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Incredible must read analysis. Take away: the world is going to go "medevil". It's the only way out of this mess. Since the zero hedge layout is so bad, i'm going to post as much of the article as Diigo will allow: Jim Kunstler's 2014 Forecast - Burning Down The House Submitted by Tyler Durden on 01/06/2014 19:36 -0500 Submitted by James H. Kunstler of Kunstler.com , Many of us in the Long Emergency crowd and like-minded brother-and-sisterhoods remain perplexed by the amazing stasis in our national life, despite the gathering tsunami of forces arrayed to rock our economy, our culture, and our politics. Nothing has yielded to these forces already in motion, so far. Nothing changes, nothing gives, yet. It's like being buried alive in Jell-O. It's embarrassing to appear so out-of-tune with the consensus, but we persevere like good soldiers in a just war. Paper and digital markets levitate, central banks pull out all the stops of their magical reality-tweaking machine to manipulate everything, accounting fraud pervades public and private enterprise, everything is mis-priced, all official statistics are lies of one kind or another, the regulating authorities sit on their hands, lost in raptures of online pornography (or dreams of future employment at Goldman Sachs), the news media sprinkles wishful-thinking propaganda about a mythical "recovery" and the "shale gas miracle" on a credulous public desperate to believe, the routine swindles of medicine get more cruel and blatant each month, a tiny cohort of financial vampire squids suck in all the nominal wealth of society, and everybody else is left whirling down the drain of posterity in a vortex of diminishing returns and scuttled expectations. Life in the USA is like living in a broken-down, cob-jobbed, vermin-infested house that needs to be gutted, disinfected, and rebuilt - with the hope that it might come out of the restoration process retaining the better qualities of our heritage.

"The push for monetary reform is on, and intellectuals seeking to reform the monetary system in accordance with free market principles are seriously debating two alternative solutions. One is a return to the gold standard in some fashion. The other is a free market in currency, i.e., private currency competition. Toward the latter end, Rep. Ron Paul has sponsored a bill repealing legal tender law. Their primary concern is the establishment of perfect money, which they define as money which changes in value the least. A much stronger case can be made for private currency competition than for a national gold standard in achieving this goal. Broadly speaking, private currency competition can provide the means to both a better concept of money (i.e., the development of an ideal monetary standard), and a better practical implementation of a monetary system." The argument that gold is the intrinsically right standard, so people do not need any choice in the matter because the government would only be making them do what is best for them anyway, is a philosophical can of worms that ultimately undermines the moral case for free markets. This is probably why the Ayn Rand Institute, that flagship of right moral political philosophy, migrated its support from the gold standard to a system of free banking with private currencies. Even if one remains unconvinced of the superiority of private currency competition and believes that a fiat gold standard would work, one should always argue for liberty, not try to work within the bounds of statism to ameliorate its effects. The advocates of freedom, individual rights, limited government, and capitalism should not waste any effort trying to revive a statist concept. They should adopt the boldest possible vision of a free market and then pursue it relentlessly. This is your clarion call. Some believe that because a denationalization of money is the ideal state of affairs, a monetary Holy Grail, its achievement must be far off in th

Written in August of 2011, this article continues to be an important guideline to understanding Gold and Silver prices, and the efforts of Banksters to manipulate these competing forms of monetary exchange to the US Dollar.  Good stuff.  And i did write Brandon a proposal for a mobile application connecting PayPal to the Storage Vault Depositories he sites in this article (based on the GOLD app design i provided to Tino in 2008). excerpt: China Competes With The Comex As of this summer China now has its own Comex, called the Hong Kong Mercantile Exchange. The exchange opened for trade on May 18th (the CME's incredible margin hikes in silver began only weeks before, which suggests to me that they were trying to preempt the positive effects the HKMEX would have on metals). The HKMEX moved into action only five months after the Chinese Pan American Gold Exchange was instituted. The exchange issues its own ETF's in gold and silver. These securities, though, are not based on leverage or derivatives like most Comex based ETFs. The bottom line; the Comex global monopoly on commodities trade is over: How To Break The Barrier Methods for smaller investors to fight back against the market manipulations of large banks have been sparse, and often limited to desperate appeals to the CFTC and the government, who are bought and paid for, and who have no intention of ever stopping global financiers from dragging their unwashed behinds across the face of the planet. Relying on bureaucrats to mend the wounds they themselves encouraged or inflicted is foolhardy, to say the least. Top down solutions are NOT an option now, and I'm not sure if they ever were. This leaves us with only one other choice; to fix the problem with our own hands from the bottom up. This is, of course, easier said than done… In the case of silver manipulation, what we are faced with is an unprecedented effort to subvert and suppress an alternative system so that the mainstream system can continue to

Will Obama rethink his push for sanctions against and military encirclement of Russia? One would suspect that the banksters will soon be pushing him to do so.

I'm struck again by the poltical brilliance of Russia's decision to drop the South Stream Pipeline in favor of a new pipeline through Turkey to the border with Greece. Russia has gained an ally in Greece in terms of fighting economic sanctions on Russia and reinstating trade between Russia and the EU. Greece has veto power in the EU on any new sanctions or renewal of existing sanctions, at least most of which have sunset provisions. Russia also made allies of two NATO members, Greece and Turkey. And Greece is positioned by its threat of refusal to repay debt to the troika banksters to break the absolute hold the banksters have on monetary policy in the Eurozone. Russia magnifies that threat by saying that it is open to a proposal to bail out the Greek government. Not yet known is whether a condition would be abandoning the Euro as Greece's own currency. Greece might conceivably reinstate the drachma with its value pegged to a basket of foreign currencies, including the ruble and yuan. In other words, Greece leaving the EU and NATO and joining BRICS is conceivable.

Watch prices of imported goods rise in the coming year?

Stunning stuff.  The end of the petrodollar is explained, incluiding it's history, meaning and importance to the American way of life.  March 20th was the trigger date, when Iran begqan accepting settlement payments for oil in non dollar denominations.  A currency basket backed by hard commodity ratios (gold :) is being used instead of the dollar.  China is now aggresively promoting the yuan as a gold backed alternative to the inflated dollar.  The tipping point will probably happen in June of 2012.  

Russia dumping its holdings of U.S. Treasury bonds to purchase gold.