Crime and Punishment

From private fraud to public folly, where goes sound money, so goes civilized society...

(Source: Getty Images)

Joel Bowman, checking in today from Buenos Aires, Argentina...

Fraud, farce… and fury. Nary a day goes by, it seems, when some shyster or another is not exposed for diddling the books, fiddling the numbers and filching investor funds. 

While the world waits to learn the fate of Mr. Bankman-Fried, a scandal-weary public seized a pound of flesh yesterday when another Silicon Valley darling, Elizabeth Holmes, was sentenced to more than a decade in prison for defrauding investors. The Wall Street Journal:

Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of Theranos Inc. who was convicted of defrauding investors, was sentenced to more than 11 years in prison, capping the extraordinary downfall of a onetime Silicon Valley wunderkind who promised to revolutionize blood testing.

U.S. District Judge Edward Davila, who oversaw the trial in which Ms. Holmes was found guilty of running a yearslong fraud scheme at her blood-testing company, delivered the sentence Friday in federal court. A jury convicted Ms. Holmes in January on four charges that she misrepresented the startup’s technology, finances and business prospects to investors.

Elizabeth Holmes... Anna Sorokin... Billy McFarland... Martin Shkreli... and of course, the latest (and probably largest) conman of them all, Sam Bankrun-Fraud. Is it just us, dear reader, or does there seem to be a hot run of conmen lurking around the traps these past few years? 

Time was when Joe Public could rely on his congressmen to rip him off, extort his earnings and generally hound, harass and harangue him at every turn. Now he has a whole new cohort of brigands, who didn’t even have the decency of getting themselves elected to public office, fleecing him at every turn. For shame!

It’s the Money, Stupid!

Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised. After all, where goes sound money, so too goes civilized society. (See It’s the Money, Stupid! for details.) With honest earners and savers losing a government-guaranteed 8% of their purchasing power annually (officially, that is... unofficially it’s likely much higher), dishonesty starts to look appealing to some. Why do things “by the book” when the state itself is cooking them?

Sound money underpins sound transactions, in which decent individuals trade their savings (their time) for their desired goods and services. By attacking the integrity of money – undermining its function as a steady store of value, reliable unit of account and accepted medium of exchange – the state lays waste to the social contract that undergirds civilization itself. 

Promises are broken... contracts become meaningless... and where once good faith and common decency stood, suspicion, deceit and chicanery take root.  

What would be the point of “breaking” a more or less functioning society, you wonder? Isn’t squeezing the Middle Class a bit like killing the golden goose? Why would a financial elite want to set their own country on course to Argentina, or Venezuela, or Zimbabwe? 

Bill took up the question in his three-part essay earlier this week, Middle Class Delenda Est. (See archived articles, below) But Dan has a theory, too... maybe it’s just the government doing what Harry Browne described all those years ago...

“The government is good at one thing. It knows how to break your legs, and then hand you a crutch and say, 'See if it weren't for the government, you wouldn't be able to walk.”

Break the financial system, in other words, then offer you a “solution”... which just happens to accord nicely with their own maniacal goal set and which will cost you even more of your liberty and privacy along the way. 

Here’s Dan, calling out the government’s sinister modus operandi in yesterday’s research note:

First destroy the currency (and the Middle Class) with inflation. Then, increase your leverage over them by replacing the money with the technology of surveillance and control. That’s what we’ve claimed is the plan of the current American financial regime. Financial Repression is the only way to get your way out of $31 trillion in debt without defaulting.

Here’s a question for you: Do you think it’s a coincidence that the same week the third-largest digital asset exchange melts down that the New York Fed announces a 12-week pilot program to test a proto Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC)? 

Hmm. You can read more about it here. The authorities say the point of a CBDC is to lower transaction costs and promote access and ‘inclusion’ in the financial system. When they let their guard down, they also talk about how digital money can give or deny permission to buy certain things, or even where you can travel (as if the G-20 statement earlier this week calling for international vaccine passports wasn’t bad enough). Location tracking and programmable money are closer than you think.

What do you reckon, dear reader? Is this just another “helping hand” from your duly elected better angels in public service? Or a wolf in sheep’s clothing, one who’s appetite is in direct opposition to your life, liberty and pursuit of happiness? Leave your thoughts in the comments section, below...

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Meanwhile, investment director Tom Dyson offered a concise summary of the overall investment strategy here at Bonner Private Research in a note to members on Wednesday. Here’s the key takeaway...

As regular readers know, we’ve battened down the hatches. There’s too much debt in the world and not enough real income to support it, now interest rates are rising. The Day of Reckoning has arrived.

We’re positioned for long bear markets in stocks, bonds and real estate. We’re forecasting a sort of lost decade for investment assets as society wrestles with energy, copper and food shortages, bad debts, price hikes, trade imbalances, war and unemployment.

I’m no permabear. I just think there are times when it pays to take risks and there are times when it doesn’t. I think now is one of those times. “Set the dial to maximum defense” we’ve said all year. 

I continue to suggest subscribers hold lots of cash and lots of physical gold. The cash hedges you against nominal price declines. The gold hedges you against a depreciating currency. It’s essential to hold both.

We’re also going to try to profit from shortages in energy and other basic materials. Our Trade of the Decade is long oil, short dollars. And for making shorter term trades, we use a model we call “inflate or die” which says the economy is now so leveraged, it functions with an “on-off” switch.

Either the Feds keep inflating the bubble… or the economy collapses chaotically. The switch is currently set to “off” which is why we’re being so cautious in our short term outlook for investments. We’ve also described this as “inflation volatility.”

Finally, we’re always on the lookout for any special situations we can take advantage of to earn a little safe income from our savings. 

Just on those “special situations” for a second, in late September Tom alerted BPR members to a foreclosure specialist that was poised to do well should the housing market continue to deteriorate (exactly as it has subsequently done). As of yesterday’s close, that pick was up just over 55%. It’s exactly the kind of situation Tom is looking for while keeping the overall portfolio locked in “maximum safety mode (that is, mostly cash and precious metals). 

On Wednesday, Tom introduced two new ideas to members; one, a holding company that’s trading at a steep discount (30%) to the value of the liquid assets it owns; the other, an options strategy that involves “selling-to-open” short-term, out-of-the-money, put options. It’s a way to generate income which, Tom reckons, “can easily reach a cash return of 25% on an annualized basis.”

If these kinds of strategies are of interest to you, take a look at our membership options here to find something that suits you. 

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And now for Bill Bonner’s missives from the past week...

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And that will do us for another weekend wrap. As always, feel free to share our work with friend and foe alike. We’ll be back tomorrow with a lite, pre-Thanksgiving musing.

In the meantime, keep warm and stay safe.

Until tomorrow...

Cheers,

Joel Bowman