I want the whole of Europe to have one currency; it will make trading much easier. Napoleon Bonaparte
Five years ago today the government faced one of the biggest financial crises in history. It was a day when the Bank of England lost billions and speculators made fortunes. A day of disaster from the which the government never recovered. Black Wednesday, BBC 1997
It would be a revolution: the Pound’s value would be locked against the German Deutschmark and other currencies. ibid.
The prime minister took the decision without negotiation. ibid.
In the City the crisis that would become Black Wednesday was brewing. ibid.
A dramatic announcement live on television that as of twelve midnight that evening the 500 and 1,000 Rupee notes would no longer be accepted as legal tender in the country. The Corbett Report, The Indian Demonetization Disaster Explained, James Corbett online 2017
Death by Demonetization. ibid. Satya Sagar article
Yes, the block chain is truly revolutionary. Yes, Bitcoin is Tulipmania 2.0. Yes, cryptocurrency is a nail in the coffin of the bankster parasites. Yes, digital currency is a tool of the totalitarian tyrants. No, these statements are not contradictory. The Corbett Report, The Bit-Coin Psy-Op, James Corbett online 2018
Bitcoin is a peer to peer cryptocurrency whose transactions are recorded in a public block chain ledger. ibid.
Bitcoins made some people very rich indeed. At least on paper. For some investors here it’s a rollercoaster ride as values plunge. Panorama: Who Wants to be a Bitcoin Millionaire? BBC 2018
Behind the hype we uncover a plain old-fashioned scam. ibid.
If you had bought £50’ worth of Bitcoin at the beginning of 2011 it would now be worth more than £1,000,000. ibid.
And wherever there’s the promise of gold there’s also those who want to exploit the prospectors. ibid.
All the money literally disappeared in a couple of months without a single school, hospital or bridge ever being built. PSTV.tv – New American Century
1999: ‘The one thing that’s missing that will soon be developed is a reliable e-cash.’ Bitcoin: Beyond the Bubble, Milton Friedman, 2018
Beneath all the hype and hysteria lies what could be the most important technology of our lifetimes. ibid.
It’s a digital currency, much like the electronic currency we use today. But it’s also the payment network which facilitates the transfer of this new digital currency from one person to another. ibid.
The Bitcoin network is decentralised. ibid.
All Bitcoin transactions are crytographically verified by thousands of computers on the Bitcoin network. ibid.
Bitcoin hits $11,000 as Cryptocurrencies fuel renewed interest. ibid. RT news header
Bitcoin jumps 1,000% this year. (Currency & Bitcoin & Internet & Money) ibid. CNN news header
Welcome to a world in which we can be our own bank. We take it for granted that money creation is controlled by governments and banks. But there’s a community of people who don’t see this as a given and who get quite worked up about it. This community is switching to what they think is a better monetary system. The Bitcoin Gospel, VPRO 2015
‘It is not a system based on debt. It is a system based on ownership.’ ibid. Andreas Antonopoulos
Proponents speaks passionately about a digital miracle that can save the world from financial ruin. The Bitcoin story starts off like a gospel revelation. ibid.
The block-chain technology: a global open ledger which can be used to share much more than just money. ibid.
At Bretton Woods the US had promised to be the world’s reserve currency backed by gold. But the Fed had created far more dollars than it could ever redeem in gold. And now the US could no longer keep that promise. Money for Nothing: Inside the Federal Reserve, 2013
For the first time in history the dollar was just a piece of paper backed only by faith in the Federal Reserve and its policies. That promise was only as good as the Fed actions behind it … The dollar lost more than half its value. ibid.
The Euro has not only not made the Europeans better off but it has inflicted an historic defeat upon European capitalism; secondly, rather than proving helpful in the crisis that followed 2008, what the Euro has done, the Euro’s architectural design amplified massively the tsunami that hit the continent of Europe … and consequently led to the current political disintegration of the political centre. Yanis Varoufakis, Oxford Union 2015, Youtube 55.42
The fragmentation of the Euro zone is at an advanced stage. ibid.
The stronger it [Euro] is, the weaker the population living under it. ibid.
It has not just been a failure, it has been pointless … It was less than pointless, it was destructive. ibid.
We [Greece] were the apple in the eye of German bankers. ibid.
There was a deluge of credit cards that people were receiving in the mail. ibid.
They shifted the gigantic losses of the idiotic banks on to the shoulders of the taxpayers – it’s called austerity. ibid.
This is malice by design. ibid.
Deflation begets monsters. ibid.
Transitioning from an inflationary world to a deflationary world – people should be scared. There is going to be disruption and that disruption is coming no matter what. There is nothing fundamental that governments can do to stop the rate of technology progress. Jeff Booth, interview The Keiser Report August 2020, author The Price of Tomorrow: Why Deflation is the Key to an Abundant Future, RT August 2020
You have technology moving at an exponential pace driving prices down, and governments all around the world [are] caught in an inflationary trap that they created themselves our of monetary policy, fighting that force. And I would ask a simple question – isn’t it good when the value of your money goes up, and prices go down? ibid.
The abundance of technology would be broadly distributed. ibid.
It’s not going to go on for ever no matter what … It doesn’t matter until it does. One giant thing they miss that this is they assume a reserve currency goes on for ever, right, and you can just keep printing and people just trust in your currency. ibid.
What if a country, let’s say China, created a currency and decided to keep on printing for ever, and they used the currency and they used it to buy the world? … Would we trust that currency? ibid.
And so you can see from that thought experiment that if you just keep on printing money, people lose faith in your currency, and so you don’t have a reserve currency any more. So there’s a whole bunch of people like I think are like brainwashed in this ‘debt doesn’t matter’, that this can go on for ever. And it’s going to happen gradually … There is nothing that can that stop this. We are going to have deflation for sure. Structurally, technology requires it. The path to get to deflation could end up through hyper-inflation first – currency default, debt default – it could happen a whole bunch of different ways but we are going to have deflation anyhow. ibid.
The concentration of wealth because you’re fighting a natural force – Capitalism can’t work, right, so effectively the Government is the market today. Free market principles don’t work any more. ibid.
Deflation we’ve never seen in our lifetimes. What if next year everything around you got cheaper? All it does is increase the value of your savings, and decrease the value of your assets. (Inflation & Capitalism & Economics & Technology & Future & Prices & Value & Money & Dollar & Currency & Bitcoin & Market & Debt & Revolution) ibid.
Why do you think the top five technology companies are at historic heights? ibid.
Everybody knows it. ibid.
More band-aids on a systematic, a structural change that has to take place. And so what they’re really trying to stop is a revolution, right, but they’re making the revolution more likely. ibid.
Currency markets decided to take on the British government. They deliberately set out to force John Major to devalue and to leave the Exchange Rate Mechanism. It was to be a defining battle over who now really controlled Britain’s economy – the markets or the government. Adam Curtis, The Mayfair Set IV: Twilight of the Dogs, BBC 1999
In 1792 Thomas Jefferson adopted the dollar as this country’s official monetary unit. Jefferson in particular spoke eloquently of the dangers of paper money. Money, Banking and the Federal Reserve, 2006
Italy and J P Morgan entered into a currency swap. Frontline: Money, Power and Wall Street IV, PBS 2012