America Distracted by Rainbows & Confederate Flags As Greece Sets Off Global Banking Meltdown

When it comes to the news, where we choose or are guided to focus attention is critical as it determines what we know, how we think, feel and believe which powerfully shapes our view of the world. And don't think for an instant that the government's media arms are not aware of this. The United States, in particular, has used media propaganda to bend the hearts and minds of its people to their will for a long time now.

Being fully aware of this tactic, in turn, allows a higher perspective from which to filter information and news events the government deems most important for us to focus upon. In just about every case, there is something arguably much more newsworthy going on at the same time they'd rather we didn't know about. 

In the aftermath of 911, an angry and frightened America was convinced an all-seeing big brother was necessary to fight mysterious evildoers "who don't like our freedoms." This meme easily allowed the passing of the US Patriot Act, the formation of the DHS, the TSA and unlimited spying of its own citizens by the NSA.

Something to think about

In the name of security, America had given up much of its freedoms originally guaranteed by the Constitution. It occurred so slowly though that  it all seemed reasonable at first. Let's take a look at recent examples that appear to have distracted Americans from knowing about far greater issues the government wants to keep hidden.

GAY MARRIAGE & CONFEDERATE FLAGS

The government has successfully gotten the majority of the nation so emotionally worked up over these two manufactured events, that most cannot see the manipulation taking place. Since the Supreme Court's recent decision to allow same-sex couples to marry, the internet meme has become about rainbow flags and gay pride. Meanwhile, conservatives and Christians who see the decision as an affront to traditional family values, rage against their gay pride adversaries. 

At the same time, the media wants to convince everyone the Confederate flag stands for racism and should be banned everywhere. Nevermind that the Civil War was actually fought over the southern states' desire to secede from the northern federal government's encroachment of their Constitutionally given sovereign rights. The same federal government which has grown even more monstrous today. As the media spins these memes to its advantage, neither group is able to see greater events that have much more impact on their lives unfolding right under their distracted noses.

CYPRUS SETS THE STAGE

After the Cyprus banking collapse, we wrote The Cyprus Banking Collapse & How It May Wipe Out Your Savings! I'm sure most Americans had no idea this even occurred, since the US media didn't deem it newsworthy enough to share with its people in any detail, though the rest of the world's media did. In a nutshell, a banking holiday was called, Cyprus banks closed down for weeks, customers were locked out of their accounts and ATM's stopped dispensing cash.

After the dust had settled, bail-in laws were announced, whereby the banks got to keep (steal) upwards of 50% of their customers' deposits to stabilize their system. It was obvious that this new rule was going to quickly become adopted by our banking system as well, which it recently was! This was the very reason our media didn't want you to know about it, since that would give you time to begin exiting the banking system and look for more viable alternatives in which to store your savings.

GREECE FALLS

We have been reporting on Greece's inevitable banking collapse and exit from the eurozone for some time now as it's one of the many canaries in the proverbial coal mine at the moment. Because it's playing out right now, we'll examine the tremendous influence it will have on our lives very shortly and perhaps why our government would rather distract you with rainbows and confederate flags.

This will not end well

Though Greece makes up a small part of the eurozone economy, it has been a troubled child from the very moment it was allowed to join. In essence, it was an insolvent country that needed hundreds of billions in loans just to stay afloat and pay its debts. It then required even larger investment loans to pay the interest on the new loans, while the original debts grew to "impossible to pay back" heights. 

I know, you're probably thinking "what sucker would keep investing in a country that was destitute with no way of ever paying back the money it borrowed?!" Ah, great question, but unfortunately that sucker would be us! You see, investment loans to failed nations have become the hottest game in town for banks and hedge funds, who receive trillions of near zero percent interest money from the Federal Reserve and its sister European Central Bank to throw at these countries until they finally go bust for good.

These debts are then packaged and sold by the banks, hedge, mutual and bond funds as triple A-rated derivative investments, even though everyone knows they are anything but! This is the exact same criminal ponzi-scheme the banks created with bad real estate loans that were packaged and sold off as sound investments which led to the 2008 meltdown. The major difference now is this scheme is magnitudes bigger and it's estimated that there are over $1.5 quadrillion in failing derivatives that will eventually go bust!

The first bomb just went off!

It's highly important to know that most 401k, pension and related retirement vehicles also invest in some form of sovereign debt in order to keep this ponzi scheme afloat. Most people have no idea that the bulk of their retirement money is being thrown into this black hole, never to be seen again. This is why on Monday, June 29, 2015, all of the world's stock markets plunged, with banking stocks getting hammered even more so!

Getting back to Greece, their emergency negotiations with the eurozone creditors, who demanded the insolvent nation to continue making interest payments, broke down in the final week of June, setting the stage for an official default in July. And the chain reaction had begun!

As the weekend hit, panicked Grecian citizens by the thousands rushed to bank ATM's to draw out as much of their money they could. Sadly, it was too little too late as many ATM's ran out of money and capital controls were hastily hatched, allowing no more than $66 per day to be withdrawn. To add insult to this catastrophic injury, the government announced a banking holiday until July 6th, while they come up with a formula on how much of their citizens' money they need to steal.

What a bank run looks like

Despite this Greek tragedy unfolding in front of their eyes for so long, why didn't their citizens act until it was too late? I believe the answer to that comes down to the fact that when things occur slowly over time (boiling frog in pot syndrome), human nature causes most to complacently adapt and treat them as normal events. It is only when the heat is turned up suddenly will they scramble to exit the pot that is now burning them alive! 

Deja vu, Cyprus for sure! And this should serve as a head's up warning for the rest of us, who still entrust the bulk of our savings and investments with banks, brokerage firms and retirement plans, even as the debt locomotive speeds towards us while we stand on the tracks, debating rainbows and racist flags.

Need another very telling sign of the soon to be out of control banking contagion that Greece has unleashed? Puerto Rico's Governor Says Island Debts 'Are Not Payable.' With over $72 billion in debt, Governor Padilla has admitted there is no way they can make any more payments without collapsing the entire state. As with Greece debt, American investors are heavily invested in Puerto Rican debt through mutual, bond and retirement account funds and don't even know it!

So when Puerto Rico refuses to make their debt payments in early July, expect the markets to once again react violently to the downside, while wreaking havoc on the US municipal bond market. Additionally, at the very least, we can expect other insolvent countries to ride the default momentum wave and refuse to make their debt payments as well. This list includes the so-called PIIGS nations of Portugal, Ireland, Italy, (Greece we know) and Spain. 

These are not lifeboats!

The dominoes are going to start falling hard and fast and there is simply no way for the Fed, IMF or the ECB to paper over it this time! And at the risk of being redundant, yes, US and foreign banks, bond, mutual, retirement and hedge funds are heavily invested in those countries as well. When the default train plunges off the monetary cliff, everything goes up in smoke for good.

THE BIG RESET

While the game of monetary musical chairs plays out in the west, China has been quietly positioning themselves to unceremoniously dethrone the US dollar and make the yuan the new reserve currency for world trade. For well over a decade, China has been the number one importer of gold and silver in the world, while exporting none of the metals mined inside their borders. This has been done because they have known for years that the US dollar's days are numbered and in its death spiral as we speak.

Chinese Gold Price Fix by End of 2015. China is well aware that "he who owns the gold makes the rules," so are making sure they make the rules by now having the largest hoard of gold safely tucked away in their central bank vaults of any country in the world, including the US. In fact, they are planning to start their own gold fix trading platform by the end of this year, which will most likely replace the London fix, which has come under intense scrutiny for price manipulation and allegations it has no actual metal backing trades made through it. China has been very clear that their fix will be backed 100% by actual physical metals, a claim the London fix cannot make.

China's bold statement to the world!

When this occurs, expect to see the prices of both metals soar. JPMorgan, Citi, HSBC et al, who have been agents for the western central banks to suppress prices with unbacked paper short contracts, will no longer be able to as the fix moves to China's transparent physical trading platform. This will create true price discovery based on free market supply and demand. Know that supply is extremely limited, especially in physical silver, while demand is going to be tremendous.

To further distance themselves from the US dollar, China's Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) has been met with overwhelming global enthusiasm as 57 nations have signed on to become founding members. This initiative will do trade in currencies other than the dollar or euro, with much of it in China's renminbi. Not coincidentally, the US warned all of its trade partners not to join the AIIB as it would clearly erode US dominance and give China too much power. Not a single nation listened and joined anyway.

You cannot get a clearer signal that the world no longer fears the US (other than Japan and Canada) and is jumping off the dollar ship before it sinks! To prove the soundness of their banking system, China is further preparing to announce their official gold holdings in the coming months, a figure that is estimated by gold experts to be between 5,000 - 20,000 or more metric tons, dwarfing the officially reported amounts the US claims to hold, but have refused to have audited for over forty years.

Who wins this currency war?

This anticipated announcement may signal the end of the dollar's reign of fiat dominance and crown China as the new undisputed reserve currency king. Either way, the writing is already on the wall. Those individuals who can read it and take decisive action will transition into the new gold and silver-backed monetary paradigm with great success, while the boiling frogs, distracted by the innane media propaganda of the moment, will be left with piles of worthless paper, wondering what went wrong?

In closing, it's important to remember that gold and silver have been trusted as money for over 5,000 years, while every would-be empire that attempted to replace the metals with fiat paper debt notes eventually fell to ruin because of it. Today's situation is no different than that which befell The Great Roman Empire that was thought to be 'too big to fail' in its day. Indeed, though the days may change, 'the song remains the same.'

  

Multiple Financial Black Swans Converging at Once - Time To Act is Now!

I was a recent guest on the nationally syndicated radio program The Ronnie McMullen Show, a great and extremely informative show that covers much of the important news that is either under-reported or not at all by the mainstream corporate news outlets. What I especially like about Ronnie's coverage is that he casts a hot light on the corrupt, negative, and often dark agendas we face, but does so in a way that ultimately empowers his listeners to do something positive about them. 

Conversely, there are multitudes of so-called alternative news personalities (you probably already know which ones) that report the same news with an angry style that I'm sure ends up creating anxiety and feelings of overwhelming hopelessness for those who listen for any length of time.

I was on his show specifically to speak about an article I had written titled "Monsanto: Planting Seeds of Death, Disease & Despair." As the subject matter was so vast, Ronnie spent several shows covering this truly diabolical company. What Monsanto has done to the world for the past 110 years really is a horror story of unprecedented proportions. Yet, the whole point of writing the article was not to depress readers into feelings of hopeless submission at the feet of this Goliath-like monstrosity. 

Rather, Lost in the Bamboo Forest was created to cover the really big global issues that touch our lives on a daily basis. I believe this awareness gives us a totally different and higher vantage point perspective from which to see the world. This, in turn, engages our innate creative abilities the opportunity to come up with personal solutions that benefit ourselves, our loved ones and the communities in which we live. So, let us keep that in mind as we explore the multitude of financial black swans quickly heading towards us so we can utilize our great human potential to counter or possibly sidestep them altogether.

JADE HELM

Ominous logo for a training op

For the first time in U.S. history, the military will be conducting Jade Hem 15, a massive, nationwide secret training operation in public from July 15-September 15. Helmed by U.S. Special Operations Command, this joint op will include Green Berets, Navy Seals, 82nd Airborne and thousands of soldiers from all branches of the military, rumored to also include foreign troops. 

Nine states are officially involved, Texas, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, California, Mississippi and Florida. Of those states, a map was revealed listing the entire states of Texas and Utah as being hostile, along with a small portion of California's southern tip. 

This revelation has independence-minded Texans in an uproar. Many fear this is the government's blowback to Texas demanding the return of over $1 billion worth of gold from the New York Fed vaults to move into their own state bullion depository. Why did Texas do this? In part, because the state no longer trusts the increasingly insolvent Federal Reserve to hold their valuable gold stash and wants it safely in their own possession.  

Texas further enacted legislation which protects their gold if the federal government creates another executive order to confiscate gold held privately by its citizens or states if the economy collapses as happened in 1933.

Section A2116.023 “A purported confiscation, requisition, seizure, or other attempt to control the ownership … is void ab initio and of no force or effect.” 

More intriguing is a bill gaining stream in Texas, SB989, which allows any person to deposit gold or silver at the state depository and to use the metals to receive or make payments with any person or company who also have storage accounts there. This completely bypasses the dollar and the risk of holding dollar-denominated assets in banks that are heading for another catastrophic failure. Does Texas know something the rest of the nation needs to catch up on perhaps?

Whole states of Texas & Utah "hostile"

And is Utah also listed as hostile during Jade Helm because its Governor Gary Herbert passed legislation in 2011, eliminating sales tax on gold or silver purchases, while recognizing them as legal tender? Other states to jump on the bandwagon to officially declare gold and silver coins legal tender include Arizona, Kansas and South Carolina, with eight other states still in the legislative process. 

Since we know what lengths the federal government will go to stop any state, or country for that matter, from creating alternate forms of money to compete with the dollar's hegemony, perhaps this 'hostile' designations are anything but random coincidence!

In response to growing criticism and distrust, the Pentagon has sought to quell speculation by claiming this so-called 'exercise' is being conducted solely to help train U.S. troops to be more effective when occupying foreign countries. However, one of the 'drills' calls for terror cells to stage terror attacks on the unsuspecting public in an effort to find out how well police, national guard and fire departments respond. Does that sound insane to you? It should! 

What is Jade Helm 15?

So far though, the public doesn't seem to be buying it and probably for good reason. Due to the fact that the vast majority of nations the U.S. has invaded are desert-based landscapes, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Afghanistan, etc., critics rightly question why they are using urban cities for this purpose.

Because of the well-documented movement of thousands of MRAP urban assault vehicles, tanks, helicopters, ammunition and related military hardware to all areas of the country, many fear the real purpose of Jade Helm is to institute martial law when the economy collapses. The most logical question becomes 'why the need for incredibly expensive joint training exercises by deploying this much manpower and weaponry throughout urban areas of the nation?' It seems like complete and utter overkill, but since we may find out soon enough what it's really all about, it makes sense to do what we can to prepare regardless.

Is this where the nation is headed?

ECONOMIC COLLAPSE

Despite the Fed's assurances the nation is on track for a recovery, a peek below the surface tells a more sobering tale. Wall Street continues to rocket higher, but that's due to the Fed artificially keeping lending rates at historic lows and 'loaning' (wink) trillions of cheap money to banks and hedge funds to keep the stock-bond markets afloat just a little while longer. 

Meanwhile, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has been doing their part by reporting unemployment rates of 5% for the past few years, which seems like a great figure. Sure, if the nation's economy is being supported by 95% of it's working citizens employed in full-time positions that is. However, it seems the BLS has been conveniently manipulating employment data to make it seem just peachy. 

The BLS says this is good news!

First, they decided it is reasonable to count part-time jobs as full-time employment. Additionally, if an individual works multiple part-time jobs to make ends meet, each of those jobs is counted as a separate individual with full-time employment. 

The worst of their tricks, however, is the fact that anyone who cannot find a job for more than six month and those whose unemployment benefits have run dry are no longer considered unemployed. Yes, they just disappear into the statistical void. 

Despite the government assertions, welfare rolls have swelled to over 50 million, with over 100 million Americans on some form of government assistance, the most in U.S. history. Is this what an economic turnaround looks like?

BANK CAPITAL CONTROLS

As often as the banks proudly state how great and mighty their institutions have become, one wonders why they have begun instituting capital controls and quietly enacting  new banking bail-in rules. Last year, several of the biggest banking institutions, among them Chase, decided to inexplicably disallow individual and small business customers from wiring money out of the U.S., under the guise of terrorism protection. But, it's obviously a way to keep money from moving out of the country by trapping it in their bank.

Chase has gone even further by creating another new rule that forbids customers from storing cash or precious metals in their safe deposit boxes. This is yet another heavy-handed scheme to 'encourage' customers to deposit that cash into their bank accounts instead, which sets them up for the next big banking legislation ruse.  

The new bank bail-in rules are the opposite of the bank bail-outs which saw taxpayers forced to pay for the bankers' criminality by giving them untold trillions of dollars as punishment. Under this now active law, when banks fail yet again, they can keep some or all customer money on deposit, depending on how catastrophic the next failure is. 

Most customers have no idea that once they deposit money into their savings account, they become an unsecured creditor and it is no longer legally theirs, but now belongs to the bank. 

I wrote previously this would become the defacto standard here in the article "The Cypress Banking Collapse & How it May Wipe Out Your Savings." It's important to know that these types of rules are only drafted when those that draft them, namely the bankers, are certain they need to employ them shortly!

GREECE DEBT DEFAULT 

You're probably wondering why an insolvent Greece, imminently about to default on their massive debt to the European Union, would matter to us here in the States. Well, let's face it, the world's economies are intimately tied together like never before, in part, due to the U.S. dollar contagion spreading throughout the globe and the massive time bomb of hundreds of trillions in failing derivative bets that will soon go tits up!

Greece burns - is the EU next?

You see, the global financial system is in a very precarious state. For the first time since the European Union's inception, a member nation, Greece, has defaulted on its loan payment to the EU, with no ability to pay it back. And the other member nations are balking at the prospect of bailing them out with more loans. Sound familiar? 

It's expected that when Greece defaults in the coming weeks and leaves the union, Italy, Spain, Ireland, Portugal, France, Belgium, Cyprus among others, will similarly default on their loan payments and stampede for the exits, bringing the whole EU ponzi scheme pyramid crashing down. To prepare for this eventuality, on May 28th, EU regulators gave member nations a short two month deadline to adopt banking bail-in rules or face legal action from the EU Court of Justice. Why are they in such hurry, unless they know the stink is about to hit the fan?! 

CHINA'S ASIAN INFRASTRUCTURE INVESTMENT BANK (AIIB)

Just a few years ago, the AIIB was considered a pipe dream by those in the west. After all, it seemed preposterous for anything else to supplant the petrodollar's dominant status as the world's reserve currency. Yet, as we've seen above, the world's financial systems are in a precarious state and the ever patient China has been waiting for the right moment to take full advantage of the growing weakness in the west.

Financial power shifts Eastward!

China has initially funded the bank with $100 billion to begin making infrastructure loans to member nations, whose membership was ratified in late March 2015 to overwhelming success. 57 countries have invested further capital and joined as founding shareholder members, making up a quarter of the world's nations and 16 of the top 20 economies in the world. 

The only holdouts were Canada, Mexico and Japan due to urgings (threats) made by the United States. Revealingly, Obama pleaded with other nations not to join as it would undermine the power of the dollar. They paid him lip service, then joined anyway. It couldn't be any clearer of a signal that the world is abandoning the United States before the dollar completely implodes and are instead rushing towards China as the world's premier trade partner.

It is estimated that by 2020, a staggering $20 trillion in global infrastructure investments will be made through the AIIB. And how will China make sure they hold the dominant seat and trust among their member partners? With gold! Over the past decade, China has quietly and quite methodically become the world's greatest importer and miner of this most precious monetary metal. Over that time, it has stopped exporting any of it and has been buying up all available tonnages of gold it can get its hands on from western vaults, presumably to back their currency with. 

Though China hasn't disclosed how much gold they currently hold, estimates put that figure somewhere between 8 and 30 thousand tons, which would easily surpass the U.S.'s supposed amounts, more than enough to make the renminbi the de facto global reserve currency. This is the very reason the rest of the world is now in a mad scramble to obtain as much gold as possible and so should you! 

But, if you cannot afford gold's relatively high price of around $1,200 per oz, an even better storage of wealth may be silver, which can be purchased for $16 per oz and will most likely outperform gold by a factor of 3 to 1 to the upside when China and other member nations finally announce their gold holdings either later this year or next. This is because silver will also be utilized as a monetary metal, albeit a more accessible one for day to day purchases and transactions. 

Both metals though are coiled springs set to explode upwards when the banks, EU, Wall Street, derivative bond bubbles implode. As the saying goes "he who owns the gold (and silver) make the rules" and we're about to see that play out once again. Either way, how we individually respond to the above information may dictate who among us ultimately survives, thrives or, God forbid, dies during both the global and domestic events unfolding in front of us at this moment in time. 

Therefore, it would seem to make sense to have some basic stores of food and water, begin pulling money we can't afford to risk losing from the banking system, hold some cash on hand, sell at least a little of our artificially inflated stock, 401k, IRA or mutual fund assets and picking up some gold or silver bullion coins. If nothing else, these actions will serve as an insurance policy you hope you'll never need, but know you just might. And it may be sooner than we think!

In closing, all information we receive allows us to examine our world from a better perspective. This knowledge, in turn, empowers us to make informed choices that can greatly impact our lives for the better if we so choose to take on the responsibility to think, breathe and act independent to the rest of the complacent herd. And we know full well what fate eventually befalls the docile herd that refuses to act until it is far too late. Until next time, be well my friends.

What real money looks like