How to Survive Financial Armageddon

About the author: JS Kim is the Chief Investment Strategist & Founder of SmartKnowledgeU, a fiercely independent investment research & consulting firm dedicated to exposing the fraud of Wall Street and the best ways to invest in gold and silver.

UK court sets deadline for St. Paul campers - The Real Deal

Occupy protesters in Britain have been camping out on the steps of St. Paul's Cathedral for the last four months but during the week they lost what seemed to be their last court case and they now face eviction. 

Meanwhile, the Royal bank of Scotland has been bailed out by the British government in the largest bank rescue for £45 billion which is over $70 billion with British government owning 82 percent of RBS (Royal Bank of Scotland).

Hans Blix: 'CIA feeds us bad info on Iran nukes' - IAEA ex-head

UN nuclear watchdog IAEA has been closely cooperating with the world's spy agencies, including on Iran, for years, former head of the agency, Hans Blix Source

George Osborne: UK has run out of money + Diesel over £1.50 per litre

The Government 'has run out of money' and cannot afford debt-fuelled tax cuts or extra spending, George Osborne has admitted.

By Rowena Mason:

In a stark warning ahead of next month’s Budget, the Chancellor said there was little the Coalition could do to stimulate the economy.

Mr Osborne made it clear that due to the parlous state of the public finances the best hope for economic growth was to encourage businesses to flourish and hire more workers.

“The British Government has run out of money because all the money was spent in the good years,” the Chancellor said. “The money and the investment and the jobs need to come from the private sector.”

Extend And Pretend Coming To An End

Submitted by Tyler Durden 
Submitted by Jim Quinn of The Burning Platform, 

The real world revolves around cash flow. Families across the land understand this basic concept. Cash flows in from wages, investments and these days from the government. Cash flows out for food, gasoline, utilities, cable, cell phones, real estate taxes, income taxes, payroll taxes, clothing, mortgage payments, car payments, insurance payments, medical bills, auto repairs, home repairs, appliances, electronic gadgets, education, alcohol (necessary in this economy) and a countless other everyday expenses. If the outflow exceeds the inflow a family may be able to fund the deficit with credit cards for awhile, but ultimately running a cash flow deficit will result in debt default and loss of your home and assets. Ask the millions of Americans that have experienced this exact outcome since 2008 if you believe this is only a theoretical exercise. The Federal government, Federal Reserve, Wall Street banks, regulatory agencies and commercial real estate debtors have colluded since 2008 to pretend cash flow doesn’t matter. Their plan has been to “extend and pretend”, praying for an economic recovery that would save them from their greedy and foolish risk taking during the 2003 – 2007 Caligula-like debauchery.

Death Spiral: 'Greece stranded, won't survive'

As Spain tightens its belt in the face of more cuts, the troubles reverberate across southern Europe. Source 
"There is no way that Greece can manage to bring together all of these cuts.. There is no possibility that Greece is going to survive in the Euro in the long term!"

Stratforgate: WikiLeaks releases ‘shadow CIA’ mail

Whistleblower website WikiLeaks has exposed more than 5 million emails apparently obtained by the hacking of Stratfor, the private intelligence company dubbed the “shadow CIA”. The leak may be as high-profile as that of the State Department cables.

The emails, dated between July 2004 and late December 2011, give a glimpse on the inner workings of the company. They show how Stratfor gathers confidential information from paid insiders, including senior state officials, and provides it to large corporations and US governmental agencies.

The private correspondence confirms that Stratfor’s area of interests goes far behind those of a merely civilian firm. In one report, an insider in Russian defense revealed sensitive information on the tactical ballistic missile Iskander, including its development progress and the use during the August 2008 armed conflict with Georgia.

The think-tank is operating as an outsourced spy agency, recruiting sources and pumping them for insider information (and, as skeptics say, disinformation). It lacks capabilities that true special services have, like using spy drones or secretly raiding governmental archives James Bond-style. But otherwise Stratfor operates successfully, turning secrets into cash outside of the usual restrictions and need for accountability that their state counterparts face.

Kubrick's Odyssey - Secrets Hidden in the Films of Stanley Kubrick?

Critical Mass: The Mispricing of Derivatives Risk And How the Financial World Ends

Jim Sinclair does a good job of explaining the difference between the notional and real value of derivatives, and how that real value comes to bear on the financial system in the event of a default. You can read this here for a review of the basic concept if you do not understand it.

Within my own view of money, uncollateralized financial instruments like derivatives are credits, or potential money. When an event triggers them so that they become real, with a significant presence on the balance sheet and the income statement, then they become money.

Grant Williams On The Simplicity Of Owning Gold

Submitted by Tyler Durden: As we enter a week in which the expectations are high for yet another large expansion of central bank balance sheets, and ever more extreme monetary policy (thanks to the LTRO 2), we thought it appropos to listen to Grant Williams, of the famous "Things That Make You Go Hhhhm" newsletter, explain in its simplest terms, why it is still a good time to own gold. In two excellent and succinct presentations, Williams discusses the 'simplicity' of investing through the last four decades but ends by focusing specifically on the rotation to Gold at the start of the last decade (2000) and why the reason for rotating out of the precious metal has not occurred yet. Seeing the world of Gold as a battle between Too Much and Not Enough (and drawing on global supply, demand, and holdings flow) Williams lays out the reasons for owning gold, and how to know when to cover - as he narrows the five reasons to reconsider Buffett-and-Roubini's Barbarous Relic down to one simple rule - Central Bank Monetary Policy Changes.

Doug Wead Officially Confirms There's No Deal between Ron Paul and Mitt Romney + Speech at Central Michigan University

Additional:Speech at Central Michigan University "one day we will all be able to say, we are all Austrian free market economists..." "...we are now in the biggest dept chrisis in the history of the world.">>

Spanish revolt brews as national economic rearmament begins in Europe

Spain's new prime minister has looked into the abyss and recoiled.

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard:

 Though he swept into office as an apostle of orthodoxy, Mariano Rajoy has since delved into Madrid’s ghastly accounts and concluded that it would be "suicidal" to try to slash the budget deficit from 8pc of GDP to 4.4pc of GDP this year, as demanded by Europe's fiscal Calvinists.

Such a policy would require a further €40bn or €50bn of cuts and accelerate the downward spiral already underway, beyond the 1.7pc contraction expected this year by the International Monetary Fund.

The unemployment rate would rise to well over 25pc with six million out of work by the end of the year, equivalent to 30pc under the old definition used in the last jobless crisis in the early 1990s.

A study by BBVA of 173 cases of fiscal squeezes in OECD countries over the last thirty years concluded that demands on Spain are almost unprecedented. They found only four such cases, and three were offset by devaluations. The fourth was Ireland in 2009. The country crashed into slump, culminating in a 54pc fall in Dublin house prices.

"We have reached the point where `taxes kill taxation'. The therapy is turning fatal