SPACE, SPECIE, AND FINANCIAL FRAUD

Yes, you read that headline correctly, but I guarantee you, you're not alone in doing a double-take on it. When M.D. found and sent this article along, I did  double-take too, and I even added "you've got to be kidding!" out loud. My dog, Shiloh, who is used to such exclamations and "harumphs!" looked at me briefly, whined in empathy, gave me a couple of wags of her tail, and promptly went back to sleep. But no matter how one turns one's head to look at it, that's what the headline, and the article, are saying:

The Air Force Might Have To Protect Money Laundering in Space

I have to admit, I said "You've got to be kidding!" more than once as I read this article (and the second time earned a disgusted and somewhat impatient "snort" from Shiloh, with no accompanying tail-wags). But it was well-deserved, because I literally had to read some of the opening statements in this article twice before their implications hit me.  And they hit me like a blow to the solar plexus or a slap in the face. If they don't hit you that way, then you're simply not paying attention:

If you’re looking for the ultimate in physical security for your future assets, look up, way up. Growing fears about cybersecurity and the rapidly decreasing cost to access space has given birth to a new class of startups offering satellite-based data centers impervious to all physical hacking. What sort of information is so valuable that the average person needs to protect them in space? One answer: money. Even space vaults need guards, and in this case the brunt of that job will go to U.S. Air Force.

But putting digital money into space-based data centers not only puts it out of reach from thieves, it’s also out of jurisdiction from law enforcement. In other words, the Air Force could one day soon be on the hook to protect a hive of money laundering in space.

Now, forget about all of this being connected to crypto-currencies and basing their data centers in space:

Bitcoin data servers in space sounds like a random mashup of tech buzzwords. In fact, it’s a real business model. Bitcoins are encrypted digital currency tokens. Jeff Garzik, one of only five people on the planet responsible for maintaining the core bitcoin codebase and founder of the space startup Dunvegan Space Systems, or DSS, announced this month that his company had partnered with Deep Space Industries to acquire craft to ferry 24 small satellites into space.

“Our company is pursing the financial side of things so you can store some of your Bitcoin encryption keys, some of your key backups, in space on our satellites,” Garzik said at the South by Southwest Interactive, or SXSW, technology conference in Austin, Texas, last week. “The legal and jurisdictional issues of space are really where the excitement is,” he said. “We can create new and interesting environments while not being bound to some of the earthly laws that we have constraining development … exploring new legal jurisdictions is also one reason why we need to go to space.”

These orbital safety deposit boxes would be beyond the jurisdiction (or easy capture) of any law enforcement agency, regulator or tax collector. And bitcoins have already been implicated in possible ISIS funding operations online.

No, nevermind that such companies might be helping - intentionally or otherwise - to fund international terrorism. There's a "catch", however, and it's a doozy:

But do space banks really represent the ultimate in security for data? In a 2007 missile test, China destroyed a weather satellite to much international condemnation. Over the last few years, a sense of urgency about future threats to space infrastructure has risen among many experts.

“The capability to materially harm satellites in space is well within the abilities of multiple countries, including the United States, Japan, the countries of Europe, China, Russia and India,” said John C. Mankins, president of the space systems technology group Artemis Innovation.

In other words: your money is entirely safe up there, except for potential "little" threats from China, Japan, France, Germany, Britain, Italy, Russia, India... and who knows who else?

So what's really being said here? Well, if you boil all the studied and cautious language out of it, what you're really being told is: (1) the securest place for digital currency database location is space, (2) but space also presents virtually limitless opportunities to launder money and, therefore, because it lies outside normal Earth-bound jurisdictions, for all sorts of financial fraud.

Or to put it as succinctly as possible: a space-based economy is a fraudulent one, by definition. What cannot be put up there efficiently and with cost efficiency?

Answer: bullion, specie. even pallets of paper money are out, all for the simple reason that it would be cost prohibitive. And to put that point succinctly, a space-based financial system is by definition a two-tiered system, with the fraudulent one "up there" and the (more-or-less) "honest" one being "down here."

And why is that important? Well, recall the "financialization" of commodities that I mentioned in last Wednesday's blog, and recall that that financialization of space commodities has been underway by my interpretation for a very long time (see my analysis of the initial bearer bonds scandal). We've encountered and blogged about the value of various asteroids out there, and their estimated mineral wealth. We've suggested that by collateralizing those assets already that they've also leveraged that collateralization to increase the money supply. We've even suggested that, to balance the books and "de-leverage" the system that they now actually have to go out there and get it. Or at least, pretend to do so. But the pretense can only last for a while, because sooner of later, one has to send the galleons, load them with mineral wealth, and bring them back to Spai... er... Earth, where the sudden influx of bulllion will increase the money supply, and drive up prices, and drive out industry to less labor-costly areas.

In short, the space economy is not only fraudulent, but that fraud must sooner or later be balanced by actual recovery of commodities in and from space.

Mr. Globalooney is, in other words, now trapped. Sooner or later he will have to invoke space to his rescue.. and like he has done so often in the past, that may come in the form of a (real, or fake) war.

Hence, all the UFO and aliens talk recently in Mr. Globalooney's lamestream propotainment media, and by the governments of the West that he (thinks he) owns and controls.

He's nothing if not consistent... and consistently stupid.

See you on the flip side...