Who Owns the Most Gold Privately? Notable Gold Investors | The Epoch Times

By Oxford Gold Group

Have you ever wondered who owns the most gold privately? The gold industry is thriving, as this yellow metal is highly coveted and a safe haven investment that usually appreciates over the long term. However, there’s only a finite supply of gold in the world. So, who are the individuals and families that own the most holdings of gold in the world? Below, we’ll tell you about the most prominent gold investors with privately owned reserves, notable advocates for gold IRAs, and how private gold ownership affects gold market prices.

Private Owners

John Paulson
John Paulson is an American hedge fund manager and billionaire famous for having one of the world’s biggest privately owned gold reserves. He’s also well known for predicting the 2007 mortgage financial crisis and has made headlines for his mammoth-sized gold holdings through his firm, Paulson & Co. As the central banks start to buy more gold in response to the devaluation of fiat currencies, Paulson has been a vocal advocate for investing in physical gold bullion.

Ray Dalio
Ray Dalio is another of the most famous gold buyers and owns one of the largest private gold reserves in the world. He’s the founder and co-chief investment officer of Bridgewater Associates, which manages $150 billion in assets. In the second quarter of 2020, Bridgewater Associates invested $400 million in gold holdings, including exchange-traded funds with the SPDR Gold Trust and the iShares Gold Trust.

Indian Families
Indian households have some of the largest gold reserves in the world. Most of these are in the form of gold jewelry, which is primarily for weddings and Diwali festivals. Indian families (not including what the banking system owns) have roughly 25,000–27,000 tons of gold. The most exciting fact is that a significant portion of these gold reserves is held by the rich and throughout the caste system.

Stanley Druckenmiller
Stanley Druckenmiller is a legend in the investing world. Like John Paulson, he predicted in 2005 that the Federal Reserve would trigger a housing crisis and economic collapse. In 2015, he had more than $292 million in exposure to the SPDR Gold Trust.

Eric Sprott
Another of the world’s most prominent investors in gold is Eric Sprott. He’s a Canadian who has invested vast amounts of money in precious metals, including gold mining and exploration companies like Labrador Gold, Benchmark Metals, Ethos Gold, and New Age Metals.

The Royal Family of Saudi Arabia
The royal family of Saudi Arabia is well known for being unimaginably wealthy and having some of the largest gold reserves in the world. They’re lavish spenders, with a reported net worth of approximately $1.4 trillion.

How Much Gold Is There in the World?

The World Gold Council reports an estimated 208,874 metric tons of gold mined worldwide. Even knowing that, it’s impossible to estimate how much gold in the world remains. While there is plenty, much of this physical gold is too deep to mine. Experts estimate that at a rate of 3,000 metric tons per year, the world’s currently accessible gold will have all been mined in less than 18 years unless new mines are discovered.

Some of the Most Notable Advocates for the Gold IRA

Peter Schiff
Peter Schiff successfully advocates the precious metals industry and gold IRAs (individual retirement accounts). He founded SchiffGold and still serves as honorary chairman since he sold the company in 2016 to Goldmoney. He considers precious metals, like gold IRAs, safe haven investments to hedge against inflation and the rapid weakening of our country’s currency.

James Rickards
James Rickards is another advocate for investing in gold and precious metal IRAs. He is an investor, advisor, and lawyer who frequently lectures on why Americans should buy gold and allocate about 10 percent of their wealth portfolio to precious metal investments. He was also the primary negotiator for the Federal Reserve when it rescued Long-Term Capital Management.

Robert Kiyosaki
Robert Kiyosaki is an American investor and the founder of the Rich Dad Company. He has long been a proponent of investing in physical gold and gold IRAs. He’s a financial advisor who aims to help people achieve financial independence through wise investing.

Laith Alsarraf
Another of the most prominent gold investors and advocates for precious metals and gold IRAs is Laith Alsarraf, who founded Birch Gold Group. He believes in empowering people and financial strength through knowledge, and is one of the most well-respected businessmen in the IRA industry.

Which Countries and National Governments Have the Largest Gold Reserves?

Which countries can claim to have all the gold? The U.S. Federal Reserve has the highest gold reserves in the world, thanks to its switch from the gold standard a few decades ago, when citizens could redeem national currency for gold. Our country’s gold reserves are around 8,133.5 metric tons. Furthermore, 75 percent of its foreign reserves are in gold as well. However, other countries also have significant gold reserves in their possession.

Second on the list is Germany, with 3,359 metric tons of gold. German investors are also rapidly investing in more gold than in previous years and are becoming some of the largest global investors in gold.

In the third position is Italy, with 2,452 metric tons. Other countries with large gold reserves include China, France, and Russia. Interestingly enough, the United States is considering freezing Russian gold reserves over the war in Ukraine. The World Bank reports that the International Monetary Fund also has some of the largest national assets, with official gold holdings at around 90.5 million ounces. The European Central Bank has also been buying more gold reserves, with about €26 billion invested in 2021.

Why Do Some Individuals Choose to Hold Gold Privately?

Is there a benefit to buying private gold instead of government-backed bullion? While the primary advantage of government bullion is its security and stability, it’s also far more expensive, mainly if it’s collectible. Unfortunately, that premium comes in the form of extra fees.

With private gold, investors can avoid those extra costs and use the money to purchase more bullion instead. Government bullion has a guarantee, so investors know their gold’s precise weight and purity, unlike private purchases. However, as long as you take the time to verify the seller and the quality of your gold before you purchase it, you can enjoy the benefits of private gold ownership while avoiding the extra expense of collector’s fees.

How Does Private Gold Ownership Affect Gold Prices?

If someone has a large privately owned gold reserve, does that affect the price of gold? Of course, as only a finite amount of gold is left in the world, the price will increase once supplies begin to dwindle, according to the law of supply and demand. While private ownership can affect gold prices if individuals buy enough gold to affect the supply, it’s not the only factor that impacts prices.

The availability of gold imports also affects prices, as developing countries that mine the metal often have supply-chain issues due to political reasons like civil war. A nation with a slightly weakened currency can also impact the export industry, increasing it by a large margin. In addition, factors like inflation, the central bank actions, and the mining industry also affect prices. Historically, when the stock market and paper assets decrease, the price of gold increases. Not all gold reserves in the central banks are legal, however. Illegally sourced gold has been a big problem and is another factor influencing spot prices.

Source: The Epoch Times

Is the Collapse of the Petrodollar Imminent? Here’s How It Could Impact the World’s Reserve Currency | International Man

By Nick Giambruno

It’s been rightly said that “he who holds the gold makes the rules.”

After World War 2, the US had the largest gold reserves in the world, by far. Along with winning the war, this let the US reconstruct the global monetary system around the dollar.

The new system, created at the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944, tied the currencies of virtually every country in the world to the US dollar through a fixed exchange rate. It also tied the US dollar to gold at a fixed rate of $35 per ounce.

The dollar was said to be “as good as gold.”

The Bretton Woods system made the US dollar the world’s premier reserve currency. It compelled other countries to store dollars for international trade or to exchange them with the US government for gold at the promised price.

However, it was doomed to fail.

Runaway spending on warfare and welfare caused the US government to print more dollars than it could back with gold at the promised price.

By 1967, the number of dollars circulating had drastically increased relative to the amount of gold backing them. This encouraged foreign countries to exchange their dollars for gold, draining the US gold supply at an alarming rate and collapsing the London Gold Pool. At this point, it was clear this system was breaking down.

On Sunday night, August 15, 1971, President Nixon interrupted the scheduled TV programs and made a surprise announcement to the nation—and the world. He announced the unilateral end of the Bretton Woods system and severed the dollar’s last tie to gold.

The end of the dollar’s gold backing had profound geopolitical consequences.

Most critically, it eliminated the main reason foreign countries stored large amounts of US dollars and used the US dollar for international trade. As a result, oil-producing countries began to demand payment in gold instead of rapidly depreciating dollars.

It was clear the US would have to create a new monetary system to stabilize the dollar. So it concocted a new scheme… and chose Saudi Arabia as its accomplice. This agreement came to be known as the “petrodollar system.”

The US handpicked Saudi Arabia because of its vast petroleum reserves and dominant position in the global oil market.

In essence, the petrodollar system was an agreement that the US would guarantee the House of Saud’s survival. In exchange, Saudi Arabia would do three things.

First, it would use its dominant position in OPEC to ensure that all oil transactions would only happen in US dollars.

Second, it would recycle hundreds of billions of US dollars from annual oil revenue into US Treasuries. This lets the US issue more debt and finance previously unimaginable budget deficits.

Third, it would guarantee the price of oil within limits acceptable to the US and prevent another oil embargo.

The petrodollar system gave foreign countries another compelling reason to hold and use the dollar. And it preserved the dollar’s unique status as the world’s top reserve currency.

But… why oil?

Oil is the largest and most strategic commodity market in the world.

As you can see in the chart below, it dwarfs all other major commodity markets combined. The annual production value of the oil market is ten times bigger than the gold market, for example.

2023-01-petrodollar-TFU.png (898×557)

Every country needs oil. And if foreign countries need US dollars to buy oil, they have a compelling reason to hold US dollars even if they are not backed by a promise to redeem them in gold.

Think about it… If France wants to buy oil from Saudi Arabia, it must purchase US dollars on the foreign exchange market to pay for the oil first.

This creates a huge artificial market for US dollars and differentiates the US dollar from a purely local currency, like the Mexican peso.

The dollar is just a middleman. It’s used in countless transactions, amounting to trillions of dollars that have nothing to do with US products or services.

Since the oil market is enormous, it acts as a benchmark for international trade. If foreign countries are already using dollars for oil, it’s easier to use the dollar for other international trade.

In addition to nearly all oil sales, the US dollar is used for about 80% of all international transactions.

Ultimately, the petrodollar boosts the US dollar’s purchasing power by enticing foreigners to soak up dollars.

The petrodollar system has helped create a deeper, more liquid market for the dollar and US Treasuries. It has also helped the US keep interest rates lower than they would otherwise be, allowing the US government to finance enormous deficits it otherwise would be unable to.

Multi-trillion deficits would otherwise be impossible without destroying the currency through money printing.

It’s hard to overstate how much the petrodollar system benefits the US. It’s the bedrock of the US financial system and has underpinned the dollar’s role as the world’s reserve currency since the 1970s.

That’s why the US government protects it so fiercely. It needs the system to survive.

World leaders who have challenged the petrodollar have ended up dead.

Take Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi, for example. Each led a large oil-producing country—Iraq and Libya, respectively. And both tried to sell their oil for something other than US dollars before US military interventions led to their deaths.

Of course, there were other reasons the US toppled Saddam and Gaddafi. But protecting the petrodollar was a serious consideration, at the very least.

When countries like Iraq and Libya challenge the petrodollar system, it’s one thing. The US military can dispatch them with ease.

However, it’s a whole other dynamic when China (and Russia) undermine the petrodollar system… which is happening in a big way right now.

China and Russia are the only countries with sophisticated enough nuclear arsenals to go toe-to-toe with the US up to the top of the military escalation ladder.

In other words, the US military can’t attack Russia and China with impunity because they can match each move up to all-out nuclear war—the very top of the military escalation ladder.

For this reason, the US is deterred from entering a direct military conflict with China and Russia—even though they are about to strike a fatal blow to the petrodollar system.

US Sanctions Accelerate Demise of Petrodollar

In the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the US government launched its most aggressive sanctions campaign ever.

Exceeding even Iran and North Korea, Russia is now the most sanctioned nation in the world.

“This is financial nuclear war and the largest sanctions event in history,” said a former US Treasury Department official.

He said, “Russia went from being part of the global economy to the single largest target of global sanctions and a financial pariah in less than two weeks.”

As part of this, the US government seized the US dollar reserves of the Russian central bank—the accumulated savings of the nation. (Washington did the same to Afghanistan’s dollar reserves after the Taliban took Kabul.)

It was a stunning illustration of the dollar’s political risk. The US government can seize another sovereign country’s dollar reserves at the flip of a switch.

The Wall Street Journal, in an article titled “If Russian Currency Reserves Aren’t Really Money, the World Is in for a Shock,” noted:

“Sanctions have shown that currency reserves accumulated by central banks can be taken away. With China taking note, this may reshape geopolitics, economic management and even the international role of the U.S. dollar.”

The head of the Russian Parliament recently called the US dollar a “candy wrapper” but not the candy itself. In other words, the dollar has the outward appearance of money but is not real money.

It’s important to remember some simple facts.

#1: Russia is the world’s largest energy producer.

#2: China is the world’s largest energy importer.

#3: Russia is China’s largest oil supplier.

And now that the US has banned Russia from the dollar system, there is an urgent need for a credible system capable of handling hundreds of billions worth of oil sales outside the US dollar and financial system.

The Shanghai International Energy Exchange (INE) is that system. The maturation of China’s alternative to the petrodollar is a big reason why the massive amount of energy trade between Russia and China occurs in yuan, not US dollars.

Further, Washington has threatened to sanction China similarly for years.

These threats against China may be a bluff, but if the US government carried them out—as it recently did against Russia—it would be like dropping a financial nuclear bomb on Beijing. Without access to dollars, China would have previously struggled to import oil and engage in international trade. As a result, its economy would come to a grinding halt, an intolerable threat to the stability of the Chinese government.

China would rather not depend on an adversary like this. It’s one of the main reasons it created an alternative to the petrodollar system. The INE allows oil producers to sell their products for yuan (and gold indirectly) while bypassing the US dollar, sanctions, and financial system.

Other countries on Washington’s sanctions list are enthusiastically signing up.

According to Credit Suisse, Russia, Iran, and Venezuela own 40% of the proven oil reserves of OPEC+ members. These countries are under strict US sanctions, which makes accepting US dollars and transacting globally challenging. So it’s no surprise that these sanctioned oil producers are happy to accept yuan as payment and support the petroyuan system.

But it’s not just sanctioned oil producers that benefit from the petroyuan…

Think about it. Any oil-producing country has two choices:

Option #1 – The Petrodollar

The dismal financial situation of the US guarantees the dollar will lose significant purchasing power.

Plus, there’s enormous political risk. Oil producers are exposed to the whims of the US government, which can confiscate their money whenever it wants, as it recently did to Russia.

Option #2 – Shanghai International Energy Exchange

Here, an oil producer can participate in the world’s largest market and try to capture more market share.

It can also easily convert and repatriate its proceeds into physical gold, an international form of money with no political or counterparty risk.

From the perspective of an oil producer, the choice is a no-brainer.

Even though most people have not realized it yet, we are at the end of the petrodollar system and on the cusp of a new monetary era.

There’s an excellent chance more financial turmoil is coming soon.

Are you ready for it?

Source: International Man

30th Anniversary Edition ~ Sovereign’s Handbook by Johnny Liberty Now Available! | Liberty International

If you have ever heard talk or been to a seminar about “sovereignty”, then very likely those conversations were influenced by the foundational research of the author and educator.

His research and educational journey reaching millions of people worldwide began in 1992 and culminated in 2022 with the 3-Volume book release – his final word on the subject.

At the turn of the millennium his books and audio courses facilitated in part –  a sovereignty and tax-honesty movement that involved millions of Americans.

This 3 Volume series comprises the life’s work of Johnny Liberty filled with comprehensive insights into the last few hundred years of history, law, economics, money, citizenship and governance. 

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Many of the answers may be found within these revolutionary pages. Available as a paperback, E-Book (PDF) or an Amazon Kindle format. Thank you for supporting the author. 

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With Freedom For All, 
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The Coming Global Financial Revolution: Russia Is Following the American Playbook | Global Research

By Ellen Brown

No country has successfully challenged the U.S. dollar’s global hegemony—until now. How did this happen and what will it mean?

Foreign critics have long chafed at the “exorbitant privilege” of the U.S. dollar as global reserve currency. The U.S. can issue this currency backed by nothing but the “full faith and credit of the United States.” Foreign governments, needing dollars, not only accept them in trade but buy U.S. securities with them, effectively funding the U.S. government and its foreign wars. But no government has been powerful enough to break that arrangement – until now. How did that happen and what will it mean for the U.S. and global economies?

The Rise and Fall of the PetroDollar

First, some history: The U.S. dollar was adopted as the global reserve currency at the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944, when the dollar was still backed by gold on global markets. The agreement was that gold and the dollar would be accepted interchangeably as global reserves, the dollars to be redeemable in gold on demand at $35 an ounce. Exchange rates of other currencies were fixed against the dollar.

But that deal was broken after President Lyndon Johnson’s “guns and butter” policy exhausted the U.S. kitty by funding war in Vietnam along with his “Great Society” social programs at home. French President Charles de Gaulle, suspecting the U.S. was running out of money, cashed in a major portion of France’s dollars for gold and threatened to cash in the rest; and other countries followed suit or threatened to.

In 1971, President Richard Nixon ended the convertibility of the dollar to gold internationally (known as “closing the gold window”), in order to avoid draining U.S. gold reserves. The value of the dollar then plummeted relative to other currencies on global exchanges. To prop it up, Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger made a deal with Saudi Arabia and the OPEC countries that OPEC would sell oil only in dollars, and that the dollars would be deposited in Wall Street and City of London banks. In return, the U.S. would defend the OPEC countries militarily. Economic researcher William Engdahl also presents evidence of a promise that the price of oil would be quadrupled. An oil crisis triggered by a brief Middle Eastern war did cause the price of oil to quadruple, and the OPEC agreement was finalized in 1974.

The deal held firm until 2000, when Saddam Hussein broke it by selling Iraqi oil in euros. Libyan president Omar Qaddafi followed suit. Both presidents wound up assassinated, and their countries were decimated in war with the United States. Canadian researcher Matthew Ehret observes:

We should not forget that the Sudan-Libya-Egypt alliance under the combined leadership of Mubarak, Qadhafi and Bashir, had moved to establish a new gold-backed financial system outside of the IMF/World Bank to fund large scale development in Africa. Had this program not been undermined by a NATO-led destruction of Libya, the carving up of Sudan and regime change in Egypt, then the world would have seen the emergence of a major regional block of African states shaping their own destinies outside of the rigged game of Anglo-American controlled finance for the first time in history.

The Rise of the PetroRuble

The first challenge by a major power to what became known as the petrodollar has come in 2022. In the month after the Ukraine conflict began, the U.S. and its European allies imposed heavy financial sanctions on Russia in response to the illegal military invasion. The Western measures included freezing nearly half of the Russian central bank’s 640 billion U.S. dollars in financial reserves, expelling several of Russia’s largest banks from the SWIFT global payment system, imposing export controls aimed at limiting Russia’s access to advanced technologies, closing down their airspace and ports to Russian planes and ships, and instituting personal sanctions against senior Russian officials and high-profile tycoons. Worried Russians rushed to withdraw rubles from their banks, and the value of the ruble plunged on global markets just as the U.S. dollar had in the early 1970s.

The trust placed in the U.S. dollar as global reserve currency, backed by “the full faith and credit of the United States,” had finally been fully broken. Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a speech on March 16 that the U.S. and EU had defaulted on their obligations, and that freezing Russia’s reserves marks the end of the reliability of so-called first class assets. On March 23, Putin announced that Russia’s natural gas would be sold to “unfriendly countries” only in Russian rubles, rather than the euros or dollars currently used. Forty-eight nations are counted by Russia as “unfriendly,” including the United States, Britain, Ukraine, Switzerland, South Korea, Singapore, Norway, Canada and Japan.

Putin noted that more than half the global population remains “friendly” to Russia. Countries not voting to support the sanctions include two major powers – China and India – along with major oil producer Venezuela, Turkey, and other countries in the “Global South.” “Friendly” countries, said Putin, could now buy from Russia in various currencies.

Russia Finance Minister: We May Abandon Dollar in Oil Trade as It Is Becoming “Too Risky”

On March 24, Russian lawmaker Pavel Zavalny said at a news conference that gas could be sold to the West for rubles or gold, and to “friendly” countries for either national currency or bitcoin.

Energy ministers from the G7 nations rejected Putin’s demand, claiming it violated gas contract terms requiring sale in euros or dollars. But on March 28, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia was “not engaged in charity” and won’t supply gas to Europe for free (which it would be doing if sales were in euros or dollars it cannot currently use in trade). Sanctions themselves are a breach of the agreement to honor the currencies on global markets.

Bloomberg reports that on March 30, Vyacheslav Volodin, speaker of the lower Russian house of parliament, suggested in a Telegram post that Russia may expand the list of commodities for which it demands payment from the West in rubles (or gold) to include grain, oil, metals and more. Russia’s economy is much smaller than that of the U.S. and the European Union, but Russia is a major global supplier of key commodities – including not just oil, natural gas and grains, but timber, fertilizers, nickel, titanium, palladium, coal, nitrogen, and rare earth metals used in the production of computer chips, electric vehicles and airplanes.

On April 2, Russian gas giant Gazprom officially halted all deliveries to Europe via the Yamal-Europe pipeline, a critical artery for European energy supplies.

U.K. professor of economics Richard Werner calls the Russian move a clever one – a replay of what the U.S. did in the 1970s. To get Russian commodities, “unfriendly” countries will have to buy rubles, driving up the value of the ruble on global exchanges just as the need for petrodollars propped up the U.S. dollar after 1974. Indeed, by March 30, the ruble had already risen to where it was a month earlier.

A Page Out of the “American System” Playbook

Russia is following the U.S. not just in hitching its national currency to sales of a critical commodity but in an earlier protocol – what 19th century American leaders called the “American System” of sovereign money and credit. Its three pillars were (a) federal subsidies for internal improvements and to nurture the nation’s fledgling industries, (b) tariffs to protect those industries, and (c) easy credit issued by a national bank.

Michael Hudson,  a research professor of economics and author of “Super-Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire” among many other books, notes that the sanctions are forcing Russia to do what it has been reluctant to do itself – cut reliance on imports and develop its own industries and infrastructure. The effect, he says, is equivalent to that of protective tariffs. In an article titled “The American Empire Self-destructs,” Hudson writes of the Russian sanctions (which actually date back to 2014):

Russia had remained too enthralled by free-market ideology to take steps to protect its own agriculture or industry. The United States provided the help that was needed by imposing domestic self-reliance on Russia (via sanctions). When the Baltic states lost the Russian market for cheese and other farm products, Russia quickly created its own cheese and dairy sector – while becoming the world’s leading grain exporter.

Russia is discovering (or is on the verge of discovering) that it does not need U.S. dollars as backing for the ruble’s exchange rate. Its central bank can create the rubles needed to pay domestic wages and finance capital formation. The U.S. confiscations thus may finally lead Russia to end neoliberal monetary philosophy, as Sergei Glaziev has long been advocating in favor of MMT [Modern Monetary Theory]. …

What foreign countries have not done for themselves – replacing the IMF, World Bank and other arms of U.S. diplomacy – American politicians are forcing them to do. Instead of European, Near Eastern and Global South countries breaking away out of their own calculation of their long-term economic interests, America is driving them away, as it has done with Russia and China.

Glazyev and the Eurasian Reset

Sergei Glazyev, mentioned by Hudson above, is a former adviser to President Vladimir Putin and the Minister for Integration and Macroeconomics of the Eurasia Economic Commission, the regulatory body of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU). He has proposed using tools similar to those of the “American System,” including converting the Central Bank of Russia to a “national bank” issuing Russia’s own currency and credit for internal development. On February 25, Glazyev published an analysis of U.S. sanctions titled “Sanctions and Sovereignty,” in which he stated:

[T]he damage caused by US financial sanctions is inextricably linked to the monetary policy of the Bank of Russia  …. Its essence boils down to a tight binding of the ruble issue to export earnings, and the ruble exchange rate to the dollar. In fact, an artificial shortage of money is being created in the economy, and the strict policy of the Central Bank leads to an increase in the cost of lending, which kills business activity and hinders the development of infrastructure in the country.

Glazyev said that if the central bank replaced the loans withdrawn by its Western partners with its own loans, Russian credit capacity would greatly increase, preventing a decline in economic activity without creating inflation.

Russia has agreed to sell oil to India in India’s own sovereign currency, the rupee; to China in yuan; and to Turkey in lira. These national currencies can then be spent on the goods and services sold by those countries. Arguably, every country should be able to trade in global markets in its own sovereign currency; that is what a fiat currency is – a medium of exchange backed by the agreement of the people to accept it at value for their goods and services, backed by the “full faith and credit” of the nation.

But that sort of global barter system would break down just as local barter systems do, if one party to the trade did not want the goods or services of the other party. In that case, some intermediate reserve currency would be necessary to serve as a medium of exchange.

Glazyev and his counterparts are working on that. In a translated interview posted on The Saker, Glazyev stated:

We are currently working on a draft international agreement on the introduction of a new world settlement currency, pegged to the national currencies of the participating countries and to exchange-traded goods that determine real values. We won’t need American and European banks. A new payment system based on modern digital technologies with a blockchain is developing in the world, where banks are losing their importance.

Russia and China have both developed alternatives to the SWIFT messaging system from which certain Russian banks have been blocked. London-based commentator Alexander Mercouris makes the interesting observation that going outside SWIFT means Western banks cannot track Russian and Chinese trades.

Geopolitical analyst Pepe Escobar sums up the plans for a Eurasian/China financial reset in an article titled “Say Hello to Russian Gold and Chinese Petroyuan.” He writes:

It was a long time coming, but finally some key lineaments of the multipolar world’s new foundations are being revealed.

On Friday [March 11], after a videoconference meeting, the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) and China agreed to design the mechanism for an independent international monetary and financial system. The EAEU consists of Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Belarus and Armenia, is establishing free trade deals with other Eurasian nations, and is progressively interconnecting with the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

For all practical purposes, the idea comes from Sergei Glazyev, Russia’s foremost independent economist ….

Quite diplomatically, Glazyev attributed the fruition of the idea to “the common challenges and risks associated with the global economic slowdown and restrictive measures against the EAEU states and China.”

Translation: as China is as much a Eurasian power as Russia, they need to coordinate their strategies to bypass the US unipolar system.

The Eurasian system will be based on “a new international currency,” most probably with the yuan as reference, calculated as an index of the national currencies of the participating countries, as well as commodity prices. …

The Eurasian system is bound to become a serious alternative to the US dollar, as the EAEU may attract not only nations that have joined BRI … but also the leading players in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) as well as ASEAN. West Asian actors – Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon – will be inevitably interested.

Exorbitant Privilege or Exorbitant Burden?

If that system succeeds, what will the effect be on the U.S. economy? Investment strategist Lynn Alden writes in a detailed analysis titled “The Fraying of the US Global Currency Reserve System” that there will be short-term pain, but, in the long run, it will benefit the U.S. economy. The subject is complicated, but the bottom line is that reserve currency dominance has resulted in the destruction of our manufacturing base and the buildup of a massive federal debt. Sharing the reserve currency load would have the effect that sanctions are having on the Russian economy – nurturing domestic industries as a tariff would, allowing the American manufacturing base to be rebuilt.

Other commentators also say that being the sole global reserve currency is less an exorbitant privilege than an exorbitant burden. Losing that status would not end the importance of the U.S. dollar, which is too heavily embedded in global finance to be dislodged. But it could well mean the end of the petrodollar as sole global reserve currency, and the end of the devastating petroleum wars it has funded to maintain its dominance.

Source: Global Research

Author: Ellen Brown is an attorney, chair of the Public Banking Institute, and author of thirteen books including Web of DebtThe Public Bank Solution, and Banking on the People: Democratizing Money in the Digital Age. She also co-hosts a radio program on PRN.FM called “It’s Our Money.” Her 300+ blog articles are posted at EllenBrown.com.

Russia sets fixed gold price as it restarts official bullion purchases | Kitco

By Anna Golubova

Russia’s central bank resumed its gold purchases from local banks on Monday, but it set a fixed price on the precious metal.

Starting this week, the Russian central bank will pay a fixed price of 5,000 roubles ($52) per gram between March 28 and June 30, the bank said on Friday. This is below the current market value of around $68.

The central bank added that the resumption in buying will ensure supply and uninterrupted production of local gold.

Two weeks ago, Russia’s central bank announced that it was halting its official gold purchases from local banks due to a surge in demand from regular consumers

This is because Russians went on a gold buying spree in March to protect their savings as the ruble collapsed. Major banks in Russia reported a rush of consumers investing in bullion and coins.

Sberbank, Russia’s largest financial institution, reported that demand for gold and palladium has quadrupled in the last few weeks. Meanwhile, Russia’s Ministry of Finance also referred to gold as an “ideal alternative” to the U.S. dollar.

Setting a fixed price for gold reminds some analysts of what the U.S. did during the “gold standard” years. The period between 1879 and 1914 is known as the classical gold standard era, during which one ounce of gold would represent $21. Then in the 1930s, the U.S. banned gold ownership and raised the value of the dollar in gold from $20.67 to $35 per ounce.

That price remained fixed until 1971 when Richard Nixon put a halt on the U.S. dollar’s convertibility into gold, which meant that other countries could no longer redeem dollars for gold. In 1973 the gold standard was scrapped.

“I am reminded of what the U.S. did in the middle of the Great Depression. For the next 40 years, gold’s price was pegged to the U.S. dollar at $35. There is a precedent for this. It leads me to believe that Russia’s intention would be for the value of the ruble to be linked directly to the value of gold,” Gainesville Coins precious metals expert Everett Millman told Kitco News. “Setting a fixed price for rubles per gram of gold seems to be the intention. That’s pretty important when it comes to how Russia could seek funding and manage its central bank financing outside of the U.S. dollar system.”

Gold is one of the most logical international currencies to use when you are trying to get around sanctions, Millman added.

Sanctions against Russian gold

Last week, the U.S. Treasury banned all gold transactions with Russia’s central bank.

“U.S. persons are prohibited from engaging in any transaction — including gold-related transactions — involving the Central Bank of the Russian Federation, the National Wealth Fund of the Russian Federation or the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation,” the Treasury said on its website.

These types of sanctions could be effective to an extent, said Millman. “It can have a significant impact if for no other reason than to force other partners to shy away from doing transactions with Russia in gold. At the same time, knowing that the global gold market can be rather opaque, it would be much more difficult to enforce that type of restriction or regulation,” he explained.

In response to escalating sanctions from the West for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Moscow said that “unfriendly” countries could be required to pay for Russian gas in rubles or gold, according to the chair of Russia’s Duma Committee on energy.

“If they want to buy, let them pay either in hard currency, and this is gold for us, or pay as it is convenient for us; this is the national currency,” Pavel Zavalny said at a news conference on Thursday.

Russia is also considering accepting Bitcoin for its oil and gas exports and being more flexible in general regarding payment options with “friendly” countries.

“We have been proposing to China for a long time to switch to settlements in national currencies for rubles and yuan … With Turkey, it will be lira and rubles,” Zavalny said. “You can also trade bitcoins.”

Source: Kitco

The Collapse of the Western Fiat Monetary System may have Begun. China, Russia and the Reemergence of Gold-Backed Currencies | Global Research

By Peter Koenig

On 19 April 2016, China was rolling out its new gold-backed yuan. Russia’s ruble has been fully supported by gold for the last couple of years. Nobody in the western media talks about it. Why would they? – A western reader may start wondering why he is constantly stressed by a US dollar based fiat monetary systems that is manipulated at will by a small elite of financial oligarchs for their benefit and to the detriment of the common people. 

In a recent Russia Insider article, Sergey Glaziev, one of Russia’s top economists and advisor to President Putin said about Russia’s currency, “The ruble Is the most gold-backed currency in the world”. He went on explaining that the amount of rubles circulating is covered by about twice the amount of gold in Russia’s Treasury.
In addition to a financial alliance, Russia and China also have developed in the past couple of years their own money transfer system, the China International Payment System, or the CIPS network which replaces the western transfer system, SWIFT, for Russian-Chinese internal trading. SWIFT, stands for the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, a network operating in 215 countries and territories and used by over 10,000 financial institutions.

Up until recently almost every international monetary transaction had to use SWIFT, a private institution, based in Belgium. ‘Private’ like in the US Federal Reserve Bank (FED), Wall Street banks and the Bank for International Settlements (BIS); all are involved in international monetary transfers and heavily influenced by the Rothschild family. No wonder that the ‘independent’ SWIFT plays along with Washington’s sanctions, for example, cutting off Iran from the international transfer system. Similarly, Washington used its arm-twisting with SWIFT to help Paul Singer’s New York Vulture Fund to extort more than 4 billion dollars from Argentina, by withholding Argentina’s regular debt payments as was agreed with 93% of all creditors. Eventually Argentina found other ways of making its payments, not to fall into disrepute and insolvency.

All of this changed for Argentina, when Mauricio Macri, the new neoliberal President put in place by Washington, appeared on the scene last December. He reopened the negotiations and is ready to pay a sizable junk of this illegal debt, despite a UN decision that a country that reaches a settlement agreement with the majority of the creditors is not to be pressured by non-conforming creditors. In the case of Argentina, the vulture lord bought the country’s default debt for a pittance and now that the nation’s economy had recovered he wants to make a fortune on the back of the population. This is how our western fraudulent monetary system functions.

China’s economy has surpassed that of the United States and this new eastern alliance is considered an existential threat to the fake western economy. CIPS, already used for trading and monetary exchange within China and Russia, is also applied by the remaining BRICS, Brazil, India and South Africa; and by the members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), plus India, Pakistan and Iran, as well as the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU – Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Tajikistan). It is said that CIPS is ready to be launched worldwide as early as September 2016. It would be a formidable alternative to the western dollar based monetary Ponzi scheme.

The new eastern monetary sovereignty is one of the major reasons why Washington tries so hard to destroy the BRICS, mainly China and Russia – and lately with a special effort of false accusations also Brazil through a Latin America type Color Revolution.

In addition, the Yuan late last year was accepted by the IMF in its SDR basket as the fifth reserve currency, the other four being the US dollar, the British pound, the euro and the Japanese yen. The SDR, or Special Drawing Right, functions like a virtual currency. It is made up of the weighted average of the five currencies and can be lent to countries at their request, as a way of reducing exchange risks. Being part of the SDR, the yuan has become an official reserve currency. In fact, in Asia the yuan is already heavily used in many countries’ treasuries, as an alternative to the ever more volatile US dollar.

It is no secret, the western dollar-led fiat monetary system is on its last leg – as eventually any Ponzi scheme will be. What does ‘fiat’ mean? It is money created out of thin air. It has no backing whatsoever; not gold, not even the economic output generated by the country or countries issuing the money, i.e. the United States of America and Europe. It is simply declared “legal tender’’ by Government decree.

No pyramid scheme is sustainable in the long run and eventually will collapse. It was invented and is used by a small invisible upper crest of elite making insane amounts of profit on the back of the 99% of us. Since these elitists are in control of the media with their lie propaganda, as well as the warmongering killing machine, US armed forces, NATO, combined with the international security and spy apparatus, CIA, MI6, Mossad, DGSE, the German Federal Intelligence Service (BND) and more, we are powerless – but powerless only as long as we ignore what’s really going on behind the curtain.

Our western monetary system is based on debt has all the hallmarks of a failing global monster octopus. The US banking system was deregulated in the 1990’s by President Clinton. The European vassals followed suit in the early 2000’s. About 97% of all the money in circulation in the western world is ‘made’ by private banks by a mouse click in the form of ‘loans’ or debt. Every loan a private bank hands out is a liability on that bank’s books; a liability that bears interest, the key generator of the banks’ profits. Profit from thin air! No work, no production, no real added value to the economy.

If and when the banks within this web of debt begin recalling their outstanding liabilities, they may set a non-stoppable avalanche in motion – leading to a chaotic end of the system. This end-run may have just begun. We have seen a gradual build-up since the end of WWII with the armament of the Cold War farce, and a high point with the manufactured sub-prime crisis of 2007 / 2008 / 2009, prompting an artificial and endless global economic crisis which may come crashing down in 2016 / 2017.

The damage may be humongous, leaving behind chaos, poverty, famine, misery – death. With the invisible ruling elite having cashed in, remaining on top and being liable to start again from scratch. – If we let them. It always boils down to the same: An uninformed people can be manipulated at will and is left in awe when hit by unexpected events, like acts of terror by bombs or banks.

Let us be crystal clear – we are all uninformed as long as we listen to and believe in the mainstream media – which are controlled by six Anglo-Zionist media giants, feeding the western public with 90% of the information, the so-called ‘news’ that we consume so eagerly every day; the barrage of lies that repeat themselves in every western country every hour on the hour – and, thus, become the truth. Period.

We must get out of our comfortable armchairs, listen to that innermost spark in the back of our minds, telling us against all avalanches of lies that there is something wrong, that we are being fed deception. We have to dig for the truth. And it is there – on internet, on alternative media, like Global Research, Information Clearing House, VNN, The Saker, NEO, Russia Today, Sputnik News, PressTV, TeleSUR – and many more credible sources of truth-seekers.

Back to the impending collapse. – The ground rules for our pyramid monetary scheme have been laid in 1913 by the creation of the FED. Again, the FED is an entirely private, Rothschild dominated banking institution that serves as the US Central Bank. It is the omnipotent dollar making machine. It was fraudulently and secretly conceived in 1910 on Jekyll Island, Georgia, and described by Jekyll Island history (http://www.jekyllislandhistory.com/federalreserve.shtml ) as the “duck hunt” which

“included Senator Nelson Aldrich, his personal secretary Arthur Shelton, former Harvard University professor of economics Dr. A. Piatt Andrew, J.P. Morgan & Co. partner Henry P. Davison, National City Bank president Frank A. Vanderlip and Kuhn, Loeb, and Co. partner Paul M. Warburg. From the start the group proceeded covertly. They began by shunning the use of their last names and met quietly at Aldrich’s private railway car in New Jersey.”

The concoction of these secretive “duck hunters” became in 1913 the privately owned Rothschild dominated Federal Reserve System, the US central bank by deceit.

After signing the FED act into existence, President Woodrow Wilson declared,

“I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the civilized world no longer a Government by free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men.”

The Anglo-Saxon system had a central bank in England since way back in 1694. It was then already controlled by the Rothschilds, as was the entire banking system. Baron Nathan Mayer Rothschild once declared:

“I care not what puppet is placed upon the throne of England to rule the Empire on which the sun never sets. The man that controls Britain’s money supply controls the British Empire, and I control the British money supply.”

The Rothschild family’s fortune cannot be properly estimated, but it must be in the trillions. What Baron Nathan Mayer Rothschild may have said some 300 years ago, still holds true to this day.

No wonder, breaking loose of this sham monetary scheme is number one priority of most countries that treasure sovereignty, autonomy and freedom, though they do not dare say so openly, lest the empire lashes out at them punishing them with the very financial terror they want to escape from. And lashing out at the unaligned world the empire does, like a dying beast, attempting to pull with it much of the living world into its own shoveled grave.

Is it therefore coincidence or a rather a purposefully planned convergence of several events as a last ditch effort first to ravage then to salvage as much as possible before the collapse?

On 10 April, Zero Hedge reports “Austria Just Announced A 54% Haircut of Senior Creditors in First “Bail In” Under New European Rules”. The Austrian “bad bank”, the failed Hypo Alpe Adria, that became Heta Asset Resolution AG after the government’s nationalization, found a US$ 8.5 billion hole in its balance sheet, enough to trigger the new European ‘bail-in’ rule. Is it coincidence that also in Austria a major bank failure triggered the Great Depression also on a 10th of April – in 1931? – This is a first in Europe. Be prepared for others to follow, as over-extension of European banks is estimated in excess of a trillion dollars.

On 15 April, the New York Times reported that – Five of Wall Street’s eight largest banks are in defiance of the US banking regulator. The FED and FDIC said that “JP Morgan, Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, State Street and Bank of New York, all lacked ‘credible‘ plans to enter bankruptcy in the event of a financial crisis.” These banks have until October 2016 to comply. Under the new rules a tax-payer bail-out would be unlikely. Hence ‘bail-ins’ could affect millions of depositors and shareholders, their funds being stolen in order to self-rescue the too-big-to-fail banks. After all, non-compliance with the regulator’s requests, or insolvency, can easily be manufactured as a legal base for stealing common people’s savings. No worries, the TBTF banks will not go away, but your savings may.

The CIA released Panama Papers (for who still doubts about the CIA involvement in the release of the Panama Papers,

read here http://journal-neo.org/2016/04/09/the-panama-papers-the-people-deceived/),

aimed in a most rudimentary way at defaming the ‘usual suspects’, Presidents Putin and Assad, as well as Iran, Venezuela, Brazil, of course – and others. Strangely no notable EU or US citizens or corporations were on the list. Would anybody seriously believe that Mr. Putin, a former KGB agent, would be so ignorant as to putting his fortune (even if he had any to hide) into Panama, the epitome of a US puppet state, where you can’t flush a toilet without Washington knowing it?

Some token neocons appear in the published papers, like Argentina’s new ‘Washington appointed’ President Mauricio Macri, who is running amok ruining his country. Within less than four months he has rolled Argentina’s economy back by ten years, raising poverty from below 10% in November 2015 to 34% by the end March 2016. The Empire needs him to keep gradually turning Argentina into chaos, however not too quickly, lest he may be ‘deposed’ and replaced by a US adversary – that would not at all be appreciated in Washington. For the types of Macri that made it on the list, the Panama Papers are a warning signal to keep them in-check.

The publication of the Panama Papers may also be an incentive for US citizens and corporations to bring home trillions of undeclared dollar holdings stacked away in overseas tax havens into homeland financial shelters like those in Delaware, Wyoming, South Dakota and Nevada, thereby helping strengthen the gradually decaying dollar.

Simultaneously, some European countries and Japan introduced negative interest rates, so as to increase monetary liquidity, thereby hoping stimulating an ever stagnant economy. That’s the pretext. In reality however, negative interests are but a precursor to a wholly bank controlled financial system. Normally ‘bail-ins’ and negative interest would cause a run on the banks. This has not happened yet.

In Switzerland, one of the first countries to introduce negative interests, the Swiss National Bank reported that the demand of the 1,000 franc notes – one of the world’s highest value denominations (apparently to be maintained despite ECB Draghi’s call for elimination of high denomination bank notes) – increased by 17% (by CHF 4.7 billion – US$ 4.85 billion) in December 2014, the month following the introduction of negative interests. May it be an indication that the Swiss have quietly started hoarding big-denomination cash?

Future hoarding and runs on the banks will be countered by the introduction of a cashless society, i.e. all monetary transactions will gradually become electronic. The process has already begun. In Sweden and other parts of Europe, as well as Japan, cashless supermarkets and department stores claim big success, especially with the young consumers, who happily play along paying electronic cashiers by swiping their cell phones in front of an electronic eye.

The Young and Innocent – if they only knew that the banking oligarchs want to control their money and enslave them with a ‘fun gadget’, they may decide to resist.  But well know those who control the system that the young are the drivers of the future. We, the old resistance will eventually die out. Problem solved. – But we are not dead yet. The Times are A-Changing… (Bob Dylan, 1964).

The nefarious trio – ‘bail-ins’, negative interests, and a cash free society – will make living in the industrialized ‘first world’ a sheer nuisance, a stressful dance on toes, as the emperor’s proverbial Damocles Sword hangs intimidatingly above us.

Washington may have one last joker up its sleeve – reintroducing the ‘gold standard’, the very gold standard that Nixon abandoned in 1971. The US have also been accumulating huge amounts of gold over the past 25 years. A new US dollar gold standard would most likely be set at a ratio that would wipe out all US debt, including future ‘unmet obligations’ (GAO – General Accounting Office) of about US$ 125 trillion. It would attempt to keep the western industrialized world in Washington’s orbit, but might lose most of the developing world owning natural resources coveted by the west. These countries oppressed and colonized for centuries are likely to gravitate to the new China-Russia alliance – leaving the outsourced and outwitted west alone without workforce – and with a massive but outdated military power.

To counter the build-up of this criminal last ditch sham by the western Zionist banking czars, China and Russia have been preparing over the last few years an independent financial system, delinked from the US dollar and which now incorporates the BRICS, the SCO nations, as well as the Eurasian Economic Union. This association of countries and economies account for about half the world’s population and at least one third of the globe’s economic output; a fact totally ignored by the mainstream media, for obvious reasons. The Machiavellian sinking ship does not want its passengers to jump to safety.

The 19 April 2016, announcement by China of its gold-backed yuan, no longer convertible into dollars, may just trigger an economic shift into the ‘eastern camp’. Many countries are wary and tired of western exploitation, enslavement, threats of sanctions, oppression and an ever present danger of invasion by the killing machine. The decoupling of the dollar by a third of the world economy may indeed open new horizons, creating new alliances, new hope for a more equal and just world.

Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a former World Bank staff and worked extensively around the world in the fields of environment and water resources. He writes regularly for Global Research, ICH, RT, Sputnik, PressTV, CounterPunch, TeleSur, The Vineyard of The Saker Blog, and other internet sites. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance.

Nothing Is Ever As It Seems And No Respite For Precious Metals | Gold Eagle

By Michael Noonan

5StackedCoinsAn eminent collapse of the US fiat petrodollar? China and Russia, with their enormous build-up of physical gold over the last several years, waiting in the wings to lead a new gold-backed currency?  The growing BRICS alliance to unseat the elite’s Western NWO and its banking system?

A growing likelihood on the first question, and no and no to the latter two questions. In fact, the elites are probably doing more to destroy the fiat Federal Reserve “dollar” than any other group or alliance. There has been talk about the US destroying the dollar for at least the past four years. Kyle Bass even made the pronouncement whereby a senior Obama administration official told him, “We’re just going to kill the dollar.” That is exactly what is happening and coming from “inside information.”

What most people refuse to understand, if not even acknowledge, is the extent to which the elites have an utter stranglehold on the world’s financial system, and by world we do not mean just the Western world.  China and Russia are included. There is no single country that can exist without the machinations of the elite’s banking system. They have been running the world for a few hundred years and are masters at it.

Russia has enough gold to back its ruble in some way. Understand that the current price for gold does not represent a fair standard of value.  It is vastly undervalued, and one day, the reality of what should be a fair value for gold and silver will occur. They are both money and measures of value. Most people have reversed their thinking and measure the value of PMs by valueless fiat. This is a huge mistake and reflects how well the elites have successfully exercised mind control over the masses to maintain this false belief.

The agenda for a New World Order is at least 100 years old, when bankers and corporate presidents were all aiming to control every aspect of industry via financial manipulation, straight from the well-established Rothschild “game book,” as it were. This unabated zeal for world control is not something that has been in the works for just the past several decades. Knowledge of this does not come from an announcement in the New York Times or Wall Street Journal; rather, one has to diligently read through a myriad of source material and then see how the dots are connected.

In a nutshell, if the elites have their way, and to date they remain unopposed, the fiat Federal Reserve Note, aka the debt “dollar,” will be replaced with some form of a new international currency, or perhaps SDRs [Special Drawing Rights], an international basket of currencies. All money may exist as computer credits that can be readily tracked.  If anyone dare oppose the bankers, poof, your credits just disappeared, and you have nothing. Bankers rely on debt largesse and fear.

There will be no sovereign nations.  All countries will be held accountable to the new Wizard Of OZ bankers behind the curtain, much like the experiment called the European Union. The EU may fall apart, but the lessons learned will not be lost, and in fact they will be honed to format what is to come. The handful of banking elite that rule the Western economies will become “elite-er.”

What of China and Russia?  Both have advocated respect for the IMF with expressed desires to be participants in the system. The system will change, to be sure: no more Federal Reserve fiat “dollar” as the world’s reserve currency. Not a few hold out the errant belief that the BRICS nations, primarily China and Russia, will replace the elite’s banking system. Absolutely not! The elites are redesigning the next phase of their control over the financial world to include the BRICS, all eager to join the “club” for the first time and be major participants on the financial world stage.

The question is, will Russia make it before the Obama administration, under direct control of the elites, destroys the Russian economy? Perhaps a better question to ask is, CAN the elites take down Russia?    Just as the United States, as a physical country was replete with so many natural resources, which have all had their existence sucked out of them, Russia has the most natural resources of the entire world, and the bankers want control over them. There is one big obstacle: Vladimir Putin.

If Putin had his way, he would kick the Russian Central Bank out of Russia. It was created, designed and controlled by the Rothschilds, so Putin has little control over it. The Russian central banking elite have been getting wealthy from their arrangement, and they are not about to give up their Golden Goose.

If you want to understand why Obama has chosen to overthrow the sovereign Ukrainian government and replaced it with a puppet leader that has been conducting genocide against Russian loyalists in Eastern Ukraine, the Donbas area, it is a not-so-indirect [non]declaration of war. This has been followed up by another form of war via all the economic sanctions Obama has been strong-arming the EU to enforce against Russia to their own detriment. The US does not care, as long as it gets its way.

Western bankers will not allow Putin to remove the Russian central bank, as he is trying to do. The elites have a 3-pronged attack against Putin: 1. military threat, [Russia is more than up to the task], 2. economic sanctions, [mostly backfiring and costing the EU more], and 3. Russian banker oligarchs who will do anything to oppose Putin in order to preserve their banker-criminal enterprise.  With US history as a guide, presidential opposition, Lincoln, Garfield, Kennedy, and Reagan prove that assassinations have their effect and may not be out of the question.

It is interesting to see the West [really just Wall Street banks] attack the ruble causing it to lose about 60% of its value relative to the fiat “dollar.”***  Will it succeed, or is Putin allowing the attack to push down the value of the ruble, and at the bottom rush in to buy as much as he can, using the sale of over-valued Treasury holdings owned by Russia? In the process, flooding the market with US bonds will put pressure on the fiat “dollar,” and viola, a reverse financial coup by Putin.

***Russia has less than $700 million in debt, the US has over $18 trillion; Russian debt is about 15% of GDP, the US runs at over 100% of GDP; Russia runs a budget surplus, the US runs a burgeoning deficit; Russia has gold to back it currency, the US now only has the military to back its fiat and increasingly widely shunned “dollar;” Russia has the largest natural resources in the world, the US has depleted or ruined most of its natural resources. With which of these two countries does the rest of the world want to conduct business?

China is not in a position to have its renminbi become a world reserve currency, and that country has been announcing its support in becoming a stronger member in the IMF via participating in SDRs with its national currency.  For China, it becomes a major world player and participates in a remake of the financial COMPOSITION [not replacement] of the existing world banking system.

For the elites, it is a match made in heaven.  The US, as a spent nation, gets dumped and China becomes  a willing replacement in the pecking order. To what degree Russia is a participant remains to be seen.  While China and Russia have become stronger trading partners, China is not above seeing Russia weakened to China’s advantage. All is never as it seems.

2014 is ending unexpectedly for PMs, considerably weaker than what most thought would be sharply higher prices. Based on what the charts are conveying, at least the initial part of 2015 will not fare much better.  Supply and demand are not the driving factors. World financial dominance is. A number of PM “experts” are not focusing on this aspect.

If it has not yet become clear, seeing how the banking elites are attacking Russia, militarily and economically, willing to destroy that country, and seeing how the US is being used in its own self-destruction, willing to impose its military might and debt sabotaging of other nations, then those who cannot understand the process will never understand how gold and silver have become useful pawns in the service of the elite bankers and now how China is positioning itself to become the next United States as a world superpower. The role of Russia remains a question.  The role of gold and silver is also a burning question.

As to  substantially higher gold and silver prices in the “great reset” scheme, it makes no sense for the still-in-control elites to allow PMs to be dramatically revalued too high. Neither gold nor silver will ever be allowed to compete with their fiat monetary system. We have no clue how gold and silver will ultimately be re-priced, nor do we think does anyone else, despite all the numbers being bandied about.

What we know for sure is that the trend of any market is the most powerful and most influential force, and this week’s analysis of the PMs market is a simple fact-based one. It takes time and effort to change a trend. To whatever degree these market are being manipulated, even the manipulators eventually “show their hand” through price and volume activity. We see no change for prices remaining low, if not even making newer recent lows in the months ahead.

It does not alter the view and necessity for the ongoing accumulation of the physical metals, for having them will be essential when the big “reset” finally hits. Time remains on the side of the buyers, but low prices may give way to higher premiums in order to keep the game alive.

Last week, we wanted to see gold rally strongly on increased volume, taking out 1250 with ease. That did not happen and until it does, gold remains on the defensive and subject to staying at current levels. The longer gold stays at these levels, the greater the probability for another low. Chart comments provide the factual explanation. Read more…

Source: Gold Eagle