Everyone talks about making money but not enough people talk about protecting it. It's harder to make money but very easy to blow everything away if not careful.

How do you manage risk when investing or making financial decisions, and what strategies have worked best for you?

There are still some people who are yet to trust cryptocurrency which is why they haven't diversified to that as an investment. They see cryptocurrency as scam which is why they refuse to buy any cryptocurrency/coin.

If you have invested in cryptocurrency, when did you make your first purchase? Which coin did you buy?

I've been on the fence about investing in cryptocurrency, I already have $3 worth of Ethereum that I got from a survey website, I didn't pay money for it I spent my time taking surveys and doing tasks. Bitcoin is obviously worth way more than Ethereum and is the oldest crypto. My question for the community, is it really worth trying to invest in crypto and is it similar to to investing in gold or should I completely ignore crypto and just hold on to the little crypto I have.

Creating a personal budget is one of the easiest ways to manage your money. When you have a budget, spending, saving, and investing becomes easy. I don't create a personal budget on a regular basis but sometimes i do, especially when the money is tight.

Do you create a personal budget to manage your income and track expenses? is it weekly budget or monthly budget.

💬 After Watching: Reflection & Discussion

This documentary presents a particular legal and historical perspective on taxation and government authority. Take time to reflect on the evidence presented before participating in the discussion below.

Reflection Questions

• Which legal or historical argument did you find most thought-provoking?
• Did the documentary raise questions you had not previously considered?
• Which claims appear well-supported by legal or historical sources?
• Which claims deserve additional research using statutes, court decisions, or other primary sources?
• How does this documentary connect with earlier discussions on monetary policy, inflation, and the growth of government?

Join the Discussion

Share your thoughts below. Focus on the evidence presented, the legal and historical arguments discussed, and any additional sources that helped shape your understanding. Respectful, evidence-based discussion is encouraged.

First they came for Muslim activists. Then they came for Nigel Farage. Now, they’re coming for independent media outlets.

UK-based readers may recall the moment almost exactly three years ago when the word “debanking” entered the mainstream British English lexicon. The prestigious London-based private bank Coutts had just decided to close Nigel Farage’s bank account due to his unsavoury political views and alleged Russian connections. That decision turned out to be very costly.

Almost immediately, Farage did what Farage does best: he whipped up a massive media frenzy. In next to no time two senior banking scalps had been claimed: those of Dame Alison Rose, the CEO of Coutts’ parent bank and “Big Four” lender, Natwest (formerly known as the Royal Bank of Scotland) and Coutts’ chief executive Peter Flavel.

Within a month, Natwest’s share price had slumped 8%, wiping £1 billion off its market cap, much of which was being propped up with public funds, and generating juicy returns for short-selling hedge funds. As we reported at the time, the resulting scandal drew much-needed public attention to a long-standing but accelerating trend — the “de-banking” of people and organisations with politically inconvenient views:

[T]his is hardly a one-off event: as I reported a couple of weeks ago, banks on both sides of the Atlantic are increasingly debanking their customers, often without explanation. I gave the example of California-based writer, activist, and social and political commentator Elad Nehorai, whose political views and ideals could not diverge more from those of Nigel Farage. Yet he, too, had his account at Bank of America, his bank of many years, summarily closed with no apparent warning or explanation…

Without a bank account, it is almost impossible to participate in the economy. And it is getting more difficult as cash becomes harder and harder to access and use. As Alex Lo writes for South China Morning Post, “Banking is a fundamental utility like water and electricity, and that’s precisely why democratic societies are increasingly turning to its use as a method of censorship and repression.”

However, the resulting government inquiry concluded that customers were not being “debanked” for political reasons. As a result, not only has debanking continued but debanked customers now face the prospect of being blocked from setting up new accounts at other banks, as the Telegraph reported on Monday:

Banks are planning to block “debanked” customers from setting up accounts with other lenders, potentially leading to innocent people being effectively locked out of the financial system, The Telegraph can reveal.

Lobby group UK Finance is developing a platform that will allow banks to share data on their customers where they detect “markers of economic crime”.

Lloyds, Barclays and Revolut have already started sharing data about customers, leading to accounts being frozen or closed, The Telegraph understands, following a pilot in 2024.

The data-sharing platform will build on that pilot to make a UK-wide system, which could automatically bar people from opening another account.

But concerns have been raised that thousands of innocent customers and businesses who have been debanked unfairly could be barred from opening up an account with another bank, effectively leaving them locked out of the financial system.

The latest victim of the debanking trend is the left-wing news website The Canary, which has accused the Lloyds Banking Group of “withholding a substantial amount of our money”  after nearly a decade of use. The news outlet — which brands itself as “radical working-class media” — says “Lloyds has not explained why it has taken this action… despite multiple communications from us”.

In a statement on Tuesday, the Canary speculated about the possible reasons behind Lloyds’ decision, including its anti-Zionist and pro-Palestine stance:

Whilst we do not currently know the reasons behind our debanking, we cannot afford to be naive about this.

We do know that multiple other politically engaged people have suffered similar actions by other banks in recent times. It is not lost on us that powerful banks are able to restrict the financial activity of anti-Zionist and pro-Palestine organisations and individuals.

It is an outrage that the Canary has been unceremoniously dropped into financial instability with no notice or explanation from Lloyds.

Starmer’s Last Attack

It would hardly come as a surprise the attack was in response to The Canary’s pro-Palestine sympathies. The UK government has done everything within its not inconsiderable powers to criminalise pro-Palestine, anti-genocide activism, including by scrapping the ancient right to trial by jury. Through its new National Security Law, the outgoing Keir Starmer government seeks to bulldoze literal thought crime legislation into law — in Orwell’s native United Kingdom.

I need to explain something very important to you.

The law that the govt used to arrest me, Section 12(1A) — the first ever use against a journalist — is a very short line. It is vague on purpose. And that is the exact line they have copied into the new "National Security Bill"

— Richard Medhurst (@richimedhurst) July 1, 2026

You can say something that is 100% factual, but if it paints what they deem a "proscribed organization" — even one that has never harmed the UK — in a "good" light, you can get 14 years in prison. (That's also copied from the Terrorism Act).

Anything you say can be twisted.

— Richard Medhurst (@richimedhurst) July 1, 2026

An article in The Canary explains just how dire a threat the new National Security Law poses to journalism and political dissent, describing it as “one last power grab” by Keir Starmer’s outgoing government:

As I am sat here writing this, there’s a sense of terror kicking in. I’m a journalist. It’s my job to be in the know about foreign affairs. At the Canary we pride ourselves on bringing people the news that the mainstream doesn’t dare. But this terror is absolutely nothing compared to what other people must be feeling.

This radicalised weaponisation of new legislation will hit marginalised communities so first and hardest. Journalists and community workers with direct, lived and painful connections to global conflict zones are facing a massive legal trap. If a reporter so much as quotes an entity that the home secretary has designated as a threat, they face immediate prosecution.

Civil liberties groups warn that the law will grant the Home Office absolute power to decide who is allowed to speak. And by leaving the definition of ‘assisting a designated body’ vague, the state has created a total monopoly on the narrative. It’s very much going to be, follow their way and toe the line, or go to jail, it seems.

Indie media outlet Zeteo warned of the severe danger of this new power-grab. The outlet warned that journalists face immediate arrest simply for conducting public interest interviews with banned groups. People will only get one side of the story. There will only be one narrative fed to us… and it will be the government’s.

The timing of Lloyds Bank’s debanking of The Canary is also curious, coming just two months after it announced the launch of a daily left-wing print tabloid — and what’s more, one that defends Palestinian rights. Following an injection of cash last year from used car and property website founder Cecil Hetherington, Canary director Steve Topple hailed the new tabloid as an alternative to the corporate press.

After its debanking, the Canary says it is now in a “financially precarious situation” and does not know when “money that Lloyds is holding will be returned” or how it will affect “our ability to get another bank account in the future”.

“The immediate effect has been that we have been unable to pay any staff or contractors,” Topple told Novara Media. “We have a large team, and all of them are now extremely distressed and in limbo. Many of them are marginalised people and it has hit them very hard. We are trying our best to mitigate the situation and have so far received much-appreciated support from members of the public.”

Lloyds’ actions have already triggered a storm of protests from across the political spectrum.

This is a disgraceful move by @LloydsBank

Be under no illusion, it's an attack on all independent media in UK that doesn't tow the government line

If Lloyds doesn't sort this immediately, a widespread boycott campaign should ensue https://t.co/VbdqcKcI9i

— Matt Kennard (@kennardmatt) July 1, 2026

Corbyn told the Canary that the anti-democratic attempt to silence an independent news site was "a very dangerous road"

Via @skwawkbox https://t.co/rgxQhu6HmI

— Canary (@TheCanaryUK) July 2, 2026

The Canary has been debanked by Lloyds.

Debanking is one of the most pernicious forms of cancellation that an individual or organisation can face — something the FSU is only too familiar with.

Lloyds has provided no explanation for its decision and has not told The Canary when… https://t.co/Y2YKbFC1wu

— The Free Speech Union (@SpeechUnion) June 30, 2026

A Growing Phenomenon

The first major target of debanking in the UK, well over a decade ago, were members of the British Muslim community, particularly those involved in Pro-Palestinian activism. But unlike with Farage, their plight was met with total radio silence in the mainstream media, as the veteran journalist Peter Oborne recounts in the video below.

Peter Oborne Exposes Nigel Farage Banking Bigotry @OborneTweets pic.twitter.com/sir2vSAPlq

— Double Down News (@DoubleDownNews) July 11, 2023

By the time Farage had lost access to Coutts’ banking services, in the summer of 2023, banks in the UK were closing nearly one thousand accounts daily, with just over 343,000 closed in 2022, compared to about 45,000 in 2017.

Following the Farage affair, the Financial Conduct Authority conducted an investigation into banks’ debanking practices, the conclusion of which was that banks had not been closing customers’ accounts for political reasons. Farage described the outcome as “farcical”.

In the US, recent victims of debanking include Scott Ritter, the former United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) weapons inspector who is a prominent critic of US and Western imperialism. In January, his bank of 26 years, Citizens’ Bank, closed all of his accounts, including his and his wife’s joint accounts with their daughters, without offering an explanation, as he recounts in the first minutes of the following interview with Judge Napolitano:

In a letter to Ritter Citizens Bank apparently that not only was it under no obligation to divulge the reasons for closing his accounts but that Citizens’ policy actively prevents any disclosure of any information concerning the decision to close the account. As Cato Institute notes, this silent treatment often has to do with confidentiality laws:

However, these are not laws meant to protect the financial privacy of customers. Rather, this confidentiality is to prevent citizens from finding out they are under criminal investigation. For example, reports filed under the Bank Secrecy Act are restricted so heavily that banks cannot share the details of the reports or even admit that a report exists.

While Ritter does not know the exact reasons for his debanking, he suspects that someone in the FBI, fully armed with the “totality of [his] banking transactions”, had “tipped off” Citizens Bank about “suspicious activity” that resulted in Citizens Bank issuing an SAR [Suspicious Activity Report].”

Ritter believes that donations he had received and subsequent cash withdrawals before his three trips to Russia in 2025, which thanks to US and EU sanctions is disconnected from the Western economy, may have triggered the move. According to Ritter, the “purpose of “de-banking” is to harass a targeted individual,” even in the absence of evidence pointing to any criminal activity.”

The reasons for an account closure, while often a mystery to the customers affected, often include operational reasons. Put simply, a financial institution chooses to close the account of a customer because the reputational risks of being associated with that client are simply too high. However, political or ideological motivations appear to play a part in some prominent cases.

The most clear-cut example of this was the Canadian government’s decision, in February 2022, to invoke the emergencies act to compel banks to seize the accounts of the freedom convoy protesters who had blocked several key border crossings. According to the minutes of a meeting between Canada’s Economy Minister, Vice President and WEF board member Chrystia Freeland and senior bank executives the day before the act was invoked, one CEO flagged concerns that if banks were forced to close accounts, it could be seen as the sector “being used as an arm of the government” or even “a political weapon.”

In 2022, Paypal banned the accounts of the UK-based Free Speech Union, its founder Toby Young and his online publication, the Daily Sceptic, for purportedly breaching its policies against hate speech. Worse still, the fintech giant surreptitiously slipped a line into its terms of service granting itself the right to fine customers $2,500 for spreading misinformation. When the news got out, provoking a huge public backlash, PayPal claimed it had all been a big mistake.

Of course, as NC readers EssCetera and Rev Kev pointed out in comments to a previous post, Paypal has a long, storied history of doing this sort of thing, going all the way back to its freezing of Wikileaks’ account in 2010. And banks in the US have been closing down the accounts of workers in the porn industry since at least 2014 as part of “Operation Chokepoint”, which targeted certain undesirable but legal business sectors (h/t Michaelmas).

From “Debanking” to “Civil Death”

If there’s one fate worse than being debanked, it is suffering through the ordeal of “civil death”. Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur for the Palestinian occupied territories, became subject to US sanctions roughly a year ago that cut her and her family off not only from US banking but also travel and tech.

In Albanese’s case, it was clear to her why she was being put under constraints normally reserved for narco-barons and terrorists: she had just published a UN report denouncing the more than 60 (largely Western) multinational corporations that are allegedly complicit in, and profiting from, Israel’s military occupation of Gaza.

“This fury [came] because I poked the bear,” she said. “Not in one eye, in both eyes.”

👉 “The moment I pointed to the fact that there are businesses who are profiting from it, yes, I get sanctioned.”

The first UN expert in 80 years to be sanctioned by the U.S. explains why she now faces a U.S. travel ban, frozen accounts, no ability to bank anywhere, cancelled… https://t.co/ia3WLhmyV7

— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) December 11, 2025

In the clip below, Albanese explains (in French), as she fights back tears, the extent to which she has been barred from participating in basic civil life since the imposition of US sanctions against her:

“I can’t make payments with my working credit card nor can I do transfers; my health insurance has been cancelled, I can’t make hotel reservations… I’m being treated as if I were Pablo Escobar. “

UN official Albanese described financial and insurance restrictions imposed on her following her public statement characterizing Israeli actions as genocide.

"I can't make payments with my working credit card nor can I do transfers; my health insurance has been canceled, I can't… pic.twitter.com/zAH7paGjxm

— HatsOff (@HatsOffff) June 30, 2026

Other victims of civil death, this time at the hands of EU authorities, include the German journalist Hüseyin Doğru and Jacques Baud, a retired Swiss colonel and former senior strategic analyst for NATO. In both cases, the justifications were openly ideological. Baud was accused of of acting as a “mouthpiece” for pro-Russian propaganda and disseminating “conspiracy theories” about the war in Ukraine while Doğru was targeted due to his reporting on Gaza.

In the case of Doğru, both his wife and mother were also targeted with sanctions (h/t vao). In neither case were criminal charges imposed, and because the sanctions are defined as an administrative measure within the EU’s bureaucracy, neither Baud nor Doğru can appeal to a court of law in their respective countries of residence (Belgium and Germany). This is the very definition of Kafkaesque.

Worse still, these sorts of processes could soon be automated almost across the board, as I warned in my 2022 book Scanned:

Combining [central bank] digital currencies with digital IDs while phasing out, or even banning, the use of cash would grant governments and central banks the ability not only to track every purchase we make (and made in the past) but also to determine what we can and cannot spend our money on. They could also prevent certain “undesirable” people from buying anything. Anyone with a blocking notice attached to their digital identity would “thus be unable to do many of the most basic things independently,” says [German financial journalist Norbert] Häring.

Incidentally, the digital euro has already become a de facto legal reality, after the European Parliament (EP)’s economic and monetary affairs committee gave a green light to the eurozone central bank digital currency (CBDC) last week. Presumably, even many members of our highly informed readership will have been unaware of this fact since it all occurred against a backdrop of near-total media silence.

From 1926 through 2025, just 27.6% of stocks beat the broader market. Nearly 60% actually destroyed shareholder wealth, and the median stock delivered a lifetime return of -6.9%. Yet despite those sobering odds, U.S. stocks collectively created roughly $91 trillion in wealth over the last century, with just 46 companies responsible for half of it.

Those are some of the headline findings from a new study by Hendrik Bessembinder of Arizona State University's W.P. Carey School of Business, who examined the performance of nearly 30,000 U.S. stocks over the last century. The research paints a striking picture of how wealth is actually created in the stock market: while broad market indexes have generated exceptional long-term returns, the vast majority of individual stocks have failed to keep pace.

Bessembinder analyzed 29,754 publicly traded U.S. stocks between 1926 and 2025. Over that period, the overall stock market produced an annualized return of about 10.1%, turning every dollar invested into more than $15,000, according to the study, detailed in this white paper. 

But those impressive aggregate returns mask an uncomfortable reality. The typical stock fared far worse. In fact, the median stock lost 6.9% over its lifetime, fewer than half of all stocks generated a positive lifetime return, only about 41% outperformed Treasury bills during the time they were publicly traded, and just 27.6% managed to outperform the market itself.

The reason is simple: stock market returns are incredibly uneven. While any stock can fall to zero, there is effectively no limit to how much a winner can rise. Over long periods, a tiny number of extraordinary companies generate gains so large that they more than offset the thousands of stocks that stagnate, disappoint, or disappear altogether. Those rare winners account for an outsized share of the market's overall success.

Perhaps the most surprising finding is that this concentration has become even more extreme. In Bessembinder's original research covering 1926 through 2016, 89 companies accounted for half of all shareholder wealth created by the U.S. stock market. After adding the last nine years of data, total wealth creation more than doubled to roughly $91 trillion, yet the number of companies responsible for half of it fell to just 46.

And yet stocks are heralded as a safe way to invest.

Silver's Real Price Is No Longer the Paper Price?

Good morning everyone, and welcome to the weekend Join the Dots.

Last weekend I found that magnificent interview with Toby Costa. It was pure information, which is exactly what this channel is about. This channel is not about giving financial advice. It is about providing information so that you can make better-informed decisions for yourself.

This week I found another two excellent interviews featuring Dr. Nomi Prins at the Rick Rule Symposium held in Florida. Today we're going to begin with one of the key themes from those discussions by looking at silver.

Silver Shortages in India Push Premiums Higher

Let's begin with the first article.

India's restrictions on silver imports have created shortages. Naturally, when the government limits imports while demand remains strong, shortages develop and premiums rise because people still want silver regardless of government policy.

During 2025, India imported approximately 138 million ounces of silver, representing roughly 15% of the world's annual silver supply.

When restrictions are placed on imports, the result is predictable. Demand remains while supply becomes more limited, causing prices to increase.

Currently, silver is selling at roughly an 11% premium in Mumbai, equivalent to about $6.50 above the paper spot price.

This closely mirrors what is happening in Shanghai, where silver is trading at approximately an 11.5% premium, around $6.70 above the current spot price.

This means the world's two largest silver-consuming nations—countries whose populations have a deep cultural appreciation for both silver and gold—are both paying premiums of roughly 11% over the quoted paper market price.

To many observers, this serves as further evidence that the paper market is not accurately reflecting physical demand.

Evidence is what matters.

Evidence.

Truth.

From that evidence we can draw logical conclusions, separating reality from suppressed truths to better understand what is actually happening.

Australia's Housing Slowdown and the Second Derivative Effect

The second article is particularly relevant for viewers in Australia.

It examines what could be called the second derivative of a housing market slowdown.

Rather than focusing directly on falling home prices, it looks at what happens to businesses that depend on an active property market.

The article, published by the Financial Review rather than a personal blog, is titled:

"How a Frozen Property Market Is Putting a Chill on Freezer Sales."

The concept is straightforward.

When housing activity slows, sales of household appliances decline.

People typically purchase new refrigerators, freezers, washing machines, and other large appliances when they move into a new home.

Likewise, homeowners often upgrade household goods when rising property values make them feel wealthier. Increased home equity encourages additional spending because people believe they have more financial flexibility.

As the housing market freezes, those purchases disappear.

This is why retailers that sell household appliances begin experiencing declining sales.

The impact doesn't stop there.

Furniture retailers suffer.

Automobile sales weaken.

Curtain and furnishing companies see reduced demand.

Many sectors tied to home purchases begin to struggle simultaneously.

Eventually these effects spread throughout the retail economy, creating recessionary pressures that originate from a slowing housing market rather than from consumer demand alone.

A Major Buyer Continues Accumulating Gold

The third item comes from Andy Schectman, speaking with Kai Hoffmann during the Rick Rule Symposium.

The central message is simple.

There appears to be a very large buyer—a true "whale"—steadily purchasing enormous quantities of physical gold and taking delivery.

Many speculate that this buyer is China, although the identity cannot be confirmed with certainty.

Regardless of who it is, the important observation is that large amounts of physical gold continue leaving the market and moving into long-term ownership.

Andy Schectman presents extensive supporting data for this conclusion.

Although much of this information has been discussed before, it reinforces the growing evidence that significant physical accumulation continues behind the scenes.

The Real Asset Lockout Has Begun

The primary discussion of the day centers on Dr. Nomi Prins.

What makes Dr. Prins particularly interesting is her background.

She previously worked at a senior level on Wall Street.

That experience allows her to understand not only how financial markets function but also how major financial institutions think and why they position themselves the way they do.

Understanding Wall Street's perspective helps explain many of the changes now taking place throughout the global financial system.

According to Dr. Prins, real assets will increasingly be required to support real money.

While technology companies continue attracting headlines and excitement, Wall Street banks are quietly expanding something else:

Their precious metals divisions.

Banks are hiring additional personnel and expanding their metals desks because they are preparing for future developments rather than reacting after the fact.

Banks don't wait until changes appear on newspaper front pages.

They anticipate them.

They study demand.

They observe where capital is moving.

Earlier we looked at India's growing silver premiums.

We also examined the strong premiums developing in China.

Another important statistic reinforces this trend.

In March alone, after silver prices declined, China imported approximately 836 metric tons of silver, nearly 30 million ounces.

That single month's imports represented roughly 3% of total annual global silver production.

China continues acquiring significant quantities of both silver and gold.

Dr. Prins summarizes the situation well:

"Tech is still buzzing, but at the same time the metal desks are hiring."

That contrast is significant.

It suggests that while public attention remains focused on technology, major financial institutions are quietly preparing for an environment where precious metals play a much larger role.

One notable example illustrates this shift.

JPMorgan reportedly relocated its entire precious metals desk from New York to Singapore, giving employees only one week's notice.

Such an abrupt relocation demonstrates how strategically important the metals business has become.

It was not an ordinary corporate move.

It reflected the importance of positioning the bank correctly for what it believes lies ahead.

Gold as a Monetary Anchor

Dr. Nomi Prins argues that gold is likely to continue moving higher over the long term because the forces driving demand are structural rather than temporary.

She notes that while short-term price fluctuations attract attention, the more important trend is the growing demand for gold as a strategic reserve asset.

According to Dr. Prins:

"Gold is going to get higher than these levels. We were looking at 5,500 in January. Our prediction at Prinsights was for 6,000 by the end of the year, and we still stand by that."

She explains that the reason extends far beyond simple investment demand.

The structural demand for gold is increasing because countries are looking for ways to diversify away from dependence on the U.S. dollar—not only as a currency, but also as a source of strategic power.

Gold increasingly serves as collateral that can support international trade agreements.

Those agreements may involve energy shipments, industrial equipment, transportation, or countless other forms of commerce.

Even when gold itself is not the item being traded, possessing substantial gold reserves strengthens a nation's financial position.

Dr. Prins believes central banks, particularly China, are unlikely to reverse the changes they have already made.

China reduced its holdings of U.S. Treasury securities from approximately $1.3 trillion to roughly $620 billion.

She argues that it is unrealistic to believe China will suddenly purchase hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of Treasuries again.

The global balance of economic power has changed.

Rather than focusing on daily price volatility, Dr. Prins believes investors should recognize that the world is entering a much larger hard-asset, commodity-based supercycle.

In her view:

"Gold is a monetary anchor for trade, for payment systems, and for central banks to diversify their own power."

The Growing Importance of Real Asset Collateral

Dr. Prins touches on several major themes that we've discussed for months.

One of the most important is the future role of collateral.

As Miles Harris frequently points out, the key question becomes:

What will serve as collateral in the future?

For decades, U.S. Treasury securities occupied that position.

They were widely viewed as the premier Tier One asset.

According to this discussion, that perception has weakened significantly in recent years.

Following the freezing of approximately $300 billion of Russian reserves, many countries began reassessing the security of holding large amounts of U.S. government debt.

Meanwhile, China has reduced its Treasury holdings by more than half while increasing its holdings of precious metals.

Exactly how much gold China owns remains uncertain because official reporting is limited.

Nevertheless, the broader trend appears clear.

Real assets are becoming increasingly important as collateral.

Dr. Prins also highlights the geopolitical dimension.

In today's changing international environment, gold and silver are no longer viewed solely as investment assets.

They are increasingly regarded as strategic financial resources within the broader competition between major global powers.

The Burden of Government Debt

Dr. Prins then turns to another issue: the enormous cost of servicing government debt.

She explains that whether people recognize it or not, everyone ultimately pays for government debt.

The United States now carries approximately $40 trillion in national debt.

The figure is so large that it becomes difficult to fully comprehend.

Yet the practical consequences are easier to understand.

Every year, before funding roads, hospitals, schools, energy infrastructure, or countless other public services, the federal government must first pay interest on that debt.

Dr. Prins compares this situation to an individual carrying large personal debts.

People often experience periods in life where they accumulate mortgages, student loans, or credit card balances.

Eventually they attempt to reduce those debts while continuing to save and invest for the future.

Governments, however, have followed a different path.

According to Dr. Prins, since the financial crisis the United States has continued moving in only one direction:

Higher debt.

As debt grows, interest payments consume an increasingly larger portion of government resources.

That leaves less money available for investments that directly benefit society.

Ultimately those costs work their way through the economy in the form of taxes, public spending decisions, and reduced financial flexibility.

Every taxpayer bears part of that burden.

Is There a Plan?

The sheer scale of debt servicing has reached extraordinary levels.

Approximately $1 trillion per year is now spent simply paying interest on U.S. government debt.

That occurs before spending on healthcare, education, defense, infrastructure, or other government priorities.

Dr. Prins questions how such a trajectory can continue indefinitely.

She also argues that there appears to be no comprehensive plan for reducing the debt burden.

The same concern extends beyond the United States.

Many developed countries—including Europe, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia—face similar challenges.

The fundamental question becomes:

Where is the long-term plan to reduce these growing debt obligations?

According to Dr. Prins, there isn't one.

There is no clear escape route.

If that assessment proves correct, it becomes easier to understand why many nations are seeking alternatives that include greater reliance on tangible assets.

What Has All That Debt Produced?

The discussion then shifts to a broader question.

If trillions of dollars have been borrowed, what has that borrowing actually created?

Looking across many American cities, educational institutions, and healthcare systems, the speaker argues that the visible results do not appear proportional to the scale of the debt accumulated.

By comparison, Japan is presented as an example of a country that used large amounts of debt differently.

Its borrowing helped finance industrial development, research, technological advancement, and manufacturing.

Many of the products that established Japan's global reputation—particularly its automobiles—were supported by decades of investment in research and development.

According to the speaker, China is following a similar strategy today by directing substantial resources toward industrial expansion and technological development.

The broader point is not simply the amount of debt a country holds.

Rather, it is how effectively that borrowed money is used.

The discussion concludes by previewing a future examination of China's property market and financial system.

The speaker notes that there are both strengths and weaknesses that deserve careful analysis.

Rather than approaching the subject from an ideological perspective, the goal is to examine the available evidence wherever it leads.

As he concludes:

"I'm not anti-China. I'm not anti-US. I'm anti-waste, I'm anti-lies, and I'm anti-censorship.

Pro-truth."

https://mises.org/wire/how-bad-were-recessions-fed-not-bad-they-are-now]https://mises.org/wire/how-bad-were-recessions-fed-not-bad-they-are-now

I was thinking maybe organizing things in a way to make it easier for beginners to see what they should start with.

I've gathered a lot since joining. I used to imagine money just sitting in a bank account like cash in a vault but learning how the monetary system actually works was eye-opening for me.

I learned that most money today is digital, not physical. Banks don’t just store money; when they issue loans, they effectively create new money within a regulated system. That changed how I see things big time.

I used money and currency interchangeably and incorrectly. They are not the same. It feels like discovering the hidden mechanics of something I use every day. Thank you! 😄

Zang International with Lynette Zang

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Lynette Zang is an economist that has been involved in the markets at some level since 1964, as a student, banker, stockbroker and precious metals and currency analyst. She has been studying currency lifecycles since 1987 and discovered similar social, economic, and financial patterns that occur throughout the stages of a currency’s lifetime. She believes that recognizing these patterns enables people to see what’s coming and make well-informed choices that put their best interest first. Together, Lynette, her team of experts and special guests share how to best prepare for economic uncertainty. Focus will be in the areas of Lynette’s mantra and how to be equipped in the key areas of Food, Water, Energy, Security, Wealth Preservation, Barterability, Shelter and last, but certainly not least, Community. This channel is dedicated to supporting sound money globally and building a community that connects us worldwide.

Fantastic video discussion!

David Rogers Webb is a former investment banker and hedge fund manager who studied the mechanisms by which the Federal Reserve manipulated financial markets through the Dot-com bubble and bust. Then, early in the Great Financial Crisis of 2008/2009, he became alarmed when client accounts were encumbered in the bankruptcy of a small broker dealer. He then discovered that legal changes had been made quietly which sever property rights to securities.

G. Edward Griffin is a thoughtful writer, documentary filmmaker and tireless advocate of American values, individual responsibility and human freedom. Griffin wrote the landmark book on the Federal reserve titled The Creature from Jekyll Island.

What if the currency in your wallet was created through a chain of IOUs?

In Episode 4 of Hidden Secrets of Money, Mike Maloney breaks down one of the most important — and least understood — parts of the modern financial system: how currency is created.

This episode explains how Treasury bonds, Federal Reserve checks, banks, debt, taxes, and fractional reserve lending all work together inside what Mike calls the biggest scam in the history of mankind.

The core idea is simple but shocking: the Treasury issues IOUs, the banks buy those IOUs, the Federal Reserve writes its own IOUs, and currency springs into existence. The process repeats over and over, enriching the banking system while increasing the national debt and passing the bill to the public.

Mike also explains why inflation is not simply “prices going up,” why debt must keep expanding under the current system, and why understanding the difference between money and currency is essential.

This is a great miniseries and may be worth featuring along side hidden secrets of money.

THE UNITED STATES OF ADDICTION

Serialized Article — Part 1

How did George Washington get paid the first time? It wasn't with coins. The mint did not open until 1792. Washington's presidency began in 1789. The answer is that George Washington got paid the same way all US presidents have been paid: with bankers' fingers in his pockets, skimming money from the entire country through one huge banking scam.

That huge banking scam did not start in 1913 with the Federal Reserve. It did not start in 1863 with the National Banking Act. It did not even start in 1791 with the first Bank of the United States, the country's first central bank. It started on Alexander Hamilton's third day in office in 1789 when he had the country borrow funny money from a fake bank in which Hamilton owned shares. He then paid George Washington and other US creditors and employees of the government with that funny money.

Hamilton did not invent the scam himself. He copied it from the Bank of England system set up in 1694. But Hamilton fixed its one big flaw, the flaw that caused the Bank of England to default in 1696 when its funny money was exposed as a sham. Hamilton found a way to prevent a default from happening. Otherwise, the two scams are identical.

If George Washington had known the truth about his early paychecks, there would be a sequel to the hatchet story where what gets chopped to bits is a Treasury Secretary rather than a cherry tree. Thanks to Alexander Hamilton, George Washington got paid with paper IOUs, banknotes issued by the so-called Bank of New York in which Hamilton owned shares.

What prevented exposure of those banknotes as paper Chuck-E-Cheese tokens worth 35 cents on the dollar was the first bailout in United States history. In that bailout, Hamilton converted the Chuck-E-Cheese tokens into full US dollars and then had the United States pay his fake bank interest on the full US dollars rather than the fake bank paying the United States for every dollar-denominated paper Chuck-E-Cheese token that Alexander Hamilton upgraded into a full legal US dollar.

The United States paid the Bank of New York 6 cents. We transformed dumpsters full of its junk paper IOUs into full money and we paid the bank. This is crystal clear from the official record, as you are about to see.

If you understand this scam and, in particular, how Hamilton fixed the flaw with the Bank of England system, you will understand the scam that is modern central banking throughout the West, which is hands down the biggest scam in the history of the world.

By way of that background, welcome to Best Evidence. My name is John Titus. This video marks this channel's return to the War for Bankracy series after a very long break corresponding to a sea change in my thinking about how and when the cabal of globalist criminals that is currently running the US came into power.

How and when did they take sovereignty and divest the people of agency, taking the power from we the people? Like a lot of other people, I believed it was by a coup d'état at some point in American history. Originally in this episode I was going to argue that the coup took place during the global financial crisis. Other people of course have pointed to other events in US history as marking a coup. The JFK assassination is a big one. The creation of the Fed in 1913 is one. 9/11 is a biggie. And originally episode 4 was going to pile on to that list and say, “No, no, it was the global financial crisis.”

But the more I researched and really the more I analyzed, the more I understood that the coup theory does not really work. Not because there has not been a sovereign power transfer. For sure there has been a sovereign power transfer. We the people have not been the real sovereign in the US for a very long time. I do not think very many thinking people would argue that point.

The coup theory fails because a coup d'état is a criminal act. It is pretty much the worst crime on the books. Whereas the sovereign power transfer that took place in the US did so through legal channels. There was nothing criminal or illegal about it. And it was not at some point in US history. It was within two days of Alexander Hamilton taking office on September 11th, 1789.

THE UNITED STATES OF ADDICTION

Serialized Article — Part 2

That's when, two days later, he handed the keys to the nation's sovereignty, which is the power over national credit, over to private bankers. He did that, like I said, by copying and improving the Bank of England system set up in 1694.

Now, in episode two, we saw that the establishment of the Bank of England was a pivotal event in world history because that is what propelled the private power over national credit past the military to become the number one sovereign power in sovereign nations. Remember Machiavelli said in the early 1520s that the military was the greatest power, but by the early 1800s, Thomas Jefferson said, “No, banking institutions are more dangerous than standing armies.” That is really not so much a difference of opinion as it is a difference of era. Machiavelli simply did not live to see the Bank of England created in 1694. And that is when standing armies yielded to banking institutions as top dog.

And one very important reason for that was that in the Bank of England system and in the systems that follow it, power over national credit was not just private. It was anonymous. And that latter feature is what enables people, private individuals, to wield enormous power over a nation with no democratic safeguards, no restraints, and no transparency at all. You do not even know who they are. With the military, at least you know the names of the top brass.

In this episode, I am going to walk through that scam again, but this time I am going to use the US as an example and show you how Hamilton perfected the scam by eliminating the biggest risk faced by the bankers. I am also going to talk about another feature of the private credit system which ensures that the power wielded by bankers is permanent and that is the fact that the private power over national credit behaves exactly like an addiction. It replicates an addiction perfectly, where the country is the addict, the private bankers are the drug dealers, and the private credit, the money, what we think of as money, is the drug.

Actually, I am going to show you that the private power over national credit is worse than a drug addiction. I will get to that. But make no mistake about it, private credit addiction went into the veins of the US, into its money supply, at birth. And it is the apex ancestor of every addiction that came after it.

In so far as a coup d'état is concerned though there was not one. When Alexander Hamilton perfected the Bank of England system of addiction here in the US he did not do anything illegal and he was never challenged. He might have been near the limits of his discretion as US Treasury Secretary but no one ever challenged him. Not Congress, not the president, not the courts. So private credit addiction has raged in this country for 250 years. The public debt is now $40 trillion. The interest payment is absolutely out of control. And now the drug dealer's got to harvest the addict's organs because siphoning blood out of our veins is no longer enough. In financial terms, the debtor can't service the interest payment anymore, not the real interest payment at any rate. So the creditor has got to start pocketing collateral. And we are experiencing that in real time right now.

That is a short form of US history. Private credit addiction was created in 1789 in order to feed parasites. It got worse for 250 years and now the parasites are bleeding the nation dry before they move on to their next host or whoever that might be. But there was never a coup. If you want to take over a country, a coup is actually dangerous because it exposes you to prison, exposes you to death. It is a hanging offense. The much smarter play is to get the nation addicted to your credit and then control the credit. That is what is going on. Doing it that way gives you the upside of a coup d'état, gives you sovereign control without the downside, the risk of prosecution, jail or death. That is because the private power over national credit is a voluntary and legal transfer of power from the nation to private individuals.

The trick, of course, is getting the nation to hand over its power like that, which in the US was done by way of an inside job, as you are going to see in this video. It was not some outside enemy, in other words, who jabbed a needle of private credit addiction into the nation's arm. It was her first United States Treasury Secretary. And no one said peep. So even if it was of dubious constitutionality, what Hamilton did, and I think it was questionable at a minimum, it was not illegal and thus there was never a coup in the US.

That is a major reversal for me and for this channel because for over 10 years I have been saying there was a coup at some point, that at some point in US history a gang of criminals took over, took control of the US. And my number one piece of evidence on that score was and is to this day extremely solid, very solid, never challenged. And that is a decision made at the highest levels of government not to prosecute any executive at any global too-big-to-fail bank even when the banks admitted their crimes. That decision, as I have shown repeatedly on this channel, was ultimately made by the banks themselves by installing attorneys at the Department of Justice who refused to investigate crimes by banks. That outcome is absolutely shocking because it reveals that private bankers enjoy sovereign immunity far beyond what the United States president has under the Constitution.

Remember Nixon had to answer a subpoena. That is what got him out of office. He was subject to investigation but not the global too-big-to-fail banks. And what that reveals, the fact that they are not being investigated, is that the sovereign power under the Constitution, we the people, is not really the sovereign power in the US. I still stand by that. In fact, I did two long videos on that very point. One was The Veneer of Justice in the Kingdom of Crime in 2016 and then All the Plenary's Men in 2017. This video in a lot of ways is a prequel to those, but those said there was a coup and that is wrong. Otherwise, those videos stand as is. They are other good videos. However, it does not follow from the loss of sovereignty that a coup is what caused the loss of that sovereignty. That is where those videos go wrong.

In reality, our loss of sovereignty starts with a bank in which Alexander Hamilton owned shares and which is absolutely remarkable for its absence from so many accounts of early US monetary history. The vast majority of accounts of early US monetary history focus exclusively on the Bank of North America. But the US actually borrowed from two banks back then. One was the Bank of North America and the other is Hamilton's Bank, the Bank of New York. And of those two, the Bank of New York is obviously the real ancestor of today's too-big-to-fail banks, not the Bank of North America. And that is based on several abuses that were simply not true of the Bank of North America, the more popular rival than the Bank of New York.

THE UNITED STATES OF ADDICTION

Serialized Article — Part 3

I will just kind of run through what distinguishes Bank of New York over Bank of North America. One, the Bank of New York was born on the wrong side of the law. We are going to see that later. And it operated without a bank charter for seven years. It did not get its charter until 1791. And it did not have a charter because the people of New York did not trust it. The Bank of North America was in Philadelphia. It had its charter in 1781. Number two, the Bank of New York's encroachment on the sovereign money issuing prerogative under Article One of the Constitution was done with 100 per cent private ownership just like the New York Fed today. Bank of North America was 60 per cent publicly owned, at least early on, at least at first. Number three, Hamilton owned shares in the Bank of New York while he was US Treasury Secretary borrowing money from his own bank. So the financial graft of public servants that is so commonplace today started with the Bank of New York. Just those precedents make it a far better case for studying the private power over national credit scam.

Now, briefly, where am I getting my information about the Bank of New York and Alexander Hamilton? The answer is I am getting it from the Bank of New York's official history, 1784 to 1884. So, let's take a look at it. This is my corkboard for this episode where I can see all my source materials in one place and I can get to them. The leftmost item you see here is appendix 7 from the book I just mentioned, the history of the Bank of New York. And you can see the page over there, the list of stockholders of the Bank of New York at the time of its incorporation in 1791. So in 1789, the Bank of New York does not have a charter at all. But that does not stop it from issuing banknotes and lending them out to borrowers like the United States. Nor does it prevent it from issuing stock, including you see here, one and a half shares to Alexander Hamilton and three shares to his good buddy Aaron Burr. And even a share to their pal Oliver Cromwell, who died in the mid-1600s. Huh. Anyway, who knows? Whatever. If you flip to the end of appendix 7, you see that there are 723 total shares in the company, which made Hamilton the 0.2 per cent owner of the Bank of New York while he is sitting as Treasury Secretary. One and a half shares is kind of curious to me. The subscription price for a share was $500 per share. Hamilton was more than an investor though. He wrote the articles of incorporation for the bank in 1794 and was one of its 12 directors before he became Treasury Secretary. I will get to that in a bit, but he was knee-deep in this bank. One and a half shares is curious because it seems kind of small, but it is certainly enough to create the good old-fashioned aroma of self-dealing.

This is a good point to mention. By the way, the War for Bankracy series is 100 per cent backed up by Solari.com and Catherine Austin Fitts. Meaning, not only can you watch and download the War for Bankracy series at Solari.com in case YouTube and BitChute and Odysee take it down, you could always find an archival copy at Solari. But in addition, you can also at Catherine's site download the research materials and sources that you see here like the Bank of New York's official history. There is a PDF of that you can just download yourself. Catherine Austin Fitts, incidentally, gets huge props for this episode in particular and supporting it. She is a major Alexander Hamilton fan. So her support of this episode is being provided at great personal pain, rest assured. But support it she will because Catherine is first and foremost a woman of great personal integrity. She has also been magnificent as a mentor doing a weekly show with her together called Money and Markets on Solari for the last five years. Thank you Catherine Austin Fitts. I do not say that enough.

In any case, let's move on and let's now explore the scam called the private power over national credit by comparing the nation's early dealings with the Bank of New York with England's dealings with the Bank of England in 1694. So to set the stage in 1789, the US has just started to operate under the Constitution and it needs money for salaries and it could get that money either by borrowing money or by issuing money. Congress has both of those powers under the new Constitution specifically under Article 1 Section 8. Paragraph two of that section gives Congress the power to borrow money on the credit of the United States. And under paragraph five, Congress can coin money. Now, upfront, did coining money under the Constitution include the right to issue paper money like greenbacks almost 100 years later? A lot of people will tell you, "No, the term coining money only means gold and silver coins." But hold that thought. We will see if that position really boils down to no more than a ruse by private bankers to filter the right to issue paper money from we the people and keep it for themselves. For now, let's stipulate though that coining money is indeed limited to gold and silver coins. And we will see where that stipulation takes our analysis.

So it is 1789 and the US can coin money or borrow money on US credit to pay the salaries for new government employees like George Washington. But rather than coining money or borrowing money, the US borrows IOUs. It borrows paper notes from private banks in order to pay George Washington's lavish $25,000 a year salary and the more reasonable salary of Vice President Adams at $5,000 and on down to the Senate and the House. But what does that look like? What does a paper note from a private bank look like? Well, let me just show you. Let's just drill right down on this note from the Bank of New York. The US borrowed this privately issued funny money instead of borrowing real money, instead of borrowing gold and silver. But how do we know that this note is not actually money itself? Well, the note tells you that it is not money right there on its face. You can see that the president and directors of the Bank of New York promised to pay $1 on demand to whoever. If this were real money, there would be no need to demand anything. Unless a demand amounted to taking your $1 Bank of New York note to the bank, demanding your dollar, and being told by the teller that you are holding a dollar, and that your demand is thereby satisfied. That is ridiculous. That does not make any sense. So, you can see this note is not actually money. It is a promise to pay money, to pay $1. So, in 1789, money in the US was by custom silver and gold coins. A lot of them were Spanish doubloons, silver dollars, pieces of eight. And that is consistent with our stipulation. So, when the Bank of New York says it will pay $1 on demand, what that means is that the holder of this note could walk into the Bank of New York and demand in exchange for the note one ounce of silver, probably Spanish, or the equivalent amount of gold, probably a coin. But the point is, either way, when you ask the Bank of New York for your $1 in exchange for its $1 IOU here, you are probably going to get your silver dollar probably. If the bank has it on hand, then yeah, but that is not guaranteed. And that is why the $1 Bank of New York note, like all bank notes, is worth less than the face value of the note, worth less than a dollar. Think of it like a coat claim check at a restaurant. Yeah, you are probably going to get your coat back. But the ticket is worth less than the coat itself to be sure due to risk. We will talk about what percentage of their face value the Bank of New York notes were worth in a minute. For now, we know what the bank note is. It is an IOU and what it is not, which is money.

Now, the US borrowed $80,000 of notes from the Bank of New York in 1789. Alexander Hamilton chose that route. He went that way. That was his choice. And up until that point, that is exactly the same route that England took in 1694 with the Bank of England. It borrowed 1.2 million pounds of notes from the private Bank of England. The problem was the Bank of England stopped paying on its notes just two years later in 1696. It was a total disaster and it stopped paying because it lacked the gold to back its notes. And there was a run on the Bank of England. It was forced to say, yeah, we do not have the gold to back the IOUs. We saw this in episode two.

THE UNITED STATES OF ADDICTION

Serialized Article — Part 4

We saw this in episode two. The question is, was the Bank of New York any different? We know because we just saw it that the bank issued at least $80,000 in notes just to the US, plus it issued other notes, plus it had deposits. And depositors can demand gold and silver, too, just like note holders. And also this is very important. The Bank of New York lacked a charter. It did not have a charter in 1789. That is a big problem. The question is did the Bank of New York face the risk of a bank run like the Bank of England did in 1696? And the answer is yeah, it faced a run. It faced the risk big time. Not only did the Bank of New York lack sufficient gold to pay out all the demands out there, but its lack of a charter made it especially susceptible to a bank run. How do we know that? Because the Bank of New York's own official history tells us that in very clear language. Let's go back to our corkboard and see here. Look at the Bank of New York official history again. Let's just look at chapter 4 of the bank's history, page 36, second paragraph. The following is a statement of the assets and liabilities of the bank at the time it commenced business under the charter May 1st 1791. And then the actual balance sheet is shown on the next page. Here we go. We are interested in the Bank of New York species bank. It is Precious Metal Bank. That is in US dollars. The paper bank you see there is a hold over from when New York state as a colony issued notes denominated in British pounds which it actually did up until 1787. So we are going to bypass that and just look at the species bank the dollar bank. So on the right side there you see capital stock and that is gold and silver paid in by investors like Hamilton $318,000. Now, normally that money, that 318 grand would not be subject to a demand for return, but it is here because the Bank of New York did not have a charter. I will talk about that in a minute about why that is the case. But let's keep moving through liabilities. Next, you see notes at 181,000 and then deposits of $774,000. Both of those liabilities are without a doubt subject to demands for redemption on the spot. So, the Bank of New York, we will include the capital. I will get to why you have to include it in a minute. It has $1.27 million of liability subject to demands for conversion into gold and silver coins. If I am right about its capital stock being subject to demands for return, now let's pause for a minute. Let's look at assets. On the left side, you see gold there at $516,000. But you notice that it gets reduced down to $463,000 because there is $53,000 of notes that are already laying claim to that gold. So, it is only $463 grand. So the actual value of Bank of New York notes is not 100 cents on the dollar. It is 35 cents on the dollar because the bank has only got 463 grand to back up over $1.27 million of liabilities. And that figure, like I said, that is for 1791. It is not going to be that much different in 1789 unless it is worse. Now let's talk about why I say the capital stock is subject to demands for gold. Just like note holders and depositors can demand the gold. So could investors in the Bank of New York. Normally investors in companies like Hamilton investing in the Bank of New York. They can get their money back. They can get their gold back out of the company by selling shares to a second investor willing to buy those shares. In other words, if they want their gold back, they got to find a buyer. The company or the bank is not just going to hand the gold back to the investor in exchange for the investor's shares. But the Bank of New York's articles of incorporation, which were written by Hamilton in 1784, as we saw, told investors that their legal liability was limited to the amount that they invested. So, it was limited liability company. In other words, if you invested $10 in the Bank of New York, your total liability, your total exposure for the acts of the bank would be $10. But it turns out that is false. Without the bank charter, investors are on the hook for every act done in the Bank of New York's name. So if you invested $10 in that bank and the Bank of New York then loses, let's say, a wrongful death lawsuit for $10 million, a court issuing that judgment can reach your assets to the extent necessary to pay that $10 million judgment. You see why a charter is important now? So, if an investor asks the Bank of New York for their gold back the Bank of New York has got to cough up pronto. And Alexander Hamilton damn well knows that because he is a guy who got investors gold in the first place by telling them that the Bank of New York was a limited liability corporation. Now Hamilton was smart enough to recuse himself as a bank director when he became US Treasury Secretary, but there is no getting out of being the author of those articles of incorporation. And in 1787, Hamilton, as we saw from the Bank of New York's own official history, still had stock in his own bank, which George Washington is going to learn when he destroys the bank with a hatchet for refusing to honor his bank notes that he earned as US president. Now, given everything you have heard about Alexander Hamilton before, does he strike you as the kind of guy who is going to leave a loose end like a potential bank run just hanging out, whipping around in the wind, looking for something to hit. That is what William Paterson did with the Bank of England in 1694. But William Paterson was a pirate. He was a retired buccaneer. Hamilton was a lawyer. He was not a sloppy guy. He did what he had to do to conceal the bank's massive gold shortage. How did he do that? Well, let's take a look. Let's go to the official record. As you can see, this is the history of national loans of the US, July 4th, 1776 to June 30th, 1880. It is from the Treasury Department for the 10th Census of the United States. The part we are interested in is on page 29, which shows exactly how Hamilton solved the problem he created by paying people like George Washington and other US creditors with paper IOUs printed up willy-nilly by a private bank without enough gold in its vault to cover a potential run. Let's go top of the page. Look at the look there talking about arrangements with Bank of New York and Bank of North America for temporary loans in the earliest days of the US. Specifically, it says money received from these banks paid the first installment of salary due to President Washington, senators, representatives, and officers of Congress during the first session of the Constitution. So, temporary loans from these two banks pay George Washington. And we know that what the Bank of New York lent to the US government was paper notes. We also know that the Bank of New York cannot come even close to honoring all of its liabilities. So what does Hamilton do? He writes an official Treasury circular and sends it around to creditors of the United States who are both owed money by the US and who in addition sooner or later owe or will owe money to the US themselves. The circular quoted here was sent to customs collectors. Customs remember were the main source of US revenue back then more than a hundred years before income taxes got started. And this is how Hamilton headed off the Bank of England problem. How he prevented a bank run that caused the Bank of England to default. Here is what Hamilton says to the creditors. Sir, it is my desire that the notes of these banks payable either on demand or at no longer a period than 30 days should be received in payment of the duties as equivalent to gold and silver and that they will be received from you as such by the treasurer of the United States. This measure, he says, will facilitate remittances, facilitate payments from the states without drawing away their specie, meaning without drawing down their gold and silver. Signed, Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of the Treasury. So that is how Hamilton fixed the problem he caused when he had the US borrow bank notes worth 35 cents and pass them off as full dollars. A gamble that had burned the Bank of England and William Paterson, but was not about to burn the Bank of New York and Alexander Hamilton. Treasury Secretary Hamilton converted the Bank of New York IOU paper from notes into full US dollars by making them acceptable to the US government in payment of taxes. That is how you create money. And notice that he also expressly decreed those notes to be equivalent to gold and silver. England did not do that with the Bank of England in 1694 and it defaulted two years later. There was no bailout over there at least not in 1694. But let's return to the issue of paper money and let's think about what happened here with one piece of paper Hamilton circular the letter to the creditors. Hamilton converted other pieces of paper notes worth 35 cents into money into dollars. That is absolutely identical to a two-step money printing process. Step one, the Bank of New York prints some angels on a bunch of paper. Step two, Hamilton puts the US seal of approval on the angel paper, converting it into money. The Bank of New York angel paper started out as a 35 cent asset. The official US seal added 65 cents, turning it into $1 of legal money. So why is the US paying a percentage of the dollar when it added the vast majority 65 cents of that dollar's value? The better question though is why the US did not cut out the Bank of New York all together, pay it nothing, and simply print the paper itself. It could print eagles instead of angels. Obviously, the US had the ability to issue paper money from day one. Hamilton's letter that circular proves that even without the Supreme Court decision 80 years later holding as much that was Knox versus Lee of a series what is called the legal tender cases. And Knox versus Lee said yeah no greenbacks are constitutional. They are valid. The point here now though is that no one has ever complained about Hamilton's letter purporting to turn confetti from the Bank of New York into gold. So why do not the people who insist that the US can never ever be allowed to print money vilify Hamilton for doing exactly that, for violating their precious commandment? And the answer is their real problem is not with the US printing money. Their real problem is with the US printing money and not handing a percentage of it to private bank parasites like the Bank of New York. Remember, you got to remember the Bank of New York's demand for a percentage of the money came after the US upgraded the parasites trash IOUs into full dollars, which saved the bank from a bank run. And all these demands that the Bank of New York made, the upgrade, the bailout, the percentage cut, they are being made despite the painfully obvious fact that the US does absolutely not need the parasites at any stage of the money printing process. The Bank of New York drew angels on Post-it notes. That is it. That is all it did. Angels on Post-it notes. That is it. And if the bankers want a percentage of GDP for that, you got to be kidding me.

How much did the US pay the parasites anyway? Pay the Bank of New York for them to just suck interest payments out of the country whose labor is what enabled the conversion of their 35 cent junk paper into full silver dollars in the first place. Remember, the US borrowed $80,000 face of Bank of New York paper IOUs. But how much did that cost us? Well, let's take a look. Here you go. Center of the page for payment of interest on $80,000 borrowed from the Bank of New York, $1,934.82. And you can see just below that that the 80 grand loan from the Bank of New York was not made all at once. The US government borrowed 20 grand on Hamilton's third day in office, September 13, 30 grand the next day, 20 grand on October 1st, and a final 10 grand installment on December 1st, all in 1789. And you can see from above those entries that Hamilton is computing the interest payment on the loan as of March 1st next year, 1790. So it is less than a year. The bottom line math on these installments works out to a single blended rate on the aggregate $80,000 loan of 6 per cent annually. And I am here to tell you that is pure usury. That $1,935 interest statement, that is pure skim. You just saw it is Hamilton's blessing in his role as Treasury Secretary as a public servant that makes those notes worth 100 per cent of their face value. Makes them money rather than a paper asset worth 65 per cent less. So again, if it is the country's blessing of private bank notes that confer status as money on those notes, why are we paying private bankers a percentage of our own money when we could simply have the Treasury issue 80 grand ourselves and be completely free of any debt? Hands down, this is the biggest scam of all time anywhere. But let's ask this question. How does 6 per cent interest though for the Bank of New York parasites compare with the Bank of England parasites? Well, when England borrowed its gold back notes, it paid the Bank of England 8 per cent. So, the interest rate was different. The bottom line here is that American revolutionaries ended up getting a whole whopping 2 per cent discount for their troubles. Other than that, the scam of the US borrowing private banknotes in 1789 is identical to the scam of England borrowing private banknotes in 1694. This transatlantic scam, in other words, is what launched the public debt as an operating expense both in England in 1694 and in the US in 1789.

For just let all this sink in for a minute. We won the American Revolution. The American Revolution was won in 1781. But eight years later, the private bankers in London who had been fleecing the rebel colonies, indebting the rebel colonies at an 8 per cent interest rate, had been replaced by private banker parasites in New York who were indebting the United States at 6 per cent interest. Private anonymous bankers control each country by controlling its national currency. The country pays interest to private bankers to use their IOUs instead of simply issuing their own money, issuing the country's own money. The tragedy is that both countries destroy themselves with debt rather than just issuing money with no debt at all. And you can thank Alexander Hamilton for that. You can thank Hamilton for reducing the American Revolution to a shift change in bank managers who enslave nations in debt wherever they go. In other words, the United States might have beaten King George III's army, but it did not beat his bosses. Alexander Hamilton saw to it that the bankers stayed in command. When Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration in 1776, 40 years later said that banking institutions are more dangerous than standing armies. This is exactly what he was talking about. And this is why Alexander Del Mar complained about the American Revolution. Actually, he did not complain about the American Revolution. He loved the American Revolution like I do. He complains about what happened just after the Revolution. And this is in his History of Money in America, which he wrote in 1899. Let's turn to page 109 where Del Mar goes on about how great the American Revolution is before revealing his massive disappointment with the immediate aftermath. Listen to his reason here. Never was a great historical event followed by a more feeble sequel. A nation arises to claim for itself liberty and sovereignty. It gains both of these by an immense sacrifice of blood and treasure. Then when victory is secured, it hands the national credit, that is to say, a national treasure over to private individuals to do as they please with it. So Del Mar says the US wins sovereignty when it wins the Revolutionary War, but then it immediately hands the win over by handing national credit over to bankers. The question though really is so what? If you hand over the national credit as Del Mar calls it to private individuals, are you also surrendering your sovereignty like I have been saying here? Del Mar answers that question yes. He comes down on my side of that issue which he makes clear when he completes his thought that he started there on page 109. He goes on so let's go back and I will finish that passage off. Here is Del Mar's impact assessment of handing over the national credit to private individuals. The colonists had practically an entire continent to themselves. They had only to take care that the seed they planted was genuine and uncontaminated. Nature was certain to do the rest. Well, they planted. And now, 1899, look at the fruit and see what it is that they planted. They planted financial corporations, a rotten seed that Rome had trampled underfoot nearly 2,000 years before. They planted private money in which successively both Greece and Rome had found the germs of social decay. And they planted financial exemptions from public burdens whose offspring has already become a tree so mighty that it cast a threatening shadow over the land. In a word, they planted another revolution. So there you have it. Now, why do you need a revolution? Why so extreme guy is what you are asking? The revolution is what you need in order to replace a king with some form of representative government run in accordance with the will of we the people. In theory, we the people gained our sovereignty from the revolution, at least here in the US. So the question really boils down to first, why is it that a handover of national credit amounts to a much broader handover of national sovereignty? And second, more specifically, why do not we the people simply use the sovereign powers that we did not hand over, like lawmaking, law enforcement, the right to raise standing armies? Why do not we use those sovereign powers to take the national credit issuance power back out of private hands? What is it about private and anonymous people issuing national credit that gives them sovereignty and dominion over an entire country despite the fact that their ability to issue that credit only exists because the country gave them that permission to do so in the first place? The answer is that debt-based monetary system as launched by Hamilton on his third day in office amounts to an addiction in which the drug dealer lender has total power over the drug user borrower. When bankers wrote IOUs for $80,000 and lent them to the US, which then had to pay back $82,000, private credit addiction was born in the US. The real cost to the country for that $80,000 hit was not $80,000. It was $82,000. And the hit after that is going to be $84,000 and so on. That is your basic addiction. You need more and more drugs to get the same high and you need more and more money to buy the same stuff. Debtor nations and debt-based monetary systems are addicted in two distinct senses. Number one, they pay ever larger prices to their dealer for yesterday's high. And second, if they do not get enough dope, they crash. The dealer's power over addicts comes from the control of the dope supply. And actually, private credit addiction is worse than a drug addiction due to what happens after a crash. When drug addicts and alcoholics crash, aftercare is managed by people outside of the cycle of addiction, doctors, family, friends, people who see that the real problem is alcohol and drugs and urge the addict to stop using dope and using drugs altogether in order to help the addict kick the addiction. When the debt-based monetary system crashes, by contrast, aftercare is managed by the drug dealers, by the bankers, because they are the experts, and their job is to keep the cycle of addiction going. And to do that, they have got to convince the addict that his problem has been fixed, that the cause of the crash is all gone. Now, the entire debt-based monetary system, in other words, rests on selling huge lies as truth to all of society. You actually believe that Dodd-Frank fixed the causes of the global financial crisis? Dodd-Frank is the brainchild of the leading drug dealer in the United States. I am going to show you that in the next episode using the drug dealer's own handwriting. You think the Banking Act of 1933 or Glass-Steagall eliminated the causes of the Great Depression? You got to be kidding me. They might have been good laws, but they played footsie with the real problem, which is private credit addiction on a national scale. But the high priest experts of finance and economics who are rich from the system that they work under are not going to tell you that. They will never identify any real solution. The entire industry, the entire finance and economics industry is a huge PR firm working for and owned by the people who get to create money out of thin air and lend it to the rest of us. That system, by the way, can sustain itself for only so long. Eventually what happens is the interest payment gets so big that the dealers got to start seizing the addict's collateral, seizing the nation's assets. That process is actually underway right now in the US. You see all these different schemes going about. Tokenization is one that all boil down to one thing. They are harvesting national assets before the parasites move on to their next host. And there is no voting your way out of this either. There is no buying your way out. Neither one is really an option, voting or buying your way out. And the reason for that is that no matter how much money you have got, Dope Man has got more. Dope Man prints money. You got to earn your money. To get out of this, you need assets that are not for sale. You need people who are not for sale. You need their spirit. You need their anger and the willingness to act. You need a revolution. In other words, exactly like Alexander Del Mar said. And you are never going to get there as long as you are looking for scapegoats like coup d'état perpetrators. And that is true for two reasons. Number one, it is a waste of time. Let us just say you are right. Let us say you are right and there was a coup at some point. Okay, well now what? What are you going to do? Round up all the perps? Most of them are dead. And if what you say is true, they are above the law anyway. So even if you are right about a coup, you are wasting your time because there is nothing you can do. The second reason to stop looking for perpetrators of some coup d'état is that blaming your problems, you are here meaning a country's problems, on some hobgoblin like a coup d'état perpetrator without ever asking if you yourself did something to cause your own misery is a go-to behavior of addicts in order to rationalize their own suffering. Addicts blame every person, place, and thing under the sun except for their own behavior, which never changes as a result because it is never identified as being a problem. As anyone in any drug and alcohol recovery program can tell you, Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, Rational Recovery, Women for Sobriety, Recovery Dharma, all of them, any program to stop addiction. It is not until the addict gets honest about the role he has played in his own misery that addiction can start coming to an end. Until the addict gets honest, he is going to hide behind fake villains and never take matters into his own hands. The problems in the US are rooted in its monetary system. That system is open to inspection. It is on the books. It is in Treasury circulars. It is in statutes. It is in case law. The problem is not hidden away in some dark cloak and dagger mystery. And look, I am not saying the people in charge have not committed crimes. They damn sure have. I have documented a lot of them at length on this channel. But the reason those crimes go unpunished is not that there was some coup. The reason those crimes go unpunished is that the criminals can use national credit to buy their way out of problems, to stay in power, and stay out of jail. Blaming your problems on a coup gains you nothing. Actually, the people who control the system by lending money into existence are all too happy to watch you vanish down rabbit holes searching for some coup rather than searching for things that we can do to end our own debt servitude. Now, in case you still doubt me that handing over national credit to private banks amounts to a handover of sovereignty, in the next episode, we are going to look at America's leading drug dealer, the New York Fed, at the height of the global financial crisis, and see how it controls the political process and election outcomes, and watch it break every law in its path to prop up its bank lieutenants just to keep the private credit addiction system alive and well in the West. There were eight people in the room that night in the New York Fed and one of them was a junior guy from the Treasury named Kevin Warsh. How about that? So, your new Fed chairman is a material witness to the Fed decision that night to break all the rules, including, by the way, the cardinal rule of central banking. Warsh's leash has been short ever since, and it is going to stay short when the next crash materializes into an absolute nightmare. So, stay tuned. Thanks so much for watching. I will see you next time.

I came here because I wanted to understand why prices kept rising and why the economy always seemed so unpredictable. I thought I had it mostly down and I figured I'd learn a few things and move on, but after finishing the core curriculum and about half of the documentary library, I realized how little I actually understood about money despite years of school. I still have a lot to learn, but I can finally understand answers to these questions without feeling completely lost. Looking back, this has been a valuable educational experience. 🙂

Financial education is one of the most important knowledge everyone should acquire. It's an education which gives people a better chance to succeed.

The question I'm confused about now is whether only it is enough to create equal opportunities for everyone?

I’m curious where people stand on this. Should governments redistribute wealth to reduce inequality or should individuals keep what they earn?

Personally, I think some support is necessary because the rich keep getting richer while the poor suffer and struggle so much.

The real question is where should the line be drawn if government decides to redistribute wealth?