Where are we now?

Dow down 296 points yesterday – or just under 2%.

Cruz and Clinton win the Iowa caucuses. Oil is back below $30.

An election has been described as two wolves and one lamb voting on what to have for dinner.

Actually, there was never any doubt about what was on the menu. An election is really when the wolves scrap over who gets the choicest pieces.

To bring new readers fully into the picture… It doesn't matter who won in Iowa. Major policies are not determined by the voters but by the more or less permanent elite who run the government, aka the “Deep State.”

Fighting to Lose

The Fed is an instrument of the Deep State, not of the people.

This sounds conspiratorial. But it doesn't require any hidden agenda or secret handshakes.

Most people want power, money, and status. If you can get control over the government – the only institution that can steal and kill, legally – you've got it made. That's why so much money is spent trying to get elected or to influence public policy.

The U.S. presidential campaign has seen surprisingly strong showings from two “outsiders”: Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders.

Why?

As former Congressional staffer turned Deep State whistleblower Mike Lofgren recently told Bonner & Partners Investor Network editor Chris Lowe, it's because each in his own way warns voters about the wolves.

The insiders, according to Trump and Sanders, are predatory and incompetent. But the Deep State is more predatory and less incompetent than it appears.  

It fights wars, for example, not to win them… but to lose them. The War on Poverty has been going on for more than 50 years. Still no sign of victory. But it has financed countless careers and retirements of government operatives.

The War on Drugs has raised profit margins for the drug dealers… and for the drug fighters too. But the public has suffered higher levels of violence and billions of dollars in prisons and crime-fighting costs.