Three Days Of Darkness, A Mayan Story As Told by Ms. Juana Cowo

“My Granny was scolding we children when we was very young… she told us we knew nothing of the challenge of the darkness. She said when she was very young, she and all the people woke up to no sun. She said she was so frightened for it was very dark without the sun and also too cold. She told me and my brothers and my sisters and my cousins that we take too much for granted, that we take for granted the sunshine and the moonshine, but that we would never do this again when we had lived through the three days of darkness.

Granny said that the elders knew right away what to do in this time of no sun and no light. That this time had always been prophesied by the elders and had happened many, many times before. The wise people always prepared for this darkness by saving the old tortillas (corn tortilla chips). And so the elders began to build the fires, for the fires must be lit or the darkness can drive some to madness. And the people began to pray together and sing together and burn the tortillas together for this is the sacred food that the Gods desire. Granny says that the smoke of the tortilla carries the message to the Gods to please bring back the sun.

My Granny said that when the people become too wicked, when we forget to worship the Gods and have respect for all life, that the Gods block out the sun to remind us of the sacred ways and the importance of worship and of gratitude for life. She said that for three long days, the villagers prayed and prayed and prayed together and to cease their hunger, they not only burnt the tortilla but also ate it. She said that the h’men (the shamans) would begin to get excited and happy as they felt their prayers being received and then the darkness would lift. She said in her time it took three long days but that she had heard stories of the darkness taking longer to leave. She said the Gods only return the light when enough people were praying in earnest.

My Granny said the darkness would come again because it always comes, because the people always stray far from their Creator and must be reminded time and time and time again… My Granny told us to behave well with good intentions. She told us this story to keep alive the memories and the knowledge of what to expect and of what to do. And so right now I save my old tortillas and I gather my firewood and I prepare my children and grandchildren with the stories because my body tells me that the time is almost here.

Daily I hear of stories of the crime in my country, the violence, the murder, brother against brother. I hear stories of war and violence and hunger in our world and I know the time has come for the Gods to humble us people once again. I go to church each week to worship my Gods and the church sits empty. All the people are not at church but everyday they have money for the bars, for the drink. This is bad medicine. And so I know the darkness must come and I can only pray that enough people will pray through that darkness that it may be over in three days or less. This is my prayer, let the people remember their Creator and humble themselves to live in peace once again.

Afterthoughts: My Granny also said that before the event occurs, one or a few of the villagers will dream the event and that even though the darkness is overwhelming, it is also beautiful. She says all the forest animals come to sit with the people, none are hunting each other down, they are simply sitting, bidding their time in the darkness with the humans. She says to witness everyone in prayer is a moment of magic and grace and beauty.”

Ms. Juana Cowo is a Mopan Maya of Belize. She was my midwife for the birth of my fifth child. She is my family herbalist through sickness. She is a bone setter. She has grown up in the Maya village of San Pedro de Columbia in Belize on tribunal land but now resides on the island of Caye Caulker where she works as a massage therapist at my Spa and the village midwife for those few women who choose this method. She is a very special, simple and pure woman and the above story is a true story as told to her from her long departed grandmother. I believe this is a story told to children so that they will grow up to behave with integrity. I understand this to be an oral story passed from one generation to another. Ms. Juana does believe that this truly happened to her grandmother.

Recently two urgent messages have been released from the indigenous elders. One was from Little Grandmother, Keisha Crowther saying to all lightworkers to “wear a quartz crystal”. She gave no explanation as to why, she only stressed that it is of utmost importance. A second urgent message came from Golden Light Eagle saying that we must prepare ourselves now. “Things will be difficult in the very near future, but we can do something about it…start drying foods and saving water and so on. We should not wait for anyone. Don’t wait for anyone. He also said that the Spirit mentioned ‘the darkness’ is a place of ceremony for them, a place of healing. We are to stay in Love & Compassion.”

And as I complete this article a third urgent message comes to my mind. The Maya High Council said to watch for the missing magnetosphere. Well, a certain site that tracks the magnetosphere says it has been going crazy in the last month, doing things it has never seen and the scientists fear it may collapse soon. http://www2.nict.go.jp/y/y223/simulation/realtime/
The Maya High Council also said to watch for the magnetic polarity shift into Russia. This has actually been reported on yahoo news, one of the most mainstream venues for reporting news.(http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=why-is-the-north-magnetic-pole-raci-2010-12)

And so be it. The prophesied 3rd shaking is imminent! This earth birth, our labor, which was destined to start in March 2011, has actually begun early. May the Gods be with all of us through this challenging part of the journey to the new world.

In La’kesh,
Navajo

Spiritual traveller and visionary since youth, avid interest in indigenous cultures and shamanism, channels Navajo Changing Woman for guidance through the Mayan Calendar end date of 2011- 2012...

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The Inflation Tsunami (Part One of Three)

04/04/11 London, England – Over the past year The Amphora Report has written extensively on the topic of inflation, including in Guess What’s Coming to Dinner: Inflation! and The Inflation Tipping Point. While we prefer the monetary definition of inflation as growth in the supply of money and credit, we note that, beginning around mid-2010, the monetary expansion of 2008-09 began to feed through into consumer price inflation. This has continued to the present day and at an accelerating rate. Consumer price inflation data are now surprising to the upside just about anywhere one chooses to look: in Asia, Europe and, more recently, even in the US. To use a timely if tragic metaphor, the inflation ‘tsunami’ set in motion by a massive monetary expansion in 2008-09 is now making landfall around the world, pushing up prices for a broadening range of goods and services.

While the Japanese have been playing their part in this global inflation they have more recently upped their game in response to the Sendai earthquake. The Bank of Japan (BOJ) has printed some 15tn yen, or roughly $180bn US dollars, since the disaster struck. But the stimulus doesn’t end there. In response to a surge in the yen–a natural result of financial markets anticipating repatriation of Japanese capital to finance reconstruction–the Japanese Ministry of Finance (MoF) asked for and received the cooperation of most major central banks in intervening to weaken the yen, with the BoJ selling some 700bn yen (approx $6bn) for dollars, euros and other currencies. At one point reaching nearly 76 to the dollar, the yen has subsequently fallen back to 83, even weaker than it was prior to the quake. Coordinated FX intervention is rare and is one of the more blatant ways in which policymakers seek to manipulate the global economy.

We are always skeptical when central banks act as if they know better than the financial markets. Not only it is simply impossible for a handful of bureaucrats to regulate anything as dynamic as a modern economy or financial system but central banks also have a demonstrably poor track record. The credit market disaster of 2008-09 was a direct result of misguided central bank policy, specifically consumer price inflation targeting. Most modern central banks claim legitimacy because they keep inflation ‘under control’. Yet these are the folks that create fresh money in response to economic headwinds which are frequently of their own making. Orwellian rhetoric to the contrary, modern central banks are rightly understood to be the champions of inflation–if normally of the moderate sort–rather than its nemesis.

Let’s consider just why, exactly, the BoJ thinks it is doing Japan a favor by printing a huge amount of money and intervening to weaken the yen in response to the earthquake. Presumably it believes that this is going to stabilize the financial system and help with the coming reconstruction effort. But whereas the first point is probably correct to some degree, we doubt the second holds true. When a company loses a major factory to some natural disaster, it is a loss of productive capital. The company then has a choice to make. Should it rebuild the factory out of savings or, alternatively, allow itself to shrink instead and generate less future earnings? The correct decision, of course, is that which maximizes the net present value of the firm. If the cost of rebuilding exceeds the benefit of restoring the factory’s income stream, then the factory should not be rebuilt. Yet if the factory was profitable and costs less to rebuild than the expected future profits, the company should proceed with rebuilding.

How does printing yen and intervening in the FX market affect this decision? By driving down borrowing costs, it makes it appear less expensive to finance reconstruction. But as Japanese firms are large net savers, they don’t really have an incentive to borrow at all to rebuild; rather, they can dip into their extensive savings. As these savings are overwhelmingly denominated in yen, a weaker yen, therefore, makes it more rather than less expensive to rebuild. Yes, Japan is a large exporting nation so a weaker yen can be seen to support exports, but as a result of the earthquake which has destroyed or damaged much industrial capacity, Japan is now unable to export as much as before (at any given exchange rate) and will thus be relatively more reliable on imports during the reconstruction period. The BoJs action does not support the rebuilding effort. It in fact undermines it by preventing financial markets from adjusting in ways that would result in greater price discovery in import, export and financial markets and, therefore, a more economically efficient reconstruction process.

Moreover, long-term observers of Japan know that the last two decades have been characterized by endless fiscal stimulus of various kinds, resulting in chronic resource misallocation which has demonstrably failed to restore the higher rates of economic growth that were common from the 1950s through the 1980s.The legacy, however, is a massive public debt which needs to be serviced with tax receipts. As a country prone to major earthquakes, one could argue that, rather than build ‘bridges to nowhere’ in the 1990s and 2000s, the government would have better served the national interest by spending far less, thereby encouraging savers, including insurance companies, to build large reserves which would be available in the event of a disaster on the scale of the Kobe or Sendai earthquakes. The prospect of rebuilding after any major national disaster is intimidating, yet it would be somewhat less so today were government debt/GDP only around 100%–as was the case when the Kobe quake struck in the mid-1990s–rather than over 200%, as is the case today.

Regards,

John Butler,
for The Daily Reckoning

[Editor's Note: The above essay is excerpted from The Amphora Report, which is dedicated to providing the defensive investor with practical ideas for protecting wealth and maintaining liquidity in a world in which currencies are no longer reliable stores of value.]

John Butler has 17 years experience in the global financial industry, including European and US investment banks in London, New York and Germany. Recently, he was Managing Director and Head of the Index Strategies Group at Deutsche Bank in London, responsible for development and marketing of proprietary, index-based quantitative strategies in global interest rate markets. Prior to DB, John was Managing Director and Head of European Interest Rate Strategy at Lehman Brothers in London, where his team was voted #1 by Institutional Investor. He has contributed to financial publications including the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, Boersenzeitung and Handelsblatt.

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Three Sites Where You Can Monitor U.S. Radiation Levels

EPA map of U.S. radiation monitoring stations

Radiation from Japan’s Fukushima nuclear disaster has been detected in the air in five Western states and in rainwater in at least two so far.

While federal officials continue to assure the public that no harmful levels have reached the United States, some Americans have not been content to take the government at its word. Geiger counters have been selling like popsicles in summer, and traffic has never been higher at websites that display data from radiation monitoring stations.

We list three such sites below.

[more...]

Related posts:

DON’T Take Potassium Iodide Unless You Are Exposed to RadiationJapan’s radiation no threat here: Canada PMScientists Project Path of Radiation PlumeLevels of Radiation Rapidly Rising In Ibaraki Prefecture Near Fukushima Nuclear Power PlantMore U.S. states find traces of radiation from JapanRadioactive fallout from Fukushima approaching same levels as Chernobyl

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Three Reasons Why Stocks Will Continue to Rise in the Immediate Term

While macro economic analysis issues such as reduced interest rates and a declining U.S. dollar have positive effects on the stock market, there is a direct correlation in the stock market to its trading direction and the value of the stocks that trade in the market.

Here are three reasons why stocks will continue to advance in the immediate term.

Profit margins of the S&P 500 non-financial companies are expected to rise 8.9% in 2011, their highest level in 18 years (Bloomberg survey, 3/14/11).

Stocks rise as their profits rise. With interest rates at record lows, real estate prices still trying to find a bottom, bond buyers weary of higher interest rates in 2011, and gold still not accepted by general investors as an investment, stocks remain the only viable alternative for investors. As public companies continue to increase their profits, their stock prices will rise.

The S&P 500 companies are sitting on their biggest hoard of cash ever—close to $1.0 trillion.

Cash insulates companies from economic downturns, while providing them with money to make acquisitions and to buy back their own stock—both exercises resulting in less stock in the marketplace. Less supply of stock, even if demand remains unchanged, results in the stock market moving higher.

Dividends are set to rise as corporate profits spur bigger payouts to investors.

Rising dividends make stocks more attractive to investors. The highest profit margins in 18 years will see corporate profits returned to investors in the form of dividends.

In respect to interest rates, a 100-basis-point rise in long-term rates will have a major negative impact on the bond market. For the cash-rich S&P 500 companies, a 100-basis-point rise in interest rates will not have much of an impact on earnings. In fact, I believe the stock market has already discounted a full percentage point increase in interest rates.

Michael’s Personal Notes:

For my gold bug readers, and those investors investing in gold, here’s a short recent history on gold bullion:

1900 – The U.S. adopts the gold standard via the passage of the Gold Standard Act.

1913 – The U.S. Federal Reserve requires all money issued by the Reserve to be 40% backed by gold.

1933 – Start of the Depression; Roosevelt prohibits private holdings of gold bullion and gold coins.

1944 – Bretton Wood agreement established. U.S. dollar needs to maintain a gold coverage of $35.00 to on ounce of gold.

1971-1973 – The U.S. devalues the dollar and raises the official selling price of gold to $42.22 per ounce. Currencies start to float freely without a specific tie to gold.

1975 – Americans allowed to own gold coins and bullion for first time since 1933.

1976-1979 – The International Monetary Fund does away with the official price of gold. Governments allowed to trade freely in gold.

1980 – Gold reaches $875.00 per ounce.

1999 – Euro is introduced as a currency; 15% backed by gold.

2001 – Central banks return to buying gold for the first time in 20 years.

2015-2020 – World inflation and a collapse in the value of the U.S. dollar over the past decade causes gold to trade between $2,500 and $3,000 an ounce. (This one’s a Michael Lombardi prediction.)

Going way back…

1091 B.C. – Gold becomes a form of money in China in the form of squares.

560 B.C. – First gold coins minted in Turkey.

58 B.C. – Julius Caesar’s conquests of other countries are enough to pay off Rome’s debt. How will the U.S., with the world’s biggest national debt, pay off its debt?

(Source, except for Michael’s prediction: The Ages of Gold, National Mining Association, World Gold Council, 2007.)

Where the Market Stands; Where it’s Headed:

The Dow Jones Industrial Average opens this morning up 3.8% for 2011. My opinion is that, through thick and thin, we have been in a bear market since March 2009 has served me well, and I continue with that belief.

What He Said:

“Many of today’s consumers have purchased properties with very little down payment. They’ve been enticed by nothing-down, interest-only, second and third mortgages. Bottom line: The lower-interest-rate environment sucked consumers into the housing market big-time. And that will eventually cause us all problems.” Michael Lombardi in PROFIT CONFIDENTIAL, June 22, 2005. Michael started warning about the crisis coming in the U.S. real estate market right at the peak of the boom, now widely believed to be 2005.

Michael bought his first stock when he was 17 years old. He quickly saw $2,000 of savings from summer jobs turn into $1,000. Determined not to lose money again on a stock, Michael started researching the market intensely, reading every book he could find on the topic and taking every course he could afford. It didn’t take long for Michael to start making money with stocks, and that led Michael to launch a newsletter on the stock market. Today, Michael only employs the top market analysts and editors. Some of our recommendations have posted gains in excess of 500%! Michael has authored and published over one thousand articles on investment and money management. Along the way to building Lombardi Publishing Corporation, now with over one million customers in 141 countries, Michael became an active investor in real estate, art, precious metals and various businesses. Readers of the daily Profit Confidential e-letter are offered the benefit of the expertise Michael has gained in these sectors. Michael believes in successful stock picking as an important wealth accumulation tool. Married with two children, Michael received his Chartered Financial Planner designation from the Financial Planners Standards Council of Canada and his MBA from the Graduate Business School, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, Scotland. Follow Michael and the latest from Profit Confidential on Twitter

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Yemen Police Open Fire On Protesters Leaving 50 Hurt, Three Seriously

Reuters is now quoting witnesses as saying that 50 protesters have been hurt in Yemen, three of them seriously. Earlier on Tuesday, thousands of inmates rioted at the central prison in Sanaa, taking a dozen guards hostage and calling for President Saleh to resign, according to the Associated Press. At least one prisoner was killed and 80 people were wounded, police said. And elsewhere, gunfire erupted in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, where Gbagbo forces killed 4. These are just the latest pieces of news from Reuters in a day in which nothing at all from the tape mattered, as a rumor circulates that the wildcat well drilled in the 1 billion barrel strategic petroleum reserve in Bernanke's back yard has now started producing.

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