Mike Maloney: The Dollar As We Know It Will Be Gone Within 6 Years

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This week's podcast sees the return of Mike Maloney, monetary historian and founder of precious metals broker GoldSilver.com.

Based on historical patterns and the alarming state of our current monetary system, Mike believes the fiat US dollar is in its last years as a viable currency. He sees its replacement as inevitable in the near term -- as in by or before the end of the decade:

All of this is converging with the crazy experiments the Federal Reserve has done.

I absolutely believe that there are economic consequences to this that are inescapable. The Fed is not just in a box; a trap has been set. And before the end of this decade, if there is still a US Dollar around it will not be this US Dollar. It will be a dollar that is tied to a very different monetary system.

The last three shifts in our monetary system were little baby steps off of the classical gold standard where it was fully backed. We went down to a 40% reserve ratio with the Federal Reserve in the United States during the Gold Exchange Standard. Then the Bretton Woods system didn't have a reserve ratio specified, but I believe the dollar was about 8% backed by gold by the time Nixon took us off of gold in '71. Now, the only backing that the US Dollar has is the promise to tax us all in the future: it is US Treasury bonds, or the Fed doing its quantitative easing and buying mortgage-backed securities.

And how corrupt is the notion that you can give some entity the power to have a check book that has a $0 balance and they can go out and buy anything they want with that and it just creates currency? That is corrupt in itself.

Think about how immoral this is. First of all, the Fed whipped up that currency not out of thin air but by indebting the public. They buy a Treasury bond or a mortgage-backed security, and now they own the mortgage on your house or they own a Treasury bond that you are going to work for in the future and pay taxes to pay off. And so they give all of this currency to the banks, and then they pay them interest to not loan it out or otherwise stimulate the economy. So they are giving them the gift of interest.

By the way, any profits that the Fed has at the end of the year are supposed to get turned over to the Treasury. Well, they are paying the banks interest that reduces the amount that they give to the Treasury by exactly that amount. So in other words, the public is paying those banks interest. That's where all of the interest comes from. We're not seeing those profits passed on to the Treasury anymore. 

Anyway, I do think that this system is coming to an end before the decade is out. The other shifts in our monetary system were baby steps off of gold. Now we have to go from nothing most likely back to something. And it's going to be a financial, economic convulsion the likes of which the world has never seen. It is going to affect everybody on the planet. During the last three monetary shifts, it was only the world's central banks and big international banks that were affected and were worried. The common man didn't even know what was going on. With this one, everybody is going to feel it. Everybody is going to know it. You will either be a winner or a loser, but everybody is playing this game. 

 

Click the play button below to listen to Chris' interview with Mike Maloney (51m:18s):

This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://peakprosperity.com/mike-maloney-the-dollar-as-we-know-it-will-be-gone-within-6-years/

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Another excellent interview, IMO.  Thank you Chris, Adam, and Mike.  One of my favorite take-aways from the podcast, and a "keeper" for me, was this: "…And there are so many people whose lives are just completely wrapped up in sports. And the outcome of the sports do not impact their lives, but that is what they care about. They purposely avoid contact with anything that actually does have an effect on their lives. They don't' want to know about this stuff. I think that is the way, actually, that a lot of the public is."  I'm not anti-sports, particularly if it gets kids active, off the sofa, and the game controller out of their hands; however, many of us have adult friends that fall into this camp.  Happy grilling!

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I like the more fundamental take on money, thinking about the dollar being gone by the end of the decade, that's something to contemplate about for sure.  Not that any of us has a crystal ball, but get a feeling that things will be very different this time around.
I understand the advice on the accumulation of productive assets, precious metals being deemed the simplest of those.  But I would posit there yet a simpler productive asset that anyone, regardless of means, can invest in, oneself.

Certainly it is sound advice to accumulate assets, sound money, or claims on future labor and avoid debt, responsibility for past labor.  But the question that nags at me is who is going to take responsibility for the excess CO2 in the atmosphere, degraded or destroyed farmlands, polluted waterways, depleted or polluted aquifers, and decaying social structure?  Who?

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I'm strongly in treebeards camp. If we are going to make any real attempt to thrive following then the externalities are going to have to gain a central theme. Otherwise we will just create more major energy corporations and make profit out of exploiting tar sands or similar, we simply do not take into account the fact that our grandchildren may not have a possibility of survival – that's an externality. And in the moral calculus of capitalism, and i would wager whatever comes next, greater profits in the next quarter outweigh the fate of our grandchildren – and of course it's not grandchildren, but everyone. 
So why are we seeing attacks on social programs across the spectrum? Why? It's based on solidarity. It's based on concern for others. Bust that up best you can and the public will have no other options but to allow the state to intervene! The progression is debt slavery, debt insanity, death insanity.

Rose

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[quote=DennisC]One of my favorite take-aways from the podcast, and a "keeper" for me, was this: "…And there are so many people whose lives are just completely wrapped up in sports.
[/quote]
Recently, I ran into the description "somnolent-television watchers."  I believe it was in Richard Heinburg's book: "Snake Oil: How Fracking's False Promise of Plenty Imperils Our Future."
I don't have to mentally visualize "somnolent-television watchers," all I have to do is look around the room, wherever I am sitting at the moment.
I gladly give a guarded recommendation to Richard's book.  I believe Richard does an excellent job covering the reality of fracking.  
It's his vision of the alternative that I can't see as practical.  His energy vision is pretty much wind and solar.  I don't see us maintaining any sort of advanced industrial/technological society without a more concentrated energy source.  Based on what I've read, I don't believe we have the capital or resources available to implement a global energy system based largely on wind/solar.  
Thorium nuclear reactors come to mind as a more viable alternative for the core component of an energy system.

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we are, those who farm in a fashion to sequester C02 in our soils over which we steward. we are, those who spend their sweat and  fiat dollars on responsibly grown foods. we are, those who walk,ride…robie, husband to a life partner and a farm,father,farmer,optometrist and feeling as though there are not enough "we are's"

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Chris-
First, I agreed with the vast majority of the interview.  Central Banks love credit growth, as do banks in general, staying focused on real assets, currency crises, foreigners buying US assets, etc.  The usual.

However, I was suprised when I heard you quote Steve Keen on your interview.  You said of him, "…there is this economist out of Australia, Steve Keen, and he talks about how it is possible that our money system isn't necessarily exponentially expansionary."  And then you went on to describe how exponentially expansionary our money system clearly is.

From my reading and listening to Keen, he agrees completely that our money system is exponentially expansionary.  All his charts say this as well.  As a result, it just seemed unfair for you to drop Keen (by context) into the bucket of people who do not see an exponential problem.

The only place I see you two disagreeing is on the systemic ability of participants in aggregate to make interest payments on our stock of credit money without a constantly growing source of credit money - the whole stocks/flows issue.

Keen believes our system is doomed to cycles of private debt bubble creation not because of a systemic inability in aggregate to pay credit money interest, but because bankers are by nature driven to lend as much as possible (because they profit dramatically thereby - and end up eventually capturing government through their profits), and borrowers are by nature driven to participate in every ponzi-financed asset bubble that comes along.  According to Keen, it is a long cycle of mini-Minsky credit bubbles + a ratchet effect and we end up generating debt that grows at an exponential rate.  Zoomed in, credit growth is actually an oscillating wave centered around a more or less fixed percentage growth per year - right up until the big pop happens.  We see this in both his model, and in actual credit data - FRED timeseries LOANINV run through a MA(12) to make it smooth, change y/o/y.

But at the core, Keen is suggesting it's not the fault of our current credit money system - its the inner nature of the participants that is the root cause of the problem.  That, and the fact each "mini-bust" doesn't clear away enough of the malinvestment to result in a reset back to long term sustainable debt levels.

I say all of this with some trepidation, because I know this seemingly wonky issue can generate a strong emotional reaction from many people here at PP.  But I think its a discussion worth having.  We can't in good conscience prescribe the right remedy unless we clearly understand the cause.

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Anyone have any idea how many ounces it takes to buy the median home in the US?  I make tons of charts every single day, and I didn't have a clue.
Maloney sure was right from 2000-2012.  Homes were not the place to be, gold was - and I didn't hear a peep about this from MSM.  Anyone see someone a Time Magazine photo of someone hugging a gold bar in 2011?  A sixbagger is nothing to sneeze at.

But the flipside was true in 1980 - 2001.  Sell gold, buy homes, you'd have multiplied your money by 7x.

So my question is, where are we in the gold/home cycle?

 

And here's an uber-long-term chart, using Shiller's home price index dating back to 1890, alongside the USGS average gold price data dating back to 1900.  The shiller data is an index - not actual dollars, but compare the curves and they still effectively show the ratio and the changes over time.

This stuff is really fascinating to me.  I learn something new almost every day.

I'm still struggling with this cycle and looking for a cause.

 

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Thanks for this great interview. I just have a comment regarding the point made about how the wealth destruction that's coming is actually a wealth transfer. To a great extent I think this is true but the world at large will also be experiencing a major wealth "destruction" as well. The problem is that most of the world's wealth today is illusory; it is manufactured by the Fed through its interest rate manipulation and money printing. There is a bubble in finance, and finance is basically just about confidence in the future. The Fed has been fighting the laws of nature for 40 years to keep everyone believing that we can continue growing and that resources aren't scarce, and for the most part, people believe them. When that comes crashing down it will indeed seem like a major wealth destruction event, in addition to wealth transfer, because there just isn't anywhere near the amount of real wealth (defined as energy, water, ecological and mineral resources) available that the financial indicators have led us to believe. The trick will be ensuring that any gains you receive via the wealth transfer exceed losses from the generalized wealth destruction, so that you can do your part in maintaining the middle class.
 
I heard a statistic a while ago that the largest component of Canada's GDP is finance. I can't verify this but it's probably true, and I'm sure it's even more true for the US. The thing is, when the financial system implodes and this wealth transfer / destruction event takes place, and confidence in the future (i.e. debt bonds which form the basis of the finance industry) is lost, then there will be no more jobs for almost all of those people working in finance. I think it can be argued that the combination of automation efficiency, job offshoring, and economic stagnation which have created so many problems for labour in N America have seen those jobs be absorbed in two places: welfare, and financial services. Neither of those categories does much useful or valuable. It's kind of funny how this loss of demand for labour has resulted in a whole sector of the economy coming to prominence in which people get paid for basically doing nothing except perpetuating a ponzi scheme... yet the people working in finance all believe that they are very important and necessary for "wealth creation". So I see a huge additional chunk of unemployment stress coming after the system crashes.
 
Furthermore, commodity prices will rise, which will stifle consumption and result in even more job losses on the "production" side. I don't see any reasonable way forward which will be able to deal with this unemployment problem, at least not politically acceptably. The one saving grace we may have is that human labour in sectors like agriculture may become competitive again when wages drop, and also machines will become expensive because it's all manufactured overseas, so we may see people returning to using their hands. So it turns out that we will have completed our journey back into the Middle Ages -- the majority will be serfs working with their hands on property owned by the wealthy, the likes of Cargill, etc. I guess that's another multi-century cycle repeating. Unfortunately I don't think we're going to get another "Serfdom Cycle" to try to avoid next time, as we have peaked in energy and it's now all downhill.
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I had a similar thought.  The statement that wealth doesn't get destroyed, but merely changes hands assumes two things that I don't think are true in the present situation.  First it assumes that demand will still exist and second it assumes that energy and inputs will still be affordable.  If you manage to get your hands on a plant that makes shoes during a "wealth transfer" you could very well come out the other side and find that a.) people are making due with what they have and demand is a fraction of what it was, b.) supply chains for raw materials may no longer be viable, c.) electricity, if available, might be too expensive to cost effectively operate the plant.  I agree that primary assets like farm land, mineral rights, possibly PM's, and other basic necessities with locally available inputs will likely be transferred but I suspect that large parts of the industrial infrastructure and it's derivative industries will no longer be viable (at least for a time) which I would consider wealth destruction.  Thoughts?

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Mark-
I tend to agree, there will be both wealth transfer and destruction.

I recall reading an analyst that said wealth destruction came to visit every single asset class during the Great Depression, at one time or another.  There was no one place to hide safely throughout the period.

I also agree with TallestMan, certain sectors of the economy will see their capital goods value get stomped harder than others.  When there is great disruption, the basics will probably retain more value than the luxury goods.  "Probably."

So your choice is, be nimble and prepared to trade (in a wide variety of ways) as we move through the turbulence, or reduce debt and gather around you as many essentials of your life as you can.  Just from a "peace of mind" standpoint, move out of stored value in units of the money system, and buy real things, simply accepting that the dollar value of these things may plummet or rise - and the outcome is thorougly out of your control at any moment in time.

If your wealth effectively supports you and your family, I'd call that success, regardless of the dollar sign attached to it at any point in time.  And - the more value you have in stuff that's impossible to tax, likely, the better.  Armstrong thinks we'll drop into a tax-crazy situation where the bureaucrats fight like crazy to keep their chunk of the pie (salary, pensions, etc), all at our expense.

At one point I thought treasury bills might be a safe place to hide.  Now I'm not sure at all.  IMF is now talking about "reprofiling" as general policy - when a country loses access to the debt markets, it extends the maturity of its debt instruments.  30 day t-bills become 10 year bonds.  Same coupon, of course.  Massive loss in NPV (i.e. if you wanted to liquidate today, you take a big hit).  And who knows what sort of inflationary event happens in the next 10 years while your (supposedly 30 day) money is frozen.

Slowly I'm being convinced that any cash in the monetary system in whatever form (unless its a modest amount of FRNs) is a bad idea.

Mish pointed out Spain just enacted a small retroactive tax on bank deposits.  0.03%.  Retroactive to Jan 1 2014, for those who imagine they could escape.  30 cents/1000 euro.  But its not the amount, its the principle.  "Its where the money is."

A 0.03% tax on Spain's 2.03 trillion euro bank deposits will raise 609 million euro.  That's Real Money.

Next time they have a money problem - perhaps its a 0.1% tax.  Wow, 2 billion euro.  That was easy.

Is taxing bank deposits inflationary or deflationary?  Monetarily: DEFLATION!  But - for other asset classes?  Likely, quite inflationary, as Spanish bank deposit money flees in advance to places where the money hopes it won't be (retroactively!) taxed.  Armstrong says money moves in anticipation of events.  Maybe London will see another spike in property prices from those wealthy Spaniards taking those deposits out of Spanish banks in anticipation of another retroactive tax next year.

Total US bank deposits: 11.5 trillion.  Just FYI.

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Wrong tense, Dave. Use the past or present tense. The wealth has been destroyed. The oil in the ground, fish in the sea, virgin land are all either depleted or on the cusp.I believe that the garden of Eden was somewhere between the Tigris and the Euphrates. Look what 4000 years of civilization hath wrought. Can you envision what it must have looked like to the first settlers?

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DaveF said, 

At one point I thought treasury bills might be a safe place to hide.  Now I'm not sure at all.  IMF is now talking about "reprofiling" as general policy - when a country loses access to the debt markets, it extends the maturity of its debt instruments.  30 day t-bills become 10 year bonds.  Same coupon, of course.  Massive loss in NPV (i.e. if you wanted to liquidate today, you take a big hit).  And who knows what sort of inflationary event happens in the next 10 years while your (supposedly 30 day) money is frozen.

Slowly I'm being convinced that any cash in the monetary system in whatever form (unless its a modest amount of FRNs) is a bad idea.

I never thought I would hear you say that.  You were the original, "strong dollar", "best of the worst currency" guy.  I appreciate your ability to reappraise.    
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True wealth is a healthy mind, body, community, and environment.  If you haven't got that, all the gold in the world not worth much of anything.  Accumulating gold to those ends makes sense.  Hope we can avoid being absorbed by the central banker borgs, this podcast has a lot of good advice to that end.  Hats off to all those folks, who without a thought of themselves, have picked up what needs to be done to make this world a better place, without fanfare, or the desire to be noticed or praised.I am very much in favor of plowing paper in productive assets of any kind, I guess gold is just a little further down on my list.  Basic hand tools and the equipment to keep them in good order, than more complex and fragile equipment from there on up.  The true miracle of our current technological innovation is communication and the availability of information.  You can run that without thorium reactors.  The information about reforming our relationship with the planet that has been just about lost in recent generations is  coming back in spades.  Complexity and specialization can be maintained at a much lower energy lever if the information level is high enough.  The lower the information density, the higher the energy intensity that is needed to maintain complexity.
I would like to see someone try to graph that correlation.
 

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You said,

 The true miracle of our current technological innovation is communication and the availability of information.  You can run that without thorium reactors.  The information about reforming our relationship with the planet that has been just about lost in recent generations is  coming back in spades.  Complexity and specialization can be maintained at a much lower energy lever if the information level is high enough.  The lower the information density, the higher the energy intensity that is needed to maintain complexity.
The ideas you are espousing are very attractive... but I am not sure I fully understand.  Can you give some examples of how better, or higher level information could bring this benefit?

I have been leaning of late toward reading those thinkers who try to imagine a reformed world.  How might money work?  How might we reconnect with each other and the world.  How might we break down the separation that Eisenstein speaks of?

One thinker who I have recently been introduced to is Robert David Steele.  He also speaks of our increasing access to information.

  http://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2014/jun/19/open-source-revolution-conquer-one-percent-cia-spy

Today's capitalism, he argues, is inherently predatory and destructive:

"Over the course of the last centuries, the commons was fenced, and everything from agriculture to water was commoditised without regard to the true cost in non-renewable resources. Human beings, who had spent centuries evolving away from slavery, were re-commoditised by the Industrial Era."
Open source everything, in this context, offers us the chance to build on what we've learned through industrialisation, to learn from our mistakes, and catalyse the re-opening of the commons, in the process breaking the grip of defunct power structures and enabling the possibility of prosperity for all.
"Sharing, not secrecy, is the means by which we realise such a lofty destiny as well as create infinite wealth. The wealth of networks, the wealth of knowledge, revolutionary wealth - all can create a nonzero win-win Earth that works for one hundred percent of humanity. This is the 'utopia' that Buckminster Fuller foresaw, now within our reach."
The goal, he concludes, is to reject:

"… concentrated illicitly aggregated and largely phantom wealth in favor of community wealth defined by community knowledge, community sharing of information, and community definition of truth derived in transparency and authenticity, the latter being the ultimate arbiter of shared wealth."

Are you and Steele on the same wavelength here?  Thanks, Jim
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JimH-It was a journey; gaining a clearer understanding of what money is and how it works: bank credit vs debt, sovereign debt vs private debt, effects of sovereign defaults on bank balance sheets, the couple of IMF papers on policy, as well as some recent actions in the eurozone.
We are still the best of the worst, and the core economy will die last.  I still believe that.  But I have a clearer view of the future now - at least I think I do.
I believe in the near future, we will get to see several sovereigns lose access to debt markets.  This happened briefly in 2012, but it will happen more seriously in the future.  Then we'll see what the various governments do in response.  Big Money will see this too.  The government choices are: reprofile & seize, or monetize the debt wholesale.  I believe sovereign default is not an option, because it ends in the destruction of the core economy banking systems, and the core will do anything to avoid that outcome.  [Bankers always win, we know that by now.]
My guess: Europe will reprofile and seize and avoid default as much as possible, to avoid a banking collapse in the core, and direct losses to pension funds and Big Money.  Japan will monetize, to avoid another 20 years of deflation.  Its a simplistic answer, but it is just extrapolating along an existing trajectory.
Problem is, either path ends in disaster for Big Money.  Big Money neither wants its bank deposits seized, nor its 30 day treasury bonds turned into 10 year notes with a lame coupon.   And it certainly doesn't want massive money printing crashing the underlying currency its paper assets are held in.
But underlying all this is the reality that most of those excess claims need to be destroyed - and Big Money is comprised right now mostly of excess claims to real wealth.  All those claims are the side effect of 60 years of un-deflated Minsky Speculative and Ponzi finance.  The paper is going away - inflated through a currency collapse, deflated via default and seizure, or imprisoned via reprofiling.  The only question is, who will be holding the paper?
As Big Money loses confidence in paper - bank deposits, sovereign paper, and probably junk too - it will start trying to exchange its paper for something that (it hopes) won't either be seized by the government, reprofiled, defaulted on by a counterparty, or monetized into a currency loss.  Bagholders will get the paper, and Big Money will get the assets.  Then the paper will be seized, reprofiled, printed, or defaulted on.  The paper bagholders will lose.
Probably best not to be too deeply in paper at that time.
But that's not the end of the story.  As a side effect of Big Money's flight into assets, this will drive asset price bubbles which must eventually pop.  Once the paper bagholders lose - once the excess claims are destroyed - the global economy will eventually be hit by deflation as capital simply hides rather than take risk, velocity drops, and that will pop the valuation on those asset price bubbles.  There will be no more Big Money capital flight to support the high prices on those now-dreadfully-expensive London homes, art collections, and so-on - the valuations are supported only by a constant flow of Big Money fleeing paper.  I think at the end of the day, Big Money "hiding" in those assets will find their refuge ends up losing value.  Sure they'll have a London property, but it will be worth only half of what they paid for it.  They will be bagholders too, much to their surprise.
And by that point, Big Money will be quite shy of any sovereign paper assets.  At some point, the US government will lose access to the debt markets, and we'll have the same choice: reprofile & seize, or print money.  I'm honestly not sure what we'll pick; I'm leaning more towards reprofile & seize, only because wholesale printing would be terrible for the bankers and bureaucrat pensions, but its a close race.  Who knows, maybe we'll do both.
I'm coming to the conclusion that I'm not sure there IS a hiding place.  There may not be an answer.  Having the basics to live on, debt-free shelter, food, transportation, energy - and perhaps becoming mentally and emotionally prepared for a lot of turbulence could put us all a massive step ahead all on its own.  Tossing the booze, picking a leader, coming up with a plan - any plan! - it all seems to make more sense to me now than trying to find the magic wealth storage box that will insulate me from the coming storm.  I still like a stack of FRNs "just in case" but that too could be made illegal.  Retroactively, of course.
Look at the gold/house ratio.  It says "gold is overpriced, relative to houses."  Do I feel like buying a house?  NO!  But I have one now.  Should I sell it?  What on earth would I buy?  Paper just seems unattractive, knowing what I know.  Nor can I see buying a ton more gold, knowing that the house/gold ratio is so low.  I have enough gold in relation to my other holdings.
A house, gold, energy production, no debt - it just seems better than trying to guess.  And that's where I am now.  Likely I won't bail out of paper wholesale, but I think I'll focus on private assets, not public ones.  And I'll be mentally prepared to get hit with some sort of wealth tax and/or seizure of the paper I do have.  And I don't like either bank deposits, or treasurys anymore as a safe haven.  They are too subject to seizure by a desperate sovereign who has lost access to the credit markets.  And I also don't favor flight into "real things" just as a hiding place.  They'll suffer a decline in value too, once all the paper claims are extinguished.  Paper bagholders will have their revenge!  Now I'm thinking, only flee into "real stuff" you actually want to own as a help to your own lifestyle.  That way if you're wrong on the timing, at least you will get real value from the asset you bought.
Perhaps it was the retroactive nature of the Spanish bank deposit tax that rattled me the most in recent days.  It was almost like the Spanish government said: "We see your pathetic attempts at capital flight, and we raise you a retroactive tax!  Oh yeah!!"  It was my glimpse into the future, and the future was saying to me: Life Will Not Be Fair.
At the end of the day, the goal really is to be happy anyway.  So - get the stuff you need, the stuff you really would find useful to have around to keep you in the style to which you've become accustomed, and then emotionally get set for just about anything to happen.  Make a plan, and if that one doesn't work out, make another!

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A couple of thoughts.
If tertiary wealth is predicated on a claim to primary and secondary wealth, and you go to foreclose on a house and you are met by a group of people with serious expressions on their faces, and guns, who say "You have no further claim to this families home and we will kill you if you pursue this any further", so you go to the Sheriff to demand assistance enforcing your claim and he shrugs and says, "The people in and around the house are my constituents and neighbors, you are a shiny suit from the big city, and I don't want to get shot either", isn't that a transfer of wealth?  I follow this site and these conversations closely, but to this hill billy much of it begins to sound like "blah, blah, blah, blah, blah".  I can't help but think that at the end of the day, the person with the tertiary paper may have a difficult time making good their claim on primary wealth when confronted by a desperate man with a gun.

In either an inflationary or deflationary economic death spiral I suspect that the unemployment rate will quickly drop to nearly zero as people will begin to get very busy doing something, or starve.

John G.

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It all depends on how far the rule of law has devolved.  Certainly, history makes it clear that the upper hand lies with the party most willing and able to do violence.  Currently, that would be your county sheriff.  At present, most sheriff departments back whatever play the state/federal government lays out.  But what if that should change?  Organizations like Oath Keepers make it clear that the Fed's grip on local law enforcement is far from omnipotent.
Assets held within the financial system are easily taxed/seized from any central location.  Physical asset seizure, however, requires the cooperation of local authorities, which may (probably will) suffer under the duress of a "global reset".

I believe that under such conditions, location will matter quite a bit.  Areas that favor involuntary socialism (i.e. Marxism) will be less comfortable for those with assets than areas that have historically been more individualistic.

Robert Steele (get it, rob steal?) is a chump.  He thinks capitalism is inherently predatory.  It is not, it is HUMANS that are inherently predatory, hence, the systems they contrive will always be workable to that end.  All the political systems in the world have failed in this regard, and will continue to fail: they cannot change the nature of man.

He states: "Predatory capitalism is based on the privatisation of profit and the externalisation of cost."  That's not capitalism, that's fascism.  Under only capitalism, it is not possible to "externalize" costs.  Only through government coercion is it possible to shift costs on to others not party to contract, so you must have governments and corporations working together, what Mussolini called "corporatism".

He also says:  "What we need is a system that fully accounts for all costs."  I completely agree.  That should start with the elimination of limited liability.  The idea that we are not 100% responsible for our actions is ludicrous.  To make a portion of society immune to the consequences of their actions is evil, plain and simple.

"The end result of a limited liability economy is socialism or communism… So what you ultimately do with limited liability is to destroy the entire economy, because you’ve destroyed the idea of responsibility."  -RJ Rushdoony

"Limited liability encourages people to take chances with limited risks, and to sin economically without paying the price. Limited liability laws rest on the fallacy that payment for economic sins need not be made. In actuality, payment is simply transferred to others."  -CS Lewis

 

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The perceived difficulty with communication in periods of transition is that rapid change renders our traditional road maps and sign posts obsolete.  A few common references used to allow us to cover a lot of ground, no more.  But in this supposed difficulty there is also great opportunity.  It forces us to stop skimming across the surface of life and dig a little deeper.  Pull back the curtain and look at who is saying what and why, perhaps do a little primary research of our own.  Traditional world views are on the table for discussion, finally! I buy Fords, vote Democratic, am (insert the religion of your choice), a Yankees fan, a vegetarian, a liberal, conservative, a nature lover, gear head, redneck, capitalist, carnivore, omnivore, localvore, communist, socialist, hipster, geek, jock, anarchist, atheist,  American (insert the nationalist flag of your choice), deer hunter, bird watcher, freak.  Do we really know what any of it means, were any of those choices conscious? Was it just a reaction for or against something or someone, perhaps a desire to return to a time when we were more comfortable or happy?  Can we unpack those boxes while we are awake and see what is inside?
The answer to the unrelenting drive of entropy is consciousness.  We hold onto our hatred, whoever it is that we blame in the world, so refuse to believe that evil, by its nature is always unconscious. How empty would our world be if we had to give up our hatred of the Fed, Government, Rich, Poor, climate deniers, climate change believers, etc…  We believe we are conscious and have free will and have the power to do conscious evil because we have set the bar way to low.  We are aware only of our most basic impulses, but not those that create evil at a grander scale.  Ron Paul summed it up this most basic awareness when he said he said, "is the only reason we don't take drugs because it's illegal?"  He speaks to the information density or awareness that talks to our capacity and necessity of of preserving complexity.  The paranoid power centric police state that we currently live in reinforces the idea that without centralized controls, chaos will ensue.  Quite to the contrary, the current system has stripped away the deeper and more complex relationships between the normally functioning parts our society and natural systems. We have confused command and control systems for the much deeper organic connections that allow healthy systems to grow and thrive.  This command and control system has created a barren wasteland which has engendered all manner of unconscious evil that has now been allowed to thrive.  When the current system breaks down, order will return.

The battle we are in now is for our collective survival.  The wages of self centeredness is fear, the two are inextricably connected, they cannot be separated.  One feeds the other.  Fear is the one thing that we must root out most diligently.  Pursuit of individual survival at he expense of the whole is to give into fear and feed the monster and destroy the self.  The reason the nature of the current threats is global is because it is time that we as humanity need to wake up.  There simply is no other option. Things will continue to decay until we develop the consciousness to turn them around. True freedom born of our awareness of our collective responsibility for each other is the only way out. 

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An update to the transcript of this interview:
When Chris and Mike recorded this 2 weeks ago, the Accelerated Crash Course (ACC) had only been live for ~ 1 week. Chris correctly mentioned that, at that time, it had received 40,000 plays.

I'm happy to provide the update that, a little less than 3 weeks since its launch, we've just crossed the 100,000 plays milestone for the ACC.

Chris and I are quite happy with these early results. They show that this new material is resonating and becoming widely distributed – and that's due in large part to this community sharing it so enthusiastically with family, friends and colleagues. THANK YOU for helping us spread this critical information.

We are continuing to leverage the media and our various partners to introduce new eyes to the ACC. Hopefully, between our efforts and yours, we'll cross the million+ plays milestone sometime this year.