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...Until now a full picture of global debt was missing. The October 2016 Fiscal Monitor has, for the first time, put a number on the size of debt covering virtually the whole world and the picture is not pretty.

Janet Yellen and her merry band of money printers are oblivious to the dangerous speculation and valuation excesses that their policies have implanted throughout the financial system. No wonder the Trump voters want to throw the bums out. It is none too soon.

Value investing sounds easy enough until you try it in practice and realize that cheap securities can always get cheaper and the market is not always accommodating in how and when it recognizes value over time. It’s the old line that value investing is simple, but never easy.

The complete and total collapse of Deutsche Bank would be an event many times more significant for the global financial system than the collapse of Lehman Brothers was. Global leaders simply cannot afford for such a thing to happen, but without serious intervention it appears that is precisely where we are heading.

We desperately need to repair and replace a vast part of our national infrastructure but where do we get the money? Well, the U.S. has spent hundreds of billions of dollars trying to fix Iraq and Afghanistan and God knows how many more hundreds of billions of dollars over the years on other projects around the world so what if we renewed the focus on our own needs?. [In this article I identify our infrastructure shortfalls and present a way to pay for the needed projects which, combined with my proposed specific massive tax reform, could reposition the country to be the most powerfully competitive nation in the world.

While it is unclear what impact the next few interest rate hikes will have on the real economy the long term impact is a different story. A more active Fed may have an enormous impact on how investors build portfolios, a development we contemplate in this article.

This site is devoted to enlightening oneself regarding the economy, the markets and investment options to strengthen one's financial wellbeing. That being said, occasionally I think a meaningful site should share other ways to improve one's life to make it the absolute best it can possibly be - and this is one such article.

Increasing stock market prices are largely driven by an increasing rate of monetary inflation BUT monetary inflation growth has now been either flat or declining for the last three years, depending on what time frame one looks at. Conclusion: Earnings, and ultimately valuations, must fall as an ever-expanding rate of monetary inflation is unsustainable and as interest rates cannot forever be kept artificially low.

...Whenever a country (or countries) creates debt that is beyond the level that they can ever repay, an economic collapse is a near-certainty. Today, many jurisdictions, particularly, the US, EU, UK, Canada, etc. have created debt that is far beyond anything the world has ever seen. This assures us that the corresponding collapse will be of epic proportions.

Don't miss the `forest` for the `trees` when looking for a clear trend in gold prices and market activity. Here are some of those `trees` to consider - and which have some analysts predicting gold prices per ounce as high as $10,000 (Jim Rickards) to $12,000 (James Turk).