Kerry Lutz's--Financial Survival Network

• Newmont and Barrick merger—fact or fiction;
• De-escalation the equivalent of tapering and recovery;
• Sunday night sentiment attacks alive and well;
• Japan’s 36th monthly trade deficit;
• Death of markets—36 hours not a single buyer for Japanese debt;
• Miserable earning season going on but Dow doesn’t care.

Alan Newman is editor of Crosscurrents, a stock market investment newsletter. He's also a real estate investor. He's extremely concerned about the direction of the country and all the debt that's being piled on at all levels of society. For this reason and others, he's been bullish on gold since 9/11/2001. He's more bullish now as he's ever been. And he's waiting for the stock market to take a major hit. 

We caught up with the Daily Reckoning's Chris Mayer. He just got back from Ireland and says there's a major fire sale taking place. Between the damage that took place in Ireland, Spain, Greece and other countries, assets are available at well below their replacement cost. Of course there's no telling when the long awaited recovery will occur, but if you've got the nerve and the cash, you could score big. 

Paul LeJoy came to America from Africa and saw that it was still the land of opportunity. While others complained and believed that they couldn't get ahead, Paul plowed ahead and built up a real estate empire. Now he helps others do the same. On a recent trip back to his homeland in Africa, he saw that little has changed. His fellow country men are just sitting around waiting for the government to come to their rescue and it's not happening.  

We spoke with Martin Armstrong today about the Blood Moon, the Death of the Dollar, the crumbling Euro and the ascent of China. While he sees China becoming the leading world economy-eventually, he doesn't see the dollar dying off as quickly as others do. Mainly because there's no other currency to take its place at the present time. The war cycle is heating up at the same time as civil unrest cycle, the first time this has happened since the 1700's. Also the first of 4 Blood Moons has just passed. The last will pass just as the Sovereign Debt Big Bang goes off in the third quarter of 2015. Interesting times ahead that's for sure. 

Brandi Jo Newman was born into a family of bankers, cattlemen, oilmen and good ol’ boys. She learned at an early age how to communicate with different personalities and egos. Her goal now is to help her clients, many of them baby boomers, to save their retirement. She does this with the concept of infinite banking, which uses whole life insurance to lock in and compound savings and high returns. 

We caught up with our friend Jerry Robinson and discussed the following:

• Russia declares war on the Dollar;
• Palladium hits 32 month high and broke $800;
• Gold buy signal coming in 3-4 months;
• Analysis of mining stocks performance during a market crash.

Christina Tobin loves to fight the good fight… for US voters. She’s making a career of helping honest, earnest candidates to run for political office.

In the course of her work, she decided to mainstream her efforts. In order to shift power back to individual voter, Tobin founded The Free & Equal Elections Foundation, a non-partisan, 501(c)3 non-profit organization, dedicated to creating open and transparent elections in 2008. Free and Equal is the platform that’s helping thousands of citizens work together, who want to clean up politics for once and for all. She's hoping to make all political parties irrelevant and put power back into the hands of the people once and for all. 

Michelle Seiler-Tucker is a leading authority on buying, selling and improving businesses as well as increasing a business's revenue streams. She has sold several hundred businesses and franchises. She has helped buyers from all walks of life buy the American Dream, create financial freedom to be their own boss and to obtain a better quality of life. What makes her such a major player in the industry is that she closes nearly 98 percent of all the offers she writes, truly an amazing track record. 

We talked with our old friend Jay Taylor about the impending collapse of the petrodollar. Seems like the world is ready to move on from this failed experiment, but what will become of the United States? China and Russia are setting up oil exchanges and getting ready for life without it. Jay also talks about an intriguing mining stock that seems to have all the makings of a major gold player. Novo Resources sounds really exciting. 

Well it finally happened. Main Street, or at least hick street stood up to DC and DC backed down. The Bundy Ranch, located a stone's throw from Harry Reid's spread in Searchlight Nevada has been the scene of a twenty year battle by the Fed's to stamp out ranching in the name of protecting the supposedly endangered desert tortoise. Finally, the heavy hand of the government was going to end the dispute once and for all. What they weren't counting was a convergence of thousands of concerned citizens coming to the rescue. Once the Feds realized that the sheeple were mad as hell and weren't going to take it any more it was all over. 

We had a long discussion with Jim Rickards about his new book and the coming death of the dollar, along with most of the world's major currencies. According to Jim, the IMF is already going through dry runs for the day the inevitable occurs. The world has been in a depression for at least the past 6-7 years and there's nothing that the central banks have been able to do to stop it. In fact they've made it worse. The world's governments have been asleep at the wheel and that's why we are where we are today. A most compelling interview. 

After years of such wonderful results in the US, the ECB is ready to go all in on QE for Europe. Seems that they just can't take a strong Euro any longer. That and cutting interests rates to Zero and perhaps they can tank the Euro without really trying. And we thought that failure was an orphan.

Ann Marie Murrell of Politichick.TV fills us in on what's going on in California. While liberalism continues to run amuck, Hollywood as the epicenter of the film industry continues its decline. We turned to the confrontation that took place outside of Las Vegas, where the Bureau of Land Management sought to shutdown a family ranch that had been in operation since 1870. Just when it appeared that all Hell was about to break loose, cooler heads prevailed and the BLM backed off, for now.

Mondays with Andrew Hoffman:

• The Ukraine going from bad to worse;
• First week after sales tax hike in Japan sales down 25%;
• What if anything has been successful about Abenomics;
• ECB 1.4 trillion QE coming;
• Draghi says loosening of monetary policy coming soon;
• In US 20 percent food price increase affecting fake PPI numbers;
• FOMC minutes proved ending fake ZIRP was false;
• HFT and Flash Boys discussion;
• Gold physicla demand keeps going up-wonder why.

Russian foreign policy always seems to be focused on a goal and centered around a strategy. American foreign policy has been chasing its tail for so long that no one can remember what it is trying to accomplish. Add to that seemingly endless pointless wars and no wonder why most of the population seems to return to isolationism.

When it comes to what's going on in Hollywood or the networks, James Hirsen always gets it right. He saw this one coming. Seems Letterman just can't click with those younger audiences and he can't produce those viral videos the way that others do. But is Colbert the right person to replace him? After all, who is he really? Guess we'll find out soon enough.

I'm halfway through Michael Lewis's book Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt. I wish I could say there was anything in there that surprised me. What a shocker, Wall Street is rigged. Since the first share was sold to an unsuspecting public, the markets have always been rigged. It's just that technology allows it to be done on a scale never before imagined. Just like spying on your phone calls or emails or texts. Governments have been spying on their citizens since the beginning of time, it's just that technology makes it so damn easy. And governments have been rigging the markets too. And now they never stop. 

Rick Ackerman is a trader's trader. As a result he's usually focused on the short term looking to make a profit where he can. He's amazed that the grand illusion, the existing stock market scam, has gone on for as long as it has. As a perma-bear he thinks it's just about run its course, but as a trader he's never sure about anything. But he sure likes the June gold contract. 

Jan Skoyles is one of those rare people, a young person who has read history and understands the value of sound money. She is Head of Research at The Real Asset Company, a platform for secure and efficient gold investment. Jan first became interested in precious metals and sound money when she met Ned Naylor-Leyland whilst working alongside him in the summer of 2010. She sees gold and bitcoin doing quite well in 2014 and beyond. 

David Barnett is a long term listener to FSN. He's also an expert at local investing. He agrees with Charles Hugh Smith that local investing is the way to go and he's got a number of unique strategies on how to get it done. From leasing cars to your friends/neighbors, to providing local businesses with equipment financing, David knows how to help his community and earn big returns in the process.. 

Professor Laurence Kotlikoff sees more and larger deficits ahead. Even though the Fed is ending Quantitative Easing and pulling the punch bowl away, there's no desire on the part of the administration or congress to get their act together. Thus, the situation will continue to deteriorate until a real disaster occurs. 

Sandy Botkin, noted CPA and attorney joined us for a discussion of the right way to send your child to college. Rather than taking on a mountain of debt, you can get your child a first rate education and still have cash left in the bank. The key is figuring out what your child wants/needs to get out of their higher education and then planning the most cost-effective means of achieving it. That might mean community college for 2 years or it could require attending a fine state school and saving a fortune. The key is not to get taken in by fancy college brands. 

J.B. Glossinger a/k/a The Morning Coach, is an internationally known speaker, author, coach and consultant. His goal is to help people manifest what they want in their business, organizational and personal lives. He is a master of human potential and development, helping individuals and organizations learn how to break through to the next level. J.B. enthusiastically shares what he has learned from his personal transformations, his corporate and personal experiences, and his MBA and Ph.D. background. He offers a unique perspective, bringing pragmatic approaches to a new and evolving world. His ideas are interesting and fresh, combining the wisdom of the ages with modern science.

From selling jumbo jets to starting his own successful companies, J.B. is very familiar with the corporate world. His firms include the Alive Foundation, Inc., (AliveFoundation.com) — which launched MorningCoach.com, the world’s largest real-time personal-development resource on the Web—and PowerBizCoach.com, the world’s first kaizen business-improvement system.

Steve Simpson is the director of Legal Studies at the Ayn Rand Institute. He believes that the latest SCOTUS case Mccutchen v. FEC which eliminated the aggregate limit on individual campaign contributions. Steve thinks this is a blow for free speech as limiting how much money one can contribute is tantamount to limiting one's right to free speech. It will be interesting to see how the few remaining campaign contribution limits hold up in future court decisions.