Argentina's Milei Plans to Close Central Bank, Saying They’re the 'Greatest Thieves'

Welcome to Crossroads. We have some big stories today. In Argentina, the new president is saying that closing the central bank and actually dollarizing, meaning adopting the US dollar, is non-negotiable. Also, the dangers of fiat currency and unlimited spending, problems that stem from centralized banking. We're going to be discussing that today. And we'll also go into the socialist ties to centralized banks. Something many people may be wondering, and what are centralized banks? What are the concerns with them? We'll discuss all of this and more in today's episode. That said, first, let's jump into what's happening in Argentina. Now, the new president there, Javier Mele, is making true on his promise to close the country's centralized bank. The move was being criticized as just a rumor. But he then took to X, where he clarified that shutting down the central bank is a non-negotiable matter. This is his official statement on that, if you're wondering. Now, the Buenos Aires Herald said this, one of the local newspapers there. It said, Although the central bank remains a non-negotiable part of Javier Mele's economic plan, the president-elect's team said via a press statement on Friday, it says the release added that they were confirming Mele's commitment to his proposal of eliminating the country's main banking authority in order to shut down what they called false rumors. Now, in another video, Mele called the central bank one of the greatest thieves of all time. And I'll be discussing a bit of what this means and, you know, is that actually true? Well, look, many people have pointed out the problems of centralized banking. This goes back to the founding fathers, in fact. You know, centralized banks are not necessarily new. Thomas Jefferson was criticized in the Bank of England, as were many others. The founding fathers of the United States were deeply opposed to the Bank of England. And they wanted to prevent a scenario like what was happening in Europe at the time, where people were becoming slaves to bank debt. Now, I'm not exaggerating when I say slaves. How do we define a slave? A slave is a person who works, but they are not entitled to the wealth they generate. And so how does banking tie into that? Well, when you go into debt, you become a slave to the holder of the debt. This is an old principle, not necessarily new, not even necessarily related to banks. The debtor is beholden to the person who they owe it to. That's the nature of it. And if you engage in some of the predatory practices, banks practice, at least modern banks, I'll explain the differences with some of this. Well, what happens is that you have things like, you know, graduating interest rates. You have issues like fiat currency. You have many other traps, I would call them, that are established to lure you into debts that you can't really pay off. What does that mean? It means that indefinitely sometimes you will be working and a section of your pay, a portion of your pay is going to be taken by the banks because you've fallen into a debt trap, essentially. Now, these debates historically have continued to this day. And, again, there's other problems with centralized banks, which we'll get into as well. There are a lot of debates around banks in general, I should say. But with centralized banking, because, you know, we could go a lot into banking itself, and there are some positives and negatives to it. But with centralized banking, one of the big concerns is that essentially what it is is a bank that is not allowed to fail. And this is important. The prospect of failure for a bank means that they can't take too much of people's money for risky investments. It means they can't abuse people with loans that people can never technically pay off. If people just one day say, hey, I'm not going to pay the bank, what happens? If enough people do that, the bank goes out of business. Meaning the banks need to, to an extent, make sure that they're doing things in a way that are at least manageable. And, of course, if banks, normally the way they work is you give them, let's say, $100, and under normal circumstances they might take, you know, maybe $50 or $70 of that, depending on how daring they're feeling. They'll take a portion of that money and they'll invest it. It's through this method that banks typically do, at least historically, play some positive role in terms of helping the development of larger businesses in the country, although there's other problems with that, such as, for example, financing wars and so on. The issue you have, though, is that if the bank takes too much of people's money, and let's say they take 90% of people's money, and then the person shows up and says, hey, where's my $100? And like, well, bad news, buddy, only $10 of that $100 is left, but good news, if you just wait a while, we'll hopefully make it back an investment. You know, you have a scenario like that, which the banks are typically concerned about. This is why runs on the banks are problematic. If everybody suddenly wants their money back, the reality suddenly dawns that banks don't have your money. They've invested your money. And the other issue you have is that with centralized banks, essentially what has happened is with a bank that can't fail, it lets them increasingly make risky investments to the point where, for example, the Federal Reserve and things like that, because it bails out banks, it makes it so that banks can make very risky investments, things that are, maybe they'll invest 99% of your money, sometimes even more, in fact, because they can write debt as if they actually held something. Now, the issue then is if banks hold, if they lose too much money, if they don't get their money back, again, they're going to fail. This ties into the dangers of fiat currency and unlimited spending. Now, one of the key problems with things like the Federal Reserve, you know, aside from printing fiat currency, essentially fake money, right, phony money, which allows them to keep printing money and inflating the currency, by the way, is that the Fed can bail out failing banks, meaning, again, as I just discussed, when you have a central bank like the Federal Reserve and you've given it additional power, aside from the normal powers that, again, a central bank might have, you give the Federal Reserve the ability to take people's money, essentially through the medium of inflation, which I'll explain, and use part of that to give banks money to bail them out to make sure they cannot fail. This is why, for example, in 2008 with the banking crisis, what happened? We bailed out the banks. Even during the recent crisis, we bailed out many banks. You might remember there was several smaller banks in the U.S. that, of course, went belly up. The big banks were saved. The smaller ones lost too much consumer confidence, or they would have been bailed out just fine as well. But lo and behold, that's what happened. And there's also the problem of giving the government limitless access to cash, which they can create by stealing wealth from the population through inflation. Now, I briefly discussed the problem with inflation. How does that work? The nature of fiat currency is that it's essentially a paper bill that represents a certain value. It's an IOU, essentially. And when you go to the bank, and let's say you give them your $10 worth of gold, let's use that as a hypothetical, you give them $10 worth of gold, and they give you a certificate that says $10. And you're like, okay, this $10 will forever be able to buy that piece of gold right back because it's worth the same amount. This is the way the public often interprets this. But that's not how the banks look at it. What do the banks do? You give them that piece of gold worth $10, probably a very small piece, by the way, and the bank, rather than, let's say, trying to increase its wealth, will merely print more of those bills that represent a set currency. Now, rather than you having, let's say, a bill that represents the value of that $10 in gold, they'll print two, meaning that they've given the public two bills now, meaning the bill you have in your pocket, the actual value has been cut in half. That's inflation. And when they print four, well, that means that it's been cut in four pieces, and then eight, cut in eight pieces, and then 100, cut in 100 pieces, where your $10 is worth, you know, 10 cents or whatever. They continue doing this. And it's through this way that banks reduce the actual value of money. That is what inflation is. And, of course, that brings up other problems as well, which is essentially unlimited spending. Banks can continue printing money, which allows them to continue creating wealth for themselves artificially, which they can then use to essentially allow governments to have unlimited spending on anything they want, including wars, by the way. Mises Institute had an interesting piece explaining some of this, noting the Federal Reserve in particular. It said this, abolishing the Fed, meaning the Federal Reserve in the U.S., would put a huge break on planning state, you know, social planning. Without the ability to expand the money supply at will, the federal government would become about as threatening as a state or local government. That's only the beginning of what the end of the Fed would mean. It would dramatically change the political culture in this country. Bureaucracies would tumble. Trade would stabilize. The investment risk calculus would accord with the free market. The state is always and everywhere a danger. And even when it has no monopoly on money and no printing press that can create money tickets at will, but a state with the ability to make its own money is a grave and relentless threat to prosperity and freedom. At least according to the Mises Institute, which represents more of a libertarian form of economics, of course. You know, this is where you get into some of the arguments, I believe, that the Argentinian president, Millet, is bringing up. He's very openly a libertarian, and it's very likely he's going on the same concept, because when he discusses the problems of centralized banking, at least where he's at, he's talking about government powers. He's talking about the, you know, expansion of the state. He's talking about trying to stabilize the markets in favor of the average person, rather than powerful elites who claim to represent the average person, but typically don't. These are some of the issues he's campaigning on. And if you eliminate this kind of theft, notably through centralized banks, because as I mentioned, he described centralized banking as one of the greatest forms of threat, a view commonly held by a lot of libertarians. I would agree with it as well, actually. He's arguing, of course, that if you eliminate that loophole within the financial system that allows a limitless creation of artificial currency at the cost of essentially stealing it from people's pockets without them realizing it, because you're essentially giving them, again, a ticket that represents a value you're holding, and you just print more tickets, you create essentially more wealth for yourself, but the actual value being held has maintained pretty much the same actual value. By doing this, again, you rob people, and about every 10 years, inflation doubles. It's actually much worse right now in the US. But Millet also talks about the problems of socialism, and the problems, again, of the burgeoning state of this massive bureaucracy that builds up. And many people who would agree with this type of economics would point to the powers of the central banks as being one of the key problems with this. Here's Mises Institute in a letter from Ron Paul. It says, again, a libertarian, right? It says this further in, economic elites benefit when the Federal Reserve pumps new money into the economy because they have access to the money created before there are widespread price increases. Artificially low interest rates, because the Fed can control interest rates, also facilitate the growth of the welfare warfare state. As I mentioned, a lot of war spending, massive spending, is only made possible because of centralized banking. He notes that the Federal Reserve's inflationary policies, again, when you're printing money, stealing money from people's pockets without them realizing it, essentially. That the inflationary policies harm the average American by eroding the dollar's purchasing power. This forces consumers to rely on credit cards and other forms of debt to maintain their standards of living. Many Americans are unable to afford their own homes because they've been saddled with student debt that can even exceed their income. Now, he notes that since the bailouts of 2008, there's been a growing understanding that the current system, notably the economic system, is rigged in favor of the elites and against the average American. Now, it sounds familiar. This is what Malay is also saying in Argentina. But he continues saying this, Ron Paul. He says, unfortunately, popular confusion of our system of Keynesian neoliberalism, again, Keynesian economics, which is what is adopted by many leftist countries, with a free market economy combined with a widespread entitlement mentality, has led many Americans to support increasing government control of our economy. The key to beating back the rising support for socialism, on both the left and the right, is helping more people understand. Now, he notes that the key to beating back the rising support for socialism, on both the left and the right, is helping more people understand that big government and central banking are the cause of their problems. And that free markets in all areas, and especially in money, are the solution. Now, this sounds strange. It's because when people criticize capitalism and so on, oftentimes they're not criticizing actual capitalism. They're criticizing crony capitalism, which is something entirely different. They're criticizing the interventionist policies that have damaged the actual free market. And when people criticize student loans and unaffordable health care and unaffordable houses, look no further. It's state interventionism in the hand of that, oftentimes causing the spike in prices. Because the way the market works under normal circumstances, is that when people can't afford something, it goes out of business. If people can't afford houses, they can't sell the houses. If people can't afford health care, the hospitals go out of business. And of course, the normal way they avoid that is by lowering prices to meet what people can actually pay. And of course, there's different tiers in the quality of it, depending on what you can pay or can't pay. But typically, you will have people engaged in the free market, looking to provide products and services and various forms of care to people at all economic levels. You know, with medicine, for example, most doctors were not about business. It was about the Hippocratic Oath, an oath you took to save lives. I would say the medical system is broken because of the abandonment of the Hippocratic Oath. And I would blame part of that, a large part, on interventionist policies, which through regulation and constant legal threats, made it very difficult for doctors to do business without significant risks or costs to themselves. Now, it's important, as Ron Paul notes, that the Liberty Movement put pressure on Congress to cut spending and rein in, or better yet, in the Fed. Because he's arguing, as is Malay, that central banking is one of the core problems in many of these areas where we see rising costs, unaffordable basic ways of living. And as we see, essentially, a system get taken away from us and sold back to us, or rented back to us, essentially on debt. Now, on the issue of socialism as well, Malay in Argentina has been explaining how it is the biggest problem that Argentina faces. And he explains how this issue ties into problems with the system behind big government overall. Let me play you this and we'll talk a bit more. There are people who work, and we don't live by envy, hatred, resentment, theft, and unfair treatment of the law, which is the filth of social justice, which is the most unfair thing that exists. Because it implies stealing from a person the fruit of their labor to give it to whoever they want. But where did this bunch of satraps come from? You know why? Because in all this process, not only did they destroy the economy, they made people poorer. Now, after making these statements, Malay goes on to describe politicians as being the key problem in this. He does seem to be more on the kind of far end of libertarianism. I think he actually had a video where he showed the anarcho-capitalist flag, which is, of course, the idea of just eliminating government almost entirely and letting the markets essentially regulate the system. But he ties it into the issues with union leaders, politicians, central banks, and the broader issue that people look to big government to solve their problems when big government is instead the cause of many problems in the first place. Now, personally, I would say you need some government. I think you do need a military. I think you need basic forms of justice. I do think you need police. I do think you need police and courts. And I do think you need some basic forms of government to maintain this system. Generally speaking, I don't believe in the full-blown anarcho-capitalism. But Malay, of course, is going on this. And, of course, I would argue that many countries can go on this because America essentially provides the system of international stability that many of them need. And, of course, if you look at Malay's policies, he's not becoming an anarchist. He's actually appointing people who are even relatively moderate in some regards. And so he's not looking to abolish everything. But what he is talking about is abolishing the fat on government and abolishing the systems that allow for corruption, notably. And by getting rid of things like, for example, the, let's say, systems that allow for crony capitalism among politicians, central banks, union leaders, and many other things, he's looking to eliminate the financial incentives and forms of corruption that allow for crony capitalism to take root in societies. Now, that being said, let me give you an example of how some of this might play out. Here you have another story on bankers wanting legal immunity so they can push the ESG agenda. Case in point, as Malay is noting, as many others have noted. That protections for banks is what is allowing a lot of these agendas to take place in the first place. Because, again, ESG is not profitable. Environmental and social governance doesn't necessarily make money. They wouldn't need to essentially create a racket where they threaten people with financial harm or damage to your brand if you refuse to go along with their policies. These strong-arm tactics are things that go against the nature of the free market. If the public, you and I, decide that we don't want to buy something, it's going to go out of business. We don't change them, essentially, through threatening them. We change them through just deciding we don't want to put our money there. Now, of course, some people would argue that with ESG, because they give scores to different companies, that that in itself is informing the markets of, let's say, the policies of that company. And by doing so, allow people to decide whether or not they want to spend their money on it. That's not really fully accurate. The way that ESG works is it creates a stigma on a company based on many different criteria, which may or may not actually reflect tangibly what the surface label entails. ESG, environmental and social governance. Which is why, for example, you can have big oil companies with very good ESG scores, but you have guys like Elon Musk, who runs Twitter, and Tesla, a literal electric car company, having very bad ESG scores, not because they're going against environmental policies, but because he's getting labeled, at least in his case, for what appear to be political reasons. And so what you have, then, is this union forming, not just at the civic level, but also at the government level, where governments, essentially, are working hand-in-hand with investors and bankers and, of course, big businesses, in order to enact social policies that go against the civic society. You and I, and you and I making choices in where we put our money. Let me show you what Bloomberg had to say about this new ESG push. It says this. Bankers servicing one of the world's biggest ESG debt markets are now actively seeking legal protections to guard against the potential greenwashing allegations that may be ahead. Essentially, what they want is legal immunity in order to do something that was debatably legal, something that may, in fact, break the law. And they want the government to protect them while they break the law, essentially. Now, let me show you this. Economic Times of India says a bit more in it. It says Greg Brown, a London-based partner in Allen & Overy's banking practices, said that he's seen a surge in clients asking for new legal clauses in the SLL documentation. And it notes that such add-ons are designed to let lenders strip the sustainability claim from a loan. So-called declassification provisions mean that bankers can just book what had been an SLL as a normal loan, should they subsequently realize the product doesn't actually merit an environmental, social, or governance label. In other words, they're gaming the label. They're gaming the system. They're doing things that don't meet the criteria the public and even investors are being told it represents. And merely what they're doing is instead using that label, gaming the system, and getting the good ESG scores in order to get money while not actually representing what the public has been led to believe it means. Now, again, this is being framed as a request for legal immunity as a form of greenwashing. And what is that? It's when you make false or misleading statements about environmental benefits in order to push a product or practice. It's like the snake oil salesman you had back in the day. They're lying to you to get your money. It's a way of deceiving investors, though, not necessarily people buying in the actual storefronts or markets, folks like you and I. Investopedia describes it like this. It says that greenwashing is the process of conveying a false impression or misleading information about how a company's products are environmentally sound. Greenwashing involves making an unsubstantiated claim to deceive consumers into believing that a company's products are environmentally friendly or have a greater positive environmental impact than they actually do. Although in this case, again, it relates not to consumers necessarily, but instead to investors and to banks. And again, this ties into the bigger picture of what we're going at here, which is that essentially what you have is an internal little network of individuals gaming the system at the cost of the average citizen. And when you have guys like Malay, again, now the president-elect in Argentina, noting how centralized banking fits into the ecosystem of big government, this is what I believe he's actually referring to. That said, that's it for YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook. For the rest of the episode, come join me on EpochTV, E-P-O-C-H-T-V dot com. I'll be talking about China's shadow banking sector, which is now going belly up alongside many other things. And also, folks, I want to hear your thoughts on central banking. Do you think it's good or bad? Email me your thoughts. Crossroads at EpochTimes dot com. Crossroads at E-P-O-C-H-T-I-M-E-S dot com. And again, send your thoughts on the new Argentinian president's plan to close the central banks that I just talked about. And again, this email is a new dialogue we're starting on Crossroads. I want to hear your thoughts on the issues as well. So again, send me an email. Crossroads at EpochTimes dot com. Now, that says jump over to EpochTV. We'll talk about one more story, then we'll jump into questions from the audience. The link to that is in the description below this video. Thank you all again, and I will see you on EpochTV. Experts agree. One of the best ways to protect against financial uncertainty.