MCR wrote:

GOLD AND OIL PRICES

I've seen a few postings the lead me to think that panic and fear are creeping into people's thinking. Perhaps I haven't been clear enough. And let me say that everyone should take a breath. This is going to be a long process and there's too much urgency creeping in to people's thinking. If you cave in now you won't stand a chance against what's yet to come.

GOLD

For the longer term (maybe 30-50 years) I do agree that gold by itself may not be a permanent answer to anything. It may prove to be but my vision doesn't reach that far. From 2004 through the present day, however, I have recognized something that many don't seem to grasp and I have said it clearly in my lectures and writings.

Too many people see that the end of the petroleum-industrial age is here and are planning and preparing to live in a post-petroleum world. That is a big mistake. It's great to start repairing your soil, plant a vegetable garden, reduce debt etc. But what lies before us is what I have called the "Transition Period" -- a period of turbulence, uncertainty, possibly violence, and massive social and economic dislocation. However money will be defined in the future, it will most certainly have to have one quality. It must be tied and limited bysomething tangible that is also finite -- like energy is. Historically, over maybe six thousand years, gold has been that accepted refuge and it still is. The thing with gold is that it is known, recognized and accepted already. Consider the advantage of gold as opposed to say, trying to get people to accept something new as money. That work is already done with gold. Of all the options available, I have chosen gold as a PART of my plan to survive the"Transition Period" because if one doesn't get through that phase,whatever follows is moot. This is not for just the "rich and famous" as someone said. Anyone can start buying small amounts of gold for a few hundred dollars. No, one cannot eat gold. But one can carry it. One can measure it. One can trust that it is what it is; an unreactive metal that is always the same weight and same measure. One can trade gold for other things. It doesn't require someone to go and look up in tables or other material to find out what it is. It is simple and it is universally recognized as a store of value. Gold is part of a recommended mix of many survival needs, not the only thing I recommend. During the transition period it will offer choices that few other commodities, with similar characteristics will. It is by far not the only tool in my tool kit, nor should it be in yours.

OIL PRICES

I guess I am a little disappointed that so many folks don't seem to understand what's happening with oil prices. It's been on the map for a long time. TPTB are losing their control as must happen as the paradigm shifts. The $147 price seen this summer broke the backs of over-extended consumers. Demand destruction was too successful. Everything that has happened since was triggered by that, and I repeat that I believe the July price spike was intentionally induced.The collapse hasn't even begun to hit home. Millions more are going to be unemployed and the business shut downs have only just begun. The trickle-down effect hasn't fully hit home. The economy has crashed so far, so fast, that even plummeting oil prices aren't reigniting consumption. Unemployed people don't drive as much no matter what the gas price is and they won't until they have a job again. The problem is that most of them won't have jobs again. All the economic predictions are saying that waves of shutdowns, layoffs and firings are still coming. Airlines are almost giving away seats because flights are getting empty. I just talked to someone at the dog park who flew round trip to NY for $349 two weeks ago. Then I spoke to someone who had just bought a roundtrip to Chicago for only $179. As all the Peak Oil experts have been saying for years, a collapse in oil prices is a very bad thing that makes the so-called Bumpy Plateau look like the Rocky Mountains. Why? It de-inecentivizes investment in alternative energies and delays any efforts to wean ourselves from oil. Oil below a certain price makes it no longer economical to invest in wind, solar, tar sands, deepwater or any of the more expensive alternatives and the things that can tide us over. Those regimes are already showing signs of shutting down. A couple of years ago Matt Simmons suggested to me that setting a floor of $100 for oil was a good thing. I agreed completely. We must have some stability to prepare. It is clear now that falling oil prices are not going to stabilize the economy, so we shouldn't look there. They are only going to make the future less safe for all of us. That being said, the recents hints that OPEC may cut production are a good thing. They will help conserve a resource for which we still haven't got an alternative.

MCR wrote:

CITIGROUP Update

I told you so...

http://uk.reuters.com/article/bankingfinancial-SP/idUKBNG38495120081022?sp=true


GOLD

Someone asked a pretty good question about gold.

I wouldn't worry.

In the history of mankind gold has been the ultimate flight capital after food, water and weapons. Long time FTW readers will recall how thoroughly FTW documented the manipulation of gold prices; primarily to avert fear and/or panic in the markets. We all owe a great debt of gratitude to GATA for so many years of meticulous research and education.

So should you be worried or surprised to see that at a time when the markets are imploding, the gold price being ruthlessly suppressed? All financial conventional wisdom says that gold should be soaring and God only knows which Peters they are robbing to pay Paul to do it. In my opinion, the counterintuitive and counter-rational movement in gold only suggests that the ultimate crash will be harder and deeper than it should/could have been. In desperation, those who have rigged the markets are dooming themselves -- and maybe us too. The longer gold's breakout is delayed the closer it will be to an at-time-of-death breakout and the more astronomical the price rise. It's like pushing a volleyball deeper underwater. The deeper it goes down, the higher it will explode out of the water when released.

Remember talking about capitulation? Well that's not just for stocks. True capitulation will also be the moment in time when gold is free to move to its rightful place.

You hold on to your stocks.

I'm keeping my gold, thank you.

MCR writes:

WHAT THE HECK IS GOING ON HERE?

Oh, baby. This is far from over.

http://www.reuters.com/articlePrint?articleId=USTRE49K8NM20081021

MCR
***********

JO writes:

Re the recent exchange over a blog comment which asked about two pseudo-journalists whom FTW emphatically does not endorse:

While collecting articles and writing for the blog for the last two and a half years, as well as reviewing comments before they get posted, I've been aware that some comments contain mis- or disinformation. The disclaimer to the right was posted to distance ourselves from them.

I've tended to err on the side of inclusion because:

1. I believe that the majority of the writers are innocent and are asking for direction.

2. Even though the guilty ones are not seeking enlightenment, we're not afraid of them. They tend to get defeated in arguments from other commenters which is enlightening all 'round. Sometimes 'wrong' questions can elicit good responses; witness Mike's comment below.

Of course, there's a limit. I'm probably inviting a deluge of nonsense from people who want to test this policy to see how far it will go. You won't see the worst of these comments and I'm not saying "Bring 'em on." Just.... Sigh.

DISCLAIMER ON ANTI-SEMITISM AND GOVERNMENT DISINFORMATION

Recently someone posted a comment referring our readers to two known disinformation agents, both of whom have expressed deep anti-Semitic, bigoted and racist sentiments over many years -- leaving a deep and well-documented record. One claims no plane hit the Pentagon and the other claims that he can prove that Peak Oil is a lie. One was kicked out of almost every movement he has participated in over the last six years for intentionally disruptive behavior and outright lies. I can prove that. The other is an advocate of alien visitations and many things that smack of distractive and disruptive "journalism" for the sake of personal profit.

We are seeing that the American people are growing wise to such tactics in the presidential campaign. We are also seeing that people are rebelling against such tactics. I cannot stop people who wish to tarnish me/us by posting links to racist or hate propaganda on other sites. But this is my blog, with my name on it. The work that all of us from FTW and I have done will not be tarnished by this kind of bullshit.

I am giving fair warning: Any links posted as comments on this website to these kinds of messages will be removed. There is no room for hatred or bigotry anywhere on this blog. We assume that those who participate here are educated and smart enough to avoid such references. Those of us who "get" it will not be slowed down by ignorance, stupidity, hate, or those who continually ask"college-level" discourse to be slowed to third-grade babble for their pleasure.

Complain all you want to, but on this blog, my decisions are final. The evil and the danger we are facing as a species transcends all human descriptors. Going out and "eliminating" all "Zionist bankers"will not solve the world's problems. The evil and the test lies within each of us -- all humans as a species. The biggest battles we fight are in our own souls.

Take your hate and stupidity elsewhere. It has no place here.

MCR

MCR wrote:

THIS HAS BEEN ON THE MAP FOR A LONG TIME
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE49K0VH20081021

I loved Dmitry Orlov when Dale Allen Pfeiffer introduced me to himabout five years ago. FTW was the first to publish him. So, if it looks like collapse; walks like collapse; smells like collapse; and there's some collpase s--t laying around...

Do ya think???

**************

JO wrote:

The Secret War With Iran

According to the Federation of American Scientists, this is a new book translated from the Hebrew and based on interviews with Israeli intelligence officers which contains new information including the following:

Hizballah, acting as a proxy for Iran, temporarily refrained from taking American hostages between June 1985 and September 1986 in support of the arms sales deal between the U.S. and Iran that later became known as the Iran-contra affair.

The CIA is credited with 'brilliantly' dismantling the Abu Nidal Organization, 'sewing discord among its members by getting them to believe that they were being robbed by other operatives.'

Money as Debt
Video introduction to how the economy works

Central Banks All But Stop Lending Gold
The Seventy-Five Minute Market Rescue
Tongue-in-cheek article by John Crudele, intrepid gumshoe on the trail of the Plunge Protection Team.

Everything You Never Wanted to Know About Warren Buffett
A supposedly tell-all biography which is anything but.
GOP in Push to Erase Voters; Purges ACORN in Drive to Register Low Income
Flow
Film about water

Jerome Corsi Deported from Kenya



Plus.......

Permacultre: Beyond Green

This Friday October 24, 2008 at 6:30:

Henry George School of Social Science,
121 East 30th Street
between Park Ave and Lexington


Permaculture is a design system for creating sustainable human environment. On one level, it deals with plants, animals, buildings and infrastructures. However, permaculture is not about these elements themselves, but about the relationships we can create between them by the way we place them in the landscape.

The aim of permaculture is to create systems that are ecologically sound and economically viable, which provide for their own needs, do not exploit or pollute and are therefore sustainable in the long term. Permaculture is based on the observation of natural systems, the wisdom contained in traditional farming systems and modern scientific and technological knowledge.

With Mr. Philip Botwinick and Ms. Sharon Kimmelman of Local Energy Solutions (a Not For Profit organization educating about the interconnectedness of Energy, Economy and Food)


The Two Faces of Money

Saturday October 25, 2008 at 7pm

Park Slope Food Coop,
782 Union St.
(btw 6th and 7th Ave)


Food and Money have a long history. In fact, up until World War II, tea bricks were used as money in Siberia. Today, unfortunately, neither system is sustainable, but thankfully that’s beginning to change – for food at least. Money is a daily part of our lives too, but why is there no movement for a sustainable monetary system, worse yet, few people understand it. Join us for an opportunity to better understand our current monetary system – its origins, evolution, the current economic crisis, and how a sustainable monetary system is possible.

THE NUMBER OF MORTGAGES vs.PROPERTIES

I'm glad that several of you asked about my comment. It shows you're paying attention. I'm not sure how much help I can be for reasons out of my control.

I started receiving the warnings about the number of mortgages from Catherine Austin Fitts -- former Assistant Secretary of Housing -- in late 2004 or early 2005. That was followed by several key stories which had that choice morsel buried (as usual) in later paragraphs. Unfortunately, when FTW's computers were smashed on June 25, 2006 I lost the ability to locate those stories. As we reloaded new computers with all of my research from backups, the new IT tech changed all the dates on all of my 20,000+ stories to July 10, 2006 and the file names were changed in many cases. File trees were rearranged and my ability to search was really impaired. I just entered "mortgages" in my search engine and came up with more than 300 archived stories. I just can't go back and read through them all. In all I have perhaps 4,000 separate research files totalling 4 Gigs.

However, throughout 2005-6, I cited these alarming discrepancies in all of my lectures and I believe it's in my video "Denial Stops Here"compiled from my 2004 through late 2005 public appearances. I used Powerpoint slides and probably there's a slide in there with one of the stories supporting this.

I no longer communicate with Fitts in any way. The reasons are between her and me. Yet I have never had reason to doubt what she told me on this subject and there were substantiating stories. It was clear that the same addresses were being used on multiple mortgages and that fictitious properties had also been created to blend in and pump the value of bundled mortgage-backed securities. This pattern first appeared way back in the S&L crisis in the last years of Bush I. The RTC (Resolution Trust Corporation) was used to destroy or hide evidence and I would say "literally" complete and finalize the looting that happened then. The S&L crisis was, I believe, a trial run for what's happened this year. With time I am more and more convinced that the Bushes et al have known that Peak Oil was coming for a long time and have planned to loot wealth, keeping it out of the hands of those who could/would use it constructively. Note that both economic crises happened at the very end of Bush regimes. It has been the"cashing-out" process for their "base".

MCR

Read the last sentence. Either Citigroup is scrambling to clear out of positions that might sink it, or we are witnessing one of the greatest financial crimes in history; or both. TPTB always try to destroy the evidence. Remember, there are three times more paper mortgages out there than actual properties. The government is paying for the fictitious ones too.

http://www.bizjournals.com/buffalo/stories/2008/10/13/daily26.html?t=printable

Could Citigroup be one of the mechanisms for the shutdown rather than a victim? Why then did Buffet prevent it from getting something it needed so badly? Time will tell.

-- MCR

Citigroup Posts Loss Amidst Credit Costs

THE DAY OF THE LAST DEBATE

Pump and dump. Pump and dump. The heart beats its last few beats. Blood hemorrhages. Today the Dow lost more than 700 points. Again. Each time it goes up that is fresh money going in. Each time it sinks again that is the fresh money going out.

There has been no capitulation.

The economy of the United States is being destroyed beyond redemption. -- Good.

Only an entirely new kind of economy can emerge in the face of Peak Oil.

Last week I was flipping through the channels and I stumbled across George Soros (gag!) being interviewed by Bill Moyers (gag!). Soros was right when he said it was going to be a bad depression. He was also correct when he said that it was far from over and that this was the end of an era.

However, he was quite wrong when he held up a copy of his new book "A New Paradigm" and then described basically the same one we have now. We -- those who understand the issue -- will not permit a prince of the old paradigm to be the architect of, or perhaps a king in, the new. I called for a New Paradigm two and a half years ago in a speech on the same stage where Abraham Lincoln once spoke; at New York's Cooper Union... Years before that I was out-and-out plagiarized by Gore Vidal when he slapped his name on the original research and writing I had done on Zbig's book "The Grand Chessboard". I can live with that. But we will all be damned if we allow George Soros to define the next epoch of human history for us.

-- What in the World Is Happening With the Global Drug Trade?

Over the last few months I have tracked major seizures of cocaine bothin the Pacific and the Gulf. Three separate seizures involved semi-submersibles of small submarines that don't go under the water but sink flush with it to eliminate radar signatures. (Doesn't work well for satellite surveilance.) Each of those seizures was 3,000 metric tons or more. Then I found that the DEA had recorded earlier seizures this year totaling more than 4,000 tons. The last time I checked (2000), the U.S. was consuming only 6,000 metric tons of cocaine a year. What gives? There is no evidence I know of to suggest that consumption has grown. It's counterintuitive. I don't have the contacts I used to but I can tell you that in L.A. there is virtually no powdered cocaine to be found and it's been that way for months. There is a litle crack out there but I suspect that may be crystal meth -- "crank". Meantime Mexico has errupted into a virtual drug-defined civil war with hundreds, if not thousands, murdered.

Then today Matt Savinar sends me this story about how the world's heroin supply is disappearing:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/markeaston/2008/10/map_of_the_week_the_mystery_of.html. Someone is stockpiling heroin. Heroin is the base drug of morphine. The opium poppy, papaver somniferum, is the source of opium, the most commonly used, and most effective natural pain killer in man's history. Heroin is made from opium. I fear that opium and heroin have become new hot commodities and there is no way that that much opium/heroin could be intended for "recreational" use -- or even to supply addicts. It seems that someone is banking heavily on a lot of people being in a lot of physical pain. -- Good job Matt, as usual. I can't explain what's happening wth cocaine. Is it being hoarded until the price goes up? Not likely, because no one will have money tobuy it in just a few short months. But then again, if it's dirt cheap,say $75 a gram...

I repeat that by itself, all the cash from the global drug trade is not relevant to the current economic crisis. I last estimated all cash generated by illegal drugs at aruound $600 billion a year. By itself, the Lehman bankruptcy was $750 billion or so. Then came the bailouts and the trillions in equity that has been destroyed.

I don't have time to do the research but I'm sure we'll find out what it means soon enough I suspect. This all smells so... , so... BUSH.

Maybe we'll see all the drugs turn up right after the markets bottom. That could squeeze a few final dollars out of the corpse.

-- The Last Debate

Thank God it's over. No major changes. McCain reminded me of Joe McCarthy when he attacked. McCain's face is saved. It was his best performance. Both men lied about energy. It's over.

Now all we have to do is to get to, and through, the election.

MCR

P.S. - Where, oh where is Citigroup? I see that they're in for a chunk of the bailout but the silence is deafening.

-- MCR

Revolution and Victory Gardens

Jenna Orkin


Revolution is in the air. Even Ben Stein says so.

The former Nixon speechwriter who crafted a whole persona out of a professorial drone (in the field of Economics, no less) is sounding a little bewildered these days. If the old saying is true that a radical is a conservative who's been arrested, Ben's acting like a Wall Street hotshot who wakes up to find himself in a jail cell with a bunch of weirdo peak-oil salesmen.
Politics makes strange bedfellows. Like so many other things these days, (Putin, for one,) human commonality is rearing its head in the oddest places.

Which means that so is enmity.

My former enemy is now my ally so who is now my enemy? Oh, right; I am.

The head-scratching, "expert"-addicted American is going, perhaps for the first time, to have to do some independent thinking. Not grabbing the nearest soundbite and repeating it to his buddies as though it were sage counsel; not summing people up with the snappiest stereotype, but real research, upending all his fondest, most comforting notions and assumptions.

Once that process begins, there is no end. The rabbit-hole of inquiry is one in which question leads only to bigger, more fundamental question. No longer can we automatically endow the older or even the more expert with authority. Like the earliest victims of AIDS who, for lack of knowledge among the medical profession, were forced to do their own research and come up with far-flung solutions which their doctors then adopted for their other patients as well, we must become the experts.

At least, expert enough to make rational decisions about our own lives. And in a world in which nothing can any longer be taken for granted, that is going to take some effort.

Where to start?

From scratch. Seeking knowledge not just from the purported experts, the "suits," but from anyone who seems to have a handle on whatever the given problem is. The off-hand dismissal of people who lack credentials can be suicidal.

In this way, true sustainability must come hand in hand with equality. Our deeply-rooted pyramid notion of society is going to have to crumble. Pyramids were built on slave labor. A different social structure might have erected a differently-shaped tomb.

Let the festivities begin.


****************

Meanwhile, the New York Times is also sounding radical note, muted by reasonably-cadenced prose.

In an article entitled, "Farmer in Chief," in the Sunday Magazine, journalist Michael Pollan lays out a presidential policy plan for growing food during the next administration.

It is filled with points which will sound familiar to readers of this blog as well as peak oilists and permaculturalists everywhere, denouncing monocultures which depend so heavily on pesticides and fertilizers and calling for a return to solar- rather than fossil fuel-based agriculture.

Pointing out the Dale Allen Pfeiffer nugget which Mike Ruppert has repeated in countless lectures, that it takes 10 calories of fossil-fuel energy to produce one calorie of food as well as other equally galvanizing tidbits (it takes 5000 gallons of water to produce a pound of feedlot beef) - the article also provides some history of our current food-growing practises:

"After World War II, the government encouraged the conversion of the munitions industry to fertilizer — ammonium nitrate being the main ingredient of both bombs and chemical fertilizer — and the conversion of nerve-gas research to pesticides."

That's a loaded sentence, couched in a multi-thousand word article, like a landmine in an idyllic pastorale. How many Americans, furrowing their brows as they read it over their morning coffee, are going to sit bolt upright in bed eighteen hours later at 3 A.M.? Probably not many, but otherwise Pollan would never have gotten away with it. This is but one straw on the camel's back and far from the last one.

Pollan advocates regional food economies both in America and around the world and recommends setting up a Strategic Grain Reserve modelled on the current Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

He also points out:

"Right now, most of the conservation programs run by the U.S.D.A. are designed on the zero-sum principle: land is either locked up in “conservation” or it is farmed intensively. This either-or approach reflects an outdated belief that modern farming and ranching are inherently destructive, so that the best thing for the environment is to leave land untouched."

Some of his proposals are creatively sensible:

To qualify as 'food' he recommends that an edible substance contain a minimum ratio of micronutrients per calorie of energy.

And while he doesn't use the phrase "Food, not lawns" he proposes that "the White House [should] observe one meatless day a week - a step that, if all Americans followed suit, would be the equivalent, in carbon saved, of taking 20 million midsize sedans off the road for a year."

The White House lawn should also be a paragon for the rest of the country.

"[T]ear out five prime south-facing acres of the White House lawn and plant in their place an organic fruit and vegetable garden.
When Eleanor Roosevelt did something similar in 1943, she helped start a Victory Garden movement that ended up making a substantial contribution to feeding the nation in wartime. (Less well known is the fact that Roosevelt planted this garden over the objections of the USDA which feared home gardening would hurt the American food industry.)"

Let's just hope his ideas are not all too little too late.

Michael C. Ruppert

Many of my predictions about the US gov't shutting down the economy were contained in my comments for Title 17 US Code reprints of major news stories. We don't have the ability to make those available to you but we have them. If you want to search for places where I discussed it, I suggest that you enter the term "demand destruction" in the Exact Phrase mode of the search engine. Also look for the words"looting" and "liquidation". Then go back and read GlobalCorp and --off the top of my head -- "As the World Burns" from 2004.

Demand destruction is what this is all about, not just for oil but for almost all commodities. If (as an example) the world consumed 85 mbpd this year, the economic crash may result in demand reduction to 79-80 mbpd next year. Coincidentally, that will probably match what global decline rates allow the world to produce. The severity of the crash still in progress leads me to suspect that decline rates are actually much steeper than acknowledged.

-- Oh, how I wish we had the NEPDG report.

Hope this helps.


MCR