Breakdown

We’re not trying to predict an unknown future in this commentary.

We’re just pointing out that the signs of a breakdown are everywhere. 

The streets of many of our most beautiful major cities have been turned into encampments for addicts and the homeless and dumping grounds for human waste and drug paraphernalia.

Day after endless day, from the east coast to the west, we watch orchestrated mobs of masked criminals, committing acts of looting and arson where there used to be law and order.

It is clearly a sign of civil and legal breakdown.

These conditions have not arisen against the will of the political authorities.  Much of this breakdown is ignored if not actively encouraged by the political authorities.

Students of history looking for parallels have cited the Russian Revolution and the French Reign of Terror.

To us it most closely resembles China’s Cultural Revolution.  Rebel groups, violent and ignorant, were encouraged by Chairman Mao and his henchmen to roam the streets lawlessly.  Children and students were made managers of schools, farms and factories, their former managers forced to grovel in public humiliation sessions, confess their sins, and perform menial labor.  The accomplished were shamed for their achievements.  The learned were lectured by the ignorant.  Legal restraints on violence were lifted and acts of terror became common.  

As we watch windows being smashed and statues being pulled down here in America, we remember accounts of the destruction of churches, temples, and monasteries in China, and the book burnings of their Cultural Revolution.

Eventually massacres and even cannibalism ensued in China.  Today’s protestors carry signs bearing the motto “Eat the Rich!’’ as a totem of their wealth envy.  But in the depths of the Cultural Revolution, cannibalism was not metaphorical.  

How far along are we in our own cultural revolution?  There are a lot of familiar patterns being re-enacted beside by the violent mobs on the streets.  We have public humiliation sessions in our biggest companies and educational institutions in which blameless individuals are blamed, belittled, and shamed for the deeds of others.  We are now told by this vanguard of the revolution that things like mathematics, grammar, industriousness, and punctuality are nothing but the tools of a racist society’s oppression.  

Perhaps there is a more apt precedent for what is underway in the US today than China’s Cultural Revolution.  We can’t say for sure.  It is not our specialty.

Our field is money.  We are students of monetary history.  We have some familiarity with the breakdown for paper money economies in other times and places.

So, one thing we can say for sure is that the breakdown that is taking place all around us in our civil life and in the social order in also taking place in our monetary system. 

Unlike mobs smashing plate glass windows, torching buildings, and assaulting elderly people, the failing monetary system does not show up on the evening news.  Graphs of the compounding federal debt and the frenzied of money printing of the Fed are no competition for images of cities on fire. 

But the breakdown of the monetary system is very real.  Already banks are anticipating a tsunami of bankruptcies and defaults by businesses large and small, and on mortgages and consumer loans.  But that’s only the beginning, because the resources to paper over these bankruptcies have been consumed.  The money-printing is about to backfire as each round of money printing demands another.  The confrontations and political battles are becoming more pitched because, unlike in our more prosperous past, the stakes are higher than ever because the resources are dwindling.  Our politics are beginning to look like bands or pirates killing each other as they fight over their plunder.

Indeed, we can’t imagine that the November election—no matter who wins—will usher in a new era of peace and prosperity.  It will usher in increased polarization and a much more heated public debate.  No matter who wins.  It will accelerate the breakdown because the losers will not go quietly.  

The consequences of our monetary breakdown will be just as destructive as a city burning to the ground.  That’s why you need to own gold and silver.  Because the monetary system is breaking down like everything else.

Find out more.  We can’t stop the new American Cultural Revolution.  But we can help you protect yourself and your wealth from the monetary breakdown.

Speak with a Republic Monetary Exchange gold and silver specialist today.