Tag: Doug Casey

Doug Casey on Banking with the Fed

Justin’s note: Abolish the Federal Reserve.

Regular readers have heard Doug Casey make this suggestion many times. He’s been arguing in favor of this for years.

But not everyone thinks getting rid of the Fed would solve America’s money problems. In fact, one Bloomberg writer thinks the Fed should have even more power. Specifically, he thinks that everyday people—not just commercial banks—should bank with the Fed. You can read his entire essay here.

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After reading this, I got on the phone with Doug… who I knew would have something to say…

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Doug Casey on the Crisis in Argentina

Via Casey Research

Justin’s note: Argentina is teetering on the edge of a full-blown crisis.

Its currency, the peso, is in free fall. Inflation is skyrocketing. And foreign investors are fleeing the country.

In short, it’s starting to feel like 2001 again. So, it’s no surprise that the Mauricio Macri government is doing everything it can to prevent a repeat of that disaster.

It’s already raised the key interest rate to 40%. It’s unloading the foreign reserves. And Argentina is in talks with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to secure a massive bailout.

No one knows if these emergency measures will work or backfire. But if there’s anyone who might have an answer, it’s Doug Casey.

Doug isn’t just a student of money. He’s also lived in Argentina for years. So, I recently phoned him to see what he thinks about all of this…

Justin: Doug, what do you make of what’s happening in Argentina? Is the government taking the right steps to prevent a crisis?

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Doug Casey on the Future of War, Part 2

Via Casey Research

Justin note: Yesterday, Doug and I discussed how future wars will be fought differently than they are today.

Today, in part two, Doug explains what a possible shooting war between the U.S. and China would look like… how artificial intelligence could be used in future wars… and what he believes will be “the single biggest technology that’s going to change the nature of warfare.”

Justin: What about a possible shooting war between the United States and China? You said there was a high probability of that happening recently.

Doug: Well, it seems like all these horrible people Trump has surrounded himself with—like that fellow with the bushy mustache—are banking on one, a conventional war. They seem to figure US aircraft carrier groups will allow them to bring the war to the enemy, but avoid going nuclear.

Unfortunately, the carrier is equivalent to the battleship in World War II. It has many sophisticated defense mechanisms, but there is no defense against the hypersonic weapons that the Russians, Chinese, and soon everybody else, are developing.

The carrier group’s Aegis systems, phalanx guns, and anti-aircraft missiles are useless against hypersonic attack.

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Doug Casey on the Future of War

Via Casey Research

Justin note: Something’s stuck with me since the last time I spoke with Doug Casey.

Earlier this month, we discussed the new “era of peace” in the Korean Peninsula. Doug talked about a meme floating around the internet saying that the US could employ a new super weapon dubbed the “Rod from God.”

While this weapon probably won’t be deployed anytime soon… it got me thinking about the future of war.

Specifically, how they’ll be fought and how they’ll be different from past wars.

I called up Doug for more on this idea…

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Doug Casey on the Demise of Nation States

Via Casey Research

Justin’s note: Longtime readers know what Doug Casey thinks of nation states. He says they’ve mostly been an “inefficient, counterproductive, and expensive nuisance” and a “testimony to how thoughtless the average person is.”

He also says nation states are going out of business.

I recently called him up to get an update on where we are today… and what to expect going forward.

Today and tomorrow, I’m sharing our discussion. I think you’ll enjoy…

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Doug Casey on “Offensive” Words

Via Casey Research

Justin’s note: Stop saying offensive words.

That’s what the Associated Press (AP) is telling writers.

You see, the AP puts out a stylebook every year that includes universal guidelines for stylistic matters like punctuation, capitalization, and even word choice.

In a recent version, the AP encouraged writers to not use words such as “pro-life,” “migrant,” “refugee,” “Islamist,” and “terrorist.”

It’s completely ludicrous. Yet, sadly, it’s a sign of the times.

In the interview below, Doug Casey tears down the AP’s blacklist and discusses why this is happening…

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Doug Casey on the Coming Comfortable Dystopia, Part 2

Via Casey Research

Justin’s note: Yesterday, Doug and I discussed why China’s getting ready to roll out a “social credit system”—and why the U.S. could do something similar. Today, in the second part of our conversation, Doug shares more thoughts on this disturbing trend…

Justin: I imagine that corporate America will also be in favor of a social credit system. After all, it sounds like the ultimate marriage between big business and big government.

Doug: Absolutely. It relates to our recent conversation about Facebook and the other tech giants. The government loves these companies, and they’re hooked up with the government. The Deep State really exists.

I dislike Facebook intensely, and don’t use it. Only idiots do. But you know what’s interesting? I set up my Facebook account years ago; it seemed like a good way for old pals to get back in touch. And in the beginning, I would get friend requests from a lot of strangers—I didn’t know who these people were. But neither did I care. So I said “yes” to just about everyone’s “friend request.”

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Doug Casey on the World’s First Government-Backed Cryptocurrency

Via Casey Research

Justin’s note: Venezuela just introduced its own cryptocurrency.

That’s right… The country battling chronic food shortages, runaway inflation, and widespread violence launched the world’s first government-backed cryptocurrency.

Each one of these coins is supposedly backed by one barrel of oil, so the government is calling it the “petro.”

President Nicolás Maduro claims the petro will turn Venezuela into an “economic powerhouse.” Vice President Tareck El Aissami says it puts Venezuela “at the vanguard of the future.”

Now, I’m long-term bullish on cryptocurrencies. But the petro has “scam” written all over it. Still, the crypto market has surprised me before. So I called Doug Casey to see what he thinks…

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Chung Kuo

Guest Post by Doug Casey

This article is entitled Chung Kuo, which means Middle Kingdom.

The Chinese have long seen themselves as superior to every other race (like almost every race does) and the center of the world. It’s because they were so confident of this that they never ventured out as Europeans did, with a brief exception in the 15th century when a gigantic Chinese fleet, composed of ships vastly superior to those of Europe, ventured as far as Africa. Since dropping the ball on world conquest back then, or at least exporting their culture wholesale, they’ve been in stasis, and on the receiving end of what Europe had to dish out.

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Doug Casey on Why Gold Could Go “Hyperbolic”

Via Casey Research

Justin’s note: Volatility has come storming back.

Just look at the CBOE Volatility Index (VIX), which measures how volatile investors expect the market to be over the next 30 days.

It’s up 89% since the start of the year. Last week, it hit the highest level since 2016.

Investors aren’t used to this. After all, last year was the least volatile year ever for U.S. stocks. That lulled many investors to sleep. It led them to take risks they would normally never take.

Now, those same people are wondering what to do. They aren’t sure if this is just a run-of-the-mill pullback…or the start of something much worse.

To help answer this question, I called up Doug Casey. I knew he would have an interesting take on this matter…

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Doug Casey on the Coming Financial Crisis

Via Casey Research

Justin’s note: Earlier this year, Fed Chair Janet Yellen explained how she doesn’t think we’ll have another financial crisis “in our lifetimes.” It’s a crazy idea. After all, it feels like the U.S. is long overdue for a major crisis. Below, Doug Casey shares his take on this. It’s one of the most important discussions we’ve had all year.

(If you missed the first two interviews from this series, you can catch up here and here.)

Justin: Doug, I know you disagree with Yellen. But I’m wondering why she would even say this? Has she lost her mind?

Doug: Listening to the silly woman say that made me think we’re truly living in Bizarro World. It’s identical in tone to what stock junkies said in 1999 just before the tech bubble burst. She’s going to go down in history as the modern equivalent of Irving Fisher, who said “we’ve reached a permanent plateau of prosperity,” in 1929, just before the Great Depression started.

I don’t care that some university gave her a Ph.D., and some politicians made her Fed Chair, possibly the second most powerful person in the world. She’s ignorant of economics, ignorant of history, and clearly has no judgment about what she says for the record.

Why would she say such a thing? I guess because since she really believes throwing trillions of dollars at the banking system will create prosperity. It started with the $750 billion bailout at the beginning of the last crisis. They’ve since thrown another $4 trillion at the financial system.

All of that money has flowed into the banking system. So, the banking system has a lot of liquidity at the moment, and she thinks that means the economy is going to be fine.

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Doug Casey on What Happens After the Next 9/11

Guest Post by Doug Casey

Is a police state in the US possible? Absolutely.

That’s because people are essentially the same the world over, regardless of their culture, religion, race, or what-have-you. A certain percentage of them are sociopaths.

There is a standard distribution of sociopaths across time and space. It’s a function of Pareto’s Law, better known as the 80-20 rule. 20% of the people do 80% of the work. Another 20% are responsible for 80% of the crime. 20% of the population always winds up with 80% of the wealth. And so forth, through all areas of human endeavor. This observation can be represented by a bell-shaped curve—a “standard distribution”—with a small minority at each extreme, but the large majority in the middle. The people who will take us to a police state are sociopaths—criminal personalities who don’t respect the liberty or property of others. And sociopaths gravitate towards government, and eventually come to control it.

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Doug Casey on Why Millennials Favor Communism

Via Casey Research

Justin’s note: Communism is better than capitalism.

At least, that’s what a growing number of young people in the U.S. think.

I wish I were joking. But a recent study from the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, a D.C.-based nonprofit, found that half of the millennials it surveyed would rather live in a socialist or communist country than a capitalist society.

And 22% of those surveyed had favorable views of Karl Marx… while 13% viewed Joseph Stalin and Kim Jong-un as “heroes.”

To figure out what’s behind this disturbing trend, I called Doug Casey…

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Doug Casey on the New Fed Chair

Guest Post by Doug Casey

A few words are in order about the likely new Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell.

I don’t know the man personally. Not that it would make any difference; denizens of the swamp within the Beltway usually present well, and a brief meeting rarely allows you to penetrate someone’s social veneer. But I’m pretty confident that if we dined together it would be tense and unpleasant. We’d have no common ground, after the obligatory two minutes on the weather and the state of the roads.

He’s a lawyer, has been a Fed Governor for five years, and appears to be a “steady as she goes” so-called moderate Republican. He’s a lifelong Deep State player. But let’s not waste time psychoanalyzing this bureaucrat; he’s just a cog in the machine. And the machine, at this stage, has a life of its own.

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Doug Casey on the Paradise Papers

Via Casey Research

Justin’s note: People are outraged over the Paradise Papers.

The Paradise Papers are a collection of more than 13 million confidential documents. They relate to offshore investments.

Someone stole these documents from Appleby, a law firm based in Bermuda, and leaked them to the press.

But that’s not why people are upset. Instead, they’re mad that rich people are using offshore accounts to pay less taxes.

It’s completely ridiculous. So, to make sense of this, I called Doug Casey…

Justin: Doug, what do you make of all this hysteria surrounding the Paradise Papers? Should the public be upset, or even surprised, that rich people are trying to reduce their tax burden?

Doug: It’s a sign of the times for several reasons. And none of them are good. It’s a sign of terminal moral sickness.

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Doug Casey: How I Learned to Love Bitcoin, Part II

Via Casey Research

Justin’s note: Today, Doug Casey continues his argument for why this cryptocurrency bubble is only getting bigger from here. He also explains what this all means for the price of gold. (If you missed the first part of this essay, you can catch up here.)

By Doug Casey, founder, Casey Research

In all of Africa, most of South America, and a great part of Asia, fiat currencies issued by governments are a joke. They’re extremely unreliable within those countries. And they’re totally worthless outside the physical borders of the country. That’s why those people now want dollars. But those are physical paper dollars. And governments everywhere are trying to eliminate physical currency.

I think, therefore, that the Third World will adopt Bitcoin in a huge way.

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