Tag: economics

China is Next

The USA’s European satrapies have apparently been ordered to start reducing their economic ties with China:

Germany’s economy ministry is considering a range of measures to make business with China less attractive as it seeks to reduce its dependency on its major trading partner, according to a Reuters report. Sources familiar with the matter revealed that the measures may include reducing or even scrapping investment and export guarantees to China in addition to reducing participation in trade fairs and scaling basic training for local employees.

There have been ongoing discussions in Germany about “overdependence on China,” especially since Scholz assumed office. Despite the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine conflict on Germany’s concerns about the security of its industrial and supply chain, its economy ministry’s consideration over measures is essentially related to a policy shift away from China.

It’s legitimate for a country to be concerned about its high level of external dependence and long-term economic security. However, it is unrealistic to unilaterally emphasize a so-called “decoupling.” After all, China and Germany cannot be decoupled considering the strength of two-way economic ties. It’s understandable for Berlin to assess adjusting and diversifying the supply chains in order to safeguard the stability. What is unacceptable to China is using “reducing dependency on China” as a pretext of “decoupling” while accusing China of being “unreliable,” which is a discriminatory and targeted attack on a major trading partner.

It would appear that the second front is in the process of coming, and that the US doesn’t wish to get caught off-guard as it was by Russian preparations for Western sanctions. But so much of the Western economy is reliant upon Chinese manufacturing that it’s hard to imagine the effect being less catastrophic than the consequences of sanctioning Russia have been.

DISCUSS ON SG

A Cold, Dark Winter

The numbers are not looking good for Europe.

We got a very shocking sense of the staggering numbers involved in the existential, crippling European crisis earlier today when Norwegian energy giant Equinor echoed what Zoltan Pozsar said in March, warning that “European energy trading risks grinding to a halt unless governments extend liquidity to cover margin calls of at least $1.5 trillion.” As Bloomberg put it, in its best non-Zoltan imitation, “aside from inflating bills and fanning inflation, the biggest energy crisis in decades is sucking up capital to guarantee trades amid wild price swings. That’s putting pressure on European Union officials to intervene to prevent energy markets from stalling.”

“Liquidity support is going to be needed,” Helge Haugane, Equinor’s senior vice president for gas and power, said in an interview. The issue is focused on derivatives trading, while the physical market is functioning, he said, adding that the company’s estimate for $1.5 trillion to prop up so-called paper trading is “conservative.””

In other words, massive amounts of newly-printed funding (because with yields blowing up, Europe’s fiscal stimulus will be over before it started unless central banks step in and backstop the latest energy hyperinflation bailout plans) will be required to avert an energy disaster. Alas, the final number will be even more massive, because overnight Goldman’s research team published a must read note (available to pro subs), in which the bank looked at the scale of the energy bill challenge, potential European government responses and industry implications, and quantified the total damage. The numbers are staggering:

According to Goldman, Italian household energy bills could rise from ~€150 to ~€600 in 2023. Some more details:

“For most families and industrial customers, energy bills are renegotiated every twelve months; on our estimates, energy bills for most consumers will peak this winter. We estimate a c.€500/month cost for power and gas currently, implying a c.200% increase vs. 2021 when average bills were c.€160/month. Energy bills could approach €600/month in a zero flows (from Russia) scenario we believe. “

The trigger for this exponential surge in costs: since January 2020, 1-year forward gas and power prices – usually the reference when signing new energy supply contracts for families or industrial customers – have each increased by more than 13x. The following exhibit shows this evolution, rebased to 100.

For Europe as a whole, this would be equivalent to a near €2 TRILLION increase in gas and power spending (equivalent to c.15% of GDP)… the math is simple: Europe can’t print more nat gas, oil, coal, etc, so one way or another, it will have to offset the surge in costs, first in commodities and then in all downstream chains, which in the very near future will mean governments will soon be subsidizing Europe’s cost of living as the alternative is a violent revolution.

This is not an exaggeration. I’ve heard of forward contracts with increases as much as 16x from very reliable sources, and that’s in Switzerland, which is in better shape, electricity-wise, than the UK, Germany, or France.

But the choice between inflationary subsidies and violent revolution is a false binary. There is a third and much better option.

It’s time for nationalist leaders to come forward, replace the failed globalists in the various European governments, end their retarded and self-destructive alliances with Ukraine, and make a peace with Russia that will inspire it to turn on both Nordstream 1 and Nordstream 2. The Europeans are going to have to surrender to Russia sooner or later, so they might as well do it sooner and minimize the economic consequences to their people and to their economies.

DISCUSS ON SG

Better Buckle Up

We’ve been warned, repeatedly. Now even the Russians are warning us.

The world is about to experience major turbulence as a result of illogical moves by Western nations, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said.

“Most likely, a huge global storm is starting,” Peskov warned in an interview with Tass on Monday.

“In many ways, there are objective reasons for that, but there are also subjective reasons for this beginning storm, which are linked to absolutely illogical and often absurd decisions and actions of the authorities in the US, Europe, the EU and individual European countries,” he said.

The sanctions imposed by the US, the EU and some other nations on Russia over its military operation in Ukraine have backfired causing a spike in energy prices and record inflation across the West.

While the rise in electricity prices is still largely speculative, they will be economically catastrophic even if they are only as bad as the politicians are openly discussing in the media. Behind doors, the situation may be considerably worse; whereas price rises of 20 to 40 percent have already been announced, the real range of future contracts is from 10x to 16x.

This is far more than the vast majority of small businesses can afford, which means that many of them are not going to survive the winter. If Britain is any guide, more than a few will not survive the autumn. And the Russians are not about to let the globalist governments of the Were-West off the hook either.

Russia’s gas supplies to Europe via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline will not resume in full until the “collective west” lifts sanctions against Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin has said.

DISCUSS ON SG

Very Correct Indeed

At least one commenter on Gab gets it regarding the student loan situation.

The thing is, Vox is very correct. Forgiving student debt is deflationary. Erasing a debt is literally removing money from the system (despite the money being fake and gay). This means that there is less to go around, and thus services and products require less of it to buy.

Its just like if we got a trillion dollars in cash and burnt it all. The relative ‘strength’ of the remaining notes is now stronger as there is less of it in the economy. Its very simple stuff really (of course in this economy, money does not work like that. It is literally made up numbers on a spreadsheet and doesn’t exist in the same way cash does, but it makes a useful analogy).

The real issue here is the battle between your logical understanding, and your emotional reflex to hate the idea of it. I will freely admit that it sucks. It feels very unfair, because it is unfair that people are getting their debts forgiven at the (theoretical) expense of the tax payer. Especially when more sensible people either didn’t get in debt, or paid it off by living very frugally. Add to that the fact that we know the vast majority of these students are going to be blue haired human detritus, who wish us all dead if they could have their way. Again, I admit that this fact does suck.

But ultimately, you’re going to have to step out of that mindset and look at the big picture, and understand that you just got to rip off the band aid. This whole situation was brought about my the government, and the greed of the college industry. Many many decades of passed since Universities became a place of learning for the good of society. Now is just a multi-billion dollar racket. This situation should never have been allowed to happen. After the debt is forgiven, it is very important that the entire University cabal be taken down. There should no loans given by the government. All further education loans should be completely private, so that banks have to know they will get their money back, which will ensure people won’t be getting into debt with garbage degrees. IT also means universities will have to be competitive with their pricing. I am also in theory not against a government giving grants for in-demand industries if it helps the economy overall (although I wouldn’t trust the current government to determine this given their agenda).

Stop being over-emotional retards and see the big picture. Just accept that it needs to happen. A society cannot grow and thrive when entire generations of young people start their lives with 6 figure debts which they will not be able to pay off. It crushes their soul, stops them having families and in the long run will hurt you more than the short term “its not fair”-ism of having to bite the bullet. Yes most students are retards, but put the blame where it belongs.

I go considerably further with regards to education policy. All student loan debt should be banned. It is not only usury, it is a particularly wicked form of usury because it is unnecessary. The entire edifice of education credentials needs to be toppled – it is already in the process of collapsing – because it is totally useless and accomplishes nothing except to give the SJWs in corporate HR an excuse to prevent the hiring of productive people of whom they disapprove for one reason or another.

Remember, once converged, an institution loses its ability to perform its primary function. Therefore, every converged institution should be eliminated – not fixed, eliminated – for being no longer fit for cause.

DISCUSS ON SG

Shut Up, He Explained

I put up a post on Gab attempting to explain to Boomercons that eliminating student loan debt was not inflationary. I was unsuccessful, on the basis of the 193+ replies.

Dear Boomercon,

Eliminating student loan debt is not inflationary. It cannot be inflationary, because in a credit economy, cancelling debt reduces the quantity of credit money in the system.

This is intrinsically deflationary.

Love,
Vox

So, because I am a kinder, gentler Dark Lord, I decided to helpfully explain to this woefully ignorant souls the nature of credit money and how it relates to the monetary phenomena known as “inflation” and “deflation”.

Dear Gab commenters,

The undeniable fact is that I know considerably more about economics, debt, and credit money than you do. Not only am I an economist by training, but I correctly predicted the 2008 financial crisis and I am the author of the labor mobility refutation of free trade.

Frankly, most of you appear to be functionally retarded where economics are concerned. So, I will type very slowly in order that a few of you might be able to follow along.

Most money is debt and it comes from nowhere. It is not printed by the government, it is literally created from nothing when a loan is taken out. This is inflationary. When a loan is cancelled, forgiven, or written off, the debt literally vanishes. This is deflationary, since it reduces the amount of money in the economy.

If the loan is paid off, either by the debtor or by a third party, then no money leaves or enters the system. It is a neutral action. If interest is paid on the loan, this is mildly inflationary but trivial at current interest rates.

That’s literally how debt money works, and if you don’t understand why L.1 is bigger and more important than the M1 money supply, then please stop sharing your opinion on the subject of student loans because you have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.

Love,
Vox

DISCUSS ON SG

A Good Start

Fake President Biden announces the first step in what we can hope is a path to forgiving all student debt and banning all student loans.

The president will forgive debts of up to $20,000 dollars for students who went to college on Pell grants and $10,000 for students who did not receive Pell grants. Debt forgiveness only applies to individuals earning less than $125,000 or couples filing joint earnings of $250,000.

Don’t make the mistake of defending the wrong thing because bad or stupid people happen, for whatever reason, to be doing the right thing for a change. Student debt is a scam, it should never have been legal in the first place, and the law preventing student debt from being discharged.

Make no mistake: if you’re on the side of the bankers and the Boomers and the universities here, you are absolutely and without question choosing the side of evil. And there is no amount of solipsistic argumentum ad personalem is going to make your argument any more convincing or moral, or any less economically ignorant and churlish.

Don’t forget the Parable of the Unmerciful Servant either.

Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’ In anger his master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.

And FFS, discharging debt is not inflationary, so don’t even think about trying to cite that sort of media ignorance at anyone. In a credit money economy, debt-forgiveness is literally deflationary.

UPDATE: Stonetoss shows how to silence the Boomercon critics.

DISCUSS ON SG

Unrest in Europe

If even the wealthy and highly-prepared Swiss are anticipating shortage-related social unrest despite their world-class self-sufficiency, the social order across Europe and in the UK is unlikely to remain intact this winter.

Swiss people may revolt and resort to looting if the Alpine nation is hit by a severe energy crunch this winter, the police chief of one of its cantons told local media on Saturday.

Fredy Fassler, the head of the Security and Justice Department in the canton of St. Gallen, told German-language daily Blick that a blackout would have “far-reaching consequences.”

“Imagine, you can no longer withdraw money at the ATM, you can no longer pay with the card in the store or refuel your tank at the gas station. Heating stops working. It’s cold. Streets go dark. It is conceivable that the population would rebel or that there would be looting,” he said, adding that the country’s authorities should take measures to prepare for such extreme scenarios…

Fassler’s comments come after Swiss authorities said last week that they may place restrictions on energy consumption this coming winter, signaling that “power shortages [are] among the most serious risks” for the landlocked country.

What the police chief doesn’t mention is that the main reason the Swiss would likely be rebelling against their government is that the country produces what should be sufficient electricity for its own winter needs, but it has promised to provide a fair amount of that electricity to the rest of Europe. And the Swiss people are very unlikely to accept the idea that they have to freeze in darkness so that their electricity can be sent to France or Germany due to the outdated ideals of a few globalist Europhiles.

Still, the fact that the Swiss authorities are already talking openly about the situation and at least beginning to try to address the problem is a positive sign. The silence of the EU countries on the subject does not bode quite so well. Of course, the solution for the Europeans is perfectly straightforward: stop participating in the neocon’s proxy war on Russia, end the idiotic sanctions regime, return everything that was seized, and apologize profusely to the Russian government.

Like it or not, no one can deny that it’s a better alternative than famine, freezing, and facing a popular revolt. If they don’t choose wisely, the over/under on EU regime change before this time next year is probably around five and could be considerably higher. And Italy and Hungary will not be the only nations to exit the EU.

Nationalism is inevitable. Nationalism is inevitable because globalist imperialism is constructed on false foundations that we now know to be both evil and impossible.

UPDATE: Notice that the Swiss are on the verge of panic on the basis of an expected 10-percent shortfall. I anticipate the shortfalls in other European nations will be at least 3x that.

The energy shortage is “imminent”, Roger Nordmann from the left-wing Social Democratic party told the SonntagsBlick. “The war in Ukraine is causing acute gas shortages. Half of the nuclear power plants in France are at a standstill. And the drought is putting a strain on hydropower. This combination of drastic factors means that Switzerland could be short of around 15% gas and up to 10% electricity in the coming winter,” he said.

So end your war on Russia, guys. You took sides and you lost. It’s over. This really isn’t that hard.

UPDATE: Now the NHS in the UK is also starting to foresee trouble. Perhaps if the British authorities would stop welcoming “refugees” and start repatriating them to their homelands, they’d possess sufficient resources to prevent a humanitarian crisis among their own people.

The UK could face a “humanitarian crisis” involving ill health, excess deaths and rising inequality if the government does not take urgent action on rising energy bills, the National Health Service (NHS) Confederation warned on Friday. The organization wrote to the chancellor of the exchequer, claiming that failing to act would add more pressure on health services that were already strained.

DISCUSS ON SG

The Canary Died

A Sri Lankan explains his experience in his native land, and why it is likely to be replicated throughout the Western world.

As a Sri Lankan, I find watching international news coverage of my country’s economic and political implosion is like showing up at your own funeral, with everybody speculating on how you died.

The Western media accuses China of luring us into a debt trap. Tucker Carlson says environmental, social and corporate governance programs killed us. Everybody blames the Rajapaksas, the corrupt political dynasty that ruled us until massive protests by angry Sri Lankans chased them out last month.

But from where I’m standing, ultimate blame lies with the Western-dominated neoliberal system that keeps developing countries in a form of debt-fueled colonization. The system is in crisis, its shaky foundations exposed by the tumbling dominoes of the Ukraine war, resulting in food and fuel scarcity, the pandemic and looming insolvency and hunger rippling across the world.

Sri Lanka is Exhibit A. We were once an economic hope, with an educated population and a median income among the highest in South Asia. But it was an illusion. After 450 years of colonialism, 40 years of neoliberalism, and four years of total failure by our politicians, Sri Lanka and its people have been beggared.

The former president Gotabaya Rajapaksa deepened our debt problems, but the economy has been structurally unsound across administrations. We simply import too much, export too little and cover the difference with debt. This unsustainable economy was always going to collapse.

But we are just the canary in the coal mine. The entire world is plugged into this failing system, and the pain will be widespread.

Read the whole thing. And keep in mind that this appeared in The New York Times. Then realize the likelihood that you and your family are likely going to be facing some variant of these challenges over the next 6-18 months due to the ongoing failure of the neoliberal global order and the wickedness of those who preside over it. Therefore, preserve knowledge, prepare supplies, and purchase ammunition.

The first difference is that neither China nor the rest of the BRICSIA nations are going to come to the rescue of the nations whose governments have declared war on them. The second difference is that the Western nations, being more accustomed to wealth and comfort and even more indebted, have considerably further to fall than Sri Lanka did.

DISCUSS ON SG

Whatever Happened to Equality?

It was always nonsense. But the purely mythical nature of “equality” has become inescapably obvious under the rule of Clownworld

There has been a huge backlash in Scotland after the SNP appointment a man as the country’s first period dignity officer. Jason Grant was handed the post for the Tay region of Scotland, with his duties set to include promoting access to free sanitary products following the introduction of the Period Products Act. The Act came into force in Scotland on Monday, and puts into law that tampons and sanitary towels must be made available by councils and education providers to anyone who need them. The Bill was initially brought forward by Labour health spokeswoman Monica Lennon and passed in November 2020, and is intended to eliminate period poverty and help households under financial strain.

I look forward to learning how the Clownworld governments will manage to lose The War on Period Poverty. And what does poverty even mean in a world where people own nothing and eat bugs?

DISCUSS ON SG

You’re Not Neutral When You Choose a Side

Switzerland belatedly discovers that it can’t redefine the concept of neutrality.

Russia has turned down a Swiss offer to represent Ukrainian interests in Russia and Moscow’s interests in Ukraine because it no longer considers Switzerland a neutral country.

Switzerland has a long diplomatic tradition of acting as an intermediary between countries whose relations have broken down, but Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Ivan Nechayev said on Thursday this was not possible in the current situation.

“The Swiss were indeed interested in our opinion on the possible representation of Ukraine’s interests in Russia and Russia’s in Ukraine,” Nechayev said. “We very clearly answered that Switzerland had unfortunately lost its status of a neutral state and could not act either as an intermediary or a representative. Bern has joined illegal Western sanctions against Russia.”

Switzerland has mirrored nearly all the sanctions that the European Union imposed on Russia over its military intervention in Ukraine.

No independent sovereign nation is going to trust the Swiss any longer or permit them to act as a neutral intermediary now that their federal government has not only taken sides in the NATO-Russian war, but foolishly chosen the losing side. If the current Federal Council had been in charge when WWII started, it would have taken the side of the Axis and gotten the country occupied by 1944.

This really isn’t that surprising. If the federal government ever decides to redefine chocolate to mean “something that isn’t chocolate”, the demand for Swiss chocolate will collapse too.

If you are as others see you, then the recent statement by a Russian foreign ministry spokesperson that “Switzerland had unfortunately lost its status of a neutral state” could be a tipping point in any understanding of what neutrality and Swiss neutrality mean. It is one thing for the 200-year-old Swiss “perpetual neutrality” recognised at the Congress of Vienna in 1815 to be questioned internally, but for a major power, a member of the United Nations Security Council, to make such a declaration adds a new dimension to the ongoing domestic and global discussions of what neutrality means.

Neutrality means not taking sides. If you take a side, if you engage in economic sanctions or military conflict, then you obviously are not neutral. It’s not just the Russians who recognize that Switzerland is no longer a neutral state, but China and the rest of the BRICSIA coalition too. And what is the significance of “international law” that 80 percent of the global population does not recognize or respect?

DISCUSS ON SG