Marc Faber recently forecast a 50% decline in the US Stock Market. In this interview he elaborates and discusses FED, Negative İnterest Rates, Asian Nations, War On Cash, and the China Credit Bubble.

related for traders from Victor Adair: Live From The Trading Desk: Brace Yourself

“However, no two people see the external world in exactly the same way. To every separate person a thing is what he thinks it is –in other words, not a thing, but a think.”~ Penelope Fitzgerald

The masses made no noise when central bankers started to flood the system with hot money and are still quiet, so why will the banks stop? There are trillions of dollars that the big players will make and still stand to make before this game is over. We are in the race to the bottom and once a race starts you cannot stop it. So expect the negative rate experiment to be continued and this will continue until the masses revolt. The story below will be heard more often in the months and years to come. Individuals are being forced to speculate in their quest for sustainable yields.

Cathy Berger, a 55-year-old who lives in Nassau County, N.Y., and works as development director at the Queens Chamber of Commerce, said that in the years before the financial crisis she used to invest a large portion of her savings in certificates of deposit, earning an annual rate of as much as 8%.She moved a portion of her savings into high-dividend stocks after rates fell, but lately, those stocks have been under pressure amid turbulence across the financial markets.

“It’s so volatile,” said Ms. Berger. “Trying to reap any kind of income from your money, from your assets, is almost impossible now.” Full Story

Negative rates are already pushing Managers of Pension funds into a tight corner; soon there will be no way to go. Pension funds typically invest in bonds, but bonds are paying such miserly rates that you cannot call it investing anymore. You have to call it charity. At some point these pension funds will be forced to speculate; to some degree, this is already coming to pass. The article below highlights the conundrum most pension fund managers face.

To even come close these days to what is considered a reasonably strong return of 7.5%, pension funds and other large endowments are reaching ever further into riskier investments: adding big dollops of global stocks, real estate and private-equity investments to the once-standard investment of high-grade bonds. Two decades ago, it was possible to make that kind of return just by buying and holding investment-grade bonds, according to new research. Full Story

We are just at the beginning stage of this new trend that we have decided to label as “The speculate or starve Phase“. Imagine the amount of money these funds could bring to the markets in the years to come; it will be like 1-2 QE’s combined.

This market is going to trade at levels that seem dangerously insane even to the most ardent of bulls. We said this in 2014, 2015 and we have said this several times in 2016. Pin this somewhere and look at it one day, you will have some great stories to tell your grandkids when you recall this crazy phase many moons from now.

The Goal of central bankers is to force, not coax, the majority of savers to do something they never thought they would ever do; for a person that saves, the word speculate is a dirty word, but one day these savers will be forced to embrace this term that is alien to them. It is hard to imagine that now, but when they do, central bankers will have proven that an individual’s perception can be altered at will by just changing the angle of observance.

At no point in history have the Top players utilised the principles of Mass psychology so aggressively against the masses as they have done since 2010.  They are looking to alter individuals perceptions completely and sadly, they are doing an incredible job. The more we look around, the more we see their techniques working. Thus understand this, no matter what any country states, the end Goal, for now, is to devalue the currency.

It is not all gloom and doom; this mess will pave the way for something better In the future, but before that chaos insists on having its day in the sun.   When over 62% of Americans do not have $1000 in a savings account or over 30% would have a hard time coming up with an extra $400 to cover emergency expenses you know that the outlook is far from rosy.

Markets are no longer tied to real economic growth. Today economic growth or lack of it is irrelevant as cheap money powers the markets, and there is a plentiful supply of that for those who least need it; the rich and the powerful have access to endless lines of credit that they can tap and turn into even larger sums. However, the day is drawing closer where bankers will allow the small guy to have access to some of these funds. No bull market has ended without mass participation and for the masses to jump in you need to make them feel like they have money to spend.

If you examine the situation from this angle, you can see that there are many avenues left for the Fed to tap and to push this market into super bubble territory. In such an environment, it would be prudent to own some Gold and Silver bullion.

“The difference between a mountain and a molehill is your perspective.” ~ Al Neuharth

Volatility is the name of the game. Stocks are acting up, but standing strong. Oil is propelling higher and the US dollar is falling. Turmoil around the world has never been higher and an ominous shadow is lurking in the background, ready to strike. 

The situation that we now face is ultimately going to end in a collapse of epic proportion. The financial world is now a ticking bomb that is just waiting to explode – I know this, you know this and even if the masses don’t, they can feel it in their bones.

The only ones that don’t seem to be aware of this dangerous situation are the elites who are currently profiting off of this heightened turmoil and their mainstream media mouthpieces who couldn’t be more happy to assist in the destruction of the Western financial world. After all, it would make for a good story right?

Unfortunately, I am not alone in this assessment of the current global situation. Marc Faber, a prominent voice in the financial community and the editor the Gloom, Boom and Doom report has taken an ultra bearish view of the current economy.

….continue reading HERE

The year was 1986.

Top Gun was the #1 movie in America.

Halley’s Comet was visible with the naked eye.

Microsoft went public, instantly making Bill Gates one of the wealthiest people in the world.

And the US government took in $93.7 million through a little known authority called “Civil Asset Forfeiture”.

As you’re likely aware, Civil Asset Forfeiture is a legal process that allows the government to seize assets from private citizens without any due process or judicial oversight.

People can be deprived of their private property without ever having been even charged with a crime, let alone never having actually committed one.

The horror stories of its abuse are endless.

People who have never done anything wrong have had their life’s savings, homes, and business assets confiscated without so much as a warrant.

This constitutes theft, plain and simple.

And like most government initiatives, it started small.

Again, the statistics from 1986 show $93.7 million worth of cash and property was seized by the government.

By 2014, that figure had grown 4,667% to a whopping $4.5 billion.

And we learned in 2015 that the government stole so much private property from its citizens that the total amount exceeded the value of all property stolen by every thief and felon in America combined.

It reminds me of that sign Ron Paul used to keep on his desk during his tenure in Congress: “Don’t steal. The government hates competition.”

The public also learned about all the extraordinary incentives for state, local, and federal police agencies to steal from private citizens.

The entire idea behind Civil Asset Forfeiture is that they can confiscate your property, then put the burden on YOU to prove that you didn’t do anything wrong in order to get your property back.

So much for innocent until proven guilty.

It’s such an astonishing scam: how is someone supposed to be able to afford to prove his/her innocence after their financial resources have been confiscated?

Moreover, it turns out that these agencies are all sharing the wealth among themselves.

The US Department of Justice routinely doles out hundreds of millions of dollars of these stolen funds to local police in a corrupt sort of ‘proft sharing’ arrangement.

DOJ statistics show that between 2000 and 2013, federal “equitable sharing payments” to state and local law enforcement more than tripled, totaling an incredible $4.7 billion.

There are some sickening stories of police departments using this money to buy things like margarita machines, trips to Hawaii, concert tickets, and more.

Again, this is money that was stolen from private citizens without a warrant or any due process whatsoever.

24-year old Charles Clarke, for example, had $11,000 in physical cash on him when he was traveling through Cincinnati airport.

Clarke didn’t have a bank account; he had been saving money for his entire life, including his disabled mother’s VA pension from her time in the military.

He ordinarily kept the cash at home but was traveling with it because he and his mother were moving apartments.

Local officials at the airport saw the money, and, despite it being perfectly legal to carry physical cash, they thought it was suspicious and confiscated it.

His entire life’s savings was stolen by the government in an instant. And he hadn’t done anything wrong or charged with a crime.

There are countless more stories like Clarke’s.

But it turns out that was all just Phase 1 when Civil Asset Forfeiture was a type of ‘passive’ theft.

Law enforcement agencies would seize funds and assets as a target of opportunity, like Clarke’s money at the airport, or a cop who spots a few thousand dollars in cash at a routine traffic stop.

These are the normal stories.

But now we find out that federal agencies, led by the DEA, are now activelystalking Americans to figure out what they can seize.

Like sophisticated thieves who case a jewelry store before robbing it, the DEA has been trolling Americans’ travel records looking for ‘suspicious’ activity.

I’m not talking about past travel. I’m talking about upcoming travel.

Anytime you book a flight, airlines create a code called a PNR, or Passenger Name Record, with all of your travel details and personal information.

And what a surprise– the federal government has gotten its hands on this data.

So now it seems the DEA is combing through PNRs looking for suspicious activity like last minute, one-way tickets.

Because apparently only slimy low-lifes who carry treasure troves of illicitly acquired cash buy last minute one-way tickets.

This is amazing: you’d think that, with the obvious public backlash against Civil Asset Forfeiture over the past two years that the government would tone down the practice.

On the contrary, they’re taking it to the next level.

So now instead of passively waiting to steal from citizens as the opportunities arise, they’re actively casing our travel itineraries looking for potential targets.

This is truly banana republic stuff.

This trend serves as an obvious reminder: when you live in a place with such a corrupt system of justice, does it really make sense to keep 100% of your wealth and life’s savings within their easy reach?

The fact is that any court, police department, or government agency can seize your assets in an instant: your cash, car, bank account, business, and even your home.

And with the data this obvious, it’s simply not worth the risk.

There are so many legal steps you can take to insulate yourself from this growing, ominous trend.

You can move some funds offshore to a safe, stable foreign bank. Or even hold some gold and silver abroad in a non-reportable safety deposit box.

But doing nothing in light of this trend is practically an invitation to get robbed.

Have a good weekend, 

Simon Black

Founder, SovereignMan.com

related: Michael Campbell on: Chalk One Up for The Establishment – Mike Duffy’s At It Again

European bank shares are down for the second day following a last minute bailout package aimed at Italian banks one day before a stress test showed Monte dei Paschi would be insolvent in an adverse scenario.

The ECB’s stress tests published on Friday showed Monte dei Paschi has a huge capital shortfall, with the bank’s Common Equity Tier 1 (CET1) ratio of negative2.44 percent.

Forget the adverse scenario bit, Monte dei Paschi, Italy’s third largest bank and oldest bank in the world is insolvent in any realistic scenario.

Monte dei Paschi Down 16% Today

….continue reading HERE