An ounce of preparation...and thankfulness

I've been committed to focusing on being thankful for all the blessings I've been given.  Staying focused on being thankful is not always easy, especially in light of what's going on all around us.  I have stopped sharing observations about what's going on because either you get it or you don't and anything I share at this point isn't going to move you if you haven't already confirmed your position and beliefs.

If you are paying attention and not burying your head in the sand, no doubt you've noticed that each week it seems the tension in the streets is escalating and sadly I think that will get worse.

I know it's hard to imagine but there are all sorts of people who feel America needs to literally be torn down and they're committed to that goal.  If you read that and thought to yourself, "that's just not true" then you are experiencing the normalcy bias.

While we're busy living our lives, growing our businesses, paying the bills and raising our kids, others are cranking out schemes to disrupt society for their own ends.  While we have been dutifully paying attention to the positive aspects of building our lives based on the American dream, others have been working out plans to undermine the very fabric of what has allowed us reach for the stars in the first place.  It is almost inconceivable that people would harbor so much malice and hatred that they really want to tear all this down, but all you have to do is listen to them in their own words.

To such people, anything can be justified when they believe 'the system' needs to be collapsed, even the total breakdown of the fabric of society.

Did you know that only 9% of Americans are in any way prepared while 91% are at risk of being blindsided.

In a crisis, you may have only minutes to respond and statistics show you MUST be able to survive for up to 40 days completely on your own without ANY assistance.

Confusion keeps people from getting prepared because there are so many factors to consider.

Unfortunately, that's like a deer freezing in the headlights of an oncoming car.

The fact is that getting prepared is way easier and more affordable than you think when you have a specific plan.

A little targeted preparation goes a long way.

Now, more than ever, you need to be ready.  Not just for yourself, but so that you can be a help to others around you when the proverbial $h!t hits the fan.

Warning From Wall Street Broker: “The Entire System Has Been Utterly Destroyed”; Recommends “ALL customers Withdraw From All of the Markets”

http://www.benzinga.com/news/11/11/2140209/james-koutoulas-responds-to-ann-barnhardts-letter-thinks-shes-taking-the-easy-way

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Warning From Wall Street Broker: “The Entire System Has Been Utterly Destroyed”; Recommends “ALL customers Withdraw From All of the Markets” Mac Slavo November 18th, 2011   Editor’s Note: You will rarely, if ever again, see a brokerage firm close their doors not as a result of losing all of their customers’ money, but rather, preemptively in order to prevent them from being wiped out.   That’s exactly what Ann Barnhardt of Barnhardt Capital Management did Thursday morning when she advised clients that her firm was liquidating all customer brokerage and options accounts.  In a series of letters published on her web site, disseminated by Zero Hedge, and brought to us by The Daily Crux, Ms. Barnhardt takes the unprecedented step of shutting down her firm in order to prevent losses in what she says is a system that “is no longer functioning with integrity and is suicidally risk-laden.”  The reasons for her taking the steps she did to save client investments are, in our opinion, nothing short of heroic (prompting even Rush Limbaugh to give her kudos) given recent developments in the global economic crisis that include the collapse of government primary dealer MF Global and the untennable situation in Europe. While most Wall Street tycoons and brokers continue to manage money in a highly leveraged marketplace on the verge of collapse while talking their books on financial news shows in an effort to instill confidence in their customers who are swallowing the hopium hook, line and sinker, Barnhardt will have none of it and chose, instead, to pull the plug and get her customers out.  This is an absolute must read warning for all American investors. Though Barnhardt’s firm dealt primarily in futures and options trading, she cautions that ALL markets have been infected with systemic contagion, including the underlying cash commodities – known in layman’s terms as the physical delivery of goods. With the recent collapse of MF Global, the details of which suggest direct fraud and theft of customer accounts, and the government’s lack of any serious response, Barnhardt seems to think there is a real possibility of cascading, system-wide failures in the broader financial sector.  Look out folks, because if she is right then we’re in serious trouble – and soon. The takeaway is, If you’re not sure what is happening in the markets then get out and get your money to safety, otherwise it will soon be added to the asset pool of the organizations complicit in orchestrating the destruction of our financial markets and economic system. Without further ado, prepare to be blown away: ________________________________________ BCM Has Ceased Operations (source) Posted by Ann Barnhardt – November 17, AD 2011 10:27 AM MST Dear Clients, Industry Colleagues and Friends of Barnhardt Capital Management, It is with regret and unflinching moral certainty that I announce that Barnhardt Capital Management has ceased operations. After six years of operating as an independent introducing brokerage, and eight years of employment as a broker before that, I found myself, this morning, for the first time since I was 20 years old, watching the futures and options markets open not as a participant, but as a mere spectator.  The reason for my decision to pull the plug was excruciatingly simple: I could no longer tell my clients that their monies and positions were safe in the futures and options markets – because they are not. And this goes not just for my clients, but for every futures and options account in the United States. The entire system has been utterly destroyed by the MF Global collapse. Given this sad reality, I could not in good conscience take one more step as a commodity broker, soliciting trades that I knew were unsafe or holding funds that I knew to be in jeopardy.  The futures markets are very highly-leveraged and thus require an exceptionally firm base upon which to function. That base was the sacrosanct segregation of customer funds from clearing firm capital, with additional emergency financial backing provided by the exchanges themselves. Up until a few weeks ago, that base existed, and had worked flawlessly. Firms came and went, with some imploding in spectacular fashion. Whenever a firm failure happened, the customer funds were intact and the exchanges would step in to backstop everything and keep customers 100% liquid – even as their clearing firm collapsed and was quickly replaced by another firm within the system.  Everything changed just a few short weeks ago. A firm, led by a crony of the Obama regime, stole all of the non-margined cash held by customers of his firm. Let’s not sugar-coat this or make this crime seem “complex” and “abstract” by drowning ourselves in six-dollar words and uber-technical jargon. Jon Corzine STOLE the customer cash at MF Global. Knowing Jon Corzine, and knowing the abject lawlessness and contempt for humanity of the Marxist Obama regime and its cronies, this is not really a surprise.   What was a surprise was the reaction of the exchanges and regulators. Their reaction has been to take a bad situation and make it orders of magnitude worse. Specifically, they froze customers out of their accounts WHILE THE MARKETS CONTINUED TO TRADE, refusing to even allow them to liquidate. This is unfathomable. The risk exposure precedent that has been set is completely intolerable and has destroyed the entire industry paradigm. No informed person can continue to engage these markets, and no moral person can continue to broker or facilitate customer engagement in what is now a massive game of Russian Roulette.  I have learned over the last week that MF Global is almost certainly the mere tip of the iceberg. There is massive industry-wide exposure to European sovereign junk debt. While other firms may not be as heavily leveraged as Corzine had MFG leveraged, and it is now thought that MFG’s leverage may have been in excess of 100:1, they are still suicidally leveraged and will likely stand massive, unmeetable collateral calls in the coming days and weeks as Europe inevitably collapses. I now suspect that the reason the Chicago Mercantile Exchange did not immediately step in to backstop the MFG implosion was because they knew and know that if they backstopped MFG, they would then be expected to backstop all of the other firms in the system when the failures began to cascade – and there simply isn’t that much money in the entire system. In short, the problem is a SYSTEMIC problem, not merely isolated to one firm.  Perhaps the most ominous dynamic that I have yet heard of in regards to this mess is that of the risk of potential CLAWBACK actions. For those who do not know, “clawback” is the process by which a bankruptcy trustee is legally permitted to re-seize assets that left a bankrupt entity in the time period immediately preceding the entity’s collapse. So, using the MF Global customers as an example, any funds that were withdrawn from MFG accounts in the run-up to the collapse, either because of suspicions the customer may have had about MFG from, say, watching the company’s bond yields rise sharply, or from purely organic day-to-day withdrawls, the bankruptcy trustee COULD initiate action to “clawback” those funds. As a hedge broker, this makes my blood run cold. Generally, as the markets move in favor of a hedge position and equity builds in a client’s account, that excess equity is sent back to the customer who then uses that equity to offset cash market transactions OR to pay down a revolving line of credit. Even the possibility that a customer could be penalized and additionally raped AGAIN via a clawback action after already having their customer funds stolen is simply villainous. While there has been no open indication of clawback actions being initiated by the MF Global trustee, I have been told that it is a possibility.  And so, to the very unpleasant crux of the matter. The futures and options markets are no longer viable. It is my recommendation that ALL customers withdraw from all of the markets as soon as possible so that they have the best chance of protecting themselves and their equity. The system is no longer functioning with integrity and is suicidally risk-laden. The rule of law is non-existent, instead replaced with godless, criminal political cronyism.  Remember, derivatives contracts are NOT NECESSARY in the commodities markets. The cash commodity itself is the underlying reality and is not dependent on the futures or options markets. Many people seem to have gotten that backwards over the past decades. From Abel the animal husbandman up until the year 1964, there were no cattle futures contracts at all, and no options contracts until 1984, and yet the cash cattle markets got along just fine.  Finally, I will not, under any circumstance, consider reforming and re-opening Barnhardt Capital Management, or any other iteration of a brokerage business, until Barack Obama has been removed from office AND the government of the United States has been sufficiently reformed and repopulated so as to engender my total and complete confidence in the government, its adherence to and enforcement of the rule of law, and in its competent and just regulatory oversight of any commodities markets that may reform. So long as the government remains criminal, it would serve no purpose whatsoever to attempt to rebuild the futures industry or my firm, because in a lawless environment, the same thievery and fraud would simply happen again, and the criminals would go unpunished, sheltered by the criminal oligarchy.  To my clients, who literally TO THE MAN agreed with my assessment of the situation, and were relieved to be exiting the markets, and many whom I now suspect stayed in the markets as long as they did only out of personal loyalty to me, I can only say thank you for the honor and pleasure of serving you over these last years, with some of my clients having been with me for over twelve years. I will continue to blog at Barnhardt.biz, which will be subtly re-skinned soon, and will continue my cattle marketing consultation business. I will still be here in the office, answering my phones, with the same phone numbers. Alas, my retirement came a few years earlier than I had anticipated, but there was no possible way to continue given the inevitability of the collapse of the global financial markets, the overthrow of our government, and the resulting collapse in the rule of law. As for me, I can only echo the words of David: “This is the Lord’s doing; and it is wonderful in our eyes.” With Best Regards- Ann Barnhardt

It's Going to be a GREAT YEAR 2013!!!

One sunny day in January, 2013, an old man approached the White House from across Pennsylvania Avenue where he'd been sitting on a park bench. He spoke to the U.S. Marine standing guard and said, "I would like to go in and meet with President Obama."

 The Marine looked at the man and said, "Sir, Mr. Obama is no longer President and no longer resides here."

The old man said, "Okay," and walked away.

The following day the same man approached the White House and said to the same Marine, "I would like to go in and meet with President Obama."

The Marine again told the man, "Sir, as I said yesterday, Mr. Obama is no longer President and no longer resides here."

The man thanked him and again just walked away.

The third day the same man approached the White House and spoke to the very same U.S. Marine, saying, "I would like to go in and meet with President Obama."

The Marine, understandably agitated at this point, looked at the man and said, "Sir, this is the third day in a row you have been here asking to speak to Mr. Obama. I've told you already that Mr. Obama is no longer the President and no longer resides here. Don't you understand?"

The old man looked at the Marine and said, "Oh, I understand. I just love hearing it."

The Marine snapped to attention, saluted, and said, "See you tomorrow, Sir.