Tag: news

Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

Scientists in Brazil have found that the countries most affected by the coronavirus spread are the ones who continued to allow unrestricted travel across their borders, prompting further arguments that the most effective method of preventing the spread is tighter frontier controls.

The research, carried out by the Federal University of Bahia in Salvador, suggests that screening and quarantining those coming into countries from outside could have been “a cheap solution for humanity”.

The researchers based their analysis on records of 7,834 airports, using online flight databases documenting 67,600 transport routes in 65 countries.

The scientists factored in a number of forces, including climate, socioeconomic factors, as well economic and air transport, in an attempt to ascertain how the size of outbreaks was affected in 65 countries which had more than 100 cases.

The overwhelming factor was found to be air travel, leading to a conclusion that it is “the main explanation for the growth rate of COVID-19.”

The study notes that “The 2019 – 2020 world spread of COVID-19 highlights that improvements and testing of board control measures (i.e. screening associated with fast testing and quarantine of infected travellers) might be a cheap solution for humanity in comparison to health systems breakdowns and unprecedented global economic crises that the spread of infectious disease can cause.”

The data tallies with the fact that the US and the UK, which have the first and third highest air travel globally, have also suffered the most COVID-19 deaths with 74,600 and 30,615, respectively so far.

The US did not close its airports until late March, while Britain’s borders have remained completely open with little to no testing or quarantining of incoming travellers happening at all.

On the other hand, nations like Austria, Denmark and New Zealand closed their borders within days of their first confirmed cases, and have experienced much fewer deaths.

Austria in particular has enacted tight border controls, refusing entry to anyone without a medical certificate confirming they had tested negative for the virus, and placing a mandatory 14 day quarantine on those who do not have them. The country has suffered just 68 deaths per million of its population, with only 606 overall.

Denmark closed its borders to all non-citizens in mid March, only excluding those with ‘credible purpose’ such as non-citizen Danish residents. The Scandinavian nation has recorded just 503 deaths.

The UK, on the other hand has allowed some 18 million people to enter from outside the country with hardly any of them undergoing health screenings or being put into quarantine.

Labour MP Stephen Doughty noted that “The fact that many of these people then likely arrived and travelled onwards across the UK with little or no adherence to social distancing, and with no checks or protections at the border is deeply disturbing.”

The UK has seen 100,000 people arriving from foreign countries at UK airports every single week, all with virtually no health checks whatsoever.

Being fat obese can double someone’s risk of going to the hospital for severe COVID-19 symptoms, a new report published by the University of Glasgow concluded this week. With that being said, a leaked document from the UK government obtained by The Sun outlines how obese people could be forced by their employer to work at home for the next year as lockdown restrictions are relaxed. 

The proposed measures, currently in draft form with the UK government, are aimed at preventing workplace transmission of the virus by protecting the most vulnerable of society. Along with overweight people, the elderly, women who are pregnant, and people with heart disease and diabetes have been profiled by the government with weak immune systems. 

In a post-corona world, as restrictions are lifted, the measures will serve as a guideline for businesses to reopen their offices, as they must comply with government orders. It calls for shields around each desk to limit the virus spread. Companies will have to ban sitting back-to-back, hot-desking, and sharing of equipment. There will also be marks on the ground to instruct where people can or cannot stand. When people return to their desks, pre/post corona workspaces might be unrecognizable. 

The measures also include handwashing and sanitizing stations around the office. This will allow employees to clean their hands and workstations regularly.

The proposed measures will likely limit face-to-face meetings and only allow if necessary. Employees will be forbidden from sharing pens, computers, and or any other devices. The strict rules will likely force employers to drive more staff to work at home. 

The Sun was told after 6-12 months of the new measures, a review period would be seen to see if the workspace rules will stay in place. 

An industry source said: “If it [COVID-19] survives the winter, these measures will have to be in place longer.”

Several company bosses told The Sun that new social distancing measures could also help to mitigate the traditional flu. 

“The one positive is traditional flu cases will go down because you’re socially distancing,” the source said. 

The proposed measures, still in draft form, are not just guidelines to prepare offices for a post-corona world, the measures cover many other parts of society, as described by The Sun: 

• Offices: Staggered shift times, less sharing of equipment and continued maximisation of home working are among a number of ideas listed as part of a draft government strategy to help businesses prepare for a return to work. Increased hygiene procedures and the installation of protective screens are also included in the plan. Efforts to avoid employees working face-to-face will see them working side by side or facing away from each other, according to the plans leaked to Buzzfeed News.

• Shops: There will be limits on the number of people in stores so Brits will be asked to shop alone to enable shops to be allowed to open and kick-start the economy. The advice for reopening non-essential shops such as clothes stores will be similar to the supermarket rules. Tape setting out two metre distances will have to be put on shop floors, and Brits will need to queue outside. Many shops will go cashless to stop the spread of the virus through money.

• Public Transport: In cities like London, maintaining the two-metre rule would make it impossible for workplaces to operate anywhere near full capacity. The most used Tube line for commuters is the Central Line, but in order to operate social distancing rules its usage would have to be cut by a staggering 85 per cent. Hand sanitiser will be installed on trains to protect commuters. Platforms and bus stops will contain two metre markers to maintain social distancing and one-way systems will be in place.

• Schools: A complex blueprint for schools to open in waves of different age groups is being planned. Reopening primary schools is a priority for the government in order to minimise the threat to early years development and help parents return to work. But Year 6 pupils will be first back if they are forced to stagger the reopening dates as they are at the most crucial stage of their learning. PM Boris Johnson wants the first schools to reopen on June 1. Year 10 and 12 pupils are expected to be the first wave of secondary schools to open. No firm date has been set for reopening workplaces but The Sun revealed last week that May 26 has been pencilled in as a target date as long as the government’s five tests for lifting the lockdown measures are met by then.

As to everyone who is overweight and wants to return to an office setting because their 550 sq. ft. flat in London is a jail cell — well, now might be the time to hop on a Peloton or an exercise bike. What’s baffling to us, is at what weight will the government determine if someone is too fat to work in an office? 

Authored by Alasdair Macleod via GoldMoney.com,

An unexpected destruction of fiat currency has been advanced by the monetary and fiscal response to the coronavirus. Financial markets have yet to discount the possibility of such an outcome, but in the coming months they are likely to awaken to this danger.

The question arises as to what will replace fiat currencies. In the past the answer has always been gold but today there are cryptocurrencies as well, whose enthusiasts are more aware than most of fiat money’s failings.

This article describes the basics about money, what it is and the role it plays in order to understand what will be required by the eventual replacement for fiat. It concludes that gold will return as the world’s medium of exchange, and secure cryptocurrencies, unable to provide the scalability and stability of value required of a medium of exchange will be priced in gold after the demise of fiat. But then the rationale for them will be gone, and with it their function as a store of value.

The destruction of fiat money

These are strange times. Circumstances are forcing governments to destroy their money by debasing it to pay for their obligations, real and imagined. If central bankers had a grasp of what money really is, they wouldn’t have got into a position where they are forced to use their seigniorage to destroy it. They are so ignorant about catallactics, the fundamentals behind economics, that they cannot see they are destroying the means of exchange they have imposed upon their citizens with far worse consequences than the abandonment of the evils they are trying to defray.

Unless you believe in a financial form of perpetual motion you will know that all else being equal if you double the quantity of money you approximately halve its purchasing power. It is therefore an incontestable fact that if a central bank doubles the quantity of a circulating fiat currency, it is taking to itself half of the value of everyone’s cash, currency deposits, profits and salaries. It makes everyone poorer and it is simply a travesty to promote monetary inflation as a costless form of economic rescue. Yet the major central banks are now unashamedly admitting to a policy of deploying an infinite expansion of circulating currency.

The effect on capital allocation is equally destructive, because it undermines economic calculation. The suppression of interest rates and increasing quantities of currency tempt businessmen into unprofitable investment decisions which only appear profitable. But inflationism periodically fails as any follower of credit cycles will attest. And the more extreme the policy of inflationism, the more capital is misallocated, and the worse the periodic failures. Today, we can add to these woes monetary and interest rate policies intended to prevent any and all businesses from going to the wall in a final act of capital misallocation.

We now stand on the edge of a global monetary crisis brought about by a new, rapid acceleration of money-printing. Never before have we seen our own governments and those of all our trading partners embark on the same policies of monetary destruction. Never, therefore, will we have seen the scale of global wealth destruction that we about to experience. Unless governments change their inflationary policies, they will lead to the miseries we read about in countries such as Venezuela and Zimbabwe being visited upon us all.

It is extraordinary that modern economists are blind to the true effects of inflation, which have been known since the dawn of money. Nicolas Oresme, a French bishop in the fourteenth century and a notable translator of Aristotle, warned of debasement:

“I am of the opinion that the main and final cause why the prince pretends to the power of altering the coinage is the profit or gain which he can get from it… the amount of the prince’s profit is necessarily that of the communities’ loss but whatever loss the prince inflicts on the community is injustice and the act of a tyrant and not of a king, as Aristotle says. And so, the Prince would be at length able to draw to himself almost all the money or riches of his subjects and reduce them to slavery and this would be tyrannical, indeed true and absolute tyranny as it is represented by philosophers, and in ancient history.”

As a description of inflation, it was a continuity statement of what was known from classical times. In Oresme’s day and before, the principal form of debasement was of the coinage. It is no different from issuing any form of money or credit unbacked by a valuable metal. Apart from alchemists dreaming of creating gold out of something else, the principal deniers of the true purpose of inflationism have been John Law in eighteenth century France, Geog Knapp and his chartalists in Bismarck’s Germany, and Lord Keynes the consequences from which we are suffering today. Oresme was spot on. The whole purpose of debasement is to fund the state, and the state licences banks for that purpose, extending monetary favours to big business as well. Forget the flummery about stimulating us; that amounts to a cover for statist robbery of our wealth.

The coronavirus is not the cause of this folly. It has only shortened timescales, the likely time before we discard fiat currencies entirely. It has brought forward the time when homo economicus anticipates the total loss of the government currency’s purchasing power. From that moment, those of us unwilling to descend into barter will seek a new medium of exchange. In desperation, governments are likely attempt to provide alternatives. If so, it almost certainly will be a variation on the fiat theme, which they find impossible to abandon for lack of finance. They will then discover that a lasting money is not to be chosen by the state, but by the people.

This has been the lesson of history. Those who think economics as a science started with Keynes, and preceding theories were thereby invalidated, are in for a primal shock. It is time to relearn the basics about money so that we can anticipate what form of money will endure as a replacement for the failure of government fiat currency.

Defining money

There are two incontrovertible facts that underlie economic analysis and the role of money.

The first is that the division of labour is more productive than the work of isolated individuals. That is to say, individuals maximise their productivity by deploying their individual skills, relying on their enhanced output to acquire all their other needs and wants from other specialising producers in their community. Not even Marx denied this, nor all the other socialists who emerged on the economic and political scene from his time onwards. Only Keynes denied it in order to impart validity to his General Theory.

Socialist economists even agree with the second incontrovertible fact, that, ascetics aside, individuals prefer a higher productivity of their labour to a lower one. Socialist arguments were not against these facts but dispute which way of dividing labour is most productive. Marxists have argued that the division of labour should be harnessed for the benefit of the state, and that instead of being exploited by employers, labourers would become happier and more productive. Less extreme socialists simply believe that there is little or no difference of production output in a business controlled by the state, compared with one in private ownership.

It therefore follows that to facilitate the division of labour, the role of money is to facilitate an exchange of goods. It enables people to choose between goods and services, and therefore for people to exercise their judgement of the relative values they place on different goods. It enables them to choose.

Value is not to be confused with prices. Value is an expression of a graded preference between goods, the assessment of one against another. Money is the commodity whose sole function is to facilitate the transfer of production into needed and desired consumption in order to satisfy individual scales of value. The difference between value and its realisation as a price in a transaction devolves into subjective values placed by different individuals for goods and services being exchanged and into a common objective value for money.

Separately from money’s objective transactional value, transacting individuals have different values for money itself relative to a particular product within money’s objective context. In a transaction it follows that one party will value a given quantity of money more than the good at the point of exchange, while the other party will value the good more than the quantity of money demanded; otherwise an exchange cannot take place. The exchange is recorded as a price expressed in money terms.

This description crams into a few paragraphs the relationship between value and money. It is a topic rarely addressed by modern economists, which is one reason the catallactic role of money is poorly understood. A second, and no less important reason is the defining literature on the subject originated in Austria in German, with the unfamiliar names to the Anglo-Saxon ear of Menger, Böhm-Bawerk, Wieser and Mises amongst others. Instead, the neo-classical economics of today ignores all subjectivity and has evolved into an inflexible mathematical macroeconomic certainty, eliminating unpredictable human action, melding value with prices.

But from these basics all other roles of money are derived. Clearly, while one party wants the money more than the item being exchanged and the other prefers the item to the money, both parties in a transaction will require a medium of exchange that is stable. They can then agree an objective value at the time of the transaction. But when an individual or business sells his, her or its production, the money gained is not immediately exchanged for other goods. Money must therefore have more than an objective value at the time of a transaction, because it is also the temporary storage of labour or of a business’s output.

It is fundamental that all economic actors are confident that the purchasing power of money does not alter for the time they are likely to possess it in lieu of the goods and services yet to be acquired, else they will either dispose of the money more rapidly than they would otherwise, or alternatively hoard it to a greater extent than they would normally require. And when the division of labour is organised into a cooperative system, such as a business involving numbers of people, rewarding them for production by paying fixed salaries, it is a fundamental assumption of all employment contracts that the salary does not alter in its purchasing power.

The stability that qualifies money as the medium of exchange over time is also fundamental to related functions, such as the ability of transacting parties to agree deferred payment terms and the facility of money to permit adjustment for risk factors between a transaction and its final settlement. Other than deferred payments based purely on trust, deferred settlements will reflect a level of time preference agreed between acting parties. This is the measure of the difference between values of immediate possession and deferred possession for the period agreed.

The greatest value for transacting parties is for possession sooner, with future possession valued less. All commodities are subject to this rule. Furthermore, money’s time preference is also subject to this rule and will reflect money’s own characteristics as well as those of goods being exchanged.

Instead of being expressed as a discount to current possession, the time preference of future possession is expressed as an annualised interest rate. Assuming a current valuation of a future value, a time preference value of 95 per cent of current ownership in one year’s time is the same as an interest rate of (100-95)/95 = 5.26%.

Time preference can only be agreed between transacting parties, and it is impossible for outsiders, such as the state, to know what that value is. With respect to money, this is commonly termed the originary rate of interest, shorn of other considerations, such as transactional risk and anticipated changes in the prices of future goods, which are additional factors.

It should be apparent that a medium of exchange discharges its functions most effectively when the transacting public has the greatest confidence in the money’s stability, leading to a relatively low level of time preference. Policies of state inflationism undermine this condition and, if continued, inevitably leads to the loss of confidence in fiat money altogether. Recent events, the combination of a downturn in the credit cycle and the economic consequences of the coronavirus, have committed central banks to an unlimited increase of monetary inflation, which in addition to the suppression of all time preference, by imposing zero and negative interest rates on economic actors, will bring forward the day when faith in fiat currencies is lost entirely.

We can therefore anticipate the death of today’s fiat currencies. It is a mistake to think it will be a gradual process: it has already been gradual since the late 1960s, when the remaining fig-leaf of gold convertibility was finally abandoned with the failure of the London gold pool. Since then, measured in gold the dollar has lost over 97% of its purchasing power compared with gold. Given this latest acceleration of monetary debasement, it is likely to be the nail in the coffin for the fiat dollar. Instead of a continuing decline, the outcome is likely to be a final collapse, not just through its over-issuance, but because fiat money will have lost all its derivative functions. The only thing missing is public awareness.

The end of fiat money can be defrayed by reverting to a gold standard, turning it from pure fiat to a representative of gold. But that will only be a lasting solution if the state stops intervening in the economy, runs balanced budgets and embraces free markets. Unfortunately, inflationism in the form of neo-Keynesian economics is so ingrained in political thinking that many central banks will look to invent new forms of fiat money instead of returning to a gold exchange standard.

One of the alternatives being experimented with is state-issued cryptocurrencies, but it is not yet clear what purpose they are intended to serve. Crucially, they are sure to differ from bitcoin and similar cryptocurrencies by having a centralised ledger under state control. Apart from the questions raised by wider uncertainties surrounding the durability of a cryptocurrency’s use-value, unless the state version is backed convincingly by gold, it will be no more than a dressed-up fiat currency, a successor to failure unlikely to obtain enduring public trust. For the moment, we must dismiss state issued cryptocurrencies as irrelevant to our analysis, because independent cryptocurrencies are better stores of value due to their distributed ledgers.

Gold as money

The inflationists deny that gold should play any monetary role, for the simple reason that it hampers inflationist policies. Being the most likely way of securing a currency, for a gold exchange standard to work will require strict rules-based monetary discipline.

A gold exchange standard is comprised of the following elements. The new issues of state denominated currency must be covered pro rata by additional physical gold, and it must be fully interchangeable at the public’s option. The state is not required at the outset to cover every existing banknote in circulation, but depending on the situation, perhaps a minimum of one-third of the issue should be covered by physical gold at the outset when setting a fixed conversion ratio. The point is that further note issues must be covered by the issuer acquiring physical gold.

Banknotes which are “as good as gold” are a practical means of using gold as the medium of exchange. Electronic money, being fully convertible into bank notes must also be convertible into gold.

A gold exchange standard also requires the state to radically alter course from its customary inflationary financing. The economy, which has similarly become accustomed to future flows of apparently free money, will have to adjust to their future absence. Consequently, the state has to reduce its burden on the economy, such that its activities become a minimal part of the whole; the smaller the better. It must privatise industries in its possession, because it cannot afford to absorb any losses and inefficient state businesses detract from overall economic performance. At the same time, the state must not hamper wealth creation and accumulation by producers and savers as the means to provide investment in production. Government policy must be to stop all socialism, allowing charities to fulfil the role of welfare provision, and let free markets have full rein.

Broadly, this was how British government policy developed following the Napoleonic wars until the First World War, and the proof of its success was Britain’s commercial and technological development, entirely due to free markets. But the British made one important mistake, and that was in the Bank Charter Act of 1844, which in England and Wales permitted the expansion of unbacked bank credit. For this reason, a cycle of credit expansion developed, punctuated by sharp contractions, the boom and bust that led to a series of banking crises. A future gold exchange standard must address this issue, by separating deposit-taking into a custodial role and the financing of investment into an agency function.

It is a common error of neo-Keynesian economists to believe gold is an unsuitable medium for financing modern trade and investment, because, it is often alleged, it lacks an interest rate. Since interest rates existed throughout gold standards, the confusion arises from assuming an interest rate attaches to paper currency. But if a paper currency is fully convertible into gold, then interest rates are effectively for borrowing and lending gold, and do not apply to the currency. The best measure of what savers may gain by lending their gold savings risk-free is the yield on government debt, repayable in gold and realisable in the market at any time. This is illustrated in Figure 1.

Shortly after the introduction of the gold sovereign in 1817, the yield on undated government debt gradually fell to 2.3% in 1898. This reflected a natural decline in time preference as free markets delivered increasing benefits and accumulating wealth for the British population. Following the gold discoveries in South Africa, between the early-1880s and the First World War global above-ground stocks of gold doubled, and the inflationary effects led to a rise in government Consols yields to 3.4%.

The encouragement to investors to provide financial capital for investment in industry and technology was two-fold. A family’s investment in 1824 rose in value due to the long-term fall in Consols yields. By 1898, invested in Consols it would have appreciated by 65%. At the same time, the rise in the purchasing power of gold-backed sterling increased approximately 20%. Saving and family inheritance were rewarded.

Importantly, above ground gold stocks have grown at approximately the rate of that of the global population, imparting a long-term stability to prices in gold. For this reason, it is often said that measured in gold the cost of a Roman toga is not much different from that of a modern lounge suit. Other money-related benefits of gold and gold exchange standards compared with those of pure fiat also follow from this stability.

Between countries that use gold and gold substitutes as money, except for short-term settlement differences covered by trade finance, balance of payments imbalances only existed to adjust price levels between different nations. If a country exports more goods and services than it imports, it imports gold or gold substitutes on a net basis. The increased quantity of gold in that country tends to adjust the general level of prices upwards to the general level of prices in countries that are net importers of goods and services, which find the outflow of gold has moved their prices correspondingly lower. The ability to issue unbacked currency has been removed, so net balance of payment flows become a pure price arbitrage. This is in accordance with classical economic theory and has its remnants today in concepts such as purchasing power parity.

In summary, gold retains the qualities that ensure it will always be the commodity selected by people to act as their medium of exchange. It offers long term price stability and is the ultimate fiscal and monetary discipline on governments, forcing them to reduce socialist ambitions, to accept the primacy of free markets, and to permit acting individuals to earn and accumulate wealth. Being fully fungible, gold is suitable backing for substitute coins and banknotes. It is an efficient medium for providing savings for the purpose of capital investment. And the tendency for prices measured in gold to fall over time driven by natural competition and technology ensures a low and stable originary rate of interest.

Bitcoin and similar distributed ledger cryptocurrencies

Now that we have defined money and identified why fiat currency is on an accelerating path to failure, we must look at the much-mooted alternative to gold of cryptocurrencies, the most notable of which is bitcoin. For simplicity we shall comment on bitcoin only.

The principal characteristics of bitcoin are its pre-programmed limited and capped rate of issue, and its distributed ledger otherwise known as the blockchain. The former distinguishes it from fiat currencies, which as we have seen are beginning their final inflation run, and the latter ensures governments cannot gain control or otherwise interfere with it.

While governments can confiscate their citizens’ profits, close down cryptocurrency exchanges and direct their licenced banks not to accept or make payments in connection with cryptocurrencies, they have yet to do so. So far, when authorities have intervened, the reasons given have been to tackle fraud, real and imagined, and alleged money-laundering. For governments to shut cryptocurrencies down would probably require international cooperation by all governments to deny the right to own cryptocurrencies. An agreement on these lines would be almost impossible to achieve and would take many years of intergovernmental negotiation, given the violation of property rights involved and the precedents created. Due to the accelerated timescale of the demise of fiat currencies, intervention of this sort seems unlikely.

Bitcoin will therefore survive government intervention to become a possible replacement for fiat currencies. But there is the practical problem of exchange being broadly limited by users looking for investment and speculation, rather than being used as payment for goods. This is for good reason: in any transaction an acting man will want all the price subjectivity to be reflected in the goods being exchanged and objective values to be confined to the currency. Currently, bitcoin’s volatility is extreme as shown in Figure 2, which compares bitcoin priced in gold ounces with gold priced in dollars.

Gold’s volatility against the dollar approximates to the volatility of any another currency, and its upward trend principally reflects the declining purchasing power of the dollar. Even priced in gold ounces, bitcoin’s volatility has been dramatic, too dramatic to act as the objective value in an exchange for goods.

Unless bitcoin’s volatility subsides sufficiently so that it becomes widely accepted as a medium of exchange, it cannot act as efficient money in the catallactic sense. Furthermore, the blockchain system is too cumbersome for a global medium of exchange, currently limited to about half a million transactions daily when trillions are required.

While accepting that bitcoin’s other monetary features have yet to be developed, volatility would also appear to rule out agreements between lender and borrower on the value of time preference as the basis of using it for deferred settlement. For now, bitcoin appears to be good for buying with a view to selling in return for another form of money, rather than acting as money itself. Undoubtedly, owners of bitcoin, or hodlers as the slang term puts it, are valuing them in dollars, and thinking of taking profits in dollars. It appears that hodlers are speculating on bitcoin’s rise, rather than the dollar’s fall, though that will change as the general public begin to ditch their fiat currencies.

When hodlers finally understand this distinction, in the absence of fiat money and using bitcoin for day-to-day exchanges for goods, what will they sell them for? If we rule out purchases of other cryptocurrencies, the answer can only be for metallic money, gold, or properly constituted gold substitutes.

While we can draw attention to a cryptocurrency’s lack of monetary characteristics, it does not mean we can dismiss them as being merely speculative counters. Circumstances change, and it is likely that when the general public finally understands that fiat currencies are worthless, it will look for alternative stores of wealth. Bitcoin enthusiasts are among the first to understand the benefits of hoarding wealth against failing fiat currencies. Furthermore, technological innovation could provide solutions to bitcoin’s lack of transactional scalability.

Central banks are also running cryptocurrency and blockchain projects, so far with little apparent sense of direction beyond trying to keep abreast of developments. The most advanced state appears to be China, which is trialling a digital version of the yuan. But far from having the characteristics of a cryptocurrency, any version of the yuan digitised or not is, for the moment at least, just a fiat currency.

In the final analysis, whether bitcoin becomes money is down to what the transacting public decides. But for now, it remains a hedge to fiat currency risk, with the potential for the price to rise, not just reflecting the demise of the dollar and other fiat currencies but rising in its own right. The market for bitcoin is potentially huge, far larger than the feed into any speculative bubble in history, with billions of people possessing mobile phones capable of acquiring them.

Concluding remarks

The inflationists, encompassing the entire financial establishment and their epigones, fail to see the ending of fiat currencies. But a rational and objective analysis coupled with empirical evidence tells us that the sudden and rapid escalation of monetary expansion, aimed to ensure financial assets do not fail, will lead to the destruction of the dollar as the world’s principal medium of exchange. And with the reserve currency gone, it is very unlikely the other major fiat currencies will survive.

The question then arises as to what will replace fiat currencies. Government attempts to extend the life of fiat money by issuing new versions imitating cryptocurrencies will fail, only likely to extend the life of fiat by a matter of months, if at all. Existing cryptocurrencies, even the best of them, are not currently suitable replacements due to their lack of scalability and volatility. Furthermore, for now bitcoin is the preserve of investors and speculators, taking a punt on the demise of fiat, without an exit plan other than to measure or take profits in a fiat currency.

The same accusation can be levelled at gold, which is probably even less used in transactions for goods than bitcoin. But gold has the advantage of a track record of always returning as the money of public choice after fiat fails. Together with its suitability for deferred settlements, we can therefore be certain that gold will be money once again, while we cannot be so certain of the future for cryptocurrencies.

This is not to say that cryptocurrencies will not afford protection for individuals as fiat fails, only that an exit route has yet to evolve, other than being spent as money. Consequently, cryptocurrencies might retain investment or speculative value, but it will end up being measured in gold. That being the case, the reasons for using cryptocurrencies as an escape from failing fiat will disappear when gold becomes money again, along with a future role for cryptocurrencies as mediums of exchange.

Authored by Colin Todhunter via Off-Guardian.org,

Following the court decision in the US to award in favour of Dewayne Johnson (exposure to Monsanto’s Roundup weed killer and its active ingredient, glyphosate, caused Johnson to develop non-Hodgkin lymphoma), attorney Robert Kennedy Jr said at the post-trial press conference:

The corruption of science, the falsification of science, and we saw all those things happen here. This is a company (Monsanto) that used all of the plays in the playbook developed over 60 years by the tobacco industry to escape the consequences of killing one of every five of its customers… Monsanto… has used those strategies…”

Johnson’s lawyers argued over the course of the month-long trial in 2018 that Monsanto had “fought science” for years and targeted academics who spoke up about possible health risks of the herbicide product.

Long before the Johnson case, critics of Monsanto were already aware of the practices the company had engaged in for decades to undermine science. At the same time, Monsanto and its lobbyists had called anyone who questioned the company’s ‘science’ as engaging in pseudoscience and labelled them ‘anti-science’.

We need look no further than the current coronavirus issue to understand how vested interests are set to profit by spinning the crisis a certain way and how questionable science is again being used to pursue policies that are essentially ‘unscientific’ – governments, the police and the corporate media have become the arbiters of ‘truth’.

We also see anyone challenging the policies and the ‘science’ being censored on social media or not being given a platform on TV and accused of engaging in ‘misinformation’.

It’s the same old playbook.

The case-fatality ratio for COVID-19 is so low as to make the lockdown response wholly disproportionate. Yet we are asked to blindly accept government narratives and the policies based on them.

Making an entire country go home and stay home has immense, incalculable costs in terms of well-being and livelihoods. This itself has created a pervasive sense of panic and crisis and is largely a result of the measures taken against the ‘pandemic’ and not of the virus itself.

Certain epidemiologists have said there is very little sturdy evidence to base lockdown policies on, but this has not prevented politicians from acting as if everything they say or do is based on solid science.

The lockdown would not be merited if we were to genuinely adopt a knowledge-based approach. If we look at early projections by Neil Ferguson of Imperial College in the UK, he had grossly overstated the number of possible deaths resulting from the coronavirus and has now backtracked substantially.

Ferguson has a chequered track record, which led UK newspaper The Telegraph to run a piece entitled ‘How accurate was the science that led to lockdown?’ The article outlines Ferguson’s previous flawed predictions about infectious diseases and a number of experts raise serious questions about the modelling that led to lockdown in the UK.

Ferguson’s previous modelling for the spread of epidemics was so off the mark that it may beggar believe that anyone could have faith in anything he says, yet he remains part of the UK government’s scientific advisory group. Officials are now talking of ‘easing’ lockdowns, but Ferguson warns that lockdown in the UK will only be lifted once a vaccine for COVID-19 has been found.

It raises the question: when will Ferguson be held to account for his current and previously flawed work and his exaggerated predictions? Because, on the basis of his modelling, the UK has been in lockdown for many weeks, the results of which are taking a toll on the livelihoods and well-being of the population which are and will continue to far outweigh the effects of COVID-19.

According to a 1982 academic study, a 1% increase in the unemployment rate will be associated with 37,000 deaths [including 20,000 heart attacks, 920 suicides, 650 homicides], 4,000 state mental hospital admissions and 3,300 state prison admissions.

Consider that by 30 April, in the US alone, 30 million had filed for unemployment benefit since the lockdown began. Between 23 and 30 April, some 3.8 million filed for unemployment benefit. Prior to the current crisis, the unemployment rate was 3.5%. Some predict it could eventually reach 30%.

Ferguson – whose model was the basis for policies elsewhere in addition to the UK – is as much to blame as anyone for the current situation. And it is a situation that has been fuelled by a government and media promoted fear narrative that has had members of the public so afraid of the virus that many have been demanding further restrictions of their liberty by the state in order to ‘save’ them.

Even with the promise of easing the lockdown, people seem to be fearful of venturing out in the near future thanks to the fear campaign they have been subjected to.

Instead of encouraging more diverse, informed and objective opinions in the mainstream, we too often see money and power forcing the issue, not least in the form of Bill Gates who tells the world ‘normality’ may not return for another 18 months – until he and his close associates in the pharmaceuticals industry find a vaccine and we are all vaccinated.

In the UK, the population is constantly subjected via their TV screens to clap for NHS workers, support the NHS and to stay home and save lives on the basis of questionable data and policies. Emotive stuff taking place under a ruling Conservative Party that has cut thousands of hospital beds, frozen staff pay, placed workers on zero-hour contracts and demonised junior doctors.

It is also using the current crisis to accelerate the privatisation of state health care.

In recent weeks, ministers have used special powers to bypass normal tendering and award a string of contracts to private companies and management consultants without open competition.

But if cheap propaganda stunts do not secure the compliance, open threats will suffice. For instance, in the US, city mayors and local politicians have threatened to ‘hunt down’, monitor social media and jail those who break lockdown rules.

Prominent conservative commentator Tucker Carlson asks who gave these people the authority to tear up the US constitution; what gives them the right to threaten voters while they themselves or their families have been exposed as having little regard for lockdown norms. As overhead drones bark out orders to residents, Carlson wonders how the US – almost overnight – transformed into a totalitarian state.

With a compliant media failing to hold tyrannical officials to account, Carlson’s concerns mirror those of Lionel Shriver in the UK, writing in The Spectator, who declares that the supine capitulation of Britain to a de facto police state has been one of the most depressing spectacles he has ever witnessed.

Under the pretext of tracking and tracing the spread of the virus, the UK government is rolling out an app which will let the likes of Apple and Google monitor a person’s every location visited and every physical contact. There seems to be little oversight in terms of privacy.

The contact-tracing app has opted for a centralised model of data collection: all the contact-tracing data is not to be deleted but anonymized and kept under one roof in one central government database for ‘research purposes’.

We may think back to Cambridge Analytica’s harvesting of Facebook data to appreciate the potential for data misuse. But privacy is the least concern for governments and the global tech giants in an age where ‘data’ has become monetized as a saleable commodity, with the UK data market the second biggest in the world and valued at over a billion pounds in 2018.

Paranoia is usually the ever-present bedfellow of fear and many people have been very keen to inform the authorities that their neighbours may have been breaking social distancing rules.

Moreover, although any such opinion poll cannot be taken at face value and could be regarded as part of the mainstream fear narrative itself, a recent survey suggests that only 20% of Britons are in favour of reopening restaurants, schools, pubs and stadiums.

Is this to be the new ‘normal’, whereby fear, mistrust, division and suspicion are internalized throughout society? In an age of fear and paranoia, are we all to be ‘contact traced’ and regarded by others as a ‘risk’ until we prove ourselves by wearing face masks and by voluntarily subjecting ourselves to virus tests at the entrances to stores or in airports?

And if we refuse or test positive, are we to be shamed, isolated and forced to comply by being ‘medicated’ (vaccinated and chipped)?

Is this the type of world that’s soon to be regarded as ‘normal’?

A world in which liberty and fundamental rights mean nothing. A world dominated by shaming and spurious notions of personal responsibility that are little more than ideological constructs of a hegemonic narrative which labels rational thinking people as ‘anti-science’ – a world in which the scourge of authoritarianism reigns supreme.

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As this article was going to press, it was announced that Neil Ferguson is resigning from his role as science advisor to Boris Johnson’s government, in the wake of the allegations he has broken the lockdown rules he himself recommended in order to meet his girlfriend .

As the travel and tourism industry implodes, savvy consumers, with zero f*cks given about contracting the virus, have been buying cheap airfare to Hawaii, along with heavily discounted rooms at top resorts. Around mid/late March, when strict stay-at-home orders went into effect, locals, who were confined to their homes, noticed many of these tourists were disregarding public health orders. This infuriated some who allege that if an outbreak on the island(s) was seen, it could easily overwhelm the local hospital system. 

By late March, tensions between locals and tourists were quickly building. A group of locals held a protest at Kahului Airport in Maui County, holding up signs that read: “TOURIST GO HOME,” “LEAVE OUR AINA!,” “TIME TO GO,” and “GO HOME.” 

By mid-April, the Hawaii Tourism Authority issued a $25,000 grant to nonprofit Visitor Aloha Society of Hawaii (VASH) to fund a program that would issue one-way plane tickets to tourists who broke 14-day quarantine orders or other social distancing rules. As of April 26, we noted about 26 tourists were provided one-way tickets back to their home airports for breaking the rules. 

Now it appears things are getting serious in the state. Authorities are arresting “rogue tourist” who break quarantine orders: 

“A newlywed California couple left their Waikiki hotel room repeatedly, despite being warned by hotel staff, and were arrested. Others have been arrested at a hotel pool, loading groceries into a vehicle outside a Costco and bringing take-out food back to a hotel room,” AP News said. 

The strict measures, some of the most stringent in the country, have been working to suppress the outbreak. As of Friday, about 629 cases and 17 deaths have been reported in the state, a relatively low number when compared with Northeast states.

Hawaii sacrificed its largest industry: tourism – to fend off the virus. With many resorts, restaurants, and other businesses closed, unemployment has skyrocketed to 25% to 35%. At least 100 hotels have suspended operations as locals stay home to weather the public health crisis. 

Honolulu City Councilmember Kym Pine said the sacrifices Hawaiians are making today to protect their communities, in the long run, is hugely disrespectful when a tourist comes to the state and blatantly ignores the rules.  

“The people that are coming don’t care about us. They’re coming to Hawaii on the cheap and they obviously could care less whether they get the virus or not,” she said. “So they obviously could care less about that mom and dad who have no job and no food.”

AP says the honeymooning couple, Borice Lepovskiy, 20, and Yuliia Andreichenko, 26, of California, refused to sign a “quarantine agreement” after they came back late one night after picking up pizza. The next morning, they left their room and were arrested. 

At least 20 people have been arrested statewide on charges of breaking quarantine orders. Many others have been given warnings or citations. Anyone who is convicted of the violation is subjected to a $5,000 fine and a year in jail. 

“Officials have even considered having travelers wear an ankle bracelet during their quarantine period, or setting up a designated site where tourists would be required to stay at for the 14 days,” AP notes. 

Mufi Hannemann, president and CEO of Hawaii Lodging and Tourism Association, said hotel key cards are being programmed to only allow people to check-in – so when they leave their rooms – they will need to get a new card, which would be a red flag for front-desk workers that the tourist potentially violated quarantine rules. 

AP provides several other accounts of tourists being arrested: 

Last month, a pair arrived on Kauai and were told to go directly to their hotel. Kauai police stopped them after they were seen going in the opposite direction of their hotel.

Adam Schwarze, 36, who police said lives on Oahu and his travel companion, Desiree Marvin, 31, of Alexandria, Virginia, were ultimately arrested in the parking lot of a grocery store.

Leif Anthony Johansen, 60, of Truckee, California, was supposed to be in quarantine but was spotted on a personal watercraft off Oahu’s famed North Shore. He was later followed to a Costco, where agents from the state attorney general’s office arrested him as he was loading groceries into his vehicle.

Hannemann said he’s surprised that people still are coming to Hawaii considering much of the attractions are shutdown: 

“I am, quite frankly, quite surprised that people would still want to come because this is not the Hawaii that you’ve dreamed about, that you want to experience,” said Hannemann of the tourism and lodging association. “There’s a lot of attractions that are closed. Everyone is walking around with masks. You know, we’re just not going to demonstrate that spirit of aloha that you’ve heard so much about. … So to me, it’s just crazy for someone to still want to come here.”

And a word to the wise – it’s probably a good idea to stay away from Hawaii at the moment. The next thing you know, law enforcement might start tracking tourists with GPS bracelets.