Tea Party's Pick: Michele Bachmann or Ron Paul?

While all the candidates now pay homage to the movement, the real question is this: Who can best ride this wave? Michele Bachmann, congresswoman from Minnesota? Or Ron Paul, congressman from Texas?

Ron Paul Issues Budget Statement

A four-part statement on restoring fiscal discipline

LAKE JACKSON, Texas –June 21, 2012 GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul issued a statement on what his budget priorities will be if elected. See statement below.

“As President, I will not be able to waive a magic wand and solve all of our problems overnight. I will have to work with Congress and build consensus from the American People.

“But, there are several things that I will do right away to strengthen the fight for Constitutional government.

“First, I will veto any spending bills that contribute to an unbalanced budget.

“During these tough times, the American people are tightening their belts and making sacrifices to make ends meet. So should government.

“Second, I will veto any spending bill that contains funding for Planned Parenthood, facilities that perform abortion and all government family planning schemes.

“Like millions of Americans, I believe that innocent life deserves protection and I am deeply offended by abortion. It is unconscionable to me that fellow Pro-Life Americans are forced to fund abortion through their tax dollars.

“As a Congressman, I’ve never voted for any budget that includes funding for Planned Parenthood. Instead, I’ve introduced the Taxpayers’ Freedom of Conscience Act to cut off all taxpayer funding of abortions, so-called “family planning” services and international abortionists.

“Third, I will direct my administration to cease any further implementation of ObamaCare.

“And fourth, I will on day one of my administration begin to repeal by Executive Order unconstitutional and burdensome regulations on American business. I will be the first President to shrink the size of the Federal Register. We must create a favorable regulatory environment for U.S. business. This cannot be stressed enough.”

10 Most Influential People in the Alternative Media (2011)

The criteria we've chosen to base these rankings of the most influential alternative media figures are the following;

• people that have the courage to seek the truth no matter where the information leads them; 

• those with the courage to question 9/11; 

• those who don't buy into the false left-right political paradigm;

• those who are grounded in peace and liberty;

• those with the communication skills and platform to affect real change.

Significantly, each of the people who made our list is clearly driven by unyielding passion.  Despite some natural disagreements, they each provide a unique bridge to forbidden knowledge and they all deserve high praise for their efforts and commitment to inform the public. Sincerely, it is very encouraging to have so many talented voices leading the stampede for truth, liberty, justice, and peace.

With so many people doing great work in the real alternative media, we are sure that some deserving reporters will be left off the list. Although Activist Post has forged relationships with some of the people on this list, we've tried to remain as non-biased as possible in our observations.  At the end, we've also included a list of those who deserve honorable mention for their tireless work and talent providing the truth. 

The World According to Doug Casey by Doug Casey, Casey Research

Here’s a collection of some classic quotations from Doug Casey...

“Foreign aid might be defined as a transfer of money from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries.”

“[What politicians are doing] is not only the wrong thing, it is the exact opposite of the right thing.”


“The Constitution in the U.S. is a dead letter. It has been parsed and interpreted out of existence.”

“Things are going to be so bad, they’re going to be even worse than I think they’ll be.”

“I am more than a libertarian; I don’t believe in the right of the state to exist. The state is unnecessary for society to exist. Everything that needs to be done can be done by the market.”

“The U.S. dollar will eventually reach its intrinsic value.”  [Which will be zero.]


“Remember that through most of U.S. history, residential real estate was not viewed as an investment. You didn’t buy a house to make yourself wealthy selling it to someone else. It was viewed as an expensive consumer good that depreciated – you bought or built a house to live in it, just as you bought clothes to wear or a horse to ride. It was just a part of life – a necessity, a convenience, but an expense.”
 
“You don’t own your property. Try not paying your real estate taxes for a year or two, you’ll find out who really owns your property.”

“Gold will not just go through the roof, it will go to the moon. The gold mania has not even started.”

“Your biggest risk today is not an investment risk – it is a political risk. So you’ve got to diversify politically. This is absolutely critical.”

“One of the definitions of stupidity is an inability to correlate cause and effect.”

“When the food riots start in New York, LA, London, Paris, etc., I want to be good and far away.”


“I only like to do something when the odds are stacked heavily in my favor.”

“Currencies are artificial abstracts created out of thin air by the governments.”
 
“Increasingly desperate states will be the greatest risk to your wealth.”

Financial Repression: A Sheep Shearing Instruction Manual by Daniel R. Amerman, CFA

Overview

"Financial Repression" is currently a hot buzzword in the global economic community, and its effects are even worse than it sounds. Like other recent economic buzzwords such as "monetary sterilization" and "quantitative easing", the average person will never understand the meaning, if they hear the phrase at all.  That is too bad, because governments around the world deliberately and methodically stripping wealth (and therefore security and retirement lifestyle) from hundreds of millions of people is the quite explicit objective of Financial Repression.

As published in a recent working paper on the IMF website, Financial Repression is what the US and the rest of the advanced economies used to pay down enormous government debts the last time around, with a reduction in the government debt to GDP ratio of roughly 70% between 1945 and 1980.  Financial Repression offers a third way out - as it allows governments to pay down huge debt burdens without either 1) default or 2) hyperinflation.  If you are a senior government official of a nation that has a huge "sovereign debt" problem – like the United States and almost all of Europe, and you want to stay in power - this proven method is a topic of keen interest.  

To understand this miraculous debt cure for governments, you need to understand the source of the funding. As we will explore in this article, the essence of Financial Repression is using a combination of inflation and government control of interest rates in an environment of capital controls to confiscate the value of the savings of the world's savers.  Rephrased in less academic terms - the government deliberately destroys the value of money over time, and uses regulations to force a negative rate of return onto investors in inflation-adjusted terms, so that the real wealth of savers shrinks by an average of 3-4% per year (in the postwar historical example), and it uses an assortment of carrots and sticks to make sure investors have no choice but to accept having the purchasing power of their investments shrink each year.

What the IMF-distributed paper really constitutes is a Sheep Shearing Instruction Manual.  The "way out" for governments is effectively to put the world's savers and investors in pens, hold them down, and shear them over and over again, year after year.  Uninformed and helpless victims is what makes Financial Repression work, and it worked very well indeed for 35 years.  On the other hand, if you understand what is truly going on, then you do have the ability to turn this to your substantial personal financial advantage.  With a genuinely out of the box approach to long-term investment, the more heavy handed the repression - the more reliable the wealth compounding for those who reject flock thinking.

The Mechanics Of Financial Repression

The specifics of financial repression took somewhat different forms in each of the advanced economies, but they shared four characteristics:  1) inflation; 2) governmental control of interest rates to guarantee negative real rates of return;  3) compulsory funding of government debt by financial institutions; and 4) capital controls.

CHART OF THE DAY: The Housing Double Dip Is "CONFIRMED" And There's No Relief In Sight

"Confirmed" is the word used in the latest announcement from Case-Shiller, which showed a surprise 3.61% year-over-year decline in home prices.
This line stands out from the announcement:

“This month’s report is marked by the confirmation of a double-dip in home prices across much of the nation. The National Index, the 20-City Composite and 12 MSAs all hit new lows with data reported through March 2011. The National Index fell 4.2% over the first quarter alone, and is down 5.1% compared to its year-ago level. Home prices continue on their downward spiral with no relief in sight.” says David M. Blitzer, Chairman of the Index Committee at S&P Indices.

See the dotted line here to see that markets have now fallen to fresh lows, below the previous dip.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-march-case-shiller-2011-5#ixzz1OVXhRopz