09 - On Location...

Currently, and for the last three weeks, I am in Belfast.  With the situation in HK becoming ever more crazy by the day we took the opportunity to escape from Hong Kong for a bit - I escaped with V and 3 suitcases.  I also have some family matters that I am giving priority to at this time.  We plan to stay a few more weeks in Northern Ireland and then after some time in Belgium we will be visiting some other European locations.  I do hope that HK will be a place that we can go back to - we will see...

What's happening?

Quite a few significant events have happened in the last few weeks that deserve some deeper analysis and checking than you will ever get from the media propaganda circus that is running full force at the moment.  You should be in no doubt that the "Great Reset" with its supporting "Great Narrative" is in full swing.

In most of the world the C19 story has run its course - for now.  Most countries seem to have have "declared victory" and "moved on".  Obviously HK is an exception (nothing happened there for the last two years) and I fear they will get to experience the whole 2-year thing in the coming 3-4 months.  Watch out -  the politicians everywhere are looking to permanently establish the "emergency controls" as "normal" - see previous Letter for some examples in Ireland and EU.  

Invasion of Ukraine has led to so many lines being crossed - to the extent that clearly things will never be the same again in our lifetime.

Why? How did we get here?

I do not claim to know all the answers but some things are fairly clear if you look with open eyes and the wisdom that previous generations and civilisations have made available to us - even if most choose to ignore it (Plato on the flaws of democracy).   Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it and even those who learn will have litle choice but to go along for much of the ride.  

Perhaps my notes and the links below will help you to form an educated opinion rather than the pervasive propaganda we are all being fed.

The current situation is more than 100 years in the making and much (if not most) of what you thought was true is less veracious than you could ever imagine.  No doubt we could (and maybe should) go back further but let's start in 1913 when the British Government asked the public no longer to request exchange of their pounds for gold coins at the post office.  This led to the issuing of War Bonds and fractional reserve accounting that allowed the Bank of England essentially to print unlimited money to fight in WW1; without this devious action they would have been constrained to act within the limits of the country's reserves and WW1 would have been shorter.  Read The Fiat Standard  for more details on how this happened.  Around this time, and likely no coincidence, the US bankers were scheming how to get around the constitutional controls against such actions in their own country - read more in The Creature from Jekyll Island.

Following WW1, Germany was forced to pay war reparations in Gold (hard money).  This led to a decade of money printing and extravagant excesses and crashes as hyperinflation set in, ending in the bankrupting of the country and the nationalism that fed WW2 - the gory details of devaluation and hyperinflation in Weimar Germany are described in When Money Dies.  Meanwhile the US bankers who had been preparing since 1913 stepped in with unlimited money printing to fund WW2 and then also in their Marshal Plan to cement in place the Bretton Woods post-war agreement that made US Dollar the global reserve currency.

Decades of boom and bust followed - well explained by Ray Dalio who portrays this as perfectly normal and to be expected - unfortunately it is for soft (non-hard) money based economies.  The Fourth Turning will give many additional insights to this period too as well as cycles to watch for and their cause and nature.   In 1961 Eisenhower tried to warn the population in his farewell address about the "Military Industrial Complex" and many believe that Robert Kennedy's assassination in 1963 may well  be not entirely unrelated.

Things came to a head in August 1971 when the countries of the world realised that the US was (contrary to all promises) printing unlimited funds to (among other things) fight the Vietnam war and so undermining the expected and required convertibility of US dollars (the currency of global trade) for Gold (hard money).  A French warship heading to NY to collect France's gold was the straw that caused Nixon to default on US Debt convertibility and "close the gold window".

This in turn led to further decades of increasing financialization, further fuelled (pun intended) by the PetroDollar creation and "exorbitant priviledge" that the US obtained by having the global reserve currency - benefiting those closest to the money supply (Cantillon effect) while hollowing out the US manufacturing and eventually devastating its middle and working classes (Triffin dilemma) - Arthur Hayes describes all this and much more as well as the likely outlook in his article - Energy Canceled.  Absolutely required reading or listen to Guy Swan reading it and giving his additional interpetation.

Zoltan Pozsar of Credit Suisse explains how the money system is now being reset following the events of last few weeks and his article outlines a likely way forward - Bretton Woods III.  His paper is somewhat dense, heavy reading and you might prefer to listen to Luc Gromen's more conversational explainer with Marty

All of this was well known to our forefathers

The writers of the American Constitution understood the dangers of money being controlled by any elite group and they did their best to include protections in the US constitution.  It did take the bankers multiple decades and puppet presidents to circumvent these but do so they did.   Thomas Jefferson could not have been more clear in his warning.

" If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around(these banks) will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered."

Islamic finace also recognised the dangers - you will likely be aware of the restrictions that forbid interest payments - read this interesting article from The Guardian

You will likely also be aware from schooldays that the Roman Empire collapsed because it expanded too much and the overhead became unbearable leading to the debasement of its money and inability to extract tax payments to support itself.  Read more from Mises Institute.   Here too, much of this will likely ring familiar.

So what can you do about it?

In theory Governments should respect Consent of the Governed and the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that "The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government".  

For you to decide if and to what extent governments today are acting in line with these principles.   If not, what can you do about it?

The options you have are basically  - Loyalty, Voice or Exit.  1. You can be loyal and accept what you are told - 2. you may (or may not) be able to voice disagreement and 3. you may (or may not!) be able to exit.  Authoritarian governments will make everything except Loyalty difficult or even impossible - if in doubt, read George Orwell 1984 - or look just around at recent events today in many countries.

I'll be happy to delve deeper into this in subsequent letters if there is interest - for now I recommend you to read Sovereign Individual.  It is a long read but each chapter starts with a summary and you can read the summaries of each chapter as a first step.    Also - I'm happy to discuss with you - just reach out and let me know!

For those who prefer a structured reading list, check References

That's it!

No one can be told what The Matrix is.
You have to see it for yourself.

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