The Daily Bell is pleased to present
this exclusive interview with Jeffrey Berwick
Introduction: Jeff Berwick is an anarchist, libertarian and
freedom fighter against mankind's two biggest enemies, the state and the
central banks. Jeff is chief editor of The Dollar Vigilante, an
anarcho-capitalist, Austrian economics based newsletter focused on surviving
The End Of The Monetary System As We Know It (TEOTMSAWKI) and CEO of TDV Media
and Services, which provides internationalization information and solutions for
yourself and your wealth. He is also host of Anarchast, an anarchist video
podcast, and is a contributing editor at many of the world's largest financial
and precious metals related websites. In 1994, Jeff Berwick founded Canada's
largest financial website, Stockhouse.com. A prominent speaker at many of
the world's freedom, investment and gold conferences as well as regularly in
the media including CNBC, CNN and Fox Business, Jeff expatriated long
ago from his country of birth, Canada, and considers himself a citizen of the
world. He has lived in numerous locales since including Los Angeles, Hong
Kong, Bangkok and currently lives in Acapulco, Mexico and is building a home in
Cafayate, Argentina. In essence, everything he writes about for TDV he
has done or is doing.
Daily
Bell: What's going on, Jeff?Jeff Berwick: What isn't going on! We certainly live in interesting times and it is going to even get more interesting from here.
Daily
Bell: Is the world getting crazier or is
it just our imagination?
Jeff
Berwick: That's exactly what I was saying. I
am surprised so many people are so unaware about what is really going on in the
political, economic and financial worlds. If they were aware, they'd be
shocked. And, if they lack any moral philosophy and economic historical
knowledge, probably dismayed. But maybe many purposely keep themselves in
the dark for their own mental protection. I hear "I don't want to
know" a lot. But like Ayn Rand said, "You can ignore reality, but you
can't ignore the consequences of ignoring reality."
Daily
Bell: What's the biggest issue on your
plate? What are you most concerned about?
Jeff
Berwick: I sum it up as The End Of The
Monetary System As We Know It (TEOTMSAWKI), which is sort of an
all-encompassing acronym for the fact that the political, financial and
economic systems we have lived in for the last 40 years are all on the cusp of
collapse. That collapse is actually a good thing, as the world has never been
less free in human history thanks to the explosion in the size of the state
during the last couple of centuries. But the transition from these systems to
what will hopefully be a much freer system will be dangerous. And, of course,
there is the possibility that when they collapse things get even worse as
people panic and give governments and central banks even more power. In either case, this is the most dangerous
time in history for capital.Daily Bell: Give us some background, for readers who don't know you.
Jeff Berwick: I've been interviewed twice in the past by The Daily Bell so those who are interested can look at those interviews for a more detailed answer on my history. What I am really, though, is a truth-seeker. I want to know what the truth is and am not scared to dig far down the rabbit hole to find it. Secondly, I don't believe in thinking collectively when it comes to nations, but I do have a warm spot in my heart for humanity as a whole, and also for all the wondrous living things that are here on this space rock with us. And, because of that, I want to see everyone and everything living as happily as they can. It is my opinion, certainly as far as humanity is concerned, that the best way to make that happen is to spread the word of freedom and to rally against those who try to enslave and oppress others. Those people most often are the ones pulling the levers of government ... one of the worst ideas still being propagated on this planet.
Freedom from governments and the
centralized violence of their laws and regulations isn't a desire to hurt or
damage others or the environment; it's the only moral system and it turns out
that it is has the very real side effect of constantly driving technological
progress and standards of living.
Daily
Bell: Are things getting worse
economically for the West? For the US?
Jeff
Berwick: I think it is unquestionable. I've
been writing for years with proof of that. But you just have to look at numbers
in recent weeks to see that is empirically the case. Unemployment in Spain is
26.6% and in Greece it's 27.6%. It's even worse for younger people who are
really feeling the brunt of the socialist
systems that have been in place for decades. Youth unemployment in Greece tops
75%! And, the real unemployment rate in the US is well over 20% when measured
in the old way that doesn't try to hide realities that would cause unrest among
the populace. Not to mention that 1 in 6 people in the US is on food stamps...
1 in 4 children is on food stamps. The entire Western world is already in a
deep depression as bad as the 1930s depression and it is going to get much
worse from here.
Daily
Bell: Is the US coming out of a
recession?
Jeff
Berwick: I think I can best answer that
question with a question. What is a recession? What I mean by that is that the
standard ways the government, media and economists calculate "a
recession" make no sense. The entire West, and most of the world, is run
rampant with incorrect economic thinking. GDP, as just one example, is a fallacy.
It does not denote "growth" or "recession." Adding up the
price of everything sold into one number for a geographic region does not say
very much at all about the true economic health of the people of that region.
If that were the case then, as Paul Krugman would advise, we should destroy
every city in the West and rebuild it, as it would massively increase GDP as
people's savings were used to just get them back to where they were before
their cities were destroyed. It's a ludicrous concept.
The US is already in a depression
that has just begun. There are no green shoots. There is no recovery. All that
is happening is the Federal Reserve is printing new money (QE) and fooling people, temporarily,
into thinking they are richer than they are as their existing earnings buy less
and they have to take on more debt to keep their standard of living from
plummeting. They'll soon find out the truth as that new money destroys their
purchasing power and their lives get painfully downsized.
And so, to answer your question of
whether the US is coming out a recession – where a recession or depression is a
general decline in the standard of living – I think the answer is not only is
the US not coming out of a recession but it is still in just the preliminary
stages of a depression.
Jeff Berwick: Many people incorrectly state that Obama and Obamacare are socialist. Obamacare in its current form is fascist and part of crapitalism – crony capitalism. It is just forcing people to use private, monopolistic insurance companies or be fined. Luckily, however, as with most things government does it is totally incompetent. This may be the fastest government program to implode in history.
Daily
Bell: Will Obamacare be overturned? What
will its impact be? Is the real goal a single payer system? How's that working
out for Canada?
Jeff
Berwick: Considering that its real results
have been tens of millions of people losing their medical insurance (and having
their rates increased by as much as 500%) with just a few thousand people
actually receiving medical insurance, it will be interesting to see just how
far the federal government can push the American sheeple until they finally
have enough. As for Kanada, I have countless personal horror stories of the
medical system there, as I was born and lived there until I was in my early
30s. I spend a lot of my time in Mexico now and much prefer the free-market
medical system in Mexico to either of its fasco-communist
northern neighbors.Jeff Berwick: What I have found interesting is that the libertarian mindset is so foreign to the political class one-party system that Harry Reid (Communist-Nevada) called Tea Partiers anarchists! They for the most part aren't anarchists at all but constitutionalists or minarchists. What is nice, however, is that the word libertarian is finally being understood in the "land of the free" and is actually a cool thing to be now. Glenn Beck, who is a neocon, calls himself a libertarian. Bill Maher, who is a liberal, calls himself a libertarian. And the Republican Party is actually realizing that if they want a chance of winning, they will have to get the vote of the Ron Paul libertarians. Even better is that if libertarians form a substantial part of the Republican Party, it will destroy the Republican Party as we know it and soon after it will destroy the federal government. Because once people become libertarian it usually isn't very long until they become true anarchists and realize that government itself is an unnecessary evil. A popular Internet meme put it best: "What's the difference between a libertarian and an anarchist? About six months."
Daily
Bell: What's going on with Chase? Why the
new limits on international wires and cash transactions, both deposits and
withdrawals, for small business accounts?
Jeff
Berwick: Capital controls have been and are
rapidly coming into effect in the US. But, they are doing it quite sneakily.
The biggest thing to watch on this front is Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), which is set to come into effect in July, 2014.
FATCA essentially tries to make every bank on Earth a spy arm of the IRS.
Most banks outside of the US are not willing to do what it takes to comply with
this act and therefore, by extension, it will be nearly impossible for an American
to get a foreign bank account. It already is, in fact. It's de facto capital
control. That's why we urge people to make moves to get the majority of their
assets outside of the US as quickly as possible. It's not easy, but we have set
up many services to help people do that such as TDV Offshore, TDV Wealth
Management and TDV Passports.
Daily
Bell: What's going on with China? The
economy there is supposed to be improving.
Jeff
Berwick: China is certainly a very
interesting place. A massive amount of wealth has been created since they let
go of the shackles of communism and replaced it with their own brand of fascist
capitalism. They have many of the same problems as the US, however, with
insolvent government-propped-up banks and central bank money printing. They
don't have the debt levels of the US, however, so it should do much better
there than in the US over the coming years. But expect it to be a wild ride.
Daily
Bell: China, Germany, London – all these
regions are supposedly seeing new real estate bubbles. Your opinion?
Jeff
Berwick: Bubbles, bubbles everywhere.
Central banks around the world, including the three just mentioned, have been
printing money at unprecedented levels causing massive misallocation of capital
and yes, some of that new money is going into real estate. In the US most of
the money has been going into the massive bubble in government debt, which has
increased from $900 billion in 1980 to over $17 trillion today... and into the
stock market, which is seeing nominal new highs. But, in real terms, the Dow is
still down nearly 50% from 2000.
Daily
Bell: Some non-economic questions. You
spoke of the militarization of the police last time. Any updates?
Jeff
Berwick: Updates? Where to begin! Since we
last spoke the entire city of Boston was locked down while people hid in their
houses and what can only be described as a military police force broke in
people's doors and terrorized people in their supposed search for a skinny
19-year-old boy with a rice cooker. The Department of Homeland InSecurity has
purchased 4.5 billion hollow point bullets... more than 10 for every man, woman
and child in the US. And police departments around the country have been buying
tanks.
Police now are the biggest threat to
your personal safety in the US. Police kill a person's dog in his home during a
no-knock raid on average every 19 minutes and are regularly fingering and
anally probing people if they look like they are clenching their buttocks and
possibly hiding substances that violate the modern day War on People
prohibition on certain recreation.
Daily
Bell: You compared what was going on in
the US to pre-World War II Germany. Further thoughts?
Jeff
Berwick: The comparison to Germany between
1921 and 1944 is almost eerie. In 1921 Germany went through a hyperinflation
... which is in process in the US. In Germany in 1933 the Nazi government
conducted a false-flag attack on the Reichstag, Germany's parliament, in order
to gain national political power. This, of course, is very akin to 9-11. They
then democratically elected a charismatic personality in Hitler... akin to
Barack O'Bomber, the most warmongering Nobel Peace Prize winner in history who just this week extended the
Afghanistan War to 2024 ... making it more than two decades of occupation and
war in that country. Not to mention all the other wars and occupations in
places like Iraq, Libya and the recent attempt in Syria. As things continue to
get worse in the US the federal government is becoming more and more oppressive
and across the country there are unconstitutional checkpoints checking people's
papers. Many cities and counties have started making "homelessness" illegal
and rounding up homeless and placing them in camps from which they are not
allowed to leave. And that is on top of the US itself, which has the largest
prison camp population on Earth with 5% of the population of the Earth and 25%
of the worldwide prison population, most of whom never committed a crime
against anyone or anyone's property.
Where does it go from here? No one
knows, but the direction is clear and I removed myself from the Western world
ten years ago to stay clear of the place that I consider to be ground zero for
this economic collapse: the US.
Daily
Bell: What about the NSA and Edward
Snowden – has the surveillance society been exposed? Is that a good thing?
Jeff
Berwick: It was both very exciting and at the
same time very disappointing. Finally someone stepped forward to "blow the
whistle" on the East Germany on steroids surveillance society in the US.
This was excellent and Edward Snowden is a hero... although I wish he had
contacted us to get a second passport beforehand. On the disappointing side was the malaise with
which the news was greeted by the American public. It was almost a collective
yawn and many people, including one of the Miss USA contestants, considered it
a good thing to "make us safe." Apparently that old quote from
Benjamin Franklin, "Those who give up essential liberty, to purchase a
little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety" has been
forgotten. After all, they don't teach kids in the government indoctrination
centers (public schools) these things. Instead, they make them pledge their
allegiance to the state every morning.
Daily
Bell: Europe is irate. But don't all
governments do this sort of thing?
Jeff
Berwick: Well, I wouldn't say
"Europe" is irate. The governments in Europe, and around the world,
are irate. I don't recognize government as being legitimate so I don't really
care what they do to each other as long as they leave us peaceful people out of
it... but they rarely do.
Daily
Bell: Snowden wants formal forgiveness
from the US government. Will he get it?
Jeff
Berwick: Of course not. Information is the
enemy of the state. I would advise Snowden not to even request forgiveness. He
did nothing wrong.
Daily
Bell: Will he end up staying in Russia?
Jeff
Berwick: I am quite surprised and a little
disappointed that some of the billionaire freedom-lovers haven't flown him out
discretely on a private jet while avoiding any US or US-ally airspace. Of
course, however, it'd likely still get shot down. There are no real rules when
it comes to government. Snowden was smart to run to, of all places, China and
Russia to defect from the US but he should have been even smarter and garnered
himself a non-US passport first to make things easier and moved to a country
which is not a US ally and who doesn't have an extradition treaty with the US.
But I do enjoy seeing a world where someone from the US has to defect for
speaking the truth and runs to places that would have been considered insane 30
years ago, like Russia. Things are changing fast.
Daily
Bell: Is Putin a defender of freedom and
an adversary of Western corporatism? Or is he merely advancing his own interests?
Jeff
Berwick: Putin is a thug and a despot just
like every other president or prime minister on this planet. Only sick people
seek power that is undeserved. But I do like his moxie for sticking it to the
US government. But your suggestion that he is just using it to advance his own
interests is correct. In a perfect world people would realize that government
and collectivism is evil and just ignore it all. But we aren't there yet.
Daily
Bell: Are China and Russia really enemies
of the West or is this overblown? We think it is.
Jeff
Berwick: Again, it isn't Russians or Chinese
people who are enemies of people who live in the US. Their governments create
wars and look to impede the voluntary trade of goods and human travel. I've
never met a Russian or Chinese person who hates Americans. Almost universally,
however, people around the world hate the US government. People want freedom
and the ability to trade and travel unrestricted. That said, many governments
around the world are turning away from the wants of the US government and the
US dollar itself. This has major implications for the near future and is what I
write about at The Dollar Vigilante and in my upcoming book, Escape from
Amerika.
Daily
Bell: What about the BRICs?
Are they setting up a separate currency system? Will it really work?
Jeff
Berwick: Nope. This idea of unbacked
government fiat paper money is a barbarous relic. The free market has created the next
super currency, Bitcoin. Fiat paper currency likely still has a few years left
before its long overdue extinction, but the world will continue to move to
digital currencies ... and, in a weird twist, back to precious metals. China has been hoarding gold and now the reason for
Bitcoin's recent rise from $200 to $900 was mostly because of Chinese awareness
of the currency. I've been an advocate of Bitcoin since 2011 when it was at $3
and the uptake in the last few years has been breathtaking. The best part?
Governments can't stop it.
Daily
Bell: How's Canada doing these days?
Still worried about a housing bubble there?
Jeff
Berwick: I don't worry about anything, but I
do research as much as I can. The Bank of Canada has been inflating even more
than the Federal Reserve. In January of 2012 the money supply, as measured by
M3, was less than $1.4 trillion. In January of 2013 it was over $1.6 trillion,
making a YOY increase of over 14%. Today it stands well over $1.7 trillion. A
lot of the new money has, like in other markets, made its way into the real
estate market.
The Economist recently stated that Canadian real estate is 30% overvalued
compared to incomes and 74% overvalued compared to rental prices.
This is unsustainable and will
revert to the mean at some point. In the meantime, money printing is causing
the usual misallocation of capital and, in the end, destroying capital as consumers
and investors are confused by price signals.
Daily
Bell: We asked you this before. The
Dollar Vigilante's tagline is, "Survive and Prosper During and After the
Dollar Collapse." What do people need to do now to secure themselves in
the face of coming difficulties?
Jeff
Berwick: I rarely agree with that crony
insider George Soros but he said, in 2009, that the financial system had
collapsed but is just being kept alive, temporarily, with money printing. This
is the last stage of any fiat money and banking system. Whenever governments
are faced with the two choices faced today – defaulting and reducing the size
of government massively or printing money until the monetary system collapses –
they always choose the latter.
You can see it today; with stock markets
at nominal all-time highs the printing press is still running. Interest rates
are still price-fixed to zero and Bernanke recently said that even if
unemployment, as defined by the government's numbers, hits his target of 6.5%,
it still won't mean an end to the ZIRP and money printing.
This is because there is now no
other option if they want to keep the current statist system alive. With $17
trillion in debt, if interest rates were to rise to even 10% it would mean $1.7
trillion per year in interest payments alone. Once you take Socialist
InSecurity out of the government's theft (tax) income that would mean more than
all their tax receipts combined.
This system is dead ... only many
don't know it yet ... which creates opportunities and risks.
Number one in my mind is to
internationally diversify your assets and put them in things that Ben Bernanke,
or Janet Yellen, can't counterfeit. Precious metals and foreign real estate,
particularly productive real estate such as agriculture and farming, top the list.
We wrote a 100-page report called Getting Your Gold Out Of Dodge to help people navigate the waters of internationalizing
their precious metals. Also, to help internationalize your assets I recommend
opening an offshore company and bank account... again, something we have
provided a solution for with TDV Offshore. And if you have serious assets within the US, I would
recommend consulting with TDV Wealth
Management to internationalize those assets
and get them into a charitable trust structure. We'll be holding a
conference/workshop in Panama this coming January to help people do that.
For offshore real estate with an
agricultural foundation we have identified Chile as being one of the most
libertarian, growing economies on Earth in which to help nourish Galt's Gulch Chile.
Many free-market types are making the move to Chile much like many people moved
to the US over prior centuries, including the founding fathers, to escape tyranny and oppression in their place of birth.
The coming collapse will be so bad,
in my opinion, that those who lose the least will win. By internationalizing
your assets out of the country/government that purports to own you and putting
assets into hard assets you stand the best chance of being liquid at a time
when capital is in high demand. If you retain most of your current assets you
will be ahead of the game in the coming years as most of the Western world gets
"Cyprussed" and coming out on the other side with assets in which to
rebuild.
Jeff Berwick: I hope not because if we do that means governments and their evil twin, the central banks, will still exist. I do hope that electronic-based, gold-backed currencies come more into their own, however. There are many leading the way on this, including James Turk's Goldmoney.com, Peter Schiff's Europac Bank (not available to Americans, of course) and others.
For me, gold and silver is for
storage of wealth and Bitcoin will hopefully become the standard way of
transferring and transacting in that wealth.
Daily
Bell: Gold and silver – what's your take?
Still headed down?
Jeff
Berwick: We have two main analysts on this in
our crew and both generally agree. Ed Bugos has been bullish on gold since 2000
at $250 and is our Senior Analyst at The Dollar Vigilante
newsletter. Vin Maru heads up the TDV Golden Trader trading newsletter.
Vin has been more accurate in the
last year in having advised his subscribers to sell gold and gold stocks at
much higher levels. He received a lot of wrath from subscribers, but he has
been vindicated and those who heeded his advice were not hurt in this ongoing
decline in both gold and gold stocks. In Ed Bugos´s defense, the TDV newsletter
is not a trading newsletter but a positioning letter and he also has been
fairly correct in expecting a withdrawal in precious metals and stock prices
over the last year but could not outright issue a "sell," as we are
trying to position TDV subscribers for safety and preservation of wealth rather
than trading. Neither Ed nor I would have recommended people sell precious
metals or precious metals stocks to go completely into fiat currencies in this
environment.
Both seem to agree now that the next
few months may still have some downside. As for me, I think it is close enough
to the bottom for those who do not have a sufficient allocation in precious
metals or stocks to get in now.
Most of the crowd has once again
been fooled by money printing into thinking everything is okay. It's not okay
and it is going to be worse than most can imagine so I recommend holding what
you have or buying now if you currently don't hold.
I don't like playing around near the
end of a total collapse with the majority of my assets to eke out gains. Come
back to me two years from now and tell me if I was right.
Daily
Bell: Manipulation or just a market
correction?
Jeff
Berwick: I am a big fan of people like Bill Murphy of GATA and others like him who press governments and
central banks to be honest about their involvement in the markets. I have no
doubt there is significant manipulation in the market – in every market, in
fact. But, I don't see the manipulation of gold as being the main factor in its
price. I think that is mostly explained by normal market movements and the fact
that so many people have bought into the recovery story.
I like to use the price of gold from
1960 to 1980 as a road map and when you look at it that way this most recent
decline is not all that different from the decline in the early to mid '70s...
and we all know what happened after that, as gold and silver rose dramatically.
I think that is where we currently are on the precious metals. And I also think
the economic problems are so much larger this time around that we will see a
precious metals bubble that will shock the world.
Daily
Bell: Are you hopeful about Janet Yellen?
We think she's going to be a disaster.
Jeff
Berwick: What's to be hopeful about? There
is absolutely nothing that can be done at this point that will end in anything
but tears, one way or another. There will be a major systemic event no matter
what happens at this point, thanks to 42 years of unrestrained governments and
central banks. Just as with Rome, where eventually every Caesar was worse than
the last, the same is happening with the US federal government and the Federal
Reserve. The system is in terminal decline and I recently heard that the
Democratic ticket for 2016, if there is even an election, will be Hillary
Clinton/Michelle Obama! And, with the Federal Reserve, they just need to
install in place a puppet who will promote never-ending money printing at that
point. And it appears they have found their stooge in Yellen.
Daily
Bell: Why would they put a Yellen in as
head of the Fed when they know she's going to stimulate? Is it that they simply
don't know what else to do?
Jeff
Berwick: What else can they do? If the Federal
Reserve, which is run by the same people who run the federal government, stops
printing money and allows interest rates to go to their natural market level it
would mean that the US government not only couldn't run deficits anymore but
would have to immediately downside by 80+ percent. You saw the panic involved
with the "sequester" which was just a 3 percent proposed
"cut" of an already increased budget from the prior year. It was just
a cut in the rate of increase of spending. A stop in money printing and a
natural interest rate – which I think would be upward of 20 percent – would
make the US federal government insolvent, treasuries (which are held by
countless banks, corporations and individuals worldwide) would become
worthless, all banks would go under, taking their depositors' money with them
and it would be a depression that would be written about in the bibles of the
future.
The powers that be want to stave off
this inevitability for as long as possible and the only way to do that is to
keep printing money until all fiat currencies reach their intrinsic value and an even worse outcome... a complete, 100% economic
collapse. If Bitcoin hasn't reached general acceptance by that point, the chaos
that would ensue would be beyond biblical proportions.
In other words, this system is at
the rock-and-a-hard-place stage. No matter what they do, Obama's "Hope and
Chains" will happen and no one wants to be the face of that so they will
continue to avoid the hard decisions until it is completely out of their hands.
Then they'll probably blame
capitalism on the collapse. Hopefully, by that point alternative currencies
like Bitcoin are already well into circulation and the message of true freedom
and true capitalism, not government-powered crapitalism, are embedded into
enough of the world's population that we don't all end up eating each other.
Daily
Bell: What about the US stock market? We
believe it may be headed higher in the short term. Seems like they're trying to
get a lot of climate change companies funded.
Jeff
Berwick: Nominally the US stock market can
head to 100,000 on the Dow in the next few years. In real terms, it is headed
to zero. And, don't get me started on "climate change."
Daily
Bell: We can't resist. Is it real in your
estimation or is it a kind of scam, designed mostly to raise revenue and scare
people?
Jeff
Berwick: Of course climate change is real.
New York just a few millennia ago was under a mile of ice. Before that there
were palm trees at the North Pole. But the idea that we 7 billion ants in just
the last hundred years of industrialization are dramatically affecting the
Earth is ludicrous, to say the least.
In the '70s there was widespread
fear of a coming ice age. Then, Al Gore, of all people, did a ridiculous little
movie with a bunch of incorrect information and all of a sudden global warming
was the fear for those who buy into this stuff. He then proposed that we tax
people around the world on the air they breathe out of their mouths (CO2)
... the ultimate in statist/socialist hubris. The world, however, has been in a
cooling trend that appears to be continuing for decades to come, though, and
countless "global warming" conferences were canceled after extreme
cold temperatures, which are now called the "Gore effect," so they
had to change their story and renamed it "climate change."
Even though Arctic and Antarctic ice
have grown tremendously in the last few years (despite the global warming crowd
saying that both would be without ice by 2013) they still continue to say CO2
is a major problem. But that goes against their initial story of how CO2 levels
would warm the Earth and cause catastrophic damage. So, if the world is now
cooling, shouldn't we tax people if they don't create enough CO2, by their
logic? Where is the call to tax people who don't buy SUVs and leave them
running day and night?
My favorite is when a major
hurricane or natural event happens and the news says, "It was the largest
storm in the last 80 years!" and the alarmists all point and say,
"See! We need to tax people to stop this!"
Well, my question is, what caused
the previous storm of a larger magnitude 80 years ago? The Earth has been the
scene of countless massive natural events for billions of years. And, not to
mention, with population growth around the world and massive, immediate news
coverage, these storms are bound to hit more populated areas and be reported on
a much larger scale.
There are much, much larger problems
than manmade pollution in the world today and they are all caused by
governments and central banks. I prefer to focus on those more serious,
verifiable dangers than whether human activity contributed to possibly
increasing the size of a hurricane by a small percentage ... which it likely
didn't.
Daily
Bell: Agreed. Let's change the topic. You
live as a permanent tourist. Explain.
Jeff
Berwick: This is a lifestyle choice that I
had been living for the last decade but didn't realize had been codified
decades ago, in the '60s, by Harry Schultz. It is called the Permanent Tourist/Perpetual
Traveler/Prior Taxpayer (PT) theory.
The underpinnings of the theory are
the recognition that there is no truly free place on Earth, at the moment, with
the possible exception of Antarctica. And, I don't like cold weather. So if you
are going to live in today's world, with an intricate network of government
criminals constantly aggressing against your life and your wealth, you should
try to find every way around the system possible.
Daily
Bell: Why do you say government criminals?
Jeff
Berwick: Well, you know the difference
between the mafia and government, right? Size. There is no other important
differentiation between the two with the exception that many people still
believe in the validity of government. But that is changing fast. In any case,
with the PT theory you try to never live in a place where you are a citizen. I
have been doing that for the last decade. Wherever I do spend most of my time,
such as now in Mexico and Chile, I make sure to live there as a tourist, all
legally, under their inane laws about where I can and cannot go before they own
me. I also make sure I have more than one passport to give me options. It may
sound illogical, coming from an anarcho-capitalist like me to want to be
"owned" by more than one country. But, to the contrary, the more
passports/citizenships you have the less any one government can purport to own
you since not one can claim exclusive ownership. You get the benefit of two or
three devils fighting each other for you, so to speak. Worst case scenario, if
one of them gets overly egregious and comes after me, I just light the passport
on fire and never go there again. If you do this properly, you do not have to
pay tax in any country – if you choose your alternative citizenship properly.
Secondly, I keep all my business
ventures in alternate, non-tax jurisdictions. So, with my personal life and
business life I am not required to pay any tax ... all legally. I can go deeper
into PT theory, as it can go much deeper, if you really want to diversify your
entire life in such a way that no one government has control over you and your
assets. But, that would take a book ...which I am working on. In the meantime,
I talk regularly about it at the free Dollar Vigilante blog and the
subscription newsletter.
Daily
Bell: Any new ventures on the horizon?
Jeff
Berwick: I'm a serial entrepreneur, so yes. I
think I may have started four new businesses in the last month. Being an
entrepreneur and traveling so regularly – I have been to over a hundred
countries now – you can't help but see opportunities.
Probably the one with the most
potential that I started this month is a Medical Tourism venture that was
created to take advantage of the Obamacare debacle and offer ways for Americans
to get first class healthcare for a fraction of the price of the US in places
like Mexico and Chile. That hasn't been announced publicly yet, however.
I also plan on offering a related
business where we supply cutting-edge natural nutritional supplements that are
really taking advantage of the daily breakthroughs in science to provide people
with natural solutions to their problems rather than the medical/chemical
"solutions" offered by the Western medical-industrial complex that
mostly treats symptoms and not the root cause, which eventually just makes
people sicker. That also is yet to be announced.
Daily
Bell: Tell us about your Bitcoin
adventure. Any chance of doing something there?
Jeff
Berwick: I have entered into many Bitcoin
ventures. I see Bitcoin as a revolution in money and banking the way the
Internet was a revolution in communication (and in which I also participated,
starting Stockhouse.com in Canada, which was worth $240 million by 2000 after
founding it in 1993).
We have recently partnered to help
found GoldSilverBitcoin.com, which is the first exchange directly between
precious metals and Bitcoin, among many other ventures I am dabbling in.
Daily
Bell: What's the next big challenge people
are facing who wish to secure their livelihoods and independence in this
difficult time? What should people be doing generally?
Jeff
Berwick: Aside from everything I have said
above, the most important thing is to stop listening to the mainstream media and the government and think for yourself. Do your own
research ... don't even depend on anything I say. Look it up and dig deeper.
The truth is out there and you can find it. Your government-registered
financial adviser likely has no idea about what is really going on. This is the
most dangerous time in human history for capital and it is up to you to guide
your own ship to survive... and prosper.
And if you don't have capital, make
it. Outside of the overtaxed and overregulated West there is nothing but
opportunity. Get outside of thinking within your national borders like a serf
and do what your forefathers did – take a chance and go somewhere else where
the opportunities currently lie. I write regularly about this at The Dollar
Vigilante and we have TDV Groups as part of our newsletter, which is a network
of liberty-loving expats around the world who have gone to a new region and
made a life for themselves.
It has never been easier, thanks to
air travel, the Internet, ATM machines, mobile phones and countless other
technologies. But soon, as Western governments continue to close the doors, it
will never be harder. Mark my words.
Daily
Bell: Any other thoughts?
Jeff
Berwick: A lot of what I talk about sounds
very scary to most people. I want to finish by saying that what I am talking
about is hopeless but it's not serious, to paraphrase the Robert Redford movie
from 1965. There will be massive change in the coming years but don't let it
worry you. Just take action to be aware of those changes and prepare for them.
After that, enjoy every moment you can with loved ones and enjoy life.
Humankind has been through worse times before. And there is a lot of hope that
once this collapse happens we will move on to a world more free, peaceful and
prosperous than anyone can imagine. And, if not, enjoy what you've got while
you've got it and live your life in such a way that when it is over you don't
regret any of it.
While the future seems dire I am
expecting countless heroes to come out of nowhere, like Bradley (now Chelsea)
Manning, Edward Snowden and perhaps even you! Create the change you want to see
in life. We will need all the help we can get.
Daily Bell: Thanks!
Source:
http://www.thedailybell.com/exclusive-interviews/34772/Anthony-Wile-Jeff-Berwick-on-Practical-Solutions-to-a-Collapsing-World-Order/
See more at: http://www.thedailybell.com/exclusive-interviews/34772/Anthony-Wile-Jeff-Berwick-on-Practical-Solutions-to-a-Collapsing-World-Order/#sthash.nBWHRcDf.dpuf
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