GLD at important technical juncture.

I've been posting a lot about silver of late but I think gold and silver will move with close correlation so today's post is about the interesting technical point that the GLD ETF finds itself at.  While GLD continues to diverge from GOLD (i.e. the real spot price of the metal on the metals exchange) as well as physical gold (i.e. bullion coins and bars in your hands), it is still the easiest chart to come by for me so I use GLD as a proxy for the metal.

To keep it short, my recent Elliott wave charts for silver indicated that we would have the rally that is now occurring in both gold and silver but that my current model for silver indicates one more wave down will occur.  Of course that model could be wrong but assuming it is correct for now, gold will likely have one more small wave down as well.

In the chart at left, gold is seen to bounce at the 38.2 fib twice before breaking down below that support level with pretty good gusto.  It then went down to touch the bottom of what I think is the channel and has been doing a vee recovery ever since.


What is interesting about the chart right now at this very moment are in fact two things:

1. Whereas the 38.2 fib was support before that broke down, it is now resistance.  In other words, the chart broke down below support and is now re-testing it from below.  If the chart cannot break out here but is instead rejected back downward, it will be the famous "goodbye kiss". In that case, near term caution is warranted.  As you can see, the long term trend line is within a few hundred bucks.  Note:
• While not shown in the chart, the bounce that recently occurred was right at the 50% fib.
• It will be VERY bullish for the price of GLD if the current retracement cannot make it back down to long term support.  It means that the sellers could not revert it to the mean.  This is the stuff of very bullish inclining double bottoms... 
2. A break above the 38.2 fib would also be a break outside of the green down sloping channel.  That would be unusual in terms of bear market continuation and trading computers would pick up on it.  This occurence would likely send a buy signal to market based trade bots all over the world.  Note:
• There is broad speculation (with some interesting evidence to back it) that central banks are trying to manipulate the price of gold down.  Many dismiss it as "conspiracy theories" but of course conspiracies are the norm for mankind throughout history.  For example India, whose government I believe is now a puppet of the US, is pulling out all the stops to dissuade its people from buying physical metal.  They put import tariffs on it and created all manner of paper gold "products" in order to attract buying away from the physical metal.  None of these distractions seem to be working.  So if the metal breaks out then I think it will attract massive buying. 
• If manipulators are indeed at work here, they better pull out even more stops to halt gold at its current level and send it back down for another month or two.  Failure to do so will likely result in massive gold buying and a loss of confidence in the con men to keep their fiat currency sham going.  But even if they can manage to push it down one last time, I think that will represent the 5th of C which will still form a very bullish inclining double bottom that will push it up into a massive new 3rd wave that takes the metal well over $2000 ozt.

In short, I see golden fireworks happening before the end of the year.  We might have to endure one more smash down, perhaps even to the 61.8% fib before it is over, but the buyers will come and turn it around this year IMO.  Forget the day to day gyrations.  Take advantage of the gold pullback to fatten up your retirement savings.  Don't be like the Detroit public employees who now have to go begging for their pensions in bankruptcy court.  Be your own central banker and your own retirement account manager.  Allowing anyone else to do this for you will end badly for they are con men running a massive con game called the Global Debt Ponzi.

Flash Alert: An alternate wave count for silver.

Before I get into any details let me first say that I am unwavering in my stance that gold is money and everything else is not.  These famous words by Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan will be ignored only by those who do not understand money or the economy.  I will also say this this is elite-think and thus only partially true for the rest of us. Silver is also historical money for the masses.  Many Spanish speaking countries use the word "plata" today to indicate money (plata is the Spanish word for silver metal).  Another old saying is that "Gold is the money of kings, silver the money of lords and gentlemen, barter is the money of peasants and debt (paper money) is the money of slaves".  Of the things in this second list, only gold and silver fit the definition of money.  Money must meet all of the following three requirements:

1. a unit of account.
2. a means of exchange.
3. a store of wealth. 

Barter is simple straight across trade without use of the invention which we call money whose intention is to serve as a fungible token that represents stored labor.  Barter is for those living hand to mouth.  Slaves of course do not have the freedom of trade.  Their purpose is to work hard enough to barely support themselves and their children and then work a bit harder in order to lavishly support their masters.  Every aspect of the life of a slave revolves therefore around debt.

I think it good to have some "king money" for very long term retirement purposes but also some "lord and gentleman money" for nearer term needs.  Barter has it's place as well.  Debt is a gamble, a trap for most.  Some can use it to game the system to some success but make no mistake: use of debt is a game and one that the con men are well versed in.  You might win using debt to your advantage but if you stick to honest money you will not lose except by your own lack of ability to produce anything of value or lack of work ethic to actually produce anything.  Perhaps this is why so many elite are elite.  They have no real ability or desire to produce anything and so they resort to the con in order to thrive.  Smart con men will, for a time at least, live very high on the hog.  Until, that is, they get caught (which most usually do in the end).

In any case my silver bottom watch continues.  In short, it appears to be closely following my prior EW model, at least at the small scale and at least for now.  The top chart below was provided in a post on 6-26 of this year.  It clearly predicts another small wave down followed by a bounce down to

what I listed at the time as the 5th of 5th of C. 

That modeling is represented by the red line coming up to the top of the down sloping channel  and then bouncing down.  In subsequent posts I suggested that the bottom would likely occur in 1 of 3 places: mid channel resulting in inclining double bottom (which would be bullish and likely predict a rapid rebound) OR
bottom channel OR just below the bottom channel (which would be an Elliott wave "throw under").  In the first 2 cases I would expect declining volume as the sellers dried up and in the 3 case I would expect a volume surge as the suckers were psychologically pushed into capitulation right at the bottom.

The picture to left is an overlay of the above chart with the current action that has occurred up to 7-5.  Everything in the orange box is new data.  In short, the chart did push a little lower as expected before doing a vee style recovery to the top of the channel.  In fact, the action continued above the channel briefly but then formed a double top which sent the short sellers back into action.   After that there is a clear 3rd wave down which is indicated by the large gap (aka "cliff diving").  Given the presence of the 3rd wave, I assume there was also very small scale 1st wave before the 3rd and thus likely a similarly small 5th wave following the 3rd.  Given the small size of the 1st wave and the likelihood that the 5th will be the same size as the 1st according to EW rules where the 3rd was an extended wave, that 5th could be so short that it might even already have occurred.  If so, the chart will not make it back down mid channel and the resultant inclining double bottom will be all the more powerful.  If this is all correct, we should expect a big rally from here.

Now the bad news which is, in short, that I now think we really just witnessed only the completion of the 3rd of 5 of C, not 5th of 5 of C as originally stated some days ago.  I think many will get overly bullish into the coming rally and that there will be a final shakeout to kill off even the most determined metals bulls.  Only after capitulation will the real recovery begin.

So why the new doubt when things have been following the model so well to this point?  Well, there are 2 reasons.  First, I really expect a selloff of this magnitude to end with a capitulation blowout. Everyone has to be ruined on metals.  This is mostly the case today with many "experts" even calling metals "a bubble" regardless of the fact that we have nearly 17 trillion dollars worth of un-payable debt on the books (and 100 trillion in future obligations and likely many trillions in off balance sheet debt as well).  The real bubble is in Ponzi promises, not physical metal.  I am 1000% sure of that.  Still, a high volume capitulation finish would really cinch things up for me that a long term bottom is in (as in "likely never see silver price this low again in history").

Second and more important than the lack of capitulation bottom is an error in my initial reading/modeling of the Elliott wave chart that left me 1 large wave off of the real wave pattern.

My initial interpretation is shown in blue.  My new and current interpretation is shown in red.  Turns out, this makes a pretty big difference in the final outcome.  Why did I change my view on this?  Because my first interpretation was in violation of the EW rules.  Namely, wave 4 can never go back into the region of wave 1.  It is a rookie mistake but I made it.  The correct interpretation is that blue 1 is in fact the first wave down but blue 2 is really A, blue 3 is really B and blue 4 is really C which makes it also the real 2nd wave of the big C.

The corrected modeling of the entire C wave is thus shown at left (click on it to get a more detailed image).  As you can see if you compare this to charts above, the action is the same except we really did not reach the bottom of C yet (5th wave), we instead only reached the 3rd of C.  IIF this new interpretation is correct then we should get a very big, vee shaped rally to the top of the channel in which the bulls get too bullish too prematurely.  That will be the 4th of C.  Notice that the new interpretation shows red ((2)) as a sideways correction.  That implies, via the EW rule of alternation, that the 4th wave will be a vee type wave.  The recent chart ending of wave 3 (which I think has now occurred) was very weak and it leaves us with an inclining double bottom. It is cause for bullishness for traders and they will jump in on leverage to make a quick buck from it IMO.  So this is a very good setup for a strong 4th wave move as modeled.

Following a likely failed test of the top channel line, my current model predicts that the chart should be deflected downward into a 5th wave that should be about as painful as the 1st wave ((1)) was.  Well, that 1st wave was not really very strong, was it?  So the final 5th wave down might not actually fall below the 3rd wave which I think has just finished.  In fact, a failed 5th would result in an inclining double bottom which would be an extremely bullish setup for the next big wave up which I think at the very least will approach $50 and just as likely make a new high to $70 or above.  So while I think the 3rd of C is now likely done and that a 5th wave down is still in the cards, anyone buying silver in the current area will likely not be far wrong when the smoke clears.  A good strategy for savers is to dollar cost average into this bottoming process.

I think it's important to note that humans are obsessed with catching the exact bottom.  If they miss it by a couple bucks they despair and freak out when they see lower prices happen.   I can understand that behavior when applied to stocks because stocks clearly have no long term historical value other than what the next, highly leveraged, greater fool will offer you for them.  With stocks and bonds there is always a great chance that they will go worthless some day. 

The beauty of physical metals is that you never have to worry about that.  You buy the metal and, if the dollar price goes lower for a month or a quarter or even a couple years, your metals are in no way diminished.  They will happily sit there in your vault until the grand debt Ponzi collapses of its own corrupt weight.  They will be there for you when electronic accounts fail and every paper investment reveals its disgusting Madoffian stench.  Real metals buyers are savers who always hope for lower prices in the near term given the long term certainty that corrupt fiat currency and fractional reserve scams are destined to fail.  Moreover, world conditions make is clear that the time for collapse is not far off.  Years, not decades IMO and I would not completely rule out quarters or months either.

And now for the obligatory disclaimer.  EW modeling is just that: modeling.  Modeling theory is not perfect and modelers themselves can misread the data (cough cough).  Chaos is by definition difficult to predict with any accuracy although there are in the field of mathematics areas of study which specialize in trying to do just that.  Also, as we get down into the wee waves, the chances of chaotic events affecting the model in subtle but significant ways increases rapidly.  In other words, predicting to a certain degree is not that difficult but the smaller the degree, the higher the odds are that something will play out differently.  The one saving grace of EW modeling for this is that it contains built in triggers to tell you when your model is wrong (if only you remember to discount them in the model...).

Thus the prudent market timer will use modeling as only one set of input data to be used in conjunction with other world events (such as an increase in QE instead of the suggested tapering...) to time purchases.  For those whose energies are focused on other things (which is most people), dollar cost averaging is often a better strategy than market timing.  Forget the day to day ticks of the con and buy on a regular basis.  When you retire you will have a pile of metal coins that will have value when other things do not.  This is never a losing strategy and it has the benefit of freeing you from agonizing over market fluctuations.

Intellageddon on deck

Intel investors should take note of an extremely bearish chart setup now unfolding.  In short, the shares peaked in April last year and then got creamed into November 2012.  That was 5 waves down into "blue 1" shown on the chart below.  Then a clear A-B-C retracement to the 61.8% fib followed by a nasty double top that looks like a Batman cowl.  It is now finishing what I believe to be 1 of 3 which will likely bounce at the 38.2 % fib as shown below before breaking down with gusto as shown.  The 3rd wave down will reach a much lower low than the Blue 1 wave.  This is a good time for gamblers to be researching short term puts IMO.  Wait until the small 2nd wave transpires and then buy a few hundred bucks worth for asymmetrical gains.  The confirmation will be the breakdown below the 38.2 fib.

Needless to say, I do not expect Intel shares to collapse in a vacuum....

Silver near bottom: 3 of 5 of C is done. Now working on 4 of 5 of C.

In this post I indicated that I thought 3 of 5 of C was nearly done.  Check out the chart there and you will see that my EW count modeled a nice rally (red line) that would be 4 of 5 of C.  Today we are essentially getting that rally (click on the chart for a more detailed view).  Keep in mind that this EW

charting exercise is just a probabilistic modeling technique for tracking what is essentially a chaotic event - the emotions of people. 

 

Chaos is somewhat predictable at the very high level but as you get to finer and finer resolution the odds increase rapidly that a butterfly's wings will perturb the direction.  Still, Elliott Wave charting has been the best tool I have used for trying to time the markets and my EW model for silver indicates that we should have one more wave down indicated by the blue line coming out of the circle. 

 

The strength of that blue line is hard to predict.  It could stop mid channel and then bounce up.  This is actually the most bullish formation because it results in an inclining double bottom.  It means buyers couldn't wait for the chart to hit the bottom of the channel before stepping in.  Another possibility is for the chart to touch the bottom of the channel on dwindling volume, again indicating that all the sellers have been fleeced and it is time to run the price up again.  Finally, there could be an avalanche of sellers causing a high volume poke down through the bottom of the channel.  This could result in another extended wave down so the buy signal here for traders is when the chart tests the channel again from below and then breaks back up through.

 

I also want to point out some other things that are related.  In the past, metals smash downs would be real long term events.  Why?  Because Americans had all the money for buying them and Americans also had a strong currency called the dollar.  So Americans had the choice of metals or paper money.  Thus, when metals were smashed down like this it panicked the only possible buyers out of the metals and into something else that could be held for a long time with little perceived risk.  But today things are different.  The smash down might still be scaring Americans but it is being used as a buying opportunity by Asians.  Those trying to sell the metals into the fear zone are getting a big surprise: the buyers love the lower prices!  Instead of making the entire market fearful, a big chunk of the market is celebrating and buying. 

 

I think Asians have a long history of crappy paper money and so they simply don't trust government money like Americans do.   There have, for example, been many stories about how India is having to enact stupid laws in order to quench the gold buying of its people.  Indians LOVE gold.  Not paper gold but real, physical, in your hands gold.  And they love it more at lower prices.  Chinese folks are of a similar mind except that their government has been telling them to buy gold and silver for the past 5 years now.  China, IMO, intends to back the Yuan with metals in the future as soon as they sense enough weakness in the dollar.  That would be the end of the American funny money hegemony over the world.  It's what I would do if I were them and there are plenty of them that are far smarter than me.

 

 I think this is the new dynamic that JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs did not count on with the metals sell off.  I think the Federal Reserve is very worried about what it is seeing.  The fed knows the golden rule: he who has the gold makes the rules.  I sure hope we are not "selling" metals to the Asians that we really don't have (naked shorting) in the hopes that they will get scared out of their positions and let us cover our shorts on the cheap.  I really hope that is not happening because if it is then we are going to lose that bet.  Asians are committed to metals ownership, period.  They cannot be scared away by fake paper money.  If we have been doing this we will eventually default and fail to deliver the gold and silver that we sold them.  You will know this by a COMEX default.  If this happens and we don't make it right then it could start a world war.  Who knows, maybe that is the plan in Washington given that the US military is so powerful right now.  Perhaps all roads still lead to the US "going Roman" (conquering people to get their money instead of earning it honestly).

 

Another indication of nearing the bottom is the massive sell off in gold miners.  Check out the chart for Barrick Gold (ticker ABX).  It recently broke long term support in what was most probably a 3rd of C wave.  Keep in mind that C waves generally look like 3rd waves - they are powerful.  So a 3rd of C is like a 3rd of 3rd and that is what it took to smash through this long term support "with gusto".   Also note the declining volume on ABX.  The sellers are tapering off and volume changes often precede trend changes.  If I had to venture a guess, ABX is within spitting distance of a sustainable bottom where the speculators will then pile back in on margin for huge profits.  I think the lowest it will go is the downward sloping support line shown in grey below.  Of course, those who are buying shares in miners are gamblers because there could be a lot of hidden $hit buried in the kitty litter.  With corporations you simply never know the depth of fraud and corruption and off book leverage that has occurred.  Conversely, those buying the underlying metals are savers.  Gamblers might win big but savers will never lose.

 

Nobody knows for sure what will actually happen in the short term of course.  That's why they call it chaos.  But we do know one thing and it is a VERY powerful thing to know: if you buy the metal and hold it yourself, the metal can never, ever go bankrupt.  There can be no lawsuits against it, no CEO fraud that steals the value of it.  In other words, it gives you the possibility of holding until the storm passes knowing that your ship might take on water short term but that it is completely and utterly unsinkable.  Armed with that knowledge you never have to abandon ship in a panic as long as you don't buy it using debt and you hold it yourself so that some scum bag Wall St con man can't steal it from your account while you are busy living your life.

Bullish on Alcoa [AA]

I'm looking around at many factors and I see that inflation is starting to creep into things.  The rising interest rates are the canary in the coal mine and they are accompanied by what I believe to be the coming bottoming in metals after a large deflationary smack down.  Another way to look at this is via the stock charts of commodities producers.  Look at Alcoa's chart.  I think 2009 lows was a 3rd wave bottoming, that the subsequent bounce was wave 4 and now the chart is working out the 5th and final wave down.

The EW justification for this chart interpretation is twofold.  First, the move from 3 to 4 is a clear a-b-c retracement sequence, not a 1-2-3-4-5 impulse sequence.  So I do not think that the 2009 low was the end of a full 5 wave large scale move.  I think it was just a massive 3rd wave.  Also, look at the chart action now.  AA is clearly forming an ending diagonal.  Ending diagonals happen at the end of long trends and they suggest that a significant trend change is in the cards.   Finally, and this is not a done deal yet but the odds are quite high that it will work out like this, I see a failed 5th formation in progress that will result in a very bullish inclining double bottom.  In other words, red 5 will not likely be lower than red 3 was.

Alcoa is not an especially good company.  It is not especially smart or innovative or cost effective.  It's sort of a plodding commodities processor.  The only way for this chart to play out like I think it will is if we start seeing significant commodities price inflation.  In other words, Bernanke's feckless spending and years of exporting dollars to the rest of the world begins to come home to roost as others figure out how to conduct business without the USD as an intermediary.  It is baked into the global debt Ponzi scam that this will happen some day and the only question is the timing.  Bernanke recently talked about tapering and the market had a heart palpitation.  Imagine if he actually did anything along those lines!  It would likely result in a global depression.  The US isn't just propping up its own economy with funny money, it's propping up the whole global debt Ponzi.

It should also be noted that the past few years of smack down  in commodities shares has made AA stock a relative bargain (if you think that any shares have any value and if you think that traditional valuation metrics have any merit).  Several of the stats are in "Prechter Territory" as predicted by his book," Conquer The Crash":  At the current price of $7.86 per share, the forward PE is 11,  price to book is 0.62 (low!), price to sales is 0.35 (OUCH! That is low!).  In other words, the markets have priced Alcoa at what it is: a plodding commodities processor in a deflationary environment.  Couple that with large debt (nearly $9 bn) to cash (only $1.5bn) along with a pathetic 1.5% dividend and it's no wonder why the shares are this low.  But significant inflation will be a friend to Alcoa.  It means rising prices and it means paying back debt with devalued dollars.  Alcoa's recent earnings have been reflecting business improvement.  They were profitable last quarter and quarterly earnings increased 58.5% year over year.  It is no coincidence that solar bottomed recently.  They were always a canary in the inflation coal mine IMO.   Alcoa is about to make those who understand the cyclic nature of things a nice chunk of change.

Aluminum is so ingrained into our society that we need Alcoa.  At today's price and with that ending diagonal chart in place, I think it is a very good buy today with the intent to hold for the next 2-5 years.

Silver appears to be near the bottom of 3 of 5 of C

For those who have been following my EW analysis of silver, here is an update.  The silver smash down continues but we have not yet seen that high volume capitulation day (with a possible but not required intra-day rebound) which often accompanies the bottoming of panic selling.  Normally, I would not call selling something a "panic".  Selling stocks is always wise because they might eventually go worthless.  But selling money metals like this does fall into the "panic" heading because they are never going to go worthless.  In other words, it is always safe to buy physical metals on the dip if your time horizon for holding them is retirement (as it should be).

 In any case, the chart broke long term support a few days ago and so significant additional selling was expected.  But I don't actually expect a full mania retrace on silver back to $5 (and if it happens, it is a total gift to anyone who is 20-25 years from retirement!).  What I do expect is for the metal to form an inclining double bottom of some sort and then to go on a rapid tear upwards.  The chart is now at the bottom of the channel and it should find significant support in this region.  Then perhaps a quick head fake up before a capitulation 5th wave or alternatively a failed 5th followed by a breakout.  It could go either way.  Accurate and more importantly, repeatable prediction of chaotic events becomes exponentially more difficult (i.e. more random) as you go down in time scale.  In other words, the big moves are far easier to predict than the small ones.  Thus, grubbing for every last penny is not always the best strategy.  Dollar cost averaging into the bottom is a much more reliable method of accumulating a desired asset at a good price.

In any case, if I charted this correctly it seems that the bottom should occur just around the 4th of July.  It would be a fitting bottom given that sound money is the key to true liberty.

Fitch: "China credit bubble is unprecedented"

The UK Telegraph reports that Fitch credit rating service says,"The credit-driven growth model is clearly falling apart. This could feed into a massive over-capacity problem, and potentially into a Japanese-style deflation".

Well, what a shock.  Well, not really.  In fact, I've written many times and for several years now that China would prove to be a massive credit bubble the likes of which the world has never seen.  For example, here is a post indicating Chinese credit bubbles from 2010.  Here is another.  And in this post I applied Ponzi logic to it so that readers can know that it was all done on purpose even if supposedly with good intentions.

It's not that the leaders of all the nations are stupid thus causing them to make poor financial decisions.  It's that they are mortal humans.  Mortals die some day and so in the Keynesian spirit of "in the end we are all dead", why not get what you can while you can even if you have to stab your fellow human in the back?  Humans are greedy and selfish by nature.  This is why it has never worked out well for normal people to let other people be in charge of them.  This is why we must all be sovereign individuals come what may.   Self sovereignty does not guarantee safety.  Nothing guarantees safety.  But it does promote freedom and that is about all you can ask for in this life: freedom to determine for yourself how you will live it.

The government corruption always starts out slow.  A favor for a campaign donor here.  A kickback accepted for political favor there.  But all of it always justified in the minds of the con men because of the other good stewardship that the politicians think they are doing.  Of course, eventually their human nature pokes through and over time they figure out how to game the money supply (which is really just a proxy for human labor) and they use it for outright treasonous theft which is really a hidden form of slavery. 

That is where all governments of the world are today.  If you do anything they don't like, it's a felony.  The recent NSA leaks debacle shows that it's a felony even if what they don't like about you is that you told the truth about them.  On the other hand, if they do something horribly immoral then perhaps they need to be furloughed with pay for a couple weeks (which I call "vacation") while the sheeple forget all about the wrongdoing.  And if that doesn't work then offer a heartfelt (fake) apology and, hey, perhaps suggest more training for the government felons so they don't repeat it.  After getting used to complacency of the masses, the con men at some point don't even try to hide their wrongdoings.  They don't even feign remorse or embarrassment.  They simply say "NSA spying is not an invasion of your privacy and besides we need it to save you from terror".  Folks, that's where we are today and it is really sad to see.

Very soon government is going to have to make a decision.  They will either have to decide to reform themselves and make do with faaaaaar less than they have today or they will have to become outright tyrants; they will have to do something in order to justify martial law.  The other option is to start a world war and to hope that the people are too stupid to hold the con men accountable.  They will have to decide not because they want to but because the credit Ponzi which supported their scammy ways will have collapsed.  They won't be able to borrow money in order to fuel their political ambitions cheaply and perhaps not at all.

It's very hard to tell who is going to implode first - Japan, China, the EU, Russia, or the US.  Perhaps it will all happen very quickly for all players once any large player defaults.  The one thing I am sure of at this point is that there is no escaping massive global economic pain and no doubt a BUNCH of social unrest.  I am shocked by the number of people who have gotten caught over the past few months stockpiling pipe bombs in their houses.  For example, this and this and this. For every one that gets caught, 50 remain. 

There is going to be serious unrest all over the world, including the US.   I don't know what will kick it off here but it will just be 1 too many straws on the camel and there will be no taking it back.  There is really no way around it.  A massive debt bubble bought people's complacency and calmed them down.  When it all goes away I expect the opposite effect.  When it happens, have no doubt: those to blame are named Greenspan, Bernanke, Clinton, Bush (everyone named Bush who was ever in government), Cheney, Obama, Paulson, Every present and past executive in JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, and of course every executive in Monsanto, etc.  And let's not forget our shadow bankers like Jack Welch, etc.   In other words, our government and corporate "leaders" for the past 40+ years.  They all sold us down the river.

When it all comes tumbling down it's really going to leave a mark.