For several years I have been touting silver’s unique anti-microbial properties. Out of the nearly infinite list of technological/industrial applications for silver, it always seemed inevitable to me that this one use would ultimately become our single greatest need for the Metal of the Moon.

That suspicion/fear could, in turn, be traced back to a single threat which has loomed in an ever larger, ever more-menacing manner: Super-Bugs.  This is the colloquial name given to the bacterial monsters we have created through the reckless, excessive, and simply idiotic manner in which our species has over-used its single most-important medicine: antibiotics.

This is not a new issue, and so most readers are already familiar with the path that led us to what the World Health Organization is now openly labeling as the world’s “post-antibiotic era”. For those not already suitably terrified by the ominous meaning of those words, read this quote from WHO Director-General Margaret Chan:

“Things as common as strep throat or a child’s scratched knee could once again kill.”

This is not hyperbole, as Chan’s warning has already gone from mere theory to actual fact. A chilling article in Bloomberg identifies two terrifying features of this newest and most-deadly Super-Bug. First of all it is completely invulnerable to any/all antibiotics in existence. That alone places it in an almost unique category of killers.

However it gets much worse. The Super-Bug is described as “highly sexed”. Translation: it can (does) merge itself with virtually any bacteria – including the most common species on our planet – and instantly transform those previously treatable bacteria until Mutant Super-Bugs, themselves. E. coli bacteria, cholera bacteria, even the (benign) microbes in our soil can all be transformed into Super-Bug killers. Bacteria which already outnumber our species by billions-to-one can (will?) become legions of nearly invulnerable killers.

Fortunately, while our collective idiocy has now permanently robbed our species of its most potent protection from this potentially deadly menace, our ingenuity has provided us with a means to mitigate this medical catastrophe: silver anti-microbial technology. While the relentless over-use of antibiotics has ruined their effectiveness, other scientists have been systematically designing silver-based applications to protect us from these killers.

It is important for readers to understand that these silver-based applications are preventative in nature, rather than being treatments for bacterial infections which have already taken root. In other words, silver protects us from bacteria through the creation of silver-based coatings or ionic compounds which can be blended into various (inorganic) substances. Thus we can create anti-bacterial clothing, anti-bacterial upholstery, anti-bacterial plastic and stainless steel surfaces, etc., etc.

Why hasn’t science focused on this approach sooner, rather than its complete over-reliance on antibiotics? Taking the treatment vs. prevention dynamic to an extreme, it’s obviously cheaper and more efficient to treat individual pockets of infection with drugs than to create an entire “anti-bacterial world” around us.

However, antibiotics are neither cheaper nor more efficient when they simply cease to function, bringing us back to silver. Given the significant increase in the price of silver over the past decade, many readers may erroneously view the creation of a (partial) “silver shield” around us as prohibitively expensive.

The mistake in such reasoning is that it doesn’t take into account the extraordinary potency of silver in this – and many other – industrial applications. Silver is only a tiny component in these products, as literally microscopic amounts are sufficient to convey this anti-bacterial protection, less than 1/1,000^th part silver (by weight).

The other important distinction between antibiotics and silver-based anti-microbial products is that they fight bacteria in entirely different manners. Antibiotics essentially poison each individual bacteria cell. The substance is ingested by the bacteria, and takes time to kill each and every cell.

This basic trait of antibiotics is enormously important, since it explains how and why bacteria have (relatively quickly) been able to develop resistance/immunity to these drugs one-by-one. With each of the practically infinite number of bacteria killed by antibiotics (historically) taking time to die, this gives (gave) every one of those cells the opportunity to mutate/evolve protection from these individual antibiotics. As a simple function of the Law of Averages, it is only a matter of time until a “lottery winner” emerges which can resist a particular drug – and then reproduce, spreading that resistance.

Conversely, it would actually be more technically accurate to refer to our Silver Shield as a silver “sword”, given how silver eradicates bacteria. Unlike the less-efficient antibiotics, silver-based products kill on contact – instantaneously. This is of huge significance as it means it is impossible for the bacteria to evolve to protect themselves against silver as they have done with antibiotics, because there is no time to adapt to the silver.

Instead, the only possible means of bacteria ever developing (any) protection to these silver-based anti-microbial products would be spontaneous mutation – little different than human beings suddenly being born with three eyes, or tails. Thus creating a partial “silver shield” in the world around us is not some Fool’s Mission, where we inevitably use up this protection and are left with a lot of obsolete, wasted investment. Rather, we have every reason to view this as a permanent tool in our now vastly more difficult battle to protect ourselves from these tiny invaders.

Having established the practicality of this technology in general terms, it’s now time to look at more specific applications, and how we allocate the limited, finite amount of silver which can be dedicated to such an important function. As with many of our economic decisions in capitalist economies, much of this allocation will be determined by supply/demand and ability to pay.

How much is it worth to people to increase their child’s chances of survival by purchasing a crib with an anti-bacterial coating? How about anti-bacterial infant’s clothing? Anti-bacterial carpeting in the nursery? Anti-bacterial flooring in the kitchen and/or bathroom? Anti-bacterial toys? Anti-bacterial plates and utensils? Anti-bacterial diapers?

And what happens when people dare to venture outside their homes in our “post-antibiotic world”? The potential legal liability alone from people acquiring these Super-Bugs in public places/facilities is going to create a gigantic incentive to “go silver”. Hospitals, medical clinics, and all related facilities have already been rapidly incorporating this silver-based technology into more and more aspects of their design and equipment. With the emergence of this ultimate Super-Bug that process can only increase/accelerate.

Then there is our transportation system. From our airports to our public transit systems there will be enormous and increasing public pressure to “go silver” as more and more people die from this latest-and-greatest Super-Bug. Along with the legal liability issues and simple peer-pressure, we could see much/most/all of our transportation system “go silver” in the foreseeable future.

How about the world of entertainment? Living in a post-antibiotic world with Super-Bug killers all around us, would people be more likely to go to a movie theater which advertised anti-bacterial upholstery in its seating, or one without such a feature? How about our sports stadiums? How much silver would it take to upholster the 50,000 (or 100,000) seats in just one of these stadiums?

Note that part of the reason we got to this Super-Bug crisis in the first place was because of the countless thousands of “anti-bacterial products” – derived from antibiotics – which flooded into our marketplace, despite the fact that many of those products were never effective to begin with. “Anti-bacterial” became nothing more than a multi-billion dollar marketing gimmick. Thus with a threat which is now real, and a product which is effective, the market for silver-based anti-bacterial products is literally nearly infinite.

Those not previously familiar with the silver market will likely be unaware that silver is virtually irreplaceable in numerous important, hi-tech applications of the 21^st century economy. Solar panels, hybrid cars, and computers are just a few of the products which will be competing with producers of anti-bacterial products for limited supplies.

Indeed, global stockpiles of silver are at their lowest level in at least 500 years (already), and investors are currently purchasing silver in record quantities to protect themselves from the reckless currency debasement of Western governments (and their bankers). It is only a matter of time until continued suppression of the price of silver by the banking cabal leads to the total collapse of remaining inventories.

That in turn can only lead to an explosion in price which will make silver’s previous 800% gain pale in comparison. I have warned/explained to readers on many occasions how this artificial interference in the silver market must result in those dynamics taking place. With the emergence of an ultimate Super-Bug now a reality, this inventory collapse/price explosion must occur sooner rather than later.

While millions of people all around the world will suddenly be filled with apprehension at learning they are now living in a “post-antibiotic world”, for the bankers of JP Morgan (sitting on the largest “short” position in silver in the history of the world) I suspect that they will be dreading the “cure” much more than the “disease”.

[Disclosure: I hold “physical” silver and shares in silver mining companies]

As Western economies and Western societies continue to deteriorate, I find myself frequently appalled but rarely surprised. Thus it was a refreshing change to be “surprised” by this weekend’s Greek election – made even better by the fact it was a pleasant surprise.

The Western mainstream media had told us to expect the two rancid, Establishment parties in Greece (PASOK and New Democracy) to maintain their grip on power by circling the wagons and forming a Coalition of Convenience, to prevent the possibility of any real change. The script had seemingly been written.

PASOK and New Democracy would unite to serve the bankers and continue their Friedman Austerity: stomping on the poor and middle class to preserve the wealth and privilege of the aristocracy. As they finished the destruction of Greece’s economy they would also complete their own self-annihilation. This would have then set the stage for a real “election” in Greece (i.e. an event where “change” was an option).

PASOK and New Democracy would vanish into political oblivion. A clean slate of political parties would emerge with a “radical” agenda: placing the interests of the Greek people ahead of those of Western bankers and their own Oligarchs. However that’s not what happened in this election.

Either Western media misrepresented Greek voter sentiment in their pre-election predictions, or (being a part of the rancid Establishment themselves) they simply failed to understand it. Greek voters, after being subjected to two years of political/economic rape, advanced the timetable.

They “squeezed” PASOK and New Democracy in the same manner those two traitor-parties had been squeezing the people on behalf of the Oligarchs. Despite the full weight of the Greek Establishment making a last, desperate attempt to maintain the (corrupt) status quo; the voice of the Greek people was heard.

The effective winner in the election was the SYRIZA Party, which translates literally as “Coalition of the Radical Left”. This simple translation tells us all we need to know about how far the Western political pendulum has swung to the right.

Representing the broad majority rather than the privileged few is now a concept of the “radical left”. That principle used to go by a much more general label: democracy.

Eliminating corruption and restoring faith and trust in government is now a concept of the “radical left”. That principle used to go by a much more general label: justice.

Placing feeding the people ahead of making interest payments to bankers as a political priority is now a concept of the “radical left”. That principle used to go by a much more general label: compassion.

The Western propaganda machine has wasted no time in cranking-up its media megaphone to maximum decibels. “Beware the Rise of the Radical Left!” shriek its fearmongers. It is a strategy doomed to failure. Demonizing the concepts of democracy, justice, and compassion as principles of “the radical left” will only complete the isolation and political disconnect of the Western Establishment.

This is how and why we continue to see cycles of revolution, whether by sweeping changes via the ballot box or more forcible means of political reform. The privileged Establishment self-destructs as it severs all connections with the people (and the real world) and retreats to its ivory towers.

“Let them eat cake,” suggested Marie Antoinette. “Eat more austerity,” sneered PASOK and New Democracy. The message of these modern Fascists was harsher, but the separation from reality is the same.

Note that the fearmongering of the Western media after Greece’s election is not only a losing strategy but a dishonest one. It’s attempt to portray this election as a “radical” ideological change is a complete betrayal of the facts.

Immediately after the election, Alexis Tsipras (the leader of SYRIZA) reached out to the Independent Party of Greece – a right-wing party and also officially “anti-austerity” – in seeking to unite the Greek people, irrespective of their political stripes. This election had only one message: “change”, as Greeks across the political spectrum rejected the corruption and betrayal of the political status quo.

In addition, note the totally different dynamics (and outcome) we saw in Greece’s election versus the election which took place in France, also this weekend. In France there was no real change. The Iron Fist of Fascism (Sarkozy) was simply replaced by the Velvet Glove of Fascism (Hollande). Instead of Sarkozy’s blatant brutalizing of the Little People, we have Hollande proposing the more subtle form of economic rape represented by “the Euro Bond”.

Clearly, unlike the Greek people the French people have not yet suffered enough to shake off their propaganda-induced coma of apathy. Four years of being throttled with Hollande’s Velvet Glove should be more than enough time to awaken the French people – by completing the destruction of France’s economy.

Even more stark was the difference in the reaction of the Western propaganda machine to the two elections, epitomized by coverage of London’s The Telegraph:

…Greece is potentially ungovernable as a minority government must try and pass [sic] a new raft of austerity measures next month which are a condition of an EU-IMF bailout and Greek membership of the euro.

In France, while Hollande, the Socialist President-elect is a centrist, he is sitting on a powder keg of resentment at measures that his government will have to pass if it is not to spark a meltdown of financial markets.

In Greece, the two Establishment parties couldn’t even muster 40% of the vote between them, meaning that a solid majority of Greek voters have chosen politicians expressly vowing to support the will of the people. Yet we see the mainstream media labeling Greece as “potentially ungovernable”.

Yes Greece is now “potentially ungovernable” from the perspective of the Establishment, seeking to implement an agenda absolutely contrary to the will of the people, and with now only a clear minority of Greece’s politicians willing to betray the people and serve as their stooges.

Then there is France, where the Establishment knows that one of their Boys is still in charge. As a result, even the right-wing Telegraph is willing to give France’s new Socialist president a muted thumbs-up as a “centrist”. Yet it notes that Hollande is “sitting on a powder keg of resentment”. Let me translate that phrase, since the propaganda machine loves to engage in euphemisms when it is seeking to evade the truth.

Obviously when The Telegraph refers to a “powder keg of resentment” it is clear acknowledgment that as another Establishment candidate seeking to maintain the status quo and serve the agenda of the bankers that Hollande will be acting against the will of the people. Furthermore in maintaining the status quo and continuing policies which have totally and unequivocally failed all across the West, he is dooming France’s economy to precisely the same fate as Greece.

Meanwhile in Greece there is the potential for a new government which will seek to represent the will of the people, and make a good faith attempt to improve the economy and make real changes – rather than continuing to commit economic suicide. Why is one labeled as “potentially ungovernable” but not the other? The answer is already before us.

Starting from Day 1, the Establishment (and its mouthpieces in the mainstream media) have dedicated themselves to supporting their Boy in France, while doing anything and everything they can to undermine any government with the temerity to attempt to represent the people.

Should the anti-Establishment majority in Greece manage to form a government, we can expect that the verbal assault from the propaganda machine will be accompanied by an economic assault in financial markets. This would simply mirror the actions of the Establishment in Iceland, after their political lackeys were also banished from power.

The path to political and economic freedom for the Greek people will not be an easy one, already that is plain to see. Getting to “the light at the end of the tunnel” will mean passing through considerable darkness, as the Establishment makes its Last Stand (at least in Greece).

Unlike the French people, however, the Greek people have at least made a start along that road. For that reason alone, any new government would merit our moral support – and some cautious optimism. The Winds of Change are blowing strongly in Greece.

The talking-heads in the mainstream media spend so much of their time talking out of both sides of their mouths that they have clearly become oblivious to the extent of that double-talk. This is the only rational explanation as to the insistence of the mainstream media in repeating the same self-contradictions.

In this case I’m referring to media double-talk regarding their reporting on the precious metals sector, and most particularly their totally perverse coverage of the precious metals miners. The contradictions should be obvious to any/all investors who watch this sector closely.

On the one hand we have the media endlessly bashing these miners as “under-performers”. Despite the (supposedly) “high” bullion prices we’ve seen in recent years just look at the charts, shriek these bashers. Yes, when we look at the results from our (totally manipulated) markets, it is clear that (mysteriously) these miners are in the midst of their second Depression in five years – in the middle of one of the longest, strongest bull markets in history. Of course the myopic media notices nothing unusual about that.

However, the propagandists couldn’t be content to leave their sabotage of the miners at that level. Out of the other side of their mouths we hear voices like Bloomberg. Inserting the stiletto, it proclaims in its headline:

Barrick Leads Miners Spending Faster Than Earnings Rising

Ouch! The message from that stab-in-the-back is clear: these miners are money-losers…but hold on a second. Weren’t these same propagandists telling us (again and again and again) that these miners should all be drowning in profits from the “high” bullion prices they crow about (as they warn us repeatedly about a “bubble”)?

Methinks I see a contradiction here. Either these miners are reaping “high” prices for their gold (and silver) and thus raking in windfall profits; or, they are struggling in just attempting to stay afloat – as low bullion prices mean they are unable to offset spending with revenues. Both of these things cannot be true at the same time.

The Depression being experienced by these miners is real. As a shareholder in these companies I can vouch for that personally. Thus if we accept the market evidence at face value (and ignore overwhelming evidence of rampant manipulation), the message the market is sending is unequivocal: bullion prices must rise substantially merely to make this sector sustainable over the long term (let alone ever reaching the lofty status of a bubble). This brings us back to the reporting of the media propaganda machine, and their incessant fear-mongering that the precious metals sector (gold and silver) represent asset bubbles which investors ignore at their peril.

How can the precious metals sector be in a “bubble” when prices aren’t high enough to even sustain the sector over the long-term? How can the precious metals sector be in a bubble when investors are holding (on average) only about 1% gold/silver in their portfolios, versus the historical average of 5% to 10%? How can the precious metals sector be in a bubble when gold stockpiles are declining and silver stockpiles are nearly exhausted? As a matter of arithmetic every commodities bubble must be characterized by an upward explosion in inventories.

In short, we have this market demonstrating all the surface indications of a sector in a Depression, yet we have the mainstream media incessantly referring to the depression-conditions in this sector as a “bubble”. It is one thing to be merely mistaken. That can be dismissed as incompetence.

The consistent, perverse manner in which the media reports on this sector in referring to a Depression as a “bubble” cannot possibly be explained as mere incompetence. Reporting the exact opposite of the truth on even a single occasion implies dishonesty rather than innocent mistake. Incessantly reporting the precise opposite of the truth can only be regarded as a campaign of lies.

Those of us who observe and report on these companies on a regular basis will insist that the “reason” for the Depression among these mining companies is simple. There has been an all-out assault by the banking cabal on these miners to sabotage their share prices. As with any companies and any sector, doing so destroys the ability of these companies to raise capital, as in our modern markets the primary means of raising capital is via leveraging equity.

Note, however, that this analysis still leads to the identical conclusion: the only thing which can shake these miners free of their current Depression would be much higher bullion prices. Thus there is no other “angle” by which the actions of the mainstream can be viewed, where their analysis could possibly be justified as legitimate or even honest.

How “high” is high? Obviously any sector market/where the prices are not sufficient to sustain operations over the long term is characterized by low prices not high prices, indeed prices which are too low to be sustained over the long term. This is a tautology of economics.

However, look through the Bloomberg hatchet-job and you will never see the words “low prices” and certainly no suggestion that prices are too low. Indeed we see nothing but the exact opposite – droning on and on about the rapid increases in price:

…gold prices climbed 156%…

…the gold and silver price has gone up quite dramatically…

…the price has risen for 11 consecutive years and reached a record $1923.70…

Would anything in Bloomberg’s reporting lead investors to the inevitable conclusion from their own facts: that prices are too low to sustain the sector over the long term? Of course not.

Instead Bloomberg opted for a “blame the victims” strategy: these reckless miners were engaged in a “growth at any cost” strategy, it claimed. And once again we see the propagandists talking out of both sides of their mouths.

It is this same mainstream media which accuses these miners again and again and again of being under-achievers: “under-performing” the price of bullion despite recording record profits. When (for the first time in history) we have investors mysteriously shunning companies reporting record profits (at the urging of the mainstream media); what choice are these miners being given? Grow or perish.

Much like our lying central bankers rape savers with their near-zero interest rates and then lecture them for over-spending, we have the same blame-the-victim orgy taking place with media reporting on the precious metals miners. First you drive investors away from these companies with intentionally malicious lies that the sector is “in a bubble”, then you lecture the miners for “over-spending” in trying to woo those investors back. Clearly this rape template is being over-used by our Overlords.

Being in regular contact with investors in these miners, I am well aware of their sense of outrage and frustration as their own prudent, honest, investing is being sabotaged by the combination of media lies and bankster manipulation. “When will it end?” is the inevitable question.

Unfortunately I can’t answer that question. Manipulation is an arbitrary act, and thus can never be predicted – with the exception of the patterns which emerge in the manipulation itself. Lies remain effective until they are disbelieved. Again that is a development which no one can precisely predict.

Thus what is a more productive exercise is to look at how this current Depression with the gold and silver miners will end. While we could undoubtedly construct more complex and detailed permutations, there are only a few basic paths forward:

1) Western bond markets collapse and gold and silver prices explode higher. All major Western economies are currently on this path, only the timetable for implosion varies. Clearly once this Ponzi-scheme collapses and $10’s of trillions in banker paper goes to zero (like we already saw with Greece) there will be many paper-holders suddenly obsessed with climbing aboard the shiny gold and silver Lifeboats. There will only be “seats” for about 1% of that money.

2) Paper currencies are driven to zero via hyperinflation. This scenario is obviously much, much worse than (1), since all of the bankers’ paper instruments are denominated in these worthless currencies – and thus all banker paper becomes totally worthless. Even more people (many more) will want to climb aboard the gold and silver Lifeboats – and even fewer will find “seats”.

Unfortunately Scenario Two is not only worse than Scenario One it is also more probable. All the Western debt-sinners are now past the point of no return. It is impossible for any of them to ever balance their budgets. As we have seen now already for four years, this leaves the banksters with only one option: to attempt to continue to prop-up their fiat currency Ponzi-schemes by printing even more paper – much, much more than at any time in history.

We know this is true because we now have the empirical evidence to prove it. As we have seen first with Greece, then with the UK, and now with Spain; even attempting to balance the budget (via sadistic Friedman Austerity) only causes these economies to disintegrate even more rapidly. Thus our cowardly political leaders have the choice of succumbing to debt-default – and be visibly “holding the bag” when voters look for a culprit to blame – or they can let the bankers engage in even more reckless money-printing to (briefly) delay an even worse collapse.  When we watch U.S. politicians continuing to “party like it’s 1999”, we don’t have to speculate as to which choice has been selected.

However, for the sake of argument let’s put aside the fact that our lemming-economies are charging toward one of two cliffs. Let’s assume that the lemmings grow wings, or have parachutes strapped to their backs, and somehow after they stampede off the cliff ahead of them they do not end up going “splat”. This brings us to the third potential path forward, even if it is totally hypothetical.

3) The bankers and media are totally successful in their campaign against the miners and “win”. This Tag-Team of Deceit continues to hold down the price of gold and silver, while also continuing to successfully attack and depress the gold and silver miners.

What happens then? Actions carry consequences. This is the part that these “Wile E. Coyote” bankers simply cannot comprehend. Holding down the price of bullion will stimulate high levels of consumption by both investors and industrial users (eager to take advantage of “cheap” metal). We have seen this consistently now for more than 10 years (that’s called a “pattern”).

Similarly, depress the miners and you depress supply. Depress supply and it’s impossible to meet the (highly-stimulated) demand. Inventories must decline. When inventories decline prices must rise – at the very latest when inventories reach zero. Again, this is nothing more than a simple tautology of arithmetic and thus it must happen.

Newer investors to this sector need some historical context in order to properly understand the dynamics here. It was the successful suppression of the gold and silver markets during the 1980’s and 1990’s which created this 10+ year bull market of the New Millennium. Actions carry consequences.

The price of gold was pushed to a multi-decade low. The price of silver was pushed all the way down to a 600-year low. This created the voracious demand for these metals at once-in-a-lifetime prices.

Equally, pushing gold and silver prices to those extreme lows destroyed the supply chain at precisely the same time they were creating massive demand. Thus the fact that gold and silver have had the most-bullish supply/demand fundamentals for any class of commodities over the past decade was also the inevitable consequence of the machinations of the bankers.

Artificially create a bear market (for any commodity) and the inevitable consequence is a bull market.

What’s different now is that the bullion that the bankers dumped onto the market to stomp on prices during the 1980’s and 1990’s is gone. Meanwhile their paper Ponzi-schemes teeter much more precariously than during the 80’s and 90’s. The reasons to flee to the 5,000 year security of gold and silver grow by the day, while the capacity of the bankers to impede their advance continues to dwindle.

All roads lead to higher gold and silver prices. When it comes to the manipulation of these markets, “success” for the bankers leads to their inevitable defeat. Wile E. Coyote could never catch the Roadrunner. And the schemes of the bankers cannot trump the Laws of Arithmetic.

Gold is a barbarous relic.

Even most ordinary people who rarely pay any attention to topics in the realm of economics will be familiar with this expression. Like most of the Big Lies from the media propaganda machine, our governments have made sure that most of us have heard this one enough times to have it burned into our psyches.

As with most of these Big Lies, this too is a blatant perversion of the truth. It will come as no surprise to gold-bugs and that dwindling minority who advocate sound monetary policies that the reference to gold as a “barbarous relic” was made by the one-and-only John Maynard Keynes. It was from Monetary Reform, a book Keynes published in 1924 – and it was a reference not to gold itself – but to the gold standard:

In truth, the gold standard is already a barbarous relic…

Thus the original reference was made by the most infamous paper-printer in all of history, desperately searching for some insult he could hurl at the gold standard in order to attempt to make his monetary nonsense sound appealing to the Sheep – i.e. the global economics community.

For those not familiar with the mechanics of national economies, the gold standard has often been referred to over history as “the Golden Handcuffs”. How did it acquire this intimidating nickname? Because it absolutely limits our governments from any extreme/insane fiscal or monetary policies without the consequences of those policies being immediately known to the general public.

A government trying to run huge deficits (like the U.S. government was doing during the Vietnam War), would quickly see its “bank account” (i.e. the national gold reserves) quickly evaporate as paying for those deficits emptied the government’s Treasury. Thus ultimately the primary reason that a gold standard is despised (or rather feared) by all the charlatan money-printers like Keynes and the deadbeat governments of modern Western economies is that a gold standard forces governments to pay their bills.

However, the fear/hatred of the Money-Printers and Deadbeats toward the gold standard doesn’t end there, it only begins. By definition, a gold standard bases all new currency creation on one’s national gold reserves. Thus these Handcuffs also prevent Keynes and all his central-banking ilk from allowing the printing presses to run wild with new money-printing – quickly destroying the value of any currency with dilution. So in addition to forcing governments to pay their bills it also forcibly prevents them from excessive money-printing. Two strikes against the gold standard.

There is yet a third category of social miscreants who fear/despise a gold standard even more than the charlatan economists and deadbeat politicians – the thieving bankers.  The bankers use excessive money-printing as their primary means of stealing all of the wealth of an entire society. Three strikes against the gold standard!

The mechanics are simple arithmetic and thus totally incontrovertible. When you recklessly dilute the nation’s currency at a rate of more than 10% per year (i.e. the 10+% “inflation rate” for the U.S. as calculated by John Williams of Shadowstats.com), but you only pay people near-zero interest rates on their savings then these people are effectively becoming 10% poorer each year with respect to those savings.

Into whose pocket does all that money disappear? The pockets of the Thieving Bankers, who are legally allowed to print-up all this “money” for themselves absolutely for free. This act of theft; the largest, most blatant, and most pervasive form of theft in the history of the human race has been given an innocuous euphemism by the bankers, and their minions in the media propaganda machine: “fractional-reserve banking”.

We have a century of incontrovertible evidence to provide us with proof “beyond a reasonable doubt”. When the Federal Reserve was created almost exactly a century ago, the bankers had just begun their campaign to destroy the gold standard, and a quasi-gold standard was still in effect. Even then, during the Federal Reserve’s Century of Money-Printing (when it was assigned the role of “protecting” the dollar) the U.S. dollar has lost roughly 98% of its purchasing power.

The numbers become even more unequivocal when we look at the 40 years since Nixon assassinated the last vestige of the gold standard in 1971. In just the last 40% of the Federal Reserve’s infamous tenure the U.S dollar has lost close to 80% of its purchasing power.

Impair a gold standard and you inevitably weaken a currency. Abolish a gold standard and you inevitably destroy a nation’s currency. Note that over this century the United States has had “a strong dollar”, as owner of the world’s “reserve currency”. What does this say about the quality of the paper currencies of the rest of the world’s paper-printing governments?

This is not “news”. Every time a nation severs all connection with a gold standard and produces “fiat currencies” (paper which only has value by government decree), the paper money goes to zero, or is simply abolished before that path to destruction has been completed.

This goes back literally a thousand years, to ancient China – the dubious “inventors” of (purely) paper money. Ask the gold- and silver-buying Chinese of the 21^st century which form of money is the “barbarous relic” and they would obviously gesture toward the paper they are shedding with zeal – in favor of glittering gold and shining silver.

The Chinese are not alone. Back when pompous Western bankers were maliciously spreading their propaganda that gold was a barbarous relic, they were backing up those evil words with equally evil deeds: dumping approximately 500 tons of their own gold onto the market to crush the price of gold – and lend credence to their lies.

But (as the saying goes) “what goes around comes around”. The gold of the Western bankers is gone, and along with that their capacity to destroy the gold market. But the lie lives on. As recently as 2009, Keynesian disciple (and Noble Prize-winner) Nouriel Roubini declared that gold was still “a barbarous relic”, and thus the gold market was a “bubble” that was about to pop.

When Roubini made those bold predictions at the end of 2009, the Money-Printers (i.e. the central banks) were just about to flip-flop from net-sellers of gold to net-buyers of gold (for the first time in two decades), and the price of gold was under $1200/oz. In 2010, the central banks bought a net 87 tons of gold. And their gold-buying rapidly accelerated in 2011, with the central banks adding a whopping 440 tons of gold last year.

This news came out at the same time it was announced that Mexico, Turkey, and Russia added approximately 45 tons more gold to their holdings in March of this year alone. Central bank gold-buying continues to accelerate. So much for Roubini’s assessment of gold as a “barbarous relic”.

Meanwhile, the price of gold soared more than 60% higher than the “bubble price” that Roubini warned us of, only to be temporarily stuffed back down only 40% higher than when Roubini made his feeble predictions. So much for a “gold bubble”. With that alone, we know all we need to know about both Nouriel Roubini and Nobel Prizes. If you’re an economist, and you worship Keynes, you’re going to get a Nobel Prize sooner or later.

But back to the central banks. It has been asked of me by several worried readers if all this central bank gold-buying is being done to stock-up on gold – merely so that the bankers can again crush the market by dumping all the gold they are currently accumulating.

Here individual gold-holders can put their minds at ease. It is governments like China and India and Russia, and many other Asian nations who are doing almost all of the gold buying. The Western central banks who were the perpetrators of all the gold-dumping haven’t bought a single ounce (at least not legally).

They can’t – they are trapped. The metaphor I use is the old line about “how many elephants can you fit through the eye of a needle (simultaneously)?” What would happen to the gold market – and the price of gold – if Western central banks tried to elbow their way to the front of the line to do some gold-buying of their own?

The price of gold would immediately be launched into orbit as all these big-buyers competed for the limited supply: precisely what they have devoted thirty years of fanatical efforts to prevent. Not only would the supply/demand fundamentals alone send the price of gold rocketing higher, but think of the signal it would send to the market?

Western central banks, the biggest gold-haters in the history of the world, the biggest gold-dumpers in the history of the world were now “buying gold”. The same banks which had dumped thousands of tons of gold onto the market at prices of $400/oz and less were now prepared to buy gold as the price soared above $2000/oz.

Equally importantly, for Western central banks to suddenly flip-flop at the present time and try to load up on their own gold (after this bull market has already surged higher for more than a decade) would absolutely contradict and vaporize all their recent, cherished lies that gold is in a “bubble”. You can’t very well call something a “bubble”, and then rush to the buyers’ window, cheque-book in hand…at least not unless you’re a bash-and-buy artist like George Soros.

It is said that “actions speak louder than words”. When the central bankers were shrieking the loudest that “gold was a barbarous relic” they were selling 500 tons of gold per year. Now they are buying 440 tons per year (and the buying continues to accelerate).

What does it tell us about the bankers’ paper money? Nothing that many of us didn’t already know.

While some may argue my criticism of the insipid mainstream media is too extreme, my rebuttal is simple: “don’t shoot the messenger.” It’s not simply that these media drones are wrong consistently – indeed, almost unfailingly – but in many instances their reporting on issues is literally 180 degrees opposite to the facts.

There can be no more obvious example of the mainstream media’s inability to distinguish “black” from “white” than its utterly worthless reporting on the debt crisis sweeping across Western nations. Not only have they been unanimously incorrect in identifying any of the causes of this debt-crisis, but these dolts can’t even manage to describe the problem correctly.

In this case it is necessary to put the proverbial cart before the horse. First I’ll show people what the Western debt crisis is really all about. Then once the problem is clear it will be much easier to understand/accept the real causes.

Sadly, while is truly a “Western” problem it will have to be illustrated with U.S. data, due to the lack of availability of “real dollar” data for other Western economies. It is ironic that the U.S. – which has both pioneered and perfected lying-with-numbers with its official statistics – is now the only place to obtain realistic (i.e. “real dollar”) economic data in many important categories.

This is due entirely to the tireless efforts of John Williams of Shadowstats.com, as well as the efforts of less-visible sites and individuals who have built upon that body work. Williams produces the only data on U.S. inflation (and many other key statistics) using the same methodology for each year’s calculation.

Conversely, as I have explained on previous occasions the U.S. government is continually “moving the goalposts” with its statistical lies. It is continually changing the methodology of its calculations. Not only are these “changes” comprised of ever more dubious/absurd “adjustments” and “assumptions”, but this intentional deceit is compounded by refusing to update old data with the new methodology – the only possible means to produce consistent measurements.

Instead, the U.S. government’s statistical liars simply string together these disconnected series’ of calculations – thus literally comparing “apples” to “oranges”. We can see not only proof of the deceit, but a clear indication of the motives for these lies when we examine charts which include both the official government lies along side data produced from Williams consistent (and statistically valid) methodology.

The two charts below not only demonstrate unequivocally that the Western “debt crisis” is a revenue crisis (not a “spending crisis”), but we can clearly see the efforts of the U.S. government statisticians to hide the true nature of the crisis – by creating phony data to suggest we are experiencing a spending crisis instead.

It is truly unfortunate that we are forced to rely upon U.S. data to illustrate this revenue crisis. As the great Warmonger of the last half-century, the U.S. has devoted a much larger percentage of its government expenditures to military spending (by several multiples) than any other nation in the post-Industrial Revolution era. The Soviet Union tried to match the massive Reagan arms-race of the 1980’s – and was completely bankrupted in the effort. Thus the “curve” of the spending chart is severely distorted by huge (and well-documented) explosions in U.S. military spending.

Looking at the chart below, the green line represents Williams’ data (i.e the Truth). We see U.S. government spending surging in the latter half of the 1960’s (the Vietnam War). We see it accelerate again in the 1980’s (the Reagan arms-race). But note that in the last few years of the Reagan regime – while military spending was still recklessly accelerating – that actual spending had topped, and even began to decline slightly.

This marked the beginning of the era of declining government services (and real spending on people). Apart from a tiny up-tick in U.S. government spending in the early 1990’s (the first war against Iraq), total U.S. government spending (in real dollars) has been steadily declining since the late 1980’s.

When we look at the light-blue line (i.e. the official government lies), we see the myth that the U.S. government and its media minions have been trying to sell to the sheep: that the U.S. is in the grip of an out-of-control “spending crisis.” Coincidentally the producer of this chart chose the year 2000 as his “base” for assigning a nominal level to these numbers.

It is shortly after 2000 that we see government lies about a spending crisis being ramped-up at exactly the same time that the government’s lies about inflation were also increasing at a near exponential rate. The U.S. government has worked very hard at producing the myth that it has been spending too much (on its own people), when in fact that spending has been in steady (perpetual?) decline for several decades.

What is the only other exception to that trend? We see a dramatic spike in U.S. government spending to finance the hand-outs to Wall Street following their self-destruction in 2008. What is absent from this chart? There is not even a tiny up-tick in real U.S. government spending following the infamous “9/11”.

Since that time the U.S. government has spent $trillions invading-and-occupying Afghanistan in the War for Drugs. It’s spent $trillions invading-and-occupying Iraq in the War for Oil. And total spending for the Orwellian “Department of Homeland Security” (and all of its fascist apparatus) has also likely totaled in the $trillions. But much of what this modern-day Gestapo does is kept totally secret – supposedly as a matter of “national security” – and thus we must attempt to deduce its activities (see “The U.S. Prison-Cell Economy”).

Note what is relevant to this topic however, none of these $trillions on two wars and its own Secret Police was financed out of increased spending (in real dollars). As a matter of logic and arithmetic this means that all of this was funded by cutting what the government spends on its own people – trillions of dollars of cut-backs on social spending.

Already we are presented with several massive myths that have been gleefully propagated by the mainstream media. Let’s start with this one: the Afghanistan invasion and the Iraq invasion were wars in much “only a few Americans made sacrifices” (i.e. the soldiers and their families).

Obviously a lie. As the chart on spending clearly shows, in fact all ordinary Americans have been seriously impacted by massive cut-backs in government services. The truth is that only a few Americans did not have to make any “sacrifices” for those two wars.

That would be the tiny group which the Occupy Wall Street movement likes to label “the top-1%”. While ordinary Americans have faced substantial hardship as a direct consequence of those two invasions (and the $trillions squandered on Homeland Security), the top-1% were literally being showered with money – the even more infamous “Bush tax-cuts”.

Government apologists will argue that my analysis “can’t be right”, even though (real) statistics don’t lie (unlike the U.S. government). They will insist that even if there has been a cut-back in the level of government services that it can’t account for all of those $trillions spent on wars.

The apologists are actually partially correct. The suffering inflicted upon the American people by its own government to pay for its wars has not come entirely out of declining services. It has also come from cheating its senior citizens and its own employees in what it pays them.

As I note on a regular basis, lying about inflation is a deceit which pays endless “dividends” to governments – which explains why devious U.S. statisticians come up with new lies about inflation on a regular basis. It’s utterly simple to show how those lies end up cheating its seniors.

Social Security (and several other seniors benefits programs) supposedly have COLA clauses (“cost of living adjustments”). However, when the U.S. government lies and says that annual inflation is roughly 2%, while John Williams honestly calculates U.S. inflation at 10+%, then each and every year it is actually cutting benefits to seniors by approximately 8%. Now that’s “austerity”! It is yet more irony that the same senior citizens who most gleefully support the wars of the U.S. government (at the ballot box) are the segment of the U.S. population being most adversely affected by the “guns-not-butter” spending policies of the U.S. government.

It’s only slightly more difficult to illustrate how the U.S. government has also been “squeezing” its own workers – contrary to another even more popular mainstream myth that government workers are ridiculously over-paid. Regular readers will recognize the chart below, the one showing the greater-than-50% decline in the wages of the average U.S. worker over the past 40 years.

Government and media propagandists would have us believe that all through those 40 years that ordinary government workers have been getting fattened-up with year after year of large wage increases. Can anyone see any sign of those “wage increases” in the chart above?

Note that over these 40 years that the U.S.’s private sector Oligarchs have been relentlessly hacking-and-slashing employment while the government has been loading up on more workers (while not spending any more money in wages). This means the overall percentage of government workers in the workforce has never been higher.

Now here’s an IQ test for all the idiot-drones in the media. If average wages for all workers have been plummeting lower (by more than 50%) while government workers have been supposedly getting year after year of raises, then what are we to believe? Are private sector workers are now making less-than-zero wages (i.e. paying their employers for the privilege of being their slaves)?

Here’s Part II of the IQ test: if the U.S. government has been adding lots of workers in recent years, while real spending has been flat (despite two, hugely expensive wars), then where are the dollars for those mythical wage increases? You can’t pay more workers, more wages with less money. Any close examination of the data shows that as a matter of simple arithmetic that wages for U.S. government workers (in real dollars) are also steadily falling – not rising.

What has been the result of a decade of (secret) “austerity” for the American people? The same as Greece: the deficits have simply gotten larger and larger – topping out (at the moment) at roughly $1.5 trillion, or 10% GDP. Meanwhile, the U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio is now 100% as the $15 trillion national debt matches the (alleged) $15 trillion of U.S. GDP. Either one of those statistics comprise a full-fledged debt-crisis. Both together signify a level of insolvency at least as severe as any of the Euro debt-sinners.

Let’s summarize all of this media mythology about supposed government over-spending:

1) Spending on government social programs (in real dollars) has been steadily falling not rising.

2) Wages for government workers (in real dollars) have been falling not rising.

3) With our economies now already totally hollowed-out (from 40 years of “genocide” directed at the Middle Class), so-called “austerity” causes deficits to get larger, not smaller.

It is entirely regrettable that in analyzing our revenue crisis that is has been necessary for readers (and myself) to wade through four pages just to briefly dissect government and media lies about an alleged “spending crisis”. Again, don’t shoot the messenger.

A decade of extreme government/media brainwashing about a mythical spending-crisis requires a detailed rebuttal. Our governments are taxing too little, not spending too much. Government workers (like all other ordinary Western workers) are being squeezed by perpetually declining wages, not getting year after year of exorbitant increases – like the Oligarchs themselves. And “austerity” only increases deficits (and cripples economies).

When media drones tell us (again and again and again) that governments need to “cut spending” (even more), cut the wages of government workers (even more), and always keep inflicting ever more-punishing “austerity” on ordinary people they are not writing a prescription for economic health. Instead, as has been starkly illustrated by Greece (in the most economically brutal manner possible), the media mythology about our debt crisis is nothing but a certain recipe for economic suicide.

When a herd of lemmings stampedes off a cliff it is nothing but an accident of fate, as they arbitrarily chose the wrong direction. Not so with the lemmings of the mainstream media. Their ability to spot “cliffs” – and then charge full-speed in that direction – is a “gift” only equaled by our political leaders.

In Part II of this series I can finally begin to discuss the revenue crisis itself, and the real causes of the (real) crisis.

I’ve had enough. Day after day of 100% manure from these propagandists. It’s time to shout out that “the Emperors are wearing no clothes.”

For three years we have had to listen to B.S. Bernanke (yes, his initials really are “B.S.”) drone on and on about the mythical “U.S. economic recovery.” I recently pointed out with an abundance of long-term charts and elementary reasoning that it wasn’t even theoretically possible for the crippled U.S. economy to be growing.

However, don’t take my word for it. Instead, let’s look at the actions of B.S. Bernanke. Until Japan’s failed experiment with taking interest rates to zero – and leaving them there – no nation in modern history had ever engaged in such recklessly insane monetary policy.

There is a very good reason why this had never happened before in economic history. Zero percent interest rates (as I have noted previously) are nothing less than the economic equivalent of a defibrillator. It is a last-ditch, desperation measure designed to attempt to shock some life back into a dying body.

Ultra-low interest rates (interest rates much lower than inflation) were never intended as a permanent prescription for any economy. They rape “savers”. And with rapidly greying populations, we are becoming societies of savers. Leaving interest rates at near-zero is simply serial rape.

What happens when you rape savers again and again and again? They stop saving. They begin spending their paper as fast as they get it – the inevitable consequence of near-zero interest rates.

The math is simple. When you have “negative interest rates” (savings rates much lower than inflation), every day that people hang onto their money it loses value. So people spend that money today, rather than waiting until tomorrow to spend it  – when it will be worth less (worthless?). And when all the consumers start spending all their money as fast as they get it (and then borrow more at those near-zero interest rates), asset bubbles start cropping up all over the economy – starting with the real estate market.

This is what must happen with any/every economy with near-zero interest rates…with one exception. When does the human body no longer respond to a defibrillator? When it is already dead. When does an economy not “respond” to near-zero interest rates (i.e. explode into asset-bubbles)? When an economy is already dead.

All that Japan has accomplished with nearly two decades of near-zero interest rates is to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt (in hindsight) that its economy has been dead for all these years. Similarly, all that B.S. Bernanke has proven with his 3+ years of near-zero interest rates is that the U.S. economy is already dead.

We don’t need two decades of near-zero interest rates to prove the U.S. is an economic corpse. Defibrillating an economy with near-zero interest rates for 3+ years (and getting no response) is proof of death just like defibrillating a body incessantly for three years would prove it’s a corpse.

For the deluded apologists who claim there hasn’t been enough time for the U.S. to pump-up all of its asset bubbles yet again, there is an inevitable precursor for interest-rate induced asset bubbles: ultra-high inflation. If the U.S. economy was not already deceased then 3+ years of 0% interest rates would have already led to out-of-control inflation.

Yet we have B.S. Bernanke insisting that U.S. inflation is extremely low – despite the $trillions of new paper he has been relentlessly injecting into it for nearly 4 years. Even John Williams of Shadowstats.com who engages in honest calculations of U.S. inflation insists that U.S. inflation is still only “high” (just over 10%), but nowhere near the “hyperinflationary depression” he originally predicted for the U.S. going as far back as 2003.

Then there is the U.S. Treasuries market. What do the “highest prices in history” for U.S. bonds indicate from an economic fundamentals standpoint? That the U.S. economy is in the midst of its worst depression. There is absolutely no possible way to rationalize the highest prices in history for U.S. bonds and a “growing economy” – especially with the U.S. dumping the greatest supply of Treasuries in history onto the market. Maximum supply and a growing economy directly imply low Treasuries prices, not the highest prices in history.

However, it would be unfair to single out B.S. Bernanke for all of this criticism. There is also plenty to criticize about Canada’s central bank stooge: Mark Carney – yet another Goldman Sachs alumnus. Yesterday the Bank of Canada again left Canada’s interest rate frozen at its own near-zero level.

What was this liar saying today? He was gushing about the “strengthening” global economy, and thus the Bank of Canada elevated its projections for global economic growth for 2012. Where was the interest rate increase, Mark?

Any Canadians with functioning memories knows that Mark Carney has been lecturing Canadians incessantly for the past two years about their “over-spending”. As noted above, Mark Carney’s interest rates are 100% responsible for that behavior – as (like most people) Canadians demonstrate an aversion to rape.

Meanwhile, real estate bubbles across most large Canadian cities swell ever larger, and teeter ever more ominously. Mark Carney’s near-zero interest rates are 100% responsible for that as well.

In short, if Mark Carney believed one word of his own B.S. about a strengthening global economy then he would have raised interest rates yesterday, and indicated that many more increases were on the way. That would halt the “over-spending” of Canadians, rather than causing it. It would halt the growth of real estate bubbles across Canada, rather than causing them.

Just as with B.S. Bernanke, we see Carney’s actions always and absolutely contradicting his own words. When people say one thing but do another we call them hypocrites. When people intentionally say one thing but do the opposite then they are simply liars.

On Wednesday, April 18th 2012, a nice little editorial by Gavyn Davies appeared in the FT print edition. It was entitled “Fed Doves are Biding Time Before Another Shot of QE“.

The case being made in that article is pretty clear: that the Fed’s recent “seeming” backpedaling from QE (or hawkishness) is just posturing — so that the market will not blast off in an inflationary ramp-up before the Fed’s next, inevitable, round of QE.

Unfortunately I cannot provide you a link to this article online, because when I tried to look it up, I found that it was replaced by something entitled:

Fed’s Doves Lose Appetite For Easing

That is pretty interesting because that title implies exactly the opposite argument as the print article it corresponds to. At least, to the naive reader, or those simply scanning the headlines and mouthing off (such as, we presume, virtually all TV news anchors and especially CNBS bobble-head “journalists”).

The original article wasn’t just slightly biased towards concluding that the Fed is simply doing a head-fake (as many of us “tin-foil-hatters” have been banging the table about): it was the entire point of the article.   So to change the title as above, giving the opposite impression, is grossly dishonest.  I am attaching a scan of the print version, with the bulk of the article (the wonkish middle portion) blurred out, so I don’t get sued.  But the highlighted portions illustrate my point:

Of course, was there ever any doubt what is really going on here — the lap-dog financial media water-carrying for the Fed?

Let me preface this piece by first stating that my reason for writing it was not to induce people to guess which scenario they found more probable, and then to place their bets beforehand. Rather, my purpose was exactly opposite: to prepare people for either scenario so that when they recognized one or the other unfolding they wouldn’t do something stupid in a moment of panic (or greed).

Sadly, in our markets to “do something stupid in a moment of panic” generally means doing precisely the opposite of what one should be doing. This also explains why the bankers like to start panics. First of all, as the cause of these panics the banksters are neither “panicked” nor (obviously) surprised themselves. So they continue to operate calmly (in this feeding-frenzy) while the sheep make themselves especially easy to sheer.

As a result of this never-ending game being played in our markets by the bankers, there is genuine utility in looking ahead (something the sheep almost never do) so that when events do unfold we will be prepared to act (calmly) – as opposed to reacting in panic (as the bankers desire).

With that preface out of the way, the next task is to explain/define these two, looming scenarios:

1) The crash-driven rally

2) The event-driven rally

Putting aside the fact that gold and silver are the most undervalued assets on our planet today; despite this ever-present truth the sheep generally need a “reason” to jump on the precious metals bandwagon. The irony here of course is that simply by jumping on the bandwagon the sheep supply the necessary momentum to drive prices higher – meaning that no “reason” is every truly necessary for gold and silver prices to go higher, in accordance with their ultra-bullish long-term fundamentals.

So the Catch-22 of the precious metals market is that we always need some catalyst to break gold and silver free of the intermittent bankster-created “log-jams” which have occurred in this market over the course of its 10+ year bull run, even though there is never any reason necessary to bid-up these grossly undervalued assets. In the last several years we have seen (arguably) three such catalysts. Two of those catalysts were events and one was a “crash”.

Taking these catalysts in chronological order, the first of the three was the Crash of ’08. Critics will argue that a “crash” is precisely an example of an event-driven catalyst. However, as I alluded to previously a market-crash is a particularly unique form of event, due to the extreme and unusual sentiments which accompany that event. The second reason to distinguish this catalyst from an “ordinary” event which serves to drive the market higher is that the circumstances prior to a crash will be markedly different from the circumstances of any other event-driven rally.

To begin with, one very likely clue that we will be on the precipice of another banker-created crash is that gold and silver (and likely all commodities) will begin to rally strongly without any identifiable cause for their strong surge in prices. To be more precise, the mainstream media (i.e. the propaganda machine) will not supply us with any “reason” for these soaring prices (other than pointing to their favorite scapegoats, the evil “speculators”).

They will not tell us that those price increases are nothing but playing catch-up for the previous $trillions in money-printing. Understand that what responsible precious metals commentators generally tell their audience is that we accumulate gold and silver merely to preserve our wealth – i.e. we’re not doing this (greedily) looking to turn a profit. However, the fundamental truth is that the decades of suppression, and the even more extreme manipulation of recent years mean that gold and silver are more undervalued today than they were at the beginning of this bull market over ten years ago.

Similarly, with the banksters’ paper grossly overvalued, this means that most commodities should be soaring to much higher prices, simply based upon the long-term ramifications of year after year of hyperinflationary money-printing. Here we come to the ultimate fear of the banksters, and the political stooges who serve them: they know that the end of their entire, paper Ponzi-scheme will be imminent when prices for hard assets (i.e. gold, silver, and commodities) begin to soar without any explicit short-term causes.

Unlike the brainwashed sheep, they know their history. They know that the ultimate cause of all hyperinflation is a general loss of confidence in (worthless) paper – just as the Dutch “lost confidence” in their precious tulips 400 years ago. Thus when prices begin soaring (i.e. the paper begins to crash) “for no reason”, the real reason will be that people are losing confidence in the paper and dumping it in favor of hard assets.

This precisely describes circumstances in the spring and summer of 2008, and explains why the bankers decided that nothing less extreme than a “crash” would suffice to put the breaks on the looming hyperinflation. What this means is that unlike an ordinary event-driven rally for the precious metals sector we will be tipped-off prior to the next crash being manufactured: we will see another instance of spiraling gold, silver, and commodities prices with charts showing a clear exponentially-rising pattern.

The banksters will not sit back quietly and allow their $100’s of trillions in Ponzi-paper to evaporate. Inflicting severe economic hardship on 100’s of millions means nothing to them. Indeed, the bankers have an even more extreme “solution” for dealing with a pending hyperinflation scenario: starting a war.

Hitler started World War II to cope with the aftermath of Germany’s hyperinflation from the Weimar Republic. However Hitler wasn’t a banker. He had no mountains of worthless paper to protect. His only motives were to create a smoke-screen for the economic ruin from the preceding hyperinflation and to cover-up his own economic mismanagement, which is an inherent aspect of all Fascism.

With the bankers (and the ultra-wealthy Oligarchs) being firmly in charge of our governments today, war would be a tool that they would use undoubtedly before any hyperinflation reduced their mountains of paper to what it really is: “Monopoly money”. Thus should we see another repeat of the explosion in gold, silver, and commodities prices which took place in the spring and summer of 2008, many would suggest that we should hope for a market crash.

Those with the inclinations to be “traders” (i.e. the greedy) will be sensing opportunity at this point. They will note that we will have a clear warning before the next crash is manufactured. They will note that such a crash will occur when we see a distinctive repeat of what occurred in gold, silver, and commodity markets in the spring/summer of 2008. They will look at the charts for gold and silver for 2008, and they will think to themselves “sell”.

This would be a colossal failure of analysis, and another triumph for naked greed. Simply because identical circumstances cause the bankers to use an identical “tool” (i.e. a market crash) does not mean that the consequences of their reckless intervention in markets will be identical.

Our economic circumstances in 2012 are enormously different than in 2008. Today our economies are all much weaker. Today our economies are all much less solvent. These two different dynamics both have significant implications in any crash scenario. Create a crash in a (relatively) strong economy and there is resistance; that is, that residual economic strength will push back against the downward economic pressure of a crash – slowing the descent and stretching-out the length of time of that downward slide before “bottom” is hit.

Conversely, create a crash in a weak economy and all you have is free-fall. We would (will?) see a crash which is much faster, and much more severe. This alternately means that anyone attempting to “time” this event by selling their gold/silver and then (assuming they can) buy it back it cheaper could miss badly in either direction.

The fact that a 2012 crash would tend to be a much faster event would mean that it could be over before all the would-be traders are expecting. They are sitting-and-waiting (for even cheaper prices) with their pile of depreciating paper, while prices have already began bouncing back. And as with the Crash of ’08, the rebound in gold and silver prices will be at least as rapid as their plunge, and likely even more rapid – leaving all those greedy “traders” still waiting at the station.

On the other hand, with a crash in 2012 undoubtedly a much more severe economic event, would-be traders could easily jump back into the market too soon – and do their buying with prices about to plunge much lower. We can assess those relative probabilities by looking at our other different dynamic for 2012: much less solvent governments.

The Crash of ’08 sparked the Money-Printing of ’09, which in turn has directly led to the Debt Crisis of 2010-to-present. The “64-trillion-dollar question” today is this: if a crash in 2008 caused a debt-crisis (when our economies were relatively strong), what would a crash do in 2012 – with our economies all weak, and all of Europe already in a debt-crisis. The answer to that question is really simple. Everybody is Greece.

The combination of an even worse crash, with much weaker economies, already in the midst of a debt-crisis means that either the money-printing would have to be much, much more extreme (i.e. guaranteed hyperinflation) or it would fail to halt our economic crash despite the extreme money-printing.

Understand that every new “dollar” of paper created is created with more debt. Understand that our interest rates are already as low as they can go, and still we see the debt-dominoes going bankrupt one-by-one. So doing much more money-printing means piling on exponentially more debt onto already insolvent economies…while revenues are simultaneously plummeting lower. This precisely describes what just took place in Greece.

So when “everybody is Greece” (including the world’s worst debt-sinner, the United States) what are the holders of $10’s of trillions in Western bonds going to do? Will they stoically and nobly “go down with the ship” like the Captains of Finance that they are? Or will they all scramble for the nearest “lifeboat” like proverbial rats deserting that sinking ship? I’ll let readers answer that one for themselves.

In the Crash of ’08, it was only the gold-bugs (and silver bulls) who were thinking to themselves “paper is going to zero”. The sheep were still all running towards that worthless paper. In any crash in 2012 (or 2013) it will be obvious to everyone that “everybody is Greece”, and all that paper is going to zero.

What this means is that in any future crash event, any sell-off in gold and silver will end very quickly and very abruptly, when all of the “rats” from the bond-market (belatedly) try to swap (worthless) paper for (valuable) metal. Naturally, all of the extreme money-printing taking place means that the underlying paper currencies are just as worthless as the bonds.

This should mean that all the sheep would be dumping their paper currencies for gold and silver too. However, that would imply rational thinking. Since the panic of any crash event means the opposite of rational thinking, the holders of our paper currencies will undoubtedly do even worse than the bond-holders.

As I continue to point out to readers, it would take much less than 10% of these paper-holders turning toward the 5,000 security of gold and silver to cause precious metals prices to soar to many multiples of present prices (especially in the tiny silver market). This comes at a time when people are only holding about 1/10^th as much precious metals in their portfolio as is the historic norm.

The question for the precious metals bears and skeptics is this: if gold and silver prices can go on a 10+ year bull-run while ignorant Western investors have under-owned this asset class to the greatest degree in history, what happens when all of the “stupid money” of the West belatedly rebalances their holdings?

As an aside, this raises a secondary question: how can the drones in the mainstream media continue to talk about “bubbles” in gold and silver while these assets have never been so under-owned by Western investors?

When thinking investors begin to ask (and answer) these questions for themselves, their strategy for any crash scenario should be clear: don’t idiotically sell the gold and silver they are already holding, greedily hoping they can cash-in on some “obvious” short-term trade. Rather they should be buying more gold and silver in any crash, even in the face of rapidly falling prices. They would know that any plunge would be very short in duration, and will reverse higher very, very strongly, when all of the paper-holders finally begin to “see the light”.

Naturally, the hope of myself and all other gold and silver bulls is that we can see gold and silver begin their next, inevitable rally from some event which inspires much less fear and economic carnage than an economic crash. In Part II, I will flash-back to two such events, and note both their significant similarities and significant differences.

In the middle of 2007, Morgan Stanley paid out $4.4 million to settle a class-action lawsuit initiated against it by its own clients. Why were Morgan Stanley’s clients suing it? They alleged that Morgan Stanley took money from them for buying precious metals on their behalf, took money from them for “storage” of these precious metals accounts, but only pretended to purchase the bullion.

Morgan Stanley (reading from the standard Wall Street script) denied the allegations, but settled the case “to avoid the cost and distraction of continued litigation.” Before moving on to Morgan’s Stanley’s latest exploits in the precious metals market, this deserves a few comments.

First of all, if Morgan Stanley did only pretend to purchase bullion on behalf of its clients, while charging them for the “bullion” and storage fees on that imaginary bullion, we have a word for such actions: fraud. So if Morgan Stanley was guilty of swindling its own clients in this manner then why wasn’t it required to acknowledge its guilt?

The answer is simple. Morgan Stanley is based in The Land of Fraud (aka the United States of America). In The Land of Fraud swindling people (whether total strangers or long-term clients) is a way of life – just ask a former Goldman Sachs employee. Thus the Wall Street banksters can commit fraud without ever having to admit fraud.

Indeed, Bloomberg explicitly confirmed that the SEC’s commit-but-never-admit policy has been standard practice for more than four decades, with such settlements then rubber-stamped by the U.S. judiciary. Bloomberg noted this institutionalized corruption when it criticized a (lone) U.S. judge who has had the temerity to challenge the commit-but-never-admit doctrine:

…As part of the agreement, New York-based Citigroup neither admitted nor denied the allegations, a clause which has been standard in such settlements for at least four decades.

But it gets better for the Wall Street fraud factories. Not only can they commit acts of fraud with impunity while never having to admit to them, but the “fine” they receive after being caught in the act is rarely more than 10% of their proceeds of crime – and often much, much less.

A classic example was the travesty of American Justice when Wachovia Bank was caught laundering nearly $400 billion dollars of drug cartel profits. It paid less than $200 million in fines and penalties. This was less than 2% of the bank’s 2009 profits, and less than 0.05% of the drug-money it laundered.

Given the colossal size of the crime, given the hundreds (if not thousands) of people who would have been murdered to produce those profits, given the tens of thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of people who would have become addicted to the drugs which produced those profits; one would have thought that Wachovia would have faced the maximum possible wrath of the law. After all, this crime occurred in the country which has foisted its hypocritical “War on Drugs” upon the world. Yet what we saw (and what we always see in The Land of Fraud) was something far less than “a slap on the wrist.”

The analogy would be a group of serial-rapists who go around buggering their victims with impunity, because not only do they never have to admit to the act of rape; but the “punishment” for their crimes (no matter how frequent, or how aggravated) is never anything worse than a pat on the bum.

The implication here is clear with a commit-but-never-admit doctrine which goes back at least 40 years: in the United States the word “fraud” is considered redundant. The presumption of the so-called regulators can only be that all of Wall Street’s transactions are fraudulent, and thus classifying any individual Wall Street business deal as a “fraudulent transaction” would be like referring to “wet water” or “cold ice”.

This is confirmed by the quantum of fines for this litany of fraud, which is never called fraud. We have another term for when someone is forced to surrender a tiny portion of their profits from a transaction to an “associate”: a commission. These farcical legal proceedings are nothing for the Wall Street banksters but a (minor) cost of doing business.

In other words, it is yet another absurd fraud to refer to the pennies levied against Wall Street as “fines”. A fine (by definition) penalizes someone for doing something wrong. Obviously if you “fine” someone only 1% or 2% of their ill-gotten gains you are not penalizing them at all – you are encouraging them to rape-and-pillage as a way of life.

Thus we come to the latter half of Morgan Stanley’s Wall Street script for denying wrong-doing: it’s claim that it only agreed to pay its slap on the wrist “ to avoid the cost and distraction of continued litigation.” As we have seen, the cost of litigation (i.e. doing business) is utterly trivial. As for Morgan Stanley’s claim that it would be “distracted by litigation”, this would be like a fish claiming it was getting “distracted” from all that swimming.

If anyone visits Bloomberg News on a daily basis they will find that the plethora of Wall Street fraud has become such a burden on Bloomberg’s reporters that they now only publish individual acts of Wall Street wrong-doing of the most extreme/egregious nature. For all the everyday, nickle-and-dime acts of fraud (i.e. involving mere millions) Bloomberg now produces a daily compendium of Wall Street’s endless litigation. Indeed, on some days Bloomberg needs to publish several of these compendiums – as the individual summaries of banker misdeeds was too extensive to be included in a single article.

Given that no one knows their way around a courtroom like a Wall Street bankster, this also begs the question: why would Morgan Stanley’s (veteran, highly-paid) legal team pay millions in fines  for only pretending to buy bullion for its own clients if (as Morgan Stanley argued) there were “no violations of law and no default or failure to perform [emphasis mine]”?

Either it did purchase precious metals (and store them) for its clients – as it contracted to do – or it didn’t; there is no possible middle-ground here. If it did purchase the bullion; then it writes down the serial numbers, takes a few pictures, produces a notarized affidavit or two, and case dismissed.

Since it would only cost Morgan Stanley roughly 1/1,000,000^th of what it paid in its fine to completely exonerate itself (and pay no fine), there can be no rational explanation for Morgan Stanley “settling” this litigation if it had done nothing wrong. Indeed, if Morgan Stanley is as adverse to “the distraction of litigation” as it claims to be, then why spend two years in this class-action lawsuit – when it would have taken little more than two days to completely exonerate itself (if it had done nothing wrong). Quite simply, Morgan Stanley’s deeds totally contradict its own words.

However, that was 2007 and this is 2012 – and Morgan Stanley is back in the bullion business, betting that the chumps who still bring their business to these fraud factories have very short memories. This time it has “refined” its approach to selling precious metals to its clients, as described by another commentator, Avery Goodman:

…It is now offering to sell you gold, silver and platinum bars, and to keep them “safe”,  but in a scheme in which they refuse to segregate client assets that they falsely label “allocated” ownership.

Customers who take them up on their offer are going to be cheated. They will not be purchasing metal in allocated storage. Instead they will be purchasing an unsecured bond with repayment promised in the form of gold, silver or platinum. They will be investing in money, not to purchase real metal, but, rather, to fund the operations of a fractional banking scheme involving precious metals.

How does Goodman justify those strong remarks?

Under traditional concepts of allocated precious metals storage, the legal relationship between the warehouse facility and the owner is one of bailment. That means that the warehouse must segregate your property so that it is capable of being identified specifically as yours. It must be able to identify every exact coin, bar and/or piece of jewelry [emphasis mine]…

As Goodman himself concludes, the intent of Morgan Stanley is clear:

…Apparently, investors who are looking to buy precious metals , for the first time, are reading enough, beforehand, to know that they are supposed to be demanding that their holdings be placed in allocated storage…

Thus just as in 2005, Morgan Stanley is explicitly promising its clients that it is buying “physical” metal on their behalf, and then storing that metal in individual (allocated/segregated) accounts. However, in 2005 Morgan Stanley was explicitly pretending to be “storing” gold/silver/platinum for them in individual accounts (as alleged by the clients who successfully sued Morgan Stanley in 2007).

In 2012 Morgan Stanley has added a different wrinkle. Instead of pretending to store precious metals on behalf of its clients (as was alleged in 2005), it has simply invented its own definition of “allocated”, where it is not required to actually hold any metal for clients individually – despite what it is advertising to them. Goodman supplies us with Morgan Stanley’s unique, 2012 definition of an “allocated account”:

Allocated ownership means that the physical precious metals (bars and coins) you order from Morgan Stanley Smith Barney’s Precious Metals Trading Desk are purchased and stored on your behalf, but no specific metal bar or coin is specifically identified as belonging to you [emphasis mine]…

Before we slide down the slippery slope of semantics, let’s take a moment to supply a definition of the verb “to allocate”, so that there can be no accusation (on my part) of perverting language:

1. To set apart for a particular purpose; assign or allot

Yet those clients who choose to hand their money to Morgan Stanley for one of its “allocated precious metals accounts” will find (as Morgan Stanley explicitly acknowledges in the fine print) that nothing is being “set apart, assigned, or allotted” to them.

In 2007, Morgan Stanley paid $4.4 million after being accused by its own clients of only pretending to purchase bullion on their behalf, and then charging them “storage fees” on this imaginary bullion – a blatant act of fraud (as alleged). However, in 2012 while Morgan Stanley is once again charging its clients “storage fees” for the bullion they think they are buying for themselves, it is no longer even pretending to store any bullion on their behalf.

Should Morgan Stanley (again) find itself in the familiar position of being a defendant to more litigation from this latest precious metals scheme, one doesn’t have to have a law degree to predict their line of defense. This isn’t “fraud”, but merely a minor issue of “mislabeling”.

Let us never forget this is The Land of Fraud. If the Wall Street fraud factories can knowingly submit blatantly forged documents to U.S. judges in official court proceedings (countless thousands of times), and have this brushed-off as nothing more than “sloppy paperwork”; I like Morgan Stanley’s odds should it once again find itself being sued by its own clients.

More than two years ago I began warning readers of the most heinous acts of fraud ever perpetrated by the Western banking crime syndicate, which I dubbed “economic terrorism”. These swindles involved nothing less than the destruction of entire European economies, solely so that the banksters could profit on approximately $100 trillion in bets they had placed on the debts of these economies.

The mechanics of this economic rape have been explained many times in the past.  First of all the bankers duped governments and institutions all over the Western world into placing trillions of dollars (and/or euros) in bets that interest rates were about to soar higher – just before they crashed interest rates to the lowest levels in history. This swindle is known as “interest rate swaps”.

The second (and even more destructive) form of fraud perpetrated against these governments didn’t even require their participation – merely their naïve acquiescence. The bankers began placing huge bets (totaling at least $60 trillion) that these nations would default, and then had the audacity to call these bets “insurance” (credit default swaps). Note that such “insurance” had been banned in the U.S. for more than half a century – based upon anti-gambling statutes.

Here is the question which these banksters would never answer: how does a third party placing bets on whether someone’s home would burn down provide any “insurance” to the owner of the home? The answer of course is that it doesn’t. What it did do, however, was to create a $60 trillion motive for “arson”.

This is precisely what we have we have seen. After the banksters (primarily based in Wall Street) got assorted chumps to take the wrong side of this $60 trillion, unregulated mountain of bets – betting that these Euro governments would not default – they then began to systematically burn-down the economies of Europe one by one.

I have explained this process several times in the past already, so those readers new to this will have to refer to my previous work. In a nutshell, the Wall Street terrorists can manipulate the interest rates of these nations to (literally) any number they choose via the fraudulent manipulation of the credit default swaps market. I warned readers that this made Greek default inevitable, since if interest rates can be manipulated to any level then any nation can be bankrupted on its debt.

This is exactly what took place with the destruction of Greece’s economy. Each time that Greece’s government served the bankers by announcing a new round of “austerity”, the terrorists would immediately drive-up the interest rates on Greece’s debt so much higher that every dollar of budget-cutting was consumed in higher interest payments…plus a little bit more.

The result was that instead of austerity improving the solvency of Greece’s economy, the Wall Street terrorists always ensured that its economy was worse off after each new round of budget cuts – immediately creating even more pressure for even more austerity. It was nothing but a totally masochistic vicious circle. At one point the banksters had manipulated Greek interest rates more than 50 times higher than those of the U.S. – despite the fact that (as I have explained previously) the U.S. economy is even more fundamentally insolvent than that of Greece.

Now the terrorists have targeted Spain.

What we see taking place in Spain today is an exact, carbon-copy of what we saw in Greece. On the one hand, we have a traitor-government willingly imposing round after round of Friedman Austerity on its own people – despite the utter futility of such sadistic budget-cutting. On the other hand we have the banking crime syndicate (with the gleeful assistance of Big Media) relentlessly driving interest rates on Spain’s debt ever higher, clawing back every penny of that austerity in interest payments to the Bond Parasites.

Said Spain’s Prime Minister, Mariano Rajoy:

“Spain is facing an economic situation of extreme difficulty, I repeat of extreme difficulty, and anyone who doesn’t understand that is fooling themselves…the alternative is infinitely worse.”

Congratulations Chicken Little! Rajoy succeeded in convincing his people that the sky is falling. Unfortunately, what he forgot to tell them was that the budget-cuts he’s imposing have absolutely zero chance of improving things for his own people, while only engorging the Bond Parasites. Already Spain’s government is budgeting €29 billion this year for interest payments alone, roughly 30% more than one year ago – while imposing savage budget-cuts on his own people.

At the same time, Rajoy then increased upward pressure on the country’s budget deficit by announcing “amnesty” for the nation’s tax-cheats. Milton Friedman must be smiling from Hell. The wealthy get the “carrot” in Spanish austerity, while the Little People get only the “stick” – exactly as occurred in Greece. Even worse, having granted amnesty to tax-cheats once, this creates massive incentive/reward for future tax evasion – guaranteeing that government tax revenues will plummet lower, and the deficit will soar higher.

As for Rajoy’s threat/warning to his own people that “the alternative is infinitely worse”, Spain’s official (i.e. phony) unemployment rate has already reached 24%, even higher than in Greece and the highest in Europe – while he rewards tax-cheats and whacks his own people with more than €27 billion in new budget-cuts. I would suggest that nothing could be infinitely worse than that.

Meanwhile (exactly as occurred in Greece), immediately after this new “austerity” is announced, Bloomberg and the Wall Street terrorists are busily at work manipulating Spain’s interest rates much, much higher – their reward for the budget cuts just announced by their amigo, Rajoy.

Here is Bloomberg’s salvo just for today:

…Spanish borrowing costs have been going up since Rajoy announced on March 2 that his government wouldn’t comply with the deficit target the previous administration had set with the European Union…The country hasn’t met the EU’s 3 percent [of GDP] deficit ceiling  since 2007, and the government forecasts debt to reach 79.8 percent of GDP, the highest in more than three decades.

What the propagandists of Bloomberg fail to include in their “analysis” (for context) is the fact that the U.S. is currently running budget deficits equal to roughly 10% of GDP. And its $14+ trillion national debt is already 100% of GDP. Yet we have Bloomberg explaining to its readers “why” Spain’s interest rates should continue going higher – even though they are already several multiples of U.S. interest rates.

Meanwhile, Bloomberg  (and the bankers themselves) considers it totally appropriate for interest rates on U.S. debt to be at the lowest levels in history, despite the U.S. having the largest deficits and debts in the history of the world (even without including the $100+ trillion in “unfunded liabilities”) which it excludes from any/all official calculations.

Obviously when the biggest sovereign deadbeat in the history of the world enjoys the lowest interest rates on its own debt in history (see “Maximum Fraud in U.S. Treasuries Market”), while lesser debtors see their own interest rates (and interest payments) ratcheted-up inexorably higher this is empirical proof of the fraudulent manipulation of our debt-markets – wholly deserving of the label “economic terrorism”.

If it isn’t bad enough already that individual European governments are willingly facilitating the economic rape of their own nations, we see/hear increasing talk of these traitor-governments creating a “Euro bond”: one bond for all of Europe, and thus one debt market for all of Europe. Should the bankers be able to persuade (and/or blackmail) their political lackeys into embarking upon this act of collective, economic suicide; the Wall Street terrorists would then be able to do simultaneously (to all of Europe) what they currently have to perpetrate against these nations one at a time.

While obviously it is primarily the peoples of Europe who should be demanding the immediate, unilateral repudiation of all credit default swap contracts relating to their own markets, we see absolutely no indications of awareness among their own populations about what is really taking place. Consequently, people in North America should also be very, very concerned – and actively lobbying to remove the political stooges who permit such crimes-against-humanity.

For the question we should all be asking ourselves is this: once the Wall Street terrorists have finished laying waste to the economies of their friends in Europe, whose debt markets do you think they are going to destroy next?