It’s a very well produced film with high production values. Essentially, it’s a consolidation of many skeins of thought in the vein of films/books like The Corporation, Zeitgeist, Chariots of the Gods by Von Daniken, The Creature From Jekyll Island by G.E. Griffin, The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America by Iserbyt, and They Mystery of Banking by Rothbard. The only thing missing is the JFK assassination. And thankfully they do not claim the élites are really lizard people (or did they, I forget).

But Thrive goes further by establishing its own reductionist cosmology based on the torus as the universal pattern of energy flow. The main potential benefit being free energy, which has enormous economic, social, and political implications if true. It’s akin to zero-point energy and the implications of the work of Tesla.

But there’s something I just don’t trust about Mr. and Mrs. Gamble. They may be forthright, well-meaning human beings, but they carry the aura of some spiritual occultist leaders who are simply too at peace with themselves on the surface. I got the sense that they are trying to establish the Cult of the Torus.

However, the inclusion of Catherine Austin Fitts adds a lot of credibility to this video for me. I have great respect for her and her opinions, some of which some might find a bit, shall we say, “out there.”

In the end, the message that change is possible is positive and necessary is one that the world sorely needs right now. I would suggest people don’t get too caught up in some of the claims, but focus on the fact that humanity does have the potential to be better than what our current paradigm would seem to allow.

And then there is the issue of neighbors, and neighboring stores. A lot of the dead commercial real estate here is drifting off to substand uses ie “Play it Again Sports”…..a dead Taco Bell….a dead Blockbuster….a dead exercise machine place…a dead exercise gym….and on and on….get the picture? It is insidious, but the decay goes on, and the rot sets in…..slowly so you almost don’t see it…..but the people who moved out years ago who return to visit friends see it immediately….and it seems to be coming to Vancouver Island.

Thanks Danielle for putting Thrive up there for us. And BTW, I spoke to a Fidelity rep on the phone today during market hours asking him if anyone has been complaining about the market as of late and what to do about it. He said, yes a lot of people are getting tired of the up/down, whipsaw action….then he asked ME what my plan of action was!!! I told him my age, then went silent. He was thirty. And I went silent. Then I told him my plan of action. Sit in almost 100% cash earning very little for as long as it took to disgust out the other players. He laughed! He said how low did I expect the markets to get? I basically told him your targets…..2009 levels. He was silent. Then I told him 2007-2008 was just the leading edge of the storm..and it did in the bubbly homebuyers. The far-edge of the storm was the coming destruction to state and municipality pension funds IF these markets don’t produce some returns. I had to repeat this several times, but he did ‘get it’ I hope. Then I hung up and silently thanked you for all your wisdom and time you spend with us here.

Thank you Danielle. Thank you!

If it’s true that O’Leary personally pocketed only about 12 million dollars or so from his sale of TLC and his subsequent involvement with Mattel, then he is nothing more than a very entertaining—and rather deflated–fraud.

I used to enjoy watching O’Leary on BNN, but I never liked his “the only thing that matters is money” mantra. Every time he espoused his filthy lucre world-view I would cringe at the thought of so many Canadians (especially young Canadians), who were caught under his curmudgeon charms, nodding their heads and saying, “right on!”

I agree that the CBC has denigrated its own credibility by exploiting O’Leary’s rude, pompous, and arrogant on-air personality. Of course, Amanda Lang’s role was to maintain that credibility with rational comment and to reign in O’Leary when he went to far. Sadly for her, their on-air partnership was the financial news equivalent of Abbott & Costello. Are they still together? I don’t know, I stopped watching long, long ago.

As for his funds, I’m not surprised they’ve underperformed. But redemptions since the crisis of ’08 have become pretty much common across the board, so I would not necessarily single him out for that.

While I’m sure this does not apply to you or to Venable-Park in a negative way, it has to be said that the most lucrative practice in finance is taking the “golden crumbs” of naïve investors. Kevin O’Leary certainly parlayed his abrasive personality into more business for his fund company. Sadly, it may turn out that his personality may be (perhaps) the only thing that was real about him.

http://www.theburningplatform.com/?p=30603

There can always be countervailing forces to any trend. Long ago I supposed that Western governments would try to counter the aging trend with young immigrants from places like Asia and the Middle East. I’m not saying the immigration wave into Canada of the last decade was a policy response to the aging problem, but it make sense to me. By God, something has to be done to ablate the tsunami of boomer retirees heading our way.

It helps to understand why money flows into certain assets (e.g. demographics, business cycle, laws, policies, inflation, politics, geo-politics, innovation, etc., etc.) at different times. Generally, you don’t want to buy the assets that everyone else has, but rather the ones that everyone else will want in the near future.

But that’s certainly easier said than done. Does the lack of volume in stocks presage a big market drop? Or can Hal 9000 carry stocks all on his own until volume returns? I thought we would have a big drop in Canadian real estate in 2008. But the feds reflated the system like a cheap balloon and turned a boom into a mania.

Eric Janszen did a great deal of research about a decade ago before going heavily into gold, silver, and Treasuries. FYI: he got out of silver right at the recent peak, but remains in gold. James Dines identified the rare earth elements boom long before anyone in the MSM even knew what rare earths were. Both have been richly rewarded (also because they sell investment newsletters, perhaps the greatest source of their wealth. But you can’t deny the fact that they made good calls).

If “head” banker takes huge bonuses, and basks in glory (even though it was mostly luck).
If “tail” banker asks for forgiveness and tax-payer funded handouts.

This is the system we are facing.

What is even worse, is that banker would stop at nothing, even the destruction of whole economies.