Also, government’s way of trying to remain anonymous . . . .
Some people believe in coincidences. Others deny that there’s any such thing—at least in the arena of politics.
I haven’t made up my mind. I’m inclined to believe that, while conspiracies are likely explanations for many seeming “coincidences,” “innocent” coincidences are still possible.
Nevertheless, when someone flips a coin that comes up heads ten times in a row, five times in a row, or just three times in a row, even naïve fellows like myself begin to suspect that something more than “coincidence” is at work.
For example,
• On Tuesday, June 18th, President Obama said that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke had done a “great job” but had, “already stayed a lot longer than he wanted or he was supposed to.”
Later that day, former Federal Reserve governor Laurence Meyer observed that, with that remark, President Obama, “. . . essentially fired Ben Bernanke on the spot and gave him a fairly tepid testimonial afterward.”
I wrote an article on President Obama’s remark and hypothesized that if Mr. Bernanke were about to “resign,” it would almost certainly mean that his inflationary policy of “stimulating” the economy with enormous injections of fiat dollars was also destined to end. If QE3 ($85 billion/month) was about to end, we could expect a significant decline in US and global stock markets and the possible onset of the Greater Depression.
Therefore, it seemed odd to me that, since our economy was already fragile, President Obama would risk making such an unflattering statement about Chairman Bernanke. Didn’t Obama realize that any suggestion that Bernanke was leaving the Federal Reserve could be perceived as evidence that the rats were leaving the ship? Didn’t Obama understand that his remark might be sufficient to diminish public confidence and thus do real harm to the economy?
Was Obama simply dumb enough to accidentally make such an imprudent remark? Or was Obama intentionally signaling that Ben Bernanke and QE3 were both about to go?
• Not to be outdone in the imprudent remarks department, on Wednesday, June 19th, Mr. Bernanke announced that the gov-co’s attempt to stimulate the economy by means of Quantitative Easings 1, 2, and 3 might slow this year and even end next year.
Thus, Bernanke “coincidentally” confirmed the implications of Obama’s earlier remarks: the current QE3 policy of injecting $85 billion per month into the US economy might stop within the next 12 months.
Stock markets around the world quickly reacted with significant declines. The Dow dropped from 15,300 to 14,700 by Friday—600 points in two days.
Mr. Bernanke did not claim to be “shocked, shocked I tell you!” by the markets’ strong reactions to his Wednesday warning. But he did claim to be “puzzled”.
I can’t see why. The world pretty much understands that the $15 trillion US economy is on life support provided by the Federal Reserve’s injection of $85 billion per month ($1 trillion per year) into the economy. Without that monthly “fix,” the US economy will certainly decline and might collapse. The global economy would follow suit.
More importantly, on Tuesday, we had President Obama hinting that it was time for Mr. Bernanke to go and implying that it was time for QE3 to go. Then on Wednesday, “coincidentally,” we had Mr. Bernanke expressly warning that QE3 might slow this year or even end next year.
Thus, it seems certain that QE3 (the $85 billion monthly “fix” that’s kept the US and global economies alive in recent months) is going the way of the dodo bird. That means the Obama administration has pretty much made up its mind to let the economy suffer a significant decline in the next 12 months. (It’s not only true that there’s been no “recovery,” it’s now going to be admitted that there’ll be no “recovery” in the near future.)
• And then, on Monday, June 24th, the BBC News reported that the Bank of International Settlements (“BIS”; often described as the “central banks’ central bank”) announced that it’s time to end the “whatever it takes” approach to reviving the depressed global economy and return to “strong and sustainable growth.” In other words, the BIS sees no point to simply throwing more fiat money at depressed economies and expecting them to revive. It’s been tried; it hasn’t worked; it’s not likely to work; we need another strategy.
If so, the BIS has thereby signaled that: 1) the evidence of the past 5 or 6 years indicates the current global economic problem can’t be solved by simply printing more fiat currencies; and/or 2) the world’s central banks have somehow exhausted their capacity to print more fiat currency; and/or 3) by printing more fiat currency in conjunction with suppressing the market prices for gold and silver, the West’s central banks have caused a flow of gold from the West to Asia that will disable western economies’ ability to invest in themselves and rebuild after the coming economic depression.
The BIS announcement is consistent with Obama’s and Bernanke’s recent warnings that QE3 can’t continue forever and will be diminished or perhaps terminated within the next 12 months. If so, the US economy will decline further. If the US economy collapses into depression, so will the world economy.
The three parallel and “coincidental” announcements by Obama and then Bernanke (in the US) and then from BIS (in Europe)—within a matter of days—imply that the Powers That Be have had enough. They apparently realize the fiat currency game they’ve been playing is futile and destined for self-destruction. Their attempts to inflate the global money supply and thereby stimulate the US and global economies have failed. If inflation won’t work, then perhaps it’s time to let deflation run its painful course. Then, after a global depression wipes out trillions of dollars’ worth of unpayable, paper debt-instruments, the world economies can rebuild.
If so, the PTB may be about to “pull the plug” on the US and global economies, surrender to the forces of the coming “Greater Depression,” and let the Devil take the hindmost. They can’t stop the oncoming “Greater Depression” and have therefore decided to stop trying to do so.
• Implication? Before the end of this year, and perhaps within the next 90 days, we might see an event comparable to the A.D. 1929 Stock Market Crash. This event will be so sudden and shocking that, in later years it may come to be regarded as the “cause” of the Greater Depression. That won’t be true, of course—but it’ll be convenient to say it is.
The real cause of the coming Depression is the complete abandonment of the gold standard in A.D. 1971.
In any case, the coming event may be as devastating economically as the 9/11 attack was devastating politically. If so, we are truly and finally in “end game”.
• A worst case scenario is always, by definition, the least likely scenario. Even so, if we did experience a “worst case” scenario, we could expect to see the economic, banking and monetary systems crumble. It could take years, perhaps even a generation to rebuild a strong and prosperous economy.
But, who can say? What if we have an economic depression, but not the “worst case scenario”? It’s conceivable that the economy might fall, and even the banking system might fall, but the fiat monetary system might survive—at least for a while.
In the midst of any depression, “cash is king” and even fiat currencies may be perceived to be have increasing value. It’s not impossible that the PTB are determined to let the economies of the world collapse while still trying to maintain the role of fiat currencies as something valuable.
If it’s true (as our recent “coincidences” suggest) that the PTB have decided to let the economies collapse, but still maintain the apparent value of fiat currencies like the US dollar, we could expect to see a continued war against gold and silver. This war would be waged by working mightily to suppress the prices of gold and silver to ever-lower levels.
This wouldn’t be surprising or necessarily hard to accomplish (at least for a while) since, during a depression, the prices of everything tend to fall. So long as the prices of food, gasoline and homes are declining, how many would be surprised if the prices of gold and silver also continued to decline?
So long as gov-co can convince the world that gold and silver are just commodities and that neither is real “money,” it might be possible to maintain the illusion that paper, fiat dollars (debt instruments) are actual “money” (assets). From gov-co’s perspective, that’s the key: to keep people convinced that gold and silver are not “money” but green, paper debt-instruments are.
But once a significant percentage of people realize that gold and silver are true “money” (assets) while paper dollars are just debt-instruments (liabilities), the world will stampede towards gold and its price will soar while the purchasing power of paper currencies falls dramatically.
• There is one other possibility. If the PTB realize the current, fiat monetary-system is necessarily toast, they might not try to sustain it—at least not for long. Let the US and global economies collapse. Destroy virtually all of the existing paper debt instruments. And then crank out a “new-and-improved” paper dollar that was backed by gold and/or silver.
Of course, to make a gold backed currency work, they’d probably have to raise the price of gold to somewhere between $20,000 and $50,000 per ounce—but if they really wanted to revive the economy, that would do it.