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September 5, 2019

Humans Are Creating Their Own Narratives

Michael Krieger | Posted Tuesday Sep 3, 2019 at 3:47 pm

Somewhere between the arrest of Jeffrey Epstein and his extremely suspicious death in a Department of Justice operated prison, the public learned that an FBI intelligence bulletin published by the bureau’s Phoenix field office mentioned for the first time that conspiracy theories pose a domestic terrorism threat. This was followed up last week by a Bloomberg article discussing a new project by the U.S. military (DARPA) to identify fake news and disinformation.

We learned:

Fake news and social media posts are such a threat to U.S. security that the Defense Department is launching a project to repel “large-scale, automated disinformation attacks,” as the top Republican in Congress blocks efforts to protect the integrity of elections.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency wants custom software that can unearth fakes hidden among more than 500,000 stories, photos, videos and audio clips. If successful, the system after four years of trials may expand to detect malicious intent and prevent viral fake news from polarizing society.

Recall that after the 2016 election, focus was on social media companies and we saw tremendous pressure placed on these platforms by national security state politicians and distressed Democrats to “do something” about the supposed fake news epidemic. Fast forward three years and it’s now apparently the U.S. military’s job to police human content on the internet. This is the sort of natural regression a society will witness so long as it puts up with incremental censorship and the demonization of any thought which goes against the official narrative.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Things Fall Apart

August 6, 2019

Things Fall Apart

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

– Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

You’re not losing your mind, everybody else is. Things are crazy and getting crazier. Something must be done. Somebody, please do something.

If paying attention to global events overwhelms and results in a combined sense of dread, concern and bewilderment, you’re not alone. It’s not simply because humans have more access to more information than ever before that you feel this way, there does appear to be a quickening in the pace of the unfolding of humanity’s latest chapter. Things are genuinely falling apart, but things are always falling apart. Likewise, things are always being built and created. Governments come and governments go, as do global empires and monetary systems. Everything is dying and being born all at once, constantly and forever. This will not change.

That said, there are periods in history when the entire paradigm you’ve been accustomed to living under changes rather abruptly and for good. A change of this nature alters the entire game on a global basis and happens perhaps once in a lifetime.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

U.S. Stock Market Hits a New Record High, but What’s Really Going On?

July 4, 2019

U.S. Stock Market Hits a New Record High, but What’s Really Going On?

As Americans head off to Independence Day celebrations, they’ll be greeted with a plethora of headlines about record highs in the U.S. stock market. What I find most interesting about the latest bout of exuberance is the fact that priced in gold, stocks remain far below last fall’s peak.

From my perspective, a real equity bull market is one where the stock market, in this case the S&P500, consistently hits new highs relative to what’s historically been the world’s politically-neutral monetary asset, gold; and the U.S. stock market did exactly that from August 2011 until September 2018. Though equities in nominal terms bottomed in March 2009, we didn’t really get the all clear in my view until equities started rallying versus gold in late summer 2011.

U.S. stocks continued to hit new highs via this ratio until the most recent high in September 2018. This represented a seven year equity bull market of historic proportions, but since last fall the ratio has consistently lagged nominal highs in stocks as you can see in the chart below.

What I find so interesting about the above chart is that both of 2019’s new record highs in the U.S. equity market came at considerably lower levels in the SPY/GLD ratio compared to last fall’s high. In fact, today’s SPY/GLD ratio is not just 14% below where the ratio was during last September’s stock market high, it’s also 3% below the prior equity market high in May.

So what does all of this mean? It’s too early to tell for sure, but what the chart tells me is there’s a high probability the economic cycle ended and started to turn down last September, and 2019’s nominal highs in equities (May and July) are sending false signals about what’s really going on. Combine this with the fact that gold recently broke out of a multi-year downtrend and the argument becomes stronger.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Macro Update – Gold, Bitcoin and the Gigantic Global Debt Bubble

May 14, 2019

Macro Update – Gold, Bitcoin and the Gigantic Global Debt Bubble

Today’s the first day in a long time financial markets appear willing to at least consider the reality of the geopolitical situation on the ground for what it is, as opposed to what most people would like it to be. As I’ve noted for months, the “trade war” is just one battle in a much larger, increasingly unstable struggle between the U.S. and China for global power and leverage to shape the next paradigm of world history.

A failure to appreciate how big this really is explains why investors have been so willing to swallow unrealistic happy talk from both sides. The risk that needs to be discounted in the market isn’t a risk of higher tariffs, but the risk of WW3. The U.S. and China were never going to sign a trade deal and blissfully return to the ways things were. That world is over. We now find ourselves in the very early days of a historic struggle to influence the future.

Gold

Back in January, I wrote a twitter thread centered around gold which ended up becoming very popular. It’s been around five months since then, so I want to provide a quick update.

I had outlined four reasons why I had become increasingly bullish.

· Jan 4, 2019 Replying to @LibertyBlitz

9/ U.S. equities have been in a historic bull market since then, and gold has done nothing but go down. I don’t think the next bull market in gold can really get going until this central bank manufactured 10 year asset bubble begins to burst, and I think this is now happening.

10/ Now I want to summarize why I’m becoming increasingly confident a gold bull market is on the way.

1) Market cycles turning (discussed above).
2) Geopolitics, emerging multi-polar world order.
3) Sentiment.
4) Trading action.74 4:19 PM – Jan 4, 2019

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Trump Administration’s Iran Policy Will Hasten Imperial Decline

April 23, 2019

The Trump Administration’s Iran Policy Will Hasten Imperial Decline

There was a postwar order, but was it liberal? Like most political orders, it looked much better on paper than it did in practice and to the core members of the order than those on the margins…

Liberal values were only remotely attached to the postwar institutions. Sovereign equality did not translate into a liberal world order. The postwar institutions were run by the most powerful countries, with middle and lesser powers either shunted to the back of the room or locked out altogether…Third World now comprised most of the world’s states, but it was on the outside looking in. Western states enjoyed democracy and the rule of law, but the U.S. and the former colonial masters undermined rather than supported democracy and human rights elsewhere. Some Western states and analysts presumed that the global order must have some legitimacy because there were no great (or at least successful) revolts by the Third World, but they mistook coercion and the lack of alternative for consent…

The suggestion, then, is that if the international order is having greater difficulty creating rule-based governance, it might have less to do with the weakening of liberalism and more to do with the fact that the rules that have been in place for decades were overdue for an overhaul, and especially given a shift in power from the West to the East.

– From Michael N. Barnett’s piece: The End of a Liberal International Order That Never Existed

A primary focus of my writing of late centers around the idea that the policies of the Trump administration, and the neocons in control of it, will hasten the decline of U.S. imperial power and more rapidly usher in a multi-polar (and possibly bifurcated) world. Today’s news regarding the elimination of waivers on Iranian oil imports provides another perfect example.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Arrest of Julian Assange is an Attack on Journalism, Liberty, Self-Government and Civilization Itself

April 16, 2019

Arrest of Julian Assange is an Attack on Journalism, Liberty, Self-Government and Civilization Itself

Without an unfettered press, without liberty of speech, all of the outward forms and structures of free institutions are a sham, a pretense – the sheerest mockery. If the press is not free; if speech is not independent and untrammeled; if the mind is shackled or made impotent through fear, it makes no difference under what form of government you live, you are a subject and not a citizen.

– William Edgar Borah

Agitators are a set of interfering, meddling people, who come down to some perfectly contented class of the community and sow the seeds of discontent amongst them. That is the reason why agitators are so absolutely necessary. Without them, in our incomplete state, there would be no advance towards civilization.

– Oscar Wilde

The glimpse of Julian Assange being dragged from the Ecuadorean embassy in London is an emblem of the times. Might against right. Muscle against the law. Indecency against courage. Six policemen manhandled a sick journalist.

– John Pilger: Assange Arrest a Warning from History

I was born 80 years ago in a country called the United States of America, and now I live in a Homeland — an expression we haven’t heard since Hitler.

– Gore Vidal

The only thing I’ve been able to think about for the last few days is the mugging of Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy in London. This post could go in many different directions, but given all the excellent articles already written on the topic, what seems most necessary is an explanation of what this means in the big picture of freedom in the Western world and civilization in general.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Trump Cares About Two Things – Empire and the Stock Market

April 9, 2019

Trump Cares About Two Things – Empire and the Stock Market

Though not surprising, it’s nevertheless extraordinary to watch Donald Trump publicly and shamelessly morph into a George W. Bush era neocon when it comes to foreign policy, and a CNBC stock market cheerleader when it comes to the economy. Just like Barack Obama before him, Trump talked a good populist game on two issues of monumental importance (foreign policy and the rigged economy), but once elected immediately turned around and prioritized the core interests of oligarchy.

Trump doesn’t even give lip service to big picture populist topics anymore unless they’re somehow related to the culture war, which works out perfectly for the entrenched oligarchy since the culture war primarily serves as a useful distraction to keep the rabble squabbling while apex societal predators loot whatever’s left of this hollowed out neo-feudal economy.

The pivot toward status quo consensus when it comes to two of the most existential issues facing the nation should be deeply concerning to everyone, but particularly to those who thought Donald Trump would be different. When it comes to militarism and empire, Trump’s hypocrisy and bait and switch is one for the record books. Just as it became clear Obama was a fraud once he hired Larry Summers and Timothy Geithner (we later found out his cabinet was apparently chosen by Citibank), Trump placing neocons Mike Pompeo and John Bolton into key positions was a clear sign you could take “Make America Great Again” and flush it down the toilet. This administration is now laser focused on maintaining and even expanding imperial reach.

Like Obama before him, Trump’s abandonment of every important thing he ran on was noticeable early on. Recall that while campaigning, Trump accurately called out the Saudis for their key role in the 9/11 attacks:

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Is the World Already Multi-Polar?

April 2, 2019

Is the World Already Multi-Polar?

A hefty case can be made that the Empire of Chaos currently has no allies; it’s essentially surrounded by an assortment of vassals, puppets and comprador 5^thcolumnist elites professing varied degrees of – sometimes reluctant – obedience.

The Trump administration’s foreign policy may be easily deconstructed as a crossover between The Sopranos and late-night comedy.

– Pepe Escobar, in his recent Consortium News piece: Empire of Chaos in Hybrid War Overdrive

While the U.S. empire’s existed in various states of decline for much of the 21st century, I’ve been opining on the topic with far more frequency and urgency since the election of Donald Trump. This isn’t because he’s fundamentally much different from the imperial managers (aka presidents) that came before him on foreign policy, but because his personality, style and overall boorishness serve to accelerate the pace of decline.

As many astute observers have noted, what really bothers establishment types on the “NeverTrump” right and the “Russiagate conspiracy theory” left is not so much what Trump does, but how he does it. These political cliques may disagree on many issues, but what they have in common — aside from Trump derangement syndrome — is a love affair with U.S. empire and an unwavering dedication to the maintenance of American geopolitical dominance at all costs.

Both the NeverTrump right and the Russiagate conspiracy theory left are concerned that Trump, unlike Obama, is a poor global salesman for empire. Obama had the rare quality of being able to bailout bankers and keep them out of prison, pass healthcare “reform” only an insurance company could love, and expand American wars across the globe and still be revered around much of the world and celebrated as a liberal at home. That’s the sort of person you need in charge to keep a corrupt and violent empire running smoothly.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Federal Reserve Chairman Appears on 60 Minutes – Why Now?

March 12, 2019

Federal Reserve Chairman Appears on 60 Minutes – Why Now?

One of the most famous, and prescient, financial cartoons in American history is the above depiction of the Federal Reserve Bank as a giant octopus that would come to parasitically suck the life out of all U.S. institutions as well as free markets.

The image is taken from Alfred Owen Crozier’s U.S. Money Vs Corporation Currency, “Aldrich Plan,” Wall Street Confessions! Great Bank Combine, published in 1912, just a year before the creation of the Federal Reserve.

Last night, the current high priest of money printing, asset bubbles and inequality, Jerome Powell, appeared on 60 Minutes. Interviewer Scott Pelley mentioned the fact that such discussions are rare and noted the last time a Fed head appeared for such a chat was Ben Bernanke back in 2010.

As such, what I find most interesting about this event wasn’t Powell’s boilerplate, bureaucratic propaganda about how the economy’s doing fine and how much central bankers love average Americans, but why he and the institution he heads felt a need to do this now.

There’s no doubt something has the Fed spooked otherwise Powell never would have done this. One factor is they know the economic ground’s starting to shift beneath them, and they need to push a particular narrative ahead of time so central bankers can once again do as they please when “the time to act” arrives.

This is why Powell pushed the blame on the current economic slowdown on China and Europe. The Fed is no different than your average politician. It takes full credit when things go well, but endlessly deflects and blames outside forces when things fall apart.

Rule number 1 of the Federal Reserve: It’s never the Fed’s fault.
Rule number 2 of the Federal Reserve: It’s never the Fed’s fault.
Rule number 3 of the Federal Reserve…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Don’t Believe the Hype – Expect a Worsening of U.S.-China Relations

March 5, 2019

Don’t Believe the Hype – Expect a Worsening of U.S.-China Relations

If you receive your news via Donald Trump tweet, or courtesy of proclamations by Larry Kudlow, you’d be forgiven for eagerly anticipating a groundbreaking U.S.-China trade deal to be announced imminently, and thinking such a deal will save the global economy from rolling over into a serious downturn as well as pacify geopolitical tensions between the number one and number two economies in the world. However, if you expect these things, I don’t think you’re paying attention.

Before we get a little into the weeds, let me be clear that I have no idea what Trump and Xi will, or will not, announce regarding trade. Trump seems fanatically obsessed with the stock market, and Xi’s been dealing with an economy in a tailspin. It’s certainly possible they come up with some sort of agreement they think will restore confidence in the global economy and convince people the last few months were nothing more than a “glitch.” It’s also important to understand this positive outcome appears to be assumed by the stock market and investors generally. Anything less might be seen as a colossal disappointment.

The purpose of this post is not to predict the outcome of any particular trade negotiation. It could go in a lot of different ways and I have no edge in forecasting it. Rather, the purpose of this post is to express in no uncertain terms the view that U.S.-China relations will deteriorate substantially from here in the years ahead.

For a little background to this perspective, I suggest reading December’s post, Is U.S. Geopolitical Strategy Experiencing a Monumental Shift?, in which I concluded:

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

You Can’t Stop the Cycle

February 26, 2019

You Can’t Stop the Cycle

2018’s valuation records are astounding in that they show the S&P 500 to be more fundamentally over-valued than it was at the prior two historic stock market valuation peaks in 1929 and 2000, bona fide speculative manias.

– From Crescat Capital’s recent investor letter

Cycles are perhaps the most natural and common occurrence in the universe. The planets orbit the sun, seasons change, day turns to night and night back to day, humans are born, grow old and die.

Some of these cycles are more pleasant to think about than others, but their consistent occurrence remains factually unassailable. Indeed, it could be said that a human life itself consists of an endless series of encounters with various cycles. Cycles of the natural world and cycles created by humans themselves. Human created cycles are the focal point of today’s piece.

I’ve been writing a lot about cycles over the past few months since it’s become increasingly clear that the artificial economic cycle we’ve been living in for about a decade is on its last leg. In order to understand how significant this is, it’s important to recap what the last ten years actually represented.

It didn’t represent a healthy economic growth cycle, but rather an insanely irresponsible, and arguably criminal, manufactured bubble boom where central banks printed enormous amounts of money to inflate asset prices like stocks, bonds and real estate. In this deranged mission they succeeded, but at a great cost to social stability.

4/ This is key because super rich boomers who get more money thanks to the Fed’s plutocratic polices don’t go out and purchase 5x more avocados or gasoline. No, they do what they’ve habitually done their whole lives. They buy financial assets (stocks and bonds) and real estate.

5/ To narrow it down even further, it wasn’t just very rich boomers, it was very rich boomer financial types. They love stocks, bonds and real estate even more than the average boomer. So they went nuts.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Martial Law Is Unacceptable Under Any President

January 31, 2019

Martial Law Is Unacceptable Under Any President

In the midst of the three ring circus known as the false Left/Right paradigm it is sometimes easy to forget that there is a motive behind the chaos; that there is an intended end game. Part of that end game, I believe, is the eventual erasure of individual liberties and the implementation of martial law in the US. However, the establishment quest for government lockdown requires something very special in order to succeed – They need a considerable percentage of the population to support and defend it.

Governments rarely attempt outright martial law. The reason should be obvious; no military, no matter how advanced, has the capacity to suppress a unified citizenry. If the public is armed, the task becomes even more impossible. The laws of attrition alone would make the conflict bloody and costly.

Martial law is a mechanism that cannot be exploited in a vacuum. The-powers-that-be understand that it can only be used when a large percentage of the public is conned into supporting it. This is usually accomplished through the triggering of engineered crisis events, but there is also another method for getting the masses to back martial law, and that is to push both sides of the political spectrum to extreme zealotry until one side decides to use government as a weapon against the other.

Whether by disaster or political division, the public can be influenced to rationalize government dominance of every aspect of life.

The agenda to engineer crisis is evident. In past articles such as ‘The Federal Reserve Is A Suicide Bomber With A Deeper Agenda’, I have outlined the facts behind economic decline and how it is often utilized by central banks and their international banking partners to accumulate and centralize wealth while also manipulating society into accepting reduced living standards for generations to come.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The American Empire Pivots Toward Venezuela

January 26, 2019

The American Empire Pivots Toward Venezuela

Many people are coming to quick takes on yesterday’s extraordinary decision by the U.S. government to recognize an unelected opposition leader as interim President of Venezuela based on their view of Maduro and his government. Similar to the emotional responses to those first clips of the Covington students and Nathan Phillips, such superficial opinions feel good and confirm biases, but don’t tell you much about what’s really going on. From my seat, the move by the Trump administration to choose the leader of Venezuela by diktat is just straight up imperial geopolitics. Nothing more, nothing less.

A month ago, I reassessed my geopolitical assumptions in the post, Is U.S. Geopolitical Strategy Experiencing a Monumental Shift? In it, I detailed how U.S. foreign policy seemed to be shifting toward a focus on containing China, which would lead to a far more serious confrontation between the world’s number one and number two economies.

I’ve now seen enough to seriously consider that we may be entering an entirely new geopolitical environment dominated by vastly increased tensions between the U.S. and China. If so, it will likely last a lot longer than you think as leaders in both China in the U.S. will be looking for a scapegoat as their crony, financialized economies struggle under unpayable debt and unimaginable levels of corruption.

With the attempt to push Russia back in Syria a clear failure, the neocons in Trump’s administration quickly got to work on their next scheme. Enter Venezuela.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Can You Time Peak Crazy?

January 15, 2019

Can You Time Peak Crazy?

You don’t need me to tell you how completely crazy and distorted the financial markets have become over the last decade. Anyone reading this already knows that, which is partly why I stopped writing on the topic several years ago. I came to the conclusion there was no point in constantly screaming at the top of my lungs about what a farce the global financial system was. Instead, I decided to step back, let things play out to their predictably tragic end, and then play closer attention as the curtains started to come down. As has been made clear in my recent commentary, I think we’re now reaching that point.

I’ve begun reflecting a little more about the lessons I’ve learned over the past several years of status quo stupidity, and one particular conversation I had a while ago with a friend who was a portfolio manager at a major hedge fund came to mind. I searched my old emails to find exactly what I had written, and the response became the inspiration for the title of today’s post.

The correspondence occurred nearly four years ago, in February 2015. His initial message highlighted a FT article about the fact that Nestlé bond yields had turned negative. This was my response to his email:

Once you enter certifiably “crazy” territory it becomes almost impossible to bet against crazy until it is obvious it is all unraveling. Once in crazy territory it can easily get more crazy since crazy has already been established.

The above is why you should never bet money against crazy simply because it’s crazy. Crazy can go on for a long time, especially when the people in charge see themselves as gods sent from the heavens to deliver the planet from the horrors of declining asset prices and lower financial industry bonuses.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Final Act in a Terrible Play

January 11, 2019

The Final Act in a Terrible Play

If you don’t follow me on Twitter, you’ve been missing out on some good stuff. With the brith of our third child a couple of months ago, it’s been increasingly hard for me to find the time to sit down and write longer posts, so I’ve been putting more and more content on Twitter. Last Friday, Brent Johnson of Santiago Capital, asked me to provide additional thoughts on my recent turn to being far more bullish gold. Normally I would’ve written it in a piece, but being pressed for time I put together a Twitter thread

1/ Earlier, my friend @SantiagoAuFund asked me to expound on gold. I was a bit surprised by the interest the tweet generated, so I’ve decided to compose a thread on the topic and financial markets generally. There’s a lot coming, so apologies to those with no interest.

There are 32 posts in there and I suggest you read the whole thing. More important than the thread itself; however, was the unprecedented and totally surprising response I received. As I explain in the tweets, I intentionally avoided talking about markets for nearly half a decade for a variety of reasons, and so I was blindsided by the enthusiastic and exceptionally positive response. It led me to do quite a bit of soul-searching, and ultimately convinced me that the time is ripe for me to start commenting about financial markets again. Not only because I think we’re at or very close to a major inflection point, but because people want to hear it.

For the record, I didn’t think central planners would be able to put Humpty Dumpty back together again ten years ago for as long as they did.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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