"What we should do is go and persuade our governments not to go and drop bombs on people," Pink Floyd"s Roger Waters said.
The post WATCH: Pink Floyd Frontman Stops Concert To Explain False Flag Chemical Attack in Syria appeared first on The Free Thought Project.
(INTELLIHUB) — Hip-hop artist/Rapper Blooded the Brave, a.k.a. Kyle Reese, appeared on The Shepard Ambellas Show Friday, where he spoke about his new synth-wave sound and governmental control.
“It’s all backwards, what’s up is down, what’s right is wrong, and what’s wrong is all around,” the rapper with an alter-ego explained to Shep during the live broadcast. “That’s where we are at, we are in the upside-down, it’s like doublespeak is real, 1984 is here.”
“I’m not shocked by it — I have an inner peace because these people that are pulling the strings are so desperate, they’re scared of us,” he explained. “I mean, we’re the ones with the power, that’s why they do this, that’s why people feel like they have to […] do everything they tell us because we’ve been brainwashed.”
You can listen to the entire broadcast here. Fast-forward to hour number two of the show at the 1:00 mark.
Follow @BloodedtheBrave on Twitter and visit his official website BloodedtheBrave.com.
The post Blooded the Brave: It’s all backwards, what’s up is down, what’s right is wrong appeared first on Intellihub.
Do you ever listen to music and feel the hairs on your arm or neck standing up? Perhaps it makes you feel like crying? It may mean that you have a strong connection between specific parts of your brain.
Matthew Sachs, a former undergraduate at Harvard, decided he wanted to find out why people got chills when they would listen to music and what might be triggering this feeling.
His research experiment took a look at 20 students and their feelings when listening to music. 10 students admitted to feeling chills or having goosebumps when they hear music. The other 10 did not. Brain scans were taken of all 20 students and the results were analyzed.
Of the 10 who had stated they experience strong emotional connection to music and felt ‘chills’ when listening, displayed a different brain structure than those who claimed to not experience ‘chills’ when listening to music.
The area of the brain in question here is that of the auditory cortex and those that process emotions. What was found was that those who experienced the feeling of ‘chills’ while listening to music had denser or stronger fibres connecting the areas of the brain in question. This means that the two areas can communicate better.
Sachs’s published his findings on Oxford Academic but he is quoted by Neuroscience as saying:
“The idea being that more fibers and increased efficiency between two regions means that you have more efficient processing between them.”
In audio engineering school I learned fibres, cables, or wiring is like having a thick smoothie in front of you and having different straw choices. You have a thin straw or a thick one, which one can you more easily drink the smoothie from? This is the same with audio cables sending data or sound. The same seems to be in the theory discussed above. The denser the fibre, the easier it is to send the energy, or data, from one area of the brain to the other.
While it’s not 100% clear, they may mean you have a more intense connection to feeling emotions. It may also mean that your memories linked to a certain songs may be strong.
All in all, our emotions are physical experiences triggered by something our mind believes. Often times it is a belief system or program we have associated with an experience or how to feel about it that triggers a specific emotion. Thus, different people can feel different emotions about the same experience, as it’s based on a belief about the experience.
Although Sachs’ study was very small in size, he is currently working to conduct further research to explore the brains activity when listening to songs that register certain reactions. He hopes to physically discover what causes these reactions and potentially determine treatment for psychological disorders based on these findings.
Because depression causes an inability to experience pleasure of everyday life, music can be used to help provide therapy to those suffering.
Even if you do not experience strong emotions from listening to music, the exploration into connecting to our emotions and understanding them is key. Emotions simply tell us more about ourselves inside. And while we may experience a certain emotion about something at one time, this doesn’t mean we will always experience that emotion, or any at all, about that experience.
In fact, beyond emotions is a state of peace that we sometimes can confuse for emotions. I have found that when I am feeling my absolute best, I am experiencing a state of being that is pure peace, pure love and beyond emotions. This isn’t to say I don’t feel emotions in those times, but it’s a connection into knowing what’s beyond the physical experience of an emotion.
I have always found that emotions are a reference point that allow us to experience something more deeply and intently. And when we examine what that means about ourselves, we gain a greater sense of self awareness.
Given that some of us often feel very disconnected in our lives and given how much of the population experiences depression, it’s not all that surprising that even in a small group that Sachs studied, 50% did not report experiencing that connection with music.
What would come from humanity having greater connection to our emotions and understanding them? Would they not drive us and take over as much when we did experience them? Might we be able to understand why we get angry at times and perhaps explore how to move past those triggers and lessen suffering? After all, why do some of us get mad at an experience while another doesn’t? Why do some of us feel upset at being called a name while others don’t? And do you notice those who don’t get upset rarely get called names? Do we attract the experiences that can help us learn more about ourselves?
These are all deeper questions that I believe can help move us beyond suffering induced by our lack of awareness of our emotions and why they can be triggered. That said, emotions are not a bad thing by any means, they are incredible. They allow us to enrich our experience ten fold at times. I simply feel we are being challenged to not be driven so intensely by our emotions.
The post If Music gives you Goosebumps, Here’s What it may Say about your Brain appeared first on The Sleuth Journal.
Authored by Doug Casey via InternationalMan.com,
Is a police state in the US possible? Absolutely.
That’s because people are essentially the same the world over, regardless of their culture, religion, race, or what-have-you. A certain percentage of them are sociopaths.
There is a standard distribution of sociopaths across time and space. It’s a function of Pareto’s Law, better known as the 80-20 rule. 20% of the people do 80% of the work. Another 20% are responsible for 80% of the crime. 20% of the population always winds up with 80% of the wealth. And so forth, through all areas of human endeavor. This observation can be represented by a bell-shaped curve—a “standard distribution”—with a small minority at each extreme, but the large majority in the middle. The people who will take us to a police state are sociopaths—criminal personalities who don’t respect the liberty or property of others. And sociopaths gravitate towards government, and eventually come to control it.
My view is that 80% of human beings are basically decent, get along, go along types. 20% are what you might call potential trouble sources, that can go either way. But then you take 20% of that 20% and you’re dealing with the sociopaths.
When social conditions reach a certain stage these really bad guys come out from under their rocks and take advantage of the situation. We’re seeing that right now in the US, across the political spectrum. Just as we’ve seen in the past in hundreds of places throughout history.
A major tipping point occurred sixteen years ago, on September 11, 2001, with the attacks in New York and Washington. They were disastrous. But not nearly as disastrous as the government’s reaction to them.
Among them the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. Anybody that speaks German knows that a reasonable translation of Homeland Security is Geheime Staatspolizei, which is usually abbreviated to Gestapo. Anybody that goes through airline security these days should ask themselves, “Where the hell did they find these people? Didn’t they have jobs before they went to work for this moronic agency?” The answer is that there are people out there who like wearing costumes, are willing to boss, herd, interrogate, and go through the dirty laundry of their fellow citizens. They take their jobs seriously and you better not even look at them sideways. There’s no reason to believe it’s going to get better as they groove into their jobs, and their employer cements itself into place. More likely the trend will accelerate.
Is America currently a police state? Well, let’s see. You can still get in your car and go anywhere, although you might be stopped by the police and you might be detained if your papers aren’t in order. Or the officer thinks you’re not properly respectful. Or you have “too much” cash.
Was there any particular day that Germany became a police state in the 1930s? I’m not sure you can put your finger on any one particular day, even after Hitler was legally and democratically elected. It was a progression, with new laws, new regulations, new taxes every day. While more fear and hysteria were worked up among the populace. Kristallnacht didn’t occur the day after the National Socialists took power.
It’s a case of the frog being put in a kettle of water where the temperature is gradually raised to a boil. That’s what’s occurring in the US. After 9/11, in addition to Homeland Security, we got the Patriot Act, with, among other things, its suspension of habeas corpus. That means that the government can lock anybody up for any reason and not even have to tell them why. Accuse them of being an “enemy combatant”—a neologism that justifies anything, and is robotically and thoughtlessly accepted by Boobus americanus—and anything is possible. Including a trip to a CIA black site in some Third World hellhole. This is something I thought was settled in Western Civilization with the Magna Carta and King John. But we’re going backwards in most areas of personal freedom. And America, of all places, is leading the way—even while falling behind economically.
I don’t know if I can put my finger on exactly when we’re going to go over the edge, but if I was going to guess I would think the real catalyst is going to be the next 9/11-type event. And I don’t doubt it’s going to happen.
How are we any different than the Germans in the 1930s? This was one of the most civilized, best educated countries in Europe and they fell into the abyss. I suppose we’re a bit different. Americans are addicted to welfare, anti-depressant drugs, food, and electronic devices. That should certainly give us a better outcome…
There’s a joke I like to tell. Let me ask you this: Which is the gravest danger? Is it the ignorance, or is it the apathy of the average American today? Stumped? Here’s the answer: I don’t know and I don’t care.
* * *
When we do tumble over the political edge—which will likely happen sooner rather than later—complete economic collapse is sure to follow. That’s why we’re sharing our field guide to Surviving and Thriving During an Economic Collapse. Click here to download your free PDF copy now.
Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,
Not much has changed in the 37 years since John Lennon was gunned down by an assassin’s bullet.
All of the many complaints we have about government today - surveillance, corruption, harassment, political persecution, spying, overcriminalization, etc. - were used against Lennon, who never refrained from speaking truth to power and calling for social justice, peace and a populist revolution.
Little wonder, then, that the U.S. government saw Lennon as enemy number one.
A prime example of the lengths to which the U.S. government will go to persecute those who dare to challenge its authority, Lennon was the subject of a four-year campaign of surveillance and harassment by the U.S. government (spearheaded by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover), in an attempt by President Richard Nixon to have him “neutralized” and deported. As Adam Cohen of the New York Times points out, “The F.B.I.’s surveillance of Lennon is a reminder of how easily domestic spying can become unmoored from any legitimate law enforcement purpose.”
Years after Lennon’s assassination, it would be revealed that the FBI had collected 281 pages of surveillance files on him. As the New York Times notes, “Critics of today’s domestic surveillance object largely on privacy grounds. They have focused far less on how easily government surveillance can become an instrument for the people in power to try to hold on to power. ‘The U.S. vs. John Lennon’ … is the story not only of one man being harassed, but of a democracy being undermined.”
Such government-directed harassment was nothing new.
The FBI has had a long history of persecuting, prosecuting and generally harassing activists, politicians, and cultural figures, including Martin Luther King Jr.
In Lennon’s case, the ex-Beatle saw that his music could mobilize the public and help to bring about change. Yet while Lennon believed in the power of the people, he also understood the danger of a power-hungry government. “The trouble with government as it is, is that it doesn’t represent the people,” observed Lennon. “It controls them.”
By March 1971, when his “Power to the People” single was released, it was clear that Lennon was ready to participate in political activism against the U. S. government, the “monster” that was financing the war in Vietnam.
The release of Lennon’s Sometime in New York City album, which contained a radical anti-government message in virtually every song, only fanned the flames of the government’s war on Lennon.
In 1972, Nixon had the ex-Beatle served with deportation orders “in an effort to silence him as a voice of the peace movement.” Despite the fact that Lennon was not plotting to bring down the Nixon Administration, as the government feared, the government persisted in its efforts to have him deported. Equally determined to resist, Lennon dug in and fought back. Finally, in 1976, Lennon won the battle to stay in the country. By 1980, the old radical was back and ready to cause trouble.
Unfortunately, Lennon’s time as a troublemaker was short-lived.
Mark David Chapman was waiting in the shadows on Dec. 8, 1980, just as Lennon was returning to his New York apartment building. As Lennon stepped outside the car to greet the fans congregating outside, Chapman dropped into a two-handed combat stance, emptied his .38-caliber pistol and pumped four hollow-point bullets into Lennon’s back and left arm.
John Lennon was pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital.
Much like Martin Luther King Jr., John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Robert Kennedy and others who have died attempting to challenge the powers-that-be, Lennon had finally been “neutralized.”
Yet Lennon’s legacy lives on in his words, his music and his efforts to speak truth to power.
Even so, his work to change the world for the better is far from done.
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, peace remains out of reach. Activists and whistleblowers continue to be prosecuted for challenging the government’s authority. Militarism is on the rise, all the while the governmental war machine continues to wreak havoc on innocent lives. And those who do dare to speak up are labeled dissidents, troublemakers, terrorists, lunatics, or mentally ill and tagged for surveillance, censorship or, worse, involuntary detention.
As Lennon shared in a 1968 interview:
I think all our society is run by insane people for insane objectives…
I think we’re being run by maniacs for maniacal means.
If anybody can put on paper what our government and the American government and the Russian… Chinese… what they are actually trying to do, and what they think they’re doing, I’d be very pleased to know what they think they’re doing.
I think they’re all insane. But I’m liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That’s what’s insane about it.”
So what’s the answer?
Lennon had a multitude of suggestions.
“If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there’d be peace.”
“Produce your own dream. If you want to save Peru, go save Peru. It’s quite possible to do anything, but not to put it on the leaders….You have to do it yourself.”
“Peace is not something you wish for; It’s something you make, Something you do, Something you are, And something you give away.”
“War is over, if you want it.”
In other words, fighting the evil of the American police state can only come about by way of conscious thoughts that are put into action.
Do you want an end to war? Then stop supporting the government’s military campaigns. Do you want government violence against the citizenry to end? Then demand that your local police de-militarize. Do you want a restoration of your freedoms? You’ll have to get the government to recognize that “we the people” are the masters in this relationship and government employees are our public servants.
The choice is ours.
The power (if we want it), as Lennon recognized, is in our hands.
“The people have the power, all we have to do is awaken that power in the people,” concluded Lennon. “The people are unaware. They’re not educated to realize that they have power. The system is so geared that everyone believes the government will fix everything. We are the government.”
For the moment, the choice is still ours: slavery or freedom, war or peace, death or life.
The point at which we have no choice is the point at which the monsters—the maniacs, the powers-that-be, the Deep State—win.
As Lennon warned, “You either get tired fighting for peace, or you die.”
(TMU) Anxiety — that feeling of dread, fear, worry and panic — is certainly nothing new. Hippocrates wrote about it in the fourth century BCE. As did Søren Kierkegaard in the 1860s. And Sigmund Freud addressed the disorder in 1926.
However, jump to the present and we’re seeing a significant uptick — especially with youth.
Pharmaceutical drugs tend to be the classic treatment for treating anxiety (as well as the biggest money maker). Cognitive therapy is a common approach as well. Those with a holistic bent often turn to meditation, yoga, massage and other relaxation techniques. Music therapy has also been used with some success. But now neuroscientists in the U.K. have zeroed in on a single song that results in a dramatic 65 percent reduction in overall anxiety…
A 2013 survey found that 57 percent of American female university students reported episodes of “overwhelming anxiety.” And in the United Kingdom, the charity YouthNet discovered a third of young women — and one in ten young men — suffer from panic attacks.
Marjorie Wallace, CEO of the charity Sane, believes that generation Y (those born in the 1980s and 1990s) is the age of desperation. “Growing up has always been difficult, but this sense of desperation? That’s new,” she says.
Writes Rachael Dove in Anxiety: the epidemic sweeping through Generation Y:
“So, what’s going on? The rise of technology, overly-protective parenting and “exam-factory” schooling are among the reasons psychologists suggest for our generational angst. Another, brought up on multiple occasions by my peers and by psychologists I spoke to, is the luxury (as ungrateful as it sounds) of too much choice.”
Pieter Kruger, a London-based psychologist, says research indicates that people who feel they don’t have a choice are actually more resilient — mainly because they can blame life or others if they make a wrong decision. However, if you have a range of choices, you have no one to blame but yourself. “We become much more obsessive because we want to make the right decision every time,” he says.
Writer Claire Eastham, 26, agrees on her blog We Are All Mad Here:
“I spend a lot of time worrying about what I am going to do with my life. Previous generations had choice taken out of their hands. If you are told what to do it takes the pressure away.”
In our modern era, decision making can trigger a type of paralysis. Often, we will obsessively research the many different options for, say, a pair of shoes. Eventually, information overload will kick in and shut the whole shopping venture down, leaving us exhausted and guilty for being crippled by such a seemingly simple task.
Technology also contributes to the rise of anxiety. A good number of millennials feel exposed without their smartphones — and are rarely without them. Mobile gadgets tend to be their window to the world and foster a sense of connectedness. But there’s a dark side to feeling the need to keep on top of what everyone is doing on social media — otherwise known as Fomo, or the Fear of Missing Out.
“Fomo is very real and can be a constant addiction that affects anxiety levels and a general sense of wellbeing,” says Kruger.
Social media allows us to compare everything — relationships, diet, figure, beauty, wealth, standard of living — not only with our friends, but with celebrities too. And, as research has shown, time on social media “can cause depression in people who compare themselves with others.”
Besides revamping our lifestyles and limiting exposure to social media — and learning to work with a sometimes overwhelming abundance of choice — neuroscientists have found listening to a specially designed song can have a profound influence over our levels of anxiety.
Researchers at Mindlab International in the U.K. wanted to know what kind of music induces the greatest state of relaxation. The study involved having participants try to solve difficult puzzles — which inherently triggered a certain degree of stress — while connected to sensors. At the same time, participants listened to a range of songs as researchers measured their brain activity, heart rate, blood pressure and rate of breathing.
What they found is that one song — “Weightless” — resulted in a striking 65 percent reduction in participants’ overall anxiety, and a 35 percent reduction in their usual physiological resting rates.
Interestingly, the song was specifically designed to induce this highly relaxed state. Created by Marconi Union, the musicians teamed up with sound therapists to carefully arrange harmonies, rhythms and bass lines, which in turn slow a listener’s heart rate and blood pressure, while also lowering stress hormones like cortisol.
In fact, the music is so effective, that many of the female participants became drowsy — to the point where lead researcher Dr. David Lewis-Hodgson advises against listening to it while driving.
But don’t take their word for it. Experience it for yourself here:
By Carolanne Wright / Republished with permission / The Mind Unleashed / Report a typo
This article was chosen for republication based on the interest of our readers. Anti-Media republishes stories from a number of other independent news sources. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not reflect Anti-Media editorial policy.
Speaking to the BBC, legendary Welsh singer Tom Jones, perhap smore fmaous for his Vegas shows now, confirmed that the scandal in the movie industry, following the revelations regarding Harvey Weinstein, is also common in music.
Speaking at the launch of the “The Voice UK” television programme in Manchester, Jones stated that “Things have always happened in the music industry as well. There"s been people complaining about publicists and different things they"ve been expected to do to get a record contract, just like a film contract."
Unexpectedly, Jones acknowledged that he’d faced this problem when he started out
“Yes. At the beginning, yes...
There were a few things like that. But you avoid it. You just walk out...
But what"s tried on women is tried on men as well. But then again, it"s not much though. It was just once, really."
Jones said that it left him feeling terrible...
“you think I’ve got to get away from this person and it can’t be like this... There’s always been that element there, that people with power sometimes abuse it.”
The question is whether other members of the music industry follow Jones lead but name names.
Jones added:
"Things happen in showbusiness, and sometimes things are covered up and then they come to light and other people come forward, it"s like taking the cork off of a bottle.
Things come out that maybe should"ve come out years ago, who knows. But that"s the way it is with showbusiness, you are in the public eye, and that"s it. You have to take the good with the bad. But justice will out. If you"ve done something wrong you"ve got to pay for it, or prove that you haven"t done anything wrong."
The fact that it’s also been going on in the music industry for many years – Jones began his career in 1963 – is probably not going to surprise anybody.
It appears that "fake news" has finally made it to the news wires.
Shortly after the market open, Dow Jones blasted a story that "in a surprise to everyone who is alive" Google was buying Apple for $9 billion. It said that Google CEO Larry Page had "secret talks with the now-deceased Steve Jobs in 2010 to firm up the deal" which was announced when Jobs" will was read in Cupertino. As a result, each Google shareholder would get 9 shares of Apple stocks, and the report added that "obviously Google will move into Apple"s fancy shareholders. Google employees said, "Yay."
The release was accompanied by a flurry of machine-readible headlines on Bloomberg and other news services:
Well, apparently the algos ignored the ridiculous details and the laughable purchase price and promptly sent the price of Apple surging to $158, if only for a few seconds...
We can only imagine the avalanche of furious phone calls into Dow JOnes, because moments ago a Dow Jones spokesman announced to "Please disregard the headlines that ran on Dow Jones Newswires between 9:34 a.m. ET and 9:36 a.m. ET." He said that "due to a technical error, the headlines were published. All of those headlines are being removed from the wires. We apologize for the error."
Of course, by the time it was retracted, the initial momentum had pushed the world"s most valuable stock higher, and dragged the Nasdaq higher with it.
That said, it begs the question: how could such a glaring, and hugely market moving error have made it to the production platform, where it impacted thousands of headline scanning algos.
Finally, was this "fake news" also Vladimir Putin"s fault?
Legendary investor Jim Rogers, who in 1973 founded the Quantum Funds, a prominent family of hedge funds, with then-unknown Hungarian-born financier named George Soros, joined RealVision’s Steve Diggle for a wide-ranging interview where the legendary financier, who moved to Singapore in 2007 with his family because he wanted his children to be immersed in Asian culture, discusses his views on gold, bitcoin, and what makes a good investor – along with his belief that a major correction in financial markets is about to begin.
The interview, which was filmed two weeks ago in Singapore, begins with a discussion of a theme in finance that’s been at the forefront of discussions about the market outlook. Many investors believe that, with volatility at record lows and valuations at record highs, a major shock is imminent. However, these same investors have been burned by uncooperative markets, as an expected selloff has yet to materialize.
Rogers said he stumbled into his first job on Wall Street, but ended up falling in love with it because it allowed him to “follow the world and know about things.”
He added that, over his investing career, Roger"s has learned that he has a tendency for his calls to be early. So now when he makes an investment decision, he waits six months before buying.
SD: How do you know the difference between being early and being wrong? Because -
JR: You teach me that, OK? I"d like to know. I"m still trying to learn.
SD: I really don"t know, either. I mean, one of the things that has confounded, I think, all of us in this most recent unprecedented rally - I mean, it"s not unprecedented in history, but the sort of things that have gone up and the level of volatility we"ve had that"s been unprecedented. The only period that I can compare it to are the late 90s, where just everything in a certain area went up. Now it was almost-- at least in the States, it"s almost everything across the board. And there have been plenty of people who"ve wanted to short the FANGs, to short some of the tech stocks, to short some of these very expensive blue chips. And they"ve been very badly punched.
And then even in the face of very good mutual fund investors, people with tremendous track records like Grantham Mayo, who have moved to a higher cash position - they"ve seen massive reductions, because their own investors don"t seem inclined to stick around and see how it plays out. So both on a personal and professional level, being early seems to be incredibly painful and destructive to your business.
JR: Sure can.
SD: So if you"ve got a conviction, do you wait for a change in momentum? Do you use moving averages, which is something that I know people have been used, and I"ve used something myself, which is to wait until the 5 and 20-day diverge, and that gives you a signal that momentum"s coming out of a trade? Or do you just need to size it to a degree which you can be persistent?
JR: Well, I usually - since I know I"m always early, I make a decision and then wait, and just make myself wait a month, six months, whatever it happens to be. And I"m still too early. I"m still too early nearly always, because I make the decision too soon, I realize. So maybe I better start making the decision later in life. Sometimes, you just have to throw in the towel. Especially on the short side, you have no choice. If they"re just racing against you all the time, you can sit there and meet the margin calls all day long, but one of the old adages is, never beat a margin call, which you may have heard from old-time traders. If you"ve got a margin call, just don"t meet it, because that means something is very seriously wrong.
SD: Right, that"s your stop loss.
JR: Yeah, well, stop losses are usually before a margin call comes. But I want to go back to something you said. You"re not as experienced as I am, obviously, because you"re not as old as I am, is what I"m saying. But I remember in the early 70s, there was something called the Nifty 50, and they were 50 stocks that everybody - the JP Morgan bought everyday. Didn"t matter. Avon, Xerox, IBM - they were stocks that always were eternal growth stocks.
And they just kept - we would short them, and they just kept going up. They never stopped. Polaroid-- that was another. And they just never stopped going up. Everything else stopped going up but those Nifty 50, which would be something like the FANGs today, or maybe in the late 90s, some of the other kinds of stocks. So this has happened before in market history. They eventually crack, there"s no question.
And to today, if you look at the S&P 500, for instance, in the US, I think there are only 40 or 45 stocks that are above their 50-day moving average, to use technician"s kind of talk. Everything else is in a downtrend. And yet the market is making all-time highs.
SD: And so there"s a lack of breadth in the market.
JR: Definitely that lack of breadth. What is that - over 90% of the stocks are in downtrends. 10% are in uptrends, but they"re big companies. And since the S&P is capitalization weighted, those 50 stocks, 40 stocks, whatever it is, dragged the average to all-time highs.
Diggles" questions soon veered toward the subject of what makes a good investor. Some believe, Diggle says, that to have conviction, you need to know more than 98% of people who follow a stock.
Rogers said he was never a very disciplined investor, so it’s difficult for him to say how one develops skills like timing and good judgment.
Knowing more than your rivals is a major advantage, he says. But there’s something to be said for judgment that just can’t be taught.
SD: So what was different about your analysis? Had you gone deeper into this company? Because one of the things that you"ve said on a number of occasions, and I think it"s very impactful, is if you want to have conviction, you have to know more than not just 90% of the people, but 98% of the people who follow the stock. Is it that you"ve gone deeper? You"ve read the annual report, you"ve looked at what would now be the 14k. Or was it that you"d seen something with a greater level of skepticism or objectivity which other people had missed?
JR: Well, it"s both. If read the annual report, you"ve done more than 90% of investors. If you read the notes to the annual report, you"ve done more than nearly everybody, including the CEO of the company. So it is certainly knowing more than other people. But then it takes more than that. You also have to know more, but then you have to figure out what does it mean? Just because you know more, you have to then analyze it.
If 100 people go into a room and hear a presentation, Steve, they"ll all come out - most of them will come out with the same view. Seven or eight of those people will come out and say, aha, what this really means is it"s going down the tubes, or whatever you come out with. Or seven or eight will come out and say, this is the best thing since sliced bread.
They will realize. They will analyze it and understand it better than the others. It"s judgment. I don"t know how to teach judgment. I wish I knew how to teach judgment. Facts are wonderful. Knowing more than everybody else is a big, big, big leg up. But then judgment - how you get judgment? And that"s certainly what I didn"t have. I certainly didn"t have timing. Not that I do now, but I have a little better judgment than I used to, and a little better timing than I used to, because I learned to wait.
SD: So your prescription to be an above average investor, to go back to my original question, is be independent-minded, do your work. Don"t try and perfect the timing, but if you develop a high enough level of conviction around it, see it through.
JR: Yeah, that"s what I always do. And sometimes, I get it right. But I"ve certainly made plenty of mistakes in my life.
With stock and bond valuations hopelessly inflated, Rogers says investors hoping to lock in the highest risk-adjusted returns should consider buying gold coins. Barring that, gold futures are the next best market. Rogers says trading gold futures is a great strategy for traders because it’s a market where speculators have easy access to leverage.
Furthermore, investors who have time to conduct the due diligence should consider investing in a gold mine – but it needs to be the right gold mine.
SD: Going back to gold, so gold coins -
JR: Gold coins are the best way. And you should have physical possession of some gold coins. After that, gold futures are the best way if you want to make money and you"re a good trader. Gold futures, that"s where you can get the most leverage of any, unless you can find the right gold mine. But there are hundreds of gold mines. If you"re smart enough and have the time to find the right two or three gold mines, then, yeah, then you"ll make huge amounts of money in the right to - but, you know, there are hundreds of gold mines.
The conversation soon turned to a discussion of the ETF space, a market about which Rogers has many reservations.
SD: And investors do seem to be becoming more short-term, despite the fact that everything we know tells us that finding good people and backing them for the long-term is the most successful thing you can do. Investors seem to be becoming more and more influenced by very short-term records. And that"s one of the things that"s savaging the mutual fund industry right now. One of the things that I wanted to touch on is this ETF phenomena. I mean, it"s probably the equivalent of the Nifty Fifty of the day, which is buy everything in its weight, don"t do any research. Don"t take any views. Don"t even take a view on a manager let alone a stock, but just own a basket. And a lot of people feel great disquiet about this. I think your commodity index has a few ETFs on it, does it? So perhaps you"re not the guy to ask if you"re in the ETF industry.
JR: No, no, no, I certainly see what"s happening in ETFs. I mean I pay enough attention to know what"s going on. First of all, ETFs are very efficient, very easy, very simple. There"s no question about that.
Therein lies part of the problem, of course, with ETFs is that they are easy, simple, et cetera and that makes it easy for somebody to say oh, I want to buy Germany, buy the German ETF, and don"t even look to see what"s in the German ETF or whether it"s a good ETF to own. And maybe it should be a terrible ETF, but nobody looks anymore.
So there are excesses developing in the ETF business.
There"s no question about that. But don"t worry Steve, we"re going to have a bear market. And when we have the bear market, a lot of people are going to find that, oh my God, I own an ETF and they collapsed. It went down more than anything else. And the reason it will go down more than anything else is because that"s what everybody owns.
And it is this bear market that looms over the market that Rogers is most fearful of as the level of debt that has built across the globe makes a disaster inevitable...
JR: Steve, in America as you know, we"ve had bear markets every few years.
SD: We used to.
JR: Well done. And Janet Yellen will tell you we"re never going to have a bear market again because she"s smarter than we are, she"s smarter than the markets, and the central bank has things under control now. She publicly stated this. Do not worry. We will not have financial calamities again. Head of the central bank in America has said that out loud officially, Mrs. Yellen-- yeah, Mrs. Yellen.
I happen to have a different view. Now if you believe the American central bank, you shouldn"t be talking to me at all. But we"ve had, we used to have bear markets every several years. We always, always since the beginning of the republic. In my view we will have them again.
And the next one is going to be horrendous, the worst-- you came in the business in "86. It will be the worst in your lifetime, in your financial experience.
And the reason, in 2008 we had a bear market because of too much debt, staggering amounts of debt. Steve, since 2008 the debt has gone through the roof. Every country in the world talks about austerity. Nobody has reduced their debt in the last few years.
Everybody has increased their debt in the last few years. And so the next time we have a bear market, it"s going to be horrendous because of this.
Even China-- in 2008, the Chinese had a lot of money saved for a rainy day. It started raining in Singapore. They had a lot of money saved for a rainy day. It started raining.
They started spending and helped save the world. But even China has a lot of debt now.
Like his fellow hedge-fund luminary Ray Dalio, Jim Rogers is a cryptocurrency skeptic. However, his outlook is somewhat more nuanced. While Rogers says he doesn’t know enough about the market to have a view on which coins might prosper and which might die on the vine, he suggested that people shouldn’t assume that bitcoin will dominate the market forever.
After all, Rogers says, most people have never heard of the company that invented the automobile – it disappeared long ago, he said. There once were hundreds of companies manufacturing cars around the world. Now, he says, there are only 25.
SD: Well, there"s been plenty of commentary on cryptocurrencies or cybercurrencies on RealVision and in the mainstream. We"re trading them. it"s an extraordinary financial experiment. If you"re a libertarian, I guess you mind find it inspiring that this has happened with absolutely no regulation. But where do we go with these things? Are you a true believer?
JR: Well, Steve--
SD: Are you an enormous skeptic?
JR: I don"t own one, nor am I short one. So I am neutral in that sense. I do know that there are over 2,000 now in just a few years. And anything that booms like that usually has a reason - there"s reason for skepticism. You do know that some of them are already zero.
I think the Wall Street Journal had an article yesterday maybe that 30% of the ones that have been launched in the last year or two are at zero because they have not traded. Now, there are some that have been skyrocketing. They"ve gone up 30 or 40, 100 times. So if you own the ones that have gone up 30 times, you think these are wonderful. If you own the ones that have gone to zero - or some have already gone bankrupt.
Somebody offered me a lot of them recently. And while I was doing my homework, it turned out to be a sham, a fraud. Fortunately, I was doing my homework so I never got around to taking them.
There"s no question that the world has money problems. There"s no question that all of our lives are being changed by the internet. My kids will never go to a bank when they"re adults. My kids will never go to a post office.
They may rarely go to a doctor when they"re adults. And so money"s going to change on the internet too.
Which one? I don"t know. You"ve heard of IBM in the computer business? IBM did not invent computers. The company that invented computers you never heard of, likewise with automobiles. I mean, there were hundreds of automobile companies 100 years ago. There are only 25 now.
Rogers, who chafes at being called a contrarian, says one sure-fire strategy for strong investing returns is investing in assets that are "hated" by the broader investing community, for example his Russian-stock investments are making all time highs, he said.
SD: I want to turn to a few specific sectors now rather than the general outlook of the world. It"s clear that you"re very concerned about that, though not so concerned that you want to actually be fighting it with aggressive shorts right now. One thing that you"ve spoken about in the past and one thing that we are exposed to is agriculture. It"s an area that"s generating quite a lot of comment. But from our experience, very few people have actually done anything about it. Very few pension funds, very few individuals have exposure to it. It"s hard to get through the stock market. There are very few agriculture companies, certainly on land-owning companies. You can get exposure through the food industry. But you became very positive about the agriculture a while ago. Where are you know on that?
JR: I"m extremely bullish on agriculture. That hasn"t made me any money yet. Well it has a little bit because one of my largest shareholdings - a large - well, it"s not one of my largest, but I am a director of a Russian fertilizer company which is making all-time highs or near all-time highs, which is pretty astonishing given that it"s Russia and everybody hates Russia, as you well know. In fact I"m startled that all of my Russian stocks making all-time highs.
And this is a hated market. So it"s something I have learned. If you buy something that"s hated, chances are you"re going to make a lot of money down the road.
In one of his last questions, Diggle pointed out that Rogers, who began working on Wall Street during the first half of the twentieth century, has often expressed a disdain for young people working in finance.
Diggle says he first noticed this about Rogers while reading a piece he wrote for Barron’s Magazine in the late 1980s.
Rogers says he doesn’t trust young people for one simple reason: They’re often cocky. But the Darwinian nature of Wall Street quickly separates the wheat from the chaff, making those who survive far more tolerable.
SD: I think you have something against guys in their 20s because the first time I became aware of you as an investor was a Barron"s article written in the summer of 1987, and it"s a very impressive article. I was very young on Wall Street. And there was this guy, Jim Rogers, and they said, what do are you bearish on, Jim? And you said, the world. There are all these 20-something guys that are thinking that they deserve six figures just because they work on Wall Street and they know how to buy stocks. And three, four months later, you turned out to be absolutely right.
But as a 20-something at the time, I thought you were being very unfair on 20-something guys. Now that I"m 53, I share your view of these 20-year-old guys. You"ve got to stay away from them.
JR: Well, but see, you made it. You survived. You"re a 26-year-old or 20-year-old who made it and survived, and so it"s OK. Many of them don"t and don"t know why. They make a lot of money. They don"t know why they made money.
So they don"t know why they lose money. They don"t know what happened.
You, at least, something happened. You"re still here. You still have a job. You"re still in the investment world.
SD: I"m self-employed like you.
JR: Right.
Rogers has recently been vocal about his bearish outlook on the markets. In an interview during the summer, he claimed that the largest financial crisis of his lifetime is still to come.
Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,
Desperate to fill hours and hours of air time on 24-hour news channels, media corporations have made sure the discussion of the correct posture of National Football League players has been front and center.
Apparently, before grown men can chase a little toy around a grassy field for a few hours, it"s absolutely essential that they take part in a variety of pro-government rituals. This was not always the case, though, and prior to the twentieth century, it was hardly expected that a ballgame be preceded by a recitation of the national anthem or any other song of national allegiance.
Indeed, the current pantomime in which NFL players are expected to stand at attention for the national anthem is of extremely recent origin. As Tom Curran pointed out on Comcast Sportsnet, prior to 2009, football players "weren"t on the field for the national anthem and instead generally remained in the locker room."
And why did players start making a display of their "patriotism" in 2009? It turns out the government gave them taxpayer money to do so:
In 2009, Barack Obama"s Department of Defense began paying hundreds of thousands towards teams in a marketing strategy designed to show support for the troops and increase recruitments. The NFL then required all players and personnel to be on the sidelines during the national anthem, in exchange for taxpayers dollars. Prior, the national anthem was played in the stadium but players had the option of staying in the locker room before heading out to the field.
Furthermore, teams that showed "Veteran"s Salutes" during games were paid upwards of $5.1 million dollars.
In total, 6.8 million in taxpayer money was doled out to sports teams - mostly NFL teams - for so-called "paid patriotism."
When the Pittsburgh Steelers elected to stay in the locker room during the anthem this past Sunday, this was denounced by many as "boycotting" the national song, although this would have just been standard practice a decade ago.
Not surprisingly, if we look into the history of playing the national anthem at sporting events, we find war was an important factor.
Before the First World War, playing the national anthem or sporting events was quite rare. No one expected it to be done, and hiring a band was expensive.
According to mlb.com, the most conspicuous early use of the national anthem was at game 1 of the 1918 World Series during World War I. Unexpectedly, during the seventh-inning stretch, a military band played the national anthem in an effort to liven up a reportedly surly and war-wearied group of spectators.
Use of the anthem spread from there. The anthem"s use expanded even more during the Second World War, as Matt Soniak notes:
During World War II, baseball games again became venues for large-scale displays of patriotism, and technological advances in public address systems allowed songs to be played without a band.
"The Star-Spangled Banner" was played before games throughout the course of the war, and by the time the war was over, the pregame singing of the national anthem had become cemented as a baseball ritual, after which it spread to other sports.
But even after the war, the habit of playing the anthem at every game was not firmly in place until the Vietnam war.
In most cases, the use of the anthem was not directly subsidized as it was with the taxpayer-funded paid-patriotism scam. Usually, team owners quite voluntarily employed the anthem as a marketing gimmick. In times of war, team owners were happy to use the anthem as a type of advertising to make an emotional connection between the customers — i.e., the spectators — and the team"s product. Wrapping a commercial product in the flag and apple pie to increase sales is hardly unique to pro sports. But pro sports may have used this tactic more successfully than any other industry.
Unfortunately for the NFL, this tried-and-true marketing strategy may be backfiring as the teams" employees — and surely many spectators as well — see no problem with using the anthem ritual as an opportunity to make a political statement. The result has been a marketing nightmare for the league.
Although this has been taken up by politicians such as Donald Trump as a matter of critical importance, it really should be viewed as just a private business matter. Tho Bishop has noted that, as private firms, each team should be free to discipline or fire any employee who might cause customer displeasure or a loss of revenue for the team. The question of course, is whether it might be even worse — in terms of earnings — for a team to eliminate its most talented athletes. That"s a business decision the owners will have to make.
To a certain extent, though, the pro sports industry has called down the current controversy on itself. Having wrapped their product in the political garb of Old Glory and the national anthem for decades, team owners are now having to pay the piper. Since many of their customers now expect pro sports to be political — but only political in a way that matches their particular ideology — team owners now face a headache that could have been totally avoidable.
It didn"t have to be this way. In recent years, many reasonable observers have complained that society is becoming increasingly politicized. Today, it"s easy to find ways in which once apolitical activities have been ruined by ideological posturing. Late night talk shows are now essentially hard-left propaganda. Selling tacos is denounced as "cultural appropriation," and every Hollywood awards show is now a series of political speeches. In the case of professional sports, however, there"s nothing recent about this sort of politicization.
For nearly a century, pro sports have been politicized through their habitual use of the American state"s symbols and songs. The Pentagon knows this, which is why it so enthusiastically shoveled millions of dollars of taxpayer money at the NFL as part of an advertising blitz. But even back in 1918, the US government knew the potential of politicizing sporting events. This is why, during the 1918 World Series, the Navy made sure it had a recruiting station at Wrigley Field.
Written by Guest Author
Bob Wilson
“Bob Dylan and the Grateful Dead: A Tale of Twisted Fate” (2017 – by Howard F. Weiner), is a fine addition to the Dylan canon in an often overlooked chapter in Dylan’s lengthly saga. It is equally a filling out of the long, strange trip undertaken by the merry pranksters in the Grateful Dead. Dylan had reached icon status that he was trying to escape before 1970 chimed in. Weiner reports that Dylan mentioned to Levon Helm as far back as 1972, that he had ideas of touring with the Dead. Even tie-die-hard Dylanolgists must be shocked to digest such a flavorful morsel, as related by Bob Dylan and Jerry Garcia aficionado, Howard F. Weiner.
It is hard to fathom looking back to 1987, that Dylan had already been written off several times by vitriolic critics. They seemed to follow him like “the men that followed Jesus, when they put a price upon his head.” They went apoplectic when the man went electric. Criticism was sundry when Dylan went to Nashville singing all country. It is hard to fathom that people would pay good money to come in and then “boo” Dylan. Before the Dead, Dylan went preaching about the man from Nazareth who is arisen, bringing Gospel live to the befuddled Grammys, as well as Saturday Night Live. If he threw the bums a dime for every time he irritated his following, we would likely be able to eliminate welfare. None of us would have been better off though, for missing out on the jousting surrounding the fanfare.
Author Howard F. Weiner also offers up in this book the head scratching nugget that Dylan offered to permanently be playin’ in the band. Weiner whittles down the naysayer who shot the idea down from under the red sky in a vote that required only one Grateful Dead dissenting member and offers up a bounty of insight, recounting anecdotes of Dylan & Deadheads which you will love tearing through in these pages.
Jerry Garcia and his band members had a profound effect on the Bob Dylan they met, caught between the gears of his own career. Weiner hashes out how the band’s touring machinery would plant the seed for Dylan’s “Never Ending Tour”. The reluctant Nobel Prize winner would go on to do more shows in the remainder of his career than the Dead did in toto. Not bad for a hermit, folk-rock, protest song writing, born again, wandering minstrel! Did I get that right?
In the video below, Howard F. Weiner joins Bart Sibrel and myself for some lively discussion about Dylan, the Dead, and Weiner’s books on the two. Turn, turn, turn around, tune in, and squeeze the last drop out of one more cup of coffee. We look back on the saga that brought these musical icons together.
~Don’t you dare miss it.
~Bob Wilson
Just click HERE or below to enjoy.
Thank you for your kind support.
–Brother Bart-
Content originally published at iBankCoin.com
So I was walking around Maine today, without a phone, totally unplugged from the world. Since I"m a personable person, quite affable at times, I conversed with lots of strangers, many people who might disagree with my "world view." Although I have strong opinions, I"m mature enough to know my ideas are meaningless time fodder, the result of theories concocted through emotional and cognitive experiences. Too many Americans actually think their ideas matter. They"re told this lie by the media and their politicians all the time, in an effort to trick people into thinking we live in a participatory democracy. Everyone is trying to ram their ideologies down the necks of others, which of course results in backlash.
The vast majority of people just want to larp around, drink something strong, and procreate. I can"t think of the last time when I thought discussing politics was a good idea for casual conversation. I did it more when I was younger, filled with vigor -- stuck in the amber of idealism. I"ve always felt dreadful after engaging in political debate -- even with people who totally agreed with me. It"s a time sink down the hole of extreme negativity and only serves to make people angry.
Why?
Because government can never please everyone, which is why I believe the less government, the better.
The connectivity of our phones and social media, amplified by the media, has turned total imbeciles into activists. These people are sick and have nothing better to do than foment strife. The "white supremacists" who marched in Virginia yesterday were idiots. They weren"t idiots because they had low IQs or because they wanted to express their opinions, but because they actually took the time out of their day to bring attention to themselves for a negative reason. What did they think was going to result from this?
A great man once told me, "if it doesn"t generate revenue, I"m not interested." He"d actually say that to total strangers at a bar, ordinary men asking for the time or if he had watched some sports game on the tube, which caused him to get punched hard in the face more times than I can remember. But it"s a good way to live, if you think about it.
I"d like to tie this up in a pretty bow and simply say "we"re all so different and America can never truly come together because of idealogical differences." But that"d be false. The core issue here isn"t politics, or racism, or identity politics, but the fact that ordinary citizens are getting wound up by social engineers, who are seeking to divide people, bringing out the ugliest in people. We"re all ugly, in one way or another -- some uglier than others. When Americans work together and leave out politics, we produce beautiful, life changing, things. But it seems every god damned news report I read these days is talking about an angry white man, a violent black man, or an evil Russian. Naturally, if you keep fucking with people"s emotions and pride, bad things will happen.
I won"t say the news needs to accentuate the positive things in life -- because they have a business to run. What I am saying, however, is that the combination of having everyone with a phone and social media account wanting to be a celebrity, coupled with an atmosphere of purposeful divisiveness, is a toxic, if not deadly, combination. At some point, I hope all people will realize that it isn"t Joe from down the block that is the problem -- but Jim in DC messing up America"s legacy.
Authored by Chris Campbell via lfb.org,
Last week, Ron Paul and many other notables in the liberty sphere took to the stage in Lake Jackson, Texas, for a very important symposium.
The topic of discussion? War and Peace in the Age of Trump.
As promised, today we present to you highlights from Ron Paul’s speech, Peace is Popular.
Lots of great stuff to cover.
So let’s get to it…
“Liberty is a young idea,” Dr. Paul began. “It’s really not something that’s been around for thousands and thousands of years. And the benefits of liberty have just been rather recent. I think of the Industrial Revolution as a consequence of an understanding of economic liberty. And with the tremendous advancements that have existed with the Industrial Revolution I’ve always wondered, why don’t we advance in the social revolution?
“If we learn how to build so many wonderful things and the standard of living goes up for so many people and we have all of these luxuries, why is it that we haven’t figured out how to stay out of killing each other?
“So at the same time we’ve had all of this advancement that helped us with technological things and the Industrial Revolution, we’ve had more killing than ever before.
“Just think of the 20th century, with all of that advancement. I can’t help but think about my dad talking to me about when the family dairy started. He delivered milk in a horse and wagon. And that was at the beginning of the last century. It was so recent and yet we haven’t advanced very much in this social sphere of how we get along with people. I am an optimist because I believe we should be able to do that. And when you look at the history of mankind, it’s really so very young.”
“I think peace is popular. Very popular. Not just among us, I think with all people. The big question is, if peace is popular and people want it, why are there so many wars?
“And that’s really a serious question… what’s going on? Especially when I go to the campuses and talk to young people, they’re not saying, ‘Yeah, let’s go have another war. We’d like to go off and get exposed to the killing and we want all the death to deal with. And we want to deal with inflation. No. That group of individuals are generally less pro-war than the rest.
“I can remember one time that I made a charge that this particular piece of legislation was pro-war. And it was on the side of the Republicans that were promoting this piece of legislation. And boy, I had one ex-military official come up to me. He was so annoyed, he said: ‘I am not pro-war!’
“They don’t see themselves that way. And yet, they are pro-war. If I had to look back and guess on the number of people I’ve met throughout my lifetime… you know, from grade school on up and the many people I’ve met in the past 15 or 20 years in politics… tens of thousand, and exposed to hundreds of thousands of people, I would say that 90% of the people I come into contact with are really pro peace.
“Peace is what they want. Why is it that although 90% of the people really want to live in peace, we don’t live in peace?
“Our problem is not so much the people become supportive of war or promote the war. Too many of them are very apathetic and complacent and just go along. But the big problem is, that the people, the citizens, the people who suffer from the war, don’t start the wars. The real problem that we have to understand is it’s the government and the government policies that cause the war and that’s what we have to restrain.
“So I think what happens… is people who have psychopathic and aggressive personalities and enjoy telling other people how to live — whether it’s in a social, economic or military sense — they like power. There is an opening and those people themselves don’t have much resistance. And governments tend to have, over the centuries, assumed a lot more power. And this just opens up the door for people who just want the power. And even those who go with good intentions to Washington, they are consumed with this attitude and they are part of the system.
“One term I don’t like is ‘moderation in politics,’ because I believe it’s a sacrifice of principles. What I like to think about in politics as far as making corrections because there’s so many imperfections, is to work with coalitions. And that is, there are a lot of people that might not be true libertarians, but they have a set of principles where they’d like to see a lot less killing and a lot less war and there’s no reason in the world we can’t be talking to the Dennis Kucinich’s of the world. Who will stand up for peace and this, to me, is I think the real answer. Moderates, when they come together, they have to sacrifice their true conviction.
Although the non-aggression principle, if widely adopted, would solve many incessant problems we face today, “One thing you can’t solve,” says Dr. Paul, “is the problem of good and evil. Adams said, ‘We the founders have given you a republic if you can keep it.’ And he said the moral standings of the people will make the difference. When the people become immoral, the system doesn’t work. At the same time, the problem is the immoral people get into government.
In order to keep government in check, says Paul, we need to have a clear definition of the role of government.
“The role and purpose of government should be to protect liberty. That’s it. That’s what our goal should be.”
In order to do so, we need to repeal the vast majority of what today’s government does.
“You have to have a system where the government is strictly limited. What would it mean? It would mean, first off, that we should be able to have a position in a county like ours, that our states should always have a right to secede. It’s the right to secede that’s important. That would hold the federal government in check. The government would have to be careful. But even if they had nullification, which is a strong issue of Jefferson. Just so we as a people, the local people, the local and state governments, didn’t like what the feds were doing, and if they’re violating the Constitution, you oughta be able to opt out and nullify it. That would hold a big check on the federal government as well.
“And the neat part about this is it’s coming. We are going to have chaos. We’re going to have economic chaos. We’re going to have the political fallout from our foreign interventionism. The world will turn against us and we are going to have an opportunity for a lot of nullification. It’s already happening.”
“I think it’s fantastic that the issue of the ridiculous War on Drugs is coming to an end because the states and the people are nullifying these laws and saying ‘stay away.’ I hope that doesn’t get reversed with this administration, but at least we’re making progress there. And I think that is great.
“I was out in Arizona, because they’re passing a bill out there and it’s very popular. Trying to follow the Constitution on the money issue. Because the directive is to the states. The states are not allowed to use anything other than gold and silver as legal tender. So who broke the law? The government broke the law. They were explicit in the Constitution that you can’t counterfeit. That you can’t debase the currency. And they were very explicit. We’re not allowed to debase the currency. But the government is. And that is why this principle, that basic Bastiat principle, that if you and I cannot do something, if you and I can’t steal from people, we can’t debase the currency, and we can’t rob and kill and do all of these things, why in the world have we allowed our governments to do that?
“We have to curtail that power. So we just can’t just go out and kill people because it’s against the law and it’s immoral… why do we allow our governments to do this constantly? With bombs and missiles and threats and boycotts… all of the things we do. We have to be able to apply these basic principles that have been understood. But it’s turned out that our governments did this to hold us in check. To say, ‘You can’t do this. You can’t do that. You bend the rules, we’re going to get you.’
“But they’re exempt. And this sucks in the people who love that power. And most people are too lackadaisical and too apathetic.
“We need to get rid of the apathy. We need to stand up and be engaged. Everybody has a responsibility. And I’ve often talked about the responsibility of us as individuals.”
Dr. Paul makes an important point we’ve made here in our virtual pages plenty of times before. Democracy obscures the truth of how changes in society are really made.
All throughout history, it has been a creative minority, not 51% of the population, that has helped bring incredible leaps of human progress to fruition. A relatively small group of changemakers blazed the trail and the rest of the population, seeing this new path was a better option than the status quo’s, simply traipsed through.
Today is no different.
“I think that we need eight percent of the population to really change the world,” says Dr. Paul. “Eight percent to lead the charge.”
If you’re reading this, it’s very likely you belong to that eight percent.
You don"t see the pattern? Bush, Clinton, Obama, Reagan - Dem v. Republican?
They all work for the same puppet master, the money(ed) people who create and profit from all the wars and who have endebted/enslaved every taxpayer worldwide.
Starve the beast, don"t work, don"t play/pay. Grow/catch/hunt your food, but pay for your hunting/fishing license if "enforcers" are nearby. Gotta pay to hunt in the Kings forests, (when his enforcers are watching).
We"ve come so far to get nowhere, maybe only 50-100 years of real freedom (1800-1900) in the last 4-5,000 years. To come this far and still be owned and enslaved. And yet we rail "Freedom", "USA, USA, USA"
Don"t get me wrong, we are the best in the worst comparison, but we"re still delusional when thinking we are free and not enslaved, while paying for an Empire with military bases in 75 countries with "fiat" dollars emitted from a printing press or "Fed-based-bitcoin"
Reality will at last occur and affect the least observant at the musical chairs party.
Been a long time since I"ve seen talk about stacking. Au was around $1,285 today, Ag around $18.50
Via Kevin Muir of The Macro Tourist blog,
The other day in the midst of an epic food-fight-rally in the stock market, a younger kid from my office wandered by and expressed his disbelief at the incessant bid. Shaking his head he asked me if I had ever seen something so insane.
Ahhh…. the joys of being young - everything is new.
I explained to him that I had indeed seen this movie play out before. A few times actually.
But herein lies the problem. All the grizzled old guys like me have been burned by so many bubbles, we see them everywhere. Corporate bonds, real estate, sovereign debt, equities - all you need to do is open your inbox to be inundated with research pieces warning about the dangers of sky high asset prices.
Yet there are some differences between today and all the previous bubbles.
One of the twitter guys that I respect immensely said recently, “[German] bunds are not in a bubble. No one is buying them on margin and no one is bragging at cocktail parties that they are long ‘em.”
Yup, I can’t say I disagree. German bunds are nothing like Japanese stocks in the 1980s, dotcom stocks in the 1990s or real estate in the 2000s. There is no public euphoria speculating on German rates going even lower. The long side of the German bund market might be a little crowded within the fixed income community as bond managers hide in supposedly safe bunds, but there is no mania engulfing the average person on the street.
Do I think German bunds are insanely overpriced? You betcha.
But if you use cocktail chatter as the only way to measure bubbles, then there aren’t any bubbles anywhere (except maybe in calling bubbles).
Let’s face it. There is no Gatsby-esque celebration regarding the recent stock market rise. No one is bragging at parties at how much money they are making. In fact it is just the opposite. Most people are complaining bitterly about how the stock market is running away on “terrible fundamentals” and how there is nowhere to invest their money without taking crazy risk.
This “bubble” differs greatly from all the other ones I have experienced. Previously you were labeled an idiot for not embracing it. Not so now. In the late 1990s Warren Buffett was called a Luddite for not buying into the Dotcom bubble, but today he ridiculed as an out of touch Octogenarian for purchasing stocks such as Apple at all time highs.
I understand the rally of the past couple of months has pushed us up into record overbought territory. We have hit a point where there are more bullish newsletter writers than any time since 1987. I have no doubt we are due for a pause, and maybe even a correction that shakes out all the recent buyers.
But I do not buy the idea this is some sort of speculative frenzy. Look at the flow of funds since the credit crisis.
This chart of equity flows over the past decade shows that both institutional and private clients have been net sellers over the majority of the time since the credit crisis. Where is all this speculative froth that has pushed equities up over the past decade?
Yes, the last few months has seen retail chasing stocks, but are they buying in a frenzy? Or are they maybe “short” risky assets in their already depleted savings?
Most investors have saved far too little to fund their ever increasing longer lifespan. They are stuck between Central Banks’ financial repression era minuscule yields and their government’s continual reduction in retirement benefits. Not only that, but they got scared from equities’ collapse in the previous crisis, and have been steady sellers of risky assets, stuffing the proceeds into fixed income at the absolute worse time.
So although it might be fashionable to claim equities are in a bubble, be aware this “bubble” is completely different. It is not driven by speculation, but instead might be the most gigantic short squeeze of all time.
The reason there is little euphoria as stocks push up to new highs is that most investors are “under invested” in risky assets. Sure, the stock portion of their portfolio might be rising, but they don’t have enough to fund their retirement.
This overvaluation is still risky and dangerous, there is no doubt about that. Stocks are stupidly expensive. But they are up here on forced movement out the risk curve - not crazy speculation. There are no shoe shine boy stories.
Who knows what this will mean over the long run. The only thing I know for certain is that is not nearly as much fun…
