Bob Chapman, the publisher of “The International Forecaster”, gives his reading of history, explains why he’s very bullish for gold and silver, and addresses the problems he sees with the way our current money system works: “Loans are made that can never be paid.”

By Lars Schall

Bob Chapman, once the largest gold and silver stockbroker in the world, was born in Boston, Massachusetts on October 16, 1935. He attended Northeastern University in Boston majoring in business management and served from 1954 to 1958 in the U. S. Army Counterintelligence, mostly in Europe. In the early 1960’s he studied at the University of Geneva while working at the same time for Investors Overseas Services.

All in all, Mr. Chapman worked from 1960 to 1988 as a stock broker. For 18 of those years he owned his own brokerage firm. From 1962 through 1976 he specialized in South African gold shares. He and his family lived in Salisbury, Rhodesia (now Harare, Zimbabwe) and Johannesburg, South Africa from 1970 to 1973. Between 1976 and 1988 his business surged from 1,000 to 6,000 clients.

Starting in 1967, Mr. Chapman began writing articles on business, finance, economics and politics having been printed and reprinted over the years in more than 200 publications. He helped to get Gary Allen’s  “None dare call it Conspiracy” published (Buccaneer Books, 1971) and financed subsequently the Gary Allen Report, which had 30,000 subscribers.

In June of 1991, at the request of business associates, he began writing “The International Forecaster” (www.theinternationalforecaster.com), a compendium of information on business, finance, economics and social and political issues worldwide, which reaches 10,000 investors and brokers monthly directly, and parts of his publication are picked up by 60 different websites weekly exposing his vast knowledge of the mining business and his grasp of worldwide financial markets and political scenes to over 10 million investors a week.

Bob Chapman spends currently most of his time in South America.

Mr. Chapman, you have worked for several years in the U. S. Army Counterintelligence. May I ask you what you did there exactly?

Well, in the 1950’s, as many will remember, they had a draft in the United States. I was working and also going to university at the same time. They contacted me and asked me if would test for the military, it was non-binding. I did and they said: “You can have any job you want, but you have to work more than two years.” So I asked what the best job was and they told me: “Being a spook.” Back then I didn’t know what this was and they explained to me that a spook is someone who spies on an enemy, and the enemy at that time of course was the soviet-bloc countries.

I joined and went to school for cryptanalysis, traffic analysis and communications intercept. It was one of the greatest experiences of my life, because I was connected to men who were very brilliant. Anyway, after finishing that, I went to Germany and was based in Frankfurt, Baumholder and Kassel. We intercepted the communications of the KGB, the NKVD, STASI, and numerous other high level agencies. You name it, we’ve spied on it.

Did you observe during that time a close alliance between former Nazi-personal and intelligence services in the U.S.?

No, actually I didn’t know until the 1960’s, that a number of high ranking people in the national-socialist movement had been recruited by the U.S. government to particularly spy on Russia. That was their main motivation, I think. But I knew nothing about it at that time.

Did the United States only import via “Operation Paperclip” Nazi-scientists and intelligence personal or did your country also import some aspects of the Nazi-ideology as well? And if the latter is the case, do you see “side-effects” of it occurring even today?

First of all, there was of course Werner von Braun and his group that were recrasitioned by the U.S. government at the end of the war. It is pretty common knowledge that they developed the rocket programme for the United States. But I never saw any reason to think that the ideology of the Nazis was incorporated in any way with the United States until the 1970’s.

At that time I was introduced to people who had been mainly Officers and Generals in the former German military. Then I found out things that went on with “Operation Paperclip” and how high ranking Germans got out of Germany. I started to realize that there was a commonality of interest between the American hierarchy and the former German hierarchy. I began digging and found out that Brown Brothers Harriman and the Bush family had been very instrumental in doing business with AEG and IG Farben. In fact, I worked in the IG Farben-building in Frankfurt. They funded money through these and other German firms, which in turn went to the national-socialist government.

In my opinion this was done by design. But in all honestly I have to tell you that I don’t think that the Generals that I knew had a clue of what was going on and how Hitler was financed – and I don’t think Hitler did either. He may have, but I don’t think so. What it all means is that there were people in the United States and in the United Kingdom as well, who were deeply involved in the fascist concept. Looking back over the years, I think that Hitler did what he did because other people wanted him to and they funded him.

Could it be that one of those “side-effects” is also the huge military-industrial complex (MIC) in the United States? Chalmers Johnson wrote for example in February 2008 in a “Le Monde diplomatique“-analysis entitled “The Economic Disaster that is Military Keynesianism. Why the US has really gone broke“ the following:

“Global confidence in the US economy has reached zero, as was proved by last month’s stock market meltdown. But there is an enormous anomaly in the US economy above and beyond the subprime mortgage crisis, the housing bubble and the prospect of recession: 60 years of misallocation of resources, and borrowings, to the establishment and maintenance of a military-industrial complex as the basis of the nation’s economic life.” [1]

How did it come in retrospective that the MIC became so important for the American economical system as pointed out by Mr. Johnson?

I think the United States, just like the Romans, realized, if you get the biggest and the best army, you can subject people and exact tribute from them. We were basically following what Rome has done, to make it simple for people to understand, only today it isn’t marching armies, helmets and breast-plates, today it involves nuclear warfare and all kinds of sophisticated weapons, which the United States has the most of. Also, the people behind this development have generated their powerbase through the military-industrial complex. All the wars are financed on both sides by the same group of people. It’s not only America, it’s also the United Kingdom and sometimes other countries as well.

For more than four decades you follow closely the activities of the infamous Bilderberg Group (www.bilderbergmeetings.org), which was founded 1954 in Oosterbeek, Netherlands. Given, that groups like the Bilderberg Group are not self-generating but the expression of a conscious persue: what was the reason to form this particular group back then?

It was formed as a commonality of interest among different groups, which evolved after the Second World War, although these people in Europe particularly were in contact with each other for centuries. During the 1800’s there was this evolutionary process in America that was akin to and tied to what was going on in England and that was the rise of industrial power in the United States. So you saw the evolution of another segment of what is known, generally speaking, in Europe as the Black Nobility or the Illuminati, and one way how these people contact with one another were the Bilderberg meetings. Up until perhaps maybe twenty years ago nobody had ever heard of them and then in the last five years they had been covered more extensively.

The reason why nobody heard of these gatherings of the most important people in different walks of life was because the media that goes to the meetings is forbidden through the Chatham House rules of not reporting anything. These are some of the most influential people in the world within the media. That’s the simple reason why people hadn’t heard about it until people like myself started pushing. But there are others that have done a great deal more than I have in this respect, I’m just a tiny little cog in the wheel. Now the whole world knows that there are these kind of meetings and that they are secret. What are these people doing? Well, what they are doing is planning things for the future whether we like it or not. They don’t care whether we have democracies or what kinds of governments as long as they control it.

When you mention the Illuminati, I guess there is a bit of a difference between what you mean and popular culture believes, right?

Well, I mean people who are in contact with one another for several hundred years and who were also at one time in Europe deeply involved with the Masonic orders, starting with the Knight Templers all the way through. These people were involved in the collapse of the Venetian bankers in 1348. They were just exiled and that allowed them to continue to do what they had been doing before in running the financial system in Europe and as well as controlling Europe to a great degree through the royal houses as well as through well-placed business men in one form or another.

Coming back to the Bilderberg Group, what is this Round-Table group in your estimation all about today and why should people pay attention to the existence of it?

Now that they know about it they should pay attention, because these people try to chart the course of humanity. It’s not just this group. There is the Group of 300, the Group of 30, then you have the Royal Institute in London and in the United States you have the Trilateral Commission as well as the Council of Foreign Relations, which is modelled after the Royal Institute of International Affairs. They want to run things.

One facet that never seize to amaze me with regard to the Bilderberg Group and other such “clubs” of the rich, powerful and influential[2] is this fact: every time there is a G8-summit taking place, there is a great deal of attention paid to those events by the global mainstream media. Every time the Bilderberg Group comes together, the news coverage becomes almost “the sound of silence”. But if the public isn’t properly informed about those gatherings is it then any wonder that “conspiracy theories” exist about them?

Well, if the things they’re doing are so good then why don’t they tell the world about it? What they’re doing is so good for them. They start wars, finance both sides of them, don’t care who wins and believe that large parts of the world population should be reduced, and of course having those wars fulfils that end, because millions and millions of people die. But there are other aspects to it such as the control of services and industry, banking, Wall Street, the City of London and on and on.

In my opinion every war we’ve had was in English jargon a scam. There is a book for example, “Hitler, Born at Versailles” written by Leon Degrelle. I knew Leon quite well. This book shows clearly that the groundwork for World War 2 was laid at the end of World War 1. That is perpetual war for perpetual peace, so to speak. This is the creation that these monsters – and that’s what they are – have created for the peoples of the world. The American and British and French soldiers said: “May God be with you,” and on the Germans side they said: “Gott mit uns,” but the whole thing is crazy when you understand what these people are up to.

Mr. Chapman, people like you are dismissed easily as “conspiracy theorists.” Is this an insult to you or is it the logic result that you are labelled as such?

It’s not easy to stand in for truth and logic and listen to all the things people are saying about you, but I have been right for more than twenty years with my newsletter “The International Forecaster” 98% of the time. You only get that kind of result when you figure out what the criminal minds are going to do next based upon what they have done in the past. Nobody in the Bilderberg Group calls me on Monday morning at 8 o’clock and says: “Guess what’s happening?” I don’t have that kind of contacts.

What details are you familiar with related to this years agenda of the Bilderberg Group meeting that was held in Sitges at the Costa Dorada in Spain from June 3^rd to 6^th?

Well, as far as I know they were strongly for an invasion of Iran. They were also extraordinarily concerned about the exposure of what was going on among their various groups such as the Bilderberg Group. In fact, to my understanding a lot of people didn’t show up because of the publicity that finally leaked out about their meeting. That never happened in such a big way. I imagine in the future if they’re smart then they’ll form a new group and meet somewhere in secret again.

With regard to Iran, what kind of purpose should this war serve?

I think a number of purposes. First of all, in mentioning the military-industrial complex there is a tremendous amount of money involved. War is a very profitable business for some people. Also one must not forget that a lot of other people will die. This is important to those groups we’re talking here about. But as far as the war in Iran is concerned, geopolitically it’s highly important. You can not only steal a lot there as they are doing in Iraq, but you can also outflank Russia and China. The same thing is true with Afghanistan. A few days ago there was an article in the New York Times about the mineral resources in Afghanistan.[3] That was one of the reasons why America wanted to be there, never mind the opium production.

One interesting member of the Bilderberg Group is for sure George Soros. Would you like to tell us a bit about the background of this “Mega Speculator” and “Wizard” that is usually not discussed in mainstream media?[4]

It’s never discussed (laughs). George grew up in Hungary. When he was a boy, he was taking in by a family and declared to be Christian, when in fact he was Jewish. He worked later on with Germans who were collecting people to be send away to camps, and in that process George would find out where the valuables were and he and the people he worked with would confiscate them. After the war was over, for his acumen I would guess, he was chosen to go to, I believe it was Oxford, and then he evolved within the structure of the Illuminati. He is obviously a very, very bright person. He has been involved in the markets for many years, he had obviously inside information in 1992 when the pound collapsed, because he made billions and billions of dollars.

It wasn’t too long ago that he was convicted of stock fraud in Paris, he appealed and he lost. He paid a very large fine. Bilderbergers don’t go to jail, they just pay fines. Two sets of justice in almost every country – one for them and one for us. Then, just recently, about one and a half years ago, he was caught doing stock fraud in Hungary and was convicted there as well. So the man is a twice convicted felon. A crook, who is enormously wealthy. He also funded and formed the different colour groups in Eastern Europe – the Orange Revolution and that sort of thing. He lost his influence there, but he did cause a lot of damage to those countries.

The reason why I’ve mentioned Mr. Soros is this: at this years “New Economic Forum” in Davos, Switzerland, he said that gold is “the ultimate bubble.” Who’s interests are served by this kind of talk (besides his own[5])?

What George is doing is that he is talking his book. He’s talking about a position he already has – but he doesn’t tell anybody about that – or a position he wants to make. If George is not long gold, he’ll try to talk gold down so he can buy it cheaper. If he is long gold, what he’s going to do is that he says: “I think gold is going somewhat higher.” Then others will come in, they buy gold, drive the price up and he can sell. Warren Buffet does the same thing and all those other people you see on CNBC. These guys are a bunch of crooks. I know, I’ve been there.

Can you name us reasons why gold is no bubble and is not overbought?

Well, if you just take inflation since 1980, when gold was 850 dollars an ounce, then official inflation would give you a price of gold of about 2400 dollars an ounce – and they are selling it for 1200 dollars an ounce. That is proof that there’s no bubble and it is prove that it is suppressed.

Do you agree with Egon von Greyerz, founder / co-manager of “Matterhorn Asset Management AG” in Zurich, Switzerland, who said recently that there are basically only two possibilities for the global economy: a deflationary collapse or hyperinflation, and that in both scenarios gold will win?[6]

He’s absolutely correct. I saw him on CNBC the other day with the others on the panel who attacked him and he didn’t get too exited about it. They probably won’t invite him again. I used to be there, too, talking about the things we are talking here about today. But it’s fruitless, because all they try to do is disarm you. I don’t have time for that.

Do you also agree with Mr. von Greyerz that most currencies can only be measured by now against gold, because they all lose value every day?

He’s again absolutely right. Seven years ago the dollar started really losing value against gold, and about four years ago the tied turned on every other currency including the Swiss franc. The comments by Egon are absolutely correct. At this time I don’t know which way they are going to go. Are they going to go back and inflate and hyper-inflate or have they decided that this is the time to go directly into a deflationary depression?

But in inflationary times gold goes up to reflect the lost of buying power from inflation. In a time, when you have a deflation, the value of everything falls except for gold. Gold holds its value. So no matter which way they go you’re going to be off-setting your losses in local, domestic currency by having gold and sometimes silver as well. Therefore, gold is something you should always have.

Can you point out for us some indicators that suggest that the end of “paper gold” is near?

We had an event that happened about six months ago on the LBMA, the London Bullion Market Association. One of the professionals there witnessed an alcoholic conversation by people who were working for JPMorgan Chase. They were talking about how they would again rig the silver market. He reported this to the CFTC in Washington D.C., the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, an agency of the U.S. government, and he told them exactly what was gonna happen and exactly when. They didn’t do anything about it. And then they had a general hearing of the CFTC about two months ago. This person, who exposed all of this, was not invited. So he went public with the story.

Now everybody on Wall Street and in London knows that Morgan is rigging markets. That’s the way things go. More often than not Morgan is acting for the Federal Reserve, which is privately owned, or the U.S. Treasury. The government, the Fed and Wall Street don’t want gold going up, because when it does people say: “Gee, there must be something wrong.” So gold is being suppressed and also silver for that reason. But they have the evidence. There are two investigations going on, one by the CFTC and the other by the U.S. Justice Department, which is a criminal persuit. But I don’t think anything will come out of that, because JPMorgan Chase is one of the biggest share-holders in the Federal Reserve.

What will happen if this special capacity to cap and manipulate the gold price is gone via ETF in the future markets?

Well, Andrew Maguire, the gentleman who exposed Morgan, said that the traders for large firms like Morgan are off-side leverage 100:1. That means that for every dollar that they have in gold they’ve lent out or sold short one-hundred dollars. The leverage is enormous. If a large amount of clients call for delivery then they can’t deliver. The same thing is going on at COMEX, and the gold ETF pretends that they have all the gold, but you can’t get an outside audit of what they really have.

I suspected from the very beginning that they had a gold position, but that they are using derivatives. The SLV, which is the silver counterpart, admits that they use derivatives, because it is part of their contract. I believe they hedged the same way that COMEX and the LBMA has and eventually the whole thing is going to blow up. That’s why I tell people to buy gold and silver bullion and coins and take delivery or keep them in a safe place like in a vault in Switzerland perhaps and to buy gold and silver shares of the companies that produce gold and silver, because their earnings go up exponentially as the price goes up.

Let us discuss another reason why the gold price is unlikely to tank. The supply won’t meet demand in the next years, is this correct in your opinion?

The supply versus demand in the market has been short for over ten years. It’s 150 to 200 tonnes. It’s going to continue to get wider, because less and less gold is coming to market. One of the reasons for that has been the lack of exploration and all the easy gold has already been found. The two largest finds recently were under glaciers in South America. So the amount of gold and silver produced over the next ten years will continue to decline. That is very bullish for gold. But the real factor in gold is the investment factor, and the investment factor is there, because people don’t trust their fiat currencies anymore.

Mr. Chapman, you’re an expert on South African gold mining. A few days ago it was reported that the gold production in South Africa declined in the first quarter to 44 tonnes. Therewith the gold production was 15 % lower than in the quarter before and -12,4% compared to 2009. Will this factor make a fall in prices more or less impossible?

That is going to make prices go up, because less gold will come to the market, just as we’ve discussed. The unions as well as the ANC in South Africa are talking about nationalising the gold mines. They should have done it ten years ago. But the miss-management today is unbelievable. About 35 years ago all I bought was South African stocks, because they paid very large dividends about 20-22% a year. But they’re just totally incompetent today and of course the mines are very, very deep. They are a couple of miles down into the earth, and the refrigeration and cooling problems are monumental. It’s going to continue to deteriorate, it’s not going to get better.

Where do you expect the gold and silver price will be at the end of 2010?

With silver I think it could trade at 25 dollars, maybe higher, and gold could easily trade up into the 1500-1650 dollars area. We just don’t know exactly. It all depends on world events – will there be a war in the Middle East, can they keep the suppression of gold and silver going? There are a lot of factors here, it’s not an easy call. You are working against official policy, although it’s secret policy, of the United States government. They are the enemy when it comes to investments. Not only are they rigging the gold and silver market, they are rigging every other market, too. I can see them in the market in the United States every single day.

At the end of the trading session?

Usually. If they want the market to end up close to even and it’s off 50 points, they just take it right up – with tax payer money, of course.

One obvious reason why gold performs very well under the current circumstances is the debt burden in many industrialized societies. The federal government of the U.S. is now $13 trillion in the red, the Treasury Department announced recently. But this is just the official number, I guess. How much to do you think the US federal government is really in debt?

First of all, they have a cash accounting system, whereas in all businesses in the United States we use an accrual system. Totally different. So the cash debt is 13 trillion dollars, but the accrual debt, which means everything but the kitchen sink, if that’s thrown in it’s a 105 trillion dollars. These are all the commitments they have made, namely Medicare, Social Security, pensions – you name it. The United States government is bankrupt. The same is true in England. And you know about the PIIGS in Europe. There are 20 countries right now that I consider on the verge of bankruptcy. These are major countries.

Do you foresee an international debt settlement conference in the future?

Absolutely, and I think maybe a year to a year and a half away, perhaps quicker. That’s what the Illuminists are working on and why they exposed Greece. Anybody who is involved in finance and politics in Europe has known that Greece has been broke for 15 years. Greece should never been allowed to join the euro and neither should Italy incidentally. When they decided to take Greece down, they didn’t anticipate that the people would say: “Oh no, we’re not going to do that.” The Greeks won’t go along with the programme.

The Greeks know for example that Papandreou is a member of the Bilderberger Group, because I was there on radio and television and was interviewed by their top newspaper and told them: “You put the fox in charge of the hen house. He’s going to sell you out.” I said that the first thing they’ll do is start selling things that are owned by the state at thirty or forty cents on the dollar so to speak – so that you can reduce your debt. Who is all the debt owed too? It’s the bankers. Who made the loans? The bankers. Who made bad loans? The bankers. That include Citigroup, when David Rockefeller was running it 1974-75 during the junta and onward. Lately it’s been JPMorgan Chase and especially Goldman Sachs. The public down there knows this. And it’s true in every other country. Loans are made that can never be paid. The IMF does the same thing all the time to keep people in bondage and under control.

So there will be such a meeting where all come together and these nations will devalue and those nations will revalue and all write off 2/3 of their debts, pay 1/3 back like Argentina did 10 years ago, and will live happily ever after. Of course the people who own the currencies in those countries going to lose 2/3 of their money’s buying power. But they won’t tell them that until it’s over. I hope they won’t cooperate. I tell everyone in the PIIGS in Europe to refuse to pay the bankers. Let them go under. They deserve it.

How does it come, Mr. Chapman, that we have a profound financial crisis and huge debts piled up – but there is very limited effort out there to address the problem of money creation? I mean, if you have a money system in which money is created as debt and in which you have always more interests to pay than you have actually money in circulation to serve the interest, isn’t it logic that you ultimately end up one day in inflation and ever increasing debt via endless money printing?

Without question. And that monstrosity can only be created by central banks. You hear about price inflation, this kind of inflation and that kind, but it all comes back to central banks. They create inflation.

Another interesting aspect related to the creation of money in the U.S. is this: “the Federal Reserve Act authorized a private central bank to create money out of nothing, lend it to the government at interest, and control the national money supply, expanding or contracting it at will.”6 The question is: wouldn’t it much better for the majority of people if the government of the U.S. gets rid of this private banking cartel that is largely controlled by the NY Fed-member banks and print its own money without interest?

Absolutely. That’s what caused the death of Abraham Lincoln and of John F. Kennedy, among other things with Kennedy, because the bankers don’t want government printing the money, they want to control it. The way to solve that is by having legislation, because legislation brought about the Federal Reserve Act in America. Let’s have a legislation to end the Federal Reserve Act. Then you pass it and it does not exist anymore, and all of the things they do go back to the U.S. Treasury Department, where they were in the first place. But of course you have to close the revolving door between New York banking and Wall Street on the one hand and the Treasury Department on the other.

Let’s switch to Europe. How does the whole bailout-activity in the euro-zone help the Federal Reserve and some European central banks to intervene in the currency markets?

It happens all the time through swaps. The Fed creates 500 billion dollars, which they just did one and a half year ago, and they exchange that money with five major nations. Those nations take the money and the deal is this: the foreign nations use the money to get liquidity, but they also take the money and go into the U.S. treasury market and buy treasuries. It’s really the Fed through those nations that is buying these treasuries. On the other hand the Fed takes the foreign currencies and they go in to suppress them by selling them so that the dollar will go up and the value of the euro will go down. When the euro goes down the European goods are cheaper, which keeps the economies going there, and it makes the dollar stronger so that the people think nothing is going on, which forces gold to go down at the same time. Very complex. But as far as the euro is concerned, I think it’s probably a year to a year and a half left and then that’s it. The Germans never wanted the euro and they’ll go back to the D-Mark. In fact, I have sources in Athens, who tell me that they’re printing the drachmas now.

Is it certain to you that the crisis is far, far from being over?

It will last for many, many years. Why do you think there is a run on gold and silver in Germany and Switzerland? Because a lot of people realize what’s going on. They want real money. Money that doesn’t owe anybody anything. That’s gold and silver. It doesn’t get anymore complicated than that. Look at 6000 years of history. Now you know why there are gold bugs.

Thank you very much for taking your time, Mr. Chapman!

It was absolutely my pleasure.

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