Tag: economics

What Insurrection Looks Like

Owen Benjamin points out that unlike the fake January 6th narrative, what’s happening in Sri Lanka right now is a real insurrection:

Sri Lanka’s economy has collapsed. This is what an actual January 6th looks like not the fake one that America scripted. The IMF won’t bail them out either. 80% of the population currently can’t get daily meals. They had a middle class last year. This was the country that known pedophile, science fiction author, and inventor of frauds like the satellite, Arthur C Clark fled to to avoid arrest and openly live with young boys. The country has been morally broken for a long time. But now it’s financially broken. They also just ran out of all fossil fuels and no one will ship them any because their money is worthless. Imagine currently being on that island? And the news isn’t reporting it because it scares them. This is never far from any country functioning on a fiat currency. And no Bitcoin is not a solution, as Canada will tell you. Yesterday all of their digital banking shut down for a full day.

The collapse of the global economy has evidently begun. Stay out of debt, focus on purchasing material things that last rather than digital ephemera, build your arsenals and libraries, and get out of the cities. If you’re not married, get married. If you’re married, start having children.

Remember: the future belongs to those who show up for it and the strongest businesses are those that are founded during depressions and times of war.

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Dutch Uprising

The Dutch farmers are leading the charge against the Wicked Evil Fascists and their attempt to starve the nations of the West:

The Dutch people are rising up to protest destructive WEF climate law. We are going to share their story with the world.

The World Economic Forum controlled Dutch government announced last week an end to modern farming – putting harsh controls on nitrogen, and spelling the end to thousands of family farms.
In response, Dutch farmers took a page out of the Canadian Freedom Convoy playbook. They took to the highways, blockaded borders, and launched massive protests.

So far, the global media has vilified the farmers, brushing aside their concerns with the New World Order-style policy, and propagating government lines.

People are finally beginning to figure out that the self-admitted global population depopulationists actually, really, and truly want them and their children dead, and that they are willing to use a broad variety of tactics designed to do precisely that. And, Russia excluded, they haven’t even begun to fight back yet.

Karl Denninger’s skepticism notwithstanding – I’ll address his points directly in a future post, but for now will merely observe that his perspective is proof of how even the smartest, best-informed secularist can’t possibly grasp the entirety of what is happening – the vaccines, the war in Ukraine, and the ongoing collapse of the energy and food supply channels are all various elements of the depopulationist agenda.

As hard as it is to believe, some people literally seek Hell on Earth, because they believe they will serve their master with honor and privilege in Hell.

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Close Your Account

Before they do it for you, you thought criminal:

Halifax customers are closing their accounts today after its social media team told them to leave if they don’t like their new pronoun badges for branch staff in what is being branded one of the biggest PR disasters in British business history.

Britons have been pulling out millions of pounds in investments and savings as well as cutting up credit cards or transferring balances to rivals after they accused the bank of ‘alienating’ them with ‘pathetic virtue signalling’.

The row began this week when Halifax tweeted its 118,000 followers on Tuesday revealing that it would allow staff to display their pronouns on their name badges, in a post that read ‘pronouns matter’.

It showed a photo of a female staff member’s name badge, which featured ‘she/her/hers’ in brackets under the name Gemma, and said the policy was to help avoid ‘accidental misgendering’.

One customer replied: ‘There’s no ambiguity about the name “Gemma”. It’s a female person’s name. In other words, it’s pathetic virtue signalling and is seen as such by almost everyone who has responded to the initial tweet. Why are you trying to alienate people?’ Within 20 minutes a member of the Halifax social media team, calling himself Andy M, replied: ‘If you disagree with our values, you’re welcome to close your account’.

Andy M’s response has outraged customers, and seen hundreds claiming they will boycott the bank with many saying they have closed their accounts. Others have cut up their credit cards or getting rid of insurance policies.

It’s going to be fascinating to learn if corporations can survive without customers or if customers can survive without the services provided by corporations. Because it’s only a matter of time before corporations start exercising the rights they have granted themselves in their contracts of adhesion – the one-sided EULA statements to which one “agrees” by virtue of using the service or purchasing the product – to deny those deemed thought criminals their services.

On its website, Halifax say any customers they deem to be ‘transphobic’ could have their accounts closed.

Underneath a page titled ‘what we stand for’, they say: ‘We stand against discrimination and inappropriate behaviour in all forms, whether racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic or ableist, regardless of whether this happens in our branches, offices, over the phone or online on our social media channels.

‘Such action may include account closure or contacting the police if necessary.’

And as we saw with Patreon, this self-granted corporate right to police customer behavior has been, in practice, expanded to include places and platforms that have nothing to do with the corporation itself. This is another reason why the BRICS economy is going to completely swamp the converged neoliberal economy.

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The War for the Future of Man

An extremely important interview about WWIII with the man who could not unreasonably be considered Russia’s Wang Hunin, who forecast the current conflict after 2008. Definitely read the whole thing.

RUSSTRAT Institute presents a transcript of the speech of Sergey Glazyev, Member of the Board (Minister) for Integration and Macroeconomics of the EEC, at the round table “Russia” held on June 1, 2022 in IA REGNUM: what image of the future meets the goals of national development?”, organized by the RUSSTRAT Institute and REGNUM News Agency.

We are now addressing the fundamental questions of our existence. And a special military operation is a catalyst for this process of understanding our place in the world, and of course, we need an image of the future. I would like to draw your attention to the fact that the special military operation, which was initially announced as denazification, demilitarization – we understand what this means for Ukraine – is now gradually raising the stakes on this front.

Everyone is already saying that this is a global hybrid war, although it was clear from the beginning that the special operation should be considered in a much broader context. Now many people believe that this is a civilizational war, where different worldview systems are opposed. It is clear that this is a war of good and evil and a war for the survival of humanity in the end.

Before we talk about the image of our future, I would like to draw your attention to the patterns of long-term socio-economic and political development. We – I mean a group of scientists from the Academy of Sciences who work in long cycles of economic and social development-first of all, we managed to foresee this particular war in 2022. Back in the 14th year, it was clear that the challenge that we faced and the result of which was reunification with the Crimea, will necessarily affect the entire Russian world, including the territory of Ukraine. I even published a book, The Last World War.

Somewhere, what we see today was absolutely and almost precisely formulated, including the number of Ukrainian Armed Forces and the role of the Americans and the British in this occupation of Ukraine, as well as the cultivation of Ukrainian Nazism. All this was predicted almost to the last detail. We are continuing our research. According to which the peak of the confrontation falls on 2024. This is the forecast that my colleague gave 10 years ago, even before the current military operation and even before 2014. And then there were no new political seven-year cycles.

Why 2024 and why are we in such a situation of hybrid warfare? The fact is that the modern period is characterized by two simultaneous revolutionary events. The first is the technological revolution, which used to be talked about a lot. It is called differently, we say that it is a change of technological structures. And always this change in technological patterns occurs through the economic depression, which in this cycle began in the world in 2008 – with the beginning of the global financial crisis.

And during this transition phase, a new technological order has already been formed, a well-known complex of nano-engineering information and communication technologies, which is evolving not only into the economy. But also in the ways of conducting military operations, too. We actually see that we are facing more than just an enemy based in the Pentagon and Mi6. Our troops are facing artificial intelligence. This is already a war of a new technological order.

But a more important point is the change in world economic patterns in the context of our current topic. The change of national economic structures is a process that occurs once a century and during which the management system changes. Previously, we would call this the process of socio-political revolution, but, speaking in a modern way, this is a radical change in the institutions of world economic relations, industrial relations and the entire system of managing socio-economic development, which is also accompanied by a change in the centers of the world economy.

The global economy is rapidly shifting to Southeast Asia, which already accounts for more than half of gross domestic product growth. And in this new center of the world economy, a completely different management system has been formed compared to the one in which we live today. I must say that the change in world economic patterns, as you can see in this picture at the top. These are world economic patterns with a once-in-a-century shift cycle. And at the bottom are technological ones, the change of technological structures, which have a cycle of change phases of about 50 years.

Technological patterns are well known in the literature as long Kondratiev waves, more precisely, the life cycles of technological patterns and their growth phase are a long “Kondratiev wave”. The growth phase of the world economy is a century-long cycle of capital accumulation.

Once a century, there is a dangerous resonance when we simultaneously face a technological revolution, a socio-economic revolution, and a socio-political revolution. In the course of this process, not only the technology changes, but also the mindset changes. The ideology is changing, if you will. As an example, we will cite the previous phase of changing world economic patterns. 

This is a process that always, unfortunately, occurs through world wars. World wars in this case are caused by the fact that the ruling elite of the previous center of the world economy does not want to part with its hegemony and tries with all its might to keep it, up to the outbreak of a world war. 

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Depopulation: Vaccine Edition

The vaxx has led directly to a 10 percent drop in the number of live births in Germany. Expect similar declines in every other Globalist satrapy, including the United States. And if the effects on fertility are as negative as some scientists have speculated, the number of live births will continue to decline.

UPDATE: Similar 10-12 percent declines have been observed in the UK, North Dakota, and Switzerland. But the worst case observed to date is in Taiwan, where the government announced “the birth rate dropped by 23.24% in May 2022, compared to May 2021.”

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Build Your Own Global Economic Order

China is embracing the ultimate build-your-own-platform challenge:

At present, Western sanctions against Russia have sparked multiple crises faced by the global economy, dealing a heavy blow to the international economic and financial order that emerging markets and developing countries rely on for survival. To a certain extent, these sanctions have made BRICS countries aware of the urgency of strengthening their cooperation and solidarity. As major emerging market economies with global influence, BRICS countries now share the common will of pushing forward with major reforms addressing the global payment system.

None of the BRICS countries has joined the Western economic sanctions against Russia. The reason why the BRICS countries apart from Russia all refused to join such sanctions is because they share the same antipathy to unilateral sanctions imposed by the West.

It is now crystal clear that Western powers safeguard their own hegemonic self-interests through sanctions, with no regard for the interests of emerging and developing economies at all and for bringing new uncertainties and risks to the world. Behind the sanctions is the dollar hegemony.

For decades, the dollar has been the most important reserve currency in the world and the most widely used currency for global economic and trade settlement. The outsized role of the dollar in the global payment system has not only offered the US a huge financial advantage in the world economic order but also enabled it to effectively use it as a weapon to punish its adversaries. Consequently, BRICS’ interactions in terms of financial, trade, investment and other areas have often been affected to varying degrees.

It should be pointed out that the purpose of establishing the BRICS was never aimed at forming a small clique targeting other parties. The reason why BRICS countries came together is because of a common need to address the injustice and unfairness in the existing international economic, financial and trade systems and to seek reform and adjustment in the global economic order to address the legitimate concerns of developing countries.

The New Development Bank (NDB), also known as the BRICS Bank, is an important trial by the BRICS member countries to promote not only intra-bloc cooperation but also fairness in the international financial governance, even though, the NDB has had its share of challenges, like its payment mechanism being subject to the US’ dollar hegemony.

Indeed, the financial implications of US sanctions have increased the urgency of de-dollarization around the world. It is not just the BRICS, but also many other developing economies that realize the needs to reduce the role of the dollar in global payments. In bilateral settings, discussions about exploring new currencies for trade settlement are becoming increasingly popular and common, an indication that the US’ abuse of its financial power has fueled the trend for de-dollarization.

Therefore, one of the main questions facing the BRICS is how to further integrate these needs among various countries by increasing new currency settlement and building new, safer payment systems, among others.

It is urgent for BRICS to push for fairer, safer global financial system, Global Times, 20 June 2022

This is the real basis for World War III. Neither the military might of the USA nor the financial might of the US dollar hegemony will suffice to maintain the current corrupt global economic order. No one trusts either the banks or the political leaders of the skinsuit “West” any longer; Russia correctly describes them as “agreement-incapable”, just to give one example.

The so-called “Great Reset” is an attempt to replace the existing structure without changing the leadership, and it has been rejected by all of the BRICS countries as well as approximately one-third of those who are its nominal slaves. Like Hitler in the bunker, the global imperialists will fight as long as they can convince or coerce others to die in their defense, but their fate is already sealed.

The BRICS nations are not the bad guys. To the contrary, it is all of the organizations that you have been taught to regard as sacrosanct, from the United States government to NATO, the United Nations, the World Economic Forum, and the World Health Organization, that are the bad guys. This will become increasingly obvious to everyone over time.

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Transcript: Putin’s Speech at SPIEF

I welcome all participants and guests of the 25th St Petersburg International Economic Forum.

It is taking place at a difficult time for the international community when the economy, markets and the very principles of the global economic system have taken a blow. Many trade, industrial and logistics chains, which were dislocated by the pandemic, have been subjected to new tests. Moreover, such fundamental business notions as business reputation, the inviolability of property and trust in global currencies have been seriously damaged. Regrettably, they have been undermined by our Western partners, who have done this deliberately, for the sake of their ambitions and in order to preserve obsolete geopolitical illusions.

Today, our – when I say “our,” I mean the Russian leadership – our own view of the global economic situation. I would like to speak in greater depth about the actions Russia is taking in these conditions and how it plans to develop in these dynamically changing circumstances.

When I spoke at the Davos Forum a year and a half ago, I also stressed that the era of a unipolar world order has come to an end. I want to start with this, as there is no way around it. This era has ended despite all the attempts to maintain and preserve it at all costs. Change is a natural process of history, as it is difficult to reconcile the diversity of civilisations and the richness of cultures on the planet with political, economic or other stereotypes – these do not work here, they are imposed by one centre in a rough and no-compromise manner.

The flaw is in the concept itself, as the concept says there is one, albeit strong, power with a limited circle of close allies, or, as they say, countries with granted access, and all business practices and international relations, when it is convenient, are interpreted solely in the interests of this power. They essentially work in one direction in a zero-sum game. A world built on a doctrine of this kind is definitely unstable.

After declaring victory in the Cold War, the United States proclaimed itself to be God’s messenger on Earth, without any obligations and only interests which were declared sacred. They seem to ignore the fact that in the past decades, new powerful and increasingly assertive centres have been formed. Each of them develops its own political system and public institutions according to its own model of economic growth and, naturally, has the right to protect them and to secure national sovereignty.

These are objective processes and genuinely revolutionary tectonic shifts in geopolitics, the global economy and technology, in the entire system of international relations, where the role of dynamic and potentially strong countries and regions is substantially growing. It is no longer possible to ignore their interests.

To reiterate, these changes are fundamental, groundbreaking and rigorous. It would be a mistake to assume that at a time of turbulent change, one can simply sit it out or wait it out until everything gets back on track and becomes what it was before. It will not.

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Eurofragility

SHOT: French demand for Russian natural gas has been on the rise for the last four years. The upward trend continues in the current year as well. From January 1 through June 5, 2019, Gazprom’s gas supplies to France totaled 5.8 billion cubic meters, an increase of 5.6 per cent from the same period of 2018. In 2018, Gazprom supplied to France 12.9 billion cubic meters of gas, an increase of 5.4 per cent against 2017 (12.3 billion cubic meters).

CHASER: Russian natural gas flows to France via pipeline from Germany have ceased. Russia’s Gazprom will reduce gas supply to Italy by 50 percent today, says the energy company Eni.

I wonder how the politicians in Finland, Switzerland, and Sweden who threw away their nations’ neutrality in order to participate in those stunningly self-destructive sanctions are feeling now? The presumably unintended consequences have boomeranged so horrifically on the neoliberal economies that they could not unreasonably be charged with being Russian agents.

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Running on Empty

The Tree of Woe contemplates the global economic order and the reinvention of the Third World in a four-part series.

Part I of this series explained that the US dollar is the world’s first reserve currency that is not backed by precious metals. Instead it is backed by other people’s oil. Because of a secret treaty between the US and Saudi Arabia, petroleum can only be purchased with dollars. Every country needs oil, so everyone country needs dollars and sells imports to the US to get them. Demand for dollars has made the USD the primary American export, allowing the US to deindustrialize and financialize its economy.

Part II explained how the petrodollar has grossly enriched American asset holders (stocks, bonds, and real estate) and painfully impoverished American wage earners. Under the petrodollar system, dollars are created by private banks for profit. These dollars are recycled into the economy by OPEC nations, causing stocks, bonds, and real estate to rise. This profitable exchange is enforced by American military might, which punishes any country that seeks to exit the petrodollar system.

Part III explained that for the petrodollar system to function, America needs to be able to project power worldwide to secure international trade and enforce the system. America secures global commerce and projects military power by commanding the World Ocean, by which 90% of all goods are trafficked. To overcome America’s naval supremacy, both Russia and China have sought to establish control of the World Island, the Eurasian supercontinent that houses most of the world’s population and resources. The Russo-Ukraine War is a proxy war between the uncontested master of the World Ocean (America) and the would-be masters of the World Island (China and Russa).

In Part IV, we’ll discuss how faulty expectations by both sides in the Russo-Ukraine War have led to sanctions of such severity might cause the petrodollar system to break down.

It’s an excellent series, and you’d expect, although my perspective on the military situation is a little bit different. I don’t think Russia expected to quickly knock Ukraine out of the war. I think they hoped to do so with their opening gambit that included the lightning light infantry assault on Kiev, but that Operation Z never depended upon it.

The relatively small number of troops utilized, the way in which Russia has not heavily utilized its air and sea superiority, the second-rate units utilized, and the way Russia has methodically focused on attrition warfare in the Donbass all demonstrate that Russia has been holding its forces in ready to take on NATO directly. Just as the Germans were surprised by Russian manufacturing capabilities, Russian shell production has resulted in NATO complaining about Russia’s overwhelming artillery advantage, with the Russian forces able to fire up to 60,000 shells and rockets per day several months after we were informed that Russia was going to run out of ammunition within two weeks.

However, this doesn’t undermine Tree of Woe’s case so much as it underlines it. Russia has clearly been planning for a long and unrestricted confrontation with NATO and the USA from the start, one which includes both the military and the economic conflicts. Which is precisely why I think it is highly unlikely that the special military operation is going to end with a Ukrainian surrender and a negotiated settlement that brings Russia back into the neoliberal economic order.

While the World Ocean would cheerfully settle for that now, both Russia and China are obviously aware that it would merely mean putting off the larger conflict for a few years and giving their adversaries time to better prepare for it.

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The Battle of Ukraine is Over

“The battle of Helm’s Deep is over; the battle for Middle Earth is about to begin.”

Ukrainian troops are suffering massive losses as they are outgunned 20 to one in artillery and 40 to one in ammunition by Russian forces, according to new intelligence painting a bleak picture of the conflict on the frontline.

A report by Ukrainian and Western intelligence officials also reveals that the Ukrainians are facing huge difficulties responding to Russians shelling with their artillery restricted to a range of 25 kilometres, while the enemy can strike from 12 times that distance.

For the first time since the war began, there is now concern over desertion. The report, seen by The Independent, says the worsening situation in the Donbas, with up to a hundred soldiers being killed a day, is having “a seriously demoralising effect on Ukrainian forces as well as a very real material effect; cases of desertion are growing every week”.

At the same time, as the Russians capture territories in the east, and consolidate their control over the seized cities of Mariupol and Kherson, the bargaining position of the Ukrainian government is being weakened by acute disparity in the numbers of prisoners being held by each side.

The total number of Russian soldiers being held by Ukraine has fallen to 550 from 900 in April after a series of exchanges. Moscow meanwhile has more than 5,600 Ukrainian troops in captivity, the figure enlarged by the surrender of 2,500, including members of the Azov Battalion, in Mariupol.

Business Insider, 11 June 2022

The battle of Ukraine is over. The outcome – always predictable from the start – is certain, which is why the media is now filled with accounts of various globalist figures very cleverly suggesting that giving Russia what it already has might buy more time for the failing neoliberal world order. It won’t, because there was never any real war between Russia and Ukraine, which was why the Russians very carefully described their actions as a “special military operation”.

It was just a battle, and not a particularly big battle in historic terms at that. It was the first phase of a much larger military conflict.

The Russians know very well that the war isn’t over. Ukraine isn’t their primary enemy anymore than Austria or Poland were the primary enemies of Germany in the 20th Century. 2022 is more akin to 1939 than 1940, much less 1941.

The battle of Ukraine is over; the battle for world order is about to begin.

A battle which some observers, such as Karl Denninger, suspect is already lost:

The so-called Russian Sanctions have blown up spectacularly in the western world’s face. Russia now has a stronger currency than it did before the war we instigated began. Oil and Natural Gas, never mind things like fertilizer, are nice and expensive which suits Putin just fine. He has negotiated long term interchange with China for both and is building out the capacity to wildly increase same. Europe is fucked down the road as a result and in the meantime they got nothing for all these “sanctions.”

For that matter so are we. We’ve sequestered our inflationary deficit spending overseas via the China/US (and other nations, including India) trade deficit for the last two decades. That’s over and will never come back because none of the nations that we were doing it with have any reason to allow it ever again and they don’t need to. Not a single member of the Fed or other “economic punditry” has said one word about this although I sure as Hell have.

At the same time Russia is shipping oil to these nations who then cross-ship it back, some refined first, and there’s absolutely no way to do anything about that since we’re incapable of sanctioning either without instantly detonating our supply chains, offshored labor or both. As a result we can no longer spend in deficit without it reflecting back into inflation which means the “free ride” gave has been terminated and while this was always eventually going to end we did this to ourselves and thus the inflation you’re seeing and will continue to see was and is caused directly by our policies and our government.

The outcome isn’t absolutely settled. But the smart money is betting on the eventual victory of the Silk Road Alliance. There is a reason they call it Clown World and not Rocket Scientist World or Smart, Sensible, and Sustainable World, after all.

Quote of the Day: “You cannot appease Russia with some territory that they already have, or will take. Its not yours to give. Russia will decide exactly what happens to the Ukraine, how, and when.”

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