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

There are 315,000,000 people residing in the United States today. Of those, 140,000,000 (44.4%) are employed. That leads to a very simple mathematical calculation which provides that 56.6% of Americans are not working. While I realize that a portion of those unemployed persons are either under eighteen or over sixty-five, the percentage of working age unemployed persons in the United States is somewhere around 25%. Our current administration's suggestion that the unemployment rate is 7% is laughable to the point of throwing up.

As of October 1st, 2013, 21,200,000 (8%) of the American population was employed by the government. There were an additional 45,990,000 (14.6%) that worked exclusively for the government as contractors. Approximately 200,000 more work for the Federal Reserve, the IRS, the BATF and the CIA (not real government agencies, just pretend ones, and the numbers for the CIA are a little sketchy). If you add up all those folks, you get a total of (approximately) 71,390,000 (22.7%) of the entire population, but that equates to a whopping 51% of the working population.

More than half of all working Americans are employed by the government, quasi government, faux government, pretend government and their proxies and/or support groups. In other words, more than half of all employed Americans depend on one of the afore mentioned agencies for their wages/sustenance.

There are currently 100,000,000 non governmentally employed Americans receiving some kind of governmental support. Obviously, some of these people are unemployed. 48,700,000 of those 100,000,000 receive food stamps. It is not much of a stretch to suggest that the majority of the population of the U.S., is complacent, docile and rarely outspoken when it comes to dissent, because those persons depend on the government for their survival. Folks are, understandably, reluctant to bite the foot that stomps their grapes. Everyone of those persons has been weaned off their natural preservation instincts and should be considered as potential candidates for an upcoming Darwin Award Ceremony.

Walmart employs 1,400,000 million people (1%) of the working population. Walmart is the largest civilian employer. The average Walmart employee makes $11.75 an hour. That's $20,744 per year. Those wages are slightly below the national average for retail employees, which is $12.04 an hour. Even at $12.04, the national average, the salary would provide that the average retail employee in America earns less than the $22,000 poverty line.

As Mr. Hoffman points out in the following missive, Walmart has, in part, been responsible for thwarting the throes of inflation, up to now, through its cheap Chinese imports, But what happens when China finally gets pissed off enough to refuse any more of our non interest bearing debt, and, as a result, eliminates the ability of the government to simply print imaginary money (that still buys anything) to pay its employees and send to its welfare recipients. Coming soon to a Walmart and a morally, ethically and financially bankrupt country near you.

From Andy Hoffman (click for the entire piece):

I have never had a problem with Wal-Mart per se; that is, until now.  In my view, they have simply been the largest benefactor of the commandeering of U.S. business by powerful lobbying interests.   Frankly, its ability to import cheap Chinese goods has been one of the few factors mitigating the hyperinflationary impact of the Fed's maniacal money printing scheme; although sadly, this ability is on borrowed time.  Frankly, most Americans should be grateful that Wal-Mart has been able to hold prices down in a highly inflationary world; in the process, becoming the nation's largest employer.  True, said jobs are not of the highest quality – and in fact, contribute to the overall "underemployment" that causes roughly half of all citizens to require supplemental entitlement payments.  However, in my opinion, a bad job is better than none at all.

Honestly, I didn't even take issue when earlier this year, they stopped hiring full-time workers – in response to the upcoming, onerous Obamacare "employer mandate."  They have since capitulated on this policy – obviously, due to the massive negative public relations backlash.  However, such "generosity" is not all that it seems; as Wal-Mart had already amended its human resources policies – last year – to make it significantly more difficult for employees to receive healthcare benefits.

Health insurance or not, Wal-Mart is one of the lowest paying corporations in America – quite ominous, given it's the nation's largest employer.  More than half of all employees earn less than $25,000/year; which for a family of four, is considered poverty-level income.  Worse yet, Wal-Mart considers "full-time" to be just 28 hours per week; and thus, when it boasts of how many "full-time" workers it employs, it is referring to tens of thousands that would be considered "part-time" just about anywhere else.  And oh yeah, in order to qualify for health insurance, employees must work 30 hours per week; in essence, giving management a "poison pill" of sorts – enabling its public relations "spinmeisters" to claim increased full-time employment while shirking the responsibility of supplying health insurance.  All they have to do is put workers on 28-29 hour weekly shifts, and corporate gets the "best of both worlds" – at the expense of employees, of course.

On the Economic War Front

As we approach the 50th anniversary of the murder of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, I find the continuing reluctance of some of the American population to doubt the government's official story, abhorrent. Yes, it has been 50 years since that fateful day in Dallas.

In 2003, 79% of persons polled believed that there were multiple gunmen involved. In 2013 that number had dropped to only 59%. Why would it be lower ten years later? Could it be that many young people that have "entered the scene" are both clueless as well as apathetic, due to a more efficient dumbing down process, and, as a result, have been more effectively conditioned to believe the government's account of everything?

I believe that Lyndon Johnson was complicit in JFK's death. He was aided and abetted by many. Some were were working inside the government and some were working outside the government. The evidence continues to mount, as does the evidence in all the events that will subsequently be mentioned in my commentary.

As a result of getting rid of JFK, Johnson was enabled to get us mired the Vietnam War with a "False Flag Operation". It was / is known as the "Gulf of Tonkin Incident". Johnson's Mentor, Senator Alvin Jacob Wirtz (a super slimeball lawyer who taught him everything he knew) held a considerable amount of stock in a company that just happened to be one of his clients; Brown & Root. Alvin Wirtz and Lyndon Johnson helped Brown & Root acquire huge defense contracts (non-competitive) from another slimeball politician; President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the late 1930s. When Johnson got America into the Vietnam War, Brown & Root continued to increase their fortune constructing military bases in Southeast Asia (good work, if you can get it).

Throughout Lyndon Johnson's career, Brown & Root was always his single biggest financial supporter. His rivals couldn't begin to match his political war chest, which goes a long way towards explaining his political successes. Today that company is Kellogg, Brown & Root, and is wholly owned by Halliburton. LBJ and a group of Texas millionaires (crony capitalism) had also, understandably, become large stock holders of Brown & Root. Kennedy's desire to pull American Troops out of Vietnam (and killing the "cash cow") was totally unacceptable to these stock holders. Killing JFK (which would, in turn, make LBJ the President) was, what they considered, a very workable solution. So, with the additional criminal complicity of the Directors of several alphabet soup agencies as well as the Mafia, the Federal Reserve and the Catholic Church (???) the Dallas Book Depository became Dallas' most popular tourist attraction (beating out the bars on Greenville Avenue by a hair).

Subsequent protests of the Vietnam War, would finally help lead to the admission, by Robert McNamara (the Secretary of Defense under both Kennedy and Johnson) that the Gulf of Tonkin incident (the justification for going to war with Vietnam) was a false flag event that didn't happen and was made up by Johnson and his aides. McNamara apparently became so ashamed of his involvement with the criminals in the White House, the Vatican, the FBI and the CIA, that he felt compelled to try and appease his conscience (LOL). In January of 2004, during a speech he was giving at Harvard University, McNamara admitted the lie, that the August 4, 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident, where US warships were supposedly attacked by North Vietnamese PT Boats, was a staged event that never actually took place. This he stated to an audience of several thousand. The Gulf of Tonkin incident was the false flag operation that put us into the Vietnam War where 58,000 of my generation were killed. There were many who suspected the lies of of the Kennedy assassination and the Vietnam debacle long before McNamara's admission. In a March 1968 closed session of the Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Albert Gore Sr. of Tennessee (the father of former vice president Al Gore) noted:

"I believe this country has been misled, if this committee, this Congress, has been misled by pretext into a war in which thousands of young men have died, and many more thousands have been crippled for life, and out of which their country has lost prestige, moral position in the world, the consequences are very great."

Too bad such honor and responsibility were not passed on to the Senator's son, Al Gore, Jr. Al, Jr. hasn't contributed much to the human race since he invented the internet...

It is appalling, yet "par for the course", that 37 years after the Gulf of Tonkin/Vietnam debacle, copy cat criminals of the same ilk (Bush and Cheney, et al) occupying the same White House, who were also major stockholders in the same corporation, (Cheney was Halliburton's former CEO) would successfully pull off the same scam by staging a couple of false flag operations (911, and weapons of mass destruction) to justify the invasion if Iraq, where over 100,000 American soldiers have been killed or wounded, for the exact same reasons. Halliburton received countless government contracts (again non-competitive) for construction and services in Iraq, to the tune of over sixty billion dollars. We are still in Afghanistan after eleven years, protecting the poppy crop and trying to figure out how to steal their other natural resources.

How many years will it be before the public wises up to the state's unfounded, and murdureous seige of the Branch Davidians in Waco by the BATF, an arm of the IRS, whose supposed mandate is tax collection, working under orders from Janet Reno, a past maniacal Attorney General of the U.S.A.

How about tha Oklahoma bombing debacle that was continually exposed as a government agency event where Timothy McVey, like Lee Harvey Oswald before him, was chosen as the sacrificial lamb, and thereby, diverted attention from the perps and their motives.

What about the arch criminal venture dubbed fast and furious, where our government transfered thousands of military grade automatic weapons to Mexican Drug Cartels under the guidance and direction of our present maniacal Attorney General, Eric Holder.

The governmenthas become a criminal cartel and has lied. They lied about the Lusitania (getting us into WWI) Pearl Harbor (getting us into WWII) the Gulf of Tonkin (getting us into Vietnam) 911 and weapons of mass destruction (getting us into Iraq and Afghanistan) Libya, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, and soon to be Iran (getting us into WWIII) Why do American continue to go along? Maybe it is because most of them depend on the afore mentioned teat.

Please take time to revisit the following Dr. Paul Craig Roberts video contribution from September, 2010 entitled, "911, you can't handle the truth".

In this weeks contribution, Dr. Roberts shares with us his insights into motives of the Darkside, in orchestrating the coming police state in America.

From Paul Craig Roberts (click for the entire piece):

In my last column I emphasized that it was important for American citizens to demand to know what the real agendas are behind the wars of choice by the Bush and Obama regimes. These are major long term wars each lasting two to three times as long as World War II.

Forbes reports that one million US soldiers have been injured in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

RT reports that the cost of keeping each US soldier in Afghanistan has risen from $1.3 million per soldier to $2.1 million per soldier.

Matthew J. Nasuti reports in the Kabul Press that it cost US taxpayers $50 million to kill one Taliban soldier. That means it costs $1 billion to kill 20 Taliban fighters. This is a war that can be won only at the cost of the total bankruptcy of the United States.

Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes have estimated that the current out-of-pocket and already incurred future costs of the Afghan and Iraq wars is at least $6 trillion.

In other words, it is the cost of these two wars that explain the explosion of the US public debt and the economic and political problems associated with this large debt.

What has America gained in return for $6 trillion and one million injured soldiers, many very severely?

Precious Metals

This week I am basing my "Precious Metals" commentary on a post from Hugo Salinas Price. It is Hugo's contention that our society's well being has been subjugated through the imposed restriction of the use of honest money. This line of commentary could have just as easily been posted in the "Federal Reserve" section. Either way, the truth remains irrefutable, the lack of honest money has ushered in the economic demise of our nation.

I'm afraid that delusion currently pervades the consciousness of present day American society. I have often thought that if you didn't know because you haven't learned, then you are ignorant, which can be fixed. But, if you didn't know because you don't want to know, then you are stupid.

How many of our pleas have fallen on deaf ears because those that we try to wake up just refuse to listen, Stupid by birth or stupid by choice, it doesn't matter. There's just no fixing stupid.

The world has been effectively hijacked. Although I personally disagree, vehemently, with the ideologies, methods and motives of "those who would be kings', I am becoming increasingly aware that a viable solution may be no longer available. The system is broken, beyond repair. Democracy, two wolves and a sheep deciding what's for dinner, does not work. Our law makers have failed us miserably. As George Carlin put it, "first consider how stupid the average person is and then realize, fully half of everyone else is even more stupid than that". Our law makers are not the sharpest tools in the shed.

We have also been failed by our law enforcers (see Dr. Roberts' essay above). Law enforcement will never work until those that you provide, with the badge and the mandate, have enough sense to know what the law is, and who it was designed to protect, two conditions that our present enforcers seem woefully underqualified to meet. Of course, if we paid them like we pay our professional athletes, we might be able to raise the bar and expect some level of competency.

The Judicial System serves the rich and victimizes the poor. The Executive Branch is so under qualified, they have become a laughing stock both here, and, pretty much, everywhere else.

All this adds up to a failed state attempting to advance a socialist/collectivist paradigm, which will unfortunately, although destined to eventual failure, cause much pain and suffering before it finally goes away. Our much admired contributor, Hugo Salinas Price eloquently explains our dilemma below.

From Hugo Salinas Price (click for the entire piece):

Our world is run – and has been run for some time now – by a relatively very small group of individuals who have it in their power to manage, as they think, the economies of nations. Managing the affairs of a nation implies making people behave in ways in which they would not otherwise behave. National management of an economy thus means making millions of individuals do what they wouldn’t do if left to themselves.

There is not one single national economy in the world today whose people are free to do as they wish; it is not so much that people are forbidden to do what they think best, as that their choices are being narrowed, day by day, to being able to do only what is allowed.

One of the very first choices which free individuals made thousands of years ago was the choice of the money they would use in their exchanges of goods and services; after using other substances such as salt, or copper, or sea-shells, they finally chose gold and silver for use as money, because all humanity valued these metals above all other substances, and consequently gold and silver were the most convenient substances to use as money.

The fact that today we are deprived of the possibility of using these metals as money indicates that we are worse off than our ancestors who lived several thousand years ago. We are forced to use fictitious money provided by our managers and masters. One important consequence of using fiat money is that it inevitably leads to making bad investment decisions.

It is clear that if we are not allowed to do what we think best, anything else we do must be second, or third, or fourth best for our interest, and anyone who takes second best for what is in his interest, is incurring a loss. Our economic world has been so weakened and distorted by accumulated losses and false investments that it is now beyond repair.

Energy

Cascading failure in power grids has long been recognized as a severe security threat to national economy and society. The present condition of both the electric grid, as well as the various systems to deliver fresh water, nationwide, have been criminally neglected by those whose job it is to provide sufficient and adequate maintenance.

The causes of cascading failure can be extremely complicated due to the many different and interactive mechanisms such as transmission overloads, protection equipment failures, transient instability, voltage collapse, etc.

The threats to America's power grid are many and the directions from which they emanate provide ample cause for concern. First, as I mentioned above, neglect ranks right on up there with one of the greatest threats, and that threat should be the least of our worries. The administration is constantly speaking in terms of "trillions of dollars" a mere fraction of which could go a long way toward insuring the uninterrupted delivery.

An Electro magnetic Pulse is also a threat to our national grid. An EMP is a high-intensity burst of electromagnetic energy caused by the rapid acceleration of charged particles. An EMP can change the magnetic field in the earth's atmosphere to disrupt electronic devices by a pulse flowing through electricity transmission lines, overloading and damaging transmission distribution centers. EMPs can be caused by naturally occurring solar flares as well as man made nuclear reactions. A nuclear warhead delivered by a missile which was detonated high above the earth, over the U.S. (or any other country) would cause all communications to collapse, 99% of all transportation would cease to function, and electrical power distribution would become nonexistent.

Given the venerability that currently exists, our fearless leaders' attention to the situation seemed to be inept and totally lacking. Kevin Freeman clues us in on some of the particulars in the following essay.

From Kevin D. Freeman (click for the entire piece):

Last night, the National Geographic channel ran a special program titled American Blackout. It portrayed a fictional accounting of how America might respond to a prolonged outage of the power grid. The reality? It’s not good. As shown in the TV drama, things go bad in a hurry. The good news for the fictional program was that the power outage was limited to 10 days after a cyber attack. The lights came back on.

The bad news is that even if there isn’t a man-made EMP attack, there remains a serious risk of natural attack coming from our own sun. Such events happen with regular frequency and really bad ones happen every 150 years or so we think. The last “really bad one” happened in 1859 so we are due.

The good news is that this is a solvable problem from a few different perspectives. We can and should develop a missile shield that could stop a direct EMP assault. It’s not that expensive compared to the consequences or even the Federal budget. In addition, we can begin to harden the electric grid and install “fail safe” mechanisms on critical infrastructure. Manual pumps at gas stations and water supplies make sense. We can shield critical transformers from damage.

Learn as much as you can. The threat is real. The potential for solving a serious problem is likewise real. This is a non-partisan issue and we owe it to our children and grandchildren to address it.

The Fed

In 1913 the most powerful banking group in Europe bribed Woodrow Wilson, who was running for president, with enough money for him to be elected president. They also bribed enough members of congress and all of this was with the understanding that if Wilson won he would sign into law two things. First the (unconstitutional) Federal Reserve Banking Act which would create the Federal Reserve Banking System which would control the money of the U.S. Treasury. Second was the (never ratified) Income Tax Act. The IRS was set up as the collection agency to insure that the American people would pay the bogus interest on the bogus loans that the Federal Reserve would then make to the government.

Previously, the treasury would simply print the money that the government needed at no interest. Everyone involved in this scam, Wilson, the congress, the banksters, were all criminals, and those that have taken their places today are criminals as well.

Now, as we approach the centennial of the "passage" of the most reprehensible legislation to have ever been conceived, the whole world is waking up to the criminal intent of those that pushed for this legislation.

There have always been evil people in the world, since the beginning. Unfortunately, the depth of these evil persons depravity seem without limit. They need to be dealt with in the same manner that one might deal with lice.

From Nick Barisheff (click for the entire piece):

On December 13, 2013, the Federal Reserve will celebrate its 100th birthday. Undoubtedly, there will be many articles forthcoming about the Fed between now and that infamous date, and I expect most, like this presentation, will be highly critical.

Today I will be speaking about the effects central banking and the Federal Reserve have had on our lives, our society and, most important, on the way we think and act. I know many feel overwhelmed by the economic forces that have essentially taken full control of our markets since 2008, but I am here to remind you that the light shines much brighter today than it did when I first began seriously exploring this subject several decades ago.

During what I believe are the final years of the U.S. dollar's rule as the world's de facto reserve currency, desperation is confirming what only a few years ago would have been dismissed as conspiracy theories of the lunatic fringe. Desperate acts, like the bailouts of 2008 and the attempts at crushing the gold market in 2013, have opened a window into the dark world of central banking and the most ubiquitous propaganda campaign in history against sound money practices.

Today I want to look at the methods used by the Fed to wage such a war over the past one hundred years against gold and economic common sense—practices the Fed would very much like to keep from the public eye.

Today we can come to understand the deception of fiat currency, and we can protect our wealth through precious metals ownership at a great discount to its true value. We can regain economic sovereignty by changing the way we think about money, and by acting on that knowledge.

Financial Survival

The consideration that those on the Federal teat should be restricted from participating in an election is a notion that I explored in my November, 2004 essay, The Great Silver Heist. Although, at the time, I was unaware that John Stuart Mill had espoused the idea in 1859, the logic of the idea is irrefutable.

Those who champion the welfare state do so either as parasites, or economic predators. Our current crop of so-called representatives falls squarely in the latter category. As I concluded in my here-to-for mentioned essay, the right to vote must be limited to those who do not receive Federal subsidy. Otherwise, the majority of the population will always vote for a handout. I call our present system "basterdized democracy". Its not working. In my essay, I took that concept to its extreme by including anyone that recieved money from the government for any reason. As I cited above, that would eliminate approximately 70% of the voting population from the process.

Until that, and other changes, I brought up in "Silver Heist", are implemented, we (those of us who, through the forced extraction of our wealth via taxation continue to support those that do nothing) will continue to suffer the throes of a Facist collective.

From Ol' Remus (click for the entire piece):

Ol' Remus voted in local elections earlier this month. By local he means offices in the township, a place with fewer residents than the apartment building he lived in in Philadelphia. It's a rather large geographical area with a tiny, unincorporated hamlet embedded in it. "The Burg", as it's known, is an attractive, relatively prosperous place with an occasional new business or expansion of an existing business, but calm down, there's no danger of runaway growth. We're talking low-voltage stuff here. The town budget is of the same order as a stand-alone McDonald's franchise in bleakest Saskatchewan. The tallest building in the burg was four stories high, which burned down a hundred years ago. Until the gas station was built, the basement was covered over and used as an informal "downtown" shooting range. The gas station was then converted to various other businesses, which burned down this year. Now it's a parking lot with space for well over a dozen vehicles. Such was our lunge for the cosmopolitan.

Candidates in our local elections run mostly uncontested, or the same nominee appears on two or three ballot lines and so comes to the same thing. The politics part is run on an "everybody knows" basis, and yes, everybody does know. The real action takes place before the ballots are printed. Some say (oops) whoever draws the short straw is the nominee, and better luck next time.

Other than a council seat or two, voting endorses a fait accompli. Being largely a matter of expressing consent, and a social event, turnout is heavy. Nearly complete. People notice the absentees. Elected officials are convincingly disguised as farmers and tradesmen and hourly workers during daylight hours. But roads get fixed, hydrants get flushed, mandatory standards are met, bills paid, audits passed. What needs doing gets done without a whiff of drama. It works.

What doesn't work is voting in national elections. If voting worked it would have worked by now. Whenever voting even looks like it will work it's savaged as if it were terrorist activity. Nope, sorry, national elections are a pump-and-dump fraud, voting confirms the payer so the checks can be cut.

There's only one legitimate schematic for national government and that is the Constitution. Vote all we want, when the plumbing of power is fraudulent there's no way to safely exercise our liberties. Until constitutional governance is restored the people are no more free than those of any other third-world peasantry living in any other strongman's pest-hole. Until constitutional governance is restored, everybody who participates is participating in a criminal enterprise; office holders, permanent government and voters alike.

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 exclusively 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 think 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.