Currencies are the lifeblood of trade and the economy; if a currency fails, the entire economy fails. Yet, most people rarely think about the health or buying power of the money in their pocket. People don’t research how often currencies actually falter and how common it is for inflation or stagflation to strike nations. They just assume that the money they have will be as useful tomorrow as it is today. They also assume that money will never change in a dramatic way.
This lack of interest in how money works is likely due to the fact that people are not taught how their money is created. It’s not discussed in schools, the truth is avoided in colleges and the mainstream news rarely mentions it. People think our government and treasury handles all of that, but the reality is that our government does NOT create our money; at least, it’s not in charge of the process. Central bankers are, and they operate from a “quasi-independent” position.
For example, former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan once openly admitted that the central bank “answers to no one” and does not follow orders from the government. They do what they want when they want.
This attitude should concern you because it is a long held argument among critics of the Fed that they are an unelected body with ultimate power to destroy the economy and the dollar at will if they want to. Sure, the US President gets to “choose” the next successive chairman, from a list of candidates that is given to him by the Fed, of course. And Congress could conceivably call for a full audit of the Fed’s financial actions and policies, but they never do because it would never be allowed by the banks or their political partners. The central bank is the most powerful institution in our nation by far. They are completely unaccountable and uncontrollable.
There is only ever the question of public reaction; this is the one thing the bankers fear. They are afraid that the public will learn who they are and what the central bank does. They are afraid that their actions and policies will anger the public enough to inspire rebellion. They are afraid that the torches and pitchforks will one day come out. So, they divert blame as much as possible for the damage that they cause.
Apologists for the Fed claim that the central bank only creates money from thin air when the government asks them to, and so it’s the politicians that are to blame. This is a lie. The politicians go begging to the Fed for more money, and the Fed usually obliges while also creating tens of trillions of dollars on the side for their friends in the corporate world.
For example, only ONE TIME in recent history has a Fed policy action been investigated by the Government Accounting Office. This audit was of a single set of bailouts enacted by the bank, and it was only allowed because the public was starting to get wise to the bank’s activities (thanks to Ron Paul’s presidential campaign). The audit was designed to shut people up. But, what was found was startling, and so the media swept the info under the rug. Over $16 trillion in fiat money had been conjured by the Fed in the span of a few years, while the original claim was that mere billions had been created for the bailouts starting in 2008.
Keep in mind that this audit was limited only to a particular set of bailouts; it was not a full audit of the Fed’s entire operation. We truly have no idea how many dollars the central bank has created out of thin air since the credit crash began. We can only reference the Fed’s own data, which is probably not very honest.
The only thing that limits central banks from total monetary dominion is the fact that physical dollar holdings and even digital bank transfers can be accounted for. Once those dollars are out in the ether there’s not much the central banks can do to hide them and eventually, inflation will reveal the truth.
The bankers need a new system which allows them total control of every single penny from creation to circulation. They want the ability to make money appear or disappear in real time. More than that, they want the ability to track every single dollar, including who has them and what they are using them for. They want to be able to micromanage trade, and thus achieve a financial totalitarian empire.
Enter Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) based on blockchain technology…
Ever wonder why the mainstream media has been hyping up cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin for the past few years? Ever wonder why major banks like Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan have been pumping billions of dollars into crypto infrastructure and research in private while at the same time bashing crypto in the news? Ever wonder why central banks have been dismissing crypto as dangerous while at the same time developing their own cryptocurrencies?
It is because they are easing the masses into the notion of a fully digital trade system in which physical money no longer exists. Central banks might act like they are suspicious of crypto – but in reality they LOVE it.
The Bank for International Settlements (BIS), also known as the “central bank of central banks,” recently released a survey which states that at least 81 central banks around the world have been accelerating plans to release their own cryptocurrencies. Many excuses are given, including the covid pandemic, but they were actually working on these digital products well before the pandemic began.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has been talking about developing a global cryptocurrency system tied to their Special Drawing Rights basket for years. Numerous globalist institutions have been pursuing the technology and it’s nothing new. What IS new, though, is banks openly admitting to the plan.
The BIS, one of the most clandestine globalist organizations that still has a public face, has even admitted that it is developing CBDC tech. And what this tells me is that we are very close to a sea-change in our economic environment. Generally, criminals will not reveal their criminality unless they think it’s too late for anyone to do anything about it. With stagflation hitting our economy hard this year we have to question if the behavior of the banks suggests much worse conditions to come?
The public would never readily accept CBDCs as money unless their existing money lost most of its buying power and the current system was in the gutter. This is how new levels of empire are born; a major crisis allows for the elites to consolidate control while the people are distracted by their own private disasters. The big picture is changed while each person is terrified by their own small picture calamity.
In the US, markets and mainstream economists are just praying that the Fed capitulates on interest rate hikes, because they think this would save stocks from collapse. However, even if the Fed did this there would still be the problem if inflation/stagflation. If they don’t back off of rate hikes (I predict they will not capitulate or reverse course anytime soon) then there will be recession on top of price inflation. There’s no way that the current speed of rate hikes is going to slow down inflation from tens of trillions of fiat dollars flowing through the global economy. As I’ve warned for a long time now, the Fed has created a Catch-22 scenario in which the economy crashes no matter which policy decision they make.
But what if this was all by design?
With the introduction of CBDCs in the wake of a stagflationary crash, the central banks could call for a new global network of currencies to “stop such a crisis from ever happening again.” The BIS and the IMF will be ready and waiting with the SDR basket, or something very similar. The bankers will remove all physical money over a short period of time and a global digital system will take over. All privacy in trade will be gone, except for those people involved in barter, black markets and commodities.
The advent of CBDCs could also mean that money and economic participation will become privileges, not rights. Digital trade could be tied to a social credit system, much like the one that exists in communist China.
Want access to your checking and savings accounts? Better not say anything critical of the establishment, or you could be reported by a neighbor or stranger by cell phone app and have your money disappear in seconds. The onus will then be on you to prove that you are “loyal” and get access back. You are guilty until proven innocent. Maybe you don’t want to take the next untested mRNA vaccine for the next dubious pandemic threat? You’ll have little choice if your ability to function economically is controlled digitally.
This is the world we are facing if we allow central banks to fully digitize money and trade. It is a nightmare environment of complete authoritarianism. The public at large is mostly unaware of the incredible danger inherent in CBDCs and they must be educated before the current crisis grows so large that they can no longer focus on anything other than their own problems.
Editor’s Note: The rise of CBDCs is the biggest reason we are so bullish on Americans shifting portions of their wealth and retirement away from the markets and into precious metals.
Image via Shutterstock. Article cross-posted from Alt-Market.
Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.
