13 Apr 2013

Doug Casey on Second Passports

Louis James: Doug, a lot of our readers have asked about getting a second passport. I realize this is a large and complex issue – several issues, actually – but would you care to go over the basics of where to go and what to do? And for those not already thinking about this, why?
Doug Casey: Sure. We've talked quite a bit about the increasing urgency of getting some of your assets out of your home country, especially if it's the United States. We've talked about having stores of precious metals in safe places abroad, and setting up bank and brokerage accounts abroad as well. I've said that safest way to store wealth abroad is to buy property, which can't be seized by your home country without an act of war. The purchase of real estate solves several issues all at once.
But that's all about protecting assets; to protect yourself, getting a second passport is unfortunately very important.
LJ: Why unfortunately?
DC: Because you shouldn't have to need government papers to live as you please. It used to be that a passport was a document that a ruler of one country would give to a traveler to ask the rulers of other countries to assist him in his travels.

WHEN WE GROW, This is what we can do (Full Documentary)

Finegold2: "When We Grow...This Is What We Can Do" is an educational documentary concerning the facts about cannabis. In this feature length documentary we explore everything there is, from industrial hemp to medicinal cannabis use, from the origins of cannabis prohibition to the legality of growing equipment.

The Gloriously Ballooning Bailout Bedlam Of Cyprus

By Wolf Richter: Bailouts start out small. At first, Cyprus just had a funding crisis; the markets had gotten smart, after years of dousing the country with cheap euros. Not that the risks weren’t there before. But markets opened their eyes. So Cyprus went begging to Russia, and got €2.5 billion in November 2011. That money evaporated without a trace. Then last June, the two largest banks were deemed to need €2.3 billion – €500 million for the Bank of Cyprus and €1.8 billion for Laiki Bank – to fill a void in their regulatory capital, the story went. No big deal.
But the banks had been eviscerated by mismanagement and corruption, and their balance sheets were loaded with deteriorating Greek corporate debt; Greek government bonds that had received a 70% haircut; loans to developers extended during the real-estate bubble that had blown up; loans on developments that were never finished or were built so shoddily that they’ve been declared uninhabitable; loans to politicians that were written off as gifts; and mortgages extended to homeowners who were tangled up in a title-deed scandal that the banks themselves had aided and abetted, leaving 130,000 properties (in a country with 838,000 souls) without title deeds, with disputed ownership, and often worthless mortgages.
So by the end of June, as bailout talks with the Troika took off, “sources” mumbled something about €10 billion, including a government bailout, that hadn’t been on the table before. People gasped. But it was just the beginning.

Israel Apartheid Bodysnatchers: Organ trade from Palestinians

Press TV's documentary program "Israeli Connection" looks into the scandal caused by organ kidnapping from Palestinians by Israel and from the odd poor Israeli too. Source

Bitcoin Bubble Buzz - Max Keiser with James Turk

Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert discuss the Old Lady's gold habit, the gold that may be leaving Cyprus' central bank (or not) and Confucius' famous saying: "IMF STUPID SELL GOLD, I'M BUYING." They also look at the Federal Reserve data accidentally sent to Wall Street bank lobbyists and the venture capitalists entering the new Land Grab. In the second half of the show, Max Keiser talks to James Turk about money, gold, bitcoin, currency wars and the nature of bank failures: to look good until the bank fails overnight. They also discuss Austrian school theories on money and how they relate to gold and to bitcoin. Source

GOLD, GREED & GLOBAL COLLAPSE: who benefitted most from yesterday’s spectacular fall

goldfall13413
The Slog: What you see left isn’t just the tale of a horrendous day for gold – it fell $88, or just over 4%, in a day – it is the record of a fall that steepened the minute New York opened, twice tried (and failed) to rally, and yet managed to do all this on a day when the vast majority of fundamentals should’ve been pushing the price up, not down.
The one exception to this was the Troika demand on Thursday that Cyprus sell its gold to help pay off debt. I have two observations to make about that: one, why do that to Cyprus now and not to anyone else before? And two, on paper it didn’t look like the sort of volume to start a gold freefall.
This is a murky business, so we need to consider it from all sensible angles.
The fundamentals
The US is degrading and diluting its currency, the UK’s austerity strategy is falling apart, the EU economy is flatlining, and Russia is massively overdependent on energy sales in a world where the outlook for energy consumption is awful: indeed, only the coldest european Spring for decades has enabled it to maintain any kind of momentum.
China’s slowdown now looks inevitable given the atrocious consumption outlook outside its borders, and US economic nerves tightened yesterday when the IMF cut its growth forecast for the year from 2% to 1.7%, alongside official figures confirming a 0.4% slump in retail sales in March – the biggest fall since last July. Factory output in the EU declined, and the north-south imbalance worsened as Slovenia edged towards the centre of the debt radar. Italy’s output fell by a disastrous 8%, and Portugal’s constitutional Court has rejected the Troika’s bailout plan. 41% of Germans no longer believe their banked money is safe.
The myth of Obama’s ‘recovery’ long ridiculed here is now clearly seen for the lie it was. The Cyprus ‘bailin’ has caused massive leakage of capital from the eurozone. The Troika’s Athens talks are acrimonious and stalled.

Hacking Planes, Brains & The Environment

AJ: Hijacking and crashing planes using an Android, Scientists hack the brain to anticipate and potentially alter decisions and a special report from Kristen Meghan on her personal involvement with chemtrails. Source

Wikileaks Releases Kissinger Cables and Two Decisions in Manning Trial

Michael Ratner: Kissinger files show important role Wikileaks continues to play revealing real history of US foreign policy; Judge makes one decision favorable to Manning, one not Source

Fascist MIC USA: South Koreans fear paying the price for another US-led war

US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel said North Korea is nearing a "dangerous line", as the Obama administration continues to escalate nuclear war fears by making belligerent statements nearly every day. Such hostility contrasts starkly with the perspective of the average South Korean, as repeated polls show they favor not just peace with the North but also reunification. Source

11 Economic Crashes That Are Happening RIGHT NOW


11 Economic Crashes That Are Happening RIGHT NOWBy Michael Snyder: The stock market is not crashing yet, but there are lots of other market crashes happening in the financial world right now.  Just like we saw back in 2008, it is taking stocks a little bit of extra time to catch up with economic reality.  But almost everywhere else you look, there are signs that a financial avalanche has begun.  Bitcoins are crashing, gold and silver are plunging, the price of oil and the overall demand for energy continue to decline, markets all over Europe are collapsing and consumer confidence in the United States just had the biggest miss relative to expectations that has ever been recorded.  In many ways, all of this is extremely reminiscent of 2008.  Other than the Bitcoin collapse, almost everything else that is happening now also happened back then.   So does that mean that a horrible stock market crash is coming as well?  Without a doubt, one is coming at some point.  The only question is whether it will be sooner or later.  Meanwhile, there are a whole lot of other economic crashes that deserve out attention at the moment.
The following are 11 economic crashes that are happening RIGHT NOW...
#1 Bitcoins
As I write this, the price of Bitcoins has fallen more than 70 percent from where it was on Wednesday.  This is one of the reasons why I have never recommended Bitcoins to anyone.  Yes, alternative currencies are a good thing, but there are a lot of big problems with Bitcoins.  Why would anyone want to invest in a currency that could lose 70 percent of its purchasing power in just two days?  Why would anyone want to invest in a currency where a single person can arbitrarily decide to suspend trading in that currency at any time?