So much has happened in the past few hours of 10 October 2018 that it will go down in history. In fact it went down in history 30 years ago already, and now it is playing itself out, to the day ironically, as a double whammy of climate and cash storm all in one day. 30 years ago on 01-9-88 The Economist magazine published an edition whose cover read “Get ready for a World Currency”. On it was a picture of a phoenix rising from the ashes of the dollar holding a coin with 10-10-2018 inscribed. This week the news was abuzz with the prophecy, as well as FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) about this day being one of immanent doom. Was Bitcoin the long-predicted one coin to rule them all, the world wondered? And then it hit!
While Hurricane Michael (close to Category 5) was hitting Florida as the 4th biggest in US history, a financial sell-storm was hitting Wall St, led interestingly by all the top tech shares like Facebook and Apple (both down 1%), Intel and Microsoft (down 1.5%), Amazon (down3%), and Netflix (down 4.3%) in the first few hours. By the time you read this it could be worse. Due to contagion the storm was sweeping the stock markets globally. As the Dow crashed by 830 points, the S&P500 and Nasdaq just as bad, Asian markets followed suit, as well as the EU. The era of rapid growth had ended overnight, all on the very day prophesied on the Cover of the Economist magazine 30 years ago. Was it a coincidence? Perhaps, but primarily it was because of…
The Fed
“The Fed has gone crazy” President Donald Trump (10-10-18)
The Federal Reserve Bank of America has just begun to raise interest rates for one of the few times since the crash of 2008. They are the ones that print all the worthless paper money for America, in order to prop up its unsustainable economy. Suddenly all those living on borrowed money, on debt, were about to be charged more for that debt. The stock market was at an all time high, sustained for the past several years since the Great Recession of 2008 by manipulation by the Fed, who lowered interest rates to near zero, and printed more paper money to climb out of the financial crash. Of course the Economist magazine of 30 years ago was never to know this when they published their prediction. Or were they? Did the Rothschilds somehow plan this whole Ponzi scheme circus all along? And are they and the shadow government actually the ones behind this Bitcoin one world currency? Many people are probably asking these questions now today, as we see the markets wobble. I mean when the Nasdaq has its biggest drop in 7 years, and $172 billion is lost overnight in the stock market, and Walmart/Sears – the biggest retail shop in America – has to file for bankruptcy, one can’t help but start questioning the industry. Basically the era of rapid growth came to an abrupt end on the very day predicted on the Economist magazine cover 30 years ago. Or so it seems to some conspiracy theorists. The timing is too coincidental. The category 4 hurricane (biggest ever recorded for October in history) is just an embellishment to the story.
A new world currency by 2018?
And it’s not just America feeling the crash. Italy is about to fall off the Euro, like a boot falling off the foot of the continent, and Deutsche bank is on the verge of collapse. German and French stock markets also fell 2% on the very same day, following Wall Street’s lead. Is Bitcoin this fabled one world currency predicted in the economist? In my opinion…No. I wish it was, but here are the facts: Bitcoin is used in very few places and situations at present to be anywhere near a global currency on the level prophesied in the article of Volume 306, page 9 of the Economist magazine. The article begins:
“Thirty years from now, Americans, Japanese, Europeans, and people in many other rich countries, and some relatively poor ones will probably be paying for their shopping with the same currency,”
In some rare cases Bitcoin is being used here and there but not much…yet. Maybe the timing of the article is just a bit out. Maybe Bitcoin will become the one world currency and could, even today, be a safe haven as a store of value as the stock market crashes. I wish it was, but it isn’t. In the past few hours of writing this, just a day after the stock market tumble, the Bitcoin price also dropped suddenly and sharply by about 5% and Etherium, the second biggest cryptocurrency by 11% in a matter of hours. Oh dear. There goes the theory. And Bitcoin is probably going to drop still further in price in the coming weeks and months, according to some analysts. We may be only half way through the current bear cycle. Nobody knows, but one thing is for sure, and that is that Bitcoin is not soaring in value as the stock market slumps. It is actually following suit, confirming what some have said – that it can’t be relide on as a safe haven just yet, as its price is related to the VIX index, the volatility index also known affectionately as the “fear index”. I’m not the one bursting the Bitcoin bubble. That bubble has already burst, 10 months ago. Yes we were in a bubble, but so was the stock market, and that too is being burst now as interest rates are hiked. It’s all unfolding as I write this…
What else did the Economist magazine prophesy?
Well the article of January 1988 did mention that “national economic boundaries are slowly dissolving”. And this was just before the Eurozone and the adoption of the Euro as a currency. It also wrote that “the absence of all currency risk would spur trade, investment and employment.” Well the Eurozone is taking tremendous strain since the adoption of their one currency. Just look at what happened to Greece a few years ago. The same is happening to Italy now. It was artificial to lump the southern countries with the northern ones, and we can see that crumbling today. “The world phoenix (the name they gave their mythical one currency) supply would be fixed by a new central bank, descended perhaps from the IMF.” Curiously the IMF is meeting today, as this is all unfolding, in Bali. And their primary topic of discussion is what they call the “Human capital index”. They say that more needs to be invested in the health and education of the poorer nations so that they can produce better workers who will boost the economy. It concerns me when leaders see humans more as a source of economic gain than as beings of consciousness who need their higher potentials fulfilled, beyond just health and earning capacity. Interestingly there is another “currency” besides Bitcoin or any cryptocurrency, that has been engineered, called the SDR – Special Drawing Rights. It was being used then already (mentioned in the Economist article of 1988) and deserves some investigation, since it is also starting to look like this fabled one world currency so talked about. Ironically enough one thing that both the Economist article and today’s IMF agree on is that we are heading towards a digital world. Back then the world wide web had not been invented yet. Today all money is becoming digital and Bitcoin is just the leading edge, based on Blockchain technology. However, I don’t think we can say just yet whether it is the fabled “phoenix” currency prophesied in the Economist magazine 30 years ago. We will have to wait and see. Let’s see what 11-11-18 brings…
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