One Bank Reveals The Dismal Truth About The $150 Trillion Crusade Against Climate Change

 A Don Quijote fight against CO2 while importing everything from China and cutting down tropical forests is no way to mitigate whatever is coming our way. But by now, it should be obvious to anyone that the purpose of Global Warming has very little to do with the planet and everything with upward redistribution of wealth speeded up by QE.

 

Last week, Bank of America sparked a firestorm of reaction amid both the pro and contra climate change camps, when it published one of its massive "Thematic Research" tomes, this time covering the "Transwarming" World (available to all ZH pro subs), and which serves as a key primer to today's Net Zero reality, if for no other reason than for being one of the first banks to quantify the cost of the biggest economic, ecologic and social overhaul in modern history.

The bottom line: no less than a stunning $150 trillion in new capital investment would be required to reach a "net zero" world over 30 years - equating to some $5 trillion in annual investments - and amounting to twice current global GDP.

Needless to say, the private sector has nowhere near the capital required to complete this investment which is why Bank of America generously estimate that all or parts of the bill would have to be footed by central banks in the form of tens of trillions in QE. And since QE is essentially debt monetization, and since $150 trillion in new debt would have devastating consequences on the economy, BofA was kind enough to share its calculation of just how inflationary this billionaire pet project would be: the "full monetization" scenario, where central banks inject $5 trillion in liquidity every year via QE for 30 years, would result in incremental 3% of inflation for a good decade. This is inflation over and above whatever is already coming down the pipeline.

Which is where we get to the punchline, because as BofA admits, the crusade against climate change, the ESG doctrine, the "Net Zero" world, whatever one wants to call it, it's all about greenlighting the biggest QE episode in history, one wrapped in the "noble" veneer of fighting for the most important cause in the history of civilization, but in reality it's just the biggest wealth transfer scheme in history:

We just see a peak of <1% additional inflation a year over a three decade horizon. Under more aggressive scenarios where central banks opt to absorb either half or the full decarbonization bills through quantitative easing, the risks of an inflation shock grow. Still, we think our third case is the most likely scenario, as it would be politically difficult to justify a much more expansive monetary impulse. True, while central bankers have expressed a desire to help green the economy, their corporate bond purchases have historically been restricted to crisis time policies through quantitative easing and remain well below purchases of sovereign debt. As such, any purchases of corporate green bonds would likely be limited both by the size of future purchase programs and their proportion relative to the overall corporate bond market, with slightly higher allocations under more progressive purchase policies that highlight environmental concerns

At this point alarm bells should be going off even among the most brain-dead progressives because for all its touted benefits, the costs are starting to emerge and - at least when it comes to the next two or three generations - they will be absolutely crushing for the middle class, while allowing the top 1% to plunder and pillage virtually all the world's assets. Think of it as the biggest mandated theft in world history, and suddenly one can understand why every private-jet setting billionaire is oh so very vocally in support of a "net zero" world.

It gets worse.

Now that the genie is out of the bottle, and the hard questions like "who gets to pay for all this" are being asked, Bank of America had a follow up report in which it made it abundantly clear that "contrary to some arguments, we think climate mitigation efforts are likely to hurt growth in the next decade or so."

In his note titled "A hot take on climate change" (once again available to professional subscribers in the usual place), Bank of America chief economist Ethan Harris first goes through all the familiar steps of just why it is so imperative - and noble - to do something to fight greenhouse gases (similar to what we have read for much of the early part of the 20th century, when article after article starting in 1912 lamented the catastrophe that is global warming, at least until the 1970s when the lack of actual global warming prompted "scientists" to suggest that global cooling and "a new ice age" is inevitable instead). At least the scientists could agree that it's "global something" (turns out it would really mean "global money printing"), and as Harris laid it out, this is what "scientific consensus" appears to agree on now:

1. Human behavior is having a significant impact on climate change and climate events.
2. Even under optimistic assumptions—such as achieving net zero emissions by 2050—the impacts will likely grow over this century.
3. Early action is much more effective than waiting until later.
4. Uncertainty about the exact impact is not an excuse for inaction: a wide range of outcomes means more, not less urgency in acting.

None of the above is new as the mainstream media has been bombarding its audience for the past decade with emotional platitudes and qualitative appeals as to why something has to be done.

However, as we first touched upon last week, any discussion of the economics of climate change should start and end with the fact
that it is the ultimate example of “externalities”—private activities (usually for corporations who scions and shareholders are by now in the top 0.01% of global wealth) that create public costs. Indeed, as Harris writes, climate change is the ultimate externality because activity in one place impacts the whole world. The fact that climate change is global in nature and that so much of the benefit of actions accrues to everyone else has some powerful implications.

First, unlike other technology “races”, climate mitigation is more of a cooperative “game” than a competition. When countries like the US and China “compete” to develop new technologies, two points of conflict often tend to arise—a fight for market share and a fight for geopolitical superiority. By contrast, countries that develop efficient climate mitigation technologies have a strong incentive to share the benefits. If they hoard the technology, the impact on their own climate will be much smaller.

This is great... if only it weren't a pipe dream. Why? Because as the recent refusal by China's Xi Jinping - incidentally the world's largest polluter - to join his fellow "climate change crusading" world leaders at the COP26 Net Zero summit in Italy later this month, it's all one giant spectacle meant for the masses. Because if the world's largest polluter is making it clear he has no interest in actually reducing his own CO emissions, then anyone preaching some bullshit about a "cooperative game" can shove it.

Still, where Harris is somewhat correct, is in pointing out the "depressing consensus out of the climate change literature" that even if everyone cooperates, the earth will continue to warm as there are lags in the link between GHG and global warming. Indeed, under the best of outcomes—with every country hitting aggressive mid-century goals—the policy shift will mitigate, not stop the problem. Hence in BofA's view, "climate events will be a rising downside risk—of varying intensity—under almost any plausible scenario."

In other words, the net zero theater of the absurd is one where the actors' motives clearly diverge - when only a convergence from the start could make it work - yet where even a best case scenario of complete cooperation has no chance of actually stopping the problem, just mitigating it. Oh, and meanwhile, the world is set to incur some $150 trillion in costs.

Which then brings us to BofA's core assessment: will all this be good or bad for growth? Here, we find some unexpected truth...

In BofA's view, both press reports and many of the studies of climate change focus on the wrong side of the economy—the impact on aggregate demand rather than on productive capacity. For example, the latest report from the International Energy Agency (IEA) argues that pushing toward net zero emissions would lower employment in the traditional energy sector by 5 million by 2030, but would add 14 million jobs in the clean energy sector. They also argue that “the increase in jobs and investment stimulates economic output, resulting in a net increase in global GDP to 2030.” Global GDP growth averages 0.4 higher over the 2020 to 2030 period. The downside would be that some countries would be winners and others would be losers, and that inflation - once one factors in the trillions and trillions of central bank QE needed to fund this whole crusade - could be 1-to-3% higher.

Here Bank of America disagrees, writing that by the time serious climate mitigation efforts are underway the global economy will likely be close to full employment. This will likely be the case in the US. Hence staffing up the industry means drawing workers out of the rest of the economy. At the same time, building up green energy infrastructure will require more than a doubling of investment in the sector, from roughly 2% of GDP now to a 4.5% average over the 2020-30 period. Where is that 2.5% of GDP going to come from? (spoiler alert: money printing, and everyone knows this).

Or maybe note: Harris admits that in the short run, central banks could in effect accommodate the surge in demand, allowing their economies to overheat. Hence the IEA estimate of 1-to-3% higher inflation. However, the BofA economist disagrees with that estimate as well. If the Fed allows a permanent overshoot of economic potential, inflation will not just increase, it would trend higher. As in the 1970s there will be a feedback loop between price inflation, wage inflation and price expectations.

Translation: the "net zero" crusade against climate change really is.... the necessary and sufficient condition to trigger the hyperinflation that the world's massively indebted nations need to inflate away their debt.

But wait, there's more, because as Harris concedes next, in reality, while inflation is set to soar, climate mitigation is "also likely to slow the supply side of the economy,  particularly in the ramping up phase." He explains further:

Big structural changes in the economy tend to create big transitional challenges. Workers need to move from one sector to another, some industries will boom while others shrink, and as regulations and taxes increase, capital that had been invested in producing and using dirty energy will rapidly become obsolete.

All of this means lower trend growth during the transition from a dirty to a green economy. And, as noted above, there isn't even any assurance that a transition to a green economy will ever be completed once it has begun; at best, we may be stuck in the "mitigation" phase for ever.

The highly asymmetric payoff - BofA concedes - comes in the very long-run, with the benefits accreting here and now to those who stand to reap the generosity of central bank printing, which naturally will be those who own the inflation-resistant assets such as stocks, commodities and, of course, cryptos; while the pain borne by everyone else which - sadly - means the shrinking middle and lower classes, who however are "in it for the long run", and for the benefits that a cleaner climate will (perhaps) provide their grandchildren and great grandchildren. Their generation, however, will be sacrificed at the altar of the 0.1% good. Because like every true religion, "climate change" also requires a sacrifice so a handful of chosen ones can live better.

Just the tip of the iceberg

So much for theory, what is happening on the ground? As Harris explains, the progress on policy is painfully slow as some policies continue to worsen rather than help the problem. Consider two examples. First, according to IEA, countries spend more than $400BN per year subsidizing mainly oil, but also gas and electricity consumption. In many instances there is a conflict between helping the poor and helping the environment. Second, despite what BofA calls "rising sea levels and increased hurricane activity," some countries incentivize locating houses in harm’s way through subsidized insurance and disaster relief. Almost as if the countries themselves, and certainly the Malibu beachfront billionaires, don't actually believe in - gasp - rising sea levels. Again there is a conflict between two goals—helping vulnerable people and reducing the cost of climate events.

Meanwhile, climate change and mitigation efforts already appear to be impacting the global economy. While scientists are very careful to avoid assigning a causal relationship between climate change and individual climate events - perhaps for the same reason that "science" emerged as a politically-motivated farce when reaching rash, ideologically-driven conclusions during the covid spectacle  - but they point to some disturbing trends. Consider two examples highlighted by BofA: "First, data published by the Environmental Protection Agency show that the number of wildfires in the US has shown no trend from 1983 to 2020. However, when they focus only on large fires, the amount of acres burned seems to have shifted up significantly starting in about 2000. Second, the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory collates studies of hurricanes and tropical cyclones. Its report is sprinkled with the usual qualifiers (medium to high confidence) but the evidence points to an increase in the intensity of storms in recent years." Dear Bank of America - this is called tortured goal seeking: squeeze the data hard enough and any pattern you want will eventually emerge.

More importantly, BofA admits that there is now evidence that climate change and mitigation play "some role" in the recent rise in energy prices (to this we would counter that not only does climate change mitigation play "some role" but that the chief reason for the global energy crisis is the idiotic push for a ESG utopia, something which we warned would happen back in June in "Will ESG Trigger Energy Hyperinflation").

But where it gets worse is that given the regulatory outlook, and the now prevailing stigma associated with any fossil fuels, investment in dirty energy capacity will be low and depend on high prices. Meanwhile green energy is not ramping up fast enough to fill the gap. Hilariously, changes in wind and rain patterns seem to have affected the supply of wind and hydro power. The same wind and hydro power that was supposed to lead the world out of its fossil fuel addiction. Because so blind were the scientists in pushing their political agenda, they failed to see what was right in front of their noses, the same way Reuters figured out last week that European and U.S. cities planning to phase out combustion engines over the next 15 years first need to plug a charging gap for millions of residents who park their cars on the street. Oops - perhaps in retrospect, the policymakers and scientists should have though of the blindingly obvious first, instead of rushing to goalseek the agenda to makes them the most monetary benefits...

LIVING IN A POTEMKIN WORLD (PART TWO)

Link to Part Two of LIVING IN A POTEMKIN WORLD

“Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” – George Orwell

All the examples of truth suppression and silence regarding the truth pale in comparison to the massive conspiracy of silence related to this build back better pandemic scheme. From the outset, when ZeroHedge and a few other alternative media outlets postulated the virus had escaped from the Wuhan bio-weapon lab, a conspiracy of silence was initiated to cover-up the facts. Twitter crushed anyone who put forth this possibility and suspended ZeroHedge from posting for months.

Why the cover-up to protect the communist party of China? As usual, it’s about the money. These media companies, universities, politicians, mega-corporations, Biden and Fauci are all bought off by China. The lies and misinformation continue to this day, as China’s control of major players within our government, media, academia, and corporate America is deep and broad based.

The silence and suppression of the lab leak theory was necessary so Biden and his globalist backers, along with their media propaganda outlets and social media tyrants, could blame Trump for allowing the virus to spread across the U.S. Their impeachment farce, to take the focus off Biden’s traitorous actions in the Ukraine, had dissipated under an avalanche of lies and misinformation, just like Russiagate.

Mass murderer Fauci, the chief funder of weaponizing the China flu, and his cohort of Chinese funded “experts” lured Trump into signing his own death warrant by shutting down the country over a flu, less lethal to those under 50 than the annual flu. After achieving the goal of striking fear into the masses, the lies, falsities, miss-truths and silencing of truth tellers has taken on a new dimension never imagined by Orwell, Huxley or Bernays.

Dehumanizing the populace through mandatory masking, even though Fauci scoffed at the need for masks in March 2020, CDC studies showed masks don’t stop viruses, numerous scientific studies proved masks don’t work, and the cases rose exponentially in January 2021 in all areas with mandatory masking requirements, was the goal of the globalists. The media publicity campaign to promote masks and lockdowns was pure propaganda, based on zero facts and no data.

The PCR test was engineered to produce cases that did not exist, because fear was necessary to allow mail-in ballots for the election, and to destroy the economy before the election. Any doctor or scientist questioning the validity of the PCR test was cancelled and censored. There is complete silence in the media about the FDA pulling its EUA for the PCR test as of December 31, because it can’t distinguish between covid, the flu, or common cold.

The most blatant cover-up and silence about the truth is regarding these experimental gene therapies, framed as vaccines, and designed to enrich Big Pharma, corporate hospital chains, the media pushing the disinformation, government lackeys like Fauci and his pals who will be rewarded handsomely for their acquiescence, doctors paid off to keep silent, and scientists getting big fat grants from Big Pharma.

This might be the most despicable, evil undertaking in the history of our country. And it is still in its infancy. Even though there have been 63 scientific studies proving invermectin, a safe and cheap drug prescribed to human beings for decades whose inventor received a Noble Prize in medicine, drastically reduced the symptoms of covid and essentially ended the pandemic in India, it has been scorned, ridiculed, and suppressed by the media, Fauci, Walensky and Big Pharma.

If they admitted that it works, their EUA for the jabs would be invalidated, and the tens of billions in profits would dry up and not be able to be spread around to the co-conspirators. Money talks and the deaths of hundreds of thousands around the world is a small price to pay for increasing the wealth of the oligarchs and their hatchet men. Twitter & Facebook declare any positive factual information about ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine to be misleading and false.

They have banned dozens of doctors and journalists from presenting alternative views from the approved globalist narrative. Alex Berenson, Naomi Wolff, Ron Paul, Front Line Doctors (FLCCC), NY Post, and dozens of other truth telling people and organizations have been de-platformed and denied their First Amendment rights because mega-media corporations say they have a monopoly on the truth.

Joe Rogan recovered from covid in a few days using ivermectin and a couple other Front Line Doctor recommended treatments. CNN and the rest of the compliant left-wing media ridiculed him for taking horse de-wormer. One problem for them. Rogan has a bigger and more listened to platform than these dying legacy media echo chambers. He destroyed shill faux doctor Sanjay Gupta and fake news CNN and proved they are nothing but lying mouthpieces for the corrupt authoritarian establishment.

Fauci, Big Pharma, and the media lied about the efficacy of these “vaccines”, which aren’t even vaccines. The lies about them being almost 100% effective in keeping you from contracting covid were perpetuated by Fauci, Biden and Big Pharma in early 2021. No questioning of the trial data was allowed. We now know their Big Lie has been utilized to demand compliance, institute vaccine passports, and force companies to mandate vaccines. And now they are coming for your children, even though children have virtually 0% risk of dying from covid. They have doubled down on forcing these jabs upon those who refuse to participate in this dangerous experiment.

The truth is these vaccines do no work as advertised. They do not protect you from catching the virus, spreading the virus, being hospitalized by the virus, or dying from the virus. Its efficacy is so poor, they are demanding you get a booster after six months. The booster’s efficacy will wear off even sooner. An eternity of booster shots are just what Big Pharma and the Fauci worshipers want.

Real vaccines eradicate disease (smallpox, polio). This vaccine creates variants, injures people, kills people within weeks, and appears to be creating a long-term ADE (anti-body dependent enhancement) problem for the millions who have put their trust in a Big Pharma experiment, where they face no liability for any death and injuries they cause. Data is emerging in Germany & the UK showing the overall mortality rate, not due to covid, rising rapidly. You won’t hear that on any media outlet, but the facts cannot be denied.

As Biden and his fear mongering leeches continue their all-out assault on our liberties, freedoms, right to make a living, and right to choose what medicines we put in our bodies, their time is running out. Half the country is chanting “Let’s Go Brandon” as this Potemkin Pandemic fizzles out, no matter how hard the fake news media, Raggedy Ann Psaki, Dementia Joe, and Flip Flop Fauci, attempt to keep the fear and loathing at an elevated level. Real journalists and real medical “experts” would be congratulating the American public for the tremendous success in the 52% decline in cases over the last month, and the 25% reduction in deaths. But facts don’t align with their narrative, so the plunge in cases is never mentioned.

In August, the attack dog media were overjoyed by the rise in cases in Florida. DeathSantis was trending on Twitter and stories of imminent disaster were widespread because DeSantis made vaccine mandates and masking mandates illegal, while telling Biden to shove his totalitarian measures. It’s funny that there is complete silence about the 91% plunge in cases over the last two months and 62% crash in deaths in the last month. With a population over 21 million, Florida has one of the lowest rates of covid per million people in the nation, with no authoritarian measures or mandates, and a vaccine rate in the middle of the pack. Floridians are living their lives like normal.

As the shrill cries for everyone to be vaccinated continue from the “experts”, a strange occurrence seems to be happening. Let’s examine the facts, without bias or spin. Vermont is the most vaxxed state in the country, with 70.4% of their population fully vaxxed. How could their cases be at an all-time high, exceeding the winter peak, and still rising? Inquiring minds would want to know whether this means the vaccines don’t work or are they actually the cause of the new cases. Don’t expect an investigative report from 60 Minutes, Jim Acosta, or Rachel Maddow. They are too invested in the narrative and highly compensated to report what they are told to report.

Now to the other side of the ledger. West Virginia is the least vaxxed state in the country, with only 40.8% of their population vaxxed. The liberal elite MSNBC junkies scorn and ridicule these uneducated “hillbillies” and their vaccine “hesitancy”. How could their cases fall by 45% over the last month with such a low vaxx rate? It’s almost as if the vaccines have absolutely no impact on the level of cases or deaths. The national rise in cases that started in August, peaked in September, and will dwindle to virtually nothing in November, happened when the majority of adults were already vaxxed.

Since the beginning of this plandemic, cases have been purposely overstated by a factor of at least five; deaths attributed to covid have been overstated by a factor of at least ten, as only 6% of deaths can be attributed solely to covid; vaccine effectiveness is less than 50% and only lasts a few months; the adverse reactions and deaths from the vaccine appearing in the VAERS database is understated by at least a factor of ten as the medical industry desperately covers up the damage being inflicted on humanity.

Natural immunity from having the virus is at least ten times stronger and long lasting than these vaccines, but the paid-off medical “experts” purposely ignore these facts. The question is why the lies? For what purpose are the lives of millions being purposely destroyed? What is the true agenda? I think Huxley and Orwell capture the gist of the situation in their own brilliant assessments of mankind.

“A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude.”  – Aldous Huxley

“All tyrannies rule through fraud and force, but once the fraud is exposed, they must rely exclusively on force.” – George Orwell

There are millions of Americans loving their servitude, voluntarily masking, begging for their booster, unquestioningly believing everything Fauci utters, demanding vaccine mandates and passports, and never entertaining the possibility they have been lied to and led to slaughter by their government leaders. These people are weak minded, easily manipulated, and will never question their totalitarian masters.

But, there is a segment of the population, of probably less than 20%, who are capable of seeing through this entire fraudulent episode and choosing to resist the tyranny subverting our country. There are still real journalists (Berenson, Greenwald), non-compromised  doctors (Robert Malone, Pierre Kory, Peter McCoullough), and alternative media websites who day in and day out fight to expose the fraud, lies, and deception engulfing our world.

Now that this fraudulent hijacking of our civilization has been exposed by the few remaining truth tellers, the totalitarian globalists are enacting their agenda exclusively through force. The vaccine mandates and passports are designed to coerce the resistant into falling into line, or their jobs, income and livelihood will be destroyed. Biden and his handlers have no issue with overriding the Constitution with dictatorial proclamations designed to intimidate companies and citizens into submission.

Defiance and protests are met with clubs, pepper spray, rubber bullets, and imprisonment. When the Attorney General considers parents voicing their displeasure at school board meetings as domestic terrorism, while judging ANTIFA and BLM burning cities and killing cops as peaceful protests, you know there is a much more diabolical aspect to this farce.

At first this Build Back Better Great Reset agenda seemed far fetched and seemed like a conspiracy theory. But, as we know, virtually every conspiracy theory over the last decade has proven to be true. It is now undeniable to anyone with critical thinking skills, which eliminates every CNN, MSNBC, NPR, Washington Post, NY Times acolyte, this globalist agenda is real and in danger of succeeding. The brazen disregard for all societal and cultural norms, the rule of law, borders, individual rights, and the Constitution, are proof this is an ongoing coup designed to tear down the foundations of our society, so a new world order based on communistic principles can be installed.

How else can you explain the purposeful opening of our southern border to third world vagrants; the purposeful destruction of our domestic energy industry; the forced firings of tens of thousands in the medical industry, transportation industry, military, law enforcement, and other vital industries due to vaccine mandates for a vaccine that doesn’t work; the destruction of the job market through welfare incentives to not work; subversion of the military through wokeness and purging of anyone who voted for Trump; purposely generated massive inflation through Federal Reserve money creation; bankrupting the nation with $3.5 trillion social engineering green new deal bills; and wreaking havoc on global supply chains with inane policies and restrictions.

These men seek power for its own sake. They want complete control over the world and a reduced population of slaves. As individuals who understand the truth of what’s going on, we can often feel alone and abandoned. This is part of their plan. They want us to abandon hope. They want to separate us from others of like mind. They know we outnumber them, so they crack the whip in order to make us bow down to their demands. But once one stands up, others will follow, and then the tide will turn.

LIVING IN A POTEMKIN WORLD (PART ONE)

 Months after months, it is more and more obvious that Covid-19 is not about a mere virus but about building a New World Order. The opportunity was manufactured and will not go to waste. Time is of the essence. The financial system is crumbling...

 This two part essay is as complete and encompassing as can be.

 Link to the article on The Burning Platform (Part One)

“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.” ― George Orwell, 1984

“Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.” ― George Orwell, 1984

I never thought I would experience the dystopian “fictional” nightmare Orwell laid out in his 1949 novel. Seventy-two years later and his warning about a totalitarian society, where mass surveillance, repressive measures against dissenters, mind control through government indoctrination and propaganda designed to convince the masses lies are truth, fake is real and the narrative can be manipulated to achieve the desired outcome of those in power, have come to fruition.

Everything is fake. I don’t believe anything I’m told by the government, the media, medical “experts”, politicians, military leadership, bankers, corporate executives, religious leaders, financial professionals, and anyone selling themselves as an authority on any subject matter. We are truly living in times of mass deception, mass delusion, and mass willful ignorance.

The term Potemkin Village comes from stories of a phony movable village built by Grigory Potemkin in the late 1700’s to impress his former lover, Catherine II, during her journey to Crimea in 1787. He supposedly erected fake villages along the banks of the Dnieper River, as her vessel sailed by, to impress her with the progress he was making on her behalf. After she passed, he would have the village disassembled and then reassembled further along downstream.

I guess this was an early version of fake news, though I am sure there were also plenty of falsities and propaganda in the newspapers of the time. But, in our current day, oppressors have taken lies, falsities, miss-truths, and propaganda to heights never conceived by Edward Bernays, George Orwell or Joseph Stalin.

Any semblance of a Constitutional Republic given to us by Franklin and his courageous fellow revolutionaries has dissipated, as decades of delusion, debt, decadence, and degeneracy have sapped any trace of revolutionary spirit, desire for freedom, love of liberty, or aspirations of self-reliance and self-responsibility among the masses. When you step back and observe how we got to this point in history, you realize it wasn’t a mistake, but a plan by those who control the levers of power, with a goal of accumulating immense riches and total dominion over those they consider nothing more than disposable chess pieces in their game of building a new world order.

We are nothing more than parasites to these tyrannical power-hungry satanical fiends. They have proven they will use any means necessary to achieve their evil ends. The last two years have pulled back the curtain to reveal the oligarch globalist bloodsuckers who have been draining the lifeblood from our nation. The enemies have been exposed by their lies and misdeeds.

For most of the past century the ruling class has been able to implement their methodical pillaging operation utilizing Huxley’s “soft” dystopian methods versus Orwell’s “hard” dystopian techniques. Huxley, who at one time was Orwell’s French teacher in high school, wrote a letter to Orwell shortly after the publication of 1984 where he put forth his vision of the future:

“Within the next generation I believe that the world’s rulers will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging and kicking them into obedience.”

As contemporaries, Huxley (Brave New World – 1931), Bernays (Propaganda – 1928), and Orwell (1984 – 1949) all agreed those wielding the power of government, whether seen or unseen, use propaganda techniques to mold the minds of the masses in ways conducive to keeping them in power. Huxley and Bernays believed people could be controlled through mind manipulation, materialism, entertainment, and pharmaceuticals. Orwell, in the wake of 65 million deaths in the space of seven years, and the Soviet totalitarianism in Russia, foresaw a future with a boot stomping on a human face forever.

From 1950 until 2000, Huxley and Bernays’ view held sway, as Americans were enthralled by consumption, sports, movies, technology, and the miracle of living far above their means through plentiful debt provided by Wall Street bankers and their Federal Reserve lackeys. We were so distracted by amusing ourselves, we allowed oligarchs and their highly compensated apparatchiks in government, the media, the military, and the corporate world to hijack and ransack our country for their enrichment.

Neil Postman in his 1985 book Amusing Ourselves to Death compares and contrasts Orwell and Huxley’s views of dystopian tyranny:

“What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.” In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.”

Since 9/11 the tables have turned. The implementation of the pre-written Patriot Act and initiation of the surveillance state, as revealed by Snowden and Greenwald, has ushered in a new Orwellian era where a truncheon to the skull and boot on the face supplements the endless technological distractions and incessant propaganda spewed by the legacy media networks and rising social media censorship cabal.

There has clearly been a coalescing of the government, Surveillance state, media, military, Big Tech, Big Pharma, and Big Business to seize the power, control and wealth of the planet and put it in the hands of the few. The Build Back Better marketing campaign, with the goal of a new world order, controlled by oligarchs like Gates, Soros, Bezos, Schwab, Zuckerberg, and Bloomberg, is not a wild-eyed conspiracy theory. It is a work in progress.

The level of brazen dishonesty and blatant criminality among those who portray themselves as leaders and experts in our debauched society has reached astronomical levels over the last two years. There are no trustworthy politicians. No trustworthy corporate executives. No trustworthy military leaders. No trustworthy scientists or academics. They have all been captured and are financially beholden to those controlling the purse strings.

It’s always about the money and power that comes from having money. If you are paid handsomely to lie, you will lie. The truth is meaningless to those who seek power and control. Suppression of the truth is more financially rewarding to those seeking world domination. This entire engineered pandemic scheme has exposed this fact.

A virus, released accidentally or purposely from a Chinese bio-weapon lab, funded by Anthony Fauci, was weaponized and marketed as the greatest threat to mankind in world history, as a means to cover-up a financial system ready to implode, unseat a president through fraudulent mail-in ballots, enrich the wealthiest men on the planet, test how far totalitarian measures could be pushed, and roll out of an experimental gene altering therapy that may or may not be part of a bigger population culling operation promoted by Gates, Schwab and the rest of the Davos crowd. What we do know is this virus only kills very old, very sick, and very obese people. It’s a virus with the largest marketing campaign in world history, paid for with your tax dollars.

With a 99.7% survival rate, there should have never been lockdowns, school closures, mandatory masking, vaccine mandates, or elevating criminal mass murderers like Fauci to sainthood status. The elderly in nursing homes and hospitals should have been protected. Instead, they were slaughtered by Democrat governors putting infected patients into their midst.

Safe and effective early treatment with ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine would have saved hundreds of thousands of lives, but the corrupt medical “experts” were bribed by Big Pharma to push these untested, ineffective, dangerous vaccines on a fearful public with promises of a cure. More lies. The “vaccines” do not keep you from catching covid, spreading covid, being hospitalized with covid, or dying from covid. In other words, it is a complete and utter failure.

When you then see Fauci, Biden, Walensky and their Hollywood marketing machine demanding vaccine mandates and vaccine passports to entitle you to basic human rights, you realize this has never been about your health or the good of society. This dementia ridden joke, play acting as president, is doing the bidding of the invisible government, as documented by Bernays, in implementing a social credit system styled after the communist China totalitarians they admire.

The un-vaxxed will soon be treated like the Uyghurs in China, placed in internment camps until we see the light, unless we start to fight back NOW. The WEF cadre of captured politicians positioned in countries across the planet have been activated to implement the Build Back Better plot to achieve their goal of a new world order controlled by tyrannical oligarchs and their highly compensated bureaucrat servants.

They have been testing their totalitarian methods in countries with smaller populations (New Zealand, Australia) to see how far they can push their citizens before they push back. When the protests begin to get violent, they back off and pretend to reduce restrictions, then re-institute the lockdowns and restraints on freedom after hyping some new variant. As Bernays claimed, those in control of society know how to psychologically manipulate and mold the minds of the masses through the use of fear, greed, rewards, pain, threats and lies.

We have entered one of the most dangerous periods in world history, as this engineered crisis is being commandeered by sociopathic totalitarians to implement their warped demented plans to destroy the existing societal structures and economic systems in order to build back better under a centralized communistic authoritarian techno-gulag configuration designed to benefit the few at the top, while keeping a boot on the face of humanity forever. When you understand their end goal, much of the seemingly incomprehensible decisions being made by Biden and his handlers come into clearer focus.

It is difficult to step back and try to observe the current state of affairs in an impartial manner when those manipulating the narrative are intent on creating conflict, emotional reactions, anger, and outrage. Pitting us against each other and distracted by daily concocted outrage porn spewed by the completely captured corporate media outlets, allows the oligarchy (billionaires, bankers, politicians, mega-corps, Deep State) to continue their plunder and pillage crusade unhindered and undetected.

They are counting on their decades long social indoctrination program, known as the public school system, to keep the masses from thinking, questioning, or recognizing they are being screwed over the people they believe are looking out for their best interests.

Not only are the dark forces currently ruling the earth not telling the truth, but they have a far greater power in keeping silent about the truth and suppressing it when it rears its ugly head. The truth would set us free, so it is vital for the totalitarian propagandists to keep it from being heard or seen by the masses. Huxley realized during the last Fourth Turning that if you controlled the narrative and suppressed the truth, you could influence opinion much more effectively.

“Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth. By simply not mentioning certain subjects… totalitarian propagandists have influenced opinion much more effectively than they could have by the most eloquent denunciations.” – Aldous Huxley

The current batch of autocratic techno-propagandists have tools which make this truth suppression far easier than it was in the 1930’s and 1940’s. With six mega-corporations dominating the mainstream media outlets, they easily coordinate their messaging and can jointly ignore anything which undermines their predetermined narrative. The examples of ignoring, silencing, or censoring the truth over the last two years could fill hundreds of pages, but a few examples will suffice to make the point.

In September 2019, the financial system began to shudder and quake, with overnight repo rates of 10% indicating tremendous strain. The MSM kept silent as the Fed reversed their tightening and resumed QE to infinity. The press has never questioned the trillions created out of thin air by the Fed to prop up this debt bloated carcass, even as the economy surpassed the GDP before this engineered scamdemic. Why doesn’t 60 Minutes do an expose on why the Fed continues to keep interest rates at 0% when inflation is raging in excess of 10%? Complete silence on issues which hurt the average person the most.

The entire Russiagate Deep State coup against Trump was built on lies, misinformation and suppression of facts by the compliant co-conspirators in the media. Obama, Hillary, Comey, Biden, Brennan, Clapper and a myriad of other traitorous filth conspired against a sitting president and the media kept silent about the facts. The most blatant example of a complete cover-up of the truth by the MSM and the Silicon Valley social media censorship police was, and still is, crackhead Hunter Biden’s laptop during the final days of the presidential campaign.

There is unequivocal proof Hunter Biden and the Big Guy were shaking down foreign governments for cash, influence peddling, and threatening foreign leaders who dared to look into their slimy traitorous dealings. All of the left-wing media outlets either ignored the story or called it Russian disinformation, because they had to get Biden elected. Twitter and Facebook censored and banned anyone putting forth the facts of this story. Then issued fake apologies afterward.

But that was just the beginning. The halt to vote tabulations in the middle of the night in all the swing states, with Trump significantly ahead, was not reported by the press. Fake stories about burst pipes were promulgated. Vote counting irregularities and truckloads of missing ballots didn’t happen if the media didn’t say they happened. Video surveillance of fake ballots being added to the counts was not shown by the media outlets.

The Washington Post and NY Times just applied the same language about conspiracy theories and the most secure election ever to override the substantial factual evidence showing massive voter fraud in the key swing states. Whenever evidence was presented on social media platforms, the person was banned, and their evidence disappeared. Zuckerberg needed to make sure the $420,000 he spent to swing the election to Biden was not wasted. By not reporting on the Arizona audit results, the huge irregularities found never happened. Right?

Since the installation of Trojan Horse Joe, the level of silence, suppression and censorship of the truth has reached new heights. Of course, the worst attack on democracy since Pearl Harbor, and far worse than 9/11, was the armed selfie insurrection of January 6, during which no one was armed except the black cop who murdered an unarmed white woman. The media, who gleefully exposes every detail of a cop’s life when they immobilize a drug addled black criminal resisting arrest who died of an overdose, seemed completely uninterested in even trying to identify the cop who murdered Ashli Babbitt.

Why Shortages Are Permanent: Global Supply Shortages Make Fantastic Financial Sense

 So very true! The facts are that there are no universal truth in economics. Different logics apply at different times. A profound and fascinating discovery.

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

The era of abundance was only a short-lived artifact of the initial boost phase of globalization and financialization.

Global corporations didn't go to all the effort to establish quasi-monopolies and cartels for our convenience--they did it to ensure reliably large profits from control and scarcity. Not all scarcities are artificial, i.e. the result of cartels limiting supply to keep prices high; many scarcities are real, and many of these scarcities can be traced back to the stripping out of redundancy / multiple suppliers of industrial essentials to streamline efficiency and eliminate competition.

Recall that competition and abundance are anathema to profits. Wide open competition and structural abundance are the least conducive setting for generating reliably ample profits, while quasi-monopolies and cartels that control scarce supplies are the ideal profit-generating machines.

The incentives to expand the number of suppliers, i.e. increase competition, are effectively zero. America's corporations spent $11 trillion buying back their own stocks over the past decade; that's equal to the combined GDP of Japan, Germany and Italy. If adding new suppliers to the global supply chain were profitable, some of that $11 trillion would have exploited those vast profits.

The financial reality is attempting to compete with an established cartel that has captured regulatory and political mechanisms is a foolhardy waste of capital. If firing up a new supplier of essential solvents, etc. was so captivatingly profitable, the why wouldn't Google and Apple take a slice of their billions in cash and go make some easy money?

The barriers to entry are high and the markets are limited. A great many specialty lubricants, solvents, alloys, wires, etc. are essential to the manufacture of all the consumer and industrial products that are sourced globally, but the markets are narrow: manufacturers need X amount of a specialty solvent, not 10X.

Back in the good old days before globalization and financialization conquered the world, corporations lined up three reliable suppliers for every critical component, as this redundancy alleviated supply chain chokeholds. But to keep those three suppliers in business, you need to spread the order book among all three. Nobody will keep a facility open if it's only used occasionally when the primary supplier runs into a spot of bother.

And so now we're all seated at the banquet of consequences flowing from stripping out redundancy and competition, and ceding control of supply chains to quasi-monopolies and cartels. Scarcities are their source of profits, and since it makes zero financial sense to spend a fortune building a plant to make solvents, lubricants, alloys, etc. in limited quantities in markets dominated by quasi-monopolies and cartels, shortages are a permanent feature of the 21st century global economy.

The era of abundance was only a short-lived artifact of the initial boost phase of globalization and financialization; now that the consolidation is complete, shortages make fantastic financial sense.

By all means thank Corporate America for squandering $11 trillion to further enrich the top 0.1% and insiders. Alas, there was no better use for all those trillions than further enriching the already-super-rich.

Hidden Bankruptcy: The Reality Behind Uncle Sam's Inflated Bar Tab

 As discussed many times over the last two years, it is more and more obvious that the Covid emergency has very little to do with the Covid virus but is conversely much better correlated to the looming bankruptcy of the US and the related end of the current monetary system. 

 As we barrel full speed towards the maelstrom, we can already hear the roar of the waterfall ahead.

 

Authored by Matthew Piepenburg via GoldSwitzerland.com,

Below, we look at The hidden bankruptcy of the US in the wake of even more inflationary forces confirmed by cost-of-living-adjustments, Uncle Sam’s interest expenses, objectively unloved Treasuries and a roaring as well as convenient COVID narrative.

Math vs. Double-Speak

Given the fact that just about everything coming out of the mouths of debt-cornered policy makers requires a lie-detector and “double-speak” translator, we’ve been arguing since the moment the Fed began peddling the “transitory inflation” meme/myth to think differently.

In short: It’s our view that inflation is a snowball growing, not melting.

Toward this end, we’ve written and spoken at length as often as we can as to the many converging forces pointing toward rising inflation—from increased governmental guarantees (controls) over commercial bank loans, commodity super cycles to just plain economic realism, as inflation (and hence currency debasement) is the only tool left (beyond bankruptcy, taxation and “growth”) to service otherwise unsustainable debt levels: A hidden bankruptcy.

But let us not stop there, as other inflationary storm clouds are on the horizon yet ignored (not surprisingly) by an increasingly clueless financial media.

Another Glaringly-Ignored Inflation Indicator—COLA 2.2022

In particular, we are thinking about the U.S. Cost of Living Adjustment (“COLA”) for 2022 which could easily reach 6%, the highest of its kind since 1982.

It would seem that the U.S. Social Security Administration, unlike Powell, is aware of inflation, and therefore preparing (i.e., “adjusting”) for the same.

As the price for entitlement obligations rises, so too will the level of money printing to pay for the same, a veritable vicious circle for rising inflation.

Then there’s simple math.

We’ve talked about the Realpolitik of negative real rates as the final and desperate way for debt-soaked sovereigns to service their debt.

The signs of this are literally everywhere.

If we take, for example, a 1.4% Treasury Yield and subtract a potential 6% COLA increase for Social Security, we get -4.6% real rates, which will be a boon for alternative stores of value like gold and silver or “currencies” like BTC (as well as farmland and high-end real estate, which is continuing to enjoy a debt-jubilee of negative 3% real (i.e., “free” mortgages).

The necessary evil of negative real rates also speaks to the ongoing taper debate…

Giving Clarity to the Taper Debate

As tweets by twits pour across the electronic universe, it’s often important to notice what is not being “tweeted,” such as the interest expense on Uncle Sam’s national bar tab.

As the financial world hangs on the edge of its seat to see if the Fed will taper its QE (i.e., money printing) program and send bonds (and stocks) to the floor and rates toward the sky, they’ve ignored some basic math and a key chart.

Specifically, we are referring to the chart below representing the true interest expense on the debt bar-tab of a now fully debt-intoxicated Uncle Sam:

With central-bank “accommodated” asset bubbles (from stocks to real estate to art) now at historically unprecedented levels, tax receipts flowing into the U.S. coffers from the ever-growing millionaire-to-billionaire class have been rising.

This may seem good for that punch-drunk Uncle Sam, but what no one is talking about is that despite even those “capital gain” receipts, the interest expense (i.e., “bar tab”) in D.C. is now an astronomical 111% of those same tax receipts.

In other words, U.S. tax income doesn’t come close to even paying interest (let alone that archaic concept known as “principal”) on growing U.S. debt obligations.

Can anyone say, “Uh-oh?”

Given the stark but ignored reality of unpayable U.S. debt, the implications going forward are fairly clear.

First, the Fed will not be able to “taper,” as less QE will mean an even higher interest rate, and thus higher interest expense on debt it still can’t pay at today’s artificially low rates.

Stated otherwise, a “taper” would only add helicopters of gasoline to a debt fire that is already burning the Divided States of America.

Given the dangers of such a taper, it likely won’t happen because it can’t happen, and this means more money printing and hence more negative real rates creating a hidden bankruptcy ahead, a weaker USD and rising precious metal prices, among others.

But What If the Fed Tapers?

Alternatively, should the Fed somehow turn hawkish and taper its QE support in the face of a debt forest fire, Treasuries will sell off dramatically, rates will rise, markets will tank, and the USD will surge—not good for Gold, BTC or just about anything else.

Does it Matter?

But as we’ve also tried to make crystal clear, there is no way the Fed will taper QE liquidity before it sets up a back-channel for even more liquidity from the Standing Repo Facility, Reverse Repo Facility and FIMA swap lines, which are all just “QE” by other names.

In simple speak, therefore, the “taper debate” is no debate, as the Fed has many liquidity tricks up its greasy sleeves.

In addition to liquidity tricks, the Fed has some ugly bonds to buy.

Embarrassing Treasuries

As we’ve said so many times, the biggest issue today is unsustainable and embarrassing debt levels requiring inflation (hidden bankruptcy), compliments of policy makers rather than a viral pandemic narrative out of all proportion to its confused scientific truths.

COVID has been an all-too timely and convenient pretext for blaming global debt ($300T) or U.S. public debt ($28.5T) on a flu rather than a sordid history of grotesque mismanagement from politico’s and bankers that was in play long before the first headlines out of Wuhan.

Furthermore, COVID monetary and fiscal policy measures effectively became a (hidden) pretext for a second market bailout greater in scope (yet better in optics) than the post-Lehman bailout of those otherwise Too Big to Fail banks.

In short, the façade (and branding) of a humanitarian crisis allowed a market-saving liquidity rescue (Bailout 2.0) to an otherwise Dead-on-Arrival bond market in late 2019.

In case this sounds too controversial to consider, please follow the Treasury market rather than our bemused nouns and adjectives, not to mention our total lack of scientific/medical credentials.

Bad IOUs

Just like friends don’t accept IOUs from drug addicts, global investors heading into 2020 stopped buying Uncle Sam’s Treasuries.

In simple-speak, Uncle Sam just seemed too debt-drunk to trust.

As a result, his Treasury bonds, once seen as “safe havens,” were finally seen as “bad jokes”—akin to the paper coming out of equally discredited zip codes like Greece, Italy or Spain.

For this reason, foreigners in a nervous 2020 (unlike a broken 2009) had not only stopped buying U.S. Treasuries, they were selling them.

Yep.

Months ago, smart voices from the Street, including Stan Druckenmiller, were warning about the implications of such a shift in financial consciousness/trust.

Druckenmiller’s Astonishment

Specifically, Druckenmiller spoke of something he’d never seen in over 40 years as a market veteran.

That is, as stocks were tanking in the spring of 2020, he also saw the bond market lose 18 points in one day.

This correlated fall in stocks and bonds was not, as everyone “tweeted,” a reaction to the fiscal profligacy of the CARES Act, but more sadly a very new trend by foreigners to get rid of increasingly discredited U.S. IOUs.

Folks, this is a critical shift.

For over two decades (including during the Great Financial Crisis of 2009), U.S. Treasuries (and the USD) were once seen as “safe” landing places for foreign money rather than a risky bet.

Now, instead of seeing an annual average $500B inflow into U.S. bonds, we are seeing annual outflows of $500B…

When you tack on a $700B current account deficit in D.C. to a net loss of $1 trillion in Treasury support, whose left to “fill the gap” and buy those unwanted IOU’s?

You guessed it: The Fed.

And how will they come up the money to cover these purchases?

You guessed it again: They’ll mouse-click that “money” out of thin air to create a stealthy, hidden bankruptcy.

Needless to say, such realism (i.e., objective math) puts a lot of pressure on the U.S. Dollar as the Fed is forced to create even more money at a record pace to buy otherwise unwanted Treasuries.

But what kept the USD from falling in favor by end of 2020, if no one was buying our bonds but the Fed?

Well, the short answer is that all that foreign money (from sovereign wealth funds and foreign central banks) once ear-marked for our once-credible U.S. Treasury bonds went instead into those massive U.S. digital transformation companies who benefited most from a locked-down new mad world, namely GOOG, ZOOM and MSFT etc.

And how did Druckenmiller describe this shift?

Simple. He called it a “raging new mania.”

From Mania to Desperate

Foreign money once reserved for “safe haven” bonds was (and is) pouring into an already over-sized equity bubble.

By July, the USD had peaked, but after a peak comes, well…a fall for the Greenback—all very good for commodities, real estate, growth tech stocks and, of course, precious metals.

Back to the “What If” of a Naked Taper

But (and this is a very big “but”), what if the Fed were insane enough to taper QE without any back-door liquidity from foreign swap lines and the repo programs?

Again, ugly Treasuries would get even uglier, tank in price, sending rates and the USD higher and gold lower, along with a sharp sell-off in risk assets—i.e., corporate stocks and bonds.

But again, we don’t think this will happen, because as desperate as central bankers are, they are equally predictable.

Predictable Behavior?

That is, they know that such a naked taper (i.e., a taper without a back door repo or swap-induced liquidity) would cause rates to spike, and hence Uncle Sam’s bar-tab to default.

As the Fed’s Vice Chair intimated last year, US Treasuries (Uncle Sam’s bar tab) are simply too big to fail.

This means we can expect more liquidity (QE or repo/swap) and hence more, not less inflation.

The Fed is stuck in a self-inflicted dilemma–between letting inflation rip (to partially service America’s bar tab and “declaring” a hidden bankruptcy) or watching markets sink to the bottom of time.

For now, which choice do you think these banking, pro-market cabal thinkers will make?

The Realpolitik of COVID

Meanwhile, and regardless of one’s views on the vaccine mandates, case fatality rates vs. infection rates, or mask wearing vs. mask annoyance, no one needs our amateur medical advice.

But looking at COVID as a policy tool rather than as controversial health issue, it’s also fairly clear that the powers that be will be milking this fear-porn-to-policy trick for all its worth for as long as its worth.

Why?

Again, COVID is a wonderful narrative to justify more debt and more instant liquidity (i.e., fiat monetary expansion) and hence more inflation to inflate away the debt of debt-drunk nations already fatally in debt pre-COVID.

Rightly or wrongly, there are already scientists out of the UK (namely Oxford vaccine creator Sarah Gilbert) with more IQ-power and credibility than Fauci or Fergusson (admittedly not a high bar), who are already signaling that COVID will resemble little more than a common cold by next year.

This, if true (and no one really knows anyway), would be good for the world—but would the policy makers like this?

A post-COVID normal would be a boon to commerce and economic activity, and hence a boon to the velocity of money, which would kick inflation into ultra-high-gear.

High inflation will mean higher rates, which scare debt-soaked politicians and central bankers, unless inflation rises higher than those rates and negative real yields become the norm, which, again, we think is the realistic (i.e., only option) for these financial magicians running our governments, lives and central banks.

In such a scenario, gold will smile upon the inflation to come.

In short, and however we look at it, inflation is the new norm, and negative real rates are no less so, regardless of how the taper or COVID debate plays out.

As the future unfolds, gold, whose price is waiting for confirmation of such inflation, will only grow stronger as the “transitory” meme gets weaker by the day.

Will The China Cold War Unstick America's Glue?

 Great food for thoughts!

 

Authored by Alastair Crooke via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

Can an America that off-shored much of its manufacturing capacity to China, for short-term profit, afford the de-coupling?

Washington isn’t quite sure what to do after the chaotic end to America’s ‘forever’ war. Some in Washington bitterly regret exiting from Afghanistan at all, and advocate for an immediate return; some just want to move on – to the China ‘Cold War’, that is. The cries from the initial Establishment ‘melt down’ and its articulation of pain over the Kabul withdrawal débacle, however, indicates the extent to which the almost obsessive focus on ‘Hobbling China’ nevertheless seems like an humiliating retreat to U.S. hawks, habituated to more global, and unlimited interventions.

It is a retreat. ‘Rome’ is relegating its ‘distant provinces’ to their own devices, and even its abutting loyalist inner circle is being downgraded to ‘benign’ indifference. It is a drawing-in towards the ‘hub’, a ‘circling of wagons’ – the better to muster energies for a lunge out at China.

There are the acquiescent regions that Americans occupied after WW II (the psychologically-seared Japan and Germany), and then there is the American world empire, which exists chimerically wherever U.S. commercial and cultural power reaches, and more practically in its patchwork of client states and military installations. This third empire is regarded by many Americans as its most remarkable achievement – a triumph of the ‘City of Light’.

The post 9/11 era’s final ‘Mad Hatter’s Tea Party’ dénouement scene at Kabul Airport did however, clearly convey a strong end-of-the-Roman Empire feel. Yes, failure in Afghanistan may have taken place far from Rome itself, yet something more profound today hangs in the air: a Change of Era.

And defeats on distant frontiers, can entail profound consequences – closer to the imperial core – as a sense of accelerating imperial decline bleeds into domestic arguments, widening already yawning ideological rifts.

An embedded national consensus can change very slowly, and then, under the right pressure, all at once. And in many subtle and sometimes chaotic ways, that trigger for change came from Trump. No dove or systematiser, he nonetheless made realism and anti-interventionism, quasi-respectable again.

Elbridge Colby, who was in Trump’s Pentagon helping devise its national defence strategy, has a new book, The Strategy of Denial: American Defense in an Age of Great Power Conflict, making the case for a foreign policy that leaves the post-9/11 era clearly and decisively behind. The outer circle of the ‘periphery’ reduces to over-horizon, necro-tech management, and the ‘near provinces of empire’, such as Europe are dismissed as ‘sideshows’ to the main event – China. To focus on Iran or North Korea, he says, is simply misguided.

It is “a realist’s book, laser-focused on China’s bid for mastery in Asia as the 21st century’s most important threat”, Ross Douthat writes in the NY Times. “All other challenges are secondary: Only China threatens American interests in a profound way, through a consolidation of economic power in Asia that imperils our prosperity and a military defeat that could shatter our alliance system. Therefore, American policy should be organized to deny Beijing regional hegemony and deter any military adventurism — first and foremost, through a stronger commitment to defending the island of Taiwan”.

The Strategy of Denial presents a particularly unsentimental version of a rapidly consolidating Washington consensus. Biden’s speech justifying withdrawal from Afghanistan, in terms of an end to nation-building and focus on counter-terrorism – albeit more softly spoken – said the same as Colby.

The contradictions implicit within the 9/11 era’s War on Terror, and coercive westification, may have become only too plain today with 20th anniversary hindsight, but other contradictions within the ‘Hobble China’ pivot are potentially just as fatal to its success – as were the flawed assumptions underlying the 9/11 era zeitgeist.

Its’ most basic contradiction is that far from providing the balm around which Americans can gather and unify, the China pivot is likely only to loosen the glue binding a heterogeneous ‘nation’ increasingly turning in upon itself.

Firstly, the ‘new consensus’ has it that the best way for America to weaken China is to make it ‘the world versus China’ – confronting it with a broad, transnational coalition, based on the value-struggle between democracy and authoritarianism. Yes, but this repeats the error underlying the 9/11 policy – namely by assuming that the rest of the world still admires and aspires to emulate American liberal democracy. Look what occurred in Afghanistan. The world has changed – deference to western values per se has evaporated.

There once was a time when ‘pro-Europeans’ too, were confident that the world would almost inevitably be remade in the image of the West, as it endlessly expanded its rules, and exported its model. Since then, even the Europeans have lost confidence in a world vision, and have become psychotically more defensive (imagining looming ‘threats’ from everywhere and everything). And as the European model has hollowed out, becoming less credible, so too, Europe has and leant into raw mercantilism. The logic of the European situation is clear. It needs China, more than China needs Europe.

It would be a huge ‘stretch’ therefore, for Washington to imagine that ‘the world’ might side with its democratic values against China’s ‘authoritarianism’. Just to remind, U.S. democracy was tarnished in the eyes of the world in light of the 2020 Election. And some 70–80 million Americans share that view too. We saw it nightly on our screens.

Secondly, it assumes that America’s ‘corporate’, capitalist economic system is a tremendous asset in the Cold War against China. Well, it isn’t. China has its economic problems, certainly; but unlike most western states, it is trying to move away from raw neo-liberalism and endless liquidity – as the hammer set to every ‘nail’. China is deliberately turning away from this model’s distortions, sky-high housing and living-costs, huge inequalities, and collateral social damage. It would be an error to underestimate ‘the pull’ of this alt-vision (even for Europeans). China is, itself, a civilisational pole.

Then thirdly, there is the basic contradiction in having a laser-like single focus on ‘Hobble China’, which is brought about only at the expense of feeding Americans’ sense of accelerating imperial decline, bleeding into domestic tensions.

This is Pat Buchanan’s argument in a piece entitled, Who and What Is Tearing the U.S. Apart? He answers:

“After 9/11, Bush invaded Afghanistan and Iraq. President Barack Obama attacked Libya and plunged us into the Syrian and Yemeni civil wars. Thus, over 20 years, we have been responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands and driven hundreds of thousands more from their homes and their countries. Are Americans really as oblivious? … Many of these peoples want us out of their countries for the same reason that 18th and 19th-century Americans wanted the French, British and Spanish out of our country and out of our hemisphere”.

“Unlike previous generations, our 21st-century divisions are far broader — not just economic and political, but social, moral, cultural and racial. Abortion, same-sex marriage and transgender rights divide us. Socialism and capitalism divide us. Affirmative action, Black Lives Matter, urban crime, gun violence and critical race theory divide us. Allegations of white privilege and white supremacy, and demands that equality of opportunity give way to equity of rewards, divide us. In the COVID-19 pandemic, the wearing of masks and vaccine mandates divide us”.

“The debate over American national identity is cursed seven times over”, Darel Paul, Professor of Political Science at Williams College, writes:

“Does the United States even constitute a ‘nation’? In the sense of common descent (the root of “nation” is the Latin nasci, to be born) – clearly not. Widespread fear of such an ethnic sense of American identity drives considerable hostility to the very idea of nationalism. Most American elites prefer words like ‘patriotism’ … The problem with this conception of patriotism is that it is a weak glue. The recent history of the United States offers ample evidence. Rather than objects of agreement – liberty, equality, individual rights, and self-government are instead [today] the objects of discord.

“Here we come to the real glue of America: From the founding of the country in the fires of war, the United States has been an expansionary republican empire ever incorporating new lands, new peoples, new goods, new resources, new ideas. This “empire of liberty,” as Thomas Jefferson called it, knew no limits … Continuous military, commercial, and cultural expansion since Jamestown and Plymouth cultivated the restlessness, vigour, optimism, self-confidence, and love of glory for which Americans have long been known. The glue of America has thus ever been what Niccolò Machiavelli called virtù in service of “a commonwealth for expansion.” Such a republic is always in tumult, yet a tumult that, if well-ordered, finds glory …

“Forward motion thus becomes the lifeblood of such a polity. Without it, the purpose of the civic bonds of unity inevitably come into question. An America that is not a glorious republican empire in motion is not America, full stop. This part of the American mythos Lincoln left unsaid at Gettysburg.

“Since the 1960s, the glory of the American empire of liberty has tarnished. Since the mid-2010s it has fallen under sustained internal attack. The failures of national purpose in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan are amplified by the failure of globalization to generate common wealth for the commonwealth. If Americans are not united for expansionary republican greatness, what then are all these fissiparous races, creeds, and cultures bound together for? While belief that self-government may perish from the earth without American unity may have been plausible in 1863 or 1941, it is a hard sell in 2021”.

Does this struggle against China make sense? Can America, whose economic and financial system today is highly precarious, afford to bludgeon China into adverse economic straits also? Can an America that off-shored much of its manufacturing capacity to China, for short-term profit, afford the de-coupling? Do American corporate leaders truly share the view that the (inevitable) consolidation of economic power in Asia imperils American prosperity, and that its consolidation would shatter their imperial outreach, dollar-based order? Possibly they do. They do fear it.

THE ECONOCRISIS

 This article argues that the Covid crisis is making things worse for the economy. I agree, but only to a limited extent. Things were going to end badly anyway. In retrospect, mascarading an economic crisis into a virus one was nothing short of pure genius... if the consequences remain manageable.

 If not, the social chaos ahead could be on a scale we haven't seen for a long time. 

 

Storm clouds blanket the entire global economy right now. In the articles I’ve written over the last ten days, I reported extensively on the following prevailing winds that are assailing all economies, and in this article and the next, I’ll reveal how our governments are actively making them much worse:

• The fastest rise in inflation since IHS Markit began tracking;
• Commodities now at record highs;
• Full-blown Asian and European energy crises (in oil, natural gas and electricity) with gas lines like the 70’s;
• Global shipping problems doing nothing but getting worse for months;
• Developing food shortages due to energy crises and shipping problems;
• The Fed now admitting none of this is as transitory now as they had formerly believed;
• Persistent labor shortages well after all augmented unemployment benefits have ended;
• The European Central Bank, Bank of England and US Federal Reserve all tapering/raising interest rates simultaneously;
• The first time multiple central banks have moved to various levels of tightening after their economies and markets had already started to rapidly decline during a time of extraordinary CB largesse;
• The resolute history of stock-market troubles when the Fed tapers and stock market disaster when it tightens;
• Stock markets and bond markets both starting to shiver over the prospects of tightening now that schedules are being talked about for real, busting through recent trading ranges and levels of support;
• Recent horrible US bond auctions with bid-to-cover levels not seen since the 2008 economic collapse;
• The imminent removal of the Fed’s absolute control over US treasury pricing and the yield curve;
• Risk appetite and sentiment in stocks falling for the past half year according to surveys;
• The rapid growth of product shortages expressed by numerous businesses.
• Relentlessly expanding shipping backups.

The governments of this world and their COVID policies and environmental policies seem hellbent at present on turning the COVIDcrisis into an all-out economic crisis, maybe even to the point of causing global economic collapse. In this two-part series, I’ll lay out some of the inexplicable things they are doing to make the crisis worse.

Our governments brings a pox upon us

While officials are warning us that hospitals and hospital staff are overburdened, these same officials in many states and in the Federal government have decided now is the time enhance this critical medical shortage by forcibly firing all medical personnel who refuse to get one of the various COVID vaccines.

Not long ago, those who are now being jettisoned from their livelihoods were the heroes and heroins who risked life and limb to save the unvaccinated because everyone was unvaccinated. Now, many of those who got COVID for their efforts are choosing not to vaccinate because they (as medical professionals) believe their enhanced natural immunity is better and don’t see the need to take more risk with a vaccine that has had no long-term testing. Now their governments are insisting they all be fired for refusing the vaccine that they do not need (because natural immunity, once enhanced by getting a disease, is almost always as good or better than a vaccine).

Whether you agree with those medically trained individuals and their personal choice or not and whether or not you believe medical confidentiality and civil liberties must be protected in the face of public fear or must also be jettisoned, you have to agree that fewer nurses and PA’s and surgical techs and administrative staff will leave hospitals more overburdened than they are now. That’s math, not politics. As a result,

With President Biden’s federal vaccine mandate set to take effect on Monday, health-care systems around the country are suspending elective in-patient surgeries and refusing to accept ICU patients from other hospitals as they brace for potentially hundreds of firings of nurses and other critical staffers, potentially even doctors….

Erie County Medical Center in Buffalo is planning to do all that and more, as it says it may soon fire about 400 employees who have chosen not to get the single job [sic.] required by the edict….

Northwell Health, the state’s largest health-care provider … might be forced to fire thousands of people who have refused to get vaccinated.

Zero Hedge

This looming expansion of the health crisis, of course, could be avoided, but the federal government and many state governments are determined to make it worse in order to (they wrongly hope) force millions of people to get vaccinated. It will work with some, but not with many.

Prediction: Therefore, I’m predicting an intensified man-made medical crisis due to officials who believe livelihood threats will force most people to give up what they see as a civil right — their personal right to decide what goes into their bodies and to govern their own health decisions.

New York’s new governor agrees the crisis is manmade, saying,

What is looming for Monday is completely avoidable, and there’s no excuses.

Governor Hochul is right, of course. We just disagree over which people are at fault for creating the crisis — those who put the crisis in play, or those who refuse to play along.

How large, potentially, is this problem?

16% of NY’s 450,000 hospital workers and 83% of nursing home workers – which number around 45,400 – remained unvaccinated.

Paramedics are also being forcibly fired. At a time when shortages are likely to create more conflicts, other first responders are being fired for not getting vaccines, too, such as police and firefighters. Therefore, as we enter what I believe will be the winter of our discontent, we’ll have fewer responders to help deal with the many problems that emerge due to all the building crises.

The new vaccine mandates are also clobbering businesses that barely survived the earlier COVID shutdowns by forcing partial shutdowns all over again. Businesses in some states that barely made it through the sporadic COVID closures are now being given a one-two punch by their local and state governments: 1) Not only must they fire their unvaccinated employees, forcing the businesses to downscale; 2) they just turn away all their unvaccinated customers by requiring a vaccine card and ID to enter restaurants and large public venues.

Running at marginal levels for the past eighteen months, more businesses are permanently closing, as if our shattered economy can handle more busted businesses. I just saw one restaurant in my own county announce in the paper that it is finally closing due to COVID because it just can’t handle the reduced capacity any longer. Governments don’t care. They see this as an essential cost, and they are not even slightly willing to consider softening the blow with immunity cards to go with the vaccine cards that would verify a person had antibodies from a past COVID infection so was not a risk. They completely reject the possibility of even thinking about that.

This madness is no small matter. New York City restaurants report their business has plunged 40-60% just because of the vaccine mandates! That makes survival of already strained businesses in what has always been a low-margin industry almost impossible. Their governments don’t care! Battling COVID at all costs, even with scientifically unsupportable measures, is the sole directive, even if we destroy our nations doing it.

NYC Restaurateurs: Business Down 40 to 60 Percent Due to Vaccine Mandate:

New York City restaurateurs are complaining that their business has been slashed severely by the COVID-19 vaccine mandate, which requires people 12 and older to show vaccination proof for indoor dining, indoor fitness, and indoor entertainment….

Comparing the clientele from pre-mandate to when it kicked in about two weeks ago, “Our business is definitely down 50, I’m going to say 60 percent,” Burke said with a somewhat downhearted tone….

Burke and his staff have had to refuse a lot of customers for not having the passes.

“They’re being refused and they get a resentment against us, they don’t get a resentment against Bill de Blasio or Biden, or whoever is mandating us to check for this.”

“I mean how is that fair in New York City, that the trains are jammed with people with a silly mask on and they’re not being mandated to show nothing, and yet they’re coming against the heart of the city. We’re the ones that’s trying to keep 20 people employed here,” Burke said.

“We will go out of business if this continues, it’s gonna force us to shut our doors.”

Epoch Times

Their governments will not even CONSIDER the possibility that the hundred-million people who have already had COVID don’t need a vaccine. That doesn’t fit the secular religious dogma of the day.

We are destroying ourselves due to mass hysteria that is not even willing to think. Israel just did a massive study that showed natural immunity among those who have already had COVID is actually far superior to vaccinated immunity. That doesn’t matter. It doesn’t fit the dogma. It will not even be given thought because, apparently, our leaders would rather destroy us than stray from the CDC’s dogma. Other studies have now shown that those who have had COVID carry antibodies in their bone marrow that will make them immune for a lifetime, just as happens with measles.

The federal government believed, as have many state governments, that it could strongarm citizens into compliance by threatening their survival — their livelihoods. It has rapidly discovered a great many of those citizens will not comply. That means we will have worse COVID because hospitals are being rendered less able to handle it by kicking out employees who are likely no risk at all.

To show how extreme the insanity is, this is all happening at a time when all businesses are struggling with labor shortages as well. Now they have to fire many of their remaining employees. 

Prediction: That assures we will have more business closures this winter and more business slowdowns. 

Consider how many goods — even medical supplies — have to be driven by truckers and unloaded at ports where nations already have serious shortages of workers. Many truckers in the US are Trump supporters who are ardently opposed to the vaccine mandates and have stated they will not comply, but they work for large companies that must enforce the vaccine mandates. Think about how much the loss of likely thousands of truckers during an existing trucker shortage will slow down all transportation services for the delivery of goods to consumers and commodities to producers and energy to all, again also raising the price of those due to greater scarcity.

Already, the rebellion has begun:

In this time when EVERYONE KNOWS labor is already in short supply, one writer rightly comments,

American workers have been stripmined and abused for 40 years in classic boiling-the-frog fashion, and now they’ve finally had enough. The Great Resignation, like other drivers of inflation, is complex and cannot be reduced to a single cause. Like the other systemic drivers of inflation, labor refusing to work for low pay and being treated like pack animals has been a long time coming, and there are no quick fixes of the sort pundits promote.

Of Two Minds

There are no quick fixes by the government, but the government has actually mandated that unemployment be made worse (with no eligibility for benefits in some states if it is due to vaccine refusal). These mandates will cement in place the downward spiral of stagflation in which an economy declines as prices rise. The spiral will happen because higher unemployment means more belt-tightening and more shortages in production. More shortages in turn force forcemore belt-tightening by pressuring prices up even more.

Now that participants understand their income will buy less in the future, they have a powerful motivation to buy something tangible now while the price is lower than it will be next year–a motivation that increases demand and pushes costs higher, which then reinforces the incentives to convert earnings into something real before the Fed destroys even more of the purchasing power. Wage earners have no choice but to demand much higher wages to partly offset soaring costs, and employers who refuse find employees are leaving en masse. Those who increase wages must raise prices to offset their higher costs.

Since governments are depleting the labor that can provide services, perhaps it is a good thing they are also depleting the customers who demand services:

The politicians don’t understand … there is no one size fits all with medicine. And you can’t tell a person has just finished chemotherapy, that they have to take a vaccine to have a dinner, when their doctor says they can’t.

Epoch Times

We are compounding our crises with tone-deaf policies that have no nuances in how they are applied. While CDC exemptions exist for employee terminations, I have only heard of a few places with exemptions from vaccination for customers if they have medical limitations. I have not heard of states or the federal government providing “vaccination exempt” cards for customers to carry if they meet the CDC’s short list of exemptions for employees. So, how do you prove you are exempt — carry a letter from your doctor?

If the government is so sure vaccines work, why are they so afraid of unvaccinated people who can only hurt others who have chosen to remain unvaccinated? If the government is so sure vaccines work, why are they even afraid of people who have already had COVID who have been scientifically proven to have less likelihood of a repeat infection than vaccinated people have of a “breakthrough” infection? They cannot argue it is because the unvaccinated are more likely to be carriers who can pass the disease on to other, as science has proven the vaccinated are equally likely to be carriers who can pass the disease on to others.

Is this dogmatic blindness or a hidden agenda that must see you vaccinated even when science gets in the way of the argument for vaccination. Vaccine mandates are not being driven by the science, and this will assure my next prediction.

Prediction: The already serious crisis of shortages is going to become much worse this winter due to the mandate madness limiting businesses. That assures inflation will run hotter still! And these shortages — in food or energy or health care — can be lethal. For some they will be.

Prediction: The vaccine mandates will quickly turn us into a nation of Sneaches where some of us have stars to prove we are vaccinated and others do “not have stars on thars.” The unvaccinated will become the pariah class of social outcastes in our more divided society — people who are segregated out of to public events and restaurants and airplanes, trains and buses, and out of hotels. Therefore, I have another predition:

Prediction: Expect social rage to grow as the orders to refuse service expand, and especially as they result in refusal of health care services to those in desperate need who will be told hospitals must give them last priority since they chose not to protect themselves (even if they are among the millions who are already better protected by natural immunity but struck this year by some other calamity). Expect more conflict between the vaccinated and “the great unwashed” like myself.

You see, I am refusing vaccination on the basis that I recently had COVID; I’ve had many colds that were FAR worse; and I now will fight COVID off even easier because I have naturally enhanced immunity. So, I’m not getting the vaccine, even though my employment will be terminated, just for the sake of making the hysterical non-thinkers feel more comfortable — the people who believe they are more immune due to the vaccine, though they are obviously far more afraid of me than I am of them. 

My employer has announced they will terminated all the unvaccinated by the 18th of October, though they are allowing certain medical exemptions. I might qualify for that for reasons I won’t go into because I still believe I have a right to medical confidentiality, so I need prove nothing about my medical health to anyone. It will depend on whether or not my doctor (with whom I will talk of my medical history) is willing to approve the medical exemption. If she does not, I will be unemployed by mid-month in solidarity with those who say, “You are not going to force me to exit my freedoms due to your fears.” 

I think I am more immune than they are, and scientific evidence says my immunity is much more enduring. People who have had the measles or smallpox are not required to get a vaccine for the diseases they already had, and those vaccines were test many more years before being forced on the public. So, why should I take a vaccine that has not had longterm testing just because others are afraid?