As the editor of the Silver Bear Cafe, I spend most of my time researching current events. I explore the markets, the economic war that is being waged on the middle class, precious metals, the Federal Reserve, energy, and how to go about surviving financially. In this weekly column I will attempt to condense the week's events and examine how the news might affect your pocketbook.

This piece is an example of my weekly news letter which I write, especially, for the members of the Silver Bear Cafe. This week I am using my "Bully Pulpit" to exhibit the nature of my newsletter and to clarify some statements I recently made during an interview with Chris Duane.

Financial Markets

We are getting very close, economically speaking, to catastrophic collapse. I know I've been saying this for years, but back then, I thought it was years off. Now I think it might be months, or even weeks. There is an ongoing debate as to whether the collapse will be the result of a willful conspiracy by "those who would be kings" or the result of the actions of out of control morons. As stated by Mark Twain , oh so many years ago: "I often wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who put us on, or imbeciles who really mean it." I have been predicting the day when the general population will wake up as a result of a swift kick in the butt and a slap in the face. This, unfortunately, will not be a cathartic awakening, as those slapped will have no clue as to where the blow comes from, or who did it, or why. The will be no solutions available to those who still think everything is beautiful. Long time readers have been preparing for this event for a while. I believe that it will take, even the most aware of us, by surprise in various respects. Very few have experienced the reaction of the mindless minions to chaos. Coming soon to a neighborhood near you. But, on a happy note, along with the bad comes opportunity. It is the best time in the last eight months to buy silver.

From Simon Black

I met up with my colleague, and we dove immediately into a conversation about international banking and the state of the global financial system. As a senior executive of a large international bank, he is the ultimate insider. And I was floored by what he told me.

He openly acknowledged, for example, that banks are frauds. Most banks, particularly in the developed west, only hold a tiny fraction of their customer’s deposits in cash. The rest is gambled away on whatever the popular toxic security du jour happens to be.

This entire system rests upon a very thin layer of confidence, reinforced by the occasional taxpayer bailout. Yet it struck him as incredible that people still had confidence in banks, especially given that most of the investment products promoted to their customers are “crap”.

He told me how destructive central bankers are, creating untold amounts of inflation that only serves to make people poorer, while enabling governments to go deeper into debt.

Most of all, he told me that very few of the banking sector’s underlying deficiencies have been addressed since the 2008 meltdown. Many western banks are still insolvent, with the key difference that their governments are now also insolvent.

He believes that in the coming years, this confluence of risk will finally burst, most likely induced by the effects of the currency wars and competitive devaluation.

It was astounding, he said, that the G7 actually published a statement trying to soothe concerns about the global currency wars. “Whenever the government tells you to not worry about something,” he said, “it’s time to be very worried.”

Unfortunately, most people don’t know what’s happening. They don’t know that their government is insolvent, and that the only way they can persist is to go deeper into debt and devalue their currency. They don’t know that the money in their bank account isn’t safe. And they don’t have any idea how far their government will go to maintain the status quo.

It turns out that the screaming teenagers outside were a perfect metaphor. Happily ignorant. Distracted. And completely unaware. Most people simply aren’t going to see it coming.

And yet, from a big picture perspective, it all seems so obvious. National balance sheets across the developed west are deeply in the red. Bank balance sheets are precarious at best. Central bankers are flooding the world with paper money. And governments are trying everything– capital controls, competitive devaluation, pension nationalization– to keep the party going.

The writing is on the wall. And tTaking some basic steps now can make a world of difference. This includes purchasing real assets (precious metals, productive land), moving a portion of your savings to a well-capitalized banking system, and taking control over retirement funds.

These are steps that make sense no matter what; even if the worst never occurs, you won’t be worse off. And should the house of cards collapse, you’ll be one of the few people left standing.

On the Economic War Front

The first step in solving a problem is its lucid identification. In the case of the Economic War that is currently being waged against the American Middle Class (which is, irrefutably a problem) the problem lies in the abandonment of the rule of law by every arm of government. There is a pervasive evil which has in its grip, the future of liberty and freedom in America. There are many, having been stripped of their ability to exercise any semblance of critical thought, who, as a result of being intentionally dumbed down and, as a result, stupid on purpose, refuse to consider the overwhelming evidence which provides means and motives for the crime of the millennia. The motive is the basest of all, greed. In the missive noted below, Mr. Welch gives these scumbags much more credit than I believe they are due. It is a far greater task to build something up than it is to tear it down.

From Ryan Scott Welch:

There is an adage that reads "never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity... but don't rule out malice." This is known as Heinlein's or Hanlon's Razor (there is only a slight difference between the two). Unfortunately many people only go by the first part of Heinlein's Razor, leaving out the "but don't rule out malice" part.

People using this heuristic decision-making shortcut often think that even though some things that people do seem very suspect, and even though mental red flags are going up and instinctive alarms are sounding, that there must be some explanation, other than malice, to explain the actions of people.

This is especially true when the suspicious people are connected to them is some way like family, friends, or even the politicians that they support. Many people using Heinlein's Razor shrug off these suspicious actions as if they were just a mistake, or maybe the actions that people did were the result of "bad luck", or possibly that ignorance can explain why they made those decisions. But I would like to focus on the second part of Heinlein's Razor which of course is: but don't rule out malice.

Sometimes, some people actually act out of malice. Malicious people do exist in the world and always have, as far back as the beginning of recorded human history. It is easily possible that you know, or know of, some malicious people. They could be your acquaintances or friends; they could even be in your family, and yes, they might be one or more of your political leaders. In support of the second part of Heinlein's Razor there's another adage called Occam's razor that says among competing hypotheses, the one that makes the fewest assumptions should be selected -- the simpler the explanation, the more likely it is to be true, everything else being equal. If you have to mentally jump through a lot of hoops to explain how someone's motive cannot be malice then Occam's Razor says that the more assumptions you need to make the less likely that your hypothesis is true.

Focusing on politics, and by association politicians, what if the harmful actions that your politicians make can be more logically explained by malice than by stupidity? For example, most politicians are quite intelligent. Most have succeeded in academics at the highest levels in the world. Most have also been very successful in business or professionally besides success in politics. Only the smallest percentage of politicians could actually be described as stupid prior to their being elected. So how is it possible that some of the most successful and intelligent people in the United States can suddenly become stupid the moment they walk in the door of Congress? Or alternatively, how is it possible that these intelligent and successful people suddenly become unlucky? Is there any logical explanation? Isn't it much more likely that the people in congress are just as lucky and intelligent as they were the day before they were elected? And if that is true, how can you explain the "stupid" things that these intelligent and successful politicians do?

I submit that the more likely hypothesis, which is supported by both Heinlein's and Occam's razor, is that these politicians are not at all stupid or unlucky, but they are doing exactly what they want to do and they are getting exactly the result that they hope to achieve. You might think, "I can't believe that my politicians are purposefully destroying/harming (fill in the blank). Well, you are probably right. You can't believe it, but that does not mean it is not true. Much that is true is not believed at first.

If it is true that the destructive decisions that these politicians make are just mistakes or caused by stupidity then many if not most of the decisions made should be good, right? But if most of the decisions made are not good, can stupidity explain that? Even if these politicians were blithering idiots, wouldn't about half of their decisions be right, just from the laws of probability, or rather "dumb-luck"? The fact that most of the decisions made are destructive precludes the stupidity hypothesis by definition. The only logical explanation therefore is that these destructive decisions are willful; they are on purpose, they are by design.

Now of course, if you are both intelligent and you have a malicious agenda, you would not let the people that elected you know of your nefarious designs, at least not those who don't share your agenda, so you would camouflage your intentions by providing some kind of cover. Any excuse that your (for the most part) ignorant and lazy electorate could swallow would do. It does not even have to make sense. You just need an excuse so that the people that elected you can wrap themselves in their delusional cocoon and go comfortably back to sleep.

Precious Metals

I was recently interviewed by my good friend Chris Duane. During that interview we talked extensively about silver (go figure). I had been railing about the Federal Reserve and the insidious sleight of hand called inflation. Inflation is theft. The people who cause inflation are thieves. The Federal Reserve is the sole cause of inflation. Everyone who is the least bit affiliated with the Federal Reserve are thieves. Ben Bernanke is currently the chief thief. The IRS is no more than the collection agency for the Federal Reserve. The thieves that started the Federal Reserve planned ahead and waited until December 23rd, 1913, when most of the Congressmen and Senators had already left to join their families for Christmas. They then, as a result, had fewer politicians to bribe to pass the unconstitutional legislation that brought the Fed into being. The Federal Reserve Act actually usurped the U.S. Treasury's constitutional right to issue currency. Before 1913 (when the Federal Reserve Act was passed) the U.S. Treasury Department created the currency and put it into circulation through the issuance of treasury bonds. The government paid minimal interest to bond holders. There was no tax burden (income tax) on the American people associated with the issuance of currency. When the Federal Reserve came into being, the Banksters had the treasury department print Federal Reserve Notes and they then lent them back to the government at interest. The Bankster imposed a condition that the American taxpayer would be responsible for paying interest to them. All of the sudden these criminal thieves needed a collection agency to collect the unconstitutional interest on the unconstitutional debt the the corrupt politicians (in return for payoffs) willfully took on. They called the collection agency the Internal Revenue System. I view it as a large group of Guidos and Bubbas that collect the usurious payment on loans made by neighborhood crime bosses, only on a national level.

During the interview, I expressed my contention that the best reason to invest in precious metal in general, and silver in particular, was to protect your capital from the decimation of inflation. I suggested that silver had intrinsic value that could not be stolen by the criminal banksters. I used, as an example, a 1964 quarter, that would buy a little more than one gallon of gasoline then, and because it was made of silver, would currently get you almost three gallons of gas. Currently, a quarter will buy one-fifteenth of a gallon of gasoline. The difference is a result of currency manipulation (in this instance, unconstitutional coinage debasement by LBJ at the behest of the FED) and the ensuing loss of purchasing power is a blatent result of theft. So many banksters, so few lampposts.

I would like to take this opportunity to amend that conclusion. I often get wound up in my rants against the Fed and dismiss the obvious as something to be taken for granted. It this case it deserves clarification. There is just as great, if not greater potential for silver, to protect your capital, than just a hedge of inflation. There is also the matter of manipulation and price suppression. The darkside has been suppressing the price of precious metals, especially silver, for many years. I believe that that supression is coming to and end. Market pressures are greater than the slimey machinations of the bozos. When the suppression does end, and I think it may be sooner than later, the price will explode.

From John Rubino

The past year has tested the worldview, and sometimes the sanity, of precious metals investors. But it has also given us another chance to load up at what might turn out to be dirt-cheap prices, says Carsten Ringler, managing director of German financial firm TASS Wertpapierhandelsbank GmbH. Here’s an excerpt from a long conversation we had this week, in which he laid out the reasons for optimism about precious metals in general and the junior silver miners in particular.

DollarCollapse: Good afternoon Carsten, it's great to finally speak with you. Let's begin with your general take on the major asset classes.

Carsten Ringler: It is nonsense to be in long-term government bonds at the moment. A 1% – 2% rise in interest rates would kill you in 10-year Treasuries. Gold and silver on the other hand are money, and as long as the [paper] money supply is increasing at today's rate, precious metals are the place to be. There might be another leg down, but it will be short and mild. I am confident that within in the next 2-3 years we'll see a breakout in precious meals that leads to a mania similar to the past few bubbles.

One way to understand how cheap precious metals are in paper money terms is to go to the Minneapolis Fed's website and use their inflation basket calculator. You can put in the price of a good on a date in the past, and the machine calculates the inflation-adjusted price from then to now. For gold, starting in 1980 when it was $850, today's inflation-adjusted price is $2,400. So when anyone says gold is too expensive because it has risen the past ten years, you can respond that according to the Minneapolis Fed $2,413 is where it would be if it had just kept up with inflation. For silver, start with the 1980 $49.45 high and you get an inflation-adjusted price of $139.

I also calculate ratios for more than 40 different interest rates, equity indices, real estate prices and other commodities. And those results are just as encouraging. For example, in 1980 you could buy the Dow Jones Industrial Average for 17.5 ounces of silver. Today you need 451 ounces. If the Dow remains stable at 14,000 and the Dow/Silver ratio returns to its all-time low of 17.5 ounces, silver would be $802. One ounce of gold would have bought the Dow back then and today you need more than eight. So either the Dow is overvalued to silver and gold, or silver and gold are undervalued compared to the Dow.

There are 1,226 billionaires in the world. If just a few of them shifted a few percent of their assets into gold and silver it would cause a massive run on those metals. This will be a shift that will be written about in history books. They'll ask how we could have been so stupid to trust fiat currencies. Gold and silver are not going up in value, currencies are losing purchasing power against them. Therefore holding precious metals will help to store wealth and give protection against rising inflation in the future.

Based on all of the above, my minimum price targets are $150 for silver and $4,000 for gold within the next five years.

Energy

I find myself often recounting the story of Nikola Tesla exhibiting "free energy" to George Westinghouse. Tesla figured out "over unity; ambient electricty generation over 100 years ago.

Radiant Energy can perform the same wonders as ordinary electricity, at less than 1% of the cost. It does not behave exactly like electricity, however, which has contributed to the scientific community's misunderstanding of it.

In 1931, under the financing of Pierce-Arrow and George Westinghouse, a 1931 Pierce-Arrow was selected to be tested at the factory grounds in Buffalo, N. Y. The standard internal combustion engine was removed and an 80-H.P. 1800 r.p.m electric motor installed to the clutch and transmission. The AC motor measured 40 inches long and 30 inches in diameter and the power leads were left standing in the air - no external power source and no recharging of any batteries was necessary.

At the appointed time, Nikola Tesla arrived from New York City and inspected the Pierce-Arrow automobile. He then went to a local radio store and purchased a handful of tubes (12), wires and assorted resistors. A box measuring 24 inches long, 12 inches wide and 6 inches high was assembled housing the circuit. The box was placed on the front seat and had its wires connected to the air-cooled, brushless motor. Two rods 1/4" in diameter stuck out of the box about 3" in length.

Mr. Tesla got into the driver's seat, pushed the two rods in and stated, "We now have power". He put the car into gear and it moved forward! This vehicle, powered by an AC motor, was driven to speeds of 90 m.p.h. and performed better than any internal combustion engine of its day! One week was spent testing the vehicle. Several newspapers in Buffalo reported this test. When asked where the power came from, Tesla replied, "From the ether all around us".

Upon the conclusion of the test, Mr. Westinghouse asked Tesla "Where can I put the meter?" Tesla replied, You cannot meter ambient electricity. It's free." Upon hearing that, Westinghouse took the car, put it in a warehouse, and no one ever heard anything about it again. Greed seems to be the recurring theme when tyring to grasp the the causation of suffering and strife on our planet.

From Szandor Blestman:

I don't like to sound like a gloom and doomer, but at the same time I don't want my positive nature to cause me to turn a blind eye to reality or history. The reality is that the energy and currency cartels have a tremendous amount of power and influence over our federal government and the senators and congressmen who claim to represent the people. History has shown that our "lawmakers" will make laws beneficial to these powers rather than laws beneficial to the economic under classes or protecting individual rights. The reality is that we've been going through a long economic depression. History shows that often times hard economic times end in massive and very destructive wars. History also shows that the same energy and currency cartels benefit greatly from those wars. Here's an interesting lecture on how all wars can be tracked back to private central bankers as the initial fomenters of events leading to war called "All Wars are Bankers' Wars" by Mike Rivero. I urge everyone reading this to listen to it all the way through.

Who are these men to make such monumental decisions? Who are they who feel they can threaten the most powerful governments on the planet? They threaten more than governments when they make such threats, they threaten you, your way of life, your children and grandchildren's future, and everyone's economic security. Who are they who feel they can decide the fates of millions? Who are they who would cause such human suffering to try to sate their own insatiable lust for wealth and power? Are these men gods? Are they demons? What magic do they hold over otherwise good men to cause them to turn against their fellow human beings?

These men are not gods or demons, though they might fancy themselves to be. They have no power over other men, but these other men let greed and lust for power rule over their judgment and corrupt their principles. They excuse their immorality by claiming it necessary for the "greater good," but in their hearts of hearts they know the greater good is not served and a great evil is perpetrated. Those they have corrupted claim a higher purpose, but they have been lowered to the basest of levels and seek to do the same to all mankind. These men are the central bankers. These men are the influential corporatists. These men may live amongst all the finest luxuries this physical world has to offer, but their souls are black as coal and their spirits reside in the depths of the deepest, most stagnant, most fetid marsh imaginable.

Money is not wealth, but those entrusted with its creation use it to enrich their own selves. Money is not power, but those who create it use it to influence those who have obtained positions entrusted with certain powers. Money is not energy, but those who create it have used that power to corner the market on fossil fuels. Fossil fuels are not the only sources of energy, but those who produce them would like to keep everyone dependent upon them. The way to break the cartels is to break the cycle of dependence. The way to break the cycle of dependence is to stop using the products they offer. As hard as it sounds, we must each personally make an effort to do what we can to stop using fiat currencies and to stop using the fossil fuels the cartels provide.

It is important that we strive for independence. It is important that we honor individual property rights. It is important that we do our best to become self owning individuals who decide for ourselves which other individuals or groups of individuals we want to do business with and which individuals or groups of individuals we don't want to do business with. In this way we can shun those who would wage wars on others. In this way we can shame those who would bring harm to others. In this way we can decide with our dollars who deserves our money and who doesn't. In this way we can decide for ourselves who we associate with and who we don't. In this way we can deny our consent to be governed. No individual or group of individuals should have the power to force you to do business with them. No individual or group of individuals should have the power to force you to associate with them. No individual or group of individuals should have the power to force you to let them violate your natural rights or suffer catastrophic consequences. It is only when everyone has the power to say "no" to these individuals or groups of individuals without fear of retribution that mankind will be truly free. It is only then that we will truly prosper. It is only then we will be allowed to become the best humans we can possibly become.

The Fed

I'm taking this marvelous opportunity to admonish the Fed twice in one newsletter. At the risk of being redundant I will further elucidate that the Federal Reserve Act was passed by 3 (THREE) bribed senators in a unanimous voice vote (all three of them) on 23 December 1913 - while everyone else was home for the holidays. Some people think of the Federal Reserve Banks as United States Government institutions. They are private monopolies which prey upon the people of these United States for the benefit of themselves and their foreign customers; foreign and domestic speculators and swindlers; and rich and predatory money lenders. The Fed has followed a consistent policy of flooding the economy with easy money, leading to a misallocation of resources and an artificial "boom" followed by a recession or depression when the Fed-created bubble bursts. From the Great Depression, to the stagflation of the seventies, to the burst of the dotcom bubble, to the housing market crisis, every economic downturn suffered by the country over the last 98 years can be traced to Federal Reserve policy. If everyone that worked for the thieving, criminal Federal Reserve died tomorrow, there would not only be more apple pie, but there would also be more parking places, and you just can't argue with logic like that.

In the following missive, G. Edward Griffin exposes the most blatant scam of all history. It's all here: the cause of wars, boom-bust cycles, inflation, depression, prosperity. It's just exactly what every American needs to know about the power of the central bank." Mr. Griffin is a graduate of the University of Michigan where he majored in Speech Communication. He is the recipient of the Telly Award for Excellence in TV Production. He is the founder of the Cancer Cure Foundation and has served on the board of directors of the National Health Federation and the International Association of Cancer Victims and Friends. He is a contributing editor for the New American Magazine and is President of American Media, a publishing and video production company in southern California.)

From G. Edward Griffin:

It's the most important financial lesson of your life!

The Mandrake Mechanism... What is it?

It is the method by which the Federal Reserve creates money out of nothing; the concept of usury as the payment of interest on pretended loans; the true cause of the hidden tax called inflation; the way in which the Fed creates boom-bust cycles.

In the 1940s, there was a comic strip character called Mandrake the Magician. His specialty was creating things out of nothing and, when appropriate, to make them disappear back into that same void. It is fitting, therefore, that the process to be described in this section should be named in his honor.

In the previous chapters, we examined the technique developed by the political and monetary scientists to create money out of nothing for the purpose of lending. This is not an entirely accurate description because it implies that money is created first and then waits for someone to borrow it.

On the other hand, textbooks on banking often state that money is created out of debt. This also is misleading because it implies that debt exists first and then is converted into money. In truth, money is not created until the instant it is borrowed. It is the act of borrowing which causes it to spring into existence. And, incidentally, it is the act of paying off the debt that causes it to vanish. There is no short phrase that perfectly describes that process. So, until one is invented along the way, we shall continue using the phrase "create money out of nothing" and occasionally add "for the purpose of lending" where necessary to further clarify the meaning.

So, let us now... see just how far this money/debt-creation process has been carried - and how it works.

The first fact that needs to be considered is that our money today has no gold or silver behind it whatsoever. The fraction is not 54% nor 15%. It is 0%. It has traveled the path of all previous fractional money in history and already has degenerated into pure fiat money. The fact that most of it is in the form of checkbook balances rather than paper currency is a mere technicality; and the fact that bankers speak about "reserve ratios" is eyewash. The so-called reserves to which they refer are, in fact, Treasury bonds and other certificates of debt.

Our money is "pure fiat" through and through.

The second fact that needs to be clearly understood is that, in spite of the technical jargon and seemingly complicated procedures, the actual mechanism by which the Federal Reserve creates money is quite simple. They do it exactly the same way the goldsmiths of old did except, of course, the goldsmiths were limited by the need to hold some precious metals in reserve, whereas the Fed has no such restriction.

Financial Survival

One of the greatest challenges to our ongoing well being(s) (I refer to it as "perpetrating the myth of my existence") is how to keep from succumbing to the "old dog" theorem. One of the problems with the ongoing pursuit of freedom and liberty, is coping with the realization that we can't be free alone. We have to strive, just as diligently, to insure that the freedoms and liberty of the bozos next door are not encroached upon. With the realization that those folks aren't going to provide much help or support, we must accept the burden of eternal vigilance which has been placed on our shoulders alone. I remember a line out of a song, first heard during my "wonder years", by the inimitable Paul Simon, when he wrote: "They just hear what they want to hear, and disregard the rest". We are currently facing a dire situation that has been mindfully engineered to dumb down the population, to the point that has rendered said population unfit to survive. Survival of the fittest is a real concept. Darwin was right. About everything. Evolution is healthy. Devolution is deadly and has become, in this country, the prevailing social meme. It is frustrating to fight for the freedom of the bozos next door when they don't care. Consequently, that is the only way it will work. Fortunately, you don't have to like them.

From Nelson Hultberg:

Paradigms are mega-systems of thought that explain certain realms of reality so as to shift mankind toward new visions. For example, mercantilism, Lockean limited government, species evolution, Pasteurian medicine, quantum physics, Keynesian economics and welfare-state politics are paradigms that developed in their respective fields over the past several centuries. History is a continual process of shifting toward new paradigms in which the established thought of society is dramatically altered.

Paradigm shifts can be either positive or negative. When positive, these shifts are the manifestations of truth's discovery and a better way of life. But in bringing about a better way of life, they also create a powerful dilemma for those who find themselves on the wrong side of the shift.

The dilemma is this: Those whose views are being corrected resist the correction quite vigorously because of that human foible we call ego. People do not like to admit that they have lived the bulk of their adult lives subscribing to a serious intellectual error. Thus, when a great ideological correction begins, for example, in the field of political-economy, they resort to sophistry in order to defend the older way of looking at things that they have supported for most of their lives. This is because 95 percent of humans who are past 40 years of age are no longer seekers of truth; they are seekers of "support for their previous convictions." This is what makes them feel content in life. Truth, therefore, takes a back seat to protecting their egos and the convictions they have held for several decades.

You must first realize that there are, present in our lives, enemies. You must then know who those enemies are and act accordingly.

Eliminate as much debt as possible, especially “variable rate” debt, such as credit cards and lines of credit. Interest rates will be rising, so the elimination of debt offers a “real return” of escaping rising rates by creditors.

Get some control over some fresh water.

If you are depending on Social Security, stop.

Follow the course opposite to custom and you will almost always do well...

Its not what you don't know that will screw you up, it's what you know that is wrong. The spin you hear from the mainstream media is intended to mislead you. Open your eyes and face the future. If you leave your head in the sand and ignore it, you are only leaving your butt exposed for the world to kick. This all may sound like gloom and doom, but when you get a handle on what is going to happen, you will have a future filled with opportunity. Fortune favors the Informed.

More next week...

May the Great Spirit be with you always,

Johnny Silver Bear
Chief cook and bottle washer, The Silver Bear Cafe

Disclaimer

All statements and expressions are the sole opinions of the editor and are subject to change without notice. A profile, description, or other mention of a company in the newsletter is neither an offer nor solicitation to buy or sell any securities mentioned. While we believe all sources of information to be factual and reliable, in no way do we represent or guarantee the accuracy thereof, nor the statements made herein. The staff of Silver Bear Cafe are not registered investment advisors and do not purport to offer personalized investment related advice. The publisher, editor, staff, or anyone associated with, or associated to the Silver Bear Cafe may own securities mentioned in this newsletter and may buy or sell securities without notice.