I know a lot of goldbugs hate my guts because I do not constantly only say BUY and I point out that NOT only gold and silver survive the collapse of a currency.
I once had a German client who was a multimillionaire back in the 1970s. When the German government collapsed, he was buying all the old coins that were base metals for scrap. They were nickel and copper and some aluminum. It was presumed that they were all then worthless.
The new government could issue the paper money, but they lacked the metal to strike a whole new coinage. They then announced that the old coinage would retain a value as fractions of the new currency. He became a multimillionaire overnight. I use to enjoy his stories of the transition since he lived through it there in Germany.
His stories of living through such monetary reforms helped me understand the mechanism behind such events. As I have explained, even in times of geopolitical stress, that is the period when we find the greatest number of hoards of even ancient coins.
Just like the stock market, gold has risen and fallen in value. The propaganda about Bitcoin was the same nonsense – the hedge against central banks and a “store of value” when it is simply no different from anything else that trades – it moves up and down. There is NO STORE OF VALUE in human history. Everything rises and falls. That was what Karl Marx was trying to stop – the Business Cycle of booms and busts.
Sorry, I am not a Marxist. There is a cycle to everything and that means that there is a TIME to BUY and a TIME to SELL. The stock brokers in the Great Depression told people to hold. The market always comes back. Others told them to average in. It took 25 years for the stock market to reach the old 1929 high (it exceed the 1929 high in 1954 on the Dow).
I buy gold but in coin form. The one consistent form of value historically has is generally been food if you go that far down the rabbit hole. However, a loaf of bread from 1930 will not do you much good today despite the fact it was just 12 cents back then. Now that was an investment if it would survive 100 years.
Precious Metals will do well, but I would prefer them in coin form. You may know what they are, but it is the other person who has to know before it has any value. That average person must be able to identify that it is real. That will be your problem. You won’t get change for a cup of coffee with a kilo bar of gold.
I have suggested the pre-1965 silver coins for small transactions. But real estate, art, ancient coins, antique cars, rare coins, and the stock market will all have some value being redenominated into whatever new currency emerges and that will depend on the government. The German stock market rose with hyperinflation and was re-denominated in the new currency in 1925. Like most other markets, it rallied and peaked going into 1929. So I’m sorry if the truth hurts. But the stock market will NOT go to ZERO and only gold will rise if the dollar crashes. There is no such period in history that hints at such nonsense. This is propaganda made up by those trying to sell gold and will say anything just like a used car salesman.
No matter what the tangible object might be,
it will rise and fall with the business cycle. It always has, and it always will.
QUESTION: Governments create their own sovereign fiat currency, to facilitate trade, among other reasons. So counterfeit is punishable, in some countries, by death, & at minimum, incarceration. Currency is supposed to be sacrosanct, created under the most exacting conditions. So what to do when your own gov’t engages in what is essentially officially endorsed counterfeit? I mean, the “money” has become almost meaningless, unless you’re on the receiving end. For non-insiders like me…buy PM.
HS
ANSWER: I have trouble with this misinformation always about the only money is gold and paper dollars are worthless fiats, which have rebuilt the world many times over since 1861 and the introduction of the paper dollar.
The propaganda of the goldbugs which has led so many to lose so much has been this nonsense that gold is the hedge against inflation. When the gold coin was money during the 19th century, it rose and fell in purchasing power no different than any paper currency. These people sell fiction like a used car salesman just to sell their product. It honestly does not matter what money is. It always is just a derivative of barter. I give you this for that. You will accept paper money because you know that others will accept it from you. A woman tried to spend a $20 gold coin at Walmart and they refused to accept it because they did not know what it was. She then took them to the back and exchanged them for $20 bills.
Try going to Starbucks and spending a $20 gold coin and asking for change. Unless the salesperson knows what it is, they will refuse.MONEY has always been nothing more than a belief system. That’s all!
FIAT simply means by arbitrary decree. Just because a currency is gold or even silver, does NOT make its value intrinsic. Governments have debased their coinage and reduced the weight declaring its value shall be whatever they say. I have written about how Japan did that and eventually, the people refused to accept Japanese coins and they stopped minting them for 600 years.
The Romans reduced the weight of their silver coinage from 6.5 grams to 4 grams and only because they defeated the Greeks, the Roman monetary system became standard.
During the American Revolution, people accepted the Continental Currency. Money has always simply been predicated upon what people will accept.
Gold has no value whatsoever unless the other person also believes it has value. Gold or silver has no value intrinsically any more than a paper dollar or a bag of rice unless there is an unspoken agreement among people that it is a valuable medium of exchange.
This is the truth. All else is propaganda. Money has been many things throughout thousands of years from seashells to cattle and even slave girls.
Saint Patrick in the 5th Century AD upon his arrival in Ireland, found that MONEY was expressed in human slave girls. He wrote in his Confession,“I think that I have given away to them no less than the price of fifteen humans.” This passage shows something very important. First, MONEY is not defined as the Medium of Exchange exclusively. It also serves the purpose of a Unit of Account. This becomes the true function of MONEY even more so than what it is. MONEY is a language of value.
FIAT is when the government dictates what something is and that will be Digital Central Bank Currency. But if everyone accepts it, then it becomes the medium of exchange.
Since Trump was already not guilty of having the affair (to which Stormy Daniels admitted never took place), does that mean that the New York Court has indicted him on the charges of “being blackmailed”?
DB
QUESTION #2: Bill Clinton committed perjury. That was legal grounds to indict him and remove him from office. Nobody wanted to indict Richard Nixon either. I can now see why Socrates is forecasting the collapse of the United States. I just realized that the Declaration of Independence was approved by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, announcing the separation of 13 North American British colonies from Great Britain. What I did not know was it was only a vote of 12 and New York abstained. It seems like New York is at it again. Do you really think we can last until 2032?
ANSWER: What Bragg has done is so undermining to the entire country and he has accepted money from a foreign power seeking to undermine the United States – George Soros. That is treason in my book. He is doing the bidding of a declared enemy against the United States and everything our way of life has stood for.
Yes, the Declaration was designed 1776.506. The United State will exist no more after 2034.50. I am very concerned that the 2024 Presidential election is not going to be fair. By the time we get to 2025.90, this does not look good in the least. It is highly unlikely that we are looking at this lasting as we have known it until 2032. It looks like everything unravels starting in 2027.
The US government has been on a spending spree over the past few years and there is absolutely no way they can ever pay the bill. Federal spending hit $4.45 trillion in 2019 in the wake of the pandemic, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). That figure hit $6.21 trillion as of the latest report, marking a 40% uptick in four years. What has changed?
This goes far beyond the Ukraine fiasco. While defense spending rose 18% over the past four years, nondefense spending shot up 43% to $941 billion. Spending on Social Security and retirement increased 33% from 2019 to 2023 as the Baby Boomer generation began to exit the workforce. Retirement has become a luxury with the current cost of living and many are opting to continue working rather than retire. Yet, the mentality of hard work paying off is dwindling. The effects of the pandemic can still be felt as the workforce dynamic has changed. The supplemental unemployment income distributed freely during the pandemic has had disastrous consequences.
Spending on food stamps has increased by 102% from $63 billion in 2019 to $127 billion in 2023. Welfare support rose 50% as well from $32 billion to $48 billion. Unemployment costs have increased 32% over the past four years, despite the record-low unemployment rate. The US spent $53 billion on educational pandemic aid and $71 billion to help failing PBGC plans. The CBO now foresees a federal budget deficit of $1.4 trillion in 2023, and this number is expected to rise.
Biden’s Build Back Better Act pushed for the largest welfare spending in US history. It pays NOT to work in Biden’s America. According to the Heritage Foundation:
"Total government spending on the average poor family will rise from $65,200 per year to more than $76,400. When limited private earnings are added to this massive government spending, combined total resources will reach nearly $94,600 per year for the average poor family."
Biden repealed some of the reforms issued by the Clintons to boost reliance on government aid. People who choose not to work are eligible for unconditional cash grants funded by working taxpaying citizens. “Taxpayers would be required to pay larger sums to support welfare recipients, but recipients would have no reciprocal obligations,” the Heritage Foundation continued. Those who decide to marry receive less funding. Mothers who have children by multiple fathers receive more funding. Traditional values are punished. Why rely on family when you have the government?
Some states pay six figures to “low-income” families through benefits and subsidiaries. A family earning nearly a quarter million per year could still qualify for ObamaCare subsidies, and in some states, families earning $300,000 annually still qualify. Unemployment benefits plus ObamaCare subsidies for a family of four are equivalent to the national median income in 24 states. Some states offer more than others. In New Jersey, a family of four can receive benefits up to $108,000 even if no one is working.
Welfare was supposed to be a tool to help people during times of need. It should incentivize people to get back to work. Biden is giving your money to foreign countries. He is giving your money to US citizens who chose not to work. This is clearly socialism at play, as it does not pay to work in Biden’s crumbling America.
QUESTION: Hello Martin, Been reading your writings with keen interest for over 15 years now since while you were incarcerated. My question is: The way you paint a picture of the past economies going back hundreds and thousands of years through the discovery of coinage hoards is brilliant. How will a future “Martin Armstrong” from say 500 to 1,000 years from now be able to utilize that methodology of discovering the history of this era when we’re largely a computer digital transaction society? (Especially if government-planned digital currency takes over?) Thanks. Jerry S.
ANSWER: I know the crypto-people do not like my view that digital currency is entirely dependent upon the power grid and once money is in any official exchange, it will be subject to government regulation. Just look at Tik Tok. The government wants to ban it because they CANNOT get into the data and who is saying what. It has nothing to do with China. They are not interested if you paid the babysitter next door, but Congress is. They have backdoors into everything – not Tik Tok. That has become the hub for many threats to their form of society called the dreaded CONSERVATIVES.
Reading historical accounts of things would never provide the real picture. The coinage has been the breadcrumbs that lead to the truth. I can see the real level of debasement, and when put together with historical accounts, we can get a real picture of history. We must also respect that some periods are black holes and the coinage is what turns on the light.
For example, it is the coinage that enables us to confirm much of history and I believe we will see the future follow the past. The wife of Augustus, Livia, the first empress of Rome, was a very powerful woman. The real power behind the thrown. I suggest watching the series – Domina. It is far better than any fictional story. It was his mother, Livia, who pushed him to be Emperor.
Livia was renowned for her intelligence but was also one of the most beautiful women in Rome. Tiberius was not her favorite – that was his brother Drusus. Tiberius had a son with his first wife Vipsania who was born in 14BC. Livia compelled Tiberius to marry Augustus’ daughter Julia as a way to the throne. Augustus was not fond of Tiberius for he was simply unsocial. His marriage to Julia was like a mixture of oil and water. She sought sexual parties and ignored Tiberius and was finally exiled by her father.
Frome the coinage, we can confirm that Tiberius responded to a major earthquake that destroyed much of Asia, modern-day Turkey. Tiberius issued coins for the aid of Asia. We also know that he waived all taxes for 5 years and donated 10 million sesterces for relief. What politicians would ever system taxes as a tool of relief today?
Augustus’ heir was to be Germanicus (15BC-19AD) who was the son of Nero Claudius Drusus, the younger brother of Tiberius, and Antonia, who was the daughter of Mark Antony and Augustus’ sister Octavia. He was married to Agrippina, Sr, who was the daughter of Agrippa and Augustus’ daughter Julia. Agrippina seems to have been the independent-minded woman who blamed Livia for the death of her husband.
Agrippina, Sr. was such a disruption politically that Tiberius was compelled to banish her like her mother in 29AD where she eventually died of starvation in 33AD. Her son, Caligula, seems to have inherited her insanity, and her daughter Agrippina, Jr, as well. She is actually the first woman on Roman coinage displaying her name. Livia’s portrait would be used but always styled as some goddess.
Of course, her son Caligula has warranted films exclusively devoted to his. He is famous for insulting the Senators by making his horse a senator. Caligula was born in 12 AD. He was named as Tiberius’ heir in 37AD and it has been long suspected that Caligula smothered Tiberius to death to take the throne. He was notorious for his depravity and cruelty. He was assassinated by the Praetorian Guard on January 24th, 41AD.
The Praetorian Guard needed an emperor or there was no point in them being the Praetorian Guard. They turned to Claudius and made him emperor. You can see from his coinage the image of the Praetorian Guard camp on the reverse announcing that he was made emperor by the Praetorians.
There is a great series of these events done years ago by the BBC. It was based on the book I Claudius and the series bares the same name – I. Cludius. That too is a worthwhile series that was produced decades ago.
In fact, Agrippina Jr, sister of Caligula, was not only the mother of Nero who ordered her killed for her dominance, but she married he uncle Claudius to secure the throne for Nero. Once again, we find her portrait on coins alongside her son, Nero, which also reflected her dominance and effective rule of the empire. Some have likened her to Hillary Clinton for her cunning and effective rule behind the curtain.
To ensure Nero would become Claudius’ heir, she poisoned Claudius’ son – Britanicus. It shows what a bad apple can do to the whole lot. Many have pointed to the fact that it was the dominance and cunning of the women that brought down the Julio-Claudian Dynasty.
Nevertheless, the coinage not merely confirms history, but also provides a window through time for us to see how human nature never changes, and as such, the future becomes merely a repetition of human contrivances.
To answer the question if future historians will be able to do what I have done if the currency is eliminated and we have just electronic digital currency, I believe the answer lies in the past. We can see something rather astonishing right here during the reign of Tiberius (14-37AD).
Augustus/Octavian (heir to Julius Caesar) became the first emperor of Rome following the defeat of Cleopatra and Mark Antony in 30 BC. He was granted the title Augustus in 27BC by the Senate for saving Rome from the proxy war of Cleopatra who used Mark Antony to try to conquer Rome. However, because he was the first emperor, it appears that he blanked the empire with coinage to justify his position as emperor, not king, which was really the same thing. There are over 500 different silver denarii types. I have never even heard of a collector assembling each type.
Against that backdrop, being indeed a reluctant emperor and forced into an unhappy marriage, it is understandable that being an unsocial workaholic, the circumstances most likely drove Tiberius deeper into seclusion. He rarely left Rome. In fact, he would not even attend the gladiator games. This is the extent of his coinage – two types. That’s it! Instead of the proliferation of coinage under Augustus, spending was curtailed and we can determine that from the coinage, not contemporary accounts. This led to a SHORTAGE of money, and in such a recession. That became the Financial Panic in 33AD.
Because of the shortage of money, this is where we find the first time that the private sector began to issue its own coinage. Some have claimed they were some sort of token. But they are confined to this period of Tiberius where there was a Financial Panic and a shortage of coinage compared to the reign of Augustus.
During the Great Depression, because there too the austerity measures of the government created a shortage of currency. Thus, over 200 cities in the United States began to issue their own currency for local use.
Likewise, during the Civil War, there was also a shortage of money There is a whole array of private coinage during that event. Then there was the hard time that followed the Panic of 1837, Again we have private coinage surfacing. The same again took place with the Panic of 1873.
In Japan, because of the corruption of the government always devaluing the currency of the previous emperor, the Japanese finally just stopped accepting the coinage of their own government. The economy reverted to one of barter and they used the coinage of China. Japan lost the authority to even issue coinage for 600 years until the Meiji Era.
Cryptocurrency will fade with the collapse of governments. It will be too dependent on a unified power grid. If history is any guide, we will return to a barter system combined with perhaps old identifiable coinage that the average person will recognize. That is one reason why I do not recommend bars of silver or gold, but the old coinage. Bags of pre-1965 silver coins in the US or similar in Europe and Canada where the average person can look at a date and accept it whereas they cannot tell the difference between a var of silver or nickel.
Do not make the mistake of judging others by yourself. You may know was a bar of silver is, but that will not help you if the other person does not. There are videos on YouTube where people are offered a silver bar or a chocolate bar and they take the chocolate. Not everyone knows what you may know. Keep that in mind.
So at the end of the day, we will have to rebuild society from the ground up post-2032. A currency need not be backed by anything. Its value is ALWAYS based upon a belief system. The same is true with gold and silver. They had no utility value, only as jewelry from the outset. They were valued because at first, the kings reserved gold only for their adornment.
Orichalcum, brass, is the legendary metal mentioned in the story of Atlantis in the Critias of Plato. In fact, orichalcum was considered second only to gold in value and it held a greater value than even silver. It was said to have been mined in many parts of Atlantis in ancient times. These ingots of orichalcum were discovered in a shipwreck that had sunk 2,600 years ago, off the coast of Gela in southern Sicily. The ingots are an alloy consisting of 75–80% copper, 15–20% zinc, and smaller percentages of nickel, lead, and iron. In other words, they are brass. Because the color is closer to gold, this was highly prized.
The Greeks rarely used orichalcum for coinage in the Hellenistic world. It was used experimentally by Romans under the reigns of Octavian and Mark Antony. Where we begin to see orichalcum used in the coinage consistently is dated to the monetary reform of Augustus (23 BC). It was then that he introduced sestertii and dupondii were struck in orichalcum (Cu-Zn alloy) rather than silver and bronze. The sestertius of the Republican era was a tiny silver coin of about 0.7 grams. Later, the monetary reform Nero made during 63–64 AD, introduced the use of orichalcum to the denomination of the as, semis, and quadrantes.
Following the Civil War with the death of Nero, orichalcum was replaced in the coinage with bronze. It is highly likely that someone figured out how to make orichalcum and its premium just collapsed. Counterfeiters had long figured out how to mix wrap a coin in silver and strike it to make it appear it was silver, but also to use chemicals to cause the silver to appear on the surface. We cannot rule out that someone had figured out how to make brass and thus it lost its premium.
The value of any currency is entirely based on belief. Once the ancients figured out that orichalcum was just an alloy and could be made, then it no longer seems as more valuable than silver. Even cryptocurrency is worthless. Its entire valuation is simply based that others believe it has some value. Money at its most basic core during a financial crisis is predicated upon its utility value. Hence, in Japan, bags of rice became money. It is unlikely that even cryptocurrency will survive the transition post-2032. Precious metals ONLY in the form of some recognizable coin will be accepted like the Japanese accepted Chinese coins. Barter will return as it always has. That will most likely be in the form of food.
QUESTION: The tech industry has been shedding jobs like it’s no tomorrow. Are you still hiring when everyone else is firing?
GH
ANSWER: Yes, but only experienced people in Machine Learning/AI. We are in a different field with completely different end goals. Not a start-up company and not trying to create an AI that will know the name of Lady Gaga’s dog.
The layoffs are because they are focused on consumer spending. We are not directed at that. In fact, the worse the economy gets, the greater our demand becomes. We have always been counter-trend in that regard.
In 2010, Barron’s wrote a piece on me effectively laughing at my forecast that the share market would rally to new highs. What seems to inevitably unfold is this notion that whatever the event might be in motion, the mere thought of a reversal in trend appears impossible. When the press disagrees with Socrates, I know it will be the press who is wrong. And because they end up being wrong, of course, they cannot print a retraction so they will just pretend you do not exist rather than admit – Sorry, we were wrong. The Dow made that new high above 2007 by February 2013. That was 64 months from the October 2007 high.
I have been in the game for many years. With each event, it appears to be like Groundhog Day. They pop their heads out and declare they do not see their shadow, so the entire world will disintegrate and that is always based upon opinion. It is never backed by real analysis. Just the standard human trait of assuming whatever trend is in motion, will remain in motion.
Being an institutional adviser, I have never had that luxury. We have had to deal with some of the biggest portfolios in the world. They want accurate forecasting, and it has to be long-term – not day trading. They are not interested in the typical headlines of doom and gloom that the press love to print with every financial event simply to get readership. That is all they care about. It has been the financial version of the fake news.
When we step back and look at this favorite fundamental that people beat to death to predict the end of the world, the national debt, and the collapse of the dollar. Little did they know that the increase in National Debt during the 2007-2009 Financial Crisis was supposed to bring down the sky and end the existence of the dollar. We can see the sharp rise in debt simply made a double top with the Financial Crisis of 1985.
It was that previous 1985 Financial Crisis that set in motion the Plaza Accord which brought together the central banks creating what was then the G5 – now G20. Of course, like every government intervention, the side effect was the 1987 Crash and their attempt to reverse their directive at the Plaza Accord became the Louve Accord. When the traders saw that failed, the collapse in confidence led to the 1987 Crash.
It has always been a CONFIDENCE game as I pointed out with the 1933 Banking Holiday previously. In this case, the failure of the Louvre Accord which came out and said the dollar had fallen enough, once new lows in the dollar unfolded and the central banks could not stop the decline, led to financial panic by 1987 which manifested in the 1987 Crash.
This chart shows the quarterly change in the National Debt since 1966, Here you can see the 1985 and 2008 Financial Crises were on par. Neither one ended the dollar no less the world economy. So when I warned the share market would rally and make new highs and Barron’s laughed in 2010, I said the same thing after the 1987 Crash and people laughed.
In fact, on the very day of the low, I said this was it and that we would rally back to new highs by 1989. That was perfect and the market responded to the Economic Confidence Model (ECM) which has been published back in 1979. This was more than simply forecasting the 1987 Crash and the very day of the low. It clearly established that the ECM had revealed that there was a secret cycle behind the appearance of chaos even in economics.
Larry Edelson was actually a competitor at the time. But Larry respected that the forecast from the model was far beyond what people would ever expect. If we are ever going to advance as a society, we have to stop the bullshit and understand HOW markets trade and WHY. Larry did that. He understood that the model was something larger than just personal opinion.
Even those claiming to be using the K-Wave cannot make real forecasts. The basis of Kondratieff’s argument came from his empirical study of the economic performance of the USA, England, France, and Germany between 1790 and 1920. Kondratieff took the wholesale price levels, interest rates, and production and consumption of coal, pig iron, and lead for each economy. He then sought to smooth the data using an averaging mathematical approach of nine years to eliminate the trend as well as shorter waves. Kondratieff thus arrived at his long-wave theory suggesting that the economic process was a process of continuous waves of boom and bust.
Kondratieff’s work was compelling and contributed greatly to the Austrian School of Economics that first began to develop the concept of a Business Cycle. The general central principle of the Austrian Business Cycle Theory is concerned with a period of sustained low-interest rates and excessive credit creation resulting in a volatile and unstable imbalance between saving and investment. Within this context, the theory supposes that the Business Cycle unfolds whereby low rates of interest tend to stimulate borrowing from the banking sector and thus then result in the expansion of the money supply that causes an unsustainable credit source boom which leads to a diminished opportunity for investment by competition.
Here is a chart of the business cycle that was created by a farmer named Samuel Benner. Benner based his work on Sunspots, which actually incorporated solar maximum and minimum that today’s Climate Change zealots refuse to consider. Nevertheless, someone manipulated Brenner’s work and created a chart to try to influence society handing it in with a wild story to the Wall Street Journal published this cycle on February 2nd, 1932, when the market bottomed in July 1932. Still, nobody knew who had investigated this phenomenon in 1932.
When I was doing my own research reading all the newspapers to understand how events unfolded, I came across this chart. I found it interesting that during the Great Depression people were reaching out and some began to embrace cyclical ideas. The problem with both Kondratiff and Brenner was that the period they used to develop their cycles was the 19th century because the real Industrial Revolution was unfolding and in the 1850s, 70% of the civil workforce were all in agriculture. Consequently, if you constructed a model based entirely upon one sector, it would work only as long as that sector was the top dog.
Being a historian buff, it quickly hit me that NOTHING remains constant and that the economy will ALWAYS evolve, mature, and then crash and burn. Where agriculture was 70% of the workforce in 18590, it fell to 40% by 1900, and then down to 3% by 1980.
Just look at energy. The earliest lamps, dating to the Upper Paleolithic, were stones with depressions in which animal fats were burned as a source of light. In cultures closer to the sea, they began to use shells as lamps which they would burn at first animal fat. Clay lamps began to appear during the Bronze Age around the 16th century BC and the invention quickly spread throughout the Roman Empire. Initially, they took the form of a saucer with a floating wick.
We even find Roman oil lamps as luxury items crafted out of bronze. There are collectors of terracotta oil lamps for there is a vast variety of motifs. There is everything from dolphins, and various entities, to erotic oil lamps, which may have been used in brothels. The point is, if you constructed a model on oil, you would have surely accomplished similar results to Kondratief and Brenner.
Then of course, just as the energy moved from animal fats to vegetable oils, by the 19th century it returned to whale oil which was extracted from the blubber. Emerging industrial societies used whale oil in oil lamps and to make soap. However, during the 20th century, whale oil was even made into margarine.
Then the discovery of petroleum and the use of whale oils declined considerably from their peak in the 19th century into the 20th century. Ironically, it was fossil fuels that probably saved whales from extinction. Hence, now we are entering a period where they deliberately want to end fossil fuels and move to solar and wind power. Obviously, just a cursory review of energy reveals the problem of basing a model on the current energy source or major economic industry. Things change with time.
Honest journalism has become a crime. I have appeared numerous times on Maria Zaric’s program, Zeee Media. Maria is a professional journalist who asks thought-provoking questions to the experts that appear on her show. Her content goes against the grain and traditional narrative. The Australian-based journalist has been questioning COVID, the Great Reset, governments, globalists, the war in Ukraine, and many other topics that are completely taboo in the mainstream media. They attempted to shut down her channel in the past. Now, she has been de-banked with no explanation.
“Do you shut down peoples accounts due to their political views by any chance?” Maria asked the bank representative, only to be met with silence. Maria had been banking with ING Bank for numerous years without issues. Her account was suddenly shut down shortly after releasing a story on domestic terrorism in Australia. ING Bank has been unable to explain why her account was canceled.
Interestingly, ING is a partner of the World Economic Forum. Maria has extensively covered the WEF’s agenda to “enslave humanity.” Is Australia secretly keeping track of journalists’ “social credit scores” to silence skepticism?
The idea of eliminating someone’s ability to bank is essentially eliminating them from society. We saw Canadado the same thing to those protesting the Trucker Convoy. Trudeau took things a step further by also de-banking people who simply donated to the cause. The Canadian government used the premise of money laundering as a way to coerce the banks into reporting any activity that could have been intended to help the protestors. I know of numerous people who were frantically attempting to remove their funds from the bank during this time.
As if the public needed more reasons to lose trust in the banking system. This is not limited to one bank or country. I discussed how banks have the ability to “cancel” someone after JPMorgan Chase de-banked the rapper Kanye West for antisemitic remarks. The bank acts as the jury and judge. Epstein was permitted to hold funds at JPMorgan Chase despite an ongoing pedophile ring trial. Bernie Madoff banked with JPMorgan Chase. The bank has secret ties to the Third Reich and helped the group funnel money through South America during World War II. Again, the bank acts as the jury and judge; anyone can be de-banked anytime for any reason.
Most countries may not openly have social credit scores, but they’re keeping tabs on us. They are keenly aware that resistance to this New World Order is building. So they are now using professional journalists as examples hoping that people will stop asking questions to learn the truth. That is one of the reasons why this blog is free of charge – you deserve to know the truth.
QUESTION: Marty there are a lot of people who seem to be trying to create a panic. Some are claiming the stock market will plunge by 50%. Others are saying nothing will survive other than gold. It seems like none of these people have any sense of what is really unfolding. They were saying the same thing for different reasons before the banking crisis. Can you offer any historical perspective?
Thank you. You seem to be the only real source these days.
Pete
ANSWER: The Bank Holiday took place the first week of March 1933. It began with governors closing down the banks in their states. Once one began, like COVID rules, they quickly jumped on the bandwagon. As reported by March 4th, 1933, some 41 states had already declared a banking holiday. Back then, the president took office in March – not January. Thus, Roosevelt was sworn in on March 4th, 1933. As the new president, FDR delivered what is arguably his best-known speech.
“So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is…fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and of vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. And I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days.”
The following day, Roosevelt declared a national banking holiday on March 5th, 1933. Then Congress responded by passing the Emergency Banking Actof 1933 on March 9th, 1933. This action was combined with the Federal Reserve’s commitment to supply unlimited amounts of currency to reopened banks. Back then, they effectively created a de facto 100% deposit insurance and this was before the FDIC was created.
However, what the history books have omitted because it revealed the real reason for the major banking crisis, was the confiscation of gold precisely as Germany did in December 1922 seizing 10% of all assets which unleashed hyperinflation in 1923.
In Herbert Hoover’s memoirs (1951), he documents the fact that Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) played a very dirty game of politics. There were rumors that FDR would confiscate gold in 1932 BEFORE the election. These rumors spread and people ran to banks to withdraw their funds. The night before the election in 1932, FDR denied that he would do such a thing. After FDR won the election, the real bank panic began. FDR would not take office until March 1933.
The run on banks began as the Great Depression started. In 1929 alone, 659 banks closed their doors due to mismanagement and speculation. Ironically, to save money on paper, it was also in 1929 when the currency was reduced in size to save money. This time, they want to move to digital and save 100% on printing money. Here in 2023, the failures are due to the WOKE agenda which has deprived the banks of risk management rather than speculation.
However, as the 1931 Sovereign Debt Crisis hit, the number of bank failures skyrocketed. Goldman Sacks and others were selling foreign bonds to Americans in small denominations., As Europe began to default, US banks holding foreign debt and individuals in need of cash led to a banking panic for external reasons. Here is a chart showing the listing of bonds on the NYSE. We can easily see the collapse in the bond market thanks to the 1931 Sovereign Debt Crisis.
By 1932, an additional 5,102 banks went out of business. Families lost their life savings overnight. Thirty-eight states had adopted restrictions on withdrawals in an effort to forestall the panic. By March 4th, 41 states had declared a bank holiday shutting down banks. Bank failures increased in 1933, and Franklin Roosevelt deemed remedying these failing financial institutions his first priority after being inaugurated.
However, it was actually the election of FDR that started the banking crisis post-1931. Hoover pleaded with FDR to please come out and address the gold confiscation rumors. People had been hoarding their gold coins fearing the rumored confiscation. Despite Hoover’s plea for FDR to come out and deny the rumors after the election, he remained silent. Given FDR’s manipulation of Japan and the attack on Pearl Harbor which he appeared to instigate with sanctions confiscating Japanese assets in the USA, denying the sale of any energy to Japan, and then threatening to use the fleet to block them from buying fuel from anywhere else, They Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. There were Senate investigations afterward about FDR’s role because the US had already broken the Japanese code and knew in advance about the attack on Pearl Harbor. He did that to force the US into World War II.
It was in his character to remain silent and create the worst banking crisis in history before he was sworn in as president. FDR was a radical socialist and many viewed that he admired Lenin. If it were not for Mr. Jones exposing the truth behind Stalin, even the corrupt New York Times journalist promoting Stalinism was meeting with FDR. The run on the banks became massive when FDR won the election on November 8th, 1932. FDR allowed the banking system to implode with people rushing to withdraw the money in gold coins.
At 1:00 a.m. on Monday, March 6th, 1933, President Roosevelt issued Proclamation 2039 ordering the suspension of all banking transactions, effective immediately. Roosevelt had taken the oath of office only thirty-six hours earlier.
The terms of the presidential proclamation specified:
[N]o such banking institution or branch shall pay out, export, earmark, or permit the withdrawal or transfer in any manner or by any device whatsoever, of any gold or silver coin or bullion or currency or take any other action which might facilitate the hoarding thereof; nor shall any such banking institution or branch pay out deposits, make loans or discounts, deal in foreign exchange, transfer credits from the United States to any place abroad, or transact any other banking business whatsoever.
For an entire week, Americans would not have access to banks or banking services. They could not withdraw or transfer their money, nor could they make deposits. The entire economy ran simply on cash in your pocket.
While the first phase of the banking crisis unfolded after 1929 due to speculation losses (hence Glass–Steagall Act), then the second phase was the 1931 Sovereign Debt Crisis, it was the third phase with the election of FDR that led to thousands of banks failing as there was a mad rush to withdraw your gold coin. But a new round of problems that began in early 1933 placed a severe strain on New York banks, many of which held balances for banks in other parts of the country. About 4,000 banks failed during this period alone bringing the total to over 9,000.
Much to everyone’s relief, when the institutions that could reopen for business on March 13th, 1933 saw depositors standing in line to return their stashed cash to neighborhood banks. Within two weeks, Americans had redeposited more than half of the currency that they had withdrawn post-FDR’s election on November 8th, 1932. This would prove to be a sneaky trick of FDR to get people to redeposit all the gold coins they had withdrawn – as we are about to explore.
The stock market was also ordered closed when FDR came to power. With the cleverness of a real con artist operating a Ponzi Scheme to gain the confidence of the people, FDR needed the gold coin to be deposited for Phase 4 of the banking crisis. On March 15th, 1933, (The Ides of March), the stock market was allowed to reopen. On the first day of trading, the New York Stock Exchange recorded the largest one-day percentage price increase ever.
The week before the closure, the Dow Jones Industrials fell to 49.68. The week following the closure, the Dow rallied to 64.56 – a percentage gain of virtually 30% over the banking holiday. The shorts who were better on the collapse of the market once it reopened were devastated. It was a major short-covering rally.
With the benefit of hindsight, the nationwide Bank Holiday and the Emergency Banking Act of March 1933, ended the bank runs that had plagued the Great Depression, but it also set the stage for the confiscation of gold. What you have to understand is that Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s (FDR) actions in 1933 were not directed simply at gold. He was embarking on what he called the New Deal, which was a Marxist Agenda that was very popular at the time. His New Deal would end austerity, whereby they were maintaining a balanced budget in the belief that they needed to inspire confidence in the currency.
It was this balanced budget philosophy that also inspired John Maynard Keynes who argued that in times of economic distress when the demand has collapsed, that is when the state needs to run a deficit and increase the money supply. There was a simultaneous international flight of capital from Europe to the United States in the face of European sovereign debt defaults. That capital flight lasted for nearly two years until FDR won the election in 1932. There was much concern that Roosevelt would do what Germany did in 1922 in confiscating assets. That was the rumor about the possible confiscation of gold.
Milton Friedman criticized the Fed because the capital flows poured into the US but they refused to monetize it. We can see that as Europe defaulted on its debts in 1931, the capital rushed head-first into the dollar. Then we see that the dollar peaked in November 1932 with the election of FDR fearing that would weaken the dollar and exploit the economy. All this gold came to the USA pushing the dollar higher, but the Fed refused to monetize it, was Milton’s criticism. The backing of gold behind the dollar doubled in supply between 1929 and 1931.
So, you must separate gold and the devaluation of the dollar to comprehend what the issue was all about. FDR could have simply abandoned the gold standard, as did Britain, and not confiscated gold. However, that would have also been sufficient to end austerity. But the bankers would have profited and sold the gold overseas at higher prices. Roosevelt in his confiscation of gold was intended to deprive the private sector of profiting from his devaluation of the dollar which was rising the price of gold from $20 to $35. You must keep in mind that he even degraded Pierre du Pont (1870-1954) and called him the “Merchant of Death” because he produced arms for World War I and made a profit off of that war demand. Many saw Roosevelt as a traitor to his own class.
The confiscation of the gold was for two reasons. First, FDR was changing the monetary system from one where there was no distinction domestically from internationally to a two-tier system. Gold would freely circulate without restriction only internationally. Therefore, the confiscation of gold was altering the monetary system moving to a two-tier monetary system with gold only used in international transactions.
Consequently, FDR confiscated gold to move to a two-tier system and to deprive Americans of any profit from his devaluation. What FDR then did was confiscate gold from all institutions ordering them to turn over whatever they had. Ironically, this move was intended to target bankers rather than the public. FDR did not have people knocking on every door demanding all their gold. That is why there are plenty of US gold coins that have survived. If individuals possessed them rather than an institution, then they kept what they owned
Therefore, Roosevelt was able to seize whatever gold existed in banks. He declared all contracts void that had gold provisions for payment. It was in Perry v. United States – 294 U.S. 330 (1935) that the US Supreme Court ruled that Congress, by virtue of its power to deal with gold coin as a medium of exchange, was authorized to prohibit its export and limit its use in foreign exchange. Hence, the restraint thus imposed upon holders of gold coins was incidental to their ownership of it, and gave them no cause of action. id/P. 294 U. S. 356.
The Supreme Court held that it could not say that the exercise of this power by Congress was arbitrary or capricious. id/P. 294 U. S. 356. They held that even if the Government’s repudiation of the gold clause in the government bonds was unconstitutional, it did not entitle the plaintiff to recover more than the loss he has actually suffered, and of which he may rightfully complain. id/P. 294 U. S. 354. Therefore, the Joint Resolution of June 5, 1933, held:
“insofar as it undertakes to nullify such gold clauses in obligations of the United States and provides that such obligations shall be discharged by payment, dollar for dollar, in any coin or currency which at the time of payment is legal tender for public and private debts, is unconstitutional.” id/P. 294 U. S. 349.
Yet, swapping gold for dollars created no loss that was cognizable even though the taking of gold was unconstitutional. Clearly, the Supreme Court did not consider the loss in terms of foreign exchange. The Court reasoned:
“Plaintiff has not attempted to show that, in relation to buying power, he has sustained any loss; on the contrary, in view of the adjustment of the internal economy to the single measure of value as established by the legislation of the Congress, and the universal availability and use throughout the country of the legal tender currency in meeting all engagements, the payment to the plaintiff of the amount which he demands would appear to constitute not a recoupment of loss in any proper sense, but an unjustified enrichment.”
In my understanding of the law, those who argued before the Court made purely a domestic argument. A dollar was still a dollar in domestic terms so there was no cognizable loss and the Court did not reach the constitutional question. Had they argued that their loss was with respect to some debt owed in British pounds, they there was a loss. Purely domestically, the only loss would have been to inflation and the Court would never rule against the government on such an issue.
All of that said, there does not appear to be any historical precedent for the stock market to collapse by 50%, all tangible assets to turn to dust, and only gold will survive given a banking crisis where Biden and Yellen sit on each other’s hands and do nothing. Trust me. Every major Democratic donor will be screaming. And as for those claiming the Fed will reverse its position, say inflation is suddenly no longer a problem, and monetize everything in sight, this is even too big for the Fed. have to create QE and absorb all the debt, there to things have changed. If the Fed does that, it will also lose all credibility. It squarely understands that inflation comes from handing Ukraine a black check to the most corrupt government in the world. The Fed raised rates yesterday for it cannot back down. It is choreographing the best it can but the bankers do not listen.
If they simply stand behind all the deposits, then there will be no panic. That is what they did in 1933 and the market rallied in confidence thereafter.
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This is a library of News Events not reported by the Main Stream Media documenting & connecting the dots on How the Obama Marxist Liberal agenda is destroying America