Abundant Michael: 2012

John Templeton's predictions of Financial Chaos and rapid change

This prediction of Financial Chaos was written by financial and spiritual pioneer John Templeton in 2005 before the housing bubble burst, before the 2008 financial crash. Publically released in 2010 many of the items in it have already happened, others may be yet to come.

  • Peak prosperity (in 2005) is now behind us
  • Extra money supply will cause inflation with will cause bank deposits and government bonds to lose real value
  • Peak debt (mortgage and other) will default/mark down in value and will be bailed out by government (eg Fannie Mae, Mortgage Back Securities $20 billion federal purchases per month)
  • Surplus capacity in air and ocean transport will lead to lower prices and shake outs of inefficient companies
  • Many universities will be replaced by electronic learning
  • Many intuitions protected from change by government, labor or entrenched bureaucracies will collapse as outside change accelerates over the next 50 years
  • Computers and other electronics will rapidly increase in skills, helping people be more efficient including the illiterate (eg iPhone Siri talking servant)
  • Increased global competition and downward pressure on company profits
  • Top earners, innovators and nations allowing freedom will prosper much more rapidly than the rest of people and countries

John M. Templeton
Lyford Cay, Nassau, Bahamas

MEMORANDUM (June 15, 2005)
 

Financial Chaos — probably in many nations in the next five years. The word chaos is chosen to express likelihood of reduced profit margin at the same time as acceleration in cost of living.

Increasingly often, people ask my opinion on what is likely to happen financially. I am now thinking that the dangers are more numerous and larger than ever before in my lifetime. Quite likely, in the early months of 2005, the peak of prosperity is behind us.

In the past century, protection could be obtained by keeping your net worth in cash or government bonds. Now, the surplus capacities are so great that most currencies and bonds are likely to continue losing their purchasing power.

Mortgages and other forms of debts are over tenfold greater now than ever before 1970, which can cause manifold increases in bankruptcy auctions.

Surplus capacity, which leads to intense competition, has already shown devastating effects on companies who operate airlines and is now beginning to show in companies in ocean shipping and other activities. Also, the present surpluses of cash and liquid assets have pushed yields on bonds and mortgages almost to zero when adjusted for higher cost of living. Clearly, major corrections are likely in the next few years.

Most of the methods of universities and other schools which require residence have become hopelessly obsolete. Probably over half of the universities in the world will disappear quickly over the next thirty years.

Obsolescence is likely to have a devastating effect in a wide variety of human activities, especially in those where advancement is hindered by labor unions or other bureaucracies or by government regulations.

Increasing freedom of competition is likely to cause most established institutions to disappear with the next fifty years, especially in nations where there are limits on free competition.

Accelerating competition is likely to cause profit margins to continue to decrease and even become negative in various industries. Over tenfold more persons hopelessly indebted leads to multiplying bankruptcies not only for them but for many businesses that extend credit without collateral. Voters are likely to enact rescue subsidies, which transfer the debts to governments, such as Fannie May and Freddie Mac.

Research and discoveries and efficiency are likely to continue to accelerate. Probably, as quickly as fifty years, as much as ninety percent of education will be done by electronics.

Now, with almost one hundred independent nations on earth and rapid advancements in communication, the top one percent of people are likely to progress more rapidly than the others. Such top one percent may consist of those who are multi-millionaires and also, those who are innovators and also, those with top intellectual abilities. Comparisons show that prosperity flows toward those nations having most freedom of competition.

Especially, electronic computers are likely to become helpful in all human activities including even persons who have not yet learned to read.

Hopefully, many of you can help us to find published journals and websites and electronic search engines to help us benefit from accelerating research and discoveries.

Not yet have I found any better method to prosper during the future financial chaos, which is likely to last many years, than to keep your net worth in shares of those corporations that have proven to have the widest profit margins and the most rapidly increasing profits. Earning power is likely to continue to be valuable, especially if diversified among many nations.


from
http://arizonaenergy.org/News_10/News_Aug10/Sir%20John%20Templeton%2592s%20Last%20Testament%3B%20Financial%20Chaos%20Will%20Last%20Many%20Years.htm

How Wall St corrupts Congress and the SEC

One of the reasons our Empire is ending is corruption. Here is an example of corruption around Wall Street from an article in Rolling Stone.

The great mystery story in American politics these days is why, over the course of two presidential administrations (one from each party), there’s been no serious federal criminal investigation of Wall Street during a period of what appears to be epic corruption. People on the outside have speculated and come up with dozens of possible reasons, some plausible, some tending toward the conspiratorial – but there have been very few who've come at the issue from the inside.

 

We get one of those rare inside accounts inThe Payoff: Why Wall Street Always Wins, a new book by Jeff Connaughton, the former aide to Senators Ted Kaufman and Joe Biden. Jeff is well known to reporters like me; during a period when most government officials double-talked or downplayed the Wall Street corruption problem, Jeff was one of the few voices on the Hill who always talked about the subject with appropriate alarm. He shared this quality with his boss Kaufman, the Delaware Senator who took over Biden's seat and instantly became an irritating (to Wall Street) political force by announcing he wasn’t going to run for re-election. "I later learned from reporters that Wall Street was frustrated that they couldn’t find a way to harness Ted or pull in his reins," Jeff writes. "There was no obvious way to pressure Ted because he wasn’t running for re-election."

 

Kaufman for some time was a go-to guy in the Senate for reform activists and reporters who wanted to find out what was really going on with corruption issues. He was a leader in a number of areas, attempting to push through (often simple) fixes to issues like high-frequency trading (his advocacy here looked prescient after the "flash crash" of 2010), naked short-selling, and, perhaps most importantly, the Too-Big-To-Fail issue. What’s fascinating about Connaughton’s book is that we now get to hear a behind-the-scenes account of who exactly was knocking down simple reform ideas, how they were knocked down, and in some cases we even find out why good ideas were rejected, although some element of mystery certainly remains here.

 

There are some damning revelations in this book, and overall it’s not a flattering portrait of key Obama administration officials like SEC enforcement chief Robert Khuzami, Department of Justice honchos Eric Holder (who once worked at the same law firm, Covington and Burling, as Connaughton) and Lanny Breuer, and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner.

 

Most damningly, Connaughton writes about something he calls "The Blob," a kind of catchall term describing an oozy pile of Hill insiders who are all incestuously interconnected, sometimes by financial or political ties, sometimes by marriage, sometimes by all three. And what Connaughton and Kaufman found is that taking on Wall Street even with the aim of imposing simple, logical fixes often inspired immediate hostile responses from The Blob; you’d never know where it was coming from.

 

In one amazing example described in the book, Kaufman decided he wanted to try to re-instate the so-called "uptick rule," which had existed for seventy years before being rescinded by the SEC in 2007. The rule prevents investors from shorting a stock until the stock had ticked up in price. "Forcing short sellers to wait for the price to tick up before they sell more shares gives a breather to a stock in decline and helps prevent bear raids," Connaughton writes.

 

The uptick rule is controversial on Wall Street – I’ve had some people literally scream at me that it doesn’t do anything, while others have told me that it does help prevent bear attacks of the sort that appeared to help finally topple already-mortally-wounded companies like Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers – but what’s inarguable is that Wall Street hates the rule. Hedge fund types or employees of really any company that engages in short-selling will tend to be most venomous in their opinions of the uptick rule.

 

Anyway, Connaughton and Kaufman were under the impression that new SEC chief Mary Schapiro would re-instate the uptick rule after taking office. When she didn’t, Kaufman wrote her a letter, asking her to take action. When that didn't do the trick, he co-sponsored (with Republican Johnny Isakson) a bill that would have required the SEC to take action.

 

Nothing happened, and months later, Kaufman gave a grumbling interview to Politico about the issue. One June 30, the paper’s headline read: "Ted Kaufman to SEC; Do Your Job."

 

The next day, the Blob bit back. Connaughton was in the basement of the Russell building when a Senate staffer whose wife worked for Shapiro shouted at him. From the book:

"Hey, Jeff, you’re in the doghouse." He meant: with his wife.

"Why?" I asked.

"That Politico piece by your boss."

I was taken aback but tried to downplay the matter. "We just want the SEC to get its work done."

"Remember," he said. "We all wear blue jerseys and play for the Blue Team. I just don’t think that helps."

When Connaughton told Kaufman over the phone what the staffer said, Kaufman exploded. "You call him back right now and tell him I said to go fuck himself in his ear," Kaufman said.

 

Similarly, when Kaufman tried to advocate for rules that would have prevented naked short-selling, Connaughton was warned by a lobbyist that it would be "bad for my career" if he went after the issue and that "Ted and I looked like deranged conspiracy theorists" for asking if naked short-selling had played a role in the final collapse of Lehman Brothers. Naked short-selling is another controversial practice. Essentially, when you short a stock, you're supposed to locate shares of that stock before you go out and sell it short. But what hedge funds and banks have discovered is that the rules provide "leeway" – you can go out and sell shares in a stock without actually having it, provided you have a "reasonable belief" that you can locate the shares.

 

This leads to the obvious possibility of companies creating false supply in a stock by selling shares they don't have. Without getting too much into the weeds here, there is an obvious solution to the problem, which essentially would be forcing companies to actually locate shares before selling them. In their attempt to change the system, Kaufman and Connaughton discovered that the Depository Trust Clearing Corporation, the massive quasi-private organization that clears most all stock trades in America, had come up with just such a fix on their own. Kaufman recruited some other senators to endorse the idea, and as late as 2009, Connaughton and Kaufman were convinced they were going to get the form. "I said to Ted, 'We’re going to change the way stocks are traded in this country.'"

 

But before the change could be made, Goldman, Sachs issued "data" showing that there was "no correlation" between naked short selling and price movements. When Connaughton asked an Isakson staffer what the data said, the staffer, intimidated by Goldman, replied, "The data proves we're full of shit." Connaughton looked at the data and realized instantly that it was a bunch of irrelevant gobbledygook, even firing off an angry letter to Goldman telling them the tactic was beneath even them.

 

But Goldman’s tactic worked. A roundtable to discuss the idea was scheduled by the SEC on September 24, 2009. Of the nine invited participants, "all but one" were for the status quo. Connaughton expected the DTCC representatives to unveil their reform idea, but they didn’t:

Afterwards, I went over to [the DTCC representatives] and asked, "What happened?" Sheepishly, and to their credit, they admitted: "We got pulled back." They meant: by their board, by the Wall Street powers-that-be.

 

Essentially the same thing happened in Kaufman’s biggest reform attempt, the amendment to the Dodd-Frank bill he co-sponsored with Ohio’s Sherrod Brown, which would have broken up the Too-Big-To-Fail banks. But the Brown-Kaufman amendment, which was really the meatiest thing in the original Dodd-Frank bill, the one reform that really would have made a difference if it had passed, just died in the suffocating mass of the Blob. The key Democrats one after another failed to line up behind it, and in the end it was defeated soundly, with Dick Durbin, the number two man in the Democratic leadership, giving it this epitaph: "a bridge too far."

 

Again, those interested in understanding the mindset of the people who should be leading the anti-corruption charge ought to read this book. It's the weird lack of concern that shines through, like Khuzami’s comment that he’s "not losing sleep" over judges reprimanding his soft-touch settlements with banks, or then Southern District of New York U.S. Attorney Ray Lohier’s comment that the thing that most concerned him – this is the period of 2008-2009, the middle of a historic crimewave on Wall Street – was "cyber crime."

 

On the outside we can only deduce the mindset from actions and non-actions, but Connaughton’s actually seen it, and with the book you get to see it too. It’s scary and definitely worth a read.

 

from http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/a-rare-look-at-why-the-government-wont-fight-wall-street-20120918

What happens when everyone is given free money

Fun story. Perhaps if "QE to Infinity" doesn't work the Fed will go with this plan

May all your dreams come true

Bill awoke to the sound of cars racing down his street. "Damn kids" he muttered before seeing that it was 5:30 AM. He knew he would have 15 more minutes to sleep before the alarm clock told him it was time to start another day.

 

He tried to sleep, but just pondered his financial situation for the nth time. He had about $half a million set aside for retirement, but wasn't sure if it was enough to carry him through the rest of his life. He was tired of working at the machine shop. The odor permeated his entire life - clothes, skin, everything! He really wanted a boat to go fishing. There was an affordable model at the marine shop that would let him fish the bay and surrounding rivers, but he really wanted the million dollar plus "Adventurer." He could spend weeks out on the high seas and forget about reality. He knew it would take winning the lottery or the Publisher's Clearinghouse sweepstakes to consider such a dream. He never played, so he knew that wouldn't happen.

 

Just as the 5:45 alarm sounded, he heard the doorbell ringing. "Who could that be at this hour?" he wondered as he made his way to the door. Another car raced by, but he was focused on the doorbell. He got to the front door and turned on the porch light. Looking through the cheap peep site in his door, he saw a handful of people in suits. They looked official, so he opened the door.

 

Just then, a camera flash blinded him momentarily and he heard the pop of a champagne bottle. As his eyesight regained its footing, he saw one person hand him a larger than life, foam-board check for $10,000,000 with his name in the "Pay to" location. They gave him a plastic cup filled with champagne and congratulated him on winning the Publisher's Clearinghouse FOMC Sweepstakes. As quickly as it unfolded, it ended and the crew of suits headed back to their van.

 

Bill didn't know what to do. He was dumbfounded. He took a sip of champagne from his plastic cup and winced. "You'd think they would buy something other than rotgut" he muttered beneath his breath. He looked at his check and realized this was the answer to his dreams. He could now quit working and live a life that he dreamed about. He was going to get that "Adventurer" boat and enjoy it as long as he could!

 

Just then, he was brought back to the present when he heard a car swerve in front of his place. A car was racing down the street and almost hit the group of suits from Publisher's Clearinghouse. They had another bottle of champagne and another foam-board check and were heading to the neighbor across the street.

 

He watched as they rang the bell and waited a minute or so. As the door opened, they flashed a camera, popped the cork, and handed his neighbor a check. In a few minutes, it was over and they were heading back to their van. Still in his bathrobe, Bill walked down to the van to ask them what was happening. As one of the suits pulled out the next oversized check, he explained that the Federal Reserve decided that everyone in America should be rich, so they contracted with Publisher's Clearinghouse to give every household in America $10,000,000. Today was the first day of the campaign and they had thousands of teams across the country giving this money away. "Isn't America great?" the suit asked Bill.

 

Bill heard another car racing by and looked up the block. He saw many of his neighbors standing on their doorsteps with slack jawed looks, holding the foam-board checks in one hand and the cheap plastic cups in the other. Reality hit him quickly.

 

He knew that these chacks would quickly lose real value once it was obvious that so much new money was being circulated. He had to act fast. He calmly walked back to the house and quickly put on his best suit of clothes. They were clean, but still smelled of weld splatter. Then, he loaded his check in the car and headed for the bank.

 

Drivers were behaving erratically. Everyone was speeding and driving recklessly. He decided to do the same so he wouldn't get beat to the bank. As he turned the corner to the bank, he saw a long line of folks with the foam-board checks. They were too big to fit in the ATM so folks just had to wait for the bank to open.

 

Bill decided that rather than wait in line, he'd go to the Marine Shop. He knew the owner sometimes came in really early and that way he could buy the "Adventurer". He was sure the owner would be delighted enough to cash the check and give him a normal sized check for the difference.

 

As he arrived at the Marine Shop, he saw 2 other people anxiously waiting at the door with their foam-board checks. Apparently, they had the same plan as he did. As Bill walked to the store entrance to talk to the other customers and wait, the Marine Shop owner pulled into the parking lot. As the owner got out of his car, one of the 2 screamed that he wanted to "buy the 'Adventurer' and he had cash." The other guy offered to buy it for $1.5 million. The bidding war was on and quickly ended at $10 million. The owner saw the oversized checks and knew something was different. He just smiled as he opened the doors for business.

 

Bill could see other cars coming into the parking lot and people rushing to the store with their oversized foam-board checks. Once inside, people were madly bidding on any boat in the inventory. He watched as a small, outboard powered, fresh water fishing boat was bid up to $10,000,000.

 

Then, it hit him. Everything just changed. His scrimping and saving for decades to amass $half a million was reduced to insignificant peanuts in the matter of a few moments. When he awoke, he was ahead of the game and ready to retire. Now, he was essentially on the same financial footing as everyone else.

 

As quickly as the dream occurred, it turned into a nightmare. He decided to take the check home and save it for an uncertain future ... because that is what he had always done.

Grover


from comment on http://www.peakprosperity.com/blog/79694/trouble-printing-money

Is it necessary to be angry to take action for peace?

Interesting quote on if it is ok to be peaceful - because "only if I am angry do I want to take action for peace".

I've heard people say that they cling to their painful thoughts because they're afraid that without them they wouldn't be activists for peace. "If I feel peaceful," they say, "why would I bother taking action at all?"

My answer is "Because that's what love does." To think that we need sadness or outrage to motivate us to do what's right is insane. As if the clearer and happier you get, the less kind you become. As if when someone finds freedom, she just sits around all day with drool running down her chin.

My experience is the opposite.

Love is action.

- Byron Katie

My view is that now we have entered the Aquarian Age (on June 21st 2012) there is no longer any need to hang on to lower vibrations. Before it might have been useful to use that energy of anger to take action. Now I can chose to act from a vibration of peace or love.

How to scan, record and monitor everything for total control

Thought policeThese guys (the governments) won't be happy until they can scan everyone's body, house, email, car, driving patterns, postal mail, financial, verbal conversations and thoughts. And record it all in the new NSA super computer complex so that they can do back searches over years of information looking for patterns of people who are not under their control. Yeah what we need now is Thought Police, come on George (Orwell), tell the government how to train the Thought Police. Oh, yeah you already did (1984).


PS All of the above are either already implemented or have technology already existing:

  • body - TSA airport body scanners. Argentina is implementing a national ID based on fingerprints and face scanning of all citizens. All non US citizens are fingerprinted and face/iris scanned on entering the country - it is probable that this will be extended to US citizens and residents in the future.
  • house - warrentless "sneak and peak" searches
  • email - NSA and ISP scans
  • phone - warrantless phone taps and cell phone tower dumps
  • street - there are over 4 million video cameras in London, many of which can identify car license plates and faces
  • car - GSP bugs for cars plus of course your smart phone GSP. US local police are using car license plate scanners to track and store car movements of all cars on certain roads, with information passed on to a central federal database in Virgina
  • postal mail - well they say they still need a warrant for this scanning but they can record all the to and from addresses on your mail without a warrant already
  • finances - all "suspicious" transactions are reported by banks to the US government, and in addition bank staff are under a quota system to report a certain number each month. It is likely that all bank and credit card transactions are being recorded by NSA. Under the FACTA and HIRE laws banks worldwide are required to report US citizen's financial accounts held abroad under penalty of a 30% withholding on all wires to/from that bank whether to a US citizen or a foreign citizen. Cash purchases of gold over $10k are reported. In Spain paying cash for anything over 2500 Euros is illegal. In Argentina you now need to fill out a government form to get permission to buy foreign currency and must report all goods bought with a credit card abroad including on ebay and amazon.
  • verbal conversations - Canadian government installed microphones in its airports to record all conversations there. I imagine the US won't be far behind
  • thoughts - laser chemical detectors and face pattern scanners can tell if you are nervous or are hiding other emotions etc at airport and other scanning locations

What will living in the Gray State in April 2013 be like?

If you REALLY want to see what's coming -- and you can stomach it -- watch this mind-blowing trailer for a film project called "Gray State." WARNING: Extremely disturbing images, but probably quite accurate, too:

Movie info at http://www.indiegogo.com/graystatemovie

 

Opinions differ widely on exactly when this meltdown is going to take place. Brilliant investment strategist Max Keiser says the global meltdown will occur before April of 2013, and he's also on the record saying the U.S. government is going to "fire up the incinerators." That's to deal with the hoards of hungry, angry protesters who have no jobs, no savings and suddenly no welfare money to spend, either.



Whether you believe that apocalyptic vision or not, even in the most optimistic case, the debt collapse is inevitable. The laws of mathematics cannot be altered by merely hoping so. "Hope and change" doesn't actually work. You have to have REALITY on your side. Responsible spending. The federal government is the most irresponsible organization on the planet, as it is shoving us all into a financial catastrophe which will have an immense cost in human suffering and death, not to mention loss of freedoms.

 

It is difficult to imagine an "orderly" collapse. Hence the need for Martial Law, over a billion rounds of hollow point bullets purchased by the government, and so on. Did you really think all the 1.4 billion rounds of ammunition were just for "training purposes" as claimed by the mainstream media? C'mon. Stop being so naive. They're for deployment against the people when the collapse comes, got it?

The government is also working on creepy robotic land drones that can march around the cities with infrared cameras and shoot mounted weapons at selected human targets.

Video from:
ieee.org military robotics article


This is not science fiction. It's a DARPA-funded robotic army initiative. They already have the robots playing a game they call "follow the leader" but which is actually "pursue the human prey."


The U.S. military is also about to deploy a new wave of "Kamikazee drones" that carry an explosive payload and fly directly into their targets, setting off a massive detonation. This is reported in WIRED (http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/09/suicidal-drone-6-miles-away/) which says:

The "Lethal Miniature Aerial Munition System" -- It's for when the Army needs someone dead from up to six miles away in 30 minutes or less.

All freedom-loving Americans need to get prepared to not just survive the coming collapse, but also to defend yourself against an army of military robots unleashed against the American people. That's the ultimate dream of the global controllers, of course: To deploy an army of mindless robots that won't question orders when directed to open fire on protesters.

From http://www.naturalnews.com/037155_Eurozone_financial_collapse_Germany.html#ixzz26OLR8qAj

 

Out fighting chariots, battleships and how the US Empire is defeated in the end

This article explains how a seemly invincible empire (such as the current US empire and the past British and Hittite empires) can be suddenly militarially defeated by a weaker adversary.

 

The role of the US military in the downfall of American empire, and the suggestion I propose to offer is that one of the most likely triggers for an American imperial collapse is the experience of dramatic military defeat. I’m not suggesting, furthermore, that such an experience will happen in spite of the immense power of today’s US military machine; I’m suggesting that it will almost certainly happen because of that vast preponderance of force.

 

Chariots and battleships are simply two examples of a common theme in military history:  any military technology that becomes central to a nation’s way of war attracts a constituency—a group that includes officers who have made their careers commanding that technology, commercial interests who have made their money building and servicing that technology, and anyone else who has an economic or personal stake in the technology—and that constituency will defend their preferred technology against the competition until and unless repeated military defeat makes its abandonment inescapable. One weapon such constituencies routinely wield is the military scenario that assumes that the enemy must always make war in whatever way will bring out their preferred technology’s strengths, and never exploit its weaknesses. 

 
As far as I know, whatever literature ancient Egyptian chariot officers, horse breeders, and bow manufacturers may have churned out to glorify chariot warfare to the Egyptian reading public has not survived, but there’s an ample supply of books and articles from British presses between 1875 or so and the Second World War, praising the Royal Navy’s invincible battleships as the inevitable linchpin of British victory.  All this literature was produced to bolster the case for building and maintaining plenty of battleships, which was to the great advantage of naval officers, marine architects, and everyone else whose careers depended on plenty of battleships.  The fact that all this investment in battleships was a spectacular waste of money that might actually have done some good elsewhere did not register until it was too late to save the British Empire.

 

 

If my readers have any doubt that the same sort of literature is currently being churned out by the constituencies of today’s popular Pentagon weapons systems, I encourage them to visit the nearest public library and check out a copy of Tom Clancy’s 1999 puff piece Carrier: A Guided Tour of an Aircraft Carrier.  It’s a 348-page sales brochure for the most elaborate piece of military technology ever built, a modern nuclear aircraft carrier, which currently fills the same role in the US military that the battleship filled in that of imperial Britain. You needn’t expect to find substantive analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of this hugely expensive technology, or of the global military strategy or the suite of tactics that give it its context; again, this is a sales brochure, and it’s meant to sell carriers—or, more precisely, continued funding for carriers—to that fraction of the American people that concerns itself sufficiently with military affairs to write the occasional letter to its congresscritters.

 

 

The inevitable military scenario comes in the last chapter, where Clancy demonstrates conclusively that if a hopelessly outgunned and outclassed Third World nation were ever to launch a conventional naval attack against a US carrier group, the carrier group will probably be able to figure out some way to win. It would be a masterpiece of unintended comedy, if it weren’t for the looming shadow of all those other books before it, singing the praises of past military technologies whose many advantages didn’t turn out to include any part in winning or even surviving the next war.  Nor are carriers the only currently popular weapons system that benefits from this sort of uncritical praise; the US military is riddled with them, and thus with a series of potentially fatal vulnerabilities that rest partly on the unmentioned weaknesses of those technologies, and partly on a series of impending changes to the context of military action that follow from points we’ve discussed here many times already.

 

 

The US military faces at least three existential threats in the decades immediately ahead: 

  • The first is that rising powers will devise ways to monkeywrench the baroque complexity of the US military machine, leaving that machine as crippled and vulnerable as Hittite chariots were before the javelins of the Sea Peoples.
  • The second is that an ongoing revolution in military affairs will leave the entire massive arsenal of the US military as beside the point as all those British battleships were once the Second World War rolled around. 
  • The third is that the decline in fossil fuel supplies will make it impossible for the United States to maintain a way of war that, reduced to its simplest terms, consists of burning more petroleum than the other guy.

 

 

I’ve commented before that nothing seems so permanent as an empire on the verge of its final collapse, or as invulnerable as an army on the eve of total defeat. That’s a good general rule, but it’s even more crucial to keep in mind in thinking about military affairs.  The history of war is full of cases in which the stronger side—the side with the largest forces, the strongest alliances, the most advanced military technology—was crushed by a technically weaker rival.  That unexpected outcome can take place in many different ways, but all of them are a function of one simple and rarely remembered fact: military power is never a single uncomplicated variable.

More at original article

 

How Empires (including the US) decline and fall

In this article Armstrong explores how empires like the US, British, Roman and German medieval city states died (or in the US case will die).

So what should we expect? As the economy collapses, people will hoard and spend less. This is the check and balance against HYPERINFLATION. Furthermore, there are huge political ramifications involving a CORE RESERVE CURRENCY compared to Zimbabwe or Germany in the 1920s that cannot be ignored. The dollar cannot move into HYPERINFLATION for it is the reserve currency that would bring everything down with it. Empires do not die in that manner. The value of the dollar will certainly decline against assets, but it will not move into HYPERINFLATION. World War III would breakout before that.
Capital cannot simply flee to yuan, Brazil or any other place, because if the reserve currency goes, so does everything else. China’s reserves would vanish overnight. The notion of HYPERINFLATION is nice – just not practical. Empires collapse they have never expired by HYPERINFLATION. When an empire dies that is the major reserve of all nations, we must be concerned about a complete meltdown and the breakup of the nation long-before HYPERINFLATION UNDERGROUND economy and a store of wealth in time of political crisis. Remember – institutions will always be vulnerable to seizure. So never leave your gold in a bank that could be seized. You are defeating the very purpose of buying gold in such circumstances.
During the worst periods of the Great Depression, many communities were temporarily deprived of normal monetary supplies and functions because of bank failures, hoarding of money, and inability to collect taxes. People simply had no money to spend. To counteract this situation, various forms emergency currency or “scrip” were issued. The first of these appeared as early as 1931, though it was not until a year later that it was being issued in any appreciable quantities. By February of 1933, according to a Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Affairs estimate, there were over 400 communities using some form of emergency fiat currency – and this was before the official “bank holiday” and the resulting flood of scrip across the country. Gold was hoarded – not used as money.


Clearly, people will create money if the state fails to provide it. Roman coins exist in quantity today solely due to the very same human trends that appear in every crisis – hoarding. This reduces the VELOCITY of money creating DEFLATION yet INFLATION as costs rise..

 

I have stated numerous times that the purchasing power of the Roman denarius collapsed to the point it purchased 1/50th of its previous worth. The German Hyperinflation was 170 marks to the dollar at the beginning to 87 trillion. To compare this with the fall of Rome with money dropping to 1/50th of its former value, that is only 170 to 8500. Rome did not go the way of hyperinflation. It was the CORE economy and it collapse at 170 to 8500 level not 170 to 87 trillion.

 

Sorry, but you can die in a desert from extreme heat or freeze to death in Antarctica from extreme cold. To survive, we need a temperate climate to live within. DEFLATION or INFLATION can kill an economy. Empires do not die by HYPERINFLATION – that is reserved for the fringe. When an empire dies, it historically has ALWAYS been by DEFLATION/STAGFLATION. How? Real wealth is driven from the ABOVEGROUND economy into the UNDERGROUND economy where it is hoarded and tucked away. This is why we find hoards of Roman coins. This reduces the VELOCITY of money and commerce collapses. This is ALWAYS AND WITHOUT EXCEPTION how empires die. This is why there was “scrip” issued in the United States during the Great Depression. The VELOCITY of money came to a halt in different regions.


The British Empire did not die of HYPERINFLATION. The pound collapsed in value. It did not inflate into oblivion. The British Empire simply rolled over and died. The decline of the sterling silver penny of England was no different a path than the decline and fall of Rome. The United States will follow the same path and that means there is a risk that it will break apart into regional sections ONLY AFTER the dollar is hit very hard following Europe and then Japan.

How the Matrix is kept strong in your subconscious mind

How the Matrix is kept strong in your subconscious mind.

 

This YouTube documentary juxtaposes pop culture images of consumption and bubble-gum images of sex and materialism, with the brutality of war from which the powers that be wishes to distract the populace.



A TV interview of Aldous Huxley offers insight into the inevitable role television would play in our lives. It is possibly one of the most importantly prophetic interviews in history,? and integration of contemporary news clips only emphasizes his point further.

 

This video shows the programming taken from just one day of prime time TV

 

9/11 Breakthrough: PBS Documentary Raising Serious Questions on 9/11 Goes Viral

I have read about issues with the official story of 9/11 for several years and watch videos on YouTube but this is the first time PBS (the US version of the BBC) has covered it in a 90 minute documentary. At the very least there are some very strange hard evidence on 9/11 that contradicts the official story and at the most the US government was involved. This is based on scientists and engineers that have reviewed the evidence. Either way worth reading and watching and forming your own opinion.

A 9/11 documentary aired on PBS and available for free viewing on the PBS website is going viral. '9/11: Explosive Evidence - Experts Speak Out' was produced by Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, a courageous group of over 1,500 architects and engineers which has dared to ask hard questions about 9/11 and present the disturbing hard evidence.

In this beautifully produced, 90-minute documentary, over 40 scientific experts share their professional insights about the events of 9/11.

To watch the full revealing video on the PBS website, click on this link:

http://video.pbs.org/video/2270078138

To watch a concise, 15-minute version of this excellent documentary:

http://personalgrowthcourses.net/video/911/world_trade_center_wtc_7_building_video_15


As of Sept. 8, 2012, the PBS website shows this 9/11 documentary is the second most watched documentary of the week on PBS. According to this Digital Journal article, it is also the most shared of all PBS documentaries at this time. You are invited to watch this highly educational film and spread the word to your friends.

In addition to these 1,500 architects and engineers who are calling for a new, impartial investigation of 9/11, over 1,000 government and military officials, professors, pilots, and 9/11 survivors and family members have publicly stated that the 9/11 Commission Report is fatally flawed.

Among these respected individuals are two former U.S. Senators, a former FBI director, the former president of Italy, and many more. To explore their compelling statements, click here.

Hundreds of major media articles also raise serious questions about the official story of 9/11. You can find a two-page summary of dozens of these articles with links for verification at this link. A longer ten-page summary at this link goes into much more detail.

For an abundance of other reliable, verifiable information suggesting a major cover-up of 9/11, explore the resources in the "What you can do" section immediately below. Thanks for caring. By joining together and spreading the word, we can make a big difference.

With best wishes for a transformed world,
Fred Burks for PEERS and WantToKnow.info
Former language interpreter for Presidents Bush and Clinton

Note: Consider donating to Colorado PBS, which originally broadcast this 9/11 documentary, as a way of thanking them for their courage. Leave a note on why you are donating. Here's the link.

 

This message is available online at http://www.WantToKnow.info/911/9-11_documentary_pbs

 

The Mission of WantToKnow.info:
To provide our readers with reliable, verifiable information on major cover-ups,
and to serve as a call to work together for the good of all

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