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

The future has been stolen from us. It is gone and will never be returned. It has been stolen by a cabal of miscreants that I have habitually come to refer to as "the darkside". This cabal is led by the offspring of several very wealthy banking families, mostly European (although there are three American families involved whose wealth was derived from business loans made to them by their European counterparts). The families are run by their current matriarchs or patriarchs, who have never taken a risk in their lives, and have lost, through the generations, any sense of moral purpose or social responsibility. They are completely and entirely self serving and self absorbed putzes, and, because of the influence provided them through their amassed, unearned institutional wealth, they have become a serious thorn in the side of the rest of the the human race. As a result of their actions, I believe that their days are numbered. I have identified these families and their individual histories in several essays I have penned over the years, but that is not the point of this missive.

Having monitored the global financial markets for the last twelve years, on a daily basis, I can only say, the stinky stuff has finally hit the mixmaster. As a global society, we have been woefully remiss when it comes to "driving the money changers from the Temple", so to speak. The Darkside, being motivated by greed, and nothing else, have messed things up to such a degree, that nothing, short of a cataclysm will will result.

Although I say the future has been taken away, I do not mean to say there will not be one, but that we will have to build a new one from scratch. Unlike recent generations that have, for the most part, taken the future for granted, allowed themselves to be lulled in to a sense of complacency and have, pretty much, fallen asleep at the wheel, the future will belong to those who are willing to fight for it, and to the winners will go the spoils.

From Jim Willie:

An unstoppable sequence of events has been put into motion finally. The pressure has been building for months. Some themes are plainly evident, except to those who wear rose colored glasses in the US Dome of Perception. The USTreasury Bond will be brought home to the US and British banks, where it will choke its bankers, then be devalued for survival reasons, after a painful isolation. The Chinese and Russians will conspire to finance the Eurasian Trade Zone corridor foundation with USTBonds, held in reserve, put to usage. The British will play a very unusual role, selling out the United States in order to be squires to the Eastern Duo.

The process has begun; it cannot be stopped. The events are already being grossly misinterpreted and minimized in the US press, where devoted lapdogs, artistic swindlers, and creative writers prevail. The Paradigm Shift eastward is showing its next face, with a truly massive trade zone for cooperation and reduced cost overhead as the giant foundation. The Untied States for all of its past hegemony and devious manipulations and vicious attacks, will be excluded. The British will assist in the exclusion in order to avoid the Third World themselves. The following blueprint is the result of years of planning, with steady information and hints and confirmations by at least two Hat Trick Letter sources. The sunset of the USDollar has a blueprint.

 

On the Economic War Front

I have been researching the motives, causes and effects of the New World order for several years now. What I have found is disconcerting, to say the least. What is equally disconcerting, however, is the inability of the sheeple to wake up to the realities of the situation. Denial is not a river in Egypt.

Unfortunately, try as we all may, the bulk of society refuses to even consider the possibility that they are being set up for a fall, and we are considered a part of the lunatic fringe by the vast majority of Americans.

I believe that humanity is rapidly approaching a crossroads. For years I have harped on the misinformation campaign and the unfettered issuance of fiat. As I have suggested many times before, if any person or group is granted the ability to invent, (counterfeit), money, then they are also granted absolute power. If I had the ability to invent money, I could buy anything I wanted, including the vast majority of the human population of the earth. If you believe that you are above temptation, just start adding zeros. Of course, I don't have the ability to invent money, and those that do aren't buying patriots. In fact the people that they are interested in are those who can help them squash patriotism, national sovereignty, and our Constitutional way of life. To lend to my perception that this is an international dilemma, one need only consider the European Sovereign Debt Crisis and the prevalence of fiat currency systems world wide.

There is, afoot, a brilliant, albeit treacherous, scheme to control all the people and all the property of all the world. Who'd of thunk it?

From Simon Black:

Secret. Dirty. Sham. Shadowy. Illicit. Fake. Covert. Questionable. These are typically the words used to describe the world of offshore asset protection in mainstream media.

The classic presumption is that if you go offshore– foreign bank account, overseas safety deposit box, foreign trust, foreign corporation, etc.– then you MUST be doing something wrong.

The world has become a gigantic financial nudist colony, full of government agents who pry ever more deeper into our nether regions looking for loose change betwixt the sofa cushions. Yet people are all too willing to comply. And anyone who shows up with a bath towel is branded a criminal or financial terrorist.

Fact is, moving money and assets offshore is not illegal. It’s perfectly legal, as long as you pay tax on the income and make the appropriate disclosures.

And despite the media hype, this is not something that’s just for the criminal terrorist class. As a matter of fact, going offshore is one of the best tactics to protect yourself against the criminal terrorist class… and by that, I mean central bankers and politicians.

Insolvent governments throughout history have ALWAYS resorted to a very limited playbook. Capital controls, wage and price controls, direct confiscation of assets… these tactics are nearly foregone conclusions in heavily indebted countries.

Just look at what happened in Cyprus. Look at what’s happening in Argentina. The evidence is overwhelmingly obvious. Pretending that ‘it can’t happen here’ is dangerous thinking.

There is going to come a time, likely soon, that retirement savings will be targeted. Capital controls are already in the works, cheered along by economic ‘luminaries’ like Paul Krugman. Central bankers will continue to steal the purchasing power of our hard-earned savings. It’s happening.

Moving a portion of your assets abroad isn’t criminal. It’s not crazy. If properly disclosed, it’s one of the sanest things you can do to protect yourself against the real criminals.

Precious Metals

Since founding the Silver Bear Cafe in 2001 I have exhibited an almost manic preference of silver as a hedge that I believe has the greatest potential for increasing in value. The price of silver has been has been grossly manipulated since around 1873 when another flaming miscreant, Ulysse S. Grant, continued his post war dog and pony show by demonitizing the lustrous white metal. From a historic perspective each administration that has sought to alter the original coinage act of 1792 was prompted to do so for nefarious reasons. But the criminals have not been restricted to government officials.

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 co-ordinates 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.

The chief purpose of the Silver Users Association, when it was formed 54 years ago, was to lobby and convince the US Government to dispose of its immense stockpile of silver, as much as 4 billion ounces of silver, at as favorable a price as possible. Of course, when I say "favorable", I'm talking about as low a price as possible to the members of the SUA. The prices were decidedly "unfavorable" to the owners of that silver, the citizens of the United States. But, in any event, the SUA was successful beyond imagination. In my opinion they conspired to hold down prices and that's an anti-trust violation. The SUA achieved an almost impossible feat. They made off with the world's largest known stockpile of silver. Let's see - the US Government had billions of ounces of silver the year the SUA was formed, and 54 years later, the US announced it would have no silver left this year. That is truly remarkable. And the best part (or worst part, if you are a regular citizen) is that the SUA got a real "steal" of a price on that silver, roughly one dollar an ounce. Slick and successful would be mild words when judging the accomplishments of the Silver Users Association. So would price fixing. - Taken from Ted Butler's 2001 essay entitled"Silver Users, Silver Abusers"

SUA members include corporations like Eastman Kodak and Polaroid who use great quantities of silver for the production of film. Obviously, the price of silver plays an important role in their bottom lines and it is of great advantage to keep the price of silver as low as possible. Other clients include Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, General Dynamics, American Superconductor, and Intermagnetics General who use even greater quantities of silver for the production of super conducting cables, missiles and torpedoes. All companies that produce electrical components for use in weapons, high tech aircraft, fighting vehicles, ships, communication devices, almost everything that has to do with the war machine, depend heavily on silver.

An interesting thing to point out is that when a missile or torpedo explodes, as much as 1400 ounces of silver is vaporized. This is one of the industrial reasons why the above ground stockpiles of silver have already been depleted to the point of scarcity. The artificial capping of the price of any commodity is not unlike the insertion of a huge cork in a volcano. This can result in nothing less than the massive explosion of its price in the immediate future.

Members of the SUA also include Union Carbide, Dow Chemical, Du Pont, Goldman Sachs, and JP Morgan Chase. Why would Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan Chase be members of an organization whose sole purpose is to suppress the price of silver? Well, from a central banker's standpoint, a worldwide recognition of the superiority of silver, as money, over their "funny money" would be a disastrous occurrence. Am I singing to the choir here?

The Federal government, apparently to make the paper dollar appear worth more than it is, allows artificial price depressive tactics aimed at silver and gold---Constitutional money. When Federal regulators default on their duties, it is up to state officials including you to take action. If anyone attempted to sell short 22 times the number of Ford Motor shares in existence, the SEC would lock that person up for 200 years. Yet, in silver, the CFTC allows such insanity. Such insanely huge and totally un backed short positions cannot help but have the effect of smashing the price to the ground, a situation on the COMEX complained about by high-ranking Mexican and Peruvian government officials as far back as 1971 (see New York Times, June 10, 1971, page 67, and June 21, 1971, page 42). Producers are cheated of fair prices for this commodity, and thousands are out of work because of this and central bank silver "leasing." Taken from a letter written by Charles Savoie to Drew Edmondson, the Oklahoma State Attorney General, on September 29th, 2003.

Again let me state, the radical depletion of our country's strategic silver reserve and the incessant, illegal action of the naked COMEX shorts who routinely sell 22 times more silver than is available for delivery is illegal, abhorrent, and reprehensible.

From Hebba Investments:

The first thing that stands out about the numbers is that silver eagle sales continue to be very strong with 3,356,500 ounces sold in March. This was the second largest amount ever sold in March, and the only March that surpassed this number was in 2010 - when silver prices were 40% lower. The year-to-date numbers continue to impress with 14 million silver ounces sold through March - which is 15% higher than the second highest month (March 2011). As a reminder, 2011 was the strongest year for silver eagle sales (and for the silver price) with 39 million silver eagles selling in 2011, and if we continue matching this sales pace, 2013 will be 15% higher than 2011 and reach 45 million silver eagles sold.

To put these numbers in perspective, according to the U.S. Geological Society, the U.S. mined 1050 tons of silver in 2012 (or 33.6 million ounces). If sales maintain their pace of 45 million ounces of silver, the U.S. will use ALL of its mined silver to mint silver eagles and then have to import and additional 350 tons of silver (11.4 million ounces) simply to meet silver eagle demand - leaving no domestically mined silver for anything else. This is a very extraordinary situation!

Gold eagle sales were relatively subdued with 62,000 ounces of gold eagles sold. Not particularly impressive but on the low side of average. Cumulative gold sales of 292,500 ounces were much better, with the third highest amount of year-to-date sales in the current bull market.

Energy

Speaking of cataclysms, the greatly ignored catastrophy which is Fukushima, continues to worsen. The city of Tokyo is now as irradiated as Fukushima was a year ago.

From Dan Amoss:

(Fukushima has spewed much more radioactive cesium and iodine than Chernobyl. The amount of radioactive cesium released by Fukushima was some 20-30 times higher than initially admitted.  Japanese experts say that Fukushima is currently releasing up to 93 billion becquerels of radioactive cesium into the ocean each day.   And the cesium levels hitting the west coast of North America will keep increasing for several years.  Fukushima is still spewing radiation into the environment, and the amount of radioactive fuel at Fukushima dwarfs Chernobyl.)

As such, the concept of "background radiation" is largely a misnomer. Most of the radiation we encounter today – especially the most dangerous types – did not even exist in nature before we started tinkering with nuclear weapons and reactors. In a sense, we are all guinea pigs.

Mixing Apples (External) and Oranges (Internal)

Moreover,  radioactive particles which end up inside of our lungs or gastrointestinal track, as opposed to radiation which comes to us from outside of our skin are much more dangerous than general exposures to radiation.

The National Research Council's Committee to Assess the Scientific Information for the Radiation Exposure Screening and Education Program explains:

Radioactivity generates radiation by emitting particles. Radioactive materials outside the the body are called external emitters, and radioactive materials located within the body are called internal emitters.

Internal emitters are much more dangerous than external emitters. Specifically, one is only exposed to radiation as long as he or she is near the external emitter.

For example, when you get an x-ray, an external emitter is turned on for an instant, and then switched back off.

But internal emitters steadily and continuously emit radiation for as long as the particle remains radioactive, or until the person dies – whichever occurs first. As such, they are much more dangerous.

As the head of a Tokyo-area medical clinic – Dr. Junro Fuse, Internist and head of Kosugi Medical Clinic – said:

Risk from internal exposure is 200-600 times greater than risk from external exposure.

 

The Fed

It could be said that the "Darkside's" plan, along with the disinformation campaign, involved the use banks instead of tanks. Although I believe that my initial assessment (in 2001) was accurate to a degree, my continued research has opened doors of enlightenment and understanding that I could have never fathomed ten years ago. At the time, it had not yet occurred to me that the bad guys had already succeeded in corrupting the 90% of all the Senators and members of the House of Representatives as well as the entire Executive Branch and the Supreme Court. The accomplishment of that ignoble feat enabled them to buy (through payouts to criminal politicians) the enactment of legislation that would make deeds that had there-to-fore been illegal, legal. This, they deemed, was the most expeditious way they could facilitate the raping and pillaging the National Treasury and America's Middle Class.

From Anthony Wile:

A book review in the Wall Street Journal by associate professor of economics at San Jose State University Jeffrey Hummel entitled "The New Central Planning" tends to confirm the perspective that the Federal Reserve is under continued attack. The upshot may be a new monetary system, one way or another.

The new system, probably some sort of gold standard, will not merely inch into position but will be the result of various problematic failures of current monetary policy. It may be driven, in fact, by catastrophic failure. The seeds are being sown even now, and the review in the Journal examines some of them.

What is noteworthy is not the discussion but that it has appeared at all and that it is conducted within a historical context. In fact, this is the point we've been making here in the pages of The Daily Bell and long before, that the timeline is now sufficient to counteract any arguments that might support the institution. One hundred years of damage, economic ruin and institutionalized prevarication is enough. Here's something from the review itself:

What role should the Federal Reserve play in the U.S. economy? That question is at the heart of any study of the economic crisis that began in 2007 and any consideration of how to prevent further crises. A year ago the chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, delivered four lectures at George Washington University, in which he argued that the Fed's response to the crisis—including its conspicuous and contentious bailouts—fell within the traditional role of a central bank. Those lectures and Mr. Bernanke's answers to some audience questions have now been edited and published in a slim volume. Pitched to a general audience, "The Federal Reserve and the Financial Crisis" is part of the chairman's praiseworthy effort to increase Fed transparency.

The review oes on to enumerate various Fed failures, though not in great enough detail so far as I am concerned, and inexplicably is not as vehement about current Fed-inspired disasters as past ones. The most interesting aspect of current central bank policy is the manipulated tightening of monetary policy in 2007. History may well examine that incident with greater interest than it now receives.

Central banks fix the price of money and its value. And price fixing never works. The Fed, controlling the world's reserve currency, is the most powerful central bank and the most destructive. The destruction accomplished under Bernanke will linger long after he slips away.

Financial Survival

Our current system is broken. It is broken beyond repair. I had once thought that through my energies, and those of many others, who saw the writing on the wall, that I/we could help wake up the general population to the stark reality of the cancer of tyranny, and that, united in the cause to fight tyranny, we could do something about it. This is a tyranny that has infected every aspect of our lives, It threatens our very survival. Unfortunately, we have failed to wake up a sufficient number of those who care enough to act. There are, perhaps, only 10,000,000 citizens in this county that care enough to be willing to see what's going on. That 10,000,000 is out of a population of 330,000,000. We don't seem to be getting very much help from the bulk of the populace. Consequently, we are all going down. Their unpreparedness will simply exacerbate the situation. We must now "be the ants" and prepare to witness the end of the current paradigm and be ready for whatever is to replace it. They will continue to "be the grasshopper" and worship at the altar of American Idol and Jersey Shores.

"They just hear what they want to hear and disregard the rest." - Paul Simon

From Michael Snyder:

Have you ever noticed that whenever the government or the mainstream media wants to demonize a particular point of view they call it a "conspiracy theory"? The unspoken message is that normal people such as us should never dare to question the official propaganda being put out by "official sources". But what if those "official sources" are wrong? What if those "official sources" have a specific agenda that they are trying to promote? Has it become a crime to ask questions? Has it become a crime to think for ourselves? The other day, Public Policy Polling did an opinion poll about "conspiracy theories".

Just by reading the questions they asked, it is obvious that the goal was to make those that believe in those theories to look foolish. When they released the results of the poll, they stated that some of the "conspiracy theories" could only be found in "the darker corners of the internet" – as if there was something unsavory or evil about them. But is it really "crazy" to believe that sometimes bad people do bad things? A conspiracy is just "a secret plan by a group to do something unlawful or harmful". So do conspiracies ever happen? Of course they happen. They have happened for as long as humanity has existed. But in this day and age, we are just supposed to assume that all of our politicians and all of the big corporations that dominate our society are just sweet and wonderful and would never want to do us any harm whatsoever.

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.