GROW UP! How can anyone be for this spoiled brat? - TS

GROW UP!

How can anyone be for this spoiled brat?

By Thomas Sowell – 1.30.16

Of all the many things said about Donald Trump, what was said by Roger Ailes, head of the Fox News Channel, said it all in just two words: “Grow up!”
It is amazing how many people have been oblivious to this middle-aged man’s spoiled brat behavior, his childish boastfulness about things he says he is going to do, and his petulant response to every criticism with ad hominem replies.
He has boasted that his followers would stick by him even if he committed murder. But is that something to boast about? Is it not an insult to his followers, if it is true? Moreover, his cockiness is misplaced, because he still does not have a majority among Republican voters, while you need a majority of all the voters to win any state in the general election.
Trump has a showman’s talent for telling people what they want to hear. But you can listen in vain for a coherent argument from him, based on facts and logic, much less an understanding of the inherent limitations of the office of president.
More than two centuries ago, Edmund Burke said: “Constitute government how you please, infinitely the greater part of it must depend upon the exercise of the powers which are left at large to the prudence and uprightness of ministers of state.”
In other words, the personal character of the people to whom you entrust the powers of government matters even more than what kinds of government institutions there are. There have been some good kings and some bad presidents, as well as vice versa.

In a world where the future of this country is threatened from within by increasingly angry polarization, and where external threats can become nuclear, are we really going to entrust the safety or this country to a man who still needs to grow up?
Is the fact that he loudly expressed our own disgust with the political establishment a sufficient reason to gamble the whole future of the country by putting him in the White House?
The White House is not a place for on-the-job training. You are supposed to be ready, or at the very least grown up, before you walk in the door. Aging happens automatically, but maturity is optional — and it is an option that Donald Trump has not yet chosen to exercise.
The issue that Trump raised about Ted Cruz’s having been born in Canada is not the first time he has tried to challenge where someone was born. “The Donald” was among those who tried to say that Barack Obama was not born an American citizen, and who disgraced themselves, while undermining other critics of Obama who had serious objections to his policies.
On the other hand, messianic demagogues have often spoken at least part of the truth. But they have also often led their followers to their doom, whether at Jonestown, Stalingrad, or innumerable other places. That is a very high price to pay for an exhilaration of the moment.
Donald Trump is not the only one who needs to act like an adult. With this country starting to unravel from within, while ruthless enemies overseas are developing both nuclear weapons and intercontinental missiles to deliver them, we face problems that cannot be solved by candidates with glib words or by voters who votes for whoever meets their emotional needs.
If you don’t understand the issues, but want to do your patriotic duty, then stay home on election night, whether in the primaries or in the national election in November. Uninformed voters turn elections into a game of playing Russian roulette with the future of America.
Conservative candidates will also have an opportunity to show their maturity and their patriotism. This is not the first primary season in which the conservative vote has been split among so many Republican candidates that it virtually guarantees that someone who is not a conservative will win the Republican nomination.
At some point during the primary season, it becomes clear that some candidates have no real chance of winning the nomination, much less the general election. At that point they can either continue hanging on, keeping the conservative vote split, or they can withdraw and throw their support to some other conservative candidate who has a chance.
A lot of people need to grow up, and to do something for this country that has done so much for them.

ON EUGENICS AND WHITE PRIVILEGE

ON EUGENICS AND WHITE PRIVILEGE. In his latest G-File, Jonah Goldberg watches the “Progressive” left shift the goalpostson their deeply racist past and concludes:

When Liberal Fascism came out and I was being attacked on all sides, I remember my editor saying something like:
“Look, everyone’s going to scream about this for a long time. Then, someday, maybe in ten years, a more ‘reasonable’ person will come along and concede about 80 percent of your argument and claim that ‘everyone knows’ that stuff.”
We’re not there yet, obviously. And maybe we never will be. But the recent mainstream liberal acceptance that Woodrow Wilson was a bad, bad guy can be traced directly back to Liberal Fascism. I’m not claiming all of the credit, of course. The Claremont gang and the folks at Reason, among others, were beating up on Wilson long before me. But the anti-Wilson argument went mainstream on the right because of Liberal Fascism (largely because Glenn Beck picked up on it).
Similarly, the notion that progressives were eugenicists was crazy talk ten years ago. Now, everyone knows it, nothing to see here, move along. I can’t wait to see what becomes old news next.

Read the whole thing.

17

Posted at 7:43 am by Ed Driscoll   

DOES EUROPE HAVE A FUTURE?

POSTED ON JANUARY 27, 2016 BY JOHN HINDERAKER IN IMMIGRATION, ISLAM

DOES EUROPE HAVE A FUTURE? [UPDATED]

That is a question that could be repeated daily, given the steady stream of news stories like these. First, from Germany, where New Year’s Eve turned into a nightmare of sexual assault with hundreds of women being attacked by migrants, a report on several cities’ preparations for Carnival:

Cologne and Bonn carnival organisers have begun handing out rules for refugees for next week’s jollity – with warnings about women, alcohol and urinating in public.

The cities are on edge after mass sexual assaults by immigrants against hundreds of women on New Year’s Eve in Cologne. The number of complaints resulting from the frenzy in and around the main station now stands at over 820.

Cologne’s Cathedral Square on New Year’s Eve

Carnival is a bigger celebration and could be a worse problem.

In Bonn, carnival organisers have now printed leaflets welcoming migrants – provided they behave themselves.

Printed in several languages including Arabic, the flyers read: ‘People dress up to celebrate, sing and dance together. In the carnival time everyone must deal respectfully with one another and observe the laws.
‘Bützen – that means kisses on the cheeks. Sexual approaches are not allowed! Women and men must always be in agreement. No means no!

“No means no.” That’s borrowed from American college campuses, isn’t it? Somehow I think these folks have a little farther to go.

‘Urinating in public is forbidden!’

I’m glad they cleared that up, although here, to be fair, the migrants might have some company.

In Cologne one of the points raised on the leaflet – which is printed in Arabic too – is also about alcohol, which Muslims are not supposed to consume.

It reads: ‘Many in Cologne will be drinking beer or other alcoholic beverages at carnival time, but of course there is no obligation to do so.

‘Having fun, singing and dancing can all be done as well without alcohol.’

Speaking for myself, I never did much singing or dancing without alcohol, but others may be different. The point is that if you have to start at square one with a gentle suggestion that sexual assault and public urination are frowned upon, you are probably in trouble.

This story comes from Sweden:

Swedish police have resorted to sending undercover officers to Stockholm’s swimming pools amid a rising number of sex assaults on girls by migrants.

Plain clothes police will monitor swimming baths in the Swedish capital after ‘a few dozen’ suspected cases of sexual harassment were reported mainly by parents of teenage girls.

It comes amid reports that a number of girls said they had been sexually assaulted by young male asylum seekers at the city’s Eriksdalsbadet Olympic baths in the past three weeks.

The girls who filed complaints were all under the age of 18.

‘We do not wish to point fingers to a specific group…

Of course not!

…but we are talking about boys without a parent or guardian,’ Stockholm City police chief Elisabeth Anestad told Expressen.

Eriksdalsbadet, which is the biggest aquatics centre in Stockholm, has previously reported a spike in sexual assaults – mainly incidents involving boys and young men groping women. As a result, Stockholm police will now have uniformed police regularly patrolling the swimming centre, and the pool’s hot tubs are now segregated by sex.

It’s happening in Belgium, too:

It comes as a Belgian mayor announced that he would propose banning male refugees from a swimming pool for a month on Monday after complaints from female bathers.

And, not surprisingly, Germany:

The German town of Bornheim, 19 miles south of Cologne, temporarily banned male asylum seekers from its pool this month after receiving complaints of sexual harassment.

Last week, the historic baths Johannisbad baths in Zwickau, Saxony banned all migrants after male asylum seekers had been caught masturbating in a hot tub and sexually assaulting women.

Back to Sweden:

Sweden has seen a dramatic increase in the number of Moroccan under-18s who apply for asylum without a parent or guardian in the past four years, with many later running away from the housing provided to live on the streets in the capital.

Stockholm police estimate that at least 200 Moroccan street children move in the area around the main train station in the centre of the capital, sleeping rough, and living off criminal activity.

‘These guys are a huge problem for us. They steal stuff everywhere and assault security guards at the central station,’ one police officer told SVT.

‘They grope girls between their legs, and slap them in the face when they protest. All police officers are aware of this. I would never let my children go to the central station. No officer would.’

Alexandra Mezher

Still in Sweden, a more tragic crime. Alexandra Mezher, a 22-year-old social worker who was working at a home for unaccompanied young refugees, was stabbed to death by one of them. He is said to be a 15-year-old Somali, but in fact his identity is unknown and no one knows how old he is. The reaction to the murder by left-wing Swedish officialdom was mixed:

[National Police Commissioner Dan Eliasson]…said: ‘Well, you are of course distraught on behalf of everyone involved. Naturally, for the person killed and her family, but also for a lone young boy who commits such a heinous incident.

‘What has that person been through? Under what circumstances has he grown up? What is the trauma he carries?

‘This entire migration crisis shows how unfair life is in many parts of the world. We have to try to help solve this best we can.’

Most Swedes would say that the incident shows how unfair life was in Sweden, to poor Miss Mezher. But Eliasson’s sympathy for the murderer was not unique:

Eliasson is not the first senior political figure in Sweden to demand compassion for the 15-year-old boy being held on suspicion of murder.

Marie Osth Karlsson, a senior local government commissioner, said: ‘I also have to express sympathy for the man behind the crime, there is also a person behind it’

Both Eliasson and Osth Karlsson belong to the ruling Social Democrat party, which has been criticised in the past year for its handling of the migrant crisis.

You might think that is enough for one day. But here is one more, from Denmark. A 17-year-old girl was attacked near a refugee center by a man who tried to rape her. Fortunately, the girl had a can of pepper spray in her purse and fought off the attacker, who has not been caught. The upshot? The girl is to be prosecuted, apparently, for illegal possession of pepper spray. The case has sparked considerable controversy in Denmark.

We could go on, but let’s mercifully draw the curtain over events in Europe. We have here predators and prey, a familiar theme in nature. But even rabbits and wildebeest are smart enough to understand that they are prey and to try to defend themselves. European elites? The jury is out.

UPDATE: More information has come out about the murder of Alexandra Mezher, in part because the allegedly 15-year-old murderer has made his first court appearance. I am going to hazard a guess and speculate that the perpetrator, reported to be six feet tall, is older than 15:

It has also emerged that the perpetrator attacked another resident of the home for unaccompanied minors, and Ms. Mezher intervened to try to stop the fight. It was at that point that the perpetrator stabbed her to death. Ms. Mezher’s family says that she “had warned her mother she ‎was caring for ‘big powerful guys’ aged up to 24 in the shelter” for unaccompanied minors.

A humiliating day awaits the Federal Reserve

By John Crudele

January 28, 2016                                                                                                                    

 

Modal Trigger  

The Commerce Department, at 8:30 a.m. Jan. 29, will announce how healthy the US economy was in the fourth quarter — and the answer is expected to be “not so good.”

In fact, according to the Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank, the nation’s economy, or gross domestic product, grew at just a 0.7 percent annual rate in the final three months of 2015.

That’s not the official number — the official one will come on Friday from Commerce. The Atlanta Fed keeps running tabs on what the number should be, based on data already in circulation. They call it GDPNow and, so far, it has been pretty accurate.

Some Wall Street economists have GDP forecasts that are even lower, much lower — like negative numbers lower.

So why will the Fed be embarrassed?

Because just last month, it raised interest rates despite the fact that it was quite clear that the economy was slowing. In fact, the Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow model back in December wasn’t much higher than it is now.

The Fed on Wednesday, following its January meeting, said it would keep interest rates right where they are. That is, no hike or cut.

But already, it’s acknowledging that the US economy is slowing. Friday’s GDP should be a whack across the face since the rate hike was so recent.

Stock prices fell sharply after the announcement, because the Fed said nice things about the labor market — something it will probably regret in less than a week — and because there seems to be more concern about inflation, which could prompt more rate hikes.

Higher interest rates, of course, tend to slow down an economy. And to raise them when business conditions are noticeably weak — as they were at the end of 2015 — is an obvious mistake.

In fact, the Dow Jones industrial average is down 9.1 percent since the day before the Dec. 16 Fed rate hike. Either the markets don’t like the hike, or the economy is cooling and profits are falling — taking stock prices with them — or both.

I’ve already explained that the Fed felt that it needed to raise interest rates for a number of reasons that I can’t disagree with. For one thing, the quarter-percentage-point hike in December from the long-standing near-zero rates gives the Fed an opportunity down the road to lower rates when the economy starts weakening.

The second reason is that savers have been getting killed by the ultra-low rates, and I think that even the Fed now realizes that this unusual policy has been a disaster.

But a couple of things have happened since the December hike. The first is that interest rates really didn’t go up. The so-called “discount rate” did — that’s the rate banks charge each other for overnight loans — and so, too, did the irrelevant prime rate.

But interest rates in the open market have actually gone down because traders realize that the world economy is a mess and that borrowers will need to be incentivized to borrow through low rates.

After Friday’s GDP number, there will be the usual defenders and detractors. The defenders, mostly Wall Street pros, will argue that economic growth slowed because (1) the weather in the US was warmer than normal and (2) China’s slowing growth hurt US companies.

If the GDP on Friday comes in lighter than expected, you’ll start hearing two things. There will be howls first that the US is going into a recession and, second, that the Fed needs to do something.

The calls for the Fed to “do something” will get louder if the stock market continues its abysmal performance — down 8.5 percent this year.

What can the Fed do? As I said above, it could take back the quarter-point rate hike it instituted in December, even if that will make Chair Janet Yellen and her policymaking committee look foolish. More likely, the members of the committee will start reassuring the markets that another rate hike won’t be happening until later than expected.

Wall Street has been expecting another rate hike in March, but that time­table now seems to have gone away. I’ve been saying that the next hike won’t be until summer, and that’s what the experts now seem to expect.

Since I’ve been right, I’ll tell you what I think: The Fed will be given an opportunity to hike rates come June because it’ll get some misleadingly good economic numbers this spring — as it always does.

Whether the Fed uses that opportunity to raise rates will depend a lot on how it thinks the financial markets will react.

Right now, I’d guess there won’t be another hike this year — especially since a move like that might be awkward in a presidential election year.

As exciting as this Friday will be for the financial market, next week will be even more so. On Feb. 5, the Labor Department will release its January employment report.

The December report showed an exceptionally large gain of 292,000 jobs.

I revealed in a previous column that almost all that growth came from seasonal adjustments and the real gains were 11,000. Still, the 292,000 is the only justification left for the Fed’s actions in December.

A lousy employment report next week will put the Fed in a whole new kind of trouble. I won’t get into it now, but January jobs reports like the one coming next week are often disappointing because of some statistical quirks in the numbers.

If this Friday’s GDP report elicits an “Oops” at the Fed, next Friday’s could result in a lot of “Oh, s–t!”

HILLARY WAS PAID $225K A POP FOR WALL STEET SPEECHES

HILLARY WAS PAID $225K A POP FOR WALL STEET SPEECHES THAT REPORTERS WERE BARRED FROM COVERING:

 Not only were reporters kept out, but Clinton refuses today to release transcripts. What was she promising Goldman Sachs Group, the Carlyle Group, Morgan Stanley, et. al. that she didn’t want reporters to hear then or us to read now? The Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group’s Richard Pollock obtained a copy of Hillary’s Harry Walker Agency speaking engagement contract and much more.

11

Posted at 7:14 am by Mark Tapscott   

How stupid and vicious do elites think ‘we’ are? - MSM

MICHAEL BARONE: How stupid and vicious do elites think ‘we’ are?

The “we” in that question are ordinary citizens and the “they” are political and media elites who hold them in contempt. Which they do over and over again by trying to obfuscate and cover up the source and motives of terrorist attacks.
Barack Obama, who refuses to use phrases akin to “Islamist terrorism,” is a prime offender, but far from the only one. His predecessor George W. Bush, after the attacks of September 11, made a point of visiting mosques and calling Islam a religion of peace.
Undoubtedly he then feared that many Americans would attack and assault Muslims, real or perceived, and a very few such attacks occurred. But government statistics count far fewer “hate crimes” against Muslims than against Jews.
Nonetheless Obama still behaves as if any suggestion that terrorists shouting “Allahu akbar!” has something to do with Islam will spark massacres and persecution across the country. The American people are seen as a great beast, incapable of reason or cool judgment. Stupid and vicious.
So they must be reminded that they are not morally superior to terrorists. At a national prayer breakfast, Obama felt obliged to remind Americans that Christians attacked Muslims — in the Crusades, 800 years ago. . . .
Americans may be noticing as well how far political correctness has gone in Europe, especially Germany. European and American elites praised Chancellor Angela Merkel for promising to take in 1 million mostly Muslim, mostly male refugees. Why can’t America be so generous?
But ordinary people, there and here, have seen how police, municipal and national officials have covered up migrants’ behavior on New Year’s. Even mass assaults on women in Cologne and other cities, and how print and broadcast media eagerly cooperated. Cellphone cameras told the story which elite media wanted to ignore. . . .
Ordinary Americans, I think, have a better sense of how to get these questions right, without dissolving into irrational hatred, than the elites who look down on them as stupid and vicious.

The ruling class hates the ruled. The ruled have begun to return the favor. Which goes to the point of my USA Todaycolumn.

44

Posted at 7:30 am by Glenn Reynolds   

Is Russia Imploding In Front Of Our Eyes... Again? - It's About OIL

Don’t look at China, the threat might come from Saudi Arabia

   Summary

 24 October 2015

 

You probably have heard this numerous times before; the Chinese position in US Treasuries is outright dangerous and China could single-handedly force the US Dollar to weaken quite substantially. Whilst that’s definitely correct, it sure looks like one is overlooking the impact the low oil price has on the public finances of Saudi Arabia.

As the country is mainly depending on exporting its oil to keep its government budget balances, the Kingdom has been hit extremely hard by the 60% drop in the oil price as an almost certain budget surplus was suddenly converted in a huge budget deficit. In fact even during the darkest hours of the Global Financial Crisis, not a lot of countries saw their government budgets dip into the red by in excess of 20%!

Source: The Guardian

The main problem is the fact Saudi Arabia had been using an assumed oil price of $100/barrel to balance its budget and as the current oil price is less than $50/barrel, a lot of government officials will be scratching their heads. A huge budget deficit also means the Saudi’s will be scrambling to get their hands on cash and earlier this year the country has completed the first debt offering in almost 10 years!

But that won’t really help much. Raising a few billion dollars in government debt won’ offset a lot of the expected $150B deficit and the officials in Riyadh will continue to target the country’s sovereign wealth fund (well, it’s not ‘officially’ a sovereign wealth fund, but just an investment division of the central bank) which is the third largest  in the world and had in excess of $750Bin assets before the oil price started to fall.

Source: tradingeconomics.com

The Saudi Arabian wealth fund was an excellent performer as it yielded an average 11% return over the past 10 years and this might be the country’s best bet to get out of the current oil crisis. But that’s also where the US Dollar comes into play.

And zooming in:

Source: International Monetary Fund

The original purpose of the fund was to make sure the Saudi economy remained relatively stable, and the assets could and should be monetized to soften sudden economic shocks. To serve this purpose, the country’s cash was invested in low-risk and highly liquid investments, such as US Treasury bills. It’s impossible to know how many hundreds of billions Saudi Arabia has invested in US debt securities as the American government doesn’t want you to know how which gulf country owns how much of the US debt (Government Accounting Office, 1979). But as the Saudi’s have virtually pegged their currency to the US Dollar, we would dare to bet in excess of half of the fund’s assets are held in US debt securities as it fits the bill in terms of a) liquidity, b) ‘safety’ and c) currency protection.

Even if you’d assume Saudi Arabia would be able to raise $30B per year in government debt, it still has a $120B gap to cover and the only decent solution would be to start selling US debt. This could put additional pressure on the financial markets as it won’t be easy to absorb this kind of selling.

That’s yet another reason why the Federal Reserve won’t be able to increase the interest rates anytime soon. Saudi Arabia’s gradual selling could be taken care of by the market but imagine the USA would start to increase its interest rates as well. A snowball-effect isn’t out of the question at all, and the pressure on the government bonds would be even higher and instead of a stronger Dollar, the US Dollar would be weaker. It will be extremely interesting to see more updates from the Saudi’s to see how much of the US treasuries it has already sold and how it plans to tackle its government deficit.

Because no matter what happens (excluding a sudden jump in the oil price), in 4 years from now, Saudi Arabia’s foreign reserves will be depleted. And that will most definitely fuel additional unrest in the Middle East.

> Click here to read our Guide to Gold and prepare yourself for the future!

 China, debt, Deficit, GDP, Gulf, Gulf States, oil, Persian Gulf, Riyadh, Saudi, Saudi Arabia, Sovereign Wealth Fund, Treasury, US dollar

__________________________________________

Is Russia Imploding In Front Of Our Eyes... Again?

Submitted by Secular Investor on 01/24/2016 07:24 -0500

• Budget Deficit
 
• Davos
 
• European Union
 
• Google
 
• Saudi Arabia
 
• Switzerland
 
• Twitter
 
• Twitter

Certain countries are starting to feel the pain of the low oil prices. In a previous column, we already warned you about the potential problems in Saudi Arabia that might spill over to the USA. Saudi Arabia was quickly moving towards a government deficit of almost 22% of the GDP, resulting in a shortage of $150B on the total budget in 2015.

Keep in mind that preliminary expectation was based on an oil price of $40-45 per barrel and as the oil price has continued to fall, Saudi Arabia’s finances have gotten worse by the week (and even by the day).

But Saudi Arabia isn’t the only country that is feeling a huge impact from the low oil prices, as Russia for instance might have some more issues to dig itself out of the current government deficit hole. Whereas Saudi Arabia was smart enough to put quite a bit of cash in its sovereign wealth fund (which was the third largest in the world) to reduce the impact of the economic shocks, the Russian economy isn’t as well-prepared as the Saudi Arabian economy.

Even though Russia says it has been preparing for an average oil price of approximately 40-60 dollars per barrel during the next several years, we remain unconvinced about the country’s readiness to indeed be able to cope with a continuously low oil price, and it’s really hard to imagine the country can indeed survive it at all.

Source: Bricplusnews.com

Indeed, at the Davos forum in Switzerland, Russia has quietly tried to open the door with the international community to try to find a way to reduce the pressure on the Russian economy, and the government officials are hoping to see for instance the European Union become more flexible with the economic sanctions as that will very likely be the only way to avert a horrible economic crisis (and potential collapse of the country’s entire  economic and financial system).

Since the beginning of this year, the Russian Ruble has lost approximately 10% of its value, indicating the market is also becoming increasingly reluctant to believe Russia’s expectations, and the low oil price has sent the Russian Ruble tumbling as the currency lost approximately 60% of its value since May last year. Not only will the government budget deficit be much higher than anticipated (the expected $50B deficit was based on an oil price of $50/barrel, whilst the current oil price is trading quite a bit lower than that level.

Source: Google Finance

In our opinion, Russia has approximately 12-18 months left at the current oil price before the country reaches a point of no return , as its foreign reserves are dwindling due to the lower oil revenues. And that could actually be a dangerous situation, as Putin isn’t exactly the kind of person who’d be sitting on his hands when the economy is collapsing. And a bear that’s being backed into a corner can do something dangerous to draw the attention of the population away from the failing economy.

The best cure for low oil prices are low oil prices, that’s for sure, but is Russia able to wait for these higher oil prices? It’s not just Russia’s oil sector that is depending on the oil price, but the entire economy. Saudi Arabia’s government deficit is worse, that’s true, but the country has a much bigger war chest to wait this one out, whilst Russia is already seeing the bottom of its foreign currency treasury.

Source: crudeoilpeak.info

And oh yes, the last time we saw the oil price plunging like this (and staying at a low level for a prolonged period of time), it actually was the start of the Soviet Union falling apart

Betting on Deflation May Be a Huge Mistake

Betting on Deflation May Be a Huge Mistake. Here’s Why…….

Submitted by Bruno de Landevoisin on 01/24/2016 11:32 -0500

• Consumer Prices
 
• Copper
 
• Crude
 
• Crude Oil
 
• Federal Reserve
 
• Futures market
 
• Jim Rickards
 
• Precious Metals
 
• Purchasing Power
 
• Real estate
 
• Recession

inShare4

 

 

By Stefan Gleason of the Money Metals Exchange

Precious metals investors heading into 2016 worry the dollar will continue marching ahead, right over the top of gold and silver prices. The Fed is telegraphing additional rate hikes throughout the year, and commodity prices – led by crude oil – are falling. There have been tremors in the biggest beneficiary markets of all when it comes to the Fed’s QE largesse – U.S. equities and real estate. And the possibility of a recession is growing, both in the U.S. and around the world.

There are plenty of reasons we might see even lower official inflation numbers and a stronger dollar in 2016. But don’t think for a second that consumer prices or living costs will fall. They haven’t, they aren’t, and they never will in a sustained way – thanks to the Fed’s creation in 1913. This is where the deflationists have it wrong.

The impact of further disinflationary forces or even a deflationary episode on precious metals prices is a bit harder to predict.

The bear case for precious metals is rather simple. Should metals trade like commodities, they are likely to follow other raw materials lower. If we get a liquidity crunch akin to the 2008 financial crisis, just about everything will be sold as investors raise cash to meet margin calls or flee to the dollar as a perceived safe-haven.

There is also the possibility that metals prices will simply be managed lower. Growing numbers of investors realize that Wall Street is not a bulwark of free markets. Major banks have admitted to rigging markets against their own customers, and the Federal Reserve aggressively intervenes in markets in its quest to centrally plan the world economy. Why wouldn’t the Fed also be active in trading precious metals? Those dismissing the notion that metals prices are manipulated are naive.

Today’s Situation Is Different Than 2008

The bear case assumes history, in particular the experience surrounding 2008, will repeat. Or that there is still plenty of ability for anyone seeking to force metals prices lower in the futures market to actually do so. Or both.

Maybe. But relying on those assumptions could be a tragic mistake.

For starters, the U.S. dollar is already near record highs. Meanwhile, commodities and precious metals have been beaten down mercilessly. This set-up is the complete opposite of what faced investors leading up to the summer of 2008. And even though stocks and commodities got hammered in 2008, gold posted modest gains for the year as a safe haven from the threat of a collapsing economy.

Lower gold and silver prices have already produced an imbalance between bullion supply and demand. Supply deficits in 2016 are likely to make the developing problem with inventory at the COMEX and other exchanges even bigger. Registered stocks of gold all but vanished recently as bargain hunters, particularly in Asia, have been happy to buy and take delivery. Silver inventories aren’t in much better shape.

More deliverable bars must come from existing stocks, but holders won’t be anxious to sell. Those with “eligible” COMEX bars have certainly been slow to convert them to “registered” of late. By all indications, miners will be unable to provide the needed supply.

With prices below the cost of production, mine output is set to drop significantly this year.

If the metals markets look forward, as markets are supposed to do, they will anticipate the Fed’s response to a strengthening dollar and economic malaise. In 2008, investors knew little about the lengths to which the Fed would be willing to go. Today they DO know. The Fed will overwhelm deflation by creating new inflation.

Markets are completely dependent on Fed stimulus, and people simply expect officials to roll out an even bigger initiative whenever the need arises. Anything to prevent the cleansing effect of corrective forces from restoring health to the economy. In a recent interview, market expert Jim Rickards predicted the Fed will abandon rate increases and actually commence lowering before the year’s end.

Metals investors should take heart in the fact that gold and silver prices have shown some resilience in the face of disinflationary forces recently. Both metals outperformed oil and most other commodities last year. Yes, prices declined roughly 11% for both metals. But crude oil fell 36% and copper lost 22%. The precious metals gained purchasing power against many other things.

Bottom line: Don’t bet on a meaningful deflation. Fed officials will not allow it. And they can keystroke dollars into existence until the power goes out for good.