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The gold standard is a system where the nation’s money supply is determined by the supply of gold that is mined. Over time we have had different types of gold standard economies and countries have even suspended the gold standard during wars (e.g.: WWI). Until WWI the world had the international gold standard. Under a gold standard, paper money like $ and £ are not money- they are simply substitutes for a specific weight of gold.

History of Gold:

Mankind has used gold for thousands of years as money. However, the modern gold standard system is the most important.

International Gold Standard system (1870-1914) (Classical Gold Standard)

This was when money was redeemable for gold and there were few interruptions. This was the most stable monetary order in the history of gold. Every major currency such as the £, US$ and Franc were all redeemable for gold. Gold was the real money. £ is simply a name to define a weight of gold. Under this system, exchange rates were fixed based on how much weight of gold equalled 1 unit of currency. £1 was 1/4^th of an ounce and $1 was 1/20.67^th of an ounce, resulting in an exchange rate of $4.86/£.

In the long run, the money supply growth was extremely limited. Money supply could only grow if the amount of gold mined was increased. As a result, this made the value of money very stable. For example, after the 1848 California gold rush, inflation averaged 1.5% per year (according to Larry White), but as the amount of gold mined slowed, then there was gentle deflation. The net result is that between 1800 and 1900, the price level fell slightly. The reason is because as saving and investment increase and technology improved, the output of goods and services grew faster than the money supply, resulting in deflation. However, since 1971, when Nixon ended Bretton Woods, the dollar has lost 82% of its value.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Great Flood

March 31, 2018

The Great Flood

There is little doubt that the amount of water on earth really does not change. There is simply what is known as the Water Cycle whereby evaporation moves water to the sky and then it is redistributed as rain elsewhere. Therefore, the likelihood of an actual flood in Biblical terms that covered the entire world is unlikely. What we do know is that there is a wealth of evidence that the movement of the plates clearly resulted in the great flood that created the Mediterranean sea and there is also evidence that there are cities under the Black Sea no less the Mediterranean.

There is evidence that there was a tremendous flood when there was a break in the land at the Straits of Gibralter. What has surfaced is evidence that when that breach took place, the water rushed into the basin at probably around 100 mph. This is certainly something that would be remembered and probably handed down from generation to generation. (see Scientific American)

Nevertheless, it is also obvious that the sea level has risen in the Mediterranean even since the time of Julius Caesar (100-44BC). The city of ancient Alexandria in Egypt lies below the sea. Obviously, even in relatively modern times, the sea level has risen flooding communities. So actually stating definitively when did the Biblical Event of the flood take place is difficult to pinpoint because there have been great floods from 3 million years ago to 2,000 years ago. What is certain is that the sea levels have risen and fallen and this is part of nature – not instigated by humans.

Keep Going. This Too Shall Pass.

March 30, 2018

Keep Going. This Too Shall Pass.

Like the weather when a storm approaches, or as the seasons turn, or waves pounding on a shoreline, any deviations are measured and compared by speed and intensity. The same can be said for headlines: Omnibus, discouraged Deplorables, rumors of war, prospects of peace, economic bubbles, fluctuating markets, and political intrigue. Round and round it goes; when it ends, nobody knows. It’s a time of transition; and when traveling over mountaintops, through valleys, and on rough seas, no one has all of the answers.

Even when looking at maps.

The books, “Generations” (1992) and “The Fourth Turning“ (1997), were written by the historians William Strauss and Neil Howe. These recent explorers identified recorded cycles of history and categorized them across multiple cultures and eras. In both books, historical timelines were analyzed and populations were correlated to specific life-cycles labeled as generational types. Strauss and Howe additionally addressed the concept of time in the context of both circular and linear perspectives and defined what is called a “saeculum” as a “long human life” measuring roughly 80 to 90 years. Every saeculum is comprised of four turnings, each lasting around 20 years.

Just as there are four seasons consisting of spring, summer, fall and winter, there are also four phases of a human life represented in childhood, young adulthood, middle age and elderhood. As each phase of human life represents approximately 20 years, so is each generational archetype identified within the historical cycles, or turnings, as follows.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

John Butman: New World, Inc.

March 27, 2018

Photos.com/Jupiter Images

John Butman: New World, Inc.

From its start, resources have driven America’s fortunes

We all learned in grade school that the Pilgrims sailed to North America to escape religious persecution.

That’s wasn’t necessarily the case, explains author John Butman. At least, it certainly isn’t the whole story.

In fact, the Pilgrim’s voyage to the New World was a seventeenth-century entrepreneurial start-up. It was funded by nearly one hundred investors, who expected a profit on their contributed capital.

This fascinating re-visitation of the origins of America, told in full in Butman’s book New World, Inc., highlights how nearly every human endeavor throughout history has been rooted in gaining or maintaining access to resources.

Of course, back in the days of the Pilgrims, there were only about 0.5 billion humans on the Earth. As we write about on this site, resources are likely to play an even more influential role in the future as the planet goes from 7.5 billion souls today to 10 billion by 2050…

By the 1500s, England’s main export was woolen cloth, mostly to continental Europe. But in 1550, for a number of reasons, the bottom fell out of the market and they weren’t selling enough, The merchants and the leading business people of the day,were very gravely concerned about the economics of the country. Population was on the rise at that point and there was a strong divide between the Gentry and the common people. And as the economics got worse, the social situation got very tricky, and there was really severe social unrest. So there was a real need to find new sources of revenue, new sources of jobs — and so that’s what directed their focus overseas.

After 1600, there were many ventures to America. At first, they’d simply send ships over to America leaving early in the spring, ultimately March or April – the trip would take six to eight weeks. The plan was trade with the Indians for certain commodities like fish, furs and sassafras (which was a very prized herb, it was thought to cure almost everything), and then fill up the hull of their ships, get back, sell the goods in England and on the continent, and make a profit. But they discovered that it was just not sustainable. It was just too risky: on any given trip when sailing over to America, you couldn’t be sure that you would get enough of what you needed to return with.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Big Story

March 24, 2018

The Big Story

Can We Change Civilization by Changing Its Origin Story?

The Slave Market – Gustave Boulanger Public Domain

How did humans go from savanna-dwelling primates to moon-bouncing Tide Pod™ eaters? This is the big question that Big History has been trying to answer for millennia. Sure, other ages may have framed the question differently.

Pre-Internet historian Herodotus may have asked, How did humans get from Promethean clay to Babylon? Mass death enthusiast Christopher Columbus may have asked (he didn’t), How did humans get from biblical clay to Indian gold? But for the past few hundred years, the Big Thinkers, from Jean-Jacques Rousseau to Jared Diamond, have generally agreed on the basic contours of our history:

Humans set out on our baffling journey in a pristine Garden of Eden, living benignly in small bands of hunting and gathering primitives. They would dance, copulate, and paint in caves in an egalitarian state of nature, or a nasty, brutish one depending on your temperament and desire for couch cushions, cotton cuffs, and monarchy. Our fall from Eden came with the slithering of agrarian city-states into our lives. As soon as we began cultivating beans and beer, the story goes, we had to build a large bureaucratic apparatus to manage all the products and people populating these nascent city-states. Given the complexity of this task, dictators, kings, and emperors – keen administrators, that is – were unfortunately necessary to organize this dense population into productive workers. Most of the people living in this new thing called “civilization” would have to toil as slaves, alas. Sorry, this is just the Faustian bargain one must make to enjoy cities and storable food: wage/chattel slavery and all-powerful despots in exchange for literature, indoor plumbing, and memes.

But anthropologist and author of Debt: The First 5,000 Years, David Graeber, is having none of it. In a recent piece published in Eurozine, he and UCL archaeology professor David Wengrow argue that this story is all wrong. Instead, the Davids suggest, the story is a lot messier and a lot more open to alternative forms of civilization and economy:

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Collapse of Society – Are the Doom & Gloomers Even on the Right Page?

March 20, 2018

The Collapse of Society – Are the Doom & Gloomers Even on the Right Page?

QUESTION: Hey Marty,
Thanks for the incredible information you are sharing. I subscribe to your service and read your blog every day.
Do preppers have any justification in planning for a complete collapse, be it economic, political or otherwise? I keep a 30 day supply of freeze dried food but I have friends that are much more serious in their stockpile.

Thanks!

ANSWER: The end of the world scenarios that the doomsday people forecast are over the top. If things unfolded as they proclaim, there would be no point in preparing for there would be nothing left. Movies like the Planet of the Apes were based upon this theory. The likelihood that there will be an economic and political upheaval is 100% on point.

I have recommended keeping a stash of food, but notfor the reasons they put out there by the doom & gloom people. The winters are going to keep getting colder. As they do, this will also disrupt the food supply. I have warned that historically, it is Global Cooling that kills off people – not Global Warming. Additionally, as political unrest rises, there will also be a disruption in the food supply. The majority of people are incapable of growing food for themselves, so society as a whole has this great vulnerability as was the case in in the eternal city of Rome. I simply look at history and there is no agenda in what I publish. We are entitled to just the facts.

Historically, as taxes kept rising, and public safety became a growing concern in the urban life, more and more people began to migrate leaving Rome walking away from their property. There is simply a cycle where we all come together to form great societies, the ruling class becomes greedy, and then the cycle turns we migrate back to suburbia.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

What We Face Requires a Cyclical Perspective

March 17, 2018

What We Face Requires a Cyclical Perspective

To survive what we face clearly requires an open mind to understand that everything in nature moves through a cyclical pattern. The majority of people see the world only in a linear fashion. Politicians proclaim they can change the world and create perpetual prosperity and/or punish those that cause recessions. Naturally, there are no mirrors in government so the culprit must always exist outside of their shenanigans.

I often get the question WHAT IF everyone followed my work. The answer is simple. That is IMPOSSIBLE. That is like saying why can we all not just vote the same. There will never be a single political party that the people would vote for because there are differences of opinion. The majority of society ignores history because that is the past and somehow irrelevant because we are more sophisticated today and those people ran around in diapers chucking spears at each other. This merely ensures that history repeats because they are far too ignorant to comprehend that life is like a Shakespeare play. It has been performed for hundreds of years and the only thing that changes has been the actors.

Human society as a whole expects a linear life of happily ever after and when that fails, they advocate punishing the person responsible. They cannot dare investigate that just perhaps the world works in a far more complicated manner than just that.

Those who think only linear cannot avoid the crash and burn. Those who see the world cyclically understand there is a time and place for everything.

Cycles in Time – Origin of the Theory & Why It Was Ignored in Western Culture

March 16, 2018

Cycles in Time – Origin of the Theory & Why It Was Ignored in Western Culture

QUESTION: Mr. Armstrong; Just about every culture outside of Christianity believed in the cyclical aspects of time and nature. Do you have any idea why Western Christian culture failed to incorporate cyclical theory?

ANSWER: If you actually read the Bible, you will find the very similar cyclical references and numbers. It just seems that the mainstream interpretation overlooked it post Dark Age. There is so much in there from the maxim that there is a time and place for everything to the Revelations that forecast the Devil will be cast into the abyss for 1,000 years and then it will begin again between the tribes of God and Magog. That describes a cycle. For some reason, the general religious teaching fails to point that aspect out. This seems to be rooted in the prejudice of the Dark Age for that is clearly a line of demarcation in every field of knowledge that was lost after the barbarian invasions.

Throughout the centuries, there has been an understanding of cycles that have come down to the present age through the corridors of time. There has been a knowledge that comes from the dim ages of past eras, that seems to emanate from all the races, as well as the different schools of thought. Just what is the origin of this basic understanding of cycles cannot be traced to some specific teaching by a single culture or person. There is unquestionably an unbroken direct line throughout the ages that extend further back than even the time of Greeks who the Romans viewed a knowledgeable. There are references to cycles that we find in many extracts that even go back to the ancient Egypt and Chaldea. These appear to have influenced the Pythagoras (about 500 bc) and Ancient Grecian arcane schools of philosophy. Where did they come from? The answer seems to stretch back to still more remote and arcane investigations of the universe and the heavens.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Checking In on the Four Intersecting Cycles

March 14, 2018

Checking In on the Four Intersecting Cycles

If you think this is a robust, resilient, stable system, please check your Ibogaine / Hopium / Delusionol intake.

Correspondent James D. recently asked for an update on the four intersecting cycles I’ve been writing about for the past 10 years. Here’s the chart I prepared back in 2008 of four long-term cycles:

1. Generational (political/social)

2. Price inflation/wage stagnation (economic)

3. Credit/debt expansion/contraction (financial)

4. Relative affordability of energy (resources)

Here are four of the many dozens of essays I’ve written on these topics over the past decade:

Long Cycles: Cheaper Goods, Costlier Capital, Income Disparity Increases (August 1, 2008)

Beyond the False Dawn: Global Crisis 2020-2022 (February 18, 2011)

A Disintegrative Winter: The Debt and Anti-Status Quo Super-Cycle Has Turned(December 5, 2016)

We’re in a Boiling-Point Crisis of Exploitive Elites (June 19, 2017)

The key point that’s not communicated in the chart is there are dynamics that interact with each of these cycles. For example, demographics are influencing each of these trends in self-reinforcing ways.

Governments are borrowing more to fund the promises made to seniors decades ago when there were relatively few retirees compared to the working populace. Now that the ratio of those collecting government benefits to workers is 1-to-2 (one retiree for every worker), the system is buckling.

The “solution” is to borrow increasing sums from future taxpayers to fund pay-as-you-go healthcare and pension programs for retirees.

Technology is another dynamic that is actively influencing all these cycles in self-reinforcing ways. As technology is substituted for human labor, wages stagnate and the size of the populace paying taxes dwindles accordingly. The “solution” is once again to borrow more to substitute for declining purchasing power.

The dynamics driving wealth/income inequality and the rise of politically/financially dominant elites are also powering these cycles. As Peter Turchin has explained–a topic covered in my essay When Did Our Elites Become Self-Serving Parasites? (October 4, 2016)– social disunity / discord rises when the number of people promised a spot in the elite far exceeds the actual number of slots available.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Cult Of War, Violence And Greed

February 28, 2018

Cult Of War, Violence And Greed

America is a unique class of humans from any perspective, with the recent school shootings it seems a reminder is needed that America is a country, and a culture, built on blood, violence, greed, and the most carnal instincts of the bottom of the Maslow pyramid. First let’s start with a bit of history.

The “Founding Fathers” as they are called, actually there were many groups who came to America at the same time. Finally they all sort of worked together. Mostly we can categorize them as two groups:

Greedy Entrepreneurs (those who wanted to find riches in the new world) AND
Religious Zealots whose beliefs were SO NUTTY they were exiled from their home countries, or their way of life was banned there (I.e. Illuminati)

The poor class of ‘sick and weak’ workers really just wanted a job, they didn’t really form any institutions or influence the culture here – they just worked their ass off. This silent working class still exists today, although it is less potent than 100 years ago.

The ‘Founding Fathers’ to be precise were a bunch of White European slaveowners that said all men are created equal. The world didn’t take America serious until Truman maimed millions of Japanese at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, so all this early history has never really been explored from this perspective aside from a few books on the topic. America was a land of freaks and nuts and counterculture revolutionaries, witches, racists, and warriors. The American Revolution was the first realization of this collective that all agreed that violence is the first answer to solve any problem. Fuck the British, throw the tea in the river. The sissies that didn’t buy this line escaped quietly North and started Canada.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

False Flag Potential in the Middle East: Iran, Syria, and Israel

February 16, 2018

False Flag Potential in the Middle East: Iran, Syria, and Israel

Their End Goal for We the People: “I am the State…the State is all!”

(“Quarlo” from “The Outer Limits,” episode “Soldier”)

History does repeat itself; if not identically, then in identical circumstances and events in different nations. History also does not just “happen,” as there are powerful forces at work in every nation. False flags have been used throughout human history: politicians and oligarchs initiate them to follow a hidden agenda. Too often the masses become the “True Believer” of Eric Hoffer. Worked up into a patriotic frenzy, they charge into the fray…little understanding that the great war or the great crusade is orchestrated by smiling bankers and nabobs, securely “in the rear with the gear,” sending men out to die to attain their secret objectives.

In this vein, consider that the Military Industrial Complex (MIC) is not limited to American White Anglo-Saxon Protestants of the United States, but a “conglomerate” of independent nations with the ability to wage war, sustain it, and sell arms. Each independent nation has their own “MIC” but they freely exchange goods and services (what we call arms and “negotiated” conflicts). They march to their own beat but allow themselves to be “guided” by the politicians, the oligarchs (who may or may not actively own industries in the MIC), and the bankers.

The lessons learned by history with the Rothschilds banking family as an example shows how one group of bankers can leverage both sides in a war between two different nations and profit no matter what the outcome. Make no mistake: this has not changed, and if anything, it has become even more “specialized” with private contractors waging wars on behalf of governments…the business of war, sanctioned with the (un)holy “blessing” of a nation-state (or an “actor” or “partner” as they’re now ludicrously termed).

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

A Brief (and Messy) History of Modern Gold Standards

February 1, 2018

A BRIEF (AND MESSY) HISTORY OF MODERN GOLD STANDARDS

Although gold prices hit a new high in mid-January, Americans, by and large, are still reluctant about gold. They don’t quite “get it.” This incomprehension is different than that of Americans not “getting,” for example, bitcoin (as few seem to). They may understand gold as a safe haven that has always stood the test of time, war, crises, inflation, etc. Some also understand that no gold proponent advocates harkening back to a mythical 19th century gold hey-day (one that did not exist — certainly not consistently), or recommends re-issuing gold minted currency, or reverting to any kind of bimetallism (the 19th century norm).

That said, the “barbarous relic” view tends to persist. Overall, it is thought that gold simply has no place in a modernized (read: central bank-controlled) economy. Making matters more complex is the question of what is gold and what is not. The recent proliferation of gold derivatives, “paper gold,” ETFs, certificates, bogus gold; the Chinese, the Russians, depleted reserves, actual supply make its study opaque and abstract. In light of this confusion, a basic overview of the role of gold in an economy, both in classic and modern terms, is in order:

The Complexity of the Age of Gold Standards

In the beginning of the modern economic era of the later 19^th century, a pure “gold standard” was never consistent. However, its rise to preeminence as ‘the’ pillar of sound economic theory was that of gold’s role as a hedge against inflation and against Unsound Money — paper money easily manipulated to reckless credit whims. In this regard, the European central banks of the day were excellent watchdogs.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Censorship “Is The Cause Of Every Revolution In Human History”

January 6, 2018

Censorship “Is The Cause Of Every Revolution In Human History”

In response to a question about stopping “fake news”, Edward Snowden notes:

Censorship does not do good. We might want to believe it does, and this gets into the fake news problem, for example, that if we just empower Facebook to decide what we can and can’t see and what is good and bad, the problem can be solved. But this is a mistake for a number of reasons.

One, it creates a slippery slope where now we have private corporations deciding what can and cannot be said. But further, let’s say there are clear cases, we’re talking about things like Jihadist propaganda, we’re talking about fascist communities that are promoting ideas that are actively harmful, out in the public. The problem is, if you censor them, you don’t actually remove them. You don’t stop the idea from being spread. You just force them underground. It is underground where these ideas actually propagate best and most effectively. This idea that we can just stamp out ideas, we know does not work. This is the cause of every revolution in human history.

President Kennedy agreed:

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.

Indeed, the American government is doing what King George did before the American Revolution … trying to crush dissent.

Renaissance Italy Presents a Strong Case for Decentralization

December 29, 2017

Renaissance Italy Presents a Strong Case for Decentralization

Common wisdom tells us that without a clear leader and monopoly on force, chaos reigns until a new order is established.

My political theory is rooted in a single axiom that I came to independently: governments are mafia. I actually came to this conclusion in the reverse order when I was disillusioned to find that despite a great PR campaign, the southern Italian mafia was nothing more than another government.

I remember thinking that in Sicily the competition for security services created a comfortable and entertaining environment, with private security doing most of the necessary security work. The Polizia Municipale often working for the mob, and Carabinieri following them around trying to catch a dirty cop. On another trip to Italy, I spent about a month in Tuscany and I started to toy with the idea that competition in force and hierarchy, in general, was preferable.

It is not by any accident that the renaissance began in a city governed by merchants-turned-bankers.

The Medici Family

There is something honest and refreshing about the role that the Medici family played in Tuscany. They were merchants in the textile trade who turned a dime into a dollar and ended up establishing the largest bank in Europe. With influence from the guild of the Arte della Lana they were able to gain positions on the guild appointed Signoria(appointed by the gonfaloniere who was appointed by the guilds) that ruled the Republic of Florence, and eventually consolidate power in the city.

Despite the centralized influence of the Vatican, there was a true independence to the city-states and by that virtue true diversity. A one hour drive south through Greve in Chianti brings you to the former Republic of Siena, which never fell to the House of Medici until Spain offered the territory as payment of debts to the Medici Bank after an 18-month siege in 1555.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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