Summary: To register for the McAlvany Wealth Management Tactical Short Q1 Call Click Here<br> <br> Is debt "for the common good" even more noble?<br> <br> The new morality - equal pay with no work<br> <br> Cryptocurrencies react to regulatory vulnerabilities<br> <br> <br> <br> The McAlvany Weekly Commentary<br> with David McAlvany and Kevin Orrick<br> <br> Modern Monetary Practice: The Alluring Tree In The Garden<br> April 20, 2021<br> <br> “Our tree is an infinite provider. The fruit will always be in reach. All our protectors have to do is harvest and eat and share with us if we’re good and not evil by the new definitions. Never again will politicians be limited by resources. Any number of promises can be made and all promises will be kept because we have access to the infinite. This is the theory of the infinite money tree.”<br> — David McAlvany<br> <br> Kevin: Welcome to the McAlvany Weekly Commentary. I’m Kevin Orrick along with David McAlvany. <br> <br> Well, gosh, I can’t believe we’ve already gotten through quarter one, Dave, but one of the nice things about a quarter ending is those who want to hear Doug Noland and you talk about what’s going on in the markets, they can tune into the Tactical Short call because you do that each quarter.<br> <br> David: Well, and of course, Doug writes the Credit Bubble Bulletin every weekend, and that is a treasure trove for those who are interested in not only the credit markets, but the financial markets in general, getting you very much granular detail on what has happened in the preceding week.<br> <br> Kevin: And that’s free to tune in on mwealthm.com. So if you just go to mwealthm.com, you can tune in. And actually, Doug is somebody that you and I, Dave, have read for decades before he came on staff.<br> <br> David: Yeah. So join us for the Thursday Tactical Short quarterly call, contemplating an inflection point. It’s 2:00 PM Mountain Standard Time this Thursday. And as Kevin mentioned, you can register for that at mwealthm.com and submit your questions there as well.<br> <br> Kevin: One of the things you’ve brought out over the last few years, Dave, is this incredible technology of blockchain, which of course is in the form of Bitcoin, Ethereum, those other currencies. Ken Rogoff, yeah, he said what was obvious. And that is, it’s not the kind of thing that will ensure independence for long. It’s almost like it’s been tested in the free market now. The governments, who see the monopoly of their own money creation being threatened, now we’re starting to see it take over. It’s intriguing to see Bitcoin come under pressure this week. And there’s a number of reasons that were given if you read Bloomberg.<br> <br> David: Yeah, certainly rumors of the Treasury Department pursuing financial institutions for money laundering using cryptocurrencies. We had Bitcoin down 15% over the weekend, not an incidental or small amount, but you also had reports suggesting that it was instead an electricity blackout in Xinjiang, a region in China, and that the Bitcoin miners in that space were hit. So cryptocurrency markets then followed suit. <br> <br> What is not conjecture is the USM position of sanctions on Russia, including Russian-linked Bitcoin addresses, which we read about at nasdaq.com. We could skip right past that, but I’m still trying to fathom US-targeted sanctions on something that’s supposed to be anonymous. Do you see what I’m getting at?<br> <br> Kevin: Yeah. And it just shows me the vulnerabilities right now of cryptocurrency. I mean, you mentioned money laundering as being one of the possibilities, the crackdown on that. You mentioned electricity blackouts. You mentioned sanctions on Russia. And then of course regulation. That’s something that you’ve brought up in the past as well. Regulation in the various countries is coming.<br> <br> David: Yeah. Certainly,
