Yahoo finance reports US stock futures in ‘limit down’ status on Sunday, 3/22/2020. Worth noting is Yahoo’s attribution of the crisis to the “coronavirus crisis.” This is incorrect. Our financial crisis is the responsibility of the Fed and those who justify and encourage its ungodly practices of debt creation, monetary debasement and bailouts.
“And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to his purpose.”
Romans 8:28
That was an interesting week. Last week, I’m talking about. The one where, if we are still working, we’re doing so from makeshift home offices, the one where governors are locking down the citizenry of entire states and shutting down their economies, the one where the financial markets continue of crash at a rate comparable to, or even exceeding, that of 1929, and this at a time when the Fed is printing more funny money faster than it ever has.
It would seem that Humpty Dumpty indeed has fallen, and all the king’s horses and men are working feverishly to put him back together. Will they succeed? That depends on your definition of success. It may well be that by printing enough money and bailing out not just individual companies, but entire industries, the powers that be may succeed in extending the current politico-financial system a bit longer. Maybe another year of so. Who knows? Longer term, it is doubtful that the current governmental and financial structures currently in place will be able to survive in their current form. Change is going to happen.
Just to give you a idea about how desperate some in the political establishment haver become, last week a member of Congress suggested that the federal government provide every person in America – she did not say citizens, but every person in America, which includes, among others, illegal aliens – with a pre-loaded debit card in the amount of $2,000, which would be renewed with $1,000 per month for a year. That works out to $660 billion for the first month, then $330 Billion for the next eleven months. If I’ve done my math correctly, this works out to almost $4.2 trillion.
How does she plan to pay for it? This Congresswoman, Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), wants the Treasury to issue two $1 trillion platinum coins, have the Fed purchase the coins, then have the Treasury sweep the funds into the Treasury General account, from which the money would be disbursed to “every person in America.”
This is nothing but a massive dollar devaluation scheme, not unlike what FDR did in 1933-34 when he forced everyone to turn in his physical gold, then devalued the dollar about 70% against gold. The biggest difference is that Tlaib’s scheme would be far more aggressive in devaluing the dollar, meaning it would be massively inflationary. This can easily be seen if we consider the current price os platinum and the amount of investment grade platinum that is currently available. The current price of platinum in US dollars is $618.61. According to this article, there are about 8 million total ounces of investment grade platinum bullion available in the world. At current prices, this means the total value of all investible platinum is about $5 billion. If the US federal government used this entire 8 million ounces to mint two huge coins weighing 4 million ounces each, this implies that the dollar would be devalued against platinum to approx. 1/400 of its current value. Put another way, platinum would go from $618.62 per ounce to around $247,444 per ounce. Other prices would rise accordingly. Put another way, the dollar would lose 99.75% of its value against platinum. This is even enough to make an inflationist such as FDR blush.
Of course, it’s highly doubtful that, even if Tlaib’s scheme were put into practice, the coins – if you can call a 4 million troy ounce object a coin at all – would almost certainly be far smaller than in my example above. This means that the devaluation of the dollar would be far greater than 99.75%
Further, Tlaib claims that her scheme is deficit-neutral, not requiring any new debt to be issued. Perhaps I’m missing something here or have done my math wrong, but the cost of her program for one year is more than double the $2 Trillion value of her two proposed coins, so where does the other $2 trillion plus come from?
I went through the above exercise in some detail just to give you an example of the sort of absurd nonsense that passes for thinking among our leaders in Washington. And while Tlaib’s scheme is ridiculous, it’s really not all that much more absurd than proposals being floated by the Trump administration. Trump is talking about bailing out whole industries, having the federal government own stock of bailed out companies and sending checks to everyone as well. President Trump himself has gone on record arguing for negative interest rates and quantitative easing.
As in 2008, so it is in 2020. Government officials are running around with their hair on fire desperately trying to fix a debt crisis by, wait for it…taking on more debt!
Lux Lucet 
Coronavirus Quarantines, Are They Biblical?
Posted in Politics, Scripturalism, tagged Coronavirus, John Robbins, Scripturalism, Scripture Commentary on March 29, 2020| 1 Comment »
An almost empty street is seen at Times Square in Manhattan on Monday in New York City. On Tuesday, Governor Andrew Cuomo dismissed rumors that a quarantine would be in place for the state after days of rumors of New York City being put on lockdown. JJOHANNES EISELE/AFP/GETTY
All the days wherein the plague shall be in him he shall be defiled; he is unclean: he shall dwell alone; without the camp shall his habitation be.
“We haven’t faced an enemy like we are facing today in 102 years – we are at war. In the time of war, we must make sacrifices, and I thank all of our Ohio citizens for what they are doing and what they aren’t doing. You are making a huge difference, and this difference will save lives,” said Governor DeWine. “Right now, we are in a crucial time in this battle. What we do now will slow this invader so that our healthcare system will have time to treat those who have contracted COVID-19 and also have time to treat those who have other medical problems. Time is of the essence.” Thus reads the announcement on the Ohio.gov website where the state’s Stay At Home Order is also listed.
Clearly, Governor DeWine takes the coronavirus [the Ohio.gov website calls it COVID-19] outbreak very seriously. Note the repeated use of military terminology in the quote above. We are told that “We haven’t faced an enemy like we are facing today in 102 years” [apparently, this is a reference to the 1918 outbreak of the Spanish Flu]…“we are at war”…“In time of war”…”we are in a crucial time in this battle”…”What we do now will slow this invader.”
With all this military terminology, one wonders when the Governor plans to institute a draft. Then on second thought, in a way, he already has. As the website notes, beginning March 23, 2020 at 11:59 p.m. Ohioans are under a Stay At Home Order. This order is effective until 11:59 p.m. on April 6, 2020 “unless the order is rescinded or modified.” This order applies to everyone, and as of this writing on March 29, no recension or modification of this order has been announced. So in a way, all Ohioans already have been drafted into the Governor’s war.
One question that seems not to have been asked in the wake of Governor DeWine’s announcement is, on what authority does he give this order? Reading through the order, one finds that it contains provisions that shutter a not insignificant portion of the businesses within the state. What is the legal basis for the Governor’s order?
One possible answer is that Ohio has adopted some form of “Medical Martial Law” legislation that was propagated in the wake of the Swine Flu pandemic in 2009. Researcher James Corbett produced a video back in 2009 related to the Swine Flu pandemic which he titled Medical Martial Law and which dealt with the legislative response that followed the outbreak of that pandemic. In his video, Corbett states that something called “The Model State Emergency Health Powers Act” was drafted by the Center for Law and the Public’s Health at Georgetown University (Jesuits) and Johns Hopkins University. According to the website of The Centers for Law & the Public’s Health, the Model State Emergency Health Powers Act (MSEHPA) “grants public health powers to state and local public health authorities to ensure a strong, effective, and timely planning, prevention, and response mechanisms to public health emergencies (including bioterrorism) while also respecting individual rights.”
The website boasts that forty-four states have adopted MSEHPA in whole or in part, but, curiously, Ohio is not listed among them. Neither was I able to find anything on other websites linking MSEHPA to Ohio. That being the case, this model legislation, as dangerous as it is, apparently is not the basis for the Governor’s actions.
According to the language in the Order itself, the basis for the Order is R.C. [Revised Code] 3701.13 which allows the Director of the Ohio Department of Health to “make special orders…for preventing the spread of contagious or infectious diseases.”
That said, although he doesn’t come out and say it directly, Governor DeWine and Dr. Amy Acton (Ohio’s Director of Health) seem eager for the public to see the Stay At Home Order as some form of Medical Martial Law. This can be seen from the Governor’s own words, laden as they are with military terminology.
(more…)
Share this:
Read Full Post »