What I see coming for the next few years.

[ThePythonicCow]

Posted by Paul (here)
If, If, the "political central power" is successfully centralized on a world level, under the control of whomever is the dominant power on this planet, then they can reinforce that power by placing the power of money creation in that same central political institution.

Rather clearly, of course, such a centralization of overt power would be motivated by the presence (appearance) of an existential threat to all of humanity.

[ThePythonicCow]

On two related fronts, confidence of Americans in the government continues its decline. From Gallup polling:

However both Putin and Obama continue to speak with confidence that whomever is listening to them will appreciate the importance of respecting "international law".

For example, Obama says that Internatlional Law is supreme over the US Constitution.

On the other hand, in a recent major speech by Putin, he got in the following delightful dig at Obama and American foreign policy:

However, what do we hear from our colleagues in Western Europe and North America? They say we are violating norms of international law. Firstly, it’s a good thing that they at least remember that there exists such a thing as international law – better late than never.

Respect by Americans for their federal government in Washington is at what may be an all time low. Any American who was once a Republican (such as I was) learned that Washington was corrupt during the administrations of Clinton in the late 1990's and Obama in the last six years. Any American who was a Democrat learned that Washington was corrupt during the administrations of Bush senior (early 1990's) and Bush junior (for eight years beginning just before 9/11 of 2001). The only one's left trusting Washington now are the Americans who are naturally part of those to whom Obama appeals and who have little or no historical memory.

This is not an accident, in my view. Both the big banks and the big government are being ripened for a fall.

On the other hand, the rule of international law is being promoted as, without question, for the greater good.

[ThePythonicCow]

From way out in left field ... a call for a "One World Religion" at 12 minutes 22 seconds of Doug Batchelor Analyzes Pope's Recent Threat of 'Unity or Else" (12:22)

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=7kgxEvIDoGs

The Great Conflict being stirred between Christians and Muslims may well be another example from the playbook of the Bastards in Power: Thesis (Catholic), Antitheses (Protestant, Jewish and Muslim), Synthesis (One World Religion).

I have not actually listened to the above Youtube video in its entirety. As I informed my deceased mother's Catholic Priest (she was a Catholic nun), while I was arranging her various funeral and burial affairs a few years ago, I'm a heathen. Formal religion is not a topic of much interest to me.

But I suspect that a one world government will not happen without also a one world religion.

Religious sectarianism must (in the view of the globalists) go the way of political nationalism, all superficial details such as choice of sports team and gender identity.

===

On a topic of greater interest to me, there is another essential purpose of the Internet. In the eyes of those bastards who would consolidate humanity, the better that they might control humanity, the Internet is playing an essential role in reshaping the viewpoint of the typical human, from being a member of a family, community, church and nation, to being primarily an earth bound human.

This is a great blessing and a great risk. Most of us humans still seem to trust that groups of humans are best managed by governments, and the bastards in power find that provides an excellent means to control us en masse, via our collective entities, whether violently imposed or peacefully formed (though, in either case, inevitably violently sustained.) Articulate and honorable anarchists, such as Stefan Molyneux, are a rarity.

[778 neighbour of some guy]

Posted by Paul (here)
From way out in left field ... a call for a "One World Religion" at 12 minutes 22 seconds of Doug Batchelor Analyzes Pope's Recent Threat of 'Unity or Else" (12:22)

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=7kgxEvIDoGs

The Great Conflict being stirred between Christians and Muslims may well be another example from the playbook of the Bastards in Power: Thesis (Catholic), Antitheses (Protestant, Jewish and Muslim), Synthesis (One World Religion).

I am in the process of claiming sovereignty here in Holland, and in my search I stumbled upon the below papal Bull of 1302 where they declare to be the only rightful representation of God on earth, ( something they cannot substantiate with anything other then words, I'll repeat that .................words. no matter who speaks them, words are words and they can be contested, if no evidence gets presented or the legal term passes without answer you can consider the silence as confirmation of " We have no evidence", in that case you can officially pull the same trick as they did for centuries if you would choose to do so, not my cup of tea, but it however DOES mean, there are ONLY TWO LAWS you will ever HAVE to abide to, DO NOT KILL and DO NOT STEAL, laws of the sea, of the land, and all other laws are null and void from that point onwards for you as a human being of flesh and blood, there are no downsides, you ca still use your legal fiction PERSON if you CHOOSE to do so, yadayadayada.

Anyway, Unam Sanctam, the papal Bull from 1302 still applies, nobody objected so there you go, here it is, read carefully and between the lines.

UNAM SANCTAM


Bull of Pope Boniface VIII promulgated November 18, 1302

Urged by faith, we are obliged to believe and to maintain that the Church is one, holy, catholic, and also apostolic. We believe in her firmly and we confess with simplicity that outside of her there is neither salvation nor the remission of sins, as the Spouse in the Canticles [Sgs 6:8] proclaims: 'One is my dove, my perfect one. She is the only one, the chosen of her who bore her,' and she represents one sole mystical body whose Head is Christ and the head of Christ is God [1 Cor 11:3]. In her then is one Lord, one faith, one baptism [Eph 4:5]. There had been at the time of the deluge only one ark of Noah, prefiguring the one Church, which ark, having been finished to a single cubit, had only one pilot and guide, i.e., Noah, and we read that, outside of this ark, all that subsisted on the earth was destroyed.

We venerate this Church as one, the Lord having said by the mouth of the prophet: 'Deliver, O God, my soul from the sword and my only one from the hand of the dog.' [Ps 21:20] He has prayed for his soul, that is for himself, heart and body; and this body, that is to say, the Church, He has called one because of the unity of the Spouse, of the faith, of the sacraments, and of the charity of the Church. This is the tunic of the Lord, the seamless tunic, which was not rent but which was cast by lot [Jn 19:23- 24]. Therefore, of the one and only Church there is one body and one head, not two heads like a monster; that is, Christ and the Vicar of Christ, Peter and the successor of Peter, since the Lord speaking to Peter Himself said: 'Feed my sheep' [Jn 21:17], meaning, my sheep in general, not these, nor those in particular, whence we understand that He entrusted all to him [Peter]. Therefore, if the Greeks or others should say that they are not confided to Peter and to his successors, they must confess not being the sheep of Christ, since Our Lord says in John 'there is one sheepfold and one shepherd.' We are informed by the texts of the gospels that in this Church and in its power are two swords; namely, the spiritual and the temporal. For when the Apostles say: 'Behold, here are two swords' [Lk 22:38] that is to say, in the Church, since the Apostles were speaking, the Lord did not reply that there were too many, but sufficient. Certainly the one who denies that the temporal sword is in the power of Peter has not listened well to the word of the Lord commanding: 'Put up thy sword into thy scabbard' [Mt 26:52]. Both, therefore, are in the power of the Church, that is to say, the spiritual and the material sword, but the former is to be administered for the Church but the latter by the Church; the former in the hands of the priest; the latter by the hands of kings and soldiers, but at the will and sufferance of the priest.

However, one sword ought to be subordinated to the other and temporal authority, subjected to spiritual power. For since the Apostle said: 'There is no power except from God and the things that are, are ordained of God' [Rom 13:1-2], but they would not be ordained if one sword were not subordinated to the other and if the inferior one, as it were, were not led upwards by the other.

For, according to the Blessed Dionysius, it is a law of the divinity that the lowest things reach the highest place by intermediaries. Then, according to the order of the universe, all things are not led back to order equally and immediately, but the lowest by the intermediary, and the inferior by the superior. Hence we must recognize the more clearly that spiritual power surpasses in dignity and in nobility any temporal power whatever, as spiritual things surpass the temporal. This we see very clearly also by the payment, benediction, and consecration of the tithes, but the acceptance of power itself and by the government even of things. For with truth as our witness, it belongs to spiritual power to establish the terrestrial power and to pass judgement if it has not been good. Thus is accomplished the prophecy of Jeremias concerning the Church and the ecclesiastical power: 'Behold to-day I have placed you over nations, and over kingdoms' and the rest. Therefore, if the terrestrial power err, it will be judged by the spiritual power; but if a minor spiritual power err, it will be judged by a superior spiritual power; but if the highest power of all err, it can be judged only by God, and not by man, according to the testimony of the Apostle: 'The spiritual man judgeth of all things and he himself is judged by no man' [1 Cor 2:15]. This authority, however, (though it has been given to man and is exercised by man), is not human but rather divine, granted to Peter by a divine word and reaffirmed to him (Peter) and his successors by the One Whom Peter confessed, the Lord saying to Peter himself, 'Whatsoever you shall bind on earth, shall be bound also in Heaven' etc., [Mt 16:19]. Therefore whoever resists this power thus ordained by God, resists the ordinance of God [Rom 13:2], unless he invent like Manicheus two beginnings, which is false and judged by us heretical, since according to the testimony of Moses, it is not in the beginnings but in the beginning that God created heaven and earth [Gen 1:1]. Furthermore, we declare, we proclaim, we define that it is absolutely necessary for salvation that every human creature be subject to the Roman Pontiff.

Last sentence, very dangerous.

"IT IS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY FOR SALVATION THAT EVERY HUMAN CREATURE BE SUBJECT TO THE ROMAN PONTIFF"

So that's where we can stick it if its up to the church, that place where Saturn doesn't shine.

[ThePythonicCow]

I know of perhaps just one forecaster whose past date specific forecasts have been better than chance - Martin Armstrong.

Yesterday, Martin posted a good article, summarizing his current understanding of where we are and where we are going.

Martin uses an unconventional form of dates, as years and hundredths of a year, as that is more convenient for calculating and presenting his analysis of cycles. The beginning of this year was 2014.00, and the end will be 2014.99. The current date as I write this is 2014.25 (April 1, 2014 being one-quarter of the way into 2014.)

Martin anticipates a major cycle change at 2015.75, which would be about October 1, 2015. He anticipates a major economic, political and monetary collapse, the likes of which we have not seen since the 1700's, with a substantially increased risk of major wars.

Here's Martin Armstrong's article The Age of Civil Unrest:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

All governments had better open their eyes for we are on the brink of a major convergence between both the Cycle of Civil Unrest, Civil War & Revolution and International War. Both of these models converge and as I pointed out at the Cycles of War Conference, this is the first time we have seen this convergence since the 1700s.

This is no plain modern event with civil unrest erupting because of an interconnected world. These are grassroots uprisings cross-fertilized perhaps from a world contagion yet they often have similarities – corrupt governments. Turkey, Ukraine, Thailand, Venezuela and Bosnia-Herzegovina are all middle-income democracies with elected leaders besieged by people angry at misgovernment, corruption and economic sclerosis. These days it is no longer just dictators who have something to fear from the crowd. This is the promise of Marxism that centralized planning and false promises are coming home and governments are too corrupt and incompetent to deliver what they have claimed for decades.

Communism is dead. The socialistic agendas that have lined the pockets of government and filled the coffers of banks is over. The national debts are on average composed of 70% interest payments not programs to help the poor as marketed. The debts that keep growing with no intent upon paying anyone back are draining the national productivity and turning the people into economic slaves. The standard of living has declined and it now takes two incomes to survive where one use to be just fine. Women won the right to work and lost the right to stay home.

The promises that you save for the future have collapsed into dust as interest rates have been driven lower making savings utterly worthless. There is no such thing as saving and living off your fixed income. The elderly are being driven back into the work force and the whole ideas that a generation believed in are vanishing before their eyes.

So it is no longer communists and dictators that are the targets. All governments are now the targets and when the economy turns down after 2015.75, the threat of civilization will be pulled apart by the self-interest of politicians clinging to power to the detriment of the people.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Zerohedge reposted this article here, without further comment.

Then The Daily Bell reposted that here, with its usual perceptive and unique analysis, beginning with this overview:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The world's pre-eminent cycle forecaster has caught up to us (see above excerpt). Martin Armstrong published his grim analysis on his own website and over at ZeroHedge and it's attracting a great deal of attention.

Armstrong is no flash in the pan. A forecasting pioneer, especially when it comes to gold, Armstrong has apparently received as much as US$10,000 an hour for his forecasting abilities, and he obviously remains opinionated and controversial.

The excerpt speaks for itself, but the blunt summation of what's going on eloquently summarizes what we have been predicting for years now: That what we call the Internet Reformation is going to reshape the world.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Daily Bell's analysis of Martin Armstrong's article concludes with:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

We're certainly not so mathematical as Armstrong. But his prognostication regarding the market's demise near 2016 uncannily tracks our own perspective. As does his general sense of the unraveling not just of the West but of the global system.

Armstrong sees it as a function of debt and attributes the unbearable loan portfolio to greedy politicians and supine electorates. We have a somewhat different point, though we arrive at the same conclusion.

Is it all just a gigantic mistake? We have a hard time with that. There is too much power concentrated at the top among just a few central bankers and the BIS itself. These trends have taken decades to develop while the BIS has met regularly alongside the G8 and the G20. It stretches credulity to believe all these august and intelligent individuals observed the evolution of sovereign debt overload but did nothing.

Either they simply didn't notice or they saw but declined to take action. Thus, they were exceptionally absent-minded in aggregate or amazingly passive. We don't believe the world's most powerful leaders and financiers are either. The third option is that of directed history. What has come to pass is what was intended.

Out of chaos, order ...

The only way to increase internationalism is to create a crisis and then offer a solution. We've been predicting this for years.

Most recently, we've explained it within the context of a Wall Street Party that is intended to continue for the next year or two – making those who participate carefully in a calculated manner extraordinarily wealthy before the curtain finally comes down.

And now Armstrong has chimed in. The difference is, we think it's very important to understand the WHY as well the WHAT.

Understand the modern command-control-paradigm of the power elite and you shall be rewarded with a considerable sense of control both psychologically and within a larger personal, professional and even investment context.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Conclusion

There is trouble coming, no doubt, but if you understand the context, you will be in a better position to take the human action that can help yourself, your loved ones and your friends and community.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

My view aligns rather well with Armstrong's (rather like my view of how to shoot a basketball aligns rather well with Michael Jordan's ... only he could do it, while I could only watch intently.)

The debt is getting piled higher and deeper, and an avalanche is due, fairly soon. The precursors to the avalanche will continue to be positioned, over the next year or two, until not all the King's men and not all the King's horses can put Humpty Dumpty back together again.

[ThePythonicCow]

In the shorter time scale of days, not the 1.5 years until the downturn that Martin Armstrong predicts in the previous post, we have JP Morgan escalating the financial/monetary war between the US Dollar and Russia.

From Monetary Blockade Of Russia Begins: JPMorgan Blocks Russian Money Transfer "Under Pretext" Of Sanctions (ZeroHedge), we have:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Wait, did JPM just take a unilateral action, not mandated by the state department (because nowhere in the Russian sanction list does it say putting a freeze on Russian bank transfers), and refuse to process a simple money transfer? Why? And if indeed JPM is doing this, how long until all other US banks, most of which are just as allegedly criminal in dealing with offshore sources of illegal money, follow suit and leave Russia entirely in the world when it comes to USD-backed transactions.

Because what JPM may have just done is launch a preemptive strike which would have the equivalent culmination of a SWIFT blockade of Russia, the same way Iran was neutralized from the Petrodollar and was promptly forced to begin transacting in Rubles, Yuan and, of course, gold in exchange for goods and services either imported or exported.

One wonders: is JPM truly that intent in preserving its "pristine" reputation of not transacting with "evil Russians", that it will gladly light the fuse that takes away Russia's choice whether or not to depart the petrodollar voluntarily, and makes it a compulsory outcome, which incidentally will merely accelerate the formalization of the Eurasian axis of China, Russia and India.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

See more at the above link.

[ThePythonicCow]

Posted by Paul (here)
In the shorter time scale of days, not the 1.5 years until the downturn that Martin Armstrong predicts in the previous post, we have JP Morgan escalating the financial/monetary war between the US Dollar and Russia.

From Monetary Blockade Of Russia Begins: JPMorgan Blocks Russian Money Transfer "Under Pretext" Of Sanctions (ZeroHedge) ...

This action by JPMorgan seems to have antagonized the Russian bear, unlike previous US "sanctions" that merely amused the bear.

From Furious Russia Will Retaliate Over "Illegal And Absurd" Payment Block By "Hostile" JPMorgan (ZeroHedge):

Unlike previous responses to Russian sanctions by the West, which were largely taken as a joke by the Russian establishment, this time Russia is furious: according to Bloomberg, the Russian foreign ministry described the JPM decision as "illegal and absurd."

From JPMorgan Assailed by Russia as Bank Blocks Payment (Bloomberg):

The biggest U.S. bank thwarted a remittance from the Russian embassy in Astana, Kazakhstan, to Sogaz Insurance Group “under the pretext of anti-Russian sanctions imposed by the United States,” the ministry said yesterday in a statement on its website. Sogaz lists OAO Bank Rossiya, a St. Petersburg-based lender facing U.S. sanctions over the Ukrainian crisis, as a strategic partner on its website.

Interfering with the transaction was an “absolutely unacceptable, illegal and absurd decision,” Alexander Lukashevich, a ministry spokesman, said in the statement.

U.S. President Barack Obama announced the action against Bank Rossiya last month as part of a broadening of sanctions that targeted government officials and allies of Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose associates own Rossiya. The embassy’s transaction was for less than $5,000 dollars, a person with knowledge of the dispute said, asking not to be identified because such transfers aren’t public.

Any hostile actions against the Russian diplomatic mission are not only a grossest violation of international law, but are also fraught with countermeasures that unavoidably will affect activities of the embassy and consulates of the U.S. in Russia,” Lukashevich said.

[ThePythonicCow]

Catherine Austin Fitts is quoted by Jim Willie, CB, in his latest (subscription) Hat Trick Letter, as saying the following:

The people who are in control, in my experience, are quite intelligent. Of course they understand that when you centralize control of capital in this way, you destroy a great deal of it.

Small business is being targeted and destroyed. This is purposeful. It has been for years. Credit has been shut off on Main Street, done on purpose. So you start off with X utils of capital broadly dispersed, and to centralize control you shrink it, but end up with much tighter control. They know all of this, since done intentionally.

Control is the goal, not optimization. They optimize, but only when and where it serves their strategic goals. For purposes of understanding what is happening, it helps to shelve frustration and anger, head into the invention room, and say, the system is working perfectly. It is optimized perfectly for the goals of those managing the system. Then work from there.

I agree with Jim that capital is being stockpiled for a change in paradigm. When the change in paradigm comes, it will be presented as the kind of reform you describe. It will radically increase the power of the people who engineered the financial coup. A new crowd of puppets will be presented as the saviors and the old crowd of puppets will be blamed. And so life on planet earth goes on.

I continue to listen most closely to what Catherine Austin Fitts, Joseph P. Farrell, and Martin Armstrong say - three of the best.

===

Here's a more extended interview of Catherine Austin Fitts, made a month ago, by the "Dark Journalist":

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=VM-NEcWhj4c

The Dark Journalist provides this summary of the above interview on his Youtube upload:

Join Dark Journalist and Former Assistant Housing Secretary/Financial Expert Catherine Austin Fitts in this groundbreaking overview of the darkest secret of the Black Budget: The UFO Economy!

What does the economy, surveillance, advanced technology, a secret space program, NASA and the covert finance world have to do with the UFOs flying in our airspace?

Find out the shocking answer and learn about the forces behind the upcoming geopolitical and market events of 2014!

[ThePythonicCow]

I heard recently that the Chinese Yuan is now the second most commonly used currency in international trade, surpassing the Euro.

Hearing that, it became clear to me the ebb and flow that is likely for our monetary system.

Outrages over the fraud and brutality associated with the current world reserve currency, the US Dollar, are motivating other regional currencies to rise to similar power.

After a period of competing "regional" currencies (such as the Dollar, Yuan, Yen and Euro) for a period of time (one year, five years, ... beats me) further problems will arise ... severe global economic problems ... mandating a second change, to one world reserve currency over the regional currencies.

Martin Armstrong's Economic Confidence Model would place the greatest depth early in 2020.

The Banksters are well versed in creating severe economic problems when they so choose, and they will substantially control the regional currencies, providing them the usual leverage they require for such operations.

The fear that more regional governments would be created, including in particular uniting the US, Canada and Mexico in a North American Union, was stoked by a major doom & gloom scenario that went swept through "conservative" leaning Americans in recent years. But it's not the additional regional governments that is the core concern; it's the additional regional currencies, such as the Dollar, Yuan and Euro. This further removes nations from control of their own currency, into nebulous institutions that invariably end up being controlled by those who most seek control.

As Mayer Amschel Bauer Rothschild remarked "Give me control of a nation's money and I care not who makes it's laws".

That's what the regional currencies (including the US Dollar, after its demotion to the currency of the US and its few remaining close allies) will accomplish. It will cause sufficient change and turmoil to enable the Banksters to gain further control both over the US (which will have a depressed economy, once it has to pay more for imports) and over other nations (which will have to set up new financial infrastructure to handle the new currency arrangements.)

So it proceeds in four phases:

1. tear down the US Global Reserve Dollar hegemony,
2. build up (Bankster controlled) alternatives (US Local Dollar, Euro, BRICS, ...),
3. tear those down as well, and
4. replace with a global monetary system.

Each phase enables the bastard banksters to gain further control, and inflicts further suffering on humanity. However, if I understand Armstrong's Economic Confidence Model (see above), this will be followed by one grand, final burst of private (corporate controlled) economic activity, peaking in 2032 as a similar burst peaked in 1929.

The first of these two major tear downs appears to be proceeding without the need for a major war (outside of the vicious and fraudulent War on Islam Terror) or a false flag alien invasion. Recall that Islam is the last great bastion of support for non-debt based money on the planet.

I am less confident that the second major tear down will do as well.

This reminds me of the Great Depression, which tore down the national gold backed currencies, followed by the Second World War, which lay the foundation for a US Dollar Reserve currency as the basis for international trade.

By the end of the Second World War, the Banksters had successfully completed vacuuming up most of the gold held in the major vaults across Europe and Asia, sending it to New York, and then absconding with it The Japanese were sub-contracted to steal China's gold, and the Germans to steal Europe's gold, before they both lost to the Americans.

I anticipate that the movement of 10 or 20 thousand tons of gold towards the BRICS nations, China especially, is not a long term change in direction, but a shorter term manipulation of gold to gain better control over the BRICS nations, especially China.

Just as the Banksters were happy to remove silver from common monetary use in the US with the Crime of 1873, so will they be happy to continue removing gold from common international monetary use in present times. They can extend and withdraw credit (create and destroy debt) more easily, in the comfort of their air conditioned offices, with far greater control, than they can mine gold from the earth, or confiscate private or government held gold.

Anyone trying to preserve wealth using gold will have to transfer their wealth to other forms at the right time, or lose it. The optimum time might have already passed, when gold peaked at about $US 1900/ounce in 2011, though I'd guess there is one more higher peak left. At this moment, gold is at $US 1294/ounce (or, adjusting for inflation, roughly $1100 to $1230 per ounce using 2011 US Dollars, depending on whose inflation stats you use.)

The Roaring Twenties, in which many Americans were investing in the stock market using borrowed money (on "margin"), reminds me of the great housing boom of the previous couple of decades, in which many Americans were investing in the real estate market using borrowed money (mortgages.) In both cases, when the bank both calls in those loans and crashes the economy, stifling the cash flows funding payment, it sucks to be in debt and one cannot even begin to sell one's assets in a sufficiently timely and profitable manner so as to cover one's debts. The bank ends up owning the collateral.

I don't know how the previous paragraph maps to other nations ... sorry.

But in any case, if this is a replay of the period of 1921 through 1945, then we have some years of global economic collapse ahead of us, followed by some major world-wide trauma, followed by the dawning of a New World Monetary System, controlled by the Banksters, using debt as the basis for money.

Where is Jesus Christ when you need him?

[ThePythonicCow]

The clearest description of our current economic difficulties that I have seen recently can be found in this new "Daily Bell" article: Keynesianism's Ugly Secret.

It's long enough that I won't quote it all here, and I don't see how I could easily excerpt it, but here's one key point to look for in this article: "malinvestment."

A debt-based monetary system introduces money into the system not where it will likely be most productive of future goods and services for the economy, but where it portends to yield the best interest in the present. Eventually a society ends up with a vast over supply of empty shopping malls, McMansions and (in China at least) empty cities, while manufacturing is concentrated into massive environmental bio-hazards.

The malinvestment resulting from a debt based monetary system is the economic equivalent of eating junk food. It might "taste good", and it might be heavily promoted and widely distributed, but debt-based money eventually destroys the health of an economy.

For example, the United States can no longer produce much of what it consumes, nor even anything that it might fairly trade for what it consumes. Note that I don't count military invasions, spying, financial fraud, black ops, and propaganda to be "fair trade" .

Eventually this imbalance must redress itself. Given the massive trade imbalances in the entire world that are driven by the imbalanced economies of the United States, the resulting detox is almost certainly going to be painful for much of the world.

[ThePythonicCow]

I posted a good update in what I see coming in another thread: Brief warning from Lindsey Williams (2 May 2014) -- Post #52.

That post explains the important properties of any currency, the coming Great Depression, and the replacement of the US Dollar with several major regional or national currencies as the basis of the world monetary system.