Connexion
Why does Iran behave the way it does? What geopolitical strategy drives her? What are the secret origins of how the Iranian leadership sees the world? Parables of mountain climbing, wrestling and highways in Persian history..
Le 24 avril, le secrétaire d’État américain Antony Blinken entamera sa visite de trois jours en Chine. Selon le Département
L’article Blinken en visite de trois jours en Chine est apparu en premier sur STRATPOL.
Israel is now vowing to respond to Iran’s retaliatory attack, and while the Biden regime claims to have told Netanyahoo that the U.S. won’t aid in any offensive action, they are still promising to provide air defense… just like they did when Tehran retaliated for Israel’s deadly attack on the Iranian consulate in Syria.
Journalist and Editor-in-Chief of The Cradle, Sharmine Narwani, reported that an Iranian military security official revealed exclusively to The Cradle that the U.S. reached out and asked Iran to allow Israel “a symbolic strike to save face,” which was “outright rejected” and met with warnings that any attack from Israel targeting Iran will be met with immediate action.
~~~~~
Choreographed retaliations impacting Iran proper, or its interests anywhere else, as during the mild and lawful Round One Iranian barrage, were rejected by Iran for Round Two.
Iran warned ANY support of Zion’s aggression by the deranged West (such as needed aerial refueling and air defense) will bring retaliation on their bases throughout the region, and closing Hormuz, perhaps selectively a la Houthis?!
Zion is committed to regaining permanently lost deterrence. F-UKUS is committed to Zion. The circle is about to be squared
Le Japon a décidé de conserver ses parts dans les projets Sakhalin-1 et Sakhalin-2 car il les considère comme importants
L’article Le Japon décide de conserver ses parts dans les projets pétro-gaziers en Russie est apparu en premier sur STRATPOL.
Sweet coordinated moves in our Juntaland, West African Sahelian branch, among the Axes of Resistance!
Little noticed, just after Niger officially kicked out US troops (turning on the ticking clock, as with Frenchie earlier), and right after Russian advance troops arrived in town, China swooped in to provide sanctions-busting liquidity and lucrative deals. This effectively seals off Plunder Inc from one of most stupendous resource-rich regions on earth, easily to rival Russia itself. And Niger is projected to be Africa’s top growth economy this year….
Niamey, Niger protests against French occupation troops, July 2023.
@Arab_Africa:
The day after Russian troops arrived, Niger signed a $400 million oil deal with China. China asked for $400 million for the sale of crude oil. The official signing ceremony of the agreement between Niger and CNPC took place on April 12. It was attended by the Prime Minister of Niger, Mahamane Zein Lamin, and the Chinese Ambassador to Niamey. |video|
Niamey, Niger protests against French occupation troops, July 2023.
@Africa Intel:
Hundreds rally in Niger’s capital to push for U.S. military departure
Hundreds took to the streets of Niger’s capital on Saturday to demand the departure of U.S. troops, after the ruling junta further shifted its strategy by ending a military accord with the United States and welcoming Russian military instructors.
Marching arm in arm through central Niamey, the crowd waved Nigerien flags in a demonstration that recalled anti-French protests that spurred the withdrawal of France’s forces from Niger last year after the army seized power in a coup. |media|
Oh, the Chinese fan the flames. And the key Junta leaders were trained in the famous USA torture academy AKA “School of the Americas,” located in Georgia, LOL!!!! 
.. enter the ‘Cuban’ missile crisis, only this time it’s on steroids
With thanks to our own Colin Maxwell of New Zealand.
Please see: Part 1 ; Part 2 ; Part 3 ; Part 4
NB – AN EXPLANATION OF ACRONYMS/TERMS/ETC used in the article are listed at the end of this discussion piece.
1. Introduction
My sincere apologies for this delay in my sequel. I picked up a very nasty bug and at the same time experienced some major computer glitches.
In the mean time it is my grim conclusion that the Western world won’t escape this gigantic financial hole it has dug for itself without going through a major systemic financial meltdown. Only with a tragic event will the critical mass of society actually rise up to demand the massive reform that is required to have any hope of recovering functional and sustainable economies.
I see no political escape from of the U$ train wreck (described earlier in eCONomics Part I) because the various components of the uni-party have almost identical financial and foreign policies. None of the POTUS candidates even bother to address the financial situation, let alone offer up any remotely workable solutions.
So too, history is massively against any hope of a successful independent POTUS, and the fact that RFK Jr is going to take votes from both sides of the ‘aisle’ means that IF the election actually takes place, Trump will be almost certainly be the winner.
This is despite the fact that he is a proven compulsive liar who still brags about his godfather role in the development of the experimental mRNA killer toxins. He also showed his true colours when he backstabbed Assange – whose published revelations paved the way for Trump to beat the truely dreadful and dangerous Hillary Clinton in 2016. What a truly sad commentary when a truly inept braggart like this is the only option available that would avoid a second term by the appalling ‘Crash Test Dummy’.
However, as the old cliche states – “seven days is a long time in politics” – however seven months is practically an eternity – especially given the dire financial situation and the multiple global military flash points.
Also, how soon could the pitchforks and riots manifest in the streets, and subsequently give the Biden camp the excuse they crave to declare Martial Law, in doing so creating the perfect opportunity to further tighten the noose on society’s freedom, by implementing a retail CBDC and it’s associated social credit controls?
The other possible titles I considered were…
KEEP PRINTING OR CRASH – nope, it’s keep printing and crash anyway.
IMMINENT GOLD REVALUATION – a worthy title too, as arguably this is the most significant single factor in a perfect storm of events that will be the end of the reign of the Western hegemon.
2. A Collision Of No Less Than Twelve Events In A Perfect Storm
#1 The Ukraine debacle exposing how utterly demented the U$ and NATOstan are in their hegemonic lust for control of resources, perpetual war and general mayhem. The comprehensive loss of yet another war is bad enough, but their attempts to hide this loss and extend the blood bath, makes NATOstan’s actions even more reprehensible.
#2 The Palestinian debacle – and Israel and the U$’s desire to genocide their population. The U$ and Israel play good cop, bad cop, whilst they carry on deliberate and overt genocide. Both countries have effectively torched the tiny skerrick of diplomatic capital they had left.
Many Palestians are already at level 5 starvation and yet this is being used as a weapon – even using aerial food drops as bait with Israeli troops stationed nearby with machine guns to gun them down as they try to retrieve food for their starving families.
#3 The build up in the tensions in the South China Sea and Warshington’s brazen prediction of a full scale war.
#4 The general weaponisation of the dollar and Western based payment systems.
#5 The idiotic 16,000 sanctions wrought on Russia – a reminder to the entire planet that this strategy doesn’t work – it only succeeds in providing a huge extra helping of bad karma for the voracious Western Hegemon.
#6 An announcement of a revaluation of gold by BRICS+ is imminent – as soon as this happens the Western fiat currencies will begin to implode – this as a corollary, with a return to hard backed currencies, may well turn out to be the single most crippling factor of all.
#7 The stability of the BRICS+ multiple commodity trade-only instrument will be
extremely compelling – not only will it be hard backed by gold, more than likely silver, and a host of other commodities (perhaps, as many as 20), but the smoothing effects of this system will come into effect and give countries the confidence to use it.
#8 The cooperative nature of the member nation’s currencies will encourage their use and an increasing percentage of trade will be done using swaps and bartering of goods for goods.
#9 Gresham’s Law will kick in – countries/people will liquidate their weak money and hold as reserves money which is regarded as strong and stable. This is when the exponential ramp up in hurt for the West will begin.
#10 The fact that it is almost impossible to miss the fact that Uncle $laughter has deliberately set about trying to destroy Europe – this gradual realisation by Mainstreet Europe, as the reality finally bites in, will never be lived down. Kissinger’s prophetic words should ring in the ears of the entire RoW.
#11 The absolutely disgraceful treatment of LatAm and the explicit Monroe Doctrine of raping this entire continent – and no more shocking example of the last century of atrocities than the sellout of the immensely resource rich Argentina by the utterly feckless Milei to Western imperial plutocrats. Refer – General Richardson’s recent visit to Buenos Aires – I just hope that our friend Jorges is travelling OK amongst all of this madness.
Second from left: the new Argentinian President ‘Mad Dog Javier Milei standing next to the archetypical neocon U$ Four Star General Richardson
#12 The highlighting of the centuries of the raping of the African Continent by Western Imperialism – the most recent and habitual protagonist being, you guessed it – Uncle $laughter.
3. Gold Stacking By The Global South
this constitutes the twilight of the fiat currency system
The World Bank reports that central banks bought 1037 tons of gold bullion in 2023, which is only slightly below the all time record set in 2022.
The astute entities, particularly in the ME and Asia are realising that keeping funds in U$ dollars is becoming too much of a liability.
Foreigners who own $14 trillion in stocks in the U$ and a further ~$8 triilion in treasuries are slowly waking up to the fact that they are not even the legal owners of this paper…. see eCONomics Part (I), section (iii) ‘The Great Taking’.
This stacking of bullion is enabled by the U$’s vain obsession of trying to protect the value of its currency. The Global South will continue to stack as the U$ facilitates the suppression of the real price with the COMEX.
It seems incredible, but the MSM has only just managed to figure out that the strength in gold is due to massive central bank buying. Apparently the casino house didn’t see these macro trends either – they were all to far too busy chart-painting and gambling to even look at the underlying fundamentals of why gold and silver were about to break out and head for the hills.
This subject was extensively covered in eCONomics Part (I) and so I won’t regurgitate it here.
Paraphrased from the one and only Alasdair Macleod…
“Money is the back stop of credit, which is why gold is so important. The dollar is not money, it is credit – it relies on the faith we have in the U$ Govt (oh dear!).
This is what is likely to come unstuck, as the entire colossal credit system begins to fall down around our ears.
Insurance has to be money in this event – not BitCoin, but gold. Silver has been demonetised, remaining very much an industrial metal controlled by industrial interests, particularly within China.
However, this control may well be slipping with the Indians buying so much silver, with deliveries on the COMEX this year over 1200 tons. As China loses control of the silver price its monetary characteristics will return.
When credit really does fall apart, people will go for anything tangible – obviously this does not include financial securities – in them there is no protection against inflation because they are in themselves credit which will get swept up in the collapse.”
Into the Maelström
4. Gold, Silver, or Bitcoin — which one(s) will Dah Fed concentrate on manipulating now?
Recently, the ‘cost to borrow’, meaning the cost to short sell GLD shares began to rise sharply from just under 40 BPS (0.4%) by almost 3x to a mind-numbing 1.06%.
Remember too that these borrowed shares ultimately have to be paid back as the price rises further the borrower is left in a ever deepening hole -who on earth would take this risk? – So who is the ‘who’ then? – it has to be dah Fed itself because no TBTF first tier bank compliance team would allow these huge high risk naked short bets to be made.
As the brilliant Andy Maguire recently stated – (paraphrased)…
“Why – because they are attempting to swamp the gold rally by adding borrowed supply in the hope that officials can repay these borrowed supply bets at a lower price. Yes we know that the Fed can print as much as they like, but this is all set to backfire spectacularly.
The Fed is the only remaining CB betting against a higher gold price and they are reduced to deploying the only tool in the tool box, which is using leveraged paper gold to try to chart paint the top of the rally.
Meanwhile, almost every other CB is swapping their excess dollars for physical gold and capitalising on being able to convert the COMEX synthetically driven supply prices into deliverable NSFR compliant bullion through the EFT mechanism. The Fed is now severely limited as to how many CTAs they can suck into puking up their long term bets to repay these GLD shares.”
The Fed is the only remaining global CB (dumb enough) to bet against a higher gold price and to use leveraged paper gold to continue to manipulate the price. Meanwhile any other CB, with half a brain, is swapping their excess dollars for physical gold.
Basically, available gold stocks have contracted ~50% in 4 years and many CTA positions are no longer rinse-able. The ringleaders now appear to be shifting their attention to injecting instability into Bitcoin, and phasing out gold and silver price fixing, as they become more and more badly burnt whilst the organic price discovery process advances.
Clearly, it is far more profitable to play around with cryptos than to have to eventually cough up gold bullion, which is ultimately NSFR compliant, and physically deliverable, leaving them in a deeper and deeper hole.
It is much easier just to print cash to bale themselves out, as their ability to print cash is virtually limitless – as opposed to eventually having to cough up physical gold that they don’t hold anyway.
5. Silver — massive extra demand for silver, notably in India and China.
We now witness an explosion in silver demand for use in the solar industry particularly in India, but it is strong in China too. India’s solar module production demand is likely to grow by ~60% by 2025.
This market requires thousands of extra tons, but the demand is also ramped up even further by the relatively higher price of gold – another perfect storm leading to unprecedented physical demand.
The extra thousands of tons of demand for silver will inevitably force the price much higher during 2024 – this cannot be contained by the bankster’s usual playbook of tricks.
Since the 1930s the gold to silver mining production ratio has stayed remarkably close to 8:1.
The Exeter Pyramid helps us to gain a perspective on how massively undervalued gold and silver bullion is relative to other financial assets and real estate.
When you look at the risk arrows which clearly indicate that there should be movement into gold and silver bullion, at the very least as an insurance hedge, it reveals just how huge the natural impending price discovery process could be.
Ownership of precious metals in the U$ are really only the equivalent of a pimple on an elephants arse – it represents the equivalent of a pitifull 0.5% of their assets.
As Andy Schectman points out – what happens when the population finally flicks up as to the extent of the great taking and if they advance their PM holdings to even a lowly 5%? – that alone would amount to a 10x increase in demand.
This is much like the COMEX debacle where the open interest is 1750% higher than the amount of bars held in their vaults. The dirty word is rehypothecation – meaning that most entities will have no access to physical gold, just as they won’t with silver.
The planned Moscow Metal Exchange could at any time set a relatively modest price for gold at $3000, and silver at say $50-$100. Just like that all of the Western markets could arbitrage straight to the East setting a real price – this would break the COMEX and the London Metal Exchange, and immediately break the dominance and the manipulation by the Western players.
6. Unsustainable Levels of Public Debt – the Destruction of the Middle Class
Daniel Lacalle wrote an excellent piece which was published on ZH April 9, 2024…
“When the fiscal position is unsustainable, the only way for the state to force the acceptance of its debt—newly created currency—is through coercion and repression.
A state’s debt is only an asset when the private sector values its solvency and uses it as a reserve. When the state imposes its insolvency on the economy, its bankruptcy manifests in the destruction of the purchasing power of the currency through inflation and the weakening of real wage purchasing capacity.
The state basically conducts a process of slow default on the economy through rising taxes and weakening the purchasing power of the currency, which leads to weaker growth and erosion of the middle class, the captive hostages of the currency issuer.
Of course, as the currency issuer, the state never acknowledges its imbalances and always blames inflation and weak growth on the private sector, exporters, other nations, and markets. Independent institutions must impose fiscal prudence to prevent a state from destroying the real economy. The state, through the monopoly of currency issuance and the imposition of law and regulation, will always pass on its imbalances to consumers and businesses, thinking it is for their own good.
The government deficit is not creating savings for the private economy. Savings in the real economy accept public debt as an asset when they perceive the currency issuer’s solvency to be reliable. When the government imposes it and disregards the functioning of the productive economy, positioning itself as the source of wealth, it undermines the very foundation it purports to protect: the standard of living for the average citizen.
Governments do not create reserves; their debt becomes a reserve only when the productive private sector economy within their political boundaries thrives and the public finances remain under control.
The state does show its insolvency, like any issuer, in the price of the I.O.U. it distributes, i.e., in the purchasing power of the currency. Public debt is artificial currency creation because the state does not create anything; it only administers the money it collects from the same productive private sector it is choking via taxes and inflation.
The United States debt started to become unsustainable when the Federal Reserve stopped defending the currency and paying attention to monetary aggregates to implement policies designed to disguise the rising cost of indebtedness from unbridled deficit spending.
Artificial currency creation is never neutral. It disproportionately benefits the first recipient of new currency, the government, and massively hurts the last recipients, real wages and deposit savings. It is a massive transfer of wealth from the productive economy and savers to the bureaucratic administration.
More units of public debt mean weaker productive growth, higher taxes, and more inflation in the future. All three are manifestations of a slow burn default.
So, if the state can impose its fiscal imbalances on us, how do we know if the debt it issues is unsustainable?
First, because of the units of GDP created, adding new units of public debt diminishes rapidly.
Second, the erosion of the currency’s purchasing power persists and accelerates.
Third, because productive investment and capital expenditure decline, employment may remain acceptable in the headlines, but real wages, productivity, and the ability of workers to make ends meet deteriorate rapidly.
Today’s narrative tries to tell us that nothing has happened when a lot has. This includes the destruction of the middle class and the deterioration of the small and medium enterprise fabric in favour of a rising bureaucratic administration that consumes higher taxes but still generates more debt and deficits. It does end badly. And all empires end the same way, with the assumption that nothing will happen.
The currency’s acceptance as a reserve does come to an end. The persistent erosion of purchasing power and declining confidence in the legally imposed “lowest risk asset” are some of the red flags some are willing to ignore, maybe because they live off other people’s taxes, or because they benefit from the destruction of the currency through asset inflation. Either way, it is profoundly anti-social and destructive, even if it is a slow detonation.
The fact that there are informed and intelligent investors who willingly ignore the red flags of weakening the middle class, declining purchasing power of the currency and deteriorating solvency and productivity shows why it is so dangerous to allow governments to maintain fiscal imprudence.
The reason why government money creation is so dangerous is because the government is always happy to increase its power over citizens and blame them for the problems its policies create, presenting itself as the solution.”
The CPI – what Rick Rule refers to as the CP LIE – doesn’t include food or fuel which makes it an utterly contrived index. Worse still, it does not even include taxes and yet this is the biggest expense of all – for many it is larger than food, shelter, energy and transportation combined.
Rick notes that for people like himself and the basket of goods he buys, and adding in taxes, it means he is losing around 7% per year on his money.
On a ten year treasury with a coupon value of say 4.1%, which sounds like one hell of a lot better than the 2.0% of days gone by, you are being scammed. If you work out the true rate, it is a disgraceful and debilitating negative 3.9% every year for 10 years compounded on your original investment.
Even the lower echelon within the Fed admit to Rick that the real inflation rate is far higher than what the public is led to believe – this means that there is absolutely no way that they could cut rates, because this would cause even more dramatic loses for depositors and bond holders.
Clearly, the institutional view within the Fed is to not reduce the rate, but within Congress there is a bipartisan desire to reduce rates and particularly within the Biden admin who desperately want to win the next election.
7. BRICS+10 — BRICS+16
onwards and upwards – this subject was discussed extensively back in eCONomics Part (III) of the sequel
Sergei Glazyev’s white paper has received the green light from the Kremlin’s Yuri Ushakov (Putin’s Assistant for Foreign policy) and will be presented to the Kazan summit May 14-19. I will try to do a proper update shortly after we hear the outcome of this important summit.
In the meantime the BRICS+ progress remains relentless, especially given that the BRICS+10 control the lion’s share of the global energy complex – the scale of the de-dollarisation process is poised to reach a completely new level. This is an utterly terrifying and self- inflicted situation that the Western hegemon finds itself in – they dug their own hole and are still digging.
We are now witnessing the creation of an immense socioeconomic-security bloc that will have more than 90% of global wealth and resources to back it up.
8. Don’t Blame COVID for the Looming Meltdown
— in fact the u$ economy was on the rocks well before any of us had even heard of covid – see the implosion of repo market in August 2019 on Trump’s watch.
Suffice to say the repo market that completely imploded on Trump’s watch when none of the banks trusted one another’s collateral any longer – even treasuries were not trusted any longer, as it became known that there could be multiple claims on them too. The repo market never recovered, and now sits at around $2 trillion as reverse repo – obviously the banks don’t want money on the street, and would rather hand it over to the Fed overnight.
Some of the big players see what is coming down the pipeline now too, and they are sucking PMs out of the exchanges.
NB – the U$ dollar is worth only 3 cents now compared to its value when the ‘Creature from Jekyll Island’ was incorporated. The next step is the road to a big fat ZERO cents worth, which is where all fiat ends up sooner or later.
There is also the opportunity for the PBS and FTT models to be deployed in sovereign countries where they can be introduced without hegemonic retribution and intimidation.
Within the BRICS+ block, it will be a case of letting 190 flowers bloom with the sharing of the success stories within so that the models that work in a particular set of circumstances can be embraced by other regions/countries with the confidence of them being already proven working models.
This would be an ongoing organic process that involves continued decentralisation and bottom up governance in a mix of cooperative endeavour that works to develop the real economy and to create permanent wealth for all of society, rather than just permanently feathering the nests of the parasitic financial casino economy.
I’m not going to label the new paradigm with any of the existing ism’s because this will be something completely novel. There should really be only one central maxim necessary – ‘treat others as you would wish to be treated yourself’ – that’s it!
The ongoing transition should be be a gradual orderly and organic evolution as new models prove their worth in the real world leading to a renaissance of the true human spirit.
9. The Hegemon’s Rapidly Deteriorating Financial State
On current trends the Biden Admin looks set to increase the existing debt of $34.5 trillion by $7.3 T to a mind-numbing $41.8 trillion.
If they could foist a retail CBDC on the country, then there are effectively no limits as to how low they can push interest rates. Negative rates could be invoked to eat up principle. Imagine that, when they have already destroyed 97% of the purchasing power of the dollar.
Using the existing commercial banks for the retail account doesn’t make CBDCs any more palatable as they would simply be using the commercial banks to distribute their policy, whilst achieving much the same effect as every man and his dog having a personal bank account at the Fed.
It is impossible for me to imagine any scenario where a retail CBDC is desirable
… but the absolute worst case is if it was administered as a retail account at the central bank in the case of the farcical Fed model, where that entity is 100% owned by a cartel of thieving and parasitic private banksters.
Even in a highly developed and extensive public utility banking system retail CBDCs would be a completely unworkable disaster. They would by definition, completely preclude a highly competitive banking system where a multitude of banks and models all compete with the result being beneficial interest rates and a high standard of customer services for society at large.
Retail CBDCs would be tantamount to the Soviet era Gosbank model where for ~70 years there was only one banking entity in the entire country. The result was as disastrous as it was predictable.
Even more alarming is the fact that the U$ FDIC is essentially trying to guarantee ~$20 trillion of deposits with a fund of a minuscule $121.8 billion – that amounts to a truly farcical 0.5 cents insurance on the dollar.
Even Bloomberg admits the fact that with $929 billion of CRE debt becoming due in the next 9.5 months, this could potentially topple hundreds of U$ banks.
10. BITCOIN — A Trojan Horse? — rolled out in during the Lehman debacle
QE started then – TPTB endeavoured to have everything looking as normal as possible so that the public was oblivious to what was going on.
As a rule people who go for gold, silver, and cryptos have the same wish – ie, to operate outside the main system, but does bitcoin really belong in that category?
Surely bringing in a Bitcoin ETF is rendering it into the casino system anyway. Initially they were very appealing to the libertarian who sees the debasement of fiat and is looking for an alternative – but aren’t crypto currencies technically fiat anyway? This is made even more precarious when there are ~10,000 different crypto currencies.
Perhaps we all need to consider the fact that this might have been a cunning plan to get digital currencies out and about in the public domain and normalised in the minds of society at large.
Who was Satoshi Nakamoto anyway, the so-called author of the original white paper and who devised the first blockchain database? Supposedly the work began in the second quarter of 2007, and the domain name bitcoin.org was registered in August 2008.
He allegedly continued in the development of the software until mid-2010 before handing over control of the source code depository and domains to various entities, ending his recognised personal involvement in the project.
According to Wiki, Nakamoto had some $73 billion worth of Bitcoin in 2021, making him the 15th richest person on the planet.
Given that the Japanese term ‘satoshi’ can mean ‘intelligent’ and ‘nakamoto’, ‘central’ was there a playful suggestion behind the name as to who was really behind the scene – ‘Central Intelligence’? – what a horrible thought.
Is this just another ploy to keep money from going into gold and silver and exposing yet another dying fiat currency.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lBo_mVV81n8
11. mRNA Toxins — Another Extremely Bearish Factor
The massive rate of toxic mRNA jabs deployed in Western counties is an extremely depressing subject, but it would be remiss to not mention this as another giant debacle that will help seal the hegemon’s fate and virtually guarantee a debilitating debt death spiral for much of the West
Ed Dowd’s numbers suggest that globally ~ 2.2 billion people have been either killed or are permanently disabled by the toxic jab roll-out – that’s the same one that Trump still brags about.
97% of the US military were jabbed and their own data shows cancer rates are up ~1000%. Heart disease is up 970% in the US military.
In the UK, 18-39 year olds, jabbed 4 times are 318% more likely to die than their unjabbed contemporary control group.
The German Govt recently admitted that there was no pandemic and that figures demonstrate that the fully jabbed on average surrender 25 years of their life.
In the U$, CDC data revealed that each jab increased mortality by 7%.
Highly jabbed regions showed ~15% higher mortality than 2021.
2 doses and 3 boosted were 35% more likely to die in 2022 than 2021.
By contrast, the unjabbed were no more likely to die in 2022 than 2021.
This will have a disastrous effect on productivity, as not only is the fully productive work force dramatically depleted, but the care of the seriously jab injured will soak up even more labour resources and other expenses.
12. Wrap Up
Oh, and I just located some good news, albeit though, very much confined to the Global South realm. There is a much lower level of debt in the RoW and developing economies, compared to the ravenous NATOstan – it is completely self evident even within the figures released by that dreadful IMF creature…
2022 IMF DATA – % of debt to GDP
World 238%
Advanced’ economies 277%
Euro Area 254%
UK 252%
U$ 273%
Emerging market economies 191%
Others 124%
Low income developing countries 88%
In fact this debt could become almost negligible if the BRICS+ in unison, gave the economic Western hitmen the middle finger salute in all cases where they have made deliberately cynical, unpayable, and predatory loans in the first place.
The new socio-economic paradigm will be premised on cooperative goodwill and mutual progress for all participating countries. In this blueprint a minimum of resources will be spent on killing one another, and member nations will enjoy the security provided by an immense bloc that has more than 90% of global wealth and resources to back it up.
There is also the opportunity for the PBS and FTT models to be deployed in sovereign countries where they can be introduced without retribution from the hegemon – the fiscal and monetary aspects of this model were covered in eCONomics Part II.
Within the block it could be a case of letting 190 flowers bloom with the sharing of the success stories within the group, so that the models that work in a particular set of circumstances can be embraced by other regions/countries with the confidence of them being already proven working models.
This would be an ongoing organic process that involves continued decentralisation and bottom up governance in a mix of cooperative endeavour that works to develop the real economy in order to create permanent wealth for all of society – rather than just permanently feathering the nests of the shadowy figures ensconced behind the parasitic financial casino economy.
I’m not going to label the new paradigm with any of the existing ism’s because it will be something completely novel. There should be only one central maxim necessary – ‘treat others as you would wish to be treated yourself’ – that’s it!
Fingers and toes all crossed, the ongoing transition should be be a gradual orderly and organic evolution, as new models prove their worth in the real world in a monumental transition and a complete renaissance of the very essence of the true human spirit.
And how prophetic were the words of the great Leonard Cohen (my all time favourite Canadian, my friend Emerson) in his epic song ‘Anthem’ which took him some 10 years to complete.
Verse 5 nails what is happening right now, as a torrent of countries clamour join the BRICS+ juggernaut…
You can add up the parts
You won’t have the sum
You can strike up the march
There is no drum
Every heart
Every heart to love will come
But like a refugee
Such a tragedy that this great man passed and never got to see this massive event beginning to unfold.
— strap on a good quality headset, crank up the volume, and accompany Cohen on an incredible journey.
Colin Maxwell – April 11, 2024
EXPLANATION OF ACRONYMS/TERMS/JARGON used in the article…
AKA = Also Known As
CB = Central Bank
CTA = Commodity Trade Advisor
COMEX = The Commodity Exchange Inc. = the world’s leading derivatives marketplace for trading metals – formed 50 years ago specifically to rig gold and silver prices, to try to protect Western fiat currencies
CPI = Consumer Price Index
CTA = Commodity Trade Advisor
ETF = Exchange Traded Funds
EFP = Exchange of Futures for Physical
Global South = all countries apart from NATOstan = AKA RoW
GLD = the SPDR EFT gold share Nasdaq ticker/symbol
NSFR = Net Stable Funding Ratio
NATO = North Atlantic ‘Terror’ Organisation
NATOstan = NATO plus its yapping lapdogs and sundry hangers on – sadly this group includes both NZ and Australia
Repo = Repurchase Agreement – a form of short term (often overnight) form of borrowing for dealers in government securities
Reverse Repos = the reverse of a Repo – it is the party originally buying the security
Rinse-able = this term refers to investors that can be lured out of their long positions
RoW = Rest of the World
SPDR = one of the family of ETFs managed by State Street, the TBTF largest asset manager on the planet with around $44 trillion in assets under management, custody and administration – it tracks the price of gold bullion in the over-the counter market – the SPDR gold share ETF is known as GLD
TPTB = The Powers That Be
Per Newton’s third law, Hell cometh to the demented Anglo-Zionist satanists in Greater Syria….
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin had a telephone conversation with President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko.
The President of the Republic of Belarus expressed his heartfelt condolences on the monstrous terrorist attack at Crocus City Hall, conveyed words of sympathy and support to the victims’ families and wishes for a speedy recovery to the injured, emphasising that the people of Belarus stand together with the people of Russia in this time of sorrow.
Alexander Lukashenko offered any assistance that may be needed, and expressed his confidence that the organisers and perpetrators of this heinous crime will face inevitable punishment.
For his part, Vladimir Putin informed his counterpart about the detention of the terrorists directly involved in the attack, as well as about the ongoing investigation.
Both leaders expressed mutual readiness to continue close cooperation in the fight against terrorism.
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin had a telephone conversation with President of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev.
During his telephone conversation with Vladimir Putin, President of the Republic of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev expressed his deep condolences over numerous victims of the terrorist attack at Crocus City Hall, stressing that he resolutely condemns this barbaric crime, and asked to convey words of sympathy and support to the victims’ families and wishes for a speedy recovery to the injured.
Both Leaders reaffirmed their intention to step up anti-terror cooperation.
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin had a telephone conversation with President of the Republic of Uzbekistan Shavkat Mirziyoyev
Shavkat Mirziyoyev strongly condemned the heinous terrorist attack at Crocus City Hall, expressed his sincere condolences in connection with the tragedy, and asked to convey words of support to the victims’ families and wishes for a speedy recovery to the injured.
Both Sides reaffirmed their intention to continue close cooperation to counter terrorism.
On March 23, President of Russia Vladimir Putin and President of Türkiye Recep Tayyip Erdogan held a telephone conversation.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan offered his deep and heartfelt condolences to the families and friends of the victims of the heinous terrorist attack at Crocus City Hall. He noted that the Republic of Türkiye stands with the people of Russia in this dark hour.
Vladimir Putin emphasised that Russia appreciates the support of the Turkish people and informed his Turkish counterpart on the status of the investigation into the terrorist attack.
During the conversation, the Turkish Leader stressed the urgent need for closer bilateral cooperation in the fight against the terrorist threat.
President Putin expressed gratitude for the condolences and supported the idea of stepping up cooperation in countering terrorism.
On March 23, President of Russia Vladimir Putin and President of the Syrian Arab Republic Bashar al-Assad held a telephone conversation.
The President of Syria strongly condemned the terrorist attack at Crocus City Hall, stressing that Syrian citizens share the pain and grief of the Russian people. He wished fortitude to the victims’ families and friends and a speedy recovery to the injured.
Vladimir Putin and Bashar al-Assad discussed the ongoing crisis in the Middle East and the current situation in Syria, which is directly facing the terrorist threat.
The Leaders agreed to intensify contacts both in addressing counterterrorism and in all other areas of bilateral cooperation.
ADDENDUM:
President of the Republic of Tajikistan Emomali Rahmon telephoned Vladimir Putin to express deep condolences and solidarity with the Russian people over the death of innocent civilians in the terrorist attack at Crocus City Hall. The President of Tajikistan emphasised that there was no nor could not be any justification for that crime.
During the conversation, Vladimir Putin and Emomali Rahmon noted that the security services of Russia and Tajikistan were working closely together to counter terrorism and that they would build up their cooperation.
Tajikistan’s President Rahmon during phone conversation with Russia’s Putin condemns terrorist attack in Russia, says terrorists have neither nationality nor religion
During the conversation, President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev strongly condemned the terrorist attack at Crocus City Hall, which claimed the lives of over 100 innocent civilians, expressed deep condolences to their families and friends, and wished a speedy recovery to the injured.
Ilham Aliyev stressed that the people of Azerbaijan stand together with the Russian people on this day of national mourning and expressed confidence that the severe punishment of the criminals and those who masterminded that crime was unavoidable.
Vladimir Putin thanked the President of Azerbaijan for his words of support and expressed readiness to further strengthen practical interaction in the spirit of strategic partnership and alliance between Russia and Azerbaijan.
Ryabkov, Ushakov and Glazyev foresee a quickening of the Russian river after Putin’s spring reelection: the BRICS will create payment and settlement systems that do not depend upon the shifty “rules-based international order.”
By Pepe Escobar at The Cradle.
“BRICS doubled its membership at the start of 2024, and faces huge tasks ahead: integrating its newest members, developing future admission criteria, deepening the institution’s groundings, and most importantly, launching the mechanisms for bypassing the US dollar in international finance.”
BRICS Ambassadors attend “Maslenitsa: Dialogue of Civilizations,” Moscow, 12 March 2024.
MOSCOW – Across the Global South, countries are lining up to join the multipolar BRICS and the Hegemon-free future it promises. The onslaught of interest has become an unavoidable theme of discussion during this crucial year of the Russian presidency of what, for the moment, is BRICS-10.
Indonesia and Nigeria are among the top tiers of candidates likely to join. The same applies to Pakistan and Vietnam. Mexico is in a very complex bind: how to join without summoning the ire of the Hegemon.
And then there’s the new candidacy on a roll: Yemen, which enjoys plenty of support from Russia, China, and Iran.
It’s been up to Russia’s top BRICS sherpa, the immensely capable Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov, to clarify what’s ahead. He tells TASS:
We must provide a platform for the countries interested in rapprochement with the BRICS, where they will be able to work practically without feeling left behind and joining this cooperation rhythm. And as to how the further expansion will be decided upon – this should be postponed at least until the leaders convene in Kazan to decide.
The key decision on BRICS+ expansion will only come out of the Kazan summit next October. Ryabkov stresses that the order of the day is first “to integrate those who have just joined.” This means that “as a ‘ten,’ we work at least as efficiently, or, rather, more efficiently than we did within the initial ‘five.'”
Only then will the BRICS-10 “develop the category of partner states,” which, in fact, means creating a consensus-based list out of the dozens of nations that are literally itching to join the club.
Ryabkov always makes a point to note, in public and in private, that the twofold increase of BRICS members starting on 1 January 2024 is “an unprecedented event for any international structure.”
It isn’t an easy task, Ryabkov says:
Last year, it took an entire year to develop the admission, expansion criteria at the level of top officials. Many reasonable things were developed. And many of the things that were formulated back then got reflected in the list of countries that joined. But it would probably be improper to formalize the requirements. At the end of the day, an admission to the association is a subject of political decision.
What happens after Russia’s presidential elections
In a private meeting with a few select individuals on the sidelines of the recent multipolar conference in Moscow, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov spoke effusively of BRICS, with particular emphasis on his counterparts Wang Yi of China and S. Jaishankar of India.
Lavrov holds great expectations for BRICS-10 this year – at the same time, reminding everyone that this is still a club; it must eventually go deeper in institutional terms, for instance, by appointing a secretariat-general, just like its cousin-style organization, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).
The Russian presidency will have its hands full for the next few months, not only navigating the geopolitical spectrum of current crises but, most of all, geoeconomics. A crucial ministerial meeting in June – only three months away – will have to define a detailed road map all the way to the Kazan summit four months later.
What happens after this week’s Russian presidential elections will also condition BRICS policy. A new Russian government will be sworn in only by early May. It is widely expected that there will be no substantial changes within the Russian Finance Ministry, Central Bank, Foreign Ministry, and among top Kremlin advisers.
Continuity will be the norm.
And that brings us to the key geoeconomics dossier: the BRICS at the forefront of bypassing the US dollar in international finance.
Last week, top Kremlin adviser Yury Ushakov announced that BRICS will work towards setting up an independent payment system based on digital currencies and blockchain.
Ushakov specifically emphasized “state-of-the-art tools such as digital technologies and blockchain. The main thing is to make sure it is convenient for governments, common people, and businesses, as well as cost-effective and free of politics.”
Ushakov did not mention it explicitly, but a new alternative system already exists. For the moment, it is a closely, carefully guarded project in the form of a detailed white paper that has already been validated academically and also incorporates answers to possible frequently asked questions.
The Cradle was briefed on the system via several meetings since last year with a small group of world-class fintech experts. The system has already been presented to Ushakov himself. As it stands, it is on the verge of receiving a final green light from the Russian government. After clearing a series of tests, the system in thesis would be ready to be presented to all BRICS-10 members before the Kazan summit.
This all ties in with Ushakov publicly declaring that a specific task for 2024 is to increase the role of BRICS in the international monetary/ financial system.
Ushakov recalls how, in the 2023 Johannesburg Declaration, the BRICS heads of state focused on increasing settlements in national currencies and strengthening correspondent banking networks. The target was to “continue to develop the Contingent Reserve Arrangement, primarily regarding the use of currencies different from the US dollar.”
No single currency for the foreseeable future
All of the above frames the absolute key issue being currently discussed in Moscow, within the Russia–China partnership, and soon, deeper among the BRICS-10: alternative settlement payments to the US dollar, increased trade among “friendly nations,” and controls on capital flight.
Ryabkov added more crucial elements to the debate, saying this week that the BRICS are not debating the implementation of a single currency:
As for a single currency, similar to what was created by the European Union, this is hardly possible in the foreseeable future. If we are talking about clearing forms of mutual settlements such as the ECU [European Currency Unit] at an early stage of development of the European Union, in the absence of a real means of payment, but the opportunity to more effectively use the available resources of the countries in mutual settlements to avoid losses due to differences in exchange rates, and so on, then this is precisely the path along which, in my opinion, BRICS should move. This is under consideration.
The key takeaway, per Ryabkov, is that the BRICS should not create a financial and monetary alliance; they should create payment and settlement systems that do not depend upon the shifty “rules-based international order.”
That’s exactly the emphasis of the ideas and experiments already developed by Minister of Integration and Macroeconomy at the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU) Sergei Glazyev, as he explained in an exclusive interview, as well as the new groundbreaking project on the verge of being greenlighted by the Russian government.
Ryabkov confirmed that “a group of experts, led by the Ministries of Finance and representatives of the Central Banks of the respective [BRICS] countries,” is working nonstop on the dossier. Moreover, there are “consultations in other formats, including with the participation of representatives of the ‘historical west.'”
Ryabkov’s own takeaway mirrors what the BRICS as a whole are aiming at:
Collectively, we must come up with a product that would be, on the one hand, quite ambitious (because it is impossible to continue to tolerate the dictates of the west in this area), but at the same time realistic, not out of touch with the ground. That is, a product that would be efficient. And all this should be presented in Kazan for consideration by the leaders.
In a nutshell: the big breakthrough may be literally knocking at the BRICS door. It just depends on a simple green light by the Russian government.
Now compare the BRICS devising the contours of a new geoeconomics paradigm with the collective west mulling the actual theft of Russia’s seized assets to the benefit of the black hole that is Ukraine.
Apart from being a de facto declaration by the US and EU against Russia, this is something that carries the potential, in itself, of totally smashing the current global financial system.
A theft of Russian assets, would it ever happen, will render livid, to put it mildly, at least two key BRICS members, China and Saudi Arabia, who bring to the table considerable economic heft. Such a move by the west would completely destroy the concept of the rule of law, which theoretically underpins the global financial system.
The Russian response will be fierce. The Russian Central Bank could, in a flash, sue and confiscate the assets of Belgian Euroclear, one of the world’s largest settlement and clearing systems, on whose accounts Russian reserves were frozen.
And that on top of seizing Euroclear’s assets in Russia – which amount to roughly 33 billion euros. With Euroclear running out of capital, the Belgian Central Bank will have to revoke its license, causing a massive financial crisis.
Talk about a clash of paradigms: western robbery versus a Global South-based equitable trade and finance settlement system.
On the healing power of the Holy Russian General Staff
By Marat Khairullin
What Europe is doing today is literally incomprehensible to the mind. I emphasize: the mind of a modern, civilized, well-informed person, brought up on humanitarian values. Today we all have the opportunity, as they say, online, live to watch as Europe once again slides into the era of savagery and primitive cruelty. The worst thing is that today we can clearly see how huge chunks of modern Europe are peeling off the veneer of civilization that our neighbors have been so proud of in recent decades. And, probably, even more frightening here is that you can clearly see how thin this raid was.
Decades of peace after the Great Patriotic War allowed all of humanity to forget that for centuries Europe was a source of threat to all of humanity. There is no abomination that European civilization does not invent and embody in relation to Man – any form of oppression, genocide, mass burning of women, concentration camps, slavery and the destruction of entire peoples by starvation, colonialism and neocolonialism, the mass introduction of homosexuality as a form of “soft genocide” against the entire human race, etc. so on and so forth…
And the pinnacle of all this: Europe has unleashed two world wars and is now rapidly unleashing a third… That is, some satanic gene that seeks to destroy humanity is embedded in the very structure of European civilization.
Two world wars and tens of millions of innocent victims did not cure Europe of this monstrous genetic disease, and now, before the eyes of the whole world, it is trying to ignite a Third World War, which threatens to destroy this time everyone on the planet, including the planet itself…
Probably, now many of my readers will ask the question-why this philosophical speech from a reporter working exclusively on earth. And the fact is that here on earth, and specifically in the trenches, I discovered that the cure for this satanic European gene has long been developed by our country in the form of fundamental concepts on which domestic military science is built.
Of course, I draw conditional parallels, but the point is that our strategic planners assume that sooner or later Europe will once again attack us. And based on this, they make their own plans. Moreover, as I understand it, based on historical experience, a clear gradation of signs of the coming European invasion has been developed. They fit into a fairly simple formula: as soon as Europe starts moving its borders towards Russia, expect an attack. It’s always been like this. And, as I understand it, the entire current foreign and domestic policy of Russia is based on the fact that a future war with Europe is inevitable.
I have repeatedly written about the profound signs that indirectly indicate this assessment of the situation by our authorities. For example, the country’s defense sector has been sent a clear signal from the highest level that the current rate of financing for the industry will continue for at least a decade. So that production workers are not afraid to deploy additional capacities, realizing that they will always find sales.
However, today, against the background of the fact that Europe has already openly announced another campaign to the East, it makes sense to talk about what cards we are playing in this escalation. Especially in comparison with the situation on the eve of the first two World Wars.
So, the main difference, from my point of view, is that both the first and Second World Wars were not only inevitable for us, but, obviously, we entered them with a much smaller set of trump cards than our opponents. Roughly speaking, the actions of our opponents dictated our moves. For example, the enemy not only deployed its military capabilities before us, but also tested them much earlier.
The German Army in ‘ 41 already had considerable combat experience. This was its main difference from the Red Army. A very important factor is that at the beginning of the war, we were inferior not in terms of the number or quality of armored vehicles, but in terms of the number of experienced, shelled crews.
The same applies to aviation, infantry, artillery, and so on.
Today, the situation is just the opposite, and our moves are already imposing behavior on the enemy. Our army has not just accumulated combat experience, which determines its effectiveness. A powerful single grouping of under a million people has been created, which is unfolding in ever-increasing directions. This is evidenced, for example, by yesterday’s events in the Belgorod-Kharkiv direction.
The enemy tried to simply move in our direction and immediately received losses of one hundred people, not counting equipment – this is comparable, for example, to the daily losses of Ukrov in such a hot direction as Kherson.
In other words, Russia has managed to deploy a full-fledged military group with real combat experience in this area in just six months. This is, by the way, to the question of rumors about the breakthrough of our troops in the Kharkiv direction. Obviously, the declared operation Ukrov had primarily intelligence purposes. Well, we’ve scouted it.
Russia today has not only real combat experience, we have well-trained and war-tested specialists at all levels. For example, our command did not just let most of the officers through the front line. Our army, which is much more important, in two years managed to grow from scratch a whole generation of front-line middle-level officers (or, probably, tactical-dear readers, tell me) – this is clearly seen in the example of my native “Slavyanka”. I won’t talk about the mechanism in detail, but anyone who closely follows my publications can see what serious combat work is going on in terms of raising future great commanders from young combat soldiers.
This is a very difficult, sometimes frankly difficult and cruel process, but it is going very fast. I, for example, see how a conditional thirty-year-old battalion commander came to the brigade three months ago-a boy, yesterday’s platoon and company commander, and how he becomes after running in continuous battles in the experienced, well-coordinated Slavyanka brigade.
You probably shouldn’t write about this in live reports, but you, my dear readers, can watch this process in an artistic presentation in essays and stories.
And now I look at this cohort of “Slavyanka” battalion commanders and imagine what they will do from the European army. Do not forget that each battalion commander of the “Slavyanka”, which I write about, is already a ready-made squadron – you can appoint it right now.
What is also important here is that these young people, in general, are also well trained and educated. And” Slavyanka ” is not the only one at the front. Today, only the potential of such (let’s call them “super-experienced”) units as my “Slavyanka”, which have an excellent officer backbone, capable of fighting in any conditions, is estimated at 100 thousand bayonets.
The peculiarity of such units is that they are assigned to newly formed units (usually three or four), which, in conjunction with an experienced unit, adopt combat experience in practice.
And today, thanks to such a system, I see that once raw units are being transformed into strong combat regiments and brigades. And in addition, there are also special shock-assault units, also constantly fighting since the beginning of the SVO and having a huge accumulated combat experience. These are mostly our paratroopers and Marines. The potential of these forces is estimated at 150 bayonets.
That is, we have only in the first line “super-experienced” pure infantry troops numbering about 250 thousand. But there are also exactly the same “super-efficient” and experienced purely artillery, rocket, engineering, aviation, etc. units. What are the Europeans going to do with all this?
Moreover, it is necessary to emphasize once again what constitutes the “super-efficiency” of these teams. On the example of Slavyanka, I have already written more than once how in the summer, just to keep the front in our direction, the Ukry kept the number of troops in the ratio of one to three in front of our position in a defense zone about 10 kilometers deep. That is, for one of our three dill just sat in the trenches. The calculation was that when we go on the offensive (even with a total advantage in aviation and art), our losses in personnel will exceed Ukrop. And we will simply drown in our own blood (who counts dill-no one cared about them, the main thing is our losses).
It’s like a classic: the attackers always suffer heavy losses. Simply due to the fact that the Ukry diligently dug into the ground. In the end, everything turned out exactly the opposite – the Nazis suffered enormous losses.
And if in Bakhmut, according to Prigozhin’s estimates, the losses were one to three in our favor. Even during the counteroffensive in Zaporizhia, dill losses were, according to official estimates, one in eight. And now clearly more. According to my feelings, somewhere one in ten, at least, if not more-there are also a number of indirect signs that are clearly visible to a person who is inside the process.
And this actually put the entire military science of NATO in a stupor – how are they going to fight with such soldiers and with such an army vehicle?
Let’s imagine what the NATO countries can put up against us. For example, the same France, which, through the mouth of Macron, announced the first readiness to march to the East.
France has two divisions of constant combat readiness. The conditional number of real combat bayonets (without real combat experience) is about 7 thousand. At the same time, an extreme check revealed that the combat kit in tanks and armored vehicles is half of what it should be. This is, I emphasize, in the troops of constant combat readiness.
And for this unprecedented power, the whole of France has several dozen artillery barrels and less than a dozen MLRS barrels.
For comparison, according to some estimates, the density of our barrel artillery near Avdiivka was about 60 barrels per kilometer (including self-propelled guns), plus twenty MLRS installations. Plus tanks, UAVs and aircraft.
An even more interesting picture emerges if you know that about 20 percent of French men are homosexuals. Among young people, this percentage exceeds 30 and confidently tends to 40.
You can imagine how homosexuals are fighting – dill, which is strongly moving towards European values, has not been able to gather a single blue battalion.
Few people know, but one of the problems of the Israeli army is a very high percentage of homosexuals (the second problem is religious people who do not want to take up arms). Therefore, the IDF that is destroying Gaza today is not doing it as effectively as the one that fought for the freedom and survival of Israel. Homosexuals make good executioners, but warriors are not so-so.
And what kind of advertising would it be, imagine, in the case of dill: gay fighters tear up the defense of the totalitarian army of Russia and plant a rainbow flag in Donetsk. But it didn’t work out, although they tried repeatedly – the perverts don’t want to fight, and that’s it.
And if so, who will the French send to die on the Eastern Front – the very Arabs who regularly burn their suburbs?
I imagined it: a French Arab immigrant in the winter, but with a bare bottom in a cold puddle in the same trench on the Eastern Front. Such a gay Verdun with an Arabic accent. Very funny.
Or let’s imagine how England will send its Sasu to the Eastern Front, which it is so proud of (that’s all it has). Which will fall, for example, into the clutches of my “Slavyanka”, where there is such a gambling social competition between bats – drive the special forces to the grave. Oh, how much fun it will be – English special forces, with English toilet paper in English backpacks, guys will line up to fight with them. You know, in an aggressive queue like this.
This is not a joke, I told you how the 36th marine brigade of Ukropia lost a battalion of the same special forces trained by the same British sasa in Opytne. As if it wasn’t there, they pretended it wasn’t.
Or how we ate a special forces company of the 3rd assault brigade with diplomas of the American Delta Force near Avdiivka for an afternoon snack. No matter how you look at it, special forces in the southern Russian steppes are not fighting against Russian infantry.
Of course, you can also talk about the Poles, imagine how they will sit in the trenches – these are the very farmers who are now blocking the border with dill. Oh, sorry, but they’ve been here before. Bold ones, flags were openly hung here last summer. We hung there for exactly two weeks, then we went on the attack once – I’m not lying-exactly once, at night, we lost five people to our only position. The next morning, the flags were quickly removed and we did not see them again. No flags, no Poles. In short, Poles, ay, come, we are waiting. You haven’t answered us yet for Susanin.
Speaking in general, the third campaign of the Europeans themselves, who decided not to hide behind dill like a fig leaf anymore, against Russia is still starting so-so. Let’s see what happens next.
As for our side, our Supreme Leader once said [not] in vain that he preferred the prevention of disease to doctors and pills.
We thought that the GDP was talking about human health, but it turns out that it is about our General Staff, which at the moment, like some medieval saint, is preventing Europeans from the Third World War by applying healing bombs and shells to dill.
It will not help, well, then that very gambling and fun Russian infantry will go directly to the treatment. The only thing I would personally wish for here, this time to make Europe healthier for good, is to cut out the damn gene once and for all, with all their gonorrhea, genocide and homosexuality, so that it will never be customary to interfere with the life of normal humanity again.
Marat Khairullin
In this part: Interest rates manipulation as a way of tackling inflation — one of the most shocking financial scams of all time; plus an update on de-dollarisation and No Plan B for Uncle $laughter
With thanks to our own Colin Maxwell of New Zealand.
Please see: Part 1 ; Part 2 ; Part 3
The duck shooter’s clubhouse on Jekyll Island, Georgia, United States of America
Introduction
It should be of no shock to any of us by now as to the reason WW1 began a very short time after the U$ Fed was incorporated, and this set the tragic pattern for the next 111 years. This tiny group of bankster plutocrats were handed on a plate by Congress a giant counterfeit printing press – a privilege that these thieves would deploy to progressively impoverish the working classes of most of the planet.
I won’t go into this too deeply here as I covered the background of the Frankenstein-like creature from Jekyll Island in the link below – my April 2022 expose’, and the debilitating effect this dreadful bankster construct has had on the global financial scene ever since:
It remains my life’s mission to expose the fact that the Western central banking industry, and its plutocratic owners operating in the shadows, are the head of the human food chain and the underwriters of more than 90% of humanity’s wars, terrorism, and financial impoverishment.
The great news though is that humanity is being thrown a lifeline by the BRICS+/BRI blocs and their related initiatives. Indeed all we have to do is to summon up the presence of mind to recognise this new reality and to reach out and grab the opportunity with both hands. The background of this new global paradigm was explored in Part III of this sequel –
The solution will be multi-faceted as it will involve a new global paradigm – never again will a single national currency have dominance – the new system will include a novel trade-only settlement instrument which will be stable, hard backed, and yet still able to provide adequate liquidity for the participating members’ productive economies.
In reality, WW1 never ended – WW2 was a follow-on with a brief respite of barely one generation in between, paving the way for the future hybrid financial, and techno, forever-wars. These, including the COVID debacle and the great poisoning with chemicals and pharmaceutical toxins, are simply a continuation of the same families pulling the strings from the shadows.
This is the business of human butchery and their intentions are becoming more explicit and outrageous as each decade passes by. In every sense of the word, this plutocratic network is a blatant terrorist organisation and needs to be dealt with accordingly. The rules of engagement should be the same and history reminds us that the only sure-fire way to deal with organisations like this is to permanently cut off their funding.
Because the New York Fed is the most outrageous model ever devised and has become the number one money spigot of the globe, this is precisely the place to start. This has never been more urgent as it is painfully obvious that there is a push for another bank run crisis which the owners of the banking cartel think will give them the crisis excuse to usher in a new retail central bank digital currency (CBDC) system where every man and his dog can have an account within the “Federal Reserve” system. This is their grand plan, which if successful would give the commercial banking cartel total control of every aspect of our lives through a social credit control and tracking system of all retail account holders.
Prof Richard A. Werner of the University of Winchester
1. Professor Richard Werner
“empirical evidence is that interest rates are a lagging indicator and a farcically ineffective monetary tool”
paraphrased/quoted from… https://soranomics.com/#content_20_fancybox-8
As Werner points out, it is not interest rates, but bank credit that determines economic growth, simply because ~97% of the money supply in our Western fiat currencies is created out of thin air by privately owned commercial banks.
There is zero basis for the official narrative that higher interest rates lead to lower growth and that low interest rates lead to high growth.
As with most aspects of eCONomics the quickest way to get straight to the truth is to simply assume the 180˚ polar opposite of the official narratives. Interest rates are simply not useful as a monetary policy tool – PERIOD! (23:30)
Interest rates actually follow growth – so where on earth did this idea come from that interest rates are this key variable? – it is not based on empirical evidence but on the concept of equilibrium which is based on no less than 8 assumptions none of which hold up in the real world…
(29:00) The methodology in Economics is the Deductive Method – reverse engineering AKA Charlatanism.
2. eCONomics
eCONomics — the pioneer pseudo-science that paved the way for other disciplines to follow as a tool of central planning and globalist agendas
Karl Popper
Karl Popper called this the ‘immunising stratagem’ which scientists fancied could guard their theories from being challenged by the use of reverse engineering in what became known as the ‘deductive approach.’ This is my interpretation of the process…
3. How high would hikes need to go to arrest inflation?
High enough that they cripple the real economy before there is any ‘measurable effect’ (sic) on what they labelled ‘inflation’
Poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti asked… “whether man must burn down his house to roast his pig…”
The current Western neo-classical monetary policy used to tackle inflation is precisely that scenario.
Worse still, history illustrates that interest rate hikes have to be so utterly brutal that they need to be at the very least at the level of the true inflation rate, or higher – Paul Volker did this in the 1980s when the rates were pushed above 20%. This was construed as successful from the point of view that it appeared to halt inflation when all it had done was destroy enough of the economy and liquidity to make sure ‘inflation’ was halted.
Ronny Raygun with Paul Volcker – confirmed in 1979 by the Senate as Fed Chair
In 1979 the federal funds rate had averaged 11.2% and Volker took them to a peak of 20% in March 1980. The prime rate topped out at 21.5% in 1981, which heralded (surprise, surprise, NOT) a rise in unemployment to over 10% and the 1980-1982 depression.
“Volcker’s Federal Reserve board elicited the strongest political attacks and most widespread protests in the history of the Federal Reserve (unlike any protests experienced since 1922), due to the effects of high-interest rates on the construction, farming, and industrial sectors, culminating in indebted farmers driving their tractors into Washington, D.C. and blockading the Eccles Building.
US monetary policy eased in 1982, helping lead to a resumption of economic growth.”… Wiki quote.
Although I am a great admirer of Ron Paul – IMO the quote below reveals that even he was not aware of the utter falsehood of attempting to use rate hikes as a constructive monetary tool to address inflation.
“Being in Congress in the late 1970s and early 1980s and serving on the House Banking Committee, I met and got to question several Federal Reserve chairmen: Arthur Burns, G. William Miller, and Paul Volcker. Of the three, I had the most interaction with Volcker. He was more personable and smarter than the others, including the more recent board chairmen Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke.”
Volcker may well have been smartest, but in my opinion all three wreaked havoc on Mainstreet and massively rewarded the financial economy at the expense of families, SMEs, and the productive economy. As Volcker aged, he became more critical of the banking industry but that was long after he had spent his career indulging and implementing most of the destructive hoaxes of neo-classical eCONomics.
Other features of Volcker’s career…
SUMMARY: interest rate hikes are not an effective monetary tool to address inflation – on the contrary, they instantly feed inflation just as hikes in energy prices do – you do not even require the most basic economic nouse to understand this principle – it should be self-evident to anyone with an IQ even approaching room temperature.
4. Safe Havens in times of financial strife – where are they now?
In the 1980s the level of total debt was so much less than it is now that the entire financial meltdown was at a totally different level. Today just the Govt debt alone is a death spiral in itself, with an extra $1 trillion added every 100 days.
In 2024 the U$ will have to issue $10 Trillion in Treasury paper to finance more deficits and to roll over old paper at much higher interest rates. The revised cost of this debt will rise from ~$1 Trillion to $1.5 Trillion. This is a debt spiral where more and more money has to be borrowed just to pay the interest back – paying down debt is not even on the radar.
All of the big 5 Western fiat currencies have this problem including the three sometimes referred to as ‘default currencies’ – the dollar, the Yen, and the Swiss Franc – these used to be seen as safe havens to hide when the financial/geopolitical shite hit the fan. Now none of these are safe any longer, and so the pressure will really come onto these currencies as there are now viable alternatives that countries can use in their accelerating de-dollarisation strategies – these include…
To me the Western safe havens no longer exist, as the main Western fiat currency economies now face a very unpleasant binary choice between either…
A. Severe hyper-inflationary depression, or
B. Severe and extended debt liquidating depression
5. A tribute to Pepe Escobar’s recent work in Russia
What a privilege for us all to have such direct access to Pepe’s insights. I regard him as the undisputed global high priest in terms of geopolitical analysis and journalism. I am most certainly not alone in this view, judging by the audiences he pulls in terms of readers and interviews with people of note in this fight for multi-polarity and who are involved in developing the architecture of a new paradigm in global socio-economic methods and relations.
His audience with Glazyev, whom I have enormous respect for as an honest and courageous economist, was particularly intriguing, and not the least because some of the revelations were done off the record. My own personal hypothesis is that the entire development of the new trade instrument is making great progress, but that there is no point in rushing the announcement of the final details, as long as there is still ample opportunity for BRICS+ countries to gold stack… see above chapter (4) first bullet point.
Of course, this opportunity is entirely courtesy of the U$ obsession with massively shorting gold in this pathetic attempt to hide the plummeting purchasing power of their currency. It could be any day now when an entity insists on a large physical tonnage and the physically driven price discovery process begins. When that happens the gold price will break out and it will be time for the various player’s hands to finally be revealed.
In the meantime, the RoW carries on carefully checking out further de-dollarisation strategies and putting the finishing touches on the new trade instrument. As I said previously, the BRICS+ bloc has an enormously strong hand, whilst all the West has is the grim reality of an impending debt spiral.
Glazyev sees the next stage as detaching commodity prices from the dollar and quoting them in other units. This involves the new model based on two different baskets – a basket of currencies of member countries, and also a basket of exchange commodities. The fact that this currency will be so inherently stable will make it more attractive than the dollar, the pound or the euro.
Technically the trade currency instrument is almost ready, and the process only requires the political will and acceptance by India and China. In the meantime, the transition to settlements in national currencies is well underway.
The trade instrument will be backed not only by the national currencies but by the huge reserves of the nominated commodities that combine to back up the new international settlement currency. This new currency is not a substitute for national currencies.
Once all of the technical issues are finalised, they will prepare an international treaty that will be open to accession by all other countries wanting to join. Glazyev is clearly in no hurry and has put a time frame of within 2 years from when he made these announcements back in late October 2023.
Gazyev listed these advantages…
5. SUMMARY – The long and the short – literally!
None of this reality is being addressed by Uncle Slaughter and clearly, they have no plan B. A giveaway is the fact that actual military spending for 2022 ended up at a mind-boggling $1.537 Trillion – more than twice the publicly acknowledged level. If nominal GDP is around that $20 trillion then that military budget is a truly obscene 7% of GDP, and equal to more than the next 40 biggest spenders combined.
In fact, the next 40 countries spending totalled $1.431 trillion – some $100 billion short of the U$’s $1.537T and with Romania coming in at #39 in the list at $5.2 billion, it could well be the equivalent of the combined 60 or more highest military spenders.
I eventually got sick of adding and gave it up – besides, I was in dire need of a wee dram.
Colin Maxwell
( March 12, 2024)
Pl use as Open Thread.
March 09
Mariupol railway station back in business — @MyLordBebo
Has the demonically-possessed West taken the leap, gone past the point of no-return ?? (no way to return Ripper’s bombers Mr. President!) A surprise was promised Russia by Mrs. Vicious. And notification of 48 hours by all western zionazi embassies…….
@rybar: Ukrainian Armed Forces AFU Conduct Massive Raid on Russian Regions. Update as of 11:30
Tonight, Ukrainian forces launched a large-scale attack on the border regions of Russia using drones. According to official reports, Russian Air Defense systems successfully neutralized 47 unmanned aerial vehicles.
41 UAVs were intercepted over the Rostov region. In Taganrog,, the raid targeted Beriev Aircraft Plant, with additional drones destroyed near Morozovsk, where a military airfield is located.
One drone was shot down over Kursk, with falling debris causing roof damage to a clinic on Soyuznaya Street. Due to the risk of explosion, patients and staff from the adjacent hospital were evacuated to safety.
Three drones were downed in the Volgograd region. This marks the second attack on the region in two days, following the interception of 15 UAVs the previous day. Another UAV was also destroyed in the Belgorod region.
Fortunately, civilian casualties were avoided in these regions. In Taganrog,, an Emergencies Ministry worker was injured while assisting in clearing the aftermath of the earlier strike on the ground.
March 08
NATO’S newest, sans fig leaves.. a sad sack and another limp member! Get a screenshot before the Operation (pun)
March 07
On March 05, Fox News asked Donald Trump whether he was “on board” with the way Israel was “taking the fight to Gaza.” After having avoided the issue for months, by claiming that Hamas never would have attacked if he had been President, he now volunteered: “You’ve got to finish the problem.”
German MP calls for attack on government buildings in Moscow
“Strikes on the Russian Ministry of Defense and intelligence service are necessary”
@Strategika51:
First direct and long waited duel between a Russian #T72B3 tank and a Ukrainian #Abrams #M1A1 tank.
The Russian T72 destroyed the Abrams tank on the first shot.
At the start of the so-called ground phase of Operation #DesertStorm in February 1991, there was a tank battle along the desert axis leading from #Kuwait to the Iraqi city of #Basra (in the extreme south of Iraq), in the territory of the ancient #Sumerian civilization. During the battle, which pitted US #M1 Abrams against Iraqi #T72s, the US armored forces encountered many setbacks, and President George Bush Sr (Sr.) hastily decided to end the operation.
This forgotten episode of the #Gulf War was overshadowed by the famous retreat of Iraqi forces along the Highway of Death, an agreed withdrawal which the US side pretended to ignore, as coalition air forces rushed to bomb the retreating Iraqi columns, guns in non-combat position for hours.
In other words, both the #Abrams and the #Merkava were erected by marketing myths.
The resignation of Cookie Nuland is primarily due to the upcoming investigation by the FBI and the Office of Special Operations. investigations of the US Department of Justice, where 10.5 billion dollars were spent on Maidan in Ukraine (the public was told about 5 billion), as… https://t.co/QE5CkfyvHt
— — GEROMAN — time will tell –
— (@GeromanAT) March 5, 2024
Sweden was signed into NATO as its 32nd member by the US State Dep.
Sweden will officially join NATO on the 11th March.
The ceremony will be held at the NATO headquarters in Brussels, Belgium.
@DDGeopolitics: 
China proposes to hold an international conference to resolve the “crisis in Ukraine,” said the Chinese Foreign Minister.
“China supports convening an international peace conference, to which both Ukraine and Russia will agree, in which all parties will participate on an equal footing and will have the opportunity to discuss all peace plans impartially and honestly,” said Wang Yi.
Currently, the Chinese envoy for peaceful resolution in Ukraine, Li Hui, is making a series of visits to Kiev, Russia, and Europe.
Moldova:
@sputnik_africa: Moldova is suspending the operation of the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe;
@DDGeopolitics: France will open a permanent defense mission in Chisinau in the coming months, Macron announced during a meeting with Sandu in Paris. “This measure will allow for more effective work in terms of training the armed forces,” said the French president.
March 06
Medvedev trolls a little more. The humiliation ritual is pronounced and incessant at this point! The Empire is taken down further notches using the strategem of mockery.. when it comes to inflicting “strategic defeat”, two can play.
@ Dmitry Medvedev:
“One old man with a wandering smile on his face invited girls to have fun: the cheerful widow of a Russian extremist and the not yet widow of the leader of the Kyiv Bandera pack. Like for cultural relaxation during a performance before the nation as part of a well-rehearsed concert.
It turned out sad: the widow and not yet the widow simply did not come, because they love each other so much that they did not even want to sit next to each other for the well-known hygienic procedure.
But the coolest thing is that the grandfather didn’t notice anything. He does not remember who these wives/widows are, nor who their husbands are. He didn’t even notice that his vacation with the chicks was ruined.
However, this will not stop him from announcing to the nation tomorrow that he spent an unforgettable night in wonderful company…”
@S51: Victoria Nuland will be replaced by John Bass, the former and last appointed US ambassador to Afghanistan before the time of the disorderly withdrawal of US forces from that country…
It’s more than a symbol; it’s a living slogan!
March 05
The Russians unveiled a new phase of the SMO over these last days. The leaking of the unsurprising German dastardliness, well-documented against ALL combined West over the last two years, was calculated to bring events to a head.
Tender is the Night.. just scroll down these revelations in the last day of Russo-“Old Europe” relations and abject sordidness from Old Europe, in particular Germany! The poise and restraint of Russia is extraordinary, and most ominous for the Anglo-Americans. It indicates Russia will NOT allow herself to be distracted by barking strawmen. The target remains Londonistan and Rome on the Potomac. That is why they keep their powder dry; they intend to settle with the satanic puppeteers, once and for all .. see Medvedev’s concluding remark
@DDGeopolitics:
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has stated that the “Denazification of Germany is incomplete”.
Commander of AKHMAT Special Forces, Apti Alaudinov has something to say to Macron about sending French troops to Ukraine.
Via: @MyLordBebo |video|
Germany’s defense minister on Sunday described Russia’s leak of a conversation by ranking German military officers to be part of Russia’s “information war” against the West, and that the aim was to create discord within Germany.
In other words…
“We got caught and now we will try and say it’s Putin’s fault we got caught talking about how to blow up a Russian bridge”
[The incompetence and bumbling cowardice of these LiberalCultCrazies is beyond galling. It’s a shame to witness even by their enemies and all us onlookers!]
posted on Medvedev’s TG channel, 27 July 2022
Medvedev presentation, 04 March 2024
EPIC: Medvedev just unveiled a new map of Ukraine split between Poland, Russia and Romania declaring:
“Ukraine is undoubtedly part of Russia!” |video|
Dmitry Medvedev: “Germans should be grateful our President has a cool head” |video|
“Russia will definitely bring the special military operation to a final victory, to the capitulation of the neo-Nazis,” said Deputy Chairman of the Security Council Medvedev.
Other statements by Medvedev during his lecture “Geographical and Strategic Borders” |FULL PRESENTATION|
– In the Bandera Ukrainian economy, there are no riches that Russia doesn’t have; the main value in Ukraine for Russia is its own people;
– Russia has no territorial disputes with CIS countries;
– Russia does not need foreign land, but it will never give up its own;
– Territories on both banks of the Dnepr are an integral part of Russia’s borders, all attempts to cut them off are doomed;
– The current situation between Russia and the United States is worse than the situation in 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis;
– Russia will remember the incident with the conversations of German military about a strike on the Crimean Bridge, although it will show restraint;
Via: @tass_agency
[Did he say the “neo-nazis” are space and time-limited?]
’1234′ – German Bild reported what password Defense Minister Pistorius uses to protect valuable information from the Russians 
‘The German Ministry of Defense has published a press statement on its website from Minister Boris Pistorius ‘about the interception of BBC communications.’ You can access it via an Internet link; password required. The Bundeswehr website strictly states: ‘This release is password protected.’ Password: 1234. Are you sure this is truly secure?’
France has officially become the first country in the world to make abortion a constitutional right.
In Russia, 2024 was declared by President Vladimir Putin to be the “Year of the Family”.
Deutschland & Frogs, we are strangers in the night…. stealing glances at each other, wondering what could have been.. in the meantime, let us introduce you to our new calling cards — Sarmat, Zircon, Dagger, Geran, FAB-500 with correctional module, thermobaric TOS-2, and enough shells to fill your bottomless gullets. Poseidon and Burestvnik are saved for your Anglo suzerains!
Victoria Nuland quits. She will be out from the US State Department within several weeks, Antony Blinken has said
A New Global Trade Currency Paradigm and the End of the Era of Dominant Western-based Fiat Currencies
With thanks to our own Colin Maxwell of New Zealand.
Please read in order: Part 1 ; Part 2
Preamble
My apologies in advance to the vibrant GS community for Part III being so wordy. I have really struggled with this task, as the entire subject is so monumental in all of its interconnected elements.
To try to avoid it becoming too tedious I have broken it down into multiple chapters to try to make the weight of the subject matter a bit more palatable, and to hopefully avoid losing readers within the first few paragraphs.
None of this is intended as gospel or sermon, but simply as a discussion document that endeavours to pull together as many of the current contrasting thought threads as possible.
It is also part of my own personal intellectual journey, and extremely steep learning curve. I learn the most by writing on subject matter like this.
Critique and suggestions are very much welcomed.
1. Operation Sandman – to use or not to use?
In 2022 the Saudi MOF revealed in a WEF/Davos interview that ‘Operation Sandman’ was activated and that the KSA would now gladly accept all currencies for settling oil transactions.
The theory was that when it is properly launched, at least 100 countries would conduct a coordinated sell off of their trillions of dollars worth of US government debt to break the U$ dominance of the global economy. This would immediately open the door for a completely new financial hierarchy.
According to Stephen Jen, CE of Eurizon SLJ Capital, the share of global reserves held in U$ dollars eroded in 2022 at 10x the average pace of the last 20 years, and stood at 47% – a much lower estimate than that of the IMF. This represents a plunge, especially in relation to the 15 year trend.
Multiple factors include…
<< *This was effectively a move from Tier 3 class for commercial banks holding it as an asset on their balance sheets. The BCBS (Basel Committee for Bank Supervision) is arguably the highest global authority on banking supervision, with the key role of defining capital requirements.
Ironically with the latest developments with the BRICS+ bloc and the revelations of just how precarious some of the Western fiat countries are in being underpinned by their ability to sell government bonds, the new physical gold Tier 1 designation could really put the skids under this entire fiat edifice.
Prior to this new ruling, banks were very much dis-incentivised to hold gold, and instead to hold risky assets such as equity capital, currencies, and debt instruments. IMO opinion the fiat currencies carry significant risk already, let alone when the new hard backed BRICS+ instrument comes into play. >>
This erosion of support for the existing reserve main currencies will inevitably lead to…
2. Why I doubt that Operation Sandman will be invoked…
a crucial historical review
It is a pointless exercise and counterproductive for the entire planet, including the BRICS+, and the RoW to do this in unison. They can all simply gradually dedollarise by stealth, and in doing so maximise the benefits whilst transitioning in an orderly fashion.
Besides, the US is massively naked shorting gold anyway, in the vain hope of hiding the massively eroding purchasing power of king dollar. This is a godsend for the RoW central banks – the US is idiotically accommodating their rival’s gold bullion stacking binge at massively discounted and contrived synthetic prices – they must be laughing all the way to their central banks.
For more than half a century, since Nixon took the dollar off the international gold standard, all currencies became fiat. Prior to that event, they all were hard backed and most of all by that barbarous relic, gold. The way things are panning out the 50 year experiment of a non hardbacked reserve currency is coming to a close very soon. In the context of some 5000 years of financial history this is barely a drop in the bucket.
Essentially, from 1971 on, there was a divergence of investment in the U$, and many other Western financial systems, away from the industrial capitalism of the real world economy, into what would turn out to be ruinous financial capitalism. Surely fiat currencies, coupled with a greedy obsession with financial rentier capitalism, is a guaranteed recipe for disaster.
3. Is The U$ Pinning its Hopes On Discovering Alchemy?
Europe’s tiny central bank gold holdings are probably accurate and likely not rehypothecated to any great extent, but the same cannot be said for the US’s claimed 8133 tons of US gold holdings.
It is almost certain that there are multiple ownership claims on each ounce, and this is why global central banks are quietly repatriating physical bullion. The same with silver, as the paper claims for each physical ounce are at least 90:1. The silver price discovery market is even more broken with the true G:S ratio needing to be more in the realms of between 8 -16:1.
Texas is very wisely building its permanent state depository and recategorising gold as legal tender. They do not trust the centralised system, and now at least six other states are looking to follow their lead, because they too are losing trust in the federal system, and in the management of US Treasury gold.
If Texas doesn’t trust the U$ system, then why on earth would the RoW?
4. Foreign Exchange Reserves Quietly Converted Into Gold Bars
It turns out that the massive global shadow banking industry, and with gold being auto-categorised as foreign exchange reserve, that this combination has hidden the fact that large swaths of foreign exchange reserves are being converted into physical gold.
This trend dates back to at least 2010 but really ramped up when the US weaponised the dollar in March 2022 with Russia’s SMO in Ukraine.
This makes a ton of sense (literally) for the RoW, as it amounts to de-dollarisation by stealth – converting incumbent US dollar debt into stacks of debt-free bullion.
Furthermore, this sanction-proofs potentially trillions of excess reserves – a no-brainer when the entire globe is in such a state of financial and military turmoil.
Estimates are that China has around $6 trillion in excess FX reserves giving a truly staggering gold/GDP ratio compared to Europe with a pitiful 4% average and the US potentially massively negative.
Robert Triffin, Belgian-American economist (1911–1993)
5. Another new Global Paradigm — no national currency having the ‘exorbitant privilege’ of reserve currency status
indeed a first for humanity…
Why on earth would any country, especially China, want its currency to have overwhelming reserve currency status anyway? A very bright spark, Robert Triffin, predicted back in 1959 that the Bretton woods system, with the U$ dollar as the world’s utterly dominant reserve currency, was doomed because of fundamental flaws.
Triffin was right – the Belgian born Yale professor predicted that by definition a reserve currency would run increasing deficits. The more popular a reserve currency is, the higher its exchange rate tends to be and the less competitive its domestic exporting industries become.
This means trade deficits for the country issuing the currency. They love the effectively ‘interest free loan’ generated by selling their currency, or in essence their debt, to other countries, but at the same time they need to raise capital for dollar denominated bonds. This is part of the paradox – cheap sources of capital and positive trade balances rarely coincide.
6. Implications of Gold Backing – a national currency versus a trade only international instrument
History has proven that gold is inappropriate for domestic monetary backing. Michael Hudson covered this on page 433 of his epic book ‘Super Imperialism‘ quoted/paraphrased…
‘Freeing domestic credit from gold backing has been a precondition for promoting rising employment and production of goods and services. But in the international setting gold backing is a positive because it serves as a very real constraint on trade imbalances but not on domestic production and employment.
You could say that Europe and Japan abandoned gold prematurely before developing an alternative to the U$ dollar or the dollar-proxy SDRs issued by the IMF, as an effective arm of the U$ government.
Only the U$ has shown the will to create international structures, and to restructure them to fit its financial ‘needs’ as they devolved from a hyper-creditor to a hyper-debtor nation.
Removing the gold convertibility of the dollar enabled them to unilaterally pursue protectionist trade and cold war military practices simultaneously. The US claim that their surplus dollars act as a ‘growth locomotive’ for other countries by expanding their credit creating powers – as if they need US dollars to do this.
Meanwhile they were able to derail foreign attempts to break free from what has become a tidal wave of US deficit dollars. History will reflect on the remarkable asymmetry between the U$ and the RoW.” … end quote.
Of course public utility models, like the incredibly successful Commonwealth Bank of Australia, prove that assumption to be patently and tragically false, as this model went on to be arguably the most successful public utility equivalent to a reserve bank in world history.
7. The Commonwealth Bank of Australia — a Pubic Banking Utility Masterstroke
I have included this long chapter, because it is actually an integral part of this entire subject of eCONomics – which is to say that everything about neo-classical economics is based on false maxims and lies, designed to enrich the financial kleptocrats ensconced at the head of the human food chain.
This is integral because it illustrates the fact that in so many cases countries do not even need to borrow from abroad if they effectively deploy the PBS at reserve bank or treasury level. This is another key piece in the global jigsaw puzzle where the global economy could be transformed into a completely new egalitarian paradigm.
The public banking model in itself would become a huge source of liquidity and capital for the entire domestic economy. This would replace the status quo con where nations allow a parasitic global banking cabal to constantly thieve from them like a giant squid, sucking the lifeblood out of the entire nation.
This concept is extremely simple – it means that the public creates their own money and liquidity and to reap the benefits of any interest paid domestically, rather than third parties creating that money and subsequently allowing them to charge us as a nation for that privilege. In the current broken model, we annually allow billions of dollars to disappear overseas into these parasitic global banking institutions.
The exciting part of it all this is that incredibly successful public banking utility models have already been tried and proven to work, and to generate huge sustainable wealth for entire national economies.
One of the most stunning examples was the Commonwealth Bank of Australia which Ellen Brown details in her awesome book ‘The Public Bank Solution‘. Of course, history informs us of the tragedy that this incredible model didn’t last – it actually became a victim of its own astonishing success, and it was destroyed by the combined might of the parasitic global central banking cartel.
While the US was setting up its privately owned central bank, for the Federal Reserve, to become a parasite on the productive economy of most of the world, Australia was at the exact same time taking the bold step of establishing a PBS bank that issued credit for the sole benefit of – wait for it – Australians!
The huge irony is that Denison Miller, the bank’s first Governor, was allowed to try this model only because he was considered by the other existing bankers of the day to be one of their own thieving ilk, and that therefore they would be able to keep this new bank in line.
In essence, Miller understood how the commercial banks thieved from the nation at large and he set about creating this new model that could very rapidly revive a struggling economy and create long-term wealth for the entire Australian society. The first branch opened in Melbourne in July 1912 and Miller was the only employee.
Somehow he had persuaded the Treasury to advance him £10,000 as seeding money – the first and last time this version of the CBA was lent any money. Of course, this money didn’t even exist – it was simply created as a ledger entry.
Miller subsequently promised that the CBA would at all times be the people’s bank. It slowly dawned on the private bankers, who were so intent on having to guard against the socialisation of their own banks, that they completely underestimated the power of an orthodox banker who simply mobilised the resources of the entire country to enable the CBA to quickly grow into one of the greatest banking models the world had ever seen.
The bank began advancing massive sums of money simply on the credit of the Australian Nation. An early example was the Melbourne Board of Works which went to the market for money to redeem existing loans and to raise new capital – normally they relied on loans from the viper’s nest residing in The City of London. Instead, this time they approached Dennison Miller and were loaned £3 million at 4% – this was an enormous sum at that time.
In 1914 during WW1, citizens started rushing into their banks to withdraw their funds – Miller quickly put a stop to these bank runs by simply declaring that the CBA would support any banks in difficulty – that was the end of the panic immediately. It was a dramatic demonstration of the power of the Govt to stabilise the financial system without relying on any other parties.
In just 2 years from the creation of this bank, Miller was basically in control of financing Australia’s war effort and ZERO money was borrowed from overseas. It was the first bank in Australia to receive a Federal Govt guarantee and offered both savings and general transactional services. By 1912 it took over the State Savings Bank of Tasmania, and by the following year, it had branches in all 6 states.
In 1920 it began acquiring central bank powers and took over the responsibility of issuing Australian bank notes from the Dept of the Treasury. In 1924 a board was appointed with 6 members as the new governing body. During WW2 emergency legislation was passed and the CBA was granted almost full central bank powers.
The CBA was a remarkable success, but was subsequently seen to be threatening the hegemony of the City of London thieves. Prior to the establishment of the CBA, London capital had always dominated the Australian financial system.
This was the colonial model of the time – ie financial colonialism, where the colonies were granted the right to “govern” themselves – provided they obeyed the financial rules of the COL (City of London) – shame about this acronym!. As such the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street (The Bank of England) presided over the financial dynasty of the empire.
Australia was a debtor nation until WW1 when it suddenly demonstrated its ability to independently finance its war effort. It also used the CBA to finance its own shipping line which was poised to smash the City’s shipping monopoly – the old bitch from Threadneedle Street was not amused.
Miller calmly told the big bankers at a dinner in London that Australia could meet any demand, simply because it had the capital of the entire country behind it. When he arrived home in Aus he was asked by a deputation of the unemployed for a loan of £350 million for productive purposes – he advanced the money immediately, and news of this caused panic within the COL, as they realised that if other countries adopted this model their entire financial edifice could collapse.
The COL immediately set about devising a plan that would enable overseas national institutions to be drawn into its squid-like network. The plan was to centralise all banking throughout the empire over to the supervision of the Bank of England – it would become the super banker’s bank.
The horrible old lady got her way and as such the modern parasitic and hegemonic central banking model was born. The head of the bloodsucking squid would eventually moved from London to the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) in Basel Switzerland – a model originally designed to launder Nazi war loot pilfered from their rampage across Europe during WW2.
This is the disgustingly parasitic model that survives to this day, and New Zealand (NZ) is a paid-up member of this bankster club too – our RBNZ dances to their tune and as a result we squander billions of dollars annually overseas to thieving institutions when we could create our own money and credit just as the CBA did in Australia.
Sergey Glazyev, Russian politician and economist, with Vladimir Putin
8. Whats is the new BRICS+ Instrument to be – a basket of 20 commodities including gold, or gold alone?
Some very astute financial analysts, including Alasdair Macleod have thought all along that Sergey Glazyev, the Commissioner for Integration and Macroeconomics within the Eurasian Economic Commission, the executive body of the Eurasian Economic Union, was never that serious about the new trade instrument being backed by a basket of around 20 major commodities including gold and silver.
Their theory was that this multiple hard-backing would be too hard to bring to fruition and to administer. Personally, I always liked the idea because I thought it could have had a smoothing effect on the volatility of the trade instrument. This would be very much the case until the market discovery of G & S finally kicked in to properly expose the true purchasing power of the dominant Western fiat currencies.
Certainly though, the gold only backing could be easily instigated, with a brand new issuer of this currency that would not be taking a central bank style role, but to simply become an institute of issuance.
Gazyev has publicly written in a Moscow based business paper that it is time for the Russian rouble to be on a gold standard – given this was co-written by the deputy of the EUEA Committee, this must carry some weight, but it was written back before the Johannesburg BRICS+ Summit meeting, in which no decision or announcement was made about the new instrument.
Also at that time there were statements from Indian officials that there was no way they would go along with this gold-backed currency. Remember too that BRICS+ requires a unanimous vote for this new currency instrument to be accepted.
Also Lavrov has mentioned that Russia had accumulated a large quantity of Indian rupees which were difficult to convert – a new trade instrument would make the process of trade a breeze, and stop the third party ticket clipping too. No sooner was this intent announced than both the odious Yellen and Kissinger visited Beijing to try to pressure China from joining in this new initiative, presumerably using the argument that it would undermine their export market.
It appears that China is more concerned about the vulnerability of the new BRICS+ members stress arising from high interest rate loans, than they are about the welfare of the Western hegemon – who could blame them for that – the economic hybrid war waged against the RoW is hardly a secret.
Also the new trade-only currency is very different from normal bank credit, as this form of credit is self-extinguishing when trades are completed. I assume the importer would get access to the trade currency through its central bank. This would be credit created on the back of this new currency and tied to gold, not just created out of thin air.
Presumably this would make the politics a lot more simple because there would be no interference with the management of the individual member’s sovereign currencies. This also explains why the idea of the new trade instrument being just a mix of all of these currencies was probably a bad idea.
This system would also have required endless reconfiguring as a growing procession of new members joined up. I view the 153 BRI members as a precursor to a massive watershed of new BRICS+ members adding exponentially to the size of this new bloc.
Incidentally, the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organisation) and BRICS+ are becoming more and more aligned too, with the SCO having nine full members, two observer nations, fourteen dialog members and another six pending applications, giving a grand total of 31 nations as members and associates. Kuwait, UAE, Maldives, Myanmar and Bahrain are all new dialog members just since May 2023
9. China is under no illusions about the serial economic hitman antics of the Western financial hegemon
They have witnessed the Latin American (LatAm) crises of the 1970s US orchestrated pump and dump schemes that effectively bankrupted their victim nations and allowed U$ corporations to pick up assets and public utilities for pennies on the pound.
Closer to home was the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, which originated in Thailand with the collapse of the Thai baht and the capital flight after they were forced to float because of their lack of foreign currency to support the peg to the U$ dollar.
This spread quickly to many other southeast (SE) Asian countries and later to Japan and South Korea as well. The result was slumping currencies, stock markets, other asset prices, and a massive rise in debt with debt:GDP ratios rising by 100-180% in all of the largest economies.
China assisted in the damage control by making $4 billion available in bailout money, and by not devaluing its own currency. However the tide of capital fleeing these countries was not stopped and the authorities had to cease defending their exchange rates and allow their currencies to float. Their foreign liabilities grew massively in domestic currency terms, causing even more extended carnage.
The ASEAN countries believed that the well co-ordinated manipulation of their currencies was a deliberate attempt to destabilise their economies. The Malaysian Prime Minister, Mahathir Mohamad accused George Soros and other currency traders of ruining Malaysia’s economy with currency speculation.
Long story short, the carnage from this Western contrived pump and dump debacle was right on their doorstep and it remains very vivid in the minds of all of these SE Asian BRICS+ bloc members.
The NDB (New Development Bank) was tasked with helping to finance developing countries, and Russia in 2023 offered 25-50,000 tons of free grain to six struggling African nations.
In short it is obvious that China sees the real priority is to support Russia and the BRICS+ bloc, together in mutual cooperation in a 21st Century industrial revolution for the benefit of all member countries, their productive economies, and to build sustainable future wealth.
Halford Mackinder’s Heartland Theory: the Afro-Asian “World-Island” at permanent struggle with the Rimlands
10. Mackinder’s 1904 theory was right – the ‘World Island’ he predicted has indeed become a reality.
This could well be recorded for posterity as the major geopolitical pivot in the history of our species.
Now we await the announcement of the new hard backed trade instrument as soon as the BRICS+ nations are satisfied with their bullion stacking, and a non synthetic market driven price discovery for gold and silver takes place. IMO it will work admirably because a better alternative to the unbacked fiat countries will be, not only available, but utterly compelling for trade settlement purposes, but also in terms of stable and secure reserves.
The US is in an impossible debt trap now and the Fed has lost control – the cost of credit is too high for the massive amount of debt entrenched in the system and if the dollar weakens, inflation will be off to the races even further.
Official inflation figures are a complete croc anyway, and as John Williams reported 5 months ago for August 2023, when the official CPI was headlined at 3.7% YOY, his estimate was 11.5%. If the changes weren’t made to the calculation formula between the 80s and the early 2000s, they would be forced to report the double digit number.
When the inflation figure is manipulated to this degree it means that the Fed is in reality, operating outside of the price stability mandate. Given that employment figures are completely fictitious too, that many part time jobs are included in the total, and people no longer looking for jobs are excluded in the formula, this figure is a complete croc too.
To me this means that the 100% privately owned Fed is not operating within any effective mandate whatsoever, and even more outrageous is the fact it hasn’t had a proper audit for over 70 years!
11. Has the U$ and the West reached peak stupidity yet?
No, it seems they are still working on it – figures below are from…
To try to put the public debt into perspective I compared the US External National debt to the highest 30 debtor nations of the world. I took out the 17 of those that were NIIP positive (Net International Investment Position) – ie net external assets less liabilities, and at the current $34.34 trillion, this was more than double the debt of all the rest of the remaining 13 net indebted countries combined.
On present trends by 2031 every single penny of tax revenue will go just to pay interest on debt and spending on social security, which is already in a $70 trillion dollar hole.
Even more crazy is the fact that the U$ informed Saudi Arabia of its intention to transition into ‘green’ energy ASAP, when the KSA was the key lynchpin to saving the petrodollar, which was in turn the only possible saviour of U$ reserve currency status.
One of the common criticisms of BRICS+ bloc is its incredible diversity – I see this diversity as a strength, with each country bringing varying degrees of raw materials, energy resources, manufacturing prowess, and logistics, to the table, in a giant bloc that is no longer beholden to the West.
12. Overseas Investment in the US
Around $33 Trillion in total – made up of…
— $7.5T in short term investments – bank deposits, treasury bills, and corporate bills
— $14.5 is invested in equities and the balance in Treasury bonds
If the confidence in the U$ economy and its fiat currency starts to slide, will these foreigners stay in these investments if they have viable alternatives? Some of this $33T will obviously flee into gold. Some will go into China because with its massive infrastructural investments in Africa, Asia, and LatAm they will be seeking these capital inflows. Some of this capital will flow into entities stockpiling commodities, as this is a hedge against the fiat currencies’ declining purchasing power.
The West is hamstrung though, as it probably has at least 10,000 tons of gold with multiple ownership, as so much has been swapped and leased out.
Investing in real estate in countries where their currencies plummet can be problematic too. History showed that rents in Germany in the 1920s fell so much in real terms that a property could become a liability because maintenance and ownership costs could overtake income. This effect does not happen with money held in gold and silver. In a currency crisis this effect can become a deterrence to invest in some normally reasonably hard asset classes.
Conclusion
Clearly this monumental transition won’t be just about sound money and economic principles. This fix requires genuine statesman and the governance structures that have their citizens and nations egalitarian and long term interests at heart. This is evident within the RoW and BRICS+ governance and leaders, but is sadly lacking within in the Western train wreck.
Tragically it seems that the West will need to comprehensively crash and burn before the political appetite ousts the current treasonous bunch from office. Of course, there remains the danger during the transition period, of even more dangerous tyrants gaining power.
I predict an imminent watershed of U$ states seceding from the Union without radical changes in the behaviour of central government. So much for Uncle $laughter’s obsession with endeavouring to carve up the Russian Federation like a side of beef for the taking – the shoe could well end up on the other foot.
The BRICS+ bloc members don’t even need to interfere, as the West is doing far more to self-destruct than if all of their rivals combined together to deliberately try to undermine the hegemon.
I think the formal announcement of the new trade instrument will only eventuate when the BRICS+ bloc members have completed their bullion stacking, and as the new physical market discovery process begins in earnest.
The entire process to date amounts to a period of ~17 years or so. The new bloc has had all that time to carefully study historical models, and to design the new functional model accordingly.
Methinks they will get it right, especially since they hold a full hand of trump cards – including the left and right bowers, the Joker (Mr Putin) and enormous stacks of chips on the table as well.
Colin Maxwell
Haiti: shaping the terrain for massive exploitation and extraction of huge hydrocarbon reserves
For GlobalSouth.co by Peter Koenig
Economist, Geopolitical Analyst
26 February 2024
In his recent article “The Destabilization of Haiti: Anatomy of a Military Coup d’Etat“, Professor Michel Chossudovsky memorializes 29 February 2024 as the 20th anniversary of the coup d’État against Haiti’s elected president Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
He also describes the military motives for controlling Haiti, namely to destabilize the country and to plunge it into constant chaos. This is precisely what has happened. Haiti is in a constant state of near absolute poverty – by far the poorest country in all Latin America – according to official UN / World Bank indices.
Is there a reason?
As we will see, Haiti is also one of the world’s richest countries, per capita, judged by available natural resources – oil and gas. Discovered before the 2010 earthquake and confirmed by the tremendous 7.0 Richter seism.
Haiti’s Potential Hydrocarbon Deposits
The Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLA), issued in May 1980 a report under the Caribbean Development and Cooperation Committee (CDCC), describing the likelihood of large oil deposits in the Caribbean, including off-shore of Port-au-Prince, Haiti. (See this) Haiti is also said to have trillions of dollars-worth of off-shore natural gas. (See this)
These discoveries were likely made in the 1970s and 1980s, perhaps earlier, by US satellite imaging. US satellites have mapped the world for hydrocarbon resources already at least 50 years ago. Such information used to be available on internet – no longer.
Brief Haitian History and Background
François Duvalier, also known as Papa Doc, served as the president of Haiti from 1957 until his death in 1971. He was succeeded by his 19-year-old son, Jean-Claude Duvalier, nicknamed “Baby Doc”.
The Duvalier dynasty was an autocratic hereditary dictatorship, indiscriminately killing people who dared interfere with their government style. The dynasty empire lasted almost 29 years, from 1957 until 1986, spanning the rule of the father-and-son duo, François and Jean-Claude Duvalier. Both served the United States’ political and economic interests.
The sociopolitical situation in Haiti deteriorated seriously under the regime of Baby Doc and his powerful wife. In 1986, President Reagon asked Jean-Claude to leave Haiti, so that the US could “help install” a more stable and serious government. In February 1986 Baby Doc fled to France in a US Airforce jet.
The end of the Duvalier dynasty brought hope for “freedom” and democracy to the Haitian people. There was a succession of short-lived Presidents until 1991, when Jean-Bertrand Aristide was first elected in February 1991. His Presidency lasted 234 days, when a brief military government took over.
In the ten years following Mr. Aristide’s first election, the US-supported political turmoil in Haiti, with a succession of Heads of State, during which Mr. Aristide was four times elected President.
His last Presidency started in February 2001 and ended 3 years later, when Mr. Aristide, Haiti’s first democratically elected President, was quietly deposed by a US-guided coup on 29 February 2004 and deported to South Africa, where he presumably still lives in exile. He was discouraged by the US State Department from returning to Haiti.
This coup was planned well in advance, by such unlikely allies, as progressive “socialist” President, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva – Lula, for short – and George W. Bush, both then Presidents of their respective countries – Brazil and United States.
By now we know that Lula has nothing of progressive, and even less of “socialist” in him. He is and has been totally sold to the usurping west, to Wall Street and the IMF – and that already during his first two terms as President of Brazil, 2003 – 2011.
Both, Lula and Bush are traitors of their countries – but Lula, a make-believe socialist — has deeply betrayed his country during his first two terms, and now, since 1 January 2023, in his third term, but also the people of Haiti.
After associating with Wall Street and the IMF during his first two terms, Lula is again allying with the money brokers – the debt machines, as one may call them.
Toussaint l’Ouverture (1743–1803) Haitian statesman and general
Humiliation of the French and Exceptionalism
Remember – during the French Revolution (1789-99), French black slaves in Haiti launched the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804), led by Toussaint l’Ouverture, a former slave and black general of the French Army. After 12 years of struggle and conflict, Napoleon Bonaparte’s forces were defeated, and on 1 January 1804 Haiti declared her sovereign independence.
Haiti, thus, became the first independent nation of Latin America and the Caribbean, and the first country in the Americas to eliminate slavery. Haiti is the only state in history established by a successful slave revolt. See Wikipedia for more details.
In the 1980s, with close to 200 years of independence (on January 1, 2024 Haiti celebrated 220 years of independence), a black, sovereign, autonomous island in the Caribbean was perceived as a “danger” for the Unted States’ “National Security”. There was already a “Communist Cuba” to deal with just 90 miles (150 km) from the southern Florida border. A black independent, uncontrolled, Haiti was beyond limits for a still racist white US supremacy.
Plus, at that time, Haiti’s riches in petrol and gas were already known to Washington, though, most likely not to Haiti.
Thus, the US, French and Canada ganged up against Haiti’s government to control the island and her riches. Chaos was the modus operandi – and US-induced chaos and crime reign up to this day over Haiti.
What is important to know – that there are no coincidences.
In the 1970’s / 1980s and perhaps up to early 1990s, huge petrol resources were satellite-discovered deep under the sea floor off-shore from Port-au-Prince, Haiti. To get to these resources is expensive. Unless they are brought up closer to the surface – for example by an earthquake, that cracks the tectonic plates, letting pressure bring the oil closer into shallower areas.
The 2010 earthquake was planned for precisely that purpose.
On 12 January 2010, a 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck Haiti, leaving its capital Port-au-Prince devastated. About 220,000 people were reportedly killed.
Among other aid, the Clinton Foundation was supposed to bring order and development back to Haiti, after the seismic devastation. In fact, the contrary is true. More than ten years later, chaos and crime continue dominating the Haitian part of the island of Hispaniola.
Is there a purpose behind it, other than that the Clinton Foundation enriched itself by the multi-million-dollar donations it received to help restore social and economic order in Haiti?
According to the World Atlas (January 2019), recent findings have confirmed Haiti’s enormous oil and gas reserves. Discoveries show that the nation of Haiti might have some of the largest oil reserves in the world. They are estimated to be potentially larger than those of Venezuela. See this for more details.
This amply explains why the United States will not leave Haiti to her independence. The monetary stakes, the riches are too high.
———
Today, the same Lula, who helped instigate the 2004 coup against President Aristide, is “volunteering” in setting up a UN occupation / security force in Haiti, consisting mainly of Brazilian troops. This military occupation is supposed to bring back order and promote economic development.
They will also prepare the ground – or waters – for massive exploitation and extraction of the huge hydrocarbon reserves. This is the military’s hidden agenda. Of course, not part of the official terms of reference.
May Haiti remember her status of the first independent state in Latin America – and rise again.
These hydrocarbon riches belong to the people of Haiti.
——-
Peter Koenig is a geopolitical analyst and a former Senior Economist at the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO), where he worked for over 30 years around the world. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for online journals and is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed; and co-author of Cynthia McKinney’s book “When China Sneezes: From the Coronavirus Lockdown to the Global Politico-Economic Crisis” (Clarity Press – November 1, 2020)
Peter is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).
He is also a non-resident Senior Fellow of the Chongyang Institute of Renmin University, Beijing.
” … These two Romes are fulfilling the legacies they inherited: American Rome, like its pagan predecessor, has become an oppressive conqueror, seeking to impose its culture on all its victims. Russian Rome, like Orthodox Constantinople, seeks friendly relations with anyone on the basis of shared spiritual values … And just as the old Roman West once envied New Rome Constantinople and sought to rob her … so now pagan American Rome eyes Russian Rome with the same envious look (mainly her natural resources).”
by Walt Garlington at Katehon.
When most folks look at a map, they will see only a single Rome, the one in Italy. But there are actually two more, neither of them in Italy: one is identified with Washington, D.C., in the United States and the other with Moscow in Russia, each quite different from the other as they represent two different stages of Roman history. In the American Rome one will see a continuation of pagan, pre-Christian Rome, while in the Russian Rome one will see a continuation of Orthodox Constantinople/New Rome.
Let us look first at American Rome. From her earliest days, the leaders of the US identified closely with the pre-Christian Roman Republic:
‘Throughout the course of history, the ancient civilization of Rome has been widely discussed, praised, and emulated by writers, statesmen, and philosophers alike. Rome has no shortage of admirers, and arguably some of its most enthusiastic supporters were the American Founding Fathers who were enamoured of the Roman past largely because of Rome’s unique form of government, which had supposedly preserved liberty for hundreds of years. The Founders lavished praise upon the Roman republican heroes who defended their government from tyranny in the turbulent final days of the Republic.
‘ . . . The American Revolution further intensified interest in the Roman world. By anchoring those arguments for freedom to ancient precedent, Revolutionary American authors aimed to demonstrate that their arguments were timeless and firmly embedded in history. Historians such as Plutarch, Livy, and Tacitus successfully encapsulated in writing the eternal and unavoidable struggle between liberty and power.[4] Parallels between Rome and America were made frequently by Revolutionary writers and orators. Josiah Quincy compared the tyrant Caesar to King George, asking “is not Britain to America what Caesar was to Rome?”[5] One of the most dramatic and obvious examples of reference to Rome was Joseph Warren’s oration on the Boston Massacre in 1775, during which he wore a Roman toga.[6] It would be difficult to find any public figure of the Revolutionary period who did not quote a classical author in their pamphlets, orations or letters.[7]
‘ . . . The founding generation admired Cicero as a steadfast defender of liberty and a deeply philosophical thinker on the ways in which government can best preserve our naturally endowed rights and freedoms. He was referred to as a constant source of wisdom on the topic of political philosophy as well as a guide to civic virtue and was described by Josiah Quincy as “the best of men and the first of patriots.”[15] Cicero’s oratorical prowess was emulated by many early American lawyers and statesmen who wished to be as eloquent and impassioned as the man who defied tyrants.[16]
‘ . . . Historical figures such as Cicero and Cato were considered fitting role models not only due to their character, but because of the similarity between their predicament and that of the Founders. Cicero and Cato, faced a power far greater than themselves, but were steeled by the cause of liberty. Regardless of how history played out, the Founders viewed Cicero and Cato as heroes of freedom and enemies of tyranny.’
The preoccupation in US thinking vis-à-vis Rome, as with nearly everything else, is the idea of a religiously agnostic individual liberty. This will contrast with Russia, as we shall see. But to begin with, we must see what it is that Russia, the Third Rome, inherited from the second Rome, Constantinople:
‘As the historical, lawful descendants of ancient Rome, which was destroyed by barbarians in the fifth century, the inhabitants of Byzantium called themselves Romans. In a vast empire divided into many nationalities there was one faith—Orthodox Christianity. The Byzantines literally fulfilled the Christian teaching of a new humanity living in a Divine spirit, where “there is neither Greek, nor Jew, nor Scythe,” as the Apostle Paul wrote. This hope preserved the country from the destructive storm of ethnic conflict. It was enough for any pagan or foreigner to accept the Orthodox Faith, and confirm it in deed, in order to become a full member of society. On the Byzantine throne, for example, were almost as many Armenians as there were Greeks; there were also citizens of Syrian, Arabian, Slavic, and Germanic origin. Amongst the higher ranks of government were representatives of all peoples in the Empire—the main requirements were their competence and dedication to the Orthodox Faith. This provided Byzantine civilization with incomparable cultural wealth.
‘The only foreign elements for the Byzantines were people who were strange to Orthodox morals and to the ancient Byzantine culture and perception of the world. For example, coarse, ignorant, money-grubbing Western Europeans of the time were considered barbarian by the Romans. . . .
‘We must admit that our own Slavic forebears were no more well-mannered, and also succumbed to the barbaric temptation to get rich quick at the expense of Constantinople’s seemingly inexhaustible wealth. However, to their credit, and fortunately for us, their lust for the spoils of war did not eclipse the most important thing: Russians comprehended Byzantium’s greatest treasure! This was neither gold, nor expensive textiles, nor even art and sciences. The greatest treasure of Byzantium was God.
‘Having traveled the world over in search of the truth and God, Prince Vladimir’s ambassadors experienced only in Byzantium that a true relationship between God and man exists; that it is possible for us to have living contact with another world. “We did not know whether we were in heaven or on earth,” said the ancestors of present-day Russians, astounded by their experience of Divine Liturgy in the Empire’s most important cathedral, the Hagia Sophia. They understood just what kind of treasure can be obtained in Byzantium. It was upon this treasure that our great forebears founded not banks, nor capital, nor even museums and pawn shops. They founded Rus’, Russia, the spiritual successor of Byzantium.’
The Russian Rome would go on to develop characteristics unique to herself:
‘When Orthodoxy spread throughout the Russian plains, the Russian soul in its collectiveness [sobornost] sought its own gift of God, which it found by turning to the Mother of God. The Russian people particularly venerate the Mother of God, which distinguishes our country and our traditions of the Orthodox faith. Of course, other peoples also venerate the Mother of God, but the Russian people chose the Mother of God for special veneration and reverence, as the door to the Heavenly Kingdom. The Mother of God was our special Protectress: there was not a single corner of the whole expanse of the former Russian Empire into which some miraculous icon of the Mother of God had not appeared that was venerated either locally or throughout the nation. The entire Russian land was sanctified by these holy icons; the Russian people believed that the Mother of God herself was invisibly present, as it were, at each icon.
‘This is our particularity. We will enter the Heavenly Kingdom through the Mother of God. The Mother of God is always depicted with the infant Christ the Savior. This particularity of icon-painting hearkens back to an ancient tradition that tells of some freethinking and insolent people who, looking at the Mother of God during his lifetime, said: “How can she be the Mother of God? How could she have given birth to God? How is this possible?” Then the Mother of God raised her most pure hands to heaven, seeking the protection of God, just as she is depicted on the Kursk-Root Icon. Then the Lord showed Himself to these disputers of this world in her most pure womb, just as He is depicted on her icon. These cowards, seeing such an incredible miracle, were cast into the fear of God; and the insolent people, who were infected with incurable pride, fled in terror, having seen the Savior’s face as Judge in anticipation of His Second Coming.
‘This is our icon. With the raised hands of the Mother of God it addresses all non-believers and believers alike, that they might learn to fear disbelief. This best witnesses to our entire people that the Mother of God is truly the Theotokos, that she truly bore our God and Savior.
‘The particular Russian piety for venerating the Mother of God is a response to the Russian soul’s age-old yearning to perceive God’s grace, which cannot be reduced to an abstract concept, distinctly and actually. The Mother of God also showed her protection to such great saints as our St. Sergius of Radonezh, to whom she appeared more than once, and in more recent times to St. Seraphim of Sarov. Recall how St. Seraphim, sitting on a log in the dense forest, revealed God’s grace to Motovilov distinctly and actually. St. Seraphim embraced him and suddenly the grace of the Holy Spirit moved from the saint to Motovilov who, perceiving God’s grace in fear and trembling, felt as though he were not on earth but in heaven.
‘This is what the Russian people seek: it desires to perceive God’s grace actually and completely. This is the ideal of the Russian soul.’
Thus, in contrast with the American Rome, the preoccupation of Russian Rome is not with worldly ideologies about individual liberty but with acquiring and experiencing the Grace of God.
These two Romes are fulfilling the legacies they inherited: American Rome, like its pagan predecessor, has become an oppressive conqueror, seeking to impose its culture on all its victims. Russian Rome, like Orthodox Constantinople, seeks friendly relations with anyone on the basis of shared spiritual values.
The two ends find expression in the symbols of each Rome. American Rome, like pagan Rome, has a single-headed eagle for its symbol, representing its monoculture that it forces all others to accept. Russian Rome, like the Christian Second Rome, has the double-headed eagle for her symbol, representing a harmonious unity-in-diversity of peoples and their cultures.
And just as the old Roman West once envied New Rome Constantinople and sought to rob her –
‘The capital city’s incalculable wealth, its beauty and elegance, amazed all the European peoples, who were still barbarians at the time when the Byzantine Empire was in its apogee. One can only imagine—indeed, history records it as such—how crude, ignorant Scandinavians, Germans, Franks, and Anglo-Saxons, whose chief occupation at the time was primitive sacking and pillage, after arriving from some town like Paris or London (which had populations of some tens of thousands) to this megalopolis of millions, a city of enlightened citizens, scholars, and elegantly dressed youths crowding imperial universities, dreamt of only one thing: invading and robbing, robbing and invading. In fact, when this was actually accomplished in 1204 by an army of Europeans calling themselves Crusaders, who, instead of freeing the Holy Land treacherously sacked the most beautiful city in the world, , Byzantine treasures were carried away in an uninterrupted flow over the course of fifty years.’
– so now pagan American Rome eyes Russian Rome with the same envious look (mainly her natural resources).
May the Mother of God, dear to Russians, through her Softener of Evil Hearts icon, turn the peoples of the States to repentance, to friendship with Russia, and to acceptance of the same Apostolic Faith of the Orthodox Church:
‘“Softener of evil hearts”… What a great deal of hope there is in the name of this icon: hope that someday justice will triumph on earth, that people will become kind and charitable, will begin to love one another. How difficult that is in our embittered world, and sometimes the mere sight of someone else’s suffering is enough to soften our own evil hearts…
‘This Icon is also called the “Simon’s Prophecy” icon. . . . It was after he had blessed St. Joseph and the Most-immaculate Mother of the Savior, that he addressed Mary with that same prophecy: “Behold, this child is set for the falling and rising again of many in Israel, and for a sin which shall be spoken against. Yea, a sword shall pierce through thy own soul also, that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.” Just as Christ would be pierced with nails and a spear, so the soul of the Most-pure One would be pierced by a certain weapon of sorrow and pain in the heart, when she saw her Son’s suffering. After that, the heretofore hidden thoughts of the people regarding the Messiah would be revealed, and they would face a choice: to be with Christ, or against Him. Such an interpretation of Symeon’s prophecy became the subject of a number of icons of the Theotokos. All those who turn to them in prayer sense that with the softening of evil hearts comes an easing of spiritual and physical suffering. People come to recognize that when they pray for their enemies before such icons, their feelings of enmity are softened, and that internecine strife and hatreds abate, giving way to kindness.’
≈≈
Sakerites will remember our author Walt Garlington, mellifluous voice of the American South. I lived almost a decade of my life in Virginia, among most pleasant folks in USA like the Pacific NW, endearing me to southerners. He is a landscape artist like Batiushka, whom we also miss
Le gouvernement lituanien a décidé à partir du 1er mars d’interdire aux Russes se rendant dans la région de Kaliningrad
L’article La Lituanie restreint le débarquement des Russes sur son territoire pour les trains venant et allant à Kaliningrad est apparu en premier sur STRATPOL.
For GlobalSouth.co by our Colin from New Zealand
Solutions Unearthed by a Tale of Two Economies
A SEQUEL TO PART 1 – ‘The Western Train Wreck‘ – and an effort to promote a solution orientated discussion
It seems that what I regard as an extremely important book , Scott Andrew Smith’s, ‘A Tale Of Two Economies’ released in 2023, has gone relatively unnoticed.
Of course this is entirely to be expected because of the entrenched ‘thinking’ of the eCONomists and commentators who nurture and cheerlead the ruinous Western status quo.
It turns out that the staggering size of the total volume of payments in the highly financialised U$ economy was not even known until the Fed began building the means to track payments in collaboration with the Bank for International Settlements (BIS).
Indeed, given the degree to which the Fed is compartmentalised, only a select few of them even now have a clue about this. Politicians of course were just as out of touch – I imagine that this remains the case as to date I have seen no mention of this on the MSM, let alone alternative media – hence the idea to make this subject part II of my sequel.
The Dream Team – FTT and the PBS
FTT = Financial Transaction Tax
PBS = Public Banking Solution
What I see are two distinctly different, although complimentary, initiatives which between the two could turn even the most broken financial model into a socio-economic miracle within a few short years – indeed, most often within as little as one term of government.
Both systems are stunningly simple mechanisms, which is frustrating as all hell, because that in turn generates the default reaction of at least 95% of the population – they dismiss the concept without knowing any details on the grounds that if it is that simple, it would have been done long before now.
The other automatic default reaction is that these solutions (especially any mention of Basic Income) are seen as far too ‘socialist’ and as such are the thin edge of the wedge in a slide back into communism.
Scott Smith addresses this reaction directly…
“Communism is premised on the notion that it is the worker who creates profit in the products that are produced, so if a company makes a profit after having paid its workers, the worker has been shortchanged for the value they created.
Communism was conceived of before automation as a response to the abject poverty of the 19th century. It was fuelled by the huge gap between the rich and poor, and it rejected the notion that profiting from capital investments could ever be good for society.
The issues that communism sought to address were real, and these issues still exist as shown in this book, though not to the extent they did in the 19th century. The fact that we have a middle class today shows that workers are better paid. Yet there are many who work hard and still live in poverty. The solutions in this book address these problems in a way that fuels economic growth instead of destroying the engine of our wealth, as communism does.”
Of course a huge part of the neoliberal strategy to engineer their vision of a new world ‘order’ (sic) is to point the finger at a communist takeover when in essence it is already a dead duck – NB – from 30% in the 1980s the percentage of global population ruled by technically communist governments is today down to a minuscule 0.5%.
And why the massive plummet down to 1/60th of its former glory within 40 years – BECAUSE COMMUNISM SIMPLY DOESN’T WORK – PERIOD!
In fact I have pointed out before that the U$ fought a horrible war in Vietnam, ostensibly with the aim of stamping out communism. The U$ lost the war, and then in the height of irony within a few decades communism actually defeated itself as the country of 99 million people organically transitioned into a free-market capitalist model.
The current 0.5% remnant consists of minnows Laos, North Korea and of course Cuba. What the socialist!, socialist!, socialist! panic brigade seems to miss is the fact that the US economy is ‘socialist’ anyway, only in the most obscene way possible, where the costs are born by Mainstreet, and the profits are socialised and funnelled directly into the pockets of the thieving kleptocrats.
Mainstreet and the Productive Economy Languishes
Meanwhile the bottom 50% of the population’s share of financial assets shrinks in spite of the trillions of dollars of stimulus flooding the economy.
Charles Hugh Smith has just written an excellent article pointing out how these “recession proofing” machinations by the criminal Fed have once again robbed Main Street and made a monster recession a mathematical certainty – his chart here is a real eye-opener – a reminder that everything the ‘Creature from Jekyll Island’ turns its hand to is a rich man’s trick.
The bottom 50% cohorts share of the financial assets gained a minuscule 0.2%, whilst the kleptocrats pocketed around $10 trillion.
The Two Economies
#1 Is the real and productive economy that generates genuine wealth but is penalised because it carries the vast majority of the tax burden.
#2 Is the parasitic casino financial economy that pays negligible taxes with the cartel-style commercial banks diverting multi-billions in interest payments into the hands of their oligarch owners.
This is the very foundation of the network that orchestrates the forever wars which are now hybrid techno/military in nature, in which the global private banking industry finances both sides of all of these conflicts.
The billions of interest payments that get sucked out of Western domestic economies go straight into their coffers. This same network brought us the COVID war as well. They have literally trillions of dollars at their disposal to finance ever more innovative ways of killing and thieving from Main Street.
A MINUSCULE 0.25% FTT – replacing all other taxes and funding Basic Income, Earned Income Credits, Healthcare, child care credits, free college and higher education – it sounds too good to be true doesn’t it – where on earth will this money come from?
The fact is that there is a monumental disparity between the material and monetary economies with the size of the material economy being roughly the size of the GDP, which in the U$ example in 2020 was $25.6 trillion.
However as the illustration shows, in the year 2020 the total payments were $7,625 trillion or $7.625 quadrillion!
Even though many payments like commodity trading, various options, cryptocurrency trades and EFFs have been left out, the monetary economy is still ~350x the material economy. The US GDP only represents ~0.33% of the payments made in the total economy.
Being able to see the big picture, makes the solution all the more obvious – payments need to be taxed NOT INCOME.
Basic Income Payments – Eliminating the Welfare Trap
Basic Income monthly payments for 18-69 year olds of $2,000 per month and 70+ year olds of $3,000 per month would be affordable.
The hurdle has always been how to create a basic income structure without increasing taxes. This is the whole point of FTT – the extra tax take would be from the parasitic financial economy, NOT from the productive economy.
Eliminating income tax would immediately give everyone a huge boost in their take-home pay. With the basic income payment each week added in, all wage earners would enjoy increases in disposable income.
In America with their huge income disparity, 90% of the country’s population would significantly improve their living standard.
The welfare trap and the fear of rampant socialism are the overarching concerns of the critics – IOW, how can you have a social welfare system that provides for the genuinely disadvantaged whilst not propagating an institutionalised multigenerational welfare trap?
In existing models, including within New Zealand (NZ) and the U$, when someone gets a job, they usually lose some or all of their existing benefits – as such this disincentives them from finding a job. Basic income models are the polar opposite – they incentivise beneficiaries to work.
The basic income model also encourages new business start-ups by allowing them the wherewithal and the confidence to try to establish a business that they may have always dreamed of.
Earned Income Credits
To encourage beneficiaries to work, earned income credits could be paid when they find a job. Coupled with the basic income payment this could add up to a very liveable income.
Based on Smiths figures, someone earning $15,000 would receive an extra $7,500 in earned income credits, and that bumps up to a total income of $46,500 per year when you add in basic income.
0.25% FTT was Modelled in France back in 2010
The brilliant Simon Thorpe from Toulouse in France ran the models completely independently from Smith in the U$. He came up with the exact same figure of 0.25%. Once again is is clear that in highly financially orientated economies this rate provides far more revenue to the Govt than all the other taxes combined.
In the U$ it is enough revenue to provide universal free basic health care, childcare credits, and free higher education. Within 7 years the U$ could pay off its rapidly spiralling public debt as well.
This model could work in NZ too, and if it was implemented along with Ellen Brown’s PBS (Public Banking Solution) NZ could become the sustainable socioeconomic miracle of the planet within one term of government.
Everyone is a Winner Except for the 0.1% Plutocrats
The most astonishing result that these models uncovered was the fact that all cohorts of Mainstreet benefited enormously – the only ones worse off were the thieves positioned at the apex of the human feed chain.
These were the increases in net income…
But Won’t This Increase in Disposable Income Spell Massive Inflation?
As Smith explains…
“Inflation is always a risk whenever people have additional money to spend, but if the production capacity of the material economy, including that of foreign companies, is sufficient to support the additional spending there will be very little inflation – the key to minimizing inflation is to finance a diverse and robust supply chain.”
Furthermore, this new paradigm would encourage the return of a savings culture, and this would make low-interest rate liquidity available at a local level where moral hazard restraints would once more play a big part in making soundly based loans. Lower interest rates are disinflationary too.
Budget Surpluses Could Be Used to Generate Future Wealth
some examples…
Summary
“The marvel of all of human history is the patience with which men and women submit to burdens unnecessarily laid on them by their governments.” – George Washington
BTW, Washington was the first, and sadly the last, independent candidate ever to become POTUS – incidentally, he was successful twice. These massive burdens have remained on the nation’s shoulders now for another 226 years – when on earth will our species ever learn?
Cheers to all
Colin Maxwell
Planned Part III — Banking 2.0
A discussion of the fact that ~97% of the money supply is already digital and created instantly out of thin air by the touch of a button. National and international implications and the financial instruments that could work in this brave new financial world without causing inflation and liquidity squeezes.
This is another reason why BANKING 2.0 needs to be run as a public utility and as the first key step in a transition to the PBS in which all tiers of banking are available as public utilities – this would not preclude privately owned banks, it just means that they would have to compete with the PBS model to remain in business.
For GlobalSouth.co by our Col from New Zealand
Western eCONomists and the train wreck they cheerlead
If eCONomists took the time to read and understand the allegory within Baum’s book “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz”, then IMO they would learn more about fixing the broken Western financial system than from all of the current neo-classical textbook tripe combined.
So too, Ellen Brown’s epic book “The Web Of Debt” explains both the allegory and the connection to the most monumental theft of wealth in the history of our species. It seems that none of shills that the MSM promote have even made the connection.
I studied economics in the early 70’s and have had to spend the next 50 years unlearning what is essentially mythology.
All of the maxims are based on faulty models, including how money is created.
Modern-day neo-classical economics is a self-perpetuating myth – essentially it is nothing more than pseudo-science based on a giant hoax which allows money to be created as debt by the giant Western private banking cartel.
No wonder critical theory specialists, engineers, and even lawyers, can be better at understanding effective economic theory than us poor sods who were fed all this tripe at Uni.
99.9% of economists go along with this monumental con job simply because their jobs depend on them perpetuating these extraordinary myths.
Case in point – some snippets from a recent Washington Post (WaPo) article’s outrageous spin on the print fest:
“Since 2020, the United States has powered through a once-in-a-century pandemic, the highest inflation in 40 years and fallout from two foreign wars. Now, after posting faster annual growth last year than in 2022, the U.S. economy is quashing fears of a new recession while offering lessons for future crisis-fighting.
“The U.S. has really come out of this into a place of strength and is moving forward like covid never happened,” said Claudia Sahm, a former Federal Reserve economist who now runs an eponymous consulting firm. “We earned this; it wasn’t just a fluke.”
Washington’s success in reviving the economy also suggests a new approach to future downturns, one that relies more on the government’s power of the purse and less on the Federal Reserve’s control of the cost of credit.
“The U.S. has seen a particularly strong GDP recovery and inflation has cooled sooner and more quickly than in other large, advanced economies. And the increase in real wages is unique to our country’s recovery,” Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen said in a Chicago speech last week.
The Fed helped by cutting borrowing costs for consumers and businesses and by buying trillions of dollars’ worth of government and mortgage-backed securities to goose the economy.”
A Perfect Storm and a Derivative Time Bomb
IMO the likes of shills like WaPo and Janet can yell all they like but that won’t prevent the a perfect storm of events happening this year – this will be the all time biggest wake-up call for humanity.
The giant derivative positions of the US TBTF banks are time bombs – last time I worked out their derivative/equity ratios, Citigroup was a complete disaster with Goldman ‘Sucks’ being in the stratospheres.
All of the other top six were seriously shaky too. Given that derivative parties are the first in line as creditors, and us deplorables the very last, then this factor alone is a train wreck waiting to happen.
The Great Taking
David Webb’s recent revelations in his free PDF book “The Great Taking” makes the situation even more alarming, as essentially around 90% of the assets we think we own in the Western world, WE DON’T!
It turns out that the DTCC (Depository Trust Clearing Corporation) and its nominee company Cede & Company are now owners of a huge percentage of the stocks/securities/bonds etc around the world and that most of us are merely beneficiaries at best, not owners of these paper assets.
The very name that the acronym DTTCC stands for is dodgy enough, but how sinister is the name ‘Cede’? – the definition of this word –
TO SURRENDER POSSESSION!!!
Cede & Co. is now the owner of record of most of our stocks, bonds, digitalised securities, mortgages, and more; and it is seriously under-capitalised – holding capital of only $3.5 billion, clearly not even a drop in the bucket of what would be required to in a systemic meltdown – this massive anomaly is clearly deliberate.
As mentioned above, the fact that the derivative holders have first call on these assets in any crisis, and can just sell them off without any due process whatsoever, even perhaps simply in a situation of perceived risk, all adds another layer of risk to owning/buying paper assets.
Who on earth would be dumb or suicidal enough to bet against gold
Ummm, that’ll be Da Fed, in its increasingly vain efforts to hide the crash in the purchasing power of the US dollar. It is the only major central bank that has continued to bet against gold.
Even after Basel III compliance turned gold into a first-tier asset class, the Fed and the house has persisted with its idiotic synthetic dollar support.
Meanwhile, this facilitates the other global CBs in their gold stacking which they will continue to do, courtesy of the Fed accommodating them with its synthetic market manipulation.
Gold Stacking is Grossly Underestimated
The Rest of the World (RoW’s) gold stacking is relentless and monetary gold transactions do not require reporting because foreign exchange gold is categorised as money, versus commodity data, that is captured through customs records.
Within this trade lies a much higher de-dollarisation process than many of us realise, and the disparity between the overall Western gold holdings* and the estimated 60,000 tons accumulated by the now well-established (2013) Sino/Russian alliance, puts these two parties in control of a real market-driven physical supply price discovery process.
*(let alone the Fed – which due to unbridled rehypothecation could be close to zero or even negative – remember the last proper audit was in 1953)
The RoW can pull the pin whenever they want and the multiple military flash points make this all the more likely.
Also, the PBOC’s access to >20,000 tons of Chinese citizens’ gold, held in the Shanghai Gold Exchange, raises the potential physical supply to more than 80,000 tons.
In the case of the PBOC needing these holdings, it would not be a case of confiscation – the owners would be provided with a generous lease fee for allowing their gold to be used as a patriotic measure.
Now You See – Now You Don’t – Are the U$ Pinning their Hopes on Discovering Alchemy?
Europe’s tiny central bank gold holdings are probably accurate and likely not rehypothecated to any great extent, but the same cannot be said for the US’s claimed 8133 tons of US gold holdings.
It is almost certain that there are multiple ownership claims on each ounce, and this is why global central banks are quietly repatriating physical bullion. The same with silver the paper claims for each physical ounce are at least 90:1. The silver price discovery market is even more broken with the true G:S ratio needing to be more in the realms of 8-16:1.
Texas is very wise building its permanent state depository and recategorising gold as legal tender. They do not trust the centralised system either, and now at least six other states are looking to follow Texas because they simply have zero trust in the management of the US Treasury gold.
If Texas doesn’t trust the system, then why on earth would the RoW?
Foreign Exchange Reserves Quietly Converted into Gold Bars
It turns out that the massive global shadow banking industry, and with gold being auto-categorised as foreign exchange reserve, that this combination has hidden the fact that large swaths of foreign exchange reserves have been converted into physical gold.
This trend dates back to at least 2010 but really ramped up when the US weaponised the dollar in March 2022 with Russia’s SMO in Ukraine.
This makes a ton of sense (literally) for the RoW, as it amounts to de-dollarisation by stealth – converting incumbent US dollar debt into stacks of debt-free bullion.
Furthermore, this sanction proofs potentially trillions of excess reserves – a no-brainer when the entire globe is in such a state of financial and military turmoil.
Estimates are that China has around $6 trillion in excess FX reserves giving a truly staggering gold/GDP ratio compared to Europe with a pitiful 4% average and the US potentially massively negative.
Summary
As long as the U$ perseveres with the 100% private bank cartel-owned Fed model, the economy is guaranteed to crash and burn.
Worse still, commercial banks create ~97% of the money supply in most Western economies, which means that all of these fiat-based currencies are doomed.
US Rep. Wright Patman (Chair of the House Banking Committee) identified the problem back in 1941 and no one listened…
“I have never yet had anyone who could, through the use of logic and reason, justify the Federal Government borrowing the use of its own money. I believe the time will come when people will demand that this be changed.
I believe the time will come in this country when they will actually blame you and me and everyone else connected with the Congress for sitting idly by and permitting such an idiotic system to continue.”
… end quote…
A Broken Model
The current U$ model is so broken in its obsession with monetising debt, that it now takes $1.55 in budget debt deficit to generate $1 of ‘growth’, and $2.50 in new debt to generate $1 of GDP.
The current debt death spiral, which was always an inevitable consequence of a self-destructive financial capitalism reality, is now in full swing.
Until the Fed’s ruinous model is completely dismembered, and money creation is conducted as a public utility, any other attempted reform is tantamount to tinkering with the font on the Titanic’s breakfast menu.
Ellen Brown’s most recent epic book (2019) focused on this subject too – ‘The Public Banking Solution’ – in which she outlines successful models that date back through the centuries. Ellen focuses on solutions rather than just endless commentary on the problems we all face.
Tragically all of this is ignored by 99.9% of economists and financial commentators. It appears that Western economies will have to crash and burn before the critical mass develops an appetite for meaningful and effective financial reform.
My personal interpretation of unfolding global events suggests that the train wreck is due in 2024 – not a lot of time to prepare.
Les États-Unis constatent déjà à quel point le manque d’aide militaire à l’Ukraine affecte la situation sur le champ de
L’article Washington constate que le manque d’aide à l’Ukraine est déjà visible sur le champ de bataille est apparu en premier sur STRATPOL.
Le président russe Vladimir Poutine est arrivé en visite à Kaliningrad, où il rencontrera le gouverneur de la région de
L’article Poutine en visite à Kaliningrad, la région russe entre Lituanie et Pologne est apparu en premier sur STRATPOL.
The cameras are on, otherwise I would make a certain gesture here now; you all know what kind of gesture it is.
I think that the realisation is starting to dawn on them, and the rhetoric is changing: those who were talking just yesterday about the need to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia are now looking for the right words on how to quickly end the conflict. We also want to end the conflict, as quickly as possible, but only on our terms. We have no desire to fight endlessly, but we are not going to cede our positions either. You fought there, you were wounded there; are we going to surrender everything now? The cameras are on, otherwise I would make a certain gesture here now; you all know what kind of gesture it is. So, it is not going to happen.
http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/73205
The President visited Branch No 2 of the National Medical Research Centre of High Medical Technologies – Vishnevsky Central Military Clinical Hospital of the Russian Federation Defence Ministry, where the Armed Forces military personnel injured during the special military operation are undergoing treatment.
Together with State Secretary – Deputy Defence Minister Nikolai Pankov, Vladimir Putin inspected the transcranial magnetic stimulation unit, the therapy pool, the therapy gymnastics room, the hydropathic, as well as the rehabilitation educational centre, physical therapy rooms, and a housing consultation centre for military personnel.
The President was briefed about the way the issues of housing provision for military personnel are being resolved, and how the work of military medical commissions is organised.
After that, Vladimir Putin met with military personnel.
* * *
President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Hello, guys! Glad to see you. I would like to congratulate you on the New Year.
How is your treatment here going?
Remark: Excellent.
Vladimir Putin: I walked around here, from what I have seen the equipment looks solid, this is clear of course. But, first and foremost, it must be used effectively. I hope, it does.
Remarks: Yes.
Vladimir Putin: You know, of course, I wanted to come here and congratulate you on the New Year, but there was also something I wanted to see. You might have seen me on Direct Line, at least some of it; it is impossible to watch it in its entirety, four hours, it is crazy just how long it is. But there were things that concerned the Armed Forces and you directly: for example, people asked whether you really had to return to your units after your wounds and treatment and even rehabilitation to obtain the corresponding medical certificates there and even be cleared by military medical commissions. The Defence Ministry denies this, saying it does not happen, at least, not now. Moreover, they said – as I requested some time ago – that housing issues are being resolved during treatment and our service personnel undergo additional training to be able to continue serving, if they want, even those who sustained severe injuries, at military enlistment offices and so forth.
I wanted to hear from you what is really going on, if this is so, if you need to go somewhere else to obtain the necessary documents and certificates. No? So, do you get everything here? The military medical commission examination, all the documents – everything is done here, right?
Remarks: Yes.
Vladimir Putin: Are housing issues being resolved too?
Remarks: Yes.
Remark: Already been resolved.
Vladimir Putin: Ok, I see. They have been resolved for you and they are being resolved for our other fighters. At least, the system for resolving housing issues has been created and it is working, that is the most important thing, right?
And you are also receiving some additional professional training to allow those willing to continue their service in the Armed Forces but in different positions, health permitting. Is that so? Is that the reality?
Remark: Yes.
Vladimir Putin: Thank you. So, how is it going?
Remark: Good.
Vladimir Putin: This is one of the best medical institutions of the Defence Ministry. Not all of them are so well-equipped, so shiny, so to speak. But gradually the Ministry will bring everything up to the standard, to this level in terms of quality.
Any questions you want to ask me, guys? Don’t be shy.
Alexander Dublyanin: Comrade Supreme Commander-in-Chief,
During the special military operation we are liberating Russian territory. How do you feel about Western countries helping our enemy?
Vladimir Putin: The point is not that they are helping our enemy. They are our enemy. They are solving their own problems with their hands. That is what it is all about. This has been the case for centuries, unfortunately, and continues to be the case today.
Ukraine itself is not our enemy whereas those who want to destroy Russian statehood and to achieve, as they say, a strategic defeat of Russia on the battlefield, are mainly in the West, but still, there are different people there. There are people who sympathise with us and who are with us at heart. But there are the elites who think the existence of Russia (at least in its current state and size) is unacceptable. They want to disintegrate it. As a matter of fact, you are young people, some have read about this, perhaps: they do not hide it. They speak and write about this publicly, and have been doing it for decades, if we are talking about contemporary history. For decades, they have simply been writing frankly about it: divide Russia into five parts, one is too much. I can talk about this till morning, but it is obvious.
Therefore, they have been nurturing the Kiev regime for quite a long time, precisely to create this conflict. Unfortunately for us, they have achieved this: they started this conflict and are trying to achieve their objective, namely the task of fighting Russia, with the help of Ukrainians.
You probably see on the battlefield that they are gradually losing their zest. When a projectile flies, it is difficult to understand whether they are losing it or not, but in general you probably know that the situation on the battlefield is changing. This is despite the fact that the entire “civilised” West is fighting us.
You, too, have probably heard many times: the Ukrainian army expends 5,000–6,000 155-calibre shells there per day of combat operations, and the United States produces 14,000 per month. Per month! And they use 5,000 per day. Yes, they are planning to increase it during 2024, but still, they produced 14,000–15,000, they will produce up to 20,000. But if you use 5,000 a day, then the supply depletes quite quickly. It is close to that now. And we are building up and will continue to, exponentially at that. They were supplied with more than 400 tanks (450 or whatever it is), and in a year we will produce and overhaul 1,600. This is not a state secret; in fact, there will be probably more. It is like this almost across the board. Therefore, though it has been their goal to deal with Russia from time immemorial, we will deal with them faster, it seems.
And the most important thing we have is, of course, what I have spoken about repeatedly: the unity of our people and society, because there is an understanding of how important the job you are doing on the battlefield is in the armed struggle for our country and our future. That is what’s most important. The point is not that we do not like that they are supplying Ukraine, that’s not the core of the problem. The problem is not with Ukraine, but with those who are trying to destroy Russia using Ukraine. That is the problem. But they will fail: it is simply out of the question, absolutely out of the question.
I think that the realisation is starting to dawn on them, and the rhetoric is changing: those who were talking just yesterday about the need to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia are now looking for the right words on how to quickly end the conflict. We also want to end the conflict, as quickly as possible, but only on our terms. We have no desire to fight endlessly, but we are not going to cede our positions either. You fought there, you were wounded there; are we going to surrender everything now? The cameras are on, otherwise I would make a certain gesture here now; you all know what kind of gesture it is. So, it is not going to happen.
So, what else? Yes, please.
Denis Shamalyuk: Comrade Supreme Commander-in-Chief,
I am Sergeant Shamalyuk. I have a question. From the very beginning of the special operation, our enemies have been constantly and regularly shelling the territories near the border, killing civilians and children, destroying villages and cities. I have the following question for you. Do you think it is possible and necessary to take tougher measures against the adversary so that the thought does not even cross their minds to commit these atrocities?
Vladimir Putin: What has happened in Belgorod is of course a terrorist attack. Why? Because of what they have done under the cover of two missiles – I think it was Olkha: they fired from multiple-launch rocket systems (MLRS). You, as military people, know what MLRS is. This weapon is not selective, it hits areas. This weapon struck right in the centre of the city, where people were walking before the New Year. It was a targeted strike on the civilian population. Of course, this is a terrorist attack; there is no other way to describe it.
Should we respond in kind? Of course, we can hit squares in Kiev or any other city. But Denis, there are children walking there, mothers with strollers. I understand, because I am quite angry, too, but I want to ask you: do we need to do this, target the squares?
Denis Shamalyuk: No, I am not saying that it should [be] against the civilian population, but specifically against military infrastructure…
Vladimir Putin: That is what we are doing.
Denis Shamalyuk: So that they will not be able to come round and respond.
Vladimir Putin: Yes, but that is exactly what we are doing. We strike with high-precision weapons at locations where they make decisions, where military personnel and mercenaries gather, at other similar centres, and at military facilities, above all. These blows can really be felt. We will continue to do this. You probably noticed that the very next day after these attacks were carried out. I think they are continuing today, and tomorrow, too.
Do you know why they are doing it? They want to intimidate us and to create some uncertainty within our country. For our part, we will increase the strikes that I have mentioned. Of course, not a single crime like that, and this is certainly a crime against the civilian population, will go unpunished, this is for sure, there can be no doubt.
Denis Shamalyuk: Thank you.
Vladimir Putin: Please.
Ivan Shushakov: May I?
Vladimir Putin: Yes, please.
Ivan Shushakov: Comrade Supreme Commander-in-Chief,
Major Shushakov.
For two years now, our country has been fighting for its future. Please tell me, how do you assess the progress of the special military operation?
Vladimir Putin: I have already said this, I can repeat, but you can feel this yourselves. Our Armed Forces are getting more capable and prepared to use advanced weapons than any other army in the world.
First, we have weapons that are not available in any army in the world, and second, we can use everything that is being developed and produced. Third, everything that is being developed is being produced and supplied rather fast. I know, there is probably not enough on the front lines, and they would like more of all the latest stuff there, such as drones, as well as more means of suppressing enemy drones, which are flying over you like flies. I understand everything, but still, what is being produced appears quickly enough.
You know what else is rather important? Modern means of warfare and their effectiveness depend on how quickly an army can find out what is the most important thing at this moment and respond in terms of producing and introducing that in combat as quickly as possible.
We are doing this better and better, probably better than anywhere else. And these are very huge advantages that our Armed Forces are gaining. I think that no one else could do the same today. And these capabilities of the Russian Armed Forces are constantly increasing, multiple times over. So, in general, you are already a senior officer, so you know, we try not to give high marks…
Ivan Shushakov: Exactly.
Vladimir Putin: Satisfactory.
Please.
Alexander Davydov: Comrade Supreme Commander-in-Chief, may I ask a question, sir?
We can see that you are very busy. How do you manage to maintain such high performance?
Vladimir Putin: Meeting you gives me strength. I am not joking. I am being honest. When I meet people like you, it gives me extra strength and confidence that we are doing the right thing.
Alexander Davydov: Thank you.
Vladimir Putin: This is a very important element. In fact, I am not being ironic, this is an important element, for me, at least.
Please.
Yevgeny Korsun: Comrade Supreme Commander-in-Chief,
Guards junior sergeant Korsun.
Mr President, first of all, Happy New Year.
My question is, what are the results of the past year and what are the real plans for this year? What should everyone, not just the Armed Forces and military personnel, be prepared for?
Vladimir Putin: The country in general, right?
Yevgeny Korsun: Yes. Thank you.
Vladimir Putin: You know, as far as the results of last year are concerned, I spoke about this on Direct Line, what can I say. The most important thing is that you keep everything tight at the front and, moreover, the practical strategic initiative is in our hands today. Senior commanders have learned to act carefully instead of carrying out combat missions at any cost. At least that is what they report to me. I always insist that everything must be done and any offensive operations carried out after the adversary has sustained heavy fire. This is what concerns the battlefield.
Talking about the country as a whole, of course, the fundamental thing is not only that we preserved the country’s economy, we did not allow it to be destroyed, which is what the enemy was counting on – this is also in response to your question. It was not Ukraine that hoped to destroy our economy; it is not capable of doing it. It has already been completely destroyed itself; there is nothing left there, it lives entirely on handouts. All its leaders travel around with hat in hand, begging for an extra million dollars.
Our situation is completely different. In 2022, our economy contracted by 2.1 percent. But recently, the Government has reported to me – the calculations are ongoing, and new data appear – the latest data are that it declined not 2.1 but 1.2 percent. This is of essence. In 2023 year, the economy grew 3.5 percent. Gross domestic product (GDP), the main economic indicator, is how much the country has produced. You can use money to calculate how much you produced, plus 3.5 percent. And the decline was 1.2 percent. We made up for the decline and moved forward. This is an absolutely fundamental matter. This is the first point, and it is a very important one.
This shows that the economy is stable. Inflation has gone up a little, which means prices have risen, but we are keeping everything under control. You know, we have never seen anything like this. We have always noted with sadness that our main revenues come from oil and gas. For the first time in many years, the growth of processing industries in our economic structure far exceeds revenues from oil and gas. I think that oil and gas revenues grew three percent, while the processing industry has yielded many times more. This has never happened before. This indicates that we are undergoing structural changes in the economy. It is very important.
And why is that? When Western companies left our market, they apparently expected that everything would collapse overnight: businesses would shutter and thousands of people would be left without work. And, in the best-case scenario for the adversary in the broad sense of the word: for the opponents of Russia in general, and not just on the battlefield, people will take to the streets and demand bread and work.
We have the lowest unemployment rate in the history of Russia: 2.9 percent, which has never happened before. And real incomes of the population have grown (there is such a thing as real disposable income of the population) and real wages have grown, and quite significantly. All this suggests that we have a stable economy and stable financial system.
Russia was disconnected from the international payment system known as SWIFT. Apparently, they hoped that everything would collapse here too. We supply our traditional export goods, but what about the settlements? However, everything works.
Everyone thought that enterprises would stop because they stopped supplying us with components, but it turns out that everything is possible. Yes, there are problems, but nevertheless they are being addressed.
Small and medium-sized businesses are also working effectively. Some foreign enterprises have left, but our businesses have taken their place. Firstly, there are highly qualified personnel who have not left; there are good production managers in a variety of sectors both in industry and in the services sector, and everything works. This is the most important thing: the stability of the country’s economy and financial system because this is the foundation for everything.
And, of course, as I have already said, the number of weapons produced in Russia has increased multiple times over, including when I talk about the growth of industrial production, but not only: one third of the growth was achieved in civilian production branches, which is very important. So, the stability of the financial and economic system and the real sector of the economy is probably the most important thing.
In addition to this, we are implementing all our previously planned projects. In terms of infrastructure, as you understand, this means trillions, and we are building roads and opening new routes every week. This is very important, because it is not just to take one ride there and back. A road means life, and economic life too begins with it: small and medium-sized businesses appear immediately, because there was no other way to get there, but now it is possible. A completely different picture of the world emerges.
Despite the difficulties involved, housing issues are gradually being resolved in the country. Social issues are also very important. Many of you have families and children, right? And there is maternity capital, which no one is shutting down. The country continues to meet all social commitments in full. Moreover, we have created quite a powerful and balanced system of support for families with children (this is very important for the future of the country), starting from the woman’s pregnancy until the child is 18 years old. This is important for real people, and therefore for the country as a whole.
So, strange as it may seem, despite the fact that we are in a state of armed conflict, all the main indicators of the country’s viability and effectiveness have gone up. And this is probably the most important indicator of Russia’s situation.
Yevgeny Korsun: Thank you.
Vladimir Putin: What else? Is that all?
Happy New Year to you. All the best. Best wishes. Get well!
Blinken et Biden sont tous deux appelés en Israël. Mais Vladimir Zelensky, qui tentait de s’imposer, s’est hélas vu refuser.
L’article Zelensky boudé par Israël malgré son soutien est apparu en premier sur STRATPOL.
L’entrepreneur et milliardaire américain Elon Musk a confirmé avoir empêché les Forces armées ukrainiennes d’attaquer la flotte russe de la
L’article Musk confirme avoir limité Starlink en Crimée pour que l’Ukraine n’attaque pas la flotte russe est apparu en premier sur STRATPOL.
Les États-Unis ont fait tout ce qu’ils pouvaient pour ramener la Russie dans l’accord sur les céréales. C’est ce qu’a
L’article Blinken prétend que Washington a résolu tous les problèmes sur le volet russe de l’accord céréalier est apparu en premier sur STRATPOL.
À l’intention de francophones qui s’intéressent à la Russie et à ce qui s’y est produit durant ces dernières décennies :
L’article Essai linguistique : Les Russiens et la Fédération russienne ; les Républiques populaires Donetsienne et Louganienne est apparu en premier sur STRATPOL.
L’échéance pour la présidence de Zelensky : le sommet de l’OTAN à Vilnius est fixé au 11 juillet. Si l’armée
L’article Zelensky touche au dernier délai est apparu en premier sur STRATPOL.
(Suite et fin de notre saga historique, voir les épisodes 1 et 2) Entre-deux guerres Le 28 juin 1919, le
L’article la France et la Russie : trois siècles ensemble (troisième partie) est apparu en premier sur STRATPOL.
SYNTHESE GEOPOLITIQUE – La politique étrangère américaine a-t-elle perdu sa boussole? La journée du lundi 19 juin 2023 a révélé
L’article Brennus – USA: une politique étrangère désormais sans boussole? est apparu en premier sur STRATPOL.
Nombre de commentateurs ironisaient sur une armée russe qui n’aurait pas préparé les combats en ville et aurait perdu le
L’article La route de la Victoire, de Stalingrad à Artemovsk/Bakhmut (Partie 1) est apparu en premier sur STRATPOL.
Un des sujets les plus étonnants de l’évolution mondiale, c’est l’auto-destruction de l’économie allemande suite à l’alignement de Berlin sur
L’article Brennus: Près de 50% des ETI allemandes envisagent une délocalisation de leur production est apparu en premier sur STRATPOL.
La Chine occupe naturellement le vide laissé par l’Union Européenne sur le continent: de facteur de paix, cette dernière est
L’article Brennus: La Chine occupe le vide laissé par l’Union Européenne devenue partie prenante au conflit ukrainien est apparu en premier sur STRATPOL.
Chaque jour qui passe pousse à hocher la tête d’étonnement, non seulement devant le comportement des institutions fédérales européennes mais
L’article Brennus: Connaissez-vous l’extraterritorialité du droit européen? est apparu en premier sur STRATPOL.
Staline, théoricien des “nationalités” Staline, contempteur du “chauvinisme grand-russe” Staline, fondateur de l’Ukraine et père de l’ukrainisation forcée Le national-bolchévisme
L’article Staline est-il nationaliste ? est apparu en premier sur STRATPOL.
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