Norcini - If History is Any Guide, This is Going to End Badly
With
global stock markets trading in the red and continued volatility in
gold and silver, today King World News interviewed legendary Jim
Sinclair’s chartist, Dan Norcini. Norcini said he is seeing disturbing
parallels between what is happening today and what has already taken
place in history. Here is what Norcini had to say about the situation:
“I’ve read ‘The
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,’ by Gibbon, and he might as well
have been writing about modern-day America. Our financial institutions
are completely corrupt.”
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April 23, 2012
Dan Norcini continues:
The Roman empire began to
decline morally to the point where its own philosophers were expressing
dismay over the decay. The military also began to decline as more and
more of its ranks were constituted by mercenaries. At the same time,
military incursions by the barbarians on the fringes of the empire were
on the rise.
Public spending continued
unabated, with successive emperors opting to further increase the
already onerous tax burden on the people....
Continue reading the Dan Norcini interview below...
“There were other factors,
but the steady erosion of faith in the money system played a big role in
the collapse of the empire. The rulers had begun to debase their
coinage. They adulterated the metal content of the coins. When the
merchants caught on that there wasn’t the same amount of silver in the
coins, as an example, they raised the prices. This, of course, created a
great deal of inflation.
The emperors responded
to the inevitable inflation by issuing price controls under edict of
death. Without the ability to raise prices, merchants were unable to
sell at a profit, so Rome experienced chronic shortages of many goods.
Some merchants were forced to close down their shops. Others were a bit
more creative, if not daring – they sold goods ‘under the table’ on the
black market.
The bottom line is the
merchants began to understand how the monetary authorities (emperors)
were corrupting the money by debasing it. It’s complicated, but let’s
just say that as this debasement of the coinage continued, inflation
spiraled out of control, the currency collapsed and the empire
eventually fell.
The combination of rising
prices and rising taxes gave birth to an exodus out of the empire by
many of its citizens. Unable or unwilling to comply with the onerous
tax burden, some simply abandoned their estates and homes and moved
elsewhere.
By the time the end had
come, in many cases, the citizens were actually relieved to see Rome
fall. Citizens began to think the new rulers would be less oppressive
than their former masters. Where I am heading with this, Eric, is that I
see disturbing parallels between ancient Rome and the United States.
People tend to forget that
Emperor Constantine and many of the extremely well-connected Romans went
to form the city of Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul). That Eastern
empire endured for another 1,000 years because they had gold and other
honest forms of money.
The bottom line is the
fabric of Roman society and the institutions became corrupt and this
weakened the empire, both internally and then externally. This
ultimately lead to the fall of the empire.
The US has entered a
similar period of decline. The political system is broken and corrupt,
and the major financial institutions now resemble criminal banking
syndicates. If history is a reliable guide, one thing you can be
assured is this will end badly.
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