Wednesday, November 30, 2016

CTTA: Top IS Militants in Southeast Asia


CTTA: Counter Terrorist Trends and Analysis (November 2016)
Building a Global Network for Security
A Journal of the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research
We are pleased to release this month’s issue on ‘Top IS Militants in Southeast Asia’.

Volume 8, Issue 11, November 2016 of the Counter Terrorist Trends and Analysis (CTTA) (ISSN 2382-6444) is available here.

A new batch of radical jihadist leaders and key operatives has emerged in Southeast Asia, replacing a number of the Al Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) old guard who have been killed (e.g. Azahari Husin and Noordin Top), executed (e.g. Imam Samudra and Ali Ghufron) or incarcerated (e.g. Abu Bakar Bashir and Hambali). Five of the new leaders have achieved some prominence in recent years because of their jihadist activities: Bahrumsyah, Bahrun Naim and Gigih Rahmat Dewa from Indonesia, and Muhammad Wanndy and Isnilon Hapilon from Malaysia and the Philippines, respectively. They have pledged their allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, leader of the so-called Islamic State (IS), and represent the ‘fresh face’ of violent extremism in the region. Their emergence attests to jihadists’ ability at regeneration and leadership succession.

Unlike previous Southeast Asian jihadist leaders, a few of the present leaders like Bahrumsyah, Bahrun Naim and Wanndy run terror cells from overseas in Iraq and Syria. This poses a security challenge for governments in the region. While in the past they could eliminate or neutralise the top leaders operating in Southeast Asia, now they have to contend with cell leaders who operate from overseas with impunity, issuing instructions and directives, transferring funds, and facilitating travel for jihadists. Constraining them presents a huge challenge given the ease of communications via social media. 

The five leaders featured in this issue are not spiritual and ideological leaders like Abdullah Sungkar (deceased) and Abu Bakar Bashir of Jemaah Islamiyah, but strategists and tacticians like Azahari Hussin and Noordin Top who masterminded terrorist operations. This partly explains why no wali (governor) has been appointed for IS enclaves in Indonesia and the Philippines. Only Hapilon has been appointed as the emir for IS Philippines. A potential emir in Indonesia, Santoso, was killed in July 2016 before he could be appointed.

Together with a few others, the five jihadi leaders have contributed to raising the threat level in Southeast Asia, as evidenced by the attacks, and discovery of terror plots and cells in the region. Militants mounted attacks in Jakarta in January, Puchong (Malaysia) in June and Solo (Indonesia) in July. In August, an IS suicide bomber attempted to kill a Catholic priest and his Church congregation in Medan (Sumatra). In the same month, militants plotting to stage a rocket attack against Singapore’s Marina Bay were arrested, and in October, three policemen were injured in a knife attack in Tangerang, near Jakarta. On 26 November, IS-linked militants in Indonesia were arrested for plotting to launch bomb attacks against the Myanmar Embassy, Parliament, the National Police Headquarters and several television stations. In the Philippines, a bomb exploded in Davao city in September while kidnappings for ransom and clashes with the armed forces have persisted. More than 400 militants have been arrested in the region. Clearly, there is an urgent need to identify and neutralise the principal leaders and members of terrorist cells and disrupt their plots in the region.    

One of these militant leaders is Bahrumsyah, a key Indonesian jihadi leader appointed by al-Baghdadi as leader of IS’ Southeast Asia battalion, Katibah Nusantara, in Iraq and Syria. Jasminder Singh delves into Bahrumsyah’s background and the involvement of his combat unit in various military operations and training, manufacturing of improvised explosive devices, sniping and ideological propagation. Bahrumsyah and his battle-hardened and well-trained fighters might return to the region when IS falls in Iraq and Syria and this would have serious security implications for Southeast Asia.

Another emerging Indonesian militant is Bahrun Naim who has plotted several terrorist attacks in Indonesia. Muh Taufiqurrohman and Ardi Putra Prasetya explain Bahrun’s journey towards radicalisation, his vast networks in the jihadist community, his prominence in the cyber domain, and his quest for recognition from IS Central and the jihadi community by orchestrating terror attacks in Indonesia.

V. Arianti sheds light on one of Bahrun Naim’s subordinates, Gigih Rahmat Dewa who achieved notoriety for plotting to mount a rocket attack against Singapore’s Marina Bay. Leader of a terror cell in Batam, an island south of Singapore, Gigih also facilitated the arrival of Uighurs into Batam and aided the migration of Indonesians to Syria.

In Malaysia, Muhammad Wanndy Mohamed Jedi has emerged as a high-profile online ‘celebrity’ for IS sympathisers. He was behind the June 2016 Puchong grenade attack that occurred along with other IS-directed and IS-inspired ‘Ramadan’ attacks in several countries. Muhammad Haziq bin Jani examines Wanndy’s rise as a jihadist, his network of cells, and his threats to kill high-ranking security officials.

Another significant militant leader is Isnilon Hapilon who has been appointed emir of IS Philippines with the support of 16 militant groups in the archipelago. Hapilon is leader of the Abu Sayyaf Group faction that defected to IS in July 2014. Angelica Barangan Habulan cautions that an IS enclave in the Sulu Archipelago presents a security threat not only to the Philippines but also to Southeast Asia.

The terror attacks in Southeast Asia should be seen against the backdrop of more devastating suicide bombings and shootings in Paris, Brussels, Istanbul, Dhaka and elsewhere, resulting in thousands of casualties. In the months ahead, IS is likely to transform itself from a caliphate-building entity to a terrorist operations-based movement when it is fully routed in Iraq and Syria. This change is highlighted by Mohammed Sinan Siyech in his article which explains in some detail how IS has sowed the seeds of its own destruction. The group’s self-defeating ideology of perpetual conflict and acts of savagery makes it a dangerous movement that has to be degraded and destroyed.

The editorial team welcomes your feedback and comments. Please write to us at ctta@ntu.edu.sg.

Trump’s Victory: Future of US-Pakistan Relations

RSIS Commentary is a platform to provide timely and, where appropriate, policy-relevant commentary and analysis of topical issues and contemporary developments. The views of the authors are their own and do not represent the official position of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, NTU. These commentaries may be reproduced electronically or in print with prior permission from RSIS and due recognition to the author(s) and RSIS. Please email: RSISPublications@ntu.edu.sg for feedback to the Editor RSIS Commentary, Yang Razali Kassim. 


No. 291/2016 dated 29 November 2016
The Rise of Trump and Its Global Implications

Trump’s Victory:
Future of US-Pakistan Relations
By Abdul Basit

Synopsis


Pakistan features quite low on the US priority list. Under the Trump presidency, the low-key US-Pakistan relations are likely to continue. However, the security-centric ties will be trouble-prone and bumpy.

Commentary


BREXIT SHOOK Europe; Trump’s victory has shocked the whole world. Perhaps the 11/9 shock is more baffling than the 9/11attacks. Trump not only fooled the 24/7 US media pundits but also belied the pre-electoral projections which regarded Hillary Clinton as the favourite candidate.

After his victory, US friends and foes are equally worried about Trump’s future course of action. During his election campaign, he had blown hot and cold against his allies and opponents alike. For instance, he praised the Russian President Putin, the US archrival, for fighting Islamic radicalism and criticised NATO, the US closest ally, as a redundant organisation that should be disbanded.

Response in Pakistan


In Pakistan, Trump’s victory evoked mixed responses about the possible impact of his presidency on US.-Pakistan relations. Currently, Islamabad features quite low on Washington’s priority list. What does Trump’s victory mean for Pakistan?

Will the coldness in the Pakistan-US ties increase further or will it remain at its current level? More importantly, what are the benchmarks to evaluate Trump’s future policies; his election campaign rhetoric or his prospective cabinet appointments and the inaugural speech he is going to make in January? Probably, both factors combined will shape his future policies.

In Washington, Trump is considered an outsider to the system. Foreign policy is not his strong area. His election agenda focused heavily on internal policies; therefore, his immediate focus will be domestic.

Political rhetoric is one thing, the reality of running the office is quite another. After briefings from the Pentagon, State Department, C.I.A. and other key institutions, Trump is likely to tone down his pre-electoral rhetoric. Notwithstanding his promises, in retrospect, President Obama could not shut down Guantanamo Bay detention camp or to withdraw the American troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. It remains to be seen how much space the US system will afford Trump to translate his election agenda into policies.

Low-key US-Pakistan Relations Will Continue

Since 2011, Pakistan’s importance as a key US ally has lessened following the killing of Al-Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden in Abbottabad. One indicator of that is there has been no visit to the US by the former army chief General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani in his second extension (2011-2013) and only one trip by the outgoing military chief General Raheel Shareef in 2015.

Notwithstanding Trump’s victory, US-Pakistan ties are already very cold and cannot sink any lower. Washington and Islamabad do not look towards each other favourably. Pakistan has already bid farewell to the IMF programme this year. Since the onset of the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) Beijing has replaced Washington as Islamabad’s major strategic, economic and diplomatic partner.

The US has already left Pakistan out of the Afghan peace process by “droning” the former Taliban chief Mullah Akhtar Mansoor in Balochistan and scuttling the Pakistan-initiated  peace process in Afghanistan. The Coalition Support Funds (CSF), given for counter-terrorism cooperation since 9/11, have elapsed last year. The future military and economic aid to Pakistan has been slashed and made conditional to certification.

Transactional Ties

However, Pakistan will continue to be a distant US partner and a troubled ally. Under Trump, the framework of the US-Pakistan ties will remain transactional and security-centric. It will revolve around counter-terrorism, the peace process in Afghanistan and nuclear non-proliferation. The “do more” demands from the Trump-led White House and the Republican-dominated Congress will become a routine occurrence. Pentagon will have a greater say in determining the future US policies towards Pakistan.

Generally, the US will deal with India and Pakistan separately while formulating its policies for South Asia. Keeping the long-term US strategic interests in focus, India will feature quite high in the American priority list due to the commonality of goals and interests in defeating terrorism, containing China and enhancing economic ties. The US is already helping India become a member of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), supporting its stance on Kashmir and favouring the Indian bid to get permanent membership of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC).

Coming Challenges for Pakistan in Trump Era

The Trump administration will certainly turn the heat on Pakistan to expedite the slow-moving trial of the 2008 Mumbai attackers and take it to a logical conclusion. Similarly, the pressure to take action against the India-focused militant groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM) will increase. Likewise, the demands to dismantle the Taliban sanctuaries on Pakistani soil will also escalate.
        
The immediate negative impact of Trump’s policies on US-Pakistan relations will be indirect. For instance, his Middle East policy could result in a cut in remittances and rise in layoffs of Pakistani workers in the Gulf States. Similarly, his stringent visa policy towards the Muslim countries is likely to affect Pakistan as well. Moreover, if high tariff barriers are instituted it could negatively affect Pakistani exports to the US. Similarly, his policies towards migrant communities in the US might affect the Pakistani diaspora resulting in deportation or loss of jobs.
   
Way Forward

Presently, there is a bipartisan consensus in Washington on South Asia tilted in favour of India and keep separate and de-hyphenated engagement with Pakistan. Pakistan would do well to work with the US in areas where interests converge and have frank talks on issues of divergence instead of adopting duplicitous policies or making false promises. 

Under President Trump, the low-key US-Pakistan relations are likely to continue without facing any immediate rupture or downgrading. However, the ties will remain trouble-prone and bumpy.


Abdul Basit is an Associate Research Fellow (ARF) at the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research (ICPVTR) of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

Click HERE to read this commentary online.

Only 10 Countries In The Whole World Are Not Currently At War

Only 10 Countries In The Whole World Are Not Currently At War

World War III may have not been declared yet, but the world is already at war...
war
By: Claire Bernish / THE ANTIMEDIA United States — A troubling report by the Institute for Economics and Peace found a mere ten nations on the planet are not at war and completely free from conflict. According to the Global Peace Index 2016, only Botswana, Chile, Costa Rica, Japan, Mauritius, Panama, Qatar, Switzerland, Uruguay and Vietnam are free from conflict. Iceland tops the list of most peaceful countries in the world, followed by Denmark, Austria, New Zealand, Portugal, Czech Republic, Switzerland, Canada, Japan, and Slovenia — while the United States ranked far lower, at 103. Palestine, placed in the index of 163 nations for the first time this year, ranked 148th.
War-torn Syria placed at the bottom of the list, lower than only South Sudan, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen, Central African Republic, Ukraine, Sudan, and Libya.
The index gauges global peace using three broad themes: the level of safety and security in society; the extent of domestic or international conflict; and the degree of militarisation,” the report states.
Though 81 countries improved their level of peace according to those criteria, those gains were muddied by deteriorating peace in 79 other nations. In the last decade, “the average country score deteriorated by 2.44 per cent with 77 countries improving while 85 countries deteriorated, highlighting the global complexities of peace and its uneven distribution.”
While Central and South America continue to earn the worst marks for societal safety and security, the U.S. represents one of the only exceptions due to its “excessive incarceration rate.”
Overall, Europe held its spot as the most generally peaceful region, while the Middle East and North Africa region (MENA) remains consistently the most tumultuous on the planet.
“The historic 10-year deterioration in peace has largely been driven by the intensifying conflicts in the MENA region,” the report notes. “Terrorism is also at an all-time high, battle deaths from conflict are at a 25-year high, and the number of refugees and displaced people are at a level not seen in 60 years.
“Notably, the sources for these three dynamics are intertwined and driven by a small number of countries, demonstrating the global repercussions of breakdowns in peacefulness.”
According to the report, the United States spends an outrageously high percentage of the globe’s military expenditures — 38 percent — while the next largest military spender, China, accounted for considerably less, 10 percent of the global share. In the score of militarization, the least peaceful countries include Israel, Russia, North Korea, Syria, and the U.S.
Of particular note in this year’s tenth anniversary index — the most comprehensive to date — globalization of conflict, in repercussions such as the growing refugee crisis, is driving a growing disparity between the least and most peaceful nations.
In fact, the “number of refugees and displaced persons increased dramatically over the decade, doubling from 2007 to 2015, to approximately 60 million people. There are nine countries with more than 10 per cent of their population classified as refugees or displaced persons with Somalia and South Sudan having more than 20 per cent of their population displaced and Syria with over 60 per cent displaced.”
While actual terrorist activity most heavily impacts Syria, Iraq, Nigeria, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, its ripples spread worldwide.
“Many countries are at record high levels of peacefulness, while the bottom 20 countries have progressively become much less peaceful, creating increased levels of inequality in global peace,” according to the report.
As the world descends into a far less peaceful state overall, the staggering cost of militarism and violence becomes painfully clear — 13.3 percent of the globe’s total economic activity, $13.6 trillion in purchasing power parity, concerned violent conflict. That’s the equivalent of “$1,876 for every person in the world.”
Working toward peace will require the international community to promote peaceful, just, and inclusive societies, the IEP urged in conclusion, though such goals aren’t expected to be reached quickly or easily.

This article (Only 10 Countries In The Whole World Are Not Currently At War) by Claire Bernish originally appeared on The Anti-Media.
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Welcome To The Currency War (Part 23): Europe Will Devalue Or Dissolve

http://www.gold-eagle.com/article/welcome-currency-war-part-23-europe-will-devalue-or-dissolve

Welcome To The Currency War (Part 23): Europe Will Devalue Or Dissolve

 
November 27, 2016
No rest for the wicked. With the shockwaves from Brexit and President Trump still reverberating around the world, the established order is bracing for more bad news. Next up is a December 4 Italian constitutional referendum that might end the reign of centrist Prime Minister Matteo Renzi and replace him with a bunch of anti-euro iconoclasts from the Brexit/Trump part of the spectrum. Here's an excerpt from a much longer, deep-context Guardian UK article:
As the air of insurgency becomes unmistakable, the technical debate over reforming a 70-year-old constitution is in danger of becoming a sideshow. Perhaps the most disturbing poll for Renzi found last week that only 40% of Italians say they will vote on the reform package; 56% consider their vote to be more a verdict on the prime minister, his government and, by implication, the state of the nation.
If that bigger picture still dominates come polling day, it is hard to see anything but defeat for a man once billed as Italy's Tony Blair. After 13 years of a flat-lining economy, Italians are battered, bruised and looking for somebody to blame. Unemployment is running at 11%, but is close to 40% among the young, who made up the bulk of the 107,000 who left the country last year to seek work abroad. The aftermath of the financial crash is estimated to have wiped out about a quarter of Italian industry. The average family income is less now than it was in 2007.
Traditionally among the most enthusiastic proponents of European integration, ordinary Italians are furious at the EU's failure to share the burden of the huge migration surge to their southern shores. Lectures from Brussels on the need to cut public spending and balance budgets, given the desperately straitened times, have added insult to injury. It is no coincidence that a current bookshop bestseller - 1960: The Best Year of Our Lives - is a nostalgic evocation of the Italian postwar economic miracle, when the country's growth was judged to outstrip Germany's.
As initially strong support for his constitutional reforms has plummeted, Renzi has tried to turn the tide. In an attempt to woo an increasingly Eurosceptic electorate, he has begun to talk tough to Brussels, temporarily abandoning austerity targets and threatening to veto the EU budget unless other member states show more solidarity over migration.
Resorting to what opponents describe as scare tactics, he has also drawn attention to a recent spike in the interest rates on government bonds. The markets have become decidedly uneasy at the prospect of Italy becoming the next country to deliver a seismic shock at the polls. "The yield will get bigger if uncertainty grows," noted the prime minister. "That's not a threat: it's just a fact."
A sharp rise in the cost of financing Italy's colossal public debt could spell disaster. But just as the so-called fear factor failed to keep Britain in the EU, there are few signs that Renzi's economic warnings are having the desired effect.
And not long after Italy takes its shot at the status quo, France will go to the polls for a run-off presidential vote pitting far-right François Fillon and extreme-right Marine Le Pen. Check out the latter's rhetoric:
"I think that the elites have lived too long among themselves. We are in a world where globalization, which is an ideology, has forgotten, and put aside the people, the people's interests, aspirations, and dreams," National Front party leader and French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen told CNBC following Trump's election victory.
"They have acted like carnivores, who used the world to enrich only themselves, and whether it's the election of Donald Trump, or Brexit, the elites have realized that the people have stopped listening to them, that the people want to determine their futures and in a perfectly democratic framework, regain control of their destiny. And that panics them, because they are losing the power that they had given themselves," Le Pen went on to say.
The major tenets of National Front's ideology include nationalism, protectionism, and right-wing populism - with strong stances against immigration. A once obscure political party that had no real weight in French politics, the National Front is now a major player.
Envious of the UK's Brexit referendum, Le Pen wants France to leave the European Union. In campaign stops across her country she has championed for more immigration restrictions and has been vocal against radical Islam - very akin to the way Donald Trump carried his campaign. Much like the president-elect's foes, Le Pen's critics have relentlessly labeled her a racist and a fascist.
It's hard to overstate the threat posed by these two votes to the EU — the world's largest economic entity — and by implication to the rest of the global financial system. Italy is the third biggest country in the EU, and France is the second. Let either pull out and the result might be dissolution and the end of the euro. Trillions of dollars of euro-denominated bonds would suddenly be converted to lira or francs, forcing the holders of those bonds to take big losses and impairing bank capital across the continent, leading in turn to derivatives blowing up pretty much everywhere, and so on until the whole house of cards is threatened.
So what does a fiat currency/fractional reserve banking Establishment do when confronted with such a looming catastrophe? What it always does of course: Cut interest rates and ramp up money creation in order to devalue the currency.
Put another way, the only way to ease the burden the common currency places on inefficient countries like Italy and France is to cut the value of the euro to the point where French wine and Italian cars are screaming buys around the world. Those industries grow and hire more people, who in turn are more open to preserving the status quo.
Now combine a massive euro devaluation (which, by the way is already in progress)...
...with a trillion-dollar US infrastructure program financed with borrowed money, and the result might be a world awash in unprecedented amounts of liquidity. If that's not paradise for precious metals then it's hard to imagine what would be.
Related Research

Monday, November 28, 2016

Marcos-initiated “globalization” led to PH economic decline

Marcos-initiated “globalization” led to PH economic decline

ibon-2016-1125-marcosglobalization
ibon-2016-1125-marcosglobalization

“In 1980, the Marcos regime actually made the Philippines the first country in Asia and the second country in the world, after Turkey, to be at the receiving end of a World Bank structural adjustment loan (SAL). The conditionalities of the US$200 million loan included among others tariff cuts, removal of import licenses and quantitative restrictions, lowering protections, and export-promotion – all in line with the market-oriented restructuring of the economy. This first SAL and another US$302 million one in 1984 were the historic spearheads of subsequent decades of trade and investment liberalization in the country.” — from Anyare? Economic Decline Since Marcos

General Eisenhower’s Final Warning

General Eisenhower’s
Final Warning

John F. Kennedy
55 years ago, President Eisenhower went on Live TV and warned us of a threat far more deadly than the Soviets and the Chinese.
It’s a danger“from within”—and today, that powerful enemy poses an immediate risk to everything you hold dear.
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence… The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes.”
On January 17, 1961, President Dwight D. Eisenhower closed out his second term and delivered his farewell speech on live TV.
A highly decorated 5-star general, “Ike” Eisenhower became Supreme Allied Commander during World War II.
In charge of the combined Allied Forces that defeated Nazi Germany, he was the most powerful soldier in American history.
He then served two terms as U.S. President.
After 46 years in public service, Ike delivered his farewell address to the American people.
He referenced the 3 wars America had just fought. He expressed pride in America’s strength and wished the best for his successor, John F. Kennedy.
But Ike also issued an unprecedented warning that almost no one paid attention to at the time.
He warned of a behind-the-scenes shift in Washington DC that had “grave implications” for America.
He exposed a group of unelected insiders that threatened to take full control of the U.S. government.
He revealed the dark side of American power…a shadow government…
And as you’ll soon see, that shadowy group has only grown since Ike’s time, silently expanding to take over the American money system, Wall Street, the Pentagon and the White House itself.
This elite answers to no one: not voters, not Congress, not even the President himself.
But today, the shadow government has brought us to the verge of a historic crisis. Not a military crisis. Not a government crisis. But a financial crisis… even worse than the meltdown of 2008…
You see, while these powerful insiders could control the military, the bureaucracy, Congress, and the banks…there was one thing they couldn’t understand or control. And now it could be on the verge of a major blow-up.
In 1961, General Eisenhower continued his prescient warning:
The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”
Just three days after Ike’s farewell speech, John Fitzgerald Kennedy was inaugurated as the 35th President of the United States.
Kennedy took Eisenhower’s farewell warning seriously, and took on this unelected cabal of powerful insiders.
John F. Kennedy
JFK even wanted to disband a major part of the shadow government for good before they grew too powerful. Following Eisenhower’s warning, he threatened to:
splinter them into a thousand pieces and scatter it into the winds…”
Soon after, JFK was assassinated. There are many controversies around JFK’s murder. Who did it? Why?
All we know for sure is that, since that dark day in Dallas, no other president has dared challenge that group of unelected insiders. Their power has only grown…
After Kennedy, their influence spread even wider than Eisenhower feared.
In a single, sudden move – on August 15, 1971 – they took control of America’s money. And nobody even noticed.
Then, their tentacles spread through Wall Street as they exerted control over the financial system and the economy…
This forever changed the world’s financial system.
Unfortunately for us all, the powerful group that Eisenhower warned about is more powerful than ever.
They aren’t organized into one federal department. They don’t hold gatherings or have a single leader. There is no secret handshake or hidden membership list.
Rather, this shadow government – and its leaders – exists right out in the open.
As Mike Lofgren, who worked in Congress for 27 years, wrote:
There is another government concealed behind the one that is visible, a hybrid entity of public and private institutions ruling the country… connected to, but only intermittently controlled by, the visible state whose leaders we choose.”
And all the evidence points that today, this shadow government controls almost everything: the military and intelligence services, homeland security and the TSA, social security, medical care, the federal income tax system, the U.S. dollar, the banks and the entire financial system itself.
The financial connection is most important. And truly global.
It’s an open secret that explains why so many of us feel like something “isn’t quite right” in the world…
And once you realize how deep and far-reaching this shadow government is, the dots begin to connect. Then you will see why things work the way they do.
And it’s terrifying.
In a moment, you’ll see how this unelected group exerts power over your freedom and finances.
How it has wrested control over how and when you retire, how you spend your own money, what taxes you’re made to pay, your access to medical care and even what foods you eat.
Once you know the secret behind this powerful group, you’ll understand:
  • Why your vote rarely matters… (And why there will be little difference between a Democrat or Republican president, despite what they claim in their campaigns… )
  • Why most everyday Americans feel like it’s impossible to get ahead, despite all of our so-called “progress” over the past 40 years. ( The average American hasn’t gotten a raise in decades, earning no more than he did in the 1970s… )
  • The reason why, since 1979, the top bracket has experienced seven times more income growth than the middle class…
  • Why America keeps waging aggressive and endless wars that are designed to be lost, at great human cost ( and cost to the taxpayer… )
  • Why your hold-in-your-hand cash, your privacy, and your core financial freedoms are quickly disappearing in America…
  • And how the feds pulled off the biggest legal money grab in modern history. They stole $8 trillion from savers and retirees – and transferred it to Wall Street and their crony friends.
You’ll see the whole story when I reveal how the shadow government works later in this video…
You’ll see how the dots connect…the lies, the frauds, the delusions.
You’ll see how they’ve brought us inexorably close to another devastating financial crisis.
But the good news is this: you can take specific, proven steps to protect yourself and your family -- on the individual level -- if you get started soon.
My name is Bill Bonner.
Forty-three years ago I drove into Washington D.C. in my ’53 Chevy pickup.
Like so many others, I wanted to change our government.
Get it back to its roots.
I was naïve…I was young. So I joined an advocate organization called the National Taxpayers Union.
We tried to spread the message: unless these insiders were brought under control, it would bankrupt our kids and grandkids.
We grew our membership to 125,000 like-minded folks.
Obviously, we failed. Since then, the federal debt has more than quintupled. The debt of the entire nation has increased 10 times.
And the group of insiders Eisenhower warned about has only gotten richer and more powerful.
But don’t get me wrong. I’m not running for office. I’m not asking for your vote or for you to sign a petition.
Instead, I’m warning you about an imminent breakdown in the US economy caused by the corruption of our financial system.
And although I’ll touch on politics in today’s broadcast, I won’t offer a political solution.
Because there is none.
I learned that the hard way.
Today’s message is about your money and your future. It’s about your ability to pay your bills and retire comfortably.
It’s designed specifically to help you help your children to live in a safe, prosperous and free country.
That’s why I’ll focus on individual financial solutions you can put in place on your own.
Why the government you vote for is only “the tip of the iceberg”…
I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase “just the tip of the iceberg.”
Only 10% of an iceberg appears above the water while the remaining 90% remains unseen, below the surface.
Here’s a good picture that shows that…
This iceberg represents the U.S. government:
The government you elect is only the tip of the iceberg.
The remaining 90%, which controls the real money and power, is unelected and hidden from view.
That picture is a perfect metaphor that describes the cabal of unelected power brokers that Eisenhower warned about in January of 1961…
The tip of the iceberg – the part that you can see, sitting above the waterline -- is the elected, visible government. It’s both houses of Congress, the President, your state and local governments, the judicial branch…
But the part you can’t see represents the real power.
It’s called the Deep State.
The Deep State doesn’t face elections and isn’t limited by term limits or the public voice. It answers to no one but itself.
It consists of the careerist bureaucrats, the silent intelligence and surveillance apparatus, the Pentagon paper pushers (but not the real soldiers), the lobbyists backed by billions of untracked dollars, Wall Street, crony contractors, the Federal Reserve and the vast military industrial complex…
All of those seemingly disparate forces form America’s Deep State. And their main goal is simple: to preserve and expand their own power.
And, just as the portion of the iceberg beneath the water forms 90% of the iceberg’s total mass, the shadowy Deep State exerts 90% of the American government’s power.
This is why nothing seems to change in Washington DC.
So you can see why so many Americans feel that something’s deeply wrong with the country.
And you can see why tens of millions of Americans have long since given up on “the establishment.”
It is because of the Deep State that Eisenhower warned about over 50 years ago.
Put simply, the Deep State does not share your concerns or your problems. Often, it intentionally causes many of our problems because it profits from them.
Most important, it is concerned with its own wealth and power – and it only gets them by taking them from you.
In short, the Deep State is your enemy.
But that’s not the end of the story. It is only the beginning…my research has uncovered a weak link in the entire chain of the Deep State’s power and influence…a “fatal flaw” that threatens the whole system at once.
It has to do with America’s money, and how this shadow government never really understood how it works. Without realizing it, they created a system with a ‘doomsday bug’ built into it…
Like a ‘sleeper cell’ this bug will soon spring to life, with devastating consequences for our entire political and economic system.
The coming crisis promises to be even worse than the financial meltdown of 2008 -- because since then, the problem has doubled in size, and so has the threat it poses.
I anticipate that some will find my conclusions unbelievable, perhaps offensive or even “anti-American.”
But I simply followed my nearly four decades of research to its logical and necessary conclusion.
Of course, I could be wrong. And I hope I am. But I’ll reveal the facts along with every corresponding step of my thinking to you today.
That way, you can see it all for yourself.
I’ll also show you the story behind that fatal flaw – and how it now threatens your savings and investments – in just a moment. Now, I’ll share my background so you can see for yourself if I’m a credible source…
Like I said a moment ago, my name’s Bill Bonner.
I’m not a whistle blower, former CIA operative, ex-military man, or someone who leaks classified government information.
After all, I’ve never had access to any actual inside information because I’ve always been an outsider.
I’m just a curious citizen who had a nagging hunch many years ago – a hunch that everything wasn’t right in America.
And I’ve relentlessly followed that hunch to its logical conclusion, which I’m presenting to you today.
Here’s the beginning of that story of how I discovered the pin that will prick the Deep State’s bubble…
Around 35 years ago, I assembled a group of analysts – including the former head of the BBC, and an Oxford scholar… to research, expose, and even predict massive world shifts.
In 1987, we predicted that the Soviet Union would collapse. A few years later, that’s exactly what happened.
In 1989, I was personally mocked for predicting that the Japanese stock market would crash. We wrote, “The long-running bull market in Tokyo may be nearing an end.” Months later, the Japanese stock market crashed. It has never recovered.
In 1993, we predicted the rise of Muslim terrorism, writing “especially troubling for many in the West will be the rise of Islam. This could be the biggest threat to world peace in the next two decades. The bomb at New York’s World Trade Center is just a small taste of what’s to come.”
Eight years later the September 11 attacks hit the World Trade Center.
In 2000, I sent out a note warning that a “day of reckoning” was at hand for the dot-com boom. That very day the NASDAQ began a two-year, 77% decline.
And recently we predicted the crash of the housing bubble in 2008, along with lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Our success has allowed my once small group to grow into the largest underground research network on the planet, with 2.4 million private subscribers...
The FBI and CIA have even approached us for help on matters of national security.
But I don’t bring this up to brag.

I’m here because I think we’re about to get hit with another major shock… in the U.S. money system…

One more important than anything my company has yet dealt with… rivaling and even surpassing the fall of the Soviet Union.
Except that this time it won’t be happening halfway around the world. We won’t be watching it on CNN or Fox News from the comfort of our living rooms.
The epicenter of the next great world shift will be right here in America. And the Deep State will be the cause of it all.
As I hinted before, the Deep State consists of the massive domestic and foreign intelligence apparatus – the CIA, FBI, TSA and Homeland Security…the huge Pentagon hierarchy…the tens of thousands of bureaucrats buried in D.C., the lobbyists, the contractors, the Congress, the President…
But today’s message pinpoints the most powerful segment of the Deep State – the part that controls America’s money.
As you’d expect, their control of America’s money allows the rest of the Deep State operations to take place. They fund much of the government…and transfer, literally, trillions of dollars to their crony friends and privileged industries.
Without money, they can’t do anything. No legislation, no intelligence, no bribes, no foreign policy, no war, no nothing.
And, as it happens, that fatal flaw I’ve been warning you about is hidden within America’s money system. So this flaw will affect each and every American...
Now, I must warn you that some of the facts I’m about to tell you may seem incredible.
Yet, they are all true.
And I’m not about to ask you to sign up for some survival kit. Or ask you for a political donation… or even get you to sign a petition.
I’m just going to tell you what I’ve discovered.
You can decide for yourself how seriously you want to take this threat.
I’m also going to tell you what my friends and I are doing to prepare ourselves.
And what you can do… for yourself, your family, and your wealth… as we enter an unprecedented moment in American history.
Let me explain…
For the entire time that I’ve been working alongside PhDs, analysts, political operatives, and journalists to track and predict the greatest shifts of our time…
I’ve been watching a single trend take shape…
For 35 years I’ve been studying it. And it turns out that General Eisenhower was right to warn us back in 1961 – he was right about everything.
In 1993 we warned that it would eventually meet a disturbing conclusion.
And today I think that’s exactly what’s about to happen.
In fact, we’ve recently passed what I believe to be a point of no return, which means that a monetary crisis is now inevitable and unstoppable. And it was caused, unwittingly, by the Deep State.
It will start small.
Maybe you’ll try to get money out of the ATM one day and find that it isn’t working…
Maybe you’ll be at a restaurant with your wife and when the check comes your credit card will be denied…
You’ll call your bank. You’ll get a prerecorded message from some government agency you don’t recognize.
As I said, it will start small.
But it will spread to our food supply chain… our gas stations… our banks… our government…
Prices will swing wildly from one day to the next… investments will be impossible to sell… Social Security checks will pile up uncashed on your kitchen table…
potential home buyers will walk away… And one by one every service you and I and every other American has come to rely on will shut down… paralyzing our country… and changing the course of this nation’s history.
I realize that must sound unbelievable…
But understand that I, and analysts within my network, have made predictions like this in the past.
I’ve been doubted before. I’ve even come to expect it.
Even when I’m right.
For instance, back in the late 1980s, I became convinced that the Japanese stock market was about to crash.
At that time, the Japanese had just bought New York City’s Rockefeller Center for $846 million. They had also bought Columbia Pictures for $4.4 billion.
And American tire maker, Firestone, was also suddenly a Japanese company.
They were selling more cars than we were. They were making better computers and TVs. On the face of it, it was crazy to bet against them…
Yet on Page 87 of our annual forecast of 1989, we wrote:
In our view, the Japanese stock market is one of the two most overvalued markets in the world. The long-running bull market in Tokyo may be nearing an end.”
That year the Japanese stock market was at its highest point in history.
Movies and books at the time were depicting a future with Japan as the No. 1 superpower.
Maybe that sounds foolish now, but back then it was a fact, and everyone thought we were crazy for predicting the end of Japanese domination.
I remember in October of that year, one of my friends, a former economist for the CIA named Mark Skousen, made a joke of it.
As a present, he gave me a mockup of a book:

How I Called the Crash in Japan
– by Bill Bonner

I wish I had written that book.
Two months later, the Japanese stock market began a decline that is still going on today as Japan entered what would later be called “the lost decade.”
People just refused to believe that big change was on the way and that Japan would fizzle out.
But here’s the thing – the core reason beneath Japan’s spectacular rise…and its decades-long decline… is the exact same thing underlying the money crisis that’s about to wash over America.
But, obviously, this problem is far larger today in America, because our economy dwarfs that of 1989 Japan…
In addition, in 1987 one of our analysts predicted the fall of the Soviet Union.
At the time, our politicians in Washington had been stockpiling weapons to guard against what they thought was superior Soviet technology.
The famous Team B report, commissioned by the CIA years earlier, had claimed that the Soviet economy was booming and that they wouldn’t hesitate to attack America.
Yet in 1987, we weren’t fooled. We wrote:
We have no doubt that sooner or later, but probably sooner, many of the characteristic features of the Soviet system will be abandoned. Put simply, communism is in its twilight.”
Sure enough, two years later the empire started to break apart.
By 1991 it was all over. Yet politicians and scholars – even a report commissioned by George H. W. Bush (then CIA director) got it totally wrong.
People just could not imagine that a world superpower could suddenly become irrelevant, just as people could not believe that Japan would ever break down, or that the tech boom would ever stop, or that housing prices would collapse.
As you might imagine, a large part of what took the Soviet Union down stemmed from their own, Communist version, of the Deep State.
Unelected, unanswerable apparatchiks buried deep in the Soviet state eventually ‘managed’ their economy to a standstill…and brought about its downfall with their secret, harmful policies.
I doubt this time around will be much different. The feds – whether they are in America or the Soviet Union – always want a growing, healthy economy. But they also want to control it…and determine who gets what. You can’t have it both ways.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. I’m just going to tell you what I know in the hopes that maybe it will help you.
But let me pause here for a second, because I sense you may have some questions about me and my company.
After all, you’re probably wondering why you’ve never heard of a news and research network this big… especially one with an unmatched track record.
My company is known as “The Agora.” It’s not a business in the conventional sense. You see, The Agora itself doesn’t actually publish anything. There’s no big central authority telling anybody what to do. Instead there’s a vast network of hundreds of different analysts and mini-media outlets running all across the globe that operate independently yet are all interconnected.
But at it’s core, they’re all engaged in the same effort: to understand what is really going on in the world and to help folks like you prepare for it.
As the kids would say, we were an “open source” network of research and opinion 18 years before the term was invented.
And despite our size, we operate very privately, and our analysts only share research and news directly with private subscribers. I don’t tell them what to do. They work completely independently and reach their own conclusions. And I think that’s what puts us ahead of the curve every time.
We don’t own a cable channel or a single newspaper. We don’t buy splashy ads in magazines. We don’t sponsor sports stadiums or anything like that. We keep a low profile.
Of course our success has not gone totally unnoticed… The CIA once actually tried to convince me to use Agora as a front for their international operations. In case you’re wondering, I said no.
In our 35 years, we’ve grown into the biggest network of our kind on the planet, operating across 20 different countries with 2.4 million subscribers worldwide.
And we’ve done it by exposing, and often predicting, the most important events and trends in recent world history.
After making these predictions over the decades, a single thread emerged. And that thread nagged at me until I really grasped it.
One entity – one group – appeared to play a major role in each and every one of these major world events.
Eventually I came to see that this group was the Deep State that Eisenhower so presciently warned about.
Each time we’ve been able to accurately call a major world event – especially a market crash or other type of crisis – we’ve given our private subscribers an important opportunity to protect themselves.
And that’s what I want to give you and the general public today.
I’ve never actually done anything like this before.
I’ve co-written three New York Times bestselling books… been interviewed on countless TV shows… I’ve been invited to Washington to meet with political leaders…
Yet, I’ve never released my own private research to the general public in this way before.
But then, this Deep State revelation is possibly the most explosive – and the most urgent situation – of my entire career.
And it’s a story only I can tell. Because I’m the only person in this business – possibly in this entire industry – who has been watching this situation from the very beginning.
You see, what most people don’t realize is that in the 1950s, prodded by elements in the Deep State, the United States began switching over to an entirely new kind of economic system.
By the 1970s, they made it official…and nobody noticed.
This new system was – on the surface – a great success. It has allowed us to amass more wealth on paper than any other nation in history…
Despite the collapse of our industrial sector in the ’70s... Despite our manufacturing base moving overseas, resulting in lost jobs and broken towns all over America…
Despite two major market crashes in just the past 15 years…
This new system made our economy what it is.
It’s what keeps our lights on… our grocery store shelves stocked… our gas stations fueled… our Social Security checks in the mail… and our investments producing gains.
If you’ve ever wondered how we manage to keep going despite every sign pointing to a coming collapse…
This is it.
The trouble is that over 30 years ago I noticed a fatal flaw in this system. And as this system keeps growing, so, too, does the doomsday device buried within it… growing bigger and bigger all the time.
And right now, I believe we’re past the point of no return.
When this house of cards collapses – which it will – a systemic shock will disrupt our lives in ways you never thought possible. You will suddenly be locked out of your own bank account, unable to withdraw cash or deposit a check.
Your stocks will swing wildly out of control. You may not even be able to access your Social Security money.
Like a virus, it will spread to our food supply chain, causing massive shortages in the cities and suburbs. The same will happen to our gas network.
America’s highways will become empty and quiet.
And one by one, every service you’ve come to depend on – from your bank to your grocery store to our federal government – will shut down.
Here’s what will happen first, the first domino to fall, so to speak…

You won’t be able to get cash, and without cash you won’t be able to buy food or gasoline.

And what happens to America then?
As a society we are now more than ever dependent on convenience… on free government services instead of our own hard work… on credit instead of our own hard-earned cash…
What happens when people can’t use their credit cards? When they can’t drive to get their checks because there’s no gas? When the only thing you can count on is cash… and no one seems to have any of it?
Will you be able to rely on your neighbors? Your fellow citizens? Lately, I’m not so sure…
Now I realize that to someone who hasn’t been studying this for 35 years, the idea of a serious crisis like that hitting America might not seem possible.
After what I’m about to tell you, I think you’ll reconsider.
Literally, your ATM wouldn’t work. You type in your code, no money comes out. You get your paycheck, you can’t cash it.” Neel Kashkari
U.S. Treasury insider
Those are the words of the architect of the 2008 bank bailouts, Treasury Department insider Neel Kashkari.
What he’s describing is a crisis that you and I came very close to experiencing just a few years ago. If it sounds similar to what I was just describing, it’s for good reason.
Former secretary of the Treasury Tim Geithner has stated,
"We came exceptionally close. You could hear the fear and the panic, because anybody living in that world at that time running a business at that time knew that they were on the edge of losing the capacity to function."
Most important, the Deep State itself was in deep trouble. And it pulled out all the stops to protect itself.
This has been confirmed by former secretary of the Treasury Hank Paulson as well as two U.S. congressmen.
And while President Obama assured Americans that, “the shadow of the crisis has passed” in his State of the Union address, I recently came across video footage of Janet Yellen, the current chairwoman of the Federal Reserve, openly admitting that the U.S. is still facing a very real threat.
We could find ourselves in a devastating spiral.Janet Yellen
Federal Reserve Chairwoman
She goes on to assure everyone that the Federal Reserve is fully in control of the situation.
But the truth is that, by their own standards, the feds’ policies have not worked.
In fact, official records indicate that the highest levels of our government have already spent $4.5 trillion trying to contain this threat – more than we spent on World War II.
It’s a desperate move. And I don’t think they’ll be successful.
As I write, the U.S. economy is still in a slump.
This is despite the biggest stimulus of new cash and credit in history.
We have fewer real breadwinner jobs today than we did 15 years ago, and the typical household has less income.
But let me back up for a second and explain exactly what it is we’re facing and how we got here in the first place.
By now I’ll bet you’ve already heard more than a few over-the-top conspiracy theories and wacky ideas from people who either don’t have all the facts or who intentionally try to mislead you.
Maybe you’ve even watched a few specific dates for the beginning of a crisis come and go.
If so, you’re not alone.
There are a lot of people out there who know deep down that something’s not right in America, that it’s been a different place since 2008.
Yet, they can’t quite put their finger on what exactly is happening or what’s coming next…

Because it’s not just Obama… or the national debt… or a currency threat… There’s a much deeper problem.

The system itself is corrupt. It was corrupted – not exclusively, but most importantly – by the people General Eisenhower warned us about.
But it’s so subtle…so clever…so elegant, that you can look right at it and still not see what is going on. That’s why the hundreds of Internet experts you’ve probably heard from are usually wrong.
They only point at the symptoms, not the real threat.
Meanwhile, the mainstream media is almost completely ignoring the danger we’re in. They just don’t understand it. And frankly…neither they, nor our leaders, want to understand. They benefit from it. They depend on it.
So it’s no small wonder that the vast majority of Americans still have no idea about the threat…or even realize that our own government is spending trillions of dollars trying to contain it
That’s what brings me here today, to tell you the truth as we see it. And the truth is that what’s wrong with America didn’t start in 2008 or in the decade before that.
Let me start from the beginning, when I first discovered a terrible secret about our economy.
As I mentioned before, I started out in politics.
In D.C. I ran one of the most influential lobbying groups of its era, the National Taxpayers Union, all while attending law school at Georgetown University in the evenings.
We brought one of the largest class-action lawsuits ever against the secretary of the Treasury, and we lobbied state governments to pass balanced-budget amendments.
At the time, I didn’t realize that the Deep State even existed. I had no idea how to fight it. And I didn’t know how impossible it would be to win. The New York Times, from March 6, 1981, describes the story of the lawsuit:
The drive to propose a constitutional amendment requiring the federal budget to be balanced has started up again. The National Taxpayers Union, leading the effort nationally, said it believed that four more states could be found to pass the proposal this year.”
While fighting to reduce the national debt, I attended Reagan’s inaugural ball. I was introduced to Ron Paul for the first time.
I gave Grover Norquist – one of the most powerful lobbyists in America today – his first job in the city. I found myself having lunch with Margaret Thatcher and Milton Friedman, together.
But frankly, I was terribly naïve. I knew we weren’t getting anywhere in our effort to contain government deficits, but I didn’t know why. It took another 30 years to figure it out.
And it’s not just government debt.
Don’t get me wrong. I still think it’s an important issue, and one we’ve been deeply involved with.
For example, our documentary on the subject, I.O.U.S.A., which includes interviews with Warren Buffett, Alan Greenspan, my friend Ron Paul, me, and others, was screened at the Sundance Film Festival and widely praised by critics.
In fact, after seeing the film, Roger Ebert made it one of his top five documentary films of that year, writing a “letter to our grandchildren”:
I have just seen a documentary titled I.O.U.S.A. that snapped into sharp focus why your lives may not be as pleasant as ours.”
But while I recognize just how dangerous a broke government can be and how much damage large government deficits have done to other nations, I’ve since realized that the government’s debt is really just a symptom of the disease itself.

In short, our national debt is actually a smaller part of a much larger… and much more dangerous threat…

And now I’m going to prove it.
Here's the obvious and immediate problem: there's not enough real money in the system. There’s no official record of this, but I estimate that somewhere between $958 billion to $1.5 trillion changes hands in the U.S. every month.
People buy milk, pay babysitters. They pay their mortgages and their taxes. Consumer spending alone is $11.2 trillion annually.
But here's the thing: there's only $1.2 trillion worth of actual dollars – physical money – in the entire world.
We can't be sure how much of that is actually here in the U.S. Estimates are that some 50 percent to 75 percent of our money is in overseas bank accounts or held by foreign governments, and a lot of what is left in the states is called "dead money."
It's stuffed in mattresses and safe-deposit boxes.
In fact, the amount of U.S. dollars being hoarded this way – that is to say the amount of dead money – is now at an all-time high.

All in all, there might be as little as 250 billion actual U.S. dollars circulating here in the United States…

And while that might seem like a lot of money, consider that a single U.S. company – Walmart – takes in nearly twice that amount in annual revenue, and our government spends 14 times that amount in just a year…
So if there are only 250 billion physical U.S. dollars in this country, where are all those trillions of dollars coming from, and what would happen if they suddenly disappeared?
Let me remind you that those physical U.S. dollars are America's only legal money – or "tender." There is no digital dollar, at least not yet, and the average Joe isn't buying his groceries with Bitcoin.
One explanation is that people are just spending the same dollars over and over so that $250 billion is changing hands so much that you see trillions of dollars spent at the end of the year.
Only, that can't be possible.
What I've just described is called "monetary velocity," and you can measure it.
And right now monetary velocity is at its lowest point in history. People aren't spending that $250 billion in actual U.S. dollars. It's staying put in those mattresses and safe-deposit boxes.
So people are spending something else, and here it is…

The terrifying source of all our money…

It's our credit system.
Who controls the credit system? Who set it up? Why?
As you can see, for the past 30 or so years it's been growing exponentially.
That's why, although wages have been falling since the 1970s…
…And although we have fewer dollars to spend and our dollars are worth less and less…
…America still appears to be getting richer and richer.
Since the 1970s, the credit system in America has grown to become our biggest and our most crucial asset…
Credit, not real money, is what people spend. Since 1971, the real money has been taken out of the system. Credit is what we have now.
And every credit dollar has a dark side to it -- debt. And there’s more debt outstanding now than twice the value of every single home in America put together, more than three times the value of every single U.S. bank's assets combined, more than 20 times the trillions of dollars the U.S. government collects in taxes every year.
Look, if you have $1, it's yours.
It doesn't matter what other people think or what's happening on Wall Street; it's yours to spend as you like. But credit is different.
It can disappear before you spend it, because at some point all that credit can only exist if people believe they'll get paid back, that is if they believe there's enough money in America to pay back all that $60 trillion in outstanding credit.
But here's the truth: there isn't. Our credit system is insolvent. And when it fails, which it surely will do, it could wipe out more wealth than any other crisis in history.
To put that in context, $10.2 trillionvanished during the financial meltdown of 2008.
This next crisis will wipe out six times that amount. I'm not talking about a few credit cards getting denied. I'm talking about the whole system shutting down. And that will be a disaster that goes way beyond just a matter of money.
In modern America, long, complex chains of production and distribution put food on your table and gas in your car.
Eight out of ten people live in cities or suburbs. Almost no one, not even the farmers themselves, can survive off of food they grow themselves. Instead, they all depend on credit. First, the farmer gets a loan from the bank to buy his farm.
Then he uses credit to buy supplies, fuels, fertilizer, seed – everything.
After the crops are sown, the wholesaler, who got a loan to build his warehouse and processing center, uses credit to buy the raw food from the farmer so he can process it and package it.
Then a trucker, who got an auto loan to buy his truck, uses credit to buy fuel so he can haul the food to a retailer.
The retailer needs credit to keep the lights on and the shelves stocked and the stores open.
Each part of this chain can afford to take on that debt because they know that eventually the consumer will buy that food, mostly likely using a credit card.
If any one, crucial piece of that chain stops working…

Suddenly suburbs and cities are cut off from their food supplies…

Businesses can't run. Paychecks don't go out.
When the credit system starts to implode, it not only destroys the mechanism that runs our economy, it shuts down our access to our own money.
Imagine what happens as lenders try to redeem $60 trillion worth of credit and there's only $250 billion to go around.
You go to your ATM; you ask for cash, but there isn't any cash left. Suppose you have a $10,000 line of credit on your card.
If the credit system doesn’t work, you might as well be flat broke.
Dollars become ultra scarce. Prices skyrocket. Banks go under.
In fact, it would only take about three hours for our entire country to shut down.
I know that must sound impossible, but I know this for a fact. You see, the last time our credit system came to the verge of collapse, that's exactly what nearly happened. I know. I was watching. So was my whole network of analysts and researchers all over the globe.
Tonight, I want you to go to the ATM machine, and I want you to draw out everything it will let you take” Senator Richard Burr (N.C.)
Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee
One Friday in 2008, he called his wife, Brooke, to tell her that he wasn't coming home that weekend; he had urgent business in D.C.
He also gave her one very important instruction: "Go to an ATM. Take out everything you can."
I'll bet that sounds extreme, but what you may not know is at the time, the U.S. was just hours away from a total systemic shock.
At 11:00 AM, the Federal Reserve had noticed hundreds of billions of dollars starting to disappear from the American economy.
A massive loss of faith in the system had prompted big players to get their money out while they still could.
In response, the government began injecting billions to, quote, "liquefy" the system, and it watched helplessly as that money vanished without a trace.
Congressman Paul Kanjorski remembers panicked meetings with Secretary of the Treasury Hank Paulson and Chairman of the Federal Reserve Ben Bernanke behind closed doors in Washington that day.
He would later admit that if not for one last-ditch effort…

The entire United States of America would have gone dead in the water by 2 p.m. that afternoon…

Shocking, I know, especially because most people still don't realize how close we came to a full-scale shutdown…
Or how close we are still…
You see, this situation never actually got resolved. Instead, it got worse. A McKinsey study tells us that there's $57 trillion more global debt in the world today than there was in 2007, and it's growing.
In fact, it's being artificially pumped up by the Federal Reserve and other central banks.
As you can see from the chart below, our current U.S. credit system started around 1950. In the late '70s, traditional American industries – such as cars, steel, televisions, radios, even computers – moved overseas.
Credit came in and replaced traditional wage increases as a way to prop up our economy. That's what triggered the massive growth phase. It entered around that time.
We warned in 1993 that it would begin to unwind, that the credit cycle would come to an end.
That nearly happened in 2000 when the credit system first stalled out and the dot-coms went bust. But then housing was there to support it. All that credit rushed into the housing market, which then shot up to meteoric levels.
But when housing collapsed, there was nothing else to keep us going.
That's when the Federal Reserve started buying up bonds and mortgages.
Starting with a balance sheet of $700 billion before the crisis, the Federal Reserve is now on the hook for $4.5 trillion.
That's how much new cash and credit it has put into the system in the last seven years.
Our lender of last resort, the Federal Reserve, has become too big to fail.
Unfortunately, if it does, there's no higher entity that can step in, save our credit system. It has simply gotten too big.
And all it takes is just one small loss of faith. A few big players start taking their money out while they still can, and then people start lining up at ATMs, and a systemic shock will paralyze the nation.
Even former Federal Reserve Chairman, Alan Greenspan, is sounding the alarm.
Unless we come to grips with this problem… I’m afraid we’re going to run into some kind of political crisis…Alan Greenspan
Former Federal Reserve Chairman
In the 38 years we’ve been providing subscribers with information, we've seen countries get hit with financial shocks like this again and again.
In just the last century, I can name at least 38 events very similar to what I'm describing, but none of them has even come close to the scale of the potential collapse here in America.
That's because none of these countries has ever been able to borrow so much or become so dependent on credit. We're going to see just how dependent we've become, and I'm not looking forward to it.
America's unique status as the world's superpower has enabled us to keep borrowing at unheard-of levels, all on the assumption that we're good for it, but we're not.
And at some point, someone will realize that.
When Americans can no longer use their credit cards, when grocery stores are hoarding food rather than selling it, when we become stranded in our homes because there's no gasoline, when our retirements vanish, when our government benefits are cut off…
What will happen to America as a country?
I'd like to be able to say that we'll band together and take care of each other, but will we?
In the 1970s we had a near miss with a very similar kind of crisis. Our steel and auto industries began to fail; gas prices soared; riots broke out in major cities, like Philadelphia, Boston, and Chicago.
One woman, a teenager at the time, remembers:
Working at a country gas station, she remembers being swarmed by an angry mob one day after the gas station ran out of gas.
In terms of economic crisis, it was tiny compared to what we're facing today yet it took America to its very foundation.
Can you imagine a full-blown collapse in today’s America?
Where anger at police is reaching a boiling point…?
Where teenagers can use the Internet to summon “flash mobs” in just minutes…?
Where half of the population pays no taxes and depends on aid from the federal government…?
Where students crippled by college loans can’t get jobs…?
Given what we saw in Baltimore, in Ferguson, New York, Oakland, and other cities, with people seizing just about any excuse to loot stores and break windows…

How long do you think those same people will refrain from stealing and violence when they can’t get a meal?

My feeling is not very long.
All this must seem incredible, but I've seen these types of crises play out again and again all over the world.
Because of the nature of my business, I've lived on three continents and visited probably 100 countries.
I was an economic adviser to Belarus in 1992 just before a crisis turned the country into a socialist dictatorship.
I recommended that they establish a firm system of private property rights, auction off state-owned property, and let the free market do the rest…
But the Soviet-era bosses who controlled the country weren't willing to let go their own power.
They chose an opposite course.
Few years later, I witnessed one of our most powerful rivals undergo a similar collapse. People desperately tried to find cash as ATMs went dark.
Debit cards stopped working, and banks shuttered and disappeared altogether.

Millions of seniors were cut off from their pensions, without warning.

The government made it illegal to withdraw money from your own bank account.
They shut down the stock market after it plummeted 10 percent in 40 minutes.People couldn't get rid of their investments for any price. Flour, butter, rice, and sugar disappeared. Hospitals ran out of medicine.
Elderly women were forced to dig through trash bins for food. The situation grew so severe that the government organized a special SWAT team to conduct tax raids on the homes of its citizens to get every last dime it could out of them.
And I'm not talking about ancient history, either. This happened in 1999, and there are plenty more examples where that came from.
For instance, most people think of Argentina as a poor country.
What they don't know is that before America became the dominant superpower on the planet, Argentina was one of her main competitors.
It was a lot like the U.S. with similar resources, a similar population and similar spirit of free enterprise and liberty. In fact, Argentina was actually growing faster than America. Buenos Aires, its capital, was settled by immigrants from Ireland, Italy, and Germany.
It combined the rich agriculture and industry of Chicago with the boulevards, parks, and buildings of Paris.
A few years ago, I bought an isolated cattle ranch up in the Andes Mountains of South America, so I pass through Buenos Aires regularly on my way there, and I know the country pretty well.
Walking down the streets, you'd see decaying subway trains – state of the art many years ago – big, beautiful buildings covered in graffiti, windows broken, old cars – top of the line in their day – sitting junked by the side of the road.
It's was if a war had broken out.
Why? It was a financial crisis, very similar to what I see coming in the U.S.
In fact, when you look at the damage that events like this can cause, it's no small wonder our government has already put $4.5 trillion – that is more than it cost to liberate Europe – towards stopping it.
For example, in the 1990s riots killed 1,500 people and destroyed 4,000 buildings when a country in Asia got hit with a similar economic disaster.

But worse than the property damage… the violence… even the food shortages…

Events like this have a strange power, greater even than wide-scale physical disaster, a power to not only make your wealth and the stability you've grown accustomed to disappear, but also your very way of life – the traditions, the values, things passed down for generations.
For example, when a violent monetary trauma hit Germany's first republic, thousands of years of tradition disappeared overnight.
Worse than the financial damage was the social damage.
Families collapsed as the young turned on the old.
Women were forced into prostitution.
Mothers begged to keep their children fed. Political gangs assassinated one another in the streets.
A young man recalls:
It was dreadful to watch… It was more than disorder that smashed over people; it was something like daily explosions; if anything survived one explosion, it got into another the next day….”
Another writer, Kurt Kersten, recorded the downfall as it happened:
German culture, as much as it existed, is perishing… The middle class is worn out... one has only two choices: either slowly perish or join the [leftwing] revolutionary party.”
Imagine that in today’s America… when our very culture is already under attack… where the young already seem to be at war with our traditions…
Imagine for a second…
  • Truckers can’t get the gas for their rigs…
  • Grocery stores’ shelves start to go bare…
  • Homebuyers can’t get loans… and prices crash…
  • Bonds become worthless… IRAs and 401(k)s can’t be cashed out…
  • Stocks fall dramatically before the markets close altogether…
  • Prices swing widely out of control…
  • People take to the streets demanding action from the government…
  • Strikes paralyze our industries…
  • Rioting destroys homes, shops, even entire neighborhoods…
I'm not saying you'll wake up tomorrow and suddenly America will no longer be a superpower or that tonight someone will try to kick down your door looking for cash and valuables.
But what I am saying is that when this does start, things will go bad very quickly. You never think it'll happen to you.
In fact, no one ever does. It's human nature.
Your brain actually won't let you believe that a disaster can happen.
Even when the evidence is clear that a major upheaval is on its way, even when it's a simple matter of common sense that danger is near, most people convince themselves that it can't happen.
I’m from Southern Maryland… I grew up in a poor family and as soon as school let out, we’d go work out in the tobacco fields (this was in the ’50s, back when that sort of thing was still allowed).
Every year in mid-spring, my Uncle Edward would get my cousin, my brother, and me to sit on the back of his old tractor and plant tobacco while he drove up and down the fields.
Now imagine that my uncle wasn't sure summer would come that year – that he wasn't sure the tobacco crop would grow.
Well, I can tell you Uncle Edward would've sat on his porch with a six pack instead. You see, human beings need to believe that things will happen more or less as they always have, that the sun will come up every morning, that plants will grow, that the rains will come.
If we didn't, we couldn't plant food or buy houses or start businesses or do much of anything.
Of course, believing nothing will ever change is actually a form of delusion; totally irrational, but it's necessary for our survival.
The problem, though, is that sometimes things do change big time, and we are unprepared when really big changes are about to strike.
People refuse to believe what's often right in front of them.

Lawyers call this “willful blindness”… psychologists call it the “normalcy bias”…

That's why, while I was warning our subscribers about the dot-com bubble, for example, plenty of people thought it would never end.
A famous book at the time – Dow 36,000 – argued that the stock market was cheaper than ever. An article published in The Atlantic read: "Stock prices could double, triple, or even quadruple tomorrow and still not be too high."
Then suddenly the NASDAQ started falling and eventually wiped out 77 percent of its value.

Today I’m seeing the same “willful blindness” here in America.

People believe that our credit economy can just keep going forever, that we can keep borrowing and spending money that really isn't there.
They think debt can go up faster than income indefinitely, even though it's mathematically impossible.
And now our highest government officials are still locked in a desperate struggle to keep this system going, and the fact of the matter is they've already used up all the tools they have.
They've kept credit cheap by reducing interest rates to near zero.
People believe that our credit economy can just keep going forever, that we can keep borrowing and spending money that
How much lower can they put the rate if the system runs into trouble? They've already expanded the fed's balance sheet by 542 percent in just a few years.

How much more can they do?

History is full of people who thought they were the exception, just like most Americans believe today.
These stories always play out the same way.
People think the rules don't apply to them. They think they can get away with something that no one else has.
Our credit economy is no different. The rules still apply.
Credit is not real money. It's just the flipside of debt.
You run up too much debt and you go broke, and many, many Americans are about to learn this eternal truth the hard way.

We can’t build the biggest credit system in world history and expect it to stay standing forever…

Eventually someone loses faith.
In fact, we've seen this before, right here in America. In 1819, people in America started noticing that banks were always trying to get out of honoring cash deposits.
They give you an IOU instead, supposedly as good as real money.But attempts to redeem those notes for actual money were actually blocked or stalled in some way.
Suddenly, cash started to skyrocket in value, with banks desperately trying to cover up the fact that they couldn't actually honor their deposits.
They didn't have enough money.
When the American public along with foreign creditors caught on to this…
A third of America’s money vanished into a black hole…
The Western Territories ran out of cash completely. They had to switch to a barter system using grain. Real estate and land prices dropped off a cliff, as did income from rents.
You couldn't sell anything, because no one had the money to buy it from you.
And no one would risk a loan, because there wasn't necessarily enough cash to get it back.
Nearly half of all the money in the country disappeared. The resulting economic collapse stretched on well into the following decade.
And we were lucky, because we were young and the collapse happened before the problem was bad enough to do permanent damage.
And back then most families were self-sufficient, and the whole economy worked on cash, not credit.
Today, it's a different story.
We have a credit system, worth more on paper than the national wealth of most countries, and it's already starting to come apart.
Ever since that 2008 morning when the Treasury noticed billions disappearing from the U.S. economy, the Federal Reserve has been locked in a desperate struggle to keep this event at bay, and it hasn't worked.
They've even been flooding the U.S. economy with more new money than ever, to try to make up the shortfall.
You see, the Fed's goal is to hit 2 percent inflation. When that happens, they’ll know what they're doing is working.
Except inflation won't budge. They're already doing everything they can…As I explained, the Deep State depends on it; it is funded on credit. That’s how it got so big and so powerful.

But now they’re running out of time…

By last summer, the Federal Reserve was already supposed to be raising interest rates. Here it is, a year later, and the latest GDP numbers show the economy's still not healthy.
But it’s not healthy because it is corrupt. It doesn’t create wealth. But here’s the essential thing:
It is a credit system…not a wealth system. Everybody has debt. And everybody depends on somebody else to pay… Otherwise, the whole thing collapses.
If the economy ever stops growing…or the amount of credit outstanding ever stops increasing—it’s over.
Without extra wealth -- growth! -- all those trillions of debt can never be repaid. And that’s why they can never raise interest rates…or taxes… And they can never reduce debt.
It’s too dangerous.
In one recent week, $7.2 billion disappeared from U.S. stock funds, the ninth major withdrawal in the previous ten weeks.
Just one fund saw $38 billion pulled out. To compare, the previous record for withdrawals was set in 2009 with just $20 billion.
And Wall Street's already on edge. A note from a Bank of America analyst is now warning, "Correction risk will grow in the absence of fresh inflows in the coming weeks."
It's not clear where this money is going, but billionaires are thought to be hoarding an average of around $600 million in cash each.
As we get closer and closer to this crisis, I expect more and more restrictions on your ability to deposit, to withdraw, and to use your own cash.
Here's what will happen: you'll go to your ATM, but your account will be frozen. The bank will tell you it noticed a suspicious activity.
What suspicious activity? You tried to take out your cash.
In fact, we're already seeing this in Europe.
Just recently a Swiss pension fund tried to withdraw a very large amount of cash from its bank, with the idea of storing that cash in a guarded vault instead. The bank refused to give the fund its money.
And when the pension fund complained, the government backed the bank. In fact, it admitted that it had been, quote, "recommending that banks with cash demands act restrictively."
And it's already starting to happen in the U.S.

From Florida to New York, states have been moving to restrict citizens from accessing and using cash…

In fact, Louisiana just made it illegal to use cash to buy any precious metals... including gold from a second hand dealer.
Even some in the mainstream media have started to notice what’s going on. Bloomberg has reported:
"There's a surge of creativity around ways to drive interest rates deeper into negative territory. As this new world takes shape, cash becomes pivotal."
Am I just being paranoid? I hope so. Maybe it won't happen.
Maybe it won't be so bad. But as you'll see in a moment, something must give. The credit economy cannot last, and it's anyone's guess just how bad it will be when it finally gives way…

America on the verge of being ripped apart

In America today we're seeing protests, rioting, young people fighting with police and turning their backs on American values.
A majority of people in the U.S. now favor taking some people's money to distribute to others.
A majority also favor higher taxes.
It's already beginning to look like a very different America from the one you and I grew up in.

Today one in five Americans do not think the U.S. will remain a single country going forward

There have already been secession movements in Texas and Hawaii. In fact, a consultant for the Pentagon revealed plans by the Chinese to provide arms to these Hawaiian separatists.
And Chinese officials have actually threatened the U.S. secretary of state, saying they would not hesitate to assert their territorial claims over the islands.
According to at least one source, the U.S. military even has contingency plans in place for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Hawaii.
Meanwhile, a recent report by Pew Research finds Americans more divided than ever. But frankly, you don't need a scientific study to prove that…
  • From the violence that ripped through Baltimore last April…
  • to the complete dysfunction of our Congress…
  • to the massive decline in marriage rates for our young men and women…
  • to the increasingly vocal and sometimes violent opposition to traditional American values…
I'm not sure how well America, at least as I know it, could withstand food shortages; banks closing; bonds, retirement accounts, and benefits becoming worthless.
In short: there's not enough real money, real cash – real wealth --, to support the standard of living that we're used to.

Realize that if you collected every single dollar bill in this country…

You’d have less money than the GDP of Finland…

And not much more than the GDP of Greece.
Our economy runs on credit, not cash.
And in a credit crisis, which is certainly ahead, credit is the first thing to disappear. The second thing that goes is cash.
And then you have even more problems.
I've seen cases where economic shocks like this last year's, where…
  • people are cut off from their bank accounts for months at a time,
  • prices swing wildly out of control,
  • strikes cripple services and shut down highways,
  • hospitals can't get medicine,
  • governments become increasingly desperate and violent…
Whether this will happen today or tomorrow or a month from now, I don't know. Nobody knows. But I do know that no country in history has ever maintained the course that America is on now. I know that no one gets away with creating fake wealth. Credit can't be free; there's always a price to pay.
Many of my closest friends and colleagues, some of the richest, most well-connected people I know, are already preparing themselves.
Some are buying gold and silver. Some are moving to foreign countries or even renouncing their U.S. citizenship.
All of them are stashing away cash.
Pretty extreme, I know.
Myself?
I already mentioned my isolated and entirely self-sufficient mountain ranch, and I've also amassed a good deal of gold, silver, and other currencies as a hedge against this scenario.
Of course, I hope I won’t need them.
And I realize that most people can't do measures like these. So in just a moment, I'm going to let you in on a couple things I've put together to help you.
But before I do, there's just one thing I haven't told you yet.

All that I’ve just mentioned in this message…
is only Act One…

You see, the story doesn't end with the shutdown of our credit networks and the massive systemic shock that comes along with it.
What I've just warned you about is merely the run-up to an event that will change the course of world history and bring the American era to a shocking conclusion.
Now, I know that you've already given me a lot of your time, and I appreciate that, so I won't go into the second part of the story right now.
But I've laid it all out in "The Great American Credit Collapse," a never-before-published exposé on this crisis. It's not that long, only 15 pages. You can read it fast and get ready quickly.
And it's not some boring textbook on economics.
It's written as a thrilling, easy-to-read account of what the future holds for America, what the collapse of our system will look like, and what the government will do in response.
It details...
  • Your day-to-day life in the post-credit economy
  • The SHOCKING SECOND ACT of the story that I haven’t told you yet (the Deep State won’t give up its source of funding readily)
  • The DESPERATE policies our government will try and why they won’t work
  • HOW food shortages will break out across the country and WHERE YOU should be when they hit
  • WHERE the money and the opportunities will be in the post-credit economy
  • WHY I do NOT believe we’re going into a 30-year depression…
  • And much, much more.
The fact of the matter is, the failure of our credit system won't just push down profits and produce a few layoffs. I’m not talking about another ‘recession.’ Or a business slowdown. Or just higher unemployment.
The crisis I fear will change everything about how you live in America and how you get around to the stores you shop at and the brands you buy.
Now, I've co-written or written two New York Times bestsellers, and about five books in total. You can go online and buy any of them.
But I would recommend that you read "The Great American Credit Collapse" before anything else.
Only you won't be able to find it at any bookstore. In fact, I didn't even give it to my book publisher.
That's because it's not for sale or intended to make me any profit. I've prepared "The Great American Credit Collapse" to be the definitive resource in understanding how this collapse will unfold.
That's why you're about to get the opportunity to claim your own free copy in just a moment. It's the first step you can take right now to get protected. I've already put measures in place to protect myself and my family.
In fact, let me show you what I've done.

I’m currently writing this from a mountain cattle ranch, about the size of Rhode Island…

9,247 feet above sea level… And a six-hour trek, with a 4-wheel drive vehicle, from the nearest city…

My laptop is running on solar power. And when the satellite I use to access the Internet comes up over the mountain, I'll send this out to my offices back in Baltimore.
It sounds odd, I know, and maybe I am a little eccentric.
But I learned a long time ago that you can't just follow the crowd and do what everybody else does and hope to get different results.
And actually, I don't live here full time. But it's nice to know I have a safe haven somewhere, especially as my six children get older and move away.
I like knowing that they have a place to take shelter should the worst happen.
We grow our own vegetables here. We keep our own livestock. In fact, here at the ranch I even have a vineyard so I can drink my own wine.
Meanwhile, to keep my money safe I recommend that everyone have a stash of gold somewhere.

But I realize, that you may not be able to take the same actions I’ve taken…

And frankly, I wouldn’t recommend that you do…
Maintaining international properties when you're not around to fix things is very expensive.
And I have an army of consultants, lawyers, advisors, and friends all over the world to make the connections and investments I need to pull this off. But you don't have to.

All the information and advice you need is available for free. You just have to connect the dots sometimes. Or you can let my team help you and make it simple.

That is, I want to give you access to everything my team has pulled together on the end of credit in America.
Consider it your personal intelligence briefing on the subject, from the very head of a multinational research and news organization.
And if you're imagining complex charts, data tables, and things that look like bank statements, don't worry.
That's NOT AT ALL what I have in mind. Let me show you what I mean.
Let's start with where you can find money you can trust.

The Deep State, Exposed: What it is, how it affects you, and how to protect your wealth and privacy...

In 1961, president Eisenhower said that “we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence” by the Deep State.
And his warning has never been more urgent than it is today…
Because, as you’ve seen in this very letter, the Deep State holds immense – and growing – power over you.
And the economic crisis the Deep State brought about has never been a bigger threat to your wealth, freedom and privacy.
That’s why I just put the finishing touches on my report called “The Deep State Exposed: How a Group of Unelected Insiders Brought America’s Financial System to the Brink of Collapse.”  It’s one part expose, one part prep guide, and I want you to get your hands on it right away.
After all, the Deep State’s tentacles reach into almost every part of your life – including into areas you probably wouldn’t expect.
I reveal how they’ve insinuated themselves into the far reaches of the American government, using that power to radically alter our money system, the banks, the dollar, and the stock market itself.
But it doesn’t stop there. Because the Deep State has also extended its control into the U.S military and intelligence services.
When you dig into these shocking facts, you’ll start to see why America constantly gets involved in aggressive overseas wars that have nothing to do with self-defense or the America’s national interests.
You’ll see why America can’t seem to end these wars even though they bear no benefit to the taxpaying public.
And you’ll also see how the Deep State gets rich -- in money and power -- from these endless interventions and nation-building misadventures.
The Deep State has an extreme amount of control over the public school system, too. And the implications of that are as terrifying as they are astounding. In many ways, education has become yet another extension of the government.
Even private schools and homeschoolers must comply with certain Deep State laws, so it’s almost impossible to escape this…
It’s not a topic generally discussed, but the Deep State has enormous influence over the medical system in the United States, as well. You need to know these facts before you schedule your next doctor visit…
And they’ve crept into American farms, ranches and the food supply, too.  From the FDA to the various farm cartels enforced by the government, the Deep State has infiltrated your dinner table and the local grocery store. So they can exert control over the foods you eat, if you’re not careful.
I lay all of this bare in “The Deep State Exposed” and I want to send you a personal copy right away. It’s an urgent, if alarming, primer on just how bad the Deep State has grown…
Now, let's turn to where you can find money you can trust…

Where to Find Money You Can Trust

The fact of the matter is, you should not trust money you can't hold in your hand. In the beginning of this crisis, before people realize what's going on, I expect physical dollars to become very scarce.
Numbers on a screen will do you no good in a credit collapse.
That's why if you ignore everything else from this presentation, I would hope that you maintain an emergency cash reserve at home, one month's worth of expenses at a minimum.
But cash dollars aren't the only kind of money I would recommend you have during a crisis. Now, the truth is that I'm a bit of a gold bug.
I've made good money investing in gold ever since issuing my trade of the decade back in the year 2000: buy gold, sell U.S. stocks.
In fact, I believe there's a very good possibility that the price of gold will rise dramatically. But please don't buy it to make money.
It's also an excellent store of value, like an indestructible savings account.
But gold is not actually that practical for day-to-day transactions, once dollars become scarce and electronic forms of payment are no longer working.
We saw this back in 2001, during Argentina's financial collapse.
Argentines found themselves using radically different new forms of money. And the interesting part is that they weren't rare gems or coins.
In fact, what becomes valuable in a crisis will shock you.
Many times it's stuff you already own in your own home, wealth you never thought you had. And there's often no one type of money that dominates in the aftermath of a major collapse.
You may need different types of currency for different transactions.
That's why I've had my team assemble a guide on the types of money you want to have readily available when our $60 trillion machine finally breaks down.
For example, this one small item you can buy at Wal-Mart, or almost any department store, that during a crisis becomes an incredibly valuable currency for everyday goods. You may even have some in your home already.
And there are plenty more examples. You'll find full details in "The Crisis Money Guide: The Money You Need to Have in Times of Crisis."
As part of your full briefing on our credit threat, I've decided to include this guide with every copy of "The Great American Credit Collapse." And no, neither of these are for sale or available through any other of our services. . But that's just the beginning.

How and Where to Get Your Own Homestead

Have you ever dreamed of having a safe, self-sufficient spot you can get away to?
Imagine sitting down to a meal of your own meat and vegetables, never spending another second stuck in traffic on your way to Wal-Mart.
But having your own homestead with your own food supply is about more than just living better.
When the credit system fails and shuts off our supply chain, I expect the cities and the suburbs to be hit hardest.
They depend the most on shipped goods.
That's why now is the time to look into getting a homestead, a hideaway.
Call it a safe house. Don't worry, travelling to foreign countries is not required. According to my team of top researchers, there are still many ways to get beautiful property right here in the U.S., even on the cheap, and sometimes for free if you use the right approach.
In fact, some of the most beautiful land in America is up for grabs if you know where to look. You'll find it all in "How to Get Your Own Homestead on the Cheap."
I actually used one of the techniques you'll read about to secure my very first building in Baltimore for just $1.00. And more recently, I built a house – for peanuts – that is completely off-the-grid.
It needs no heat, no electricity, and virtually no maintenance. I even designed my own hot water heater, with no moving parts.
But you don't have to move away from your home and your friends to take advantage of what I've done.
In fact, when you receive your own copy of "How to Get Your Own Homestead on the Cheap," you'll discover what you can do to gain all of the advantages of having your own off-the-grid haven without ever leaving your own neighborhood and the friends you know so well.
You see, being prepared is not just about hoarding money or moving out to the wild. There are many things you can do without taking such drastic steps. In fact, here's one of them.

Five Straightforward Ways to Protect Your Cash

We’ve all heard the stories of people using worthless paper money to start fires or wallpaper their homes.
But that’s not what happens here…
Instead, it will be more like what physicists call an “event horizon.”
That sounds like science fiction I know, but it’s actually quite simple. And very real.
When a massive star collapses and creates a black hole, the event horizon is the closest you can get without being sucked into its center and destroyed.
Once past the event horizon, it does not matter what you are or what you do – you will disappear into the black hole.
In the same way, when the credit system collapses it will create a pull that money will be unable to resist.
This is how real dollars become so scarce so fast in a crisis like this. This is our own financial “event horizon.”
With no real money around, prices begin to crash. Businesses fail. Jobs vanish.
Anything connected to money – your house, your retirement portfolio, and even your gold – is exposed to these powerful forces.
Thankfully, we have some idea on how to survive events like these… where entire nations come against a financial event horizon…
Because they’ve happened before. To Japan… even America in its early days.
My team has studied how people were able to survive these events. And they’ve put together a list of 5 essential strategies you should know about.
They’ve discovered what assets don’t lose value… and how to keep your money safe.
I recommend you see their findings for yourself. You’ll get the exact steps you can take in Five Straightforward Ways to Protect Your Cash.
Even if the global credit system collapses… or the U.S. government wages a “War on Cash”...you can protect, and even grow, your capital with these valuable tips.
But before I can give you access to this, I want to make sure that you really are getting filled in on every single crucial aspect of this developing story.
That's why I'm including something a little bit different in the library you're about to receive.
You see, part of the reason I've been observing this growing credit system for so long is that it has shocking similarities to other large-scale disasters I've observed in history. It shares a very important common thread with almost every single failure and disaster I've seen.
But what's more intriguing is that this same thread pops up everywhere, even in places you'd least expect. It's a very simple phenomenon. It's been recorded by scientists, and yet most people don't realize it exists.
That's astounding 'cause everything, from the national debt and American credit, to war, to making money and getting rich, to success in business, or how you interact and get along with other people, to almost any task we undertake, even your own projects and life's ambitions, are deeply affected by this one thing.
Had Napoleon understood this, his family might be still ruling half of Europe. If that seems incredible, it's precisely why I find this one thing so fascinating. It's everywhere. It's behind more than one specific form of cancer and many preventable diseases.
It's behind mental health problems too. If Americans understood it, we'd be leading much healthier, longer lives, with much less government.
It's so exceptional, I've actually written a book about it called Hormegeddon.
If I say so myself, it's the best book I've ever written, and it's probably the last book I'll ever write, because I consider it to be the final word on everything I've spent the last 40 years building.
It's like the blueprint on which every prediction we've made and most of what I believe is based. And it has played a role in much of my life, just as it does in yours, even if you don't realize it. Of course, Hormegeddon is not a self-help book.
But it's almost impossible to truly understand what's about to happen to us without understanding what the word "Hormegeddon" means.
Here's what bestselling Black Swan author Nassim Nicholas Taleb, and distinguished professor of risk engineering at New York University, had to say about Hormegeddon:
This is a must-must-must-read… It is deep, illustrative, witty, pleasant to read.”
And contrarian economist Marc Faber, aka “Dr. Doom,” said,
I am seldom jealous of anybody, but I truly envy Bill Bonner’s writing and intellectual skills… It is funny, cynical, sarcastic, highly informative, beautifully written, entertaining, and most importantly, written by a man who is not afraid to tell the truth, and stand up for it. I do not say this often, but when I read his Hormegeddon, I was truly in awe.”– Marc Faber, publisher of the Gloom, Boom & Doom Report,director of investment advising firm Marc Faber Ltd.
Another reviewer writes:
This is a book that works on so many levels… and it’s the kind of advice you wish your dad would have given you.”
Another says:
Hormegeddon is simply brilliant… This book offers a detailed analysis of the major problems of our day and exposes the fallacy that is collective central planning in a way that is undeniably logical. The true treasure contained within this book is not the micro-analysis, however, but something even more important…”
You can buy a hardcover copy online.
Hormegeddon
But just to make it easier, I've decided to include a free electronic copy of Hormegeddon with the intelligence reports I've already mentioned.
You see, I'm a businessman. No one within The Agora is publicly funded, and we're all independent of any bank or corporation or large media company.
This is important.
We're not saints or do-gooders. We're not smarter either. We're just not beholden to Wall Street or the government or Big Business.
So we don't pretend not to see this huge credit bubble getting ready to pop. We're all out here on our own.
We owe all our success to individuals just like you, not Big Brother or Big Money.
So you can see why I would want to tell you about what I believe to be the defining collapse of America.
We're all in the same boat.
And right now, I'm worried about what might happen to you and to other hardworking Americans when the credit markets seize up and the ATMs stop working.
So maybe it's time, before I let you go, to tell you what exactly is going to set off the largest financial collapse in world history.

“What’s the flashpoint here?”

Well, the truth is that major events like this rarely have big triggers or flashpoints.
For example, the Arab Spring, a revolution that toppled four governments, sparked civil wars, and led to mass protests and riots in at least 12 other countries, began when a fruit vendor set himself on fire.
When the right set of conditions are all aligned, as they are right now in the U.S., it doesn't take a big event to set off a historic implosion.
It's almost always something small, unexpected.
Think about World War I, in which millions of Germans, British, and Americans died in trenches in France.
It started with a shooting more than 1,000 miles away by a Bosnian.
And if you're aware of what's going on in America today, if you've seen the unrest in our cities, if you've noticed that something's not quite right with our economy, then I don't think it will take much to set off an irreversible breakdown in our way of life.
That's why I want to give you everything we've got on this crisis, because the most important thing I'm going to offer you is something I haven't even mentioned yet.
It's a pass into a very special group… the newest independent research service within The Agora…

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This is what we do every day: try to connect the dots.
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This is the first time I've ever opened up a service to share what I know with likeminded people. It's not something you'll find anywhere else.
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Right now the sun is going down over the mountains, and I expect I'll lose satellite connection soon.
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  • How to Get Your Own Homestead on the Cheap
  • Five Straightforward Ways to Protect Your Cash
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In the weeks that come, I expect the government will grow increasingly desperate in the Fed's battle against the fall of America's credit system…
We've already seen how it is taking steps to limit your access to and use of cash. We've already seen how attempts to contain this problem have not worked.
No nation has ever succeeded in cheating the natural laws of sound money, at least not for long.
And the choices you make today will decide where you'll be on the day our dollars disappear, our banks shut down, and our way of life collapses.
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Sincerely,
Bill Bonner
Editor, The Bill Bonner Letter
P.S. By the way, in case you missed any of that, here’s what you’re getting today:
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  • The Crisis Money Guide: The Money You Need to Have in Times of Crisis
  • How to Get Your Own Homestead on the Cheap
  • Five Straightforward Ways to Protect Your Cash
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Hormegeddon
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