HS 77 – Predictions for 2012 and Beyond with Linda Schurman

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It's my pleasure to welcome Linda Sherman to the show. She is the author of what A Survival Guide for the 21st Century. And she had published this book back in 2007 and virtually all of her predictions have come true. So as we head into the new year of 2012, what can we expect in 2012 and beyond? Obviously, many people think this will be a seminal year in history, as the past few years really have been in so many ways. Whether it is a subject of globalization, financial speculation, religion, law, education, media, meaning beauty, all sorts of things. Let's kind of get into it with Linda and let's see what the future holds for us. Linda, welcome. How are you?

Well, I'm fine. It's a pleasure to be on your show.

Pleasure to have you as well. And Linda, where are you coming to us from today?

Ithaca, New York.

Oh, you're in upstate New York. That's where my.

Yeah, where Cornell University and Ithaca College reside.

Fantastic, Fantastic. What's interesting, Linda, about you Is I heard you on another radio show, very famous radio show, and I must be honest, I never thought I would have an astrologer on the show. But your interview was so insightful and so interesting. I was just riveted to the radio listening and wanted to get you on our show to talk more about it. So I'm glad you're and want to hear what you have to say about 2012 and beyond.

Well, 2012 is a very, very difficult year in human civilization, broadly speaking, because we're confronted with a number of configurations, mainly the Pluto Uranus square and also the aspects throughout the year to the Neptune of the United States, which doesn't mean much to you, but to us it has to do with the need for emergency reactions to, to have people who can solve emergencies. Because I feel the economy, the global economy is going from bad to worse, quite frankly. Real unemployment in the United States is actually real unemployment is over 22% and most people have lost their savings, lost their retirements. The abuse of our financial system, which was deregulated over a long period of time. But the worst deregulations took place in 1999 when they got rid of the Glass Steagall act and instituted the Commodities Modernization act, which allowed the derivatives market, which before then had been under control, to go completely out of control to the point where derivatives trade is now over $700 trillion, which doesn't even count. The over the counter dark market derivatives trade, which is where all the money has gone. As the banksters, as we all know in 2008, which I pred in my book would be the beginning of the Great depression, that in 2008 we had a major, major crash. And also between 2007 and 2008 the real estate bubble broke and we had this enormous crash in real estate. We have unprecedented in history government debt, government debts all over the world. As we know what has happened in the European Union and many of the European nations are really officially bank with debt. And then we have the biggest in this country, personal or populous debt that we have ever had in history. Families that may be at present making maybe $40,000 a year have $40,000 in credit card debt and maybe another $200,000 in mortgage debt when their houses are underwater. All of the political spin that you have around that the people running for office are going to fix this economy, it's just not going to happen. I feel that things are going to get worse even in the second half of the year. Commodities are going to come down. I feel that the currency Crises which we are currently having with the Eurodollar are going to get worse rather than better because the European Union doesn't have a central bank in which they can print a lot of money as the United States. It does.

But one thing I must say about that, Linda, and I don't know what you're going to say next, you would only think that printing money is a good thing if you're a Keynesian. And I think printing money leads to just massive inflation.

Exactly, exactly true. But it's in a sense better than massive deflation or a complete and total crash. This is why I do not see this year that anybody is going to be able to solve anything, essentially. But for this very reason that you stated here in the United States, the likelihood is eventually, either this year and going into the next several years, that Bernanke is going to be busy printing money and that the US dollar will eventually become devalued, that we will have inflation. This they consider to be better than massive deflation which occurred in the 1930s when you could buy a loaf of bread for a few pen. The point is that no matter how you look at it, we're in major, major trouble. Now, my advice to people in my book and on my newsletters, I have an online newsletter. What I have advised people to do way back when, before all of this happened, was to get out of debt. And interestingly enough, I realized with your podcast and what you do to get into income producing real estate, that when the price of real est estate comes crashing down, which it has in so many places, if you're positioned, you can produce income from rental. This is what my husband and I did and we now have rental income. We have no debt, we pay cash for our house and we have an adjacent apartment that we rent. But the problem is most people are in such major debt. The kids have college loans, are coming out of college with $100,000 worth of college loan debt or wor, get a job or work.

You know what is really scary, by the way, Linda, about the student loan debt, I wonder sometimes if that was really part of the vast conspiracy to just enslave the middle class. Because it's always been the mantra, go to college, get a good education. And the college inflation has been absurd. And it's largely been so. It's been possible to inflate college tuition so much because the stupid government has been and they're guaranteeing student loans. And when you guarantee student loans and make them more plentiful, then you have more money. Chasing a limited Supply of services, College degrees would be the services in this case. And so the price naturally goes up and these universities can just charge ridiculous amounts of money, which they do. And college tuition has inflated much faster than the rate of general inflation for many years now. But here is the thing that is so scary about it is that student loan debt is not dischargeable in bankruptcy. And this is something that is literally a form of debt slavery. These kids, they could leave school with 100, 200 grand in student loan debt and they can never get away from it. I mean, they could declare bankruptcy once, twice over the course of the next 15 years and they've still got to pay that student loan debt no matter what that is.

You're absolutely right, Jason. It's heartbreaking. You're absolutely right. And further to what you're saying, back in 2005 there was a so called bankruptcy reform bill passed that makes it now difficult across the board for individuals to declare bankruptcy. And that was passed by both parties in Congress. So bankruptcy as an out, as a way of discharging, relieving or minimizing your debt has been severely again, because the credit card companies are such a powerful lobby and the banksters, as we would say, that hold that credit card. Those credit cards have been so powerful that the government and the monopolies and the banksters have gotten in bed together and passed legislation that is making criminal activities legal, such as the subprime loans and the financialization of subprime mortgages that were packaged and sold off to guess what? Greece, Portugal, Ireland and Italy.

Iceland. Don't forget Iceland.

Yes, and Iceland. Interesting though, Iceland has sort of reformed itself. It sort of threw everybody out and started over again and they seem to be doing okay. But, but it's, you know, this is what it's going to take. I feel that we are in for a grand long depression and that it's eventually the bad guys, the monopolies, the banksters and the government, which is building up to be an agency which is taking our constitutional rights away from us, such as the recent National Defense Authorization act signed by Obama that allows our military to, to arrest us without due process, which means that we're not legally charged with anything. We don't get a lawyer, we don't get a trial, anything. This is very serious. And then you have, as a contrast, you have the recent crashing and burning of MF Global, who was headed up by John Corzine, the quintessential insider of all time, former senator from New Jersey, Goldman Governor, Goldman Sachs CEO.

Linda. Why is it always. Goldman Sachs is at the heart of everything, you know.

Yeah, well I have said for a long time, I mean the secretaries, I'm fond of calling it the secretaries of.

The treachery instead of the Treasury. The treachery, yeah, that's good.

Most of them are the present isn't, but most of them are from Goldman Sachs. And I feel that the worst cartel in government that represented these agencies was during the Clinton years was Robert Rubin, former CEO of Goldman Sachs. Alan Greenspan and Lawrence Summers, whom I nearly passed out when Obama appointed him as his economic adviser. These guys, they pushed through legislation that killed the Glass Steagall act which had separated regular commercial lending banking from financial banking. And this is how mortgages got financialized and literally turned into derivatives and the Commodities Modernization act, which took the lid off of derivatives. And it's just what we were turned into is a lot of very wealthy people at the top of the food chain could use the economy, even including people's mortgages as their personal roulette wheel. And here we are. And the average person, you mentioned the middle class. And I always say, what middle class?

Well, it's still bigger than it is in most any country around the world, but it's getting smaller. And that's what is really bothering me and so many other people who are paying attention to it.

Well, I want to say that the government statistics the end of December revealed that half of this nation is at or below the poverty line, 1/2. So I say to you, if half of the population of this nation is at or below the poverty line, where, where's the so called middle class? It's more, not an average, but a median figure. If you know about statistics. It's a line drawn in the middle where maybe only a few people reside.

Right, right.

Some middle point between the top and the bottom. So my feeling is, and you're very sophisticated about these things and a lot of people that you've had on your podcast, like Doug Casey, I fan of his, I want to say that as much as I think because I know it's important for people who listen to this to say, well, what can I do? I think one of the important things is to wait until gold bottoms, it's in a short term bear market and kind of wait until a bottom in the second half of the year as early as the end of August, but probably by October we're going to see gold rising again. So gold is a good place as just a hedge against currency instability where currency is going to be worth less and less and even worse than it's worth, it's almost like nobody's going to believe in it anymore.

Yeah, and people should understand that currency is different than money. Money represents actual things that have intrinsic value, whereas currency is just a symbol of supposed value or fiat value. Linda, I want to ask you about a few things and kind of clarify a few things. I agree with you that debt is a major problem, both on a national level, a sovereign level for many nations and of course the US and for individuals even more so. But a few things just to kind of, I want to kind of smoke some stuff out and I know this is not your specific area, whereas it is mine, but when it comes to debt, I agree with you, the debt is a huge problem. However, I think with so much inflation on the horizon, there is one type of debt that is very good and I call it self liquidating debt. Debt that is against income properties as long as it's long term fixed rate debt that you can outsource to tenants. Now granted, we still have to live in a society where we have not had a complete collapse of civilization where there's some rule of law to some extent and there are some people who think we should just all move out to the woods and have cans of beans and a shotgun. I don't quite think things are ever going to get that bad because I don't either. You know, too many people remember how it was. And I don't think civilization is really going to fall apart, even though I've interviewed a lot of people on my show that think that. And it's interesting, I went into doing this show several years ago when I started it, thinking some of those thoughts myself, reading some of this material and listening to some of these people and now that I've had a chance to really interview them, I think there's likelihood of civil unrest in pockets and for short periods, similar to the LA riots in the 90s and things here and there and some ugly stuff on the Occupy Wall street front. And the government scares me for sure with they're just diminishing our rights more and more. However, I think still before the US is really considered that bad a place, you have to ask yourself this question compared to what? And I think in the US we have a long way to fall before I would even consider leaving. There are so many people now that are talking about becoming an expat and I've interviewed them on the show even, you know, and I mean one of my friends, well, several of my friends, they're doing stuff around the world. You know, one's really into South America. He's probably thinks he's going to move his whole family from California to South America. Another one wants to leave the US and move to China. And I'm like, are you kidding? I just. I don't get it.

Jason, I totally agree with you. We got to remember that we still do have the right to protest. We still do have the right to elect people or get rid of them or whatever. I agree with you. I think that the, the Occupy Wall street movement and many of these other movements will eventually consolidate into a third political party that will have some clout over the next several years. That's what I think the outcome and this is the way we can do things. But I did predict in 2011 that we would see the beginning of the second American Revolution. And I believe revolutions have a very bad track record of violence and upheaval, and sometimes they replace those they've thrown out with worse people. We've got the ability here to replace people eventually. I think it's going to take a long time. I think the bottom of this depression will be around 2020. But I think between 2024 and 2026, we're going to see a new, more egalitarian equ. We're going to get our democracy back. There are going to be some new ideas. I think that there's going to be a solution to energy. As I said on the show that you heard me on, I believe that there's going to be a new non fossil fuel form of energy that will become major and centralized, that there are going to be breakthroughs in physics that are going to create something that nobody knows that much about at this point, probably hydrogen fusion. And the infrastructure will be set up in the 2000 and twenties around the world. I agree with you that many of my clients and people that I know are saying I'm going to relocate to Central and South America.

And I'm saying it's too early to think like that.

Well, not only that, but we're up against as well massive earthquakes that I think are beginning to. To take place around the world and volcanic eruptions. And many of the nations are not even counting climate extremes, earthquakes and volcanoes that we're seeing happening at an increased rate and increased intensity during this time, which I predicted in my book would be there through early 2016, from the end of 2009 through early 2016. And I do feel that there is a very real danger of a major one hitting the California coast, particularly the San Francisco area. But we're going to see a lot of tectonic events, especially in the spring of this year. And so sometimes a person might move somewhere and find out they can't live there. And also, like yourself, I sense in you a certain love of this country.

Oh yes, absolutely.

And I feel that way too. I feel we have a core potential here that needs to be reawakened. We would have become lazy and lethargic and not paying any attention.

Luxury is the lull and luxury or prosperity, whatever you want to call it, is the lull to apathy. And Americans have had it so good for so long that we have become complacent. But just to get back to what you were saying earlier, I hope you're right that there really is a legitimately powerful third political party. Maybe it's the Ron Paul type sect. I don't know exactly what it would look like. I don't know if it's even possible because, you know, I'm afraid that the people really pulling the strings, whether they be the Bilderberg Group or whoever really runs the world, you know, I don't know. But you know, the way I think it might play out, I think instead of seeing a third party at a national level, we might see more of a movement toward states rights or state secession. And I've predicted for many years now that if, if Texas were to, say, secede from the United States, it would become the Hong Kong of the United States. In other words, as Hong Kong is to China, Texas would be to the US and so many productive, ambitious, hard working people would move there seeking out greater opportunities. Whereas you see places like California and New York, your state, and my former state, California, my family's from New York. So that have these big oppressive governments and intrusive governments. You see people leave them, maybe that would be the thing that would swing the pendulum back if you saw this sort of brain drain out of these other things.

And in a way I agree in the sense that I see a great relocalization that even that could involve the states and the states making more and more of their own individual decisions and having a closer framework. But, but I think it's going to be really communities that you live in and how the community reorganizes itself into local entrepreneurial enterprises. And reviving the small business is really what is the foundation for the good things in America.

No question. It's not Wall street, it's Main Street.

Right. And it is, I think on that basis. But I think we have to face absolutely catastrophic environmental issues that are coming up. We have to learn to relocalize our food production to start organic farms. We have to. We're at the verge with Neptune going into Pisces between February of this year and March of 2025. We've got global potable water crisis staring us in the face. We've got mass extinction of life forms on earth that are, that are just startling just looking at the science of all of this. So we have to change the way we live. And I agree with you that relocalization is going to be extremely important.

But I want to say. Yeah, you are absolutely right. You know what is the obstacle though? It's not just what's in people's mind and their habits and so forth. Shift shop at the farmer's market instead of the big corporate store. Part of the corporatocracy. But the other problem, Linda, is the government. I mean, and one of the worst offenders frankly is the leftist Obama administration. I mean they are trying to consolidate food production so they can control it. Just like they're consolidating the banks so they can control that. And it is of course it's not just Obama. It's a symptom of the whole government.

I don't know that that's so leftist. I think Obama is simply responding to the agribusiness monopoly that are huge lobbyists.

But he's appointed people the head of Monsanto or the former head of Monsanto, I forget which is now heading the Department of Agriculture. I mean this is bad.

Bush was even worse. He appointed all these people who were former CEOs or former heads of the companies he was supposed to regulate.

Right. They're all cut from the same cloth, you know. I know.

And we're finding out now that Frankenfoods or these genetically engineered seeds are toxic to animals, devastating to the environment, using up more water and they do not reduce, they are increasing the amount of insecticide we have to use.

But you know what they do? They make a lot more money for companies like Monsanto. And that's the problem.

Exactly. And the worst damage Monsanto has done is in India and these other nations where the they have forced local farmers to buy their seeds which are non reproducible. I mean the evil just goes on and on. So it's to me, I know the ideological stuff in politics today between the Democrats and the Republicans has to do with big government versus business. To me right now we don't even have that choice. It's big business and banks controlling business, big government and big Government enforcing what these people want on the rest of the people to their own.

You couldn't be more accurate. The United. The Wall street has purchased the U.S. senate. They've just bought it. They support both sides of the aisle. They just hedge their bet. They give it to the Republicans and the Democrats so that when either party is in control, they get what they want.

And then that your listeners go to getmoneyout.com which is a website that can have you vote for getting all private money out of all political campaigns. As a constitutional amendment, that would be.

A dream come true. But, you know, I just don't think it's going to happen, but it would be great.

I think this, you know, we have to start at the grassroots. And I feel that these grassroots things, eventually, they're not going to happen tomorrow, they're not going to happen this year. Eventually they're going to happen. We have to get behind them. We have to push them. We really have to. And that's why I'm happy about Occupy Wall street and even the Tea Partiers. I mean, I'm not saying I agree with everything that all those movements are proposing, but I think they're the beginning of something. In fact, I was surprised some people emailed me and said some of the Tea Partiers wanted to unite with the Occupy Wall Street.

Oddly enough, it is a continuum. I agree. It's, you know, my friends, most of them tend to be on the right side of the aisle, and that's where I've always leaned. But I see the flaws in both of them. They're just the same thing. G. Edward Griffin, the author of the Creature from Jekyll island, who you're probably familiar with.

I read that book.

Wasn't it great? When I, when I had him on the show, he said something very tell. He said that what you see in the media between the liberals and the conservatives, the Democrats and the Republicans, is you see something that's really tantamount to a wrestling match that you see on television. It's fake. It's just entertainment. It's bread and circuses. It's just meant to distract us from the real agenda of the globalists that are trying to hollow the country out. And they are just trying to destroy the middle class so that they can gain more control of resources and raise the prices and reduce the access to those resources.

You're absolutely right. I couldn't agree more. I call them weapons of mass distraction.

Yeah, weapons of mass distraction. I love that.

Yeah. The media itself, for the most part, except for programs like yours and coast to coast and many other shows that do have. And on the Internet. And by the way, there is, you know, then you have a chance to hear people express what they feel is the truth, rather than this stuff that you hear on the mainstream media, which amounts to absolutely no information whatsoever. In fact, people come over here from other countries and say, you know, you don't have any news over here.

It's amazing. I know. It's just the corporatocracy. It's all sanitized. It's the same top six stories that run in a cycle. You'd think if you turn on the television and watch any of the news stations all day, you'd think there's nothing else going on but six things in the whole world. It's mind boggling.

You're absolutely right, Jason. I couldn't agree with you more.

No, I know European news is far, far deeper than ours, but it's a global thing. The only real free news is the stuff that is done by individuals. And I say the Internet and the blogosphere is one of the more reliable places to get your news, believe it or not.

Well, we've got to be very vigilant because there's a new bill in Congress sponsored by Joseph Lieberman that would have the right for the government to take off the Internet anything they felt that was some kind of a threat to them.

Oh, boy.

A very broadly written bill.

The Founding Fathers must be rolling over in their graves now. It's just amazing.

Our founders, as I've said over and over again in my book, Thomas Jefferson would be coming back as a ghost, preaching on the mountaintop as to how we betrayed. The Founding Fathers were such a unique group of intelligent individuals and they had spats with each other and disagreements from the left and right, but they got it together to form this great country. And we've lost that thread and we've got to get it back. And I think we will. I think with the 2020s, and I don't think that China is going to be the next great. You can't breathe the air there. They're running out of water because of the Himalayan glaciers have melted. The Yangtze and Yellow Rivers in China are so filled with factory pollutants because they had no environmental laws there. So you can't breathe the air or drink the water. And I just think that China is in major trouble, that people are getting very, very sick and dying in that country. And they're keeping the lid on it as the China. It always has kept the lid on publicizing anything. And I also am predicting this year that China's going to have another rebellion of its own. A Tiananmen Square type of revolution is going to happen over there.

Let me take a brief pause. We'll be back in just a minute.

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It'S interesting because my friend who has he spent about, I don't know, 10 months or so in China on his last trip there, opened a company there, has a company in the US a company in Ireland and a company in China now. And he, he keeps writing these emails to our group of friends saying I'm here in China with virtually no government interference. It's amazing what capitalism can do, blah, blah, blah. And I wrote back and I said, does getting run over by a tank constitute government interference? Exactly.

No. As long as they like what he's doing over there. And it employs Chinese workers who will work for about 30. As long as you can outsource the American labor force to cheap, almost slave labor abroad and China is benefiting, it's fine. But at any time they can either throw you out or arrest you. You've got to remember that you're in a communist dictatorship in China that allows capitalistic enterprises to come in and their companies are all owned by their government. So you have to keep these things in mind when you're doing right now. It's a heyday for certain people who are able to go over there. And because the labor costs are so low, they do not have to put any pollution devices on their factories. They make a whole lot of money at the top. But eventually it's going to come see everybody, these people are going to fall on their swords. The people controlling things in the world today are going to fall on their swords. And we will sort it out in the last analysis, but there are a lot of innocent people who will be victimized by all of this along the.

Way and people who already have been. Now why do you say they're going to fall on their swords? How do you know that? How will that happen and why will it happen?

Well, I practice what is called mundane astrology, which is the fate of nations, of corporations, of human civilization itself. But I look at individual charts of countries and I can see in a few years from now, China is going to face, and their leadership is going to face major, major problems and challenges that they will be in some kind of revolution or upheaval which is spreading all over the world, and they're not going to be exempt from it. And many of the people who have controlled things harshly are going to be brought down. And we're seeing that already throughout the world. It started with the Arab Spring in the Middle Eastern nations. The big question mark is when these people are brought down, so to speak, who is going to replace them? And what new ideas are going to come into play? And these are all looming questions for which there are no answers at the moment. But I am an optimist and I think over the long term humanity will have a mass consciousness raising and we will recognize that we need to live in concert with the earth and in cooperation with each other. And when that day comes, we will have an entirely new kind of civilization.

Linda let me ask you for a moment about commodities. You made remark that you thought commodities were going to decline in price. And then you also mentioned gold, and of course you probably mean silver in tandem with it, or precious metals in general. And I want to just ask you about that a little bit. And in order to ask you the question, I've got to just give you a little bit. And I know you've looked at my shows and so forth, and I just want to run my philosophy by you for a moment, if I may, and I want to see what you think of it, because I want to know if I'm doing the right thing or the wrong thing. I think it's right. But people who live in a vacuum and fall too in love with their own ideas usually fall on their sores. So I never want to be that person. But generally speaking, and this is just in a nutshell, it takes hours to explain this. I did a seminar for a group of investors. It's a nine hour day, basically, where I go through all of this stuff, but very, very briefly. My favorite asset class is income property. And there are a few reasons why, but mainly it's because I have something that I call the ultimate investing equation. And basically it works something like this. Basically what I say is I buy, I say buy properties where you get the property far below the cost of construction or replacement, where the land is free. So you're not buying in expensive areas like California or anything. You know, you're buying in areas like Dallas, Indianapolis, Atlanta, Phoenix, where you're buying properties for 30 to 50 to maybe $70 per square foot, and the land is Free, where it would cost 80 to $120 per square foot to rebuild those properties. Now, I call this, oddly enough, packaged commodities investing. Because I really think that the play is in the commodities. The concrete, the steel, the lumber, the petroleum products, the copper wire, the glass, all of the ingredients, the energy, all of the ingredients that goes into building a house or an apartment building, right? And what I say is, I say buy these packaged commodities below their cost today. Look at it this way. If you had to buy commodities on the commodities exchange, you'd have to pay the current trading price of copper or lumber or gold or silver or whatever the commodity or soybeans or coffee beans or pork bellies or whatever the commodity was, right? So now with beat up real estate, you can buy them for less than their cost. And not just that, you can finance them for three decades at incredibly low fixed rates. Whereas now if someone gets a mortgage on a property, they might borrow that money at 4.5 to 5% and not pay that mortgage off until 2042. I mean, wow, by 2042 we'll have almost another hundred million people in this country. And then you look at the population around the world, which will increase dramatically by, by then. And all of those people consume these same, what I call packaged commodities around the world. So they're not just a US thing, they're not just tied to the dollar. And then what you do is you take that long term fixed rate debt that's three decades long and you outsource it to somebody called a tenant and see, when I invest in gold and silver as well. But I look at the gold and silver as just a defensive strategy where you're just simply saying this is a way to save money, to store wealth, wealth, it's better than saving it in fake fiat dollars that are just paper and ink. Because at least one thing now we have 7 billion people on earth. One thing that pretty much 7 billion people agree is that gold and silver are money.

That's exactly my philosophy, that I don't look at gold and silver per se as commodity. When I talk about commodities, I'm talking about how they're traded in the direction derivatives exchanges, the futures trading and the price going up and down. On that score, you're talking about the actual ownership of something that has intrinsic value. And those are two different things.

Interesting distinction. Tell me more.

I think like there are people that are constantly, they make money on derivatives exchanges, trading commodities futures. And I think they're going to get burned the second half of this year from June on in that area. However, I am 100% with you in owning through the ages. Interestingly enough, for thousands of years the number one wealth for people ultimately has been land, mainly farmland. And I think if you, your plan sounds very, very, I think if you own something outright, you own it and you can lease it and rent it, that you're in a very, very good position. And I really think you have a very good plan.

So just one more part of that plan if I may. The reason I like the debt against the property though is because when it's fixed rate debt, and right now I believe the true inflation rate is about 9.5%. Whereas the government of course under quotes that they always have really, but especially since the 80s, they've really, you know, or the late 70s, they really, really misquoted inflation. And so they tell us they would have us believe that inflation is about 3 or 4% when it's really close to 10. But I think we may see inflation, Linda, that is easily well above 20, 30, 40% in this country in the future as the entitlement time bomb of 60 trillion to $130 trillion comes home to roost. That's going to be an ugly one. And the government attempts to keep its promise by inflating away the debt. And China starts balking and Japan starts saying why should we buy these treasury bills anymore? They're going to be worthless. You know, the US is printing money like it's going out of style. And so what you do is you take advantage of something that I call, I coined a little phrase around it, I call it inflation induced debt destruction. And what happens is that inflation transfers wealth from lenders to borrowers. Oddly enough, the debtor is the one who benefits when inflation comes along. As long as of course the debt is tied to a real asset that produces income that you don't pay the debts yourself. See on your income property, someone else pays the debt, the tenant does and the debt debt is fixed rate for a long term as long as you follow all of those rules. It seems like the people that if inflation comes, and you and I both think it will, some people think it won't, but if it comes, you're just going to benefit. Because like think about it. If you owe a million dollars on a real estate portfolio today and say inflation is just 10% in real dollars one year from now, you really only owe 900,000 because inflation keeps the value.

Of Bernanke is going to pay down the debt the U.S. debt create by creating printing more dollars, creating dollar inflation. And, you know, there's two things. There's dollar inflation and there's price inflation. And they're not exactly the same.

They are. I'm glad you mentioned that because. And what you're getting at there, just so the listeners know, is that the, the academic definition of inflation is just simply creating more money. The result that you see, the symptom of that is you see higher prices. Usually now there's a lag time there, and it's usually about 18 months to two years historically. Because what happens is, you know, inflation occurs, or what you should say, price inflation occurs when you have too many dollars chasing a limited supply of goods and services. And that takes a little while to play out. And right now what we've got is we've got the banks just hoarding them up money.

They're not lending it to anybody. And all of these crazy foreclosures that are going on very often are very much in limbo. People are trying to refinance their mortgages and the paperwork, they paperwork you to death, they never get it done. And you sit there forever and ever. It's such a confused pile of mess.

Well, I think one of the things that's happening there, there is the banks have taken all of this money from the taxpayers, these bailouts. And the government has said, look, in return for this money, we want you to start modifying loans and helping people in foreclosure and all of that kind of stuff. And so they've done it. It's window dressing. It's a big lie. They've set up these departments, they say they'll modify loans. And what they've done is a drop in the bucket. They've done a few thousand loan modifications. I remember Charles Payne, the Wall street guy. Once on his program, I heard him say, on average, every loan modification that B of A, or I call them the mafia bank of annoying that B of A has done. They're like the most hated company in America, I think they have done. Every loan modification has cost the government like $800,000 to modify a loan that's $120,000. It's just. It's insane.

You're absolutely right. And you know what's even further crooked schemes is they used bank of America, for instance, one of the worst, used an illegal entity to process the subprime mortgages to begin with. And now various states supreme courts are ruling those entities as illegal. And so that even their foreclosure process has been rendered illegal. This happened in Kirby.

There was a robo signing yes, absolutely.

And so many of these people are saying, I'm just going to sit here, let them foreclose, let them try to get me out. The whole process was illegal to begin with. So you have that further boomerang thrown into the situation. You know, just to make your point about your plan is I have a friend here in this area who has bought about four houses with three apartments in each house, and he got like 30 year mortgages on each one of those. His own house is paid for, but he used that equity, one rent. He has three rental apartments in each of those buildings. One rent makes his mortgage payment and his taxes, so that the other two rents are pure profit for him, and he's retired on that. And this area that I live in has a shortage of rental properties because we have Cornell University, we have Ithaca College, we have a lot of colleges around us.

And the other thing you have is you have so many people that either can't get a new loan if they want to buy a house, or they're cycling out of the ownership market because they've been foreclosed on. And many times it was a strategic default, so it made sense.

Exactly. True.

But, you know, what were you going to say, Linda? That happened in Kansas. I was kind of curious. You sort of changed quickly. Yeah.

The state supreme court, I believe it was either in 2009 or 2010, ruled that the mortgages issued through this illegal entity were illegal, that they weren't valid, and therefore the foreclosure process on the people who had the houses was also invalid. And that has been spreading to other states. The state supreme courts are ruling. I don't know. I haven't tracked how many other states have now their supreme courts have also ruled this. But again, you mentioned earlier how the states are going to take over a lot of the ruling and legal process, in that sense of the word, that you're going to see a relocalization of things.

And I think that relocalization is going to be good for all except the corporatocracy who wants to control us and limit our resources and raise our prices on things. No question about it. Well, Linda, what else do you predict for the future? Just to kind of wrap up here. We've been talking a long time, and you're so interesting to talk to. I just. I really like your work.

Well, I like what you're doing, too, Jason. I think. I think it's great. I think most of the issues I am really, really concerned about are ensnarling ourselves with Iran I think there's going to be a lot of threats and a lot of confusion this year about are we going to go or is Israel going to go to war with Iran because of their nuclear thing. They just announced that they enriched Iran uranium today. And I think that is going to be a mess because already they are threatening to close down the Gulf of Hormuz, which is the major area through which oil is transported out of the Middle East. And of course we have hit them with sanctions. So I think there's some real danger of something blowing up this year in Iran. I don't really think this administration wants to go to war in Iran, but I think there's going to be a lot of almost getting there during the course of this year because the chart of Iran has been activated by this retrograde Mars and square Neptune in the usa. I think as I said, the protest, the Occupy Wall street movement is going to consolidate and become quite cohesive and possibly be a part of forming a third political party that may displace one of the other parties eventually. I think I mentioned briefly earlier on in this interview that there is developing a worldwide water crisis that is coming about that we're going to have to address. And I also feel that we're in a significant earthquake cycle from the northwest coast of the United States, California, Mexico. I think Japan is going to get hit with more severe earthquakes and tsunamis. Alaska, Chile, Iceland and Italy, all of those areas are being hit by this Pluto, Uranus Square and there's a solar eclipse May 20th squared to Neptune. I would say that this April through June area is the time of greatest earthquake and volcanic danger this year. And it's considerable. Those are the things. So I'm really concerned about my friends and everybody on the west coast because even if you're far enough inland to avoid, there still is a shutdown of electricity and utilities and the economic crises that that generates as well. So this is going to be tough from that point of view. Last year in February, I predicted a major earthquake and tsunami in Japan, which of course took place in March. The Fukushima nuclear plant is still leaking. They have not been able to really shut down those leaks and it's poisoning the islands and it's very, very, very tragic. I think also within the next decade or so, many island nations throughout the world will be underwater or will become uninhabitable. Malaysia, Indonesia, Japan, coastal regions throughout the world, low lying coastal regions as the oceans are rising. So we are going to consist front these kinds of emergencies as well as everything else. I have advised people to move inland to a place of elevation that has a good supply of potable water and is surrounded by a culture of organic farming and gardening and local entrepreneurship and strong local community participation, which is why my husband and I moved here. We're 1,100ft above sea level, we're inland, and we're in the Finger Lakes region surrounded by glacial lakes. We're not going to run out of water for a long time.

Good points, good points. Well, Linda, how can people get a hold of your book or get a hold of you?

Learn more about is sold on Amazon.com it is sold on Google Books. You can order it from any bookstore. You can come to my site and order it directly from my click in to my publisher. But preferably the easiest way is just to go to Amazon and order it right. They deliver it right to you.

And the book is called what A Survival Guide for the 21st Century. Linda Sherman, thank you so much for joining us today. Appreciate it.

It's a pleasure. Jason.

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