Danielle DiMartino Booth: Will yield surge get out of control? This is the Fed's next move

The U.S. 10-year Treasury yield briefly surged above 1.6% on Thursday. Until the Federal Reserve declares an intervention to bring down the long-end of the curve, equities markets could see continued "nervousness" said Danielle DiMartino Booth, CEO of Quill Intelligence.

- Source, Kitco News

Dave Kranzler: Silver Pumped On Wall Street Bets To Suck In Retail Traders?

Ron Paul: The Social Cultural Authoritarian Bubble Will Pop

The century-old big government obsession in America is getting old and weathered. 

Debts that are never-ending...Wars that are never-ending...

One Federal Reserve economic bubble after another. Social-Cultural manias. All are coming to a head at some point. 

Big Government is always unsustainable, and Americans should once again embrace their roots of individual liberty.

- Source, Ron Paul

Jerry Robinson - We Have to Protect Ourselves and Families From the Coming Collapse

​Jerry Robinson, Economist, trend trading coach, author of “Bankruptcy of Our Nation,” and founder of "Follow the Money" returns to Liberty and Finance this first time in 2021 to lay out his view of the poorly understood risks and opportunities with which we find ourselves surrounded in these unusual times.

- Source, Liberty & Finance

The Debt Bomb is Set to Explode, Inflation to Spike in 2021

Gerald Celente discusses the building debt bomb and how it is now being primed and set to explode in 2021. 

Will governments around the world double down and print more, causing hyperinflation, or will they finally let the system collapse?

Our bet is that the money printers are going to be sent into hyperdrive, devaluing peoples savings the world over.

Strap yourselves in, as 2021 has only just begun and is already looking to be a more volatile year than 2020 and that's saying something!

- Video Source, Gerald Celente

GameStop Was A Warning: Elites Are Weaponizing Censorship To Keep Outsiders Out

As the apex predators of capitalism, hedge funds are accustomed to raking in billions by driving companies into the ground and feasting on the carcasses. So there was widespread satisfaction last week when members of an online discussion group called WallStreetBets started beating the Wall Street bully boys at their own game. Ringleaders of the group noticed that hedge funds had taken a short position in the videogame retailer GameStop that far exceeded the number of shares available to trade. 

Motivated as much by revenge as by profit, these influencers in the group encouraged the 2.7 million members (since risen to around 8 million) to purchase the stock in order to drive the price higher and create a massive short squeeze. This quickly became a movement with a cause similar to that of Occupy Wall Street, except much more effective because it hit the intended target where they would feel it the most, in the wallet. “The only way to beat a rigged game,” one WallStreetBets leader said, “is to rig it even harder.”

GameStop stock, which closed at $17.69 a share on Jan. 8, shot up to $347.51 by the close last Wednesday. With combined losses of almost $20 billion, hedge funds were on the ropes and close to bleeding out, selling their longs in an increasingly futile effort to cover their shorts. 

One fund, Melvin Capital, lost over half its value and had to be bailed out by hedge fund sugar daddies Ken Griffin (Citadel) and Steve Cohen (Point 72). Another fund, Citron, was teetering on the brink of collapse. All this outsider army needed to win was the continued ability to communicate with each other online, and their collective ability to keep piling into the “Buy” side of the trade. Within hours, they would be hobbled on the first front and crippled on the second.

The Empire Strikes Back

First, the digital distribution platform Discord banned the WallStreetBets account after the close Wednesday for “hate speech, glorifying violence, and spreading misinformation.” (For a moment, it looked like Reddit had also banned the group, but they resisted pressure to do so.) If the quoted justification sounds familiar, it’s nearly identical to the one given by Google, Apple, and Amazon for deplatforming Parler just three weeks earlier. Echoing Amazon, Discord said it had sent the group repeated warnings about objectionable content before deciding, on that day of all days, to shut them down.

Meanwhile, WallStreetBets investors were locked out of their trading accounts by online brokers such as Robinhood on Thursday morning. Based on new collateral requirements that it says were imposed by an industry consortium, Robinhood forbade its users from buying GameStop and other stocks that WallStreetBets had identified as short squeeze opportunities. Users were allowed only to “close their positions”—in other words, to sell to the shorts desperate to buy. When angry users registered their disapproval by leaving over 100,000 one-star reviews of the Robinhood app in the Google Play Store, Google deleted them.

Normal trading was allowed to resume Friday, but the hedge funds used their 24-hour sole ownership of the battlefield to fortify their positions, covering the most vulnerable shorts. Wall Street then sent in reinforcements, as new short positions were taken at these high price levels, virtually guaranteed to pay out when, inevitably, the air leaks out of the balloon. 

Faced with a game that, for once, they couldn’t rig in their favor, it appeared that the insiders tipped the board over and started a new game. As a massively decentralized online group of scrappy outsiders, the only tools at WallStreetBets’ disposal were online trading and social networking. Both were frozen at the crucial moment, and the hedge fund insiders were let off the hook. The weaponization of censorship is a big part of the reason why.

Down the Slippery Slope

Some of us warned of a slippery slope when Parler was taken down and a sitting president was systematically ghosted from every online speech platform. But we could not have foreseen how slippery the slope would be, or how fast we would slide down it. We were told that the curbs on speech of President Trump and his supporters were necessary to prevent further “insurrection” and protect the peaceful transition of power. 

However, much like the troops and barricades that still ring the Capitol, these speech restrictions remain in place well after the transition of power has occurred. The censorship power is always justified in response to a genuine outrage or crisis, but it is rarely relinquished once the threat passes. Rather it gets weaponized to protect powerful, connected insiders, as the GameStop fiasco illustrates.

How do we suppose Discord chose that moment to enforce its “Community Guidelines” against WallStreetBets? Almost certainly, one of the hedge funds whose ox was being gored combed through their message boards looking for anything that might violate the terms of service. 

And surely they found it, as these boards contain the same raunchy language you would hear if you visited any trading floor or boiler room on Wall Street. They presumably reported the content to Discord, which took the group down.

Did Discord warn WallStreetBets of content violations before last Wednesday? I’m sure they did. Amazon sent such a warning letter to Parler as well. Frankly, such a letter could be, and likely is, sent to every large message board on the web. The founder of a user-generated content site described it to me as “the One Percent Problem.” 

Every user-generated content site will have a small percentage of offensive material that gets through, no matter how many content moderators are hired. For example, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube allowed far more content advocating for and planning the Capitol riot than Parler. But instead of acknowledging this, they were eager to blame the upstart, which had recently taken over the top spot in the social networking category in the app store. Scapegoating Parler served the dual purpose of deflecting blame and squashing a competitor.

Critics of social networks insist that these sites simply need to double down on censorship in order to finally rid us of problematic speech. But that ignores how social media moderation actually works. Algorithms set to recognize keywords capture only a small fraction of problematic posts, leaving millions of posts for humans to review. 

The work is so voluminous that it’s outsourced to far-flung locales where English may not even be the first language. Low-level employees must decipher complicated guidelines while navigating our increasingly Byzantine world of political and cultural hot-buttons. 

Mistakes are inevitable, and the harder a company tightens the standards to get the One Percent Problem down to 0.1 or 0.01 percent, the more undeserving accounts—from Ron Paul to the Socialist Equality Party—will be swept up in the dragnet. With the Town Square now digitized, centralized, and privatized in the hands of a cartel of Big Tech companies, the protections of the First Amendment no longer apply...

- Source, Zerohedge, read the full article here

Surviving a Crash: Break From the Herd With David Smith

​Gold mining analyst and boots-on-the-ground natural resources researcher David Smith of The Morgan Report, returns to Liberty and Finance to offer his seasoned experience on how to break from the herd in times of crisis. 

David shares why preparation is essential to successful execution of a contrarian strategy, enabling us to avoid many pitfalls and reap outsized gains during these unpredictable times.

- Source, Reluctant Preppers

Portnoy Calls for People to be Jailed Over Hedge Fund Scandal in Scathing Interview

Barstool Sports Founder Dave Portnoy joins Tucker Carlson to discuss exactly what is happening between GameStop investors and the popular app Robinhood.

- Source, Fox News

Strategic View: Gold Could see $25,000 in 10 years

The two big rallies in gold occurred over roughly 10-year periods. Both saw dramatic increases in the value of gold. From August 1971 to 1980, gold rallied from $35 per ounce to over $700 per ounce, a twenty-fold increase.

Please note a significant pullback from $200 to $100 per ounce during this time, a 50% drawdown. Even in a bull market, prices often have to correct before finding new footing.

Great Reset

One might say that there was a “great reset” of the financial system in 1971, which moved the world past the Bretton Woods agreement.

Tech Bubble Bursting

In 2001, following the bursting of the tech bubble, the gold price again rallied over 10-years. This instance resulted in a maximum gain of seven to eight times the rally’s beginning point ($250). The tech bubble, followed by the housing bubble of 2007-2008, provided policy support for gold inflation through quantitative easing and other measures.

In 2021, amid a worldwide pandemic and political and societal upheaval, the World Economic Forum and other prominent world organizations call for and/or promote a “Great Reset.” Whether this Great Reset results in a new worldwide monetary paradigm is unclear. However, with government world debt increasing, concurrent with declining economic growth, the timing appears to be good for world leaders to have those discussions.

Regardless of whether we are on the cusp of a new monetary paradigm, the case for increased allocations to gold is compelling. As governments continue to add to their deficit spending, the expectations for inflation are rising. Gold tends to perform well in these inflationary environments.

It is our view that the next big bull market in gold is just getting started. In 2020, gold broke to new highs before recently pulling back to the $1,800 per ounce level. If we look back at the last two big runs higher in gold, it is reasonable to expect that gold could achieve ten-fold or twenty-fold increases over the next 10-years. Such is especially true if the world financial system experiences a “great reset.”

Technical and Tactical View

At the beginning of a bull market, one option for investors would be to increase gold allocations and hang on for the next decade or so. Such investors should prepare to endure meaningful drawdowns along the way.

We are long-only in our gold and precious metals holdings. Since gold follows seasonal and other patterns, we look for areas to accumulate more and take profits. We believe that we are near a decent point to accumulate more gold, miners, and other precious metals.

The $1,800 per ounce area was a significant resistance level in 2012 and 2013, and the breaching of this level in 2020 was a significant event. This resistance level has become a support level, and the $1,800 level was already successfully back-tested in November 2020. Another pull-back to the $1,800 per ounce level could be a good point for accumulation.

Zooming in to a weekly view, we see gold is trading near the 50-week moving average in a triangle formation and/or bull flag above $1,800. Such is undoubtedly a critical technical level, and we could see volatility, both up and/or down, over the next few weeks as gold seeks to find direction for its next move. If it falls below the 50-week moving average, then the next accumulation zone might be along the lower trend support line near $1,650.

Gold Options Sentiment

Each day, we publish signals related to more than twenty different options markets. Our proprietary Options Sentiment index for gold is suggesting that this could be a good accumulation zone. Recently, when Options Sentiment was less than 20% (such as now), it has been an excellent time to accumulate.

Investors will recall the events of March 2020, which saw meaningful draw-downs in stocks, gold, and many other asset classes. If there is another flight to liquidity soon, we could see significant drawdowns in the gold price, as investors seek safe-haven cash to avoid all kinds of volatility.

Final Thoughts

We are very bullish for gold over the next ten years, and we will be looking for good entry points for gold, silver, and gold miners here in 2021. We will not be surprised to see $25,000 per ounce of gold by the year 2030. It will likely be a volatile ride higher, with large drawdowns along the way.

Technical analysis suggests that the $1,800/oz and $1,650/oz levels are good entry points for gold at this time. Options Sentiment also indicates that now is a decent time to accumulate more gold and/or precious metal mining stocks.

- Source, Silver Bear Cafe

Gregory Mannarino: Be Ready, It’s Going to Happen at a Time THEY Choose

Gregory Mannarino, founder of TradersChoice.net and known as “The Robin Hood of Wall Street,”​ returns to Liberty and Finance to answer viewers’ questions on the coming financial reset, the runaway debt and looming bond market crash, the Fed “Buying it ALL,” the rotation into Gold/Silver/Cryptos as Dollar alternatives, and what’s next for our freedom and future in this unrecognizable new world.

- Source, Liberty & Finance

A Move Into Silver Like You’ve Never Seen Before...

​Renowned author and metals market & mining analyst, and founder of TheMorganReport.com, David Morgan, returns to Liberty and Finance / Reluctant Preppers to give us his studied perspective.

Ron Paul: The Bipartisan Stimulus Hoax

Democrats and Republicans publicly argue and bicker with one another. Outwardly, there is conflict. 

But when it comes to expanding the power of government in every direction, there couldn't be more harmony between them. 

The growth of state power and destruction of individual liberty is a bipartisan affair laced with endless lies. 

Word of another "stimulus" is in the headlines, with the stated intention of "helping" Americans and the economy.

- Source, Ron Paul

Catherine Austin Fitts: The Great Reset Means a Digital Control System

Investment advisor and former Assistant Secretary of Housing Catherine Austin Fitts says the reset is “the end of currencies.” She goes on to say, “It’s the death of currencies.

Currency is something that is liquid. Currency is something I can put in my pocket and walk away. This is a digital control system. This is a credit at the company store.

You will be given a credit at the company store, and if you do what you are told, you can buy things at the company store, but you can’t start your own store. That’s what we are watching right now in the U.S. economy. This is how it works.

The insiders and their businesses are deemed essential and can stay open. Then they can do a series of things to shut down all the independent people and herd all those cash flows into theirs. So, you can’t go to church and you can’t sing, but you can stream Netflix. You can go to Costco. You can go to Walmart.

If the Fed and New York money center banks can make money from it, it’s essential, and you can do it. They can borrow from the Fed at 0%, and our credit cards cost 16%. This is how this works. So, this is economic warfare, and it’s designed to destroy the independent producer.”

- Source, USA Watchdog

Bitcoin Goes Parabolic: Tis the Season for Record Breaking Highs

Here we are again, yet another week and yet another new all time high for the price of Bitcoin. This asset is truly on fire and is now once again entering into a "parabolic" phase.

The reasoning for this continues to be the ever increasing demand of institutional investors who are moving heavily into the crypto space, with Bitcoin being the natural first and main choice for many of these institutions.

But how long can these gains continue at this neck breaking pace, before one of its dreaded and often before seen crashes occur?

Tis the Season for Bitcoin

Bitcoin has truly dominated the financial headlines as of the past few months, with CNBC and other financial outlets plugging the crypto currency over and over again.

This has led to much speculation and much hype surrounding the asset class and for good reason, the gains experienced in the Bitcoin marketplace have been truly historic.

(Chart source, coindesk)

At the time of writing, Bitcoin stands at $22,478.27 USD, moving up from a low seen on December 11th of $18,137.32 USD.

This means that in one week's time, Bitcoin has gained a stunning $4,340.95 USD per coin. 

Say what?

Those buying in at these prices need to have stomachs made of steel, as this is starting to look like one of Bitcoins many "blow off" tops that it has had countless times throughout the years, only then to be rebought by stronger hands at lower prices.

Many people have discovered that this is one of the most volatile and turbulent asset classes that you could possibly buy into, making you fabulous gains overnight, only to evaporate before you go to bed again at night.

However, for those who have "stuck" it out for the long-term, dollar cost averaging into Bitcoin month over month, have done remarkably well, outpacing any other asset class on the market.

Practice Extreme Caution Moving Forward

For those who are new to the Bitcoin space, you may be expecting these gains to continue indefinitely, however, Bitcoin is a fickle lover and what it gives, it rapidly takes away.

Remember, the price of Bitcoin was trading as low as $10,555 USD per coin as of early October, meaning that it has more than doubled in only two months!

Typically this is a giant red flag for any asset, any stock, or anything in general. 

A large correction is likely to occur as investors who have profited wildly in the past few months take money off the table and secure their gains.

I would not be surprised to see Bitcoin suffer a retracement back to the $15,000 USD level, however, anything is possible at this point, as Bitcoin has continued to prove time and time again. The volatility is just that extreme within this space.

Gold and Silver Bullion Continued to be Underappreciated

Meanwhile, Bitcoin's older cousins, gold and silver bullion continue to be foolishly ignored.

(Chart source, goldprice.org)

Many investors see the continued stagnation in the price of gold and silver bullion as being directly related to the meteoric rise in Bitcoins price.

This may be somewhat true, even if it does not paint the full picture, as precious metals and cryptos are two wildly different asset classes, that serve very different purposes to those who have more than a superficial level of knowledge of the two asset classes.

I do believe however that this is a trend that cannot and will not continue, as I know many investors within the crypto space who strongly believe in the fundamentals of precious metals and their necessity as an insurance policy against rising inflation and geopolitical risk.

It is very likely that if the bull market for Bitcoin continues into 2021, then you are going to see some crypto investors diversify a portion of their gains out of the crypto space and into precious metals, causing the metals to play "catch up" and move significantly higher.

There simply is no replacement for physical precious metals in your personal possession, despite what some within the crypto space would try to tell you.

In Conclusion

To make any solid predictions on what is going to unfold throughout the course of 2021 is an incredibly difficult task for even the most brilliant of financial minds, however what is almost guaranteed at this point is that 2021 is going to be filled with extreme risk and uncertainty.

COVID-19 will continue to plague the world well into the year and more financial bailouts are going to be needed if the system has any hopes of staying afloat until the true end of this crisis.

Money printing is going to continue to occur at a record breaking pace and inflation will follow suite.

This is exactly why you are seeing alternative assets such as Bitcoin being bought so heavily and is exactly why I believe that we are going to see precious metals break free from its shackles as we head throughout next year.

Until then, be safe and as always, keep stacking.

- Source, Nathan McDonald via the Sprott Money Blog

Rick Ackerman: Second Great Depression Starts in 2021

Analyst, professional trader and financial writer Rick Ackerman likes gold and silver too, but not because he sees explosive price rises. 

He likes precious metals because they are solid core investments. They work well in inflation or deflation. 

They are rugged and will work no matter what comes. Ackerman thinks what is coming will be far worse than the Great Depression, “I call it the ‘Second Great Depression.’

What are we going to have? A zombie apocalypse? I use the example of somebody riding to the soup kitchen on an $8,000 graphite trail bike.

We are going to find out how many of the jobs are completely unnecessary, like 95% of people who work for government. That’s coming.

It’s coming sooner or later, and we are going to have a time or day of reckoning. How long can this con go on? 

We are in a very unstable position and, financially speaking, we have stimulus not stimulating anymore in a meaningful way.”

- Source, USA Watchdog