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by Edgar J. Steele

“Hello, darkness, my old friend,
I’ve come to talk with you again,
Because a vision softly creeping,
Left its seeds while I was sleeping,
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains … within the sound of silence.”
— The Sound of Silence, Paul Simon (1964), recorded with Art Garfunkel (1966)

My name is Edgar J. Steele.

As so often is the case, today’s posting began as a small squib for friends, then snowballed. Much of this has been posted on my web site for over a week, briefly on the main page as a blog entry, then as an independent article, all the while undergoing some pretty massive updating, editing and, even, a name change or two. I have resisted recording it until now because I considered it a work in progress.

Today’s is a financial discussion with wider implications than many might think because, unfortunately, money is power. Financial markets reflect and, often, presage social, political and military developments. To view world events without an eye on the markets is to see only part of the picture, with the reverse even more true.

Realistically assess world developments and one pretty accurately can forecast financial market swings – by that, I mean the broad strokes, not short-term gyrations. This should be an obvious truth, but one that often is overlooked. It is what has caused me to promote gold and silver for several years now, with only the past year truly beginning to fulfill predictions made by so few of us.

Study history and the repetitive nature of human events becomes apparent, with the economics of empire particularly predictable. How odd that we are able to stand upon the shoulders of those who have gone before us for all things technological, yet must relearn things social all over again, each and every generation. That simple fact, alone, suggests the true purpose of life, you know.

Warfare is both social and technological, which is why human beings grow ever more efficient at killing one another, yet never learn the real lesson of war (that there are no winners, of course). That is why generals inevitably fight the last war, again and again, until they lose. That is how the regimented British lost their colonies to a bunch of rag-tag bushwhackers. That also is why America is losing in the Middle East. In their time, Roman generals also succumbed.

It is no small coincidence that, like Britain of the 1700s, America today struggles to retain its empire, or that the struggle has been the same for every empire, down through history. You see, empire has a nasty habit of killing off its center and the rulers of empire never go gracefully. All empires have gone down the same way: in utter disbelief, all the while grabbing and clutching at the perks and comforts that the descendants of empire builders came to view as their natural and rightful due. Rotting from the inside out, the economy of empire unwinds, always, in the same fashion: overspent, overstretched and, ultimately, bankrupt. Sound like any country you might know?

Why must it be this way? Why must America now fail, just as did past empires? Because the leaders of empire, like teenagers, cannot be told a thing. If youth is wasted on the young, then money is wasted on the old. Thomas Jefferson knew this. So did George Washington. So did most of America’s founders. Imagine Jefferson, Washington, Franklin and Paine in the same room with George W. Bush or Nero or any of a number of other borderline-imbecilic heirs to the keys of empire. Do you see my point?

Nobody vital ever gets past the inbred and overly-comfortable sycophants of empire so as to refreshen and renew it. Did you know that Thomas Jefferson actually advocated a fresh American revolution every generation or so?

In short, all this is why I and some others know where America is headed while her erstwhile leaders, not to mention her actual rulers, obviously do not, yet refuse to allow those who do a turn at the tiller. Their loss of comfort – their pain – would be too great. And so, they take the rest of us down with them as they seek to retain an empire they neither earned nor deserve.

But, things look so … normal, don’t they? In word: No. Not at all. Already, the economic “perfect storm” that has assembled just outside the awareness of most Americans dwarfs that which engulfed America, then the entire world, nearly a century ago. And there is no avoiding it.

While I foresee economic and financial catastrophe for America of Biblical proportions, very recently there have been some exceptionally irresponsible false reports circulated around the Internet about American bank runs, caps on bank withdrawals, China dumping the entirety of its dollar reserves, America calling out China financially and OPEC dropping the dollar, among others. The problem is that there is a nugget of truth to all of these ridiculous stories, so some choose to believe them … probably the result of wishful thinking, in reality.

Yes, all these things – and much, much worse – will come to pass, but not tomorrow and not next week.

Yes, the Chinese could collapse America’s economy by this time tomorrow with a simple press release, should they choose to do so, but they have more to gain by continuing to bleed us before they decide to gut us. That fact, alone, escapes the attention of most.

The Chinese think differently from us. They are at war with us and they take a long view. Theirs is not a profit/loss mentality. The Chinese think in terms of world conquest – and not financial conquest, either. We greatly err in attributing our own outlooks and motivations to them.

I suspect that many of the rumors flying around find their source in Friday’s Washington Post, which carried a story entitled, “U.S. lawmakers urge action after China meeting.” It seems that a particularly dense congressman (Sander Levin, D-Mich) called for China to be labeled a “currency manipulator.” In that same article, an even denser fool named Kevin Kearns, head of something called the U.S. Industry and Business Council, referred to Treasury Secretary Paulson’s desperate Chinese visit this past week as “idle diplomatic chitchat” and stated that “Congress needs to seize control over China’s trade policy.” Yeah, right. Congress can’t seize its own pants, so intent is it upon bending over for every special interest in town.

Friday also saw both gold and silver drop like rocks at the end of the day’s trading, with the dollar strengthening against other currencies. Just some serious manipulation by the world’s real currency manipulators – the US government – so that Paulson comes home from China not looking like the obvious loser that he was (the Chinese told him to pound sand). Both metals will bounce right back, with silver bumping $14 per ounce again shortly and gold pushing to new highs, as well, rest assured. In fact, tomorrow would be a great day to buy silver, but do it early … real early.

While the Chinese have spoken of exchanging some of the monetary reserves they have constructed from their trade surplus with America, you see, they insist upon keeping their currency pegged to the US dollar, which is why all that stuff down at Wal-Mart just seems cheaper and cheaper these days. Meanwhile, America exports some of its inflation to China, who eventually will take a big-time loss when finally it decides to dump its excessive dollar reserves.

Saddam Hussein stopped trading his oil for dollars, which is what really got him deposed (that and Israeli demands, of course). Now Iran has said it will do the same, which is why Bush wants to attack it (along with more Israeli demands, of course). Venezuela is going its own way, without the dollar, and its leader, Hugo Chavez, fears the American invasion each and every day. Argentina and Brazil just have announced their intention to trade internationally in other than the dollar, as well. Do you suppose we will be invading Buenos Aires next? Everybody is running scared of the day that China finally cuts the dollar loose.

Of course, China’s refusal to follow suit makes America less competitive all the time, with more and more of her industry heading overseas every day, along with the jobs, principally to China. When America finally has no manufacturing capacity left and no ex-employees who could remember how to do their jobs, China will pull the plug and the party will be over for good.

Supposedly, America wants China to float its currency against the dollar and, I suppose, that is true to a degree. Some industry and banking leaders actually do see the coming economic pandemic and are trying to forestall it by letting some of the air out slowly. In reality, what Treasury Secretary Paulson and others fear is the Chinese dumping their reserves all at once, which would collapse America’s economy overnight. That is why Mr. Kearns’ demand that Congress “seize control over China’s trade policy” is so patently ridiculous. China calls the shots now, folks, ensured by your new toaster-oven and big-screen TV, not to mention all that stuff you just bought and are busy wrapping for Christmas this year.

Now, having said all that, and before we move on to my now-obligatory rant for the day, permit me to lay the groundwork with a very specific financial marketplace discussion, one with relevance to a great many list members of long standing.

Time to Board the ETF Train

Just as advised in recent musings, I have moved all my modest market investments into SLV, the Exchange-Traded Fund for silver … excepting only a small GoldCorp (GG) holding with which I am having trouble parting. I have held GoldCorp so long that I barely can stand to see all of it go, though I did manage to let go of all but this last smidgen during GG’s recent price runup.

Now comes brokerage behemoth Merrill-Lynch and recommends GoldCorp: http://metalsplace.com/metalsnews/?a=8964. As any good contrarian must, I view a blessing by the mainstream as the kiss of death. It’s just like every stock you hear about from any of those morons braying at us from CNBC’s ever-dwindling niche: If they like it, you can bet it’s toast. Perhaps GG will get a short-term kick, which will persuade me to unload the very last of my GG shares, then … who knows? Regardless, the Merrill-Lynch analyst called for a “target” stock price of $38 for GoldCorp. GG closed Friday at just under $29.

I know where the whole market has to go, after all. So do all of America’s corporate insiders, who are selling their shareholdings in droves. So do you. Heaven knows, I tell you often enough. Ask yourself: Have we yet to be wrong?

When the stock market goes, all the mining stocks will go down with it at the outset. Some will come crawling back. Will GG be among them? Maybe. Or maybe not: Since GoldCorp’s merger with Glamis now is complete, Glamis’ CEO has taken over from the lamentable Ian Telfer, in yet another move that I doubt augurs well for GG shareholders.

Lords of the Grown-Up Flies

As seen following last year’s Hurricane Katrina and, many years earlier, in SouthCentral LA – once looting begins, animal instinct of the basest nature seems to govern the behavior of certain substrata of society, with the ultimate destruction of all that is being looted. Trust me when I tell you that America’s government, business and media strongholds all are gripped firmly in the hands of globalists possessed of the basest, most self-serving and greedy instincts known to man. I’ve been in there, right alongside them and fighting them, for more years than I care to remember. I know what I’m talking about.

In restless dreams I walked alone
Narrow streets of cobblestone,
‘Neath the halo of a street lamp,
I turned my collar to the cold and damp
When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night … and touched the sound of silence. (Simon, Ibid)

GG, once so solid and cash rich, just sold a significant piece of its Wheaton silver shares to meet cash-flow requirements, after all; cash-flow requirements kicked way up by paying way too much for Glamis in the surprise non-shareholder-approved merger, not to mention some pretty rich stock options granted to GG’s executives. Some might call all that being unclear on the concept. Some might call that simply business as usual in the modern Western model that enriches executives and directors at the expense of shareholders and employees.

Lessons of the Food Chain

GoldCorp may well be one of the bigger boys of gold now, yet still is dwarfed by Barrick. Just announced: Barrick’s hostile attempted takeover of NovaGold has failed – some think the expiration of Barrick’s most recent tender-offer extension merely is a pause in the campaign, but I am not one of them. This Barrick/NovaGold battle became a cause celebre in gold circles, most notably with the admirable Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee (GATA) throwing its considerable influence against Barrick. Barrick almost certainly has the good sense now to turn to other things – meaning, easier pickings. I doubt the gold community, thin as it is, has the patience to rally behind yet another Barrick target.

Well, well, well… You just have to wonder where Barrick’s sights might next wander, don’t you? If to GoldCorp, then expect another on-the-cheap takeover bid (Barrick may be many things, but its management is not composed of complete fools and thieves). Frankly, I no longer care what happens to GoldCorp now that it has fallen into the hands of the greedy, the self-serving and the globalist – but, I repeat myself.

When Pigs Get Fat, Do Hogs Get Slaughtered?

Something I said before bears repeating: The outrageously overgenerous price given by GoldCorp’s outgoing CEO Ian Telfer to Glamis shareholders, sprung on GoldCorp shareholders by surprise on August 31, resulted in a dramatic drop in GG’s stock price on record volume before any of us out here knew what was going on. This took place within mere days of Telfer treacherously and, in my professional legal opinion, illegally discouraging shareholders from selling out to a minitender offeror for a price higher than that to which he, himself, then drove GG’s stock price with the Glamis merger announcement!

GG dropped like a rock on August 31 and, like so many, by the time I heard the news about the GoldCorp/Glamis merger, so much damage had been done that I couldn’t imagine it getting much worse. I said as much in “Goldcorp: Feeling Glamis All Over?” which I posted just two business days after the carnage began. GG’s stock price was to catch a downdraft, however, and ended up down $9 before another month passed, to about $22, a drop of nearly one-third of GoldCorp’s pre-merger-announcement price. All things considered, I assume that the GG/Glamis deal masked some behind-the-scenes maneuvers, about which we likely never will hear, but for which a great many GG shareholders paid dearly.

Better a Half Bottle in Front of Me than a Frontal Lobotomy

Hopefully, all who follow my irregular market observations held on to their GoldCorp stock as I advised if they, too, got caught flat-footed by Telfer’s merger announcement, and have been able to unload their shares at current levels, also as I advised three weeks ago. In fact, just a few days ago we saw GG’s price echo pre-merger levels, pushing $31. With luck, you got out somewhere between $30 and $31. I exited all but the diminutive stash mentioned above at $29 and change. Not as good as the $40 peak we saw earlier this year and perhaps not quite as good as might crop up during coming days or weeks, but quite respectable, considering that GoldCorp traded for under $10 when first I started talking about it, years ago. Hindsight is 20/20, of course, and foresight often is overly hopeful.

And in the naked light I saw
Ten thousand people, maybe more.
People talking without speaking,
People hearing without listening,
People writing songs that voices never share
And no one dare … disturb the sound of silence. (Simon, Ibid)

As usual, the rich (corporate executives, directors and likely some silent “special” interests, in this case) get richer and the poor (that’s you, me, most shareholders and the employees) get poorer. Isn’t capitalism just grand? Bottom line: I’m pulling the plug on GG once and for all.

Migrating off the Grid

What’s more, I am on the verge of pulling the plug on paper assets altogether. Remember that I always have said I would retreat further and further toward physical precious metals, the closer we get to the economic abyss I foresaw so many years ago. Though I’ve gotten used to the sound of laughter, I honestly cannot understand anybody today who does not acknowledge the very real possibility of a complete financial market meltdown unlike anything ever before seen in America.

The Sounds of Laughter

They laughed years ago when first I said to buy GG at under $10 per share. Nobody laughed last month when I said to sell GG above $29, a gain of 205%!

They laughed years ago when first I said to buy gold at under $325 per ounce. Nobody is laughing today, with gold selling for about $625, a gain of 92%!

They laughed years ago when first I said to buy silver at under $4.50 per ounce. Nobody is laughing today, with silver now selling for about $14, a gain of 211%!

They laughed when I said, a little over a year ago, to sell gold at $473 per ounce and plow the entire proceeds into silver at $7.50. Nobody is laughing today, with that maneuver yielding a 46% gain in the interim, versus a “mere” 32% for those who elected to stand pat with gold. That divergence will become far greater as time goes on, rest assured.

Furthermore, while my recommended gold-for-silver swap has yielded a gain almost half again as large as that realized “simply” by holding gold all these years, it has positioned us to avoid the potential gold confiscation about which I first warned you a year ago (a viewpoint that still draws laughter), the statutory basis for which my friend Larry Patterson, publisher of Criminal Politics, first alerted me. I have read the statute in detail and, clearly, there is only one implication to be drawn: Mr. Patterson’s. Odd that nobody else seems to have gotten behind the notion. Odd and opportune, since it means that silver still is a bargain.

Laughter is a fickle form of criticism, as I have learned.

They laughed when I called for Bush’s impeachment, years ago. Nobody laughs at that today!

They laughed when I said America was becoming a police state, years ago. Nobody laughs at that today!

They laughed earlier this year when I said that 9/11 would come in August. Nobody laughed just two weeks later when the “Liquid Bomber” plot was unveiled. Some still laugh at the rock-solid proof I offered that the Liquid Bomber plot was a “false flag” operation of the US and UK governments, just as 9/11 was a false-flag operation of the US and Israeli governments (which latter assertion still draws raucous laughter from an ever-declining portion of America, owing to the overwhelming evidence).

Fools, said I, you do not know
Silence like a cancer grows.
Hear my words that I might teach you,
Take my arms that I might reach you.
But my words like silent raindrops fell,
And echoed … in the wells of silence. (Simon, Ibid)

The Best Evidence of Where We are Headed…

I could go on and on and on, but you get the idea. Read through my past articles – I leave every single one of them posted on line for a reason, you know. Show me where I have been wrong even once. Just once – prove me wrong about something significant … about anything significant, for that matter. Don’t argue or make unprovable claims – spare me your contrary rhetoric and unsupportable allegations, please – prove me wrong about just one thing I have said about anything of significance in recent years, either on line or in my book!

Well, yes, in fact, I do have a point to make and a genuinely relevant point it is, as well. Today’s litany isn’t simply ego-driven braying, though we all love to be right – lawyers more than most and I more than most lawyers. Even so, usually I am willing to be wrong – which in itself evidences the fact that I rarely am wrong.

Here’s the point: I still get laughter.

I still get laughter concerning most everything I have to say about the future of both America and the world.

I still get laughter when I speak out about upcoming world war, economic depression or the breakup of America.

I still get laughter when I talk of the coming American race war, America’s future military defeat or the ongoing control of America by Zionists and the terrible danger that Zionism represents.

As pointed out, I’ve gotten used to the laughter. I’ve also grown accustomed to being right.

…Look at Where We are Coming From

As promised, here is the obligatory rant (my shortest on record): Tell me how someone like myself, who has been so right, so consistently, about so many things – right down the line – possibly can be wrong concerning all the things about which I still carry on, most all of which still draw unceasing laughter from so many?

That question should make anyone capable of rational thought very nervous.

And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon God they made.
And the sign flashed out its warning,
In the words that it was forming.
And the sign said, the words of the prophets
Are written on the subway walls and tenement halls.
And whispered in the sound … of silence. (Simon, Ibid)

My name is Edgar J. Steele. Thanks for listening. Please visit my web site, www.ConspiracyPenPal.com, for other messages just like this one.