Will the Market Do What Western Leaders Cannot?
- The Illuminist privately owned central banking cartel is facing its biggest challenge in its history. Their plan for a controlled demolition of the western world economy is not going as smoothly as they like. The path towards a One World Currency, Global Supra-National Central Bank and World Government will not be easy. The sheeple are waking up. As in the past, world war is their final option/deception.
Will the Market Do What Western Leaders Cannot?
….Here at TheDailyBell.com, we tend to be libertarian-conservative in our outlook: government is the problem, not the solution. To rely on government to clean up the mess that has been made is a little like relying on an out-of-control bully to bring harmony and discipline to the classroom. It’s not likely to happen. America’s financial house is in disarray. Its unconstitutional progressive tax structure has been crying out for reform since World War II. Even the nation’s Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is a tax cheat. Meanwhile, thanks to the Federal Reserve, the dollar has lost between 95 and 99 percent of its value in the past 100 years. So much for the idea that the Fed is an “inflation fighter.” Inflation “maker” is more to the point.
Various states (large ones like California) are starting to “formally” go broke. Other states and municipalities, facing tremendous budgetary problems, are beginning to cut what have been considered vital public services such as public education and police and firefighting services. Even the most sacred of cows – the municipal pension – may be in danger. What happens if municipalities simply cannot pay? If the till is empty, promises cannot be kept.
Here’s a number to startle you: America’s debt may not be US$13 trillion (the normally quoted figure) or even US$50 or US$100 trillion – figures that emerge when some unfunded liabilities are added in. According to U.S. economist, Laurence Kotlikoff, America’s national debt is $200 trillion, when Baby Boomer demographic demands are calculated – including Social Security, public union, pension and health-care demands on the public purse. That’s a mighty big figure. America, in fact, is destitute.
It’s no surprise to us. At the Bell, we’ve been predicting a monetary and fiscal meltdown for years. We’ve also predicted the return to some sort of commodity-money standard, and that seems to be taking place, given the many countries that are dissatisfied with the way America is handling its financial affairs. It’s hard to believe that only ten years ago, America’s financial house was a good deal tidier than today. But that was before the advent of the George Bush administration. Two wars and one economic crisis later, America’s budget is in ruins. Now it’s the Democrats turn. But everything the Obama administration has done to “fix” the problem has in fact made things worse.
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Basically what Keynesianism has come to mean is that the government can print money (using the power of a central bank) and spend money (borrow money and raise taxes) to create “make work” projects that keep people employed until a given economic crisis eases. The idea, to put it bluntly, is to maintain the current system and pay people just enough to survive (and eat) so that the system itself doesn’t collapse from bankruptcy or into popular rebellion.
But this time around it’s not working. The fiat-money, central banking system has been around for 100 years and has reached the end of its manipulative life. Central banks around the world delinked from gold some 40 years ago and this has gradually ruined the credibility and value of the world’s reserve currency, the dollar. Now Russia, China and even South American countries are trying to remove themselves from dollar dependency. There is much talk of relinking paper money to some sort of underlying commodity so that governments (like the US) cannot spend themselves into oblivion.
The trouble is that there is one dirty little secret that no one talks about: almost every country in the world has a central bank and because of dollar reserve policy all these countries are delinked from money metals as well. This has never before happened in the history of the world. The ramifications are substantial. China’s price inflation is running nearly out-of-control because that country’s communist leaders have printed so much paper money that the currency is steadily losing value. India is in the same boat and so are a number of countries in South America. The European currency has not necessarily been overprinted – but as a result EU countries are going broke because they cannot debase their currencies as they have in the past.
The only solution is to return to some sort of commodity money. Gold and silver have served faithfully as such money in the past. At the Bell, we’ve long predicted the return of some sort of tangible monetary standard, perhaps even a gold and silver standard (called bimetalism). With current electronic facilities the supply of gold and silver in the world can be digitalized and circulation anomalies can be smoothed out. The criticism that there is not “enough” gold and silver is actually a moot point. There is always enough, especially if “free banking” polices are employed. Before the Civil War, the US was on a quasi-free banking standard and such standards have succeeded, on and off, throughout history.
The Internet itself is a “game changer” – as we often remark at the Daily Bell. The information about alternative monetary systems as well as the ability to create and market news kinds of money have spread far and wide throughout the world thanks to this new form of electronic communication. No longer do thinking people – the two percenters who matter – believe that only government solutions are the answer to economic and social problems. In fact, every law – every regulation and mandate – is a price fix, placed upon the larger society by force and distortive to the larger community. Inevitably, price fixing is inefficient and creates queues, scarcities and even rationing of some goods and services.
Central banking is a massive kind of price fixing of money – as central bankers “set” interest rates, distorting economies and causing terrible booms and busts over time. Western regulatory democracies fix prices (and create queues and shortages) every time a law is passed or a regulation is introduced. Over time, the distortive effects add up until economies have trouble functioning, unemployment becomes the rule rather than the exception and peoples’ standard-of-living plummets to rudimentary levels. This certainly seems to be happening now.
Government has caused these problems. The useless laws, absurd environmental regulations, fiscal deprivation and monetary dysfunction are not apt to be cured by the same “bullies” that proposed, implemented and enforced them. So what will happen? Over time, Western societies may gradually collapse, not all at once and not in a manner much remarked upon, certainly not in the mainstream press. But slowly, the market itself may reassert its dormant power.
While government leaders meet in Geneva or Cancun, normal people will begin to use gold and silver – or even barter – instead of increasingly worthless paper. People will gradually withdraw their paper savings from banks and purchase goods and services of some significant value. People will work off the books to avoid taxes that are squandered on inflated municipal pensions; they will create communities that function away from – beyond increasing government dysfunction. It is already happening – no matter whether one approves or not – and the Internet is providing considerable support.
There is ample historical precedent for this sort of change. The Gutenberg press – the Internet of its epoch – helped spawn a whole wave of free market thinking: the Renaissance, the Reformation, even the Enlightenment. It survived attempts at censorship, licensing, etc. But there are other examples, too, even earlier, including those of great, ancient South American civilizations that collapsed mysteriously, much to the History Channel’s puzzlement. We are told that the Mayans and others abandoned their fabulous cities because of drought and other environmental factors. But it is just as likely that the sophisticated tribes that provided the labor finally tired of the incessant warfare and bloodletting of the day. Each city was, at times, a mini-nation, battling with all the others.
After a point, perhaps, “civilization” became too much; the tributes became too much; the regulations became oppressive. Were the cities, then, simply abandoned … their inhabitants refusing to support societies that demanded so much but gave so little in return? And where are the descendents of these tribes today? In fact, they still exist throughout South America, farming and worshipping as they always have; the vibrant survivors of great, but oppressive cultures. Yes, they have survived and life goes on. The markets work; people prosper. Only the cities have crumbled.
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Sara Flounders on Provocative US Korea Wargames!
- America and South Korea goes into disputed territory, which North Korea claims belongs to them, deploy 30-40 war ships, hundred of warplanes and conduct live fire exercise, this is of course provocation! This is like saying: ‘I want to pick a fight with you!’. Brandishing your military might in disputed territory is provocation. The Anglo-American western hegemony wants war! Yes, Kim Il Sung and his regime are evil. But history shows the Illuminist, Masonic Anglo-American axis is far worse. The Koreans (both North and South) and the Japanese sheeple will be sacrificed to do the dirty work, to bait China into an all out World War 3!
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Mounting State Debts Stoke Fears of Looming Crisis!
- Are things getting better? Do you believe in the economic statistics from the Bureau of Lying (ahem Labor) Statistics? Do you believe in the hot air from the snakes in the District of Criminals(DC)? The people who are passing laws and implementing TSA ‘public molestation’? America is bankrupt at practically all levels: federal, state, municipal, cities….etc. Only the Wall Street banksters and their casino is doing remarkably well ! Americans are being raped financially. The final act of this rape is currency debasement which will stoke hyper-inflation. This is, of course, to help the banksters inflate away all their gambling debts/losses ie derivatives.
Mounting State Debts Stoke Fears of Looming Crisis
Budget imbalances, state and local government debt worry analysts
The State of Illinois is still paying off billions in bills that it got from schools and social service providers last year. Arizona recently stopped paying for certain organ transplants for people in its Medicaid program. States are releasing prisoners early, more to cut expenses than to reward good behavior. And in Newark, the city laid off 13 percent of its police officers last week.
While next year could be even worse, there are bigger, longer-term risks, financial analysts say. Their fear is that even when the economy recovers, the shortfalls will not disappear, because many state and local governments have so much debt — several trillion dollars’ worth, with much of it off the books and largely hidden from view — that it could overwhelm them in the next few years.
Super-sized pensions, and a doomsday scenario
“It seems to me that crying wolf is probably a good thing to do at this point,” said Felix Rohatyn, the financier who helped save New York City from bankruptcy in the 1970s. Some of the same people who warned of the looming subprime crisis two years ago are ringing alarm bells again. Their message: Not just small towns or dying Rust Belt cities, but also large states like Illinois and California are increasingly at risk.
Municipal bankruptcies or defaults have been extremely rare — no state has defaulted since the Great Depression, and only a handful of cities have declared bankruptcy or are considering doing so.
But the finances of some state and local governments are so distressed that some analysts say they are reminded of the run-up to the subprime mortgage meltdown or of the debt crisis hitting nations in Europe. Analysts fear that at some point — no one knows when — investors could balk at lending to the weakest states, setting off a crisis that could spread to the stronger ones, much as the turmoil in Europe has spread from country to country.
Mr. Rohatyn warned that while municipal bankruptcies were rare, they appeared increasingly possible. And the imbalances are so large in some places that the federal government will probably have to step in at some point, he said, even if that seems unlikely in the current political climate. “I don’t like to play the scared rabbit, but I just don’t see where the end of this is,” he added.
Resorting to Fiscal Tricks
As the downturn has ground on, some of the worst-hit cities and states have resorted to fiscal sleight of hand to stay afloat, helping them close yawning budget gaps each year, but often at great future cost.
Few workers with neglected 401(k) retirement accounts would risk taking out second mortgages to invest in stocks, gambling that the investment gains would be enough to build bigger nest eggs and repay the loans.
But that is just what Illinois, which has been failing to make the required annual payments to its pension funds for years, is doing. It borrowed $10 billion in 2003 and used the money to invest in its pension funds. The recession sent their investment returns below their target, but the state must repay the bonds, with interest. The solution? Illinois sold an additional $3.5 billion worth of pension bonds this year and is planning to borrow $3.7 billion more for its pension funds.
The secret sauce behind bloated state pensions
It is the long-term problems of a handful of states, including California, Illinois, New Jersey and New York, that financial analysts worry about most, fearing that their problems might precipitate a crisis that could hurt other states by driving up their borrowing costs. But it is the short-term budget woes that nearly all states are facing that are preoccupying elected officials.
Illinois is not the only state behind on its bills. Many states, including New York, have delayed payments to vendors and local governments because they had too little cash on hand to make them. California paid vendors with i.o.u.’s last year. A handful of other states, worried about their cash flow, delayed paying tax refunds last spring. Now, just as the downturn has driven up demand for state assistance, many states are cutting back.
‘The worst year’
The demand for food stamps has been rising significantly in Idaho, but tight budgets led the state to close nearly a third of the field offices of the state’s Department of Health and Welfare, which take applications for them. As states have cut aid to cities, many have resorted to previously unthinkable cuts, laying off police officers and closing firehouses.
Those cuts in aid to cities and counties, which are expected to continue, are one reason some analysts say cities are at greater risk of bankruptcy or are being placed under outside oversight.
Next year is unlikely to bring better news. States and cities typically face their biggest deficits after recessions officially end, as rainy-day funds are depleted and easy measures are exhausted.
This time is expected to be no different. The federal stimulus money increased the federal share of state budgets to over a third last year, from just over a quarter in 2008, according to a report issued last week by the National Governors Association and the National Association of State Budget Officers. That money is set to run out next summer. Tax collections, meanwhile, are not expected to return to their pre-recession levels for another year or two, given that the housing market and broader economy remain weak and that unemployment remains high.
Scott D. Pattison, the budget association’s director, said that for states, next year could be “the worst year of this four- or five-year downturn period.”
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James Turk: The Scramble for Physical Metal Intensifies! Backwardation in Gold and Silver Market!
James Turk: Be prepared for an upside explosion in the price of both precious metals!
- When maestro James Turk speaks, I keep quiet and listen! Have you put on your space suit and helmet? Get ready for the moonshot in prices of gold and silver! Massive amount of money created out of thin air means astronomical prices of gold and silver!
James Turk: The Scramble for Physical Metal Intensifies!
December 4, 2010 – The scramble for physical gold and silver is intensifying. People increasingly want to own the real thing, and not some paper substitute, all of which come with counterparty risk. This conclusion is apparent from the following two charts of gold and silver forwards, which are based on data made available by the London Bullion Market Association through November 24th (the most recent data available).
Because gold is money, gold almost always trades in contango, meaning the future price is higher than the spot price. The percentage difference between gold’s spot and future price is gold’s interest rate, so in this regard, gold is not different from other moneys, except gold’s interest rate is lower than those of national currencies. Interest rates are a reflection of risk, and because gold’s purchasing power cannot be debased by central bank or government actions, the risk of losing purchasing power when holding gold is low. So gold is rewarded by the market with a low interest rate.
If the future price is lower than spot, which is called backwardation, you can sell your metal in the spot market, invest the dollars you receive to earn interest, and then buy your metal back in the future at a lower price and profit the difference. But there is another important factor to consider outside the math of this formula.
If you sell your physical metal in the spot market and at the same time agree with someone to buy it back at a future date, you are now holding someone’s paper promise instead of physical metal. In other words, you have counterparty risk, which of course is avoided when you own a tangible asset like physical gold or physical silver.
Normally, few people worry about counterparty risk. So bullion dealers and other institutions dealing in the precious metals watch for opportunities to profit from backwardation, with the result that gold rarely, if ever, trades in backwardation, which explains why the above chart is so extraordinary.
Gold for 1-month and 3-months forward has been mainly in backwardation for more than one year. Even more exceptional is that gold 6-months forward has been in backwardation since November 5th. To show how rare this event is, I checked the LBMA database, which goes back to 1989. There is not one instance of 6-month forward gold being in backwardation, which nearly confirms my own experience. I’ve been trading the precious metals since the 1970s, and I can’t recall any time before this year when 6-months forward gold was in backwardation. The current and continuing backwardation is truly incredible.
Note too the clear downtrend in 12-month forward gold which is approaching backwardation, which is similar to the downtrends for other forward periods. These downtrends make clear that the demand for physical gold is intensifying.
The picture is even starker in silver. Not only are its forwards also in clear downtrends, silver 6-months forward has been continuously in backwardation since June 2nd and mainly in backwardation for more than one year. What does it all mean?
In a word, it is bullish. The only way the increasing demand for physical metal can be met is with higher prices. The higher price will at some level entice people to sell their metal and hold a national currency instead, as I explained in my previous article, The Precious Metals Power Higher.
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Skeptics might also argue that there is no backwardation apparent from Comex settlement prices. Aside from the fact that Comex recently changed the method to determine settlement prices from a market-driven basis to instead allow a manual override, which now makes backwardation on the posted Comex settlement prices virtually impossible, one has to first recognize that Comex is first and foremost a market for paper-gold and paper-silver. Therefore, a piece of paper can promise virtually anything, without regard to the underlying reality of how physical metal is actually trading. In other words, Comex shows March futures in contango, when they should in reality be in backwardation. Thus, if you are buying March silver or April gold futures, you are overpaying. This overpayment is no doubt going into the pockets of those banks that are perennially short and use their size to control the paper market. They can, after all, always conjure up whatever paper they want out of thin air, which of course they cannot do with physical metal.
Any way you look at it, the backwardation in gold and silver is a truly rare event and an exceptionally bullish one too. So be prepared for an upside explosion in the price of both precious metals as the scramble for physical metal intensifies even further as a result of people increasingly choosing to hold a safe-haven tangible asset instead of paper.
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Wikileaks: A Tool of Psy Warfare!
- Wikileaks is definitely controlled opposition. It is a CIA, Mossad and Pentagon operations IMO. The net result of its ‘leaks’ is the continued promotion of wars and war escalation: against Pakistan and Iran. It points fingers at many people but Zionist Israel. That tells you that Mossad and Zionists are definitely involved. If it is really a genuine operation, I seriously doubt the MSM will give it so much coverage! General Mirza Aslam Beg, former Chief Of Army Staff, Pakistan :
Wikileaks: A Tool of Psy Warfare
The Wikileaks revelations confirm the obvious, more than what it informs us about the darker corners of ‘US diplomacy, cloaked in securitocracy.’ In fact, it is Cyber War, in the new game of psy-warfare, targeting individuals and countries, to cover-up the shame of defeat of war on Afghanistan, war on Iraq and 2006 Israeli war on Lebanon. The cyber war has been launched, impacting public opinion globally, and focusing on three objectives mainly:
One: To cause defamation of the countries which have had a role, direct or indirect, in the defeat of the Americans and their allies, in Iraq, Lebanon and Afghanistan, and create mistrust amongst them, so that they are not able to challenge future American plans in the region.
Two: To create conditions for a civil war in Afghanistan and out of the chaos and confusion, reduce Pakistan and Iran to subservience, something they have not been able to achieve during the last thirty years.
Three: To establish Indian hegemony over South Asia, including Afghanistan, and project American strategic interests in the region.
The technique used in making these revelations is typical of psy operations approach, of mixing truth with lies in a manner that truth tends to get submerged under the lies, as is the case here. The report has not said a word about Israel, nor it gives any disadvantage to US in the implementation of policies in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran and other Muslim countries, which have been particularly targeted. The Wikileaks betrays the role of a country with resources to break the secret code of US diplomatic order, because it is not possible for an individual like Julian Assange, the fugitive, to accomplish such high profile task. The report, no doubt, has created ripples around the world, but will subside as it is looked into with a deeper perspective, regarding its source, intent and purpose.
Hillary Clinton expressed concern over the Wikileaks revelations and resolved to prevent such happenings in the future. In the first place, did she not know what the ‘Wikileaks’ were upto, and why could they not be stopped in time and their website blocked, under the law of the country? It could be checked, if the US government so wanted, but did not, because, they themselves are part of the game.
Over the period, Pakistan, Iran, Turkey and Saudi Arabia have drawn closer to each other, Turkey is also looking East and a kind of Strategic Consensus is emerging. The multi-billion dollar gas pipe-line agreement has been signed with Iran, though Pakistan doesn’t have enough funds for the project but China is willing to support. Iranian generous support for the flood affected people, has been gratefully acknowledged by the people of Pakistan. Iranian President visited Riyadh, early this year and establish a new level of understanding with the Saudis and having had the bitter experience of the civil war in Afghanistan, induced by the Americans after the Soviet withdrawal in 1989, the Iranians are now opposed to any such design by the occupation forces. Wikileaks, thus is a crude attempt to create distrust, between Pakistan, Iran and Saudi Arabia in particular at this critical juncture, when the occupation forces face the dilemma of exiting from Afghanistan, without any understanding reached with the Taliban. Thus a sinister plan is emerging to divide Afghanistan in three ethnic zones and deny overall control to the Taliban, because, Taliban rule is feared by the occupation forces. The plan to divide Afghanistan has been worked out at Brussels, by the Internal Crisis Group. Its main features are:
1. A few months time has been given to Karzai to negotiate peace and evolve a plan with the Taliban and Northern Alliance. Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Iran are expected to fully support such negotiations.
2. If negotiations fail, the alternative is to divide Afghanistan. Thus, the constitutional framework is being prepared for the new government, envisaging the judicial system and the political structure, based on consensus of the federating units.
3. Afghanistan is to be divided into three ethnic zones. The provinces of Badakhshan, Samangan and Saraipul will be handed over to the Tajik and Uzbek warlords, who are already in control of these areas. Provinces in the East and South East will be given under control of Taliban and other tribal leaders. Kabul, Parwan, Wardak and Lugar provinces will be retained by the Americans, supported by about 10,000 American troops, operating from four air bases in this region.
It is a vicious plan, to once again plunge Afghanistan into a civil war and the consequential fall-out on the neighbouring countries. Thus, USA its allies, India and Russia in particular, will have a field day, stoking the fire of death and destruction in Afghanistan. It was the fall-out effect of thirty years of blood-letting in Afghanistan, that countries like Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Palestine and Kashmir are so radicalized. Many more countries will now be affected, in the region and beyond. Sadly, the conscience of the global community, it seems is rusted and is not moved by the death of over six million innocent Muslims, killed in Chechnya, Palestine, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Somalia and Kashmir, during the last thirty years, as a result of state aggression against the Muslim countries. And now the global peace-brokers want to be the witness to more blood-letting, through state terrorism by the civilized world.
When President Obama took over the reigns of the government, some two years back, it was simple for him to demonstrate courage and launch himself in pursuit of the change he had dreamt for the American people and say: “President Bush, you have won the war in Afghanistan and it is my job now to withdraw forces and leave the people there to establish peace in the country.” That would have been a very kind gesture of deeper human sensibility, particularly for the Muslims, who, will now suffer, under the shadows of Wikileaks and the vicious plan of deceit and division of Afghanistan and the consequential chaos, confusion and disorder.
The road to peace in Afghanistan passes through Washington, where the decision makers have to follow the Rule of the Game, that is, ‘engage with the winner – the Taliban, to lay down the conditions for peace.’ History is a witness to the rule of the game, some 2336 years ago, when Porus, the ruler of the Pak-Afghan border region, was produced before Alexander, the conqueror, who asked Porus, “What treatment should be given to you”? Porus replied “You know the Rule of the Game – Treat the way a king treats another king, who is defeated.” Alexander was so impressed that he handed over the territory, he had won, to Porus, and from this territory the Maurias rose to establish an empire, under the ‘Trimurti Seal’, which now is the State emblem of India.
Washington must follow, the Rule of the Game for the sake of enduring peace in Afghanistan. Truth must be faced, as Albert Schweitzer, the French philosopher said: “Truth has no special time of its own. It’s hour is now – always.”
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Societal and economics observer and commentator with an endtimes, future history perspective. Follow me at Twitter: socioecohistory
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