In Part 3 of my critical thinking and education series, I am posting a video from Charlotte Iserbyt, the Senior Policy Advisor in the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI), U.S. Department of Education, during the tenure of Ronald Reagan, and author of “The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America”, as the substantive portion of this commentary.  Ms. Iserbyt’s father and grandfather were members of the Skull & Bones secret society and as Senior Policy Advisor of the OERI, Ms. Iserbty had access to an abundance of secretive minutes from past educational policy meetings that revealed the true intention of the Rockefeller and Carnegie funded global education system. Whether or not you believe everything Ms. Iserbyt has to say, her pedigree makes the interview a definite worthwhile listen despite its length and is sure to make you reconsider your views about institutional academics.

We, at SmartKnowledgeU, have long stated that business school curricula promotes and instills zero knowledge critical to understanding how capital markets truly operate and how to create wealth.  For this reason, we have often stated that “Delaying a College Education in this Economy is the Right Choice.” If we were responsible for building a nation’s business educational curricula, here are some of the topics we would consider mandatory, none of which are taught in business schools today, and all of which are part of the SmartKnowledgeU Wealth Secrets educational online course:

A History Of Central Banks and Their Motives
How Money is Created, How the Monetary System Operates, & The True Definition of Money
The Real Definition of Inflation
How to Properly Interpret “Official” Government Key Economic Indicators
How to Interpret Publicly Released Corporate Earnings Statements
How Bankers Have Shaped World Thought Through Academia & Media
Understanding Fractional Reserve Banking
Understanding Austrian v Keynesian Economics
The Real Story Behind the Efficient Market Hypothesis & Diversification Strategies
The Monetary History & Investment Value of Silver
The Monetary History & Investment Value of Gold

You may find Part I & Part II of this SmartKnowledgeU series on Education & Critical Thinking below:

Part I: Lack of Critical Thinking is Key to the Corrupt Status Quo Maintaining Their Power

Part II: The Hidden Dark Agenda of Public Education

About the author: JS Kim is the Founder and Chief Investment Strategist for SmartKnowledgeU, a fiercely independent investment research and consulting firm with a mission of helping to stomp out Wall Street fraud and to reinstitute sound monetary principles and sound money worldwide. We sincerely appreciate all of you that continue to “like” our Facebook fan page and “follow us” on Twitter. Through these mediums, we will keep all of you aware of some major campaigns we will be launching in early 2012 to raise global awareness of monetary truth and our proposed solutions to institute sound money that CAN serve as a viable and implementable solution to the financial ills heaped upon us by the global banking cartel.

Republishing Rights: The above may be reprinted on other sites as long as all text and links remain intact, INCLUDING the “about the author” text. Sites that republish our articles and do not abide by these rules will be asked to remove the article for copyright infringement violation.

Yesterday I released an article, “Lack of Critical Thinking is Key to the Corrupt Status Quo Maintaining Their Power”, on my blog and at ZeroHedge and it generated a lot of comments including those that stated they don’t believe in conspiracies or the existence of a “big bad wolf” that deliberately is “out to get us”. However, for those of us familiar with the works of John Taylor Gatto, we know that there are literally mountains of evidence that indict former Presidents and corporate businessmen with deliberately steering the global education system towards the singular mission of producing obedient factory workers to serve the corporate industrialists during the Industrial Revolution. Furthermore, there are mountains of evidence, direct from the horse’s mouth, that their continued mission for the academic system today is to produce obedient servants to the State and to kill any individualism and critical thinking that may lead to an awakened state among the masses that would challenge the moral authority of those in power.

John Taylor Gatto, one of the most well-known and outspoken critics of the public education system, quit his 30-year teaching career in 1991, because confined within the system, Gatto believe he was hurting children more than helping them. He stated the following as his reason for leaving institutional academia:

“I feel ashamed that so many of us cannot imagine a better way to do things than locking children up all day in cells instead of letting them grow up knowing their families, mingling with the world, assuming real obligations, striving to be independent and self-reliant and free…I don’t mean to be inflammatory, but it’s as if government schooling made people dumber, not brighter; made families weaker, not stronger…the training field for these grotesque human qualities is the classroom. Schools train individuals to respond as a mass. Boys and girls are drilled in being bored, frightened, envious, emotionally needy, and generally incomplete. A successful mass production economy requires such a clientele. A small business, small farm economy like that of the Amish requires individual competence, thoughtfulness, compassion, and universal participation; our own requires a managed mass of leveled, spiritless, anxious, family-less, friendless, godless, and obedient people who believe the difference between Cheers and Seinfeld is a subject worth arguing about. An executive director of the National Education Association announced that his organization expected ‘to accomplish by education what dictators in Europe are seeking to do by compulsion and force.’ You can’t get much clearer than that. WWII drove the project underground, but hardly retarded its momentum. Following cessation of global hostilities, school became a major domestic battleground for the scientific rationalization of social affairs through compulsory indoctrination.”

I precisely stated in my article yesterday, “Refuse to accept something as fact just because an authority figure, whether a professor, the Vatican, or politician, told you to believe it, and automatically many amongst the sheep will accuse one of pandering to conspiracy theories, even when one can present many facts that support one’s opposition view much more strongly than the widely accepted view” in the hopes that people would read this line and digest historical facts before dismissing the main points of my article. Yet, from reading the comments posted below my article yesterday, it seems as though some may have dismissed my argument before even examining the facts.

Mr. O.A. Nelson, retired educator, recounted a December 1928 meeting in which he spoke to the American Association for the Advancement of Science. His recollection of the meeting below addresses some of the comments posted on my article from yesterday regarding the importance of sciences.

“We were 13 at the meeting. Two things caused Dr. Ziegler, who was Chairman of the Educational Committee of the Council on Foreign Relations, to ask me to attend…my talk on the teaching of functional physics in high school, and the fact that I was a member of Progressive Educators of America, which was nothing but a Communist front. I thought the word ‘progressive’ meant progress for better schools. Eleven of those attending the meeting were leaders in education. Drs. John Dewey and Edward Thorndike, from Columbia University, were there, and the others were of equal rank. I checked later and found that all were paid members of the Community Party of Russia. I was classified as a member of the Party, but I did not know it at the time. The sole work of the group was to destroy our schools! we spent one hour and forty-five minutes discussing the so-called ‘Modern Math.’ At one point I objected because there was too much memory work, and math is reasoning; not memory. Dr. Ziegler turned to me and said, ‘Nelson, wake up! That is what we want… a math that the pupils cannot apply to life situations when they get out of school!’ That math was not introduced until much later, as those present thought it was too radical a change. A milder course by Dr. Brechner was substituted but it was also worthless, as far as understanding math was concerned. The radical change was introduced in 1952. It was the one we are using now. So, if pupils come out of high school now, not knowing any math, don’t blame them. The results are supposed to be worthless.”

While I agree that sciences are critical for learning and also critical for the development of reasoning skills, Dr. Ziegler’s comments reveal that men like him, men that helped shape our academic system, clearly did not want sciences to be taught in a manner that would improve critical thinking and reasoning skills, but instead, in a manner that was completely inapplicable to real life situations. It is not a coincidence that after I graduated from university, I often would comment to my friends, “You know what, there is not one thing I learned in school that I apply in life today.” In fact, the inapplicability of schooling in life reaches far back from even my university days. When I was 14, I had already completed two years of advanced calculus, and believed in a typical teenager bout of self-delusion, that I was some sort of mathematical genius. But in reality, outside of the praise of my teachers, what was the point of my mathematical “progress” back then? Yes, it enabled me to score a perfect score on the math portion of the SATs and then gain entrance into an Ivy League university. However, in retrospect and in complete absurdity, I cannot think of one instance since my educational career ended that I have ever applied, in real life, anything that I learned during my years of mathematical schooling. It is as if the purpose of my institutional mathematical training was solely to enable me to gain a higher score on a standardized test, a ridiculous purpose if there ever was one. And today? Because all I did was memorize advanced mathematical formulas back then, I have long since forgotten them all, and nothing is applicable to my life today just as Dr. Ziegler of the CFR had desired.

In great irony, it was the very inapplicability of education that allowed me to excel through the system. The advantage I held over all my peers was that I had a photographic memory. I recall even as early as the 6th grade when I could read a passage about the Civil War a single time and remember exactly how many soldiers died from each side in each battle and on what specific date in history. Because the academic system stressed rote memory and regurgitation without any true learning, my photographic memory served me exceedingly well and my teachers labeled me as “gifted” and heaped extra attention upon me, even though I never really began to learn how to critically think until I read books on my own outside of the academic system and after I had already graduated from university.

But what if sciences were taught in a manner that developed critical thinking and reasoning skills? How much easier today would it be today to actually convince people of the fact that the global monetary and Central Banking system is a criminal, immoral system deliberately designed by corporate thieves to harm people instead of help people? How much easier would it be to convince people of State run false flag propaganda such as the bogus enemy engagement of the USS Maddox in the Gulf of Tonkin at the time it happened instead of 40 years later? How much easier would it be to convince people that the two-party system in America is just an illusion to con people into believing they have a choice when no real choice is ever offered to people in elections? Of course, the answer is that it would be infinitely easier. The lack of developed critical thinking skills in the institutional academic system is also the reason why people continue to falsely believe the propaganda of banker shills that a gold standard helped cause the Great Depression and why it is so difficult to convince Westerners of the value of gold and silver but infinitely easier to convince Asians of the value of gold and silver. The stark dichotomy is due simply to the fact that people believe what the State tells them to believe. Logic, reasoning, and critical thinking are all meals on the menu of threats to the power of the status quo. And this is why the goal of academic education by the elites is to strip away reasoning skills from subjects such as math that inherently rely on reasoning. This is also the reason why institutional academia will never change and that those that wish for it to change find that they cannot work within the system but have to leave it. My friend, Alyssa Gonzales, decided that operating outside of the system and founding her own school,Los Feliz Charter School for the Arts, was the best solution to be able to encourage, instead of suppress, the development of critical thinking and reasoning skills of young children. If you live in Los Angeles, please visit her school and support Ms. Gonzales’s efforts, described at their website as the following:

“In contrast to curriculum found in a traditional public school setting which stresses teaching and learning in the areas that can be most easily assessed by standardized testing measures, arts-integrated curriculum develops the whole child: kinesthetic, musical, spatial, interpersonal, intrapersonal and natural intelligences. At LFCSA, we challenge children to construct their own meaning from complex ideas and concepts. Acknowledging that students learn and demonstrate what they know in a variety of ways, our instruction allows children to see, hear, and express according to their individual learning styles.”

In support of spreading awareness of the true intent of corporate businessmen that have “donated” billions of dollars to shape the curricula of the most “prestigious” schools in the world today, here is a video titled “The Dark Secrets of Public Education”. Certainly, this video deserves a thousand times more views than the current 9,900 views it has thus far received. If you would like for our communities to be more thoughtful, more open-minded, and more co-operative in the future instead of obedient to the powers that be, please send this article and video to everyone you know so we can foster a more honest and open debate about the State’s goals of institutional academia. Thank you.

About the author: JS Kim is the Founder and Chief Investment Strategist for SmartKnowledgeU, a fiercely independent investment research and consulting firm with a mission of helping to stomp out Wall Street fraud and to reinstitute sound monetary principles and sound money worldwide. We sincerely appreciate all of you that continue to “like” our Facebook fan page and “follow us” on Twitter. Through these mediums, we will keep all of you aware of some major campaigns we will be launching in early 2012 to raise global awareness of monetary truth and our proposed solutions to institute sound money that CAN serve as a viable and implementable solution to the financial ills heaped upon us by the global banking cartel.

Republishing Rights: The above may be reprinted on other sites as long as all text and links remain intact, INCLUDING the “about the author” text. Sites that republish our articles and do not abide by these rules will be asked to remove the article for copyright infringement violation.

(1) 45% of the students showed no gains in learning the first two years of college, and
(2) 36% gained little learning even after four years of college level courses

even though the average GPA was 3.2 among the sample of students.

Richard Arum, the author of the study, discovered that “students [were] able to navigate through [college] quite well with little effort”. Furthermore, he discovered that many faculty were focused on their own research with a disdain for teaching many of the introductory freshmen and sophomore level courses that colleges required of them. The gains in learning were ascertained by tests that measured critical thinking, complex reasoning and writing skills in a standardized manner.

Of course, other factors outside of the enormous failures of the US educational system are also responsible for the failures of students to gain any critical thinking or complex reasoning skills during their years spent inside institutional academics. There is a plethora of mass entertainment designed to prevent young adults from noticing that bankers are ruining their lives and ignoring all the topics that affect their quality of life while keeping them fixated on events that will eventually have no consequence on their quality of life. The Jersey Shore, American Idol, the Bachelor, an 18-game NFL season that will extend the nation’s fixation on football for several more weeks…shall I continue? Arum’s study found that students spend less time studying today and more time socializing as compared to their peers from a decade ago and blamed students for deliberately seeking easy courses full of fluff for their lack of learning in addition to professors and universities that valued research and money more than teaching. Of course, the question still persists of why do universities even waste students’ time by offering students courses full of fluff? And if students really go to college to socialize more than they study, do they really need to waste $30,000 of their parent’s money every year for the privilege of playing Xbox in their dorm rooms with their friends?

Though the value derived from institutional academia seems to be little, this hasn’t prevented the owners of these institutions from raising tuition prices by 29% over the last four years from $84,940 to $109,172 for a four-year private university degree (Source: the National Inflation Association). In fact, if people were to view institutional academia as the money-making business it really is, one would likely conclude that in terms of value for money spent, this business would rank as one of the greatest all time-scams next to the fractional reserve banking system.

Supporters of the institutional academic system frequently quote studies that illustrate that a job seeker without a college degree will earn substantially less than someone that has one, or that someone without a high school diploma has a much greater probability of ending up inside the US penal system than someone that possesses one. Yet, these arguments and conclusions are highly flawed. The control group in these studies that end up having lower paying jobs or that end up in prison are those that choose not to pursue education at all. But what if such studies used a control group of home-schooled children or children that attended “alternate” institutions of education where they really learned how money is created and how banking really works instead of the utter lies that are taught in business school classrooms today? I would fathom to think that this control group would test much higher in terms of critical thinking, complex reasoning AND illustrate higher earnings potential after graduation with the benefit of having little or no debt as compared to their institutionalized peers (those that attended traditional academic institutions).

Last year I wrote a series entitled the “Astounding Failure of the US Education System” regarding the very above topics. You may find these three articles here along with one by the National Inflation Association.

October 21, 2010: The Astounding Failure of the US Educational System

October 28, 2010: The Astounding Failure of the US Educational System, Part 2

October 29, 2010: The Astounding Failure of the US Educational System, Part 3 (And Why Entrepreneurship Can Save America)

January 12, 2011: College Bubble Set to Burst in 2011

In those above articles, though I concentrated on the failures of the US education system from a students’ perspective, I also discussed the astounding successes of the US education system from the perspective of the very small elite communities that control governments and countries around the world. The purpose of the educational system as it has been constructed and implemented in developed countries by elite financiers (aka bankers), has never been to foster learning and to promote critical thinking. It has always been to implement factory like conditions in schools that kills creativity, intelligence, and critical thinking while promoting apathy from boredom, a sheep-herd like mentality that acquiesces to authority and an inability to discern reality from fiction. Today, after revelations of fraud and theft time and time again as the modus operandi, and not the exception, at the largest banks in the world, disdain for bankers is at an all time high and very well-deserved. Still, many Westerners still cannot shake themselves from the banker created propaganda about gold being a “barbarous relic” even as world leaders in Tunisia and Egypt abscond with massive amounts of gold after their leadership created economic breakdown in their respective countries.

If one were to study the history of Western education, one would realize that bankers and the richest financiers of the time comprised the very small, elite, select group that devised the modern academic system today. If you believe that bankers never had the community’s best interests at heart for the past several decades when they sold their customers zero-down, sub-prime, and negative interest mortgages that they knew their customers would eventually default upon, asset backed commercial paper (ABCP) and other derivative products that eventually would lose 50% or more of its value, and stocks in a market they were rigging and front-running every day with their HFT algorithmic models, then why in the world would you believe that this very same group of morally bankrupt people would devise an academic system that was designed to actually educate people?

There are far too many people in this world that do not critically think as the “Academically Adrift” study proved. After being bombarded with mantras like “Stay in School” and “Education is Good”, young adults internalize these mantras and actually believe that they are being educated. Of course, education is good, just not the type that you will receive in traditional halls of institutional academia. While the modern educational system still performs a fine job in increasing the aptitude and skill level of students that train for certain specialized vocations such as medicine, engineering, and architecture, I believe that a very large percentage of the modern educational system achieves nothing more than wasting four years of a student’s life and increasing the indebtedness of these students’ parents or the indebtedness of the students themselves.  This is not a conclusion that I draw from speculation but one that I draw from the annals of history. In the early 1900’s, the Board of Education’s Director of Charity, Frederick Gates, stated:

“In our dream, we have limitless resources, and the people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hand. The present educational conventions fade from our minds; and, unhampered by tradition, we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive folk. We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning or science.”

Who founded the Board of Education? Frederick Gates, and wait for it…John D. Rockefeller of the Rockefeller banking family. If you really think that an educational system that was molded by the top banking families in the world will freely provide to you of their own beneficence the secrets they utilize to gain enormous amounts of wealth in the classrooms of colleges and universities, then go ahead and waste the more than USD $200,000 it will now cost you in tuition (including room and board) at Harvard University for that four year degree. Certainly a student does not need to spend USD $200,000+ of his parent’s money just for the access that a prestigious degree provides. Thus, the real question becomes, is the ACTUAL KNOWLEDGE gained through the achievement of that degree worth USD $200,000?  A young adult would be far better prepared to handle the fast approaching tumultuous years of this global monetary crisis by skipping school, and investing the full amount that would have been wasted on tuition in gold and silver. After four years, as long as the student invested during any of the inevitable dips in the price of gold and silver that occur every year, such a student would literally have a mountain of money to start his or her own business, even fail in his or her first venture, start a second business, and succeed – and all with zero debt. Thus the answer to the above question is definitively NO.

And during those four years, I strongly advocate the pursuit of education, just NOT INSTITUTIONAL EDUCATION. Go to the library and read books. Go online and take some courses for a fraction of the price of a university education. Make appointments with business leaders and find a mentor and learn from them. Find an apprenticeship somewhere. All this will be exponentially more invaluable to your earning potential and critical thinking skills than becoming indoctrinated with worthless knowledge that the elite wish to impart to you.

Go to “prestigious” universities like Princeton University and you may be so unfortunate as to have Paul Krugman fill your brains with lies like he stated on September 2, 2009:“There was nothing in the prevailing [economic] models suggesting the possibility of the kind of collapse that happened last year.” If that was the case, then how did I predicted the 2008 economic collapse well before it happened? And how did a handful of others around the world predict the 2008 crisis before it happened as well? And how do I know that another more serious crisis is a near certainty that will likely kick off sometime in 2011 and extend well into 2013, 2014, and 2015? Paul Krugman failed to see the elephant in the room that existed in 2006 and that rampaged through the room in 2008 because he subscribes to the economic conceptual nonsense that the world’s “top” universities inject into the minds of young men and women. Men like Krugman, have as their purpose, to prevent young adults from becoming “philosophers or men [and women] of learning or science.” Those that were able to realize that most of the economic concepts taught in business schools is utter nonsense were able to spot the elephant in the room quite clearly.

If you really believe that the purpose of institutional academics is to increase critical thinking, then why do SO MANY PEOPLE TODAY still believe that the global economy is recovering and that US banks are fine when the majority of them would be declared bankrupt today but for fake FASB reporting measures that allow them to misreport and lie about their earnings? If the majority of people today were critical thinkers, the US consumer confidence index would be at about 10.5 instead of at an eight-month high of 60.6. This only proves that our “modern” educational system has killed critical thinking.

When I attended the University of Pennsylvania, one of my roommates was attending the Wharton School of Business. After the first day of class, he excitedly informed me that his professor told all students on the first day of class that they would not receive less than a grade of “B” as long as they just showed up to every class. In fact, my roommate laughed as he told me this story, probably in disbelief of the easiest “B” he would earn in his life. What is always among the top two concerns of college students that desire high-paying jobs after graduation? GPA, right? If one can be assured of a “B” by doing nothing more than showing up to class and sleeping through every class, what significance does a GPA have? It is ironic that employers continue to seek candidates with prestigious degrees with high GPAs because this nonsense feeds into the desires of young adults to attend prestigious universities and to seek the achievement of high GPAs, all at the cost of true learning, the true development of critical thinking skills and a massive mountain of debt that bankers are quite happy you acquired. But as long as this cycle of non-learning continues, the elite and their creation of the modern educational system have achieved their goals.

In the NIA article I referenced above, the National Inflation Association stated that in the near future, there will be “a boom in online education where Americans take all of their courses over the Internet from the comfort of their own home at a fraction of the cost of traditional college.” I can only hope that this prediction becomes a reality as young adults in the Western world will be bankrupted if they continue committing themselves to massive loads of debt in pursuit of a prestigious degree that will provide little to zero knowledge about how to successfully deal with the coming second phase of this global monetary crisis. If you are not attending school to learn a very specialized skill, then I believe 100% that attending institutional academia will set you back in your ability to succeed over the next five years of this global monetary crisis. Even if you need the structure of a traditional academic institution because you are entering a specialized profession such as medicine or engineering, I still believe that delaying your education for the next two to four years and using the money that would have been spent towards tuition, books, and room and board to invest in gold and silver and/or buy a farm and plant crops is a far smarter decision that will result in your ability to lead a decent life after graduation. Central Bankers have deliberately ensured that food and energy prices will continue to soar so at a minimum, so spending your time wisely instead of attending school will ensure that you can eat over the next several years when Darwin’s Survival of the Fittest theory will be on display for the entire world to see.  From my personal experience, I can state one thing unequivocally and without reservation: Everything I learned about succeeding in business, I learned outside of college and graduate programs.

To read an extended version of this article posted on ZeroHedge, click here.

About the author: JS Kim is the Founder and Managing Director of SmartKnowledgeU, a fiercely independent research, education and consulting company that offers online education courses that teach the truth that traditional business schools refuse to teach their students.

Republishing rights: The above article may be reprinted on other sites as long as all text and links remain intact in their entirety, including the above author acknowledgment.

Normally I don’t read all the comments on the articles I post due to time constraints. I usually skim them from time to time but I normally don’t have the time to read all the comments that people post on every video I upload and every article I post. I just skim comments to see if people disagree or agree with what I’m saying and also to gain more insight from people more knowledgeable than myself about certain topics about which I have written. In fact, having people call me an idiot, misinformed, and bitter is validating. Why? If my articles don’t provoke at least a handful of haters then that means I’ve probably stopped telling the truth and my views have gone mainstream. So I truly don’t mind the hateful comments that call me a moron, embarrassing, and misinformed, because these types of comments inform me that I am accomplishing what I have set out to do in trying to open up people’s minds to an alternate viewpoint. Furthermore, I’m used to the hate by now.

Ever since I started my investment blog, The Underground Investor, in 2006, I’ve been receiving negative and occasionally sometimes even hateful comments. Back then, people called me crazy for repeatedly and passionately advocating the virtues of gold. In fact, quite strangely, I’ve been called by those that vehemently disagree with me, both a left-wing liberal and a far-right neocon nut; a left-wing liberal for discussing gold and silver-price suppression schemes years ago and for drawing attention to the plight of the starving, and a far-right neocon for labeling President Obama as a banker puppet the minute he selected his Wall Street cabinet. The funny thing is that I consider myself neither left or right-wing but an independent that always takes the side of truth and justice.

There’s nothing ever wrong with others vehemently disagreeing with me. I’ve been wrong in the past, and I’ll be wrong again in the future. I only wish that those that express their opposition in the form of name-calling would make more of an effort to provide constructive criticism that actually contributes to the discourse rather than just accusing me of being angry, foolish, or short-sighted. I don’t know why some believe that happiness and truth have to reside at opposite ends of the spectrum. It seems, these days, that if you tell the truth, people assume you must be some disenchanted, bitter, furious, A Time to Kill – Samuel L. Jackson-type of character that screams “Yeah, they deserve to die and I hope they burn in hell!” I guess this type of
stereotyping makes it easier to dismiss the truth.

The late Tupac Shakur once said that when the public started criticizing him very harshly for the stories he told through his lyrics, he became self-conscious and considered self-censoring himself, thinking as he wrote his lyrics, “I can’t write that. That’s too harsh” or that he would start deleting lyrics, afraid that they might offend someone. However, he quickly killed the notion of self-censoring his lyrics. Why? He said when he did so, he would suffer from writer’s block and that the sincerity and honesty of his song-writing disappeared. Thus, he concluded, for better or for worse, that he would no longer worry about how people would react to his lyrics but that he would just right whatever flowed from his heart. I tend to think that I blog in the same manner. At times, I make comments that some people will criticize for being too blunt and too harsh, but I never write with the intent of being offensive to anyone. As they say, the truth ain’t always pretty.

In any event, I want to acknowledge my supporters as well and those that provide thoughtful commentary. In fact, I want to address a commenter on my previous article that stated that parents must take responsibility for the education of their children and that education begins at home. I 100% agree with this statement. However, I believe that in today’s modern society, this responsibility has become increasingly difficult to take on for parents as opposed to within the societal structure that existed 40 to 50 years ago. If any of you have read any of the books about the history of US education not only by John Taylor Gatto but also by Howard Zinn, Joel Spring et al, you will discover that there was a concerted effort by the men that funded the US educational system to end the era of the housewife that stayed at home and cared for the children while the husband was at work. How did they achieve this? By debasing and severely devaluing money so that a one-income family would no longer be adequate and by ensuring that both parents would have to enter the workforce, thus drastically decreasing the time parents had to spend with their children. Thus, the goal of the men that funded the educational system was to deploy more influence over children’s thought processes than even their own parents by engaging children in the educational system more hours a day than they would be engaged collectively by both of their parents.

As I usually write the articles I post when I have spare moments in the wee hours of the morning, I often have one of my administrators skim comments of my articles within the first 24-hours after posting just to ensure I didn’t make any egregious factual errors in my frequent haste to write new articles. Regarding the article that comprised the first part of this three part series, The Astounding Failure of the US Educational System, my admin was genuinely upset about some of the negative comments posted in the article (God bless her heart). She came to me and said, “I can’t believe some of the negative comments on that article. That was probably the least self-serving article you have ever written. You shouldjust stop writing these articles if people are going to attack you for writing them.”

Upon hearing how upset my admin was, I told her to hold on and to allow me a couple of days to read through all the comments. When I finished reading all the comments, I went back to my admin and told her, “I read all the comments. There were 280 comments at the time I read them, and maybe only a dozen that were really negative. Look, if one young adult understands what I write and saves himself or herself a life of debt, then that article is worth 3,000 negative comments. And people can say whatever they want to say. It’s a free world and I don’t have a problem with that. Furthermore,” I told her, “I know that my blogs have achieved what I want them to achieve. There’s a young kid in Seoul that has written me many times that I think is brilliant because he already understands how the matrix works. He’s told me that because of my articles, he’s postponing the traditional educational route and going to strike up an attempt at becoming an entrepreneur first. I know he’s going to be successful because he’s passionate and he’s very intelligent in the unconventional, non-academic sense.”

“Okay, then,” she replied. “But you need to really write an article that lets people know how accurate your predictions have been. If people knew how accurate your predictions have been for five years running and that it has nothing to do with your academic career, then maybe they’ll understand your rejection of traditional business academia to a much greater degree. Maybe then, they would get it.”

So without further ado, I’m ironically going to follow up what my admin considered “the least self-serving” article I’ve ever written with what I believe will be the most self-serving article I’ve ever written. Even so, my embarrassingly shameless self-promotion in this article still has a very important point, and that is to illustrate that higher education is not the Holy Grail to knowledge, intelligence, and entrepreneurial success. On April 23, 2008, when I was not yet writing for Zero Hedge, I wrote an article on my blog titled “Will US Markets Crash Now or Later?” that was printed on Seeking Alpha (see the link). If you visit the link and read the comments, many commenters called me naïve and foolish for writing such an article, even though, 18 business days after I wrote this article, the US S&P 500 started a massive 54% decline from the 1440 level to the 666 level that any normal person would define as a crash. So why did people automatically discredit me and believe the “authorities” that preached the economy was fine and that US markets had begun a new bull market in earnest?

Before I answer that question, let’s consider a very small sampling from a much wider list of predictions that I have provided (1) on my blog; or (2) to my clients over the past five years that have come true. The below are exact quotes that have only been extracted and condensed from much more comprehensive bulletins sent to my clients.

My Past Predictions

June 2006: “The dollar has to weaken not a little, but considerably, for the massive U.S. trade deficit to close considerably. And a stronger U.S. dollar of course makes this less likely to happen (a stronger dollar means that U.S. goods become more expensive for foreign countries, so U.S. exports would be likely to decline). However, because American individuals are burdened with debt as well, Bernanke’s hands are tied as to the number of times he can continue to raise interest rates without causing an economic recession. In the early 2000’s many American’s overextended their credit, taking advantage of historically low interest rates to buy huge houses with low mortgage payments that were really over their budget.”

Outcome: The sub-prime mortgage fiasco and currency fiasco that we warned about became a reality. Within just one year, the U.S. dollar lost 15% against the NZ dollar, 5% against the Sing, and 16% against the Thai baht not to mention huge losses against major currencies like the Euro and Pound Sterling.

August 16, 2006: “Over seven and a half years, if your portfolio has tracked the S&P 500’s index as some 97% of U.S. professional money managers aim to do, you have about the same amount of money you had seven and a half years ago – only with the rapid devaluation of the dollar, your same amount of dollars buys much less today, so in all actuality, tracking the index has lost you money. That’s a whole lot of waiting for a whole lot of nothing. And that’s the good news. The bad news is, as of 2006, the U.S. stock market’s performance will likely become even worse for the rest of this decade.”

Outcome: When I made this prediction, every single one of my former colleagues in the investment industry with whom I discussed this prediction laughed (and some quite literally, laughed out loud) at this prediction. In fact I remember one investment industry professional stating that the probability of the S&P 500 closing lower than its August 16th, 2006 level at the end of the decade was ZERO, even if one took the effects of inflation into account. Today, at the near end of this decade, four years after
my prediction, the nominal S&P 500 level stands at 1,183.08, down from its nominal level of 1,295.43 on August 16, 2006. Factor in real inflation rates of 10% to 13% between 2006 and 2008 and more recent inflation rates of 8% to 9% (as calculated by shadowstats.com) and the REAL losses in the S&P 500 in the past four years become quite substantial.

September 6, 2007: “Increased volatility in stock markets will occur as $370 billion in sub prime mortgages re-set to higher rates, starting with $50 billion in September and $30 billion every month thereafter for the next 18 months to 2 years. Triple-digit losses in the Dow during single day trading sessions will become commonplace…2007, and possibly into very early 2008, will present the last opportunity to buy gold at less than $700 an ounce, but not without some volatility in between….We will see a strong rebound in the U.S. markets after a deepening and scary correction. The rebound will be manufactured again by the U.S. Treasury with the help of the U.S. Federal Reserve.”

Outcome: Although it’s hard to think back this far, on September 6, 2007, gold was trading at $685 an ounce. I presented the above opinions at the Pan Pacific Hotel in Asia at an investment forum, after which several investment professionals approached me and told me they believed that gold was too expensive and that they would wait until gold dropped below $600 an ounce again before they would consider buying. These professionals may still be waiting to buy. Gold rose from the $680 level in September to over $1,000 a troy ounce by March of 2008. The London PM fix never closed below $700 an ounce since then, even when the Fed Reserve engineered its now infamous attack against gold prices in October of 2008. Triple-digit losses in the DJIA happened almost daily or several times a week to open January of 2008 just as I had predicted.

November 16, 2007: “With financial and housing stocks slumping and big corrections in many major global stock markets, much of the easy money shorting markets has already been made, though more will come in the future. I think mutual fund companies are the next best bet for now. As the crisis widens, I expect outflows from mutual funds to occur. There have been some funds whose share price has defied current trends and those would be the best bet, Janus Capital among them (JNS). Janus has a trailing 12-month P/E of more than 40 versus the 29 of its peers. But there are others as well.”

Outcome: During the next four months, Janus Capital’s share price plummeted more than 38%.

January 2008: “We can be assured that in 2008, that the destruction of monetary value in both Europe and the United States will occur…when smart investors finally realize that no fiat currency is safe, I believe that investors (at least the savvy one) will begin to dump the Euro and the Pound as well.”

Outcome: In August and October of 2008, both the Euro and Pound plummeted in value, both losing about 25% in value in a very short time period.

July 22, 2008: “The global financial crisis is not under control and becoming better as [bankers and gov’t officials] continually publicly state. My downside target for Fannie Mae right now would be $4 a share.”

Outcome: Though U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson stated that “[Fannie Mae’s] regulator has made clear that they are adequately capitalized,” Fannie Mae dropped from $19 a share at the time I made my statement to near nothing (turned out my $4 a share prediction was too optimistic!). On September 10, 2007, the US Gov’t nationalized Fannie Mae.

March 11, 2008: “If you are an “old-school” person that believes in the sacredness of and credibility of banking institutions and view Money Market Funds as “safe”, I urge you to re-assess that belief right now. Many Short-Term MMFs invest heavily in Asset Backed Commercial Paper (ABCPs), many of which are backed by these very shady Mortgage Backed Securities.  If the MBS’s go belly up, so does the ABCP, and your MMF, which everyone believes can never lose value, WILL lose value.”

Outcome: It took a little bit longer for this prediction to come to fruition, which of course, opened the doors for people to state I was crazy once again. On September 16, 2008, one of the first and largest US money market funds put a seven-day freeze
on investor redemptions after the net asset value of its shares fell below $1. Shortly thereafter, two more money market funds also announced their inability to redeem the fund at a net asset value of $1.

March 6, 2009: I stated to my Platinum clients “now is a good time” to add MORE to physical silver holdings. I further emphasized that this was a long-term play and that while “it is always impossible to determine the timeframe for exactly when these great leaps higher in price will occur, [this] is always why I seek what I feel are low-risk, high-reward entry prices.”

Outcome: Since then, silver has risen 78% from $13.12 an ounce to $23.31 an ounce.

May 31, 2009: I stated to my clients “It’s time to be very cautious with your precious metal stocks”. I explained the reasons why I believed danger was imminent (reasons that have to do with gold price suppression schemes) and why the time was ripe to apply tight trailing stop losses on PM stocks.

Outcome: The AMEX gold bugs index (HUI) plummeted from 398.06 on the first day after I issued the bulletin to 318.27 in the next 15 trading days, a 20% rapid fall.

Now let’s look at some of the predictions of my more “educated”, more advanced-degree-having colleagues in the industry.

PhD Ben Bernanke and Paul Krugman’s Predictions

July 2005: Bernanke stated there was no housing bubble in the US: “We’ve got a growing economy, jobs, incomes. We’ve got very low mortgage rates. We’ve got demographics supporting housing growth.”

In an interview in which Bernanke was informed of a premise that a housing bubble existed, Bernanke replied: “I guess I don’t buy your premise. It’s a pretty unlikely possibility. We’ve never had a decline in house prices on a nationwide basis.”

July 2007: Bernanke stated “[Home] sales should ultimately be supported by growth in income and employment, as well as by mortgage rates that, despite the recent increase, remain fairly low relative to historical norms…The global economy continues to be strong, supported by solid economic growth abroad. US exports should expand further in coming quarters.”

Outcome: Just two quarters later after Bernanke’s first declaration that the housing market would continue to grow, US Median Housing prices (real prices) started a non-stop slide for the next 3 years, falling more than 35%.

November 2006: Bernanke stated, “The motor vehicles sector may already be showing signs of strengthening.”

Outcome: By September, 2008, Chrysler, GM and Ford asked for $50 billion to pay for health care expenses and avoid bankruptcy and ensuing layoffs. By December, President Bush had agreed to an emergency bailout of $17.4 billion to be distributed by the next administration. Chrysler filed for bankruptcy in May, 2009 and GM followed suite, one month later. (Source: Reuters)

February 2007: Bernanke stated, “We expect moderate growth going forward.”

Outcome: In 2007, the revised US GDP was 1.9%, the slowest rate in 5 years. In 2008, the revised US GDP was 0.0%. The REAL GDP rates (versus the officially reported gov’t numbers) were much less, but that’s a story for a different day.

July 2008: Krugman stated that Fannie Mae (FNM) and Freddie Mac (FRE) “didn’t do any subprime lending, because they can’t: the definition of a subprime loan is precisely a loan that doesn’t meet the requirement, imposed by law, that Fannie and Freddie buy only mortgages issued to borrowers who made substantial down payments and carefully documented their income.”

Reality: From1997-2007 FNM and FRE acquired a total of $2.2 trillion in subprime loans and private securities backed by subprime loans. FNM and FRE’s failure to classify these loans as subprime is a matter of semantics. FNM acquired loans that carried a FICO score of less than 660 (a regulatory definition of subprime) though it failed to classify these loans as subprime. (Source: Edward Pinto).

March 20, 2009: Krugman stated, “The Fed is, however, creating a new liability: the monetary base it creates to buy these bonds. In effect, it’s printing $1 trillion of money, and using those funds to buy bonds. Is this inflationary? We hope so!…I’m not complaining; I think quantitative easing (it’s really qualitative easing, but I give up on trying to fix the terminology) is the right way to go.”

Reality: Desiring and “hoping” for significant inflation amounts to the endorsement of theft. Doing so signals a desire to plunder the wealth of every citizen, to cripple the elderly that rely on savings to live, and to punish the welfare of younger generations that choose to save now.

Higher Education Often Encourages Arrogance, Not Intelligence

In regard to my above predictions, though I found little to no use for any of the information I acquired from my MBA studies in making any of the economic predictions I posted above, the act of writing my thesis for my Master in Public Affairs was truly useful to these predictions. My topic for my MPAff thesis was media and information filters and censorship. Learning how information is censored as it passes through the various distribution channels of the mass media provided the impetus for my research into the sources and motives for all information that government agencies and bankers release in the media about capital markets. Understanding this process has undoubtedly helped me to understand how bankers move the prices of capital markets up and down. However, I must emphasize that I gained this understanding not inside the academic system, but on my own, outside of, and in spite of, the academic system. I threw out my Keynesian economics background and studied Austrian economics. I studied the money trails among Central Banks, governments and corporations to understand how price behavior really worked in capital markets and discounted the supply/demand dynamics I had been taught. I researched the origins behind all mountain of statistics that move capital markets and asked questions about the origins of these statistics and the motives of the men that created them. Had I not even completed a college degree, I have zero
doubt that I would still be able to make the same predictions I made above with the same degree of accuracy. In fact, only when I shed my elitist feelings about attending an Ivy League school and believing that nothing I learned at this institution could possibly be false, and only when I literally de-programmed my brain from the entire body of business academic knowledge I had accumulated within institutional academia did I finally start making economic predictions that consistently came true, year after year.

So how can those with advanced PhDs from the most prestigious universities in America be so wrong? I think the answer is fairly simple. Because of the admiration society bestows upon those with advanced degrees, those with advanced degrees often develop a level of inflexibility in their thinking that I associate with arrogance. For example, I often got in heated debates with prospects that were scientists years ago when I was still working for Wall Street. Because scientists are so used to working with models based upon statistics, many (not all, but many) of them insisted on studying and understanding the meaning of every single portfolio statistic, including beta coefficients, the r-squared statistics, and so on. When I used to tell these prospects that obsessing over these statistics would not lead to any better returns because the reality of markets is controlled by many factors extraneous to these statistics, they still insisted on understanding every little statistic. Thus, I countered with a different strategy.

I discovered that when I informed these scientists that these Wall Street risk models were developed by PhDs in economics from Wharton, they ceased harping about portfolio statistics and in a matter of seconds, amazingly acquired an immediate faith
in the validity of these asset allocation models. This is exactly the bunch of rubbish and rigidity that I associate with higher learning at times. All I had to do to convince prospects about the validity of a model they were unsure was valid one minute ago was to tell them that a PhD from a prestigious university developed the model. This, despite the fact that at no point and time did I ever encounter a single risk asset allocation model developed by a Wharton or Harvard PhD that included gold and/or silver. Not one single time for one single day for one single hour. Because I left the world of Wall Street in 2005, some will rationalize the decision of these PhDs to exclude gold and silver as an asset class from even their lowest risk asset allocation models as acceptable because of their belief that the global monetary crisis had not yet started.

This reason is pure rubbish. By the end of 2005, gold was already five years into its bull run, and silver, three years. Both PMs had already embarked on their bull runs because of the cracks in the monetary system that had already begun to show. As soon as I left the corporate investment firm and started my own firm, from DAY ONE of our launch in 2006, we informed our clients that a monetary crisis was under way and that one of the lowest-risk, highest-reward assets they could purchase was gold. Of course I would never have realized this if I continued believing the rubbish I had learned in my Economics 101 textbook that inflation is caused by rising prices.

So are all PhDs, MDs, JDs, MBAs, etc. stupid and are all teachers in the institutional academic system useless? Of course not. There are brilliant MDs, PhDs, JDs, et al, as well as brilliant individual teachers. Still, the expanded base of information of those in possession of advanced degree does not make them automatically more intelligent than anyone else. Furthermore, the system as a whole still produces, from advanced degree programs, many more rigid thinkers than free thinkers, and many more horrible teachers than wonderful teachers. Too many people still foolishly equate the attainment of advanced degrees with intelligence. But perhaps this is an indictment of exactly what is wrong with our educational system today – if we can’t even agree on something as simple as the definition of intelligence, we’re destined to never acquire any of it.

Stay tuned for the third and final article of this series on education, Why Entrepreneurialism, Not Climbing the Corporate Ladder, Will Save the Global Economy. I’ll be posting the final part of this series very soon.

About the Author: JS Kim is the Founder & Managing Director of SmartKnowledgeU, a fiercely independent investment research & consulting firm dedicated to helping Main Street thrive and succeed despite the fraud of Wall Street.

Republishing Rights. The above article may be reprinted on other sites as long as all text and links, including the author acknowledgment above remain intact.

“What you know you can’t explain, but you feel it. You’ve felt it your entire life. There’s something wrong with the world. You don’t know what it is, but it’s there, like a splinter in you mind, driving you mad” – Morpheus

By the time you finish reading this article, you may discover that you have many more questions than answers. When I decided to write this article, my objective was not to provide answers but rather to demonstrate to you that many presupposed airtight beliefs may actually be littered with holes. Rather than to provide answers that may bring curiosity to a halt with the end of this article, my objective is to have inserted many more splinters in your mind that drive you to seek more answers, to question the beliefs you already question, and to validate the truths you already know.

Today, nearly everyone seems to realize that all major stock markets in the world are Casinos rigged by the banker/government cartel for their own benefit only. Among investors, there is a remarkably higher level of awareness today of the rampant fraud inherent in the world’s leading stock markets than even that which existed a mere five years ago. Only those that are absolutely rigid in their thinking despite the presentation of a mountain of credible facts that support the contention of massive fraud being perpetrated in stock markets remain among the few unable to comprehend the truth. Albert Einstein once stated that unthinking respect for authority is the enemy of truth. Too many of society’s widespread beliefs today were borne out of unthinking respect for authority, and because of this, many of us have been living the great majority of our lives in absolute darkness. Several weeks ago, I addressed this very topic in a 6-part video series that explores this very Empire of Illusion.

I’m going to preface this article by stating that this article contains largely my opinions though I present supporting facts when possible. This article also contains many deductions, extrapolations and opinions, though the deductions are derived from logic and the extrapolations, from common sense. In this article, I aim to demonstrate that many universal truths accepted as indisputable today by society-at-large, with origins in the banking/government cartel, are 100% entirely impossible to prove with facts. Furthermore, within the context of this article, I will demonstrate that my opinions often present a stronger argument for truth than the “truths” presented by the banking/government/media complex that have been so lazily accepted by millions of people around the world.

Admittedly, my articles often contain very passionate views and strong opinions. However, passion has never been the twin soul of inflexibility. I have changed my views on many different topics over the course of my lifetime as the direct result of the accumulation of more knowledge and the greater gifts of deeper wisdom. I would hope that any intelligent man or woman would always stand ready to adjust, alter, modify and/or eventually change one’s belief system if he or she encounters compelling new information that conflicts with or sheds news perspectives on previous beliefs, even if these previous beliefs were very tightly held beliefs. When the weight of evidence shifts the balance of judgment towards the probabilities of an opposition view as likely holding the correct belief, any intelligent person should give serious consideration to altering one’s present belief to the assumption of the opposition view, even if it is a minority one, and even if it is an unpopular one.

I don’t ask any of you to believe what I say in this essay just because I state it. That would be the apex of hypocrisy in addition to being antithetical to my belief system regarding how all men and women should arrive at his or her own truth. Instead, I invite all of you to perform your own research and form your own conclusions about the hypotheses I state in this article. Furthermore, I encourage all of you never to accept a belief just because your neighbor, your brother, your sister, your mother, your father, or your co-worker holds this belief to be true. I encourage each and every one of you to challenge beliefs you hold if you hold these beliefs merely for the simple and indefensible reason that this belief has persisted among society for hundreds of years. It is neither the level of our education nor the institution that educated us that makes any of us intelligent. Rather it is the willingness to challenge our present belief system, our openness to analyzing new knowledge, and our ability to critically think for ourselves independent of authority that makes us intelligent.

The Roman Catholic Church taught for centuries a geocentric view of the world that the sun revolved around the earth. During the centuries they taught this lie as indisputable and infallible, anyone that dared challenge this belief risked imprisonment or even death. Copernicus, a scientist that lived from 1473 to 1543, was the first well-known historical figure to challenge the Church with the idea of a heliocentric universe in which the earth revolved around the sun, though he was clearly not the first person to advance this truth. To avoid persecution by the Church, Copernicus never published the heliocentric theories contained in his book, “On the Revolution of the Celestial Spheres”, when he was alive. After Copernicus’s death, Galileo took up further advancement of the theory of the heliocentric universe. For daring to challenge the Church’s authority, Galileo was declared guilty of being “vehemently suspect of heresy” and was imprisoned from 1633 until his death in 1642. It was not until 1758, more than 200 years after the death of Copernicus, that the Church finally revoked a general ban on all books that advocated a helicocentric view of the universe. However, even after lifting its ban, the Church only allowed public access to heavily censored versions of Galileo’s Dialogue and Copernicus’s De Revolutionibus. Surely if one widely accepted lie could persist as the truth among the masses for centuries as a result of those in power suppressing fact, then many similar instances are possible.

“Banking and fraud were born into our global word as Siamese brothers, inseparable since birth. And just like Siamese brothers, if ever separated, they would likely die together as well.”

Today, one may assume that banking and financial fraud is more prevalent today than in decades past given the greater visibility of this subject matter provided by the independent media and to some extent, the mainstream media. Persistent whispers of high-tech fraud in the form of High Frequency Trading programs that control the daily behavior of stock markets with SkyNet-like efficiency and headlines of covert deals made under the shadowy cover of dark pools reach the public’s ears and eyes, and the public readily believes that the levels of banking and stock market fraud are much greater today than they had been in the past. But the public fails to recognize the yin and yang of fraud. The depths of the economic lows today are only possible because the summits of the economic highs of yesterday were also built on fraud. The truth is, banking and stock market fraud was rampant all through the Bush Sr. and prosperous bull market Clinton years as well. The only difference was that because the fraud of this time was busy creating warm, giggly feelings of false prosperity, the masses believed that these times were honest times. Even Arthur Levitt, the Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission from 1993-2001, was smart enough to know that this was not the case. By the time the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 was “officially” repealed in 1999 through a collaborative effort between Citigroup CEO Sandy Weill and Fed Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, Mr. Levitt himself stated that the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act was nothing more than a mere formality. The reality of the banking and investment environment at this point, Mr. Levitt stated, was that the US Federal Reserve, at the behest and incessant lobbying of its member banks, had already “almost totally eroded” ALL of the protections of Glass-Steagall.

So do not mistake the illusion that is often sold to the masses as reality as actually being reality. Goldman Sachs did not just become the Rolling Stone, Matt Taibbi-bequeathed “great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity” this past decade. Goldman Sachs has been doing what Goldman Sachs does since it was founded in 1869. The notorious Italian-American gangster Lucky Luciano, after learning of the corruption of Wall Street, allegedly stated his remorse over his choice to become a gangster versus a bankster after spending a day on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange in the 1940s. Before being deported to Italy due to crimes he committed as a gangster, Luciano allegedly confessed, “ I suddenly realized I had joined the wrong mob.”

Banking and fraud were born into our global word as Siamese brothers, inseparable since birth. And just like Siamese brothers, if ever separated, they would likely die together as well. Below is just a very small sampling of the voluminous amounts of articles which I’ve written regarding the fraudulent state of markets over the past five years, including some very accurate predictions that were based upon an understanding of this fraud.

“A Market Rally in Monopoly Money”, September 9, 2009

“Can Rising Stock Markets Serve as a Sign of a Crashing Economy?” June 10, 2009

“The Biggest Stock Market Scam of the Century, the Nuclear Option, is Being Unleashed – But Will it Succeed?” March 23, 2009

“Recent Anomalies in U.S. Stock Markets – Proof of Free Market Intervention?” May 11, 2008

“Will US Markets Crash Now or Later?” April 23, 2008

“The Coming Dollar Crisis & Subsequent Gold Boom”, January 31, 2008

“Is Hyperinflation Coming to the US, Time to Stock Up on Gold”, November 7, 2007

“The Short-Term May be Rosy, But Beware the Financial Crisis that is Building Steam”, March 21, 2007

“The Peak Investment Crisis”, September 9, 2006

Today a great number of people, from retail investors to investment advisers, understand that although stock prices still move on earnings statements, cash flow, forward projections, etc., none of these parameters have any credibility anymore as tools in projecting future stock price behavior. Corporations across the globe have used the allowances of massive accounting changes in their respective countries to create fantasy-land numbers that basically shelter our eyes from the truth while feeding our brains the same output from the same banker/government propaganda program – that all is okay in Wonderland.

In fact, even the great vampire squid establishment known as Goldman Sachs shockingly admitted that the great propaganda machine has been showing signs of breaking down. This month, Goldman Sachs’s David Kostin, finally admitted what not only I, but what a handful of others have been saying for many years now: “The economy is NOT the market.”

“Every business school in the world should have a class titled The Empire of Illusion 101 so business students can learn that economic theory and economic reality are creatures that reside at the opposite side of the spectrum and whose paths infrequently cross.”

For this reason, I’m going to take you down a new rabbit hole that remains relatively unexplored – the rabbit hole of the commodity world. I don’t believe that there is a single global commodity today that is sold at a free market price or even remotely determined by the free market forces of supply and demand as every economics professor from here to Timbuktu teaches in their Economics 101 class. I believe that Bankers rig the prices of all global commodities and control prices for their benefit only to the detriment of the wealth of their nations’ citizens. The price of all commodities, not just the ones most important to bankers such as precious metals, currencies, energy resources, and food, is always determined by their perceived values and not their real values.

Just reference this video, where I provide a foolproof test for people so they can understand that diamonds are just one of thousands of commodities today sold on its perceived value versus its real value that would be determined by the free market forces of supply and demand. Though the well-documented 1870 discovery of thousands of pounds of diamonds at the Orange River in South Africa stripped the diamond of its status as a precious stone, millions of people worldwide today still willingly pay a price for diamonds that reflect their erroneous belief that it is a precious stone. Just as the diamond cartel sets false artificial prices for diamonds in the world market, bankers set false prices for many of the world’s most actively traded commodities.

In every business school around the world, business professors constantly teach a new batch of naïve, impressionable young adults the Empire of Illusion. They teach students that prices of commodities are set by the free market principles of supply and demand. Practically all of us have seen the supply and demand chart that is the staple of Economics 101 classes around the world. Supply goes up, demand is constant, price falls. Supply diminishes, demand is constant, price increases. Supply is constant, demand falls, price falls. Supply is constant, demand rises, price increases. And eventually supply and demand forces will meet at a theoretical point of price equilibrium. These are all complete myths, for in the real world, bankers create artificial supply and artificial demand numbers to set real prices. Therefore, supply and demand forces, while affecting the price of commodities, do not impose the largest effect upon the final price points of commodities.

Every business school in the world should have a class titled The Empire of Illusion 101 so business students can learn that economic theory and economic reality are creatures that reside at the opposite side of the spectrum and whose paths infrequently cross. Perhaps a decent analogy to help people understand the illusion of free markets is the illusion of the political world. In the United States, The Powers That Be (TPTB) designed the two-party Republican/Democratic system to give people the illusion of hope that accompanies change and the illusion that they have some type of choice. In reality, bankers control both parties, as is clearly evidenced by the fact that there has been zero change in fiscal policy in the United States for the last 22 years during which George Bush. Sr, William Jefferson Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Hussein Obama all served as Presidents. Since the political system is corrupt and the same small elite group of bankers control the President regardless of his political affiliation, the process of elections is nothing more than a charade that only ensures that TPTB have a different face to present to the public that they can sell as one that represents change, if the previous President had been unpopular with the people.

Capital markets are exactly the same. The bankers have taught the world that free markets exist to present people with the illusory belief that the people just may have some control in setting prices in capital markets. However, in the end, the reality in the political markets and the commodity markets is exactly the same. Though people imagine they are in control, bankers manipulate all scenarios in these markets just as a four-star general would command his absolutely obedient foot soldiers in a military theater operation. It’s a damn shame that millions of wide-eyed students grow up believing the utter nonsense of supply-demand determinants and free markets that they learn in business schools all around the world. Bankers, through fostering massive speculation in futures markets as well as releasing potentially fake supply numbers, play an enormous role in dictating the perceived value of every commodity on earth. This is what economic professors should be teaching their students in Economics 101, but they don’t and they never will.

As I continue to uncover the mechanisms of the commodity matrix in this article, I believe this article to be one of the most important I have written in the last five years. I believe this article to be more important than even any of the dozens of articles I’ve posted on my blog that provided very specific guidance about specific sectors. Why? The answer is simple. If this article can open people’s eyes so they can experience the déjà vu of spotting the black cat in the matrix and therefore learn to see the matrix itself, ultimately the ability to see the moving parts of the big picture will allow people to connect the dots on their own and help them far more during the second phase of this global monetary crisis than any specific, short-term guidance.

Since there are literally thousands of commodities to choose from, I have chosen to discuss the Empire of Illusion with five commodities only: Gold, Oil, Food, Money and Education. Let’s start with gold.

Gold – Price Suppression Schemes Galore?

By official IMF reports, the United States is supposedly the largest holder of gold reserves in the world, at 8,133 tonnes. I say “supposedly”, because the Federal Reserve has not allowed the US’s reported gold reserves to be confirmed by an independent third-party audit since January 20, 1953. Thus, nobody really knows how much physical gold the US owns, except those that blindly accept the government’s word as the truth. There are many additional reasons why the official US gold reserve tonnage remains in doubt besides the lack of confirmation of the IMF reported number in more than 58 years. During the 58-year period since the last audit, leaked US Central Bank documents uncovered by GATA have confirmed numerous speculations that the Federal Reserve has dumped US gold reserves in the form of Central Bank swaps and/or through lease arrangements with global bullion banks. Just how much of this gold may have disappeared from US bank vaults to achieve the suppression of gold prices is anyone’s guess as is the amount of these gold swaps and leases that have actually been returned to the US.

Of course, the true numbers of US gold reserves are not the only numbers brought into question. It seems that all Central Bankers, no matter what their race, have a genetic propensity to lie. In April, 2009, the Chinese Central Bank announced in April, 2009 that it’s gold reserves were really twice its prior “officially reported number” for the past five years. And in June 2010, Saudi Arabia followed suit when it announced that, due to an “accounting error” its gold reserves had, like China, more than doubled overnight. If anyone believes that China is really disclosing the true amount of their gold reserves to the world today, then let me dispel your naïvete with a quote by former US Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Alan Blinder: “The last duty of a central banker is to tell the public the truth.“ So it’s not just China and the US’s gold reserves that I question, but I question the validity of gold reserve numbers from every key Central Bank in the world. Ask the Bundesbank of Germany if they can prove they have custody of their reserves in their own country and you will likely not receive a straight answer to this relatively simple question either.

And what about the demand side of the equation? At a CFTC hearing in April, 2010, in a well-covered story, Jeffrey Christian of CPM Group confirmed that what is loosely called the London “physical market” trades up to a hundred times more paper gold than there is physical metal supply to back those trades. So even demand numbers in the gold market have been proven to have little integrity. The not-so-invisible hand of banker fraud is clearly at play in heavily determining the price of gold. Finally, many of the same price suppression schemes that bankers have utilized against gold have also been utilized against silver, though I am not going to broach that subject here for lack of space and time.

Oil – Is it Even a Scarce Resource?

With oil, I believe that the banking/oil cartel utilizes the same perceived and artificially low supply scam as the diamond cartel to effectively create deliberate wild fluctuations in oil prices that they can capitalize on to amass great fortunes. Over my investment career, I have written both articles declaring my belief for the peak oil theory as well as articles in which I rejected the peak oil theory after becoming privy to additional knowledge of which I had previously been unaware. I stand today, after further research, firmly no longer a believer in the peak oil theory. Yes, I am aware of the reported figures about dwindling production in Mexico’s largest oilfield, Cantarell. Yes I am aware of rapidly dwindling oil production numbers for global oil production numbers as well. Yes, I am aware that the predominant number of people in this world believes in the Peak Oil Theory (which alone is reason for me to start questioning it). And yes, I am aware that many will think that it is ludicrous to challenge the Peak Oil Theory. But should the concept of challenging a “universal truth” that we have been told, even instructed to believe, ever be considered ludicrous? For that is all I am suggesting here. I will present facts of an alternative theory regarding the possible abundance of oil that merit consideration and I merely challenge you to consider the possibility that it could be true.

When there is a belief as widely accepted as the Peak Oil Theory, one must always question the source of this belief. In addition to my blogs over the past five years that have explored the fact that virtually every key economic indicator statistic produced by governments are blatantly false, there are many others that have also done a fine job of establishing this fact (just perform a quick perusal of the website ZeroHedge if you are ignorant of this fact). Why do governments produce economic lies? Because they have a better chance of maintaining power if they can successfully con the public into believing the “rosy” economic lies they produce. Why does the diamond cartel produce phony diamond supply statistics every year to mercilessly jack up diamond prices on unthinking, lovestruck men every year? Because producing phony supply statistics allows the diamond cartel to charge artificially high prices for diamond. In other words, the producers of these lies are also the greatest beneficiaries of these lies. So who benefits from the production of phony oil supply statistics, higher oil prices and a fear of peak oil? The oil cartel and bankers.

Understanding the shadowy world of bankers requires one to think like a detective in pursuit of a criminal. Identify a motive for why supply numbers for various key commodities may have been falsely manufactured and you will find the likely culprit behind these manufactured numbers. I have already illustrated to you earlier in this article that bankers have lied to the world about the fundamentals of stock markets and the real determinants of stock price behavior. I have also illustrated to you that bankers have lied to the world about the real determinants of gold and silver prices. I will reveal later, a quote from a Vice Chairman of a Central Bank that reveals his belief that it is not just the prerogative, but also the duty of a Central Banker, to lie to the public. So knowing this, why would anyone believe that bankers would tell us the truth about the real determinants of the price of a barrel of oil?

When oil incredibly soared from $51.20 on January 17, 2007 to $147.20 a barrel in 7 months, and then incredibly crashed to $35.35 a barrel just 5 months later, and then incredibly soared to $81.19 a barrel just 10 months later, I challenge anyone to produce figures of changing supply and demand determinants than can logically explain these massive swings in price over such a condensed period of time. Of course, the textbook media answer provided for these wild swings in price was that enormous global demand caused oil to soar in 2007, a crashing economy in 2008 caused a nosedive in 2008, and economic recovery caused soaring prices once again in 2010. I contend that the real answer is that Wall Street firms engineer massive manipulation of oil futures market contracts to create a significant portion of these wild swings, if not the majority portion of these wild swings, even though “official studies” only attribute a nominal amount, perhaps 10% to 30%, of these wild fluctuations to speculation. Global oil prices, like global gold prices, are completely determined by a paper futures market today. So it is not the producers of oil that cause oil to rollercoaster from $50 to $150 to $35 to $80, and it is not speculators that produce the wild swings in supply and demand estimates that create these rollercoaster rides. Rather it is the bankers that control these paper markets and that control the supply and demand numbers that create these wild swings in price.

When I first started discussing enormous fraud in the pricing behavior of gold markets six years ago, people used to regularly ridicule me for my beliefs, especially whenever I publicly blogged about my beliefs. Back then, my beliefs were grounded in my own research as well as the very substantial mountain of evidence provided by GATA that had not yet made its way into the general consciousness of the mainstream public. Today, public beliefs about gold price suppression schemes have evolved 180 degrees. Now deniers of gold price suppression schemes, not I, are the ones viewed as naïve. I believe the same realizations will eventually happen with all commodities, not just gold. Does anyone else but myself notice that when oil prices are skyrocketing, peak oil theories are widely discussed as the instigator for higher oil prices. However, during times when bankers decide to move the price of oil much lower, why does peak oil almost never factor into the discussions of oil prices?

“Proposing that we know for certain that the process to form oil takes hundreds of thousands or millions of years seems far more absurd to me than the alternate theory of abiotic oil, where scientific evidence supports that the carbon found in the building blocks of oil are not formed from the decomposition of fossilized remains.”

F. William Engdahl, an economic researcher, historian and freelance journalist for some 35 years, states,

“The whole peak oil theory rests on the idea that oil is a fossil fuel, which is accepted as religious dogma by almost every geology department in most of the world. The problem is, oil is not a fossil fuel, it’s not from the detritus of dead dinosaurs or from algae from under the ocean or bird fossils or whatever fossils you want to take. It’s not a biological product.”

If this is true, then what is oil? There is another theory about oil’s origins that very few people are aware of called the abiotic theory of oil that actually has a lot more scientific credibility than the much more speculative “fossil fuel” theory of oil. Mr. Giora Proskurowski, a scientist with the School of Oceanography at the University of Washington in Seattle, recently headed a study that produced some very interesting conclusions. Oil, Proskurowski stated, may actually be a natural product that the Earth’s mantle constantly generates and whose source may be living organisms as small as plankton rather than decaying ancient forests and dead dinosaurs. The advocates of this alternative abiotic theory of oil production believe that oil seeps up through bedrock cracks and is deposited, rather than originated, in sedimentary rock as the fossil fuel theory of oil claims.

As proof of the increasing credibility of the abiotic theory of oil production, scientists point to the Lost City, a hypothermal field 2,100 feet below sea level located along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge at the center of the Atlantic Ocean noted for its strange 90 to 200 foot white towers that bubble from its vents. In 2003 and 2005, Mr. Proskurowski and his team descended in a submarine to collect samples of the liquid that bubbles from the Lost City sea vents. Upon analysis, Proskurowski and his team discovered that the liquid that contained natural gas and the building blocks for oil, hydrocarbons. However, the hydrocarbons from the Lost City sea vents contained carbon-13 isotopes. They found no evidence of carbon-12, the carbon isotope typically associated with biological origin. Proskurowski and his team postulated that the hydrocarbons found in the Lost City sea vents were formed from the mantle of the Earth through an abiotic process of Fischer-Tropsh (FTT) reactions, and not from biological material that had settled on the ocean floor.

During the German Nazi regime, Nazi scientists developed FTT equations that could produce synthetic oil from coal and contributed to the world’s understanding of an abiotic process of oil production. Proskurowski also discovered that the methane in Lost City contained no carbon-14, which also lent enormous credence to the scientists’ hypothesis that the carbon source for the hydrocarbons of the Lost City vents came from within the earth’s mantle, far away from organisms that might have had contact with the global carbon cycle at the surface. In other words, the Lost City vents contained organic material formed by inorganic processes, the exact antithesis of how the fossil fuel theory postulates that oil is formed. Before Proskurowski’s study, Cornell University physicist Thomas Gold had argued in his book “The Deep Hot Biosphere: The Myth of Fossil Fuels” that micro-organisms found in oil were possibly produced in the mantle of the earth.

Again, as I stated before, before one can ever trust information that is so widely accepted, one has to find its source. The problem today is that the vast majority of people are just too lazy to ever question the source even though when one finds the source, the source often has multiple ulterior motives for producing its information. As a consequence of this intelligence inertia, the public-at-large has become extremely prone to blindly and very dangerously accepting any information as fact as long as it is printed in a “credible newspaper” or it is spoken on a “credible television news station.” In 1956, M. King Hubbert coined the term “peak oil”. In 1975 Hubbert himself predicted a worldwide crisis in oil by 1999 or 2000. Even though this did not occur, this did not discredit the peak oil theory whatsoever.

Of course, the question that immediately surfaces is this. Why would the banking cartel want you to believe that the oil is a fossil fuel if it is not? Here is the answer. If bankers could successfully sell the world the idea that oil was a byproduct of a process that involved hundreds of thousands or millions of years of anaerobic decomposition of buried dead organisms, then it would become infinitely easier to sell the world on the idea of peak oil and manipulate the price of oil. It is extremely difficult to manipulate the price of a commodity if everyone believes that its supply is abundant. So step back for a second, take a deep breath and let’s consider the logical arguments for/against the fossil fuel theory of oil production and for/against the abiotic theory of oil production. Is not a theory that proposes that the process to form oil would take not decades, not centuries, but MILLIONS of years through the decomposition of fossilized remains a theory that resides on the furthest edge of the spectrum of speculation? After all, testing this theory would take millions of years for this is how long this theory’s process presupposes is the necessary timetable for the formation of oil. Proposing that we know for certain that the process to form oil takes hundreds of thousands or millions of years seems far more absurd to me than the alternate theory of abiotic oil, where scientific evidence supports that the carbon found in the building blocks of oil are not formed from the decomposition of fossilized remains.

In regard to oil, F. William Engdahl continues, “It’s a controlled market — this is not a free market! Energy is probably the most controlled market in the world, food being second.” However, with this point, I respectfully disagree with Mr. Engdahl. In my opinion, money is the most controlled market in the world, with food and energy tied for second.

When considering the possibility that the banking cartel had created a lie about the real oil supply and was responsible for a potentially fake fossil fuel theory, my thoughts inevitably led me to questions regarding the US – Iraqi war. In fact, the US military’s invention in Iraq and the Bush administration’s invention of WMDs to justify military intervention almost seem to validate the Peak Oil theory. After all, why would America need to capture strategic control over the Middle East’s oil supply if oil was not a scarce resource but replenished quite abundantly by an abiotic process? I struggled with this question until I asked myself the following two questions, two questions that should always be asked before accepting the validity of any theory propagated by an authoritative source:

(1) Who is the source of this information?, and

(2) If the information is a lie, who benefits from the lie?

To question (1), most people already know that the Peak Oil Theory originated with M. King Hubbert. But can most people answer the question, “Who was M. King Hubbert?” M. King Hubbert was a geoscientist who worked at the Shell research lab in Houston, Texas. His biography provided by Wikipedia, is as follows:

“M.King Hubbert worked as an assistant geologist for the Amerada Petroleum Company for two years while pursuing his Ph.D., additionally teaching geophysics at Columbia University. He also served as a senior analyst at the Board of Economic Warfare. He joined the Shell Oil Company in 1943, retiring from that firm in 1964. After he retired from Shell, he became a senior research geophysicist for the United States Geological Survey until his retirement in 1976. He also held positions as a professor of geology and geophysics at Stanford University from 1963 to 1968, and as a professor at UC Berkeley from 1973 to 1976.”

A few months back, I produced a video series about the principles of ideological subversion that emphasized the essential role of education in the widespread acceptance of false ideas into the mainstream belief system. Hubbert certainly fits the bill here as he was granted numerous opportunities to spread his Peak Oil theories to the masses through his professorships at the top US universities of Columbia, Stanford and UC Berkeley. After Hubbert’s death, Matt Simmons, a Houston oil banker and decades-long friend of former US Vice President Dick Cheney, was able to leverage Hubbert’s peak oil theory to crystallize a global belief in the limited global supply of oil before he eventually turned whistleblower on British Petroleum during the BP Gulf of Mexico oil disaster, and was discredited himself before dying under questionable circumstances in 2010. Simmons was George W. Bush’s energy adviser, a member of the National Petroleum Council and also a member of the secretive, powerful Council on Foreign Relations.

Thus we’ve established that the oil industry and bankers were the source of the Peak Oil theory as well as the impetus behind propelling the theory into prominent global attention. Now let’s turn our attention to question (2). Who benefited the most from the Peak Oil theory and the War in Iraq? Again, the top beneficiaries of the Peak Oil theory and the War in Iraq were, and still are, oil producers and bankers. Why are bankers at the top of the list of beneficiaries of the war, you ask? It’s a simple equation. The US Federal Reserve creates money to fund the war and lends it to the American government. The American government in turn must pay interest on the money they borrow from the Central Bank to fund the war. The greater the war appropriations, the greater the profits are for bankers.

As I’ve only researched the abiotic theory a little over a month in preparation for this article, I am certainly not an expert on this theory. However, I think I’ve raised enough questions that should raise reasonable doubts regarding the possibility that bankers may just be providing false oil supply numbers to manipulate the oil price for personal gain. With that thought in mind, let’s turn our attention to agriculture.

Food & Money – The Two Commodities Bankers Use to Induce Subservience in the Masses

The price of the world’s food staples, such as rice, corn, wheat and soybeans have recently been soaring. In April, 2010, the media reported that “As rice prices soar toward $1,000 a ton, governments across Asia brace for possible unrest as the region’s staple food becomes less affordable and less available.” Paul Risley, the United Nations World Food Program’s spokesman in Asia, says some of the 28 million “poorest of the poor” it feeds could go hungry because the agency cannot afford to buy many of the world’s staple grains.

Meanwhile, corn, the staple food of Central America and Mexico, also has soared in price in recent weeks. The US Department of Agriculture, in releasing its monthly crop report last Friday, revised its forecast for the US corn crop downwards by 12.6 million tonnes, or 3.9 per cent, to 321.7 million tonnes. According to CBH Group’s wheat trading manager, Chris Brown, the USDA’s revision was the largest monthly revision for corn crop supplies ever. “Never before has the USDA moved the corn yield down by such an amount,” Mr. Brown said. In addition, prices of other staple crops such as wheat and soybeans have also been rising with tremendous rapidity in recent weeks.

On May 6, 2009, I wrote an article on my blog, the Underground Investor, called “Hundreds of Millions May Face Starvation in the next 5-10 Years” to call attention to the ongoing plans of Central Bankers all around the world to severely devalue global currencies.

Back then, I wrote:

“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.”

Though I wrote the above 18 months ago, that article was wholly ignored by all the media sources that regularly reprint my articles. Today, the situation I warned of above, is in essence what is beginning to materialize. Though mass starvation has not yet happened today, it could become a serious problem in the next five years at the rate Central Banks are devaluing the world’s major currencies. Today, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations estimates that 925 million people go hungry every single day. This alarming number is essentially the number of people on the fringe of survival and a fair estimate of the at-risk-for-starvation population if prices of the world’s basic food staples continue to soar. Today, the major media has just started to label the global monetary crisis as a “currency war” with recently dated origins. But that simply is not reality. The currency war between East and West has been occurring behind the scenes for a minimum of several years now. Nothing as severe as a global monetary crisis develops overnight and the world’s leading economies have been aware of this currency crisis for many years now.

So what is the real cause of soaring food prices? In Thailand, the leading rice-exporting country in the world, Korbsook Iamsuri, the secretary-general of the country’s rice exporters association, stated, “Don’t forget that we grow twice as much as we need domestically, that’s why we have so much to export. And all of a sudden everything’s gone, so I do not believe that that is the actual situation we’re facing.” Mr. Iamsuri blamed much of the soaring rice prices on farmers’ hoarding behavior which he stated was creating an artificial supply squeeze. Yes, it is not just the banker’s fault that food prices are rising so rapidly. Drought, flooding, inclement weather conditions, greed-driven hoarding behavior of traders and producers, rising input prices spurred by rising oil prices, and crop failure in some regions of the world all contribute to rising food prices. However, some of these other determinants of rising food prices, like rising oil prices and hoarding behavior, are also indirectly attributable to banking monetary policies. But what about the supply numbers of staple crops? Are they trustworthy? Since we have learned that government supply statistics regarding the commodities of gold and oil are 100% unverifiable, should we blindly believe the “official” government statistics regarding crop supplies? I suggest that we should not.

Remember the two questions that we should always ask before accepting the validity of any theory propagated by an authoritative source:

(1) Who is the source of this information?, and

(2) If the information is a lie, who benefits from the lie

Today, global rice stocks have been reported at a two-decade low. And corn prices surged again on Friday after a new report from the United States Agriculture Department claimed that this year’s corn crop would be smaller than expected. December corn futures on the Chicago Board of Trade reached a high of $5.84 a bushel in trading on Tuesday, October 12, an astonishing 70% increase in prices from the $3.43 a bushel price just 3 ½ months earlier. Even though CBH Group’s wheat trading manager, Chris Brown, made the USDA forecast for the coming corn harvest sound catastrophic – “Never before has the USDA moved the corn yield down by such an amount” – the REALITY of that soundbite designed to move corn prices higher, is much less dramatic. The USDA forecast, on a year-over-year basis, only forecast a 3% drop from the prior-year record level corn harvest. Thus, the true question becomes, “How can a projected 3% drop from a RECORD crop yield produce a 70% spike in the price of corn futures in about 100 days?

Again, if we look at the sources of food supply numbers, we uncover some answers. Industry trade organizations release the overwhelming number of estimates that warn of short or waning food supplies. And with all other commodities we’ve discussed in this article, if these supply estimates are untruthful, the industry and bankers are the parties that benefit from these numbers the most. I am not saying unequivocally that numbers regarding the world’s food supplies are lies, but I am saying that we need to consider this possibility. Many of the numbers that move the prices of the world’s agricultural commodities are based upon estimates of future yields, that when realized, reveal the estimates to be wildly incorrect. Furthermore, not only do bankers profit tremendously from volatile price swings in the world’s leading crops through participation in agricultural futures markets, but bankers also tremendously benefit in a secondary manner that is hidden from the public. If the public believes that soaring food prices are simply due to bad weather, bad yields and alternate uses of food (i.e. corn produced for ethanol), by drawing attention TO these factors as the major cause of rising food prices, bankers successfully draw attention AWAY from what I believe is, and will continue to be, the largest component of higher food prices by an overwhelming margin- the Central Banking monetary policies of devaluing global currencies.

If bankers, through a massive propaganda campaign, can get people to forget about the fact that food prices are soaring because they are devaluing all major global fiat currencies, then they are likely to avoid blame in what I see as an impending and inevitable global food crisis. Yes, I know that bankers are not the ONLY reason food prices are soaring and I’ve stated other factors that contribute to rising food prices above. But even when they aren’t directly responsible for rising food prices, they often are still indirectly responsible. For example, the greedy hoarding behavior of commodity traders or farmers is almost entirely driven by the recognition that food prices in the future will be much higher due to the Central Bank’s current campaign of massive currency devaluation. Without the reality of currency debasement, the different players involved in setting global food prices (which also includes bankers) would not be hoarding food supplies right now that could instead be feeding people at cheaper prices. And Central Banking currency devaluation policies encourage hoarding not just with agricultural commodities, but with many other commodities as well. For example, when oil traders anticipated huge swings higher in oil prices, they have been known to rent massive supertankers to buy and store oil cheaply in order to sell it at much higher prices later.

Currencies – Debt or Asset?

Since I’ve written about the commodity of currencies prolifically for more than five years now in the public realm, and because most people already recognize that 98% of paper money does not exist but as a digital representation in our physical world, I am going to keep my commentary about fiat currencies quite sparse. By definition, a Central Bank exists to manipulate currency valuations and to prevent free markets from operating. The two statements that I reprinted below are the only two statements you need to read to understand that bankers have created our current global monetary system for the sole purpose of manipulating and controlling the wealth of nations.

“If all the bank loans were paid, no one could have a bank deposit, and there would not be a dollar of coin or currency in circulation. This is a staggering thought. We are completely dependent on the commercial Banks. Someone has to borrow every dollar we have in circulation, cash or credit. If the Banks create ample synthetic money we are prosperous; if not, we starve. We are absolutely without a permanent money system. When one gets a complete grasp of the picture, the tragic absurdity of our hopeless position is almost incredible, but there it is. It is the most important subject intelligent persons can investigate and reflect upon. It is so important that our present civilization may collapse unless it becomes widely understood and the defects remedied very soon.” – Robert H. Hemphill, Credit Manager of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, 1935.

In 1942, Federal Reserve Chairman Marriner Eccles testified before the House Committee on Banking and Currency, that “if there were no debts in our money system, there wouldn’t be any money.”

As the above statements were respectively issued in 1935 and 1942, it is obvious that the goal of bankers, for decades and centuries now, has been to destroy and control people through the issuance of money as debt. If, after reading the above statements, you are still fuzzy over the rationale why Central Bankers have 100% complete control over the purchasing power and store of value of those digital credits in your bank account, you may watch this video about the harmful effects of currency debasement to lend some clarity to that issue.

Formal Education – Essential…for Brainwashing Only

I will appropriately conclude this article about the banker-created Empire of Illusion with a discussion of how even the institution of education has been transformed into a commodity. This month, Bloomberg Businessweek reported that “a third of the top 30 U.S. business schools became less selective when admitting applicants to their full-time MBA programs in 2010.” Consequently, with education, when the going gets tough, the tough get, well, they get easier. Academic institutions are now willing to compromise their reputation and standards and admit less qualified candidates in an effort to keep their bottom-line numbers intact.

If you are a recent high school graduate considering entering university today, a young college graduate considering entering an MBA program today, or a parent with a child that is facing either of these two scenarios, as you conclude this article, it should be clearly apparent by now that:

(1) A young adult will never learn the mechanisms behind how the real business world operates within the confines of a traditional academic institution, and

(2) Given today’s economic environment, postponing or never pursing a formal academic degree may be the smartest choice one can make.

The Final World

I have always said, both privately and even publicly on my company’s website, that understanding fraud will contribute much more insight to the world of investing than the study of any “official” numbers and statistics released by corporations and governments. Today, more than ever, I believe that an understanding of the fraud and rigging games of bankers is not only essential to anyone interested in investing in capital markets today, but that it is also 100% necessary to survive the growing global monetary crisis during the next 5 to 10 years.

About the Author: JS Kim is the Managing Director of SmartKnowledgeU, a fiercely independent investment research and consulting firm dedicated to helping Main Street beat the fraud of Wall Street. JS earned his undergrad degree from the University of Pennsylvania and a double Masters in Business Administration and Public Policy from the University of Texas at Austin. However, JS credits the bulk of his knowledge about how the investment industry really works not to these two institutions of academia, but almost solely to his two decades of self-study. Dissatisfied with the rampant corruption and fraud he witnessed in the commercial banking & investment industry, JS permanently walked away from Wall Street in 2005 to start his own firm. Since launching his Crisis Investment Opportunities newsletter in 2007, JS has helped investors achieve more than 137% returns from June, 2007 to October, 2010 (in a tax-deferred account).

Republishing Rights: The above article may be reprinted on other websites as long as all text and links remain as is, including the author acknowledgment above.

The last time, I specifically wrote an article about an imminent US market crash titled, “Will US Markets Crash Now – or Later?” on April 23, 2008, the S&P 500 peaked just 17 business days after I made that call, at about 1,440, and then proceeded to fall until it bottomed at about 673 in early March of the following year. I think that we would all agree that a plunge of more than 50% aptly qualifies as a crash, yet if you visit that article, you will see that the bulk of comments that followed my article ridiculed my prediction back then, even though I was supremely confident of that my prediction would manifest itself. Today, by my estimation, there are just two possibilities to a global stock market rally that has occurred on the backs of government deception and financial industry executive lies.

(1) Once the low summer volume trading ends and the computerized trading programs of Goldman Sachs et al cannot manufacture fake rallies, the market will crash; or

(2) The bulls will be right about US and other global markets rallying another 10% to 20% higher from this point, as anything is possible given markets that are driven by fraud; but this surge higher will ultimately end in a crash as well.

So which scenario do I think is more likely? At this point, I believe scenario (1) is more likely, though it is entirely plausible that scenario (1) may coincide with scenario (2). Though Abby Cohen calls for a new bull market, any intelligent person will tell you that a sustainable bull market is not possible when unemployment in the US is hovering at about 20% and likely going to worsen in the future, when foreign institutions are not only not buying US Treasuries anymore but have been dumping Treasury debt on a net basis for many months now, and when the US manufacturing base has contracted and exports of real goods have fallen at the quickest rate in decades. Of course, there are “official” government statistics that will refute what I just stated here, but since I have already written extensive and detailed articles about why the bulk of all key economic indicators released by governments worldwide are fake and unreliable, I’m not going to re-hash these issues here.

To understand why people like Abby Cohen make such bold public predictions such as new bull market developing now, just refer to the Consumer Gullibility Index chart below and it should be immediately apparent why fraud and deception is the number one export of governments and financial executives worldwide. And should this market eventually crash as I believe will happen, I am also quite sure, despite Abby Cohen’s very public call of a new bull market, that Goldman Sachs will be on the right side of this trade and make significant profits from the downside as well. A true bull market should produce a sustained rally for several years with periods of moderate, not steep corrections. If, when I dug well beneath the surface of the mindless “expert” banter that states that signs of economic recovery are everywhere, and I saw significantly improving economic fundamentals, I would be the FIRST PERSON to state that the economic crisis is over and a new bull run is on its way. Unfortunately, I cannot make this call because this is NOT what I see right now. I see a confidence bubble forming that when reality causes it to burst, will drag down stock markets once again.

In the above chart, the solid red line represents the CCI and the jagged S&P500 chart has been superimposed over it.

Steep corrections in markets happen after Central Banks create huge bubbles, aka distortions, in markets through the creation of artificially low interest rate environments and when investment firms use TARP money and computerized trading programs to manipulate markets against the grain of free market behavior. We live in an investment environment of unprecedented & systemic fraud, and one can quite successfully argue that it is foolish not to account for how this fraud will affect the behavior of stock markets. Furthermore, it is prudent to generally predict that the majority of the general public will be fooled by this fraudulent activity. For now, deceptive earnings reports allowed by deceptive accounting techniques combined with dishonest statements from government and financial executives and manipulative actions undertaken by large commercial investment firms have created a massive rally. In fact, on June 2nd, 2009, I wrote an article whereby I expressed my belief of how the current fraudulent activity would affect US stock markets titled, “Telltale Signs that a Significant US Market Correction Won’t Happen in the Immediate Future”. Though we are getting much closer to the next crash, I still need to see more signs and conditions develop before I will say that we are on the brink of the next crash. And sure, this rally could continue even beyond the expectations of the bulls. But is this scenario likely?

Again, the failure of the general investing public to realize that they were being fleeced in early 2008 was quite evident from the reaction to my “Will US Markets Crash Now – or Later?” article written in late April, 2008. In response to Goldman Sachs alumnus Abby Cohen’s prediction of a new bull market, the only way I can assign any credence to her prediction is if you define a bull market as one that is driven higher by fraudulent activities and one that will certainly end in massive failure. If that’s your definition of a bull market, then it is possible we may have a new bull market. However, if your definition of a bull market is a strong market built on a solid foundation of a recovering economy that doesn’t wipe out the wealth of its participants with a big future crash, I guarantee you this is not the situation we have today. If you wonder why Abby Cohen predicted a new bull market, just sneak another peak at the CCI chart above and realize that financial executives and high government officials are the biggest pimps of deceit-manufactured confidence in the world today. But one thing you must realize is that though they are the biggest pimps of deceit, they are also the biggest profiteers off this deceit and will be properly positioned to take advantage of the bursting of this “confidence bubble”. As they manufacture these confidence bubbles, they are the best positioned to know when they will burst as well. That is the irony of this whole game. They benefit to the upside and downside because they create the upside and downside. If you are interested in seeing just how the financial elites manufacture false confidence bubbles that inevitably must burst, watch US Congressmen grill Goldman Sach’s Hank Paulson about his behavior when he was US Treasury Secretary at this video blog.

Again, to reiterate, I can only see two future outcomes of this current rally (1) A big failure or a (2) massive failure. I just don’t think the odds of a moderate correction in the midst of an ongoing rally that takes markets to significantly higher heights are favorable or likely unless somehow (1) Wall Street has figured out how to use their computerized trading systems to permanently rig markets on an unending path higher; or (2) economic fundamentals drastically change in an unforeseen fashion by the end of this year. And if this rally continues unabated (especially in US markets), the steeper it climbs, the more quickly it will likely fall. As I stated above, it is foolish not to consider how fraudulent behavior can cause a disconnect between stock markets and economic reality and thus produce irrational rallies that last for an irrationally long period of time. However, it is equally foolish not to consider and account for the multiple factors that can and eventually will cause a sharp reversal in the same aforementioned irrational market behavior. Account for and closely watch these factors, and if you’ve been on the long side of this rally, you will know with a fair amount of certainty when is the apropros time to step off this hot-air balloon ride.

The last time I called a market crash in April, 2008 and it happened, I basically made the call because I saw nothing fundamental that could sustain that rally despite the load of hot air that the financial media was distributing throughout the mass media about “recovering” fundamentals (sound familiar?) This time around, I’m quite certain that the same people that were fooled and hurt in Round One will be fooled and hurt in Round Two of the investment and monetary deception game. While it is a shame that those that purposefully fuel such games of deception and fraud and ruin the financial lives of millions end up on TV instead of in jail, it is truly up to each individual investor to dig deeper to discover the facts for oneself as the truth about this economic and monetary crisis will never be freely offered through the mainstream media. When considering what to do at this point, if I were an investor that still believed in investing in the major indexes of world markets, I’d rather be on the sidelines now and miss another irrational 15% higher climb (if it happens) rather than remain on board and experience the plunge during the scary ride down.

For a much higher level of premium information and specific guidance about how to achieve financial freedom with our PROPRIETARY investment system, consider our subscription services. Learn more about our premier investment research and education services, the SmartKnowledgeU™ Investment Education System here, and our premier stock research newsletter,the Global Stock Picker, a newsletter where the return of our Model Portfolio is 21.68% just 12-1/2 months after our launch, a figure that is outperforming U.S. and U.K. markets by nearly 40%, the Chinese Shanghai SSE index by more than 63.03%, and the India BSESN index by more than 24.41%!

Most Read Posts (64 articles) – Discover which articles Underground Investor™ readers are most interested in. See the full database, including the most recent articles that may not be listed below,  by clicking the link above.

Sept. 27, 2007 – 101 Reasons Why Managing Your Money is the Quickest Way to Build Wealth
Sept. 25, 2007 – 10 Surefire Ways to Make an Investment Fortune
Sept. 15, 2007 – Why the U.S. Feds 0.50% Rate Cut Won’t Save the Markets
Sept. 15, 2007 – U.S. Interest Rate Cut to Have Little Long-Term Positive Effect
Aug. 20, 2007 – How Much Does the Gov’t Really Manipulate Markets
Aug. 9, 2007 – More Gov’t Foolishness (or Lies) Again: Markets are Sound…NOT!
Aug. 9, 2007 – Chinese Tariffs and the Nuclear Option
Jul. 24, 2007 – How to Invest Like the World’s Greatest Investors
Jun. 17, 2007 – Get Out of Dollar-Denominated Bonds While You Still Can!
May 1, 2007 – Uranium Stocks are Finally Getting the Attention They Deserve
Apr. 23, 2007 – The Emperor’s New Clothes Abound in the Investment Industry. Don’t Get Cheated by Your Advisor
Apr. 20, 2007 – Use Intelligent Strategies to Push Risk Back onto Investment Firms
Apr. 19, 2007 – In Risky Markets, Follow the Behavior of the Ultra-Rich, Not the Rich
Apr. 12, 2007 – The Secret to Investing

Gold Investments (37 articles) - Use traditional rules to invest in gold stocks and you’ll lose money hand over fist with this asset class. Learn more about one of the most important components of every portfolio for future years to come. See the full database, including the most recent articles that may not be listed below, by clicking the above link.

April 23, 2008 – Will U.S. Markets Crash Now or Later?
Feb. 4, 2008 – Could Chinese New Year’s Fuel the Next Rally Higher for Gold Stocks?
Jan. 29, 2008 – Even After This Strong Run, Gold Stocks are Still a Bargain Today. Here’s Why.
Jan. 5, 2008 – A Sneak Peak at Our Premium Level Information
Nov. 4, 2007 – Is Hyperinflation Coming to the U.S.? It’s Time to Stock Up on Gold.
Nov. 4. 2007 – Gold is the Best Investment Today, History Tells Us So.
Nov. 2, 3007 – Gold Expensive at $791/oz.? Not by a Longshot
Jun. 5, 2007 – Learn How NOT to Invest in Gold
Mar. 30, 2007 – Navigate the Minefields of the Investment Information Highway
Mar. 7, 2007 – This Bounce in Gold Markets Merits a Cautious Approach
Mar. 6, 2007 – Gold Stocks Correction – What it Means?
Feb. 28, 2007 – How to Profit from a Weakening Market, Gold Stocks, & More, Part II
Feb. 28, 2007 – Buying Opportunity in Gold Stocks
Feb. 28, 2007 – How to Profit from a Weakening Market, Gold Stocks, & More, Part I
Feb. 23, 2007 – Uncover the Ignored Asset Classes
Feb. 12, 2007 – How Do I Know that Institutional Money is Still Not on Board with Gold?
Jan. 25, 2007 – If You Don’t Own Gold Stocks, You Need To
Jan. 23, 2007 – Building Wealth Requires More than Just Contrarian Investing
Jan. 14, 2007 – Use the Long Tail of Investing to Accurately Predict the Price of Gold
Jan. 11, 2007 – The REAL DEAL about Gold and Energy
Dec. 13, 2007 – Commodities and Asians: Apparently We All Look Alike
Nov. 6, 2006 – Sometimes Silence is Golden
Oct. 10, 2006 – Shock and Awe Awaits Global Markets
Oct. 4, 2006 – Is Gold’s Correction Over Yet?
Oct. 2, 2006 – Fiat Currency Concerns Give Rise to a Gold & Silver Backed Currency System
Oct. 1, 2006 – The Gold Timeline – A History of Gold Prices
Sept. 16, 2006 – Has the Commodities Bubble Burst? No, No, No!
Sept. 13, 2006 – Sell the Rumor, Buy the News
Sept. 11, 2006 – Gold’s Speculative Stigma is Unwarranted
Sept. 3, 2006 – Gold’s Glitter is Genuine
Aug. 14, 2006- Knowing Your History is More Important to Creating Wealth than Fundamental Analysis

Financial Crisis, Dollar Crisis & Recession Proof Investing (30 articles) – Foolish investors’ eyes lit up as New Century Financial dropped from $30 to $20 a share during the recent subprime mortgage fiasco. Their hearts thumped with excitement as shares dropped from $20 to $10 and they doubled down. When shares dropped to $5 they thought it had to be the bottom and put their last remaining money into New Century. A month later, they lost everything. There is similar optimism surrounding the dollar today from self-declared currency experts. Discover why the dollar is much more likely to go the way of New Century than experience a comeback like Muhammad Ali’s Rumble in the Jungle. For the most recent articles, perhaps not listed below, click the above category link.

June 26, 2008 – The One Question That Will Have the Greatest Impact on Your Financial Future
May 14, 2008 – What’s Driving the Price of Oil Higher? It’s the Dollar, Stupid!
April 30, 2008 - How Low Will the Feds Go?
April 17, 2008 – Monetary Inflation. How Increased Paper Wealth Can Translate into a Lower Standard of Living
March 3, 2008 – Why Investors Will Never Make Money in this Bear Market
Feb. 20, 2008 – The Secret to Building Wealth in Volatile Markets
Feb. 6, 2008 – Is Recession in the U.S. Coming? We’re Already in One.
Jan. 28, 2008 – The Outcome of the Fed’s Interest Rate Cuts? History is the Best Oracle.
Jan. 24, 2008 – The Fed’s 0.75% Interest Rate Cut – A Recipe for Future Disaster
Dec. 7, 2007 – The Dollar Panic. Is it Real?
Sept. 19, 2007 – Signs of a Peak Investment Crisis Keep Coming
June 18, 2007 – Alan Greenspan’s Call of Checkmate on China is Premature
June 17, 2007 – PIMCO’s Bill Gross and the Economist Agree with SmartKnowledgeU 6 Months After the Fact!
May 28, 2007 – The Politics of Higher Oil Prices
May 26, 2007 – Asian Countries Pooling Reserves to Protect Themselves from the Incredible Shrinking Dollar, Part II
May 25, 2007 – Asian Countries Pooling Reserves, Part I
May 3, 2007 – The Death of the 3-Year Treasury Note
Apr. 1, 2007 – The Next Cold War Will be an Economic One
Jan. 25, 2007 – Dollar-Denominated Bonds Faltering
Jan. 9, 2007 – Use the Longtail of Investing to Accurately Predict Dollar Behavior
Jan 7, 2007 – 10 Reasons Why Dollar-Denominate Bonds Aren’t Safe
Dec. 21, 2006 – Iran Presents More Trouble for the U.S. Dollar
Dec. 7, 2006 – The U.S. has Perfected the Incredible Shrinking Dollar

Free Stock Picks (24 articles) – While our top-shelf stock picks and ideas that have since returned 100% to 200% returns are reserved for our members only, here read articles about some mid-shelf stock picks and ideas that have already returned 30% returns in less than a year. Access the full database, including the most recent articles that may not be listed below,  by clicking the topic link above.

Jun. 4, 2007 – To Prove the Effectiveness of Our SmartKnowledgeU™ Investment System, Even Our Weakest Picks that We’ve Given Away for FREE Have Soared
Apr. 29, 2007 – After BAIDU, Possibly Focus Media
Apr. 2, 2007 – Profit, Don’t Lose From Market Corrections
Apr. 2, 2007 – Global Warming Presents Easy 30% Gains for Underground Investor Readers
Mar. 13, 2007 – Beware the Perpetual Bulls, Part II
Feb. 18, 2007 – Banking Sector FY 2008 – Positive for Japan & India, Negative for China
Jan. 4, 2007 – Chinese Technology Companies to Watch in 2007
Dec. 19, 2007 – MSFT and Internet Protocol Version 6
Dec. 12, 2006 – It’s Time to Keep a Close Eye on Indian Stocks ICICI & HDFC
Dec. 7, 2006 – The Ocean Becomes a New Growth Point in the World Economy
Oct. 30, 2006 – What’s the Safest Place to Invest in the Oil Industry Now?
Oct. 30, 2006 – You’ll Find Ignored Investment Opportunities in the DRC & Libya
Oct. 23, 2006 – Indian Banks Anyone? Four Letters: HDFC
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The Peak Investment Crisis & Stock Market Crash (57 articles) – Bubbling underneath the surface, there lies a peak investment crisis. When it hits, savvy investors will build a fortune. Unfortunately, most investors will be blindsided and lose great fortunes instead. Access the entire database, including the most recent articles that may not be listed below,  by clicking on the above category link.

Nov. 4, 2007 – Is Hyperinflation Coming to the U.S.? It’s Time to Stock Up on Gold.
Nov. 4. 2007 – Gold is the Best Investment Today, Part II
Oct. 15, 2007 – Our New Forum on Facebook: Crisis Investing
Oct. 9, 2007 – Beware the Turbulence that Lies Beneath the Surface, Part I
Sept. 20, 2007 -The Signs of a Peak Investment Crisis Keep Coming
Sept. 19, 2007 -Why the U.S. Fed’s 0.50% Rate Cut Won’t Save the Markets
Aug. 9, 2007 – More Gov’t Foolishness Again
Jun. 29, 2007 – Don’t Let the Strength of the U.S. Markets in the First Half of 2007 Fool You
Mar. 11, 2007 – It’s the Difference Between Chasing & Building Wealth
Mar. 6, 2007 – What this Correction Means for Gold Stocks
Feb. 28, 2007 – How to Profit From a Weakening Market & Gold Stocks
Sept. 9, 2006 – The Peak Investment Crisis
Aug. 11, 2006 – How to Protect Your Portfolio During Turbulent Markets

A New Investment Paradigm for the 21st Century (11 articles) – Fundamental and Value investing may take years of patience to pay off (i.e. Apple Computers was a huge value stock at $13 a share and took more than four years of waiting to pay off huge), Growth investing often leads to chasing hot sectors that correct rapidly. Discover why changing conditions in today’s global market has created a new investment paradigm that is hands down the best way to invest today. Click the link above to see all articles, including the most recent articles that may not be listed below,  in this category.

Jul. 24, 2007 – How to Invest Like the World’s Greatest Investors
Feb. 25, 2007 – Frontrunning Can Make You a Fortune
Jan. 30, 2007 – The New Paradigm of Successful Investment Strategies
Jan. 21, 2007 – 10 Reasons the Longtail of Investing is the Only Way to Build Wealth
Jan. 16, 2007 – Use the Longtail of Investing to Predict Major Market Events with High Accuracy
Jan. 9, 2007 – Accurately Predict U.S. Dollar Behavior
Sept. 1, 2006 – What Mark Cuban Failed to Realize About Investing

The Biggest Investment Myths (62 articles) – All investment professionals, from investment firms to financial consultants to the financial journal purposely spread tales of lies and deception. Jim Cramer, an investment professional that amassed a fortune as a hedge fund manager, recently stated that the last thing he ever wanted to do is to tell the truth. Find out why deception is part of the game in the investment industry.  Click the category link above to access the full database, including the most recent articles that may not be listed below.

Oct. 25, 2007 – New Home Sales Went Up. So What?
Oct. 15, 2007 – Beware the Turbulence that Lies Beneath the Surface, II
May 6, 2007 – Economic Reports Drive Short-Term Behavior, but Hardly Represent the Truth
Mar. 21, 2007 – The Short-Term May be Rosy, but Beware the Financial Crisis that is Building Steam
Mar. 4, 2007 – Foreign Markets aren’t as Risky as the Pundits Say
Feb. 23, 3007 – Evolve Your Investment Strategies with Evolving Technology
Feb. 6, 2007 – My Problem with Investment Newsletters (except ours, of course!)
Feb. 4, 2007 – 10 Questions to Help You Find a Superior Financial Consultant
Jan. 30, 2007 – A New Paradigm of Successful Investment Strategies
Jan. 25, 2007 – Despite Evidence to the Contrary, Millions of Investors Will Believe Whatever they Want to Believe
Jan. 7, 2007 – 10 Reasons Why Dollar Denominated Bonds Aren’t as Safe as You Think
Jan. 5, 2007 – How Understanding MMA Champions will Make You a Better Investor
Dec. 18, 2006 – The True Determinants of Wealth Have Nothing to do with Asset Allocation
Nov. 12, 2006 – The Greatest Investment Myth Exposed: Why Modern Portfolio Theory WILL NEVER Make You Rich.

Wealth Literacy (88 articles) – Wealth Literacy is the new Financial Literacy. Financial Literacy may teach you to be fiscally responsible but you can still be financially literate and remain poor. Wealth Literacy fills in all the holes of Financial Literacy and teaches you how to build wealth today. Click the category link above to see new articles that may not be listed below.

Oct. 15, 2007 – Our New Facebook Investment Group – Crisis Investing
Oct. 9, 2007 – Beware the Turbulence that Lies Beneath the Surface, I
Apr. 23, 2007 – Beware the Emperor’s New Clothes -Don’t Get Cheated by Your Adviser
Apr. 20, 2007 – Intelligent Investment Strategies Push Risk Off of You & Back onto Investment Firms
Apr. 19, 2007 – In Risky Markets, Follow the Behavior of the Ultra-Rich, Not the Rich
Apr. 17, 2007 – Why Wealth Literacy is More Important than Financial Literacy, Part II
Apr. 15, 2007 – Why Wealth Literacy is More Important than Financial Literacy, Part I
Apr. 13, 2007 – Pop Investing is All the Rage, but it’s a Loser’s Game
Apr. 12, 2007 – The Secret to Investing in 3 Easy Rules
Apr. 10, 2007 – Build Wealth by Answering These 5 Questions
Mar. 30, 2007 - How to Navigate the Minefields of the Investment Information Highway
Mar. 12, 2007 – The Short-Term May be Rosy, But Beware the Financial Crisis that is Building Steam
Mar. 11, 2007 – The Difference Between Chasing Wealth and Building Wealth
Feb 23, 2007 – Uncover the Ignored Asset Classes
Feb. 21, 2007 – Why Traditional Education Stifles Your Ability to Build Wealth
Feb. 15, 2007 – 7 Habits of Highly Effective Investors
Feb. 8, 2007 – 10 Reasons Why a Professional Athlete’s Best Friend Needs to be his Financial Adviser

Politics and Stocks (30 articles) – Think you don’t need to understand politics to be a good investor? Think again. If you don’t understand politics, you’ll never fully understand the most likely future direction of global stock markets, oil, gold, and currency markets. Click the above category link to see the full database of articles, including the most recent articles that may not be listed below.

Apr. 11, 2007 – Building Great Wealth in Stocks Requires Understanding Politics
Apr. 1, 2007 – The Next Cold War will be an Economic One
Apr. 1, 2007 – Possible U.S. Military Intervention in Iran
Mar. 13, 2007 – To Err on the Subject of Chinese Tariffs May Expedite a Shakespearean Tragedy
Dec. 17, 2007 – Do Free Markets and Free Trade Exist?

Oil Crisis (15 articles) – Think oil prices are controlled by supply and demand, futures traders, or Peak Oil Theory? Think again. Discover the true determinants of oil price behavior, primarily dollar devaluation. Click the above category link to see the full database of articles, including the most recent articles that may not be listed below.

May 14, 2009 – What’s Driving the Price of Oil Higher? It’s the Dollar, Stupid!
May 28, 2007 – The Politics of Higher Oil Prices
Nov. 26, 2006 – Does the end of Mid-Term Elections Mean Higher Gas Prices Again?
Nov. 8, 2006 – The Peak Oil Theory was Created by – You Guessed it – Big Oil!
Oct. 30, 2006 – The Safest Place to Invest in the Oil Industry Now? – Oil Refiners, Pipeline Manufacturers, Deep Sea Platform & Drilling Manufacturers, and 4D Imaging Companies
Oct. 30, 2006 – You’ll Find Ignored Investment Opportunities in the DRC and Libya
Oct. 12, 2006 – How Has Prince Bandar bin Sultan Affected Oil Prices in Years Past?

Uranium Investments (3 articles)– The bulk of this information is contained within our members only area, but you’ll find an article or two here. Click the above category link to see the full database of articles, including the most recent articles that may not be listed below.

May 1, 2007 – Uranium Stocks are Finally Getting Some Attention. Better Late than Never.
May 1, 2007 – What Does Uranium Futures Mean for the Future of Uranium Stocks?

Africa Investments (5 articles) – For the more daring investor willing to place small bets for HUGE returns, Africa awaits.

Canada Investments (4 articles) – Articles about Canada and the Canadian stock market and hands down some of the best opportunities in ANY global stock market.

China Investments (21 articles) – Articles about Chinese stocks and the Chinese stock market.

India Investments (4 articles) – Articles about Indian stocks and the Indian stock market.

Japan Investments (4 articles) – Articles about the Japanese economy and stock market.

Russia Investments (1 articles) – Articles about the Russian economy and stock market

U.S. Stocks (25 articles) – Articles about U.S. stocks and the American stock market.

Vietnam Investments (3 article) – Articles about Vietnam and the explosive yet unregulated Vietnamese market.

Investment Psychology (22 articles) – One of the most important but yet most overlooked and ignored aspects of investing is psychology. Discover how an improper mindset can be the difference between huge losses and huge gains in your portfolio. Click the above category link to see the full database of articles, including the most recent articles that may not be listed below.

Feb. 7, 2007 – Investors Should Apply the Rule of Shopping 101 to Buying Stocks
Jan. 3, 2007 – Will the 2006 Year End Rally Continue into 2007?
Dec. 21, 2006 - Perception Can Overrule Reality in Driving Behavior but Reality Will Overrule Perceptions in Driving Outcome
Nov. 30, 2006 – The Recency Effect Hurts Investment Decisions
Nov. 2, 2006- Canadian PM Stephen Harper & Hungarian PM Ferenc Gyurcsany – the More Things Change the More They Stay the Same
Nov. 2, 2006 – Irrational, Not Rational, Behavior Often Drives Markets
Oct. 24, 2006 – The Financial Media are Like Bad Weatherman
Oct. 8, 2006 – The SmartKnowledgeU Reader’s List
Oct. 4, 2006 – Hungarian PM Ferenc Gyurcsany: We LIED Morning, Noon, & Night!
Sept. 26, 2007 – Move Over Harry Potter! The Deceptive Wizardry of Fund Managers
Sept. 17, 2006 – When it Comes to Investing, You Get What You Pay For
Sept. 16, 2006 – Why Do People Believe One of the Dumbest, Most Flawed & Deceptive Measures of Economic Conditions?
Sept. 13, 2006 – Why Book Smarts Won’t Help You Build Wealth
Sept. 10, 2006 – Investment Psychology 101
Aug. 24, 2006 – To Become Wealthy, Abandon Widespread Beliefs About Investing
Aug. 18, 2006 – Following Mainstream Media Will Lead You Down a Disastrous Investment Road
Aug. 3, 2006 – Following Short-Term Fluctuations Will Create Poor Investment Decisions

Options Investing (10 articles) – We don’t discuss options much here but occasionally, if there is a compelling play, we’ll write an article or two.

Water Investing (1 article) – Read articles about investing in water as a commodity as the world’s fresh water supply becomes more scarce.

The Zen of Investing (42 posts) – Read articles from our resident martial arts expert regarding how understanding principles of martial arts can make you a much better investor. A combination of “The Art of War” and “The Art of Investing” if you will. Click the above category link to see the full database of articles, including the most recent articles that may not be listed below.

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