MD: I had this dialog with someone calling themselves IMissLiberty on substack. We love to dissect these comments. In this conversation she is IML. I am TM (which is the same as MD). Here’s our dissection.
IML: The value of things is based on what you are willing to pay for them.
TM: Correct… sort of. It’s determined by negotiation…and that takes two parties. Once created (by making a promise spanning time and space and certifying it) money serves as any other object in simple barter exchange [SBE]…until it is destroyed (on promise delivery). In the interim it’s just stuff…like gold or dollars or pork bellies…or bottled water.
IML: Money is for saving the value of work and cost you already paid to produce something you sell today, not today’s cost to mine more.
TM: Money once created serves as the most common object in any SBE.
IML: Further, an ounce of gold found in your great grandmother’s treasure box is worth the same as the one mined and refined today–even though the costs were completely different in dollars or in whatever currency the older ounce was made.
TM: An ounce of gold is not different than a cement block…or money (after creation and before destruction) . It’s simply an object of SBE. It doesn’t matter who created it, when they created, where they stored it, what they paid for it. It’s just stuff. It’s not money. It’s just a primtive substitute…and hasn’t served as money in my nearly 80 year life time.
IML: The mining cost sets a floor but it doesn’t control demand.
TM: Supply and demand for each object (as viewed by the traders for that particular trade) dictate the trade. It’s the “negotiation” stage of all trades…SBE or otherwise. The other two stages are “promise to deliver” and “delivery”…which in SBE in the “here and now” happen simultaneously.
IML: Supply and demand are both involved in the future price of something you earn today.
TM: The so-called “price” is the exchange rate for two objects in SBE. It is set by the traders in the “negotiation” phase of the trade. The future price is estimated by “self proclaimed artists…like appraisers”…and Black and Shoals…and manipulated by governments and banks…and other imagination figments like LIBOR. It’s always a figment of someone’s imagination. However, if we’re talking about money in a “real money process”, it is always in units of HUL’s (Hours of Unskilled Labor). This simplifies the trade by twice: Both parties now know the “real undisputed value” of one of the objects. (a) It is in perpetual free supply; (b) it is in perpetual perfect supply/demand balance; (c) it is free of external loads…like interest; (d) it has no time value…doesn’t gain of lose with time or over space; (e) it costs nothing to create or destroy; (f) and cannot be counterfeited. They are left to agreeing on the value of the other object in the SBE. Ask a HUL to take an hour to make a hole; measure the hole; you will “always” get the same size hole (other conditions being equal) in all time and space.
IML:One could buy gas and store it, but gas is too volatile to carry in one’s wallet and has a limited shelf life and thus lose value.
TM: True, but irrelevant when it comes to money. Gas is not and never will be money. It’s just stuff…an object of SBE.
IML: Gold and silver have a non-perishable advantage as a store of your past costs/work.
TM: So do cement blocks. They’re all just stuff. Cement blocks have outperformed gold and silver over the last five years. When traded for dollars, gold and silver have gone up and down…cement blocks have only gone up.
IML: If I babysat for an hour in 1966 and got paid in two quarters I could spend that 50 cents to buy two gallons of gas any time in the future, and maybe more as the cost of extracting gas gets more efficient–as long as the quarters were silver.
TM: Great choice of examples. I hired baby sitters in 1966. They were paid 6 quarters per hour (I think my wife paid them 2 quarters)…same as my summer job in 1962. If we had real money then I would have paid them one HUL per hour. It was SBE.
IML: If they weren’t silver (counterfeit, paper, digital) they would barely pay the gas tax.
TM: In 1964 I paid one quarter (containing silver) for one gallon of gas (SBE). In 1965 I traded one quarter (containing no silver) for one gallon of gas (SBE). It proved the quarter itself traded for the gas. What it was made of (i.e. its intrinsic value) played no role. It’s even more dramatic today. You pay 10+ quarters (containing zero silver…or 90% silver) for a gallon of gas. You’re foolish to trade the silver quarters because they trade for more value in a different context…e.g. in making photographic film. That’s how money works. And why commodity money doesn’t work. In the case of coin: (1)the cheaper you can make it; (2) the more durable you can make it; (3) the more precisely you can control its dimensions (ie. weight, diameter, thickness); (4) and the more difficult you can make counterfeiting…the better. But it’s still just stuff when it comes to SBE.
IML: “Compared to the dollar” a decaying rubber-band yardstick is no better at measuring carpet than a dollar price over time, except it will fail much sooner and be replaced with something more useful.
TM: And this is the same for any object of SBE. An 1848 ounce of gold was worth more than an 1850 ounce. Supply changed dramatically in those years. At the end of the 1800’s the value of gold and silver gyrated…until by law they claimed silver was not legal tender…only gold and so-called gold backed paper was legal tender (another government imagination figment). In 1973 the French were owed some huge amount of money…let’s say it was $1B. The USA claimed an ounce of gold could be purchased for $35. The French knew by experience it cost $70+ to trade (SBE) for an ounce of gold. The French said, keep your dollars USA. You agreed to settle the debt in gold and we’ll take the gold. Tilt went the so-called “lie” called the gold standard. Nixon didn’t cause the failure. He just could no longer lie about it as his predecessors had. If we were on a “real money process”, the units of the debt would have been HULs and guaranteed never to change their value over time and space. Such fictions as gold stability have existed over all time and space.
An interesting exercise when comparing and contrasting two competing choices. If one of the choices is current practice and the other one is a claimed improvement, reverse their positions. Assume the new choice is the current practice, and vice versa. Now which one is harder to sell? This technique removes the inertial advantage all current practice has. It illustrates dramatically how ridiculous most “conservative” practices are. Electric cars vs ICE (Internal Combustion Engine) cars is a good case to practice on.
IML: If 1913 had been gold instead of a central bank, the income tax would still only tax the top 1% as promised, and it would be enough for peace and prosperity, but not enough for war.
TM: This is the Achilles heel of all government controlled money. Governments collect taxes to pay interest to the money changers who institute them. Governments sustain themselves through counterfeiting of money they claim to control. Central Banks are figments of the money changers imagination forced upon governments. They need them for another figment of their imagination…that being “reserves”. In a “real money process” there are no reserves. No one has to put their savings in a bank for the bank to loan out ten times that savings at a 4% spread (i.e.40% which doubles in less than 2 years) . And thus there is no such thing as a “run on the bank”. All trades are completely separate and isolated.
This is an interesting definition of a capitalist…i.e. two years. They create a bank; capitalize it; accept deposits; loan out ten times the deposits at 4% spread; double their money in 2 years; take 1/2 off the table removing all their original risk; and wallah…look mom, I’m a capitalist. What’s not to love about capitalism.
IML: The miners and refiners produce more when the price offered is higher than the cost of production. They stop when they are not offered enough, and then the supply drops. If they are hungry, they will produce enough for food or for dollars for food–it’s a market price.
TM: You can say the same for farmers growing corn or raising pigs. They’re just stuff in SBE.
IML: There is always demand for metals. Try to imagine life without them.
TM: Try to imagine life without food…or without water where it doesn’t rain much. Both are just stuff in SBE. In the case of rain it is genuinely free. In the case of food…not so much. And in times of food and water shortages, metals play second fiddle.
IML: Imagine filling your cavity with bitcoin or paper.
TM: I have. See this to know about Bitcoin: https://moneydelusions.com/wp/?s=bitcoin. Bitcoin dramatically illustrates that DEFLATION is even worse than INFLATION. The only “proper” level of each is zero. No process can measure it. And only a “real money” process can guarantee it to be zero…it’s the nature of the process: INFLATION = DEFAULT – INTEREST = zero.
IML: There is no similar floor under fiat currencies. The dollar and bitcoin are ultimately worth their weight in gold ($0).
TM: When you know what money is (i.e. a promise to complete a trade over time and space); when you know where money comes from (i.e. created by traders like you an me buying stuff with time payments); when you know where money goes (i.e. returned and destroyed with each time payment…or mitigated by INTEREST collections of like amount when DEFAULTed). The operative relation is: INFLATION = DEFAULT – INTEREST = Zero.
I value gold these days at roughly $2,000 per ounce. If you take all the gold in the whole world and divide it by the number of people, you get about one ounce per person as I recall…i.e. roughly $2,000…i.e. roughly 200 HULs. First, that’s not near enough for anybody’s need in trade…not in the near term…certainly not over time and space. But more importantly, the HULs are the only object guaranteed to have exactly the same value in every SBE. Gold goes up and down. Dollars go up…until they call the loans…then they go down dramatically. And as usual with all fake money…up is down and down is up when you think about it.
MD: The Mises Monks are always great fodder for illustrating the spread of confusion and delusions as to what money “really” is. Let’s dissect this one.
One of history’s greatest ironies is that gold detractors refer to the metal as the barbarous relic. In fact, the abandonment of gold has put civilization as we know it at risk of extinction.
MD: How’s that for an opening line? The Monks never disappoint. “Greatest Ironies”; “gold detractors”;” barbarous relic”: Yet they never seem to be able to tell us what money really is. But this may be going too far. Removing “gold” will “risk extinctions”?
Gold’s main use is in jewelry and plating electrical contacts. Once used to fill teeth, it’s been a very long time since gold was used for that (except for Negros who use it to decorate their faces.) And in no lifetime of anyone living today has gold served as money. And silver ceased serving as money in 1965…almost 10 years before Nixon declared the obvious…that the so-called gold backing of the dollar was a giant fiction…a fraud on which the French called them out.
The only risk to extinction was use of mercury amalgamating silver to fill teeth. It was shown to be poison…like lead in paint and gasoline. Precious metals have never been money. They are just clumsy expensive stand-ins for what money really is…”a promise”. And what do these Monks call real money? They call it “fiat money”…and make it a derogatory slur. Since when is a “promise” derogatory. Let’s continue.
The gold coin standard that had served Western economies so brilliantly throughout most of the nineteenth century hit a brick wall in 1914 and was never able to recover, or so the story goes. As the Great War began, Europe turned from prosperity to destruction, or more precisely, toward prosperity for some and destruction for the rest. The gold coin standard had to be ditched for such a prodigious undertaking.
MD: Served economies “brilliantly”? Economic panics were as regular then as pandemics are becoming today. And in 1913 (a year before this so-called brick wall), the Federal Reserve Act began to plague us with the money we have today…a money that States freely counterfeit…and that money-changers collect interest on…and that both manipulate to deliver the so-called “business cycle”. “Prodigious undertaking”? Oh please!
If gold was money, and wars cost money, how was this even possible?
MD: A Mises Monk might be close to getting something right here. You can’t support a war if you can’t pay for it. And if gold is money…with only about one ounce per person on Earth (less than $2,000)…you’re not going to support war with gold. But you can by counterfeiting. They claim Lincoln did this to finance the USA Civil War in the 1860’s…and that’s correct. But when that counterfeit money (Greenbacks) was paid back, it ceased to be counterfeit. It “proved” to be “real” money. That hasn’t happened with any war since. The State just rolls its counterfeit money over by taking out new loans to pay off the old.
First, people were already in the habit of using money substitutes instead of money itself—banknotes instead of the gold coins they represented. People found it more convenient to carry paper around in their pockets than gold coins. Over time the paper itself came to be regarded as money, while gold became a clunky inconvenience from the old days.
MD: Well, the Monks being right didn’t last long did it? Here at Money Delusions we know money is an “in-process promise to complete a trade spanning time and space”. It is only created by traders like you and me. It begins as a ledger entry…open to all to see. And it ends with delivery on the promise and reversal of that ledger entry documenting the promise…again for all to see. In the interim it may remain a ledger entry; it may become a “demand deposit” (i.e. check); it may become a paper chit (currency); it may become a token (a coin). As such, it becomes the most common object of every simple barter exchange. But in the end it becomes a reversing entry in a ledger and is extinguished forever…for that trading promise. And if the promise is broken (defaulted) an “interest collection” of like amount is immediately made to recover the “orphaned” money. This guarantees perpetual perfect balance of supply and demand for the money itself…and thus zero “inflation”.
Second, banks had been in the habit of issuing more bank-notes and deposits than the value of the gold in their vaults. On occasion, this practice would arouse public suspicion that the notes were promises the banks could not keep. The courts sided with the banks and allowed them to suspend note redemption while staying in business, thus strengthening the government-bank alliance. Since the courts ruled that deposits belonged to the banks, bankers could not be accused of embezzlement. The occasional bank runs that erupted were interpreted as a self-fulfilling prophecy. If people lined up to withdraw their money because they believed their bank was insolvent, the bank soon would be. People had no idea their banks were loaning out most of their deposits. They did not know fractional reserve banking, a form of counterfeiting, was the norm.
MD: That’s not a “habit”…it’s by design. Money-changers instituted the State. The State chartered the Banks (owned by the Money-changers)…and gave them a 10x leverage advantage over traders like you and me. And when those scoundrels abused even that enormous privilege, the State they created defended them…as designed. It’s not a government-bank alliance. The State is a “creation and tool” of the Money-changers. And the State fiction of Laws sealed the deal. They pass one law that dilutes the golden rule and bammo…everything else that isn’t against the law (but violates the golden rule) is suddenly legal. And that obvious problem created here brings us 40,000 new laws each year…trying to put the Genie back in the bottle…trying to make us comply with that one simple golden rule.
And why didn’t the people know this was going on? Because there was “secrecy” in banking. Money requires “authentication” of the trader creating it and “transparency” of the promise to all lookers. And “defaults” are evident to all lookers “immediately”…and immediately mitigated by “interest collections” of like amount.
Here again, the Monks get close to saying what’s going down. Money “is” fiat…and that’s good. It’s what makes it so efficient in trade. But a “real” money process gives “no” trader an advantage…not even the Money-changers; their States; or their Banks. In this context, the “fraction” is not 10x…but rather infinite to the trader. And there is no reserve. Unlike a water well, you don’t have to prime the pump. But if you don’t replace the water you pump, you don’t get to pump again…until you replace that water. Lots of metaphors going on here.
Gold coin redemption requirements put limits on fractional reserve banking. Such limits were not welcomed by banks. Since banks could loan to the government, limitations also capped government spending, so the government did not like the limitations of gold coin redemption either.
MD: What “coin redemption requirements”? They were always a fiction. Gold coins were never used in my lifetime. And silver coins quit being used in 1964…and changed nothing in the behavior of traders… proving that precious metal was not money. Rather, it was the “token” that was money. At the same time, the paper money which said “Silver Certificate” changed to saying “Federal Reserve Note”…and as far as traders like you and me were concerned, nothing changed.
We never asked for the silver promised by those certificates. We had no use for it. It weighed too much and was too bulky. But for non-traders, the change was large. These non-traders are called “investors”. They’re really just gamblers. And they immediately gobbled up all the silver. You can now buy it on eBay (google “Silver Roosevelt Dimes 90% Junk Constitutional Circulated *Guaranteed Cheapest!”). It sells for (i.e. trades for) $4.50 for 10 dimes…dimes that used to trade for two candy bars…before State counterfeiting withered the dollar to its current condition.
And “government limitations”? Does anyone really believe there is such a thing as a government limitation? All governments are by their very definition “unlimited”!
Which brings us to the wall gold allegedly hit.
Preparing for War Means Preparing for Inflation
In his 1949 book, Economics and the Public Welfare, economist Benjamin Anderson tells us, “the war [in 1914] came as a great shock, not only to the masses of the American people, but also to most well-informed Americans—and, for that matter, to most Europeans.” And yet, Germany, Russia, and France began accumulating gold prior to the war (with Germany starting first in 1912). Gold was taken “out of the hands of the people” and carried to the reserves of the Reichsbank, the German central bank. People were given paper notes “to take the place of gold in circulation.”
MD: It goes all the way back to the Battle of Waterloo! … and for all time before that! All wars are “bankers” wars (i.e. money-changer wars). And if they had a “real money process” back then, they could have taken up all the gold they wanted. Traders had no use for it. There are no “reserves” in a real money process. It’s promises with which we deal. The only thing that can destroy a promise is to destroy the record of the promise…or destroy the person who made the promise. And a “real money process” mitigates such contingencies with “interest collections of like amount.” It’s simple arithmetic. Who pays the interest? Only traders who have a propensity to default pay it. And those traders have to work that much harder if they want to continue to trade at all, because once the defaults get too large, the marketplace ostracizes them.
When war broke out in August 1914, Gary North explains that the pre–World War I policy of gold coin redemption was
independently but almost simultaneously revoked by European governments. . . . They all then resorted to monetary inflation. This was a way to conceal from the public the true costs of the war. They imposed an inflation tax, and could then blame any price hikes on unpatriotic price gouging. This rested on widespread ignorance regarding economic cause and effects regarding monetary inflation and price inflation. They could not have done this if citizens had possessed the pre-war right to demand payment in gold coins at a fixed rate. They would have made a run on the banks. Governments could not have inflated without reneging on their promises to redeem their currencies for gold coins. So, they reneged while they still had the gold. Better early contract-breaking than late, they concluded.
MD: Earth to Monks. You just made our case. You’ve shown that precious metals are no cure to State deviance and malfeasance. A “real money process” has no State sponsorship. It has no Money-changer sponsorship. It has only trader and their marketplace sponsorship. And it depends on “authenticating” the trader and “accounting” for the trader’s promises. By the classical triple “A”s of trade: (1) Authentication; (2) Authority; (3) Accounting; all “responsible” traders (i.e. those with no propensity to default) have equal “authority” to create money. Those with non-zero propensity to default pay insurance “premiums” which are called “interest collections”. And they’re not arbitrarily set in the smokey rooms of LIBOR . They always equal “defaults incurred”. I’ve always wondered why banks always tell us the “prevailing interest”…but never show us the “prevailing defaults”. Now I no longer wonder. It enables their “business cycle”. It enables the “front running”of economic perturbations they themselves cause by “throttling” the money supply …supposedly in the interest of controlling inflation (which they cause) and maintaining full employment (which they can’t control at all).
If governments had not broken their promise to redeem paper notes for gold coins, they would have had to negotiate their differences rather than engage in one of the deadliest wars in history. Abandoning the gold coin standard, which had always been under government control, was the deciding factor in going to war.
MD: Duh! How about we do an “iterative secession”. How about we do without government altogether.
Though the US did not formally abandon gold during its late participation in the war, it discouraged redemption while roughly doubling the money supply. Blanchard Economic Research discusses the situation in “War and Inflation”:
MD: If gold is money, how did they “double” the money supply? These Monks are beyond stupid. In a “real money process”, you can only double money supply by doubling trader promises. And traders don’t make promises they can’t see clear to delivering. But get rid of government and the money-changers that create it and bammo…a doubling of trade would be minuscule.
War also causes the type of inflation that results from a rapid expansion of money and credit. “In World War I, the American people were characteristically unwilling to finance the total war effort out of increased taxes. This had been true in the Civil War and would also be so in World War II and the Vietnam War. Much of the expenditures in World War I, were financed out of the inflationary increases in the money supply.”
MD: When it comes to money, there’s only one type of inflation. That is when supply exceeds demand for the money itself. And this is impossible in a “real money process”. And as we pointed out earlier, the Civil War was different from all following wars. The Greenbacks were “all” recovered (“Greenbacks then became freely convertible into gold“)
Governments had a choice to make: fight a long, bloody war for specious reasons, or retain the gold coin standard. They chose war. US leaders found their decision irresistible. It was not J.P. Morgan, Woodrow Wilson, Edward Mandell House, or Benjamin Strong who would be fighting in the trenches.
When we hear that “going off gold” was the prerequisite for global peace and harmony, we should remember places such as the Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery in France, where grave markers seemingly extend to infinity. These are mostly the graves of young men who died for nothing but the lies of politicians and the profits of the politically connected. Gold wanted no part in the slaughter. But politicians and bankers knew a paper fiat standard was the monetary prerequisite to achieving their goals.
MD: Every time I ask one of the Mises Monks how you can use gold as money when there’s only one ounce per person on Earth? …i.e. less than $2,000…1/2 what someone at Home Depot makes in a month! The line goes dead.
Conclusion
John Maynard Keynes, who coined the term “barbarous relic” in reference to the gold standard, wrote about the world that was lost when gold was abandoned:
What an extraordinary episode in the economic progress of man that age was which came to an end in August, 1914! . . . The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth, in such quantity as he might see fit, and reasonably expect their early delivery upon his doorstep. . . . He could secure forthwith, if he wished it, cheap and comfortable means of transit to any country or climate without passport or other formality, could despatch his servant to the neighboring office of a bank for such supply of the precious metals as might seem convenient, and could then proceed abroad to foreign quarters, without knowledge of their religion, language, or customs, bearing coined wealth upon his person, and would consider himself greatly aggrieved and much surprised at the least interference. But, most important of all, he regarded this state of affairs as normal, certain, and permanent, except in the direction of further improvement, and any deviation from it as aberrant, scandalous, and avoidable.
If Keynes had read what he wrote, he might have been a better economist. And we might be living in a better world today.
MD: This is shades of the Red vs. Blue; The Donkeys vs. the Elephants; the Harlem Globe Trotters vs. the Washington Generals; the Keynesians vs the Mises Monks. You’re never going to solve a problem when you’re given two choices, both bad, and both controlled by a single non-choice. Such is democracy. Long live democracy.
George Ford Smith is a former mainframe and PC programmer and technology instructor, the author of eight books including a novel about a renegade Fed chairman (Flight of the Barbarous Relic), a filmmaker (Do Not Consent), and an advocate of stateless market government. He welcomes speaking engagements and can be reached at gfs543@icloud.com.
MD: This article is so typical of what we see coming out of ZeroHedge.com. These people actually believe what they write. As usual, we’ll dissect the article in place and expose the delusions. We’ve done it repeatedly before. The trouble is, they either will never get it…or the are an active part of the scam.
It’s no secret that China and Russia have been stashing away as much gold as possible for many years.
MD: And if they had a clue they wouldn’t be doing that. At the point where gold can have meaning in economics, the game is already over. There is only enough gold on the planet for each person to have less than 2 ounces…less than $4,000. If gold were actually the media of exchange, it would have to trade for a few orders of magnitude greater than that. And if it did, people would be digging up their own back yards looking for the stuff. It’s beyond stupid. Miners who actually know how to find and refine gold would become enormously wealthy, but could never create enough for the rest of us to use it in trade…i.e. as money.
China is the world’s largest producer and buyer of gold. Russia is number two. Most of that gold finds its way into the Russian and Chinese governments’ treasuries.
MD: Where it does absolutely nothing for the benefit of anyone.
Russia has over 2,300 tonnes—or nearly 74 million troy ounces—of gold, one of the largest stashes in the world. Nobody knows the exact amount of gold China has, but most observers believe it is even larger than Russia’s stash.
MD: Ok. Take that number. 74,000,000 ounces. Divide that by the 7 billion people on the planet. That comes to about 0.01 ounces per person on the planet. Times $4,000 per ounce you have $40. That’s 4 trips to McDonalds. Now what?
Russia and China’s gold gives them access to an apolitical neutral form of money with no counterparty risk.
MD: Counterparty risk? What does that have to do with anything. Money is an “in-process promise to complete a trade over time and space.” It is always, and only, created by traders like you and me. And it is always properly destroyed when we deliver as promised. In the mean time it circulates as the most common object of every simple barter exchange. It’s a record keeping problem…and a discipline problem if the trader fails to deliver as promised.
Remember, gold has been mankind’s most enduring form of money for over 2,500 years because of unique characteristics that make it suitable to store and exchange value.
MD: This stupid argument won’t even play in Peoria… let alone throughout the world.
Gold is durable, divisible, consistent, convenient, scarce, and most importantly, the “hardest” of all physical commodities.
MD: And here we have an open admission of ignorance about money. Durable isn’t an issue. An open record keeping system (e.g. ledger) is durable. Divisible? You can divide a number to any number of pieces you choose. If you buy a car by creating $70,000 in new money, that money can circulate as any denomination the marketplace requires. In the USA the smallest denomination is one cent…and most people won’t bend over to pick one up. Consistent? What does that mean? A promise is a promise. Delivery is delivery. What’s to be inconsistent? Convenient? What in the world is more convenient than a record keeping system? Create checks, currency, coins, … they’re just convenient place holders for what is recorded in the ledger. Scarce? This is the one that gets me most. The media of exchange should never be scarce. Quite the contrary, it should be in perpetual free supply. It should resist trade not at all. Hardest? As in harder than a Hershey bar? How ridiculous! And the one they left out…which is historically the biggest problem with any substitute for “real” money…it must be non-counterfeitable! And who is the biggest counterfeiter in “all” cases? Government!
In other words, gold is the one physical commodity that is the “hardest to produce” (relative to existing stockpiles) and, therefore, the most resistant to inflation. That’s what gives gold its superior monetary properties.
MD: Another open admission to stupidity. The money relation is: INFLATION = DEFAULT – INTEREST. Counterfeiting, the biggest cause of default not mitigated by interest collection, is the biggest source of inflation. It’s a very small fraction of traders who don’t deliver as promised. And when that happens, a “real money process” makes an immediate and equal interest collection of like amount. This guarantees that inflation will be perpetually zero.
Russia and China can use their gold to engage in international trade and perhaps back the currencies.
MD: Only as long as ignorance regarding real money prevails.
That’s why gold represents a genuine monetary alternative to the US dollar, and Russia and China have a lot of it.
MD: And of course there is no shortage of “stupid” people who think that matters. Real traders will “create” a “real money process” every time if not conflicted by the money-changers and the governments they institute. I’m now going to let him spew on as long he purveys the same ridiculous fiction. If he comes up with some new nonsense I’ll break back in.
Today it’s clear why China and Russia have had an insatiable demand for gold.
They’ve been waiting for the right moment to pull the rug from beneath the US dollar. And now is that moment…
This is a big problem for the US government, which reaps an unfathomable amount of power because the US dollar is the world’s premier reserve currency. It allows the US to print fake money out of thin air and export it to the rest of the world for real goods and services—a privileged racket no other country has.
Russia and China’s gold could form the foundation of a new monetary system outside of the control of the US. Such moves would be the final nail in the coffin of dollar dominance.
Five recent developments are a giant flashing red sign that something big could be imminent.
Warning Sign #1: Russia Sanctions Prove Dollar Reserves “Aren’t Really Money”
In the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the US government has launched its most aggressive sanctions campaign ever.
Exceeding even Iran and North Korea, Russia is now the most sanctioned nation in the world.
As part of this, the US government seized the US dollar reserves of the Russian central bank—the accumulated savings of the nation.
MD: Oh I would so like to have Putin’s ear here. The best thing he could do is institute a “real money process” and use his gold to allay his doubters…he’d never have to touch any of it. In fact, I would like to see Elon Musk do it, rather than buy Twitter (that will bury him in criminal lawsuits should he succeed there).
It was a stunning illustration of the dollar’s political risk. The US government can seize another sovereign country’s dollar reserves at the flip of a switch.
MD: …until its counterfeiting is so obvious and egregious it deals itself out of the game all together.
The Wall Street Journal, in an article titled “If Russian Currency Reserves Aren’t Really Money, the World Is in for a Shock,” noted:
“Sanctions have shown that currency reserves accumulated by central banks can be taken away. With China taking note, this may reshape geopolitics, economic management and even the international role of the U.S. dollar.”
MD: Is anyone getting the dozen or so calls a day that I’m getting…from so-called investors who want to trade dollars for my real property? Why do that unless you know the dollars you hold are about to be worthless.
Russian President Putin said the US had defaulted on its obligations and that the dollar is no longer a reliable currency.
The incident has eroded trust in the US dollar as the global reserve currency and catalyzed significant countries to use alternatives in trade and their reserves.
China, India, Iran, and Turkey, among other countries, announced, or already are, doing business with Russia in their local currencies instead of the US dollar. These countries represent a market of over three billion people that no longer need to use the US dollar to trade with one another.
The US government has incentivized almost half of mankind to find alternatives to the dollar by attempting to isolate Russia.
MD: I vote for a competitive HUL (Hour of Unskilled Labor) based “real money process”. The HUL is valued today (i.e. trades for the same size hole in the ground) as it has for all time…recorded or otherwise.
Warning Sign #2: Rubles, Gold, and Bitcoin for Gas, Oil, and Other Commodities
Russia is the world’s largest exporter of natural gas, lumber, wheat, fertilizer, and palladium (a crucial component in cars).
It is the second-largest exporter of oil and aluminum and the third-largest exporter of nickel and coal.
Russia is a major producer and processor of uranium for nuclear power plants. Enriched uranium from Russia and its allies provides electricity to 20% of the homes in the US.
Aside from China, Russia produces more gold than any other country, accounting for more than 10% of global production.
These are just a handful of examples. There are many strategic commodities that Russia dominates.
In short, Russia is not just an oil and gas powerhouse but a commodity superpower.
After the US government seized Russia’s US dollar reserves, Moscow has little use for the US dollar. Moscow does not want to exchange its scarce and valuable commodities for politicized money that its rivals can take away on a whim. Would the US government ever tolerate a situation where the US Treasury held its reserves in rubles in Russia?
The head of the Russian Parliament recently called the US dollar a “candy wrapper” but not the candy itself. In other words, the dollar has the outward appearance of money but is not real money.
That’s why Russia is no longer accepting US dollars (or euros) in exchange for its energy. They are of no use to Russia. So instead, Moscow is demanding payment in rubles.
MD: Bingo. Game over for the Earth’s, and History’s, most egregious counterfeiter.
That’s an urgent problem for Europe, which cannot survive without Russian commodities. The Europeans have no alternative to Russian energy and have no choice but to comply.
European buyers must now first buy rubles with their euros and use them to pay for Russian gas, oil, and other exports.
This is a big reason why the ruble has recovered all of the value it lost in the initial days of the Ukraine invasion and then made further gains.
In addition to rubles, the top Russian energy official said Moscow would also accept gold or Bitcoin in return for its commodities.
“If they want to buy, let them pay either in hard currency—and this is gold for us… you can also trade Bitcoins.”
Here’s the bottom line. US dollars are no longer needed (or wanted) to buy Russian commodities.
Warning Sign #3: The Petrodollar System Flirts With Collapse
MD: I’m really skimming now. This guy is so far off the tracks there’s no hope of bringing him back. I think I’ll quit here.
Oil is by far the largest and most strategic commodity market.
For the last 50 years, virtually anyone who wanted to import oil needed US dollars to pay for it.
That’s because, in the early ’70s, the US made an agreement to protect Saudi Arabia in exchange for ensuring, among other things, all OPEC producers only accept US dollars for their oil.
Every country needs oil. And if foreign countries need US dollars to buy oil, they have a compelling reason to hold large dollar reserves.
This creates a huge artificial market for US dollars and forces foreigners to soak up many of the new currency units the Fed creates. Naturally, this gives a tremendous boost to the value of the dollar.
The system has helped create a deeper, more liquid market for the dollar and US Treasuries. It also allows the US government to keep interest rates artificially low, thereby financing enormous deficits it otherwise would be unable to.
In short, the petrodollar system has been the bedrock of the US financial system for the past 50 years.
But that’s all about to change… and soon.
After it invaded Ukraine, the US government kicked Russia out of the dollar system and seized hundreds of billions in dollar reserves of the Russian central bank.
Washington has threatened to do the same to China for years. These threats helped ensure that China cracked down on North Korea, didn’t invade Taiwan, and did other things the US wanted.
These threats against China may be a bluff, but if the US government carried them out—as it recently did against Russia—it would be like dropping a financial nuclear bomb on Beijing. Without access to dollars, China would struggle to import oil and engage in international trade. As a result, its economy would come to a grinding halt, an intolerable threat to the Chinese government.
China would rather not depend on an adversary like this. This is one of the main reasons it created an alternative to the petrodollar system.
After years of preparation, the Shanghai International Energy Exchange (INE) launched a crude oil futures contract denominated in Chinese yuan in 2017. Since then, any oil producer can sell its oil for something besides US dollars… in this case, the Chinese yuan.
There’s one big issue, though. Most oil producers don’t want to accumulate a large yuan reserve, and China knows this.
That’s why China has explicitly linked the crude futures contract with the ability to convert yuan into physical gold—without touching China’s official reserves—through gold exchanges in Shanghai (the world’s largest physical gold market) and Hong Kong.
PetroChina and Sinopec, two Chinese oil companies, provide liquidity to the yuan crude futures by being big buyers. So, if any oil producer wants to sell their oil in yuan (and gold indirectly), there will always be a bid.
After years of growth and working out the kinks, the INE yuan oil future contract is now ready for prime time.
And now that the US has banned Russia from the dollar system, there is an urgent need for a credible system capable of handling hundreds of billions worth of oil sales outside of the US dollar and financial system.
The Shanghai International Energy Exchange is that system.
Back to Saudi Arabia…
For nearly 50 years, the Saudis had always insisted anyone wanting their oil would need to pay with US dollars, upholding their end of the petrodollar system.
But that could all change soon…
Remember, China is already the world’s largest oil importer. Moreover, the amount of oil it imports continues to grow as it fuels an economy of over 1.4 billion people (more than 4x larger than the US).
China is Saudi Arabia’s top customer. Beijing buys over 25% of Saudi oil exports and wants to buy more.
The Chinese would rather not have to use the US dollar, the currency of their adversary, to buy an essential commodity.
In this context, The Wall Street Journal recently reported that the Chinese and the Saudis had entered into serious discussions to accept yuan as payment for Saudi oil exports instead of dollars.
The WSJ article claims the Saudis are angry at the US for not supporting it enough in its war against Yemen. They were further dismayed by the US withdrawal from Afghanistan and the nuclear negotiations with Iran.
In short, the Saudis don’t think the US is holding up its end of the deal. So they don’t feel like they need to hold up their part.
Even the WSJ admits such a move would be disastrous for the US dollar.
“The Saudi move could chip away at the supremacy of the US dollar in the international financial system, which Washington has relied on for decades to print Treasury bills it uses to finance its budget deficit.”
Here’s the bottom line.
Saudi Arabia—the linchpin of the petrodollar system—is flirting in the open with China about selling its oil in yuan. One way or another—and probably soon—the Chinese will find a way to compel the Saudis to accept the yuan.
The sheer size of the Chinese market makes it impossible for Saudi Arabia—and other oil exporters—to ignore China’s demands to pay in yuan indefinitely. Moreover, using the INE to exchange oil for gold further sweetens the deal for oil exporters.
Sometime soon, there will be a lot of extra dollars floating around suddenly looking for a home now that they are not needed to purchase oil.
It signals an imminent and enormous change for anyone holding US dollars. It would be incredibly foolish to ignore this giant red warning sign.
Warning Sign #4: Out of Control Money Printing and Record Price Increases
In March of 2020, the chair of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, exercised unfathomable power…
At the time, it was the height of the stock market crash amid the COVID hysteria. People were panicking as they watched the market plummet, and they turned to the Fed to do something.
In a matter of days, the Fed created more dollars out of thin air than it had for the US’s nearly 250-year existence. It was an unprecedented amount of money printing that amounted to more than $4 trillion and nearly doubled the US money supply in less than a year.
One trillion dollars is almost an unfathomable amount of money. The human mind has trouble wrapping itself around such figures. Let me try to put it into perspective.
One million seconds ago was about 11 days ago.
One billion seconds ago was 1988.
One trillion seconds ago was 30,000 BC.
For further perspective, the daily economic output of all 331 million people in the US is about $58 billion.
At the push of a button, the Fed was creating more dollars out of thin air than the economic output of the entire country.
The Fed’s actions during the Covid hysteria—which are ongoing—amounted to the biggest monetary explosion that has ever occurred in the US.
When the Fed initiated this program, it assured the American people its actions wouldn’t cause severe price increases. But unfortunately, it didn’t take long to prove that absurd assertion false.
As soon as rising prices became apparent, the mainstream media and Fed claimed that the inflation was only “transitory” and that there was nothing to be worried about.
Of course, they were dead wrong, and they knew it—they were gaslighting.
The truth is that inflation is out of control, and nothing can stop it.
Even according to the government’s own crooked CPI statistics, which understates reality, inflation is rising. That means the actual situation is much worse.
Recently the CPI hit a 40-year high and shows little sign of slowing down.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see the CPI exceed its previous highs in the early 1980s as the situation gets out of control.
After all, the money printing going on right now is orders of magnitude greater than it was then.
Warning Sign #5: Fed Chair Admits Dollar Supremacy Is Dead
“It’s possible to have more than one reserve currency.”
These are the recent words of Jerome Powell, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve.
It’s a stunning admission from the one person who has the most control over the US dollar, the current world reserve currency.
It would be as ridiculous as Mike Tyson saying that it’s possible to have more than one heavyweight champion.
In other words, the jig is up.
Not even the Chairman of the Federal Reserve can go along with the farce of maintaining the dollar’s supremacy anymore… and neither should you.
Conclusion
It’s clear the US dollar’s days of unchallenged dominance are quickly ending—something even the Fed Chairman openly admits.
To recap, here are the five imminent, flashing red warning signs the end of dollar hegemony is near.
Warning Sign #1: Russia Sanctions Prove Dollar Reserves “Aren’t Really Money”
Warning Sign #2: Rubles, Gold, and Bitcoin for Gas, Oil, and Other Commodities
Warning Sign #3: The Petrodollar System Flirts With Collapse
Warning Sign #4: Out of Control Money Printing and Record Price Increases
Warning Sign #5: Fed Chair Admits Dollar Supremacy Is Dead
We are likely on the cusp of a historic shift… and what’s coming next could change everything.
* * *
The economic trajectory is troubling. Unfortunately, there’s little any individual can practically do to change the course of these trends in motion. The best you can and should do is to stay informed so that you can protect yourself in the best way possible, and even profit from the situation. That’s precisely why bestselling author Doug Casey and his colleagues just released an urgent new PDF report that explains what could come next and what you can do about it. Click here to download it now.511
MD: Having a total and universal misunderstanding of what money is, we get myriad articles telling how money is being manipulated…or should be manipulated. From the title we expect this is just such an instance. We’ll look…and annotate in place.
What lies beneath
As usual, just over two weeks into the new quarter, and well in advance of the developed economies, GDP-giant China told us exactly what happened there in Q1. When I say ‘exactly’, I mean to the usual degree of decimal-place detail, but the same lack of any useful breakdown: and despite lockdowns so hard that China’s Weibo is allegedly censoring the first line of the Chinese national anthem (“Stand up! Those who refuse to be slaves”) after it was used to vent frustrations.
MD: What a bazaar opening salvo!
Somehow, the expectation was for a 0.7% q/q GDP print, 4.2% y/y, up from 4.0% in Q42021: we got a far stronger print to show Covid, and Chinese data, don’t matter – GDP rose 1.3% q/q and 4.8% y/y.
Does one celebrate the resilience of the economy? MD: How can one separate the economy from the manipulation of its money?
Does one ask how that was possible when March data saw retail sales -3.5% y/y, below consensus of -3.0%, down from 1.7%… and yet higher than expected at 3.3% y/y year-to-date (YTD) vs. a 6.7% print in February that already did not match what *any* retailer is seeing? When fixed asset investment, albeit above consensus, slowed to 9.3% from 12.2% y/y even as property investment was weaker than seen at just 0.7% from 3.7% y/y? And industrial production rose to 5.0% from 4.3% y/y – which must have been via net exports… despite port closures!
MD: Does anyone ask why behavior of an economy should be sensitive to a calendar?
Does one ask why monetary policy was eased last week anyway, with the reserve requirement ratio cut 0.25% again? (That’s a move which will be as ineffectual for the real economy as all the previous cuts were: the only thing it perks up is enthusiasm from analysts who don’t understand how the real economy works.) MD: Does anyone ask why there should be such a thing as a “monetary policy”? Does anyone ask why anyone…or any small group…should have such a knob to manipulate?
Does one ask why China just announced details-free economic stimulus measures? (e.g., “Reform will be deepened to remove consumption constraints. Sound and steady development of consumption platforms will be advanced.” How so, when rumours are that we are soon to see bank deposit rates cuts to make room for lower lending rates, which follows the same financial-repression/demand-destruction path seen in the ‘new normal’ elsewhere?) Probably not. MD: When it is provable that everyone acts in their own self interest, why does not everyone’s self interest have equal weight? Why do we have banks screwing with lending rates when we know it is “traders”, not banks or the governments they institute, that create and destroy money?
Does one ask how local-government debt to build more infrastructure is ‘consumption’? (e.g., “consumption-related infrastructure development may be funded by local government special-purpose bonds, to leverage the catalytic role of investment in expanding consumption.”) MD: Why do we allow something claiming to be government…why do we allow it to control something like infrastructure development…but not manufacturing development? We shouldn’t even have government. What’s it good for?
Does one note an easily achievable stimulus floated is a de facto export subsidy? (e.g., “Export rebates will be better utilized as an inclusive and equitable policy tool that is consistent with international rules, and the business environment for foreign trade will be improved on multiple fronts.”) Yet if China thinks it can grow its way out of a structural crisis by flooding the world with more goods *again*, then it is in for a real shock. MD: Do traders need stimulus? What’s keeping traders from naturally making trades they can see clear to deliver on? Why do people allow a money-changer creation like government to even exist?
Making that point, Bloomberg warns: ‘Global Investors Flee China Fearing That Risks Eclipse Rewards’. All the more reason for a 1.3 % q/q print then(?) The article notes, “Russian sanctions raise concerns the same could happen to China… a growing list of risks is turning China into a potential quagmire for global investors. The central question is what could happen in a country willing to go to great lengths to achieve its leader’s goals.” This is hardly news to those who wanted to see it: but a South China Morning Post politics podcast this weekend in which one of their correspondents stated he had heard directly from an EU source that in recent discussions over Russian sanctions, US officials stated they are already gaming-out the same measures for China – and using language such as “when we sanction China”, not “if”. MD: Sanctions are a siege tactic. And siege is an act of war. Who is conducting this warring aggression…and why? Why does an entity capable of mounting such an attack even exist? Who needs it?
Imperialism and realism: Bancor and Rancor
Meanwhile, in Ukraine, hopes of peace talks appear forlorn: Mariupol appears close to falling, as the city of 400,000 stands in ruins; and despite talking of risks of a Russian tactical nuke, President Zelenskiy defiantly states his country won’t give up the Donbas and can keep fighting for 10 years, if needed. If supported by the West, perhaps it can – and the EU’s Von der Leyen is pushing for Europe to accelerate arms shipments to Kyiv, talking about an oil boycott, again, and sanctioning Russia’s largest bank, Sberbank. Markets were thinking 10 days and none of the above when this all started. MD: Why doesn’t this paragraph state it was Zelenskiy whose artillery caused the ruin of Mariupol?
On another front, as Finland and Sweden race towards NATO membership, Russia is moving forces towards the Baltic. Is this a bluff, as some felt it was over Ukraine? Or is Moscow going to engage in some form of limited confrontation with either or both Scandinavian states to ensure that if they enter NATO they do so already in a conflict with Russia? MD: Why do these countries want NATO membership? What’s in it for them? What do they lose by ostracizing NATO? What if Russia’s movements are totally defensive…or protective of the innocent…which of course they are?
Taking things to a more meta level, last week I argued ‘Bretton Woods 3’ (BW3) — a new global FX and financial architecture– is a fancy name for militarized mercantilism; that the West used to be good at it; that it will be again, even if it means lots of neoliberal norms have to go; and anyone who thinks a BW3 emerges painlessly hasn’t read any history. Usefully, one of the key proponents of ‘anti-American imperialism’ just made the point for me in depth. MD: If you argued for any kind of “global FX and financial architecture” you are stupid beyond belief. At the very least, you are clueless about what money is…where it comes from…and where it goes. Mercantilism is government imposed monopoly. Eliminating government is the solution.
(NB For these thinkers, American imperialism is the only imperialism: everything else is ‘realism’. That was underlined by humanist and coffee-table intellectual’s intellectual —and long-time believer that the auto-genocidal Khmer Rouge get a bad press— Noam Chomsky, who explained this weekend that Ukraine should surrender, because that’s ‘just the way the world is’.) MD: There should be a vaccine against morons like Chomsky.
In an interview, Russian politician Sergey Glazyev talks about “the imminent disintegration of the USD-based global economic system, which provided the foundation of the US global dominance… the new economic system [unites] various strata of their societies around the goal of increasing common well-being in a way that is substantially stronger than the Anglo-Saxon and European alternatives. This is the main reason why Washington will not be able to win the global hybrid war that it started. This is also the main reason why the current dollar-centric global financial system will be superseded by a new one, based on a consensus of the countries who join the new world economic order.” MD: The fact that such a thing as “the USD-based global economic system” even exists or should be tolerated is admission of zero understanding of money. They can change the money system all they want. Until they understand what money is…where it comes from…and where it goes, they’ll keep getting the same result. And of course they want that result. This leopard doesn’t change its spots.
So far, so gold-bug, crypto-nite, Chomskyite, Russian/Chinese nationalist, US billionaire hedge-fund manager, or general Down With This Sort of Thing. But we get details: MD: Such nonsense!
“In the first phase of the transition, these countries fall back on using their national currencies and clearing mechanisms, backed by bilateral currency swaps.At this point, price formation is still mostly driven by prices at various exchanges, denominated in dollars.” MD: Open admission of money manipulation. A “real money process” cannot be manipulated in any fashion whatever.
That’s what I have been flagging: things remain priced in USD and, for a few, at the margin, and inefficiently, USD are netted out via bilateral, geopolitical barter. However, “This phase is almost over.” That seems ambitious: it isn’t even a month old! Regardless, next comes “a shift to national currencies and gold,” and then: MD: A problem that does not…and cannot exist with a “real money process”.
“The second stage of the transition will involve new pricing mechanisms that do not reference the USD. Price formation in national currencies involves substantial overheads, however, it will still be more attractive than pricing in ‘un-anchored’ and treacherous currencies like USD, GBP, EUR, and JPY. The only remaining global currency candidate –CNY– won’t be taking their place due to its inconvertibility and the restricted external access to the Chinese capital markets. The use of gold as the price reference is constrained by the inconvenience of its use for payments.” MD: A “real money process” cares nothing about pricing mechanism. That’s up to supply/demand balance of objects being traded. All the “real money process” is concerned with is guaranteeing perpetual perfect supply/demand balance of the money itself.
So, as I pointed out, nothing really works; which, alongside final consumption being in the West, and lots of aircraft carriers, is a strong argument for the USD status quo, imperialist or not. But not to worry if you disagree, because after that: MD: When “it’s broke”, it a good time to “fix it”. You don’t fix something by changing it’s name. This will get fixed when a “real money process” is available for traders to choose. Once that is done, all these broken processes will wilt on the vine. No trader in his right mind would ever use one.
“The third and the final stage on the new economic order transition will involve a creation of a new digital payment currency founded through an international agreement based on principles of transparency, fairness, goodwill, and efficiency.” Which the international community is of course famous for. “A currency like this can be issued by a pool of currency reserves of BRICS countries, which all interested countries will be able to join.” MD: This is like religion…constantly trying to deal with knowledge that encroaches on its myths. They just create new myths…and change the wording of the old myths. It’s pretty disgusting.
Except India is questionable, and even Brazil might be shaky given where it sits geographically, near the source of all those aircraft carriers. And so we have Russia, China, and South Africa. That doesn’t even make a good acronym, let alone bloc.
“The weight of each currency in the basket could be proportional to the GDP of each country (based on purchasing power parity, for example), its share in international trade, as well as the population and territory size of participating countries.” So, it will be dominated by China; and so India is definitely out. “In addition, the basket could contain an index of prices of main exchange-traded commodities: gold and other precious metals, key industrial metals, hydrocarbons, grains, sugar, as well as water and other natural resources. To provide backing… relevant international resource reserves can be created in due course. This new currency would be used exclusively for cross-border payments and issued to the participating countries based on a pre-defined formula. Participating countries would instead use their national currencies for credit creation, in order to finance national investments and industry, as well as for sovereign wealth reserves. Capital account cross-border flows would remain governed by national currency regulations.” MD: If the currencies in the basket were using a “real money process”, their weight would not be relevant. The exchange rate would be constant…and one to one…at all times. This is a problem created by, and moved around by, money changers and the governments they institute. If you turn back the history of these governments you always find “one individual” who got control of a military and directed it to his own ends…and then took charge of the territory it acquired. This typically spans no more than 10 or 20 years in the first instance. And if he’s successful in creating a religion in that period, that religion passes to his heirs…until the people being dominated pull back the curtain and expose the scam. In the case of Britain, the people are so stupid it spans a period going back beyond useful records. That, folks, is perfect stupidity.
So, he is talking about a new ‘gold standard’ based on everything from precious metals to base metals, to water, to one of the key ingredients for cakes, to the GDP of China, questionable data and all. Somehow these back a new global reserve currency which somebody will manage, and provide emergency liquidity in, despite *ALMOST EVERYONE IN THE NEW BLOC RUNNING TRADE SURPLUSES* – and most so with the West, who are not going to join. As such, this is not so much a proposed Bancor, as Keynes floated at the original Bretton Woods before the US insisted on the global role of the USD; nor a monstrous Rancor to devour Wall Street; it’s just plain rancour (“bitterness or resentfulness, especially when long standing”). Indeed, here is the coup de grace: MD: Anyone talking about a standard that changes value with time, is talking nonsense. And gold is anything but constant in value. We can now create new gold at a fraction of earlier costs…except where a new discovery is found … and then you can just pick up nuggets off the ground creating fictitious wealth. Changes like that…or large quantities going down with a sinking ship…create great disruptions. And such disruptions are totally unnecessary…actually impossible…if a “real money process” is in effect.
“Transition to the new world economic order will likely be accompanied by systematic refusal to honor obligations in USD, EUR, GBP, and JPY. In this respect, it will be no different from the example set by the countries issuing these currencies who thought it appropriate to steal foreign exchange reserves of Iraq, Iran, Venezuela, Afghanistan, and Russia to the tune of trillions of USD…. Even if they were to default on their obligations in those currencies, this would have no bearing on their credit rating in the new financial system. Nationalization of extraction industry, likewise, would not cause a disruption.” MD: An open admission to traders that they are…and will continue to be…dictated to by the money-changers. How is it that the real producers in the world (i.e. the traders) can be so totally dominated by the absolute non-producing slugs of the world (i.e. the money changers)?
In other words, adopt the new world order and you get to default on all your FX debt and nationalise all your foreign-owned businesses! That is precisely what I also argued: bet on the new and bet on the default of the old. That is not going to be peaceful or painless – and it will be vigorously resisted. MD: This “new world order” thing is just the new “war monger”. The latest weapons of these war mongers is immigration and virus creation and spread…and they are essentially the same thing.
You want to ensure that even vampire-squid on Wall Street and global-not-local US billionaire hedge-fund managers agree to dump neoliberalism for Western mercantilism and a bifurcated Cold War world of tariffs, capital controls, and naval blockades? Keep talking about mass nationalisations and organised debt defaults in the Eurodollar markets.52,222109 MD: These articles just continue to be less and less interesting…more and more stupidity revealing. Such is life…and then you die.
MD: I tripped over the following YouTube propaganda and thought I should warn you about GoldMoney.com. Macleod gave a link to this article which I will now annotate.
MD: First, I’ll relate my story. Then I’ll annotate this article by Macleod. Neither Turk nor Macleod have a clue about what money is. It is obvious from this YouTube discussion and will likely be evident from this article as well. You can see other reactions to his nonsense by searching for “Macleod” or “GoldMoney” at the end of this article.
First, my story. Over 10 years ago I was buying gold because I was convinced the financial system was going down the toilet. GoldMoney.com had this value proposition: If I bought “gold grams” from them, they would store the gold in secure vaults around the world. They claimed to be governed by the Isle of Wight I think. At the time, gold and silver were going up quite aggressively against the dollar.
First, I dipped my toe in. I sent them about $1,000, let it sit in the account for a little while, then asked them to send me the $1,000 plus the appreciation back. They did it without a hitch. Next, I sent them quite a bit more money from my retirement fund. And I ran an experiment. I asked them to send me some gold. They did this…but there was a hitch. I had to pay “import duty” on the gold. The round trip “load” was 10% so I decided as long as gold was diving, I’d wait until it hit bottom to ask for my delivery. At least the import duty would be lower.
Anyone who has watched gold knows it has been a poorly performing asset. The cement blocks I’ve bought over that same period have done much better than my gold at GoldMoney.com. Every few months I would do my reconciliation of my account so I could update my own records.
All of a sudden I couldn’t get into my account. At the time I was busy with other things and procrastinated. But when I finally raised the issue with them they claimed their “regulator” needed additional information. I said “no problem”. Just close my account under our original terms and send me the gold.
They refused. But they said they would send me dollars to my bank account. I had to close my bank account some years earlier because my money proved not to be safe there. They said I had no recourse but to do as I was told. I went to the “WayBack.com” archive and gave them a link to our original agreement…which specifically said they weren’t regulated by any financial regulator…and that was part of their “value proposition”.
As of this writing the issue is still not resolved. They owe me a response in our dialog. I told them I was under no illusion that this matter would be resolved “legally” as the legal process is corrupt beyond hope.
Now…on to Macleod’s nonsense.
By Alasdair Macleod Goldmoney Insights April 07, 2022 We will look back at current events and realise that they marked the change from a dollar-based global economy underwritten by financial assets to commodity-backed currencies. We face a change from collateral being purely financial in nature to becoming commodity based. It is collateral that underwrites the whole financial system.
MD: Right now, as I noted, I’m looking back and seeing that Goldmoney is not to be trusted.
The ending of the financially based system is being hastened by geopolitical developments. The West is desperately trying to sanction Russia into economic submission, but is only succeeding in driving up energy, commodity, and food prices against itself. Central banks will have no option but to inflate their currencies to pay for it all. Russia is linking the ruble to commodity prices through a moving gold peg instead, and China has already demonstrated an understanding of the West’s inflationary game by having stockpiled commodities and essential grains for the last two years and allowed her currency to rise against the dollar.
MD: Note, with a “real” money process, geopolitics can play no role at all. Of course, Macleod is clueless about that.
China and Russia are not going down the path of the West’s inflating currencies. Instead, they are moving towards a sounder money strategy with the prospect of stable interest rates and prices while the West accelerates in the opposite direction.
MD: Notice he uses the term “stable” for interest rates and prices. We know that prices will do what they will do. It “is as it is” they say. But with a “real” money process, we know INTEREST is zero for responsible traders like you and me. And we know prices are not influenced by the money at all. Money is guaranteed to have perfect supply/demand balance throughout its life…and thus zero inflation and deflation.
The Credit Suisse analyst, Zoltan Pozsar, calls it Bretton Woods III. This article looks at how it is likely to play out, concluding that the dollar and Western currencies, not the rouble, will have the greatest difficulty dealing with the end of fifty years of economic financialisation.
MD: We know that any regulated money scheme will eventually blow up. If they can envision a Bretton Wood III, they can envision a XVIII…it’s like the Superbowl. And he needs to learn how to spell “ruble”. I wish he could help me with “dealing” with GoldMoney.com. Oh…and with a “real money process”, there is no such thing as financialisation…or backing for that matter.
Pure finance is being replaced with commodity finance
It hasn’t hit the main-stream media yet, which is still reporting yesterday’s battle. But in March, the US Administration passed a death sentence on its own hegemony in a last desperate throw of the dollar dice. Not only did it misread the Russian situation with respect to its economy, but America mistakenly believed in its own power by sanctioning Russia and Putin’s oligarchs.
MD: The USA has had its death sentence my whole life…nearly 80 years. When I started my career, about 1/4th of my income went to government…and about 1/4 of the citizens were dependent on government. By the end of my career 50 years later, both those ratios have increased at an exponential rate to over 3/4…and we know even they can’t go past 4/4ths.
It may have achieved a partial blockade on Russia’s export volumes, but compensation has come from higher unit prices, benefiting Russia, and costing the Western alliance.
The consequence is a final battle in the financial war which has been brewing for decades. You do not sanction the world’s most important source of energy exports and the marginal supplier of a wide range of commodities and raw materials, including grains and fertilisers, without damaging everyone but the intended target. Worse still, the intended target has in China an extremely powerful friend, with which Russia is a partner in the world’s largest economic bloc — the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation — commanding a developing market of over 40% of the world’s population. That is the future, not the past: the past is Western wokery, punitive taxation, economies dominated by the state and its bureaucracy, anti-capitalistic socialism, and magic money trees to help pay for it all.
MD: Maybe we should remember that only the USA congress can declare war. Sanctions are a siege tactic…and a siege is an act of war. Congress just declares war on inanimate things like “drugs”…they don’t want the competition. I wish they could declare war on “stupidity”…but of course that would be shooting themselves in the foot. For a long time I have realized that Britain and Israel were our worst enemies. But government is now eclipsing them.
Despite this enormous hole in the sanctions net, the West has given itself no political option but to attempt to tighten sanctions even more. But Russia’s response is devastating for the western financial system. In two simple announcements, tying the rouble to gold for domestic credit institutions and insisting that payments for energy will only be accepted in roubles, it is calling an end to the fiat dollar era that has ruled the world from the suspension of Bretton Woods in 1971 to today.
MD: And again remember the latency. In 1971 when the USA formally renegged on their guarantee of $35/ounce for gold (after confiscating all their citizens gold at $28/ounce)…in 1971, the real price of gold was over $70/ounce. France demanded a debt payment in gold and the jig was up. But it had obviously been up for some time at that point.
Just over five decades ago, the dollar took over the role for itself as the global reserve asset from gold. After the seventies, which was a decade of currency, interest rate, and financial asset volatility, we all settled down into a world of increasing financialisation. London’s big bang in the early 1980s paved the way for regulated derivatives and the 1990s saw the rise of hedge funds and dotcoms. That was followed by an explosion in over-the-counter unregulated derivatives into the hundreds of trillions and securitisations which hit the speed-bump of the Lehman failure. Since then, the expansion of global credit for purely financial activities has been remarkable creating a financial asset bubble to rival anything seen in the history of financial excesses. And together with statistical suppression of the effect on consumer prices the switch of economic resources from Main Street to Wall Street has hidden the inflationary evidence of credit expansion from the public’s gaze.
MD: We should remember, in 1964 we could buy a gallon of gas for a quarter dollar…which was 90% silver. In 1965 they quit minting silver into the coins…but the 1965 quarters still traded for a gallon of gas. This proved beyond all doubt that the silver had nothing to do with the trade. It implicitly demonstrated that money “represented” an in-process promise to complete a trade over time and space. And coins and currency were just tokens representing that promise. Why doesn’t Macleod make note of that?
All that is coming to an end with a new commoditisation — what respected flows analyst Zoltan Pozsar at Credit Suisse calls Bretton Woods III. In his enumeration the first was suspended by President Nixon in 1971, and the second ran from then until now when the dollar has ruled indisputably. That brings us to Bretton Woods III.
MD: And as I noted, even if you believe Macleods nonsense about commoditisation, don’t resort to Goldmoney.com for your commodity. They can’t be trusted.
Russia’s insistence that importers of its energy pay in roubles and not in dollars or euros is a significant development, a direct challenge to the dollar’s role. There are no options for Russia’s “unfriendlies”, Russia’s description for the alliance united against it. The EU, which is the largest importer of Russian natural gas, either bites the bullet or scrambles for insufficient alternatives. The option is to buy natural gas and oil at reasonable rouble prices or drive prices up in euros and still not get enough to keep their economies going and the citizens warm and mobile. Either way, it seems Russia wins, and one way the EU loses.
MD: What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. We played that card with the middle eastern nomads in the 1930s. They must accept only dollars for their oil. Write all you want Macleod. Theirs no end to their ability to rig any game.
As to Pozsar’s belief that we are on the verge of Bretton Woods III, one can see the logic of his argument. The highly inflated financial bubble marks the end of an era, fifty years in the making. Negative interest rates in the EU and Japan are not just an anomaly, but the last throw of the dice for the yen and the euro. The ECB and the Bank of Japan have bond portfolios which have wiped out their equity, and then some. All Western central banks which have indulged in QE have the same problem. Contrastingly, the Russian central bank and the Peoples Bank of China have not conducted any QE and have clean balance sheets. Rising interest rates in Western currencies are made more certain and their height even greater by Russia’s aggressive response to Western sanctions. It hastens the bankruptcy of the entire Western banking system and by bursting the highly inflated financial bubble will leave little more than hollowed-out economies.
MD: Wouldn’t it be neat if this Bretton Woods III thing actually fixed the problem once and for all by instituting a “real money process”? There would be no such thing as a central bank…anywhere on the planet. In fact, banks would probably cease to exist as well. And of course Goldmoney.com wouldn’t exist either.
Putin has taken as his model the 1973 Nixon/Kissinger agreement with the Saudis to only accept US dollars in payment for oil, and to use its dominant role in OPEC to force other members to follow suit. As the World’s largest energy exporter Russia now says she will only accept roubles, repeating for the rouble the petrodollar strategy. And even Saudi Arabia is now bending with the wind and accepting China’s renminbi for its oil, calling symbolic time on the Nixon/Kissinger petrodollar agreement.
The West, by which we mean America, the EU, Britain, Japan, South Korea, and a few others have set themselves up to be the fall guys. That statement barely describes the strategic stupidity — an Ignoble Award is closer to the truth. By phasing out fossil fuels before they could be replaced entirely with green energy sources, an enormous shortfall in energy supplies has arisen. With an almost religious zeal, Germany has been cutting out nuclear generation. And even as recently as last month it still ruled out extending the lifespan of its nuclear facilities. The entire G7 membership were not only unprepared for Russia turning the tables on its members, but so far, they have yet to come up with an adequate response.
MD: Earth to Macleod…oil doesn’t come from fossils. It abiotic. And further, planet Earth loves CO2. It basks in CO2. The global warming nonsense is just that…nonsense!
Russia has effectively commoditised its currency, particularly for energy, gold, and food. It is following China down a similar path. In doing so it has undermined the dollar’s hegemony, perhaps fatally. As the driving force behind currency values, commodities will be the collateral replacing financial assets. It is interesting to observe the strength in the Mexican peso against the dollar (up 9.7% since November 2021) and the Brazilian real (up 21% over a year) And even the South African rand has risen by 11% in the last five months. That these flaky currencies are rising tells us that resource backing for currencies has its attractions beyond the rouble and renminbi.
But having turned their backs on gold, the Americans and their Western epigones lack an adequate response. If anything, they are likely to continue the fight for dollar hegemony rather than accept reality. And the more America struggles to assert its authority, the greater the likelihood of a split in the Western partnership. Europe needs Russian energy desperately, and America does not. Europe cannot afford to support American policy unconditionally.
That, of course, is Russia’s bet.
MD: Imagine if Russia and China adopted a “real money process” and quit counterfeiting money. Then the whole world would have to follow suit. And governments couldn’t create money to wage wars. They couldn’t counterfeit money to buy citizen’s support. They would be less than 1/10th the size they are now.
Russia’s point of view
For the second time in eight years, Russia has seen its currency undermined by Western action over Ukraine. Having experienced it in 2014, this time the Russian central bank was better prepared. It had diversified out of dollars adding official gold reserves. The commercial banking system was overhauled, and the Governor of the RCB, Elvira Nabiullina, by following classical monetary policies instead of the Keynesianism of her Western contempories, has contained the fall-out from the war in Ukraine. As Figure 1 shows, the rouble halved against the dollar in a knee-jerk reaction before recovering to pre-war levels.
MD: Imagine the chart below if Russia (and the USA) had instituted a “real ” money process. That chart would be a straight horizontal line at 100. It wouldn’t wiggle at all. Now how could that be bad?
The link to commodities is gold, and the RCB announced that until end-June it stands ready to buy gold from Russian banks at 5,000 roubles per gramme. The stated purpose was to allow banks to lend against mine production, given that Russian-sourced gold is included in the sanctions. But the move has encouraged speculation that the rouble is going on a quasi- gold standard; never mind that a gold standard works the other way round with users of the currency able to exchange it for gold.
MD: With a real money process you have none of that nonsense.
Besides being with silver the international legal definition of money (the rest being currency and credit), gold is a good proxy for commodities, as shown in Figure 2 below.[i] Priced in goldgrams, crude oil today is 30% below where it was in the 1950, long before Nixon suspended the Bretton Woods Agreement. Meanwhile, measured in depreciating fiat currencies the price has soared and been extremely volatile along the way.
MD: Macleod doesn’t seem to realize that the changing supply/demand for gold and the changing supply/demand for oil…and for virtually all commodities will always dictate price. But with a real money process, a perpetually perfect balance of supply and demand for money is “guaranteed” and thus plays no role in pricing at all. It doesn’t need to be as complicated as these dolts are making it folks.
MD: It’s interesting that the curve above for goldgrams is a constant “zero”. That’s what your gold is worth to you if you bought it from Goldmoney.com…absolutely zero. They say “the regulators made us steal it from you”.
It is a similar story for other commodity prices, whereby maximum stability is to be found in prices measured in goldgrams. Taking up Pozsar’s point about currencies being increasingly linked to commodities in Bretton Woods III, it appears that Russia intends to use gold as proxy for commodities to stabilise the rouble. Instead of a fixed gold exchange rate, the RCB has wisely left itself the option to periodically revise the price it will pay for gold after 1 July.
MD: Is it just coincidence that “Pozsar” looks a lot like “Ponzi”? And earth to Pozsar, money is always and only linked to one thing…a responsible traders promise to complete a trade over time and space. The only reason we have all the nonsense that this article pontificates about is because moneychangers (and the governments they institute) counterfeit money at will. Stop that and bingo…problem solved.
Table 1 shows how the RCB’s current fixed rouble gold exchange rate translates into US dollars.
MD: Need to add cement blocks to the above chart. They did better than gold.
While non-Russian credit institutions do not have access to the facility, it appears that there is nothing to stop a Russian bank buying gold in another centre, such as Dubai, to sell to the Russian central bank for roubles. All that is needed is for the dollar/rouble rate to be favourable for the arbitrage and the ability to settle in a non-sanctioned currency, such as renminbi, or to have access to Eurodollars which it can exchange for Euroroubles (see below) from a bank outside the “unfriendlies” jurisdictions.
The dollar/rouble rate can now easily be controlled by the RCB, because how demand for roubles in short supply is handled becomes a matter of policy. Gazprom’s payment arm (Gazprombank) is currently excused the West’s sanctions and EU gas and oil payments will be channelled through it.
MD: With a real money process governing all nations money, exchange rates between the various currencies would be constant. In time they would all adopt the HUL (hour of unskilled labor) as the unit of measure. Since that never changes in value…i.e. always trades for the same size hole in the ground…exchange rates would be perpetually 1.0000 for all nation’s money. There would be no need for nations.
Broadly, there are four ways in which a Western consumer can acquire roubles:
By buying roubles on the foreign exchanges.
By depositing euros, dollars, or sterling with Gazprombank and have them do the conversion as agents.
By Gazprombank increasing its balance sheet to provide credit, but collateral which is not sanctioned would be required.
By foreign banks creating rouble credits which can be paid to Gazprombank against delivery of energy supplies.
MD: Be careful. That’s like Goldmoney.com saying a way to acquire gold is by sending money to them. But when you ask for your gold they say net not, nay, nope, nix, n’t;
The last of these four is certainly possible, because that is the basis of Eurodollars, which circulate outside New York’s monetary system and have become central to international liquidity. To understand the creation of Eurodollars, and therefore the possibility of a developing Eurorouble market we must delve into the world of credit creation.
MD: Macleod. Everyone here are MoneyDelusions knows that the Euro is pure nonsense…like all government managed (distorted and misguided) money…like putting lipstick on a pig.
There are two ways in which foreigners can hold dollar balances. The way commonly understood is through the correspondent banking system. Your bank, say in Europe, will run deposit accounts with their correspondent banks in New York (JPMorgan, Citi etc.). So, if you make a deposit in dollars, the credit to your account will reconcile with the change in your bank’s correspondent account in New York.
MD: But if the USA government claims you owe them money, they grab it right out of your bank. Your bank does nothing to defend you. And you “won’t” get your money back. You will die first. And of course the government is faceless…so there’s nobody for you to kill in return. They call it civilization.
Now let us assume that you approach your European bank for a dollar loan. If the loan is agreed, it appears as a dollar asset on your bank’s balance sheet, which through double-entry bookkeeping is matched by a dollar liability in favour of you, the borrower. It cannot be otherwise and is the basis of all bank credit creation. But note that in the creation of these balances the American banking system is not involved in any way, which is how and why Eurodollars circulate, being fungible with but separate in origin from dollars in the US.
MD: In a real money process, there is really no reason for loans. Only deadbeat traders (i.e. those who default on their promises need ever resort to loans.
By the same method, we could see the birth and rapid expansion of a Eurorouble market. All that’s required is for a bank to create a loan in roubles, matched under double-entry bookkeeping with a deposit which can be used for payments. It doesn’t matter which currency the bank runs its balance sheet in, only that it has balance sheet space, access to rouble liquidity and is a credible counterparty.
MD: The solution doesn’t lie in creating new government entities to do the counterfeiting. The solution is to take the money process out of the hands of “all” governments. Let it rest with the traders like you and I.
This suggests that Eurozone and Japanese banks can only have limited participation because they are already very highly leveraged. The banks best able to run Eurorouble balances are the Americans and Chinese because they have more conservative asset to equity ratios. Furthermore, the large Chinese banks are majority state-owned, and already have business and currency interests with Russia giving them a head start with respect to rouble liquidity.
MD: Remember when we did it to the Japanese in the late 30’s. We restricted their trade. And we enticed (forced) them to attack us (yes…our government was fully aware of Pearl Harbor and the war it would enable them to start.)
We have noticed that the large American banks are not shy of dealing with the Chinese despite the politics, so presumably would like the opportunity to participate in Euroroubles. But only this week, the US Government prohibited them from paying holders of Russia’s sovereign debt more than $600 million. So, we should assume the US banks cannot participate which leaves the field open to the Chinese mega-banks. And any attempt to increase sanctions on Russia, perhaps by adding Gazprombank to the sanctioned list, achieves nothing, definitely cuts out American banks from the action, and enhances the financial integration between Russia and China. The gulf between commodity-backed currencies and yesteryear’s financial fiat simply widens.
MD: And Goldmoney.com will claim some government is prohibiting them from delivering your gold to you. See how easy that works?
For now, further sanctions are a matter for speculation. But Gazprombank with the assistance of the Russian central bank will have a key role in providing the international market for roubles with wholesale liquidity, at least until the market acquires depth in liquidity. In return, Gazprombank can act as a recycler of dollars and euros gained through trade surpluses without them entering the official reserves. Dollars, euros yen and sterling are the unfriendlies’ currencies, so the only retentions are likely to be renminbi and gold.
In this manner we might expect roubles, gold and commodities to tend to rise in tandem. We can see the process by which, as Zoltan Pozsar put it, Bretton Woods III, a global currency regime based on commodities, can take over from Bretton Woods II, which has been characterised by the financialisation of currencies. And it’s not just Russia and her roubles. It’s a direction of travel shared by China.
MD: This is like your wife always claiming to have a yeast infection. Pretty soon you find a way around that.
The economic effects of a strong currency backed by commodities defy monetary and economic beliefs prevalent in the West. But the consequences that flow from a stronger currency are desirable: falling interest rates, wealth remaining in the private sector and an escape route from the inevitable failure of Western currencies and their capital markets. The arguments in favour of decoupling from the dollar-dominated monetary system have suddenly become compelling.
MD: When does the obvious cease to be a belief?
The consequences for the West
Most Western commentary is gung-ho for further sanctions against Russia. Relatively few independent commentators have pointed out that by sanctioning Russia and freezing her foreign exchange reserves, America is destroying her own hegemony. The benefits of gold reserves have also been pointedly made to those that have them. Furthermore, central banks leaving their gold reserves vaulted at Western central banks exposes them to sanctions, should a nation fall foul of America. Doubtless, the issue is being discussed around the world and some requests for repatriation of bullion are bound to follow.
There is also the problem of gold leases and swaps, vital for providing liquidity in bullion markets, but leads to false counting of reserves. This is because under the IMF’s accounting procedures, leased and swapped gold balances are recorded as if they were still under a central bank’s ownership and control, despite bullion being transferred to another party in unallocated accounts.[ii]
MD: Actually there is no end to the money-changers creativity in cheating you. Deal them out of the game. Institute a real money process. There’s really no use in reading this nonsense further. I’m tired…and throwing in the towel. Just one parting comment: Do business at Goldmoney. com at your own risk A word to the wise is sufficient.
No one knows the extent of swaps and leases, but it is likely to be significant, given the evidence of gold price interventions over the last fifty years. Countries which have been happy to earn fees and interest to cover storage costs and turn gold bullion storage into a profitable activity (measured in fiat) are at the margin now likely to not renew swap and lease agreements and demand reallocation of bullion into earmarked accounts, which would drain liquidity from bullion markets. A rising gold price will then be bound to ensue.
Ever since the suspension of Bretton Woods in 1971, the US Government has tried to suppress gold relative to the dollar, encouraging the growth of gold derivatives to absorb demand. That gold has moved from $35 to $1920 today demonstrates the futility of these policies. But emotionally at least, the US establishment is still virulently anti-gold.
As Figure 2 above clearly shows, the link between commodity prices and gold has endured through it all. It is this factor that completely escapes popular analysis with every commodity analyst assuming in their calculations a constant objective value for the dollar and other currencies, with price subjectivity confined to the commodity alone. The use of charts and other methods of forecasting commodity prices assume as an iron rule that price changes in transactions come only from fluctuations in commodity values.
The truth behind prices measured in unbacked currencies is demonstrated by the cost of oil priced in gold having declined about 30% since the 1960s. That is reasonable given new extraction technologies and is consistent with prices tending to ease over time under a gold standard. It is only in fiat currencies that prices have soared. Clearly, gold is considerably more objective for transaction purposes than fiat currencies, which are definitely not.
Therefore, if, as the chart in the tweet below suggests, the dollar price of oil doubles from here, it will only be because at the margin people prefer oil to dollars — not because they want oil beyond their immediate needs, but because they want dollars less.
China recognised these dynamics following the Fed’s monetary policies of March 2020, when it reduced its funds rate to the zero bound and instituted QE at $120bn every month. The signal concerning the dollar’s future debasement was clear, and China began to stockpile oil, commodities, and food — just to get rid of dollars. This contributed to the rise in dollar commodity prices, which commenced from that moment, despite falling demand due to covid and supply chain problems. The effect of dollar debasement is reflected in Figure 3, which is of a popular commodity tracking ETF.
A better understanding would be to regard the increase in the value of this commodity basket not as a near doubling since March 2020, but as a near halving of the dollar’s purchasing power with respect to it.
Furthermore, the Chinese have been prescient enough to accumulate stocks of grains. The result is that 20% of the world’s population has access to 70% of the word’s maize stocks, 60% of rice, 50% of wheat and 35% of soybeans. The other 80% of the world’s population will almost certainly face acute shortages this year as exports of grain and fertiliser from Ukraine/Russia effectively cease.
China’s actions show that she has to a degree already tied her currency to commodities, recognising the dollar would lose purchasing power. And this is partially reflected in the yuan’s exchange rate against the US dollar, which since May 2020 has gained over 11%.
Implications for the dollar, euro and yen
In this article the close relationship between gold, oil, and wider commodities has been shown. It appears that Russia has found a way of tying her currency not to the dollar, but to commodities through gold, and that China has effectively been doing the same thing for two years without the gold link. The logic is to escape the consequences of currency and credit expansion for the dollar and other Western currencies as their purchasing power is undermined. And the use of a gold peg is an interesting development in this context.
We should bear in mind that according to the US Treasury TIC system foreigners own $33.24 trillion of financial securities and short-term assets including bank deposits. That is in addition to a few trillion, perhaps, in Eurodollars not recorded in the TIC statistics. These funds are only there in such quantities because of the financialisation of Western currencies, a situation we now expect to end. A change in the world’s currency order towards Pozsar’s Bretton Woods III can be expected to a substantial impact on these funds.
To prevent foreign selling of the $6.97 trillion of short-term securities and cash, interest rates would have to be raised not just to tackle rising consumer prices (a Keynesian misunderstanding about the economic role of interest rates, disproved by Gibson’s paradox[iii]) but to protect the currency on the foreign exchanges, particularly relative to the rouble and the yuan. Unfortunately, sufficiently high interest rates to encourage short-term money and deposits to stay would destabilise the values of the foreign owned $26.27 trillion in long-term securities — bonds and equities.
As the manager of US dollar interest rates, the dilemma for the Fed is made more acute by sanctions against Russia exposing the weakness of the dollar’s position. The fall in its purchasing power is magnified by soaring dollar prices for commodities, and the rise in consumer prices will be greater and sooner as a result. It is becoming possible to argue convincingly that interest rates for one-year dollar deposits should soon be in double figures, rather than the three per cent or so argued by monetary policy hawks. Whatever the numbers turn out to be, the consequences are bound to be catastrophic for financial assets and for the future of financially oriented currencies where financial assets are the principal form of collateral.
It appears that Bretton Woods II is indeed over. That being the case, America will find it virtually impossible to retain the international capital flows which have allowed it to finance the twin deficits — the budget and trade gaps. And as securities’ values fall with rising interest rates, unless the US Government takes a very sharp knife to its spending at a time of stagnating or falling economic activity, the Fed will have to step up with enhanced QE.
The excuse that QE stimulates the economy will have been worn out and exposed for what it is: the debasement of the currency as a means of hidden taxation. And the foreign capital that manages to escape from a dollar crisis is likely to seek a home elsewhere. But the other two major currencies in the dollar’s camp, the euro and yen, start from an even worse position. These are shown in Figure 4. With their purchasing power visibly collapsing the ECB and the Bank of Japan still have negative interest rates, seemingly trapped under the zero bound. Policy makers find themselves torn between the Scylla of consumer price inflation and the Charybdis of declining economic activity. A further problem is that these central banks have become substantial investors in government and other bonds (the BOJ even has equity ETFs on board) and rising bond yields are playing havoc with their balance sheets, wiping out their equity requiring a systemic recapitalisation.
Not only are the ECB and BOJ technically bankrupt without massive capital injections, but their commercial banking networks are hugely overleveraged with their global systemically important banks — their G-SIBs — having assets relative to equity averaging over twenty times. And unlike the Brazilian real, the Mexican peso and even the South African rand, the yen and the euro are sliding against the dollar.
The response from the BOJ is one of desperately hanging on to current policies. It is rigging the market by capping the yield on the 10-year JGB at 0.25%, which is where it is now.
These currency developments are indicative of great upheavals and an approaching crisis. Financial bubbles are undoubtedly about to burst sinking fiat financial values and all that sail with them. Government bonds will be yesterday’s story because neither China nor Russia, whose currencies can be expected to survive the transition from financial to commodity orientation, run large budget deficits. That, indeed, will be part of their strength.
The financial war, so long predicted and described in my essays for Goldmoney, appears to be reaching its climax. At the end it has boiled down to who understands money and currencies best. Led by America, the West has ignored the legal definition of money, substituting fiat dollars for it instead. Monetary policy lost its anchor in realism, drifting on a sea of crackpot inflationary beliefs instead.
But Russia and China have not made the same mistake. China played along with the Keynesian game while it suited them. Consequently, while Russia may be struggling militarily, unless a miracle occurs the West seems bound to lose the financial war and we are, indeed, transiting into Pozsar’s Bretton Woods III.
[i] Chart kindly provided by James Turk from his recent book, Money and Liberty (pub. Wood Lane Books)
[ii] See Treatment of Reserves and Fund Accounts — Balance of Payments Division IMF Statistics Department.
[iii] Gibson’s paradox showed that the price correlation with interest rates was with the general price level, not with the rate of price changes. Because Keynes and others failed to explain it, modern economists ignore this relationship with respect to monetary policies. See https://www.goldmoney.com/research/goldmoney-insights/gibson-s-paradox
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If The Fed Starts A Digital Currency, It Had Better Guarantee Privacy Tyler Durden’s Photo by Tyler Durden Tuesday, Apr 05, 2022 – 08:00 PM
MD: As always, Money Delusions will use the true definition of “real” money to annotate this article. The article appear in ZeroHedge.com as “If the Fed Starts A Digital Currency, It Had Better Guarantee Privacy”. And the title itself reveals confusion about what money is…and what its characteristics are. This begins by knowing what money is (i.e “an in-process promise to complete a trade over time and space”); how money is created (i.e. transparently in plain view by traders like you and me); how money is destroyed (i.e. also transparently by the trader delivering as promised); what happens if the trader “defaults” (i.e. “interest” of like amount is immediately collected); and how money trades in the interim (i.e. anonymously as any other object of simple-barter-exchange). Let’s get started:
Authored by By Andrew M. Bailey & William J. Luther via RealClearPolicy.com,
President Biden’s latest executive order calls for extensive research on digital assets and may usher in a U.S. central bank digital currency (CBDC), eventually allowing individuals to maintain accounts with the Federal Reserve. Other central banks are already on the job. The People’s Bank of China began piloting a digital renminbi in April 2021. India’s Reserve Bank intends to launch a digital rupee as early as this year.
MD: They immediately exhibit that they don’t know what money is. “Banks” have nothing to do with “real” money at all. It is the most obvious corruption of real money. And “digital” is just one of many forms of money.
Most commonly, money is just an entry in a ledger. In some cases it is in the form of coins and currency…both carefully designed to resist counterfeiting. In some cases it is in the form of a check (i.e. against a demand deposit). And we already have a fairly digital form of money in “debit cards”…a link to your ledger records that you carry in your purse. “Credit cards” are not an example of money. Rather, they are an example of “money creation”.
When you charge something on a credit card, “you” are creating money…a promise to complete a trade over time and space. When you use a “debit card” you are merely submitting proof that you hold some previously created money.
A CBDC may upgrade the physical cash the Federal Reserve already issues – but only if its designers appreciate the value of financial privacy.
Cash is a 7th century technology, with obvious drawbacks today. It pays no interest, is less secure than a bank deposit, and is difficult to insure against loss or theft. It is unwieldy for large transactions, and also requires those transacting to be at the same place at the same time — a big problem in an increasingly digital world.
MD: And before cash we had the tally stick…which claims to be the best implementation of money. And tally sticks were “real” money. They represented a promise to complete a trade over time and space. They worked better than gold. In fact, they could claim any kind of “backing” the trader’s agreed to (e.g. pork bellies). But nobody “traded” tally sticks. Thus, in that respect they weren’t money at all. They really were close to “crypto” in that respect…but much cheaper to create. You could create a tally stick with a twig and a knife. Today’s crypto requires insane amounts of electricity waste to create. They call it “proof of work”…which of course is nonsense.
Nonetheless, cash remains popular. Circulating U.S. currency exceeded $2.2 trillion in January 2022, more than doubling over the last decade. The inflation-adjusted value of circulating notes grew more than 5.5 percent per year over the period. And U.S. consumers used cash in 19 percent of transactions in 2020.
MD: Actually, the money changers are revealing the imminent collapse of cash. They hold lots of cash (counterfeited by government) and are doing everything they can to exchange it for real “property”. I get a dozen calls a day from “so-called investors” who want to “buy” my property. It’s a game of musical chairs. They don’t want to holding it when the “reset” comes as they know it will be instantly worthless. And also note, with “real” money, inflation is perpetually zero. No adjusted valuation is ever necessary.
Why is cash so popular, despite its drawbacks? Cash is easy to use. There are no bank or merchant terminal fees associated with cash. And, most importantly, it offers more financial privacy than the available alternatives.
MD: In actuality, cash is “not” easy to use. You almost never see it being used…even in restaurants and bars. I use it in bars just to keep score. I take a certain amount of cash, which when I’ve used it up I know I’m about to have had too much to drink. I spend lots of time explaining to other patrons why I can’t let them buy me a beer.
When you use cash, no one other than the recipient needs to know. Unlike a check or debit card transaction, there’s no bank recording how you spend your money. You can donate to a political or religious cause, buy controversial books or magazines, or secure medicine or medical treatment without much concern that governments, corporations, or snoopy neighbors will ever find out.
MD: With a “real” money implementation, there is no need for banks to be involved. All that is necessary is a “block chain” like implementation that resists the “three general problem” and counterfeiting. And when properly implemented, the “block chain” implementation is cost free. It has no use for “proof of work”. It “knows” it’s keeping track of performance on promises.
Privacy means you get to decide whether to disclose the intimate details of your life. Some will happily share. That is their choice. But others will prefer to keep those details private.
MD: But keep in mind, while “real” money used in trade is “always anonymous”, it’s creation is always “open and transparent”. Awareness of this distinction is crucial.
In a digital world, personal information can spread far and wide. And it can be used to exclude or exploit people on the margins. The choice about what information to share is important. For some, flourishing depends on carefully choosing how much others know about their politics, religion, relationships, or medical conditions.
Financial privacy matters just as much as privacy in other areas. What we do reveals much more about who we are than what we say. And what we do often requires spending money. In many cases, meaningful privacy requires financial privacy.
MD: Again, keep in mind that money is only concerned with the problem of “counterfeiting”. It cares not at all who is using it and for what. But people using it must know and expect it is genuine…i.e. not counterfeited. And of course we all know the principal counterfeiters of money are governments. For a “real” money process to exist, it’s operation must be transparent and impervious to any attempts to control or to counterfeit it. It is simply about record keeping.
Privacy also operationalizes the presumption of innocence and promotes due process. You are not obliged to testify against yourself. If law enforcement believes you have done something unlawful, they must convince a judge to issue a warrant before rifling through your things. Likewise, financial privacy prevents authorities from monitoring your transactions without authorization.
MD: Law doesn’t apply to a “real” money process. But open communication and mitigation is crucial. Again, it’s about making counterfeiting impossible. And when detected it must reveal who did the counterfeiting; see that the counterfeiting doesn’t happen again; and treat the counterfeiting for what it is… a “default”. And thus it immediately mitigates it with “interest” collection of like amount. This must be totally transparent…so the marketplace can ostracize the perps. Who pays the interest? Other irresponsible traders.
The recent executive order, to the administration’s credit, notes that a CBDC should “maintain privacy; and shield against arbitrary or unlawful surveillance, which can contribute to human rights abuses.” But a reasonable person might worry that the government is paying lip service to privacy concerns.
MD: A principle “axiom” must be observed at all times. If you are considering a government solution to any problem, you are still looking for a solution. Government is “never” the solution to any problem. It is just a magnifier of the problem.
A recent paper from the Fed, offered as “the first step in a public discussion” about CBDCs, suggests the central bank has no interest in guaranteeing privacy at the design stage. Instead, it maintains that a “CBDC would need to strike an appropriate balance […] between safeguarding the privacy rights of consumers and affording the transparency necessary to deter criminal activity.” The Fed then solicits comments on how a CBDC might “provide privacy to consumers without providing complete anonymity,” which it seems to equate with “facilitating illicit financial activity.” A U.S. CBDC, in other words, will likely offer much less privacy than cash.
MD: No central entity (especially a central bank) is ever involved in a “real” money process. Rather, it is the “process” that is the entity. As such, the process is universally used and totally transparent to all traders at all times.
We do not deny that financial privacy benefits criminals and tax cheats. Such claims tend to be exaggerated, though. In reality, it is a small price to pay for civil liberty. That due process applies to everyone — criminals included — is no reason to scrap the Fourth or Fifth Amendments.
MD: Taxes implies government…so it is a non-starter. If government participation was ever a valid option, it would be the “only” viable option. You would pay taxes (and only taxes) for everything. Your gasoline, your groceries, your clothing…all would be free. You would just pay tax and it would be covered out of that. Some people call this communism. Some call it insurance. It’s all nonsense.
Policymakers may be tempted to compromise on financial privacy when implementing a CBDC. Instead, they should attempt to replicate the privacy afforded by cash. Like non-alcoholic beer, the Fed’s “digital form of paper money” would superficially resemble the real McCoy while lacking its defining feature.
MD: Policy is the the marker here. No process is every properly governed by policy. The closest we should ever come to adopting policy is the “golden rule”. Policy is different from process. Money is a “process”. It cares nothing about policies like full employment and setting inflation at 2% (while continuously failing by a factor of 2).
MD: Note: There are charts
embedded in this article
which link back to the original. In time they will likely get
broken.
MD: A proper MOE (Medium of Exchange or Money) Process
treats all “traders” equally. But this instance does bring on to
the stage an important case. What limits should be placed on the
size of “promises” it will embrace…and why?
The case is fairly simple for individuals. It easily embraces
the case for viable shelter (buying a house). It easily embraces the
case for viable transportation (buying a car). It easily embraces
the case for unanticipated medical needs (supplementing insurance).
But how does it deal with the case for highly leveraged promises?
I will answer this question as I read the article and
intersperse my comments. Hopefully it will address these issues. The
most important issues are regarding “leverage” and detection of
“rollovers”.
The only way to get really wealthy in any society is through
unusual leverage.
Banks grant themselves 10x the leverage you and I have. As
individuals we have no leverage. We work an hour…we make some
number of HULS (note: HULs…Hours of Unskilled Labor… are the
ideal MOE measure). We must be really really good at what we do
(e.g. neurosurgery) to be worth 10x what we were in high school).
The mom and pop shop has almost no leverage. They “are”
the business. But as they grow they hire help. And that is the
beginning of their leverage growth. They take a piece of their
workers’ labor as if they performed it themselves. As they grow they
retain earnings but may also take on debt (i.e. they make money
creating promises) or they take on partners (sell shares in their
company). The money creating case is problematic. You can’t just say
I want to create a car company and create $100B (or 10B HULS).
Then we have the financial wizards. They claim to be able to
deploy surplus HULs better those who earn those HULs. And they take
a piece of the action if they succeed. They don’t suffer if they
fail; their clients do the suffering. They use options, derivatives,
high speed trading, and myriad other tricks to multiply the natural
leverage this game brings them.
Selling shares is not problematic. Each shareholder has to
decide how he’s going to come up with the money to pay for his
share. And the business itself decides how it will reward his
participation. There are many games being played in this space to
help mom and pop keep control as they grow. For example, they can
give themselves options to buy shares as payment. They can mix debt
and equity instruments as warrants. The options have proven to be
inexhaustible…their consequences unknowable and unsupportable.
Such tactics are of no concern to the MOE process. Its only
interest is in the “reasonableness” of the money creation and
tracking its return and destruction. That means assessing the
trader’s propensity to default and monitoring his performance in
real time. And we know how to address such issues. We call them
actuaries. They have great experience in the mutual casualty
insurance business.
So now lets see how we address this very unusual but real
instance of a threat to the MOE process. More importantly, we see
how the MOE process places the responsibility exactly where it
belongs…with the promise maker and with the process behavior. This
characteristic gives some assurance of self discipline.
If the trader screws up, the trader must back his failed
promise or he must pay the consequences (i.e. be banned from
creating money…as we know all governments will be banned if they
don’t change their behavior).
If the process screws up (i.e. supports an irresponsible
trader), it must penalize oncoming traders (responsible or
irresponsible) immediately. They pay INTEREST (which is returned if
they prove to be responsible).
Now to the article. My interspersed comments appear formatted
as this pretext is formatted. And please bear with me…I’m thinking
through this as I write and it’s worth at least what you’re paying
for it.
==================
Well, with everyone and everything else getting a bailout, may as
well go all the way.
MD: What a remarkable opening. Is that like “if rape
is inevitable, relax and enjoy it”?
Two months after we
reported that the state of California is trying to turn
centuries of finance on its head by allowing businesses to walk away
from commercial leases – in other words to make commercial debt
non-recourse – a move the California Business Properties Association
said “could cause a financial collapse”, attempts to bail
out commercial lenders have reached the Federal level, with the WSJ
reporting that lawmakers have introduced a bill to provide
cash to struggling hotels and shopping centers that weren’t able
to pause mortgage payments after the coronavirus shut down the U.S.
Economy.
MD: Well, the concept of “throwing good money after bad” is well known. And this likely falls into that category. Shopping malls have become a thing of the past. They had their 50years in the sun and have now been made obsolete by a better idea (.e.g. Amazon). The handwriting was on the wall way before the COVID-19 hoax and government lock-down suspended trade. COVID-19 is a neutron bomb attack. It kills people but doesn’t destroy things. For those still alive, a restart should be a simple process. Suspend the delivery on existing money creating promises until the external restrictions have been lifted. Continue to support new money creating promises using regular actuarial principles. Such principles will detect “rollover” attempts and reject them.
I think the obvious solution is to recognize the situation and do an “automatic extension” of promise time terms (the “time” part of the time and space spanning trade) of all affected promises, and move painlessly on down the road. Nobody gets hurt.
The bill would set up a government-backed funding vehicle which
companies could tap to stay current on their mortgages. It is meant
in particular to help those who borrowed in the $550 billion CMBS
market in which mortgages are re-packaged into bonds and sold to
Wall Street. What it really represents, is a bailout of the only
group of borrowers that had so far not found access to the Fed’s
various generous rescue facilities: and that’s where Congress comes
in.
MD: The problem as expressed here does not exist with a
proper MOE process. Money is not “backed” by anything but the
process. So there is no such thing as a CMBS market or
mortgage-backed securities and bonds. If we had a proper MOE
process, such techniques could still exist for those who want the
risk of non-responsible traders. But that is no concern or
responsibility of the money process. And the phrase
“government-backed funding vehicle” is a marker. This is not a
viable proposal with the word “government” in it.
To be sure, the commercial real estate market is imploding, and
as we reported at the start of the month, some 10% of loans in
commercial mortgage-backed securities were 30 or more days
delinquent at the end of June, including nearly a quarter of loans
tied to the hard-hit hotel industry, according to Trepp LLC.
MD: And if those leases were taken on by trader created
money, then an automatic 30 day extension would have already been
applied to their promise. Such extensions could go on indefinitely.
There are no so-called investors involved at all. Mom and pop
created the money (they created money for the full lease as if it
was a purchase…but is paid out to the seller monthly) and this is
one of those unavoidable occurrences that the money process
naturally accommodates. Loan sharks anticipate this too. They take
the property. Moving these leases into the MOE process space stops
the domino effect such instances create.
MD: The above curve illustrates the superiority of the
MOE process solution. In April, the COVID-19 hoax lock down
occurred. Up until then the market was healthy and getting more
healthy. Then wammo!. With the MOE process, the above curve would go
flat…or maybe even continue to go down. And a new curve would
start up. That curve would be the automatic extensions of the time
component of the money creating promises. There is no pain to anyone
anywhere…and everyone is still responsible for their promise.
Note, this concept also applies to floor plans purchased in
anticipation of normal business sales performance…now interrupted
by the lock down. Such provisions are now provided by banks through
lines of credit or compensating balance loans…and they profit
exorbitantly.
“The numbers are getting more dire and the projections are
getting more stern,” said Rep. Van Taylor (R., Texas), who is
sponsoring the bill alongside Rep. Al Lawson (D., Fla.).
MD: In our system “sponsoring a bill” means “bowing
to a lobbyist”. That’s how our corrupt system works. That’s what
gives the wealthy so much leverage over the mom and pops. A proper
MOE process levels the playing field…at no cost or risk to anyone.
Under the proposal, banks would extend money to help these
borrowers and the facility would provide a Treasury Department
guarantee that banks are repaid. The funding would come from
a $454 billion pot set aside for distressed businesses in the
earlier stimulus bill.
MD: You’ve got to love that phrase “banks would extend money”. Folks. The banks don’t have money. They have a 10x leverage privilege. A proper MOE process makes that privilege unnecessary. Let the banks continue to exist if they want to. But the 10x privilege is an anachronism.
Richard Pietrafesa owns three hotels on the East Coast
that were financed with CMBS loans. They have recently had occupancy
of around 50% or less, which doesn’t bring in enough revenue to
make mortgage payments, he said.
MD: And here is a case where we have to ask: where does the money come from? When you buy a house over time you can securely make that money creating promise. You know what you expect to make and purchase a house accordingly. But if the income is interrupted its your problem to find a replacement for it.
But Pietrafesa has no way of replacing his interruption. Such deals are heavily leveraged (OPM…other people’s money). He couldn’t get the MOE process to allow this money creating trade in the first place. He would have to rely on forming a collective to get his hotel deal done. And if the collective fails, well, as individuals in the collective, they have an incentive to keep it from failing or they lose their share. The MOE process may allow their trading promise to Pietrafesa…but would not allow Pietrafesa’s promise to the owner of the hotel he purchased. For example, just like buying a house with time payments, they could actuarially show they could buy a piece of a hotel with time payments…and be responsible if it fails.
He said he is now two months behind on payments for one
of his properties, a Fairfield Inn & Suites in Charleston, S.C.
He has money set aside in a separate reserve, he said, but his
special servicer hasn’t allowed him to access it to make debt
payments.
MD: Here we have the domino effect. He’s paying a “special servicer” to cover this risk. He’s buying insurance. It’s an actuarial problem. And insurance companies are the ultimate leveragor. In insurance CLAIMs = PREMIUMS. The money is made on the investment income. But with a real MOE process which guarantees zero INFLATION, investment income can’t benefit from the leverage INFLATION gives. The insurance business becomes a risk mitigation business with a proper MOE process…as it should be.
“It’s like a debtor’s prison,” Mr. Pietrafesa
said.
MD: An MOE process does not have a provision for penalizing. It only has a provision for naturally ostracizing. Pietrafesa would have to pay INTEREST if he DEFAULTs and tries to create money again. And he has to make up that DEFAULT to become a responsible money creating trader again. It’s the natural negative feedback stabilizing loop of the process.
Those magic words, it would appear, is all one needs to say these
days to get a government and/or Fed-sanctioned bailout. Because in a
world taken over by zombies, failure is no longer an option.
MD: These days are no different than other days. In the
olden days the zombies were taken over by the Rothschilds…through
their J.P.Morgan agency. It was and is a protection racket…just
like the mafia runs. A proper MOE process removes the leverage and
drives them out of business…kind of like legalizing drugs drives
those dealers them out of that business. Ultimately, people need to
be responsible for their own stupidity…but not for the stupidity
of others.
While any struggling commercial borrower that was previously in
good financial standing would be eligible to apply for funds to
cover mortgage payments, the facility is designed specifically for
CMBS borrowers.
MD: Thus, the leverage is in the ability to lobby. Such
advantage needs to be eliminated…in a very natural, not
legislative, manner. A proper MOE process goes far in enabling that.
It gets better, because not only are taxpayers ultimately on the
hook via the various Fed-Treasury JVs that will fund these programs,
but the new money will by default be junior to existing insolvent
debt. As the Journal explains, “many of these borrowers have
provisions in their initial loan documents that forbid them from
taking on more debt without additional approval from their
servicers. The proposed facility would instead structure the
cash infusions as preferred equity, which isn’t subject to the
debt restrictions.“
MD: The taxpayers are not on the hook. Our current
process with no stabilizing negative feedback will just keep
escalating until it blows itself up. Then most people (not in the
inner circle with advance warning) lose; it resets; and starts all
over again…with the insiders picking up the pieces for pennies on
the dollar. We now pay over 3/4ths of what we earn to governments.
Where does communism begin? Where does slavery begin?. It’s not a
good system folks. We’ve been duped. And praising the constitution
and wrapping ourselves in the flag is not going to fix it. It was
broken when it was installed…the anti-federalists got it right but
lost the argument.
Yes, it’s also means that the new capital is JUNIOR
to the debt, which means that if there is another economic downturn,
the taxpayer funds get wiped out first while the pre-existing debt –
the debt which was unreapayble to begin with – will remain on the
books!
MD: When a building collapses, it’s kind of immaterial
whether the lower floors or the upper floors collapse first. When
this calamity happens, the dirt this house of cards stands on is the
only thing of value.
Perhaps sensing the shitstorm that this proposal would create,
the WSJ admits that “the preferred equity would be considered
junior to other debt but must be repaid with interest before the
property owner can pull money out of the business.”
MD: And this is how we get 40,000 new laws every year.
They start with a bad process (i.e. principles diluted by laws) and
are stuck with a huge maintenance problem.
What was left completely unsaid is that the existing impaired
CMBS debt will instantly become money good thanks to the
junior capital infusion from – drumroll – idiot taxpayers who won’t
even understand what is going on.
MD: “will instantly become money”: Let’s examine
this. We know what money is. So somehow he’s saying that some trader
instantly makes a promise spanning time and space here. Who’s the
trader, the taxpayer? Well that’s no different than what we have now
with government doing perpetual rollovers of their trading promises.
That’s not money creation. That’s counterfeiting. We already know
that.
How did this ridiculously audacious proposal come to being? Well,
Taylor led a bipartisan group of more than 100 lawmakers who last
month signed a letter asking the Federal Reserve and Treasury to
come up with a solution for the CMBS issues. Treasury Secretary
Steven Mnuchin and Fed Chairman Jerome Powell have indicated that
this may be an issue best addressed by Congress.
MD: “asking the Federal Reserve and Treasury to come
up with a solution”? They’re the problem. Institute a proper MOE
process and we drive out the problem. That allows us to address
issues in a “proper” context rather than an “opportunist”
context.
In other words, while the Fed will be providing the special
purpose bailout vehicle, it is ultimately a decision for Congress
whether to bail out thousands of insolvent hotels and malls.
MD: The malls have no future. They are the buggy whip
of a previous era. They need to be plowed under and reseeded. But
the hotels are viable. They are just suspended in time. If they’re
collectively owned they are the responsibility of the members of the
collective. They are suspended in time. They are not failing. And
suspension carries no cost in this instance except maintenance.
Remember, with a propper MOE process, money has zero time value.
Failure? That’s something else again. It all get’s back to the
individual traders’ responsibility and recourse. A proper MOE
process should allow small traders to create money to tide
themselves over the temporary situation. It should not support large
highly leveraged traders to do so. It’s an actuarial problem.
And if some in the industry have warned that an attempt to rescue
the CMBS market would disproportionately benefit a handful of large
real-estate owners, rather than small-business owners, it is because
they are precisely right: roughly 80% of CMBS debt is held by a
handful of funds who will be the ultimate beneficiaries of this
unprecedented bailout; funds which have spent a lot of money
lobbying Messrs Taylor and Lawson.
MD: Handful of “funds”. What is a fund but a
collective… where the manager gets the gains and the participants
get the losses. People who buy into a fund roll their own dice. When
the fund is a pension fund, only the pensioner should have control.
With perpetual zero inflation, placing their pension under a rock is
a viable solution.
Of course, none of this will
be revealed and instead the talking points will focus on reaching the
dumbest common denominator. Taylor said the legislation is focused on
– what else – saving jobs. What he didn’t say is that each job that
is saved will end up getting lost just months later, and meanwhile it
will cost millions of dollars “per job” just to make sure
that the billionaires who hold the CMBS debt – such as Tom Barrack
who recently
urged a margin call moratorium in the CMBS market – come out
whole.
MD: Saving jobs “is” the issue. These workers are
suspended in time. It’s their responsibility to provide for
themselves. They can do this by creating money to tide themselves
over (say for a year or two if necessary). A proper MOE process could
actuarially support this money creation.
Say we have the maitre-d of the hotel restaurant. It’s
pragmatic for him to span this interruption and go back to work as if
nothing happened. So he creates a time and space spanning money
creating promise. He creates two years of normal income to be paid
back 1/100th monthly. The payback begins two years hence and proceeds
100 months. When he goes back to work he begins paying back,
essentially cutting his own salary a manageable amount. And while
suspended, he can put up dry-wall and make some pin money.
For the bar-back it’s a little different. He may make a money
creating promise covering 3 months income to be paid back monthly
beginning in three months over a two year span. And he immediately
goes looking for a replacement job…maybe putting up dry-wall. His
job is not his “career”.
“This started with employees in my district calling and saying
‘I lost my job’,” Taylor said, clearly hoping that he is dealing
with absolute idiots.
MD: An idiot institutes processes that have built in
domino effect.
And while it is unclear if this bill will pass – at this point
there is literally money flying out of helicopters and the US deficit
is exploding by hundreds of billions every month so who really gives
a shit if a few more billionaires are bailed out by taxpayers –
should this happen, well readers may want to close out the trade we
called the “The
Next Big Short“, namely CMBX 9, whose outlier exposure to
hotels which had emerged as the most impacted sector from the
pandemic.
MD: The money flying out of the helicopters is
counterfeit. It will go directly to producing INFLATION. It will only
create taxes to the extent the money-changers demand their tribute
payments…that’s where “all” taxes go.
With a proper MOE process the domino effect is mitigated; a
natural stabilizing negative feedback mechanism prevails; and a
pragmatic self controlled recovery is instituted. Remember. When you
have a government solution to a problem, you just have the same
problem multiplied and are still looking for a solution.
Alternatively, those who wish to piggyback on this latest
egregious abuse of taxpayer funds, this crucifxion of capitalism and
latest glorification of moral hazard, and make some cash in the
process should do the opposite of the “Next Big Short”
and buy up the BBB- (or any other deeply impaired) tranche of the
CMBX Series 9, which will quickly soar to par if this bailout is ever
voted through.
MD: And the real character of so-called “investors”
is revealed and amplified. Without a proper MOE process, money is the
chips in an opportunist, privileged casino called capitalism.
Traderism is where real money lives.
MD: So here we have another good example where a proper MOE process doesn’t “treat” a problem; rather it anticipates it and prevents its effect.
Authored by Frank Shostak via The Mises Institute,
[MD] The Mises Institute is professionally and universally clueless about money. But within that community, Frank Shostak holds the record for irrational thought. In the olden days his clarion call was “money pumping” … as if money could be pumped. Let’s see what he’s up to now.
According to the Austrian Business Cycle Theory (ABCT) the artificial lowering of interest rates by the central bank leads to a misallocation of resources because businesses undertake various capital projects that prior to the lowering of interest rates weren’t considered as viable. This misallocation of resources is commonly described as an economic boom.
[MD] According to the theory of park swings, if you push on a swing, it will oscillate. What in the world does Shostak think the business cycle is but the money changers farming operation? We here at MD know that a “real” money process does not allow any such perturbations … thus this is a non-sequitur. Now let’s watch him sequitur.
As a rule businessmen discover their error once the central bank – that was instrumental in the artificial lowering of interest rates – reverses its stance, which in turn brings to a halt capital expansion and an ensuing economic bust. From the ABCT one can infer that the artificial lowering of interest rates sets a trap for businessmen by luring them into unsustainable business activities that are only exposed once the central bank tightens its interest rate stance.
[MD] As we love to do here, we point out the nonsense that happens or is imagined to happen without a real money process in operation. What Frank writes about here “can not happen” with a real money process. INTEREST collections are in a bear hug with DEFAULTs experienced. Neither INTEREST nor DEFAULTs are a knob anyone can turn.
Critics of the ABCT maintain that there is no reason why businessmen should fall prey again and again to an artificial lowering of interest rates. Businessmen are likely to learn from experience, the critics argue, and not fall into the trap produced by an artificial lowering of interest rates. Correct expectations will undo or neutralize the whole process of the boom-bust cycle that is set in motion by the artificial lowering of interest rates. Hence, it is held, the ABCT is not a serious contender in the explanation of modern business cycle phenomena.
[MD] What Frank writes here would be true … if we had a real money process. But we don’t. We have a manipulated money process. What could be more obvious when we see them repeatedly use the term “monetary policy”. A real money process has no such capability … and never will. But the so-called “business cycle” which requires no theoretical examination … is a real tool of manipulation. And it does what it is intended to do … to put traders off balance in a “predictable way” … predictable to those turning the knobs … not to the traders suffering the manipulations.
According to a prominent critic of the ABCT, Gordon Tullock,
One would think that business people might be misled in the first couple of runs of the Rothbard cycle and not anticipate that the low interest rate will later be raised. That they would continue to be unable to figure this out, however, seems unlikely. Normally, Rothbard and other Austrians argue that entrepreneurs are well informed and make correct judgments. At the very least, one would assume that a well-informed businessperson interested in important matters concerned with the business would read Mises and Rothbard and, hence, anticipate the government action.1
[MD] Consider an inventory control analogy. If you know exactly what demand will be and have total control of supply, you can have a part arrive at the exact moment a customer comes in to buy it. But if either of those expectations cannot be expected, you must lay in “safety stock” (i.e. surplus for eventualities) to keep service percentage high. Now if someone is artificially manipulating demand or supply for their own benefit, you have two things: (1) A cheater benefiting from his behavior; and (2) A non-optimal process that must pay the cost of defending against the cheater. There’s enough of that going on in business without having it being done covertly and overtly to the money itself … especially in the name of “price stability” and “full employment”.
Even Mises himself had conceded that it is possible that some time in the future businessmen will stop responding to loose monetary policy thereby preventing the setting in motion of the boom-bust cycle.
[MD] No they won’t. In the inventory control example, the businessman statistically observed the supply and demand patterns. When they are noisy and unpredictably cyclical, he must lay in more safety stock. When they’re highly predictable, he can trim his safety stock dramatically. Let’s see what the “Mises” genius himself has to say on the subject.
In his reply to Lachmann he wrote,
It may be that businessmen will in the future react to credit expansion in another manner than they did in the past. It may be that they will avoid using for an expansion of their operations the easy money available, because they will keep in mind the inevitable end of the boom. Some signs forebode such a change. But it is too early to make a positive statement.2
[MD] Idiot! The businessman has no choice. He must serve his customers in the face of any eventuality. Picture him going to his bank and saying he’s not going to pay his mortgage this month because of “tightening” but fear not, next month there will be “loosening” and I will make both payments then.
Do Expectations Matter?
Now, a businessman has to cater for consumers future requirements if he wants to succeed in his business.
So whenever he observes a lowering in interest rates he knows that this most likely will provide a boost to the demand for various goods and services in the months ahead. Hence, if he wants to make a profit he would have to make the necessary arrangements to meet the future demand.
[MD] What is Shostak arguing for? He hasn’t made a demand to institute a “real” money process to make this manipulation impossible.
For instance, if a builder refuses to act on the likely increase in the demand for houses because he believes that this is on account of the loose monetary policy of the central bank and cannot be sustainable, then he will be out of business very quickly. To be in the building business means that he must be in tune with the demand for housing.
[MD] Actually, he’s better to be in tune with the money changer’s farming operation. That’s the tune that is being played.
Likewise, any other businessman in a given field will have to respond to the likely changes in demand in the area of his involvement if he wants to stay in business.
If a businessman has decided to be in a given business this means that the businessman is likely to cater for changes in the demand in this particular business irrespective of the underlying causes behind changes in demand. Failing to do so will put him out of business very quickly.
[MD] But do you see these businessmen or Shostak demanding the institution of a real money process? I wonder if Shostak will demand anything to deal with this manipulation problem.
Hence, regardless of expectations once the central bank tightens its stance most businessmen will “get caught”. A tighter stance will undermine demand for goods and services and this will put pressure on various business activities that sprang up whilst the interest rate stance was loose. An economic bust emerges.
Furthermore, even if businessmen have correctly anticipated the interest rate stance of the central bank and the subsequent changes in the growth rate of money supply, because of the variable time lag from money changes to its effect on economic activity it will be impossible to establish the accurate timing of the boom-bust cycle.
[MD] Frank. Read some history! Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1802 “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 them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their Fathers conquered…. I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies…. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.” And even if he didn’t write it, it’s absolutely true and obvious.
Due to the time lag, prior changes in money supply could continue to dominate the economic scene for an extended period. (Given that the time lag is variable, it is not possible to ascertain when a given change in the money supply growth rate is going to start to dominate the economic scene and when the effect of past changes in money supply is going to vanish).
We can conclude that correct expectations cannot prevent boom-bust cycles once the central bank has eased its interest rate stance.
The only way to stop the menace of boom-bust cycles is for the central bank to stop the tampering with financial markets.
[MD] And the only way to get them to do that … since they’re doing it “on purpose for their farming operation” … is to INSTITUTE A REAL MONEY PROCESS TO COMPETE WITH THEM. Asking them kindly “please don’t do that” isn’t going to work.
MD: As usual, the title itself exposes the total lack of understanding of what money is. As anyone knows who has been paying attention here, interest rates are “not” controlled by anyone or anything in a “proper” MOE process. INTEREST collections are perpetually and immediately made to meet DEFAULTs experienced … and if that is under anyone’s control, it is the trader defaulting.
Inflation-adjusted—or ‘real’—rates remain low, lending support to booming , prices for stocks, property and other assets. But some worry that could vanish sooner than markets realize
MD: Actually, what we’re seeing here is the banks farming operation in action. They’ve loaded up the wagon with energized traders’ expectations and resulting risk taking behavior, and they will soon pull the rug out from under them.
By Jon Sindreu
Dec. 26, 2017 7:47 a.m. ET
Investors are elated by a booming global economy and the promise of central banks to tighten monetary policy only gradually. But a question haunts them: Will interest rates develop a mind of their own?
MD: “Will interest rates develop a mind of their own?” Can a stupider question be posed? Interest “rates” are a function of two things. In the numerator, they are a function of continuously accumulated DEFAULT experience. In the denominator they are a function of what someone chooses that denominator to be. In a “proper” MOE process, the denominator would be related to cumulative defaults for each money-creating class, according to their actuarial propensity to DEFAULT.
While central banks set short-term rates—the 1.5% rate that the Federal Reserve publishes on its website—economists disagree about how much control they have over long-term borrowing costs. These are gauged by government-bond yields, especially those with returns tied to inflation.
MD: These so-called short-term rates are arbitrarily set by our current system. In general, they are about what their target rate of INFLATION is. They target 2%, have historically delivered 4%, while the proper value of inflation is 0%.
Low inflation-indexed—or “real”—rates push money into risky assets, because investors get little extra purchasing power for holding safer securities. According to a new report by BlackRock Inc., the world’s biggest asset manager, subdued real rates have been 2017’s main driver of returns in global infrastructure debt and investment-grade corporate debt. They also boost gold and real estate, analysts say, which don’t pay coupons but don’t lose value when inflation rises.
MD: “Subdued real rates?” What more direct evidence could their be of the banks farming operation? Do these so-called “asset managers” just accept this? Or are they actually part of the farming operation themselves? “Main driver of returns?” In a “proper” money process, supply/demand ratios for each product and service are the main … and only real … driver of returns. If the ratio is high, the return will be low and vice-versa. Money has nothing to do with it because its perpetual supply/demand ratio is 1.000.
Many markets could climb off record highs if real rates rise. But it is hard to forecast, said Kevin Gardiner, global investment strategist at Rothschild Wealth Management, because “nobody knows exactly what sets interest rates.”
MD: “Climb off?” … don’t they mean “fall off?”. Interest rates in the current process only benefit the money changers. With their special privilege, a 1% increase in interest rates yields them a 10% increase in return. In a proper process with perpetual 0% inflation, their privilege becomes no privilege at all … ten times zero is zero (10x 0.0000 = 0.0000)
Real rates have often moved in lockstep with central-bank policy—but not always. In the 1970s, runaway inflation pushed real rates down even as the Fed and other central banks increased nominal rates.
MD: With a “proper” process, the only “policy” is that DEFAULTs are immediately met with INTEREST collections of equal amount. That policy never ever changes. A “proper” process cannot be farmed.
Yields on 10-year inflation-linked Treasurys are currently below 0.5%. Before the 2008 financial crisis, they hovered at around 2%. After the Fed unleashed unseen amounts of monetary stimulus, they hit a record-low of minus 0.87% in 2013. Many analysts and investors see it as a sign that policy makers have strong control over real rates.
MD: With a “proper” process there is no such thing as “monetary stimulus”. Money is in perpetual free supply. That supply is perpetually identical to demand for the money yielding perpetual zero inflation.
“We are overweight global indexed bonds,” said Paul Rayner, head of government bonds at Royal London Asset Management. “We’ve done a lot of analysis on this, and ultimately the biggest driver of government bond yields still remains central bank activity, even for [inflation-linked bonds].”
MD: With a proper MOE process, Rayner is out of work. There is no “lot of analysis” to be done. Their worshiped relation ((1+”i”)^”n”) … they call it the time value of money … is neutered when “i” is perpetually zero.
With a “proper” MOE process, there are no “government bonds”. Governments are simply no different than any other trader. If they are responsible, they create money without any interest load. If they are deadbeats, they pay interest accordingly. And since governments “never” return the money they create (they just roll their trading promises over … which is default), the interest paid by them perpetually equals the money they wish to create. In other words, they “can’t” create money.
But classic economic theory says that central banks can only influence rates at first, as people ultimately see through their meddling. So unless officials set policy to reflect the economy’s long-term economic trends—which is how the Fed’s Janet Yellen and Mark Carney at the Bank of England have justified keeping rates low in recent years—inflation or deflation will follow.
MD: “Classic economic theory?” You mean “classic economic stupidity!” don’t you? People never see through banks meddling. It is the farming operation and it has worked as long as the governments they institute protect the operation. Again, this is an open realization that banks have an enormously profitable farming operation. A competing “proper” MOE process would make that farming operation experience perpetual crop failure and/or market opposition.
According to this view, rates are so low because people are saving a lot and these saved funds can be lent out and used to invest, a copious supply that pulls down the cost of borrowing.
MD: Stupid is as stupid does … or as stupid has been duped to think. In our current process there is the illusion that savings play a role. And the 10x leverage privilege retail banks enjoy is directly affected by that. But in the final analysis, it is the Rothschilds that control everything through their control of all but two central banks in the entire world … and of the Bank of International Settlements. They do whatever they please. With a competing process they would be out of business almost instantaneously, never to raise their ugly head and influence again … ever!
Some money managers and analysts now warn that the tide is about to shift, whether central banks keep policy easy or not. By looking at the share of the population aged between 35 and 64—when people save the most—research firm Gavekal predicts real rates will soon rise as people retire and spend their life savings, eroding gains in stock markets.
MD: Boy … this guy is deluded beyond repair I think. The Rothschilds are in total control. The theoretical mechanisms the writer thinks are at work have been propagandized into his head. Yes, a degree in economics is just buying self imposed propaganda. With a proper MOE process, there are no economics … just trading decisions made on a perfectly static level playing field … i.e. buying and selling and producing decisions.
It “could happen tomorrow or 10 years from now, but I’m not counting on the latter,” said Gavekal analyst Will Denyer.
J.P. Morgan Asset Management argues that aging is already starting to push rates higher, meaning that 10-year real yields will be 0.75 percentage point higher over the next 10 years.
Other investors have a different worry: They fear that yields will stay low even if central banks try to tighten policy because they are concerned a recession may be coming. This year, the Fed has nudged up rates three times and yields on long-term government bonds—both nominal and inflation-linked debt—have stayed unchanged or declined, echoing similar issues that then Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan had in 2005.
MD: Translation: “a recession may be coming” means “harvest time may be coming”. It’s pretty easy to see when it’s time to harvest. You look at how ripe the crop is … i.e. how thoroughly the traders have been sucked in. The farming analogy is near perfect.
Indeed, the yield curve—the yield gap between short and long-term Treasurys—is now at its flattest since 2007, and many investors underscore that, in the past, this has often preceded an economic slowdown in the U.S.
“Unless the evidence is very compelling that’s a false signal, I think the market’s going to be nervous,” said David Riley, head of credit strategy at BlueBay Asset Management, who is now investing more cautiously.
MD: Booga booga … buy gold advises the great see-er.
Still, investors may read too much into what yields say about the economy, said the Bank for International Settlements, a consortium of central banks. In new research looking at 18 countries since 1870, the BIS found no clear link between rates and factors like demographics and productivity—it is mostly central-bank policy that matters.
MD: “A consortium of central banks?”… Rothschield’s holding company you mean?
Does this mean investors can rest easy because rates won’t creep up on them? Not so fast, said Claudio Borio, head of the monetary and economic department at the BIS, because officials may still raise them to contain market optimism. Central banks in Canada, Sweden, Norway and Thailand are thinking along these lines, analysts said.
MD: “Not so fast” says Rothschild’s weather man. We can do anything to the crop we choose to do … when we choose to do it.
If central banks control real rates, then it is inflation that has a life of its own—it isn’t just a reaction to officials deviating from economic trends—and it could explain why central bankers have failed to stoke it for years. So officials might as well raise rates to quash bubbles instead of “fine-tuning inflation so much,” Mr. Borio said.
MD: Anyone who has followed MoneyDelusions analysis of these ridiculous articles has to be holding their sides in pain from laughing too hard.
Still, Isabelle Mateos y Lago, global macro strategist at BlackRock Investment Institute, thinks investors don’t have to worry about this yet.
“The conversation is moving this way, but I don’t think central bankers have a fully articulated view,” she said.
MD: “Central banks don’t have a fully articulated view?” Dream on. They do control the weather of this farming operation you know. And they control the farmers ability to buy seed and tractors and land. But having dropped the obligatory number of names, the write concludes his nonsense for now.
Write to Jon Sindreu at jon.sindreu@wsj.com
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MD: Please do write Jon as he begs … and send him a link to this exposure of his Money Delusion.
MD: Remembering what money really is … “an in-process promise to complete a trade over time and space” … that it is only created by traders … and that for any given trading promise, it only exists for the duration of that promise … and that during that interim time, there is perpetual perfect supply/demand (i.e. zero inflation) of that money created … knowing all that, look how silly such articles like this become.
by Izabella Kaminska
In 1999, the actor Whoopi Goldberg made a bold decision. Rather than be paid for an endorsement for a dotcom start-up, she took a 10 per cent stake in the business. It seemed wise. At the time, everyone was investing in internet businesses and a rush of initial public offerings was making early investors into millionaires. I was reminded of this amid a flurry of news about the new boom in cryptocurrencies — and their celebrity backers. Ms Goldberg’s venture, Flooz, was billed as the future of money in a digital world and it hoped one day to rival the dollar.
MD: Let’s see if there is evidence that they had any clue about what money is before starting this venture. Nope!
The way it worked, however, was much less revolutionary. The service resembled a gift certificate: customers paid in dollars and received Flooz balances. These could be redeemed at participating merchants, with the hope that credits would one day circulate as money in their own right.
MD: What’s the point? How were they supposed to work without dollars kicking them off in the first place? When they replaced the dollar, what was going to create them?
The problem for Flooz was that little prevented mass replication of its model. One prominent competitor, Beenz, differed only slightly, by allowing its units to trade at fluctuating market prices.
MD: A “proper” MOE process can have no competitors. A competitor either does the exact same thing as this proper MOE process, or it isn’t competitive. And since there is no money to be made in the process (contrasted to the similar casualty insurance process where money is made on investment income), it’s not going to attract many competitors. It would be the trading commons themselves who would steward the process. We have experience with this. The internet is just such a process example … a technology commons.
Like banking syndicates before them, the ventures decided to club together for mutual benefit by accepting each other’s currencies in their networks. Even so, by 2001 both companies had failed, brought down by a lack of the one ingredient that counts most in finance: trust. Flooz was knocked by security concerns after it transpired that a Russian crime syndicate had taken advantage of its currency, while the fluctuating value of Beenz soon put users off.
MD: Fluctuating value turning users off is a good sign. Users aren’t as clueless as these entrepreneurs.
Their loss turned into PayPal’s gain, the latter succeeding precisely because it had set its aspirations much lower. Rather than replace established currencies, PayPal focused on improving the dollar’s online mobility, notably by creating a secure network that gained public support. This, it turned out, is what people really wanted.
MD: And PayPal missed the real opportunity by not following up. If they had gone ahead and implemented micro-transactions, I would be paying a tiny (what 1 cent; 5 cents?) price for reading this article. That day has to come. Supporting the likes of FT with advertising and subscriptions is just plain nonsense.
Did we learn anything from the failures of the internet boom? Apparently not. In what is looking increasingly like a new incarnation of dotcom fever, celebrities are endorsing virtual currency systems. Heiress and reality TV star Paris Hilton tweeted this week that she would be backing fundraising for LydianCoin, a digital token still at concept stage. It offers redemption against online artificial intelligence-assisted advertising campaigns.
MD: Advertising campaigns “are” artificial intelligence. We know it as propaganda. It’s annoying … and really dangerous when it reaches the minds of the stupid.
Baroness Michelle Mone, a businesswoman, announced she would be accepting bitcoin in exchange for luxury Dubai flats. What is particularly striking about this path to riches is its “growing money on trees” character.
MD: What is “particularly striking” is that someone would part with their bitcoins for one of her flats … knowing the extraordinary deflationary nature of bitcoins.
While the internet boom was dominated by IPOs, linked to a potentially profitable venture to come, this time it is “initial coin offerings” igniting investor fervour. Most ICOs do not aspire to deliver profits or returns. Indeed, from a regulatory standpoint, they cannot — most lawyers agree doing so could classify them as securities, drawing regulatory intervention which would force them into stringent listing processes.
MD: If they knew what real money was, they would know that every trader (like you and me contracting for a house or car with monthly payments) is making an ICO. What in the world is it going to take to get these brilliant idiots to recognize and understand the obvious?
That opinion was substantiated in July when the US Securities and Exchange Commission warned: “Virtual coins or tokens may be securities and subject to the federal securities laws” and that “it is relatively easy for anyone to use blockchain technology to create an ICO that looks impressive, even though it might actually be a scam.”
MD: Now isn’t that the pot calling the kettle black. The SEC is itself a scam.
So most ICOs make do by selling tokens for pre-existing virtual currencies for promises of direct redemption against online goods, services or concepts, or simply in the hope the tokens themselves will rocket in value despite offering nothing specific in return.
MD: Stupid is as stupid does. If you know that zero inflation is the right number for any money you don’t go looking for “rocketing” value. An ideal unit for money is the HUL (Hour of Unskilled Labor). We were all a HUL doing summer jobs in high-school so we can relate to them any time in our lives … and to any trade we make. The HUL itself has not changed over all time. It trades for the same size hole in the ground. With median income now at about $50,000 per year, the median person is able to trade his skilled hours for about 3.5 HULs these days.
They still think they can succeed where other parallel currency systems have failed, by bolting into pre- established blockchain-distributed currency systems such as Ethereum or bitcoin.
MD: A proper MOE process is totally transparent when it comes to the money creation/destruction parts of the process. Block-chain techniques (i.e. universally accessible ledger) would be helpful to enhance that transparency. But there would be no mining involved. New blocks would have to be created at any time at zero cost.
These already come with a network of token-owning users. But with the numbers of conventional merchants that will accept these currencies falling rather than rising, these holders need something more compelling to spend their digital wealth on. As it stands, the real economy can only be accessed by cashing out digital currency for conventional money at cryptocurrency exchanges. This comes at some expense.
MD: So far, the expense is insignificant … because of the enormous “guaranteed” continual deflation of the cryptocurrency itself (their ridiculous mining process). It’s kind of like the reverse of our government run lotteries. With government lotteries, you are guaranteed to lose (except for the minuscule chance you win). With cryptocurrency, you are guaranteed to win (until everyone loses as what is essentially a Ponzi scheme … with no Ponzi … comes down).
But with regulators clamping down on how exchanges are governed, token holders who cannot or do not want to pass through know-your-customer and anti-money laundering procedures remain frozen out.
MD: What’s disconcerting is the knowledge that if we instituted a “proper” MOE process, the regulators would clamp down on it too. It would make their current counterfeiting impossible … and it would make it impossible for money changers to demand tribute. That would just not stand. Regulators and governments everywhere are a major part of our problem.
That leaves their holdings good for only three things: virtual currency speculation, which is ultimately a zero-sum game; redemption against dark-market goods or capital control circumvention. It is assumed ICOs offering real goods, services or real estate in exchange for cryptocurrencies can somehow tap into this sizeable, albeit potentially illicit and restricted, wealth pool.
MD: Real estate wants positive inflation. Money changers in real estate do not want real money (there’s no leverage in it … time value of real money is guaranteed to be perpetually 1.0000) … and for sure they don’t want money that is guaranteed deflationary.
Yet if competing unregulated economies really start gaining traction, governments will act. China’s central bank has already branded ICOs an illegal form of crowdfunding and more rulings are expected from other jurisdictions in coming weeks.
Then again, if history teaches us anything, the system’s own propensity to cultivate fraud and unnecessary complexity in the face of more secure and regulated competition may be the more likely thing to bring it down.
MD: Actually, if you crowd the money changers existing con … “they” are likely to bring it down. “Real” money crowds money changers out of existence. That will not stand. Too bad for us traders and producers in society.
When given the choice, people usually opt for security.
MD: Which of course we don’t have … if you call government taking 3/4ths of everything we make …. you can’t call that security. I call it slavery. If you call money changers taking “all” taxes we pay as tribute … leaving governments (which the money changers instituted to protect their con) to sustain themselves by counterfeiting … I call that criminal.
izabella.kaminska@ft.com Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2017. All rights reserved. You may share using our article tools. Please don’t copy articles from FT.com and redistribute by email or post to the web.
MD: I am openly violating this request. My comments are far more valuable than anything to be learned in this article. And the fairest way to make my comments is to intersperse them in the disinformation that these articles present.
by Tyler DurdenSaturday, May 21, 2022 – 01:30 PM
