International Forecaster Weekly

But for whatever ray of sunshine the largely misleading figure might bring to investors, there is another factor to consider: in the era of QE Infinity, good news is bad news. This is because the markets are trying to read the tea leaves to predict whether or not Bernanke and the Fed crew will announce the QE taper at the Fed's FOMC meeting next month.

Inside the report, more people fell out of the job pool. Inside the report we saw wages fall. The BLS added 54K jobs to the report that didn’t exist. But that’s just the “simple” stuff. Take a peek at this… for the entire year of 2013 we’ve created 953K jobs. But and this is the catch…731,000 of them have all been part time.

Unfortunately, now that China is the world's third largest economy, and now that trade with China has become an indispensable component of world trade, this problem is not just a Chinese one. It's global. The real question is whether the government in Beijing will have the fortitude to let some of the banks engaging in the dangerous ponzi lending schemes fail.

When Roosevelt confiscated everyone’s gold in the 30’s and devalued our dollars, not too many folks had enough gold to matter. There was no “outrage” ... it didn’t even get front page coverage. The fact that after midnight that evening, Beer was legal again. The confiscation came at the same time prohibition ended. Beer won, gold lost. But again Americans are pure suckers when it comes to having things stolen from them.

Russian justice convicts Alexei Navalny, the only opposition figure to emerge in the last five years, but who is he really?Is he a credible alternative to Putin, or a criminal? Is he more than a western stooge, a political opportunist? Will jailing Alexei Navalny bring about unforeseeen consequences?

In years past, the Fed appeared to be the savior to our economy. If things were too slow, they’d change the interest rate picture, inject some “liquidity” and in due time the economy would perk up and we’d begin to grow well again. If things then got too hot to handle, they’d pull back the reigns, tighten rates and slow down the train. Many thought they had it all figured out and nothing bad could ever happen again. Oh how wrong that is.

This perception of safety and promise of high returns may seem too good to be true. And that's because it is. They are a Ponzi scheme according to no less an authority than China's Securities Regulatory Commission Chair, Xiao Gang. They are offered in promotional specials as a way of luring in deposits to help banks meet monthly capital requirements when needed.

Sadly, as with every other fiction, the story has to end at some point. And when this era of bubble creation ends, vast swathes of the public stand to lose everything they have. That's why it's important to identify, understand and avoid the bubble trap. Because as hard as it is to believe, it's not always possible to see the bubble while you're inside of it.

As always, we have to fall back on the old dictum: watch what they're doing, not what they're saying...  are these Fed insider banks and bullion bank manipulators off their rockers, or do they know something that we don't? Because it is hard to look at these figures without concluding that we are due for a gold market rally the likes of which have not been seen in a long time.

Four things for acheiving your indepenence, Electronic Fronteir Foundation works to restore the 4th Amendment, there are many ways to achieve greater independence from the system. Far too many to outline here, in fact, but you should do something about it, and its not too late to join the protest against NSA spying programs.

While we bask in summer weather there are still three things on our plate to watch in the Economy. Canadian Mark Carney now heads up the Bank of England, hired because they couldnt find a non-corrupt Brit for the job. The ECB has a meeting planned, and then while everyone is on vacation, US employment figures are to be released.

So, the spinner heads at the Central banks got together and in dark rooms like an old gangster meeting they lay out a plan. It goes sort of like this…. “Hey fellas, we have a lousy economy. We need to get people spending so maybe companies will make things again. If we can get folks to open their wallets and create some demand, maybe we can keep out of a depression.”

So why are people (sometimes the very same people who argue that they have nothing to hide) reluctant to give away all of their personal information to a random person on the street? Obviously because they do not know that person or his intentions. He could be a criminal attempting to steal the information so he can access their bank account or steal their identity.

...today’s “nut” is usually tomorrows’ news. When I suggested that gold would hit 1000 dollars to the ounce “within ten years” I penned that in 2001. I was “nuts’ I was a loon. Yet gold most certainly did that. The public is also finding it a bit scary that the NSA is privy to every single thing you ever do. We were just whacko conspiracy nuts. But now it’s on main stream TV. Ghee, maybe Bob wasn’t nuts after all?

The gulf between those common sense ideals of Andy Griffith and the sad reality of the modern-day US government and the new NSA spying scandal is mind-boggling. What happened in the last 50 years to so fundamentally transform the ideals of a society?