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December 15, 2003

Economic Meltdown, Secessionist Crackup?
by Nelson Hultberg

I had not thought about our perilous future for some time. But a question from a reader started me contemplating again the terrible dangers lurking up ahead because our government has spent the 20th century wallpapering the world with flim-flam dollars. He asked, "What likelihood was there that the U.S. and other foreign governments would sell off significant portions of their gold reserves in order to reduce their debt, should the price of gold become tempting enough to do so?"

This would never happen, of course. America's current national debt is $6.9 trillion and its upcoming liabilities are approximately $44 trillion. So the $140 billion worth of gold in the U.S. Treasury's vault would be but a drop in the bucket in comparison. Even if gold would skyrocket to $3000 per ounce (which it could well do), it still would give us only $1 trillion to dispense toward $50 trillion in government debt. So selling off gold at higher prices would never be a workable solution to our catastrophic problems.

But the governments of the West are definitely selling off portions of their gold -- just not to pay their debts. They are doing so to try and "manage" the price of gold for as long as they can. The Fed and the U.S. Treasury know that they have no chance of keeping gold under $400 per ounce while they devalue the dollar down into the 60's on the USDX charts. But they hope that through their secret machinations with the mega-bank cartel in New York, they can keep a slowly rising lid on the price of gold and prevent a price explosion that would set off a panic amidst the world's investors. This is of crucial importance, for such an unbridled explosion would send the bond vigilantes into overdrive. U.S. Treasuries would be cast over the rail like so much flotsam at sea. Interest rates would scream. The Dow would crash. Asians would head for the lifeboats. Arabs would demand Euros for their oil. America would cease to be a superpower. The economic meltdown would flatten the world's economies like flower gardens in a hurricane.

Such a move would doom America to second rate status among nations for decades to come. As much as our Fed tries to denigrate gold to the public, it realizes full well the profound importance gold plays in history and in investment psychology. Exactly how much credence the Fed gives to the Keynesian hogwash about gold being a "barbarous relic" is hard to say. But it surely knows that without gold in its vault, the world would have even less faith in the dollar than is now developing. Without faith in the dollar, America's standard of living would plummet.

How then will the Fed's "price capping" tactics affect the price of gold in the long run? Mike Bolser of Le Metropole Cafe made a most astute observation the other day in explaining that since the Fed is running out of metal, we can be sure that they will be frantic to try and conserve their rapidly diminishing supply so as to control the price of gold for as long as they can. This will prohibit them from any kind of heavy suppression that crashes the price. In other words, they can no longer reverse the price escalation with their manipulative sales. They can only try to bring about an orderly price rise in an attempt to slow down the price volcano threatening to erupt and take down their rotted system. This is what cornered rats do when they have no successful way out. They choose what they perceive to be the least injurious path.

Remember the brilliant 1987 movie No Way Out with Kevin Costner and Gene Hackman. Hackman played the American Secretary of State who was advised by his slimy assistant (Will Patton in a masterful performance of criminal bureaucratism) to attempt a cover-up of Hackman's indiscretions and crimes. But in end, there was NO WAY OUT for this cornered rat. Well, today's bureaucratic rats at the Fed have no way out from their past criminality either. Ninety years of egregious counterfeiting and Keynesian fallacies have brought them to such an ugly predicament. Greenspan's own treason in '96 when he bought into the "new economy" nonsense and gunned the money supply is now coming back to haunt him. Such are the penalties for hubris and power lust. Such is the fate of those who abandon right principle.

So, our government will hang on to the bulk of its gold and try to pay off its overwhelming debt by inflating its way out and paying with the cheaper dollars of tomorrow. They will try to buy time with a vast array of market manipulations and financial gimmickry. They will grasp at straws. They will jawbone and delude themselves. They will stonewall and dump all insurmountable problems into the next administration's lap. And, of course, they will continue to relentlessly inject massive "liquidity" into the system in hopes of not having to incur a crash on their watch. This kind of short-range, pass-the-buck inflationary strategy will be pursued until eventually the major trading nations (Europe, Japan, China) no longer wish to hold dollars, or dollar related assets, in reserve. When this happens, there will be a mass dumping of dollars on the Forex markets and a mass exodus of dollars out of the U.S. This will bring the most ungodly chaos to the U.S. with a stock market crash, a dollar crash, a bond market crash, and a blow off top in the gold and silver markets with gold screaming past $1000/oz to who knows where.

At present the rest of the world's nations are fooling themselves into believing that the dollar still has worth and will somehow hold its worth into the future. But the rest of the world is beginning to get very nervous. Another year or two of the Greenspan-Bernanke inflationary policies (combined with the Demopublican spendaholics in Congress and our imperious pursuit of world hegemony) and serious repercussions will begin to shatter the veneer of normalcy now prevailing.

No way to know precisely when, or in what manner, the monster crisis will unfold. But it will indeed unfold. The structure is too rotted from within. Our policies and perspectives are too warped, our excesses too huge. Too much damage has been done to monetary integrity, ethical propriety, social congruity. Too many political humbugs and parasites, too many barnacles have accumulated on the ship's hull of our life's energy. The Rubicon was crossed in 1971. When Nixon closed the gold window to the world, he opened the lid to Pandora's Box. He tore down the last prevailing bulwark of economic sanity.

Most probably the monster crisis will be precipitated by the rest of the world's nations reluctantly withdrawing their support from the dollar in a last ditch effort of self-defense. They will con themselves into believing that somehow their dumping of dollars will be absorbed by the world market without terribly drastic consequences. Europe, China, and Japan will be like the holders of tech stocks in the Nasdaq in early 2000; there will come a time when it dawns on them that America is not going to be able to stop inflating and that therefore their dollar denominated reserves are ridiculously overbought pieces of paper headed for a big time plummet in value. They will then stop trying to slowly leak dollar conversions and U.S. bond sales into the market and will rush to dump many of their dollar holdings all at once in an effort to beat the crowd. This will suck millions of big money private investors into a rush for the exits also. The crash of the dollar, as it drags our stock and bond markets into oblivion, will be horrendous.

The Federal Government will panic and establish dictatorial controls over the major economic power centers such as banking, international trade, and critical corporations. Fascism will arrive in its naked form (we have it in a disguised form at present). Exchange controls will be enacted. It will be illegal to take money out of the country. The Patriot Act will be used more and more oppressively. Big Brother tactics will be heaped upon Americans. If terrorists capitalize on the turmoil, martial law will be put into effect. The beginning stages of Orwell's nightmare will descend upon us. Geographic blocks of nations will gradually form into major trading and defense zones -- e.g., CanAmerica, EuroRussia, Chinasia, etc.

The Secessionist Crackup

As bad as it will get, however, there will still be hopeful paths to take for the survival of freedom and sanity. One is that in the chaos that descends upon America, numerous state secessionist movements will rise up with strong voices advocating withdrawal from the tyrannical control of Washington. I believe Texas will be one of the leaders, and will possibly draw the states of the old South along with some of the western states into a historic split of America. The split will be between the two philosophies of big government statism and small government constitutionalism.

If things really get catastrophic, and if there are enough clear voices enunciating why Washington is to blame for the disastrous mess we're in, then other states could join in the Texas revolt also. You might have the great middle section of America (from Ohio to Idaho and the Carolinas to Arizona) splitting off from Washington D.C. and its liberal northeastern client states. You might have California, Oregon, and the state of Washington forming their own country. You would then have three America's -- Eastamerica, Texamerica, and Calamerica.

The guiding creed for Texamerica would be to restore a limited Constitutional government that outlaws paper money and any form of income taxation. Gold would be restored as money. Free enterprise would flourish again. Statesmen like Ron Paul would rise up to govern as the Founders envisioned.

Sound like a crazy dream? Think again. As the long Kondratieff winter and its severe economic crises become more and more entrenched in the upcoming years, there is a distinct possibility that the nation's intelligentsia will open up to the truth they are presently rejecting. If enough of them could be reached over the next decade, there could come a time when the establishment and its intellectual honchos no longer command fervent allegiance from the public despite the guns and tanks they will ultimately use to back up their dictates. The establishment's talking heads would then be discredited. Its central banking philosophy of paper money would be scorned. Its Demopublican political monopoly would be seen for the insidious despotism that it is. This is the nature of men. Trying times have a way of opening them up to radical truths that they would ignore in calmer times.

One thing is for sure; the next two decades are going to be tumultuous and tragic. The events that unfold will be far more radical than we dare envision today. Paradigms in banking, politics, and philosophy will be overturned. Wrenching lifestyle shifts will be forced upon millions. Something akin to what happened after the fall of the USSR in 1989-91 will take place in America. Our ruling regime will collapse and bring Russian style economic hardship to us all, but the ultimate outcome here will not be so certain, nor so quick as it was in Russia. The old guard statist establishment here in America is not as hated as the Moscow commissars were. The lines of demarcation between tyranny and justice are more blurred here. The citizens of America are still gullible and still eager to sanction their enslavers. The Demopublican statists still command a large legion of dupes and useful idiots. They will make use of that allegiance and fight viciously to hold on to the power they have so nefariously usurped. How things go will depend upon whether the nation's intelligentsia bring themselves to reject the shams of statism, or whether the government-media-academy triad is able to continue bamboozling them. What is somewhat unnerving is that whoever wins this battle to control the destiny of our country will determine the fate of freedom on the planet for centuries perhaps. It will be a monumental clash of ideology, political power, and money.

Why We Are Disintegrating as a Society

In a recent article, Invasion of the Mind Snatchers, I outlined the major reason why America was disintegrating economically, politically, and culturally. I stated that we are being propelled toward a one-world despotism because of a powerful "collectivist curvature of the mind" that took over our intellectuals starting back in the early 20th century. This curvature of the mind has resulted in a master conspiracy to move America into a New World Order. The master conspiracy is comprised of an array of SECRET CONSPIRACIES (such as the Rhodes Society in England and its front groups such as the CFR and the Trilateral Commission in America). But what so many astute observers in the freedom movement fail to grasp is that the "secret" conspiracies are only the tip of the iceberg. The real conspiracy goes much deeper.

To genuinely grasp what is taking place in America today, we need to go further than just an expose of conspiracy front groups. We need to go to the root cause of the conspiracies. We need to ask what it is that continually spawns these secret organizations? Why are all these conspirators conspiring to move America into a one-world despotism? What is it that motivates them to want to centralize our government, debase our money, confiscate our earnings, regiment our economy, and form a one-world government? What makes them so eager to trash our Constitution as if it was nothing but yesterday's newspaper? What makes them hate the free enterprise system that built America? The answer to these questions lies in ideology, most specifically the "false" ideology that saturates the curriculums of our schools from the third grade on. Dwelling behind the curtain of all the secret front groups is a giant TACIT CONSPIRACY in the school system that functions as the grand fueling mechanism of the secret conspiracies. See my article, Invasion of the Mind Snatchers for a more detailed analysis of this point.

It is in the realms of philosophy, economics, political science, and history that a relentless stream of highly intelligent ideological robots are being formed every year to go out into the world and work their way into the power centers of society. The "tacit" ideological conspiracy feeds the "secret" political conspiracies. The tacit conspiracy is the cause; the secret conspiracies are the symptoms. The tacit conspiracy hides in plain sight. It dominates our public schools and universities. It talks openly about its goals, but it does so in a code language of utopian rhetoric. It masterfully makes use of deception, sophistry, euphemism, and lip service so as to mislead the masses of well-meaning Americans who do not possess the intellectual training to decipher the evil premises and long range ramifications that lurk behind the utopian rhetoric. While it is immensely important to expose the secret conspiratorial groups operating in America and throughout the West, it is even more important to get people to understand and begin to fight the tacit ideological conspiracy that has taken over our schools. The secret conspiracies are a horde of little rodents prowling the political back streets of our society. The tacit conspiracy is a monstrous fire-breathing dragon dominating our schools. The rodents are effects; the dragon is the cause. So we must always keep our causes and effects straight. Don't stop trying to snuff out the rodents, but let's also start throwing some freedom grenades at the dragon.

Thus, to say there is a political conspiracy among our elite bankers, politicians, and corporate moguls to destroy our free way of life does not adequately capture the reality of what is happening to us. These evil men represent only the surface effects of the real conspiracy, which is ideological. Reprehensibly false ideas in philosophy, economics, political science and history, taught by pre-eminent thinkers of the past two centuries, have slowly seeped into our culture to reshape our worldview, our ethical sense, and our economic understanding. Out of this reshaped worldview has come the elitist army of "New World Order Apparatchiks" that now dominates our media, our mega-banks and our Demopublican Congress.

Making a Difference

If you would like to learn more about what has brought the world to this precarious state of affairs, and what you can do to help save the cause of freedom in the aftermath of the coming economic meltdown, go to the following website [ http://www.afr.org ]. Americans for a Free Republic is an organization formed to enlighten the public about the TRUE causes of our present crisis and what must be done to solve the horrific dilemmas we now face as a country and a people.

Help us spread the word. Do not let the tyrants and their legions of dupes win by default. Do not sanction the enemies of freedom through apathy and cynicism. Do not allow inertia to lull you into thinking the other guy will warn the people. We all need to become Paul Reveres. We all need to acquire, to the best of our abilities, the steel of Patrick Henry, the nobility of Washington, the logic of Jefferson.

We need to take a page from the story of the old man and the starfish. After a huge storm had brought a series of mini-tidal waves to his beach community one night, there were tens of thousands of starfish washed up on the sandy shore that next morning. Amidst the masses of starfish the wise old man could be seen patiently picking them up and tossing them back into the sea. Along came a young lad in his twenties with green hair, eyebrow rings and a scornful face. He started laughing and mocked the old man with cynical derision. "You have to be crazy, old timer. You can't possibly save these starfish; there's thousands of them. You're wasting your time you fool. YOU CAN'T MAKE A DIFFERENCE!"

The old man looked up at the insolent youth and smiled. He then reached down and picked up one of the struggling starfish and winged it far out into the water, replying to his tormentor, "Made a difference with that one, didn't I?"

Everyone of us has to choose whether we will try to make a difference, or whether we will give in to indifference. Will we fight to inform our neighbors, or will we succumb to craven apathy? Will we be an intrepid rebel or a cynical Tory? Will we opt for principle or popularity? Will we be strong or weak? All of us have the power within us to become something other than vegetating blobs while we are on this earth. That power lies in our minds and in the strength of our personalities. Those who possess that inner strength will feel compelled to spread the word in any way they can for as long as they live. They will feel compelled to wing as many starfish back to life as they can. Those who are weak-minded will scorn all this as senseless, just as the green haired youth did. They will choose to remain a vegetating blob. They will sanction their enslavers. They will cynically smirk at messages such as this. This is the nature of humanity's snivelers. They prefer the warm security of the authoritarian State to the uncertainty of a free economy. They wish to be taken care of, to avoid the rigors of reality. They wither in face of turmoil. And when they see others fighting valiantly against insurmountable odds for the freedom they have scorned, they are subconsciously humiliated because they are not deep in the thick of such a fight themselves. They have chosen to avoid the fight, to ease through life, to sell out their principles, to collaborate with the weasel-tyrants. Thus they must find a way to salve their consciences. That way is to mock the Davids who go up against the Goliaths, to smear the Rolands of Roncesvalles that history hands down to us as God's exemplars.

You the reader have one paramount choice to make regarding all this. It is High Noon for the cause of freedom and sound money. Will you fight with God's exemplars, or will you hide behind the protective doors of establishment privileges and lies? If you choose to fight, then your first and foremost duty is to become aware of WHAT is happening and WHY it is happening. That awareness can be found at the AFR website [ http://www.afr.org ]. Your second duty is to emulate Paul Revere and warn all those in your sphere of influence. You do this by making a diplomatic nuisance of yourself, by pleasantly pestering your comrades to wake up to the sham of Demopublicanism. You do it by convincing them that there are grander values in life than brand new SUVs; there is something called the American way of life. It is a way of life that requires personal independence, small government, gold money, and free enterprise.

Tyranny is stealing into our lives like crack cocaine filters into a ghetto -- beguiling and lethal. It is devastating everything in its path, everything that is noble, honorable, and free. All the stoic traditions of strength, all the great lessons of logic, all the revered truths of Nature that have been handed down to us throughout history are being assailed at this very moment in history -- this brief span of decades that makes up the latter 20th, early 21st centuries. The weasel-tyrants and their unctuous lackeys have control of the intellectual, political and banking power centers of our country, but they don't have control of the truth. They don't have control of our integrity as humans. They don't dominate our inner psyches. They can't prohibit us from rising up and rebelling. They can't extend their enslavement UNLESS WE SANCTION IT! They can only win if we refuse to fight them. They seek the weak-minded, the payers of lip service, the conformist dupes who eagerly memorize the cliches of collectivism so as to find their worth through herd acceptance. What the elites fear is a populace with the strength of William Wallace, the daring of Washington's band crossing the Delaware in the dead of winter, the ingenuity of Sir Francis Drake in his Caribbean skirmishes. They fear Americans who are willing to fight for the original America. Up against such heady citizens, the weasel-tyrants will fade like flies in the winter. Our job is to build an army of such heady citizens.

You can help by joining the cause. Start by getting out of debt, and into gold and silver. Then become informed. Read the books of freedom and sound money, and pass them on. Bring people to the website where you are reading this essay; bring them to AFR's website. Bring them to a state of urgency. Bring them to the truth of our Constitution and to the laws of Nature and Nature's God. Nothing other than this kind of effort will suffice. You cannot help truth and freedom by watching moronic TV shows at night; that is how the elites control you. They flood the airwaves with mindless entertainment. It's our version of Brave New World's "soma" for the masses. Today's TV is for zombies and dullards. The same applies to our movies. Next time you're in the theater, look around you at all the somnolent hoi polloi stuffing their faces with popcorn and their psyches with trashy sexploitation. Tyrannical regimes allow slaves to have soma and sexual freedom. But they take away their economic and political freedom. And the dupes buy into it, believing that if they are allowed to flaunt society's sexual mores and zap their brains with cocaine, then the country is still free. Huxley was the first to point out that modern totalitarian rulers leave the "activities of sex" alone, but regiment the "activities of production." This allows those who are servile by nature to con themselves into voting away their REAL freedom -- their freedom to keep the fruits of their toil, to price their products as they please, to pay the wages they please, to associate with whom they please, to speak and worship as they please. Look around you; there are far more servile people in this human race than there are independent people. This is the reason why dictatorships dominate the history of man; the majority of humans want to be ruled. They want to relinquish their meaningful freedom; it requires too much self-assurance and grit.

The cause of America is the cause of REAL freedom. Such a cause is impossible without gold money, equal tax rates, limited government, and a self-reliant people. These are the stars to which we must hitch our wagons. These are the philosophical bombs that we must hurl into Washington's swamp of political leeches that is sucking the marrow from our lives. When the Washington leeches have so stultified our nation that ghastly ruin prevails throughout, then is when the state secessions will begin. All readers should make note. A meltdown is coming; a crackup will follow.

Nelson Hultberg
Americans for a Free Republic

Nelson Hultberg is a freelance writer in Dallas, Texas and the Executive Director of Americans for a Free Republic www .afr.org. His articles have appeared in such publications as The Dallas Morning News, Insight, The Freeman, Liberty, and The Social Critic, as well as numerous Internet sites. He is the author of Why We Must Abolish The Income Tax And The IRS (1997) and Breaking the Demopublican Monopoly(2004). He is presently finishing a book on political-economic philosophy entitled The Golden Mean: The Case for Libertarian Politics and Conservative Values.

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