A PURE PLATINUM RENDEZVOUS
I just got this email from an attendee at Rendezvous X at the Platinum Hotel in Las Vegas last weekend:
"The weekend was really over the top – but it was almost impossible to pick only one favorite speaker. The range of topics was so varied and we found every one thoroughly engrossing. Of major importance for us right now was Hank Brock. But Ralph Peters was amazing, Dave Janda was amazing, as was Alex and Joel and Skye and Mike Kelly and Congressman McCotter and… well, even you were amazing, Jack!
:-) :-)...…anyway, I just wanted to let you know that both my husband and I were so glad we came. Keep this up and I’m afraid we just might have to make every one of them from now on….."
This is a sample of how overwhelming has been the response we’ve received from the attendees. I frankly am still in a state of overwhelm over the experience itself – from the camaraderie and seeing TTP friends to the deluge of insightful information imparted by our speakers.
Here are a few of the highlights of that deluge. Soon, however, Miko will finish editing the video so you can watch each speaker’s presentation for yourself.
First up Friday (5/06) evening was Congressman Thad McCotter of Michigan, introduced by his friend Dr. Dave Janda. He got an enthusiastic fist-pumping response when he reminded us that:
"The government doesn’t spend what it makes – it spends what it takes."
When asked if Boehner was going to non-negotiably demand the full and complete repeal/defunding of ObamaCare as one price for raising the debt ceiling, he said no, Boehner wouldn’t.
That was depressing, yet he made it clear this was his public answer. Privately, he revealed that he was forming a coalition of scores of his colleagues (most all of the GOP freshmen but also a sprinkling of Dems) to demand just that.
The most furious note-taking of the Rendezvous was prompted by Hank Brock. His explanation of the unparalleled financial crisis America faces today was exceptionally clear. Everyone was thinking, "Well, we’re doomed," until he dropped this informational grenade: "There were more millionaires created during the Great Depression of the 1930s than at any other time in US history before or since."
How could that be? Because crisis creates opportunity, and folks who figured out what those opportunities were became rich. This is true today – thus Hank said: "In my 30 years of financial analysis and planning, I have never seen so many opportunities as now."
One reason is we’ve never had opportunities on such a global basis before. But you have to know where to look and where not. Hank, for example, is not keen on China – "a key problem with China is they are not creators, not innovators, but copiers" – but quite keen on Chile. Hank’s presentation is one you’ll definitely want the video of.
Jack Kelly’s "A Hill To Die On" was sobering. The conundrum is this. If Zero is re-elected in 2012, then it is "absolutely certain our country is doomed." It is, in the term of the Prussian military genius Carl von Clausewitz (1780-1831), our schwerpunkt, the decisive point or fork between victory and defeat.
Thus: "All of our problems either have been caused, or have been made much worse, by Barack Obama. He is the principal barrier to reform. No real progress can be made until he is removed from office. We should focus all our energies on this task. And we should do nothing that would make winning the election more difficult."
And thus the conundrum: We can’t wait that long, Congress must do "something substantial now to slow down Zero’s bullet train to bankruptcy." Yet shutting down government "services" in order to prevent bankruptcy will so alienate those dependent upon them that Zero is in like Flynn next year. What to do?
Two things. First, trade small increases in the debt ceiling – enough to get by for only a few months at a time – in exchange for real budget cuts with each increase. Second, massively cut things out of the FY2012 budget this October that no one except the moonbats will even notice are missing – like the EPA – while keeping things like paying the troops and Social Security recipients.
With that, we can avoid immediate catastrophe while keeping our focus unwaveringly on the schwerpunkt of November 6th, 2012.
Orthopedic surgeon and host of radio talk show Operation Freedom Dr. Dave Janda gave a boffo explanation of the inhumane evil of ObamaCare as "a weapon of mass health destruction." As Rep. McCotter’s Medical Advisor, he is helping craft a series of repeals of this evil.
Famed soldier, author of 26 books, and Fox News military analyst Ralph Peters mesmerized us with his look at the world. He began by noting that just as he loves Europe – "It’s one of my favorite museums" – he loves California – "It’s my favorite foreign country."
Yet even with our most populous state going over the falls, he’s not as pessimistic as are many conservatives. America’s resilience will override Obama’s damage. Nor is he pessimistic about the Arab Spring. The revolts in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen et al, will open up new opportunities.
He is, however, quite pessimistic about our relationship with Pakistan, as his article today (5/12), Public Enemy Number One, devastatingly demonstrates. One arresting observation: So many of our troubles and just about every war we’ve had for years now have been over colonial borders, primarily those drawn by the British.
Alex Alexiev talked about the Three Europes: the one in the north that will do ok (Germany, Scandinavia, Switzerland), the one in the south that will not (Spain, Italy, Greece, Portugal), and the one in the east that is doing better than the first two.
Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Macedonia, Romania, and especially Bulgaria have far greater economic growth potential that the other Europes now. The tax incentives are among the best in the world, such as Bulgaria’s with 10% flat income tax, 10% corporate tax, and full repatriation of profits.
Which is why Alex and I are taking a group of TTPers to Bulgaria next month (June 11-18) to explore the country and its investment potential.
Alex further touched on a wide range of topics, from how over 50 generations of Arab inbreeding puts Arabs at such a severe disadvantage in a competitive world, and how China’s biggest problem is that it doesn’t have time to get rich before it gets old.
Skye began by strongly suggesting we all read three books:
This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly by Carmen Reinhart & Kenneth Rogoff.
Surviving the Economic Collapse by Fernando Ferfal Aguirre.
Crisis Preparedness Handbook by Jack Spigarelli.
He urged us to consider that what happens to you is not the same as what happens to the country at large. Thus you can decouple yourself from nationwide disasters brought about by Zero’s government, and the smaller the jurisdiction you’re in (e.g. your county or small town), the easier it is to do so.
He also cautioned that there are many different possible futures, so don’t plan for just one (such as, say, hyper-inflation). You need to be adaptive, to plan on several possible futures. Then you can be nimble and jump from one to another without getting stuck in one that didn’t occur.
Skye looks upon the Fed as an accordion player, squeezing then expanding the money supply, squeezing or stretching people out while insiders (crony capitalists and big bankers) make fortunes coming and going.
This game must avoid hyper-inflation which also screws the insiders – but it may be too clever by half, for the expanding accordion is so stretched out now most any black swan event can pull the accordion apart. Look at what these gargantuan floods in the Mid-West may do to corn and grain prices.
He closed with advice his parents gave him who grew up during the Great Depression: "You can’t go bankrupt if you don’t owe anybody." If you’re neutral, neither in debt to anyone nor anyone in debt to you, then it’s far easier to stay afloat and not go belly-up.
Joel Wade provided a raft of practical advice on how to cope with crises – which he’ll be discussing in his column tomorrow (5/13).
What did I say? Good grief. We went around the world. I’m skeptical on China and high on Indonesia. The world’s biggest duke-out is building between the two big boys on the Asian block, China v. India (note, as per Ralph Peters: the Indo-Sino borders were drawn by Brits). I’m on the side of Thaksin Shinawatra’s Red Shirts in Thailand and think Pakistan should be broken apart (e.g., Baluchistan and Sindh forming a union and seceding).
Zero is waging war on Libya, an unimportant Arab land while doing nothing to support regime change in Syria, which would save Israel from Hamas, Lebanon from Hezbollah, and precipitate regime change in Iran.
The euro (and with it the European Union as an anti-democratic dictatorial bureaucracy) is going under – and will do so before the dollar. One principal reason, however, for the enormity of the present crisis is that the world has never before had a world currency (the dollar) and it is in dire jeopardy.
Get out of US dollars and into, e.g., Canadian dollars or Norwegian krone. You can easily do so with a World Currency account at Everbank.
I closed with this word to doom and gloomers. America is in an incredibly serious situation, brought upon itself by electing a president who hates America so much he wants God to damn it.
Nonetheless, for all the horrific destruction to our culture and economy, he and the Left have suffered an irrecoverable defeat.
The Left is not Marxist or Communist. It is Fascist. That is, it has no ideology at all except for the Will to Power, the obsession to control people’s lives. Marxism was only a convenient rationale for this, and when that failed with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Left looked for another.
The Left thought it had finally found the Holy Grail of Will to Power Rationales with the scam of Global Warming. Yet, despite the unending and ubiquitous torrential downpour of warmist propaganda for years now, a majority of Americans still think it’s a crock.
The Left will likely never be able to invent a better rationale than Warmism – which means they are now in irreversible retreat. If Americans have the smarts and balls to reject Warmism, they have the smarts and balls to regain their freedom and reclaim their destiny as, in the words of Ronald Reagan, "the last best hope of man on earth."
We must have Ronald Reagan’s faith in America. With that faith, we will prevail.
It was a memorably wonderful Rendezvous.