Bitcoin and other Intangible Savings Vehicles

 

by Alfred Adask

 

Reuters reported in "Bitcoin plunges after marketplace indefinitely halts withdrawals," that,

 

"The price of the digital currency bitcoin slid to its lowest level in nearly two months on Monday after bitcoin digital marketplace Mt. Gox said a halt on withdrawals it announced on Friday would continue indefinitely after it detected "unusual activity."

 

"The bitcoin price varied dramatically from one exchange to another, with Tokyo-based Mt. Gox, the best known operator of a bitcoin digital marketplace, recording one of the biggest drops for the day.

 

"On the Mt. Gox platform the currency plunged to as low as $500 early on Monday, down more than 27 percent from Friday's final price of $692, according to the Mt. Gox website. It last traded at $595.74, off nearly 14 percent from Friday."

 

What's the "halt on withdrawals [can] continue indefinitely" mean? 

 

It means that the Bitcoin market is manipulated and not a true, free-market currency.

The reason for the halt on withdrawals was said to be "unusual activity".

 

What do you suppose "unusual activity" means?

 

It might mean that the Mt. Gox exchange is heavily invested in Bitcoins, and the free market (or hackers or government) is pushing the price of Bitcoins down, so the Mt. Gox exchange is endeavoring to protect its investment in Bitcoins by refusing to allow withdrawals by people who are bailing out of Bitcoins. 

 

If so, I'll bet that the Mt. Gox Bitcoin exchange's "halt on withdrawals" will continue until Mt. Gox has managed to secretly liquidate most of the Bitcoins it currently owns and thereby protect its own wealth.  Then, when the management of Mt. Gox is safe from further Bitcoin losses, it will allow its "depositors" to withdraw and sell their Bitcoins for whatever they can get.

 

Lesson #1:  Those who live by the digital currency, die by the digital currency.

Lesson #2:  Those who invest their savings in something tangible like gold will be comparatively safe from being robbed by "hackers and bankers and governments"

 

(Ohh, my!).

 

 

 

Retirement Savings Begin at 40? . . . 50? . . .  60?

 

by Alfred Adask

 

 CNBC.com published an article entitled, "40-plus? It's not too late to start saving".  The thrust of the article is that, while it's best to start saving for your retirement long before you turn 40-it's still possible to accumulate meaningful savings if you start shortly after 40:

 

"From a retirement-planning perspective, this is the decade [from age 40 to 50] where the rubber meets the road.

 

"Those who started socking money away sooner are best positioned to meet their long-term goals, of course, but there's still plenty of time to shore up your savings if you've been hitting the snooze button on your 401(k) plan for the last 20 years. "

 

But what about those who haven't saved anything and turn 50?  Or even 60?  Is there any hope for them to save enough for their retirement?  Or is it too late to start saving?  Must they instead rely only on So-So Security?

 

Generally speaking, those who don't start saving for their retirement until they're over 50 are unlikely to save enough to build a "nest egg" big enough to get them through their "golden years" with anything other than So-So Security.

 

But that depends on how they save. 

 

In other words, if you store your savings in a bank account in the form of cash that are subject to devaluation by inflation, your post-50 savings may not generate much of a retirement "nest egg".

 

However, if you saved your wealth in the form of stocks, you might do better.

 

In you invested your savings in U.S. bonds, which are comparatively "low" right now and therefore destined to rise, you might do even better (assuming the government doesn't repudiate its bond debts).

 

But what if you started saving right now in the media of gold?  We can't predict the future with any accuracy, so there's never a guarantee.  But we can see a couple of fundamentals and probabilities: 

 

1. As compared to paper dollars, the price of gold is up 3,700% since A.D. 1971.
2. Even after the painful correction of A.D. 2012 & 2013, the price of gold has increased by an average of 13% per year over the past fourteen years.
3. The price of gold fifteen years from now (and perhaps even five years from now) will be several times higher than it is today.

That means that instead of investing your savings in bank accounts, stock or bonds-which will be lucky to generate a 5% annual return on investment and thereby increase by 40% every seven years-you could invest in gold which can be reasonably expected to increase by a factor of 13% per year to a 135% increase over seven years.  That's over three times the increase you might expect from conventional investments.  Thus, if you start saving late, you may be able to overcome that disability by saving in gold and enjoying a much higher annual return on your investments.

 

If the price of gold rises by 20% per year (and it did from A.D. 2000 through most of A.D. 2011), any savings invested into gold today, might increase 250% within the next seven years-and it could conceivably go even higher and/or in a shorter period.

 

In truth, most of your conventional investments (bank accounts, stocks, bonds, pensions, etc.) will be lucky to generate more than 5% return on investment each year.  That means that over the next seven years, $1,000 saved today in conventional investments will probably be worth no more than $1,400 seven years from now.

 

That same $1,000, saved in the form or gold or silver, will probably be worth $3,500 seven years from now-and maybe much more.

 

These kinds of returns on precious metals can't be guaranteed, but they're not only possible, they're probable.  Over the next seven years, the total return on gold could be at least 250%.  Over the same seven years, the total return on conventional paper and digital investments are unlikely to be more than 40%.

 

If you want to start saving late in life, conventional savings in the form of digital or paper vehicles are unlikely to do much for your retirement. 

 

But, if you start saving in gold or silver, there's a good chance that a relatively small amount of savings might serve you very well in just a few years.

 

When it comes to savings, the issue isn't merely how much you save, but also in what investment media do you save?   It's a virtual certainty, that if you save your wealth in conventional investments, you'll be lucky to receive an annual return of your investments of more than 5%.  If you save in the form of precious metals, you can expect an annual return of 15% to 20%. 

 

If 5% can't possibly add up to enough to make much difference in your retirement savings, but 20% just might make a significant difference, where should you put your savings?  Conventional investments in paper debt-instruments?  Or precious metals?

The answer's obvious.

 

You could even start saving for your retirement as late as age 60, and-if you lived frugally and saved in gold-you might still generate a decent nest egg for your "golden years". 

 

No matter how old you are and when you started saving, if you don't have savings in the form of gold, you shouldn't be surprised if your "golden years" turn to "brass".

 

 

Suspending the Debt Ceiling's Limit

 

by Alfred Adask

 

Bill Holter (The Holter Report) recently wrote in "No Debt Limit?  Why?":    

 

"Did you scratch your head . . . just a little bit at how easy John Boehner rolled over and the debt ceiling got lifted by Congress?  "Clarity" it was said, and the "uncertainty" of a debt limit was lifted so all should be OK for another year.  No sequester, no cutting back ...no nothing.  That's right, NO debt limit at all for a year so we (and the markets) should party like its 1999 all over again!  Right?"

 

 In fact, only one other nation in the world-it might be Ireland, I don't recall-has a "Debt Ceiling" like that imposed by U.S. law.  For other nations, governmental borrowing is limited only by common sense and whatever the market will bear.

 

Here, in America, governmental borrowing has been limited only by the Debt Ceiling law-if even that has truly limited our government's insatiable appetite for more and more borrowing.

 

For example, the previous debt ceiling was $17.2 trillion, and the National Debt was $17.2 trillion.  But John Williams at Shadowstats.com has calculated that the true National debt is closer to $90 trillion.  If Williams is right, this implies that the actual $90 trillion National Debt exceeds the legal "Debt Ceiling" by about $73 trillion-over 400% higher than the legal limit. 

 

If so, the official/legal "Debt Ceiling" has been routinely ignored for years.  Apparently, government may be legally in debt for $17.2 trillion and illegally in debt for another $73 trillion.

 

I'm not even sure what that means.  I assume the American people are legally liable for paying the official/legal National Debt of $17.2 trillion, but who is liable for paying $73 trillion that was borrowed in violation of the Debt Ceiling law?

 

The Congressional Budget Office has calculated that, including unfunded liabilities, the federal government is actually in debt for over $200 trillion.   I also have no idea if "unfunded liabilities" in excess of the $17.2 trillion Debt Ceiling limit are legal or illegal-but that question may now be moot since the this week's Debt Ceiling law declared that there'll be no express borrowing limit at all for the next year.

 

*  Hmph.  As Mr. Holter wondered, Why has government chosen to suspend the Debt Ceiling? 

 

I can imagine three possible explanations:

 

1. The absence of a Debt Ceiling means that government anticipates an approaching economic debacle, is desperate for more currency, and has therefore removed any restriction on its ability to borrow enormous and unprecedented sums needed to survive that debacle.  That's possible, but it implies that government expects to see big trouble this year.
2. You might conclude, as I have, that government wants to escape the legal borrowing limits and all of the political hoopla that are attached to borrowing limits and permanently repeal the Debt Ceiling law.  This year, they'll suspend the debt ceiling; next year they'll repeal it completely.
3. But there's a 3^rd possibility:  The absence of a specific Debt Ceiling might help to suppress the growing suspicion that the government is no longer credit-worthy.  Here's why that peculiar hypothesis might be possible:

 

For a least a decade, we've understood that the debt ceiling was imposed by Congress to limit on the federal government's seemingly insatiable borrowing.  Therefore, whenever a new ceiling was declared, the Executive branch was expected to quickly borrow up to whatever maximum limit had been declared by Congress.   

For example, if the debt ceiling had been $8 trillion, and Congress declared the new debt ceiling to be $10 trillion, the government might quickly borrow another $2 trillion, push up against the newest $10 trillion Debt Ceiling limit and force Congress to raise the Debt Ceiling again to, say, $13 trillion.  Then government would borrow another $3 trillion, push up against the $13 trillion Debt Ceiling and force Congress to engage in another melodramatic debate and another inevitable increase in the Debt Ceiling to, say, $17.2 trillion-which is where the official National Debt was up until the recent Debt Ceiling law suspended that Debt Ceiling for a year.

 

Now we have no debt ceiling.  When it comes to government borrowing, the sky's the limit . . . or is it?

 

Let's suppose that Congress raised the new Debt Ceiling from $17.2 trillion to $18 trillion.  Government would quickly borrow the additional $800 billion.  Congress would soon be forced to play another episode of the Debt Ceiling Follies. Who needs all that aggravation every six to twelve months? 

 

Therefore, rather than set a new Debt Ceiling that's just a little higher than the current Debt Ceiling, why not authorize a new Debt Ceiling of, say, $20 trillion or even $25 trillion?  Then, the government couldn't quickly borrow all the funds that are authorized, and Congress might avoid another episode of the Debt Ceiling Follies for several years. 

 

So, why suspend the Debt Ceiling rather than authorize a substantial increase of $2.8 trillion in the Debt Ceiling to say, $20 trillion total?   

 

Maybe it's because Congress fears that that government can't find any more creditors willing to lend another $2.8 trillion to the government.

 

In other words, what if Congress authorized a $20 (or $25) trillion Debt Ceiling, but government couldn't quickly borrow up to the limit of that new Debt Ceiling?  Could government's inability to borrow up to a new Debt Ceiling limit be viewed as proof that the world regarded the U.S. as an unworthy credit risk? 

 

If government couldn't quickly borrow up to the limit of a new Debt Ceiling, the world might suddenly see that the "emperor was nude".  Once the world openly refused to lend more credit to the U.S. government, the U.S. and global financial systems might collapse.

 

However, if there were no express debt limit and government could only borrow, say,$1 trillion, government could deny that it's been "cut off" by the lenders and claim that it "only" borrowed $1 trillion, because that's all it wanted.  It's like going to a party and not being invited to have a piece of cake.  Instead of admitting that you were snubbed, you can save face by claiming that you didn't have any cake because you didn't want any. 

 

Without a specific Debt Ceiling, government might similarly claim that if it only borrowed, say, $500 billion, it's because that's all it wanted to borrow-not because the lenders refused to lend any more.

 

This conjecture is certainly a long shot.  Still, it might be conceivable that, in order to:  

 

1. Avoid having another congressional Debt Ceiling melodrama every 6 to 12 months if they set a low Debt Ceiling limit; and also,
2. Avoid the risk of showing that no one will lend to the U.S. government if they set a huge Debt Ceiling; that,
3. Congress therefore suspended the Debt Ceiling.  Result?  No low Debt Ceiling; no high Debt Ceiling; no Debt Ceiling.

 

So, what's the most likely reason for a Debt Ceiling suspension? 

 

1. Is it to allow government to engage in unlimited borrowing in order to cope with what may be a fast-approaching economic catastrophe?  Maybe.  If so, we can expect an economic debacle in A.D. 2014.
2. Will government use this one year of Debt Ceiling suspension as a first step to repealing the Debt Ceiling laws?  Almost certainly, Yes.  This is the most benign explanation and does not presume an approaching catastrophe in A.D. 2014.
3. Or, could it be that government has suspended the Debt Ceiling limit in order to avoid the public embarrassment of being openly denied credit by the world's lenders and thereby creating proof that the government is no longer credit-worthy?   As these three explanations go, this one's the least likely.   

 

*  Still, this 3rd explanation isn't impossible since, to some degree, it's already taking place. 

 

I.e., for the past year or more, the government has been unable to sell most of its bonds on the free market.  The world's lenders have already begun to openly despise U.S. bonds.  We know that's true because the Federal Reserve has been purchasing about 70% of the federal government's bonds.  Purchase by the Fed has been an act of "charity" intended to help government borrowing when no one else would.  The purchase of U.S. bonds by the Federal Reserve has been designed to maintain the illusion that the federal government is still credit-worthy. 

 

But, more recently, even the Federal Reserve is trying to avoid lending to the federal government by "tapering" their monthly QE purchases of U.S. bonds.

 

Given these current realities, it's not so fantastic to suppose that government might be very sensitive to allowing any program that could further derogate U.S. credit.  If so, it is possible that the Debt Ceiling was suspended to avoid creating proof that the U.S. government's credit rating had fallen. 

 

*  As 2014 unfolds, we'll see how much the U.S. government borrows under a suspended Debt Ceiling. 

 

If government tries to borrow a lot and is successful in doing so, the government's credit rating will be proven to be high, and explanation #3 will be shown to be ridiculous. 

 

If government (now authorized to engage in unlimited borrowing) is surprisingly subdued in its attempts to borrow, and is perhaps openly rebuked in its attempts to borrow, then we'll have evidence that the federal government's credit rating has fallen, and the Debt Ceiling may have been suspended in order to conceal that fact.

 

We shall see. 

 

In the meantime, the facts remains that the federal government's access to credit is already shrinking and that loss does not bode well for government's future borrowing or power.

 

Gold was up to $1,320 Friday. 

That's up $75 in the previous 30 days or an average of about $3.40/trading day.

There are about 220 trading days in the rest of this year.  If gold continued to rise at an average of $3.40/day, the price of gold could be up another $750 for a year-end price of $2,075-that's an increase of 57% in the next 10.5 months.  Over 5%/month.

 

Most conventional paper-debt investment vehicles will be happy to generate a 5% increase per year.  We don't know what gold will actually do, but gold has a shot at an increase of 5% per month.

 

 

There are over 5000 active cults in America that are seducing and destroying lives.  Some on this list you will recognize, while others are out of the spot light for now.  These include Scientology, Christian Science, Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church, Herbert W. Armstrong's Worldwide Church of God, The Way International and many more...Some are non-Christian type cults but many are 'Pseudo-Christian Cults.'

Health Risks

by Herbalist Wendy Wilson

 

A while back we talked about the statistical risk to your health if entering a hospital environment for treatment. The Institute of Medicine published a report in 1999 which estimated nearly a 100,000 people die from hospital and physician error every year. They estimated that death by medicine was the third leading cause of death in America. Apparently the risk of dying while being treated at the hospital is so significant that in 2002 John James PhD founded the Patient Safety Americaadvocacy group. Statistically Dr. James discovered there are 210,000 hospital deaths annually, which are preventable. And due to inferior record keeping the statistical numbers are probably higher (400,000). According to Dr. Lucian Leape, the 1999 study is relatively outdated since "medicine is more complex now." How many patients need to die due to negligence or budget cuts before the numbers matter enough to do something about it?

 

DID THEY USE LISTERINE?

Recently the Novant Health Forsyth Medical Center in Winston-Salem exposed 18 patients to a rare degenerative and fatal neurological disease called Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD). This disease is due to a rare protein which can survive on the surface of surgical equipment after standard hospital sterilization. About 1% of the CJD cases are attributed to contaminated surgical equipment. Patients are especially at risk if they enter the hospital for the following procedures: transplants, human growth hormone treatments and any surgery that involves the brain, spinal cord or eye tissue. People can also acquire this disease eating contaminated beef, exposure to contaminated blood or blood transfusions. The unsuspected patients at the NC hospital were exposed via improperly sterilized surgical equipment recently used on a patient with the CJD prion disease. Apparently there are specific procedures to sterilize reusable equipment especially when a disease is contagious and fatal. CJD is often associated with mad cow disease but can have other strains as in this case. There are only a small number of laboratories in the US which can test for CJD and this disease affects 300 Americans annually. Symptoms of CJD usually involve behavior abnormalities, dementia and other rapid cognitive imbalance. These symptoms can take years to materialize but once they do, death occurs within one year. The last recorded case of hospital surgical infection of CJD was in 1976. The risk in this scenario may be low but just one person contracting the disease due to negligence is one too many. According to the Department of Health and Human Services the number of CJD cases has nearly doubled since 2008. As some of you may know, Listerine was first developed as an operating room disinfectant used by Dr. Joseph Lister in the late 1800's. As toxic as Listerine is, it is not strong enough to kill infectious prions causing neurological diseases.

 

LOW RISK?

Johnson and Gibbs concluded that the risk of contracting CJD from a blood transfusion is so low that the blood is not tested for such prion diseases. Indeed, cleaning up hospital surgical equipment to avoid the spread of prion disease is a bioburden. Hospitals have strict guidelines from the CDC and WHO on the sterilization of equipment, which are broken down into three categories: critical, semi-critical and noncritical. Obviously the equipment used on a patient infected with a neurological prion disease such as CJD would be in the critical category. So, all the equipment such as; surgical instruments, implants, endoscopes, respiratory therapy equipment and any devise that touches mucous membranes or broken skin must be sterilized according to the "critical" guidelines. Noncritical items would be any objects such as walls, floors, blood pressure cuffs and other furniture or instruments that were not in contact with infectious tissue. As you can guess, prion sterilization methods are laboriously long and costly. Medicine admits that even with the strictest of sterilization methods using four chemicals, heat and other methods this may not be 100% effective to kill the pathogen. So, the question is, are hospitals abandoning the "critical" level of sterilization due to excessive cost? That is something the 18 surgery patients from Novant Health Forsyth Medical Center in NC should ask. It looks like the neurological time bomb these 18 patients maybe sitting on is due to negligence, cost-cutting efforts or both.   If we start to see this trend in hospitals across America in order to stay open, will this make death by medicine the second leading cause of death? I'm asking this because the infections patients can acquire while in the hospital are staggering such as: viral, bacterial and fungal pathogens (bloodstream infections (BSI), pneumonia (ventilator-associated (VAP), urinary tract (UTI), staph, enterococcus (antibiotic-resistant bacteria (VRE), MRSA, and surgical site infection (SSI). It is estimated the 10% of hospital patients in the US will be infected with a hospital acquired infection, which accounts for approximately 2 million infected patients. The CDC states that one-third of these infections are preventable and further estimates that hospital acquired infections account for 20,000 to 99,000 deaths annually. The costs associated with these infections are between $4.5 to $11 billion. The most common hospital acquired infections are in order of prevalence: urinary tract (36%), surgical site (20%) and bloodstream and pneumonia are tied (11%).  In Europe these gram-negative infections account for 25,000 deaths annually. The countries with the lowest incidence of hospital acquired infections are; Switzerland, Belgium and Italy.

 

GOOD & BAD NEWS

The good news is that hospital admissions are declining but the bad news is not because folks are healthier. The Advisory Board and Reuters released details on why hospital admissions have dropped and the underlying factors are due to changes in insurance and government healthcare policy. Stock shares in hospitals and insurance companies have also dropped 2%-3%.

 

SPARE NOTHING

Staying out of the hospital is the goal. If you find yourself at a hospital you'll want to vacate as soon as you can. For hospital infections I use herbs such as garlic (very broad spectrum), ginseng and Echinacea root. I will vary the herbs for pneumonia, sepsis or urinary tract infections. You will find very useful herb kits, organ cleanses and immune boosting formulas at Apothecary Herbs made with certified organic herbs. In the event your local hospital closes you will have some emergency back-up tools. Call Apothecary Herbs to order or for a free product catalog 866-229-3663, International 704-885-0277 http://www.thepowerherbs.com , where your healthcare options just became endless. Don't forget February is the Big month for colds and flu. You'll save 20% on the larger size (2 oz & 4 oz) herbal formulas under the cold & flu section. For everything else  subscribers will save 15% on orders of $45. Coupon VAL14 Hurry! Expires after this weekend on 2/17/14.

 

Sources:

http://www.journalnow.com/news/official-forsyth-patients-exposed-to-rare-brain-disease/ 

article_b3f2e9d2-929d-11e3-986d-001a4bcf6878.html

http://cid.oxfordjournals.org/content/32/9/1348.full

http://www.who.int/csr/resources/publications/bse/WHO_CDS_CSR_APH_2000_3/en/

 http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvrd/cjd/qa_cjd_infection_control.htm

http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-the-history-of-listerinereg.htm

http://www.fiercehealthcare.com/story/hospital-medical-errors-third-leading-cause-death-d

ispute-to-err-is-human-reprot/2013-09-20

http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/967022-overview

http://www.nlm.nih.gov.medlineplus/ency/patientinstructions/000449.htm

 http://www.alibris.com/search/books/isbn/97818615634467?cm_mmc=sem-_-Google-_-DSA-_-na&device=c&network=s&matchtype=b&gclid=CIGMk67XxLwCFSzNOgodVlcA2Q

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hospital-acquired_infection

http://www.advisory.com/adily-briefing/2013/07/01/fitch-drop-in-hospital-admissions-caused-by-systemic-shifthttp://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/17/us-hospitals-admissions-idUSBRE9BG18J20131217

"NEW" from Apothecary Herbs POWER GREENS FOR PETS - Keeps you away from the vet.  Natural herbs for dogs and cats. Because we want organic pets. More info 866-299-3663.    MORE HERB SECRETS IN THE POWER HERBS e-BOOK. By popular demand The Power Herbs e-book is available with symptom/herb reference guide, information on organ cleansing and how to make your own herbal tinctures plus a whole lot more. You must have email to order and receive the e-book a PDF version of The Power Herb book for just $14.99. At this time, we do not offer this title in hard copy.

 

COMING UP ON HERB TALK LIVE

Herbalist Wendy Wilson on Herb Talk Live

Saturday morning show:

7 am EST on GCN

2/8/14 Dr. Rebecca Carley with more on deadly vaccines.

3/1/14 David Foreman, retired pharmacist has natural solutions to manage the munchies.

3/22/14 John Monroe natural vision solutions

 

Weekday show:

7 pm EST on AVR

2/18/14 Dr. Rebecca Carely with more on deadly vaccines.

2/27/14 David Foreman, retired pharmacist has natural solutions to manage the munchies.

3/20/14 John Monroe natural vision solutions

 

Shortwave show 8 pm EST WWCR 4840

 

 

Thank you to all my clients and readers who continue to send me important information and links for me to share.  The massive corruption and fraud which is systemic at all levels of government is so self evident at this point that I know we are reaching critical mass of the awakening necessary to take down the psychopaths destroying everything that matters.  A very important interview by Jeanice Barcelo on satanic ritual abuse (which my son has been going through for over a decade) can be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXwq7QnbtT8&feature=youtu.be .  This is going on all around us, and the perpetrators are never prosecuted.  The good news presented in this interview of Kerth Barker is that he was healed from what was done to him as I hope my son will be one day.  Very important information, as he describes how his BABYSITTER was his tormenter something to think about, for sure. This is a GLOBAL issue, being completely ignored by the mainstream media (although 800,000 children go missing each year in the US alone).  This is ugly stuff, but ignoring what is going on is a big mistake.  These people are doctors, lawyers, judges, police officers, pastors and priests, etc.  They are EVERYWHERE.  To learn about the pedophile psychopaths in government, go to http://www.franklinscandal.com .  I have interviewed author Nick Bryant in the past.  Former U.S. Senate aide facing child porn charges found dead: http://www.reuters.com/artic.e/2014/01/24/us-usa-congress-alexander-idUSBREA0N1DX20140124  (He must have pissed off the wrong people, as rarely are these perverts exposed).