Transcript of the above video: 

I have actually had a lot of correspondence. Folks have been sending me emails and messages, comments and various videos regarding this whole notion of a "Teflon" Thai Baht or something. I think maybe Tim Newton did a video on it; people have sent me links. If he did, tip of the hat to him. I don't know what he actually said, I haven't watched that video, but it seems to be, the premise is and this is something even I have my own issues with a "strong" Thai Baht but I am not getting into the whole issue of whether it is good or bad if the Baht is strong compared to the Dollar or other currencies abroad. The issue here is and what I want to dive into is what the thumbnail pertains to.

The thumbnail is actually taken from one of my all-time favourite movies. I love the movie Schindler's List. I know that sounds strange in a sense because it's a very tragic film, but it is a film that to my mind really speaks to the resilience and the endurance of the human spirit, and also it is interesting because it shows how, in a sense, even a scoundrel can be sort of redeemed just by his own basic humanity. Schindler, and I have actually read two biographies on Oscar Schindler, ever since I saw that movie, and I find it to be almost; he is a very fascinating character. One, he was actually a member of Germany Intelligence; he was a member of the Abwehr. He was a very controversial figure in the Czech Republic - or what was once called Czechoslovakia - pertaining to the issues surrounding the Sudetenland, but ultimately, and he was a sort of if you will early member of the National Socialist Movement in Germany, which is ironic or paradoxical, however you want to look at it, when you look at his later history where I just think the man's basic humanity came through and he just couldn't be party to a massacre, and he just basically took it upon himself to help people, is basically what he did, especially people that were close to him that he knew, that were personal. There is another figure from that era, Sir Nicholas Winton, you can read about, who assisted in getting thousands of children to safety in the lead up to the Second World War. There are stories like this. They are just kind of heart-warming where what is it the Shakespearean quote: "So shines a good deed in a weary world." In any event, there is a scene in that movie which is actually apocryphal. The scene did not occur or the circumstances where he is seeking this loan to buy this factory actually did not occur. The factory was affectively appropriated and given to him if you read his biography. But that said, it's a scene where he's talking to these two guys who are in the ghetto - these two Jewish folks - and they are talking to him and he is trying to get them to loan money to basically buy their factory and then he is going to pay them back with pots and pans that he produces that they can then use to trade while they are in the ghetto. That's basically the premise of it. And there's a scene where one of them says, "Hey that deals not good enough. A fair deal would be a percentage of the company." And he says, "that's not possible under the current circumstances we are in." Basically they are not allowed to own anything at that point legally, if you read the history about it. Then the one guy says to him, he says, "money is still money," and Schindler turns to him and he says, "No it is not, that's why we are here." This is an important thing to understand and again I am not going to the whole issue, this doesn't get to the underlying issues associated with the tragedies that occurred in World War II, I'm not going to that. What I'm trying to explain here is, it's what Schindler says there.

There are points in history where the very paradigm of money or of what is money or what holds value, changes. Now certain things, there have been through lines throughout history. There is a great guy to really watch if you are interested in some of this, a gentleman by the name of Alastair MacLeod, I'll try to find his Substack link and put it up in the description below; he used to work for Gold Money. He's on YouTube, he's all over YouTube; he talks about this stuff. But he often talks about how people have a very fundamental misunderstanding of the so-called "rising price of gold" because he says gold is not rising, it's the value of Fiat money that is falling, or I think it would be better put, the perceived value of Fiat money versus gold that is falling in people's estimation. Rounding this back, and this is the whole point of ‘money is still money’. No it is not, that's why we're here.

A perfect example of this was a major occurrence and that I have recently talked about especially in connection with the talk of these account seizures and so-called mule accounts etc., etc., there was a “temporary” situation that occurred under Nixon where Nixon “temporarily closed the gold window, I believe 1971, he temporarily” closed the Gold Window; it's never opened since. Up to that point, under what I would call Bretton Woods 1.0, basically the Western world's economies were, all Fiat currencies were sort of pegged to the dollar and then the dollar was pegged to gold. And then at one point France sent in a couple of battleships to New York Harbour and said, "hey we are here to collect our gold; we want to change in dollars, and we want to take gold." In the close aftermath of that, Nixon “temporarily” closed the gold window. In that moment, what we had known of as money was not still money in the same sense it had been the day before. That's one of these moments one of these almost epochs if you will, where things fundamentally changed and that's what Schindler is trying to convey in that scene in my opinion, even though it's apocryphal that hey, we are under circumstances where the very paradigm of what is money and the value thereof, maybe the value thereof of maybe the better salient point, the crux of it, has changed and in '71 dollars, at least on a Central Bank Level, ceased to be redeemable directly for gold. From that point forward, we went into what I would kind of call Bretton Woods 2 where effectively, and by the way, for all of those out there who are big haters of Henry Kissinger, and I know Henry Kissinger has a real mixed bag of accomplishments or so-called accomplishments, but what we would call the “Petro Dollar” system yeah that was a big accomplishment. If anything, Kissinger should probably be lauded by Americans for the 50 years after '71 because the Petro Dollar system basically existed whereby Saudi Arabia basically bought US treasuries; they would only sell oil in dollars so effectively the dollar kind of got tied to oil in place of the whole Bretton Woods 1.0 system.

For better, worse, and I am not saying I necessarily like this development, I want to be clear on this. I am, at the end of the day I was born and raised in America. I have come to love my adopted homeland here in Thailand, but I am at the end of the day an American by birth, if nothing else. I am Western too; I'm Western thinking, I'm sort of Western oriented in the way that I approach life I guess philosophically. I don't like necessarily seeing, one, I've done a video in the past talking about the YUASA shift where sort of we've watched the epicenters of technical innovation move West if you will over the centuries and in my opinion we are currently in the midst of, I don't think we can say it's fully concluded, but we are watching that jump over here to East Asia. Now I would argue it is not going to one place; it sort of going to be diffused throughout East Asia, but that's what we are seeing. I viewed Silicon Valley Bank's collapse as a watershed moment where we saw the YUASA shift and things started moving over here. The point I am trying to make is I don't necessarily like these developments; I'm not making these videos because I like it. I'm just trying to point it out and especially for expats try to give them a framework in which to sort of deal with all of this stuff in their day-to-day lives, for lack of a better word. 

For those who are interested in long form content that I make on a weekly basis where I do dive into this stuff even much more deeper than even a video like this quite frankly under certain circumstances, especially as it pertains to local, regional and even international geopolitics, I get into it on our long-form news service, Integrity News Service you can email us, [email protected], we can give you the information about how to get on the mailing list for that. Also while I'm talking to my book, I'll put some photos up, my better half and I have nice set up a restaurant here in downtown Bangkok. If you're interested in American Diner style food, breakfast anytime, it is called Pancake Palace. As the name implies, breakfast anytime as well as American Diner style food: cheeseburgers, hamburgers, buffalo wings, chilli bowls. You can check us out there, links in the description below to find our location; we would love to see you there.

 

Back to this though. The point I'm trying to make is I don't like necessarily the rise of BRICS if you will. I don't like necessarily the developments that I am seeing where there may be for lack of a better term, I mean it's just factually correct, something of a decline in usage of the Dollar in international trade. I'm not necessarily in favour of any of it but at the end of the day it is happening to some degree. Now I'm also not Chicken Little. I do not think the sky is falling. I do not think anyone including any of the jurisdictions in the so-called BRICS countries want to see a so-called Dollar collapse, that's not my point. But I do think that as the geopolitical situation changes, as the economies of Eurasia especially begin to rise and the dynamic of World Trade networks begins to shift, we are entering one of these moments not unlike the scene that I thumbnailed from the movie Schindler's List where "money is still money". Well no it is not, and in a way, the rise of crypto is somewhat indicative of this, something that we once: I mean I remember the first time I heard of the notion of cryptocurrency, I kind of laughed about it, because I never thought people would actually believe that value could be stored that way. Now if you want to get into all the theories and philosophies behind crypto, I don't have time for that. I have my own thoughts on it; I see the benefits of it but I don't think it's the saviour other people think it is.

Long story short and to sort of conclude this video, I think we are entering a very different period than anything we have seen in roughly the last 75 years, well maybe longer than that now, but basically since the end of the Second World War - the creation of what I would call Bretton Woods 1.0 - and then Bretton Woods 2.0 that we saw basically up to this point, things are shifting. Do I think it's cataclysmic for Western fiat currency holders? Dollar, Pound, Euro, otherwise? No not necessarily. But things are changing and the paradigm out here in East Asia, especially regarding those currencies, I think it is probably going to shift, so don't be surprised if it does. And exactly how and the permutations of that shift remain to be seen, but we will certainly be keeping you updated on this channel as the situation evolves.