Friday, November 30, 2018

Dead Dinosaurs

It's a popular myth that oil and natural gas are the products of dead dinosaurs. However, the sheer quantity of hydrocarbons found in the depth of our planet is sufficient evidence to invalidate this hypothesis. The vast majority of dead dinosaurs decomposed completely. What few remains we have, apart from some very rare exceptions, are skeletons only. Their flesh were eaten and rotted away as is the normal fate of dead animals.


Brontosaurus: by MCDinosaurhunter Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=33465760

The popular myth is likely to have had its origin with the coal fields that display clear evidence of having once been forests. If trees can be turned into coal, why not dinosaurs too? However, much of the oil and gas that have been discovered come from rock strata far below where life has ever existed. There is also methane and ethane lakes on Titan, Saturn's largest moon. Those hydrocarbons were surely not produced from dinosaurs.

There are also molecular clouds in space containing methane and ethane together with simpler molecules such as water and carbon monoxide. Hydrocarbons are everywhere. There is no need for dead dinosaurs to explain their existence in the depth of our planet.

The fact that our planet has hot internals, far warmer than would be the case if nothing was going on, is seen as proof that there must be radioactive processes taking place. This in turn explains the expanding Earth, and also the abundance of salt, water and hydrocarbons found deep below Earth's surface.

Radioactivity produces lighter elements from heavy elements. This is known as radioactive decay. It produces heat together with hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, chloride, sodium, nitrogen, etc. These lighter elements combine in turn to produce organic compounds of various kinds. Salt, hydrocarbons and water are all produced continuously inside Earth as byproducts of radioactivity, and this too produces heat. The heat inside our planet comes from both radioactivity and chemical reactions.

Our planet is not a dead and inert body. It shivers with earthquakes, often in response to solar flares in our direction, it erupts lava, it expands and it produces organic compounds. Earth is very much a living planet, connected to a living universe.

Thursday, November 29, 2018

Ocean Drains

The Mariana Trench is the deepest natural point in the world, located in the western Pacific Ocean approximately 200 kilometers (124 mi) east of the Mariana Islands. It is thought to be a subduction zone where the seafloor of the Pacific is gobbled up by the continental plate to the west. It must therefore have come as a surprise to researchers that this zone draws in water at an enormous rate.

Subduction implies a reduction of seafloor area. The quantity of water in a subduction zone should therefore go down. It should push water out to the sides as seafloor is gobbled up. Alternatively, subduction trenches must grow deeper at a rate that exceeds the volume lost by the shrinking seafloor. Since the Mriana Trench is not growing deeper at the required rate, and water is nevertheless rushing in towards it, the explanation must be that subduction is not in fact happening, or there are drains at the bottom of the trench, forcing water into the Earth.

Unwilling to give up on the idea of subduction, and unable to find holes for the water to drain into, geologists have come to the conclusion that water is somehow mixed with the rocks that are subducted in under the continental plate to the west. This would mean that the rocks that sink into the Earth are of very low density, making the whole subduction story all the more fantastic. Nowhere in physics do we see low density materials sink in under denser materials. But in geology, this is supposed to happen at an extraordinary rate.

A more logical conclusion would be that the Mariana Trench is not in fact a subduction zone but an expansion rift. An expanding seafloor at the trench, even if expanding at a very slow pace, would require huge amounts of water to fill the the volume created.


South pole view of the expanding Earth

What the geologists have discovered is not another fantastic mechanism of subduction where water gets gobbled up by Earth's crust, but further proof that Earth is expanding.

Wednesday, November 28, 2018

Gypsy Stories

There was a very popular teacher at the school my son is attending here in Porto. She was young, intelligent, empathetic and in every way what kids like in a teacher. It was also clear that she was genuinely interested in and fond of the children in her classes. However, she is no longer teaching at my son's school, and I only see her every now and again when I happen to deliver my son to school at the same time she delivers her daughter.

She has received a scholarship from the EU to write a paper on gypsies, and the prestige and money associated with this was evidently enough to sway her away from her teaching position at the school.

I'm not going to pretend I know all the details about her assignment, or why she accepted it, but I'm pretty confident that this is a classic example of how direct interference from governments makes everybody poorer and less content than they would otherwise have been.

Here we had a teacher doing a fine job in every way, and very much enjoying her work, that got an offer she could not refuse. The money she would make by writing a paper on gypsies and their lives in Portugal was more than she could make as a teacher. In addition, there is no doubt a good deal of prestige associated with the paper, and its purpose harmonized with the teacher's left leaning sympathies.

The stated goal of the EU when it comes to gypsies is to have them fully integrated into "the system". Living outside the system, gypsies do not pay any taxes. In the eyes of the progressive left, this is synonymous to being helpless and lost. But the reality of it is that the system has in fact always been the enemy of gypsies, especially in progressive nations such as Norway. Even the most superficial study of that nation's progressive past will produce mountains of evidence for the evils that progressives have hoist upon gypsies in the name of assimilation.

However, Portugal was under the rule of Salazar during the worst of the progressive era. He was a reactionary dictator who proudly proclaimed his anti-progressive stance. While the rest of Europe was busy persecuting gypsies, breaking up families, forcefully sterilizing and lobotomizing them, and even killing them right out, gypsies were allowed to continue their lives outside the system in Portugal. It is therefore excusable that a young progressive in Portugal would be relatively unaware of the decidedly sinister undertone of an EU program to assimilate gypsies into the system.

An EU grant carries a lot of prestige with it, but I suspect that the young teacher has figured out by now that the paper she is writing is at best useless, and at worst an excuse for some serious mischief. The paper, if it carries the desired conclusion, will be used as a weapon in some internal power play in the bureaucratic halls of the EU machinery. If it carries the "wrong" conclusion, it will be discarded and ignored. No-one in politics cares about truth or knowledge. All that matters is power.

However, the money to fund the paper does not come out of a vacuum. It was brought in in the form of taxes. People in productive employment had to give up a share of their earnings to finance the grant and the bureaucracy that administered it. The reason teachers are paid as badly as they are is in part due to the fact that money is siphoned off of their productive work in order to give away as grants.

The result of this is that good teachers, doing productive and meaningful work, are being burdened by taxation and at the same time lured away from their position by financially attractive yet meaningless assignments. Instead of having happy, prosperous teachers, we end up with over-burdened teachers and unhappy researchers.

August von Pettenkofen - Gipsy Children - WGA17393.jpg

Public Domain, Link

Bankrupt Farmers

Bankruptcy among farmers in the Mid-West is on the rise. This coincides with a fall in prices of not only farm products but input factors such as oil and petrol as well. There is overproduction. This in turn is due to credit expansion that has now come to an end.

Large Mid-West farms have adopted an industrial approach to farming, including an industrial approach to financing. Capital goods such as tractors and harvesters are financed with loans. Farmers do not save money for future investments, instead they borrow and invest when credit is cheap. This means that investments in farm equipment is centrally orchestrated through the interest rate set by the central bank. Investments happen all at once. What would otherwise have been a randomly distributed activity becomes an activity synchronized through central planning. The result of this is the boom and subsequent bust known as the business cycle, and it appears that we now are in the bust part of the current cycle.

Going forward, we can expect prices to drop further before going up again. Once we reach peak bankruptcies, prices will bottom. Thereafter, overproduction will gradually turn to underproduction. Prices of essential goods will rise, prompting fear of price inflation. The text book response to this by central bankers is to set interest rates even higher, thereby exacerbating the problem. Not only will the cost of living go up, the cost of borrowing will go up too. However, this will continue until the central planners again find it necessary to stimulate the economy with cheap credit, thereby starting a new cycle of boom that will inevitably be followed by a bust.

Goat at the Farm.jpg

By Lozsie - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link

Tuesday, November 27, 2018

Malinvestments and Wages

When capital is employed productively more products are produced at lower cost. This enable producers to undercut the prices of their less efficient competitors, which in turn benefit consumers. The more capital we have employed productively in the economy, the more there is to consume at a lower price.

From this, we may infer that malinvestments come with a benefit, namely lower prices. However, on closer inspection, we see a big distinction between low prices due to efficient allocation of resources and low prices due to malinvestments. Where resources are allocated efficiently, only products of value are produced. In the case of malinvestments, we end up with products of little or no value. In both cases, prices go down, but it is only in the first case that prices go down for products of value.

Our purchasing power is not affected positively by malinvestments. Rather, the opposite is the case. When bad ideas get funded, it is necessarily at the expense of better ideas. Taking crypto-currencies as an example, we have engineers employed to produce numbers that can be traded speculatively in exchanges. This diverts labor, equipment and energy away from productive employment in favor of purely speculative activities with no productive output.

A lot of effort is spent with nothing of value to show for it. However, the well paid engineers are consumers. They drive up prices for products of value, making them less affordable for the productively employed. Had the crypto-engineers spent their energy on something of value, everyone would have benefited. But when they spend time, energy and scarce resources on worthless activities, they function solely as a drain on the economy.

When the crypto-bubble finally collapses, worthless crypto-tokens will be on sale together with computer equipment and other capital. But this does not benefit the productively employed in the same way that they would have benefited had the malinvestment not happened in the first place. The unwinding of a speculative bubble comes solely as a relief to the productively employed, allowing their purchasing power to raise back to where it should have been all along.

As mentioned in my post on Gresham's Law, bad money drives good ideas out of the economy. The fact that as many as 40% of all workers see their jobs as meaningless, indicate that we are currently awash in bad money. We are in the midst of a speculative bubble in which bad investments are made at the expense of the productively employed. Labor is greatly undervalued, and capital is correspondingly overvalued. Only an implosion of the current system, with a purge of central banking and political meddling, can rectify this problem.

Xanadu Indoor Ski.JPG

By Brad Miller Millertime83 - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

Malinvestments and the Dow/Gold Ratio

In theory, prices measured in gold should end up lower than their starting point after a complete credit cycle. Credit expansion spawns malinvestments which have to be liquidated during the subsequent credit contraction. With a surplus of products and capital goods produced through the cycle, prices end up lower than they started.

With credit cycles being enhanced and made bigger through central banking, the progressive period that we are currently living through should see larger swings than the liberal period that preceded it. There should be evidence of a marked change in price fluctuation, starting late 1913 when the Federal Reserve was established.

As it happens, this is exactly what we see. By studying a 200 year chart of the Dow/Gold ratio, we see a dramatic difference in market behavior between the liberal era and the progressive era. Less than 20 years after the introduction of central banking, there is a huge overshoot to the upside in the value of the Dow. In the late 1960s there is another overshoot, almost as bad as the one in 1929. Finally, there is a pronounced but less severe overshoot in 1999.

Just as predicted by theory, the overshoots are each followed by undershoots. Prices ended up lower than where they started. It also appears that the upward trend channel has been damaged. While the upward price trend is steady and confined during the liberal era, the progressive era has seen such large price fluctuation that no clear trend can be discerned. While it is possible to simply continue the trend channel upwards from the liberal era, a more horizontal line would fit just as well.

Keeping in mind what we know about credit cycles and malinvestments we can reasonably predict that the current price ratio is likely to be a top. Massive monetary easing and credit expansion that dwarfs anything we have seen before has taken us from a low of about 7 in 2009 to a little over 21 in 2018. This looks and feels much more like the bounce during the decline in the 1970s than the start of a new push towards another all time high.

With 2009 marking the start of a massive credit expansion, we can predict that prices will fall below this level over the next decade or so. Adding to this that the entire progressive era can be seen as a gigantic credit expansion, we can be fairly confident that the coming price drop will go beyond the 1980 low of 1. It is not unreasonable to call for a 0.5 bottom. This means that we have no reason to invest in the stock market as long as the Dow/Gold ratio is above 7, and that we should be cautious even at that level. There is no reason to be excited about low prices before we are well below 3.

Xanadu Indoor Ski.JPG

By Brad Miller Millertime83 - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

Monday, November 26, 2018

Credit Expansion and Contraction

While malinvestments always lead to lower prices in the end, they start off with prices going up. This happens as a direct result of credit expansion. Banks take the signal of low interest rates from the central bank and convert it into credit that it hands out to customers. Investors get credit notes in the form of dollars, euros, pounds etc. They subsequently go out and spend it on raw materials and property. Capital goods are produced with an increased supply of finished products as result.

However, credit is not money. It is merely the trust of an institution in a future payment. The investors command credit because the lenders trust them to pay back on their loans. It follows that credit cannot be infinitely extended. At some point, the limit to what we can trust people to deliver is reached, and no more credit can be extended without loss.

What happens when interest on loans are kept artificially low is that banks can afford to trust people more than they should. They expand credit beyond the reasonable, and since interest rates are determined centrally for all customers, the expansion goes to everyone in the economy. Everyone leverages up on debt at the same time.

When interest rates starts to rise, everyone get in trouble at the same time as well. Positions have to be unwound in order to cover debt. Suddenly, there is a rush to sell, and prices fall. This is the moment when malinvestments become clear to see. There are too may houses, they are too big, they are in the wrong area. There are too many products of various kinds. The demand was not based on real wealth but credit. The customers are no longer there.

Prices may well continue to go up in nominal terms. Relative to dollars and euros, prices may rise. However, relative to gold, prices go down. As things stand right now, it appears that we have reached the peak of the current expansion and that a drop in prices relative to gold is inevitable.

Crowd outside nyse.jpg

By US-gov - From an SSA poster: http://www.ssa.gov/history/wallst.html, Public Domain, Link

Sunday, November 25, 2018

Malinvestments

malinvestment is a misguided investment made as a direct consequence of price-signals coming from central banks. Artificially low interest rates makes it profitable to invest in projects that would otherwise not be undertaken. Capital gets typically diverted from immediate concerns to more secondary concerns. The production of capital goods get a boost at the expense of more pressing issues.

The strip mining of the tar sands of Alberta is but one example of a massive mallinvestment. All concerns for the environment have been pushed aside in favor of huge investments in capital goods and infrastructure. The destruction of rain-forests is also enabled through artificially low interest rates.

The damage to the environment caused by central banks is clear to see. However, rather than blaming the central planners, the entrepreneurs and capitalism are blamed, and more central planning is called for. The historic fact that central planning always result in waste and destruction does not seem to sink in with the average environmentalist, and they certainly don't see the connection between malinvestments and central banking.

While it's understandable that those unfamiliar with the concept of malinvestments are clueless to the destructive side of central banking, it's a little strange to hear people familiar with the concept express opinions that are clearly at odds with what they claim to understand.

It has been known ever since Ludwig von Mises wrote in his books on the subject that artificially low interest rates cause malinvestments, especially in capital intensive industries such as mining and manufacturing. The result of such investments are always a fall in prices for both the capital involved and the end products. Both oil prices and the capital invested in oil production are therefore headed for a fall in prices.

Another malinvestment that has seen a spectacular rise and fall over the last two years is the crypto-currency industry. This whole industry came into existence for the sole purpose of getting away from central planning. Its very existence is due to central banks messing around with currencies. If central banks had stuck with a gold standard, no-one would have had any reason to look for alternatives.

The very fact that we have to constantly monitor the crypto space for technological developments tell us that crypto is not money. Money is a store of value while technology is fleeting. We can put a gold coin in a box and know with certainty that the coin will be valuable many years down the road. The same cannot be said about crypto, which almost certainly is headed to zero, certainly if there is a return to a gold standard at the end of the recession we are currently headed into.

Alberta tar sands and crypto are some of the best current examples of malinvestments. Still, we have Peter Schiff talking about malinvestments one moment and the near certainty of a sustained price rise in oil the next moment, and Maneco64 does the same with crypto. It is baffling to hear such well educated people get these things so wrong when everything else they say makes perfect sense.

Syncrude mildred lake plant.jpg
Syncrude mildred lake plant

By TastyCakes is the photographer, Jamitzky subsequently equalized the colour. - Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons., Public Domain, Link

Friday, November 23, 2018

Exploding Meteorites

Meteorites have been in the news lately for having allegedly caused two major catastrophes in human history. First, it was the discovery of a large impact crater on Greenland. The meteorite responsible for it appears to have struck during the Younger Dryas some 12,000 years ago. The impact was so energetic that it may well have caused extraordinary floods, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions and earthquakes.

Another meteorite appears to have struck during the biblical time of Abraham, giving support to the story about Sodom. Archaeologists have found evidence to suggest that an enormously hot wind flattened a town located by the Dead Sea. The only explanation for this is that a meteorite exploded very close to the settlement, wiping it out in an instance, as described in the Bible.
Meteorite exploding in the sky

While there is a crater on Greenland, there is no crater by the Dead Sea. This tells us that the impact on Greenland was much more energetic than the explosion above Sodom. However, it does not follow that the crater on Greenland is the result of a kinetic collision between a meteorite and Earth. It too can be the result of an explosion, and there is strong evidence to suggest this.

An interesting feature of the crater on Greenland is that it has a raised center. This is the tell tale footprint of an electric discharge. The return stroke of a powerful lightning will pull matter up with it, leaving a raised structure in the center. The meteorite that hit Greenland most likely got zapped to pieces by a lightning bolt between itself and Earth.

It appears then that all meteorites above a minimal size explode before impact, no matter how big they are. Impact craters are not due to kinetic collisions. Rather, they are the products of shock-waves from electrically induced explosions.

Wednesday, November 21, 2018

Gresham's Law

When there are two different kinds of money in circulation with identical nominal values, the least valuable of the two will stay in circulation while the most valuable one will go out of circulation. No-one in their right mind would use a gold sovereign to buy a beer, even if its face value is one British pound. We use our legally mandated fiat currencies for our daily purchases. Gold and silver coins are kept as savings.

This is known as Gresham's law, and is so self evident that it does not require much explaining. However, there is an important related aspect that is somewhat less obvious. When good money is pushed out by inferior fiat currencies, a general corruption of society follows. Good ideas and good people are pushed out as well.

Fiat currencies are easily inflated. They loose value over time, and holders of such currencies are therefore constantly looking for investment ideas. This spawns malinvestments. Resources are redirected from productive to unproductive work. Bad ideas that wouldn't ordinarily get any funding, are suddenly everybody's favorite investment darlings. Truly insane and destructive fads become speculative bubbles.

This in turn drive honest people to the sidelines. Seeing through the madness and realizing that it is all speculative nonsense, honest people withdraw from the fad driven part of the economy. However, with a lot of resources allocated to fads, there is not enough resources allocated to good and honest ideas to provide everyone with  meaningful employment.

Good people and good ideas become marginalized through bad money. The more corrupt the money, the more marginalized is the good and honest side of society. Financiers, politicians, lawyers, bureaucrats and other busybodies get a large part of the funding that should have gone to farmers, engineers, factory workers, nurses, and other good people.

Not only does bad money drive out good money, it drives out good and honest people as well, thereby corrupting society as a whole.

1959 sovereign Elizabeth II obverse.jpg
Sovereign

By Heritage Auctions for image, Mary Gillick for coin - Newman Numismatic Portal, Public Domain, Link

Monday, November 19, 2018

Bitcoin Trading Volumes

It used to be that Bitcoin trading volumes would remain unchanged from weekdays or even go up during weekends. Most of the big moves were also during weekends. This was especially true around the peak of the mania. However, this pattern has since changed, and has now definitely reversed.

High volume days with big price action no longer happen during the weekends. They happen during weekdays. This indicates that the type of people involved in Bitcoin have changed. While they used to be the average Joe, unemployed or employed, with weekends therefore especially busy, the typical Bitcoin trader now is a professional.

Bitcoin prices are now at their most stable during weekends. Prices are flat or moderately up, all on very thin volumes. Weekdays on the other hand have of late become tremendously busy, with sharp prices drops.

What we can see, is that the pattern in volume changed before the latest price action. The professional traders did not start smacking the price down right off the bat. Rather, they have spent much time accumulating their positions. The volumes reveal this to be so, and from the price action it is clear that the professionals are short Bitcoin.

They have most likely shorted futures while at the same time buying Bitcoin. With their short future options coming due, they are now busy dumping Bitcoin into a market with very few buyers. This results in losses in their Bitcoin positions, but gains in their futures. Since they are more heavily invested in short futures, they net a profit for themselves.

This is exactly what many predicted would happen once Bitcoin futures trading started a little less than a year ago, and this will continue until Bitcoin finally goes to zero. Bitcoin has no utility except for speculation. There is no drain on Bitcoin. Their numbers are fixed. This means that there is no downward limit except zero. The professionals know this. They will accumulate Bitcoin while going short on futures. They will then smack the price down by dumping large volumes of Bitcoin. Taking the profit from their futures they will again accumulate Bitcoin and short futures. This will continue until there are no genuine buyers left and Bitcoin finally goes to zero.

Queen

While the king represents the visible and physical side of a household, the queen represents the subtler and less visible sides. The king protects the realm by his physical presence. He moves deliberately and confidently in harmony with God. While he may be swift and forceful at times, there is never anything frantic about him. His wife can move confidently within his sphere without having to worry about his mental state or physical abilities. This makes her free to take care of the subtler issues of the house.

The fact that the king is the visible and physical side of the household does not mean that he is somehow better than his queen. It is merely a reflection of his masculinity. He might not even be the true head of the household. It may well be the queen who owns and controls everything. But the good queen does not make any big deal out of this. She thrives under the protective wing of her king. Why point out to people that things are somehow different from what they appear? That would only serve to expose her and make her vulnerable.

A great example of this is a family I've had the pleasure of getting to know here in Portugal where I live. In charge of a small domain, and independently minded, the head of that household can properly be termed a king. He is always seated at the head of the table. Calm and deliberate in everything, he is the image of a king in harmony with God.

His wife never makes much of a fuzz about anything. She makes sure that dinner is prepared and that all the guests are properly taken care of. She sits sometimes at his side, sometimes at the other end of the table, and other times at whatever place she finds interesting company to chat with. With a good sense of humor and a sharp wit, she is always busy chatting with friends and family, but never excessively so.

It was not until quite recently that I realized that it was the queen that was in fact the true proprietor of the realm, and that the king was in large part a figurehead. To start with, I wasn't even sure who of the other people in the room the queen was. She was that discrete.

The reason for the queens discretion was not due to some sort of conditioning. The family is as modern and open minded as any. Rather, it is a great arrangement for her to have her husband take care of the physical and visible side of things. His business activities bring in a reasonable income that she administers in partnership with him.

A funny anecdote in this respect was an episode in which the queen told her king that she was going out to do some errands. He told her that she had his permission. She smiled and thanked him. Then she turned to me, as a somewhat puzzled bystander. "Not that I need his permission, but isn't it great to be both free to do whatever I want AND have his permission?"

The good queen plays this kind of games all the time, and her king plays along. It is a great partnership under any circumstance. However, it comes in particularly useful in times of unrest. While he protects and directs the household physically and visibly, she moves deceptively into and out of conflict.

Chess piece - Black queen.JPG

By MichaelMaggs - Own work, CC BY-SA 2.5, Link

Sunday, November 18, 2018

Feeling Safe

To feel safe, we have to feel sheltered and in control. A house or apartment provides physical shelter. Friends and family can provide moral support and physical shelter. Government can do the same, or at least pretend to do so. Physical treasures give shelter for the proverbial rainy day.

During good times, we feel sheltered by our circumstances, and we are willing to take risks. There is little need for physical treasures when we feel safe and in control. The future is bright. We are all going to get rich. Who needs gold and silver when we can make a fortune in tech stocks and crypto.

However, when the wind turns and storm clouds gather, things suddenly don't look so good. What exactly are these tech companies producing? Is this crypto thing real, or just as fake as gold points scored in role playing games? Can I afford the big mortgage I took out on my house? Is my cash in the bank safe? Is the government going to save us? Will they be able to keep the currency from collapsing?

It is during times of uncertainty that physical treasures become valuable and sought after. The more uncertain we feel, the more we long for a pot of gold. This is why gold always goes up in price during crisis, even when prices of everything else go down.

Cloud cumulonimbus at baltic sea(1).jpg

By Arnold Paul - Selbst erstelltes Foto, CC BY-SA 2.5, Link

Friday, November 16, 2018

King

To be a king, in the proper archetype sense of the word, a man must not only be the head of a household, with loyal descendants, he must also have control of a domain. This domain is the realm of the king. This is typically his private estate and any associated properties, not necessarily owned by him.

The good king will protect anyone inside his realm. If under attack, the entire realm will be defended by the king. This is often due to purely practical considerations. A majority stake holder in an undertaking cannot easily defend his part without also defending everybody else. However, the good king makes no fuss about this, and the natural reward from the minority stake holders is admiration and loyalty, which in turn makes the defense of the realm all that more easy to perform.

The bad king on the other hand is a despot. He seeks to use his stake as a means to dominate everybody else. He will demand protection money in the form of rent. He will demand admiration, loyalty, and even thanks and praise for his actions. In this respect, every nation but a handful of mini-nations scattered around the globe, is in the hands of despots. The political leaders of nations everywhere demand taxes, praise and thanks while constantly subjecting citizens to harassment in the form of needless regulations and micromanagement.

However, there are lesser kings everywhere. We do not have to sway political power to be king. What is required is a sense of sovereignty. Anyone rejecting the sovereignty of the political establishment is automatically an aristocrat. This was pointed out by Fernando Pessoa a hundred years ago. Add life experience, an estate, loyal descendants and friends to this, and we have a king.

Chess piece - Black king.JPG

By MichaelMaggs - Own work, CC BY-SA 2.5, Link

Wednesday, November 14, 2018

House

Nature, wild and untamed, is by and large a horrible place. That's why we need to create a garden, preferably with a wall to separate it from the untamed world beyond. However, this is not enough. We also need a place to shelter ourselves from the weather, especially during winter. We need a house, a comfortable and safe place to spend the nights and winters.

The house is the control center of our existence. It is from the comfort and security of our house that we direct our affairs. This is why the word house is also used to mean estate and dynasty. When we put our house in order, we are not merely cleaning the house. We are taking care of matters that need sorting out. This may be business related or strictly private.

Similarly, the house of Windsor is not merely a house, it is a dynasty. The head of this dynasty is the queen of England. Its members include the crown prince, the prince and their spouses as well as more distant relations.

We tend to think of dynasties as strictly confined to royalty. However, any family can operate as a dynasty, and there is much evidence in the form of folk lore and old religious texts to suggest that this was the normal mode of operation for most families in the past.

What is required for a dynasty is a house and loyalty to the head of the household. The house does not have to be directly owned by the head of the family. It may be a rented apartment. The key factor is loyalty. If it rests with the head of the family, as opposed to some other person or organization, we have a dynastic arrangement. In their strictest form, dynasties operate as independent kingdoms, with loyalty to the head of the family rather than the state.

What separates successful families from less successful ones is the way they operate relative to the state. Family members inside a dynasty do not feel obliged to pay respect to the state. On the contrary, they seek to own it and control it for themselves. A dynastic family in the publishing business will for instance seek control and ownership of the departments of culture and education. A family on welfare may seek to influence and control the bureaucratic process related to their welfare payouts.

Members of a dynasty will often proclaim loyalty to the state. They will encourage people to embrace the state and pay their taxes. However, they will only do this to the extent that they profit from it. Members of a dynasty with no ownership in the state apparatus have no reason to say anything publicly about the state.

Varassaari5.JPG

By Vesahjr - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

Monday, November 12, 2018

Garden

A garden is nature tamed. It is a managed piece of land, often walled off from the untamed nature on the outside. In our garden, we feel contented and happy. It is our own private heaven. We see things grow. There are flowers and berries. There are herbs and vegetables. Our garden provide us with food for our body and our soul.

This is in stark contrast to nature in its wild state which is full of dangers and very much lacking in the comforts and foods found in our garden. However, nature untamed is all that God provides for us. It is up to us to turn His creation into a garden. The idea that we can somehow produce a garden without effort or through coercion and power over others is saturnistic. If we want others to help us in our garden, we have to pay them. We cannot simply force them to do work. Nothing good ever came under threats of punishment.

Heaven is closely associated with a garden. We have Eden, a mythical garden that tended itself, and we have paradise, God's garden in heaven. A garden is the physical representation of peace and tranquility. When we work in our garden we come in contact with God. We learn that small seeds grow into big plants. We learn the importance of care and attention. We also learn that some things come to nothing, no matter how much effort we put into them, while other things grow almost without effort. The garden is in this way a perfect metaphor for life.

Left untended, a garden returns to nature. An unattended garden is a sad sight. It indicates decay and death. The unattended garden is spooky because of this. We half expect to see ghosts and monsters appear where things have been left to rot. The owner of such a garden, if still alive, is either physically or mentally ill.

A man's garden is a reflection of his soul. Some gardens are wild and loosely tended. Other's are strictly measured out. We have the formal gardens, and the English garden. One emulates the strict hierarchy of order. The other is a representation of liberty. Each in their way, they represent man's stewardship of God's creation. As long as the garden is well tended and a pleasure to look at, it indicates mental health and prosperity.

A garden is therefore a wonderful therapeutic instrument. Angst and depression can be remedied with a garden. A garden gives meaning to existence. It connects us with God. It fills us with tranquility and peace of mind.

A garden does not have to be a real physical place. Any creative project can be seen as a garden. I personally like to write. This blog is therefore a garden. I have a small allotment as well, so I have both a physical garden and a continuous project. The combination of the two help me reflect on things. It makes it easier to navigate through life.

Zürich - Käferberg - Affoltern IMG 3194.JPG

By Roland zh - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

Sunday, November 11, 2018

Bank of England's Empty Vaults

The Bank of England recently denied Venezuela access to its own gold. The request was for 14 tonnes to be delivered, hardly an astronomic amount considering the thousands of tonnes supposedly held in the vaults of Bank of England. However, all sorts of excuses were fabricated to deny the Venezuelan government the delivery.

The immediate implication of this is that no nation can expect to get their gold delivered on request. Gold held in the vaults of the Bank of England may not be delivered, and it will certainly not be delivered in the event of a crisis, which is the exact moment gold comes in as the ultimate store of value.

The rational response to this by any government holding gold in these vaults is to get it out as soon as possible. However, if the vaults are empty, and this is the real reason Venezuela was denied access to their gold, then any request will be met with resistance and delays.

Asking for a mere 300 tonnes of gold held in the US, the German government had to wait several years for delivery. This happened some years ago, and was the first clear sign that gold held in safe keeping in the US and the UK is not in fact held in their vaults. The gold bars delivered to Germany were not the ones they had once delivered for safe keeping. The gold had been sourced from the open market.

There is no reason to believe that gold held in the UK is any more safe than gold held in the US. More likely than not, the gold has been leased out or sold. Deliveries will therefore take a lot of time, considering that it has to be bought off the open market.

The best way for foreign governments to get their gold back may therefore be to take care of the open market purchases themselves. They can ask the Bank of England to sell their gold into the open market. If this is announced ahead of time, gold prices may fall initially as speculators panic. The money received from the Bank of England can then be used to buy the gold.

The Bank of England will of course not sell any physical gold that it does not hold. They will issue paper gold contracts and ETFs. How long they will be able to keep this going is anyone's guess, but one thing is certain. The sooner a government takes action to repatriate its gold, the more likely it is to get most or all of it back. The latecomers are in serious danger of not getting anything. Since everybody involved now know this to be a fact, a run on gold seems imminent. Expect a short-lived  downward manipulation of the gold price before physical gold disappears from the market.

When the manipulation and deception is clear to all, no-one will part with their gold before some sort of new world order is established. The opening price, after the reset will be much higher than the price is today.

1959 sovereign Elizabeth II obverse.jpg
Sovereign

By Heritage Auctions for image, Mary Gillick for coin - Newman Numismatic Portal, Public Domain, Link

Friday, November 9, 2018

Treasure

Treasures are things that we value. That's why the word treasure is both a noun and a verb. We treasure our treasures. We are willing to fight for them, hide them, or do whatever it takes to avoid losing them.

A pot of gold is a treasure. But so is a precious moment with someone special. Treasures do not have to be physical things. Friends and relatives are treasures just as much as gold an property.

Treasures are extensions of ourselves. They are our properties, our memories and our wealth., all the things that makes life pleasant and worth living. To loose our treasures due to greed, fear or sloth is therefore a sin. Such loss makes life less valuable, and it makes ourselves less valuable by extension.

Goldeagle.jpg
Gold eagle
Public Domain, Link

Thursday, November 8, 2018

Gold

Of all the elements in the periodic table, gold is the only one that can be reused without any loss. It can be fashioned into jewelry, gold teeth, electric wiring, coins, bars, etc. Then, after serving its purpose, it can be melted down and fashioned into something else. Gold, once dug out of the ground, never disappears unless lost at sea or through some other accident. Gold is eternal.

The above ground quantity of gold is constantly increasing, due to its eternal quality. At present, there is more readily available gold in the world than there is readily available steel. If pressed, many thousand tons of gold can be made available over night. Yet, gold is far more expensive than steel. This is because it takes much more effort to get gold out of the ground than it takes to get iron ore out of the ground. Given enough time, much more steel can be delivered than gold.

In financial terms, gold moves like lightning. It is the most financially liquid of all commodities. It is also the most stable of all commodities because it is never consumed. It is merely transformed. This makes gold perfect as money. The fact that it is relatively plentiful is not a problem, but an advantage. Anyone can own a bit of gold. There is plenty to go around. Divided equally among everyone on the planet, every child and old person included, there is about 20 gram for each.

The quantity of above ground gold has grown pretty much in line with the population. Gold is therefore just as rare today in relative terms as it has been before. This means that its value has remained relatively stable as well, even though its value swings considerably. At times, it is possible to buy a house for less than a kilogram. At other times, it takes more than sixteen kilograms to buy a house. But this is to be expected in a world full of financial booms and busts. With people chasing easy riches through debt, as promised by Saturn, prices are bound to swing dramatically from one extreme to another.

In my book on gold oriented investing, I point out that gold is in fact the perfect measure of value. By relating prices to gold, rather than fiat currency, trends become clear and sensible investment decisions can be made. Gold is in other words the perfect money. It is God's money, provided by nature itself. In fact, it is by many perceived to be the only money that has ever and will ever exist. As testified by JP Morgan before the house of congress in 1912: "Money is gold, nothing else."

This is how it has been throughout the ages. Alternatives to gold as money have come and gone, but only gold has remained. This is so ingrained in society that our language is full of references to it. We talk of golden opportunities, gold plated deals, being as good as gold, having a heart of gold, etc.

The only danger with gold is that it can make us greedy and fearful. This is mentioned in the bible: "For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs."

It should be noted that while some people fall into this trap, most people do not. Money is not the root of all evil, as some claim, it is merely a possible source of evil when greed and fear leads us astray. On the whole, money is good, it provides us with a means to transact. It allows us to withhold and defer spending for later. It gives flexibility and freedom to those who hold it. That's why treasures tend to be full of it.

Gold is eternal. It is also a measure of value, superior to all other types of money. It is no coincidence that the alchemists of old believed gold and eternal life to be derived from one and the same substance.

Goldeagle.jpg


Public Domain, Link

Wednesday, November 7, 2018

Angels

Angels are manifestations of God, and they are like God, neither good nor evil. They are God's messengers and soldiers. Those who are in tune with God will pick up on the signs that precede their actions so that they can take the necessary precautions. These signs are in the heavens and in the earth. Adverse climate changes will be preceded with unusual weather patters. Man made disasters will be preceded with imbalances, visible well in advance.

Angels can also tell us of changes for the better. This too will be seen in the heavens and in the earth. Fair weather and well employed capital are signs of good times to come.

When things are seriously out of wack, angels come in to restore balance and order. In this perspective, we can identify the third and fourth horsemen of the apocalypse as angels of God. They are the inevitable result of saturnistic meddling with nature. While the first two horsemen are representations of Saturn and his demons, the two subsequent ones are God's punishment in the form of hunger and death. Those caught unaware are swept away by God's wrath.

Angels are powerful forces of nature, and we better stay on the right side of them when they come visiting, or we will be swept away with all the other sinners. However, when approached correctly, angels act to our advantage. If we are doing the right thing, living in harmony with nature, we will be spared their wrath and we may even profit. In times of war, angels appear on the battle filed in the form of adverse weather, disease and hunger. Soldiers allied with Saturn, expecting a quick and easy victory, discover too late that they are ill equipped for a prolonged fight.

We also have the ability to conjure up angels within ourselves. If we are doing the right thing, we have the advantage of righteousness which can be used to resist demons, both internal and external. By conjuring up our own angel, we can expel internal demons, and summon the strength and will to fight. Angels protect the weak and the innocent, and they are free of sin. They do not fall for Saturn's trickery and promises of easy riches based on entitlement and hierarchy. No angle ever fought on the side of those who claim to do good by stealing from, murdering and enslaving fellow men.

GuidoReni MichaelDefeatsSatan.jpg

Heaven and Hell

Modern thinking about life and the world we live in is full of strict divisions. We separate mental conditions from physical conditions, and internal conditions from external conditions. This is useful in many ways, as it defines more clearly what we are talking about. However, such separations are sometimes less than clear cut. An addiction to a drug for example, manifests itself in severe physical pain in the absence of the stimulant. It is impossible to say whether the addiction is mental or physical. Similarly, our mental condition is not independent of external conditions. No-one can feel serene and happy while on the verge of freezing to death in a snow storm.

Archetypes of all kinds tend to span the human experience. They are mental and physical, internal and external, all at the same time. Heaven and hell are examples of this. When we feel serene and happy, we are in heaven, and when we feel tormented and tortured, we are in hell. Heaven and hell are mental states, but they are not independent of physical and external conditions.

While it is possible to block out external factors through meditation and pure force of will, proactive preparation and action is by far the best way to build a pleasant environment for our existence. A comfortable home, a reasonable amount of savings, good company and good food, when combined together can make for some very nice moments. It may snow and rain. The wind may be howling. But as long as we stay inside, we are comfortable. If we have what it takes to ride out the storm, we can even say that we are in paradise.

However, even in a living paradise our life can be hell. If our lifestyle is unsustainable, we will know in the back of our mind that what we have will be lost. With such knowledge, it 's impossible to feel truly contented. Consumerism is by no means an alternative to sustainable living and good company. Heaven can only be achieved in harmony with God. If we try to go beyond nature in our desire for worldly pleasures, all sorts of evils will ensue.

Conversely, it is possible to live harmonious lives under severely adverse conditions. If we are well prepared and we have the will and conviction to face the adversaries, either head on or through stealthy circumnavigation, we can have peace of mind in the knowledge that we are doing the right thing. Instead of giving into demons, both internal and external, we have conjured up angels.

GuidoReni MichaelDefeatsSatan.jpg

Tuesday, November 6, 2018

Saturn and His Demons

The problem with Saturn isn't that he is evil but that he attracts evil. The promise of easy riches and power over others summons demons of all kinds. Anyone giving in to these temptations will find themselves tormented by demons, both internal and external. A desire for easy riches make us give in to greed and fear as well as jealousy and envy. It also puts us in serious danger of loss since it encourages excessive risk taking and living beyond our means.

Hierarchy and coercion bring up the sadistic lowlife that hides in us all. It does not matter how well-intended we are, the moment we employ coercion, we open up for all kinds of evils. A great example of this is the CPS which has as its goal to better the lives of children. The intention is nothing but good, but because coercion is part of their tools, all sorts of evils are produced. Pedophiles and the sadistically inclined flock to the CPS with horrendous results.

The well-intended, hoping to do good for children and their families will soon find themselves confused inside the CPS. Clear evidence of sadistic behavior is everywhere. The only way for such people to keep on working is to convince themselves that the end justifies the means, that more good is produced than evil: There are bad decisions and the odd rotten apple, but all in all the CPS is of benefit to society. However, this is a lie and the well-intended will know this in their hearts. They will be tormented. The only way to escape is to leave the CPS or become emotionally hollow.

Over time, the CPS becomes ever more sadistic as the well-intended leave. The sadistic get evermore power and influence. Pretty soon they rise to the very top of its hierarchy. This was the case in Norway, where a notorious pedophile rained supreme for more than a decade. Yet, the institution has not been dismantled. The belief is that this was a bad apple that happened to climb to the top, and that the CPS, even under the worst kind of leadership, does more good than bad. The belief that good intentions automatically translate into good results is so widespread that even the most obvious evidence to the contrary is dismissed as weak and beside the point.

Most people see any objection to the CPS as evidence of evil intent. They assume that people objecting to the coercive nature of the CPS is somehow in favor of suffering, or so self absorbed that they do not give a damn. But none of this is true. Very few people disagree with the idea that children should be helped and protected. What is debated is the use of coercion. Those who are with God know that coercion is a tool of the devil. As long as coercion is allowed inside the CPS, it will never work as intended. It must be stripped of this right. Only then will the CPS function as intended.

Without coercion as a tool, the sadistically inclined will have no reason to seek work inside the CPS. The well-intended will stay, and the demonic will either leave or suppress their demons. Those who came to the CPS with nothing but good intentions, but became corrupted by hierarchy and power, will in most cases correct their ways. With the demons pushed back and away, the well-intended can resume their work and do good to the benefit of all.

This same logic applies to all sorts of institutions. People objecting to global carbon tax are not necessarily disagreeing with the science of global warming. They are opposed to the tax. They do not believe that a coercive redistribution of wealth is going to improve life on this planet, or protect us from imminent harm. It is also quite evident that man-made global warming is less of a problem than what we were told. None of the predictions that were made and pushed through the media have come true. Lies and deception of this kind is evidence of evil intent. It makes people suspicious.

We all want to live in a better world, but the easy remedies pushed by Saturn are not going to work. As soon as coercion and greed is let into society, more damage is done than good. We have to accept that things must happen naturally and freely. Nature cannot be sidestepped, and it does not matter if we are religiously inclined or not. We are all part of nature. There is no way to escape this fact. No matter what sort of clever trickery Saturn comes up with, his schemes will never produce more good than what can be achieved freely and naturally in harmony with God.

Saturn - HST 2019-06-20 full size.jpg
Saturn

By NASA, ESA, A. Simon (Goddard Space Flight Center), M.H. Wong (UC Berkeley), OPAL Team - https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/heic1917a/ For caption, see: https://hubblesite.org/contents/media/images/2019/43/4565-Image, Public Domain, Link

Monday, November 5, 2018

Saturnists

When it comes to archetypes, I prefer to talk about Saturn rather than Satan. The two are in fact the same being. However, due to an excess of demonic attributes, Satan has been turned into an ugly monster, pretty much useless as an archetype. Saturn on the other hand has retained his original interpretation as a being convinced of his superiority to God. To avoid confusions, and tone down the demonic side of this spirit, I talk of saturnists rather than satanists.

A saturnist is a person convinced that God's creations can not only be managed, but made better through wise decision making. Why stick with the imperfect world created by God, when we can go for perfection?

What makes this line of thinking convincing is that we do know that nature must be managed in order to produce fruits. We have to plant seeds and tend our garden in order to reap our rewards. God does not do this for us. It is our task to make the best of what we got.

It is also clear that we can produce all sorts of goods from nature. We can build comfortable homes. We can produce fine foods and luxury items. We can have entertainment and prosperity. Even diseases and all kinds of wants can be overcome.

From this it seems like man, rather than God, is the ultimate creator and that we can create anything we wish. However, there are limits to what we can do. We cannot produce something from nothing. We cannot improve on thing through coercion, and we cannot simply take something if it does not belong to us.

Saturn leads good men astray by suggesting that a better world can be created through coercion, entitlement and hierarchy. A popular saturnist belief is that we can achieve riches through debt and consumption. Another saturnist belief is that we can get rid of vice through coercion. By making drugs illegal, we can rid ourselves of drug addiction. By taking children from parents, we can rid society of unhappy childhoods. By taxing the rich, we can rid ourselves of poverty.

The typical politician is a saturnist. He promises to make the world a better place through coercion and entitlements. Those who believe this to be possible are also saturnists. People expecting things to get better through legislation rather than voluntary interaction are saturnists, whether they know this or not.

By this standard, our entire society is predominantly saturnist. Very few people believe in voluntary interaction and peaceful coexistence. Entitlement, coercion and hierarchy is by far the preferred mode when it comes to social organization.

Where this will end is well known. We know what happened to the Romans and their empire. We know what happened to the English empire. All man made constructs based on coercion and entitlement lead to ruin. After the first two horsemen of the apocalypse follow the two last ones, and those who are caught unaware suffer greatly.

Capitol at Dusk 2.jpg

By Martin Falbisoner - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

Sunday, November 4, 2018

Archetypes

When conveyed correctly and understood correctly, archetypes can be a very effective way to communicate ideas. This is why religious texts and folk lore is so full of such symbols. However, when misinterpreted or taken at face value, archetypes come across as nonsense. It is therefore very unfortunate that many archetypes have become increasingly separated from their original meaning.

Many people believe folk lore to be nothing but superstition, and religious texts to be only for religious people. But we don't have to be religious to understand and benefit from the stories in the Bible, and folk lore is often full of useful insights too.

"To pay the piper," is an expression taken directly out of one of Grimm's texts. It's about debt and the inevitable bill that has to be paid, either by the ones who committed to it, or by their children.

The four horsemen of the apocalypse convey a similar story. Those who follow false advice will eventually have to pay dearly for their sins.

All of this is quick and easy to pick up, provided we know what the archetypes represent.

While many archetypes are still readily understood by most people, some have been perverted. The most important figure in this respect is God, who represents the idea of existence. Nature and God is almost indistinguishable. Knowing this, we do not have to wonder why God can be so cruel at times. God is not good or bad. God simply is.

Satan is another misunderstood figure. He is not a sadistic tormentor of souls. That's what demons are. Satan is a deceiver. He is constantly coming up with schemes that are supposedly better than what God has made. But all his ideas are flawed. They require force and coercion. Wherever Satan spreads his ideas, there is strife and misery. People who fall for Satan's trickery end up miserable. To follow Satan is to sin, and the physical and mental hardships that come with sin is hell.

To sin is to miss the target through frivolity, greed, lust, etc. Hell is mental ruin, often coupled with economic ruin.

Heaven is also a mental state. It is the reward for bravery, righteousness and honesty. It is the just reward that comes with a balanced life in tune with God. It comes in the form of praise and love and often riches. Most importantly it is the comfort of a clean conscience. Knowing that we did the right thing is the biggest comfort of all.

I'm not a religious man, but I'm no idiot. I understand that there is much wisdom in the Bible, and in old folk lore too for that matter. To ignore all this wisdom is folly. It simply makes us susceptible to Satan's trickery. We all have our weaknesses. If we are not careful, we will give in to one or more of them, and we will end up miserable. We should therefore all take some time to reflect over what we are doing, and whether or not it is sustainable. Are we gambling with our lives? Are we living beyond our means? Are we slothful? Are we self centered and vane? Are we out of tune with God? If so, we better shape up and get our act together, because hell in the form of depression or ruin is never far away for those who live their lives in sin.

Paradise Lost 12.jpg
Paradise lost

Saturday, November 3, 2018

Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are described in the last book of the New Testament of the Bible, the Book of Revelation by John of Patmos, at 6:1-8. The chapter tells of a book or scroll in God's right hand that is sealed with seven seals. The Lamb of God opens the first four of the seven seals, which summons four beings that ride out on white, red, black, and pale horses.


Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

By Viktor Mikhailovich Vasnetsov - http://lj.rossia.org/users/john_petrov/166993.html, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2649874

While the fourth horseman is specifically named Death, the three first horsemen are merely described in terms of their symbols. The first one has a crown and a bow, the second one wields a sword, and the third carries a scale. Most interpretations of this is that the four horsemen represent conquest, war, famine and death. However, the specifics as to their exact manifestations are widely debated.

My personal interpretation of these symbols are that of man-made catastrophe which takes on four distinct phases. First, there is a grand idea with a saturnistic origin. It contains some mix of superiority, entitlement and the promise of easy riches. Historic examples of this are the Roman empire, Napoleon's empire, Russia under Stalin, and China under Mao. All of these empires went astray due to the ideas they promoted. They started with a widely popular, but greatly flawed idea.

The problem with saturnistic ideas are twofold. They are unsustainable, and they give advantage to some at the expense of others. While the unsustainable aspect can be managed for a prolonged time, the unfair distribution of resources is felt immediately. It is therefore resisted, and there is strife. Rome experienced civil war early in its development. Napoleon's empire emerged from the French revolution. Communist Russia and China both started with civil wars.

In cases where the saturnists win, the two last horsemen arrive at some later stage. The unsustainable aspect of the new order must at some time be rectified. Things must revert to a balance with nature. This is the significance of the scales. What has been out of balance returns to balance, and there is much suffering and sorrow among those who were duped into believing in the unsustainable and flawed logic of the original idea.

Finally, there is death. The idea dies, and its followers face ruin, starvation and in some cases death. 

The four first phases of the apocalypse are recurring events. The apocalypse described in the Bible has three subsequent phases, including earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Nature itself revolts. Only the first four phases are man-made. They are also the only events regularly recurring throughout history.

The dominant saturnistic idea of our times is that of Keynesian economics. It promises riches to those who go into dept, and many of its proponents promote the idea that war and destruction are engines of wealth creation. Clearly, those being bombed back to the stone ages are not experiencing riches, nor are people deep in debt rich. Also, building bombs instead of refrigerators, cars and houses, does not make us richer, even if the bombs are dropped on others. Yet, despite these obvious flaws in its logic, Keynesian economics is popular and widely believed to work.

Rather than easy riches, Keynesian economics is leading us to ruin, and it appears that we are quite far progressed towards the end. We have had pretty much continuous wars since the introduction of central banking, a key aspect of Keynesian economics. The two first horsemen have already arrived, and we are waiting for the third and fourth to appear. The economy is greatly out of balance. We build all sorts of stuff with little or no value while ignoring basic necessities like agriculture and preparations for years of bad harvests, long predicted to come by climate scientists.

We are at the latter stage of the expansion under the flawed logic of the current saturnistic idea. What will come is the third horseman. Basic necessities will become extremely scarce while goods and services of less importance will remain abundant. We are about to enter a phase of economic collapse. Those with debt, heavily invested in financial papers and technology stocks will discover the price of their false belief. There are no easy riches. Debt does not make us rich and war does not produce prosperity. Those who fail to get their house in order will face the fourth horseman. Ruin and death is on the horizon, and time is running out. The era of Keynesian economics is drawing to an end.