QUESTION: Martin. …Thank you for getting back to me. I have one quick question though. What does it mean when you say “It is in the staging period”? Thank you for your insights. I don’t want to live in fear, but don’t know what to do.

ANSWER: There is no need to live in fear. If I tell you I am going to punch you in the face, and say see, her it comes! Do you stand there and just watch it? Or do you move or defend yourself? If you understand what is unfolding then you can move with confidence and not get sucker-punched. Do not live in fear. Just accept this is our fate. We cannot stop it for this is the way things advance. They require events to promote change.

It appears that 2016 is “the staging period” and by that I mean everything is preparing to align and when it does, we will see that alignment if you simply open your eyes to the world around you. As long as we understand what is coming, no worries; we can handle it. It is the reshaping of the future that we have to fight for. What kind of world will we leave our children? We can see the authoritarian posture of government as they hunt money everywhere. This has got to stop. They have become the enemy of civilization. People come together to conduct a more efficient economy. When government abuses the power and sees us as cattle, then we retreat back in the direction of smaller tribes that offer freedom from central oppression. The Ying and Yang of Civilization.

Donald Tusk of the European Union (EU) in Brussels, European Council president, has warned that the EU is really in danger of total collapse. He has come out and said that David Cameron’s referendum in Britain will be copied by other members tactics for their own “egotistic goals.” He has said this will unleash the unthinkable democratic right of European people to disagree with the elite in Brussels. He called this a populist political movement that will bring the EU bloc to the brink of “suicide”.

Donald Tusk is now saying he is clearing his diary next week to concentrate on the “very fragile” talks with Britain to create some “new settlement” at the EU summit next week to keep Britain in the EU and to allow Cameron to declare some victory so he can call off the referendum. That is the agenda in Brussels.

The problem Tusk does not understand because he is looking at keeping his own job, is that there is no plan in Brussels to fix anything. This is simply trying to maintain their power by denying democratic processes. There is no acknowledgement that the problem lies with the Euro and the entire structure which is undermining the banking system.

Until Brussels is willing to say; Oops! Sorry about that! We really screwed everything up, there is not a prayer in hell that the Euro or Europe can be saved. The Euro will make its rally and destroy the economy fueling more deflation, the ECB will turn the screws and keep the NEGATIVE interest rates, and in the end, it will have to fail anyway.

I have been warning that Chancellor George Osborne is probably going to go down in history as the man who destroys what is left of the British Empire. He has done whatever could be done wrong absolutely perfectly. Seizing pension funds to be invested by his decree is up there with Argentina standards. Osborne is now currently putting in place his grand scheme to retain the power of government in Britain. His grand scheme is to seize effective control of the nation’s local government pension schemes and direct them to invest in his infrastructure projects that are probably lobbied by friends.

Politicians in the post-Roosevelt Era took the idea of the WPA created by Roosevelt to provide jobs for the unemployed. Keep in mind that this was the transition from agriculture to skilled labor, which was quite a different problem from today. The second problem was the shift to the technology of the combustion engine that allowed farmers to replace workers by the dozen with motorized tractors and automobiles replaced trains. These technology shifts made the WPA a viable alternative because we needed to change the skill sets of workers. Now, infrastructure projects do not train workers to change their career and they offer nothing from a permanent employment perspective. So raising taxes and seizing pension funds to funnel into infrastructure has a NEGATIVE economic impact today. The technology shift is not moving backwards in skills, it is moving forward.

Osborne is crossing THE line here as a pretend left-wing socialist masquerading as a economic “conservative” that no other major G5 nation has dared to tread no less the British government throughout its entire history. This is where government are moving. Seizing everything just like Maximinus who destroyed the confidence in Rome and set in motion the acceleration of its decline.

The fuse has been lit. The world economy is in serious trouble and we have the worst possible people at the helm. You have Obama who want to double the funding now for the SEC and CFTC to go after the banks because he smells blood. He also wants to add a $10 tax to oil just because he see something else he can tax.

The question becomes, just how long can we try to climb out of this mess before it consumes the entire rope? It does appear that the greatest period of turmoil will be 2017 moving into 2020. Whatever can go wrong – will go wrong. We have everything culminating from a Sovereign Debt Crisis to the War Cycle intermixed with political destabilization. Indeed, 2017 is going to be the year from political hell. With election is Germany, France, and the referendum in Britain exiting the EU, we then throw in the real potential for the election in the States to flip to Trump. The world as we have known it is coming undone.

When we look at the markets, they are clearly trying to speak to us. Many markets avoided their year-end numbers like gold closing ABOVE 1044 level. This we warned meant gold was not as weak as it might appear. The Dow closed lower warning there too a correction was underway.

So far today gold opened at 1197 and ran up to the 1215 area hovering around our opening pivot point for today which was 1207.57. Keep in mind that the resistance stands in the 1226 area but the real key here is to accomplish a closing above 1209 on Friday. Then we can get a pop up about $100 which would convince many it has turned. But alas, the stars are not quite aligned just yet. Our yearly resistance starts at the 1309 level so this is how far we can push gold right now. Beware, a break back below 1179 will warn the market is turn negative again.

The Dow opening pivot point for today is 15747 and our extreme support for 2016 lies at 13100 level. It has been the S&P500 leading the way down. This is not something to overlook. I have stated countless times the difference here is the Dow reflects big international money and the S&P500 is concentrated with domestic. As the European banking crisis continues to unfold, the Euro caught a bid as capital was being withdrawn from overseas investments. Many big banks have been shutting down their dealing desks. They are handing back screens from all the companies like Bloomberg as the industry contracts. This also has resulted in liquidating foreign trading positions. The US prosecutors fining European banks excessively have changed the game. They want to pretend they are protecting the markets, but in reality, nobody goes to jail and they just line their pockets with huge fines. This has set in motion the great migration of the financial industry and we can see from the chart above on Deutsche Bank, it does not look very good.

Nonetheless, banks overall are not looking healthy long-term. Looking at the Dow Jones Financial Index, we can see here that this sector did NOT make new highs above 2007. This is not something to overlook. I have warned, get out of financial stocks. The game is over.

Iran has begun to sell oil, but in euros. They think this is some sort of blow to the USA, but in fact, they are taking on the currency risk of the euro. This could be interesting for when the euro resumes its decline they will actually be undercutting everyone else who is pricing in dollars. This could make the markets very interesting as we move ahead.