Topic: Martin Armstrong Discussion - page 196. (Read 647176 times)

That's exactly what Jim Rickards says, that a global reset is coming and that China wants a seat at the big meeting at the IMF where the major economic powers sit down and come to a consensus re the (IMF's) SDR as the new settlement currency (between nations).  

Local currencies would still be maintained.

Rickards writes that each power will have about the same amount of gold "per capita", which is roughly what we have RIGHT NOW, except for two major economic powers: Japan and China.  That is why Rickards believes that China is quietly accumulating gold, so that it would have the roughly 4000 (perhaps more, say 6000) metric tonnes to represent its financial strength (based on national gold reserves).

His latest book, The Road to Ruin, describes this pretty well.

While extremely connected, Rickards does not offer up PROOF, but the stakes are (would be) very high, so they might very well keep all of this secret.  Or try to...

Gold is simply not fungible because of this. As an investment it sucks because we do not know total supply and as a currency it wont be able to circulate because of capital controls, when they need or want to have control they will do it with gold. It's too heavy and serves no purpose so it was abolished from gold standard when we started to increase debt but also increase productivity. Bitcoin was designed to be anti-capital controls and serves that purpose rather well. You will not have to worry about carrying 100lbs bricks of gold to protect your fortune from force, instead  you protect yourself from hackers and other digital attacks which is easier and more efficient.

Sigh...  

See the first two links under CoinCube highlights for a refutation of this argument.

This is what I also assume for long time - but is there any (open) evidence for ?

It's a slightly eccentric concept, but you've only described one of the traits that goes along with gold being and existing in an open entropy system.  You see, it's not actually required we dig up gold from the ground.  Mining gold by attacking each other with shovels is just as viable.  It doesn't matter if the entire ground reserve was exhausted, mining still exists in a...different form.  

If it was not possible for gold to change hands through force after all the ground reserves were gone, then it would be equivalent to Ethereum proof of stake and be just as valueless.  It appears you have involuntarily stumbled upon the fact that force is the only valid consensus mechanism in the universe.

Gold is Wealth for Giants; they do not need to trade it.

Latest idea circulating in certain Gold bug scenes is that the Gold price is surpressed so China can obtain enough of it to warrant an equal position at the table when, not if; when the Global monetary system is re-established upon another major financial crisis hitting. I certainly hope so 

Yet the government has proven and is able to confiscate it at will and thus has power to screw people over with it. A decentralized system that cannot be shutdown gives people the power over the government. Can't really hide gold, its not fungible since all they have to do is mark the gold that isn't tradeable, anyone caught with it will be thrown in prison in that case and thus noone will want to use that piece of gold or trade for it.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-12-27/europe-proposes-confiscating-gold-crackdown-terrorist-financing

every angle you analyze it gold is a dying proposition. Makes sense why its not used as reserve currency anymore.

Mob rule to change the traits on the fly is not money, nor are oligarchs colluding behind the scenes to try and impose their will upon you like China miners and Barry Silbert.  That's why gold and silver have value, because people like that have no power to screw with it and change it into something else. 

Miners and big merchants already signed off which makes it a bit better. It is more nimble and adaptable to market requirements than gold. Other issues will be solved because its technology and anything can be done via programming. The digital era is going to transform the way we think about money. I don't think we have a clear grasp on what money actually is. It is what you make of it, something that is an exchange medium for work but there's no clear definition of what it is in all use-cases. Bitcoin is closer to what we collectively would like money to be than gold.

Then you don't understand what the traits of money are in the first place.  If something just transforms from one thing to another at random, it's NOT FUNGIBLE, and this is something required of money.  The fact any transformation also causes a rough consensus attack is also another nail in the coffin.

It's blatantly obvious bitcoin is not "money".  Could it be a currency?  Yea, just about anything can be a currency.  Is it a store of value?  No.

But forget all that.  Just about everything in deciding if cryptocurrency has any value or not only revolves around 2 subjects:  entropy and Nash equilibrium.  In relation to these two traits, I explain here why proof of stake has zero value, and why bitcoin with ASICs doesn't either.  I don't think you will have any valid argument against this:

http://steemit.com/steemit/@r0achtheunsavory/the-r0ach-report-14-defining-if-cryptocurrency-has-a-value-or-zero-value-from-a-fundamental-scientific-perspective

I'll identify under-rated  entity another time but it's none mentioned so far.

Thing about Saudi and Israeli they're military is intellectually very weak. Oh sure, they have lots of fancy military hardware and they like to throw their weight around and beat up some defenseless “enemy”, but once you set aside all the propaganda you realize that the Saudis can’t even deal with the Houtis in Yemen while the Israelis got comprehensively defeated by 2nd rate Hezbollah forces back in 2006.

Both try to beat by sponsoring others via support of terrorism and /or doing air strikes- and calling big brother US.
But as Big bro weakens - so do they - they can't do much.

...

Risk Mgmt and tabnloz

The Middle East is a snake pit, a den of vipers far worse than what Trump has found in Washington.  I remember reading an old Yemeni saying:

"Touch Yemen, get burned."  I believe that you could extend that saying to include Syria, Iraq, Libya, etc.......

Saudi Arabia and the UAE are getting burned there in Yemen, losing much blood and treasure...

Risk Mgmt: I have about run out of candidates to become the "new (under-rated) entity to clean up the Middle East".  Do you have anyone in mind?  China, Russia, Iran and Israel are about the only countries there who "count".  Turkey?  Ahh, I doubt it.  Egypt?  Ahh...

It is starting to look like Israel is slowly becoming allies of a sort with the Saudis, Jordanians and the Egyptians.  Will this hold?  I don't know.  I think tabnloz has the right idea re understanding US policy: for whatever faults the Saudi monarchy has (lots), they would likely be much better than a radical government that would take their place.

*   *   *

Re BTC production, my technical understanding is weak.  But, I believe that electricity cost may wind up being the largest single factor re future production.  The ASIC machines use a lot, and the Chinese are doing whatever it takes to mine the 65% or so of new BTC (roughly TWICE the rest of the world combined).

In China, electricity cost to (some of) the miners is artificially cheap, giving them a real advantage vs. the West.

Re speculation in BTC (it's what I am doing), I HODL until a big price rise (like last week), then I buy gold with it.  Just bought some Au and Pt (platinum) with BTC.

*   *   *

Mother Nature may be getting more reluctant to give up her resources as easily as in the past.  We may have reached "Peak Oil", perhaps "Peak Gold" as well.  Here is an interesting guy to follow re energy and precious metals (read him for some time to understand his views better):

https://srsroccoreport.com/

There's still a lot of "stuff" out there in the world, I am on a visit to Peru right now, and on an earlier visit "someone who might actually know" told me that there were HUGE gold reserves that were being kept quiet or not-quite-known (sounds unlikely).  But, Peru and many other countries have not been THOROUGHLY explored (who knew 20 years ago that Nevada would produce so much US gold?). 

The problem is that new deposits of many materials may become much more expensive to produce, particularly energy costs.

Don't think they make them per se, it's part of the complexity of their strategies in the region.

Israel can't do the dirty work itself overtly (like invading Iraq or Syria). Not because it is clueless but because it is as much as a political & strategy battle as anything else. Saudi / Israel work with each other behind the scenes whenever it suits them, much like they worked with Iran. If Israel were to invade Syria or Lebanon the outcry would be immense and force other Muslim countries to go on the offensive. Whereas when it happens internally (Gaza / West Bank) nothing happens as israel has nukes.

But let's play out a scenario - if the US abandons the Saudi's, what happens to Saudi? It already funds most of the terrorism. Overthrow (Iraq, Libya) and destabilisation (Syria) has massively increased the terror threat in Western countries whether the action was right or wrong. So the risk is that the House of Saud gets replaced with a *worse* option and leads to Iran becoming the regional superpower. Iran gaining dominance, via any scenario as Shia's, is the worst possible outcome for the Saudi's / Qatari's.

I think this defines the US Saud relationship. Oil for global reserve dollar tradeoff - we keep our end of the bargain in return for you helping us in the region. Then you have to factor in the Syria / Iran / Russia alliance.

TO: OROBTC

Thanks for the Production/ Supply thoughts per each commodity including BTC.

In your opinion- is discovery / Supply/Mining/ Production of BTC more man-made heavy or like other hard commodities mother-nature heavy?

Because just my thoughts- I'm thinking sooner or later some entity may find way to produce more out of thin air / like govt print press - your thoughts?

Regarding #4 - new entity- I shouldn't really call it a new entity - just a under-rated entity-
It will come out once US weakens seeing they can't support Saudis and Israelis no more...will clean up all Middle East including Jerusalem.

Reality is that Israel and Saudi make US do all the dirty work -- because they're clueless on handling themselves.

Software can adapt.. gold cannot. Qed.

Imagine they fix the consensus system to either include mimblewimble style consensus or something else that incentivizes honest miners and LN reducing fees. Then add CT on top of schnorr sigs and now you got a whole new ballgame. Gold on other hand too heavy to move and can easily be confiscated by the state. This is probably what market runnup is pricing in.

You're just flat out lying.  Bitcoin's value prospect is entirely based on it being decentralized, yet it's fucking designed to centralize LOL.  Both proof of stake and proof of work are erroneously labeled when they should both just be called proof of monopoly.  And I have already explained numerous times why bitcoin does not function as a store of value either, even if it actually was decentralized in the first place.  

Then you have the other undeniable outcome of bitcoin only having two possible endgames:  either it goes to zero or completely co-opted by the state.  This is the only current reason someone should invest in bitcoin, if you believe it's a trojan horse and want to front run the government, otherwise it has no future.  Yes, it could be pump and dumped to $10,000 or more before it dies from not being decentralized at all, but it has no value as a centralized or cartel controlled payment system and still has way higher counterparty risk than gold and silver no matter what you do to it.

You also must have forgotten there's no reason for bitcoin to exist if the common man can't even mine it through commodity hardware.  It's not really an open entropy system in practice if you have a fixed, static cartel and the cartel are the only people who can mine.

To OROBTC

#4  A new entity?  Who?  Not Israel, they aren't interested in bossing around more Arabs in any "Greater Israel".  Who else Huh


No NOT Israel.   A new entity will clean up take charge of Middle East including Jerusalem


#6  USA is much better off than UK and Europe, at least IMO.  The USA could become isolationist though.  Europe has BIG problems. 

Like Brexit- if few more leave EU - they can keep good standing members and Rid themselves of bad ones - like turnaround mgmt / consolidated and build their own EU army .

You have completely lost your marbles .. none of what you say is true. You keep saying the same things. Market proved you wrong over and over. Bitcoin >>>>>> gold silver combined as an investment in forseeable future.

You have been crying top since you sold at $700 while the rest of us have been laughing all the way to the bank . Good luck with your closed box thinking there roach. You have not comprehended a single thing I have been trying to tell you yet again.. more trollish behavior than I expected from you honestly

I don't know squat about predicting the near future, but BTC may have hit the top of its range for sometime.  Has gold languished so long that THAT may be a contrary indicator?  Don't know that either.

MSM often does signal a direction change (in the wrong direction!), it's a worthwhile indicator to throw into the hopper...

Be smart, be safe, and own both!

Well duh, you buy before the bubble when nobody else is talking about it, not during it.  There was no more obvious reverse indicator for bitcoin than this: