Overcoming Financial Obstacles To Investing In Gold And Silver

Overcoming Financial Obstacles To Investing In Gold And Silver

July 9, 2020   Investing Precious Metals

So far, we’ve unpacked the top two most frequently cited objections highlighted by recent research: 1) the investor is taking time to consider an investment proposal currently in hand, and 2) the investor is still in the initial research phase of his or her precious metals exploration.

The third most common reason given has to do with the price of gold. Specifically, investors cite objections such as not having "enough" money for gold and wanting to “time the market” by waiting for the price of gold to drop.

Below, we’re teasing out the nuances of these topics and providing what we hope will be helpful insights for anyone else who may be grappling with the same trepidations in their investment journey. Read on to learn more!

Not Enough or No Money for Gold Right Now

A typical charge we hear time and again is that the price of gold is too steep to begin or continue investing, which is subsequently and falsely projected onto the whole precious metals market at large. Many investors, both novice and seasoned, think they don’t have enough cash to start or continue investing in precious metals. While the availability of funds is an important consideration when making any long-term financial decision, precious metals are often more attainable than many people think.

Alternatives to Gold

While the yellow-hued metal has proven itself time and again to be a reliable store of wealth for investors of all backgrounds, acquiring precious metals does not mean having to add only gold coins to your asset portfolio. If you think the price of gold is indeed too high for you right now, there are a variety of other options from which to choose.

The silver market, for example, is a great complement to gold. Silver is often available at lower price points than gold, palladium, and platinum, making breaking into the precious metals sector more attainable for many investors. Silver is also typically regarded as a metal that gives investors a bigger “bang for their buck,” allowing them to accumulate more ounces per dollar than other higher-priced options.

It's essential to keep in mind that lower prices don't mean the investments are necessarily inferior when it comes to shoring up hard-earned wealth. Much like gold, silver has consistently increased in value over the last several years, allowing it to serve in its own right as a reliable hedge against inflation for many investors. Silver has and continues to be a reliable means of safeguarding wealth for many investors across the country.

To continue reading, please go to the original article here:

https://www.usgoldbureau.com/news/financial-obstacles-invest-gold-silver

People Fear They’ve Got Too Much Cash in Their Bank Accounts

People Fear They’ve Got Too Much Cash in Their Bank Accounts

Donald Moore  Bloomberg July 31, 2020

(Bloomberg) -- The savers are getting restless.

Running out of guaranteed ways to get meaningful returns, some people are increasingly being tempted to raid their interest-earning cash savings to load up on assets such as bitcoin, gold and stocks. The comfortable, if small, returns of high-yield savings accounts are looking less palatable as volatile assets take off.

For a while, Brian Harrington, 28, had been satisfied with a high-yield savings account at Ally Bank, earning a risk-free 2%. Now, the marketing consultant in Anaheim, California, is planning to convert his remaining $15,000 in savings into bitcoin. He thinks the future is one of long-term economic stagnation and low rates.  “I’m not rooting for Doomsday,” he said. “But you have to keep searching for yields.”

The last few months have, in some respects, been a boon for account balances. Nationwide lockdowns enacted to slow the spread of Covid-19 have cut consumer spending, and stimulus checks arrived for millions of Americans. The personal savings rate rose to a record 32.2% in April. Mint, a financial planning platform, told Bloomberg that its customers deposited 16% more into their accounts between March and June compared with the same period last year.

There’s one problem: Now isn’t a great time to hold onto money.

It had become standard advice in personal-finance subreddits and Facebook groups to keep extra cash in high-yield savings accounts, but the rates on those have fallen steadily for the past year. Popular brands such as Ally and Marcus — the consumer arm of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. — offered rates in July of 1% and 1.05%, respectively; both were over 2% a little over a year ago, when the U.S. Federal Reserve cut rates for the first time since the 2008 financial crisis.

“Some banks will drag their feet a bit to stand out from the crowd, but they’re all working their way down,” said Greg McBride, chief financial analyst at Bankrate.com, explaining the drop in returns across the board.  There’s no guarantee that yields for these accounts will rebound any time soon.  “The interest rates the Fed sets is a huge component, but it’s also related to the health of the overall economy,” said Anand Talwar, deposits and consumer strategy executive for Ally.

To continue reading, please go to the original article here:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/people-fear-ve-got-too-091502928.html

10 Steps to Become a Millionaire in 5 Years (or Less)

10 Steps to Become a Millionaire in 5 Years (or Less)

Increase your income, lifestyle, and joy  Benjamin Hardy, PhD  Mar 23, 2019

It doesn’t matter where you currently are in your financial situation — whether just starting out or already making lots of money.  Most people, no matter what their income, are treading water. As a person’s income rises, so does their spending. Few people understand how to continually increase their income, lifestyle, and joy at the same time.

In this article, you will learn:

How to become wealthy

How to build a life that continually increases your level of confidence and joy

How to continually expand, learn, grow, and succeed as a person

How to develop mentorships, friendships, and strategic partnerships with nearly anyone you want

If these things are not interesting to you, then this article was not written for you.

Here’s how it works.

1. Create a wealth vision

“When riches begin to come they come so quickly, in such great abundance, that one wonders where they have been hiding during all those lean years.” — Napoleon Hill

Step one of becoming financially successful is to actually create a vision for yourself financially. Einstein said that imagination is more important than knowledge. Arden said creativity is more important than experience.

How much imagination do you have for your future?

Do you see huge potential and possibility for your life?

Or, do you see a pretty average life?

Creating a vision is an iterative process. You don’t just create a vision once and then never look at it again.

You continually create and write your vision — every single day.

Look at any area of your life in which you’re doing well, and you’ll find it’s because you see something beyond what you currently have. By that same token, look at any area of your life that isn’t exceptional, and you’ll find that you don’t see something beyond what you currently have.

Most people are living in and repeating the past.

Having a vision is focused on the future.

Your life and behavior immediately shift when you begin imagining a different future and stridently strive for it.

In order to do this, you must obliterate your need for consistency. From a psychological perspective, people generally feel the need to be viewed by others as consistent. This need causes people to retain behavioral patterns, environments, and relationships that are ultimately destructive and unsatisfying for far too long.

To continue reading, please go to the original article here:

https://medium.com/better-marketing/10-skills-to-becoming-a-millionaire-in-5-years-or-less-e16b8b20500c

Opinion: How To Protect Your Money — At Every Age

Opinion: How To Protect Your Money — At Every Age

Outside the Box  Published: July 29, 2020   By Stephen Augstell

Learning from mistakes in uncertain times

Growing up, my friend’s mom always gave me good advice. When things went terribly wrong, Mrs. Brown would say, “It’s a learning experience, Stephen.”  I realized that the experience, however painful, could serve me well in the end. 

80% of older Americans can't afford to retire - COVID-19 isn't helping The fallout of COVID-19 has yet to be fully measured, but it’s fair to say that most of us have been impacted in some way — some more than others. However, what we learn from challenging occurrences can help us manage risks going forward.

In these uncertain times, the risks you face depend on where you are along your course toward reaching your goals. Whether you’re just starting out and in your 20s, or you are older and further along your path, consider the following measures to help mitigate the damage of the next unforeseeable event.

In your 20s

• Protect your FICO score with a line of credit attached to your checking account. Overdrafts are costly and can lead to all sorts of credit problems down the road. A low FICO score can severely limit your ability to fully leverage your income.

• Open a Health Savings Account. You can qualify if you have a high deductible health insurance plan. Contributions are tax deductible and growth in the account is tax-free if withdrawals are used for qualified medical expenses.

• Build your budget. Know how much you need to survive.

• Keep an emergency fund to pay for an unexpected expense or to buy you the time necessary to secure your next job.

•Take full advantage of work-related benefits such as matching contributions within a company sponsored retirement plan. It’s guaranteed money so you can’t go wrong.

• Start a Roth IRA. It’s less arduous than a traditional IRA and investment growth is income tax-free.

Fuel for Investing Smarter

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To continue reading, please go to the original article here:

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/how-to-protect-your-money-at-every-age-2020-07-29?siteid=yhoof2&yptr=yahoo

And Suddenly Your Passport Is Worthless

And Suddenly Your Passport Is Worthless

Notes From the Field By Simon Black July 30, 2020  Bahia Beach, Puerto Rico

Imagine being a seventeen year old, travelling internationally, all by yourself. It’s scary, but exciting-- all the more so because you have been accepted to Harvard University.

You’ve worked your tail off for years, all culminating in this amazing opportunity for an education at one of the top schools in the world. And so, after an exhilarating summer travel adventure around the world, you hop a plane to the US where you’re set to start classes in a few days. All you have to do is clear customs and have your passport stamped by a US immigration official.

No problem, right? After all, Harvard students don't exactly fit the demographic of who might be “randomly” selected for more scrutiny at a US border crossing.

But that changes if you are a Palestinian national living in Lebanon.

Ismail Ajjawi already had his student-visa ready when he landed in Boston last August.

But Customs agents weren’t satisfied. They grilled him about his religious practices, and asked to see his phone and social media.

Ismail couldn’t say no or else he could be rejected from entering the country. So he handed over his digital life to be examined by border agents.

And those agents didn’t like what they saw.

Ismail’s friends were sharing political points of view that America-- or at least one American immigration official-- found objectionable.

Ismail himself had not shared, liked, or commented on these “objectionable” posts.

But regardless, Customs canceled Ismail’s visa, and deported him back to Lebanon.

Goodbye America. Goodbye Harvard education.

Hello the arbitrary and Byzatine process of crossing an American border.

It’s not hard to find horror story after horror story from people trying to deal with US customs.

You spend all this time and money to get everything in order, buy a ticket, and any random border agent can reject you for any reason.

US citizens, on the other hand, have long enjoyed one of the best travel documents in the world.

With a US passport you could enter 157 countries without having to even apply for a visa. Rarely did any US citizen get deported at a foreign border crossing.

But that has changed.

Now the US passport is practically worthless because of Covid-19 travel restrictions.

For example, the European Union remains closed to US citizens. But that ban doesn’t apply to Canadian, Chinese, or Uruguayan nationals to name a few examples.

US passport holders are down to being allowed access to only about three dozen countries.

Compared to before the pandemic, it is like having a passport from Haiti, Tunisia, or Botswana.

Sure, the US passport may regain all its clout and privilege after the pandemic.

Then again it might not.

Certain temporary emergency measures might become permanent.

Just think about all the new security features to travel after the attacks of September 11, 2001.

The TSA (Transportation Security Administration) and DHS (Department of Homeland Security) were born.

Screening procedures intensified. Agents could now feel you up and down. Then came naked body scanners and the Real ID requirement.

The ratchet effect makes it easy to lose your freedoms, but a lot harder to regain them.

It’s easy to imagine that many Covid restrictions will remain. And that if your passport is on a list of ‘unsafe countries’, you’ll need to apply for a visa before you can travel.

The good news is, you don’t have to be stuck with any passport simply by accident of birth. You can obtain a second (or third, fourth, and fifth passport should you desire).

There are four main ways to obtain a second passport: through ancestry, naturalization, “flexibility” (like marriage, adoption, or even converting to Judaism), or investment.

The citizenship by investment option allows you to become a citizen of another country by buying property, investing in a business, or giving a direct donation to a country’s development fund.

It is the quickest option for acquiring a second passport, but also the most expensive.

But with tourism essentially halted, Carribean countries are desperate for revenue. So they are lowering their prices on purchasing a passport.

St. Lucia has become one of the cheapest in the world for single applicants because of the new Covid discounts.

You can now buy a $250,000 bond from St. Lucia which will be paid back (without interest) after five years.

That means after the bond is returned, you could buy citizenship for as little as the cost of the filing fee– about $40,000.

Antigua and Barbuda (which has a similar program) has also cut its fees through October 31, 2020 making it the cheapest option for a whole family looking to buy citizenship.

[And members of our inner circle, Sovereign Man Total Access, are able to acquire these passports even cheaper thanks to a special arrangement in two Carribean nations. The savings can easily amount to $15,000 to $20,000 or more.]

But are these passports really better than a US passport?

Right now, yes.

St. Lucians can travel to Japan, for instance. But if you only have a US passport, you’re banned.

St. Lucians are also currently allowed into the UK with no requirements to quarantine-- US citizens have to isolate for two weeks.

In the future, who knows. But these tiny Carribean island nations at least won’t be giant targets, caught up in diplomatic retaliation from trade or immigration wars.

US citizens, on the other hand, could easily see increased restrictions due to diplomatic tensions with other countries.

In other words, nobody has a bone to pick with a St. Lucian. And no one is ever going to hijack an airplane and threaten to start killing St. Lucians.

And with a St. Lucian passport--or any second citizenship-- you always have at least one other option for where you can travel away from your homeland.

That means another option to live, work, invest, or hunker down for a global pandemic… or whatever comes next.

To your freedom & prosperity, Simon Black, Founder, SovereignMan.com

https://www.sovereignman.com/trends/and-suddenly-your-passport-is-worthless-28467/

This Is Bigger Than Covid But Few People Are Paying Attention

This Is Bigger Than Covid But Few People Are Paying Attention

Notes From the Field By Simon Black July 27, 2020  Bahia Beach, Puerto Rico

Most people realize that 2020 has thrust two game-changing trends upon us that will change the world for years to come.

The first is Covid.

In less than six months, this virus has created extreme global hysteria and economic devastation. Countless businesses have gone bust or are teetering on the edge. Tens of millions of jobs have been lost.  Government debt around the world has exploded higher. And their heavy-handed abuse of power has been astonishing… often incomprehensible.

Politicians and public health officials have suspended many of our most fundamental freedoms, threatened to come into our homes and take our family members away, and even banished us from our own private properties.

We’ve also seen a breakdown in basic social conventions.  Family and friends have stopped gathering together in person out of fear that someone may be a carrier. Weddings and funerals are virtual. And a simple handshake is practically considered an act of biological terrorism.

And, just like 9/11 nearly two decades ago, many effects of Covid will never return to ‘normal’.

Then there's the social justice movement... which tore onto the world stage two months ago with a desire to make important cultural changes.

At its core, the movement is virtuous. After all, it’s supposed to be about freedom.

But it has quickly become divisive, menacing, and pointlessly violent.

Everything is offensive. Intellectual dissent must be immediately squashed. People lose their jobs, receive death threats, or are censored, merely for expressing completely valid (and even supportive) opinions.

And some of the largest corporations in the world have all submitted to the Twitter mob, like Nazi collaborators in France who began goose-stepping with the Wehrmacht the moment Hitler took Paris.

History is being rewritten. Vocabulary is being replaced. And any civil discourse results in persecution.

Just like lingering Covid effects, this social turmoil will also be with us for years. Don’t fool yourself into believing it’s some some flash in the pan that will be over in a few weeks.

But what I wanted to tell you today is that there is a THIRD, major trend brewing right now. And it could prove to be even bigger than Covid, bigger than the social justice movement.

It’s not one that evokes the same emotion. So you won’t see too many people marching in the streets or cowering in fear in their homes. There’s no hysteria.

This third major trend is rational. And that’s why it’s largely been ignored. But its impact could be far bigger and longer lasting.

I’m talking about conflict with China.

Over the past several months we’ve witnessed a minor trade dispute between the United States and China escalating into a major diplomatic conflict, and now, into full-blow Cold War.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo left no doubt about this when he essentially declared cold war against China’s communist party in a speech late last week:

“If we bend the knee now, our children’s children may be at the mercy of the Chinese Communist Party, whose actions are the primary challenge today in the free world.

General Secretary Xi is not destined to tyrannize inside and outside of China forever, unless we allow it.

Richard Nixon was right when he wrote in 1967 that ‘the world cannot be safe until China changes.’ Now it’s up to us to heed his words.

Today the danger is clear. And today the awakening is happening.

Today the free world must respond. We can never go back to the past.”

It’s pretty incredible how China has already managed to get most of the world to bend to its will.

There are so many examples of this; major US airlines like Delta and American, have scrubbed references to “Taiwan” on their websites so as not to offend the Chinese communist party.

Hollywood, despite constantly thrusting its woke social justice politics in everyone’s faces, refuses to utter the slightest criticism of China, simply so they can squeeze out more box office revenue there.

And the National Basketball Association squashed an executive for Tweeting support to Hong Kong protesters last year.

Even the league’s biggest and most outspoken star, Lebron James, meekishly told reporters that China has “a complicated issue with racial, socioeconomic and geopolitical layers" and that he saw “little upside in speaking up” against the Chinese communist party.

Comparing sports team owners to ‘slave owners’ is perfectly fine. But don’t say anything bad about China!

In addition to Pompeo’s speeech, the US-China conflict escalated last week when the US government ordered the Chinese to close its consulate in Houston, Texas.

The Chinese government retaliated by closing a US consulate in China.

This is after months of sanctions, asset seizures, tariffs, arrests, expelling of foreign journalists, and plenty of tension about the Coronavirus.

I know there’s a lot of fear that an actual shooting war will break out between the US and China. And that is a possibility.

I’m probably biased as a West Point graduate, but I’m convinced that the US Marine Corps and Army Rangers are the most proficient fighting forces in the world.

But the reality is that China has a bigger army. It's better equipped with newer, better technology. Its tanks are superior, and it has more of them.

China has also been investing heavily in its Navy and Air Force; it already has more ships than the US Navy, and it has also rolled out a fifth-generation fighter jet, the J-20, to compete head-to-head against the US military's F-22 and F-35.

But that's just conventional warfare. The next war will be highly unconventional... and the Chinese are dominant in "system destruction warfare".

They could take down the US power grid, hack multiple defense and intelligence networks, and remotely disrupt key US command and control elements, before a single shot was fired.

This is not my assessment; the Pentagon has been wargaming conflict between the US and China for years. And in the words of one researcher who has participated in these scenarios, the US “gets its ass handed to it.”

Fortunately, a shooting war is unlikely. Why would China want to invade the US and deal with 400 million guns in the hands of the civilian population?

Why would the US want to invade China and deal with another Vietnam war?

War doesn’t benefit either nation, and on that basis it’s possible… but not probable.

What is likely is a total reset in the global financial system.

The current “Bretton Woods” financial system in which the US economy and US dollar are at the center of the global economy is decades old.

The US has derived extraordinary wealth and prosperity from this system for years.

Bretton Woods is the reason why the US national debt can be nearly $27 trillion (over 100% of GDP) without the dollar collapsing in value.

It’s the reason why the Federal Reserve can conjure trillions of dollars out of thin air and keep interest rates at 0% for years, but still be taken seriously.

Losing this advantage would be nothing short of catastrophic for the US economy.

And continued conflict with China is the one thing that is practically guaranteed to make it happen.

That’s why this trend-- conflict with China-- could be the biggest thing happening right now.

It’s not as scary as Covid, it’s not as emotional as social justice… but the effects may be permanently devastating.

To your freedom & prosperity, Simon Black, Founder, SovereignMan.com

https://www.sovereignman.com/trends/this-is-bigger-than-covid-but-few-people-are-paying-attention-28428/

Good Things Taken Too Far

Good Things Taken Too Far

Jul 22, 2020 by Morgan Housel

Penicillin is probably the most important discovery of the last 100 years. It’s saved somewhere between 80 million and 200 million lives. Your great grandparents would have found it indistinguishable from sorcery. But when it first came to use its discoverer, Alexander Fleming, saw a problem: Antibiotics were so good that people would want to take them all the time, and taking them all the time could backfire as drug-resistant bacteria adapted and proliferated. He said in 1946:

the public will demand [the drug and] … then will begin an era … of abuses. The microbes are educated to resist penicillin and a host of penicillin-fast organisms .. can be passed to other individuals to others until they reach someone who gets septicemia or pneumonia which penicillin cannot save. In such a case the thoughtless person playing with penicillin treatment is morally responsible for the death of the man who finally succumbs to infection with the penicillin-resistant organism. I hope the evil can be averted.

It wasn’t averted. It’s exactly what’s happened.

Drug-resistant bacteria have surged so much that the U.K. has revised down future life expectancy. The U.N. thinks drug-resistant bacteria caused by the overuse of antibiotics could kill 10 million people a year by 2050, reversing the lives saved since penicillin came into use in 1945.

Good things can be taken too far – helpful at one level and destructive at another.

They can be more dangerous than bad things, because the fact that they’re good at one level makes them easier to rationalize at a dangerous level. Doctors who overprescribe antibiotics think they’re doing good in a way people selling meth don’t.

A lot of things work like that, don’t they?

Good things – praise-worthy things – that in a high enough dosage backfire and become anchors?

A few I see in investing:

To continue reading, please go to the original article here:

https://www.collaborativefund.com/blog/good-things-taken-too-far/

Making Sense of 2020 Here We Are: 5 Stories That Got Us To Now

Making Sense of 2020  Here We Are: 5 Stories That Got Us To Now

Jul 16, 2020 by Morgan Housel

Three days after Ronald Reagan was inaugurated in 1981, New York City Council President Carol Bellamy joined a group of speakers at a luncheon to discuss the country’s future.

The group tried to make sense of a world that was hardly recognizable from a generation before. Crime, inflation, and unemployment were surging. Speakers offered visions of what might happen next.

Bellamy said they were all misguided.

No one was discussing “where we’ve been, and until we know that, it’s difficult to figure out where we’re heading,” she said, according to the New York Times.

This article is about how that idea applies to 2020.

Everyone is innocently short-sighted when trying to make sense of 2020.

January, before Covid-19 upended everything, feels like a different lifetime. March is already a blur. Time slows when you experience surprise, and every day of 2020 brings a new shock. So the recent past feels like distant history.

But if you survey the confusing mess we’re in – 50 million jobs lost, 130,000 dead, Tesla stock up 400% – you have to remember that none of it happened in a vacuum. Every event has parents, grandparents, siblings, and cousins – previous events that planted the seeds, passed on their DNA, and continue to influence what’s happening today.

To have any hope of making sense of what’s happening in 2020, we have to pay attention to a bunch of seemingly unrelated stories that began before anyone had heard of Covid-19.

Here are five that seem particularly important.

1. People grew apart financially at the same time they became connected digitally, which exacerbates tribal instincts and exposes you to people who don’t see the world as you do, who become easy targets for criticism and blame.

To understand why so many people are so angry in 2020 you have to realize that half the country gained insight into the other half at the very moment those halves were as different economically as they’ve ever been.

Here’s one side of the equation:

To continue reading, please go to the original article here:

https://www.collaborativefund.com/blog/here-we-are-5-stories-that-got-us-to-now/

Mortgage Rates Are Effectively Negative In the Land Of The Free

Mortgage Rates Are Effectively Negative In the Land Of The Free

Notes From The Field By Simon Black   July 22, 2020   Bahia Beach, Puerto Rico

By the late 200s AD, the economy of ancient Rome was in serious distress.

There was hardly a single year during that entire century without some major crisis– civil war, barbarian invasion, plague, imperial assassination, political scandal, or economic depression.

It was so bad, in fact, that historians refer to this period as the Crisis of the Third Century. And the Roman economy suffered immeasurably as a result of all the turmoil.

In a desperate effort to make ends meet, Rome’s emperors routinely resorted to debasing the currency.

To give you an example, the antoninianus silver coin had around 50% silver content when it was first circulated in 215 AD. Within a few decades, the antoninianus had been debased so much that newly minted coins contained less than 3% silver.

Naturally this created rampant inflation; as Rome’s currency rapidly lost value, merchants had to continually raise their prices in order to keep up with the currency debasement.

So in 301 AD, Emperor Diocletian tried to combat inflation by imposing strict price controls across the empire… and he issued his infamous Edictum de Pretiis Rerum Venalium, known as the Edict on Maximum Prices.

(Unsurprisingly, Diocletian’s edict pointed the finger at evil capitalists, blaming the inflation on “men whose aim it is to restrain the general prosperity. . .”)

The edict went on to regulate every single wage and price in the empire… from a bushel of wheat to a day’s labor on a farm. And anyone who didn’t abide by the law was threatened with the death penalty.

The effect of the law was devastating. Not only did Diocletian’s edict NOT fix the inflation problem, it caused countless Romans to flee, many of whom went north to live among the barbarian tribes.

That proved even more disastrous, because Diocletian was rapidly losing taxpayers. So shortly after, the imperial government passed another law, forbidding anyone from leaving.

Every Roman was tied to their job, or to their farms. And the restrictions were generational: a son was legally bound to follow the trade and guild of his father.

This is actually a fairly common theme throughout history.

Russian Czar Ivan the Terrible, for example, decreed in 1581 that peasants were not allowed to leave their farms without the owner’s consent. And this was the norm in Europe for centuries while the feudal system was in place.

Freedom of movement is a relatively new phenomenon… something that became commonplace only in our modern time. It is one of the most important freedoms we have, and one that I believe many people will avail themselves of now.

These pandemic lockdowns have been absolutely devastating. The worldwide economic cost alone is tens of trillions of dollars. Hundreds of millions of people have lost their jobs (according to UN estimates). Millions of businesses have gone bust.

But even beyond the economic costs, the pandemic has caused a lot of people to reexamine their lifestyles.

People who live in cramped, super-expensive, highly-taxed urban areas were cooped up like hamsters for weeks, even months, barely able to even go outside.

And any rational person who understands there may be new waves of the pandemic… or entirely new pandemics that come in the future… is looking around for better options.

After all, politicians, intoxicated with their own power, have already shown us how they’re going to react– with hysteria, stupidity, and violence.

In southern California, beach goers were told to stay off the dry sand, but wet sand was OK. Officials in Nassau County, New York made it illegal to touch other people’s tennis balls.

Comrade Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York City locked everyone up in their homes and threatened to throw people in jail who ‘illegally’ attended religious services… but was totally fine when rioters, looters, and protesters took to the streets.

And Gunnison County, Colorado ordered all non-residents, including those who own homes in the area, to leave at once, and “not return until further notice.”

Fortunately nobody has to flee into the welcoming arms of barbarian tribes anymore… nor are we tied to the land like medieval serfs.

A lot of people are now realizing for the first time that they do have the freedom to move. The lockdowns forced nearly every business into remote work arrangements, and many of those will end up being permanent.

As a business owner, I think remote work is a double-edged sword. Productivity is definitely higher when people are together in an office.

But remote work is far more efficient; no more wasting time in traffic. It’s less expensive because it eliminates the need for office space. And employees tend to be happier.

So undoubtedly a lot of remote work arrangements are here to stay.

And people are starting to see now that they can live anywhere; there’s no need to stay in the city, or even suburb, just to be near the office, when you don’t have to go to the office anymore.

I’ve written about this a lot: I’m anticipating a great migration, from high-tax, high-cost, high-stupidity places, to low tax, low cost, more sensible places.

In the Land of the Free, this means Texas, Florida, Tennessee, and even states like Idaho and Wyoming.

Here’s the kicker: mortgage rates are now below 3%… which is nuts. At 3%, the real estate is essentially free.

If you imagine that inflation alone is 2% per year, then you’re effectively paying just 1% interest. And that 1% will be mostly credited back to you through various tax benefits, like a home office deduction, interest expense deduction (on a loan up to $750,000), and property tax deduction (up to $10,000).

This means that your tax-adjusted, inflation adjusted interest rate is probably ZERO, and potentially even NEGATIVE… so you can technically be paid for borrowing money now.

So it’s worth strongly considering this opportunity while it’s on the table.

 To your freedom & prosperity, Simon Black, Founder, SovereignMan.com

https://www.sovereignman.com/trends/mortgage-rates-are-effectively-negative-in-the-land-of-the-free-28337/

No Surprise: Silver Is One Of The Best Performing Assets In World

No Surprise: Silver Is One Of The Best Performing Assets In World

Notes From The Field By Simon Black  July 20, 2020  Bahia Beach, Puerto Rico

Sovereign Man is a little over 11 years old. And when we started this business, silver was worth $13 per ounce at the time.  My philosophy then, just like today, is that precious metals hold their value over the long-term. But back then, there was one key indicator that told me an investment in silver could pay off fairly quickly.

In 2009, silver was trading at a ratio of over 70:1 to gold, meaning 70+ ounces of silver was worth 1 ounce of gold. A ratio of 70 was considered quite ‘expensive’; over the last century or so, the ratio has historically hovered around 50:1, i.e. one ounce of gold was generally worth 50 times an ounce of silver.

And back in ancient times, the ratio was closer to 15:1.

The 70:1 ratio back in 2009 didn’t make sense to me. The panic of the Global Financial Crisis had prompted a lot of investors to buy gold, but silver was largely being ignored.  So we suggested to our readers that silver is a sensible long-term bet.

In fact I wrote in an article on July 7, 2009 that readers consider a long-term futures contract that would lock in the price of silver for two years at just $13.

And sure enough, within two years, the gold/silver ratio had reversed to just 35:1, and the price of silver hit a record high of roughly $50 an ounce.

Now, no financial investment should move up or down in a straight line, and we were concerned that the silver price had risen too quickly.

So, within hours of the silver peak, we sent a note to our readers suggesting that silver may be at a top, and essentially locking in a gain of nearly 300%.

Silver then spent the next few years in the doldrums… until now.

Several months ago when this pandemic became a global issue, the gold/silver ratio hit a record 120:1… and the price of silver fell below $12 per ounce.

Once again, this didn’t make sense to me.

And I’ve written to you several times over the past few months that silver would probably rise, even beyond gold, because of all the Covid response.

Central banks around the world printed trillions upon trillions of dollars, and governments have increased their debt levels even more.

In the United States alone, the national debt increased by three-quarters of a trillion dollars just in the month of June!  And the Federal Reserve expanded its balance sheet from $4 trillion to $7 trillion since the start of the pandemic.

This is not without consequence. Governments are going deeper into debt, and central banks are feverishly printing more money, at a time when economies are barely functioning.  So there’s far more money circulating in an economy that’s producing fewer goods and services… which, again, doesn’t make sense.

Plenty of governments have tried this before; when their economies falter, they just print money and hope the problem goes away.  But typically this just makes the money worth less… and real assets like gold and silver worth more.

Unsurprisingly, silver is now one of the best performing assets in the world; the gold/silver ratio has fallen to 93:1… that’s still considered quite high, but clearly much lower than 120.  And the silver price just hit $19.70 per ounce as I write this-- a gain of 68% in just four months.

This means that silver has vastly outpaced the gains in the S&P 500 stock index, and it even outpaced the gains that gold has made since the start of the pandemic.

I believe there’s a very strong case to be made that both gold and silver could continue to perform very well over the next few years.

Around the world we’re already seeing record government debt, record corporate debt, record consumer debt, record central bank balance sheets, record money creation, and plenty of economies still in various stages of lockdown.  This pandemic is far from over... and the economic consequences will linger for years.

My analysis is pretty simple: the more money that central banks print, and the more debt that governments take on, the more valuable gold and silver will become.

Right now, gold is still relatively undervalued when compared to the overall money supply… and silver is still historically undervalued relative to gold.

So, again, there’s a good case that both could still rise from here over the next few years.

But my personal philosophy about precious metals isn’t about trading them to make a quick buck.

I view gold and silver as an insurance policy: a way to hold wealth when there’s a lot of uncertainty.

And there’s a ton of uncertainty right now… social unrest, political upheaval, massive bailout programs, looming Cold War.

Yes, the world is rarely certain. There are always crises and hotspots and emergencies to deal with. But the issues that we are dealing with today are genuinely unprecedented in modern times. And we’re dealing with several of them at the same time.

Ordinarily we can have a reasonable amount of confidence in what tomorrow is going to look like… or that six months from now the world will look a lot like it does today.  But the reality is that we have no idea what tomorrow will bring. Another major outbreak? Another lockdown? Another city set ablaze?

So, even though gold and silver still have strong upside potential, I believe it’s this level of uncertainty that’s the biggest reason to own precious metals right now.

To your freedom & prosperity, Simon Black, Founder, SovereignMan.com

https://www.sovereignman.com/investing/no-surprise-silver-is-one-of-the-best-performing-assets-in-world-28263/

Artificial Economic Crisis

Artificial Economic Crisis

Final Wake Up Call By Peter B Meyer

New Emerging Reality

Misery without an end. And what is seen now is only the tiny tip of the iceberg. The worst is still to come – when in a few weeks or months a clearer picture will emerge of what industries will live or die, and more people will be relegated to economic paupers.

The world has become an insane asylum but the majority of society is too much asleep to notice the insanity about what is happening with the Coronavirus pandemic. It is of the highest importance, more people around the globe are waking up to the new emerging reality and understand that what historically has been taught, socialised and raised to believe government as the truth, is nothing else but an example of outright propaganda bull#.

To create a better future, people must first remember the past, unlike what happened in China’s cultural revolution from 1966–1976, when the past was being deliberately erased. Old customs, old cultures, old habits and old ideas that didn’t match the ideology of the Chinese communist government were wiped clean, this way is not the road to learn from the past, but to reduce it to nothing.

The way to earn more money is well known. Get up early. Work hard. Learn. Save. Invest. Build businesses. That has worked for every group or society. But today, the money is fake, the wealth is fake, and the progress is fake too.

The whole banking sector is already the beneficiary of trillions in giveaways from Central Banks. Saving more money on deposit in cabal-owned banks will do nothing for the majority of the populace in today’s Main Street economy. But it will be a big bonus for the banking Elite.

 Central Bank Economy Is Going Down

This central bank economy is going down, and it’s not coming back.  According to Yelp, 53% of the restaurants will not be reopening. On average, 43% of the businesses won’t be reopening, and cabal owned big businesses are going to gobble these up. Here’s a headline, ‘Big hotels could benefit from aid.’

That’s right, more billions and billions of currency are going to big hotel chains. Why are the markets up? The Central Banks are pumping money into these big companies who got richer by about $650 billion since the pandemic started.  We the people are all becoming slave workers on the cabal plantation.

“Follow the money,” all roads lead to the Rothschilds and their formula of gaining control of a nation’s money supply and then making all the rules. In the process of gaining control of the world’s money supply, each country’s gold holdings were stolen, and replaced with printed Euros or US dollars as loan against interest from the Rothschild owned IMF.

The Rothschilds will not accept any competition. The first stage of the world’s largest Ponzi scheme succeeded. Next was the removal and eventual suppression of the price of gold and silver. Now the destruction of the world economy is occurring because of ongoing activity by desperate central bankers who mistakenly blame President Trump for causing the failure of the monetary system.

Unemployment Soaring To Heights Never Experienced

People already now realise the damage of unheard proportions. In the first four months of this so-called, criminal-WHO-dominated pandemic, a global disaster of proportions far exceeding those of 1929-33 and 2008-09 is being witnessed. Never in recorded human history has so much misery been created.

With bankruptcies abounding, the stock market recently plunged by more than 30%, with some ups and downs called “quick profit taking” because of foreknowledge by the rich and powerful on the backs of the small investors. Then, well connected billionaires again increased their wealth during the first 4 months of 2020 by US$406 billion, according to CNBC of 1 May 2020.

The universal Covid-lockdown has also caused a meltdown of productive assets, which now become easy prey to be bought by large cabal corporations to enhance their grip on society.  Unemployment is soaring to heights never experienced before by modern humanity, the number of people unemployed is currently at over 80 million out of a job in the US and EU. This does not account for those who have given up looking for a job or  claiming unemployment.

According to Fox Business News, up to 40% may never get back to work. Authorities predict unemployment may reach 50% by the end of the year – to be compared with 25% in the worst 1929 recession period. These are only US statistics. The situation elsewhere is more chaotic especially in the EU it is likely even worse.

The International Labour Office (ILO) announced that within months, worldwide unemployment may hit 1.6 billion people, which is half the globe’s workforce. Many of these people, especially in the Global South have already been at the verge of poverty or under the poverty line, living from day to day, with no savings.

Now they are condemned to begging – and many, maybe hundreds of millions, to die from famine, according to the World Food Program (WFP). Many if not most of them have no access to health services, no shelter, or any other form of social safety nets, because the COVID-caused economic collapse has wiped out even flimsy social safety structures poor countries may have set up.

Diabolical Plan Collapses Economic Activity

Taking a few steps back – it is clearly no coincidence that the entire world is stricken by the same virus virtually at the same time. That does not happen naturally – but can happen, as it did, when the virus is artificially implanted in every country at the same time. So, there is a diabolical plan behind this so-called corona-crisis which does not even have to be a crisis, if looked at real disease and death rates – not the inflated, fear-inspiring ones.

Economic activity across the globe has collapsed, GDP is shrinking at the fastest pace on record, and the economic data is worse than anytime in history. Every sector of the economy is contracting and every economic indicator is pointing down.

With everything else going crazy, the real insanity is that the Federal Reserve has bailed out the Banking industry every night since Sept. 11, 2019 and the banks now need over $4 Trillion, every night! And there still is no noise about that!

This collapse has been manipulated. It was the object of insider trading and foreknowledge. The fear campaign played a key role in the implementation of the stock market crash. In February, roughly $6 trillion was wiped off the value of stock markets worldwide. Massive losses of personal savings of average citizens have occurred, along with corporate failures and bankruptcies. It was a bonanza for institutional speculators including corporate hedge funds. The financial meltdown has led to sizable transfers of money wealth into the pockets of a handful of financial institutions.

Make no mistake, this COVID-operation has been carefully planned. There is nothing spontaneous or accidental. This economic recession is engineered at national and global levels. In turn, this crisis was already integrated into US-NATO military and intelligence planning. It is intent not only upon weakening China, Russia and Iran, it also consists in destabilising the economic fabric of the EU. This crisis is unprecedented in world history, and can be seen as an act of war. It is straightforwardly an act of crime against humanity.

Imperial New World Agenda In Progress Without Military Intervention

The ultimate objective of “Big Money” is to transform nation states, with their own institutions and national economy, into “open economic territories”. That was the fate of Iraq and Afghanistan. But now it can be done without sending in troops, by simply ordering subservient proxy governments integrated by corrupt politicians to close down their economy on humanitarian grounds, the so-called “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) without the need for military intervention.

This is the imperial New World Agenda in progress – the privatization of all countries, eventually to own and privatise the entire planet! The tendency is towards the centralisation and concentration of economic power.  All heavily indebted national governments are instruments of Big Money. They are proxies.

Key political appointments are controlled by lobby groups representing all Rothschild owned Financial Institutions including Wall Street, the Military Industrial Complex, Big Pharma, Big Oil, the Corporate Media and all Digital Communications Giants, etc.  The unspoken intent of global capitalism is the destruction of each nation state and its institutions leading to global poverty on an unprecedented scale.

Hopefully by now, people are going to understand the tactics of their government. Although elected by the people they don’t work for the people, because they are paid for by the Deep State to complete Agenda 2030. Be assured; your government is your biggest enemy.

The biggest unsolved problem is a failed economic system. Negative interest rates and fiat money have taken power away from real savers and real bankers and concentrated it in the hands of the cabal, they own both the central banks and the Fortune 500 companies, and are engaged in a giant self enrichment programme. They have used their money to buy control of the media, so that the political system has degenerated to the point of dysfunction. 

And each time, they make the situation worse. When the money goes, everything goes, because money represents time and life. When people can’t trust, they lose faith in their institutions, in the system, in the government, and in each other. This is the moment people need to wake up en masse, it is urgently required, because the battle is now and if we don’t win the fight we are in today, society will become much worse than today. Truth combined with facts become our most powerful weapon for repealing the lies of the corporate media and the governments.

Be a Patriot and help to increase people’s awareness by sharing this and any other FWC-article. – With FWC-source acknowledgment: Reproduction in other languages, or media forms is permitted. Our goal is to awaken as many people as possible.

Once 50% of the population awakens, the truth will come out. Let us work together to have this materialised before year-end.

http://finalwakeupcall.info/en/2020/07/15/artificial-economic-crisis/