11/17/2011 @ 9:28AM
Polemic talk radio host Alex Jones. He and his guest say it's time to sell stocks and bonds.
The U.S. banking system is not safe from the unraveling European sovereign debt crisis. Alex Jones, the T-Rex of conspiracy radio, and his guest say it is time to take the money and run.
Jones’ guest, the inflammatory Gerald Celente, founder of The Trends Research Institute, said investors should forget U.S. stocks and bonds and put it in cash, or the usual favorite of the apocalyptic, gold and silver coin.
“The whole thing is a game thats rigged by Wall Street,” says Celente. “The whole system is going down. Pull your money out your Fidelity account, your Scwhab accout, and your ETFs.”
On Nov.14, Celente toldRussian 24 hour news network RT TV that he lost over “six figures” in gold future contracts when MF Global collapsed Bear Stearns style, seemingly vanishing from the market overnight.
Hardly one to mince words or mask his disdain for what he sees as a Wall Street-to-Washington crime syndicate, Jones’ show on Thursday is a testament of Main Street’s overall caution about investing after being fully or nearly totally wiped out in 20008.
Celente’s view is not relegated to just fringe internet radio programming. He’s been on nearly every network news show over the last 15 years, from Oprah Winfrey to CNN. In 2009, one of Celente’s employees took his advice and switched nearly 60% of her 401k into gold. Forbes said she overreacted, but the only security to perform better than the SPDR Gold (GLD) ETF this year, for example, has been Chinese internet stocks.
“When I say take your money out of the banks and put it under the mattress, this is not advice,” Celente says. “Personally, I buy gold coins from reputable companies. I take my money out of investment funds and I buy gold and silver. You need the three g’s — gold, guns and a get-away plan.”
A getaway plan from what? As Jones and Celente see it, the collapse of the Western financial markets and contagion from southern Europe. On Thursday, bond spreads from Spanish and French debt rose on fears that Italy’s problems will spread throughout the region.
Spain and France struggled with government bond auctions early Thursday. Nobody wants them at current yields, so yields will have to go higher to represent the risks involved with buying south European government debt. It might not just be Greece anymore. It’s Italy. And then Spain. And them Portugal might get worse. And up north…Ireland. Where does it end?
Spain 10-year bond yields on Thursday rose to their highest level since 1997, with interest rates rising 1.5 points above the average paid at similar auctions this year. Reuters cited unnamed sources calling the bond market “pretty awful” to “dreadful.” The euro fell on the foreign exchanges in response.
Paris fared a little better, but again had to pay markedly more to shift nearly 7 billion euros of government debt. Fears that the euro zone’s second largest economy is getting sucked into the maelstrom have taken the two-year debt crisis to a new level this week, Reuters reported.
“The euro zone has got to deliver something which is going to calm markets down and at the moment markets feel like they are being given no comfort whatsoever,” Marc Ostwald, a strategist at Monument Securities, told Reuters.
Back at the Jones radio show this morning, talk of the usual suspects from the elite salon group known as the Bilderberg Group, to a conspiracy of hedge funds allegedly “stealing people’s brokerage accounts” en masse, investors are witnessing a “hostile takeover”, says Jones.
Celente said that people have to find morality in order to change the political and financial system. He charged political leaders with perpetuating a system of fraud for personal gain.
“The politicians are enablers of crime bosses,” he says. Newt Gingrich made over $1 million advising Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which were at the center of the sub prime mortgage crisis.
“Every financial institution is under the same kind of pressure as we see in Europe. If you think your money is safe with any of those big names, you’re making a big mistake,” Celente said…loudly at times.
While Celente and Jones’ passionate plea may, on balance, fall on mostly deaf ears, investors holding cash in simple savings and checking accounts are protected by the FDIC up to $250,000 even in the case of bank failure. Under SIPC rules, stock accounts are also partially protected up to a point if a broker/dealer goes bankrupt, though the process often involves a legal fight. source: Forbes
