What I see coming for the next few years.

[ThePythonicCow]

Dang -- when am I going to learn?

When US President Obama says he will be strong, he is weak. When he says he will be weak (or whatever word he uses instead), he is strong (or what I'd call tyrannical.)

Behold Obama's response to Putin, now that the Crimea has voted to succeed from the Ukraine and seek to join the Russian Federation:

• Russian Deputy PM Laughs at Obama’s Sanctions (ABC News)
• Why Today's DEAD CAT BOUNCE In Stocks Will Lead To Heavy Losses. By Gregory Mannarino (Youtube)
• The West's response to Russia: Limp, little, and late (TheWeek.com)
• Obama Announces New Sanctions Against Russia (NBC News)

The report in the first link above directly quotes a Russian deputy prime minister mocking Obama for Obama's weak response (on ABC News, a mainstream US news outlet, no less!)

The second link above goes to a Youtube video of Gregory Mannarino, a stock trader in the US. Gregory has a different focus in this video, and he is speaking from a more "conventional" view regarding world politics (his expertise and talents are in stock trading, where he's been quite good of late.) But listening to him, I hear that he is quite frustrated with the impotence of Obama's sanctions, which focused on a few Russian oligarchs, not on either Putin nor on Russia overall.

Quoting Gregory Mannarino: "I'm embarrassed to be an American today. ... Our President is so weak. He's done nothing ... to hurt the economy of Russia."

The third link above is another mocking of Obama's weak response, from TheWeek.com.

The fourth link above, from NBC News (another mainstream US news media outlet) simply describes Obama's sanctions, stating in part:

The White House announced a series of sanctions targeting a group of individuals, including senior aides to Russian President Vladimir Putin and the former president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych. A senior administration official described the seven individuals targeted by the sanctions as "cronies" of the Russian government.

===

So the imminent crisis that I thought might boil over continues to simmer quietly. For now at least, Obama will not, it seems, provoke Putin into using some "nuclear" financial, economic or monetary option.

[TargeT]

even now I still feel " not yet" is the moto of the day.

perhaps these are all feints and maneuvers to gauge public response, perhaps I'm just crazy assuming there's a tight, observant, controlling group that is actually guiding all this rather than a (more realistic?) group(s) of opportunistic selfish / greedy individuals trying to leverage any situation to their best interests.

[ThePythonicCow]

Ah - good interview by Greg Hunter of USAWatchDog.com with Jim Sinclair, one of the long time gold bugs that I've been following for years.

Jim has much the same view that I've been espousing. We're on the cusp of an economic/financial/monetary (and potentially hot) war, which the US will lose. The US Dollar will be rejected as the world's Reserve Currency when Russia accepts other currencies for gas and oil. The price of imports into the US will rise sharply, and the US economy will collapse, into either a depression, or a war-time economy (or one after the other, as I predicted in my opening post on this thread.)

Jim Sinclair: Russia Can Collapse US Economy, Gold Update, Silver is Gold on Steroids & More

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=KXGPzDq45gM

Here's Greg Hunter's article with some of this interview in text form:

Putin Has Nuclear Economic Bomb-Jim Sinclair (USAWatchDog.com)

[ThePythonicCow]

Dave Hodges, who tends toward the "doom & gloom sooner rather than later" school (which school I attend on a part-time basis), is anticipating a little bit of "hot war" now (as in the next week or two.)

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=rVgyQPDfNT4

Article at: Ukraine and Syria Will Both Fall to Putin (TheCommonSenseshow.com)

Hodges is anticipating that Putin (Russia) will overrun the Ukraine in a few days, with overwhelming military force, and relatively limited casualties. That much wouldn't surprise me.

But Hodges is expecting the US to respond with some sort of false flag event (hmm ... I wonder if the missing Malaysian Boeing 777 will have a role in this?) to justify invading Syria in turn. The US pretty clearly lacks sufficient forces to "defend" the Ukraine from the Russian military, but can bring substantial force to bear on Syria. Hodges figures that Putin is prepared for this, and will back Assad of Syria, and likely hold both Syria and use that escalation as sufficient reason to detonate his "financial weapon of mass destruction" ... blowing up the Reserve Currency status of the US Petro-Dollar.

Perhaps ... but so far Obama has shown himself to be too timid for such sharp action. But if it did happen as Hodges predicts, then I would predict that the resulting hot war would not escalate further at this time. Rather it would be a prelude to the couple years of the Great Depression II for the US, with economic collapse and the risk of very serious inflation, perhaps even on the scale of the hyperinflation in the Weimar Republic of Germany between 1921 and 1924.

[ThePythonicCow]

Posted by TargeT (here)
perhaps I'm just crazy assuming there's a tight, observant, controlling group that is actually guiding all this rather than a (more realistic?) group(s) of opportunistic selfish / greedy individuals trying to leverage any situation to their best interests.

Perhaps one more observant controlling group, or perhaps two competing groups, each aware of the rather fearsome power of the other, so (sometimes) avoiding being too rash and impulsive.

[Dennis Leahy]

Hi Paul,

Is this the Dave Hodges interview that you meant to post? This one, titled "WW3 Russia And Ukraine by Dave Hodges", on Caravan to Midnight, ...

===

[ Mod-edit: Good catch. Actually I didn't have a video of Hodges discussing this. I only had the article. My reposting of the video of Greg Hunter interviewing Jim Sinclair, and my faillure to provide the link to Dave Hodge's article, were my confusions. Thanks to your research, I learned that Dave Hodges was on a very recent Youtube, on Caravan to Midnight with John B Wells, discussing these same matters. Cool. My above Hodges post is fixed now, I hope, with both article and correct Youtube links. Thanks! -- Paul. ]

[Ron Mauer Sr]

Dmitry Orlov interviewed by Greg Hunter. Dmitry was born in Russia and lived through the collapse of the U.S.S.R. His perspective on the near future is interesting.

Some points made:

• Russia does not need to do anything about the Ukraine. Most of the military and civilians want to return to Russia.
• Russia does not need the U.S.
• The U.S. economy is terminal, but the end date cannot be predicted.
• The supply lines to troops in Afghanistan run through Russia and Pakistan. Russia is 100% reliable. Pakistan is not. When troops leave Afganistan, Washington needs Russian support for large scale troop movement. If Russia refuses cooperation, leaving Afghanistan will be like leaving Saigon at the end of the Vietnamese war, this time 1000X worse.

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=yCO5nZgvtbY

[T Smith]

Posted by Paul (here)
Ah - good interview by Greg Hunter of USAWatchDog.com with Jim Sinclair, one of the long time gold bugs that I've been following for years.

Jim has much the same view that I've been espousing. We're on the cusp of an economic/financial/monetary (and potentially hot) war, which the US will lose. The US Dollar will be rejected as the world's Reserve Currency when Russia accepts other currencies for gas and oil. The price of imports into the US will rise sharply, and the US economy will collapse, into either a depression, or a war-time economy (or one after the other, as I predicted in my opening post on this thread.)

Jim Sinclair: Russia Can Collapse US Economy, Gold Update, Silver is Gold on Steroids & More

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=KXGPzDq45gM

Here's Greg Hunter's article with some of this interview in text form:

Putin Has Nuclear Economic Bomb-Jim Sinclair (USAWatchDog.com)

Here's the thing:

In theory this analysis is spot on. I can't say I disagree with anything Sinclair is saying here. But in my mind, his speculation of gold emancipation is akin to analyzing the chemistry of a single match, coupled with a very detailed and accurate analysis of the ratio of oxygen-to-carbon in the surrounding environs a mile radius out, and (rightly) concluding that said match could consume an entire city block given the current head wind and the known flammable materials in its path. And in theory, he would be absolutely correct.

But $50,000.00 gold? Yes, I could light a match, and given all the right conditions (with no outside intervention) potentially burn down a city block. But after considering all variables outside natural law (and mainly the various power mechanisms the Federal Reserve welds to prevent the emancipation of physical from paper, some of which may be highly unthinkable, sociopathic, treasonous, murderous, and perhaps even beyond that what we can even begin to imagine) how practical, in reality, is the emancipation of physical gold from paper gold? Aren't there contingencies in place to prevent such a wild fire from spreading by any means necessary (perhaps even nuking a city, say, as a false-flag tactic in the same vein as a fireman quelling flames with a water hose?), especially if said city block contains the entire fortune, riches, and power of those whose interest it is to keep their fortune and power from burning to ash? Is this really possible in the world we live in today? And if so, what would the landscape of the world look like in which the Powers That Be have lost complete control? What other black swans would we necessarily see in that world, which may or may not also contribute to the price of gold?

My gut understanding is commentators like Jim Sinclair always under estimate the controlling interests manipulating reality, in this case the Federal Reserve. I'm not suggesting the Federal Reserve are "Gods", or it is impossible for them to lose control, but I'm almost certain they have a many more tricks in their bag, and some much more malignant than merely flooding the market with naked shorts.

How do I know this? Because they have WAY too much to lose for them to succumb to laws of supply and demand.

[ThePythonicCow]

Posted by Ron Mauer Sr (here)
Dmitry Orlov interviewed by Greg Hunter. Dmitry was born in Russia and lived through the collapse of the U.S.S.R. His perspective on the near future is interesting.

As Greg Hunter says near the end of this interview ... very enlightening.

¤=[Post Update]=¤

Posted by T Smith (here)
But $50,000.00 gold?

Well, if it gets that bad, it won't really be that an ounce of gold is worth $50,000, but rather that a US Dollar is only worth 1/50,000-th of an ounce of gold.

(A "cute" way of saying that a new suit might still cost me about one ounce of gold, a new car of modest proportions ten ounces of gold, and a loaf of bread 1/1000-th of an ounce of gold ... it would be the $US prices that went "over the moon.")

Yes, the US Banksters and their crime syndicate the Federal Reserve has WAY too much to lose to allow this.

The question is whether they are the ones ultimately calling the shots.

My hunch is that they are not.

[ThePythonicCow]

Posted by Paul (here)
But Hodges is expecting the US to respond with some sort of false flag event ... to justify invading Syria in turn.

...

Perhaps ... but so far Obama has shown himself to be too timid for such sharp action. But if it did happen as Hodges predicts, then I would predict that the resulting hot war would not escalate further at this time. Rather it would be a prelude to the couple years of the Great Depression II for the US, with economic collapse and the risk of very serious inflation, perhaps even on the scale of the hyperinflation in the Weimar Republic of Germany between 1921 and 1924.

A few hours ago, Bill Ryan made a very important post, with an alternative viewpoint: Ukraine, Crimea, Syria, Israel, Iran, Putin, and World War III.

[ThePythonicCow]

Posted by Paul (here)
The question is whether they are the ones ultimately calling the shots.

My hunch is that they are not.

We have met our future, and we are it

[ThePythonicCow]

The latest edition of Jim Willie's Hat Trick Letter (http://goldenjackass.com) includes much the same forecast as I have been presenting in this thread:

• A Global Currency Reset (date has been set)
• US Dollar loses reserve status with initial 30% devaluation
• Some new reserve currency, perhaps via the IMF, is established
• Significant confiscations of US pensions and bank accounts
• A year or two of bank failures in the US
• Then total economic collapse

[TargeT]

Posted by Paul (here)
[*]A Global Currency Reset (date has been set)

???

date has been set to what?

[ThePythonicCow]

Posted by TargeT (here)

Posted by Paul (here)
[*]A Global Currency Reset (date has been set)

???

date has been set to what?

Jim Willie did not say what the set date was ... only that his source for this said that it had been set.

[ThePythonicCow]

There have been times (perhaps including in something I might have posted above) when I thought that what we are witnessing is the transfer of the control center of the bastards in power to another nation-state. At times in the past, the financial control center (and sometimes the entire control center) has been in Egypt, Greece, Rome, Venice, Amsterdam, London, and New York. At times, I have thought we are now witnessing the movement of the financial control center to Beijing, China.

Currently, I don't think that's what's happening. We are not witnessing a national transfer, but the evolution of control to an explicit global basis.

We are witnessing the transfer from a series of national control centers to one global control center. This will not happen simply by various nations uniting in regional unions, which unions then unite into one global union (by which I mean an explicitly dominant control center of humanity, not a debating society like the present United Nations.) Rather the national control structures must be demolished first, for they otherwise present too cumbersome an obstacle to the intended and explicit global control structure. Indeed, the present day problems of the European Union may well be used to justify the neutering of nation state power at the same time as the global union is formed, in much the same way as state power was (ultimately) neutered in the formation of the United States, using the failed example of the Articles of the Confederation (1780's) in the first attempt at a nation-state in the former British colonies of North America, after the American Revolution.

China is not the new control center designate, but rather part of the scaffolding in use during the demolition. The United States has been strong; strong enough to extinguish any upstarts who might have impeded this globalist agenda and strong enough to be the explicit, though still essentially nationalist, dominant control structure on this planet since it entered World War II on the "day that shall live in infamy" (US President FDR's words), December 8, 1941, the day after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

But now, over the decades, the US debt, as well as much of its manufacturing, agriculture, and energy production have been exported. Domestic US power has been brought under central control, thanks in part to such efforts as

• the War on Drugs CIA Drug Competitors,
• the War on Terror Freedom,
• Homeland Security Tyranny,
• student loans debt (over one Trillion US Dollars - see here)
• the housing mortgage bubble and collapse of the previous decade,
• the financial crisis of 2008,
• Obama Care Federal Medical Control,
• the poisoning of our water, air, food, soil,
• various orchestrated "mass shootings" intended to justify gun confiscation, and
• the impending confiscation of any remaining savings, pensions and retirement funds.

However, China is not the "new home" of the financial elite. They are just part of the demolition scaffolding. Just yesterday, David Stockman (a former budget director under Ronald Reagan and one of the more asture commentators of late) posted an excellent analysis of the deep flaws inherent in the present Chinese economic structure at China’s Monumental Ponzi: Here’s How It Unravels.

Stockman concludes his article with:

So China is on the cusp of the greatest margin call in history. Once asset values starting falling, its pyramids of debt will stand exposed to withering performance failures and melt-downs. Undoubtedly the regime will struggle to keep its printing press prosperity alive for another month or quarter, but the fractures are now gathering everywhere because the credit rampage has been too extreme and hideous.

The banksters in the City of London (the closest publicly visible face of the economic elite) are not relocating to Beijing. Rather they are strengthening their involvement with Beijing, as explained in Directed History Of The City's Alliance With China . The currency swap arrangements between London and Beijing described in this article are analogous to wiring up a few more of the explosives for the planned controlled demolition.

At various times, I have read that a collapse of the Japanese financial debt and markets will trigger the great world wide financial, monetary and economic collapse. See for example here. At other times I read that the failure of (nominally German) Deutsche Bank will be the trigger. At other times, I read that the failure in the derivative markets will be the trigger. At yet other times, I read that larger scale trading of petroleum, especially between the Middle East (Saudia Arabia, et al) and China in Chinese Yuan will be the trigger.

These are all high explosive financial demolition charges that the bastards in power have been planting, as part of a massive, controlled (or so they hope) financial, economic and monetary demolition of the current systems on this planet.

In my opening post to this thread, I forecast this sequence of events:

• Economic collapse in the US and Europe (and many places elsewhere) for the next 2 to 4 years
• Then serious risk of World War III between NATO and China/Russia.
• Then New World Order economically, politically, financially, monetarily, ...

Later on in this thread, I also offered the alternative of an alien invasion (no real aliens need apply) to a major World War III.

There is yet another variant of this that now seems at least as likely to me:

• Economic collapse in the US, Europe and Japan, over the next 2 to 4 years
• Subsequent economic collapse of China and Russia.
• Global depression, ending with some world wide galvanizing event such as a (fake) alien invasion.
• The afore mentioned New World Order economically, politically, financially, monetarily, ...

China will dramatically weaken economically when its export customer base has collapsed, pulling the last remaining underpinnings out from underneath its immense internal financial pyramid scheme (see Stockman's article, linked above.)

Russia, primarily an exporter of energy and other natural resources, will dramatically weaken economically when demand from its customers Europe and China collapse, perhaps expedited by the early "retirement" of its strong leader, Putin, and perhaps further expedited by the release, in response to a "World Wide Alien Threat", of commercially useful free energy or cold fusion technologies.

===

There is an underlying principle here that is worthy of note. Just as Mayer Amschel Bauer Rothschild remarked "Give me control of a nation's money and I care not who makes it's laws", so also will the transition from national power to global power be an essentially economic event, not an essentially political or military event.

Economics is the study of the interchangeable abstraction (aka "money") of the essential forces of human civilization: energy, natural resources, human labor, and human intelligence. Economic force is the useful generalization of all such forces essential to human civilization. Control of the money is the ultimate generally useful force.

===

The replacement of the US Dollar with a global monetary construct (not with simply a basket of national currencies, as might be an intermediate step) will be the singularly most significant event in this transition to an explicit world power structure.

Of course, such a replacement will not be a singular event, but rather a collapse in the current world wide fiat monetary system, followed by world wide economic depression, followed by a "new solution" rising from the ashes.

===

From Michael G. Pento's The Coming Bond Market Collapse: How to Survive the Demise of the U.S. Debt Market, page 163:

I don't buy into the assumption that a decision away from US debt would be a commensurate decision toward another sovereign. On the contrary, I think the crisis of sovereign debt will metastasize throughout the developed world. Europe doesn't have to exit the crisis zone for the United States to enter. The same goes for Japan. These three sovereigns can be in crisis at once. And this would coincide with a collapse in the fiat currency system.

[ThePythonicCow]

Posted by Paul (here)
The currency swap arrangements between London and Beijing described in this article are analogous to wiring up a few more of the explosives for the planned controlled demolition.

Yesterday, Zerohedge posted that Germany and China have just made a similar agreement: China & Germany Sign Yuan-Settlement Pact

[ThePythonicCow]

Posted by Paul (here)
From Michael G. Pento's The Coming Bond Market Collapse: How to Survive the Demise of the U.S. Debt Market, page 163:

I don't buy into the assumption that a decision away from US debt would be a commensurate decision toward another sovereign. On the contrary, I think the crisis of sovereign debt will metastasize throughout the developed world. Europe doesn't have to exit the crisis zone for the United States to enter. The same goes for Japan. These three sovereigns can be in crisis at once. And this would coincide with a collapse in the fiat currency system.

When Pento recently presented this view that Japanese and US sovereign debt markets could collapse together in a CNBC interview involving several financial experts, his participation in that show was entirely erased from what was finally broadcast. What Pento Said To Get Him Erased From CNBC (King World News).

This is a typical indication that he was hitting "too close to home."

[ThePythonicCow]

Posted by Paul (here)
There is an underlying principle here that is worthy of note. Just as Mayer Amschel Bauer Rothschild remarked "Give me control of a nation's money and I care not who makes it's laws", so also will the transition from national power to global power be an essentially economic event, not an essentially political or military event.

Economics is the study of the interchangeable abstraction (aka "money") of the essential forces of human civilization: energy, natural resources, human labor, and human intelligence. Economic force is the useful generalization of all such forces essential to human civilization. Control of the money is the ultimate generally useful force.

A point of clarification, perhaps of interest at least to those who share my focus on clarifying key underlying concepts.

Money is the underlying substance of human civilization. It forms and energizes the control mechanisms by which humans are organized into large groups. It is the fluid of trade across large nations. Its various forms provide the underlying control mechanisms of the human, political and corporate members of civilization. It is the essential means by which the bastards in power on this planet have managed humanity and extracted their labors, for many, many, millennia.

Similarly aether is the underlying substance of the physical universe. It is the stuff out of which matter, energy, and fields are formed. Astronomy, physics, astrology, and alchemy are some of the various disciplines studying these processes.

There is an alchemy or physics of both money and aether ... both are subject to subtle rules of form and frequency ... both are capable of manifesting strange and wondrous effects.

===

We are witnessing a significant transformation in the form in which money is manifest in our civilization, from the coin of nation states (the coin of the realm) to the coin of an explicit global state. Such a change will be traumatic for our civilization. The change might not even succeed as the bastards intend. Perhaps civilization will collapse, or perhaps the bastards in power will lose their control. The cycles and energies of planet earth, of its solar system, of its galaxy, and of the life on this planet all effect the result. Perhaps also the intentions of other intelligent beings effect the results, for better or worse.

Both excessive fear and excessive hope can diminish our human potential to make the best of this.

===

The bastards in power seek to preserve their relative monopoly on the alchemies of money and aether. These magics are the greatest sources of their power over humanity.

[Selene]

Posted by Paul
We are witnessing a significant transformation in the form in which money is manifest in our civilization, from the coin of nation states (the coin of the realm) to the coin of an explicit global state. Such a change will be traumatic for our civilization. The change might not even succeed as the bastards intend. Perhaps civilization will collapse, or perhaps the bastards in power will lose their control. The cycles and energies of planet earth, of its solar system, of its galaxy, and of the life on this planet all effect the result. Perhaps also the intentions of other intelligent beings effect the results, for better or worse.

Both excessive fear and excessive hope can diminish our human potential to make the best of this.

Best. Summary. Ever.

Thank you so much, Paul. You're better than you know....

Cheers,

Selene

[ThePythonicCow]

Hmmm ... perhaps it is not just the "dominant nation state" that is being phased out. Perhaps it is also the dominant banks that lend to those states.

Listen (if you enjoy learned economics talks) to this talk from IMF economist Michael Kumhof:

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=d6x8RqiAqno

In the above talk to the London School of Economics (LSE) in October of last year (2013), Kumhof reinvigorates the "Chicago Plan", which was first put forward by University of Chicago professors Henry Simons and Irving Fisher during the Great Depression. That plan changes the fundamental nature of money generation, from being lent into existence by banks, to being "coined" into existence by the central political authority.

Such has been done in the past, such as Benjamin Franklin's public money (American colonies, mid 1700's), or Abraham Lincoln's greenbacks (during US Civil War, 1860's). Examples of money directly issued by political powers likely exist in other nations as well; I just don't know of them offhand.

Whosoever issues money controls our civilization. For the past few centuries, at least, this control has lay predominantly with the large banks, lending money to governments, corporations and individuals. The Bank of England funded the British Empire, upon which the sun never sat in the 1800's. The Federal Reserve, founded in 1913, funded the American Empire, upon which darkness prevails across the planet, in present times.

This dichotomy of apparent public power residing in the governments of various nation states, and the hidden financial power residing in major banks, provided the underlying structure needed to create the major wars and the major economic booms and busts, of the last few centuries.

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.

A major economic depression, with the collapse of some major Western banks (for example HSBC, Deutsch Bank, JP Morgan, Bank of America, RBS, Citigroup, ...) and even of a central bank (the US Federal Reserve), and with the coincident collapse of a quadrillion dollars of interest rate derivatives, could be just what would be sufficient to gain public acceptance of a money issued by a "political" entity, instead of by the "evil banksters."

(The first problem would be that this political entity would not genuinely represent the people, nor even the various nations which have organized political power until now. The second problem would be that the people have shown limited competence to represent themselves, and what competence they do demonstrate continues to be under a deep and broad attack on many fronts, including toxic food, water, air, education, medicines, news, propaganda, distractions, ...)

===

On a slightly separate note, I suspect that both the "gold bug" talk (get out of money and into the "true" money for all (publicly) recorded history, gold and silver) as well as the recent "bitcoin" flap, are both part of setting us up for a major change in the money creation mechanisms of our civilization.