This Is Why I'm Here And Not There!

Obamacare - What Could Go Wrong?

Please excuse me while I go all political on you, but I have a question that you dear readers might be able to answer for me.

Let me see if I have this right. We have now been "gifted" by our government with a healthcare plan we are forced to buy and fined if we don't, which purportedly covers at least 10 million more people, without any new doctors but provisions for 16000 new IRS agents, written by a committee whose chair says he doesn't understand it, passed by a congress that didn't read it (but exempted themselves from it), with funding by a treasury chief who didn't pay his taxes, for which WE will be taxed for four years before benefits even take effect, by a congress that has bankrupted social security and medicare, signed by a president who smokes, all overseen by an obese surgeon general and financed by a country already trillions in debt? What could possibly go wrong? Hm-mmm?

Let's face it, the problem with America's healthcare is that it pays for treating symptoms not curing causes, and changing how we pay or who pays will not fix this crises. Taking personal responsibility for our health and living healthier lifestyles is the solution, not Obamacare! Check out www.healthyfooders.com

The Sorcerers of Silence

We are all of us, each and every one, cast under the spell of enchantment. The malevolent Wizards of War have placed us in a trance; enthralling man, woman and child with words and images which hold us in fitful slumber. It is a place of dark bad dreams and the erratic vibration of fear. It is, alas, our present reality.

For the past few years I have pointed out to friends and familiars that you must focus on real issues and ignore all of the background noise that is produced by the media and the so called financial gurus. The scene for what is happening today, and which will continue to happen in the next few years, has already been set for years and even decades. What happens to Greece, J.P. Morgan, U.S. Federal Reserve or the European Union has no effect whatsoever on the exceedingly severe long-term economic and social decline that the world will experience in the next few years.

These daily headline events merely create short term volatility caused by irrational and short-term-oriented investors, including HFC (high frequency computer) traders. The Dark Years Are here, the world is almost certain to experience a hyperinflationary depression of a magnitude that will have a massive impact for the majority of the world’s population for years and probably decades. And there is no short term action taken by any governments that can change the outcome. They have tried, and failed.

It is time to Get Out Of Dodge! It is long since past the time to make a change, you must not tarry further. You must distance yourself from the steadily encroaching fascist Security State apparatus that seeks to hold you in thrall to their corporatist masters and bleed from you the taxes necessary to wage their Everlasting War (aka population reduction). It is time to make a change.

The very thought of "change" in one's life is scary to a lot of people. But change is our only constant companion. It is the only sure thing in our lives. Thus, we ought to embrace change as a friend who brings opportunity, even though in the companionship of uncertainty.

There are still countries that, due to their unique circumstances, offer a more benign governance to their citizens, along with their foreign residents. These places, particularly a few countries in South America, will soon close down their borders to the veritable tsunami of immigrants attempting to escape from the tyranny of their current governments. Thus, time is of the essence. You should seek safety. Now!

Richard Russell of Dow Theory Financial Letters, who, like myself, experienced the 1930s Depression, says that in an economic depression everyone suffers, it is just the case of who suffers the least. For me, that's just where I wish to be …. somewhere else, in company with the least suffering. Those who had "Eyes To See and Ears To Hear", and then acted!

Growing Your Own Grocery Store

These beautiful, tender, succulent leaves that you see above will provide me several nutritious, organic meals ... all with very little time and effort on my part. It takes only high altitude sunshine, the magical mineralized water of Vilcabamba and deep, rich soil. Add in a few vegetables that grow along side the lettuce in the same garden greenhouse and you have what is called "Healthy Food". When that day comes where the supermarket shelves are stripped bare, my garden will sustain me ... abundently. How about you? Just wondering.

In the Dark Days to come, FOOD is going to be in short supply (if available at all.) The little garden plot you create now, either an inexpensive indoor hydroponic system or outdoor greenhouse, can feed you and your family with nourishing, organically grown food. If what the so-called "prepping experts" are telling us is true, then the greenhouse will be needed to protect the plants from excess solar UV radiation. It's why I have one, as do my neighbors. And it helps me grow HUGE heads of lettuce like that which I'm holding in the photo just above. Good luck with your own.

U.S. FAMILY NET WORTH DROPS TO LEVELS OF EARLY 1990s

The Fed’s much anticipated release of its survey of U.S. consumer finances reports that a hypothetical family richer than half of the nation’s families had, in 2010, a net worth of $77,300 as compared to $126,400 in 2007. That’s a whopping drop of nearly 40%. In fact, that is galloping poverty! Moreover, the median family income also fell to $45,800 in 2010 from $49,600 in 2007. No, quantitative easing does not solve all problems; far from it.

The only way to beat such a growing reality caused to us all by a fiat currency system and uncontrolled credit and debt creations is to own the right asset classes at the right time, i.e., NOW. Failure to do so will only lead to further net worth loses. Oh, and in case you're wondering, GOLD is the only item shown on the chart below to be a buy ... except for periods of strong growth. Do you really think THAT is right around the corner?

For those of my greatly belabored readers who are still invested in the stock market (hmm-mm, like to live dangerously, dont'cha?) here is a chart that gives you at least a hint as to "what to do when". But good luck in figuring out from government statistics whether we are in inflation or deflation. Fear and Greed aren't that hard, just check your gut feeling. Here is the chart:

Helga's Bar And The Banksters

A subscription service sent me this piece and I don't know whom to credit for it, but it's the clearest explanation I've heard regarding the debt crisis and the credit bottleneck that is stifling the world's economy.

Helga is the proprietor of a bar. She realizes that virtually all of her customers are unemployed alcoholics and, as such, can no longer afford to patronize her bar. To solve this problem she comes up with a new marketing plan that allows her customers to drink now, but pay later.

Helga keeps track of the drinks consumed on a ledger (thereby granting the customers' loans).

Word gets around about Helga's "drink now, pay later" marketing strategy and, as a result, increasing numbers of customers flood into Helga's bar. Soon she has the largest sales volume for any bar in town.

By providing her customers the freedom from immediate payment demands, Helga gets no resistance when, at regular intervals, she substantially increases her prices for wine and beer - the most consumed beverages.

Consequently, Helga's gross sales volumes and paper profits increase massively. A young and dynamic vice-president at the local bank recognizes that these customer debts constitute valuable future assets and increases Helga's borrowing limit. He sees no reason for any undue concern, since he has the debts of the unemployed alcoholics as collateral.

He is rewarded with a six-figure bonus.

At the bank's corporate headquarters, expert traders figure a way to make huge commissions, and transform these customer loans into DRINKBONDS. These "securities” are then bundled and traded on international securities markets.

Naive investors don't really understand that the securities being sold to them as "AA Secured Bonds" are really debts of unemployed alcoholics. Nevertheless, the bond prices continuously climb and the securities soon become the hottest-selling items for some of the nation's leading brokerage houses.

The traders all receive a six-figure bonus.

One day, even though the bond prices are still climbing, a risk manager at the original local bank decides that the time has come to demand payment on the debts incurred by the drinkers at Helga's bar. He so informs Helga. Helga then demands payment from her alcoholic patrons but, being unemployed alcoholics, they cannot pay back their drinking debts. Since Helga cannot fulfill her loan obligations she is forced into bankruptcy. The bar closes and Helga's 11 employees lose their jobs.

Overnight, DRINKBOND prices drop by 90%. The collapsed bond asset value destroys the bank's liquidity and prevents it from issuing new loans, thus freezing credit and economic activity in the community.

The suppliers of Helga's bar had granted her generous payment extensions and had invested their firms' pension funds in the BOND securities. They find they are now faced with having to write off her bad debt and with losing over 90% of the presumed value of the bonds. Her wine supplier also claims bankruptcy, closing the doors on a family business that had endured for three generations; her beer supplier is taken over by a competitor, who immediately closes the local plant and lays off 150 workers.

Fortunately though, the bank, the brokerage houses and their respective executives are saved and bailed out by a multi-billion-dollar, no-strings-attached cash infusion from the government.

They all receive six a figure bonus.

The funds required for this bailout are obtained by new taxes levied on employed, middle-class, non-drinkers who've never been in Helga's bar.

Now do you understand?

Tinfoil Hats and Expectations

I haven't posted anything in over a month simply because I've been waiting with bated breath for something to happen worth commenting upon,. Nada. Zilch. Zero! And I can only hold my breath for so long.

The Conspiracy Conduits were jammed with dire prognostications, pettifoggeries and prophesies …. all of which bode direly for us in the immediate future. We were even given a couple of exact dates to circle on our respective calendars, September 27th, 2011 and then March 2nd, 2012. The first one was supposedly the date when most all of the U.S. elite political class minions would be in not-so-secret bunkers deep beneath Denver's International Airport facilities. What was to happen? Well, how about a "false flag" episode.

Now for those of you who are not prone to layering the inside of your Panama Hats with tinfoil or maintain a yearly subscription to Alex Jones, a False Flag Episode (attack) is an engineered geopolitical ploy used to arouse the citizenry into a fighting frenzy. It is the necessary prelude to WAR!

For this latest "secret conspiracy", the candidates ran the gauntlet from the sudden admission that Planet X was indeed coming close enough to earth to create severe catastrophic damage, to a group of "White Hats" in the military staging a coup. And fanning the flames of all this was a furtive former Forbes editor residing in Japan named Benjamin Fulford. He was the self-styled spokesman for an Asian group of assassins called The White Dragon Society, who were in the process of bringing to justice that shadowy group of Bad Guys called Illuminati. Even Shock Jocks Jeff Rense and Alex Jones were pussycats compared with Fulford's utterings.

Oh, but wait … there's more! Na-aaa, that's enough.

So with my expectations on a higher state of alert than my immune system after a dose of antibiotics, I sat glued to the World Wide Web awaiting the latest version of Armageddon (right after these brief commercial announcements.)

It's now March 24th. The politicos are safely home. The White Dragon Society is nowhere to be seen and no dreaded Brown Dwarf Star has appeared in the overhead night-time sky. Frankly, every time there is one of the "for sure" prophecies based on a specific date, I'm reminded of my favorite cartoon shown below. Meantime, I'm going to cancel my subscription to the "Time Monk" WebBot series of predictions. As for knowledge of the future …. as Clark Gable once opined, "Frankly, my dear, I just don't give a damn."

You Won't Believe This!

Want to know why Greece will NOT be allowed to default, despite all of the drama on the world stage?

Here is a link to what Greece owes and which banks it owes it to. If THIS doesn't mess with your head, nothing will. And hey, it doesn't even show the five U.S. banks that would instantly become insolvent if a default did actually occur.

Click Here For Greek Debt

The Powers That Think They Be

I don't know why, but at a dinner party recently someone asked me to play the role of soothsayer and proclaim to those gathered where I thought the geopolitical world was headed. I've little understanding of such things these days and even less of a sense of what trends are now so firmly in place that we can know where the path mankind is traveling will lead us.

But considering the idiotic clown-like performance of our world "leaders" lately, let me share this circus metaphor that I used to provide my answer of sorts:

The Powers That Think They Be (PTTTB) gathered in the center ring have been entertaining us with a balancing act ….. keeping the wobbling, spinning plates of the economy precariously balanced atop slender poles held in trembling, uncertain hands. The crowd seems to know that these are merely incompetent clowns, not well-trained performers, but those of us who have paid for our ticket to this Greatest Show On Earth still hope fervently that no great catastrophe will occur to mar our entertainment.

As is usually the case with such performances of derring-do, when the plates finally fall to the floor in a shattering cacophony, the "PTTTBs" will simply cram themselves into their little clown jalopy, scurry from the circus ring, and leave the roustabouts to clean up the mess. And you and I, dear reader, are the roustabouts.

As to when and how this accident-in-waiting finally comes about, I'm afraid I don't have a clue. But the only way that I know that such a balancing act can end is either the jugglers catch all the plates in midair as they are falling (amidst great applause) and immediately treat the onlookers to another act, or the plates end up in a shattered heap on the floor, to the groans and disappointment of the crowd. In any case, the clowns have scampered away in merry abandonment, leaving the customers to wander down the midway looking for other distractions from reality.

So it is, so it will always be ….. unless we choose a different path.

As one of my favorite Chinese aphorisms states: "If you don't change your direction, you will surely end up where you are headed."

Where The Writing Gets Done

Thought that you dear readers might like to see a photo of my little casita's study, where all the blog scribbling takes place. The books you see in the background have been lugged around with me for the past forty years, some of which are far older than that. Being a semi-retired gentleman of leisure, I now have the time and inclination to re-read a good number of these books ... some of which are finally beginning to make some sense to me. Everyone should have a personal library of "real" books, along with the new digital e-books stuffed into our Kindles, iPads and other assorted electronic readers.

Every book has within its pages the combined life-energy of the person who wrote it and of those who have read it and thought of its contents. And whenever a book changes hands, that energy grows and strengthens. Find within the pages of your books the ideas and concepts that awaken the chord of recognition in your mind and in your heart. Let the words become those thoughts that enable you to manifest a greater clarity of who you are and what you are to do with your life.

We The People Say ....NO MORE!

Listen up, Congress people! You are NOT going to disintegrate our country because of your petty bickering, pandering and posturing. You who have been sent to our nation’s capitol to represent and serve us—the very men and women we elected to get us out of this mess—cannot seem to tie your own shoe laces, much less offer a solution to our economic problems. Instead, you have sold our votes cheaply to those who would profit from your political ineptness …. The banksters, lobbyists and corporatists. But NO MORE!

We The People are coming together in a coalition as diverse as the left-leaning 99% Occupiers and the conservative Tea Partiers to sweep you and your oligarchical cronies into the dustbin of history. We are slowly arising to take back our Republic, to reestablish our constitutionally guaranteed Rights and the Rule Of Law .... with Justice.

And the first order of New Business will be to revise the size and complexity of our institutions and practices of governance. Nothing should be “too big to fail” if it means that our beloved country falls as a result. You, the politicians, could have led in this renewal effort, but to your everlasting shame you have not. So we say to you, NO MORE!

Go home and be replaced by those who are no longer constrained by either ideology or political obligation, by those of our fellow citizens who will sit down in the spirit of compromise and find solutions for the good of the whole country and its citizenry. It CAN be done. It MUST be done.

Wandering Down Woo-Woo Avenue

Any damned fool knows that pyramid power and such belongs in the province of Tinfoil-Hat-wearing weirdoes, right? …. Right? Well, let me share a little journey down Woo-Woo Street I recently took.

For almost a year there has been a quite beautiful little piece of "art sculpture" sitting on my coffee table. It has the look of something that Terrance McKenna's "self-replicating Elves from DMT-space" might have crafted. And yes, it was in a pyramid shape, made out of a clear resin and about six inches high.

Through the resin could be seen a coil of copper around a large crystal sitting on a bed of what appeared to be tiny metal shavings. There was a "machine" look to it, but certainly no outer controls to turn it on … or whatever. And so it sat there.

Then a couple of days ago I was sent a link to a video presentation. Imagine my surprise (if that's not too tame a word) when I saw what appeared to be a duplicate of my "art sculpture" that the speaker was holding and discussing. It was, he said, "an Orgone Generator" created to attract and then amplify the orgone energy first described by Wilhelm Reich back in the 1930s. AH-HA! The proverbial palm slapped my forehead in startled recollection. Yes, THAT Wilhelm Reich!

I had read all about Reich back in high school …. about the fact that he was the only scientist to ever have his books and research papers burned by minions of the U.S. government. The poor fellow, who was either a genius or a medical madman, was also tossed into prison where he died shortly thereafter in curious circumstances. I remembered thinking at the time that the government spent a lot of effort to shut this supposed nut-case up, and wondered if there wasn't something to the good doctor's claims after all. And here was one of his inventions …. sitting right on my own coffee table.

So with the wriggle of my fingers and a pushing around movement of my hand, my computer keyboard and mouse led me to a consultation with the Great Oracle Google. My little "objet 'd art" was, I discovered, a powerful devise for transmuting the negative energy of electrical impulses into the positive polarity of organ energy. Hm-mmm. OK, that supposedly meant that the little "machine" zapped the low frequencies emitted from my computer, the neighborhood cellular towers, CIA Scalar waves, HAARP signals and all the other conspiracy theory electronic "smog" in my immediate environment. WOW! Not only that, but it was reported THE best delta-level deep sleep inducer ever invented!

Now that was something that non-scientist Patrick could check out for himself, and I did. Guess what? For the last three nights in a row my little iPod application that captures sleep habits indicated that I enjoyed almost seven straight hours of deep, deep delta-level sleep each of those nights. What I personally experienced was three nights worth of the most incredible technicolor dreaming that I can ever remember having …. after I moved the little pyramid out of the living room and onto the bedside table right next to my head. It was without doubt the best night's sleep I'd had in years.

The end result of my impromptu experiment is that I'm trying to find a king-sized version of the Orgone Generator and see if I can't sweep all of the errant electronic dust out of Vilcabamba itself. But now I find out that there are many such devises "chugging away" here in Vilcabamba, supposedly helping to maintain our pristine environment. And maybe it's why the Old People of Vilcabamba have so much energy and live so long. Little did I know!

A hold-your-breath report will follow from a newly minted member of the Woo-Woo Club. .

For all those who feel that I have been too gloomy in my view of the markets, and thus the economic health of the U.S., the following should somewhat vindicate my position:

Denver based Barnhardt Capital Management is a futures brokerage firm that focuses on agriculture and cattle futures, round-the-clock broker access, and inexpensive commissions. At least, it used to be.

BCM shuttered its operations yesterday. The firm's founder Ann Barnhardt posted the reasons online for the entire world to see:

"I could no longer tell my clients that their monies and positions were safe in the futures and options markets' because they are not. And this goes not just for my clients, but for every futures and options account in the United States. The entire system has been utterly destroyed by the MF Global collapse."

Ms. Barnhardt further explains that markets are completely fractured... that the rule of law in the United States no longer exists. She decries Jon Corzine of MF Global for having outright stolen customer funds, and various exchanges and government regulators for having frozen out customer accounts as a result.

Given that the entire industry is "suicidally-leveraged" and exposed to "European sovereign junk debt", Barnhardt recommends that ALL customers "withdraw from all of the markets as soon as possible so that they have the best chance of protecting themselves and their equity."

I couldn't agree more with this sentiment. Leave the markets to the speculators and hotshot young brokers with itchy fingers poised over the BUY or SELL buttons of their high speed computer trading platforms. To believe that you can win in this kind of financial Ponzi game environment is simply suicidal!

Lawyerly Complexity

If, dear reader, you are anything like me, then you are probably scratching your head and trying to understand exactly what the recent financial industry legislation is all about. More important, will these new rules and regulations keep another global financial meltdown from happening.

Take, for example, the so-called Volker Rule, a cumbersome part of the even more unwieldy Dodd-Frank financial reform act. This sprawling 2,000 plus page red-headed stepchild of regulations is a ludicrous example of complexification. The reason? Lawyers! Almost if not all of the people writing these rules are lawyers, and lawyers by training and proclivity detest simplicity when drafting laws, regulations, contracts, or indeed any sort of legal document designed to govern behavior.

They do this because they want to forestall future disputes and potentially expensive litigation by exhaustively codifying behavioral rules and spelling them out under every conceivable circumstance. Since when have you not seen a lawyer sorely tempted to insert an "except that" or “provided, however” phrase into the simplest contract?

So what does that mean for the Volcker Rule and financial reform in general? Well, one might argue that the best solution is to scrap that overlawyered piece of legislation and go back to the original suggestion of the author, Mr. Volker.

“I’d write a much simpler bill. I’d love to see a four-page bill that bans proprietary trading and makes the board and chief executive responsible for compliance. And I’d have strong regulators. If the banks didn’t comply with the spirit of the bill, they’d go after them.”

From that simple statement to the monstrous two thousand page creation of the Dodd-Frank legislation, with the lawyerly help of the professional nit-pickers. Perhaps it is long since time to pass yet another law ….. one that prohibits lawyers from serving in congress or on congressional staffs. Maybe then ……….

My New Art Sales Manual Has Been Published At Amazon.com/Kindle

Those of you who are artists may find of significant interest a sales manual that has just been published on Amazon.com. It was written at the peak of my own art gallery career, just before my retirement. It is an up-to-date primer that explains in easy to understand language how an artist can go about selling his or her own art.

The majority of the more than one million new artists that come onto the scene each year will not be able to get their work into a commercial art gallery. This means learning how to sell your own art in the marketplace. The Secrets of Selling The Artist's Art explains the anatomy of the sales process, how to maximize your studio as a selling tool and even how to establish your own Internet presence. Check it out for yourself. Click on the image below. Oh, and the price is right: only $4.99 .... and EVERY artist should have $4.99 worth of curiosity about how to sell their artwork in a BILLION dollar market.