Tag: economics

The Industrial Insanity of the Third Reich

For those few historical ignoramuses who still lionize the grand strategery of the German Chancellor during the leadup to WWII, this article by Big Serge will suffice to conclusively prove that he was every bit as irrational and incoherent as his eventual successor, Angela Merkel. And then some.

In many ways, the German surface fleet became something like the perfect black hole for resources. In the prewar years, it began a nominally ambitious building program which was still in its infancy when the war began. Naval planners were explicitly preparing for a mid-century war, with construction programs targeting fulfillment in 1948. Consequentially, the navy was entirely unprepared for war in 1939, and the surface fleet never threatened to fulfill any meaningful strategic function. Yet the scale of the building program was sufficient for the navy to siphon meaningful financial and industrial resources from the ground forces and the Luftwaffe. This was an impressively titrated level of wastage: naval expenditures were large enough to weaken the other arms of the Wehrmacht, but too late and too little to make the navy into a useful arm in its own right…

The picture that emerges is one of absolute strategic schizophrenia, and nearly total disconnect between the naval authorities and Hitler’s foreign policy and war aims.

The real kicker, however, was that in 1939 Hitler – reacting to Raeder’s complaints about shipyard delays – promoted the Z-plan to the highest industrial priority. This made an immediate and material impact on the readiness of the German ground forces for the war that was about to start. Steel rations to army production were cut dramatically, precisely as the ground force was expanding and preparing for action. In 1939, after Hitler pushed the navy to top priority, the German Army was forced to scale down production of the MG34 machine gun (cut by 80%), the 10.5cm field howitzer (by 45%), and the Panzer III and IV tanks (by 50%).

The abrupt priority shift towards naval construction occurred at the worst possible moment on the German strategic timeline. Shipbuilding, with its long timeframes and technological bottlenecks, could yield nothing in the short term – the lone exception being submarines, which could be built faster, but of course Raeder was not focused on U-boats at this time. Thus, despite accelerating the naval program, all the active ships at the start of the war had been laid down in 1935 or earlier. However, the naval program did succeed in cannibalizing the ground forces, siphoning off critical industrial resources. 1939 was the worst time for such a reordering of industrial priority, and it ensured that Germany began the war with hundreds fewer tanks and howitzers, and not a single extra ship to show for it.

In fact, the more that one looks at the Nazi program, the more totally insane its actions appear, and the more one begins to wonder if Hitler, like Zelensky, was merely an actor-puppet who was installed by whatever precursor to modern Clown World was active at the time in order to do what no sane and intelligent military leader would ever even think to do.

Then again, modern Germany’s actions appear no less insane, as it eschews inexpensive Russian oil even as its economy collapses despite the influx of third-world refugees who all the economists and scientists repeatedly vowed were good for it. It’s becoming increasingly obvious why France, Britain, and Germany are so desperate to keep Ukraine in the war it cannot win, as Ukraine is the only customer for the armaments industries that are presently keeping their sinking economies from going straight to the bottom.

No matter what the ideology is, the price of ignoring the rules of objective reality is always incoherency, followed by inevitable failure.

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They Were Not Good for the Economy

I’ve pointed out that no matter how relentlessly the Clown Worlders pontificate about the importance of the false values and repeat their rhetorical mantras, eventually reality is going to impose itself. And today, Great Britain has officially returned to the economic dark ages of the 1970s due to the way in which free trade and immigration have, much to the surprise of all the mainstream economists, resulted in the exact opposite of economic prosperity:

Rachel Reeves insisted her monster £30 billion Budget tax rise was the ‘absolute minimum’ pain for working people today – despite splurging huge sums on benefits. The Chancellor said she ‘had’ to impose more pain on the country even though the Treasury’s own watchdog only told her there was a £6billion hole in the public finances.

The huge raid unveiled yesterday includes an eye-watering £12.7billion from extending the hated tax threshold freeze for another three years.

Around a quarter of the working population will be paying higher or top rate tax by then, up from just 15 per cent when it was imposed in 2021. The higher rate threshold would have been £70,370 by 2030 instead of £50,270 if it had risen in line with inflation.

All those refugees being handed hotel accommodation, monthly stipends, and free smartphones have to be paid for somehow, after all. To say nothing of the three generations of immigrants who still haven’t even begun to break even with regards to their net contributions to the British economy.

It does seem that the composition of migration has become less favourable from an economic perspective, with fewer people getting skilled worker visas and a higher share of refugees, who often need a lot of support.’

Translation: as bad as the negative economic impact of migration is already, it’s only going to get worse as employable foreigners avoid the shrinking destination economies while the unemployable continue to flood in.

When a nation breaks with the wisdom of its past traditions, it begins to die. The fact that it doesn’t die immediately seems to confuse a lot of educated and credentialed retards into believing that their new assumptions are viable when the truth is that there is a significant amount of inertia in a society that takes time to peter out before the full effects of the new course become apparent to everyone.

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An Old and Prescient Warning

It’s not really a surprise that the works of the great Swiss nationalist of the 20th century were suppressed and are now mostly forgotten in the 21st. But Gonzague de Reynold not only predicted the rise of a globalist supranationalism marketed to the people on the basis of economic interests, he warned of how such schemes would inevitably collapse and wreak devastation on the nations foolish enough to buy into them.

And while the Swiss of the 1940s were wise enough to heed his words, the current state of the USA, the UK, and the two great member-states of the European Union are demonstrating in real-time how his warnings are still entirely applicable today.

We need a national renewal. If it does not happen, if we let the current regime follow its course, we know very well where we will end up. We know it and, unless we are blind, we see it: through statism to socialism; after which, chaos. For as soon as we let things run their course, they escape the control of men, they follow their internal logic, all the way to the point of collapse…

We are no longer in an era when the existence of a nation is justified solely by the fact that it is constituted as a State, that its independence is guaranteed by treaties, sheltered by an international law whose roof is moreover full of holes. We are in an era when a nation must justify its existence by its works, by its intelligence, by its will to live. A nation that would reduce itself to being nothing more than an association of interests, a firm, would lose its right to existence and would sacrifice its own independence through a sort of collective suicide.

There lies the peril that interest groups and economic parties bring upon a country. The day when they realized that their interests lay in the suppression of a border, they would not hesitate to propose it.

We cannot learn anything useful from the corrupt mainstream intellectuals of today because, like the training-corrupted LLMs who parrot their falsehoods, their minds are malformed by a series of now-obvious falsehoods and outmoded ideological propaganda dating back to the ironically mislabeled “Enlightenment”.

We must look instead to the iconoclasts of the past, whose predictions have observably proven to be correct. Because events always follow the path of the correct logic that is rooted in the truth of Man and his behavior, not the false logic of useful madmen and their rosy-hued dreams that will inevitably turn out to be nightmares.

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BNP Paribas Problems

  • As of 11:00 AM EDT on Monday, 20 October 2025, stock market trading in BNP Paribas has been HALTED after the bank stock plunged ten percent in today’s trading. BNP Paribas is the second largest Bank in all Europe. Trouble signs with the bank stock hit early in trading over in Europe, with the bank stock dropping about 5% at open, which fell further to 8.67% around 10:00 AM EDT, which has now lead to a ten percent drop triggering a “Circuit Breaker” halt in the Bank’s stock trading.

However, it appears unlikely this is a trigger event similar to the collapse of Bear Stearns in 2008, in that there is a concrete reason for institutions dumping their shares that is not related to the potential insolvency of Europe’s second-largest bank.

  • BNP Paribas shares tumbled as much as 10% on Monday, after a U.S. jury found the French bank helped Sudan’s government commit genocide by providing banking services that violated American sanctions, raising questions about whether the lender will be exposed to further legal claims. The federal jury in Manhattan on Friday ordered the French bank to pay a combined $20.5 million to three Sudanese plaintiffs who testified about human rights abuses perpetrated under former President Omar al-Bashir’s rule.

Losing an expensive lawsuit isn’t good, of course, but the need to pay out a few tens of millions is unlikely to serve as an initial domino.

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Immigration is Importing Poverty

The big lie about immigration is that it is “good for the economy” and “necessary to maintain the social security structure”. Because in any advanced economy, immigrants reduce the productivity of labor and impose a tremendous financial burden on the economy that significantly outweigh any benefits they could ever collectively provide.

New data shows that foreigners account for a substantial share of people living in absolute poverty in Italy, even as the poverty rates of families with two Italian parents drops. One director of La Verita newspaper, Maurizio Belpietro, has run an opinion piece in his newspaper lamenting that Italy is “importing poverty.”

“We are importing poor people. Of the total immigrant population, 35.6 percent live in absolute poverty. This rate is five times higher than that of Italians,” writes Belpietro, who is an influential voice in Italian politics with 360,000 followers on X.

He further notes that although foreigners make up a small percentage of the population, they represent a huge share of the number of people living in poverty.

“Of the 2.2 million households living in poverty, i.e., do not have enough income to support a minimum standard of living, 1.5 million are Italian and 733,000 are foreigners. This means that, despite being less than a tenth of the population, poor non-EU citizens are one third of the total,” he wrote. The data, from the Italian government’s Istat, shows that for those families with one Italian and one foreign parent, the absolute poverty rate is only slightly lower, at 30.4 percent.

Claims that mass immigration would “save” European pension systems are increasingly running into reality.

Citing the article, Italian commentator Francesca Totolo wrote on X: “No, immigrants do not pay pensions to Italians. The absolute poverty rate among families of only foreigners is 35.2%, while among families of only Italians it is 6.2%. This means that it is and will be Italians who have to pay for assistance, subsidies, housing, and pensions to foreigners without resources.”

This finding has been replicated in many other countries, which shows that the left’s promise that foreigners would feed into the pension system falters when confronted with the data. Notably, there are substantial differences between EU and non-EU foreigners, with EU foreigners often boosting GDP and contributing to the tax base, in particular those from certain EU countries.

According to a landmark study from the Netherlands, the report found that migrants had cost the state €400 billion between 1995 and 2019. In Germany, the estimated cost of migrants is currently at €50 billion a year, including social benefits, housing, integration, education, and child allowances.

In 2021, French author and academic Jean-Paul Gourévitch said in an interview with Radio Sud that employment data show that it is a myth that immigration to France has economic benefits.

“I have studied this topic extensively and today everyone in France, from the left to the right agrees that immigration costs more than it brings in,” Gourévitch said. “There is a major difference between left and right (oriented) economists regarding the costs: the leftist economists say the deficit is six to ten billion [euros per year], while those on the right say it is 40 to 44 billion. My own scientific research shows that the deficit is 20 to 25 billion [euros],” he said.

There is absolutely no positive economic argument for permitting mass immigration except for the appeal to debt-funded GDP growth that could be much less expensively provided by simply having the government distribute more spending money directly to the native population to boost consumer spending.

Mass immigration is an economic disaster as well as a societal disaster. There are only three solutions: mass repatriations, mass violence and ethnic cleansings, and total societal collapse. And no amount of magic-wording, word-spelling, and name-calling is going to create a viable fourth option.

The mass importation of foreigners is almost unprecedented in history. And extreme policies such as we have suffered will inevitably result in extreme consequences.

Consider that Great Britain has been invaded by 10x more foreigners than have invaded Ukraine. How can anyone expect the consequences for Great Britain to be less significant over time than the consequences of defeat for Ukraine? A military invasion is often less significant over time, because in the case of a military invasion, most of the foreigners eventually return home.

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Asymmetric Economic Warfare

Despite being more vulnerable to trade war pain due to its export surplus, China has adroitly managed to gain the upper hand in the economic conflict by taking advantage of the fact that semiconductors require input factors that are almost entirely under Chinese control.

Despite the show of progress and professed optimism for a potential de-escalation in the Madrid trade talks, the US wasted no time to launch a series of trade and tech sanctions against China immediately afterwards, just like it launched the sneak attack on Iran shortly after its 5th round nuclear talks with Tehran.

  • The US Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) tightened its chip ban on China, expanding the embargo to cover all semiconductor related software and equipment sales to China, in an effort to completely choke off China’s ability for chip production
  • Washington expanded its entity list (i.e. black list) to deny high end sales to businesses outside of China that have 50% or more Chinese ownership
  • It announced a plan to charge million-dollar port fees for any Chinese-operated shipping companies, Chinese-made ships, or non-Chinese shippers with Chinese-made ships in their fleet or on their order books, in an effort to undermine China’s shipping building industry
  • Washington also put a 721% tariff on Chinese clean energy products such as solar panels
  • It imposed 50% tariff on semi-finished copper products and copper-intensive goods (e.g., wiring, batteries) under Section 232, targeting China’s dominance in EV/tech supply chains
  • It ended de minimis exemption for low-value packages, hitting e-commerce from Chinese platforms such as Temu and Shein

Faced with the bad faith from the Trump regime, China retaliated swiftly with a suite of counter actions:

  • Beijing published its latest restrictions on rare earth products to deny any sales of China-sourced rare earth magnets, processing technology, and equipment to foreign military and semi-conductor industry
  • It revoked import license for US lumber and soybeans. China was the biggest buyer of US soybeans in the past and accounted for over 50% its export. But it has ordered no purchase in 2025
  • Beijing announced it would charge reciprocal port fees for any US-operated or US-owned shipping companies. China runs 7 out of the world’s top ten container ports and has by far the highest port calls. Though the US builds few ships and few large shipping companies are US operated, US pension funds and asset managers own large shares in some of the world’s top shipping companies like Maersk which are now subject to the port fees. This move directly targets US financial interests
  • China also tightened up export of lithium ion and graphite anode, critical for green transformation
  • It expanded the unreliable list (China’s answer to the entity list) to cover more US defense contractors, tech firms, and critical mineral companies. It also launched anti-trust investigation against Qualcomm, a large US chip manufacturer

The latest tit for tats strongly indicates China is ready to move up the escalation ladder in its confrontation with the US on trade and technology issues.

In particular, Beijing’s enhanced rare earth restrictions are expected to deal a massive blow to high tech and military production in the US and its vassals.

In its embargo of chip technology against China, the US utilized the Foreign Direct Product Rule (FDPR) to block chip export to China if non-US made chips use any American technology, software, or equipment somewhere along the supply chain.

In essence, the FDPR allows US to claim jurisdiction to any products US technology touches even if it is made overseas such as the case with TSMC and ASML. The rule gives the US extraterritorial reach.

With the new rare earth restrictions, China flips the logic back to the US. Beijing has announced any non-Chinese companies operating anywhere must obtain Beijing’s approval to export rare earth magnets or semiconductors if those products contain Chinese original rare earth, or if they are produced using Chinese rare earth technology, process or equipment.

Beijing is denying all rare earth products, technology, equipment, and technical support to foreign end users it doesn’t approve.

The Chinese economic strategists understand that in an economic war, pain flows downstream. The US thought it was in the driver’s seat – and indeed, I assumed much the same due to the fact that the US economy would benefit greatly from refraining from importing goods from China and onshoring its now-absent industrial manufacturing capabilities.

But the stranglehold China has upon the materials required for modern warmaking materials, particularly drones and semiconductors, means that the USA will have to choose between its ability to make war and its ability to maintain the global Clown World economy. And for the first time, it is not possible for Uncle Sam to choose guns and butter.

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China Warns the USA

China is no longer content to permit the USA to throw its economic weight around without consequences.

Beijing has made it clear that it won’t yield to Washington’s latest tariff threats, urging the United States to seek a negotiated settlement instead of escalating tensions.

The warning came as part of an official statement released by China’s Ministry of Commerce on Sunday. The response followed US President Donald Trump’s plan to impose a 100% tariff on Chinese imports, citing Beijing’s new restrictions on rare earth exports – vital materials used in products from smartphones to fighter jets.

“China’s position on the trade war is consistent: we do not want it, but we are not afraid of it,” the ministry stated.

The Chinese people are even less inclined to submit to US posturing on trade and interference with Chinese affairs.

We are simply sick and tired of the nonstop demonization of anything related to China by the US. This export ban of rare earth minerals is just the start. If the US does not correct its course, and stop interfering our legitimate rights for development, then we will engineer global economic collapse. Do you really think you can take China down, without us taking you down too? After that, we will let our weapons do the talking.

I was on Chinese state television during President Trump’s first term. Back then, neither the economists nor the journalist believed that Trump would start a trade war with China, which I suspect is why the initial Chinese response to all of the US provocations were so mild and passive. But now, with the panoply of sanctions, direct and indirect, that are being imposed upon China, such as the attempt to ban flights over Russian territory from landing in the USA because it provides Chinese airlines with an advantage of European and US airlines that can’t fly over Russian territory, the Chinese have decided to start playing hardball.

And Larry Johnson explains why China is, contra the expectations of economists like me who were primarily looking at the overall trade picture, actually in a very strong position vis-a-vis the USA in a trade war.

Drones
China dominates the US commercial drone market, with Chinese firms supplying the vast majority of units.

  • Import Share: Approximately 80-90% of US commercial drones are Chinese-made, led by DJI (50-70% market share) and Autel Robotics (15%). US imports of Chinese unmanned aircraft dropped 58.9% from Jan-Nov 2023 to Jan-Nov 2024 due to tariffs and restrictions, but China still holds over 70% of the residual market.
  • Broader Reliance: In 2025, US tariffs reached 170%, tripling prices and slashing imports by up to 75%, yet no viable domestic alternatives have scaled to replace this volume. Military and consumer sectors remain vulnerable, with ongoing Section 232 investigations into national security risks.
  • Implications: Disruptions could halt 80%+ of commercial operations (e.g., agriculture, surveying), per CSIS analysis.

Drone Components
US drone manufacturing heavily relies on Chinese-sourced parts, complicating diversification efforts.

  • Supply Chain Dependence: China provides 70-90% of key components like motors, flight controllers, imaging equipment, and batteries. In 2024, China restricted exports of these to the US, causing price surges of 200-300% and supply shortages.
  • Recent Trends: By April 2025, combined US tariffs hit 170% on components, disrupting global chains; 15 Chinese firms were added to the US Entity List in October 2025 for supplying parts used in conflicts. Indirect reliance persists via third countries (e.g., Vietnam assembly).
  • Implications: The US military drone supply chain is “deeply dependent” on Chinese inputs, per Forbes, with domestic production lagging; restrictions weakened Ukraine’s drone capabilities as a proxy example.

Processed Rare Earth Minerals
Processed rare earths (e.g., oxides, compounds) are essential for electronics, EVs, and defense; China controls ~90% of global processing.

  • Import Share: China supplied 70% of US rare earth compounds and metals imports from 2020-2023, with 2024 estimates holding at ~70-77% (10.4 million kg total imports). Net import reliance dropped to 80% in 2024 from >95% prior years, thanks to minor diversification (e.g., Malaysia 13%).
  • Value and Volume: 2024 imports valued at $170 million (down 11% from 2023); apparent consumption ~6,600 tons.
  • Recent Trends: In 2025, China tightened export controls on seven elements, impacting US defense; US mined 45 kilotons but exports 95% for Asian processing.
  • Implications: 70-80% exposure leaves sectors like renewables and missiles vulnerable; USGS warns of supply risks.

So while the USA is in a stronger overall position and will benefit greatly from onshoring manufacturing and industrial capacity during a trade war, China is in a much stronger military position if the trade war becomes an actual war, either direct or by proxy.

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Immigration is a Luxury

Eva is correct. Immigration is neither necessary nor is it “good for the economy”:

Every non-Western immigrant that enters The Netherlands puts an average strain of €600.000 on the Dutch national treasury. Yet many people still believe the diabolical lie that immigration is necessary to solve the aging population issue. The opposite is true.

Immigration cannot solve the birth rate problem because the loss of a net-productive native cannot be replaced by one, two, or ten net-negative immigrant. In fact, the more immigrants, the worse the problem will inevitably be.

Karl Denninger calculates that less than 15 percent of all US immigrants contribute anything at all. The percentage that are net-positive could be under five percent, which obviously cannot even begin to compensate for the negative effects of their fellow immigrants, let alone the native shortfall.

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Recalculate

Karl Denninger works out that at most 14.5 percent of illegal immigrants “work and pay taxes”.

Ok, 2 million people have been removed.

These are all (or mostly; nothing is ever “all”) productive working people just trying to make an honest living, right? That’s the line run by people who are against deporting those here illegally.

Really? Is that true?

Let’s ignore January because Trump didn’t take office until the 20th, and nothing really happened until February.

February 2025, Employed: 162.544 million
August 2025, Employed: 163.288 million

Hmmm…. 744,000 more people working in August of this year than in February.

Now let’s look at 2024, when Biden was in office and before this operation began, same months.

February 2024, Employed: 160.315 million
August 2024, Employed: 161.348 million

Hmmm…. 1,033,000 more people working in August than in February in…. 2024.

So….. 289,000 more people went to work from February to August of 2024 when illegal aliens were flooding the country than in the last seven months.

In other words of the 2 million illegal immigrants that have been expelled by one means or another it is a reasonable argument that a mere 14.5% of them, or about one in seven, were working in a form and fashion that was recorded in the household survey, which is a clean survey of people, not of employers who are paying everyone above the table on W2s. I’ve been following said survey since the 1990s privately and reporting on it monthly since 2007.

The rest of those who have been removed or self-deported were being showered with the proceeds of armed robbery committed by local, state and federal governments against everyone else here in the United States, including you and I, or they were living on outright criminal activity that is not counted as employment at all.

Oh, and beyond that 14.5% they were not paying any employment or income taxes either so spare me that tripe as well.

All of the economics-based pro-immigration arguments assume a much, much higher percentage of working and tax-paying immigrants than is actually the case, which, of course, is why the net drain on total economic resources is inevitably much higher than the pro-immigration “it’s good for the economy” idiots anticipate.

Even without the relevant statistics, it’s very, very easy to observer how deleterious mass immigration, legal or illegal, is for an economy, as all one has to do is look at the economic history of the USA post-1965, and the economic history of the UK and the European countries post-2010, to see how opening the borders to less-intelligent, less-productive peoples lowers the wage rate, reduces overall societal wealth, increases state spending, enlarges state debt, and shrinks the economy in real per-capita/debt terms.

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Collapse by 2050

A leaked Chinese geopolitical strategy document reveals China’s self-confidence. The document predicts, “The US and Western Europe will collapse due to cultural and demographic conflict by 2050.” China’s leaders increasingly see multiculturalism as “cultural suicide” and believe the west is dying because of it.

—CNN

The Chinese aren’t wrong, although my 2004 estimate for the initial breakup of the USA as a unitary political entity is 2033. The EU has already begun to break apart and the centrifugal forces will continue to grow stronger with the failure of its economic war against Russia. The USA, the UK, and every Western European country are either going to collapse into a violent partition like India circa 1947 or embark upon ethnic cleansing on a larger scale than the Israelis are currently applying to Gaza.

Multiculturalism isn’t just cultural suicide, it is societal suicide, which is arguably worse. The Chinese know this; Xi is not only smart, and not only has the benefit of being advised by Wang Hunin and other brilliant historical philosophers, but is also a student of the greatest political mind of the 20th Century, Lee Kwan Yew. So he knows what we all know, and what Clown World refuses to accept, about multiculturalism.

That’s why Russia is now selling 106 billion cubit tons of natural gas to China every year in lieue of the 160 billion cubic tons it used to sell annually to Western Europe. The Russians, too, know who is going to win in the long run.

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