Terra Tech plummeted 36% on Thursday.

Terra Tech isn’t a household name. But it’s the largest publicly traded U.S. marijuana stock.

It wasn’t the only major U.S. marijuana stock that plunged on Thursday, either.

MassRoots, a marijuana media company, fell 40%. General Cannabis, a marijuana services company, fell 40% as well.

Even Scotts Miracle-Gro got swept up in the hurricane—and it’s not even a marijuana company. It’s a fertilizer company. But many of its customers are marijuana growers.

It was a full-blown panic.

• International Man readers aren’t used to seeing marijuana stocks falling…

That’s because the industry’s been in an explosive rally since last summer.

In fact, the U.S. Marijuana Index, which tracks 15 major U.S. marijuana stocks, has more than tripled in value since July.

So, what triggered this bloodbath?

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• The answer is Jeff Sessions…

Sessions is the U.S. attorney general. He’s also a notorious drug warrior.

In fact, he once called marijuana “slightly less awful” than heroin. He also believes “good people don’t smoke marijuana.”

In short, he’s no fan of marijuana.

That said, Sessions has largely left the marijuana industry alone since he was sworn into office in February.

But last week, Sessions rescinded the Cole Memo. This policy tells federal prosecutors to treat marijuana as a state issue.

In other words, Sessions just opened the door for a possible federal crackdown.

That’s a big concern for marijuana companies.

• It’s also why marijuana stocks tanked on Thursday…

But here’s the thing…

Sessions can’t kill the legal marijuana industry.

It’s simply too big.

The U.S. marijuana market is already a $6.5 billion industry. And it’s expected to grow to $50 billion by 2026. That would make it bigger than the American craft beer and chocolate markets combined.

What’s more, 165,000 people already work in the U.S. marijuana industry. And employment will skyrocket as the industry grows.

In fact, New Frontier Data projects the legal marijuana industry will create almost 300,000 jobs by 2020. That’s more than the Bureau of Labor Statistics expects from manufacturing, utilities, and government jobs.

Marijuana sales are also a huge tax revenue generator for states where it’s legal.

Take Colorado. It legalized medicinal marijuana in 2000. It then legalized recreational marijuana in 2014.

In 2016, Colorado did $1.3 billion in marijuana sales. And the state collected $200 million in tax revenues from marijuana sales.

Colorado’s not alone, either. California, Washington, and Oregon all depend on marijuana sales for tax revenue.

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• Local politicians aren’t going to let Sessions go after the industry…

Here’s a quote from Illinois State Senator Heather Steans:

Consumers already have easy access to marijuana and rolling back this guidance is short sighted.

Steans also said that cracking down on the industry will push more people to buy marijuana on the black market.

Steans isn’t the only concerned politician fighting back, either.

On Thursday, Colorado Republican Senator Cory Gardner called Sessions’ decision a “complete reversal,” noting that “Sessions told me there would be no plans to reverse the Cole memorandum.”

Garden also said he will put a hold on all Justice Department nominations until Sessions reverses his stance.

In short, Sessions would face immense pressure if he goes after the industry. The backlash would be next to impossible to overcome.

Not only that, the average American favors marijuana legalization. According to a recent Gallup survey, 64% of Americans think cannabis should be totally legal. That’s an all-time high.

• Investors are realizing Sessions will fail, too…

Just look at the U.S. Marijuana Index I mentioned earlier. It’s up 26% today.

Many individual U.S. marijuana stocks are up even more. In fact, Terra Tech and MassRoots are up 30% and 48%, respectively, as we go to press.

Those are monster gains. But you must realize two things…

One, most U.S. marijuana stocks are still well off their all-time highs. They’re a bargain compared to where they were trading before Sessions opened his mouth.

And more importantly, as I’ve shown you over the last few months, the bull market in marijuana stocks is just getting started.

So, consider buying marijuana stocks while there’s still blood in the streets. Just remember to treat marijuana stocks as a speculation.

Don’t bet more money than you can afford to lose. Use stop losses. And take profits when you get them.

Regards,

Years ago, when visiting the US, I’d often watch late night television. Just prior to each interval, in order to ensure that viewers would sit through the adverts, the show would run a panel that said, “More to Come.”

This, of course, was effective, as the viewer would be anticipating that the best part of the programme would come in a later segment. He would then be more likely to continue watching.

Today, we’re looking at the reverse of that situation. The programme we’re watching is The Decline and Fall of the American Empire and those who recognize the decline are viewing with ever-increasing trepidation the developments that are unfolding there. Even those of us who are not American and don’t live there are glued to our screens, as we’re aware that we’re viewing the early stages of a collapse that promises to be the greatest social, political, and economic event that we’re likely to see in our lifetimes.

Following World War Two, the US was in a boom beyond anything the world had ever seen. The Americans came to the war late, after having built up their manufacturing capacity for war dramatically, at the expense of the Allied powers in Europe. And they achieved this, essentially for free. It was paid for with the gold from the vaults of the European allies. After the war, Europe was trashed, and it would take decades for them to get on their feet again. Meanwhile, the US had been going flat-out in production, had first-rate modern factories, and, most importantly, held the majority of the world’s gold.

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The 1944 Bretton Woods Agreement ensured that the US dollar would become the world’s default currency and would later become the petrodollar, ensuring American hegemony over much of the rest of the world.

There can be no doubt that, in the first decades after the war, the US had an amazing run and was, arguably, one of the best places to live in the world.

But, unfortunately, as so often happens, American political and industry leaders became full of themselves and couldn’t resist going out on a limb to gain even more for themselves. In so doing, they turned the US from the world’s foremost creditor nation into the world’s foremost debtor nation. Worse, when they reached this unprecedented point, they opted to just keep going.

Worse still, it would appear that today’s leaders are aware that the mother of all bubbles that they’ve created is going to pop sometime in the near future, as they’re preparing themselves for the mother of all pushbacks from the populace when the crashes come.

The FBI, CIA, NSA, and a host of other authorities have either been created or expanded, allowing the creation of the world’s foremost police state. And, beginning in 2001 with the Patriot Act, they have created a host of laws to assign authority to any of those bodies to exert ever-increasing control over the population. Capital controls, migration controls, higher taxes, confiscation of deposits in banks, and quite a bit more have been passed in legislation, including the ability to declare the US in its entirety to be a “battle zone,” through which habeas corpus and the court system can be suspended nationally.

Yipes. (Or blimey, depending on where you’re from.)

At this point, any American who’s paying attention could be forgiven if he’s genuinely frightened as to where his government is going with all this.

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And so, we come back to the title of this essay—“More to Come.”

A regular flow of proposed laws is now coming down the pipeline that would have been considered the stuff of a bad movie a few decades ago, but is now only too real and  threatening to the freedoms of the average citizen.

Instead of “more to come” meaning that the best is still on the way, the opposite would appear to be the case.

“But how can this be?” we ask ourselves. Surely those in power—the politicians, the industrialists, the central bankers, etc.—must see this coming, and, if that’s so, surely they’ll do something to stop it.

Well, historically, that’s never been the case. Those in the greatest positions of power have never suddenly reversed an empire when it was about to self-destruct. What they tend to do instead is to guard against becoming casualties of the disaster they’ve created.

So, is that what’s happening this time around? In a word, yes.

The Bernie Madoffs of the world go to jail. However, those who commit the same fraudulent acts from within the system never go to jail. For example, if the heads of a bank commit massive fraud, the bank pays an enormous fine. The fine is then paid by the stockholders. And should the fine be large enough to crash the bank, the bankers can appeal to the government to bail them out, as they’re “too big to fail.” Thus, the taxpayers pick up the bill. Therefore, the more damage the bankers do, the more they prosper.

At this point, what we’re witnessing is an era in which laws are regularly being passed to ensure that the creators of the bubble will have a “Get Out of Jail Free” card and others will sustain the losses.

This is the very essence of what happens in an endgame run. Just as a hitman who places a bomb in a building makes his exit before the bomb can go off, the creators of bubbles safeguard themselves before the economic bomb can go off. They have no intention of being around to live with the resultant devastation that they’ve put into play.

Pete Townshend wrote, prophetically, “Won’t Get Fooled Again” in 1971, in which he hoped that the latest gang of leaders would be better than the last. In the final line of the song, he grimly announces, “Meet the new boss—same as the old boss.”

And, in fact, this is the usual outcome. Perhaps the reason why empires collapse much in the same way, time and again, and their citizens consistently fail to see it coming, is that empires general last a long time before collapsing. The Venetian Republic lasted over 1,000 years. The Spanish Empire lasted just under 500 years. Holland lasted 130 years; Russia, almost 200; the UK, by some estimates, about 300.

And it’s been much the same for the others. In every case, they last longer than a single lifetime, so it’s rare that any individual sees more than one empire collapse in his own lifetime and doesn’t understand that empires don’t end with a whimper. They end with a crescendo, not unlike The Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again.”

We will be witness to the collapse of the world’s foremost empire. This is not mere conjecture. The US has all the symptoms that historically precede a collapse, and we’re now coming close to the final stages.

And, if history plays out yet again, as it has repeatedly, we can expect that, in the lead-up to the collapse, the controls by governments will become increasingly draconian. As we consider “more to come,” we should be braced for the likelihood that the worst controls are yet to be revealed.

Regards,

When I was a boy, cartoonist Charles Schulz introduced a new comic strip called Peanuts. Its central premise was children having the same problems as adults, and it was an instant hit.

There were several recurring themes and, each autumn, the cartoonist would have his main character, Charlie Brown, attempt to fly a kite. At first all would go well, and Charlie Brown would build up his hopes, only to have them dashed when a tree would snag his kite and eat it.

This theme was endlessly enjoyable, as it reflected a syndrome familiar to all adults. The cartoonist was careful to ensure that he could do new variations on the theme every autumn, due to the fact that Charlie Brown never succeeded. At the end of the strip, the tree always ate his kite.

And so it often goes in the adult world. Albert Einstein famously said, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”

And, yet, in every era, we can see this strange behaviour play itself out, time and again.

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People go to casinos, imagining that, somehow, the casino will lose and they will win. They buy lottery tickets with odds of hundreds of thousands to one against them.

And, amazingly, they invest in the stock market, not just badly, but in the very same pattern that has historically proven to virtually guarantee loss. More amazingly, this is not the behaviour of the occasional loser; it’s the approach adopted by the great majority of investors and is one that they staunchly defend as “wise and informed investing,” right until the crash that cleans them out.

So what, then, is this pattern? Well, generally, a potential investor contacts his broker and asks him if there’s anything he can recommend. The broker virtually always says yes—that whilst some stocks do not earn his endorsement, there are others that he feels are almost certain to go up.

Should the investor then buy, he can count on the broker to push the prospect of further investment, whenever one of his recommendations has risen in value. (He’s less likely to get in touch if his recommendations go down.)

As each bull market unfolds, the broker advises his clients that, if they don’t continue to buy, they’ll be “missing out,” and the opportunity for enrichment will pass them by.

Each investor who’s roped in by this spiel reinforces the broker’s prediction, expanding the bull market and attracting more and more investors to get into the game.

Then, something very interesting happens.

In a major bull market, when investors have reached their limit, they’re advised that they can buy on margin and increase their position. This is acknowledged as being risky in normal times, but these are not normal times. This is the mother of all bull markets, and “the sky’s the limit.” The investors dive in.

When they become so strapped that they cannot buy on margin any further, many investors, believing that they’re on the cusp of getting rich, borrow money privately to buy on margin and, in so doing, become dramatically leveraged, but they do so because the broker promises that the bull market is going “to the moon.”

But, like all bubbles, this one, too, eventually pops. Naturally, Wall Street doesn’t want an uncontrolled collapse of the market (after all, they wish to get themselves out before a crash), so, their ideal scenario is to create a controlled crash. Once the writing is on the wall, they themselves sell out, just prior to a trigger that will collapse the market.

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In 1929, this was achieved through a sudden raise in interest rates. Since investors were up to their eyes in debt, any rise in interest rates meant that they’d default on their loans. The brokers would then unilaterally sell off their clients’ portfolios (as they are entitled to do in a margin call). They, of course, hope to salvage the maximum amount possible for themselves, so they do their best to liquidate everythingovernight.

The customary reaction by investors is to be stunned that a crash occurred that they didn’t see coming and that they woke up one morning to find that they’d sustained a massive loss.

In the early 2000s, a small number of people (myself included), predicted a stock market crash. I estimated its occurrence to be in 2007, so, in order to be out well ahead of time, I was out in 2006. (As it transpired, I was out earlier than necessary, for which I had no regret.)

Prior to the crash, I warned friends and associates, who invariably said, “All indicators say that the market’s still going up. If it starts to slide downward, then I may sell.”

I repeatedly reminded them that a major bull market never ends with a whimper. It invariably ends with a major upside spike, before it suddenly plummets downward.

And this is not a coincidence. It’s based upon the behaviour stated above.

What I find truly amazing is that most investors never learn. Even after they’ve been cleaned out once, they simply find another “better” broker and start all over. Incredibly, the average investor will work hard at his regular job and do all he can to get better at it, then, whatever savings he can create that year, he hands over to someone else to manage. He makes little or no effort to educate himself in the patterns of bull and bear markets so that he can avoid another failure.

He repeatedly takes his kite out to fly it amongst the trees.

Many investors make the same mistake over and over, throughout their careers, working hard for their pay, then literally throwing away their savings.

Today, we’re approaching the end of a major bull market. This one is especially interesting, in that, since 2008, we’ve been in a depression that virtually no one acknowledges. Those on Wall Street state with confidence that, despite increased unemployment, manufacturers leaving the country in droves, diminishing GDP, extensive business closures, etc., “This can’t be a depression if the market is up.”

Unfortunately, what we’re really witnessing is the world’s longest sucker-rally.

In the 1930s, a popular, if bitter-tasting, joke was that, “When every shoeshine boy is offering stock tips, it’s time to get out of the market.” That advice arrived too late.

We’re presently at that point again, except that the profession of shoeshine boy has disappeared.

Incredibly, even heads of banks and Wall Street firms are now warning that the end is near. Perhaps the most unlikely expert of all to join this group is Lord Jacob Rothschild, who has now said, in a semi-annual report,

We do not believe this is an appropriate time to add to risk. Share prices have in many cases risen to unprecedented levels at a time when economic growth is by no means assured.

Clearly, he was careful not to employ phrasing that would be overly alarming, but he did make the quote to explain why he has dumped massive amounts of US assets (i.e., he’s getting out before the crash).

Meanwhile, the average investor, who contributes the oxygen to create all bubbles, is once again flying his kite, convinced that the tree will not once again eat his kite.

Regards,