Be dangerous in the best way possible: by thinking for yourself, by refusing to be silenced, by choosing sensible solutions over political expediency and bureaucracy.
When all is said and done, the solution to what ails this country is really not that complicated: decency, compassion, common sense, generosity balanced by fiscal responsibility, fairness, a commitment to freedom principles, and a firm rejection of the craven, partisan politics of the Beltway elites who have laid the groundwork for the government’s authoritarian coup d’etat.
The training video is only five minutes long, but it says a lot about the government’s mindset, the way its views the citizenry, and the so-called “problems” that the government must be prepared to address in the near future through the use of martial law.
Chaos
Complexity
Order
Stagnation
Growth only comes from discomfort. Fear the order and embrace the complexity. If your world is in chaos reach for the pain.
A frank discussion about the truth of the matter. The US and Europe out-Gold the rest of the world 10 times over. Unless there is more gold to cover the bets, no one is motivated to go to a gold standard. The alternative, to devalue assets by 50 to 90 percent would be terminate many lives on this planet.
Will The Multi-Polar World Be Backed By Gold?
It’s not news that China and Russia have been buying gold by the hundreds of tonnes. It’s not news that Russia divested itself of most of its U.S. Treasury holdings last year in response to Donald Trump’s sanctions on Rusal, upsetting the global Aluminum market.
Russia has led the charge on central bank gold buying, having increased its official holdings from 400.3 tonnes in Q1 of 2007 to 2168.3 tonnes as of the end of Q1 2019. That’s a 442% increase in gold reserves.
China, on the other hand, has only in the past couple of years joined Russia’s party of announcing its gold buying on a monthly basis. Previously, China would simply drop a 500-600 tonne bomb on the markets and see what would shake out of it.
Now, few people who follow this stuff believe China’s government only owns 1916.3 tonnes of gold. Estimates range from 4000 to 6000 tonnes. Like Russia, very little of China’s domestic production of gold (404 tonnes in 2018) leaves China and makes its way into the global market.
It is mostly absorbed by the Chinese population via purchases off the Shanghai Gold Exchange (SGE). And the PBoC itself uses Chinese banks as proxies to buy its gold overseas from the U.K., Singapore and Switzerland.
Russia’s gold buying consumes most, and sometimes all, of Russia’s domestic production (297 tonnes in 2017). The same is true for Kazakhstan (68.4 tonnes) and a few other countries.
It’s easy when looking at these trends to see that something big may be on the horizon, that gold is on the verge of being re-monetized and a major shakeup to the world financial system is imminent.
That the multi-polar world is here. It’s not, but it’s coming.
The boys at The Duran had a fascinating (if a bit forward-looking) video recently where they discuss the situation brewing between the U.S. and China.
The basic thesis is that the U.S. and China are headed for a mostly amicable divorce of their economies, a disentangling as it were. And that that would then allow for the emergence of the so-called multi-polar world that both Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese Premier Xi Jinping are working towards.
On this point I don’t disagree. It’s a strong point Alex Mercouris makes here that the U.S. and China have acknowledged their growing contention in the global economy but that there is no need for a completely antagonistic relationship.
The U.S. doesn’t have to extend the unipolar moment into infinity to ‘win’ this ‘war’ with China. That is globalist thinking, maximalism to the extreme.
The U.S. and China can, strategically, disengage from each other while cultivating different paths for their futures. And this is the essence of the phrase ‘multi-polar.’ If that is Trump’s vision on this that is an improvement over the globalist Davos Crowd perspective so entrenched in Europe, which brooks no dissent from its Borg-like behavior.
It’s neither optimal nor likely but it sets a tone that will shift the future outcomes in the right direction. To do this Trump has to win re-election and be successful in confronting the Swamp via Jeffrey Epstein like I believe he’s doing.
However, and this is the bigger point coming back to gold, I do think Russia and China setting up their part of the multi-polar world based on a gold standard similar to Bretton-Woods is not workable.
There are a number of reasons for this but the main one is that Bretton-Woods never worked in the first place. The discipline of the reserve currency nation, the U.S., was never in observed. We violated the terms of the $35/ounce gold peg immediately.
First, by selling off the greatest hoard of silver ever amassed and then by simply printing the money during the Johnson and Nixon Administrations. It is insane to think that Russia and/or China will for any length of time exhibit any real fiscal discipline that would allow for a Bretton-Woods-style currency regime to work.
This is libertarian critique 101, folks. Just because the U.S. can’t keep its hand out of the cookie jar, doesn’t mean Russia post-Putin will. And the less said about the Chinese shadow banking bubble the better.
Moreover, the U.S. and the EU still have their gold reserves. Even if some or all of it has been lent out to suppress the price at times. I don’t believe that’s been the case since China opened up the Shanghai Gold Exchange and Russia began accumulating in earnest.
That would have put explosive upward pressure on the price of gold as thousands of tonnes would have had to be sourced to settle those positions. Instead, the U.S. and the EU were likely allowed to unwind any short positions over time which allowed years of annual production to flow east.
And this is the fundamental problem of a government-backed gold standard. It will not ever last. Governments create market interventions which have to be paid for via money printing or debt. And both of those things belie the discipline of the gold standard.
There is an infinite gap between the intention of China and Russia to build a multi-polar global financial system between East and West and the re-emergence of a gold-backed currency regime.
Because, for a moment, let’s get real about who owns what gold.
On the West side of the world we have the U.S., EU, BIS, the IMF and the Gulf states.
On the other side we have the central banks in the Russia/China orbit who are currently accumulating gold or are becoming independent actors on the world stage. It’s a bigger list than in the past twenty years, but that list is still small (The BRI Bloc (as defined by me herein) consists of the following countries: Russia, China, India, Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Qatar, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Thailand, Malaysia, Serbia and Brazil).
Going through World Gold Council numbers for Q1 2019 we get the following numbers. Just over 7000 tonnes of gold for what I’m calling Eastern BRI Bloc, those countries that are both accumulating gold in their reserves and are important partners in China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). It’s impressive that they have added more than 3000 tonnes over the past six-plus years.
Total Belt + Road Bloc Gold Holdings Still Dwarfed by U.S. Reserves.
However, that’s still less than the U.S.’s 8133.5 tonnes let alone the more than 10,000 tonnes that make up the reserves of the European Union countries and doesn’t include the 2814 tonnes owned by the IMF, the 504 tonnes owned by the ECB itself or the 102 tonnes owned by the Bank of International Settlements.
For any discussion of this bloc challenging the reserve status of the U.S. and European systems, There would have to be at least another 6000 tonnes available between China and Russia that are not on their official books to even being to make that argument look realistic.
Let’s use M1 money supply figures for a proxy of what gold backing would look like, just to get a lay of the land.
For all of the talk of the U.S.’s imminent bankruptcy, the gold reserves at current prices make up 9.6% of M1 at current prices ($1415/oz). China’s official gold reserves make up just 1.0% of M1. Even if you believe the upper end of China’s estimated real gold holdings it’s still only 3.3% of M1.
If you count the estimated 16,000 tonnes held privately in China and that was convertible into currency that would still only get China up to 12.2% backing of M1 with gold.
Russia is the closest there is to a gold-backed currency there is. The ruble by that metric (M1) 84.0% backed by Russia’s official gold reserves.
That is an eye-popping number and it tells you that the Russians have very prudently saved over the past fifteen years or so. They have built what we Austrian economists like to call a ‘pool of real savings’ to lever into higher order investments.
Russia is now ready to deploy a significant part of its trade surplus and even some of its pool of real savings to build new and needed infrastructure for Russia. Putin mentioned in his annual 4-hour direct line that he was ready to begin spending some of Russia’s oil revenues, drifting away from neoliberal and monetarist Alexei Kudrin and towards the nationalist/Keynesian Sergei Glazyev.
Given the state of Russia’s finances and a 10+ billion per month trade surplus, this is a no-brainer really. It’s their down-payment on the multi-polar world.
And it marks a specific shift in attitude which will assist China in building out Belt and Road but it will do nothing to allow for a return to any kind of gold standard until China gets its financial house in order.
To sum up, what killed Bretton-Woods was the same thing that killed the British pound post-WWI, a refusal to price gold accurately by the governments printing the money. Britain could have kept the gold standard and more of its empire had it re-valued the pound to reflect the money supply in 1918.
It didn’t and it destroyed the British post-war economy. The same thing is happening now. And the U.S. will either have to allow the world’s assets to plunge by 50-90% or allow the price of gold to rise to reflect the amount of money in circulation.
Given the numbers I just laid out that should give you an idea of just how much higher gold has to go to balance the books of the world. And no one in power, other than the Russians, are prepared for that kind of event.
Because until that happens there is no incentive for gold to circulate as money, or the discipline of the gold standard to be observed.
What China is doing, like Russia and the rest of the BRI Bloc, is they are building gold reserves to build the confidence of the world for the day when trust in the Western system fails. By having significant gold ‘backing’ but without convertibility those countries today adding to their rainy day funds will be the places capital will flow towards to avoid the whirlwind.
That is when the multi-polar world can be inaugurated.
Buy heavy, solid, handmade furniture instead of the flimsy imported stuff
At the holidays, focus on activities and traditions instead of gifts. Go for a walk or drive through the neighborhood to look at lights, get into your PJs and watch a special movie together on Christmas Eve and make certain treats that can always be expected
Make your own bath and body products using pure ingredients like coconut oil, essential oils, and herbal extracts
Yes, I watched the computer come into my head and the internet took my hand and lead me to a seemingly brighter world. But I still know how to grow food and more importantly grow myself. Be careful what you wish for… -ed
Technology can be dazzling but also debilitating to real human progress, and when I say “progress” I do not mean advancements in the world of machines but advancements in the world of people, and one does not necessarily lead to the other.
First, I fully recognize that whenever anyone attempts to criticize technological innovation they take the risk of being labeled a “crackpot” or an “outdated fossil”, a barbaric relic of a foregone era. However, this attitude is an ignorant one. It assumes that the path we are on as a species is one of perpetual improvement as long as we continue to follow the great technology god; but what if this assumption is completely wrong? What if we are actually devolving rather than evolving?
I’m not here to grunt and shake my spear at the wheel and the combustion engine and the programmable computer – I like all these things. But, what I don’t like is the dark future I see when humanity turns machinery into a great metal, polymer and digital “nurse maid” and we lose our ability to take care of ourselves. Dependency is the cornerstone of slavery, and our civilization is becoming increasingly dependent.
In my time on this earth I have had the privilege and suffered the pain of watching the digital age come to fruition. I’ve witnessed the creation of the home computer, the birth of the internet, the proliferation of cellular technology, and now the spread of “artificial intelligence” and 5G. I have also seen the decay of an entire generation of millennials into uselessness and despondency, lacking any practical skills of production or survival and completely reliant on digital technology for everything, including building up illusions of friendship and intimacy. I have witnessed the pussification of America.
The counterarguments against this will vary. Some will say that our society has simply become more convenient and more comfortable, and this is a good thing. Others will claim that skeptics like myself are afraid of the social changes that come with the globalization that the digital age brings. Still, others will maintain that centralization and dependency are “natural” extensions of man’s evolution; that it is inevitable and so we should embrace it.
These are also the classic arguments of the Futurists, a subculture of ideological zealots who believe that all old ideas and ways of living must be treated as obsolete and thrown out to make way for all new ideas and ways of living. The notion is that all new ideas are an automatic improvement; that each new generation is superior to the one before it as they supposedly have access to more knowledge, and thus they are more wise. But knowledge is not the same thing as wisdom and it is often misused to achieve rather brutal and vulgar goals.
What the futurists will never admit is that there are very few new ideas in the world, only old ideas rehashed and recycled and repainted to look different. In the grand scheme of history, freedom as an idea is very old, but it’s social application on a grand scale is something entirely new. Centralization, whether by force, manipulation or technological entrapment, is hardly a revolutionary concept. It is the oldest of philosophies.
The trend today indicates a path to swift centralization, and according to the evidence this is not a natural progression but the consequence of a deliberate agenda by elitist groups that wish to remain in power for centuries to come. The advent of many technologies today is not necessarily the problem, it is how these technologies are being applied in our society that is infantilizing the masses.
Let’s discuss some specific examples…
Communication Overload
Cell technology and the internet have changed the world. With a web connected computer in your pocket, you will always be able to communicate with others, you will rarely get lost, and you can even record video of everywhere you go and everything you do – instant memories. Who knows how much time this technology has added to a person’s day, or how many lives it has saved. But let’s consider the darker side…
First, attention spans of Western nations have shortened to less than that of goldfish since 2002; right around the time that cell phone and internet use began to explode. According to overall research the average person now spends up to 4 hours a day just looking at their cell phone, and combined with daily social media use at home and at work I expect that this number increases dramatically. In fact, American adults spend approximately 11 hours per day interacting with various media. That’s most of their waking life being distracted by minutia.
The parts of the world that have instant access to this technology are being zombified and they don’t seem to realize it. Over-saturation of information and instant gratification trigger an oxytocin and dopamine response in the human brain similar to the response we get when we socialize normally, but there is evidence to suggest that the strength of human interaction has a lot to do with the level of pleasure we receive through a dopamine response. Social media interactions are a poor proxy for real relationships. So, social media creates a near constant flow of dopamine, but also weaker and less significant. This has led to a new form of addiction, perhaps more invasive than any chemical drug in existence.
Interaction with other human beings without social media or instant gratification has become unthinkable, but the real world does not function according to personal whims, and so, people have begun to discard time when functioning away from the web; they become grossly impatient, like small children. When forced to do the “remedial tasks” that are required for survival they grow frustrated and complacent. They avoid the pauses or quiet moments in life, refusing to ponder experiences and explore the deeper meaning behind the events they read about briefly each day in their news feeds. All the information is at their fingertips, but they have no clue how to absorb it and apply it critically.
Inviting The Watchers Into Your Home
People do a lot of stupid things in the name of convenience, including opening their homes to surveillance and tyranny under the guise of easy living. While a cell phone is essentially a listening device, video surveillance device and tracking device in your pocket that governments and corporations can exploit anytime they wish, the problems do not stop there. The future of technology is fully interconnected homes in which everything is digital and everything is linked to the “internet of things”.
We have seen some of this exposed recently with controversies over Amazon’s Alexa tech, which is essentially a large and sensitive listening device which people pay for with their own money and voluntarily place in the middle of their homes. Amazon has been caught on multiple occasions collecting vast amounts of data from their Alexa network, including recordings of customer conversations which employees and even the government then have access to.
But this is a less subtle example. Consider having ALL your home appliances linked to the web and what this would mean? Government surveillance of daily electrical usage and appliance usage; which means they would know when you are home and what you are doing at all times. This might not seem like a big deal if you think you “have nothing to hide”, but in a world where carbon Nazis are attempting to dictate every aspect of our lives over fraudulent global warming claims, your electrical usage might become a legal issue one day. Not to mention, if every single device in your home is voice activated for convenience, then this means your every private word becomes subject to bureaucratic scrutiny.
Take this a step further and consider a society in which digital connection is required in order to live. Cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology are building the foundation for a cashless economic system in which privacy in trade becomes a long forgotten memory. Every transaction can be tracked, and and monitored. And while crypto is being sold to the public as “decentralization”, the reality is that it is even more centralized than fiat currency, as all trade must flow through a government and corporate dominated internet and be recorded on the blockchain in order for the cryptocurrency to proliferate. Not only this, but many crypto innovations are being accomplished by people deeply connected to government surveillance agencies like the NSA, and the infrastructure is being built by globalist corporations like JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs.
Privacy is the foundation of freedom. All tyranny relies first on the invasion of privacy and the removal of private spaces. The 4th Amendment exists for a very good reason. The argument that “if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear” is a very foolish one. Governments are commonly made up of fallible people who are often corrupt or psychopathic, but frankly NO ONE has the objectivity and wisdom necessary to oversee the private actions and conversations of millions of citizens and then judge them fairly. Politicians and bureaucrats are the least qualified and yet we give them the most power to oversee our lives, all in the name of technological convenience.
Artificial Intelligence And Automation
When it comes to technology the mass surveillance issue is the subject most discussed, but there is a problem that concerns me even more – automation. There are plenty of menial tasks in this world that probably should be handled through industry and robotics, but some things should be required learning for every person. For example, do we really want the complete automation of food production in our society? Well, that is the goal of corporations, and it could destroy our ability to provide our own necessities in the future simply by removing the knowledge from our social memory.
The ability to grow food and harvest food, as well as collecting seeds for future harvests, is integral to human survival. The concept of hunting and gathering is so far removed from the average person’s daily life that it is almost a lost art form, but we have not lost all knowledge of food production yet. What I see though is a bleak future if the current path of technological centralization continues.
Imagine a world in which nearly everyone is hyperconnected to media, to the point that they wear their devices like clothing at all times. Imagine a society where the average person is so enveloped by data that they no longer pay any attention to the tangible world around them and almost all human interactions are achieved through the middle man of the internet. Imagine people so infantilized by convenience that they no longer know how to do ANYTHING for themselves. They no longer know how to produce goods. They no longer know how to fix anything that is broken. They no longer know how to grow food or find water, nor do they even know where it comes from. They are completely dependent on automation.
They live completely on the grid – they are born on the grid, and if you were to pluck them from their life of comfortable slavery and place them in the middle of the woods surrounded by food, water and potential shelter they would still die. Now realize that this is basically reality today for many people, and the virus of dependency is spreading.
Technological advancement serves no purpose to humanity except as a crutch or a cage unless it serves the purpose of liberty and is tempered by the conservation of ancient knowledge and skills passed down through generations. The two ideologies must balance each other out. Those who say otherwise are trying to con you into trading your freedom for a fantasy.
