DOW THEORY ANALYSIS SAC
Special Report
US$: Truth in Advertising
Enrico Orlandini
Oct 12, 2006
In most civilized countries, we have laws designed to protect the average citizen from unscrupulous individuals or entities desiring to separate them from their hard earned money. As best I can determine, there's only one small problem with the legal system. Historically the biggest frauds have been carried out by governments and not individuals. What's more, they've almost always stood behind the rule of law when they did it. I contend that the greatest frauds in history all involved currencies and it is the greatest Ponzi scheme the world has ever known. You start by using gold and silver coins to gain the confidence of the masses. Then you tell them that "for there own good" you're going to convert to a 100% gold backed paper money, a/k/a fiat money. After all, it's less cumbersome and a sight more convenient. Slowly, almost imperceptivity, you reduce the percentage of gold required to back the paper money saying that it's a bad investment to have all that metal just lying around. Hell, just think of the cost to have someone come around everyday and dust those dirty old gold bars. Most of the debasements go unpublicized and are signed into law after midnight. Finally, after much time has passed, the public is told that you really don't need any convertibility at all because the currency is fully backed by a responsible government. There's a contradiction in terms for you: the words "responsible" and "government" used in the same phrase.
What I have described to you has taken place in every major country in the world on at least one occasion, and that includes the US. Go and look up the 'Continental' on Google if you don't believe me. France, Germany, Italy, and England have all had numerous fiat currencies over the last four hundred years. Then there's Latin America. In Peru alone, I have seen Soles de Oro, Soles, Intis, and Nuevo Soles in the last thirty years. From an historical perspective printing money in Latin American is almost a national pastime. Then there are fourth world countries in Asia and Africa where it's cheaper to use the local currency in the bathroom than... well, you get the idea. If you could put all of histories monetary failures in current U.S. dollars, I have no doubt that the figure would dwarf the size of our present day world economy. Trillions upon trillions of dollars up the stack!
With that in mind, I want to take a look at the U. S. dollar. More years ago than I care to remember, I was sitting in an introductory economics class when the professor asked anyone in the student body if they knew the definition of a dollar. Being a wonderful and thoughtful person, and realizing we were all dumber than dirty, he then supplied the answer: "it is a store of value" he proudly announced! Many people still believe that to be the correct definition, so I will begin here. The dollar is a product of the Federal Reserve Bank created more than ninety years ago. Congress, in their infinite wisdom authorized a private company (the Fed), to create money. The original shareholders included Morgan and Rothschild and a number of the "owners" weren't even American (so much for national security). Originally, dollars were required to be backed by some percentage of gold and bore the inscription "gold certificate" or "silver certificate" indicating they were redeemable in that metal. To the best of my knowledge, no one ever audited the Federal Reserve so there is no way of knowing if the metal existed or not. In the early 70's, Nixon made the debate a mute point when he closed the gold window.
With a swipe of the pen, gold became a barbarous relic and dollars were now backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. government. I suppose it's just a coincidence that the United States completed the transformation from being a creditor nation to a debtor nation at the same time. Today the U.S. holds the honor of being the world's largest debtor nation and we owe it all to the Federal Reserve. So there you have it folks, a dollar with no tangible assets and backed by the largest debtor nation the world has ever known! If that's not a scam, I don't know what is. What's more every new dollar printed is destined to service existing debt, or represents new debt, and that brings me to the present day definition of a dollar: debt! The dollar is nothing more and nothing less than debt, generated by a Federal Reserve which is not only illegally constituted, but also has no assets. And they charge for the pleasure! They weren't satisfied to just defraud Americans either, they had to defraud the world by making the dollar the world's reserve currency
Given everything I've said, I would like to take a quick look at where the dollar has been, where it is today, and where it'll be a little further down the road. Let's begin by taking a look at the historical chart for the U.S. Dollar:
From early 2002 until late 2004, the dollar was the short sale of the century, bottoming at 80.50. Then we spent almost all of 2005 rallying back up to 92.00. Now it appears that we are preparing to test the late 2004 lows. What will the test depend on? First and foremost on my list is the interest rate. If the dollar suspects that rates could rise, it could slow the decent or even create a short term rally. Such a rally would find resistance at 86.50, 87.92, 89.50 and 90.70. My personal opinion is that any such rally would run out of gas somewhere in the 86.90 area due to a trend line that passes through and extends back to the 2002 top. Short term support comes in at 85.50 and 83.50. I would expect that we'll remain in a trading range of 85.50 to 87.50 until the November elections pass, and then we'll head down; maybe with a vengeance.
Long term the dollar has no place to go but down and it will go down. I want to end this discussion by posting a Daily Point & Figure Chart of the U.S. Dollar:
I really like to use P & F charts because it strips out all the opinions, prejudices, politics, and other assorted garbage and boils everything down to price. It tells you what price is saying, and price is saying new multi-decade lows! If you want an opinion, I give you one: the dollar will go a lot lower than 76.00 over time. I predict that by the end of the decade, the dollar as we know it today will cease to exist. Inflation, or better yet hyperinflation, will see to that. And if we should be unlucky enough to see deflation, I suspect we'll all resort to barter and gold coins. No matter which of the above-mentioned three horsemen pop to the surface, there will be only two monies of choice: gold and silver. After all, it's in the U.S. Constitution and our forefathers had the presence of mind to put it there because they not only had foresight, but a good understanding of human nature.
Oct 10, 2006
-Enrico Orlandini
321gold.com |
