Collapse of the U.S. Economy

Exposing the Fraud: ‘Inside Job’ Movie Trailer (HD)

September 1, 2010

SHTFPlan.com - From Academy Award® nominated filmmaker, Charles Ferguson (”No End In Sight”), comes INSIDE JOB, the first film to expose the shocking truth behind the economic crisis of 2008. The global financial meltdown, at a cost of over $20 trillion, resulted in millions of people losing their homes and jobs.

Through extensive research and interviews with major financial insiders, politicians and journalists, INSIDE JOB traces the rise of a rogue industry and unveils the corrosive relationships which have corrupted politics, regulation and academia. Narrated by Academy Award® winner Matt Damon, INSIDE JOB was made on location in the United States, Iceland, England, France, Singapore, and China.

Hat tip Bearish News

Everything is OK *Video*

August 28, 2010

SHTFPlan.com - BackBurnerNews put together a video montage of one way to awaken the masses and get the message out -- with a megaphone.

A crowd of people gather ’round to listen, and it’s obvious that the majority of them are receptive to non-traditional ideas -- or rather, those ideas they don’t hear in the mainstream news but know to be true deep down.

People know what’s going on in terms of the way our lives are being manipulated, even if they have just a hint that things aren’t always as they seem. Those who have lived their lives without being aware may only need a single Eureka moment to make a significant, long lasting impact on their individual well being and the betterment of our world as a whole.

The goal, of course, is for everyone of us to pick up their own personal megaphone, be that a microphone at a community event, a keyboard and a blog, a ballot on election day, or an awareness of how we spend our hard earned income and which causes and movements we’re funding when we do so.

Hat tip Silver Bear Cafe

Michael Pento Says Fed Will Buy Stocks and Real Estate in Its Next Attempt to Create Inflation

September 2, 2010

Zero Hedge - As part of the Fed’s latest QE iteration, it has already been made clear that despite initial disclosures that the Fed would stay in the 2-10 Year bound of Treasurys, Ben Bernanke is now also gobbling up the very long end of the curve.

For all those who are, therefore, still confused why bonds continue to surge to record levels, don’t be: when there is a guaranteed bidder just below you in the face of the Fed, and who you can turn around and sell to at will, there is no pricing risk.

The problem, from a bigger stand point, is what happens when the Fed is actively buying up 30 Year bonds with impunity and the much desired (by the Fed) inflation still does not appear? Well, the Fed then, in Michael Pento’s opinion, will begin to purchase stocks and real estate.

And as all those who enjoy comparing the US to Japan can attest, outright purchases of securities by the Japanese government is a long-honored tradition in the ongoing fight with deflation in Japan. However, and as the recent BOJ (lack of) intervention demonstrated, Japan never could do anything with the required resolve, and bidding up one stock here and there would never achieve anything.

Which is why in this interview with Eric King, Michael Pento makes the case that, as opposed to the occasional market intervention via the President’s Working Group, Bernanke will soon make stock purchases an outright policy of the Federal Reserve as its last ditch attempt to engender inflation before the hundreds of billions of Commercial Real Estate and other bank debt start maturing in 2011/2012. Bernanke is running out of time, and he knows it. And once the Fed becomes the bidder of last resort in stocks, all bets are off, as the Central Bank will become the defacto only market in virtually every risky category. And the only safe vehicle, once the market then begins to price in Fed driven asset-price hyperinflation, will be gold.

Pento also provides some perspectives on the Fed’s balance sheet, which he anticipates will expand in a “great fashion,” but a much bigger concern to the recent Euro Pacific Capital addition is the possible surge in M2:

“That base money can expand -- M2 which is currently running around 8.5 trillion all the way up to nearly 25 to 30 trillion dollars of money supply-- that’s enough obviously to send prices through the roof.”

All Bernanke needs to do is light the “alternative asset purchasing” match, and all those who wonder what left-field hyperinflation could come out of will get their answer.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a Pento interview without a requisite smack-down; in this case of Dennis Gartman, whose call to sell gold denominated in euros at the very bottom of the recent gold correction, needs no further commentary: EUR-denom gold has jumped well over 10% since Gartman said to get out. Pento adds the following:

“There is so much misinformation out there. Dennis Gartman was out there saying gold has lost its inflation hedging properties: this is just ludicrous and insane. I can tell you that gold will never lose its inflation lure, and that’s precisely why I’ve stepped up my purchases of gold., I see what the monetary base is doing; I can clearly see Bernanke’s next step is to vastly increase the size of the balance sheet and the monetary base. So for me, it’s 100% an inflation hedge.”

Pento also goes into explaining: why housing is facing a “deflationary depression” and a further collapse in pricing; why inflation benefits only those closest to the money (i.e., the banks and the military complex); why inflation destroys the middle class; the impact on discretionary purchases, nemployment, real incomes and all other items which tend to “follow the money.”

Lastly, Pento concludes with an analysis of what would have happened had the government allowed the deflationary depression to occur two years ago, without the tens of trillions in bank bailouts. We protracted and elongated the depression. But instead of having the benefit of falling prices, you have rising prices. And if Pento is right, the price rise has only just begun.