'Why the Debt Crisis Is Even Worse Than You Think'

from bloomberg.......

........................."Even the $4 trillion “grand bargain” on debt reduction hammered out by President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio)—a deal that collapsed nearly as quickly as it came together—would not have gotten the U.S. where it needs to be. A June analysis by the Congressional Budget Office concluded that keeping the U.S.’s ratio of debt to gross domestic product at current levels until the year 2085 (to avoid scaring off investors) would require spending cuts, tax hikes, or a combination of both equal to 8.3 percent of GDP each year for the next 75 years, vs. the most likely (i.e. “alternative”) scenario. That translates to $15 trillion over the next decade—or more than three times what Obama and Boehner were considering.

You start to see why, absent signs of a serious commitment to deficit reduction, the rating services are warning they may downgrade the federal government’s triple-A rating even if Congress does meet the Aug. 2 deadline. Fortunately, our debt hole is escapable. But digging out requires that leaders of both parties come to terms with just how deep it is.

"The U.S. is in danger of reaching a generational tipping point at which older Americans have the clout to vote themselves benefits that sap the strength of the younger generation—benefits that can never be repeated. Kotlikoff argues that we may have reached that point already. He worries that the U.S. could become Argentina, which went from one of the world’s richest to lower-middle income in a century of chronic mismanagement.


While Washington is absorbed in the composition of a budget deal—how much in spending cuts vs. how much in tax increases—that’s of secondary concern to macroeconomists. The more important figure to them is the size of the deal. The reason so many of the plans aim for $4 trillion in budget balancing is because that’s the amount that would (at least temporarily) stabilize the debt-to-GDP ratio and calm the bond market vigilantes. The downside, of course, is that if such a retrenchment is phased in too quickly it would drag down growth at a time of 9.2 percent unemployment''...............READ MORE

'Communist China Forbids Journalists To Report on Suspicious Train Wreck'

from the atlantic.........

"Last weekend, two high-speed trains crashed in China after one was struck by lightning, killing 40 people and causing immeasurable damage. But after the shock from the catastrophe wore off, many in China began questioning the details of the crash. For example, why were the wrecked parts of the train buried so quickly? Why couldn't the second train stop? And why have there been a string of infrastructure disasters in the country?

These questions, it turns out, were too many for the Chinese government. TheNew York Times is reporting that, in a sudden order sent from the Communist party late Friday, "Chinese authorities have enacted a virtual news blackout on the disaster except for positive stories or information officially released by the government."

“There were three calls,” one editor in Beijing said. “The first came around 9 p.m., ordering us to ‘cool down’ coverage of the Wenzhou accident as much as possible.” An hour later, the newspaper was instructed “to print only Xinhua’s wire and not to print anything we had gotten ourselves. No comments, no analysis,” the editor said. A third call at midnight ordered the accident coverage off the front page.

The Beijing-based Economic Observer ignored the directive, though said it was because they had already printed. The producer of one news program was reportedly reprimanded after program. But other newspaper editors followed the directions, and editors had to tear up Saturday editions in some cases and replace them with "cartoons or unrelated features"...............READ MORE

Military Industrial Complex: We came, we saw, we destroyed, we forgot

trillions and trillions of taxpayer dollars wasted............from foreignpolicyjournal........


http://killinghope.org/

"An updated summary of the charming record of US foreign policy. Since the end of the Second World War, the United States of America has …

1. Attempted to overthrow more than 50 governments, most of which were democratically-elected.[1]
2. Attempted to suppress a populist or nationalist movement in 20 countries.[2]
3. Grossly interfered in democratic elections in at least 30 countries.[3]
4. Dropped bombs on the people of more than 30 countries.[4]
5. Attempted to assassinate more than 50 foreign leaders.[5]

In total: Since 1945, the United States has carried out one or more of the above actions, on one or more occasions, in the following 69 countries (more than one-third of the countries of the world):

Afghanistan Albania Algeria Angola Australia Bolivia Bosnia Brazil British Guiana (now Guyana) Bulgaria Cambodia Chad Chile China Colombia Congo (also as Zaire) Costa Rica Cuba Dominican Republic East Timor Ecuador Egypt El Salvador Fiji France Germany (plus East Germany) Ghana Greece Grenada Guatemala Honduras India Indonesia Iran

Iraq Italy Jamaica Japan Kuwait Laos Lebanon Libya Mongolia Morocco Nepal Nicaragua North Korea Pakistan Palestine Panama Peru Philippines Portugal Russia Seychelles Slovakia Somalia South Africa Soviet Union Sudan Suriname Syria Thailand Uruguay Venezuela Vietnam (plus North Vietnam) Yemen (plus South Yemen) Yugoslavia

Notes

Wasteful Military Spending by the Military Industrial Complex

from national interest.........

"Many advocates of promiscuous military intervention angrily reject the claim that America is an “empire.” Granted, the U.S. doesn’t directly rule its imperial dependents. But Washington policymakers do insist on maintaining a military presence wherever and whenever possible, irrespective of America’s defense needs.

The Obama administration’s attempt to pressure the Iraqi government into “inviting” the U.S. to remain is almost comical. Rather than requiring Baghdad to demonstrate why a continuing American presence is necessary, U.S. officials have been begging to stay. Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates said: “I hope they figure out a way to ask.” His successor, Leon Panetta, recently blurted out: “dammit, make a decision.”

However, it is Washington that should make a decision and bring home America’s troops.

The U.S. continues to garrison Europe, Japan and South Korea decades after American forces first arrived. All of these international welfare queens could defend themselves. Despite President Bill Clinton’s promise that American troops would spend just a year occupying the Balkans, an area of minimal security interest to the United States, some troops remain to this day. And uber-hawks talk about maintaining a permanent presence in Afghanistan, as distant from conventional U.S. defense interests as any nation on the planet"...............READ MORE

'Financial vs. Fiscal Crises: A 21st Century Primer'

from diplomaticourier........

"A strange thing is happening in Washington.  Many politicians, pundits, and commentators are starting to confuse two interrelated but substantively different ideas: fiscal crises and financial crises.  While not everyone is guilty of this inadvertent or perhaps intentional mix-up, we are beginning to witness a recurrent pattern of attempts to paint the 2008 financial crisis as one that was primarily fiscal in nature.  Confused yet?  I don’t blame you.

Fiscal crises most commonly refer to ongoing institutional problems with managing debt loads, with the institution in this instance being the federal government.  Financialcrises, on the other hand, typically connote systemic problems within the financial sector of an economy – stemming from some combination of bad corporate choices and government policies – that ultimately lead to an economic retraction of some sort.  Getting these two things straight in the minds of the American public will go a long way towards informing robust public debate about necessary next steps: the banking crisis that led to a near-economic collapse in 2008 was primarily financial in nature, whereas the consequences of that crisis have resulted in short- to medium-term fiscal problems at the local, state, and national level.  There is meanwhile an additional long-term fiscal crisis that has been quietly chugging along for many years – indeed decades – now, and this particular problem is largely linked to long-term imbalances between tax revenues and spending on entitlement programs and defense.

In case you were wondering, there is a very good reason for some politicians to paint the 2008 crisis as a fiscal rather than financial one.  By confusing these two terms and ideas together, self-described “fiscal hawks” in Washington can bolster their claims of out-of-control government spending by the Obama administration, conveniently shifting any blame away from themselves.  The argument goes something like this: the reason we are in this mess today is because of excessive government spending by the current administration, and the only way to turn the economy around is to therefore cut this same irresponsible spending"..................READ MORE

End the "Never Ending Wars" and Bring the Boys Home.........

the military industrial complex has gone stark raving mad..................

"Allen West Blasts "Incredible, Unconscionable" Defense Cuts in Reid Bill"

"I heard some things that really sent a chill down my spine," said West. "When commanders told me that we're starting to have to budget toilet paper into the barracks ... that reminded me of the times when I was at Fort Bragg, North Carolina ... and I had to do the exact same time."




.................if we end these senseless wars and bring the boys home........we wont have to worry about how much toilet paper to buy............from the weekly standard................LINK

'Crossfire, and hints of compromise'

from boston.com.......

"Facing an imminent deadline to raise the debt ceiling and avert throwing the nation into an unprecedented default, leaders of the opposing parties appeared to spend more time blasting each other yesterday than on working toward a deal, until late-night negotiations at the White House finally opened up the prospect of a bipartisan compromise.

Senate majority leader Harry Reid, hoarse and wan after a tumultuous week, took the floor in the Senate shortly after 10 p.m. to make the dramatic announcement that he was delaying a vote on a measure he had been pressing - and which Republicans had attacked - to allow time for the White House push to bear fruit.

He offered few hints of the shape of the unfolding deal, except to say he was confident it would raise the debt limit sufficiently to avoid revisiting this sort of stalemate before the 2012 elections. “There is still a distance to go before any arrangement can be completed,’’ he said.

US Treasury officials have said the country will not have enough money after Tuesday to pay all of its bills, including Social Security and veterans’ benefits"...........READ MORE

'Some Austerity'

from cato.....

"It is clear we must enter an age of austerity," House minority leader Nancy Pelosi mourned as she endorsed Harry Reid's proposal for raising the debt ceiling. Austerity? Really?

The Reid plan would theoretically cut spending by $2.7 trillion over ten years. Even if that were true, it would still allow our national debt to increase by some $10 trillion over the next decade. But, of course, the $2.7 trillion figure is mostly fiction.

About $1 trillion of the savings would come from the eventual end of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, savings that were going to occur anyway. Senator Reid might just as well have added another $1 trillion in savings by not invading Pakistan.

Another $400 billion comes not from cuts but from assuming reduced interest payments. And, of course, there are $40 billion in unspecified "program-integrity savings," meaning the "waste, fraud, and abuse" that is the last refuge of every phony budget cutter. The plan rejects any changes to Medicare and Social Security, despite the fact that the unfunded liabilities from those two programs could run as high as $110 trillion. But those liabilities generally fall outside the ten-year budget window, so Reid — unlike our children and grandchildren — doesn't have to worry about them"..............READ MORE

"David Stockman on our quasi-bankrupt country"

from cnn........

"The crisis lies in the debt, not the ceiling. Kicking the can with a six months' ceiling increase is the worst possible alternative because it allows the politicians of both parties to continue making the Big Fiscal Lie. The Republican "no tax increase" position is preposterous; we are collecting less than 15% of GDP in taxes, the lowest since 1950, and spending 24% of GDP.


More than half of that is national security and Social Security, and the Republicans don't have a plan to cut a dime from either. Likewise, the Democrats are lying when they say Social Security is not part of the fiscal problem.

Benefits will exceed payroll taxes by $50 billion this year alone, and the red ink only gets deeper with time. Social Security should be subject to a stringent means test on the top 15 million affluent retirees, so that there is something left for the 40 million lower-income elderly who are already on the ragged edge.

Finally, the $800 billion defense and security budget is a relic of the Cold War, which ended 20 years ago, and should be cut by $200 billion. We no longer have any industrial state enemies and we have been fired as the world policeman - so it is time to mothball some carrier battle groups, ground some air wings, drastically reduce our troop strength, end the futility of Afghanistan and stop buying multibillion high-tech weapons that we can't afford and don't need"............READ MORE

World Economic super power: The Corporation of London

Pepe Escobar: The allure of Afghanistan- 'Asian powers jostle for position amid vast mineral reserves and strategic oil pipelines, while West keeps bombing'

from aljazeera.......

"Afghanistan is not often perceived as a mineral Holy Grail.

But, as it turns out, between $1-3 trillion in mineral wealth lies unexplored across the Hindu Kush. There's enough uranium, lithium, copper and iron ore to potentially turn Afghanistan into a commodities powerhouse.

The Pentagon knows all about it - how could it not? And the Russians have known about it since at least the 1970s, when they mapped out all the uranium riches of northern Afghanistan.

Washington may have complex geopolitical energy reasons to remain in Afghanistan - as explored in a previous Al Jazeera article that generated enormous reader response. 

For its part, Islamabad is still obsessed with viewing Afghanistan as a pliable satrap. But the going gets much juicier when one looks at key Eurasian players such as Russia, India and China and their own, non-Pentagonised reasons to come to this mineral Walhalla.


Business suits, not bombs
Early next month a crucial bidding war begins in Kabul. It concerns Hajigak, the world's biggest iron ore deposits, which are located in central Afghanistan (at least 1.8bn tons, according to a Soviet estimate made in the 1960s).

To the sound of much predictable Taliban grumbling, all 15 bidding companies are from India - including giants Tata Steel and JSW, the country's third-largest private steel company.

A stable, business-friendly Afghanistan is absolutely essential for India - a gateway to oil and gas from Iran, Central Asia and the Caspian. India is building power stations and strategic roads, such as the one linking Afghanistan with the Iranian port of Chahbahar.

Few may know it, but it's not only Africa that is the object of a fierce India-China business "war". Afghanistan is also a key chessboard. There are five types of minerals on the Afghan horizon - gold, copper, iron ore, and inevitably, oil and gas - and the Indians and the Chinese are all over them".............READ MORE

'Taliban offer talks if US sets pullout date'

lets close down the 400 US military bases in Afghanistan..............from asia times online.........

"The Taliban leadership is ready to negotiate peace with the United States right now if Washington indicates its willingness to provide a timetable for complete withdrawal, according to a former Afghan prime minister who set up a secret meeting between a senior Taliban official and a US general two years ago. 

They also have no problem with meeting the oft-repeated US demand that the Taliban cut ties completely with al-Qaeda.

Ahmad Shah Ahmadzai, who was acting prime minister of Afghanistan in 1995-96, told IPS in an interview that a group of Taliban officials conveyed the organization's position on starting peace negotiations to him in a meeting in Kabul a few days ago.

"They said once the Americans say 'we are ready to withdraw', they will sit with them," said Ahmadzai.

The former prime minister said Taliban officials made it clear that they were not insisting on any specific date for final withdrawal. "The timetable is up to the Americans," he said"..............READ MORE 

'Details on How the Rothschild Cabal Snakes and Insiders Use their Media Powers to Lie and Deceive the Public'

from analysis-news.com...............

"So how do the Rothschild Cabal bankers (to include their racial cousins like the Warburgs, Lazards, Oppenheimers [who are not only big in banking but huge in gold, diamonds and the wealth of Africa; this is why US foreign aid to Africa is so important], get away it without yet a major depression and/or excessive inflation/hyperinflation today?  How does the US dollar and US bonds supposedly have value and buyers still today?  How is it that the Cabal holds things together without some major problems? 

Man, don’t you get it yet on how the Rothschild masters control things?  They lie and deceive the public through their controlled puppet governments (like the US, Britain and the EU) and of course through their highly successful world media powers (starting with their owned/controlled Reuters, Associated Press, United Press International and major TV and newspaper corporations and their highly influential entertainment powers in Hollywood). 

The Cabal master snakes merely say that what is true is not true and what is false is true.  And most of the public is so mesmerized with Rothschild brainwashing that they never are able to put two and two together to challenge the Rothschild Cabal rulers.  The public has been trained/brainwashed to accept whatever the Rothschild Cabal tells them over the nightly TV news programs. 

That’s why we have so far not had any acknowledged high inflation.  The Rothschild Cabal cousins, puppets and agents with the governments and media powers simply deny that it exists.  That’s why there has not been an official depression.  The puppets, cousins, and agents simply called it a recession for a few months and then they declared that it was over and we were in recovery (on cousin Bernanke’s spin to Congress on Jul 13, he still referred to the alleged recovery in progress).  On this theme, see the Goldsmiths 200"............READ MORE

a link to all the goldsmith articles.......http://www.analysis-news.com/allfolder/Archives-Goldsmiths.htm

'Monitoring America'

from wapo.......

"Nine Ten years after the terrorist attacks of 2001, the United States is assembling a vast domestic intelligence apparatus to collect information about Americans, using the FBI, local police, state homeland security offices and military criminal investigators.

The system, by far the largest and most technologically sophisticated in the nation's history, collects, stores and analyzes information about thousands of U.S. citizens and residents, many of whom have not been accused of any wrongdoing.

The government's goal is to have every state and local law enforcement agency in the country feed information to Washington to buttress the work of the FBI, which is in charge of terrorism investigations in the United States.

Other democracies - Britain and Israel, to name two - are well acquainted with such domestic security measures. But for the United States, the sum of these new activities represents a new level of governmental scrutiny.

This localized intelligence apparatus is part of a larger Top Secret America created since the attacks. In July, The Washington Post described an alternative geography of the United States, one that has grown so large, unwieldy and secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs or how many programs exist within it.

Today's story, along with related material on The Post's Web site, examines how Top Secret America plays out at the local level. It describes a web of 3,984 federal, state and local organizations, each with its own counterterrorism responsibilities and jurisdictions. At least 934 of these organizations have been created since the 2001 attacks or became involved in counterterrorism for the first time after 9/11"................READ MORE

'Debt Crisis? Bankruptcy Fears? See Jefferson County, Ala.'

 f u wall street..............from nytimes........

"A few hundred miles north of here, politicians are fighting over debt. It is a spirited debate, full of discussions about what kind of country will be left for future generations and pledges not to kick the can down the road.

But one does not have to go far to see that possible future. Welcome to Jefferson County. This is the end of the road, where the can cannot be kicked any farther.

There are lessons for everyone here, and they are all painful: lessons for those who are not concerned about the prospect of mounting debt, for those who insist that steep cuts can be relatively painless, for those who think the bill for big spending can safely be put off into the future, for those who have blind faith in the market and for those who think the government can always be relied upon to protect the interests of the people.

All of these beliefs have led to a place where the government can no longer borrow and the little cash on hand is being demanded by creditors, where the Sheriff’s Department cannot afford to respond to traffic accidents and hundreds of county workers are sitting at home, temporarily or possibly permanently out of work. They have also led to a widely held conclusion among residents that no one is on their side.

The prospect of county bankruptcy, which would be the largest of its kind in United States history, has gone from being an unwelcome mark of distinction to something that many residents insist should have happened a long time ago.

It still stings to think about how things got this way, how county residents are stuck with the tab from a reckless binge by Wall Street bankers, middlemen and crooked politicians, a greed-fueled spree that none of the voters actually wanted or even knew was happening. But residents know that complaints about fairness have not made that debt, all $3.2 billion of it, go away.

“What are you going to do?” said Steve Mordecai, 50, who was eating lunch at Ted’s, a meat-and-three place here that is somewhat less crowded than usual on Fridays, given that so many county employees are no longer working. “The county created the mess,” Mr. Mordecai said. “Now we have to pay it back.”

The story that ends in overspending excess began in neglect: in 1996, the federal government accused Jefferson County of sending raw sewage into area rivers and demanded that it rebuild its dilapidated sewer system. Such a project would be costly, but officials hoped to avoid unpopular rate increases first by pushing that cost into the future, and then by adding a maze of derivatives that were supposed to shield the county from interest-rate increases"............READ MORE

'The Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries calls for clampdown on cheap communist Chinese imports'

from financialgazette..........

"The Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries (CZI) president, Joseph Kanyekanye, has launched at veiled attack on the government's Look East Policy, saying Chinese imports were now the single largest threat to local industries.

He said government should regulate cheap imports from the world's second largest economy to ensure that local industries, still smarting from a decade-long economic crisis that was broken by dollarisation of the economy in 2009 are protected.

Local industries were currently operating at an average of 48 percent but have failed to lift themselves out of the operational quagmire of the past decade due to an influx of cheap imports and lack of capital for the refurbishment and replacement of antiquated machinery.

"CZI has observed that there has been an influx of goods particularly from the Chinese and I'm not xenophobic but I      feel for my country," Kanyekanye said in his contribution to the Medium Term Plan (MTP) launched by government a fortnight ago".............READ MORE

'Inside China's high-speed cover-up of weekend disaster'

cheap chinese products...............from theaustralian............

"FOR Japan's high-speed rail industry, last weekend's crash in China was no real surprise.

Those behind Japan's Shinkansen, which has not had a single fatality since it began in 1964, had their fingers burned when they took their technology to China.

After collaborating on early projects, they say China stole their technology and froze them out as it looked to establish a vast domestic network as well as an export industry in high-speed rail.

In the wake of this bitter experience, they warned loudly of safety fears and doubts over Chinese operating practices and effectively withdrew from all collaboration in China.

While it looked at the time suspiciously like sour grapes as China surged ahead with its plans to build the world's largest high-speed rail network, last weekend's crash has shown how prescient the fears were.

The crash and the typical post-disaster obfuscation may have exploded China's dreams of competing on the global stage, and have tipped the balance back towards Japanese, French, Canadian and German companies that are battling it out over high-speed rail contracts in the developing world and the US.

China has resumed services on the route even though an investigation, likely to be seen as a cover-up, has barely begun.

Governments from the Middle East to South America that were flirting with choosing cheap Chinese bids for their rail projects, face some difficult decisions"...............READ MORE

'What the debt ceiling fight won't fix'

we are being "had"..........from chicago tribune.......

"Whoever wins this battle, the government's sea of red ink will keep expanding. There is no general agreement on numbers, but the publicly held debt now stands at about $11 trillion. Obama's budget would have pushed the total to around $20 trillion by 2021. Under either the Boehner plan or the Reid plan, it would exceed $17 trillion.

All this screaming and squabbling, and for what? A huge increase in the amount of borrowed funds that you and your descendants will have to repay.

Freshman Republicans in the House rallied behind the "cut, cap and balance" plan, but it amounts to yet another stack of alluring promises. The cuts, $111 billion next year, are not itemized. Neither are the programs that would take a hit from the caps.

The "balance" refers to a constitutional amendment to ban deficit spending. But such an amendment — even in the very unlikely event it could be passed — wouldn't balance the budget. It would merely commit Congress and the president to approve cuts in spending or increases in revenue that would eliminate the fiscal gap.

It's not a solution. It's a promise to come up with a solution, somehow, someday"...........READ MORE

'The Rothschild Cabal Has New Plan to Buy Worthless Treasuries from Banks with Fed Cash'

from goldseek.......


In essence, this Fed gimmick supposedly will allow selected banks and financial institutions to turn in US Treasuries which they are holding to the Fed in exchange for Fed cash—presumably on a temporary basis (which of course would allow them to eventually assume the position of being permanent transfers). Without delving into the mechanics of how this plan will solve the nation’s problems (which were not revealed in the story, and logically cannot be rightfully solved by this mechanism), there were a couple of salient issues lurking behind the scenes on this proposal. 

........"First, I was amazed that there is one more fascinating revelation of the fact that the Fed has power to completely override even the functions of Congress.  If the privately owned US Federal Reserve System has this power in a legitimate grant from the US Constitution and/or US Congressional statutory law, why have a US Congress involved in any aspect of the US economy or monetary matters?  Why doesn’t the Congress just back off and say let the Fed handle it since they have this supposed constitutionally approved authority?  Why not abolish Congress and let the Rothschild Cabal masters run the nation completely. Well they run it anyway since most of the Congressional persons are already bought and paid for as puppets of the Rothschild Cabal masters. 

Obviously, there is no way that the privately owned Fed is going to sit back and allow its own owners and masters to suffer such huge losses.  The Fed is therefore already making plans on what it will do to rescue investments by its owners and masters in US Treasuries.  Of course, when the Fed bosses undertake this scheme to transfer Rothschild Cabal losses on US Treasuries to the US taxpayers, they will do it under the guise of their supposed power and their supposed work to save the financial situation of the generic US nation.  No mention will be made that it is just another gimmick to bail out and help their racial cousins running the big banks and financial institutions. 

"Many Americans are just foolish enough to suppose that Rothschild cousin Ben Bernanke is an idiot and a dummy.  But I have never entertained such foolishness.  Bernanke works for and serves his real bosses who own the Fed.  He is no fool.  He knows exactly what he is doing to enrich his cousins and masters with the Rothschild Cabal banking empire. 

Bernanke and the other Rothschild cousin flunkies now see the handwriting on the wall for the future of US Treasuries of the bankrupt US government.  All along, the masters, sitting in the towers of money power in the City in London (as first revealed to hard money readers in the Goldsmiths XXXI, published on Feb 1, 2009), have been giving much attention to how they will further save their cousins/corporations in the United States as the US financial house of cards starts to fall.  My take is that this present Fed scheme or something similar will in time see implementation.  If the politicians do act and presently delay the default then this scheme can be temporarily deferred till a later time when it will be needed by the Cabal snakes running our nation.  For sure, it is not going away. 

Clearly, once the Cabal kicks off this process, it will balloon up fast as the Fed starts buying US Treasuries from the linked cousin banks first in the US and then from those around the world.  The question I have then is what will happen to the US dollar as the Fed floods the world to buy up bad US Treasuries like they have been buying up bad real estate mortgages?  How many days will it take before the US dollar hits the at last acknowledged garbage can of worthlessness? As a minimum, gold and silver will be going up big"............READ MORE