Posted originally on Jan 17, 2025 by Martin Armstrong
QUESTION: I made a bet that a friend was wrong that Roosevelt also confiscated silver. I never heard of that, only gold. He said I should write to you and you will decide who wins.
Thanks
FD
ANSWER: Sorry, you lose. He must have been at one of my conferences when we discussed that if he told you to ask me. Most people have never heard that Roosevelt also confiscated silver – not just gold. On August 9th, 1934, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt implemented the seizure of all silver situated in the continental United States with Executive Order 6814 – requiring the Delivery of All Silver to the United States for Coinage. This was the same abuse of executive power as Executive Order 6102, which FDR signed on April 5th, 1933, “forbidding the Hoarding of Gold Coin, Gold Bullion, and Gold Certificates within the continental United States” with some differences.
A key difference here with the silver Executive Order 6814 excluded the seizure of all silver coins, whether foreign or domestic. At the same time, Executive Order 6102 only exempted certain types of collectible or numismatic coins from seizure because Teddy Roosevelt had been an ancient coin collector and even J.P. Morgan. Franklin was a stamp collector.
In a famous letter to U.S. Secretary of the Treasury L.M. Shaw, dated December 27, 1904, Teddy Roosevelt stated, “I think the state of our coinage is artistically of atrocious hideousness. Would it be possible, without asking permission of Congress, to employ a man like [Augustus] Saint-Gaudens to give us a coinage which would have some beauty?” He saw the ancient coins as magnificent works of art unprecedented in numismatic history. Teddy saw the ancients as inspiration.
He had the $20 1907 gold struck in high relief with Roman numerals for the day. But modern machines could not handle this type of work. Only 11,250 were struck before being replaced with the flat-relief design with regular Arabic numbers.
There was a shortage of silver because people were also hoarding silver after confiscating the gold. There were no silver dollars minted after 1928. Only when Roosevelt confiscated the silver in 1934 did we see 1934 silver dollars being struck
Posted originally on Jan 17, 2025 by Martin Armstrong
NATO’s new Secretary-General Mark Rutte believes that members must reduce spending on social programs to redirect funds into the war effort. Rutte is prepared to spend as if NATO were already at war. Social security programs and pensions must come secondary to the neocon agenda.
“On average, European countries easily spend up to a quarter of their national income on pensions, health and social security systems, and we need only a small fraction of that money to make defense much stronger,” Rutte told MEPs. NATO knows that incoming President Donald Trump will no longer subsidy other member states. Trump is calling on all NATO members to up their spending to 5%, but Rutte believes the best they can muster “will be impressively more than the 2 percent” initial target.
Rutte said it’s crucial to “bring NATO and the EU closer together” as it can no longer rely on the US for unlimited funding. The neocon retirement home refused to meet their obligatory 2% target until recent years on the heels of Trump initially threatening to pull out of the alliance followed by the Russia-Ukraine war. It’s highly unlikely that the organization would be calling for emergency funding if we were looking at a Kamala presidency. Most nations STILL cannot or will not meet their 2% target. These nations never had the pressure of finding funding since the US was always willing to write the check.
“We are not at war, but we are not at peace either,” Rutte commented. No peace is the precise agenda. There could be peace as no allied nation has been threatened. The threats are coming from within the alliance as a fear-mongering tactic. “We are safe now, but not in four or five years,” he said, adding later that if spending doesn’t go up Europeans should “get out your Russian language courses or go to New Zealand.”
The Dutch are familiar with Rutte’s rhetoric. Naturally, no plan was presented, but the people should be aware that politicians are prepared to punish civilians, including those who paid into poorly managed social systems throughout their long, tax-paying lives.
Posted originally on Jan 16, 2025 by Martin Armstrong
Governments worldwide are at a loss on how to solve the housing crisis. Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez of Spain believes placing a 100% tax on properties purchase by non-European Union residents will solve the crisis. He’s wrong.
“The West faces a decisive challenge: To not become a society divided into two classes, the rich landlords and poor tenants,” Sánchez said. An estimated 700,000 properties sold throughout the nation in Spain, the second-highest volume of sold homes in over 15 years. Non-EU residents accounted for a mere 27,000 home purchases. News outlets like BBC are stating that foreigners composed 15% of the Spanish housing market in 2023 but they are also including EU residents who will not be burdened by this tax. The German and French, for example, are large purchasers of properties in Spain.
The government has not said when this will go into effect. What they fail to realize is that the average real estate investor may purchase a handful of properties and rent a few out. They are not buying anywhere near the level of massive funds like BlackRock who have taken over the residential real estate market globally in recent years. The government is not calling out these funds because they partner with them to create new housing, student residences, and co-living options. BlackRock and others can be considered a necessary evil to some extent as there is a severe housing shortage in comparison to demand. However, the president said he wanted to target those looking to profit from real estate but failed to target actual investment funds. The government always targets higher net-worth INDIVIDUALS looking for passive income.
Then at the same time, Spain is eliminating a fast-tracked residency program called the “golden visa.” This program was intended to attract high-net-worth individuals who are able to spend a minimum of €500,000 on housing. These individuals would have paid taxes into the economy and likely intended to live there for a portion of the year, spending more money in Spain.
Let us not count out okupa laws that not only legally permit squatting, but it forbids homeowners from evicting squatters. Over 55,000 complaints regarding illegal occupation have been filed in the last four years. Not only are squatters permitted to stay in unoccupied housing, but the landlord has an obligation to keep the utilities on AND pay for them.
Open borders certainly are not helping, as 63,970 new migrants entered the nation last year, a 12.5% increase from the year prior. The government says they are curbing migration since figures are down from the 2018 high of 64,298, but nations, especially coastal nations, cannot truly calculate everyone who illegally enters.
No one in government will ever question, “Has this been done before? If so, what was the outcome?” Canada attempted to charge an albeit smaller 25% entry tax on real estate for foreign buyers, but good luck finding a home there. I believe these measures are simply smoke and mirrors. The concept appeases the people who are struggling to afford housing and the government can say that they attempted to combat the problem.
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