COMMENT: I have investigated what you have said about our Western leaders. From the US to Britain, the Balkans, France, Poland, and Germany, they all want war. I am 77 now. My whole life was about creating peace. I remember Richard Nixon opening China and dividing it from Russia. I believe you are correct. There is no explanation for everyone seeking war other than to hide their appalling government mismanagement.
Thank you for your analysis. It is always unmatched.
GKB
REPLY: History repeats, and human nature never changes. We have the model from Rome, the greatest empire ever created. The Pax Romana was achieved by everyone benefiting in their economic relations. Once these people removed Russia from the SWIFT system, they condemned the United States to its demise. The rise of the BRICS has nothing to do with fiat money. All money has always been fiat. From ancient times, we find imitation coinage of the dominant economy being created by other regions, showing that there was always a premium over the metal content if it was a coin of the dominant economy like the US dollar today. Here is an imitation of an Athenian Owl stuck by the Egyptians, who never had coins until they were conquered nearly 100 years later by Alexander the Great. They issued imitation Athenian Owls because they were the currency of international trade.
Even the Celts, when Julius Caesar conquered Europe, still imitated his coinage. The metal was virtually the same, so it was not a counterfeit but an imitation. The Celts still used Roman coinage for their monetary system.
Even 300 years before Caesar, when the Macedonians were the dominant economic power of Phillip II and his son Alexander the Great, we find Celtic imitations of Macedonian gold where they at least tried to imitate the design.
Even after Caesar conquered Europe, we find Germanic imitations of Roman bronze coinage. Once more, they could have created their own coinage but imitated the coinage of Rome.
As trade expanded with India, we find a series of 300-year-old Indian imitations of Roman gold coinage. We also see Celtic imitations of Roman silver coinage and Germanic coinage, which also ran for about 300 years.
The fact that we have hundreds of years of imitations of the dominant economy PROVES beyond a shadow of a doubt that the coinage was NOT based on the metal content; there was always a premium applied to the dominant currency in the world at that time.
This entire nonsense that the dollar is just a fiat currency is absurd. The value of ANY currency is the strength of its economy. The dollar has been the RESERVE currency BECAUSE everyone wanted to sell their products to American consumers.
The PAX Romana took place BECAUSE all the conquered lands found it was beneficial to be part of the empire, for they could sell their products – hence free trade. World Peace was created by allowing free trade as the Romans did. Then, the people would oppose any local politician preaching war, for it would cut off their income. We were on the verge of world peace before COVID-19, when everyone participated in the world economy. Today that has all been destroyed. Peace is no longer fashionable – hatred and war now define world leaders.
