Close your eyes and listen. What do you hear? Does it sound like the “baa baa baaing” of sheep? Are you meandering with the flock? Following the herd? Or what’s the term for a group of lemmings so fixated on a route that they don’t notice running off the cliff?

Craig Hemke (aka “Turd Ferguson“) of TF Metals Report applies several decades of commodity and market expertise to challenge conventional perspective on currency, markets, the economy, and even geo-political news or lack thereof. He examines end-game consequences of the trillions of dollars in unserviceable U.S. debt and unfunded social programs, a broken and corrupt banking system, and paper money valued only by faith but diluted at will by a private, for-profit bank (Federal Reserve).

“The banking system and a lot of the banks died in 2008 and 2009.”

– Craig Hemke

In the TF Metals Report blog and podcast – where members are affectionately known as “Turdites” and the community is known as “Turdville” – Craig shares his thoughts and insights on gold, silver, and other precious metals as tools for wealth preservation and insurance against systemic failure.

The herd mentality has it that gold and silver are not investments. Warren Buffet calls them barbaric relics. Although Buffet himself has said, “you pay a very high price in the stock market for a cheery consensus.” Baron Rothschild said famously in contrarian investor fashion, “the time to buy is when there’s blood in the streets.”

“Eventually, as all systems have done in the past, there will be a day of reckoning. Your protection against that is some type of physical gold and silver ownership.”

– Craig Hemke

It’s odd that gold is argued not to be an investment although it fits perfectly the definition of money and currencies trade heavily every day in speculation, arbitrage, and hedging. At the minimum, there is value to insurance. There is value to liquidity and optionality. And there are times to lean toward risk-off where 0% may not be a gain but is much better than a loss.

In a boom-bust-addicted financial system that would suffer periodic devastating fires and blame nature rather than find the political fortitude to clear the underbrush, equity markets are historically overbought and U.S. public debt (i.e. printing money) keeps the plates spinning. For how long? Through the next election cycle? Until a natural or political event can be blamed for collapse?

“The system is designed in such a way that it works until it doesn’t. That can now be said across the investment universe.”

– Craig Hemke

This chart of the S&P 500 shows ALL market appreciation from the dot com boom wiped out. All. Think about that. As prescribed, I got out of school, got a job, threw an aggressive percentage of my paycheck at retirement account investment funds and 10 years later was back where I started.

Once in a lifetime bad luck? We did it all again in the run-up back to the same levels and then wiped it all out again in the great recession / global financial crisis crash of 2008-2009.

Now take a look at the recovery since the last crash. Can anyone claim that this market hasn’t been propped up to dangerous, dizzying heights?

How does one prop up markets and an entire system? Squint a bit at the shape of the S&P market price chart and then look at this one – US Federal Debt. When money has no intrinsic or underlying value, it’s called fiat currency. Every fiat currency in the history of the world has ultimately collapsed into nothing more than a pile of worthless paper.

Once upon a time, long ago, the US dollar was backed by gold and silver. Meaning, you could leave the precious metals in a bank safe, trade representative notes for convenience, and then exchange paper notes back to the bank and retrieve your metal at any time you liked. The Swiss Franc was the last holdout to have gold backing and it also is now simply worthless paper.

The value of paper money is 100% based in the faith of those willing to continue to hold and trade it, until the record suddenly stops spinning in a financial game of musical chairs. Only, it’s no game. This is serious business. Recklessly printing trillions of paper dollars keeps banks and markets falsely afloat and appearing profitable. And when the music stops, if that fiat currency is all that you’re left holding, you’d better hope it burns warm in the winter or is soft enough to wipe yourself.

CRAIG HEMKE

Craig Hemke, aka “Turd Ferguson,” was a licensed securities “professional” for nearly twenty years. Disgruntled by the fraud known as “financial services”, he retired to a career as a serial entrepreneur in 2008. Though otherworldly in his ability to forecast price movements, The Turd is NOT a soothsayer, a psychic or a witch. After all these years, he simply has a decent understanding of the forces at play in the precious metal “markets”.
In the TF Metals Report Blog, Turd shares his thoughts and insights as to precious metals trends and the financial markets. The TF Metals Report Podcast is where Turd interviews various thought leaders and experts on subjects such as market trends or economic collapse scenarios. These podcasts come out approximately every two weeks.

SHOW HIGHLIGHTS

  • Pursue your passion and things fall into place
  • How US banks were kept afloat after the last crisis
  • Politicians and central bankers preparing for the next crisis
  • Gold and silver as wealth insurance
  • The best way to own and hold precious metals

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