To understand this fully you need to understand the history of money, and the history of the dollar in particular. We will not be proposing a full exposé here, merely some hints and references.
Following WW2 the prevailing powers met in Bretton Woods and decided the dollar would be the global reserve currency, one dollar being backed by 1/35th ounces of gold. The big society programs and monetary inflation in the 60s caused the collapse of the London gold pool, and ultimately a sovereign American default.
Of course Nixon “temporarily” suspending the gold window is not called a default in orthodox circles. But that’s what it was. The USA reneged on its promise. That meant the end of the gold exchange standard (the gold standard itself had died a few decades back already).
Confronted with a historic challenge, the USA negotiated with the Saudis that the dollar should be informally backed by Saudi oil. Cue the oil exchange standard, and the beginning of petrodollar diplomacy.
What was called the 1973 “oil crisis” was not an oil crisis, it was a dollar crisis. In other words it was a monetary event.
Followed a bumpy road for the US dollar prominence, with Volcker saving it in extremis at the end of the 70s, and American allies agreeing to devaluations in a series of accords. If you don’t know about the Plaza accord, Louvre accords, it is time to read up.
Following US victory in the scripted cold war, the dollar seemed to have no challenger left. This allowed the Greenspan great moderation years, an euphemism for a historical era of credit expansion, unseen since the 1960s.
The Nasdaq crash of 2000 and 9/11 symbolically signified the end of that era, and signaled the “new world order”; understood exoterically as a “new American century”, insiders were actually esoterically signaled towards the “new Chinese millennium”.
By the time the 2008 crisis hit, the end of the dollar system had become “baked in the cake”. That’s when powers that be started talking about it openly. That’s when the gold manipulation program started becoming admitted (vindicating GATA), and when China started overtly hoarding bullion. That’s also when the rumor of Fort Knox being empty started being allowed (encouraged) to spread.
The current Coronacircus situation, as highlighted here among other places, is meant to catalyze the “fall of America” and the “new world order”, that is a world order led by China. But please don’t take our word for it.
Trump’s “trade war” with China, that will culminate in “accusing China of spreading the virus”, will lead to a monetary conference that will be billed as a Plaza accord 2.0, but will actually be more comparable to the 1945 Bretton Woods conference. China will be “forced to accept” that the US dollar be depreciated against the Yuan Renminbi, as “compensation for the virus” (as competitive devaluation is being promoted as something beneficial by Mr Donald “I’m the king of debt” Trump). He will be celebrating a “great deal”, and he will be triumphantly reelected.
Will follow a period of debilitating inflation for the USA. Soon China will be remonetizing gold. That will end the era of the dollar’s supremacy.
What you are seeing today is a symptom of this. This is a monetary event. A deflationary event, that always precede periods of very high inflation. The ongoing deflationary tsunami (basically an 80-year old debt bubble collapsing on itself), which this absurd price action is a sign of, will cause the planners to react by going full Zimbabwe (which they have actually already started doing). Whatever amount they print will however be insufficient. This is how money dies: debilitating deflation, followed by hyperinflation. It will be playing out in the coming months.
It is important, at this point, to realize the USA is undergoing a controlled demolition by a parasite that has chosen China as its new host. The USA, the only country of significant size to have ever been founded on the natural principal of individual liberty, must be humiliated and destroyed. It is a historically productive and industrious country, whose values the parasite and eternal enemy of civilization abhor.
We are sorry to have to tell this to so many well-intended patriotic Trump supporters, but he is not what you think he is. Please look into his actual allegiances. We will not spell them out here, as any label would be imprecise and caricatural. The Commedia already does an excellent job with its stock characters, Pantalone and Il Dottore in particular.
For what it matters: we believe they will fail. The union might not survive, but places like Wyoming or Texas will never be subdued. The blood of Thomas Jefferson still flows in the veins of many Americans.
This was written in haste, please forgive shortcuts and approximations. For further reading we recommend Ferdinand Lips’ Gold Wars (PDF) and Nathan Lewis’ Gold the Once and Future Money (PDF).