Money

Management 101 

Cash Course:

4 signs

You're living beyond your means

You're not saving

Financial advisers suggest saving around 15 percent of your income, whether it be for retirement or in separate savings accounts. If you can't afford to save 5 percent of your income, it's time to consider cutting expenses in your budget.

 DYI:  Live below your means save and invest the difference.  How many of us actually do it??!  When one report after another that a huge portion of our population are unable to scratch up $400 dollars for an emergency; obviously not all of these people are destitute but a vast majority simply unable to control their spending habits.

For those of you who are living below your means and have money to save how much is enough before starting to invest?  There are many rules of thumb here is mine.  Have at all times 5 to 10 thousand dollars [preferably 10] in your checking account for any of those day to day small emergencies or scheduled events such as car maintenance, dental visits etc. and basic bills that arrive every month.  After that I subscribe to the debt free lifestyle that provides maximum freedom from worry and of course allows for more dollars to save and invest.

Checking account is over 10 grand?  Great here is step 2 for your saving plan.  Open a short term bond fund [DYI’s favorite is Vanguard Funds] building up reserves for your next car/truck replacement keep on saving until a greater amount than needed.  This will help you significantly for your next vehicle.  In other words keep pushing up the dollar amounts until the mutual fund’s compounding is funding a lifetime of car/truck purchases.  This is possible unless an individual is purchasing high end cars/trucks.  Purchasing used or modest vehicles [I drive Honda Civics] this is very possible.

The author of the article would have you saving 15%.  Shoot for 25% by subscribing to a frugal lifestyle.  There are almost endless websites, videos, or books out there to help you and to keep you motivated.   

Your housing costs take up too much of your income

It's easy to fall into a trap of overspending on housing, especially in areas where affordable, convenient housing is difficult to find. But financial advisers suggest housing costs — including rent, mortgage payments and insurance — should not exceed 30 percent of your take-home pay. 

DYI:  A house for most of us mere mortal middle class folks will be the largest dollar purchase in our lives.  Over spend and you will quickly understand the expression “money pit!”  Never spend more than 2 times your income for a home.  I prefer no greater than 1.5 times income that can be achieved with a significant down payment.  Homes are a consumption item that is rarely a great investment.  Purchase a McMansions thinking they are a great investment, after adding up insurance, interest payments, property taxes, maintenance and inflation most of the time the return is negative unless it is sold at the top of a real estate bubble.  Every self made millionaire will tell you greater the mortgage smaller the net worth.  Simple as that!    

You don't have an emergency fund

In 2017, the Federal Reserve Board found around 44 percent of households could not cover a $400 emergency expense. If you're in that group, car problems, medical expenses, the loss of a job or any other emergencies could cause you to go deep into debt.

DYI:  Before monies are placed into long term investments have that emergency fund in place that I’ve already described.  Get the horses in front of the cart!  

You spend for entertainment 

"The main thing is don't develop bad habits. Do you really need those high-end, brand-name things?" Ramsay said. "People think they need the newest BMW or whatever it is. But I think those brand name things can hurt you over time."

DYI:  If you are reading this blog or others you are not one to be purchasing high end name brand merchandise.  I do advocate buying quality for if you purchase cheap junk you will end up buying twice.  I’m a Honda guy their cars are well engineered and well made.  I know a Civic is not for everyone their Accord model is just as good as any of the upscale BMW’s or Lexus’s.  Purchasing these cars or similar types of trucks is for nothing but status.  Simple as that!

 DYI

U.S.

Asset Strippers!

Psychopathic US Senator Openly Calls For Maduro To Suffer Gaddafi’s Fate

Influential US Senator and 2016 presidential candidate Marco Rubio has tweeted a blatant death threat and incitement of violence against Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro. As of this writing the post has 13 thousand shares and counting. 

Secondly, the paltry $20 million in food, medical and hygiene supplies sent via USAID pales in comparison to the $30 million per day the new US oil embargo will be costing Venezuelans this year. If the US wanted to help the Venezuelan people, the best thing it could do is end its crushing economic warfare upon them, which experts say has made economic recovery all but impossible. Believing the CIA/CNN narrative that US sanctions only impact a nation’s leadership is dumber than believing that US bombs only kill bad guys; former UN special rapporteur Alfred de Zayas has said that US-led sanctions are killing Venezuelans and could be tried under international law as crimes against humanity. The best way for the US to help Venezuelans would be to cease all interventionism and end its economic warfare upon them.

US slaps sanctions on Venezuelan governors supporting Maduro

DYI:  Don’t anyone dare call this meddling as we all know the U.S. would never do such a thing especially in Latin America??  We’ve had a long and sordid history of doing just that since the Monroe doctrine.  It looks as if the U.S. is going to asset strip Venezuela to the bone all to the benefit of our global natural resource corporations.

  DYI

Vaccines

Yes or No?

The Braselton News

Anti-vaxxer movement is not science

Saturday, February 9. 2019

Mike Buffington

The current measles outbreak in Washington state, and several other states, point to a troubling trend in the U.S. where a lot of parents are refusing, or delaying, the vaccination of their children. 

An aggressive anti-vaxxer movement has taken to social media in a bid to undermine the use of vaccinations in this country. (England is also being slammed with the same kind of movement.) 

DYI:  Right from the beginning Mike Huffington fails to include the vaccine court, founded in 1986, - and has awarded over 4 billion in damage claims.  This is either incompetency on his part or simply leaving out the 300 pound gorilla standing in his way of advocating that vaccines are not just safe and effective but vital to mankind’s existence.

Federal vaccine court quietly pays out billions

A chickenpox outbreak at a private school in North Carolina drew extensive national news coverage in November. The thrust of most stories was the public health threat of unvaccinated children and superstitious beliefs about vaccine risks. 

But there was little fanfare when, about the same time, an obscure federal program that compensates victims of vaccine injuries passed a milestone. Payouts by the national Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, or VICP, have now topped $4 billion.

Documented vaccine injuries are extremely rare. Over the past 30 years, the vaccine court has received 20,123 petitions claiming injuries and deaths, of which nearly 18,000 have been resolved. Of those, 6,313 have been approved for compensation through settlements or judgments. According to the Health Services & Resources Administration, that translates into approximately one compensable case for every one million doses of vaccines administered.

******************** 

The result is what is happening now in Washington where there is a crisis with several dozen cases of measles, most involving children who had not been vaccinated.  

Closer to home, as of the end of last week, three cases of measles have been reported in Atlanta — all three were in the same family and were not vaccinated.It wasn’t always this way. Twenty years ago, measles had been mostly wiped out in the U.S. 

Alas, the rise of social media in the early 2000s gave a small group of conspiracy theorists a new platform on which to spread their anti-vaccination propaganda. The result has been that parents in some areas have refused to have their children vaccinated, a situation that has led to a resurgence of measles.  

The anti-vaxxer movement is akin to many of the other crazy conspiracy movements that have found a home in social media. 

Some people believe the earth is flat.

DYI:  Out of the gate you take a cheap shot by lumping in anyone who questions the current dogma that vaccines are safe and effective are connected to the flat earth crowd.  Wow what a scientific approach to your reasoning.  

Some people believe the Holocaust didn’t happen.

DYI:  This blogger is Jewish and I have serious questions regarding the Holocaust.  Just mentioning a few questions makes one a heretic as this is just another way of pushing for self-censorship.   

Some people believe the moon landing was faked.

DYI:  Another opportunity to spread propaganda all for the staged faked moon landings.  Yep Mike you can count me in as one of those so called crazies.  There is now so much evidence that they were faked believing otherwise is simply nonsensical.  The books and videos are damn near endless exposing this 25 billion [in 1973 dollars] HOAX!   

Some people believe the attacks on 9/11 were an inside job.

DYI:  You can count me in… Anyone who believes the so called 9/11 official report are either too young to know; lazy to do any rudimentary investigation or is simply DELUSIONAL.  And there is a forth reason for espousing falsehoods as facts.  Simply put the individual in question is a shill [propagandist] for our government’s official position.

The 9/11 commission would have you believe that day airliners and buildings go against all basic aeronautical and structural engineering principals including all three of Sir Isaac Newton’s laws of motion.  We are expected to believe that three steel framed buildings collapsed due to fire when no other buildings before or since has collapse.  Or that two airliners that supposedly hit each of the towers there was no debris [except the planted engine by the FBI (it was the wrong engine for the plane)] at the base of the buildings.  This is simply preposterous.  To say the least I could go on and on and on with one ridiculous notion our government has laid out as fact.             

All of those bogus beliefs can be found in various conspiracy theory websites and in mainstream social media memes. It’s all false, of course, but the drumbeat of fake information has begun to brainwash a lot of people who should know better. 

DYI:  Brainwashing???  The mainstream press is up to their eyeballs and beyond reporting these DHS FEMA all agencies mass casualties DRILLS; no one shot; no one killed or wounded; AS IF THEY ARE REAL!  We the common citizens are the ones who are being attempted to be brainwashed by the mainstream press not some so called rogue video or website/blogger.  They cannot even report on a damn hurricane without doing a majority of it in front of green [pretending as if he or she is actually there].  

The same thing is happening with the anti-vaccination movement where otherwise normal people have come to believe that they know more than their child’s doctor. I’ve had an anti-vaxxer parent tell me that very thing one time — because they had “researched” vaccinations on the internet, they believed they were smarter than their doctor about the subject. 

Another anti-vaxxer parent once told me that vaccinations didn’t rid the country of polio — it was other things, she said, that had eradicated the terrible disease.
Nuts. 

DYI:  Specific vaccines would have to be taken on a case by case basis.  However right during the time vaccines were being developed public health was improving by leaps and bounds.  Chlorinated water developed by Dr. John L. Leal in 1908 [Jersey City, New Jersey] was a mile stone improvement for stamping out water borne illnesses of all types.  This single breakthrough that spread throughout the world saved lives in the billions.  Add on sewage removal and then sewage treatment plants, simple garbage collection, plus the development of cars and trucks displacing horses in the city along with all of the manure and urine, all made enormous strides in the health of the public at the same time vaccines were being developed.          

Psuedo-science being posted on social media is the gasoline that has fueled the anti-vaxxer movement. Because of the growth in the anti-vaxxer universe, the World Health Organization has listed it as one of the top 10 threats to public health for 2019. 

The willful ignorance of real science might not be too bad if you’re a flat-earther (unless you’re an airplane pilot where factual knowledge about navigation of the round earth is kind of important). But willful ignorance about vaccinations is dangerous. 

How soon our society has forgotten the days before vaccines when polio, measles, whooping cough and other preventable diseases killed hundreds of thousands of children each year. Infections killed many more, both adults and children. 

The advent of antibiotics after WWII and the growth of vaccinations has saved millions of lives, especially children. Anti-vaxxers dispute that and claim vaccinations are dangerous despite solid evidence to the contrary.  

The movement got a boost about a decade ago when some Hollywood celebrities embraced the cause. Because of that, some parents started to believe the actors and fake social media memes rather than their own doctors, a testament to the gullibility of people caught up in today’s celebrity culture atmosphere. (As with politics, Russian “bots” have also been spreading anti-vaxxer messages on social media.)

DYI:  Just couldn’t help yourself just had to through in the Russians that so far zero conclusive or even superficial evidence supporting interference into our political or medical community.  Just had to jump on the Russia, Russia, Russia bandwagon.    

What’s really crazy about the anti-vaxxer movement is how some states accommodate it by passing laws that allow parents to opt out of having their children vaccinated for “religious” or “philosophical” reasons. (Georgia allows a religious exemption, but not a philosophical exemption.)  

Neither one should be allowed. The only reason for not vaccinating a child should be for medical reasons.  

That idea rubs against the more libertarian views of many anti-vaxxers who espouse the idea that “the government” should not force them to do anything with their children they don’t believe in and that they should have a “choice” of whether or not to vaccinate.  

But what a parent believes, or doesn’t believe, isn’t the issue. A parent may not believe in child safety seats in a car, but young children have to be in such a seat by law and parents have no “choice.” So why do we mandate safety car seats, but give parents a fig-leaf legal excuse to not have their child vaccinated? An unvaccinated child is at risk — that is no different than a child who isn’t in a seat belt. And not only are those children at risk, but they also pose a threat to other children who may be medically fragile and unable to be vaccinated.

DYI:  So now you are advocating the nanny state where big government is all seeing and all-knowing directing the masses all to their benefit.  Good Lord this is a freedom issue.  Should people use seat belts?  Of course they should but making compliance mandatory does not harm someone else’s family or individual(s).  Stupid yes but the last time I looked that was not against the law.     

Whatever our beliefs, our rights end when our actions pose a danger to our own children, or to others. It’s a medical issue and has nothing to do with what parents believe, especially when those beliefs come from the sewerage of fake information that flows through the social media ecosystem.

 DYI:  So you could give a damn as to what parents believe or don’t believe.  They must adhere to the vaccine dogma or have their children forcibly injected?  That is what your article is inferring is it not?

Just had to take another pot shot at independent web sites and bloggers; many who highlight the ongoing massive corruption within America up to and including big pharma.       

If you want to know how well vaccines work, look at the record of the polio vaccine, which has helped eliminate that terrible disease from most areas of the world. The only places polio continues to exist are in pockets where radical religious groups like the Taliban keep children from being vaccinated. 

DYI:  That is simply reinforcing that 9/11 was committed by the Taliban and not rogue elements of our government and the Israeli Mossad that is simply a clever use of propaganda.   

My wife and I were recently walking down the street in a developing country — a country filled with all kinds of superstitions — when we stopped to talk to a young boy walking with his mother. On one ankle, the little boy wore a silver bracelet that identified him as having taken the polio vaccine.  

If people in under-developed countries can embrace the need for childhood vaccinations, you’d think that as one of the world’s most developed and educated nations, we’d have no problem understanding the need for vaccinations in the U.S. 

It’s time for state laws to change and do away with both philosophical and religious exemptions to vaccinations. Those laws are nothing more than an embrace of willful ignorance. 

The current measles outbreak in Washington is proof of what happens when parents start believing social media junk science over their own doctors and real science.  

Mike Buffington is co-publisher of Mainstreet Newspapers. He can be reached at mike@mainstreetnews.com.

DYI:  Simply put Mike Buffington is a fascist.  That the State knows best and damn any parent that gets in the way.

Side note:  I don’t know for a fact but my experience this article was most likely came out of a writing committee of the CIA.  If not then Buffington has experience in these matters.

DYI

War

Drums!

The Ramp Up to War on Iran is Here

John Bolton never met a war he didn’t like, except Vietnam. That would be the one he refused to fight in. 

Today he is calling up every marker he has to create the narrative for a legal justification for an attack on Iran that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spilled the beans on just before the Warsaw Stink Fest last week. 

And viruses like Bolton and his dispensationalist cohort Mike Pompeo don’t care about the after-effects of their messianic drive for their better world. They don’t care one whit about the Iranian people, Syrians or even the Americans they purport to be doing all of this for. 

All they know is that in their mind this is a just war to preserve American hegemony because it is an innately better form of tyranny than the ones practiced by literally anyone else.

Putin Warns US Against Putting Missiles in Europe to Target Russia

The unilateral US withdrawal from the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty has reopened the possibility of the United States positioning intermediate nuclear arms in Europe targeting Russia. This is of particular concern to Russian officials because NATO territory comes right up to the Russian border. 

 DYI

Credit Exhaustion Is Global

Bubble

News

Credit Exhaustion Is Global

Europe is awash in credit exhaustion, and so is China.

The signs are everywhere: credit exhaustion is global, and that means the global growth story is over: revenues and profits are all sliding as lending dries up and defaults pile up. 

What is credit exhaustion? Qualified buyers don't want to borrow more, leaving only the unqualified or speculators seeking to save a marginal bet gone bad with one more loan (which will soon be in default). 

Europe is awash in credit exhaustion, and so is China. China's situation is unique, as credit expansion has been propping up the entire economy, from household wealth to corporate speculation to the export sector. 

Echoing Tolstoy, every economy in a credit-fueled boom is happy in a similar way, but every economy in a credit-exhaustion decline is unhappy in its own way. The euro's internal contradictions and the EU's political "irreconcilable differences" are about to manifest in a unique way, and China's credit bubble bursting is about to deflate bubbles in shadow banking, housing, speculation and confidence in China's central planning model.

DYI:  I’ve been saying for far longer than I care to admit that China’s economy is a ticking time bomb.  When the collapse occurs they will experience their version of our 1930’s Great Depression.  If the author is correct maybe for the first time China’s arriving Great Depression will be sooner instead of later. 

The EU is an ongoing basket case and will get worse as their social programs continue to blow sky high as their birth rate is below replacement with fewer and fewer workers supporting those on relief or retired.

 

All of the same things are in place for European banks barely staying afloat.  Deutsche Bank is the worldwide 300 pound gorilla in the room with 1.77 trillion in assets.  If they fall a very possible cascade event could happen triggering other failures worldwide as well.  To say the least the happy days of borrowing money appears to be over and soon to come is the hangover.

DYI

Trust

Busting!

Tan Liu: Why Many Of Today's Most-Owned Stocks Are Ponzi Schemes

Too much phantom wealth vs cash flow

Former financier and current statistician Tan Liu, author of the recent book The Ponzi Factor: The Simple Truth About Investment Profits [DYI ordered his book at Barnes & Noble cost $8.00] explains how many of today's perpetually dividend-less companies traded on the public market are operating as ponzi schemes by definition. 

As a result, a substantial amount of the market capitalization of our stock market is actually "phantom wealth" that doesn't truly exist. It will vaporize during the next financial crisis as investors proiritize cash flows in-hand over the promises of starry-eyed CEOs:

DYI: Below is the gist of the 49 minute podcast [excellent interview] with the author Tan Liu along with my comments. 

When it comes to stocks, there are two ways of making money. There are capital gains and there are dividends. 

In the case of dividends, there’s nothing wrong with those, because they comes from the profits of the underlying company itself. 

But the issue is with capital gains, the whole buy low/sell high gamble that's promoted 99% of the time on CNBC, financial news networks, and is also the focus of a lot of financial research. 

The issue with capital gains is that they come from other investors. When one investor buys a stock for $100 and then sells it for $110, that extra $10 (or actually the full $110) they’re getting is not coming from the company. It comes from another investor, who will then need to sell it to yet another investor.

DYI: The basic difference between an investor and a speculator is an investor makes money when he buys [interest or dividend stream of payments] as opposed to the speculator when he sells.  Yes it is true under this broad guideline investors have made additional money when they sell.  However as opposed to the speculator they are not held hostage by the whims of other market participants.  

So when one person buys low and sells high, another is also buying high and needs to sell for even higher. And a system where current investors’ profits are dependent on cash from new investors is by definition how a Ponzi scheme works. 

DYI: Completely agree in its essence it is essentially Ponzi like.  Trading profits such as retailer who purchases at whole sale and sells at retail is doing the same thing or an individual trading in art, diamonds, or other objects would be doing the same thing as well.  The biggest take is more along the lines of thinking.  Again those who own non dividend paying companies are completely at the whims of other speculators desire to purchase shares at a higher price.

What’s wrong with that is a lot of stocks don’t pay dividends and why are you an owner of a company if the company never pays the so-called owners? 

How it works because when a stock doesn’t pay dividends, there is no monetary connection between the revenues and profits of the company and the actual shares. 

And the only thing that’s really increasing is just this Ponzi process of one investor trading money with another investor. And it’s fundamentally different from the money itself that investors ultimately want. No one actually wants to buy stocks and say hey. I don’t ever want my money back. I just want stocks and I want to watch that value grow. And I never want my money back. 

Wrong. Everyone wants their money back. Because a stock is essentially completely worthless unless you can get your money back. And every investor that buys stocks wants more money than they contribute.

DYI: The first question a business’ man or women will ask is “How long will it be before I get my money back?”  With a non dividend paying stock that is completely unknown.  With dividend paying companies at least that can be measured with some measure of accuracy.

But if investors are the only ones contributing money into the system, how on earth can they all make money from it? That’s really the bottom line. A stock without dividends is really just a Ponzi asset and there is no monetary connection to the company. 

So therefore, it’s not a real equity instrument at all and furthermore, we can see this because some people say oh, well stocks are real property. How can it be real property if literally companies can print this stuff like toilet paper [stock certificates] at any time they want? Real property takes time to replicate.

DYI: Bingo! Estimations that 15% of publicly traded companies are what are termed as zombies.  The only way they continue their existence is through stock offerings – that dilute existing shareholders – and non stop debt offerings.

 

The debt side of the equation was made possible by the long term downward slide in interest rates since 1981.  If rates have ended their secular decline and start moving back up in earnest these companies will all cease to exist as their modest cash flows will be unable to make their interest payments.  Additional stock offerings will not be enough in that environment.

People forget that the reason why stocks were equity instruments to begin with is that they all pay dividends, according to history. Before the 1900s, all stocks paid dividends and there was a monetary connection between the shareholders and the companies that they owned. 

That’s how stocks were supposed to work. It was supposed to be that simple. You buy a piece of a company; it makes money; you make money. But that’s not how stocks work now. This idea that stocks can literally have no dividends and these companies can make billions and never pay dividends indefinitely. 

Or that these companies can continue losing money and keep printing stocks? In the case of Tesla and many others, this  is a new concept that came out over the past 100 years or so. So the way that stocks work now is fundamentally different from how they actually were designed to work and how they worked before the 1900s.

DYI: It is my understanding that Tesla has lost around 2 billion dollars since their existence.  Through non stop stock and bond offerings all bought up by speculators [many who think of themselves as investors] have been on a wild ride.  So far the irrational love affair with this company remains but Katy bar the door when it ends.  Say bye bye to stock offerings at an ever higher price bringing in millions and debt offerings of billions at cheap interest rates.  When that day arrives it will be a miracle if the company survives.

And a stock without dividends when there is no monetary connection to that company should never be seen as an equity ownership instrument.  

DYI: It is equity in name only but should never be seen in one’s mind as an equity investment.  Companies that are reinvesting all of their earning for faster growth without additional stock offerings or debt placements are minuscule if not outright microscopic in numbers.

Here is an observation made by an unknown author in the comment section at Peak Properity.com was so good I thought I’d share it with you.

As with everything in life, it is important to know who you are dealing with.  "Don't do business with dishonest people."  Amen to that.  In my experience, management is everything.  If they are slimy, then no undervaluation makes it worth your while to put in time and money [if you own large amount of shares]; - you will just end up in court eventually, and that's an utter waste of time and energy. 

On the other hand, fractional ownership is a fine vehicle if management is generally trustworthy.  And that's not about elites or non-elites.  Companies big and small have this same issue. 

Often the "gap" between intrinsic value and price appears because the herd has thundered away from a particular sector for quite some time, and it is deeply unpopular.  I'm sensing that the mining shares could be like that right now [DYI included].  Now I don't know which management is good in the sector, but the people closer in (Sprott, Fleckenstein, etc.) have a much better idea. 

Tradeable gaps occur ultimately because investors are not rational - they are herdlike in nature.  (Of course, sometimes gaps occur because the company is about to die, and the valuation is looking at information that is a year old, and way out of date.  Its important to sort out which one you are dealing with.) 

Now then, am I going to throw out the baby (fractional ownership) with the bathwater (our current state of market disorder and deformation)?  No, I am not.  Although companies do require regulation since, if not kept in check, they can be very predatory.  Kind of like having a big dog around - you need them on a leash at all times. 

Same thing with capitalism [kept on a short leash].  If company market shares are kept small, and money is kept out of politics, and the "commons" are regulated appropriately, then capitalism works great.  Best system ever. That's because it lines up perfectly with the inner nature of humanity.  But let companies grow to take over their marketplace, then they seize government and manipulate things around to keep their cartel control in place, and it’s literally the worst system ever.  This wicked system is exampled by old US Steel of yesteryear; the Seven Sisters of oil or Big Tobacco all of days gone past.  And now: Facebook, Google, Amazon.  Bezo's even acquired his own propaganda vehicle [Washington Post] as yet another lever of control over government. 

Do I throw out capitalism because today's crony-capitalism is horrible?  No.  I prune capitalism back to where it works best.  That's because the other options: socialism, communism, fascism, are just ridiculous - are not even real options, because they do not align well at all with Man's inner nature - the love of a windfall, the desire to minimize work, etc. 

Capitalism worked fairly well when businesses were small, and didn't have enough throw weight to control government.  And you may have noticed my bit about keeping it on a leash - regulation of the commons is important, since capitalism doesn't care about the commons.  That's a tension and a balance, and most definitely capital will always agitate to tip the balance in their favor.  Didn't someone say that the price of liberty is eternal vigilance? 

So yeah.  I'm a fan of capital, capitalism, equity as a funding source, and as an investment.  As long as companies are kept relatively small, it’s the best system ever.  And that's the challenge.  We pruned capital back down to size during the 30's, but people forgot the lessons and let companies get big in the 90's.  The Clinton's got rich, and we got Glass-Stegall repealed, and now we're stuck with cartel-monopoly capitalism. 

And that's the cycle.  We'll eventually prune capital back down again, fix things for another 80 years, and our great-grand-children will dutifully forget the lessons we paid blood to learn and the cycle will begin all over again.

 DYI

Debt

Crises!

Coming to a Country Near You?

DYI: Researchers, economists and anyone else who have studied the world wide sovereign debt build up knows that sooner than later a loss of confidence in that countries ability to repay.  The United States has now passed the threshold with debt exceeding our GDP and continues to grow at a 5% growth rate reducing our ability to service it.  This growth rate does not factor in any intervening recessions and with 70% of spending in untouchable entitlement social programs a debt crises is a few years away.

 

DYI model portfolio has a 32% commitment to precious metals mining companies.  Gold along with the other metals has always protected capital from government’s currency debasement.  The days of easy credit and speculator/investor desire for risk taking are now receding.  Precious metals and especially gold would be timely and potentially rewarding.

Updated Monthly

AGGRESSIVE PORTFOLIO - ACTIVE ALLOCATION - 02/1/19

Active Allocation Bands (excluding cash) 0% to 50%

68% - Cash -Short Term Bond Index - VBIRX

32% -Gold- Global Capital Cycles Fund - VGPMX

 0% -Lt. Bonds- Long Term Bond Index - VBLTX

 0% -Stocks- Total Stock Market Index - VTSAX

[See Disclaimer]

 This blog site is not a registered financial advisor, broker or securities dealer and The Dividend Yield Investor is not responsible for what you do with your money.

This site strives for the highest standards of accuracy; however ERRORS AND OMISSIONS ARE ACCEPTED!

The Dividend Yield Investor is a blog site for entertainment and educational purposes ONLY.

The Dividend Yield Investor shall not be held liable for any loss and/or damages from the information herein.

Use this site at your own risk.

PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS.

DYI

Political

Theater

Pelosi warns GOP: Next president could declare national emergency on guns

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Thursday issued a warning to Republicans poised to support President Trump's decision to declare a national emergency at the southern border: the next Democratic president, she said, could do the same on guns.

DYI:  Before I address the Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s wild and insane comment let me speak to President Trump who has continued the artificial backdrop of Obama’s war on guns.  For those of you who do not know this may come to you as a surprise, these highly publicized mass shootings are staged faked events.  They are DHS FEMA DRILLS; no one shot; no killed or wounded; promoted as real by the lying PROPAGANDA spewing main stream press all acted out by a bevy of CRISES ACTORS.  All President Trump would have to do is call into his office the head of DHS and state immediately these drills – used as propaganda – will stop immediately [followed up by executive order]. 

No more Sandy Hook Hoaxes, no more Hollywood Las Vegas with the sound of gun fire over the band’s sound system or the latest Aurora Illinois staged faked event along with so many others.  This TERRORIZING the unsuspecting and gullible Americans must cease NOW!

Speaker of the House Pelosi there is none, zero Constitutional right to enter our country ILLEGALLY.  There is a Constitutional guarantee of the right to bear arms and it shall not be INFRINGED.

Trump and Pelosi are doing – by design – further empowering the American Fascist State.  Forget all of this nonsense of left versus right it is massive corporate power aligned with big government all in an effort to control the masses from cradle to grave extracting the maximum dollars from the people without endangering themselves with a full fled revolution.

  DYI

     

Deportation amnesty for UAC families tucked inside spending bill

“It puts hundreds of thousands of people off limits for deportation,” said Jessica Vaughan, policy studies director at the Center for Immigration Studies.The provision, sought by Democrats, grows out of the increasingly thorny situation of the tens of thousands of children whose parents pay to smuggle them into the U.S. each year to reunite with their families.

Under existing policy, the children are usually processed and quickly released to sponsors — often the very parents or relatives who paid to smuggle them and, in most cases, who are in the U.S. illegally themselves.

Section 224(a) would make it so ICE cannot detain or remove anyone who has effectively any kind of relationship (even just as a "potential sponsor") with any unaccompanied minor:

Gold

Positive Cross!

50 day breaks above 200 day

Moving Average!

Wall Street firm says there is now a 'strong case' for gold over bonds, stocks

• Bernstein is tracking two key measures, both of which are at levels not seen since World War II: global government debt and central bank buying of gold.

• The firm argues that the current geopolitical environment is heading toward a period in which neither stocks nor bonds will work.

• "We show that from current equity valuations and from similar points in previous cycles gold and equities give more similar returns ... [to] risk assets such as equities," Bernstein said.

"A material shift in geopolitical risk and a near-record build up in government debt make other potential risk-free assets more questionable and also bring a temptation to create inflation, thereby further enhancing the case for gold," the note added.

"The problem with holding gold is that the long run real return is zero. However, it is also apparent ... that there are periods when the other traditional source of 'risk free' returns, in the form of Treasury bills, fail to deliver risk-free returns," Bernstein said. "These tend to be in periods of geopolitical uncertainty or after large build-up of debt."

DYI:  The way to understand gold and its returns is this:  Over very long periods of time – from 1913 formation of the Federal Reserve – if you purchased gold then and held to today your return would be equal to that of T-Bills reinvested.  Or simply put it would equal the rate of inflation.

Gold is money.  

The best comparison is purchasing 1 ounce of gold back in 1913 at $20.67 and having that same amount in U.S. currency held to today which would you rather have?  Obviously, gold.  Gold is trading at $1316 with the same purchasing power of goods or services as $20.67 back in 1913.  It is money that holds it value over long periods of time.  Much shorter time periods there can and has been wild swings in price.

Dow/Gold Ratio as of 1/12/19 is 19.3 to 1.

The shorter term swings that can be used within our lifetime of investing by following the Dow to Gold Ratio [see chart above].  Today it is 19.3 to 1 around the midpoint range or fair value.  Gold could break out or simply be a head fake with the price falling back with the 50 day average breaking below the 200 day for a negative cross.  Which direction??  Who knows?  It is a possibility with DYI holding 32% of our model portfolio we are ready to increase or decrease all based upon our averaging formula as valuations change.

 Updated Monthly

AGGRESSIVE PORTFOLIO - ACTIVE ALLOCATION - 02/1/19

Active Allocation Bands (excluding cash) 0% to 50%

68% - Cash -Short Term Bond Index - VBIRX

32% -Gold- Global Capital Cycles Fund - VGPMX

 0% -Lt. Bonds- Long Term Bond Index - VBLTX

 0% -Stocks- Total Stock Market Index - VTSAX

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This site strives for the highest standards of accuracy; however ERRORS AND OMISSIONS ARE ACCEPTED!

The Dividend Yield Investor is a blog site for entertainment and educational purposes ONLY.

The Dividend Yield Investor shall not be held liable for any loss and/or damages from the information herein.

Use this site at your own risk.

PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS.

DYI