Showing posts with label WORLD ECONOMY. Show all posts
Showing posts with label WORLD ECONOMY. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 12, 2012
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Gold and Silver Explode as Banksters Abandon Market Manipulation
Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
September 14, 2020
Infowars.com
September 14, 2020
Gold has surged to a new high as the prospect of inflation reared its ugly head in the United Kingdom on bad news from a report indicating a weaker-than-expected eurozone industrial production. Germany and France, despite sovereign debt fears, have been able to manage anemic growth but today’s data signals a slow down.
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| Gold traded as high as $1,261.90 on Tuesday. Photo: Bullion Vault. | |
On Tuesday the gold price traded as high as $1,261.90 and as low as $1,246. “The U.S. dollar index was adding 0.03% to $81.90 while the euro was losing 0.19% to $1.28 vs. the dollar. The spot gold price was rising $14.30, according to Kitco’s gold index,” writes Alix Steel for The Street.
Silver also experienced a boost today. The precious metal was up 14 cents to $20.31. Earlier this month, spot silver trading reached its highest point since March 2008.
“While silver has many of the same investment attributes as gold, it enjoys the added advantage of industrial demand. And as a currency alternative, silver is more practical. It’s been used as a currency, most notably by the United Kingdom (pound sterling). The French word for money is argent, or silver. In fact, the United States and Great Britain were both on a silver standard up until the 1800’s,” explains Gabriel Wisdom, writing for Forbes on September 8.
Market observers believe silver prices will soon rise on speculation that JP Morgan is in the process of winding down its proprietary trading operations. “In the past years, compelling evidence of silver and gold price manipulation by JP Morgan has been found,” writes Elisheva Wiriaatmadja.
“JP Morgan was not just an accommodative good corporate citizen in the illegal transfer of the manipulative silver (and gold) COMEX short position. In addition to undisclosed government guarantees against loss, JP Morgan was given free reign to liquidate the COMEX short position at their discretion, knowing full-well the regulators would look the other way, no matter what dirty tricks were necessary to cause the price to collapse,” MarketWatch noted over two years ago.
Now that the banksters have decided to abandon their artificially low price scheme, the price of silver will rise, making it an excellent investment.
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Thursday, September 9, 2010
Too Big To Fail Global Banks Will Collapse Between Now and First Quarter 2011
Matthias Chang
Global Research
September 9, 2010
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Global Research
September 9, 2010
Readers of my articles will recall that I have warned as far back as December 2006, that the global banks will collapse when the Financial Tsunami hits the global economy in 2007. And as they say, the rest is history.
Quantitative Easing (QE I) spearheaded by the Chairman of Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke delayed the inevitable demise of the fiat shadow money banking system slightly over 18 months.
That is why in November of 2009, I was so confident to warn my readers that by the end of the first quarter of 2010 at the earliest or by the second quarter of 2010 at the latest, the global economy will go into a tailspin. The recent alarm that the US economy has slowed down and in the words of Bernanke “the recent pace of growth is less vigorous than we expected” has all but vindicated my analysis. He warned that the outlook is uncertain and the economy “remains vulnerable to unexpected developments”.
Obviously, Bernanke’s words do not reveal the full extent of the fear that has gripped central bankers and the financial elites that assembled at the annual gathering at Jackson Hole, Wyoming. But, you can take it from me that they are very afraid.
Why?
Let me be plain and blunt. The “unexpected developments” Bernanke referred to is the collapse of the global banks. This is FED speak and to those in the loop, this is the dire warning.
So many renowned economists have misdiagnosed the objective and consequences of quantitative easing. Central bankers’ scribes and the global mass media hoodwinked the people by saying that QE will enable the banks to lend monies to cash-starved companies and jump start the economy. The low interest rate regime would encourage all and sundry to borrow, consume and invest.
This was the fairy tale.
Then, there were some economists who were worried that as a result of the FED’s printing press (electronic or otherwise) working overtime, hyper-inflation would set in soon after.
But nothing happened. The multiplier effect of fractional reserve banking did not take off. Bank lending in fact stalled.
Why?
What happened?
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Claims of Recovery But Results Nowhere To Be Found
The American public is alarmed at what they see going on. Most of them do not understand what has been done to them. The propaganda fed to them daily has them completely confused and that is understandable. They know the financial sector has been bailed out and they somehow have to pay the bill. They have been deceived and few of them want to admit it. They have been told their economy is in recovery, but improvement is nowhere to be found. Government tells them inflation is 1.6% when they know it’s certainly higher than that and has been for some time. The only beacon of light, if they can discover it, is the truth of talk radio and the Internet. Through these methods of communication the truth can be found and it is reaching all around the world.
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| Between now and the end of February gold and silver should do very well. | |
The American and European banking sectors are generally insolvent and have been so now for a few years. Almost every day there are bank mergers you never hear about and more than 110 banks have gone under so far this year. Thousands of bank branches have disappeared and many unceremoniously have had name changes. The key to banking today is to carry two sets of books. One for the good assets and the other for the bad assets, as sanctioned by the Bank for International Settlements, the BIS, the governments in the US and Europe and the FASB. Most assets are marked to model, which means the bank determines their value arbitrarily, because no visible market exists for the assets. The bookkeeping is a travesty. The idea is to not let the public know how difficult and irreparable the situation really is. It is admitted that 829 banks are on a problem list, but that is just the tip of the iceberg. Failures should accelerate during the coming year. This loss of trust in the system is going to take its toll. Confidence will continue to wane as more and more pressure is brought up to bear versus dollar, which in turn will force gold higher, as it continues to reassert itself as the world’s only real currency. In the end it will spell failure for dollar denominated assets. That will finally bring recognition that the system has failed. This will bring great pressure on the banking system and some major banks will fail. This is why only enough cash should be kept in banks for three months expenses, or six months for businesses and in your safe at home along with your gold and silver coins and weapons, you should have $5,000 in small bills, for emergencies.
It is important to remember that this is part of a plan to nationalize the American banking system, so that it fits into the new National Socialist structure – the corporatist structure that members of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateralists and the Bilderbergs have planned for us. This national banking system is to be the key to future World Government, or a New World Order.
As that effort moves forward the Fed is just short of two years of zero interest rates, a policy that they cannot easily change. If they raise rates at this juncture or stop increasing money and credit the bottom will fall out of the economy. These are the only methods they have of keeping the system alive. The Fed struggles to keep the ship afloat knowing this may be the last time this Band-Aid solution will work. The bubbles that were created, like in real estate, is in its fifth year of decline. Next will be bonds, the stock market and with them insurance companies and retirement plans. Looking at the scene objectively everything the Fed has thus far done has been a failure. A good part of the public is aware of all this and they seethe with anger. Just consider all the unemployed over 40, who will never have a job again and if they do become employed the wage will be ½ to 1/3 of what they once earned. We get letters every day describing the plight of the average American.
Bailing out the financial system hasn’t worked. The loans and special deals have only covered up the crimes these corporations were involved in and allowed them to escape bankruptcy, which they so richly deserve. There is no other way to describe what has transpired in the financial community than welfare for the mega rich. What is worse is that they go right on looting the public as if nothing has happened.
That brings us to the antithesis, which is gold.
We are sure you all remember the supposed swap of 349 tons of gold between commercial banks and the BIS, the Bank for International Settlements. Commercial banks usually work through central banks that represent them at the BIS; thus, this was an unusual procedure, only discovered when someone picked up a footnote in the BIS statement. Making the event more sinister was that there were no BIS official announcement and that the BIS refused to name the banks involved. This is similar to the Fed refusing to divulge to whom they lent $12.8 trillion. We believe these swaps terminate in January, so we anxiously wait to see what the conclusion will be. Will the gold be redeemed or will it become the property of the BIS, or will the swap terms be extended? We guess the real question is were those who did the swap gold bullion banks? Was the public sale of gold by the IMF a factor? Remember the IMF swore they would never dump gold on the open market, but yet they did just that. Adding to the mystery is that the BIS have seldom used gold swaps in recent years. Due to the secrecy involved we tilt toward a billion-bank bailout. In addition we saw fully qualified buyers rejected and gold sold into the market by the IMF. There can be only one reason for that and that is gold price suppression. As it has turned out every time the IMF sells the Russians go into the market and buy it. We also remember a similar episode in the late 1990s when Gordon Brown, the British Treasury Secretary, sold off half of England’s gold at about $275.00 an ounce to bail out London bullion banks.
For those who have an interest in gold they should be paying close attention to gold and silver shares. As of late they have been moving up strongly. Some eight to 20 percent depending on which indicator you watch. The tenor of the market has changed decidedly over the past several months. We could well be experiencing a renewal of share influence. Up until our government decided to manipulate gold and silver, bullion, share prices always led bullion.
We believe this renewal is being led by several factors. The triumph of gold as the only world currency as witnessed over the past 16 months; the use of massive amounts of money and credit in QE1, and now at the beginnings of QE2, which will have equally bad results; trillions of dollars being stolen by those in and around government; the realization that gold and silver production have fallen; the lack of affect of massive naked net shorts in the bullion pits and the LBMA and Comex and the multitude of naked shorts in the shares, all of which have failed to deter higher prices. Higher inflation is on the way, thus $1,600 gold looks very probable this year and $3,000 next year.
Historically September sees higher gold prices 81% of the time. Between now and the end of February gold and silver should do very well. Silver is poised to soon break out to $25.00 or higher. We are also about to see a parting of the ways in gold and silver versus commodities, just like we began to see between the US dollar and gold. In the future gold and silver will be assisted by a major fall in confidence in the Federal Reserve, which is already underway. Their failure to produce a recovery with $2.5 trillion that they injected into the system, along with the administration, has not sat well in the business world. Now the Fed is beginning another $2.5 trillion rescue, which may end up being $5 trillion. Monetary expansion and monetization means higher inflation, which means higher gold and silver prices. As you see in this issue the administration is going to mark mortgages to the market and rewrite new loans. That will add to more monetary expansion. In fact it may be part of the QE2. Word is that this program could put $50 billion into consumer’s hands to spend, which the taxpayer would be on the hook for. We also estimate, even with the programs, 40% to 50% would go into foreclosures.
Rumors reach us that Bank of America was in serious trouble in July and had the Fed not poured in funds the bank would have failed. We described earlier in the year why BofA had such problems; it had been a dumping ground for the Fed. It now looks like the bank may be dismembered with the biggest and best pieces going to JPM and GS.
We are also getting disturbing reports that some kind of secret rules regarding gold and silver bullion. It seems that naked shorting has become a major problem. It may be the only way they can neutralize the problem; and that is to seize bullion accounts to cover their shorts. We are sure holders will be compensated, but they’ll lose their positions and have to buy them back somehow. We just saw the Swiss government and the banking community rollover for imperial America, so it is conceivable that they would pull something like this. Forewarned is forearmed. That is why we always recommend taking physical delivery if possible. All banks and governments are no longer to be trusted.
Second quarter GDP was 1.6%, we had predicted 1.5% months ago. As we forecast the third and fourth quarters will be dreadful, probably between minus 1 and plus 1. The quantitative easy is not coming fast enough; banks finally trying to lend to small and medium businesses, which create 70% of the jobs has had only moderate success and the new US government mark-to-market bailout of mortgage holders won’t affect the market until next year. Adjusting payments by bringing loans down will push $50 billion into the economy will only create more debt and still 40% to 50% of homeowners will fall into foreclosure. Without jobs there can be no solution.
Worse yet, corporate earnings for 2011 should be flat.
Unemployment still is going nowhere although recent numbers on the face were not all that bad. Of the 67,000 in job growth 10,000 was the result of the end of a construction strike. A figure government loves to hide is those forced into part-time employment by an additional 331,000, which certainly keeps the figure close to 10 million. In case you didn’t notice all the gains were part-timers – hours worked were flat. Manufacturing lost 27,000 jobs. In April the diffusion index was 68 and in August it was 53. Probably the most important figure of all U6 rose in August to 16.7% from 16.5% in July, as real unemployment after taking out the birth/death ratio rose again to 21-3/8%. This news should keep wage increases flat to slightly higher.
Retail was all over the place in distortion. There were jobless benefits that were released to those that had previously been cut off, and there were 17 states implementing tax holidays that added 2% to overall sales.
The Conference Index fell to 24.9 in August from 26.4 in July. We won’t quote the ISM manufacturing Index because we do not believe it. It was statistically impossible for it to be where it was reported to be. All employment increases were in the private service sectors in health and education, which was statistically impossible as well. We find no confusion, just more lies. The economy is slowing and it’s as simple as that. Productivity was dismal at a minus 1.8%; normal is plus 2.5%. This will negatively affect profit margins as labor costs grow 1.1% and that will force up prices and inflation. As far as GDP growth is concerned we are back to the last quarter of 2008 and the first quarter of 2009 officially. Who knows what the real numbers are. The momentum is gone and if it is to be regained QE2 had best come fast and furious. The loss of traction is now close to where it was when Lehman was destroyed, but 20% to 40% higher than other unfortunate events took place. The difference is the slowdown has been stealth and there has been no panic and no negative events. Such an event would bring the economy down to some of the worst levels in the last dozen years.
After seeing new home sales on an adjusted seasonal basis we suspect they are not correct. The unadjusted numbers fell 7% and that is hard to reconcile. We see no shift in direction. The coming mortgage giveaway will only delay the inevitable for a year or two. It is certainly no solution. Coming in September it amounts to cheap political pandering at the expense of all American taxpayers.
Business sees what we see and it does what it has to do to stay alive. You might call it a state of neutrality as business again dries up and more small and medium-sized businesses fall by the wayside. Owners are sick and tired of more regulations and taxes and idiotic car and appliance programs that do not work. They just steal future sales. The passing of the healthcare reform with onerous rules, additional taxes and confusion haven’t helped. The disagreements over the extension of the Bush tax cut renewals don’t help, especially with the President vowing to kill them. Then how dumb can rewriting underwater loans be? It’s just another temporary solution to aid the financial sector. Most small businesses will pay the fine and opt out of health care for employees completely, leaving valued employees at the mercy of the government and socialized medicine, as 25% of doctors, dentists and other professionals either retire or leave the country. We saw the same thing happen in England in the 1950s. Why would businesses expand and hire under these woeful circumstances? They know real growth is zero.
We know tariffs on goods and services would turn everything around, but our House and Senate have been purchased by the New World Order crowd that want America and Europe on their knees financially and economically so the public will be forced to accept a corporate fascist world government. Free trade, globalization, offshoring and outsourcing have been in full swing for 20 years and the damage done to the American economy has been incalculable. The only way the system can be saved before it crashes is for the system to be purged. The financial sector and others have to be allowed to go into bankruptcy and if they are not eventually chaos and revolution will ensue. Yes, we know that financial sector controls the government, so won’t voluntarily allow that to happen. That is why the November election is so important. All the incumbents have to be swept from Congress. Even removing half of these purchased criminals would give us a chance to heal the system. Without that there is little hope of a positive solution. At least you have been forewarned and at least you can protect what assets you have left by being invested in gold and silver related assets. It is all a sad commentary on our country and its citizens.
In addition, we found it illuminating that Sir Alan Greenspan, an Illuminist, is working with the Paulson Group advising them on monetary matters, money supply and gold prices. This is the same elitist who got us into this mess in the first place, at the direction of his controllers. Quantitative easing one and now quantitative easing 2 should cause inflation to surge and in that process gold and silver will surge as well. That has to be a reason why Greenspan is selling his services. That is to make sure Paulson understands the relationship created by the Fed, which is the creation of massive amounts of money and credit, overall monetary policy, inflation and hyperinflation and the prices of gold and silver.
The bottom line is the Illuminists, the Fed and Greenspan are advocating purchasing gold. The Fed as we have said so often has no other alternative but to reflate. This is the final stamp of approval on designating gold the only real world currency, which we have strongly forecasted for the past 16 months. They realize they have lost control of the dollar, finances and the economy. Gold is reassuming its rightful place as the only world currency.
Obama to Ask Congress to Pass $100 Billion Research Tax Credit
Obama to Propose Tax Write-Off for Capital Investments allowing businesses to deduct from their taxes through 2011 the full value of qualified capital investments.
U.S. to Deploy Broader Mortgage Aid – mortgage balances for homeowners that owe more than their homes are worth.
Officials say between 500,000 and 1.5 million so-called underwater loans could be modified through the program, the first initiative to target homeowners who are current on their mortgage payments but are at risk of default because they have no equity in their homes.
Obama to Link Tax Plan, Hiring With the job market stuck in neutral, the Obama administration is moving toward using the revenue from expiring tax cuts for the wealthy to finance about $35 billion of tax cuts for small businesses and workers, administration and congressional officials said Friday.
William C. Dunkelberg, chief economist for the National Federation of Independent Business, said small business doesn’t need another tax cut and that allowing the money to stay in the hands of consumers including by extending all the Bush tax cuts is what will ultimately help the economy recover.
“History shows that letting Washington have the money and spend it is very ineffective,” he said. “If you give a small biz guy $20,000, he’ll say, ‘I could buy a new delivery truck, but I have nobody to deliver to.’ ”
A combative President Barack Obama rolled out a long-term jobs program Monday that will exceed $50 billion to rebuild roads, railways and runways, and coupled it with a blunt campaign-season assault on Republicans for causing Americans’ hard economic times.
GOP leaders instantly assailed Obama’s proposal, and many Democrats will likely be reluctant to approve additional spending and higher federal deficits just weeks before elections that will determine control of Congress. That left the plan with low odds of becoming law this year.
It appears that Obama’s latest Stimulus scheme is a political gambit that tries to get Republicans to vote against small business tax cuts. But there have already been several small biz tax cuts that have produced zilch. The plan will have little to no effect on the economy in coming months because businesses still see the record tax hike that will appear in four short months.
The BLS increased Birth/Death Model jobs to 115k vs. 98k last August. This is ludicrous and has been the prime ruse that the BLS has exploited to overstate job growth for years.
Another dubious fact in NFP is the 19k job gain in construction. 10k workers returned from strike. Part time workers for economic reasons soared by 331k. Working one hour per week counts as employment according to the BLS…Full-time employment tanked 254k per the Household Survey. According to the BLS, 331,000 Americans were forced to downgrade their employment status to part-time or some chunk of them would have lost their jobs.
The number of persons employed part time for economic reasons (sometimes referred to as involuntary part-time workers) increased by 331,000 over the month to 8.9 million. [This is a sign of econ weakness.]
If the ISM and Chicago PMI are so great and its employment component was so great why did August manufacturing jobs decline 27k vs. the expected gain of 10K? And why did stocks rally on negative manufacturing employment, when it rallied on ISM employment strength?
John Williams: The ability to play monthly games with seasonals, the nature of assumptions in the handling of hard data and revisions to same, and a 95% confidence interval of +/- 129,000 jobs around the reported payroll number change, provide significant reporting leeway should someone choose to target payroll reporting in the context say of consensus expectations tied to the financial markets, or of related media hype that could impact public political perceptions.
Please understand what John Williams is saying. Statistically, the confidence or accuracy of the employment report is 95% according to the BLS. This means any variance within +/-129k jobs is within the statistical margin of error.
Protection of money market investors at risk Investors in loss-making money market funds are less likely to be bailed out by fund sponsors in the future, increasing the risks of a run on the $5,000bn (£3,247bn, €3,896bn) sector, according to Moody’s, the ratings agency.
Justin Meadows, chief executive of the MyTreasury trading platform: “To be perfectly frank, neither the funds or their parents are prepared to wear the risk [of implicit guarantees] any more.”
One senior industry figure concurred, saying: “The bills are becoming bigger and bigger. $2.9bn is a big cheque and you wonder how long people are going to go on like this. “But the role that money market funds play in financing the economy is substantial. We are the ones that swallow all the short-term paper.” http://www.ft.com/cms…
Banks Bought Bonds Amid Debt Crisis Even as Europe’s sovereign debt crisis intensified early this year, banks continued to load up on debt from Greece and other countries with the most acute fiscal problems, according to a report released Sunday that also suggested that the European Central Bank inadvertently encouraged institutions to increase their risk.
Fury Over Public Pensions Sparks Lawsuits – Several state and local retirement funds have balked at disclosing the pensions of individual government workers, triggering lawsuits that claim taxpayers have the right to such information.
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Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Why Hyperinflation is Coming and How to Prepare Now
Sovereign Investor
“We all keep worrying deflation, but it can turn so fast” – Adam Fergusson
Back in 1980 when my late grandfather, Abe Roseman, passed away, I inherited numerous personal items. These included tie bars, cufflinks, his old desk and lamp, and several other reminders of my childhood that to this day always put on a smile on my face.
Thirty years later, rummaging inside my late grandfather’s desk, I found 55 ounces of silver. Somehow, after all those years, I failed to pry open every drawer; what a surprise! How did he know I was a silver bull?
Or, perhaps, he wanted to be prepared for hard times.
Wisdom in Experience
I was pretty close to my grandfather. Abe was born in 1911 and lived through the Great Depression in Montreal. My grandmother would later remind me how bad things were in Canada at the time with unemployment at absurdly high levels from coast-to-coast. My grandparents knew how to be frugal and understood the value of money.
My generation (I’m in my early 40s) doesn’t know what it means to suffer an economic catastrophe; but we came darn close in 2008. I think we’re already in a “soft” economic depression. By “soft” I mean that without government backstops two years ago, we’d see blood in the streets, civil chaos and, possibly, runaway inflation by now.
In my view, this is a depression.
When 2 Million Marks Won’t Buy a Loaf of Bread
One item I inherited from my grandfather in 1980 was a bunch of old German bank notes, neatly tucked away in a plastic folder. At the ripe age of 14, I had no clue what these bills were worth, let alone what the German inscription meant. So I just buried Grandpa’s stash in my safety deposit box for the next 30 years.
Last month, however, I decided to review the causes and effects of the German Weimar Republic’s hyperinflation in the 1920s. I went to the bank and got Abe’s German notes. To refresh my history I read Adam Fergusson’s When Money Dies
, first printed in 1975. I urge every investor to grab a copy ahead of “Quantitative Easing Part II” this summer.It turns out my grandfather kept a bunch of German marks from periods ranging from 1922 to 1924; the note below is a scan. The amount is Zwei Millionen Mark or 2 Million Marks printed on Aug. 15, 1923 – exactly the same year that mind-boggling inflation started to run out of control in Germany.
Unbelievably, two million marks could barely buy a loaf of bread. Within hours, prices would escalate rendering that loaf to 3 million marks, four million marks etc. German paper had become almost worthless. Hyperinflation wiped out the entire middle class.
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Monday, September 6, 2010
The Impact of Fiat Money as the World’s Reserve Currency
David Redick
The creation of fiat official government money has had a profound effect in history and on our nation and the world today. "Fiat" means it is worth whatever the government says it is (its face value), although the material of which it is made may have more or less intrinsic market value. Examples would include both valuable silver dollars and worthless paper, each declared to be worth $1; and today’s American Eagle bullion coin with a face value of $50 for one ounce of gold.
Normally, when a country creates too much fake money, sellers avoid it for payment, or stop buying its bonds due to its falling value, and the party is soon over. However, the U.S. is in a unique positionnever seen in the history of the world. Our fiat paper money is the primary de facto world’s "reserve currency" (anyone will accept it for payment and keep it as cash, or as a dollar-denominated asset; banks keep it as their reserves, like gold). We can create new money out of thin-air, and sellers of goods and services worldwide will accept it. We can also pay our debts with it, even as the federal government spends to excess.
We have abused the privileged status of the U.S. dollar in many immoral and counterproductive ways. It is the underlying cause of our major problems, such as jobs being exported due to excess imports of goods (other countries would run out of money; the U.S. can create more as needed!), strange banking and securities deals based on loose money, excess personal spending and debt, and wars.
The US dollar has lost over 95% of its purchasing power since 1913 due to excess monetary inflation by the Fed by creating new money to pay bills. This has been the main cause of the 2,000% increase in prices since 1913. Excess money creation prior to 1913 resulted in short-term inflation and panic runs on insolvent banks, but the Fed allowed long-term abuse by bailing-out such banks, which in turn caused the moral hazard of the banks taking excess risks by seeking casino profits for the last 97 years and counting!
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One cannot underestimate the importance of our ability to pay debts to other nations, and not be required to convert to their money. This conversion would normally trigger market valuation, which could collapse the value of the U.S. dollar. Conversely, other nations must buy dollars to pay for most imports, and face declining exchange rates if they have expanded their money supply too much. We have abused this reserve status, and as of mid-2009 other nations started seeking alternatives (yuan, yen, a basket of currencies, etc.).
Most people are not aware that the reserve currency is used for most payments between other nations; for example, India pays Brazil for coffee with U.S. dollars. Hence, all nations keep a supply of U.S. dollars to use in trade. All banks are required to have sufficient reserves in order to show a strong asset base for the bank’s obligations (mainly demand and time deposits). Since the USD has been valued by the world system to be "as good as gold," it is known as a reserve currency and used instead of gold to fund these bank reserves. The Dollar has been used in about 90% of international transactions since its ascendancy in the 1920s, but has become weaker since 2000, and declined to 70% or less by 2009. About 30% of international deals are now done in Euros and Yen, but that is increasing as the economies and currencies of China and others grow stronger. Indeed, China started using its yuan for international transactions in 2010, and also allowed foreign firms to create yuan-denominated private equity funds.
There have been a series of international agreements to manage currency. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank were born of these deals. Both are counterproductive causes of spending and distortions (including feeding corrupt governments), and should be abolished along with the Federal Reserve.
Redeemability was restricted more and more until the 1944 Bretton Woods agreement, which set rules to: 1) Allow only nations to redeem paper for gold between each other (not people; a form of the Gold Bullion Exchange standard). 2) Create the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to handle its transactions. 3) Set the USD as the world's official reserve currency, with a fixed value of $35 per ounce of gold.
The US engaged in so much monetary expansion (inflation of the money supply) after WW2 it lost much of its value and flooded Europe with so-called Euro-dollars. France finally started demanding gold for most of their paper dollars, which peaked with De Gaulle’s famous press conference on Feb. 4, 1965 where he described the U.S. as having an "exorbitant privilege" as the world’s reserve currency, which allowed us to pay our debts with money created out of thin air! De Gaulle said:
There can be no other criterion, no other standard, than gold. Gold that never changes, that can be shaped into ingots, bars, coins . . . that has no nationality and that is eternally and universally accepted as the ultimate fiduciary value par excellence.
France started redeeming their paper dollars to gold, but Nixon soon refused to remit gold to any nation (we were running out), and then abrogated Bretton Woods on Aug. 15, 1971, setting the dollar "afloat" with no redeemability. Within a few years, all nations had done the same, including conservative Switzerland. Whoopee! Everybody could make money out of thin air!
The Fed destroys the value of our money by excess expansion of the money supply. Proof is shown in the start and end purchase power amounts below, which are from www.measuringworth.com:
It took $1,202.05 in the year 1912 for the same purchase power as $1,000 in the year 1774 (a 17.7% loss in 138 yrs, or 0.13 % per yr).
It took $22,427.40 in the year 2008 for the same purchase power as $1,000 in the year 1913 (a 95.5% loss in 95 yrs, or 1.0% per yr). Almost eight times worse than before the Fed!
A decline in purchasing power of the dollar, and thus price increases, always follow a rapid and excess (over 5% per year) increase in the money supply (monetary inflation). As shown below, the dollar has lost 95% of its value from 1913 (when the Fed started) to 2010, but 80% of that loss occurred after Nixon cut the Bretton Woods tie to gold in 1971, increasing the money supply even faster. Other factors, such as a reduced supply of goods and services, can cause price increases, but monetary inflation clearly has caused the most harm:
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Source: Byron King, www.agorafinancial.com |
The US dollar has lost over 95% of its purchasing power since 1913 due to excess monetary inflation by the Fed by creating new money to pay bills. This has been the main cause of the 2,000% increase in prices since 1913. Excess money creation prior to 1913 resulted in short-term inflation and panic runs on insolvent banks, but the Fed allowed long-term abuse by bailing-out such banks, which in turn caused the moral hazard of the banks taking excess risks by seeking casino profits for the last 97 years and counting!
A special monetary expansion event occurred in late 2008 when Bernanke produced the now infamous Bailout Spike by injecting almost $1 trillion of new money into the U.S. economy. On April 15, 2008, the Fed held $866 billion in assets, which served as the monetary base for the nation. On April 15, 2009, it held $2.2 trillion. A decline in purchasing power of the dollar will follow this increase in the money supply.
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