Tariffs at this stage are not just absurd, they are counterproductive and the symbol of America's decline. Think about Boeing giving back money to its shareholders (and 55 million dollars to its president!) applied to car manufacturing, solar panels, batteries, microchips.
Just to jump to something completely unrelated, if we are as good as containing AI as the Americans are at containing China, may god have pity on us!
The BRICS have got the US dollar cornered as the dollar is on its last foot.
Great talk by Jim Rickards!
"Never too late!" comes to mind! In Japan too, some voices are starting to be heard against the mRNA vaccines. They are simply not yet operational and therefore dangerous. Now the real problem is that we've known that from the very beginning. And those who promoted their safety are the same people who also managed to skip the tests. If this is not criminal, what is?
Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
Dr. Robert Redfield, former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said Thursday that many officials who tried to warn the public about potential problems with COVID-19 vaccines were pressured into silence and that it’s high time to admit that there were “significant” side effects that made people sick.
Dr. Redfield made the remarks in a May 16 interview with Chris Cuomo on NewsNation, during which he lamented the loss of public confidence in public health agencies because of a lack of transparency around the vaccines, which he said “saved a lot of lives” but also made some people “quite ill.”
“Those of us that tried to suggest there may be significant side effects from vaccines ... we kind of got canceled because no one wanted to talk about the potential that there was a problem from the vaccines, because they were afraid that that would cause people not to want to get vaccinated,” Dr. Redfield said.
In his role as head of the CDC, Dr. Redfield was part of the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed, a project to surge COVID-19 vaccine development at a time during the pandemic when little was known about the virus and rapid vaccine rollout was widely seen as key to getting the outbreak under control and lockdowns lifted.
In September 2020, a few months before the first COVID-19 vaccines were given in the United States, Dr. Redfield testified before the Senate that COVID-19 represented the “most significant public health challenge to face our nation in more than a century,” and that the prevailing view among scientists at the time was that the overall case fatality rate of the disease was somewhere between 0.4 and 0.6 percent in the United States.
“If you were to look right now, individuals under the age of 18, it’s about 0.01 percent, 19 to say 69, it’s more like 0.3 percent. And if you’re over the age of 70, it’s about 5 percent now,” he testified at the time.
While there’s lingering controversy about the severity of COVID-19, a recent study estimates that the global case fatality rate was 8.5 percent in February 2020 but had plunged to 0.27 percent in August 2022, meaning that the estimated relative risk reduction over that time was a whopping 96.8 percent.
In his interview on NewsNation, Dr. Redfield said that the vaccines that were developed as part of Operation Warp Speed were “important” and saved “a lot of lives.” However, despite their benefits, the drawbacks of the vaccines must be a matter of open discussion, he said.
“They’re important for the most vulnerable people, those over 60, 65 years of age. They really aren’t that critical for those that are under 50 or younger. But those vaccines saved a lot of lives, but they also—we have to be honest, some people got significant side effects from the vaccine,” he said.
“I have a number of people that are quite ill and they never had COVID, but they are ill from the vaccine,” he continued. “And we just have to acknowledge that.”
The severity of COVID-19 remains a matter of debate because it’s unclear whether deaths were overcounted or undercounted due to various factors, such as lack of clarity around the role of underlying medical conditions in fatalities in cases where COVID-19 was listed as the primary cause, or underreporting of asymptomatic infections. Aside from the issue of whether people died “from” COVID-19 or “with” a positive test for SARS-CoV-2, there have also been questions about the role of secondary pneumonia caused by mechanical ventilation.
Either way, a study from January 2023 indicates that the global case fatality rate from COVID-19 has dropped dramatically over the course of the pandemic. Global case fatalities ranged from 1.7 to 39.0 percent in February to March of 2020, according to the study—but fell to below 0.3 percent in July to August 2022.
The researchers estimate that the risk of death from COVID-19 has dropped by 96.8 percent over the course of the pandemic.
Along with a decline in COVID-19 fatalities, there have been growing concerns about vaccine side effects, given that a significant number of vaccinated people have reported various adverse reactions.
The most common COVID-19 vaccine adverse events are those that affect the body generally, with fever, fatigue, and overall discomfort being the top three, according to the U.S. Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). But there are others.
For instance, heart muscle inflammation (myocarditis) and inflammation of the lining outside the heart (pericarditis) have both officially been acknowledged by the CDC as a known side effect of Moderna’s and Pfizer’s mRNA COVID-19 vaccines.
Nervous system disorders have also been reported, with such disorders being the third most common in the Pfizer trials, coming after general and muscle-related adverse events.
There have also been papers linking spike-protein-based COVID-19 vaccines to skin problems, a dull ringing in the ears known as tinnitus, visual impairments, blood clotting, and even death. Recent reporting from EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders“ program indicates that the likelihood of death associated with COVID-19 vaccines (in close proximity to the shot rather than proven as caused by it) was over 100 times greater than for flu vaccines.
There are also concerns about a post-vaccination jump in excess deaths and disability.
The CDC still recommends that people of all ages receive a COVID-19 vaccine, saying that the potential side effects do not outweigh the potential harms of getting sick with COVID-19.
In a notice published in late April, the agency again called for adults aged 65 and older to get the latest version of the vaccines.
"We are getting closer to nuclear war!" That's Canadian Preper, so you'd guess he's on the edge of reality. Fine. Except that gold at 2420 dollar per once would tend to agree. At this speed, we'll be well past 3000 by the Summer.
No, we are not crazy. The conspiracy is real. Here's the proof!
Great post on how the US, just like Rome at the end is undermining itself.
One huge caveat as the author completely miss the meaning of the Russo-Chinese alliance and the potential of the BRICS to coalesce developing countries into a non dollar block.
But overall, there can be no doubts at this stage: We are at the very edge of momentous changes. 408, 476, 1453, 1789, 1914, history will decide but it is likely that 2024 or maybe 2025 will be added to the list.
Authored by James Hickman via SchiffSovereign.com,
By the early 400s, the Roman Empire was coming apart at the seams and in desperate need of strong, competent leadership. In theory, Honorius should have been the right man for the job.
Born into the royal household in Constantinople, Honorius had been groomed to rule, practically since birth, by the finest experts in the realm. So even as a young man, Honorius had already accumulated decades of experience.
Yet Rome’s foreign adversaries rightfully believed Honorius to be weak, out of touch, divisive, and completely inept.
He had entered into bonehead peace treaties that strengthened Rome’s enemies. He paid vast sums of money to some of their most powerful rivals and received practically nothing in return. He made virtually no attempt to secure Roman borders, leaving the empire open to be ravaged by barbarians.
Inflation was high. Taxes were high. Economic production declined. Roman military power declined. And all of Rome’s foreign adversaries were emboldened.
To a casual observer it would have almost seemed as if Honorius went out of his way to make the Empire weaker.
One of Rome’s biggest threats came in the year 408, when the barbarian king Alaric invaded Italy; imperial defenses were so non-existent at that point that ancient historians described Alaric’s march towards Rome as unopposed and leisurely, as if they were “at some festival” rather than an invasion.
Alaric and his army arrived to the city of Rome in the autumn of 408 AD and immediately positioned their forces to cut off any supplies. No food could enter the city, and before long, its residents began to starve.
Historians have passed down horrific stories of cannibalism– including women eating their own children in order to survive.
Rather than send troops and fight, however, Honorius agreed to pay a massive ransom to Alaric, including 5,000 pounds of gold, 30,000 pounds of silver, and literally tons of other real assets and commodities.
(The equivalent in today’s money, adjusted for population, would be billions of dollars… similar to what the US released to Iran in a prisoner swap last year.)
Naturally Honorius didn’t have such a vast sum in his treasury… so Romans were forced to strip down and melt their shrines and statues in order to pay Alaric’s ransom.
Ironically, one of the statues they melted was a monument to Virtus, the Roman god of bravery and strength… leading the ancient historian Zosimus to conclude that “all which remained of Roman valor and intrepidity was totally extinguished.”
Rome had spent two centuries in the early days of the empire– from the rise of Augustus in 27 BC to the death of Marcus Aurelius in 180 AD– as the clear, unrivaled superpower. Almost no one dared mess with Rome, and few who did ever lived to tell the tale.
Modern scholars typically view the official “fall” of the Western Roman Empire in the year 476. But it’s pretty clear that the collapse of Roman power and prestige took place decades before.
When Rome was ransomed in 408 (then sacked in 410), it was obvious to everyone at the time that the Emperor no longer had a grip on power.
And before long, most of the lands in the West that Rome had once dominated– Italy, Spain, France, Britain, North Africa, etc. were under control of various Barbarian tribes and kingdoms.
The Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Vandals, Franks, Angles, Saxons, Burgundians, Berbers, etc. all established independent kingdoms. And for a while, there was no dominant superpower in western Europe. It was a multi-polar world. And the transition was rather abrupt.
This is what I think is happening now– we’re experiencing a similar transition, and it seems equally abrupt.
The United States has been the world’s dominant superpower for decades. But like Rome in the later stage of its empire, the US is clearly in decline. This should not be a controversial statement.
Let’s not be dramatic; it’s important to stay focused on facts and reality. The US economy is still vast and potent, and the country is blessed with an abundance of natural resources– incredibly fertile farmland, some of the world’s largest freshwater resources, and incalculable reserves of energy and other key commodities.
In fact, it’s amazing the people in charge have managed to screw it up so badly. And yet they have.
The national debt is out of control, rising by trillions of dollars each year. Debt growth, in fact, substantially outpaces US economic growth.
Social Security is insolvent, and the program’s own trustees (including the US Treasury Secretary) admit that its major trust fund will run out of money in just nine years.
The people in charge never seem to miss an opportunity to dismantle capitalism (i.e. the economic system that created so much prosperity to begin with) brick by brick.
Then there are ubiquitous social crises: public prosecutors who refuse to enforce the law; the weaponization of the justice system; the southern border fiasco; declining birth rates; extraordinary social divisions that are most recently evidenced by the anti-Israel protests.
And most of all the US constantly shows off its incredibly dysfunctional government that can’t manage to agree on anything, from the budget to the debt ceiling. The President has obvious cognitive disabilities and makes the most bizarre decisions to enrich America’s enemies.
Are these problems fixable? Yes. Will they be fixed? Maybe. But as we used to say in the military, “hope is not a course of action”.
Plotting this current trajectory to its natural conclusion leads me to believe that the world will enter a new “barbarian kingdom” paradigm in which there is no dominant superpower.
Certainly, there are a number of rising rivals today. But no one is powerful enough to assume the leading role in the world.
China has a massive population and a huge economy. But it too has way too many problems… with the obvious challenge that no one trusts the Communist Party. So, most likely China will not be the dominant superpower.
India’s economy will eventually surpass China’s, and it has an even bigger population. But India isn’t even close to the ballpark of being the world’s superpower.
Then there’s Europe. Combined, it still has a massive economic and trade union. But it has also been in major decline… with multiple social crises like low birth rates and a migrant invasion.
Then there are the energy powers like Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Indonesia; they are far too small to dominate the world, but they have the power to menace and disrupt it.
The bottom line is that the US is no longer strong enough to lead the world and keep adversarial nations in check. And it’s clear that other countries are already adapting to this reality.
Earlier this month, for example, China successfully launched a rocket to the moon as part of a multi-decade mission to establish an International Lunar Research Station.
By 2045, China hopes to construct a large, city-like base along with several international partners including Russia, Pakistan, Thailand, South Africa, Venezuela, Azerbaijan, Belarus, and Egypt. Turkey and Nicaragua are also interested in joining.
This is pretty remarkable given how many nations are participating, even if just nominally. Yet the US isn’t part of the consortium.
This would have been unthinkable a few decades ago. But today the rest of the world realizes that they no longer need American funding, leadership, or expertise.
We can see similar examples everywhere, most notably in Israel and Ukraine. And I believe one of the next shoes to drop will be the US dollar.
After all, if the rest of the world doesn’t need the US for space exploration, and they can ignore the US when it comes down to World War 3, then why should they need the US dollar anymore?
The dollar was the clear and obvious choice as the global reserve currency back when America was the undisputed superpower. But today it’s a different world.
Foreign nations continuing to rely on the dollar ultimately means governments and central banks buying US government bonds. And why should they take such a risk when the national debt is already 120% of GDP?
In addition, Congress passed a new law a few weeks ago authorizing the Treasury Department to confiscate US dollar assets of any country it deems an “aggressor state.”
While people might think this is a morally righteous idea, the reality is that it will only turn off foreign investors. Why should China, Saudi Arabia, or anyone else buy US government bonds when they can be confiscated in a heartbeat?
All of this ultimately leads to a world in which the US dollar is no longer the dominant reserve currency. We’re already starting to see signs of that shift, and it could be in full swing by the end of the decade.
Absolutely stunning and brilliant video by George Gammon who surprises Canadian preper with non intuitive financial concepts and consequently overturn the poor guy's beliefs obliging him to admit literally that the explanation is "above his pay grade!"
What's stays is that our financial system is probably about to crash although George Gammon believes that Central Banks will be able to keep us hanging up there for a while longer. (I disagree because these things have a dynamic of their own and at some stage, as in Japan right now, the Central Bankers start to lose control.)
What is proven to be nonsense is the Canadian preper's belief in a collapsed Western economic system where you have to fend for yourself with a gun while bartering radishes with your neighbors. George Gammon gives the example of Argentina which is as collapsed as can be and where people nevertheless stick with the local currency (or dollars) to the exclusion of Gold, silver and bitcoins that nobody wants. A great practical lesson of ABC economics.
I completely agree with Martin Armstrong: We may get war because Western governments facing collapse will not know what else to do. What a tragedy!
Interview with Martin Armstrong by Piero Messina for SouthFront
Martin Armstrong is one of the most influential economists of our times. Someone called him the “Forecaster”, because that was the title of the biopic film that helped make his activities known throughout the world.
Those of Martin Armstrong are not just “predictions”, as his reflections are based on the compendium of precise mathematical formulas and analytical skills. We interviewed him to try to understand the current geopolitical context. From the crisis of Western democracies to the birth of the BRICS front, to arrive at profound reflections on the risk of a military conflict on a global scale, Armstrong interprets real-time data thanks to his diachronic “vision” and a decades-long effort of research and analysis . Armstrong’s work allows us to connect knowledge of the past to critical factors of the present time. For all these reasons, Armstrong’s analyzes are precious for understanding the present and orienting ourselves towards a future that appears full of unknowns and pitfalls.
Our greatest threat is centralized control; that is what doomed communism. I agree with Huntington that the clash of civilizations will be based upon cultures and religion mainly because of centralized attempt to impose a unified culture.
The military in economic pillars that dominate Washington today have nothing to do with freedom. They have to do with people who were unwilling to accept the collapse of communism. Whereby the enemy was transformed by communism to ethnic racism.
The birth of the BRICS was caused by these people we call the neocons who engaged in ethnic racism and targeted Russia by removing them from the world economy under SWIFT. This woke up many in the world, realizing that the dollar was now being weaponized and was no longer a monetary instrument exclusively. Nations began to realize if they did not conform to the commands of Washington, then they to could be removed from SWIFT. Thus they have divided the world economy bringing to an end globalization.
It has been propaganda that we live under a democracy. We live under republics in which case the people are represented and have no right to vote on critical issues. Republics historically are the most corrupt forms of government compared to a monarchy or dictatorship which cannot be bribed. In a republic, all representatives lacking term limits are up for sale to the highest bidder. This has resulted in the collapse of confidence in government both in Europe and the US which have fallen below 30% – the lowest since WWII. External agents such as George Soros, Bill Gates, World Economic Forum, push personal agendas which has further undermined the confidence in our systems. It is the government that decides if we go to war or not. The people are never asked.
The sovereign debt crisis that we face has appeared often throughout history. It is unsustainable because governments act in their own self-interest and will always expand debt to retain power. Historically, these systems collapse when they issue new debt to pay off the old, and no one is there to buy the new debt. Once they can no longer continue to borrow new money, then inevitably, they collapse.
History repeats because human nature never changes. The Roman Empire is but one example from history of its success and failures. It lasted longer than anyone because it did not impose cultural regulations. The Christians called them pagans because they had so many Gods. That was the product of their policy of freedom of religion. Athens had Athena, Northern Europe had Thor, so they did not try to change the culture of the lands they conquered. They created a common market where someone in Britain could sell products to someone in Rome. So the freedom of religion, low taxation, freedom of movement, and a common market combined to create the Pax Romana.
It is unlikely that we can avoid world war. Governments need war because their debts are no longer sustainable. They will use the war as the excuse for defaults – as was the case for WWII. They will create Bretton Woods II with the IMF digital currency as the reserve.
I believe we have a third world war that will begin piecemeal with the Middle East, Iran vs Israel, Europe vs Russia, north Korea vs Japan and South Korea, China vs Taiwan. But they will eventually merge together.
The wealth of every nation is its people. That has been proven with the rise of Germany and Japan after WWII. This is the essence of Adam Smith’s “Invisible Hand.” But those in government prefer Marx, for he advocates that the state has the power to manipulate the people. So, Governments have forgotten it and reject Smith because Marx provides them with more power.
I named my computer model after Socrates because the oracle of Delphi had said that he was the smartest man in Greece. He tried to prove the oracle wrong and the process proved it to be correct. He was put on trial and sentenced to death because he knew too much. My computer has taught me a lot in geopolitics, we had a major bank in Lebanon in the 1980’s and they asked if I could create a model on the Lebanese pound. I put the data in the computer and it came out and said their country would fall apart in 8 days. I thought something was wrong with the data. When I told the client, they asked me what currency would be best, and I said the Swiss Franc. Eight days later the civil war begn. Obviously they saw the movement of money themselves and came to me for the timing. The same thing happened with a client in Saudi Arabia who was a big shipper. He called me asking me what gold would do tomorrow because Iran was going to begin attacking shipping in the gulf. So once again, there was advanced information about war. By 1998, I understood how the computer was forcasting such events. I warned in June at our London conference that Russia was about to collapse. The London financial Times had snuck into the back of the room and reported that forecast on the front of their newspaper on June 27th 1998. Russia collapsed about 6 weeks later.
Yes, we saw the capital flows shift a day in advance, up to a week in advance in the case of the attack in israel. The defense stocks began to rise even with 9/11 the government used our model to look at who bought puts on airlines in the days before. Someone always knows when they’re going to do these types of events. And they move their money either to profit or to avoid a loss. The computer is tracking everything. It cannot tell me which person has done it. Just that the move is about to take place.
The amazing discrepancy between what people want and what they get through the government "nanny state". As laws pile upon laws, life becomes less fun, more regimented and regulated into nothingness. No surprise people spend most of their time indoor, it's a legal jungle outside. Especially if you're black and poor in red states and unless you're black and poor in blue states.
Authored by John & Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,
“Whether the mask is labeled fascism, democracy, or dictatorship of the proletariat, our great adversary remains the apparatus—the bureaucracy, the police, the military.”
- Simone Weil, French philosopher
We are caught in a vicious cycle of too many laws, too many cops, and too little freedom.
It’s hard to say whether we’re dealing with a kleptocracy (a government ruled by thieves), a kakistocracy (a government run by unprincipled career politicians, corporations and thieves that panders to the worst vices in our nature and has little regard for the rights of American citizens), or a Nanny State Idiocracy.
Whatever the label, this overbearing despotism is what happens when government representatives (those elected and appointed to work for us) adopt the authoritarian notion that the government knows best and therefore must control, regulate and dictate almost everything about the citizenry’s public, private and professional lives.
The government’s bureaucratic attempts at muscle-flexing by way of overregulation and overcriminalization have reached such outrageous limits that federal and state governments now require on penalty of a fine that individuals apply for permission before they can grow exotic orchids, host elaborate dinner parties, gather friends in one’s home for Bible studies, give coffee to the homeless, let their kids manage a lemonade stand, keep chickens as pets, or braid someone’s hair, as ludicrous as that may seem.
As the Regulatory Transparency Project explains, “There are over 70 federal regulatory agencies, employing hundreds of thousands of people to write and implement regulations. Every year, they issue about 3,500 new rules, and the regulatory code now is over 168,000 pages long.”
In his CrimeADay Twitter feed, Mike Chase highlights some of the more arcane and inane laws that render us all guilty of violating some law or other.
As Chase notes, it’s against the law to try to make an unreasonable noise while a horse is passing by in a national park; to leave Michigan with a turkey that was hunted with a drone; to refill a liquor bottle with different liquor than it had in it when it was originally filled; to offer to buy swan feathers so you can make a woman's hat with them; to enter a design in the Federal Duck Stamp contest if waterfowl are not the dominant feature of the design; to transport a cougar without a cougar license; to sell spray deodorant without telling people to avoid spraying it in their eyes; and to transport “meat loaf” unless it’s in loaf form.
In such a society, we are all petty criminals.
In fact, Boston lawyer Harvey Silvergate estimates that the average American now unknowingly commits three felonies a day, thanks to an overabundance of vague laws that render otherwise innocent activity illegal and an inclination on the part of prosecutors to reject the idea that there can’t be a crime without criminal intent.
The bigger the government grows, the worse the red tape becomes.
Almost every aspect of American life today, including the job sector, is now subject to this kind of heightened scrutiny and ham-fisted control.
Whereas 70 years ago, one out of every 20 U.S. jobs required a state license, today, almost 1 in 4 American occupations requires a license.
According to business analyst Kaylyn McKenna, more than 41 states require that makeup artists be licensed. Twenty-eight states require a license before you can work as a residential painter. Funeral attendants, whose duties include placing caskets in visitation rooms, arranging flowers and directing mourners, have to be licensed to do so in Kansas, Maine and Massachusetts.
The problem of overregulation has become so bad that, as one analyst notes, “getting a license to style hair in Washington takes more instructional time than becoming an emergency medical technician or a firefighter.”
This is what happens when bureaucrats run the show, and the rule of law becomes little more than a cattle prod for forcing the citizenry to march in lockstep with the government.
Overregulation is just the other side of the coin to overcriminalization, that phenomenon in which everything is rendered illegal, and everyone becomes a lawbreaker.
As policy analyst Michael Van Beek warns, the problem with overcriminalization is that there are so many laws at the federal, state and local levels—that we can’t possibly know them all.
“It’s also impossible to enforce all these laws. Instead, law enforcement officials must choose which ones are important and which are not. The result is that they pick the laws Americans really must follow, because they’re the ones deciding which laws really matter,” concludes Van Beek. “Federal, state and local regulations — rules created by unelected government bureaucrats — carry the same force of law and can turn you into a criminal if you violate any one of them… if we violate these rules, we could be prosecuted as criminals. No matter how antiquated or ridiculous, they still carry the full force of the law. By letting so many of these sit around, just waiting to be used against us, we increase the power of law enforcement, which has lots of options to charge people with legal and regulatory violations.”
Case in point: in New Jersey, in what journalist Billy Binion describes as “yet another example of the effects of overcriminalization, which increases interactions between civilians and police with little benefit to actual public safety,” police went so far as to arrest a teenager and seize other teen’s bicycles for so-called traffic violations and a failure to register their bikes with the state.
This is the police state’s superpower: it has been vested with the authority to make our lives a bureaucratic hell.
That explains how a fisherman can be saddled with 20 years’ jail time for throwing fish that were too small back into the water. Or why police arrested a 90-year-old man for violating an ordinance that prohibits feeding the homeless in public unless portable toilets are also made available. Or how states across the country, in a misguided attempt to disperse homeless populations, have criminalized sitting, sleeping, or resting in public spaces; sharing food with people; and camping in public.
The laws can get downright silly.
For instance, in Florida, it’s against the law to eat a frog that was used in a frog-jumping contest. You could also find yourself passing time in a Florida slammer for such inane activities as singing in a public place while wearing a swimsuit, breaking more than three dishes per day, farting in a public place after 6 pm on a Thursday, and skateboarding without a license.
“Such laws,” notes journalist George Will, “which enable government zealots to accuse almost anyone of committing three felonies in a day, do not just enable government misconduct, they incite prosecutors to intimidate decent people who never had culpable intentions. And to inflict punishments without crimes.”
Unfortunately, the consequences are all too serious for those whose lives become grist for the police state’s mill.
In this way, America has gone from being a beacon of freedom to a locked down nation.
We labor today under the weight of countless tyrannies, large and small, carried out in the so-called name of the national good by an elite class of governmental and corporate officials who are largely insulated from the ill effects of their actions.
We increasingly find ourselves badgered, bullied and browbeaten into bearing the brunt of their arrogance, paying the price for their greed, suffering the backlash for their militarism, agonizing as a result of their inaction, feigning ignorance about their backroom dealings, overlooking their incompetence, turning a blind eye to their misdeeds, cowering from their heavy-handed tactics, and blindly hoping for change that never comes.
The overt signs of the despotism exercised by the increasingly authoritarian regime that passes itself off as the United States government (and its corporate partners in crime) are all around us: censorship, criminalizing, shadow banning and de-platforming of individuals who express ideas that are politically incorrect or unpopular; warrantless surveillance of Americans’ movements and communications; SWAT team raids of Americans’ homes; shootings of unarmed citizens by police; harsh punishments meted out to schoolchildren in the name of zero tolerance; community-wide lockdowns and health mandates that strip Americans of their freedom of movement and bodily integrity; armed drones taking to the skies domestically; endless wars; out-of-control spending; militarized police; roadside strip searches; privatized prisons with a profit incentive for jailing Americans; fusion centers that spy on, collect and disseminate data on Americans’ private transactions; and militarized agencies with stockpiles of ammunition, to name some of the most appalling.
Yet as egregious as these incursions on our rights may be, it’s the endless, petty tyrannies—the heavy-handed, punitive-laden dictates inflicted by a self-righteous, Big-Brother-Knows-Best bureaucracy on an overtaxed, overregulated, and underrepresented populace—that illustrate so clearly the degree to which “we the people” are viewed as incapable of common sense, moral judgment, fairness, and intelligence, not to mention lacking a basic understanding of how to stay alive, raise a family, or be part of a functioning community.
In exchange for the promise of an end to global pandemics, lower taxes, lower crime rates, safe streets, safe schools, blight-free neighborhoods, and readily accessible technology, health care, water, food and power, we’ve opened the door to lockdowns, militarized police, government surveillance, asset forfeiture, school zero tolerance policies, license plate readers, red light cameras, SWAT team raids, health care mandates, overcriminalization, overregulation and government corruption.
We relied on the government to help us safely navigate national emergencies (terrorism, natural disasters, global pandemics, etc.) only to find ourselves forced to relinquish our freedoms on the altar of national security, yet we’re no safer (or healthier) than before.
We asked our lawmakers to be tough on crime, and we’ve been saddled with an abundance of laws that criminalize almost every aspect of our lives.
We wanted criminals taken off the streets, and we didn’t want to have to pay for their incarceration. What we’ve gotten is a nation that boasts the highest incarceration rate in the world, with many doing time for relatively minor, nonviolent crimes, and a private prison industry fueling the drive for more inmates.
We wanted law enforcement agencies to have the necessary resources to fight the nation’s wars on terror, crime and drugs. What we got instead were militarized police decked out with M-16 rifles, grenade launchers, silencers, battle tanks and hollow point bullets—gear designed for the battlefield, more than 80,000 SWAT team raids carried out every year (many for routine police tasks, resulting in losses of life and property), and profit-driven schemes that add to the government’s largesse such as asset forfeiture, where police seize property from “suspected criminals.”
We fell for the government’s promise of safer roads, only to find ourselves caught in a tangle of profit-driven red light cameras, which ticket unsuspecting drivers in the so-called name of road safety while ostensibly fattening the coffers of local and state governments.
This is what happens when the American people get duped, deceived, double-crossed, cheated, lied to, swindled and conned into believing that the government and its army of bureaucrats—the people we appointed to safeguard our freedoms—actually have our best interests at heart.
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, the problem with these devil’s bargains is that there is always a catch, always a price to pay for whatever it is we valued so highly as to barter away our most precious possessions.
In the end, such bargains always turn sour.
This is quite a bombshell - If the BRICS truly introduce a new payment system this will indeed change our world profoundly in many respects.
Get ready for what may well be the geoeconomic bombshell of 2024: the coming of a decentralized monetary ecosystem.
Welcome to The Unit – a concept that has already been discussed by the financial services and investments working group set up by the BRICS+ Business Council and has a serious shot at becoming official BRICS+ policy as early as in 2025.
According to Alexey Subbotin, founder of Arkhangelsk Capital Management and one of the Unit’s conceptualizers, this is a new problem-solving system that addresses the key geoeconomic issue of these troubled times: a global crisis of trust.
He knows all about it first-hand: a seasoned financial professional with experience in investment banking, asset management and corporate matters, Subbotin leads the Unit project under the auspices of IRIAS, an international intergovernmental organization set up in 1976 in accordance with the UN statute.
The Global Majority has had enough of the centrally controlled monetary framework put in place 80 years ago in Bretton Woods and its endemic flaws: chronic deficits fueling irresponsible military spending; speculative bubbles; politically motivated sanctions and secondary sanctions; abuse of settlement and payment infrastructure; protectionism; and the lack of fair arbitration.
In contrast, the Unit proposes a reliable, quick and economically efficient solution for cross-border payments. The - transactional - Unit is a game-changer as a new form of international currency that can be issued in a de-centralized way, and then recognized and regulated at national level.
The Unit offers a unique solution for bottlenecks in global financial infrastructure: it is eligible for traditional banking operations as well as for the newest forms of digital banking.
The Unit can also help to upend unfair pricing in commodity trading, by means of setting up a new – fair and efficient – Eurasian Mercantile Exchange where trading and settlement can be done in a new currency bridging trade flows and capital, thus paving the way to the development of new financial products for foreign direct investment (FDI).
The strength of the Unit, conceptually, is to remove direct dependency on the currency of other nations, and to offer especially to the Global Majority a new form of apolitical money - with huge potential for anchoring fair trade and investments.
It is indeed a new concept in terms of an international currency - anchored in gold (40%) and BRICS+ currencies (60%). It is neither crypto nor stablecoin – as it’s shown here.
The Global Majority will instantly grasp the primary purpose of the Unit: to harmonize trade and financial flows by keeping them outside of political pressure or “rules” that can be twisted at will. The inevitable consequence translates as financial sovereignty. What matters in the whole process are independent monetary policies focused on economic growth.
That’s the key appeal for the Global Majority: a full ecosystem offering independent, complementary monetary infrastructure. And that surely can be extended to willing Unit partners in the collective West.
Now to the practical level: as Subbotin explains, the Unit ecosystem may be easily scalable because it comes from a fractal architecture supported by simple rules. New Unit nodes can be set up by either sovereign or private agents, following a detailed rule-book in custody of the UN-chartered IRIAS.
The Unit organizers employ a distributed ledger: a technology that ensures transparency, precluding capital controls or any exchange rate manipulation.
This means that connection is available to all open DEX and digital platforms operated by both commercial and Central Banks around the world.
The endgame is that everyone, essentially, may use the Unit for accounting, bookkeeping, pricing, settling, paying, saving and investing.
No wonder the institutional possibilities are quite enticing – as the Unit can be used for accounting and settlement for BRICS+; payment and pricing for the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU); or as a reserve currency for Sub-Saharan Africa.
And now comes the clincher: the Unit has already received backing by the BRICS Business Council and is on the agenda at the crucial ministerial meeting in Russia next month, which will work out the road map for the summit next October in Kazan.
That means the Unit has all it takes to be on the table as a serious subject discussed by BRICS+ and eventually be adopted as early as in 2025.
As it stands, the priority for the Unit conceptualizers – whom I followed for over a year during several, detailed meetings in Moscow - is to inform the general public about the new system.
The Unit team is not interested at all in getting straight into political hot waters or to be cornered by ideologically-laden arguments. Direct references to inspiring but sometimes controversial concepts or authors like Zoltan Pozsar may bury the Unit concept into pigeon holes, thus limiting its potential impact.
What may lie ahead could be extraordinarily exciting, as the Unit appeal could extend all the way from Elon Musk to the BRICS’s New Development Bank (NDB), hopefully engaging an array of crucial actors. After a positive evaluation by Finance Minister Anton Siluanov – who remains on the post in the new Russian government - it’s not far-fetched to imagine Putin and Xi discussing it face to face this week in Beijing.
As it stands, the major takeaway is that the Unit should be seen as a feasible, technical solution for the theoretically Unsolvable: a globally-recognized payment/trade system, immune to political pressure. It’s the only game in town – there are no others.
Meanwhile, the Unit conceptualizers are open for constructive criticism and all manners of collaboration. Yet sooner or later the battle ranks will be lined up – and then it will be a matter of seriously upping the game.
Vasily Zhabykin, co-author of the Unit white paper and founder of CFA.Center, Unit’s technological partner at Skolkovo Innovation Hub in Moscow, crucially stresses: the Unit “represents apolitical money and can be the connector between the Global South and the West.”
He’s keen to point out that “the Unit can keep all the wheels turning unlike most of the other concepts that feature ‘dollar killers’, etc. We do not want to harm anybody. Our goal is to improve efficiency of currently broken capital and money flows. The Unit is rather the ‘cure for centralized cancer’’’.
Subbotin and the Unit team “are keen to meet new partners who share our approach and are ready to bring additional value to our project.” If that’s the case, they should “send us 3 bullet points on how can they help and improve the Unit.”
A bold follow-up step should be, for instance, a virtual conference on the Unit, featuring leading Russian economist Sergey Glazyev, Yannis Varoufakis, Jeffrey Sachs and Michael Hudson, among others.
By email, Glazyev, a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Minister of Integration and Macroeconomics of the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU) , summed up the Unit’s potential:
“I have been following the development of Unit for more than a year and can confirm that Unit offers a very timely, feasible solution. It is academically sound, technologically innovative and at the same time complementary to the existing banking infrastructure.
Launching it under the auspices of an UN institution gives Unit legitimacy, which the current Bretton Woods framework is clearly lacking. Recent actions by the US administration and loud silence from IMF clearly indicate the need for change.
A decentralized approach to emission of potential global trade currency, whose intrinsic value is anchored in physical gold and BRICS+ currencies, makes Unit the most promising of several approaches being considered. It balances political priorities of all participants, while helping each sovereign economy develop along its optimal path.
The New Development Bank (NDB) and BRICS+ shall embrace the concept of Unit and help it to become the pinnacle of the new emerging global financial infrastructure, free from malign political interferences while focused instead on fair trade and sustainable economic growth.”
A clear, practical example of possible Unit problem-solving concerns Russia-Iran trade relations. These are two top BRICS members. Russian trade with Iran is unprofitable due to sanctions – and both cannot make payments in US dollars or euros.
Russian companies suffer significant losses after switching to payments in national currencies. With each transfer, Russian businesses on average lose as much as 25% due to the discrepancy between the market rate in Iran and the state rate.
And here’s the key takeaway: BRICS+ as well as the Global Majority can only be strengthened by developing closer geoeconomics ties. The removal of Western speculative capital shall free up local commodity trading, and enable the pooling of investable capital for sustainable development. To unlock such a vast potential, the Unit may well be the key.
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