver Pricing a lot
09:10 We May Never See $14 Silver Again in Our Lifetimes
09:40 Silver to Gold Ratio, Technical Analysis
12:30 Maximize Profit with Junior Mining Stocks Once You Have Some Physical

Silver Explodes Back On To the Trading Scene With the Comex May Contract

by Jesse
April was a dull month for the silver bulls, with gold dominating the Comex contract deliveries.
And now that we are into the May contract delivery period, the shoe is definitely on the other foot.
The May silver contract showed 3,915,000 ounces delivered on the first day for May at the price of 17.55.
The big seller was the house account from the vampire squid, Goldman Sachs.  And the biggest buyers were the tag team of the house account at JPM, and their mystery customer who keeps taking delivery after delivery of bullion.
The next big contract month for gold is in June.  Of course with the shift of trading from NY and London to Asia, one has to wonder how much that may really matter.
Silver is back on track.  Let’s get ready to rumble.

Violent Protest At Trump Rallies And The Economy Is Why He Needs To Be President



Violent Protest At Trump Rallies And The Economy Is Why He Needs To Be President

Asia’s Market Giants Turn Into $11 Trillion Headache for Traders

  • Tokyo, Shanghai shares among world’s worst performers in 2016
  • No stimulus from Bank of Japan added to woes on Thursday

Asia’s two biggest stock markets are jostling for an ignominious prize.
Japan’s Topix index and China’s Shanghai Composite Index have tumbled more than 13 percent in 2016 to rank along Nigerian and Mongolian shares as the world’s worst performers. In the two years through the end of December, the Asian gauges outperformed MSCI’s global measure by at least 20 percentage points. The Bank of Japan stood pat on monetary policy Thursday, sending Tokyo stocks tumbling, while the Shanghai measure fell to a one-month low.
Another Chinese Yuan Devaluation Is Coming
The recent trend of Chinese stockpiling of commodities such as oil and metals, many of which are settled in US dollars, suggests the Chinese may be preparing for a devaluation.
China’s growing debt problems (the majority of which are yuan based) combined with deflationary pressures will catalyze the decision to devalue.
China has not effectively pivoted toward a service-driven economy. China still relies on low-cost exports to drive growth. A weaker currency is needed to compete.
The Chinese government battled back foreign speculators by intervening to prop up the yuan. With the threat abating, China is free to intervene without losing face to international speculators.
Our take: We assess that China will devalue its currency in the next 3-6 months to counteract deteriorating domestic financial conditions caused by export weakness and heavy bank debt.
UFS

Goldman Sachs “Bail-in” Plot Designed to Steal Your Bank Account

goldman sachs flag
Bail-outs, Bail-ins, the average consumer has trouble keeping these terms and their meanings straight. Both terms are relatively new on the American economic scene. Here is what these terms mean:
“A bail-out is when outside investors rescue a borrower by injecting money to help service a debt. Bail-outs of failing banks in Greece, Portugal and Iceland were primarily financed by taxpayers”.
…a bail-in occurs when the borrower’s creditors are forced to bear some of the burden by having a portion of their debt written off. For example, bondholders in Cyprus banks and depositors with more than 100,000 euros in their accounts were forced to write-off a portion of their holdings. This approach eliminates some of the risk for taxpayers by forcing other creditors to share in the pain and suffering.”
As an American investor, if given no choice, I would prefer a bail-out over a bail-in. In the case of a bail-in, it is my money that is being stolen from me by the bankers to they can keep their institution afloat as opposed to the bail-in where it is my money that is directly taken from me in order to satisfy bankers debts.

Goldman Sachs Is Covertly Ushering In Bail-Ins Beneath the Radar

Goldman Sachs has a new new online bank that it acquired from General Electric Co. The evidence is quite clear that Goldman Sachs has taken the lead in what will become the “the Great American rip-off”, which will lead to massive bail-ins around the country. Before we go further in this developing story in which bail-ins are already happening in America, let’s take a look at the character of Goldman Sachs in order to gain some much needed perspective on who will be setting the trend in this newest waves of the bankers hijacking the country.

Goldman Sachs and Integrity Are Mutually Exclusive Terms

If one wants to predict the next false flag attack, one merely has to watch the actions and the money movements of Goldman Sachs.

In the days leading up to the attacks on 9/11, Goldman Sachs “shorted” the sale of airline stocks which plummeted in the aftermath of the attacks. Just a coincidence you say?

In the days leading up to the housing bubble, Goldman Sachs shorted housing stocks which ignited the bubble. The Federal government fined Goldman Sachs, but in typical fashion, nobody went to jail. Just another coincidence you say?
As I documented in my seven part series, The Great Gulf Coast Holocaust, Goldman Sachs executed a “put option” for preferred insiders invested in Transocean stock,thus protecting the profits of these preferred insiders on the morning of the explosion. Transocean was the owner of the ill-fated oil rig. Goldman Sachs also sold the lion’s share of its BP stock less than two weeks before that fateful day on April 20, 2010. Nalco was the subsidiary of Goldman Sachs and BP at the time of the explosion. Who is Nalco? Nalco was the exclusive manufacturer of the deadly oil dispersant, Corexit. Corexit has done more to wreck the ecology of the Gulf as well as the health of the Gulf Coast residents than the oil spill itself. Again, this is all documented in my seven part series. By the way, I count another three coincidences in this paragraph alone and if you are keeping score, we are looking at a total of five amazing coincidences. But wait, there is more!
The moral of this story is clear, if there is to be a significant false flag event, the financial actions of Goldman Sachs will prove to be the key. And Goldman Sachs’ actions have signaled yet another oncoming false flag. As I reported on in April of 2013, Goldman Sachs instructed its brokers to sell short on gold stocks. And then after the bulk of the gold market panicked and the price of gold plummeted in a massive sell off, the Goldman Sachs boys did it again. The Goldman Sachs brokers began to purchase gold in massive amounts, for its elite clients, at a greatly depressed price. By the way, Goldman Sachs employed the EXACT same strategy with regard to the Gulf Oil tragedy. When Goldman Sachs sold off BP stock in the days before the explosion, they purchased massive amounts of BP stock at a greatly reduced price in June of 2010. In short (no pun intended), Goldman Sachs is clearly a criminal enterprise organization.
Any financial endeavor that Goldman Sachs is involved in, should be looked at with a wary eye.

Goldman Sachs Will Lead the Way in the Covert Theft of Your Money

In a major transaction that went virtually unnoticed, Goldman Sachs just took over $16 billion of deposits from the online business it bought from GE Capital. Goldman Sachs immediately merged this platform with its GS Bank USA and created a hybrid banking model.
Goldman Sachs is offering 1.05 percent interest on savings accounts that are opened online. The bank has added to its deposit base by 700%.
Here is where the Goldman actions get very interesting and very serious. On this past Tuesday, two U.S. agencies have announced their special version of a long-term liquidity rule outlined by global regulators in 2014. When we start reading professional sounding catch phrases, it is time to clutch our collective wallets as Goldman announces that it is embracing the “funding ratio” policy that requires banks to hold enough easy-to-sell assets to meet any liabilities coming due in the next 12 months. The easy to sell assets are your bank account.

New Rules

Hoping you will get lost in the words, Goldman is planning to rob you blind. Under these new policies, deposits are viewed as a more stable form of financing than market-based sources such as reposessions.
Goldman Sachs said in its latest annual report that it’s already in full compliance with the pending short-term rule, called the liquidity coverage ratio.
The term, the liquidity coverage ratio means that your deposits are the source of backing for the banks instead of the U.S. taxpayer. However, the only way that could be achieved is if the FDIC is not involved. And for the FDIC to not be involved, your bank assets could not be counted as money. I wrote an article in November of 2014 in which I stated that your money had been stolen. Why would I make such an outrageous claim? Because at the G20 conference held at that time in Brisbane, Australia, it was decided that a depositor’s assets would no longer be called money when it went into the bank. This became the impetus for shifting the backing of banks away from bail-outs to bail-ins where your deposit can be confiscated by the bank at any time and in any amount.

Conclusion

Who else but Goldman Sachs would be the one to usher in a brand new way to steal American citizens’ money?

I am not Nostradamus, but I do have the globalists playbook and I know that they are going for broke and soon the game will soon be over if we are not willing to make a stand. Convert your banking assets and retirement accounts to more permanent and sound investments (i.e. gold). Stop shopping in their Walmarts, Kmarts, and other slave marts. Get out of the exploitive globalist system. Shop locally! Eat out in the small family owned restaurants. Most of all, get out of the dollar, while you still can! Plan for what is coming. Plan to survive and to thrive after the event.