Most Popular
1. It’s a New Macro, the Gold Market Knows It, But Dead Men Walking Do Not (yet)- Gary_Tanashian
2.Stock Market Presidential Election Cycle Seasonal Trend Analysis - Nadeem_Walayat
3. Bitcoin S&P Pattern - Nadeem_Walayat
4.Nvidia Blow Off Top - Flying High like the Phoenix too Close to the Sun - Nadeem_Walayat
4.U.S. financial market’s “Weimar phase” impact to your fiat and digital assets - Raymond_Matison
5. How to Profit from the Global Warming ClImate Change Mega Death Trend - Part1 - Nadeem_Walayat
7.Bitcoin Gravy Train Trend Forecast 2024 - - Nadeem_Walayat
8.The Bond Trade and Interest Rates - Nadeem_Walayat
9.It’s Easy to Scream Stocks Bubble! - Stephen_McBride
10.Fed’s Next Intertest Rate Move might not align with popular consensus - Richard_Mills
Last 7 days
Nvidia Numero Uno in Count Down to President Donald Pump Election Victory - 5th Nov 24
Trump or Harris - Who Wins US Presidential Election 2024 Forecast Prediction - 5th Nov 24
Stock Market Brief in Count Down to US Election Result 2024 - 3rd Nov 24
Gold Stocks’ Winter Rally 2024 - 3rd Nov 24
Why Countdown to U.S. Recession is Underway - 3rd Nov 24
Stock Market Trend Forecast to Jan 2025 - 2nd Nov 24
President Donald PUMP Forecast to Win US Presidential Election 2024 - 1st Nov 24
At These Levels, Buying Silver Is Like Getting It At $5 In 2003 - 28th Oct 24
Nvidia Numero Uno Selling Shovels in the AI Gold Rush - 28th Oct 24
The Future of Online Casinos - 28th Oct 24
Panic in the Air As Stock Market Correction Delivers Deep Opps in AI Tech Stocks - 27th Oct 24
Stocks, Bitcoin, Crypto's Counting Down to President Donald Pump! - 27th Oct 24
UK Budget 2024 - What to do Before 30th Oct - Pensions and ISA's - 27th Oct 24
7 Days of Crypto Opportunities Starts NOW - 27th Oct 24
The Power Law in Venture Capital: How Visionary Investors Like Yuri Milner Have Shaped the Future - 27th Oct 24
This Points To Significantly Higher Silver Prices - 27th Oct 24
US House Prices Trend Forecast 2024 to 2026 - 11th Oct 24
US Housing Market Analysis - Immigration Drives House Prices Higher - 30th Sep 24
Stock Market October Correction - 30th Sep 24
The Folly of Tariffs and Trade Wars - 30th Sep 24
Gold: 5 principles to help you stay ahead of price turns - 30th Sep 24
The Everything Rally will Spark multi year Bull Market - 30th Sep 24
US FIXED MORTGAGES LIMITING SUPPLY - 23rd Sep 24
US Housing Market Free Equity - 23rd Sep 24
US Rate Cut FOMO In Stock Market Correction Window - 22nd Sep 24
US State Demographics - 22nd Sep 24
Gold and Silver Shine as the Fed Cuts Rates: What’s Next? - 22nd Sep 24
Stock Market Sentiment Speaks:Nothing Can Topple This Market - 22nd Sep 24
US Population Growth Rate - 17th Sep 24
Are Stocks Overheating? - 17th Sep 24
Sentiment Speaks: Silver Is At A Major Turning Point - 17th Sep 24
If The Stock Market Turn Quickly, How Bad Can Things Get? - 17th Sep 24
IMMIGRATION DRIVES HOUSE PRICES HIGHER - 12th Sep 24
Global Debt Bubble - 12th Sep 24
Gold’s Outlook CPI Data - 12th Sep 24

Market Oracle FREE Newsletter

How to Protect your Wealth by Investing in AI Tech Stocks

The Educated Socialism of Obama

Politics / US Politics Feb 16, 2013 - 06:37 PM GMT

By: DailyWealth

Politics

Porter Stansberry writes: In Wednesday's essay, I laid out the "great lie" that is bankrupting America.

At the heart of this lie – told by so many of our political leaders and believed by so many of my fellow citizens – is a horrifying turn of events. As I mentioned, the drive for freedom and a better life through hard work, saving, and independence has been replaced by a craven need for the illusion of security.



Rather than trying to leave our children in possession of a better world – with more financial security – political leaders around the world now bicker about how to change the rules so that still more debt can be stacked upon their grandchildren.

For an idea on how things will turn out, a few lessons from history are instructive...

The Spanish Empire destroyed itself by "finding" money, rather than by building industries. And the key to its temporary wealth was a single mountain in Bolivia, "Cerro Rico" – the Mountain of Riches.

At least, that's what the Conquistadors named it. In Bolivia, they call it "the mountain that eats people." Thousands of slaves died trying to satisfy Spain's lust for treasure.

In Cerro Rico today, silver is still mined by people making a few dollars a day using pickaxes in dust-filled shafts with no ventilation, no light, and no safety features of any kind. The 10,000 miners who work there every day toil under the constant fear that the entire mountain could collapse on them. After 400 years of unregulated mining, it's like Swiss cheese.

Bolivia's politicians use these conditions to demand more power and implement more socialism. Of course, it's the poverty caused by decades of socialism that actually prevents modern mines from being built.

Last month, Bolivia's current socialist strongman, Evo Morales, published his Ten Commandments Against Capitalism. He starts out broadly with No. 10...

Economic development must not be oriented to the market, to capital and to profit; development must be comprehensive and be oriented to human happiness, harmony and equilibrium with Mother Earth.

Then he gets to the real point...

We must free ourselves from that colonial bond called the External Debt, which serves only to blackmail us, to oblige us to hand over our assets and privatize our natural resources, and to destroy the sovereignty of peoples and states.

The colonial External Debt is the mechanism of exaction and impoverishment that afflicts the developing countries and limits their access to development. We call for canceling this unjust External Debt. No more inequality. No more poverty. It is time to distribute the wealth.

These aren't just empty words, either. In June 2011, Morales nationalized the Toronto-listed South American Silver exploration firm, promising only compensation "later." Six weeks later, Bolivia decided that the compensation paid to the Canadians would be zero. Nada, zilch, nothing. Apparently, it was time to seize their wealth.

The people of Bolivia cheered this madness. As their reward... Bolivians will continue to work in some of the most dangerous and least-efficient mines in the world. Their real wages will continue to fall. That's because without capital investment, without savings, without property rights... without the responsibilities of capitalism... there will be no increase in wealth.

Bolivia's socialist policies will have the same economic effect as similar activities in Venezuela and Argentina... The black market rate for dollars in Venezuela is three to four times higher than the official exchange rate. In Argentina, the "blue" dollar rate is 50% more than the official rate.

The looming crisis in these countries interests us in two ways... First, because so much of the world's raw materials (including food and hard commodities, like metals) come from countries like these, a return to socialism will undoubtedly cause shortages and price spikes around the world.

But on a more important and deeper level, ask yourself, what's the real difference between Evo Morales and our current American political leaders?

President Obama and his puppet at the central bank, Federal Reserve Chief Ben Bernanke, are also calling for us to cancel our external debt. They're just saying it in a smarter way, calling it "quantitative easing."

And what's the real difference between what Morales advocates in his Ten Commandments Against Capitalism and what's happened in the U.S. over the past decade? First, President Bush granted free medicine to every retired American. Then, Obama pushed through "free" health care for everyone. In his State of the Union address, he labeled these benefits, plus Social Security payments, "civil rights."

That's pure madness. Rights are something you're born with as a human being. They describe what people can't do to you or take from you.

The government cannot guarantee you any benefit or service without first taking it from someone else. That's why the promise of socialism is merely the promise of plunder. Whether it will benefit you depends on where you stand. However, the nation as a whole cannot become wealthy through the plunder of its own citizens. This one fact explains why Argentina – which was the fifth-wealthiest nation in the world 100 years ago – now ranks 50th.

That's where we're headed. Make no mistake. By 2020, the costs of Social Security and Medicare alone will reach $2.5 trillion a year. That's more than the U.S. federal government collects in all forms of tax ($2.4 trillion) today.

The only things funding these programs are lies and taxes. We've been paying for these programs out of current revenues all along – just like convicted hedge-fund scammer Bernie Madoff used new money to create the illusion of returns for existing clients. There is no way we can afford these obligations without making them far more redistributive and increasing payroll taxes enormously. Obama says "of course" we need more taxes. And he's going to do everything in his power to levy them.

It's time to distribute the wealth, all around the world.

The true costs of the world's return to socialism will strike the mining industry first. That's because mining requires immense capital investments over long periods of time. These mines are sitting ducks for politicians, who can tax them or nationalize them easily... all while the public cheers them on...

But that greatly reduces existing supply and makes new supplies incredibly difficult to procure. In short, you can print money, but you can't print metals. And this explains the price spike in gold and silver over the last four years.

Still, all these precious metals do come from somewhere...

While we don't believe that mining companies are a good investment in the long run, they can be incredibly lucrative as short-term speculations. Politically driven market disruptions make mining stocks soar. That's why gold- and silver-mining companies have also long been thought of as crisis hedges – just like refined metal. And we're about to enter an extended – perhaps decades-long – period of unprecedented, politically caused market disruption.

That's why I'm encouraging my readers to buy precious metals like gold, silver, and platinum. Although these metals have appreciated in value over the past 12 years, they have much further to run.

Good investing,

Porter Stansberry

http://www.dailywealth.com

The DailyWealth Investment Philosophy: In a nutshell, my investment philosophy is this: Buy things of extraordinary value at a time when nobody else wants them. Then sell when people are willing to pay any price. You see, at DailyWealth, we believe most investors take way too much risk. Our mission is to show you how to avoid risky investments, and how to avoid what the average investor is doing. I believe that you can make a lot of money – and do it safely – by simply doing the opposite of what is most popular.

Customer Service: 1-888-261-2693 – Copyright 2013 Stansberry & Associates Investment Research. All Rights Reserved. Protected by copyright laws of the United States and international treaties. This e-letter may only be used pursuant to the subscription agreement and any reproduction, copying, or redistribution (electronic or otherwise, including on the world wide web), in whole or in part, is strictly prohibited without the express written permission of Stansberry & Associates Investment Research, LLC. 1217 Saint Paul Street, Baltimore MD 21202

Disclaimer: The above is a matter of opinion provided for general information purposes only and is not intended as investment advice. Information and analysis above are derived from sources and utilising methods believed to be reliable, but we cannot accept responsibility for any losses you may incur as a result of this analysis. Individuals should consult with their personal financial advisors.

Daily Wealth Archive

© 2005-2022 http://www.MarketOracle.co.uk - The Market Oracle is a FREE Daily Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting online publication.


Post Comment

Only logged in users are allowed to post comments. Register/ Log in