Mobile Only Banking

 

A Hand-held Revolution
[courtesy Google Images]

I’m not a real-estate student or investor.  Nevertheless, the following video was produced from a real estate agent’s perspective by the NREP (National Real Estate Post).  The video describes an ongoing revolution that involves “smart phones” and “mobile only banks”.

According to the video, there are now ten banks in the world that are “mobile only”.  That means these banks have no vaults, no tellers, no ATMs, or branch offices.  You can’t even access these banks by means of your desktop computer.  They are only accessible by means of smart phones.

As I said, “mobile only” banking marks a revolution.  This revolution points towards a purely digital, global currency.  The question is, can this “revolution” withstand the dangers of digital currency, digital banking and hackers?

video     00:06:20

http://thenationalrealestatepost.com/mobile-only-banks-the-new-rage/

 

 

The Trouble with Cash? There’s Not Enough Of It

Cash: Not Enough to Go Around
[courtesy Google Images]

Phoenix Capital Research recently published an article entitled “Physical Cash Poses a HUGE Problem For Central Banks”.  According to that article,

 

“More and more institutions are trying to make it harder for you to move your money into cash.”

 

That’s not precisely true. Generally speaking, we don’t have any “money” (gold or silver) in circulation.  We only have “currency” (fiat, paper and digital dollars).  It would therefore be more correct to say that,

 

“More and more institutions are trying to make it harder for you to move your wealth [not money] that you’ve stored in the form of paper debt instruments into cash.”

 

In other words, financial institutions are trying to force people to store their wealth in paper or digital debt instruments rather than convert that wealth into physical cash.

 

[Digital] Capital Controls

Hi-Speed Digital Dollars
[courtesy Google Images]

According to Wealth Reporter (“Fed Employees Roll Out Bold Idea To Trap The Entire Country’s Wealth”):

 

“Capital controls are simply laws that regulate and restrict what you are allowed to do with your money by regulating the flow of cash in and out of a national economy. The laws define such things as where you can invest your cash and how you can allocate your assets.

“A major financial news source just published shocking details about a research report by two employees at the Federal Reserve Bank. The 36-page report applauds the use of ‘capital controls’ in global markets.”

 

Capital controls are intended to regulate or even prevent the flow of currency in or out of a nation’s economy.

So long as the international flow of paper currency is controllable, central banks (like the Federal Reserve) have two mechanisms for controlling their nation’s economy:

 

“Grandmaster Putin’s Golden Trap”?

Grandmaster?
[courtesy Google Images]

Dmitry Kalinichenko recently wrote a brilliant article entitled “Grandmaster Putin’s Golden Trap”.  That article was originally written in Russian and later translated into English by Kristina Rus.

The translation is generally easy to read, but there are some portions of that English translation that may not have clearly expressed Mr. Kalinichenko’s original ideas.

The article began with,

 

“Very few people understand what [Russia’s President Vladimir] Putin is doing at the moment. And almost no one understands what he will do in the future.  No matter how strange it may seem, but right now, Putin is selling Russian oil and gas only for physical gold.”

Say whut?!

Surely, Russia is not selling its petroleum products only for physical gold.  Surely, Russia is accepting other fiat currencies (such as euros, yuan and dollars) as “payment” for its crude oil.  From his second line, Mr. Kalinichenko’s arguments seem false or even silly.

 

Inquiring Minds Wanna Hack

Hackers
[courtesy Google Images]

The New York Times recently published an article entitled “Hacked vs. Hackers: Game On”.  That article warned of the growing dangers of “hackers” breaking into our credit card and banking accounts:

 

“The impact on consumers has been vast. Last year, over 552 million people had their identities stolen, and nearly 25,000 Americans had sensitive health information compromised—every day.

 “Over half of Americans, including President Obama, had to have their credit cards replaced at least once because of a breach, according to the Ponemon Group, an independent research organization.”

 

Of the world’s 7 billion people, over one-half billion have had their identities stolen by hackers.  In just one year.

 

Government To Cut Size of US Military

Fighting for our freedoms? Or for our currency?
[courtesy Google Images]

Prior to A.D. 1933, the paper dollar was backed by both gold and silver.  That meant that if you had a paper dollar in your pocket, you could trade it for a silver dollar.  If you had twenty paper dollars in your pocket, you could trade them in for an ounce of gold.

In A.D. 1933, President Roosevelt removed gold coins from domestic circulation and the domestic paper dollar was backed only by silver.  Foreign-held paper dollars could still be redeemed with gold.

The government stopped redeeming domestic paper dollars with silver in A.D. 1968 and stopped redeeming foreign-held paper dollars with gold in A.D. 1971.  At that point the dollar became pure fiat without any intrinsic value.  We could’ve expected significant inflation (devaluation of the paper dollar) at that time, but the Nixon administration cut extraordinary deals with Saudi Arabia and then OPEC whereby both of those entities guaranteed to sell their crude oil for U.S. dollars only.

Net result?  If any nation wanted to purchase crude oil on the international market, they had to use US dollars to do so.   Given that most nations needed to purchase crude oil, most nations therefore needed fiat dollars. The resulting demand created the “petro-dollar”—US dollars that were no longer backed by gold or silver, but were implicitly backed by crude oil.

 

Digital Currency: Convenient for Users; Convenient for Robbers

Bitcoins are always portrayed as tangible “coins” rather than intangible, digital “bits”
[courtesy Google Images]

Reuters recently reported in “Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox disappears in blow to virtual currency” that,

“Mt. Gox, once the world’s biggest bitcoin exchange, looked to have essentially disappeared on Tuesday, with its website down, its founder unaccounted for and a Tokyo office empty bar a handful of protesters saying they had lost money investing in the virtual currency.

“It was not clear what has become of the exchange, which this month halted withdrawals indefinitely after detecting ‘unusual activity.’  A global bitcoin organization referred to the exchange’s ‘exit,’ while angry investors questioned whether it was still solvent.”

What’s been done to Mt Gox Bitcoins can be done to any other digital currency—including the fiat dollars in your credit cards, debit cards, bank accounts and pensions funds.  It can all be made to disappear in moment, and investors can be left with nothing.