Inflation does not discriminate based on income. According to a new Bloomberg report, over one-third of Americans earning at least $250,000 annually are living paycheck to paycheck. Only 5% of the nation earns over $250,000 per year, and this is who the politicians would call “the rich.” One in ten noted that they struggled to cover their household expenses in April.
This is especially true for Millennials who lack decades of savings and were forced to purchase housing and other big-ticket items at the historically high price levels. Among those earning $250,000 or more per year, 55.4% of Millennials reported living paycheck to paycheck compared to 26% of Boomers. In the $100,000 to $150,000 income range, 63% of Millennials reported an inability to save compared to 26% of Boomers.
Living paycheck to paycheck comes with the risk of slipping into debt. The Federal Reserve recently reported that 78% of Americans believed they were living comfortably financially, but they may be seeing the situation through rose-colored glasses. One in nine respondents from the same Fed survey admitted that they could not afford a mere $400 emergency expense. In this current economy, the wise are reassessing their spending as inflation is not expected to decline anytime soon.
The Canadian National Post has reported on the rising concern that the World Economic Forum is making all the calls as to what the Canadian government should do. They admitted that this question has “gained remarkable currency among Canadian[s]” particularly since the events of the Freedom Convoy. While they concluded that the WEF is not controlling Canada, implying this insanity is all the brainchild of Trudeau, they admitted that “it’s not entirely crazy to jump to the conclusion that an international cabal of ultra-elitists is secretly pulling the strings on world affairs (particularly when they keep claiming as much).”
I recently finished another documentary where I was actually asked: “Would you debate Schwab?” I answered “Yes!” I explained that throughout my career, I have been butting heads with academics worldwide. The ONLY one I met who was actually interested in how the world functioned was Milton Friedman who I cherish his autographed photo I keep on my shelf – not a bust Lenin as is the case with Schwab, which really is on his shelf.
I was impressed with Milton Friedman who came to listen to me speak in Chicago. When I was finished, he came up and said: “Hello. I’m Milton Friedman. That was the best speech I ever heard.” I was probably the largest foreign exchange adviser in the world. That is what made my company so famous. I have told the story before that prior to 1985, I was in Geneva having lunch with the head of one of the major banks in Switzerland. I had prepared a list of names like European Advisers I was going to open an office in Europe. I asked his advice on what name to use. He told me to name one European analyst. I was embarrassed for I could not. I apologized and said I’m sure there must be, but I just did not know of any. He chuckled and said there were none.
He then explained to me how currency had become political so no analyst working for a bank would dare say that their currency would decline. That would have been a political statement against the government. After World War II, politicians used their rise in the currency as a political validation that their policy was correct and so vote for them.
He said to me, that the reason everyone uses you is that you “do not give a shit if the dollars goes up or down!” He explained to me why we had become so big on a global scale. As an American, saying the dollar would decline or rise was not a political assault upon the government. Nobody ran for office claiming the dollar was up against the Mexican Peso so vote for me! They would have e been laughed off the stage. It was another lesson in life that you cannot judge others by yourself.
As fate would have it, I had a client who was a senior VP at Franklin National Bank, which was once the United States’ 20th largest bank. Most people have no idea but in 1951, it was Franklin National Bank in Long Island, New York, that issued the first card that most resembles today’s general-use credit cards. For the first time, customers could purchase items and pay them off quickly or be charged interest if the debt carried over. Participating merchants had to pay a fee for each card purchase. By 1952, about 28,000 customers and 750 businesses had signed up for the card which eventually became the Mastercard. The concept started spreading that same year when a bank in Michigan licensed the charge card program from Franklin. The idea was so popular, that in 1958, American Express launched its first charge card.
On October 8, 1974, it collapsed in obscure circumstances, involving connections to the Italian Michele Sindona who was alleged to be a Mafia banker. It was at the time the largest bank failure in the history of the country. Because I knew futures and international finance, I was asked to take a look at the problem the bank had. The bank failed on a 10% move in the Italian Lira. Nobody seemed to understand international finance back then. Currency futures began trading on May 16th, 1972 following failed negotiations to reestablish a fixed exchange rate system. Thus being a trader, my client Walter Zenergle, asked if I could take a look at the problem. it was clear, that nobody yet understood about hedging risks except those of use who were traders.
The academics dealt in theory. Traders had to learn from their mistakes. After the failure of Franklin National Bank, it seemed that whenever there was an issue with currency, I seemed to get the call. When the Asian Currency Crisis hit in 1997, I was asked to come to Bejing to meet with the central bank. I was surprised that they had not called in some academic from Harvard. But went I got there, I discovered they had sent their people to work around the world on trading desks. They then returned to run the central bank. When I was asked by guys in the Fed and the US Treasury what was my impression of the Chinese central bank, I responded: “I was impressed. They only hired people with experience.”
The problem with academia has always been that it is entirely theory without any real-world experience. That is what impressed me about Milton Friedman. He came to listen to me speak to LEARN what was happening in the real world. Milton had said to me also that day, that I was doing what he only dreamed about. In 1953, he proposed a floating exchange rate system whereby the free markets would impose checks and balances against the policies of the government. Nilton has been the ONLY academic I have ever met that bothered to investigate rather than theorize as did Marx and even Keynes and certainly Schwab.
Unfortunately, Trudeau is listening to Schwab. Canada, Australia, and New Zealand as well as Europe are following the directive of Schwab. He is NOT in actual control. But the people running these political bodies are kissing his ring as if he is the godfather of economics.
President Biden on Friday declined to rule out Ukraine having to cede part of its territory to Russia in order to end this standoff with Moscow. Biden claims he won’t tell Ukraine what to do within their own borders but it’s OK to call for the assassination or overthrow of Putin inside Russia. This whole thing makes no sense. I have had personal friends in the Donbas and in Kyiv for more than 10 years. They are both friendly people but if you dared to bring a bottle of Russian Vodka to dinner in Kyiv, it’s an insult. Both sides will NEVER get along.
I warned back in 2013, that not only did our computer forecast that Ukraine would be the place when World War III began, but that the country should have been split along language lines. This conflict has been funded by the United States. John McCain, who never saw a country he did not want to invade, was there not just in Maidan cheering the revolution against Yanukovich, but there are plenty of photos of him meeting with the head of the Neo-Nazis and with their troops promising support against Russia to keep the civil war going.
While it may not be popular because of all the propaganda, the very word “Ukraine” means borderlands. It was not its own country before the USSR. There was yet another country that has vanished from the maps – Galicia, which was the geographic region spanning what is now southeastern Poland and western Ukraine. This is where they were following the Mongol Invasion. It covers much of such historic regions as Red Ruthenia and Lesser Poland. The name was first mentioned in Hungarian historical chronicles in the year 1206 as Galiciæ.
As far as Crimea is concerned, it is the oldest civilized place in the entire region. The people were known as Crimeans – hence the modern name Crimea. During the 14th century, this was a post occupied by Genoans (Italian, Genoa). They were invaded from the East and they brought the Black Plague with them. They catapulted the dead bodies into the fort and the Italians fled taking the Black Plague with them to Europe.
The head of Russia who instigated the Cuban Missile Crisis actually grew up in Ukraine in the Donbas. He was the political head of Ukraine and rebuilt the city after World War II. When he then rose to the head of Russia, he summarily gave Crimea to Ukraine to be administered in 1954. After his death, the Duma overruled that calling it illegal for he also loved to play with borders and caused disputes throughout the empire.
Ironically, DNA evidence shows there is no difference between Ukrainians and Russian and Putin is not crazy in saying they are their brothers. But Stepan Bandera was not much different from the head of the KKK. He ascribed to the ideas of Hitler and was even a German Nazi. It was his personal hatred that led the Ukrainian Nazis to exterminate ate in ethnic cleansing Jews, Polish, and Russians. He wanted, like Hitler, a pure-blood Ukraine.
While Robert McNamara (1916 – 2009), who was a leading Neocon behind the Vietnam war, admitted that they misunderstood the Russians and that Vietnam was a civil war that they really should not have been engaged in, his apology before he died did not bring back more than 50,000 dead Americans.
Ukraine will be another lesson we learn only with blood and guts – it is no different than cheering the hatred of the KKK in a civil war. What if Russia pulled out? What then? Zelensky would order his troops to exterminate all Russian in the Donbas to realize the dream of Bandera?
Posted originally on the conservative tree house on June 4, 2022 | Sundance
For his weekly monologue Neil Oliver hits on a subject very near and dear to the heart of CTH. Mr. Oliver is making his acceptance known today, CTH has been making our acceptance of the reality known for over ten years; hence, the name “The Last Refuge.” The bottom line, governments now represent corporate interests – not people. The policy makers now consider the interests of the state, not the interests of the people.
Anyone who is still pretending, particularly post-COVID examples, that any western government is applying a principle of citizen representation to their policy is lying. There are many people still pretending government is designed to represent the people; however, their pretense is based on their inability to cope with the alternative. All around us are the signs showing traditional, representative, western government has collapsed. We are in this weird place where we pretend it hasn’t. WATCH:
[Transcript] – “If you cannot – simply cannot – understand what’s happening in this country and in the world now, I might have the explanation.
You may, at least until recently, have been labouring under the misapprehension that the State has your back – that those in power have your best interests at heart. Let me make it clear that I use the word State deliberately. These words are not directed solely at the Government, or even just Parliament – but at the whole edifice of those in positions of power – elected and not.
If like me you no longer believe the State has your back, it’s at least likely that you know, indeed are surrounded by, many that still do. You, or those around you, may still believe that decisions are being taken, plans set in place, by those at the top of the food chain, with a view to securing and perpetuating the world your ancestors worked for, in some cases gave their lives for. You or they may have thought that the indigenous culture of these islands, nurtured for a thousand years, was still held dear by those occupying positions of power and responsibility.
But no, as far as I’m concerned, that is no longer the case and hasn’t been the case for a good long while. Understand and accept this much, at least, and the otherwise bewildering sense of confusion goes away at once. It is such a relief.
So much of what is happening now – crashing economy; livelihoods destroyed; dismal care of physical and mental health; educations compromised or worse; a so-called green agenda prioritised at all costs and regardless of harms done by subsidies on bills – those subsidies that are the only, absolutely the only reason any private company ever raised a wind turbine, or invested in solar panels for British skies; VAT on fuel; spiralling costs of food and essentials; deliberately destructive setting aside of farmland and discouragement of farmers and farming as an industry in a time of global food insecurity.
Domestic and international travel made so problematic as to be hardly worth the bother; the looming prospect of digital IDs; the rise of digital currencies instead of money – all of these troubling realities and more – all of it makes sense once you apply the “Keep It Simple” principle.
What we are witnessing is no longer a State working to serve us and to protect our shared heritage, institutions, culture and way of life. Rather we are watching their deliberate destruction and dismantling ready for replacement with something else.
Many of those in place in our institutions – in government, in parliament, civil service, academia, even the Church – evidently loathe this country. It’s that simple. They loathe what this country has been; what, to some extent at least, it still is. Furthermore, they despise those who value what has been and who wish to see all of that conserved and handed on to future generations.
These islands are presided over now by idealogues committed to the wholesale demolition of what has been Britain and British, and its replacement with the product of some parasitic ideology shaped in their own image.
In times such as these, there is often an appetite for and calls for revolution. I would advise against such means. Revolutions are for the birds, always a disaster in the end. Revolutions devour their children, as a wise man said.
The preferable solution is to maintain all that is good, all that has served us well. Maintain the foundations of the old house and as much of the structure above as is still sound. Root out the rot and treat the woodworm, repair and replace what is broken, but keep as much as possible of what has stood the test of time, what has worked.
The bitter irony is that it appears that a revolution is indeed being planned – in fact has been long in the planning and is now being rolled out. In the past it was kings and nation states that feared revolution by the common people, the slaves. Now it is the State itself that is fomenting revolution, from within. The rot is at the core, at the heart. By contrast it is the people, we the people, who want the country and the culture and the heritage saved and who must therefore resist the State-sponsored revolution with all the strength we have.
We are told, by them, that pain is coming – and that that pain must be endured. Suddenly they’re all saying it at once, all over the world, yet another script parroted in unison – like Build Back Better – only worse. But that pain is for us alone, we the proles. Those with the money and power will glide above it all in their private jets, leaving in their wake contrails of CO2 that might as well scribble on the sky the message:
“Suck it up, peasants”.
They’ll push burgers made of bugs at us – while they sit down to Cote de Boeuf. We’ll have real pain and they’ll have champagne. We’ll have nothing. And they’ll be happy. Or so they like to think.
Again and again, I turn to the Keep It Simple philosophy – what some call Occam’s Razor. If it seems to make no sense that 30 million petrol and diesel cars might be replaced with electric alternatives powered by a non-existent infrastructure … that’s because the simpler explanation is that almost none of us are meant to have cars at all – electric or otherwise. If you wonder why in the US and here in Britain we are turning our backs on fracking and other sources of power under our feet and beneath our surrounding seas, it is because the intention is that we in the troublesome West should have much, much less energy available to us as ordinary people than before. The intention is not to go green. The intention is that we should go without.
As part of their revolution, the State is laying plans to hinder any protest or dissent. The so-called Online Safety Bill is nothing less than a whole new way to ensure the censorship and silencing of any who would challenge the hobbling of our rights and freedoms, our herding like cattle towards a digital slavery in which our every financial transaction, every communication, every movement, every meeting, every word, might be monitored in real time and also judged against a code of behaviour drafted by people we do not see and cannot know. We stand to be judged against standards set to curtail every aspect of our being and whenever it suits the State, we will be found wanting and punished as a consequence.
This is the weekend of the Platinum Jubilee. Jubilee is a word with an interesting back story. It has deep roots in the Hebrew word Jobel, which is a ram – or more specifically a trumpet made from a ram’s horn. In ancient times, thousands of years ago, the Jobel was sounded to announce the Year of Atonement – a regular event when all debts were written off, unconditionally and completely, thus freeing those who had been enslaved to rich people because they owed them money.
US economist Michael Hudson has written that as long ago as the time of the Assyrians, 4,000 years ago, it was understood that economies always became unstable, and ultimately collapsed, when too many people simply could not settle their debts to the rich, and through no fault of their own. The solution, understood and applied for thousands of years, was that periodically all debts had to be cancelled – this was a jubilee.
Jesus Christ understood the need to write off debt to save society. The older, Greek version of the Lord’s Prayer says, “forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors”. Only much later, when the Church had made it a matter of craven morality to repay every debt, were the words debts and debtors replaced with trespasses and trespassers. By then, the church was in cahoots with the rich. In his first sermon in the synagogue Jesus told the congregation he had come to bring a clean slate debt cancellation – what he called the Year of the Lord. This, the cancelling of otherwise unpayable debt to Rome and the Romans, was the basis of his message of hope to the downtrodden.
The economic mess we’re in now is not the fault of we, the little people, but of the banks and their ruinous recklessness in pursuit of obscene profit. In 2008 they got to write off their mistakes, with the help of eye watering amounts of taxpayers’ money, to cancel their debts. Those same banks don’t want to do the same for us, though. Far from it. The bankers and the rest of the super-rich elite want to foreclose on those in debt. When that happens, the rich elite will own everything, and we will own nothing. Sound familiar?
In this year of Jubilee, I would say we have a lot to learn from ancient wisdom – to remember that our ancestors knew the fight that mattered was to prevent the population falling into bondage to the elite, who wanted to own everything. I very much doubt that a jubilee for the people, an unconditional cancelling of all debt, is quite the great reset those of the elite have in mind. They need us to owe them, so that they own us. Bankers always say debts must always be paid, or there will be chaos. They would say that, wouldn’t they?
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you. This is the time of waking up and understanding that the state is not to be trusted – not anymore and not for a long time.
All of this is the stuff they used to call Conspiracy Theory. Call it as much if it blows your skirt up. I no longer care. In my book, those they call Conspiracy Theorists are more accurately described as the ones who saw it all coming.” (link)
“A Paradigm Shift is needed – Urgently. It cannot be provided to you, you must develop it within your own mind – and you’d better do it quick; or you will lose.” ~ Sundance 2012
Posted originally on the conservative tree house on June 4, 2022 | sundance
During press remarks yesterday, Joe Biden implied that Ukraine may need to cede territory in Eastern Ukraine to Russia as part of a “negotiated settlement.”
The statement came at the end of remarks centered around the May jobs report and Biden’s claim that U.S. consumers were in the best economic position of the past decade, therefore the government must begin increasing direct subsidies to offset energy costs and massive inflation pressure. When Biden was asked, “does Ukraine have to cede territory to achieve some peace?”he stated:
[Transcript] – [F]rom the beginning, I’ve said and I’ve been — not everyone has agreed with me — nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine. It’s their territory. I’m not going to tell them what they should and shouldn’t do.
But it appears to me that, at some point along the line, there’s going to have to be a negotiated settlement here. And what that entails, I don’t know. I don’t think anybody knows at the time.
But in the meantime, we’re going to continue to put the — the Ukrainians in a position where they can defend themselves. Thank you all so very much. (link)
It has been obvious from the outset that annexing Eastern Ukraine, the region containing a majority pro-Russia population, was always the intended objective of Russian aggression. With Biden making this admission public, it raises the question then why did we agree to send $40 billion?
Russia’s hold on the Eastern Ukraine Donbas region is now essentially complete. This is the area that had been in a state of civil war since 2008, and the Russian annexation would essentially bring that conflict to an end.
Any Ukraine-Russia negotiation would come down to Ukraine acquiescing to the territory already lost. It’s not like Russia is going to give it back. The “negotiated settlement” amounts to the Ukraine and western NATO alliance admitting Russia has accomplished its intended objective.
It seems doubtful that Joe Biden sought approval from the U.S. State Dept, CIA and Senate Foreign Relations Committee, specifically those who are conducting this proxy war, prior to this statement.
In a deleted video posted on the World Economic Forum’s website, the group praised the lockdowns for offering a quiet atmosphere.
The dystopian post-apocalyptic setting certainly seemed quiet at times. Here is what the latest lockdown sounded like in Shanghai for those who have already forgotten:
Posted originally on the conservative tree house on May 31, 2022 | Sundance
Joe Biden sought counsel today from New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern about how best to remove firearms from Americans and force the U.S. economy to a dependency on renewable energy. Prime Minister Ardern took the top spot in the global progressive movement after the retirement of German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
PM Ardern, a remarkable smiley-faced fascist, now represents the face of modern global leftism and boned-up her progressive bona fides with the totalitarian New Zealand COVID policy. The corporate fascists within the World Economic Forum love the government compliance model represented by Ardern to the collective global society they are creating.
New Zealand has a population of 5 million people, and a GDP of $205 billion (about the same as Nevada). By comparison the U.S. has a population exceeding 350 million and a GDP exceeding $21 trillion. That said, during their White House meeting today, Joe Biden emphasized that he welcomes the assistance of PM Ardern in helping to guide U.S. efforts for firearm regulation and a comprehensive climate change driven renewable energy economy.
[Transcript] – […] You understand that your leadership has taken on a critical role in this global stage — and it really has — galvanizing action on climate change; the global effort to curb violence, extremism, and online, like happened in Christchurch.
And — you know, we want to be — I want to work with you on that effort. And I want to talk to you about what those conversations were like, if you’re willing.
The United States is, you know — it’s just been — there’s a — there’s an expression by an Irish poet that says, “Too long a suffering makes a stone of the heart.” Well, there’s an awful lot of suffering. We’ve been — I — I’ve been to more mass shooting aftermaths than, I think, any President in American history, unfortunately. And it’s — it’s just — so much of it is — much of it is preventable, and the devastation is — is amazing.
Yesterday — or not — the day before, I was up — I was down in Texas. And people sat in a room — about 250 of them in a large room — with me for almost four hours. Not — nobody left. They waited until aft- — until I spoke to every single person in that room. Every single person, they waited to the very end. And the — they — the pain is palpable.
And you’ve been one of our closest partners with a long history and friendship. Eighty years ago, Marines landed in New Zealand before embarking on — into the Pacific Theater in World War Two. And I think I told you, when I met my — my — two of my mother’s brothers who were in the Pacific — they used to be able to deploy at the same time in those days, in World War Two. And one was shot down in New Guinea. And they never found the body. But it’s — you know, it’s — the history goes back a long way — a long way.
And I want to, by the way, recognize New Zealand’s significant support for Ukraine, as a lot of Indo-Pacific countries are doing now. And — because this is more than just a regional war going on.
So, I look forward to our conversations today. We have a lot to talk about. And I’m really, really delighted to have you here — really.
PRIME MINISTER ARDERN: Thank you. And can I say, Mr. President, thank you, so much — so much —
PRESIDENT BIDEN: You — you can do anything you want.
PRIME MINISTER ARDERN: Great. (Laughs.) Thank you. And we really welcome this opportunity.
As you’ve said, we’ve spoken on several occasions. And what stood out to me on both those occasions were we traversed such similar issues, and not — not least, of course, our shared history.
You speak of your uncle’s service in the Pacific; my grandfather served in the Pacific. And I think that speaks to the personal connection but also the depth of our friendship and relationship as two countries.
We are in an incredibly difficult international environment. But also, domestically, it is extraordinarily challenging as well. And can I bring the sincere condolences of the people of Aotearoa New Zealand for what you have experienced in Texas and in New York? And it’s been devastating to see the impact on those communities.
Our experience, of course, in this regard, is our own. But if there’s anything that we can share that would be of any value, we are here to share it.
PRESIDENT BIDEN: Well, the work you’re doing with tech companies is really important, and I want —
PRIME MINISTER ARDERN: Absolutely.
PRESIDENT BIDEN: — to work with you there as well.
PRIME MINISTER ARDERN: And I absolutely look forward to updating you on some of the conversations we’ve had this week because I hold hope that we can make progress.
I also wanted just to acknowledge your leadership in bringing to the table the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework. And whilst, of course, we are significant advocates for the CPTPP, the IPEF presents a significant opportunity to build the economic resilience of our region. So, I look forward to having a bit of a discussion about that opportunity as well.
I also want to acknowledge your significant leadership on Ukraine and how important that has been not only to us as we’ve looked to play a role as well, but globally as we look to make sure that we strengthen the international response to what is a threat to our values and, of course, the territorial sovereignty of Ukraine.
I do want to finish on a note of optimism. Climate change also is one of the greatest threats that we face. And I believe that, in you, not only have we seen the leadership but the opportunity that exists between our nations to work together on this incredibly difficult issue that will only be resolved if we work together.
So, thank you. With — as you’ve seen, we’ve got a lot to discuss, so —
PRESIDENT BIDEN: We’ve got a lot to do. And I want to emphasize the last point you made: “working together.”
PRIME MINISTER ARDERN: Absolutely.
PRESIDENT BIDEN: We are not coming to dictate or lay down the law. We —
PRIME MINISTER ARDERN: Yeah.
PRESIDENT BIDEN: — we have more work to do in those Pacific Islands as well. I mean, we’ve — and so, we talked at length about — in the past about my trip to Japan and Korea and then dealing with the Quad. And so — but I think there’s a lot of opportunity —
PRIME MINISTER ARDERN: Yeah, I agree.
PRESIDENT BIDEN: — to make the world safer and deal with the environment.
PRIME MINISTER ARDERN: I agree. I agree. So, thank you.
PRESIDENT BIDEN: Thank you.
Thank you all very much.
Q Mr. President, will you meet with Senator McConnell on guns?
PRESIDENT BIDEN: I will meet with the Congress on guns. I promise you.
Posted originally on the conservative tree house on Posted May 30, 2022
Today, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has announced new legislation to freeze gun ownership in the country and block any further ownership. [Gov Statement Here] It certainly was a short trip from confiscating and seizing the bank accounts/assets of his political opposition, to removing guns from Canadian citizens.
Trudeau held a press conference to announce the new legislative measures which include “red flag” laws, and blocks on any further handgun sales. Recap Video WATCH:
QUESTION: Marty; the gold propaganda is increasing dramatically. They are now claiming there are five signs that say the dollar will collapse any day now.
Warning Sign #1: Russia Sanctions Prove Dollar Reserves “Aren’t Really Money”
Warning Sign #2: Rubles, Gold, and Bitcoin for Gas, Oil, and Other Commodities
Warning Sign #3: The Petrodollar System Flirts With Collapse
Warning Sign #4: Out of Control Money Printing and Record Price Increases
Warning Sign #5: Fed Chair Admits Dollar Supremacy Is Dead
My friend flew in from Brazil and they pulled her over and checked all her jewelry. I think you had said they were doing that in Italy last year. This was New York at JFK. Cryptocurrency is not currency and selling oil in Bitcoin which is crashing makes no sense when it too is not backed by anything. These are the same old claims for the last 20 years that I can remember. Their solution is always – buy, buy, buy gold. My question is if they are now pulling you over for jewelry when you travel, gold has underperformed for 30 years compared to stocks and even the dollar. Will gold even survive in this crazy world?
Thank you for always being the voice of reason
WK
ANSWER: These ideas and claims are old and never change. For years they claimed the dollar was only the reserve currency because of oil, yet oil as a percent of the world economy was at best 5%. Then the claimed Bitcoin would replace the dollar as the reserve currency. That was just another scam and based on this same old theory of the Quantity of Money that dates back to Gresham’s Law. That theory is so dead it’s crazy, but it is like one of those Zombie movies that it keeps coming back to life.
Gresham advised Queen Elizabeth based on the debasement he saw in the coinage by her father Henry VIII. He was debasing his currency because Spain was doing that and he thought it was a way to create free money. The French did that during the 13th century by altering the silver to gold ratio which blew up the financial system in Italy and ended many banking houses. Those who base their entire theory on this period TOTALLY fail to grasp the context of the period.
There was NO Reserve Currency. All the currencies of various nations traded on the first currency exchange which was Amsterdam. They traded against each other ENTIRELY on the metal content. That is what determined the value of their currency.
Coming out of the Dark Ages, the first coin to actually attain a universal acceptable which was the first stage of a reserve currency was the gold florin of Florence, Italy. This was made possible by the rise of Italian banking and the Medici there in Florence. Other countries imitated the florin for it was accepted as the standard.
Imitations of the universally accepted currency took place with the Athenian Owls, the tetradrachm of Alexander the Great, and then the Roman silver Denarius and gold Aureus. The strongest economic power saw its currency become dominant in the world so others issued coins imitating them because a Roman gold aureus carried a premium over just a plain lump of gold. Egypt never even issued coins until they were conquered by Alexander the Great yet to facilitate trade, they issued imitation silver Athenian Owls, which were really the first established world currency.
However, I have warned that analysis has two approaches. First, you start with a theory and then cherry-pick the fact to support your theory as they are doing in Climate Change. There, they ignore all the data prior to 1850 and only attribute the warming since the last Little Ice Age to the Industrial Revolution.
They took a natural cycle oscillating back up which is when economic expansion always takes place historically, They then attributed that to fossil fuels and ignored the entire natural history of the earth. This has been used solely to justify creating their one-world government because no single nation can defeat global warming.
Here we have the front cover of Time Magazine predicting climate change back to an ice age. That was dated January 31, 1977 corresponding to the sharp spike down into a negative Arctic Oscillation in 1977. In the April 28, 1975 edition of Newsweek, they actually proposed solutions for climate change that included outlawing internal combustion engines.
This is when Al Gore came to the rescue. Just like the poles flip on the sun every 11 years, Al Gore flipped the argument from manmade cooling to manmade warming to save the end goal — eliminating all fossil fuels regardless of the evidence. Who needs science when you can just make up the studies and cherry-pick the facts to support whatever you want. They have done that very same exercise with this forecast centered on gold and how the dollar will collapse all because of fiat, which every currency has been from day one when Lydia first created coins and declare their value which was always in excess of the metal content.
Even the propaganda of the Petrodollar has been mind-blowing. Unbeknownst to these people who push that theory, they are clueless about the truth behind what really took place during the 1970s. In 1976, the US and Saudi Arabia colluded to force down oil prices, which inadvertently set in motion a financial crisis in Iran that destabilized that economy and undermined the Shah’s hold on power. These facts have surfaced from declassified documents of Brent Scowcroft who worked in both the Nixon and Ford White House Administrations. Their attempt to manipulate the price of oil downward created the Iranian Revolution. The religious faction used the decline in oil and the economic recession to overthrow the Shah. OOPS!
This strange theory that the dollar is supported by oil just does not hold up. Even when we just compare the highs and lows between the dollar and oil, it does not hold up. In 2008, the dollar bottomed against the Euro but oil peaked. The dollar bottomed in 2016 but crude bottomed in 2020. The high in the dollar in 1985 coincided with the 1986 low in crude. Like global warming, they focus on just one aspect and ignore the fact that the dollar has NEVER been canceled and that it has become the world reserve currency because of that fact, plus it is the dominant economy just as Rome, Athen, and Macedonia in their times.
Emerging markets before World War I issued debt in British pounds. After World War II and all the capital fled to America because tanks were rolling down the streets in Europe, Emerging markets issue their debt in dollars – no longer British pounds. These people focus only on gold, the quantity of money, and old dead theories of Petrodollars, and totally ignore the fact that the United States has the largest consumer-based economy in the world. That is how China, Japan, and Germany have all risen from the ashes without gold reserves. They were export-oriented economies selling products to Americans. None of these theories ever mattered and that is why you have heard the same story since 1971 and everyone who followed that forecast has lost a fortune in everything else.
The definition of Fiat Currency is highly prejudiced. Investopedia says:
“Fiat money is a government-issued currency that is not backed by a physical commodity, such as gold or silver, but rather by the government that issued it. The value of fiat money is derived from the relationship between supply and demand and the stability of the issuing government, rather than the worth of a commodity backing it. Most modern paper currencies are fiat currencies, including the U.S. dollar, the euro, and other major global currencies.”
“fiat money, in a broad sense, all kinds of money that are made legal tender by a government decree or fiat. The term is, however, usually reserved for legal-tender paper money or coins that have face values far exceeding their commodity values and are not redeemable in gold or silver.”
Before coins, even the Bible stated that in Genesis 23:16: “Abraham agreed to Ephron’s terms and weighed out for him the price he had named in the hearing of the Hittites: four hundred shekels of silver, according to the weight current among the merchants.” The very first this that took place was that there was an agreement on the standardization of weight.
Therefore, it was in Lydia that the king began to stamp his symbol on these standardized denominations. He effectively took over the creation of money. The value he set was over and above the previous raw value of the metal. Thus, this became fiat which coin collectors call “seignorage” the profit over and above the metal content.
When war broke out, Lydia was the first to debase the currency maintaining the value but reducing the weight. This idea that if the money is gold somehow makes the system honest, is nothing but propaganda.
Even under a gold standard, there were periods of inflation and deflation. Read the history of the California Gold Rush. During the 1849 Gold Rush in California, the journalist for the New York Tribune, Bayard Taylor (1825-1878), arrived in San Francisco by ship during the summer of 1849. He was shocked at what he encountered and did not think that anyone would even believe what he was going to write. His dispatches about the gold rush economy in California stunned many and helped to create the 1849 Gold Rush. The average wage for a laborer in New York was about one or two dollars a day. In California, individual hotel rooms were rented to professional gamblers for upwards of $10,000 a month, which is the equivalent of about $300,000 today. The degree of inflation in terms of gold was astounding and lacks comparison in modern times. There was so much gold, that the value of goods rose even though they did not in New York. The inflation phenomenon was local.
Gold became so common; they were even striking $50 gold coins in California when $20 was the highest denomination elsewhere and $1-dollar coins down to 25 cents all in gold. Eventually, there were $1 gold coins minted in the United States for general circulation throughout the USA. Indeed, Taylor wrote:
“[One] citizen of San Francisco died insolvent to the amount of forty-one thousand dollars the previous autumn. His administrators were delayed in settling his affairs and his real estate advanced so rapidly in value meantime that after his debts were paid, his heirs had a yearly income of $40,000 [$1.2 million today].
“These facts were indubitably attested; everyone believed them, yet hearing them talked of daily, as matters of course, one at first could not help feeling as if he had been eating ‘of the insane root.’”
As far as fiat is concerned, the true definition is when the value of a currency is declared by the government which is all money even if it is made of gold or silver. Here are two silver dollars issued in 1873. The domestic silver dollar standard was taking 70 cents worth of silver and calling it one dollar with a weight of 26.73 grams. Simultaneously, that was not recognized in Asia so they issue a Trade Dollar for external use with a weight of 27.22 grams. The value of the metal is solely based upon the decree of the government. By the 1890s, the United States had flooded the world with silver which resulted in the Panic of 1893. By then, the value of the silver was perhaps 60 cents they were calling a dollar.
These people often confuse FRAUD with the monetary system. Sweden is the oldest Central Bank. That is where the fraud all began. The first true banknotes for circulation appeared in Sweden, and these were actually used by the government to support its wars with Germany. In 1661, the government established a 30-year monopoly for its Stockholm Banco to issue these banknotes known as “letters of credit” that were to be payable in Swedish copper plate money that was extremely heavy weighing almost 15 kilos. It was not very practical for these huge plates to actually be used in circulation.
However, this practice of Fraud began whereby they abused the system. They began to issue more paper notes without the copper plates in the bank. That is entirely different from fiat currency. Here they said they were backed by the copper plates, but they needed more money so they issued notes fraudulently without the purported backing. That is NOT a fiat system – it is fraud.
This FRAUD was discovered and it led to the first banking panic in 1663 when there were more obligations than copper plates to redeem the notes. The bank was forced to close in 1664.
I have told the story before that it is so CRITICAL to understand the full context of history. William Penn took the term Philadelphos in ancient Greek which meant Brotherly Love. He interpreted that in a Christian sense that I love my brother. So he named his city Philadelphia – the city of brotherly love. Well to those of us who did study ancient cultures and languages, it was always one of the funny jokes. Brotherly Love meant you married your sister.
These people interpret gold as money and fiat and all the other nonsense with petrodollars etc, they have selected what they want to support a theory that they began with. Everything they have been telling people for decades has resulted in a lot of people losing a fortune and even some losing their homes.
They are not interested in actually looking at the truth. To them, it’s all fiat money, and only a return to a gold standard will stop inflation and create the perfect world following that same dangerous path as Kark Marx.
The system is far more complex and you CAN NOT reduce everything to a single cause and effect. That is what others are doing with CO2. It’s time to wake up and smell the roses. Garbage in = Garbage Out.
I have warned that the Russian Sanctions have begun the decline and fall of NOT the dollar – but the entire world economy. Once Biden used SWIFT to remove Russia, that was the end of globalization. It has NOTHING to do with the oil or anything else. The sanctions have severed Russia from the West’s Economy and put China on alert that they are coming for them as well. China setting up its alternative to SWIFT, is not directly trying to kill the dollar. It is recognizing that the world economy is under siege and what will evolve in the future in the collapse of all governments but the single greatest threat has been the Sanctions which have altered everything – not fiat currencies and gold.
World peace is created by everyone benefiting from a global economy. Destroying globalization leads nowhere but to war for that hand no longer feeds you so go ahead and bite it.
Posted originally on the conservative tree house on May 29, 2022 | Sundance
The Associated Press [HERE] and more importantly the U.S. Intel Community outlet, the Washington Post [HERE], are beginning to change direction in their narration of the war in Ukraine.
Both sources of information are starting to position Eastern Ukraine as a lost cause, with the Washington Post giving specific examples of conscripted Ukraine fighters who are abandoning the effort in the donbas region. As noted, “after three months of war, this company of 120 men is down to 54 because of deaths, injuries and desertions. The volunteers were civilians before Russia invaded on Feb. 24, and they never expected to be dispatched to one of the most dangerous front lines in eastern Ukraine.”
The Ukraine commander, Serhi Lapko and one of his lieutenants, Vitaliy Khrus, “retreated with members of their company this week to a hotel away from the front. There, both men spoke to The Washington Post on the record, knowing they could face a court-martial and time in military prison.” Together, Lapko and Khrus describe the essential elements of a fragmented Ukraine fighting force up against a committed Russian military advance.
Even the Washington Post admits the Ukraine central government is desperate to push morale boosting propaganda which seems constructed from the efforts of the U.S. State Dept, specifically the intelligence community within it. “Videos of assaults on Russian tanks or positions are posted daily on social media. Artists are creating patriotic posters, billboards and T-shirts. The postal service even released stamps commemorating the sinking of a Russian warship in the Black Sea.”
These examples are targeted toward a western audience and likely not being carried out by independent Ukraine government operation in Kyiv. Promoting the image of Ukraine is a construct of the U.S. state dept and U.S. intelligence.
The global impression of Ukraine must remain elevated to continue the U.S. proxy war against Russia. However, as noted, the WaPo is starting to shift the goal posts and expectations away from a Russian defeat in the donbas region.
Most notably within paragraphs like this you can see the purposeful shift. “Lapko and Khrus’s concerns were echoed recently by a platoon of the 115th Brigade 3rd Battalion, based nearby in the besieged city of Severodonetsk. In a video uploaded to Telegram on May 24, and confirmed as authentic by an aide to Haidai, volunteers said they will no longer fight because they lacked proper weapons, rear support and military leadership.”
[…] Ukraine’s military rebutted the volunteers’ claims in their own video posted online, saying the “deserters” had everything they needed to fight: “They thought they came for a vacation,” one service member said. “That’s why they left their positions.”
Hours after The Post interviewed Lapko and Khrus, members of Ukraine’s military security service arrived at their hotel and detained some of their men, accusing them of desertion. The men contend that they were the ones who were deserted. (read more)
The Associated Press story flows in a similar line to the WaPo narrative; however, the AP must maintain the Western Government slant:
[…] Russia has intensified efforts to capture the cities of Sievierodonetsk and nearby Lysychansk, which are the last major areas under Ukrainian control in Luhansk.
Luhansk Gov. Serhii Haidai reported that Ukrainian fighters repelled an assault on Sievierodonetsk but Russian troops still pushed to encircle them. He later said Russian forces had seized a hotel on the city’s outskirts, damaged 14 high-rise buildings and were fighting in the streets with Ukrainian forces.
[…] Mariupol’s port has reportedly resumed operations after Russian forces finished clearing mines in the Azov Sea. Russian state news agency Tass reported that a vessel bound for Rostov-on-Don in southern Russia entered the port early Saturday.
In the call with Macron and Scholz, the Kremlin said, Putin emphasized that Russia was working to “establish a peaceful life in Mariupol and other liberated cities in the Donbas.”
[…] Ukrainian authorities have reported that Kremlin-installed officials in seized cities have started airing Russian news broadcasts, introduced Russian area codes, imported Russian school curriculum and taken other steps to annex the areas.
Russian-held areas of the southern Kherson region have shifted to Moscow time and “will no longer switch to daylight saving time, as is customary in Ukraine,” Russia’s state news agency RIA Novosti quoted Krill Stremousov, a Russian-installed local official, as saying Saturday. (read more)
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