Greek Collapse Could Hit U.S. Next! - Peter Schiff

[cylonmaker2053]

There was a Hangout last week with silverbug BrotherjohnF who discussed how silver is "the people's money" as the market is too small to manipulate compared to gold.

I'm not sure how a smaller market would make it less susceptible to manipulation? the opposite would seem to be the case.

A smaller market in the realm of physical silver coupled with high industrial demand makes it a market than is easier to break the manipulators' backs because if too many trading silver contracts want to call and choose physical delivery, then it creates a short squeeze.

The market of physical silver is so small compared to its real world demand that it can be used as leverage against high levels of naked shorting--one of the primary tools the money masters use to ensure gold and silver do not break the perceived value of the fiat in circulation. 

interesting thought that there's more of a natural floor to silver bc of relative value in industrial use vs. financial...i can see that. that natural demand could have adverse effects on the long side, though, if manipulators intentionally pumped the price and ended up selling to industrial buyers who had no choice but to buy or halt production.

[Erlich Bachman]

there is no way to know the actual supply of silver, it's the same premine and unknown total amount and distribution problem as we have with gold.  Seriously the whole idea of gold and silver being "immutable" seems to be more wishful thinking than anything. People have been mining the shit for a long time, the catholic church for one had quite a bit of time collecting the stuff, but where is the omniscient, transparent and irrefutable account of it all?

No, gold and silver are not immutable nor omniscient which is why crypto is an entirely different asset class than both real estate and commodities

real estate
commodities
companies
currency/bonds/paper promises
crypto

everything in your investment portfolio falls into one of these 5 basic groups.

Are you diversified?

immutable and omniscient are valuable properties for an asset class to possess

tangible is cool too, but different indeed

[JoeyD]

1. currency (fiat/gov-bonds) - check
2. commodities - check (naked shorting)
3. businesses - check
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-06/snb-boosts-stake-in-apple-exxon-in-37-5-billion-u-s-portfolio
4. real estate - if it has a mortgage, then the bank owns it already

5. immutable property (crypto)   

people compare bitcoin (5) with gold (2) ..
would you consider gold being part of 5 also?

No, I should have been more specific about this new 5th class of asset that is unique from all the rest because it is both immutable and omniscient (both features are integral to creating valuable transparency) meaning that you do not know how many ounces of gold are buried under the Vatican, but you do know how many BitShares there are out there.   

If there are 2 things that free markets just adore, it's transparency and profits.

Why?? Because increased transparency means reduced risk.

I agree.

I don't agree with silver being that much better than gold, the smaller market would make it more volatile and easier to manipulate. Also same as gold, there is no way to know the actual supply of silver, it's the same premine and unknown total amount and distribution problem as we have with gold.  Seriously the whole idea of gold and silver being "immutable" seems to be more wishful thinking than anything. People have been mining the shit for a long time, the catholic church for one had quite a bit of time collecting the stuff, but where is the omnicient, transparent and irrefutable account of it all?

Gold and Silver aren't the answer and unless you are in something like the denture or jewelry business it doesn't have all that much hard value in my eyes and it's most certainly not on the same level as solutions like crypto-currencies. The whole intrinsic value of gold sounds like rubbish to me as well, gold doesn't evoke any emotional response in me and I find it to be a useless material even in the form of rings, I grab anything tightly and the junk deforms and cuts into your skin.

[fuzzy]

1. currency (fiat/gov-bonds) - check
2. commodities - check (naked shorting)
3. businesses - check
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-06/snb-boosts-stake-in-apple-exxon-in-37-5-billion-u-s-portfolio
4. real estate - if it has a mortgage, then the bank owns it already

5. immutable property (crypto)   

people compare bitcoin (5) with gold (2) ..
would you consider gold being part of 5 also?

No, I should have been more specific about this new 5th class of asset that is unique from all the rest because it is both immutable and omniscient (both features are integral to creating valuable transparency) meaning that you do not know how many ounces of gold are buried under the Vatican, but you do know how many BitShares there are out there.   

If there are 2 things that free markets just adore, it's transparency and profits.

Why?? Because increased transparency means reduced risk.

[Erlich Bachman]

1. currency (fiat/gov-bonds) - check
2. commodities - check (naked shorting)
3. businesses - check
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-06/snb-boosts-stake-in-apple-exxon-in-37-5-billion-u-s-portfolio
4. real estate - if it has a mortgage, then the bank owns it already

5. immutable property (crypto)   

people compare bitcoin (5) with gold (2) ..
would you consider gold being part of 5 also?

No, I should have been more specific about this new 5th class of asset that is unique from all the rest because it is both immutable and omniscient (both features are integral to creating valuable transparency) meaning that you do not know how many ounces of gold are buried under the Vatican, but you do know how many BitShares there are out there.   

If there are 2 things that free markets just adore, it's transparency and profits.

Why?? Because increased transparency means reduced risk.

[fuzzy]

There was a Hangout last week with silverbug BrotherjohnF who discussed how silver is "the people's money" as the market is too small to manipulate compared to gold.

I'm not sure how a smaller market would make it less susceptible to manipulation? the opposite would seem to be the case.

A smaller market in the realm of physical silver coupled with high industrial demand makes it a market than is easier to break the manipulators' backs because if too many trading silver contracts want to call and choose physical delivery, then it creates a short squeeze.

The market of physical silver is so small compared to its real world demand that it can be used as leverage against high levels of naked shorting--one of the primary tools the money masters use to ensure gold and silver do not break the perceived value of the fiat in circulation. 

[cylonmaker2053]

There was a Hangout last week with silverbug BrotherjohnF who discussed how silver is "the people's money" as the market is too small to manipulate compared to gold.

I'm not sure how a smaller market would make it less susceptible to manipulation? the opposite would seem to be the case.

[Permie]

1. currency (fiat/gov-bonds) - check
2. commodities - check (naked shorting)
3. businesses - check
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-06/snb-boosts-stake-in-apple-exxon-in-37-5-billion-u-s-portfolio
4. real estate - if it has a mortgage, then the bank owns it already

In fact, the bank's ownership percentage of all  4 of the 4 core asset classes has been going up over time.

It's a good thing that a new asset class was born:

5. immutable property (crypto)   

BitShares - the 5th core asset class

This opens eye .. kind of ..
though, people compare bitcoin (5) with gold (2) ..
would you consider gold being part of 5 also?

There was a Hangout last week with silverbug BrotherjohnF who discussed how silver is "the people's money" as the market is too small to manipulate compared to gold. I'm not sure I understand exactly what he meant but his point was that gold is super manipulated (like a premine as someone else said), and that silver is in the hands of too many people.
So I'm not sure if gold fits with "immutable property" alongside crypto. It was illegal to hold gold for 42 years, from 1933-1975. Sure, some people disobeyed and hid their gold but what a hassle. Pieces of paper and multi-sig make hiding crypto trivial in comparison.

The Wizard of Oz is an allegory for the desire for silver as the people's money, and the big baddies at the end of the yellow brick road (gold?) are actually powerless and rule behind the curtain with smoke and mirrors. Scary terrorism media headlines and blind obedience to the state sound familiar?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_interpretations_of_The_Wonderful_Wizard_of_Oz

In a 1964 article,[5] educator and historian Henry Littlefield outlined an allegory in the book of the late 19th-century debate regarding monetary policy. According to this view, for instance, the "Yellow Brick Road" represents the gold standard, and the silver slippers (ruby in the 1939 film version) represent the Silverite sixteen to one silver ratio (dancing down the road).

[xeroc]

1. currency (fiat/gov-bonds) - check
2. commodities - check (naked shorting)
3. businesses - check
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-06/snb-boosts-stake-in-apple-exxon-in-37-5-billion-u-s-portfolio
4. real estate - if it has a mortgage, then the bank owns it already

In fact, the bank's ownership percentage of all  4 of the 4 core asset classes has been going up over time.

It's a good thing that a new asset class was born:

5. immutable property (crypto)   

BitShares - the 5th core asset class

This opens eye .. kind of ..
though, people compare bitcoin (5) with gold (2) ..
would you consider gold being part of 5 also?

[JoeyD]

The current financial system may seem complicated, but it is rather simple:

Debt currency can only collapse 2 ways:

1.   Deflation - When people realize that many debts won’t be repaid.  Lehman Bros set off a cascade of bankruptcies that rocketed the gold price to the moon and spawned smartchains.  99-1 fractional reserve banking means that only 1% of all loans need to be delinquent for the entire financial system to collapse.  Did Lehman have 1% of the total global debt?  Of course not, but if AIG and every other bank on Wall St was not given unlimited loans at 0% to keep from going bankrupt back then, then…

2.   Hyperinflation – Only when the values of all commodities begin to rise consistently with food, real estate, and equities.  In other words, if the price of gas and gold ever goes back up, look out below.   

Fiat does not stand a chance when its users must trust that the bankers have made profitable financial loans.  It’s getting easier for people to see that banks have made more than 1% bad loans, and that smartchains can only make 0% bad loans.

Those are not the only options however, you can also restart the currency or join another one with some arbitrary conversion rate as for example the euro, or whatever else they can come up with. Common or factual sense seem to not be requirements for currencies.

My biggest gripe with the commodities is that they appear to be just as easily manipulated if not moreso than fiat, especially if the vast majority of those commodities are owned by a sub decimal percentage point of the population. To put it in crypto terms, they are premined and the distribution sucks even more than Ripple or NXT, worse still, we have no idea what the total supply is. So insignificant little stakeholders like us, buying into gold, might just as easily be pumped and dumped as any other scamcoin-victim.

To me the new shared ledger consensus-solutions seems to be the only viable solution.

[Erlich Bachman]

The current financial system may seem complicated, but it is rather simple:

Debt currency can only collapse 2 ways:

1.   Deflation - When people realize that many debts won’t be repaid.  Lehman Bros set off a cascade of bankruptcies that rocketed the gold price to the moon and spawned smartchains.  99-1 fractional reserve banking means that only 1% of all loans need to be delinquent for the entire financial system to collapse.  Did Lehman have 1% of the total global debt?  Of course not, but if AIG and every other bank on Wall St was not given unlimited loans at 0% to keep from going bankrupt back then, then…

2.   Hyperinflation – Only when the values of all commodities begin to rise consistently with food, real estate, and equities.  In other words, if the price of gas and gold ever goes back up, look out below.   

Fiat does not stand a chance when its users must trust that the bankers have made profitable financial loans.  It’s getting easier for people to see that banks have made more than 1% bad loans, and that smartchains can only make 0% bad loans.

[JoeyD]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKW4UmvbwKU

What do you guys think?

I've been listening a lot to Peter Schiff over the past months, but recently with Greece and Puerto Rico it feels like the pressure is really building.. I'm not the type to be paranoid or gloomy, and I know I only recently got into reading about economy, but the stakes are really high here, so if there's even a small chance it should be given enormous weight. Ron Paul was on the Alex Jones show before Schiff, and he's pretty much saying the same things.

In my experience people are generally bad at facing uncomfortable things, and even when they know something at an intellectual level, their actions are still often rooted in the false reality where everything is still fine. You could see it in Greece; people knew on some level that the banks were going to close well in advance, or at least that there was a good chance, and yet it was only after the banks closed that people seemed to realize the gravity of the situation.

Jim Willie told me that his sources are saying it will happen sometime this year or at the latest, 2016.  I think they are going to pull something out of their butts though...
I actually think we are going to have certain people blamed for a mixture of financial and cyber terrorism to create the need to steal from people on a large scale.  We will have another grand war and it will likely not involve guns nearly as much as it will computers, communities and networks thereof. 
Is anyone familiar with the saying from a game called "Metal Gear Solid"? 
There is a saying in one of the latest ones where the protagonist, "Snake", says "War has Changed...".  He doesn't know just how correct he is...
War has been one of the primary basis' behind the U.S. economy since long before I was born...so as long as it is allowed to persist and the majority of people remain ignorant...I think it keeps floating.  Any crashes that happen will be allowed to happen and will have specific agendas behind them.  The assimilation of crypto currencies will be one of those agendas...because it is one hell of a tool for the Mafiacracy.

Well I've been hearing and reading more and more about BRICS (although it is now far larger than those initials suggest) and their new world currency being the trick they want to pull out of their ass. Funny to me is how supportive IMF is of the whole BRICS reset of the financial system, while that would mean the end of the IMF.

While looking into it I ran into this website. While I don't know how factually correct that site is and I have some issues with being branded for life if you ever attended a school supported by a Christian cult compared to attending those pinacles of excellence in the form of public schooling, I do find it interesting that there is so much overlap in IMF and BRICS management.

To me it's getting hard to doubt that the days of the USD as the world currency are pretty much numbered.

Meanwhile, I am interested to see how this greek thing will pan out. There are several "system banks" sweating bullets right about now, especially the german ones. Would be nice to see if the attempted hostile private takeover of Greece actually fails or not.

I've listened to an interview with Schiff on infowars.com yesterday and I found his "solutions"  and whishes to be rather odd, as in, exactly what is happening and at the root of the problem now. Why are both Schiff and mr. Infowars advocating the exact things that the "manipulators" they fear are working towards? Looking at Greece, it seems that a democracy might just be the only tool you have against the aristocracy or oligarchy that is seen as so subversive. Why in hell does Schiff want an aristocracy instead of a democracy?

Also what's with the weird reasoning of socialism being the cause of all problems? I've been trying to figure out the logic or reasoning behind it, but I can't make sense of it. Do they believe Europe to be socialist or something or are they talking about the US?

[fuzzy]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKW4UmvbwKU

What do you guys think?

I've been listening a lot to Peter Schiff over the past months, but recently with Greece and Puerto Rico it feels like the pressure is really building.. I'm not the type to be paranoid or gloomy, and I know I only recently got into reading about economy, but the stakes are really high here, so if there's even a small chance it should be given enormous weight. Ron Paul was on the Alex Jones show before Schiff, and he's pretty much saying the same things.

In my experience people are generally bad at facing uncomfortable things, and even when they know something at an intellectual level, their actions are still often rooted in the false reality where everything is still fine. You could see it in Greece; people knew on some level that the banks were going to close well in advance, or at least that there was a good chance, and yet it was only after the banks closed that people seemed to realize the gravity of the situation.

Jim Willie told me that his sources are saying it will happen sometime this year or at the latest, 2016.  I think they are going to pull something out of their butts though...
I actually think we are going to have certain people blamed for a mixture of financial and cyber terrorism to create the need to steal from people on a large scale.  We will have another grand war and it will likely not involve guns nearly as much as it will computers, communities and networks thereof. 
Is anyone familiar with the saying from a game called "Metal Gear Solid"? 
There is a saying in one of the latest ones where the protagonist, "Snake", says "War has Changed...".  He doesn't know just how correct he is...
War has been one of the primary basis' behind the U.S. economy since long before I was born...so as long as it is allowed to persist and the majority of people remain ignorant...I think it keeps floating.  Any crashes that happen will be allowed to happen and will have specific agendas behind them.  The assimilation of crypto currencies will be one of those agendas...because it is one hell of a tool for the Mafiacracy.

[cylonmaker2053]

prediction is one of the hardest things to do with complex systems, like the economy or financial markets. what's certainly true is that risks are mounting and have been centralized/aggregated to an astonishing degree since the last financial crisis; that seems to be the recipe for guaranteeing bigger future crises. timing or describing that crisis is a completely different matter...

all i know is that we should always be ready for uncertainty and remember that our pathetic human minds tend to underestimate risk at the exactly wrong times! we also tend to have an absurd degree of extrapolation bias in mentally modeling future risks on past crises.

[Permie]

3 facts make another economic collapse within the next 5 years extremely likely.

The rate of capital destruction due to zero % and negative interest rates
The rate of debt monetisation with currency creation/printing
The rate of US dollar rejection in reserve and the increasing international diversification into gold trade settlement

The debt is completely unserviceable, austerity chokes growth, it's inevitable.

In Jim Willy's Beyond Bitcoin talk he discusses how China are paving their way for a gold backed (?) CNY to replace the dollar, by adding CNY to the global basket of reserve currencies regional banks will be 'forced' to add CNY to their portfolio, therefore displacing a % of held dollars.
https://beyondbitcoin.org/bonus-hangout-with-jim-willie-from-goldenjackass-com/

Found an article describing the situation in Greece on /r/bitcoin, and how Greeks should not be fooled into funding the economic hitmen (banks) that are decimating their country

https://truthandsatire.wordpress.com/2015/07/03/greece-the-one-biggest-lie-you-are-being-told-by-the-media/

Stage 1: The first and foremost reason that Greece got into trouble was the “Great Financial Crisis” of 2008 that was the brainchild of Wall Street and international bankers. If you remember, banks came up with an awesome idea of giving subprime mortgages to anyone who can fog a mirror. They then packaged up all these ticking financial bombs and sold them as “mortgage-backed securities” for a huge profit to various financial entities in countries around the world.

Stage 2 is when the financial time bombs exploded. Commercial and investment banks around the world started collapsing in a matter of weeks. Governments at local and regional level saw their investments and assets evaporate. Chaos everywhere!

Stage 3 is when the banks force the government to accept massive debts. For a biology metaphor, consider a virus or a bacteria. All of them have unique strategies to weaken the immune system of the host. One of the proven techniques used by the parasitic international bankers is to downgrade the bonds of a country. And that’s exactly what the bankers did, starting at the end of 2009. This immediately makes the interest rates (“yields”) on the bonds go up, making it more and more expensive for the country to borrow money or even just roll over the existing bonds.

Stage 4: Now, the rape and humiliation of a nation begin. For the debt that was forced upon them, Greece had to sell many of its profitable assets to oligarchs and international corporations. And privatizations are ruthless, involving everything and anything that is profitable. In Greece, privatization included water, electricity, post offices, airport services, national banks, telecommunication, port authorities (which is huge in a country that is a world leader in shipping) etc.

I've not checked any sources but it gives an alternative view to what is going on

Nick Szabo's blogpost on Greece today: http://unenumerated.blogspot.ca/2015/07/the-greek-financial-mess-and-some-ways.html

I am an interested amateur and certainly no expert

[Ben Mason]

3 facts make another economic collapse within the next 5 years extremely likely.

The rate of capital destruction due to zero % and negative interest rates
The rate of debt monetisation with currency creation/printing
The rate of US dollar rejection in reserve and the increasing international diversification into gold trade settlement

The debt is completely unserviceable, austerity chokes growth, it's inevitable.

[JoeyD]

Looking at one past example I have my doubts about the slow and steady decline. The only thing that will be slow and steady is human disbelief about what is really happening, because in dollar/euro we trust.

To me the current situation is more like the old Road Runner cartoons, with Wild E. Coyote temporarily running and standing on air above the abyss for comedic effect.

Also if even the IMF talks about a big reset 10 times in a 2 minute speech, then I'm not that confident that the big shots are oblivious of the current state of affairs. Actually the foundation of the brics, Great Britain and other western countries joining them and the deals with Russia, Iran and China to no longer take petro-dollars (without their leaders being immediately bombarded to kingdom come as with all previous attempts) plus all the countries stockpiling gold by the truckload, it seems that the end of the dollar has already happened.

While the "confidence" that our entire financial air castle is built upon might seem hard to disperse, doesn't necessarily mean that it will do so slowly once it does. Humans can change their points of view surprisingly quickly at very inopportune moments.

[Buck Fankers]

Here's a different opinion ... http://www.freemansperspective.com/will-last-crash/

[Riverhead]

I've always found headlines with phrases like, "Could Happen" a bit cowardly. Sure, a lot of things could happen. Either believe in what you're saying or don't say it in lights.

donkeypong already said everything better than I ever could so I'll leave it at that. The end will not come with a bang but with a long cyclical decline that will only be recognizable in retrospect.

[donkeypong]

I think we'll have another recession in a number of years, but it will depend on when (and how quickly) energy prices go up again in the U.S. It's hard to see any such trouble for at least 2 or 3 years, perhaps longer, barring some event. And I am not convinced it will be some catastrophic collapse, either. The catastrophic collapse will come when when the demand for affordable energy exceeds the supply, assuming technology and conservation do not contribute much. Even then, I see things moving in cycles of inflation (when fuel prices are low) and deflation (when fuel prices are high) for awhile longer. That's because higher energy prices make some development projects realistic and it takes time to bring their production online; when it comes online, then there is a period again where affordable energy is available for a bit longer.

This thing could play out for 5 or 10 years, even longer. If there is a collapse, it probably will come in phases, where the trend sometimes appears to be going in the opposite direction (seesawing), but those are just growing pains as the economy adjusts to new economic realities. At the end of the day, commodities, real goods, and tangible assets will have value. The derivatives and instruments (and any other fluffy BS tools Wall Street uses to make money) will have a lot less value because they add little to the economy.

[CLains]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKW4UmvbwKU

What do you guys think?

I've been listening a lot to Peter Schiff over the past months, but recently with Greece and Puerto Rico it feels like the pressure is really building.. I'm not the type to be paranoid or gloomy, and I know I only recently got into reading about economy, but the stakes are really high here, so if there's even a small chance it should be given enormous weight. Ron Paul was on the Alex Jones show before Schiff, and he's pretty much saying the same things.

In my experience people are generally bad at facing uncomfortable things, and even when they know something at an intellectual level, their actions are still often rooted in the false reality where everything is still fine. You could see it in Greece; people knew on some level that the banks were going to close well in advance, or at least that there was a good chance, and yet it was only after the banks closed that people seemed to realize the gravity of the situation.