Destroying The Planet To Save Ukraine?

  As the end of the road looms ahead, European prosperity will have to be sacrificed. It was going to be for the sake of the planet, now Ukraine looks like a better choice.

 But it cannot be for the obvious reason that Europe has been trudging down the wrong economic and especially financial alley for the last 30 years.

Authored by Patricia Adams and Lawrence Solomon via The Epoch Times,

Saving Ukraine from Russia has become more important to Western leaders than saving the planet from climate change, more important than keeping their populations from freezing in the dark, more important than the viability of Western industries, and more important even than avoiding the risk of an all-out nuclear war between the West and Russia.

An early indication of the West’s loss of all perspective where Russia is concerned - call it Russia Derangement Syndrome - occurred in the United States after Donald Trump was elected president. Large swathes of the public, including virtually all Democrats and the legacy media, embraced a fantasy known as Russian Collusion, which asserted that Russia had colluded with the Trump campaign to install him as president.

The fantasy persisted for three years until 2019 when Russia Collusion was confirmed to be a hoax perpetrated by Trump’s rival for the 2016 presidency, Hillary Clinton.

Former Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson testifies before the House Intelligence Committee in an open hearing in the U.S. Capitol Visitors Center in Washington on June 21, 2017. Johnson answered questions about Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential elections and his department’s response to the threat. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Earlier this year, after Russia invaded Ukraine over a territorial dispute, Russia Derangement Syndrome went into overdrive. An infuriated West sanctioned Russian goods and services helter-skelter without thinking through the consequences, chiefly those involving energy. Russia represents continental Europe’s chief energy source and is the main reason Europeans can keep the lights on.

Only after the Europeans decided to punish Russia, and only after Russia announced cuts to gas flows—temporarily, it said—on the Nord Stream 1 pipeline of 60 percent, did it dawn on Europeans that Russia could retaliate this coming winter through punitively-timed energy curtailments, putting Europe at Russia’s mercy.

In Germany, for example, Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s administration did its sums to discover that under all scenarios, Germany lacked the reserves needed to last the winter.

“That was the sobering moment,” admitted Klaus Mueller, who heads Germany’s gas network regulator.

“If we have a very, very cold winter, if we’re careless and far too generous with gas, then it won’t be pretty.”

The European Union, now in a panic, is scrambling to acquire fossil fuels from any sources in a desperate attempt to stockpile energy prior to winter. Germany is returning to coal, as are Austria, Italy, and the Netherlands. The United Kingdom is also turning to coal and reversing its ban on fracking and on North Sea oil production. The EU is endorsing Norway’s latest exploitation of the North Sea and is open to new contracts for long-term commitments of natural gas.

The United States is exporting record amounts of gas, so much so that Europe now receives more high-priced liquefied natural gas from U.S. tankers than inexpensive natural gas from Russian pipelines. Since Russia invaded Ukraine, Europeans have advanced more than 20 liquefied natural gas import projects.

In this fossil fuel free-for-all, the West has effectively abandoned its once ironclad commitment to combat climate change, which its leaders never tired of describing as an existential threat to the planet. Gone is Germany’s net-zero commitment to phase out coal plants by 2030, tenuous is the UK’s pledge to stop using coal in power stations by 2024, and shaky is the G-7’s determination to end “direct public support for the international unabated fossil fuel energy sector by the end of 2022.” Instead, the G-7, noting its determination to support Ukraine, backed increased deliveries of liquefied natural gas and urged oil-producing nations to increase their production.

Wind turbines near a coal-fired power plant are pictured near Hamm, western Germany, on June 8, 2022. (INA FASSBENDER/AFP via Getty Images)

To punish Russia, the Europeans are knowingly visiting far more severe punishments on themselves. Germany is preparing to put its population on an emergency footing by urging a rationing of energy. Its governments are responding by dimming street lights, switching off the illumination of historic buildings, and shutting off hot water in gyms, museums, and government buildings. Housing complexes are limiting the hours that hot showers can be taken and lowering the thermostats in centrally heated complexes. Industries are planning to scale back, move away from Europe, or shut down operations altogether.

“A complete halt to Russian natural gas exports would cost Germany 12.7% of economic performance in the second half of 2022,” costing some $200 billion and affecting 5.6 million jobs, the Bavaria Industry Association warned last month.

Denmark’s emergency plan involves shutting down gas heating during the summer, taking shorter showers, drying clothes outside, and suspending gas supplies to energy-intensive industries.

A greater punishment still is being voiced in the form of nuclear war. The UK, France, and the United States have all reminded Russia that they possess nuclear weapons in response to Russian reminders that it has the greatest nuclear arsenal of all.

Remarkably, before the West so uniformly came to Ukraine’s defense, Ukraine was held in low regard by Europeans, viewed as a kleptocracy run by corrupt oligarchs with only the faintest hint of the rule of law. That image was transformed overnight once Russia invaded, as Ukraine became an instant darling of the West, so worthy as to warrant the destruction of the West’s economy, environment, and possibly the West itself.

Such is the power of the Russia Derangement Syndrome.

The Chinese Dream is Over! (Video - 18')

 China is on the edge of the abyss. But if and when it explodes, it is the whole world supply chain which goes with it. Plus of course chaos in Asia. And this is the best scenario. The bad one is of course war. 

 The CCP is out of touch with a slow but accelerating return to Maoism. The zero-covid policy is probably the best illustration as Shanghai was disinfecting its airports including the runways recently.  

 All this while the Chinese super-bubble is exploding. For anyone who has lived through the Japanese bubble burst of the 1990s, the experience was quite traumatic. So, now imagine something 10 times bigger in an unstable country.

 

 

The VAERS system Piles Up Vaccine 'Adverse Event' Reports

 Susan Ellenberg, PhD, the former Director of the Office of Biostatistics and Epidemiology at the FDA’s Center for Biologics, told RCI that “anything that gets reported goes directly into the [VAERS] system … so mostly what you get is noise.” 

 OK, understood.

 Dr. Walter Orenstein, formerly the CDC’s director of immunization, concurs. He said, “That’s why it’s called adverse ‘events’ as opposed to reaction because reaction implies causation. Event is basically something that follows.” Elderly people, for example, die regularly; if they are dying days or weeks after being vaccinated, that does not necessarily mean the vaccine is killing them.

 Fine. But they didn't have such hesitations in counting ALL deaths of elderly people as caused by the virus even when the deaths were later than average age in most countries. So scientific caution, well justified, only applies for the vaccine, now, but not for the virus, earlier?

 This is how perception is being manipulated. Doctors are doctors applying the scientific method sometimes... otherwise they are just "human" applying the precautionary principle. How convenient! 

Authored by Clayton Fox via RealClear Investigations,

Since the Food and Drug Administration authorized the first vaccines for COVID-19 in late 2020, the government and much of the media have insisted that the medicines developed in record time are safe and effective. Those who raised questions about them have been routinely dismissed as conspiracy theorists.

And yet an online database co-administered by the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control has compiled more than 1.3 million reports of vaccine-implicated  “adverse events” running the gamut from mild to severe, including 29,000 deaths.

Representative entries include:

• A 44-year-old male from California with a blood clot in the brain (CVST) five days after receiving Pfizer vaccine, dose unknown.

• A 31-year-old female from Pennsylvania with heart inflammation (myocarditis) two days after receiving Moderna’s booster.

• A 58-year-old female from California with blood clots in legs (DVT) after receiving Johnson & Johnson booster. She reported:

“Day after booster on 11/16/21 my right leg was aching. 7 days later on 11/23/21 my sole of my right foot was very painful upon walking. This resolved 2 days later by 11/25/21. On day 11 (11/26/21) my ankle was slightly swollen and painful to touch. These symptoms continued to migrate up my leg to my inner thigh. On 12/13/21 I was seen by my primary care Doctor and was sent for a d-dimer blood test which was 1.77. I was seen in vascular dept and ultrasound indicated multiple DVT from my groin to my ankle.”

These reports are not anecdotes from “anti-vaxxers” on the dark web. They come from the federal government’s open-source log, the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System. It allows anyone to go online and report a bad reaction that could be linked to any vaccine, including those for COVID-19.  (RealClearInvestigations has linked above to VAERS reports posted at Openvaers.com, an independently run and easier to navigate database that copies reports verbatim from the CDC’s less user-friendly “WONDER” system.)

While the reports are unfiltered and unexamined, the idea is that such public input will allow researchers to identify potential problems. But the sheer number of reports, and their specificity, have the attention of concerned scientists and even some politicians like Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, who has invited people harmed by vaccines to testify before Congress and advocates compensation for them.

Johnson's office said he has been admonishing the health authorities over the VAERS reports for a year. "The senator believes the CDC and FDA need to take their own adverse event early warning system seriously and be transparent with the American people," it said in a statement. "To date, they have not been."

VAERS was created in the late 1980s as an outgrowth of a congressional mandate to create a system for compensating vaccine victims and their families. In 2015, the CDC said the average number of annual reports was roughly 30,000. In 2021, there were nearly 1 million. Given the large increase during a politically charged pandemic, the usefulness of VAERS is the subject of great debate even among scientists

Some health experts believe that the number of reports is primarily a function of increased publicity around the COVID vaccines, a high number indicating only that many more people are aware of the system and concerned about potential side effects from the shots. Others say the number and strong indications in certain symptom categories – such as the cardiovascular examples cited above – paint a bleaker picture of the vaccines’ safety.

Dr. Peter McCullough, a renowned cardiologist and academic physician with over 600 papers published in medical literature, was one of the first professionals to publicly question the safety of the COVID-19 injections. On April 21, 2021, on his podcast The McCullough Report, he read out some of the early, alarming statistics from VAERS including reports of 502 heart attacks, 84 miscarriages, 321 cases of low blood platelet counts (thrombocytopenia) and 2,342 deaths. For Dr. McCullough, these numbers were a huge red flag. For comparison, he cites the last “mass vaccination program” undertaken in the United States, the 1976 swine flu vaccine. Dr. McCullough noted that there were approximately 55 million people vaccinated, with an accompanying 500 cases of Guillain-Barré syndrome, and around 25 deaths. “And the government officials at that time said, ‘we’re going to pull it.’”

Dr. McCullough said that by April 2021, VAERS reports were already so numerous  that he felt the COVID vaccines should be pulled off the market. That same month, Fox News host Tucker Carlson voiced doubts about the vaccines' effectiveness, and Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Biden's top medical adviser, blasted him for pushing "a typical crazy conspiracy theory."  

As of today, the system has more than 29,000 reports of deaths.

VAERS reports, however, are not hard evidence. Its website explains: “A report to VAERS generally does not prove that the identified vaccine(s) caused the adverse event described. It only confirms that the reported event occurred sometime after vaccine was given. No proof that the event was caused by the vaccine is required in order for VAERS to accept the report. VAERS accepts all reports without judging whether the event was caused by the vaccine.” Some of the FDA and CDC’s most senior veterans advise caution in interpreting the data.

Susan Ellenberg, PhD, the former Director of the Office of Biostatistics and Epidemiology at the FDA’s Center for Biologics, told RCI that “anything that gets reported goes directly into the [VAERS] system … so mostly what you get is noise.” She said that it’s nearly impossible to prove causation with this dataset alone. Dr. Walter Orenstein, formerly the CDC’s director of immunization, concurs. He said, “That’s why it’s called adverse ‘events’ as opposed to reaction because reaction implies causation. Event is basically something that follows.” Elderly people, for example, die regularly; if they are dying days or weeks after being vaccinated, that does not necessarily mean the vaccine is killing them.

There are many reasons why the VAERS data is usually insufficient to prove causality between vaccination and adverse events, including:

• There is no reliable denominator to establish event rates – and no “control” group against which to measure adverse events.

• Reports are often messy or incomplete.

• Underreporting has been a consistent and documented issue. (One CDC study shows that the system may capture as few as 12% of adverse events, meaning the total for COVID-19 vaccines could be as high as 10.8 million.)

• On the other hand, overreporting is also an issue, as noted in this 2003 CDC review: “Other potential reporting biases include increased reporting in the first few years after licensure, increased reporting of events occurring soon after vaccination, and increased reporting after publicity about a particular known or alleged type of adverse event.”

• In the case of childhood vaccinations, vaccine sets are co-administered, making it nearly impossible to know which specific vaccine caused the adverse event.

So why continue using an unreliable system – apart from the fact it was required by Congress? Experts agree that VAERS can be extremely useful in picking up signals of causation, which can be confirmed with further study, usually employing the government’s other major monitoring system: the CDC’s Vaccine Safety Datalink. The VSD uses the combined databases of nine major healthcare systems nationwide, providing detailed patient data, and the ability to look at control groups of unvaccinated patients. The downside to the VSD is that unless an issue comes through the healthcare system, it’s not going to be reported. So if someone dies at home after being vaccinated, it won’t make it into VSD, though it might make it into VAERS.

One prime example of VAERS picking up a signal leading to an important safety discovery occurred in the late 1990s with the RotaShield vaccine for rotavirus – an ailment that causes diarrhea and vomiting in the very young. While clinical trials revealed a small number of cases of intussusception – the sometimes-deadly folding of the intestine in small children – the  finding was not seen as prohibitive. Nonetheless, public health researchers flagged it as something to look for in VAERS as the vaccine was distributed widely. When reports started piling up in VAERS, it led to a review process, which ultimately led to the manufacturer pulling the vaccine off the market and the FDA pulling its license. A clear success for the system.

In the case of the COVID-19 vaccine products, Dr. Orenstein said VAERS has been a success, and that the large number of reports has been helpful in identifying certain issues. “The increased volume may be a good thing. Because of the increased reporting we’ve been able to detect causally related problems, with mRNA problems with myocarditis and pericarditis, and with J&J coagulation problems and Guillain-Barré, so in essence, VAERS is important.”

Jessica Rose, an independent researcher in Israel, agrees, and has devoted the past year and a half to putting VAERS under a microscope. Dr. Rose has a PhD in computational biology from Bar-Ilan University, a post-doc in molecular biology from Hebrew University, and another in biochemistry from the Technion, widely considered Israel’s MIT. She has become a fierce critic of the COVID-19 vaccines and spent countless hours poring over VAERS reports to craft her articles on the emergent issues.

For Rose, who has been collaborating with Dr. McCullough, the information available in the VAERS system on its own is sufficient to prove causality when it comes to vaccine-induced myocarditis from all three vaccines, especially the mRNA-based shots from Pfizer and Moderna. They specifically raise concerns around the high rate of myocarditis reported among boys ages 12-15. Their paper stating this was received, peer-reviewed, and accepted by Elsevier, the publisher of Current Problems in Cardiology, where the piece was to be released. It was then withdrawn from the site at the discretion of the editor. No basis was given for the removal. Dr. McCullough described the situation in detail to Bret Weinstein on his Dark Horse podcast in December. When asked for comment, Dr. McCullough told RealClearInvestigations:

Elsevier, the world's largest medical publisher, has for the first time in its history started violating publication contracts with unilateral retractions in the pandemic era. These papers were fully peer-reviewed, contracted, and published without any threats to scientific validity. The one thing in common for these retractions – they provided data on COVID-19 vaccine injuries, disabilities, and deaths. Thus Elsevier has broken the trust of the consuming public, doctors, and patients. In addition to legal exposure, Elsevier is losing ground to MDPI and other publishers that do not engage in corrupt censorship.

Asked to respond to the cardiologist's comment, Elsevier issued this statement to RCI: “We do not agree with these assertions; this article in press was withdrawn following our standard policies which are all publicly available on our website.”

The Lyme Disease Precedent

Dr. Orenstein and the federal health apparatus now acknowledge that adverse outcomes like myocarditis, coagulopathies/thrombosis, and Guillain-Barré have been established as causally related to the COVID-19 shots in certain cohorts – and that VAERS played a role in making those connections – but see them as rare.

Former FDA epidemiologist Ellenberg says the sheer number of events in VAERS may reflect the revival of an old phenomenon: high adverse publicity around vaccines, similar to what happened with the Lyme disease vaccine and arthritis.

Lyme disease can cause arthritis. So can aging. When many reports of arthritis started appearing in VAERS after that vaccine was rolled out in 1998, bad publicity followed. Ellenberg started receiving phone calls from lawyers asking her when FDA was going to pull the vaccine. Ultimately, FDA convened a panel to look into the correlation, and no causal connection was found. “But because of the publicity, use of the vaccine waned and eventually the producer took it off the market.”

Regarding the COVID-19 vaccines, Jessica Rose said VAERS shows a grim picture that has nothing to do with publicity. The reporting system “is functioning as a pharmacovigilance tool right now,” she said. “There are an enormous number and range of safety signals being thrown out.”

In March 2022, after the COVID-19 vaccine had been available for 15 months (462 days), she compared the number of VAERS reports related to these shots versus those for flu vaccines. Given the greater number of COVID shots administered during that period, she predicted that “the rate of reporting in VAERS…should be about twice for COVID than for flu.” What she found instead was “117.6 times as many reports of adverse events in the context of the COVID shots.”

Rose is adamant. “This is not about the number of doses, this is about these products doing more damage [than the flu vaccines],” she said, “systemic, comprehensive damage that we’ve never seen before. There’s no doubting that these products are different.” When RCI queried Rose as to which three adverse events might be most readily proven as being caused by the vaccine with data posted in VAERS, she replied, “Myocarditis, Bell’s palsy, and anything related to clotting.

Quietly, large numbers of peer-reviewed studies have been accumulating in legitimate journals, lending credence to those who believe many adverse events are occurring, and that they are causally related to vaccination. Just recently, a study of vaccines in three Nordic countries revealed a strong correlation between getting the Astra-Zeneca shot and a higher incidence of cardiovascular injury, and a lesser but still significant correlation for recipients of the Pfizer and Moderna products.

Finally, a “preprint” study (not yet peer reviewed) uploaded June 23 and co-authored by Peter Doshi, a senior editor at the British Medical Journal, as well as physicians from UCLA and Stanford, concludes that a careful analysis of all available data now suggests that the benefits of vaccination do not outweigh the potential harms. To make their calculations, the researchers used data from VAERS as well as its European equivalent, EudraVigilance, and the WHO’s VigiBase.

But the story remains complicated. For instance, Rose agreed drawing conclusions is complicated by the lack of data in VAERS about whether reporting patients have also recovered from COVID. Studies have now shown that having had COVID also increases the risk of cardiovascular events in the year after recovery. On the other hand, an Israeli analysis shows a correlation to vaccine rollout, but not to COVID-19 infection rates.

With such variables, the task of monitoring vaccine safety can seem almost futile. But Dr. Robert Chen, the creator of VAERS, disagrees. He believes the system, in concert with the Vaccine Safety Datalink and other resources, has worked well in alerting the public health community to issues due to vaccination. He told RCI that “in terms of its main function of telling you that something is going on, it’s amazingly effective.”

Dr. Orenstein said the VSD should be expanded if possible as a complement to VAERS but said that without a single national database, the current system of monitoring vaccine safety is “as good as it gets.” For Ellenberg, a statistician by training, “these are horrible, messy databases. You’re looking for a needle in a haystack.” When talking to other epidemiologists and encouraging them to create better systems for analyzing VAERS, Ellenberg said she uses this analogy: “If you can reduce the whole haystack to a handful of hay, then that makes your job just a little bit easier.”

Rose acknowledges the messiness of VAERS, but believes it provides enough information to tell a story of danger. She said that in her analysis, 60% of VAERS reports describe events within 48 hours of vaccine administration – one more criteria for causality. Rose said: “It isn’t on me to prove that these products aren’t safe, this is on them [CDC, FDA], legally, to prove that these products are safe. And they’re not doing their jobs.” On that point, a recent public records request by Josh Guetzkow, Ph.D., and the legal team at Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Children’s Health Defense found that CDC has not been analyzing the VAERS data on COVID-19 shots using its own stated methods.

In an email to RCI, the CDC stated, “COVID-19 vaccines are undergoing the most intense safety monitoring in U.S. history.”

Davos Loses Big Time... Draghi On the Way Out In Italy

  I do not know what to make of this! Is it just an interesting way to look at politics in Europe or is there more to it? The coming weeks should tell us.

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

Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi is out. He tendered his resignation to President Sergio Mattarella. Mattarella is refusing for now. There will be another confidence vote. It shouldn’t matter.

As is always the case with Italian politics, the story is always far murkier than the headline.

The headline is Five Star Movement (M5S) leader Giuseppe Conte could no longer back Draghi’s government because he’s doing nothing to deal with spiraling food and energy costs in Italy. Without M5S support it will be difficult, at best, for Draghi to maintain power.

The parties which ‘won’ the last election are now polling 3rd and 4th. M5S is now polling at just 12%. Lega just 15%.

It is Georgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy that lead the polls. And we are, at most nine months away from Italian elections.

I’d say nine weeks is more likely.

So, M5S and Conte making this move now is not in their favor. This implies something far deeper than what it looks like on the surface.

It implies strongly that there is an urgency to removing Draghi that trumps basic power politics, that the future of Italy itself may be what’s at stake.

And I think I might know why.

Italy is woefully unprepared for this winter as gas storage is well below levels necessary to get through the winter. The problem is Italy and the EU have been lying publicly about it. According to EU data Italy’s gas system is over 65% full, with over 126 TWhrs available, in line with other major nations, like Germany.

But looking at the actual numbers, for this year, which have been fiendishly difficult to get a hold of in recent weeks (I wonder why), Italy’s Stogit, the main gas storage company in Italy, is only 53% full and that jumped significantly in recent days (link to the data from today 7/14/2022).

Compare the run rate of gas storage filling (see chart below) from today’s data versus that of 6/17/2022 where storage stood at just 37% capacity and you’ll see exactly what I’m getting at.

So, what happened around then that all of a sudden caused a shift in the gas storage rate for Italy? M5S began its campaign against Draghi’s handling of Ukraine and a general strike was called among transport workers for June 17th.

After Draghi publicly talked about settling the Ukraine conflict with Russia, Italian Foreign Minister Luigi DiMaio (former PM and leader of M5S) openly criticized Draghi’s “immaturity” when dealing with Russia.

Now, this is where things get really murky. Remember that it was Conte who was Angela Merkel’s bagman back when he was Prime Minister to derail any potential Italian exit from the European Union, or, at least the euro. Remember also, that it was Lega’s Matteo Salvini who was openly calling for Italy to ditch the euro.

Salvini was then put under pressure from a bogus Soros-led lawsuit against him when he was Interior Minister over his handling of a boatload of refugees.

Conte staged a coup against DiMaio while they both threw Salvini under the bus when he made his move in August 2019 to take down the government and force new elections, which, at the time, Lega would have won in a walk, having more than 35% national support.

Since then Salvini has cucked out to nearly every bad move made by Italy, likely because it didn’t matter what he did.

In the end these maneuvers by the Italian political elites neutered the upstart M5S and Lega and eventually they brought Draghi in as a kind of politically-neutral caretaker Prime Minister to get the country through to the next election, which is scheduled for the first part of 2023.

Davos needed Draghi in charge in Italy to shepherd the country’s liquidation, which is where the gas storage crisis fits in. Davos moved quickly to put all of their people in place around Europe after installing Fungal Joe Biden as president in the US. Draghi being in charge in Italy meant that Davos was in charge of both sides of the Italian-American relationship.

And I’m sure they all expected they had everything they needed to ‘run the table’ geopolitically. Draghi would implement vaccine mandates, Green Passes and degrade further Italy’s competitiveness at every turn.

The euro would remain strong, Eurobond yields low, the ECB’s reputation untarnished and the Fed captive to the Democrats’ bonkers spending plans. That was the state of play when Draghi was installed in March 2021.

All that was needed was for the US to roll over and print/spend themselves into oblivion with the Democrats fully in power in the US. The Fed would be forced to monetize another 6+ trillion in debt the world didn’t want and the US would collapse, allowing capital to flow into Europe as opposed to fleeing it.

We all know how that turned out.

As I’ve been banging my shoe on the table about for the past year, the Fed, led by Jerome Powell, has been steadily undermining the Eurocrats’ agenda with tight dollar policy which started this massive bull run in the US dollar last June when he raised the payout rate on Reverse Repos to 0.05% above the Fed Funds Rate.

At the same time, Krysten Sinema (D-AZ) and Joe Manchin (D-WV) blocked the domestic agenda by refusing both the Infrastructure and Build Back Better bills in the Senate. Pelosi and Schumer were stymied at every turn and couldn’t get anything past those two.

As I said then, those two only stand tall because powerful people stood behind them. People even Davos couldn’t blackmail.

That’s a short list, FYI. It starts with the Fed and it ends with international capital not ‘down with the Comintern.’ For a full list, just look at those unwilling to sanction Russia for throwing the first punch in Ukraine.

Once that agenda collapsed and Powell’s second term as FOMC Chair secured, that set the stage for what’s happening now.

Because Draghi’s resignation begs a LOT of questions. Why would Conte, formerly Merkel’s stooge, pull out of the coalition if Davos was still in control of the situation in Italy? What changed that forced this?

I outlined the lying about the gas storage and Draghi’s wavering on Ukraine above, but is that enough? Last week Davos got a couple of scalps — Boris Johnson and Shinzo Abe. Both of them were aligned with the US, not Europe.

Europe wants to back the War against Russia without looking like they back the War against Russia. Typically European, they want to have their foreign policy cake provided by US money and eat it too.

They are going after Olaf Scholz to put the Greens formally in charge in Germany and betray what’s left of the German middle class.

You know I believe the Fed is working to re-establish US primacy over its own monetary and fiscal policy, which tracks with the way Powell has raised rates and caused heart attacks within the Eurodollar system.

Moreover, when you look at the failures of the Biden administration to get any traction globally to isolate Russia you see a Davos agenda that is failing completely.

It then tracks that weak newcomers to the Italian Swamp, like those in M5S, may have finally been given enough assurance that the situation has changed. Yesterday’s 9.1% CPI print was enough to really begin breaking things.

The Anti-Davos factions within the US are strong enough now for them to throw off the Davos yoke, as represented by Draghi, Mattarella and former PM Matteo Renzi, and begin Italy’s bid for independence.

The Fed responds to Davos taking out Johnson by taking out Draghi and putting the EU on a path to disintegration. The euro broke parity with the US dollar today on this news. Now the ECB is staring at a vortex of higher rates as the Fed is clear to raise another 75-100 bps in two weeks.

What’s Lagarde going to do? Raise rates? If so then buh-bye Italy and hello Euro-zone banking crisis.

Given how hated Draghi is in Italy, there is no way for him to continue given what we know now. Any further resistance by Mattarella will ensure the lot of them get lynched publicly.

The mood in Italy is that bad.

The likely story is that Draghi was looking the other way while Germany openly siphoned off gas meant for Italy for itself to ensure that Italy starved and froze this winter.

So, what the TL;DR?

The EU is in serious trouble. With Draghi’s fall, there is no stopping a collapse of Italian debt prices as either Davos goes for broke and nationalizes Italy’s gold reserves or Meloni comes to power with the backing of the US banks and DoD and takes the country out of the euro, if not the EU itself.

The betrayal has been total. There’s no bringing Italian loyalty to the EU back after it’s reveal as yet another shitty German attempt to take over Europe.

As I’ve described in previous articles, with Russia on one side and the US Fed/Banking Interests on the other the stress on the Euro-zone and the European Central Bank has never been higher.

The ECB has no answers and has as much admitted they don’t. All they can do is keep funding Italy until the US mid-terms where Davos hopes they can save the Democrats from a complete wipe out. That was also the plan.

Now Conte and M5S have blown up those plans as well.

There is a real fight for primacy over the West’s power going on. Will it be led by Eurocrat commies or Anglo corporate fascists. There are no ‘good guys’ here. They are all terrible.

This takedown of Draghi, the ultimate Davos insider, is one of the most important turning points in 2022. It signals to me that they have now lost control over the single most important country in Europe. It is the fulcrum on which the future of humanity may ultimately rest.

Given how close we are to Davos manipulating the US and the world into a global holy war for energy, as outlined by Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s Three Lighthouses speech recently, I’d say I’m on the side that is working to avoid that.

20 million SPF sun block hasn’t been invented yet. I’m sure I would have seen that in Wired. For that reason alone you should probably cheer for the ignominious end of the public life of Mario Draghi.

Saudis Double Russia Crude Imports As It Prepares For BRICS Inclusion

  The world is being reconfigured as we speak. 

  Initially, the Covid-19 pandemic was instigated to reflate a financial market standing on its last leg. The financial part worked, trillions of dollars, Euros, Yens and Yuans were added to the market, delaying the reckoning. The economic part was unplanned and consequently dreadfully executed, resulting in the current stagflation. As for the social consequences, they were misunderstood and catastrophic as we are seeing now.  

  But the real story is hegemony: Who controls the world.

  The goal of the Ukraine war was clearly to break Russia. But the country has proved far more resilient than expected. 

  Now with the help of China, the Russians are restructuring the world. This is an extraordinary endeavor. A total economic war with the West.

  This is why we are on the edge of World War 3 and will stay there for as long as it takes in a fragile balance which can be shattered any moment...

Saudis Double Russia Crude Imports As It Prepares For BRICS Inclusion

Saudi Arabia has a thirst for heavily discounted Russian diesel and other fuel products banned by many countries in the West.

The world's largest oil exporter more than doubled the amount of Russian fuel oil in the second quarter to supply power generation stations to meet surging cooling demand this summer and allow the kingdom's crude exports to increase.

Western sanctions forced Russia to discount fuel oils on spot markets, which has increased demand in the East, not just from the Saudis but also from China and India. 

Energy trade data provided by Reuters shows Saudis imported 647,000 tons (48,000 barrels per day) of fuel oils from Russia in the second quarter -- up from 320,000 tons in the same quarter last year. 

The surge in the Russia-Saudi energy trade (also detailed in "Middle East Ramps Up Imports Of Shunned Russian Fuels") comes as BRICS International Forum President Purnima Anand told Russian newspaper Izvestia that Saudis are planning to join. That would boost multilateral cooperation between BRICS, including Saudis, meaning they wouldn't cave to the US demands to restrict Russian energy imports. 

Meanwhile, the Biden administration has unleashed a barrage of financial sanctions against Russia to isolate it from the global trading system to reduce trading revenue -- all of which have backfired -- and allowed Moscow to reap record oil revenues. 

President Biden will meet with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) without Saudi King Salman on Friday (the same day Anand announced Saudis are preparing to apply for membership). It's expected that no public announcements on increasing oil supply will be made, according to Bloomberg sources. 

Biden's meeting with MbS appears to be a waste of time and more for optics. The fundamental point behind the meeting to increase crude production won't transpire into anything meaningful. Biden needs to work on expanding the capacity of refined oil products, such as gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel, though much of that is out of his control and will take years. 

The point is that Saudis need cheap Russian fuel oils and plan to join an expanding economic club that will distance themselves from Western countries and aligns them more with Russia and China. The rise of BRICS and the possible inclusion of Saudis would outline the US' waning control over the international order.

"The Damage Could Be Huge": Chinese Banks Tumble, Swept Up In Mortgage Nonpayment Scandal As Borrowers Revolt

 At this stage of our gigantic ponzy, the only question left to be answered is what breaks first. China by the nature of its real estate market is a prime contender as noted several times over the last few years. 20% of 60 trillion dollar invested in empty apartments is a lot of worthless assets. Investing in an empty flat in an unfinished tower in a faraway city was all very fine as long as someone was willing to buy it from you. Now you're left with your "tulip bulb" and you still need to water it so that it can blossom uselessly next year for everyone to see what a fool you were. 

 Xi Jinping is walking on a tightrope, high above the ground. This is the real reason why the risk of war with Taiwan is so high. Internal politics trumps geo-strategy, every time.

"The Damage Could Be Huge": Chinese Banks Tumble, Swept Up In Mortgage Nonpayment Scandal As Borrowers Revolt

On Friday, shares of China’s banks extended their slide to a two-year low amid fears widespread mortgage non-payments would spark contagion within the banking sector (see "China On Verge Of Violent Debt Jubilee As "Disgruntled" Homebuyers Refuse To Pay Their Mortgages") even after the local banking and insurance regulator said it will maintain continuity and stability of financing policies for the real estate sector.

China Central Television said on its WeChat page that the regulator will guide financial institutions to participate in risk disposals based on market conditions, after researcher China Real Estate Information Corp. reported that home buyers had stopped mortgage payments on at least 100 projects in more than 50 cities as of Wednesday, spurring concerns that the quality of home loans is in rapid decline and could culminate in a 2007-like credit/housing bubble blow up.

Still, as Bloomberg Markets Live reporter Ye Xie writes, the grassroots movement of Chinese homebuyers boycotting mortgage payments isn’t exactly akin to the US subprime crisis of 2008.  That said, no matter what Beijing does to address the latest chapter in China’s housing crisis drama, banks are likely to share the burden.

In the wake of a surging number of homebuyers who refuse to pay mortgages on construction projects that have stalled, China’s banking regulators said Thursday that they are coordinating with other agencies to support local governments in working to ensure the delivery of housing units. Separately, Bloomberg reported that policy makers held emergency meetings with banks to discuss the issue amid concern that it may worsen.

The boycotts raise the risk of mortgage defaults, a new set of troubles for banks that are already squeezed by exposure to ailing property developers. Mortgages make up almost 20% of total bank loans outstanding, amounting to about 39 trillion yuan ($5.8 trillion).

In a rather panicked note from Morgan Stanley economist Zhipeng Cai (available to pro subscribers), he addresses the topic of widespread mortgage nonpayment and writes that "we estimate 188mn sqm (1.7mn units) are at risk. We expect local governments will be urged to help completion, but a national bazooka solution remains difficult in near term."

His warning: "Non-linearity is the key to watch."

To others, however, such as Xie, this is an exaggeration. According to the Bloomberg reporter, "it’s reasonable to argue that this is unlikely the start of something as bad as the US subprime crisis. Unlike lending to developers, mortgages have been regarded as the safest assets on banks’ balance sheets, as Betty Wang, an economist at ANZ, pointed out. Mortgage defaults have been rare, and rising home prices over the years have increased the value of banks’ collateral."

Some data: the average non-performing mortgage-loan ratio of the six largest banks, which accounted for 68% of China’s total home loans, was only 0.38% in 2021, compared with an NPL ratio of 2.73% for developers, according to Wang’s calculations.

Of course, all of this assumes that the current mortgage-boycott movement can be quickly nipped in the bud. If not, the potential damage could be huge. Nomura’s economist Lu Ting and his colleagues estimated that about 4.4 trillion yuan worth of mortgages made between the end of 2020 and March of 2022 may be tied to those home projects that have been stalled or slow in being built.

Understandably, Chinese banks have gotten hammered in recent days. The CSI bank index fell more than 4% over the past two days to the lowest since March 2020. Their price-to-book ratio has dropped to an all-time low of 0.61, suggesting investors believe a significant part of the banking system’s assets are impaired.

At the same time, the CSI 300 Financials Index slipped as much as 1.2% on Friday, and is set for an 11th session of declines. Of course, the worse it gets, the more likely Beijing will have no choice but to unleash a powerful releveraging bazooka, even if it has to do so kicking and screaming.

Indeed, as Xie correctly concludes, "the government is likely to step in sooner rather than later as the mortgage boycotts start to undermine social stability. Either banks have to chip in to provide cheap funds for developers to complete projects, or they have to allow homebuyers to delay their payments. Neither is an attractive option."

What is the worst case scenario? Here we go back to the "non-linearity kicking in" case suggested by Morgan Stanley:

Home-buyer confidence weakens further from a low starting point, leading to further deterioration in property sales. This may force more developers, even relatively strong ones today, to suspend unfinished projects, furthering the downtrend. In the meantime, housing prices may continue to fall, exacerbating the downward spiral. Furthermore, the stress in the housing sector could spread to the broader economy, given the extensive inter-sector linkages, while being magnified by the financial system.

In short: a self-reinforcing downward cascade which ends in either a historical crash of the world's largest asset...

... or a state bailout. Here are the two most likely policy responses according to Morgan Stanley:

• Damage control: Local governments will likely be called upon to mobilize resources on a by-project basis, possibly with the help of SOEs and LGFVs, to kick-start suspended projects, signaling to the public that housing completion is the over-arching priority. SOE developers may be encouraged to conduct M&A activities, taking over stalled projects.
• Reining in systemic risk beyond the near term: Policy makers will likely need to send a clear and strong signal that they stand ready to be the "rescuer of the last resort" to rein in systemic risks. Plausible moves include more meaningful demand stimulus, more explicit guarantees on quality developers, or (less likely) a TARP-like program. Translation: a massive firehose of liquidity and credit is about to be unleashed.

One final though: similar to crypto lenders which generously handed out 20% DeFi interest until it all blew up spectacularly in one giant, cross-linked ponzi scheme, so China's 5%+ mortgage rates had been an extremely lucrative business for banks. It's now payback time.

The great recycling LIE (what really happens to plastic)

 Plastic is probably one of the worst polluting product currently used in the world because of the sheer quantities produced. A much worse and more urgent problem than CO2 or energy production as can be seen below. It will take 30 years and trillions of dollars to change our energy system. We could solve our plastic problem in less than 10 years at a fraction of that cost by creating biodegradable plastics. But that would reduce profits for powerful companies so it won't happen. When you understand this, you also understand that most of what you are being told is little more than manipulation.   

 As a diver, I would love to see less plastic in the sea, on the beaches and more generally in our lives. Understanding the problem with plastic which is over focusing on production and use, not cycle would change drastically our society. The great discovery of capitalism is also the one the least talked about for obvious reasons: Externalizing costs. Taking everything into consideration is more complex, far more expensive and less profitable. But it is also much more green and ecological. It is in fact what generations before us used to do. But the subject has been deflected into a green utopia which doesn't touch profits or vested interests. Almost a religion where you can't even question the dogma. And while we fight dragons and CO2, long before the warming apocalypse, we be done destroying the forests (palm oil), polluting the seas (plastics) and create a consumer suburban life which is THE unsustainable part of our society.        

 

Redacted (Video News - 19')

 Redacted is a new and interesting News channel if you are interested in hearing a different story than the main stream media.

 

"Take The Tragedy In Sri Lanka And Multiply By Ten": The Fed Just Lobbed A Financial Nuke That Will Obliterate The Global Economy

 But is there really a choice now? Developing countries will be sent under the bus with rising interest rates just when food and energy prices explode. Sri Lanka is but a few months ahead of the curve!

By Larry McDonald, author of the Bear Traps Report

We are living in a period of mass “Jonestown” economic delusion. Just twenty months ago – central bankers were offering to buy nearly every junk bond known to mankind, dramatically distorting the “true cost of capital.” All the way from crypto to emerging markets – it was a moral hazard overdose. Everyone on earth was borrowing money at fantasy-land bond yields.

Now, the Fed is promising endless rate hikes and $1T of balance sheet reduction onto a planet with emerging market and Euro-zone credit markets in flames.

Listen, all I have is an economics degree from the University of Massachusetts, but after having spent the last 20 years trading bonds professionally and embarking on a 20k feet deep autopsy on the largest bank failure of all time – from my seat the current Fed agenda is sheer madness and will be outed very soon.

The true cost of capital was distorted for so long, we now have hundreds of academics– clueless to the underlying serpent inside global markets. When the 6 foot seven, Paul Volcker walked the halls of the Marriner S. Eccles Building of the Federal Reserve Board in Washington, our planet embraced about $200T LESS debt than we are staring down the barrel at today. 

In 2021, global debt reached a record $303T, according to the Institute of International Finance, a global financial industry association. This is a FURTHER jump from record global debt in 2019 of $226T, as reported by the IMF in its Global Debt Database. Volcker was jacking rates into a planet with about $200T LESS debt. Please call out the risk management imbeciles that make any reference of Powell to Volcker.

Many economists in 2022 are highly delusional – a very dangerous group indeed. When you hike rates aggressively with a strong dollar you multiply interest rate risk, which was already off the charts coming from such a low 2020 base in terms of yield – it's a convexity nightmare. Interest rate hikes today - hand in hand with a strong U.S. Dollar - carry 100x the destructive power than the Carter – Reagan era.

At the same time, you add lighter fluid on to the credit risk fire in emerging markets with a raging greenback. Global banks have to mark to market most of these assets. If global rates reset higher and stay at elevated levels, the sovereign debt pile is in gave danger. The response to Lehman and Covid crisis squared (see above) has left a mathematically unsustainable bill for follow on generations. The Fed CANNOT hike rates aggressively into this mess without blowing up the global economy. We are talking about mass - Jonestown delusion on steroids.

Then Covid-19 placed a colossal leverage cocktail on top. Emerging and frontier market countries currently owe the IMF over $100B. U.S. central banking policy + a  strong USD is vaporizing this capital as we speak.

A dollar screaming higher with agricultural commodities – priced globally in dollars - is a colossal tax on emerging market countries – clueless academics at the Fed are exporting inflation into countries that can least afford it. Emerging – and
frontier market countries owe the IMF over $100B – U.S. central banking policy – strong USD, is vaporizing this capital.

A quarter-trillion dollars of distressed debt is threatening to drag the developing world into a historic cascade of defaults. The number of developing nations trading distressed has doubled, with El Salvador, Ghana, Egypt, Tunisia and Pakistan appearing particularly vulnerable. With the low-income countries, debt risks and debt crises are not hypothetical - try buying oil in USD in an EM currency. A fifth — or about 17% — of the $1.4 trillion emerging-market sovereigns have outstanding in external debt denominated in dollars, euros or yen, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Academics at the Fed are exporting inflation into countries that can least afford it – decimating communities all over the planet. The tragedies are piling up. While given cover from their well-placed collection of pawns, tough guy Powell is playing his Volcker act – right out of a scene in a poor man's poker game. In terms of who ́s actually running the show – emerging market bonds are plunging 10 points a week and Powell wants you to think he's got pocket Kings.

Truth is, the global credit risk dynamic has the Aces, and the Fed is looking down at pocket 2s, if that. The IMF has total lending capacity near $1T, Powell is currently wiping out 10% of that. Ultimately, this lost tribe will be coming back, “hat in hand” - yet again to the U.S. taxpayer.

So now we have global bank balance sheets, stressed by $20T to $30T in mark to market losses from Equities, Treasuries, European government bonds, Crypto, Private equity and Venture capital – in the middle of the worst emerging market credit crisis in decades. All after just 150bps of rate hikes from the Fed? Hello?? Anyone home? There are A LOT of bonds that look like this! Oh – by the way – Egypt owes the IMF $13B, the Fed just lit these liabilities on fire.

If the Fed keeps its policy path promises, take the tragedy in Sri Lanka and multiply it by ten across the globe over the next six months. Check-mate FOMC.

Blain: The Immediate Threat Is Inflation, But... what about China?

  I agree! As we have warned many times over the last two years, the Chinese bubble is gigantic. People expect that somehow the Chinese Central Bank will find a way to solve the problem. But what unknown weapon do the Chinese have that Western bankers know nothing about? Just asking...

Authored by Bill Blain via MorningPorridge.com,

“ All that glitters is not gold…”

The immediate threat is inflation – how could a strong CPI print destablise markets, but inflation is also a question of what shocks are still to come, and investing accordingly. What if a big No-see-Em shock is still to come – a Chinese financial crisis?

Markets are all about risk – What do we know, and what do we not? That’s easy – we know what we care to learn about the past, what we think we know about today, but about tomorrow we are just making informed guesses.

Today the big front and centre issue is inflation. Does it get worse or better, and for how long?

Take a look at any inflation chart and it will typically shows a series of sharp, short-lived spikes – which makes sense: something triggers inflation, it is addressed and the economy adapts, the price shock is normalised as the economy learns to cope with the new normal.

The immediate critical risk is another new shock; that a stronger than expected US CPI (inflation) report triggers major wobbles across markets by raising expectations of aggressive central banking rate tightening – that’s given some impetus by the comments of Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey who said :“bringing inflation down to the 2% target is our job, no ifs or buts”. The market expects a 50 bp Bank hike in early August – there is little else left in the Bank’s armoury.

The market is split on where the inflation threat goes from here:

• There are naysayers who say trying to address the multiple inflation shocks now hitting global markets with recession inducing monetary tightening is just daft.

• There are others who say it’s all the fault of the overly-easy monetary experimentation of artificially low-rates and QE of the last 14 years: inflation everywhere is a monetary phenomenon. (Inflation is very real and it has enormous socio-economic consequences.)

• There are some market watchers who believe inflation already peaked, and June will mark a high for this inflationary spike as the economy successfully adapts and digests the Ukraine energy shock and the end of pandemic supply chain crisis. They argue there is significant resilience built in that will ease tensions.

• There are others, including myself, who believe inflation could yet spike higher, and could remain persistently higher for longer than central bank dot-plots suggest. The energy crisis is not over – and could get substantially worse if Putin does not reopen the gas valves to Europe (currently closed for “maintenance”) later this month. Coronavirus lockdowns in China remain a threat to keep supply chains malfunctioning, and growing wage-inflation as industrial unrest ferments across Europe is going to hit hard in Q3/4 as recession bites.

What’s a fund manager to do? Inflation hurts earnings – as this current earnings season will no-doubt show. Interest rate rises will hit stock returns, balance sheets and prices. One argument is to buy stocks in the expectation the economy will adapt while strong fundamentals re-establish themselves.

On Monday there was a fascinating intervention on the inflation conundrum for asset managers from retired bond king Bill Gross – reminding us bonds diminish risk but lower returns.. “Jim Cramer famously says there’s always a bull market somewhere but I’m straining to find one now.” Gross goes on to say investors should mitigate the pain, accept its happening and “12 month Treasuries at 2.7% are better than your money market fund and any other alternatives!” He has a point – although others say this is time to buy duration to up the return to 3%!

On the other hand, maybe there is more pain to come? Maybe it will be Europe where Euro parity to the dollar is doing precious little to boost economies heading into a new recession, where energy security is perilous, and politics looks a-dither.

And, there are growing signs all is not well in China..

There is a widely held view Paramount Leader Chairman Xi feels so secure, and the distracted west looks so riven, it’s time for a quick operation to seize Taiwan. Maybe not – the Chinese, who share tactical doctrines with the now discredited Russian steamroller, look embarrassed by its shortcomings. For all its’ military posturing and new weapons, the Chinese are not an “outward bound” empire – historically, they prefer to internalise. The spectacular growth of China over the last 30 years has come from the internal control and expansion of its domestic economy, initially through exports and now through domestic consumption.

That’s bound to have created internal tensions – which can be seen in terms of inequality, environmental damage, and the limitations on internal freedoms – all of which we know..

But, over the last 2 years of Covid, China has effectively sequestered itself from the global economy. We think we understand how it works, but in reality… do we?  Look at how dramatically and swiftly Hong Kong has been spun from being the premier western entrepot into a kow-towing domestic city.

China is big and it matters. It is like and unlike the west. It has multiple growth problems and demographics that will trigger whole new issues the West has yet to adapt to. The Covid lockdowns, understanding of the Party and government, and now bursting economic bubbles and what looks like a developing banking crisis – I’m beginning to wonder if the Middle Kingdom is more trouble than we think? If so it will have enormous global consequences – it could be a massive No-See-Um that could destabilise the global economy.

I’ve been reading up on the Chinese Banking riots in Henan Province. The fact Chinese protestors wanting money back from local banks following a run were set upon is hardly unusual – the immediate suspicion is corrupt local politicians were protecting themselves. But there are two aspects to the story to consider:

• The first is Chinese Surveillance Capitalism: clamping down on reporting, using unidentified security personal to beat up and break up protestors, and local officials manipulating Covid “personal health codes” to ping protestors as likely Covid carriers takes state-control to a new level. Observers are not surprised – they saw the mandatory health codes as a way in which Government could control the masses. If surveillance capitalism is so established – why is party corruption still such an issue?

• The second is the scale of the domestic banking problem. Is it really just a local, one province problem? What are we not seeing? Could it be the whole Chinese banking system is teetering?

The official line is it’s a local banking problem caused by criminality, presenting the line “local gangsters” have been systematically looting some small banks after “capturing” them up to a decade ago – which sounds like bad regulation and incompetent bank inspection. But runs on banks and lines of people asking for their money back is very 2007.

I am convinced much of the UK banking crisis following the run on Northern Rock that year would have been avoided if the Bank of England had stepped in to provide liquidity earlier. It was when the plentiful liquidity that supported bank property and corporate lending suddenly dried up as it became clear just how unbalanced that lending was that the global financial crisis was triggered.

Let me ask a rhetorical question: Is it possible China’s well known hot property bubble, it’s corporate borrowing binge, plus the high degree of corruption within the system, is fuelling a very real banking crisis in China? Is China about to suffer its’ very own internalised version of the Global Financial Crisis of 2008? How much worse will it be made by the ongoing Covid bogey being used to keep the economy under control? Are Covid Lockdowns being used to disguise the scale of a massive Chinese financial crisis?

Just asking…