Below, I’ve summarized pertinent points of this growing food crisis:

• Though the mass media has continued to virtually ignore this massively important story, food riots, instigated by soaring food prices, occurred in about 30 countries last year, including Haiti, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, and Bangladesh. Due to shrinking food stocks, leading agricultural commodity exporters such as India and Argentina imposed bans on overseas sales of food products.

• Last year, global rice stocks fell to a 30-year low after droughts decimated crop yields in China and Africa. At one point, during a two-week period in April of 2008, prices of rice rose 50%. Rice is the staple food for more than 3 billion people. According to the World Bank, the real price of rice and wheat respectively rose to a 19-year and a 28-year high last year.

• At the recent G8 Agriculture Ministers meeting held in Treviso, Italy in April of 2009, US Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack stated that climate change had materially affected the challenge to feed the world’s population – expected to reach 9 billion by 2050 from today’s current number of 6.5 billion. As a solution, he called on the G8 to back the use of science in agriculture, including genetically modified organisms, to boost productivity.”

• In 2009, for the first time ever, the United Nations reported an unprecedented 1 billion+ people went hungry every day and predicted that this number would continue to rise due to persistently high food prices and the continuing economic crisis.

Though the above unfolding catastrophe should be the leading story of every major media outlet in the world, instead swine flu has trumped this potentially much greater catastrophe. World Health Organization (WHO) officials have currently assigned the worldwide risk of swine flu to a Phase 5 level indicative of an “imminent pandemic”; if starvation were considered a disease, the risk factor of this hunger catastrophe would be assigned the WHO’s highest rating of Phase 6.

Beyond the surface points I noted above, there are some truly disturbing facets of this hunger catastrophe that lie beneath the surface. Given that the WHO has labeled swine flu a pandemic with a recent figure of confirmed cases at 1,316 worldwide, it is no exaggeration to consider a hunger pandemic that currently has more than 1 billion victims a catastrophe. Though droughts, low crop yields, and the spectacularly foolish, inefficient experiment to turn food into biofuels have all significantly contributed to the imminent mass starvation problems that will soon materialize, the truth is that the easiest and most efficient way to address the hunger catastrophe is purposely being obfuscated and hidden by the world’s Central Banks and financial oligarchs. Ironically, one of the most significant components of the troubling rise in food prices, monetary inflation, is also the easiest symptom to attack and solve as opposed to other solutions that seek to raise crop yields through the increased use of biogenetically engineered seeds. In addition, though poor climate conditions have undoubtedly contributed to low crop yields in recent years, the real effect of monetary inflation on plunging food stock levels is often obscured by governments through highly inaccurate and deceptive PPI (producer price index) numbers.

Of the current 6.5 billion people in this world, 50%, or 3.25 billion, live on a daily wage of $2 that has not changed in years, despite the fact that significant erosion in the purchasing power of these $2 over the past decade. In turn, the billions of people that subsist on $2 a day spend $1 on food daily. Simple math dictates that if the price of basic diet staples in the developing world (rice, corn, wheat, etc. but specifically rice) rises to $2 or $3 a day or more, more than 3 billion people will no longer just be hungry, but will begin to die from starvation. In previous essays of mine, I have outlined a strong argument for significant inflation in our future despite the persistent campaigns to spread deflationary beliefs. If time proves my arguments to be correct, then a doubling, or even a tripling or quadrupling in the prices of basic food staples is a real and distinct threat to the mortality rates of billions of people. Given the magnitude of this moral crisis, no matter one’s stance in the debate of inflation versus deflation, it is imperative to grant consideration to the possibility of strong inflation in imminent years and its implications for 3.25 billion of our fellow citizens.

This is precisely why the moral disaster of mass global starvation that looms in our near future must first and foremost be approached as a direct symptom of the foolish and dangerously destructive monetary policies now being implemented by the US Federal Reserve, the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan, and the European Central Bank. The United Nations, in their press release, stated that mass global hunger today is attributable to rising prices, and none other than former US Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, in a rare moment of clarity, stated in 1997 that “price increases are really the same thing as depreciation of the currency”. There is little doubt in my mind that one of the largest components of rising food prices over the next five years will be a very significant “food tax” that is directly attributable to the debasement of all major global fiat currencies. Thus, one of the most efficient and effective steps we can implement to prevent our current global hunger catastrophe from evolving into a global starvation catastrophe is to re-institute a sound monetary system in which all money is backed by gold or silver or a combination of both.

During the recent G8 Agriculture Ministers meeting in Italy, when US Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack used this platform to promote the business interests of the biogenetic agricultural industry, such chatter was a smokescreen designed to deflect attention away from the true culprit of this catastrophe – monetary inflation. Given Vilsack’s history of well-documented supported for bio-genetically engineered agricultural crops, including his award as Governor of the Year by the Biotechnology Industry Organization in 2001, his preferred solution to this crisis offers no surprises. Those who invest in Monsanto (NYSE:MON) now, in terms of monetary profits, will likely emerge smelling like roses a couple years down the road. Still, a larger moral question than the debate over the safety of bio-genetically engineered food or the morality of using a crisis to promote business interests must be answered – “How significant are the contributions of our unsound monetary system to the greatest potential humanitarian crisis of our lifetime?”

Given the course of monetary policies being implemented by our global Central Banks, though this is a prediction I hate to make and detest even more if it comes true, the likelihood is very strong today that hundreds of millions of people will starve to death within the next five to ten years. Though many will find this prediction outrageous, remember that many of my predictions that were considered outrageous 2-3 years ago have now come true. I write this article not for shock value, but for the simple reason that this crisis is avoidable if we begin altering our solutions to the global financial crisis today. However, a persistent refusal to acknowledge the primary role of our fraudulent monetary system in creating this worldwide financial crisis will only serve to cement this obscene prediction in future years.

Should this grim hunger catastrophe continue to progress as increasingly seems likely, growing numbers of food-inspired riots and complex national security issues caused by mass migration issues will arise that will necessitate a response from our world leaders. Should this happen, I have no doubt that our world leaders will spin the starvation catastrophe as attributable to every reason imaginable but the true culprit – our unsound monetary system. Should this problem progress, eventually millions of rural poor will migrate to urban centers, driven by a need to earn higher wages to buy increasingly more expensive food. Ironically the consequence of flooding urban areas with cheap labor in developing countries will be significant wage depression for higher income earners and the rapid deterioration of the middle class into the poor.

Historical precedent for this outcome already was already set during the post NAFTA-years in Mexico, when NAFTA policies created a mass migration of poor into urban centers and effectively destroyed the wage potential of the middle class. Thus, this hunger crisis will not only affect the survival rates of 3+ billion people, but it will also negatively impact the earning potential of billions of urban dwellers in the future as well. Hopefully, this potentially epic humanitarian and moral disaster will finally serve as the necessary blaring alarm to citizens of the world to address the equivalent moral disaster that is our fiat monetary system.

JS Kim is the President & Founder of SmartKnowledgeU, LLC, a fiercely independent investment research & consulting firm that helps clients create wealth during this ongoing global financial & monetary crisis.

I opened this blog with that comment to illustrate that money and greed will many times take precedence over issues of national security or the democratic desires of people. This is a concept that is extremely difficult for many people to grasp, especially those that have fallen victim to the mass media’s snow job (no pun intended in regards to U.S. White House Press Secretary Tony Snow).

However, one only needs to look at the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America, an agreement signed by U.S. President Bush, Mexico’s President Vicente Fox, and Canada’s PM Stephen Harper on March 23, 2005, in relative obscurity, to understand the truth of my above statement.

I have heard many people state that the discussion of politics has no place in the discussion forum of investments and the stock markets. While this should be true, it is not. And if you don’t understand the inseparable links between politics and the stock market, then in the end, your investment decisions will suffer. I guarantee you this.

The Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America has major, widespread implications for the future economic direction and national security of all three countries, even regarding the possible development of a single North American currency that would replace the peso, the U.S. dollar, and the Canadian dollar, yet it was not widely reported on by the mass media. Have you heard about it before? If not, then you prove my point.

But much more damning evidence of the fact that finance, and not governments, make the world go round is apparent when exploring the lead quote of this blog. In March, 2006, the U.S. government decided to keep the African nation of Libya on its official list of state sponsors of terrorism. Despite this, and despite Ibrahim’s inflammatory comment directed toward the U.S. government, the U.S. government still decided to restore full diplomatic relations with Libya just five months ago and remove Libya’s label as a state that sponsors terrorism.

In fact, given the frequent White House criticisms of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s similarly colored inflammatory statements, how many of you remember hearing criticisms of Ibrahim’s statement? I read international news daily and while I come across dozens of stories about the U.S. rebuking Chavez I can’t recall a single story I encountered that criticized Ibrahim.

Why?

Libya has oil- lots of it – and they’ve been friendly to the desire of Western oil companies wishing to explore and develop in their country. Although Libya intelligence has cooperated with American intelligence in interrogating captives and providing information to capture terrorists, certainly another important impetus behind the restoration of diplomatic relation is undoubtedly the massive oil reserves that Libya possesses. Despite the fact that countries such as Nigeria are in the news far more frequently, Libya possesses the largest oil reserves of all African nations. And as soon as diplomatic relations were restored, every single major big oil company, American and European, was knocking on Libya’s door.

As you will know from my next blog entry which I will post in a day or two, after big oil finishes its current leg up, I much prefer shifting assets to auxiliary industries away from companies that directly explore and produce oil. However, investing in the right junior production companies will still be okay. One such company is the UK firm Soco International (Ticker: SIA.L on the London Stock Exchange).

Besides oil interests in Vietnam, Yemen, and Thailand, Soco International holds oil exploration interests in the Democratic Republic of Congo and in Libya in Africa. I purchased Soco International about four months ago because of the wildcards of the DRC and Libya. These are two countries that could potentially grant explosive growth to Soco in addition to its solid projects in Vietnam, Yemen and Thailand.

The DRC is transitioning into one of the more stable emerging nations after decades of corruption and volatile instability, and because of this, I like SOCO’s exposure to the DRC as well. Follow this link to read about elections in the Democratic Republic of Congo this week that a Reuter’s reporter called “the most important in Africa since a ballot in 1994 ended decades of apartheid repression in South Africa, the United Nations said on Saturday.”

I know that most people probably are unaware of the importance of the changing political and economic landscape in the DRC and the changing attitudes of the U.S. towards Libya, but as I said, my goal is to dig out opportunities that most likely will never make it to the mainstream media. I discovered both of these developments four months ago and as a result, invested in Soco.

However, realize that Soco is subject to more volatility and more geo-political risk because of its business strategy than blue chip oil companies and even other junior oil companies. However, there is also an “X” factor with this company that I have not discussed. I have reserved discussion of this “X” factor only for members of my SmartKnowledgeU™ e-learning site that we will hopefully launch within the next month. This “X” factor helps mitigate much risk when investing in companies similar to Soco, and also exists for companies of all sizes. For example, telecomm giant Verizon is another company that has this “X” factor that I also like. Many of you that know me know that I recommended buying Verizon about six months ago due to this “X” factor. And even though Verizon has had a good run recently, I believe that due to the “X” factor, that it would still be a good stock to purchase on dips in the future.

So again, my strategy in investing in Africa for now largely consists of finding companies that are invested in some of the African nations that have potential for explosive growth such as the DRC and Libya, but yet have a wide enough portfolio of business outside of Africa to mitigate these riskier opportunities.

P.S. By the way, Lula has just secured re-election in Brazil.

Technorati Tags: Soco International, oil stocks, best free stock picks, investment strategies, Libya, Thailand, Vietnam, politics and stocks

J.S. Kim is the founder and Managing Director of SmartKnowledgeU™, a comprehensive online investment course that uses novel, proprietary advanced wealth planning techniques and the long tail of investing to identify low-risk, high-reward investment opportunities that seek to yield high double-digit or greater annual returns.

Thailand has one of the cheapest stock markets in all of Asia, and it’s about to get even cheaper. Currently I’m in Bangkok and yesterday, after weeks of verbal grenades and strategic maneuvering that pitted the Thai Prime Minister against the Thai military, factions opposed to Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra staged a coup last night to oust him. Even before the coup, Thais have been largely split in their support and criticism of Prime Minister Shinawatra.

PM Shinawatra has been largely supported in rural areas, where the rural poor have viewed Shinawatra as an ally to their cause because of numerous programs he has enacted to aid them. However in urban circles, much criticism has been directed at Shinawatra. In fact, Thai media mogul Sondheim Limthongkul, head of Manager Media Group, has been a thorn in Shinawatra’s side for months on end now, staging highly public rallies and speeches that were harshly critical of his former friend and sometimes attended by tens of thousands of people. Ironically, the fortunes of Manager Media Group were once said to have turned for the better due to Limthongkul’s friendship with Shinawatra.

However, after relentless criticism by Limthongkul, in which he has criticized Shinawatra as dictatorial and corrupt, their friendship has no doubt degenerated to a point that is now beyond repair. In fact, just about a year ago, a popular TV show hosted by Limthongkul was taken off the air by Channel 9, a government controlled TV station. This was followed by Bangkok court-issued gag orders that demanded Limthongkul’s criticisms of Shinawatra cease (which I’m sure to Americans, sounds eerily familiar as U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney has at times commented that criticisms of the U.S. administration’s policies in Iraq “validates the strategy of terrorists”).

The public sniping between Thaksin and his opponents reached a peak when he sold Shin Corporation, which many Thais view as a national asset, to a Singapore company for 73 billion Baht (roughly USD $1.97 billion), claiming that he did so only at the urging of his children and to avoid appearances of conflict of interest in the future. In fact I strongly believed back then that the reason the U.S. dollar had been strengthening against all Asian currencies for six straight weeks except the Thai baht was due to the PM’s huge multi-billion position in Thai Baht. If you click here, you can read the ludicrous explanations given by the Bank of Thailand for the baht’s continuing strength as the lone Asian currency defying global trends in Asia. In any event, the public sniping became so bad at this point that Thaksin appealed to the most revered King of Thailand, stating that he would step down if the King asked him to do so. The infighting continued with an alleged attempt on Thaksin’s life recently.

However, many believed the attempt to be fabricated by Thaksin so that he could gain control of the Thai military (the story circulating in Thailand was that the military was involved in the alleged attempt on Thaksin’s life. Thaksin, in response, sought to replace many top military personnel with his own people – moves that received strong opposition internally in the military).

Finally, this power struggle culminated last night with the coup. Martial law has been declared, a night curfew is being enforced, and the constitution has been suspended. Already the leaders of the coup have met with revered King Bhumidol Adulyadej and declared their loyalty to him, though the King has yet to publicly declare his position regarding the coup. Furthermore, soldiers in Bangkok are patrolling the streets wearing yellow armbands in their declaration of loyalty to the King. Schools, banks, and the Thai SET (stock market) are all closed today.

It is ironic that some world leaders have expressed “grave concerns” over this coup in Thailand because of its threat to democratic processes, especially since the general sentiment here in Bangkok seems to be that a great amount of Thais support the coup and view it as a positive development (due to the perceived serious levels of corruption that had infiltrated PM Thaksin’s reign). In fact, this morning on TV here, the military announced that they will hold power for no longer an amount of time than is absolutely necessary to return Thailand to a more democratic process. It is the hypocrisy of these world leaders that strips them of their credibility. They denounce the actions of the Thai military, but yet remain silent as corrupt regimes rule all over the world, only to finally voice an opinion upon the mobilization of extreme actions that are driven by the very fact that democracy has been fiercely eroded.

There have been great threats to democratic processes in recent U.S. and Mexican elections where accusations and allegations of massive voter fraud existed in elections that many believed to have resulted in “illegitimate” presidents. Many of these world leaders had a chance to demonstrate that when it comes to democracy, they play no favorites. All they had to do was demand accountability to ensure that indeed democratic processes had prevailed in these elections. Where were the “grave concerns” of these world leaders then? As an example, so many Mexicans believe that their recent election was fraudulent that they are enacting an unprecedented “parallel” government and swearing in a parallel President in Obrador 11 days before Calderón’s official inauguration. To me, this action is amazing, but perhaps necessary, if election fraud did indeed occur in the Mexican national elections, and the fraud was not corrected.

In 2004, Clinton Eugene Curtis testified under oath to the U.S. House Judiciary Members in Ohio that he developed untraceable software programs that could secretly fix U.S. election results in states that relied heavily on electronic voting machines. In an election where Kerrey convincingly won the exit poll results but convincingly lost the official results to Bush, and where there were statistically significant discrepancies between exit poll numbers and official numbers in the swing states of Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania that should have merited a serious, formal investigation. But it didn’t. In fact, the discrepancies didn’t even merit a fraction of the international protest that the current Thai coup is registering.

In Thailand, the coup that occurred last night was a bloodless coup, as peaceful so far (let’s keep our fingers crossed) as a coup could possibly be. Other “bloodless” coups may have happened in the past in the U.S. and Mexican elections through means more devious and less visible than a military marching into government offices, but nonetheless should have sparked similar international outrage, but has not (in Mexico of course, it has sparked domestic outrage). Again, because we don’t know if these claims in Mexico or the U.S. were true, accountability for accuracy in the election should have been demanded by the international community. But no accountability was ever demanded. This again, just further supports the theory of corrupt governments across the world supporting each other for economic gain. But I digress.

The quickest way to make money off of this coup situation is to short the SET. But since Thai stock markets are closed today and the SET will no doubt reflect the negative weight of the coup when it re-opens, if you haven’t shorted the SET when the rumors of the coup started (the coup rumors started weeks ago before it actually took place last night), it’s probably too late.

The Thai stock market is one of the most undervalued in all of Asia, trading at a P/E of about 7, compared to the South Korea’s KOPSI’s P/E of about 11 and the Hong Kong Hang Seng’s P/E of about 12. In fact, even though the U.S.’s S&P 500 P/E’s ratio is the lowest in a decade, it is still trading at a P/E of 16 (this demonstrates how undervalued Asian markets tend to be). As far as how Asian markets are labeled, at times it almost seems arbitrary. The South Korea market is still often classified by international stock market indexes as “emerging” but to anyone that has recently visited Seoul, it should be quite clear that the South Korean market has emerged already. But again, the arbitrary labels given to Asian markets that often confuse Western investors is a topic for another blog.

Major companies in the SET, just from my experience of being here, would be AIS, True Corp, Bangkok Bank, Thai Airways, Siam Cement, Charoen Pokphan Foods (otherwise known as CP Foods here), and of course the Thai PM’s former company, Shin Corporation. For a short term trade, it could be worthwhile to keep an eye on all of these stocks and wait to see how far they drop as a result of this coup. If some of these stocks drop significantly, wait until they look as if they have bottomed out, buy them and ride them up for quick gains. As long as this coup remains bloodless and the Thai PM does not launch a military counterattack, the Thai stock markets should recover nicely just as the U.S. markets quickly recovered about 25% in several months after 9/11. Furthermore, as a longer term investment opportunity, as the Thai SET is already highly undervalued, the coup will no doubt push the SET’s P/E ratio even lower. Again, many Thais probably view the coup as good for Thailand as long as it remains bloodless and peaceful. The SET is very young, as stock markets go, only founded in 1973. This means that it will still be volatile as it contines to mature. However, if the coup is successful and PM Thaksin is replaced with someone perceived to be much less corrupt, then the coup may actually help the Thai SET to bounce back strongly, smooth out volatility in the future, and help its performance in the long-term.

All I can say today is Power to the People.

Maholo, KAEHO

On July 25^th, in my E-Zine Issue #013, I mentioned that I thought the U.S. dollar was going to strengthen and that gold was going to fall. Since then the dollar has rallied for six straight weeks and reached six-week highs on August 8^th against most major world currencies, recouping all of its earlier losses against the yen. And back then I specifically mentioned that I believed gold would head below USD $600 an ounce. And yesterday, gold continued sharply retreating since my statement to about $592 an ounce. And I have strong reason to believe that it will possibly challenge the June lows of $570 an ounce and perhaps even head lower before sharply rebounding and heading much higher.

Before I continue as to how I can predict these things with a fair amount of confidence, let me discuss why the dollar hasn’t strengthened against the currency in Thailand even though it has strengthened significantly against most other Asian currencies. In Thailand, though the U.S. dollar has been making a strong run against the major currencies of the world in the last six weeks, it has barely strengthened at all against the Thai baht.

Since the topic of this discussion is the fact that governments consistently lie and can not be trusted, let’s take a quick look at possible reasons why the baht has remained strong against the dollar despite the dollar’s strength against other currencies. The sale of Shin Corp. brought the Shinawatra family 73 billion Baht. My guess is that the Shinawatra family is in the process of greatly diversifying this huge windfall of Baht into other currencies, including Euros and possibly Yen. A weaker Baht would translate into losses of millions of baht in foreign currency exchange transactions for the Shinawatra family.

In the past, Bank of Thailand Governor MR Pridiyathorn Devakula said the baht’s appreciation against the dollar was primarily caused by the inflow of foreign capital for the purchase of Shin shares. He said, “There was a broker [associated with the Shin deal] selling [foreign] currency in the market. I just learned about it today, but I don’t know how much money is involved. I don’t know how many shares they’re going to sell.” If foreign capital inflow to purchase one company’s shares can create significant price movements in a nation’s foreign currency to cause the creation and destruction of billions of dollars nationwide, then something is seriously flawed with this nation’s currency policy. Can you imagine if the sale of General Electric in the United States to a European company caused Americans to lose trillions of U.S. dollars? What is really flawed is the lack of any truth in that above comment. And that’s putting it politely. So the central Bank of Thailand is going to let a broker’s actions dictate the strength or weakness of the Thai Baht? That statement is absolute deceptive junk.

More likely what has kept the Baht high against the dollar is private powerful interests being put ahead of a nation’s interests. These actions happens all over the world, and though I can’t prove it, most likely the fact that the Shinawatra family’s windfall of 73 billion Baht has had an enormous amount of influence on why the Baht has remained strong against the U.S. dollar though most every other major Asian currency has weakened against the dollar. So though people living in Thailand might have thought I was wrong on my call about a bullish run in the dollar continuing, I have been right on this call in virtually all countries but Thailand. And most likely due to the shenanigans of influential politicians.

But that’s not my major topic here, so let’s move on. The point is that governments lie and that their “official” statements cannot be trusted as a major influential component in your investment decisions. I will continue to make significant amounts of money for my clients by not listening to any government anywhere in the world. In a previous e-zine, I discussed how the U.S. government consistently lies about the rate of inflation in their country by removing the energy and food pricing components from their inflation component. The rate of inflation they use in “official” statistics applies more to an imaginary person that never eats and uses energy as opposed to a real live breathing human being. If you go to this website, http://www.fms.treas.gov/fr/index.html , you will find a report entitled the U.S. Financial Report. Inside this report, there are many statistics that contradict the U.S. government’s officially reported statistic of a national debt level of USD $8 trillion.

In fact one of the smarter U.S. Congressman serving the U.S. government today, Jim Cooper, a former Rhodes scholar and Harvard Law School graduate, estimates that the true U.S. deficit using the government’s own numbers is $49 trillion, about six times greater than their “official” statistic. At 6 inches per dollar, 5,280 feet per mile and about 234,000 miles from the earth to the moon, this amount, in one dollar bills placed side by side, would be enough to go from earth to the moon and back over 40 times! Though I haven’t read Mr. Cooper’s full report, knowing the U.S. government’s penchant for distorting and lying about major economic stastics, and assuming that Mr. Cooper, as a former Harvard Law School graduate and Rhodes scholar, is an intelligent man, I think it would safe to assume that the U.S. government is again lying about a major economic statistic.

If we examine the numbers stated in President’s Budget’ issued by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the much lesser known Financial Report of the United States issued by the Department of Treasury, we will find differences even in the U.S. stated deficit for FY2005. The OMB claims that FY2005 national debt grew by $319 billion but the U.S. Department of Treasury states in their report that FY2005 national debt grew by $760 billion. Without getting into boring accounting details, the difference of $441 billion between these two figures is the difference between cash and accrual accounting. Quite simply, the $319 billion is the deficit between the actual cash spent by government agencies and the cash collected from individual taxpayers. The $760 billion deficit is the difference between cash spent and future obligations accrued by the U.S. government during FY 2005 and the cash collected from individual taxpayers.

So back to my point about how I knew with a fair amount of confidence that the price of gold was going to drop shortly and the U.S. dollar was going to rally is because I ignore government and central bank lies and perform my own research to root out the truth in making my investment decisions for myself and my clients. I don’t think, but I KNOW that governments all over the world lie about economic conditions all the time. I have researched many more numbers than just the ones described within this article, and I discover dramatic discrepencies all the time between official federal and bank reports that describe the same economic figure.

I believe that if you truly want to earn significant returns and dramatically outperform the large investment houses, that to dig deep down the rabbit hole to tease apart lies from reality is not an optional choice, but 100% necessary. Put another way that the average investor is sure to understand, when I stopped using any information contained in “official” economic reports released by world governments several years back, and instead used freely publicly available information to come to my own conclusions, this was when I really started earning phenomenal returns.

Very interesting points, J.S. In martial arts, we often use deception or feints to draw the attacker in so we can parry with a deadly strike. But why all the deception on behalf of governments towards its citizens, J.S.? I understand why corporations would to it. But isn’t the role of government to protect the health of a nation? Or are you saying that corporations have invaded government to such a degree that the government no longer serves the interests of the people but rather the interest of big corporations? Until next time. Maholo, KAEHO.