500th Post!

 500th post!

 

 I started this blog in March 2019. Originally, I had planned a technical, personal blog to discuss marketing, data, AI and other issues I was interested in. The idea was to share knowledge and exchange information with like-minded specialists. 

 This lasted about 6 months. My most interesting and popular post at the time, was an older post from LinkedIn where I presented the new dystopian project of Social Credit in China and explained how it could be used to literally enslave the population. It was supposed to be activated in 2020, It was and the results were exactly as expected... and worse!  

 Should we care about our citizen Score?

 Then Covid happened. As I was on a trip to Europe, I found myself locked down in France for over 6 months until Japan reopened its doors to residents and I could finally return home. 

 But during those 6 months something terrible happened. Together with over the top, unneeded political and economic measures which devastated the lives and mental health of many people, a dark cloud of censorship fell over the Western world. There had of course been a limited amount of censorship before, even in the most liberal countries, but you could still argue, present different points of view and discuss issues. With Covid, suddenly, you could not even scientifically discuss issues. Events would be followed by almost immediate Media announcements stating an official truth from which they would not move whatever inconvenient facts were uncovered later. Nay-Sayers would be ridiculed and more significant people have their carrier destroyed for stating facts which were not in line with the official truth. 

 And so I started researching the subject to try to understand and form my own opinion, free from the prevalent and often inconsistent official version.

 The first question was about the origin of the Corona Virus. We were told as an absolute truth that it could not come from the Wuhan bio-research laboratory and that it's origin was in the "Wuhan" wet market. This was suspect from the beginning as Chinese people do not eat bats although the virus was clearly coming from bats. (The only place in the world were people actually eat bats is in Palau, in the Pacific. Picture below.) The WHO being largely financed by China, it made sense that they would take some "freedom" with the truth. But why would Western governments follow suit?

 Then came the lock-downs. "Two weeks to flatten the curve" we were told which were extended again and again. Then the masks, "utterly useless" according to scientists at the time, but hey, people needed to "feel" this was an emergency so they were made mandatory in country after country with absolutely no effect whatsoever on the epidemic which went on from place to place with or without masks. 

Then came trash statistics to justify all the inept political and economic measures. In almost every country the age of death from the virus was higher that the normal average age of death in the country. This should have been enough to prove that the Corona virus was having an overwhelming effect on the old and frail which were the ones in need of protection, not the rest of the population. Finally, when the data came at the end of 2020, in most countries, there was no excess death for the entire year! Usually, a few months above average followed by a rapid return to normal. This was consistent with a slightly above average flu year...

 But while we were hammered with Covid propaganda, warning us about the risk of explosion (based on the discredited model of Pr Ferguson in the UK), a new campaign of vaccination with the new untested mRNA vaccines was started. Many immunology scientists warned us that the technology was experimental and potentially more dangerous that the virus itself due to the possible interference with the immune system. They too were silenced... and colossal profits were generated with almost no dissenting voices.  

 Thankfully, after two full years of this ordeal, we could at last look forward to 2022 as "the year after". If only! As the economies around the world reopened and the price of oil exploded back up to 90 dollar per barrel. Russia, tickled by the war preparations of Ukraine initiated a full invasion of the country, followed by immediate war-like sanctions showing the real intentions in Western circles. And the propaganda which had been fierce for Covid became almost totalitarian for Ukraine and was joined by censorship of "pro-Putin" information. More or less anything not towing the line of pro-Ukraine propaganda, however outlandish. 

 In-between, I ignored the bending of language, mostly in the US, as well as the political shenanigan, clearly engineered to disorient and confuse the population. But not the economic and financial stress just as clearly indicating the risks ahead. 

 And as mentioned in my previous blog, here we are now in mid-2022 on the edge of the precipice. The necessary tightening of interest rates in the US will play amok with Europe and Japan which run the risk of a full fledged implosion of their respective money before the end of the year. 

 What to expect?

 The Covid crisis came suspiciously two months after the Repo crisis in October 2019. The Ukraine crisis followed suspiciously the Covid crisis as it was losing steam in early 2022. Now, Ukraine is slowly being flattened by Russia with little scope for an upturn on the front. So what's next? Will the financial crisis be left to follow its course? Or will "something" happen? 

 I would bet for "something" following the two earlier occurrences. Ukraine? Taiwan? Iran? The flash points are numerous but probably look more palatable than admitting that you ran the economy into the ground with "free" money. So, will "Putin-oil-prices" be followed by "Xi-flation"? Hard to tell but I will keep trying to understand what is really happening and look at our macro-reality with articles on cycles, the economy, science, and yes from time to time, marketing, data and AI as I intended originally.

 PS: I welcome dissenting, argumented opinions although this blog is to some extent a personal effort to document key ideas and keep a repository of important articles.