Do away with Reserve Currencies and Centralized Financial Control

By LUIS MIRANDA | THE REAL AGENDA | SEPTEMBER 13, 2012

For way too many years, the United States has enjoyed an unfair advantage with respect to the rest of the world: most international commerce is conducted in US dollars. Both friends and foes of the US have had to purchase raw materials, parts, finished products, pay tariffs and exchange rates in dollars because the world saw the American currency as a strongly positioned instrument that was backed by the economic and military might of the United States.

The result of having a reserve currency, both for the US and for the rest of the world is clear: Americans have enjoyed decades of bounty because almost anything that is necessary to live is paid for and purchased in US dollars. From crude oil to food staples, countries and companies use the US dollar to complete most commercial transactions. But the bounty for Americans was not the only consequence — or goal, depending how you see it. Because the US dollar was the reserve currency of the world, its value was kept artificially high. People, companies and other countries bought US dollars to use them in their daily activities such as traveling expenses, for example.

The value of the currency, especially a fiat one like the US dollar is artificial because after the central bank decides to print money beyond what a country produces — GDP — in order to run a debt-based economy, it is just a matter of time before the wheels of the truck come off. In the case of the United States, three and a quarter of the four wheels have already fallen off. The US currency has been hyper-inflated in a controlled manner since the creation of the Federal Reserve System, which is the same system of centralized power used in almost every single nation in the world; no matter if it’s a developed, developing or underdeveloped country.

Today, the value of the dollar, the Euro, the Peso or the Real do not represent the capacity of a country to produce, innovate and sell goods in local, regional or international markets through bilateral or multilateral agreements. The value of currencies is set by banking institutions and then freely manipulated by artificially-managed markets, not real capitalism or free markets.

The kind of “commercial contract” that helped the US to sets its currency as the “world reserve currency” and that provided the unfair advantage against its business partners and competitors is now reaching its end. The rise of China as one of the largest producers of finished products — through questionable standards to say the least — along with the economically weaker position of the United States in the world stage, has prompted nations to seek alternative forms of completing commercial transactions that do not use US dollars. United States competitors, especially those who lend money to the country, realized that the United States will most likely default on its debt or will simply pay with a devalued currency which will not be worth much, so they’ve decided to use their own currencies instead of the US dollar.

For example, China and Russia have closed several agreements to realize commercial transactions in their own currency as supposed to using dollars. The Chinese and the Russians, it seems, learned that by using the Yuan and the Ruble, they are not only valuing their currencies, but are also avoiding to pay the “dollar tax”, or the cost of having to buy and sell in US dollars, which had kept them in a competitive disadvantage against their commercial and military foe.

The devaluation of the dollar due to banking manipulation conducted by the Federal Reserve or the weakening of the currency in international markets — is bad news for the US and the American people, because it means that if the dollar fails to keep its status as the reserve currency, everything will be more expensive for them: raw materials, food, energy, interest rates, etc. But worse than all of that is that the demand for US dollars in the world will significantly decrease, which in itself will turn the dollar into a less attractive way to pay for and sell goods and services.

The loss in value of the American currency will also worsen another problem: the US debt. The US has been for a long time the best debtor nation in the world, for its lenders thought that since the country had the world’s reserve currency would guarantee that their loans would be paid in full. But now, reality shows otherwise. The fall of the US dollar from the pedestal of “world reserve currency” will also make it more expensive for the US to pay its current debt as well as the debt it will incur into in the coming years and decades. The weaker the dollar is, the more expensive it becomes for the US to pay its debts. This scenario is now seen in Spain, Greece, Italy and Portugal, who have handed their sovereignty to foreign banking institutions in exchange for “financial rescues”.

Although common wisdom would suggest that US indebtedness with China would be the worst possible situation while the dollar declines, there is actually a worse scenario and it does not involve China. The US main lender is not China anymore, but the Federal Reserve Banking System, a private institution that represents the interests of an international banking consortium located abroad, not in the United States.

The banking mafia will continue to willingly lend to the US because all debt created by the Federal Reserve in the name of the United States and its people will always have a way to be paid. The United States, just as many other countries in the world do, mortgage the lives of present and future people by taxing them to death in order to pay interests on the ever exploding debt. This ‘trust’ that the banking institutions have in the United States and other nations can only be broken if the US dollar fails as the world reserve currency. That is why the European bankers have created parallel fiat currencies such as the Euro, which they also intend to collapse in order to establish a sort of electronic untraceable form of currency.

At the same time and while it is still possible, wealthy individuals who have made their fortunes through deceitful practices, such as George Soros, as well as governments have begun a race to get rid of their dollar reserves — a fact that also weakens the US currency — and invest in gold, rare metals, silver and other valuable instruments. The divestment of funds from US dollars to other currencies or valuable metals or materials threatens to accelerate the fall of the once strong world reserve currency.

The decline of the US dollar has emboldened countries like China to seriously consider letting its currency fluctuate freely in the open market. This practice is set to begin at some point in 2015 and will continue until 2017, the Chinese have said. Do the Chinese feel that by 2015 the dollar will be weak enough that it won’t be able to directly compete with the Yuan? Perhaps. But in a financial world where almost everything is fake, there is no reason to believe that the American government or the banking institutions that it represents will not come up with a way to slow down or stop the collapse of its currency. Many financial experts expect the opposite, though. Some of them even believe that the collapse of the dollar will happen some time between the Winter of 2012 and the Spring of 2013.

If there is one thing the world has learned is that independent nation-states that establish commercial agreements in a bilateral or multilateral fashion are better off that those which are prisoners of a common currency with a centralized financial power system. The only reason why the world is dominated by common currencies and so-called unions is because those schemes facilitate monopolies and control, which is what the international banking mafia wants. The Euro is a clear example of how monopoly works perfectly well when a group of oligarchs intends to artificially create economies to later collapse them so that they can consolidate power. It works beautifully. For the rest of us, let’s do away with reserve currencies that provide unfair advantages as well as centralized power that only renders benefits for the Anglo-Saxon power elite.

BRICS Denounce Currency Manipulation

By LUIS R. MIRANDA | THE REAL AGENDA | MARCH 29, 2012

In the power shift the world is experiencing today, both the rich nations and the supposed emerging economies are making sure they appear as cohesive groups with common goals. While the Anglo-Saxon bloc has governed over the world for well over a century, the emerging new powers in the underdeveloped regions of the planet are betting on public unity to exercise pressure over the current rulers.

While the dominant European nations and the United States hide behind bailouts to avoid facing the debacle of the banker-sponsored debt crisis, the BRICS want to show the world that there is another way to do things that may be more beneficial for all. Although the birth of the BRICS, a group composed by China, Brazil, Russia, South Africa and India seemed to be a good initiative to bring about economic and perhaps even political balance in the power struggle now occurring, the truth is that the BRICS are an example of what the Anglo-Saxon Empire was 200 years ago: A bunch of wannabe leaders who cannot find significant common ground to create and exercise policies that improve their people’s standard of living, but who do take time to show off their newly acquired insignificant medals.

It is easy to see why the BRICS are simply more of the same. In the latest communique issued by the group, it member countries criticize the United States and Europe for their manipulation of the Dollar and the Euro currencies. This criticism is well founded, but aren’t China and Brazil doing the same thing? They are. China artificially manipulates its currency to keep its value low and with that benefit by keeping the cost of exporting its goods low. Brazil on the other hand, also resorts to currency manipulation to keep the Real at about 1.75 Reais per dollar. Recently, business leaders in Brazil have been lobbying the government led by Dilma Rousseff to further devalue the Real in order for them to be more competitive in the international market. The idea according to these business leaders, is to take the Real to at least 1.85 per dollar, which would allow them to reduce the cost of exporting their products to the European and American markets as well as not having to pay better wages to its workers. In other words, the Brazilian industry is asking the government to tax its people by devaluing the Real, which will increase inflation.

In a previous statement, some members of the BRICS talked about their reservations to denounce currency manipulation because China, one of the most influential members of the group, also engages in such behavior. It was only after China learned about the position of the other member-states and understood that the official communique was meant to criticize Europe and the United States that the document was made public. “Brazil will push for its large emerging-market peers including China to denounce what it sees as unfair monetary policies by Europe and the United States, raising the stakes in a global confrontation over economic imbalances,” reported Reuters on Wednesday. On Thursday, representatives of some of the most influential multinational corporations that operate in Brazil, met with the Secretary of Commerce in the capital city of Brasilia, Brazil to request that the government manipulated the Real in order for those companies to gain an advantage on foreign competitors and international markets.

According to Reuters, Brazil accuses rich nations of using policies to cause a “monetary tsunami” by adopting policies that spread benefits such as low interest rates and bond-buying programs. These policies, according to the report, were designed to stimulate the troubled U.S. and European economies. This is the official explanation, however, the real goal is to cause a massive debt hole from which the global economy cannot come out of. Banking leaders in Europe and the United States are letting the debt crisis collapse in a progressive and incremental way to a point where the artificially created liquidity will not be able to bail nations out. So-called emerging markets like Brazil, are directly or indirectly absorbing the new monies being put out by the banks and large investors — in many cases as loans or investments in infrastructure — in order to hook developing countries into deeper debt and terminate them once their power grab process is completed. This is not reported in the local media or talked about by mainline economists, who believe that the investment is coming in as a result of some magical attraction that the country has, or perhaps because Brazil is governed by a woman, or because the people here are friendly. The few economists who do know about the real intentions the bankers and large investors have in mind do not have the guts to talk about it.

Publicly, the BRICS seem to be led by Brazil, whose Trade and Industry Minister, Fernando Pimentel, believes that although their complaints about currency manipulation and other protectionist policies will not convince powerful countries to stop such policies, it will somehow allow them adopt other protectionist policies they’ve previously denounced including raising tariffs and implement changes in trade and commercial policies at supranational unelected bodies like the World Trade Organization.

A few years ago, when Brazil magically became the target of massive investment no one in this country complained about it, or about currency manipulation or protectionism of any kind. But after the country began to feel the effects of the current global depression, apologists started talk about the external reasons why the country’s economy was tanking. Although Brazil has overtaken the UK as the world’s 6th largest economy, internally the results of such achievement are nowhere to be seen here in Brazil. In fact, Brazilian companies as well as international corporations that operate here are not even close to embracing open markets and free trade — not even among themselves. Instead, they are envisioning future protectionist measures to save themselves from decision made by Europe and the United States. Brazil and Argentina are carrying out a trade war that limits the free flow of products and services. Companies are having to trade smaller amounts of goods in order to get paid smaller amounts of money so that the central banks do not hold payments due to the large volume of the transactions.

“Brazil has blamed the global liquidity glut for making its currency one of the world’s most overvalued. As local industries struggle, its economy grew only 2.7 percent in 2011, below its BRICS peers and down from a blistering 7.5 percent in 2010,” reports Reuters. Meanwhile, Brazilian officials do not recognize that it is their incapacity to govern which caused their industry’s growth to slow down. The country suffers with one of the largest schemes of corruption in the world which results in inefficient production, skyrocketing taxes,  and poor infrastructure which makes Brazil one of the most difficult and expensive places to do do business.

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Luis Miranda is the founder and editor of The Real Agenda. For more of his stories, subscribe to our article feed. You can also follow him on Twitter and Facebook. Email article ideas and insights through the Contact page.

Manipulated Markets Make a Come Back

Does it make sense that during the deepest depression since 1929, the U.S. Stock Market comes back up from a 6oo+ point decline? Only a manipulated system where speculators have complete control could recover from a rout that showed how little confidence investors have in the market today.

by Luis R. Miranda
The Real Agenda
August 9, 2011

While countries are in dire straits to make payments on mostly illegally acquired debts and the price of oil continues to fall; while little to nothing is produced or manufactured in the industrialized world and no ingenuity makes it big anywhere in the world; while the most important currencies continue to tumble and other financial markets turn more sour; while unemployment continues to grow from the low 20′s and more people make use of food stamps and unemployment benefits; while more jobs are exported to third world nations that support slave work for their populations and inflation is only tamed by artificial manipulation of the currencies; while numerous people look to gold and silver as their salvation, surprisingly the stock market came back from the pantheon and surged to recover from the slide seen just a few hours ago.

There is very little that can't be done when someone or something controls fiat currencies, rating agencies, and financial markets.

But not only did the stocks came back strong; they had the largest gains in more than two years. Along with this “come back” the U.S. dollar got weaker and the Swiss franc rose the most since 1971. Even the very same Standard & Poor Index managed to recover almost 5 percent, the most significant gains since 2009. In the meantime, the origin of the financial disaster, the privately owned banks headed by the Federal Reserve announced their intent to print more worthless money into the economy as a way to “boost” confidence. Even though QE1 and QE2 failed to provide any confidence, or for that matter failed to provide anything positive, the FED believes it is appropriate to bring up QE3. With this, the FED shows its interest to purchase more government bonds, which will consolidate its position as the largest holder of U.S. government debt.

“The Fed is clearly setting up a situation that could offer them the potential to do something significant, if necessary,” Bruce McCain, who helps oversee $22 billion as chief investment strategist at the private-banking unit of KeyCorp in Cleveland, said in a telephone interview. “That could be viewed as a positive,” added McCain. “People are starting to realize that what we’ve had in the market was an overreaction.” Really? Positive? How so?

Artificial Surge after the Decline

How can a stock market come back from a 600+ point decline in just a few hours if one considers that the cause of such loss -the downgrade of the U.S. debt rating- has not been dealt with? It simply boggles the mind, doesn’t it? The United States credit rating was lowered from AAA to AA+ by Standard & Poors, a rating agency that is paid by the banks to evaluate financial products and which is in part responsible for the current financial catastrophe. Together with Moody’s, S&P was created the by the banking system to carry out “independent” evaluations of financial products as well as credit confidence on institutions, state and local governments and of course whole nations.

According to Bloomberg, Stocks came back from a loss of $ 1 trillion after S&P downgraded the U.S. credit rating last Friday evening. The results of the downgrade were not felt until Monday, when the Markets opened all over the world. The S&P index sank about 11 percent and the stock market lost 648 points or more than 6 percent. But just 24 hours later, everything was different. “The MSCI All-Country World Index rose 2.1 percent for its biggest gain of the year”, says Bloomberg. “The index started the U.S. session valued at about 12.1 times profits, down from 21 in 1995..The MSCI Emerging Markets Index pared today’s drop to 2.2 percent after tumbling as much as 4.4 percent.”

Stocks Rally? What Rally?

In the Stock Market, the Dow Jones climbed almost 430 or 4 percent, failing to completely recover from the recent loss. The stocks experienced the 1oth more significant gain in its history. Can you believe it? In the middle of a Depression, the stocks rally the much?

Meanwhile, in the S&P, shares got to the front of the line due to the numerically significant gains. In total, they accumulated some 8.2 percent all together. This is the biggest rally since May 2009, which meant a complete recovery from Monday’s low. Bank of America Corp., which is now being sued by AIG for fraud, managed to gain 17 percent while other players like Hartford Financial Services got back 16 percent.

Of course the main stream media is giving all credit to the Federal Reserve, due to its announcement that it intends to “boost” the economy by injecting worthless cash into it. The FED’s head, Ben Bernanke and his aides came out to try to calm the demise a bit, although not everyone at the FED agreed with the move to bring along a new quantitative easing move. Three members from the policy committee dissented and instead called for maintaining interest rates low for a longer period of time.

As the docu-film “The Inside Job” impeccably exposes, there is very little that can’t be done when someone or something has the power to create money out of thin air, create rating agencies, control those agencies to give AAA ratings to whatever they choose and electronically manipulate the financial stock and bond markets whenever it’s convenient in order to perpetuate the fraudulent debt-based system the world has worked under since 1913.

False Policy Changes

The best way to perpetuate the above cited financial system is to have the available tool continuously reinforce the falsehood of the Central Bank sponsored plans. So, Moody’s has come out to praise the FED’s move to maintain the interest rates at a quarter of a percent in order to bolster the downturn. It’s a  ”major policy change,” said Augustine Faucher, director of macroeconomics at Moody’s. “By providing a more explicit time line for raising rates, the Fed is telling markets it is concerned about recent economic weakness and the potential for a near-term contraction, and is dedicated to spurring stronger economic growth,” Faucher added.

Just as this statement by Faucher is baseless, so is the belief that because the U.S. dollar is the world’s reserve currency, it can stand more beating than any other one. In fact, one of the reasons why the U.S. has not been downgraded further is that its currency is still consider valuable. Ironically, the dollar has lost 98 percent of its value since it became the subject of manipulation by the bankers. Moody’s has stated that the U.S. dollar can support larger levels of debt than other currencies. How do they figure that with a currency that is so devalued. They can’t figure it out. They just make it up.

The one world reserve currency scheme is only beneficial to those who control it, because the rest of the nations need to do business while devaluing their own. In sound economics, the value of paper money is based on a country’s production or manufacturing, therefore, the U.S. dollar can no longer be such reserve currency. U.S. manufacturing has eroded so badly, that it has cost the jobs of some 18 million people in the last few years.

If the U.S. dollar is still the world’s reserve currency, why are there other currencies that have better exchange rates than the dollar itself? I am no economic expert, but if the Swiss Frank rates higher than the dollar in currency exchange markets, shouldn’t the Frank be the reserve currency? Or even better, shouldn’t a commodity like gold be the reserve currency given its capacity to withstand recessions, depressions and financial market manipulations? It should. The reason why gold is not the reserve currency or at least the commodity over which a paper money currency is supported is that bankers cannot monopolize it, “hug” it or manipulate it.

High Market but Low Results: The World Economy in Shambles

While the banks try to extend the suffering period for the middle and low classes, countries in Europe are scrambling for a life boat to jump on. Although France and Germany are said to be negotiating an agreement to buy Spain’s and Italy’s debt in order to avoid a deeper economic collapse, some sources claim that the rescuers believe the Italian debt is too large to save. Both Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel began to hear opposition voices that are calling for a different position from the German and French governments. The reason for this is that an eventual bailout of Italy and Spain could cost the rescuers their AAA rating. This is seen as a possible trigger to drag the world’s economy further into the precipice.

Although U.S. markets artificially revived themselves on Tuesday, other countries were not as lucky. In Italy, the bond market saw a loss of 11 percent on its 10 year note. Just as the FED has done in the United States, the European Central Bank kept Italy and Spain afloat through the purchase of their bonds for a second day in a row. That was not enough to save the Spanish 10 year notes, as they collapsed eight basis points to 5.08 percent on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, oil prices hit some of the lowest levels for the year by getting down to $79.30 a barrel. Conversely, gold prices soared and added 4.1 percent to get to a record price of $1,782.50 an ounce.

Germany Accuses US of Indirectly Manipulating Dollar

Reuters

German Economy Minister Rainer Bruederle on Saturday took issue with what he called a U.S. policy of increasing liquidity, saying it indirectly manipulated exchange rates.

The U.S. Federal Reserve is widely expected to embark on a fresh round of asset purchases to prop up the economy.

“There was criticism of the American policy of monetary easing, or creating more liquidity,” Bruederle said after a meeting in South Korea of finance officials from the Group of 20 economic powers.

“I tried to make clear in my contribution to the discussion that I regard that as the wrong way to go,” he said.

“An excessive, permanent increase in money is, in my view, an indirect manipulation of the (foreign exchange) rate.”

Foreign exchange rates should be determined by markets, said Bruederle, who was attending the G20 meeting in place of Germany’s hospitalised finance minister.

Bruederle said he was positively surprised by the results of the meeting, which he said surpassed expectations.

There were intensive discussions at the meeting about a letter from the U.S. Treasury Secretary calling for action in tackling foreign exchange and trade imbalances, Bruederle said.

Geithner’s focus was on China, but Germany, Japan and Korea were also in focus, Bruederle said, adding that he regarded the U.S. plans as having “planned economy elements.”

Bundesbank President Axel Weber, who is also a member of the European Central Bank’s Governing Council, said regulators were in the final stages of bank regulatory reform and it was now up to lawmakers to implement the new rules soon.

Solutions were still needed for dealing with system-relevant banks, Weber said, adding that these should include an orderly insolvency mechanism.

The Financial Stability Board (FSB) should make proposals for dealing with such system-relevant banks by next summer at the latest, Weber added.

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