The Great Taking

Have the global elite devised an elaborate plan to take everything we own? Let's review a book that makes a compelling case.

Atlanta, GA

August 24, 2023

“Evil men will burn the world to the ground to rule over the ashes."

-Sun Tzu

From a tree on our property hangs a paper nest. Within and around it are several hundred hornets, a host of bald-faced yellow-jackets. 

About the size of a volleyball, their hive is far enough off the ground to not be an immediate threat. But perhaps that naive assumption is the greatest danger of all. 

Like the Federal Reserve or CIA, the hive hovers overhead, usually unnoticed, yet always watching. And harboring hostile irritants ever-ready to sting.

Like the men who move the world, they don’t like being noticed, and they hate being bothered. Anyone who tries should expect to be stung.

In some sense, they can’t help themselves. They’re unwitting slaves to the habit of force. It’s in their nature to control the population and boss people around. 

The “conspiracy theorist” epithet came from the CIA several decades ago. The agency deftly deployed it to discredit those who asked any questions. It was better to disparage skeptics than engage in debate.

These days, anything that diverges from conventional wisdom or the government line is casually dismissed as a “conspiracy theory”. It’s a wonderful way to keep inconvenient questions from being asked. 

But after the lunacy of the last three years, “conspiracy theories” should be the default assumption. Not that ongoing collusion is undertaken to keep us in line. Perpetual plotting isn’t necessary.

Like infielders who know what to do if the ball’s hit their way, the players need not coordinate a response to understand which actions are in their collective interest. As with bees in a hive, they know their role without planning every move. 

Last week I was sent a small book with a big warning. It’s among the more frightening things I’ve ever read. 

Written by former hedge fund manager David Rogers Webb, The Great Taking details a disturbing plan to rip everyone off. And by “everyone”, I mean all of us who think we own any of our assets.

Webb chronicles his credentials by reviewing his family history and professional background, particularly when he began to realize things were going awry. 

In the late 1990s, especially after the collapse of LTCM but before the tech bubble burst, he noticed central bank counterfeiting moved markets much more than economic activity did. 

This is obvious in retrospect, and a truism today. But it was “conspiracy theory” then. Webb, who ran his hedge fund at the time, recalls being called a “conspiracy theorist” whenever he made the assertion. 

Webb recounted meeting with George Soros during the dot com bust. When Webb wondered whether anything more could be done to keep markets afloat, Soros assured him “you don’t know what ‘they’ can do.” 

That’s scary enough. But more frightening was that “in such a moment, even George Soros spoke of a they.”

Watching the markets in 2003, Webb witnessed a phenomenon he’d never seen before. On certain days, everything went up, even as money growth went down. 

The only reasonable inference, as Webb put it, was that “new money was being directly injected into the financial markets.” Several years before it was officially described, this was the unheralded beginning of “Quantitative Easing”.

The heralded beginning came after the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, when an avalanche of counterfeit currency bailed out big banks harboring tens of trillions in derivatives losses. 

A few years before that collapse, “safe harbor” provisions of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code were revised to ensure certain creditors (who the bankruptcy court called “members of the protected class”) could capture client assets without a challenge. 

Legal theft was quietly codified. It became case law when Lehman went bankrupt. Before that failure, “JP Morgan [clearly among the “protected class”] took client assets as a secured creditor while being custodian for those assets!”

The US Bankruptcy Court of the Southern District of New York justified this heist (which was clearly fraudulent under prior bankruptcy laws) as necessary to protect “financial stability of the clearing houses” and prevent “chain reactions of insolvency among market participants.”

Apparently, individuals who’d always thought they owned securities no longer had rights to claim their assets. If the custodian collapsed, clients’ “securities” went with it.

Property rights to financial assets no longer existed. Before long, if Webb is right, no others will either. 

Like explosives around a condemned building, debt is being compiled to precipitate an implosion. Those who cause the detonation will enhance their wealth by burgling the debris. 

Crises aren’t accidental. They’re caused by people who’ll profit by the “recovery”.

Much as the powers-that-be are trying to eradicate physical cash today, their predecessors eliminated paper stock certificates several decades ago. 

And they marketed these maneuvers with similar pitches. Eliminating paper would be more “convenient”, crack down on crime, and ease transactions when exchanges were made. 

As Michael Malice might say, this may be factual, but it’s not truthful. The real reasons are more nefarious, and rarely advertised. Surveillance and confiscation aren’t selling points that will persuade most people. 

Until there’s a crisis. 

But when one arrives, the people will want someone to blame. And for someone else to pay the price. 

When the derivative dam bursts, major financial institutions…and the central clearing parties (CCP) that facilitate their transactions…will drown. 

So “regulators” who helped fill the reservoir are also the ones who’ve constructed the rescue raft. But only secured creditors will fit in the boat. And the vessel is painted with the pleasant assurances that if an institution fails, taxpayers won’t pay.

Unless the taxpayer “owns” financial assets held in custody at a failed firm. Then, like the Cypriot bank “bail-ins” a decade ago, the institution’s customers will be on the hook…while the big fish scarf the krill and swim away.

As under-capitalized as financial institutions and clearing parties are, it’s almost as if they’re designed to fail. Webb recalled precedence of the “Bank Holiday” in 1933. 

By executive order, banks were closed. Later, only those approved by the Fed were allowed to reopen. 

Thousands of banks were left to die. People with money in those disfavored institutions lost it all, as well as anything they’d financed (houses, cars, businesses) that they now couldn’t pay for. The “chosen” banks collected the collateral and consolidated the debts.

Notwithstanding centuries of financial instruments being treated as personal property, the “securities” we “own” are no longer ours. Neither are any assets they finance.

Assets we think we possess are legally controlled by custodial companies. And these entities can claim our property as collateral in the event of someone else’s insolvency. 

This is true of all tradable financial instruments around the world, wherever they are held. 

Whether in pension plans, investment funds, or custodial accounts, all securities ostensibly “owned” by the public are, according to Webb, “encumbered as collateral underpinning the derivatives complex”, which is “orders of magnitude greater than the entire global economy”, so “there’s not enough of anything to back it.”

The plumbing is in place to flush our accounts when the next collapse occurs. Certain secured creditors have legal claims to client assets. The US established “legal certainty” for such protocols in the wake of the dot-com bust a quarter century ago. 

Under the rubric of “harmonization”, global conformance to this standard has been underway since.

The Europeans initially resisted, more from politics than principle. But a workaround was arranged whereby “the objective of Legal Certainty for creditors was to be pursued by other means.” 

Around the world, securities owners were once assured their assets couldn’t be used as collateral without their express consent. That’s no longer true. 

A sample disclosure from a major European securities depository states that in the event of “shortfall of securities”, clients will be “considered unsecured creditors without priority to the assets of the bankruptcy estate.”

No place on earth can someone own stocks or bonds as personal property without exposure to insolvency of the account provider. All securities are pooled so they can be collateralized elsewhere.

Global “collateral management systems” have been established, enabling quick cross-border transfers of client assets to secured creditors. 

That means that after the next (inevitable, and probably planned) financial collapse or derivatives disaster, the pipes are in place to steal our stuff. 

Perhaps this is why, despite large bank failures, the Fed keeps raising rates. It’s like they’re trying to cause the calamity. When they do…as with the “bank holiday” in 1933…it’ll create the panic upon which to apply their palliatives. 

After using low rates to entice people to buy things with cheap credit, most things people own will become subject to legal confiscation in a financial collapse. 

The collapse is key to “The Great Taking”, as is the new digital money that’ll arrive in its wake.

In Webb’s words, the coming crisis is “a deliberate strategy” of subjugation to eliminate resistance. It’s about “herding humanity and eliminating pockets of resilience.”

Now all that’s needed is a catalyst for the crisis. Tightening an interest rate noose around a debt-addled economy floating on unprecedented funny money and endless fake assets should suffice. 

And when enough institutions suffocate, those who asphyxiated them will ride to the “rescue”, forcing innocent asset-holders to give CPR to the chosen survivors. 

After they do, they’ll be out of breath, reliant for air on digital feeding tubes from the people they “saved.”

Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC)…currently being developed by central banks representing 114 countries…will be the sole source of monetary sustenance. 

When they arrive, the chute will be shut, with all the cattle locked in the abattoir. The State will be able to permit, prevent, monitor, and manipulate any transaction anyone tries to make. 

It’ll be total control. Freedom will vanish. As Webb says, “you will comply if you want to eat.”

About ten years ago, Webb spoke at a hedge fund conference in Europe, where he explained what was being planned for the securities attendees thought they owned. 

He remembered the coffee break after his speech. “I asked people what they had thought about what I had said. I asked if they understood what I was explaining. One person merely replied, ‘Oh, yes.’ I asked him what he would do about it. He simply said, ‘Nothing.’”

It’s easy to scoff at that answer. But if what Webb says is correct, it’s difficult to devise a better one. 

What should we do? Short of compiling physical gold or stacking Bitcoin…either of which can be regulated, taxed, or taken away…what options are there?

It’s a bit like the arson-induced forest fires attributed to “climate change.” While we bicker over the cause and lament the result, an insider land grab seems to ensue.

The next time the economy goes up in flames, will a connected elite claim our assets from the rubble? Why not? They always have. But now the means are there to prevent any protest.

Having read this book, I almost wish I hadn’t. Like learning an asteroid is imminent, being in possession of this information doesn’t tell us what to do with it. 

Webb laid out the problem yet offers few solutions. And as the saying has it, if there are no solutions, perhaps there’s no problem. 

The only option seems to be to get out of “the system”. But how? And where to go? I suppose we could pay penalties, pull money from retirement accounts, and load up on gold, grub, and a bolthole in the woods. 

Those may be good ideas, but they don’t necessarily untie us from the tracks before the financial freight train arrives.

As the buzzing increases, we do our best to protect our nest before the wasps arrive.

JD