Hello from Acapulco Bay,
I am still here, but not for long, as I leave to Mexico City on Sunday night for a Monday interview by satellite with Max Keiser, then off to Miami for one night and then on to St. Kitts for the Liberty Forum conference on the beach with Peter Schiff, Doug Casey and many other greats to help to free some slaves.
As I wrote last weekend, I barely feel like I know my own family as they change so much during my sometimes month-long sojourns. This didn´t improve much even though I was here for an entire week this time around. I saw my wife for perhaps a total of a few hours, but it wasn't entirely my fault. She spends about 4 hours per day in the gym and when she isn't doing that there are always family and other things she has to take care of, like some of our businesses such as a condo company and hotel (and we sold two condos this week for bitcoins… if you have a business, you absolutely must offer your products in bitcoin. You can exchange for dollars very easily if you want – and subscribers will soon learn how I have easily been able to change millions of dollars worth of bitcoin for dollars with no transaction fees). And I, of course, work almost from the moment I awaken until I go to sleep so between her schedule and mine, even if I am "home", our interactions are fleeting.
But I did see her today for about twenty minutes when she walked into my home office and found me mesmerized by my screen with my jaw agape. She spoke for at least 10 seconds before I even really heard her. She finally snapped her fingers in front of my eyes and I shook out of my trance.
"Hey!", she said in Spanish, "That's disrespect. I am talking to you!"
I apologized and said, "Oh, sorry… but, seriously, look at this and you will see why!"
I then clicked on this video.
She watched for maybe twenty seconds before saying, "Where is that?"
I told her it was in the US today for the shopping day after Thanksgiving.
"What's Thanksgiving?" she asked.
I stammered for a moment, trying to think of how to explain in Spanish.
"Well, it is a bit hard to explain," I said, "It is a day that many people in the US celebrate the world's largest genocide of about 100 million… of Native Americans… and so they eat turkey and then, some of them, the next day, fight for toasters that are $5 off."
She gave me the same look she often does and said, "I don't know why you watch this crazy stuff."
I shrugged. I don't know why either. But as she walked out the door to tend to business I clicked the play button and continued looking at it, mesmerized.
As the video ended I sat in silence for a bit trying to compute what I just saw. I shouldn't be too surprised as I have seen Black Friday videos from years past which look almost identical. But, this time I asked myself, why are these people acting this way?
I asked the same on my personal Facebook page and a lot of the answers were that they are just poor and really need a $5 discounted toaster.
They may be relatively poor but I have known, and stayed in the shacks, of people who have maybe $20 worth of assets, including the shack and if they heard there was a 50% discount on rice at a store they wouldn't act this way. I even know many people in Mexico who make no more than $300/month and live a lifestyle of beach parties and still go out on weekends to cheap nightclubs and have fun and I know, for a fact, that if they heard Walmart here had everything 25% off, they'd just shrug and wouldn't care.
But, Toni M. responded on my CIABook wall, "What makes Americans act this way? It begins in utero with the mother's diet, with fluoridated water, vaccines, flu shots, TV, music, movies, baby formula instead of mother's milk, separating mother and babe, day care, preschool, public school, advertisements, fast food, GMO's……that's the short list. Americans are drugged and dumbed down before they are even born, after that it is just too easy."
I think she hit on a lot of the main reasons. I would add to it that if they feel "depressed" living in this incredibly fasco-communist police state (as is a normal human reaction), they are then prescribed all sorts of lobotomizing dangerous chemicals like Zoloft and Prozac. They've also been conditioned into living in an economy wrought with inflation that constantly withers away their standard of living. And, the welfare and food stamp system that incentivizes people not to improve themselves and turns them, over time, into flailing chimpanzees. And the Keynesian idea that permeates the US that consuming, not producing, is good. And the mainstream media constantly propagandizing and telling them they are lucky to live in the "land of the free" and that the rest of the world is scary. The decimation of the family by many of the systems above and the complete lack of a feeling of community also wrought by many government programs and police that are predators in many of the poorer areas of the US.
"Seriously, what are these things?" I thought. I really couldn't tell much of a difference between that video and the zombies in World War Z. Except in World War Z the zombies were less obese and faster… which as a sidenote, angered the zombie genre movie fans.
After watching Black Friday I leaned back in my chair and looked to the sky. What will happen when the US dollar collapses and either the EBT cards and welfare are cut off or can't buy anything but matches? And, what if even your middle class Americans are pushed to the edge during The End Of The Monetary System As We Know It (TEOTMSAWKI)?
A bead of sweat started to run down my brow, but then I was interrupted by my cook (who costs $15/day) who was delivering my steak dinner downstairs to my home office and who let me know he had great plans for a birthday party with his friends that night and was excited. He told me of how they have been planning the celebration for weeks. Soon after, our fulltime maid, who makes about the same as our cook, popped in with a smile to let me know she was leaving for the day and asked if I needed anything else and assured me all the little people (kids) and dogs were happy and content.
They love working for us and are happy for the work… and we also help out by putting our cook through cooking school and previously helped out our maid during the floods a few months ago in Acapulco.
I thought for a minute to show them the Black Friday video and what life was like in a third world country… but then I stopped. They are happy, why ruin their day by showing them how people in the US live?
BITCOIN AND CHINA
Another of the strange things about watching Black Friday is that many impoverished Amerikans are literally fighting over all kinds of goods and trinkets made in formerly communist China. Yet, if you asked most of these "shoppers" about China they'd almost assuredly just say it is a backward third world country. Or something about eating dogs… or, possibly, "Our jeeerrrbbbbsss".
The fact of the matter is that China has been booming. There are now more than a million millionaires in China due to a generally freer market (less taxes and less regulation) than the US and their opening up to more capitalism again a few decades ago after a brief experiment with communism that.resulted, as always with communism, with the death of tens of millions of people.
Related, you may have noticed bitcoin surpassed $1,000 this week.
In fact, it surged past and reached parity with gold for the first time on Friday.
Why? That is the question on a lot of people's minds. Some say it is because the Bernank gave it his approval. Despite the oddity of having a central bankster's approval of de-centralized currency driving it higher, and it likely did have some effect, there is one image that can explain it all.
That is a screen shot from FiatLeak.com that I have had open for the last hour.
As you can see, during that time, people exchanged fiat currencies for bitcoin of over $12 million worth of value. More than $10 million of that value, as you can see on the bottom right, was exchanges between Chinese remnimbi for bitcoin compared to about $2 million of US dollars for bitcoin. If you go to FiatLeak.com any time during Chinese daylight hours (night time in the US for those publicly skooled who don't even know where it is), they have an animation, in real time, of where the bitcoins are going. At times it can seem ridiculous as almost all the bitcoins, just like gold, are going to China. The difference between bitcoin and gold is that you can actually watch all the wealth going to China in realtime rather than waiting for month-old government and central bank reports!
This is the major reason for bitcoin's rise in the last few weeks. In the last month, BTC China, became the world's largest exchange for bitcoins after a 30-fold increase in trades over the last two months, overtaking Mt. Gox.
Why are the Chinese gravitating to bitcoin? The reasons are obvious. China still has, for all intents and purposes, capital controls on the remninbi. And bitcoin creates an easy, nearly cost-free, instantaneous way to transfer funds worldwide. Adding to that, the Chinese government has not only been promoting its citizens on owning gold but has also begun accepting bitcoin as payment for numerous state entities such as the third largest mobile phone service in China, China Telecom.
The Chinese aren't that stupid and they know the US dollar is done and are getting their citizens into gold and bitcoin.
Of course, when you do that, you know what happens next.
The Nazi Germany of the 21st century, the US, has begun flying jets into Chinese airspace resulting in a tense standoff.
And, if you don't think the US is the equivalent to Nazi Germany in the early 1940s, please feel free to explain in the comments section below how the US occupation and aggression of Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and nearly Syria are any different than the German occupation of Poland.
This is what empires do.
On that note, The Dollar Vigilante (TDV) Germany launches in the next few weeks in German (of course) as we spread our freedom forces around the world, adding to TDV Spain and TDV Latin America, which have already become big hits in their region.
We already have secured a lead agent in China to offer our freedom related products to Chinese clients, operated out of Hong Kong, of course. And may soon be ready to launch TDV China (if you are interested, contact us as we are narrowing down our list of interested parties).
The market is definitely there to offer TDV Passports, TDV Offshore and numerous other of our freedom products to the Chinese also. TDV China alone should be worth $100 million in the next two years. We are also still looking for Russian speakers who understand our message to get us into Russia… and many other countries. Start a TDV franchise in your country today!
Even in bitcoin, this week alone, in our entire umbrella of companies under TDV Media we have already sold numerous condos in Acapulco (AcaCondos), numerous lots and farm share investments at Galt's Gulch Chile of which we are a founding partner and numerous passports, including a passport sale to one of the best known names in the anarchist revolution (I am sworn to secrecy on who)… all purchased in bitcoin.
In fact, I think it wouldn't be a stretch to say that our umbrella of companies is one of the largest companies on Earth in terms of bitcoin revenue. Only Amazon.com (through Gyft) , Shopify.com, Virgin Galactic and a few others are probably larger now that they accept bitcoin.
Soon, however, we´ll be small change as thousands of businesses around the world, every day, including Subway restaurants soon, accept bitcoin. And, that is a good thing!
In that respect, however, I have no plans to stop here in the bitcoin world. I've been putting together some of the brightest minds on countless projects and may even soon look at taking a bitcoin related company public in Kanada as things transpire (again, if you'd like to participate, let us know via email).
All of the buzz about bitcoin has brought out the detractors, as Gary Gibson pointed out earlier this week. But, I think, just as I found with the internet in 1994, that the detractors both don't understand bitcoin and are unaware of where this is all going. By the time they figure it out, bitcoin will be trading well above parity with gold. Charles Vollum, a good friend of TDV who operates PricedInGold.com recently stated, amongst friends, that he thinks the next stop for bitcoin is at parity with a kilogram of gold…well above $40,000.
Could it have massive pullbacks along the way? Yes, of course. It will have massive pullbacks along the way. But will bitcoin fade away as a fad? Or a ponzi scheme? In my opinion there is no chance of that. Once people realize what bitcoin is and use it in their lives they will, like me, count the seconds until the current monetary system collapses and everyone uses it.
This is a revolution in money and banking just as the internet was a revolution in communication. I remember telling companies to get on the internet in 1994 and hearing the same things. These things go through the same stages as truth. First it was ridiculed, as bitcoin has been from 2009 to nearly today. Now it is being violently opposed by many. Three years from now it will be accepted as self evident that this is the future of money.
Mark my words.
