Best-selling author James Rickards writes Dear President Trump: America is in for a Rude Awakening in January.
Really? Let’s investigate.
Dear President Trump,
Over the last couple of years I’ve been all over TV… from Fox News to CNBC, CNN and Bloomberg. I’ve been telling our fellow Americans that the financial global elite was planning to issue their own globalist currency called special drawing rights, or SDRs.
And that those elites would use this new currency to replace the U.S. dollar as the global reserve currency.
Let’s stop right there for a second to take a peek at the IMF SDR Fact Sheet.
The SDR is an international reserve asset, created by the IMF in 1969 to supplement its member countries’ official reserves. As of March 2016, 204.1 billion SDRs (equivalent to about $285 billion) had been created and allocated to members. SDRs can be exchanged for freely usable currencies. The value of the SDR is based on a basket of five major currencies—the US dollar, the euro, the Chinese renminbi (RMB), the Japanese yen, and the British pound sterling.
In his letter to President Trump, Rickards warns everyone that the “financial global elite plan to issue their own globalist currency called special drawing rights, or SDRs”, an event that actually happened about 48 years ago.
Total US Dollar Debt Owed vs SDRs
The total amount of SDR’s is a pissy $285 billion as of April 21, 2017.
Total Credit Market Debt Owed was 65.5 trillion in March of 2016. The Fed has since stopped publishing the number.
That is what Rickards proposes will cause a crash. The actual number is even smaller if one factors in Euro-denominated debt, Yuan-denominated debt, and Japanese-denominated debt.
The idea behind SDRs is to reduce currency fluctuations. IMF borrowers (countries like Greece) convert SDRs into their currency of choice (in the case of Greece, that would be Euros).
Investopedia notes: “SDRs are used by the IMF to make emergency loans and are used by developing nations to shore up their currency reserves without the need to borrow at high interest rates or run current account surpluses.”
The respective weights of the US dollar, euro, Chinese renminbi, Japanese yen, and British pound sterling are 41.73 percent, 30.93 percent, 10.92 percent, 8.33 percent, and 8.09 percent. These weights were used to determine the amounts of each of the five currencies included in the new SDR valuation basket that took effect on October 1, 2016.
Trade does not really take place in SDRs. In fact, Investopedia stated the IMF discourages countries from pegging their currencies to SDRs, the opposite of what Rickards suggests.
With that background out of the way, let’s return to to the alarmist nonsense from Rickards.
Alarmist Nonsense
Make no mistake, if the IMF is planning to use Distributed Ledgers to replace the U.S. dollar with SDRs. And just to be clear, when SDRs take over, the American people will be left with devalued dollars.
Once other nations start accumulating the globalist currency through Distributed Ledgers, they will no longer need to hold dollars. Once Distributed Ledgers go live, other nations will no longer need to buy Treasury bonds.
And that means our government — your government — will no longer be able to finance its normal operations, including welfare programs like Social Security. For those who have their retirement account parked in stocks, they could watch it evaporate in a matter of days. The weakest companies in the stock market could collapse once this plan goes live.
Function of Math
No one forces China, Japan, or anyone else to hold dollars. That other countries accumulate US dollars is a function of math.
The US runs a trade deficit, other nations must accumulate US assets (typically treasuries because they pay interest).
Piling Nonsense Upon Nonsense
The transition from a U.S. dollar system to a new system dominated by SDRs will be messy. Stocks will collapse… and will stay down. There will be no recovery this time, because the U.S. government won’t be able to come to the rescue like they did in 2008.
In a special report dated June 2017, the IMF had this to say about Distributed Ledgers: The IMF favors control by a “pre-selected group of participants” or “one organization,” rather than allowing “anyone” to participate.
This paper should be viewed as the first step in the IMF’s plan to migrate its existing form of world money, the SDR, onto a DLT platform controlled by the IMF.
They’re telling you exactly what their plan is. It would be foolish to ignore them, or assume the U.S. dollar will remain the global reserve currency much longer once this plan is implemented, as early as January 1, 2018.
You know the global elites’ aren’t your biggest fan. You know the U.S. dollar has been under attack.
This is the global financial elites’ plan to remove the U.S. dollar from its position of power and to attack your administration all at once.
Who do you think American’s will blame when the stock market crashes, or Social Security runs out? We can hear the talking heads already.
Jimm Rickards
for The Daily Reckoning
That alarmist conclusion was of course followed by a chance to get a “free groundbreaking publication” whose only intent is to get you to buy something.
Rickards is pissing and moaning about a trivial amount of SDRs that the IMF loans to developing countries and global basket cases like Greece.
Even if the IMF does something in January of 2018 with distributed ledgers, it will be as meaningless as the IMF’s original implementation of SDRs 48 years ago.
Perhaps there is a “rude awakening” in January, but SDRs will not have anything to do with it.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
What on earth has happened to Rickards!
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Perhaps he’s taken to plagiarizing The Mogambo Guru.
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What on earth has happened to The Mogambo Guru ?!
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i think he had some health issues, his posts on the website are few and far between. he was at the time the only one who really followed the action in the repo window. the best we have now is doug noland,
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(WFD!) Love his crazy style. Do a web search and you can usually find him and a recent article. It was a lot easier when he was on Goldseek and 24HourGold.
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Rickards got involved with those crooks at Agora is what happened.
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Read more about Agora here: https://agora-financial.pissedconsumer.com/complaints/RT-P.html
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you beat me too it
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THIS is what happened http://research.agorafinancial.com/research/html/cwa_impact_0415/?code=LCWAR504&n=CWA_impact_0415&ver=3
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He wants to make a lot of money.
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The man trying to make lots of money by selling magic elixers to voluntary buyers is a lot less dangerous than the con artists in Washington forcing everyone to participate in pyramid schemes on penalty of jail time
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Yep! Rickards is ALWAYS selling stuff…just like SO many others bombarding the internet inboxs with ALL kinds of Chicken Little crap. It’s mostly Hype, with the remainder Hype, and a little more Hype to top it off…..
B.S.
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Rickards is always trying to persuade you to buy stuff you don’t need. But its voluntary on the buyers part whether to buy what he is peddling. You have a choice.
Socialists are always FORCING us to buy stuff we don’t need and threatening to fine/jail anyone who doesn’t want to buy what they are peddling. You do not have a choice.
Who is the bigger problem?
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He gives you insight into CIA contingency planning, and for allowing him to spill secrets he has to float a few trial balloons for them. The man is a double, or maybe triple agent. Recently he floated the meme that the leftist ANTIFA is really a fascist organization. Whenever some news item (CNN) about a new highly organized group (with no leaders and no organization) is promoted as a threat (think ISIS) you know the CIA is not far away. They may very well be building this fiction right now, in an effort to depose the current president, who like JFK ran into problems with the spy agency.
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Not sure how (or even if) that relates to my comment.
Maybe you meant to reply to someone else?
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not since GW Bush said ” go out and shop and defeat the terrorists” has it ever been more clear. the stock market is a matter of national security, nuff said.
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Social Security is a welfare program? If so, I hope that all those on welfare are paying as much into it as I have into Social Security over the years.
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SSI was an insurance policy that was converted into an entitlement. Insurance is an unsustainable ponzi that incurs nothing but price increases due to unrealistic promises required to sell it…. something for nothing. As we see the costs of insurance rise, we feel more and more entitled to a “return”.
What is disturbing is that government, “we the people” FORCE those who see this for what it is to participate. This has become the template for progressivism, use force derived from fear and insecurity, to relieve others of their assets.
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Social security was a pyramid scheme from the day it was proposed by a corrupt socialist (FDR) who promised something for nothing.
The first people to get into the pyramid paid “contributions” (FORCED contributions) for months, but then collected “benefits” (proceeds of the crime) for years. The scam required more people paying into the pyramid than taking out — from day one.
Social Security is not and never was insurance. It was never a savings vehicle. It was always (and still is) a government FORCED pyramid scheme.
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Maybe your candidate should propose eliminating Social Security and see how far that gets.
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Pyramid schemes break down on there own, whether anyone proposes it or not. Also doesn’t matter if you mumble about the 3rd rail of politics or how you are going to vote for the other criminal the next time.
You don’t matter. You paid into a pyramid scheme, and you did so by force. Like all pyramid schemes, the people who pay in right before the collapse will lose the most.
Read my lips and kiss my intern — this social security scam is no different.
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SSi is more like a second-to-die annuity; the income stream dies when you do, as opposed to a pot of money that your heirs get. It was created by a Congress controlled by Southern Democrats in their 50’s and 60’s; in other words, by people who grew up in the South in the 1870’s and 1880’s during Reconstruction. Is it any surprise that SSI is in reality a transfer of wealth from shorter-lived black people to longer-lived white people?
FDR and the Democrats could have made it inheritable with assets in stocks and bonds, and there was a plan put forward at the time to do just that, but that idea was throttled by the Democrats. Can you imagine how much wealth (and independence from politicians’ empty promises) would have been created in the past 80 years for all demographic groups?
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Minority groups could have put their money into index funds instead of putting it into big government.
They deserve what they voted for.
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Yeah, but look at all the unintended consequences, not the least of which has been the opening of borders in a desperate bid to get the new bodies they pretend will continue to fund the ponzi.
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SSI (Supplementary Security Income) is funded from the Federal government’s general revenues, not from FICA taxes. SSI was set up to benefit poor and/or low income Americans who do not qualify for Social Security retirement or disability benefits.
Social Security benefits funded from FICA taxes were designed to replace a higher percentage of income of low income workers than from high income workers. FICA taxes could only be invested in US government securities. Nobody stole your taxes. But the original retirement concept was expanded over the years to cover survivor and spousal benefits with no extra taxes required of workers who had a spouse or minor children.
If you think SS is a bad deal for YOU, try to retire early and do your best to live a long life. Or you could move to Somalia. I doubt that it has FICA taxes.
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Gee, I though I was supposed to SAVE for my retirement, which is why some people retire at forty and others die standing at their job. Now it is government or “the collective’s” responsibility to secure our retirement (in a lifestyle which we would like to be accustomed, of course), right
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All politicians are crooked no matter what party they belong to.
FDR on April 5th 1933, banned private gold ownership in the United States, forcing gold owners to take their bullion to a bank and exchange it for Dollars at the prevailing rate of $20.67.
On January 30, 1934 FDR devalued gold from $20.67 to $35 per ounce.
This common thief stole more than half of people money ( 69% ).
And then, according to you, he saw the light and repent by establishing :The Social Security Act was enacted August 14, 1935.
( age to qualify was 65 but most people live to age 62 )
you really are gullible.
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You are absolutely correct. And if FDR was truly concerned about putting money into people’s pockets, he should have devalued gold before calling it in, and then have people turn in their $20 gold pieces to get $35 in return. He was just a thief, like every socialist.
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“…paying as much into it as I have into Social Security over the years.”
You never payed anything “into” anything. If you did, it there would be money somewhere in that “into.”
What you did do, was hand over money to known liars and crooks. In exchange for nothing more than sweet little crooked lies. And now, exactly as the lying crooks planned it, you are stomping your boots, pumping your fists and cheering them on, in their efforts to rob entire generations of other people, who are not dumb enough to fall for their lies. And who never saw a penny you claim to have “paid into,” yet whom you are still self righteous enough to insist should be forced to, at gunpoint, pay you.
Like all government rackets, the whole thing should just be walked away from, abandoned and forgotten by noon tomorrow. All involved fired and all bonds and “promises” thrown on the scrapheap of history, where all of government belongs.
You being suckered by some conman, in no way entitles you to rob someone else in order to make up for what you feel you were suckered out of. By all means, go find the slimeball who promised you whatever you feel you are owed. Shake him down, take his stuff, sell his wife and kidneys, and pimp his kids to pedophiles. But leave everyone else out of it. They had nothing too do with scamming you (heck, mostly weren’t even born yet), and owe you nothing.
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At some point his credibility must become totally busted.
Perhaps he’s finally looking to retire so needs one last push for income.
A good expose Mish.
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Just the antidote to Rickard’s stuff that we need!! I see alarmist stuff like that in my in box every day. “they are going to take your 401’s away” etc. All pervasive nonsense adding to the misinformation we battle every day.
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they ARE going to take our 401k’s (or forcibly convert them to devalued Treasuries)… it’s only a question of when…
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+1
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James G. Rickards seems to believe that Gold is the best bet to preserve wealth and the best investment instrument.
However, last year I’ve followed his idea to buy Gold, but then that was the peak
The gold price never recovered to that peak until today one year later.
Better off to invest in Cryptocurrency last year.
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I bought when Gordon Brown was selling … talk about calling a bottom. Always fade the corruptocrats. In this case, he was giving a big sop to his banker friends, and he has been rewarded handsomely.
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+1000
Always fade the corrupt-o-crats.
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I foresee problems emerging everyday that will absolutely tear our culture to sheds at some point in time. I have lived through small collapses: Cambodia, Lebanon, The Balkans, Vietnam what is coming will not be easy to swallow–the change will be horrible A culture is based on belief and is always destroyed by truth–often rapidly. I tend to look at Rickards as paid as a shill, paid to be wrong all the time. No more than the rattle of a witch doctor. A distraction to keep our minds off real problems. And he is making good money doing so. As an former Marine officer I can tell you one fact—once an “Agency Man” always and “Agency Man.” To orchestrate the desired response his books are allowed, sanctioned and promoted. I rather like him and would love t have a coffee with him or better yet have a one on one Texas Hold Em, match with him. On second thought, maybe I’d lose–for a man who is wrong all the time he is making all those big bucks. Ralph T.Foster
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I recently met an American couple who live and work abroad, and first thought was, “Company under deep cover.” They’re easy to spot.
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When you start feeling your age closing in, you realize you only have a certain amount of time to market your books. They all have those books, yahknow.
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Yes Bryant,,, Social Security is a welfare program. .. As are Medicare, Medicaid, Food Stamps and myriad other entitlement programs that consume 70% of the federal budget….
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Do you know that the Federal Governmrnt borrowed billions from Social Security to make tax cuts for the rich possible? Now they moaning that they have to pay back these loans out of general revenues LOL The only solution is of cause to cut the payouts of SS…
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Do you know that our government has borrowed trillions of dollars to fund an entitlement society? Sure, they will cut taxes as everyone wants something for nothing. Only stupid middle America still believes in working for a living.
The nature of corruption is that while we can all acknowledge it exists, we also understand that IT provides us the most reliable path, thus we participate. My father, born in 1919, knew SSI was a Ponzi, but he was forced to participate and felt “entitled” to take from it all he could. See how corruption works?
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Its funny how a socialist like FDR creates a government sponsored ponzi scheme, and forces everyone to participate — and then the socialists blame the ponzi collapse on people trying to take their own money back.
The same scam going on with Obamacare. We were FORCED to participate in more ponzi financing by a corrupt regime that exempted itself… and now the Pelosi gang is whining because too many Americans are trying to get our own money back.
Socialism causes economic pain and suffering. Always has, always will.
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Excellent post. Right on the mark.
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The difference between an ordinary Ponzi scheme and the Social Security Ponzi scheme is the people running the Social Security Ponzi scheme can just create as much money as they want. The ordinary Ponzi scheme runs out of new sources of money which causes it to crash. What will cause the Social Security Ponzi to crash if they can just print as much as they want?
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That argument is really stupid and has been discredited more times than you can count.
Every sovereign country — including all the ones that failed — could print their own currencies in infinite amounts. Many have tried; it never works.
And yes, several of these failures were global reserve currencies at the time of their failure — England and France being two classic examples.
Stop peddling this moronic “we can always print” fraud. Its just plain false
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Medex, the power to print is what actually enables their destruction. If not for the ability to print and create money from debt, failures would remain small and local, not a world wide nuclear event that we see brewing.
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LBJ borrowed billions from Social Security to fund Vietnam and his war on poverty. Right about the time he used Enron like financing gimmicks to “privatize” FNMA / FHLMC and fraudulently claim his budget was balanced when it was anything but. Nixon and Ford had to deal with the dollar collapse and inflation that JFK and LBJ caused.
Nice try at obscuring well established facts, but your need to revise history (not just about statues) to fit your propaganda just betrays how bad your socialist ideas are
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“Do you know that the Federal Governmrnt borrowed billions from Social Security to make tax cuts for the rich possible?”
Tax cuts are not paid for. Tax payer pay taxes. The government did not earn the money, the tax payer did.
The Bush tax cuts were across the board. The majority of that tax cut did not stay in the pockets of the rich, it stayed in the pockets of the rest of us.
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“No one forces China, Japan, or anyone else to hold dollars. That other countries accumulate US dollars is a function of math.”
Don’t be so sure of that. Khadaffi and Saddam were sitting pretty until the decided to de-Dollarize.
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+1
China and Japan accumulate dollar reserves because their trade surplus forces them to.
Attempt to dump the dollar, watch your trade surplus and “social harmony”, as the Chinese call it, evaporate
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We are all living within the realities of this corrupt delusionary construct.
Reality shaped by fraud……all created for our own good…..even if that “good” is NOT uniformly distributed.
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Yeah, right now they have battered-spouse syndrome. We’re going to hit them one too many times, and they’ll find a way to channel the sources of that social unrest into another Great Patriotic war against what they consider to be a Gangster Regime.
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The problem is the respective spouses need one another. It’s not easy to walk away. No doubt there will be a proper breakup at some point but not today.
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Rather than “no one forces” those countries to hold US dollars, I would say it is in their own self-interest to hold USDs.
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“Nice country you got there….Be a shame if something were to happen to it.”
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Riktards — who has the distinction of being the co-inventor of “too big to fail” during the LTCM fiasco — used at least back in the day to provide plausible-sounding analysis. Now he has hitched his wagon to the Agora pump-and dump shop to tap the mass market and make big bucks. Perhaps he is grooming himself for a seat at the NWO table. His forecasting record is lousy — the Iranians were going to mine the straits of Hormuz, the GBP was to collapse due to lack of gold backing, and the USD was to collapse on Sep 1, 2016….. the list goes on. He is by his own admission a CIA- and Pentagon consultant and ridiculed the 9/11 sceptics in his book “Death of Money”. And after writing a whole book on the new case for gold, why recommend only 10% portfolio allocation?
And the so-called “Elites” – absoulte poppycock. If Riktards is himself a member of the “Elite”, he would not need to hawk books and newsletters, and would certainly not be dilvulging the “Elite” plans for World Financial Domination to the Great Unwashed. And if he is not in the Elite, who are his “Elite” sources and how trustworthy are they? Why would they provide Riktards with valid information? The whole thing reeks of a con.
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Hey Mish. Having read all three of Rickards books and having followed him for years, IN SPITE OF THE financial HYPE, I still consider him to be an excellent source of information. The Philip’s Curve model of the Fed is basically out of date. Rickards has a more updated model which strikes me as much more realistic and flexible, taking into account many, many more variables. His “insider” status, see chp 4 of The Road to Ruin, shows exactly what happened to Long Term Capital Management, should dispel anyone who thinks he is a fraud. Rickards follows in the footsteps of Griffin’s The Creature from Jekyll Island and brings us up to date on what’s REALLY happening behind the scenes. Most folks know little about the IMF and SDRs, nor the workings of the G-7, etc.
Yes, his CONSTANT pitch with “inside” information about gold, military stocks,
gold stocks, basket of “reserve currencies,” certainly turns me off, especially with the amount charged for this information, BUT his theorizing and analyzing of up- to -date FACTS (he presents SOURCES for his perspective), is greatly appreciated by me, and confirmed by many other Alternative Newsletters/books.
His advice to have SOME gold, land, art, and cash in his Deflationary/Inflationary investing portfolio strikes me as well balanced.
Unfortunately only a small percentage of the population can prepare successfully given the cost of these things.
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I agree with nearly all of the above – But he also poes over the top often
Hype sells
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Can I download a copy on pirate Bay?
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@ KPollinger
“Art”? Good luck with the dealer commissions, costs of climatized storage, repairs, insurance, proof of genuineness (expensive laboratory tests), proof of previous ownership (not stolen), bid-ask spread, resale value – if any. Or maybe Rickards has a buddy who will sell you shares in an art collection? Pieces of “art ” are more dime-a dozen than stamps these days. “Modern art” has been shown to be in many cases a money laundering operation. Websearch that topic if you have the leisure.
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Mish — in addition doesn’t the US control the IMF. Didn’t the US donate most of the gold that the IMF has. Also isn’t this one of the big complaints of the Chinese and a number of other countries about the IMF is that it does what the US govt or maybe what the US deep state wants it to do. I appreciate you calling out Rickards here. I read his letter on Zero Hedge and thought what a crap. For all these countries to attempt to change USD for SDR’s would create such world chaos that it is unbelievable. Rickards must have been smoking some of the CIA crack when he wrote that.
Ish
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Mish — in addition doesn’t the US control the IMF. Didn’t the US donate most of the gold that the IMF has. Also isn’t this one of the big complaints of the Chinese and a number of other countries about the IMF is that it does what the US govt or maybe what the US deep state wants it to do. My would the US Deep State have the IMF implement SDR’s in a way to destroy the US Dollar? Really shows a lack of understanding of the IMF. I appreciate you calling out Rickards here. I read his letter on Zero Hedge and thought what a crap. For all these countries to attempt to change USD for SDR’s would create such world chaos that it is unbelievable. Rickards must have been smoking some of the CIA crack when he wrote that.
Ish
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Yes – total nonsense all around
The US is a heavy funder of the IMF – That could change under Trump but it would not matter for all the reasons stated
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And I personally take offense at your general name-calling folks out who disagree with you. “MORE ALARMIST BS”
Read all his books and Strategic Investment newsletters, WITH AN OPEN MIND, and tell me he is full of BS. Nothing of value with Rickards?????? I, at least, TRY to make distinctions.
AND I still follow you with much of your GREAT reporting/analyses.
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Refute what I said.
I agree with Rickards about many things
Please enlighten all of us on how this article is wrong
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you didn’t even touch the issue of DLT
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Strategic Investment which ripped off all its subscribers when James Dale Davidson blew town for South America and left them high and dry? Hard to have confidence in an outfit that fleeces subscribers or the people currently writing for them.
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A lot of what Rickards writes about is highly technical, and to be blunt, beyond the mental capacity of the average college indoctrinate. He has to dumb a lot of things down, and he knows he has to hype a lot of stuff up to compete with iPads and pokemon hunts — his target audience isn’t very bright.
Having said that, each of the darwin candidates Rickards markets to has the option — the CHOICE — to buy or to laugh at the hype. You are not forced to purchase it.
Beneath the hype and marketing, a lot of what he writes is 100% correct. But there is a huge amount of hype.
Its how the TV stations got everyone fixated on the storm of the century (again, about the 50th storm of the century in the last 20 years).
Its how the dim witted Democrats wasted 8-10 months looking for Putin prints to explain how a rank criminal like Hilary could lose — after she called half the registered voters in the country deplorables. Seems like a “Marketing for Dummies” book would advise against insulting half your market, and for $20 instead of the millions she paid her lobbyists and handlers.
Hype is all the media has now — they gave up on facts. Rickards is adapting to the market he sells to. Its still annoying hype (or “alarmist BS”), but that’s the media industry
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Rickard…., I bought his book. I think he is delusional. Since then, I read his writing only when I sm in the mood to read something from deluded writer….
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I see similar stuff from Peter Schiff – the US dollar will “collapse” etc. etc. He and his fans actually think that the USD index will go close to zero! The USD index is nearly 60% Euro – another fiat currency. plus a bunch of more fiat currencies like Yen, Pound, Yuan etc. How can other paper currencies rise so much against the USD? If anything, the USD is the cleanest shirt in the laundry hamper.
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It’s the same old thing from Agora…today, it’s “the markets are headed for a crash”…tomorrow it’s “DOW 50,000…???”…
Yes, I do think there’s a plot by Russia and China to unseat the dollar as the reserve currency but do I think they can-or will-pull it off???
Not any time soon!!!
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It’s just a predictable consequence of a financialized society.
With a population conditioned to believe that this and that “going up” and “going down” and “crashing” are somehow important phenomena. So they waste their lives obsessing over nonsense like this stuff.
No different from their equivalents obsessing over “winning streaks”, “lucky guys” and “systems” to “beat the odds” at casinos. Instead of focusing on the only thing that’s meaningful: The edge the casino, and those close to The Fed, enjoys.
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Who cares. No one in Switzerland gives a rats ass that they aren’t the reserve currency. Come to think of it, plenty of countries doing just fine not being a reserve currency..
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Having the world’s reserve currency is actually a curse!
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As is having a national currency at all.
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Reblogged this on World4Justice : NOW! Lobby Forum..
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Yes, Rickards is all bluster and we can happily ignore him, however, the idea that that people’s 401K’s (and any other savings devices you care to think of) are fair game for desperate governments is a real threat and Rickards is hardly alone in saying so. If you employ common sense you’ll arrive at the same conclusion.
As a marker take these events as a guide: Australian Govt imposes a (one-off, ahem..) Supertax on highly profitable mining companies as the China-driven mining boom rages in 2011/2012. Epic fail as boom turns to bust, but it’s the thought that counts. Australian Govt imposes a ‘banking levy’ in the latest 2017 budget which is forecast to raise $1.5bn for the public sector slush fund. The Australian Govt has been toying (for years) with the idea of forcing (by statute) a portion of local 401Ks into a Govt-directed Infrastructure Fund to both boost economic ‘growth’ and deliver ‘necessary’ infrastructure. This will become a reality eventually – zero doubt about that.
The point is this: when governments need money they go to the people who have it and where it’s all effectively ‘captured’. Direct taxation is dead as a source so bank accounts and 401Ks will inevitably be in the firing line. It’s only a matter of time.
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I’ve read a couple of Rickards books and found them insightul. Trouble with reading his column on Daily Reckoning is they always end with “So, everything’s going to crash so you’d better sign up for our insider list and buy gold!”
This makes trying to find out what’s REALLY going on really difficult, because everybody seems to have some kind of an angle.
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Thanks Mish for your great effort to address this scoundral and his effort to make money off people fears. I’m one of them. My fault alone. I won’t be listening to any more of his baloney any more. So thank you, once again for bringing more light and truth.
Packysite.
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