"Never argue with stupid people. They will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience." –Mark Twain
If you want to fully understand and appreciate the work of Mike Stathis, from his market forecasts and securities analysis to his political and economic analyses, you will need to learn how to think clearly if you already lack this vital skill.
For many, this will be a cleansing process that could take quite a long time to complete depending on each individual.
The best way to begin clearing your mind is to move forward with this series of steps:
1. GET RID OF YOUR TV SET, AND ONLY USE STREAMING SERVICES SPARINGLY.
2. REFUSE TO USE YOUR PHONE TO TEXT.
3. DO NOT USE A "SMART (DUMB) PHONE" (or at least do not use your phone to browse the Internet unless absolutely necessary).
4. STAY AWAY FROM SOCIAL MEDIA (Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp, Snap, Twitter, Tik Tok unless it is to spread links to this site).
5. STAY OFF JEWTUBE.
6. AVOID ALL MEDIA (as much as possible).
The cleansing process will take time but you can hasten the process by being proactive in exercising your mind.
You should also be aware of a very common behavior exhibited by humans who have been exposed to the various aspects of modern society. This behavior occurs when an individual overestimates his abilities and knowledge, while underestimating his weaknesses and lack of understanding. This behavior has been coined the "Dunning-Kruger Effect" after two sociologists who described it in a research publication. See here.
Many people today think they are virtual experts on every topic they place importance on. The reason for this illusory behavior is because these individuals typically allow themselves to become brainwashed by various media outlets and bogus online sources. The more information these individuals obtain on these topics, the more qualified they feel they are to share their views with others without realizing the media is not a valid source with which to use for understanding something. The media always has bias and can never be relied on to represent the full truth. Furthermore, online sources are even more dangerous for misinformation, especially due to the fact that search algorithms have been designed to create confirmation bias.
A perfect example of the Dunning-Kruger Effect can be seen with many individuals who listen to talk radio shows. These shows are often politically biased and consist of individuals who resemble used car salesmen more than intellectuals. These talking heads brainwash their audience with cherry-picked facts, misstatements, and lies regarding relevant issues such as healthcare, immigration, Social Security, Medicaid, economics, science, and so forth. They also select guests to interview based on the agendas they wish to fulfill with their advertisers rather than interviewing unbiased experts who might share different viewpoints than the host.
Once the audience has been indoctrinated by these propagandists, they feel qualified to discuss these topics on the same level as a real authority, without realizing that they obtained their understanding from individuals who are employed as professional liars and manipulators by the media.
Another good example of the Dunning-Kruger Effect can be seen upon examination of political pundits, stock market and economic analysts on TV. They talk a good game because they are professional speakers. But once you examine their track record, it is clear that these individuals are largely wrong. But they have developed confidence in speaking about these topics due to an inflated sense of expertise in topics for which they continuously demonstrate their incompetence.
One of the most insightful analogies created to explain how things are often not what you see was Plato's Allegory of the Cave, from Book 7 of the Republic.
We highly recommend that you study this masterpiece in great detail so that you are better able to use logic and reason. From there, we recommend other classics from Greek philosophers. After all, ancient Greek philosophers like Plato and Socrates created critical thinking.
If you can learn how to think like a philosopher, ideally one of the great ancient Greek philosophers, it is highly unlikely that you will ever be fooled by con artists like those who make ridiculous and unfounded claims in order to pump gold and silver, the typical get-rich-quick, or multi-level marketing (MLM) crowd.

If you want to do well as an investor, you must first understand how various forces are seeking to deceive you.
Most people understand that Wall Street is looking to take their money.
But do they really understand the means by which Wall Street achieves these objectives?
Once you understand the various tricks and scams practiced by Wall Street you will be better able to avoid being taken.
Perhaps an even greater threat to investors is the financial media.
The single most important thing investors must do if they aim to become successful is to stay clear of all media.
That includes social media and other online platforms with investment content such as YouTube and Facebook, which are one million times worse than the financial media.
The various resources found within this website address these two issues and much more.
Remember, you can have access to the best investment research in the world. But without adequate judgment, you will not do well as an investor.
You must also understand how the Wall Street and financial media parasites operate in order to do well as an investor.
It is important to understand how the Jewish mafia operates so that you can beat them at their own game.
The Jewish mafia runs both Wall Street and the media. This cabal also runs many other industries.
We devote a great deal of effort exposing the Jewish mafia in order to position investors with a higher success rate in achieving their investment goals.
Always remember the following quotes as they apply to the various charlatans positioned by the media as experts and business leaders.
“Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.” - King James Bible - Matthew 7:15
"It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled." –Mark Twain
It's also very important to remember this FACT. All Viewpoints Are Not Created Equal.
Just because something is published in print, online, or aired in broadcast media does not make it accurate.
More often than not, the larger the audience, the more likely the content is either inaccurate or slanted.
The next time you read something about economics or investments, you should ask the following question in order to determine the credibility of the source.
Is the source biased in any way?
That is, does the source have any agendas which would provide some kind of benefit accounting for conclusions that were made?
Most individuals who operate websites or blogs sell ads or merchandise of some kind. In particular, websites that sell precious metals are not credible sources of information because the views published on these sites are biased and cannot be relied upon.
The following question is one of the first things you should ask before trusting anyone who is positioned as an expert.
Is the person truly credible?
Most people associate credibility with name-recognition. But more often than not, name-recognition serves as a predictor of bias if not lack of credibility because the more a name is recognized, the more the individual has been plastered in the media.
Most individuals who have been provided with media exposure are either naive or clueless. The media positions these types of individuals as “credible experts” in order to please its financial sponsors; those who buy advertisements.
In the case of the financial genre, instead of name-recognition or media celebrity status, you must determine whether your source has relevant experience on Wall Street as opposed to being self-taught. But this is just a basic hurdle that in itself by no means ensures the source is competent or credible.
It's much more important to carefully examine the track record of your source in depth, looking for accuracy and specific forecasts rather than open-ended statements. You must also look for timing since a broken clock is always right once a day. Finally, make sure they do not cherry-pick their best calls. Always examine their entire track record.
Don't ever believe the claims made by the source or the host interviewing the source regarding their track record.
Always verify their track record yourself.
The above question requires only slight modification for use in determining the credibility of sources that discuss other topics, such as politics, healthcare, etc.
We have compiled the most extensive publication exposing hundreds of con men pertaining to the financial publishing and securities industry, although we also cover numerous con men in the media and other front groups since they are all associated in some way with each other.
There is perhaps no one else in the world capable of shedding the full light on these con men other than Mike Stathis.
Mike has been a professional in the financial industry for nearly three decades.
Alhough he publishes numerous articles and videos addressing the dark side of the industry, the core collection can be found in our ENCYCLOPEDIA of Bozos, Hacks, Snake Oil Salesmen and Faux Heroes.
Also, the Image Library contains nearly 8,000 images, most of which are annotated.
At AVA Investment Analytics, we don't pump gold, silver, or equities because we are not promoters or marketers.
We actually expose precious metals pumpers, while revealing their motives, means, and methods.
We do not sell advertisements.
We actually go to great lengths to expose the ad-based content scam that's so pervasive in the world today.
We do not receive any compensation from our content, other than from our investment research, which is not located on this website.
We provide individual investors, financial advisers, analysts and fund managers with world-class research and unique insight.
If you listen to the media, most likely at minimum it's going to cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars over the course of your life time.
The deceit, lies, and useless guidance from the financial media is certainly a large contributor of these losses.
But a good deal of lost wealth comes in the form of excessive consumerism which the media encourages and even imposes upon its audience.
You aren’t going to know that you’re being brainwashed, or that you have lost $1 million or $2 million over your life time due to the media.
But I can guarantee you that with rare exception this will become the reality for those who are naïve enough to waste time on media.
It gets worse.
By listening to the media you are likely to also suffer ill health effects through excessive consumption of prescription drugs, and/or as a result of watching ridiculous medical shows, all of which are supportive of the medical-industrial complex.
And if you seek out the so-called "alternative media" as a means by which to escape the toxic nature of the "mainstream" media, you might make the mistake of relying on con men like Kevin Trudeau, Alex Jones, Joe Rogan, and many others.
This could be a deadly decision. As bad as the so-called "mainstream" media is, the so-called "alternative media" is even worse.
There are countless con artists spread throughout the media who operate in the same manner. They pretend to be on your side as they "expose" the "evil" government and corporations.
Their aim is to scare you into buying their alternatives. This addresses the nutritional supplements industry which has become a huge scam.
Why Does the Media Air Liars and Con Men?
The goal of the media is NOT to serve its audience because the audience does NOT pay its bills.
The goal of the media is to please its sponsors, or the companies that spend huge dollars buying advertisements.
And in order for companies to justify these expenses, they need the media to represent their cause.
The media does this by airing idiots and con artists who mislead and confuse the audience.
By engaging in "journalistic fraud," the media steers its audience into the arms of its advertisers because the audience is now misled and confused.
The financial media sets up the audience so that they become needy after having lost large amounts of money listening to their "experts." Desperate for professional help, the audience contacts Wall Street brokerage firms, mutual funds, insurance companies, and precious metals dealers that are aired on financial networks. This is why these firms pay big money for adverting slots in the financial media.
We see the same thing on a more obvious note in the so-called "alternative media," which is really a remanufactured version of the "mainstream media." Do not be fooled. There is no such thing as the "alternative media." It really all the same.
In order to be considered "media" you must have content that has widespread channels of distribution. Thus, all "media" is widely distributed.
And the same powers that control the distribution of the so-called "mainstream media" also control distribution of the so-called "alternative media."
The claim that there is an "alternative media" is merely a sales pitch designed to capture the audience that has since given up on the "mainstream media."
The tactic is a very common one used by con men.
The same tactic is used by Washington to convince naive voters that there are meaningful differences between the nation's two political parties.
In reality, both parties are essentially the same when it comes to issues that matter most (e.g. trade policy and healthcare) because all U.S. politicians are controlled by corporate America. Anyone who tells you anything different simply isn't thinking straight.
On this site, we expose the lies and the liars in the media.
We discuss and reveal the motives and track record of the media’s hand-selected charlatans with a focus on the financial media.
To date, we know of no one who has established a more accurate track record in the investment markets since 2006 than Mike Stathis.
Yet, the financial media wants nothing to do with Stathis.
This has been the case from day one when he was black-balled by the publishing industry after having written his landmark 2006 book, America's Financial Apocalypse.
From that point on, he was black-balled throughout all so-called mainstream media and then even the so-called alternative media.
With very rare exception, you aren't even going to hear him on the radio or anywhere else being interviewed.
Ask yourself why.

You aren't going to see him mentioned on any websites either, unless its by people whom he has exposed.
You aren't likely to ever read or hear of his remarkable investment research track record anywhere, unless you read about it on this website.
You should be wondering why this might be.
Some of you already know the answer.
The media banned Mike Stathis because the trick used by the media is to promote cons and clowns so that the audience will be steered into the hands of the media's financial sponsors - Wall Street, gold dealers, etc.
Because the media is run by the Jewish mafia and because most Jews practice a severe form of tribalism, the media will only promote Jews and gentiles who represent Jewish businesses.
And as for radio shows and websites that either don't know about Stathis or don't care to hear what he has to say, the fact is that they are so ignorant that they assume those who are plastered throughout media are credible.
And because they haven't heard Stathis anywhere in the media, even if they come across him, they automatically assume he's a nobody in the investment world simply because he has no media exposure. And they are too lazy to go through his work because they realize they are too stupid to understand the accuracy and relevance of his research.
Top investment professionals who know about Mike Stathis' track record have a much different view of him. But they cannot say so in public because Stathis is now considered a "controversial" figure due to his stance on the Jewish mafia.
Most people are in it for themselves. Thus, they only care about pitching what’s deemed as the “hot” topic because this sells ads in terms of more site visits or reads.
This is why you come across so many websites based on doom and conspiratorial horse shit run by con artists.
We have donated countless hours and huge sums of money towards the pursuit of exposing the con men, lies, and fraud.
We have been banned by virtually every media platform in the U.S and every website prior to writing about the Jewish mafia.
Mike Stathis was banned by all media early on because he exposed the realities of the United States.
The Jewish mafia has declared war on us because we have exposed the realities of the U.S. government, Wall Street, corporate America, free trade, U.S. healthcare, and much more.
Stathis has also been banned by alternative media because he exposed the truth about gold and silver.
We have even been banned from use of email marketing providers as a way to cripple our abilities to expand our reach.
You can talk about the Italian Mafia, and Jewish Hollywood can make 100s of movies about it.
BUT YOU CANNOT TALK ABOUT THE JEWISH MAFIA.
Because Mr. Stathis exposed so much in his 2006 book America's Financial Apocalypse, he was banned.
He was banned for writing about the following topics in detail: political correctness, illegal immigration, affirmative action, as well as the economic realities behind America's disastrous healthcare system, the destructive impact of free trade, and many other topics. He also exposed Wall Street fraud and the mortgage derivatives scam that would end of catalyzing the worst global crisis in history.
It's critical to note that the widespread ban on Mr. Stathis began well before he mentioned the Jewish mafia or even Jewish control of any kind.
It was in fact his ban that led him to realize precisely what was going on.
We only began discussing the role of the criminality of the Jewish mafia by late-2009, three years AFTER we had been black-listed by the media.
Therefore, no one can say that our criticism of the Jewish mafia led to Mike being black-listed (not that it would even be acceptable).
If you dare to expose Jewish control or anything under Jewish control, you will be black-balled by all media so the masses will never hear the truth.
Just remember this. Mike does not have to do what he is doing.
Instead, he could do what everyone else does and focus on making money.
He has already sacrificed a huge fortune to speak the truth hoping to help people steer clear of fraudsters and to educate people as to the realities in order to prevent the complete enslavement of world citizenry.
Rule #1: Those With Significant Exposure Are NOT on Your Side.
No one who has significant exposure should ever be trusted. Such individuals should be assumed to be gatekeepers until proven otherwise. I have never found an exception to this rule.
Understand that those responsible for permitting or even facilitating exposure have given exposure to specific individuals for a very good reason. And that reason does not serve your best interests.
In short, I have significant empirical evidence to conclude that everyone who has a significant amount of exposure has been bought off (in some way) by those seeking to distort reality and control the masses. This is not a difficult concept to grasp. It's propaganda 101.
Rule #2: Con Artists Like to Form Syndicates.
Before the Internet was created, con artists were largely on their own. Once the Internet was released to the civilian population, con artists realized that digital connectivity could amplify their reach, and thus the effectiveness of their mind control tactics. This meant digital connectivity could amplify the money con artists extract from their victims by forming alliances with other con artists.
Teaming up with con artists leads to a significantly greater volume of content and distraction, such that victims of these con artists are more likely to remain trapped within the web of deceit, as well as being more convinced that their favorite con artist is legit.
Whenever you wish to know whether someone can be trusted, always remember this golden rule..."a man is judged by the company he keeps." This is a very important rule to remember because con men almost always belong to the same network. You will see the same con artists interviewing each other,referencing each other, (e.g. a hat tip) on the same blog rolls, attending the same conferences, mentioning their con artist peers, and so forth.
Rule #3: There's NO Free Lunch.
Whenever something is marketed as being "free" you can bet the item or service is either useless or else the ultimate price you'll pay will be much greater than if you had paid money for it in the beginning.
You should always seek to establish a monetary relationship with all vendors because this establishes a financial link between you the customer and the vendor. Therefore, the vendor will tend to serve and protect your best interests because you pay his bills.
Those who use the goods and services from vendors who offer their products for free will treated not as customers, but as products, because these vendors will exploit users who are obtaining their products for free in order to generate income.
Use of free emails, free social media, free content is all complete garbage designed to obtain your data and sell it to digital marketing firms.
From there you will be brainwashed with cleverly designed ads. You will be monitored and your identity wil eventually be stolen.
Fraudsters often pitch the "free" line in order to lure greedy people who think they can get something for free.
Perhaps now you understand why the system of globalized trade was named "free trade."
As you might appreciate, free trade has been a complete disaster and scam designed to enrich the wealthy at the expense of the poor.
There are too many examples of goods and services positioned as being free, when in reality, the customers get screwed.
Rule #4: Beware of Manipulation Using Word Games.
When manipulators want to get the masses to side with their propaganda and ditch more legitimate alternatives they often select psychologically relevant labels to indicate positive or negative impressions.
For instance, the financial parasites running America's medical-industrial complex have designated the term "socialized medicine" to replace the original, more accurate term, "universal healthcare." This play on words has been done to sway the masses from so much as even investigating universal healthcare, because the criminals want to keep defrauding people with their so-called "market-based" healthcare scam, which has accounted for the number one cause of personal bankruptcies in the USA for many years.
When Wall Street wanted to convince the American people to go along with NAFTA, they used the term "free trade" to describe the current system of trade which has devastated the U.S. labor force.
In reality, free trade is unfair trade and only benefits the wealthy and large corporations.
There are many examples on this play on words such as the "sharing economy" and so on.
Rule #5: Whenever Someone Promotes Something that Offers to Empower You, It's Usually a Scam.
This applies to the life coaches, self-help nonsense, libertarian pitches, FIRE movement, and so on.
If it sounds too good to be true, it usually is.
Unlike what the corporate fascists claim, we DO need government.
And no, you can NOT become financially independent and retire early unless you sell this con game to suckers.
Rule #6: "Never argue with stupid people. They will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience." –Mark Twain
Following this rule is forcing the small and dewindling group of intelligent people left in the world to cease interacting with people.
You might need to get accustomed to being alone if you're intelligent and would rather not waste your time arguing with someone who is so ignorant, that they have no chance to realize what's really going in this world.
It would seem that Dunning-Kruger has engulfed much of the population, especially in the West.
The following expose was created with ChatGPT assistance.
PART I — The Anatomy of the Doom Cartel
The modern Doom Cartel didn’t arise from a school of thought, an economic movement, or a coherent ideological project. It emerged from a market opportunity—an enormous one—and from a fundamental shift in how people consume information, experience fear, and search for meaning.
As financial crises deepened public distrust and the digital age transformed attention into a commodity, doom became a product line. It became something you could package, price, and sell. And the people who recognized this early enough became multimillionaires simply by mastering the psychology of collapse.
At its core, the Doom Cartel is not a conspiracy, not a political faction, and not a group of thinkers. It is an industry, a revenue ecosystem built around the monetization of fear.
Its members include gold peddlers, newsletter publishers, political propagandists, junior-miner promoters, crypto alarmists, offshore tax fantasists, doom-prep influencers, and pseudo-economists who turned being wrong into a profitable career path.
They do not need to coordinate directly. They operate like organisms in the same ecosystem, feeding on the same nutrient: fear-induced engagement.
Fear is the raw material.
Political identity is the binding agent.
Financial misinformation is the product.
The Doom Cartel discovered that the most profitable customer is not merely frightened. He is politically frightened. Political fear is more durable, more addictive, and more profitable than financial fear because it attaches to identity.
When a financial forecast fails, disappointment is directed at the forecaster. But when a political-financial narrative fails, disappointment is redirected toward external enemies: elites, globalists, the Fed, the government, the deep state, the media. The customer concludes not that he bought a bad product, but that sinister forces sabotaged him. This is the brilliance of the model. The Cartel can fail indefinitely; the customer never leaves because the failure strengthens the emotional bind.
The first truth about the Doom Cartel is that it is not ideological. It is opportunistic. Its public messaging may appear aligned with a particular political tribe, but the actual allegiance is to one thing only: revenue. If fear stopped paying, the ideology would mutate overnight. If a new demographic appeared more profitable, the Cartel would pivot instantly. Their worldview is not a worldview at all—it is a sales funnel dressed as prophecy, a commercial entity masquerading as rebellion.
Because this is a business, the Cartel refined the mechanics of fear the way Silicon Valley refines algorithms. It learned the half-life of panic. It learned the conversion rate of outrage. It learned how to activate cortisol in an audience with a single headline. It learned that patriotism is not a value but an emotional trigger, and that tribal loyalty is the most powerful subscription-renewal technology on Earth. A tribe that fears extinction will pay anything to the people who promise salvation.
The Doom Cartel perfected that formula.
EXHIBIT 1 — The Doom Cartel Business Cycle
Below is the operational cycle followed by nearly every major player in the industry, whether openly or unconsciously. It is not about being correct; it is about managing customer emotion.
|
Stage |
Mechanism |
Outcome |
|
1. Fear Activation |
Introduce a new crisis (real or invented). |
Audience enters high-cortisol, low-analysis state. |
|
2. Identity Binding |
Frame the crisis as an attack on the customer's political or moral identity. |
Audience forms tribal bond with narrator. |
|
3. Urgency Engineering |
Add countdowns, “final warnings,” and moral duty rhetoric. |
Audience moves from passive fear to urgent action. |
|
4. Product Insertion |
Insert investment picks, gold IRAs, crypto, newsletters, or offshore schemes as the “solution.” |
Fear monetized into purchase. |
|
5. Failure Protection |
When predictions fail, blame elites, globalists, or sabotage. |
Audience loyalty strengthened, not weakened. |
|
6. Crisis Renewal |
Introduce new crisis; repeat cycle indefinitely. |
Revenue becomes recurring and self-reinforcing. |
This cycle is what separates the Doom Cartel from ordinary financial charlatans. It is the industrialization of fear. And once the Cartel discovered the political dimension of fear, the business scaled faster than any investment firm could ever hope to replicate.
Fear has no overhead.
Fear has no supply chain.
Fear is infinitely renewable.
THE CORE DEFINITION OF THE DOOM CARTEL
The Doom Cartel is best defined as:
A decentralized commercial ecosystem that sells fear-based narratives by merging political identity manipulation with financial misinformation, enabling its operators to fail indefinitely while expanding revenue.
It is decentralized: no command center, no formal alliance, no hierarchy.
It is commercial: the end goal is always the sale, never the truth.
It is fear-based: no member prospers unless the audience remains emotionally destabilized.
It merges political and financial narratives: this creates psychological dependency that survives repeated forecasting failure.
It allows indefinite failure: because blame is redirected, the Cartel’s forecasting accuracy becomes irrelevant.
No traditional business model is this elastic. No legitimate financial research firm could survive 20 years of being wrong. No pundit could retain credibility after a decade of failed predictions. But the Doom Cartel thrives precisely because its customers are not buying forecasts—they are buying identity protection. They are buying reassurance that the world is as dangerous as they fear and that the Cartel alone understands the danger.
The Cartel does not need to coordinate to succeed. But it does share the same raw materials, the same demographic base, the same marketing techniques, and the same political vocabulary. It also shares the same incentives: the more frightened the population, the more money flows into the industry.
THE DEMOGRAPHIC FUELING THE MACHINE
Contrary to the caricatures, the Doom Cartel’s audience is not solely composed of the uneducated or the economically illiterate. Many followers are highly intelligent people whose trust in institutions collapsed after the dot-com bust, the 2008 crisis, the COVID shock, or decades of political dysfunction. They were already primed to seek alternative explanations for chaos. The Cartel simply refined the supply of these explanations into a product line.
The common traits among doom-industry followers include:
The Doom Cartel did not create these vulnerabilities. It found them and industrialized them.
THE CARTEL’S DISCOVERY: POLITICAL FEAR IS PERMANENT
Financial fear is cyclical.
Political fear is permanent.
This was the breakthrough that transformed doom from a niche market into a commercial juggernaut.
From 2000 to 2005, financial doom merchants relied almost entirely on market-based forecasting—hyperinflation calls, stock collapse warnings, dollar death predictions. They saw spikes of success during recessions and droughts during expansions. They had to constantly wait for new crises to stimulate demand.
But politics changed everything. Political fear doesn’t require a recession. It requires only a headline. It regenerates itself through elections, scandals, cultural shifts, demographic changes, and partisan propaganda. It does not require accuracy—it only requires intensity.
Once the Cartel discovered that the emotional half-life of political panic was functionally infinite, it rebuilt its business model around it. It learned that political fear binds people more tightly than financial fear because political fear binds them to each other. You are not just frightened; you are part of a tribe under siege. And if the tribe is under siege, leaving the tribe feels dangerous.
Marketing genius disguised itself as ideological solidarity.
EXHIBIT 2 — Why Political Fear Outperforms Financial Fear
|
Attribute |
Financial Fear |
Political Fear |
Why Cartel Prefers It |
|
Duration |
Short-lived |
Long-lasting |
Provides stable recurring revenue |
|
Emotional intensity |
High during crises |
High and constant |
Enables daily content cycles |
|
Dependency |
Weakens when markets recover |
Strengthens with every news cycle |
Creates identity lock-in |
|
Accountability |
Forecasts can be proven wrong |
Blame is redirected |
Forecasters never lose credibility |
|
Sales leverage |
Limited |
Infinite |
Every political event can trigger a new “urgent” offer |
Once political fear entered the funnel, the Doom Cartel grew into something closer to a religion than a media niche. Not because it offered spiritual comfort, but because it offered existential meaning: a story of betrayal, a story of enemies, a story of collapse, a story of righteous resistance. Religion has dogma. The Doom Cartel has copywriting.
THE POLITICALIZATION OF FINANCIAL GRIFT
This chapter focuses heavily on the political manipulation tactics that allow the Cartel to maintain loyalty even when its predictions fail. But before we dive into those tactics in later sections, we need a clear understanding of the Cartel’s political objectives—not ideological objectives, but economic ones.
The Cartel does not care who wins elections.
It cares that the audience believes elections threaten their survival.
The Cartel does not care about policy details.
It cares that the audience believes policy is an attack on them personally.
The Cartel does not care about the Constitution, sovereignty, inflation, or freedom.
It cares that these concepts can be weaponized to sell financial products.
Political messaging within the Cartel is transactional. Every argument, every forecast, every rhetorical escalation serves the same purpose: disarm critical thinking, heighten panic, and convert emotional arousal into a purchase.
This is why the Cartel simplifies politics into binary morality plays. It cannot afford nuance. Nuance is kryptonite. If someone understands a policy, they cannot be convinced it is the apocalypse. If someone understands how markets work, they cannot be convinced collapse is imminent. If someone understands central banking, they cannot be frightened into buying gold at a 40% markup.
This is the conversion engine that powers the industry.
THE INDUSTRIAL STRUCTURE OF THE DOOM CARTEL
To see the Doom Cartel not as a set of personalities but as a functioning commercial machine, we need to map its structure.
These are the frontmen—the pseudo-experts, doom podcasters, YouTube prophets, gold advocates, and newsletter big names who generate the narratives. They create the content that activates the audience’s emotional state.
This is the domain of the copywriting cartel—Agora, Stansberry, Casey Research, and the countless offshoots that write the “collapse is coming” scripts. These people do not need to believe what they write. They need to write what sells.
Gold IRAs, silver dealers, crypto pumps, junior miners, survival kits, offshoring seminars, tax evasion fantasies, doomsday courses, subscription newsletters. The products vary; the sales logic does not.
Affiliate marketers, influencer partners, doom-finance YouTube channels, email lists, and “financial conference” circuits. This is the pipeline through which the same fear flows to millions of people.
The most brilliant and sinister component. When customers lose money, the blame is redirected outward: elites, the Fed, government conspiracies, globalists. The scammer is never at fault.
A new crisis is introduced, and the cycle repeats.
The Cartel is not a conspiracy. It is a business model.
And like any business model, it scales.
PART II — The Historical Evolution of the Doom Cartel (1980 → 2025)
The Birth, Mutation, and Industrial Expansion of an Economy Built on Fear
The Doom Cartel we know today—the gold shills masquerading as economists, the newsletter empires masquerading as research firms, the YouTube prophets masquerading as analysts—did not begin with YouTube, the internet, or even the post-2008 crisis era. Its roots stretch back to the pre-digital age, when the earliest ancestors of the Cartel discovered that fear was not merely persuasive—it was profitable, renewable, and infinitely scalable.
To understand why the Cartel became an empire, we must trace its evolution decade by decade, as fear slowly transformed from a rhetorical device into a financial product, then into a political weapon, and finally into a multibillion-dollar ecosystem that spans continents, platforms, and demographics.
This is not just a history of grifters.
It’s a history of how modern society—fractured, angry, insecure, overloaded—became the perfect host organism for the commercial exploitation of doom.
The 1980s — The Proto-Doom Era
Talk Radio, Gold Peddlers, and the Birth of the Apocalyptic Sales Pitch
The modern Doom Cartel’s embryonic form emerged in the late 1970s and early 1980s—a period defined by inflation, recession, Cold War paranoia, and collapsing trust in government institutions. This was the era when talk radio first discovered that fear-based commentary could build loyal audiences, and when gold dealers learned that political anxiety was the most effective marketing tool ever invented.
Before the internet, doom was a direct mail business.
Gold salesmen and fringe financial newsletters filled magazine pages and mailboxes with headlines like:
These weren’t analyses. They were advertisements.
But the audience didn’t know the difference yet.
This was also the era of survivalist culture—a movement fused with Cold War paranoia and libertarian anti-government sentiment. It represented the first documented instance of doom rhetoric merging with identity. You weren’t just buying gold because it might go up. You were buying gold because you believed America was on the brink of collapse.
That fusion—fear plus identity—became the blueprint for the next 40 years of doom commerce.
The 1990s — Cable News, Militia Fantasies, and the Early Internet Underground
By the 1990s, doom rhetoric had diversified into multiple mediums.
But the most important development was the copywriting revolution.
This is when proto-Agora and its early competitors began hiring direct-response marketers who realized something no economist, analyst, or journalist had yet articulated:
Fear converts better than information.
Panic converts better than reason.
Existential dread converts best of all.
These pioneers didn’t need accuracy.
They needed emotional resonance.
If the audience was scared enough, they would buy anything—books, VHS tapes, “crisis survival guides,” or annual newsletter subscriptions promising insider secrets to escaping the coming collapse.
The pre-modern Doom Cartel had found its raw materials.
The modern version would later industrialize them.
The 2000–2008 Cycle — The Great Acceleration
Dot-com Crash → 9/11 → Iraq → Housing Bubble → 2008 Crisis
The perfect storm that mass-produced fear consumers.
Nothing amplified doom psychology more effectively than the 2000–2008 sequence of crises. Each event shattered a different pillar of public trust:
This generation of Americans emerged from the decade believing—often justifiably—that the system was rigged, fragile, and indifferent to their survival.
The Doom Cartel did not create this climate.
It capitalized on it.
The first mega-stars of the doom industry emerged in this era:
And looming above all of them: Agora—the marketing empire that would unify the chaos into a coherent commercial industry.
Agora perfected the modern doom funnel. Their copywriters studied the psychological effects of fear, identity threat, and political outrage. They learned that:
This was the birth of the modern Doom Cartel.
The Cartel had three new advantages the 1980s doom business never enjoyed:
With these tools, the Cartel scaled beyond anything the proto-doom world imagined.
Fear became mass-distributed.
Panic became a subscription product.
Prophecy became performance art.
EXHIBIT 3 — The Catalyst Timeline: 2000–2008
|
Year |
Event |
Effect on Doom Cartel |
|
2000 |
Dot-com crash |
New class of financially traumatized victims enters funnel. |
|
2001 |
9/11 |
Explosive rise of conspiracy culture → fertile ground for doom narratives. |
|
2003 |
Iraq War |
Institutional distrust becomes mainstream. |
|
2005 |
Peak housing bubble |
Doom forecasts go viral for the first time online. |
|
2007 |
Subprime collapse |
The Cartel’s audience balloons as fear becomes widespread. |
|
2008 |
Global crash |
Demand for doom content skyrockets; Cartel enters hypergrowth phase. |
By 2008, the industry had everything it needed except one final piece—political tribalism.
That piece arrived in the next decade and transformed the industry permanently.
The 2009–2016 Phase — The Hypergrowth Era
YouTube + Political Polarization + Post-Crisis Trauma
This period is when doom content went from niche to mainstream. Three forces converged:
1. The Rise of YouTube
YouTube democratized doom. Anyone could upload videos with titles like:
And they did.
The algorithm rewarded emotional extremity.
Moderation suppressed engagement.
Fear spread faster than ever.
2. Post-2008 psychological trauma
A generation of Americans was angry—rightfully so.
But the Doom Cartel gave them the wrong villains.
Instead of learning about derivatives, leverage, systemic risk, or regulatory capture, audiences were fed narratives about:
Once the audience framed the crisis as intentional sabotage, not economic complexity, they became permanently locked into the doom worldview.
This was the psychological tipping point.
3. The birth of modern political tribalism
From 2012 onward, political discourse radicalized.
Partisanship morphed into identity.
Identity morphed into existential struggle.
The Doom Cartel recognized the opportunity instantly.
If financial doom was powerful, political doom was nuclear.
They merged the two:
The final stage of the business model was complete: people weren’t buying doom because they feared losing money—they were buying doom because they feared losing identity.
And identity lasts longer than any financial cycle.
EXHIBIT 4 — Business Model Inflection Points
|
Period |
Innovation |
Effect |
|
1980s |
Direct mail + gold fear marketing |
Proto-doom audience created |
|
1990s |
Talk radio + early internet |
Doom community begins forming |
|
2000–2008 |
Copywriting industrialization |
Doom becomes a scalable product |
|
2009–2016 |
YouTube + political tribalism |
Doom becomes a mass commercial ecosystem |
|
2017–2025 |
Crypto + social algorithms |
Doom becomes a globalized, algorithm-driven attention economy |
The 2017–2025 Era — The Algorithmic Doom Supernova
Crypto → Pandemic → Inflation → AI Panic → Geopolitical Chaos
If the 2000–2016 era built the Cartel’s infrastructure, the 2017–2025 era turned doom into a global cultural force.
This era delivered more fuel than the Cartel could have dreamed of:
1. Crypto Mania
Crypto became the perfect doom asset class.
It fused anti-government fantasy with get-rich-quick greed.
It created a new generation of doom influencers who blended:
Crypto doomers and gold doomers formed an unholy alliance—two tribes with the same psychology and different merchandise.
2. The pandemic
COVID-19 created the largest global psychological shock since World War II.
The Cartel moved instantly:
Every fear produced a new product.
Every product produced a new subscriber.
3. Inflation + rate hikes + recession fears
These events didn’t cause fear; they intensified existing fear narratives.
Doom creators repackaged them into:
Accuracy didn’t matter; urgency did.
4. AI panic
A gift from the heavens.
The Cartel now sells:
Every new innovation becomes a new fear vector.
5. Geopolitical disorder
Russia. China. Middle East. Europe. Cyberwarfare.
Every headline is an ad.
Every conflict is content.
Every escalation is a new sales opportunity.
The Cartel is now fully global.
EXHIBIT 5 — THE FULL EVOLUTION TIMELINE (1980 → 2025)
1980–1989: Gold peddlers, survivalist magazines, proto-libertarian collapse culture, talk radio anger merchants. Doom product: Gold + survival kits.
1990–1999: Early internet conspiracies, militia-era paranoia, direct mail newsletters, pre-Agora copywriting. Doom product: Collapse newsletters + VHS courses.
2000–2008: Dot-com crash → 9/11 → Iraq → housing collapse → 2008 meltdown. Agora industrializes fear marketing. Doom product: Paid newsletters + gold IRAs.
2009–2016: YouTube doom prophets. Identity politics. Post-crisis trauma. Doom product: Online subscriptions + junior miners + doom seminars.
2017–2020: Crypto mania + political tribal warfare. Doom product: Crypto conspiracies + gold/bitcoin “hedge bundles.”
2020–2025: Pandemic → inflation → AI panic → geopolitical chaos. Doom product: Survivalist-cyber-fear hybrid funnels + globalized doom influencers.
The Doom Cartel is no longer a niche. It is an international fear economy.
PART III — The Political Manipulation Machine
How the Doom Cartel Turned Politics Into the Most Profitable Fear Engine in Modern History
The Doom Cartel’s most powerful innovation—and the reason it dominates the fear economy today—is its weaponization of politics.
Before the mid-2000s, doom merchants relied primarily on financial collapse narratives: inflation, debt spirals, stock market crashes, monetary resets. These worked, but only cyclically.
When markets stabilized, demand for doom content fell. When fear subsided, revenue dried up.
Politics solved that problem.
Politics produces perpetual emotion.
Politics manufactures perpetual crisis.
Politics turns fear into identity, and identity has no expiration date.
When the Cartel blended financial doom with political hysteria, it discovered a psychological reality that transformed its business:
A financially fearful person is a customer.
A politically fearful person is a disciple.
Financial fear can fade.
Political fear metastasizes.
Financial fear is about money.
Political fear is about self.
Financial fear drives one-time purchases.
Political fear drives lifetime monetization.
This section will dissect the Cartel’s political tactics one by one, but before examining their individual mechanics, we need to understand the underlying psychological architecture that makes these tactics so devastatingly effective.
Political fear does not merely frighten people—it reorganizes their entire cognitive and emotional landscape. It changes how they think, how they interpret reality, how they evaluate risk, and how they assign blame.
The Doom Cartel didn’t invent political manipulation.
But it perfected the commercial use of it.
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF POLITICAL FEAR: THE CARTEL’S GOLD MINE
Political fear activates a different cognitive circuitry than financial anxiety. The brain perceives political threats as tribal threats—attacks on one’s family, values, identity, or way of life.
When people believe their tribe is under attack, they do not think analytically. They respond emotionally, reactively, and—crucially—irrationally.
Political fear triggers:
The Doom Cartel recognized that this psychological state is ideal for selling financial garbage.
Someone who is scared will buy gold.
Someone who is politically scared will buy anything.
This is why the Cartel’s language is always existential:
The framing transforms routine events into life-or-death struggles.
The customer is no longer evaluating a financial claim—they are defending their identity.
Identity does not permit skepticism.
Identity does not permit nuance.
Identity clings to whatever protects it.
And so the Cartel manufactures a world in which every headline is a threat and every threat requires a purchase.
1. THE DOCTRINE OF PERPETUAL POLITICAL EMERGENCY
“There must always be a crisis—preferably one that cannot be verified.”
The Cartel crafts an atmosphere where political catastrophe is always imminent but never specific enough to be debunked. They avoid details that could be fact-checked and instead rely on broad existential claims:
Nonspecific predictions cannot be disproven.
They can only be replaced with new predictions.
This doctrine allows the Cartel to maintain an unbroken chain of urgency.
Every day is the last day.
Every vote is the most important vote.
Every policy is the tipping point.
Every opponent is the villain.
The audience stays terrified.
The Cartel stays profitable.
EXHIBIT 6 — Anatomy of a Perpetual Emergency Script
|
Component |
Purpose |
Example |
|
Vague threat |
Impossible to falsify |
“The system is on the brink.” |
|
Identity appeal |
Emotional lock-in |
“They are coming after people like you.” |
|
Countdown timer |
Forces impulsive buying |
“You have less than 48 hours to prepare.” |
|
Hero positioning |
Establishes authority |
“I’ve been warning about this for years.” |
|
Product insertion |
Monetization |
“Only this report protects your family.” |
This formula is not accidental.
It is engineered.
2. REFRAMING ORDINARY POLITICS AS APOCALYPSE
How routine legislation becomes existential crisis
The Cartel’s second manipulation tactic is to reinterpret ordinary policy debates as acts of political annihilation. Taxes, regulations, budgets, social programs—none are treated as policy disputes. All are framed as existential attacks.
A minor tax change becomes “the destruction of freedom.”
A regulatory rule becomes “government tyranny.”
A spending bill becomes “the end of capitalism.”
A deficit increase becomes “hyperinflation guaranteed.”
The point is not to inform.
The point is to inflame.
If the audience believes every policy is a doomsday trigger, then every policy is a fresh sales opportunity.
This tactic also prevents defection.
If someone moderates their views, they risk betraying the tribe.
Moderation becomes disloyalty.
Disloyalty becomes guilt.
Guilt becomes fear.
Fear becomes obedience.
And obedience becomes revenue.
3. MANUFACTURING POLITICAL ENEMIES
The Cartel must always have a villain large enough to blame for everything that goes wrong.
The Doom Cartel cannot operate without villains.
Villains serve three functions:
These villains are intentionally vague and shape-shifting:
These labels are strategically abstract.
No evidence is required.
No definition is provided.
The lack of clarity is the feature, not the flaw.
An undefined enemy can absorb infinite blame.
EXHIBIT 7 — The Doom Cartel’s Enemy Rotation Cycle
|
Phase |
Enemy Used |
Purpose |
|
Traction-building |
Banks, hedge funds |
Appears apolitical, appeals to populist anger |
|
Tribal activation |
Globalists, elites |
Heightens identity threat |
|
Urgency phase |
Deep state, cabal |
Pushes audience toward purchases |
|
Failure-shielding |
Media, bureaucrats |
Blames losses on external sabotage |
The enemy changes, but the fear remains.
Fear is the product.
4. PATRIOTISM AS A SALES TRIGGER
“If you love your country, buy this.”
The Cartel realized early that patriotism is the single most powerful emotional accelerator for subscription revenue.
People will buy almost anything if they believe it defends their values, heritage, or national identity.
Thus was born a new product category:
None of these products contain meaningful financial insight.
What they contain is emotional leverage.
A patriot does not feel like a customer.
A patriot feels like a defender.
Once the customer identifies purchase with virtue, cost becomes irrelevant and skepticism becomes betrayal.
5. THE TRAITOR NARRATIVE
Weaponizing guilt and fear to silence dissent
Dissent is fatal to the Cartel’s business model.
If customers begin questioning claims, the entire illusion collapses.
So the Cartel inoculates itself by manufacturing a traitor narrative:
Criticism becomes betrayal.
Skepticism becomes shame.
Fact-checking becomes treason.
This prevents customers from leaving even after catastrophic financial losses.
They haven’t been scammed—they’ve been tested.
The more money they lose, the more fiercely they defend the people who misled them.
This is the psychology of cults.
The Doom Cartel uses it for profit.
6. THE SIEGE EFFECT
Creating a permanent state of existential threat
The hallmark of a Doom Cartel follower is the belief that they are constantly under attack—from government, from corporations, from technology, from immigration, from other cultures, from global elites, from economists, from central banks.
Siege mentality destroys emotional regulation.
Siege mentality produces compulsive consumption.
Siege mentality binds people to the protector.
The Doom Cartel casts itself as the only group capable of interpreting the threats, warning about them, and providing the tools to survive them.
This is why siege messaging is always plural:
The Cartel doesn’t need specifics.
Just the fear of infiltration, collapse, takeover.
A person under siege doesn’t ask for evidence.
A person under siege asks for protection—and pays for it.
7. FINANCIAL LIES EMBEDDED IN POLITICAL NARRATIVES
The most profitable fusion of all.
This is where the Cartel makes its real money.
The moment politics merges with financial advice, the customer stops evaluating investments rationally.
A junk penny stock becomes a patriotic bet.
A doomed crypto becomes a rebellion against tyranny.
A gold IRA scam becomes a defense against globalists.
If the investment collapses, the political framing inoculates the grifter:
The victim cannot admit financial error because doing so would mean admitting ideological error.
The Cartel wins twice:
8. OUTRAGE CYCLE MANIPULATION
Every news event becomes a monetizable trigger
The Doom Cartel does not merely respond to news cycles—it converts them into revenue cycles.
Every event, no matter how trivial, is reinterpreted as:
A congressional vote becomes a special bulletin.
A CPI release becomes an urgent alert.
A foreign speech becomes a buy signal.
A minor regulation becomes a survival guide upsell.
The Cartel cannot allow calm.
Calm does not subscribe.
Calm does not buy.
Calm does not panic-buy gold or crypto or survival courses.
Fear sells.
Calm cancels.
Thus the industry must weaponize every headline.
EXHIBIT 8 — The Outrage Monetization Pipeline
This system is sophisticated, relentless, and completely optimized for profit.
9. PRETENDING TO BE “ANTI-POLITICAL” WHILE DOING PURE POLITICS
The Doom Cartel constantly insists:
“We’re not political—just truth-tellers.”
This is a lie, but it is an effective one.
Claiming apolitical status attracts a wide demographic of people who:
These people are highly susceptible to controlled narratives disguised as neutrality.
The Cartel benefits twice:
This tactic is one of the most successful in the entire playbook.
10. DELEGITIMIZING GOVERNMENT TO SELL REGULATORY EVASION
The Cartel’s most sensitive revenue streams—offshore schemes, crypto dodges, metals markups—depend on convincing customers that government is not just incompetent, but illegitimate.
If government is illegitimate, then:
Delegitimization transforms risky, dubious, or fraudulent products into acts of rebellion.
The Cartel does not simply criticize government.
It delegitimizes it.
Once legitimacy collapses, anything becomes sellable.
11. IDENTITY HIJACKING: TURNING FOLLOWERS INTO FOOT SOLDIERS
The final stage of political manipulation is identity fusion.
This is when the customer stops seeing themselves as merely a supporter and begins seeing themselves as part of a cause.
When this happens:
Identity hijacking is the holy grail of doom commerce.
It is what transforms a customer into a lifetime source of revenue.
Their worldview, their politics, their sense of belonging—everything becomes tied to the Cartel’s narrative.
They are no longer the audience.
They are the product.
PART IV — Kingpin Dossiers
The Architects, Frontmen, and Industrial Engineers of the Modern Doom Cartel
The Doom Cartel is not one person. It is not one company. It is not one conspiracy. It is an ecosystem—an interlocking grid of marketers, pseudo-economists, pundits, newsletter factories, metals dealers, crypto grifters, offshore fantasists, survivalist merchants, and algorithm-driven influencers.
But every ecosystem has its apex predators, its architects, its megaphones, its profit centers. These are the kingpins—the individuals and institutions whose narratives, marketing funnels, and commercial strategies shaped the modern doom economy.
This section delivers the full dossiers on these figures—not as celebrities within the fear economy but as structural components of a system designed to monetize panic while evading accountability.
DOSSIER 1 — Peter Schiff
The Gold Prophet Who Turned Permanent Wrongness Into a Business Model
Peter Schiff is perhaps the single most recognizable face of the Doom Cartel—a man whose brand was built not on accuracy but on theatrical pessimism, endless repetition, and an uncanny ability to reframe failure as proof of conspiracy. Schiff is not a serious economist, nor a serious market forecaster. He is a marketer—a gold peddler in economist’s clothing—whose entire business model depends on audiences confusing performance with passion.
Schiff rose to prominence during the 2005–2008 window when he issued a series of vague, exaggerated housing warnings while simultaneously delivering a mountain of incorrect macro forecasts. His public persona became a paradox: he predicted everything and nothing. His warnings were always sweeping enough to sound prescient yet ambiguous enough to avoid accountability.
This ambiguity wasn’t a flaw. It was the strategy.
After 2008, Schiff’s brand mutated into full-blown collapse evangelism:
None of it happened.
But Schiff’s customers didn’t care—because Schiff’s forecasts weren’t predictions, they were identity statements.
Following Schiff became a lifestyle.
Being wrong became rebellion.
Reality became irrelevant.
His role in the Doom Cartel is foundational. He established:
He is not the most accurate doom figure.
He is simply the most visible—and therefore the most profitable.
EXHIBIT 9 — Schiff’s Forecast Failure Loop
|
Stage |
Schiff Claim |
Reality |
How He Spins It |
|
1 |
Dollar collapse imminent |
Dollar strengthens |
“Manipulated by elites” |
|
2 |
Gold to $5,000 |
Gold stagnates |
“Temporary suppression” |
|
3 |
Hyperinflation coming |
Inflation normalizes |
“Fed cooked the numbers” |
|
4 |
Treasuries worthless |
Treasuries rally |
“Bond bubble engineered by Fed” |
|
5 |
Stock market doomed |
Markets rise |
“Artificial, unsustainable manipulation” |
Schiff’s real product is not analysis.
His product is validation for people desperate to believe collapse is righteous.
DOSSIER 2 — Doug Casey
The Philosopher-King of Libertarian Doom and the Patron Saint of Junior Miner Grifts
Doug Casey occupies a unique position within the Doom Cartel—not as a forecaster, not as a marketer, but as a myth-maker. He provides the ideological scaffolding that supports the entire doom worldview.
His brand rests on libertarian romanticism, frontier mythology, and anti-state absolutism. He portrays himself as a philosopher-warrior fighting collectivism, but his commercial output tells the truth: he is a promoter of speculative penny stocks, offshore fantasies, and survivalist rhetoric packaged as high intellectual critique.
Casey pioneered several Cartel staples:
But his most profitable innovation was the junior miner pump funnel, where the only people making money were insiders and promoters. Casey’s writing lent philosophical credibility to these schemes, convincing followers that buying worthless miners was an act of defiance against tyranny.
The irony is poetic:
A man preaching self-reliance built a fortune selling illusions.
EXHIBIT 10 — Casey’s Ideological Sales Conversion Chain
|
Message |
Emotional Trigger |
Product Sold |
|
“Government is predatory.” |
Fear of tyranny |
Offshore schemes |
|
“The system will collapse.” |
Anxiety + identity |
Gold, silver |
|
“Only free thinkers will survive.” |
Ego reinforcement |
Junior miners |
|
“Society is doomed.” |
Fatalism |
Survival products |
|
“Elites control everything.” |
Powerlessness |
Paid newsletters |
Casey’s contribution to the Doom Cartel isn’t accuracy—it’s language.
His vocabulary of villainy, libertarian martyrdom, and apocalyptic inevitability became the Cartel’s lingua franca.
DOSSIER 3 — Jim Rickards
The CIA-Themed Oracle of Collapse Whose Predictions Never Arrive
Jim Rickards is the Cartel’s most theatrical character—a man who blends national security cosplay with financial eschatology. His persona is built on implication, mystique, and the illusion of insider knowledge.
The pitch is simple:
“I know things you don’t, and I’m here to warn you.”
Rickards is the master of:
His entire career is a monument to elaborate storytelling.
None of his bold predictions materialized:
He is the novelist of doom.
The screenplay writer of fear.
The Tom Clancy of collapsing currencies.
But accuracy is irrelevant.
Rickards’ power lies in narrative immersion.
He turns doom into cinema.
And people subscribe to the show.
EXHIBIT 11 — Rickards’ Fear Lexicon and Its Psychological Function
|
Term |
Psychological Effect |
|
“Ice-9” |
Freezes the imagination with catastrophic imagery |
|
“Reset” |
Invokes total loss and tabula rasa fear |
|
“Lockdown of money” |
Attaches pandemic trauma to financial systems |
|
“War game” |
Suggests military-level secrecy |
|
“Covert operations” |
Artificially boosts credibility |
|
“Monetary integrity crisis” |
Sounds technical, implies collapse |
Rickards sells immersion, not insight.
He manufactures the experience of knowing secrets.
And secrets, in the doom economy, sell better than truth.
DOSSIER 4 — Robert Kiyosaki
The Self-Help Guru Who Morphed Into a Doomsday Crypto-Gold Peddler
Robert Kiyosaki is the most dramatic metamorphosis in the Doom Cartel ecosystem. Once a benign financial self-help writer, he transformed into a full-time doom prophet, crypto shill, gold promoter, and political rage merchant.
His early career revolved around simplistic financial aphorisms. But when that market became saturated, he discovered a more profitable lane:
Fear sells better than budgeting tips.
Apocalypse sells better than education.
Identity sells better than advice.
Kiyosaki’s reinvention aligned perfectly with the rise of YouTube doom culture and the political radicalization of the 2010s. He repackaged himself as an elder-warrior truth-teller warning of:
He found new audiences among gold bugs, crypto zealots, and anti-government subcultures. His message became a cocktail of pseudo-economics, political doomsday rhetoric, and investment hype.
The products he pushes are consistently garbage:
He is the perfect hybrid doom merchant:
a self-help mythmaker with political instincts and zero accountability.
DOSSIER 5 — AGORA & STANSBERRY
The Copywriting Cartel That Industrialized Doom
Agora is the Doom Cartel’s beating heart—the industrial machine behind the fear economy, the script factory that wrote the modern template for doom marketing.
If Schiff, Casey, Rickards, and Kiyosaki are the frontmen, Agora is the studio. It employs the world’s most aggressive copywriters, engineers the most manipulative funnels, and produces hundreds of doom prophets the same way Hollywood produces actors.
Agora perfected:
Its junior brand, Stansberry Research, institutionalized the practice of generating “special reports” predicting imminent collapse to sell lifetime subscriptions.
Agora’s innovation was not ideological.
It was psychological.
It learned the emotional triggers that convert fear into cash—and scaled them globally.
It is the RICO blueprint of doom—with no Mafia, just marketing teams.
EXHIBIT 12 — The Agora-Stansberry Fear Funnel
|
Stage |
Tactic |
Outcome |
|
1 |
Manufacture a crisis |
Audience destabilized |
|
2 |
Introduce villain |
Blame external forces |
|
3 |
Introduce insider hero |
Establish authority |
|
4 |
Reveal “secret opportunity” |
Trigger curiosity |
|
5 |
Add countdown timer |
Create urgency |
|
6 |
Sell subscription |
Monetize panic |
|
7 |
Release follow-up doom |
Prevent cancellation |
This system is replicated by hundreds of companies worldwide.
DOSSIER 6 — Junior Miner Pumpers
The Underworld Branch of the Doom Cartel
Junior miner pumpers represent the darkest corner of the Cartel—the speculative underbelly where investors lose everything while promoters walk away rich.
These pumpers use the same political narratives as other doom merchants but with one additional twist: resource nationalism.
They claim:
This framing allows pumpers to sell worthless shares of shells, zombies, and exploration-stage fantasies to politically agitated investors.
The pattern never fails:
This is the Cartel’s most predatory domain.
DOSSIER 7 — Crypto-Doom Influencers
The Algorithmic Mutation of Doom
Crypto influencers represent the next-generation Doom Cartel. They combine:
Crypto became the perfect product for the doom psyche:
fear of government + desire for freedom + greed for explosive returns.
These influencers don’t just predict collapse.
They promise deliverance through digital assets.
Their message is:
Their audiences are young, angry, anti-institutional, and algorithmically programmed to distrust authority.
Crypto doomers are the Cartel’s future.
DOSSIER 8 — Offshore Freedom Grifters
Weaponizing Political Paranoia and Collapse Fantasies to Sell Escape Packages
This wing of the Doom Cartel thrives on a single psychological premise:
If you convince people their own government is an existential threat, you can sell them an escape hatch.
Offshore grifters do not rely on sophisticated market analysis or geopolitical insight. Their products are built on fear of:
They position themselves as liberators offering “freedom” through:
Their audience is the same doom demographic—just with a different impulse.
Where gold buyers seek protection, offshore buyers seek escape.
Both impulses spring from political fear, which the Cartel amplifies into a commercial sales funnel.
But within this niche, two figures stand out as the most visible, most aggressive, and most manipulative in the “escape” sub-industry:
NOMAD CAPITALIST — The Polished Panic Merchant
The Corporate-Styled Offshore Grift Wrapped in Lifestyle Branding
Nomad Capitalist built its empire by reframing panic as aspiration.
Unlike the scruffier doomers who scream about collapse, this group uses:
to sell the same underlying product: fear packaged as “freedom.”
The core message:
“Your government is going broke; Social Security is a Ponzi scheme; taxes are theft.
If you’re smart, you’ll escape now—preferably by buying my services.”
This business model rests on three key manipulations:
1. Rebranding Tax Avoidance as Sovereignty
Nomad Capitalist markets offshore strategies as “reclaiming your freedom,” even though most are:
The system works only because followers are politically terrified and believe defection from their home country is an act of self-defense.
2. Selling Panic as Luxury
Most offshore grifters rely on doom.
Nomad Capitalist sells doom in a suit.
The company uses:
to create the illusion that fleeing your home country is an upgrade rather than an act of fear.
3. The Upsell Funnel Hidden Behind Outrage
Every claim of:
funnels the viewer toward ultra-high-ticket consulting packages that often cost more than the average customer could ever save from the strategies being pitched.
It’s financial self-harm disguised as empowerment.
JEFF BERWICK — The Anarchist Doom Prophet of the Offshore Underworld
Crypto-Hysteria + Doom Politics + Offshore Evangelism = The Perfect Storm
If Nomad Capitalist is the polished version of offshore fear, Jeff Berwick is the raw, anarchist, apocalyptic version.
Berwick openly embraces collapse narratives:
His flagship message:
“The government is evil; collapse is coming; escape the system before it destroys you.”
Berwick sells:
...inside an ideological wrapper of rebellion and anti-state vengeance.
1. Collapse as a Sales Platform
Berwick weaponizes every political headline:
His followers are not seeking tax advice.
They are seeking salvation from a collapsing world.
2. Crypto as an Offshore Gateway Drug
Berwick’s unique contribution is the fusion of crypto maximalism with offshore libertarianism.
He preaches that:
This framing pulls crypto-injured investors into the broader doom ecosystem.
3. The Illusion of Escape
Berwick’s brand promises escape from tyranny but offers:
It is offshore doomerism in its purest form.
EXHIBIT 13 — Offshore Grifter Psychological Funnel (Nomad Capitalist vs. Berwick)
|
Funnel Stage |
Nomad Capitalist (Polished) |
Jeff Berwick (Apocalyptic) |
|
Hook |
“Your tax burden is unfair.” |
“Your country is collapsing.” |
|
Emotional Trigger |
Aspiration + envy |
Fear + rage |
|
Identity Appeal |
“Be a global citizen.” |
“Reject tyranny.” |
|
Crisis Frame |
Government inefficiency |
State malevolence |
|
Product |
High-ticket consulting |
Crypto + offshore anarchism |
|
Outcome |
Legal/financial risk |
Ideological radicalization |
Both funnels rely on political fear.
Both convert fear into high-ticket financial harm.
Both serve as two ends of the same Doom Cartel spectrum.
THE ROLE OF OFFSHORE GRIFTERS WITHIN THE DOOM CARTEL
Offshore fear merchants serve three systemic functions:
These are the Cartel’s “premium” sales conversions—$15k, $20k, $50k+ packages leveraging political panic.
Gold bugs → crypto anarchists → tax rebels → expatriation cultists.
It’s the same fear, just with different packaging.
“You are not safe where you are.”
If you can convince someone they are not safe at home, you can convince them to buy anything.
And the Doom Cartel knows this better than any industry on Earth.
CONCLUSION — The Cartel’s Kingpins Are Not Thought Leaders. They ARE the Industry.
The Doom Cartel is not driven by ideology, accuracy, or intellectual conviction.
These kingpins are not economists or philosophers.
They are performers, marketers, manipulative storytellers, and funnel architects.
Each plays a specific role:
Together, they form a complete commercial ecosystem:
a machine that turns fear into lifetime revenue.
SEE Why Mike Stathis’s Work Dismantles Political Doom
Also Read: The Social Cost of Doom
Related
Also See
Related
More on the Scammy Financial Copyediting Industry
More on Dave Collum
More on Alex Jones
Background of Jeff Rense
Background on Fitts
More on Copyediting Cons
Articles on Gold and the Gold Pumping Syndicate
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