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What I find remarkable about the 2016 presidential election campaign isn’t just the surge of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders.
It’s the realities behind their rhetoric.
Don’t get me wrong. Weiss Research is 100% nonpartisan. We won’t take sides and won’t endorse candidates. Our goal is strictly to help you make more prudent investment decisions. And our method rests purely on an objective analysis of the facts …
Fact #1. Trump and Sanders have radically transformed the political landscape. No matter who takes the nominations and no matter who wins the White House, they will have forever left their imprint on history.
Fact #2. The majority of their supporters are being squeezed financially by precisely the same economic problems we’ve been writing about — the worst recession since the Great Depression, the most expensive bank bailouts of all time, the weakest recovery in modern times, the lowest labor force participation in half a century, the worst yields on savings ever.
Fact #3. These money megatrends, in turn, are paralleled by equally powerful trends in the social-political realm: The most widely despised concentration of power since colonial times, the greatest income inequality since slavery, the most corrupted political processes since Reconstruction.
What’s even more remarkable is that our Weiss Research analysts predicted this precise scenario.
Two years ago, Larry Edelson warned that cycles of war would ramp up dramatically through 2020 — not only with overseas conflicts, but also with growing social and political schisms in the United States. He foresaw the rise of non-establishment politicians. And he predicted, well ahead of time, the surging anger among average citizens.
That’s what we have right now.
Mike Larson issued dire warnings as well. He wrote that these trends would ultimately bleed the Fed’s power to sustain the economy, help create a new round of turmoil in credit markets, and gut corporate profits.
That’s also what we have right now.
Will all of this continue? Unfortunately, it’s difficult to imagine any other alternative.
But again, I want to point you to the realties behind the rhetoric. They’re not going away. They’re bound to continue driving the presidential election to unexpected places. And they could have a broad impact on the U.S. economy for years to come.
Here are just two prominent examples …
The rhetoric: America’s middle class has been
squeezed between a rock and a hard place.
True? Absolutely!
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The percentage of adult Americans working or actively looking for a job has plunged to 62.6%, the lowest level in over 40 years.
What most people don’t realize, however, is that this trend began long before the Great Recession and will probably continue long into the future.
Granted, some of this was no surprise. Economists knew that baby boomers would be leaving the labor force in record numbers. And they did.
Economists also weren’t particularly shocked to see Americans under 30 staying in school (and out of work) a lot longer — to get MBAs and PhDs.
What comes as a shock to the “experts” is that, after the Great Recession, a record number of workers shifted over to disability insurance and have never gone back to work.
And what’s even more shocking is that many Americans in their prime, especially men under 55, have also left the labor force, never to return — their income down, cost of living up, new job opportunities scarce, hopes for a better life dashed.
Meanwhile, debt still looms as a huge problem for U.S. households.
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The Last Great Bull Market The next four years are going to be one of the most challenging times America — and the world — has ever faced. In fact, I believe the next four years will contain the most important economic events of your lifetime. Events that will shape your financial future and the financial future of all those you care for, for decades to come … That why I urge you to read my latest e-book, Winds of World War III … You’ll get the facts you need to protect yourself, along with what you need to do to prepare for this last great bull market. Click here now for your free copy! –Larry |
| Internal Sponsorship |
Just over eight years ago, on Dec. 31, 2007, households were buried in a historic debt mountain of $14.1 trillion — home mortgages, auto loans, credit card debts and other consumer loans.
Then, with the bust, many were forced to shed some of that debt in a flood of home foreclosures and personal bankruptcies. It was very painful. But at least it relieved some of the debt burden on American families.
Today, however, despite disappointing gains in income and the weakest economic recovery on record, those same households are now strangled again, with a new pile-up of debts that matches the peak debt levels of yearend 2007: $14.1 trillion.
The big difference: Years ago, they could count on inflation to continually reduce the burden. Now they can’t. In fact, if deflation continues to spread, it could make it far more difficult for the average American family to meet fixed debt payments, threatening to cause a new wave of debt delinquencies, debt defaults and personal bankruptcies.
The rhetoric: We’re suffering a head-on attack on
America’s one-person-one-vote democracy.
Reality? You bet!
The decline of America’s democratic processes has multiple facets, and the one outstanding example is the rise of super PACs — a new animal that was born with a federal court case in July of 2010.
The decision: These organizations can raise unlimited amounts of money from corporations, unions, associations and individuals. They can spend the money to advocate for or against candidates. And they can do so with virtually no limitations except the requirement to report to the federal authorities.
The super PACs raise big bucks.
Like manna from heaven, they shower those bucks on politicians they want to help win. Like big guns, they aim the money at politicians they want to help defeat. And unlike any other group in history, they have often been able to make or break the best and the worst, significantly shaping America’s destiny.
What’s especially unusual in this election cycle, however, is that Trump and Sanders are making nearly every super PAC pour most of that money down a bottomless pit.
As of last week, seven individual super PACS — supporting Republican candidates Carson, Fiorina, Graham, Huckabee, Kasich, Jindal and Paul — have raised nearly $42 million and spent more than half of that money so far. Result: A long series of embarrassing failures across the board.
Meanwhile, the super PAC called America Leads, which supports Christie, has raised $16 million and somehow managed to spend over $17 million — another effort that has run into a brick wall.
And what’s particularly ironic is that the super PAC called Right to Rise USA, which supports Bush, has raised the most money of all (a whopping $118 million), has spent the most money of all (over $69 million) and has produced the most disappointing results of all (only 2.8% of the votes in the Iowa caucuses).
All told, as of last week, there were 2,194 groups organized as super PACs, reporting total receipts of nearly $513 million and expenditures of nearly $179 million. Mostly down the tubes.
What’s worse, a chart depicting other sources of campaign funding over the past half century looks a lot like charts depicting the dot.com or housing booms:
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Inflation and population explain some of the growth in campaign spending. But even adjusting for those factors, it’s out of control. And this chart doesn’t include money raised or spent by Super PACs.
And I repeat: What’s especially remarkable about this election cycle is that non-establishment candidates Trump and Sanders, with far less money raised from traditional sources, have soared to the top of the charts.
One Last Word …
All of this is part and parcel of the same economic disasters we’ve written about so frequently and the same escalating cycle of conflict that we’ve harped on so forcefully.
If you ignore these changes, they could set you back many years. If you understand and harness them, you can advance far more rapidly.
So stay tuned for specific instructions from our editors.
Good luck and God bless!
Martin
P.S. TODAY is the final day to get your special Early Bird membership in Global Currency Investor … and the incredible savings that come with it!
Global Currency Investor provides an incredibly profitable way to diversify in the current topsy-turvy market.
To find out more — and become a member — simply click this link now.
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Dr. Weiss founded Weiss Research in 1971 and has dedicated his entire career to helping millions of average investors find truly safe havens and investments. He is Chairman of the Weiss Group, which includes Weiss Research and Weiss Ratings, the nation’s leading independent rating agency accepting no fees from rated companies. His last three books have all been New York Times Bestsellers and his most recent title is The Ultimate Money Guide for Bubbles, Busts, Recession and Depression.
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I’M RETIRED AND JUST ABOUT TO GET A PENSION CUT FROM CENTRAL STATES PENSION. I HAVE MOVED SOME MONEY TO CLOSED END FUNDS FOR THE INTEREST PAYMENTS. I HAVE NEVER SEEN AND OF THESE PRODUCTS TALKED ABOUT FROM MIKE.LARSON OR LARRY EDELSON. BONDS DO PAY AND YOU GET YOUR MONEY BACK WHEN THE DUR DATE IS HIT.
Look at Morningstar. They talk a lot about CEFs for retirees.
DREAM ALONG WITH ME.
edelson’s war cycles are turning out to be spot on. not all, but most of larry’s big-picture predictions are amazingly accurate, so long as he doesn’t get too date specific.
That’s why I still pay attention to Larry. His trends are spot on, even if his timings are often off m ore than a little.
For some reason, at the weekend, I started reading Larry’s “Winds of War”, for the third time. As you said, his forecasts, if he doesn’t get too specific with stock picks, are very accurate and have helped me to “better understand” the probable cause of the major trends.
just do the opposite of what you read and things will be so fine
only the hawk would say that.
are you talking to yourself again?
it helped you?
only when i do the opposite.
oil storage inventories are still on the rise. at some point in 2016, oil storage inventories will begin a decline. that will be the turning point we are looking for.
Being retired is a disaster for the past years. No income from safe investments, Lose money with stocks. Money saved over a lifetime will not last at this rate.
Protection of principal is the name of the game now as we enter the Greatest Depression in history.
sounds like another good buying opportunity. i’m ready.
YOU MISSED THE BOOT.
You got it. I have invested in Mason Jars. The next 20 years are gonna suck.
The Boomers are not leaving the work force in unprecedented numbers. The over-55 workers have been forced to defer retirement. It’s workers in the 20s and 30s group that are dropping out. These are the Boomers’ kids.
The SuperPAC phenomenon demonstrates, ironically, that raising and spending a lot of money doesn’t necessarily get you anywhere.
you’re a smart guy d. i’ve been following your comments for awhile. i pay attention to what you say. i hope you stick around.
Exactly. Go to a 7-11 anytime after dinner and who is behind the counter? Teenager or boomer. Late/overnight? almost always boomer. 2nd job or deferred retirement because the millennial kids are not sufficiently impressed by these jobs. The kids have 50-200k student loans and understandably do not want a 25k job. By my name, you can guess we took what we could get then, yet I have 3 twentysomething kids and I think they may have it worse than we did.
If I had to make the case for your theory I would say it is because the 55 or 65 year old has more financial responsibilities than their 20 or 30 year old children.
So right about what’s happened so wrong about why. The why is the high jacking of the economy by the financial services industry which got a bug boost with the repeal of Glass Steagal at the urging of Citi’s Robert Rubin and signed into law by President Clinton, way before superpacs which mostly have brought into the light what was in the dark before.
Yep…..Rubin was the architect of the repeal. He now denies it.
Glad to read that we hopefully will not have another compassionate RINO Bush in the White House. The problem, if there was one, is simple. You cannot have inflation if the middle class has run out of income to spend. Too bad the FED is just stupid. What do you expect from academics. Zero interests do not and never have created larger pay checks, except for people like Lloyd Blankfein. It is in all the NEWS.. He is now a billionaire.
If this new wave of young adults will build our future America, we are in deep trouble. I do not care how many PHD’s Mr. Weis says they possess as compared to my generation, who contributed to the American economy rather than waste time in higher education, their preference for Bernie is proof that these kids are unable to link the horrible standard of living in the banana republics with socialism that they are enthusiastically supporting. PHD’s or Master degrees just mean they fed their professors what their professors wanted to hear. This notion that “I have a PHD now society must grant me an excessive salary” is typical Russian communism, not based upon a market based economy. Now, they are so brain washed and beyond redemption, I will not shed a tear for those who are living in their parents basements stroking their Ipods.
Ivano,
I fully expected you to close with “get off my grass”
I totally agree with Martin Weiss and Larry Edelson about the sorry state of affairs in this country and the world. I do want to keep reading your analysis and comments. I am not able to pay for even your more reduced offers. I have invested my available IRA money in physical gold and will be ready to leave the G fund (Short term bonds) when you sat our stock market is ready to correct.
I am 62, my wife is 63 and on disability and we are responsible for a 15 yr. old grandson and a 10 year old grand daughter. I am employed by USDA Farm Service Agency and plan on working until I am 71. I hope to get a legal settlement and plan on paying off all my debts shortly. We hope to sell some family property to BP in South Alabama. I will invest like you suggest with any spare money that I have but I am hardly able to make ends meet at this time. Please be patient with me because the minimum fees for investing like you advise are more than I can afford at this time.
I do understand and appreciate what you are saying and am somewhat prepared for the AX to fall.
wh
William is a good example of the root of our problem: he is working for the government. I’m not saying anything about the value or need for his work, or about his ability. Just that instead of it being done through the private sector, and paid for that way, it is done through government, and paid for through debt and taxes on all of us. We have become a de-facto socialist nation through our dependency on government to do things. Like all socialist nations, we are headed for a collapse. I say this, having been a part of it myself in younger years: military and a couple of government agencies. Even my last work before retirement, though for a private company, involved teaching people to conform to government rules and regulations. Looking back, I am not especially proud of that, though I think I did it well. It should not have been needed.
Hi Martin
What I see changing is the escalating losses of ordinary people in boom bust stock markets over the years. No longer based on fundamentals, mum and dad’s are pitted against program trading. They are forced into seeking better yields because interest rates are so low. There’s a lack of trust in Washington’s figures and a perception that neither side has a solution. Those who believe they are entitled want more free stuff, while the tax payers want reform of the system. Mr. Sanders and Mr. Trump are plausible candidates in these times which says something about the systems we have in place. Many ordinary folks want change.
When one racks and stacks at all of the charts in both the Economic and Social-Political realm produced by Weiss Research, and especially Larry Edelson over the last ~5 years as well as Martin Armstrong’s work which looks at the same basic trends, one fact in the aggregate clearly jumps out. At least on a temporary basis the United States seems to have peaked by almost all measures of national power, and well being in 1999. After that year it seems to have been all down hill, and the fall off is actually pretty dramatic as it begins early in 2000, and builds momentum after that. This trend is non partisan in nature, and is simple fact. Bill Clinton may have been a decent President in the 1990’s, but his last year in office was an absolute disaster, and after him the spiraling down only accelerates. Something changed for the negative in the U.S. almost immediately after 1999, which was believe it or not 17 years ago now. It is not clear exactly what that change was. it clearly predates both Bush v Gore and 911which are symptoms more than causes, although 911 should never have occurred. Martin Armstrong believes the repeal of Glass-Steagall had a lot to do with it, although this also looks more like a symptom than a root cause for something that is much more fundamental in America’s national culture. How does a nation go from being fairly competent in 1999 to being almost hopelessly incompetent starting in 2000. This is indeed a mystery, but after 16 years of national failure in so many different areas the trend is clear, although the precise reasons may not be.
Good points. The decline did start in the last year of the Clinton admin but I agree with you…..this is much more than presidential input. Bush did not help with his debt loading and Obama doubled the National Debt with shameful budgets. We are living in the early years of a Greatest Depression.
One analyst (Harry Dent) says the root cause is demographics (a population’s age). Up to about 46 yrs old, we are mostly spenders. After that it declines. We reached that median age around 2007. A good example of a demographically challenged country is Japan, which reached that median age level around 1990 and has suffered practically no growth for about 25 yrs. I believe the US is following Japan’s no growth, high QE, central banking model.
What has changed and what can we do about it?
We use to be a nation of wanting to own our own businesses. Not only did this offer employment opportunities for the young to get started, it brought an engine room to the economy. Different administrations have added to this simple dream by adding responsibility for benefits to employers and bureaucracy to take the dream away. Now the game seems to be make it overseas and try and profit from measures on Wall Street.
Beurocracy gentlemen, beurocracy; that has been and still is the problem. Not only do the beurocrats feed off of it, but so do the do-gooders.
Oh yes and do not forget the leeches, the lawyers; in particular lawyers who write laws meant for lawyers to interpret. Have you ever noticed how many lawyers enter politics.
I worked to 65 and a half. I only left because the company was getting set to abolish one position out of twelve, class 8 truck driver. The job was so bad between Social Security and union pension I got a slight pay raise, Why is the Donald and Bernie surging? I think very simply they speak to the now below middle class and their frustrations, runaway illegal immigration especially the violent illegals, spend-spend-spend. We see our our jobs being strangled by ever increasing regulations that have millions of us any hope of a pay raise, let alone cutbacks to pay for the increasing burden and cheaper foreign goods costing more jobs. I’m waiting for the chronically unemployed rioting at the local WAl-Mart or Target as they are the leading job exporters. By now it has become apparent to most of us that the super PACs want to buy the election for their own means, usually to the detriment of the vast majority of we the people. Then there is also the situation where if one party loses an election for various ballot measures they can run to the Federal Courts and decide that he/she is smarter than the people and overturn their vote. The California marriage act was overturned by a federal judge because HIS live-in BOY friend made HIM sleep on the couch. Corruption is all around us. Remember Eric Holder went to Ferguson at Clueless Leader’s orders to find an excuse to charge the cop in the Brown shooting, never mind the facts.
Martin, Thank you for the insightful article. The sharp uptick in your PAC spending chart is HUGE, and data trends like this should not be that difficult to analyze, e.g. is the increased funding primarily coming from a single source such as Wall Street firms? In addition, the trend suggests that there is a segment of America with buying power (probably not the middle class or lower middle class) that suddenly became very, very concerned about their influence on the system. Why did this appear so abruptly?
Dr. Weiss, would you comment on the great Fed bailout. Dr, Bernanke claims the Fed and Treasury saved the financial system worldwide and that saving the investment banks on Wall Street and the others who created the housing bubble was only a necessary side effect. That this didn’t help main street and the average worker much as seen by the so-called recovery and current economy is obvious. It didn’t help those wanting to retire on their savings as interest rates plummeted near zero. I look at so many government programs and its obvious the American people are pawns. How has moving the auto plants to Mexico under NAFTA helped American workers? Except for those with pre-existing conditions, how has ObamaCare helped the vast majority of people as out of pocket costs and deductibles double? And except for Mr. Trump, how has ignoring the 30 million illegals in the country who often don’t pay taxes not depressed wages?
Its interesting that Senator Sanders defines many issues very similar to Mr. Trump, though from my perspective, offers but more of the same policies which always fail.
Financial Markets are controlled by social mood, not governments or big brokerage houses or any other organized group. Central Banks don’t have the financial strength to control mass social mood. We are seeing a decisive turn from optimism to pessimism that was predicted. Cycle Theory is one way to measure social mood, there are others out there too.
Bingo! Social mood absolutely controls the markets. And it IS going negative….very negative. Young folks giving up now look to socialism for the answer. This will not end nicely. It will probably need 20 years to repair. (look at Japan and their Depression still going).
A lot of interesting reads. Kudo’s to the man helping his grandchildren I am sure you are not alone in this respect. Yes the Super Pac’s have taken control of elections spreading their money among their legions of wanna be leaders giving them their marching orders. Its nice to see Bernie and the Donald thumb their nose at these people. Yes picking bits and pieces from posters corruption is indeed all around us. Facts are out the window. We the common folk are under attack period. You should be afraid of the small sliver of people that are exerting control over America and influencing people be very afraid. Its sad to see on gentleman say he will work till he is 71 I retired at 55 during the real “Golden Years” in 1992-93 when the Blue Jays won the world series back to back. They too overcame other teams that were backed up with huge bankrolls and name players. It was one of the highlights of my life. I to am frightened now as I have chosen to live in a country that seems to have no respect for international laws and the rights of people but its Custards Last Stand for me as I am now 77. Good luck voters choose substance over sugar coated sweet nothings a lot of them are uttering.
Thanks for the advise. Believe or not, there are some of use out here in life that listen to our elders and take lessons in history, so we don’t repeat it. And…our elders are sometimes more wiser.
Thanks again, I know I will be stingy with my vote.
God help us!
“Custard’s last stand” has got to be the howler malapropism of the year! It defines the 2016 USA political and economic scene! When Ben & Jerry’s Homemade Ice Cream Co. sold out to a huge European multi-national corporation, in April 2000, it’s founders from Vermont, Ben and Jerry, joined the board as “de-facto kept men”. “Custard’s last stand” indeed!. How prophetic a “turning point” in America’s commercial history. I have been laughing profusely recalling how poor old “Custard” was sold out, in order to keep from crying tears of despair. Shortly after Robert Rubin, Larry Summers and Timothy Geithner talked Clinton, Congress and OECD countries into accepting the repeal of most of Glass-Steagall, in 1999, and China joined the WTO, Greenspan’s Fed flooded the banks with liquidity to avoid the Y2K hoax calamity. Does anyone remember good old “Y2K Ed Yardini” of Deutsche Bank? Those actions are where it all began for me. A tsunami of derivatives soon arrived. Nobody but Buffett understands these “instruments of mass financial destruction”, but they all will when they blow up. Yes, it was “Custard’s last” (ice cream) “stand”, that brought it on, indeed!
There are many things that are driving the markets down but, the two most important things are excessive GREED AND CAPITALISM. Corporations skimp on workers pay and Shareholders Dividends. Executive Salaries and Bonuses in the form of Stock Bonuses is manipulated to reduced investments for Shareholders. Most CEOS and top executives are acting like the fool that killed the Goose that lays golden EGGS.
It is not CAPITALISM!!! It is Greed and Cronyism. stop thinking Capitalism. In Capitalism the Shareholders should be the winners. They’re not, as you yourself so rightly point out.
The workers under proper Capitalism should also be winners. This is not capitalism that manages correctly, it is Financial Cronyism. A relatively short term horizon game of winner take all and leave behind hollow broke companies without a future FOR ANYONE.
Proper Capitalism is what Henry Ford said and did: “The Industrialist must endeavor to supply his products at the cheapest possible price, WHILE PAYING HIS LABOR THE HIGHEST POSSIBLE WAGES”. (He doubled his workers wages).
The second part of the above is what everyone forgets. You see he worked out that unless his (and other industrial) workers could afford to buy his Model T, he could not have the numbers to sustain a large enough sell through to cover his overheads. This is what every American multinational has forgotten. If you don’t employ and pay the workers who in heavens name will buy your product?
If every American stopped buying Nike, unless it was produced in America what would happen to Nike?
THINK… proper sustainable Capitalism goes where the customer goes. In it’s proper application it should also form it’s own customers. Wait and see, another mistake is waiting to happen when Robot-Factories take over all production jobs. Who will buy the very cheap products these factories will produce?
Think on the Uber/self driving car cascade. If all Taxi and Uber drivers are replaced by Uber self drives, how many millions of people will be out of work? What’s the knock on effect? How many McDonalds, house and apartment rentals and clothing companies etc. etc. will have lower sales? WHO WILL THEN BE ABLE TO AFFORD THE UBER SELF DRIVES?
Yours is a classic example of what is known in logic as the “no true Scotsman” fallacy. What you call “cronyism” is simply a degenerate stage of capitalism which results when the pool of surplus value that can be extracted from labor shrinks sufficiently. Today, if a CEO of a public company followed Henry Ford’s example he/she would not be long in the job. The market demands that a CEO raise gross margins (charge as much for their products as the market will bear) and reduce operational costs (go where labor is cheapest or replace human labor with technology). In Ford’s case his workers were the same people buying his products. The Foxconn workers building new iPhones for Apple are not the ones buying those phones. Ford also had an advantage (temporary) over his competitors because he mastered the assembly line, which vastly increased individual worker productivity and allowed him to increase wages while still making plenty of profit. The point is that “capitalism” is not a static thing that has some fixed set of rules – it is an evolving system. Capitalism can create a thriving middle class but under a different set of conditions it can also destroy the middle class. Everyone who thinks that capitalism can do no wrong would do well to read Marx, whose critiques of the system actually have a great deal of merit, although his conclusions were off-base.
To: mcs_in_ny, Hi, thanks for the reply. You know, even Charles Dickens critiqued degenerative Capitalism. I’m well aware of Marx’s critiques and I concur with what you said.
If you look further down in my post you’ll see that my point is exactly what you said, the iPhone workers are not buying iPhones, so who will buy them when there are no more customers who can afford them? What happens to Apple? (Ok it’s started already)
I also give the Uber example and the knock on effects that will come with robot job takeovers.
I also expand a bit on what Capitalism truly is, “the creation of a customer” (Peter Drucker) not the maximization of profit, but the optimization of profit on a sustainable basis. That means the companies should be pursuing strategies of making a profit today and in 20, 30 years time never mind the share price. If they don’t pursue that, they’re dysfunctional.
If the system (CEO’s loosing their jobs) does not allow it, then the system is not Capitalism it’s Piraticism (Piratical?). It’s Hume’s (I think) war of all against all.
Somewhere in the Dune books Frank Herbert made one of his characters remark that “it is not the system of Government or it’s laws that define a Society (or Nation), but the character of the leaders that apply them, that is the major telling point for the society’s continued well being or not”.
I am really afraid that we’ll land up in Hume’s world with a great explosion and possibility of a French Revolution re-boot. God help us it’ll be very ugly.
First of all, baby boomers have NOT left the labor force in droves. This is the most false “truth” being put out by media/fed. There is not a single piece of evidence to support this, all demographic studies use 55+ as an age group. Any statements on baby boomers are pure speculation! Don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story…
I am truly saddened to read some of the comments above. Why are so many good people with sound minds blindsided by the REAL causes of the economic calamity that will hit us all like a tsunami very soon. People see the symptoms, but they fail to see the causes which remains hidden in the “shadow banking world” of carefully engineered monetary and fiscal policy makers, the “unseen” powers to be! As an example: For every $1.00 USD spent by the super-pacts, $1000.00 USD are spent in lobbying by special interest groups once the candidate is elected and in office. Capitalism in its purest form today has become an EXCLUSIVE financial model, in favor of the elite view, instead of being an INCLUSIVE model for everyone to share the dream which was created by our founding Fathers. Our American ‘dream’ is now our ‘nightmare’ it seems! The problem is SYSTEMIC, not SYMPTOMATIC! History taught us one lesson, again and again, the scales will have to be re-balanced come what may!
WAKE UP!! REACT!! WE THE PEOPLE OWN THE FUTURE, ALWAYS HAVE, ALWAYS WILL! Let us stand together and take our future back – Iceland did it, so can we!!
You’re so very right, but Iceland imprisoned all it’s top Bankers. Any chance of that happening in any other part of the world at present without a revolution?
As to Capitalism, that’s a misnomer what we have is Cronyism. Capitalism is another deep thinking animal altogether, see my post above.
Thomas is spot on. Ours is a pretend democracy controlled by a few with legalized bribery and extortion. The revolving door of politicians, regulators and lobbyists is the best evidence. We are reaching the climax of cartel capitalism run amok.
People also seem to forget that where we are now is the natural evolution of Capitalism. A system driven by competition will produce winners and losers. The ones who keep on winning are getting fewer but more powerful and the losing pool is getting larger and larger. No system is perfect.
Gentlemen: Obviously, none of you have taken Econ 101 where I leaned the cause of the Great Depression was NOT the 1929 Stock Market Crash, but the fact that “too much money became concentrated into too few hands”. With today’s distribution of income and wealth as concentrated as much or more than 1927, what would you expect? If the Fed’s $4 Trillion had been spent on building wind and solar energy farms instead of pumping up the legalized Ponzi scheme known as the stock market, the new jobs and multipier impact of those incomes, together with the eliminated waste of resources spent on fossil fuels and the mitigation of their adverse environmental impacts, would have had a positive instead of negative impact upon the distribution of income and wealth, the economy, and the stock market. The consequence of the maldistribution of income and wealth is now the ongoing economic “shock” from the loss of life sustaining nutrient circulation, the same as occurs after severe traffic crashes. Repeated IV debt injections (i.e., QE) alone cannot cure the injury! Redistribution of income and wealth is the ONLY remedy!
MoCo fails to note that it is powerful wind turbine producers, like GE, coupled with Chinese solar panel suppliers who have effectively lobbied Obama, Congress and EU Parliaments into funding, with huge subsidies, these inefficient electrical generators. There are commercially viable, non-subsidized, technologies that are zero carbon emitters, and also efficient, low cost electrical generators. They get no respect and no government funding. Their hands are often tied by strongly focused lobby groups whose lies are funded to suppress such clean energy alternatives. Saudi Arabia exports a flood of crude oil into North American markets. These and some domestic crude supplies are transported by dangerous railcars rather than infinitely safer pipelines. Yet the environmental lobby is silent about these sources and transport methods; while howling furiously about “dirty” North-American crude oil and “dangerous” pipelines. Many governments, including the USA, are being fooled by their true adversaries, while paying subsidies to fund them. Follow the money and expose who funds these lobbies.
1. 25 years ago I told my husband the cycles were going to start going down so look for an old, old fashioned plowshare to bring home to store in the garage with extra handles. And if you can, find a large iron kettle to make stuff in the back yard. 2. I taught my grand children which pond and swamp roots, and plants to gather by the side of the road and off the fields, plus the seaside plants and under water creatures. 3. I had my husband start curing wood for sling shots. Squirrels like nut trees. Squirrel meat is good stuff. 4. Put away a lot of “stuff”(you figure it out). 5. Read history and the bible. Where as most religion books don’t tell you how to survive in bad times at least that old rambling set of testaments will. Kids, get a grip!
“Don’t get me wrong. Weiss Research is 100% nonpartisan. We won’t take sides and won’t endorse candidates”
Martin, can you please explain your involvement with Grassfire ? It certainly looks like it’s one of your creations, and they definitely take sides and endorse candidates
It occurred to me that the average Joe–myself included are becoming tax slaves to our masters at the centralized government engineered and run by an illegal alien who lied his way into politics and is probably a Salafist muslim plant whose education was purchased for him by the Saudis. Capitalism is only a fable anymore preached to the few patriot still living.. In Marxism–there is always an elite group and we surely have a bunch of government and their cronies as elitists. The muslim in the white house leads an imperial lifestyle unimagined in Truman’s day and has cost the tax slaves billions for said lifestyle. No wonder Sanders appeals to the young–What to do when the Marxists run out of other peoples money???
Wow! everything was just peachy before 2008. You may have noticed that corporations have been shifting well paying jobs overseas for the last 35 years. This is whats left. Low paying jobs, Young people going to and staying in college to get better paying jobs that are not there in the numbers needed give them all high paying jobs., as the governments and people worldwide are awash in debt.We have a small percentage of people who are the ultra wealthy, most of the rest are struggling to make ends meet.
Since when are we a one-person-one-vote democrary? We are a republic with an electoral college!