Category Archives: Money

The Great Government Gold Heist Of 1933, by SchiffGold

Posted on April 7, 2020 | 1 comment

People buying gold hand over fist might want consider a precedent that’s already been set for the government taking that gold: Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Executive Order 6102. From schiffgold.com:

Yesterday marked the anniversary of the great government gold heist of 1933 ordered by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

On April 5, 1933, the president signed Executive Order 6102. It was touted as a measure to stop gold hoarding, but it was in reality, a massive gold confiscation scheme. The order required private citizens, partnerships, associations and corporations to turn in all but small amounts of gold to the Federal Reserve in exchange for $20.67 per ounce.

The executive order was one of several steps Roosevelt took toward ending the gold standard in the US.

With the dollar tied to gold, the Federal Reserve found it difficult to increase the money supply during the Great Depression. It couldn’t simply fire up the printing press as it can today. The Federal Reserve Act required all notes have 40% gold backing. But the Fed was low on gold and up against the limit. By stealing gold from the public, the Fed was able to boost its gold holdings.

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Coronavirus: Ten Things to Think About, by Justin Pavoni

Posted on April 1, 2020 | 1 comment

Any actual thinking, as opposed to feeling or reacting, about coronavirus is to be encouraged. From Justin Pavoni at ronpaulinstitute.org:

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1. All of this can be solved by following the voluntary principle: If you are worried then stay home. If you are willing to assume the risk then go to work. Going to work means you may interact with people and thus get sick. It’s a risk. The other people at work took on this risk of their own choosing too. Life is full of risks. Not going to work has its own obvious risks associated with it. Let people choose their own paths based on their own risk tolerance and voluntary choices. Don’t impose your view via government force on those of us that peacefully disagree with you.

2. There have been 23,000 US deaths so far this year due to flu, 3,000 from coronavirus. Worldwide stats are roughly in parallel. Legitimate population samples and common sense show that the virus has infected way more people than reported by the immoral news organizations that make money off this hysteria. It is highly likely that REAL death rates are closer to .05 percent rather than the oft-emphasized 3 percent.

3. Social Distancing makes people distrust one another. People that are afraid of each other are easier to control. We just had a house fire and while nobody will shake my hand because they’re afraid to death of coronavirus, they’ll happily walk around in the burned down home without a respirator. Of course the burned down house is far more likely to be an immediate and serious health threat. Anyone else see a problem here?

4. I have already seen certain local governments posting websites for all of us to tell on each other for congregating in groups. My wife has had skeptical posts removed from Facebook. Sounds a lot like the secret police to me.

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The journey to monetary gold and silver, by Alasdair Macleod

Posted on March 19, 2020 | Leave a comment

The coronavirus and the current financial crisis may not be all bad. They’ll probably be the death of fiat money. From Alasdair Macleod at goldmoney.com:

Markets are just beginning to latch on to the economic consequences of the coronavirus. Central banks are slashing interest rates and beginning to throw new money into the mix and governments are increasing deficit spending.

Few analysts have yet to understand the enormous consequences of the coronavirus for missed payments and accumulating current debt, which is and will rapidly drain liquidity from wholesale money markets. It is increasingly certain that the eurozone’s banking system will require rescuing from insolvency with knock-on consequences for the global monetary system. Concern over the consequences for the $640 trillion OTC notional derivative market, particularly for $26 trillion of fx swaps, is so far absent.

Continuing on our theme that the fates of the dollar and US Treasury values are closely bound, the extraordinary overvaluation of the bond market will translate into a collapse for both. This article charts how the collapse of the dollar and financial asset values is likely to progress and concludes that we are witnessing the end of the neo-Keynesian fiat currency fantasy, which will be done and dusted with surprising rapidity.

Only then will sound money, after varying time periods for different nations, return.

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A Year After The Second MAX Crashed Boeing Is Faced With Ruin, by Moon of Alabama

Posted on March 12, 2020 | 3 comments

Bet you Boeing wishes it had back the $43.4 billion it has spent buying its own shares since 2013. From Moon of Alabama at moonofalabama.com:

On top of the damage that misguided shareholder value policy caused to Boeing’s will now come the effects of an unprecedented pandemic. Together they may well signal the end of a once great company.

On March 10 2019 Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 crashed shortly after taking off in Addis Adaba. All 157 people on board died. It was the second crash of a Boeing 737 MAX airplane six month after Lion Air Flight 610 had crashed and killed all 189 people on board.

Exactly a year ago Moon of Alabama published its first piece about the MAX. At that time all MAX planes were grounded except in the United States. We described Boeing’s shoddy implementation of the plane’s maneuvering characteristics augmentation system (MCAS) and concluded:

Today Boeing’s share price dropped some 7.5%. I doubt that it is enough to reflect the liability issues at hand. Every airline that now had to ground its planes will ask for compensation. More than 330 people died and their families deserve redress. Orders for 737 MAX will be canceled as passengers will avoid that type.Boeing will fix the MCAS problem by using more sensors or by otherwise changing the procedures. But the bigger issue for the U.S. aircraft industry might be the damage done to the FAA’s reputation. If the FAA is internationally seen as a lobbying agency for the U.S. airline industry it will no longer be trusted and the industry will suffer from it. It will have to run future certification processes through a jungle of foreign agencies.

Congress should take up the FAA issue and ask why it failed.

The MAX was developed and built as cheap as possible and not as safe as possible. Boeing cut corners and deceived its customers and  regulators. Its management had only one thing in mind – the stock price of Boeing and its so called shareholder value.

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Posted in Business, Collapse, Debt, Financial markets, Government, Law, Money, Morality

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Central Banking is Socialism, by Ron Paul

Posted on March 9, 2020 | 1 comment

Socialism has been alive and well in the US for over 100 years. From Ron Paul at ronpaulinstitute.org:

Last week, the Federal Reserve responded to Wall Street’s coronavirus panic with an “emergency” interest rate cut. This emergency cut failed to revive the stock market, leading to predictions that the Fed will again cut rates later this month.

More rate cuts would drive interest rates to near, or even below, zero. Lowering interest rates punishes people for saving, thus encouraging consumers and businesses to spend every penny they make. This may give the economy a short-term boost. But, it inhibits long-term economic growth by depleting the savings necessary for investments in businesses and jobs. The result of this policy will be more pressure on the Fed to indefinitely maintain low interest rates and on the Congress and president to create another explosion of government “stimulus” spending.

Boston Federal Reserve President Eric Rosengren has suggested that Congress allow the Federal Reserve to add assets of private companies to the Fed’s already large balance sheet. Allowing the central bank to buy assets of, and thus assume a partial ownership interest in, private companies would give the Federal Reserve even greater influence over the economy. It could also allow the Fed to advance a political agenda by, for example, favoring investment in “green energy” companies over other companies or refusing to purchase assets of retailers who sell firearms or tobacco products.

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Next Comes The “Turbulent Twenties”, by David Stockman

Posted on March 6, 2020 | Leave a comment

Debt will only take you so far and it looks like global debt is just about out of gas. From David Stockman at peakprosperity.com:

The past 30 years of False Prosperity is over

The coronavirus is now exposing a far more deadly disease: Namely, the poisonous brew of easy money, cheap debt, sweeping financialization and unbridled speculation that has been injected into the American economy by the Fed and Washington politicians.

It has turned Wall Street into a dangerous gambling casino while leaving Main Street buried under mountainous debts, faltering investment in growth and productivity and the hand-to-mouth economics of spending more than you earn.

It has also left the American economy exceedingly vulnerable to external shocks. That’s because 80% of households have no appreciable rainy day funds and businesses have hollowed out their balance sheets and artificially extended their supply chains to the four corners of the earth in order to goose short-run profits and share prices.

However, this unprecedented fragility is becoming evident as public health authorities around the world aggressively move to contain the Covid-19 contagion. This will mean separating workers from their workplaces, consumers from the malls, diners from the restaurants, travelers from the airlines, hotels and resorts and much more like and similar disruptions to the supply-side of the economy.

In short, the world’s supply chains are buckling and freezing-up, thereby causing production and incomes to fall abruptly. In turn, shrunken incomes and cash flows will pull the legs out from under the edifice of debt and speculation that has been piled atop the American economy.

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The Real Reason for the Shocking New Developments in the War on Cash, by Jeff Thomas

Posted on February 28, 2020 | 1 comment

When cash vanishes so too will any vestige of financial privacy other than transactions in real money, i.e. gold and silver. From Jeff Thomas at internationalman.com:

war on cash

International Man: Australia has proposed a law that provides a $25,000 fine and two years in jail for those who make cash transactions of $10,000 or more. If passed, the Currency (Restrictions on the Use of Cash) Bill could be implemented in 2020.

Do you see this legislation as Orwellian?

Jeff Thomas: Oh, yes, very much so. The claim by the Australian government’s Black Economy Taskforce is that the law will help stamp out tax evasion, money laundering and other crimes.

What we’ll be seeing is a plethora of laws popping up in all the countries that were a part of the post-war prosperity boom – the US, Canada, Japan, Australia, Europe and others. All those jurisdictions dove headlong into the debt pit that the US created after 1971. All of them are now facing an economic crisis as a result.

Consequently, all of them will be creating capital controls. My belief is that each will host several of these laws, and the others will all adopt them. Each law will be justified as protection against money laundering, terrorism, tax evasion, a rising black market or a combination of those scare tactic focal points. As such, the populace of each country will welcome them, not understanding that the real purpose is to have the banks determine how much you’re allowed to spend.

By having each country put forth a portion of the laws, then having all the others copy them, they’ll hope to make the laws appear to be less draconian. After all, how bad could they be, if all these countries support them?

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