03/03/16 – Nick Giambruno – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, you guys, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
It's my show, The Scott Horton Show.
Next up is Nick Giambruno.
He is the senior editor at Doug Casey's Casey Research, internationalman.com.
Welcome back to the show, Nick.
How are you doing?
Great.
Can you hear me all right?
Yeah, yeah.
You're fine.
I just forgot to hit the button was the only reason I couldn't hear you.
Welcome back to the show.
How are you?
I'm doing great, Scott.
Thanks for having me.
You know, I think that's the first time I've actually ever done that particular screw up where I forgot to even call.
A lot of times I might forget to hit the button on the board here, but that's different.
Anyway, happy to have you back on the show.
I like the title of this, Revealed, The Hidden Agenda of Davos, 2016.
I don't know if it was even on C-SPAN.
I didn't get a chance to try to watch any of these self-appointed rulers of the world up there giving their speeches, but you seem to think that, well, you seem pretty certain that there's a lot more going on than what they admit to the cameras anyway.
Yes, and here's the evidence for it.
I just decided to connect the dots after I got a flood of articles from the New York Times, The Economist, Zero Hedge, other publications.
All of a sudden, there is this big acceleration in this call to eliminate cash or eliminate high-denomination currency notes, and I decided to put the pieces of the puzzle together and the timing of this, and it all goes back to this January 2016 conference in Davos.
If your listeners aren't familiar, this is a conference that happens every year where it happens in the open.
This is not some sort of secret meeting or anything like that.
People who are leaders in business, in government, in media, even some celebrities go to these events and they talk about the issues of the day.
Some of the meetings do actually happen behind closed doors, but the actual event itself is out in the open.
If you look at the events that happened during and after this, it's quite striking.
I hadn't seen anybody really put it together in a timeline, so I thought I'd do it myself.
I think it really paints a compelling picture.
For example, the financial world was shocked a few weeks ago when Japan decided to take its interest rates negative for the first time ever.
This came after the head of the Japanese central bank had repeatedly denied that he even was planning to do this.
He went out to this Davos conference in late January, and he came back a few days later and he implemented negative interest rates.
Okay, it looks like something might have changed his mind at that conference, but it was hardly an isolated incident.
You have a bunch of other related events that happened.
You have the CEO of Deutsche Bank calling for the elimination of cash.
You have Norway's biggest bank essentially doing the same thing, and then you have the editorial board of Bloomberg.
The title was Bring on the Cashless Future, and you can imagine what the thrust of that article was.
Financial Times had a piece that came out very similar, and then Harvard jumped on board and put out a paper talking about the need to eliminate high-denomination notes like the $100 bill and the 500-euro note.
Over and over, we see a lot of this, but it all really started to accelerate.
It just went into overdrive after this Davos meeting.
I can't conclusively prove it, but I think there's a lot of circumstantial evidence that points in that direction.
In fact, you even say that they admit that they have very private meetings there, along with their very public ones, too.
They do.
That part of it isn't a secret.
Just what happens at the secret meeting is.
Precisely, and that's out in the open.
It's in the BBC and in other...
Your point is very well taken here.
This sounds like crankery.
Whoever heard of negative interest rates and outlawing cash, it sounds like a fringe thing.
You're countering that by saying...
We're talking about the most powerful people in the world, or their representatives in media and their lackeys in government are the ones proposing this.
This is something to take very seriously, and we'll get to all the reasons why, which I know you're good at explaining as well.
Can I just stop you for a second?
You don't have to take my word at it.
Take their word at it.
Well, that's what I'm saying.
You're citing all of these sources to show.
These are the most powerful people saying this.
My question is this.
If the banks rule everything, and especially the nation states, then why are they allowing the government to engage in this policy that seems like it's tailor-made to destroy their business, to force all of their depositors to take their money right out of the bank then?
You're going to charge me money just for having it sit there and pay me not just no interest, but actually...
And not just all your fines and fees, you nickel and dime me to death, you banker bastards, but now you're going to give me negative interest rates too?
Then isn't that, on just the face of it, Nick, horrible for the banks, and why would they tolerate this insane policy?
It is horrible for the banks, and they would tolerate it because that's not the end of the story.
The other component of this, the evil twin brother of negative interest rates, is the war on cash.
The people who are pushing negative interest rates are fully aware of this.
If interest rates are negative in the situation you just described, a lot of people would rather take the money out of the bank and put it under the mattress than suffer basically a penalty or a tax on saving money.
How in the heck are you going to save for retirement with negative interest rates?
The economic central planners know this, and that's why the war on cash has been really ramped up kind of in tandem with the spread of negative interest rates around the world.
Here's the thing.
If people start withdrawing money from the banks, the banking system is very fragile.
Most people don't even put a thought into this, but thanks to the fractional reserve banking system, there's not a lot of cash at the banks, whether that exists in digital form or in paper form.
If people start pulling money out of the banks en masse, it won't take much to bring the whole thing down.
Their solution is to make accessing cash harder and in some cases illegal.
If you look at various countries around Europe, France for example, it is now illegal to do cash transactions over €1,000 without documenting it properly.
They're just doing all of these things that make it more and more inconvenient or flat out illegal to use cash.
That has the effect of keeping the cash in the banking system.
That makes the banks happy in that they don't have to worry about bank runs, because there's no bank run if you can't withdraw your cash.
I think that's the answer to your question.
Yeah.
Well man, is anybody besides you making the privacy argument here too?
I think you cite Ron Paul here saying, geez, this is the IRS's dream come true.
It's kind of a joke to me, but still the point is made.
This is the slavery of Satan right out of the book of Revelations.
This is the worst slavery could possibly be, where nobody could buy or sell anything to anyone without it going on their permanent record.
Oh yeah.
It's truly horrifying.
You don't necessarily need to be a religious person to see that either.
But yes, this is what it's coming to.
It's the government's dream.
How do they justify it?
It's completely ridiculous, and anybody who can think critically and independently can see right through this.
They're saying, oh well, terrorists use cash, and drug dealers use cash, so we have to get rid of it or make it harder to use.
Yeah, what are you trying to hide from us, Nick?
Yeah.
But no, I think people ...
It's unfortunate, but most people don't remember how privacy is really an aspect of ...
It's a fundamental human right.
It's necessary to keep human dignity, and it's necessary in a free society.
Unfortunately, a lot of people have forgotten that.
All right, y'all.
Hold it right there.
We'll be right back with Nick Giambruno from internationalman.com.
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All right, you guys, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
It's my show, The Scott Horton Show.
I'm on the line with Nick Giambruno, which I'm sorry, man, I'm sure I'm probably pronouncing that pretty badly.
No, you got it right.
Yeah, no, okay, cool.
All right.
That's Casey Research, International Man.
He is a senior editor there.
How a witch doctor convinces everyone he's a neurosurgeon, that's one.
You know, I got a story like that, but I'll save it.
Reveal the hidden agenda of Davos 2016 and the world's first cashless society.
These are all important articles for you to read at internationalman.com.
And now, Nick, so here's the thing, man, is I'm not an international man and an investment advisor and I just don't understand these things.
You're going to have to make me understand.
These guys' idea is that they want to make reverse interest rates.
Not only are they paying you almost nothing to keep your money in your account, but they're going to punish you for keeping money in your account.
But then they're going to blackmail you into keeping your money in the bank account anyway by trying to outlaw cash and make it impossible for you to take out bills large enough to do anything important with.
But then, so doesn't that completely defeat the whole point of doing the negative interest rates in the first place, which is this stupid policy of trying to stimulate the economy by forcing people to spend the money?
Well, no, they'll just spend the money through electronic means that are tracked, controlled, and taxed to the maximum.
So that's what they'll do there.
They're counting on people to not just sit there, you know, if you have a thousand bucks in the bank and you lose 50 bucks a year, you're going to spend it, especially if you extrapolate that for a larger amount.
So the point isn't whether you're keeping your money at the bank, the point is whether you're spending your money through the bank, using their card to do it, etc., like that.
Oh, sure, because then it's, you know, just think of the information that's available to them there.
It's really, you know, not just the IRS's dream, it's the NSA's dream, too.
Well, sure.
And you know, it's funny, man, for me, and I know, I guess it probably sounds stupid, but I was so paranoid about this kind of thing back in, like, 1994, that I was completely done being concerned about it, like, ten years ago or more.
But now, here it is again.
The idea that you're really going to have no choice but to always, every time you buy anything, it has to be on the record, or else you're basically, you know, giving probable cause for a full-scale investigation of what it is that you're up to.
You know, reducing anybody who wants to be slightly free to a barter economy and poverty.
But here it is.
Seems like that's what they're going for.
Well, the good news is, is they haven't won yet.
And there is some hopeful signs here.
And in a couple of cases, we've seen counter-editorials in big newspapers, like the Wall Street Journal, just come out and say that this is ridiculous, and, you know, make the same criticisms that you and I would make.
But unfortunately, among the opinion makers and, you know, the economists at these publications, it's a minority opinion, but, you know, there is some resistance to it.
And they haven't completely done, you know, gone forward with some of these ideas yet.
We can still use the $100 bill, you know, we can still use cash, but the momentum, it's clear to see where the momentum is going.
So the good news is, is there's still time to fight this and there's still time to take action to protect yourself.
And I think it's very simple how to protect yourself.
The way to win the war on cash is to own gold and silver, physical gold and silver within your possession.
Those are forms of money that are not going to be susceptible to negative interest rates and so forth.
So, you know, and they're accepted anywhere in the world.
You take a gold coin anywhere in the world and they'll recognize its value, whether it's Canada, North Korea, Mexico, anywhere in Europe.
It's recognized around the world.
So I think it's really going to push people into precious metals.
Yeah, well, and then so there's possibilities for bubbles even in the metals then when it comes down to it, right?
I think I think so.
You know, we'll have to see how this plays out over the next few years.
But another thing to mention is that just for them to consider such a radical and extreme thing as banning cash and trumpeting it in all of these publications and in Harvard and so forth, I think it shows they're desperate.
This is this is not a move they would consider if they were confident in their in the economy and their grip on the economy.
I think it's I think it's a sign of desperation.
And another thing, too, is that there's there's another sort of psychological component to this war on cash.
Well, I forgot to mention this earlier in the program.
A few weeks after this Davos conference, Monopoly, the game, you know, the classic game that people would play, you know, you have cash and you buy properties and so forth.
Well, they announced that Monopoly will no longer feature cash.
You're going to have a bank card when you decide to buy Baltic Avenue or something like that, or the railroad.
It's it's also there's a psychological component, you know, they're trying to push people into getting used to not using cash anymore.
And I think that is certainly part of it.
Yeah, well, and you can certainly see how it's the basis for a total police state where, you know, I knew an old hippie lady who had once dated a weed grower out in California or something, and she had sued and gotten her FBI file.
And it was huge.
And they'd been following her to the store and following her to all her friend's houses and this and that.
We're talking like 1968 or whatever, 72 or I don't know, back in old days.
But the thing is, all they got to do to compile that kind of FBI file level investigation of anyone at any time is the stroke of a key because it's all already pre-investigated itself and laid itself right down on the record.
So they just type in your name and hit enter.
And here's everything we know about Nick from every database we have access to, which is a hell of a lot.
Yeah, well, I think there's a there's another edge to that story, too.
Technology can definitely aid the state in that kind of stuff.
But technology is also a very good thing for the individual.
We look at things like Bitcoin encryption and all sorts of these all these distributed technologies, 3D printing.
So I think it's I think it's a tug of war.
I don't think it's I don't think the outcome is certain.
I don't think it's completely hopeless.
And I just look at, you know, for example, BitTorrent.
And they have tried to shut down BitTorrent for over 15 years.
And I you know, anybody can still go on and get whatever they want on BitTorrent.
So I think there is a ray of hope that, you know, they can't shut these things down.
And, you know, we'll see if they're able to really push us towards a cashless society and are successful at that.
Well, that would be a big victory for the bad guys.
So let's hope that doesn't happen.
Yeah.
And, you know, it's cool, too, about the technology that well, for one example, and I know there's more you mentioned Bitcoin, but one of my favorites and I'm not just being, I hope, a hollow shill here, but I really mean it is the commodity disk where my friend Arlo Pignotti got these silver coins and they're embedded with a QR code where you just scan it with your phone and it'll take you immediately to the website and tell you the instant spot price.
So at any time, if you want to you whip out that gold or silver coin, as you talked about, that you could take with you, you know, any place in America or any place in the world.
Not only that, you get scanned with your phone and tell them exactly what it's worth right now on the market when you're exchanging it.
And that kind of thing, it's it seems like that kind of thing makes, you know, cash and all, you know, the bank digits obsolete.
Why do we need them at all when we can trade gold and silver coins with each other and know exactly what they're trading for at any moment?
Well, I think, yeah, you hit the nail on the head here and that the solution is to not restrict options for people to choose what kind of money they'd like to use, but to take away those restrictions, let the market decide what kind of money people would want to get rid of these ridiculous legal tender laws that force you to use Federal Reserve notes and and really let the people vote with their with their money.
And I think if we did that, it's clear that we would see some alternative forms, whether it's gold, silver or some sort of mix between a cryptocurrency and a commodity currency like gold or silver come into come into being.
Well, I don't know everything in the world about Bitcoin.
I know there's a lot of great things about it, and I don't know if it's Bitcoin or something else, but it certainly points the way toward peer to peer making Citigroup and JP Morgan Chase absolutely obsolete.
What could they possibly do other than fleece me?
Why would I want to do business with them ever when I can just send money direct?
Oh, absolutely.
That's a wonderful thing, because these big banks are are at this point just appendages of the U.S. government.
They're not entities of free market of the free market.
They're entities of of crony capitalism and economic fascism.
So anything that does away with them, the better.
All right, y'all, that is Nick Giambruno.
He writes for Doug Casey's group.
It's international man dot com.
Casey Research.
And this one is the world's first cashless society is here.
The totalitarian's dream come true and revealed the hidden agenda of Davos 2016.
Thanks very much for coming back on the show, Nick.
Good talk to you.
Anytime, Scott.
Hey, I'll Scott here.
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