from JayTaylorMedia:
How One Woman’s Failure to Act is Costing Her More Than Just Money
by Simon Black, Sovereign Man:
Every summer around this time I rent a palatial wine and olive estate here in central Italy for a few weeks of relaxation with friends, business colleagues, and Sovereign Man: Total Access members.
We’ve been coming to the same place for six years in a row, and it’s gorgeous.
At the center of the estate is an 18-bedroom mansion that has been in the same family since it was built four centuries ago.
Back then, Italy was still a major center of wealth and power. London was still a developing backwater and New York didn’t even exist yet.
The Imperial City’s Fiscal Waterloo
by Jim Rickards, DailyReckoning:
It’s all over now except the shouting about Obamacare repeal and replace, but that’s not the half of it.
The stand by Senators Lee and Moran was much bigger than putting the latest iteration of McConnell-Care out of its misery. The move rang the bell loud and clear that the Imperial City has become fiscally ungovernable.
That means there is a chamber of horrors coming. With it, an endless political and fiscal crisis that will dominate Washington for years to come. Its cause is deep and structural.
History Repeats: The Continuing Threat to Freedom and Democracy
from Jesse’s Café Américain:
Lately it has been popular in some circles to talk about the US being a ‘late stage democracy’ that has ‘never been more ripe for tyranny.’
Sometimes they like to drag in Plato to give their thought pieces a gleam of higher learning and a supposed grounding in history.
But their pieces fall into that trap, that very sort of temporal vanity and self-centered preoccupation to despair that Newman notes so well in saying that “every century is like every other, and to those who live in it seems worse than all times before it.”
Would you be surprised to hear that less than one hundred years ago there was an actual plot, bankrolled by some of the most powerful and famous figures of the American one percent, to use military force to depose a sitting American President and instead install a fascist in the White House who would be more compliant with their greed and lust for power?
The model for this takeover would have been similar to Benito Mussolini’s infamous ‘march on Rome.’
Another Reason Men Don’t Work: Imaginary World More Enjoyable than the Real World
by Mish Shedlock, Mish Talk:
President Trump, like President Obama before him, point out the low unemployment rate as a measure of success.
What they don’t point out are masses of people on welfare via fraudulent disabilities, people in school wasting money in dead-end retraining exercises, people who have simply given up looking for a job, and people in forced retirement needing Social Security payments to survive.
A team of researchers from Princeton, the University of Chicago, and the University of Rochester discusses another class of individuals who are not working but are not counted as unemployed: People, primarily young men who are addicted to games. For such individuals, games provide a fantasy world that is far more enjoyable than the real world.
TRUMPCARE COLLAPSES WHICH CAUSES THE DOLLAR TO DRAMATICALLY FALL: THIS RESULTS IN GOLD RISING $7.50 AND SILVER ANOTHER 16 CENTS
FOR THE 3RD CONSECUTIVE DAY, GOLD RISES AND YET MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF GOLD LEAVE THE GLD PROBABLY HEADING FOR SHANGHAI
from Harvey Organ:
SILVER ALSO WITNESSES A WITHDRAWAL OF 946,000 OZ DESPITE SILVER’S 16 CENT RISE
In silver, the total open interest ROSE BY A TINY 162 contract(s) UP to 206,753 DESPITE THE HEALTHY RISE IN PRICE THAT SILVER TOOK WITH YESTERDAY’S TRADING (UP 17 CENT(S). THE ONLY EXPLANATION THAT I CAN THINK OF IS SOMETHING HAS SCARED OUR BANKERS TO NO END AS THEY HAVE STARTED TO COVER THEIR SHORTFALL IN EARNEST ALONG WITH OUR SPECULATOR SHORTS. HOWEVER THE BANKERS ARE HAVING AN AWFUL TIME TRYING TO SHAKE THE SILVER LEAVES FROM THE SILVER TREE.
In ounces, the OI is still represented by just OVER 1 BILLION oz i.e. 1.034 BILLION TO BE EXACT or 148{5f621241b214ad2ec6cd4f506191303eb2f57539ef282de243c880c2b328a528} of annual global silver production (ex Russia & ex China).
FOR THE NEW FRONT MAY MONTH/ THEY FILED: 24 NOTICE(S) FOR 120,000 OZ OF SILVER
In gold, the total comex gold ROSE BY A RATHER SMALL 2,039 CONTRACTS WITH THE RISE IN THE PRICE OF GOLD ($4.20 with YESTERDAY’S TRADING). The total gold OI stands at 485,866 contracts. AGAIN, AS IN SILVER SOMETHING HAS SCARED OUR BANKERS AS THEY STARTED TO COVER THEIR GOLD SHORTS IN EARNEST ALONG WITH THE NEWBIE SPECULATOR SHORTS. THE PLETHORA OF DATA RELEASED ON FRIDAY SHOWING RETAIL SPENDING BASICALLY COLLAPSING ALONG WITH SMALLER INFLATION NUMBERS MUST BE SCARING THESE GUYS TO DEATH.
Killing the Goose
by Jeff Thomas, International Man:
I’m frequently asked by Americans how long I think the “recovery” will take. From my point of view, the answer is obvious, but then, I don’t spend my evenings watching American news programmes that have, since 2010, been endlessly claiming that a genuine recovery is right around the corner.
It would seem logical to me that when the news anchor who cried wolf (claimed the imminence of recovery over and over with no result) proved to be either exaggerating, or just plain misinformed, my faith in him, his programme, and his network would diminish considerably.
But, what if all the news anchors on all the programmes on all the networks claim that a recovery is unfolding? Surely, there must be truth in the claim.
John Rubino – Yellen’s Retreat and the Rise of the KleptoCurrencies
by Kerry Lutz, Financial Survival Network:
John Rubino joined us for a discussion of Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen’s retreat from so-called interest rate normalization. Looks that raising rates is off the table for the foreseeable future. Can QE to infinity be far behind. Things aren’t so good in the Crypto-currency space. Prices of Bitcoin et al., have been hitting the skids the past week. Will it continue? As of last Wednesday there were 970 Crypto-currencies. Does the world need any more? But it’s sure to get them regardless. Let’s see where they head now.
Click HERE to Listen
US Military Establishment Study Admits The American Empire Is “Collapsing”
from Zero Hedge:
A new study conducted by members of the U.S. military establishment has concluded that the U.S.-led international global order established after World War II is “fraying” and may even be “collapsing” as the U.S. continues to lose its position of “primacy” in world affairs.
“In brief, the status quo that was hatched and nurtured by U.S. strategists after World War II and has for decades been the principal ‘beat’ for DoD is not merely fraying but may, in fact, be collapsing,” the report states.
Janet Yellen Blames A Federal Reserve Induced Faltering Economy on… Wait For It… Drugs!
by Jeff Berwick, The Dollar Vigilante:
Central planning is only good for two things. Poverty and comedy.
The stories from the Soviet Union central planners are just that. They caused abject poverty for hundreds of millions of people AND created hilarious stories about shortages of such things as right shoes. The claim was that two factories were set up, one to make left shoes, and one to make right shoes. But when the factories started in production it was discovered that both were making left shoes creating a massive shortage of right shoes.
When central planning is involved get ready for starving people and laughs galore!
One of the world’s most popular tech companies just lost another $2 billion…
by Simon Black, Sovereign Man:
Last night Netflix executives announced that a record 104 million people worldwide now subscribe to its service.
This number handily beat what analysts were expecting, and the stock SURGED nearly 9{5f621241b214ad2ec6cd4f506191303eb2f57539ef282de243c880c2b328a528} to an all-time high. Netflix is now trading at more than 200 times earnings.
Look, I like Netflix. House of Cards is entertaining.
But you shouldn’t invest in a business based on its number of customers and quality of content alone.
