Wall Street Journal - Economic Anarchy, Zombie Hordes, Cycle Gangs

[Anti Federalist]

From Dow Jones "Market Watch" part of the online WSJ network.

When the most staid and "conservative" of publications starts publishing pieces like this, it's time to start seriously thinking about heading for the hills.

How to invest for a global-debt-bomb explosion
Prepare for an apocalyptic anarchy ending Wall Street's toxic capitalism

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/how-to-invest-for-the-debt-bomb-explosion-2010-02-09?pagenumber=1

By Paul B. Farrell, MarketWatch

ARROYO GRANDE, Calif. (MarketWatch) -- Wake up investors. Are you prepared for the economic anarchy coming after a global-debt time bomb explodes? Are you thinking outside the box? Investing differently? Act now -- tomorrow will be too late.

Start by looking past the endless cable skirmishes between Rush, Glenn, Bill and Shawn versus Harry, Nancy, Ben and Barack. Look way past the insurgency bonding Sarah and her diehard Tea Party revolutionaries with Ron Paul's Neo-Reaganite ideologues, Fat-Cat Bankers and the Party of No, all planning a massive frontal assault on the 2010 elections, hell-bent on destroying the presidency. All that's the sideshow.


The Big One is coming soon, bigger than the 2000 dot-com crash and the 2008 subprime credit meltdown combined. A huge market blowout. And as Bloomberg-BusinessWeek predicts: "The results won't be pretty for investors or elected officials."

After the global-debt bomb explodes don't expect a typical bear correction followed by a new bull. Wall Street's toxic pseudo-capitalism is imploding. Be prepared for a massive meltdown. Yes, already the third major bubble-bust of the 21st century, triggered once again by Wall Street's out-of-control Fat Cat Bankers. And it's dead ahead.

Can your family survive in the anarchy after the debt bomb explodes?
America's already descending into economic anarchy. We're all trapped in a historic economic supercycle, a turning point that must bleed through a no-man's land of lawless self-destructive anarchy before a neo-capitalistic world can re-emerge. Investors tell me they "feel" it at a deep level, "know" it's happening. They keep asking: "What's the best investment strategy to prepare now?"

Can your family survive in the anarchy after the debt bomb explodes?
America's already descending into economic anarchy. We're all trapped in a historic economic supercycle, a turning point that must bleed through a no-man's land of lawless self-destructive anarchy before a neo-capitalistic world can re-emerge. Investors tell me they "feel" it at a deep level, "know" it's happening. They keep asking: "What's the best investment strategy to prepare now?"

This is no joke, folks. Are you prepared? Or preparing? Will your family survive in a post-apocalyptic world, when anarchy is rampant in America? Look at Washington, Wall Street and Corporate America today. You know it's already begun.

You are witnessing a fundamental breakdown of the American dream, a systemic breakdown of our democracy and our capitalism, a breakdown driven by the blind insatiable greed of Wall Street: Dysfunctional government, insane markets, economy on the brink. Multiply that many times over and see a world in total disarray. Ignore it now, tomorrow will be too late.

Not a war about ideology, but an economic game-changer
This is a war to control 299 million American taxpayers. A war waged by the "Happy Conspiracy" Jack Bogle profiled in his 2004 "Battle for the Soul of Capitalism," a war machine of Fat Cat Bankers, CEOs, 42,000 mercenary lobbyists and a Congress held hostage to unlimited campaign donations. Their conspiracy has been waging this war against Americans for decades, long before the Supreme Court exposed their dirty secret.

Yes, your enemy is that "Happy Conspiracy:" It has degraded into a pseudo-capitalism with no conscience, no sense of the public good, hell-bent on controlling America's mind, your money and the global markets for its own selfish ends. And eventually it will trigger the game-changing global-debt bomb, the third global meltdown of the century that finally ignites the Great Depression II, plunging us into an era of anarchy.

Investors keep asking: "If it is coming, how do I invest? Buy gold? Commodities? Hedge? Short trading? TIPS? Hoard cash? Buy and hold? Lazy Portfolios?" What if the Dow sinks below 5,000? Maybe the worst-case scenario recently predicted by Bob Prechter: A deeper plunge to the 1,000 range? Imagine a global depression, a bear market dragging on for decades: "How do I protect my family? Can I ever retire? What do I invest in? How can anyone prepare?"

How America's two classes are preparing for a descent into anarchy
As America descends into anarchy your family's survival and your ability to retire will depend on which of America's two economic classes you belong to out of our total of roughly 300 million citizens:

1."Average Joe & Jane" Americans: You're one of 299 million Main Street Americans. Average income is $50,000, only 10% of the average bonuses paid to Wall Street's Fat-Cat Bankers. Or you're already one of America's 20% underemployed ... maybe on food stamps ... maybe among the 47 million with no medical insurance ... your retirement assets are about $50,000, a year's survival. And you are "mad-as-hell" you're not working "inside" the "Happy Conspiracy."

2."Happy Conspiracy" Insiders: You're one of the lucky million or so elite Insiders in the "Happy Conspiracy." You may work for a Fat-Cat Bank that American taxpayers bailed out last year so you pocketed a 2009 bonus gift of somewhere between $600,000 and $10 million. Maybe you're a Corporate American CEO. Maybe you're on the Forbes 400 list. Or you're a U.S. Senator.

Here's how these savvy Insiders are preparing: In his 2008 best-seller, "Wealth, War and Wisdom," hedge fund manager Barton Biggs, a highly respected Insider in the "Happy Conspiracy," advised rich insiders to expect the "possibility of a breakdown of the civilized infrastructure."

His advice: Make tons of money. Buy an isolated farm in the mountains. Protect family against the barbarians: "Your safe haven must be self-sufficient and capable of growing some kind of food ... It should be well-stocked with seed, fertilizer, canned food, wine, medicine, clothes, etc. Think Swiss Family Robinson."

How Wall Street insiders will treat Main Street in 'The Anarchy'
And when the barbarians do come, firing "a few rounds over the approaching brigands' heads would probably be a compelling persuader that there are easier farms to pillage." Imagine a scene like Port-au-Prince after the quake. Biggs is no radical anarchist, he's an establishment Insider, a great guy. We both arrived at Morgan Stanley about the same time. Biggs remained 30 years, was Morgan's chief global strategist. Ten times Institutional Investor magazine put him on Wall Street's "All-America Research Team."

True, he did hedge his prediction of the coming anarchy. His odds: 1 in 10. But in an early 2009 Newsweek article, "A Generation of Destruction: Throwing money at the problem and propping up greedy banks is like trying to put out a fire by pouring gasoline on it," Biggs teased us with a bleak scenario: "Great cycles of wealth creation have usually lasted about two generations, or 60 years. Inevitably, unequal riches corrupt and create envy, and they are always followed by a generation of enormous wealth destruction."

Warning: By vastly understating the risks while his Insiders prepare for the coming anarchy, Biggs is quietly misleading and disarming the rest of America.

The truth is Insiders in the "Happy Conspiracy" elite will follow Biggs' ultra-simple investment strategy: Make massive amounts of money fast using short-term strategies, spout lip service about the "public good." But always act in your own self-interests first, preparing for when anarchy spreads worldwide in an economic pandemic.

How can America's 299 million 'second-class citizens' invest for anarchy?
So what can the average Joe and Jane, the other 299 million Americans do? Warning: In anarchy, nobody knows. Period. The only possible strategy: "Think Swiss Family Robinson." Stockpile like a "Happy Conspiracy Insider."

Many still challenge us about proven strategies like buy and hold, Modern Portfolio Theory, Lazy Portfolios. Unfortunately, they all need a real democracy driven by honest, transparent capitalism to function effectively. They can't function in anarchy.

And Wall Street's already lapsed into a toxic pseudo-capitalism, using it to manipulate Main Street America. Eventually that mindset will force Main Street Americans to misuse the same dark "Swiss Family Robinson" tactics as the Insiders in order to survive the coming anarchy.

What's our alternative? A new American Revolution
But wait, wait, I hear you asking loudly: There must be an alternative to this dark descent into anarchy, to the loss of everything that made America the greatest nation in history?

Yes there is an alternative. Out of the ashes of anarchy must come a Second American Revolution. But unfortunately nothing will happen until a great crisis awakens America ... shocks the conscience of the masses ... we are "asleep" ... only a seismic, systemic shock will trigger the necessary revolution.

The future of our economy and indeed our nation demands another political revolution. We must take back our democracy and capitalism from a government run by Wall Street and its "Happy Conspiracy" ... their toxic self-serving power hold must be broken and, if not, a rising new conspiracy of China, India, oil-sovereignties and asset-rich nations will replace our homegrown "Happy Conspiracy" as it eventually goes down in the flames of anarchy.

Sadly, that's the future many of us realists see ahead for America

[angelatc]

I read this earlier, and went a little light headed. It's one thing to see the prophecies here, but seeing them there gives them a new sense of urgency.

[rancher89]

LOL, the one comment about the article not living up to the title kills me...."no investment advice"...waste of time.....LOLOLOL

good find

[Vessol]

Ron Paul's Neo-Reaganite ideologues :confused:

[t0rnado]

The writer of this articles seems to have note card worth of information about a bunch of topics.

[__27__]

The writer of this articles seems to have note card worth of information about a bunch of topics.

You have to write something, and let us not forget in the new-media world page hits pay bills. Don't you think that article will get a few more hit than his average article?

[Anti Federalist]

US debt will keep growing even with recovery

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100214/ap_on_bi_ge/us_deficit_crunch

By TOM RAUM, Associated Press Writer Tom Raum, Associated Press Writer – 2 hrs 21 mins ago
WASHINGTON – It's bad enough that Greece's debt problems have rattled global financial markets. In the world's largest economic and military power, there's a far more serious debt dilemma.

For the U.S., the crushing weight of its debt threatens to overwhelm everything the federal government does, even in the short-term, best-case financial scenario — a full recovery and a return to prerecession employment levels.

The government already has made so many promises to so many expanding "mandatory" programs. Just keeping these commitments, without major changes in taxing and spending, will lead to deficits that cannot be sustained.

Take Social Security, Medicare and other benefits. Add in interest payments on a national debt that now exceeds $12.3 trillion. It all will gobble up 80 percent of all federal revenues by 2020, government economists project.

That doesn't leave room for much else. What's left is the entire rest of the government, including military and homeland security spending, which has been protected and nurtured by the White House and Congress, regardless of the party in power.

The U.S. debt crisis also raises the question of how long the world's leading power can remain its largest borrower.

Moody's Investors Service recently warned that Washington's credit rating could be in jeopardy if the nation's finances didn't improve.

Despite election-year political pressure from voters for lawmakers to restrain spending, some recent votes suggests that Congress, left to its own devices, probably isn't up to the task of trimming deficits.

Both the Obama administration and Democratic leaders have put job creation ahead of deficit reduction for now.

The Senate faces an important vote after it returns on Feb. 22 from its President's Day recess on a bill intended to stimulate job growth. The legislation offers a $13 billion payroll tax credit for companies that hire unemployed workers, including an additional $1,000 tax credit for workers retained for a full year.

Proposed belt-tightening steps by President Barack Obama, including a freeze on some nondefense, nonentitlement spending, would make only a small dent in the mountain of debt.

The budget he submitted to Congress this month proposes record spending of $3.8 trillion for 2011. Taxes in next year's budget will support only $2.5 trillion of that spending, leaving $1.3 trillion to be borrowed.

The president's budget is a best-case outlook, from the administration's vantage point.

It doesn't take into account future liabilities from the growth of entitlement benefits and is based on projected economic growth that depends on a solid recovery. It assumes Congress will pass all of Obama's initiatives, including spending cuts and tax increases previously rejected by Congress.

Congress already has rejected a bipartisan deficit commission that could have forced Congress to take painful steps on tax increases and entitlements.

The commission would have been modeled on one that makes military base-closing decisions, forcing Congress to take up or down votes. The Senate turned aside the legislation last month after some original Republican supporters jumped ship once Obama endorsed the plan.

Proponents say this type of commission is the only way to make painful debt decisions. Obama says he'll create a bipartisan commission by presidential order instead.

"In the end, solving our fiscal challenge — so many years in the making — will take both parties coming together, putting politics aside, and making some hard choices about what we need to spend, and what we don't," Obama said in his weekly Saturday radio and internet address.

Still, his commission wouldn't have the power to force a congressional vote.

Obama's call for fiscal austerity came at the same time he signed legislation lifting the cap on government debt from $12.4 trillion — which is close to being breached — to $14.3 trillion to permit more borrowing.

The same law puts in place new budget rules praised by deficit hawks that would require future spending increases or tax cuts to be paid for with higher taxes or other spending cuts. "After a decade of profligacy, the American people are tired of politicians who talk the talk but don't walk the walk when it comes to fiscal responsibility," Obama said.

It's not clear when the debt's day of reckoning will arrive. But the overall national debt over the next few years will rise to 100 percent of the gross domestic product — a level viewed as alarming by the International Monetary Fund and international economists.

The Social Security system, the biggest social spending program, has begun paying out more in benefits than it collects in payroll taxes. For the past quarter-century, Social Security had produced a surplus that helped finance the rest of the government.

Medicare, the health care program that now covers 45 million elderly and disabled people, is in worse shape. It's been paying out more than it takes in since 2008 and its trust fund is projected to run out of money in 2017.

Carmen Reinhart, an economics professor at the University of Maryland and a former IMF official, suggested the nation's fast-growing indebtedness may not have a visible impact at this point on ordinary Americans. But some day it will pounce.

"One thing we can say with a fair amount of certainty," she said. "We never know when the wolf will be at our door. The wolf is very fickle and markets can turn very quickly. And a high debt level makes us very vulnerable to shifts in sentiment that we cannot predict."

[Truth-Bringer]

The future of our economy and indeed our nation demands another political revolution. We must take back our democracy and capitalism from a government run by Wall Street and its "Happy Conspiracy"

And that could very well happen just in time. (http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?t=231468)

[Truth-Bringer]

The Big One is coming soon, bigger than the 2000 dot-com crash and the 2008 subprime credit meltdown combined.

Eventually, it will have to come, but I don't think it's going to go down like that. I just watched a new video by Robert Fisk:

YouTube - Robert Fisk reveals truth behind 'dollar demise' report (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFi1KlUh5PI)

He's rather well-connected and states that his Chinese and Middle East contacts told him that dumping the dollar as the world currency will not occur for another 9 years because they don't want to hurt themselves because they are too heavily invested in dollars. Makes sense if you ask me.

So what I think is going to happen is a slow meltdown. The only thing that could start a stampede to the exits at this point is if the American people wake up and realize their currency is becoming worthless, but I don't expect that to happen with the majority of people.

Meanwhile, we Ron Paul supporters should keep buying precious metals and moving into non-dollar assets.