The poor man?s gold, silver could easily reach as high as $50 per ounce by year end and even skyrocket to $100/oz over the next few years; significantly outperforming gold, said Stephen M Smith, Managing Member of Smith McKenna, LLC.
The price of silver is largely undervalued right now. It is also the perfect time for silver investors to amplify their physical silver investment portfolios.
The current spot price of silver has been relatively stable in the mid $20 range, with many analysts agreeing that it is substantially undervalued in its historic relationship and ratio to gold.
Investing in precious metals for capital gains is all about the right position and the right knowledge.
One important factor is the price paid for that investment and the barriers to entry for silver are more attractive than they have been in a long time; silver is cheap right now.
Many people miss out on opportunities to invest at the low end before market booms because of fear, lack of knowledge or just flat out uncertainty in unfamiliar territory. Most people just don?t know where to start.
Stephen M Smith agrees that knowledge, pricing and the right position are everything when it comes to investing in precious metals.
He firmly believes that silver?s next boom is going to experience ?no slowdown? like it did in 2011, potentially making a lot of people very wealthy. Investors shouldn?t overlook silver; the dollar is depreciating right now and could get a lot worse.
?Did you know that silver might be a better investment vehicle than your IRA/401k. You must own the physical asset however, and steer clear of futures, derivatives and ETFs,?said Smith.
The current global cues like money printing and stimulus efforts in Europe, and the ratio of silver to gold being out of whack could be a strong recipe for bullish success and wealth creation for those who invest in silver.
The current ratio is approximately 58:1, whereas its traditional and expected ratio is around the 30:1 ballpark range. As history repeats itself, like it has consistently done for decades, silver has a large ratio gap to close which could send the price of silver into the$50/oz range.
One key factor for investing in silver, is limiting the costs associated with the investment. Smith McKenna, under their recent business announcement, now offers the cheapest yet most secure investment in the industry; with no commission brokers, free insurance, and a mere 0.1% storage fee in licensed third party depositories.All of the savings are passed onto the investor; substantially increasing potential profits in precious silver.
Commodities are an excellent way to diversify an investment portfolio, especially because they are finite in supply. Less supply of silver and more demand is a winning combo for investors who hold physical silver.
Last year, according to The Silver Institute, there was only 1% in new mined silver added to supply. Silver is used for jewelry, investing, and is an industrial metal with exceptional properties of strength and conductivity that is tied to the pharma, electronics and solar panel industries to name a few.
As global manufacturing increases for these sectors with China a key player, limited above ground supply, and the value ratio gap resolved; the price of silver is likely to rise swiftly and steadily.
Every since I stumbled across this little skill called SEO, I?witnessed?the growth of the Internet from a side most still have no clue about. I was also able to expand my knowledge beyond just an SEO and stepped into the world of Internet Marketing. A whole different ball game that my SEO skills meshed with well. Upon arriving to the dance, I began to notice the change from traditional marketing channels used to inform the masses to new age ones that placed businesses at the fingertips of those searching for a particular business or product. And it started to hit me - Marketing and Branding make all the difference in your businesses survival.
Why Marketing Keeps Your Business Alive
The old saying of "if you build it, they will come" has just about met the end of its road. The average business in the U.S. closes in the first 2 to 5 years of opening their doors, and the majority closed due to lack of marketing. Even if your business is in a busy area with tons of foot traffic, you just can't rely on people floating in on a whim. Creating a marketing plan allows your business to gain the attention it needs as long as it can be found by those seeking your brand or product.
Over 300 million daily searches are performed in the U.S.
66% of those searches seeking a certain business, product or service contact or visit the business 82% of the time.
So when someone is searching for your product or brand, do they find you or your competition?
Branding is What It's All About
Marketing and Branding can actually be kissing cousins. Once you begin marketing your business, you've started to push your brand as well. A brand could be:
A product or service you offer
A certain type of business
Branding your business, product or service while Marketing is one thing, but building a solid reputation for it is what makes it stick. Growing your brand is all about its trust and reputation it builds in the eyes of its consumers. This means that what ever brand you offer the public of your network for sale, it has to be trust worthy enough to come back for more. If it doesn't accomplish this, then even your marketing is dead in the water because no one believes in your brand.
Market and Brand the Right Way
What do I mean by the right way? What I mean is make sure your marketing plan places your brand where people are searching for it. The number one issue with businesses opening is that they NEVER take the time to create a marketing plan or use old outdated marketing tactics expecting success. There lack of marketing knowledge and information doomed them from the start. Remember that your marketing Budget is ALWAYS a priority for your business. Without it, there is no real need to even open your business.
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - NBC said on Tuesday it is broadening its comedies to bring in bigger audiences, and drove home the point by bringing out what could be the network's newest star - a scene-stealing monkey called Dr. Rizzo.
Rizzo, a capuchin monkey whose Hollywood resume includes the movie "The Hangover Part 2," is just one animal in a cast of tigers, cats, owls, boa constrictors and dogs in the upcoming "Animal Practice" - a comedy set in a veterinary hospital that NBC hopes will have mass appeal.
"We're going to transition with our comedy programs and try to broaden the audience," NBC entertainment chairman Bob Greenblatt told TV reporters on Tuesday.
Greenblatt said that although shows such as "The Office," "Community" and "30 Rock" are "award winning and incredibly sophisticated and clever," they don't bring in enough viewers for the network.
"They do tend to be a little more narrow and sophisticated than we would want for a broad audience," Greenblatt said.
NBC has ordered seven new comedies for the upcoming season starting in September, including "Animal Practice," and a show executive-produced by comedian Jimmy Fallon about young, hands-on dads and their babies called "Guys with Kids."
"I hope these new shows are also clever and smart but can also broaden the size of the audience," Greenblatt said.
"Animal Practice" stars Justin Kirk as a cranky veterinarian who relates better to pets than people. Dr. Rizzo is his cute resident sidekick in what producers on Tuesday called a workplace comedy with a twist.
"I have never seen a show where human behavior is seen through the prism of animal behavior and we were really excited by the possibility of that," executive producer Alessandro Tanaka said.
Tanaka and the show's other producers say the comedy is as much about the relationships - professional and personal - between the human inhabitants of the animal hospital.
"It is a smart, character-driven comedy which also happens to have a monkey in it. It's not the other way round," said executive producer Scott Armstrong.
But as if to challenge that notion, in zoomed Dr. Rizzo, perched on a toy ambulance with sirens blazing and giving a wave to assembled television critics at their bi-annual meeting.
"She is super cool. She is the most famous monkey in Hollywood," said Kirk. "She is pretty amazing."
U.S. viewers will get a sneak peek of "Animal Practice" next month during NBC's coverage of the London Olympics, before starting its run in September.
(Reporting By Jill Serjeant; Editing by Christine Kearney and Steve Orlofsky)
You are here: Home ? Financial Institutions ? Corporatism and Fraud are Why We?re Screwed:
By L. Randall Wray
A version of this post first appeared at "Great Leap Forward?, my EconoMonitor blog.
As the Global Financial Crisis rumbles along in its fifth year, we read the latest revelations of bankster fraud, the LIBOR scandal. This follows the muni bond fixing scam detailed a couple of weeks ago, as well as the JPMorgan Chase trading fiasco and the Corzine ? MF Global collapse and any number of other scandals in recent months. In every case it was traders run amuck, fixing ?markets? to make an easy buck at someone?s expense. In times like these, I always recall Robert Sherrill?s 1990 statement about the S&L crisis that ?thievery is what unregulated capitalism is all about.?
After 1990 we removed what was left of financial regulations following the flurry of deregulation of the early 1980s that had freed the thrifts so that they could self-destruct. And we are shocked, SHOCKED!, that thieves took over the financial system.
Nay, they took over the whole economy and the political system lock, stock, and barrel. They didn?t just blow up finance, they oversaw the swiftest transfer of wealth to the very top the world has ever seen. They screwed workers out of their jobs, they screwed homeowners out of their houses, they screwed retirees out of their pensions, and they screwed municipalities out of their revenues and assets.
Financiers are forcing schools, parks, pools, fire departments, senior citizen centers, and libraries to shut down. They are forcing national governments to auction off their cultural heritage to the highest bidder. Everything must go in fire sales (pun intended) at prices rigged by twenty-something traders at the biggest and most corrupt institutions the world has ever known.
And since they?ve bought the politicians, the policy-makers, and the courts, no one will stop it. Few will even discuss it, since most university administrations have similarly been bought off?in many cases, the universities are even headed by corporate ?leaders??and their professors are on Wall Street?s payrolls.
We?re screwed.
Bill Black joined our department in 2006. At UMKC (and the Levy Institute) we had long been discussing and analyzing the GFC that we knew was going to hit, using the approaches of Hyman Minsky and Wynne Godley. Bill insisted we were overlooking the most important factor, fraud. To be more specific, Bill called it control fraud, where top corporate management runs an institution as a weapon to loot shareholders and customers to the benefit of top management. Think Bob Rubin, Hank Paulson, Bernie Madoff, Jamie Dimon and Jon Corzine. Long before, I had come across Bill?s name when I wrote about the S&L scandal, and I had listed fraud as the second most important cause of that crisis. While I was open to his argument back in 2006, I could never have conceived of the scope of Wall Street?s depravity. It is all about fraud. As I?ve said, this crisis is like Shrek?s Onion, with fraud in every layer. There is, quite simply, no part of the financial system that is not riddled with fraud.
The fraud cannot be reduced much less eliminated. First, there are no regulators to stop it, and no prosecutors to punish it. But, far more importantly, fraud is the business model. Further, even if a financial institution tried to buck the trend it would fail. As Bill says, fraud is always the most profitable game in town. So Gresham?s Law dynamics ensure that fraud is the only game in town.
As Sherrill said, without regulation, capitalism is thievery. We stopped regulating the financial system, so thieves took over.
A century ago Veblen analyzed religion as the quintessential capitalist undertaking. It sells an inherently ephemeral product that cannot be quality tested. Most of the value of that product exists only in the minds of the purchasers, and most of that value cannot be realized until death. Dissatisfied customers cannot return the purchased wares to the undertakers who sold them?there is no explicit money back guarantee and in any event, most of the dissatisfied have already been undertaken. The value of the undertaker?s institution is similarly ephemeral, mostly determined by ?goodwill?. Aside from a fancy building, very little in the way of productive facilities is actually required by the religious undertaker.
But modern finance has replaced religion as the supreme capitalistic undertaking. Again, it has no need for production facilities?a fancy building, a few Bloomberg screens, greasy snake-oil salesmen, and some rapacious traders is all that is required to separate widows and orphans from their lifesavings and homes. Religious institutions only want 10%; Wall Street currently gets 20% of all the nation?s output (and 40% of profits), but won?t stop until it gets everything.
There is rarely any recourse for dissatisfied customers of financial institutions. Few customers understand what it is they are buying from Wall Street?s undertakers. The product sold is infinitely more complicated than the Theory of the Trinity advanced by Theophilus of Antioch in 170 A.D., let alone the Temple Garments (often called Magic Underwear by nonbelievers) marketed today. That makes it so easy to screw customers and to hide fraud behind complex instruments and deceptive accounting.
A handful of thieves running a modern Wall Street firm can easily run up $2 trillion in ephemeral assets whose worth is mostly determined by whatever value the thieves assign to them.
And that is just the start. They also place tens of trillions of dollars of bets on derivatives whose value is purely ?notional?. The thieves get paid when something goes wrong?the death of a homeowner, worker, firm, or country triggers payments on Death Settlements, Peasant Insurance, or Credit Default Swaps. To ensure that death comes sooner rather than later, the undertaker works with the likes of John Paulson to handpick the most sickly households, firms and governments to stand behind the derivative bets.
And the value of the Wall Street undertaker?s firm is almost wholly determined by euphemistically named ?goodwill??as if there is any good will in betting on death.
With these undertakers running the show, it is no wonder that we are buried under mountains of crushing debt?underwater mortgages, home equity loans, credit card debt, student loans, healthcare debts, and auto-related finance. Simply listing the kinds of debts we owe makes it clear how far along the path of financialization we have come: everything is financialized as Wall Street has its hand in every pot.
Thirty years ago we could still write of a dichotomy? industry versus finance?and categorize GE and GM as industrial firms, with Goldman Sachs as a financial firm. Those days are gone, with GM requiring a bail-out because of its financial misdealings (auto production was just a sideline business used to burden households with debt owed to GMAC, the main business line), and Goldman Sachs buying up all the grain silos to run up food prices in a speculative bubble. Obamacare simply fortifies the Vampire Squid?s control of the healthcare industry as it inserts its strangling tentacles into every facet of life.
Food? Financialized. Energy? Financialized. Healthcare? Financialized. Homes? Financialized. Government? Financialized. Death? Financialized. There no longer is a separation of the FIRE (finance, insurance, and real estate) and the nonFIRE sectors of the economy. It is all FIRE.
Everything is complexly financed. In the old days a municipal government would sell a twenty year fixed rate bond to finance a sewage system project. Now they hire Goldman to create complex interest rate swaps (or even more complex constant maturity swaps, swaptions, and snowballs) in which they issue a variable rate municipal bond and promise to pay the Squid a fixed rate while the Squid pays them a floating rate linked to LIBOR?which is rigged by the Squid?s banking brethren to ensure the municipality gets screwed. Oh, and the municipal government pays upfront fees to Goldman for the sheer joy of getting screwed by Wall Street?s finest.
The top four US Banks hold $171 Trillion worth of derivative deals like this. Derivatives are really just bets by Wall Street that we will get screwed?it is all ?insurance? that pays off when we fail. Everything is insured?by them against us.
What is healthcare ?insurance?, really? You turn over your salary to the FIRE sector aka Wall Street in the hope that should you need healthcare, they will allow your ?service provider? to provide it. But when you need the service, ?Wall Street? will decide whether it can be provided.
Oh, and Wall Street?s undertakers have also placed a bet that you will die sooner than you expect, so it wins twice by denying the coverage.
Finally, US real estate?the RE of the FIRE?underlies the whole kit and caboodle. That is the real story behind the GFC: given President Clinton?s budget surpluses and the simultaneous explosion of private finance, there simply was not enough safe federal government debt to use to repo against the explosion of collateralized OTC derivatives positions taken on by financial institutions with one another starting back in the mid 1990s. Wall Street needed another source of collateral for financial leverage.
You see, all the top financial institutions are dens of thieves, and thieves know better than to trust one another. So (derivatives) transactions between fellow thieves have to be collateralized by safe financial assets ? which is the traditional role played by Treasuries. But there were not enough of those to go around so Wall Street securitized home mortgages that were sliced and diced to get tranches that were supposedly as safe as Uncle Sam?s bonds. And there were not enough quality mortgages, so Wall Street foisted mortgages and home equity loans onto riskier borrowers to create more product.
Never content, in order to suck more profit out of mortgages, Wall Street created ?affordability? products?mortgages with high fees and exploding interest rates?that it knew would go bad. Even that was not enough, so the Squids created derivatives of the securities (collateralized debt obligations?CDOs) and then derivatives squared and cubed?and then we were off and running straight toward the GFC.
Wall Street bet your house would burn, then lit a firebomb in the basement.
Mortgages that were designed to go bad would go bad. CDOs that were designed to fail would fail.
Suddenly there was no collateral behind the loans Wall Street?s thieves had made to one another. Each Wall Street thief looked in the mirror and realized everything he was holding was crap, because he knew all of his own debt was crap.
Hello Uncle Sam, Uncle Timmy, and Uncle Ben, we?ve got a problem. Can you spare $29 Trillion to bail us out?
And that is why we are screwed.
I see two scenarios playing out. In the first, we allow Wall Street to carry on its merry way, as the foreclosure crisis continues and Wall Street steals all homes, packaging them into bundles to be sold for pennies on the dollar to hedge funds. All wealth will be redistributed to the top 1% who will become modern day feudal lords with the other 99% living at their pleasure on huge feudal estates.
You can imagine for yourselves just what you?re going to have to do to pleasure the lords.
This will take years, maybe even a decade or more, but it is the long march Wall Street has formulated for us. To be sure, ?formulated? should not be misinterpreted as intention. No one sat down and planned the creation of Western European feudalism when Rome collapsed. To be sure, the modern day feudal lords on Wall Street certainly conspire?to rig LIBOR and muni bond markets, for example?and each one individually wants to take as much as possible from customers and creditors and stockholders. But they are not planning and conspiring for the restoration of feudalism. Still, that is the default scenario?the outcome that will emerge in the absence of action.
In the second, the 99% occupy, shut down, and obliterate Wall Street. Honestly, I have no idea how that can happen. I am waiting for suggestions.
About Randall Wray
L. Randall Wray is a professor of economics and research director of the Center for Full Employment and Price Stability at the University of Missouri?Kansas City. His current research focuses on providing a critique of orthodox monetary policy, and the development of an alternative approach. He also publishes extensively in the areas of full employment policy and the monetary theory of production. Wray received a B.A. from the University of the Pacific and an M.A. and a Ph.D. from Washington University, where he was a student of Hyman Minsky.
CALGARY ? When the fear became almost unbearable, Rejeanne Taylor reminded herself that all she could do was put one foot in front of the other.
The two-time breast cancer survivor would walk to help cope with a disease that cruelly invaded her body twice ? once in 1998 requiring a mastectomy, and again eight years later, when she endured rounds of gruelling chemo therapy and radiation.
?When you?re out there walking, you?re not a cancer patient. You?re a vibrant, capable, physically strong person,? Taylor told the Herald. ?It was so important for me to have something beyond just the cancer in my life.?
Now cancer-free, Taylor walks to raise money and Sunday she added 40-kilometres to her running tally at the Weekend to End Women?s Cancers.
The annual 60-kilometre walk raised $1.8 million in support of the Alberta Cancer Foundation, which funnels dollars toward research and cancer therapies at the Tom Baker Cancer Centre and clinics across the province.
?It?s cancer. It?s mysterious and unpredictable, and that?s why we have to keep raising money for research. There?s too many children and too many young people that face this journey,? Taylor said.
One of those young people is 25-year-old Ashley Hart.
A month before her wedding day last July, doctors told Hart that she had breast cancer.
She faces surgery for a double mastectomy on Aug. 7, but Sunday she crossed the finish line with a smile on her face, flanked by family, having walked 60 kilometres to raise more than $13,000.
?I don?t really know how to take it easy. I golfed through my chemo,? Hart said. ?When you?re the person going through it, you just do what you have to do.?
When she was first diagnosed, Hart admits she felt angry.
?I was confused. At the time I wanted to know why it was happening to me and why it happened at 24,? she said. ?But I got those answers later.?
Doctors told Hart that she was a carrier of BRCA1 ? a rare, mutated gene responsible for increasing the risk for breast and ovarian cancers.
?I was more upset for my mom and my husband. My mom wished it was her and not me. That was upsetting.?
Organizers said the Weekend to End Women?s Cancers, the largest fundraiser for women?s cancers in Alberta?s history, has raised $47 million for the Alberta Cancer Foundation since its inception.
?This year in Alberta, 1,950 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer and 270 with gynecological (cancers). Funds raised by The Weekend are put to use immediately, and support cutting-edge research, the development of new therapies and prevention programs for breast, cervical, endometrial and ovarian cancers,? said Myka Osinchuk, CEO of the Alberta Cancer Foundation.
Close to a thousand Albertans participated in the two-day trek that ended Sunday.
Cleveland Browns rookie quarterback Brandon Weeden is having a "last hurrah," as he calls it, by playing in his charity golf tournament on Monday in Oklahoma before heading to training camp this week.
"Golf allows me to free my mind and helps me relax," Weeden said. "A lot of guys love to fish and hunt, and this is my hobby. It's my escape before it's time to buckle down. And this event is so important."
Weeden and his wife, Melanie, have partnered with Children?s Hospital Foundation to hold the "Swing from the Heart" Golf Challenge at Oak Tree National in Edmond. They are especially looking at increasing the number of pediatric cardiology surgeons.
In a letter to charity donors, Weeden said: "Melanie and I first learned of this shortage through our personal relationship with one of Children?s miracles, and his parents. Five-year-old Gavin was born with the complex congenital heart disease Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome (HLHS). Gavin?s condition has called for the most advanced surgical techniques and intricate care. However, due to the recruitment of Gavin?s surgeon away from Children?s in Oklahoma City to San Diego, the family has had to travel to California for his treatment. Gavin?s battle, his unbridled spirit, as well as his family?s enduring resolve, has inspired us to champion the challenge of building the medical team at The Children?s Hospital in Oklahoma City."
"He's my No. 1 fan and I'm the same for him," Weeden said. "He is a tough little kid who I have a lot of respect. Once I knew I was in a position to help, I did."
After the tournament, Weeden will head to Cleveland to start training camp with the Browns. He is expected to compete with Seneca Wallace and Colt McCoy for the starting QB job. The Browns' rookies are slated to report on July 24, with the veterans joining them on July 26.
And Weeden would hope to have his contract resolved, too. He is scheduled to receive a four-year deal worth about $8.1 million under the NFL's new rookie wage slotting system. The 22nd overall pick in April's NFL draft out of Oklahoma State wants all four years guaranteed, something that doesn't always come in place with someone taken that late in the first round.
"What I'm asking for is not too much. I think it's fair," Weeden said. "If they see me in their plans as the starting quarterback, it doesn't make sense why they wouldn't do it."
And he and his wife are ready to build a life in Cleveland.
"This is an underrated town. My wife absolutely loves it, but then again, you might want to ask me that again in December!" Weeden said. "Nothing is ever really guaranteed, so I want to be smart about this. But when camp starts, I'll be there."
About Randall Wray