Peak Prosperity

Over the past decade, the world’s central banks have distorted the price of money by bringing interest rates to record lows. With credit so cheap, asset prices have risen dramatically as companies and governments have borrowed to the hilt. And now with the Everything Bubble threatening to burst (perhaps in mid-bursting already?), we’re suddenly realizing that the phantom asset price gains were ephemeral, while the debts are permanent. How will the economy cope with dangerously overleveraged nations, industries and households? Not well. To discuss this massive problem and propose some potential solutions is Steve Keen, professor of economics at Kingston University in London and author of Debunking Economics.

How to wake society up to the big issues we collectively face. In this week’s podcast, Chris Martenson poses these important questions to Dr. Tali Sharot, professor of cognitive neuroscience in the Department of Experimental Psychology at University College London. Dr. Sharot is known for her research on the neural basis of emotion, decision making, and optimism. Her 2012 Ted Talk on the optimism bias received over 2.3 million views.

The most hated stock market rally still has room left to become truly despised, according to Martin Armstrong. Armstrong is an economic forecaster, former hedge fund manager, monetary and foreign exchange currency expert and a deep student of history. He has advised central banks, powerful political leaders, and has testified before Congressional committees on economic cycles and monetary and currency issues. At present, he is extremely concerned about the gross distortions central bank policies have had on the global economy. Excess liquidity has caused asset prices to become recklessly inflated while enabling otherwise-doomed companies to persist by feeding off of the cheap and plentiful capital.

Skip Horner has spent the past 50 years leading expeditions in the world’s most remote, inaccessible and dangerous places. In this podcast, Skip shares his best practices for risk management, many of which universally apply to all dimensions of life including personal safety and financial security. And he drives these lessons home with white-knuckle stories from his personal adventures, when his life was held in the balance.

Fresh from releasing his exhaustive 340-page annual report titled In Gold We Trust, Ronald Stoerferle joins us to summarize his forecast for the yellow metal.

The growing retirement continues to be a major focus here at PeakProsperity.com. Our recent podcast with Ted Siedle exposed the shocking insolvency of many pension funds. And on the private retirement account side, we’ve written numerous articles revealing the ‘failure to save’ of tens of millions of Baby Boomers. In today’s podcast, Chris interviews Damion Lupo who shines light on a potential option that may add useful value to folks planning for, or already in, retirement - the Qualified Retirement Plan, or QRP.

With the world re-entering a period of greater economic instability, with the central banks painted into a corner, with global stocks looking weaker by the day, the price of gold is starting to shine again. The yellow metal has recently hit all-time highs priced in a number of world currencies (the dollar not among them…yet). Craig Hemke, better known by his nom-de-plume, Turd Ferguson, explains why gold looks like it finally has a brighter future ahead.

Every so often, our work in the premium side of PeakProsperity.com is deemed so important that our paying subscribers request we share it with the general public. Last week's 'Off The Cuff' podcast received so many of these requests that we are releasing it to all here. In last week's Off The Cuff podcast, Chris delivered a very personal message about how we each decide to live our lives.

"We are on the precipice of the greatest retirement crisis in the history of the world. And that makes perfect sense because, first of all, we have the largest elderly population in the history of the world. Just focusing on the United States: our elderly are woefully unprepared to retire. And in the decades to come we will witness millions of elderly American's, Baby Boomers and others, slipping into poverty. 'Too frail to work, too poor to retire' will become the new normal for many elderly Americans." So warns pension fraud whistleblower Ted Siedle.

It's make or break time in the markets cautions Sven Henrick, technical analyst and lead market strategist for Northman Trader. His weekly flurry of trendline charts warn that the major indexes have been compressing in rising wedges that increasingly point to a binary outcome: either a massive new leg up that will result in the market making new all time highs, or a bad breakdown that could waterfall into a 2008-style correction. One high-level chart he tracks closely indicates that if the SP 500 does not soon rise above the blue trendline that began in 2009, a sharp roll-over is highly likely:

In late February, Sonoma County California experienced intense flooding causing several hundred millions of dollars in damage. Fortunately loss of life was very low relative to the fires that ravaged the same region the year before. In this week's podcast, we talk with Adam Parks, whom we've interviewed previously about sourcing and preparing sustainably-raised meat (he operates a meat CSA in Sonoma County). Adam's business in Sebastopol, CA was hit hard by the flooding, and he graciously paused his recovery efforts to give us a play-by-play account of what happened during the disaster and how Sonoma County is recovering from the floods. This is a little different from our usual fare, but is an instructive reminder that disasters strike without warning, and that when they do, most people and businesses are caught completely unawares.

Love it or hate it, the potency of the Trump Administration is on the wane, soon to be stuck in the mire of the Swamp it has deepend instead of drained, while the economy falls into one hell of a recession - so claims former Regan-era Cabinet member and Congressman David Stockman. In his new book Peak Trump, Stockman notes how the wide divergence between Trump the campaigner and Trump the president appears to be proving to be his undoing.

In late February, Sonoma County California experienced intense flooding causing several hundred millions of dollars in damage. Fortunately loss of life was very low relative to the fires that ravaged the same region the year before. In this week's podcast, we talk with Adam Parks, whom we've interviewed previously about sourcing and preparing sustainably-raised meat (he operates a meat CSA in Sonoma County). Adam's business in Sebastopol, CA was hit hard by the flooding, and he graciously paused his recovery efforts to give us a play-by-play account of what happened during the disaster and how Sonoma County is recovering from the floods. This is a little different from our usual fare, but is an instructive reminder that disasters strike without warning, and that when they do, most people and businesses are caught completely unawares.

For years now we've been covering the false promise of the American shale oil "miracle". Yes, it has extracted a lot more oil out of American soil that most thought possible. But at an economic loss. And at great environmental cost. If the shale drilling companies can't make any profit, either when oil prices are high or low -- why are we still pursuing shale deposits so aggressively?

Stocks provide a return to today's investors via two mechanisms: dividends and capital gains. Dividends provide and income stream which can be quantiatively values. Capital gains result from speculation, an expectation that future dividends will be higher than the market currently expects. But what's the value of a company that continuously pays no dividends and does not appear as if it ever will in the foreseeable future?