Home Blog Page 2

Guns, Girls, and Greed: I Was a Blackwater Mercenary in Iraq with Morgan Lerette

from Kerry Lutz's Financial Survival Network

Kerry and Morgan Lerette discussed various topics related to the challenges and complexities of military engagements in Iraq. They explored Lerette’s experiences as a mercenary, the difficulties of nation-building, the challenges of providing support in a self-interested environment, and the historical and contemporary role of private military contractors. The conversation shed light on the lack of coordination between different agencies, the limitations of General Petraeus’ strategy, and the difficulties of instilling democratic values in societies where tribal loyalty takes precedence. They also discussed the potential impact of private military contractors on political decision-making and the need for greater scrutiny and regulation in this area.

Click Here to Listen to the Audio

Sign up (on the right side) for the free weekly newsletter.

The Great Gold vs Bitcoin Debate: ZeroHedge Presents Roubini and Schiff Against Scaramucci and Vorhees

from Zero Hedge

Proponents of gold and bitcoin often hail from the same ideological background: Austrian economists, dollar bears, Libertarians tired of State manipulation of fiat currencies and, generally, the anti-Fed crowd. Yet shared principles have not eased the age-old rivalry between the two assets.

Relative to Bitcoin, gold lost considerable value last year as an ounce of gold fell from 0.11 BTC to almost 0.03 BTC, a historically important level. The last month has seen the precious metal rebound somewhat relative to ‘digital gold’:

Continue Reading at ZeroHedge.com…

The Steady Slide Towards Tyranny: How Freedom Dies From A to Z

by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead
The Rutherford Institute

“As I look at America today, I am not afraid to say that I am afraid.” – Former presidential advisor Bertram Gross

The American governmental scheme is sliding ever closer towards a pervasive authoritarianism.

The American people, the permanent underclass in America, have allowed themselves to be so distracted and divided that they have failed to notice the building blocks of tyranny being laid down right under their noses by the architects of the Deep State.

This steady slide towards tyranny, meted out by militarized local and federal police and legalistic bureaucrats, has been carried forward by each successive president over the past fifty years regardless of their political affiliation.

Biden, Trump, Obama, Bush, Clinton: they have all been complicit in carrying out the Deep State’s agenda.

Continue Reading at Rutherford.org…

Will Trump Survive This?

by James Rickards
Daily Reckoning

This is a highly consequential election year, to say the least. The policy differences between Biden and Trump are enormous. Whether it’s taxes, regulation, borders, energy or foreign policy, the differences couldn’t be clearer.

And though I prefer to focus my analysis on markets alone, I can’t. These days especially, politics plays too great a role in how markets behave.

But this year’s election is about far more than policy.

In the past, the D.C. establishment could live with a typical Republican or Democrat. They knew neither candidate would rock the boat too much if he got elected. Both candidates were cut from the same basic cloth and played by the accepted rules.

Continue Reading at DailyReckoning.com…

The President Overtaking the Federal Reserve – Bad Idea

by Martin Armstrong
Armstrong Economics

I do not agree with Donald Trump’s view of the Federal Reserve. I speak on behalf of sound economic policies that benefit the people. I do not blindly support a political candidate for the sake of being on the right side. Now, I criticized Trump during his presidency for constantly pressuring the central bank to lower interest rates. There are rumors swirling that Trump, if elected, would set the price of interest rates himself without the advice of the Federal Reserve. While this may be an extreme side of the rumor, Trump and every other president would like more power over the Federal Reserve — BAD IDEA!

What we must keep in mind is that the Federal Reserve’s original design, which lasted for about one year, was brilliant. The classic banking model involved borrowing from depositors on a demand basis and lending long-term, making a profit on the spread in interest rates, such as for business loans and mortgages. This was relationship banking, not today’s transactional banking model.

Continue Reading at ArmstrongEconomics.com…

JPMorgan Remains the Second Largest Money Market Fund Manager, Despite Needing Billions in Money Market Bailouts From the Fed in 2020

by Pam Martens and Russ Martens
Wall Street on Parade

The Office of Financial Research (OFR), the federal agency created after the financial crash of 2008 to keep federal banking regulators on top of threats to financial stability, has posted an interactive chart showing the largest managers of Money Market Mutual Funds in the U.S. Alarmingly, the parent of the largest and riskiest bank in the United States – JPMorgan Chase – is also the second largest Money Market Mutual Fund manager.

According to the OFR, as of March 31, 2024, JPMorgan was managing $657.9 billion in money market funds, second only to Fidelity, which on the same date was managing $1.3 trillion in money market funds. The data comes from Securities and Exchange Commission Form N-MFP2.

Continue Reading at WallStreetOnParade.com…

Columbia University is Looking Like a Terrorist Training Camp

by James Hickman
Schiff Sovereign

Columbia, Yale, and NYU are nothing compared to the violence and radicalism that the medieval University of Frankfurt reached in the 1500s.

Violence and chaos had become a major problem at nearly all universities across central Europe– especially the German ones– ever since Martin Luther had famously published his Ninety-Five Theses in the year 1517.

Practically overnight, life in Europe had become extremely divisive. People lost the ability to disagree with each other rationally or to discuss ideas with an open mind. And universities became ground zero for intellectual oppression.

Professors led the charge to stir conflict on campus and divide students into warring tribes. Ravenous mobs bullied ideological opponents and labeled them ‘traitors to the cause’. Violence, coercion, and intimidation soon became commonplace.

Continue Reading at SchiffSovereign.com…

Japan Having Yen Troubles, and Copper Tells the Tale

What happens when commodities are badly mispriced because off too many financial-only speculators distorting the price signal? Eventually, it’s big trouble. What happens if the yen completely melts down? I don’t know, but it looks like we’re going to find out.

by Dr. Chris Martenson
Chris Martenson’s Peak Prosperity

The Japanese central bank apparently used tens of billions of dollars of firepower to drive the price of the yen back up compared to the US dollar, but accomplished very little. This is the sort of comprehensive failure one sees before TSHTF.

The last time we had an Asian currency crisis, things were extremely turbulent and dicey. And that was back in 1997 when global leverage was a fraction of its current values. Who knows how turbulent things could get this time?

Next, the story of copper is a real head-scratcher if you come at it from a fundamental, logical angle. The basic conundrum is that the current price of copper is barely 1/3rd that needed to justify opening a new mine.

Continue Reading at PeakProsperity.com…

No One Can Make Government Work

If businesses don’t serve customers well, they go out of business. Government, on the other hand, is a monopoly.

by John Stossel
Reason.com

President Joe Biden says, “I know how to make government work!”

You’d think he’d know. He’s worked in government for 51 years.

But the truth is, no one can make government work.

Biden hasn’t.

Look at the chaos at the border, our military’s botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, the rising cost of living, our unsustainable record-high debt.

In my new video, economist Ed Stringham argues that no government can ever work well, because “even the best person can’t implement change….The massive bureaucracy gets bigger and slower.”

Continue Reading at Reason.com…

The Most Splendid Housing Bubbles in America Amid the Now-Fizzled Rate-Cut Mania & Erstwhile Plunge in Mortgage Rates

by Wolf Richter
Wolf Street

Rate-Cut Mania died, mortgage rates re-jumped to 7.5% today, but here’s what home prices did during Rate-Cut Mania.

The brief and now bygone era of Rate-Cut Mania. Today’s S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Home Price Index, dubbed “February,” is a three-month moving average of home prices whose sales were entered into public records in December, January, and February. Today’s data therefore reflects Rate-Cut Mania that lasted from the beginning of November until February 13, when the Consumer Price Index showed with brutal frankness that inflation was rearing its ugly head again.

Continue Reading at WolfStreet.com…

On Real Estate Income Expectations

by Karl Denninger
Market-Ticker.org

In short if you expect rental income flows to remain stable and yet you also think valuations should go up rather than down you’re dead wrong.

Here’s the simple fact of it: “Cap rate” expresses the return on invested capital as a percentage. A $500,000 property that has net operating income (that is, income minus operating expenses) of $25,000 has a “Cap Rate” of 5%.

What is a reasonable “cap rate”? It is always higher than the short-term interest rate on Treasuries because there is risk in a real estate transaction but there is no risk in short-term Treasuries. That is, if I get a 5% payout on $500,000 worth of 13 week T-bills rolled over every 13 weeks for a year (that is, the IRX is at 5%) for a real estate transaction to make sense it must pay materially higher than that cap rate because I cannot control for the risk that the value of the property may decline, there is significant expense in disposing of the property if I choose to do so and real estate is illiquid (that is, I cannot call someone or get online and get rid of it in a day or three.)

Continue Reading at Market-Ticker.org…

Biden Team Edits His Scripted Video 8 Times in 24 Seconds

by Wendell Husebo
Breitbart.com

Joe Biden’s aides spliced a 24-second scripted video of the president eight times, raising concerns about whether he can deliver simple remarks without mistakes.

  • About one-third of Democrats doubt Biden’s mental fitness, a Harvard/Harris survey recently found.
  • Another poll revealed 82 percent of Americans harbor concerns about his physical and mental health.
  • Only about one-third of voters say Biden is physically or mentally fit to serve a second term, Quinnipiac found.

Politicians often record remarks on camera for social media, but few short videos are as heavily edited as Biden’s 24-second video. The exception to the repeated jump cuts would be videos created for TikTok.

Continue Reading at Breitbart.com…

Take National Security Off Auto-Pilot

by Andrew Byers
The American Institute for Economic Research

American foreign policy has been lurching along for decades now, ever since the end of the Cold War, without sufficient clarity. What are our goals as a nation, and how might we best achieve them? There have been times in the course of American history when the nation had genuine strategic clarity, such as when it went to war against the Axis following the attack at Pearl Harbor. In that instance, the United States properly assessed what it wanted to achieve — the unconditional surrender of the Axis Powers — how it might best go about achieving that end, and proceeded to marshal its resources to ensure success. Clearly, the use of military force is warranted when critical US interests are at stake, such as when an aggressive rival hegemon (like Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan) threatens to dominate a key region, and there are no alternatives to using force. Problems have arisen when the United States has used significant military force in cases when important US interests are not at stake, or in instances when non-military means could have been used.

Continue Reading at AIER.org…

Marxism and Cowardice are the Hallmarks of America’s Colleges and Universities

by Steve McCann
American Thinker

The campuses of America’s colleges and universities are awash in Marxist ideology and tolerance for Fascist/Nazi tactics as well as cowardice and lemminglike groupthink by professors and presidents. The chaotic and perilous end-product of these mindsets is what Americans are witnessing today in the virulent antisemitism, support for Islamic terrorism, and anti-Americanism at so many colleges and universities.

Thirty-five years ago, the New York Times published an article entitled “The Mainstreaming of Marxism in US colleges” describing how, despite unmitigated failures and the collapse of Marxism around the world, Marxist ideas were becoming mainstream in the halls of American universities.

Continue Reading at AmericanThinker.com…

Man Exposes Vehicle-Tracking Tech Being Forced Onto Public

This is the beginning of the overall globalist agenda to COMPLETELY strip people their right to freely travel.

by Kelen McBreen
Info Wars

In a video going viral online, a man describes how his Hyundai Kona EV installed geo-tracking technology in the vehicle without his consent.

[…] He explains that after purchasing the car from a dealer, “The car went in for a maps upgrade and came back as a write-off for me. They took the opportunity to upgrade the Bluelink Linfotainment software. When I started it up, I was presented with a new screen saying terms and conditions changed.”

After reading a few pages of the new terms, the man says his vehicle “was now equipped with geo-fencing and geo-timing capabilities. We’re talking about anything with an SOS button.”

Next, the guy notes his wife’s 2016 vehicle had a built-in system where a “range limit” and “time limit” for usage could be remotely programmed into the car.

Continue Reading at InfoWars.com…