Guest Post: The Realities Of Choosing Your Survival Retreat Location

I am a child of an age laden with illusory wealth, and have benefitted (for a short time at least) from the financial fakery of our economic system, as have many Americans.  Most of us have not had to suffer through the unmitigated poverty, hopelessness, and relentless fear that are pervasive in harsher days.  All our problems could be cured with money, especially government money, and as long as the greenbacks were flowing, we didn’t care where they came from.  Ultimately, though, the ease of our well-to-do welfare kingdom has set us up for a cultural failure of epic proportions.  Anytime a society allows itself to be conditioned with dependency, its fate is sealed. We do not know what crisis really is.  Many Americans barely have an inkling of what it entails.  We imagine it, in films, in books, and in our own minds, but the fantasy is almost numbing.  We lose sight of the tangible grating salty rawness of the worst of things, while imagining ourselves to be “aware”.  Most people today are like newborns playing merrily in a pit of wolves. Preppers, on the other hand, are those who seek to understand what the rest of the public goes out of its way to ignore.  They embrace the reality and inevitability of disaster, and suddenly, like magic, they are able to see its oncoming potential where others cannot (or will not).  The price they pay for this extended vision, however, is high… 

Santelli And Kaminsky On Broken Rules, Unpredictability, and Deleveraging

In one of the best clips we can remember, Rick Santelli and Gary Kaminsky show just what happens when the kool-aid-drinkers are allowed to speak frankly about our predicament. Instead of constant silver-lining-seeking or trotting out failed truism after failed truism, the two men (who notably have been actual market participants as opposed to mere observers) take on the uncertainty and unpredictability that weighs heavy on our global economies as governments break the rules time and time again - and took advantage of crisis "getting away with anything". Focusing back on what could happen if the market were allowed to think for itself, Kamintelli deface the edifice of central banker largesse and blame it for the actual demise we face  - noting that it is now clear that whether it is QE or actual rate easing, using jobs as the argument for excessive intervention is a failed concept. On a Friday that seems to have devolved into a low volume sideways nudge in equities, this is six minutes well spent as they ask and answer the question: "Have rates been too low for too long?" and how those who played by the 'rules' continue to be the ones who are penalized. There is hope for recovery if the market is allowed to find its own level - "it will get better, but the deleveraging pain still has to be taken all over the world."

Top Mitt Romney Donors: Update

As Mitt Romney speaks on TV, we thought it may be prudent to present an update of the key donors to the Romney presidential campaign.

RANsquawk Weekly Wrap - 01/06/12

Payroll Postmortem

In perhaps the under-statement of the year, BofA's Economics group note that "May's unemployment report was a disappointment" with evidence of a weather reversal and weakness concentrated in construction, leisure, and temporary help. Pointing out that "This is the recovery of fits and starts", BofA believes we are entering a slow patch in the second half of the year. They do not see this report as sufficient to prompt Fed action in June, but it makes August QE increasingly likely. The weakness in the US data is overlapping with an intensifying crisis in Europe, which means the risk-off trade continues.

Bill Gross Channels 1972 Rock

Gold Explodes, Spam Unchanged

Gold has jumped over $50 post-NFP, now back over $1600. Maybe, just maybe, as we have been saying since January 1, 2012 is a carbon copy of 2011, and the NEW QE is coming now that only central planning can sustain an epic economic collapse (for a few months at least)?