- Top NSA Officials’ Reaction To 9/11: “9/11 Is a Gift To The NSA. We’re Going To Get All Of The Money We Need, And Then Some” … “
What was the NSA’s reaction to 9/11 … the greatest intelligence failure in history?
After all, overwhelming evidence shows that 9/11 was foreseeable. Indeed, Al Qaeda crashing planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon was itself foreseeable. Even the chair of the 9/11 Commission said that the attack was preventable.
And a top NSA whistleblower says that the NSA had all of the information it needed prior to 9/11 to stop the attacks. The only reason NSA didn’t share that information with other agencies is because of corruption … in an effort to consolidate power. And see this.
As a high-level NSA whistleblower notes in a brilliant new documentary coming out in September (the best documentary I've ever seen), the reactions to 9/11 by the number 2 and number 3 official at the NSA were:
“9/11 is a gift to the NSA. We’re going to get all of the money we need … and then some”
and
“We’ll milk this cow for 15 years”
How can this be true?
Because mass surveillance has nothing to do with preventing terrorism.
- Read This Before The Government Uses The Orlando Shooting To Start Another War
Submitted by Claire Bernish via TheAntiMedia.org,
Late Thursday evening, the Wall Street Journal reported, 51 State Department officials signed a statement condemning U.S. policy in Syria in which they repeatedly call for “targeted military strikes against the Damascus government and urging regime change as the only way to defeat Islamic State.”
“In other words,” as Zero Hedge summarized, “over 50 top ‘diplomats’ are urging to eliminate [Syrian Pres. Bashar al] Assad in order to ‘defeat ISIS’, the same ISIS which top US ‘diplomats’ had unleashed previously in order to … eliminate Assad.”
This gordian knot created by United States foreign policy — and intensified by that same policy — means not only could war with Syria be on the horizon, but if that happens, the U.S. could be facing a far more serious threat.
While discontented officials used what’s known as the “Dissent Channel” — “an official forum that allows employees to express opposing views,” State Department spokesman John Kirby explained in the WSJ — Saudi government officials employed more direct means to press their interests with the U.S. in Syria.
In a meeting with President Obama on Friday, Saudi foreign minister Adel al Jubair asserted, “Saudi Arabia supports a more aggressive military approach in Syria to get Assad to agree to a political solution,” as CBS’ Mark Knoller tweeted.
al Jubeir says Saudi Arabia advocates release of 28 classified pages on 9/11 attacks so his country can respond to "any allegations."
— Mark Knoller (@markknoller) June 17, 2016
Of course, this meeting and the push for increased military force couldn’t be more timely to drum up public support, as a heated national debate has ensued following the deadly attack on an Orlando nightclub purportedly carried out by Omar Mateen — who pledged loyalty to ISIS as he killed 49 people and wounded over 50 others.
Despite the CIA’s report acknowledging it found no tangible connections between Mateen and the so-called Islamic state — also released on Friday — the narrative concerning his ISIS ties saturated mainstream headlines for days, almost certainly cementing the link in the public’s mind.
Disgruntled politicians eager to overthrow Assad — thus also carrying out Saudi goals — can now facilely flip the script to assert deposing the Syrian government is necessary in the fight against everyone’s enemy, the Islamic State.
“Failure to stem Assad’s flagrant abuses will only bolster the ideological appeal of groups such as Daesh [ISIS, etc.], even as they endure tactical setbacks on the battlefield,” the WSJ reported the dissenting cable stated.
But concerns about bloating ISIS’ following borders on comical, except for the potential waterfall of repercussions from carrying out targeted strikes on the Syrian government, considering the U.S. government, itself, once expressed the desire for the rise of an Islamic State to aid in the overthrow of — you guessed it — Assad.
According to declassified documents obtained by Judicial Watch last year:
“If the situation unravels there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist Principality in eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor), and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran).”
Former Director of National Intelligence and retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, however, spoke to Al Jazeera about this ill-fated, notorious strategical blunder.
“You’re on record as saying that the handling of Syria by this administration has been a mistake. Many people would argue that the U.S. actually saw the rise of ISIL coming and turned a blind eye, or even encouraged as a counterpoint to Assad,” journalist Mehdi Hasan prefaced his query, adding, “The U.S. saw the ISIL caliphate coming and did nothing.”
Flynn responded, “Yeah, I think that we — where we missed the point. I mean, where we totally blew it, I think, was in the very beginning.”
Besides backing and blessings from the Saudi government for aggression on the Syrian front, dissent among U.S. officials couldn’t be more imperative in their eyes, because, as the WSJ reported:
“The internal cable may be an attempt to shape the foreign policy outlook for the next administration, the official familiar with the document said. President Barack Obama has balked at taking military action against Mr. Assad, while the Democratic hopeful Hillary Clinton has promised a more hawkish stance against the Syrian leader. Republican candidate Donald Trump has said he would hit Islamic State hard but has also said he would be prepared to work with Russia and Syria.”
In fact, as Zero Hedge also noted, an albeit contested report from earlier this week claimed Saudi Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman made comments including “a claim that Riyadh has provided 20 percent of the total funding to” Clinton’s campaign.
Politicians and officials, in other words, are fast aligning a narrative touting the need to wage war with Syria in order to have it carried out by the candidate they assume will next take the White House.
And despite being a risky move in its own right — not to mention a potentially superficial, if not muddying, solution to an almost solely U.S.-created problem — ramping up military airstrikes in Syria could quite literally spark war with Russia.
“The Russian Air Force bombed U.S.-trained rebels in southern Syria not once, but twice Thursday, and the second wave of attacks came after the U.S. military called Russia on an emergency hotline to demand that it stop,” an unnamed defense official with knowledge of the situation told Fox News.
Russia has repeatedly warned against U.S. moves to oust Assad, which President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, reiterated following the tense situation Thursday and the report calling for increased military targeting of the Syrian government saying, it “wouldn’t help a successful fight against terrorism and could plunge the region into total chaos.”
As recently as February, Saudi Arabia proposed sending its own troops to join the fight against ISIS — which Russia wholly condemned. As head of the State Duma committee, Pavel Krasheninnikov, warned, “Syria has to give official consent, to invite, otherwise it will be a war.”
Now, it appears, that war might be closer than ever.
Syria doesn’t constitute the only arena of contention between the U.S. and Russia. As Anti-Media reported this week, continued buildup of NATO forces along the old Cold War foe’s borders in the Balkans and Poland — and particularly also in the Black Sea — has provoked Russia sufficiently enough for officials to caution the move might amount to aggression.
“This is not NATO’s maritime space and it has no relation to the alliance,” Russia’s director of European affairs told Interfax.
Nonetheless, the U.S. and E.U. have proffered a policy whereby defense of its installations on foreign soil is being carried out under the cloak of the NATO alliance — possibly with the intent of posturing dominance in the region to create a buffer zone for operations in Syria.
Pipelines through Syria would specifically allow oil and natural gas to flow to the European Union, which currently sources that fuel primarily from Russia. In other words, if Russia wants to defend its profitable relationship with the E.U., it must defend against the U.S.-led, Saudi-supported overthrow of its Syrian ally, Assad.
Meanwhile, civilians in Syria have been treated like cannon fodder and are fleeing for their lives — but the intensifying geopolitical maneuvers appear more likely than ever to have brought us all to the brink of a third world war.
- BMG Polls Throw Mud In The Waters of Brexit Trends: Numbers Believable?
Submitted by Mish Shedlock of MishTalk
Yesterday I wrote how that even recent phone polls show Leave ahead in the Brexit debate.
A BMG poll that was supposed to be released on Friday was delayed until today. That poll strongly reverses other recent telephone polls.
The headline reads “Remain 53.3%, Leave 46.7%” but that representation is quite inaccurate.
The BMG/Herald Final EU Referendum shows Remain leads 46% to 43% with 11% undecided.
Don’t Knows and PNTS (prefer not to say) totaled 11%. From this set of numbers BMG issued the final result “Remain 53.3%, Leave 46.7%”. Remain lead by 7pts after imputed DK/PNTSs.”
Why impute voting intention for Undecideds and Refusals?
BMG states “It is our view that using predicted voting intentions to impute voting intentions for undecideds and refusals is preferable and more accurate than existing methods of excluding undecideds and refusals.”
Headline Numbers Believable?
In a word, No (at least without normalizing the results to other polls).
Let’s do that now.
Recent Phone Poll Analysis
The above tabulation is the best interpretation as to where we stand now.
The latest poll is actually Survation, but is it biased to Leave?
Leave Bias
BMG notes “Our latest poll took 6 days to complete for just over 1,000 responses. Some respondents are harder to reach than others, and some are more difficult to convince to take part in a survey. If there’s no response our interviewers will call the sample of respondents up to eight times and never at the same time of the day. It is for this reason that the majority of our survey responses are collected on the second or later attempt.”
Survation was the only pollster not to conduct its survey over multiple days. If one disregards Suration for that reason, the two latest polls are BMG and Ipos MORI.
BMG has a 3 point lead for Remain whereas IPOS Mori has a 6 point lead for Leave. ICM is the next most recent poll and it has a 5 point lead for Leave.
No Trend Change
One poll does not change the trend. It does suggest things are not as clear-cut for Leave as they were.
Moreover, we still do not know how the death of Jo Cox affects the overall results. To understand, we need to see new polls after the her senseless murder.
- Artist's Impression Of The Opening Ceremony At The Rio Olympics
- Huge Scandal Erupts Inside NATO: Alliance Member Germany Slams NATO "Warmongering" Against Russia
As we reported in just the past week, not only has NATO accelerated its encirclement of Russia, with British soldiers deployed in Estonia, US soldiers operating in Latvia and Canadians in Poland, while combat units are being increased in the Mediterranean…
… but even more troubling, was NATO’s assessment that it may now have grounds to attack Russia when it announced that if a NATO member country becomes the victim of a cyber attack by persons in a non-NATO country such as Russia or China, then NATO’s Article V “collective defense” provision requires each NATO member country to join that NATO member country if it decides to strike back against the attacking country.
Specifically, NATO is alleging that because Russian hackers had copied the emails on Hillary Clinton’s home computer, this action of someone in Russia taking advantage of her having privatized her U.S. State Department communications to her unsecured home computer and of such a Russian’s then snooping into the U.S. State Department business that was stored on it, might constitute a Russian attack against the United States of America, and would, if the U.S. President declares it to be a Russian invasion of the U.S., trigger NATO’s mutual-defense clause and so require all NATO nations to join with the U.S. government in going to war against Russia, if the U.S. government so decides.
Also recall that the attack on the DNC servers which leaked the Democrats confidential files on Trump and Hillary donors lists were also blamed on “Russian government hackers”, before it emerged that the act was the result of one solitary non-Russian hacker, but not before the US once again tried to escalate a development which may have culminated with war with Russia!
Throughout all of these escalations, the popular narrative spun by the “democratic” media was a simple one: it was Russia that was provoking NATO, not NATO’s aggressive military actions on the border with Russia that were the cause of soaring geopolitical tension. Ignored in the fictional plot line was also Russia’s clear reaction to NATO provocations that it would “respond totally asymmetrically” an outcome that could in its worst oucome lead to millions of European deaths. Still, no matter the risk of escalation, one which just two weeks ago led to assessment that the “Risk Of Nuclear Dirty Bomb Surges On Poor US-Russia Relations“, NATO had to maintain its provocative attitude .
All NATO had to do was assure that all alliance members would follow the lead, and nobody would stray from the party line.
And then everything imploded when none other than the Foreign Minister of NATO member Germany, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, criticized NATO for having a bellicose policy towards Russia, describing it as “warmongering”, the German daily Bild reported. And just like that, the entire ficitional narrative of “innocent” NATO merely reacting to evil Russian provcations has gone up in flames.
As AFP adds, Steinmeier merely highlighted all those things which rational persons have known about for a long time, namely the deployment of NATO troops near borders with Russia in the military alliance’s Baltic and east European member states. However, since it comes from a NATO member, suddenly one can’t accuse Russian propaganda. In fact, NATO has absolutely no planned response to just this contingency.
“What we should avoid today is inflaming the situation by warmongering and stomping boots,” Steinmeier told Bild in an interview to be published Sunday.
German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier“Anyone who thinks you can increase security in the alliance with symbolic parades of tanks near the eastern borders, is mistaken,” Germany’s top diplomat added.
Needless to say, Russia bitterly opposes NATO’s expansion into its Soviet-era satellites and last month said it would create three new divisions in its southwest region to meet what it described as a dangerous military build-up along its borders. This is precisely what NATO wants as it would be able to then blame Russian effect to NATO cause as an irrational move by the Kremlin, one to which the kind folks at NATO HQ would have no choice but to respond in their caring defense of all those innocent people, when in reality it is NATO that is desperate to provoke and launch the conflict with Russia.
And now even its own members admit it!
In its latest ridiculous escalation, blamed on Russia no less, NATO announced on Monday that it would deploy four battalions to Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland to counter a more assertive Russia, ahead of a landmark summit in Warsaw next month. Well, as Steinmeier made it very clear, NATO’s deployment to provoke Russia was precisely that. As a result a Russian “assymmetric” response is assured, and this time it may even spill over into the combat arena, something which would bring infinite delight to Washington’s military-industrial complex neocon puppets.
In an interview with Bild on Thursday, NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said Russia is seeking to create “a zone of influence through military means”. “We are observing massive militarisation at NATO borders — in the Arctic, in the Baltic, from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean Sea,” he told the newspaper.
How do we know Steinmeier hit it nail on the head? The neocon Council of Foreign Relations trotted out its “fellow” who promptly took to character assassinations and demanding Steinmeier’s resignation, instead of asking if perhaps a NATO-member country accusing NATO of being a warmongering provocateur, is not the real reason why Europe is back deep in the cold war, with an escalating nuclear arms race to go alongside it, courtesy of the US military industrial complex whose profits are entirely dependent on war, conflict and the death of civilians around the globe.
If Steinmeier calls it “warmongering” to push back agst Putin, he should step down — that’s not German policy. https://t.co/4V2iLCYvtx
— Stephen Sestanovich (@SSestanovich) June 18, 2016
As for the unprecedented reality in which NATO’s biggest and most important European member is suddenly and quite vocally against NATO and as a result may be pivoting toward Russian, we for one can’t wait to see just how this shocking geopolitical debacle for western neocons and war hawks concludes.
- Noam Chomsky On The Breakdown Of American Society & A World In Transition
Submitted by C.J.Polychroniou via Truth-Out.org,
The US is facing uncertain times. While it remains the only global superpower, it is no longer able to influence events and outcomes to its liking, at least not for the most part. Frustration and worry about the risk of upcoming disasters seem to far outweigh US voters' hopes for a more rational and just world order. Meanwhile, Noam Chomsky argues, the rise and popularity of Donald Trump is occurring due to the fact that US society is breaking down.
In this exclusive interview with Truthout, Noam Chomsky addresses contemporary developments in both the United States and around the world and challenges prevailing views about class warfare, neoliberalism as the outcome of economic laws, the role of the US as a global power, the status of emerging economies and the power of the Israel Lobby.
CJ Polychroniou: Noam, you have said that the rise of Donald Trump is largely due to the breakdown of American society. What exactly do you mean by this?
Noam Chomsky: The state-corporate programs of the past 35 or so years have had devastating effects on the majority of the population, with stagnation, decline and sharply enhanced inequality being the most direct outcomes. This has created fear and has left people feeling isolated, helpless, victims of powerful forces they can neither understand or influence. The breakdown is not caused by economic laws. They are policies, a kind of class war initiated by the rich and powerful against the working population and the poor. This is what defines the neoliberalism period, not only in the US but in Europe and elsewhere. Trump is appealing to those who sense and experience the breakdown of American society — to deep feelings of anger, fear, frustration, hopelessness, probably among sectors of the population that are seeing an increase in mortality, something unheard of apart from war.
Class warfare remains as vicious and one-sided as ever. Neoliberal governance over the last thirty years, regardless if there was a Republican or a Democratic administration in place, has intensified immensely the processes of exploitation and induced ever-larger gaps between haves and have-nots in American society. Moreover, I don't see neoliberal class politics being on retreat in spite of the opportunities that opened up because of the last financial crisis and by having a centrist Democrat in the White House.
The business classes, which largely run the country, are highly class conscious. It is not a distortion to describe them as vulgar Marxists, with values and commitments reversed. It was not until 30 years ago that the head of the most powerful union recognized and criticized the "one-sided class war" that is relentlessly waged by the business world. It has succeeded in achieving the results you describe. However, neoliberal policies are in shambles. They have come to harm the most powerful and privileged (who only partially accepted them for themselves in the first place), so they cannot be sustained.
Neoliberal policies are in shambles. They have come to harm the most powerful and privileged, so they cannot be sustained.
It is rather striking to observe that the policies that the rich and powerful adopt for themselves are the precise opposite of those they dictate to the weak and poor. Thus, when Indonesia has a deep financial crisis, the instructions from the US Treasury Department (via the IMF) are to pay off the debt (to the West), to raise interest rates and thus slow the economy, to privatize (so that Western corporations can buy up their assets), and the rest of the neoliberal dogma. For ourselves, the policies are to forget about debt, to reduce interest rates to zero, to nationalize (but not to use the word) and to pour public funds into the pockets of the financial institutions, and so on. It is also striking that the dramatic contrast passes unnoticed, along with the fact that this conforms to the record of the economic history of the past several centuries, a primary reason for the separation of the first and third worlds.
Class politics is so far only marginally under attack. The Obama administration has avoided even minimal steps to end and reverse the attack on unions. Obama has even indirectly indicated his support for this attack, in interesting ways. It is worth recalling that his first trip to show his solidarity with working people (called "the middle class," in US rhetoric) was to the Caterpillar plant in Illinois. He went there in defiance of pleas by church and human rights organizations because of Caterpillar's grotesque role in the Israeli occupied territories, where it is a prime instrument in devastating the land and villages of "the wrong people." But it seems not even to have been noticed that, adopting Reagan's anti-labor policies, Caterpillar became the first industrial corporation in generations to break a powerful union by employing strike-breakers, in radical violation of international labor conventions. That left the US alone in the industrial world, along with apartheid South Africa, in tolerating such means of undermining workers' rights and democracy — and now I presume the US is alone. It is hard to believe that the choice was accidental.
There is a widespread belief at least among some well-known political strategists that issues do not define American elections — even if the rhetoric is that candidates need to understand public opinion in order to woo voters — and we do know of course that media provide a wealth of false information on critical issues (take the mass media's role before and during the launching of the Iraq war) or fail to provide any information at all (on labor issues, for example). Yet, there is strong evidence indicating that the American public cares about the great social, economic and foreign policy issues facing the country. For example, according to a research study released some years ago by the University of Minnesota, Americans ranked health care among the most important problems facing the country. We also know that the overwhelming majority of Americans are in support of unions. Or that they judged the war against terror to be a total failure. In the light of all of this, what's the best way to understand the relation between media, politics and the public in contemporary American society?
It is well-established that electoral campaigns are designed so as to marginalize issues and focus on personalities, rhetorical style, body language, etc. And there are good reasons. Party managers read polls, and are well aware that on a host of major issues, both parties are well to the right of the population — not surprisingly; they are, after all, business parties. Polls show that a large majority of voters object, but those are the only choices offered to them in the business-managed electoral system, in which the most heavily funded candidate almost always wins.
Similarly, consumers might prefer decent mass transportation to a choice between two automobiles, but that option is not provided by advertisers — indeed, by markets. Ads on TV do not provide information about products; rather, they provide illusion and imagery. The same Public Relations firms that seek to undermine markets by ensuring that uninformed consumers will make irrational choices (contrary to abstract economic theories) seek to undermine democracy in the same way. And the managers are well aware of all of this. Leading figures in the industry have exulted in the business press that they have been marketing candidates like commodities ever since Reagan, and this is their greatest success yet, which they predict will provide a model for corporate executives and the marketing industry in the future.
The Obama administration has avoided even minimal steps to end and reverse the attack on unions.
You mentioned the Minnesota poll on health care. It is typical. For decades, polls have shown that health care is at or near the top of public concerns — not surprisingly, given the disastrous failure of the health care system, with per capita costs twice as high as comparable societies and some of the worst outcomes. Polls also consistently show that large majorities want a nationalized system, called "single payer," rather like the existing Medicare system for the elderly, which is far more efficient than the privatized systems or the one introduced by Obama. When any of this is mentioned, which is rare, it is called "politically impossible" or "lacking political support" — meaning that the insurance and pharmaceutical industries, and others who benefit from the current system, object. We gained an interesting insight into the workings of American democracy from the fact that in 2008, unlike 2004, the Democratic candidates — first Edwards, then Clinton and Obama — came forward with proposals that at least begun to approach what the public has wanted for decades. Why? Not because of a shift in public attitudes, which have remained steady. Rather, [the] manufacturing industry has been suffering from the costly and inefficient privatized health care system, and the enormous privileges granted, by law, to the pharmaceutical industries. When a large sector of concentrated capital favors some program, it becomes "politically possible" and has "political support." Just as revealing as the facts themselves is that they are not noticed.
Much the same is true on many other issues, domestic and international.
The US economy is facing myriad problems, although profits for the rich and corporations returned long ago to the levels they were prior to the eruption of the 2008 financial crisis. But the one single problem which most of academic and financial analysts seem to focus on as being of most critical nature is that of government debt. According to mainstream analysts, US debt is already out of control, which is why they have been arguing consistently against big economic stimulus packages to boost growth, contending that such measures will only push the US deeper into debt. What is the likely impact that a ballooning debt will have on the American economy and on international investor's confidence in the event of a new financial crisis?
No one really knows. Debt has been far higher in the past, particularly after World War II. But that was overcome thanks to the remarkable economic growth under the wartime semi-command economy. So we know that if government stimulus spurs sustained economic growth, the debt can be controlled. And there are other devices, such as inflation. But the rest is very much guesswork. The main funders — primarily China, Japan, oil producers — might decide to shift their funds elsewhere for higher profits. But there are few signs of such developments, and they are not too likely. The funders have a stake in sustaining the US considerable economy for their own exports. There is no way to make confident predictions, but it seems clear that the entire world is in a tenuous situation, to say the least.
You seem to believe, in contrast to so many others, that the US remains a global economic, political and of course military superpower even after the latest crisis — and I do have the same impression, as well, as the rest of the world economies are not only not in any shape to challenge America's hegemony but are looking toward the US as a savior of the global economy. What do you see as the competitive advantages that US capitalism has over the EU economy and the newly emerging economies in Asia?
The 2007-08 financial crisis in large measure originated in the US, but its major competitors — Europe and Japan — ended up suffering more severely, and the US remained the choice location for investors who are looking for security in a time of crisis. The advantages of the US are substantial. It has extensive internal resources. It is unified, an important fact. Until the civil war in the 1860s, the phrase "United States" was plural (as it still is in European languages). But since then the phrase has been singular, in standard English. Policies designed in Washington by state power and concentrated capital apply to the whole country. That is far harder in Europe. A couple of years after the eruption of the latest global financial crisis, the European Commission task force issued a report saying that "Europe needs new bodies to monitor systemic risk and co-ordinate oversight of financial institutions across the region's patchwork of supervision," though the task force, headed then by a former French central banker, "stopped well short of suggesting a single European watchdog" — which the US can have any time it wants. For Europe, it would be "an almost impossible mission," the task force leader said. [Several] analysts, including the Financial Times, have described such a goal as politically impossible, "a step too far for many member states reluctant to cede authority in this area." There are many other advantages to unity. Some of the harmful effects of European inability to coordinate reactions to the crisis have been widely discussed by European economists.
When a large sector of concentrated capital favors some program, it becomes "politically possible" and has "political support."
The historical roots of these differences between Europe and the US are familiar. Centuries of … conflict imposed a nation-state system in Europe, and the experience of World War II convinced Europeans that they must abandon their traditional sport of slaughtering one another, because the next try would be the last. So we have what political scientists like to call "a democratic peace," though it is far from clear that democracy has much to do with it. In contrast, the US is a settler-colonial state, which [murdered] the indigenous population and consigned the remnants to "reservations," while conquering half of Mexico, then expanding beyond. Far more than in Europe, the rich internal diversity was destroyed. The civil war cemented central authority, and uniformity in other domains as well: national language, cultural patterns, huge state-corporate social engineering projects such as the suburbanization of the society, massive central subsidy of advanced industry by research and development, procurement and other devices, and much else.
The new emerging economies in Asia have incredible internal problems, unknown in the West. We know more about India than China, because it is a more open society. There are reasons why it ranks 130th in the Human Development Index (about where it was before the partial neoliberal reforms); China ranks 90th, and the rank could be worse if more were known about it. That only scratches the surface. In the 18th century, China and India were the commercial and industrial centers of the world, with sophisticated market systems, advanced health levels by comparative standards, and so on. But imperial conquest and economic policies (state intervention for the rich, free markets rammed down the throats of the poor) left them in miserable conditions. It is notable that the one country of the [global] South that developed was Japan, the one country that was not colonized. The correlation is not accidental.
Is the US still dictating IMF policies?
It's opaque, but my understanding is that IMF's economists are supposed to be, maybe are, somewhat independent of the political people. In the case of Greece, and austerity generally, the economists have come out with some strongly critical papers in the Brussels programs, but the political people seem to be ignoring them.
On the foreign policy front, the "war on terror" seems to be a never ending enterprise and, as with the Hydra monster, a new head pops when one is cut off. Can massive interventions of force wipe out terrorist organizations like ISIS?
Upon taking office, Obama expanded intervention forces and stepped up the wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan, just as he had promised he would do. There were peaceful options, some recommended right in the mainstream: in Foreign Affairs, for example. But these did not fall under consideration. Afghan president Hamid Karzai's first message to Obama, which went unanswered, was a request to stop bombing civilians. Karzai also informed a UN delegation that he wanted a timetable for withdrawal of foreign (meaning US) troops. Immediately he fell out of favor in Washington, and accordingly shifted from a media favorite to "unreliable," "corrupt," etc. — which was no more true than when he was feted as our "our man" in Kabul. Obama sent many more troops and stepped up bombing on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistan border — the Durand line, an artificial border established by the British, which cuts the Pashtun areas in two and which the people have never accepted. Afghanistan in the past often pressed for obliterating it.
The entire world is in a tenuous situation, to say the least.
That is the central component of the "war on terror." It was certain to stimulate terror, just as the invasion of Iraq did, and as resort to force does quite generally. Force can succeed. The existence of the US is one illustration. The Russians in Chechnya is another. But it has to be overwhelming, and there are probably too many tentacles to wipe out the terrorist monster that was largely created by Reagan and his associates, since nurtured by others. ISIS is the latest one, and a far more brutal organization than al-Qaeda. It is also different in the sense that it has territorial claims. It can be wiped out through massive employment of troops on the ground, but that won't end the emergence of similar-minded organizations. Violence begets violence.
US relations with China have gone through different phases over the past few decades, and it is hard to get a handle on where things stand today. Do you anticipate future US-Sino relations to improve or deteriorate?
The US has a love-hate relation with China. China's abysmal wages, working conditions, and lack of environmental constraints are a great boon to US and other Western manufacturers who transfer operations there, and to the huge retail industry, which can obtain cheap goods. And the US now relies on China, Japan and others to sustain its own economy. But China poses problems as well. It does not intimidate easily… When the US shakes its fist at Europe and tells Europeans to stop doing business with Iran, they mostly comply. China doesn't pay much attention. That's frightening. There is a long history of conjuring up imaginary Chinese threats. It continues.
Do you see China being in a position any time soon to pose a threat to US global interests?
Among the great powers, China has been the most reserved in use of force, even military preparations. So much so that leading US strategic analysts (John Steinbrunner and Nancy Gallagher, writing in the journal of the ultra-respectable American Academy of Arts and Sciences) called on China some years ago to lead a coalition of peace-loving nations to confront the US aggressive militarism that they think is leading to "ultimate doom." There is little indication of any significant change in that respect. But China does not follow orders, and is taking steps to gain access to energy and other resources around the world. That constitutes a threat.
Indian-Pakistani relations pose clearly a major challenge in US foreign policy. Is this a situation the US can actually have under control?
To a limited extent. And the situation is highly volatile. There is constant ongoing violence in Kashmir — state terror by India, Pakistan-based terrorists. And much more, as the recent Mumbai bombings revealed. There are also possible ways to reduce tensions. One is a planned pipeline to India through Pakistan from Iran, the natural source of energy for India. Presumably, Washington's decision to undermine the Nonproliferation treaty by granting India access to nuclear technology was in part motivated by the hope of undercutting this option, and bringing India to join in Washington's campaign against Iran. It also may be a related issue in Afghanistan, where there has long been discussion of a pipeline (TAPI) from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to Pakistan and then India. It is probably not a very live issue, but quite possibly is in the background. The "great game" of the 19th century is alive and well.
In many circles, there is a widespread impression that the Israel lobby calls the shots in US foreign policy in the Middle East. Is the power of the Israel lobby so strong that it can have sway over a superpower?
My friend Gilbert Achcar, a noted specialist on the Middle East and international affairs generally, describes that idea as "phantasmagoric." Rightly. It is not the lobby that intimidates US high tech industry to expand its investments in Israel, or that twists the arm of the US government so that it will pre-position supplies there for later US military operations and intensify close military and intelligence relations.
When the lobby's goals conform to perceived US strategic and economic interests, it generally gets its way: crushing of Palestinians, for example, a matter of little concern to US state-corporate power. When goals diverge, as often happens, the Lobby quickly disappears, knowing better than to confront authentic power.
I agree totally with your analysis, but I think you would also agree that the Israel lobby is influential enough, and beyond whatever economic and political leverage it carries, that criticisms of Israel still cause hysterical reactions in the US — and you certainly have been a target of right-wing Zionists for many years. To what do we attribute this intangible influence on the part of the Israel lobby over American public opinion?
That is all true, though much less so than in recent years. It is not really power over public opinion. In numbers, by far the largest support for Israeli actions is independent of the lobby: Christian religious fundamentalist. British and American Zionism preceded the Zionist movement, based on providentialist interpretations of Biblical prophecies. The population at large supports the two-state settlement, doubtless unaware that the US has been unilaterally blocking it. Among educated sectors, including Jewish intellectuals, there was little interest in Israel before its great military victory in 1967, which really established the US-Israeli alliance. That led to a major love affair with Israel on the part of the educated classes. Israel's military prowess and the US-Israel alliance provided an irresistible temptation to combine support for Washington with worship of power and humanitarian pretexts… But to put it in perspective, reactions to criticism of US crimes are at least as severe, often more so. If I count up the death threats I have received over the years, or the diatribes in journals of opinion, Israel is far from the leading factor. The phenomenon is by no means restricted to the US. Despite much self-delusion, Western Europe is not very different — though, of course, it is more open to criticism of US actions. The crimes of others usually tend to be welcome, offering opportunities to posture about one's profound moral commitments.
Under Erdogan, Turkey has been in a process of unfolding a new-Ottoman strategy towards the Middle East and Central Asia. Is the unfolding of this grand strategy taking place with the collaboration or the opposition of the United States?
Turkey of course has been a very significant US ally, so much so that under Clinton it became the leading recipient of US arms (after Israel and Egypt, in a separate category). Clinton poured arms into Turkey to help it carry out a vast campaign of murder, destruction, and terror against its Kurdish minority. Turkey has also been a major ally of Israel since 1958, part of a general alliance of non-Arab states, under the US aegis, with the task of ensuring control over the world's major energy sources by protecting the ruling dictators against what is called "radical nationalism" — a euphemism for the populations. US-Turkish relations have sometimes been strained. That was particularly true in the build-up to the US invasion of Iraq, when the Turkish government, bowing to the will of 95% of the population, refused to join. That caused fury in the US. Paul Wolfowitz was dispatched to order the disobedient government to mend its evil ways, to apologize to the US and to recognize that its duty is to help the US. These well-publicized events in no way undermined Wolfowitz's reputation in the liberal media as the "idealist-in-chief" of the Bush administration, utterly dedicated to promoting democracy. Relations are somewhat tense today too, though the alliance is in place. Turkey has quite natural potential relations with Iran and Central Asia and might be inclined to pursue them, perhaps raising tensions with Washington again. But it does not look too likely right now.
On the western front, are plans for the eastward expansion of NATO, which go back to the era of Bill Clinton, still in place?
One of Clinton's major crimes in my opinion — and there were many — was to expand NATO to the East, in violation of a firm pledge to Gorbachev by his predecessors after Gorbachev made the astonishing concession to allow a united German to join a hostile military alliance. These very serious provocations were carried forward by Bush, along with a posture of aggressive militarism which, as predicted, elicited strong reactions from Russia. But American redlines are already placed on Russia's borders.
What are your views about the EU? It is still largely a trailblazer for neoliberalism and hardly a bulwark for US aggression. But do you see any signs that it can emerge at some point as a constructive, influential actor on the world stage?
It could. That is a decision for Europeans to make. Some have favored taking an independent stance, notably De Gaulle. But by and large European elites have preferred passivity, following pretty much in Washington's footsteps.
* * *
- Russia Warns US Against Striking Assad
As we reported yesterday, over 50 US State Department officials are now calling for "targeted military strikes" directly against Assad's Syrian government as a means to defeat ISIS.
The irony of course is that we've now come full circle. The US created ISIS in hopes of toppling Assad, and now that the ISIS strategy is losing momentum (due in large part to Russia' relentless pounding of the group), the US now wants to just fast forward to the end game, which is to take out Assad directly (using ISIS as a reason of course).
What has also emerged is that Saudi Arabia has now grown impatient with the fact that Assad is still in power, and have started to press the US to provide more sophisticated weapons to the rebels. Saudi foreign minister Adel al Jubeir who is visiting the US just confirmed as much yesterday when he said that "Saudi Arabia supports a more aggressive military approach in Syria to get Assad to agree to a political solution."
The Foreign Minister says Saudi Arabia supports a more aggressive military approach in Syria to get Assad to agree to a political solution.
— Mark Knoller (@markknoller) June 17, 2016
In response to calls to take this approach, the Obama administration has expressed concern that attacking the Assad regime could lead to a direct conflict with Russia and Iran, which of course is a rational way to view the situation because Russia has been steadfast in its support of Assad's government, or at least not allowing the US to take it out.
Speaking to Russia's top economic forum, Putin proposed that the Syrian opposition could be offered seats in the Syrian cabinet as part of efforts to encourage dialogue that could lead to new elections being held in Syria. Putin said that creating a new government that will have the trust of most of Syria's population is key to ending the conflict, and that goal can be achieved through drafting a new constitution and holding new elections, something Assad pledged to Putin would happen.
In a sound bite that Putin absolutely must have known would get back to the Obama administration, Putin reportedly said "There is nothing more democratic than elections" – clearly a jab at the US and its hypocrisy of wanting to simply take out Assad militarily as opposed to working with Russia to force Syria holding new elections.
On Friday, Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov strongly warned Washington against striking Assad's forces, saying it would "fuel turmoil across the entire region", and that any attempt to topple Assad's government "wouldn't help a successful fight against terrorism and could plunge the region into total chaos."
Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said that the calls for a military action against Assad "can't but worry any reasonable person", adding "who would bear responsibility for that? Or shall we see the same Hollywood-style smile as it happened already in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya?"
* * *
Of course Konashenkov is right, the US has made a complete mess out of the Middle East and it appears as though Russia is not going to allow yet another debacle to take place in Syria. The question is this, will the US fold and pander to its Saudi "friends" who are pushing to have Assad out, or will the fact that toppling Assad will lead to a direct conflict with Russia be enough to have the US stand down. If all of the recent activity taking place on Russia's borders is any indication, we can get a good sense as to which way the US is leaning.
- Making 'The Unthinkable' The New Reality – Hogs To Slaughter
Submitted by HardScrabbleFarmer via The Burning Platform blog,
America is a third world country, it’s just not ready to accept that reality yet. Politically it is thoroughly corrupted, economically it is too deeply indebted to ever extricate itself, morally it is without direction, rudderless in dangerous seas and heading for the rocks.
The divides between the wealthy and the impoverished too wide to ever cross, the races and generations set against one another deliberately, provoked hourly by the very people who should be doing everything possible to unite them, armed to the teeth, seething with rage, neutered or enraged by pharmaceuticals, depending upon the age and gender, divided by sex, generations of fatherless children at every level raising up children who have no connection to anything that isn’t coming from a glowing screen- and all the while deliberately it seems, provoking hostility with every nation, every race, every people and persuasion in order to stir up a seething cauldron of slights and revenge for the coming reckoning.
Those once magnificent buildings will burn and the swarms that dwelt there will fan out, like flames across the face of the old nation looking to settle the score, imagined or real.
Last night I had a dream. One of the last things I did before I called it quits just after dark was to feed the hogs. I stood on the tailgate of the truck and emptied bags of watermelon rinds and soft mangoes, wilted heads of lettuce, bunches of carrots, apples, sweet yellow hothouse peppers imported from Holland, strawberries by the gallon, string beans, potatoes, cabbages and onions. The sows stood up on the fence rails and lifted their snouts to me to pet, their way of thanking me for the meal although they’d waited all day long for it.
When I finished I broke down the cardboard boxes and rolled up the empty plastic bags and then filled their troughs with fifty gallons of fresh, cool water. The Moon wasn’t quite full and Mars just beneath it, glowing like a jewel, and in the distance the large thunderheads were tipped pink from the last rays of the distant Sun, barn swallows streaking across the top of the orchard feasting on the mosquitoes that came to life in the cooling air.
I thought about these hogs, always hungry, always anticipating the next feeding and how easy they have become to manage since I discovered that simple secret. They will sit patiently waiting for me to bring them food rather than try and escape and find something to eat on their own. They are spoiled by their good fortune, fattening themselves on the food I bring them until they produce the things we require of them- piglets to sell and sausage and bacon to eat. I cannot imagine that the people who have managed to gain control of the levers of power in this world have not only learned from these kinds of lessons, but perfected the intricacies of human manipulation; psychological, pharmaceutical, social and spiritual.
I dreamed that the reasons that government checks and benefits were doled out monthly was no different than the reason I feed the pigs only once a day in large quantities. They grow dependent upon it, it is just large enough to make them feel for the moment like they have something substantial and to be excited about it and so remain close to the source of that disbursement, but it is not enough for them to ever be able to put away for the future so they might have the chance to escape that perpetual bondage, and by the end of their waiting there is only the hunger for the next allotment. No one would choose to live that way voluntarily and so they are led there, like the farmer with his bucket of slops, tapping the edge with a stick as he walks back to the enclosure, every head tilted in his direction, every eye glued to the pail.
The people who run the show know what they’re doing in such minute detail that the exact dollar figure of public assistance must have been studied to the last cent. This much and no more. How they slowly altered the values one at a time to make the unthinkable the new reality. Who could possibly father children and then abandon them? Who could accept from another the sustenance of life while never trying to participate in your own? At each step they added another rail, a new line of wire to the enclosure that is the life of the human livestock. And how many so readily accepted their own confinement and subjugation.
- So You Didn't Get Rich…
Submitted by Mark Ford via InternationalMan.com,
Waa! It’s not fair!
We baby boomers were told that if we worked hard and saved, we could spend the last quarter of our lives living comfortably and free from financial worries. Our parents told us. Our employers told us. Even the government told us.
How often, during our years of toil, did we daydream about those future days? The leisurely breakfasts, the afternoons golfing, dinners with friends, weekends with our grandchildren…
(Note to younger people: Don’t stop reading. What I’m saying here applies to you too—in spades!)
But now that we are reaching retirement age, the promise is beginning to feel like a fraud.
For many of us, a financially secure, worry-free retirement no longer seems possible.
Not to worry. I’m going to give you my best advice on how to create a very attractive retirement from what looks to be a seemingly impossible financial situation.
After scaring you with some numbers in this essay, I’m going to spend the next installment telling you how to fix anything you may have been doing wrong. I’ll also give you some realistic suggestions for acquiring wealth—no matter how much you have to start with—while you are still willing and able to work for it.
Finally, I’ll give you an idea for how you can retire very comfortably—and very soon—on a modest income. And by “modest,” I mean less than $40,000 per year.
What Happened to the Dream?
What happened, fellow boomers? How did we fail? Did we work too few hours? Too few years? Did we spend more than we should have? Or fail to save… or save too little? Did we invest poorly?
What happened was a combination of “surprises.” Some predictable. Some not so much…
1. We worked hard, but we didn’t get meaningful wage increases.
As a group, we boomers worked more than we were required to throughout our careers. Not only did we work more than 40 hours per week, our productivity nearly doubled between 1979 and 2013 (according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics).
And we are still working hard. According to the Current Population Survey, the full-time working boomer aged 55-plus is still averaging 42.4 hours per week. (The most recent data is from 2013.)
The problem was that, over the long haul, our wages did not keep pace with inflation.
From 1948–1979, wages adjusted for inflation rose 93.4%, according to the Economic Policy Institute. The wage rate increases were beating the slow rise of inflation—big time.
Now look at what happened in the late-1970s…
In 1979 (some sources say as early as 1972), wages went flat. For the next 35 years, as we boomers passed through our late teens, 20s, 30s, and 40s, real wages increased only about 8%.
And since 2009, the tide has reversed. Real hourly wages are once again on the decline.
So while our bills continued to rise, our take-home pay, in real dollars, didn’t—and still doesn’t—keep pace with inflation.
2. We saved less and less.
According to various sources, the average boomer has had an average annual disposable income of $24,000. The problem is: We squandered a lot of it.
Take a look at the following chart. It shows the personal saving rate of Americans since 1960. As you can see, it fell from a high in the mid-1970s to 0.8% in the early 2000s.
[The personal saving rate is the percentage of disposable income set aside in savings. Disposable income is the amount of money available after taxes have been deducted.]
Americans Have Been Saving Less and Less Since the Mid-1970s
Since boomers made up 33% of the U.S. population during those years, it’s safe to say the general downward trend applies to us too. From our late teens through our 40s and 50s, we saved less and less.
3. We took on a lot of debt.
Here’s another chart, this one showing the household debt service ratio (DSR) since the 1980s.
[The DSR is an estimate of the ratio of debt payments to disposable personal income.]
From 1993–2007, the Debt Service Ratio Increased 27%
Notice how in 1980 household financial obligations represented around 11% of disposable income. That increased for over two decades.
So we saved less and, since our wages hardly moved, we were forced to take on more debt to support our bad spending habits. (I’ll talk more about this in a moment.)
For the little we did save, we put a bit of it in the stock market. Which leads us to yet another slew of “predictable surprises”…
4. We were poor investors.
Based on analysis done by Pew Research and others, the average retirement-age American today has managed to accumulate a net worth of about $230,000. About $150,000 of that is socked away in some type of retirement account(s).
Now, the average retirement-age American would have done quite well in his retirement account(s)… had he not let himself get in the way.
You see, the S&P 500 has returned an average of around 11% annually since the mid-1980s.
However, the average U.S. investor in U.S. stock funds earned only 3.7% annually over the past 30 years. (I’m using the mid-1980s because that’s when the first of the boomers hit their mid-30s. And the mid-30s are when big income increases start to happen and people are finally able to put a little aside for savings… and investing.)
So, in theory, if a 35-year-old boomer would have parked $15,000 in the S&P 500 in 1984—and didn’t touch it—the stock market would have grown that to over $350,000.
Instead, at the 3.7% return the average investor managed, that $15,000 investment in the stock market grew to just shy of $45,000.
How is it even possible that so many of us managed to underperform the stock market by so much for three decades?
We weren’t the smartest investors.
Most investors—not just boomers—chase returns. They jump on a stock after it’s already made a big run. And they cling to a sinking one far too long, hoping for a turnaround.
5. We invested through some nasty market crashes.
The crash of 1987 (when we boomers were 23–41 years old) was the first big shakeout.
On Black Monday, the Dow lost 22.6%, or $500 billion. This was the largest single-day market crash in history.
Then there was the bursting of the tech (“dot-com”) bubble in March 2000. From top to bottom, the Nasdaq composite lost 78% of its value from 2000–2002. Tech fund investors were hit even harder.
I remember how confident some of my peers were about the tech market right up until the crash. Though they never told me the numbers, I know that a few of them were devastated. If you had jumped on the bandwagon and invested in tech funds at the Nasdaq’s high in 2000, you would have likely lost three-quarters of your investment just two short years later.
And despite having lived through these experiences…
6. We still didn’t learn our lesson.
Getting back to our love affair with debt—we made yet another critical mistake. Not only did we save less and take on more debt, we attempted to live well beyond our means.
When housing and land prices became too inflated in the early 2000s, we got greedy and ate up the crummy subprime loans the banks offered us. We saw low interest rates and overleveraged ourselves to buy a bigger house, a faster car, a more luxurious life. (“We doubled productivity! We earned it!”)
The real estate bubble burst in 2007–2008 and real estate prices plummeted. That triggered yet another stock market crash, which lost us many more millions.
According to the Mortgage Bankers Association, as many as 3 million homes fell into foreclosure during the Great Recession. In some popular retirement spots, like Nevada, as much as 57% of homeowners still owe more on their mortgages than their homes are worth.
What Retirement Looks Like for the Average Baby Boomer Today
So here we are now.
Given all of the above, things are looking bleak. And it only gets worse.
As I mentioned earlier, the average retirement-age American today has a net worth of about $230,000. Around $150,000 of that is in one or more retirement accounts.
Still, will these numbers support a comfortable retirement?
Let’s do the math…
Assuming a 3.7% average annual return (the average return of most stock investors), a $150,000 retirement fund would return $5,550 per year, or $462.50 per month.
Now, keep in mind that this includes capital returns. Not just cash returns. So even if you wanted to spend this entire amount, it wouldn’t be possible (without selling some of your investments and facing capital gains taxes).
But for simplicity’s sake, let’s just use the $5,550 number.
Five thousand per year won’t buy you much in today’s world. And it will buy less each year as inflation erodes the value of the dollar. Luckily for most people, retirement accounts are only one source of retirement income. Social Security is another source.
The average Social Security income for retired workers in 2013 was $1,306 per month, or $15,672 per year.
So for the average person approaching retirement age, their retirement accounts and Social Security gets them to $1,768.50 per month, or $21,222 per year.
For one in three retirees, a third source of income is pension payouts. The median private pension benefit for individuals aged 65 and older in 2013 was $8,612. The median government (state or local) pension benefit was $20,276.
Put all that information together and retirees can expect an average monthly income of $1,700–$3,400 per month.
What sort of retirement lifestyles would this range of income afford?
Consider the following:
- The current median rent in the U.S. is $1,471. The average three-bedroom, two-bath apartment will cost you $1,300-1,700 per month.
- The average monthly electric bill for said house will cost around $107 per month.
- The average cable/internet bill is around $64 per month.
- The average annual golf club dues are around $520 per month.
- The average restaurant meal costs around $26 for two people, and retirees dined out an average of 193 times in 2013… or 16 times per month. That’s $418 per month on restaurants.
- The average annual budget for travel for retirees is $7,700. Retirees apparently plan to travel four times per year in their golden years (though I’m unsure how $7,700 will cover that). If we break it down monthly, that’s $641 per month.
Basic housing expenses, a golf membership, a few meals out each week, and a trip every three months sounds pleasant enough… though far from luxurious.
But here’s the problem: Someone earning an average amount won’t be able to afford this lifestyle on passive income alone.
And we haven’t even considered gas, groceries, haircuts, gifts for the grandchildren, and an occasional movie.
And what about health care?
The average retiree should expect to spend $220,000 out of pocket on health care during retirement—not including long-term care.
Let’s be conservative and say your retirement will last 20 years. That’s about $11,000 per year for health care, or $917 per month.
Add it all up—assuming another $2,000 per year for the expenses we haven’t yet accounted for—and you’re looking at costs of about $4,300 per month, or nearly $52,000 per year.
Keep in mind, too, that $52,000 is going to climb as inflation marches higher.
If you’re just pulling from your retirement account to make up the difference, you’re going to run out of money several years before you die. Even if you’re earning on the high end of average, you’re still looking at a shortfall of about $1,000 a month. The return on your investments just isn’t enough to make up the difference.
So let’s assume that you are nearing or at retirement age, and you can’t even come close to $52,000 in income.
Or—forget that—what if you just want to stop worrying and stressing over your current financial situation altogether?
What should you do?
I have some solutions. Five of them, in fact.
Fair warning: The information below might be difficult to take. But if you stick with it to the end, my bet is that you’ll feel a lot better about your situation. In fact, many of my longtime readers have taken this plan and broken free of financial worry completely.
More importantly, you’ll have a plan of action.
1. Be realistic about what you can expect from stocks.
First and foremost, you must recognize that you will not be able “make up” for the past by implementing any sort of short-term stock strategy in hopes of catching a big takeoff.
No matter what investment service you use, you wouldn’t be able to double or triple your money in 10 years or less without taking wild risks.
If you just had a portfolio that matched market averages, you’d only get 7–10% per year.
Take the sum of all your stock investments and multiply that by 7–10% per year for, say, 10 years and you will have a realistic idea of what to expect.
Write that number down. Don’t be tempted to make it bigger by telling yourself you will make 15% or 20% every year. It is possible that you could do that. But if you move all your money into speculative stock strategies, it is more likely that you will end up with much less than 7%.
2. Accept the fact that you may have to continue working.
Hear me out…
When your heart is set on retiring at 65, you may feel like working beyond that age will be a living hell.
But it doesn’t have to be. I’ve retired three times so far (at 39, 49, and 59). And each time, I found that going back to work was a welcome relief.
And I’m not only speaking from my own experience alone. I’ve advised many people to keep working in retirement and they have found a great deal of satisfaction in turning their hobbies and passions into second and third careers.
You don’t have to keep doing the work that you have been doing. You might be able to move into a consulting or freelance position with your current employer. Or follow a dream and start your own business. I have dozens of ideas you could try… which I’ll tell you about shortly.
But if you need to continue to work, you need to continue. The moment you accept that fact, the odiousness of working will dissipate. You might even be okay with it. Heck, you might eventually be thrilled with it.
My view on this subject is that one should never give up active work entirely. That’s because work provides great and sustaining fulfillment. Especially if it involves learning something new or following a passion or hobby.
3. Develop an additional stream of income.
Recognize another financial fact of life: the amount of money you have to save and invest, after you take away assets you plan to keep forever (like your house or your wife’s jewelry), is the single most important factor in building wealth. I call this your “net investable wealth,” or N.I.W.
You won’t hear this from brokers or bankers or stock market analysts. They won’t say it because it shatters the myth that clever stock market investing is the cure for all financial problems.
Fact is, stock investing alone can’t give you the wealth you need for retirement. Eking out a few percentage points on an investment portfolio will not solve your problem of needing more income now.
You must increase your income by other means—none of which will incur fees and commissions from your stockbroker. And none of which will be subject to the sort of volatility the market is likely to face in future downturns.
So how are you going to do that? How are you going to increase your income now, at this stage of your life?
The answer may not please you, but you must come up with a strategy to make more money from a business you have or work for.
You must also create a second stream of income. And this is so important that you have to find an hour or two every day to devote to making it happen.
I am not going to tell you exactly how to do that here. But I’m going to suggest that you check out a program I created called the Extra Income Project.
I’ve spent five years working with a team of people to develop a series of reports and how-to guides for developing income from a side business or hobby. All 36 of the individual income strategies we currently cover (plus another 10-plus we have in the works) are based on my own and my mentees’ personal experiences successfully earning money in this way.
If you want to immediately make more money, I’m telling you: This is the way to do it. This is the fastest way to grow your income.
4. Consider—or reconsider—real estate investing.
I don’t mean the kind of real estate investing that is advertised on late-night infomercials, but income-generating real estate investing. The kind of real estate investing that I do.
This strategy will give you income almost immediately. And it may very well give you asset appreciation—which can add to your net worth considerably in 10 years or less.
By the way, contrary to common opinion, you don’t need a massive investment to get into rental real estate. You can get started by pooling money with one or two friends and going in on a few properties.
Really, to be a successful rental real estate investor, all you need is three things: money, knowledge, and time. This is true of most investments, but the good news is that with rental real estate, you don’t need a lot of any one of them. In fact, with the right deal, a partner, and leverage, you can get into a lucrative rental real estate property for as little as $10,000.
Real estate is not difficult to understand. It is very much a simple supply-and-demand sort of investment. I have been able to make millions doing it and avoid the bubble without ever taking a course or getting a license or any of that stuff.
5. Retire this year on $40,000 or less.
Finally, once you increase your income, your next step should be to decrease your expenses.
Because there is a way to enjoy a dream retirement, even if your income is limited to $40,000 or less.
Imagine, you wake up when you want to and spend a half hour walking on the beach. On the way back, you buy fresh red snapper from your favorite local fish vendor.
You enjoy breakfast served to you on your private porch. Afterward, you work on your novel or you paint. Then you take a nap.
You have lunch at your regular table in the corner. After lunch, you check on the money you made from your side business today ($500). Then you take another nap.
In the late afternoon, you visit some of your friends. At sunset, you have drinks with your spouse at a beachside bar and listen to a young man play his guitar.
Does that sound good?
Many of my friends are living this dream currently. And not because they’re rich.
They’re able to live in luxury by moving abroad. What I just described to you is a typical day in Nicaragua for many retired American expats—many of them who started with a smaller than average retirement fund.
Even in nice areas in Nicaragua, property costs and rents are low. Taxes are low. The cost of living is low. Health care is affordable, and the quality is on par with the U.S.
And here’s another great perk: There is no tax on a pension or any other money being brought into the country, as long as it was earned outside the country.
You can run an internet business or any other business back home (refer back to points 2 and 3) and not be taxed a penny in Nicaragua.
Imagine earning just $40,000 per year and enjoying this lifestyle. A little house five minutes from the ocean… housekeeping and gardening services year-round… access to wild, private beaches… spas and horseback riding for $10–$25 per hour… and day trips for less than $200.
Wait a minute… doesn’t that sound a lot like the retirement you always dreamed of?
I hope you’re starting to realize that even if things didn’t go as well as you’d planned over the years, it’s not too late to have your dream retirement. Far from it. If you do the things I’m suggesting to you today, starting with boosting your income, you’ll find that, instead of disappearing, your retirement account will grow and grow over the years. You’ll learn new things about yourself, acquire new skills, have fun, and have greater financial security along the way.
All you need to do is start.
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