Last November 17 commodity broker Ann Barnhardt announced that Barnhardt Capital Management would cease operations. “I could no longer tell my clients that their monies and positions were safe in the future and options markets – because they are not,” she explained. “The entire system has been utterly destroyed by the MF Global collapse.”
According to Barnhardt, times are changing. “Whenever a firm failure happened, the customer funds were intact and the exchanges would step in to backstop everything and keep customers 100 percent liquid….” But now the system has broken down. As Barnhardt noted, “A firm, led by a crony of the Obama regime, stole all of the non-margined cash held by customers of his firm.”
There is a fascinating interview that Jim Puplava did with Barnhardt last November where she offered a perspective on where our country is headed and why. What she says is shocking and will sound improbable to many. She says, “We are now living in a lawless, Marxist communist [country]. This is no longer a nation of laws. This is now transformed into a nation of men.”
Barnhardt is using precise language. She is not exaggerating, whatever we may think. An enormous amount of money was stolen in the MF Global collapse. A huge transfer of wealth took place. “There is no rule of law,” Barnhardt told Puplava. “The rule of law no longer exists. There is no longer justice in this country; and no nation, no culture, no society can survive if there isn’t a foundation of justice. That is why we are teetering on the precipice of collapse and I foresee civil war coming in the next several years.”
Barnhardt sees corruption at the top. She also sees a political forces at work – and a political ideology that is linked to the welfare state and the massive indebtedness we see around us today. According to Barnhardt, “Europe is done. Europe is mathematically impossible, it cannot be saved…. You want to make a start … at trying to bail out Europe? We are talking about $25 trillion just to start.”
The end is indeed near. The debt at home and abroad has piled too high for too long. As of this writing, sovereign debt is growing faster than the global economy. As Barnhardt explained, “These people have so leveraged themselves … giving their brain-dead citizenry free handouts and entitlements that it is now mathematically impossible to save the paradigm. It’s not a matter of ‘if’ the global financial system is going to collapse; oh, it’s going to collapse. It’s just a matter of when.”
We might refashion Nietzsche’s famous saying that “Nihilism is at the door.” We might say that “Bankruptcy is at the door.” According to Barnhardt, “You have to get your heads around the fact that there are truly evil people in the world who … would sell their grandmother to the Nazis for a nickel without hesitation if they could get away with it.” And these people have gotten higher up in the financial food chain than they should be. Of course, the United States is full of immoral people who think nothing of breaking the rules. Anyone who has watched our culture closely knows this.
Moral rot pervades modern society. “We now know that the government is absolutely stuffed to the gills almost exclusively with this same type of moral degenerate culture,” noted Barnhardt. “These people that are in the government – that are … not just in the Congress and the Executive Branch, but also in the bureaucracy – they are in it for themselves. They are in it for the money. “
The honest businessman finds himself at the mercy of dishonest officials who are working with dishonest businessmen. “Those of us who have been in the business have known intuitively … that there was front-running going on by politicians. A great example of this is someone like Harry Reid,” said Barnhardt. “Harry Reid, when he entered Congress, had a low six-figure net worth. He now has an eight figure net worth, and he has never done anything except be a United States Senator…. How does that happen? How does a man with a hundred and seventy thousand dollar a year salaried position go from having a six figure net worth to an eight figure net worth?”
A system based on trust cannot endure the collapse of honesty and integrity. Such a system is headed for ruin or worse. “It’s obvious what’s been going on,” Barnhardt continued. “You have to start acknowledging these people for what they are, and that is moral degenerates who are basically sociopaths and psychopaths…. The only thing they care about is themselves. They will do anything. They will steal, they will lie, they will cheat….”
Bad behavior is contagious. In fact, it has spread like a plague throughout the financial system. It seems that no law can stop it. No religion can reach it. According to Barnhardt: “You have to stop thinking that these people are just misguided, or that there is some sort of a difference of opinion on economic theory. These people are nefariously trying to destroy everything in this country. It’s called the Cloward-Piven strategy. Go in and destroy and collapse the entire economy … and then rebuild a new … Marxist-socialist-fascist state out of the burning rubble of this destruction. This is intentional, this is nefarious. This is not a function of incompetence.”
According to Wikepedia, “The Cloward-Piven strategy is a political strategy outlined in 1966 by American sociologists and political activists Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven that called for overloading the U.S. public welfare system in order to precipitate a crisis that would lead to … a national system of ‘guaranteed annual income and thus an end to poverty.’” Of course, the aforesaid system of guaranteed income is simply a euphemism for the dictatorship of the proletariat.
In her interview with Jim Puplava, Barnhardt was describing something that is moving forward, even now. There really is a Cloward-Piven strategy. There really are communists who routinely operate front organizations and who infiltrate mainstream political parties and corporations. And yes, their beliefs haven taken over this country. “If we as a people don’t get real about this,” warned Barnhardt, “we will be corkscrewed into the ground and this nation will be reduced to smoldering rubble.”
She is right, of course. But few are ready for the truth. Everyone sees a system that appears to be working. And most people, seeing only what they want to see, will ignore the danger. As Christopher Lasch wrote many years ago, “If the collapse of internal [moral] restraints were confined to the criminal classes, it might be possible, by means of a combination of incentives and stricter enforcement of the laws, to restore a sense of obligation. But the culture of shamelessness is not confined to the underclass.” [Revolt of the Elites, p. 214]
