Free Republic

As the dark years are approaching, the world is now approaching survival mode. Admittedly, if you go to a high class restaurant in New York, London or Zurich, there are no signs of misery but instead of incredible affluence. What is happening to middle America or England has not yet reached Wall Street or the City of London where exquisite food is plenty and excellent wines are flowing. This is of course no different to the end of eras with major excesses and decadence. It was the same at the peak of the Roman Empire 2000 years ago or in...

The war in Ukraine is in its sixth month, and there’s no end in sight. Here’s what we know… Almost everything you heard about the war in Ukraine from U.S. media over the course of March, April and May was a lie. You heard that Putin was losing the war. You heard that Russians had poor training and low morale and were deserting in droves. You heard that Ukrainians were destroying Russian armor in large numbers to blunt the Russian advance. None of this was true. In fact, Russian troops have achieved major victories in Mariupol, Kherson, Severodonetsk, Lysychansk and...

The Japanese yen is at its weakest point in two decades. A year ago, the dollar was worth 110 yen. Now it is worth 135. Japan’s central bank is increasingly hearing calls to hike up interest rates à la the Federal Reserve, despite its historically accommodative monetary stance. To help explain the backstory, here is an excerpt from the Finance section of The End of the World is Just the Beginning: Long before the world wars, even long before America’s Admiral Perry forced Japan open to the world, the Japanese had a unique view of debt. In Japan capital exists...

Part One: The Banking Houses of Morgan and Rockefeller [VIDEO] The Four Horsemen of Banking (Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup and Wells Fargo) own the Four Horsemen of Oil (Exxon Mobil, Royal Dutch/Shell, BP and Chevron Texaco); in tandem with Deutsche Bank, BNP, Barclays and other European old money behemoths. But their monopoly over the global economy does not end at the edge of the oil patch. According to company 10K filings to the SEC, the Four Horsemen of Banking are among the top ten stock holders of virtually every Fortune 500 corporation.[1] So who then are the...

Nixon was worried about trade deficits and a deteriorating balance of payments. He rejected the advice of Volcker, then treasury undersecretary, and the Fed chairman at the time, Arthur Burns. Instead, Nixon closed the gold window, meaning foreign governments could no longer exchange dollars for gold. The value of the greenback fell like a stone. So as the value of our currency declined, prices denominated in dollars sky-rocketed. We printed bad money and too much of it, and that’s the definition of inflation. Excess money in relation to demand will do it every time. Lack of value will do it...

Tomorrow Sunday August 15, 1971 is the 50th anniversary of Richard Nixon closing the Gold Exchange Window that allowed foreign holders of US Dollars to exchange their US Dollars for gold priced at $35/ounce......an agreement that had been in place since the end of WW II.... When this decision was announced it's hard to imagine the impact after 50 years...think of Bill Clinton getting NAFTA passed, repealing the Glass/Stegall Act, think of GWB invading Iraq and Afghanistan, etc....actions by President's have monumental impact over time, when at the time it seemed to be insignificant... Not advocating one position over the...

China vs the almighty dollarBy Henry C K Liu The Italian Marxist thinker Antonio Gramsci, while under Fascist imprisonment, developed the concept of cultural hegemony: control people's minds, and their hearts and hands will follow. Gramsci explained how one dominant class can establish its control over others through ideological dominance. Whereas orthodox Marxism explains social structure as shaped by economic forces, Gramsci adds the crucial cultural dimension. He showed how, once ideological authority (or "cultural hegemony") is established, the use of overt violence to impose control can become superfluous. Today, the world lives under the virtually undisputed rule of a...

When asked about the rising value of cryptocurrencies, Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey said: "They have no intrinsic value."

Fifty years ago this Sunday, President Richard Nixon announced a bold economic plan, including the severing of the U.S. dollar’s ties to gold. Since then, the world’s monetary system has consisted of (mostly) freely floating currencies. The dollar nonetheless remains the primary legal tender used internationally for trade, finance, and as a store of value, which has conferred upon the U.S. enormous advantages. Whether that will continue for the next half-century is far from certain. The Bretton Woods system, in effect back then, reflected America’s economic pre-eminence after World War II. Currency exchange rates were fixed, relative to the dollar,...

Link only: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-05-04/sam-zell-buys-gold-with-inflation-reminiscent-of-the-1970s

There is this website https://deagel.com/forecast that projects the population and GDP for 2025. The population of USA has dropped to 99M and the GDP has dropped to 1.63 T. Does this website know something we don't?

In the wake of the FedÂ’s promise of 23 March to print money without limit in order to rescue the covid-stricken US economy, China changed its policy of importing industrial materials to a more aggressive stance. In examining the rationale behind this move, this article concludes that while there are sound geopolitical reasons behind it the monetary effect will be to drive down the dollarÂ’s purchasing power, and that this is already happening. More recently, a veiled threat has emerged that China could dump all her US Treasury and agency bonds if the relationship with America deteriorates further. This appears...

Since the arrival of COVID-19 and the subsequent decision to lockdown entire cities and nations, world economic activity has significantly decreased. When normal recessions strike, they typically involve only one nation or a single region. But the COVID Recession has hit the whole world at once. This is the first time every nation has simultaneously seen a decline in output since the Great Depression. Despite the scale of this economic disaster, many economists are calling for a quick V-shaped recovery once the coronavirus is brought under control. But is this likely? No. Even if the virus disappears tomorrow, we won’t...

Like it or not, the U.S. is already fighting an economic and technological cold war against China. While we should aim to eventually return to the optimism and promise of a broad China/U.S. partnership, the time for that is not now. This is a major challenge to our country, and we must do everything we can to avoid losing our economic leadership. By now, we all know the rivalry in 5G and AI, part of China’s $1.4 trillion technology commitment. Less attention has been given to an equally consequential struggle: who will control our future global financial systems. The power...

Warren Buffett has given up his long-held conviction against buying gold — and he’s meanwhile getting out of Goldman Sachs. The totemic tycoon revealed in filings late last week that he has scooped up more than 20 million shares of mining giant Barrick Gold Corp. even as he unloaded nearly all of his nearly 2 million shares in Goldman Sachs. The 89-year-old investing icon’s sudden embrace of the precious yellow metal — which has has previously derided as “useless,” saying that “anyone watching from Mars would be scratching their head” at the idea of investing in it — took many...

The U.S. used to be a capitalist country, but is now becoming a Marxist society, said Robert Kiyosaki, best-selling author of “Rich Dad Poor Dad.” Kiyosaki was a veteran of the Vietnam War who had seven uncles fighting in World War 2. “I fought for capitalism,” he said. “America is going Marxist.” The evolution of socialism in the U.S. started with the anti-war protests following the Vietnam War, Kiyosaki said. “When I came back [from Vietnam] the hippies were outside just like the protesters are today in Chicago. I got hit with rotten eggs, I got hit with stink bombs,...

As Bitcoin and gold hit 2020 highs, Uphold unveils a revolutionary new product redefining “store of value” for a panicked age. It’s physical gold. It’s crypto. It’s government-backed. It’s a new product from a Silicon Valley company mutating gold and crypto into a single unit. And it’s as deeply fear-soaked as anything since, well, 2020.  Today Uphold, a digital investment platform based in San Francisco, announced what it calls “a better form of gold”: Universal Gold. Users can buy the gold crypto UPXAU — a token verifiable on the Ethereum blockchain and audited by the security firm CertiK — and Uphold instantly contracts to...

Sen. Martha McSally, R-Ariz., introduced a resolution Thursday calling on China to repay U.S. bondholders more than $1.6 trillion of sovereign debt, including interest, that pre-dates the country's Communist government. The measure is co-sponsored by Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R.-Tenn, and a House measure led by Rep. Mark Green, R-Tenn. is forthcoming. Resolutions lack the force of law held by a bill, though they reflect the will of lawmakers. “China has repeatedly failed to honor its obligations to America, taking American families’ money and jobs,” McSally said. “Well, the abuse ends here. We are holding China accountable for their debt and...

It has been an miserable five years for Turkish citizens who have seen their purchasing power slashed by more than half, and it’s only getting worse. The Turkish lira has cratered against the dollar and most developed currencies, plunging from 3 TRY per dollar, to a record low 7.37 last week after a brief and valiant attempt at imposing shadow capital control by Erdogan (who is now de facto head of the Turkish central bank) failed miserably at the end of July, and not even a draconian hike in overnight funding rates above 1000% last week (to crush the shorts)...

Patrick Rooney, Founder of Old School™(Natural Health / Success / Freedom), interviews businessman and experienced gold investor Joe Grande about the reasons people should consider investing in gold and silver, and how to get started.