In the first half, monetary expert Craig R. Smith discussed how government policies are affecting market cycles, what he sees for the near future and the long term, and how vital it is to be prepared for the unexpected in today's fragile world. He contends that the recent passage of the $1.3 trillion Omnibus spending bill (which funds the federal government until Sept. 30, 2018) marks the beginning of the end for the American economy, as the deficit for this year will rise to $800 billion. Starting in 2020, we're going to run trillion dollar deficits for years to come, he continued, adding that the global debt is now higher than it was during the financial crisis in 2007.
"We have to go through a global reset," he warned, and this will likely include a big drop in the stock market accompanied by a period of high inflation. He predicts that this crisis will hit around the first quarter of 2020 when America will no longer be able to finance its ballooning debt. He cautioned that the US "petro-dollar," which has served as the world's reserve currency since the 1970s, is now facing competition from China's new "petro-yuan." He also was critical of funds that aren't backed by anything material like cryptocurrency, which he believes is going to fail.
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Arjuna Ardagh has traveled the world training more than 13,000 coaches to facilitate "awakening" of who they really are, beyond endless thought and reactive feeling. In the latter half, he shared ways in which people can achieve a kind of brilliance-- living in a continual state of fulfillment and energy. He interviewed over 400 such people to discover what they had in common. He found they had a positivity and a vision of something they were moving toward. Radical brilliance, he explained, has to do with becoming a vehicle for the evolution of humanity, and people's most amazing ideas often come "through them" rather than "from" them.
He outlined how four different co-existing phases give rise to brilliance, such as the movement of awakening (something beyond the limits of your mind) into creative flow, and intention into accomplishment. Ardagh pointed out that practical factors such as diet and supplements can affect peak brain performance, and that prayer, directed to a mysterious force or something bigger than yourself, can have beneficial effects. He also noted that misfortune and adversity can be turned around and work in a person's favor in terms of self-reliance, and accessing wisdom beyond the personal.
News segment guests: Jeff Nelken, Steve Kates