James West

Portland, OR (USA)
Role(s):
Founder/Owner/Principal

Midas Film Works LLC

Find More Startups Startup
Location: Portland
Industry: Entertainment
Year Founded: 2008
Number Employees: 1-10 people
Description: The collapse of the global banking system that began in August 2007 has as its root cause unilateral ill-conceived fiscal policy implemented by G8 governments and exploited by major players in the global financial industry. While industry spokespersons and their government counterparts scramble to re-capitalize a system that collapsed largely due to issues associated with over-liquidity, the environment that emerged to foster this atmosphere of excess liquidity and cheap credit traces its roots back to the formation of the Federal Reserve Board of the United States and the biased implementation of the International Gold Standard as governed by the Bretton Woods Agreement from 1944 until its abolition by President Nixon in 1971. Since that time, the discipline naturally imparted on monetary policy of governments by the unfettered free trading of gold bullion among central banks and the investing public has been undermined by an international suppression of the price of gold. Gold’s iconic role in economic history and present is not well understood by the average citizen. For the last 30 years, the United States Federal Reserve System in collusion with various Central Banks, Investment Banks, and gold producers, have engaged in a process to ensure the public perception of gold is that it is merely a commodity, and has no value as a component in modern economic and monetary policy. This massive breach of fiduciary responsibility is the single most important cause for the faltering global monetary system now unfolding. For the first time since the scheme’s launch, the participants in it are weakened and unable to conceal many key evidential realities that confirm its existence. The pervasiveness and detrimental character of the current monetary system precludes, through the enforced poverty of the majority of the world’s population, the realization of the full potential of the human race. This film is intended as a catalyst to stir public awareness, debate and action. “Crime of the Century” is a feature length documentary project that explores the precious metal’s historic role as the primary store of value by which all other commodities, currencies, and services are measured. It illuminates the disciplinary effect that the gold standard exerted on government fiscal policy prior to its undermining by the United States government through first the establishment of a U.S. dollar biased gold standard, and then by the abolition of the gold standard in 1971, and postulates that the current economic situation, and “bubbleomics” in general, is a direct result of the absence of that discipline. It examines and explores the contention of the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee’s basic premise that the price of gold has been suppressed by a complex scheme involving collusion among JP Morgan Chase, Barrick Gold Corporation, the International Monetary Fund, and various Central Banks around the world. While the obvious and superficial outcome is the artificially low price of gold for over twenty years, GATA contends that the effects of this scheme are exponentially more pernicious, amounting to nothing less than the undermining and corruption of the entire global financial and monetary systems. The Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee was organized in January 1999 to advocate and undertake litigation against illegal collusion to control the price and supply of gold and related financial securities. The committee arose from essays by Bill Murphy, a financial commentator, and by Chris Powell, a newspaper editor in Connecticut, published at Murphy's Internet site, (URL removed). James West, financial commentator and editor of (URL removed), a gold-oriented newsletter, travels to the world’s financial centers and interviews some of the most prominent members of the global financial community to elicit on camera evidence of the scheme which is finally coming undone with the collapse of the U.S. banking system and the resulting global recession, as the United States economy continues to crumble under an overwhelming economic meltdown that GATA says is directly attributable to the conspiracy. Tracing the roots of the educational and non-partisan organization through interviews with GATA founders Bill Murphy and Chris Powel, West presents viewers with a thorough indictment of the corrupt government offices and policies that have allowed a select and shadowy group of political and financial operators to profit fantastically from the two decade long manipulation of the gold price while the rest of us have seen our house values collapse, our living costs skyrocket, and access to capital made drastically more difficult and expensive. A historical examination of the role gold has played as an international monetary standard, and the subsequent discipline it naturally imparted to global monetary policy is presented, and the demise of the gold standard is seen as a prerequisite historical event that facilitated the Global Gold Cartel, the group of political, financial and industrial entities responsible for the perpetration of what could be the greatest financial scandal in the history of mankind. Finally, some of the most recognized names in the business world are interviewed about their views of the source of the unfolding catastrophe, and their takes on the relationship of gold to the central banking systems of the world are elicited and juxtaposed against their ideas of what needs to change to ensure the emergence of a better global economy from the ashes of this one’s demise. The upshot of the film’s messages are simple, and the linear unraveling of the complex and long-running scam will leave viewers with no doubt that: 1. Gold is the original global form of money, and continues to demonstrate its resilience as such through centuries; 2. The price of gold is artificially suppressed, and on the eve of the largest financial collapse in human history, its imminent ascendance as the preferred global currency is imminent; 3. The value of the U.S.. dollar, followed by all paper currencies, will collapse against the value of gold in the immediate years ahead; 4. Citizens who embrace this imminent financial revolution will protect themselves from the economic chaos that will be the long term damage inflicted by the Wall Street financial wizards by trading in their dollars rubles yen lira marks and even Euros for Gold. The events now unfolding on the global financial stage ARE directly attributable to the irresponsible fiscal policy of the U.S. Federal Reserve System and the United States Government. The suppression of gold as the monetary standard is the cause of the ability to fabricate so much fiat currency whose value is tied to nothing but the decisions of collusive and duplicitous central bankers around the world. The conditions under which this scheme was perpetrated have now deteriorated to the point where that cartel is in no position to defend itself against these revelations. Whereas in the past, the mainstream media was a pawn in play for the benefit of the scheme’s architects, the arguments that were the mainstay of the logic preventing appropriate and unbiased coverage of the economics of gold are now thoroughly discredited, and there is a willing audience on Main Street everywhere to hear how this situation was foisted on the citizenry by those who have abused their elected status to fraudulently enrich themselves and their accomplices. The people want to know who’s to blame.