The Fed’s latest actions in cooperating with foreign central banks to undertake liquidity swaps of dollars for foreign currencies is another reason why Congress needs enhanced power to oversee and audit the Fed. Under current law Congress cannot examine these types of agreements. Those who would argue that auditing the Fed or these agreements with central banks harms the Fed’s independence should reevaluate the Fed’s supposed independence when the Fed bails out Europe so soon after President Obama promised US assistance in resolving the Euro crisis.
Rather than calming markets, these arrangements should indicate just how frightened governments around the world are about the European financial crisis. Central banks are grasping at straws, hoping that flooding the world with money created out of thin air will somehow resolve a crisis caused by uncontrolled government spending and irresponsible debt issuance. Congress should not permit this type of open-ended commitment on the part of the Fed, a commitment which could easily run into the trillions of dollars. These dollar swaps are purely inflationary and will harm American consumers as much as any form of quantitative easing.
The Fed is behaving much as it did during the 2008 financial crisis, only this time instead of bailing out politically well-connected too-big-to-fail firms it is bailing out profligate government spending. Citizens the world over deserve better than this. They deserve sound money that cannot be manipulated and created out of thin air by central planners who promise printed prosperity. Fiat money caused this European crisis and the financial crisis before it. More fiat money is not the cure. The global fiat currency system has proven itself a failure, we need real monetary reform. We need sound money.
If you think a guy like Lindsey Williams is some sort of nut when he says paper fortunes will be lost in the coming economic reckoning, well, just consider this: it just happened with the collapse of MF Global. Gerald Celente had money with MF Global, and now it is in limbo. Celente was using futures to take physical metal delivery, which is usually a smart, cost effective way to buy physical bullion. But this time it was a problem. Overall, it just goes to show that while paper assets may be easier to own and trade than physical, it also shows how easy it is for paper to evaporate into thin air overnight.
I like the Occupy Wall Street movement, but unfortunately it has thus far not proven to be much more than a slave protest demanding different slavery conditions.
People often ask me what my political views are. They are best summed up using a quote by Henry David Thoreau from his essay on Civil Disobedience: “That government is best which governs not at all; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have.” It is that simple.
In the Occupy Wall Street movement narrative, the 99% represent the slaves while the 1% represent the masters. The masters are presumed to be the people with the most money. But that isn’t really accurate. The 1% are mostly slaves too. They just happen to be the slaves that make the master’s bed rather than pick the cotton. The real master is centralized power. And any support of centralized power is support of the master, which thus gives the master more coercive power. In the United States, the centralized power starts with the debt monetary system and is facilitated by the coercion of the government. The debt monetary system is actually bigger than government since it is beyond borders. But it can’t sustain itself without the coercive support of government.
The government educates the slaves, gives them a land to live in, feeds them with food stamps when needed, gives them healthcare when needed, and offers protection from other slaves. But it also gives the slaves enough freedom so the slaves will take care of themselves as much as possible like free range cattle. It lets the slaves pick what they want to do to get money. It even lets some of the slaves work directly for the government to enforce the government’s agenda in a self-feeding loop. All the while, the government extracts a certain amount of the fruits of the people’s labors through taxation, inflation, licensing, etc. and filters it to the top to reinforce the system. The system basically runs itself. It keeps the slaves blissfully unaware of their slavery. And even when the slaves do get upset, they simply fight with their fellow slaves for different slavery conditions. After all, their slave education never taught them that they are slaves. Some of the slaves even give their lives for their masters. And we are taught by propaganda to consider them heroes when they are really just brainwashed slaves fighting for their own brand of slavery. Henry Kissinger was once caught saying, “Military men are just dumb stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy.” If you’ve been caught up in that propaganda in the past then fine, but it’s time to snap out of it.
When this system is what passes for freedom, it’s a sad state of affairs. Have you ever noticed how you can’t even really own your own piece of land? You have to rent it from the government by paying taxes. Those taxes then go to fund the perpetuation of the slave system. You aren’t even really allowed to obtain or spend money without giving government a cut. Again, it all goes to fund the perpetuation of the coercive slave system.
What’s so stupid about all this is that the master doesn’t really exist. The master is simply the slaves giving power to a centralized authority that can protect and serve the crap out of everyone using coercion. So, when Occupy Wall Street says, for instance, we have to tax the rich more, they are just saying that we need to give the government more power to keep the slaves more equal. When Occupy Wall Street thinks public sector unions are somehow necessary to protect public workers who are paid using government theft, they are just saying that we need to give up freedom to centralized public labor power to keep the slaves more equal. When Occupy Wall Street says we need more regulation, they are just saying that we need to give up freedom to more centralized control to keep the slaves more equal instead of unleashing free-market forces. When Occupy Wall Street says the government needs to do anything other than buzz off, it is simply slaves asking for different slavery conditions. It fails to see that all this inequality is simply the result of giving government coercive power in the first place.
Government is the corrupting element of capitalism, not the taming element as the propaganda repeats. In the current system, it pays to be in cahoots with government, because then you don’t have to play by free-market rules. Government coercion, such as through taxation, provides an unfair source of profit for those who are in cahoots with government. And as long as that coercive power exists, part of the game of making money will be to use government coercion. In a free-market you can’t collect money at gun point, but in the current system the government can. And whether they are collecting money at gun point to educate kids or build bombs the coercion makes it immoral. Most people tend to miss that point though because the government propaganda is so pervasive.
Sorry, but to break slavery we need to take power away from centralization. And when it comes to government, taking power away primarily means taking money away from it. And taking money away from government in a broader sense means taking money away from centralized power. If the government can’t pay you, you aren’t going to enforce its rules.
Our monetary system is controlled centrally. That centralized control means our monetary system is not free market.There is no free market if the means of exchange of that market isn’t free. Certain powers have a monopoly on money creation in the current system: namely banks controlled by the central bank. Those powers are the real masters. To break the slavery system we must have free-market money because money is where the power originates.
At this point you may be like, so what are you Alex, some kind of anarchist? Well, let me repeat the quote I started with, “Government is best which governs not at all; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have.” People have to learn how to stop being slaves. Free people don’t need government, only slaves do. When people are ready to not be slaves, government will cease to exist. But for as long as people are content with being slaves, government isn’t going anywhere.
The belief that government is necessary is just propaganda. There is no real government anyway, it’s just a bunch of people pretending it is real. Free people operate using one simple rule, you can’t hurt other people. And if we were all operating doing stuff that doesn’t hurt other people, there would be very little hurting going on in this world. We’d be working together to only do good for one another. We’d essentially be competing to see who can do the best for everyone else. No coercion necessary. No taxation necessary. No need for crime. No need for violence. No need for even environmental regulation. You’d get ahead by doing good and good only. The slave mentality of being brainwashed into thinking that we need to let some people hurt people that hurt people to protect people creates a self perpetuating loop of hurt. I’m not saying getting out of that loop wouldn’t be difficult, I’m just saying it isn’t impossible.
So, like I said, “Government is best which governs not at all; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have.” A government free world of sane and free people is an ideal scenario. But the first step in getting there is to break the slavery mentality. This stuff like Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party need to break out of the left right dichotomy used to give the slaves an imaginary choice. It’s all propaganda to keep the real issue obscured: centralized control. Like watch this Newt Gingrich clip of him denouncing Occupy Wall Street. He fails to mention that Henry Ford once said “It is well that the people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.” Why don’t you talk about that Newt? That’s the real education that is missing. What Newt said in this clip is just propaganda trying to tell the slaves that they are already free. It’s the same as telling the slaves that they need to give the government more power to make people more free.
Occupy Wall Street needs to change its name to Occupy Central Power to really get me excited. And the central power it needs to start with is the debt monetary system headed by the Federal Reserve. Much of Wall Street is itself a slave of that system. That’s why businesses have to put out quarterly reports. Those reports are their report cards to show the banks that fund them and the governments that tax them how much money they are bringing in. Until Occupy Wall Street becomes Occupy Central Power, it is just slave protest demanding different slavery conditions. Think different.
This is a cool interview with Jeffrey Berwick of dollarvigilante.com. And if you don’t want to read it you can listen to it using the video below, starting around the 8 minute mark. However, this video is only part one of two (2 isn’t up yet as of me posting this).
Introduction: Mr. Berwick is an anarchist, libertarian, and freedom fighter against mankind’s two biggest enemies, the state and the central banks. Jeff is the host of Anarchast, an anarchist video podcast, and is a contributing editor at many of the world’s largest financial and precious metals related websites. The Dollar Vigilante (TDV) is a joint-venture publication founded by two respected free-market speakers and analysts in the financial sector, Jeff Berwick and Ed Bugos. In 1994, Jeff Berwick founded Canada’s largest financial website, Stockhouse.com.
Lindsey Williams has new information about the plans of the global elite. And whether what he says and predicts is 100 percent right, I don’t know. But I do know that what he tells people to do is stuff I already do, so I like hearing his updates. They help motivate me.
Some Highlights:
2012 will be the most startling year in 2000 years.
Buy silver and gold bullion because it might be needed to pay taxes. Even if you have no debt, you could lose your home if you don’t have a means to pay your taxes. Have enough to pay taxes for 3-5 years.
Gas prices will eventually rise big.
Paper fortunes, like those in bonds and stocks and bank accounts, will be lost in 2012.
Social Security and Welfare like Food Stamps will continue until the US defaults on its debt, which is perhaps 3 years away. US will be like Greece within 3 years.
The elite want to create as much debt as possible before the collapse. Then they’ll own as much as possible after the collapse, including entire countries. Greece will default.
The elite want to keep people afraid because fear shuts down thinking (terror threats).
Silver and gold prices have been brought down temporarily so the elite can load up. According to Lindsey, 737,000 Silver Eagles were sold by the US mint in one day October 1. The elite only buy things cheap. And they need to convert the money they’ve made recently into gold and silver. Don’t expect this sale to last more than a month or two.
The elite are 3 months behind in their timeline, much due to Gaddafi.
Syria is next to fall in the Middle East, then Saudi Arabia.
Update: December 2011
Expect a conflict with Iran. Probably later in the year 2012.
U.S. is going to provoke Iran until it fires the first shot so-to-speak.
The Iran conflict will get the blame for the planned economic implosion that will follow.
Well, for the time being, the Federal Reserve is shying away from blatantly bailing out Banks with more quantitative easing to instead concentrate on buying more time for the government. This action is being called Operation Twist. The Fed said it is going to sell $400 billion in short term US government debt to buy $400 billion in long term debt. The intent is to drive down long term interest rates and buy the government a little more time. The Fed also said it will reinvest proceeds from maturing mortgage-backed securities back into mortgage-backed securities, instead of its previous practice of buying Treasuries with the proceeds.
Wall Street didn’t initially respond well to this news, especially considering the Fed is now saying there is “significant downside risk to the economic outlook.” It is looking like the Bailout Bubble created out of the 2008 credit crisis has finally fizzled.
Gold and silver (especially silver) have been selling off big on this latest news, which is fine by me since it just spells an opportunity to buy more. I see these sell offs as gifts. Dollar cost averaging is the key to buying metals. However, a lot of the time when silver in particular goes way down in price you can’t find much because the physical market isn’t really as volatile as the paper market; the paper market can be manipulated with things like margin calls and leveraged shorting but not the physical market. This sell off is just a knee jerk reaction to no new immediate blatant quantitative easing (money printing) from the Fed; it is short term noise.
There is no new news indicating that the bull market in gold and silver is anywhere near over. For the last several years, every time gold has had a run up in prices, hack financial commentators with way too much faith in paper money have come out calling the end of the gold bubble. I don’t know about what you see, but I still see a hell of a lot more ads and signs around for “we buy gold” than “we sell gold,” which means the smart money is still accumulating. Relative to fiat money, gold has been in a perpetual bubble since the advent of fiat money. Just following the government’s own bogus inflation numbers, gold should be at least double the price it was 25 years ago in 1986, which means it should be at least $800 an ounce. When you consider all the people in the world and all the fiat money floating around the world, gold is still very cheap. Only 1/3 of an ounce of gold is available for each person on the planet (and due to industrial use, there is only 1/14 of an ounce per person of investment silver available). Therefore, the more distrustful people become of fiat money the higher gold can go. If gold simply repeats its last bull market back in the 70s, it should reach $8000 before settling down around $3000-4000 (and silver should reach $250 before settling down around $75-$100).
Every 30-40 years the monetary system becomes screwed up so bad that it needs to be reordered. We are entering one of those reordering periods. And until we know what money will be for the next 30-40 years, we can’t be sure what the price of gold should be. Eventually, gold will truly be in a bubble and it will be time to bail. But I haven’t seen anything lately that says to me that the dollar has been saved or the appetite for gold has gone crazy. I’m certainly still bullish on gold and silver, in fact, as events have unfolded over time I’ve become more bullish. However, I personally was a hell of a lot more comfortable with the idea of investing in gold and silver when gold was $800 an ounce and silver was $15 an ounce. Unfortunately, I put way too much money in gold stocks at that time instead of into physical metal. So, I know what it is like to have to buy at these higher prices. And for anyone still hesitant about taking the plunge and putting some dollars into gold and silver I’ve been pondering an easy way for people to hedge and thus minimize risk. Because we could see another 2008 or something where everything drops in price except the dollar.
Fortunately, there are two simple tools any person with a US brokerage account can use to cheaply hedge their physical bullion purchases against the absence of monetary collapse and inflation. For gold you can use the double short gold etn with the symbol DZZ. And for silver, you can use the double short silver etf with the symbol ZSL. Taxes on DZZ are the same as with a regular stock and thus simple, but with ZSL, taxes are a bit more complex since you are given a schedule k-1 form annually that you have to report on your taxes regardless of if you sold your position or not. So, if ZSL appreciates, you could have a tax burden regardless of if you sold or not. DZZ has a 0.75% annual fee and ZSL has a 0.95% annual fee; both fees are negligible, unless you are betting big money. DZZ and ZSL are very cheap these days, especially ZSL ($1200 at inception, $15 today). Say you buy a one ounce gold eagle for $1850. You can rest easy if you put 5% of that, or about $100, into DZZ. Then, even if the price of gold collapses, you could still potentially make a profit. With silver, at current prices, you could possibly protect 50 ounces of silver from a huge silver collapse with perhaps as little as 10 shares of ZSL. Those are just estimates though; I can’t know for sure how DZZ or ZSL would preform under a gold and silver collapse. However, something like that would likely remove your risk without stifling the upside if you don’t have the cojones and conviction to buy at current prices without some insurance. And those two tools, DZZ and ZSL, could be used to help avoid selling too early or too late as the price of gold and silver rises. In a total economic collapse DZZ and ZSL could blow up and become worthless, but that’s more of an argument for not going long gold and silver using etfs or etns rather than short. But regardless, this bull market isn’t going to last forever. So, not only do you have to have an entrance strategy but you also have to think about an exit strategy. I’m not giving financial advice, I’m just letting you know the kinds of things I think about doing with my own extra money.
