Lew Rockwell Institute

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The Problem Is the Weaponization of the Dollar, Not the US National Debt

Ven, 30/05/2025 - 05:01

Elon Musk expressed his disappointment in the Trump administrations bill, passed by the House, that avoided an automatic tax increase that would have occurred at the conclusion of 2025 by making permeant the 2017 tax reductions and which increased spending on defense and US border security. Musk mistakenly thinks that this bill undermines his and DOGE’s effort to reduce the federal deficit.

Musk should see his and DOGE’s success not in terms of deficit reduction, but in terms of eliminating waste, fraud, and grift from the federal budget. According to reports, Musk and DOGE have stopped the theft of $175 billion from American taxpayers who have desperate needs for their own money. Instead, the money has gone to fake companies set up by Democrats to enrich themselves and their political allies via government contracts at the expense of the American people.

Reducing the grift by $175 billion is no small achievement. It could be much larger, but corrupt Democrat judges and media are at work blocking DOGE and shutting down Elon Musk.

What Musk should emphasize is the contrast between Trump being the peace president and Trump’s increase in military spending.

America has dangerous internal enemies, but its foreign ones are manufactured by the CIA, which needs enemies for its budget and power, by the Israel Lobby, which hopes to continue using the US against Arabs and to convince Washington to attack Iran, and by the Zionist neoconservative closely allied with Netanyahu who assert US hegemony as defined by the Wolfowitz Doctrine.

I am now going to make a statement that Musk, financial journalists, American conservatives, and Republicans will dismiss as nonsense:

The US deficit is not a problem as long as the US dollar is the world reserve currency.

The national debt of the country that is the world reserve currency comprises the reserves of the central banks of the world. As long as the US dollar is the means of settling international balances, an increase in the issue of US Treasuries means an increase in the reserves of the central banks in the world. The foreign central banks and their governments are happy. With more reserves (US debt held in US Treasuries), central banks can expand their country’s money supply and the country can grow.

The world would be unhappy if the US debt ceased to grow as it would mean the central bank reserves of all other countries would stagnate, thus limiting growth.

Those who worry that the US cannot pay off the bonds representing its national debt do not understand that the US debt is denominated in US dollars and can be easily paid by the Federal Reserve creating dollars to redeem the bonds.

It seems forever that I have been trying to teach economists, the Treasury, the Federal Reserve, the financial journalists, the Republicans, and conservatives that as long as the dollar is the reserve currency America’s national debt will be held in the form of US Treasuries as reserves in the world’s central banks. As US debt rises, so does the reserves of the world’s central banks, and everyone is happy.

The danger to US national debt is not its size. The danger is the weaponization of the dollar which threatens the continued acceptance of the dollar as reserve currency. Sanctions on countries and the seizure of the Russian central bank’s dollar reserves introduce real risk into holding reserves in US dollars.

What is threatening America’s ability to finance its debt are the US sanctions that have caused the rise of BRICS and the search for alternative payment methods to the US dollar.

Why this simple fact is too complicated for economists, financial journalists, politicians, conservatives, and Elon Musk to understand is beyond me. The US dollar has been the reserve currency for about 80 years. For most of this time conservatives and David Stockman have predicted America’s imminent death by debt.

Losing the role of world currency is deadly. When Great Britain lost the role to the US after World War II, the British transitioned from riches to rags.

The post The Problem Is the Weaponization of the Dollar, Not the US National Debt appeared first on LewRockwell.

How Donald Trump Discovers the Art of Political Negotiation

Ven, 30/05/2025 - 05:01

We don’t understand the negotiations in Ukraine and the Middle East because we don’t understand the difference between wars and civil conflicts. We approach peacemaking as if it were a matter of dividing up common property during a divorce, after a few years of living together. But wars are of unparalleled intensity and are rooted in long-standing conflicts, often spanning several generations. Generally speaking, material conditions, suffering, and violence are of secondary importance compared to injustices.

We know nothing about the content of the negotiations the Trump administration has conducted with the Yemeni Ansar Allah, and we know only a very small amount about those it is conducting with Iran, Israel, and Russia. We know nothing more than a few statements here and there, not intended to make us understand what’s happening, but rather to keep those who oppose peace at a distance and reassure those who hope for it.

Furthermore, the negotiating method of this business leader turned head of state, like Donald Trump, is dizzying. He strives to evoke incoherent positions and maintain none, simply to shake up his partners in the hope of getting their assets out of their pockets. This method, which has nothing diplomatic about it, ignores the underlying causes of conflicts. It only acknowledges what each side complains about. Ultimately, it can lead to agreements that some signatories might accept at the moment, but later regret.

In any case, we must act quickly. The wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, even though they have diminished in intensity, continue to kill and destroy. The sensational announcements that this or that war could have been resolved in a few days have already run up against harsh realities.

True diplomats and true warriors don’t aim to win over others, but to live with them. They can’t get along with business leaders who want to be the best, but they can solve problems with the help of those who intend to produce what can be useful to others. Donald Trump is of this ilk.

However, the current problems are not Russian, but primarily American. This could also be the case with Palestine and Iran. Making progress on the Ukrainian conflict requires, first and foremost, not changing the Russian point of view, but addressing the unconditional support of some Westerners for the “integral nationalists,” historical allies of the Nazis. It quickly became clear to the Trump team that the Russian claim to “denazify” Ukraine was not a war propaganda invention [1]. There are several hundred monuments to the glory of Reich collaborators in Ukraine, not to mention buildings and avenues bearing their names [2]. Reading the works of Dmytro Dontsov, particularly his book Націоналізм (Nationalism), is now mandatory in the Ukrainian armed forces; a work equivalent to Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf (My Struggle) [3]. The most important church in Ukraine was banned because it recognizes the authority of the Patriarch of Moscow. Several million books were burned because they were written in Russian, that evil language, or because they were written by Russian authors, such as Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837) or Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910). All opposition political parties have been banned, and the current president, Volodymyr Zelensky, has banned new elections by extending the martial law that prohibits them every three months.

To address this issue, Donald Trump must give the Ukrainians something in return. He chose to question the savagery Russia displays when it is certain it is right, which it is. The Western press chose to focus only on the passage where the US president wonders if Vladimir Putin has gone mad. But in the same post, he also denounced Volodymyr Zelensky’s speech. He thus equated the Russian president’s cruelty with the Ukrainian leader’s bad faith. It is important to realize that while emotionally he gives the Ukrainians the upper hand, politically he gives it to the Russians.

It turns out that we belong to a civilization where emotion has replaced reason. We mourn with the fundamental nationalists, believing we share the suffering of the Ukrainians. However, in time, we will recognize the facts and turn against the fundamental nationalists we support today, or even against Ukrainians in general, because we will be ashamed of our current positions. This is the way of history: we always return to positions we can be proud of.

Vladimir Putin has already anticipated our reversal. According to him, the European Union’s unilateral coercive measures will not last. We will eventually return to our former loves, when we celebrated Franco-Russian friendship. This is why he is holding back his army, whose military superiority would have allowed him to capture Odessa long ago and thus complete the reconstruction of the old Russia.

This is what’s at stake now. Territorial boundaries matter little compared to relationships between people. Material issues are always secondary to individual freedom. The people living in Ukraine will have no trouble accepting the partition of their country once they are freed from the pressure exerted on them by the fascists who massacred their great-grandparents.

Donald Trump knew nothing about the history of Russia and Ukraine, but he’s learning quickly. He no longer believes the Western delusions that Moscow wants to invade Ukraine, and then the rest of Europe. Nor does he believe the delusions of Kaja Kallas and the Balts, for whom Russia is a “prison of peoples” that must be dismembered.

Similarly, Donald Trump knew nothing about the history of Israel and Iran, but he learned that the revisionist Zionists of Yitzak Shamir organized SAVAK, the political police of the Shah, Reza Pahlevi, and his Prime Minister, the Nazi General Fazlollah Zahedi, who had just left British jails after the overthrow of Mohammad Mossadegh [4]. It is difficult to admit, but yes, the terrible SAVAK was organized by Israeli Jews, “revisionist Zionists,” in the service of a Nazi general [5], just as it is difficult to admit that the Ukrainian integral nationalists killed many more of their compatriots than foreign enemies. Donald Trump and his negotiator, Steve Witkoff, have understood that what is at stake in the Middle East is not military nuclear power (even if it is Israel and not Iran that has the bomb), but the second round of crimes committed by the Shah’s regime with the discreet support of certain Israelis.

—

[1] “Who are the Ukrainian integral nationalists ?”, by Thierry Meyssan, Translation Roger Lagassé, Voltaire Network, 15 November 2022.

[2] « Nazi collaborator monuments in Ukraine », Lev Golinkin, Foward, January 27, 2021.

[3] Le suprémacisme blanc : Peuples autochtones et Great Reset, Lucien Cerise, Culture et racines (2021).

[4] « SAVAK : A Feared and Pervasive Force », Richard T. Sale, Washington Post, May 9, 1977. Debacle : The American Failure in Iran. Michael Ledeen, Vintage (1982).

[5] “The contradictions of modern Iran” Part One, Part Two, by Thierry Meyssan, Translation Roger Lagassé, Voltaire Network, 4 August 2020.

The post How Donald Trump Discovers the Art of Political Negotiation appeared first on LewRockwell.

Biden Admin Knew Covid Shot Risks in Early 2021 But Kept Silent for Months: Senate Report

Ven, 30/05/2025 - 05:01

The Biden administration was aware of cardiovascular dangers associated with the COVID-19 vaccines as early as its second month in office yet delayed disclosing them for months, according to a report by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.

The Daily Wire obtained a copy of the report, which uncovered a February 2021 email from Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) Vaccine Safety Technical Work Group (VaST) co-lead Lauri Markowitz that reported of the almost 1,000 post-vaccination deaths reported at the time, those with “known” causes were “often cardiovascular.”

The report further noted that Israel, which began vaccinating earlier than the United States, notified CDC officials that it found “large reports of myocarditis, particularly in young people, following the administration of the Pfizer vaccine.”

However, “(r)ather than provide the public and health care providers with immediate and transparent information regarding the risk of myocarditis following mRNA COVID-19 vaccination, the Biden administration waited until late June 2021 to announce changes to the labels for the Moderna and Pfizer COVID-19 vaccines based on the ‘suggested increased risks’ of myocarditis and pericarditis,” the report found. “Even though CDC and FDA officials were well aware of the risk of myocarditis following COVID-19 vaccination, the Biden administration opted to withhold issuing a formal warning to the public for months about the safety concerns, jeopardizing the health of young Americans.”

“For a number of months, they were talking about these things. At some point in time, they actually internally said, ‘Is there a signal of myocarditis, a safety signal?’ And the answer was ‘Yes,’” said Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, chair of the committee. “And yet, a couple of days later, they decided not to issue a warning on the Health Alert Network (HAN). Rather than provide informed consent, the federal health agencies, the Biden administration, covered it up. They downplayed the signals.”

Johnson added that the Biden administration stonewalled his committee, but the Trump administration is “beginning to produce records, pursuant to the chairman’s subpoena, that should have been provided years ago, without redactions, to Congress and the public.”

The federal Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) reports 38,615 deaths, 220,701 hospitalizations, 22,531 heart attacks, and 29,150 myocarditis and pericarditis cases as of April 25, among other ailments. CDC researchers have recognized a “high verification rate of reports of myocarditis to VAERS after mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccination,” leading to the conclusion that “under-reporting is more likely” than over-reporting.

An analysis of 99 million people across eight countries published in the journal Vaccine “observed significantly higher risks of myocarditis following the first, second and third doses” of mRNA-based COVID vaccines, as well as signs of increased risk of “pericarditis, Guillain-Barré syndrome, and cerebral venous sinus thrombosis,” and other “potential safety signals that require further investigation.” In April 2024, the CDC was forced to release by court order 780,000 previously undisclosed reports of serious adverse reactions, and a study out of Japan found “statistically significant increases” in cancer deaths after third doses of mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines, and offered several theories for a causal link.

This article was originally published on Lifesite News.

The post Biden Admin Knew Covid Shot Risks in Early 2021 But Kept Silent for Months: Senate Report appeared first on LewRockwell.

Did Smoot-Hawley Cause the Great Depression?

Ven, 30/05/2025 - 05:01

Americans are taught in school that the Smoot-Hawley tariff legislation of 1930 greatly exacerbated the Great Depression and sent the world spinning off into a decade of debt deflation and economic contraction. This seems to make sense until we remember that the history of the United States over the past century was written largely by progressives. In fact, the Great Depression began in 1920 with a decade of falling prices for farm products, a deflationary wave that eventually engulfed the real estate sector and the entire US economy.

What is missed by many discussions of Smoot-Hawley during and after that period, is the fact that the economic collapse of the 1930s was already a given with or without the new tariff law. The impetus behind the political decision to raise tariffs was a misguided reaction to the collapse of agricultural prices, but the force behind this deflationary wave was primarily “positive” factors such as new technology and innovation. The deflation that began after WWI decimated farm communities and eventually led to the collapse of real estate prices, particularly Florida real estate.

Support for protectionism was the consistent refrain from the corporate and farm lobbies in Washington in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and was supported by members of both political parties. But the real underlying cause of the powerful political push to raise the existing tariffs even higher at the end of 1929 may be found in the substantial changes that were occurring in the American economy.

Many historians and economists blame the level of tariffs after World War I and particularly during the Great Depression for making more severe the economic contraction and unemployment following the 1929 market crash. The passage of the Fordney-McCumber Tarif Act in 1922 symbolized the unique Republican penchant for trade protectionism — and currency inflation — that stretched decades back in time to the party’s inception in the 1850s.

In his 2005 book, “Making Sense of Smoot Hawley,” Bernard Beaudreau argues that the imposition of tariff protection for U.S. industry in 1930 was simply a continuation of the policies implemented by the Republican Party after they returned to power in 1920. Beaudreau cites the rising productivity of U.S. factories, the spread of electrification throughout America, and the continued influx of cheap foreign-produced food and manufactured goods as the chief cause of the deflation during this period. Bread production, for example, became automated in the 1920s, contributing to a decline in bread prices.

Imports were still perceived to be a threat by the American manufacturers of that day, despite already high tariff levels. Underemployment was the result of the lack of demand and thus falling product prices that resulted in the 1930s. American industry became too efficient too quickly, resulting in a global surplus of goods and an equally dangerous lack of demand. Air-conditioning and improved transport helped to leverage the future value of Florida swamp land into a towering speculative bubble that collapsed two years before the Great Crash of 1929.

A century before the invention of such things as “artificial intelligence” or AI, American workers worried about technology taking their livelihoods. Senator Reed Smoot (1862-1941), Republican of Utah, said of Smoot-Hawley: “To hold the American tariff policy, or any other policy of our government, responsible for this gigantic deflationary move is only to display one’s ignorance of its universal character. The world is paying for its ruthless destruction of life and property in the World War and for its failure to adjust purchasing power to productive capacity during the industrial revolution of the decade following the war.”

The onset of the Great Depression from the summer of 1929 on brought the unemployment rate from 4.6 percent in 1929 to 8.9 percent in 1930. Congress sought to correct this imbalance by limiting imports via the Smoot-Hawley tariff. While there is little doubt that higher tariffs made the Great Depression worse, higher levies on imports may not have been the primary factor. Indeed, the introduction of electricity and other innovations drove strong growth in many sectors of the economy, but not on the farm.

This alternative view of the role of Smoot-Hawley in turning the market crash of 1929 into the Great Depression of the 1930s is important to understanding the narrative of the 1920s. Following the Great Depression and World War II, the U.S. position regarding tariffs changed dramatically, in part because much of the industrial capacity of Europe and Asia was destroyed by the conflict.

Under the rubric of rebuilding the postwar world, America embraced a policy of open markets and free trade. This policy created enormous wealth and prosperity in the first several decades after the end of the Second World War. Later it sacrificed American jobs and industrial capacity to other nations. With the election of President Donald Trump in 2024, the US has embarked upon an explicit policy of rebalancing America’s trade relationship with the world by using the threat of tariffs to compel negotiations.

Far from being a detriment to Americans, the threat of tariffs wielded by President Trump is a mechanism for ensuring that other nations embrace reciprocity – “fair dealing” in classical American terms – to ensure that predatory behavior by modern mercantilist superstates such as China does not injure American workers and industries. In this sense, President Trump is inheriting the traditional, pro-labor political mantle of the Democratic Party following World War II.

Mainstream histories of this period make it seem that the Smoot-Hawley tariff was a prime factor behind the worsening economy, but the currency devaluation by Roosevelt and his refusal to lower tariffs that were already in place after decades of enlightened Republican rule were more significant. Progressive researchers pretend that the devaluation of the dollar and gold-backed securities somehow led to increased income and demand, but these assertions ignore the massive liquidation of debt and equity that occurred in the 1930s. It is closer to the mark to say that tariffs did not help, but the seizure of gold and devaluation of the dollar were systemic events manufactured by Roosevelt and his New Dealers that seem to have been the larger negative factor for the economy.

In his memoirs, President Herbert Hoover noted that the dollar devaluation by FDR was effectively an increase in the tariff from the perspective of the cost to American buyers: “The Democrats have made a great issue out of the disasters they predicted would flow from the modest increases in the Smoot-Hawley tariff (mostly agricultural products). The fact was that 65 percent of the imported goods under the tariff were free of duty, and that legislation increased tariffs on the 35 percent dutiable goods by somewhere around 10 percent. But the greatest tariff boost in all our history came from Roosevelt’s devaluation.” Hoover goes on to illustrate that both imports and exports per capita declined in the United States between 1935 and 1938 due to the regressive, anti-business policies of the New Deal.

This article was originally published on Daily Reckoning.

The post Did Smoot-Hawley Cause the Great Depression? appeared first on LewRockwell.

Interview With James Patrick: The Great Taking

Ven, 30/05/2025 - 05:01

Interview with James Patrick: The Great Taking

As many of my clients, friends and regular readers know well, I’ve spent the better part of the last decade criticizing all the great evils and trespasses of the State and its crony capitalist accomplices. I’ve written extensive analyses and gave many speeches warning fellow citizens about the dangers that lie in government power grabs and authoritarian transgressions. The most important of these risks can, without fail, be found in monetary matters and in the banking system. After all, whoever controls the money, controls the world.

By now, those of us who have studied monetary history and who carefully observe how the current system operates, are fully aware of the fact that fiat currencies are devoid of any real value. Whatever perceived value they have is totally dependent on the State and even the very notion of ownership over one’s savings is illusory. Savers can just wake up one day and find that they no longer have access to their bank accounts, as we saw in Canada, or even that part of their savings is simply gone, as we saw in Cyprus.

What might come as a much more disturbing surprise, however, is that this risk and this uncertainty over one’s property rights extends to securities too. In the interview that follows, James Patrick talks about the subject of his new documentary, “STOP IT! The Great Taking”, which shines a much-needed light on a little-known but deeply consequential transformation in global securities law. He exposes the shocking shift that occurred through a series of legislative changes in the US and the EU that very quietly transferred legal rights from investors to large financial institutions. This resulted in the legal redefinition of ownership rights over stocks, bonds, and other assets that investors believe they fully own, when they practically, effectively and legally don’t.

—————

Claudio Grass (CG): Nice speaking with you again James. Many people have heard of the term “The Great Taking” put forth by David Webb but could you briefly summarize the issue.

James Patrick (JP): Sure. The story involves a fraudulent practice that developed within the financial services industry of surreptitiously using client securities as collateral on their own trades and lending them to other firms for use as collateral on speculative bets. This practice became widespread in the 1970s, but changes in law to legalize this fraud were established in the US in the 1990s and harmonized into EU law in the 2000s.

CG: So, whose securities are being used exactly? Is it the stocks and bonds that retail investors buy through their broker?

JP: Unfortunately, this is being done to all securities in the market. All investors in securities, big and small, even sophisticated and institutional investors, are exposed to the risk of the failure of their brokers and the financial intermediaries above them in the system. Even when clients are told their accounts are “segregated,” they in fact are not. All client securities are kept in pooled accounts, and from there are pledged as collateral. This is done over and over again in rehypothecated “collateral chains.”

When any of these firms using client assets fail, clients are only entitled to “pro rata share” (a proportional share) of what is left over of the firm’s assets, and have a subordinate legal claim to recover their property behind secured creditors of the contracts their securities were posted as collateral to.

CG: That is quite surprising. How is that even legal?

JP: In answer to your question, this is how it became legal. The fraudulent use of client collateral began as an illegal act and developed into a widespread industry practice. This led to a concerted multi-decade lobbying effort to make significant changes within securities and bankruptcy law to legalize the practice. These changes to law expose all holders of securities to total risk of loss should the firms using their securities go bankrupt.

The first big legal change made was in the US in the 1994 revision of Article 8 of the Uniform Commercial Code, which is the primary section dealing with securities. This UCC amendment introduced two novel legal concepts. The first was, direct title to a security was substituted with a contractual claim on a security called a “Securities Entitlement.” The significance of this being a contractual claim is very weak in a bankruptcy proceeding.

The second novel legal concept was, in the event of bankruptcy, priority to the client’s securities was given to the secured creditor of the derivatives contract using the client securities as collateral ahead of the client (entitlement holder). The 1994 revision of Article 8 was used as a model for harmonizing these changes into EU law between the years 2004 and 2014, as evidenced by documents between the “Legal Certainty Group”, (the working group tasked with implementing these changes in securities law in the EU), and lawyers at Federal Reserve Bank of NY.

CG: So, clients are at risk of total loss at any time should the firms using their assets go bankrupt, correct? And who are the secured creditors exactly?

JP: Client securities are posted as initial margin on derivatives contracts and if the market moves against their positions, they have to put up more collateral or their initial margin gets wiped out. Each derivatives contract has a secured creditor, that takes control of the collateral pledged. The problem the industry faced, is that when client securities are posted as collateral many times, on multiple derivatives contracts, and these contracts fail, the secured creditors of those failed contracts get to take the collateral. But there is not just one, there are many and a priority contest ensues between multiple secured creditors. Industry needed legal certainty that the secured creditors would come ahead of the clients. Client’s claims to their property needed to be eliminated for the derivatives industry to function at such leveraged levels.

Another significant legal obstacle the industry faced was bankruptcy law. Prior to changes in bankruptcy law, if a client’s securities were seized on the eve of bankruptcy, this would be constructive fraud or a fraudulent transfer. So, changes in bankruptcy law were enacted federally in the United States in 2005 and 2006, that amended the “Safe Harbor” provisions and established the 546(e) exemptions which specifically exempted fraud. They actually carved out exemptions for the very criteria of constructive fraud and fraudulent transfer. I know all this sounds fantastical, but it’s true and in black and white in the law.

These changes to law have led to wild speculation in the derivatives market, which is now estimated to be valued at around 2 quadrillion dollars. The underlying value of all securities held at the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation (DTCC) in NY and at Euroclear in Belgium are around 130T. Given not all the 130T are being used as collateral, we are talking about a system wide leverage rate of over 20X, with US treasury bonds sometimes exceeding 150X leverage.

CG: How come the average investor is totally in the dark about this issue? Even seasoned professionals are most likely not entirely aware of the risk they are exposed to in the markets. How did such incredibly important and game-changing legal shifts occur without any public disclosure, let alone debate?

JP: These changes were snuck in under the radar but in plain sight. Although the broader banking, repo, and derivatives industry benefitted from them, very few people within the industry understand the big picture and broader risks this created… And big institutional investors have no idea, let alone a retail customer, even if he has hundreds of millions of dollars in the markets.

Alongside these changes, the repo market, that was really cultivated by JPMorgan, has become the primary money market between banks. These repurchase agreement contracts are inherently prone to cause systemic illiquidity should there be downturns in the market. The BIS has written many reports warning of “margin spirals” in such a scenario.

CG: Wow, so what can be done about this?

JP: Well, within the EU not much to be honest, as a lot of this has been enacted in EU code that supersedes national governments. So, short of dismantling the EU itself, I don’t see a clear legal strategy to change any of that. National governments within the EU need to assert their sovereignty, exit the EU and protect their citizens.

But in the US, because the foundational legal change was enacted on the state level and can be undone on the state level by striking a few exceptions in 1994 Article 8 revision. This would unravel the legal structure industry put in place to encumber client securities. If these bills to amend Article 8 are passed in any one state, that would allow large firms to rewrite their custodial contracts to be under that state’s laws, giving them priority to their securities if their broker or other financial intermediaries pledging their securities went bankrupt.

If we don’t make these changes, we will own nothing and be unhappy.

CG: Can you elaborate a bit more on that last point? If nothing changes, what do you anticipate will happen next? How would you expect the worst-case scenario to play out and what “dominoes” would have to fall to get there?

JP: In the worst-case scenario, we see a decline in prices within the derivatives market that causes a cascade of collateral calls. As this occurs collateral gets sold, irregardless of the price fetched on the market, and the entire collateral market freezes up and everyone’s securities get transformed to US treasuries and taken by secured creditors.

In the end, this would end up being the “too big to fail” banks that suck up all the collateral. Everyone would lose their savings and the wealth of society would be transferred into the hands of the few and no one would legally be able to dispute it, short of an armed revolution. We would then live in a much poorer world outlined by UN initiatives such as the C40.org where meat and dairy, long distance travel and cars would be out of reach of common people who would live in “15 minutes cities.”

CG: How did you get involved with this issue?

JP: Well, I’m from Washington, DC… don’t hold that against me… and I was always researching who is really in control of our ‘out of control’ government. I concluded the banking interests behind the Federal Reserve were really the ones in charge. So, I searched for best analysis of how the Fed works and this led me to Austrian economics. They provided the best analysis of the business cycle and the problems arising from fractional reserve banking. The 300-year-old practice of banks lending out their client’s deposits as loans, with the interest on those loans being profit of the bank, is a strikingly similar to the current industry practice of pledging and lending out client’s securities, with the return from those trades being the profit of the firm.

I was finishing up a doctorate on monetary and banking reform and the threat of CBDCs to civil liberties when the covid episode began. This widespread violation of our civil rights angered me so I decided to do something about it and embarked on the largest international documentary on the subject called Planet Lockdown, which you contributed greatly too Claudio. 18 months ago, I met David Webb at a conference in Sweden we were both speaking at. I approached him about making a film on the issue and we decided to make a documentary. He and several other bankers, some of whom worked in the Eurodollar market, helped me to understand this securities issue and bring my understanding of the financial markets up to date from where Austrian analysis left off. Within 3 months of starting the film, some lawyers who read his book in South Dakota began introducing laws at the state level to amend Article 8 of the UCC that would restore priority to clients to their own securities, ahead of the secured creditors. We were interviewing G Edward Griffin when David and I first heard about these efforts and the film quickly became about the legislative efforts of 2024 to amend article 8, and the rest is history. G Edward Griffin was the one who suggested the film be titled “STOP IT!”. The film came out in late January and can be seen for free at TheGreatTakingReport.com.

CG: Can you talk a bit about your experience making the film? And did you encounter any pushback during the production or after its release?

JP: If you mean harassment, no I did not. Still very few people know about this issue and those that do know parts of it do not understand the broader implications. It’s because of interviews like this one that more can find out about it and put pressure on their legislators to strike these laws legalizing theft and fraud.

CG: Quite the story. Is there anything else you’d like to end with?

JP: Everyone can see the film at TheGreatTakingReport.com. I am publishing a technical report for sophisticated investors and fund managers to better understand the inherent risks in the securities market. My report reviews the relevant changes in law in US and EU that have undermined property rights to securities and outline the unrecognized risk faced by all investors.

I would also like to encourage any US citizens to contact their state legislators to amend article 8. This is a realistic goal and the first step to restoring our property rights and peacefully deflating a 2 quadrillion dollar derivatives bubble that threatens to bring down the world economy.

Anyone can contact me with questions at [email protected]

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