National Debt

Disparities, bailouts, and a slow-motion blowup.

Now is the time to think about how you would live your life if your real value was appreciated and fairly compensated.

I don't care how much money Japan prints. Those printing presses can't offset the powerful force of demographics, at least not for long.

There is "not a chance," that the Fed will be able to unwind its balance sheet in an orderly manner, "because everybody is front-running [them]," as the Fed is creating "serial bubbles," that are increasingly hard to manage since "we're getting in deeper and deeper every time." David Stockman has been vociferously honest in the last few days and his Bloomberg Radio interview with Tom Keene was extremely so. While Keene tries his best to remain upbeat and his permabullish self, Stockman just keeps coming with body blow after body blow to the thesis that this 'recovery' is sustainable. "They are using a rosy scenario forecast for the next ten years that would make the rosy scenario of the 1981 Reagan administration look like an ugly duckling," he exclaims, adding that the Keynesian Krugmanites' confidence is "disingenuous" - "the elephant in the room - the Fed," that are for now enabling rates to stay where they are. The full transcript below provides much food for thought but he warns, if the Fed ever pulled back, even modestly, "there would be a tremendous panic sell off in the bond market because it is entirely propped up... It's to late to go cold turkey."

Gold rose 1.1% in March, its first monthly rise in six. 

For the quarter, gold was 4.5% lower in dollar terms and 1.4% lower in euros. However, signalling that the demise of gold is greatly exaggerated, gold is 3.7% higher in Japanese yen and 2.6% higher in sterling.

As one astute financial journalist said to me “ ‘cash in the bank’ doesn’t have quite the same ring to it anymore.”

It is clear now that we must have been wrong about the economy. No more proof is needed than the fact the Dow has gone up 1,500 points. Everyone knows the stock market reflects the true health of the nation – multi-millionaire Jim Cramer and his millionaire CNBC talking head cohorts tell us so. Ignore the fact that the bottom 80% only own 5% of the financial assets in this country and are not benefitted by the stock market in any way. It is time to open your eyes and arise from your stupor. Observe what is happening around you. Look closely. Does the storyline match what you see in your ever day reality? It is them versus us. Whether you call them the invisible government, ruling class, financial overlords, oligarchs, the powers that be, ruling elite, or owners; there are powerful wealthy men who call the shots in this global criminal enterprise. No amount of propaganda can cover up the physical, economic, social, and psychological descent afflicting our world. There’s a bad moon rising and trouble is on the way.

Self-admitted 'crazy-guy-at-every-cocktail-party', Santiago Capital's Brent Johnson believes there is something really wrong in the world today. But as he notes as an introduction to his presentation, "while I am not naive to the way the world works, I at least want to try to make it better." Rather than tell us what we should do, he tells us what he believes in the hope that just maybe, we may believe in many of the same things... for instance, that despite the S&P 500 returning to its all-time highs, the real economy has not recovered; that holding interest rates at less than 1% for 5 years is an indicator of a recession if not a depression and that the fact that that middle class jobs have not returned is indicative of an economy in trouble. This brief but full presentation is a litany of all that is wrong today - see how many of his 'beliefs' you agree with...

^{Importantly, Cypriots and other Eurozone citizens who own gold saw the value of their holdings rise 2% in euro terms.}

The demise of gold and the "death of the gold bull market" is "greatly exaggerated" says Mr. O’Byrne.

^{He said that while the risk from Cyprus has abated, in the light of capital controls in EU country and the treatment of Cyprus, there are now huge question marks over the future of the European Union itself.}

One of the most interesting issues of what has happened in Cyprus is where was the problem three weeks ago? There was not a mention, not a hint of anything that was wrong. All of the banks in Cyprus had passed each and every European bank stress test. The numbers reported out by the ECB and the Bank for International Settlements indicated nothing and everything reported by any official organization in the European Union pointed to a stable and sound fiscal and monetary policy and conditions. The IMF, who monitors these things as well, did not have Cyprus or her banks on any kind of watch list. In just two weeks' time we have gone from not a mention of Cyprus to a crisis in Cyprus because none of the official numbers were accurate. Without doubt, without question, if this can happen in Cyprus then it could happen in any other country in the Eurozone because the uncounted liabilities are systemic to the whole of Europe.

Why is the global economy in so much trouble?  How can so many people be so absolutely certain that the world financial system is going to crash?  Well, the truth is that when you take a look at the cold, hard numbers it is not difficult to see why the global financial pyramid scheme is destined to fail.  In the United States today, there is approximately 56 trillion dollars of total debt in our financial system, but there is only about 9 trillion dollars in our bank accounts.  So you could take every single penny out of the banks, multiply it by six, and you still would not have enough money to pay off all of our debts. Overall, there is about 190 trillion dollars of total debt on the planet.  But global GDP is only about 70 trillion dollars.  And the total notional value of all derivatives around the globe is somewhere between 600 trillion and 1500 trillion dollars.  So we have a gigantic problem on our hands.  The global financial system is a very shaky house of cards that has been constructed on a foundation of debt, leverage and incredibly risky derivatives.

Years ago we wrote of a not so far off future in which martial law, economic collapse, and the destruction of civil liberties stood imminent.  We related our views on the propaganda rhetoric of the SPLC, and how they were using false association to tie liberty groups to any deviant organization they could think of, including racists and domestic terrorists, in order to condition the American public to react to our message with immediate contempt. It became clear to us then that the SPLC, which had become the propaganda wing of the widely reviled Department Of Homeland Security, was helping set the stage for a paradigm shift in the U.S.  This shift would obviously include economic and social disruption, as well as political turmoil beyond anything our nation has seen for over 150 years.  But most importantly, it would pave the way for certain elements of the American populace, namely those who are awake, aware, and outspoken, to be labeled “enemy combatants” dangerous to the state. The SPLC, of course, has so far utterly failed in their efforts to stop the rise of Constitutional activists.  By their own admission, “patriot groups” have expanded exponentially since 2008, and continue to develop freely even in the face of wildly absurd character attacks taken from the amoral (immoral) guidebook of Saul Alinsky himself.  The truth, once realized, is difficult if not impossible to stop. Unfortunately, the establishment understands this as well...

They didn't see it coming last time either.  Back in 2007, President Bush, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and just about every prominent voice in the financial world were all predicting that we would experience tremendous economic prosperity well into the future.  In fact, as late as January 2008 Bernanke boldly declared that "the Federal Reserve is not currently forecasting a recession."  At the time, only the "doom and gloomers" were warning that everything was about to fall apart.  And of course we all know what happened.  But just a few short years later, history seems to be repeating itself. All of our "leaders" swear that everything is going to be okay.  You can believe them if you want, but denial is not just a river in Egypt, and another crash is inevitably coming.

Much virtual ink has been spilled over the decline of the mainstream media, measured by circulation, advertising revenue, or a general sense of irrelevance. Furthermore, news consumers increasingly recognize that the mainstream media outlets are basically public relations services for government agencies, large companies, and other influential organizations. Journalists do very little actual journalism — independent investigation, analysis, reporting. A news outlet that deviates from the Narrative by doing its own investigation or offering its own interpretation risks being cut off from the flow of anonymous briefings which means a loss of prestige and a lower status. In exchange for sticking to the Narrative, they get access to official sources. Give up one, you lose the other. Readers are beginning to recognize this, and they don’t want to pay. Nowhere is this situation more apparent than the mainstream reporting on budget sequestration.

Bankers have turned the paradigm of monetary truth upside down. People believe in fiat paper & digital money that is counterfeit and have always ended up in massive collapse to their intrinsic value of zero, and have zero belief in real money, like physical gold and silver, that has served civilizations as money and kept price indexes constant and stable for over 5,000 years.

But the fake deadlines, the even more fake serial fiscal crises, it all came to an end with a whimper