Kavanaugh and the Crux of a Cold Civil War

Article Provided by Thaddeus G. McCotter

We are in the midst of a cold civil war. The crux? Realizing politics is part of life, one side believes America is fundamentally a good country requiring some prudent improvements upon which reasonable minds may differ. On the other side, the Left, thinking politics is life, believes America is a hopelessly unjust nation requiring “fundamental transformation” and this is a point on which no reasonable minds can differ.

The Kavanaugh confirmation evinces the political abyss between us; and the bathetic depths to which this divide drives the Left to “win.”

Employing the subjective term “credible” for an accusation that has no basis in objective reality, the Left has rationalized its inevitable rejection of the Supreme Court’s “credibility” and “legitimacy.” It will refuse to obey any rulings involving Justice Brett Kavanagh or Justice Clarence Thomas. It threatens to conduct a future Democratic Party-led investigation of one and possibly two sitting justices, and a possible impeachment trial. In so doing, the Left perpetuates the political intimidation of Kavanaugh and Thomas in the separate and equal branch of government that is supposed to reject political considerations and administer impartial justice.

No, it won’t work. But because they feel entitled to announce this; and, excused, emboldened, and empowered by their fellow leftists in the media, they will sadly continue to attempt to erode our constitutional safeguards of equal justice under law.

Further, we’ve witnessed and will continue to bear witness to leftists acting upon calls to publicly “confront” and “get in the face” of senators voting for Kavanaugh’s confirmation—most notably Senators Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine), who have been threatened with constant harassment by what are, in essence, political stalkers. This tactic will carry over into other fights. Sadly, we have already seen leftists resort to violence in similar confrontations.


 

Regrettably, there is the decided likelihood that the Left’s propensity for violence will continue to escalate in proportion to its rhetoric. When Collins is libeled viciously as a “rape apologist” and the entire Republican Party is defamed as “Rape-Publicans,” why would any virtue signaling narcissist resist (even if they could) the incited urge to attack such villains? If you think these people would always resist the lesser angels of their natures, feel free to acquaint yourself with the video of the young pro-life lady being kicked by the “feminist” left-wing goon.

Why does the fascist Left feel entitled to engage in sedition, slander, stalking, and violence to pursue it ends? Conflating politics with life and thinking America is beyond redemption absent a fundamental (and impossible) transformation to socialist Eden where everyone must think the same upon pain of ostracism and worse, the Left cannot believe that anyone who disagrees has good intentions.

Yet the pressing question for those citizens of sound mind and stout hearts is not what will be the next manifestation of the Left’s vicious political paroxysm. To be forewarned and forearmed is, truthfully, all one can do. No, the question at hand is how, for the future good of our free republic, the Left can be constructively engaged and political civility, if not yet comity, restored.

In the wake of the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings, this increasingly is a question only the Left can answer, for it is their calumnies and lawlessness exacerbating the political divide and deepening the America’s cold civil war. Best the Left ponder and devise an answer soon.

If they do not, one day, historians will record that the violent Left had turned Steve Scalise into our Charles Sumner.

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CORPORATE AMERICA’S WAR ON THE MIDDLE CLASS

Article provided by Michael Cutler

H-1B visa program being used to displace Americans. 

Kindly forward this e-mail to your senators and congressional representatives and to as many folks as you can and then ask that those to whom you send this forward it along to everyone they can- I am attempting to create a “Bucket Brigade of Truth!

Please remember to listen to my radio show, “The Michael Cutler Hour” on BlogTalk Radio on Friday evenings at 7:00 PM, Eastern Time, and find podcasts of my previous programs at:

USA Talk Radio

My article for FrontPage Magazine today was predicated on a Policy Memorandum (PM) that was issued by USCIS on September 27, 2018 USCIS.  The administration had decided to task USCIS with issuing NTA’s (Notices To Appear) to aliens whose application for immigration benefits were denied because of fraud or for other such reasons.  This was a great move and one that would increase the capabilities of DHS to enforce existing immigration law where aliens who violate their immigration status in the United States is concerned.

HOWEVER- for reasons unknown, disappointingly, the administration has exempted aliens who entered the United States with employment-based visas, such as the H-1b visa, from this policy.

This flies in the face of the notion of putting American workers first and will, undoubtedly please the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Employers and even the governments of India and China.

In point of fact, as you will see in my article today, the major corporate players made their demands about their sacrosanct foreign workers known to the administration and, disappointingly, the administration appears to have buckled.

So much for promises about putting American workers first!

While the Trump administration has taken certain measures to enhance the enforcement of our immigration laws from within the interior of the United States, this decision is certainly not consistent with the notion of bolstering interior enforcement of our immigration laws especially where foreign workers are concerned.

Ignorance is not bliss.  Knowledge is power, so my article provides some cold hard facts for you to consider and hopefully share with others.

If you like my article I ask that you make a point of posting it on FaceBook and other social media and forward this e-mail to as many folks as you can.  It is important to dispel the lies and nonsense about the true nature and significance of effective immigration law enforcement in this particularly perilous era.

Being “Pro-Enforcement” is not “Anti-Immigrant.”  Indeed, advocates for immigration anarchy are actually taking an “Anti-Immigrant” position by obfuscating the line that separates lawful immigrants from illegal aliens.  To provide a bit of clarity, while we are indeed a “Nation of immigrants” America is not a nation of trespassers.  The difference between an immigrant and an illegal alien is comparable to the difference between a houseguest and a burglar.

Americans must be willing to stand their ground and not be intimidated by the false accusations- far too much hangs in the balance!  We must speak out against mayors and governors who create “Sanctuary Cities” and “Sanctuary States.”

Many people have come to complain that we have become too “Politically Correct” to speak the truth about important issues.  My view is that the artful use of language that has been described as examples of political correctness are in fact, examples of Orwellian “Newspeak.”

Having invoked George Orwell, it is appropriate to consider a couple of his brilliant quotes:

Political language — and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists — is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.
I addressed the way that control of language leads to thought control and ultimately a loss of our freedoms in my article for The Social Contract:

“Language Wars: The Road to Tyranny Is Paved with Language Censorship”

CORPORATE AMERICA’S WAR ON THE MIDDLE CLASS

 

H-1B visa program being used to displace Americans. 

October 9, 2018

 

Michael Cutler

Archive of My Articles for FrontPage Magazine

On November 15, 2014 I was honored to join three true leaders in the United States Congress in a panel discussion on immigration- then-U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions and Congressmen Louis Gohmert and John Fleming.  A video of this panel discussion has been posted on the David Horowitz Freedom Center’s website under the title,  “IMMIGRATION WARS: An all-star panel takes on America’s immigration crisis at Restoration Weekend.”

The video has also been posted on YouTube under the title- “Immigration Wars.”

The perspectives of these true leaders are well worth listening to.

To provide you with a bit of additional material, during my remarks at the panel discussion, I referenced my June 22, 2007 Op-Ed for the Washington Times, Immigration bill a ‘No Go’ that focused on my concerns about the previous attempt to enact Comprehensive Immigration Reform.  Senator Jeff Sessions quoted from my commentary, on three separate dates, from the floor of the U.S. during the contentious floor debates in 2007 when Comprehensive Immigration Reform legislation was under consideration..  In my piece I recommended that Comprehensive Immigration Reform be given a more honest and descriptive title, I suggested that it be renamed the “Terrorist Assistance and Facilitation Act!”  

Discussions about immigration almost invariably focus on the lack of integrity to the border that is supposed to separate the United States from America.  Clearly that border lacks integrity and represents little more than a speed bump to smugglers who transport illegal aliens and contraband including record quantities of dangerous drugs such as heroin and cocaine into the United States.

However, there are many more components to the immigration system including systems by which aliens are granted visas to enter the United States and various immigration benefits such as conferring employment authorization to aliens in the United States and also include the adjudications process by which aliens are granted lawful immigrant status and even United States citizenship.

All of these systems of the immigration system lack integrity.  Aliens who have gone on to commit crimes and even participate in terrorist attacks have often been dissevered to have successfully gamed the immigration benefits program in order to embed themselves in communities around the United States as they went about their deadly preparations.

The findings and recommendations of the 9/11 Commission must be the starting point for any discussion about immigration legislation.  That commission determined that a lack of border security, including the visa process. and fraud in the immigration benefits program, enabled terrorists to enter and embed themselves in the United States, as they went about their deadly preparations.

Immigration is not a single issue but a singular issue that impacts nearly every challenge and threat confronting the United States today!  Simply stated, the immigration laws were enacted to save lives and protect the jobs of American workers.  In point of fact, our borders and our immigration laws are America’s first line of defense and last line of defense against international terrorists and transnational criminals.

It is not “Anti-Immigrant” to be “Pro-American!”

Our armed forces are charged with securing America’s borders externally while the DHS is supposed to secure those same borders from within.  The failures of the DHS to live up to its half of the equation are undermining the efforts, valor and incredible sacrifices of Americas men and women who serve in our military!
If our government’s failures to protect American jobs by securing our nation’s borders and effectively enforcing our immigration laws concerns you or especially if it angers you, I ask you to call your Senators and Congressional “Representative. This is not only your right- it is your obligation!

All I ask is that you make it clear to our politicians that we are not as dumb as they hope we are!

We live in a perilous world and in a perilous era. The survival of our nation and the lives of our citizens hang in the balance.

American Lives Matter!

This is neither a Conservative issue, nor is it a Liberal issue- simply stated, this is most certainly an AMERICAN issue!

You are either part of the solution or you are a part of the problem!

Democracy is not a spectator sport!

Lead, follow or get out of the way!

 

A Crash is Looming, But a New Bretton Woods Is Within Reach!

A Crash is Looming, But a New Bretton Woods Is Within Reach!

by Brian Lantz and Harley Schlanger

Sept. 22–On July 25, 2007, as the first signs of the crisis began to emerge—the financial crisis that would ultimately lead to the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the near-collapse of the global financial system—economist Lyndon LaRouche opened a webcast with a warning that the system had reached a point of no return.

The world monetary financial system is actually now currently in the process of disintegrating. There’s nothing mysterious about this; I’ve talked about it for some time, it’s been in progress, it’s not abating. What’s listed as stock values and market values in the financial markets internationally is bunk! These are purely fictitious beliefs. There’s no truth to it; the fakery is enormous. There is no possibility of a non-collapse of the present financial system–none. It’s finished, now! The present financial system cannot continue to exist under any circumstances, under any Presidency, under any leadership…. Only a fundamental and sudden change in the world monetary financial system will prevent a general, immediate chain-reaction type of collapse.@s1 The cost of all this, in human lives and misery, is almost beyond calculation, and will only be touched on here, briefly.

While industry and agriculture have been starved of credit, the reign of “quantitative easing” has actually done nothing to stabilize financial markets. The central banks of Europe, Japan and America are now themselves choking on a total of approximately $14.5 trillion equivalent (at face value) of bank, government and corporate financial paper that they have purchased since 2008.@s3 This deployment of “helicopter money” has only increased financial indebtedness, while also producing a dramatic growth of the S&P 500 Index from its low in early 2009–this, itself, a sign of increasing financial instability, as “Ponzi scheme” financial betting replaces long-term productive investment.

%% Debt as the Trigger %%

An important feature of the building financial crisis has been the growth of corporate, government and personal debt. Worldwide, in the ten years since the 2008 global financial crisis, the debt held by nonfinancial corporations has grown by $29 trillion, and since 2007, the value of corporate bonds outstanding from nonfinancial companies has nearly tripled to $11.7 trillion, according to a McKinsey & Company piece, “[[Are We in a Corporate Debt Bubble?]]” [[https://www.mckinsey.com/mgi/overview/in-the-news/are-we-in-a-corporate-debt-bubble%5D]] The McKinsey article, written by Judy Lund, continues,

Over the next five years, a record $1.5 trillion worth of nonfinancial corporate bonds will mature each year; as some companies struggle to repay, defaults will most likely rise…. The average quality of borrowers has declined. In the U.S., 22% of nonfinancial corporate debt outstanding comprises “junk” bonds from speculative-grade issuers, and another 40% are rated BBB, just one notch above junk. In other words, nearly two-thirds of bonds are from companies at a higher risk of default, including many U.S. retailers. Through “shadow banking” mechanisms the totals could be significantly higher.

%% Calls for a Return to Glass-Steagall %%

As the enormity of the current unfolding crisis begins to sink in with certain more astute members of the Establishment, it is not then surprising that there are again urgent calls from additional quarters, for a return to Glass-Steagall banking regulation with its implications.

Among the most prominent of the new calls for Glass-Steagall is a white paper issued by the U.S. credit union association, the National Association of Federally Insured Credit Unions (NAFCU). Its report, titled “Modernizing Financial Services: The Glass-Steagall Act Revisited,” was followed by a September 11 op-ed in {The Hill} by the organization’s Executive Vice President for Government Affairs and General Counsel, Carrie Hunt. While understating the danger of a financial crash today, the subtext of Hunt’s piece is clear: By not restoring Glass-Steagall after the Crash of 2008, the speculative orgy of the “Too Big to Fail” banks that precipitated the crash when housing prices collapsed–which she characterizes as “excessive, unbridled risk taking”–absolutely continues today.

By not acting to ensure that, “banks’ past misdeeds are not normalized or accepted as status quo,” U.S. lawmakers’ protection of the TBTF banks means that nothing was done to prevent the growth of these banks, and the size of their debt holdings has swelled to unsustainable levels, which Hunt says “will have a catastrophic impact on the American economy and wreak havoc on consumers’ financial well-being.” Hunt writes that a “modern approach” to Glass-Steagall—

would restrict the banks’ ability to make risky bets with consumers’ savings and reduce their overall size, thereby limiting the likelihood of future bailouts and economic turmoil. developed through his study of the discoveries of scientists and physical economists of the past, such as Johannes Kepler, Gottfried Leibniz and Bernhard Riemann. He made advances on their work through his own unique discoveries, parallel to the earlier “American” approach of Benjamin Franklin and Alexander Hamilton.

For LaRouche and these scientists mentioned above, an economy is not about financial profits or “monetary theory”–which has been the basis of all neo-liberal economic “theory,” a thinly-disguised justification for looting populations, and one which has been hegemonic in the British Empire for 300 years. Rather, physical economics is about applying the most advanced scientific discoveries to the production and distribution of goods, to provide an improving standard of living for all people, while at the same time investing in the future, in areas which will lead to the scientific and technological progress needed to provide for the next generations.

On the other hand, the current, continued exponential growth of global debt and the growth of the utterly fantastic derivatives {casino mondial} of fictitious wealth can only continue through the issuance of new borrowing and increasing debt. As an inverted pyramid, it is only held up by increasingly weakening streams of revenue (debt service) bled from the remaining real economy. And this is what we have seen, particularly in the United States over the recent decades. This has been rigorously presented in Lyndon LaRouche’s series of heuristic “Triple Curves” of a “typical collapse function,”@s6 as the hyperbolic growth of financial and monetary aggregates, sustained by the third curve, the downward-plunging curve of the actual physical inputs/outputs of the real economy.

At the current moment, the growth of the global derivatives market appears to have fallen slightly, ostensibly due to “trade compression efforts.” However, the quadrillion dollar derivatives bubble remains as the main explosive, and the debt is the now-ticking detonation charge.

For example, in the “emerging market” economies, fueled by the speculative dollar carry-trade, these nations are saddled with more than $8 trillion in corporate and sovereign debt, of which more than $249 billion comes due in the next year. With rising interest rates, and a stronger dollar, speculators are fleeing from these emerging markets and their currencies, making dollar-denominated debt payments far more costly, and defaults inevitable. Witness the current currency and economic crises in Turkey and Argentina, systemically spilling over into Europe and Europe’s banks–and then into the United States through derivatives “hedging.”

Along with emerging market debt, U.S. corporate debt, student loan debt, and car loan debt have all grown exponentially, and all of this debt is then “securitized” into derivatives products, in the way that mortgage-backed securities are. The growing debt is the live “detonator.”

This is the terminal condition of the process described by LaRouche’s “collapse function,” and President Donald Trump’s actions, as valiant and well intentioned as they have been–as President he cannot succeed without our help. The demands to “save the cancer!” come from the British Empire, via the central banks, City of London and Wall Street, intent on saving their global monetary system, which is indeed the British Empire itself. Given the collapse of the real economies of the “West” caused by this blood-sucking, this system can now collapse at any time, with catastrophic consequences.

The reality of this crisis is now increasingly being acknowledged. The immediate threat to be addressed is the global debt bomb of derivatives, and the explosive charge of debt, built up by what have been unlimited flows of Central Bank quantitative easing and accompanying measures. The “bomb” could simply be detonated by the Federal Reserve attempting to now “taper” QE and raise interest rates.

The realization that one must take away from all of this, however, is that this crisis is fundamentally not about financial paper and algorithms. The matter at hand is existential for mankind as the failing British Empire’s monetarist financial system has already riven the world. It is this failing and homicidal British Empire that is threatening a geopolitical “Thucydides Trap” and thermonuclear war, attempting to manipulate the United States against its natural allies Russia and China and their growing “South-South” alliance for cooperation and peaceful development.

%% President Trump and Solutions Today %%

The Belt and Road Initiative of China’s President Xi Jinping is already transforming much of the world, engendering optimism about the future. Even if censored and blocked out in the mass media, a multitude of projects and people-to-people exchanges have made enormous, positive changes in the relations among nations and made physical changes on the ground. As a consequence of the Trump presidency and the Belt and Road, and the influential ongoing work of the LaRouche movement, the “fundamental and sudden change” that economist and statesman Lyndon LaRouche called for in 2007 can be fully realized now!

This change is now the substance of the urgent call by Helga Zepp-LaRouche, founder of the Schiller Institutes, as well as the intervention of the national flagship campaign of Kesha Rogers, Independent candidate for Congress in the Texas 9th Congressional District. The urgent requirement now, as emphasized by those two leaders, is for the convening of a “Four Powers” summit of President Trump, President Xi Jinping, President Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Modi. {The purpose of that summit is the prompt creation of a New Bretton Woods financial system, of fixed exchange rates and sovereign credit, replacing a now collapsing monetarist dis-order with a New Paradigm of “win-win” development.} The Donald Trump Presidency means that a New Bretton Woods summit among the leaders of the four leading–but very different—nations of the U.S., Russia, China and India, can now be organized.

This New Bretton Woods initiative is being taken to the United Nations this week, as well as to Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., supported by prominent international endorsements. (See the Petition elsewhere in this issue.)

In July 2016, prior to the Republican convention, Trump shocked the bankers when he stated that he favored a return to Glass-Steagall bank separation. CNBC television reported that “Wall Street is not pleased” by this. Trump intervened directly in the Republican Platform hearings, insisting, along with campaign manager Paul Manafort, that Glass-Steagall be included in the party’s platform. The plank said simply, “We support reinstating the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, which prohibits commercial banks from engaging in high-risk investment.”

Trump’s commitment to Glass-Steagall was reaffirmed by spokesman Sean Spicer, following a meeting between Trump and community bankers in March 2017. The President answered a question from Bloomberg News on May 2, 2017, about whether he still supports Glass-Steagall, by saying, “I’m looking into that right now … There’s some people that want to go back to the old system [Glass-Steagall], right? So we’re going to look at that.”

Since his inauguration, President Trump has worked to revive U.S. manufacturing and, between the months of July 2017 and July 2018, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has [[reported]] [[https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/03/job-gains-for-the-manufacturing-industry-are-the-most-since-1995.html]] a gain of 327,000 jobs in manufacturing, which is the largest gain since 1994-95. However, this increase in manufacturing job growth is not enough to turn the tide, given the ongoing collapse of U.S. infrastructure, nor halt the huge “sucking sound” emitted from the City of London’s “Square Mile” and from Wall Street.

The net physical economic output of the United States is negative. The real-world, physical consequences of disinvestment are just now being further highlighted by the devastating effects of Hurricane Florence in North and South Carolina, following the similarly disastrous hurricanes Harvey and Maria, the effects of which have not been mitigated. Nor has the prospect of future such threats been addressed. Likewise, consider the ongoing drought in the Western United States, with life-threatening water shortages and forest fires. It is also necessary to remind ourselves of the collapsing transportation grid in the New York City/New Jersey region, and consider the most recent “Report Card” of the American Society of Civil Engineers, which gave U.S. national infrastructure a grade of D+.

The continued destruction of the current and future creative and productive capabilities of the nation must be fully recognized and addressed. Causally, the continued collapse of physical economic activity is today visible in unemployment, destroyed living standards, the epidemic of heroin and other opioids, a skyrocketing suicide rate, and mass-killings that dominate our American landscape today.

This is an all-encompassing crisis, and agitation for Glass-Steagall, by itself, is not sufficient. It only begins to address the underlying axioms, as presented by LaRouche. LaRouche’s Four New Laws–and the approach to physical-economic development contained therein–are cardinal measures, and must further inform our drive for the leading four nations on the planet to convene a New Bretton Woods summit. It is the system of British monetarism itself which must be overturned, as Franklin Roosevelt acted against it in his time. American citizens are now weighing in, mobilizing with Texas Congressional candidate Kesha Rogers and the LaRouche PAC’s national 2018 Campaign to Win the Future. This approach must become the affirmative policy of the U.S. government, and, as we demolish the Russiagate coup attempt, President Trump will be freed up to take these urgently required measures.

[1].^Lyndon LaRouche webcast, July 25, 2007, published in [[{Executive Intelligence Review}, August 3, 2007]]. [[https://larouchepub.com/eiw/public/2007/eirv34n30-20070803/04-29_730.pdf]]

2.^See “[[Goodbye, George Baily: Decline of Rural Lending Crimps Small Town Business]],” [[https://www.wsj.com/articles/goodbye-george-bailey-decline-of-rural-lending-crimps-small-town-business-1514219515]] {Wall Street Journal}, Dec. 25, 2017.

3.^See “[[Central Bank Balance Sheets]],” [[https://www.yardeni.com/pub/peacockfedecbassets.pdf]] Yardeni Research, Sept. 25, 2018.

4.^Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, [[Quarterly Report on Bank Trading and Derivatives Activity]], [[https://www.occ.gov/topics/capital-markets/financial-markets/derivatives/dq218.pdf]] second quarter, 2018.

5.^See: [[So, You Wish to Learn All About Economics]], [[https://store.larouchepub.com/product-p/eirbk-1984-3-0-0-epub.htm]] by Lyndon LaRouche.

6.^For LaRouche’s Triple Curves, see [[Dennis Speed’s presentation]] [[https://larouchepub.com/eiw/private/2018/2018_30-39/2018-35/pdf/25-37_4535.pdf]] in the August 31, 2018 issue of {EIR}.

Insider Insight – Kevin Annett – September 2018

Kevin Annett Founder of The International Tribunal Into Crimes of Church & State (www.itccs.org) Dissects Crimes Against The Youngest members of Our Society

IS A NEO-LIBERAL “FIFTH COLUMN” OF REPUBLICANS JOINING WITH DEMOCRATS TO IMPEACH TRUMP?

by: Harley Schlanger

Aug. 3 — From the beginning of Donald Trump’s 2016 election campaign, there was no doubt he would face fierce opposition from the Democratic Party, whose nominee Hillary Clinton raised questions about her opponent’s mental stability. For example, at a campaign rally on June 2, 2016, in San Diego, she taunted him for expressing a willingness to cooperate with Russian President Putin: “I’ll leave it to the psychiatrists to explain his affection for tyrants,” she quipped.

This attack, before the formal opening of the FBI’s “Get Trump” task force at the end of that month, presaged the narrative of “Russian meddling” and “Trump collusion”, which has dominated the opposition to Trump since his election shocked Clinton’s supporters, who arrogantly assumed that she would win. In the two months between his election victory and his inauguration, the word “impeachment” was increasingly heard, as stunned Democrats in the U.S. and Hillary backers overseas — for example, in the U.K., where the Russiagate story had been launched by imperial geopoliticians in the intelligence community — schemed for ways to overturn the result of the election.

Though his opponents offered many reasons for wanting to remove Trump, the most significant has continued to be his expressed desire to work with Russia’s President Putin to resolve outstanding issues between the two nations. While Clinton demonstrated a reckless disregard for the dangers implicit in her anti-Russian rhetoric during the campaign — as in her demand that the U.S. impose a “no-fly zone” in Syria, risking U.S.-Russian military confrontation there — the anti-Trump/anti-Putin rants have become even more intense since the historic Helsinki summit last month. Typical was the unhinged response of President Obama’s CIA Director John Brennan, who tweeted that Trump’s comments at the post-summit press conference with Putin were “nothing short of treasonous.” He challenged “Republican Patriots” to respond against Trump.

However, given the Republican majorities in both Houses of Congress, and the overwhelming support for Trump among voters who identify as Republicans, there appeared to be little chance that Democrats could successfully remove Trump through impeachment proceedings. Though there has been a vocal anti-Trump grouping among Republicans, especially among the neo-conservative Bush networks which coalesced around a “Never-Trump” operation early in the campaign, the President’s support from the Republican base and blue-collar Democrats demonstrated there would be a price to be paid by any Republican official who would join with Democrats in a move to impeach him.

While this did not deter hard-core Republican Senate Russophobes, such as John McCain and his sidekick Lindsey Graham in their anti-Trump/anti-Russia polemics, Democratic anti-Trumpers became obsessively focused on taking back the U.S. House in the November 2018 mid-term elections as the best hope for bringing forward a successful impeachment campaign.

IT’S NOT JUST RUSSIAGATE
The work of a handful of diligent Republican Congressmen, such as Devin Nunes and Jim Jordan, has produced voluminous evidence that the Russiagate story was concocted to prevent Trump from following through with his campaign pledges to end the policies of the Bush-Obama era. Their investigations have confirmed the reports produced by the LaRouche organization, which show that the real meddling in the election was by British intelligence officials, through their collusion with Obama intelligence officials, and the Clinton campaign, which paid for the fully discredited dirty dossier against Trump compiled by “ex-MI6” operative Christopher Steele. That dossier was used by the FBI to get FISA warrants to spy on Trump campaign officials, and provide “talking points” to media opposition to his presidency.

Despite this evidence, which highlights the corruption of the FBI and Justice Department networks engaged in the campaign against Trump, many of the Republicans who produced the evidence undercut their work by insisting that there was Russian meddling, only it was on behalf of Hillary Clinton! This explains why almost all Republicans joined with the Democrats in August 2017 to pass harsh anti-Russian sanctions, to “punish” Russia. This line continues to be pushed by Republicans today. On July 31, at a National Cyber Summit sponsored by the Department of Homeland Security, Vice President Mike Pence asserted that “Russia meddled in our 2016 elections,” in an effort to “sow discord and division,” calling this “an affront to our democracy” and vowing that “it will not be allowed.”

Sen. Graham is spearheading new sanctions legislation, insisting, without offering any evidence, that the current sanctions regime “has failed to deter Russia from meddling” in the coming mid-term elections. He demanded “crushing sanctions” until “Putin stops meddling”, adding that this should continue until Putin ends cyber attacks, “removes Russia from Ukraine, and ceases efforts to create chaos in Syria”!

Helga Zepp LaRouche, the chairman of the Schiller Institute, has pointed out that this hysteria is not just about Russia, but represents opposition to Trump’s efforts to break with the whole post-cold war order shaped by the neocons. Fearful of the emergence of a new multilateral order, explicit in the global momentum in support of China’s Belt-and-Road Initiative (BRI), the neocons are desperate to keep Trump from joining this New Paradigm, to defend their unilateral order based on British imperial geopolitics and City of London financial control, enforced by U.S. military muscle. Trump’s desire to collaborate with China, Russia and others, as seen in the Singapore summit with North Korea’s Kim, and in Helsinki, represents an existential threat to Trans-Atlantic unilateralism.

However, as the battle between Trump and a leading force in Republican “conservative” networks, the Koch brothers, Charles and David and their Americans for Prosperity funding operation, has again become public, it is evident that the opposition among Republicans to Trump goes beyond his foreign policy.

NEOCONS AND NEO-LIBS UNITE AGAINST TRUMP
The Trump-Koch brothers feud predates the 2016 election. In 2015, the Kochs invited Republican hopefuls to a conference, to help donors decide who to fund in 2016. Trump opponents Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz were invited, but Trump was not. In response, he tweeted “good luck to all of the Republican candidates that traveled to California to beg for money etc. from the Koch Brothers. Puppets?”

In all, the Koch brothers spent close to $900 million in the 2016 campaign, including significant outlays to Trump opponents in the Republican presidential race, and to Republican Congressional candidates. They refused to back Trump during the campaign. At a donor conference on January 30, 2017, just after Trump’s inauguration, Charles Koch echoed the rallying cry of Clinton Democrats when he said, “We have a tremendous danger because we can go the authoritarian route” under Trump.

The Koch brothers are at the center of Republican Congressional opposition to the economic agenda that Trump campaigned for, which explains in part why his pledge to restore Glass Steagall — which he insisted be included in the Republican Party Platform — and fund a revitalization of American infrastructure, have not happened. The brothers liberally fund neo-liberal opponents of the American economic system. They are rabid supporters of the free trade agenda, typified by NAFTA and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which Trump has opposed; they favor outsourcing of industry, rather than a policy to revive American manufacturing; they oppose government funding for infrastructure, favoring instead Public-Private Partnerships; they oppose Trump on immigration, as they favor bringing in immigrants to perform cheap labor; they are committed to privatizing Social Security, to bring retirement funds into private investment swindles typified by those favored by their well-funded think tanks, the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute (they have contributed more than $100 million to such neo-liberal think tanks); and they support all efforts to impose austerity on government spending, to reduce “big government.”

During the 2016 campaign, Trump blistered large Republican donors, such as the Kochs, calling them “highly sophisticated killers” whose donations give them control over legislators. He denounced Super Pacs, such as Americans for Prosperity, as “corrupt.” His comments at his victory party after the election generated deep alarm from the donor class, when he promised to “rebuild our highways, bridges, tunnels, airports, schools and hospitals.”

Koch puppets in Congress include House Speaker Paul Ryan, whose “Team Ryan” received $500,000 from the Kochs, and free traders such as anti-Trump Republican Senators Jeff Flake, Patrick Toomey and Bob Corker, who work with Democrats such as Charles Schumer to undermine Trump. Among their favorites are Republican Senator Ben Sasse, a frequent Trump critic who is threatening to run against him in 2020, and neocon Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, who often counters Trump’s statements on foreign policy matters, and convinced the Kochs to support fellow South Carolinian Lindsey Graham. Another favored politician is Mike Pence, who received $200,000 from them for his 2012 campaign for Governor of Indiana.

When Charles Koch announced last week that he would be willing to back Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans to stop Trump, pledging to spend between $300 and $400 million to elect a neo-liberal Congress, the battle line for 2018 was drawn. If the Democrats could take back the majority of the House in 2018, and persuade some Republicans to join them, impeachment of Trump becomes a possibility. In response to Koch’s announcement, the President tweeted on July 31 that the Koch brothers are a “total joke in real Republican circles,” adding “I never sought their support because I don’t need their money or their bad ideas.”

For Trump to succeed in his efforts to reshape both strategic and financial policy, he must be more aggressive in countering the “bad ideas” of the Koch brothers and their ilk. Openly campaigning for Lyndon LaRouche’s Four Laws would provide him with the American System agenda which he has spoken about favorably. Given that his election victory in 2016 was driven by his opposition to the war policy of Clinton and the neocons, and his support for restoring the American system, to revive American manufacture and provide well-paid jobs to underemployed and underpaid American employees, this strategy would not just defeat his opponents, but bring the United States into full cooperation with the New Paradigm. This would send the Koch brothers to the proverbial “dust-bin of history.”

WITH RUSSIAGATE TURNING INTO “MUELLERGATE”, WILL THE TRUMP-PUTIN SUMMIT FINISH OFF THE U.S. BRITISH “SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP”? | HARLEY SCHLANGER

CONTRIBUTION BY HARLEY SCHLANGER

July 13 — As the world awaits the upcoming summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, the battle over Russiagate in the U.S. is heating up to a boiling point.  Developments in the last days, which include a new level of partisan recrimination in the U.S. Congress, show that those who created the “Russian-meddling-Trump-colluded” narrative, to prevent Trump from breaking with the anti-Russian policies of the Obama administration, are escalating their efforts to sabotage any agreement which might be reached between the two leaders.  Watching this unfold, there can no longer be any doubt that peaceful cooperation between the two nuclear superpowers is seen as an existential threat to those London-based geopoliticians who created the post-Cold War order.  Their greatest fear is that Trump is committed to dismantling this order, and that there is growing support within the populations of European nations for that to occur.

 

Listen to the words of the Democratic leader in the U.S. Senate, Charles Schumer, days before the Trump-Putin summit.  Trump’s duty, he proclaimed, “is to protect the American people from foreign threats, not to sell out our democracy to Putin.”  Note that Schumer issued a slightly-veiled threat to Trump on January 4, 2017, before his inauguration, not to challenge the authority of the intelligence community officials under Obama, who were at the forefront of the U.S. side in making the charges against Putin and Trump.  Schumer told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow that Trump is “being really dumb” to challenge the intelligence community’s allegations against Russia.  “Let me tell you,” he said, “you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you.”

 

Since that time, the regime change operation that Schumer was defending has been thoroughly exposed by diligent investigations conducted by Republican members of both houses of Congress.  Their investigations have confirmed what LaRouchePAC and this news service stated at the outset, that those seeking to defeat Trump’s campaign, and to destroy his presidency if he won, have engaged in illegal actions involving the highest levels of government, from President Obama on down; and that these actions were conducted, from the beginning, in collusion with the top levels of British intelligence — beginning with GCHQ’s charges of “suspicious” Russian cyber activity, to MI6 “ex”-operative Christopher Steele’s circulation of a lying memo alleging that Putin was engaging in sexual blackmail against Trump, to control him — which led to the establishment of FBI Director Comey’s “Get Trump” task force at the end of July 2016.

 

Among the small group tasked by Comey with the responsibility to take down Trump was FBI agent Peter Strzok, the number two man in the FBI in counterintelligence and the liaison to CIA director John Brennan, a leader in the Get Trump operation.  Strzok was at the center of a highly contentious hearing in the House Judiciary Committee on July 12, during which he defiantly denied that his bias against Trump affected his job in investigating both the Clinton email scandal and the allegations of a Russian connection to Trump.

 

After acknowledging that he “detested” Trump, a portion of Strzok’s text message exchange with his mistress Lisa Page, who was the chief legal adviser to disgraced former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe, and worked with Strzok on the Clinton case, the Russian investigation and later Mueller’s team, was read aloud:

Page: Trump “is not ever going to become President, right?”

Strzok: “No. No he’s not.  We’ll stop it.”

 

The Inspector General of the Justice Department released a report last month, which said of the Strzok-Page exchanges, that they damaged the “FBI’s reputation for neutral fact finding  and political independence.”  However, incredulously, the report found that such displays of “bias” did not affect the FBI’s investigation!  When challenged on this, Strzok claimed there is “simply no evidence of bias in my professional actions.”  He later denounced the hearing, saying that it is “just another victory notch in Putin’s belt and another milestone in our enemies’ campaign to tear America apart,” which he obviously blames on those defending the President, not on those, like himself, who are committed to a “regime change” in the U.S., to overturn the result of the 2016 U.S. election.

 

At the beginning of the hearing, Strzok insisted that proof that he had no bias is that he was one of the few who “knew details of Russian election interference and its possible connections to members of the Trump campaign,” but he did not make that public.  He was not challenged as to what proof he had of election interference.  After two years of FBI investigation, not a shred of real evidence of Russian interference, or Trump collusion, has been produced.

 

MUELLER’S WITNESS TAMPERING

Meanwhile, special counsel Mueller is preparing for trial in the case he has brought against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, scheduled to begin on July 25 in Alexandria, Virginia.  Manafort has been charged with bank fraud and tax violations.  In a second case, which will open on September 17, Manafort is charged with money laundering, obstructing justice and acting as an unregistered agent of Ukraine.  Mueller’s team has acknowledged that in neither trial will they present evidence of collusion with Russian efforts to rig the election.  Manafort’s attorneys are arguing that the charges should be dropped, as they have nothing to do with Mueller’s mandate to investigate the election.

 

The charges against Manafort predate his involvement in the Trump campaign, and may reflect a British-Obama vendetta against him, for his role in aiding the election victory of Viktor Yanukovych as President of Ukraine in 2010.   Manafort served as a paid consultant to Yanukovych and his party, and developed a campaign strategy that was successful.  Obama political operatives had been deployed to help Yanukovych’s opponent.  Yanukovych was overthrown in a regime change coup orchestrated by neocons in the Obama administration in 2014, which triggered a series of events leading to sanctions against Russia, and kicking Russia out of the G8, based on the false charges that Russia invaded Ukraine and illegally seized Crimea.  Settling the Ukraine issue and possibly lifting sanctions will likely be on the agenda of the Trump-Putin meeting in Helsinki.

 

Manafort is presently in prison, despite having been convicted of no crime, his bail revoked due to charges from Mueller that he was engaged in “witness tampering.”  One legal expert commented that if anyone is engaging in witness tampering, it is Mueller, whose method of prosecution includes using threats of lengthy sentences, going after family members, and bankrupting targets through requiring them to absorb huge legal fees, to convince them to “flip”, to give concocted “evidence” to go after a bigger fish.  Mueller’s lead prosecutor in the Manafort case, Andrew Weissman, is notorious for his use of such tactics, and convictions he won using these tactics have been overturned by higher courts.  Manafort continues to assert his innocence, and is preparing an all-out fight, from his jail cell, against the charges brought by Mueller and Weissman.  The same tactics were applied against Trump’s former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, who pleaded guilty to “lying to the FBI”, after Mueller threatened to bring charges against his son, and Flynn acknowledged that he was running out of funds to conduct a legal defense.

 

These tactics are also being applied against Trump’s former personal attorney Micheal Cohen, who is rumored to be seeking a deal.  He told ABC News that “loyalty to my family” comes before loyalty to the President.  He has brought into his legal team Lanny Davis, formerly an attorney representing Bill Clinton.  Davis wrote a book, “The Unmaking of the President 2016”, in which he questions the legitimacy of Trump’s election and asserts he could be removed due to “mental impairment.”

 

As the hearing with Strzok demonstrates, the tide has shifted against Mueller, as FBI officials, including Comey and McCabe, as well as Department of Justice officials, such as Bruce Ohr, are now in the line of fire for the illegal actions and tactics they employed in service of a regime change in Washington.  Central to these investigations is the relationship these officials had with British intelligence operative Steele and his “dodgy dossier,” and the FBI’s use of sting operations, designed to entrap Trump campaign officials.  Already brought to light has been the role of Stefan Halper and Josef Mifsud, who are shared assets of U.S. intelligence and MI6, in planting the idea with lower-level Trump representatives that the Russians had “dirt” on Hillary.  Also identified as a sting operator is Henry Greenburg, who spent years in a Russian prison, then worked for the FBI for nearly two decades.  Greenburg approached Trump strategist and long-time friend Roger Stone, offering “dirt” from the Russians on Hillary Clinton in return for a payment of $2 million.  Stone turned him down, telling the friend who set up the meeting that it had been a “waste of time.”

 

 

BRITS PANICKED BY TRUMP-PUTIN SUMMIT

As Mueller’s witch hunt has yet to find any evidence of  illegal acts by Putin or Trump, the U.S. President has undertaken a series of bold initiatives, which fundamentally challenge the post-Cold War order.  After leaving leaders of the G7 summit in Canada fuming, he held a successful summit with Kim Jong-un in Singapore, which was hailed by Helga Zepp LaRouche as the “Singapore example” for overcoming adversarial relations.  Trump’s success in dealing with North Korea was facilitated by international diplomacy, which included his collaboration with China’s President Xi Jinping, Russia’s Putin, Japan’s Prime Minister Abe and South Korean President Moon.

 

Though his opponents in both parties in the U.S. were visibly unhappy with the results of Singapore, Trump moved ahead to schedule his summit with Putin.  While he had hoped to meet with Putin long before now, the Russiagate attacks on him were an obvious impediment to scheduling a summit, due to fears of his advisers that he would appear to be a “Putin puppet” if he met with him.  Further efforts to disrupt a possible improvement of relations included the near-unanimous votes in both the U.S. House and Senate in July 2017 for harsh sanctions against Russia, and repeated British-instigated frauds, such as the alleged Russian role in the Skripal poisoning, and in supporting Assad’s use of chemical weapons — both frauds which have been subsequently refuted, but greatly heightened tensions between the two nations.

 

No sooner was the summit announced than the usual suspects moved to undermine his initiative.  Most vituperative were the British, who focused on the expected tussle with Trump at the NATO summit, which preceded his meeting with Putin, as a point of attack.  The {London Times} declared on July 8 that NATO leaders fear “an assault on the transatlantic alliance by Donald Trump.”

 

Even more hysterical was a column in the Guardian on July 8 by Simon Tisdale, who asks, “Is the U.S. a friend — or a foe?”  Tisdale writes that the problem is that Trump “is questioning the purpose of NATO.”  He “treats old friends worse than ostensible enemies,” citing as examples Trump’s dismissive attitude toward British PM May and German Chancellor Merkel, ignoring that most of the voters in those two countries have dismissive attitudes towards their leaders.  He added that Trump “has moved from difficult partner to potential enemy.”

 

In a blatant show of contempt for the President, Tisdale accuses him of “sycophantic courting” of Xi, and claims he will likely engage in “more crapulous fawning over an autocratic leader [Putin] who exercises a mysterious hold over Trump….”  In meeting with Putin, there likely will be “unilateral NATO-busting Trump moves” which will lead to the “normalization of Putin’s regime, and other concessions undermining the post-Salisbury western consensus.”

 

Or, as former UK Foreign Secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind put it, he fears that Trump “will empower the Kremlin” — the same sort of nonsense uttered by Peter Strzok when he said that the effort to get to the truth of Russiagate is putting a “victory notch in Putin’s belt.”  The British offensive against Trump continued after his challenge to NATO at its summit.  As he arrived in the UK after that meeting, the anti-Trump {Guardian} wrote that Trump’s actions “will please Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has long pursued a strategy of creating division in NATO.”

 

On May 26, LaRouchePAC released a memo to President Trump titled “Time to End the Special Relationship; Declassify All British-Spawned Documents Concerning Your 2016 Campaign.”  It is likely that some of the uncontrolled frenzy coming from London-based networks results from their knowledge of the credibility of LaRouchePAC among some of the President’s closest friends and advisers.  If Trump is able to break free from the phony Russiagate charges, he will be able to lead a global realignment, with Russia, China and India, which rejects the Bush-Clinton-Obama neo-liberal/neo-conservative consensus, which was orchestrated in tandem with British “elites”, and which has resulted in endless wars and ongoing economic crises.  Such a realignment would necessarily require a return to the “American system” of economics, ending the scam known as “central banking”, in which a nation’s credit and debt policy is controlled by the leading private banks, for their benefit.

 

Further, such a change would devastate the City of London and Wall Street, as they would be forced to eat their losses, instead of being able to direct profits made by trading speculative financial instruments backed by nothing — e.g. derivatives — into their coffers.

 

Meanwhile, the government of Theresa May, which continues to dig in its heels while attempting to reverse the popular vote for Brexit, is crumbling, with resignations of leading cabinet members and a continuing drop in popularity.  Now is the ideal moment for a break of nations of Europe out from under the Trans-Atlantic domination of recent years, enforced especially by Bush, Jr. and Obama, to open a new era of sovereign governments acting cooperatively in the interests of their people, in collaboration with China’s Belt-and-Road Initiative.

Real Gains No Gimmicks: Now Is The Time For Gold & Silver To Shine

Time to see if gold & silver can shine.

It’s hard to get a better set-up than we have right now.

The events calendar is light this week, and it actually favors gold & silver.

Why?

Inflation data.

Or better said, stagflation data.

We get the Producer Price Index on Wednesday and the Consumer Price Index on Thursday.

The PPI measures what producers pay for the items they use to produce their goods. It will be interesting to see how the trade wars are now affecting producer costs.

For example, just how much has the cost of steel and aluminum gone up in price?

Furthermore, what will the producers do in the face of rising costs?

Let’s talk about a soda pop for a second.

If the cans are more expensive (either manufactured by the soda pop company or sourced already fabricated in a can) because of the aluminum price increases, will the company just take the loss in profit (if there is a profit) or will the company pass on the higher costs to the consumer?

These are very real decisions that companies will make, and since businesses operate in a “just in time” inventory system, meaning the soda pop company doesn’t have tons and tons of aluminum stockpiled somewhere, but rather, it is constantly ordering aluminum with the fluctuations in demand for the soda.

And just like the producers begin making decisions about whether to charge more to their customers, or whether to eat those costs and make less profit, we’ll know soon enough in the CPI, because that is a measure of prices the customer pays.

So where the producer of soda pop is concerned about the cost of aluminum, sugar, water, etc, the consumer just wants to know how much a can of soda costs.

What does this have to do with gold & silver?

Two words: Inflation hedge.

You see, dollars sitting in a bank account or a savings account lose purchasing power with each passing month.

In some countries, like Argentina and Venezuela, fiat currency in the bank or even cash in the wallet can lose purchasing power with each passing day.

That is where gold & silver come in as a hedges against inflation.

By converting dollars into gold, or silver, that purchasing power is maintained because the metals rise in price, and they can be sold later at a higher price.

Yeah, “But Half Dollar, gold and silver only go down in price”.

Not over long periods.

Sure, during the last seven years its been brutal, but what about the last twenty?

Not bad.

Not bad at all.

Besides, since the cartel price suppression has been very brutal, especially this year, not only do gold and silver step up into their roles as inflation hedges, but they also can see capital gains in a rise in price above the rate of inflation as a way of catching back up to their fair values.

So it’s hard to go wrong with gold and silver, especially right now.

Which is why I think it’s time for gold and silver to shine.

So let’s dive in and see where things stand for the week.

We all know what happens when the 50-day moving average crosses the 200-day moving average.

It can be good news or bad news depending on which way you want an asset moving.

Or in the case of the gold to silver ratio, which one you want to outperform.

That said, the 50-day moving average on the GSR is about to cross the 200-day:

This means that silver is about to start outperforming gold at an even faster rate.

Which is something we want to see.

And if we are going to rally this week, then silver will finally be outperforming gold for the right reasons.

We can see that since the markets opened last night, it’s been strength overnight and into the morning:

So gold and silver are off to a good start of the week.

Gold does look like it has turned the corner here:

Going back one year, notice on the gold chart how the rally was strong and ultimately ran up to test the $1350s.

But also notice something about that run – we started it from $1200.

If we are going to rally this week, which I think we are, well, we’re starting from above $1250 (actually above $1260).

And where would $150 from here put us?

Yup.

$1400.

So we’ll see.

Like I said, gold & silver need to shine here, and gold blowing past the $1377 (June, 2016) highs is what gold needs to do to show us it can shine.

Now, I’m not saying we get there this week.

But, those who are new to gold and silver might not know that gold and silver can have strong surges, and a $75 to $100 move in a day is not far fetched.

Now, I don’t think we are at that point, at least not this week, but grinding higher would be what we want to see.

The Ideal would be a set-up to challenge $1350 next week, but I’d settle for putting in a close above $1300, which isn’t that much to ask at all.

A close above $1325 would get us set-up to challenge $1350 in a hurry.

I’ve put the sideways channel of pure agony back on the silver chart:

For performance in silver, we need to close out the week above the channel.

That would be approximately a 3.7% move on the week.

That’s not too much to ask either.

That would set us up to challenge $17 next week.

I still think that once we get above $17.50, we’ll be above $18 within a few days.

To recap: Gold & silver need to show strength coming off of these bottoms, and we need a strong close on Friday.

A failure to rally here is going to crush sentiment as all the gold & silver bulls are very bullish, and a break-down would be devastating.

I think we’re going higher though.

And two reasons explained later on support that statement (crude oil and the dollar).

Palladium has held on after consolidating:

Let’s look for palladium to at least get above its 50-day moving average, but if we really want palladium to shine, it would break-out above its 200-day as well to close out the week.

Even platinum looks like it is turning the corner here:

Recall that is a multi-year low on the platinum chart, and we’ve had a series of eight lower-highs and eight lower-lows, so I’m not even going to come with a price target right now.

Getting above the most recent lower-high is critical, but that means a slight pullback would be on deck in order to put in the next higher-low.

But with platinum especially, it’s baby steps.

Crude oil is consolidating here:

Call it a consolidation right around $74.

But look at the far left side of that chart – crude oil was still in the low $40s.

See why I was talking so much about inflation at the beginning of the outlook?

From $43 to $74 is a percentage increase of over 70%, in just the last year.

Which is another reason why there’s just not much downside in gold & silver.

It takes a lot of crude oil in the form of diesel to get precious metals out of the ground, and the cost of crude oil is up 70% from last year, yet gold is up barely 4% from last summer and silver is up 7%.

Just something to think about.

Copper looks like it has stopped bleeding:

Copper will be interesting to watch from the trade war angle, in addition as being a broad measure of the health of the economy in general.

That’s why they call it Dr Copper.

The cartel sure has lulled the markets back into a trance of peace and tranquility:

When I look at the VIX I think back to the movie Titanic, where the string band is playing on the deck, a peaceful melody, and chaos ensues all around them.

Well, guess what?

Here’s the Titanic:

Everything’s fine!

Go back to your cabins!

Life boats made of gold & silver?

Who needs those?

Besides, if anybody is concerned, we have life jackets in the form of U.S. Bonds:

Not keeping up with the real rate of inflation, however, means that it doesn’t matter if you’re wearing life jackets or not, because you will still freeze to death in the frigid waters.

And that’s assuming the life jackets work.

What if they are defective, as in the government defaults?

Sure, not any time soon, but down the line, the likely scenario is not a default but inflating the debt away.

But I digress, enough of the Titanic analogy.

We know the economy is the Titanic, and we know it sinks.

There is no saving it.

The dollar looks like it could be rolling over here:

If the dollar is rolling over here, just like with crude oil, that will help provide the needed boost to gold & silver.

In summary, now is the time for gold and silver to shine.

Inflation, the price of crude oil, and the dollar rolling over provide the elbow grease to bring back that luster.

Let’s grab some popcorn and watch it happen.

Stack accordingly…

– Half Dollar

SilverDoctors.com has been on the leading edge of Gold News and Silver News Since 2011. Each month, more than 250,000 investors visit SilverDoctors.com to gain insights on Precious Metals News as well as to stay up-to-date on World News impacting the metals markets.

SDOutlook07-09-18.txt

Time to see if gold & silver can shine.

It’s hard to get a better set-up than we have right now.

The events calendar is light this week, and it actually favors gold & silver.

Why?

Inflation data.

Or better said, stagflation data.

We get the Producer Price Index on Wednesday and the Consumer Price Index on Thursday.

The PPI measures what producers pay for the items they use to produce their goods. It will be interesting to see how the trade wars are now affecting producer costs.

For example, just how much has the cost of steel and aluminum gone up in price?

Furthermore, what will the producers do in the face of rising costs?

Let’s talk about a soda pop for a second.

If the cans are more expensive (either manufactured by the soda pop company or sourced already fabricated in a can) because of the aluminum price increases, will the company just take the loss in profit (if there is a profit) or will the company pass on the higher costs to the consumer?

These are very real decisions that companies will make, and since businesses operate in a “just in time” inventory system, meaning the soda pop company doesn’t have tons and tons of aluminum stockpiled somewhere, but rather, it is constantly ordering aluminum with the fluctuations in demand for the soda.

And just like the producers begin making decisions about whether to charge more to their customers, or whether to eat those costs and make less profit, we’ll know soon enough in the CPI, because that is a measure of prices the customer pays.

So where the producer of soda pop is concerned about the cost of aluminum, sugar, water, etc, the consumer just wants to know how much a can of soda costs.

What does this have to do with gold & silver?

Two words: Inflation hedge.

You see, dollars sitting in a bank account or a savings account lose purchasing power with each passing month.

In some countries, like Argentina and Venezuela, fiat currency in the bank or even cash in the wallet can lose purchasing power with each passing day.

That is where gold & silver come in as a hedges against inflation.

By converting dollars into gold, or silver, that purchasing power is maintained because the metals rise in price, and they can be sold later at a higher price.

Yeah, “But Half Dollar, gold and silver only go down in price”.

Not over long periods.

Sure, during the last seven years its been brutal, but what about the last twenty?

Not bad.

Not bad at all.

Besides, since the cartel price suppression has been very brutal, especially this year, not only do gold and silver step up into their roles as inflation hedges, but they also can see capital gains in a rise in price above the rate of inflation as a way of catching back up to their fair values.

So it’s hard to go wrong with gold and silver, especially right now.

Which is why I think it’s time for gold and silver to shine.

So let’s dive in and see where things stand for the week.

We all know what happens when the 50-day moving average crosses the 200-day moving average.

It can be good news or bad news depending on which way you want an asset moving.

Or in the case of the gold to silver ratio, which one you want to outperform.

That said, the 50-day moving average on the GSR is about to cross the 200-day:

This means that silver is about to start outperforming gold at an even faster rate.

Which is something we want to see.

And if we are going to rally this week, then silver will finally be outperforming gold for the right reasons.

We can see that since the markets opened last night, it’s been strength overnight and into the morning:

So gold and silver are off to a good start of the week.

Gold does look like it has turned the corner here:

Going back one year, notice on the gold chart how the rally was strong and ultimately ran up to test the $1350s.

But also notice something about that run – we started it from $1200.

If we are going to rally this week, which I think we are, well, we’re starting from above $1250 (actually above $1260).

And where would $150 from here put us?

Yup.

$1400.

So we’ll see.

Like I said, gold & silver need to shine here, and gold blowing past the $1377 (June, 2016) highs is what gold needs to do to show us it can shine.

Now, I’m not saying we get there this week.

But, those who are new to gold and silver might not know that gold and silver can have strong surges, and a $75 to $100 move in a day is not far fetched.

Now, I don’t think we are at that point, at least not this week, but grinding higher would be what we want to see.

The Ideal would be a set-up to challenge $1350 next week, but I’d settle for putting in a close above $1300, which isn’t that much to ask at all.

A close above $1325 would get us set-up to challenge $1350 in a hurry.

I’ve put the sideways channel of pure agony back on the silver chart:

For performance in silver, we need to close out the week above the channel.

That would be approximately a 3.7% move on the week.

That’s not too much to ask either.

That would set us up to challenge $17 next week.

I still think that once we get above $17.50, we’ll be above $18 within a few days.

To recap: Gold & silver need to show strength coming off of these bottoms, and we need a strong close on Friday.

A failure to rally here is going to crush sentiment as all the gold & silver bulls are very bullish, and a break-down would be devastating.

I think we’re going higher though.

And two reasons explained later on support that statement (crude oil and the dollar).

Palladium has held on after consolidating:

Let’s look for palladium to at least get above its 50-day moving average, but if we really want palladium to shine, it would break-out above its 200-day as well to close out the week.

Even platinum looks like it is turning the corner here:

Recall that is a multi-year low on the platinum chart, and we’ve had a series of eight lower-highs and eight lower-lows, so I’m not even going to come with a price target right now.

Getting above the most recent lower-high is critical, but that means a slight pullback would be on deck in order to put in the next higher-low.

But with platinum especially, it’s baby steps.

Crude oil is consolidating here:

Call it a consolidation right around $74.

But look at the far left side of that chart – crude oil was still in the low $40s.

See why I was talking so much about inflation at the beginning of the outlook?

From $43 to $74 is a percentage increase of over 70%, in just the last year.

Which is another reason why there’s just not much downside in gold & silver.

It takes a lot of crude oil in the form of diesel to get precious metals out of the ground, and the cost of crude oil is up 70% from last year, yet gold is up barely 4% from last summer and silver is up 7%.

Just something to think about.

Copper looks like it has stopped bleeding:

Copper will be interesting to watch from the trade war angle, in addition as being a broad measure of the health of the economy in general.

That’s why they call it Dr Copper.

The cartel sure has lulled the markets back into a trance of peace and tranquility:

When I look at the VIX I think back to the movie Titanic, where the string band is playing on the deck, a peaceful melody, and chaos ensues all around them.

Well, guess what?

Here’s the Titanic:

Everything’s fine!

Go back to your cabins!

Life boats made of gold & silver?

Who needs those?

Besides, if anybody is concerned, we have life jackets in the form of U.S. Bonds:

Not keeping up with the real rate of inflation, however, means that it doesn’t matter if you’re wearing life jackets or not, because you will still freeze to death in the frigid waters.

And that’s assuming the life jackets work.

What if they are defective, as in the government defaults?

Sure, not any time soon, but down the line, the likely scenario is not a default but inflating the debt away.

But I digress, enough of the Titanic analogy.

We know the economy is the Titanic, and we know it sinks.

There is no saving it.

The dollar looks like it could be rolling over here:

If the dollar is rolling over here, just like with crude oil, that will help provide the needed boost to gold & silver.

In summary, now is the time for gold and silver to shine.

Inflation, the price of crude oil, and the dollar rolling over provide the elbow grease to bring back that luster.

Let’s grab some popcorn and watch it happen.

Stack accordingly…

– Half Dollar

SilverDoctors.com has been on the leading edge of Gold News and Silver News Since 2011. Each month, more than 250,000 investors visit SilverDoctors.com to gain insights on Precious Metals News as well as to stay up-to-date on World News impacting the metals markets.

Featured – Interview – Dave Janda – Global Criminal Syndicate Stripping Us of our Freedoms and Money

Dave Janda, host of the popular radio show called “Operation Freedom,” says the coming economic reset that world leaders and global bankers have been talking about for years is coming and it is going to bad, then good. Janda explains, “I think what the reset is going to look like is a devaluation of the dollar to a significant degree. . . . The value of gold and silver is going to be reset to a much higher level. . . . When you see governments acquiring gold and silver and . . . when you see the banksters acquiring huge amounts of gold and silver for their own vaults, it tells me it is going to happen sooner rather than later.”

But do not fear because the best days for America are ahead. Janda predicts, “I believe the rule of law is going to be restored. I believe all of our lives will be much better. I believe we will have more opportunities than we can imagine. We are going to look back on these decades before, and we are going to say we were so oppressed and so persecuted by this criminal syndicate that was stripping us of our freedoms, liberties and our finances across the board, we are going to say how did we not do this sooner? How did we not overturn the system sooner? It was so bad then and it is so good now, but that doesn’t mean there are not going to be some tough times in the middle here.”

Join Greg Hunter of USAWatchdog.com as he goes One-on-One with Dave Janda, founder and host of the popular radio show “Operation Freedom.”

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Featured Interview – Dave Janda – Donald Trump Will Preside Over Reset and Bankruptcy

Radio host Dr. Dave Janda says the debt based financial system is headed for a reset. Janda says the reset will not only reset the debt but clear out corruption and “restore the rule of law.” Janda also says, “I have political sources that have said a reset will occur. I do not have a time frame for the reset . . . . I believe Donald Trump will preside over the largest bankruptcy in history, and that is why he’s there. I also believe that this reset will involve an escalation in the price of gold and silver, and the manipulation will be terminated.”

Join Greg Hunter as he goes One-on-One with Dr. Dave Janda, host of the “Operation Freedom” radio show, for an in-depth interview.

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Featured Interview – Dr. Dave Janda – Financial Tsunami About to Hit Our Shores

Published on Sep 19, 2017 Radio host, patriot and retired orthopedic surgeon Dr. Dave Janda brings up the human trafficking issue and our leaders because of one simple reason. Dr. Janda says, “The reason why I bring this up is because each and every one of our listeners has to know who the enemy truly is. If we don’t identify who our enemy is and how evil they are, we will never be able to defeat them.” On taking down President Trump by taking down the global economy, Janda says, “I think a financial tsunami is about to hit our shores. The elite always try to give us a heads up before they flush the toilet while we serfs are still in the shower.” Dr. Janda says one tip was given recently by an expert on FOX News who said, “Someday people are going to wake up, and gold is going to be $3,000, $5,000, heck, even $6,000 an ounce.” Dr. Janda gives three other recent warning signs given by the mainstream media about gold prices that tip off a big financial disruption is drawing near. Join Greg Hunter as he goes One-on-One with Dr. Dave Janda of davejanda.com.