We recently hosted a FREE webinar, in which Jasmine Birtles and guests discussed the new financial order and how to protect your money.
Jasmine was joined by Cameron Parry, CEO and founder of Tally Money, Gordon Kerr or Cobden Partners, Chris Lewis from inoneplace.com and George Maher, a member of the faculty at the Institute of Actuaries.
If you missed it, why not catch up below, by watching the full video or reading the transcription.
*Please note this is an automatic transcription and may contain errors.
TRANSCRIPTION
Jasmine Birtles
So hello, and welcome to our webinar, the MoneyMagpie webinar where we’re looking at are we facing a global financial reset? And how can you protect your money? Now, today we have on the panel, Cameron Parry, who’s founder of Tally money, a savings product that is based on gold. We have Gordon Kerr, who’s a former banker and CEO of Cobden Partners with Chris Lewis, who’s standing in for Jason Noble, both of them from inoneplace.com. And last, but not least, definitely, and I’m hoping he can join us is George Maher, who’s a member of the faculty of Institute of Actuaries and author of this book, Pugnare, which looks at the financial and economic history of the Roman Empire, and frankly, what it teaches us about our economics and finance today.
We also have all you lovely attendees, thank you so much for joining. And I’m looking forward to hearing from you, too, if you have any questions, put them in the chat, or, you know, put up your hand real or virtual, and we’ll come to you and the lovely Izzy is keeping an eye on everyone. So, she’ll let me know somebody has their hand up. I’ve set up this webinar, because I feel that we are on the brink of a huge change of financial reset, not necessarily a great reset. It depends on how we will behave.
Frankly, I think what we allow our leaders to do, because we seem to be at the start of a decade that mirrors the 1970s with bells on rampant inflation potential stagflation strikes the possibility of a serious recession. And on top of all that, interest rates are so low, there’s no way they can go lower, really, but they can’t go much higher, either without destroying people’s lives, frankly. Now, back in the 70s, it wasn’t the money printing, but we’ve been doing money printing on steroids now. So well, so let’s, let’s see what everybody thinks is going to happen this decade. And I’m gonna start with Gordon Kerr from Cobden Partners, because I know that you talk about this a lot, Gordon, this subject. What do you think we have in store in the next few years? Is it some sort of financial reset?
Gordon Kerr
Thank you, Jasmine. Yeah, I mean, it’s true to say just by way of background, I set up Cobden Partners about 11 years ago thinking that there will be some appetite amongst small countries on the fringe of the Euro zone, such as Iceland, for example, who obviously experienced a particularly severe crisis around about 2008 to 10. Two, just deflate somewhat from the global so called Basel banking rules, in discussions of technical accounting rules and banking regulations are very kind of pithy, boring, they don’t capture the zeitgeist at all. And it’s interesting that nobody ever talks about it, the the narrative that’s been spun by the most powerful central banks in Western Europe, the ECB, and the Bank of England that somehow banks have been kind of recapitalized, they’ve cured, their, their bad behaviour, the bad loans have been flushed out the system, I believe, is entirely false. And this is the fundamental roots of the kind of reset discussions that is the subject of tonight’s webinar, specifically, you know, three or four years after I set up clubs and partners around about 2012 to 15.
In particular, when many of you will remember the possible expulsion or withdrawal of Greece from the Euro zone. So great with their problems, they went through three or four bailout programmes within three years. And the solution to all of this, of course, was ECB Central Bank, money printing, I tend to focus more in Europe in the euro zone than on the UK. But it’s very difficult to see much of a distinction between the two. The parallel I would draw for everybody’s attention is the history of the Soviet era. Fantasy system, you refer to the Roman era think there’s a little bit too distant to be directly parallel for us. But what’s most interesting is, of course, that the Soviet system of central banking and commercial banking was was really one with just different labels. It operated on two levels.
If there was a kind of cash system where cash was carefully controlled, and the broad approach towards managing the economy was summarised by in the great book 800 pages written in the 80s by Hungarian Yanis koi called the economics of shortage effectively, they just authorised, for example, the bread manufacturers bakers to break in to bake 70% of the bread requirements of every little village in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, thus generating huge shortages. The effect of this was also to keep prices down. Inflation was viewed by the Soviets as an evil capitalist trait. But this system kind of sent five years in the Soviet Union. 45 years in, in Eastern Europe, of course, there was nobody alive. When the Soviet system collapsed. The money system collapsed in hyperinflation in 1989 to 90 nobody lived in the Soviet Union who’d been adults when this inceptive back in the 1920s.
But in Eastern Europe, there was and one guy in particular Lezak Bell Trowbridge, who became the finance minister of Poland, was responsible for designing the transition from from Soviet era monobank the approach to the Western system of capitalism. In a nutshell, I believe that the way that the Euro system is working at present, is remarkably similar to the way the Soviet era approached this with with diverting so much of the money creation to its own system of emotional central banks that intrinsically cannot go on forever.
Jasmine Birtles
No, so you’re particularly talking about the Euro there. But But, Cameron, I’ll bring you in here. Do you feel that what Gordon has been talking about is the same across the globe? Well, I mean, across the western world, you know, with the money printing in America, money printing here, as well as the euro.
Cameron Parry
Yes, yes, generally, I mean, we, for the last 50 years, nothing’s been pegged to anything physical like gold, and the fiat currency fractional reserve banking system, when the when the US in 71, closed the gold window, because they had written too many notes. I mean, a bank noted, cash is just a note, it’s like writing a check from a government. And it used to be exchanged for a commodity, which would give it give it value because of that. And you can certainly think, apologies, in a lot of you anyway, you could exchange it for that. And, but in 71, it was becoming apparent that the US have overspent with the Vietnam War, and all the rest of it.
So they’ve written far too many greenbacks, too many paper money checks with like, two than the gold they had, which is why, and this is, you know, what Gordon sort of talking about, you know, everything’s very cyclical, I mean, some things happen in cycles of months or years. You know, economic cycles used to be seven years, until central banks get involved, and then they tried to get you to avoid a recession, which is kind of a silly thing, to avoid. booms are good processions are good, the bit in the middle of the good, you know, there’s, there’s a transference of wealth that naturally goes on, depending on how you run your business, or how you behave in a certain period of the economy.
But, you know, there are a lot much larger cycles, population growth cycles, like we’re in population decline now, which will affect, you know, have a negative effect on on growth globally. And there are, you know, as they say, you know, like, History doesn’t repeat, but it rhymes, which I never quite like that term, but there is an echo to it, it won’t be exactly like that. But there’ll be, you can really learn from it. And some of these cycles are like, you know, they’re 100 year cycles, where there’s a way there’s a superpower of your life that has the military might, and the industry, to have the global currency. And we see that with the US. So at the moment, and it’s been like that since 45, when the European nations were pretty broke from fighting World War Two, and America’s economy was thriving through you know, through industry and whatnot. But but, you know, it’s folly to think the American dollar will be will be the global currency forever. It might have been forever in our lifetimes.
But if you go back a bit further, this is the case whether it’s the pound or you know, the Ottoman Empire or, or whatever, these things are kind of constantly changing. And what’s a little bit I think, scary for people at the moment is we’re going maybe there’s an end game coming again. So the the monetary system was reset 50 years ago, like this. This tends to happen every few decades. We’re getting to the point where it’ll probably happen again. It worries me a great deal that we’re getting so you know, pumped full of crises. He’s everywhere. Everything’s a crisis now that that to get the to get the changes that we will need to swallow as the public.
And that is the devaluation of our property and our money in particular, or at least the government issue, money won’t happen to you if you have to rally. But on that money on the fear, currency, you know, and it’ll be a crisis, you won’t be able to use your banking facilities tomorrow, if you don’t just agree and swallow that everything should be devalued by 40%. overnight. And, you know, that’s, that’s, that’s not right. Or just so. Yeah, there’s I mean, there’s more recent examples. Yeah, certainly, then, you know, anyway, they said definitely, it’ll change and it’ll come to an end. It’s our comes to an end is how it affects all of us, obviously.
Jasmine Birtles
I was on GB news today. One of them were talking about the pm hopefuls, and I mentioned that with Rishi Sunak, we have the danger of bringing in Central Bank digital currencies. And the the presenter said, Oh, what’s that? And I was explaining, he said, I assume that’s backed by gold? And I said, No, it’s not backed by anything, you know. So there is an assumption, I think, by a lot of people that Well, I think a lot of people think that our money is backed by gold even now. But I think there is an assumption that whatever comes next will be backed by something. But that’s not necessarily the case, is it?
Cameron Parry
I think there will have to be some some form of accountability. So when it’s not backed by anything, as fiat currency is, firstly, you get the generation that we’re in charge. And then we’re really sorry about this, but we’re not going to let you exchange our currency for gold anymore. Please forgive us. And I feel quite, you know, humble and all that. But after the next generation, who didn’t weren’t, didn’t live with it, and didn’t go through that apology sort of period. They’re just thinking, look, what we can do with this thing that’s not anchored to anything, we can just print money, and redistribute the wealth of the population.
And, you know, theorists or whatever, they mistakenly think you can print wealth, which of course, you can’t do you can’t print value, you can print money, if if money is something like fiat currency. But yeah, we’re just in a, you know, in a massive debt. We had a massive debt problem globally, back in 2007 2008, which almost caused the system to grind to a halt, and fix all that they’ve added a magnitude of more debt. So it’s not like the system’s straightened up. And, yeah, CBDCs are a slightly different thing. I mean, I can speak about that. But it’s a slightly different way of consuming a currency which will then because a currency is just a product, money is just a product.
So a central bank is just a product provider. And the the US Fed their product is the US dollar, the Bank of England, their product is the pound. And if you consider it’s just a product, then, you know, this was really the basis of designing something like tele Why would we have a product that we all use every day, that there’s no competition for despite in effectively a monopoly. And, and it hasn’t been innovated for five, five decades, you know, there’s no other industry like this. So just as a bit of background on me, five years ago, I started working on the concept of tally. And whilst 510 years ago, like, you know, there were a lot of people that would speak about these problems, but I didn’t really want to speak about them until I had a solution that I could offer people because it can get a bit, you know, Doom and gloomy, and we can do things to help ourselves.
And it’s not about picking the biggest winner and what’s going to have the most value in the next few years, it’s about getting the biggest loser out of your out of your financial life. And, and that is why, just for those who don’t know, so we created a standalone monetary system, it works seamlessly with the fiat currency, fractional reserve banking system, but it protects you from that. Because our money, each tally represents your ownership of a milligramme of gold that we vault on your behalf. We don’t own that we don’t leverage metal with.
And then through our tech and you know, our banking app, we’re not a bank, but through our app, you know, gives you an account with a source code and IBN and this type of thing. You can use the value of that for goods and services. So you can live in it just like money. I mean, it’s designed to be, you know, our websites tally money, it’s not tally gold. But but you need something that’s anchoring, giving accountability to your monetary to your money supply. And otherwise, we could have
Jasmine Birtles
Sorry, I was just thinking, you know, accountability, if I could just bring Chris in here. Because you you and Jason run in one place. And I know you have you run meetings, you run webinars with a lot of people who are very concerned about what’s happening and what could happen to their money. What are you hearing, Chris, from the people who use your services? Why are people coming to see you And what are they? What are they concerned about when it comes to their money?
Chris Lewis
Yeah, thanks, Jasmine. I think the fundamental concern for most of the people that tend to come through our door is really comes down to the CBDCs.
Jasmine Birtles
Bank digital currencies. Yeah,
Chris Lewis
exactly central bank digital currencies and what that is going to mean for the average, you know, man and woman on the street, everyone obviously has different amounts of finance available to them. And at the end of the day, 100 pounds or someone is just as important as a million pounds to someone else. And the reality is, is that a lot of people are concerned about the uncertainty as to what’s going to happen financially in the in the markets over the coming sort of five to 10 years.
And what the implication of central bank digital currencies are going to mean and for anyone on the call here that doesn’t really know a huge amount about Central Bank digital currencies, they may know about crypto, but Central Bank, digital currencies are essentially, in a short sort of quick and dirty explanation. Central Bank digital currencies is basically a central bank at the Bank of England, the Federal Reserve’s in the US a central bank controlled currency that is programmable. And within that programmable system, it allows the central bank to fundamentally top down control what happens with that central bank digital currency,
Jasmine Birtles
they can say what you spend your money on, you can spend it in a vegetable shop, but you can’t spend it in a meat shop.
Chris Lewis
And China did this recently, China have obviously got the social credit score ongoing at the moment. And with introducing their central bank digital currency, they basically gave the citizens of country the ability to download the wallet, the central bank wallet, and then basically said to him, Look, we want you to we’re gonna give you X amount and central bank digital currency, and you can go into the shops and spend it and they use it as a test run. And the reality is because it’s it’s centrally controlled by the central bank, and because it’s completely programmable, they can do whatever they like with it.
So if they decided that they did like you, and you’d said something about the government that they did, like, they could effectively wipe this the actual currency from your wallet, because again, they control it. And each central bank, you know, digital currency, coin, as it were, is programmed and tokens. So if they decided to eradicate it, they could do if they wanted to speed up the flow of money and try to increase GDP and basically say, well, we want to get money moving faster between person to person, this money that we’re going to give you, is essentially only going to be around in your wallet for the next month, and you can spend it in a month, if you don’t spend it, it goes.
And that ultimately is going to give them full top down control, which obviously is going to completely eradicate privacy from everyone’s lives, because they can track exactly how much you’ve got, where you’re spending it, what you’re spending it on. Now, ultimately, for the majority of people that we talk to, what are their primary concern? Is that what is going to happen into the banking system over the next three to five years.
Jasmine Birtles
Brilliant, and no, I think we do have George George, are you there? George Maher? Yeah. Can you hear me? Yes. Can he Oh, I can see you as well, how wonderful now? I’m going to show again, George’s book when Yari which is the history of the Russian and Russian Roman Empire from their economy. Now, this is what we’ve been talking about. George would be, you know, like Spaceman coming from, from Mars to the Romans. But the same kind of thing was something similar was happening in that time, wasn’t it with with the devaluation of Roman coinage?
George Maher
I’m salutely. Absolutely. And I think it is, it’s a marvellous lesson for us. And it picks up on some of the points that have been made by the last two speakers mean, history repeating itself, you know, human nature doesn’t change. They had a fractional reserve banking system. And also the point about control and, you know, too often people look at the Roman Empire, and they think of it as military and things, things like that. But actually, it transitioned from being a military empire to being a trading empire. And vast amount of amounts of money moved around.
I’m sitting in, in, in a building in London, located at the edge of the old Roman city of London, and when this city was founded, people sitting in Rome lent money to people here, and one senior individual lent as much as 200 million. So you know, these, these are big transactions, and that’s just just one one individual. And what what that enables that beautiful, single currency across an area be bigger than the EU same coins flowing back and forth. What that enabled was a stupendous trading empire. stuff coming here in old continuum, from from Egypt, North Africa, from the Levant, and from London back out out of there.
Jasmine Birtles
But it all came crashing down, it seemed
George Maher
it all, it all came crashing down because they had built this absolutely wonderful, amazing system that everything depended on everything dependent upon trust and recognition of the currency and other banking system. And when I look at Roman ruins, and they’re all over the place, because they built towns all over the place I’m looking at so when I look at the Colosseum, that to me, is a monument to economic incompetence. They smashed their beautiful system that had taken centuries to build. And once they had smashed the economic system, they couldn’t do the basics. They couldn’t pay the soldiers. When you can’t, soldiers, you’ve got no borders, and then people come and invade you. So to me, those ruins beautiful buildings like the Colosseum, but their monuments to economic failure, the failure to keep the currency and the banking system going.
Jasmine Birtles
Well, Gordon, you know, you’re probably fascinated listening to George speak, because I know you you love history. Do you think we are basically at the same point? Now you know, where we saw the destruction of the Roman Empire? Which George I think took quite a few years once they started to coin clipping devaluing the coins? Yes. How many years does it take? Would you say for it to really crash?
George Maher
So a roundabout, roundabout 190. They, they’re, they’re losing it roundabout 190 ad, they’re losing the discipline. They are becoming very, very complacent been an ad 250 The thing is smashed. And there is never again going to be a currency like that until the 18th century in England.
Jasmine Birtles
Yeah, so that’s sort of 70 years essentially, Gordon, what do you think? Where do you think we are? Because I know you have said you’ve gone on record saying that you think that the Euro is about to go? I mean, that’s the just the euro. But we’ve got the dollar we’ve got you know, as Cameron was saying, we were dealing with fear. These are all fiat currencies. And if they, if if one of these smashes, you know, falls, it’s going to be a bit of a house of cards, isn’t it? Unmute yourself, Gordon.
Gordon Kerr
Thanks, Jasmine, I broadly agree with that, I would just urge a bit of caution with the verb we use, I no longer like using verbs like collapse or euro will go, disappear. We are in an era of unparalleled political power by governments and they’re perfectly capable of keeping the Euro going in some way, shape or form for decades to come. I think we’re very, very close to the point in time where the euro will kind of trend off towards irrelevance where the demand for holding euros is so weak where there’s it’s replaced by other things.
And this is happening very quickly, even in the last month because in chess parlance, the European Central Bank just made a major blunder right in its monthly meeting, right about June 8 or ninth, it made a major decision to talk about issuing forward guidance not doing anything but indicating that it’s likely next move would be to increase interest rates. Now that was immediately taken by the markets as an indication that it was now fine to bet against these bombed out Southern European bonds which the ECB had been buying in in droves for the last kind of six, seven years, spreads differentials widened between Italy in particular, Germany, and within a week, the ECB was in panic mode.
I’ve got a mole who attended the ECB meetings. And he told me that, you know, they were completely flabbergasted at what what would have happened. And I decided, therefore, to invent some instrument you might have seen in the press called an anti fragmentation instrument, which is obviously another version of money printing and buying assets, mainly of Italy to try to suppress these spreads Italy being regarded as a bellwether, but you know, they’ve had a month since that meeting June 15, is not going to happen. I seen the chatter to see the phone.
The Italian government is on the verge of collapse. The former president of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi, is the prime minister can’t hold the camera together. And the reason is that the only way the ECB could get past the objections of Germany, Finland and the Netherlands, in doing this dramatic bailout of Italy, would be to abandon any pretence It’s called not engaging in outright financing of member states, and have a kind of conditioned LIS bailout of Italy, obviously, that wouldn’t be accepted by them. So I think the proposal that was made in the last two weeks to Italy was, we will buy all your bonds will restore these spreads to levels closer to Germany.
But you’ll have to agree to join in one of these kinds of bailout programmes, which, of course, would be some kind of abdication of sovereignty in favour of European Central Bank, IMF or whatever. And I think the government is just about to collapse in Italy, because the Italians won’t agree to that. Therefore, I think the demand for a replacement currency, which has some value in Europe is very strong. I also note that Germany has recently repatriated all of its gold from the States and other places, Poland and Spain, Hungary the same. So I think that work is taking place behind closed doors and some alternative, which might end up looking something very similar to Cameron’s tally.
Jasmine Birtles
That would be fun. So Cameron, has anybody from the Italian government been in touch? Because it sounds like they Well,
Cameron Parry
Andrew there, he just posted on the chat board that Mario Draghi has resigned from the Italian government. So we’re in in our session, and I’m not expecting Mario, it’d be ringing. The Yeah, I mean, if there is a reason it would seem, the reason why we use gold as an anchor is it’s the obvious thing to use, it’s very easily understood. It’s very economic to store as high value and you’re not, you’re not anchoring a currency value to a statistic like GDP, which statistics can be kind of manipulated. So I didn’t set out metalli.
From a gold point of view, I set out trying to design money after all, I’d learned from being in the blockchain industry and really from studying Bitcoin and what came before Bitcoin and what Bitcoin was trying to achieve. And it’s not it’s not like Bitcoin, we’re not a cryptocurrency, because I think there’s some short comings there that really stop the potential for mass adoption from from society. And you need a lot of people to feel comfortable using a new product that’s come from the private sector. And, you know, for it to be effective, otherwise, it’ll, you know, just skirt around the edges.
But I think if governments so here’s the thing, if governments reset with to first of all Gordon’s point, I don’t underestimate the amount of levers and pulleys and that they can let this drag out for from a central bankers point of view, they want to get CBDCs out there, because then they can remove cash from the system, once they can remove cash from the system, apart from all the tracking and the invasion of privacy that Chris was referring to, they can do stupid economic theories like negative going into negative interest rates. Now in reality, of course, we’re already in a negative interest rate here in the UK, because the official rate is just over 1%. And inflation is officially just over 9%.
So the real interest rate is negative 8%. Like, which is to say if I, if I, you know, borrow from you, Jasmine 1000 pounds, and use it for my own purposes and put it at risk, you should pay me 80 pounds for doing that your money. It’s bizarre, ridiculous stuff. And in fact, just while we’re on how bizarre things are getting. And there is some hope here, by the way, we better make sure we leave some time to speak about solutions and know that our world is not just completely falling apart. Because that’s another beautiful thing about human nature, our ability to adapt, to adapt.
So but yeah, just I mean, there’s there’s a paper put out by the FCA now, where they’re, and they’ve got an 11 million pound budget to target and communicate to the 8.6 million people in the UK who hold more than 10,000 pounds in their bank account. Because to try and get them into investments, safe investments, like they don’t want them getting speculative ones too much. But because basically, if you read between the lines, because having more than 10,000 in your bank account is not the safest place to be anymore.
Jasmine Birtles
Absolutely no. RG Yes. Oh, gee, has said. You’re talking about the banking system crashing failing, potentially, and fear becoming worthless, or worthless, potentially governments collapsing, it’s happening. So it’s no longer a conspiracy? Absolutely. Conspiracy, by the way is the truth just six months later than you thought it was. So it is this wave crypto comes in. Yeah, the banks governments will want to stop the control of this. But can they just bring Chris in on this? Because Chris, you, you, you and Jason, you’ve created a currency that’s actually silver backed but it’s a cryptic currency. Is that right?
Chris Lewis
Well, we well, I can’t take any credit for this. This is all Jason’s do. But we basically created two things. So one, we’ve actually created a silver backed cash currency. I say I say created, it’s currently being finalised and printed and all the rest of it, but effectively have a silver back to cash currency that is going to be available in number of weeks. But we also have a digital wallet called digital. So digital, that basically has, in essence, 25 different stores of value programmed into it. So whether that’s gold, silver, oil, crypto currencies, g7, currencies, stock indexes, whatever it is that your personal, you know, weighting is towards that. And basically, we provide through digital a digital representation of the physical product.
So if you, for example, decide to have silver or oil, digital provides a digital representation of that, that you can effectively go and spend in the shops or save. So if you want to go into you know, Sainsbury’s or whiskey or Tescos, or whoever your chosen supermarket is and buy your weekly shop, then you can pay for your weekly shot with your barrel of oil via the digital representation of that. And if for whatever reason, they don’t accept it, like an Apple Pay type device, then we’ve got a debit card that goes along with that and is a prepaid one that then draws the finances down from the wallet. So in terms of, I suppose what you’re alluding to in terms of solutions, and you know, it sounds like Cameron’s also on board with those sorts of ideas of what he’s doing at tally, which is which is fantastic.
The good thing about human beings is that we have endeavour and that we will try to one way or another work around these problems and to what you were saying this is really for anyone that’s doubting this is really is not conspiracy theory. A guy called Agustin Karstens, who’s the general manager of the Bank of International Settlements, was involved in a conference. I think it was mid October in 2020, and basically said that the central banks will have absolute control over the rules and regulations governing CBDCs and have the technology to enforce them, because essentially, they don’t know who’s carrying cash. This is not conspiracy theory, this is happening and it’s coming.
And we obviously have a little bit of time to adapt. And people like ourselves in one place and what Cameron is doing Italian money, we’re providing those solutions and all being well providing people with options of how they can utilise and save and avoid the central bank digital currencies and all the privacy ripping away from you as they seem to be doing.
Jasmine Birtles
Yeah, exactly. Well, this is something I’ve been thinking over the over the last few weeks that if if the our government and other governments do force cbdc CBDCs on us, there will be people and I will be at the forefront, who will come up with alternatives. And just you know, put two fingers up at the system. Again, we’ve got this. And Cameron, I think you’ll have to be at the front. Because already you are paying your your staff in gold. Is that right?
Cameron Parry
Well, some of them we contract in our currency, why wouldn’t we believe in it far more than the pound? And I get? I think I was the first I mean, it’d be weird if I didn’t believe in it. But I’m not, it’s great. I don’t really worry about I don’t really worry about inflation and stuff. Because I know generally, I’ll always be better off because I’m in a currency that that’s not devalued by design. I mean, that’s, that’s a good starting point. As I say, I mean, with what I’m, you know, and what Chris has got tainment providing there, you know, we need choices, like we need to have some options.
One thing about that I was really focused on keeping very simple with jelly is people generally right, don’t think about the concept of money when they use money. Like it’s so omnipresent in their lives. And it’s almost like where you wear glasses, you don’t really see the lens, you’re just seeing the world and you know, but you know what lenses they have, you don’t really see what that lens is made of. And, and frankly, you know, I mean, this goes to CBDCs and also some forms of digital banking. A lot of this kind of want to simplify things we want something we can just rely on know that it’s going to maintain its buying power, know that nobody’s meddling with it or putting it at risk. And I can just go on and be more productive in my life.
And that’s how I can build wealth for myself and my family. And this shouldn’t be such an extraordinary environment to create, but unfortunately, the banking system is a lending system. It works to the detriment of savers and depositors. So that was that was what I was trying to fix basically to have a healthy environment to be a saver and a depositor and and we’ve achieved that with tally it’s not maybe it’s not for everyone, but But the one thing I would say, it was a couple of things. But one thing generally, you can’t rely on someone else to kind of protect your family’s finances for you.
You know, I can appreciate people who don’t want to start becoming stock market experts and all this type of thing and doing this on the weekend after they’ve done their job all week, I mean, instead of spending time with their family, which is an hour to do, you know, because you can’t sit there and just look at your money savings in a bank account, because that’s just working against you. Which is, again, it’s a ridiculous situation, but this is why we have these kind of solutions. But yeah, you know, you want to be self resilient and empowered in your life.
And, and that’s what these, you know, certainly Tally was designed to deliver for people, it’s, it’s a positive experience, it’s not a doom and gloom scenario, you’re actually free from it, you can sleep better at night, you know that over time, it’s, you know, it goes up a multiple against fiat currency. But what really is going on is fiat currency has been devalued by design, whereas something like gold is, is effectively just maintaining its purchasing power.
So, you know, again, people, if people really wanted to think about what they’re using as money deeply is another thing they have to worry about in their lives, that we’d already be marching in the street about this ridiculous. So you just want to use something that you can trust rely on, you know, that the system that set up is protects you, and why, you know, you’re the one who earned the money. Why is anybody else messing around with
Jasmine Birtles
it? Well, true. George, back to you. Because I remember George, when you and I spoke recently, you were mentioning that the you feel that the only type of solid currency is one that is centralised, am I right in saying that? I
George Maher
yeah, I think I think so too. And to and, to an extent, I mean, what the what the Romans did, which was part of the genius was they completely centralised control of the currency. And they eliminated all competing currencies. So the currency that had existed in ancient Greece, before they invaded, it was eliminated their gold and silver coin circulate there, and it’s a unified banking system. And that gave them that that gave them a lot of stability. But the the difficulty of the difficulty of that was when there’s collapsed, there was no alternative, there was there was no new currency that could replace it that had been nurtured in some other part of the system. There were no other currencies.
And I think that one of the difficulties that we have nowadays, which is why this conversation is, is in so many ways, so very, very important is is that we actually do only have one currency, the way I look at it is the the world currency is the dollar. And the whole system is critically dependent upon that. You know, we have subsidiary currencies like like Sterling, the euro, and all the rest. But when, when things start to get difficult, there is a flight to the dollar, and that’s what everyone trusts. And it’s like, it’s like, flying a plane with just one engine, you know, it might be very efficient in some way. But if that engine goes, the whole thing goes. And that’s why I found this discussion.
So so very fascinating, because it’s showing that, you know, people have a greater awareness of the danger of being so critically dependent on one part of a system, and it’s just so lovely, you know, to to hear of the innovation that’s happening. And the more of this innovation that happens, which is which is beautiful to see in its own right, the safer we will be. And the more people say, you can’t have a plane with just one engine.
Jasmine Birtles
Some saying that we may be going into a bipolar global system where you have the dollar on one side, and then you have ruble. On the other potentially, what do you think of that?
George Maher
I think state money is state money and in state money, and what I find fascinating about the some of the developments that I see is it is the emergence of private money. And so when you say the ruble or whatever, I think the dollar, this is just an opinion, I think the dollar will win against those, but if something like tally marks, that that would be where the thing is.
Jasmine Birtles
Yes. Well, Gordon, you deal a lot with Eastern Europe. I know. Now from from what George says, Do you feel also that really the dollar is all powerful? When will continue to be even though it’s been so massively devalued? Or do you do you see the ruble with its sort of asset backed gold back to largely golden asset backed status as actually being a genuine contender?
Gordon Kerr
Well, I think the ruble is a genuinely impressive currency. It’s doubled in value since the outbreak of the war. It’s obviously regarded as a commodity backed currency. I’ve even actually pitched in Moscow to talk about designing a kind of gold based money system, but they seem to have kind of moved ahead fairly quickly with it. They’re also developing closer trading relationships with Russia, as I see they’re, they’re generating substantial oil sales, gas to east of Russia to kind of replace the revenue that they’re missing in, in Europe. So definitely, there’s any question that we are in, as you put it, Jasmine and kind of bio tripodal Polar world where the war has kind of crystallised trading relationships in some kind of East West divide is also major countries like Turkey and Pakistan, are refusing to impose any sanctions whatsoever. your specific question was in Eastern Europe.
The most interesting thing geopolitically wise in Eastern Europe, which has actually been turbocharged by the Ukraine war, is the development of the three seas initiative. This is effectively the 12 eastern most countries running more or less north south, member states of the EU, from the the three Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, down to Greece, which is considering joining in 13th. All of these countries with the notable outlier of Austria, are regarded as kind of economically poorest countries in EU, although this, this initiative started with a couple of them back in 2015, nothing has really happened until the last six to nine months. The purpose behind these 12 countries forming this unit is effectively to kind of recognising that they’ve been dealt a bit of a raw deal by the EU, which I think this is not Brexit related at all, but I think he is basically operates to the financial, economic advantage of France in particular, kind of leaving the status quo, more or less unaffected.
You know, the the wages of a certain surgery or qualified foreign worker in France, I think about two and a half 1000 euros a month, similar worker in Bulgaria 300 euros a month. And the Eastern European countries have formed this kind of political bloc to really access financial markets and demand some of these bailout funds together. And yes, there are discussions I believe taking place on this subject of optimal currency area. I don’t think they’ve gained much ground I think most of these European countries that I have contact with, just think that the best tactic for them in this euro to currency Euro crisis, which is clearly unfolding before us, is to grab on to Germany’s coattails and do whatever Germany leaves with. So I think they’re going to stay very western focused. But unless Germany recognises the intense fragility of its own and other European banking systems, then whatever currency he comes up with is going to have problems within a year or three anyway.
Jasmine Birtles
Well, interestingly, Andrew Bevan has said here that the BRICS countries are trying to form a currency. So that’s Brazil, Russia, Indonesia, China, South Africa. So yeah, that will, Andrew that’s that’s an interesting one, I’d be very interested to see what what they come up with. So we’re coming towards the end of the hour, we’re going to give ourselves a bit little bit more time because we started late, but you know, we’ve we’ve talked a lot about the, the problems of currency problems particularly affect money, pounds, dollars, euros.
And we’ve we’ve touched on some solutions, because because we did say, you know, how can people protect their wealth? Where do they put their money in bonds seem to be hopeless? Property, maybe commodities seem to be fairly strong stock markets, who knows? But so I wonder if all four of you can give me your thoughts on what people should do people who have, as you’ve said, Chris, a small amount or a large amount, depending on you know, we’re all we all have different amounts that that feel like wealth to us. But I’m going to start with you, Chris. Chris, what what do you feel people should do ordinary people with life savings? What should they be doing with it at the moment to protect it?
Chris Lewis
I think yeah, just two seconds before I get on to the that, just to say I don’t know how what people think on this but the dollar is dying. The dollar is going to go soon. I mean, in late in late 20, late 2020, sorry in Denver. returns 20, they had about $4 trillion in circulation by the end of 2021, they had 20 trillion in circulation. So it printed so much money, that the dollar is dying very rapidly. And the reality is, is that the countries can’t afford to pay their dollar denominated debt anymore, which is just going to push up. If you look at the DX y, the rating of the US dollar against other currencies is going through the roof, the dollar won’t be the reserve currency for much longer. So just as as for something for people to look at Brent Johnson’s dollar milkshake theory worth looking at, in terms of in terms of looking at the dollar, but in terms of what you were saying that what people should be doing, I think get every penny that you’ve got out of the high street banks, because they’re broken.
JP Morgan, as of 2019, had to underwear leverage to the tune of 216,000%, on the remaining cash deposits, that they’ve got the remaining cash that they’ve got in their bank, they will leverage 216,000% on it. And that goes for pretty much every high street bank, they’re leveraged to the eyeballs, and they basically don’t have the cash deposits, to pay off their, you know, derivatives that they’ve spent into the market should the market collapse. The reality is, is that when the economy goes, the banks are going to be performing bail ins left, right and centre. So I personally, I mean, we have our own financial reserve called Central Reserve, which is an offshore banking structure, we’re encouraging everyone to get their finances out of the high street banks and get it into things like gold and silver commodities, oil, natural gas, copper, wheat, all of these sorts of things are likely to do well over the coming years.
So getting getting finances out of fiat currency and into something physical is a very, very sensible thing to do. Because the reality is fiat currency in its current form, is not going to be around for that much longer. CBDCs come in, in 2024 in g7 countries, if you look at Nigeria and Jamaica, in the last two years, in the last few weeks, they’ve launched their CBDCs. Already, fiat currency is going to go and as a result, you do not want to be the last one left on the merry go round with a merry go round stops, you’ve got time to get, you know, finances into these commodities.
And Cameron sounds like they’ve put together a really, really good product to allow that we’ve done a not too dissimilar thing with digital, there are these options out there that you can start to get used to transacting in a digital fashion by using physical commodities to either save, or to spend. So we’re we’re advocating people, if they’ve got money in their or currency in their bank accounts to get it out of that and to start really thinking about as terrible as it sounds, a bit of disaster planning, having having cash at home that you need to pay your essential bills, if the ATM stops spewing out the money. Having silver you know, silver is probably the number one most undervalued asset Clock class on the planet right now. In the 19, mid 1970s, you could get a silver a one ounce of silver was about 50 odd dollars, is now about 25.
So there are very few things that you can now get at the moment in terms of commodity based assets that are half the price of what they were in the 70s. So do your research, look at the different things but certainly gold, silver, oil, natural gas, copper, wheat, they’re some of the good ones, even just looking forward to the way the world is going the world is going far more towards you know batteries. So what are the types of metals that conductive metals are using battery silver being one of them cobalt, when the car batteries go to Solid State batteries, which they’re going to be doing that use a heck of a lot of lithium, you know, buy into these things because the world is going to need it.
So invest in the in the in the things of the future that the world is essentially going to need because the price is going to go up. And as Cameron said, you want to invest in things that are going to hold its value, because it’s not that these things are going up. It’s just the cash that you’re buying with is devaluing. And that’s why the price essentially goes up.
Jasmine Birtles
Hi, Cameron, what would you add to that?
Cameron Parry
Well, just for everybody’s, you know, just to be clear, when, when Chris mentions about Alan, he’s not talking about a bailout. So after the global financial crisis, regulators or regulators basically got together and said, We’re not going to have enough to bail out from tax revenues from from tax that we all pay to bail out banks from the government. So we need to give them authority with the regulators to let individual banks expropriate or seize the parts of your depositors funds.
So when these banks get in trouble, so if you’re with I’m not casting any aspersions on particular bank Split Lloyd we’re in trouble. And I had my money with Barclays. But Jasmine if you were with Lloyds or something, and we had 10,000 in their age, and they get in trouble, they can do a Baylin and expropriate says, Say 40% of your deposit. I’m still okay with mine because my individual banks held together. And they’ve tried to take a view or justified that a depositor is a stakeholder in that organisation, which is absolute rubbish. A shareholder is a stakeholder in that organisation, somebody who’s generating returns and all that. But this is not the understanding of people using a bank or banking system.
The name of this directive is the bank. Bank, we’re what is the bank Recovery and Resolution Directive number two, it’s directive number two, since we came out of the EU, it’s a real thing, it’s a threat when when the system goes, there will be a domino effect. And this is going to be a problem for all of us. That said, I, you know, I don’t want a catastrophe to happen. I think central bankers, I mean, you can have an argument with central bankers need to exist. But um, I think a country should have its own currency, but it needs to be trusted. And really, to try something he needs to be transparent, and it needs to be accountable to something.
So I also, you know, I agree with Chris, the US dollar has got a unique, operational, functional, valued more so than the other, the other fiat currencies, as George was kind of identifying but, but it will go as well, because it has nothing behind it. I mean, it’s just structurally it’s a flawed product. So they’ll reset with a product to hopefully win our confidence, and that we can trust people again, basically politicians and central bankers, that they won’t do this to us again, but they always do it is historically it just gets repeated this debasing of government issued currency. So So I think, yeah, so the hope is, and certainly when I say hope, the, the option we have, firstly, if you’ve got to make this money, and you like investing in you like a particular thing, or if you like, following markets, I mean, you know, good luck to you, I own some stock.
So you know, I, I have a property, but I need money, I need money every day, in my daily life, I need money, because I need a buffer for a rainy day for life’s uncertainties. I know that it’s not intelligent, just to live on credit. So I need to save up for a holiday, I’ve got my kids education, but I need money. So what does money actually have to be for me, it has to be reliable, it has to be my in my control, I have to have access to it whenever I want, immediately, I need everybody to accept it, I don’t want to have to go to a venue and convince them to accept some weird, other currency. So that’s really what we were trying to design we tell him, it is true that it’s your money is gold, like a digital representation of the goal.
It’s not a cryptocurrency or anything that is your legal title. Our technology allows you to use the value of that and move it around as money and you can live in it. And I mean, I you know, I do, I don’t, I don’t have trouble sleeping at night. I also have other investments because I’m, you know, financially interested in stuff. But um, as far as money goes, I still by the way, I still have a sort of couple of direct debit to my Barclays account, I don’t mind having a little bit of fear, money is not my main money. And when I’m trying to burn down the Bank of England or anything, but they need to fix their products, it’s terrible for society. It has societal implications between the haves and the have nots, all sorts of terrible stuff. And the US dollar when that falls, and it will, that’ll be the biggest one of all, because that in a way, that’s the biggest, I hate to say, this isn’t semi good, but it’s like the biggest con pan of all of them.
So, so look, it’s so here’s the thing, the solution will come from the private sector. And it won’t just be one solution, Bitcoin really carved a path of what’s possible, regulators had to deal with it in a way that they couldn’t pressure an individual to shut it down until they figured it out. Because, you know, Satoshi Nakamoto didn’t identify him or her or themselves. And so it tested a lot of things around while matured a path of how to do certain things in technology. We don’t use these we are a centralised organisation, so we don’t use decentralised technology or distributed Ledger’s. Because we need to have the gold in our vaults in Switzerland before we can issue tally.
So it’s not created to an algorithm or anything. But you know, it showed that the private sector is really where this is. You can’t wait for the state governments they’re not they’re not the entrepreneurs, they’re not coming up with the solutions for tomorrow, or the solutions we need today. The private sector will do that. Tell us the area towns like in one place, which I apologise CRISPR hadn’t actually heard. We started talking today, but I’ll be checking that out. It sounds interesting. You know, for me, I just want something simple that I can rely on because when I want to invest I can I can do that.
Um, but um, but yeah, you’ve got to at the end of the day, you got to be self reliant, self resilient. It’s not because you want to isolate. But if you want to, if you want to be part of a community, if you want to help others, you got to get yourself in a position of strength first, and people rely on you to get your house in order. And
Chris lewis
Jasmine, just a follow up what Cameron said in regards to bail ins for everyone, that’s that’s listening. When you put money into the bank, the money legally becomes theirs, which is something that not a lot of people realise. So they can legally take it under a bail in and use it to prop themselves up. So please do have a look at what Professor Professor Richard Werner has done on this and the empirical study that he’d done just for everyone listening. But Cameron is entirely right. If you put money in the bank, it legally becomes there. So they are legally entitled to take it should
Jasmine Birtles
And this did happen in in Cyprus?
Chris Lewis
Cyprus in 2014. Yeah, just one last thing, because everyone will understand this. You’re lending your money to the bank, they’re taking the asset, as Chris was saying, they have an obligation back to you. A bank customer is a bank creditor, it’s a lending system, you know, you’ve lent it to them. Why? Because they pay interest. Interest is a return paid on the loan, like whichever direction the loan goes, but that is the return on the loan. That’s why you get interest in your savings account.
Jasmine Birtles
Paul Randolph via said, but the government does guarantee 85,000 pounds. It does. My concern, though, and I’ll come to Goldman this My concern is that if all the banks failed, surely the government wouldn’t have the money to cover all of that.
Chris Lewis
They will print a truckload and by the time you get your 85,000 back, it’ll be worth about 45. Yeah. And also, you’re meant to get the son of that skin. Sorry, Gordon, because I know the answer. But under the scheme, you’re meant to get paid out within seven days of a bank going into administration, but they don’t go into administration quickly, even when they restrict your access to your money. So we’re Northern Rock had a run on the bank a few years back well, over a decade ago.
Now, it was four months before it got reconstructed, which means you would have been without access to your money or have limited access to whatever the bank and the regulator suggest you you should be able to live on regardless of your mortgage and whatever. And then you would have got your money back. But if it’s happening across the board, you know, the Financial Services compensation scheme isn’t sitting there with all this money. It will need to be created digitally created.
Jasmine Birtles
Venetia are now finished a friend of mine, and I know we’ve spoken about this before Venetia, she says Sam, can you put your pension pot into alternative currencies? What do you think Cameron can use?
Cameron Parry
Some of them you can it depends if it is safe, and whether it’s approved by their committee. Something like physical allocated gold that you can do with tally, we’re exploring this because you do have allocated gold and it’s tied to a particular other kind of bar. But because you can move it in real time whether that is a bit too dynamic for their understanding. We just haven’t haven’t had those conversations. But you can do in some products, not too many. But things like gold, you can Yeah. into into a common set of set, which is a self invested personal pension that will give you the architecture and the flexibility to invest it as you want. It just depends on whether your provider will allow that. Sorry, Gordon
Gordon Kerr
I think I think some of the discussion is getting a bit too close for my comfort level, onto giving investment advice to the attendees. So I’m not in that business. I just operated the 30,000 feet level in terms of trying to predict the next phase in this general debasement of fiat money. So I don’t disagree with the general comments, criticising the dollar, or Sterling. But let’s bear in mind that Japan has announced the most dramatic policy in the last three months, the Japanese central bank has announced that they will finance literally unlimited amounts of Japanese government debt that a fixed interest cost of 0.25%. So they they’ve basically declared circularity of financing which one would have thought in any previous era of capitalism would have kind of crashed the currency, but it hasn’t the Japanese Yen is still accepted as a system of money. So I’m a little bit wary about making, you know, really, really dramatic doomsday predictions about the collapse of the Swiss franc or the yen or the dollar in the foreseeable future. The currency that I continue to focus on that I believe is the one which is most likely to suffer significant disruption is the Euro. Euro lacks any form of governmental authority. It’s just an agglomeration of 23 present member states with the possibility of Croatia joining in January and Bulgaria the following year. it if there’s if the the present disruption serious term or which has gripped the euro, even in the last three weeks, they’ll try everything. I’ll try it fast. They there’s nothing these Eurocrats won’t do, they will try CBDCs I think they’ll fail, I think I think there will be a kind of split, there’ll be new optimal currency areas, Jimmy will take some kind of lead. And I think we’ll see a rapid denouement of all these kind of fears that have been put in front of us. As you know, gentlemen, I have spent a great deal of time in trying to contact parliamentarians and broadcast my fears about CBDCs. But I think for those reasons, in this very difficult game of making predictions, I think the cbdc will be experimented with, and much like COVID, permanent lockdowns in Europe will kind of be rejected first. And hopefully that will help us to see the light. And all of these insane policies which have become the kind of addiction of our governments such as extreme woke policies, banning the car netzero, all of these, there’ll be a kind of reset of the thinking about that. So hopefully, this this, this, this lunatic drive into more Ultra polluting batteries will be at an end. And there’ll be some restoration of common sense and preservation of petrol cars for for the foreseeable future.
Jasmine Birtles
That’s a whole other other subject that we haven’t got time to go into, sadly, now, but bernadin has sat down. So how much what percentage of our wealth? Should we keep in the bank and keep the rest investments and things? Now, of course, you know, again, thank you, Gordon, for reminding me, nothing here can be taken as financial advice. But you know, it’s not a bad thing to be thinking about, you know, everybody has different percentages. When people asked me about how much what percentage of your investment should be in cryptocurrency, I say no more than 1%.
That’s what I say. With I mean, I personally agree with Cameron that, you know, you have enough in the bank to sort of cope with your day to day transactions, but no more. And yes, Chris is nodding on this one. I’d like to just finish, I think particularly with with George, because George, you’ve been patiently waiting there. What now with your historians hat on knowing what you know, about the Roman Empire? What would your What are your thoughts for people who want to protect their wealth? What do you think works from looking at history.
George Maher
I also I also have an actuarial hat. I knew and coming at it from both angles. I just, um, briefly, I think that one of the positives that happened out of the crisis of 2008 2009, when the world’s financial system came close to collapse, and it was inches away from the cliff edge is that people in the system did actually learn. And one of the amazing things that happened in the United Kingdom, and in some other places, was the ring fencing that happened within within the banks. And one of the deputy governors of the Bank of England, said something extraordinary a few years ago, which was that he would fight to the last drop of blood to protect ring fencing because it is so crucially important.
And what happened was the systemically important banks, such as Lloyds, Barclays, and all the rest, had their retail business carved out, and no gambling stuff in my nation use the shorthand can go in those ring fence parts of the bank. And that is crucial, it means that the states can actually protect them. And if they were to collapse, and the state were not to protect them, that that would be the end of the state. So my money that is with Lloyds, I have absolutely no concerns whatsoever about the security of it, when I want it back, I will get it back. It will depreciate. So we will have 10% knocked off at this year and 10% In my view next year. And that’s not good.
But in terms of security, I have I have no concerns about it. If you ask the question initially about where would where would I put my money? And where do I put my money? And, you know, I put it in, you know, a part of the world that I think is going to survive. And I think, you know, we’re kind of all in this together. If if the dollar collapses, everything collapses, you know, not just for them, it’s for us. If the US collapses, everything collapses, you know, whereas nature of them. So a chunk of you know, I would put a chunk into the United States. So the handy thing about the United States compared to say Russia or China is if you’ve got money there and you want to back tomorrow, you can get it back tomorrow. They don’t there’s no risk of them having hanging on to it.
And I kind of like the s&p the Standard and Poor’s 500 Here index. Because if you ever look at those 500 companies, you can just flick it over the page, as you’re looking at the US economy, Amazon recognise that Walmart I know about that. McDonald’s, don’t go there. But I know about that. So having money in the Standard and Poor’s 500, you’re investing in the US economy in a way that you can understand their institutions so that you can complain about them continue to be robust, they’re innovative, they’ll continue to want to grow the country economically.
And as someone once said, they run the country for the stock exchange, and why shouldn’t I have a shepherd? So that’s my question. And it maybe it’s maybe it’s informed by, you know, looking at that wonderful story of people who’ve built up something, and smashed. And they’re looking at the Americans today, and they’ve built up something and they could smash it, but I don’t think they’re doing it now. It don’t they’re not at that part of the cycle. My personal view.
Jasmine Birtles
I know, I know that Gordon, Chris and Cameron have a very different sense of things. But that but we’re actually at the end of our hour now. So so I’d have to say to everybody come along to the next one. Because we will be having more of these webinars. as things unfold as things change. We will be looking and looking at what is happening with currency with with money with economic situation with the financial system over the next sort of year and more.
So thank you so much for everyone. As I said before, nothing today should be taken as financial advice. Thank you so much to Cameron Perry from tally money. So that’s T A double L y tally. money.com. Do go and have a look. We’ve written a few times about tally money on money magpie.com So have a look on money Magpie as well if you want to find out more about what it does.
Thank you very much Chris Lewis from in one place.com Also worth a look at Gordon Kerr from Cobden partners and George Maher author of Pugnare, here’s my own book which cropping which is not signed to join. So next time we meet our must get you to sign it. Thank you so much. This whole thing is being recorded. It will be put to on the money magpie.com website on Monday. So do come back and make sure you join the next one. Thank you so much to everyone.
