The World Economic Forum (WEF) was founded by the German Klaus Schwab in 1971 and is based in Geneva, Switzerland. You may know it most as the hosts of the yearly “Davos” conference, oft-reported on the media, where political and financial heavyweights meet to discuss pressing matters of the day. The truly global reach of this organisation is shown by a board of trustees that includes Al Gore, Mark Carney, and Jack Ma. It now openly refers to this period of uncertainty, illness, and death as ‘The Great Reset’ via their website. Articles it posts give some clues that business and life may not return to how it was before. The oft-quoted phrase of the era, “The New Normal,” which you may have heard many places, suggests big changes too.
Contagion
In early 2020, a new virus hit the world. A virus so, so awful that nanny said we had to stay indoors. We couldn’t go near another person, go to work, school, visit a shop or travel anywhere. Life turned upside down. For millions, their livelihoods just stopped instantly. Unemployment rates flew up, and western governments especially introduced emergency payments to those now finding themselves out of work. Emergency payments that continue to the present day. In countries without the European levels of welfare, such as India, trains just stopped in their tracks. Leaving many workers who travel across the country to simply try and walk hundreds of miles home, with no financial means of support. For the luckier ones, offices worldwide closed, but they were allowed to continue working, albeit from home. It was a virus that also hammered stock markets across the world down by 40% or more.
If you feel you’ve heard the story before, then it may be because you watched the 2011 film ‘Contagion,’ in which a disease hit the world, killing thousands, stopping everything, and striking fear and distrust into everyone worldwide. This film had all the ingredients you might expect to find. The heroes, desperately trying to save lives and find a vaccine, like Kate Winslet. The villains, like the odd-toothed conspiracy theorist Alan Krumwiede, played by Jude Law, who gets his just desserts when he dies trying to prove the virus isn’t real. The film is quite clear on who is good and who is bad, in typical Hollywood style, and ends by showing how the virus began in a pig farm in China, started by bats. If that bit sounds really familiar, it’s because you may have heard it used in 2020 as a possible explanation of how Corona (Spanish, English Translation: Crown) began.
The gist of the film is certainly that only a vaccine is the solution, and in one week of August 2020, during travels across countries, the following line, from acquaintances and TV was heard, Ad Infinitum:-
“Life won’t get back to normal until we get a vaccine.”
So there we go, there’s a big illness, and the people are being primed to take what they are told is the remedy.
We Should Be Happier To Have A Job Than To Have Savings
“We Should Be Happier To Have A Job Than To Have Savings”
– Christine Lagarde, 2019.
Thank you, Christine. Your quote is the main reason why “How to Invest in Gold and Silver” got revisited 13 years after the original publication. Gold had underperformed for many years after attaining an all-time high in 2012, and gold mining companies had declined massively. Meanwhile, stock markets were apparently flying along and hitting new highs daily. Commodity prices were now lower than ever, in many cases and there was doubt in the premise of that book still being valid. Perhaps the 2008-09 crisis and fallout really was over?
When Christine said that, though, it was time to wonder. For those who don’t know Christine Lagarde, she makes big decisions on finance at the ECB (European Central Bank). The ECB is the banking facet of the European Union, and she was appointed to lead it in 2019. It doesn’t seem to matter that she was convicted of a financial crime 4 years earlier, nor did she seem to suffer any penalty for the conviction. Christine attends many events where big-ticket items are discussed, but no agenda or minutes of meetings are made public – think Bilderbergs and the World Economic Forum, for example. Christine even has Hollywood links – she was interviewed in 2010 as part of the documentary “Inside Job,” helping explain how those awful banks played roulette with our mortgages, savings, and investments, and it was all their fault. Lone financial gunmen, acting alone.
In summary, Ms Lagarde is a big cheese – or fromage grande to use her own language. When she says something, you can believe it may not just be her own words and possibly comes from somewhere deeper.
So ask yourself now, what does this quote mean to you? Images of savings being destroyed and life being a treadmill of working to earn enough to survive? Working on this premise, but not knowing what was coming or how that would be achieved, it was hard to know what to do except ensuring you have some diversification, then watch and wait.
In early 2020 it began to be clearer.
I, Daniel Blake
The irony of the Priestley play “An Inspector Calls” and the judgemental way in which welfare is issued or not issued to the needy recipient should not be lost on modern Britain, as the government now acts as a much larger version of Mrs Birling. Deciding, almost arbitrarily with an iron fist, on whether someone gets help or not. Again, media commentary exists in the form of the 2016 Ken Loach film “I, Daniel Blake,” where someone who loses their work begins a downward life spiral, with his benefits gradually cut for failing to abide by Nanny’s rules. Even when those failures were for valid reasons. A cautionary tale for anyone thinking Nanny cares about them.
An Inspector Calls
After World War 2, it was no surprise the welfare state emerged and, with it, a whole load of new money distribution schemes. Setting the scene, there had just been a major war, and the people of the UK were weary. After all, what had they got out of it? There had to be something back in return for their sacrifices, didn’t there? That was what led to the ousting of Prime Minister Winston Churchill and the installation of a new Labour PM, Clement Atlee, in 1945.
“An Inspector Calls” is a 1945 play by J.B. Priestley, but based in Edwardian England, around 1910. There’s a poignant scene in which a poor commoner goes to the local poor council to ask for needed funds as she has lost her job and is pregnant. The unpleasant Mrs Birling, the wife of a well-to-do local industrialist, sits on the council and decides that this woman is undeserving of help, totally on her own personal whims. The woman dies later. Or does she? If you’ve not seen this play or film dramatisation, it is highly recommended. Priestley presented this scene to support the introduction of a more socialist regime in the UK. Espousing free universal healthcare, regardless of circumstances.
Gold Reserves and Confiscation
Once governments got you used to the concept of using just one currency in your everyday transactions and got you used to the trust that they were looking after your gold – they began loaning it out and selling it off, often without your knowledge or consent.
(Chart: source: Wikipedia By Tsange – CC BY-SA 4.0)
Looking at the chart, it’s easy to see the UK gold reserves have declined massively, especially in the 1960s – leading to the famous ‘Pound in your Pocket’ speech by Prime Minister Harold Wilson in 1967, trying to assuage voters that their pound was still worth a pound, as the value plunged against other currencies. A pound of what, Harold? In 1999, the UK decided to sell off over half the nations’ remaining gold reserves, some 400 tonnes. At the time, gold was at the end of a major 20-year bear market, and the price was at an all-time low, a price last seen in the 1970s. The Bank of England, the custodian of the countries’ gold reserves, insists that it was never consulted in the decision, and some leaks, in fact, suggest that many of their staff vigorously opposed the move. They claim that Her Majesty’s Treasury and them alone made the decision. At the time, the Chancellor of the Exchequer was a Mr. Gordon “Golden” Brown, who subsequently became Prime Minister.
Even worse, the huge gold sales and auctions were publicly announced well in advance, thus giving gold dealers the chance to prepare for the glut of gold that was about to be released onto the market, and force the price down still further as a result. The normal strategy is to keep intended government gold sales quiet, then simply conduct the sales on the open market, obtaining the best prices possible, then announce the results afterward.
Why might a government decide to sell off one of the main assets of its people at the lowest price possible? There were rumours and accusations that the gold was sold to prevent top Hedge Funds who had got it wrong gambling on the price of gold from going bust and destroying the worldwide economy, among others.
Regardless of the truth of the rumours, 1999-2002 has subsequently been proved to have been exactly the right time to start buying gold, not selling it; in fact, the value of the gold sold by the UK has risen by over ten billion dollars since that time. This period in gold price history is now referred to as ‘The Brown Bottom.’
1971 Gold Window Closes
While the owning of gold was illegal for US citizens from 1933, the USA sat atop international trade after World War 2, allowing gold convertibility at the same price of 35 dollars an ounce for other nations. This was called the ‘Bretton Woods’ agreement, referring to the location where it was signed. However, partly due to the cost of paying for the Vietnam War, the number of dollars in circulation began rising in the 1950s and 1960s. Nations like France and West Germany seized their chance to exchange their devaluing dollars for the real thing, gold at $35 an ounce. In 1971, the window for exchanging gold was officially closed.
The Federal Reserve
As the current empire, the USA began 1900 with a strong, growing country, an economic powerhouse destined to lead the world, and best of all, their currency was all denominated in gold and silver.
The USA removed its link in gradual phases, but several major milestones stand out in history. The first of these was the creation of the Federal Reserve, in 1913, just before World War One, handing control of the US national currency to private banking interests. To emphasise the importance of this, remember Amschel Rothschild’s quote :-
“Give me control of a nation’s money, and I care not who makes the laws.”
― Amschel Rothschild
James Corbett’s superb “Century of Enslavement – History of the Federal Reserve” video and podcast documentary is highly recommended for the full history of how that happened.
USA Reduces Reserve Lending Requirement to ZERO
In 2020 during the Corona crisis, the USA simply reduced the reserve lending requirement to zero, giving banks the power to issue new money with interest added, without any savings in the bank to back it up. The media response in reporting this incredible, never-seen-before, financial act?
Zilch.
Well, virtually zilch. that was the only mainstream clip I found mentioning it.
Merv
There were many great rich cities along the Silk Road that are now just ruined, with little left of their tales of immense wealth. Merv in Iran, for example, had perhaps 500,000 people there at its peak, was a major centre of learning, and is now just a raised shell in a desert. The point is, people and wealth move, civilisation and empire grows, lives, and dies. It is never fixed, and it definitely never stays the same forever.