{"id":44047,"date":"2013-11-11T19:18:54","date_gmt":"2013-11-12T00:18:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/countingpips.com\/forex-news\/?p=44047"},"modified":"2013-11-12T06:54:47","modified_gmt":"2013-11-12T11:54:47","slug":"three-signs-of-currency-end-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/2013\/11\/11\/three-signs-of-currency-end-times\/","title":{"rendered":"Three Signs of Currency End Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

By MoneyMorning.com.au<\/u><\/a> <\/p>\n

Remembrance Day was yesterday. On November 11th we celebrate the end of the Great War at the ‘eleventh of hour, of the eleventh day, of the eleventh month’ in 1918.  Almost 96 years later, I want to briefly talk about the beginning of that war and apply to it to another war: the currency war<\/strong>. I’ll show you three signs that the trench warfare of the last three years is wearing out the world’s largest economies, not to mention savers and investors.<\/p>\n

You cannot talk about the First World War without understanding the German obsession with the Battle of Cannae in 216 BC. It was the major battle of the Second Punic War between Rome and Carthage. Using a ‘pincer movement’, the Carthaginian general Hannibal destroyed a vastly superior Roman army. You might say it was Rome’s Vietnam, and in historical terms, it flagged the end of the Republic and presaged the rise of the Empire.<\/p>\n

From the Great War to the Currency War<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n

German generals must have been attracted to the aesthetic appeal of Cannae. It was an elegant, decisive, and brutal victory. It was meticulously planned and flawlessly executed. You can see why it appealed to German sensibilities.<\/p>\n

The German plan to invade France had been carefully laid out for years prior to the actual invasion in August, 1914. The Schlieffen Plan was the German plan for total strategic victory, calculated down to the last second. It involved a Cannae-like pincer movement.<\/p>\n

One army would swoop on the French from the East, while the German First Army, under General Alexander von Kluck, would wheel around anti-clockwise through Belgium and North Eastern France. It would sweep West of Paris before turning East to join the other tong in the pincer. The French would be trapped in the teeth of a great German jaw. <\/p>\n

And then history swerved from her assumed course. Instead of continuing toward the Atlantic and marching West of Paris, the German advance turned left to soon. Von Kluck swung his army around in a great wheel, leaving Paris, and his flank, on the right. General Gallieni, charged with the defence of Paris, commandeered the city’s taxis in a brilliant improvised, early example of mechanised warfare and rushed men into battle.<\/p>\n

The result was the First Battle of the Marne. And what started as a war of manoeuvre became a war of attrition. The armies dug in. By October the front was mostly static. And by November, the heavy fortifications began.<\/p>\n

We now remember it as a brutal war of attrition. But the German plan counted on speed and movement to catch the French unawares. Once the plan broke down, neither side really had a plan B. It was just years of grinding death from gas, artillery, and senseless headlong charges ‘over the top’ of the trench wall and into no man’s land.<\/p>\n

World War Zzzzzzz<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n

In September 2010 Brazil’s Finance Minister Guido Mantega warned that the world was on the brink of a great currency war. The US Federal Reserve’s<\/a> commitment to currency <\/strong>weakness through Quantitative Easing was a great global offensive with the aim of weakening the dollar. Here are some of the key campaigns since 2010:<\/p>\n