Tag Archives: Central banks

BIS General Manager Outlines Vision for Central Bank Digital Currencies, by Steven Guinness

Posted on April 5, 2019 | Leave a comment

The globalists are cooking up all sorts of mischief for us, including central bank digital currencies. From Steven Guinness at stevenguinness2.wordpress.com:

The behaviour of central bankers is rarely (if ever) given sustained coverage in the national press. Outside of prominent economic channels, developments from within institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the Bank for International Settlements are seldom remarked upon. Instead, attention is restricted to the latest round of political theatrics which serve to disguise the actions and intentions of globalist planners.

As the furore of Brexit gained in intensity last month, BIS General Manager Agustin Carstens gave a speech at the Central Bank of Ireland 2019 Whitaker Lecture. Under the heading, ‘The future of money and payments‘, Carstens mapped out what has been a long standing vision of globalists – namely, to acquire full spectrum control of the international financial system through the gradual abolition of what Bank of England governor Mark Carney has called ‘tangible assets‘ i.e. physical money.

The ‘future of money‘ narrative is one that both the BIS and the IMF have been actively promoting since the advent of Brexit and Donald Trump’s presidency. Here are some links to speeches made by both Christine Lagarde and Agustin Carstens:

Central Banking and Fintech—A Brave New World?

Winds of Change: The Case for New Digital Currency

Money and payment systems in the digital age

Money in the digital age: what role for central banks?

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The Global Economic Reset Begins With An Engineered Crash, by Brandon Smith

Posted on March 14, 2019 | Leave a comment

Who, if anyone, is pulling the strings is subject to debate, but it’s becoming increasingly clear that the world economy is faltering. If it is, can equity market crashes be far behind? From Brandon Smith at alt-market.com:

For a few years now, since at least 2014, the phrase “global economic reset” has been circulating in the financial world. This phrase is used primarily by globalist institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to describe an event in which the current system as we know it will either die out or evolve into a new system where “multilateralism” will become the norm. The reset is often described in an ambiguous way. IMF banking elites will usually mention the end results of the shift, but they say little about the process to get there.

What we do know is that the intent of the globalists is to use this reset to create a more centralized monetary system and micro-managed global economy. At the core of this new structure would be the IMF along with perhaps the BIS and World Bank.  It is a plan that has been supported openly by both western and eastern governments, including Russia and China.

As noted, the details are few and far between, but the IMF describes the use of open borders and human migrations during the reset as a means to transfer capital from various parts of the world. It is a novel if not utterly insane way to transfer wealth that only makes sense if you understand that the globalist goal is to deliberately conjure a geopolitical catastrophe.

The IMF also asserts that blockchain technology will make capital transfer easier and more efficient in this future environment, which explains the enthusiastic globalist support for developments in blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies despite the notion in cryptocurrency circles that blockchain would somehow make the bankers “obsolete”.

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We’re Living In ‘The Groundhog Show’, by Chris Martenson

Posted on February 25, 2019 | Leave a comment

Because history is mostly a series of disasters punctuated by occasional progress, it’s a good bet that we’re in for a replay of prior disasters. From Christ Marenson at peakprosperity.com:

It’s said that truth mirrors fiction. I’m finding this to be the case more and more these days.

Take the 1993 comedy Groundhog Day. Bill Murray wakes up each day to relieve the exact same daily circumstances and interpersonal interactions. He relives the same day, February 2, over and over again.

No matter what he does, the repetitive cycle won’t break.  He goes to sleep, wakes up to his alarm, and it’s the morning of Feb 2 again.

Likewise, in The Truman Show, Jim Carrey lives in a simulated environment where everybody’s an actor in a popular TV show except him.  For him, it’s his real life.  But although he doesn’t realise it, everything around him is completely scripted and fake.

If merge these two movies together, they perfectly describe the world in which we live today.  Welcome to Groundhog Day meets The Truman Show.   Let’s call this mash-up The Groundhog Show.

In this composite story you, the plucky central character, wake up every day in a world where the same mistakes are made over and over again by our so-called “leaders”.

Take the central banks, for instance. In this show, they continually blow massive credit bubbles over and over again, which then result in widespread, painful losses when they inevitably burst. And the central planners keep doing this without any indication that they’re aware they’re repeating the same mistakes.

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Will Policy Makers Turn a Global Economic Slowdown Into a Crisis? by Daniel Lacalle

Posted on January 25, 2019 | Leave a comment

This is a far better description of how the economy actually works than anything you’d get out of economics textbooks. From Daniel Lacalle at mises.org:

The recent macroeconomic data of the leading economies point to a widespread slowdown. What is more concerning is not just a logical moderation in the path of growth, but the acceleration in the weakening of economies that were supposed to be stronger and healthier. It is even more concerning that this aggressive worsening of key leading indicators in China, the EU, and most emerging economies happens at the peak of the largest monetary and fiscal stimulus in decades.

It is easy to blame this widespread weakening on political headlines, trade wars, and — of course —Trump, but it would be disingenuous to believe those are the real factors behind the negative economic surprise.

The pace of global recoveries since 1975 has been slower and weaker, consistently, according to the OECD. Recoveries take longer and happen slower. At the same time, periods of crisis are less aggressive albeit more frequent than prior to 1975.  Another interesting evidence of the crises and recoveries since 1975 is that almost all economies end the recession period with more debt than before.

These factors are all concerning, but the evidence also shows that economic progress has continued regardless and that the main factors of wellbeing have improved dramatically. I had the opportunity of meeting Johan Norberg, author of “Progress” and we discussed all the positive elements we have seen in the past decades. In the same period, from 1975 to 2018, extreme poverty has been reduced to all-time lows. Hunger, poverty, illiteracy,  child mortality… all those terrible problems have been dramatically reduced to the lowest levels in history. That is the positive.

However, recognizing the positive is important, but ignoring the risks is dangerous. Global debt has ballooned to all-time highs, more than three times the world GDP. For those elements of progress to continue improving, we must stop the race of perverse incentives created by the wrong analysis of the origin of crises and the solutions that are often proposed in mainstream economics and politics.  I agree with Johan Norberg that the two main factors that have driven the phenomenal progress we have seen are free markets and openness. The freedom to innovate, experiment, create and share must come with the right incentives.

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Will Globalists Sacrifice The Dollar To Get Their ‘New World Order’? by Brandon Smith

Posted on January 20, 2019 | 1 comment

Globalists will sacrifice whatever needs to be sacrificed, including you and your family’s lives, to get their new world order. From Brandon Smith at alt-market.com:

Trade is a fundamental element of human survival. No one person can produce every single product or service necessary for a comfortable life, no matter how Spartan their attitude. Unless your goal is to desperately scratch an existence from your local terrain with no chance of progress in the future, you are going to need a network of other producers. For most of the history of human civilization, production was the basis for economy. All other elements were secondary.

At some point, as trade grows and thrives, a society is going to start looking for a store of value; something that represents the man-hours and effort and ingenuity a person put into their day. Something that is universally accepted within barter networks, something highly prized, that is tangible, that can be held in our hands and is impossible to replicate artificially. Enter precious metals.

Thus, the concept of “money” was born, and for the most part it functioned quite well for thousands of years. Unfortunately, there are people in our world that see economy as a tool for control rather than a vital process that should be left alone to develop naturally.

The idea of “fiat money”, money which has no tangibility and that can be created on a whim by a central source or authority, is rather new in the grand scheme of things. It is a bastardization of the original and much more stable money system that existed before that was anchored in hard commodities. While it claims to offer a more “liquid” store of value, the truth is that it is no store of value at all.

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Trump Is A Pied Piper For The New World Order Agenda, by Brandon Smith

Posted on January 5, 2019 | 1 comment

Trump’s actions belie his rhetoric as some sort of revolutionary outsider in Washington. From Brandon Smith at alt-market.com:

In my last article, ‘The Fed Is A Suicide Bomber With A Deeper Agenda’, I explored and dismantled recent propaganda surrounding the Federal Reserve’s tightening actions, including the propaganda that Jerome Powell is some kind of rogue central banker who is rebalancing the system for the good of the nation.  To summarize the points made in that article:

The Fed deliberately created the “Everything Bubble” so that it could be deliberately imploded at the proper time – in other words, the crash we have been witnessing so far during the final quarter of 2018 and continuing into 2019 is a controlled demolition of the economy.  Jerome Powell is not some “rebel” going against the easy money dictates of the Fed.  Jerome Powell is playing the role that has been given to him.  Ben Bernanke and Janet Yellen’s job was to inflate the bubble.  Jerome Powell’s job is to crash the bubble.

This is a tactic used by the Fed and the globalists that run it for over 100 years – conjure a debt bubble, deflate the debt bubble, cause a crisis, siphon up hard assets for pennies on the dollar, use the panic to gain more power and centralization, introduce new control measures while everyone is distracted, rinse, repeat.

This process of controlled demolition needs a considerable distraction so that the central banks and the globalists ultimately avoid blame for the painful consequences of the event.  Enter Donald Trump and the false Trump vs. Globalist paradigm.  As I mentioned last week, the Fed is only one side of the equation for the crash; Trump is the other side.

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Unsound Banking: Why Most of the World’s Banks Are Headed for Collapse, by Doug Casey

Posted on September 8, 2018 | Leave a comment

We’ve already had a preview of this movie: the financial crisis of 2008-2009. From Doug Casey at internationalman.com:

You’re likely thinking that a discussion of “sound banking” will be a bit boring. Well, banking should be boring. And we’re sure officials at central banks all over the world today—many of whom have trouble sleeping—wish it were.

This brief article will explain why the world’s banking system is unsound, and what differentiates a sound from an unsound bank. I suspect not one person in 1,000 actually understands the difference. As a result, the world’s economy is now based upon unsound banks dealing in unsound currencies. Both have degenerated considerably from their origins.

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Inflation Rearing Its Ugly Head, by Alasdair Macleod

Posted on July 8, 2018 | Leave a comment

The government undoubtedly understates inflation; it’s got every reason to do so. From Alasdair Macleod at goldmoney.com:

The world of finance and investment, as always, faces many uncertainties. The US economy is booming, say some, and others warn that money supply growth has slowed, raising fears of impending deflation. We fret about the banks, with a well-known systemically-important European name in difficulties. We worry about the disintegration of the Eurozone, with record imbalances and a significant member, Italy, digging in its heels. China’s stock market, we are told, is now officially in bear market territory. Will others follow? But there is one thing that’s so far been widely ignored and that’s inflation.

More correctly, it is the officially recorded rate of increase in prices that’s been ignored. Inflation proper has already occurred through the expansion of the quantity of money and credit following the Lehman crisis ten years ago. The rate of expansion of money and credit has now slowed and that is what now causes concern to the monetarists. But it is what happens to prices that should concern us, because an increase in price inflation violates the stated targets of the Fed. An increase in the general level of prices is confirmation that the purchasing power of a currency is sliding.

According to the official inflation rate, the US’s CPI-U, it is already running significantly above target at 2.8% as of May. Oil prices are rising. Brent (which my colleague Stefan Wieler tells me sets gasoline and diesel prices) is now nearly $80 a barrel. That has risen 62% since last June. If the US economy continues to grow the Fed will have to put up interest rates to slow things down. If it doesn’t, as money-supply followers fear, the Fed may still be forced to put up interest rates to contain price inflation.

It is too simplistic to argue that a slowing of money supply growth removes the inflation threat. In this article, I explain why, and postulate that the next credit crisis will be the beginning of the end for unbacked fiat currencies.

To continue reading: Inflation Rearing Its Ugly Head

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US Dollar Hegemony Tripped Up by Chinese Renminbi? by Wolf Richter

Posted on July 1, 2018 | Leave a comment

The world’s central banks aren’t shedding their dollars for the Chinese currency just yet. From Wolf Richter at wolfstreet.com:

Um, no. Central banks not enthusiastic about the renminbi.

Global central banks are not dumping US-dollar-denominated assets from their foreign exchange reserves. They’re not dumping euro-denominated assets either. And they remain leery of the Chinese renminbi – despite China’s place as the second largest economy in the world and despite all the hoopla of turning the renminbi into a major global reserve currency.

This is clear from the IMF’s just released “Currency Composition of Official Foreign Exchange Reserves” (COFER) data for the first quarter 2018. The IMF is very stingy with what it discloses. The COFER data for each individual country – each country’s specific holdings of reserve currencies – is “strictly confidential.” But it does disclose the global allocation of each major currency.

In Q1 2018, total global foreign exchange reserves, including all currencies, rose 6.3% year-over-year, or by $878 billion, to $11.59 trillion, within the upper range of the past three years (from $10.7 trillion in Q4 2016 to $11.8 trillion in Q3, 2014). For reporting purposes, the IMF converts all currency balances into US dollars. This data was for Q1. The dollar bottomed out in the middle of the quarter and has since been rising.

US-dollar-denominated assets among foreign exchange reserves continued to dominate in Q1 at $6.5 trillion, or 62.5% of “allocated” reserves (more on this “allocated” in a moment).

Over the decades, there have been major efforts to undermine the dollar’s hegemony as a global reserve currency, which it has maintained since World War II. The creation of the euro was the most successful such effort. The plan was that the euro would eventually reach “parity” with the dollar on the hegemony scale. Before the euro, global exchange reserves included the individual currencies of today’s Eurozone members, particularly the Deutsche mark. After the euro came about, it replaced all those. And its share edged up for a while until the euro debt crisis spooked central banks and derailed those dreams.

And now there are efforts underway to elevate the Chinese renminbi to a global reserve currency. This became official on October 1, 2016, when the IMF added it to its currency basket, the Special Drawing Rights. But watching grass grow is breathtakingly exciting compared to watching the RMB gain status as a reserve currency.

To continue reading: US Dollar Hegemony Tripped Up by Chinese Renminbi?

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Could Big European Banks Drag the World Economy Down? by Peter Schiff

Posted on June 21, 2018 | 1 comment

The European banking sector may be where the next financial crisis starts, but all of the world’s banks have assets and liabilities far in excess of their capital, and they are all interlinked, so once the crisis starts it will spread quickly. From Peter Schiff at schiffgold.com:

Humans are by nature somewhat myopic. We tend to focus primarily on what is right in front of us and filter out things further removed. As a result, we can sometimes overlook important factors.

As Americans, we generally devote most of our attention on American policy. We follow political maneuverings in Washington D.C., study the Fed’s most recent pronouncements and track the US stock markets. But we also need to remember there is a whole wide world out there that can have a major impact on the larger economy and our investment portfolio.

One factor that could potentially rock the world economy that a lot of American may not be aware of is the mess in the European banking system.

In a recent podcast, Peter Schiff talked about the impact the European Central Bank could have on the economy. Mario Draghi’s comments indicating he plans to hold interest rates at zero for another year roiled the markets. But that’s not the only issue facing the eurozone. As economist Dr. Thorsten Polleit noted in a recent article published by the Mises Wire, many euro banks are in “lousy” shape.

So what? you might ask. Well, the European banking system is huge. It accounts for 268% of gross domestic product (GDP) in the euro area. If the sector collapses, that’s bad news for the broader world economy.

One of the biggest problem children in European banking is Deutsche Bank. As of March 2018, the German giant had a balance sheet of close to 1.5 trillion euro, accounting for about 45% of German GDP. Polliet described this as an “enormous, frightening dimension.”

Beware of big banks — this is what we could learn from the latest financial and economic crises 2008/2009. Big banks have the potential to take an entire economy hostage: When they get into trouble, they can drag everything down with them, especially the innocent bystanders – taxpayers and, if and when the central banks decide to bail them out, those holding fiat money and fixed income securities denominated in fiat money.”

To continue reading: Could Big European Banks Drag the World Economy Down? 

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