iftttwall

‘Offend’ or ‘Defend’ – take your pick… but give thanks for the freedom to choose which (for now)…

 

Source: Townhall.com

via http://ift.tt/2hNJGBK Tyler Durden

Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

With Thanksgiving upon us, many are planning festivities which include feasts and gatherings with friends and family. 

But some others, like gun control activists, seek to make your holiday as miserable as possible.

Shannon Watts, the founder of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, used the trending hashtag #ThanksgivingWeek to call on parents to inquire about guns in homes where their child may be visiting this year.

It’s #ThanksgivingWeek: Have you asked the friends and family your kids are visiting if there are guns in their homes and how they store them? https://t.co/pyvEUh4N3m

— Shannon Watts (@shannonrwatts) November 20, 2017

Watts has been fighting against gun owners for years, pushing for gun control legislation, and has encouraged businesses to adopt gun-free policies. She is also the board chair for Rise to Run, an organization focused on encouraging communist young women to run for office.

But once again, proving that leftists are actually the violent ones who wish for the death of those who don’t believe the same fantasies they do, the lemmings who follow Watts were out in full force.

Guns in Trunpist families should be stored as recklessly as possible.

— grailsnail (@grailsnail) November 20, 2017

What most leftists don’t realize is that most gun owners don’t care about their emotions.

They probably will relish a Thanksgiving dinner without the political diarrhea that so many gun control activists spew. If I were asked the question Watts proposed, I would tell the person asking that it’s none of their business and if they don’t like then tough.

Because the cold hard truth no liberal wants to realize, is that gun control will only affect those willing to follow those laws and punishes those who have committed no crime. 

There’s no other way to look at it, and until the communists on the left can realize that, Thanksgiving may be more enjoyable without them.

Personally, I think that liberals and communists have an issue with gun rights because those are the people who can tell them “no” and back it up.  It’s hard to control a person who’s armed when you only bring your feelings to the fight.

via http://ift.tt/2jTuR55 Tyler Durden

As the NFL continues to try to address the ongoing civil war between Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones and Commissioner Roger Goodell, not to mention the intermittent hostile fire from the White House, viewers are increasingly deciding they’ve had enough and are abandoning professional football viewership altogether.  As the NY Post points out today, the embattled league saw ratings dip 6.3% in Week 11 meaning 1 million fewer people tuned in to see players take a knee during the national anthem versus last year.

The TV audience for NFL games steepened its slide in Week 11, losing 1 million viewers versus last year’s season-to-date average.

 

The 6.3 percent slump — worsening from comparable declines of 5.6 to 5.7 percent during the previous three weeks — plagued a week whose off-the-field drama made gridiron tackling seem almost tame by comparison.

 

After starting 11.8 percent behind last year’s TV audience for NFL games in Week 1, league viewership had either held its own or narrowed the gap through Week 8.

 

The 6.3 percent shortfall in Week 11 reflects an average viewership of 14.9 million for the NFL’s 68 national telecasts this year versus 15.9 million for the season-to-date in 2016.

Meanwhile, the ratings dip, combined with massive subscriber losses (see: ESPN Lost 15,000 Subscribers A Day In October), has taken a huge toll on ESPN which Yahoo News reports will have to cut some $80 million in salary costs to offset their plunging top line. 

ESPN is poised to slash an estimated $80 million in salaries and other costs in coming weeks, sources tell Sporting News.

 

The third round of layoffs in two years at the Disney-owned sports network is expected to come down after Thanksgiving and before Christmas. Sporting News broke the news that ESPN planned to lay off up to 60 people in late November and early December. Richard Deitsch of Sports Illustrated followed up with a report that said 100 positions could be impacted.

 

ESPN lost a whopping $1 billion in affiliate revenue after dropping 13 million subscribers in just six years, according to the SportsBusiness Journal. Sports insiders agree ESPN overpaid for the NFL’s “Monday Night Football” ($1.9 billion annually) and the NBA ($1.4 billion a year). During 2016, ESPN’s prime-time viewership fell 19 percent, according to the SBJ. Rather than driving Disney’s profits, ESPN has been dragging them down, spooking Wall Street analysts.

 

Meanwhile, ESPN management threw money at many anchors, analysts and reporters whose contracts were up in recent years to stop them from jumping to FS1 and other competitors. Some lost those high-paid TV gigs this spring. But ESPN is still on the hook to pay their full salaries until they get a new job elsewhere. Not many have over the past six months. Given the length of some of these expensive deals, not many will in the future, according to Awful Announcing.

 

“ESPN is dealing with three simple math problems. They have fewer subscribers than they planned for. They have higher costs than they planned for. They lower ratings than they hoped for,” said one source.

Perhaps it’s time for the NFL to admit that while most Americans can agree that professional football is really fun to watch, roughly half of them are going to disagree with whatever political stance its players decide to cram down their throats during games…so maybe best to just stick to football.

via http://ift.tt/2zv22CT Tyler Durden

Via The Daily Bell

When settlers first arrived at Plymouth, their first attempts to survive were disastrous.

It sounded like a good idea. They all shared and worked for the common good. They followed the tenet, “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need,” over 150 years before Marx coined the phrase.

Everyone was expected to work in the fields planting and harvesting, and everyone got to share the final product.

But under these conditions life was misery. In the first year, many of the first settlers starved to death. They needed to come up with something quick, for the sake of survival. So what did they do to encourage a great boom in their tiny economy?

In his journal, “Of Plymouth Plantation” 1620-1647, Governor William Bradford writes about the dilemma and the solution they found.

So they began to think how they might raise as much corn as they could, and obtain a better crop than they had done, that they might not still thus languish in misery. At length, after much debate of things, the Governor (with the advice of the chiefest amongst them) gave way that they should set corn every man for his own particular, and in that regard trust to themselves.

They abandoned the supposedly utopian system of communal sharing and decided that people were now responsible for their own survival. The land was portioned among families based on their numbers, and anyone who did not have a family in Plymouth was assigned to a household.

This had very good success, for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been by any means the Governor or any other could use, and saved him a great deal of trouble, and gave far better content. The women now went willingly into the field, and took their little ones with them to set corn; which before would allege weakness and inability; whom to have compelled would have been thought great tyranny and oppression.

What happened was simple. Now people knew that their survival, and that of their family, relied entirely on their own production. They knew that whatever excess they grew or manufactured would benefit them rather than being given to someone who hadn’t worked as hard. This got more people into the fields to work. And of course, the excess production still benefited the whole of the colony. People could now specialize and trade, meaning more wealth for everyone. Now it paid to innovate.

No one was going to force women and children into the fields before. That would have been tyrannical. But now, worrying for the survival of her family, a mother would take her children into the fields with her to work.

In his journal Bradford discusses what happened when the settlement shifted to every-man-for-himself. He laments the “vanity and conceit” of Plato and other philosophers’ claim:

…that the taking away of property and bringing in community into a commonwealth would make them happy and flourishing; as if they were wiser than God. For this community (so far as it was) was found to breed much confusion and discontent and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort.

When you get to keep what you work for, people work harder, and produce more. When people produce more than they can consume, this benefits others in the society who get to trade for the extra goods. This type of situation also leads to specialization in a particular field.

If someone produces extra food, he can then trade it. Then if someone else produces extra cloth, she can trade that. People who are good at something, can market that skill in exchange for something which they are not good at producing. When they have something to gain from extra cloth and food, they will work harder to produce more in order to trade the excess. Again, this benefits everyone, as there are now more goods available—overall production has increased because there is more to be gained from working hard.

For the young men, that were most able and fit for labour and service, did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men’s wives and children without any recompense. The strong, or man of parts, had no more in division of victuals and clothes than he that was weak and not able to do a quarter the other could; this was thought injustice.

And rightfully so. Why should one person spend their time working to support others for no reward? When he is rewarded for his effort, it is justified that he works for “other men’s wives.” And as the pilgrims found out, this actually puts him in a better position to support others.

And for men’s wives to be commanded to do service for other men, as dressing their meat, washing their clothes, etc., they deemed it a kind of slavery, neither could many husbands well brook it.

Instead of being compelled to wash others’ clothes and dress others’ meat, it was now done in exchange for another good or service. They moved on from “slavery” to mutually beneficial transactions. Bradford adds that such was the experience of good standing, God fearing men, “And would have been worse if they had been men of another condition.”

This provides us a perfect microcosm of society to study. In isolation, the principles of economics were obvious. On such a small scale it is easier to see that when you consume something you have not produced, you are taking that away from the producer. When society is set up to allow those conditions, there is less produced. When people are allowed to keep the products of their labor, more is produced, and all of society benefits. This also encourages innovation to create excess goods, which can be traded for the benefit of the producer, while also benefitting the other trader.

The plantation started with a restrictive economy. People were compelled to work, yet this requirement did not produce enough for every to live. They thought it was an unjust society, they lamented having to work for “others’ wives” or wives having to work for other men. Morale was down, and production was down, since there was no benefit to working harder. People starved to death, because of the lack of necessities grown and produced.

If they hadn’t realized their mistake and turned things around, they would never have produced enough to hold the first Thanksgiving. Only a free market allowed the conditions to give thanks for how much they produced.

The pilgrims were thankful that they had solved the problems of starvation. No one felt enslaved, instead they felt empowered. They could go as far as their brain and hard work would take them. The quality of life advanced for everyone because of the seemingly selfish doctrine that each person keeps what they produce.  And even the people in Plymouth who could not support themselves benefited because now there were enough excess goods to go around.

This Thanksgiving we can be thankful that Plymouth Plantation set the tone for individual freedom. They tried an experiment in government, and it paid off.

 

 

Be thankful for freedom.

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Authored by David Stockman via Contra Corner blog,

You could almost understand the irrational exuberance of 1999-2000. That's because everything was seemingly coming up roses, meaning that cap rates arguably had rational room to rise.

But eventually the mania lost all touch with reality; it succumbed to an upwelling of madness that at length made even Alan Greenspan look like a complete fool, as we document below.

So doing, the great tech bubble and crash of 2000 marked a crucial turning point in modern financial history: It reflected the fact that the normal mechanisms of honest price discovery in the stock market had been disabled by heavy-handed central bankers and that the natural balancing and disciplining mechanisms of two-way markets had been destroyed.

Accordingly, the stock market had become a ward of the central bank and a casino-like gambling house, which could no longer self-correct. Now it would relentlessly rise on pure speculative momentum—- until it reached an asymptotic top, and would then collapse in a fiery crash on its own weight.

That's what subsequently happened in April 2000 when the hottest precincts of the stock market—the NASDAQ 100 stocks—-began a perilous 80% dive; and it's also what happened in the broader markets—–including the S&P 500—in 2008-2009, when a thundering 60% plunge unfolded in a hardly a year's time.

So with the market raging in self-fueling momentum at the 2600 mark on the S&P 500, we reflect back to the great dotcom crash for vivid reminders of what happens next. That earlier meltdown is especially pertinent because in many ways today's stock market mania is far less justified than the one back then.

Moreover, the dotcom version was also the first great central bank fueled bubble of modern times—a creature that market participants understandably did not fully grasp. Yet to its everlasting blame, the Fed's subsequent experiments in reflationary bailouts of the casino gamblers has only caused Wall Street's muscle memory to atrophy further.

Indeed, after 30 years of Greenspan-style Bubble Finance and two devastating crashes, Wall Street is even more credulous today than it was on the eve of the tech crash. Back then, in fact, there was a considerable phalanx of Wall Street old-timers who warned about the dotcom insanity. Now almost no one sees this one coming.

 

Indeed, today's nutty forecast by Goldman Sachs that the S&P 500 will hit 3,100 by the end of 2020 makes Greenspan's earlier bubble blindness look clairvoyant by comparison.

In hindsight, Alan Greenspan did see it coming early on— when he broached the "irrational exuberance" topic in passing during a speech in December 1996. Unfortunately, he has mostly been dinged for being allegedly way too early in making the call.

In fact, we don't think he was making much of a call at all—he's was just musing out loud with no intention of reining-in the then rampaging bull. What he actually did was to conduct several gumming fests at subsequent Fed meetings and then diffidently raised interest rates a single time by a pinprick 25 basis point in April 1997.

After that the Maestro (so-called) apparently forgot all about "irrational exuberance" even as that very thing soon began infecting the entire warp and woof of the financial system.

In fact, Greenspan's fatuous amnesia became so pronounced that by the very eve of the dotcom crash in April 2000, he proved himself blind as a bat when it comes to central bank created bubbles.

Said the Maestro to a Senate committee on April 8 when asked whether an interest rate increase might prick the stock market bubble:

That presupposes I know there is a bubble….I don't think we can know there is a bubble until after the fact. To assume we know it currently presupposes we have the capacity to forecast an imminent decline in (stock) prices".

At least he got the latter part right. After the NASDAQ had risen from 835 in December 1996 to 4585 on March 28, 2000—or to an out-of-this-world 5.5X gain in 40 months—-Greenspan wasn't even sure he was seeing a bubble!

Accordingly, he apparently didn't have that capacity to predict an imminent decline—although the 51% crash to 2250 by the end of the year would seem to have been exactly that.

Indeed, after unloading the above tommyrot at the tippy-top of the NASDAQ-100 bubble, Greenspan proved himself a clueless, pitiable fool when this giant bubble deflated by 81% over the next two years.

In fact, the index ended up in September 2002 almost exactly where it had been when Greenspan spoke the words "irrational exuberance" and then moved along with the Fed's printing press at full speed—claiming there was nothing to see.

Still, back then you could almost have made a (lame) excuse for the Fed chairman's bubble blindness. The Maestro was operating in the early days of monetary central planning and wealth effects management, and its potent capacity to unleash rampant speculation in the financial system was not yet fully understood—-even if the underlying monetary theory defied all the canons of sound finance.

Moreover, in addition to rampant bubbles in the financial market, the Fed's money pumping during the 1990s did also seem to be producing some seemingly robust real world effects on main street and in the booming new tech part of the economy.

And, in turn, these positive macroeconomic developments were unfolding in a global political/strategic environment that had suddenly become more benign that at any time since June 1914.

Indeed, the outside world fairly buzzed with positive developments. These included the fact that the internet/tech revolution still exuded adolescent vigor, the government's fiscal accounts were nearing balance for the first time in two decades, the vast market of China was convincingly rising from its Maoist slumber and the Committee To Save the World (Greenspan, Summers and Rubin) had just rescued Wall Street with alacrity from the Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM) meltdown.

Likewise, Europe was launching the single currency and expanding the single market. In place of the Soviet Union, which had disappeared from the pages of history in 1991, Russia, its breakaway republics and the former Warsaw Pact (captive) nations were all bursting out of their statist chains and experimenting with home grown capitalism and reaching out to the west via rising trade and capital flows.

In the US, the combination of the end of the cold war and the internet revolution contributed a doubly whammy to growth and prosperity. When defense spending fell from 7% of GDP on the eve of the Soviet collapse to under 4% by the year 2000, substantial domestic resources were released for private investment and a resulting substantial productivity uplift.

In fact, real private nonresidential investment grew at 7.3% per year from the 1990 pre-recession peak through 2000. That was more than double the still respectable 3.4% rate recorded between 1967 and 1990; and causes the anemic 1.4% real growth of fixed investment between the pre-crisis peak (2007) and 2016 to pale into insignificance.

Notwithstanding all of these positives, however, the great bull stock market of the late 1990s ended-up getting way ahead of itself. That was especially the case during the next 18 months after the Fed's heavy-handed and somewhat panicked bailout of LTCM in September 1998 had confirmed to the newly energized casino gamblers that the Greenspan Put was most definitely operative.

In the Great Deformation we tracked 12 of the highest-flying big cap stocks ("Delirious Dozen") during the period between Greenspan's December 1996 speech and the April 2000 dotcom bust. During this 40-month period, the combined market cap of these 12 leading momo stocks—including Microsoft, Cisco, Dell, Intel, Juniper Networks, Lucent, AIG, GE  and four others—soared from $600 billion to $3.8 trillion.

That eruption did indeed give the notion of trees which grow to the sky an altogether new definition. To wit, the total market cap of the Delirious Dozen grew by 75% per annum for nearly 4 years running; and the future outlook was claimed to be even more fantastic.

For instance, as of mid-2000 Intel was valued at $500 billion and traded at 53X its $9.4 billion of LTM earnings. Yet it was argued that this nosebleed multiple was more than warranted because the company had grown its net income from $1 billion to $9.4 billion during the previous decade, and that there was nothing but blue sky ahead.

Here's the thing, however. Intel was and is a great company that, in fact, has never stopped growing.

But during the 17 years since mid-2000, its net income growth rate has sharply slowed to just 1.79% per annum; and its $12.7 billion of LTM net income for September 2017 is valued at only 15.7X or $210 billion.

In short, at the peak of the tech bubble Intel's market cap had vastly outrun its long run-earnings capacity. Even today it has only earned back 40% of its bubble peak valuation.

Likewise, Cisco was valued at $500 billion in July 200 and sported a 185X PE multiple on its $2.7 billion of LTM net income. And it, too, has continued to grow, posting LTM net income of $9.7 billion for September 2017.

Yet today's earnings are accorded only a 19X multiple after 17 years of 2.4% per annum growth; Cisco's current $181 billion market cap, in fact, sits at just 36% of its bubble peak.

Even the mighty Mr. Softie has experienced pretty much the same fate. Back in mid-2000, it posted $8.3 billion of LTM net income and was valued at $600 billion or 72X. Today its net income has tripled to $23.1 billion, but its PE multiple has receded to just 29X.

Stated differently, Microsoft's net income has grown at 6.1% per annum since the company vastly outran it true value back in early 2000. Accordingly, its market cap gained just 0.4% per annum during the last 17 years. That is, it has taken one of the greatest tech companies of all time upwards of two decades to earn back its peak dotcom era bubble valuation.

And when it comes to the industrial and financial conglomerate empire that Jack (Welch) built, the story is even more dramatic. GE's mid-2000 market cap of $500 billion stands at just $155 billion today; and its PE multiple of 60X has shrunk to just 22X.

In short, that was irrational exuberance back then, and it did not take long for the vast quantities of bottled air in the market cap of the Delirious Dozen to come rushing out. By the bottom in September 2002, four of these companies had vanished into bankruptcy and the market cap of the survivors had imploded to just $1.1 trillion.

That's a fact and you can look it up in the papers. In less than 30 months, $2.7 trillion of market cap had literally ionized.  And these were the leading companies of the era.

None of them, it might be noted, were valued at 280X shrinking net income, as is Amazon today; or at infinite PE multiples like much of the biotech sector and momo hobby horses like Tesla.

More importantly, the promising macro-economic situation at the turn of the century has given way to a world precariously balanced on $225 trillion of debt and the tottering $40 trillion Red Ponzi of China.

Likewise, the benign geo-strategic environment of that era has long since disappeared into the madness of RussiaGate, endless wars in the middle east and Africa and the incendiary confrontation between the Fat Boy and the Donald on the Korean peninsula.

Finally, after 30 years of rampant monetary expansion the central banks of the world have been forced to reverse direction and begin to normalize interest rates and balance sheets.

And that now incepting and unprecedented experiment in massive demonetization of public debts is coming at a time when—-after 8 years of business cycle expansion—the US, Japan and most of Europe are running monumental "full-employment" budget deficits.

Even then, these reckless fiscal policies are happening in the teeth of a demographically driven tsunami of pension, medical and welfare spending.

For the period just ended, the S&P 500 companies earned $107 per share on an LTM basis—or just 2% more than the $105 per share posted back in September 2014; and also only modestly more than the $85 per share recorded way back at the June 2007 pre-crisis peak.

Stated differently, on a trend basis S&P 500 companies have grown their earnings at 2.33% per annum over the last decade. How that merits a 24.3X PE multiple on today's 2600 index price is hard to fathom—let alone Goldman's 3100 target for 2020.

Indeed, just to retain today's absurd PE multiple would require $130 per share of GAAP earnings by 2020 at the Goldman target price.

That's right. By the end of 2020 we would be implicitly in the longest business expansion in recorded history at 140 months (compared to 118 months in the 1990s),

Furthermore, the term structure of interest rates will be 200-300 basis points higher according to the Fed's current policies, while the US treasury will be running $1 trillion plus annual deficits and experiencing recurring debt ceiling and financial crises.

Even then you would need 7% annual earnings growth to hold onto today's 24.2X PE multiple at the Goldman S&P 500 target.

As we said, relative to today's casino madness and the Goldman fairy tale hockey stick, Alan Greenspan circa April 2000 looks like a model of sobriety by comparison.

So if that was Irrational Exuberance back in April 2000, what we have now is surely the mother thereof.

via http://ift.tt/2A5G4U8 Tyler Durden

Submitted by BullionStar.com

Throughout human history, gold has constantly emerged as an unparalleled form of savings, investment and wealth preservation. Due to its unique characteristics and features, gold has inherent value and cannot be debased. When holding physical gold, there is no counterparty risk or default risk. Wealth in the form of gold can also be held and stored anonymously.

From its ability to retain its purchasing power over time, to its safe haven status in times of financial turmoil, to gold's ability to diversify investment risk, there are many and varied reasons to own physical gold in the form of investment grade gold bars and gold coins.

1. Tangible with Inherent Value

Physical gold is real and tangible. It is indestructible, impossible to create artificially, and difficult to counterfeit. Mining physical gold is arduous and costly. Physical gold therefore has inherent value and worth. In contrast, paper money doesn't have any inherent value.

2. No Counterparty Risk

Physical gold has no counterparty risk. When you hold and own gold bars and gold coins outright, there is no counterparty. In contrast, paper gold (gold futures, gold certificates, gold-backed ETFs) all involve counterparty risk.

3. Scarcity

Gold deposits are relatively scarce across the world and difficult to mine and extract. New supply of physical gold is therefore limited and explains why gold is a precious metal. Gold's scarcity reinforces it's inherent value.

4. Cannot be Debased

Because of its physical characteristics and features, gold cannot be debased, and gold supply is immune to political meddling. Compare this to fiat money supplies which are constantly being debased and destroyed via deficit government spending, central bank quantitative easing and financial system bailouts. On a survivorship scale, gold has far outlived all fiat currencies by thousands of years.

5. Store of Value

Gold is a preeminent store of value. Physical gold, in the form of gold bars or gold coins, retains its purchasing power over long periods of time despite general increases in the price of goods and services.

In contrast, fiat currencies such as the US Dollar are not stores of value and their purchasing power consistently becomes eroded by inflation or the general increase in the price level. Fiat currencies have a long history of either becoming totally worthless and going out of circulation, or else becoming completely debased, such as the US dollar, while remaining in circulation.

Since the creation of the US Federal Reserve in 1913, the US dollar has lost over 98% of its value relative to gold, i.e. the US dollar has lost over 98% of its purchasing power relative to gold.

Since 1913, the US Dollar has lost more than 98% of its value, while gold has retained its value.

6. Long- Term Inflation Hedge

Physical gold’s ability to retain its purchasing power over time is sometimes referred to as the “Golden Constant”. This reflects the fact that gold’s purchasing power is constant over long periods of time. This ‘constant’ exists because the gold price adjusts to changes in inflation and future inflation expectations. Therefore, physical gold is a long-term hedge against inflation.

7. A 6000 Year History

Gold has played a central role in society for thousands of years from the early civilizations of ancient Egypt, right up to the contemporary era. Gold has facilitated international trade throughout history, has been directly responsible for the economic expansion and prosperity of numerous civilizations throughout history, and has even been, due to gold exploration and mining, the direct catalyst for the growth of some of today’s best-known cities such as San Francisco, Johannesburg, and Sydney.

8. A 2500 Year Track Record as Money

Because of its ability to retain value and act as a store of value, physical gold has been used as money for over 2500 years. Gold coins were first issued in the Lydian civilization in what is now modern Turkey. Subsequently gold was used as a stable form of money in Persia, ancient Greece, ancient Rome, the Spanish and Portuguese Empires, the British Empire, and right through to the various international gold standards of the 20th century.

It was only in August 1971 that the US famously suspended the convertibility of the US dollar into gold, a move which triggered the debt fueled expansion that is still having repercussions within today’s monetary system.

To put gold’s monetary importance into perspective, for 97% of the last 2500 years, gold has been chosen by numerous sophisticated civilizations as the form of money par excellence and an anchor of stability, precisely because of its ability to retain its value.

9. Safe Haven

Physical gold acts as a safe haven asset in times of conflict, war and geopolitical turmoil. During the financial market stresses and heightened uncertainties caused by wars, conflicts and turmoil, the counterparty risk of most financial assets spikes. But since physical gold does not have any counterparty risk, investors rush to gold during these periods so as to preserve their wealth. This is analogous to sheltering in a safe harbor. Gold can thus be seen as a form of financial insurance against catastrophe.

10. Portable Anonymous Wealth

Gold bars and gold coins combine high value with high portability. In times of conflict and war, gold bars and gold coins are ideal for transporting wealth and savings across borders and within conflict zones in an anonymous fashion.

11. Universal Acceptance

Gold is universally accepted as money across the world, with the highly liquid global market always providing ample sales opportunities for gold bars and gold coins. This means that whichever city you are in across the world, you can always sell or trade your gold bars and gold coins.

12. Emergency Money

Military personnel are often issued with gold coins that they carry with them in conflicts zones as a form of emergency universal money. For example, the British Ministry of Defense often issues RAF pilots and SAS soldiers with Gold Sovereign coins to carry on their persons during combat missions and activities, such as in the Middle East.

Worthless paper Currencies vs the Inherent Value of Owning Physical Gold

13. Outside the Banking System

In the current era of global financial repression, physical gold is one of the few assets outside the financial system. Gold is not issued by any monetary authority or central bank or government. Because its not issued by any government or central bank, gold is independent of the banking system. Fully owned physical gold, if stored in a non-bank vault or held in one’s possession, is outside the banking system.

14. No Default Risk

Unlike a government bond, there is also no default risk with gold because it is not issued by any authority that could default. Gold bars and gold coins are no one else’s liability. Physical gold cannot go bankrupt or become insolvent. Therefore, there is no need to have to trust any other party when holding physical gold.

15. Portfolio Diversification

Adding an investment in gold to an existing portfolio of other investment assets such as stocks and bonds, reduces the volatility (risk) of the investment portfolio and can increase portfolio returns. This is because the gold price has a low to negative correlation with the prices of most other financial assets, because gold is less influenced by business cycles and macro-economic cycles than most other assets.

Numerous empirical studies by financial academics, as well as industry bodies, such as the World Gold Council, have validated gold’s role as a strategic portfolio diversifier. Optimal allocations to gold in multi-asset portfolios have found to be in the 5% to 10% range.

16. Currency Hedge

There is generally an inverse relationship between the gold price and the US dollar, in that the gold price generally moves in opposite directions to the US dollar. Therefore, holding gold can act as a currency hedge of the US dollar, and help manage the currency risk of portfolios denominated in US dollars.

17. Gold's Metallic Properties

Gold has many and varied metallic properties. These properties provide gold with many technological and commercial applications and uses, which in turn contribute as additional demand drivers in addition to the investment and monetary demand for gold.

Gold is highly ductile (can be drawn into very thin wire). It is also highly malleable (can be hammered and flattened into very thin film). Gold is a very good conductor of electricity and heat. Gold does not corrode or tarnish. It is chemically unreactive and non-toxic to the human body. Gold has a high luster and shine, and an attractive yellow glow.

These properties explain gold’s use in electrical and electronic wiring and circuits (e.g. computers and internet switches), its use in the medical and dental fields, gold’s use in solar panels, space travel, and gold’s traditional uses in jewelry, decoration, and ornamentation. With new technological uses being found for gold all the time, gold's demand pattern is diversified and underpinned by its commercial importance.

18. Physical gold – A tiny fraction of Paper Gold

The London wholesale gold market and the US-based COMEX gold futures market generate huge trading volumes of paper gold that dwarf the size of the physical gold market. However, these markets only trade derivatives on gold (futures and unallocated positions), representing fractionally-backed and unbacked claims on gold that could never be convertible into physical gold by claim holders.

In a scenario under which these paper gold markets became unsustainable, the prices of paper gold and physical gold would diverge, with the paper gold markets ceasing to trade and collapsing, and only physical gold retaining any real value. Physical gold is therefore an insurance against the collapse of the world's vast paper gold markets.

19. By Definition – Not an ETF

Physical gold Provides all the benefits that gold-backed Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) do not. ETFs provide exposure to the gold price, not to gold. Holding physical gold is by definition direct exposure to gold. With most gold-backed ETFs, you cannot convert the units into gold and take delivery of the gold, and in many cases, the locations of the vaults are not even known. If holding physical allocated gold bars or gold coins in a vault, such as with BullionStar in Singapore, you can always take delivery.

Gold ETFs have many counterparty risks since there are many moving parts in an ETF such as a trustee, a custodian, and a sponsor / issuer. Physical gold has no counterparty risks. When you hold a gold-backed ETF, the quantity of gold backing the ETF declines over time due to management fees being offset against the gold holdings. When you hold physical gold, you always remain with 100% of the actual gold you first purchased. There is no erosion of holdings.

20. Anonymous Storage

Gold can be stored anonymously, either in your possession within your house or property, or in a vault in a jurisdiction, such as Singapore, that has no reporting requirements. Since gold has a high value to weight ratio, storing gold does not take up much space.

21. Independent of Internet

Owning physical gold is not reliant on having internet access and access to electronic wallets and cryptocurrency exchanges. Furthermore, gold cannot be stolen by hacking an electronic address or by transferring or deleting a number in a computer.

Owning Gold Coins and Gold Bars Provides Many and Varied Benefits

22. Real Gold is Measured by Weight

Physical gold is measured in weight, not through a number set by a politician or central banker. When you buy a 1 Kilo gold bar, or a 10 Tola gold bar, or a 1 troy ounce gold coin, or a 5 Tael gold bar, you will always have that gold bar or gold coin, irrespective of the fluctuations of fiat currencies.

While thinking of the value of physical gold in terms of a fiat currency might be convenient, a better way is to think of a gold holding in terms of weight.

23. Coins and Bars – Build a Collection

Buying investment gold bars and bullion gold coins allows you to build a diverse collection of bars and coins that are at the same time a fascinating pastime and a form of investment and saving.

Bullion gold coins from the world’s major mints are beautifully illustrated and often have a connection to history. Investment gold bars from the world's major gold refineries are distinctively different from each other and you can vary a collection by cast or minted bars, and a selection of weights.

24. Physical Gold Feels like Real Wealth

Physical gold feels like real wealth. When you hold ten 1 ounce gold coins in your hand, you intrinsically know that you are holding real wealth, gold that is scarce and that has been costly to produce.

25. Gold as Loan Collateral

Gold can be used as loan collateral. Since gold is highly liquid and valuable, it can be lent and used as a form of financing, and as a way of generating interest. The wholesale gold lending market between central banks and bullion banks is highly active. Likewise, retail gold holders can also in various ways lend their gold to receive financing or interest, with new innovations to do this arising all the time.

26. Central Banks hold Gold

Although the world’s central banks like to downplay the importance of gold because it competes with their fiat currencies, most central banks continue to hold substantial amounts of physical gold bars and gold coins in vaults around the world. They hold this gold as a reserve asset on their balance sheets, and they value this gold at market prices.

Like private gold investors, central banks hold physical gold because it is highly liquid, it lacks counterparty risk, and because gold is a safe haven or ‘war chest’ asset that acts as a financial insurance in times of crisis. Central banks also hold gold for the unpublished reason that if and when gold re-emerges at the centre of a new monetary system, these very same central banks will not be caught out having no gold.

27. Gold for Gifting

Gold coins and small gold bars make great gifts and presents, and gold is a traditional form of gifting in many societies around the world. Gifting a gold coin or small gold bar to mark a birth, or anniversary, or a wedding or other special occasion, is an ideal present that will be highly appreciated by the recipient.

28. Gold for Inheritance

Gold bars and gold coins are a great form of inheritance for your children and family members. Because gold is real, tangible, valuable, and has a highly liquid trading market, it is an ideal asset for inter-generational wealth transfers. Because physical gold is fabricated in convenient weight denominations, such as troy ounces and kilograms, it can be distributed equitably among recipients, and specified equitably in wills and trusts.

This article originally appeared on the BullionStar.com website under the same title "28 Reasons to Buy Physical Gold".

via http://ift.tt/2zZmThb BullionStar

In September, South Korea surpassed China in total crypto trading volumes, and as the world’s second largest Ethereum exchange market, South Korea is evolving into an Ethereum powerhouse with a rapidly growing number of active developments, domestic projects and communities.

image courtesy of CoinTelegraph

As CoinTelegraph reported previously, the majority of traders in the South Korean Ethereum market are speculative investors and tend to be largely influenced by any movement in the industry that could lead to a decline in Ethereum price. However, a fairly large portion of investors are avid supporters of Ethereum as a technology and an infrastructure for decentralized applications.

At the moment, ICOs seem like the largest market for Ethereum. In the upcoming years, it is likely that the performance of decentralized applications will evolve as a major factor for the market cap of Ethereum. In an interview with JoongAng, a leading finance news publication in South Korea, Buterin emphasized that it could take two to five years for Ethereum to scale to a point in which decentralized applications with millions of users can be launched and sustained.

There are many multi-billion dollar conglomerates and financial institutions in the Ethereum industry developing decentralized applications and platforms on top of the Ethereum protocol. The emergence of efficient and innovative scaling solutions will create a better environment for decentralized applications and will allow highly anticipated projects such as decentralized cryptocurrency exchanges and marketplaces to evolve.

If support and enthusiasm toward Ethereum in South Korea are sustained in the mid-term, it is highly likely that the South Korean Ethereum exchange market could evolve into an Ethereum powerhouse. As Buterin noted in the interview with JoongAng in the upcoming years, applications of Ethereum in a variety of industries will be tested and implemented.

Buterin explains:

“I would say that Ethereum’s main benefits are in its generality and in its utility to many kinds of industries. There are applications in finance, identity, supply chain tracking, health care, energy and many other areas. This is a result of Ethereum deliberately being designed as a general-purpose programming platform.”

And now, given the overnight news from South Korean regulators, it appears Ethereum has that chance…

As CoinDesk reports, the governor of a South Korean financial regulator has said it has "no plans" to supervise cryptocurrency trading, according to a report.

In remarks made to reporters today, Choe Heung-sik, chief of the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS), said that, since his agency does not view cryptocurrencies as "legitimate currency," the FSS does not intend to supervise trading of the digital assets.

According to a Korea Times report, Choe added the South Korean government believes that cryptocurrencies are used in speculation, not as payment tools. As a result, the watchdog considers that cryptocurrencies are not financial products, nor is trading them a financial service.

He said:

"Though we are monitoring the practice of cryptocurrency trading, we don't have plans right now to directly supervise exchanges. Supervision will come only after the legal recognition of digital tokens as a legitimate currency."

The watchdog head's comments come amid growing popularity of cryptocurrency trading in South Korea, and may have been prompted by the recent outage of major domestic exchange Bithumb, which recently experienced a technical outage that reportedly lost traders billions of won.

But his comments appear to have quelled any anxiety among speculators, as is clear by the reaction in Ethereum – the South Koreans' confidence is back…

 

Which leaves Ethereum solidly in 2nd place among crypto market caps…

via http://ift.tt/2i0YYXA Tyler Durden

Authored by Alex Thomas via SHTFplan.com,

In the “post Weinstein” world we now find ourselves in we have seen dozens and dozens of prominent figures in Hollywood, politics, and the media be accused of a wide range of sexual attacks on women.

From groping all the way to rape, powerful establishment figures are being outed as sexual predators across the country, with the mainstream media declaring that all accusers must, at least initially, be believed.

Amazingly, at the same time, mainstream media talking heads have either specifically ignored the numerous allegations against Bill Clinton or actually claimed that his accusers are discredited and cannot be believed. (Keep in mind all other accusers are automatically assumed to be telling the truth.)

With that being said, it was only a matter of time before that dam broke as well and now, with a series of explosive comments by an Obama and Clinton ally, one can hope that Bill Clinton may finally be brought to justice with Hillary forever shamed for her role in attacking the women who came forward.

In an interview conducted on a CNN podcast by former Obama chief adviser David Axelrod, former Obama Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius opened up about the cover-up and subsequent attacks on the women who accused then President Clinton in the 1990’s.

“Not only did people look the other way, but they went after the women who came forward and accused him,” Sebelius stunningly detailed. Keep in mind this is a fact that the alternative media has reported on literally hundreds and hundreds of times while being attacked as right-wing conspiracy theorists for doing so.

 

“And so it doubled down on not only bad behavior but abusive behavior. And then people attacked the victims,” Sebelius continued.

Sebelius made clear that her criticism extends directly to Hillary Clinton herself who was widely known to be the driving force behind the attacks on her husbands accusers.

An article written about the podcast by CNN couldn’t hide from the fact that this is absolutely Hillary’s problem as well.

Sebelius extended her criticism to Hillary Clinton, and the Clinton White House for what she called a strategy of dismissing and besmirching the women who stepped forward – a pattern she said is being repeated today by alleged perpetrators of sexual assault – saying that the criticism of the former first lady and Secretary of State was “absolutely” fair.

 

Sebelius noted that the Clinton Administration’s response was being imitated, adding that “you can watch that same pattern repeat, It needs to end. It needs to be over.”

 

The comments came during a conversation with David Axelrod on the latest episode of “The Axe Files,” a podcast produced by the University of Chicago Institute of Politics and CNN.

Of course the notoriously left wing, anti-Trump network couldn’t simply report on Sebelius’s comments without also attacking Republicans who have seemingly done the exact thing that the network has defended the Clinton’s for doing.

One can imagine that like Donna Brazile, Sebelius will be attacked by Clinton’s army of media shills and then eventually attempt to backtrack a few days later when the pressure becomes too much to handle.

Regardless, the cat is out of the bag. Both Bill and Hillary Clinton (as well as the entire machine around them) actively and purposefully attacked the numerous women who accused Bill of everything from groping to rape.

They absolutely did not “stand by them.”

via http://ift.tt/2A1G9dE Tyler Durden