Financial Sense Newshour

Jim is pleased to welcome back Dr. Robert Hirsch, Senior Energy Advisor at Management Information Services Inc. and an authority on Peak Oil. Dr. Hirsch has just returned from an historic peak oil conference in Doha, Qatar, the first ever initiated by Gulf State oil producers. Dr. Hirsch believes there will be a “sea change” coming to the Middle East, once peak oil is reached. The timing of its arrival is difficult to predict, but it will likely be sooner than the global economy is prepared for. He makes the point that most people don’t understand that peak oil is a “liquid fuel problem”, and thus wind and solar technology will never solve the problem. Dr. Hirsch also sees the current projections of future US energy independence as “pure fiction”.

This week Jim and Cathlyn use the case study of Joe and Irene Turner to illustrate several issues facing today’s retirees. These issues include Long Term Care and medical expenses, fear of the financial markets, inflation, the difficulty of maintaining quality of life in a 0% interest rate environment and reconciling budgets versus sources of income. The guest this week is Dr. Bonnie Olsen of the National Center on Elder Abuse at UC Irvine. Dr. Olsen discusses financial fraud and abuse on the elderly and how to avoid it. 

In this segment of the Big Picture, Jim looks at two stock related topics. In “Drop, Pop and a Melt-up in the Stock Market”, Jim discusses the idea that the next stock market melt-up will be caused by the flight of global capital coming into the US from both Asia and Europe. In the next topic, “The Dividend Story keeps getting Better, Better and Better”, Jim looks at the reasons why to own dividend-paying equities, and the trend of growing dividend pay-outs in the first quarter of 2013. Jim will also answer your Q-Calls in this segment of the program.

Jim welcomes Simon Mikhailovich, Co-Founder of Eidesis Capital LLC in New York City. Jim and Simon cover a number of topics, including gold, why people should own it, and the difference between paper and physical gold. Simon also discusses the safety of your bank accounts in the future as governments look at the “Cyprus Model”, including the US. Simon talks about the coming “wealth taxes” in Europe, as governments desperately search for revenue amidst weakening economies. Simon  calls gold “the most under-owned asset class in the world” and believes the real bull market in gold has not yet begun.