Oct 1
Oil, Precious Metals and the Declining Dollar
The U.S. dollar has been in steady decline against nearly all foreign currencies. For the seventh consecutive session, it has
set new record lows against the euro, and for the first time since November 1976, Canada’s currency traded at par with its
American counterpart.
The dollar is dropping for a very good reason. The U.S. federal debt has been skyrocketing, approaching $9 trillion in 2007. We are
fighting a war that has cost our nation $1 trillion, and we have a growing crisis in the home loan market. The true reason the dollar
is declining is the massive trading shortfall we have with the rest of the world. Last year, we had a trade deficit of around $800 billion.
Nearly half the public portion of the federal debt is now owed to foreigners, and they are pulling out of dollars into
other currencies as the dollar shrinks in value. The euro is now the most popular reserve currency.
One of the reasons oil is hitting new record highs is weakness in the dollar. Traders are converting their
currency holdings to oil future contracts.
Gold and platinum have been acting like a classic warning indicator. Gold prices rose to $752.80 an ounce, the highest price
since January 1980. October platinum futures hit an all-time record of $1,395.50.
I think the biggest indication of trouble is apathy. While the dollar has been plunging and commodity prices have been soaring, most
people seem unconcerned by these signs of danger. One paper said you only need to worry if you're a "connoisseur of French
wines or Canadian maple syrup." When problems are neglected, they tend to build up to a breaking point.
There have been some early warning tremors from China, our largest trading partners. The Chinese government has made economic
threats against the United States, hinting that it may liquidate its vast holding of US Treasury bonds if Washington imposes
trade sanctions to force a revaluation of the Chinese yuan. Beijing has over $1.3 trillion in foreign reserves.
Saudi Arabia seems to be the most upset by the slumping dollar. The Saudis use the dollar as the main currency for their
imports and exports. Its decline has triggered higher inflation in the Kingdom. Inflation in the Middle East’s largest
economy has now reached a 10-year high. Any decision by Saudi Arabia to rebalance its currency would have a devastating impact
on the dollar.
Most key central banks have been doing their best to support the dollar, but reality is slowly setting in as traders
realize the dollar is overvalued. When I first started reporting on the dollar, it was trading at 1.20 to the euro. It has now dropped to 1.42 to
the euro. Several economists see the 1.45 level as a point where things might get dicey.
There is little hope that the declining dollar will resolve our trade imbalance. The American economy has become heavily dependent
on imports. Currency fluctuation can't make American TVs more appealing on the global market because none are produced here.
The soaring price of oil is not going to significantly increase domestic production.
Most of the global dollar holdings are in Treasury notes that yield around 4 to 5 percent. Just this year alone, bond holders
from the euro zone have seen declines greater than 13 percent. We are now at levels where panic selling could easily be
triggered as investors, having reached the limits of their tolerance for financial pain, decide to cut their losses.
Bible prophecy strongly implies that America will be a secondary economic power in the last days. During the tribulation,
Europe will be the leading political and financial powerhouse in the world. The dollar's decline could be an indication that
the switch-over is starting to take place.
Both Terry and I believe the rapture will trigger financial chaos in America. The removal of greater than 10 percent the
U.S. population would cause a recession to rival the Great Depression. It is possible that the downfall may come in several
stages, with the rapture being the final blow.
For us Christians, there should be no worry about the consequences of a declining dollar. From our long-run view, we
expect to eventually see it lose 100 percent of its value.
-- Todd
Deception: Key to Antichrist’s Kingdom
Joseph Goebbels, Adolf Hitler’s minister of propaganda during the years of the Nazi regime, put to the test Vladimir Lenin's declaration that if you tell a lie often enough and long enough, people will soon come to believe it.
Millions of Germans did, indeed, come to believe the lies–chief of which, the one that the Jews were the single greatest cause of the problems Germany had experienced during the depression of that day. Many believed Goebbels’ incessant diatribes against all semitic peoples, and that the fuehrer was akin to a god, who would lead the German people to the utopia the propagandists termed “The Third Reich.”
The evil Nazi mouthpiece and the venom he injected into the Germans proved God’s word 100 percent accurate: “The getting of treasures by a lying tongue [is] a vanity tossed to and fro of them that seek death” (Prov. 21:6).
Few regimes in history have inflicted upon their victims the catastrophic scope of death and destruction wrought by the Nazis. Hitler’s promises to the German people were based upon demon-inspired deception; his promises of peace to the world were predicated upon hellish lies. The result was the death of millions in war and in the Holocaust. The people to whom the fuehrer made the promises suffered perhaps more than anyone, with the iron-fisted Soviet dictatorships from Josef Stalin through Leonid Brezhnev and beyond oppressing a divided Germany, as part of the spoils of war.
There is another apothegm that warns sternly, echoing within the ears of this generation. But, no one seems to be listening. At least not enough people are listening to cause a red flag of alarm to alert this generation.
George Santayana the philosopher said that those who refuse to learn from the mistakes of history are doomed to repeat them. The God of heaven gives His prescription/antidote for the lies spouted by the minions of the father of lies: “Buy the truth, and sell it not; also wisdom, and instruction, and understanding” (Prov 23:23).
Not only are the geopolitical leaders of the world forgetting the warning of Santayana’s famous words, but so-called leaders within the body of Christ are beginning to fall victim to the very propaganda device Lenin warned about, and Goebbels gleefully adopted as his methodology for mesmerizing the German people of the 1930s and 40s. They are –many already have—falling for the lie that has been proclaimed loudly for a long time.
The nucleus of the lie is that Israel is the problem. This lie is, I’m beginning to think—the key to the coming Antichrist kingdom –another proof of the wisdom of Santayana’s words. Hitler’s horrors will be revisited upon not only the Jews (Jacob’s trouble – Jeremiah 30:7), but upon the whole world (read Revelation chapter 13, especially v.16-18). Antichrist’s regime will make Hitler’s Nazi atrocities seem almost child’s play by comparison, according to Jesus: “For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be” (Matt. 24:21).
Jesus gives, in the Olivet Discourse, forewarning that great deception will be prominent at the time He is set to return. Deception is at the very first of His warnings, as a matter of fact. Paul the apostle foretells in 2 Thessalonians chapter 2 that one of the major things that will be going on during the tribulation era is that a “lie” will deceive most people. There can be little doubt that Antichrist’s system of world control will come in on a platform of deception that will put to shame, in terms of magnitude, Goebbels’ lies about the Third Reich.
Daniel the prophet forcast how the end-time tyrant will use deception. Antichrist will, Daniel foretells, come in on a platform of deceptiveness: “And in his estate shall stand up a vile person, to whom they shall not give the honour of the kingdom: but he shall come in peaceably, and obtain the kingdom by flatteries” (Dan. 11:21). The “beast,” as he is called in Revelation 13, will concentrate most of his vitriol –as did Hitler—on the hated Jews: “And such as do wickedly against the covenant shall he corrupt by flatteries: but the people that do know their God shall be strong, and do [exploits]” (Dan. 11:32).
God’s people will stand strong against the deception that the Jew is the root of all evil during that era, Daniel foretells. Not so in this pre-trib era for the most part, it is sad to have to say. We can see the effects the satanic deception is having by looking at Israel. We can always count on the Jewish state to provide insight, while those who watch world issues and events through the prism of god’s prophetic Word seek discernment in these closing days of the age.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, during his visit to New York last week, proclaimed that he was for peace –wants to live in serenity, like every other good citizen of the planet. This message was, on its surface, a far cry from the hate-filled rhetoric he uses when he addresses his constituency back in the land where ancient Persia once sat. He flattered and cajoled the press and diplomats alike, and was flattered and feted in return.
Israel was, by omission --those reporters and government officials who were so gaga over Ahmadinejad ignoring the tyrant’s stated fate planned for all Jews—accused, without overtly stating their opinion, of obviously being the culprit in Middle East threats of war. This great man is just too interested in peace for the whole world to ever be a warmonger, was the sense one got upon observing the love fest.
Yet strangely, Ahmadinejad at the same time managed to tell the deluded, gullible, deceived people who fawned over him precisely his goals and ambitions. It was Hitlerian –even more profoundly mesmerizing than that. The man was positively luciferian in his deceptive presentation at Columbia University, and at the U.N.
Ahmadinejad spoke against U.S. intrusion in the Middle East; rejected the UN Security Council's authority to take action against Iran's illicit nuclear weapons program; refused to retract his statements that Israel should be destroyed, removed from the world; held to his stance that people do not have a right to live their lives based upon right of personal freedoms; did not budge from Islamic demands that women be kept wrapped in silence beneath the cultural and societal surface.
The Iranian dictator, while refusing to answer directly questions about those matters, still managed to get reported as saying that Iranian women have full rights, and are free to live their lives as they please, and that homosexuals are not executed or tortured –adding that there are no homosexuals in Iran. These absurdities went basically unchallenged by the American mainstream press, which sees a lie behind every Bush Administration statement and launches “journalistic” investigations based upon the slightest hint of perceived wrongdoing.
The news media did reportorial acrobatics to write glowing reports on the man, looking for any small sliver of evidence that he advocates peace and desires no ill will toward Israel, or Jews, anywhere.
Shades of the Fuehrer! Foreshadows of Antichrist!
The beast of Revelation, chapter 13, will one day –perhaps sooner rather than later—place his key of great deception into the lock that holds shut the door to his murderous kingdom.
--Terry
