Washington, DC -- (ReleaseWire) -- 11/03/2014 -- Nationally Syndicated Financial Myth Busting Radio Show with Host Dawn Bennett, CEO of Bennett Group Financial Services, LLC, on October 26, 2014 interviewed Howard Gold, MarketWatch Writer and editor of The Golden Egg Investing.

Mr. Gold recently wrote about the documentary "Money for Nothing," which gives view ers an inside look at how the Federal Reserve operates.

Here is the interview with Mr. Gold:

BENNETT: Will the Fed let the stock market crash before an election or do you think they're actually going to attempt some type of controlled collapse?

GOLD: Well, I don't think the stock market is going to collapse before the election. I think we've seen a rally. I think we probably hit the lowest and I think that was a correction not a market crash. I think it may take the Fed a little longer than people expect to start raising rates. I think that's going to be the next challenge.

BENNETT: I think they only have a billion dollars to inject into the market. How is this market actually going to be able to sustain itself?

GOLD: I think the Fed has had some well-timed infusions of quantitative easing after market correction, which I think is pretty interesting. I think that has definitely supported the market but I also believe that the economic recovery is real. I think unemployment has fallen quite a bit. I'm doing some research for another piece so I'm looking at various cities. A lot of the cities that were hit hard are coming back. So, I think we had a slow, probably not acceptably vigorous recovery, but I do think that is underpinning the stock market along with the zero interest rates.

BENNETT: So you recently wrote about the documentary 'Money for Nothing', which gave viewers an inside look at how the Federal Reserve operates. You mentioned that Yellen said she would never use inflation to finance the deficit. But isn't that exactly what she's been doing. She insists on 2 percent inflation every year.

GOLD: I'm not sure 2 percent would actually finance the deficit. First of all, the deficit as a percentage of GDP has been shrinking dramatically over the last few years, not that it's not too high, I still think it is. I don't really think in their minds what they're doing is financing the deficit. I think what they're doing is trying to fulfill that mandate, that difficult mandate the Congress gave them, a double mandate of primarily actually focusing on employment, but secondarily on inflation. I think they've been primarily focusing on employment. I think what happens when the market goes down is it scares them, and they go in and try to build things out of it, and I think that's been going on and off for the last 25 years. I think that's where they really go wrong. I think it's been quite a mission creep at the Fed since the stock market crashes of 1987. I think it goes well beyond what their mandate is and that's really my issue with the Fed, that I think they've just gotten too powerful and unaccountable on key things like that, and they should really stay out of the stock market, and be really focused on what their mandate is, which is to prevent the depressions, if they can, and to prevent runaway inflation if they can. That obviously secures financial stability and that's what most central banks have done in the world for the last 150 years.

BENNETT: &nb sp; You said that they get involved. They step up and they start building things up. Can you give us a bit of information and are there any interventions you've seen that can only be pinned to down to a Plunge Protection Team?

GOLD: I've read things about the plunge protecting, and it apparently started from a certain commission that President Reagan started in 1988, which consisted of the Fed Treasury Department and some others. I think the long-term capital management was a crisis that I think they essentially bailed out this hedge fund and the New York Fed got Wall Street firms to put up the money to bail out the hedge fund and it really just made a lot a bad bets. Of course in 2008 they took a lot of extraordinary steps. I don't really see evidence that there is actually a real Plunge Protection Team that sits together and works out some things like that. I just think that when crises the Fed reacts in way to try to staunch the bleeding or to prevent the worse because they're all terrified of another Great Depression. That's the lesson. There was a famous time when Ben Bernanke attended Milton Friedman's 90's birthday party at the University of Chicago a few years ago. He was Fed governor at the time, not the chairman. He said, 'Milton, we apologize. We made a bad mistake and we won't do it again.' I think that is really on a lot on their minds. I think they're really terrified of the repeat of Great Depression when the Fed did not in fact loosen the money supply, but tightened it after the crash of 1929.

BENNETT: But how do these types of interventions actually affect the average investor? Presumably, people don't really complain too much because their interventions are intended to prop up the market, but that's artificial and there are savvy investors out there that are trying to short the market as they should because fundamentals aren't there…yet losing because of the Fed rigging that is skewing the market.

GOLD: Well I disagree. I really think the fundamentals are there, earnings have been doing very, very well. I think the growth in the United States, while weaker than in previous recoveries, is certainly better than it has been in the rest of the developed world, and even a lot of the emerging markets. I think people who have shorted the market or who have gone all into gold have made a very big mistake and they have lost out on a lot of opportunity to make money over the last few years. What I suggest is that in a high-risk environment like this, people keep less of their money in stocks than some advisers recommend. A lot of the traditional advisors recommend 60 to 70 percent of stocks. I recommend 40 or 50 percent, because that limits your losses and keeps you in the game, because 70 percent of the time stocks go up. That's been proved through history.

BENNETT: Yes, but when you talk about things that are actually better out there, let's focus on the housing numbers which were very poor this week, or even McDonald's and Coca-Cola for example -- their global revenues fell 5 percent and then even their net income was some 30 percent lower. Companies like Unilever are saying the consumers around the world, just aren't there. It's just so tough out there!

GOLD: I think you're making some good points, if the consumers are weak. I do think other companies have reported great earnings. I mean you had Boeing had greater earnings, you had Intel had great earnings. The issues you have identified are correct. The consumers have certainly been hit very hard, there will still be leveraging going on. The affluent consumers are doing fine and they're spending but it's probably not enough to get the recovery up to a 3 to 4 percent GDP as opposed to 2 to 3 percent GDP.

BENNETT: I always wondered how people come about to their earnings. For examp le, Caterpillar came out in the media and said it was great, right. They had great earnings, but they had some unusual exclusions with restructuring costs that actually added back some 9 cents to their bottom line number, so it really wasn't as good as it came out to be.

GOLD: I've been covering business for many, years and companies have done this all the time, and they are very good at it. I think what people have to look at if they own individual stocks, which are not my preference I really don't generally own individual stuff nor recommend it. People really have to read& nbsp; financial statements very carefully because a lot of times it is smoke and mirrors and you have companies that don't have strong revenue growth and they're doing it through stock buybacks, they are doing it through all kinds of other financial engineering rather than through real stuff.

BENNETT: Right, then these companies are borrowing money for stock buybacks so that's not necessarily a healthy thing. So back to just trying to let things be the way they should be - a free market system, is there something to be said for simply just letting the market reflect its accurate prices based on supply and demand? Since the Fed isn't exactly investing real money, how do these interventions actually affect price discovery, which I think is an important function?

GOLD: I wish I had the answer for that, but I don't know. I mean they have helped investors, but I think as I said in my column, my MarketWatch column last week, the emergency is over. We have 5.9 percent unemployment in this country. Yes, there is a lot of underemployment, there is little work force participation for a number of reasons, but this is no longer a financial emergency. It hasn't been probably since the European debt crisis and it pretty much ended a couple years ago. So I think the way they ended it, they stopped the QE, they started raising interest rates gradually to reflect a mild economic recovery, and then they begin to sort of pay down some of the extra reserves they've accumulated in banks. It was like for $3 trillion in reserves over the last few years, and begin to wind that down too. It would be actually more bullish for the stock market in the long run and give a lot more people confidence. Up to a certain point they help, like in 2008-2009, but as you go far beyond that, I think they will have unintended consequences.

BENNETT: I do agree with you that in the long run to get all that back to normal and stopping the QE will work, but I'm just wondering, we're getting close to an $18 trillion debt that's due. We have unfunded liabilities and I know you say unemployment is getting better but the unfunded liabilities are like a $ 116 trillion. I keep asking myself how in the world can we pay this off? Even the social security administration came out last week with a wage statistic report and they are saying that 50 percent of all American workers made less than $28,000. That's not healthy. That's not good.

GOLD: I agree with you.

BENNETT: That's actually a sign that our quality of life in America is getting worse.

GOLD: No, I agree with you. I think we have a lot of problems with the wages. There's been no wage growth in this country and I think that's heading to the issue, the big issue of economic inequality. Companies have not felt the need to raise wages. I think on the flip side of that, I think that makes it much less likely we're going to see inflation like we did in the '70's, which was largely a factor of increasing wages. So, yes, I think there are serious problems. I'm very troubled b y some of this and I would like to see some policies coming out of Washington, some sensible policies that encourage people to get better skills, or give companies incentives to hire people. I guess get a better control over the fiscal situation. I think in the long run, the big problem coming down obviously is baby boomers like me retiring.
We can pay in and now suddenly we're going to start taking out and the fact is people say, oh I paid in for this. But they're going to be taking a lot more after they paid for it on average and most of the studies show that. So in the long run, I think it is a big problem. I'd like to see Congress find some sensible ways to address that and I'm very troubled by the fact that they can't even agree on anything at all.

BENNETT: Right. You've written that Janet Yellen's primary mandate at this point is boosting employment. I just read you the statistic that shows us the quantitative easing actually isn't helping the majority of Americans out there.

GOLD: It is not.

BENNETT: Can the Fed actually create employment by adjusting the money supply or is that just a theory that's constantly being tested and failing over and over again?

GOLD: I think you're right. I think constantly being tested. The Fed itself did a study on what the effect QE was, and I think it was back in 2012. They found it produced 2 million jobs. The Obama stimulus, economists found it produced about two million jobs and I did a piece on the Bush tax cuts that they probably produced about 2 million jobs too. That's not a lot of jobs in this economy especially for the cost, especially for the amount of money that was spent. It's a very, very low yield in all those cases. What I tell people, I don't think government policies create jobs. I think what government policies, central government policies would do is improve our infrastructure where it's needed and give people incentives to get better training, their skills can build up so they can get jobs and get higher pay for it and start businesses themselves.

BENNETT: So if Janet Yellen or the Federal Reserve is actually waiting for the employment to pick up -- which in reality it's not happening-- before quantitative easing is officially ended, do you think we're going to get QE5 on Wednesday?

GOLD: No, I think we are going to end QE. She is going to end it. I think they are going to wait a while on increasing interest rates and I think she's goi ng to watch and wait until unemployment gets low -- official unemployment gets to the low of '05. I think we're going to see slightly higher rates late next year but I don't think they're going to move up regularly. I think they're going to take their time increasing rates a quarter at a time. I think she's really smart and she knows that this is not sustainable for the long run. I think she is actually going to surprise people and raise the rates, but very gradually.

BENNETT: Yes, I'm going to wait to be surprised. I don't think she's as smart as you make her out to be. My big question is what's going to hold the market up after Wednesday?

GOLD: We are just going through an interesting test now. People said for about a year that the tapering is tightening. That hasn't been the case. Let's see what happens. In the market, they'll always find something to worry about. I think the next thing they're going to start worrying about is when rates start rising. I think the rates will start rising a little later than people expect, but I expect to see the market rally. I do expect to see some challenges when rates begin rising because the great Martin Zweig used to say, 'Don't fight the Fed,' but he also said that when we get to the second rate increase that's when you start thinking about taking some profits.

BENNETT: They haven't had the backbone to end quantitative easing for the last couple of years, so I am wondering if instead, they come up with some reason to continue to doing it. It certainly would destroy their credibility, but I just don't think they have the backbone to pull it off.

GOLD: I think they are on the course. If she doesn't, it will hurt her credibility more. I think they have been scared with the stock market, but then again, the S&P is just 50 points shorter than all time high now. So we had a tremendous rally over the last few sessions. If the stock market continues to fall, maybe to 50 percent down, 20 percent down, then I think it is possible that comments would have been kind of foreshadowing. Right now, I expect them to end the program, but I don't expect them to raise rates for a while.

BENNETT: What do you hope happens this Election day?

GOLD: I hope we elect people who are actually going to stop throwing smoke around and really start working together to address the real problems in this country. I have criticisms of Democrats and Republicans and I think a lot of their behavior in the Congress is childish. I think we have very serious problems and I would like to see the game end and more c onstructive action taken. I think the country really needs it.

Bennett Group Financial Services LLC, based in Washington, D.C., is a comprehensive financial services firm committed to providing opportunities to clients' as they seek long-term financial success. Its customized programs are designed with the potential to help grow, lower overall risk and conserve client assets by delivering a high level of personalized service and skill. For more information, call 866-286-2268 or visit http://www.bennettgroupfinancial.com.

Securities offered through Western International Securities Inc. (WIS), member FINRA/SIPC. BGFS and WIS are separate a nd unaffiliated entities.

About Dawn Bennett
Dawn Bennett is CEO and Founder of Bennett Group Financial Services. She hosts a national radio program called Financial Myth Busting http://www.financialmythbusting.com.

She discusses educational topics and events in the financial news, along with her thoughts on the economy, financial markets, investments, and more with her live guests, who have included Rock Legend Ted Nugent, as well as Steve Forbes and Grover Norquist. The show is a great complement to Dawn's monthly investing seminars that take place at Tysons Corner in McLean, VA, where she discusses investing.

She can be reached on Twitter @DawnBennettFMB or on Facebook Financial Myth Busting with Dawn Bennett or dbennett@bennettgroupfinancial.com

For more information on this press release visit: http://www.releasewire.com/press-releases/release-3.htm

Washington, DC -- (ReleaseWire) -- 10/31/2014 -- Nationally Syndicated Financial Myth Busting Radio Show with Host Dawn Bennett, CEO of Bennett Group Financial Services, LLC, on October 26, 2014 interviewed Charles Biderman, chairman of TrimTabs Investment Research, founded in 1990.

TrimTabs developed into the only independent research firm which provides daily coverage of U.S. stock market liquidity. The premise behind TrimTabs approaches that stock prices are a function of supply and demand of shares of stock and money rather than fundamental value.

He is also the author of TrimTabs Investing, using liquidity theory to beat the stock market, which came out in 2005. Mr. Biderman was the assistant early on in his career to Alan Abelson of Barron's.

Here is the interview with Charles Biderman:

BENNETT: Do you think these rigid markets are coming to an end, or do you think the Federal Reserve is actually going to try to attempt some type of controlled collapse?

BIDERMAN: You have to step back a second and watch underneath. The Central banks are propping up the global financial markets, whether it's actual regaining or just creating the circumstances by which financial asset prices can't keep levitating. There's one reason why this is all happening and that is because the major governments around the world have created obligations to citizens that they cannot pay.

The governments are all running huge deficits and not just current account deficits, if you add unfunded future liability. So the major governments around the world: U.S., Japan, England, except for Germany, all the future obligations. The present value of future obligations are greater than any ability to pay. That doesn't even include the current budget deficits. So if these countries were public companies and if a public company did not disclose that its future liabilities would not meet, that it couldn't be paid, the people running those companies would be in jail for fraud. But the government can lie about its ability to meet its future obligations. So how if you can't meet your future obligations, do you create wealth ? Well, not by making it more difficult to start businesses or to do new ventures. No. You levitate asset prices and the first step is the zero interest rate policy. We know that Japan has admitted that they are buying equities. The U.S. has never admitted it's buying equities, whether it is or isn't relevant, they've created a zero interest rate policy so companies growing cash are using or even if they're not growing cash, they're shrinking the share account and if there's more money chasing too fewer shares, the stock market goes up.

BENNETT: Janet Yellen, our Fed chairwomen has said, 'It isn't the Fed's job to pop b ubbles. Now, given the upside-down world we seem to be living in, which when you rig a market, or manipulate a market, do you think that means that they see that they've done something wrong and they're actually going to pop this bubble?

BIDERMAN: Well, they thought we needed to build a bridge over the economic valley so we can get to the other side safely. That's what they have thought. They didn't realize that they are not capable of creating the underlying conditions or economic growth. They thought they could do what Europe did and that is try to control everything, try to make sure that the people in charge stay in charge for the rest of their lives sucking the blood out, like pa rasites committed to the death of the host by their actions. But the parasites have convinced themselves that they're necessary for the whole survival and they will keep thinking that until the host dies. I ran across a key statistic that shows that there's been a significant decline in the amount of new company start-ups per a year going back to 2000.

BENNETT: Why do you think that is?

BIDERMAN: The amount of new business start-ups plunged under Obama, so you could say, 'Well, maybe it wa s the recession.' But the other statistic that's not dropping but it's growing is the death of businesses. So we're now at the point under Obama where there's less new businesses starting than existing businesses going out of business. That is not conducive to economic growth.

BENNETT: This past week a number of financial commentators speculated that something helped save the stock market from a serious crash, of course after it had gone down. They are saying it is the work of the group called the Plunge Protection Team. You've been one of the leading voices on the secretive group, can you tell us about who they are and what they do, and if in fact they actually really exis t?

BIDERMAN: I don't know that they actually really exist. We do know that in '09, I couldn't trace any buying sources from March to the end of the year, there were huge amounts of company selling, everybody was selling, but somebody was providing cash buying futures overnight, supporting the market. Now, it wasn't that huge amount of buying so it could have been anybody. It could have been the top six richest Wall Street traders themselves, working with some banks who were giving them some money and it was not from the Fed, or whoever. That turned the trick. This past Wednesday, I think it was more a case of the market has sold off because of fears. Let's go back to Alibaba, wh en the market was short term bearish the week before Alibaba came public, because we knew they're going to be sucking $25 billion out of the U.S. equity market. There wasn't $25 billion sitting there, so that buyers of Alibaba would have to sell other stocks to generate cash. So if you look at the facts, Google, Facebook, and Twitter got hurt the most. All the high tech stocks went down as people sold them to buy Alibaba. Then you had the Ebola, and the fear that the airline industry would collapse and trade would stop. So you had fears build and then on last Wednesday, you had a concerted effort by the central banks to come back in if the markets need them in essence.
They were there to buy so the market's panic would stop, because underlying all this as of right now, more shares are being bought than sold by companies and if you include cash takeovers of already public companies.

BENNETT: But aren't they buying back a lot of these shares on borrowed money?

BIDERMAN: Some are and some aren't. I have a fund that only invest in companies by reducing the share count out of free cash flow. To me, the best metric, to watch for consistently is free cash flow. Earnings are sometimes irrelevant because they're made up. Cash you can't make up, so I watched companies throw in cash and using a portion of the cash to reduce the share cap, because if the Feds are growing cash, the enterprise value shouldn't go down, and the price of the remaining shares automatically goes up.

BENNETT: You mentioned in recent interviews the reason companies are not investing in new products and instead buying back their stocks is because there's no demand. The economy actually isn't recovering. Can you talk about that?

BIDERMAN: Sure. If you have a situation where y ou have less new businesses starting. Since Obama took office in '08, there's 15 million more Americans. But there's only 1.3 million more jobs. So it's not less than 10 percent of the population growth got the jobs and all those new jobs are part-time jobs, perhaps 30 hours or less, which means that under Obama, there's been no new full-time job creation. It started with Bush, by the way. Bush sent us down the road to perdition and Obama's getting us there. Under Bush we had 25 percent of the population growth got jobs. Remember, Bush decided that we could spend trillions pouring money into the sands in Arabia and that's good for us. I don't know what it has gotten us, and then he opened the biggest Medicare future government obligations. So it's under George Bush that if you add the net present value of future government obligations, the U.S. turned negative net worth. It has deepened under Obama. So in my mind, Obama and Bush are the two worst economic presidents in recen t U.S. history.

BENNETT: So the market, it has all these giant swings up and swings down. Don't you think the average investor should just refuse to invest at this stage?

BIDERMAN: Well, I think that people born after 1980 are not going to invest in the market. Why? Say someone was born 1980, when they reached maturity in 2001, they saw a 50 percent market crash. Then, they see another market boom and, before they get 30, there is another 50 percent market crash. So people experiencing two major wipe-outs are not likely to risk a third. I don't think millennials are going to be stock market investors.

BENNETT: With all this volatility, do you think that there actually is a legitimate role for an agency like, if it exists – a plunge protection team? Can a group like that ever really help extensively a free market?

BIDERMAN: No. No. It is actually a criminal activity. Though it is not against the law for a budget official, or treasury officer to lie about the U.S. finances, you can say whatever you want as long as you're supposedly not personally benefiting. But if a CEO lies about his company finances, he goes to jail, and if the President lies, he gets re-elected.

BENNETT: So my understanding is that Reagan in 1998 started this, but from what I read, he was very open about it. He was very open about this committee be in existence.

BIDERMAN: You got to remember in '87 when the market crashed that there was stock market insurance that drove it down, so the people who created that were sort of called in on the carpet and they promised to not let it happen again. To me that's what I heard literary happened. Obama in Mach of '09, at the market bottom said, now is the time to buy stocks. Now, was that a signal to an informal group that did buy, that supported the market to the several billion dollars in a short period of time to stabilize things. Then the Central banks were key to going around the world and look, instead of letting garbage be taken to the dump and burned, several big banks went under and sold what? Central banks are run by bankers, and top bankers could not let their best buddies go broke. So not o ne bank went under, not one top banker was ever going to jail.

BENNETT: Do you think they feel the same about that today, or do you think they have more guts to just let it happen?

BIDERMAN: I was speaking at the Irrational Economic Summit and David Stockman was there. He was talking about how horrible things are. So when I asked publicly David, 'If your old boss Ronald Reagan were president today could he make a difference?' He said he would hope so but in reality given how the special interests now run everything, and that it doesn't matter if it's a Republican or Democrat that's elected, he said -- he didn't think even Ronald Reagan could make a difference today.

BENNETT: You think the Federal Reserve actually played the role in preventing this bear market we were entering in October?

BIDERMAN: &n bsp; One of the reasons why the market declined was that the morons on Wall Street who think that the government is capable of engineering an economic recovery, that we were bound to recover. Warren Buffet says, 'Don't bet against America.' But when you put so many headwinds and so many obstacles in the way of growth so that less companies are being started than die, that is not a headwind, that is a huge stop, big barriers to growth. So without economic growth, the only thing the governments can do is keep asset prices high.

BENNETT: I want to hear what TrimTabs does and why your work helps you be uniquely qualified to talk about the Federal Reserve.

BIDERMAN: We track all various stock market transactions bought and sold for cash.
We discovered that if you track changes in the number of shares available to people to be bought and sold, and the amount of money available to buy shares, you will know what in fact the market is going to do. A bull market in essence is more money chasing fewer shares and a bear market is less money chasing more shares. So as long as share cap keeps going down, which it has since 2012, and even though there is no new money going into the market from individuals, the market is going to keep going up until that dynamic changes.

BENNETT: So float and shrink are two terms that play a big role in your financial analysis. Can you explain what they mean?

BIDERMAN: Sure. I have a fund, TrimTabs Float Shrink ETF. It's been on the NY stock exchange for three years. The opening price was around $25 and I think we're at $51 or something like that yesterday. Our sites are propriety closed and we invest in hundredth companies that are growing cash, growing free cash flow, which is the money left over after paying all the bills, capital expenditures, 3/3 in the development. This is all the money left that if they take a portion of that money and reduce the amount of shares that are outstanding, I say that the value of the company should not go down. So there is less shares outstanding and th e company is still growing cash. The prices of the remaining shares should go up by at least the amount of percentage of the share reduction. What we are discovering is companies that have been doing that, they trade at the premium to the share account reduction and to the market because investors like to know what they are going to get and that these companies are growing cash. Some say that oh, it's so horrible that people who run American companies have an economic interest in the share price more so than their salaries so that opportunities options and actual share distribution for people who run companies have bigger interest in growing share price than necessarily their salaries. So they discovered that share account reduction has a bigger impact on stock rise than giving out dividends. So there is less dividends and more share account reduction. So that's why it is so important, particularly at this time. The biggest problem smart people face is, you see what is going on, what the future is like, where we are headed and you cannot understand why everybody else can't see it. As one economist said, the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent. You have to invest as the market is today. The market today is banished because the share accounts are being reduced. November is a very strong month for share account reduction. October is the light month so that also helped the selloff. So, we are entering into a strong end of the year for the share prices but the overall economy is not growing and will continue to shrink. At some point, that is going to be a break, a gap. You can't manipulate gravity. At some point, unless the economy starts growing, share prices are going to come back to Earth. The only question is when.

BENNETT: What do you hope happens this election day?

BIDERMAN: I don't care. I don't vote. I don't think it matters who wins. I think we have to let the governments go broke and then have smart people be around to minimize the damage. When we restart the global economy with a broadband or internet, social media type based, it's not going to be for me, it's going to be the Millennials that grow up on the Internet. They will determine the future form the government takes because the current system is breaking down and everybody realizes it, but nobody wants to face it -- w e want to hope, 'oh, yeah, well, it's lasted this long, maybe it will last until I die, so I don't have to worry about it.'

Bennett Group Financial Services LLC, based in Washington, D.C., is a comprehensive financial services firm committed to providing opportunities to clients' as they seek long-term financial success.&n bsp; Its customized programs are designed with the potential to help grow, lower overall risk and conserve client assets by delivering a high level of personalized service and skill. For more information, call 866-286-2268 or visit http://www.bennettgroupfinancial.com.

Securities offered through Western International Securities Inc. (WIS), member FINRA/SIPC. BGFS and WIS are separate and unaffiliated entities.

About Dawn Bennett
Dawn Bennett is CEO and Founder of Bennett Group Financial Services. She hosts a national radio program called Financial Myth Busting http://www.financialmythbusting.com.

She discusses educational topics and events in the financial news, along with her thoughts on the economy, financial markets, investments, and more with her live guests, who have included Rock Legend Ted N ugent, as well as Steve Forbes and Grover Norquist. The show is a great complement to Dawn's monthly investing seminars that take place at Tysons Corner in McLean, VA, where she discusses investing.

She can be reached on Twitter @DawnBennettFMB or on Facebook Financial Myth Busting with Dawn Bennett or dbennett@bennettgroupfinancial.com

For more information on this press release visit: http://www.releasewire.com/press-releases/release-3.htm

Washington, DC -- (ReleaseWire) -- 10/30/2014 -- To QE or not to QE, that is the question, says Dawn Bennett, CEO of Bennett Group Financial Services in her latest missive to investors.

That is the question everybody has on the brain, she says. And here's why…last week we had really lousy U.S housing numbers, troubled earnings and revenue in the (usually very defensive) food and drink industry as McDonald's and Coca-Cola had plunging sales worldwide. IBM took a dive after it abandoned its long-term earnings target and posted sharply lower third-quarter profits. But, the icing on the cake was the horrifying announcement that approximately twenty five banks in the Euro-zone failed the ECB (European Central Bank) stress test.

Last week across the board was pretty bad except for the slice of sunshine that came from Apple Computers magical quarterly numbers. It was the only company that really did well. The S&P 500 had its biggest low to high swings since December of 2011, and the S&P 500 went above its 100-day moving average, which to many was a good sign, proving once again that the U.S. markets are healthy…right? Not. According to the Federal Reserve, all seems to be right with the world, at least that's what these manipulators behind the curtain want investors to believe.

But here is the deal…according to our calculations, the Fed only has one billion dollars left to inject into the U.S. stock market. So investors should ask themselves, are the U.S. markets and economy strong enough to stand on their own? It's an important question. Or, will the lack of Fed monetary injection into the U.S. stock market give us a deeper correction? There is a very high degree of correlation between the Fed's liquidity programs and the advance in the market. Previously, when the Federal Reserve stopped their monetary interventions, it lead to market decline. Will the Federal Open Market Committee announce the end of quantitative easing after its two-day meeting on Wednesday, October 29, 2014? If they don't engage in a new quantitative easing program, will the U.S. stock and bond markets have a major problem?

Quantitative Easing (QE) has been the main force behind the stock market since the rise in 2008-2009. This fact, more than anything else in the world, is responsible for the U.S. stocks at all-time highs. QE1 and QE2 had fixed deadlines for the Fed ending its quantitative easing efforts, which would allow ris k and more of a free market level back on a supply and demand basis. However, this changed when the Federal Reserve announced QE3 and QE4 that were two open-ended programs without deadlines. From that point on, it was clear that risk in the marketplace would be mispriced.

The U.S. stock and bond markets are losing their critical crutch. We will look toward the Fed's statements on Wednesday, October 29, 2014. Yes, don't worry, jawboning interventions are still going to occur by the Fed or the White House or anyone who has a vested interest in a higher stock market, but investors should not be fooled. As it has in the past, the sweet talk will lull us with a quick run up in the markets, but is not going to do anything on a long term, consistent basis, because there isn't going to be any more money coming from the Fed. This means last week's miraculous rally probably isn't going to last. If investors are wishing the Fed on Wednesday, October 29, 2014 announces QE5, just know that I think their Federal Reserves' hands are tied. After engaging in quantitative easing for two solid years, the Federal Reserve would totally destroy any credibility they have left, if they start QE-ing again.

Due to all these monopoly money printing QE programs, the U.S. government debt is reaching $18 trillion. Even more incredible than the debt owed right now is what is due in the future, which are those unfunded liabilities that come to an astonishing $116. Trillion. How in the world can we pay off the debt when we don't have the real money to do it? And adding insult to injury, the Social Security Administration released a wage statistic study last week for 2013 stating that 50 percent of all American workers made less than $28,031, and 39 percent of all American workers made less than $20,000 annually. So, not only is this more evidence of the declining quality of jobs and life in the country, but with the current debt level, approximately $18 trillion, it would take more than the 400 million working years at this average wage to pay it off. Which means that it's virtually impossible for any and every American man, woman and child in the United States to put in that kind of time, or even overtime to pay off the debt, now that the Federal Reserve has piled on all of our names. The reality is we're no better off than when we started QE1 back in December of 2008.

In my opinion, no news from the Fed on Wednesday would actually be great news. Maybe we can get back to normalcy and maybe it won't be the greatest investment market, but at least we'll develop smarter rules and regulations and new fiscal policy that would help grow the market in a healthy, normal, free market way. Americans need to start taking control of their own destiny and it's something that really came home last week to me because I just believe that these policies are destroying us and not helping us. People need to speak up. We shouldn't allow this broken economic system to subjugate us, it needs to be anchored to the laissez faire foundation that in the past made America the greatest economic power in the world.

All market data references are sourced to Bloomberg terminal database.

Bennett Group Financial Services LLC, based in Washington, D.C., is a comprehensive financial services firm committed to providing opportunities to clients' as they seek long-term financial success. Its customized programs are designed with the potential to help grow, lower overall risk and conserve client assets by delivering a high level of personalized service and skill.

For more information, call 866-286-2268 or visit http://www.bennettgroupfinancial.com

Securities offered through Western International Securities Inc. (WIS), member FINRA/SIPC. BGFS and WIS are separate and unaffiliated ent ities.

About Dawn Bennett
Dawn Bennett is CEO and Founder of Bennett Group Financial Services. She hosts a national radio program on called Financial Myth Busting http://www.financialmythbusting.com

She discusses educational topics and events in the financial news, along with her thoughts on the economy, financial markets, investments, and more with her live guests, who have included Rock Legend Ted Nugent, as well as Steve Forbes and Grover Norquist. Listeners can call 855-884-DAWN as well as take podcasts on the road and forums for interaction.

The show is a great complement to Dawn's monthly investing seminars that take place at Tysons Corner in McLean, VA, where she discusses investing.

She can be reached on Twitter @ DawnBennett

For more information on this press release visit: http://www.releasewire.com/press-releases/release-3.htm

Washington, DC -- (ReleaseWire) -- 10/29/2014 -- Nationally Syndicated Financial Myth Busting Radio Show with Host Dawn Bennett, CEO of Bennett Group Financial Services, LLC, on October 19, 2014 interviewed Dr. Jane Orient is a Tucson, Arizona based internal medicine physician and Executive Director of the Association of American Physicians & Surgeons, as well as she is currently the President Doctors for Disaster Preparedness.

Dr. Orient has had more than a hundred different papers published in scientific and popular literature, including risk assessment 'Natural and Technological Hazards and Non-Hazards' and 'Medical economics and Ethics.' Her latest article 'U.S. prepared for Ebola - ten patients at the time,' asks an important question: have you wondered why Ebola patients are being sent to Omaha, Nebraska?

Here is the interview with Dr. Jane Orient:

Dawn Bennett: I read that Northwestern university professor Alessandro Vespignani is running a computer simulation of infectious diseases outbreaks which warns that there could be as many as two dozen people in United States infected with Ebola by the end of the month. However, the CDC, the Centre for Disease Dynamics disagrees. Where do you come down on that?

Dr. Jane Orient: I think the CDC has demonstrably been at the state of denial for quite some time now and we do not have the capacity to handle a widespread outbreak and we are not taking the measures that we need to stop it. In fact, we are planning to continue to import cases from West Africa. We are sending our military there when they are almost certain to be exposed and some of them are going to be infected and bring it home to their families.

Dawn Bennett: You wrote this piece about how the US is able to care for Ebola only ten patients at the time, at a special facility in Omaha, Nebraska. Can you tell us about this unique facility?

Dr. Jane Orient: This was founded by a physician. He was inspired by the 9/11 attacks and said we really need to prepare ourselves for bioterrorism. So there is this BSL 4, that's bio-safety level 4 facility, which is what the World Health Organization has required to safely deal with this virus. There are only ten beds there, some of them are already taken up with laboratory equipment. They probably can't handle more than two patients because of the waste that's generated. There's probably only a total of eleven such beds in the entire United States.

Dawn Bennett: Do we need more facilities like this one in Nebraska? Do you expect more Ebola-like outbreaks in the future? Should all hospitals prepare for this type of quarantine and have a section of their hospital dedicated to a facility like this?

Dr. Jane Orient: I don't think that all hospitals can begin to aff ord it. By the way, we don't even have the good military capacity to transport patients safely if we had a case in West Africa. The administration dismantled this program in 2010.

Dawn Bennett: Looking back, should Thomas Eric Duncan actually have been sent to this facility in Nebraska instead of the Texas Hospital where he'd been treated?

Dr. Jane Orient: I think he might have done better had he been sent there and I also think that there wouldn't be nurses and who knows how many other contacts coming down with this disease, because BSL 2 facility, which is the best that Texas could do, is really not capable of keeping its workers safe.

Dawn Bennett: There's a clip that I want to play for you. It's actually Barack Obama and he was talking about how he was hugging and kissing the nurses and the doctors at Emery because of their work with patients with Ebola, and I am just wondering, after you listen to this, would you be doing the same thing?

President Barack Obama: "I want to use myself as an example just so that peo ple have a sense of the science here. I shook hands with, hugged, and kissed not the doctors, but a couple of the nurses at Emory because of the valiant work that they did in treating one of the patients. They followed the protocols, they knew what they were doing, and I felt perfectly safe doing so."

Dawn Bennett: So, would you be kissing the nurses and hugging the doctors?

Dr. Jane Orient: I don't think it's a good idea, but Eme ry is much better equipped to protect its workers than Dallas. Also, I don't know how long after the last exposure it was when he did this. One should wait at least 21 days and probably more. World Health Organization thinks that some people don't display symptoms until as long as 42 days after they're infected.

Dawn Bennett: How many people out there are actually comparing Ebola with AIDS. What do you make of that comparison?

Dr. Jane Orient: I think it is a highly misleading comparison. It is similar in that that the diseases are caused by a virus and the virus attacks the immune system. They are also similar in that the AIDS initially was accompanied by a huge amount of fear, but at this point, we know that medical people did not come down with AIDS from exposures. Surgeons who were in the operating rooms, sticking themselves, exposed to blood, did not have an outbreak of AIDS. AIDS is much, much less contagious than Ebola. It only takes one to ten Ebola viruses to cause an infection. Its safety requires not the universal precautions that seem to work for AIDS, but the BSL 4 facility, to protect people against the air, as well as against the contacts with any amount of virus.

Dawn Bennett: I'm not a doctor, but I was told by a doctor that viruses such as Ebola actually have genomes that are made from ribonucleic acid, and they are constantly mutating. So I'm wondering does an Ebola outbreak boost odds of mutation and helping it to spread, and then maybe even potentially making it airborne?

Dr. Jane Orient: Of course it does. RNA replication is as much accurate as DNA replication. So RNA viruses for example influenza do mutate very rapidly. When you've got the huge number of them out there replicating in victims, of course there are going to be some mutations. By airborne can be confusing because people think well you vomit on somebody is the virus airborne. What they're really talking about is in the tiny droplets that you can inhale and that remain suspended in the air for long, long periods of time. It's thought that Ebola virus is destroyed by the drying, but there is experimental evidence that 1 percent of the virus is still infectious after 90 minutes. So it really can be airborne, it's been shown in experimental circumstances with animals that it can be transmitted in this way. And that's why it's a BFL 4 level virus.

Dawn Bennett: We know that it actually can be passed on to animals and the Spanish nurse's dog, after she got it, they actually killed that dog because it became infected. However, the Dallas nurse's dog was actually spared. So I am wondering which country do you think got it right? Can dogs transmit Ebola too?

Dr. Jane Orient: We don't know whether dogs can transmit it to humans, but it probably can transmit it to other dogs. Fully 30 percent of dogs in one area in Africa that had an outbreak, has antibodies to this virus. From what Ebola virus did in Africa between outbreaks in humans is it went back into reservoir species, such as bats. Well, if we had dogs reservoir species, where dogs were passing it along to each other, and humans came in contact with the dog and it was transmissible from dog species, or from contact with dogs to humans, we would never be able to extricate i t.

Dawn Bennett: There's been so much back and forth about how contagious Ebola is and President Obama said of course you can't catch it if you're on a bus with someone who has it. Yet, the CDC is currently trying to get in touch with everyone who was on that flight with the second nurse. I'm wondering which one is it?

Dr. Jane Orient: Well, the CDC is now saying that you could transmit it on the bu s, or on an airplane, so that these people that their tracing are not allowed to use public transportation. On the other hand, they're allowing people from West Africa who may well have been exposed to use aircraft. So the CDC is being inconsistent and I think that a sensible policy would be to say, yes, you can catch it on the bus. It survives on the surfaces for as long as 6 days. So if somebody vomited on the surface, or sneezes on the surface, or touches the surface, the stuff that can be shed from the skin, then yes, it's contagious.

Dawn Bennett: So do you think the U.S. government should stop travel to the United States by citizens of plague nations?

Dr. Jane Orient: I think it should stop travel by anyone whether he's an American citizen or foreign national if that person has been in an area where the epidemic is raging and has not been isolated for at least 21 days.

Dawn Bennett: How would you grade the U.S. government's handling of Ebola crisis so far? Should we be looking to the government for direction?

Dr. Jane Orient: I think it's been appalling. I think it is reckless, it is irresponsible, it is dangerous and we really need to put a pressure on them to change it before it is too late.

Dawn Bennett: As a doctor specifically trained in internal medicine and disaster preparedness, how do you feel about Obama's appointment of lobbyist, PR guy, Ron Klain as the "Ebola czar?"

Dr. Jane Orient: I think that shows that he uses this as a political problem for his administration and for his party, not as a public health problem.

Dawn Bennett: So if you were named the Ebola czar, what's the first thing you would do?

Dr. Jane Orient: I would first use every means possible to stop the importation of this virus, whether by air, or through our open borders.

Dawn Bennett: I understood just by preparing for this interview that Ebola of course as you said has an incubation period of about three weeks in which patients actually remain asymptomatic, right. Can a patient remain asymptomatic throughout and therefore end up just infecting others and they don't even know they have it?

Dr. Jane Orient: Almost every other virus that we know about is transmissible during the incubation period, and in fact with influenza maybe even more, transmissible before the person get symptoms. So why should Ebola be any different? They are relying on fever of a certain threshold which keeps coming down as the threshold of being symptomatic. Yet, in Africa it has been shown that maybe 15 percent of people who are infected don't get a fever.

Dawn Bennett: How is someone with Ebola actually treated? We know one man was given an experimental cure that apparently worked. But how are they being treated?

Dr. Jane Orient: I think that the main thing is called supportive care, which means keeping them from dying of dehydration before their body can fight off the virus. There are no specific FDA-approved treatments. There are some experimental ones such as giving plasma from a patient who has recovered and hope that it has antibodies that will prevent the virus from getting into the cells of the new patient. There is the ZMapp, which we don't have anymore, which is monoclonal of a ntibodies. There are some experimental drugs that are close to interfere with viral replication, but there's nothing that's been proved either safe or effective to treat this virus specifically. So we give them pain medicine, and we try to replace the fluids that they are losing rapidly through explosive vomiting and diarrhea.

Dawn Bennett: Are we close to a cure?

Dr. Jane Orient: How do we know how close we are to the cure? &n bsp;We don't even have any phase one testing going on on a wide scale for any drugs that I know of. There are some vaccines on the interface, but I think that doesn't do any good if you are already infected.

Dawn Bennett: Any other countries that are ahead of us on this?

Dr. Jane Orient: Not that I know of.

Dawn Bennett: I am also understanding that there is a lack of Ebola control training actually at hospitals because no one actually is in charge knowing what's going on. No one is really leading the force.

Dr. Jane Orient: Well, I think if you listen to the nurses they are not getting any training. A nurse that I know says they keep getting communications that there will be training, there will be protocols, but so far there has been none.

Dawn Bennett: Is it just this 'let it go' attitude that nothing can affect us here in America and we don't care? What is the reason for that?

Dr. Jane Orient: I think that there's a just a certain amount of arrogance that we have in this very advanced and sophisticated medical system. However, our public health is breaking down at the most basic level. Public health has overstretched in all kinds of other areas. Dallas doesn't even have enough public health people to do their own contact rations. CDC had to fly people in just to try and do that basic and fundamental procedure.

Dawn Bennett: I know you're a vocal critic of ObamaCare. Does that make sense or more sense if hospitals actually communicate among themselves and not rely on the United States government at all?

Dr. Jane Orient: It looks like the way the United States government is going that that's probably true. We don't have any expert virologist even giving us advice from the CDC, that's coming from persons who are not nearly the specialists in that. The advice has so far been wrong.

Dawn Bennett: Why would a place like Texas Health Presbyterian in Dallas actually keep a patient like this if they weren't set up for it?

Dr. Jane Orient: That is a very good question and I think now they have decided to move the nurses elsewhere.

Dawn Bennett: Yes, by commercial plane! What were they thinking?!

Dr. Jane Orient: The city dismantled the military transport that would safely evacuate patients who had a really deadly and highly contagious disease.

Dawn Bennett: Have you been contacted by anybody in the government or CDC to help them with this issue?

Dr. Jane Orient: No, I have not, but they really should contact first-class virologist.

Dawn Bennett: Yes. You are the President of the Doctors for Disaster Preparedness; you would think that they would want some more insights since we are handling it so poorl y.

Dr. Jane Orient: I think they want insight only from people who are on their side of the political spectrum because as they view it mainly as a political problem.

Dawn Bennett: These hazmat suits that people are wearing, is this going to be enough to protect them?

Dr. Jane Orient: Depends on what kind of hazmat suit you're talking about. If it's got respirator that brings filtered air that the person breaths and so he's not breathing the air from the outside. Ebola is just the chemical compound, that's all. It is a very highly lethal virus. It seems to be well adapted to infecting people and proliferating itself.

Dawn Bennett: NHI Director here in Washington D.C. said they could have a cure, but their budget was cut. What do you think about that?

Dr. Jane Orient: Well, their budget was actually increased, but they were spending it all on social norming and motorcycle helmets and other things that have nothing to do with their main mission, which is to protect us against the contagious diseases.

Dawn Bennett: Do you think this episode or this situation with Ebola is actually going to make us rethink about these types of diseases and this type of possible pandemic issue that could actually destroy our population?

Dr. Jane Orient: I think if it doesn't, we're doomed. Ebola has been studied for decades by people who feared it as a great biological warfare weapon, and people who think that it could wipe out 90 percent of the human population of the world.

About Bennett Group Financial Services LLC
Bennett Group Financial Services LLC, based in Washington, D.C., is a comprehensive financial services firm committed to providing opportunities to clients' as they seek long-term financial success. Its customized programs are designed with the potential to help grow, lower overall risk and conserve client assets by delivering a high level of personalized service and skill. For more information, call 866-286-2268 or visit http://www.bennettgroupfinancial.com.

Securities offered through Western International Securities Inc. (WIS), member FINRA/SIPC. BGFS and WIS are separate and unaffili ated entities.

Dawn Bennett is CEO and Founder of Bennett Group Financial Services. She hosts a national radio program called Financial Myth Busting http://www.financialmythbusting.com.

She discusses educational topics and events in the financial news, along with her thoughts on the economy, financial markets, investments, and more with her live guests, who have included Rock Legend Ted Nugent, as well as Steve Forbes and Grover Norquist. The show is a great complement to Dawn's monthly investing seminars that take place at Tysons Corner in McLean, VA, where she discusses investing.

She can be reached on Twitter @DawnBennettFMB or on Facebook Financial Myth Busting with Dawn Bennett or dbennett@bennett groupfinancial.com

For more information on this press release visit: http://www.releasewire.com/press-releases/release-3.htm

Washington, DC -- (ReleaseWire) -- 10/29/2014 -- An ominous stock market crash anniversary gives clues to today's financial markets, says Dawn Bennett, CEO of Bennett Group Financial Services, in her latest warning to investors.

The week of Oct 13, 2014 got a little crazy in the financial markets and may have driven some people looney because it's hard to watch a portfolio get destroyed so quickly says Ms. Bennett.

On Monday October 19, 1987, the Dow suffered its worst one-day stock market crash in history, down 23 percent in one day. It was surrounded by signs of the U.S. economy slowing down, and worried investors beginning to wonder if the stock markets were rigged for the insiders. That may seem familiar to many investors now. The sequence of events that pushed the U.S. financial markets into the abyss back then are now back with a vengeance.

If investors think this time is actually going to be different just because the Federal Reserve has stepped in and "saved us with their liquidity injections," they should think again. The technicals really did breakdown, and it was scary. It felt eerily similar to October 1987's Black Monday. Investors who were around then surely did not want to celebrate the 27 year anniversary of the crash in this fashion. I'm wondering if we're going to revisit the same scene?

The volatility index (VIX) actually jumped the week of Oct. 13 to 26.25 that Wednesday. It's the highest level since 2012. On October 15, 2014, the S&P 500 lost approximately one percent, and the Dow Jones Industrial average fell to close 173 points down. However, the intraday drop reached 460 points total.

Technically speaking, the U.S. financial markets closed below their 200-day moving average for the first time on October 17, 2014. It was the longest losing streak for the S&P 500 since August 2, 2011. Investors want to know whether that week marked a bottom for the U.S. stock market for 2014. Unfortunately from a technical and even fundamental point of view, I don't think so.

Last year the Russell 2000 net shorts were probably the largest they had been since 2008. After the fifth consecutive week of selling the Russell 2000, people were actually buying in, so it actually netted up higher, but it's because they had margin calls and needed to cover their shorts. So these over-leveraged shorts that own the Russell 2000 were squeezed and had to buy in, thereby pushing the Russell 2000 up. This inherently shows the continued weakness.

Investors need to focus on the credit markets too, especially leveraged bond loans, or bank loans and high-yield bonds. They've seen a lot of substantial selling in these sectors. The connection to the Russell 2000 is that small cap companies tend to be more credit-sensitive than mega cap companies. Mega caps can actually tap the bond markets rather cheaply, but average investors can't do that with small cap companies.

Another indicator of weakness was the Goldman Sachs Global Leading Indicator, which collapsed the week of October 13, 2014. The company said the October advance reading actually places the global cycle deeper with momentum declining. Back in June, the Goldman indicator was all about expansion and positivity. This shows we've gone from expansion to slow down to basically falling off a cliff in less than a span of 3-4 months.

Five of the six global leading indicators have worsened so far in October; S&P, GSCI industrial metals index, the Australian Dollar and the Canadian Dollar. Even the Philly Fed new orders number, which is a proxy for the global PMI, has reported down. Plus, the Baltic Dry Index declined this past month.

If all of these technical breakdowns continue, my bet is that the Fed is going to continue all its dovish language and step back into the stock market. We are in extraordinary times. If history is any indicator, and it is, investors should be looking at this 27 year anniversary of the U.S. Stock market crash and ask themselves how they should be invested?

All market data references are sourced to Bloomberg terminal database.

Bennett Group Financial Services LLC, based in Washington, D.C., is a comprehensive financial services firm committed to providing opportunities to clients? 7; as they seek long-term financial success. Its customized programs are designed with the potential to help grow, lower overall risk and conserve client assets by delivering a high level of personalized service and skill.

For more information, call 866-286-2268 or visit http://www.bennettgroupfinancial.com

Securities offered through Western International Securities Inc. (WIS), member FINRA/SIPC. BGFS and WIS are separate and unaffiliated entities.

About Dawn Bennett
Dawn Bennett is CEO and Founder of Bennett Group Financial Services. She hosts a national radio program on called Financial Myth Busting http://www.financialmythbusting.com

She discusses educational topics and events in the financial news, along with her thoughts on the economy, financial markets, investments, and more with her live guests, who have included Rock Legend Ted Nugent, as well as Steve Forbes and Grover Norquist. Listeners can call 855-884-DAWN as well as take podcasts on the road and forums for interaction.

The show is a great complement to Dawn's monthly investing seminars that take place at Tysons Corner in McLean, VA, where she discusses investing.

She can be reached on Twitter @DawnBennettFMB or on Facebook Financial Myth Busting with Dawn Bennett or dbennett@bennettgroupfinancial.com

For more information on this press release visit: http://www.releasewire.com/press-releases/release-3.htm

Washington D.C., DC -- (ReleaseWire) -- 10/27/2014 -- Nationally Syndicated Financial Myth Busting Radio Show with Host Dawn Bennett, CEO of Bennett Group Financial Services, LLC, on October 19, 2014 interviewed Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a practicing physician who has served in various capacities at the Food and Drug Administration, including Senior Adviser for Medical Technology and Director of Policy and Policy Development, and most recently he's been the Deputy Director for Medical and Scientific Affairs.

Last month Dr. Gottlieb wrote an op-ed titled "Heading off a bigger Ebola catastrophe" in which he says a more urgent international effort in West Africa is needed to stop the disease and save tens of thousands of lives. Dr. Gottlieb has a solution with three main elements to address stopping Ebola from becoming a catastrophe.

Here is the interview with Dr. Scott Gottlieb:

Dawn Bennett: Should Americans be worried about Ebola?

Dr. Scott Gottlieb: Yes we should be worried for two reasons. The first is that if the epidemic continues at its current pace in West Africa, which it seems to be, then we could be facing much more frequent and larger outbreak here in the U.S. The second reason we should be concerned is that months down the road we might start seeing these larger outbreaks. Another reason we should be concerned is that the individual cases that we've seen don't seem to have been handled well. We thought we knew how to handle this better than we do and we thought we were more prepared. Hopefully, we're going to use the time and what we learned from these incidents to better prepare for what seems to be an inevitable spread of this virus, if we don't come up with a vaccine or a drug.

Dawn Bennett: But our ability to prevent Ebola from spreading here doesn't actually reduce our obligations abroad. How do you propose we address those problems?

Dr. Scott Gottlieb: Right. I think that was the real problem early on as a lot of people quite frankly ignored the issue because they never saw it as a domestic threat. It wasn't just the United States, but other countries around the world. This always had the makings of a major humanitarian catastrophe. Early on I was comparing it to the earthquake in Haiti and tsunami in Thailand. I felt that it could become a catastrophe in that order. Now those estimates look like it's going to exceed the amount of death that we saw in those two other catastrophes. I think we need to address it by getting appropriate resources to the region to help them fight the virus, help deliver medical services to individuals, help offset the economic losses these countries are taking, and their inability to just get food and take care of basic needs because of the impact that the virus is having on their local population. So we need a tremendous relief effort and if you look at what we've done to help deal with this Ebola outbreak and compare it in proportion to what we did in for example the Haiti earthquake or the tsunami in Thailand, it's not even close to the proportion of relief and the money that was raised for those other two catastrophes. Yet I think the stakes here are much, much higher.

Dawn Bennett: I agree with you, I think we have a bigger issue here with this, especially here in the United States. Why isn't it greater?

Dr. Scott Gottlieb: I think a one-time cataclysmic event like an earthquake or a tsunami, the destruction becomes self-evident right from the outset, and it engenders a lot of support. I think in this case, the swelling nature of a viral epidemic does not have the impact of becoming apparent at all closer to the end. So it's really obvious to everyone at that point, and it's almost too late. So early on, when it was clear this is going to become a major catastrophe, but we still only had thousands of lives affected, not tens of thousands, it just didn't ride to the consciousness of a lot of people who have competing priorities. I think now that we are in the tens of thousands of people infected and dead, now it's time to become more apparent that this is a great humanitarian catastrophe.

Dawn Bennett: Do you think it's apparent to President Obama?

Dr. Scott Gottlieb: I think that the CDC director, for all the criticism that he's been receiving, did a very heroic thing in early September, when he came back from a trip to West Africa and used almost apocalyptic language to describe what he saw and it was highly, highly uncharacteristic for the CDC Director in talking about scope of the calamity and what the risk was to United States. I think that clearly pushed the president to do what he did, which was to go forward and deploy 3,000 troops to start to funnel aid in that region. The CDC Director has since backed off that bold talk, I think in part because he wants to be more cautious now that it's a domestic problem. Unfortunately the President, in my view, hasn't really ramped up his efforts. What we're doing now was probably appropriate for two months ago and what we should be doing now is to deal with a much different situation. The other thing I'll say though is, to the credit of the United States, even though I think our response has been inadequate, it's worse what other countries are doing. We are far exceeding what any other nation is doing so that should tell you something as well.

Dawn Bennett: On Friday, the White House announced it would create an Ebola czar, and this gentleman's name is Ron Klain and he's going to be taking the position. What do you think both about his position as well as Klain specifically? He has no medical background, no medical experience, do you think that's going to be a problem?

Dr. Scott Gottlieb: I don't think it's going to help. I don't understand what the White House is hoping to achieve. I evidently think that there is a political aspect of this problem and a messaging aspect to this problem because that's the areas in which Klain has expertise. So they brought someone in to manage that part, that aspect of the challenge. They still don't have anyone who is providing supervision across the relevant operating divisions of the federal government that have the authority, that are relevant, like NIH, like the CDC, like the Food and Drugs Administration. There is a position in the Secretary's Department specifically for providing that kind of leadership, but she hasn't been put into that role either. So there's really no one quarterbacking it. The Secretary of Health and Human Services who presumably would be the quarterback seems to be focused on year two of ObamaCare and the web site re-launch, so people seem to be acting on their own in various operating divisions and just trying to coordinate amongst themselves. There is no one in charge. Klain is not going to be in charge of managing the effort. He's going to be in charge of managing the message out of the White House. He was the Vice President's Chief of Staff during the swine flu when the Vice President famously went on the Today Show with Matt Lauer and said, during the outbreak of the swine flu, that he would not allow anyone in his family to be in any contained environment, including an airplane or a bus, and he, himself, would not fly on a commercial airplane, which caused the major sell-off in the airline stocks. It took about two days for the White House to walk back. So one would hope Klain is going to give better talking points to the President than he gave to his Vice President.

Dawn Bennett: The Director of NIH Francis Collins blames cuts to their budget for the lack of investment in Ebola cure, yet they spent millions on other projects in recent years. Where do you come down on this?

Dr. Scott Gottlieb: There was always money for these kinds of efforts, it just came down to a question of prioritization. A lot of the money that was made available for counter-measures for what would be weapons of mass destruction, that's where a lot of money for an Ebola vaccine came from and Ebola therapy. A lot of it went to Anthrax because it was perceived as a bigger threat. There was never shortage of money; it is the question of priority. It just wasn't prioritized very high. It's sort of politically tone deaf to start making those statements on the public health emergency and trying to point fingers to things like that, but some people around Washington always see it their way.

Dawn Bennett: We keep pointing to the United States government to fix this stuff, is there a case to be made that the medical community should be able to respond to this crisis without a government direction?

Dr. Scott Gottlieb: I think you make an excellent point because it's a misnomer that somehow CDC is in charge of delivering medical care. I don't want to take anything away from them, I give them a lot of credit. I think that they have been very adaptable in this current crisis and they've made some early missteps and had tragic consequences, but they have learned very quickly from those mistakes and we've seen them changing their posture very quickly. But what the CDC does is track and trace outbreaks; they do epidemiological surveillance and they give advice, they give medical advice around handling of things like specimens and handling of infectious pathogens. They don't deliver medical care. They don't go in and actually put a stethoscope on a patients' chests. That's not what they do. They give advice to people who deliver medical care. So it's really going to be incumbent upon the local authorities, local public health agencies and local medical institutions to try to step up their game. Major academic medical centres should be identifying teams of nurses and doctors who would be taking care of an Ebola patient if one arrived and drilling them. I worked in many academic hospitals and we drilled and trained around a lot of contingencies and this is a contingency they should be drilling on. The CDC is putting out advice on how they should be doing that, what the risks are. The CDC is going to have a lot of insight into that so they should look at the CDC guidelines very carefully. The CDC doesn't go in and actually do it. So you're right, it's going to be incumbent upon local people to take some leadership here. So if you're a hospital like Elmhurst in Queens NY, where there's a big community of immigrants who might be coming from the affected regions, you're at a higher risk of seeing the second Ebola case. Medical professionals should be drilling on that. I know some institutions are to their credit. Elmhurst is doing it.

Dawn Bennett: So this type of communication between hospitals on best practices and protocols, does the CDC simply issue an edict and then it arrives in somebody's inbox, in their email, and then the hospital's responsible for doing this? How does this type of communication typically work?

Dr. Scott Gottlieb: The CDC has roots of communication. They issue things like their morbidity/mortality weekly reports, which are very widely read, widely used about their surveillance activities looking at viral outbreaks. For example, this pathogen Enterovirus D68 which has been going around the country, they have been issuing a lot of MMWR reports showing how that virus is developing. They issue white papers to provide guidelines. In the Ebola case, they are actually developing what they call SWAT teams of CDC personnel that's going to go in and help and assist in training and oversee the training. These are the people who've been in the field with the virus in West Africa or other parts of Africa, who have some experience with that. The reality is that that experience is only partially relevant here because what we're learning, and what CDC is learning, is that taking care of an Ebola patient in modern hospitals is very different than taking care of an Ebola patient in the field. In the field, the protective gear you need probably isn't as significant as a protective gear you need in a modern academic medical centre by virtue of the fact that when we deliver intensive care in the U.S. in hospitals, we do much more for the patients, we are much more invasive, we do things as simple as multiple bedding changes and how we dispose the fluids. We are much more aggressive in the medical care. That's going to require more precautions and those are the things that they're learning. So even CDC's expertise in helping it oversee and assist, they're learning as they go to and it's a real challenge.

Dawn Bennett: There has been a lot back and forth about how contagious Ebola is. Even Present Obama says you can't catch it even if you're on a bus with someone who has it. Yet, even this past week there was a woman that began vomiting on a tour bus to the Pentagon, did you hear about this?

Dr. Scott Gottlieb: I did.

Dawn Bennett: And then of course the Arlington county's hazmat team came out and they were absolutely, completely full of caution and they transported this woman to the Virginia Hospital Centre. I'm just wondering is the CDC really getting a handle on this? Does President Obama understand what's going on with this? Even the CDC is currently trying to get in touch with everyone who was on that flight with that second nurse who was going from Ohio I think to Dallas. So which one is it?

Dr. Scott Gottlieb: I think the CDC in their public statements, think they recognize the scope of the threat domestically. I think the view is that the domestic outbreaks that we are seeing now is sort of a tip of the iceberg and you hope there won't be more outbreaks down the road and you do have to figure out how to respond to these. They are also equally focused on what's happening in West Africa because they know that if they don't head off this continued viral spread in that region, we won't be seeing these one-off cases. We're going to be seeing major outbreaks potentially in American cities, while we will never have an epidemic here assuming the virus doesn't mutate in a way that makes it much more contagious. We could see large outbreaks. For the President, I am not sure what's going on. I think the fact that we had The New York Times article where the President basically threw the CDC Director under the bus, then he brings in political operative who is a 'messaging expert' to handle this 'effort', I think it suggests to say that they have a political problem and maybe they are not recognizing the long-run issue here. It is also questionable how much they think that what they are doing is enough. Most people in the medical community don't think the U.S. response was even nearly adequate to address the challenge we face in West Africa. It might be the case that they think they've done their share and now their job is to get other nations to step up. I don't know. Certainly the actions that you see immediately around the President would not suggest that they see it as a major public health threat or major security threat, they see it as a major political threat. Maybe that's just because they are right before the election, maybe their attitude will change after the election.

Dawn Bennett: If the President named you Ebola czar, what's the first thing you would do?

Dr. Scott Gottlieb: I think the first thing I would do is to try to get more resources into West Africa, but assuming there's politics around there that I'm not fully aware of, I would try to create a network of hospitals here in the U.S that have been identified as capable of taking care of these patients. I think we need to get that network in place right away. CDC is working with these four hospitals with the bio- containment units. You don't need a bio- containment unit necessarily. I think we need to expand that network. We really have to have one referral centre in every metropolitan area where we know that there's special equipment, special personnel who are trained and drilled to handle an Ebola case. The other thing I would focus on is therapeutic. If the virus continues to spread as currently it is in West Africa, and if it does continue to drift, the only thing that's going to change the game is going to be a vaccine or therapeutic. Africa needs the vaccine, the United States needs a drug and therapeutics.

Dawn Bennett: What about the FDA? What role does it play in slowing up this process of mass production, producing of an Ebola antidote or some type of vaccine, or is it helping it?

Dr. Scott Gottlieb: We haven't seen a lot of leadership from the FDA. So if you look at these briefings on Capitol Hill of people who testified -- the head of the CDC is there, the head of NHI there, and FDA sends a very junior person who reports probably 6-7 levels below the Commissioner. It raises the question whether or not the leadership's really focused on this and how much of this is something that they're actively working on. That's concerning. The other thing is the statements of the FDA so far -- and I worked there, so I want to be careful what I say because they are my former colleagues -- but that statements of the agency so far seem to indicate that they're applying their traditional approach to drug development to the development of a therapeutic. There is a lot of reasons why I think we should dramatically change the paradigm, and make a product and make it available to West Africans, who in most cases are going to die if they don't get it. We should allow the antivirals that look like they could work in this diseases, which are actually old drugs that are well understood. So we understand their safety profile very well, we just don't know how well that works with Ebola.

About Bennett Group Financial Services LLC
Bennett Group Financial Services LLC, based in Washington, D.C., is a comprehensive financial services firm committed to providing opportunities to clients' as they seek long-term financial success. Its customized programs are designed with the potential to help grow, lower overall risk and conserve client assets by delivering a high level of personalized service and skill. For more information, call 866-286-2268 or visit www.bennettgroupfinancial.com.

Securities offered through Western International Securities Inc. (WIS), member FINRA/SIPC. BGFS and WIS are separate and unaffiliated entities.

Dawn Bennett is CEO and Founder of Bennett Group Financial Services. She hosts a national radio program called Financial Myth Busting http://www.financialmythbusting.com.

She discusses educational topics and events in the financial news, along with her thoughts on the economy, financial markets, investments, and more with her live guests, who have included Rock Legend Ted Nugent, as well as Steve Forbes and Grover Norquist. The show is a great complement to Dawn's monthly investing seminars that take place at Tysons Corner in McLean, VA, where she discusses investing.

She can be reached on Twitter @DawnBennettFMB or on Facebook Financial Myth Busting with Dawn Bennett or dbennett@bennettgroupfinancial.com

For more information on this press release visit: http://www.releasewire.com/press-releases/release-3.htm

Washington D.C., DC -- (ReleaseWire) -- 10/22/2014 -- Nationally Syndicated Financial Myth Busting Radio Show with Host Dawn Bennett, CEO of Bennett Group Financial Services, LLC, on October 12, 2014 interviewed Wayne Allyn Root, author of the book, "The Murder of the Middle Class: How to Save Yourself and Your Family From the Criminal Conspiracy of the Century."

It's really quite ad what's going on in America to our middle class. We're actually losing it. We're getting a higher class. We're getting much more people in the lower class, and we're losing the middle class, says Ms. Bennett.

The quaint notion of a middle class in the U.S. is nothing more than a myth. It seems to be a rapidly-fading fantasy from a bygone era.

This book exposes the crime of losing the middle class, and it also indicts the conspirators from the Obama administration and their willing accomplices in the media, as well as big business. In his book, Root names names and points out their dirty deeds.

So, you say the U.S. economy has had six full years to bounce back since the financial collapse of 2008, and it just hasn't happened yet. Median household income has declined substantially since then and total household wealth for the middle class families is way down, which means that middle class families have significantly less purchasing power than they did just prior to the last major financial crisis, asserts Ms. Bennett.

Here is the interview with Mr. Root:

Q: Is this going to be as good as it gets for America's middle class?

A: I'm not a pessimistic guy, so this may not be as good as it gets. We may have a major comeback. It was as bad as it got under Jimmy Carter, and then, Ronald Reagan came into office, and it got fantastic. So just because we're in terrible shape right now and have been for six years, despite what the media says.

They're lying to people. Despite the fact that the middle class right now is getting hit from all sides, that doesn't mean we're not going to make a comeback. There's a caveat to what I'm saying; we've got to seal the border so tha t Ebola doesn't destroy the American economy, not to mention kill a lot of people.

We must seal the border so terrorism on our soil doesn't destroy the American economy and kill a lot of people. We've got to seal the border so that millions of poor people don't come across the border who all demand welfare, cradle to grave, for the rest of their lives, which would destroy the American economy.

Everything bad, I believe, that could ever destroy, push us over the edge, and ruin America, completely, forever, starts at that border. It's amazing that we have a President that could care less. As a matter of fact, what's happened to business in Dallas, what's going to happen, moving forward, to business in Dallas, at this moment, an Ebola victim is a healthcare worker at the Dallas Hospital, where the first, victim, Thomas Duncan, died.

In full hazmat suit, this person managed to get Ebola. So you tell me whether people are going to be rushing to go to businesses in Dallas, whether they're going to be rushing to fly to visit friends in Dallas, whether they're going to go to conventions in Dallas, w hether they're going to go to business meetings in Dallas.

If three days after that, it happens in Las Vegas, where I live, what's going to happen to the Vegas economy? What would happen to the New York economy? If it happens to Orlando, what happens to Disney World? The entire tourism industry of America is at risk as we speak right now, 'cause the border won't be shut, and flights in the Ebola zone will not be banned by a President who obviously is either ignorant, delusional, crazy or wants to take out America. I don't know which one it is. But something's wrong with this reaction.

Q: So, when people look at the terrible decisions President Obama has made, in particular to the borders and even Ebola, and their predictable fallout, I wonder whether he's intentionally creating this turmoil, do you think? Or, is it just simply ideological for him? He's just wants to go that route, like you said, that he wants to destroy America? Do you have any theories on what explanation might make more sense to the American people if they were listening to this?

A: Yeah, I do. I'll tell you my theory. It's from my book, "Murder of the Middle Class." But I'm always careful to say, "I don't know what it is, 'cause I can't get inside a man's mind or heart." I just know that it could be total, complete incompetence. I may be wrong about everything. This guy may be the most incompetent man to ever step foot in The White House. His bad incompetency and bad decisions, and bad decision making are putting all of us at risk, our businesses, our children, our lives, all of it. Or this may be a purposeful doing. I don't know which one it is. I just know that when I went to Columbia University, from 1979 to 1983, almost everyone I met was radical or called themselves communist and socialist and Marxist.

Q: Obama was in your class. Is that correct?

A: Yes, he graduated same day as me, class of 1983. If you go back and look at the graduation list of all the students at graduation day, you'll see about, I think it was four names away from each other, 'cause his ends in an O. Mine ends in R, so it was Barack Hussein Obama, Wayne Allyn Root just a couple names away from each other. So he was my classmate.

What we learned while at Columbia from radical professors and radical students, in the whole class of about 708, I think it was, I was the one Reagan conservative there. I was the only one I ever met in my entire four years of Columbia who loved Ronald Reagan. All the other students who called themselves communists and Marxists talked about taking down America, that you have to rip it up, knock it down, burn it down and start over again, because of the incredible inequality and the incredible racism and the incredible hatred for poor people. We've got to start over again and create a perfect, utopian, socialist society. They said the way to do it was with a plan from two Columbia professors I believe, Frances Cloward and Richard Piven, husband and wife professor team.

They said you've got to overwhelm the system with crisis. That could either be spending or debt or entitlement. Or that could be a crisis like Ebola or a terrorist attack. But either way, if you overwhelm the system with a ton of crises and distractions and bring the system down, then the people will be begging for government to save them.

Then you've stuck a knife right in the gut of America, and you've made even successful small-business people, who are usually Republican conservatives, get on their knees and say, "Save us government." The next thing you know, you've got socialism. Now, it seems to me Obama spent six years trying to overwhelm the system with spending, entitlements and debt. When it didn't work 100 percent, because the system isn't down yet, maybe now he wants the borders open to see what else he can do. I don't know.

It's a terrible charge to make at someone. So I just keep saying, "It's either that, or it's incompetence." But either way, America is under full-scale attack. I won't say we're done, because I think we've always come back before, and we may come back again. But it all depends. Who are we electing this November? Who are we electing in November of 2015? It has to be turned around. I don't know. We'll find out.

Q: Can the middle class in America wake up? Can they do something? Can they put together some t ype of an effective political movement that's actually going to protect them, protect us?

A: Well, the question is whether political movement even works anymore? We're so far gone. Does it work? I mean, when you see that in the same weekend two separate federal judges literally threw voter ID laws in two separate states, including Texas, obviously there are radical activists in the judicial system whose goal in life is to upend America.

There's nothing that makes me laugh more than the issue of voter ID. When I go to the airport and I buy a $3 bottle of water, the girl behind the counter always says, "Can I see your ID, please?" Now, of course, I'm paying with a credit card. So she's saying, "Can I see your ID, please?" When I'm in a Vegas casino and I order a $6 lunch at a quick fast-food place and I hand them my Visa card, the person always says, "Can I see your ID, please?" You can't survive in America without ID.

You can't get welfare without ID. You can't get food stamps without photo ID issued from the government. And here's the important part. Every Democratic voter in America that claims ID is racist, you can't get Obamacare, you can't be seen in a doctor office and get free medical care from Obamacare without photo ID issued by the government. So explain to me how asking for it at a voting booth is racism.

So any judge looking to throw the election, due to fraud, to Democratic candidates, that's the only thing that could possibly be on their mind. There is no disenfranchisement. There is no racism by asking for voter ID when every voter in America who votes Democrat already has photo ID, because they can't get Obamacare, welfare or food stamps without it.

Q: So Wayne, in your book, "The Murder of the Middle Class," you name names. Beside the President, who else do you fault for murdering the middle class?

A: There's plenty of blame to go around with the Republican part. There's plenty of establishment Republicans who have helped Obama every step of the way. The Federal Reserve is probably ahead of Barack Obama. The United Nations is on my list. Unions, lawyers, these are all bad, bad people. The judicial system, these people aren't help to America. Lobbyists and lawyers in Washington, DC, are the death of America. But the surprise to most people, I think, in my big corporations.

You know, it's one thing to charge big government is out to create a socialist society that rewards the super rich, but big corporations, they're supposed to be for capitalism. They're not for capitalism anymore. They're for any system that asks government to force people to spend money with them.

They're happy about Obamacare, big pharmaceutical companies. Big insurance companies may have protested a little bit in the beginning, but in the end, government is forcing 30 to 40 million clients to buy insurance from them and to buy drugs from the pharmaceutical company.

So all of those big corporations were helped by Obamacare. As a matter of fact, to gain the pharmaceutical company's cooperation and support of Obamacare, Obama bribed them by putting into the Obamacare law that Americans could not buy cheap drugs from Canada or other countries outside the United States. He banned that practice, whereas all of us could go get the same drug that cost $1,000 a pill for $1 outside the borders of the United States. That would have been the easiest way to solve the health care crisis. Instead, we put government in charge. We ripped off the middle class. We've raised their rates dramatically. We killed the middle class and the rest of our health care system equality of care. And then, we're essentially banned from buying cheap drugs elsewhere. You're trapped and a prisoner of the big ph armaceutical companies charging you $1,000 a pill. You tell me whose benefit that was? Big government and big corporations are always the ones that benefit from Obama's socialist rulings.

Q: I'm in Washington, D.C. where the power brokers are. Has anybody called you about all the good ideas you lay out in your book? Do you see the worst-case scenario coming to us if they don't start implementing some of your ideas?

A: I do see the worst-case scenario coming which is the open border and Ebola. I used to think it was terrorism in the old days, three weeks ago. Now, I believe it's Ebola. The medical professional testing positive just this morning in Dallas who treated Thomas Duncan, is, I think, the lynch pin of what disaster we are facing. As we speak, that person obviously since the week went by didn't know they had Ebola. They went home. They have kids. Those kids went to school.

Those kids infected other kids. They went into stores. Who knows how many people are in their circle, and that's why it happens so fast, exponentially. You can go from one person or two people to 10,000 in a matter of days. And 10,000 becomes 1 million and 1 million becomes the whole America at risk.

So this is a disaster. We got major, major problems here that I feel were the economy and too many people on welfare or 108 million people on entitlements and ISIS and a terrorist attack on American soil, Obamacare, all horrible problems. Suddenly, they all pale next to Ebola.

Well let me tell you, that was the process I learned at Columbia University, how the communists wanted to destroy America. You keep hitting people with so many distractions that their head turns in a circle like a poltergeist.
Pretty soon, they don't know how to deal with it all. They just go into a shell and put their hands and body in the fetal position. They just go, "Mommy, mommy, help me." People can't keep up with all this.

That sure seems like Obama's Presidency, and isn't it funny that days ago, Obama's quote was, "Boy, the world seems to be spinning out of control, and none of us know what to do about it." He sounds like he's a lost puppy.

Q: We've been talking about China eating our lunch and I know you spoke about it in your book that China's actually going to be No. 1. This last week, you were right. The I MF said that China overtook the U.S. as the world's largest economy. This was mostly based on consumer purchasing power. They have 1.3 billion people. We have 300 million people. I'm just wondering does this mean life is going to continue to get more expensive as China grows out of its role of China's cheap good's supplier?

A: Most people don't even know it because most people are dumbed down by the society, by the media, by the education system. They don't even know what's going on. It happened only based on the IMF's specific criteria. One of my best friends is a brilliant economist by the name of Mark Skousen. Mark will tell you, "You know, Wayne, it's not even close. We're still three times bigger than China. They're basing it on certain specific criteria."

But when you divide their billion people by how much their GDP is and you divide ours by our 300 million people, it's not even close. We live a much higher quality of life. So China still is nowhere near passing us on pure GDP, pure economy. On certain measures defined by the IMF, yes, they passed us, and it's certainly something to worry about.

Let's not assume that they really are a bigger economy than us. They're not. The reality is that going by the old measurements, they're not. What is more worrisome than China passing us is just the fact that when you go to China and do business, it's easier to do business there. They're more capitalistic than we are. See, that's more worrisome that opening a business in America is that difficult.

Who said that? Steve Wynn, one of my heroes a nd the founder of all the greatest casinos in the history of Las Vegas and the world. Steve Wynn said, "I'm not worried about China. I'm worried about America's economy." He said that just days ago. I have much more concern about America than China, and it's much freer there to open a business than it is in America. That's one of the most worrisome things I've ever heard. So let's not worry about metrics and who's really bigger right now. Let's worry about what the future holds, because small-business men and women opening a business is the whole key to America or any other country becoming great and enjoying economic freedom and enjoying mobility and opportunity. It's all about the ability to freely open a business and free-market trading. We don't have it anymore.

As a matter of fact, in Obama's first five years I point out in my new book, "Murder of the Middle Class," by every metric and every measure, Obama is the greatest regulator in the history of the world. He created more regulations per word, per sentence, per page or just pure regulation than any President in American history combined. He has a four of the first five highest regulation years in history, and if you're wondering, "Well, four of the five? Who actually had one of the years that was worse than one of Obama's?" The last year of the Bush Presidency.

So you have the two worst presidents regulation-wise back-to-back in the history of America, and you wonder why our economy is in a standstill, is in quicksand. Bush did plenty of damage, too. Bush was a guy who loved capitalism. Maybe it wasn't his fault. It was the Democratic Congress in the last year under Bush. But he could have vetoed a lot of that. He didn't.

Q: Do you have any ideas for reclaiming capitalism for America?

A: I have a lot of ideas. When I was at The MoneyShow, I gave the closing keynote address. I decided instead of going negative and ripping Obama to shreds, I would go positive and give my economic ideas for how you save America. I swear you've never seen such excitement in your entire life. I call it a middle-class contract with America. I always start with, "Pray for America." I always get a giant ovation for that, because, you know God blessed America and made it the greatest nation in world history.

And now, all the sudden, we've taken God out of everything, out of the military, out of schools, out of the city hall. Suddenly, America is this country that's in decline. I wonder if there's a coincidence there. I don't think it's a coincidence. So, No. 1, pray. That won't hurt. No. 2, impeach Obama, 'cause he's got to be stopped. No. 3 is kind of a humorous one. Adopt the Jerry Seinfeld strategy. You know, did you watch Jerry Seinfeld's show?

Q: I did, of course.

A: Well you had Costanza, right, the laughable loser, right? He's the biggest loser that ever lived, and I point out in my new book, "Murder of the Middle Class," you know, one day he became a winner.

He became this executive at the New York Yankees, and that's every boy's dream when you're growing up, to be an executive of a sports team.

I was talking about one funny one, which is the Seinfeld Principle. On Seinfield, George Costanza was the lovable loser and suddenly became this big shot executive at the Yankees. He was dating model girlfriends, and his life was incredible. He's making big money, and this big loser turns it all around. So Seinfeld, his best friend, says to him, "How'd you do it?" He said, "Well, I realized I was a loser my whole life, and every decision I ever made was bad. So now, I think about every decision, and I do the opposite."

Think if we just did the opposite through our last six years, the opposite of everything Obama ever did, either he's a communist out to destroy America or he's just a loser whose every instinct is wrong. If you did the opposite, you'd have the most incredible, thriving economy in the world.

Name the issue, and if you do the opposite, like Obamacare, how about health freedom? Instead of more government, let's have less government. How about if you just allowed people to buy health care policy across state lines anywhere they wanted to. Wouldn't that be better? How about if you just made it completely, 100 percent all health care expenses tax deductible. Wouldn't that help everybody instantly? If you really wanted to help me, wouldn't I be able to live a better life if every time I saw a doctor and there was a $20 co-pay, I could take it off my taxes. If I could take my health insurance off my taxes, and if the deductible is 5,000 a year, if I can take the 5,000 this year tha t I spend at doctors off my taxes, wouldn't that be helpful to me?

Instead, Obama said, "No, no, no. Let's not do that. Let's, instead, force people to buy health care. Let's jack up their expenses dramatically. Let's add billions of dollars that eventually will be trillions of dollars in new taxes. Let's not let anything that squeaks through, that isn't covered, let's not let any of that be tax deductible. Let's trap people in their own state, make 'em buy in their own state.

"That will really work well, won't it?" Hasn't worked anywhere in the world. Why would it work here? So, just do the opposite of everything he wants to do. If we didn't give money to green energy companies and subsidized them and instead had a free market, electricity rates would be the lowest in history, not the highest in history.

If we actually fought ISIS instead of talking about it and calling them the JV team, they wouldn't even be there now. We would have stopped them dead in their tracks a year ago. Everything he does is either the wrong instinct or he's purposely trying to destroy the United States of America. It's not that hard to figure out what to do, Dawn.

Q: You have ideas in your book about how the middle class can take some steps to protect themselves. Could you give some practical tips?

A: No. 1 would be a gold standard. I think the country needs a gold standard because of the Feds. Throw the Fed out and back money with something real, gold. Each person needs a personal gold standard. The fact that gold is down lately, I think is a great thing. You always want to buy something when it's on sale.

I love when people tell me, "Oh, gold's no good. It's been down, and the stock market's great. It's been up." You never want to buy something when it's at its all-time high. You always want to buy something when it's at a relative low. So, now is the time to get out of stocks, in my opinion. Or at least, be careful with stocks and buy a wealth insurance policy called gold, which by the way, if you had $1 million in 1913, and you held it 'til today, it's got the buying worth $20,000 today because of inflation. If you had the same million in gold in 1913, and you used it today, it's worth of $60 million. You tell me which one you'd rather have, even if you're not good at math: $20,000 or $60 million?

So I think somehow, some way, people might be smart to buy a little bit of gold as wealth insurance. I think if you want to save your children's lives, you might be smart to homeschool or send them to private school or charter school or Catholic school, because here's my experience, take control of your children's life.

In Las Vegas, we have the worst public schools in America, but really not much worse than any other city. Most of the kids graduate only due to grade inflation. Forty percent drop out. Those who graduate need remedial math and reading just to go to a community college, whereas in the same c ity, we educated my daughter. We homeschooled her, and she just graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University as a homeschooler.

Obviously it works, but when you mention homeschooling, the society as a whole denigrates you. "Oh, I wouldn't homeschool. Oh, your kids aren't socialized. Oh, that's terrible." Really? My daughter graduated magna cum laude from Harvard. That's terrible. But the fact that 40 percent of kids drop out of public school, w e should give them more money. Wow. There's something wrong with the thinking of our society.

Q: Do you think, just from a philosophical perspective, that the American middle class can actually claw their way out of desperate, hand-to-mouth existence with some of the tips that you told today?

A: I think they can. I think I have. You've got to own your own business. You can't work for someone else. You're dead if you work for someone else. That's really my advice.

The homeschooling or private school is owning your kids' education, owning gold is owning your financial future, protecting against disaster. Owning your business means you can never be fired, 'cause unless you're mentally ill, you're not going to fire yourself, right?

If you work for someone else, your job's at risk 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Everything I do is about owning and taking personal responsibility.

Q: Wayne Allyn Root, I want to thank you so much. Get his book, "The Murder of the Middle Class."

Bennett Group Financial Services LLC, based in Washington, D.C., is a comprehensive financial services firm committed to providing opportunities to clients' as they seek long-term financial success. Its customized programs are designed with the potential to help grow, lower overall risk and conserve client assets by delivering a high level of personalized service and skill. For more information, call 866-286-2268 or visit www.bennettgroupfinancial.com.

Securities offered through Western International Securities Inc. (WIS), member FINRA/SIPC. BGFS and WIS are separate and unaffiliated entities.

About Dawn Bennett
Dawn Bennett is CEO and Founder of Bennett Group Financial Services. She hosts a national radio program called Financial Myth Busting http://www.financialmythbusting.com

She discusses educational topics and events in the financial news, along with her thoughts on the economy, financial markets, investments, and more with her live guests, who have included Rock Legend Ted Nugent, as well as Steve Forbes and Grover Norquist. The show is a great complement to Dawn's monthly investing seminars that take place at Tysons Corner in McLean, VA, where she discusses investing.

She can be reached on Twitter @DawnBennettFMB or on Facebook Financial Myth Busting with Dawn Bennett or dbennett@bennettgroupfinancial.com

For more information on this press release visit: http://www.releasewire.com/press-releases/release-3.htm

Washington D.C., DC -- (ReleaseWire) -- 10/21/2014 -- Looking at the financial markets the week of October 6, 2014, all I could think about was bungee jumping. If you are an investor that wants to experience stepping off the edge of oblivion into thin air to get the rush of free-falling and then hopefully rebounding, all you need to do is stay invested in the U.S. stock market. These quantum bounces up and down, at least for the time being, are here to stay says Dawn Bennett, CEO of Bennett Group Financial Services in her latest warning to investors.

Last Wednesday, October 8 was 2014's best day for the Dow, and then it was immediately followed by its worst day on Thursday. Now, that is what I call stock market bungee jumping. Then the next day it all ended with the worst week in three years for stocks.

At the very minimum, U.S. investors have given back approximately $2.0 trillion in wealth in U.S. stocks in the past month or so, according to Wilshire and Associates. At this stage, with the adrenaline pumping nose dive experience continuing, I doubt any investors have the desire, or the stomach, to attempt dollar cost aver aging into the U.S. stock markets.

Nearly a quarter of the stocks in the S&P 500 have dropped more than 12 percent in the past 30 days, and that puts the S&P 500 index at an eight-week low. The Dow Jones Industrial average has dropped approximately -5.49 percent to 16,141.00 which means that the blue chips are negative for the year. The Dow transports are at a negative 6.9 percent for the week. That is a really bad index breakdown.

Most important to market technicians, they closed actually below their 200 moving-day average, which is not a good sign. The NASDAQ index for the week was down negative 4.4 percent, which was its worst week in 30 months.

So far the big story that I took away from last week is I think 2014 is going to be a year of underperformance, except for gold and silver. Gold this week was up positive 2.7 percent, which was the best week in six months, and silver was up 3.3 percent this week, which was the best week in four months. Yet, it's the underperforming areas that need concern, especially in portfolios.

Now Bill Gross, formerly of PIMCO now with Janus, said something very important about what's going on. It was fascinating coming from him. He said, "Growth in the U.S. and elsewhere has been facilitated in the past 30 years by the expansion of credit and leverage. Once capitalists recognize that they can't continue to accumulate leverage at the same pace, growth is actually going to slow."

What Gross is saying shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. The U.S. debt and unfunded liabilities have far exceeded its assets for quite a long time now. The rest of Europe is no better off than the U.S.

Bloomberg actually reported that the glory days of France's welfare model is actually going to be gone, as it hasn't had a balanced budget since 1974. Which means for the last 40 years, France has lived beyond its means, even Standard & Poor's cut France's credit outlook to negative, and that was due to concerns about the country's struggling economic recovery.

The negative outlook for France's credit rating isn't necessarily an aberration in Europe. The IMF last week released a global economic forecast that said that 2014 global growt h rate is actually going to be down to unchanged from 2013 at 3.3 percent, which is one-tenth lower than its most recent 2014 forecast. So the IMF actually assigned this weaker "setback," to the economic activity in the advanced Western economies; the U.S., Europe and Japan, during the first half of 2014.

They're actually now starting to be honest about it and it isn't just France's issues from last week. Europe's largest economy, Germany, came out with a run of really lousy economic numbers, from lower industrial production to poor exports, to much lower factory orders to even weaker business confidence. So, we have bad German economic figures, France grasping for air and, Italy, Greece, Cyprus and Spain all on economic life support.

Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock, said in a "Financial Times" newspaper article on October 2nd, that the U.S. policy makers are at fault for pushing investors into riskier assets, which is the U.S. stock market. He went on to say, "You're hearing from banking sources, like the Federal Reserve, a narrative that there are bubbles out there. The reality, they're to blame," he said, "and they're not taking any responsibility for it, so you need to take responsibility for it."

Now this is the CEO from the world's largest asset manager, and he's telling investors to pay attention, to take notice that the asset bubbles in the market were artificially created by the Federal Reserve, and it's the investor's job to make the decision to take care of yourself.

So, you either have to decide to go for the market ride and stay in, or take a defensive approach in your portfolio. If investors want to avoid underperformance and end up with positive returns for the year, go the defensive route. We've spent the last six years in the greatest credit expansion ever seen in the world. I don't think there's any other alternative.

All market data references are sourced to Bloomberg terminal database.

Bennett Group Financial Services LLC, based in Washington, D.C., is a comprehensive financial services firm committed to providing opportunities to clients' as they seek long-term financial success. Its customized programs are designed with the potential to help grow, lower overall risk and conserve client assets by delivering a high level of personalized service and skill.

For more information, call 866-286-2268 or visit http://www.bennettgroupfinancial.com

Securities offered through Western International Securities Inc. (WIS), member FINRA/SIPC. BGFS and WIS are separate and unaffiliated entities.

About Dawn Bennett
Dawn Bennett is CEO and Founder of Bennett Group Financial Services. She hosts a national radio program on called Financial Myth Busting http://www.financialmythbusting.com

She discusses educational topics and events in the financial news, along with her thoughts on the economy, financial markets, investments, and more with her live guests, who have included Rock Legend Ted Nugent, as well as Steve Forbes and Grover Norquist. Listeners can call 855-884-DAWN as well as take podcasts on the road and forums for interaction.

The show is a great complement to Dawn's monthly investing seminars that take place at Tysons Corner in McLean, VA, where she discusses investing.

She can be reached on Twitter @DawnBennettFMB or on Facebook Financial Myth Busting with Dawn Bennett or dbennett@bennettgroupfinancial.com

For more information on this press release visit: http://www.releasewire.com/press-releases/release-3.htm

Washington, DC -- (SBWIRE) -- 10/15/2014 -- Nationally Syndicated Financial Myth Busting Radio Show with Host Dawn Bennett, CEO of Bennett Group Financial Services, LLC, on October 5, 2014 interviewed Anthony Kim, a Policy Analyst for Economic Freedom at the Heritage Foundation.

He talked about the future of the world's freest economy, Hong Kong, and how this small island economy, which is the world's most prosperous, is going to deal with what's going on there, and why Americans should pay close attention to what happens next.

Here is the interview with Mr. Kim:

Q: Before we get into the protests rocking Hong Kong, let's talk about your specialty; economic freedom, and Hong Kong's role as the world's freest economy. Can you explain what the Index for Economic Freedom is, and why it's important?

A: Sure. The Index for Economic Freedom is a joint annual publication by the Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal. It measures a country's economic freedom, meaning the relationship between the government and the people.

We try to measure how easy it is to do business and how low is the tax burden. What we measure is the overall entrepreneurial environment, how easy is it to conduct business, operate a business and those key elements of regulatory efficiency.

Based on our methodology and annual study, Hong Kong has been No. 1 throughout the past 20 years. It's not an easy achievement, but Hong Kong has been committed to upholding those good policies that advance economic freedom.

Q: So, can you explain briefly how Hong Kong got so wealthy? It's a small island nation, and it doesn't have a lot of natural resources, which seems to be key today to getting wealthy. How did it achieve all this prosperity?

A: Very effective implementation of those good policies that promote competition, limited government and regulatory efficiency, and really open markets to global trade and financial interaction.

As you said, Hong Kong is very small, and it doesn't have any natural resources, but through good policies, low tax burden, regulatory efficiency and open trade, they've been able to build up this very prosperous economy over the last 20 to 30 years. When you talk about Hong Kong, it's basically about those free market policies.

Q: But how have they been able to do that since they became part of China? How did it go from being part of the British Empire to being part of China? It just seems like exactly the opposite in principles.

A: Before 1997, Hong Kong was under the control of the United Kingdom. Before then, they were running their own economic policy-making. The whole situation now is under Beijing's huge influence.

Before 1997, especially since 1945, Hong Kong has been able to make its own economic policies under the guidance of the United Kingdom and British policy-making. So, under that, they've been implementing a lot of free market policies and free trade policies, as well.

Q: So, that brings us to the protests that we see in the news today. What are students angry about over there, and why is this a youth-led movement? Presumably, if China's taking away Hong Kong's freedoms, older residents would be angry as well.

A: I think what we are seeing is really the real-time interplay between the economic freedom and political freedom. All year we talked about how Hong Kong has become such a prosperous economy, and we know it's through the advancement of economic freedom.

Now, people in Hong Kong, especially since 1997, they really see their freedom in a bolder stance, meaning, including their political freedom, and it's been eroding day by day and month by month. Especially those young people, they see really heavy influence, political influence, over Beijing. They want a direct democracy, but what China has been presenting to Hong Kong's people is much less than that. They want Chinese authority. They want to screen their candidates first, and then they want to grant an indirect democracy to the people of Hong Kong. That's why a lot of young people, who've been longing for, and eager to achieve greater economic freedom as well as political freedom, decided to demand greater political freedoms directly from China.

Q: Do you have any thoughts on how this might play out? China is obviously not one to back down in a situation like this.

A: The situation is still very fluid, but I think my concern is that each side, both Chinese authority and these protesters, know exactly what they want to achieve. Chinese authority does not want to let these protesters go forward, and a lot of protesters, especially those young students, they clearly expressed that they want to have a greater democracy and political freedom. So the situation now is that I think going forward next week, it'll be much more tense, and I certainly hope not to see any tragic loss of human life or property. The situation is tense at this point.

Q: It appears to me that the Chinese government's wait-'em-out type of tactic is working at least optically, but behind the scenes, I understand pro-government gangs have gone to attack the pro-democracy supporters. Do you think that these gangs are being paid by the Chinese government, or do you think they're just doing it on their own?

A: I cannot say that for sure, but I think that we have a lot of factors that have to be considered. Obviously we cannot rule that out completely, but the situation, once again, it's getting much more complicated, because all of a sudden, this Hong Kong issue is not anymore just a Hong Kong issue. It becomes China's domestic political issue as well as a national security issue.

What we can say for sure is Chinese leadership is paying really greater attention to this ongoing situation in Hong Kong, and they would not back down. They are clear about what they want to do. They do want to keep Hong Kong under their political control.

Q: There's a rumor that the pro-democracy activists are actually a tool of the United States. What do you think about that?

A: Well, I heard about it, but before we talk about that, let's take one step back. Earlier you pointed out these protesters, largely are students, around the 17 to even 30-something years old. They are the future of Hong Kong. Let's say if this time those students, those pro-democracy protesters, they accept, "Okay, we will not pursue any more turmoil at this point." That doesn't mean the end of the story. They will be in Hong Kong for the next two, three, four decades. China inevitably, they'll have to face pro-democracy demands once again, maybe many more times. So, this is really about the real-time interplay between economic freedom and political freedom.

Q: You've said they maintain their rating on the Economic Freedom Index, correct?

A: Yes. Ever since China took over, they've maintained it.

Q: So what are these activists, these young students, afraid of? It seems to me that they're running a different economy in Hong Kong than they are in China.

A: Right, but if you look into those key components of upholding Hong Kong's competitiveness and economic freedom, we have one indicator called rule of law. Under that, there's one component about the corruption. So, a lot of young students in Hong Kong, they see a double-sided sort of a situation in their economy. One, it's very efficient, but at the same time, a lot of policy-making process is not really super transparent.

They definitely feel that under China's sort of heavy political influence, they are losing their voice in terms of demanding greater democracy and rule of law. It highlights the situation in terms of the economic freedom and political freedom interaction.

Q: So, they're losing their voice. You're talking about China reportedly trying to block domestic press, and this includes social media, from reporting exactly what's going on in Hong Kong. Do you think in this era something like that is even possible?

A: Over the years, especially since 1997, the things in Hong Kong, especially those of subtle freedom, press freedom and alike have been under sort of a greater influence over China. So, people in Hong Kong, again, those young students, they really feel that this is not the Hong Kong they used to know. Hong Kong has become sort of another city of China, and they do not want to have that. They are very used to having greater freedom.
In terms of expressing their ideas and opinions, they definitely feel that heavy dosage of China's political influence and they try to reject that future.

Q: Do you think we're seeing the beginning of another Tiananmen Square?

A: I'm very cautious about speculating on that. Certainly I do not want to see that, but we cannot rule out that because, as we know, China is not a democratic nation. This is a one-party controlled, communist-controlled country. So, if Chinese leadership feels threatened by these protesters, they may go to extreme measures, but also they do know that they cannot go down that path that easily. So, this is really a test of Chinese leadership, too.

Q: What would U.S. involvement mean for credibility of the protest movement, and actually the future of Hong Kong?

A: As we go forward, that question will become much bigger. Obviously people in Hong Kong, and especially people in the region, I think they will look for any sort of evidence of the U.S. leadership in this matter, but the U.S. has been, at best, very cautious, limiting its words. I think it's very hard to say. You know, we won't see any sort of credible level of leadership coming out of Washington, D.C. on this matter because this is a very subtle matter, I think. What's disappointing is that, I think we should be more vocal about supporting Hong Kong's democracy, but the action has been very limited at this point.

Q: If that's the case, what has been the U.S. involvement, do you think?

A: It could be a number of options, but, at this point, what we can sort of think of is that perhaps direct expression of disappointment. I think given the fact that Hong Kong is part of China, it becomes a U.S.-China sort of relationship angle.

The recreation will be much more complicated. I think maybe that's why policy makers in D.C. are saving some words until they see really the clear side of China's aggression against Hong Kong.

Q: Are you seeing any other countries stand with Hong Kong against China?

A: To be honest, a lot of countries are simply waiting and seeing. To a certain degree I feel like people in Hong Kong, they've been betrayed by China and somehow abandoned by many friends and allies around the world.

This is about freedom and democracy that we've been pursuing and struggling to achieve greater levels. Hopefully, a peaceful resolution, but time will tell what kind of a final outcome we will have. I don't see any big support pouring into Hong Kong, other than, "We are with you." It's kind of a nice gesture at this point.

Q: Why aren't they supporting them? Why aren't they standing with them? Are they afraid of China?

A: The situation is very subtle and complicated. At this point, what they can do, at best, is wait and hope for a peaceful resolution. No doubt that a lot of leaders, policy makers around the world, are paying greater attention to Hong Kong, but they're, at this point, saving their words and action too.

Q: What about a Hong Kong activist? Since nobody's standing up with them, they're on their own. How should they respond to that? Were they expecting us to come in and help them? Anybody, around the world? How should they respond?

A: As time goes by, that becomes really a tricky question for those protesters, too. At this point, they have an ultimatum by the Chief Executive in Hong Kong saying that, by Monday, October 6, you guys have to clear out those barricades and stuff. It's a very tense situation, and I think that as we go into Monday, we'll have a better picture on that cycle, too.

Q: Is it because that's the end of the holiday?

A: Yes, and government workers are coming into work. So we are getting into the second and third phase of this protest movement, but, it'll be very critical.

Q: What holiday are Hong Kong and China are on right now?

A: Since October 1st, it has been China's National Day. So, it's been a kind of week-long holiday season. Usually, in Hong Kong this is a big sort of obedience time because mainlanders from China, they go to Hong Kong. They buy a lot of stuff, like shopping season. It's ending as of today and then getting into the October 6, this will become a normal sort of day with the end of the big holiday season, and it becomes a new beginning of China's democracy movement.

Q: Some of the protesters are from Occupy Hong Kong. This is obviously a left-wing movement. Are these protesters united, or are they complaining about different things?

A: They are fairly united. Are you talking about the Hong Kong's Occupy Central versus Occupy Wall Street here?

Q: Yes. Yes. Yes.

A: I think they're a bit different. In Hong Kong, what they want is greater democracy. It's really a united movement led by students, and they do know what they want to achieve. The movement in Hong Kong vs. here in the United States, is quite different from what's happening in Hong Kong. It's more, as you pointed out, left-wing. It's more about inequality arguments. It's more against the free-market system. In Hong Kong, it's clearly about greater democracy and political freedom.

Q: Do you think when they go back to work next week, this is all going to fall apart?

A: Tough to say. I don't expect any sort of meaningful resolution of the movement. They'll come back again and again, again. These young students, I don't think, even though they're young and weak at this point, as they go forward, they will collect new energy and power and they'll come back again and again. I don't know in terms of a magnitude, in how many people they can recollect in terms of demonstrating their voice, but they're not going to disappear in a way.

Q: I know Hong Kong had two successful revolts against the Chinese government before; one in 2003 and one in 2012, and they won those. This time it just seems it's going to be much more difficult. It seems like the doctrine of one country and two systems. Maybe those didn't seem as easy back then, but they certainly won those. Do you think they really have a chance to win?

A: I think they certainly want to have that chance to be realized, and that's why it's been unfolding for a few weeks. Over the past years, they have seen that China will not keep their promise in a way, granting that level of autonomy that Hong Kong has been wanting.

That's why people at this time cannot really be any more patient. They've got to see real action and demonstrate willingness and demand, and that's what we are seeing now in Hong Kong.

Q: What about Taiwan? Are they participating in this?

A: They probably are watching this very closely too. There's people in Taiwan that issued an official statement saying, "We support the people in Hong Kong. We support their brave movement. " I bet a lot of students in Taiwan are also watching this situation very carefully, and support strongly the people in Hong Kong, too.

Q: We hear in the U.S. often that people are fed up with America's ever-growing laws, taxes and regulations, and they want to move to a freer country. Do you hear that? And if you do, what kind of advice would you give?

A: On our index economic freedom index, the United States is not even one of the Top 10 freest economies in the world. Now the United States ranked No. 12, behind Canada and Chile. We've been losing our economic freedom because of the big government policy, this big government mentality in action in terms of reforming our regulatory efficiency and other gains. So, we are getting into a very critical situation, too. Unless we reverse this downturn of our economic freedom, we will have to face a harsh reality, meaning we are losing our business to other countries. We are becoming more uncompetitive and job creation will be very dull and dry.

The United States is the only country that has been losing economic freedom for seven straight years. So, that's an alarming situation. Unless we really get together in terms of promoting good policies that promote economic freedom, we will lose continuously and other countries are catching up. They do implement effective tax policy, tax reforms and regulatory reforms, but again, we are, making it for our entrepreneurs and future entrepreneurs, more difficult to do business in he U.S.

Q: Can you be more specific about how things have changed in the last seven years under President Obama?

A: In the name of rescuing and saving our economy, the programs and policies are a heavy dosage of government intervention being made in terms of the spending and regulatory policies.

One example is that unsigned bill in the name of obtaining no regulatory deficiencies in the financial market. We added a lot more uncertainty and a lot more unnecessary regulations, and therefore what we have is inaction by the business community, by the private sector, because they don't know what to expect in terms of this kind of uncertain and ongoing regulatory change environment. A lot of people are simply trying to wait it out to see any meaningful reforms in our economy. This uncertainty is adding a lot of cost.

I wonder if there will be a solidarity protest here that would actually help us move higher up on the rankings? We will see.

About Bennett Group Financial Services LLC
Bennett Group Financial Services LLC, based in Washington, D.C., is a comprehensive financial services firm committed to providing opportunities to clients' as they seek long-term financial success. Its customized programs are designed with the potential to help grow, lower overall risk and conserve client assets by delivering a high level of personalized service and skill. For more information, call 866-286-2268 or visit http://www.bennettgroupfinancial.com.

Securities offered through Western International Securities Inc. (WIS), member FINRA/SIPC. BGFS and WIS are separate and unaffiliated entities.

Dawn Bennett is CEO and Founder of Bennett Group Financial Services. She hosts a national radio program called Financial Myth Busting http://www.financialmythbusting.com.

She discusses educational topics and events in the financial news, along with her thoughts on the economy, financial markets, investments, and more with her live guests, who have included Rock Legend Ted Nugent, as well as Steve Forbes and Grover Norquist. The show is a great complement to Dawn's monthly investing seminars that take place at Tysons Corner in McLean, VA, where she discusses investing.

She can be reached on Twitter @DawnBennettFMB or on Facebook Financial Myth Busting with Dawn Bennett or dbennett@bennettgroupfinancial.com

For more information on this press release visit: http://www.releasewire.com/press-releases/release-3.htm

Washington, DC -- (SBWIRE) -- 10/10/2014 -- The financial books for the fiscal year of the U.S. government were closed on September 30, 2014 and sadly U.S. taxpayers have $17 trillion of debt to pay the government, reports Dawn Bennett, CEO of Bennett Group Financial Services, in her latest missive to investors. That's in the ballpark of 75 percent of U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which is nearly double the level it was at when the country experienced the great financial meltdown of October 2008 she points out.

Already the U.S. national debt has expanded by more than $1 trillion in fiscal year 2014 alone. First off, the U.S. owes other foreign governments approximately $5 trillion, as well as entitlement programs, like Social Security beneficiaries. Adding all that together, entitlements, and debt to foreign governments, the number is closer to $17.8 trillion.

Unfortunately, the U.S. debt ceiling limit has been postponed, and we won't have to be bothered by another debt crisis until March 1, 2015, which is the reason many people don't even know that the Federal government closed out their books last week. Of course, that all depends on how the U.S. Treasury Department fiddles with the numbers on the books, and probably how Congress decides to pass the buck. So for now, it won't be in the headlines of U.S. media. With the mid-term elections next month, this "coincidence" is deliciously convenient, don't you think?

According to the Brookings Institute's new fiscal barometer, the U.S. entitlement programs have really tied our hands. Today, in the United States, we have a heavily socialized system that hands out checks to nearly half the population. As a matter of fact, 52 percent of all U.S. citizens live in a home that gets some form of monetary monthly benefits from the U.S. federal government each month, according to the Forbes Magazine research.

In 2014, Social Security benefits grew by 4.5 percent to $836 billion, Medicare D benefits paid by the federal government rose 2.1 percent to $487 billion, and Medicaid benefits paid grew 11.4 percent to $294 billion. That's substantial. So, why aren't more Americans worried? When I read these numbers, I get terrified. I don't think we can keep up this level of handouts.

William Gale, co-director at the Brookings Institute, points out "how interesting it is that so many people thought former U.S. President George W. Bush's agenda was unaffordable back when the debt-to-GDP ratio was half as big as it is now, and, now feel that a ratio of 75 percent is nothing to worry about, even though the debt is predicted to go higher."

There are approximately 63 million Americans collecting Social Security benefits. By 2035, that number is projected to rise to a breathtaking 91 million Americans on Social Security. The US. Government is facing a total of $222 trillion in unfunded liabilities during the years ahead, and Social Security and Medicare, make up the bulk of that hefty bill.

So, if this is where we are headed, why do we elect lawmakers who continue to call for more spending and more stimulus? It's just beyond logic! This debt is money the U.S. government owes the American people and other foreign governments. The strangling fiscal policies we have today are giving us an illusion of economic growth from which even the great Houdini could not escape.

Are we running out of options? Has U.S. monetary policy done all it can do? The Federal Reserve is supposed to be ending its quantitative easing this month, and at the same time, increasing its interest rate target. Yet, signs of our dwindling economy are still everywhere in the United States.

Yes the federal government keeps telling us our economy is improving. And yes, President Obama keeps claiming the U.S. economy is getting better, yet our ex-Fed chairman Ben Bernanke, at a recent speaking engagement, where he received his regular fee of $250,000, was actually talking about having a hard time refinancing his mortgage on his house! He admitted that publicly, and he says the mortgage market is still so tight that he can't get his own home refinanced. When he told this to the audience, they thought it was a joke, and laughed, but he said, "I'm not making this up."

It's not good when our own ex-Fed chairman can't even refinance his home loan, and when President Obama continues to tell us we are "better off than we were six years ago." Bernanke's public admission of his inability to refinance his home speaks louder than the President ever could.

"And you will know the truth and the truth will set you free"…the depth and the power of this statement has never been more true than in America today.

All market data references are sourced to Bloomberg terminal database.

Bennett Group Financial Services LLC, based in Washington, D.C., is a comprehensive financial services firm committed to providing opportunities to clients' as they seek long-term financial success. Its customized programs are designed with the potential to help grow, lower overall risk and conserve client assets by delivering a high level of personalized service and skill.

For more information, call 866-286-2268 or visit http://www.bennettgroupfinancial.com

Securities offered through Western International Securities Inc. (WIS), member FINRA/SIPC. BGFS and WIS are separate and unaffiliated entities.

About Dawn Bennett
Dawn Bennett is CEO and Founder of Bennett Group Financial Services. She hosts a national radio program on called Financial Myth Busting http://www.financialmythbusting.com

She discusses educational topics and events in the financial news, along with her thoughts on the economy, financial markets, investments, and more with her live guests, who have included Rock Legend Ted Nugent, as well as Steve Forbes and Grover Norquist. Listeners can call 855-884-DAWN as well as take podcasts on the road and forums for interaction.

The show is a great complement to Dawn's monthly investing seminars that take place at Tysons Corner in McLean, VA, where she discusses investing.

She can be reached on Twitter @DawnBennettFMB or on Facebook Financial Myth Busting with Dawn Bennett or dbennett@bennettgroupfinancial.com

For more information on this press release visit: http://www.releasewire.com/press-releases/release-3.htm

Washington, DC -- (SBWIRE) -- 10/08/2014 -- Nationally Syndicated Financial Myth Busting Radio Show with Host Dawn Bennett, CEO of Bennett Group Financial Services, LLC, on September 28, 2014, interviewed Daryl Jones, Director of Research at Hedgeye Risk Management.

Mr. Jones covers commodities, geopolitics and major asset classes outside of equities at Hedgeye. He holds a Bachelor's Degree from Yale University and a Masters Degree from Columbia University in finance and value investing.

He answered questions on Alibaba and why the media believes it is coming to America's rescue. He discusseswhat's inside the 500-page disclaimer investors haven't actually read yet from Alibaba.

Here is the interview with Daryl Jones:

Q: As your firm Hedgeye pointed out, Alibaba has an F-1 that's about 500 pages long. Please explain an F-1
and tell us what's in it? Do you think investors actually should read it because there's something important in there?

A: Yes. An F-1 is the filing that a foreign company would do before going public. There's actually been an interesting sort of analysis on these types of FCC filings. The longer they are, the more complex they are. Typically what happens is stocks underperform, which is really no surprise.

Clearly investors, while it's tough to kind of slog through a document like this, should try to get through it. Alibaba, in particular, is a really unique company because they're just on a very high level. Investors aren't actually owning shares in the company, they are owning contracts for profits from shares in the Cayman Islands company. So it's a really unique corporate structure that's non-traditional and comes with a lot of risks.

Q: So is it a unique corporate structure because the Chinese government has ownership in it and they're trying to hide that?

A: Yes, the Chinese government has ownership in it, which may be good for investors, if they're not aligned with the Chinese government. However, the Chinese government doesn't allow foreigners to own shares directly in companies that play within the China Internet sector, so that's actually why this structure was et up.

The Chinese government doesn't want foreigners to have direct ownership in any of these companies, and as a result, what we have is Alibaba share holders have just a contract that is effectively at the whim of the Chinese government.

Q: So what's the biggest risk for American investors in investing in a Chinese e-commerce giant like Alibaba? Is it politics, is it theft of intellectual property? What would that be?

A: Clearly politics is a big issue here. The Chinese government can and has changed the rules on a whim. They did something about three or four years ago that impacted Alibaba directly, which is they said a non-bank has to have a license to do online payments. So what Alibaba ended up doing was spinning out their online payments company and moving it offshore. So the government, especially a government that's not a democracy, could quickly change the rules. So that's a risk.

The other big risk I think is just ballpark, Alibaba has what's estimated to be 75 percent of the e-commerce business in China. Which, on the face of it sounds good but that's also a share that's probably going to degrade over time. The reason the company right now is so profitable is because they have this dominant market share that is probably more at a peak than a trough, so I think the risk is really increased competition.

Q: So if you invest in Alibaba, it's more of a bet on an opaque political system, right, that has a monopoly on whether actually Jack Ma's going to be allowed to succeed or not? Do you see it that way?

A: Well, exactly. It's a very opaque company in a very opaque economy. It's a very opaque and top-down political system. To the extent that they're aligned with investors. If the government is invested in the company, maybe that's a positive.

However, this is far from a non-traditional investment and the company's trading at 18-times sales, which is a really high multiple. The fact is the company basically has the same value, or, market cap, as companies like Walmart and JP Morgan. So investors really have to decide if it has the same sort of intrinsic value or assets as those companies. It really seems like a peak already. We've been calling it Alibubble rather than Alibaba. A lot of risks here that we would certainly urge people to be cautious about.

Q: About 80 percent of the stocks of mostly publicly traded companies in China is actually owned by the Chinese government. Is there some fear out there that the Chinese government could actually dump millions of shares on the market and drive down the value of share prices? Is that a real possibility?

A: When you have that sort of concentration, it's always a possibility. It would be something that hasn't necessarily happened before, but when we look at any type of investment, whether it's a government owner or anything else, clearly concentration of ownership is a risk and at some point, even governments sell. It's a concern that people should consider.

Q: All the worries in the United States about geopolitical and economic threat posed by China, for all the years that we've heard that, and the American financial and consumer markets actually remain pretty widely open to them, while the opposite is actually hardly true. Do you think this is an unequal relationship today, even though Alibaba just went public on our exchange here?

A: It's clearly unequal. We can only hope that with our market system being so open that it encourages China to do that. But I don't know. I don't like the imbalance that occurs. It's almost like we're giving them access to something that empowers them but we don't get the commensurate return from them. On some levels, it's very inappropriate.

Q: So Alibaba's CEO Jack Ma said on the day of his company's big board listing that he actually planned to invest some of his new capitalization in American small businesses. Any thoughts on what form that might take, if at all? Do you think that's true? Or will the Chinese company actually end up being a lifeline for American businesses?

A: Ha-ha, I guess. To be fair to him, he actually had already done that to some extent. Over the last two years, he's invested in almost 29 different companies close to $15 billion.

He invested in Lift, almost like a peer-to-peer taxi company. He staffs out with a company that speculated they're looking at investing in. So he already has been doing that, I don't think i t's altruistic. He's doing this for the purpose of Alibaba, which at the end of the day, is somewhat driven by what the Chinese government allows him to do.

Q: Do you think that Alibaba is actually going to give U.S. retailers and businesspeople a direct route to the hearts and wallets of Chinese consumers?

A: I think if it could, that would be a real positive thing. This looks like the CEO enriching himself, creating a fiefdom. I don't think this is something that's altruistic or really positive for the American economy, per se. It's also symbolic of what we think is a bit of a stock market bubble.

Q: Do you think Jeff Bezos, for e xample, Amazon's Merchant and Chief, actually finds himself at war with Alibaba's Chairman Jack Ma? Do you think he feels that way?

A: It's potentially a major competitor. They now have a currency to buy companies. They now have raised $25 billion on the IPO. Obviously, there's not a lot of presence, domestically, with U.S. consumers. While there are some concerns about the company, they do have a dominant share of e-commerce in China, and they now have very, very deep pockets. I think Amazon rightfully should be concerned. < /o:p>

Q: Well, Amazon doesn't offer guaranteeing payments, right? I understand Alibaba actually owes much of its success to that. There hasn't been a lot of reporting about how this financing operation works. Is this an overlooked risk, in your mind?

A: A big part of their payment system ha s sputtered off and it's closely held by the chairman, and some of the original founders. I think it's called Alipay. That is a major risk, and it's the mechanism to how the business works. I guess the positive is that what they've kind of created within China is a combination of eBay, PayPal, Amazon, Amazon web services all in one. I think structurally, is a good thing. However, it's very opaque when the big driver of the business that paints all of the business effectively is owned by another entity, that's definitely a concern.

Q: Your boss, Keith McCullough, called the Alibaba IPO epic, and he noted how off the charts the enthusiasm was for the stock. Are traders just simply starving for a trade, for a rally?

A: Yes, in part, what's happening, I think, is people are buying into the China Internet story, the growth of the Internet. The idea that the population of China is 1.4 billion, but only half of those people have the Internet.

Traders on some levels did want to buy into the rally. This is really something that signifies more of a top than anything else. The biggest IPO in history. The stock is up 38 percent on the first day. The company now has a market cap larger than J.P. Morgan, larger than Walmart, or almost as large as Walmart. Clearly this is a lot of froth. Traders and investors really kind of wanted to buy into the rally, and keep the rally going. It's just sort of an excursion for them to do that.

Q: Do you think one day we'll look back at this Alibaba IPO and shake our heads in shame or in embarrassment that we bought into it?

A: Keith McCullough, back in the day, actually worked at Credit Suisse First Boston, which was renowned for bringing companies pu blic that really had no business going public. On some level Alibaba is a real business, but what we're buying into is a contract for the profits of a company in China that we can't legally actually invest in. So there's some legal risk there.

Also the valuation is sky-high, but I don't think the company's going down in flames, but I think we also have to kind of consider, these dynamics, and really think about what it means for Tia nenmen Square.

Q: Does Alibaba even have any tangible physical assets like IBM, or Hewlett Packard, or Microsoft?

A: I think they have assets around $4 or $5 billion, which isn't necessarily insignificant. If you think about what the company's worth, over $200 billion, it's kind of crazy. However, the company appears to be very profitable, but again, it's just profitable because it has a monopoly in China that is going to erode ov er time. At 18-times sale, that's what I take away from that.

Q: So at the end of the tech bubble, there were some IPOs that looked really ridiculous in hindsight. You're basically saying you think Alibaba could actually be the mark of the top of the current bull market? This Federal Reserve-driven market? Do you think it could be the top?

A: Exactly. When interest rates are at low levels for an abnormally long time, people just start chasing any asset class. We know that bonds are ridiculously overvalued. This is an indication that even equities are at a peak. If this isn't the sight of a bubble, I don't know what is. The largest IPO ever, a company in China that's very opaque. It screams a bubble and signals a top.

Q: On Monday, Alibaba's options will trade. Do you have any suggestions as to what type of option strategy to use 3F

A: If someone owns the stock, I would definitely consider hedging it. So probably selling calls against a position. My guess is the premium on the options is going to be very high, and may not be a valuable trade. Investors can play with the volatility around the stock. The stock is volatile primarily because of the opacity of the company. When investors have less clarity, or less transparency, they tend to be more fickle with what they own. This is an example of where the stock price is going to be very volatile. So playing the options in regards to the volatility I think is one way to do it. A lot of shorts have come into the stock. I think 3 and a 1/2 percent of the shares oustanding are now short.

Q: Is Hedgeye shorting it?

A: We're still doing our work on the company, so we haven't come out with a recommendation yet. Our Internet analyst is wo rking on it. Some of these things are concerning.

Q: How should Main Street investors look at Alibaba as a stock investment?

A: It's something people should stay away from. It's too complex. Investors aren't even buyi ng stock in the company. So investing in it is governed by a whole different set of rules. Investors are at the whim of the Chinese government.

There are a lot of great American companies that investors can own stock in that have great growth trajectories. With all the opacity around Alibaba, I think people should stay away from it, particularly the Main Street type of investor who doesn't have the time to do all their homework.

Q: So what are you guys advising investors to do? Obviously not Alibaba, but what else are you doing?

A: Our view right now is really that people should shift into more of a defensive mode. From an asset allocation perspective, we think Investors should stay away from small cap and from things that are more speculative. I'd suggest blue chip companies are levered to the U.S. economy. So names that I've alre ady mentioned, like, Walmart, McDonald's, some of the big banks, companies like that.

Q: What is your overall take of where the market is today? Do you think we're reliving the late '90s?

A: I wouldn't necessarily compare it to the late '9 0s. That was really a time of an epic equity bubble. Right now we are definitely concerned about the stock market, and our view really is born out of where we think the economy is.

We have a kind of four-quad model that we look at, and we think we're heading into what we call a quad four, which is an environment of decelerated growth and decelerating inflation.

On the inflation side, that's actually a positive thing, and could emerge to be really good for the economy. If oil continues to go down and readings of inflation go lower.

People are really going to be potentially surprised by the downside in growth over the next couple bursts which means that equities will probably struggle.

Q: So the correction we got on Wednesday, I believe, this past week. Were you surprised at that?

A: No, that's sort of something we've been recommending our new clients to keep their eye out for. Valuations are high, if not at a peak. This sort of economic environment can surprise people with downside. The risk passes more to the downside, to more of a correction than anything else.

Q: Goldman Sachs came out with that report that 77 percent to 80 percent of the money managers out there are underperforming the S&P and the Dow, as well as the hedge funds for the last six years have had extremely poor performance. It seems like everybody's just getting squee zed in a no-volume market.

A: That's exactly what's happening. The issue that hedge funds have is really competition. Twenty years ago when there were a hundred hedge funds, they'd outperform, and did really well. Julian Robertson from Tiger had a conference this week, and he was talking about this basic idea that 20 years ago, when he started his hedge fund, nobody else was shorting stocks. Now everybody is. The free money is betting the stock performance is not there anymore. So then we have a hedge fund with too much leverage. The shorts go up and really what happens is the total asset class underperforms. We've seen CalPERS getting out of hedge funds.

CalPERS to be fair was always under-allocated to hedge funds. However, if you're allocating billions and billions of dollars, why put it into an asset class that consistently underperforms? It's just not intuitive. They are better off if wanting equity exposure, just being in the markets.

Q: So this four-quad model that you're working off, it's in the fourth Quadrant. What does that mean to investors? What type of correction would you be expecting, just to kind of clean out the market a little bit here? Realistically, there seems to be more delusion and happy talk than there should be?

A: Yes, realistically, we could get a 15 to 20 percent correction. I don't think anybody's really considering that. What we feel really confident about is small cap stocks will probably underperform, and the market itself is not going to generate great returns over the next probably year or so.

Q: The NASDAQ is already down. Forty-seven percent of the stock's already down substantially.

A: Yes, exactly, and underperforming. That's a perfect example. It's the internals in the market that are really breaking down. There have been some leaders. They're still doing well. It's just a bad sign when market internals are getting negative.

Q: When you talk about the internals, it's like these stocks are disintegrating inside these indices, like the S&P 500 and the Dow, but the index continues to rise. Can you explain why?

A: Normally, this would happen because there are certain sectors that are outperforming. In the U.S., it's been some more defensive sectors, like the utilities. Unfortunately, what happens is eventually it all kind of catches up.

Bennett Group Financial Services LLC, based in Washington, D.C., is a comprehensive financial services firm committed to providing opportunities to clients' as they seek long-term financial success. Its customized programs are designed with the potential to help grow, lower overall risk and conserve client assets by delivering a high level of personalized service and skill. For more information, call 866-286-2268 or visit www.bennettgroupfinancial.com.

Securities offered through Western International Securities Inc. (WIS), member FINRA/SIPC. BGFS and WIS are separate and unaffiliated entities.

About Dawn Bennett
Dawn Bennett is CEO and Founder of Bennett Group Financial Services. She hosts a national radio program called Financial Myth Busting http://www.financialmythbusting.com

She discusses educational topics and events in the financial news, along with her thoughts on the economy, financial markets, investments, and more with her live guests, who have included Rock Legend Ted Nugent, as well as Steve Forbes and Grover Norquist. The show is a great complement to Dawn's monthly investing seminars that take place at Tysons Corner in McLean, VA, where she discusses investing.

She can be reached on Twitter @DawnBennettFMB or on Facebook Financial Myth Busting with Dawn Bennett or dbennett@bennettgroupfinancial.com

For more information on this press release visit: http://www.releasewire.com/press-releases/release-3.htm

Says Most Politically Manipulated of All U.S. Economic Numbers Reported

Washington, DC -- (SBWIRE) -- 10/07/2014 -- The GDP report is the most good-for-nothing and the most massaged and politically manipulated of all U.S. economic numbers reported says Dawn Bennett, CEO of Bennett Group Financial Services in her latest missive to investors.

Investors need to look at economic reality in a different way, in particular, the GDP distortion. When human beings are faced with a problem, in order to be able to deal with this issue, they change the perception of the problem. In other words, they begin to distort reality and become creative and use that as a license to look at reality in a different way. This way usually gives them more peace and contentment than the real truth would make them feel. However this means that the new truth that they've created in their mind, the new perception, is often inaccurate she says.

I applaud creativity, especially when it comes in the form of technological advances or research that develops and pioneers new drugs to cure diseases. Apple Computer's advancements, as an example, continues to push the limits of what used to be fantasy and turning that into reality. Or innovative research at pharmaceutical companies that very quickly now try to accelerate the use of a range of potential treatments to fight diseases like Ebola. In these two areas, looking at reality in a different way benefits mankind.

However, Ms. Bennett says, when it comes to economic numbers, creativity can hurt investors because it misleads them in making a decision that may not be right for the environment we are in. For example, the creative license the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), a U.S. government commerce department, takes when measuring the the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

Now this measurement comes out every three months and measures the amount of money spent by consumers and the government. The amount of money invested in imports and exports as well as the production of widgets and gadgets. This adds up the value of all work done in the United States economy in a three-month time period. This type of national accounting should give the investing public a more accurate picture of the United States economic health. Sadly it doesn't. Instead, it keeps all American investors in the dark about the truth of our economic health.

The week of September 22, 2014, the BEA reported that the U.S. second quarter GDP surged a positive 4.6 percent, which was the biggest quarter jump since fourth quarter of 2011. Should investors be jumping up and down and cheering because that's good news? If correct, then yes! However this GDP report has very little relationship to real world activities. As a matter of fact, it's more likely the GDP release was massaged to help generate the happiest investment and political story that could be put out there says Ms. Bennett.

The latest GDP report simply is the most worthless and the most massaged and politically manipulated of all US economic numbers reported. It does not even reflect properly, or even accurately, the negative changes to the underlying U.S. economic fundamentals that drive the economy.

A hundred percent of the GDP report was happy hype and fluff because all the BEA did was make the GDP appear better by changing the definition of how to calculate profit. That's what the U.S. government did in order to show this fake rebound from the negative 2.1 percent GDP drop in first quarter of 2014.

This was the third estimate of the second revision to the second-quarter 2014 GDP, which showed a statistically significant unreal gain. The truth is that the broad U.S. economy is turning down, and that the real second quarter GDP is probably closer to a negative 1.7 percent rather than the fake positive 4.6 percent. This means the BEA actually needs to start telling the truth so that any new changes in any economic definition won't mislead Investors again.

That's not the only area of what I call information distrust. Another area of distrust is that corporate insiders are selling shares at a pace not seen since the year 2000. Corporate leaders who know more about their companies and future growth prospects than anybody in the world, even market analysts. They're unloading their company stock as quickly as possible.

According to Bloom berg, a total of 7,181 insiders bought their own stock this year, 2014, through September 12th, but 23,323 sold their shares. That ratio of buys to sells is near the lowest since 2000. At the same time, corporate repurchases reached $275 billion in the first half of the year. This is what is called leveraging up. It is particularly telling that companies are doing this to boost stock prices at a time when they are not expanding hiring or expanding payroll or expanding CAPEX. No one has seen this pace of share repurchase since 2007.

This is the type of corporate buy back craze, on debt , that helped create the 2008 crash. My guess is it's going to be the same this time around too. In other words, corporate insiders are selling when it comes to their own money, but at the same time, spending corporate money madly to buy back their own company stock, which clearly tells investors much about their negative mindset regarding the U.S. economy.

This is why this reported GDP is distorted and not really the truth. I don't think that the BEA should be taking creative license to change it, just to make investors feel better for the moment. I think it's important that we always deal with the truth.

All market data references are sourced to Bloomberg terminal database.

Bennett Group Financial Services LLC, based in Washington, D.C., is a comprehensive financial services firm committed to providing opportunities to clients' as they seek long-term financial success. Its customized programs are designed with the potential to help grow, lower overall risk and conserve client assets by delivering a high level of personalized service and skill.

For more information, call 866-286-2268 or visit http://www.bennettgroupfinancial.com

Securities offered through Western International Securities Inc. (WIS), member FINRA/SIPC. BGFS and WIS are separate and unaffiliated entities.

About Dawn Bennett
Dawn Bennett is CEO and Founder of Bennett Group Financial Services. She hosts a national radio program on called Financial Myth Busting http://www.financialmythbusting.com

She discusses educational t opics and events in the financial news, along with her thoughts on the economy, financial markets, investments, and more with her live guests, who have included Rock Legend Ted Nugent, as well as Steve Forbes and Grover Norquist. Listeners can call 855-884-DAWN as well as take podcasts on the road and forums for interaction.

The show is a great complement to Dawn's monthly investing seminars that take place at Tysons Corner in McLean, VA, where she discusses investing.

She can be reached on Twitter @DawnBennettFMB or on Facebook Financial Myth Busting with Dawn Bennett or dbennett@bennettgroupfinancial.com

For more information on this press release visit: http://www.releasewire.com/press-releases/release-3.htm

“Investors Need to Protect Their Economic Well-being Now and Be Ahead of the Herd,” She Says

Washington, DC -- (ReleaseWire) -- 09/30/2014 -- Looking at the latest research on financial markets, I couldn't help but have an image in my head of a deer-in-headlights warning for U.S. Investors says Dawn Bennett, CEO of Bennett Group Financial Services in her latest missive to investors.

Approximately 80 percent of U.S. large cap portfolio managers, since September 2013, or the last 12 months, through September 2014, not only have underperformed the S&P 500, but are actually negative, she points out. The Dow and the S&P 500 indices, which are U.S. large cap indices, keep hitting new highs, but approximately 80 percent of U.S. large cap portfolio managers, don't.

Here is a list of big high-profile U.S. companies and their performances year-to-date for 2014. They're large cap and medium cap, and they're down in a range from negative -19 percent to as much as negative 40 to 50 percent, year-to-date. Yet the S&P and the Dow continue to go up!

For example: Amazon is down approximately -19 percent; AutoNation is down approximately - 19 percent. Apollo Education Group down approximately - 21 percent; Genworth Financial is down approximately negative -28 percent, yet the Dow keeps rising.

General Motors down approximately -19 percent; Federal Mogul Holdings Corporation down approximately -20 percent; BHP Billeton Ltd., Limited Partnership,also down approximately -18 percent; Applied Micro Circuits is down approximately -49 percent; Quantum Group down approximately -25 percent; Wynnstay Group down approximately - 26 percent; MGM Resorts, and this represents the status of gambling in the U.S. down approximately -16 percent; Las Vegas Sands is down negative approximately -27 percent. And the Dow keeps rising.

McDonald's is down approximately -10 percent; Priceline is down approximately -14 percent; TripAdvisor is down approximately -10 percent; Chesapeake Energy down approximately-19 percent; Herbalife is down approximately - 44 percent; Nuance Communication is down approximately -34 percent. But the Dow and the S&P500 keep going up.

McDermott International down 10 percent; General Electric is down 7 percent; Toll Brothers is down 16 percent; Standard Pacific Corporation is down 17 percent. Where are the positive numbers? What stocks are running this Dow up?

It's obvious the U.S. stock market is breaking down from the inside out, stock by stock. Stocks are self-destructing within the indices so why then are the S&P 500 and the Dow indices hitting new highs?

There's only one answer, it's through the efforts of our Federal Reserve, and their use of derivatives, algorithmic trading, and also through high-frequency trading. Those two indices are separated completely from the reality of what's not only going on in investor portfolios, but going on with the portfolio managers in the United States. Eighty percent of them are negative.

It means that we're at the top of a speculative market. For the last five years, the Dow and the S&P 500 have been a decoy to suck investors in while the stocks inside the indices erode.

It isn't just the Dow and the S&P 500 that's been dissolving stock-by-stock. It's also NASDAQ. A Bloomberg report showed that within the NASDAQ "47 percent of the stocks in the NASDAQ Composite Index are down at least 20 percent from their peak in the last 12 months, while more than 40 percent have fallen that much in the Russell 2000 Index."

It is apparent that we are now transitioning from "risk-on" to "risk-off". "Risk-on" is what we have had in the marketplace the last few years. Speculative bets enabled by central banks by the quantitative easing programs.

Investors that went along with the Fed speculation and leveraged bets should start exiting and booking gains, because this unwinding of speculative excesses is exactly the opposite of what the stocks are doing for the last 12 months.

So let me just say this. Buckle up. Big trouble is brewing, and it will be a pretty rough ride for all investors, especially those who aren't prepared. Investors should not suffer from a deer-in-headlights syndrome, frozen, just staring at the Dow and S&P 500 indices as if it were nirvana. Investors need to protect their economic well-being now and be ahead of the herd.

All market data references are sourced to Bloomberg terminal database.

Bennett Group Financial Services LLC, based in Washington, D.C., is a comprehensive financial services firm committed to providing opportunities to clients' as they seek long-term financial success. Its customized programs are designed with the potential to help grow, lower overall risk and conserve client assets by delivering a high level of personalized service and skill.

For more information, call 866-286-2268 or visit http://www.bennettgroupfinancial.com

Securities offered through Western International Securities Inc. (WIS), member FINRA/SIPC. BGFS and WIS are separate and unaffiliated entities.

About Dawn Bennett
Dawn Bennett is CEO and Founder of Bennett Group Financial Services. She hosts a national radio program on called Financial Myth Busting http://www.financialmythbusting.com

She discusses educational topics and events in the financial news, along with her thoughts on the economy, financial markets, investments, and more with her live guests, who have included Rock Legend Ted Nugent, as well as Steve Forbes and Grover Norquist. Listeners can call 855-884-DAWN as well as take podcasts on the road and forums for interaction.

The show is a great complement to Dawn's monthly investing seminars that take place at Tysons Corner in McLean, VA, where she discusses in vesting.

She can be reached on Twitter @DawnBennettFMB or on Facebook Financial Myth Busting with Dawn Bennett or dbennett@bennettgroupfinancial.com

For more information on this press release visit: http://www.releasewire.com/press-releases/release-3.htm

Washington, DC -- (ReleaseWire) -- 09/30/2014 -- Nationally Syndicated Financial Myth Busting Radio Show with Host Dawn Bennett, CEO of Bennett Group Financial Services, LLC, on September 21, 2014, interviewed Jason Riley, author of the new book "Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make It Harder for Blacks to Succeed." He is also a member of the Wall Street Journal editorial board.

He talked about the black vote, about the Democratic Party, and whether programs intended to help minorities actually help or hurt them.

As an African-American columnist, Riley's career has been based on maintaining skepticism of the political left's leaning with black America, because in his way of thinking, liberal programs to lift the black American underclass mostly fail, and in fact, harms the intended beneficiaries. According to Riley, the reasons liberal policies and programs always seem to backfire and to hurt those they purport to help is because liberals either do not understand human nature and cultural differences, or they simply choose to ignore it.

Here is the interview with Jason Riley:

Q: Jason, do you believe that many black Americans now feel that Democratic politicians and their liberal policies have betrayed the black community, as liberal policies just seem to have left them worse off?

A: Well, it'd be hard to make that argument, given that so many blacks overwhelmingly support Democratic politicians.

Q: But why do they do that?

A: I think you can point to history, for one, where conservatives were during the Civil Rights Movement is still in the memory of a lot of black Americans alive today, particularly older Americans. That's one reason I think they flock to the Democrats. Another reason has to do with Republican outreach or the lack thereof.

There are examples of Republicans that have decided to go after this vote, spend time in these communities. Jack Kemp comes to mind, from back in the '80s. Paul Ryan's doing it today. People like Chris Christie. In his re-election bid in New Jersey, went into places like Camden and introduced himself. Richard Riordan did it in LA back in the 1990s.

These are still exceptions to the rule, where Republicans pretty much write off the black vote, and I don't ascribe racial animus to that. I think it's pragmatic politics. Republicans still believe that they can win elections without black voters, and once that changes and they feel they need the black vote to win, you'll see them courting black voters. Right now there's a huge debate in the GOP over the Latino vote, for example, whether or not Republicans can continue to win elections going forward without more Hispanic voters. There's no such similar debate going on among blacks, or about the black vote, in the GOP.

Q: So Democrats call their ideology compassionate. That's my word. What would you call it?

A: Well-intentioned in many cases, but ultimately harmful. I think that blacks ultimately must help themselves. They have to develop the same behaviors and attitudes -- and attitudes, and -- and -- and practices that other groups in America had to develop in order to rise, and to the extent that a government program or policy, however well-intentioned, interferes with that necessary self-development. I think it does more harm than good, and that's what you have in a lot of these Great Society programs.

Government attempts to help but are putting in place the wrong incentives. Trying to replace the father in the home with a government check may seem compassionate, but it doesn't encourage proper child-rearing, or even proper child-bearing. Open-ended welfare benefits may seem compassionate, but they don't incentivize a group to develop a work ethic, which is ultimately what that group will need to develop in order to make it on its own.

Q: So what you're saying is that if we could get the liberal boot off the black community's neck, then black Americans can actually thrive?

A: Yes, I would point to what was going on in black America prior to the implementation of a lot of these policies. Black history didn't just jump from slavery to the Civil Rights movement.

There was a long period in-between, and if you look at what was going on in terms of educational attainment among blacks, both relative to whites and in absolute terms, if you look at the rate at which blacks were leaving poverty, the rate at which blacks were entering the professions, skilled trades and so forth, you saw much better outcomes prior to all of these government interventions to help.

I'm not discounting the need for the Civil Rights movement. I think the Voting Rights Act of '65, the Civil Rights Act of '64, were liberalism at its best, and, I think that all Americans can be proud of what was achieved in terms of making the country more just for everyone.

But for the programs that came out of the Great Society, blacks can't get ahead. That's a much more difficult argument to make, and I would argue that the facts don't support that conclusion.

Q: So right now twice as many black Americans are unemployed as white, right? It's almost double what white or national average is. Why do you think that is? How is the Obama administration addressing this issue, or are they?

A: For the past 50 years, the black unemployment rate has been double the white. The Obama administration has not come up with anything new to address this. In fact, they continue to push policies that I think are responsible for that outcome.

Q: What kind of policies?

A: Minimum wage increases are a perfect example. Prior to the implementation of the minimum wage and prior to it taking effect, that is vis-a-vis inflation, you did not see these racial disparaties in employment. In some years in the '40s and '50s, the black labor participation rate exceeded the white labor participation rate.

Q: What was the difference then versus now?

A: I would argue minimum wage laws, in part, which are pricing a lot of younger and less-skilled workers out of the work force, a disproportionate number of whom happen to be black.

I think that has a lot to do with it. There are also cultural reasons, which I talked about in the book. Attitudes towards work play a role in this, even in the 1980s and '90s during a period of tremendous economic growth and job creation in this country, but the black labor participation rate for young men fell during the '80s and '90s.

Some of this is cultural and there are limits to what politicians can do to address the cultural problems. I argue that having a black man in the White House is all well and good, but it can't substitute for a black man in the home.

What I mean by that statement is that there are certain problems with attitudes and behaviors in the black community that are leading to these outcomes, and there are limits to what politicians can do to address them, other than getting out of the way and letting that self-development run its course.

Q: So the U.S. anti-poverty programs are actually pacifying the young black worker? Is that part of the reason why they just don't feel the need to go out and get a job?

A: That's what our experience has shown. In New York, where I am from, the welfare policies, the reforms, implemented under Rudy Giuliani, continued under Mayor Michael Bloomberg, reduced poverty and shrunk the welfare roles. You put time limits in place, you put work requirements in place, you give people an incentive to go get a job. So yes, incentives matter.

Q: So the government's only concerned with control, and they almost disguise it as charity. Is that right?

A: I think when it comes to the Democratic party, and the Left in general, I think they have a stake in the dependency that they've encouraged among blacks. They present themselves as the party of big government. They present government as a force for good in the lives of individuals. "We're the party that gives you things."

So what you have in the black community is an over-dependence on government, whether it's in terms of jobs: working in the military, the post office, civil service jobs and so forth, or an over-dependence in terms of handouts: welfare benefits, food stamps and so forth. But is an overdependence. It is something the Left counts on among blacks to keep them voting Democratic. I think they have no problem with this government dependency, whether or not it's doing the intended beneficiaries any good.

Q: They're actually wanting to keep generational poverty? Do you see it that way?

A: I don't, no, I wouldn't put it that crudely. I don't think they want to see poverty. I would argue, though, that their political interests in keeping this group of people, namely blacks, voting Democrat, supersedes everything else and so if one outcome is more poverty, that's of less concern to them than making sure blacks continue to pull the lever for Democrats.

Q: Let's change tracks here a little bit. The latest racial controversy to envelop America is the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson. So Eric Holder, the attorney general, is now investigating the local police for what he said were numerous complaints of racial bias. Do you see that as a right move?

A: No, I don't see Eric Holder's involvement at this stage necessary. I think that's being done more for optics. You know, Bull Connor is not running the Ferguson Police Department, even though I think this administration wants to pretend otherwise. We have these flare-ups like we have in Ferguson, or what we had with Trayvon Martin, and it always starts these discussions, but my concern is that we always have the wrong discussion.

We talk about tensions between the black community and police. We talk about racial profiling, or poverty, or unemployment in these neighborhoods, but I think those are really effects more than causes.

I think the real root problem here is black criminality, the black crime rate, which is largely a taboo subject that we don't like to talk about. Blacks are only 13 percent of the population, but they commit around half of all murders in this country. So long as that is the case, there is going to be tension between the police department and the black community. Blacks are arrested at two to three times their numbers in the population for all manner of violent crime, all manner of property crime. So long as that is the case, young black men are going to be viewed suspiciously by blacks and whites alike. If you want to change the perceptions that drive racial profiling, you need to change the behavior behind those perceptions, and that is, frankly, a conversation a lot of people, black or white, don't want to have. Instead we talk about these side issues, do cops value black lives the way they value white lives? Does America value black lives? Most of the killings of blacks are done by other black people. The problem is not cops shooting blacks. The problem is blacks shooting blacks, and I think that gets back to culture, and we need to talk about that.

When you try to have that conversation, like Bill Cosby has tried in the past, you get your head handed to you, because the black elites out there want to keep the focus on white behavior, not black behavior. They're not interested in black personal responsibility and playing that up. They're interested in playing up racism in America and continuing down that road with that narrative. And if you get off of that narrative, they push back very hard.

Q: You're known for black responsibility, not just here in the United States, but also in the UK. I was wondering if you saw British comedian Russell Brand, where he produced that online video where he attacked you for betraying your racial roots. Did you see that?

A: I did see that.

Q: What do you think of that? Do you want to take this opportunity to respond to him?

A: What was disappointing about what he said was him playing the white card, the white problem in black America

Q: It's easy.

A: It's a huge problem and it starts at such a young age.

You learn not to speak a certain way, not to dress a certain way. Black kids who are bookish get made fun of, they get beat up. This is a huge problem. We all know the stepping stones to the middle class in this country is an education, industry, thrift, deferred gratification. Those are not the values that permeate the black ghettoes in America. The whole suggestion that blacks speaking a certain way, acting a certain way, are acting white, or are not legitimately black, I find that was what was most disappointing about what he said because that mentality has done such great damage to black progress in this country over the past century.

Q: I just want you to comment a little bit about your book. I think it was a stunning wake-up call to the failure of liberalism and its intended beneficiaries. Is there anything you want to add?

One of the reasons I wrote the book is because I don't think my views are all that unique in the black community, among the black rank and file. There is a disconnect between the black leadership and their agenda and among the needs of the black poor, and what people in the community see happening around them.

I just want people to keep that in mind. A lot of blacks don't self-identify as conservative, but a lot of the attitudes, a lot of the beliefs that I put forward in this book are reflected in the black community. I wanted to give voice to some of those folks, because the media tends to run to the Al Sharptons and the Jesse Jacksons, and to get comments whenever we see a Ferguson, or a Trayvon Martin. I wanted people to know there are other views out there, and I wanted to give voice to them.

Q: This has been Jason Riley. You need to get his book called, "Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make It Harder for Blacks to Succeed."

Bennett Group Financial Services LLC, based in Washington, D.C., is a comprehensive financial services firm committed to providing opportunities to clients' as they seek long-term financial success. Its customized programs are designed with the potential to help grow, lower overall risk and conserve client assets by delivering a high level of personalized service and skill. For more information, call 866-286-2268 or visit www.bennettgroupfinancial.com.

Securities offered through Western International Securities Inc. (WIS), member FINRA/SIPC. BGFS and WIS are separate and unaffiliated entities.

About Dawn Bennett
Dawn Bennett is CEO and Founder of Bennett Group Financial Services. She hosts a national radio program called Financial Myth Busting http://www.financialmythbusting.com

She discusses educational topics and events in the financial news, along with her thoughts on the economy, financial markets, investments, and more with her live guests, who have included Rock Legend Ted Nugent, as well as Steve Forbes and Grover Norquist. The show is a great complement to Dawn's monthly investing seminars that take place at Tysons Corner in McLean, VA, where she discusses investing.

She can be reached on Twitter @DawnBennettFMB or on Facebook Financial Myth Busting with Dawn Bennett or dbennett@bennettgroupfinancial.com

For more information on this press release visit: http://www.releasewire.com/press-releases/release-3.htm

He has formed a band called The Refusers, whose debut album is “Too Big to Fail” with the signature song, "The Gold's All Gone."

Washington, DC -- (SBWIRE) -- 09/25/2014 -- Nationally Syndicated Financial Myth Busting Radio Show with Host Dawn Bennett, CEO of Bennett Group Financial Services, LLC, on September 14, 2014, interviewed Michael Belkin, publisher of the Belkin Report, who has formed a band called The Refusers, whose debut album is "Too Big to Fail" with the signature song, "The Gold's All Gone."

Here is the interview with Michael Belkin:

Q: So, the gold's all gone, is that right? I didn't realize you were a budding rock star.

A: Yeah, my alter ego is a musician. Before I worked on Wall Street, and was at Salomon Brothers back in the '80s and '90s. Before that I was a professional musician in LA. Anyway, I thought I would put the Belkin Report to music. So I have an album coming out called "Too Big to Fail." The first song is "The Gold's All Gone." It's about the David Stockman message, we went off the gold standard and the Fed printed money till it was blue in the face, and now we have a huge credit bubble and everything. So that's what that song's about. People can listen to it and download it for free on Google "The Gold's All Gone" by The Refusers.

Q: One of the key lyrics in your song is, "The gold is all gone," and we know the Federal Reserve bristles at the suggestion that they should be audited. So, what do you think? Are you suggesting, in this song, that the gold is, indeed, all gone?

A: Well, yes. That was the original inspiration for the song. Jim Rickards has been really good at this, too. He's another newsletter writer and portfolio manager, and friend of mine. If you look at the amo unt of credit that's been created since we went off the gold standard and the increase in the money supply without any backing, we basically have a system, the lyrics to the chorus are, "This is a funny money government standard. The gold's all gone." So, in order to equate where the rubber meets the road, we have to get back to a solid money system, the number of gold to make it work, Jim Rickards says, is something like $9,000 an ounce. That's how much the credit system is out of whack, how much money they've printed with no backing.

Q: But if the U.S. inflates and devalues the dollar, will gold go up in price? Is that what Rickards is saying?

A: Right now I'm actually bullish on the dollar against other currencies.

Q: Is that short-term?

A: Yes. What's going on internationally, the dollar's actually a defensive asset, believe it or not. It sounds crazy, given what I just said before but other places are actually worse.

For instance, the Euro is going like gangbusters despite having negative intere st rates there. You put your money in the bank and lose money. It's not that much different here, but there, it's getting more extreme. They would prefer to be in dollars rather than Euros. The world is a messed up place at the moment. The dollar is a defensive asset as money is seeking safety, believe or not.

Q: Right, but when serious problems for the dollar surface, and they will, and the U.S. has little to no gold to fall back on, it seems to me that the U.S., with its back to the wall, may become a dangerous entity in the world. I'm just wondering if it would be possible for those runni ng the U.S. to lose their heads in response to a desperate economic situation?

A: Absolutely. This morning the headlines from the BIS, which is the central bank's central bank said,"Central banks inflating 'elevated' asset prices. By fostering risk-taking and search for yield, accommodative monetary policies contribute to an environment of elevated asset price valuations and exceptionally subdued volatility." They have a bunch of warnings, this club of central banks, you know? I mean, this is the Fed and all these other guys get together, and they are saying this. They are warning in vestors that there's a bubble. Elevated asset prices are the definition of a bubble.

Q: I did read that there was some committee they're putting together to help to get through this time period, the Federal Reserve. Did you read about that?

A: Yes, a bubble-bursting committee put together to help figure out how to exit out of this because I think, to your point, they're extremely concerned. But in main line media, the headlines don't seem to get that point across.

Q: No, not yet. Sentiment hasn't changed. I'm very skeptical about that committee.

A: My experience with government, people that work for the government is that they are more interested in covering their rear end than anything.

I think that's what the Fed is trying to do. It realizes things are out of control, and there's going to be a liquidation, a deleveraging. What they've done is leverage up the system.

My clients are big hedge funds. I walk around Manhattan and I go up and down the elevators and I see hundreds, if not thousands, of hedge funds that are doing things on leverage, you know, doing all kinds of arcane strategies.

It's 2007, 2008 all over again. This time, it's subprime auto loans and collateralized debt obligations. It's some of the same stuff, but it's different. They've leveraged it up, and when you po p the bubble, the air comes out and you go into a forced liquidation mode. I think that's what we're on the brink of.

Q: Let's talk about the U.S. stock market since you were talking about inflating asset prices. September is historically the most difficult month of the year for equities. So, what's your take on September so far?

A: The main thing that's going on that I seem to be talking about, nobody else in the media is, is a lot of stocks are down and sectors are down. An example is year-to-date, utilities have outperformed the index by 5 percent while industrials have underperformed by 5 percent.

That's huge. The cyclical stuff is being sold. Now, for instance, the Dow is up about 2 percent on the year, the Russell is down on the year and the NASDAQ is up 13 percent on the year. So, people have been squeezed into a smal ler and smaller number of stocks.

Just to give you an idea of what I'm working on this weekend for next week's report, which comes out Monday, I have 88 names on my sell list that are down, on average, 21 percent from their 2013, 2014 highs, the most we topped out earlier this year. These are names like GM, down 19 percent, Federal-Mogul down 20 percent, Freeport-McMoRan down 12 percent, Eaton down 15 percent, Micron's down 7 percent. Casinos: Wynn down 26 percent, Caesar down 52 percent. Carl Icahn's biggest holdings, RIG down 38 percent, NUAN minus 34 percent, Hertz down 10 percent, Herbalife down 44 perce nt.

I could go on and on but we don't have all day, so the point is stocks are going down beneath the surface of this market, and portfolio managers are underperforming. Goldman Sachs just reported that 77 percent of large cap portfolio managers have underperformed the S&P 500 this year. So they're being squeezed. Their stocks are going down while there's this kind of weird, strange bid by high-frequency trading and who kno ws who else.

Q: In your September 8th Belkin Report, you asked a very important question, "What are the implications of this extreme divergence of sector performance in the face of the relentless bid and stock index futures?

A: I'm thinking my title for next week's report will be "The Bride of Frankenstein", the Boris Korloff movie, the first one. He creates Frankenstein and he says, "It's alive, it's alive! In the name of God! Now, I know what it feels like to be God." That's like Bernanke and Greenspan, you know? Making the tech bubble and the housing bubble. Now, we've got Yellen in there and this is like the Bride of Frankenstein or rather "The Grandmother of Frankenstein." The plot of that movie was she brings the monster back to life.

They've resurrected this crazy mental ity of investors to buy the gifts, you know? The GDX is up 13 percent year-to-date.That's the gold mining stock ETF. Even after a sell-off recently in the last week or two, the GDXJ, which is the junior gold mining ETF, is up 21 percent. Viewed in a long-term time frame, the XAU gold stock index is at the same level it was 30 years ago.

So no progress even though we're up on the year. This stuff was really slammed over the last two or three years. So, we have an everything bubble of everything else, and portfolio managers are being punished. Their stocks have been down 20, 30 percent from their peak, most 77 percent, people like Carl Icahn. Yes, 77 percent of money managers are underperforming. So I think it's like a huge torture chamber.

All we're waiting for is the outflows from public investors to start. When people start calling and redeeming and saying sell, then the market starts going down. I think that should happen as we go into year-end. The Dow's up two percent, the S&P's up seven, but I think we're set up for a deleveraging.

I counsel my clients, which are mostly big institutional investors, be careful out there. The main thing would be trying not to lose money. Look at buying gold stocks on dips.

Q: With the looming end of QE3 program in October, the U.S. stock market's going have to pass an important test, right? Wouldn't you say that? How do you think it' s going to fare? Is that going to be the instigator to a down market?

A: We sure got a bit of a preview of that in the last week, we have fictitious asset values. We've had five, almost six years of zero interest rates and QE now, and people have come to take this all for granted.

The bond prices, junk bond prices, emerging markets, equities, everything, except for gold stocks basically. I think it's sent a shudder through the market this week with just the idea of a 25 basis point interest rate increases coming.

Oh, my God, the bond sold off my points. It gives you an idea how vulnerable these fictitious asset prices are based on nothing but a central bank policy that's being criticized by their own central bank of central banks.

I can't believe that we've gone on for five or six years with this kind of craziness found pushing up asset prices.

Q: I would say I would hope that with the end of QE3 that investors will come back and focus more on the fundamentals, like revenues and earnings and profit margins. I'm just wondering though, Michael, what shape do you think C orporate America is in today? Is it really going to inspire people to invest in them?

A: Good point. A lot of the growth has come internationally in the revenues and profits now. China slows down, and now we've got a war in Europe, and sanctions.

The global PMI index has fallen huge in August. Switzerland, Sweden, down three, four points, Australia, down three points, Indonesia, down three points. Basically two to six-point drops around the globe. We have a slowdown in China, a slowdown in Europe now, where those were big growth areas. Russia and now the oil companies. I think it's going to be negative growth, to answer your question.

For U.S. corporations, it's going to take a while for that idea to filter through to people, and the market needs a good shakeup. It's not like it's the end of the world. The best investo rs I know, over the long term, they buy low. They wait for bargains. They wait for things that are sold that are down.

Q: A lot of us have been waiting for four or five years, though.

A: Wow. Well, the gold stocks have already done that. So, you know, the GDX fell almost 70 percent from peak to trough 2011.

Q: But you think it has another 25, 35 percent rise to go?

A: I think if the bear market is over in gold stocks, I think you should buy the dips. Let m e preface that with saying there's a problem with materials having the weakest sector performance forecast right now.

I have a forecasting model. I think in people's heads they group gold stocks and gold in with things like steel and related materials. As the economy slows down, a lot of materials slow down.

I'm not bullish on copper or things like that, or base metals, or base metal miners, or anything like that. So, it's strictly gold and if you get back to the song. I think gold is a defensive asset that will become attractive as investors realize everything else is overinflated and going into liquidation.

Q: What do you make of gold mining and manufacturing gold bullions' sudden ignorance of geopolitical risk?

A: I think it's an opportunity. A lot of the noise that you see in the daily trading is these high-frequency trading computer bots. As far as I'm concerned, they're not that sophisticated at this point in their evolution about what is really going on, and they only can affect things in illiquid markets.

All you need on the part of large institutional investors who began to sniff a problem with safety and a problem in the financial system again with European banks, and something that can't be papered over. I think that will ignite a bid under gold and gold mining stocks.

Q: You meet with hedge funds and institutional clients. Are they talking like that? Are they seeing it? I think they are caught up. I call it the Stockholm Syndrome where the captives identify with their captors, butI went around New York and met a lot of people a couple months ago. I got the sense that they're playing along with the FED and they're just sitting on the edge of their chairs , waiting to push the sell button. Some as soon as some technical levels break.

Everybody knows it's a bubble but they're participating in it. They're playing along with it, but they know it's wrong. They are prepared to go the other direction in a big way.

Q: The U.S. seems to that the U.S. dollar is here to stay worldwide, and that de-dollarization isn't happening worldwide, and gold is kind of like a passing fancy. Do you think this is just classic hubris, or is it just simple arrogance?

A: The dollar is definitely getting replaced as a global reserve currency, slowly but surely, and we're almost encouraging that with all these sanctions. It's been an oil-backed currency essentially since we went off the gold standard. If you wanted to buy oil, you had to pay for it in U.S. dollars, and now that is changing. Ultimatel y, it's bearish for the dollar, but I'm bullish for a deleveraging trade on the dollar just for a trade at the moment. I don't think now is the time to think of dollar collapse. I think that's further down the road.

Q: Isn't the rising price of gold a huge embarrassment to the U.S. government, because it actually devalues the dollar?

A: Absolutely. When you watch the way things trade, and whenever gold begins to break out, somebody comes in and sells billions of dollars at the open. Gold has always been a managed asset, where they try to suppress it

because it provokes a loss of confidence in the dollar.

There is a problem right now. So, if the dollar is rallying short-term for defensive reasons because other currencies are worse, like the Euro, then a lot of people would say, "Oh, then that's bad for gold." So, that's part of the psychology that's been knocking gold the last few weeks, but I think gold is more of a defensive asset than the dollar. I'm not super bullish on the dollar. I think gold will surpass the dollar.

Q: Please give us your thoughts on gold and Fed Chair Janet Yellen and a grade.

A: I came out of the University of California at Berkeley, Haas Business School, which is where Janet Yellen taught before she became Vice Chairman of the FED and Chairman. She was never my economics professor when I was there but I had to sit through her lectures in the Alumni Association, and you asked me to grade her.

I would give her an A+ as a sedative o r a sleeping aid. Literally, people were falling asleep in the room, and this is sort of like crEme de la crEme of Silicon Valley. Stanford and Berkeley are where all the tech people from Facebook and Google came from and they were literally falling asleep. It's like there's no there-there in her speeches, and and in terms of actual reality about what she does, I would give her an F. The motto of the Haas Business School is "Challenge the status quo." That's the first principle, and, Janet Yellen is the status quo.

The status quo at the moment is corporate socialism. She's replacing market forces with this idea of planning and management. If you study history, this is not really that much different than what FDR tried to do or what Hitler tried to do, replacing competition and market prices with this phony baloney academic idea of managing things, and ultimately hoping it sticks together for a while. Ultimately, however, a huge collapse happens. They can't suppress the market forces forever. I think that's what she's done. She's suppressed market forces, suppressed interest rates, created artificial credit, and she's sent all these phony signals to investors to invest in these assets that are overvalued and to corporations to buy back their own shares. The whole thing is just one huge speculative bubble.

Q: In one of your Belkin Reports you wrote how Yellen's quantitative easing policies are destroying the market's discounting mechanisms. What does that exactly mean?

A: When interest rates should go up and down, very simple concept. I used to teach Ron legislative assistants there about how the FED works and market forces. I mean, what is the matter with interest rates going up and down to reflect supply and demand? Do we live in a capitalist system or a com munist system? Basically by capping interest rates at zero for five years now that is the phoniest signal of all time. If you've taken that signal, you have done non-economic, non-rational things as an investor.

As for companies these kind of things end badly. We have short experiences like this with Greenspan and Bernanke, where they kept interest rates at 2 percent, or something, and it created a big bubble, but it only lasted a year or two. We are coming out of the biggest experience of manipulating credit conditions with bad consequences for investors.

It's all a huge speculative bubble and investors need to be ahead of the pack and not get trampled when the sentiment changes. The only thing that's keeping this us right now is this phony baloney sentiment that everything's okay, and once that sentiment changes, the world's going to look like a very different place.

Q: Where can investors get your report, if they can afford it, and also your music that's coming out?

A: They can Google "The Belkin Report," and then the band is The Refusers. We've opened for The Black Keys.
We've played the Washington state festival. The idea of doing the band is that people are going to be looking for answers. I think the world's going to change.& nbsp; I think we're living in a kind of a phony baloney period and I want to point people in the right direction.

Bennett Group Financial Services LLC, based in Washington, D.C., is a comprehensive financial services firm committed to providing opportunities to clients' as they seek long-term financial success. Its customized programs are designed with the potential to help grow, lower overall risk and conserve client assets by delivering a high level of personalized service and skill. For more information, call 866-286-2268 or visit www.bennettgroupfinancial.com.

Securities offered through Western International Securities Inc. (WIS), member FINRA/SIPC. BGFS and WIS are separate and unaffiliated entities.

About Dawn Bennett
Dawn Bennett is CEO and Founder of Bennett Group Financial Services. She hosts a national radio program called Financial Myth Busting http://www.financialmythbusting.com

She discusses educational topics and events in the financial news, along with her thoughts on the economy, financial markets, investments, and more with her live guests, who have included Rock Legend Ted Nugent, as well as Steve Forbes and Grover Norquist. The show is a great complement to Dawn's monthly investing seminars that take place at Tysons Corner in McLean, VA, where she discusses investing.

She can be reached on Twitter @DawnBennettFMB or on Facebook Financial Myth Busting with Dawn Bennett or dbennett@bennettgroupfinancial.com

For more information on this press release visit: http://www.releasewire.com/press-releases/release-3.htm

Washington, DC -- (SBWIRE) -- 09/22/2014 -- Remember those games we played as children, "ring around the rosie," "hide and seek," "musical chairs," and "blind man's bluff?" Well, the U.S. financial markets are now a game of musical chairs says Dawn Bennett, CEO of Bennett Group Financial Services. In her latest missive to investors, she cautions them to not get caught in the market when the music stops. Investors will soon feel like they have been blindfolded and their portfolios tagged "out" when the next crisis hits says Bennett.

She points to Argentina's default, Janet Yellen, jobs data, and all the lessons learned during what she calls a sizzling financial summer. These are an indication of things to come, in particular Argentina.

Argentina missed a deadline for paying interest on restructured government bonds and defaulted on its debt for the second time in 13 years. Standard & Poor's cut its credit rating from CCC, to C. The president of Argentina stunned its creditors with a scorched-earth cram-down plan in which all bonds and debt were stripped of their existing indenture and converted to local law bonds. This drastic move burns all bridges and destroys good will with the international creditor community, which likely leaves Argentina unable to access global markets for the foreseeable future.

Adding to the fire, Argentina's peso sank 1.5 percent the last week in August to $8.40 per dollar. This is the biggest drop since the government devalued the currency 15 percent in the week ending January 24th, 2014. Even in Argentina, black markets are abound, where Argentines go to avoid government limits on purchases of U.S. cur rency, and weakened the peso to a record low of $13.95. Can the U.S. learn from Argentina?

Is Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen even watching this to see the fallout and wondering if this is where the U.S. is going? Does she ever see anybody else's situation? The situation in Argentina is a lesson that the U.S. is careening down the same ruinous road as Argentina. It has lost exports: so have we; it has lost jobs; so have we; it h as record and burdening debt levels, and so do we. Argentina has been living beyond its means. So have we. The overall economic disarray is the same, just like in the U.S. It seems Argentina's luck is finally running out. What about ours?

Initially the Federal Reserve was playing a game of hide-and-seek with us since 2009. Look at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange's 2012 10-K, it shows its customer base as institutional and individual investors, major corporations, manufacturers, producers, and governments. However in 2013, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, published another 10-K, as they have to do every year, and the customer base looks exactly the same, except they added another name to the list, central banks. Central banks are now admitting to buying on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.

As the U.S. government reported the w orst jobs number of 2014, U.S. stocks closed at record highs. Why even pretend that there is a stock market? If bad news is still good news, then that means the Federal Reserve and other central banks might as well disclose everything ahead of time, ahead of each trading day, to everyone. We should all know what they're buying, since they're rigging it. No one could understand why the markets were rising in '09 and '10 and '11 and '12 and '13, but it was because of the Federal Reserve. It was because central banks were actually buying into the S&P 500, buying into the Dow.

This is unprecedented. They've never done this, which means the game they are playing is no longer hide-and-seek. It's actually now out in the open. It's more like musical chairs trying to ensure there is only one player left in this market, the Federal Reserve.

Having a permanently growing stock market is really a marvelous innovation, isn't it? It just takes all the worry out of investing. Financial professionals don't even need to go into work every day, they can practically set their watch to the daily new all-time highs based on nothing but the Federal Reserve buying with absolutely no concern that the percentage of Americans in the last six years working a full-time job has gone down dramatically, and that the quality of American jobs is extremely poor today, and that the wealth of the typical American household has fallen precipitously.

Median household income has declined for five years in a row, and dependence on the U.S. government is at an all-time high. Even the rate of home ownership in the United States has declined for eight years in a row. But the stock market keeps going up. It's almost like Steven Spielberg is making a movie on the U.S. economy, and the special effects department, the Federal Reserve, is breaking new ground in visual effects for stock markets by erasing all the volatility and fluctuation. Removing all the risk. Rubbing out all the volatility.

The U.S. stock market movement up is not based on what it should be, such as the fundamentals of US companies. It's not based on the fundamentals of the United States economy. It's based on the fundamentals of the Federal Reserve. Because there is no need to spend time analyzing the investments in your portfolio with the best data available there's really not much to do except to try to convince the Federal Reserve to give us a daily heads-up on what we should buy. This would eliminate the need for what we thought was important in the past to succeed in investing, like market research, spending time with money managers, brokers, financial advisors, even using common sense. It doesn't matter anymore.

This is what financial nirvana looks like, except too bad it doesn't feel like that ecstasy to most Americans. Being a citizen of the United States at this point can be compared to playing the adult version of the game musical chairs. We are all so mesmerized by the voice of the Federal Reserve that we don't see the chairs being removed from the game. Investors need to ask, the next time the music stops, and there is only one player left, who will it be?

All market data references are sourced to Bloomberg terminal database.

Bennett Group Financial Services LLC, based in Washington, D.C., is a comprehensive financial services firm committed to providing opportunities to clients' as they seek long-term financial success. Its customized programs are designed with the potential to help grow, lower overall risk and conserve client assets by delivering a high level of personalized service and skill.

For more information, call 866-286-2268 or visit http://www.bennettgroupfinancial.com

Securities offered through Western International Securities Inc. (WIS), member FINRA/SIPC. BGFS and WIS are separate and unaffiliated entities.

About Dawn Bennett
Dawn Bennett is CEO and Founder of Bennett Group Financial Services. She hosts a national radio program on called Financial Myth Busting http://www.financialmythbusting.com

She discusses educational topics and events in the financial news, along with her thoughts on the economy, financial markets, investments, and more with her live guests, who have included Rock Legend Ted Nugent, as well as Steve Forbes and Grover Norquist. Listeners can call 855-884-DAWN as well as take podcasts on the road and forums for interaction.

The show is a great complement to Dawn's monthly investing seminars that take place at Tysons Corner in McLean, VA, where she discusses in vesting.

She can be reached on Twitter @DawnBennettFMB or on Facebook Financial Myth Busting with Dawn Bennett or dbennett@bennettgroupfinancial.com

For more information on this press release visit: http://www.releasewire.com/press-releases/release-3.htm

Washington, DC -- (ReleaseWire) -- 09/17/2014 -- Will the Scottish vote on Independence be the fabled "Black Swan" asks Dawn Bennett, CEO of Bennett Financial Services Group, in her latest missive to investors.

I wonder if the issue of an independent Scotland would actually be something of a black swan for the U.S. and world financial markets? According to Reuters, the international news agency, investors this past month, August 2014, have pulled approximately $27 billion out of UK financial assets. This is the biggest capital outflow since the Lehman crisis in 2008. Concern has continued to grow about the economic and financial fallout if Scotland secedes from the United Kingdom. Even Morgan Stanley said that the daily equity flow data pointed to "some of the largest UK equity selling on record." The Independent, a UK news outlet reported that "Britain's banks have been quietly moving millions of banknotes north of the border to cope with any demand by the Scots to withdraw cash in the event of a "YES" vote.

Billionaire George Soros added another interesting perspective saying, "This would be the worst possible time for Scottish independence." His reasoning is that there is a resurgence of nationalism around the world and it's on a rise not just within Europe and Scotland, it's everywhere. He believes that since World War II, the U.S. and Europe have been the main advocates of the prevailing international political and economic order. But in the last five years, both the U.S. and Europe's economic weakness (due to heavy debt and the lack of ability to pay the debt) has created this vacuum that ambitious regional powers have sought to fill, including Scotland.

This collapse of international governance has given rise to a plethora of unresolved political and economic issues around the globe. We've seen them. There's been Ukraine. There's Iraq. There's Syria. There's terrorism. How about the terrorist group ISIS? All of which could cause a tremendous amount of human suffering worldwide. Even China has its own worries about a possible Scottish black swan as its own independence movements with Tibet and the province of Xinjiang are issues for them. They believe any step anywhere in the world towards separatism can catalyze a chain reaction. This could be the reason they recently implemented a quantitative easing program two days before the referendum to ease the pain of possible independence movements. All this made me wonder if the Scots say "YES" to the referendum vote on this Thursday, Sept. 18, 2014, will this event be the long-awaited black swan of the U.S. and world markets? A black swan describes a high-risk destabilizing event unforeseen by most people. A "Yes" vote for independence in Scotland's referendum on Thursday could prove to be a perfect moment for what I call the "Scottish black swan" to appear.

I believe the country of Scotland could pose a systemic market risk to the world financial markets, in particular, to an already weakened U.S. economy. The Federal Reserve is the only support of the U.S. stock market right now. Former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown even called this Scotland's "moment of destiny," and that has both negative and positive implications. The rest of us familiar with the U.S. economic fragilities, see the Scots' referendum as a highlight of extreme financial risk and complexities.

Even BNP Bank said, "What seems certain is that in the immediate aftermath of a yes vote, world financial markets will be rattled." What does this mean to investors? Not only will they be rattled after a yes vote, but the cat will be out of the bag even on a no vote, because they're not going to stop there. If they decide to vote no, they'll bring this vote up again. Eventually, there will be a yes.

Until now, the Scottish independence referendum has flown under the radar in the United States except from anyone of Scottish descent. 2014 for the U.S. markets has brought significant volatility and high levels of risk driven and passed by a highly weakened economic environment. The geopolitical issues seem to be escalating around the world. Add to this the prospect of this Scottish economy being set adrift or cut apart from the UK currency, the Pound, and U.S. investors have every reason to fear the U.S. markets will have turbulence.

We don't believe we will get any more relief from additional Federal Reserve funding to bail out the U.S. As of today, even if they did try another cash infusion, it's become ineffective, which is painful for the majority of Americans. Ninety percent feel there has been no recovery since the last recession of 2008, and the Federal Reserve knows this. Every three years, the Federal Reserve releases a survey regarding U.S. consumer finances; it's an accumulation of data on everything from household net worth to American income.

The 2013 survey just came out and it confirmed that the majority of Americans feel left behind, yet media headlines still continue to beat the positive drums saying, "everything is in recovery. You should feel good about what's going on." But we don't!

Here's an excerpt from the brief the Fed just recently released and it's going to give investors an idea about their real concerns, not what the media's telling them. It's the real concerns of the Federal Reserve. They wrote, "while the ongoing interventions by the Federal Reserve have certainly boosted asset prices higher, the only real accomplishment has been a widening of the wealth gap between the top 10 percent of individuals that have dollars invested in the financial markets and everyone else. What monetary interventions have failed to accomplish is an increase in production to foster higher levels of economic activity." Then they continued by saying, "With the average American still living well beyond their means, the reality is that economic growth remained mired at lower levels as savings continue to be diverted from productive investment into debt service. The issue, of course, is not just a central theme here in the United States but to the global economy as well."

So, after five years of excessive monetary interventions, what they're saying is that the U.S. debt levels have yet to be resolved while at the same time the U.S. media continues to tell investors that the economy's on the mend. Even the Federal Reserve knows it isn't the truth.

All market data references are sourced to Bloomberg terminal database.

Bennett Group Financial Services LLC, based in Washington, D.C., is a comprehensive financial services firm committed to providing opportunities to clients' as they seek long-term financial success. Its customized programs are designed with the potential to help grow, lower overall risk and conserve client assets by delivering a high level of personalized service and skill.

For more information, call 866-286-2268 or visit http://www.bennettgroupfinancial.com

Securities offered through Western International Securities Inc. (WIS), member FINRA/SIPC. BGFS and WIS are separate and unaffiliated entities.

About Dawn Bennett
Dawn Bennett is CEO and Founder of Bennett Group Financial Services. She hosts a national radio program on called Financial Myth Busting http://www.financialmythbusting.com.

She discusses educational topics and events in the financial news, along with her thoughts on the economy, financial markets, investments, and more with her live guests, who have included Rock Legend Ted Nugent, as well as Steve Forbes and Grover Norquist. Listeners can call 855-884-DAWN as well as take podcasts on the road and forums for interaction.

The show is a great complement to Dawn's monthly investing seminars that take place at Tysons Corner in McLean, VA, where she discusses in vesting.

She can be reached on Twitter @DawnBennettFMB or on Facebook Financial Myth Busting with Dawn Benn ett or dbennett@bennettgroupfinancial.com

For more information on this press release visit: http://www.releasewire.com/press-releases/release-3.htm

Co-author of “Wall Street Secrets for Tax-Efficient Investing: From Tax Pain to Investment Gain”

Washington DC -- (ReleaseWire) -- 09/15/2014 -- Nationally Syndicated Financial Myth Busting Radio Show with Host Dawn Bennett, CEO of Bennett Group Financial Services, LLC, on September 7, 2014, interviewed Bob Gordon, President of 21st Securities and Co-author of "Wall Street Secrets for Tax-Efficient Investing: From Tax Pain to Investment Gain" on tax inversions.

"These tax inversions are going to be an impetus to move us to a new place in the United States. Part of me says they should close the tax loop and not allow companies to do this. However it's very difficult to be a CEO and not take advantage of this because it does benefit the shareholder if the merger makes sense.

"Tax rates are so low in certain countries and some companies, particularly dealing with intellectual property, where they can set up a rationale for the earnings really taking place in Ireland or Bermuda, when really they're originating in large part in the U.S. Those companies pile up huge cash balances and then say they can't bring it back to the U.S. because they'd have to pay a tax.

"Companies then want a tax-free period in order to repatriate the money. That would just start a cycle of this. That part of the tax code really needs to be looked at hard.

"Warren Buffett played a huge role in Burger King's purchase of Tim Horton's, a Canadian company. Some call him a hypocrite for regularly complaining that he doesn't pay enough in taxes while, helping a major U.S. company flee the America corporate tax system altogether," concludes Ms. Bennett, who has been a money manager for 30 years.

Here is the interview with Bob Gordon:

Q: When Buffett's Burger King tax inversion deal was announced, do you think somewhere on a golf course, you could hear a presidential putter being snapped over a presidential knee?

A: Funny. Probably. Mr. Buffett talks about things like derivatives just being weapons of mass destruction but then he's a large player and has some innate naked put options on the Nikkei index, which he shouldn't be doing, or the insurance companies shouldn't be doing that, but to be the biggest supporter against derivatives and being up against player derivatives is sort of like business as usual.

Q: Yes, it's contradictory. We know the Obama administration is upset about tax inversions, a practice by which an American corporation acquires a foreign company and moves its headquarters out of the U.S. to benefit from lower tax rates abroad.

Please explain how companies are able to effectively renounce their American citizenship and why they actually would want to do that?

A: In the case of Burger King and Tim Horton's, at the end of the day, it's that Tim Horton's, the Canadian company, is going to be the surviving tax-paying entity, that's going to own a subsidiary that's doing business in the United States.

That's really the key, is that after this combination, the headquarters is in Ireland or Canada or someplace outside the U.S. So it's really just an acquisition merger, but it's being spurred not by the acquirer, but by the target. That's what's sort of odd, is that Burger King's the one that's starting this, but Burger King's really asking to be taken over by a Canadian company called Tim Horton's. After they combine together, Burger King might very well control the entity or bring in the bulk of the revenues.

Q: So President Obama said he was considering an executive action to curtail the abilities of companies to invert themselves abroad like Burger King. What do you think about that, and is this the smartest way to stop inversions? What about lowering our corporate tax rate?

A: Let's say there's a Coopers Industries that leaves for Bermuda nd Arthur Andersen does the same and the government changed that after you actually left the country and reincorporated in another country, that there was a special tax to that.

This inversion wave is sort of a second way of getting there, a company has to do a merger with a foreign company that's in the same business.

As far as the corporate tax rate, I don't think that's really what drives us. I think it has more to do with the way that we compute the taxes. It's computing the taxes on worldwide income. A lot of countries don't do that. We have different ways that we allow companies to play with sticking their intellectual property in tax-sheltered countries. I think it has more to do with the way our taxes are computed than the actual tax rate. I believe Burger King paid a 27 percent tax rate in the U.S. and will pay a 27 percent tax rate in Canada. That's what they're pointing to as to why this shouldn't be looked at as being tax driven. In the end, Burger King has around $500 million of unrepatriated funds outside the U.S. that they can't touch, that they will be able to touch once this becomes a Canadian company.

Q: In America we have a 35 percent corporate tax rate. It's just absurdly uncompetitive versus, let's say, Ireland, that's at 12.5 percent. You really don't think that they're going over there for better taxes? Burger King is one issue, but what about the other companies that are doing this?

A: It's my opinion they're not doing it for better taxes, but it's not a lower tax rate, I don't believe. I believe it's the way the tax base is calculates and what the tax is levied on that's the real savings that they're going to get. This has been going on for quite some time.

It was the tax director of Intel 30 years ago who testified to Congress that if he was in private practice when he was setting up Intel that it would be malpractice for him to set it up as a U.S. company. He then explained to Congress why that was. We're dealing now with exactly what he was trying to warn Congress about 30 years ago.

Q: President Obama has accused these companies of being unpatriotic. What do you make of that allegation? Do you think the barometer of patriotism and how much a company pays in taxes is actually fair?

A: I don't necessarily see a connection between those, but think it's just a political football that he's trying to deal with as best he can. This has been going on for a long time. Weyerhaeuser turned itself from a corporation to an REIT. It doesn't pay tax anymore. The government is giving rulings to REITs so cell towers and server farms are real estate and can be turned into REITs. So the government just keeps releasing the corporations from these burdens.

If you look at MLPs, Master Limited Partnerships, they are supposed to be indistinct of the energy business. The government has allowed people to just drive fracking water around to be called MLPs and avoid the corporate tax. So the government's giving rulings in REITs and MLPs, letting corporations out of the corporate base. So your point is that if it's so high that everybody's trying to do everything they can to get out of it, then maybe there's something to lowering the rate which would change the impetus to do this tax arbitrage. I think people will always want to pay less in taxes, so I don't know that these issues are ever going away.

Well using a term like unpatriotic is extremely powerful. However if you're a CEO or a chairman of a company, and you found a law that could save you hundreds of millions of dollars that you could actually use to build out the bottom line or to give back to your shareholders, what's wrong with that?

Q: That's exactly the point. That's what they're supposed to be doing. I think the only issue here is that, in many of these inversions, the U.S. individual taxpayer is sort of paying a toll for this to happen. This is great for the tax-exempt investors and great for people that own these shares in their IRAs and 401ks, but for people that hold them in their own name, they're actually paying a tax in order to get the benefit of lower taxes in the future. From the individual investor's perspective, why are inversions taxable to shareholders?

A: It's really not that Burger King's taking over Tim Horton, it's that Tim Horton's taking over Burger King. If someone owns Burger King stock, and it was taken over for cash or by another company, it could be a taxable event. If it was a U.S. company, and they could've traded shares of another company, maybe it could've been a tax-free event.

But it was not meant to do that and not that it's the exact same thing, but something's happened like this at Kinder Morgan, where people have owned this Kinder Morgan MLP for a long time, and now, they're going to pay a giant tax bill just to be able to start deducting taxes again. So taxes and tax arbitrage are driving a lot of the corporate finance that's going on out there. It's always been a factor, but it's what's driving the business completely at this point.

Q: How does the capital gain from an inversion merger actually affect a taxpayer's adjusted gross income? Could it raise the tax rate on ordinary income?

A: Well, we have various tax brackets, and as you go into a higher tax bracket, it doesn't bring the earlier income up to be taxes at the higher level, but the income that you make is taxed at that higher level. So if someone had an income of $249,000 and then had an inversion capital gains tax of 100,000, it's going to increase their income to $349,000, but the amount that's going to be taxed at the higher level is only the amount above $250,000. So, it's not that it's driving everything up into a higher tax rate, but that the income they're being forced to take is taxed at the highest possible rate.

Q: In my mind, Obama hasn't done anything in six years regarding tax reform. I would think that a real political leader would have addressed corporate tax reform with some type of revenue-neutral proposal to Congress. Could we end up with some type of bipartisan tax reform like we did in 1986 that helped to launch two decades of nearly uninterrupted growth? Do you think we'll get there with this? Will this be the impetus to get us there or to get Obama there?

A: I think you're going to have to get past the gridlock. I think that Obama's had budgets that have dealt with these things every year since he's been around, and Congress doesn't pick up the ideas he has, not that the ideas he has would balance the budget, but he certainly had this whole issue about hedge funds getting carried interest, and there's estate issues with things like grants. I think that Obama's proposals have been to close down those loopholes. I guess that hasn't gone anywhere. Representative Camp has come up with a whole tax reform proposal, but everybody at this point thinks it may just die when he leaves Congress. It isn't that people aren't talking about this, it's just that they're not talking to each other.

Bennett Group Financial Services LLC, based in Washington, D.C., is a comprehensive financial services firm committed to providing opportunities to clients' as they seek long-term financial success. Its customized programs are designed with the potential to help grow, lower overall risk and conserve client assets by delivering a high level of personalized service and skill. For more information, call 866-286-2268 or visit www.bennettgroupfinancial.com.

Securities offered through Western International Securities Inc. (WIS), member FINRA/SIPC. BGFS and WIS are separate and unaffiliated entities.

About Dawn Bennett
Dawn Bennett is CEO and Founder of Bennett Group Financial Services. She hosts a national radio program called Financial Myth Busting http://www.financialmythbusting.com

She discusses educational topics and events in the financial news, along with her thoughts on the economy, financial markets, investments, and more with her live guests, who have included Rock Legend Ted Nugent, as well as Steve Forbes and Grover Norquist. The show is a great complement to Dawn's monthly investing seminars that take place at Tysons Corner in McLean, VA, where she discusses investing.

She can be reached on Twitter @DawnBennettFMB or on Facebook Financial Myth Busting with Dawn Bennett or dbennett@bennettgroupfinancial.com

For more information on this press release visit: http://www.releasewire.com/press-releases/release-3.htm

The Bennett Group Financial Services CEO Expands D.C.-based Show Nationwide

Washington, DC -- (ReleaseWire) -- 08/26/2014 -- Dawn Bennett, host of "Financial Myth Busting" radio show & CEO of Bennett Group Financial Services, has inked a deal with Radio America to expand her Washington, D.C.-based show nationwide.

The show is also lengthening to two hours, airing Sundays at 11 AM ET.

"Our message of being true to what is really happening in the financial world as it relates to geopolitical events has struck a cord with listeners," said Bennett. "We've brought an array of guests on the show to report on subjects that deserve more attention. Partnering with Radio America allows us to take these important ideas to a much larger audience, and I couldn't be more excited."

"Dawn has a way of cu tting through the noise and providing clarity in the cluttered world of financial and economic opinion," the Chief Operator Officer of Radio America, Mike Paradiso, said. "We're excited to bring Financial Myth Busting to Radio America's listeners."

Financial Myth Busting, a show designed to help Americans separate financial facts from fallacies, quickly became the most sought-out financial radio show in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan market, airing on WMAL, the region's No. 1 news and talk station.

Bennett regularly interviews CEOs, politicians, best-selling authors, and even the occasional celebrity. Past guests have included Sen. Rand Paul, David Stockman, Jim Rickards, Patrick Byrne (CEO of Overstock.com), Dr. Ben Carson, Mort Zuckerman, Magnus Carlsen (No. 1 chess player in the world), Marc Faber, Ted Nugent, Grover Norquist, David Malpass, MEP Daniel Hannan, Steve Forbes, Rep. Trey Gowdy, Peter Buffett (the musician son of Warren), Dambisa Moyo, David Walker, and many more.

"We are thrilled to be able to double our radio time as well as be broadcast far and wide on dozens of stations throughout America, Canada, and even Alaska. So if listeners can't get enough of my thoughts on financial markets, the global economy and world events sh aping our time, then they are in luck," quipped Ms. Bennett.

Information about the program is available at www.FinancialMythBusting.com

In addition to airing on 50+ terrestrial stations, the show will also stream live on RadioAmerica.org. Nationwide clearance began Aug. 17, 2014.

About Bennett Group Financial Services LLC
Bennett Group Financial Services LLC, based in Washington, D.C., is a comprehensive financial services firm committed to providing opportunities to clients' as they seek long-term financial success. Its customized programs are designed with t he potential to help grow, lower overall risk and conserve client assets by delivering a high level of personalized service and skill.

For more information, call 866-286-2268 or visit http://www.bennettgroupfinancial.com.

Securities offered through Western International Securities Inc. (WIS), member FINRA/SIPC.

BGFS and WIS are separate and unaffiliated entities.

Dawn Bennett is CEO and Founder of Bennett Group Financial Services. She hosts a national radio program called Financial Myth Bustin g http://www.financialmythbusting.com.

She discusses educational topics and events in the financial news, along with her thoughts on the economy, financial markets, investments, and more with her live guests, who have included Rock Legend Ted Nugent, as well as Steve Forbes and Grover Norquist. The show is a great complement to Dawn's monthly investing seminars that take place at Tysons Corner in McLean, VA, where she discusses investing.

She can be reached on Twitter @DawnBennettFMB or on Facebook Financial Myth B usting with Dawn Bennett or dbennett@bennettgroupfinancial.com

For more information on this press release visit: http://www.releasewire.com/press-releases/release-3.htm

Washington, DC -- (ReleaseWire) -- 08/05/2014 -- Nationally Syndicated Financial Myth Busting Radio Show with Host Dawn Bennett, CEO of Bennett Group Financial Services, LLC, on July 27, 2014, interviewed Sidney Powell, author of the new book, "Licensed to Lie: Exposing Corruption in the Department of Justice."

Sidney Powell is a long-time lawyer at the U.S. Department of Justice. She's talking about the corruption that's happening in the U.S. Department of Justice and she names names. She didn't change the names to protect the guilty. She talks about why American companies have an entirely new reason to fear the federal government and the true stories behind some of the government's biggest headline-grabbing cases.

She pulls no punches when it comes to talking about her former colleagues at the U.S. Department of Justice. She describes how the government settles an outcome and then does whatever it needs to do to try to make that outcome happen, even if that involves hiding evidence or inventing evidence, or any other duplicitous and unethical type of behavior. It just wants to win at any cost.

Powell is one of the most distinguished attorneys in America, as her appellate experience is unprecedented. Powell has led counsel in more than 500 federal appeals, resulting in more than 180 published opinions. Powell's also considered one of the greatest whistle blowers in modern history.

In her new book, she discusses the corruption she personally witnessed while involved in the U.S. justice system, calling them cruel, illegal and unethical practices being used by prosecutors in the U.S. Department of Justice.

Powell's book is a real-life warning about the real human cost and consequences by federal prosecuto rs that don't have conscience enough to acknowledge the suffering that they have caused, and a President that has rewarded them by promoting them to powerful political positions.

Here is the interview with Sidney Powell

Q: Where did you come up with the title of your new book, "Licensed to Lie"?

A: It came about because we could not get the Bar Associations or the courts to do anything about this egregious misconduct, so these prosecutors are literally licensed to lie.

Q: So the Bar Associations and the courts have turned a blind eye to these grievances? Have you or anyone filed anything against these prosecutors?

A: Yes, we did. Bill Hodes, who's one of the leading legal ethics experts in the country, filed grievances against former White House Counsel Catherine Rumler, and against Matthew Friedrich, and against Andrew Weissmann, who was General Council Deputy Director of the FBI.

The one against Friedrich, filed in Texas, bounced like a rubber ball despite the horrific Michael Morton case that had just been resolved there where a man was found innocent by DNA evidence after he'd served 25 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit, and the district attorney had become a state district court judge. That was just egregious, so we thought the Texas Bar would pay attention to that but according to them, our complaint didn't even state a grievance, even though it was 30 pages long and included yellow highlighted evidence the prosecutors deliberately hid for six years.

Then the one against Catherine Rumler and the D.C. Bar just kind of wafted away. The one against Andrew Weisman, filed with the New York Bar, was held for about 14 months while he was General Council of the FBI, and then they punted it to the Department of Justice Office of Professional Responsibility without even telling us they were doing that, even though the Department of Justice was defending Mr. Weisman on the charges.

Q: It sounds like a hidden agenda. Do you feel the same?

A: Yes. There was definitely an agenda to protect these prosecutors from any sort of way of being held accountable for their wrongdoings, particularly once they had been promoted to their extremely powerful positions. Mr. Friedrich was the acting Attorney General for the Criminal Division in the Department of Justice, who micromanaged the prosecution against former United States Senator Ted Stevens. This unseated him and changed the balance of power in the United States Senate, and facilitated the enactment of Obamacare, among other things.

Q: You wrote a brave book naming names. You didn't change the names to protect the guilty?

A: No, I didn't change the names.

Q: You've got guts. You mentioned some of the judges who actually went along with whatever the government is doing no matter what, yet we never seem to hear about judges being impeached or otherwise tossed out. Is there any accountability remaining for federal judges, and have you heard from the Department of Justice since this book came out?

A: There has been dead silence from the other side since the book came out, which I think is damning in and of itself. Judge Alex Kozinski, who wrote the forward for the book, said he hoped people would respond. So far the only factual correction I've received is somebody told me I had the floor of the courthouse wrong for a particular scene.

Q: I guess that's good news and bad news. Good news you were highly accurate. I wonder is the Department of Justice a political tool for whoever is in the White House?

A: It is. It's becoming increasingly politicized in the last 10 to 15 years. I can't pinpoint exactly when it started by any means, but I can tell you that the last 10 years, it's done nothing but become increasingly political. A tool for the President to promote whatever his agenda is.

I would like to see the Department of Justice restored to the bastion of integrity that it used to be and to teach prosecutors that their job is to seek justice, not convictions. People should not be rewarded for prosecutorial misconduct. Right now Attorney General Holder's protecting I don't know how many corrupt prosecutors.

The public interest group called the Project on Government Oversight, http://www.POGO.org came out with a report that I featured in an article at the New York Observer, observer.com talking about the multiple hundred instances of prosecutorial misconduct, intentional and reckless, identified within the department by its own records, confirmed even by the Office of Professional Responsibility, which, as we discussed earlier, is loathe to confirm any misconduct at all. Holder won't even release the names of those prosecutors, or the cases in which the conduct occurred.

Q: What's the reason why he's not releasing those names?

A: Obviously he wants to keep them on board there.

Q: One of the fundamental responsibilities of a prosecutor is to charge defendants only with the conduct that is clearly criminal, and yet in your book, you speak of high profile prosecutors of the Unit ed States Department of Justice that actually charged multiple defenders with a crime that wasn't even a crime at all. This in turn destroyed these innocent people and their lives. Why is there such a lack of human conscience today in the Department of Justice, and is this only happening in the DOJ? Are there other departments or government agencies suffering from the same unethical behavior?

A: I'm sure it's more widespread than the Department of Justice. The Department of Justice right now seems to be the worst, because it's the largest arm of the government that can bring these massive cases against large institutions or high profile individuals. I'm sure it's more widespread than that. The agencies are running ramp ant, causing all kinds of problems for people, making up their own rules as they go along.

Q: Is there some form of reward that we don't know about that they are getting by doing this?

A: No one seems to be stopping them. Where are their supervisors?

Q: Right. Who's paying attention?

A: Exactly. Why isn't somebody paying attention? We gave Mr. Holder every opportunity to pay attention to this. We wrote and had hand-delivered to him multiple letters to bring this to his attention, and I went to DOJ and had a meeting with his immediate subordinates and got absolutely nowhere. So his statements that he would clean up the Department of Justice after he had to dismiss the indictment against Senator Ted Stevens for the egregious prosecutorial misconduct there are all a farce. It's been worse since he took over than it was before, and it was bad enough before.

Q: Let's fast forward to today. There is this recent $7 billion settlement against Citibank, which resulted from the bank's role in misleading investigators on the quality of mortgage-backed securities. Why wasn't Fannie and Freddie co-conspirators? From your experience, what is the appetite of the DOJ to go after wrongdoing in the public sector?

A: Not very high at all. Fannie and Freddie deserve a full investigation and complete transparency for the taxpayers, and instead they have been protected. The people who left there as h eads, despite the disasters they caused, got $180 million between them in bonuses, which to me is unfathomable. All that was the result of pure misconduct and corruption.

Q: Even with the IRS scandal, the DOJ's not even looking into that. There appears to be willful destruction of damning evidence from everything that we've seen and know so far. Do you think anyone there will ever be held accountable?

A: I think Judge Emmet Sullivan, about whom I've also wr itten about at observer.com, may very well help us get to the bottom of the IRS scandal just as Judge John Sirica helped get to the bottom of the Watergate scandal.

Q: What is your blog?

A: My blog is http://www.seeking-justice.org and I'm on Twitter at @SidneyPowell1.

Q: Your book is filled with a lot of shocking revelations, one after the other. I can't help to think that it's really aroused a lot of reaction. Have you heard from any of your former employees?

A: I have heard that the Department of Justice and the U.S. attorneys hate my guts.

Q: That's scary. What about Congress?

A: I was hoping to hear from Congress, but I have not. I'm hoping that the Department of Justice will take a serious look at itself and make some meaningful changes. Apparently, that may take a new administration.

Q: There haven't been any calls for hearings or investigations based on what you wrote?

A: No, not at all. There's so many problems right now that the country is dealing with and Congress is dealing with, Benghazi, the IRS, everything.

Q: So it will be put on the back burner?

A: I don't know.

Q: Why is it that federal prosecutors aren't ever penalized for wrongdoing?

A: Judges don't want to look at it. They want to believe that prosecutors are there to seek justice the way they used to be, and it's hard for them to face this, I think. It's not that they aren't willing to do something about it. It's more of an abject sort of denial problem, which is one of the reasons why I wrote the book, and even called to task the judges that I think so much of. The men that I had to write about in the book and criticize, most of whom were men that I have admired for years, and still do, to a large extent. Somebody told me the other day that o ne of the people in the book was one of his friends, and he just couldn't believe that she had done this. I said, "Well, unfortunately a lot of people in the book are my friends, too, but if you are going to be a true friend, I think you have to speak up and hold your friends accountable. Otherwise, you're part of the problem." You've heard of he who makes the rules never goes to jail for breaking them?

Q: Yes, I think it was the old movie, Billy Jack, that had a line in it something to the effect of "If the sheriff can break the law, there is no law."

A: Yeah, that's true. I just want the government held to the same standards by which it seeks to hold everyone else, and will send other people to jail for destroying evidence. If any of us did it, they'd put us in jail, but IRS can do it, and it's no problem. Or someone get promoted because they have facilitated a supervisor's, or a President's, agenda. It's an outrage.

Q: This is what you called this epidemic of Brady violations. Can you explain it to us?

A: Yes, those are actually Judge Alex Kozinski's words. He's the Chief Judge of the Ninth Circuit, and he wrote the forward to the book in his personal capacity, and spoke on it the other day at the Cato Institute, where we did a live forum that's going be rebroadcast on Book TV, and is also at cato.org on their website.

Brady violations are a Constitutional violation by prosecutors who have a legal, ethical and Constitutional obligation to provide to the defense any evidence that is favorable to the defense, mitigates the punishment against the defendant or impeaches or und ermines the credibility of any of the government's witnesses. The Supreme Court said in a case called Brady versus Maryland back in 1935, that prosecutors have this duty to disclose evidence. They hold all the cards. They're the ones who investigated the crime scene, or investigated the crime, put the case together, have access to all the witnesses. You can't refuse to talk to the government. They can put you in front of a grand jury, and you can take your 5th Amendment rights there, but they can also put extraordinary pressure on you and even get a grant of immunity to compel your testimony. So the government has the entire deck stacked in their favor, and it's only fair that they be required to give to the defendant anything they have that shows that he's innocent, or mitigates his punishment.
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Q: This epidemic of Brady violations, has it just happened in the last couple of years or has this been going on at the DOJ for the last 10 to 15 years?

A: It's probably been going on for at least 10 to 15 years, maybe longer than that. It's a big problem, also, in the states. One of the solutions I've proposed, and I know other lawyers have also, including Barry Scheck at the Innocence Project, who does this work all the time, freeing people by DNA evidence who have been wrongly incarcerated for decades, literally. It's called the Brady Compliance Order. I drafted a very clear and precise one that I'm uploading to my website so that judges could enter it in state or federal cases and compel the government to produce the actual documents and actual exhibits that show a defendant may be innocent, because all of this is for a jury to decide. If we're going to have a jury system and trust the jury system, we need to make sure they get all the evidence. The same is true for even bench trials. Nobody can accurately decide a case when somebody's siding the ball.

Q: Sidney, I thank you so much for bringing this important issue to the public's attention. "License to Lie" is available on Amazon, and at www.Licensedtolie.com It's got the links for Amazon, Barnes &am p; Noble, all the book outlets that people can order the book from. It's also on Kindle and Nook, and all the eBook websites. Sidney's blog is www.seeking-justice.org and that's a source of current information about misconduct by the federal prosecutors.

About Bennett Group Financial Services LLC
Bennett Group Financial Services LLC, based in Washington, D.C., is a comprehensive financial services firm committed to providing opportunities to clients' as they seek long-term financial success. Its customized programs are designed with the potential to help grow, lower overall risk and conserve client assets by delivering a high level of personalized service and skill.

For more information, call 866-286-2268 or visit http://www.bennettgroupfinancial.com.

Securities offered through Western International Securities Inc. (WIS), member FINRA/SIPC.

BGFS and WIS are separate and unaffiliated entities.

Dawn Bennett is CEO and Founder of Bennett Group Financial Services. She hosts a national radio program called Financial Myth Busting http://www.financialmythbusting.com.

She discusses educational topics and events in the financial news, along with her thoughts on the economy, financial markets, investments, and more with her live guests, who have included Rock Legend Ted Nugent, as well as Steve Forbes and Grover Norquist. The show is a great complement to Dawn's monthly investing seminars that take place at Tysons Corner in McLean, VA, where she discusses investing.

She can be reached on Twitter @DawnBennettFMB or on Facebook Financial Myth Busting with Dawn Bennett or dbennett@bennettgroupfinancial.com

For more information on this press release visit: http://www.releasewire.com/press-releases/release-3.htm

Washington DC -- (ReleaseWire) -- 08/04/2014 -- Even a Machiavellian U.S. Government can't hide the financial truth says Dawn Bennett, CEO of Bennett Group Financial Services, in her latest warning to investors.

In the United States government today, there is a sense that there is very little agreement about what is considered right and wrong. There is a Machiavellian system in place that suggests the ends matter more than the means. We believe it's because they no longer believe in the same values and principles that our Founding Fathers taught us, which is a free people cannot survive under a guiding Constitution unless they remain virtuous and morally strong.

The most promising method of securing a virtuous people is to elect virtuous leaders in every department. Samuel Adams, one of the Founding Fathers of the United States, once said, "Neither the wisest Constitution nor the wisest laws will secure liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt. He, therefore, is the truest friend to the liberty of his country who tries most to promote its virtue, and who will not suffer a man to be chosen into any office of power and trust who is not a wise and virtuous man.

"If Samuel Adams was alive today, he would see that from politics to the economy, it just seems like the ends matter more than the means.

Given what's happened in the last 10 years, one wonders how the U.S. government will ever regain citizen trust, but it seems it doesn't need to. Through the media and other forms of communication, call it propaganda, government officials believe the American people think that they are doing their job, and that citizens never lost trust in them. They believe citizens blissfully buy into everything they tell us, especially when it comes to the state of the U.S. economy, which I believe is one of the greatest propaganda coups of our time.

Does Washington think we are idiots? Does the government's failure to admit their mistakes undermine their credibility? Whether it's the Bureau of Labors statistics or the White House, they have simply fleeced the American people in broad daylight and convinced us to believe all is well in the U.S. economy, except it isn't. Bernanke, now Yellen's experiment in market central planning in which a central bank's balance sheet is far more important than fundamentals, has been one of the greatest investing perversions to ever emerge in the U.S. markets.

Yes, there's been no downside risk for the last five years, and this is all courtesy of the Federal Reserve, where stock returns have been disproportionately skewed to the upside, and economic numbers they put forth, just tell us that we're in recovery. However, we are starting to see a modest warning shot across the bow of what may be coming down the line.

This past week, July 21, 2014, the Dow Jones Industrial average had its biggest decline in seven weeks starting with the four percent decline index, which lowered its full-year revenue forecast quite substantially.

Next Amazon reported their ugliest earnings in years, which caused the stock to tumble 10 percent and weighed heavily on the NASDAQ index.

First it reported an earnings-per-share loss of $0.27 versus the $0.15 they were expecting, which was a net result of $126 million in net income. The operating loss was only $15 million, compared to what they were expecting, of $64 million.

However, this appears to be the result of pulling forward revenue into second quarter, since the company also announced at the same time that the third quarter loss would be a whopping $410 million to $810 million, which would be their biggest operating loss in years. But according to the propaganda spin that came out immediately in the media after they announced, this bad news was due to the weather and it had absolutely nothing to do with the state of the U.S. consumer. Yeah right.

Next came Caterpillar's earnings, the bellwether industrial company. Starting in December 2012 and continuing through today, Caterpillar has reported 19 consecutive months of declining global year-over-year retail sales. The last and only time it had 19 consecutive months of such a decline was the period starting in October of 2008, just when Lehman filed for bankruptcy.

So this great financial recovery we are supposed to be in feels more like the great financial crisis. Too many American investors are being too easily manipulated into believing what others want them to believe. Investors need to avoid becoming investment victims and look at the reality. They need to ask who can be trusted?

All market data references are sourced to Bloomberg terminal database.

Bennett Group Financial Services LLC, based in Washington, D.C., is a comprehensive financial services firm committed to providing opportunities to clients' as they seek long-term financial success. Its customized programs are designed with the potential to help grow, lower overall risk and conserve client assets by delivering a high level of personalized service and skill.

For more information, call 866-286-2268 or visit http://www.bennettgroupfinancial.com

Securities offered through Western International Securities Inc. (WIS), member FINRA/SIPC. BGFS and WIS are separate and unaffiliated entities.

About Dawn Bennett
Dawn Bennett is CEO and Founder of Bennett Group Financial Services. She hosts a national radio program on called Financial Myth Busting http://www.financialmythbusting.com. She discusses educational topics and events in the financial news, along with her thoughts on the economy, financial markets, investments, and more with her live guests, who have included Rock Legend Ted Nugent, as well as Steve Forbes and Grover Norquist. Listeners can call 855-884-DAWN as well as take podcasts on the road and forums for interaction. The show is a great complement to Dawn's monthly investing seminars that take place at Tysons Corner in McLean, VA, where she discusses in vesting.

She can be reached on Twitter @DawnBennettFMB or on Facebook Financial Myth Busting with Dawn Bennett or dbennett@bennettgroupfinancial.com

For more information on this press release visit: http://www.releasewire.com/press-releases/release-3.htm

Washington, DC -- (ReleaseWire) -- 07/28/2014 -- What do Asset Bubbles and Pornography Have In Common? I Know It When I See It, says Dawn Bennett, CEO of Bennett Group Financial Services.

What do stock and bond market asset bubbles and pornography have in common? A Supreme Court Justice once said of pornography, "I know it when I see." That's what they have in common! she says in her latest warnings to investors:

That simple notion of "I know it when I see it" is showing up everywhere in the market place. The perfect example is this unknown public company CYNK Technology (pronounced cynic), ticker symbol CYNK. The stock ran up from 6 cents per share in June of 2014, to last week, July 14, 2014, as high as $21 per share in a month. At $21 per share, that's a $5 billion valuation for the company at its current peak, July 20, 2014. The thing is it only has one employee, a $1.5 million loss on the books from last year, a really unappealing website, and one major shareholder that owns 90 percent of the equity in the company. It's based in Belize, Central A merica, and it's registered in Nevada. The stock is up 36,000 percent since June of 2014. It is impossible to justify the reasons it shot up through the roof, but it did. Companies like CYNK Technology were a major cause of the last financial crisi, yet no one saw the problem coming; asset bubbles. So, what do asset bubbles and pornography have in common?

Fifty years ago last month, a United States Supreme Court decision regarding pornogra phy was handed down in 1964. The case was Jacobellis v. Ohio, and it was argued whether a French film with sexual content could be banned by the state of Ohio because of its obscenity laws. Now, according to Supreme Court justice Potter Stewart, the film was not hardcore pornography, and how he determined that was his now famous quote, "I know it when I see it." Justice Potter Stewart explained that although he could not define what hardcore pornography was, he said, "I know it when I see it." The same goes for smart people about today's asset bubbles, which are in almost every asset class, yet no one seems to want to acknowledge them. Even when the last bubble burst six years ago in October 2008, then Fed chairman, Ben Bernanke was asked why the Fed didn't see the problem coming, and his infamous quote was, "All bubbles appear obvious in retrospect."

Speaking on the topic of asset bubbles last week, July 14, 2014, current Fed Chair Janet Yellen said, "The committee recognizes that low interest rates may provide incentives for some investors to reach for yield and those actions could increase vulnerabilities in the financial system to adverse events. While, prices of real estate, equities and corporate bonds have risen appreciably, and valuation metrics have increased, they remain generally in line historical norms." To which I say, actually they don't. It seems to me that the only people that don't see the bubbles are the ones creating them. It's up to investors to pay attention before the current stock and bond asset bubble finally bursts and causes havoc.

Here are a couple of warning signs from this past week of July 14th, 2014 that investors should heed. J.P. Morgan's earnings slid 7.9 percent on weak trading volume and near record low mortgage production according to the company. Their gap revenue was down 3 percent to $24.45 billion, and it was even down further on non-gap basis. It wa s a negative 2.3 percent to $25.35 billion. The company reported their earnings per share as good news. What boosted the earnings? J.P. Morgan used a reserve release of $521 million to buy back common stock, which boosted earnings. So they raided the piggy bank to report a profit. This is a troubling trend in the banking sector, and it isn't just J.P. Morgan who's suffering from plunging trading volume and new record low mortgage production. It's across the board so far for all the banks that have been reported.

Citibank is another example. They reported they beat earnings per share at $1.05. Well it was this one-time, non-reoccurring charge of nearly $3.8 billion, a settlement that's going to the U.S. Justice Department for fraudulent mortgage backed securities sales, which shows up as merely a pro forma adjustment of net income when, in reality, none of it was cash flow. According to the media, they beat their earnings per share. So, Citibank's stock rose 3 percent. They had a $3.8 billion settlement and may be $7 billion in total when done paying, and the stock shot up 3 percent. It's unbelievable. The other part is Citibank's revenues actually dropped 4 percent. When big banks like Citibank and J.P. Morgan are having reduced and lower revenues every quarter for the last two years and their earnings per share are only going up and having a positive response because they've adjusted something in their balance sheet, that isn't a good investment.

To finish off that week's another "I know it when I see it" moment last week was when Carl Icahn, poster child for leverage buyouts, on CNBC, said, "I'm very nervous about the U.S. equity markets." It's the older, smarter market pros that are actually telling us that this gig is up. Right now potential costs have crossed potential benefits in the marketplace, and there's no way to regain them again. So, when you hear people like Ica hn basically saying, "I know it when I see it," investors need to listen to avoid another stock market downturn.

All market data references are sourced to Bloomberg terminal database.

Bennett Group Financial Services LLC, based in Washington, D.C., is a comprehensive financial services firm committed to providing opportunities to clients' as they seek long-term financial success. Its customized progra ms are des igned with the potential to help grow, lower overall risk and conserve client assets by delivering a high level of personalized service and skill. For more information, call 866-286-2268 or visit www.bennettgroupfinancial.com

Securities offered through Western International Securities Inc. (WIS), member FINRA/SIPC. BGFS and WIS are separate and unaffiliated entities.

Dawn Bennett is CEO and Founder of Bennett Group Financial Services. She hosts a national radio program on called Financial Myth Busting http://www.financialmythbusting.com

She discusses educational topics and events in the financial news, along with her thoughts on the economy, financial markets, investments, and more with her live guests, who have included Rock Legend Ted Nugent, as well as Steve Forbes and Grover Norquist. Listeners can call 855-884-DAWN as well as take podcasts on the road and forums for interaction. The show is a great complement to Dawn's monthly investing seminars that take place at Tysons Corner in McLean, VA, where she discusses in vesting.

She can be reached on Twitter @DawnBennettFMB or on Facebook Financial Myth Busting with Dawn Bennett or dbennett@bennettgroupfinancial.com

For more information on this press release visit: http://www.releasewire.com/press-releases/release-3.htm

Washington D.C. -- (ReleaseWire) -- 07/25/2014 -- Nationally Syndicated Financial Myth Busting Radio Show with Host Dawn Bennett, CEO of Bennett Group Financial Services, LLC, on July 20, 2014, interviewed Nina Rees, President and CEO of National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.

Economic and financial literacy is actually the key to get us out of our financial mess in America says Ms. Bennett, a 30 year veteran money manager. "It has to start in elementary school and go through high school, as well as at home. So when people start life as an adult, they will have the financial knowledge they need and avoid 'the school of hard knocks.'"

"I think we do suffer from economic and financial illiteracy in the U.S., and for the past decade, we've allowed people into political office that essentially have full use of our savings accounts, in my mind. They seem to be fulfilling their own political ambitions at the expense of our present and future lives. We've had this decade of over spending with no plan to slow down, or better yet, no exit plan to actually stop putting this heavy burden on all Americans. I call this negative behavior economic and financial illiteracy, which means I think we all need a course in economic and financial literacy," concludes Ms. Bennett.

Nina Rees is the president and CEO of National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. She sets up charter schools and talks about the results that happened with this program and about how financial ignorance strangles American prosperity, and how public schools in America need to respond, and why, potentially, charter schools are actually uniquely positioned to help.

Previously, she served as the First Assistant Deputy Secretary for Innovation and Improvement at the U.S. Department of Education. In this capacity, she oversaw the administration of 28 grant programs supporting 1,300 projects and was responsible for spearheading innovative federal programs and policies such as school choice, charter schools, alternative routes to teacher certification, and school leadership.

Ms. Rees has authored more than two dozen policy briefs, and her articles and opinions have been published in the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post. Her mission is to help build an American education system that equips every child to achieve his or her born potential and to prepare all students for success in the 21st century, which is why she's championing the cause for charter schools, because in many ways, they are even outperforming public schools.

Here is the interview with Nina Rees:

Q: Given our general education system in the United States, can American children today be competitive, global American adults tomorrow?

A: It depends on where you are living and what schools you're sending your child to. In many of our communities, unfortunately, the quality of our education system is not as competitive as we need it to be in order to compete with a lot of the students in other countries.

The difference between now and 20, 30 years ago was that we could afford to only educate a few and have them be competitive against countries like South Korea, China and Singapore. But today, with a global marketplace and increasing competition for jobs coming from all over the globe, it's much more important for more of our students to not only master the skills, but also graduate college with abilities to run businesses and the intellectual capacity to create jobs rather than to be an employee.

Q: So, many educators feel their job is just to teach students how to think, how to read, how to do math, but don't you think that they should be teaching them basic life skills? Where do you come down on the divide between financial literacy and economic literacy?

A: It should be both. People need the basics and life skills are crucial, but if teachers focus on too many things, nothing gets done. I think they need to you start with the basics.

Depending on the community that you live in, some students can afford to do more than the basics and be pushed a little bit further. In a lot of inner-city communities, you have to start with the basics of math and reading at an early age, make sure that they have high-quality teachers in these schools so they can benefit from some of the other things that are important to succeed in life.

There are a lot of soft skills that can also be acquired in our schools. There's a great body of research, thanks to Angelo Duckworth and others, looking at how to build resilience and perseverance in students at an early age, because, ultimately, the students who do well after they graduate from high school and college are the ones who persevere and don't give up easily. Those not used to getting a lot of support are quick to give up and likely not succeed in life.

Q: So are school systems in America going to be getting that intricate about building the American student into such a tremendously competitive adult?

A: Increasingly they're going to have to, and what's great about charter schools, is that a lot of these schools are taking a step further and just not just focusing on academics, but also focusing on life skills.

A key way to really instill these principles comes from the home. If someone is coming from a broken home or a home where a mom is working two jobs, and he or she doesn't have exposure outside of the school to a lot of these community activities that build the person that he becomes, then it's important for the school to take on these responsibilities.

In many of our charter schools, Harlem Children's Zone is a great example in New York, they have taken on the responsibility of not only grooming students as successful in academics, but also as individuals who can leave school with the necessary skills to succeed in life. Athletics definitely are one of the skills to build the resilience and perseverance needed to compete and to stay the course.

Q: Last week, the Secretary of Department of Education, Arne Duncan, said that American schools need to start ensuring students achieve financial literacy. Is it a surprise that most students graduate from high school, or even from college, not being financially literate?

A: I was certainly surprised, and I think after the financial debacle we were in a few years ago, and now with the student aid financial crisis that we're in, I think if there's one lesson of these two things, it's that we need to make sure people have basic financial literacy as soon as possible, before even graduating from high school.

There are a couple of factors here that are important to point out. First of all, financial literacy introduced at an early age can also be a gateway to teaching math, and the more you bring the principles of why you're teaching math to life at a young age to children, the better and faster they learn math and appreciate math for the skills that it's teaching. So, it's easy and fun if you focus on it early on.

20 to 30 years ago, someone could get away with not knowing these basics, but only 1 in 10 students currently have the sophisticated financial literacy skills they need in order to succeed in life, and 1 in 6 don't have even the basics of balancing a check book mastered. We do have a crisis on our hands, but there are some easy solutions that schools can adopt, either through curricular changes or before and after school programs that can be introduced, in order to expose students early on and make sure that they actually master these skills before they go on to high school and graduate.

Q: Do you think it's possible that financial literacy in our youth today could be the key to economic recovery for our country?

A: It certainly is a component. The more people know about savings, the more they will avoid going into too much into debt.

There are many aspects to financial success in life. Our Social Security system is not going to be quite as lucrative as it is for some older Americans now. So, it's the notion of saving enough and the fact that people are living longer and a changing demographic and, lifestyle. I think these are all components that will lead to a healthier economic recovery and a happier life, right?

Q: Do you think that financial literacy, given the difficulty that our economy is in right now, will continue to take a back seat until it's seen as a legitimate academic discipline?

A: The fact that the Secretary of Education brought attention to this issue and that there is a Financial Literacy Month in April, along with many entities now focusing on financial literacy is big. There are also a lot of platforms that have been created over the years. There's an organization called Operation HOPE that has been focused on this issue for quite some time. The more attention we bring to this issue, the better. As a country, once we acknowledge there's a problem, we try to address it quickly, and this is one of those things that can be quickly and easily addressed.

Only four states right now, require financial literacy for students to have mastered before they graduate. Hopefully more states will try to build it into a curriculum, but the more you notify parents about the need for financial literacy, and the more educators are aware of the tools at their disposal outside of the classroom, the easier and faster it can be addressed.

Q: Is the charter school system addressing this issue? Do you have courses that are required for students?

A: No. Charter schools have been around for about 20 years. These are independent schools that operate outside of the school district infrastructure. In many cases, they have a degree of independence in exchange for raising student achievement. So, with that independence, they can come up with new ways of teaching and learning, and they can also adjust to these types of needs very quickly. Here, in DC, there's a school called Two Rivers that has a six-week financial literacy course that has led to the school's success in math, for instance.

So, we have a few examples of charter schools that have done a very good job with financial literacy, and we've been promoting what they do. But there is no central command post for the charter school movement. These are independent schools often run by entrepreneurs who come to this space with an aspiration to do things differently. So, depending on the focus of the school, they will focus on very different things, but, once you have examples of successful charters that are doing something like this differently, a lot of other charter schools will focus on them.

One of the things we've been trying to do is promote the concept of financial literacy so that more of our schools are looking at how they can instill these in their curriculum. Once it's in place and implemented in the right way, it can have a huge impact on math test scores, which is one of the measurement sticks in all of the state accountability systems right now.

Q: So, can you briefly talk about how charter schools are faring under the Obama administration? I know he's spoken, President Obama, a great bit about exploring education reform ideas. I'm just wondering, "Are charter schools among the reforms he's embracing?"

A: Absolutely. He has been a supporter of charter schools since he took office, and over the years, he has visited a number of charter schools and used his bully pulpit to really promote the concepts within charter schools.

Of course, as an advocacy organization, we always think that the president can do a lot more, especially on the financial side. One of the key things we need as a movement is growth, and the only way to grow the number of charter schools is by offering more seed funding to start these new schools. Right now we have over 1 million student names on charter school wait lists, so the demand for charter schools has also grown substantially over the years.

We have about 6,500 charter schools right now, serving over a little over 2.5 million students in 42 states and in Washington, D.C. So making sure that there's funding on the table to create and replicate our successful schools is extremely important to the success of our movement and, ultimately, the success of the students who stand to benefit from it.

Q: Nina, your parents did something very brave, I think, that, in turn, has inspired you to devote your life's work to championing this cause for charter schools. Would you mind sharing your personal story with us?

A: Sure. I'm an immigrant. I moved to the U.S. in 1983 from Iran after the revolution and the war with Iraq, and one of the reasons my parents left Iran was for my and my brother's education. They gave up a lot to come to this country. I think one of the things you quickly notice when you're here, though, is the opportunities at your disposal and how easy it is to access these opportunities if you have a good education.

Unfortunately, I feel that in many communities, there is no access to good education, and the only way to create opportunities is through charter schools. Charter schools are public schools. They're fully funded by taxpayer dollars, and it's just the question of having state legislatures enact laws that allow for their creation.

Q: So, no conversation on education can be complete without some discussion of Common Core. Can you explain what Common Core is and how it's going to impact this new drive to teach the basics of finance and how it's impacting what you're doing too?

A: Common Core Standards were envisioned initially by the National Governor's Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers. These entities came together right around when No Child Left Behind was being implemented to come up with ways to have different states align their standards against one another. As you recall, one of the drawbacks of No Child Left Behind was the fact that the federal government was allowing states to set their own standards, and through that, if your standards were low and your scores for the assessments you were using to measure student progress were set low, then you were able to get further flexibility without really impacting student outcome.

So these states came up with a common set of standards, and then decided if they each wanted to adopt them. A lot of these standards are actually rooted in what states have already done, so it was taking the best of what a lot of different states had done to create a rubric for a national set of standards. What complicated the problem is when the Obama administration took office, they incentivized adopting Common Core Standards through federal funding.

As a result, there's a perception that these are federal standards and that many states were coerced into adopting the standards. Now you have a few states that have decided not so much to give up the standards, but to not adopt the assessments associated with these standards, because there was also some funding on the table to create these assessments. One thing I should just mention to you about the assessments is that I actually think the assessments are much more important than the standards themselves.

You can have high bars. You can have aspirations to hit certain goals, but if you don't have a good pool to measure your progress against those standards, and if you're not tough around, where your cut scores are going to be to make sure students are, in fact, proficient and so forth, the standards become meaningless. So some states have decided not to adopt the assessments associated with the standards. They'll come up with their own assessments, and so the verdict on how effective the standards will be in these states, in my opinion, is still very much out. What's unfortunate about the debate on Common Core, first of all, is it has captured media headlines over and over, and I understand it's an interesting story, because of the philosophical divide on some of the issues at hand, but what's missing, is that in this day and age, we really should actually be aspiring to even higher international standards around financial literacy and how we're not competitive with China and Singapore and some of these other countries. To me, we should be aspiring to become better at those tests. This is missing the mark in some instances and that's where the bar should be.

Bennett Group Financial Services LLC, based in Washington, D.C., is a comprehensive financial services firm committed to providing opportunities to clients' as they seek long-term financial success. Its customized programs are designed with the potential to help grow, lower overall risk and conserve client assets by delivering a high level of personalized service and skill. For more information, call 866-286-2268 or visit www.bennettgroupfinancial.com.

Securities offered through Western International Securities Inc. (WIS), member FINRA/SIPC. BGFS and WIS are separate and unaffiliated entities.

About Dawn Bennett
Dawn Bennett is CEO and Founder of Bennett Group Financial Services. She hosts a national radio program called Financial Myth Busting http://www.financialmythbusting.com.

She discusses educational topics and events in the financial news, along with her thoughts on the economy, financial markets, investments, and more with her live guests, who have included Rock Legend Ted Nugent, as well as Steve Forbes and Grover Norquist. The show is a great complement to Dawn's monthly investing seminars that take place at Tysons Corner in McLean, VA, where she discusses investing.

She can be reached on Twitter @DawnBennettFMB or on Facebook Financial Myth Busting with Dawn Bennett or dbennett@bennettgroupfinancial.com

For more information on this press release visit: http://www.releasewire.com/press-releases/release-3.htm

Washington, DC -- (ReleaseWire) -- 07/18/2014 -- The U.S. Dollar May Have Reached Its Point of No Return Says Dawn Bennett, CEO, Bennett Group Financial Services, in her latest missive to investors.

George Orwell said, "Whoever is winning at the moment will always seem to be invincible." It seemed appropriate for this past week, July 7, 2014. I'm not talking about a particular athlete that is at the top of his game nor a particular company that is considered the best in their industry. I'm speaking about the U.S. dollar and the Federal Reserve. Both have seemed invincible for so many years, but now I wonder.

To my mind, the Federal Reserve has failed. The Fed told us that printing the dollar would equal growth, and in their effort to prove this hypothesis, the Federal Reserve embarked on Quantitative Easing I, Quantitative Easing II, Quantitative Easing III, Quantitative Easing IV, Operation Twist I, Operation Twist II, and at the same time kept interest rates at zero for over five years. All together, the Fed has printed nearly $4 trillion, and the end result has been the single weakest recovery in 75 years.

So I ask, "Just how pungent does today's economy need to smell before everyone understands it hasn't really been recovering? Actually, for the last few years it has been almost flat-line dead. Our first quarter GDP had a print of nearly negative 3.0 percent, and the Fed had the audacity to tell us, "We are recovering." The fact that the economy shrank like this despite all the Fed's interventions over the last five years is proof point-blank that the Fed's economy models and theories are wrong.

Now, the question being asked all over the world except for in America is, "Will the Federal Reserve be successful in assisted economic suicide of the U.S. economy, and, with that, the value of the U.S. dollar?"

In my opinion, perhaps the greatest crime committed by the Federal Reserve is the destruction of the American dollar. Since 1948, the dollar has been the world's reserve currency. Dollars are still accepted almost anywhere in the world, but I think its days are numbered. Since the 2008 economic crisis, the Fed's printing binge has driven the value of the dollar into the ground. Other countries have been forced to devalue their currency in order to maintain competitive prices for their export products, and now they aren't putting up with it anymore, which is why I believe de-dollarization of the world economy has begun.

The Federal Reserve's crazy experiment of printing money out of thin air is a trap set for all of us here in America as well as the rest of the world, and before the end of this decade, if there is still is a U.S. dollar around, it won't be as we know it today. I'm seeing a very significant shift taking place behind the scenes, and unfortunately, it is being appreciated by very few, this ongoing anti dollar/dedollarization of the world.

While our massively indebted administration has hopes to divert our attention of what's left of the U.S. dollar's impoverished existence, other countries like the BRICS; Brazil, Russia, India and China, are morphing into anti-dollar alliances. On June 10, 2014, Putin's economic adviser Sergey Glazyev actually published an article outlining the need to establish an international alliance of countries willing to get rid of the dollar in international trade, and also willing to refrain from using dollars in their currency reserves. That's strong evidence that the ultimate goal is to break the back of the U.S. dollar.

Even at the same time this was published, Russia announced a much-anticipated energy deal with China, which is the first step in breaking the petrodollar's stranglehold over the rest of the world. They're not going to settle any of their trading in dollars. They're going to settle their contracts in the Yuan and the Ruble. Both nations have admitted they're eager to move away from a U.S. dollar reserve currency, and they're actions are telling us they mean business, which is why I'm saying the U.S. dollar domination is probably coming to an end.

Unfortunately, there's even more that's driving the nail in the dollar coffin: the U.S. government's appalling arrogance over many years when it comes to the banking system worldwide. It has a reputation for bullying foreign banks. The latest one is the U.S. multi-billion dollar penalty on BNP bank, a French bank. The French have taken this very much to heart, so much so, that the French National Bank governor Christian Noyer and a member of the ECB's governing board said that, "The U.S. versus BNP bank case will encourage diversification from the dollar." He also continued by saying that "China has decided to develop the Renminbi as a settlement currency for worldwide use."

That statement, from the head of the French central bank and ECB member, was a direct threat to the world reserve currency, the U.S. dollar. If this current trend continues, soon the dollar will be abandoned by most of the significant global economies. The Federal Reserve's mismanagement and Washington's history bullying to get their way will make even former allies choose the anti-dollar alliance instead of the existing dollar-based monetary system. The point of no return for the dollar may be much closer than generally thought. In fact, I think the greenback may already be past its point of no return. The question all investors need to ask themselves is, "How should I position my investment portfolio in order to hedge against a weakening dollar?

All market data references are sourced to Bloomberg terminal database.

Bennett Group Financial Services LLC, based in Washington, D.C., is a comprehensive financial services firm committed to providing opportunities to clients' as they seek long-term financial success. Its customized programs are des igned with the potential to help grow, lower overall risk and conserve client assets by delivering a high level of personalized service and skill. For more information, call 866-286-2268 or visit http://www.bennettgroupfinancial.com.

Securities offered through Western International Securities Inc. (WIS), member FINRA/SIPC. BGFS and WIS are separate and unaffiliated entities.

About Dawn Bennett
Dawn Bennett is CEO and Founder of Bennett Group Financial Services. She hosts a national radio program on called Financial Myth Busting http://www.financialmythbusting.com. She discusses educational topics and events in the financial news, along with her thoughts on the economy, financial markets, investments, and more with her live guests, who have included Rock Legend Ted Nugent, as well as Steve Forbes and Grover Norquist. Listeners can call 855-884-DAWN as well as take podcasts on the road and forums for interaction. The show is a great complement to Dawn's monthly investing seminars that take place at Tysons Corner in McLean, VA, where she discusses investing. She can be reached on Twitter @DawnBennettFMB or on Facebook Financial Myth Busting with Dawn Bennett or dbennett@bennettgroupfinancial.com

For more information on this press release visit: http://www.releasewire.com/press-releases/release-3.htm