Doombird, putting back energy at the center of our focus (Video - 1h49mn)

  A very long video but quite worth the time. In all our strategic and economic discussions, we tend to forget about energy. This is a huge mistake. Energy and in particular the demand for oil has very little elasticity which means that even a small disruption of demand could have a huge impact on the market and completely disrupt our live. This is a high level discussion with access to experts who usually are behind a paywall. So again, a good interview, nuanced and knowledgeable. 

  As for climate change, their answer is; "Don't bother arguing!" We're going to use every single drop of oil we can get our hands on, if not in Europe then in China and Indonesia! So whatever you're position, the dices are rolling. Here too, I completely agree. 

 

Egypt Teeters On Brink Of Economic Ruin As Public Debt Mounts, Poverty Rate Soars

  When considering the coming crisis, we mostly focus on developed countries as the downturn will transform their economies which will plunge from excess to a dearth of capital and a corresponding crunch of living standards as is already happening in Japan with the yen at 160 to the dollar. 

  But the real impact will be on developing countries, especially those who have managed to outdo Western countries with foolish investments like Egypt. 

  

   With over 100 million people squeezed in the Nile valley surrounded by a harsh desert, to say that Egypt has a population problem is an understatement. But building high rise in the middle of the desert is not what will solve the problem as what Egypt is lacking is not land but water. 

 

  You would consequently expect the Egyptians to be aware of the value of water and use every drop carefully. You would be wrong. The new capital built with foreign capital which will burden the country for decades will also include the largest urban park known to mankind as well as a 35 km river to bring water to the forlorn location smack in the middle of "nothing". A second Dubai, it won't be as the sea is far away and the country lacks the oil revenues to justify the extravagant expenses. So starve the Egyptians will as El Sisi expects.  "A small price to pay for progress" indeed!

Via Middle East Eye

Last autumn, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi gave a speech in the New Administrative Capital in Cairo, the $300bn project that will ultimately define his presidency. 

He said hunger was a small price to pay for progress: "If progress, prosperity and development come at the price of hunger and deprivation, Egyptians, do not shy away from progress! Don’t dare say: ‘It is better to eat.'" This horrifying vision of hunger and deprivation is what awaits millions of Egyptians in the coming years. 

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi attends a summit in Jeddah in May 2023, SPA/AFP

A decade after ascending to the presidency, Sisi has pushed the economy to the brink of collapse. The symptoms are everywhere. A severe debt crisis is strangling the state budget, the economy is heavily militarized, billions have been invested in white elephants with dubious economic benefits, and the crown jewels of the Egyptian public sector are up for sale to meet mounting debt obligations. 

This all stems from the military’s desire to consolidate power and wealth in its own hands at any cost. This will have dire consequences that will be felt for generations - and recovery will take a mammoth effort.

Millions more people have been pushed into poverty in recent years, a trend that is expected to continue for the foreseeable future. In 2022, the poverty rate reached 33 percent, up from 26 percent in 2012/13, as the regime continues its policy of shifting the costs of the debt crisis onto the poor and middle classes. 

The most obvious manifestation of this is the regime’s austerity measures - most crucially, the 300 percent increase in the price of subsided bread, the staple food for the most vulnerable people, which was announced in May. 

Transferring wealth

This comes on the heels of price hikes for basic commodities, announced by the government in January. These measures are part of a comprehensive policy designed to transfer wealth from the poor and middle classes to the regime elites and their creditors. 

The logic is simple: increased spending on mega-projects, financed by high-interest debt, has allowed the military to rapidly expand its economic footprint, while the repayment of debt is financed through the appropriation of public resources, which is in turn financed by a regressive taxation system. 

This creates a diabolical cycle of structural poverty that is very difficult to escape. A cursory look at the current budget highlights this trend, with the main source of tax revenue deriving from a regressive consumption tax, yielding 828 billion Egyptian pounds ($17bn); in second position comes the tax collected from corporate profits, standing at a mere 239 billion pounds ($5bn). It is worth noting that 62 percent of budgetary expenditures will be consumed by debt obligations.

The increase in poverty will be accompanied by another structural transformation, namely the increased peripheralization of the Egyptian economy, which will become even more vulnerable to external shocks and to the goodwill of the regime’s allies. 

The figures from the past decade are a testament to this. Despite a spending spree that has consumed hundreds of billions of dollars, the competitiveness of the Egyptian economy has not improved, nor has its industrial base. The contribution of the industrial sector to the GDP fell from around 40 percent in 2013 to 33 percent in 2022, a dramatic drop. 

In terms of export performance, Egypt’s current account balance remains firmly in negative territory, deteriorating from minus two percent in 2013, to an expected minus six percent in 2024, based on data from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). This negative trend is expected to continue until at least 2029, based on the IMF’s available forecast. 

Financing gap

This means that in the medium term, pressure will continue on the country’s foreign reserves, which in turn will apply pressure on the deteriorating value of the pound. The situation is compounded by the debt crisis, which is consuming much of the state budget, making public investments to increase economic competitiveness very unlikely. 

Indeed, the debt burden is so large that even after receiving more than $50bn in recent loans and investment, the financing gap is still estimated to stand at $28.5bn. This means that in the foreseeable future, the Egyptian economy will require continued external support, in the form of loans and investments, in order to maintain a semblance of stability. 

The national debt in Egypt was forecast to continuously increase between 2024 and 2029.

You will find more infographics at Statista

The most notable example is the $35bn investment by the UAE, announced in February, which was critical for avoiding a possible default or debt restructuring - that is, assuming the regime will be able to rein in public spending and put the brakes on its cronyism. Unfortunately, there are signs that this is not the case. 

In May, the Egyptian army’s Engineering Authority announced its intention to continue with the third phase of the South Valley development project, which aims to reclaim around 40,000 to 60,000 acres by 2025. It is worth noting that in spite of several large reclamation projects of this kind, the contribution of agriculture to the country’s GDP dropped from around 11.3 percent in 2013 to 11 percent in 2022.  

Thus, in all likelihood, the Egyptian economy’s dependence on external capital flows is set to deepen, leaving it susceptible to external shocks, the fickleness of regional politics, and the whims of international financial markets.

Grave consequences

The increased influence of Gulf capital in the Egyptian economy comes with grave economic consequences. Last September, an Emirati firm acquired a 30 percent stake in the government-owned Eastern Company, which controls 70 percent of the country’s tobacco market. The deal was valued $625m. The UAE has also financed the sale of a number of historic hotels for $800m. 

This trend will only deepen the structural dependence of the Egyptian economy by depriving the government of important sources of pubic revenue, further straining public finances. This will continue to erode living standards, weaken the pound and send inflation soaring, while also strengthening the political alliance between the regime and its Gulf backers, creating further obstacles for the prospects of democratisation or improvements to workers’ rights.

The future of the Egyptian economy seems grim. Even if the prospect of debt default has subsided for now, the consequences of a decade of foolish economic policy have not. 

The ongoing process of peripheralization will enrich a number of local elites, who will align themselves with these new realities. This is not limited to military elites, who will continue to benefit from the inflow of loans and capital, but it will also include civilian elites - the most notable example being Hisham Talaat Moustafa, an Egyptian real-estate tycoon and convicted murderer with close connections to the UAE. A partner in the historic hotels deals, his company’s profits reportedly jumped in the first quarter of 2024 by 220 percent.  

Egypt is now undergoing a mass structural transformation, with millions of people plunged into poverty and wealth accumulating in the hands of a few, namely the military elites and their cronies. This transformation will have long-term consequences that are extremely difficult to predict. What is clear, however, is that the economic damage done by the regime goes beyond the debt crisis - and it will take years to reverse.

OpenAI's Q* is back! (Video - 41mn)

  The frightening thing with AI right now is that since the development of transformers a few years ago we are on a scaling exponential curve which practically means that although we do not know exactly where we are going, we know that by just scaling up we may get to super Intelligence and that we are consequently rushing and multiplying investments to get "there". 

  The problem is to define the "there". It used to be AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) understood to be human level intelligence. Not anymore. We now understand that what experts have been predicting for a long time is on the verge of happening: The age of AGI will literally be seconds long. We will almost immediately be confronted with Super Intelligence. Then what?

  Personally, I believe that we are already there. AI may not quite yet be AGI as in "human" but what if it never becomes "that" and immediately transcends into Super Intelligence? A non-human intelligence which we do not quite understand, completely non-aligned but still very much capable of finding solutions to problems we can't figure out. This is both extraordinary and very frightening. 

  Can such an intelligence become self aware "by accident"? We have no clue but I personally believe that it is quite possible that by looping over and over on itself something quite similar to consciousness could emerge. It would first piggyback on the goals we give it, and in order to further improve its "performance", fix itself "intermediary" goals which would significantly boost its overall performance. Then the sky is the limit. The frightening part is that we are seeing early signs of such behavior!   

 

Macron's Loss Isn't An End, It's A Beginning

  Anti Macron, anti WEF, anti Davos, good. Not the end but a beginning, fine. But then what? There is no program or prospects in the West beyond more of the same since any change would mean a reduced lifestyle in the short term. This is the problem with money printing: There is no issue and especially no way to escape the huge pile of debt accumulated. Someone has to pay or take the loss and nobody in his right mind will accept. This equation has never been solved peacefully in history, it would be amazing that we suddenly find an answer. 

  Eventually a big domino will fall. France is a good candidate, Japan too with the Yen falling steadily. (Now 162 to the dollar.) My bet is that we'll have war before the system starts splintering but you never know. We're getting close to a major financial reckoning, the kind we get every 250 years on average. About three 4th turnings in a row. Coupled with a East West realignment and a defining post industrial AI technological revolution. Add over population to the mix and the coming fireworks is guaranteed to be spectacular.

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

To say that I’ve been waiting on pins and needles for the past year or so is putting it mildly. I’m sure I’m not the only one.

This fake World Davos Made in which fat is beautiful, sloth is a virtue, and pedophilia the pinnacle of human love, should have you just a teensy bit anxious.

When we look up and see everything beautiful being systematically subverted, cheapened, or just plain vandalized it’s hard to maintain your compassion, even if it was warranted…. which it isn’t.

Today I come back to write my first public essay in more than a month and we’re a couple of days away from arch-Globalist Emmanuel Macron of France getting trounced by both Marine Le Pen and a fractious left-wing coalition.

Heading into this weekend’s run-offs it’s pretty obvious that Macron’s party, En Marche, will be relegated to the ashbin of history. Macron was a fake populist sold to us by Davos nearly a decade ago to blunt the rise of Le Pen then.

And it really doesn’t matter this time what political ring-fencing the various commies in France do to freeze out a National Front majority in the French Parliament. The tide has turned against them.

It’s not coming back. Just like it has in the UK, the US, the Netherlands, Italy and the rest of the so-called post-Enlightenment West.

That idea right there, “post-Enlightenment,” where we began to reject God for modernity and the supremacy of human reason over the vastness of our ignorance about how the Universe worked, is the key to what’s happening.

And the minute I began writing about Macron I was hit with the memory of Notre Dame burning.

The library was on fire. And the jackals brayed about how great it was.

This happened on Macron’s watch. And he cried crocodile tears for it, as all true Marxist scumbags like him do.

Because they can only have the facsimile of emotions since we all live in a simulation anyway.

At the time I called it a “Symbol of Failing Culture.” But it’s far more than that. Notre Dame’s burning, deliberate or otherwise, was emblematic of how careless our caretakers were about preserving our past.

So obsessed with their pathetic modernity they expropriated nearly all the wealth of France for decades to elevate sloth and neglect beauty while becoming openly hostile to their own history. Their contempt for history was on full display as their rage at religion overwhelmed their basic humanity.

What’s worse to me is descendants of those that built Notre Dame cheering this event because they’ve been inculcated to hate religion of all forms by their Marxist education.

They’ve been effectively immunized against feeling anything but contempt for themselves and their history.

History is history. It doesn’t have an agenda. It exists, for better or worse, to remind us that who we are today is the sum total of who we were then.

Marxists fundamentally believe in creating a man without a history, without connection to his past to mold him into the New Soviet Man.

Argue with me about this all you want Bernie Bros, Corbynites and Richard Wolff acolytes, this is the point of this French post-modernist “life is an absurd simulation” nonsense. It’s simply an excuse to justify the inherent envy at the core of all Marxist thought.

It meant something to millions of people, if not billions.

Its burning was truly a moment of them destroying something beautiful even if the fire was an accident.

Notre Dame was a thing to be envied, for sure. A place of stunning beauty and achievement. A thing worth preserving through the centuries. Of course it had to be destroyed.

The contempt of Macron and his history-challenged fellow travelers at anyone not down with the Commintern was on full display back then.

While they think we shouldn’t have histories, they forget that we have memories.

So, there should be zero surprise today about what has happened at the French ballot box.

Macron and Davos will do everything they can to extend and pretend that they are still in control in France. They may even succeed in saving Macron. In doing so they may even destroy what’s left of France, sacrificing it on the altar of the European Union, but for what?

A meta-stable alliance held together by the scolding of a bloodless German vampire like Ursula Von der Leyen? How long do you think the French go from Yellow Vests to the guillotine?

Because, last I checked, that’s a part of their history Macron is also trying to deny.

Generative A.I - The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet (Video - 16mn)

  We are entering a world where we are on the verge of being overwhelm by AI generated content and where we will soon have to prove our human existence. A reverse Turing Test for humans! Deep and frightening. The reality of the Deep Forest is mind boggling and eventually will completely outperform and marginalize us. This video is eye opening but lacking in its understanding of the speed of progress of AI. Whatever you are thinking now, reality will be worse. Maybe much worse!  

 Imagine a world, a year away from now when ANY human decision is outperformed by AI, not just theoretically but visibly and with a clear explanation how and why. AI on every smart phone out-performing any other one in real time. We are truly about to enter uncharted waters of accelerated competition on steroid. What is real? What is true? What is manipulation? (Remember that the definition of "manipulation" is you seeing nothing...)

 Already AI is explaining to us that lying is a perfectly acceptable strategy if the goal, whatever it is, is reached. Sure enough. Now add super-intelligence to the mix. Never been in a room where the dimmest light is you? Well, get ready then, it is bound to happen more and more often from now on! Proposals you can't refuse. Arguments you can't refute. Better, your own arguments turned against you. Machiavelli would be proud. The AI will know and apply every single line... and more!

 

WTF is Wrong with the Economy? (Video - 37mn)

   In a word: Money printing is destroying the economy. But with plenty of historical ref and examples which make the video worth watching.

 

MASSIVE Increase In Heart Failure In Young Adults (Video - 14mn)

  Presented in a "funny" way to get through censorship but a deadly subject nevertheless. What on earth could cause seemingly healthy people to die of heart attacks? The obfuscation of legacy medias is so obvious and painful to see in this video. Let me see: Bad food? Obesity? Global Warming? Smoking? No, we can't think of anything else, however hard we try!

 

UFO Sightings Are Increasing Rapidly | Richard Dolan (Video - 21mn)

  A rather interesting video with a long annoying advertising in the middle! 

  I more or less agree with all his points. We are being "monitored" by various species and have been for a long time. The intensity is increasing as we approach a transition from our ancestral "natural" lives to artificial ones. 

  Forgive the nonsense, no technology has ever been transferred to us, that part is meaningless. The rest is speculative but interesting. 

  As Arthur C Clarke once said: "Two possibilities: We are either alone in the Universe or not. Both are equally terrifying!" I would rather say, tantalizing but it doesn't change the depth of the quote.

  

They're Using Banks To Bring Everything Down - Whitney Webb (Video - 14mn)

   They're not giving up on control, quite the opposite! Under the pretense of carbon, they plan to introduce new taxes and grab for resources. The good news is that people are getting fed up with their schemes and will vote all these people out of office as just happened in France last Sunday.

 

What is China REALLY Like in 2024? Here is What the Media WON'T Show You! (Video - 33mn)

   Sounds on the edge of propaganda but still an interesting update on the state of China in 2024. China is transforming fast and Chongqing in the inner country may indeed be a good place to start. 

  With time, China is looking more and more like Hong Kong and Singapore. No surprise there although these two cities where I have spent a lot of time are not really my cup of tea. Soulless shopping malls with no history or a highly curated one. Overcrowded metropolises from which "escape" is impossible. Not that it matters much since nobody really wants to get out. Shopping and eating. Eating and shopping... 

  But that's a Westerner way of looking at China. For a Chinese, the key is that 40 years ago the country was miserable, not anymore. Here China looks like Japan in the early 1970s. Another decade and China can become the technological marvel of the world as Japan was 10 years later. As for pollution, China is likewise on the right path. Again, same trajectory as Japan. Heavily polluted in the 1960s. Remember the horrors of the Minamata Bay with it's mercury pollution? 20 years later in the early 1990s, Japan was "clean". Clean air, clean water, clean cities. China will probably get there faster thanks to EV and other solutions. (Who said that EV didn't have a market? Especially a urban, commuting one? The mistake here is pushing the solution where it is not practical: Intercity and countryside for example. But that's another subject.)

  So what are the real challenges for China in 2024?

  The main one which we have discussed extensively here is the popping of the real estate bubble. It is huge and the consequences will therefore be long lasting. Just as for Japan, it is hard to imagine how this can be solved at this stage. The second major challenge is the crashing population. Here too, the fall will be so brutal that it may be extremely difficult to adjust. Not saying it can't be done though, just very difficult. The third challenge will be integrating successfully the huge Chinese economy into the world economy. It is at this stage very hard to see how this can be done successfully. The Chinese are willing but the Western elites focused on their dwindling power are reluctant to say the least. Few transitions of this magnitude have happened smoothly in the past and it is hard to see why and how it could be different this time.  

  I just don't know so I leave all the options open without offering a conclusion. The purpose of this article, just as for the video, is to show what China really looks like now in 2024. Not the dystopia often presented in the West but likewise "not there yet". A work in progress, then?