The currency in the online role-playing game World of Warcraft is now worth more than Venezuela’s bolivar. File this one under: “Things that happen when socialists take over.”
Although it’s probably not very funny for those who use money as toilet paper in the socialist dystopia of Venezuela, it’s nonetheless, a teachable moment for delusional leftists in the United States who are chomping at the bit for a master like Bernie Sanders Nicholas Maduro. Because of anti-capitalist ideals, the fake gold of Azeroth in the World of Warcraft is now worth seven times what the bolivar is worth.
Here’s the math behind the currency value:
Per Google, one U.S. dollar is worth 68,915 bolivar.
Compare that to the price of WoW tokens, official in-game credits that can be used to extend a player’s play time or buy in-game items. Tokens can be bought with either $20 real world cash or sold for a fluctuating amount of in-game gold. One tracking service lists the current gold price of a token as 203,035 pieces. That works out to about 10,152 gold gaming pieces per USD.
By those calculations, World of Warcraft virtual gold would be worth 6.8 times as much as the bolivar.
If you factor in the black market rate of the bolivar, though, the difference is even more staggering. Dolar Today, which tracks the black market rate of the bolivar, seems to say the currency’s current value is 636,771.03 per U.S. dollar.
By that figure, WoW gold would be worth nearly 62 times as much as Venezuela’s official currency. –Forbes
A big shoutout to Forbes for doing the heavy lifting on the math. But it doesn’t change the fact Venezuela seems to have dug themselves into a pit that they won’t get out of with more regulations and market controls. Of course, Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro has shifted his support away from the Bolivar and over to the recently-launched national cryptocurrency, the Petro.
Venezuelan citizens, meanwhile, have taken to bartering in their day to day business dealings. Which is a better deal anyway – no sales tax (extortion fee).
The last recession in 2008 was spurred by excessive debt in the private sector, mostly in the housing market. But this time, it’ll be worst and much more difficult, as the problem will be caused by corporate debt, according to several leading investors.
The ensuing downturn could be immediate and sharp, once the bull market ends. But some, such as Peter Schiff, already believe we are in a bear market. “Stocks are expensive. The bull market is over. It’s now a bear market. People want to get out. People are allocating out. Growth is slowing whether people want to acknowledge it or not,” said Schiff.
But others still think they have yet to hit the top. “Once we peak, our work shows that we should expect maybe a 40% decline in equities from their peak,” Scott Minerd, chairman of Guggenheim Investments, told Yahoo Finance.“I’m talking about a recession, possibly in early 2020. Stocks tend to do well two years before a recession. But in this rally, it’s the opportunity to sell.”
At the Milken Institute Global Conference in Los Angeles, the world’s top investors are asking how much longer the good times can last. They claim the current bull-market rally began in 2009, making it one of the longest on record. But others, such as Peter Schiff, said it’s a false recovery because of the money printing scheme employed.
“When we do all that [print money to recover from a recession], the dollar is going to implode because everybody is going to know that the [money printing scheme] experiment failed. Everybody is going to know there is no way out of this box. There is no normalization of rates. That is ever going to happen. Their [The Federal Reserve’s] balance sheet is never going to shrink. The balance sheet is going to grow permanently, which means this banana republic debt monetization. They can no longer pretend that they’re not doing the same things as South American banana republics. It’s a pure ‘we just print money to finance government spending,’ which is going to explode,” said Schiff. –SHTFPlan
The good news, if there is any to be had, is that the tax cuts President Donald Trump signed in 2017 could juice markets a bit longer by leaving more money in American’s pockets. But some investors gathered at the Milken Conference also feel that the corporate forces are now swirling that will trigger the next downturn.
Because the tax cuts didn’t offer a decrease in the size of government, they will add to US government debt. Spending, not taxation, is the problem and will be until the government is reduced. And while the Federal Reserve is gradually raising interest rates, they may still not be high enough to allow for aggressive monetary policy by the time a recession hits and the Fed needs to cut interest rates. “We’re in danger of having a collision between monetary policy and fiscal policy,” Minerd says. Once interest rates rise, the amount owed on the massive amount of debt corporations hold will increase along with the debt owed by the federal government.
We are in for a rough ride, everyone.
If Minerd is right, some of the riskiest investments include high-yield bonds, other fixed-income securities, and eventually stocks. But some investors will undoubtedly hold on, hoping to squeeze out the last gains before the market turns.
Yahoo‘s suggestion? Keep a parachute handy. But we prefer you actually prepare and store things that are of use. Prepping can be difficult and it’s often hard to take that first step, but if you’re new and interested in learning, it’s never too late to start preparing for any potential outcome. The book titledThe Prepper’s Blueprint offers a simplistic and easy to follow guideline for those who would like to take that first step.
The nation of Iran has dumped the United States dollar in favor of the European euro amid tensions with Washington. Tehran’s supreme leader has proclaimed that the “dollar has no place in our transactions today.”
According to RT, The governor of Iran’s central bank (CBI) Valiollah Seif said that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had welcomed his suggestion of replacing the dollar with the euro in foreign trade, as the “dollar has no place in our transactions today.”The new policy could reportedly encourage government bodies and firms linked to the state to increase their use of the euro at the expense of the American currency.
The dollar’s downward spiral continues as financial analyst Peter Schiff predicted in 2008 and has been warning of ever since. Schiff pulled no punches when saying that the long-term trend for the dollar is essentially a slow death.
They’re going to print money until they revive the economy. You can’t revive the economy by printing money. They’re going to suffocate it to death. It’s going to die by hyperinflation. –Peter Schiff
France will start offering euro-denominated credits to Iranian buyers of its goods later this year to keep its trade out of the reach of US sanctions, said the head of state-owned French investment bank Bpifrance. According to CBI’s Director of Foreign Exchange Rules and Policies Affairs Mehdi Kasraeipour, the share of the greenback in Iran’s trade activities is not high. As part of a trade embargo, US banks are banned from dealing with Iran.
Last month, Tehran announced that purchase orders by merchants that are based on US currency would no longer be allowed to go through import procedures. The step followed an official request by the CBI and was specifically meant to address fluctuations in market rates of the US dollar. –RT
Iran is also seeking to develop cryptocurrencies to beat the United States at their own sanctioning game.
Tehran, which has long sought to switch to a non-dollar-based trade, had already signed agreements with several countries. It is also currently in talks with Russia on using national currencies in settlements.
While meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in November, Khamenei said the best way to beat any US sanctions against the two countries was joint efforts to dump the American currency in bilateral trade. He told President Putin that, by using methods such as eliminating the US dollar and replacing it with national currencies in transactions between two or more parties, the sides could “isolate the Americans.”
They [the Fed] actually made the bubbles bigger than the ones that popped. So now, the dollar’s collapse is going to be that much bigger, because it’s now a bigger bubble with more air to come out of it. And I think they have no more tricks up their sleeves. When this happens – it’s over. –Peter Schiff
Peter Schiff has been saying that this is a bear market for a few weeks now, and it looks like president Donald Trump may have just gotten the same memo. While Trump said some investors may feel some “short-term pain” in the market, but Schiff says it’s actually going to be long-term pain.
According to Seeking Alpha, Trump says any short-term market pains will all be worth it because we will get long-term gain, referring to the benefits we’ll reap when we win the trade war. In his most recent podcast, Peter said that’s not at all how it’s going to play out, though.
“We’re going to have short-term pain and then the pain is going to get worse in the long-run,” Schiff said. Schiff is a financial and market analyst who predicted the 2008 recession. But Schiff says the bigger problem, is that nobody is ready for any pain at all.
Schiff says that the real problem is the government itself. Policymakers aren’t willing to take the steps necessary to reap long-term benefits. Those steps would have to include a major cut in government spending, a cut in entitlements, cutting defense spending, and shutting down government agencies and government departments. And we couldn’t agree more. Government spending is out of control and people struggle to get by with the tax burden levied on them, and that will only worsen when a Democrat takes power.
There would be some short-term pain that would deliver some long-term gain. How about if the Fed normalizes interest rates and lets the bubbles collapse, lets people lose money, lets the markets restructure? That is short-term pain for long-term gain. That is what a real free-market recession is like. Let the government get out of the way. Let the central bankers get out of the way, and let the free market correct the imbalances and create a good foundation where we can build a lasting, sustainable, viable recovery.
But Schiff says that’s not what President Trump is all about. He’s about avoiding the short-term pain by kicking the can down the road, just like every other president in modern history.
This is a time bomb. The debt keeps going up. Every day we’re closer to the crisis. Every day there is more and more debt, right? And so, every day that goes by, we’re one day closer to the debt imploding.
Schiff went on to detail what will go wrong if the Fed decides to make a move that no one is expecting.
Normally the markets are forward-looking. They discount things that they think are going to happen. Well, if you don’t think something is going to happen, how can it be discounted? So, it’s when the markets are blindsided, when they’re surprised, that’s when you see the biggest moves because they didn’t get discounted in advance. You can’t buy the rumor and sell the fact if you’ve never bought the rumor because you don’t know there’s a rumor or you don’t believe it. So when the fact happens, nobody is positioned for it. Nobody is prepared for it. And that’s where we are in the gold market. That’s where we are in the gold stock market, in the bond market, in the US stock market. Nobody is prepared for any of the things that are going to happen because nobody believes that they are going to happen.
And Schiff says don’t get too attached to your tax cut if you actually benefited from it. Once the Democrats take the White House and both houses of Congress, those tax cuts will not only go away but be raised substantially to pay for even more democrat government spending.
Gold and silver expert David Morgan recently appeared in an interview with USA Watchdog‘s Greg Hunter. Morgan said point blank that “if the Deep State gets pushed into a corner much further, they can basically pull the plug,” and may just crash our economy.
Morgan explains why he thinks it is a great idea to have some physical gold and silver in your portfolio. “That means the stock market could come tumbling down, and then they [the deep state] could blame the Trump Administration,” said Morgan.
“If you are losing the chess game, you just get up and turn the table over and the pieces go flying everywhere. That is a metaphor for a war. That’s a metaphor for crashing the stock market. That’s a metaphor for crashing the bond market, and it’s a metaphor for it happening on its own. I am concerned that if you win, you lose. This is why the unraveling is being done extremely carefully,” he continued.
“I am not saying it is going to happen. I am saying it could happen. These people are so used to winning a rigged game, if they start being caught, and they have been caught, then they are going to do things that are not necessarily predictable. They are not going to act in a rational manner. They are going to do anything possible to protect themselves. You cannot rule out the possibility that they will turn the table over and that’s it.”
Morgan explains that the problem with the market is its manipulation by the deep state. Once they begin to lose their grip on those they feel are underneath them, they could just “end the chess game” by “flipping the table.”
A good portion of the interview shows Morgan discussing the importance of silver.
There is some free information on TheMorganReport.com regarding precious metals. You can also become a subscriber to The Morgan report and get much more timely and detailed analysis of the financial markets. If you want to find out more about the “cryptographic silver monetary system” mentioned by Morgan in the interview, click here to go to Ag.Lode.One.
In the event that the entire economy collapses and food and become scarce, billionaires are looking for high-end places to hold out and await the new world order. Many billionaires are now preparing for the apocalypse, and their survival plans don’t include anyone outside the global elites.
Peter Thiel, the billionaire behind PayPal, is among those tech giants who see New Zealand as a good place to go in the event of an apocalypse. New Zealand is seen as a particularly safe place for billionaires in the event of an apocalypse. In fact, Thiel has bought a $13.5 million 193-hectare section on the shores of Lake Wanaka, although the only building there at the moment is a barn (that can be seen).
According to the Mirror, plans show he is fitting a panic room in another property he owns in the country and he has been granted New Zealand citizenship in a streamlined process not available to normal (non-global elitists) members of the public. A rough and ready description of the attraction of New Zealand came last year inThe New Yorkermagazine, with LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman suggesting the country had become shorthand for apocalypse insurance in Silicon Valley.
In 2011, Thiel declared he’d found “no other country that aligns more with my view of the future than New Zealand”. The country is more relaxed in terms of government than many places, has ample drinking water, and some of the world’s cleanest air.
“Saying you’re ‘buying a house in New Zealand’ is kind of a ‘wink, wink, say no more’,” Hoffman said. “Once you’ve done the Masonic handshake, they’ll be, like: ‘Oh, you know, I have a broker who sells old ICBM [intercontinental ballistic missile] silos, and they’re nuclear-hardened, and they kind of look like they would be interesting to live in.‘”
“Here’s the thing, folks: to make a long story short, the actions of preppers are vilified,” says Joseph. (Who hasn’t been called a ‘crazy tin foil hat wearing conspiracy theorist’ for having extra cans of food and some dried jerky meats around?) “You look at people who store non-perishable foods, who store fuel, medical supplies…they get laughed at. But these billionaires are doing the exact same thing and in haste! So you have to wonder, what is the sense of urgency with these people of means that they’re willing to go that far, to buy 98% of an island and their own airline to get there…for there to be that much of a sense of urgency.”
“We, society, is institutionalized. When you go to school, it’s cool to be stupid, it’s cool to run with the crowd, if you run outside that crowd, if you’re a ‘black sheep’, you’re a nerd…it’s a toned-down version of prison culture…but it bleeds over to the outside, so when you do your due diligence and your research, and you say ‘holy cow! All of these billionaires are buying up these bunkers and these properties and they’re putting away food and medical supplies and alternative energy…if they’re focused on that, maybe I should do it!’ And what happens? Well, because you’re an outlier because you don’t go with the crowd, you’re vilified and looked at as a ‘black sheep.’
Billionaires are showing an increased level of urgency; perhaps we should too. “They [the billionaires and elite globalists] see something coming that we don’t. It’s all over the news: whether it be an economic collapse, whether it be a pole shift, whether it be Yellowstone; you name it….they see something most don’t, although the truth is right in front of us,” Joseph says.
If you need help prepping, or don’t know where to begin, please check out the book below. It’s full of useful information on how to prepare for many apocalyptic scenarios.
Financial writer Charles Hugh Smith recently sat down for an interview in which he boldly declared that ALL currencies – not just the United States dollar -will see a catastrophic drop during the coming economic collapse. It’s not just the dollar, but every currency backed by government force will fall.
In a video interview with USA Watchdog‘s Greg Hunter, Smith details the eventual collapse and says currencies such as the Chinese yuan will also drop. Smith, the author of the new book Money and Work Unchained and founder of the popular site OfTwoMinds.com says, “All these currencies, by which there is nothing backing the currencies except the government’s force. That’s the yen, the euro, the dollar and the Chinese yuan. They are all going to have a catastrophic drop against real assets because they are all based on too much leverage, too much debt, too much money being pumped into the financial system that ends up in unproductive speculation. You can’t grow your debt at six times the rate of your economy. In other words, if you are creating $6, $8 or $10 of debt to eke out $1 of low productivity growth, you are dooming your currency, and all currencies are doing the same thing. All the currencies are going to take a big drop at some point . . . relative to real stuff. Real stuff is commodities we need: water, grains, food, oil, natural gas, and of course, precious metals. Everybody knows they have been money for 5,000 years, and I personally feel there is a role for cryptocurrencies.”
“Once you destroy your currency, you destroy everybody’s savings, everybody’s purchasing power, everybody’s poor,” says Smith. He then explains that how governments run economies is not how economics works. Most assume we can continue to borrow from the future to pay today for the promises made yesterday. It simply doesn’t work that way. “Most of the households in the US are losing ground,” explains Smith. Hunter then asked a powerful question: “Do you think they [global elitists] are trying to crush the dollar on purpose?”
“Yeah…there’s that idea that we boost our exports if we can reduce the value of our currency compared to the yen and the euro and so on. But then of course, we have to think about the other side of that which is…the Japanese are even more dependent on exports than we are, so they don’t wanna see their currency, the yen, shoot up in value becasue their exports then become more expensive here. It’s kind of a zero sum game…no country becomes great by devaluing their currency.“
The entire system of government is broken at every level. Is it time to evolve beyond the need for rulers and authority and central planning? Smith explains that only the elites have access to the capitalism that will lift everyone out of poverty.
“If you’re in the inner circle, then capitalism works for you,” says Smith. The global elitists and politicians who get rich off the backs of those they force socialism upon don’t want a real free market to emerge because that’s how they will be taken down a notch and forced to compete in a real market scenario. “[The global elites] have protected it [capitalism] and only they get access to the benefits of capitalism and everybody else gets a watered down sort of socialism, like universal basic income. You don’t get any opportunity to do well.”
But of course, as with all government programs (including government employment), there’s always a problem, and universal basic income will create a disaster of epic proportions for human beings. The best single description of the problem, according to Smith, came from Hunter. “The fraud of universal basic income has to basically attach itself to a fraudulent money system.”
“It doesn’t really address the underlying problem which is a lack of productive work that gives a positive social role to people. In other words, they feel like they’re contributing to their family and their community. And just giving somebody a welfare check, I mean, how many people on welfare are writing poetry and really happy? I mean, we already have a test audience of what happens when you give people just enough money to scrape by, but no opportunity. What we really need is not universal basic income…we need to create opportunities to serve their community…the whole idea needs to be localized to the community...in a real free market, everybody has an opportunity to pursue what they want and to contribute and this is what we’ve lost.“
Smith says he’s more concerned, however, that the market will slowly decay rather than just crash because he thinks that the public would let the elitists get away with it.
“The consequences of the weight of our policies would become apparent if there’s a 5,000 or 10,000 point drop in the DOW. People would start asking questions…but if it just slowly erodes, people habituate to it.”
Be prepared to protect yourself and your family financially for the dollar’s imminent collapse.
Lynette Zang from ITM Trading recently joined the SGT Report to discuss the economy, precious metals, and the disastrous storm that’s brewing. According to Zang, the criminal banks have stopped lending to each other because they know something is very wrong with the economy.
The interview jumps straight to the point. The big banks are not lending to each other. What is Zang’s take on the drop in interbank lending?
“During the 2008 crisis, it absolutely plummeted but they’ve been trying to keep it a little supported at the levels back in the 80’s and…it’s plunged below where it was when they came out in ’73; and what I find interesting…is that banks don’t trust each other. They know they’re insolvent. They’re not gonna get the money back.”
Zang is then asked about Deutsche Bank. Since it’s leveraged “to the gills” is it the first bank to go?
“I don’t know whether Deutsche Bank will be the first to go, but their leverage ratio remains at 3.8%, which means if the value of their assets falls 3.9%, they are insolvent. But that can really start anywhere. It doesn’t have to start at Deutsche Bank, but Deutsche touches every single financial product in every bank. I wouldn’t say this is ‘the canary in the coal mine,’ because I’ve really been talking about pattern shifts that I’ve been witnessing since October. The pattern shifts really started in 2017. People think nothing happens until it becomes visible, but you have to look a little below…to see what you’re not seeing…the banks know that they’re not loaning to each other. And the central banks know that they’re attempting to support the mortgage markets and keep everything floating.
We’re inside of a great experiment…this is an accident that’s in the process of unfolding.“
And then the big question comes up. What do rising interest rates mean for a country that is $20 trillion in debt?
“Now, you’ve gotta understand, we’ve once you run really perpetual deficits, which we’ve been doing for a long time, what you’re doing, is you’re not touching any principle but you’re also likely not paying of all of the interest. With interest rising, all of that debt went real short term…you wanna know what it looks like? Look at Greece. Because if most of your income or all of your income goes to paying interest then you have no money for services. You have no money for teachers, you have no money for police, you have no money for retirement plans..what they’ve been doing since 2008, is transferring risk…so it didn’t look like we were in crisis mode.
Pension plans were severely underfunded in the most expensive stock market in history.”
When the crash comes, it’s going to wipe the whole thing out, says STG Report. “They are crime cartels fleecing the people.” What can president Donald Trump do to stop the banks from crashing the market?
“I don’t think there’s anything that anybody can do. They’re a lot more powerful…once we started to transition into thisdebt-based system, the transition is complete. That’s why everything is so precarious…a reset is inevitable. It has to happen.”
The good news is that if we stand together, those in power, the global elitists won’t be able to get away with a world currency that they are desperately trying to force on us. Zang also suggests accumulating some gold and silver as a way to protect yourself financially during the upcoming crash.
Peter Schiff recently attended the Vancouver Resource Investment Conference. While he was there, he did an interview with Daniela Cambone of Kitco News and Schiff said gold is going to soar.
Gold has not really rallied. It’s been going up, right? But it’s been creeping higher. Now, everybody expected it to fall. Everybody believed that as soon as the Fed hiked rates, gold’s gonna tank. And it didn’t tank. It rallied. -Peter Schiff
But you know, the Fed keeps raising rates a little bit, every once in a while, and everybody still believes that, well, the Fed is raising rates, so that’s bearish for gold. So, everybody expects gold to fall, yet it continues to creep higher. But I think once it overcomes some of this resistance – it has a lot of resistance around $1,350 – and I think if we can decisively move above that and then get above $1,400, just to make sure it’s cleared out, then I think it’s off to the races.
These tax cuts are not going to provide the economic boos that everybody believes.
I think the impact of rising interest rates and rising consumer prices will more than offset whatever benefits are to be had from the tax cuts. So, I think the economy is going to be weaker despite the tax cuts. I still think we’re heading into recession.
It’s rare to have this much optimism, but there are more problems now than there’s probably ever been, yet everybody is overlooking that. So, at some point, people are going to rush into gold, and the problem is there’s no one that’s going to rush out. So the price, I think, is just going to soar. I think you’re going to see 50 or 100 dollar moves per day up in the price of gold, once we break out.
Schiff holds firm that the consequence of the Federal Reserve manipulating the economy will be the crash of the dollar.
They actually made the bubbles bigger than the ones that popped. So now, the dollar’s collapse is going to be that much bigger, because it’s now a bigger bubble with more air to come out of it. And I think they have no more tricks up their sleeves. When this happens – it’s over.”
The impending economic collapse is hidden from most. People only see a rising stock market, not the negative underlying factors that will cause the whole system to crash.
The weakening of the U.S. dollar is just getting started, warned veteran market forecaster Peter Schiff, CEO of Euro Pacific Capital. “We have just begun a major, long-term bear market in the dollar,” he said, which should cause a spike in oil prices. He thinks oil will reach $80-$100 a barrel in 2018. The commodity currently trades at roughly $63 a barrel. Shiff focuses on oil as just one example of the inflation that will help collapse the dollar.
When the price of oil rises, it reverberates through the economy. Peter called it a gigantic tax hike for consumers. But the Fed is still worried prices aren’t going up fast enough and that they won’t hit the mystical 2% goal.
“They’re going to hit that out of the park. They’re going to be looking at 2% in the rearview mirror – in the distant rearview mirror. That is going to be the big story. They’re going to way overshoot and they’re not going to be able to do anything about it.” –Peter Schiff
“High inflation is not good for the dollar. By definition, high inflation means the dollar is losing purchasing power. If the dollar is losing purchasing power, that is bad for the dollar,” Shiff explains.
“If they [the public and investors] don’t think there’s going to be inflation, they’re wrong. Those expectations are totally wrong. People are ignoring what is going on in the currency market, what’s going on in the commodities markets, what’s going on in the bond markets. All of this stuff is flashing inflation – at least the way you measure it – consumer prices.” –Peter Schiff
Shiff continues with even more dire news. “We are very close to a major breakdown in the bond market. Now, I know the bond market has dodged a lot of bullets…so you could say ‘cryin’ wolf. Look how long the bond market has held in there. But you know what? It’s gonna hold up until it doesn’t. And when it breaks…this bond market is gonna unravel. The whole thing could unravel very, very quickly. This is what is so dangerous here. You have the bond market potentially about to break down, a major 30-year bull market about to unravel, you have the dollar getting ready to go over the edge of a cliff. “
Shiff also warns to not put your trust in the government or their bonds.
“Everybody belives the fed is going to shrink it’s balance sheet. Now, I don’t believe that but the markets believe it. Now, I checked the balance sheet on Thursday again. So far, it hasn’t shrunk at all. So there’s been no tapering.
The risk of a big drop in the bond market has never been this high. And what happens if the bond market tanks? That’s it. The stock market is gonna crash…there’s a massive crash coming. And if the fed is gonna panic, they’re gonna try to stop it.”
The feds will try to fix a stock market crash by not raising rates, which will lead to the imploding of the dollar. Everything that can go wrong, will.
“I don’t know if this is going to unravel very quickly. But it is close,” Shiff warns.
Every single financial collapse has been engineered by elitists and governments as a method of gaining the public’s support for more control over their money supply. Now one YouTuber has the guts to say it and boldly declares that those same globalists will blame bitcoin for a biblical level financial collapse.
They won’t teach you in your government schools but every major economic and financial collapse is planned. It doesn’t happen by accident. – Jeff Berwick, The Dollar Vigilante
“By any measure, we are not at the most extreme time in history in money, finance, banking, equities, bonds, real estate and other sectors,” says Berwick. “We’ve never seen money printing across the board like we’ve seen in the last decade. Interest rates are at record lows and even at ludicrous negative rates in some countries. They’ve never been lower in 5000 years. By any measure, the US stock market is at or past extremes.” Along with the US government’s debt doubling in the last 8 years to a whopping $21 trillion, Berwick says that this is just the symptom of a government and globalist manufactured economic collapse that will all have to “come crashing down.”
“As always, I look for the clues directly from those who currently control the world, for the answers,” says Berwick. He then points to a Rothschild owned economic magazine that foretells in its 1988 cover image that 2018 will be the year of the global currency. “How could the globalist bankers plan 30 years ahead for a massive change in the monetary system?” Berwick asks. “Well, look no further than Bilderberg.”
Why? “Because most of the power in the hands of the elites now rests in their control over the issuance of currency which they cannot control with Bitcoin,” Berwick continues. “Instead, what their game plan might be, is to put trillions of dollars into Bitcoin to blow it up to massive extremes.” Berwick then goes on to quote other financial an market experts, such as Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan, who all say Bitcoin will cross the $60,000 -$100,000 threshold before the collapse.
But Bewick also says that one the state gets control of the cryptocurrency, no other cryptocurrency will be allowed to coexist. The game plan is for Bitcoin to crash, either by design or under its own weight so that the global elitists and governments can implement their own cryptocurrency, and again control the supply of currency.
Some crackpots on the internet believe Bitcoin is globalist invention. They clearly don’t understand power, control, or what Bitcoin is. If they did, they’d know that Bitcoin is the antidote to the new world order, not the gateway. -Jeff Berwick
Investor Peter Schiff is warning once again about Bitcoin’s massive speculative bubble. Schiff, who is well-known for predicting the 2008 financial crash, is saying it’s those who are buying in now will be the most vulnerable when Bitcoin hits $0.
“People who got it years ago, even people who got it at the beginning of the year have the opportunity to cash out and make a lot of money. But people who are buying it at these prices or higher prices are going to lose practically everything,”Schiff told RT International Channel. Bitcoin is speculative bubble set to burst at any time, and when it does, many will lose everything.
Schiff’s main concern with Bitcoin echoes that of many preppers, including Mike Adams, the Health Ranger. “These currencies are going to trade to zero or pretty close to it when the bubble pops,” predicts Schiff. “Right now, the only reason why people are buying bitcoin is because the price is going up. When it turns around, they are not going to sell it for the same reason. There is no value in bitcoin, you can’t use it as money,” Schiff points out. “It’s too slow, too expensive and too vulnerable.”
It also doesn’t physically exist in the way gold and silver do. According to Schiff, there is a problem with fiat currencies. However, there are 1,300 digital currencies with massive inflation. “Even bitcoin itself has spun off bitcoin cash, bitcoin gold. There is no limit to supply of bitcoin-branded worthless tokens that can be created,” he said. But as soon as the price begins a downward trend, Bitcoin will implode.
“The only value in the cryptocurrency now is the fact that it’s going up,” Schiff says. “And people are buying it because they believe they’ll be able to sell it to somebody else who also thinks it’s going to keep going up because he can buy it, he can sell it to somebody else who has the same outlook. But as soon as the currency really starts to decline, it’s gonna implode and eventually, it will go down to its true value…I think the ultimate value is going to be $0.”
Schiff says cryptocurrencies are also fiat currencies and stands by his assessment that gold is a real alternative to the mess created by all of the fiat currencies (including the United States’ dollar) which have no real value in the end.
A major investment bank has predicted Bitcoin’s crash and pinpointed it to next year after it soars to over $60,000. Russia and China work together to “engineer the crash,” of Bitcoin the bank has predicted.
According to Saxo Bank, Bitcoin will continue to rise during most of 2018 until it peaks at around $60,000. At that point, Moscow and Beijing will facilitate a crash of the cryptocurrency as they harshly crackdown on it. Saxo Bank predicts that more money will be gambled in digital currencies until more than £750billion ($1trillion) is invested worldwide.
The forecast assumes a Russian crackdown taking the form of the Kremlin mining of the cryptocurrency itself and “shifting the focus away from Bitcoin in an effort to keep more Russian capital onshore.” Meanwhile, in China, Saxo Bank predicts a state-sanctioned virtual currency will be launched which requires less computing power – and less power – to mine. Eventually, due to the “heavy hand of state intervention,” interest in cryptocurrencies decreases and “completely sidelines the Bitcoin and crypto phenomenon from a price speculation angle,” according to the bank’s prediction.
The prediction also finishes with Bitcoin’s end price at just $1000. Veteran investor Eric Schiffer has also shared his warning about the cryptocurrency. He thinks Bitcoin could become the biggest financial danger of the 21st century, branding it a “financial bubble bigger than the tulip craze.” He said: “I think bitcoin is a ‘tower of death’. It is going to result in the imminent death of your investment – a thermonuclear death.”
However, other experts, such as Jordan Hiscott, chief trader at Ayondo Markets, do not agree with Saxo Bank’s assessment and prediction. Hiscott does not see a crash on the horizon for Bitcoin. But he has also warned people to think twice before investing their hard-earned cash in cryptocurrencies. “For good investment options find trusted companies that would do that for you or look for a commodity with actual underlying value,” said Hiscott.
This coming crisis will hit everyone in the wallet. Money manager Peter Schiff who accurately predicted the 2008 financial crisis can already see the writing on the wall, and everyone is going to get wiped out.
Schiff says that this time, gold will explode and the dollar will be wiped out. USA Watch Dog‘s Greg Hunter interviewed Schiff about the impending financial disaster we are facing. Almost ten years after the 2008 meltdown, Schiff had this to say:
“I predicted a lot more than just the stock market going down back then. I predicted the financial crisis, but more importantly, I predicted what the government would do as a result of the financial crisis and what the consequences of that would be because that’s where we’re headed. The real crash I wrote about in my most recent book is still coming. . . . This is the third gigantic bubble that the Fed has inflated, and when this one pops, it’s not going to be ‘the third time is a charm.’ It’s going to be ‘three strikes and you’re out.’ I think this bubble is too big to pop. I think it’s the mother of all bubbles, and when it bursts, there is not a bigger one that the Fed is going to be able to inflate to mask these problems, meaning we can’t kick the can down the road anymore.” –Peter Schiff
Schiff thinks it could get even worse too. It could go beyond just a financial crisis.
“I think the problem we are going to be confronted with is going to be much worse than a financial crisis. It is going to be a dollar crisis, and it is going to be a sovereign debt crisis where the bonds people are worried about are not some sub-prime mortgages. . . . It’s going to be the U.S. government that people are worried about and the solvency of the U.S. government and the Treasury bonds. If it’s a dollar crisis and people are worried about the dollar, the only thing worse than owning a dollar today is owning the promise of being paid in dollars in the future. I don’t think we have the courage to default and admit to our creditors that we don’t have the money and we can’t repay. I think we will create all the money that we need so we can pretend to repay, but what we end up doing is wiping out the debt with inflation.”
Inversely, Schiff says it is the same with the suppressed gold and silver markets.
“They can’t keep doing it, and it will end. It’s just like how much debt can we take on. It’s not an unlimited amount. We will know when we get there. How long can they keep the price of gold suppressed? We will know when we get there. At some point, the price is going to explode because there is real physical buying, and all that paper selling can’t camouflage that. . . . People don’t trust fiat currencies . . . . More and more people are looking for alternatives, and the real alternative is gold. When they embrace it, it’s going to overwhelm central banks’ ability to suppress the price. In the meantime, enjoy the gift that they are giving.”
Schiff also said no one knows when this is going to happen for sure, only that it will happen, and you are better off to be prepared in advance. “A crisis rarely stops with a triggering event. The aftermath can spiral, having the capacity to cripple our normal ways of life. Because of this, it’s important to have a well-rounded approach to our preparedness efforts,” says the description of the book,The Prepper’s Blueprint.
It may be the time we all take a step back and consider the impact the government has had on what Schiff says will be the ultimate destruction of the dollar and prepare as best we can.
One California lawmaker is seeking to have the state ban all vehicles powered by fossil fuels by the year 2040. Should the bill succeed in becoming a law, the state of California would not allow residents to register any vehicle that emits carbon dioxide.
According to Bloomberg,California Assemblymember Phil Ting, a Democrat who is chairman of the chamber’s budget committee, said he plans to introduce a bill that, starting in 2040, would allow the state’s motor vehicles department to register only “clean” vehicles that emit no carbon dioxide, such as battery-electric or hydrogen fuel-cell cars.
“Until you set a deadline, nothing gets done,” Ting, who represents much of San Francisco, said in a phone interview Tuesday. “It’s responsible for us to set a deadline 23 years in advance.” This is not the first time California has considered a ban on the internal combustion engine vehicle either. The topic has been discussed at the California Air Resources Board (CARB), the state’s overly powerful air quality regulator, after Governor Jerry Brown showed interest in similar moves by other countries, including communist China.
“I’ve gotten messages from the governor asking, ‘Why haven’t we done something already?’” CARB Chairman Mary Nichols said in September, referring to communist China’s planned phase-out of fossil-fuel vehicle sales. “The governor has certainly indicated an interest in why China can do this and not California.” Perhaps because Chian is a communist country run by an all-powerful government. By all means, the lawmakers now seek to make California more like China.
Using buzzwords like “climate change” the tyrants in the Golden State will be able to enact any law they see fit in an attempt to control those who live in the state.
Ting said he’ll introduce the bill when lawmakers return to Sacramento next month for the upcoming legislative session. If adopted, it would eliminate a huge chunk of carbon emissions from the transportation sector (now the top source of the” greenhouse gas” in the U.S.) as part of the state’s quest to slash emissions by 80 percent from 1990 levels by 2050.
Vanguard’s chief economist Joe Davis said investors need to be prepared for a significant downturn in the stock market, which is now at a 70 percent chance of crashing. That chance is significantly higher than it has been over the past 60 years.
The economist added,“It’s unreasonable to expect rates of returns, which exceeded our own bullish forecast from 2010, to continue.” In its annual report, the company told investors to expect no better than four to six percent returns from stocks in the next five years. Vanguard, which manages roughly $5 trillion in assets and is a proponent of long-term investing, isn’t sounding the alarm bells to scare investors out of the market. They simply want investors to be prepared.
“The risk premium, whether corporate bond spreads or the shape of yield curve or earnings yields for stocks have continued to compress,” said Davis. “We’re starting to see, for the first time… some measures of expected risk premiums compressed below areas where we think it can be associated with fair value.“
According to RT, Davis also said that overreaching is no better a solution for a lower-return environment than getting out of the market entirely. He expressed worries that after hearing of “lower returns,” some investors will view that as a catalyst to become more aggressive to generate the returns they have been used to in recent years.
“You need to stay invested, because of lower expected returns,” Davis said, adding “Don’t become overly aggressive. The next five years will be challenging, and investors need to have their eyes wide open.”
Just ten years after the 2008 financial crisis “very little has been really fixed,” and the next bubble is about to burst, says Bill Blain, a strategist at Mint Partners. According to Blain, this time, it is the bond markets that will trigger the mayhem and collapse. The 2008 crisis, which was about consumer debt, was triggered by mortgages. We still have a consumer debt crisis problem ahead, warns Blain, but the next financial crisis is likely to be in corporate debt.
“I’m convinced bond markets are the REAL bubble we should be watching, and it’s going to start in high yield…” Blain warned.
The Gulf of Alaska cod populations appears to have taken a nose-dive. Scientists are shocked at the collapse and starving fish, making this the “worst they’ve ever seen.”
“They [Alaskan cod] get weak and die or get eaten by something else,” said NOAA’s Steve Barbeaux. The 2017 trawl net survey found the lowest numbers of cod on record forcing scientists to try to unravel what happened. A lot of the cod hatched in 2012 appeared to survive, but by 2017, those fish were largely gone for the surveys, which also found scant evidence of fish born in subsequent years. Many of the cod that have come on board trawlers are “long skinny fish” according to Brent Paine, executive director of United Catcher Boats.
“This is a big deal,” Paine said. “We just don’t see these (cod) year classes disappear from one year to the next.” The decline is expected to substantially reduce the gulf cod harvests that in recent years have been worth — before processing — more than $50 million to Northwest and Alaska fishermen who catch them with nets, pot traps, and baited hooks set along the sea bottom.
Barbeaux says the warm water, which has spread to depths of more than 1,000 feet, hit the cod like a kind of a double-whammy. Higher temperatures sped up the rate at which young cod burned calories while reducing the food available for the cod to consume. And many are blaming “climate change” for the effects on the fish, although scientists aren’t directly correlating the two events. “They get weak and die or get eaten by something else,” said Barbeaux, who in October presented preliminary survey findings to scientists and industry officials at an Anchorage meeting of the North Pacific Fishery Management Council.
The 2017 trawl net survey found the lowest numbers of cod on record, more than 70 percent lower than the survey found two years earlier.
Barbeaux said the cod decline likely resulted from the blob, a huge influx of warm Pacific Ocean water that stretched — during its 2015 peak — from the Gulf of Alaska to California’s offshore waters.
Biologists tracked increases in bird die-offs, whale strandings, and other events such as toxic algae blooms. Even today, its effects appear to linger, such as in the dismal survey results for salmon last summer off Washington and Oregon. – The Olympian
The blob began to take hold in 2014, and within a year had raised temperatures as much as 7 degrees Fahrenheit in some surface waters of the Gulf of Alaska. In deeper waters, where cod feed, the temperature rose by more than 1 degree Fahrenheit. The surface temperatures recorded during the blob’s peak could be close to the average at century’s end, according to a recent report on climate change by the U.S. Global Change Research Program. Thus, future blobs could push temperatures much higher than the most recent event.
“They may not necessarily be more frequent, but they will be more intense,” said Nicholas Bond, a University of Washington climate scientist who assisted in the Gulf of Alaska cod research. “This is really going to be uncharted territory.”
The saying “you are what you eat” may have much more meaning now than it ever has in the past. Toxic food is killing humanity, and one-fifth of all deaths are now linked to processed foods.
It may not be cheap to eat good food, but it’s certainly better for your body. A new study compiling data from every country finds people are living longer but millions are eating wrong foods for their health. Poor diet is now a factor in one in five deaths around the world, according to the most comprehensive study ever carried out on the subject. Diet is the second highest risk factor for death, after smoking.
And millions of people globally are eating the wrong sorts of food and too much of it for good health. Eating a diet that is low in whole grains, fruit, nuts, seeds, and fish oils while being high in salt raises the risk of an early death, according to the huge and ongoing study Global Burden of Disease.
The study, based at the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, compiled data from every country in the world and made informed estimates where there were any gaps. Five papers on life expectancy and the causes and risk factors of death and ill health have been published by the Lancet medical journal.
“This is really large,” Dr. Christopher Murray, IHME’s director, told the Guardian. “It is amongst the really big problems in the world. It is a cluster that is getting worse.” While obesity gets attention, he was not sure policymakers were as focused on the area of diet and health in general as they needed to be. “That constellation is a really, really big challenge for health and health systems,” he said.
The problem is often seen as the spread of western diets, taking over from traditional foods in the developing world. But it is not that simple, says Murray. “Take fruit. It has lots of health benefits but only very wealthy people eat a lot of fruit, with some exceptions.” Sugary drinks are known to be harmful to health but eating a lot of red meat, the study finds, is not as big of a risk to health as failing to eat whole grains. “We need to look really carefully at what are the healthy compounds in diets that provide protection,” he said.
People are living longer but spending more of those years in poor health, and obesity is one of the major reasons. More than a billion people worldwide are living with mental health and substance misuse disorders and depression is in the top 10 causes of ill health in all but four countries. “Our findings indicate people are living longer and, over the past decade, we identified substantial progress in driving down death rates from some of the world’s most pernicious diseases and conditions, such as under-age-five mortality and malaria,” said Murray. “Yet, despite this progress, we are facing a triad of trouble holding back many nations and communities – obesity, conflict, and mental illness, including substance use disorders.”
In essence, the study reveals that the processed food/sugary drink industry is now about as dangerous as Big Tobacco.
During the last two years of the Obama administration (Fiscal Year 2015 – 2016), law enforcement agencies such as the Department of Homeland Security spent $138 million on new guns and ammunition. But what’s strange, is that $20 million was spent on guns and ammunition for federal bureaucrats.
1) The 2,300 Special Agents at the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) are now carrying AR-15’s, P90 tactical rifles, and other heavy weaponry. Recently, the IRS armed up with $1.2 million in new ammunition. This was in addition to the $11 million procurement of guns, ammunition, and military-style equipment procured between 2006-2014. What could go wrong when tax collectors have guns?
2) The Small Business Administration (SBA) spent tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars to load its gun locker with Glocks last year. The SBA wasn’t alone in the purchase of guns either. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service modified their Glocks with silencers. And recently a vote on the bill to allow civilians the freedom to hunt with a silencer was “indefinitely postponed.”
3) The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has a relatively new police force. In 1996, the VA had zero employees with arrest and firearm authority. Today, the VA has 3,700 officers, armed with millions of dollars’ worth of guns and ammunition including AR-15’s, Sig Sauer handguns, and semi-automatic pistols.
4) The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) agents also carry the same sophisticated weapons platforms used by our Special Forces military warriors. The HHS gun locker is housed in a new “National Training Operations Center” – a facility at an undisclosed location within the DC beltway.
Spending on guns and ammo at 58 non-military federal agencies (including 40 regulatory, administrative agencies) amounted to $158 million. The continued growth of the federal arsenal begs the question: Just whom are the feds planning to battle?
Federal bureaucrats are amassing arsenals of weapons and many agencies are now battle ready, but that is not a goo
It may be too late, however. When you give the government socialist powers, somehow, someone is going to be needed to enforce all the rules an all you have to do, is offer them a paycheck – a paycheck stolen from those who they now power over. It isn’t a difficult concept. It looks like the government will enforce socialism at the barrel of a gun. Humans don’t want to be stolen from and told what to do, and the only way to make them complicit slaves is by threatening to shoot them. It takes a lot of guns and ammo to enforce a socialist and communist society.
Dr. Trivino must use sunlight to examine x-rays since electricity is sporadic in Puerto Rico.
One month after the devastating Hurricane Maria wreaked havoc on the island of Puerto Rico, the territory is still facing a public health crisis. And it’s a crisis of epic proportions.
Millions of residents still don’t have access to electricity or proper health care, and bacteria in the water have exposed many people to disease. And calls for help have gone unanswered besides the few willing to travel to the devastated island privately. Senator Martin Heinrich (D-NM) along with a handful of other lawmakers are calling on the federal government to continue to provide aid to the post-apocalyptic ravaged territory.
“Even before Hurricanes Irma and Maria hit the U.S. territories, the islands’ health care system was suffering from the ongoing economic crisis. The islands are grappling with physician shortages, Medicaid programs facing an impending funding cliff, and widespread disparities in Federal health programs—and that was before hurricane season,” the lawmakers stated in a letter. “We are grateful for the public health emergency declaration in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, but more can and should be done to help Americans impacted by these disasters.”
The senators stressed that much of the islands’ power and communication networks are out and, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), it will take months before power is fully restored. Hospitals have been forced to prioritize patients, ration services, and forgo elective surgeries. The power grid’s failure has caused more problems than many anticipated, like the stall of relief efforts. Without electricity, communications are non-existent too.
Some 33 days after Hurricane Maria made landfall on Puerto Rico, only 23 percent of residents have electricity, according toStatus.pr, which provides daily updates on basic services on the island. While there are still other problems as well, such as gas stations being slow to reopen, and roads getting badly damaged, the power grid’s utter annihilation in the category 4 winds is not just a temporary inconvenience. The different ways that the lack of electricity can set off a cascade of other crises is becoming increasingly clear.
