Did Russia Intentionally Trigger A Monetary System Reset?

 This to my opinion is the case and so the "real" war has started.

Did Russia Intentionally Trigger A Monetary System Reset?

Written by Dave Kranzler, Sprott Money News

March 30, 2022

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“We are witnessing the birth of Bretton Woods III – a new world (monetary) order centred around commodity-based currencies in the East that will likely weaken the Eurodollar system and also contribute to inflationary forces in the West.” – Zoltan Pozsar, Bretton Woods III

Fiat currency is a “promise” to repay a debt obligation and nothing more. A hard asset-backed currency is a guarantee that repayment will occur.

On March 7th Zoltan Pozsar, who formerly worked at the NY Fed, was an advisor at the U.S. Treasury and currently is a strategist as Credit Suisse, published a research report titled “Bretton Woods III.” Anyone familiar with the Bretton Woods agreement understands the reference. Nixon’s snipping of the final thread connecting currency to gold is considered to be Bretton Woods II. Pozsar makes the case that Bretton Woods III is a reversion back to a monetary system in which currency is backed by commodities as opposed to being backed by a sovereign issuer’s “full faith and credit.”

A crisis is unfolding.  A crisis of commodities. Commodities are collateral, and collateral is money, and this crisis is about the rising allure of outside money over inside money. Bretton Woods II was built on inside money, and its foundations crumbled a week ago when the G7 seized Russia’s FX reserves. – ibid

The post-1971 fiat currency reserve banking system enabled by the removal of gold from the monetary system is nothing more than a Ponzi scheme. “Inside money” refers to the interbank repo/lending mechanism from which the fractional bank reserve monetary system blossoms. Pozsar distinguishes “inside money” from “outside money.” “Inside money” is created by the Central Bank/inter-bank lending mechanism that can magically turn one dollar of reserve capital into nine dollars of “credit” capital. And the one dollar of reserve capital is backed by nothing tangible – just the “full faith and credit” of the issuing entity.

Think of this monetary system as an inverted pyramid – eg something like Exter’s Pyramid.  In bankruptcy law, “full faith and credit” would be considered, at best, an unsecured loan.  Get in line and pray that there’s value left over to be distributed to the unsecureds.

In contrast, Pozsar references Bretton Woods III as the “rising allure of outside money over inside money,” where “outside money” is “commodities collateral,” meaning tangible assets for which definitive value can be determined, as opposed to the sovereign promise of “full faith and credit.”  In periods of banking crises, banks are reluctant to participate in the “inside game” (see 2008 and September 2019, for instance) because, at that point in time, they don’t trust the fiat currency collateral on which the fractional reserve banking system is predicated and thus are reluctant to lend money to their banking peers. Every time this occurs, the Central Banks have to print more money to “lubricate” the system enough so that it functions. This in turn further devalues the “inside money” on which the system is predicated.

But if currency issued by Governments and printed by Central Banks is backed by hard assets, this problem is avoided. In this system, the counterparty to trade or financing transactions would have the option of demanding payment in the hard asset or assets backing the currency – most likely gold or possibly a pre-agreed upon commodity asset. Remember, fiat currency is nothing more than an unsecured debt instrument of the issuing entity.

It’s likely that Putin knew ahead of time that the west’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine would be to freeze Russian currency reserves held at western Central Banks. Of course, this response by the U.S./west brought to light the inherent Achilles’ Heel of the modern Central Bank fiat currency reserve system. Any country that keeps currency reserves for trade settlement purposes at foreign Central Banks, specifically the Federal Reserve and the ECB, is at risk of having those reserves confiscated, thereby rendering them worthless.

In response, Russia is now demanding payment for energy in either rubles or gold from what it deems to be “unfriendly” countries. Whereas in the “inside money” banking system, settlement of trade is merely a matter of accounting ledger adjustments at the respective Central Banks, in this trade settlement arrangement, a country purchasing oil or gas from Russia in exchange for gold would need to 1) demonstrate that the gold being used for trade payment actually exists and 2) transfer the ownership rights to Russia. Russia ultimately would likely demand repatriation of the gold. The U.S./G7 made it crystal clear that possession of assets is 100% of the law.

The response by the west – led by the U.S. and its control of the global reserve currency – in all likelihood has triggered a reset of the global monetary system. I actually do not like the term “Bretton Woods III” because it references an agreement that, in its essence, destroyed the gold-backed global monetary system. Regardless, it appears for now that Russia – likely with China’s tacit support – has set in motion a global monetary system reset. In the new system countries which supply the world with goods that have price inelasticity of demand – oil, natural gas and food commodities, for instance – will have the power to enforce trade settlement in hard currencies – e.g. gold or other hard assets – rather than fiat currency Central Bank accounting ledger adjustments. This is the nature of the monetary system reset that has been triggered. Welcome to Galt’s Gulch…

“Money is the barometer of a society’s virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion–when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing–when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favours–when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you–when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice–you may know that your society is doomed. Money is so noble a medium that it does not compete with guns and it does not make terms with brutality. It will not permit a country to survive as half property, half-loot…

...Gold was an objective value, an equivalent of wealth produced. Paper is a mortgage on wealth that does not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to produce it. Paper is a check drawn by legal looters upon an account which is not theirs: upon the virtue of the victims. Watch for the day when it bounces, marked, ‘Account overdrawn.'” – Francisco’s Money Speech, Atlas Shrugged

GotGoldorRubles? Did Russia Just Break The Back Of The West?

 Clearly the war in Ukraine is a proxy war and the stakes are much higher than a corrupt country that very few people care much about, save Hunter Biden... maybe?

  The protagonists are New York and the City of London on the Western side, and Russia and China on the multi-polar side. China, maybe reluctantly as the country needed another two or three years of strengthening before such a direct challenge to the Occidental world order.

But now that the dices are rolling, all the protagonists will have to take the gloves off. China of course, but also India, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and all the other raw material producers who will less and less accept valueless currencies for actual resources. This is the real start of the real war of the 21st century. Buckle up for the ride!

Authored by Tom Luongo via Gold, Goats, 'n Guns blog,

I don’t think everyone has yet caught the significance of Russia announcing they are putting a floor under the price of gold.  

But, to be clear, Russia just broke the paper gold suppression scheme.

On Friday the Bank of Russia announced:

RUB5000 to the ounce at an exchange rate of 100 RUB/USD implies a $1550 per ounce gold price.

For a few days previous to this announcement, which they knew was coming, The West was running around with multiple bits of legislation to try and keep the Russians from selling their gold.

The G7 think the sanctions are hitting so hard that Putin will be forced to sell his gold to evade sanctions to pay for things.  They are literally running a script in their heads that is not actually playing out in the real world.

But, whatever, Neocons never met an ugly stick that they didn’t want to use to beat someone over the head with.  Too bad all they’re doing is hitting a rubber tire.

Boing!

Because here’s the gig, Russia won’t be selling any gold. They’re buying it.

These are supposed to be the architects of the global monetary system and you would think they are the ones that understand it the best.  But, clearly they do not.

What they think they understand is that they still control the flow of commodities around the world through price suppression schemes on the CRIMEX, LBMA and ICE.

They do not.

Ultimately, ‘outside money’ trumps ‘inside money.’  

Austrians, like myself, have always understood that eventually Inside Money [money that exists within the financial system] fails because it is ultimately nothing more than a Ponzi Scheme built on top of Outside Money — money that exists outside the financial system, like commodities and bitcoin.

Money, It’s a Hit!

Let’s start with the basics. Why do we create money? To act as a way to mitigate the time risk between selling what we have and buying what we want. So we sell our labor today to buy gasoline, printer paper or blow jobs tomorrow. In the meantime we hold money.

It is a way to turn thought and personal application of energy and time into a token which can procure for us real goods in the real world.

With that in mind, now think about the current financial system where all inside money is created by first selling a debt instrument to someone willing to hold it for a vig.

Back to the ruble and gold. Because once I lay out the new incentive structure it will be clear as to why the G7 has no friends in this fight anymore.  

Davos’ power rests on the ability to create credit and sell it at a positive interest carry to commodity producers.  Since base commodity production in any kind of efficient market should be a very low margin enterprise, think 1-4% real annual return, selling them debt to extract oil or gold out of the ground at higher rates than that ultimately sucks all the profit out of the venture.

Free markets when allowed to function properly grind out profit through competitive arbitrage. It is both brutal and the spark of new innovations and efficiencies.

It is the desire for higher profits over baseline that does this.

In base commodities that is difficult, at best, to do. Why? Because they aren’t anything more than a second order good. First order would be the ore or timber harvested. Second order would be the ingot or lumber produced. The higher order the good, the more specialized it is and the higher opportunity for profit through product differentiation on something other than price emerges.

That’s most difficult to do in improving resource extraction because, it follows, most of the major gains in efficiency occurred in the past when the economy was less specialized.

Confusion Over ‘The System’

If the banks are on both sides of the trade setting the price of money, then they ultimately control who wins and who loses while this goes on. And let’s not mince words, it’s them. The profit rolls up to those that produce the highest order goods with the most complex supply chains.

The banks plough the profits from getting interest on the original debt into the very companies producing the higher order goods needed to ensure the lower order goods produce no wealth through the grinding out of profit via arbitrage throughout the supply chain.

Don’t believe me? Ask cattle farmers.

In this respect the current financing of these industries is nothing more than a virtualized version of the colonial economic model of the 15th through 19th centuries.

Instead of using physical men to subjugate the locals through superior weaponry and bribes to get them to extract the mineral wealth which the colonialists take back home, today we use the post-WWII institutions to run that same system through debt issuance for capex and the interest payments (in this case pure economic rent – unearned wealth).

The producer countries of all the mineral wealth in the world are nothing but debt slaves to the money masters in Brussels, City of London and New York.  That’s the gig.

Since we’ve reached the point of debt saturation where no more debt can be issued to extract mineral wealth and have the markets believe it could ever be paid back at these real yields, the system has to be reset.

The whole Great Reset is a way to crash the existing system but leave the same colonialists in power legally.

It’s not really more complicated than that.

When you understand that dynamic now you can understand why Russia, in particular, is the vanguard of the Global South’s desire to change the System of the World.

It is also the one country that has the commodity production power to expose the vulnerabilities of this System.

That’s Nice… #GotRubles?

And that’s where pegging the ruble to gold comes in.

The Bank of Russia is now a buyer of gold at 5000 rubles to the gram, or 155,500 rubles to the troy ounce.  At a Friday March 25th closing price of RUB96.62 vs. the USD that implies a gold price of $1610 per ounce.

The ruble is now freely strengthening versus the US dollar.

Now, that is not that remarkable on its own. 

As I explained on Twitter that day:

• 1: At $1550 per ounce the first order effect here is that is implies a RUB/USD rate of around 75. Incentivizing those holding RUB to continue and those needing them to bid up the price from current levels.

• 2: This creates a positive incentive loop to bring the ruble back to pre-war levels.  Then after that market effects take over as ruble demand becomes structural, based on Russia’s trade balance.

• 3: Once that happens and the RUB/USD falls below 75, then the USD price of gold rises structurally draining the paper gold markets and collapsing the financial system based on leveraged/hypothecated gold.  Now we’re into the arb. phase @Lukegromen postulated w/ 1000bbls/oz.

So, this scheme incentivizes Russians to hold savings in rubles, because the ruble is undervalued.  It also incentivizes foreign traders to hold rubles because the ruble is undervalued relative to an overvalued open gold price.

Clearly currency speculators in Moscow, Shanghai, Singapore, Mumbai and Hong Kong are having a field day with this.

Coupled with Putin demanding ‘unfriendly countries’ paying for their Russian imports with either gold or the ruble, the natural choice is for them to buy rubles until such time as the price of gold and the ruble are in sync on international markets.

The howls of pain from the G-7 and Germany in particular are equal parts pathetic and hilarious as they complain that Putin is in ‘breach of contract’ for demanding a different payment currency for gas other than the euros stipulated in the contract.

Earlier Monday German Economy Minister Robert Habeck said from Berlin that the Kremlin demand for natural gas contracts to be paid in rubles is a “one-sided and clear breach of contracts” – saying the contracts must be honored under prior conditions, according to Bloomberg. “That means that a payment in rubles is not acceptable and we urge the relevant companies not to comply with Putin’s demand,” Habeck said. “Putin’s effort to drive a wedge between us is obvious but you can see that we won’t allow ourselves to be divided and the answer from the G-7 is clear: the contracts will be honored.”

The Kremlin’s quick shooting down of the German economy minister’s comments and the G-7’s stance on the ruble came Monday via a Russian lawmaker to state-run RIA Novosti: “Russian lawmaker Abramov says G7’s refusal to pay in Russian roubles for gas will definitely lead to a halt in supplies.”

Pissed off Russians certainly have a way with words, as a writer, I appreciate this greatly. According to TASS:

Moscow is handling the details of its gas delivery plans to unfriendly countries for payment in rubles, but it won’t engage in charity if Europe refuses to pay in the Russian currency, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Monday.

…The Kremlin spokesman remained tight-lipped on what measures Russia might take if Europe refused to pay for gas in rubles, noting that these “issues should be sorted out as they develop.” “But we will definitely not supply gas for free, that’s for sure. It is hardly possible and reasonable to engage in charity in our situation,” he emphasized.

Do you hear that Davos? That’s the sound of the ticking clock.

The Trade’s the Thing…

The reason why this current scheme is already working is that Russia runs a positive trade balance mostly in base commodity exports. Davos doesn’t want them making any money selling those commodities to the world and will continue to put sanctions on to get people to not use rubles.

They are however fighting the invisible hand of Adam Smith’s market. The demand for the ruble will rise above the pre-war exchange rate of around 75:1 vs. the USD.

The price point for gold/ruble implies that exchange rate. Russia will revisit this at the end of Q2.  This also implies they expect the ruble/dollar rate to fall to 75 by the end of Q2, if not earlier.

After that if the ruble strengthens beyond that they can adjust the gold buying price.  

If the ruble/dollar rate dips below their pegged price, buyers are getting oil at a discount when paying in gold. That will force the CRIMEX and LBMA into a supply shortage situation or they will have to end the expansion of paper gold versus real gold and allow real price discovery to the upside.

If the sanctions are successful in scaring everyone into not using rubles gold Russian commodities then the exchange rate will stay stubbornly above 75 and the boycotting world will lose competitive advantage versus those willing to brave the US’s ire by getting Russian commodities on the cheap.

As I talked about in previous articles, this sets up the opportunity to end the suppression of the price of gold through rehypothecation of physical gold in the paper markets which is the basis for the entire financial colonization system I described above.

FYI, this same scenario is going to play out in Bitcoin now that Russia has said ‘friendly countries’ can pay for imports with Bitcoin.  Has anyone noticed the current rally in the World’s Most Hated Cryptocurrency?

We now have a full gold/bitcoin/ruble (and soon Yuan) interconversion system that completely and utterly cuts out Davos and destroys their colonial debt model while also taking away their power to crash economies through hot money in and out flows.

Because the next step in all of this is for Russia to close their capital account and nationalizing the Bank of Russia making the only source of international rubles be the Russian government.  

Internally, the ruble will be de facto backed by gold and can circulate freely.  

The War Without End, Ended

The war is over folks.  Russia, China and the rest of the Global South have already won. As Luke Gromen replied to me., “in the end there’s nothing they can do about it.” 

What scares me is the last thing I tweeted out in that thread: 

“Other than widen the war on the ground.  That’s the part that scares me.”

And that’s exactly what I expect to happen next, sadly.  Biden is in Brussels saying the quiet parts out loud talking with the 82nd Airborne about going into Ukraine and calling for regime change in Moscow.  

These people still believe their own bullshit to the point where they think this becomes a war the Russians can’t win.

Putin let the world down easy with this announcement.  He could have walked right in and said 8000 rubles to the gram or $2575/oz and that would have broken the markets Friday going into the weekend, by selling his oil and gas at a steep discount.

He waited until after OpEx last Friday and the Fed’s interest rate hike plan was announced.

Timing matters guys.

But, by doing this he has very subtly also supported the Fed and it’s plan to withdraw dollars from Europe, because this will keep the price of gold in check for a little while and keeping the ECB from offsetting spiking Eurobond yields with higher gold reserves on its balance sheet.

Putin on the left arm, Powell on the right and Lagarde is about to get pulled apart at the seams if Davos doesn’t play ball and give up.

The problem there is the unquenchable arrogance of these European elites who simply do not believe they could be bested by the “colonies” in the US and the “dirty slavs” in Russia.  I’ve told you for years now that it is their inherent racism that drives their actions. 

So, do not be surprised if they empower the neocons in the UK and US to escalate from here. The signs are piling up that the Pentagon and the White House are at odds over the planned escalations. The State and Treasury Depts. are nests of vipers having usurped Congress to wage war without declaring it.

I can only hope that serious and adult people within the Pentagon will finally end this nonsense before we wind up in a war no one wants except a bunch of inbred Eurotrash well past their ‘use-by’ date.

I always say that spooks start civil wars but militaries end them. Let’s hope that we never get to the point of needing any other military than the Russians’ to end this war.

In the meantime, the message is clear, #GotGoldorRubles?

China's 5th wave of Covid arrives (Video)

 Think you had a hard time with Covid in the West? Think again: Here's China 2022!

 

Russian Sanction Blowback Will Drive a Physical Gold Revaluation (Video)

 A revaluation or a revolution?

 Listen carefully through the words. This may be THE most important video you hear in a long time!

 

Alphabetical order (Joke & education)

 At a glance, this looks like a joke. But looking at it more closely, it is anything but.

 Education as we all know is more about conforming than educating. But it could easily be different. 

 There is clearly two levels to answer the question below. A simple one for elementary school and a more advanced one. What if ALL questions were built according to this model? The simple answer is and remains correct but a more advanced answer is also possible...

 This approach is actually quite fertile and can be used more widely without deleterious effects. The Matrix movie is a good example: An action movie dealing with more complex philosophical questions in the background. Although not understanding what Morpheus, the Oracle or the Architect are saying does not prevent anyone from enjoying the movie.

 Dumbing down is a choice not a necessity!

 

The Battle for Ukraine by Scott Ritter (Ex UN Weapon Inspector) - Video

 This is a long but stunning video. Do Western leaders believe their own rhetoric? It is actually quite possible! Former President Obama used to say that Vice President Biden was not fit to be President. And that was long before his toying with senility. As for Kamala Harris, it is actually difficult to listen to her more than 10mn and not conclude that she is indeed imbecile! But there are, there must be people around them, other than the Neo-cons who actually understand and know what they are talking about. Here's one...

 

Victor Davis Hanson: The Real 'Reset' Is Coming

If only! If the dichotomy was only between conservatives and progressives. We would indeed just need to see the pendulum swing and go back to the post WW2 years. But this is of course exactly what will not happen. A better energy policy would save years, a decade at most, not get us out of our predicament.   

Some nuclear, a little wing and solar, a lot of gas would help wait until our fusion energytopia future. But all in all we still need to transition out of oil while the world population is still growing and we simply do not know how to do this.

So overshoot and crash it will be. A forth turning once again. 

Authored by Victor Davis Hanson,

President Joe Biden believes the Ukraine war will mark the start of a "new world order."

In the middle of the COVID global pandemic, Klaus Schwab and global elites likewise announced a "great reset."

Accordingly, the nations of the world would have to surrender their sovereignty to an international body of experts. They would enlighten us on taxes, diversity, and green policies.

When former President Donald Trump got elected in 2016, marquee journalists announced partisan reporting would have to displace the old, supposedly disinterested approach to the news.

There is a common theme here.

In normal times progressives worry that they do not have public support for their policies. Only in crises do they feel that the political Left and media can merge to use apocalyptic times to ram through usually unpopular approaches to foreign and domestic problems.

We saw that last year: fleeing from Afghanistan, the embrace of critical race theory, trying to end the filibuster, pack the court, junk the Electoral College, and nationalize voting laws.

These "new orders" and "resets" always entail far bigger government and more unelected, powerful bureaucracies. Elites assume that their radical changes in energy use, media reporting, voting, sovereignty, and racial and ethnic quotas will never quite apply to themselves, the architects of such top-down changes.

So we common folk must quit fossil fuels, but not those who need to use corporate jets. Walls will not mar our borders but will protect the homes of Nancy Pelosi, Mark Zuckerberg, and Bill Gates.

Hunter Biden's lost laptop will be declared, by fiat, not news. In contrast, the fake Alfa Bank "collusion" narrative will be national headline news for weeks.

Middle class lifestyles will be curbed as we are instructed to strive for sustainability and transition to apartment living and mass transit. But the Obamas will still keep their three mansions, and Silicon Valley futurists will insist on exemptions for their yachts.

In truth, we are about to see a radical reset - of the current reset. It will be a different sort of transformation than the elites are expecting and one that they should greatly fear.

The world and the United States are furious over hyperinflation that may soon exceed 10% per year. We will be lucky if it ends only in recession or stagflation, rather than a global depression.

The mess was created by the same apparat who bought into "modern monetary theory." That silly university idea claimed prosperity would follow vastly expanding the money supply, keeping interest rates at de facto zero levels, running huge annual deficits, piling up unsustainable national debt, and subsidizing workers to stay home.

Natural gas and oil costs are now soaring to unsustainable levels - and to the point where the middle class simply will not be able to travel, keep warm in winter, or cool in summer.

Both in Europe and the United States left-wing governments deliberately curbed drilling and non-Russian pipelines. They shut down nuclear power plants and subsidized costly, inefficient solar and wind projects. They ended up not with utopia, but with fuel shortages, high prices, and energy dependency on the world's most repressive regimes.

The woke revolution in the West was supposed to teach us that the "white male"-dominated Western world is toxic. Its origins, ascendence, and current leisure and affluence were supposedly due only to systemic exploitation, racism, and sexism.

Elites introduced cancel culture, doxxing, deplatforming, and social ostracism to shame these supposed exploiters and to destroy their lives and careers.

Few asked how a supposedly noxious West of some 2,500 years duration became the number one destination of millions of global non-Western migrants and offered the greatest degree of global prosperity and freedom for its citizens.

So a reset reckoning is coming - in reaction to the "new orders" championed by Biden and the Davos set.

In the November 2022 midterms, we are likely to see a historic "No!" to the orthodox left-wing agenda that has resulted in unsustainable inflation, unaffordable energy, war, and humiliation abroad, spiraling crime, racial hostility - as well as arrogant defiance from those who deliberately enacted these disastrous policies.

What will replace it is a return to what until recently had worked.

Closed and secure borders with only legal and measured immigration will return. Americans will demand tough police enforcement and deterrent sentencing, and a return to integration and the primacy of individual character rather than separatist fixations on the "color our skin."

The public will continue to tune out of the partisan and mediocre "mainstream" media. We will see greater increased production of oil and natural gas to transition us slowly to a wider variety of energy, strong national defense, and deterrent foreign policies.

The prophets of the new world order sowed the wind and they will soon reap the whirlwind of an angry public worn out by elite incompetence, arrogance, and ignorance.

Why the World is Running Out of Computers (Video)

 More than running out of semiconductors, the world is becoming more fragile which is a corollary of increased complexity so almost unavoidable. To re-balance, we'll need to decrease complexity and get rid of the slack built around systems which is why we have cycles. We have learned a lot since the last great reset but the forces at play are still beyond our reach and the consequences of our ignorance staring us in the eyes... 

 

The Art Market is a Scam (Video)

 An amazing video about the art market "scam" and why the rich gets richer while the rest gets poorer. What is known is that in any stable society, some people will quickly outsmart the system whatever system we build. But more interesting is how this is actually done. This is the striking and educative example of the art market.

 

The Future Is Here: Dystopian Movies Fit For A Dystopian World

 These are all interesting movies based on thoughtful ideas even if quality is not always there. THX 1138 and Soylent Green are oldish, Brazil a parody bordering on stupidish and They Live 's quality let the idea high and dry!  1984. Brave New World, Minority Report, The Matrix and V for Vendetta are the giants. 

 What is worrying is the lack of vision beyond these dark outlooks. What comes after that? Nothing? Just "turtles" all the way? That would be the really frightening part!

Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

“The Internet is watching us now. If they want to. They can see what sites you visit. In the future, television will be watching us, and customizing itself to what it knows about us. The thrilling thing is, that will make us feel we’re part of the medium. The scary thing is, we’ll lose our right to privacy. An ad will appear in the air around us, talking directly to us.”

- Director Steven Spielberg, Minority Report

We have arrived, way ahead of schedule, into the dystopian future dreamed up by such science fiction writers as George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, Margaret Atwood and Philip K. Dick.

Much like Orwell’s Big Brother in 1984, the government and its corporate spies now watch our every move.

Much like Huxley’s A Brave New World, we are churning out a society of watchers who “have their liberties taken away from them, but … rather enjoy it, because they [are] distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing.”

Much like Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, the populace is now taught to “know their place and their duties, to understand that they have no real rights but will be protected up to a point if they conform, and to think so poorly of themselves that they will accept their assigned fate and not rebel or run away.”

And in keeping with Philip K. Dick’s darkly prophetic vision of a dystopian police state—which became the basis for Steven Spielberg’s futuristic thriller Minority Report which was released 20 years ago—we are now trapped into a world in which the government is all-seeing, all-knowing and all-powerful, and if you dare to step out of line, dark-clad police SWAT teams and pre-crime units will crack a few skulls to bring the populace under control.

Minority Report is set in the year 2054, but it could just as well have taken place in 2022.

Seemingly taking its cue from science fiction, technology has moved so fast in the short time since Minority Report premiered in 2002 that what once seemed futuristic no longer occupies the realm of science fiction.

Incredibly, as the various nascent technologies employed and shared by the government and corporations alike—facial recognition, iris scanners, massive databases, behavior prediction software, and so on—are incorporated into a complex, interwoven cyber network aimed at tracking our movements, predicting our thoughts and controlling our behavior, Spielberg’s unnerving vision of the future is fast becoming our reality.

Both worlds—our present-day reality and Spielberg’s celluloid vision of the future—are characterized by widespread surveillance, behavior prediction technologies, data mining, fusion centers, driverless cars, voice-controlled homes, facial recognition systems, cybugs and drones, and predictive policing (pre-crime) aimed at capturing would-be criminals before they can do any damage.

Surveillance cameras are everywhere. Government agents listen in on our telephone calls and read our emails. Political correctness—a philosophy that discourages diversity—has become a guiding principle of modern society.

The courts have shredded the Fourth Amendment’s protections against unreasonable searches and seizures. In fact, SWAT teams battering down doors without search warrants and FBI agents acting as a secret police that investigate dissenting citizens are common occurrences in contemporary America.

We are increasingly ruled by multi-corporations wedded to the police state. Much of the population is either hooked on illegal drugs or ones prescribed by doctors. And bodily privacy and integrity has been utterly eviscerated by a prevailing view that Americans have no rights over what happens to their bodies during an encounter with government officials, who are allowed to search, seize, strip, scan, spy on, probe, pat down, taser, and arrest any individual at any time and for the slightest provocation.

All of this has come about with little more than a whimper from an oblivious American populace largely comprised of nonreaders and television and internet zombies, but we have been warned about such an ominous future in novels and movies for years.

The following 15 films may be the best representation of what we now face as a society.

Fahrenheit 451 (1966). Adapted from Ray Bradbury’s novel and directed by Francois Truffaut, this film depicts a futuristic society in which books are banned, and firemen ironically are called on to burn contraband books—451 Fahrenheit being the temperature at which books burn. Montag is a fireman who develops a conscience and begins to question his book burning. This film is an adept metaphor for our obsessively politically correct society where virtually everyone now pre-censors speech. Here, a brainwashed people addicted to television and drugs do little to resist governmental oppressors.

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). The plot of Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece, as based on an Arthur C. Clarke short story, revolves around a space voyage to Jupiter. The astronauts soon learn, however, that the fully automated ship is orchestrated by a computer system—known as HAL 9000—which has become an autonomous thinking being that will even murder to retain control. The idea is that at some point in human evolution, technology in the form of artificial intelligence will become autonomous and human beings will become mere appendages of technology. In fact, at present, we are seeing this development with massive databases generated and controlled by the government that are administered by such secretive agencies as the National Security Agency and sweep all websites and other information devices collecting information on average citizens. We are being watched from cradle to grave.

Planet of the Apes (1968). Based on Pierre Boulle’s novel, astronauts crash on a planet where apes are the masters and humans are treated as brutes and slaves. While fleeing from gorillas on horseback, astronaut Taylor is shot in the throat, captured and housed in a cage. From there, Taylor begins a journey wherein the truth revealed is that the planet was once controlled by technologically advanced humans who destroyed civilization. Taylor’s trek to the ominous Forbidden Zone reveals the startling fact that he was on planet earth all along. Descending into a fit of rage at what he sees in the final scene, Taylor screams: “We finally really did it. You maniacs! You blew it up! Damn you.” The lesson is obvious, but will we listen? The script, although rewritten, was initially drafted by Rod Serling and retains Serling’s Twilight Zone-ish ending.

THX 1138 (1970). George Lucas’ directorial debut, this is a somber view of a dehumanized society totally controlled by a police state. The people are force-fed drugs to keep them passive, and they no longer have names but only letter/number combinations such as THX 1138. Any citizen who steps out of line is quickly brought into compliance by robotic police equipped with “pain prods”—electro-shock batons. Sound like tasers?

A Clockwork Orange (1971). Director Stanley Kubrick presents a future ruled by sadistic punk gangs and a chaotic government that cracks down on its citizens sporadically. Alex is a violent punk who finds himself in the grinding, crushing wheels of injustice. This film may accurately portray the future of western society that grinds to a halt as oil supplies diminish, environmental crises increase, chaos rules, and the only thing left is brute force.

Soylent Green (1973). Set in a futuristic overpopulated New York City, the people depend on synthetic foods manufactured by the Soylent Corporation. A policeman investigating a murder discovers the grisly truth about what soylent green is really made of. The theme is chaos where the world is ruled by ruthless corporations whose only goal is greed and profit. Sound familiar?

Blade Runner (1982). In a 21st century Los Angeles, a world-weary cop tracks down a handful of renegade “replicants” (synthetically produced human slaves). Life is now dominated by mega-corporations, and people sleepwalk along rain-drenched streets. This is a world where human life is cheap, and where anyone can be exterminated at will by the police (or blade runners). Based upon a Philip K. Dick novel, this exquisite Ridley Scott film questions what it means to be human in an inhuman world.

Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984). The best adaptation of Orwell’s dark tale, this film visualizes the total loss of freedom in a world dominated by technology and its misuse, and the crushing inhumanity of an omniscient state. The government controls the masses by controlling their thoughts, altering history and changing the meaning of words. Winston Smith is a doubter who turns to self-expression through his diary and then begins questioning the ways and methods of Big Brother before being re-educated in a most brutal fashion.

Brazil (1985). Sharing a similar vision of the near future as 1984 and Franz Kafka’s novel The Trial, this is arguably director Terry Gilliam’s best work, one replete with a merging of the fantastic and stark reality. Here, a mother-dominated, hapless clerk takes refuge in flights of fantasy to escape the ordinary drabness of life. Caught within the chaotic tentacles of a police state, the longing for more innocent, free times lies behind the vicious surface of this film.

They Live (1988). John Carpenter’s bizarre sci-fi social satire action film assumes the future has already arrived. John Nada is a homeless person who stumbles across a resistance movement and finds a pair of sunglasses that enables him to see the real world around him. What he discovers is a world controlled by ominous beings who bombard the citizens with subliminal messages such as “obey” and “conform.” Carpenter manages to make an effective political point about the underclass—that is, everyone except those in power. The point: we, the prisoners of our devices, are too busy sucking up the entertainment trivia beamed into our brains and attacking each other up to start an effective resistance movement.

The Matrix (1999). The story centers on a computer programmer Thomas A. Anderson, secretly a hacker known by the alias “Neo,” who begins a relentless quest to learn the meaning of “The Matrix”—cryptic references that appear on his computer. Neo’s search leads him to Morpheus who reveals the truth that the present reality is not what it seems and that Anderson is actually living in the future—2199. Humanity is at war against technology which has taken the form of intelligent beings, and Neo is actually living in The Matrix, an illusionary world that appears to be set in the present in order to keep the humans docile and under control. Neo soon joins Morpheus and his cohorts in a rebellion against the machines that use SWAT team tactics to keep things under control.

Minority Report (2002). Based on a short story by Philip K. Dick and directed by Steven Spielberg, the film offers a special effect-laden, techno-vision of a futuristic world in which the government is all-seeing, all-knowing and all-powerful. And if you dare to step out of line, dark-clad police SWAT teams will bring you under control. The setting is 2054 where PreCrime, a specialized police unit, apprehends criminals before they can commit the crime. Captain Anderton is the chief of the Washington, DC, PreCrime force which uses future visions generated by “pre-cogs” (mutated humans with precognitive abilities) to stop murders. Soon Anderton becomes the focus of an investigation when the precogs predict he will commit a murder. But the system can be manipulated. This film raises the issue of the danger of technology operating autonomously—which will happen eventually if it has not already occurred. To a hammer, all the world looks like a nail. In the same way, to a police state computer, we all look like suspects. In fact, before long, we all may be mere extensions or appendages of the police state—all suspects in a world commandeered by machines.

V for Vendetta (2006). This film depicts a society ruled by a corrupt and totalitarian government where everything is run by an abusive secret police. A vigilante named V dons a mask and leads a rebellion against the state. The subtext here is that authoritarian regimes through repression create their own enemies—that is, terrorists—forcing government agents and terrorists into a recurring cycle of violence. And who is caught in the middle? The citizens, of course. This film has a cult following among various underground political groups such as Anonymous, whose members wear the same Guy Fawkes mask as that worn by V.

Children of Men (2006). This film portrays a futuristic world without hope since humankind has lost its ability to procreate. Civilization has descended into chaos and is held together by a military state and a government that attempts to keep its totalitarian stronghold on the population. Most governments have collapsed, leaving Great Britain as one of the few remaining intact societies. As a result, millions of refugees seek asylum only to be rounded up and detained by the police. Suicide is a viable option as a suicide kit called Quietus is promoted on billboards and on television and newspapers. But hope for a new day comes when a woman becomes inexplicably pregnant.

Land of the Blind (2006). In this dark political satire, tyrannical rulers are overthrown by new leaders who prove to be just as evil as their predecessors. Maximilian II is a demented fascist ruler of a troubled land named Everycountry who has two main interests: tormenting his underlings and running his country’s movie industry. Citizens who are perceived as questioning the state are sent to “re-education camps” where the state’s concept of reality is drummed into their heads. Joe, a prison guard, is emotionally moved by the prisoner and renowned author Thorne and eventually joins a coup to remove the sadistic Maximilian, replacing him with Thorne. But soon Joe finds himself the target of the new government.

All of these films—and the writers who inspired them—understood what many Americans, caught up in their partisan, flag-waving, zombified states, are still struggling to come to terms with: that there is no such thing as a government organized for the good of the people. Even the best intentions among those in government inevitably give way to the desire to maintain power and control at all costs.

Humans are Hooked. Machines are Learning! (Joke)

 

 In a sad twist, from controlled news to assisted search and tunnel vision, it looks like intelligence is slipping away from humans almost as fast as machines acquire it. We'll meet halfway sooner than expected!
#m

achinelearning #intelligence #AI

It's Happening! (Video)

 It is sad but it is indeed happening: We are slowly leaving our "old" democratic world behind and turning to fascism in the meaning defined by Mussolini. “Fascism (which) should more properly be called corporatism since it is the merger of the state and corporate power.”

 But worse! A world where public opinion is molded 1984-like by propaganda and where public discussion has been extinguished. 

Russel Brand is not easy to follow with his British accent, style and choreography but what he says is so deep and profoundly true that it is worth the effort.  

 

The Stagflation Trap Will Lead To Universal Basic Income And Food Rationing

The world will likely lack 10 to 15% of its food supply this Summer and consequently what is available will be twice as expensive as it was last year. This will be devastating in developing countries. But even in the West, inflation will be such that restructuring of the World Order and the social contract may become necessary. The ball is rolling: Brace for impact!

Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,

This past week during a conference discussing Biden’s “Build Back Better” scheme House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was confronted with questions on skyrocketing inflation. After referring to higher gas prices as the “Putin Tax”, she went on to offer perhaps the dumbest (or most insidious) denial on the causes of inflation that I have ever heard. She stated:

“When we’re having this discussion, it’s important to dispel some of those who say, well it’s the government spending. No, it isn’t. The government spending is doing the exact reverse, reducing the national debt. It is not inflationary.”

Anyone with a basic understanding of economics and how central banks operate must have felt their brains explode when they heard this, I know I did. But before I get into the numerous reasons why this claim is completely false in every way, I want to give a warning – It’s very easy in this situation to assume that Pelosi and even Biden are making these arguments because they are too stupid to grasp the fundamentals of debt creation, money velocity and fiat. That said, never mistake evil for mere ignorance.

All higher level representatives of the White House are briefed by economic experts (spin doctors) well before they answer any questions on inflation, and the things they say have been carefully scripted. It’s possible Pelosi mixed her lies up a little bit, but the narrative the establishment is trying to promote is well planned. Asserting that money creation is a counterbalance to inflation instead of the cause is not brilliant, but it’s not designed to convince many people, only create confusion.

Let’s not forget that only last year these same people were telling the public that inflation was purely “transitory” and that there was nothing to worry about. Now they are trying to cover their tracks and the culpability of the Federal Reserve. I believe the goal here is to simply stall for time until the stagflationary collapse unfolds. They have the perfect scapegoat as they launch an economic war with Russia (and likely China in the near term), and the effects of this war will hurt the US and Europe far more than many realize.

To quickly break down Pelosi’s bizarre statement I will make a couple of root observations:

• First, paying down the national debt has NOTHING to do with reducing inflation. Even if you could somehow gather enough assets to pay off the national debt without creating new dollars from thin air the current inflationary problems would persist. There would still be the matter of the tens of trillions of dollars already fabricated and floating around the global economy. Inflation is directly related to money supply and money velocity. The national debt is secondary to the issue.

• Second, we need to ask the most obvious question: If government spending “reduces the national debt” by paying it down, then why hasn’t the national debt gone down?

The Fed and the US government created over $6 trillion in fiat money in 2020 alone, and the national debt only went higher. In fact, the explosion of the national debt correlates DIRECTLY to the amount of dollars created by the Fed to supply various stimulus policies and bailouts over the years. The national debt in 2008 at the onset of the credit crash was around $10 trillion. It took hundreds of years to reach that level. In the span of only 14 years of Fed money creation the debt has now TRIPLED to over $30 trillion.

I’ll say it again – Government spending and Fed stimulus has tripled the size of our national debt in less than 14 years. And, of course, inflation has spiked as the amount of dollars injected into the global system causes the buying power of our currency to decline dramatically. More fiat dollars equals less buying power. This is reality.

Also, using Russia as a scapegoat just doesn’t hold up on the logic meter. The assertion by Pelosi, Biden and many establishment leftists has been that blocking Russian oil to the US is leading to inflation in multiple sectors of the economy, but it’s “necessary” to stop Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. One might assume that we use a lot of Russian oil. We don’t.

Russian crude oil only makes up 3% of US imports. Therefore, there is no way that sanctions on Russian oil are the cause of rising prices, nor do these sanctions have any effect on the Kremlin. Inflation was hitting 40 year highs back in December of last year, well before the war in Ukraine. In fact, news on the Fed’s interest rate hikes moves oil markets far more than news on Ukraine.

To summarize, I have a special message for Nancy Pelosi: Please so us a favor and shut up, you blood sucking crone. The American people are smarter than you, and your propaganda script is full of holes.

Onward to more important issues…

This narrative is not only about protecting the Biden Administration, it is also about protecting the Federal Reserve. As former Fed Chair Alan Greenspan once openly admitted, the central bank answers to no one, and that includes government officials. Many theorize that it is actually the central banks and international banks that make the majority of policy decisions for government, and politicians have very little say in matters. I’m inclined to agree given the number of banking elites and globalist Council on Foreign Relations members that seem to permeate every single presidential cabinet (this includes Trump’s cabinet as much as Biden’s).

Biden is an empty shell of a man barely able to maintain a semblance of sanity, who do you think really runs the country?

I have been writing a lot lately about how establishment elites and globalists actually benefit greatly from a stagflationary crisis, as long as they are able to divert blame to other sources and are not targeted for retribution by the public. One of these benefits includes a cover event for an agenda that the World Economic Forum calls the “Great Reset,” which is essentially just another name for “New World Order.”

Isn’t it marvelous that the government and media hailstorm of covid fear porn that was bombarding Americans only a few months ago has now suddenly vanished? What happened? Well, the establishment was defeated, that’s what happened. With conservatives and moderates in red states in the US and in nations around the world fighting back against the lockdowns and vaccine passports the globalists must have realized the battle in the long run was lost. Suddenly all talk of passports and medical tyranny is gone.

I realize there are some people out there that give the globalists too much credit and still argue the covid scheme was some kind of success. These people are wrong. If you want to see what success looks like go to China, where hundreds of millions are still suffering from lockdowns today and no one can do anything without an up-to-date vaccine passport and QR code. In China the vax passports are also used for tracking of the population as well as an element of their social credit scores. This is what the globalists wanted for all nations including the US, and they didn’t get it. Therefore, it’s on to the next crisis.

The stagflation threat worries me more than any other for a number of reasons, and it’s not just because of the potential for extreme poverty. As we all know, the strategy of “order out of chaos” is about creating enough desperation within a target population that the people are willing to give up their freedoms in exchange for a semblance of safety and normalcy. But what specific controls would the establishment seek out?

Stagflation has the ability to trigger much higher prices in necessities, while it simultaneously drags GDP down along with wages, jobs, manufacturing, etc. There is also the very real threat of government price controls, which would suffocate production and reduce the supply of goods even further. We are not quite to this point yet, but the danger is approaching fast.

There are two initiatives within the WEF’s Great Reset agenda that parallel stagflation almost exactly and I predict we will be hearing about them often in the coming year.

The first initiative is the concept of Universal Basic Income (UBI); we heard a lot about this a few years ago but the idea didn’t stick too well with the American public. The truth, however, is that we already had UBI for a time in the form of “covid stimulus checks.” This helicopter money was funded by over $6 trillion in central bank fiat created from nothing, and then directly injected into citizen accounts. It was barely enough for people to live on by itself, but in conjunction with other welfare programs and unemployment checks millions of people were living the easy life at home for well over a year. The money was so easy that the policy actually triggered a national labor shortage.

This small taste of UBI might have given people the wrong impression about such stimulus programs. After the covid programs the public might be led to believe that UBI would result in a carefree life with money to go around. By themselves without the benefit of other welfare programs, the covid checks would not have been enough to keep people housed and fed; the standard of living for the average person would have to fall dramatically for UBI to work at all. Enter stagflation…

With economic decline crushing our living standards it could be easier for the establishment to lure the public into UBI. Along with communist-style price controls across the board (and a reduced population due to starvation and poverty) the public would be able to survive, but barely. There would no longer be such a thing as “personal wealth,” only the scraps that governments and bankers are willing to throw people. On top of that, resistance to authoritarianism would be nearly impossible. Once the government takes on the role of mommy and daddy and the the only source of food and housing for the citizenry they are far less likely to stand against any abuse the establishment wants to dish out.

UBI is a candy coated trap which breeds dependency in a population. Free money is an addictive drug, and America just had a big taste during the pandemic.

This leads us into the second WEF Great Reset program, which is the concept of the “shared economy.” The globalists think that you should own nothing, have no privacy, and be happy about it. The initial danger here involves rationing. A government cannot institute UBI measures during a stagflationary crisis without also instituting price controls, because otherwise the fiat stimulus used to provide the UBI checks would only create MORE inflation in prices. If UBI is meant to offset inflation but it creates more inflation, then UBI becomes useless. This is another little fact that people like Pelosi will try to gloss over when they claim that money printing helps “fight inflation.”

When price controls are implemented manufacturing will implode further, because price controls mean producers of necessities will not be able to make much of a profit (or they will make no profit at all). There will be no incentive to produce among the people that actually know how to produce, and these people are not easy to replace. The supply of goods will not be able to meet demand.

Naturally, the government will take the opportunity to limit the amount of goods any single person or family is allowed to purchase or stockpile through rationing cards.

These kinds of measures have been used in the past, usually during wartime or under communist regimes. But in this case the rationing will be digital and permanent, and it will be designed to further control food and other resources as a means to prevent rebellion by the public. If you can’t store more than a week’s worth of necessities at any given time, then your ability to defy the government is nonexistent unless you know how to live off the land or have access to black markets. All they have to do is cut off your monthly UBI checks and ration account and watch you starve.