Jim Rickards has written an article titled “In the Year 2024“.
Jim introduces the article by calling it a “fictional dysptopia in the spirit of Brave New World or 1984″.
I suspect some readers will react quite strongly to this article since it describes a somewhat bleak future where government has trampled on individual freedom.
Submitted by Larry White:
However, readers should keep in mind that Mr. Rickards states this article is not a forecast or prediction of the future. Rather, it is more an attempt to alert people to the trends that are taking hold in society and challenge us to think about how we can avoid a future like this as I read the article.
Below are some quotes. Readers should read the entire article for full context. Then a few comments.
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“As
I awoke this morning, Sunday, Oct. 13, 2024, from restless dreams, I
found the insect-sized sensor implanted in my arm was already awake. We
call it a “bug.” U.S. citizens have been required to have them since
2022 to access government health care.”
“Images of world leaders were on the
screen. They were issuing proclamations about the fine health of their
economies and the advent of world peace. Citizens, they explained,
needed to work in accordance with the New World Order Growth Plan to
maximize wealth for all. I knew this was propaganda, but I couldn’t
ignore it.”
“Today, trust in markets is
completely gone. All investors want is their money back. Authorities
started printing money after the Panic of 2008, but that solution
stopped working by 2018. Probably because so much had been printed in
2017 under QE7. When the panic hit, money was viewed as worthless. So
markets were simply closed.”
“Between
2018–20, the Group of 20 major powers, the G-20, abolished all
currencies except for the dollar, the euro and the ruasia.”
“There
is also new world money called special drawing rights, or SDRs for
short. They’re used only for settlements between countries, however.
Everyday citizens use the dollar, euro or ruasia for daily transactions.
The SDR is also used to set energy prices and as a benchmark for the
value of the three local currencies. The World Central Bank, formerly
the IMF, administers the SDR system under the direction of the G-20. As a
result of the fixed exchange rates, there’s no currency trading.”
“All of the gold in the world was confiscated in 2020 and placed in a nuclear bomb-proof vault dug into the Swiss Alps.”
“The purpose of the Swiss vault was
not to have gold backing for currencies, but rather to remove gold from
the financial system entirely so it could never be used as money again.
Thus, gold trading ceased because its production, use and possession
were banned.”
“Some lucky ones had purchased gold in 2014 and sold it when it reached $40,000 per ounce in 2019. By then, inflation was out of control and the power elites knew that all confidence in paper currencies had been lost.”
“The only way to preserve wealth through the Panic of 2018 was to have gold, land and fine art. But
investors not only needed to have the foresight to buy it… they also
had to be nimble enough to sell the gold before the confiscation in 2020, and then buy more land and art and hang onto it. For that reason, many lost everything.”
“Land and personal property were not confiscated, because much of it was needed for living arrangements and agriculture.”
“Stock and bond trading were halted when
the markets closed. During the panic selling after the crash of 2018,
stocks were wiped out. Too, the value of all bonds were wiped out in the
hyperinflation of 2019.”
“Wiped-out savers broke out in money riots
soon after but were quickly suppressed by militarized police who used
drones, night vision technology, body armor and electronic
surveillance.”
“To facilitate the gradual freezing of
markets, confiscation of wealth and creation of Social Units, world
governments coordinated the elimination of cash in 2016. The “cashless
society” was sold to citizens as a convenience. No more dirty, grubby
coins and bills to carry around!”
“Instead, you could pay with smart cards and mobile phones and could transfer funds online.”
“By last year, 2023, free markets, private
property and entrepreneurship were things of the past. All that remains
of wealth is land, fine art and some (illegal) gold. The only other
valuable assets are individual talents, provided you can deploy them
outside the system of state-approved jobs.”
————————————————————————————————–
My added comments:
The first thing to say is that I don’t think that Jim Rickards is
trying to say ALL the things in this article will happen by 2024. I
think he is just challenging readers to think about the future and
realize that current trends are leading towards an end to the monetary
system we have known. Also, that major change is likely coming. It just
so happens that is the theme of this blog so, naturally we find this
article of interest.
While the article talks about an end to
free markets and a global centralized power structure, that certainly
does not have to be how things change. None of us can know the future
with certaintly and I feel like Jim Rickards would agree with that. But I
think he does want people to understand that in history governments
have tended to react to crisis by using power to maintain order.
Hopefully that kind of world will be avoided, but more centralized power
cannot be ruled out as a response if there is another huge global
financial crisis.
However, what I would like to focus on in
this article are the parts I underlined in bold above. In the world of
2024, Jim describes a global central bank (he says the former IMF) as
using the SDR currency for transactions between countries. He notes that
everday citizens are still using the three system approved currencies
(the dollar, the Euro, and an Asian currency he calls the RuAsia). Later
he says citizens can make payments with smart cards and mobile phones
and make fund transfers online.
This interests me because I have covered on this very blog the GSD currency being developed by Klickex. We
have noted here that the GSD technology could someday potentially
become a currency that could allow the “inside the system SDR” to link
to an “outside the system” currency for use by everyday citizens.
Klickex has already developed the technology that allows for real time
foreign currency transactions in the South Pacific. They have stated
that the purpose of the GSD is to stabilize foreign currency
transactions to reduce or eliminate risk in those transactions. They
have stated they are working with the global banking system on this.
Currently, Klickex technology makes it possible to transfer funds
online in real time across national boundaries using only a mobile phone
(and do foreign currency exchange in real time as well). So that part
of Jim’s 2024 world is already here in the South Pacific with plans to
grow globally. We should make
it clear that Klickex in no way envisions its technology to be used as a
control mechanism like Jim Rickards talks about in his fictional
article. But what he talks about in regards to money transfer technology already exists today. This part of his article caught our attention since we have covered it here extensively.
Lastly, note that Jim describes a future
world where gold has been confiscated. This is a topic of much debate
these days. Again, none of us know what will really happen in the
future. I did think it would be interesting to ask Jim if he had any
thoughts about how silver would be viewed in his fictional 2024 world so
I asked him about that by email.
Readers may find it interesting that Jim
replied and said that this article was not really a forecast (more of a
thought piece) and he had not really given silver much consideraton. But
he added that because silver is more plentiful than gold and has many
industrial uses, he did not think any future governments would be
interested in trying to confiscate silver. Many readers will find that
comment interesting.
While I don’t take this Jim Rickards
article for more than it was intended (just an article to challenge
people to think), I do think it should cause people to do what we
propose here. Stay informed, take the idea of potential monetary system
change seriously, watch for signs of change, and make some reasonable
preparations for potential change. The more people that do that, the
better off we will all be in 2024.
