Well, the theme should be today, throughout the world, that the world is in the greatest financial-monetary crisis, and economic crisis, in modern world history. This has been in process since the summer of 2007, when I first forecast this thing. And it's getting worse. It has had political ramifications, of course, throughout the world, and most governments have been resisting the reality of trying to pretend that this was only a financial crisis of some sort, that it would go away, that it could be fixed. And policies have been made on the assumption, that this thing is not going to crash, that there's going to be a recovery after a "period of pain."
Well, it's more than a period of pain. The present world financial-monetary system is about to go out of existence. And the only chance for having a civilization, is to put this world system into bankruptcy reorganization, and to replace the present financial-monetary system, with a credit system. Now, the crucial point here, is that very few people know what a credit system is. Everyone is convinced that monetary systems have ruled the world, and will continue to rule the world. And they assume they call up an accountant, which is the worst thing you can do these days. All you'll get is bad news, and you'll get sickness, and family break-ups and so forth.
But the issue is, that the world is governed by an empire. The empire has existed in European civilization since the period of the Peloponnesian War, in which certain monetary interests, money interests, as such, have been higher in rank than governments. Sometimes this has taken the form of an empire as such. But today's empires are not empires of governments as such, they're empires of consortia of financial interests, and monetary interests. And you have institutions, especially in a so-called free market, which is the worst form of government imaginable: In a free market, so-called, the monetary interests are above government. International financial-monetary interests are higher than government. These governments control the currency, the monetary system of the world, and of nations, and this is what constitutes a real empire. People above government, controlling government, where governments are supposed to respect the "free market" — and the free market is the system of slavery of governments.
Six months ago, I received an odd phone call from a man named Jake DeSantis at A.I.G. Financial Products—the infamous unit of the doomed insurance company, staffed by expensively educated, highly paid traders, whose financial ineptitude is widely suspected of costing the U.S. taxpayer $182.5 billion and counting. At the time A.I.G. F.P.’s losses were reported, it became known that a handful of traders in this curious unit had sold trillions of dollars of credit-default swaps (essentially unregulated insurance policies) on piles of U.S. subprime mortgages, but its employees hadn’t yet become the leading examples of Wall Street greed. And so this was before Jake DeSantis and his colleagues found themselves suburban-Connecticut outcasts, before their first death threats, before the House of Representatives passed a bill because of them (taxing 90 percent of their large bonuses), before New York attorney general Andrew Cuomo announced he was going after their paychecks, and before Iowa senator Charles Grassley said that A.I.G.’s leaders should follow the Japanese example and “either do one of two things, resign or go commit suicide.”
On Wall Street, there's a big debate over whether the Fed's next big move will come too soon or too late. In Washington, the Administration is promoting a plan to give the central bank new powers to oversee systemic risks. Over in the House of Representatives, maverick Republican Ron Paul has gathered more than 245 co-sponsors for a bill requiring an audit of the Fed. In the media, there are questions about whether President Obama will allow Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke to keep his job when his term ends in January. And finally, some commentators are wondering whether this allegedly autonomous institution will retain its independence in a post-crisis world.
But few seem to be asking what I believe is the key question: how long before the Fed's days are numbered? Why, for example, is the power to commit substantial resources on taxpayers' behalf, to influence many of the most important commitments and relationships of businesses, individuals, and governments, and to initiate economic and regulatory policies with far-reaching consequences, in the hands of unelected officials with unexceptional abilities and no real accountability?
As anticipated by LEAP/E2020 as early as October 2008, on the eve of summer 2009, the question of the US and UK capacity to finance their unbridled public deficits has become the central question of international debates, thus paving the way for these two countries to default on their debt by the end of this summer. At this stage of the global systemic crisis’ process of development, contrary to the dominant political and media stance today, the LEAP/E2020 team does not foresee any economic upsurge after summer 2009 (nor in the following 12 months) (1). On the contrary, because the origins of the crisis remain unaddressed, we estimate that the summer 2009 will be marked by the converging of three very destructive « rogue waves » (2), illustrating the aggravation of the crisis and entailing major upheaval by September/October 2009. As always since this crisis started, each region of the world will be affected neither at the same moment, nor in the same way (3). However, according to our researchers, all of them will be concerned by a significant deterioration in their situation by the end of summer 2009 (4). This evolution is likely to catch large numbers of economic and financial players on the wrong foot who decided to believe in today’s mainstream media operation of “euphorisation”. In this special « Summer 2009 » edition, our team describes in detail these three converging « rogue waves » and their impact, and gives a number of strategic recommendations (currencies, gold, real estate, bonds, stocks, currencies) to avoid being swept away in this deadly summer.
Today we are an oil-based civilization, one that is totally dependent on a resource whose production will soon be falling. Since 1981, the quantity of oil extracted has exceeded new discoveries by an ever-widening margin. In 2008, the world pumped 31 billion barrels of oil but discovered fewer than 9 billion barrels of new oil. World reserves of conventional oil are in a free fall, dropping every year. Discoveries of conventional oil total roughly 2 trillion barrels, of which 1 trillion have been extracted so far, with another trillion barrels to go. By themselves, however, these numbers miss a central point. As security analyst Michael Klare notes, the first trillion barrels was easy oil.
Of all the New York City neighborhoods swept up in the real estate boom of the last decade, few became as hot as Harlem. It grew increasingly gentrified and integrated. Its economy developed a lively pulse, and its town homes — stately, historic, but often neglected — fetched prices unheard-of for the area.
But that sense of electricity and evolution, which thrilled some residents and troubled others, has been unplugged. And a single block — West 134th Street between Frederick Douglass Boulevard and Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard — offers a vivid illustration of just how cool the market and the mood have turned.
Discussion of the 50% Retracement Rule,
potential future price levels, time studies, key dates, Fibonacci, Gann, Astro numbers, Robert Rhea's Great Depression analysis.
Six long,torturous years ago, I had a famous and on-going debate regarding our monetary system and the stock markets with my nemesis "Ron" (name changed to protect the ignorant). Ron is a fiat-worshipping, 401(k) holding sheeple, who happens to be an employee of Boeing. At the time the debate was kicked off, buggy whips were trading at approximately 350 fiatscos and Boeing stock was at twenty-five fiatscos, as shown in this chart... which reflected an approximately fifty-percent drop from its then-recent high. During the debate, Ron insisted that he was safe in his 401(k) because "The market always comes back" and that gold wasn't going to sky because it was a "barbaous relic" and the world had "changed" and people were more "sophisitcated" now than to worship a shiny rock, blah, blah.
Well, fast-forward to today and--once again--Boeing has been curshed. My buddy Ron has substantial holdings of this stock in his 401(k) because Boeing offered a match for his contributions. And the fiat price of buggy whips? How about over NINE-HUNDRED FIATSCOS, in spite of every manipulation thrown at them by TPTB. Heh. Heh, heh. So, if my buddy Ron had listened to me and cashed out his 401(k) in 2003, he would have tripled his fiatscos instead of sitting virtually unchanged (and actually behind when the cost of living is taken into account). Of course the poor lamb wouldn't cash in his 401(k) pen because Uncle Sugar would have killed him financially to do so. Which is why VIRTUALLY EVERY ONE OF MY BOOMER PEERS IS BEING SLOWLY GROUND INTO HAMBURGER MEAT!!! Because they just can't get over that psychological "hump" of paying the taxes and the Draconian IRS penalty to cash out. Which is EXACTLY why the penalty was instituted: To give the message to the sheeps that they are not worthy to manage their own money and to let the "experts" (Wall Street) do it for them in their little "menu plans".
Frankly, while I am enjoying a small sliver of Shadenfreude over Ron's thrashing, I have not "rubbed it in" and sent him any nasty e-mails filled with the comparison charts of buggy whips and death machine makers. I'm not that big of a jerk, believe it or not. In fact, I'm upset with Wall Street and DC for brainwashing the poor lambs into believing the "Stocks for Retirement" lie. And I'm even MORE upset because I constructed a deeply-detailed fifty-page report to my Boomer peers over three years ago warning them that they were about to get hosed in their 401(k)/IRAs. Yet, not one of them made any changes whatsoever to their retirement funds. And all of them are currently being decimated. So, while I will admit to some minor sense of "I tole ya so!", at the same time I don't like watching an entire generation of my peers plunged into penury.
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