Free Republic 4th Qtr 2025 Fundraising Target: $81,000 Receipts & Pledges to-date: $8,363
10%  
Woo hoo!! And we're now over 10%!! Thank you all very much!! God bless.

Posts on Bloggers & Personal

Brevity: Headers | « Text »
  • "Mein Führer...! I can walk!!"

    09/14/2016 7:47:10 AM PDT · 19 of 20
    reg45 to Phlap
    You're wrong. The Hillary theme song should be The Bitch is Back by Elton John.
  • Marc Faber: Dow Could Reach 100,000

    09/14/2016 7:45:00 AM PDT · 4 of 11
    amorphous to butlerweave
    and when the Fed stops pumping $89 billion(can’t be that much) a month into it

    Why would any central bank, with skin in the game, want to do that?

  • Columnist Says He Won't Date Feminists, Feminists Instantly Validate Him

    09/14/2016 7:32:08 AM PDT · 21 of 32
    Albion Wilde to Tolerance Sucks Rocks
    I was doing fine with this essay and all the comments until I followed the links and found a photo of the author:

    Boyfriend needs a dermatologist, a dentist, and a stylist. What is with those 50s glasses and 70s sideburns?

  • Marc Faber: Dow Could Reach 100,000

    09/14/2016 7:29:48 AM PDT · 3 of 11
    I want the USA back to amorphous

    The headline is essentially a lie. It does not summarize the essence of the article.

    The guy says: “And in an extreme money-printing environment, the Dow Jones Industrial Average can go to 100,000.”

    That means a hyper-inflationary economy with the government deliberately devaluing currency. Money loses value, and a larger quantity of dollars is required for the same purchasing power. A “100,000” Dow represents hyper-inflation.

  • Marc Faber: Dow Could Reach 100,000

    09/14/2016 7:27:56 AM PDT · 2 of 11
    butlerweave to amorphous

    and when the Fed stops pumping $89 billion(can’t be that much) a month into it

  • "Mein Führer...! I can walk!!"

    09/14/2016 7:27:54 AM PDT · 18 of 20
    ichabod1 to Phlap

    Or Bohemian Rhapsody. Fits her pretty good.

  • PA: Drunk Black Man Shoots Police Officer, Found Not Guilty by Reason of Self Defense

    09/14/2016 7:21:33 AM PDT · 3 of 3
    RideForever to marktwain

    22 vets take their lives every day. Where’s Trump’s ring?

  • I’m Black and I’m Horrified That African-American College Students Are Choosing Segregation

    09/14/2016 7:20:29 AM PDT · 24 of 33
    Zionist Conspirator to 2ndDivisionVet

    Silly rabbit. It was never about segregation. It was about who got to draw the lines.

  • Marc Faber: Dow Could Reach 100,000

    09/14/2016 7:19:52 AM PDT · 1 of 11
    amorphous
    Epoch Times: How long can the central banks manipulate markets?

    Mr. Marc Faber: This is an issue that will be decided by central bankers and I don’t have control over the manipulation of central banks. Haruhiko Kuroda of the Bank of Japan (BoJ) expressed the view that there is no limit to monetary inflation. That they can keep on buying assets and they can keep on buying equities and real estate.

    So the madness in the present time may go on. In a manipulated market, it won’t end well, but you don’t know when it will not end well, and how far the manipulation can last.

    Epoch Times: And then at one point, the central banks own everything.

    Mr. Faber: They could essentially monetize everything, and then you have state ownership. And through the central banking system, you introduce socialism and communism, which is state ownership of production and consumption. You would have that, yes, that they can do.

    The BoJ owns more than 50 percent of Japanese ETFs (exchange traded funds), which own large parts of the underlying companies. So indirectly they may own 20 percent of the Japanese companies, and they can go up to a higher level.

    I don’t think the central bankers are intelligent and smart enough to understand the consequences of their monetary policies at present. They focus on inflation but in my view they shouldn’t do anything. They don’t focus enough on what it does to the average standard of living of the people, to the average household income.

    Epoch Times: If the policies are similar, why haven’t we seen hyperinflation like in Zimbabwe or Venezuela?

    Mr. Faber: The developed market central banks can go on for quite some time. If Zimbabwe prints money, the pain is more obvious right away because if you are Zimbabwe, and you print money and the others don’t, and the currency collapses, and you feel the pain much sooner.

    If the major central banks, the Fed, the European Central Bank (ECB), the BoJ, the Bank of England, and the Chinese monetize and print money in concert and agreement with each other, they all talk to each other; then the currencies don’t collapse against each other. There may be fluctuations, but we don’t have a general collapse of a currency.

    Paper money, in general, can then collapse, and it has to a large extent against asset prices like real estate around the world over the last 30 years, against equity prices, against bond prices—which have been rallying since 1981—and against precious metals since 1999.

    Asset price inflation is less obvious to the average person in the street. The average American has no money, so he doesn’t care if prices for paintings and real estate go up—until it touches him.

    It’s nonsense to claim that inflation is only going up 1 percent per year in the United States. The cost of living of a typical family is going up much more than that—insurance, transportation, schooling are all going up.

    For example, health care premiums for insurance policies [are rising], so the typical household is being squeezed. The central banks don’t care about that; they don’t look at it.

    I suppose the system will collapse before we become like Venezuela. In the West, if they start to print money, the end game will be brief. Within five years, I expect the system to implode.

    Epoch Times: How can we avoid a collapse?

    Mr. Faber: You better ask the bureaucrats what their plans are. They had zero rates since December 2008; soon eight years [passed], and that hasn’t boosted economic activity for the average household, not in Japan nor the United States nor the EU. Now they talk about fiscal spending.

    We already have large deficits but no deficit is large enough for the interventionist, so they will boost fiscal spending. They will finance deficits by issuing government debt, which the central banks will monetize. The Treasury will issue debt, and then the Fed will buy all these debts. Of course, that will not end well, but it will postpone the problem for a while.

    Then they will find some academics who will blame wealth inequality on the evil capitalists who made so much money out of asset bubbles.

    They will blame the economic woes on these people. To some extent this is true. But the rich people did not create the inflated asset values; it was the central banks, by slashing interest rates to zero and negative interest rates in many countries.

    First, you create mispricings through artificially low rates and negative interest rates and you boost the income and wealth of the super-rich. It’s at best the 0.1 percent that really benefit from asset inflation, at the cost of all the people that have no assets and so you have this rising wealth inequality. So we have to tax the rich people and tax them more.

    Taking money from the rich is appealing if you go to voters, and you say to them, “Look, the reason the economy is doing so badly, it’s because of the rich people, the billionaires. We have to take 20 percent away from them and give it to you.” You can be sure that everybody will vote for that because the wealthy are a minority. This is what happens after monetary policies completely fail.

    Some well-connected people will hide their wealth but a lot of people won’t. Even if they take 50 percent from the richest, it’s not going to help. The next step will be to take money from less wealthy people; the interventionists will go all the way.

    poch Times: How do you invest in this environment?

    Mr. Faber: Most assets by traditional valuations are overpriced. Now are they overpriced compared to zero interest rates or negative interest rates? If you take the 10-year German bonds or the 10-year Swiss bonds or the 10-year Japanese bonds, you have no or negative yield. But you can buy equities that give you a dividend yield of 2 percent or more. Then you say stocks compared to negative interest rates are a bargain.

    But they are not cheap by traditional valuation methods.

    However, I think it’s dangerous for someone to say: “We all agree that it will end badly, so we keep 100 percent of our money in cash.” First, you have to decide which cash.

    Number two, we don’t know what the time frame until it ends badly is. And in an extreme money-printing environment, the Dow Jones Industrial Average can go to 100,000.

    It may likely not go up against precious metals, but it can go up in nominal terms endlessly. It’s not going to help the typical household. I have seen many hyperinflating economies, and in each case, the standard of living of average people declined.

    That will be the case. If I were interventionist—which I’m not, and I do not support the interventionist—if I were a central banker and I said to myself the right policy now is to increase the negativity of interest rates, we go from 0.5 percent negative to 5 percent negative.

    In this particular instance, the people and companies take the money out of the financial system and store it in cash in a vault.

    The measure to implement negative 5 percent is not going to work very well, so one way to make it work is to abolish cash. You can still hoard real estate, food, cigarettes, and precious metals, but you can’t hold cash anymore. So that is likely to happen, in my view, if they go all the way.

    Epoch Times: What about gold?

    Mr. Faber: I have made a very compelling case for gold in the late 1990s and silver and platinum. I wrote a book, “Tomorrow’s Gold,” which was not about gold but the rise of Asia. The gold price rose very sharply between 1999 and 2011, and it corrected after September 2011. It probably overshot, and the mining shares overshot on the upside, so they corrected.

    Now, between last October and December, we had major lows in gold stocks and precious metals prices from where the prices will continue to rise.

    They are going to go up tomorrow or in three to five years, I don’t know. If you keep printing paper money, the supply of money increases and assets that are in short supply or limited supply—whether it’s a Ferrari or a Gaugin painting—they are in tight supply, so they will appreciate.

    They will not all appreciate at the same time and to the same extent. There will be bubbles in real estate and collectibles; there will be bubbles in equities, as we have had three times since 1999.

    Epoch Times: But you would not only buy cash and gold mining stocks, right?

    Mr. Faber: I think holding all your assets in cash is very dangerous. I want to be diversified; I hold some cash, bonds, equities, some real estate, and some precious metals.

    The moment you diversify, your returns are suboptimal, but it’s likely to preserve your capital.

  • Cyber Warfare; should you be worried?

    09/14/2016 7:17:54 AM PDT · 17 of 25
    TMSuchman to ProtectOurFreedom

    There are fuel stabilizers that you mix in with your fuel supplies, before going into storage.

  • PA: Drunk Black Man Shoots Police Officer, Found Not Guilty by Reason of Self Defense

    09/14/2016 7:14:52 AM PDT · 2 of 3
    The_Media_never_lie to marktwain

    This Burt case is a tragic one. If any man should get a break for shooting a policeman, let it be one who is a veteran and has served two tours in Iraq. Hope he turns his life around.

    Hope the officer has recovered.

  • "Mein Führer...! I can walk!!"

    09/14/2016 7:13:18 AM PDT · 17 of 20
    Phlap to NOBO2012
    "Any way the wind blows." by Frank Zappa and the Mothers should be Hillary's theme song.
  • "Mein Führer...! I can walk!!"

    09/14/2016 7:11:56 AM PDT · 16 of 20
    KeyLargo to NOBO2012

    Hitler Reacts To Hillary Clinton Having Pneumonia

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huwcXyw2Itg

  • "Mein Führer...! I can walk!!"

    09/14/2016 7:07:03 AM PDT · 15 of 20
    steve8714 to NOBO2012

    Watch FDR American Badass on Roku on Frightpix. I doubt Hillary would defend us thus.

  • Cyber Warfare; should you be worried?

    09/14/2016 7:04:44 AM PDT · 16 of 25
    TADSLOS to JAKraig

    Good post.

  • "Mein Führer...! I can walk!!"

    09/14/2016 7:04:37 AM PDT · 14 of 20
    hardspunned to Enlightened1

    MSM

    “we’re gonna drag hitlery over the finish line if it hairlips ever one on bear creek”

  • Cyber Warfare; should you be worried?

    09/14/2016 7:00:10 AM PDT · 15 of 25
    JAKraig to Tilted Irish Kilt
    If the world crashes all the stolen data will be useless.

    Cash will be king and precious metals will be the emperor.

    Life now is good for most folks, in a crash it will not be so good but many of the things we enjoy can be preserved. Roof top solar can provide electricity even if you have no money to pay an electric bill. Cellular technology will not likely go anywhere but prepaid plans will become the norm.

    Food purchases could be problematic, just look at Venezuela.

    You should have storage at home. Food will be available but it may be available only sporadically. If you don't have means to keep refrigerated food your options could become unattractive. Get a deep freeze and a means to keep it going for at least a couple hours a day.

    Have a means to protect what you have and hide what you have from others, family will be the most important associations you will have.

    The value of cash will fluctuate, likely in the wrong direction as the government prints more and more of it, it will be nearly worthless. Keep a good portion of your cash in pre-1964 coin, quarters, dimes and half dollars. They will always have value. While gold has a lot of value is worth violence to get, people will kill for it if they know you have it, be careful. Ammo will be a good barter tool and likely as good as money. If you have an opportunity to get ammo for a good price it doesn't matter that you don't have a gun that will shoot it. If ammo is scarce then guns will be cheap.

    Organize your family to help hold what you have, be a survivor.

  • "Mein Führer...! I can walk!!"

    09/14/2016 6:57:20 AM PDT · 13 of 20
    OKSooner to Enlightened1

    One of the best ever.

    “You’re going to answer to the Coca-Cola company.”

  • I’m Black and I’m Horrified That African-American College Students Are Choosing Segregation

    09/14/2016 6:53:58 AM PDT · 23 of 33
    left that other site to 2ndDivisionVet

    Brave Little Girl.

    Who is going to tell her that maybe it was all for nothing?
  • "Mein Führer...! I can walk!!"

    09/14/2016 6:47:40 AM PDT · 12 of 20
    Byron_the_Aussie to NOBO2012
    CantStumpTheTrump ‏@CantStumpTrump1 13 hours ago

    "I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna call Hillary a cuck and you can't stop me, Ivanka! I haven't bantered in days!"