What in the world is George Soros up to now? At the 2010 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland Soros recently made the following statement: “When interest rates are low we have conditions for asset bubbles to develop, and they are developing at the moment. The ultimate asset bubble is gold.” So is Soros trying to scare people away from gold? The truth is that the price of gold did rise about 40 percent last year. In the current economic environment, there has been a flight to safety as nervous investors have flocked to precious metals such as gold, silver and platinum. But are these bad investments that are overvalued right now? Not at all. The truth is that gold and silver are just about the only things that have held their value over the past 100 years. An ounce of gold could buy you a really nice suit 100 years ago and an ounce of gold can buy you a really nice suit today. But now that it is starting to come out that there could be massive reserves of gold and oil in Haiti, we should expect the ongoing manipulation of the precious metal markets only to intensify. The truth is that the big dogs like Soros want everyone else to get out of gold and silver so that they can swoop in and get more for themselves.

If you are looking for a bubble, you don’t have to look any farther than the U.S. stock market. Remember all of that “bailout” money and “stimulus” money that the U.S. government injected into the economy? Well, it didn’t help you much, did it? Nope. So where did it go? It went to pumping up Wall Street. In a recent article, Bob Chapman did a great job of explaining what is happening….

Liquidity is not flowing into the economy it is pouring into Wall Street to aid and abet more speculation, which has sent the Dow from 6600 to 10,700.

That is why some analysts are calling this a “jobless” recovery. They think that because the stock market has gone up we are having a recovery. But it is a lie. The reality is that the stock market is experiencing a “sucker’s rally” and all the insiders are busy selling their holdings off into that rally as Chapman explains further down in his article….

It should be noted that insiders are selling into the never-ending rally, and mutual funds have very little money flow coming into the funds. That, of course, is our government at work manipulating the market. Just last week insiders bought $18 million worth of shares and sold $419 million.

But let’s not just blame Wall Street.

They are not the only ones responsible for the mess that we are in.

The truth is that we have all made bad choices. We have all bought stuff made in China for years and years just because it was a few cents cheaper. We knew that it would put some of our neighbors out of work eventually but we didn’t care as long as we could save a buck or two.

All we cared about was the lowest price. In fact, for decades the U.S. government made obscenely lopsided trade deals with foreign nations (that were very much not in our favor) just so that we could get cheaper goods for the American consumer. We were told that anything that was good for the “consumer” was good for the economy. “Free trade” (or in other words, other countries getting to send us all the cheap stuff they wanted to) was going to be the solution to all of our problems.

But it wasn’t.

Instead, we found out that there was a very high cost to those low prices.

In his excellent article entitled “The Wal-Mart Model of Self-Destruction: Lowest Prices, Always”, Charles Hugh Smith captured the high cost of our obsession with low prices beautifully….

The propaganda of marketing has so hollowed out American culture that most citizens cannot recall a time that “Consumerism” wasn’t the unofficial religion of American society. And what is the First Commandment of “consumerist religion”? The lowest price is all that matters.

Quality doesn’t matter; we’re going to move/throw it away anyway.

Who made it doesn’t matter. The idea that you might pay more to keep your neighbor employed is akin to worshipping the Devil: all that matters is the lowest price.

The sad thing is that many of you who are reading this article will keep running out to bloated globalist retailers like Wal-Mart just to save a few pennies. It doesn’t matter that their stores are filled with cheap garbage made in virtual sweat shops all over the globe and that Wal-Mart has probably decimated a large percentage of the local businesses in your area since they moved in. But on the bright side, they do pay slightly over minimum wage and they do provide part-time employment for many of the people in your area. Perhaps you can get a job with them when your job gets shipped overseas too.

The truth is that we all need to quit being “consumers” and we all need to start participating in our communities once again. Instead of supporting a big global chain that takes all of the profits out of your local community, why don’t you go visit the struggling small business down the street instead? Instead of pumping your cash into the giant shell game known as the stock market, why don’t you help a family member start a business or put it into something real like gold and silver instead?

We are all supporting the current globalist system by putting money into their banks, by investing in their stocks and by endlessly shopping in their stores.

Imagine what would happen if we all suddenly decided to stop.