This man still has a following despite his record of being spectacularly wrong about Y2K. We'll excuse him for that, I suppose. Other matters concerning him will not be mentioned either. We're instead focusing on what his article says and our responses to it for any clarification of our proposal. Since he tends to quote the Bible, we may do so as well. As usual, North's words are in blue, my remarks in black:
Gary North - April 16, 2016
Remnant Review
What is fiat money? It comes from "fiat," which means a formal authorization or proposition or a decree. Synonyms are these: edict, order, command, commandment, injunction, proclamation, mandate, dictum, diktat. It is an arbitrary order. The phrase "fiat lux" comes from Genesis 1:2: "Let there be light."
It is similar to “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness,” etc. (Gen. 1:26) Fiat has exactly the same sense when applied to this blog's assumption concerning each individual human being's inalienable right to issue money. This means that this right cannot be taken by anyone else whether that be a state or some other organized body. We acknowledge this right as implicit and derived from each human being's innate wealth which must produce income; the natural right to subsistence as a basis to attain the livelihood one is capable of.
The individual right to issue money is not without bearing on other members of any community, therefore the right is limited. We said that under our proposal, the actual amount of money that would be issued in this way would be considerably less than any modern state spends into any economy; local market. North continues,
Fiat money is the money issued by a self-proclaimed divine state. It rests on the premise of divine right: no higher appeal. It is the court of final appeal. In short, it is divine.
Since no state is deathless, this is a presumption without basis. But we'd frankly state it another way; states usurp the natural rights of all their people by claiming in any way, shape or form, that they have any right to issue fiat money. The natural fiat that belongs to each one of us has been stolen long ago by states and banks. None of their “money” EVEN SILVER AND GOLD is legitimate. Our proposal intends to rectify this usurpation.
A free market money system is an operational system to which people can appeal to because it is not statist money. People use gold coins or silver coins to buy what they want. Or they use legal claims to such coins. The state is not in the "money business.
He said a lot here so let's break it down:
1) there is no absolutely free market unless it's the black market and that is a market where all claims are settled by whatever means and there are no credit hangovers extending months or years beyond the point of sale.
2) The use of gold or silver coins is barter and the commodities value is determined by forces beyond the control of anyone using them as money so this market is NOT a free market money system as he implies.
3) Legal claims to any such coins is spurious and cannot be enforced with any regularity, therefore these kinds of monetary systems (which all used fractional reserve lending) are bogus.
4) Banks are in “the money business” and have made states into their perpetual debt slaves since the first central bank, The Bank of England, was established.
No nation-state ever allows this [a free market money system]. Every nation-state wants to be the highest court of appeal, especially in monetary affairs. Every nation-state claims legal sovereignty over money.
The reasons for this are not too difficult to see; the state is burdened by the complaints of its subjects who demand some redress for whatever inept or corrupt business practises may have resulted in loss to themselves or their businesses. The general consensus has always been to give up certain rights or reprisal to the state so that civic unrest is kept to the minimum. The reasons states have generally been “the highest court of appeal” is that there are disputes that people want states to settle for them. Since money is usually part and parcel of any of these complaints, people generally accept that the state must somehow issue the money without considering the consequences.
Any gold standard in which civil government is the defining agency is a pseudo-gold standard. It is a counterfeit. When you think "government-guaranteed gold standard," think "counterfeit."
As E. C. Riegel said, anything the state issues that is not taken back in taxes is counterfeit. Since we have stretched Riegel's assumptions to their logical extension, the issuance of money belongs directly with individual people rather than organizations or states, we'd now claim that ANY illegitimate money is counterfeit and only serves the interests of those who issue it; banks and to a lesser degree, governments.
Take some of your money out of your wallet and look at it. It says that it's a Federal Reserve Note which is a short term debt instrument. North gets into some of this further along. The mention of some state, for instance, The United States of America, indicates who owes the Federal Reserve what? To pay the money back with interest. Notice here that the issue was from a bank, out of nothing which is fiat and there's nothing wrong with that as a concept, it's simply that the right of issue has been stolen rather than allowed to the people themselves. Also and most importantly, the money to pay the interest was never created so it must be obtained by any means from a limited supply. This is in fact stealing on the basis of the money itself and limits its supply no matter how much is ever created in this way. We hold that ALL usury as described this way is theft and we propose doing away with it in our proposal.
WHEN MONEY DIES
In times of great crisis, money dies. The things that money could buy in normal times are not available at any price close to that which prevailed in normal times.
He's talking about shortages brought about by 1) real factors of supply and demand or 2) the money has lost its purchasing power. We said that the music stops when either of the following is true; either one will no longer take some money in trade or one lacks the right money to buy things.
The Bible's most famous example was the famine in Egypt under Joseph's administration. We read that the money failed (Gen. 47:15). But there was another case.
And there was a great famine in Samaria: and, behold, they besieged it, until an ass's head was sold for fourscore pieces of silver, and the fourth part of a cab of doves' dung for five pieces of silver (II Kings 6:25).
So revelatory are prices of the underlying social conditions that Elisha prophesied the end of a siege by forecasting a dramatic fall in prices: "Then Elisha said. Hear ye the word of the LORD; Thus saith the LORD, Tomorrow about this time shall a measure of tine flour be sold for a shekel, and two measures of barley for a shekel, in the gate of Samaria" (II Ki. 7:1). Before it ended, silver did not count for much. Or put differently, they had to count out a lot of silver to buy anything worth owning. What was worth owning was food.
Notice they were still using precious metals as a commodity with which to price other commodities. We've said that the value of any commodity participates in the trade and to the extent this is true the commodity is not money. Even so, when food is scarce and people are starving, silver loses its value compared to even the most meagre food.
Normal pricing reveals normal times. When prices today are close to what they were yesterday, we can be confident that society tomorrow will be pretty much what it is today unless something totally unforeseen happens. Rarely does it happen.
Oh, I don't know. Most recall how only a few years back gasoline was selling for twice what it is now. There are always unforeseen events which do impact prices one way or another.
Money prices are indicators of broad social trends. Gold reached its highest price, denominated in U.S. dollars, the week before Gettysburg. On July 3. 1863, Lee's army was defeated. On July 4, Vicksburg fell to Grant's forces. The dollar price of gold fell the following business day and did not reach these heights for a century. The world believed that the Union would win the war, no matter what the South's politicians and generals said in public.
Notice he assumes a free market for precious metals which doesn't exist and in fact has never existed since there are always speculators in far away cities (just as there were in ancient Babylon) who determine what the bottom most prices for them will be. Speculators never make any money unless prices change either up or down. It is never in the best interests of speculators to see steady prices for anything. This is why we intend on promoting a system and an organization behind it that will not allow speculative games.
What was the South's leadership to say? "Well, that does it. It's all over but the shouting. The North's shouting. We might as well surrender now. Why continue this bloodbath? The Yankee dollar is up. Gold is down. Gold says we're beaten. We might as well face it." Had any politician said this, he would not have served out his term. Yet this was exactly what the South's leaders should have said. They continued the bloodbath, yet the outcome was what the price of gold had projected.
The facts are, and North should know this too, that the Southern cause was used as a plaything in international empire games between the French and British, with a divide and conquer opportunist attitude fuelled and promoted by the same factors that controlled gold and silver as well as all the other state money except for Lincoln's greenbacks. They killed Lincoln for this and a short time later demanded legislation that made the greenbacks obsolete. Some out there like Bill Still continually push for the government to go back to Lincoln's solution. Still apparently shares this idea with Napoleon who wanted to do the same thing. Government issued money, even without paying interest on it, is still illegitimate and there is no way that the original Constitution would have ever allowed the government to issue paper notes, despite what Still and others may think.
All of this is to say that the price of gold, back in the days when governments tied their currencies to it, was a better indicator of social conditions than the speeches of politicians.
Maybe, but what I'm saying is that the price of gold was as much a matter of speculators' activities (usually on behalf of banks and foreign governments) and had little to nothing to do with what any politician might have said. Politicians are all rendered liars and fakers by the very system itself which promotes such erroneous behaviour.
No matter what politicians want people to believe, if they preach good times while the price of gold is rising, the public would be wise to discount the politicians words. Free men make evaluations of the state of the world, and the price of gold reflects their judgement. So do interest rates. They can be wrong in their forecasts, but their forecasts are best reflected in these two market prices.
Here's something else that most people who claim that silver and gold are decent indicators forget; most of the gold is NOT circulating at all, and in fact most of the gold isn't even known where it is. It is hidden, stored away, those “pools of liquidity” that sometimes one hears about. Recall that North presumes such a thing as a genuine free market exists when it never has existed and will not exist as long as certain operations (commodity speculation and stolen fiat) persist.
THE FOCUS OF ATTENTION
Why should gold be the focus of attention, the ultimate indicator? One reason is because it usually has been. When gold is not widely used as currency, silver has served the same function. These two precious metals are the most familiar indicators of underlying economic trends. People have learned after millennia that the purchasing power of gold and silver also reveals a great deal about social stability. When the price of either or both keeps rising, the world is alerted to a nation's underlying crisis. When the prices of basic commodities rise faster than the price of gold and silver, that society is becoming desperate.
We say that gold is the logical focus of attention because it is THEIR (the banking oligarchy's) oldest “brand” of their fake money. If anyone ever devises a “gold backed” system against a “government fiat” system, people are talked into believing that it's safer in terms of holding purchasing power, even though fractional reserve lending is still applied. As we've explained before, THEY control the price of THEIR money, all brands of it, through commodity speculation. So there is no real difference. Most people are fooled into thinking that such systems are “gold backed” when they are not.
Ludwig von Mises [.. not even his real name and frankly who gives a rat's ass about him, since he was a liar and deceiver as were the rest of them?] defined money as the most marketable commodity.
If that's all he could manage, he's NO help whatsoever since no commodity can ever be money. Frankly, the so called libertarians are a bunch of clowns pretending they have real solutions when all they manage is the other end of the banker's dialectic; either their credit or their gold. We are NOT going back there. Understood?
For most of the last century, beginning in the early months of World War I, gold was legally severed from currencies. National fiat currencies have served as money. Also, bank deposits serving in lieu of paper money have become money. These deposits have multiplied. Today, economists are not sure exactly what constitutes money or how to measure it.
That's because they are all “commodity as money” imbeciles!
There are numerous competing measures. Gold and silver rarely serve as money.
At least here, he's being honest. So we'll ask him again, if one has some commodity pricing all other commodities, what happens, as happened during the 16th century, to all other prices when the amount of gold circulating through society expands? In Europe, prices rose 100% during that century all due to imports of gold from the New World. Gold bugs hate being reminded of this, but too damn bad.
But Mises' definition remains accurate: money is the most marketable commodity.
Accurate? He's referring to times so desperate that civilization has ceased to exist, so therefore his sense of it is that we must all retreat back there, to times where the average human life was “nasty, brutish and short.”
You can buy what you want: (1) immediately, (2) without offering a discount, and (3) without advertising. In this sense, money is said to be liquid. It is the supreme measure of liquidity.
How's this for liquidity; just cancel all the naturally unlawful debt. Eliminate all law that supports it too.
Inside a national border, gold and silver are no longer as liquid as what a solvent national government calls money. We must pay a commission to buy a gold coin or a silver coin. In this sense, gold and silver are not money. They are not the most marketable commodities.
Thank-you!
This raises an interesting question: ls our era an anomaly? Are we living in a monetary new world order? Is this situation likely to persist? Or will we see a return of gold and silver as the most marketable commodities?
As I already said, want to return to a time when life was “nasty, brutish and short?” That's what you'll get.
If men are at long last trustworthy, if politicians tell the truth, if central bankers can be trusted not to inflate whenever there is a recession, and if things continue to operate smoothly, then the modern world will have escaped the unsentimental constraints of gold. Gold will not again become money, except as an accounting device for settling international payments among central banks.
Good for them, until the world wakes up to their longest running scam.
Yet this raises another question: Why do central banks stubbornly refuse to abandon the "barbarous relic," as John Maynard Keynes derisively called it? If gold is not good for us little people to use as money, why is it good for central bankers to use in order to settle their accounts? If gold is just another commodity, why don't central banks sell all of it that is stored in their vaults and invest the money in U.S. Treasury bills or some other nation's interest-paying debt? What do they know that the public doesn't know, and gold-hating economists don't know?
I'm not a “gold hating economist,” but I'll be damned if I allow the idea of one commodity pricing all others as legitimate money to go unchallenged. I don't give a rats ass whether the practise extends back in time either. Some things are best to grow up from, not just individually but as a worldwide society.
There is an answer: central bankers do not trust other central bankers. They do not trust the reliability of civil governments. They know that when push comes to shove in the business cycle, other central bankers will crank up the printing presses. When this happens, they all want to be in gold. So should the rest of us. To keep their credit worthiness in a crisis, they have to own gold. So do the rest of us.
Think about it this way Gary; all people who see the world this way KNOW that they are cheating everyone else, no matter what brand of THEIR money is offered. Also most of them are wanderers who never like to put down roots anywhere. Getting me yet? These kinds of people may need a few pieces of gold to sucker the rest of us into allowing them to live with us. Are you getting it yet? Of course they never trust each other because they KNOW they are all crooks! Is that explicit enough for you? There is little honour among thieves.
WE ARE NOT OMNISCIENT
If I knew what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, and next year, I could plan my life to minimize the use of cash. I could put my money into a savings account and earn interest. Why keep cash when you don't need it? The better your forecasting skills, the less you need it.
Gary, you really need to read the rest of this blog. Be sure you read it all before getting back to me. I do not suffer fools lightly. Cash gives people a degree of anonymity in their exchanges, and it serves as the price point below which nothing trades. We'd like to see more cash not less and our solution promotes this as far as possible under current public law. One final point though; if it is stealing for interest to be charged, it is also stealing to pay anything to idle money, ever. If you don't get that point or the obvious difference between capitalism and free enterprise, you've missed much. You enjoy reading your Bible? Ever understood why the Lord forbade usury? It's stealing. It's mathematically inadmissible to ask back that which was never created. One can do that with virtually any other commodity because Nature provides or God does, but NOT with money including silver or gold, because as should be better known, THEY control it all from the mines to the hoarding of it. I wont even bother with the oft mentioned retort that it was fine within the Israelite community but they could charge interest to steal from others. I happen to doubt that the Almighty would have ever implied such a thing.
Today, we have money substitutes [No, we have money, it's just illegitimate money. We wont fall for the “precious metals are the only true money” baloney]. We can deposit money in a bank or a money-market fund [a commodity speculator's creation naturally follows from what they have made of money]. We can also write a check, or use a credit card, at any time to buy what we want. We can do this because of the remarkable fiction known as fractional reserve banking [fiction, my ass, it's FRAUD!]. We lend the bank money short-term -- withdrawal allowed at any time -- yet the bank loans it out for months or years. The bank is in the condition of being "borrowed short and lent long." As long as deposits come close to equaling withdrawals, this wonderful condition can go on without problems. It is a profitable system most of the time [and what “profit” they “earn” is all stealing because no good or service was ever created in the process. I place quotes around the words or terms that are deliberately misleading]. We stop carrying much cash. We carry plastic cards instead. It is safer. It is easier. And it leaves us convenient records for our computerized personal finance programs (and also the income tax collector's finance programs).
All true.
But then comes some unforeseen development. You are in some small town, your car has broken down, and Bubba the car repairman deals only in cash. Bubba, you see, has figured out the system: the tax collector's computer doesn't trace what a credit card company or check doesn't register. [Please note here that Bubba is being blamed as a tax cheat for preferring cash which leaves no records when it is permissible for the rich to tax dodge by creating all sorts of Not for Profit Foundations and Trusts, etc. See how the present order rigs things? Most of the people making more than $500K/yr are probably not paying enough taxes and I guarantee you that anyone making $1 million/yr or more is dodging taxes. We haven't even mentioned all the “state sponsored” corporations who dodge taxes, all of which ultimately cheat the public.] Bubba looks dumb, but Bubba is really pretty clever. Meanwhile, your car is not running. You ask: "How much will it cost to get this fixed?" Bubba, being pretty smart, answers: "How much cash have you got?" You tell him. He starts laughing. He shouts back toward the garage: "Hey, Sam, get a load of this!" All of a sudden, you would like some extra cash, since your alternatives are limited and your forecasting skills have been shown to be not all that you had imagined.
Now during the following few paragraphs, those of you who have this blog's proposal in mind may see what we're going to notice:
Let us pursue this. What if, because of some unforeseen event, such as a meltdown of the stock market, a lot of people start thinking like Bubba? They think to themselves: "My bank may go bankrupt in this mess. Bankrupt, after all, comes from 'bank' and 'ruptured.' I'm getting nervous. I don't know what's coming. You never know these days. I think I would like to have cash. I think I'll go down to my bank and get cash." All of a sudden, deposits do not equal withdrawals. People who lent the bank short-term money want it back today. How is the bank going to get the cash?
It can sell off assets. So, asset prices start falling. The rush for cash means that interest rates start rising. Borrowers start panicking. Employers start firing. Fired people, filled with a new level of uncertainty, go down to the bank and demand cash. Cash is a substitute for knowledge about the future. When people are really scared about their economic futures, they want cash.
Now recall the things we brought to the surface in this article. Note also that no account within any of our IE's will be THEIR money, in fact, no Valuns will belong to anyone but you or some business you are directly associated with. There will no longer be any need whatsoever for deposit insurance which admits the fraud it attempts to protect you from. Most alternative money ends up in drawers at home rather than circulating around a community because the proponents have got one or more things wrong; they directly base the complementary money on some existing money and may include the spurious ideas of the academic economists, especially paying interest on idle money or charging interest on loans (the mother of all usury and fractional reserve practises), both of which are stealing. Again, if you don't happen to think so or agree, we'd rather not even know you. But notice what North is addressing:
In such a downward spiral of fear, uncertainty, and the rush for cash, the central bank will print up currency and deliver it to the banks. There is no other way to stop the panic and keep it from becoming a depression in which payments slow down, businesses cannot collect their money, and the economy collapses. This is called a break in the payments system. It does not happen often, but when it does, the result is an economic crisis of monumental proportions.
The likelihood of this ever happening within a Valun exchange network or VEN (our acronym for a market that uses nothing but Valuns in trade), is limited by many factors, ultimately the availability of community credit to devise projects that cannot be warranted as productive of community wealth; that capable of providing an income. All of our officers would be aware of these kinds of big bogus projects and as we said, without the approval of the local IE from whence all transactions must be identified on all our contracts, nothing will run forward. We will no longer tolerate and this will spread, some nameless, faceless, organizations of mysterious power and THEIR money to dominate our lives.
A BREAK IN THE PAYMENTS SYSTEM
There is no economic event more terrifying than this one. This takes place when a society with a high division of labor, which relies on a predictable system of payments, ceases to trust the system of payments. People start looking for other, safer ways to buy and sell. They move from one monetary unit to another [All THEIR money, so THEY win whichever way “the masses” choose to run]. In the meantime, prior forecasts are shown to have been wrong [... on purpose too, because "the masses" trusted THEIR figures rather than using their own heads]. Businesses fail, stock markets crash, and banks close their doors. As people abandon one form of money -- checks, for example -- in their quest for another form of money -- cash, for example -- those individuals who had previously relied on sales to people who write checks find themselves hard-pressed to find buyers for their products. Their buyers no longer write checks.
Notice he uses checks and cash as just two forms of money while the basic denomination remains the same. Here's the basis of the problem: IT IS NOT YOUR MONEY. NONE of it is, including the old or new gold and silver coins with the various heads of tyrants on them, none of it is YOUR money. If you don't want to see this happen, you would be looking for other ways to trust the system of payments. Why offshore or outsource your thinking on these matters?
No problem! Just start selling for cash. Problem: How do you send cash to your suppliers? In the mail? How can you prove that you sent it? You have to go to your bank. Your bank will wire the money to your supplier's bank. But your bank is closed. The demand for cash has wiped it out. Maybe your supplier's bank is also closed. So, how do you get shipments of goods so that you can sell them? You probably don't. You go out of business.
So, we will notice that North is describing what is happening right now in Venezuela or other places.
Now, let us consider technology. Your local bank has your money stored in its computer. Well, of course, it really does not store money in a computer. Or does it? Are those blips really money? [What was our hard core definition? Does anyone remember? Money to be legitimate must have been exchanged for a good or service in lieu of barter, by a single human being, not a corporation, government or bank. Is it understood where this is going already?] They are [in THEIR money] for as long as you can write a check, or use a credit card, that can subtract from that computer entry.
He's technically correct, and we eventually hope to use some technology beyond paper records, but Mark Twain's maxim is still correct; “The dullest pencil is better than the sharpest memory.” We also noted how popular physical tokens representing money (cash) are and we intend on bringing that representation of money back as well; first as V-Checks and eventually as longer running Exchange Notes). Meanwhile back to North's description of a “system of payments” meltdown:
But if the check no longer works, or the credit card no longer works, or the bank's ATM cash machine no longer works, your computer entries cease to function as money. If the banking systems computer system does not allow additions and subtractions from those digital entries we call money, most people no longer have any money.
THEIR system remember, not yours or mine. We had and have nothing to do with any of it, which is one reason most of us despise money or any conversations referencing it. Something about it we almost automatically recognize as foreign in the sense of not belonging, not ours in fact.
How can you get out of digital money? In other words, what other form of can you buy with it? Today, you can buy gold and silver coins, real estate in the country, and bulk food. But if all money except cash today is digital money, then only fiat money serves as money. You get your choice: digits or paper.
Actually, you get your choice; THEIR credit (in its various forms) or THEIR gold (and silver) since they decide what the exchange rates are between weights of those metals and the rest of THEIR money. NONE of it, is ultimately yours or mine. Also note that he mentions fiat (always associated with a state or bank) that we identify as direct usurpation of our right to issue our own money by OUR fiat! That natural fiat in fact Mr. North has been stolen from us and is every bit as important as the freedom of speech, press or assembly and in fact none of that is worth a shit without the power to issue our own money! This right is inalienable; it cannot rightfully and meaningfully be taken from any human being without direct repercussions. Look around you. Everything that is wrong in this world is due in FACT to the monopolization of money issue by bankers using governments as their perpetual debt slaves.
To get out of a lot of digital money and into paper money is difficult. Basically, most people cannot move into non-digital money from their pension funds. They can buy only non-money items. Gold and silver coins are non-money items. They are highly salable, but they are not money. They require a network of specialized dealers to create a market for them.
Thank-you, Mr. North! You may have been terribly mistaken in other regards, but you can count yourself among the few who have actually realized somewhat that money is not a commodity or represented by any commodity. Our solution strides right across this and sets all academic economics against the wall; we state that the proposed Valun is what it takes today to equal a piece of a transaction that took place on 11/2/11. That was a thousandth of the transaction 1 oz gold = $2,160. So at inception, 1 Valun (V1) = $2.16. Today to purchase the same purchasing power takes $2.78.
Think about the number of institutions that do not rely at all on digital money. It is a very short list. Now think of institutions that are likely to survive a transition from digital money to gold and silver coins [See what he's assuming? If it gets that bad, you know you have returned to times where life is “nasty, brutish and short” and “civilization” has all but ceased to exist], but without fractional reserves. There will not be many of them.
This is a relevant perspective from which to see economies outside the proposed VEN; they are in the process of disintegration due to the compounding of the effects of capitalism (making money on money without working for it), a stupendous economic black hole absorbing more wealth than it produces and state socialism (the opposite side of their prearranged dialectic) which must be kept up else “the masses” would revolt. But ultimately, we say that if business is not done through our far better transaction clearing model, that most businesses will fail.
The national governments of this world survive because they get those under their jurisdiction to send them digital money. This means that they rely on the banking system. The alliance between central governments and central banks has been operating since the establishment of the privately owned Bank of England in 1694. That model spread throughout the world in the twentieth century. Today, it is the basis of the international order. If the banking system collapses in a sea of bad debt or hyperinflation, the humanists' New World Order collapses with it.
We assume all that but consider the bankers the ultimate source of blame because it is they who FORCED states into compliance (through elaborate and at this time well known and documented schemes of blackmail, intimidation, projection, etc.) and their monopolies of the means of social control; the press and the schools.
The NWO must defend the banks. This is why hyperinflation is a threat to it; it undermines banks [It depends of just where and in whose nation hyperinflation is allowed to run its course. It destroys savings and society and renders most to levels of barbarism under which fewer people can live well]. But so is a collapse of bad debt. What's a central planning agency to do? In short, what's a central bank to do? Exactly what politicians do: delay making a decision. [Delay is the chief weapon of those in control. They can literally afford to wait out their adversaries. But what happens when all THEIR money is finally and fatally EXPOSED as the FRAUD and usurpation of our liberties that it is?] Meanwhile, hold press conferences in gibberish. The all-time model is Alan Greenspan.
THE FALL OF JERUSALEM
With this in mind, it is time to review some ancient history: the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. It is worth noting that the time frame was one hour. In fact, it took many months for the city to fall. John prophesied regarding this event:
And the merchants of the earth shall weep and mourn over her; for no man buyeth their merchandise any more: The merchandise of gold, and silver, and precious stones, and of pearls, and line linen, and purple, and silk. and scarlet, and all thine wood, and all manner vessels of ivory, and all manner vessels of most precious wood, and of brass, and iron, and marble, And cinnamon, and odours, and ointments, and frankincense, and wine, and oil, and fine flour, and wheat, and beasts, and sheep, and horses, and chariots, and slaves, and souls of men. And the fruits that thy soul lusted after are departed from thee, and all things which were dainty and goodly are departed from thee, and thou shalt find them no more at all. The merchants of these things, which were made rich by her, shall stand afar off for the fear of her torment, weeping and wailing, And saying, Alas, alas, that great city, that was clothed in fine linen, and purple, and scarlet, and decked with gold, and precious stones, and pearls! For in one hour so great riches is come to nought. And every shipmaster, and all the company in ships, and sailors, and as many as trade by sea, stood afar off. And cried when they saw the smoke of her burning, saying, What city is like unto this great city! And they cast dust on their heads, and cried, weeping and wailing, saying, Alas, alas, that great city, wherein were made rich all that had ships in the sea by reason of her costliness! for in one hour is she made desolate (Rev. 18:11-19).
What is described here can be applied to any city in which the means of payment breaks down. Why would merchants bring goods into a city if those dwelling in it cannot pay? It is the prospect of payment that keeps every delivery system operating. It is this prospect that puts a newspaper on a front lawn, electrical power in a line, water in a pipe, takes used water out of a receptacle and down a pipe, and so on. In short, if the means of payment should ever break down, there will be fewer and fewer deliveries until those inside the city can begin to produce something of value for which they can obtain the new money.
Understood? We're saying that eventually the same must occur.
Problem: the productivity of a person who lives in a high division of labor economy is dependent on the existence of a universal means of payment. The value of his productivity collapses overnight -- "in one hour" -- if the traditional means of payment is not replaced immediately by a new means of payment.
This is why there must be continuity from fiat money to money based on precious metals if we are ever to bring national governments under control -- control of the masses, who buy and sell.
The last paragraph does not follow from the previous one at all! THEIR systems are losing confidence every day and we hope THEY lose all confidence, the sooner the better. It would put an end to most of their extremely dangerous “mad science” schemes for one thing. When we chose the basis for our proposal it was gold for exactly this reason. You want to buy any of OUR money? You pay for it in GOLD buster! Or silver. But this isn't because we care more about these manifestations of money. We don't. We see past the baloney. They're just some metal to us. It is because THEY value it as a means to control US that we are interested in gold. Right now, THEIR gold buys fewer of OUR Valuns than it did at inception. That's all we ever need to know. It establishes what any of the rest of THEIR money is worth to us. Per design, their “markets” can go on as they like while the Valun remains stable. Our prices and price structure ultimately establish what will be traded, in real goods and services. We allow financing that must be 100% reserve. We do not allow you to lend what you do not have. For the rest, it's about buying something for its cash value at point of sale and arranging for “terms” in which the buyer (who needed the object or service when he needed it) to pay for that good or service over time on terms acceptable to him/her and the lender. If the lender goes under, the entire system is NOT imperilled. Nor the value expressed in the money changed. Now, notice what North says here about any possible “gold standard:”
This must not be another government scheme to fleece the public with a golden fleece. [It was the BANKS, not governments that decided it before] It must not be another government-guaranteed gold standard. We have seen how reliable such pseudo-gold standards are. They lure people to hand over their gold to a local bank. Then the local bank joins a central bank. Then the government authorizes the central bank to keep the gold. That happened in 1914. Most Europeans never got their gold back.
CONCLUSION
For a gold coin standard to be reliable, it must be the product of voluntary exchange. It must not be just another fiat currency. It must not be "spoken into existence" by a national government: "Let there be monetary liberty!" Civil governments have never declared monetary liberty. They hate monetary liberty. Monetary liberty is a restraint on civil government. That is why we need it.
STOP: None of this is ever going to work so why bother advocating it? Because North and others are desperate? No one is desperate. They either have enough of THEIR money or they don't. Capitalism and socialism working in tandem, are delivering the world into THEIR hands. The result shall be THEIR ultimate destruction, because ALL OF IT including all that silver and all that gold, are THEIR money and since neither gold nor silver are gifted with flight, they shall not move very much at all. Therefore they shall NOT circulate freely. We've already said many times that the “intrinsic wealth” concept of money is utterly bogus. Money is ONLY a means to split barter and therefore the cheaper one can make the medium of exchange the better. Hence, ANY idea that monetary reform requires a return to tokens made of gold or silver is rendered puerile to say the least.
There was been a worldwide break in the payments system in 1914: from gold coins to fiat money. To restore monetary liberty, there must be a vast monetary reform that is the product of human action, not human design.
And therefore, what Mr. North, do you require for “human action” without any design? Sounds as usual like a disaster.
Anyone who comes with a monetary reform plan engineered by a national government is operating under a delusion: the doctrine of the nation-state's legal sovereignty over money. Ignore him . . . or her (e.g., Ellen Brown).
We agree here, but for different reasons: governments have become the prisoners of the banks. They are less responsible, but obviously the present order separates and selects the worst possible characters to serve in government. Those of us with any hearts or brains want nothing to do with governments and less to do with banks and most of us do not care for either gold or silver in any form and never really have. We furthermore resent the idea that anyone can take a rare substance which nobody has and claim there can be any monetary liberty by advocating its use as money! Period! End of story! If you disagree, you're an idiot a “useful idiot” of the present disorder using FORCE as the only thing “backing” the use of so called “public” money. As we've seen, “public” anything usually becomes no one's responsibility, like public restrooms. He says in conclusion concerning gold and silver-
Accept no substitutes!
We'll accept nothing but silver and gold bullion in exchange for OUR money, but because THEY determine what the exchange rate shall be rather than us, we'll expect to charge them more gold or silver for our money as the price of gold (and or silver) falls below our inception transaction; V1 = 1/1000 of 1Au = $2,160 (not spot but “in your hand” actual rates). If they decide that gold is worth more than $2,160 (not spot but “in your hands”) then we'll just raise the inception transaction (never lower it) and therefore the Valun will retain its purchasing power above any and all of THEIR blood soaked money (including all gold and silver).
We remain open a response from Mr. North or any of his friends, but we admonish them to fully understand this blog's proposal first. It's NOT monetary reform as there is no such thing possible.
David Burton
dpbmss@mail.com
Current Hypothetical Value of a Hypothetical Value Unit
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