By James Corbett

The House of Saud is in crisis as MBS consolidates his hold on the kingdom and prepares to transform Saudi Arabia in his image. But what is behind the purge, and how does it relate to the future of the world monetary system. Join James for a classic Corbett Report debriefing on the Saudi purge and the rise of the petroyuan.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkXyWPVkqcg?feature=oembed&w=777&h=437]

See transcript and sources here.

Visit CorbettReport.com, support at Patreon, subscribe on YouTube and Steemit, and follow James on Twitter.

By Mike Maharrey

A Kentucky bill prefiled for the 2017 session would remove sales taxes from the purchase of gold and silver, encouraging its use and taking the first step toward breaking the Federal Reserve’s monopoly on money.

Sen. John Schickel (R-Union) prefiled BR156 on Oct. 11. The legislation would exempt bullion or currency purchases from state sales tax. This would include gold, silver, platinum, or palladium bars, ingots or commemorative medallions for which the value depends on its metal content, not its form. It would also exempt coins or currency made of gold silver or other metals paper currency used as legal tender.

Under the proposed legislation, the exemption would remain in place for five years.

Imagine if you asked a grocery clerk to break a $5 bill and he charged you a 35 cent tax. Silly, right? After all, you were only exchanging one form of money for another. But that’s essentially what Kentucky’s sales tax on gold and silver does. By removing the sales tax on the exchange of gold and silver, Kentucky would treat specie as money instead of a commodity. This represents a small step toward reestablishing gold and silver as legal tender and breaking down the Fed’s monopoly on money.

Practically speaking, eliminating taxes on the sale of gold and silver would crack open the door for people to begin using specie in regular business transactions.This would mark an important small step toward currency competition. If sound money gains a foothold in the marketplace against Federal Reserve notes, the people would be able to choose the time-tested stability of gold and silver over the central bank’s rapidly depreciating paper currency.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

By Tom Luongo

The Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee chose not to raise interest rates six days out from an election.  The statement was also clear as mud on whether it would raise rates at the December meeting.

Bond traders, however, are very clear in their interpretations of the statement; boosting the odds of a December rate hike to near 80%.

There is deep division within the FOMC between those focused on domestic needs — served by higher rates — and those playing at being Central Bank of the World.  The Fed has held back on raising rates all year on fears of sparking a massive rally in the dollar.

Ignore talk of a strengthening U.S. economy.  Most of the statistics are noise, if outright fabrications.  The problems the Fed faces are tied up with consequences of nearly eight years of zero-bound interest rates destroying risk-pricing the world over.

And now, those imbalances threaten a massive dollar rally.

From Rate Hike to Global Recession

By Mac Slavo

In the ongoing saga of Venezuela’s sad economic slide into hell, it came as a strong arm move on the part of President Maduro.

Bank runs are happening in Venezuela, but not to pull money from the banks; rather, to get their 100 Bs. bills into the banks before a 72-hour time limit expires and the notes become outlawed currency that is no longer officially recognized.

Long lines once again, and this time for the opportunity not to lose all the money that these struggling people have been saving up and safeguarding amid this insane and chaotic world of Venezuela:

Venezuelans are rushing to the banks this week in a desperate attempt to protect their savings from the government’s latest spasm of reckless financial policymaking.

[T]he government gave everyone a 72-hour countdown to turn in all their 100 bolivar notes before they’re removed from circulation.

[…]

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By James Holbrooks

Following recent comments from President Donald Trump suggesting the U.S. is being forced to “sit there like a bunch of dummies” as it’s taken advantage of by the economic policies of China, Japan, and Germany, leaders from those countries responded this week with comments of their own.

On Tuesday, Donald Trump, along with one of his top economic advisors, unleashed what Reuters described as a “barrage of criticism” over what the two men perceive as the three key U.S. trading partners’ deliberate devaluing of their currencies — to the detriment of the American consumer.

“Every other country lives on devaluation,” the president said in a White House meeting with executives from the pharmaceutical industry. “You look at what China’s doing, you look at what Japan has done over the years. They — they play the money market, they play the devaluation market and we sit there like a bunch of dummies.”

As he did with the auto industry, Trump is pressuring pharmaceutical companies to relocate production facilities to the United States. Complaining of red tape, Trump claimed “other countries take advantage of us with their money and their money supply and devaluation.”

Prior to the president’s meeting at the White House, the head of his newly created National Trade Council, Peter Navarro, had told the Financial Times the European Union’s euro was the equivalent of an “implicit Deutshe Mark” that gave Germany an edge over the United States on trade.

Defending her country’s practices while in Stockholm, Sweden, German Chancellor Angela Merkel stated Tuesday:

We don’t exercise any influence over the European Central Bank, so I can’t and I don’t want to change the situation as it is now. We strive to trade on the global market with competitive products in fair trade with all others.

By Stefan Gleason

The dollar’s reign as the world reserve currency will come to an end some day. But before that happens, the penny will likely go into the dustbin of monetary history.

U.S. pennies have already been debased – going from 95% copper before 1982 to just 2.5% copper (and 97.5% zinc) since. Now there’s a push afoot in the Senate to junk the penny entirely.

All the sound and fury Republican leaders made about repealing Obamacare signified nothing. They aren’t eager to betray the healthcare lobby, insurance providers, and pharmaceutical companies who worked with Congress to write the law and who paid so handsomely into campaign funds. They would rather betray voters.

Supporters of eliminating the penny note that it no longer makes any economic sense to produce them.

They argue that few people would care if their purchases were rounded to the nearest $0.05, as is now done in Canada.

That’s pretty much true. You cannot buy anything for one cent anymore. The days of penny arcades are long gone.

The decline of the value of the penny toward functional obsolescence is a sad statement about our monetary system. But rather than address the underlying problem of inflation and exploding national debt, politicians like John McCain want to just eliminate the evidence of the financial establishment’s misdeeds.

By Shaun Bradley

The United States’ ability to maintain its influence over the rest of the world has been slowly diminishing. Since the petrodollar was established in 1971, U.S. currency has monopolized international trade through oil deals with the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and continuous military interventions. There is, however, growing opposition to the American standard, and it gained more support recently when several Gulf states suddenly blockaded Qatar, which they accused of funding terrorism.

Despite the mainstream narrative, there are several other reasons why Qatar is in the crosshairs. Over the past two years, it conducted over $86 billion worth of transactions in Chinese yuan and has signed other agreements with China that encourage further economic cooperation. Qatar also shares the world’s largest natural gas field with Iran, giving the two countries significant regional influence to expand their own trade deals.

Meanwhile, uncontrollable debt and political divisions in the United States are clear signs of vulnerability. The Chinese and Russians proactively set up alternative financial systems for countries looking to distance themselves from the Federal Reserve.  After the IMF accepted the yuan into its basket of reserve currencies in October of last year, investors and economists finally started to pay attention. The economic power held by the Federal Reserve has been key in financing the American empire, but geopolitical changes are happening fast. The United States’ reputation has been tarnished by decades of undeclared wars, mass surveillance, and catastrophic foreign policy.

One of America’s best remaining assets is its military strength, but it’s useless without a strong economy to fund it. Rival coalitions like the BRICS nations aren’t challenging the established order head on and are instead opting to undermine its financial support. Qatar is just the latest country to take steps to bypass the U.S. dollar. Russia made headlines in 2016 when they started accepting payments in yuan and took over as China’s largest oil partner, stealing a huge market share from Saudi Arabia in the process. Iran also dropped the dollar earlier this year in response to President Trump’s travel ban. As the tide continues to turn against the petrodollar, eventually even our allies will start to question what best serves their own interests.

Many E.U. member states are clashing with the unelected leadership in Brussels over immigration, terrorism, and austerity measures. If no solutions are found and things deteriorate, other countries could potentially follow the U.K.’s lead and vote to leave, as well. It is starting to become obvious that countries in Eastern Europe will look to the East to get the resources their economies need.

China, Russia, and India are all ahead of the curve and started stockpiling gold years ago. They recognize that hard assets will be the measure of true wealth in the near future — not fiat money. The historic hyperinflation that has occurred in these countries solidified the importance of precious metals in their monetary systems. Unfortunately, most Americans are ignorant of the past and will likely embrace more government bailouts and money printing when faced with the next recession. Even Fed officials have admitted that more quantitative easing is likely the only path going forward.

Several renowned investors have warned about this ongoing shift of economic power from West to East, but bureaucrats and central bankers refuse to admit how serious things could get. The impact on the average person could be devastating if they are not properly educated and prepared for the fallout.

Secret $1.8 Million Cryptocurrency Script

Economist and author James Rickards summarized why China and Russia are so interested in acquiring precious metals:

They are stuck with their dollars. They fear, rightly, that the US will inflate its way out of its $19 trillion mountain of debt. China’s solution is to buy gold. If dollar inflation emerges, China’s Treasury holdings will devalue, but the dollar price of its gold will soar. A large gold reserve is a prudent diversification.  Russia’s motives are geopolitical. Gold is the model 21st century weapon for financial wars.The US controls dollar payments systems and, with help from European allies, can eject adversaries from the international payments system called Swift. Gold is immune to such assaults. Physical gold in your custody cannot be hacked, erased, or frozen. Moving gold is a simple way for Russia to settle accounts without US interference.

Mainstream pundits will continue to distract the public with the same optimistic talking points, but taking advantage of this calm before the storm is important. As this transition takes place, central bankers will sacrifice anything and everything to keep their Ponzi scheme going. Only individuals can take the initiative to protect themselves and be able to help others who won’t be as lucky. Those who embrace sound money and cryptocurrencies will thrive in this new competitive global economy, but if America fails to adapt, the same fiat system that gave it power will drag it into poverty.

Creative Commons / Anti-Media / Report a typo

By Jay Syrmopoulos

In what is the latest move to undermine the imperial world order maintained by the United States, which is underpinned through use of the petrodollar as the world reserve currency, the Wall Street Journal reports that Venezuelan President Maduro has officially followed through on his threat to stop accepting US Dollars as payment for crude oil exports in the wake of recent US sanctions.

Last Thursday, President Nicolas Maduro said that if the US went ahead with the sanction, Venezuela would “free” itself from the US Dollar.

According to Reuters:

“Venezuela is going to implement a new system of international payments and will create a basket of currencies to free us from the dollar,” Maduro said in a multi-hour address to a new legislative “superbody.”

Unsurprisingly, Maduro noted that his country would look to the BRICS countries, and begin using the Chinese yuan and Russian ruble instead — along with other currencies — to bypass the US Dollar stranglehold.

“If they pursue us with the dollar, we’ll use the Russian ruble, the yuan, yen, the Indian rupee, the euro,” Maduro said.

Rather than work diplomatically with other nations, the United States often uses sanctions to force compliance. Due to the dollar being accepted as the world’s reserve currency, almost all financial transactions are denominated in dollars. This phenomenon gives the US a powerful weapon to wield against states that refuse to follow US directives, and underpins the unipolar model of global domination exercised by the US.

The Wall Street Journal reports that as a means of circumventing U.S. sanctions — Washington’s preferred weapon of choice to force compliance — Venezuela has told oil traders that it will no longer send or receive payments in dollars, according to people familiar with the new policy.

Oil traders who export Venezuelan crude or import oil products into the country have begun converting their invoices to euros.

The state oil company Petróleos de Venezuela SA, known as PdVSA, has told its private joint venture partners to open accounts in euros and to convert existing cash holdings into Europe’s main currency, said one project partner.

The new payment policy hasn’t been publicly announced, but Vice President Tareck El Aissami, who has been blacklisted by the U.S., said Friday, “To fight against the economic blockade there will be a basket of currencies to liberate us from the dollar.”

With Europe often acting as nothing more than a vassal to the United States, it’s not unthinkable that the American lapdog EU could impose sanctions on Venezuela, which would likely pave the way for the strategic Russia–China partnership to gain an even stronger foothold in the global economic battle, as it would likely precipitate the Yuan, Ruble, and gold being used to buy and sell Venezuelan oil.

Interestingly, the decision by Venezuela – the nation with the world’s largest proven oil reserves – comes just days after China and Russia unveiled an Oil/Yuan/Gold plan at the recent annual BRICS conference. This plan would strongly undermine the hegemonic control the US enjoys over the global financial system.

During the BRICS conference, Putin unveiled a geopolitical/geoeconomic bombshell as he forwarded the notion of a “fair multipolar world.” He emphasized a stance “against protectionism and new barriers in global trade” — a reference to the manner in which US operates its empire to maintain primacy.

Russia shares the BRICS countries’ concerns over the unfairness of the global financial and economic architecture, which does not give due regard to the growing weight of the emerging economies. We are ready to work together with our partners to promote international financial regulation reforms and to overcome the excessive domination of the limited number of reserve currencies.

“To overcome the excessive domination of the limited number of reserve currencies” is simply a nice way of saying that the BRICS will create a system to bypass the US dollar, as well as the petrodollar, in an effort to undermine the unipolar paradigm embraced by the United States.

As we previously reported, China will soon launch a crude oil futures contract priced in yuan that is fully convertible into gold.

What this means is that countries who refuse to bend to the imperial will of the United States, i.e. Russia, Iran, etc., will now be able to bypass US sanctions by making energy trades in their own currencies, or in Chinese yuan – with the knowledge that they can convert the yuan into gold as added incentive/insurance/security.

The yuan will be fully convertible into gold on both the Shanghai and Hong Kong exchanges. Typically, crude oil is priced in relation to Brent or West Texas Intermediate futures, both denominated in U.S. dollars.

“The rules of the global oil game may begin to change enormously,” said Luke Gromen, founder of U.S.-based macroeconomic research company FFTT.

This new paradigm of oil, yuan, and gold is, without question, an international game changer. The key takeaway here is that the US dollar can now be bypassed without so much as a second thought.

Russia and China – via the Russian Central Bank and the People’s Bank of China – have been steadily working on ruble-yuan swaps as a means of hedging against US hegemony.

There is a strategic movement to take these actions beyond the BRICS, first allowing aspiring “BRICS Plus” members, then entire Global South to divest themselves from dependence on the US dollar.

Secret $1.8 Million Cryptocurrency Script

Essentially, Russia and China are working together to usher in a new paradigm of Eurasian integration, something that goes directly against US strategic doctrine – which dictates that Russia and China, the United States’ two main geopolitical rivals, should never be allowed to dominate Eurasia.

“In 2014 Russia and China signed two mammoth 30-year contracts for Russian gas to China. The contracts specified that the exchange would be done in Renminbi [yuan] and Russian rubles, not in dollars. That was the beginning of an accelerating process of de-dollarization that is underway today,” according to strategic risk consultant F. William Engdahl.

Russia and China are now creating a new paradigm for the world economy and paving the way for a global de-dollarization, and Venezuela is just the beginning.

“A Russian-Chinese alternative to the dollar in the form of a gold-backed ruble and gold-backed Renminbi or yuan, could start a snowball exit from the US dollar, and with it, a severe decline in America’s ability to use the reserve dollar role to finance her wars with other peoples’ money,” Engdahl concludes.

Make no mistake that the BRICS are not only working to integrate Eurasia, but to geo-economically integrate the entire Global South under a new multipolar framework that treats states as equals, regardless of their power stature globally.

The Neolibcons in Washington – bent on eventual regime change in Russia and China – are in for an extremely rude awakening. Although the BRICS have their own structural economic problems, they have created a long-term plan that will change the face of geopolitics/geo-economics and degrade the imperialist will of those that wish to dictate and order the world as they see fit.

The DC War Party’s petrodollar imperialism, which funds the US war machine and allows for a constant war footing, is quickly running out of allies to maintain its global hegemony.

Jay Syrmopoulos is a geopolitical analyst, freethinker, and ardent opponent of authoritarianism. He is currently a graduate student at the University of Denver pursuing a masters in Global Affairs and holds a BA in International Relations. Jay’s writing has been featured on both mainstream and independent media – and has been viewed tens of millions of times. You can follow him on Twitter @SirMetropolis and on Facebook at SirMetropolis.

Image Credit: The Anti-Media

By Matt Agorist

In the State’s relentless pursuit to scrutinize and control every citizen, including monitoring, tracking, and especially taxing their income, untraceable physical cash has long been a shield against such tyranny. However, thanks to Donald Trump’s nomination to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, anonymous purchases, deposits, and savings with cash could soon be a thing of the past.

In November 2017, central banking proponent and Keynesian economist Marvin Goodfriend was nominated by President Donald Trump to fill one of the vacancies on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. He was then confirmed by the U.S. Senate Banking Committee to advance.

Goodfriend is a central banking insider who’s spent decades moving in and out of government and central banks and his ideas are nothing short of Orwellian.

While his résumé may make him seem like a qualified member of the corrupt and insidious Federal Reserve System, he’s proposed and openly advocated for one of the most horrific plans a free society (somewhat) has ever seen—tracking cash.

Reuters reports:

Goodfriend’s idea was to insert magnetic strips into the bills. Each time the cash was returned to a bank, the money would be taxed at a pre-determined rate. That would discourage individuals from hoarding cash and remove one obstacle for central bankers in setting negative rates.

Negative interest rates are employed to incentivize banks to lend money more freely and businesses and individuals to invest, lend, and spend money rather than pay a fee to keep it safe.

However, it is little more than theft. Instead of paying you interest on the money you give them to store and subsequently use as reserves to make these loans, when banks are strapped for cash, they call the theft of your money “negative interest.”

Goodfriend is an advocate for both negative interest rates and tracking your cash—and this person is about to have a leadership position inside America’s central bank.

Under the ostensible idea of reducing quantitative easing, Goodfriend would apply a tax directly to cash—stealing money from already taxed dollars—by tracking who is using it. According to Goodfriend, US currency should include tracking devices that let the government tax private possession of dollar bills—for your own good, of course.

“The magnetic strip could visibly record when a bill was last withdrawn from the banking system. A carry tax could be deducted from each bill upon deposit according to how long the bill was in circulation,” Goodfriend wrote in his proposal.

What could possibly go wrong?

The idea of tracking cash with magnetic strips or RFID chips is such a horrific idea that two unlikely senators from opposite sides of the aisle have come forward to vehemently oppose the Goodfriend appointment.

Secret $1.8 Million Cryptocurrency Script

As Reuters notes again, the idea of a tax on cash is politically toxic. Senators Rand Paul and Elizabeth Warren – two lawmakers often on opposite ends of the ideological spectrum – have denounced Goodfriend’s idea, and may now put his nomination in jeopardy.

We think that is a good idea.

Rand Paul’s father, the esteemed Dr. Ron Paul has been a long-time advocate against such Orwellian moves to track cash and has been fighting them for decades.

“The whole idea is preposterous. The notion that we’re going to tax somebody because they decide to be frugal and hold a couple of dollars is economic planning at its worst,” then-Congressman Ron Paul said.

This idea that you can correct some of the evil they’ve (the Federal Reserve) already created with another tax is just ridiculous.

Matt Agorist is an honorably discharged veteran of the USMC and former intelligence operator directly tasked by the NSA. This prior experience gives him unique insight into the world of government corruption and the American police state. Agorist has been an independent journalist for over a decade and has been featured on mainstream networks around the world. Agorist is also the Editor at Large at the Free Thought Project, where this article first appeared. Follow @MattAgorist on Twitter, Steemit, and now on Facebook.