American Monetary Association (Audio Podcast)

Jason Hartman and returning guest, Dan Amerman discuss federal policies and interest rates, which hurts the savers and fixed income folks. The artificially low interest rates are not working and create higher prices through inflation. Listen at:www.JasonHartman.com.  They also discuss inflation rates, in which the federal numbers are glossed over and do not match true inflation as experienced by the American citizens through food, fuel, and utilities. Manufacturers hide inflation by making products smaller. Jason and Dan then talk about rental housing and how to arbitrage the inflation. Dan explains how to turn the fed policies around to our advantage. It starts with understanding cash flow investing and setting your safety margin. When looking at cash flows, rather than being all about the price, it’s more about the interest rate when it comes to a mortgage. In the process of creating non-free-market interest rates for banks and for the federal government, the federal government has accidentally made available subsidized mortgage rates that are available if you can get the lending. It goes directly to your bottom line as the investor, resulting in much higher cash flows than you would see in a free market.
Dan and Jason illustrate how the sharp decline in housing costs and the interest rate levels causes the floor to drop out and provides an unprecedented opportunity to obtain mortgages and have inflation pay them off.  While rates have been dropping, rents have been going up, thus making real estate investing even more profitable and sensible.
Daniel R. Amerman is a Chartered Financial Analyst with MBA and BSBA degrees in finance.  He is a financial author and speaker with over 25 years of professional experience.   Years of studying the costs of paying for over $100 trillion of US government retirement promises, as well as the costs of cashing out an expected $44 trillion of Boomer pensions and retirement accounts, have convinced him that too many promises and too much paper wealth chasing too few real resources will likely lead to substantial inflation in the years ahead, with potentially devastating implications for many savers and investors, a problem that will also apply to many other nations.
Mr. Amerman spent much of the 1980s as an investment banker helping Savings & Loans and others try to survive the effects of the last major bout of inflation in the United States.  There is a basic economics principle that much of the public is unaware of – inflation doesn't directly destroy the real wealth of goods and services, but rather, redistributes the rights to that real wealth (a principle which unfortunately will likely destroy much of the investment wealth the Boomers plan on enjoying in retirement).  The author worked with the effects of billions of dollars of such wealth redistributions, and saw how there was not only a loser for each dollar of wealth redistributed – but a winner.

Direct download: AMA54-DanAmerman2.mp3
Category:Audio Podcast -- posted at: 10:00am EDT

Jason Hartman is joined on this episode by Greg Farrell, author of Crash of the Titans: Greed, Hubris, The Fall of Merrill Lynch, and the Near Collapse of Bank of America, for a discussion of the economic crash and the resulting bailouts, as well as some of the inside dealings with some of the major banks, such as the buyouts by Bank of America. Greg explains how these banks that participated in the buyouts grossly underestimated the depth of problems in their own banks and in those they acquired. Listen at:www.JasonHartman.com. Greg relates his research on Merrill Lynch’s attempt in the 1980s to become more like Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street banks, which was to their detriment because they lacked the expertise for such business practices, and became involved in and in the middle of many of the scandals of the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. Like CitiGroup, they were in over their head. Jason and Greg discuss Wall Street in general and then specific financial groups regarding the recklessness and risky businesses, funds, etc, that they entertained to give the impression of higher rates of returns. As the plot unfolded, large bonuses to CEOs and high-producing brokers came into play, which encouraged an all or nothing attitude toward the company and fostered a “me” attitude versus long-term stability of the company. Greg also talks about what he calls the “Charlotte Mafia,” the clash of company cultures.

Greg Farrell is a correspondent for the Financial Times. In January 2009, he broke the news that Merrill Lynch had paid out its 2008 bonuses a month ahead of schedule, in December, even though Merrill was in the process of losing $28 billion for the year, and Bank of America needed an extra $20 billion in taxpayer funds to complete its acquisition of the firm. That story sparked an investigation by New York attorney general Andrew Cuomo. Greg is a past winner of the American Business Press’s Jesse Neal Award for investigative reporting and a recipient of the Knight-Bagehot Fellowship for business journalism. He earned a BA from Harvard University and an MBA from the Graduate School of Business at Columbia University.

Direct download: AMA52-GregFarrell.mp3
Category:Audio Podcast -- posted at: 10:00am EDT

Jason Hartman interviews returning guest and founder and CEO, Harry Dent, Jr., of HS Dent, an economic think tank and research company, about the next coming crash. For more details, listen at:  www.JasonHartman.com. Mr. Dent accurately predicted the boom of the 1990s, which was contrary to what many other forecasters predicted. He explains why America is on a path to the next Great Depression through its mounting debt to boost the economy. He talks about how the U.S. creates bubble after bubble in all areas, such as the housing bubble, the gold and silver bubble, the commodity bubble, etc. Trillions of dollars in stimulus money has poured forth from the government, along with the lowering of interest rates, thereby inciting inflation that will continue to grow with the current system of bailouts and lack of lending. He also discusses the peaks and deflation of spending with the switch between the Baby Boomer and current generations, and how this will affect America's economic future. Mr. Dent also paints the dark picture of China’s future, where they are overbuilding just to keep their workers employed, which will become a worldwide crisis when their building bubble bursts. Jason and Mr. Dent talk about the condition of other countries and how everything interplays to lead to the next crash that Mr. Dent forecasts. He suggests some strategies for investors and what people might expect.

Using exciting new research developed from years of hands-on business experience, Harry S. Dent, Jr. offers a refreshingly positive and understandable view of the economic future. As a bestselling author on economics, Mr. Dent is the developer of The Dent Method - an economic forecasting approach based on changes in demographic trends. In all of his past books since 1989, Dent saw an end to the Baby Boom spending cycle around the end of this decade. In his book, The Great Depression Ahead, (Free Press, 2009), Harry Dent outlined how this next great downturn is likely to unfold in three stages, with an interim boom stage between 2012 and 2017 before the long-term slowdown finally turns into the next global boom in the early 2020s. He continued to educate audiences about his predictions for the next and possibly last great bull market, from late 2005 into early to mid 2010. Since 1992 he has authored two consecutive best sellers, The Roaring 2000s and The Roaring 2000s Investor (Simon and Schuster). In his latest book, The Next Great Bubble Boom, he offers a comprehensive forecast for the next two decades and explains how fundamental trends suggest strong growth ahead, followed by a longer-term economic contraction. Mr. Dent also publishes the HS Dent Forecast newsletter, which offers current analysis of economic and financial market trends.

Direct download: AMA51-HarryDent.mp3
Category:Audio Podcast -- posted at: 10:00am EDT

oin Jason Hartman as he and author of "Quirk", Hannah Holmes explore human personality types and how they affect who we become, whether extroverted,
conscientious, agreeable, or even neurotic or obnoxious. Is it possible that our hard-wired brain chemistry can even determine our political opinions and economic views? Learn more about the Five Factors in personality and about Hannah's research atwww.JasonHartman.com. Research has shown that mice have personalities, and somewhere out there, perhaps in your own basement, is a mouse just like you. Hannah Holmes has led an adventurous life since graduating from the University of Southern Maine. She was an editor at the New York-based Garbage Magazine in the late 1980s, after which she returned to Maine to start a freelance writing career. She was a contributor in a variety of magazines.

In the late 1990s, Hannah was recruited by the Discovery Channel Online for an experiment called live internet reporting. This grand experiment led her to distant and uncomfortable parts of the world, from hunting dinosaurs in Mongolia's Gobi desert, to the Montserrat Volcano Observatory, where fine volcanic ash ruined her computer and left her hair like a ball of jute twine. She also piloted the Alvin submarine around "black smokers" a mile and a half under the ocean. It was a glorious era until Discovery.com's plug was pulled. Hannah then went on to author several books, "The Secret Life of Dust," "Suburban Safari: A Year on the Lawn," and her recent book, "Quirk," about the many fascinating personality types. Hannah's blog can be found at www.HannahHolmes.net.

Direct download: AMA50-HannahHolmes.mp3
Category:Audio Podcast -- posted at: 10:00am EDT

Join Jason Hartman and Investor Watchdog, Jack Waymire, for a discussion concerning the ethics of the financial services industry. According to Jack, the frequent lack of integrity undermines the achievement of investors’ financial goals. For more details, listen at:  www.JasonHartman.com. Companies do not do what is best for you. They are very good at hiding information that they do not want their investors to know. Investor Watchdog investigates these companies and products, acting as a go-between for investors and advisors, answering frequently asked questions, such as, “How do I know I’m getting the right financial advice?” Jack shares examples of deceptive practices by various companies and how the executives that run the companies, i.e. Goldman Sachs, are insulated from accountability simply by paying fines rather than serving jail time for unethical and illegal practices.  Jason and Jack touch on the subject of the Madoff Ponzi Scheme, where Jack talks about some of the evidence that was found, as a glaring example of unethical sales pitches and conman tactics. Jack also informs listeners of what deceptive sales practices to watch out for when dealing with financial advisors.

Jack entered the financial services industry as a financial consultant in 1976 for Warburg, Paribas Becker. He provided financial advice to companies, public entities, Taft-Hartley funds, endowments, and foundations with assets exceeding $7 billion. After spending two years with an investment firm, Jack co-founded Lexington Capital Management in 1983, a money management firm that wholesaled its services through wirehouses and regional broker-dealers. In 1989, Jack also founded a broker-dealer and built a national retail distribution system to market its products and services. Between 1996 and 2003, Lexington was sold to two larger financial service and technology companies. In his last position, Jack was President of Sungard Advisor Technologies. During these 20 years, Jack worked with thousands of investors and financial advisors and was responsible for providing services to individual investors with billions of dollars of assets.

In 2004, Jack left the financial services industry to market a book he authored: Who’s Watching Your Money? The 17 Paladin Principles for Selecting a Financial Advisor. Published in December, 2003, by John Wiley & Sons, his book was widely regarded as the first to provide an objective process investors could use to select higher quality advisors and to avoid the risks and consequences of bad advice from lower quality advisors. In 2004, Jack co-founded PaladinRegistry.com, a website that took selected content from his book and made it available to investors over the Internet. Later in 2004, a Registry of pre-screened, five star rated financial planners and financial advisors was added to the website. Paladin became the first online firm that vetted financial professionals for investors and provided comprehensive documentation for their credentials, ethics, business practices, and services. In 2008, Jack was instrumental in the development this blog site (InvestorWatchdog.com) that reports on investment risks that result from ethical conflicts in the financial services industry. Jack has appeared on CNNfn and over 100 national, regional, and local radio shows to talk about the subject matter of his book, the risk and consequences of bad advice, and Paladin’s free online solutions. He is also widely quoted in the print media including Forbes, BusinessWeek, Worth, and Kiplinger and is a columnist for Worth Magazine. Jack can be reached at Jack@InvestorWatchdog.com.

Direct download: AMA49-JackWaymire.mp3
Category:Audio Podcast -- posted at: 10:00am EDT

Despite popular belief, China is no longer a cheap place to do business with labor costs and real estate costs soaring. Join Jason Hartman as he interviews Shaun Rein, author of The End of Cheap China and Managing Director of China Market Research Group in Shanghai, about debunking common myths, such as China is stealing U.S. jobs. Many companies have begun doing business in China, due to what Shaun refers to as “capitalism on steroids.”  Tune into www.JasonHartman.com for more details. Labor costs have increased in China to the tune of around 20 percent, and the government is trying to increase wages yearly over the next five years. Another factor affecting manufacturing costs over time is that fewer of the younger generation wants to be employed in manufacturing jobs, wanting to realize their white class dreams. China is also pushing middle class development to offset the manufacturing issue.
Shaun Rein is the Managing Director of CMR, the world's leading strategic market intelligence firm. He is one of the world's recognized thought leaders on strategy consulting.

He is a columnist for Forbes on Leadership, Marketing, and China and for BusinessWeek's Asia Insight section. He is often featured in the Wall Street Journal, the Harvard Business Review, The Economist, The Financial Times, Newsweek International, Bloomberg, Time, and the New York Times. He is regularly interviewed by American Public Radio's Marketplace and NPR. He frequently appears to deliver commentary on CNBC's Squawk Box, Bloomberg TV, CBS News, and CNN International TV. Before founding CMR, he was the Chief of Research for venture capital firm Inter-Asia Venture Management. He also was the Managing Director, Country Head China for e-learning software company WebCT where he also ran the company's Taiwan and South Korean operations. He also served as the Assistant Director of the Centre for East Asian Research at McGill University. He earned his Master's degree from Harvard University focused on China's economy and received a BA Honours from McGill University.

Direct download: AMA48-ShaunRein.mp3
Category:Audio Podcast -- posted at: 10:00am EDT

Jason Hartman interviews author, former Wall Street senior banker, and best-selling investigative journalist, William (Bill) D. Cohan on the events that led up to the current economic crisis. Bill explains the choices that the big firms, such as Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, etc, made regarding what type of institution they were going to be, the path of these firms that led up to the current crisis, and how they used the bailout money gifted to them. He said it was one big party on Wall Street, during which brokers were to bring in revenue using a lot of whacky products, until everything came crashing down. Huge bonuses were paid out from the revenue collected from unsuspecting clients. For more details, listen at:  www.JasonHartman.com. Bill and Jason also discuss the Occupy Wall Street Movement. Bill expressed disappointment in the message of the movement, saying it isn’t clear and they need to learn how Wall Street really works so that they can be more effective in bringing about reform. Wall Street has been influencing what goes on in Washington and paying lobbyists and donating to congressional coffers so that they can get the regulations, or lack thereof, that they want, i.e. the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. Bill talks about how the expansion of Wall Street into Middle Class America was not an accident, using the example of Merrill Lynch being a public company. This ultimately led to broken trust between Wall Street and Main Street, as people have now shied away from risk taking.

To solve the problems, Bill suggests changing the incentive system on Wall Street, in that it can no longer be okay to take huge risks with people’s money or get paid big bonuses whether they lose money for the firms or not, as well as going back to having to use their partner’s capital to operate. William D. Cohan offers audiences a unique, close-up perspective of the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression. He combines deep knowledge of the investment banking world with the fine storytelling skills of an award-winning investigative journalist. Bill’s new book is titled Money and Power: How Goldman Sachs Came To Rule The World, a revelatory history of Goldman Sachs. His previous book, House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street, lays out in gory detail how the financial crisis began with the collapses of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers. The Last Tycoons: The Secret History of Lazard Frères & Co. won the 2007 Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award for its candid revelations about how Wall Street works. He should know; he spent six years at the firm. Bill Cohan has a long-time insider’s in-depth knowledge of investment banking—he was a Wall Street banker for 17 years. In addition to his years as Associate and then Vice President at Lazard Frères, he was a Director in the Mergers & Acquisitions Group at Merrill Lynch and a Managing Director at JPMorgan Chase. He left JPMorgan to write The Last Tycoons, which appeared on the bestseller lists of The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and USA Today. It edged out Alan Greenspan’s Age of Turbulence to win the FT/Goldman Sachs award. Bloomberg.com and The Evening Standard named it Book of the Year. William D. Cohan writes regularly for The New York Times, Vanity Fair, Fortune, The Daily Beast, ArtNews, and The Financial Times. His columns have also appeared in The Washington Post. He is a contributing editor for Bloomberg TV and is a contributor to Bloomberg View. His series of articles on the controversy of the ‘recently discovered’ Degas plaster casts in ARTNews won the Silurians 2011 Excellence in Journalism Award.

Be sure to check out our prior shows with Richard Kiyosaki, G. Edward Griffin, Peter Schiff, Doug Casey, Chris Mayer, T. Harv Ecker, Denis Waitley, John Stapleford, Addison Wiggin, Thomas E. Woods, and many more.

Direct download: AMA47-WilliamCohan.mp3
Category:Audio Podcast -- posted at: 10:00am EDT

Join Jason Hartman and returning guest, Ellen Brown, author of Web of Debt, for a discussion of the United States’ debt ceiling, QE2, inflation, as well as a brief explanation of how money came to equal debt. Ellen explains why the debt ceiling is unconstitutional, how the government is legally committed to paying its debts. She points out the contradiction that has been for more than 100 years, since WWI. The easing put into place at that time was only to be a temporary measure. For more information, listen at:  www.JasonHartman.com. Ellen also talks about shadow banking causing the crisis by money being lent into existence, slight of hand. The only real money are coins, which are one-tenth of the total money in circulation. Ellen also discusses QE2 , where the government agreed to pay the interest on borrowed money in order to maintain control of the Federal Funds rate. She said there are a lot of reserve funds on the books in certain foreign banks, including bond dealers, that is just being held.  Ellen also touches on the national debt, Glass-Steagall, and proposes state-owned banks as part of the solution, with the basic idea that we take care of our own, much the same way that Japan is reliant on their own Central Bank.

Ellen Brown developed her research skills as an attorney practicing civil litigation in Los Angeles. In Web of Debt, her latest book, she turns those skills to an analysis of the Federal Reserve and "the money trust." She shows how this private cartel has usurped the power to create money from the people themselves, and how we the people can get it back. Brown developed an interest in the developing world and its problems while living abroad for eleven years in Kenya, Honduras, Guatemala and Nicaragua. She returned to practicing law when she was asked to join the legal team of a popular Tijuana healer with an innovative cancer therapy, who was targeted by the chemotherapy industry in the 1990s. That experience produced her book Forbidden Medicine, which traces the suppression of natural health treatments to the same corrupting influences that have captured the money system. Brown's eleven books include the bestselling Nature's Pharmacy, co-authored with Dr. Lynne Walker, which has sold 285,000 copies.

Direct download: AMA46-EllenBrown.mp3
Category:Audio Podcast -- posted at: 10:00am EDT

With an insurmountable national debt and a disastrous worldwide economy, could the United States still come out top dog? Join Jason Hartman and returning guest, Daniel Ameduri, inflation expert and Chief Strategist of FutureMoneyTrends.com, as they examine the possibilities and talk about Daniel’s predictions for the new year. Daniel explains the difference between price inflation, which, though we have inflation, we aren’t seeing it in everything yet, and hyperinflation, which is a total loss of faith in currency. He talks about how if we have deflationary shock, it won’t matter what the Federal Reserve does. People around the world will lose faith in America and the dollar will become worthless, and feels there will be some type of quantitative easing. Daniel notes that, in his opinion, the $20 trillion mark in our national debt will be the psychological level at which people stop buying our debt. Jason and Daniel also talk about resource wars as resources are becoming scarce. According to real data, oil has peaked, silver has peaked, as well as many other natural resources.
Jason and Daniel also discuss this possibly being the year of Ron Paul, whether he wins in the Presidential primaries or not, simply based on his foreign policy solutions. One thing Daniel notes is that our government redistributes our taxed incomes all over the world. Americans get caught up in the debate over a tax base, but Daniel says, “Hey, you’re fighting over your own money!” But Daniel is also optimistic in saying that the U.S. still has an advantage over the rest of the world due to our business base, large military, and the largest store of gold. We’re still going to go through hard times, but it’s still possible the U.S. can come out on top. The dollar is losing its value as other countries trade in their own currencies. Daniel expresses that a complete currency crisis now is to the U.S.’s advantage. The U.S. needs to do a currency reset and back the dollar with gold again. He also feels gold will be higher due to quantitative easing, the Euro crisis, and Iran. Visit: www.JasonHartman.com
Jason and Daniel’s final words of advice are don’t be distracted by pop culture. Pay attention to what is really going on in our country and around the world.
Daniel Ameduri is a free-market thinker and inflation expert. His market calls are firmly rooted in free-market economics theory - the theory master economist Dr. Ludwig von Mises brought the world decades ago. Like von Mises, Daniel understands that government's monopoly over money and banking is utterly misguided and is distorting credit markets. Its intervention is disastrous and dangerous as it churns out more dollars and generates unsustainable booms and busts. Daniel carries on von Mises' legacy, bringing investors eye-opening, no-holds-barred analysis, market calls that are dead-to-rights, and strategies for investing that protect personal wealth during turbulent times. Daniel has been featured on RT TV, Power Hour, Financial Sense and on over 100 radio shows. He is currently the editor of FutureMoneyTrends.com and was formerly with NIA. Appearing on MSNBC, CNBC and KTLA News, inflation expert Daniel Ameduri calls it like he sees it... and he sees it pretty clearly. Daniel was one of the first to call the market crash of 2008... and the collapse of both Lehman Brothers and Washington Mutual. Daniel went on to start Future Money Trends in 2010... and it has quickly become one of the top websites for the gold and silver markets. In addition to providing cutting edge research about macro-economic trends, Daniel regularly profiles micro-cap companies with explosive upside... rare gems with the potential to make investors rich.

Direct download: AMA45-DanielAmeduri.mp3
Category:Audio Podcast -- posted at: 10:00am EDT

Join Jason Hartman as he interviews author and financial journalist Roger Lowenstein regarding the history of Wall Street’s demise. Roger talks about the increases in choice, risk, hedging, more volatility, and how free markets are open to speculation, greed, fear and manipulation. There are more markets today susceptible to booms and busts. In the old days, local bankers determined loan eligibility. Today, bankers internationally, who don’t know anything about their clientele, determine eligibility, often to the detriment of the borrowers. For more details, listen at: www.JasonHartman.com. Roger and Jason debate whether Wall Street needs more regulation or deregulation, and discuss the consequences of government interference. They also talk about many of the Wall Street mistakes and the corporations that were rescued by the bailouts and the unprecedented number of failed mortgages.  They end their discussion with observations of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Roger Lowenstein graduated from Cornell University and was a reporter for the Wall Street Journal for more than a decade, including two years writing it’s “Heard on the Street” column. He has published five books, including The End of Wall Street, When Genius Fails, and Buffet: The Making of an American Capitalist. He is also the director of Sequoia Fund. Roger is the son of Helen and Louis Lowenstein. His father was an attorney and Columbia University law professor who wrote books and articles critical of the American financial industry. Roger himself has also written numerous financial articles.

Direct download: AMA44-RogerLowenstein.mp3
Category:Audio Podcast -- posted at: 10:00am EDT