Sunday, May 8, 2022

"The truth is that your net worth is zero. My net worth is zero."

One of the great lessons of the past few years is that you only retain a claim to assets you might think of as yours at the sufferance of the politicians and the administrative state.

From American civil forfeiture where your property can be taken without court order to the national takings by executive order of Afghanistan's $7 billion in central bank assets held in the U.S. (since modified to let them have $3.5 billion)

From the freeze of Canadian bank accounts by the government and the attempted seizure of the $9 million in donations by GoFundMe, to the Bank of England's confiscation of Venezuela's gold reserves to the Russian central bank's $300 billion to the big boats of the oligarchs, many people are getting the wake-up call that ownership has been redefined to mean whoever has custody, not title.

And regarding the Russian oligarchs, I'm sure as can be that in every case we would find fraud or misappropriation or outright theft of plant, property and equipment. However the same statement is true if applied to Bill Gates and the Microsoft operating system:

"Le secret des grandes fortunes sans cause apparente 
est un crime oublié, parce qu’il a été proprement fait."
—Honoré de Balzac, “Le Père Goriot”, “Revue de Paris”, 1834
 
(The secret of a great success for which you are at a loss to account is a
crime that has never been found out, because it was properly executed.)
 
And our headline story from International Man:
 
The World Order Has Changed… Here’s What it Means for Your Net Worth
There is momentous change taking place right now.

Part of a disturbing trend over the last few months has been one of financial institutions and governments stealing other people’s money in broad daylight.

Jeff Dorman wrote a worthwhile piece on the collapse of the LME as well as other associated topics.

“Have we completely lost sight of the goal?

For a second, remove your biases. To those lucky enough to have made fortunes investing in digital assets, ignore the euphoria. For those hellbent on trying to prove digital assets have no purpose, think objectively for a moment. And let’s just look at the facts:

– The Canadian government shutdown banking access to many of its citizens over a protest.

– A decision to invade Ukraine by a single leader of a nation, Russian President Vladimir Putin, created hundreds of billions of dollars of losses in weeks due to an almost 50% decline in the Russian stock market, immediately turned Russia’s credit worthiness upside down (5yr CDS widened to as much as 900 bps from 100 bps earlier this year), and has led to rising oil prices affecting billions across the world.

– The response to the Russian attack on Ukraine by Western Allies included shutting Russia off from the international banking communication system, SWIFT—a decision that is already leading to bank runs and bank failures.

– Even before this, bond and equity markets were roiled by the decisions (or jawboning) of a handful of non-elected Federal Reserve and central bank officials who essentially control the fate of the global capital markets.

– In my own sheltered world, it took over 3 days just to transfer money from one of my U.S. bank accounts to another, despite U.S. banking being nothing more than a ledger entry in a spreadsheet.”

Jeff is not wrong. Gratefully, people like Jeff are now rapidly waking up to these realities.

What was amazing with the Canadian trucker protest is that these “emergency acts” were passed retroactively.

In other words, when you donated to the truckers, it was legal to do so. But now you are in violation of Canadian law, and as such the government can and has frozen stolen your money without any due process.

Consider what that actually means....

....MUCH MORE

I daresay even Mr. Gates is looking over his shoulder, based on his most recent CYA comments re: Covid-19:

If his net worth is only his until someone decides it isn't, there are quite a few billions in play.

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