Interview #3 with Financial Survival Network: When Castles Grow in Washington

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Yesterday, I had the pleasure to record my third interview with Kerry Lutz of Financial Survival Network.  Kerry is a fellow freedom fighter for civil rights, the Constitution and sound money.  In this segment we discuss a wide range of topics including recent weakness in The Gap and Darden Restaurants, as well as castles being … Read more

Fed Statement is Laughable: The Precious Metals Consolidation is Over

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I haven’t written anything about the markets in a very long time due to the experience in extreme boredom that they have become as of late.  The election came and went and now that we are just ahead of the Holiday Season the apathy has hit monumental proportions.  More significantly, what was the point of doing anything ahead of today’s Fed meeting?  There wasn’t any and so nobody did.

Now that the announcement is out, I think in retrospect today will turn out to be a meaningful turning point.  Not so much because of what they said, but because of where certain markets are and because of what they didn’t say.  Let’s start with the latter point.

From the statement, we found out that the Fed is set to launch an unsterilized buying program of $85 billion per month ($40 billion in mortgage backed securities and $45 billion in treasuries).  This part was widely flagged already.  The more interesting part is the language in the text discussing how the Fed will essentially link their low rates to unemployment, with 6.5% being the threshold.

This is all within a text that attempts to portray a very benign and healthy economy, one described as having an improving labor market, a housing recovery and anchored inflation expectations.  Sounds pretty good to me; so then why accelerate the aggressiveness of their radical money printing policy?

The answer is that the Fed realizes its policies haven’t worked and are convinced they need to do more and more to prove an academic point that man is indeed more powerful than nature.  At first, they said a stock market rally would set a fire under the economy.  That hasn’t worked.  Then they said a new housing recovery would do it.  Once again, nein.  So now their answer is just print money like crazy and eventually it will work.  Yes, they are insane, but we already knew that didn’t we.

Actions always speak louder than words and their actions demonstrate a deep concern for the real economy and an unspoken understanding that things are not going well underneath the layers of propaganda.

Now onto the second point.  I think today will mark an important turning point in the markets not just because of what I wrote above, but because of where things stand.

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Will the Press be Banned from Obama’s Swearing In Ceremony?

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This is just straight up creepy.  When even the compliant press turn against you there is clearly something very rotten in Denmark.  From Politico:

The White House Correspondents Association is strongly urging the Obama administration to allow press access to the president’s official swearing-in ceremony on Jan. 20, following indications from inauguration committee officials that the event could potentially be closed to the press.

Because inauguration day falls on a Sunday in 2013, Chief Justice John Roberts will officially administer the official oath of office in a private ceremony that day. The public inauguration on the Capitol Building’s West Front — at which Roberts will administer a second, symbolic oath of office— will take place the next day. 

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Wired Magazine: Public Buses Adding Microphones to Record Passenger Conversations

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Believe it or not the article itself is actually a lot worse than even the title implies.  These microphones are in many cases being coupled with cameras in order to gain an even greater level of surveillance.  All with grants from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).  Now honestly, does anyone really think this is for Al Qaeda?  This is a great follow up to my piece from last week titled:  Coming to Your Car: Mandatory Black Boxes That Record Everything.

From Wired:

Transit authorities in cities across the country are quietly installing microphone-enabled surveillance systems on public buses that would give them the ability to record and store private conversations, according to documents obtained by a news outlet.

The systems are being installed in San Francisco, Baltimore, and other cities with funding from the Department of Homeland Security in some cases, according to the Daily, which obtained copies of contracts, procurement requests, specs and other documents.

The systems use cables or WiFi to pair audio conversations with camera images in order to produce synchronous recordings. Audio and video can be monitored in real-time.

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Spooks Incorporated: Does Every Company Need its Own CIA?

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This article from Foreign Policy essentially proves what many of us have already suspected.  The ultimate in neo-feudalism is when the corporate sector and the government sector converge, and sadly in these United States this totalitarian marriage is what now dominates the landscape.  This is a very worrying trend.  From Foreign Policy: Since 9/11, a quiet … Read more

It Never Ends: Top Obama Housing Advisor Jumps Ship to Wells Fargo

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No one should be surprised by this, particularly since Wells Fargo is the favored financial vehicle for America’s top crony capitalist – Warren “I’m just like you because I drink cherry coke and eat hamburgers” Buffett.  The person in question in the latest payoff revolving door move is Bob Ryan who is currently a senior advisor to Shaun Donovan, the secretary for Housing and Urban Development.  From the Wall Street Journal:

Mr. Ryan is currently a senior advisor to Shaun Donovan, the secretary for Housing and Urban Development. He joined HUD in 2009 as the first ever chief risk officer at the Federal Housing Administration and served briefly last year as the agency’s acting FHA commissioner. He previously spent 26 years at Freddie Mac.

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Next Generation Drones to be Equipped with Lasers

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Time magazine is out with a heartwarming story about how the next generation of drones, or as some like to call them “freedom birds,” may be equipped with lasers.  Although most Americans don’t realize it, our skies are already filled with drones as I pointed out in my piece last week titled  Drones in America?  They … Read more

The United States: 5% of the World’s Population, 25% of its Prisoners

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This article is from May, but wow what a crazy statistic.  I guess there was just no room for Corzine…From The Economist:

Excessive incarceration is an American problem. The country has about 5% of the world’s population but almost 25% of its prisoners, with the world’s largest number of inmates and highest per capita rate of incarceration. California eagerly participated in this trend of locking up ever more people. During Mr Brown’s previous stint as governor in the 1970s the state switched to more inflexible sentencing. It then spent another two decades adding “tough-on-crime” laws that kept extending sentences even for minor crimes.

The resulting prison-building boom, and rapacious bargaining by the prison-guards union, meant that state penitentiaries became the fastest-growing major cost in the state budget. California’s 33 prisons and associated camps therefore bear no small responsibility for the state’s recurring budget crises, and the resultant crunch on school and university funding.

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Fukushima Safety Scientists Paid by Nuclear Operators

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Can’t say I am surprised in the least.  From The New Zealand Herald:

Influential Japanese scientists who help set national radiation exposure limits have for years had trips paid for by the country’s nuclear plant operators to attend overseas meetings of the world’s top academic group on radiation safety.

Some of these same scientists have consistently given optimistic assessments about the health risks of radiation, interviews with the scientists and government documents show. Their pivotal role in setting policy after the March 2011 tsunami and ensuing nuclear meltdowns meant the difference between school children playing outside or indoors and families staying or evacuating.

The doctor on the parliamentary panel, Hisako Sakiyama, is outraged about utility funding for Japan’s ICRP (International Commission on Radiological Protection). She fears that radiation standards are being set at a lenient level to limit costly evacuations.

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