Paving the way into a world currency, a world financial (unified) system, and then of course, a world governance. This is playing out exactly as George Soros has explained (see here).
The sole reason why I became interested in gold is because of the book “Overleef De Kredietcrisis” (How To Survive The Credit Crisis), written by Willem Middelkoop – the Dutch equivalent of Jim Rickards – in 2009. This book opened my eyes and interest for economics and I didn’t stop reading and writing about it ever since.
Your new book is named The Big Reset, isn’t our current monetary system sustainable?
Middelkoop had written four books in Dutch when he decided to switch to English, his latest book has just been relesed: The Big Reset. This book is about the War on Gold and the plans behind the scenes to create a new gold-backed world reserve currency. I had the privilege to do a Q&A with Middelkoop about his latest book. The Q&A will be published on this website in two parts.
Your new book is named The Big Reset, isn’t our current monetary system sustainable?
No, we now have arrived at the point where it is not the banks, but the countries themselves that are getting in serious financial trouble. The idea that we can ‘grow our way back’ out of debt is naive. The current solution to ‘park’ debts on to the balance sheets of central banks is just an interim solution. A global debt restructuring will be needed, as economists Rogoff en Reinhart recently explained in their working paper for the IMF. This will include a new global reserve system to replace the current failing dollar system, probably before 2020.
How will this change unfold?
Our financial system can be changed in almost every way as long as the main world trading partners can agree on these changes. Two major problems in the world’s financial system have to be addressed, the demise of the U.S. dollar as the world reserve currency and the almost uncontrollable growth of the worldwide mountain of debts and central banks’ balance sheets.
A reset planned well in advance can and probably will consist of different stages.
So currently the U.S. together with the IMF seems to be planning a multiple reserve currency system as a successor of the current dollar system. But this system which still include and center around the dollar, but other important currencies will be added at its core. OMFIF has published an interesting study last year. They remarked:
‘This marks the onset of a multi-currency reserve system and a new era in world money. For most of the past 150 years, the world has had just two reserve currencies, with sterling in the lead until the First World War, and the dollar taking over as the prime asset during the past 100 years. The pound sterling has been in relative decline since the Second World War. The birth of the euro in 1999 has turned the European single currency into the world’s no. 2 reserve unit, but it has been now officially accepted that the dollar and the euro share their role with smaller currencies. The renminbi has attracted widespread attention as a possible future reverse currency. But it’s still be some years away from attaining that status, primarily because it is not fully convertible.’
Despite the signing of a landmark nuclear deal in November with the P5+1 world powers, and a moderate tone coming from President Hassan Rouhani and Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif, Iranian defense officials escalated sharply their rhetoric against the United States over the weekend.
On Sunday, Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps Navy Commander Ali Fadavi said that the US knows that its aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf would be sunk if it launched a military strike on Iran.
“The Americans can sense by all means how their warships will be sunk with 5,000 crews and forces in combat against Iran and how they should find its hulk in the depths of the sea,” said Fadavi, according to Fars news agency.
“They cannot hide themselves in the sea since the entire Middle East region, western Europe, the Persian Gulf, the Sea of Oman and the Straits of Hormuz are monitored by us and there is no place for them to hide.”
The bellicose rhetoric follows Saturday’s announcement by an Iranian admiral that Iran had dispatched warships to the North Atlantic, while Iran’s spiritual leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei denounced the Americans as liars who, while professing to be friends of Iran, would bring down his regime if they could. He also said it was “amusing” that the US thought Iran would reduce its “defensive capabilities.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will visit the United States for five days in the first week of March, during which he will meet with US President Barack Obama at the White House and deliver an address at the annual AIPAC Policy Conference, the Prime Minister’s Office has confirmed.
The two leaders will likely discuss the faltering peace process with the Palestinians as well as differences between Jerusalem and Washington regarding Iran’s nuclear program, among other issues.
Netanyahu, for his part, has voiced growing frustration over Obama’s policies vis-a-vis Iran and Syria, with Israeli officials criticized the US president to the effect that a November 2013 nuclear deal with the Tehran regime lacked bite and wouldn’t hinder the Islamic Republic’s leaders in their alleged drive to acquire a nuclear weapons capability.
The visit also comes amid an acerbic, ongoing war of words between Israeli ministers and Washington over US Secretary of State John Kerry’s efforts to clinch a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians.
Seaborne radiation from Japan's wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant will wash up on the West Coast of the US this year.
That's raising concerns among some Americans including the residents of the San Francisco Bay Area city of Fairfax, California, which passed a resolution on December 6 calling for more testing of coastal seafood.
Between May 2011 and August 2013, as many as 20 trillion becquerels of cesium-137, 10 trillion becquerels of strontium-90 and 40 trillion becquerels of tritium entered the ocean via groundwater, according to Tokyo Electric.
Cesium isotopes, which emit flesh-penetrating gamma rays, are among the most dangerous radionuclides emitted by the plant, said Colin Hill, an associate professor of radiation oncology at the University of Southern California's Keck School of Medicine.
Strontium-90, which mimics calcium, increases the exposure risk for humans by remaining in the bones of fish for extended periods. While tritium is less radiologically intense than cesium and passes through fish faster than strontium, it can also contaminate sea creatures that encounter the isotope in high levels, Hill said.
America is a great land and lures immigrants worldwide, yet record numbers of U.S. citizens and permanent residents are giving up their citizenship or residency. For all the immigrant arrivals the trickle the other direction is increasing. The number is still small, with the “published” expatriates for the quarter 630 for the last quarter of 2013.
That brings the total number to 2,999 for all of 2013. The previous record high for a year was 1,781 set in 2011. It’s a 221% increase over the 932 who left in 2012. You can call it a shaming or a public record, but the Treasury Department is required to publish a quarterly list of Americans who renounced their U.S. Citizenship or terminated their long-term U.S. residency. The public outing puts Americans on notice who relinquished their rights.
Under crystal-clear skies on a warm autumn day, suburban mother Miriam Carey left her home in Stamford, Conn., to drive 270 miles to Washington, D.C., on a trip from which she would never return.
To this day, no one really knows why she was gunned-down by federal officers in the shadow of the Capitol dome.
The 34-year-old dental hygienist had her beloved infant daughter buckled into the back seat of her black Nissan Infiniti on Oct. 3, 2013, when she apparently made a wrong turn and suddenly found herself at a security checkpoint at the White House.
The media mistakenly reported that Carey rammed a barrier or a gate, but the initial police report mentions only that she tried to make a U-turn.
No one knows for sure, because, as WND has repeatedly reported, authorities have refused to release all surveillance video of the incident, and still have not even released the official investigation.
Carey’s family believes she panicked when officers drew their guns, causing her to flee the scene and lead police on a wild car chase that paralyzed the nation’s capital and captured the world’s attention, as local, national and international media breathlessly followed the unfolding drama.
The pivotal moment occurred at the Garfield Monument traffic circle, just south of the Capitol, where Carey brought her car to a stop but U.S. Capitol police officers and uniformed Secret Service agents inexplicably failed to use their squad cars to surround her and bring the chase to an end.
Instead, about a half-dozen officers on foot surrounded her with their guns drawn. Carey apparently panicked again and drove off through an opening between the officers. But the police then violated what is standard procedure for most major police departments and fired upon her in a crowded public space.
The media initially reported police suspected Carey to be a terrorist threat. That turned out to be untrue. Then the media reported she was mentally unstable. When that also turned out to be untrue, the media had run out of pat answers and lost interest, never bothering to really ask why the incident happened and investigate the background of Miriam Carey.
Legal and civil liberties experts told WND they have a word for what happened to her: Murder.
Where’s the outrage?
Sanders wondered aloud about the lack of outrage over the death of someone so normal, she easily could have been anyone’s relative or neighbor.
“She was a law-abiding citizen, so it’s unfortunate there aren’t more people who are upset about this because Miriam could be anyone. She was a sister and a daughter. She was a mother. She could be anyone and that’s why this issue should be on everyone’s mind. This could have been your sister, your daughter. Everyone makes mistakes, but she didn’t have to die,” Sanders said.
The attorney believes the initial media coverage is one reason there is so little public interest.
“I think what happened is that first she was portrayed as a woman with a gun. That was inaccurate. Then it was a crazy person driving around. Of course, we don’t value crazy people in this world. So we can discard them. She didn’t mean anything, and that’s how it’s been portrayed so far,” Sanders said.
Sanders zeroes on the silence from the White House over this issue.
“The president didn’t even comment on it. We’re not asking him to make any particular comment like it’s unjustified. But at least state that there was a U. S. citizen who was killed in the capital. I think that’s something that should garner some attention,” Sanders said.
Mr. Wellinghoff also noted that if a surprisingly small number of U.S. power substations were knocked out at once, that could destabilize the system enough to cause a blackout that could encompass most of the country. Now realize that many of the components of the U.S.'s electrical system sit out in the open, often in remote locations, protected by little more than chain link fences and security cameras.
We are more vulnerable than commonly thought. Those who hate America and wish us ill could easily conclude that our electrical infrastructure as our Achilles heel.
For more level-headed thinking, Rich Lordan, an executive at Electric Power Research Institute, asserts that "The depth and breadth of the attack is unprecedented." The motivation, he said, "appears to be preparation for an act of war."
Noonan adds, "It's hard to look at the facts and see the Metcalf incident as anything but a deliberate attack by a coordinated, professional group with something deeper on their minds than the joys of vandalism."
Those of us who are of a charitable bent might say that the official responses to the Metcalf attack were just for public consumption and that behind the scenes the government is working like mad to secure our electrical power stations and infrastructure. I for one hope and pray that our intelligence agencies are not as stupid as the FBI official statement makes them seem to be. But are they doing enough? And will political correctness inhibit their efforts to safeguard the grid?
Noonan ends her column with an answer to those questions: "You always want to think your government is on it. You want to think that they see what you see. But really, they're never on it. They always have to be pushed."
The vulnerabilities of the nation's electrical net have been downplayed since the 9/11 attacks, though hundreds of references exist calling attention to them. Despite good intentions, Peggy Noonan is a latecomer to this debate. It has been ten months since the Metcalf incident. Have the wheels of government begun to turn? The record is not promising. Over the threat to infrastructure security, the shadows of the Twin Towers loom stark as night.
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