Globalist-Endorsed War-On-Cash May Be China's Next Terrifying Weapon

Recent protests in Hong Kong, along with the resulting fall out from international corporations questioned for their relationships with mainland China, has placed a renewed focus on the authoritarianism of the Chinese Communist Party. This has led to several articles identifying ways in which Western countries have learned from the CCP, including Europe's growing embrace of web censorship and growing interest in the social credit system rolled out in 2018. Given that it wasn't that long ago that it was common to see Western leaders and neoliberal commentators openly envy aspects of the Chinese political system, these concerns are certainly worth exploring. What should be of equal interest, however, is the ways China may be learning from the West.

As Joseph Salerno, among others, has noted for years now, a successful War on Cash would represent a new escalation in government's long history of weaponizing currency against the population. Moving far beyond the clipping of coins as a means of stealth tax collection, the purpose of a War on Cash is not simply to strengthen a government's grasp on the wealth of its citizens - but the move becomes a highly effective means of tracking any who find themselves in the crosshairs of the state.

These features make a cashless society attractive for any government - which explains why it has become an increasingly popular goal for politicians, bureaucrats, and central bankers in the West. This is precisely why we've seen the cause promoted from such influential economists as Kenneth Rogoff, former chief economist of the IMF, Marvin Goodfriend, an economics professor at Carnegie Mellon who was once nominated to the Fed by Donald Trump, as well as various economic ministers. The governments of Australia and Sweden have made a cashless society an explicit policy goal within their countries, while some central banks — such as the ECB — have begun phasing out higher denomination bills as an opening move in their own cashless campaigns.

Of course, the international perspective of the Swedish government is quite different than that of China's — and understandably so. For all of Sweden's issues, there are no comparisons to the CCP's brutal child policies or its treatment of religious minorities. What should be understood, however, is that a successful move to a cashless society would give the Swedish government similar tools over its population as those the Communist Party seeks over its dominion. While the former may ground their policy aims in “combating drug trafficking” and “convenience,” the end result in both cases is a new terrifying weapon in the hands of the state.

Luckily, it's easier for the government to desire a cashless society than it is to create it, and we've seen countries like Sweden rethink their approach. There is reason to think that China may be less apprehensive. Not only is the government more powerful, but it is also more desperate.

Read the entire article

Krieger: 'FacebookCoin' Is A Trojan Horse Of Corporate Oligarchy

I do not think Zuckerberg’s ultimate goal is running a stable coin, although he could live with that arrangement and benefit from it for as long as necessary. I think the main reason Facebook has structured the coin with fiat backing is to make it seem less threatening to the current monetary establishment and world governments. It’s a way of saying Facebook isn’t trying to compete with the current status quo, but rather make the status quo run more smoothly and efficiently. Then, once it has a foot in the door and gains traction amongst its massive user base, all Facebook has to do is wait until the current assortment of global governments and their respective central banks fail.

At that stage it can remove the fiat currency backing (who will want it anyway), and let FacebookCoin free float. With the credibility of global governments and central banks in the toilet by then, Facebook and its corporate oligarch partners will be in a prime position to take over a sizable chunk of worldwide payments using their own currency. In other words, this appears to be a long-term scheme by elements of corporate oligarchy to position themselves as an unelected and unaccountable future sovereign power.

All that said, I want to be clear about something. Just because the above represents a plausible scenario doesn’t mean it’ll work out that way. If enough people recognize the dangers of this scheme, it could very well be stopped in its tracks.

In this regard, I want to highlight one of the biggest threats posed by a financial system run by a corporate oligarchy. For one thing, there’s the ever-present issue of censorship. I understand why many in the “crypto” world are fine with FacebookCoin since they see it as a threat to state power and control, but this is myopic in my view. Let’s not forget who is silencing the voices of Americans online in 2019. It’s not the state, but rather Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc. If we allow these companies to gain control of payments, you can be sure the same sort of unaccountable blacklisting will follow in the world of transactions.

Read the entire article

The Great Dollar Short-Squeeze Is Coming

In Part III of MacroVoices’s conversation about the twilight of the dollar’s dominance over the global financial system, Jeff Snider elaborates on a theory we initially referenced in our writeup on Pt. II: The notion that, as the supply of dollars to certain economies contracts, the greenback could see its relative value climb, even as it cedes its dominance over the financial system to the Chinese yuan, or a consortium of rival currencies.

Snider describes this phenomenon as a short squeeze: Because so many central banks predicate their monetary policy on the dollar, and because so many foreign governments and corporations need dollars to finance trade and pay down debts, the global economy is effectively net short dollars.

So, when the Federal Reserve stops the money presses and the supply of greenbacks becomes less pliable, certain parts of the financial system – Snider points to BRICS countries like Brazil and Russia as examples – will begin finding it increasingly expensive to roll over their funding, pushing the greenback higher, as Snider explains.

Yeah, I think a better terminology would be short squeeze. It’s sort of a dollar short squeeze. And, again, if we think about the Eurodollar development from things all the way back as – some things like banker’s acceptances – it’s essentially a short dollar system, where every participant in it is short the dollar.

They roll over funding every day, whether it be in repo or unsecured or in FX – or however it’s done – essentially everybody around the world needs dollars and therefore they’re short of them. So when the dollar supply becomes less malleable, less pliable, less dynamic, it becomes a problem for certain parts of the system being able to roll over their commitments.

And what happens when you have to roll over your commitment and it’s not as easy to do so, the price of it goes up. And, in terms of currencies, a short squeeze in the dollar means a rising dollar or a falling counterpart currency.

Read the entire article

Bitcoin Plummets Below $14,000; Peter Schiff Says 'Mark It Zero'

Since CME launched its futures contract, Bitcoin has been under pressure and renowned market watcher Peter Schiff is pretty clear where he thinks this ends up...

As CoinTelegraph reports, speaking to RT this week, renowned analyst Peter Schiff, credited for predicting the 2008 housing market collapse, issued a foreboding warning to investors buying Bitcoin at current prices.

Even with a shaky week, Bitcoin is hovering around the $15,000 mark, after a two-month bull run that saw the price rise by more than 200 percent.

Schiff says those trying to ride the bubble are too late:

“People who got it years ago, even people who got it at the beginning of the year have the opportunity to cash out and make a lot of money. But people who are buying it at these prices or higher prices are going to lose practically everything.”

The old adage, “buy on the rumor and sell on the news,” seems to be the perfect way to sum up Schiff’s sentiments on the current attitude of green investors trying to make a quick buck out of Bitcoin:

“These currencies are going to trade to zero or pretty close to it when the bubble pops. Right now, the only reason why people are buying Bitcoin is because the price is going up. When it turns around, they are not going to sell it for the same reason."

Read the entire article

Bitcoin Bubble: Is Bitcoin Going To $1 Million Or Is it Going To Zero?

The price of Bitcoin continues to rise at an exponential rate, and the financial world is in a complete state of shock.  Just yesterday, I marveled that the price of Bitcoin had surged past the $13,000 mark for the first time ever, but then on Thursday it actually was selling for more than $19,000 at one point.  As I write this, Bitcoin is sitting at $16,877.42, but a few hours from now it could be a couple of thousand dollars higher or lower than that.  Those that got in early on “the Bitcoin revolution” have made extraordinary amounts of money, and many believe that this is just the beginning.

Of course many of the most respected names in the financial world were convinced that this would never happen.  For example, back in 2014 Warren Buffett encouraged investors to “stay away” because he believed that Bitcoin was a “mirage”.  And not too long ago JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said that “if you’re stupid enough to buy it, you’ll pay the price for it one day”.

But for now, it is Bitcoin investors that are having the last laugh.  If you would have gotten into Bitcoin back at the beginning of this year, your investment would be worth 16 times as much today.  The following comes from CNN…

Bitcoin cracked $1,000 on the first day of 2017. By this week, it was up to $12,000, and then it really took off: The price topped $16,000 on some exchanges Thursday, and $18,000 on at least one. Other cryptocurrencies have seen similar spikes, though they trade for much less than bitcoin.

There’s a long list of factors people may point to in an attempt to explain this. Regulators have taken a hands-off approach to bitcoin in certain markets. Dozens of new hedge funds have launched this year to trade cryptocurrencies like bitcoin. The Nasdaq and Chicago Mercantile Exchange plan to let investors trade bitcoin futures, which may attract more professional investors.

Read the entire article

"You're Going To See A Rush For Gold" - Katusa Warns De-Dollarization Is Accelerating

Global strategist Marin Katusa is the New York Times best selling author of The Colder War, which details the geo-political power shift that threatens the global dominance of the United States. He’s also a well known resource hedge fund manager who legendary investor Doug Casey has called one of the best market analysts he’s ever worked with.

His prior forecasts noted that countries around the world would soon stop trading commodities like oil in the U.S. dollar, something we’re already seeing with China, Russia, Iran, and Venezuela, all of which are preparing non-dollar, gold-backed mechanisms of exchange.

This trend, according to Katusa in a must see interview with Future Money Trends, will only continue to weaken the U.S. dollar going forward and the result will be a massive capital flight to gold in coming years:

I think we’ll have a near term bounce on the U.S. dollar… then it’s going to be very weak… and then it’s going to go much, much lower… With China and Russia working together to de-dollarize the U.S. dollar starting with oil, which is the biggest market… and then all the other commodities.

You’re going to start seeing a massive unwind of these U.S. dollars in the emerging markets.

Read the entire article

One-Tenth Of Global GDP Is Now Held In Offshore Tax Havens

Accurately measuring the scope of global wealth inequality is a notoriously difficult undertaking – a fact that was brought to light last year when the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists published the Panama Papers, exposing clients of Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca. As the papers revealed, Mossack Fonseca, which is only the world’s fourth-largest provider of offshore financial services, boasted a client roster stacked with some of the world’s wealthiest and most politically connected individuals. The former prime minister of Iceland (who was forced from office because of the revelations), associates of Russian President Vladimir Putin, and the father of former UK Prime Minister David Cameron.

In a first-of-its kind study from the National Bureau of Economic Research, a team of economists has broken down rates of offshore wealth holdings as a percentage of GDP to identify countries with the largest, and smallest, percentages of wealth held offshore. The study’s conclusion suggests a reality that many readers probably suspected: the true scope of wealth inequality is far larger than the official statistics would suggest.

The study found that as much as one-tenth of the world’s GDP is held in tax havens, though that percentage can vary widely from country to country.

Here's Bloomberg:

“One-tenth of the world’s GDP is held in offshore tax havens, but that share jumps to as much of 15 percent for Europe and as much as 60 percent for Gulf and some Latin American countries, new research shows.

When it comes to total offshore wealth as a share of GDP, the United Arab Emirates, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Russia and Argentina lead the pack, while Germany, the U.K. and France all have above-average holdings. The U.S. is slightly below average.”

Read the entire article

US Bitcoin Exchange Coinbase Hits 10 Million Users

After two (and soon three) "generational" market crashes, Joe Sixpack may have lost interest in the stock market (or at least in single names, the transfer of bagholder rights from institutions to retail investors via ETFs is doing just fine), but when it comes to chasing torrid, upward price momentum, US retail investors are doing their best frenzied Chinese housewife impression now that they have discovered the next big bubble thing, and it's called bitcoin. And nowhere is America's sudden infatuation with cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, ethereum, litecoin and all other "coins" which can make (or break) a hedge fund's annual return in days if not hours, more obvious than on Coinbase, the US bitcoin exchange, which has just hit a remarkable 10 million registered users, all of whom are there for just one thing: to trade, but mostly buy, crypto currencies.

The San Francisco startup has seen tremendous growth in 2017, adding thousands of users per day and handling increasing levels of trading volume. Last month, CEO Brian Armstrong announced that the company had raised $100 million during its latest funding round, giving the company a valuation of $1 billion, making it first “bitcoin unicorn” according to Cryptocoinsnews. A few weeks later, following the latest burst higher in bitcoin, Coinbase has surpassed 10 million registered users. In the last three weeks of August, the bitcoin exchange added an astonishing 800,000 users as the bitcoin price briefly rose above $5,000. According to data from the Coinbase website, the exchange and wallet service has also recently surpassed $20 billion in total volume.

While many bitcoin veterans have panned Coinbase for its simplistic approach to trading (no limit orders, no shorting, etc) and exorbitant fees, some actually enjoy the minimialist, if expensive, experience: one user on reddit, btcltc77, referred to the exchanges as the “McDonald’s of Bitcoin banking.”

Coinbase is still the most mainstream way of buying Bitcoin. It’s the McDonald’s of Bitcoin banking.

That, and the implied safety net from its increasingly bigger venture backing, appears to be working and has made Coinbase the go-to site for millions of armchair cryptocurrency investors.

Read the entire article

Unsound Money Has Destroyed The Middle Class

Duped and Distorted

When you start thinking about what money is and how it works, you face isolation, shunning, and possible incarceration. The subject is so slippery – like a bead of mercury on a granite countertop – you become frustrated… and then… maniacal.

You begin talking to yourself, because no one else will listen to you. If you are not careful, you may be locked up among the criminally insane.

We’ve been thinking about money for the last couple of months. It has become our favorite subject. That is why people edge away from us at parties. Our family finds novel ways to change the subject.

“Whoa… sorry to interrupt, Dad… but isn’t that a flying saucer?”

Undaunted, we press on. We think we’re onto something important. We have come so far; we might as well go the whole way.

Read the entire article

The Shift To A Cashless Society Is Snowballing

Love it or hate it, cash is playing an increasingly less important role in society.

In some ways this is great news for consumers. The rise of mobile and electronic payments means faster, convenient, and more efficient purchases in most instances. New technologies are being built and improved to facilitate these transactions, and improving security is also a priority for many payment providers.

However, as Visual Capitalist's Jeff Desjardins explains, there is also a darker side in the shift to a cashless society. Governments and central banks have a different rationale behind the elimination of cash transactions, and as a result, the so-called “war on cash” is on.

ON THE PATH TO A CASHLESS SOCIETY

The Federal Reserve estimates that there will be $616.9 billion in cashless transactions in 2016. That’s up from around $60 billion in 2010.

Read the entire article

The Continuing Demonization Of Cash

The insidious nature of the war on cash derives not just from the hurdles governments place in the way of those who use cash, but also from the aura of suspicion that has begun to pervade private cash transactions. In a normal market economy, businesses would welcome taking cash. After all, what business would willingly turn down customers? But in the war on cash that has developed in the thirty years since money laundering was declared a federal crime, businesses have had to walk a fine line between serving customers and serving the government. And since only one of those two parties has the power to shut down a business and throw business owners and employees into prison, guess whose wishes the business owner is going to follow more often?

The assumption on the part of government today is that possession of large amounts of cash is indicative of involvement in illegal activity. If you’re traveling with thousands of dollars in cash and get pulled over by the police, don’t be surprised when your money gets seized as “suspicious.” And if you want your money back, prepare to get into a long, drawn-out court case requiring you to prove that you came by that money legitimately, just because the courts have decided that carrying or using large amounts of cash is reasonable suspicion that you are engaging in illegal activity. Because of that risk of confiscation, businesses want to have less and less to do with cash, as even their legitimately-earned cash is subject to seizure by the government.

Restrictions on the use of cash are just some of the many laws that pervert the actions of a market economy. Rather than serving consumers, businesses are forced to serve the government first and consumers last. Businesses act as unpaid tax agents, collecting sales taxes for state governments and paying excise taxes to the federal government, the costs of which they pass on to their customers. Businesses act as enforcers of vice laws, refusing tobacco sales to those under eighteen or alcohol to those under twenty-one. Financial institutions, which includes coin dealers, jewelers, and casinos, are required to report cash transactions above $10,000 as well as any activity the government might deem “suspicious.” Cash becomes such a hassle that it is almost radioactive, and many businesses would rather not deal with the burden. Using cash to buy a house is becoming impossible and it is probably only a matter of time before purchasing a car with cash will become incredibly difficult also.

Centuries-old legal protections have been turned on their head in the war on cash.

Read the entire article