Recognizing a ponzi scheme that is nearing the end of its cycle is like watching a slow-motion traffic accident occur in real time. As more and more people become aware of the lie, you see them veer off the road to get the hell out of there before they get caught up in the wreckage. Some people, actually a lot of people who are unknowing participants in a ponzi scheme never figure it out until after the fact.
Greed has a funny way of keeping us ignorant, so let's run a little exercise to bypass that mental block, and take a look at the fiat currency ponzi scheme that is nearing the end of its cycle.
So what exactly is a ponzi scheme?
A quick Google search gives the following definition:
a form of fraud in which belief in the success of a nonexistent enterprise is fostered by the payment of quick returns to the first investors from money invested by later investors.
So in essence, a ponzi scheme is simply a first in, first out investment scheme where the money you invest into the scheme pays the interest to those who invested before you. The process of a ponzi scheme is quite literally unsustainable in the long run because you need to bring in more and more new investor money to cover the payments to existing investors, as well as to pay out investors that choose to cash out their shares.
Another scheme that is similar to a ponzi scheme is called a 'pyramid scheme,' which follows the same logic. A classic example of a pyramid scheme is Amway, where you make money by selling Amway products to other people, but if you get someone else on board to be a seller, you also get a cut of their profits. They in turn will need to bring in new sellers as well, which will give them and you a cut of their cut. This scheme is far more sustainable, but the only real winners are those who get in at the ground floor, who end up raking in Millions or even Billions in profits without lifting a finger. This is why it's called a scheme.
Regardless of which scheme you think is better, the limiting factor for both is their inability to work forever, because eventually you run out of new people to fund the existing people, or you run out of new money.
But let's suppose that you could run a scheme on a global scale to include as many people as possible, and you stretch out the timeline so that the majority of "investors" never even realize a scheme is taking place because they haven't seen it fail in their lifetime, or during their predecessor's lifetime. This success rate boosts the confidence of participants in the system, and maintaining confidence is the key to keeping a scheme afloat.
This is important and worth repeating: The continued success of a ponzi scheme relies on participant confidence. The moment something seems amiss, usually when someone tries to cash out a large sum of money, or interest payments start getting delayed is when fear and uncertainty arise.
So considering that a scheme ends when the flow of new money stops, you would need to find a way to control the money itself, to print new money into the scheme to pay existing participants. This of course has potential, because if you control the creation of new money, you can keep the scheme going for a long time, centuries even.
So at this point you should start to see the connection I'm making between the classic ponzi scheme, and how to actually make it work long term.
At present, all but a few countries in the world are (for all intents and purposes) enslaved to central banks and their regulation of the global financial system. Now, I'm not making a case against a global economy, but rather against the means by which the current global economy has been set up, and who benefits long term.
In theory, the current system should be sustainable for a very long time, but yet it isn't holding up to the test of time, and the reason why? Human greed, that's why.
As a species we have a lot of unique behavioral traits, one of them being the instinct to stockpile wealth. Consider though that there is only so much wealth to go around, and money isn't wealth; it is simply a vehicle to move wealth around. The longer the fiat money scheme goes on for, the more the money supply will inflate because like every ponzi scheme you need new money to legitimize the old money and keep the cycle going, but you need to slow it down enough so that things don't change too much during the lifetime of individual participants.
If you go to the grocery store and the shelf price of a loaf of bread is 2 dollars, but by the time you reach the checkout the price has increased to 3 dollars, that is going to alarm you. This rapid and real-time devaluation of money is known as runaway inflation, and it's happened before in places like Venezuela and Zimbabwe, where those responsible for keeping the scheme going get greedy and pump new money into the scheme too quickly, which leads to a drop in confidence and a rise in panic spending.
If you aren't aware, the rate of new money being pumped into the system is supposed to be about 2%, which in theory allows the scheme to be sustainable indefinitely, at least longer then any of us will be alive. This of course is the Achilles heel of the scheme.
Because the scheme has survived for so long, the old guard who maintain the scheme get old and die, and fresh faces take their place. With each new generation of bankers, you're going to eventually get new schemes being built on top of the existing scheme. The concept of sub-prime loans is one that you and I are familiar with, as it caused the crash of 2007-2008 in the speculative markets, and caused the worst recession in nearly a century around the globe. In 2007 it was sub-prime mortgages, and in this decade it has expanded to sub-prime corporate loans and too much unsecured credit.
The overall goal of the scheme is to last long enough to transfer all of the worlds wealth into the hands of the global oligarchy, otherwise dubbed as the global elites by some, or the banksters by others.
In my opinion we are nearing the end of the current iteration of the scheme, as the transfer of wealth is almost complete from the West. It's not done yet, but it is the milestone by which one could figure out how much longer the existing fiat system has before it outlives its purpose.
I also believe that as we reach the end of the scheme we will see more and more banks abuse the scheme for their own end, and cause the fabric that holds the scheme together to tear and weaken until total global collapse occurs.
We see more and more insidious schemes being built on top of the fiat scheme, like student loans for example.
Credit cards are another scheme that have been allowed to exist on top of the fiat scheme, where banks are given license to practice usury (i.e. the illegal action or practice of lending money at unreasonably high rates of interest) and enslave consumers through the mechanism of debt and minimum monthly payments. The one thing you don't want to run a balance on is a credit card, as doing so means you are being fleeced.
So when does the fiat ponzi scheme end? Or, does it end?
What happens when 100% of the world is owned by the issuers of fiat currency?
One of the big threats to the scheme, at least it used to be a threat was the risk of a bank run, where people panic and try to withdraw all their money. This was a real danger in the past for the banks, as banks have always been notorious for lending out more money then they have in reserves. Those reserves make up the foundation of our digital money system, as banks are regulated through this mechanism of limiting how much new money can be generated.
This threat no longer exists for banks, and that is because by default your bank account has daily and weekly debit limits. Raising those limits to suspicious levels, or withdrawing money at a suspicious rate will alert the authorities into possible money laundering activities, or some other fraudulent activity. Business accounts have far more leeway when it comes to limits and safeguards, but rest assured those safeguards are in place to protect the banks first, and you second.
Then you have to consider that banks don't need your money in the first place, and having all your money sitting in a bank account is unsafe these days, especially in the event that a government enacts a bail-in that confiscates money from bank accounts to pay back national debt. This only occurs if a country has reached or exceeded their money printing quota, and it usually signals that a massive transfer of wealth has taken place.
As the global oligarchs take control of more and more wealth, they will in turn begin to take over governments, or to strong arm governments into being a puppet for them. Less and less will politicians represent the voters, and more and more they will enact policies that benefit no one but those at the top.
Trump's tax cuts? They happened because a bail-in for the USA wasn't going to work, as few people have a positive bank balance, and so the money was lifted from tax refunds that people were expecting but didn't get, and in turn the multi-national corporations get financial assistance by not having to pay as much corporate tax. It's a case of the poor feeding the rich, if you want to be realistic about it.
One only needs to observe the decoupling of the current stock market from reality to see how uninterested the wealthy are in hiding the scheme. In America, once dubbed the richest country in the world, there are over a million people living in their cars and/or mobile homes, and that number is growing. Millions more are homeless and unemployed, abandoned by the system that no longer needs their confidence. As more and more people are left out in the cold, the rest of us who are "lucky" enough to have an income must work harder and longer hours to keep the wealth flowing from the poor to the rich.
If the entire workforce went on strike and an economy was brought to a screeching halt, do you think the illusion would be maintained? No, of course not. The military will be called in to force people back to work at gunpoint.
Of course, this is not going to happen because the average person today does not have any survival skills. Like a herd of sheep, our society is so dependent on the shepherds that we could try to rebel, but most would starve to death. The system itself, the fiat ponzi scheme is itself too big to fail, because without it we are useless.
The environment is so polluted that catching a fish or eating wild vegetation is potentially harmful in the long term. In many cities the use of water for growing crops is illegal, and collecting rainwater instead is also illegal. Face it, you are probably incapable of surviving on your own in a crisis, and even then you would be thrown in jail for trying to.
More and more people are becoming aware of the scheme and the lie, but that usually means the scheme has run it's course and the illusion is no longer necessary. What are you going to do about it anyway, complain? Go off the grid? Try to warn others that they are screwed and can't do anything about their predicament anyway?
It's not too late to at least rid yourself of any bank derived debt and to learn to be more self reliant before the bonds of fiat slavery are too tight. Keeping the system going benefits only those who use it to transfer wealth for themselves, and once they have what they want they can remove the guard rails of the system, let runaway inflation occur, and make sure that the people themselves are so divided politically that they fight each other over whatever scraps are left.
In the meantime, while the plebs fight each other, the owners of all the wealth move to the next country for wealth extraction. China appears to be the next victim, but the current victim (the USA) still hasn't figure it out yet, there is no making America great again because the nation has already been vacuumed clean. Fort Knox? Don't be surprised if one day they crack it open and its full of cobwebs. It isn't just one country at a time that gets vacuumed up, but the surrounding countries as well. China, India, Russia, and other parts of Asia will be the next victims of wealth transfer, and the people of these nations will welcome the trade off with open arms as they get luxuries now for poverty later. Much later. Far enough away in the future that its not a worry for now.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I think the world is going to end or something crazy. But as far as wealth and lifestyle are concerned, the golden age for the west is finished, and the golden age of the East is coming. Some events may need to transpire first, wars and what not, but the change is happening and there's nothing you or I can do about it except to prepare mentally and financially for the transition period.
Whatever you do, be smart about it.
Thank you for reading. shares and comments are always welcome.