QUESTION: Do you think it is remotely possible for any return to a gold standard? I believe these arguments are not realistic.
DR
ANSWER: The fringe fantasy of a return to the gold standard just never dies. If we did not have vast unfunded liabilities and rising socialism to contend with, then such a possibility of a partial backing is possible. But to back the currency by gold, even say 1%, the restraints upon government would be unbelievable. First and foremost, politicians could not run with all sorts of promises. Bernie and Warren would be outlawed. We are so far away from any possible fixed exchange rate it is laughable.
There is so much that would have to change politically and economically for any form of a fixed exchange rate system, no less one backed by gold or anything that would be limited. You simply have to comprehend that even attempts to fix the currencies have blown up like the pound in the ERM crisis and the Swiss-euro peg. There is just so much more to this than some fictional return to a gold standard. Bretton Woods collapsed because they fixed the dollar to gold. You cannot fix even gold and silver to an unchanging ratio.
Tomorrow the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on the case: “DHS -vs- Regents of University of California“, also known as the DACA case: Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. DACA was instituted by a President Obama ‘executive action’, not an ‘executive order’.
The Obama Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) did not fully support the constitutional framework around the effort to protect a sub-set of illegal aliens; and therefore the originating presidential action was not an official ‘executive order’, a technicality that could end up as part of the argument(s). The same issue existed within DAPA (Deferred Action for Parents of Arrivals), and was ruled unconstitutional by a divided SCOTUS.
Amy Howe at SCOTUS Blog has a great encapsulation of the case and current status:
In 2012, the Obama administration established a program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), which allows undocumented young adults who came to the United States as children to apply for protection from deportation.
Applicants who meet a variety of criteria – for example, who have graduated from high school or served in the military and do not have a serious criminal record – must pay a fee of nearly $500 in total, submit (among other things) their fingerprints and home address and undergo a background check.
In the past seven years, nearly 800,000 people have obtained protection from deportation under DACA, which permits them to work legally in this country and gives them access to other benefits like health insurance and driver’s licenses. In 2017, the Trump administration announced that it would end the DACA program; in November, the Supreme Court will hear oral argument in a challenge to that decision. (read more)
In September of 2017 President Trump released a statement outlining how the administration would work with congress on immigration legislation toward a final disposition for those who fall under the DACA construct.
Unfortunately, Pelosi and House Democrats ultimately rebuked an immigration reform package they viewed was too heavy on enforcement and too much of an impediment to their preferred open-border platform. By January 2018 the negotiations collapsed.
While the oral arguments are tomorrow, it is unlikely there will be a SCOTUS ruling on the current DACA case until sometime later in 2020 (summer). Which will likely put DACA at the center of the 2020 election.
President Trump has previously been open to affording immigration protection for those who fall under DACA as part of a package for structural immigration reform. However, it is very likely Speaker Pelosi and the DNC will rebuke any legislative effort in their continued push to politicize the “dreamers”, and trick young voters into supporting democrat candidates.
Turning to the legality of the government’s decision to end DACA, the government explains that it had several different reasons to shut the program down, all of which were entirely reasonable. First, it reiterates, it believed that the program was illegal, so that keeping it in place would be “sanctioning an ongoing violation of federal immigration law by nearly 700,000 aliens.” And not only did the government believe that DACA violates federal law, but the 5th Circuit had in fact struck down the two related policies.
Particularly in light of the program’s “legally questionable” provenance and the announcement by Texas and other states that they would challenge DACA, the government believed that the best course was to go forward with an “orderly wind-down” on its own terms rather than taking its chances defending the program in court and risking the possibility that the program could be abruptly shut down.
It was also, the government observes, “entirely sensible” for it to determine that, even if it could have continued DACA, it would be better to do so “only with congressional approval and the political legitimacy and stability that such approval entails.” After all, even then-President Barack Obama, when announcing DACA, had indicated that the program was only intended as a “temporary stopgap measure.”
Instead, the government concluded, it opted to return to the pre-DACA system of reviewing requests for protection from deportation on a case-by-case basis. “One can agree or disagree with that judgment,” the government suggests, “but it is not remotely specious.” (more)
DACA lands before Supreme Court: Showdown over Trump bid to end ‘Dreamer’ program
The long-running battle over the Trump administration’s bid to end the Obama-era program for young undocumented immigrants known as “Dreamers” will land before the Supreme Court on Tuesday.
The stock market melt-up continues. Oh sure, it may be going down today, but that would indicate another buying opportunity. Buy the dip!That has worked for the past 10 years. Recessions are a thing of the past. Unemployment is low. The economy is doing great! Buy stocks! BUY BUY BUY! The stock market will not go down through 2020. Trump has ordered the Fed to make it so. We should be glad our president has such influence, but it’s more complicated than that.
I support Trump, but he’s wrong about the stock market has an indicator of economic health. The stock market is in a ridiculous bubble. That’s what the Federal Reserve does—it creates bubbles. The valuations of stocks are way out of whack with what the companies earn.
Too many Americans can’t afford to buy such sky-high stocks anyway. Most Americans are in debt and living paycheck to paycheck. For the first time, the 1 percent now has more money than the entire middle class combined. Not by means of capitalism, but by fascism. They’ve rigged the game in their favor. They have hijacked our government to make sure they will get more. Always more. The middle class is in decline. Real wages are not rising, but they’re paying more in terms of taxes and the hidden tax known as inflation. The millennials can’t pay off their college debt, let alone buy a house and start a family. The corrupt, millionaire politicians made sure those with college debt can’t declare bankruptcy. Housing prices are prohibitively expensive. That means rent goes up, too. One third of the millennials are forced to move back in with their parents. Meanwhile, 84 percent of the stock market is owned by the wealthiest top 10 percent of Americans. The 1 percent owns 38 percent of the stock market.
The ‘too big to fail’ banks have no worries. While most Americans fret about paying bills, the banks get free money from their Federal Reserve, which is there to bail them out to the tune of $150 billion per day if needed. Quantitative easing never ended. The Plunge Protection Team that is the Fed always ensures the market is propped up. It’s a perma-Thanksgiving feast for the central banks. These banker turkeys love to gobble up money. They are stuffed with money. A lot of that money goes into ‘their’ stock market. Martin Armstrong predicted the Dow will hit 40,000 in a few years. Why? Because all that free money has nowhere else to go, so they use it to make the stocks they already own go up even more. The banks aren’t going to give it to us, that’s for sure. We do get stuck with the bill, however. We pay for it via inflation and taxes and the national debt has now exceeded $24 trillion.
The Illuminati won’t spend that money on rebuilding infrastructure such as roads and bridges, but they will use it to buy up utilities and then make sure the electricity gets turned off to make their serfs suffer even more as they usher in their climate change-based ‘globalism.’
Conniving, evil men were allowed to inflict the vile Federal Reserve debt money system upon We The People. Congress unconstitutionally abandoned their mandate to handle our currency. They illegally turned over that power to international bankers. The Illuminati have always been about globalism and control and they’re achieving their goal by controlling our money supply. By this means they buy out everything—the mass media, the politicians, the courts—everything.
I have reviewed your Solution video. Could the government ease into such a solution in stages? For example, the government could place a moratorium on issuing debt and pay the year’s budget which included a reduction in principle on outstanding bond debt, and meeting current interest expense, by printing actual currency.
Dan
ANSWER: Yes. I believe we would have to do this in three stages. The point of the exercise is that markets trade on ANTICIPATION. Once it is realized that we are actually making a fundamental change, the markets will begin to move to reflect the long-term expectations.
China’s National People’s Congress has passed a new law to create a digital yuan. Back on December 5, 2013, the People’s Bank ofChina (PBOC) took its first step in regulating Bitcoin by prohibiting financial institutions from handling Bitcoin transactions. They were using Bitcoin to get money out of China in a modern money laundering scheme. Cryptocurrency exchanges or trading platforms were banned by regulation back in September 2017. They closed 173 platforms by July 2018. As I have warned, governments will NEVER allow Bitcoin to replace a national currency. They have used it for study, but it only takes a pen to kill Bitcoin.
Therefore, cryptocurrencies will not be allowed to compete in China against the government. This will be the same worldwide. Countries will move toward digital currency to enforce laws and taxation.
QUESTION: Marty, you said at the conference the efforts to overthrow the dollar as the reserve currency have failed and it will take the Monetary Crisis Cycle to accomplish that. Now that Lagarde is in the ECB, will she aid that overthrow to be replaced by the IMF’s SDR?
It was a fantastic conference this year.
FG
ANSWER: The US has abused the role of the dollar in world commerce by imposing sanctions on places like Iran. These sanctions are supported by enforcement using the dollar. The US has weaponized the dollar in this respect. About 90% of international debt is denominated in dollars. Foreign countries issue their debt in dollars to eliminate FOREX risk in order to sell it globally. Both Putin and Xi want to find an alternative to the dollar. It has been the role of the dollar that drives Putin to dethrone the dollar.
There is NO ALTERNATIVE to the dollar — PERIOD!!!!! The stupid Negative Interest Rates on the euro undermined the euro as a possible reserve currency. It has been dumped internationally, which nobody wants to talk about. In discussions with major central banks and key international banks, nobody wants the euro. Negative Interest Rateshave killed the euro as a viable currency for exchange purposes. The EU President Juncker has said that it is “absurd” that Europe has to pay for its energy imports in dollars. He has failed to understand that it is their own fault, for the structurally defective euro lacks a central national debt and forces everyone to look at each member state independently in the same manner that applies to state debt in the USA. That lack of a national debt where capital can park has been the fatal flaw behind the euro. Then add the stupidity of Negative Interest Rates and you get a currency that dressed up for Halloween, but is by no means a real reserve currency.
China has given up on trying to fight the dollar. They realize that all the yelling and screaming is pointless. The yuan accounts for only 4% of international transactions. The key for China is to use the yuan in loans to build its road of trade globally. Their greatest hope will be for the Monetary Crisis Cycle to undermine the dollar in the year ahead. That combined with the neo-cons trying to weaponize the dollar will be the ultimate means to dethrone the dollar
COMMENT: I just finished “Manipulating the World Economy.” What a wonderful book and actually a gift to those of us who attended the October conference. I hope you will soon publish this book for all the public to read.
JL
REPLY: It is going off to the printers within the next week. We hope to have it ready for Christmas. I really did try to make it the most comprehensive book on the subject matter. I was asked to write it because there was nothing out there to combat the Modern Monetary Theory, and those such a Thomas Piketty who advocate seizing the wealth of anyone who has more than he does.
COMMENT: I find it interesting how the rest of the world is declining and Socrates forecast that the US economy would be only slightly weak going into January 2020. It is interesting how it picks up the major differences. They are blind to the trend. You bring together the world. Thank you for that and there will always be idiots who cannot comprehend the trend and think Warren Buffet is a great investor when he was just a buy and hold no different than Trump. They both made money simply because of the inflationary asset trend since 1985.
Great forecast
KL
REPLY: The US economy was not poised for a major recession that everyone was forecasting because of the China trade dispute. It is softer, yes, but it is really holding up the entire world economy. The third quarter GDP was still up 0.8% whereas the prior quarter was up 1.1%. So yes, it was a slight decline. But we do not show a major economic decline in the USA.
As long as stocks have been in a bull market since 1985, then buy and hold works. But they lose in downtrends. Everyone forgets that. The year 2008 was the worse year Buffett had in 44 years. Most people cannot hold through such declines. This is why institutions have used us for decades. They cannot buy and sell like short-term investors. They need to know when to flip a major portfolio. Truly smart value investors hedge. That eliminates the risk of having to declare bankruptcy during the declines.
QUESTION: Dear Mr. Armstrong.
Does Socrates have an explanation of what is happening to the Norwegian Kroner? All the financial newspapers and banks here in Norway are scratching their heads and don’t have an explanation of why it’s devaluating against the Euro and Dollar. The central bank of Norway has an interest rate of 1.50%, while Euro has an interest rate of -0.5%.
BT
ANSWER: Norway’s currency has been declining recently over concerns with regard to the US-China trade dispute given the fact that it is highly exposed to the US-China trade situation. Additionally, the sharp decline in crude oil prices has also impacted the currency given the oil and gas industry accounts for more than 1/20th of Norway’s gross domestic product and about 2/3rds of its exports. Therefore, Norway’s economy has been highly correlated with oil prices.
Nevertheless, in Korona, the price of oil is rising given the decline in the currency (click on the image). The analysis never looks at everything from an international perspective. Your currency is retesting the 2000 high in the dollar.
CTH has some new readers, so against the backdrop of the UniParty in Washington DC jumping into action to criticize President Trump’s decision to withdraw from Syria; and against the backdrop of President Trump authorizing an operation last night that killed ISIS leader Baghdadi, perhaps a little factual and historic refresher is in order….
The 40-minute discussion took place on the sidelines of a United Nations General Assembly in New York. The meeting took place at the Dutch Mission to the United Nations on Sept. 22nd 2016:
[…] Kerry’s off-record conversation was apparently with two dozen ‘Syrian civilians’, all from US backed opposition-linked NGO’s in education and medical groups supposedly working in ‘rebel-held’ (aka terrorist-held) areas in Syria.
This opposition conclave also included ‘rescue workers’ which can only be ambassadors from the White Helmets, a pseudo NGO which serves as Washington and London’s primary PR front in pursuit of a “No Fly Zone’ in Syria, and it’s being bankrolled by the US, UK, EU and other coalition states to the tune of well over $100 million (so far). (link)
When you listen to the audio recording (embedded below) it becomes immediately obvious what was going on in 2014, 2015 and 2016 as an outcome of policy from the White House. In addition, you discover why this jaw-dropping 2016 leak/story was buried by the U.S. media and how it connects to the prior 4 years of perplexing U.S. mid-east policy.
This evidence within this single story would/should forever remove any credibility toward the U.S. foreign policy under President Obama. It also destroys the credibility of a large number of well known republicans, and explains how the prior action placed President Trump into a precarious position requiring a careful approach.
The key Secretary Kerry moments are at 02:00, and again at approximately 18:30 forward.
The discussion from 18:30 through to 29:00 are exceptionally revealing and should be listened to by anyone who has wondered what was going on in Syria. Kerry even makes mention of the “Responsibility to Protect, or R2P” principle:
.
@18:30 Secretary John Kerry [transcript]:
[…] “Well, the problem is the Russians do not care about law, and we do. And, we don’t have a basis -our lawyers tell us- unless we have a U.N. Security Council resolution, which the Russians can veto and Chinese, OR unless we are under attack from the folks there, or unless we are invited in. Russia was invited in by the legitimate regime, well, it’s illegitimate in our mind, by the regime. And so, they were invited in and we’re not invited in.”
“We’re flying in airspace there, where they can turn on the air defense and we have a very different scene. The only reason they’re letting us fly is because we’re going after ISIS. If we were going after Assad, those air defenses, we’d have to take out all those air defenses, uh, and we don’t have a legal justification, frankly, for doing that unless we stretch it way beyond the law on a humanitarian basis, which some people argue we should – by the way.”
“Uh, but so far American legal theory has not gone into these so called “right to protect”, uh, and we don’t even have what we had in Kosovo where we had an, you know, an existing resolution and so forth. Uh, even though we went alone.”
“And so it’s complicated, it’s not easy. And we’ve been fighting. How many wars have we been fighting? We’ve been fighting in Afghanistan, we’ve been fighting in Iraq, we’ve fighting -you know- in the region for fourteen years. And a lot of Americans don’t believe that we should be fighting and sending young Americans over to die in another country. That’s the problem.”
“The congress won’t vote to do it. And you can be mad at us, but what we’re trying to do is help Syrians fight for their own country; and we’ve been spending a lot of money, a lot of effort to try and help do this. So, there’s an opposition there; the opposition is doing very well. Russia came in, and that’s a problem I know, because, uh, y’ know, uh, we don’t behave like Russians, it’s just a different standard.”
“So we are trying to see if we can test whether Russia, you see, is serious about a political solution. And if they are not serious, then we will help the opposition more. But I don’t think that’s particularly good for Syrians in the end because it will mean more fighting.”
Secretary Kerry is then questioned by an obvious sympathizer toward the extremist elements (calls pro-assad Sunni faction “Sunni Jews”) about why the U.S. fights the extremist Sunni (ISIS), but not the extremist Shia (Hezbollah). Kerry’s response:
“Well, they’re [Hezbollah] a terrorist organization, we’ve designated them a terrorist organization. The reason for [airstrikes against the Sunni Extremists] is because they have basically declared war on us; and are plotting against us, and Hezbollah is not plotting against us; Hezbollah is exclusively focused on Israel, they’re not attacking now, and on Syria where they are attacking in support of the, uh, in support of Assad.”
“So it a, uh, it’s…”
[Interrupted]
Question: “But how to make the majority of the Syrian people accept this approach, that because Hezbollah or the Iraqi or Iranian groups are not attacking the U.S. now when they are attacking against the terrorism in Syria?”
Kerry: “Well, they, they are targeted by the opposition who we are arming and training.”
What the recording reveals is substantive:
♦ First, only regime change, the removal of Bashir Assad, in Syria was the 2013, 2014, and 2015 goal for President Obama. This is admitted and outlined by Secretary John Kerry.
♦ Secondly, in order to accomplish this primary goal, the White House was willing to watch the rise of ISIS (’13, ’14, ’15) by placing their bet that ISIS’s success would force Syrian President Bashir Assad to acquiesce toward Obama’s terms and step down.
♦ Thirdly, in order to facilitate the objective, Obama and Kerry intentionally gave arms to ISIS and even, arguably, attacked a Syrian government military convoy to stop a strategic attack upon the Islamic extremists killing 80 Syrian soldiers.
Pause for a moment and consider those three points carefully. Because the audio, along with accompanying research now surfacing, not only exposes these three points as truth – but also provides the specific evidence toward them.
The problem in the Obama/Kerry’s secret strategy became clear when ISIS grew in sufficient strength to give the White House optimism for the scheme – however, instead of capitulation Assad then turned to Russia for help.
When Russia came to aid Bashir Assad the Syrian Government began being able to defeat ISIS and the Islamic Extremist elements within Syria. For the hidden plan of Obama/Kerry (and also McCain, Graham, et al), Russia defeating ISIS, al-Qaeda and al-Nusra, upended their objective.
Against the backdrop of this recording we can reconcile so many historic issues. We already know of a Second Presidential Finding Memo authorizing additional CIA covert action in 2012, this time in Syria. However, unlike the 2011 Libyan operation we do not know the operational name of the second action in 2012 Syria.
2012:WASHINGTON, Aug 1 (Reuters) – President Barack Obama has signed a secret order authorizing U.S. support for rebels seeking to depose Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his government, U.S. sources familiar with the matter said.
Obama’s order, approved earlier this year and known as an intelligence “finding,” broadly permits the CIA and other U.S. agencies to provide support that could help the rebels oust Assad. (link)
Further consider how this Kerry audio tape, and the now transparent Obama policy toward Syria, absolutely confirms our earlier research as contained within the Benghazi Brief surrounding Syria. [Previous post]
President Obama, Secretary Clinton (2011, 2012) and later Secretary Kerry, together with John McCain, and the CIA tentacled team within the Republican party (2013, 2014, 2015) were willing to support extremist (under all factional names) in order to overthrow Bashir Assad…
…THIS WAS THE Obama/Kerry POLICY.
This was their 2016 admitted policy, only because they were caught.
Nothing else mattered.
President Trump took office in January 2017, and began a process to kill and remove, with extreme prejudice, the ISIS forces that President Obama, Secretary Clinton and Secretary Kerry armed. He began with the end in mind, and delivered the following quote:…
I have created this site to help people have fun in the kitchen. I write about enjoying life both in and out of my kitchen. Life is short! Make the most of it and enjoy!
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
Centinel2012 