As we currently have members in more than 33 countries worldwide now, we don’t expect these discounted memberships to last very long. If you wish to “test drive” our Platinum and Wealth Secrets memberships before fully committing, we will still offer the 14-day trial, money-back guarantee at these discounted prices as well. The last time we ran a similar sale, most memberships sold-out before the two-week period expired.

Special Extended Sale of Select SmartKnowledgeU Services (February 6, 2012 – February 9, 2012)

Platinum Membership
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$3,470 (discount of $1,485!)
Coupon Code: 888088

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To receive your special, limited-time only discount on our above products,

(1) Please visit our shopping cart at http://www.smartknowledgeu.com/memberships.php
(2) Click on the “add to cart” button for the desired product.
(3) Enter the APPROPRIATE coupon code(s) listed above for your desired product(s) into the coupon code box in the shopping cart, and click “apply”. The coupon codes listed above consist of all numbers.

If you enter the above coupon code into the coupon code box in the shopping cart, click “apply” and no discount appears, this unfortunately means that we have already sold ALL of the additional limited amount of discounted memberships we decided to offer and the discount is no longer be available. You may download comprehensive fact sheets with details about the above services on our homepage. With the enormous +28.51% return in January of 2012, the cumulative gains of our Crisis Investment Opportunities newsletter portfolio from launch in June, 2007 to January, 2012 of +202.22% has enormously outperformed the S&P 500, the FTSE 100, the ASX 200 respectively by +216.54%. +217.94%, and +232.72% and outperformed the benchmark PHLX Gold/Silver index by +157.07% during this same investment period.

Did Bankers Deliberately Crash MF Global to Crash Gold and Silver Prices?

Gold & Silver Banker-Cartel Prolonged Price Suppression Has Set the Foundation for an Explosive Move Higher in 2012

In the first article, “Did Bankers Deliberately Crash MF Global to Crash Gold and Silver Prices?” I discussed two crucial points that are important to anyone that keeps any amount of digital savings in a bank (due to the fractional reserve system, the majority of the global currency in circulation today exists in digital form only). One, bankers deliberately invented paper markets in gold and silver to kill the influence that the physical demand and supply determinants of gold and silver have over prices. Two, bankers have historically rapidly contracted and expanded paper gold and paper silver contracts (that are backed with nothing but air) to introduce volatile movements in gold and silver with the express intent of scaring people away from real money (physical gold and physical silver) and keeping people invested in their bogus paper and mostly digital money (Euros, USD, Yuan, Yen, Pounds Sterling, etc.).

In relation to the MF Global debacle, we released private messages to our members that warned them that the MF Global liquidation and theft of client assets provided hard direct proof and critical legal precedent, that in the event of a bankruptcy of a major financial firm, clients had zero rights and property theft was now being sanctioned by and approved of by the State. There are still millions of people today that don’t understand the very dangerous precedent that MF Global set for future bankruptcies of financial firms that WILL HAPPEN in coming years.

If you have not been keeping up-to-date with the MF Global dispute over hundreds of millions of dollars of client money, then I highly urge you to read these three articles below:

MF Global Clients May Lose in $700 Million Bankruptcy Fight
SW Minnesota Farmer Testifies in Commodity Scam
How JP Morgan And George Soros Ended Up With MF Global Customer Money

The first MF Global article shows you that it is still a strong possibility that clients will lose $700+ million of their money they had with MF Global before it declared their bankruptcy. That is not a sum to sneeze at by any means.

The second MF Global article is in regard to a Minnesota farmer that has not been able to recover $253,000 he held at MF Global. The farmer claimed, “This money was real money in real banks. It wasn’t under somebody’s mattress,” a statement that underscores the lack of understanding about our monetary system that exists among the masses. In fact, the opposite of what the farmer stated is becoming true today. The vast majority of money that is used in global financial transactions today exists only in digital form, not even in paper form, so paper money stored under one’s mattress is more “real” than any digital bytes on a computer at your bank. Secondly, real money is not fiat digital or paper currency but real money is physical gold and physical silver, NOT paper gold and paper silver as those that bought gold futures contracts with MF Global, hoping to take delivery of physical gold with their paper contracts, sadly discovered.

The third MF Global article, emphasizes, just as the US & many EU countries demonstrated during the 2008 free fall of financial stocks, that lawmakers and regulators are in the back pockets of bankers and will always change the laws at their whim to benefit the bankers and to defraud the people. In 2008 to prevent bank stocks from plummeting that were deservedly plummeting, lawmakers in the EU and the US forced a short squeeze higher in financial stocks by arbitrarily changing the laws and banning any short sale of any bank stocks. Even though MF Global was clearly operating as a commodities firm, they applied for and were granted, the right to be dissolved as an equities firm. In this case, everyone from the legal system and the trustee of MF Global are merely ignoring the law to profit the bankers and defraud the clients.

“Rather than being treated as a bankruptcy of a commodities brokerage firm under sub-chapter IV of the Chapter 7 bankruptcy law, MF Global was treated as an equities firm (sub-chapter III) for the purposes of its bankruptcy, and this is why the MF Global customer money in so-called segregated accounts ‘disappeared’. In a brokerage firm bankruptcy, the customers get their money first, while in an equities firm bankruptcy, the customers are at the end of the line.”

In laymen’s terms, the unfolding debacle regarding MF Global also has critical repercussions and implications regarding the implied safety of any money you have in a money market account or savings account at a bank. Remember MF Global clients believed that their money was being held in “segregated” accounts that protected their assets in the event of a bankruptcy. If you don’t believe that the MF Global bankruptcy proceedings has affected how banks view their clients’ deposits, then you are hugely mistaken. At the end of last year, Bloomberg ran a story titled “BofA Said to Split Regulators Over Moving Merrill Derivatives to Bank Unit.” In this article, the journalist stated, “The bank doesn’t believe regulatory approval is needed”.  ZeroHedge explained why BofA was making this move in their article “Bank Of America Forces Depositors To Backstop Its $53 Trillion Derivative Book To Prevent A Few Clients From Departing The Bank”:

“it shifted anywhere up to the total of $53 trillion of the total derivatives it held as of June 30 (as Zero Hedge previously reported) on its books at Q2 from the Holding Company, which was downgraded last by Moody’s from A2 to Baa1 (the third-lowest investment grade rating) to its retail bank, which was downgraded to the far more palatable A2 (from Aa3). The reason for the transfer? Bank customers who were uneasy with the fact that suddenly the collateral backstoping the operating entity handling their counterparty risk was downgraded to just above junk, demanded that said counterparty risk be mitigated by the bank’s $1 trillon in deposits.”

The MF Global case has clearly demonstrated that any insurance of banking accounts up to $100,000 or $250,000, no matter what country in which you reside, is simply MEANINGLESS if

(1) the insurance company insuring the aggregate deposits in your country is severely underfunded;
(2) the ruling corporatocracy allows financial firms to steal your property in the event of a bankruptcy; and
(3) banks are using customer deposits as collateral against the riskiest of their junk assets

All three of the above have already been proven to be the case inside the United States and will likely be the case in countries around the world as well. From the US Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation’s (FDIC) own website, you can find this statement: “On July 21, 2010, the President signed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Dodd-Frank Act) into law. The Dodd-Frank Act established a minimum designated reserve ratio (DRR) of 1.35% of estimated insured deposits, [and] mandates that the FDIC adopt a restoration plan should the fund balance fall below 1.35 percent.”

As recently as March, 2009 the US Deposit Insurance Fund had as little as $13 billion to insure nearly $4.83 trillion of deposits in US banks. By mid-2009, five US banks, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo, held about 39% of all deposits in the US and in 2012, that figure is almost certainly higher given the large number of US bank failures since mid-2009 until the present day, including very large US banks like Washington Mutual (which yours truly predicted in advance). It doesn’t take a math genius to understand that should just one of these top US banks fail,

(1) the Deposit Insurance Fund would be completely wiped out, thus rendering the $250,000 guarantee of bank deposits worthless and meaningless; or
(2) necessitate the creation of trillions of new money to maintain the guarantee, thus severely degrading the value of all existing money, thereby making the guarantee worthless once again.

Should a large US bank or European bank go bankrupt, a highly likely event in the future that can only be prevented by excessive monetary creation (which in essence is admission that the bank is bankrupt), then once can refer to the recent MF Global debacle to understand that no one will have any rights in recouping any money that is lost during a bank’s bankruptcy. If push truly comes to shove during a bankruptcy of a financial firm, and a decision must be made to either make the clients whole or the creditors of the bank whole, we all know that the clients (us) will lose the battle.

These critical talking points lead nicely into our second blog article, “Gold & Silver Banker-Cartel Prolonged Price Suppression Has Set the Foundation for an Explosive Move Higher in 2012.” As we stated in that article, sentiment was the lowest in nearly three years regarding gold & silver mining stocks at the end of 2011 and that entering 2012, bankers were still heavily distributing propaganda that silver was going to crash to $20 an ounce and gold was going to crash to about $850 to $1,000 an ounce. I made it clear in that article that strong fundamentals in the gold & mining sector combined with super low bullish sentiment in the mining sector produced a super strong buying opportunity and fantastic valuation for gold & silver mining stocks. In this article, I stated:

“there are still many reasons to expect a stellar next couple of years from gold and silver performance, including the mining stocks. From a technical standpoint, gold and silver appear to be on the verge of making a very significant run higher. I’m not saying that this will happen tomorrow, but it does look very probable within a short-time period. From a manipulation factor standpoint, gold and silver also look poised for a run higher too.”

and

“we see 2011 as nothing more than a temporary setback in gold/silver mining stocks…from a technical standpoint, gold and silver appear to be on the verge of making a very significant run higher. I’m not saying that this will happen tomorrow, but it does look very probable within a short-time period.”

Given the severe undervaluation of gold and silver and the fact that nobody should ever trust paper gold and paper silver futures as a means of taking delivery of real physical gold and real physical silver ever again. We believe that the divergences between paper gold and silver futures and spot prices and real physical gold and silver prices will eventually become enormous, as we first started predicting would happen in 2008, with premiums in the price of physical gold and physical silver eventually rising so high above the paper prices that the paper gold and paper silver markets will either

(1) eventually be ignored for purposes of price discovery; or
(2) eventually implode into its own current cesspool of lies, fraud and deceit.

Many new investors to gold and silver investing always make the mistake of trying to time exact bottoms and also to repeatedly time exact tops and to exit and re-enter markets repeatedly during the year. Given the enormous amount of volatility that the global banking cartel has introduced into all paper gold and paper silver products, including mining stocks, we believe that this type of mentality is counter-productive when the long-term picture in gold and silver has been as clear as it has been for the past several years. For example, when silver dropped below $30 an ounce last year, it was entirely irrelevant to one’s long-term wealth whether one purchased silver at $30, $29 or $28 an ounce given the fact that the probability silver will eventually rise to triple-digit dollar prices is extremely high.

We have always told our members that is a mistake to try to time the absolute bottoms of these corrections. When tremendous value exists in a sector, as existed in mid-January in the mining sector, then we always tell all new members to our services to “go all in” in their buying strategies during these times and to not worry about any short-term downside volatility or any of the misinformation being spewed by the financial mass media during these times about collapsing gold and silver bubbles. Furthermore, when the US Federal Reserve announced recently on January 25, 2012 that they would be extending low-rates into late 2014 and jump-started a one-day 5%, 6%, 7%, 8% explosion in gold and silver stock, this underscores my point even further. When the global banker cartel slams gold & silver mining stocks by 10% or more as they did at the end of last year, taking an already undervalued sector to greatly undervalued status, if one understands fundamentals, one will always view this as nothing more than a buying opportunity and not as a time to panic.

The performance of our Crisis Investment Opportunities newsletter portfolio, in August of 2010, was flat YTD, but then piled on whopping +33% gains in the last four months of the year. In 2008, our portfolio gains of a nominal 3.21% gain was followed by explosive gains of +63.32% in 2009. Though last year was our most difficult year to date since we launched our newsletter in June of 2007, our cumulative gains from June, 2007 to December 31, 2011 of +135 .18% has still outperformed the S&P 500, the FTSE 100, the ASX 200 respectively by +153.12%. +152.37%, and +169.20%. Thus, our track record of outstanding performance over time backs up our strong belief that worrying about every rise and fall in gold and silver every year will do nothing but drive you crazy and merely prevent you from handling your investments properly and intelligently. It is impossible to predict every single global banking cartel smash down of gold and silver with perfect accuracy; however, as long as one can foresee enough of them, as our outperformance of the PHLX Gold/Silver index by +104.75% over the last 4-1/2 years proves, and maintain the nerve and confidence to stay invested in gold and silver even when the “pundits” are screaming at you to get out, as they were at the end of last year and the beginning of this year, then you will do quite fine in continuing to build wealth as the monetary crisis deepens.

If one understands the possibility that all digital credits in your bank and investment accounts could disappear given the failure or a major global bank (an inevitable event it seems right now), then one should clearly understand that owning physical gold and physical silver is NOT an option but a necessity if you are to survive the second phase of this global monetary crisis. Even if we are wrong about the failure of digital financial products and fraudulent paper derivatives in the future, we will still be right, as owning physical gold and physical silver will continue to protect the purchasing power of people’s money as this monetary crisis deepens. Remember, though many have been jumping on the gold and silver bandwagon this week, we, at SmartKnowledgeU, have been publicly advocating gold (and) silver ownership since 2006, and privately, for years prior to 2006, for the same exact reasons we’re still advocating it today.

The global banking & monetary system is a fraud, a mess, and there is no turning back from US dollar & Euro destruction at this point.

Just click here to read our 2006 article “Gold’s Speculative Stigma is Unwarranted.” It’s taken about five years since we wrote that article for the public-at-large to understand that gold’s label as a speculative investment is not deserved and is mere banker propaganda. Within the next five years, the remaining skeptics will be forced to finally recognize that gold and silver are real money, and that Yen, Pounds, USD, and Euros are not.

Given the severe undervaluation of gold/silver mining stocks, junior mining stocks in particular, and the undervaluation of gold and silver right now, we believe now is an optimal time for new investors to gold and silver to begin their journey. To help all newbie investors to gold/silver begin their journey, we are currently cutting as much as 30% off of all our major services during a special, limited two-week sale that will run from January 26, 2012 to February 9, 2012. To receive the coupon codes for this sale, please visit us at www.smartknowledgeu.com and please join our mailing list.

About the author: In 2006, fed up with the rampant immorality of Wall Street, JS Kim, walked away from his job with a Wall Street firm to found and become the Chief Investment Strategist of SmartKnowledgeU, a fiercely independent investment research & consulting firm. Since then, JS has tirelessly campaigned to increase understanding about real money like gold and silver and about the fraudulent nature of fiat money.

At the end of last year, there was a lot of chatter on the internet, due to the end-of-the year slam down effected on gold and silver futures by the global banking cartel, that silver prices were going go collapse to $20 an ounce and gold prices were going to collapse well below $1000 an ounce by the first quarter of 2012. We felt that these discussions and the consequent, induced panic selling out of gold/silver mining stocks and physical gold/silver at the end of 2011 was highly unwarranted and the result of people falling for the global banking cartel price suppression tricks. In fact, we sent Special Alerts to all of our clients at the end of 2011 informing them that the banking cartel often paints charts in gold and silver to fool people and that one cannot make accurate predictive behavior based upon the assessment of technical charts alone.

At SmartKnowledgeU, it has always been our mantra that technical analysts often make huge mistakes in their predictive calls due to their sole reliance on technical charting and therefore often have to flip-flop like a politician on their calls regarding gold and silver, one moment calling for a huge crash and to sell everything gold and silver, the next moment calling for a huge run-up and to buy back everything gold and silver. While nimbleness is a good trait to have given the volatility of gold and silver assets and staying on the sidelines is sometimes necessary, trying to get out of the market on every single weekly downturn in gold and silver will surely drive an investor insane. Thus, sometimes it is necessary to ride out difficult periods of volatility and maintain your eye on the long-term trend instead of short-term banking cartel tricks. We prefer to remain more long-term trends with our calls and to keep our eyes grounded on a more fundamental outlook that incorporates technical analysis with more than a decade of knowledge regarding global banking cartel price suppression schemes. We have stated since day one of launching our company in 2006 that gold/silver technical analysis performed without incorporating the contextual nuances of global banking cartel price suppression schemes will not be accurate, especially since the cartel’s gold and silver price suppression schemes exert the most influence right now over setting the futures and spot prices.

Last year, we informed our clients at the very start of the year in January of 2011 that 2011 would yield massive volatility in gold and silver assets, proclaiming the coming year as “The Year of Volatility”. Before the year started, we knew that 2011 would produce a fierce battle between the global banking cartel and the dynamics of the physical markets for gold and silver as the global monetary crisis deepened. And indeed it did. Though we can mark 2011 as a win for the global banking cartel as they collapsed open interest in gold and silver futures repeatedly throughout the year by raising initial and maintenance margins for gold and silver futures (once raising margins on silver futures a ridiculous five times in just 9 days when silver broached $50 an ounce) and by also using the MF Global bankruptcy to force involuntary client liquidation of gold/silver futures at the end of the year, I am confident that all the banking shenanigans of 2011 has set the stage for a spectacular year ahead for PMs in 2012. If you are interested in my thoughts about how the banking cartel used the despicable MF Global fiasco to collapse gold and silver prices, you can read about it here: Did Bankers Deliberately Crash MF Global to Crash Gold and Silver Prices?

In 2011, due to the extreme volatility in gold/silver mining stocks, there were periods we opted to cash out and sit on the sidelines preceding banking cartel smash downs of gold and silver prices, and other periods we opted to stay in the market and ride out the extreme volatility due to our belief that the downside volatility would be short-lived. Thus, admittedly we had to sacrifice short-term performance for our mission of a longer-term reward with the gold and silver mining stocks in 2011. As you can see in the chart below, the HUI Gold Bugs Index re-tested lows in the 490-500 range on five separate occasions last year and greatly underperformed the metals themselves. No wonder bullish sentiment regarding gold and silver stocks just recently hit a three-year low!

However, despite the severe underperformance of the mining stocks last year, from the launch of our Crisis Investment Opportunities portfolio in June 2007 to December 31, 2011, even in light of our slight setback of 2011, our cumulative performance of +135.18% during the past four-and-a-half year period has still respectively outperformed the S&P 500, UK FTSE 100, and Australian ASX200 indexes by whopping +153.12%, +152.37% and +169.20% margins. Furthermore, our Crisis Investment Opportunities portfolio has even outperformed our closest comparable index, the Philadelphia Gold/Silver Sector (XAU) index by a whopping +104.75%. Thus we see 2011, as nothing more than a temporary setback in gold/silver mining stocks, and we’ll explain why below.

More than 3 years ago, on October 16, 2008, I wrote an article titled, JS Kim Uncovers Four Parallel Markets for Gold: Asia Futures, NY Futures, Physical Bullion, Physical Coins. In this article, I discussed the complicity of regulatory agencies such as the CFTC in the global banking cartel price suppression scheme executed against gold and silver that was, at the time, creating very significant premiums in the futures and spot prices in Asia over the Western markets, and in physical gold/silver prices over paper gold/ silver prices. Since the time I wrote that article, I have followed up with many more articles that express my belief that the premiums of physical gold/silver will increase, and eventually in exponential fashion, over the prices of bogus global banking cartel-produced paper gold/silver derivative products. Eventually, I believe that the world will ignore these bogus paper gold/silver markets entirely when setting prices for physical gold/silver. Because the global banking cartel expended so many of their bullets in 2011 in keeping the price of gold and silver much lower than their respective free market prices, it is of my opinion that it will be much more difficult for them to contain the price of gold and silver moving forward in 2012.

Today, there are still many reasons to expect a stellar next couple of years from gold and silver performance, including the mining stocks. From a technical standpoint, gold and silver appear to be on the verge of making a very significant run higher. I’m not saying that this will happen tomorrow, but it does look very probable within a short-time period. From a manipulation factor standpoint, gold and silver also look poised for a run higher too. So the two factors I use to assess gold and silver’s direction both appear aligned with one another to move gold and silver higher very soon.

As far as the timeframe? Currently, due to excessive banker meddling in gold and silver futures markets, and the unknown factor of when greater divergence will occur between physical and paper PM prices as public awareness of the paper scam grows, the exact “when” part of the equation is the most difficult to assess, though I still believe that we will see some strong moves higher in gold and silver during the first quarter of 2012. Furthermore, I strongly believe that gold and silver will still both rise multiples higher than their current banker-suppressed price and that 2012 will see periods of explosive growth for gold and silver, more so for silver than gold, and that PM mining stocks, although accompanied by great volatility once again, will perform much better than they did in 2011. I believe that the largest difference between 2012 and 2011 will be, despite some continued large bouts of volatility in the PMs, a much stronger annual trend higher for gold and silver.

The start of 2011 was a phenomenal start for junior mining PM stocks but the latter half of the year was very negative. Still, one could have done very well in 2011 with junior mining stocks by taking profits off the table when they existed and letting one’s remaining capital ride risk-free in the junior mining sector. In addition to using discipline to protect profits when they exist in the junior mining sector, the greatest friend of a gold/silver investor is patience. Sometimes one knows that great moves higher are coming, but one’s timing may be off by a mere six to nine months. Patience will allow one to still reap the bulk of the rewards from these great moves higher as long as one isn’t shaken out of the markets by the banking cartel induced price volatility in gold/silver assets. To this end, I leave you with 10-year charts of gold and silver. Sometimes, it really is necessary to step back and take a deep breath to see the forest from the trees. To sign up for our free investment newsletter, please visit SmartKnowledgeU and sign up here.

About the author: JS Kim is the Chief Investment Strategist and Founder of SmartKnowledgeU, a fiercely independent investment research & consulting firm with a focus on precious metals. For much more detailed commentary about gold and silver, consider the SmartKnowledgeU Crisis Investment Opportunities newsletter.

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

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.

Have you ever noticed how vehemently people react when you question something they believe in instead of ever being able to have an intelligent discussion with him or her? In the below video, Chris Hedges, a Pulitzer Prize winning American journalist, author, and war correspondent, nails the reason that explains why it is so difficult to change a person’s mind when they are committed to believing something even when they are confronted with a mountain of evidence that points to the contrary. Chris states that universities have stripped away humanities and other courses that develop critical thinking skills and instead, due to the historical influences of men like Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller, focus on teaching young men and women “what to think” instead of “how to think.”

Like the proverb that states we have two ears and only one mouth so we should listen twice as much as we talk, when we are confronted with actually having our views challenged, many among us fail to listen, fail to analyze, fail to think, and we instead immediately open our mouths in defense without ever seriously considering the contrary information, often in factual form, that has been presented to us. All of us, including yours truly, have been guilty of responding insensitively and unintelligently in this manner, and I believe that there is a reason for this type of response. The powers that be have used education against us by employing teaching methods within institutional academia that condition us to automatically dismiss any notion that might conflict with our internal belief systems that THEY have programmed into us. If you believe that this notion is far-fetched, consider that from 1900 to 1920, at a time when the direction of American education was very much still being molded, Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller incredibly spent more money than the entire US government in funding and building the education system to meet their specifications and wishes.

Have you ever thought about why repetition, an integral construct in the effectiveness of brainwashing, is also an integral construct in most institutions of academia in every country of the world? Could education institutions possibly be serving as re-education camps? Should not true learning involve students questioning professors, students questioning students, and professors questioning students not just to repeat and regurgitate pre-packaged responses as is so often the case, but also to critically analyze and to defend one’s positions and arguments? The Powers That Be (TPTB) that attend the Bilderberg conference must secretly smile and laugh behind closed doors at the “unthinking” nature that they have been able to instill within us. 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.

Because universities are so focused on teaching us “what to think” instead of “how to think”, this dumbing down process has produced many media figures and talk show hosts that respond to any questioning of their beliefs with censorship, an attempt to talk over opposition views, or with infantile ad hominem attacks, no matter how cogent and eloquently expressed the opposition view may be. When I lived in Japan, I learned of a Japanese proverb that states, “The nail that sticks out gets hammered down”, as if uniqueness and individuality were undesirable traits. Perhaps this may be the case as the status quo views us, their subjects, but certainly humanity should strive to achieve creativity and foster critical thought in order to establish a more moral society and to root out corruption.

Furthermore, the deliberate destruction of curricula in institutional academia that fosters critical thinking skills has given way to “hero” worship and learned helplessness instead of self-determination and self-reliance. Again, the status quo delights in the hero culture we have built today. Hero worship leaves one longing for salvation to come on the back of some mythical status without any commitment or accountability from the masses. The status quo delights in the hero culture we have built today. Hero worship leaves one longing for salvation to come on the back of some mythical hero without any commitment or accountability from the masses. The status quo delight in the hero culture that they have built in the minds of the masses as they know that longing for salvation to come from someone else will leave people in a state of learned helplessness-induced inertia and thus create an effective barrier from the manifestation of a “peasant” revolt.

Have you ever noticed how often someone will defend every fault of their country’s President, a huge pop star, or a star athlete as passionately as they would defend their own family if you should dare criticize their “hero” figure? From a logical standpoint, such defenses are the definition of irrational, as no one can truly know anything substantial or substantive about the character or true nature of a public figure with whom they have not spent a single hour. But yet people very frequently subscribe to the absolutely absurd belief that they know the character of their “hero” intimately and will defend this person’s honor (or dishonor as it may be in many cases) to the end of time. In closing, in addition to Chris Hedge’s video, I will leave you with a video I posted nearly a year-and-a-half ago in which I discuss ex-KGB Yuri Bezmenov’s discourse on ideological subversion and how such tactics can produce sheeple that will invariably obey and believe what they are told. Hopefully this will help us identify the ideological subversive tactics that are being deployed against us today all over the world and help all of us to transform into more open-minded people willing to consider alternate viewpoints other than the ones that “the powers that be” commanded us to embrace.

Read Part 2 of this series here.

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.

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.