QUESTION: Mr. Armstrong: I have watched in amazement how you connect all these elements. Everyone I spoke to agreed this was your best WEC ever. You have said the Fed needed to raise rates because of the pension crisis and it would have nothing to do with inflation but it has to normalize rates to help pensions. Then we have the ECB refusing to raise rates. Would you please comment on the Fed’s actions yesterday? Is this a central bank war?

OM

ANSWER: I understand this can get confusing because there are so many people who talk without any real-world experience. The Fed MUST raise rates to help the crisis in Pension funds. It raised the Fed Funds Rate (what banks charge each other) 25 basis points to 2.25-2.5%. While the Fed indicated there would be two more rate hikes in 2019, what has gone over everyone’s head is exactly what I have been warning about. We are witnessing indeed not a Currency War that people claim over trade since I do not see any actual counter-trend manipulation attempts as was the case with the G5 back in 1987.

This is a brand new Central Bank War that nobody seems to get I suppose since I may be the only person who actually speaks to central banks outside the USA. All the various central banks and the IMF have been lobbying the Federal Reserve since 2014 pleading with it NOT to raise rates. I have stated many times that the rate hikes by the Fed have NOTHING to do with economic growth, inflation, or trying to stop a speculative bubble in stocks.

The lobbying behind the curtain against the Fed raising rates has been very intense. What is most interesting is that BECAUSE of what the New York boys did to me, outside the country it has been a badge of honor and a CONFIRMATION that I am NOT one of them and am independent. Hence, I meet with central banks outside the USA because I am someone who knows the real game behind the curtain, have 30+ years of real-world experience, and work internationally. That has made me fill a rather unique role with a front row seat to the world. I have written before: “The talk behind the curtain remains that the Fed is still under pressure to PLEASE don’t raise rates. The lobbying continues from the IMF, ECB, and Emerging Markets.” (see Aug 2, 2018, Post).

I cannot say this any stronger! The Fed is dealing with reality. It MUST raise rates, not for the economy but in order to NORMALIZE interest rates because lowering rates makes it cheaper ONLYfor borrowers while it destroys the philosophy of saving for your retirement when you cannot earn enough interest to buy a nice dinner. Then pension funds are going belly-up like the fish in a polluted pond. State pension funds then turn to their respective governments who then raise taxes lowering the standard of living (i.e. California & Illinois). The ECB is trapped and I have warned that it is the ONLY central bank that can actually go bankrupt because all central banks do not have the same structure. I have made it clear that by their very own standards, the ECB itself is insolvent.

At the end of 2017 in the USA, total household debt exceeded $13 trillion. Total non-financial business debt stood at $6.1 trillion at the end of 2017. The Fed’s balance sheet was $4.4 trillion of which $2.4 is US Treasuries – the bulk of the rest is simply excess reserves. The national debt stood at $20.5 trillion at the end of 2017. That meant the actual Quantitative Easing was not $4.4 trillion, but $2.4 or about 10% of annual GDP compared to Europe at 20% and Japan over 100%. If we look at this perspective, this means the money supply is $41.6 trillion just using the debt. If we then add M2 (all accounts & money market accounts) which stood at $13.8 trillion at the end of 2017, this brings us to a liquid money supply of $55.4 trillion. The Fed’s balance sheet does not even reach 10% of that figure and the QE portion is less than 5%. Now, do you understand why the goldbugs were dead wrong on hyperinflation?

Now let us add the stock market, which is liquid. That reached $30 trillion by the end of 2017. Therefore, the liquid assets/cash position stood at $85.4 trillion at the end of 2017. Now let us add total personal real estate (homes) in the United States which stood at $31.8 trillion. If we include illiquid real estate, now we are up to  $117.2 trillion. We are NOWHERE near possible hyperinflation!

I will state this ONCE AGAIN!!!!!!!!

Poster in London

Raising rates is NECESSARY for the Fed also realizes that come the next economic recession, the only tool they have is to lower rates. They do NOT share this theory running around that full employment will only take place with NEGATIVE rates at -4% to -5%. The ECB is looking at that BECAUSE they cannot raise rates. Why do you think the IMF is now telling everyone to adopt cryptocurrency? That way they end hoarding and can ENFORCE negative rates. Where politicians in Australia have called for the removal of the $100 bill claims cash is for criminals, the Reserve Bank of Australia (central bank) has defended the embattled $100 note arguing that criminals prefer $50.

Trump wanted the wall with Mexico to stop the drug trade. The Democrats call him a racist for that, but they advocate eliminating the $100 bill as well. Lawrence Summers, a former economic adviser to President Obama and ex-Treasury secretary, say get rid of the $50 bill as well. They argue cash is for criminal in the drug trade, but then call Trump a racist for wanting a wall. Summers is spouting out pure propaganda since he admits that getting rid of the $100 bill, or even the $50, won’t eliminate crime and corruption, but would make it harder for criminals to launder money. I am no fan of Larry Summers. I believe he is a very serious danger to the world economy. He was a primary architect of the modern U.S. financial system that collapsed in 2008 and was among the first to advocate negative interest rates. Summers second in line in the U.S. Treasury in the 1990s under President Clinton and Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin. He advocated the repeal of Glass-Steagall and appears in the photo when Clinton signed that act (on the left).

He was also there arguing the creation of “too big to fail” theory to support wholesale bailouts without any criminal prosecution for frauds. He fought against the regulation of derivatives which later played a key role in the financial crisis orchestrated by Goldman Sachs. He became Secretary of the Treasury under Clinton 1999-2001 when Rubin left after fulfilling his reason to leave Goldman Sachs – the repeal of Glass Steagal. Summers then held the position as President of Harvard 2001-2006 during the administration of George W. Bush seriously calling into question the worth of a degree in economics from Harvard. Allegedly, Summers left Harvard after a no-confidence vote by the staff following the loss of some $1.8 billion in Harvard endowment funds to a derivatives deal gone bad reported by Reuters. After that fiasco, Summers became the Director of President Obama’s Nation Economic Council. So after that loss at Harvard, he is qualified for the White House to advise on economic policy from 2008-2010 and played a key role in bailing out the U.S. banking system.

Larry Summers is the guy who publicly admitted he cannot forecast the economy because it is too complicated for academics. Summers is also the architect of negative interest rates. He has stated that the natural interest rate remains BELOW zero even with the QE measures sterilizing any action of the Fed. Reducing short-term interest rates is the Fed’s greatest power according to Summers under Monetarism to bring about full employment during recessions. However, the Fed has been hamstrung by this zero-lower boundary resulting in a weaker recovery thus far. Consequently, Summer sees the larger problem is that this is not a short-term issue but systemic. He argues that should another recession hit right now, the Fed will be impudent. This is what Summers warned of in his speech at the IMF.

“Imagine a situation where natural and equilibrium interest rates have fallen significantly below zero,” Summers said. “Then conventional macroeconomic thinking leaves us in a very serious problem because we all seem to agree that whereas you can keep the federal funds rate at a low level forever, it’s much harder to do extraordinary measures beyond that forever, but the underlying problem may be there forever.”

Summer is the man behind the curtain wanting to eliminate cash and making money national cryptocurrencies to ENFORCE negative rates. If you eliminate paper money, you eliminate bank runs. You eliminate hoarding of money (cash) and that would allow Summers to enforce a -5% interest rate stealing your money which would enrich the banks on top of the taxes you pay to the government. I am not alone in my criticisms of Summers (see Atlantic) where may see him as unyielding, unrepentant, and arrogant. He was the there at the Treasury when Clinton eliminated the right to file bankruptcy on student loans.

It was the Clinton Administration that aided the bankers for on October 7, 1998, when President Clinton signed the Higher Education Amendments of 1998 (the 1998 HEA), which provided federal funding for education loans at a reduced rate of interest. However, Clinton sneaked in the 1998 HEA two specific changes regarding the collection of student loans that is a brewing part of the Sovereign Debt Crisis today for students cannot discharge student loans in bankruptcy and 65% cannot find a job in what they paid for. This has funded WORTHLESS education at outrageous prices creating a welfare system for academics to propagate stuff like global warming to screw us with even more taxes, and then bankers can lend money to students and turn them into economic slaves for life. Then in 2014, Summers admitted that student debt was slowing the housing recovery and the broader economic recovery. Student loans are preventing graduates from buying a home because of their debt position which will take decades to pay off at 7%+ interest rates. This man is EXTREMELYdangerous to all our liberties.

People ask me why I do not go into politics or take a political position to make a difference. First of all, I can make a living myself and do not need to rip off the country. Then there is the problem that I have real-world experience and do not come from the academic side with only theory. I actually advised under contract on portfolios that amounted to 50% of the US national debt (see testimony before Congress). I have experience which is not really a requirement these days in Washington. Plus I would lose my independence which is something I really cherish. One person cannot change the system. Look at Trump. The entire establishment is out to get him. Vogue Magazine even hates his wife – which is really a first. Every major media is marching in tune to drive Trump from office. There were 67 countries represented at the WEC event this year in Orlando. The press would spin that as I am advising people against the United States. They would turn my international experience into treason today.

QUESTION: Hi Mr. Armstrong,

Quick question for you, as someone who grew up in Quebec in the 90’s, when Quebec was voting to separate. And now living in Alberta, and seeing the sheer anger here towards Canada, is there a legitimate chance Alberta moves towards the path of separation and actually brings it to a vote?
Thanks again

Mike

(as a kid growing up in Montreal, I wanted nothing to do with separation. If the vote was held today in Alberta, I would highly consider voting to leave Canada)

ANSWER: Alberta joined Canada in 1905. This separatist movement began precisely on the half-cycle of 112 years – 2017. What we are dealing with here is that when the Federal Reserve was formed in 1913, it was established with 12 branches. When the Fed was created, it was the solution to the Panic of 1907, which was set in motion by the disruption of the internal domestic capital flows caused by the San Francisco earthquake of 1906. The insurance companies were in New York. Consequently, the cash flowed to the West and a shortage developed in the East.

The original structural design of the Fed was to establish 12 branches to manage the capital flows domestically. Interest rates would decline where there was an excess of cash and rise where there was a shortage. This, they believed, would cause capital to move between the branches to balance the national capital flows and economy. Each branch acted independently to manage the capital flows. When crops would come to market, then Kansas would have an excess of cash and rates would decline as we can see from the table showing the rates set by each branch in August 1927.

When Roosevelt comes to power in 1933, he wanted to control the economy for his socialist agenda. He usurped the power of interest rates from the various branches of the Fed and consolidated then into Washington DC making it one-size-fits-all. He, therefore, abandoned the structural design of the Fed and ever since the capital flow focus has been international, not domestic.

This is the problem in Alberta. Governments have all followed Roosevelt post-World War II. In doing so, they have completely abandoned the proper management of their domestic economies and everyone is always focused on international capital flows and currency values with respect to trade. They have COMPLETELY ignored the fact that their domestic economies are not the same from one state or province to the next.

The commodity-producing states are booming when the financial states and at their lows. Our own model is warning that we have a commodity boom coming for the NEXT 8.6-year wave on the Economic Confidence Model. Right now, the stock market rallies and commodities linger. Central Banks will raise rates in the stock market booms to prevent inflation and that is when they put farmers and miners into bankruptcy.

I have called this the Texas-New York arbitrage. Here is a chart showing when oil peaks in price, it is typically counter-trend to the financial markets. Oil peaked in 2008 when the stock market was crashing. Once again, oil prices are down and Alberta suffers while the financial markets are booming in Toronto.

What is resurfacing is the regional differences within Canada as well as the United States. The one-size-fits-all policy of central banks with regard to interest rates pits East v West in both Canada and the United States. Farmers, oil producers, and miners are forced to pay higher interest rates when their economies are declining because of speculative booms in Toronto or New York.

This is the root cause of the regional separatist movements we are witnessing in Canada. The structure of the central banks was originally intended to manage the domestic capital flows. That has been part of the whole socialist agenda to abandon that policy and create the one-size-fits-allpolicy of Marxism. This is why Alberta SHOULD move to separate. The very economic survival is critical unless the central banks open their eyes and STOP this Keynesian manipulation of interest rates attempting to manage DEMAND which they fail to even understand. It is this Socialist philosophy which is destroying governments and reducing our standard of living to support a theory of Marx which resulted in the collapse of China and Russia. You cannot be just a little-bit pregnant.

QUESTION: Marty, your account of Carausius and Postumus being the ancient Brexit is really interesting. Am I correct that whilst this separatist movement failed, it was this Brexit that forced Rome to reintroduce silver?

HM

ANSWER: Correct.  Diocletian introduced the silver Argenteus in 294AD after the defeat of Carausius’ separatist movement. It is highly likely that old silver denarii were still being used at a huge premium. We do find many denarii worn rather extensively indicating that they did see a lot of circulation.

Here is a coin of Postumus (260-268AD) and the reverse is a political statement. The reverse side states “RESTITVTOR GALLIAR” with Postumus standing left with foot on the captive barbarian, resting on his spear and raising a kneeling figure of Gallia holding a cornucopia. This is portraying him as the great restorer of order and savior of Gaul. This goes directly to the political instability emerging. His rebellion was by no means an attempt to seize the empire but to split from Rome and establish the Gallic Empire.

This is where the coinage PROVES a very important point. The debasement we see in the coinage of Rome clearly created a CONTAGION. Even though Postumus split creating a separatist movement with the Gallic Empire, he could not maintain a silver standard for the coinage he would strike simply vanished from circulation as was the case in Rome proper.

Consequently, we find that the coinage of Postumus shows that he too had to debase the coinage keeping in line with the debasement in Rome under Gallienus. The silver was being hoarded even within this new separatist movement. However, when we look at the second Ancient BREXIT movement 14 years later, things did calm down and confidence was beginning to return for Carausius issues a silver denarius and then Diocletian is compelled to follow in 294AD with the re-introduction of silver coinage known as the Argentius.

The most interesting aspect of this is that here the Second Ancient BREXIT influenced monetary reform in the Roman Empire working in reverse. The first reign under Postumus separated when the coinage was still silver. So the debasement in Rome compelled the same response in the Gallic Empire. The Second Ancient BREXIT takes place post-debasement and it issues a silver denarius to prove it is prosperous there in Britain. Thus, the influence moves back the other way. Thus, the sequence matters.

What this demonstrates is that if Europe cancels the currency and moves to its own cryptocurrency as the IMF is suggesting, people will then immediately begin to hoard the paper currency of the USA, Scandinavia, Switzerland, and perhaps even China. This could result in forcing other countries to move to cryptocurrencies to control capital flows. This is what I hope for. If we can get just one country to adopt our solution, this will put pressure on everyone else to follow. The danger cryptocurrency introduces is OFF THE CHARTS!. The sales pitch has been that they will bypass central banks. In reality, when government outlaws private cryptocurrencies and compels people to use the official cryptocurrency, then the global capital flows will be threatened profoundly.

All I can do is understand the economics of the situation and hope for the best.

QUESTION: Mr. Armstrong; Do you agree with Bloomberg that the yield on German bunds has declined in anticipation of the Fed lowering rates?

JV

ANSWER: No  The falling yields on German government debt is simply intensifying the trade to buy German and short everything in the South in anticipation of a failed Euro. It really a stretch to claim yields are declining in Germany because the expect lower rates at the Fed. This is purely a speculative punter’s play – not a shift in strategic portfolios. Italy’s budget battle with Brussels remains a concern as is the case with BREXIT. There is just a growing lack of confidence in Europe. I do not believe that even the technical pattern implies such a shift at the Federal Reserve as the reason for capital movement within the Eurozone market.

The system we have is totally corrupt and it outright UNSUSTAINABLE!!!! In Illinois, the city of Peoria has been forced to eliminate 22 firefighter and 16 police positions even after they made 27 layoffs earlier this year. Besides eliminating employees, they are now looking at adding a tax of $50-$300 to try to cover their own pension schemes as pension spending consuming everything. Pension costs are forcing Peoria to cut 38 emergency worker positions and to raise property taxes further. Peoria joins the south Chicago suburb of Harvey which is yet another warning of what is coming over the next three years into 2021.

QUESTION: Mr. Armstrong; the WEC was the best ever. The materials it took you a month to prepare in advance are amazing. Your insight into the difference between a sovereign debt crisis and how that produces deflation compared to the debasement deserves a Nobel Prize. My question is how did the people cope with the debasement? I see the hoards of even debased coinage. Did they hoard the old silver and gold coins outright or was there a black market where they fetched a premium?

PG

ANSWER: There is no question that the introduction of the double denarius known as the antoninianus under Caracalla (198-217AD) was the beginning of the acceleration of the debasement process. However, the last Emperor to produce the silver denarius in any quantity was Gordian III (238-244AD). He was assassinated by Philip I (244-249AD) and the few denarii he issued are very rare. From this point onward, we see the antoninianus takes center stage as the dominant coin in circulation.

The rise in the price of commodities appears rather stable until the reign of Gallienus (253-268AD) which the silver content of the antoninianus virtually vanishes in just 8 years going into the bottom of that Waterfall event following the capture of his father Valerian I (253-260AD) by the Persians in 260AD.  There are some references as early as the Severan period were the silver Antoninianus under Caracalla was used in more major transactions. However, in this case, they were just replacing the gold coins that were gradually being hoarded from the reign of Caracalla onward. Therefore, the silver Antoninianus was replacing gold in the markets as a higher denomination suitable for larger transactions.

When we analyze the monetary history and the production of Roman coinage, up until the early Severan period, two-thirds of the total face value of the coins in circulation were actually gold aureii. The peak in the Roman Empire was clearly the reign of Marcus Aurelius (161-180AD). Upon his death, his son took power and Commodus (180-192AD) was ruthless and insane. Upon his assassination, the Empire went into yet another civil war. This is when the Praetorian Guard auctioned off the office of the Emperor to the highest bidder who was Didius Julianus (193AD). Didius offered 25,000 sestertii per man. His reign lasted 66 days and enraged the empire as the depths of corruption.

Therefore, with the empire thrust once again into civil war, the financial system came to a halt and hoarding was the name of the game. Even with the end of the civil war and the establishment of the Severan Dynasty under Septimus Severus (193-211AD), something in the confidence of the people had changed. Septimus made great efforts to issue coinage to show the reestablishment of a dynasty in an attempt to reignite confidence in government. The hoarding of gold began to reduce the circulation of the gold aureii at this point in history. This no doubt provides a backdrop to the issuance of the double denarius known as the Antoninianus by Caracalla.

Clearly, the aureii were no longer used in the markets and the value of the gold coins in circulation was triple that of the silver coins in purchasing power. The production of denarii begins to increase at this moment to cover the lack of gold coins circulating. Consequently, following the reign of Gordian III, we find the denarii drop from production and the predominant denomination becomes the Antoninianus.

Interestingly, one of the reasons I sought to reconstruct the monetary system was to gain a look at what was really taking place within the Roman Empire because the common denominator is how people respond to events regardless of the century. Despite the increase of antoniniani in circulation, there is no inscription nor literary evidence that seems to indicate a higher degree of monetization. This seems to imply that the economy was contracting significantly thanks to the reign of Maximinus I (235-238AD) who simply declared all private wealth belonged to the state (him). He melted down golden statues of former emperors and paid informants with respect to people hiding wealth. The natural human response was to hoard rather than invest. People stopped even spending normally and saved. Therefore, despite the increase in coinage output, there was DEFLATION as we have witnessed in Europe under the Quantitative Easing of the European Central Bank (ECB). The increase in money supply resulted only in hoarding rather than inflation. They still had faith in the purchasing power of money.

Therefore, from 192 to 238AD, in the span of just 46 years, the one thing that the people understood was that government was not something one could count on as being stable. The monetary behavior of the population during this period resulted in the disappearance of the gold aureii from circulation. There are surviving inscriptions and comments showing that it was considered an unparalleled honor and a privilege for someone to be paid in imperial gold coins. In fact, the rare cases of the appearance of gold coins in inscriptions or literary sources only further demonstrate that it was exceptional for gold to be used in a transaction during the 3rd century.

Roman gold medallions, as we call them, have come down to us from antiquity in much smaller number than the silver and bronze medallions. Nevertheless, it is quite probable that a considerable number were coined, but on account of the intrinsic value of the metal relatively few now exist. They are not really a medal that is commemorative in nature. They appear to have been a donative, intended to be deliberately limited in the scope of its appeal. In other words, for all its superficial resemblance to a coin, the primary purpose of these medallions was not circulation as currency but distribution as a gift. They exist in gold, silver, and bronze. Here is a Gordian III gold medallion which was made into an ancient necklace illustrating that they were a donative rather than currency (see Gordian III gold medallion Courtesy of George Ortiz (1927-2013) Collection).

There are a number of funerary inscriptions from Asia Minor that also indicate a turn towards the use of precious-metal bullion instead of coins. There are no real silver or gold bars that have surfaced from the 3rd century that I am aware of. The Roman historian Duncan Jones cites that the nature of standardized fines changed during the 3rd century AD. Tomb raiders were supposed to pay a certain amount of money in the form of precious-metal coins to the family or the city or the imperial treasury, but the fines then changed during the 3rd century to be paid in talents of precious metals and thereby the calculation was by weight rather than by coin.

This use of bullion is attested for the first time after the middle of the 3rd century but it becomes more regular throughout the fourth and the fifth centuries in Greece as well as in Asia Minor according to Jones. It appears that society reverted back to raw metal and even fines were to be made in metal rather than coin. At the very least, large transactions were clearly taking place in terms of precious metal by weight rather than coin. When we look at the gold coinage of Gallienus, we see that the aureus declined from 3.59 grams to about 1.85 grams. There are even paper thin examples with a weight of 0.77 grams which may be a half-aureus known as a quinarius. Hence, it is very clear that gold was a rare commodity during this Waterfall Event during the 3rd century AD.

There is little question that the function of coins around the time of Gallienus’ reign and this Waterfall Event was drastically altered. Society reverted to raw metals and barter. This is why to a large extent we find very little contemporary comments on rising prices of commodities for that would be reflected in the current coin as produced. It appears that inflation in terms of the official coin was irrelevant when society was in a barter mode rejecting the official coinage of the Empire. Therefore, the inscriptions cited by Ducan Jones indicate a decrease in the use of coinage in large transactions and thus this was, in fact, a partial demonetization of the economy that unfolded during this crisis of the middle 3rd century.

What is fascinating is that the majority of silver and gold bars of the Roman Empire that have survived are predominantly from the 4th and 5th centuries rather than the 3rd century. The Quantity Theory of Money does not fully explain the financial crisis for it fails to take into account the fact that the people simply shift-gears and ignore the official production of money by the state. Still, the debased coinage is found in substantial hoards demonstrating that it was still regarded as useful perhaps in small transactions in the marketplace. Therefore, we still find major hoards of debased coins from the 3rd century.

Here during the 3rd century, gold coins, which had once comprised 70% of the money supply by value, vanished from circulation and this was then followed by silver coins pre-260AD. We can assume that the amount of gold bullion within the Roman Empire had not diminished, but it simply vanished from circulation.  Therefore, while perhaps Rome experienced inflation in terms of the debased antoniniani, there was deflation in terms of silver and gold bullion and pre-260AD.

The few gold ingots that have survived from antiquity are found with official counterstamps of the official who melted the coins to produce the bar. During the tax collection of Valentinian I (364-375AD) who imposed high taxes, not in coin but instead by weight of precious metals. Hence, the gold bars of the late Roman Empire was the result of financial reforms initiated in 366-367AD during the reigns of Valentinian I and Valens (364-378AD). The emperors saw the need to eliminate the independence of the central treasuries for fear of corruption in producing bronze coins gold plated known. Illustrated here is a gold plated solidus of Constantius II (337.361AD). Obviously, of greater importance was the concern about the fineness of the gold coin taken in payment for taxes. To endorse such measures to demand taxes by weight rather than coin, it is clear that there was grave concern over the large numbers of mutilated and fake gold solidi in circulation.

The Roman government essentially refused to accept coins which were either fake or under the official stated weight of 4.3 grams for a gold solidus as illustrated above in the exaquim (official weight illustrate here) and instead required all tax collections to be melted according to fineness and weight. Everything was melted down and poured into ingots such as the one offered here.

The inscription on this ingot reads “melted by Proculus” weighing in at 211.8 grams measuring 91 x 16 x 9 mm. This bar represented 47 gold solidii at an official weight of 4.3 grams each. Above, here is another bar which has survived with a weight of 337.23 grams or 78.4 solidi showing an image of the three emperors – Valentinian I, Valens and Gratian.

What this illustrates is that the idea that merely increasing the supply of money automatically produces inflation is seriously misguided. That assumes the people are locked into using the coinage. Despite the collapse in the silver content of the Roman coinage, there was clearly a shift to raw metal and barter. The very same thing took place in Japan. Each new emperor devalued the outstanding money supply to be worth 10% of his new coinage. After a few emperors pulling this one off, the people simply refused to accept any Japanese coins for 600 years. They used to barter, bags of rice, and Chinese coins. The Japanese monetary history is thus void of any issue of coinage for 600 years.