Month: January 2021

Authored by Michael Snyder via TheMostImportantNews.com,

If we continue destroying the U.S. dollar at our current pace, toilet paper will eventually be more valuable than U.S. dollars. 

I know that sounds absolutely crazy, but it is true.  Once the COVID pandemic hit the United States, those that control the levers of power in this country decided to go “full Weimar” and they never looked back.  As a result, the size of our money supply is rising at a rate that would have been unimaginable just a few short years ago.  To illustrate what I am talking about, I would like for you to check out this chart that was posted on Twitter by James Turk.  As you can see, M1 was up by more than 50 percent in 2020.

This chart is not from a 3rd world banana republic. It’s #USD M1 money supply. Prices are already rising in soybeans, stock indices, crude oil, copper #BTC & many more items. Money printing by the #federalreserve means #inflation in 2021 is baked into the cake. Own physical #gold pic.twitter.com/OhhlnDx8tN

— James Turk (@FGMR) December 30, 2020

We’ve never had a year like that in all of U.S. history.  What we are doing is literally insane, but most Americans aren’t even aware of what is happening because the mainstream media isn’t talking about it.

If you are not familiar with “M1”, here is a definition that comes from Investopedia…

M1 is the money supply that is composed of physical currency and coin, demand deposits, travelers’ checks, other checkable deposits, and negotiable order of withdrawal (NOW) accounts. M1 includes the most liquid portions of the money supply because it contains currency and assets that either are or can be quickly converted to cash. However, “near money” and “near, near money,” which fall under M2 and M3, cannot be converted to currency as quickly.

When new money enters the system, every dollar that you are currently holding becomes less valuable.

And if your paycheck does not rise at the same rate that the money supply is rising, that means that your paycheck becomes less valuable as well.

It is helpful to think of our money system as a pie.  When more dollars are added to the pie, your share of the pie steadily becomes smaller.

So who does benefit when the pie is expanded?

The ultra-wealthy do, and I will discuss that more below.

But first, I wanted to share another chart with you.  The first chart from James Turk showed how M1 has been rising on a percentage basis, and this next chart which comes directly from the Federal Reserve shows how M1 has been rising on an absolute basis…

Just look at that for a moment.

It truly is breathtaking.  M1 has literally been rising at almost a vertical rate, and it makes all of the inflation that has come before look almost meaningless.

This is why the stock market keeps hitting record high after record high.  Stocks started to crash when COVID first started to spread in the United States, and the Federal Reserve decided to do whatever was necessary to rescue the markets.  The “unprecedented” response that we witnessed ended up being “a key driver of billionaire wealth” in 2020…

A key driver of billionaire wealth concentration was the unprecedented monetary policy response to stabilize financial markets in the early days of the pandemic, which spurred the stock market’s gravity-defying rise. When Wall Street was on the verge of panic in March, the Federal Reserve intervened with the promise of low rates and an open-ended liquidity spigot.

In addition, Congress just kept passing “stimulus package” after “stimulus package” in a desperate attempt to “rescue” the economy.

But in the process they borrowed and spent trillions of dollars that we did not have, and that also helped to fuel our transition into hyperinflation.

The good news is that hyperinflation is not showing up at the grocery store or at Walmart yet.  Eventually it will happen, but so far consumer prices are just rising at a pace that is quite a bit brisker than usual.  Where we are seeing hyperinflation is in stock prices, high end real estate in rural and suburban areas, and in other areas of the economy that the ultra-wealthy have been pouring their money into.

Despite the fact that we just endured one of the worst economic years in U.S. history, 2020 was actually a banner year for billionaires…

Between roughly mid-March and Dec. 22, the United States gained 56 new billionaires, according to the Institute for Policy Studies, bringing the total to 659. The wealth held by that small cadre of Americans has jumped by more than $1 trillion in the months since the pandemic began.

According to a December report issued jointly by Americans for Tax Fairness and the Institute for Policy Studies using data compiled by Forbes, America’s billionaires hold roughly $4 trillion in wealth — a figure roughly double what the 165 million poorest Americans are collectively worth. The 10 richest billionaires have a combined net worth of more than $1 trillion.

Last year the rich got a whole lot richer, and the poor got a whole lot poorer.

As I discussed the other day, 2020 was a “personal financial disaster” for 55 percent of all Americans.  The year ended with close to 20 million Americans still receiving government unemployment benefits, and poverty and homelessness have been exploding all around us.

In some cases, people were waiting in lines that were up to 12 hours long just to get a couple of bags of groceries at food banks around the nation.  We haven’t seen anything like this since the Great Depression of the 1930s, and many are expecting things to get even worse in 2021.

And with each passing day, more businesses are closing and more Americans are being laid off.

The retail sector has been hit particularly hard.  The following comes from Axios…

Malls are going belly up. Familiar names like J.C. Penney, Neiman Marcus and J. Crew have filed for bankruptcy. Increasingly, Americans’ shopping choices will boil down to a handful of internet Everything Stores and survival-of-the-fittest national chains.

And what we have experienced so far is just the tip of the iceberg.  One recent report projected that “100,000 brick-and-mortar U.S. retail stores will close by 2025”…

A research report from UBS predicts that 100,000 brick-and-mortar U.S. retail stores will close by 2025, in a trend that started before the pandemic and has accelerated amid coronavirus-related shutdowns.

Our national landscape is already littered with abandoned stores and restaurants, and they are telling us that it is only going to get worse.

What is our country going to look like as this process plays out?

Of course our authorities will just respond to every new crisis by printing even more money.

That is what they did down in Venezuela, and now just about everyone in Venezuela is a millionaire.

But most of those “millionaires” are living in crushing poverty because the money is absolutely worthless.

Sadly, many other countries are doing the same thing that the U.S. is doing, and so this hyperinflationary spiral is not likely to end any time soon.

But let there be no doubt that we are also in a global economic depression.  Global GDP is about 8 percent lower than it was before the pandemic started, and the outlook for 2021 does not look promising at all.

If you think that there is a way for this economic story to end well, just go back and look at the M1 chart from the Federal Reserve one more time.

Every other time this has been tried in human history, the story has ended badly.

Our story is going to end badly too, and every American needs to get prepared to survive in a very painful hyperinflationary environment.

*  *  *

Michael’s new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.

The FDA today joined The WHO and Dr.Fauci in admitting there is a notable risk of false results from the standard PCR-Test used to define whether an individual is a COVID “Case” or not.

This matters significantly as it fits perfectly with the ‘fake rescue’ plan we have previously described would occur once the Biden admin took office. But before we get to that ‘conspiracy’, we need a little background on how the world got here…

We have detailed the controversy surrounding America’s COVID “casedemic” and the misleading results of the PCR test and its amplification procedure in great detail over the past few months.

As a reminder, “cycle thresholds” (Ct) are the level at which widely used polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test can detect a sample of the COVID-19 virus. The higher the number of cycles, the lower the amount of viral load in the sample; the lower the cycles, the more prevalent the virus was in the original sample.

Numerous epidemiological experts have argued that cycle thresholds are an important metric by which patients, the public, and policymakers can make more informed decisions about how infectious and/or sick an individual with a positive COVID-19 test might be. However, as JustTheNews reports, health departments across the country are failing to collect that data.

Here are a few headlines from those experts and scientific studies:

1. Experts compiled three datasets with officials from the states of Massachusetts, New York and Nevada that conclude:“Up to 90% of the people who tested positive did not carry a virus.”

2. The Wadworth Center, a New York State laboratory, analyzed the results of its July tests at the request of the NYT: 794 positive tests with a Ct of 40: “With a Ct threshold of 35, approximately half of these PCR tests would no longer be considered positive,” said the NYT. “And about 70% would no longer be considered positive with a Ct of 30! “

3. An appeals court in Portugal has ruled that the PCR process is not a reliable test for Sars-Cov-2, and therefore any enforced quarantine based on those test results is unlawful.

4. A new study from the Infectious Diseases Society of America, found that at 25 cycles of amplification, 70% of PCR test “positives” are not “cases” since the virus cannot be cultured, it’s dead. And by 35: 97% of the positives are non-clinical.

5. PCR is not testing for disease, it’s testing for a specific RNA pattern and this is the key pivot. When you crank it up to 25, 70% of the positive results are not really “positives” in any clinical sense, since it cannot make you or anyone else sick

So, in summary, with regard to our current “casedemic”, positive tests as they are counted today do not indicate a “case” of anything. They indicate that viral RNA was found in a nasal swab. It may be enough to make you sick, but according to the New York Times and their experts, probably won’t. And certainly not sufficient replication of the virus to make anyone else sick. But you will be sent home for ten days anyway, even if you never have a sniffle. And this is the number the media breathlessly reports… and is used to fearmonger mask mandates and lockdowns nationwide…

In late August, The New York Times and several experts admitted that up to 90% of positive PCR tests were not indicative of the active illness that could be transmitted to others.

In October we first exposed the “casedemic” and how PCR Tests have misled officials worldwide into insanely authoritative reactions.

As PJMedia’s Stacey Lennox wrote, the “casedemic” is the elevated number of cases we see nationwide because of a flaw in the PCR test. The number of times the sample is amplified, also called the cycle threshold (Ct), is too high.

It identifies people who do not have a viral load capable of making them ill or transmitting the disease to someone else as positive for COVID-19.

The New York Times reported this flaw on August 29 and said that in the samples they reviewed from three states where labs use a Ct of 37-40, up to 90% of tests are essentially false positives. The experts in that article said a Ct of around 30 would be more appropriate for indicating that someone could be contagious – those for whom contact tracing would make sense.

Just a few days earlier, the CDC had updated its guidelines to discourage testing for asymptomatic individuals. It can only be assumed that the rationale for this was that some honest bureaucrat figured out the testing was needlessly sensitive. He or she has probably been demoted.

This change was preceded by a July update that discouraged retesting for recovered patients. The rationale for the update was that viral debris could be detected using the PCR test for 90 days after recovery. The same would be true for some period of time if an individual had an effective immune response and never got sick. Existing immunity from exposure to other coronaviruses has been well documented. These are many of your “asymptomatic” cases.

However, due to political pressure and corporate media tantrums, the new guidance on testing was scrapped, and testing for asymptomatic individuals is now recommended again. Doctors do not receive the Ct information from the labs to make a diagnostic judgment. Neither the CDC nor the FDA has put out guidelines for an accurate Ct to diagnose a contagious illness accurately.

Hence, our current “casedemic.” Positive tests as they are counted today do not indicate a “case” of anything. They indicate that viral RNA was found in a nasal swab. It may be enough to make you sick, but according to the New York Times and their experts, probably won’t. And certainly not sufficient replication of the virus to make anyone else sick. But you will be sent home for ten days anyway, even if you never have a sniffle. And this is the number the media breathlessly reports.

A month later, Dr. Pascal Sacré, explained in great detail how all current propaganda on the COVID-19 pandemic is based on an assumption that is considered obvious, true and no longer questioned: Positive RT-PCR test means being sick with COVID.

This assumption is misleading.  Very few people, including doctors, understand how a PCR test works.

In mid-November, none other than he who should not be questioned – Dr. Anthony Fauci – admitted that the PCR Test’s high Ct is misleading:

“What is now sort of evolving into a bit of a standard,” Fauci said, is that “if you get a cycle threshold of 35 or more … the chances of it being replication-confident are minuscule.”

“It’s very frustrating for the patients as well as for the physicians,” he continued, when “somebody comes in, and they repeat their PCR, and it’s like [a] 37 cycle threshold, but you almost never can culture virus from a 37 threshold cycle.”

So, I think if somebody does come in with 37, 38, even 36, you got to say, you know, it’s just dead nucleotides, period.”

So, if anyone raises this discussion as a “conspiracy”, refer them to Dr.Fauci.

In response to this and the actual “science”, Florida’s Department of Health (and signed off on by Florida’s Republican Governor Ron deSantis), decided that for the first time in the history of the pandemic, a state will require that all labs in the state report the critical “cycle threshold” level of every COVID-19 test they perform.

All of which leads us to today’s announcement from The FDA…

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is alerting patients and health care providers of the risk of false results… with the Curative SARS-Cov-2 test.

And why does this matter?

Well it’s simple – this is how the establishment can show Joe Biden’s plan is miraculously rescue the world.

We explained the “fake rescue” plan in October.

The Fake Rescue

Biden will issue national standards, like the plexiglass barriers in restaurants he spoke about during the debate, and pressure governors to implement mask mandates using the federal government’s financial leverage (NOTE: his 100-day mask-wearing ‘mandate’ is already in play).

Some hack at the CDC or FDA will issue new guidance lowering the Ct the labs use, and cases will magically start to fall.

In reality, the change will only eliminate false positives, but most Americans won’t know that.

Good old Uncle Joe will be the hero, even though it is Deep-State actors in the health bureaucracies who won’t solve a problem with testing they have been aware of for months. TDS is a heck of a drug.

So, there you have it folks… First Fauci, then WHO, now FDA all admit there is malarkey in the PCR Tests, but have – until now, done nothing about it… allowing the daily fearmongering of soaring “cases” to enable their most twisted 1984-esque controls.

All that’s needed now is for one of these estemeed groups to decide to cut the Ct for a “positive” PCR Test to say 15x or 20x and suddenly, we are rescued from the “Dark Winter” as Biden’s plan slashes the positive case count dramatically… we are saved.

As an aside, this also clearly explains the disappearance of the “flu” during this season as the plethora of high Ct PCR Tests supposedly pointing to a surge in COVID are nothing of the sort.

As Stephen Lendman noted previously, claiming “lockdowns stopped flu in its tracks, (outbreaks) plummet(ting) by 98% in the United States” ignored that what’s called COVID is merely seasonal influenza combined with false positives (extremely high Ct) from PCR-Tests.

And for that reason, the great 2020 disappearing flu passes largely under the mass media’s radar. Media proliferated mass deception and power of repetition get most people to believe and having successfully “killed the flu”, they will now do the same with COVID… and, if allowed by our betters, we will all return to the new normal they desire.

Authored by Rusty Weiss via The Mental Recession blog,

A new Rasmussen survey indicates 72 percent of Republican voters want their legislators to be more like President Trump.

In fact, in their view, Trump is an extraordinarily better role model than most members of Congress.

The national telephone and online survey “finds that 72% of Likely Republican Voters think their party should be more like Trump than like the average GOP member of Congress,” Rasmussen reports.

By contrast, 24 percent see the average Republican in Congress as a better example for their party.

Overall, voters gave the “average member of Congress” 45 percent to just 40 percent for the President.

72 Percent of Republicans See Trump as Model for Future of GOPhttps://t.co/P1eJFOxOjJ pic.twitter.com/00Pf9rNgTw

— HYVE (@HYVEE7) December 29, 2020

Republican Voters Want Congress to be More Like Trump

It’s really no surprise that Republican voters want to see their congressional representatives emulate Trump, a political outsider who actually fights for the people.

As bad as his approval ratings are thanks to Democrat-controlled media, President Trump is easily more admired by Republicans than members of Congress.

In fact, in 2020, he was even more admired than Barack Obama.

“Trump tied former President Barack Obama for the honor last year but edged out his predecessor this year,” Gallup reports.

They add, “Trump’s first-place finish ends a 12-year run as most admired man for Obama, tied with Dwight Eisenhower for the most ever.”

Gallup: President Trump is most admired man of 2020. Ends Barack Obama’s 12-year most-admired run. https://t.co/k1E8VufMMe pic.twitter.com/XoXx6OaO9f

— Byron York (@ByronYork) December 29, 2020

Congress meanwhile, fared much worse in a recent survey asking Americans to rank professions by their honesty and ethics.

Congressional members actually tied car salespeople with a mere 8 percent rating them highly, while advertising practitioners came in slightly better at 10 percent.

Rounding out low-ranking groups were business executives at 17 percent, lawyers at 21 percent, and journalists at 28 percent.

Nurses, medical doctors, grade-school teachers and pharmacists top Gallup’s annual Honesty and Ethics of Professions poll. https://t.co/iLaJiqqX6D

— GallupNews (@GallupNews) December 22, 2020

Trump in 2024?

Still, Rasmussen notes that 52 percent of Republican voters think their party should put a new candidate on the presidential ticket in 2024, while 33 percent say the GOP should promote a candidate who has already run.

At a Christmas party in December, the President hinted that he would be back in the White House in 2024.

“It’s been an amazing four years,” Trump is heard saying in a live stream of the party by former Oklahoma Republican Party Chair Pam Pollard.

“We’re trying to get another four years,” the President continued, “but otherwise I’ll see you in four years.”

Trump at the White House Christmas party: “It’s been an amazing four years. We’re trying to do another four years, otherwise I’ll see you in four years.”

h/t @ZekeJMiller, @colvinj pic.twitter.com/72Q3bVY3jP

— Andrew Solender (@AndrewSolender) December 2, 2020

A similar Rasmussen survey six years ago saw Republican voters clamoring for a new face to run for President.

That new face turned out to be Donald Trump, as he easily dispatched with establishment politicians during the Republican primaries, and eventually defeated another entrenched swamp creature in Hillary Clinton.

Is there anyone who might surprise in a similar manner and emerge in 2024?

Read more at the Political Insider…

Authored by Rusty Weiss via The Mental Recession blog,

A new Rasmussen survey indicates 72 percent of Republican voters want their legislators to be more like President Trump.

In fact, in their view, Trump is an extraordinarily better role model than most members of Congress.

The national telephone and online survey “finds that 72% of Likely Republican Voters think their party should be more like Trump than like the average GOP member of Congress,” Rasmussen reports.

By contrast, 24 percent see the average Republican in Congress as a better example for their party.

Overall, voters gave the “average member of Congress” 45 percent to just 40 percent for the President.

72 Percent of Republicans See Trump as Model for Future of GOPhttps://t.co/P1eJFOxOjJ pic.twitter.com/00Pf9rNgTw

— HYVE (@HYVEE7) December 29, 2020

Republican Voters Want Congress to be More Like Trump

It’s really no surprise that Republican voters want to see their congressional representatives emulate Trump, a political outsider who actually fights for the people.

As bad as his approval ratings are thanks to Democrat-controlled media, President Trump is easily more admired by Republicans than members of Congress.

In fact, in 2020, he was even more admired than Barack Obama.

“Trump tied former President Barack Obama for the honor last year but edged out his predecessor this year,” Gallup reports.

They add, “Trump’s first-place finish ends a 12-year run as most admired man for Obama, tied with Dwight Eisenhower for the most ever.”

Gallup: President Trump is most admired man of 2020. Ends Barack Obama’s 12-year most-admired run. https://t.co/k1E8VufMMe pic.twitter.com/XoXx6OaO9f

— Byron York (@ByronYork) December 29, 2020

Congress meanwhile, fared much worse in a recent survey asking Americans to rank professions by their honesty and ethics.

Congressional members actually tied car salespeople with a mere 8 percent rating them highly, while advertising practitioners came in slightly better at 10 percent.

Rounding out low-ranking groups were business executives at 17 percent, lawyers at 21 percent, and journalists at 28 percent.

Nurses, medical doctors, grade-school teachers and pharmacists top Gallup’s annual Honesty and Ethics of Professions poll. https://t.co/iLaJiqqX6D

— GallupNews (@GallupNews) December 22, 2020

Trump in 2024?

Still, Rasmussen notes that 52 percent of Republican voters think their party should put a new candidate on the presidential ticket in 2024, while 33 percent say the GOP should promote a candidate who has already run.

At a Christmas party in December, the President hinted that he would be back in the White House in 2024.

“It’s been an amazing four years,” Trump is heard saying in a live stream of the party by former Oklahoma Republican Party Chair Pam Pollard.

“We’re trying to get another four years,” the President continued, “but otherwise I’ll see you in four years.”

Trump at the White House Christmas party: “It’s been an amazing four years. We’re trying to do another four years, otherwise I’ll see you in four years.”

h/t @ZekeJMiller, @colvinj pic.twitter.com/72Q3bVY3jP

— Andrew Solender (@AndrewSolender) December 2, 2020

A similar Rasmussen survey six years ago saw Republican voters clamoring for a new face to run for President.

That new face turned out to be Donald Trump, as he easily dispatched with establishment politicians during the Republican primaries, and eventually defeated another entrenched swamp creature in Hillary Clinton.

Is there anyone who might surprise in a similar manner and emerge in 2024?

Read more at the Political Insider…

A train carrying more than 160 Volkswagen cars was derailed in Mexico last Wednesday by armed thieves, according to Mexican authorities, FreightWaves reports.

Thieves removed almost two meters of tracks to halt the train and steal merchandise. It wasn’t clear what they were able to steal, given that the cargo was brand-new vehicles.

The train tracks were cut near the town of Acultzingo, about 80 southeast of the Volkswagen assembly plant in Puebla, Mexico, where the company makes its Jetta, Tiguan and Golf models.

Authorities said about 11 train cars carrying a load of Volkswagen vehicles bound for Europe were derailed on the way to the Port of Veracruz. The incident happened about 3 a.m. Wednesday.

Up to 165 cars may have been damaged during the derailment. The train tracks belong to the Ferrosur Co., a railway that serves the southeastern regions of Mexico.

“There were 11 units loaded with cars that overturned and some even went into the ravine, and five were semi overturned. Fortunately no one was hurt,” said a Ferrosur official, according to outlet News Informant of Veracruz.

No arrests have been made. Volkswagen AG has not issued any statement regarding the incident.

A railway union spokesman quoted by Mexico News Daily, said six rail cars rolled over completely and some dropped into a ravine. He estimated damages in the millions of pesos.

This is not the first – and certainly won’t be the last – Mexican train robbery in the region, as Bloomberg’s 2018 profile of Acultzingo so vividly revealed, in an article aptly titled “The Train Robbery Capital of the World“:

Head southeast out of Mexico City for about four hours or so and you will come upon the town of Acultzingo.

It is an impoverished, dusty little place nestled up against the rugged peaks of the Sierra Madre. Most inhabitants work the land for a living. They grow corn and avocados and raise cattle and pigs. They also rob trains. Lots of trains. So many, in fact, that Acultzingo (pronounced ah-coolt-ZEEN-go) is not only the train robbery capital of Mexico but, arguably, of the world.

Over the past year alone, there were 521 crimes committed against cargo trains in the town. And a chunk of those incidents bore no resemblance to the run-of-the-mill petty crime seen in the bigger cities of northern Mexico — vandalizing a train car or stealing railway signs. No, these were massive, choreographed affairs that often started with a low-tech trick that dates back to the days of the Wild West — piling rocks up high on the tracks — and involved small armies of thieves who descended on the derailed cars in waves to cart off the loot.

They’ve swiped tequila, shoes, toilet paper, tires, whatever they could get their hands on. One particularly violent incident alone, which derailed dozens of train cars a few miles east of Acultzingo, saddled railroad giant GMexico Transportes with more than $15 million in losses. And at Mazda Motor’s offices back in Mexico City, executives got so sick of hearing about how parts were being stripped from their vehicles that they started shipping some of them through the region by highway. Analysts estimate this tacks 30 percent on their transportation costs. (Mazda declined to provide figures.)

Security forces are so overwhelmed by the sheer number of attackers, says political-risk analyst Alejandro Schtulmann, that a sense of impunity prevails in the area. “The problem is getting worse all the time,” says Schtulmann, who heads Mexico City-based consultancy EMPRA.

It’s this kind of extreme lawlessness that has led some Mexico observers to wonder at times whether the country is something of a failed state struggling to rule over the entirety of its territory. Homicides are at a record high. Kidnappings are on the rise, too. Reining this crime in, at least somewhat, will soon be the task of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the populist leader who rolled to a landslide election victory this month in part on his pledge to restore law and order.

Read more here.

Authored by Tom Luongo via Gold, Goats, ‘n Guns blog,

What’s The Frequency, Bitcoin?

With apologies to R.E.M. and a song and album I’ve never liked – though I love R.E.M. pre-Bill Berry retirement – I ask the question this morning of you, dear readers, how out of phase (and tune) you feel with what’s going on in the bitcoin markets right now?

Because I don’t feel out of phase with what’s happening here at all. And that isn’t some kind of gloat or self-congratulatory back-pat. Just a simple statement of fact. I could see this coming, like many others, for a long time now.

In fact, I’ve been trying to tell y’all this for close to a year now. I put my newsletter subscribers in bitcoin officially last January at $8865 per coin as a hedge against U.S. dollar weakness, even though I expected dollar strength during a spasm, which happened in March.

But I also expected gold and bitcoin to rise regardless of the dollar’s performance in the forex markets because of central bank response to that spasm and the coming supply constraint in bitcoin due to the halving of the reward pool.

Given the enormous rise in Bitcoin’s price and the way it has traded around each ‘Halv-ening’ there is a strong argument that Bitcoin is becoming a competitor to gold as a store of value.

And if that’s the case, then programmed slowing inflation during a time of huge uncertainty means Bitcoin should be setting up for its next big run higher…

… If anything, I think that once the chaos begins to unfold in the dollar markets a lot of people will begin looking for ways to protect their other wealth when they can’t get dollars.

Today it is, by far, the best-performing asset in that portfolio.

I thought I’d pegged you an idiot’s dream

Bitcoin was transitioning into a safe-haven asset par excellence and it would, when the time was right, assert its gravitational pull on global capital fleeing the chaos and insanity unleashed by megalomaniacs convinced this that this time they can roll back the laws of physics and make Communism work.

And it will work… for them… for a time, as all systems based on lies, fraud, coercion and fear ultimately do.

But then that system will collapse (possibly before it gets fully formed) due to those same physical laws of the universe, the time-risk associated with data transmission (no matter how fast we make electrons travel across a wire) and the stupidity of the people receiving the signals and making the edicts.

This, of course, assumes they are even listening to the data and not just blindly executing code they wrote when they were younger, and presumably, less wise.

It’s a bad assumption.

But I know many of you are still confused as to how this weird, vaguely libertarian thing, bitcoin, can be worth, per coin, more than fifteen times what an ounce of gold commands. I assure you it’s real and it’s likely to continue that way well into 2021 despite heart-stopping volatility and your protestations to the contrary.

You wore our expectations like an armored suit

Bitcoin is the talk of 2021 because, like in times past, it is exploding daily on a perfect mix of supply constraints and fear. There are four things increasing the frequency of bitcoin’s status as a safe-haven asset.

1. The halving in May 2020 did, indeed, exert tremendous pressure on available supply. The Grayscale Bitcoin Investment Trust (GBTC) alone soaked up more supply in Q2 than was added during those three months.

2. The advent of DeFi on Ethereum added the promise of pulling a yield for HODL’ers of bitcoin as billions poured in thanks to yield-starved investors looking for income in a world where the only people allowed to have one worked for major corporations and governments, but I repeat myself

3. The inability of gold to overcome the daily manipulation of its price through futures led more institutional money looking for other options. Since bitcoin has no cost to store, literally, it is superior to gold in that respect while retaining a digital analogue to its properties.

4. The most important piece is, however, the increased awareness and respectability of bitcoin three years on from the last bubble, which finally proved to another segment of the market that it was, in fact, not a one-hit wonder.

As long as these conditions persist bitcoin will continue to explore the upper bounds of its potential valuation. Because what has to be reiterated here is something that Jim Rickards reminds us of all the time with respect to gold rising.

“Withdrawal in disgust is not the same as apathy”

Namely, gold is rising because the dollar is falling. When gold is rising against all other currencies then it is in a bull market which is systemic across all other asset classes. In other words, the currencies themselves have lost the faith of the people using it.

The same thing is happening with bitcoin. But because bitcoin is nowhere near its full capitalization as an alternative currency to the dollar, euro, yen, pound or Vietnamese dong, when the conditions are right it moves in dramatic fashion responding to macro-economic changes.

People forget that in 2016/17 there was sincere worry about a collapse in the euro. There was a lot of movement on the bitcoin blockchain in the summer of 2017 as people looked to get out of the euro-zone.

In 2013 it was capital flight out of China that underscored bitcoin’s first foray with $1000. Each time it didn’t take a lot of people (or money) to move this market and provide people with a real service in the face of government incompetence.

The powers-that-be have clamped down on moving wealth across borders via gold so bitcoin was the asset of choice to avoid currency risk. And with those moves came the attention as the story got out and here we are today.

Each one of these movements raised the market profile of bitcoin, attracted players both honest and dishonest and the market around it went through all the normal paroxysms of a new technology finding its way.

So where are we today? What’s the frequency, Kenneth?

Today we’re talking about technology, products, systems and government interference orders of magnitude more sophisticated than the original bitcoin blockchain.

And, in my opinion, almost none of them are mature enough to put real money into. Vegas money? Sure. Poker night money? Absolutely.

But we’re still talking about the basics of bitcoin as a real competing asset to many of the world’s most vulnerable fiat currencies, the aforementioned dong is one. The Turkish lira, Iranian riyal, Ukrainian Hryvnia, etc. are others.

So, let’s not but dial in too tightly here, we’re just getting used to the idea of bitcoin being a store of value in a world where it isn’t allowed to be a medium of exchange. The idea that more sophisticated financial platforms are stable and ready to subvert the current teetering banking system are still nothing more than dreams.

Bitcoin, like all highly emotional subjects, has people jumping to the endgame, talking about the death of the dollar or the euro or whatever. That is certainly a possibility, but not a certainty. And saying that doesn’t invalidate its potential nor its current status.

Like it or not people are thinking of it in these terms and the market will sort out whether we’ll get there. If there’s one thing ten-plus years of following bitcoin has taught me, sometimes very painfully, it is that there is an order of operations to everything.

So, let’s not get too crazy here. This isn’t the end of the story, but I like the story that’s been told so far.

I never understood the frequency

What’s next is watching how this latest jerk upwards in bitcoin’s price is now bringing along other projects, shedding light on ones of high quality while others of lower quality find themselves left by the roadside.

Because as many of bitcoin’s detractors point out there are serious issues here. There’s political risk of government crackdowns which may be more effective than in the past. There are centralized points of failure within the current market, such as Tether’s liquidity and lack of transparency, liquidity pools on Lightning Network and Ethereum’s architectural issues which still lurk in the distance.

We’re just beginning to see that separation happen now as bitcoin starts becoming ‘too expensive’ to some people. The rotation into other coins will happen and their differences/improvements on bitcoin’s limitations, privately admitted by even the most ardent bitcoin bulls, will prove themselves in this next phase of the cycle.

Of course, the biggest risk of all is people getting too carried away with bitcoin’s success to miss the changes to the landscape, politically, that have occurred over the past four years.

And the current rise isn’t even the beginning of the mania that’s still unsatisfied given the political unrest, economic uncertainty and naked power grabs occurring all around us. Between now and then it will prompt the harshest attempts by the oligarchy yet to cause interference and collapse bitcoin’s rising waveform.

That collapse will happen. All markets that go parabolic correct. It’s what happens after the collapse that determines the final outcome.

So, the stakes are now the highest they have ever been not only for bitcoin but for the oligarchs dead set on remaining in control. And this should prompt the most bitter battle in this monetary war. The question everyone is asking (or at least should be asking) is who has the best weapons?

Because every failed attempt to squelch the signal is another validated block in the chain which gives the bitcoin community the strength to finally switch channels all together and leave the old paradigm behind.

Everything else is just noise drowning out the signal.

*  *  *

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Days after a gang of thugs in Manhattan attacked multiple cars in broad daylight, a man on Sunday evening went on a violent crime spree with a wooden bat, attacking people and vehicles in Lower Manhattan. 

NYPD officials are baffled at the “frightening violent crime spree” and are still “trying to make sense of” what happened, said CBS New York.

CBS’ Hazel Sanchez said the Atlantic City man was armed with a “wooden bat-like weapon.” He attacked ten people and damaged several cars. 

NYPD said Bryan Thompson,43, then forced a man out of his Jeep Grand Cherokee in front of 66 West Broadway. He went on a GTA-style chase with police, eventually crashing at West 24th Street and 12th Avenue.

Thompson was hospitalized for a psychiatric evaluation. He faces multiple charges, including robbery, assault, and fleeing police. 

Sanchez has more on the Sunday night chaos in Lower Manhattan. 

The pandemic has transformed parts of New York City into a hellhole as violent crime surges. Residents are quickly moving to rural communities to escape the mess. 

Mike Green kicks off the Real Vision Daily Briefing in 2021 with Real Vision’s Max Wiethe. Although markets sold off and volatility rose sharply, Mike was not particularly surprised by today’s price action and attributes today’s selloff to market participants who waited until 2021 to take profits rather than the runoff risks that many attributed to this. He also makes the case for markets building towards a substantial correction at some point in 2021 and gives his outlook for the Georgia runoff and other important events on the horizon. In the intro section, Haley Draznin analyzes recent price action in bitcoin and equity markets.