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The Great Taking
by David Rogers Webb
For the past number of months, "The Great Taking" has been making the rounds on the internet and into the hands of financial experts, prompting more scrutiny of some of the shocking claims made by David Rogers Webb in the book.
As the book - which was released in PDF form for free - gained traction, Webb produced a video to further spread his message. That video is presented below.
Visit The Great Taking Website
The video below, by Mike Maloney and Alan Hibbard of goldsilver.com, fleshes out some of the more intricate parts of Webb's thesis and helps explain how the depths of the financial industry is preparing for national, regional, and even global crises.
If you've made it this far, here's Mike Maloney and Alan Hibbard again, discussing the velocity of money, an essential topic to understanding how and why conditions in finance, economics, and monetary policy are changing.
Zang covers monetary velocity, inflation, wealth ineqaulity, gold price suppression and how to guard against accelerating currency debasement.
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The following is a copy of a couple of excellent comments by a ZeroHedge poster known as GCJohns1971, who explained some of the mechanics and structure of the banking and securities system with clarity. To wit:
Does everyone understand the meaning of the term "Fractional Reserve Bank"? Let's use the 10:1 ratio that was until recently the US rule to clarify the idea. If a traditional bank, call it "Bank A", has assets equal to $100 then they can issue up to $900 in credit. That makes their book $900 in loan assets + $100 in deposits/real assets for a $1,000 book of which $100 are not that bank's loans -ergo 10:1 loan to equity value. But those $900 of loans can be deposited into "Bank B". Bank B now has "$900" in unencumbered assets. Bank B can loan up to $8,100. $8,100 + $900= $9000. $9,000:$900 = 10:1. Bank C could do the same thing with the loans from Bank B. Bank C could receive the $8,100 from Bank B and issue $72,900 in loans. $72,900 + $8,100 = $81,000. $81,000:$8,100 = 10:1. See? Notice that the actual "Real" assets are not loaned at any step. Instead at each step they become collateral for loans a multiple of their value. This is called "Rehypothecation". Why loans rather than loaning a portion of the original $100 asset at Bank A? Because even the original $100 is just credit, and is no more or less real than all the credit that it spawns downstream. And the bigger the loans the more the profit. Why a 10:1 ratio? It is a sovereign convention. Before 1934 The Fed had to keep 40% of the dollars issued as physical Gold. After 1934 the Gold revaluation to $35 they also reduced the % of backing to 10%. In some places in Europe the ratio is as high as 50:1. The average in Europe is around 20:1 at the GSIBs. Bank A could be the Federal Reserve. Bank B could be a Tier 1 dealer like Blackrock or otherwise a Globally Systemmically Important Bank (GSIB). Bank C could be your customer Bank. Now imagine the exact same process, except instead of loaning Dollars into existence they loan securities into existence. Bank A would be the DTCC. Bank B would be the Market Makers. Bank C is your brokerage. You literally already own NOTHING. You just don't know it. + regarding stonks;- You don't own the stock. You are an unsecured creditor of the brokerages' in a dollar amount roughly equal to the current trading value of the stock. The brokerages don't really own the stock either. They are creditors of the Market Makers. The Market makers don't own the stock. They are creditors of the DTCC. The DTCC owns some stocks. But the number they loaned to the Market Makers were a fractional reserve multiple of the ones they owned. Just as the Market Makers used their "stock claims" as a reserve to issue a multiple of stock claims to the brokerages. Just as the brokerages used what they had from the Market Makers as a fractional-reserve seed to extend credit in the name of the stock to you. All in all there will be somewhere between TEN and ONE THOUSAND stock claims for every share that actually exists. Get it? It is fractional reserve banking where credit is issued denominated in shares rather than in currencies. 3rdly- I thought this was happening in 2009. And I largely existed ledger-denominated wealth in favor of non-depreciable physical assets. As a result I lost a lot of opportunity for capital appreciation...in theory. I have at times kicked myself when feeling doubt, comparing those 2009-physical assets to contemporary traders' multiples. But when I've done the math, those assets have done between 2x and 6x in 15 years, beating inflation handily, and beating the S&P. It is a serious mistake for Millenial and GENZ Hodlers to believe they are the first to recognize the problems of credit currency. And it is purely unwarranted arrogance for them to believe themselves to have seen those problems the most clearly or presciently. The problem, you see, is that by the time it is possible to KNOW, rather than merely suspect, that it is time to get out of the market, it is IMPOSSIBLE to get out of the market. THAT IS WHAT REHYPOTHECATION REALLY MEANS: YOUR ASSETS ARE TOO TIED UP IN COMPETING CLAIMS TO WITHDRAW WHEN NEEDED. Your choice is to be (seemingly) much too early, or far too late. You only survive if you are the former. But you'll end up kicking yourself in the interim when doubts set it. The fact is, you don't know this evening that the market will reopen, or if it does, be liquid, or if it is liquid, that it will be liquid FOR YOU while all the institutions in the world are in line in front of you and have higher priority. Betting that all of those will happen next week is gambling rather than investing. And once you've taken the effort to understand how the financial system is truly constructed you will marvel at how crooked, lopsided, slapdash, and based upon seignorage it is.
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