The Dow is back under 18,000 points after yesterday’s 178-point – or 1% – drop.
Gold continues to wander around, apparently lost. More on that below…
Our long-term stock market indicator, developed for us by our chief researcher and former ValueLine stock market analyst Stephen Jones, is flashing a warning.
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Don’t Count on Your ATM Cards
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Yesterday, came a report that the prime minister of Poland, Ewa Kopacz, has urged Poles traveling to Greece to take “a larger amount of cash” with them.
Why?
Because the situation could be “very dynamic,” she says.
“Please do not count only on your ATM cards and on ATMs, but take a larger amount of cash with you.”
It’s not the dynamic situation that would worry us. It’s the dynamite that lies beneath the whole world’s money system.
It is a system that is fundamentally flawed. It depends on the intelligence and integrity of its custodians. Not that we think Madame Yellen is dumb. Nor do we doubt her honesty.
But she is, after all, only human.
And centrally planning an $18 trillion economy – by manipulating asset prices and interest rates – is a super-human undertaking.
The odds that something will go wrong?
100%…
Controls on Cash
A reader asks a good question:
I have a question about the recommendation to hold cash.
If countries are putting controls on real cash and banking, in what form should a person hold cash? U.S. dollars or some other currency. If we truly go to a “cashless society” what good would having a hoard of cash do?
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There’s nothing stopping governments from banning cash transactions altogether… and ending the usage of paper money.
Economists pretend it is a matter of convenience to the consumer (no more waiting for the clerk to make change for the fellow in front of you).
…or they try to sell it as a useful macro tool for central planners (they will be able to stimulate demand by imposing negative interest rates)…
…or they say a cashless world will be safer – you won’t be held up at gunpoint, and terrorists will find it harder to get financing.
But the real reason is control. If governments can eliminate cash, they can easily track, tax, and confiscate your money.
Full article: Why We’re Headed Toward a “Cashless Society” (Bonner & Partners)
Global Geopolitics 