An oft repeated but erroneous assertion is “Money is the root of all evil.” How can this be so? Money is simply an inanimate object. How can an inanimate object be blamed for anything? If a civilian man murders someone with a gun does the gun go to jail? If he murders someone with a chainsaw does the chainsaw go to jail? Guns, chainsaws, and anything that one person might use to harm another person can all be used for the purposes of good as well as evil. If a computer program malfunctions, do you blame the program or human programmer? I hope the idiocy of this assertion is apparent.
Before free and peaceful people chose money, barter was the trade method of choice. This carried with it inherent problems which included lack of coincidence of wants, lack of division, lack of common measure of value, and lack of store of value. Money and currency were borne out of necessity as communities grew.
Money is a tool chosen by free and peaceful people to trade amongst each other. It was chosen because it satisfied certain criteria that facilitated trade. These criteria include portability, divisibility, fungibility (interchangeability), durability, and store of value. Now there is a fundamental difference between money and currency. Currency is all those things minus being a store of value. It can be controlled by “governments” in the form of Central Banks and legal tender laws however this is not necessary. Some examples of currency not controlled by “governments” include tobacco, exotic bird feathers, colored beads, stamps, candy bars, nails, copper, lumber, axe heads, sea shells, salt, sugar, spices etc. All of these substances satisfied some criteria of money but lacked one or two others and so were eventually abandoned.
Eventually about 5000 years ago precious metals, more specifically gold and silver, began their use by free and peaceful people. Although “governments” have, over the millennia, attempted to control, standardize, and issue its use, these efforts have always failed. Precious metals always retain their intrinsic value and therefore are a wonderful protection against deficit spending, pork barrel spending, warfare, imperialism, and grandiose public works that insane “governments” frequently try to fund through taxation and debt. The market can only be unnaturally stretched and distorted so far by “governments” before it snaps back. When this snap back occurs beware! For it is during this phase that much of the illusory wealth disappears, as gold/silver do an accounting for all the excess fiat currency, government bonds, and debt that was created during the distortion. This is known as the boom/bust cycle. This economic mechanism has been in effect, in an exaggerated way, for as long as “governments” have sought to meddle and intervene in so called “monetary policy”.
As long as we allow our “government” through Central Banks to control and manage our money we will never be free. It is a rigged game on an uneven playing field. It is playing monopoly with someone who can print unlimited amounts of currency. Far from money being the root of all evil, money is at the root of human trade and therefore plays an integral role in our economic health and vitality. Support the black market! Support the counter economy! Get your wealth out of fiat currency and SIFI banks! The State can be defeated, not by violent revolution, but by economic self-sufficiency and by withdrawing support of a decadent and predatory system. Simply remove nourishment from the parasite and it will necessarily shrivel up and die without the application of any force whatsoever.
Due to Gresham’s Law gold and silver started to disappear from circulation from 431-404 BC as people spent the government enforced copper coins and hoarded the gold/silver coins. Suddenly it took a whole bunch of copper coins to buy a gold/silver coin. This is the first time gold or silver ever had a price. Before that everything was measured in a weight of gold/silver.
Amidst the flagrant fiscal deterioration of the Euro-zone since its inception, the most recent insult is what is happening in Italy. The Italian government has commanded the Italian banks to impose a 20% tax on all inbound wire transfers, treating the transferred money as taxable income. This ruling is retroactive to all wire transfers beginning from February 1, 2014. It now becomes the incumbent duty of businesses or individuals receiving wire transfers to prove to the Italian banks and by extension the Italian government, that this currency is not income. Therefore all Italians are considered “money launderers” until proven innocent. A startling realization!
This is happening not so coincidentally, as we near the 1 year anniversary of the Cyprus “bail-in” wealth confiscation that occurred in April 2013. For those of you unaware of this historic event here is a brief summary. Cypriot depositors awoke on a Saturday morning to find their accounts were frozen, nothing allowed in or out. The Cypriot banks were on the verge of defaulting and asked the European Central Bank for a bailout. What resulted came to be known as a “bail-in”. For approximately 2 weeks all accounts were frozen as Cypriot government officials were deliberating as to how much currency to steal from its citizens in the form of a tax appropriation. During these deliberations Cypriot depositors were rioting and protesting in the streets for their money to be returned to them. Alas such actions have little effect once the process of wealth confiscation has begun. The final agreement dictated that accounts with 100,000 Euros or more would receive a 47.5% tax appropriation or “hair cut”. As it turned out, those with such large accounts were owned by Russian mafia members, although many of the larger notorious Russian oligarchs were tipped off before this entire debacle occurred and succeeded in removing their currency in time before the freezing began.
After this event other banks in the Eurozone, Canada, and in the United States subtly changed their banking policy to include this “bail-in” as a possible emergency measure to be taken in times of financial crisis. This event also made clear the notion that once a deposit is made in any bank that currency is no longer your own. You are now considered an “unsecured creditor” as you have just lent your currency to that financial institution and in the event of a financial crisis, as an unsecured creditor, you will be the last to be compensated if that financial institution were to fail or default. Keeping one’s wealth in a bank or credit union has scarcely been so dangerous as it is now and vulnerable to wealth confiscation schemes of a variety of sorts.
We all work hard for the currency we earn. The last thing we would like to see is our currency being used to fund bankrupt “countries”, murderous “politicians”, or criminal financial institutions. Our true wealth is our time and freedom. Money is simply a conduit to store that wealth. Currency is the imposter that has been given to us to fool us into believing we are earning things of value. Currency is simply pieces of paper with fancy ink that “government” has dictated through legal tender laws has value. In reality nothing can be given value by “government” that will not soon thereafter return to its intrinsic value of zero. Fiat currency is no exception. Historically fiat currencies have a life span of 30-40 years. We are just beginning our 43rd year of the fiat currency experiment known as the US Dollar, more aptly put the Federal Reserve Note. Were it not for our powerful military forcing all countries on Earth to use it as the world reserve currency and as the petro-dollar, the Federal Reserve Note would have collapsed years ago.
Put the fruits of your labor into things of real tangible value that will not depreciate and that bankers cannot counterfeit at a whim. Over the course of time such things that have proven themselves as having intrinsic value include diamonds, precious stones, real estate, farm land, crypto currency, and precious metals. Of all these substances gold and silver have, for at least 2000 years, risen above all the others for their superior qualities. I am aware of only 2 methods by which gold and silver can be produced; from the collision of two neutron stars or as a result of a supernova explosion. Therefore as long as “politicians” cannot engineer these events I do believe they will retain their premier stature.
Gold and silver are essentially indestructible, which means all the gold and silver that has been mined from the time of the Ancient Egyptians is still around in some form. Their value has never gone to zero. They are the world’s first global monetary system and they are here to stay! Do not insult nature and the collective monetary choice of free and peaceful individuals. Gold and silver are the Free Market choice for wealth preservation and the foundation on which a truly prosperous society can grow. Once they become adulterated and diluted by mendacious “politicians” acting on behalf of cancerous “governments” nothing can halt the ensuing Wealth Transfer until the cycle is complete.
All we can expect is that the people will have learned their history lesson and stop trusting that “governments”, “politicians”, and financial institutions will protect their wealth and ensure their future prosperity. The only wealth these entities and “politicians” protect is their own. The only prosperity they ensure is their own. We must take fiscal, economic, and personal responsibility for our own freedoms. These things cannot be entrusted to anyone, regardless of sophomoric rhetoric or ostentatious garb. You own yourself! You are captain of your own destiny! Start acting like it!
“I am more concerned about the return of my money than the return on my money.” Mark Twain
Here is a great 12 minute video on why not to despair when faced with the short term price fluctuations of the precious metals. The fundamentals cannot and will not change. As long as politicians are running up enormous trillion dollar annual budget deficits and increasing, one must own precious metals as long term wealth protection. What is deficit spending? It is spending money one doesn’t have and didn’t earn. Since it was not given voluntarily by the citizens but effectively taken by force and under threat of imprisonment it was therefore stolen. This is the standard definition of most governments on Earth, since the very nature of government is to procure its funds through taxation or money printing which are both done without approval of the people and both have the end product of slowly siphoning wealth away from the hard working productive citizens to the thieves and loafers on Capitol Hill who thereafter give it to the criminals on Wall Street. Since the Mandrake Mechanism, or money printing, is the most abused method of funding the government, this is thoroughly inflationary and a most propitious environment for precious metals to thrive. When it costs the same to print $1 as it does $100 one can be certain this is what will be done to no end, until the public debt and interest on the debt become truly insurmountable and it thereafter collapses under its own weight.
Woodrow Wilson borrowed 30 billion dollars to fund World War I in 1917. That money has not been paid back. And we are still paying interest on it. That’s 96 years ago. The American taxpayer pays for it with cheaper dollars because the government prints money to pay its bills and that reduces the value of everything we own. The American taxpayer pays for it with higher taxes.”
Judge Andrew Napolitano
The silver supply is most definitely strained to the max as the demand for the metal is staggering. The number of American Eagles bought from the US mint by the beginning of October has already far exceeded the total number bought in all of 2012, and that was immense as well! If it continues at its current rate of massive consumption, both investment and industrial, it will most assuredly be extinct by 2020.
Sending good people in to reform a state is like sending virgins in to reform a whorehouse.”
In 2011 Mike Maloney of GoldSilver.com said “If you take all the above ground gold available for investment today and distribute it evenly amongst the global population everyone would own 1/3 oz of gold. If you do the same for silver everyone would own 1/14 oz of silver.” The population has increased since he made that calculation and the supply has greatly diminished. Now the real question is why hasn’t the price reflected this disparity in supply when the demand for both precious metals has been surging to all time highs since the 2008 housing crisis? The ability of the Central Banks, Mega SIFI banks, and Bullion banks to manipulate the prices of the metals downward with their paper gold/silver futures contracts will come to an end quite soon when the physical scarcity becomes acutely felt, which is to say when certain buyers will not be receiving their metal at such absurdly low prices because it has all been mined up or it becomes so difficult to mine that it is no longer cost effective for the mining companies to do so. At that point we will all discover their true value and purchasing power.
Let them march all they want, so long as they continue to pay their taxes.”
Alexander Haig, Secretary of State to President Ronald Reagan
Another notion to keep in mind is the stark difference between the paper gold/silver ETF (Exchange Traded Funds) market and the physical gold/silver market. As far as I know paper gasoline will not power a car, paper food will not nourish us, paper herbs will not heal us, and paper homes will not keep us warm in the winter, incidentally the latter is more of what our flimsy homes are beginning to resemble these days. Therefore paper gold/silver will never be a suitable substitute for the real physical thing. It can never be and it will never be.
It would take a salary of $396,536 today (2013) to equal in purchasing power a $35,000 income in 1980.”
John Williams, Shadowstats.com
The principle since 1945 has become “Gold is hoarded in Central Bank vaults and Silver is consumed in industry.” Historically they have always existed at a 1:10 ratio of Gold:Silver for the simple reason that that was the underground ratio that they are bio-available for mining and so the price ratio has reflected that for thousands of years. This relationship has all changed since, after World War II, silver has been utilized as an industrial metal for its superior electrically conductive, thermally conductive, anti-microbial, and reflective properties. The fact that it is an element and not a compound illustrates that there exists no suitable substitute. However the beautiful thing about silver is that even if industry stops using it, there will always be a demand for it as a store of value and as true money. Thus its value will never go to zero as is possible and will happen with all financial instruments such as stocks, bonds, mutual funds, exchange traded funds etc during the inevitable Wealth Transfer. All precious metals are commodities and therefore fluctuate in a valuation channel between over-valued and under-valued according to the economics of the time. The way to stay at the crest of the Wealth Cycles is to buy certain commodities when they are under-valued and sell them when become over-valued. This may be appreciated when one examines the difference between the savvy investor who, leading up to the Crash of 1929, bought his shares when the market was at the bottom thereafter selling them at the top and the plebeians who responded instinctively and foolishly by buying shares near the top and then losing everything. Gold/Silver, however, are unique amongst commodities in that they have certain properties that the free market has recognized and as a result has awarded them the supreme status as true quality money.
More millionaires were created during the Great Depression than at any time in US history.”
Anonymous
Here I am proud to present to you another outstanding 3 minute video of Eastern philosopher Alan Watts talking about the absurd concept of manmade currency. It is a man made notion invented to measure wealth just as a clock was invented to measure change in time. During the Great Depression there was enough houses, steel, lumber, cement, food etc for everyone to be prosperous and happy, yet because there was no currency there was privation, hunger, and suffering. Does this make sense?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvBKR5GPCWc
Most of the fiat trash you earn from your job should go to buying the poor man’s gold at these ridiculous and artificially low prices. I tell that to everyone I meet. When the market realizes the enormous disparities in supply, demand, and price of the precious metals we will see a rally towards the upside of magnificent proportions! Unfortunately that will also signify the fundamental deterioration of our current society, however it must happen. The longer we supply our fiat addicted society with monetary cocaine the worse will be the eventual withdrawal symptoms when the money spigot is eventually twisted shut.
Inflation has also eroded savings. $10,000 in the bank in 1980 would need to have grown to $113,296 in 2013 to be of equal value. That banked $10,000 in 1980 would have to yield about 8% compound interest over 33 years to equal $113,296 today. That never happened.”
This alert should not be taken lightly. One should not relax in confidence knowing that since the price of the metals is quite low that this artificially suppressed climate will maintain itself for much longer. This illusion can only persist if there is sufficient supply to meet the soaring demand. Once this supply dries up, the market will react by soaring tangible assets prices to spectacular heights as can only happen when unquenchable demand meets a brick wall. This is a process as inevitable as it is natural and no Government or Central Bank on Earth can stop it. At some point it behooves us to stop resisting the wave and just ride it. What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object? We will soon find out.
Haha Please enjoy this hilarious 4 minute video of standup comedian Michael Connell as he discusses the difference between money and currency. The government printing currency and saying “This is money!” is like McDonald’s making chicken nuggets and saying “This is chicken!” The government is in the lucrative business of making fiat currency just like McDonald’s is in the business of making fiat chicken.
The factors which affect value, spell DUST (Demand Utility Scarcity Transferability).”
Anonymous
The modern banking system manufactures money out of nothing. The process is perhaps the most astounding piece of sleight of hand that was ever invented. Banking was conceived in iniquity and born in sin. Bankers own the Earth. Take it away from them, but leave them the power to created money and control credit, and with the flick of a pen, they will create enough money to buy it back again. But if you want to continue as the slaves of bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, let them continue to create money and to control credit.”
Happy Birthday Federal Reserve! Yesterday, December 23, 1913 a day that will live in infamy, marked the 100th anniversary of the creation of our beloved Federal Reserve System, the Central Bank of our country. Why is this significant and abominable? Let us examine the ways.
The conclusion then, is, that neither the representatives of a nation, nor the whole nation itself assembled, can validly engage debts beyond what they may pay in their own time.”
Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1789. ME 7:457
Then I say, the earth belongs to each of these generations during its course, fully and in its own right. The second generation receives it clear of the debts and encumbrances of the first, the third of the second, and so on. For if the first could charge it with a debt, then the earth would belong to the dead and not to the living generation. Then, no generation can contract debts greater than may be paid during the course of its own existence.”
Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1789. ME 7:455
Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it, earns it … he who doesn’t … pays it.”
Albert Einstein
It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and money system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.”
Now, that is what Henry Ford wants to prevent. He thinks it is stupid, and so do I, that for the loan of $30,000,000 of their own money the people of the United States should be compelled to pay $66,000,000 — that is what it amounts to, with interest. People who will not turn a shovelful of dirt nor contribute a pound of material will collect more money from the United States than will the people who supply the material and do the work. That is the terrible thing about interest. In all our great bond issues the interest is always greater than the principal. All of the great public works cost more than twice the actual cost, on that account. Under the present system of doing business we simply add 120 to 150 per cent, to the stated cost.”
Thomas Edison
I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its credit system. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the civilized world no longer a Government by free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men.”
President Woodrow Wilson years after signing the Federal Reserve Act into law
The money powers prey upon the nation in times of peace and conspire against it in times of adversity. It is more despotic than a monarch, more insolent than autocracy and more selfish than a bureaucracy. It denounces, as public enemies, all who question its methods or throw light upon its crimes. I have two great enemies, the Southern Army in front of me and the bankers in the rear. Of the two, the one at the rear is my greatest foe.”
President Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War
The powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences.”
Carroll Quigley, American historian, theorist of the evolution of civilizations, and author of “Tragedy and Hope”
Haha this 3 minute video about raising the debt ceiling made me literally laugh out loud! Referring to the National Debt, Total Annual Revenue, Deficit Spending, and Annual Budget Cuts in terms of billions or trillions of dollars can have anyone’s head spinning. However when simplified and applied to the finances of an individual household the economic insanity is quite clear. It is unsustainable, societally damaging, and must come to an end.
Mike Maloney strikes another golden knockout blow with this 29 minute video of his most latest Episode 4 of the Hidden Secrets of Money: The Biggest Scam in the History of Mankind.
Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money, for money is men’s protection and the base of a moral existence. Destroyers seize gold and leave to its owners a counterfeit pile of paper. Paper is a mortgage on wealth that does not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to produce it. This kills all objective standards and delivers men into the arbitrary setter of values. Gold was an objective value, an equivalent of wealth produced. Paper is a check drawn by legal looters upon an account, which is not theirs: Watch for the day when it bounces, marked “account overdrawn.”
Ayn Rand
It stipulates in Article 1, Section 10 that “No State shall…coin Money, emit Bills of Credit; make anything but gold and silver coin a Tender in Payment of Debts…” The term “Bills of Credit” refers to any paper fiat currency that is not backed by gold or silver. Our government is allowing unconstitutional and illegal fraud to take place on a daily basis ever since 1913 when the US Economy was hijacked by the Federal Reserve!
The few who understand the system will either be so interested in its profits or be so dependent upon its favours that there will be no opposition from that class, while on the other hand, the great body of people, mentally incapable of comprehending the tremendous advantage that capital derives from the system, will bear its burdens without complaint, and perhaps without even suspecting that the system is inimical to their interests.”
The Rothschild brothers of London writing to associates in New York, 1863
According to Mike Maloney the US dollar is the “liar’s lie”, meaning it is one of the most inaccurate indicators of economic vitality that exists. Incidentally that applies to all fiat currencies across the board. Rather in order to ascertain the true value of anything one must compare it to the price of commodities, most notably precious metals. Therefore regardless if the DOW is measured in an oz of gold, barrel of oil, bushel of wheat, lb of copper etc the result is the same. It is hopelessly plummeting in value in relation to these. However just looking at it from a purely Federal Reserve Note perspective it’s pushing to all time highs!
The study of money, above all other fields in economics, is one in which complexity is used to disguise truth or to evade truth, not to reveal it. The process by which banks create money is so simple the mind is repelled. With something so important, a deeper mystery seems only decent.”
John Kenneth Galbraith (1908- ), former professor of economics at Harvard, writing in ‘Money: Whence it came, where it went’ (1975).
The Federal Reserve cannot maintain this facade of stable prices for very long with $85 billion/month being printed. The “smart money” of billionaires are already exiting the stock market and heading into hard assets. Unfortunately the “dumb money” of the masses is always lagging hopelessly behind like a dog chasing the tires of yesterday’s news.
This is a good article explaining the history of fractional reserve banking, central banks, the landmark case of The First National Bank of Montgomery vs. Jerome Daly (1969), and how paper money came to be accepted by the people. I would, however, be careful regarding her proposed State imposed solution of government fiat currency printing. No law can forcibly create peace, prosperity, or wealth. This can only occur through willing individuals engaged in peaceful and voluntary trade.
The Jerome Daly case is notable in that it was the first time that it was admitted in a court of “law” that banks create currency out of thin air the moment the borrower signs the loan document. Not only is it created out of thin air but it is to be paid back with the application of usurious interest. Therefore Mr. Daly correctly surmised that since the bank never had the money to “lend” as collateral in the first place, how can the bank ever claim to own the property should the “borrower” default on his pretended loan? The answer is the banks have no legitimate right to own any property, since this process completely violates the true definition of the word “lend”. If I need to borrow a shovel it would make sense that I need to obtain it from someone who has a shovel to lend me. A paper shovel contract simply will not do. Furthermore if you have a shovel and lend that shovel to me, would it make sense to ask me to repay you with two shovels? From where did the second shovel come into existence? If it was borrowed from someone else who also lent his shovel with interest one can understand how this system would rapidly fall apart as the mounting debt would quickly become massive and unsustainable due to the concept of compounding interest.
A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining, but wants it back the minute it begins to rain.”
Mark Twain
A similar process occurs at the federal level when the US government borrows currency into existence from the Federal Reserve. This process has many names such as currency creation, the Mandrake Mechanism, Quantitative Easing, bond/asset purchases etc. They all amount to the same thing, the counterfeiting of currency into existence at the direct benefit of those who issue it and at the direct harm to those who have their savings in currency. Furthermore if only the principal portion of all loans is created as currency and not the interest portion, how can society ever expect to pay back all these loans? The truth is it cannot, and this is the painful reality and Achilles heel of our monetary system, which is only recently beginning to show itself. It is a self-perpetuating debt spiral that can only sustain itself with the creation of ever more debt. Once the people realize this and stop borrowing currency into existence the entire house of cards crumbles into itself in a fantastic deflationary collapse. It is an endgame that has been pre-ordained since the whole deception began.
This Wealth Transfer has the ability to create vast amounts of wealth to those understand this mechanism and destroy vast amounts of wealth to those who remain ignorant. The information is there for anyone to see and understand. In the age of information, ignorance is a choice!
The world will soon wake up to the reality that everyone is broke and can collect nothing from the bankrupt, who are owed unlimited amounts by the insolvent, who are attempting to make late payments on a bank holiday in the wrong country, with an unacceptable currency, against defaulted collateral, of which nobody is sure who holds title.”
The first panacea for a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency; the second is war. Both bring a temporary prosperity; both bring a permanent ruin. But both are the refuge of political and economic opportunists.”
