GOLD!

If you want to see where the insecurities are, follow the gold market.

Back when the Obama administration was in full swing, I would occasionally foray out into conservative media, just to hear what they were lying about lately. What I noticed wasn't so much what they were saying on their program as who was advertising on their shows. There were various fraudulent weight loss products and international star registry scams - things long since debunked on other media. (Where there are gullible people...) And gold. Lots and lots of advertisements for investing in gold.

Why gold? Because gold remains steady when other forms of currency fluctuate. And because conservatives were convinced that Obama would be a complete disaster, the gold market was hyped up to an irrational degree. Now, gold is a great hedge against inflation, don't get me wrong, but inflation was never a real threat during Obama's entire eight years in office. So the over-marketing of gold was all due to one thing: conservative media frenzy.

Between March of 2008 and August of 2011, the price of gold nearly doubled, fueled almost entirely by irrational Tea-Party fears of an Obama crash. At its peak, gold had gone from trading at $1000 per ounce to $1900 per ounce, and it didn't look to be coming down any time soon.

Then it all simmered down. Gradually, people began realizing that they were just fine. After Romney lost the 2012 election, and four more years of Obama were secured, the bubble finally burst. Between March of 2013 and June of 2013, gold prices crashed from $1600 per ounce all the way down to $1200 per ounce. It has remained roughly around that price ever since. Oh, it went up as high as $1380 per ounce during the 2016 election frenzy, and then sank down below $1200 per ounce again once it was all over.

Here is the official gold price chart.

Of course, I saw through all this. I saw how the conservative robber-barons had invested in gold beforehand, and were now artificially driving up the price in order to cash in. This is part of why the price fell so dramatically after 2012 - they divested and took their profits, leaving the middle-class with a loss in their investment portfolio in a few gold coins - perhaps kept hidden behind the family portrait. It was a cruel way to punish concerned citizens who just wanted to protect their family nest-egg.

But they'd been sold a bill of goods that said Obama was evil, and they bought it. Then they bought gold. And they were wrong both times. They lost out both times.

But now gold is ticking up again, trading at $1210 per ounce and climbing. Why? Because it's becoming obvious that Trump is ever bit the disaster we all feared he would be. Investors are again turning to the security of gold to protect themselves against a weakening dollar and the horrors of inflation, or worse, defaulting on the national debt - which Trump does not seem to care much about.

And where is gold advertising for investors? Why, on liberal media!

Thanks in large part to the brand-new WRRD radio station, 1510 in Milwaukee, we can easily listen to shows like the Thom Hartmann program. Sure enough, gold is advertising on that show like gangbusters!

It's not hard to see why. The conservatives think Trump will be great, so gold investors can't play off their fears. But they can certainly play off the fears of the liberals! And that's exactly what they're doing.

I'm not going to say that gold is a bad investment this time. It was before, but unlike back then, this time there's a real threat. Our back is against the wall with a national debt Republicans refused to let Obama do anything about, and now Trump is the one who has to pay that bill. But Trump sucks at paying what is owed. He prefers to simply ignore debt and default into bankruptcy.

And who will bail out the U.S.? The International Monetary Fund? Get real!

Gold may be a smart bet this time around. But not because people want to hedge against a falling dollar.

This time, they may want to divest themselves of gold later - and buy Yen, Yuen, Rubels, Pounds, or Euros - depending upon where they have to flee the Trump regime.


Eric

*

It's All Falling Apart. Big Shock.

It's barely his third week in office, and Donald Trump has already fucked things up royally. What a surprise. In response to his sudden ban on all arrivals from key foreign countries - and by "key" I mean those whom Donald Trump does not have a business interest in, such as the biggest harbor of terrorism, Saudi Arabia - people are protesting at airports, just as they did in city streets the day of Trump's inauguration.

So far, it's been one long protest march.

As heartening as that is, I'm very tempted to tell many of the protest marchers to fuck off. Where the fuck were you all before the election? You know, when your passion counted? Was this your plan all along? Let Trump get into office, fuck up the Supreme Court, and then try to take advantage of the backlash? Do you really think that justifies deliberately fumbling the football on the 1 yard line? First you let Trump win, and now you're pissed at what he's doing now that he's won. And all for irrational hatred of Hillary. Fuck you.

But, on the other hand, better mobilized than not. Hillary would have had her backlash too. And if there's going to be a downfall of an entire political party, I would rather it be the Republican side. That's the positive part, and we can really benefit from it.

If Trump doesn't destroy it all first. Which is a very real possibility.

Barely his first month in office and he's already screwed things up so badly that he needed to move up the announcement of his Supreme Court nominee.

"Oh, look! A SCOTUS justice!"

There's only one rational position which can be taken regarding Trump's nomination of Neil Gorsuch. And that's one of equal measure. Republicans blocked any consideration of Merrick Garland for 11 months.

Now Republicans owe us 11 months of no hearings for Neil Gorsuch.

Fair's fair. You block Obama's nomination for 25% of his term, we get 25% of a presidential term back. The only even-handed course of action is eight Supreme Court justices for nearly two solid years! Eleven months! At least! Starting now!

Better yet, no votes for Gorsuch until we get one vote for Merrick Garland. Okay, so he'll fail the vote. But he will have been voted upon! Is that too much to ask? Apparently even that little bit is, according to today's politics of ultra-warfare.

Of course, I don't expect this will happen. I expect Republicans to exercise the nuclear option, do away with the filibuster and confirm him. But this will come back to bite them when it's our turn (just as it's biting us now because we did a nuclear option for cabinet appointees under Obama), and that may be only two years away when we (I'm certain) flip the House and Senate.

Which brings me again to the backlash. I wrote in this blog back on November 13th that we needed to focus on the electorate, and not just elections. I strongly recommended more liberal radio stations to counteract the conservative media blackout of rural and suburban America. Well, I'm glad to see that someone is doing that in the Milwaukee area. WRRD, AM 1510, is now on the air! How very awesome! I never thought I'd see the day when liberal radio would come to Milwaukee. But it's here! Almost as if someone actually listened to me for once.

Maybe I should bring back the Sacred Cow Wursthaus as a radio show.


Eric

*