We are on the edge of war and moving closer day after day to what nobody in his right mind should want. As we have explained regularly over the last few months, the divergent interests of West and East and irreconcilable.
At this stage, I do not see how this conflict can be resolved peacefully.
Where will the first black swan strike? It is of course impossible to guess. A little like trying to know which grain of sand will break the pile. But statistically, just as for earthquakes, we can pinpoint rather accurately when it will show up and unfortunately the time is just about now!
The Western world has just reached the edge of the financial precipice and consequently what breaks the camel's back is irrelevant as it is just about to break.
This is why each and every conflict in Ukraine, Israel or the China Sea is about to take a life of its own. Facing economic defeat, it will suddenly look like a good idea to someone, somewhere to upturn the economic game board.
Expect the unexpected and prepare for the worst. We're about to enter choppy waters.
Sacre bleu!!
The implications of French President Macron's shock announcement of snap legislative elections after sustaining a hammering from the far-right Rassemblement National in European elections are starting to show up in some much more worrying systemic signals for the EU overall.
The OATS Spread (the gap between the yields of 10-year bonds issued by France, known as OATS for obligations assimilables du Trésor, and German bunds) is back at the center of discussion ...
Complicating the situation further is the news that left-leaning political parties in France sealed an alliance to join forces in the upcoming legislative election, with polls showing it can win the second-biggest bloc behind Marine Le Pen’s National Rally.
The FT warns that Macron’s centrist alliance could be facing a wipeout in snap parliamentary elections after France’s leftwing parties struck a unity pact.
New projections suggested only around 40 of Macron’s MPs would qualify for the second round vote on July 7, in run-off races that would predominantly be fought between candidates fielded by the far right or the leftwing bloc for the 589-strong assembly.
The market's response should not be a surprise as the prospect of the far-left getting a sway over policy has rattled investors in the past.
When polls in 2017 showed the presidential election could end up as a head-to-head between Le Pen and Melenchon, French debt sold off sharply, quadrupling its premium over safer German peers in a matter of months.
France’s CAC 40 index erased its gains for the year, with banking shares such as BNP Paribas SA and Societe Generale SA among the biggest losers.
“It’s hard to ignore the parallels between our current situation and the time of the sovereign debt crisis, as there’s that familiar focus on election results, sovereign bond spreads and debt sustainability,” said Jim Reid, an analyst at Deutsche Bank AG.
That’s “coupled with no obvious sign about where things are headed next.”
Of course, as we noted on X, what Macron's decision has done is merely pull back the curtain on the reality that nothing is fixed in Europe...
“It’s a risk-off tone with concerns over France driving the markets,” said Mohit Kumar, chief economist for Europe at Jefferies International. “Particularly going into the weekend, investors would be taking some positions off the table.”
And today, as Bloomberg reports, we see further implications as funding markets freeze up, as a French public development bank has delayed the sale of a green bond...
SFIL SA postponed the offering of a green bond on Friday, without giving a specific reason, according to a person familiar with the matter.
The delay was due to volatility in the French market, said another person with knowledge of the offering, asking not to be identified as the matter was private.
A day earlier, SFIL had mandated six banks to arrange the sale of a five-year note, with the aim of raising at least €500 million ($535 million).
The question of whether he was crazy to call a snap election was posed to him directly by Le Figaro earlier this week.
His response: “Not at all, I can confirm.”
When he was asked about it again by reporters at the G-7, he said that other leaders had described his actions as “courageous.”
Merde alors...
An interesting philosophical article which can be resumed by: "Who are you going to believe? Me or your own eyes?
And in most case people indeed and especially since Covid choose to believe what they are being told.
Case in point, "The hottest May ever" in the UK under a cold pouring rain. Same in Japan, "Earliest 30C in Tokyo" yesterday although we're having a superb and amazingly cool Spring with temperatures often 5C to 10C below normal. But then again, who decides what normal is these days?
Slowly, step by step people are detaching from reality.
Previous generations used to know what reality was. They would go outside, see and experience the weather. Go to the countryside or live there, talk to farmers, see and enjoy animals, understand their needs and requirements. More generally understand that life is a complex balance between conflicting realities and necessities. They would argue with other people, confront ideas and slowly form their own.
Not anymore. Now, most people are hooked on screens most of the time. Their computers at home and at work. Their mobile phones everywhere else, monitoring and adapting to their needs. But more fundamentally "shaping" their opinions like never before by locking people in a "reality" bubble from which it is quasi impossible to escape.
Worse, most people crave this artificial and reassuring "reality" and more and more reject dissenting opinions and conflicting ideas. You just need to nudge them a little more everyday in the right direction and slowly you end up shaping public opinion like never before.
I find this very tragic but what do I know? Isn't it what an iconoclast dissident, a person we would have called a heretic not so long ago and who are now dismissed as conspiracy theorist, would say? And soon enough they switch off returning to their screens and reassuring artificial reality. A tragedy, certainly, but for whom? The lone non conforming individual asking forbidden questions, or the sheep walking swiftly towards the slaughterhouse reassured by the sheer numbers surrounding them?
Authored by Sinead Murphy via The Brownstone Institute,
The UK Meteorological Office has just reported that we have enjoyed the hottest May on record.
Meanwhile, those of us who have lived in the UK during May have endured unseasonal cold and rain, and have complained to one another constantly about it.
Welcome to the age of abstraction, when lived experience is irrelevant and theoretical constructions carry the day – when what is deemed right and true is unmoored from what is actually happening here and now.
Over four years ago, Covid lockdowns staged a dramatic confiscation of present reality. The question is, did we ever get it back?
When the UK government ordered its first lockdown at the end of March 2020, the present reality was put on hold – businesses were shut, schools closed, social activities banned, and human interactions restricted.
Chaos and suffering inevitably ensued. But in the midst of the misery, there arose a new possibility.
With present reality in abeyance, we were freed of its reality check. And we began to indulge in a new and joyous expectancy, of a wonderful future to revive a glorious past.
‘We’ll meet again,’ Queen Elizabeth assured us, reprising in her words and presence a fondly recalled togetherness of the last world war and promising its restoration as if it had only just been paused – as if the decades-long decimation of community and family and individual had never happened, as if only a temporary order to Stay Home stood between us and a lost world.
This new possibility was tantalizing and quickly took hold of Middle England, the BBC-believing bastion of British Values, bent ever more implausibly on keeping calm and carrying on.
By 2020, this beleaguered demographic had been all but spent from spotting certainties and consolations on the horizon of Left and Right, to forestall a looming vertigo at elite interests dashing its hopes from above and state-reliant deplorables whose fate beckoned from below.
Middle England, front and centre of policy and institution, had long been demoralized by its present reality:
Consigned to jobs made ever more bullshit by the erosion of ambition and discipline; flip-flopping between debt and the dregs of old desires; addled by precarity and the virtuosity that survives it; overseeing the retreat of human sympathy everywhere and applying for relief to anxiously awaited festivals that never failed to disappoint.
Lockdowns’ suspension of this reality was in itself a great boon.
But greater still was what followed: unimpeded anticipation, of a happy tomorrow to follow a happy yesterday, in which all we would do because all we had done was Hug Granny and Play Whist and Toast Marshmallows and Sing Carols.
This was not nostalgia. It was infinitely more potent.
In nostalgia, the past is glorified as what is dead, as what is ‘vintage’ or ‘retro,’ as what can therefore only be remembered, however wistfully.
In lockdown, the past was reanimated, suddenly reframed as what would be again once universal cocooning came to an end.
Lockdowns relieved us of the one thing that had stood between us and fantastic recollections of Digging For Victory and Winning At Cribbage: present reality.
We were free now to regret the past, not hopelessly as what was lost and gone, but hopefully as what had just been put on hold and would soon resume once things got back to normal.
Yes, we still went through the present realities of 2020 and 2021. We ate food and washed clothes and logged on, and drank too much and fought too hard and lost our sense of purpose. But suddenly, all of that was in parentheses – not real at all, just for now.
Lockdowns achieved a transfer of the reality-effect from an inglorious present, sodden with disappointment, to a host of abstract ideas plundered from an invented past and projected to an inflated future.
Over four years on, we are no longer supported in our exemption from present reality by government orders to Shelter In Place. Present reality is returned to us, after a fashion.
It appears, however, that we do not want it back, that the lockdown mode continues to tantalize.
The reluctance with which many have relinquished their facemask has surely warned of this. As has the ongoing normalization of work-from-home.
But there is another and more insidious aspect to our cleaving to lockdowns’ suspension of present reality: our growing enthusiasm for theoretical constructions for which present reality is irrelevant.
During lockdowns, we plundered the almost-dead stock of yesteryear for content for the new mode of fond expectancy – abstract ideas of Dunkirk Spirit and Oh! What A Lovely War were hastily put abroad, adorned with Union Jack bunting, mugs of builders’ tea, allotment lemonade, and royal memorabilia.
But already before lockdowns ended, the stock of abstract ideas began updating.
The widely disseminated death of George Floyd launched a Black Lives Matter theme complete with its cartoon fist, and the rainbow of Gender was a seamless segway from the I Heart NHS refrain that had played ad nauseam for Covid.
As lockdowns receded, we were encouraged to extend our exemption from present reality by a growing fund of available abstractions: Climate, Health, Equity, Security, Safety, Identity…
These abstractions come with ready-made, insertable symbols: Black Lives Matter fists and Gender rainbows have been joined by Ukraine flags, Greta hastags, syringe icons, and wildfire emojis.
We trade these ideas as if they are old friends – unobjectionable, universally liked. We pin their cutesy signals to our messages and our lapels.
But these ideas are not our friends. They are quite the opposite. Because these ideas are not only theoretical, they are necessarily theoretical – by definition inapplicable to our lives and therefore indifferent to our flourishing.
The idea of ‘Environment’ is no more relevant to the rubbish blowing around our street than the idea of ‘Climate’ refers to the weather outside or the idea of ‘Health’ is concerned about how we feel or the idea of ‘Gender’ maps onto our biology.
Nothing about these ideas touches down in present reality. By trading them between ourselves – by posting them and tweeting them and dropping them into our casual conversations – we perform a contempt for present reality and a will to exempt ourselves from it, perpetuating the effect of lockdowns long after the lockdowns have ended.
Early Covid scepticism often argued that they invented Covid so they could have lockdowns. In retrospect, this was wrong. They invented lockdowns so they could have Covid. Not the disease of course, which was a concoction. The idea. Or rather, the kind of idea.
Covid is not just an abstract idea. It is an essentially abstract idea. It refers to something never heard of before – an asymptomatic disease, a disease for which present reality is necessarily irrelevant.
The Vaccine, which followed fast upon Covid and with great eclat, is another essentially abstract idea. With no significant effect on either transmission or infection, it is among us only as scorn for lived experience.
But Lockdown too is such an idea, describing a degree of distancing of people from one another and of cessation of the activities of life that could never be achieved in reality.
It is in this sense that lockdowns have defined our societies, escorting us from a time when present reality was relevant and required to be manipulated to a time when present reality is irrelevant and can be vetoed at will.
Lockdowns both launched an assault upon present reality by physically removing us from it and piloted, through the impossible idea of Lockdown, the cycle of abstraction that continues to transfer the reality effect from lived experiences to theoretical constructions.
In the end of it all, perhaps they invented lockdowns just to get Lockdown, imposing abstention from present reality to kickstart abstraction from present reality.
Of course, we still live out the realities obscured by their abstractions – beneath the pristine idea of Lockdown, there arose material conditions from which millions continue to suffer, not to mention the physical devastation unfolding under the idea of the Vaccine.
But somehow, all of that is in parentheses. The fallout from lockdowns is revealed in public inquiries and injuries from vaccines are reported in the media. Yet, it produces little effect – as if none of reality is real, but only a series of aberrations.
Exemption from present reality, begun so theatrically by lockdowns, continues unabated. What counts as vital circulates in the abstract, and lived experiences are sidelined as mere happenstance, hardly worth our notice at all.
Foucault’s most important insight is that you do not need to enslave people first in order then to exploit them. There are ways of exploiting people that also enslave them.
The disciplinary techniques of industrial production, with their unerring distribution of people in spaces and times, made people at once docile and useful.
In 1990, Deleuze updated Foucault’s insight to explain that you do not need to pacify people first in order to steal from them. There are ways of pacifying people by stealing from them.
The debt-based consumerism of post-industrial societies at once made people complacent with gratification and transferred their wealth to elite corporations.
By 2020, we had moved beyond the paradigms of production and consumption, even reproaching ourselves for overproducing and overconsuming.
By 2020, it was the age abstraction.
Lockdowns officially launched this new age in spectacular style. But quickly, lockdowns became unnecessary.
For, it emerged that you do not need to lock people away from present reality first in order to circulate unbelievable ideas.
If reality is sufficiently hostile and the ideas are sufficiently abstract, you can lock people away from present reality by the circulation of unbelievable ideas.
When we shake our heads to one another about Climate, or submit to screening for the good of our Health, or question our Identity, we exempt ourselves from present reality as effectively as if we were under orders to Stay Home.
And the powers that should not be can tell us anything they like, even that it’s sunny outside.
When the people in charge start telling you things like these, you know the end is near. In fact national statistics such as inflation, jobs and employment have been cooked for over 30 years. It is important to understand that there are no "real" numbers for these economic variables which are complex by nature and difficult to represent accurately. And so there is naturally room for interpretation. Then you add hedonistic adjustments for inflation or birth/death adjustment for employment and your numbers take a life of their own, guaranteed to never exceed fixed limits.
It's little bit like genetic engineering but in a far more abstract way. Basic technologies were developed in the 1980s and 1990s and have been refined since with smothering and adjustments. It is not just Hollywood which is merging facts, reality and dreams skillfully!
Every first Friday of this year (here, here and here) we have spent hours deconstructing the glaring propaganda peddled by Biden's Labor Department, meant to show just one thing - how "strong" the economy is under the current administration - and exposing just how ugly the underlying labor data truly is. Last Friday's nonfarm payrolls was the most recent case in point: for those who didn't read our extended analysis titled "Inside The Most Ridiculous Jobs Report In Years", which dissected the laughable claim that the US added 272K payrolls (more than the highest estimate), here is what we found.
While the Establishment Survey did indeed report that 272K "jobs" were added, this number also included multiple job holders; stripping those out, we get that the actual number of "employed" workers plunged by 408K...
... which is also why the unemployment rate actually went up to 4.0% for the first time in over three years, despite this marvelous "increase" in payrolls. More importantly, it means that gap between the always upward sloping (and market moving) Establishment Survey - which counts the number of payrolls - and the flatlined Household Survey - which counts the number of actually employed workers - which hasn't made a new high since late 2023 and is back to where it was last summer, is now a stunning 9 million, the biggest on record.
But how is it possible that payrolls rose nearly 300K while overall employment tumbled by more than 400K? Well, this is where another propaganda gimmick so frequently abused by the BLS comes into play: the birth death adjustment, a statistical fudge factor that imputes job growth for any given month based on the entirely subjective assumption made by a group of pro-Biden bureaucrats of how many new businesses were created (or destroyed) in the US economy any given moment. Well, in May, the Birth/Death adjustment - recently exposed by none other than Bloomberg - "added" 231K payrolls to the pre-seasonally adjustment number; more astounding is that the Birth-Death imputation has resulted in 56% of all "payroll growth", or 1.9 million statistical "payrolls" in the past year, when according to the BLS a total of 3.4 million "payrolls" were crated.
There's more. While one can debate the quantitative aspects of the jobs report, there is no debating the qualitative: there it's one giant disaster: as we learned in May, whatever the actual number of payrolls (again, not jobs) added, what we know is that the trend of full-time to part-time worker conversions continues, with 625K full-time jobs lost in May, offset by 286K part-time jobs....
... which is hardly a new trend: in fact, over the past year, the US has lost 1.2 million full-time jobs, replaced with 1.5 million part-time jobs.
Finally, there is the data point which we first highlighted more than a year ago, and which has since emerged as the biggest political talking point involving the labor market: the fact that since 2018, the US has created exactly zero native-born jobs, and all the job growth has gone to foreign-born workers...
... and which as Standard Chartered confirmed last week, means almost entirely illegal aliens.
There is much more in our full discussion of the latest jobs report, but you get the idea: every so-called "strong" jobs report has been a disaster if one puts in even a little work to dig below the pristine, if fake, surface. And while we expected this charade to continue indefinitely, and certainly at least until the November election, at which point suddenly all the truth about the ugly labor market would be revealed to usher in the new president amid an economic crisis, we were shocked when none other than the Fed chair admitted today that the Biden admin was rigging jobs data.
In response to a question from a Bloomberg journalist during the post-FOMC presser, asking the Fed chair to comment on the state of the labor market, the Fed Chair said that two years ago the labor market was "overheated" and has since gotten back to "normal", largely thanks to "supply from to immigration" - translation: illegal aliens have been the main reasons for the increase in employment and the drop in wages and thus, overall inflation, which as we discussed recently, is the narrative that is being pushed out to mitigate demands by most Americans to halt illegal immigration.
Where things got very interesting, however, is when Powell was discussing the demand-side of the labor market: here, he addressed the dropping quits level, the decline in job openings and wages, but more importantly, the rising unemployment rate - from 3.4% to 4.0% which clearly goes against the narrative of red hot payrolls - all of which the Fed chair summarized as strong job creation, yet caveated by saying that "there is an argument that [payrolls] may be a bit overstated."
Note: he didn't say "understated" because the "-stating" always goes in just one direction: the one that makes the resident of the White House look good.
In other words, the jobs - like so many things about this Potemkin economy - are a lie, and while Powell immediately realized what he had said, and tried to couch it by adding that payrolls are "still strong", suddenly the entire narrative of a strong labor market imploded in front of our eyes, because if the Biden admin will lie about a "bit" of the jobs report, it will lie about any part of it.
And, as we have shown above and every month this year, lie is precisely what the Biden administration has been doing, month after month, year after year.
And the biggest stunner, as Edward Snowden put it so eloquently, is that he's "not sure I've ever seen the chairman of the Federal Reserve publicly accuse the White House of cooking the books on employment numbers, but here we are."
We couldn't have said it better ourselves.
This is one of the major points I have been making over the years: A fiat money system necessarily will destroy democracy. There is no other way possible.
Authored by Thorsten Polleit via The Mises Institute,
The fiat money system will not disappear just like that. Any expectations or hopes to that end should be tempered. Yes, the fiat money system could collapse; yet there is a significant likelihood it will persist longer than most people might think. This prolonged existence may come at a cost: a fascist state encroachment on the freedoms of citizens and entrepreneurs would be more profound than most people realize.
Much ink has been spilt about the impending collapse of the international fiat money system. It is a debate that naturally gains momentum in times of crisis—as witnessed in the aftermath of the 2008/9 global financial market debacle or the politically dictated global lockdown crash of 2020/21.
At the same time, however, it is entirely justified to harbor significant concerns regarding the fiat money system. After all, it is plagued by blatant economic and ethical defects.
Are you wondering about the essence of fiat money? Let’s break it down into three characteristics:
State-sponsored central banks wield a monopoly over the production of fiat central bank money. Upon obtaining fiat central bank money, commercial banks are allowed to generate their own money, known as fiat commercial bank money.
Fiat money is typically created through lending without the backing of real savings. It is essentially created out of thin air (or ex nihilo, as it is called in Latin).
Fiat money predominantly exists in dematerialized form. While it may manifest as colorful printed pieces of paper, its primary existence resides in digital entries on computer systems, represented by bits and bytes.
Whether we’re talking about the United States dollar, euro, Chinese renminbi, Japanese yen, British pound, or Swiss franc, they are all fiat money. We know from monetary theory that fiat money is not “natural” or “innocent.” Unlike moneys emerging from voluntary agreements in the free marketplace, fiat money was introduced through state intervention—involving coercion and violence—leading to many negative effects.
Fiat money is inherently inflationary, gradually losing its purchasing power over time. This phenomenon disproportionately benefits a select few at the expense of the broader population.
Moreover, fiat money causes economic instability by perpetuating cycles of boom and bust that disrupt market equilibria and create societal inequalities. It drives excessive indebtedness within economies and fuels the unchecked expansion of the state, often at the expense of citizens’ and companies’ freedoms.
Last, but not least, fiat money is dishonest money, and engaging with fiat money daily erodes the morals and values of the people involved in its circulation. However, despite these considerable drawbacks, once fiat money has been put into circulation, it is here to stay; it won’t disappear just like that. Why?
Fiat money fosters what I have previously described as “collective corruption,” wherein many people become proverbially ensnared by the structures that fiat money establishes, fostering dependency and entrenching its influence. Consider this: fiat money acts as a catalyst for the expansion of the state, making it bigger and more powerful. Companies receive new orders from the state, prompting adjustments in production and employment to meet artificial demand.
Or consider: people keep their life savings in fiat money. They invest, directly or indirectly, in government bonds and bank debentures and maintain time and savings deposits.
Gradually, people become profoundly reliant on the perpetuation of the fiat money system, consenting to nearly any measure proposed by the state (and the special interest groups taking advantage of it) to keep the fiat money system going.
Yet, akin to Achilles’ heel in Greek mythology, fiat money has a crucial vulnerability. In Homer’s epic Iliad, Hector meets his demise at the hands of Achilles. In retaliation, Hector’s brother Paris strikes Achilles with a poisoned arrow, targeting his vulnerable heel and ultimately leading to the downfall of the seemingly invincible warrior.
The Achilles’ heel of the fiat money system lies in its dependence on the demand for money. However, what does this demand for money signify? Essentially, it reflects people’s desire to hold money, influenced by a multitude of factors.
For instance, people tend to maintain money balances relative to their income. As income rises, so does the desire to hold money. The demand for money typically diminishes when interest rates rise. This is because holding onto money entails opportunity costs when higher returns could be earned through, say, bank deposits and bonds.
History demonstrates that the demand for money remains relatively steady when there is a high level of trust in the currency, meaning people are not worried that the purchasing power of their money will decline or be destroyed. Given this insight, it’s clear how states and their central banks seek to handle the fiat money system in their favor. Their primary strategy involves creating illusions and deceiving the populace to maintain control and influence.
For instance, people are often fed the narrative that inflation of 2 percent equates to “stable money”—a claim that is, of course, inherently false. In reality, a 2-percent inflation rate destroys the purchasing power of money by 2 percent every year. Furthermore, statistical goods price indices are often cobbled together to present a lower inflation rate than experienced in the market. This manipulation serves to downplay the true extent of monetary debasement.
Additionally, central bank officials and mainstream economists frequently attribute inflation to various external factors, such as alleged price gouging by greedy businesses or supply disruptions by oil-producing nations, while vehemently rejecting the notion that inflation is a monetary phenomenon resulting from the central banks’ fiat money printing. In fact, central banks are determined to avert a permanent drop in the demand for money at all costs. When the demand for money falls, people tend to exchange their money for alternative assets, such as stocks, real estate, precious metals, etc.
Consequently, the prices of these goods surge—further exacerbating the decline in the demand for money. In extreme scenarios, this can trigger a widespread flight from money, predicting a collapse of the financial and economic system. To maintain the fiat money system, central banks meticulously adjust the level of inflation to, firstly, ensure a gradual and ongoing erosion of the value of money, subtle enough to either go unnoticed or be reluctantly accepted.
Secondly, this controlled inflationary pressure acts as a defense against episodes of goods price deflation, which have the potential to make the fiat money system come crashing down. Lastly, central banks aim to prevent situations where inflation spirals out of control, where hyperinflation destroys people’s demand of fiat money entirely.
Is this delicate balancing act sustainable? Recent decades seem to suggest so. Despite numerous crises and the chronic erosion of purchasing power, the demand for money in many economies have remained relatively stable. However, can the balancing act succeed in the long-term? Probably not. The primary concern is the enormous accumulation of debt within the fiat money system, eventually reaching a tipping point of unsustainability.
At that juncture, people will be confronted with the question: Should the fiat money system collapse under the weight of deflationary pressures, or should the outstanding debt be financed by creating new money? Unfortunately, history suggests that in a time of “existential crises,” people consider expanding the money supply as the lesser of two evils.
Once initiated, a deliberate inflation policy becomes incredibly challenging to contain, let alone reverse. It has the propensity to spiral out of control, potentially culminating in high inflation or even hyperinflation, thereby precipitating a collapse in the demand for money and eroding the very foundations of the fiat money system.
However, in such a dire scenario, one must reckon with the state’s determination to avert the demise of its fiat money regime at all costs. The state (as we know it today) can be expected to exhaust all available measures to safeguard the continuity of its monetary system.
Consider this: in response to a crisis, the state resorts to drastic measures, such as imposing price and capital controls and even nationalizing banks and large corporations, transforming the economy into a highly regulated command economy.
Under such circumstances, the state assumes unprecedented control over production, dictating what goods will be produced, how much, when, and by whom, even regulating who will be allowed to consume how much and when.
In other words, the economies end in a form of fascism. A bleak outcome indeed. However, it doesn’t have to be this way. There are ways out. Much like Achilles had a vulnerable heel in Homer’s Iliad, the fiat money system also possesses vulnerabilities that can be addressed.
To mitigate the damage caused by the fiat money system, or even dismantle it altogether, the first step must be targeting its Achilles’ heel, weakening the demand for fiat money. The less fiat money people demand, the smaller the damage inflicted by the fiat money system will be. However, how can this objective be accomplished?
First and foremost, it can be accomplished by educating the populace about all the significant harm perpetuated by the continued existence of fiat money and the consequences it has. This entails, as a first step, highlighting the adverse impacts it has on individuals and their communities and encouraging people to use fiat money for transactions rather than for savings.
In other words, this can be through discouraging investments in government bonds or time or savings deposits in banks while encouraging investments in tangible assets such as stocks, precious metals, land, and property. Further actions can include ceasing the support for governments or politicians who endorse the fiat money system and fail to take actions to dismantle it.
Ultimately, of course, it is crucial to inform people that sound money is indeed possible. This involves advocating for people’s freedom to choose their preferred money, whether it be gold, silver, bitcoin, or any other alternative.
The concept of a free market in money is easy to understand and, from a technical standpoint, quite easy to implement. By allowing individuals the autonomy to select their preferred currency, we effectively target the Achilles’ heel of the fiat money system, ultimately benefiting the vast majority of people.
Yes the EU is heading for a wall, and then what if midnight rings much sooner as discussed in the previous article?
Likewise, I haven't discussed much recently the tsunami of news concerning the ineffectiveness of the fight against Covid or the danger of the vaccines. Understanding the problems early was important, getting a late confirmation that we were right not so much.
In any case, the war for control will move quickly to another subject as this is indeed the rule of the game: change the game while it's being played, keep the enemy (us) destabilized by moving fast, use the shock doctrine to immobilize your opponent. Yes people are waking up as we saw recently with the EU elections, but they are too slow and uncoordinated and therefore ineffective.
The financial instabilities are heading for a climax during this second part of the year 2024. We can therefore expect "events" to take place and preempt consequences before they happen. Let's see.
That’s in our view not only probable, but now imminent.
Take a look at this chart of unfunded pension entitlements in major European countries between 300% and 500% of GDP.
Mix this in with collapsing demographics and you’ve a recipe for debt disaster.
As the entire system collapses, those in power look to consolidate and hang onto power, choosing to ensure that dissenting views are censored.
Speaking of dissenting views being censored…
I don’t know if you saw the news, but…
AstraZeneca withdraws Covid-19 vaccine worldwide, citing surplus of newer vaccines
With the formal withdrawal of the AstraZeneca vaccine, it’s appropriate to remind people of this double page spread in The Times from March 2021 that hailed the AstraZeneca vaccine as 100% effective.
But note the article highlighted bottom right.
Here it is:
The murderers behind it, including AstraZeneca CEO, Sarah Gilbert, receiving a standing ovation at Wimbledon as the sheeple clap their own poisoning. You can't make this up!
By the way, this is the same Wimbledon where social distancing was required and adhered to while lining up buying tickets and then of course everyone sat down next to each other. Mindless fools.
It can all be a tad depressing, but there’s always a bright side.
Certainly, if you’d been reading these missives back in the WuFlu hysteria, then you may well have steered clear of the… ahem… safe and effective “treatment,” and if that is the case, then whenever you’re feeling down just remember that over a trillion dollars (with a capital T) worth of propaganda never worked on you. Ain’t that something?
Beyond freedom, control of the Internet, Covid and the usual subjects we discuss on this blog, the one I mention almost every day recently is the risk of a nuclear war.
Canadian Preper may be well informed but he is a "preper" so probably not the most reliable person on the subject. But here is the President of Serbia saying exactly the same thing in a far more moderate tone but with the same urgency. (The video in the link below is only 5 mn and well worth listening.)
In a nutshell, the West and Russia are in a trap of their own making. If Russia loses the war, the country is dismantled and this is of course unthinkable for the Russian leadership. Conversely, if the West loses the war, it loses its prestige and the whole world financial system comes crashing down. (Not that it wouldn't otherwise, just a little faster.) This is also unthinkable to the Western elites, reason why they double down their bet every six months.
Where does this lead us? Unfortunately, there is absolutely nothing new about this. There is even an official name: Wikipedia
https://www.theb2024/06/12/ the-train-has-left-the-station
The reality is that France is being kicked out of Africa and there is a clear risk concerning the colonies. No wonder Macron is panicking. France is at the forefront and will be one of the first "victim" of BRICS. But then again what can the country do? Send soldiers it doesn't have to tame the natives, 19th Century's style? Difficult obviously. So the easy solution is to up the ante in Ukraine and join the Baltic micro nations in pushing NATO to war. The risk is that the strategy could succeed. But then what? Send the whole French army (Competent, deployable soldiers are estimated at 20,000!) to Ukraine? Madness!
The video below is well worth watching, especially the second part to understand what's going on in New Caledonia and the area around the South Pacific.
Some powerful ideas from Dave Rubin talking to Russell Brand. Great analysis although I find it personally painful to see the demise of the US in real time.
The weakness of France makes the country extremely dangerous with just the wrong mix of insufficient power and remembrance of past "grandeur" to be preserved at all costs, just like the UK.
Fortunately in both cases, the electorate is saying NO to delusional politicians.
Unfortunately the risk of a wider conflict will not fade away. The fundamental cause of economic decline and risk of financial collapse remains and will eventually oblige Europe to do "something". We are entering a high stakes period.
The Kremlin says that NATO member France is fast becoming a 'direct' participant in the Ukraine war, which threatens to drastically inflame tensions and escalate the conflict further, possibly beyond Ukraine's borders.
French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday committed to transferring Mirage fighter jets to Kiev, as well as set up a French training program for Ukrainian pilots. He said this while Zelensky and Biden were in France commemorating and attending D-Day 80th anniversary events. Macron went so far as to repeat his call for Western countries to be willing to send troops directly into Ukraine.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov reacted as follows: "Macron demonstrates absolute support for the Kyiv regime and declares readiness for France's direct participation in the military conflict."
"We consider these statements to be very, very provocative, inflaming tensions on the continent and not conducive to anything positive," Peskov said Friday on the sidelines of the Saint Petersburg International Economic Forum.
Macron has pressed ahead undeterred despite repeat Moscow warnings, as The Washington Post observed:
The comment, made in a news conference with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, is the latest sign that France and other allies may now be willing to put NATO country troops on Ukrainian soil — an idea that some allies, including the United States, have long considered potentially escalatory.
Macron on Friday called Ukraine’s request for in-country training “legitimate” and said several partners have “already given their agreement.”
“We are going to use the coming days to finalize a coalition, as broad as possible,” he said.
Some reports have claimed President Biden has talked Macron out of putting Western boots on the ground in Ukraine; however, Biden's message appears to more simply be that this action can't be taken without consensus withing NATO.
Indeed such a plan would run the risk of triggering NATO's Article 5 common defense treaty, and see nuclear-armed confrontation between Russia and the Western alliance.
The below recent analysis by Responsible Statecraft shows why Macron's plan to get allies on board at this sensitive moment politically are likely doomed to failure [emphasis ZH]...
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Macron stated that Russia must not “win” the war; but, like all the other leaders of NATO, he has never defined what he means by this. Perhaps he means fighting Russia to a standstill followed by a compromise peace. In private conversations, however, French officials simply echo the U.S. line that only the Ukrainians can make peace — and the Ukrainian terms for peace require not a stalemate, but the complete military defeat of Russia.
The need for Europe to develop a capacity for self-defense should be obvious. Having nailed themselves to the Biden administration, European governments have very belatedly woken up to the realization that the next president may well be Donald Trump, and that the U.S. commitment to Europe may radically diminish. Indeed, given U.S. problems at home and in the Middle East, plus growing tension with China, this commitment is likely to diminish in future whether or not Trump is elected.
However, Macron’s hope that the supposed threat from Russia will prompt Europe to unite militarily behind French leadership vastly exaggerates both French military power and European willingness to follow France’s lead. After years of budget cuts, the French army is far too weak to intervene in Ukraine without full U.S. support. When in 2011 President Nicolas Sarkozy of France tried to take the lead in the “humanitarian intervention” in Libya, within a very few weeks he was begging an unwilling President Obama to take over the operation on behalf of NATO, for fear of a humiliating Anglo-French failure.
In terms of appealing to other European countries, Macron’s hawkish stance on Ukraine is targeting East European partners. These governments, however, are precisely the countries with the most deeply-rooted determination to oppose European strategic autonomy and maintain until the bitter end the closest possible alliance with the United States.
When considering the coming crisis, we mostly focus on developed countries as the downturn will transform their economies which will plung...
