The Euro/Dollar was exposed to extreme levels of volatility during trading on Thursday following the European Central Bank’s market shaking decision to taper its monetary stimulus to the Eurozone from April 2017 until the end of December 2017 or beyond. Although the central bank has decided to maintain its monthly purchases by 80 billion euros until March 2017, the reduction to 60 billion euros from April 2017 till year end could spark fears of a taper tantrum potentially sabotaging growth and pressuring the ECB to take further actions. With concerns still elevated over the health of the European economy and mounting political instability from Italy weighing heavily on sentiment, investors may turn to Draghi for further clarity on why the ECB made such a move.

…read more plus analysis on Crude & Gold

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“The hunt for taxes is getting pretty bad”

The European Payments Council (EPC), a subdivision of the European Central Bank, is taking one giant step forward in their quest to eliminate all cash to increase taxes. They have gone ahead and set up the technical bases last week to enable the immediate payments system throughout Europe. One of the stumbling blocks has been the fact you cannot transfer money same day for banks like to play with your money and holding it for a few days. If the payment comes from overseas, the bank will not “clear” the funds usually for six weeks.

Unless money can become instant, it is really impossible to eliminate cash. The SEPA Credit Transfer Scheme will move to allow instant transfers. The goal is to eliminate ATM machines and force people to pay using their mobile phone beginning in November 2017. Of course, there is nobody thinking about tourism. How will an American pay for something on a vacation in Europe? One suggestion behind the curtain I was recently briefed on was they could pay in advance and have an app that then pays for things in Europe.

The hunt for taxes is getting pretty bad. The entire reason for the introduction of passports was by the Roman Emperor Diocletian following the collapse during the 3rd Century. Diocletian introduced wage and price controls, and doubled the number of bureaucrats at the government’s command; Lactantius was to claim that there were now more men using tax money than there were paying it. A form of introducing a passport not to travel to foreign lands since civilization was the Roman Empire, but to be able to travel within the Empire because you could not leave your home town until you paid your taxes.

King Henry V of England (1387–1422) is credited with having invented what considered the first true international passport. The king saw this as helping his subjects prove who they were in foreign lands and not the subject of the king where they traveled. The reason for this 1414 Act of Parliament was legal. You were the property of your King. If you committed a crime in France, the French king could not punish you. He had to send you back to your king in chains noting the crime you committed and asked that you be punished by your king. This legal foundation of “jurisdiction” was not overthrown until the American Revolution, which gave birth to territorial jurisdiction. Since it was a revolt against monarchy, it was seen as implausible that if an Englishman committed a crime in America, that they would still recognize the authority of the king and send him in chains to Britain to be punished. This new idea of territorial jurisdiction is directly outlined in the 6th Amendment:

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.

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We are entering a very dark phase in this battle to retain our liberty. A proposal now being whispered behind the curtain in Europe is to impose a tax on withdrawing your own money from an ATM. The banks support this measure as a whole because they see this as preventing bank runs.

Nobody will look at the direction we are headed. I am deeply concerned that these type of proposals will send the West in a real revolution not much different from that of Russia in 1917. The divide between left and right is getting much deeper and the left is hell bent on stripping those who produce of their liberty and assets. This type of confrontation is in line with our War Cycle, which we will update in 2017.

This is the most dangerous period we are heading into for governments will respond only in their own self-interest to survive. The socialists hate those who produce. That is just the bottom line. Nobody should have wealth more than they and this is the same human emotion that has cost tens of millions of lives in civil conflicts through out the centuries. Proof this is a persistyent problem is the fact taht even the Ten Commandments state clearly that socialism is wrong: “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house … or anything that belongs to your neighbor” (Exodus 20:17).  Nevertheless, this is repuidiated by socialists who say it’s not fair that anyone has something more than they do. This material jealousy has been the source of so much death throughout the centuries because it has been exploited by the ruling class to justify their theivery.

We will review all our models and update this after the U.S. inauguration since the socialists are trying to figure out how to steal the election from Trump. There is no way to overturn Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania without fraud and they need all three overturned to claim victory. This will not end nicely. The divide will only get bigger. The future is anything but stable and safe.

The war on cash is in full swing. The whispers behind the curtain are starting to get louder. The headlines in Australia demonstrate how the press is already conspiring against the people. The new slogan rising is Cash is for Criminals. ABC of Australia ran the story:

We began writing on the War on Cash some time ago, when it was still just a theoretical ploy that we believed banks and governments were likely to employ as their economic adventurism continued to unravel. 

But, in the last year, several countries have, as a part of the War on Cash, begun removing larger bank notes from circulation in order to force people to perform all economic transactions through the banking system, assuring that the banks would gain total control over the movement of money. 

Of course, the banks could not admit their true goal to the public. They instead used the governments to claim that the measure was being undertaken to restrict crime (money laundering, drug deals, black marketing, terrorism, etc.) 

Recently, without any fanfare, ATM’s in Mexico have ceased issuing the 500 peso note US$24). The largest note is now the 200 peso note (US$10). 

At about the same time, Citibank in Australia declared that it will no longer accept coins or banknotes. 

India has joined those countries that have done away with larger notes. They did so quite suddenly and the effects are already being felt by the Indian people. The elimination of the 500 rupee and 1000 rupee notes has, of course, not limited the level of spending in India, but it has caused a sudden demand for considerably more smaller notes through which to accomplish the same transactions. 

A problem with the removal surfaced immediately when people using ATM’s were withdrawing far more notes than ever before in order to have enough cash to function normally. The ATM’s were quickly being emptied of the smaller denominations. The people of India cried foul, as 86% of all money in circulation had vanished from the system overnight. The limit for withdrawal per day is 2500 rupees (US$37) – which for some is sufficient to pay for daily expenses, but is most certainly not sufficient to carry on a business or facilitate larger transactions. 

Although deliveries of notes to the ATM’s has increased, the banks simply cannot make up for the sudden loss of 86% of the nation’s money. Not only can the delivery trucks not meet the demand, the machines cannot store the volume of notes needed. 

The result has been a partial breakdown of commerce. With millions of people beginning each day with insufficient funds to function, one bi-product of the money shortage is that over 9.3 million trucks have simply been abandoned by their drivers. (Nearly two thirds of all freight in India moves by road.) 

In January of 2016, we published an article that made reference to the turning point of World War Two on the western front. Although the German war machine was collapsing, a major last-ditch effort was made at the Battle of the Bulge to reverse the tide of the war. German tanks raced to the battle and might well have made the Germans the victors, but they ran out of gasoline along the way . 

The crews, understanding that the game was well and truly over, simply left the tanks and began to walk back to Germany. The great significance of this event is that, no matter how much bluster a political or military leadership presents, and no matter how obediently the soldiers respond to such posturing, once it’s clear that the game is up, the pretense amongst the soldiers evaporates. 

The same is true in commerce. When those who make the decisions in banking and government try to game the system one time too many, dysfunction sets in and the “soldiers” – the countless minor participants in the system – simply walk away. 

The lesson to be learned here is that, in all countries where a War on Cash is being destructively waged, the end will not be a positive one. The people of each country will increasingly become unable to function normally, as in Greece, where there have been riots due to the banking squeeze. Banks and governments have colluded to tie up wealth in order to have their hands on as much of it as possible, as they grow nearer to economic collapse. As the situation drags on, their intent is becoming ever-more transparent to those who have to suffer the difficulties caused by the squeeze. 

But, as difficult as it may be to accept, these are “the good old days”. The direst events to come have not yet begun to surface. 

As I’ve mentioned in past articles, the problem reaches its nadir when trucks that move the country’s food come to a halt. As long as sufficient food remains available to us, we treat it as just another commodity. But unlike clothing, hardware, vehicles, etc., when our source of food is cut off, even for a very short period, we become frightfully aware that its level of importance is far beyond that of any other commodity. 

It’s been said that the average person abandons his moral inhibitions after three days without food. After this time, an otherwise morally responsible man is literally prepared to kill his neighbour for a loaf of bread. 

To date, none of the countries that have declared a War on Cash has yet experienced a food panic. It would not be surprising if India becomes the first, as their trucking problem has them on the edge already. 

However, it’s ironic that the War on Cash problem is most pronounced in what was called “the free world” only two generations ago. Many of those countries that we’ve come to regard as being both prosperous and “safe” are becoming less so with great rapidity. 

Small wonder, then, that an increasing number of people are exiting these once-choice jurisdictions and seeking those that are not similarly in economic decline. Although we cannot predict how far the elimination of cash will spread, the further you are from the epicentre of the problem, the greater your chances of coming out with your skin on. 

The trick, of course, is to say, “This is where I get off,” well before (as we are beginning to see in India) the driver himself has abandoned the bus.

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The Fat Lady Is Singing For The Bond Market

Regular readers will disregard the current downward trend in precious metals prices. They were already warned, repeatedly, that the supposed “rally” in the precious metals sector this year was a Fake Rally. It was a set-up to position these markets for a crash, timed to coincide (more or less) with a manufactured crash of our bubble markets and already-crippled economies.

Precious Metals

However, it was a crash in precious metals markets (the Crash of ’08) which set the stage for the last, real rally in this sector (2009 -11). For various reasons, it will likely be a crash which sets the stage for the Next Rally. Here it is important to note that while the banking crime syndicate can manipulate the price of gold or silver they cannot affect the value of these metals. The longer the banksters pervert the prices of precious metals, the more violent the upward move in gold and silver prices when those prices finally reflect that value.

Gold and silver have value because these metals have universal aesthetic appeal. Because of that quality, and because these metals occur at ideal levels of scarcity/abundance, gold and silver have always been and will always be the best money available to our species.

Gold and silver are eternal stores of value and thus eternal protectors of wealth. These metals are also presently undervalued, to an absurd degree , because of the criminal manipulation of these markets, which has been frequently documented in previous commentaries. The Big Banks and bankers have also confessed to this manipulation.

As Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan confessed (in official testimony) that Western central banks “stand ready” to manipulate the price of gold, any time the price begins to rise. The Big Banks have already confessed to rigging both the gold fix and the silver fix, but that hasn’t stopped them from continuing to “fix” the fixes. Numerous other forms of price manipulation remain unexposed.

Such sustained, systemic price manipulation has, in turn, produced large supply deficits in both the gold and silver markets. In the case of silver, evidence has emerged suggesting that this market has had a sustained supply deficit for 30 years. It is these supply deficits which ensure there must be an upward revaluation in the price of these metals – to restore equilibrium to these markets. The longer this disequilibrium is maintained, the longer and stronger will be the upward revaluation in price.

For all of these reasons; many investors in gold and silver bullion have a difficult time identifying any other asset class which offers similar security and upside potential, in a time of grave economic uncertainty. We hold bullion as our insurance against currency debasement, economic calamities, and political strife. However, what do investors do with the remainder of their investment portfolio?

What about investors who also want a growth component for their portfolios while still keeping all of their wealth in the precious metals sector? [remove bold face when publishing] The solution to this conundrum can be identified in one, simple phrase: diversify within the sector.

….continue reading HERE