Money and Fear with Pye Ian

The coup attempt obviously failed against the Maduro government in Venezuela last week, but you knew that.  What’s worth knowing further is that the regime change agent Juan Guaidó, who was touted for months as the future leader of Venezuela, is now potentially rendered as “expendable”.  I.E. He may be more valuable to his foreign […]

The inflation rate is much higher than the US government is willing to admit.  Why isn’t it listed & discussed truthfully, then?  Because by publishing & using true data, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Labor Department & Federal Reserve would

After reaching $20,000 back in December of 2017, bitcoin’s price collapsed over 80% in a year & traded in a range suppressed under $10,000 for many months.  Yet, despite no apparent fundamental or technical trading justifications, Bitcoin’s price shot up over 23% out of the blue on April 2nd due to algorithmic trading & a [&

Whether you’re a short order cook, a trial attorney, a plumber, Starbucks barista, car mechanic, ER nurse, high school teacher or a Hollywood producer, and whether you’re infatuated with your career & ‘in the zone’ daily, or absolutely hating life while slavin’ away at a meaningless desk job while pleading for the boss to return […]

Since they kicked off over the weekend of November 17th, 2018, the French Gilets Jaunes – or Yellow Vests – protests have swept across not only France, but are showing inspiration and momentum in other nations, both in Europe and abroad.  Mimicking crowds, motivated by the courage & resilience of the French lower & middle [&

History tends to be written by the victors, yet their narrative preferences need not monopolize knowledge about events past & present.  Especially if their versions are purposefully, tactically false, misleading or limited in depth, scope or context.  The more politically sensitive historical events tend to be, the more the likelihood that their “official” historical accounts [&

It’s not enough to emphasize that the West wants regime change in Venezuela because of its oil!  That’s a given.  What’s not discussed is what the oil is wanted for.  What Maduro’s Venezuela and its allies Russia, China, Turkey & others are doing is inventing new means for pricing, trading & investing oil, along with [&

Major financial news outlets, past heads of the US Fed & Treasury and central banks are warning about not just an approaching recession, but quite possibly another global financial crisis. Financial institutions and central banks are putting their capital and efforts into adapting cryptocurrency and blockchain protocols.

$21 trillion in federal funds went outright missing between 1998 and 2015, with no one the wiser on where it went and more importantly, how.  A few keen minds have alerted alarm bells through their forensic research, yet government, its bought-off press & the checked-out public continue to simply walk past it.  “Nothing to see […]

The more eye rollingly obscure and outright boring the financial concept or instrument, the faster most people tune out from its discussions anywhere.  ‘Just leave it to those trained to deal with that stuff’, right?  Yeah, ok, but that’s how we all get into continuous trouble, and possibly how big banks, hedge funds & so-called […]

A stock market roller coaster on par with that of a decade ago is back, and essentially for the same reasons.  No, not just economic fundamentals involving back-breaking debt, corporate profligacies and geopolitical risks, but because said volatility and the asset destruction-slash-consolidation that results are in part due to much longer-term design.  This latest design […]

Major financial news outlets, past heads of the US Fed & Treasury and central banks are at this point not so quietly warning about not just an approaching recession, but quite possibly another global financial crisis.  From the Bank for International Settlements – which is the central bank to central banks – to Ben Bernanke, […]

Wait…how is it that Japan retains the third strongest national economy on earth, yet is still more or less stuck in the same deflationary tepid growth and runaway debt which it sank into starting from the tactical implementation of the Plaza and Louvre Accords back in 1985 and 1987, respectively?  How is Japan’s historical foe […]

Think back to when you saw that first Star Wars movie from 1977, and how the Death Star – this massive, cold, metal, ruthless, demonic Imperial battle station the size of a moon – was armed, mobilized & brutal enough to outright zap entire planets to bits from open space with its harnessed, martialized, concentrated, […]

Remember when the oil price shot up to an unprecedented level of nearly $150 a barrel a decade ago, right in the middle of the Global Financial Crisis?  Odd timing, huh?  How, during that general fiscal fear & mayhem, this manic run-up in price of the most important industrial commodity on earth forced you to […]

The dollar is under threat as the continuing global reserve currency, as is its critical function in pricing & trading the most important commodities & other assets on earth, be they oil, natural gas, gold, silver, copper, Treasury bonds as key sovereign-held-reserves, or foreign exchange benchmarks, amongst others.  As is the increasingly indebted western ban

Up until very recently, there were essentially two kinds of business and economic reporting trends emanating since the 2008 Financial Crisis:  Sanguine, triumphant and motivating news in the mainstream corporate transatlantic financial press, versus pensive, probing and skeptical viewpoints in the alternative economic press.  The former was from sources tethered to the central and corporate […]

Back in June of this year, tech entrepreneur and multi-billionaire Elon Musk tweeted that he’s actually a “socialist”.  He also tweeted that 19th Century philosopher Karl Marx was a “capitalist”.  Yes, you heard correctly.  Hilarity subsequently ensued online in the ‘Tweet-osphere’ and among Musk observers. Now, seeing how near-fictionally busy Musk is and has been […]

There’s so much false media noise over tariff wars, currency manipulations, Russian poisoning charges, supposedly shifty allegiances in Washington toward Moscow and other theatrical propagandistic concoctions that there’s very little chance the wider English speaking populace will view – let alone understand – the much larger macroeconomic and thus geopolitical stakes plaguing increasingly deteriorating relations […]

The transatlantic financial elite are nearly throwing the kitchen sink at Turkey, as far as currency & economic war is concerned.  Since the Coup of 2016 didn’t work in making Ankara heel before Atlanticist imperial desires, the money vice is now re-deployed, as it had been over the past couple of years, and in clumsy, […]

Hey.  Did you play video games 35 years ago in the local arcade or on your Atari set at home?  Remember how thrilled you felt zapping into oblivion those enemy spaceships in Galaga, or slicing up the snakes & other obstacles in Dragon’s Lair?  I don’t care that I’m aging myself, stick with me.  I […]

The recent victory of Andrés Manuel López Obrador – or simply, “AMLO” – as the next President of Mexico has raised red flags in certain, mostly Washington Consensus, circles, while triggering praise in others, mostly from Eurasia and left-leaning, independent Latin American nations.  There are a few curious outliers, but for the most part, there is a pall […]

Corporations hide their balance sheet debt routinely, with their lenders, advisors, auditors, rating agencies and media sycophants abetting their collective efforts in maintaining the image of not only solvency, but of nonstop growth.  Trouble is, sometimes this banal financial alchemy catches up with them, and then crises happen, whether limited to the firm, or in […]

A couple of sharp, consistent academics recently outed what had been rumored for a while – that Bitcoin’s historically unprecedented price spike throughout 2017 …. resulted in significant part – perhaps in whole! – from price and market manipulation.  Um.  Yeah!?!  This program more than hinted at it all last year.  Jumping 22 times in […]

Recent Italian political turmoil triggered telling volatility in stock markets globally, yet much is at stake regarding wider economic stability in this, a decade after the 2008 Global Financial Crisis. I.E. We’re not out of the woods yet from the debt-drenched mayhem of ten years ago, if you go by true, rather than assigned & […]

Times are tight enough … aaaand then fuel prices start to rise, further harming your pocket book, imminent travel plans, any sense of remaining monthly savings, and your general outlook for the future.  Sound familiar?  We’re in the thick of it yet again, just like a decade ago.  And yet the trend of rising oil […]

The Trump administration is applying aggressive trade tariffs against friend and seeming foe alike in these days of heightened yet manufactured global economic “events, dear boy, events”, to quote former British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan.  China’s getting the brunt of the tariff abuse, and is returning tariff pressures in kind while ramping up its drive […]

Western Sanctions Against Iran vs Expected Eastern Blowback Iran’s currencies, the rial and the toman (collectively referred to here as the “rial”), have been plummeting in perceived value for months now – nay, years, nay, decades – against the US dollar.  The rial’s aggressive drop in value Since December 2017 is neither due to core […]

For several years now, on and off rumors about the general financial health of behemoth German-based Deutsche Bank have sent everything from a nagging unease to outright panic across international financial and political circles.  At times it would be described in mainstream corporate press as “the next Lehman Brothers” – meaning a major global bank […]

Last year, the World Economic Forum referred to the growing pensions crisis as “the financial equivalent of climate change.”  That’s because retirement nest eggs, whether in the public or private sectors, have been in dire circumstances since at least as far back as the 2008 Financial Crisis, and there are no credible signs of correcting them […]

Alright.  Year in, year out, popular financial and lifestyle magazines and networks – such as Forbes, Bloomberg, CNN, CBS, Vanity Fair and others – put out these ostentatious rich people lists in issues dedicated to profiling the stated fortunes, backgrounds & future projects of the world’s most obscenely hyper-wealthy people.  You know, elites such as […]

The Venezuelan government of Nicolás Maduro is desperately attempting to reverse the entire nation from teetering on outright state collapse.  In a bold response to western sanctions pressures which have significantly contributed to Venezuela’s severely damaged economy, the Maduro government has launched an oil and gold-backed cryptocurrency platform as means of both defense against hyperinflation […]

The second longest bull market in stocks was brutally interrupted in early February 2018 with some serious volatility, including the largest single day point drop in the history of the Dow Jones Industrial Average.  I mean, why would something like that happen if the economy is otherwise doing so well, investors are so clearly exuberant, unemployment is so very, very low, and the Fed, Treasury and President Trump are guiding things along so firmly?  Tongue firmly in cheek…

The history of Wall Street and Anglo-American finance in China is one that is rarely discussed in western media or even academia, whereas knowing it would explain much about both China’s stunning economic rise over the past 70 years, as well as certainly seemingly rising tensions between China and the US today.  It’s hard to tell if there is genuine tension and enmity because of credible rivalry status between the US and China, or if everything is proceeding according to wider, deeper, much longer-term planning based on desired, durable and thus political coordination.  Large US, UK and EU inv

Chinese government officials recently informed Washington of intentions to ‘slow’ or outright ‘halt’ state purchases of US Treasury bonds.  The economic realities underlying Beijing’s report caused noticeable effects on the bond and stock markets.  Wider geopolitical considerations were certainly felt among analysts, government officials and within industry.  With the Trump Administration’s looming trade war against China sitting alongside threats posed to Chinese allies North Korea and Iran, China’s palpable concerns – and China’s perceived need for putting its largest trade partner on notice

As is now common knowledge, the 2008 Global Financial Crisis was triggered within the US mortgage and real estate markets.  What’s not so commonly known, however, is that the state of said real estate market – both residential and certainly commercial – remain precarious, with information opaquely presented by sell-side industry cheerleaders, foremost realtors themselves and the institutions which underwrite them.  In this latest episode of Money and Fear, we’ll review data points which reveal what you’re not told enough regarding true supply and demand parameters, co

In this latest episode of Money and Fear, we’ll gauge a sense or three of what to expect next year by reemphasizing economic realities today.  We’ll review data and charts that neither the Fed, nor the Bureau of Labor Statistics, nor the mainstream corporate business press want you to see, for fear of any dilution of the very ‘animal spirits’ which they all deem as necessary to keep the equities and Bitcoin gravy trains seem credible.  Viewers like yourselves will then be left with the task of thinking critically about how you want to manage your finances while staying awake to economic realit

Based on core global economic fundamentals, the gold price should be well north of $10,000 an ounce. Yet because gold is rare, is hoarded by governments and very wealthy, very private plutocrats, because it is intimately related to the value of interest rates and the perception of paper currencies themselves, its price is tactically suppressed.  Meanwhile, Bitcoin - a purposeful distraction from gold - is, in turn, strategically run up to $10,000 at an unprecedented pace, quite possibly by the Deep State’s financial and technological arms, in part so that you feel like you're 'missing out'.

“Cold hard cash”.  Paper currencies and coinage have been around for centuries.  So why is there a “war” against cash, all of a sudden?  Sure, governments and the central and private banks which control them can claim that this war is meant to prevent crimes and illicit activities, but are there deeper, longer term reasons involved?  Especially considering what “money” is and how it has the capacity to so uniquely dictate human energy?  Could the aim toward complete digitization of cash involve the wanting of complete control over each individual’s economic affairs, and thereby, every person’s

There’s certainly no love lost here for shamed film producer Harvey Weinstein or his ilk, and there’s zero excuses for his behavior towards women, colleagues, staff and talent.  The recent spate of scandals coming out of Hollywood involving the past sexual assaults and offenses of both high and low-profile executives and creative talent are odd only in the sense of their volume, timing and seemingly coordinated effort.  Yet *where* was the weight of such a coordinated national effort – which apparently involves the mainstream media, law enforcement and even government – in years or decades pas

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed above 23,000 last week, yet how and why?!?  The nonfictional US economy is much worse off than the stock indices lead on about.  Increasingly opaque digital means for trading massive volumes through “dark pools” and high frequency trading algorithms beg deep questions over how & why the equities markets seem so untethered from economic reality.  What are the roles of our largest banks, government agencies and their “revolving door” staffing policies in potentially propping up the stock market, and for what ultimate political purpose

What will happen as the US Federal Reserve decides to pull away the “unconventional” monetary stimulus punch bowl from the US and global economies?  Will their actions truly be for the good of both US and foreign economic and political stability, or is it all part of a much wider, longer term design aimed at nurturing collective chaos en route to a grander planned sense of international ‘synthesis’?  In this latest episode of Money and Fear, we’ll look at both “Quantitative Easing” (QE) as well as its impending policy nemesis, “Quantitative Tightening” (QT), or the Fed’s shrinking of its balan

Critical Questions for students of Economics and Finance, as well as for retail investors worldwide:  If you were shown how an academic discipline, or an investment marketplace, were rigged, or at the least, not fully what they’re officially sold as being, would you still invest your time, effort and/or hard earned cash?  Or would you want the truth, and to then plan accordingly around it?  Is ‘fitting in’ that important to you to where you’d potentially turn a blind eye to scientific and political realities involving financial corruption?  How long until you lose your shirt on said prescribed

Questions for students and their parents:  If college cost $750,000, would you still attend, taking out student loans to meet that amount?  How about $500,000?  No?  How about the $50,000 to $250,000 it currently costs, then?  In other words, what is the true price tag for ‘ensuring success’ in society, and why has it been rising so aggressively over the past 50 years?  In turn, what are the actual – versus perceived – dividends of such an “investment”?  In this episode of Money and Fear, we’ll look at the impending Student Debt Crisis and dissipating perceptions of college as an inim

Forget its price trajectory and the rest of the prescribed hype for a second.  *Why* is Bitcoin a ‘thing’, who said so, when, and what for?  Was it genuinely a product of simple private sector ingenuity during a time of maximum need?  OR, based on the many Establishment-linked constituencies trading, investing or imminently, regulating it, is it a ‘test balloon’ or ‘beta test’ for a much wider, older elite plan for global monetary revision?  In this episode of Money and Fear, we’ll look at Bitcoin, cryptocurrencies and the blockchain from much more nuanced political, historical and philosophic

Did a series of banks not-so-randomly failing across Europe present a negative bellwether for another imminent 2008 Global Financial Crisis?  How would any average citizen know?  In this inaugural episode of Money and Fear, we’ll review a sampling of bank failures, weigh whether more institutions can and/or will fail, and what it all means for “systemic risks”, “contagion”, and other fun technical words used to nonchalantly summarize global economic mayhem.  We’ll also ask if there is any sense of a wider – or deeper – design to such wealth destruction which would seek financial asset consolid

Newsbud is excited to announce our newest show, Money and Fear with Newsbud's financial expert Pye Ian. Money and Fear, is a program that will focus on the connections between global finance, geopolitics, currency wars, shifts in international trade, the Federal Reserve, government corruption and more.