Posts Tagged ‘invest’

By EconoChristian.com

Governments around the world seem to be increasing the grasp of their reach into the daily lives of individual citizens. Increasing amounts of taxes, regulations, and intervention in the daily transactions of business are just a few of the examples of the hand of government that are intruding upon individual liberties. As if national governments were not enough; the collective nations of the world decided to embark on the idea of forming an inter-national organization tasked with the responsibility of supposedly maintaining international order and being the moderator of participant national government’s bureaucratic wishes.

The end of World War 2 also supposedly marked the end of the atrocities committed which were often caused by negative nationalism; that is, the introverted, angst-ridden type of nationalism that supported dictators such as Mussolini who formed the basis for fascism. Out of the ashes came the United Nations with its task of rebuilding war-torn Europe. Historians would unlikely refute the fact that the world needed a stabilizing factor against the chaos at the time. However, historians rarely point-out that the main cause of the first and second World War were chiefly caused by international bankers who financed these blood conflicts with the help of individual countries’ ruling elite who included heads of business, and corrupted heads of public representation. Indeed, the United Nations — as an international governing body — has failed to live up to its promises.

Since the major world wars, the United Nations — through the collective agreement and accession of its members — embarked on a multitude of previously sovereign state-run enterprises including the enforcement of human rights, environmentalism, nation-building, and the upcoming-proposed global taxation.

Proponents of these endeavors claim that state sovereignty is unimportant and that the accession of previously state-run into a central governing body such as the UN serves a useful purpose. Critics of the UN see it as the beginnings of a new communist-era body; effectively stripping previously sovereign nations of their individual liberty, including all those who call themselves citizens in it, and increased corruption (as government tends to be notorious for). Indeed, evidence definitely points toward the latter with examples ranging from the the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol (which undermines state sovereingty); the failure of the Security Council to enforce UN resolutions; and the failure of the UN to stop the United States from unilaterally attacking Iraq in 2003.

Corruption is also a defining and defiling mechanism to which the United Nations operates its arms of bureaucratic-wielding power. Recent examples included the exposure of the Oil-For-Food scandal which involved the son of the then-Secretary General Kofi Annan. This scandal involved high-profile dignitaries, including Kofi Annan himself, receiving large bribes in exchange for their silence of indignities being committed in Iraq (among others).

The United Nations’ attempts at cessation of human rights and genocidal violations by member and non-member countries has also mired this supposed great organization in controversy during the last 50 years, with the Palestinian/Israeli conflict being the chief flashpoint of controversy. The organization was criticized for producing a disproportionate number of resolutions blaming Israel for its treatment of the Palestinian people. It has also equally been criticized for letting countries such as Cuba, Sudan, and China, for violating human rights.

In conclusion, it is easily seen that the vision of a successor to the early 20th century’s League of Nations (a similar endeavor to the UN) has been a failure by the elite of member nations to create an all-encompassing world-governing body. Not only has it been criticized for eroding state sovereignty as witnessed by the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol, but also has been chastised for the failure of the enforcement of human rights, and lastly the failure of member nations to uphold anti-corruption policies within the organization.

Why are politicians, media and businesspeople hyping the credit and financial crisis as if it were something they didn’t see coming? It has been in the making for decades, made worse since Canada signed away its economic sovereignty to the unelected World Trade Organization and NAFTA. For these reasons, Canada should be holding its own “Boston Tea Party” that the citizens of the United States are currently planning on implementing to protest massive government intervention in every facet of their economy.

This pipe dream of stabilizing Canada’s economy is not solved by shipping our manufacturing base, already less than a quarter of our economic activity, to countries where they utilize slave labour and manipulate their currency. Taxation is not the solution when the money really comes from our childrens’ futures in the form of tremendous debt. Indeed, this has been the staple of government policy since the early start of the 20th century; that is, Keynesian economics and government intervention.

No one should be opposed to fair trade, but it’s time to recognize “free trade” is fiction because every trading relationship is managed in some way. This is true because Canada and the United States have become the world’s dumping ground for cheap, slave-labor goods produced in places where there are low or no labor standards or social safety nets like the Western world has.
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Our major trading partners manage their economies to benefit their citizens, so why can’t we? Get our jobs back, put money in our wallets, let us spend it as we see fit and watch the economy grow again. Taxing does nothing but impede spending and discourages people from making proper investments and encourages outrageous financial scandals. The World Trade Organization was never voted on or discussed with the general working man or woman on “main street,” so who’s benefitting from job losses and the so called “knowledge based economy” which is really just a euphemism for unstable industries based solely on services which is nothing more than redistributing wealth rather than creating it.

You can’t spend your way out of a recession. You have to save and produce your way out of it.

What about this “Tea Party?”

The Boston Tea Party was a direct action protest by colonists in Boston, a town in the British colony of Massachusetts, against the British government. On December 16, 1773, after officials in Boston refused to return three shiploads of taxed tea to Britain, a group of colonists boarded the ships and destroyed the tea by throwing it into Boston Harbor. The incident remains an iconic event of American history, and has often been referenced in other political protests.

They’re calling themselves the “Tea Party Tax Protesters” and already dozens of them have held events across the USA. The protesters say they’re fed up with excessive state and federal tax increases and they’re rallying to express their outrage and demand change (KKTV, 2009).

More than $2 trillion has been spent on bailouts and stimulus packages in the last year. In the $800 billion spending package, members of Congress had a few hours to read 1,000 pages of bill text. No one in Congress noticed that it authorized bonuses to AIG executives, which the House later voted to tax at 90 percent. Congress imposed a penalty on payments that it authorized! That should have been a sure sign that Congress was trying to spend too much money too quickly (Kansas City, 2009).

Written by EconoChristian.com with outside sources.

A personal account of the decline of manufacturing in the Western world is poignantly displayed in the following post. It seems that with the financial manipulation of countries like China, combined with their immense labor market, along with non-existent labor laws and environmental controls, will allow companies to displace middle class Americans and Canadians out of the manufacturing sector. The question is, what will happen when almost nothing is manufactured in America anymore?

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Economists and gullible financial analysts, not to mention mentally disabled laymen touting the end of manufacturing as good thing, miss some central points concerning losing manufacturing:

The key fact is that manufacturing is the back bone of an economy because this sector is the one which actually produces tangible items. Some might say that intangible items like financial services, computer programs, and the like are products, but the reality of the situation is that these activities can be done almost anywhere in the world by anyone. What will stop these industries from fleeing just as manufacturing did? Indeed, they would flee even faster due to their nebulous nature. We have seen are only in the infant stages of the off shoring phemonenon of industries such as financial services and computer programming by large multi national companies.

Some facts and figures:

The US global merchandise trade and current account deficits hit annual rates of $900 billion in the fourth quarter of 2005, which amounted to 7 percent of US GDP, twice the previous record of the mid-1980s (as a result of which the dollar declined by 50 percent over the three-year period 1985–87). The deficits could reach annual rates of $1 trillion within the next year or so.

China’s role in the global imbalances is even greater than these numbers might suggest. A substantial increase in the value of the Chinese currency, the renminbi, is essential to reduce the imbalances, but China has blocked any significant renminbi rise by intervening massively in the foreign exchange markets, buying $15 billion to $20 billion per month for several years to keep market pressures from pushing its currency up. China apparently sees its currency undervaluation policy as an off-budget export and job subsidy that, at least to date, has avoided effective international sanction (Peterson Institute, 2006)

Figure 2. Rising imports fuel trade deficit with China : Canada-China trade, customs basis

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Are the Chinese taking over the world?

I grew up in Lebanon, Pennsylvania. I was the son of a steelworker. As a small boy, I watched in disbelief as Americans bought foreign products. Now that all the decent working class jobs have fled the country, people are beginning to wonder why they’re all so poor. As I hear more and more people complaining that they can’t make ends meet, I gloat in their suffering. They know the pain that both my father and myself felt when our jobs went overseas because Americans bought foreign products.

All this bunk about high pay, benefits, and the like is what caused the jobs to leave is complete rubbish. Despite the pay, benefits, and the like, companies of the past still turned a profit. They simply couldn’t compete with the cheap foreign labor (caused by currency manipulation and little or non-existent labor/environmental laws) and America’s myopic lust for cheap foreign goods. Since all the jobs are now gone and all that we’re left with is low paying service jobs, those products are so cheap are they? Why must companies have such huge profit margins? Shirts that cost eight cents to manufacture are sold here for twenty plus dollars. A pair of sneakers that cost a dollar to manufacture are sold for as much as 100 – 200 dollars all so some CEO and a few stock holders can have several million dollar mansions, private jets, and the like…
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“Education is the key,” many cry. The only education that this country ever needed was the one I got from my steel-working father, “buy American!” Not everybody is capable of getting an education. What we need more than education are working class jobs that afford the average person the ability to buy a house and support a family. Until this happens, we’re destined to have a lot of people on the dole.

I’m a prime example of how this country failed. I used to have a very good working class job. For over ten years, I worked this job. I could afford a house, support a child, and a wife. After losing everything to a foreign market, I fell into a very bad depression. It’s now lasted some fourteen years, and for the past six, I’ve been on Social Security Disability.

At one point, I cost my state 10,000 – 12,000 dollars a month for nearly three years as I sat in a state run mental institution. Why should I work for five to seven dollars an hour when I can sit at home and collect 400 tax-free dollars each week? I’ve tried college, but the depression is too great; moreover, if I do finish college, I’ll be a Registered Nurse. Do you really want somebody who’s embittered at the society that bought him out of a job taking care of our nation’s sick? Education…

I can’t wait to see this country completely fail!

Signed,
The Acerbate American

Why is this happening?

5. To bring about the end to all industrialization and the production of nuclear generated electric power in what they call “the post-industrial zero-growth society”. Excepted are the computer- and service industries. US industries that remain will be exported to countries such as Mexico where abundant slave labor is available. As we saw in 1993, this has become a fact through the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement, known as NAFTA. Unemployables in the US, in the wake of industrial destruction, will either become opium-heroin and/or cocaine addicts, or become statistics in the elimination of the “excess population” process we know of today as Global 2000 (Educate yourself, 2009)

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Written by EconoChristian.com with help from various sources.

Inflation is on its way and we’re not prepared for it, says establishment shill economists and financial analysts Kevin Phillips and Nouriel Roubini, who both published books within the last 2 years predicting the rise of this insidious evil lurking around the corner in economies where government plays a nefarious intrusion in the lives of private citizens.

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For those green to the term, inflation occurs when the money supply is increased and “chases” prices of goods and services; much of which all people in countries use and consume on a daily basis. When this happens, prices often skyrocket but are not matched by increased sums of income for purchasing power. Essentially it hurts the savers, low income people, and those with high debt loads on their backs because these groups of people are not able to comfortably absorb price shocks as those with no debt and/or high incomes and large amount of wealth.

A year ago, Kevin Phillips, an ex advisor to the Nixon administration, warned of a the pending explosion of a 25-year “multibubble” that started in the 1980s, when the financial sector accounted for 10 percent to 12 percent of the U.S. economy had started metastasizing into an “arguably crippling” 20 percent to 21 percent by the middle of this decade (Reuters; Daniel Trotta, 2009).

Indeed, all of the government manipulation of the US economy — not to mention the governments and economies in the rest of the world — is starting to come home to roost. All of the overleveraging and “easy credit” was bound to create a disaster all of which can be blamed on U.S. Treasury Secretaries all the way back to the Nixon administration, but more prevalently during the Clinton and Bush regimes.

The fact is that central bank manipulation — government manipulation — is the prima facie for the financial bubbles which have been plagueing economies of the world for quite some time since the introduction of central banks in the early to mid twentieth century when the Federal Reserve (a quasi-private institution) was established by international bankers in the 1930s in the United States.

The US economy — already suffering from bank failures, insane trade deficits, and astronomical public debt — has not seen the full effect of these facts and is about to encounter further hardship from areas ordinary Americans rely on day to day; that being credit card debt and personal loans. Since the banking sector has essentially restricted loans to those with previously good credit ratings, many businesses relying on cheap credit are being held in the mud. In a corollarily to the housing bust that occured in the past year, the US economy has yet to witness the fruition of other sectors that have relied on previously cheap credit manipulated by the central bank, those being the commercial and industrial real estate markets.

What economists, politicians, and pundits do not mention is the poignant fact that the entire monetary system of the world — having been essentially taken over by the Federal Reserve through the forced creation of central banks in each country around the globe — has enforced the creation of fiat, or government issue money. This fasci of money has throughout history been the target of control and manipulation of all politicians, dictators, and despots. Convincingly, Rome fell mostly because of their issuance and debasement of their currency.

In fact, at the end of the Roman empire, their mercernary legions refused to take Roman currency. “Whenever a nation slips from wealth creation to wealth preservation, it becomes increasingly difficult to sustain the prior level of wealth. As the cost of maintaining the Legions went up, the ROI on having them declined. In order to pay the cost of preservation, Rome debased its currency multiple times. Debasement is a way to pay today’s bills with tomorrows worthless coins. That led to incredibly high rates of inflation. Payment in kind often substituted for worthless currency” (Newsvine.com, 2009). It surely seems the United States economy is on this very same route since the US dollar is bring printed out of existence as we speak to pay for a tripled debt (now currently approximately 15 trillion dollars) — a debt already unsustainable during and previously to the Clinton administration. “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.” is stated in the Holy Bible in Ecclesiastes 1:9.

With Canada being such a close neighbor with the United States, and sharing such a huge amount of trade volume with its neighbor, it will surely experience a severe bout of inflation to match the economic pain being experienced in the United States. “Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said Friday (April, 2009) the Canadian economy is likely to “accelerate” out of what he deemed a “mild” recession – although warning that the next problem policy-makers may face is inflation” (Financial Post, 2009). The primary problem, however, is not trade issues, but debt incurred by the “financial stimulus” that Canada’s political elite are pushing on the Canadian populous as the economic savior. Keynes himself would be so proud.

The Obama Administration will not save us

For those thinking the Obama regime has the answers the solutions, please think again for the same people who worked for previous administration are working for this administration. At the helm of the newly created “economic recovery board” is Paul Volcker, a Nixon and Carter-era economist who was the former Federal Reserve Chairman at that time. It doesn’t stop there for the Federal Reserve Chairman in this term is Ben Bernanke, a former Bush administration Federal Reserve Chairman. How can things change when things stay the same? Indeed, Einstein told us that insanity is when you do the same things and expect different results.

Government intervention is now in such an elevated state that the entire banking system is at risk of being nationalized. Many major banks have already been taken over by the US government and many more are in danger of being usurped as well. It is obvious the current ‘crisis’ has been engineered to put the economic reins of power into the hands of ‘dear government’ who will guide us toward a socialist paradise with a controlled economy.

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The Obama Deception is a hard-hitting film that completely destroys the myth that Barack Obama is working for the best interests of the American people. The Obama phenomenon is a hoax carefully crafted by the captains of the New World Order. He is being pushed as savior in an attempt to con the American people into accepting global slavery. We have reached a critical juncture in the New World Order’s plans. and only by exposing the con can we help to save freedom in America. The Obama Deception is not about Left or Right: it’s about a One World Government. The international banks plan to loot the people of the United States and turn them into slaves on a Global Plantation. Covered in this film: who Obama works for, what lies he has told, and his real agenda, and how his initial appointments and actions prove he serves the corporate oligarchs, not the American people. If you want to know the facts and cut through all the hype, this is the film for you.

Article written by EconoChristian.com with references to various sources stated herein.

The LETS is a cooperative common currency that has been talked about in freedom circles for many, many years, and it appears that something similar to it has been catching new ground as the US dollar begins its slow decline into obliteration and imitation of every currency that has been printed and debased out of existence by a tyranical federal government.

Local Exchange Trading Systems (LETS) also known as LETSystems are local, non-profit exchange networks in which goods and services can be traded without the need for printed currency. In some places, e.g. Toronto, the scheme has been called the Local Employment and Trading System.

A Brief History Of Currency in Jesus’ Time

In the time of Jesus the coins current in Israel were Roman, Greek, Syrian and Jewish. However, the Jews were allowed to issue coins only in bronze.

Large sums were expressed in talents and mnas. The talent equaled about $2,000 in US currency. The mina was 1/60 of a talent, or about $35.00.

The silver coins mentioned in the NT are: The Syrian stater (about 50 cents), the Roman denarius (about 20 cents), the Greek drachma, equivalent to the denarius. The stater was accepted as equal to the Jewish shekel, 1/50 of a mina (about 65 cents), which was the Temple tax for two persons. The denarius was the usual day’s wage for a laborer in the field, and it was the coin of the tax to the Emperor.

The bronze coins referred to, are the Roman assarion (one cent), and quadrants (1/4 of a cent), the Jewish perutah or lepton, which was worthy only 1/8 of a cent, was the coin of the “widow’s mite.”

Where LETS started

Michael Linton originated the term “Local Exchange Trading System” in 1983 and, for a time ran the Comox Valley LETSystems in Courtenay, British Columbia.[1] The system he designed was intended as an adjunct to the national currency, rather than a replacement for it,[2] although there are examples of individuals who have managed to replace their use of national currency through inventive usage of LETS.[citation needed]

LETS networks use interest-free local credit so direct swaps do not need to be made. For instance, a member may earn credit by doing childcare for one person and spend it later on carpentry with another person in the same network. In LETS, unlike other local currencies, no scrip is issued, but rather transactions are recorded in a central location open to all members. As credit is issued by the network members, for the benefit of the members themselves, LETS are considered mutual credit systems (Wikipedia).
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A small but growing number of cash-strapped communities are printing their own money. Borrowing from a Depression-era idea, they are aiming to help consumers make ends meet and support struggling local businesses.

The systems generally work like this: Businesses and individuals form a network to print currency. Shoppers buy it at a discount — say, 95 cents for $1 value — and spend the full value at stores that accept the currency.

Communities print their own currency to keep cash flowing

Workers with dwindling wages are paying for groceries, yoga classes and fuel with Detroit Cheers, Ithaca Hours in New York, Plenty in North Carolina or BerkShares in Massachusetts.

Ed Collom, a University of Southern Maine sociologist who has studied local currencies, says they encourage people to buy locally. Merchants, hurting because customers have cut back on spending, benefit as consumers spend the local cash.

“We wanted to make new options available,” says Jackie Smith of South Bend, Ind., who is working to launch a local currency. “It reinforces the message that having more control of the economy in local hands can help you cushion yourself from the blows of the marketplace.”
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About a dozen communities have local currencies, says Susan Witt, founder of BerkShares in the Berkshires region of western Massachusetts. She expects more to do it.

Under the BerkShares system, a buyer goes to one of 12 banks and pays $95 for $100 worth of BerkShares, which can be spent in 370 local businesses. Since its start in 2006, the system, the largest of its kind in the country, has circulated $2.3 million worth of BerkShares. In Detroit, three business owners are printing $4,500 worth of Detroit Cheers, which they are handing out to customers to spend in one of 12 shops.

During the Depression, local governments, businesses and individuals issued currency, known as scrip, to keep commerce flowing when bank closings led to a cash shortage.

By law, local money may not resemble federal bills or be promoted as legal tender of the United States, says Claudia Dickens of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing.

“We print the real thing,” she says.

The IRS gets its share. When someone pays for goods or services with local money, the income to the business is taxable, says Tom Ochsenschlager of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. “It’s not a way to avoid income taxes, or we’d all be paying in Detroit dollars,” he says.
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Pittsboro, N.C., is reviving the Plenty, a defunct local currency created in 2002. It is being printed in denominations of $1, $5, $20 and $50. A local bank will exchange $9 for $10 worth of Plenty.

“We’re a wiped-out small town in America,” says Lyle Estill, president of Piedmont Biofuels, which accepts the Plenty. “This will strengthen the local economy. … The nice thing about the Plenty is that it can’t leave here.”

Brought to you by EconoChristian.com but written by Marisol Bello of USA TODAY.

This has been a pressing issue for the United States since 1994 when China started to peg it’s currency to the United States dollar. In 2005 it started to change this pegging regime to a more managed, floating currency policy in which it would be weighted against other currencies including the US dollar.

The Chinese deny any claims that they have been manipulating their currency, but it is clear they have been and are still doing so now as we speak. Why else would they change their pegged currency regime in July 2005?

By REUTERS

Filed at 7:45 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama should consider new steps to stop “China’s ongoing manipulation of its currency,” including a possible case at the World Trade Organization, U.S. congressional Democrats said on Monday.

“We urge the new administration to consider a new approach,” top Democrats on the House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee said in a letter to Obama one day before the U.S. Trade Representative’s office was scheduled to release its annual report on foreign trade barriers.

Many U.S. lawmakers have complained for years that China’s currency is undervalued and gives Chinese companies an unfair price advantage. The concern is fueled by the huge U.S. trade gap with China, which hit a record $266.3 billion in 2008.

Obama will meet with Chinese President Hu Jintao later this week in London, where both are attending a summit meeting of the Group of 20 developed and developing countries.

Last year, House Ways and Means Democrats used the March 31 trade barriers report to excoriate the administration of former President George W. Bush for failing to aggressively enforce U.S. trade agreements and act on currency concerns.

They demanded Bush immediately begin formal WTO consultations with China and to “file a WTO action if China does not agree swiftly to begin to revalue the yuan.”

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This year’s letter to Obama was softer in tone, but said the Bush administration policy of “quiet diplomacy” to pressure China to raise the value of its currency had failed.

They urged Obama to consider several options to increase multilateral pressure on China, including insisting the International Monetary Fund enforce its rule that members “avoid manipulating exchange rates … to gain an unfair competitive advantage over other members.”

Other actions could include bringing a case at WTO, beginning multilateral talks aimed at reducing currency-driven imbalances and enforcing existing U.S. trade and exchange rate laws, the Ways and Means Democrats said.

During last year’s campaign, Obama also criticized China for manipulating its currency. Earlier this year, U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner angered Beijing when he repeated those comments to the Senate Finance Committee.

China has proposed shifting away from a dollar-dominated world in favor of new a global reserve currency under the International Monetary Fund. That has prompted both Obama and Geithner to defend the current system.

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The Obama administration soon will have its first official chance to say whether it believes China is manipulating its currency when the Treasury Department issues a semi-annual report on foreign exchange rate practices.

That report is due on April 15, but is often late because of the sensitivity of the issue.

The Ways and Means Democrats noted the Bush administration was the only one not to label any country as a currency manipulator since the report was created in 1988.

“China’s massive, prolonged, one-way and sterilized intervention in the currency market, its unprecedented foreign exchange accumulation ($1.9 trillion), and its massive current account surplus demonstrate that, once again, China is manipulating its currency,” the lawmakers said.

One local college is saving students money by offering text book rentals. Metropolitan communinty college is one of t he few schools in the US offering text book rentals and the savings are astronomical. With the costs of text books triplling in the past 20 years, students have come up with a brillian way to reduce their tuition and book-buying costs. Indeed, Textbook prices in university bookstores increase annually by about 6 percent per year, according to a study by the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

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San Mateo California Community District, which includes Skyline College, the College of San Mateo, is one of the few institutions nationwide to have adopted a textbook rental service in 2006. The program is funded by large state grants, but also solicits private donations to build a large bookstore inventory, according to the bookstore’s Web site.

The difference between renting and buying is astronomical. The school saw a high-toll on the high cost of typical books, so they saw this new book rental idea as a novel way to reduce educational costs and making education more accessible. At the end of the semester if the student wants to keep the book, all he/she has to do is pay the difference and balance of the book.

The method most students used to deal ith high book costs in the past was that they would either photocopy the books, buy them and return them before the end-date, and/or photocopy them and then resell them or share the costs with their friends.

Perhaps this would be an ideal business opportunity for those of the entrepreneurial spirit among you? Starting-up a business in many countries is a cinch and obtaining permission to re-sell books should not be a problem in most jurisfictions. Setting up a shop near a school campus would probably be your best bet in maintaining a steady client base of students who seek low-cost textbooks.

The typical method to reduce costs for students these days is to resell their books after they have read them to their student-union-managed bookstore where they often find books up to 80 per cent off their original cover price. The other alternative is to loan the books from the library, but having only a few copies of the books on-hand lends to long line-ups at the library for the exact same copy, and this leaves a majority of students without necessary course material.
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Technology has come a long way in making educational material accessible to students especially with the introduction of electronic books or “E-books” where they are never printed to paper but only made available on the computer in digital format.

If the US and global economy as a whole are about to enter into a depression (if we’re not there already), has anyone bothered to wonder how long such a depression would last?  Many commentators and analysts, including economists and so-called financial gurus — who have been wrong numerous times in the past — have tried to predict various scenarios not necessarily dealing with an upcoming depression.  However, the trend is there that the people we put so much trust in to manage our finances — both public and private — are often times very wrong.

This time, on the other side of the coin, is Martin Armstrong.  A controversial financial analyst who predicted the 1987 market crash, the sputtering-out of the Japanese economy, and many other events, has came out with a startling revelation as to how long the depression many (if not most) analysts believe we are in at this moment. In his startling revelatory essay called “The Coming Great Depression and why government is powerless” he illustrates that we are facing a depression that will last 23 to 26 years.  Indeed, the longest depression in modern times.

It is frustrating to read so many comparisons of our current situation with 1929 while watching policy be set-in-motion to create spending on infrastructure. Everyone has their hand out looking for a bailout like a bunch of street burns pleading for money so they can get drunk or stay drunk. Almost nothing of what I have read is close to being accurate. The scary part is depressions are inevitably caused by politicians who may be paving the road with good intentions, but are relying upon analysis so biased, we do not stand a chance.

Our fate will not be determined by the stock market performance. Neither can we stimulate the economy by increasing spending on
infrastructure any more than buying your wife a mink coat, will improve the grades of your child in school. We are facing a Depression that will last 23-26 years. The response of government is going to seal our fate because they cannot learn from the past and will make the same mistakes that every politician has made before them. Even if the Dow Industrials make new highs next week (impossible), the Depression is unstoppable with current models and tools.

The subsequent response from government is going to ultimately seal our fate because politicians have not been able to learn from past mistakes or done their homework by reading wide varieties of academics like the Austrian school.  Confirming this, leading economists like Marc Faber has stated in the past that this depression will be worse than the last one we had during the 1930s because of the stimulus packages the governments around the world are proposing.  However, Marc has been forecasting a depression lasting between 2 to 15 years.

Monetary Safe Haven?

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As always, storing your money in the form of gold or silver is the safest bet to keep your money safe from inflation or deflation. This cannot be stressed enough and if you want to keep your family safe, it would be advisable to keep a sizeable chunk of your assets in hard form such as the precious metals. Whether it be bullion, gold jewellery, silver coins, or any other physical form of precious metal, you will be much safer than the guy down the street who stores his money in “fiat” government paper money.

Don’t believe me? Check this out.

Weaker U.S. Dollar Boosts Gold and Silver
Thu Mar 19, 2009 12:05pm

(CEP News) – Gold prices are extending their gains Thursday as the U.S. dollar continues to tumble lower.

Gold, along with all commodities, appears to be benefiting from the FOMC decision to implement major quantitative easing measures on Wednesday. The Fed announced that it would expand its balance sheet by almost $1.2 trillion, which includes purchasing $300 billion in longer-term Treasuries.

Gold prices sold off modestly in overnight trading, but prices held around $930 an ounce and sharply recovered just ahead of the North American trading session. Renewed pressure on the U.S. dollar at 8 a.m. EDT helped to push gold prices to session highs. Gold is trading just below $960.

In the last two days, CBOT spot prices have climbed over $75 dollars and commodity strategists are looking for further gains, as investors move into gold as a hedge against inflation.

Along with gold prices, silver has also done extremely well. Although the precious metal didn’t receive much of a boost following the FOMC announcement and ended the day around $12 an ounce, it has outperformed gold on Thursday. CBOT silver futures started rallying during the European session and have been on a steady rise, jumping over 8% during the trading day.

I ran into an email from my good friends at Elliott Wave and decided to share this informative article with you.

I’m always striving to bring you the most informative, enlightening content. Sometimes written by me, sometimes not.

Question: Can increased government spending help stop the crisis?
What do you think about the new mortgage bailout plan – or bailouts and proposals for additional government spending in general? The opinions on whether or not this will ultimately work seem so divided…

Answer:
In Ch. 13 of his Conquer the Crash, “Can the Fed Stop Deflation?”, Bob Prechter writes; quote: “Can the government spend our way out of deflation and depression? Governments sometimes employ aspects of’ ‘fiscal policy,’ i.e., altering spending or taxing policies, to ‘pump up’ demand for goods and services. Raising taxes for any reason would be harmful. Increasing government spending (with or without raising taxes) simply transfers wealth from savers to spenders, substituting a short-run stimulus for long-run financial deterioration.

Japan has used this approach for twelve years, and it hasn’t worked. Slashing taxes absent government spending cuts would be useless because the government would have to borrow the difference. Cutting government spending is a good thing, but politics will prevent its happening prior to a crisis. … Prior excesses have resulted in a lack of solutions to the deflation problem.
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Like the discomfort of drug addiction withdrawal, the discomfort of credit addiction withdrawal cannot be avoided. The time to have thought about avoiding a system-wide deflation was years ago. Now it’s too late. It does not matter how it happens; in the right psychological environment, deflation will win, at least initially.”

Question: In deflation, what’s best: to have no debts or preserve capital?
During a deflationary period, if you had to choose one or the other – debt reduction or preservation of capital – which one is MOST important?

Answer:
In Ch. 29 of Conquer the Crash, “Calling in Loans and Paying off Debts,” Elliott Wave International’s founder and president Bob Prechter writes; quote: “Being debt-free means that you are freer, period. You don’t have to sweat credit card payments.

You don’t have to sweat home or auto repossession or loss of your business. You don’t have to work 6 percent more, or 10 percent more, or 18 percent more just to stay even. …the best mortgage is none at all. If you own your home outright and lose your job, you will still have a residence.” Of course, one could pay off some debts AND keep some capital – it all depends on an individual’s risk appetite and tolerance.

Question: Which news and events can move the market and which can’t?
I’ve noticed that a lot of times, the stock market does the opposite of what the news suggests it should do – or does nothing at all. Can you make a distinction, if there is one, between news that does not move the market and the news that does? I’m talking specifically about the news and anticipation of another bailout plan plus stimulus package that is supposedly rallying U.S. stocks right now.

Answer:
The subject of the news is almost irrelevant. What IS relevant is the state of investors’ collective mood at the time of the news release. If they feel bullish (or bearish), they will interpret just about any news story as bullish (or bearish) too. (Or “dismiss the news,” as financial commentators often put it.)

If you need a good example, just compare the February 6 horrific U.S. jobs report with that day’s rally in the DJIA. Or, contrast the February 10 passage of the “$838 Billion Economic Stimulus Package” with a 300+ drop on the Dow. The important thing to keep in mind is that while the news can cause short-term price spikes, it has no effect on the longer-term trend; only social mood does.
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Question: If this deflation deepens, will the US dollar crash?
Bob Prechter’s Conquer the Crash and your monthly publications like Bob’s Elliott Wave Theorist, you’ve been saying that in deflation, “cash is king” as the value of the dollar rises. But won’t the U.S. government’s spending spree cause the dollar to crash instead against the euro and other currencies?

Answer:
It’s very important to make a distinction between the dollar’s domestic and international values. In a deflation, the value of any currency – the U.S. dollar, in this case – rises domestically: As asset prices fall, each unit of currency buys more domestically-available goods and services.

“Cash is the only asset that assuredly rises in value during deflation.” – Bob Prechter, Conquer the Crash, Ch. 18. However, the USD’s international value (as represented by the U.S. Dollar Index) in a deflation can rise OR fall relative to other currencies. If, for instance, the euro is deflating faster than the dollar, then the dollar’s value relative to the euro will rise, and vice versa.

Question: Won’t government bailouts turn deflation into inflation?
Trillions of dollars in bailouts “injected” into the economy – won’t they reverse deflation and turn it into inflation instead?

Answer:
Here is a quote from Bob Prechter’s October 2008 Elliott Wave Theorist: “Believers in perpetual inflation think that the government can keep assuming others’ bad debts infinitely. But it can’t. The only reason that Congress has gotten away with issuing this latest blizzard of new IOUs is that society is still near the top of a Grand Supercycle, so optimism and confidence still have the upper hand.

However, as pessimism and skepticism continue to wax and the economy contracts, the bond market will figure out that the Treasury will be unable to fund all these obligations with tax collections. Then Treasury bond prices will begin falling as if they were sub-prime mortgages. A collapsing bond market is deflation; it is a contraction of the outstanding credit supply. Recent bailout schemes will not reverse the deflationary freight train. They will serve only to confuse the marketplace and hinder the efficient retirement of bad debts, thus exacerbating the crisis and aggravating investors’ uncertainties and thereby falling right in line with the declining trend of social mood.”

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Question: When will recession end – and DEPRESSION begin?
When do you think the economic DEPRESSION will officially begin?

Answer:
It took mainstream economists over a year to recognize the “official” start of the recession! Because a depression is a much bigger and rarer event, the delay with its “official” recognition will likely be even greater. Not to mention the fact that, interestingly, there is no “official” definition of a depression; even if there were one, ours here at Elliott Wave International would probably differ. Rest assured, though: We intend to update subscribers on any “progress” in that direction.

Dear Friends,

Inflation and deflation are an investor’s biggest worries, but the threat is more prevalent as the US dollar inflates its currency to “spend” its way out of a recession (which ultimately will lead to depression).

I ran into this excellent company, Elliot Generation Wave, and thought I’d share it with you.  Years ago I invested in this mutual fund and was not disappointed in how well they kept their funds performing.

Inflation vs. Deflation
A FREE Report Reveals the Biggest Threat to Your Money Right Now.

If inflation is a quiet thief, then deflation is an armed burglar. You wouldn’t invite either into your home, yet chances are that one of the two is stealing your money right now.

Here’s the good news: You can protect yourself, but only if you know which villain to prepare for.

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