Wars benefit the political and financial elite. Most wars are on-going, whether they include formal Congressional declaration or military actions. The following wars will continue.
- Drugs.
- Poverty.
- Cash.
- Reality based statistics.
- Savers.
- Students.
- Purchasing power.
- Pensions.
- Real money.
- Accountability and honest accounting.
Drugs.
This war has cost the U.S. government over $1 trillion in direct costs. Check with your teen-aged children for the easy availability of illegal drugs to confirm its failure. Powerful forces want this war to continue – profits from drug sales and money laundering are huge.
Poverty.
The U.S. has fought this war for decades and made little progress. Per the Heritage Foundation the cost since President Johnson declared war on poverty has been (inflation adjusted) $22 trillion.
Cash.
This is a recent “war.” Financial and political control increases when individuals have no alternative for their savings except commercial banks. Remove an individual’s ability to convert assets into cash and financial privacy is gone.
Reality Based Statistics.
Stop counting unemployed people and the unemployment rate decreases. If inflation is too high, change the rules. That Ford F-150 truck has improved so much that even though the price doubled, the official inflation rate is near zero. Really?
Savers.
Drop interest rates to zero or below to funnel profits to commercial banks. Savers earn little, and pension funds and insurance companies lose revenue. The result will be insolvent pension funds and higher insurance costs. The search for yield forces savers into high risk stocks. Another market crash will devastate stocks. This war hurts many more individuals than it helps.
Students.
Make borrowing painless and raise tuition costs. Total student debt per the St. Louis Federal Reserve was $1.49 trillion (12/31/2017). Not only is this debt more likely to default, it increases 10% per year. These debts can’t be discharged, except in rare cases, by bankruptcy. Student loan debt is a government guaranteed train-wreck in progress that doubles every seven years.
Purchasing Power.
Pumping too many dollars into the economy devalues the dollar. Prices rise and purchasing power declines as it has since 1913. Ninety years ago you could buy men’s dress pants for $3 and ladies shoes for a buck.
Pensions.
Politicians make promises to buy votes and pass pension legislation that assumes unrealistic earnings and unsustainable payouts. They off-load the problems and consequences onto future politicians and taxpayers. Read “Crazy Pension News” ($76,111 per MONTH for one Oregon State pension.)
Real Money.
Gold and silver are real money. Gold coins circulated in the U.S. until the 1930s. Silver coins circulated until the 1960s. Now Americans use Federal Reserve Notes (debts) for transactions. Bad money – Federal Reserve Notes—drives out good money—gold and silver. The implosion is inevitable.
Accountability and Honest Accounting.
Politicians lie to congress under oath, load top secret documents onto unsecured servers, and… more. The Federal Reserve shipped $12 billion in $100 bills to Iraq in 2003. Accounting was non-existent. They used cash for payoffs, corruption, waste and ghost employees. Reports show they spent $500 million for “to be determined.”
War business as usual for the Elite:
- Drink Champagne with other elites at Davos and IMF meetings.
- Keep your leased senators on speed dial.
- Feed your preferred narratives into the media, which will report them as facts.
- Dismiss unapproved interpretations and facts as “fake news.”
- Cultivate friends at The Fed. Access huge low-interest loans. Smile!
- Hide assets in off-shore tax-havens.
- Purchase a Presidential Pardon when needed.
But for the rest of us:
- The financial system is rigged in favor of debt-slavery and currency devaluation.
- We must protect our savings and retirement with unloved assets. Gold was unloved ($42) in 1970 and priced over $800 in 1980. The Nikkei 225 Japanese Index bubbled higher from 1980 to 1990. The NASDAQ went crazy from 1990 to 2000 before it crashed. Silver increased by a factor of twelve between 2001 and 2011. The Dow is four times higher since 2009. Silver and gold will be priced much higher in ten years.
- Gold and silver are real money. They will become far more real when debt based assets, unsustainable debts, failing pension funds and other markets implode.
CONCLUSIONS:
- Our politicians, military and bankers pursue undeclared wars. Those wars transfer assets to the elite from the middle and lower classes while increasing their control over the middle and lower classes.
- Based on the last century we should be skeptical of official narratives, unemployment numbers, inflation statistics and all wars.
- Debt will increase until the system implodes. The dollar will continue devaluing as it has since 1913. Purchasing power will decline as prices rise for most items except televisions and computers. A loss of confidence in the dollar, U.S. government, or military will jump-start inflation to much higher levels. Politicians and bankers have not protected the value of the dollar for decades.
Take responsibility for your savings and retirement. Reduce unproductive debt.
Silver and gold come to mind.
This post originally appeared on The Deviant Investor
All true. All horribly wasteful of the resources and treasure produced and owned by decent hard working American citizens. But, in the end, we remain responsible for the situation. We have allowed it to happen, inch by inch. We have gotten what we asked for. When will we reject it? When will we say “no more”? When will we hold them responsible? Tomorrow?
How Long did you´ve to work for one pair of trousers 1913 , and how Long do you now ?
What kind of pants or trouser’s,i can easily purchase a pair of cheap dungarees at wall Mart for 20$ made elsewhere by”slave labor”, about an hour’s wage. American made jeans are more in the 80$ -200$ range,m ore like 4hours to10 hours wage, dress pants I don’t know, I work for a living and have rare use for such. I own one pair and have had them for many years.but ladies shoes for one dollar,WOW,have you bought your wife shoes lately?
Yes, that´s also the question.
No, the last summer shoes i bought were about 100 €, but my grandma told me the pair of Sandals for her as a child, had needed a discussion between her parents.
ThoDan,
How true. People talk about how “cheap” things “cost” back-in-the-day, or from one part of the country to another today. (example – housing in any other part of the US vs housing in San Francisco or Los Angeles).
But those same people forget that along with “cost” (outgo), there is also income. What is your income for the costs in that same area?
Ditto for other times. Ten cents for a loaf of bread? WOW! But you had to work (approximately) twenty minutes at 25 cents per hour to be able to buy that ten cents bread.
And this is even ignoring the cost-to-benefit ratio of modern manufacturing vs older manufacturing.
May I add war on Terror, Truth, Family, the Unborn, Christianity, Middle Class, Sovereignty, and Liberty.
You forgot(?) the war on the unborn and how it is now permeating everything and turning into a war on life. Animals first, the old are useless, there are too many people, etc.
And the medical industrial complex ain’t helping either. Doctors kill hundreds of thousands a year.
Let’s talk about the price of a chicken or a car or property
Here at the farm, the kids and I took to calling them Federal Reserve BANKERS.
And we took to calling them Federal Reserve PROMISSORY Notes.
* * * * *
I wonder… should I go back to university by borrowing a few hundred thousand? Since the bankers’ inflation automatically reduces the value of the borrowed amount by double-digit percents each year, that seems a decent return.
Here is my nefarious scheme. Tell me if you see any flaws:
I use my newly-acquired borrowed loot to acquire durable tangible goods… and I rarely step foot aboard university property.
With my new plan, I see two wins:
a) I support prep suppliers… usually small business owners.
b) I get my ‘fair-share’ of the loot from ‘too-big’ bankers instead of community lenders such as credit unions.
Irregardless of the source of my ‘fair-share’ loot, the loans are guaranteed by some nameless faceless bureaucrat deep in the bowels of some bureaucracy someplace, right?
I’m liking this theory!
Join me?
Maybe we’ll meet on Orientation Day. I plan on bringing a bag big enough for my ‘fair-share’. To help carry my ‘fair-share’, should I bring a wagon or a hand-truck?
PS:
Federal Reserve BANKERS.
Federal Reserve PROMISSORY Notes.
I’ve heard of people that become life time schoolers just to avoid paying back student loans. So your plan might work. I think you just have to be in school half time. You could probably do online classes and might still even learn something useful.
Note I’m pretty sure you to have to pass classes.
Was it Jefferson who said “When I contemplate that God is just, I fear for my country”? During World War II America dropped Nukes on two Japanese cities killing thousands of non combatants. Our side destroyed many German cities and thousands of their civilian occupants. Nearly all Americans were (and are) OK with that because Americans have always believed the citizens of a country are responsible for what their governments do. If this has ever been true for any country it is doubly true for the U. S. now. The consequences for this list of violations, if we continue to allow them, might someday result in terrible consequences. How will that feel then? It should feel deserved. Deserved because the streets of Washington D. C. were never filled with millions of citizens saying “NO MORE”! What a sad commentary it will be if in the future someone says “the best of them hid in the mountains, and there are a few of them that survive there still.”
Do you have any idea the damage that illegal drugs are doing? Even if you are aware of the 60,000 people killed by these drugs every year that doesn’t tell the entire story. Do have daughters or grand daughters? Drugs are used by men to get sex from these young girls. I know women who had to have sex with 11 men on a given day to get her drugs. The rule, as she explained it, was you had sex with whoever was in the drug house at the time. Why do people do drugs? Well of course they get hooked and it’s hard to break away from but the driving force, the reason for it all is cheap and easy sex. We have destroyed tens of millions of lives of children because of illegal drugs. Do you think an effort to stop it and reverse it is worthwhile???
Well we mustn’t blame men. We must blame feminists for creating a sexual starved manhood. How many of our young men/older men which are sexually harassed by women liberating themselves from the marriage bed? Better yet, women refusing to be married except well into their thirties or forties as they chase their careers which their husbands once held and provided for them. God has the last laugh with his Spiritual law. Women who break the law by refusing to be women(in a marriage bed) God illustrates they will be punished at the end of times “it will be tough for a woman and especially for the pregnant woman in those times.” Matthew 24
To put it more succinctly all these programs are is a transfer of wealth. Criminals always profit on both sides of the equation.
I laugh when I hear about people waiting for a “fiat currency” to replace the green back. That already happened in 1965,
Here’s another losing, money pit war: the War on Cancer. Unless focused on prevention (which it isn’t), it’s a lost cause.
Amen!
If they announced a cure there would be millions of people out of work.
From the article: Prices rise and purchasing power declines as it has since 1913.
This implies that before 1913, prices didn’t rise and purchasing power didn’t decline. Could that be true? Is 1913 used because that is when the Federal Reserve System was created? Were peoples’ savings safe before 1913? Were there no fiat currencies?
Wondering over here. Our author seems to have much certainty and all I have is questions.
Carry on.
Scroll down to the graph at this site.
https://www.quora.com/What-might-be-the-reason-for-stagnant-inflation-despite-the-economic-growth-for-the-US
It is a measure of consumer price index since 1775. Note that prices were relatively constant until formation of the Federal Reserve in 1913. Inflation (change in money supply) is meaningless by itself, but its effect of price inflation is what is important.
Good article. One point besides the war on drugs being a waste of money and lives (an ineffective) it’s also been used as an excuse to do away with countless civil liberties.
I remember the saying that one ounce of gold in 1900 could buy a man’s suit and a good dinner out with the wife, and it still can.
Now that is stable money.
A good book to read is Empire of Debt by William Bonner & Addison Wiggins.
It’s a good historical review on fiat currency.
However some of their conclusions never came to pass.
It was written in 2006 and gold was $450 ounce.
It disturbs me that so many conservatives so willingly call for dictatorial actions by our government. The war on drugs is insane, immoral, unjust, and just as importantly, unconstitutional. You can’t declare a war on an inanimate object, you can only declare war on people. Show me in our constitution where the States granted the authority to the Federal government to dictate, as in dictatorship, to 325,000,000 people what they may or may not: eat, drink, smoke, chew, sniff, snort, patch onto their skin, stick into a vein in their arm, or for that matter, shove up their rear ends.
It isn’t there, it does not exist. Without that specific grant of authority, the actions of the Federal government are, by definition, unconstitutional. No body really cares, not even most conservatives.
If you don’t know what I’m talking about, read the 10th amendment sometime, and while you’re at it, the 9th. If you disagree with me, then explain the absolute necessity of the 18th amendment. Without the 18th amendment, the Federal government was powerless to make any law banning the manufacture, import, or sale of alcohol across the entire United States. The individual States could, Federal could not. And those folks recognized, after only 13 years, that their actions were a devastating failure. There was still some modicum of intelligence in our government then, now, it’s nowhere to be found.
As for gold and silver as money. Our fiat currency is, oh gee, unconstitutional. Our constitution says only gold and silver are money. The creation of the FED was and continues to be, oh gee, unconstitutional. Only Congress has the responsibility of maintaining the value of money. The States did not grant the authority to Congress to pass along that responsibility to an unelected private banking cartel.
As for the war on cash. Also unconstitutional, no body cares. The war is being waged by the worlds central banks against their own citizens. Mostly so they can go to negative interest rates, meaning every day, every hour your wealth stays in the bank, your wealth is being stolen from you. Worse still many citizens of many countries think it’s just a Jim Dandy idea. Morons.
Disagree with me? Then you are not paying attention.
Comparing costs then and now does not work unless you also consider quality and class. A pair of durable hand stitched work jeans, like they had in 1913 will cost at least a hundred bucks and you won’t find them at Walmart.
We also have a much larger professional and middle class than they had in 1913. You cannot even compare poor people to poor people as we now enjoy the Great American Giveaway – Welfare!
The war on drugs was never for the drugs but the future war on Chrstians. Think about it. The wine press in Revelations 14:14 has everything to do with the government mowing down Christians. What government has the most militarized police force ? The United States. Which government has the most aggressive Leftwing attacks on the Right wing population? The United States. Don’t believe for one moment corporations such as Google, Facebook, and now Twitter having to answer to Congress for expunging Christian/Cinservative free so eech will stop anytime soon. Look at the BHO regime with IRS, NSA, DOJ, FBI, CPS, and the host of other government alphabet organizations targeting Tea Party and Conservative people. That paramilitary US police force is for us- the God fearing.
JWR, in my opinion, has always been correct and his opinions on gun/ammo stock is another example.
Aubrey Turban my point exactly
The trillion dollars spent in the war on drugs is in the past 42 years. Critics of the war on drugs act as if its a failure if all drugs aren’t suppressed . We don’t stop arresting burglars and car thieves because these crimes continue .
Anyone who is in favor of leagalizing drugs should see a crack baby , or bettter yet , have a meth monkey move into their neighborhood . Everything not nailed down disappears and they decide to work on their car at zero dark thirty.
Except that the war on drugs has accomplished nothing. What if we had spent the $1 trillion dollars on treatment instead? Cost of interdicting drugs out of country is ~7 times doing the same in country which is ~7 times the cost of treatment and prevention. And the drug lords do not get richer, with drug cartels being probably the greatest non-wartime cause of violent deaths.