NADA

Right NOW may very well be THE best time to raise money! But make sure you know what you're getting yourself into...

It's that time of year.... when the bank-that-does-God's-work chooses who to bless with mass affluence. This year 425 Goldman Sachs' employees were annointed "Managing Directors" which according to Emolumnet.com means an average annual comp of approximatley $1 million.

If it were not for Social Security, half of retirees would be out in the street bringing back another Great Depression like atmosphere. This is in stark contrast to that 401(k) dreams pushed by Wall Street investment banks of endless Margaritas and walks on nameless sunny beaches. The sad reality is that retirement is no longer what people think.

“Over the past five years, our businesses have created more than 11 million new jobs. Our economy is growing and creating jobs at the fastest pace since 1999.” - President Obama

Despite those feel-good headlines, the average American is far, far from solid financial footing.

We’re living in two worlds, you and I. There’s the world we see (or are made to see) and then there’s the one we sense (and occasionally catch a glimpse of), the latter of which is a far cry from the propaganda-driven reality manufactured by the government and its corporate sponsors, including the media. Indeed, what most Americans perceive as life in America - privileged, progressive and free - is a far cry from reality, where economic inequality is growing, real agendas and real power are buried beneath layers of Orwellian doublespeak and corporate obfuscation, and “freedom,” such that it is, is meted out in small, legalistic doses by militarized police armed to the teeth. All is not as it seems.

Businesses usually begin as productive enterprises. But almost all have zombie tendencies. Once they reach a certain size, they recognize that the best investment they can make is in politics. They hire lobbyists. They pay crony politicians. In return, government enacts rules and regulations to stifle competition. But as with so many of its activities, government succeeds when it fails. As a new industry arises, the money still flows from the cronies, while the feds get a piece of action from the new enterprises, too. And households? They grouse and groan. But the masses usually love government. They think business people are greedy SOBs. But they often hold the fellows who run the government racket in the same exalted category as saints, TV stars, and sports heroes. Don’t believe it?

A simple method that can boost your chances of investment (or any other) success

“It is perfectly possible for a man to be out of prison and yet not free - to be under no physical constraint and yet be a psychological captive, compelled to think, feel and act as the representatives of the national state, or of some private interest within the nation wants him to think, feel and act... To him the walls of his prison are invisible and he believes himself to be free.” - Aldous Huxley,

Ben Bernanke’s skin is as thin, apparently, as is his comprehension of honest economics. The emphasis is on the “honest” part because he is a fount of the kind of Keynesian drivel that passes for economics in the financially deformed world that the Bernank did so much to bring about.

Those who refuse debt, regardless of the sacrifice, are starving the parasitic, exploitive machine; those with debt are feeding it.

Four months ago, in another failed attempt to boost confidence in the Eurozone and stimulate lending (failed because three months later the ECB finally launched its own QE), the ECB conducted its latest stress test, which as we explicitly pointed out was an utter joke as even its "worst-case" scenario did not simulate a deflationary scenario. Two months later Europe was in outright deflation.  It was initially unclear just how comparably laughable the Fed's own stress test assumptions were, but refuting rumors that Deutsche and Santander would fail the Fed's stress test (perhaps because former FDIC head and current Santander head Sheila Bair wasn't too happy about her bank being one of the failed ones), moments ago the Fed released the results of the 2015 Fed stress test, and.... it seems there was no need to provide a sacrificial lamb as with stocks at record highs. In fact everything is awesome! FED STRESS TEST SHOWS ALL 31 BANKS EXCEED MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS

Since the beginning of this year, Wall Street economists and analysts have been consistently prognosticating that following the Federal Reserve's latest bond buying campaign, economic growth would gather steam and interest rates would begin to rise. This has consistently been the wrong call. The recent decline in interest rates should really not be a surprise as there is little evidence that current rates of economic growth are set to increase markedly anytime soon. Consumers are still heavily levered; wage growth remains anemic, and business owners are still operating on an "as needed basis." This "economic reality" continues to constrain the ability of the economy to grow organically at strong enough rates to sustain higher interest rates. This is a point that seems to be lost on most economists who forget that the Federal Reserve has been pumping in trillions of dollars of liquidity into the economy to pull forward future consumption.

The only thing that saves us from the bureaucracy is its inefficiency