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. JSB

Financial Markets

It has become more than apparent, to those who are awake, that there are grifters among us, who have attained positions of power and influence in banking and government and are, routinely, feloniously, stealing from everyone else.

"One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It's simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we've been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back." - Carl Sagan

From Andy Sutton:

The story broke from nowhere and caught many off guard. To others it was the manifestation of previously unspoken fears. It was, and is, by far the biggest story of 2013, the decade, and quite possibly the millennium. It was the crossing of another Rubicon. For years and decades, the financial piranhas had wandered around the edges, nibbling a little here and a little there. Inflation, bailouts, and other monetary mischief had already eroded the value of most currencies. But never before had they actually made the boldest of moves – to steal what were always considered to be the most liquid and secure of funds – bank deposits. In a weekend, the liquid became the illiquid and the secure became the repossessed. Hey, let's not split hairs here, the money was stolen. The media dutifully came up with another new buzzword – the 'bail-in'. Talk about putting a positive spin on outright theft.

We've already covered Cyprus in great detail. That story goes on and is largely ignored by the mainstream press corps; however, Cyprus was just a small prize. There are much bigger fish to fry – like you. This week's column will cover the groundwork that has already been laid to turn America into the next Cyprus. I am not positing here that we will necessarily be the next in line chronologically, but it will happen eventually – and likely sooner than later. There are other pools of wealth in other parts of the world that may serve as additional beta tests prior and I claim no inside knowledge of the blueprint, but can only attest to the fact that it does in fact exist and more importantly, to make you aware of it now.

On the Economic War Front

I believe that America may be heading for a, long overdue, confrontation with itself. The problem is not simply the Darkside Marauders, but, just as culpable, the pandemically apathetic sheeple that have allowed this to happen. I have been predicting for years that the day would arrive when Joe Sixpack wouldn't be able to afford a sixpack and would, as a result, lose it. That day has arrived. The problem is that Joe has no idea as to the cause of his dilemma. He doesn't know that the criminal politicians, both republican and democratic, in league with the criminal Wall Street banksters, who are all working for the criminal Pilgrims and the Fabian Socialists, and who are made up, in part, of the elitist owners of J.P. Morgan Chase (the ring leaders) Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and the Bank of England, who have intentionally orchestrated this whole debacle (not the protests, but the economic meltdown) for their personal benefit, and are, almost wholly responsible. They are intent on reducing the world population to five-hundred-million, and reducing those that remain into debt slaves and serfs. All Joe Sixpack knows is that someone has rendered the fruits of his labors inadequate to secure some relief at the end of the week, and he is pissed. Who rendered the fruits of his labors inadequate? Who diluted the value of a dollar so that it only has 5% of its purchasing power compared to 97 years ago? The Tea Party, whose movement has been so co-opted and diluted by the NeoCons that it, long ago, reached the point of impotence, have not yet picked up on the culprits. The governmental teat suckling socialists, which include not only the welfare recipients, but also the "evil 1%ers and their bailouts and bailins", remain, pretty much, clueless. It is "We the People" confronting the presence of Totalitarian Martial Law, enacted to protect the perps, described above, from the American population that will provide a solution. I'm afraid that, at this point, the solution will not be pretty.

From Roxanne Lewis:

SOCIAL SECURITY funds were moved to the general budget and spent in 1998 when Clinton claimed this $69 billion surplus. That year the government spent $30 billion more than its revenue stream. Social Security has been run like an illegal Ponzi scheme. I guarantee that the new "Entitlement Benefit" will become a means tested welfare program with benefits available only to the very poor. If you have a 401k or pension or home, guess what? You won't get it.

Now our government has now proposed that because it is unfair that some people own 401K plans, ROTH's or pensions and rationalize that because these products have performed so poorly in the past decade (was that our fault too?) that our government is much better suited to insure their stability by taking over their control and investing them in government bonds. Nobody wants our bonds but you are going to be forced to hold them for our retirement security.

Our government will continue to hyper-inflate to meet their promises and continue to live in their dream world until the music stops playing, and Joe Public will end up without a chair and nothing to show for his 50 years of labor. They will defend their power at all costs and have no intention of meeting promises made to repay their bond debts to other countries. Do you really think they will keep their promises to the common man of Social Security, welfare, food stamps, housing, SNAP, Pell Grants, and the list goes on and on? The Department of Homeland Security would not be training Russian soldiers in Tennessee, buying bullets, armored vehicles and investing in FEMA camps if they didn't expect a problem. They know they will default on their promises because the dollar will fail. They simply have no intention of honoring anything. Will Americans get angry with no jobs, no food and no homes to live? If they do, as the government suspects, the S.W.H.T.F.! The angry mobs will take to the streets taking what they need, shooting anyone that gets in their way in an effort to survive. They will then be met with those 1.7 billion hollow point bullets fired from the guns of trained Russians.

One must understand what is taking place. This is vital for our survival. Those who own the banks and government are watching Europe closely. What is happening in Europe they know will appear here when they cannot honor their debts and promises as well?

Precious Metals

The technology of the "Dark Side" owned media has reached the point where it has achieved the power of creating realities for the people that are distorted and unnatural. As corporations merge, so that they control more and more of the technology and want to use more advertising to create false needs, the costs of basic human survival will continue to escalate.

Most imperative is the "Dark Side's" obsession with increasing government power and surveillance. Citing a need to combat drug dealers and terrorists, the government has infringed more and more on the liberties of the citizen. Through Patriot Acts I & II, the Bill of Rights has been effectively dismantled. Get ready for Patriot Act III. Cash transactions are being restricted and the Internet fully monitored. The next step will be forcing the move to a cashless society, controlled by a central authority. All we need is electronic credit money, devoid of all checks and balances, and a system by which we can all be tracked on a 24/7 basis, cradle to grave, and the central banker conspiracy will be complete. This growth toward a central, spiritless governmental authority in a high tech, virtual world, divorced from natural processes, where food, water, and the routines of living have been commoditized and distorted, marks the beginning of the end, of the world as we know it, for everyone.

Which brings me to the topic of precious metals. Who among us believes that, along with all the other economic malfeasance, the price of precious metals has not been manipulated? The evidence is staggering, but the motives of the manipulators have not been exposed cohesively enough for "Joe Six Pack" to understand. "Joe" still rolls his eyes back and wonders why anyone would consider the possibility that there are forces, behind the scenes, controlling high levels of government in our country that are not working in "We the People's" best interest. Drawing on some of the research of Charles Savoie (Editor's note: Mr. Savoie's archives are housed on David Morgan's Silver-Investor site. Click on the link and scroll down to Mr. Savoie's archive) I would like to attempt to bring these motives into the light of day. I want to concentrate on silver.

In an attempt to continue to purvey the "big picture" in the silver market, here are some interesting facts for your consideration.

Silver is as important a strategic commodity as oil. The need for a supply of silver in times of war is so essential, that a shortage of the metal could pose dire and direct consequences to the continued well being of our country. With the evolution of technology, silver has become so intrinsically important, that a lack of it will adversely affect America's national security. Meanwhile, as a result of the collusion between industrial users, central bankers, the Commodity Futures Trade Commission, (CFTC), the Chicago Board of Trade, (CBOT), and government regulators, spanning the past fifty years, inventories have all but disappeared.

How and why have our silver reserves been so radically depleted? The major causal factor for the growing scarcity of silver in the United States is an organization called the Silver Users Association, (SUA). This group was founded in 1947 for the sole purpose of controlling the price of silver, and has since manned a small army of lobbyists. These lobbyists represent some of the biggest corporations in the country. As the industrial uses for silver are quite diverse, so are the types of companies that engage the services of the SUA. It is their job to lobby politicians and persuade them to suppress, depress, repress, oppress, or do what ever it takes to maintain a grip on the price of silver. The SUA coordinates campaign contributions between association members and complicit politicians in return for quasi-legal legislation designed to keep the price down. It does not matter to them whether the means of suppression are legal or illegal, so long as the price does not rise.

From Michael Snyder:

Somebody out there is sure getting prepared for something really big.  We have just witnessed a takedown of gold and silver unlike anything that we have witnessed in decades.  On Monday, the price of gold had fallen by more than 10 percent at one point.  It shocked investors all over the globe, and overall what we have just seen was the largest two day decline in the price of gold in 30 years.  The price of silver dropped even more rapidly on Monday.  It was down more than 14 percent at one point.  There was an atmosphere of "panic selling" as investors and financial institutions raced to liquidate their holdings of silver and gold.  But was this exactly what someone out there wanted? 

As I wrote about the other day, big banks and news outlets all over the world have been boldly proclaiming for weeks that gold is entering a "bear market" and that now is the time for all of us to sell our gold.  In particular, Goldman Sachs reportedly told their clients earlier this month that they "recommend initiating a short COMEX gold position".  Was that just a "good guess" on their part, or was something else going on?  Were they actually trying to help create a "selling frenzy" that would drive the price of gold much lower?

What we witnessed on Monday was absolutely jaw-dropping.  Just check out this chart of the price of gold over the past 10 years.  The takedown of gold on Monday sticks out like a sore thumb...

And that chart does not even show the full extent of the collapse.  As I write this, the price of gold is sitting at $1355.20.

But this is just the beginning for gold and silver.  As I have warned repeatedly, the price of gold and the price of silver will experience wild swings in the years ahead.

 

Energy

In 1859, upon the introduction of petrol extraction technology, the world started running out of oil. There is only so much of it, and we have now reached a point where more than half of it has been used up.

What most people do not realize is that 60% of all hydrocarbon resources have be applied to food production. Through the use of petrochemical fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, diesel fuel for tractors and harvesters, gasoline for farm-to-market transport, gas generated electricity for refrigeration, plastics for packaging and storage, the lion's share of this resource has been used for food production.

Here's the rub. "Green Energy" cannot provide an alternative to the agricultural application of petrochemicals. Through the application of the world's petro-resources in this manner, "the Dark Side" has enriched itself by artificially creating a market to sell to.

Oil based agriculture is primarily responsible for the world's population exploding from 1 billion at the middle of the 19th century to 6.3 billion at the turn of the 21st. As oil production went up, so did food production. As food production went up, so did the population. As the population went up, the demand for food went up, which increased the demand for oil. The price of food will now skyrocket because of the cost of fertilizer will soar. The cost of storing (electricity) and transporting (gasoline) the food that is produced will also soar.

In order for the planet to continue to support humanity, it's numbers will have to be reduced dramatically.

I foresee many lives being snuffed out within the next two decades as a result of the inability to afford food, (starvation), or through the involvement in the dozens of disputes that will arise over allocation of the world's remaining hydrocarbon resources, (war). Remember, "the Dark Side" is on both sides of all wars. Population contraction is absolutely essential to the planet's ability to support human life.

From Dean Henderson:

A tidal wave of mergers at the turn of the millennium transformed Sampson's Seven Sisters - Royal Dutch/Shell, British Petroleum, Exxon, Mobil, Chevron, Texaco and Gulf - into a more tightly controlled cartel which, in my book Big Oil & Their Bankers..., I term the Four Horsemen: Exxon Mobil, Chevron Texaco, BP Amoco and Royal Dutch/Shell.

By the late 1800's John D. Rockefeller had become popularly known as "the Illumination Merchant" during a time when oil was powering the reading lamps of every American household. Rockefeller figured out that it was the refining of oil into various end products and not actual crude production which held the key to control of the industry.

By 1895 his Standard Oil Company owned 95% of all refineries in the US while expanding operations overseas. Summing up his attitude towards his new oil monopoly, Rockefeller once stated, "The day of combination is here to stay. Individualism is gone never to return".

Rockefeller's Standard Oil Trust began illuminating the New World with funding from Kuhn Loeb and Rothschild banking families. While the Rockefellers worked the American side of the energy matrix, the Rothschilds consolidated their control over Old World oil resources.

By 1892 Shell Oil, under the direction of Marcus Samuel, began shipping South Sea crude through the new Suez Canal to supply Europe's factories. Shell took its name from the abundance of seashells which lined the shores of the Dutch-controlled archipelago that is now Indonesia. The Samuel family controls London's biggest merchant bank Hill Samuel, along with the trading house Samuel Montagu.

In 1903 the Swedish Nobel and the French Rothschild's Far East Trading - financed by King Wilhelm III - combined with Samuel and Oppenheimer's Shell Oil to form the Asiatic Petroleum Company.

In 1927 Royal Dutch Petroleum discovered oil at Seria off the coast of Brunei, whose Sultan would become the world's richest man as a result of his loyalty to Royal Dutch. The Dutch and British monarchs who control Royal Dutch merged their company with the Oppenheimer and Samuel's Shell Oil and Nobel and Rothschild's Far East Trading and Royal Dutch/Shell was born. Queen Beatrix of the Dutch House of Orange and Lord Victor Rothschild are its two largest shareholders.

In 1872 Baron Julius du Reuter was granted his 50-year concession in Iran. In 1914 the British government took control of his Anglo-Persian Company and renamed it Anglo-Iranian, then British Petroleum, then BP. Britain's House of Windsor controls a large stake in BP Amoco while the Kuwaiti monarchy owns 9.5%.

In 1906 the US government ordered the dissolution of Rockefeller's Standard Oil Trust, charging that Standard violated the new Sherman Anti-Trust Act. On May 15, 1911 the US Supreme Court declared, "Seven men and a corporate machine have conspired against their fellow citizens. For the safety of the Republic we now decree that this dangerous conspiracy must be ended by November 15th".

The Fed

Most of us believe that we live in the land of the free. A place where every child has the opportunity to grow up and be President of the United States. This belief is, in the best-case scenario, a stretch. In the worst case, a bald faced lie. Our political leaders are increasingly sourced from a pool of self-perpetuating elitists whose main concern is to distance themselves from the masses. When Constitutional law stands in their way, they ignore it. We are not being shepherded by altruistic wise men, but, rather, herded by megalomaniacal desperadoes.

If you asked Joe Six Pack if our society continues to be based on freedom and liberty, he would probably recollect his 9th grade American History teacher and respond "Yes, of course." If you were to ask him if our society was now based on a Stalinesque model of central planning, a totalitarian system in which the Government claimed all power, and there were no freedoms that the government did not allow, he would probably say, "No way." Joe hasn't got a clue. Hey, believe me. I've been trying to get across to Mr. Six Pack for years. He has been issued blinders by the state. He hasn't got a clue.

It appears to me that the markets are rigged. All games that can be rigged will be rigged, sooner or later. The Fed, working in league with the U.S. Government, rigs the U.S. markets. But don't think for a second that the Fed has some kind of monopoly on a situation where rapacity pervades honest reason. All markets are rigged. Central bankers, the world over, are primarily involved in fleecing the people. The fact that the Fed is the most powerful of the Central Bankers, and that they are primarily responsible for perfecting the insidious contrivance called inflation, has not kept the rest of Central Bankers of the world from entering into a game of "catch up". As far as they are concerned, there is only one motive, and that motive is economic world domination. Which Central Bankers will dominate will depend on which ones end up with the most. That's just the nature of absolute corruption. That is the reason that whole world is currently strapped with a fiat system. The ability to create money, out of thin air, provides for absolute economic power. Absolute power equals absolute corruption. It's as simple as that. By rigging the markets, through various forms of intervention, the central bankers have set up a scheme whereby the wealth of the world could be siphoned off at will.

The reason that this fiat system has become so all pervasive in the world is the lure of an uncapped, unending source of credit that is availed to all governments who are willing to play the Central Banker's game.

From Paul Craig Roberts:

I was the first to point out that the Federal Reserve was rigging all markets, not merely bond prices and interest rates, and that the Fed is rigging the bullion market in order to protect the US dollar’s exchange value, which is threatened by the Fed’s quantitative easing. With the Fed adding to the supply of dollars faster than the demand for dollars is increasing, the price or exchange value of the dollar is set up to fall.

A fall in the dollar’s exchange rate would push up import prices and, thereby, domestic inflation, and the Fed would lose control over interest rates. The bond market would collapse and with it the values of debt-related derivatives on the “banks too big too fail” balance sheets. The financial system would be in turmoil, and panic would reign.

Rapidly rising bullion prices were an indication of loss of confidence in the dollar and were signaling a drop in the dollar’s exchange rate. The Fed used naked shorts in the paper gold market to offset the price effect of a rising demand for bullion possession. Short sales that drive down the price trigger stop-loss orders that automatically lead to individual sales of bullion holdings once their loss limits are reached.

According to Andrew Maguire, on Friday, April 12, the Fed’s agents hit the market with 500 tons of naked shorts. Normally, a short is when an investor thinks the price of a stock or commodity is going to fall. He wants to sell the item in advance of the fall, pocket the money, and then buy the item back after it falls in price, thus making money on the short sale. If he doesn’t have the item, he borrows it from someone who does, putting up cash collateral equal to the current market price. Then he sells the item, waits for it to fall in price, buys it back at the lower price and returns it to the owner who returns his collateral. If enough shorts are sold, the result can be to drive down the market price.

A naked short is when the short seller does not have or borrow the item that he shorts, but sells shorts regardless. In the paper gold market, the participants are betting on gold prices and are content with the monetary payment. Therefore, generally, as participants are not interested in taking delivery of the gold, naked shorts do not need to be covered with the physical metal.

In other words, with naked shorts, no physical metal is actually sold.

People ask me how I know that the Fed is rigging the bullion price and seem surprised that anyone would think the Fed and its bullion bank agents would do such a thing, despite the public knowledge that the Fed is rigging the bond market and the banks with the Fed’s knowledge rigged the Libor rate. The answer is that the circumstantial evidence is powerful.

Consider the 500 tons of paper gold sold on Friday. Begin with the question, how many ounces is 500 tons? There are 2,000 pounds to one ton. 500 tons equal 1,000,000 pounds. There are 16 ounces to one pound, which comes to 16 million ounces of short sales on Friday.

Who has 16 million ounces of gold? At the beginning gold price that day of about $1,550, that comes to $24,800,000,000. Who has that kind of money?

What happens when 500 tons of gold sales are dumped on the market at one time or on one day? Correct, it drives the price down. Investors who want to get out of large positions would spread sales out over time so as not to lower their sales proceeds. The sale took gold down by about $73 per ounce. That means the seller or sellers lost up to $73 dollars 16 million times, or $1,168,000,000.

Who can afford to lose that kind of money? Only a central bank that can print it.

Financial Survival

The ideology of Liberty suggests and implies that people should choose to be benevolent and productive, as part of God's moral code. That society will create for itself non-governmental organizations to deal with social needs, that government is established by society to sustain and defend the unalienable (God given) rights of the individual, and limited only to this function. Political power was to remain within the individual and his society.

So you may ask, if we live in a Republic founded upon the principles of Liberty and limited government, why do so many of our politicians and teachers keep trying to shove this concept of democracy down our throats, as if freedom naturally followed? That is a very good question! Perhaps puppet politicians and their masters don't like the limits on the powers that have been granted them by our state and federal constitutions. Maybe it's because majority rule sounds legitimate and moral on its face. The majority of "We the People" have apparently gone for their hooey. If we don't watch out, we may end up where we are heading. Only the knowledge of our heritage will enable us to anticipate such schemes and act accordingly to right the direction of our Republic. If we are to successfully alter the course of America, we must familiarize ourselves with our Constitutional tenets, and share them with everyone we meet. We must "Defend to the Death" the Constitution of the United States of America. Otherwise, we will be forced to take whatever "the Dark Side" decides to dole out.

From Brandon Smith:

In America, our cultural method of debate tends to divide individual issues into carefully separated spheres of discussion. This hyperfocus on single issues, from gun rights to illegal wars to invasion of privacy, draws us away from looking at the bigger interconnected picture, otherwise known as the "macro." Each social or political conflict is compartmentalized by the mainstream, the dots are left isolated and the overwhelming overall threat to our foundational principles is marginalized.

The problem with this civic philosophy is that the general public is left without peripheral vision and unequipped to comprehend that there is a process in motion, an overarching plan that is eating away at the edges of our liberty from every angle, one small piece at a time. That is to say, we have been conditioned to obsess over the pieces and ignore the plan.

I want you to imagine the globalist establishment and the useful socialist idiots it employs as a hive of ants lurking in the grass around a bountiful picnic basket you (or your forefathers) worked very hard to procure. Now, one ant snatches a single crumb and races away, and you think to yourself that losing that one crumb is not such a sacrifice. A few more ants pilfer crumbs, and you shrug it off. A dozen more arrive, and you start to worry a little but are still too lazy to pull out the Raid. The rest of the hive sees your apathy and attacks, gobbling everything in a swarm of single-minded destruction. Left with nothing, you sit dumbfounded and hungry, wondering where you went wrong. The truth is, you went wrong with the first ant.

Not only are personal wealth and property ransacked by the collective in this way, but also personal freedom.

Every time a smaller attack on liberty is exposed or openly announced by the cult of statism, elitists invariably respond with a false face of rationality and common sense. They claim that they respect the line. They claim that they will take only the minimum. They claim that they are pursuing only a reasonable compromise. They expound on the "virtues" of their motives. They sing songs of unity, brotherhood and the greater good. They appeal to our diplomatic side; and if that doesn't work, they try to shame us instead for being "selfish" or "ignorant" of so-called "social progress." But this never has been and never will be about social progress.

Their goal is not to introduce greater understanding or awareness. It is not about public good or public safety. And at the very core, it is not about truth. If they cared about truth or principle and if their objectives were honorable, they would not feel the need to constantly lie, cheat, steal, manipulate and threaten in an effort to impose their own worldview on the rest of us. If their purpose was as righteous as they pretend, then deceit and subversion should be beneath them. Their philosophy should be able to carry itself, without their convoluted efforts.

The power elites and the people who blindly follow them are not interested in being on the right side. They are interested only in being on the winning side, and the two are certainly not the same. In the end, the result they covet most is not to achieve compromise on Constitutional ideals, but to achieve total and unequivocal destruction of those ideals. They seek to erase our heritage from history, along with those of us who value it. They want to annihilate Constitutional culture.

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.