The third-richest billionaire in Mexico, Ricardo Salinas Pliego, has shared his experience of living through hyperinflation. He warned that the U.S. and several other civilized countries are “going exactly the same route” his country went through in the 1980s.
Mexico’s third-richest billionaire, Ricardo Salinas Pliego, gave some advice Thursday regarding inflation, hyperinflation, bitcoin, and fiat currencies at the Bitcoin 2022 conference in Miami, Florida.
Salinas is the founder and chairman of Grupo Salinas, a group of companies with interests in telecommunications, media, financial services, and retail stores. According to Forbes’ list of billionaires, his net worth is about $13 billion currently.
The billionaire began by sharing his own experience living with inflation. “I was making $2,000 in 1980 and a few years later I was making 20 bucks — the same salary was down from 2,000 to 20 bucks,” he said, adding:
So I know about hyperinflation. I’ve been there. And it’s not the same to know it in theory as to actually be a victim of it.
He warned: “The bad news is that the U.S., and Japan, and the U.K., and the euroblock — they are going exactly the same route my country went in the 80s. It’s exactly copy-paste, you could just change the numbers but the graph would be the same.”
The Mexican tycoon proceeded to show a chart of the total federal debt of the U.S. government, which is projected to be $36.2 trillion in 2031. “See, horrific. $36 trillion and this is on the books debt, not counting off the books stuff,” he exclaimed.
The next chart he showed was of total U.S. assets, which grew from $0.8 trillion in 2005 to $8.9 trillion this year. “So the Federal Reserve has a lot of assets, that must be great, mustn’t it? And they’re buying bonds, that must be great,” he commented before explaining what the Federal Reserve actually did.
“What they are doing is making fake money out of thin air and loaning it out to create a purchasing power to the tune of, we’re now, $9 trillion of fake savings made by the Federal Reserve,” the billionaire described, adding:
The creation of fake credit which equals purchasing power has been astounding. The problem is because the dollar is the reserve currency of the world, can’t do anything about it. You can’t go out of the dollar — unless you go to bitcoin.
Salinas Warns About Central Bank Digital Currencies
Salinas proceeded to talk about central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). He brought up a picture of ECB Chief Christine Lagarde, BIS general manager Agustin Carstens, and U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. He labeled them “The Villains.”
He said: “CBDC, central bank digital currency, that’s even worse than the dollar. It’s much worse than the dollar because if the CBDC is issued, these people will have full control over how you can spend your money.” He opined:
Furthermore, they will be tracking 100% of all your spending and what you spend and how you spend it — they’re pretty devilish people.
He pointed out that while Lagarde was the chief of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the organization published papers stating that “the way to deal with government debt is through inflation, we will liquefy the debt and get away with paying less.”
Noting that right now we are at the equivalent of his $2,000 a month salary and we are going the route of earning $20 a month, he then asked, “Is this the future you want?”
He concluded: “I’ve been there and I’ve done that and it’s going to come. It’s not a pretty sight. So what can we do? We can buy bitcoin and sell those shitcoins that we have there. And definitely no to fiat fraud.”
He warned: “This has happened. It just didn’t happen to the U.S. It doesn’t mean it can’t happen to a civilized country. Germany was a highly civilized country until it got hit by the inflation in Weimar.” While admitting that Germany is not the same as Zimbabwe, he said it can go through the same process. The billionaire opined: “Unfortunately, in the U.S. it’s curtains. This is the way to save your skin — buy bitcoin.”
Salinas tweeted Thursday saying “Please… don’t put your future in governments’ hands, you and I know how that always ends, stay away from fiat money, invest in BTC”.
