Let me preface this piece by first stating that my reason for writing it was not to induce people to guess which scenario they found more probable, and then to place their bets beforehand. Rather, my purpose was exactly opposite: to prepare people for either scenario so that when they recognized one or the other unfolding they wouldn’t do something stupid in a moment of panic (or greed).

In the middle of 2007, Morgan Stanley paid out $4.4 million to settle a class-action lawsuit initiated against it by its own clients. Why were Morgan Stanley’s clients suing it? They alleged that Morgan Stanley took money from them for buying precious metals on their behalf, took money from them for “storage” of these precious metals accounts, but only pretended to purchase the bullion.

B.S. Bernanke has been in a quandary, ever since the Federal Reserve’s “QE II” was universally castigated as a reckless (and selfish) escapade by the U.S., aimed at doing nothing more than propping up the value of the “financial assets” of the Wall Street crime syndicate.  Bernanke never understood that criticism, since all of the money-printing done by the Federal Reserve is for the specific intent of propping-up the value of Wall Street’s financial assets. How else do you stop Ponzi-schemes from imploding?

More than two years ago I began warning readers of the most heinous acts of fraud ever perpetrated by the Western banking crime syndicate, which I dubbed “economic terrorism”. These swindles involved nothing less than the destruction of entire European economies, solely so that the banksters could profit on approximately $100 trillion in bets they had placed on the debts of these economies.

In writing about the relentless collapse of Western economies, I frequently point to “forty years of plummeting wages” for Western workers, in real dollars. However, where I have been remiss is in quantifying the magnitude of this collapse in Western wages.

Well, it’s been a tough six months for mining investors, and equally so for the 100+ contestants for the 2011-12 Great Panther Silver Miners Challenge. Despite the extremely profitable (and in many cases record) results for these mining companies, we have seen the sector generally grinding lower – in the worst stretch for these miners since the Crash of ’08.

In the topsy-turvy world of U.S. “newsertainment”, it is common knowledge that comedian Jon Stewart of The Daily Show is one of Americans’ “most admired journalists”. Regrettably, the U.S. mainstream media has chosen to compete with Stewart…by producing comedy.

Throughout the history of our industrialized economies, gold and silver have typically represented between 5% and 10% of the average investor portfolio – or roughly 5% to 10% of their wealth. Note that historically this ratio has typically risen in times of financial turmoil, crisis, or simply any time of high inflation.

Every month, the U.S. propaganda machine plays the same game in the housing sector. It announces “new home starts”. Then a few days later it announces “new home sales”. But it never, ever, ever talks about the two numbers in the same news item.