Avoiding the next inflation may now require a Zombie Apocalypse

  There is a custom in Japan where for the New Year you build a huge ball of straw on top of a hill, then light a small fire on the side before throwing it down-slope. By the time the ball rolls down to the foot of the hill, it has become a huge ball of fire called Hi-no-kuruma. (You can see that in Nara among other places.)

  Likewise, politicians have the same custom but with government budgets. The fall takes 250 years instead of 3 minutes but the resulting explosion is no less impressive. Considering the frequency, only 1 out of 10 generations can enjoy such fireworks, but fortunately, we are that generation. Enjoy! 

  PS: For those interested in how big is the fire right now, read on. Sparks are already flying all around in Washington. 

by Simon Black via Sovereign Man

Earlier this week, leaders from both major parties in the Land of the Free announced a grand bargain that, in theory, should avoid a government shutdown later this month.

According to their agreement, Congress will supposedly cap its ‘discretionary’ spending at $1.6 trillion for Fiscal Year 2024. That’s down from about $1.7 trillion in FY23.

So, yes, technically this $100 billion reduction represents about a 6% decrease over last year. And if we want to be even more cheerful about it, we could call it a 9% decrease on an inflation-adjusted basis.

If we’re being intellectually honest, that’s a step in the right direction for the US. A tiny, tiny, tiny step in the right direction.

How tiny, you ask?

Well, pretty much non-existent; the agreement to cut spending is an almost entirely symbolic gesture that won’t do much good.

Before we go further, it’s important to understand that government spending is generally categorized into three distinct buckets.

The first bucket is interest on the debt. And, at least for now, this is non-negotiable. It has to be paid.

And I don’t mean it ‘has to be paid’ in the moral sense that “America always pays its debts.”

I mean, legally, interest on the debt is automatically paid. Just like your monthly mortgage, interest payments on the US national debt get automatically sucked out of the Treasury Department’s bank account.

The second bucket is what’s known as “Mandatory Spending”, which includes programs like Social Security and Medicare. Just like the interest bucket, Mandatory Spending gets sucked out of the Treasury Department’s bank account every month.

Those two buckets– Interest payments and Mandatory Spending– constitute the vast majority of US federal spending.

The third bucket is known as Discretionary Spending… because it’s at Congress’s discretion.

Discretionary spending is what results from all their debates and arguments over annual appropriations, for everything from the military to the national parks. It also includes supplemental spending for pandemic bailouts, Ukraine, Hunter Biden artwork, etc.

So, the announcement this week was about a $100 billion reduction to Discretionary Spending.

But consider that Mandatory Spending (which Congress doesn’t touch) on Social Security alone surged $281 billion last year… and will likely increase by a similar magnitude this year.

So that single increase to Mandatory Spending will more than wipe out the entire $100 billion Discretionary Spending reduction.

Easy come, easy go.

Then there’s interest on the debt, which increased by $177 billion last fiscal year. It will probably increase by at least that much this year… which, again, more than wipes out the entire $100 billion in Discretionary Spending reduction.

If you drill down into the numbers, you’ll see pretty clearly that there are very few credible paths forward for the United States.

One path is to drastically… and I mean almost entirely… slash Discretionary Spending.

Look at it this way– last year’s Discretionary Spending was $1.7 trillion. The government is claiming that their annual budget deficit last year was also $1.7 trillion.

This means that, in order to balance the budget, they would have to almost completely eliminate ALL discretionary spending. No more military. No more Homeland Security. No more government.

In other words, one of the only ways to balance the budget would be a Zombie Apocalypse in Washington DC.

The second path forward is to make major cuts to Mandatory Spending… which would involve politically unpopular overhauls to Social Security and Medicare.

Few politicians have the courage to do so. And given that they can’t even agree on basic priorities for Discretionary Spending, it seems unlikely that they’ll come together for more difficult cuts to Mandatory Spending.

This leaves the third path forward: to prioritize economic growth and productivity… by slashing regulations and actually make it easy once again for people to do business.

And this approach would really work. If real (i.e. inflation-adjusted) economic growth were 3% or even 3.5%, instead of 2%, then America’s fiscal woes would be over within a decade.  And this is totally achievable.

With just 3% real growth, tax revenues would soar, the budget would be balanced, and the national debt would be trivial in comparison to the size of the US economy.

Seems like the obvious approach, right? Except that they’re doing the opposite… foisting even more regulatory burdens onto small business.

It’s no surprise that tax revenue last fiscal year was down 9% from the year before; that’s a testament to not only a weakened economy, but the Byzantine regulatory state that they’ve created over the past few years.

The most recent example is the Corporate Transparency Act (CTA), the completely idiotic and destructive piece of legislation that I discussed last week.

The CTA exists because the government thinks that its tax revenue should be higher. And they’re right– federal tax revenue SHOULD be higher.

But the government never points the finger at themselves. They never conclude that dwindling tax revenues are the result of their criminal mismanagement of the economy, including all the excessive regulations which debilitate business.

No, to them, the only possible reason why tax revenues are down is because of criminal tax evasion. So, their solution is to create even more regulation which forces business owners to file information reports to the government.

The even more pathetic part is that US businesses already must provide this information to the IRS.

But Congress doesn’t care. Instead, they demand that taxpayers provide the exact same information– but in a different format– to a separate agency within the Treasury Department.

Saddling small businesses with more paperwork is hardly the sort of thing that is going to make the US economy more productive.

So, they’re not going to eliminate Discretionary Spending. They’re most likely not going to find the courage or wisdom to cut Mandatory Spending.

And it sure as hell doesn’t look like they’re going to prioritize growth and productivity.

That leads to the fourth and final option: inflation… which, from a historical perspective, is what almost ALWAYS happens in these scenarios.

We’ll talk a lot more about this soon.

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The Financial System Has Reached ‘The End’; Von Greyerz

  It is indeed the end of a 250 year financial cycle as almost everybody agrees. Now combine this with a 80 year fourth turning and you have the recipe for quite some turbulence ahead.   

Authored by Egon von Greyerz via GoldSwitzerland.com,

The world is now witnessing the end of a currency and financial system which the Chinese already forecast in 1971 after Nixon closed the gold window.

Again, remember von Mises words: “There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion.”

History tells us that we have now reached the point of no return.

So denying history at this point will not just be very costly but will lead to a total destruction of investors’ wealth.

POLITICIANS LIE WITHOUT FAIL

History never lies but politicians do without fail. In a fake system based on false values, lying is considered to be an essential part of political survival.

Let’s just look at Nixons ignorant and irresponsible statements of August 15, 1971 when he took away the gold backing of the dollar and thus all currencies.

Later on we will show how clearsighted the Chinese leaders were about the destiny of the US and its economy.

So there we have tricky Dick’s lies.

• The suspension of the convertibility of the dollar in 1971 is still in effect 52 years later.

• As the dollar has declined by almost 99% since 1971, the “strength of the economy” is also declining fast although using fiat money as the measure hides the truth.

• And now to the last lie: “Your dollar will be worth as much tomorrow”. Yes, you are almost right Dick!  It is still worth today a whole 1% of the value when you closed the gold window. 

The political system is clearly a farce. You have to lie to be elected and you have to lie to stay in power. That is what the gullible voters expect. The sad result is that they will always be cheated.

CHINA FORECAST THE CONSEQUENCES ALREADY IN 1971

So in 1971 after Nixon closed the gold window, China in its official news media the People’s Daily made the statements below:

Clearly the Chinese understood the consequences of the disastrous US decision which would destroy the Western currency system as they said:

• Seriousness of the US economic crisis and decay and decline of the capitalist system

• Mark the collapse of the monetary system with the US dollar as its prop

• Nixon’s policy cannot extricate the US from financial and economic crisis

I am quite certain that the US administration at the time ridiculed China’s official statement. As most Western governments, they showed their arrogance and complete ignorance of history.

How right the Chinese were.

But the road to perdition is not immediate and we have seen over 50 years the clear “decline of the capitalist system”. The end of the current system is unlikely to be far away.

Interestingly it seems that a Communist non-democratic system is much more clairvoyant than a so called Western democracy. There is clearly an advantage not always having to buy votes.

IRRELEVANT WHICH CURRENCY WINS THE RACE TO THE BOTTOM

As the whole currency system is about to implode,  it is in my view totally irrelevant where the US dollar is heading short term measured against other fiat currencies.

The dilemma is that most “experts” use the Dollar Index (DXY) as the measure of the dollar’s strength or weakness.  This is like climbing the ladder of success only to find out that the ladder is leaning against the wrong building.

To measure the dollar against its partners in crime (the other fiat currencies) misses the point as they are all on the way to perdition.

So the dollar index measures the dollar against six fiat currencies: Euro, Pound, Yen, Canadian Dollar, Swedish Kroner and Swiss Franc. The Chinese Yuan shines in its absence even though China is the second biggest economy in the world.

But here is the crux. The dollar is in a race to the bottom with 6 other currencies.

Since Nixon closed the gold window in 1971 all 7 currencies, including the US dollar, have declined 97-99% in real terms.

Real terms means constant purchasing power.

And the only money which has maintained constant purchasing power for over 5,000 years is of course gold.

So let’s make it clear – the only money which has survived in history is GOLD!

All other currencies have without fail gone to ZERO and that without exception.

Voltaire said it already in 1729:

PAPER MONEY EVENTUALLY RETURNS TO ITS INTRINSIC VALUE – ZERO

And that has been the destiny of every currency throughout history.

Every single currency has without fail gone to ZERO. And this is where the dollar and its lackeys are heading.

To debate if a currency, which has fallen 98.2% in the last 52 years, is going to strengthen or weaken in the next year or two is really missing the point.

It is virtually 100% certain that the dollar and all fiat money will complete the cycle (which started in 1913 with the creation of the Fed) and fall the remaining 1-3% to ZERO.

But we must remember that the final fall involves a 100% loss of value from today.

BRENT JOHNSON & MATT PIEPENBURG DEBATE THE DOLLAR

So to debate whether the dollar index which today is 103, will reach 150 first as my good friend Brent Johnson argues in his Dollar Milk Shake Theory or that it will fall from here as my colleague Matt Piepenburg contends, really misses the point.

There is no prize for coming first to the bottom. The dollar is down almost 99% in real terms since 1971. So it has a bit over 1% to fall to reach ZERO.

And history tells us that the final fall is INEVITABLE.

So why worry if the Dollar or the Euro becomes worthless first? It really is a moot point.

Brent Johnson and Matt Piepenburg recently had a debate on Adam Taggart’s new platform “Thoughtful Money”. Adam is an outstanding host with great speakers and both Brent and Matt were superb in their presentation of the arguments for or against the dollar. But even though they both like and understand gold, they got a bit too caught up in the dollar up or down debate rather than focusing on the only money which has survived in history. Still, I know that they both appreciate that gold is the ultimate money.

NOT ALL CURRENCIES ARE BAD

The world’s reserve currency has had a sad performance based on lies, poor real growth, all due to a mismanaged economy based on debt and printed money.

So although most currencies have lost 97-99% in real terms since 1971 there are shining exceptions.

When the gold window was closed in 1971 I was working in a Swiss bank in Geneva. At the time, one dollar cost Swiss Franc 4.30. Today, 52 years later, one dollar costs Swiss Franc 0.88!

This means that the dollar has declined 80% against the Swiss Franc since 1971.

So a country like Switzerland with virtually no deficits and a very low debt to GDP proves that a well managed economy with very low inflation doesn’t destroy its currency like most irresponsible governments.

The Swiss system of direct democracy and people power is totally unique and gives the people the right to have a referendum on almost any issue they choose.

This makes the people much more responsible in their choices as a winning vote on any issue becomes part of the constitution and cannot be changed by government or parliament. Only a new referendum can change such a decision.

THE US BANANA REPUBLIC

Swiss Debt to GDP is around 40%. This was the level of US debt back in 1971 before the gold window was closed.

As the graph below shows, US debt to GDP is now 132%. In 2000 it was 55%.

132% debt to GDP is the level of a Banana Republic which is frantically trying to survive by printing and borrowing ever increasing amounts of worthless fiat money.

So debt to GDP is now reaching the exponential phase. I have explained the final phases of exponential moves in many articles like here.

Since there is no intent or possibility to reduce the US deficit, the likely deficit for next fiscal year is most probably in excess of $2 trillion and that is before any bad news like higher inflation, higher interest rates, bank failures, more war, more QE etc.

As I discussed in a recent article,“THE CYCLE OF EVIL”, the world is today facing unprecedented risks of a magnitude never before seen in history.

The EU's Worst-Nightmare: Pitchforks!

 

  Sure enough, Europe is toast as we warned already 3 years ago. 

  Europe was originally and should have stayed a common market. The cultures are simply too different to merge seamlessly even with huge numbers of unassimilated migrants creating a common mess. EU politicians out of hubris and grandiosity decided otherwise, then wasted the popular goodwill on foreign adventures such as Ukraine. 

  Now the greens in Berlin and the gays in Paris will have to solve real problems!

Authored by John Butler via FortuneAndFreedom.com,

• Farmers are revolting in Germany and neighbouring countries

• Populist parties continue to rise in the polls

• The EU may not survive in its current form

I recently wrote about what has become a global, populist political phenomenon.

Citizens of multiple countries, in both hemispheres, are not only voting for populist candidates but are also working outside their entrenched political establishments to either enact desired changes or oppose undesired ones.

The latter has been in focus this week as German farmers travelled to Berlin and other cities to blockade the roads in protest at the removal of certain subsidies considered noncompliant with official climate policies. Although not well reported in the British media, in the continental media, the protests made the front page.

Farm subsidies have existed all across Europe ever since the EU was founded. Affordable and available basic food was considered – and still is – a matter of national security. And since European farmers are not always as competitive as those elsewhere, subsidies were deemed required to keep them in business.

No longer. Apparently, climate goals now trump food security and affordability. And so the subsidies are to be ended, rendering farmers less competitive and possibly forcing some into bankruptcy.

As has been true throughout modern European history, the progressive Dutch were among the first to revolt against what they perceived as oppressive rules handed down from above. Farmers blockaded multiple cities and motorways in response to proposed nitrogen (fertiliser) quotas. More recently, the Dutch gave the largest portion of seats in the Tweede Kamer – their equivalent of the House of Commons – to the populist party of Geert Wilders.

Now farmers in Germany, the EU’s largest, wealthiest country, and largest net contributor to the EU budget, have joined the fray. They, in turn, have been joined by farmers in neighbouring Poland, Hungary and Austria. HGV drivers, many of whom supply farms with fertilisers and other essentials and in turn deliver produce from farm to table.

The pitchforks have come out, as it were.

As it happens, the UK also has a venerable populist tradition. In 1381, there was the so-called “Peasants Revolt” led by Wat Tyler. It began in Brentwood, Essex, with a dispute over unpaid taxes and rapidly spread to engulf much of southeast England. London was sacked, and many prominent buildings were set on fire. These included the Tower of London, in which Richard II’s lord chancellor and lord high treasurer were discovered by the rebels and summarily killed.

By comparison, today’s EU farmers are rather restrained in their actions. But they have laid down a populist political gauntlet of sorts. The common agricultural policy has been the backbone of the EU for decades. The perceived common interest of farmers has functioned as a form of political “cement” to hold the European project together and provide a base on which to build further integration into other industries.

Having been pushed too far, the farmers are now threatening to undermine the entire European project with support for populist and, in some cases, outright anti-EU parties. Recent polls suggest that, in eastern Germany, Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) is the leading political party.

Brussels has yet to voice any specific concerns about the matter. Perhaps they see these developments as just storms in teacups.

Ensconced in their modern glass and steel palaces, they might even ponder whether, if European food security and affordability are compromised in pursuit of their lofty climate goals, they should just let their peasants eat cake instead.

The Establishment Is Unmasking Itsel

  But it doesn't matter! As long as you control the medias, all is fine.

Authored by Connor O'Keefe via The Mises Institute,

Two weeks ago, I wrote an article laying out the political class’s struggle to preserve its legitimacy by fighting to regain control over the digital information space.

The piece built on Martin Gurri’s thesis that the wide adoption of the internet has caused an information revolution that, similar to the adoption of the printing press, has allowed dissent to grow and spread beyond the control of the ruling classes. The results have been political shocks like the Arab Spring, the passage of Brexit, and the election of Donald Trump.

If the twenty-first century has been a war to preserve the establishment’s legitimacy, the current battle in the United States is the 2024 presidential election.

There’s truth to the familiar cliché that the next election is always the most important in history. As the federal government grows, spends more of our money, and intrudes more in our daily lives, the stakes of elections get higher and higher.

That still holds true for 2024, but there is much more going on. In Anatomy of the State, after defining the state as the “organization in society which attempts to maintain a monopoly of the use of force and violence in a given territorial area,” Murray Rothbard dedicates a chapter to how states preserve themselves.

In Rothbard’s words:

While force is [the ruling class’s] modus operandi, their basic and long-run problem is ideological. For in order to continue in office, any government (not simply a “democratic” government) must have the support of the majority of its subjects. This support, it must be noted, need not be active enthusiasm; it may well be passive resignation as if to an inevitable law of nature. . . . Therefore, the chief task of the rulers is always to secure the active or resigned acceptance of the majority of the citizens.

In the United States, the political establishment has for many years evoked democracy to legitimize its actions in the eyes of the public. Doing so transforms any action they take into an embodiment of the people’s will and any opposition into a selfish denial of everyone else’s wishes.

But the internet allowed the public to see that many views and beliefs that had been presented as fringe were in fact popular—often even more popular than so-called mainstream ideas.

That revelation bolstered the anti-establishment movements of the 2010s—Occupy Wall Street, the Tea Party, the Ron Paul Revolution, and Trump’s 2016 campaign. And it sent the political establishment into a crisis of legitimacy.

Tens of millions of Americans sent Donald Trump to the White House in one of the biggest repudiations of the established political class in American history. In response, instead of reflecting on why so many Americans were so fed up with them, the establishment decided to frame Trump as the root cause of all the nastiness and hostility aimed their way. According to them, one man was corrupting America with hate, greed, and Russian propaganda.

That thinking has culminated in years of establishment attempts to remove Trump from power and later to bar him from ever holding office again. First, there was discussion of ousting him using the Twenty-Fifth Amendment. Then came the attempt to tie him to Russian intelligence. Next, they tried to impeach him twice. Finally, they charged him with felonies. Now some states are attempting to remove him from the 2024 ballot for a crime he hasn’t even been charged with.

The establishment is unwilling to admit that they are the reason Trump was elected. But, ironically, by attempting to disqualify him from participating in the election, they undermine the illusion of democracy - their main source of legitimacy in the eyes of many Americans. It’s hard to see how that will go well for them.

The Untold History Of The Secret Service and the US financial system

  Interesting to know how the institutions of our financial system were put in place step by step over decades. Talk about a long term plan!

Authored by Joshua Glawson via The Mises Institute,

There is an untold story in American monetary history. Some are reluctant even to discuss it.

I’m referring to the US Secret Service’s very own role in the destruction of sound money in America.

As constitutional, sound money in the form of physical gold and silver coins—whether minted privately or not—became an annoying impediment to expanding the size and power of the federal government, central planners began circulating unbacked paper proxies and formed a Gestapo-like police agency to enforce the scheme.

Founded in 1865, toward the tail end of the American Civil War, the Secret Service originated as a branch of the US Treasury Department.

The primary job of this federal police force was to prevent others from counterfeiting the U.S. currency, which had just been nationalized through acts of Congress via the National Currency Act of 1863 and the Coinage Act of 1864.

Together, these acts formed what are commonly known as the National Banking Acts of 1863 and 1864.

These Washington, DC laws imposed taxes with a levy court system and implemented direct taxation. This led to the country’s first income tax. The government also strengthened the establishment of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), which had conveniently begun operation in 1862. Conjointly, these propped up the new federal fiat currency system.

From around 1837 through part of the Civil War, currency issuance and banking in America had been directed by a more decentralized network of states and free banking institutions. These entities issued banknotes that could be cashed in for standardized gold or silver coins or traded for goods and services.

During the Civil War, however, both sides issued their own banknotes to help fund their respective war efforts, often unbacked by the two monetary metals.

The Union pushed forth greenback fiat currency in Demand Notes and United States Notes. At the same time, the Confederates printed fiat greybacks in the forms of Confederate Dollars and Confederate Treasury Notes.

The number of fiat dollars in a bank and region in the new era would be largely based on population rather than gold and silver reserves, which is one reason the Union continued to encourage immigration both for fiat monetary support and war efforts.

The Union pushed to expand American territories through these Acts to increase population and issuance of government fiat money.

Since the Union and Congress sought to impose a federal fiat legal tender currency system that did not rely on tangible value and voluntarism, they needed enforcement of those laws. Those supporting laws included income taxes and establishing the IRS. The war, economic strife, and competition between currencies created various types of “counterfeit” currency.

Government officials made haughty claims that one in three fractional gold or silver coins at that time were counterfeit and did not contain their original gold or silver weight. By decreasing the amount of gold or silver in a coin, a counterfeiter could turn a profit.

Yet, these government hypocrites had no qualms about mandating that unbacked fiat currency must be considered legally equal to gold and silver coinage. Nor did they object to the illicit profit this enabled the central government to rake in.

Sadly, the US Supreme Court notoriously affirmed this devious scheme when deciding the “Legal Tender Cases,” considered by many legal scholars (including present-day Justices on the high court) to have been wrongly decided.

As such, the government changed the definition of money and citizens could henceforth be compelled to accept non-redeemable paper as equal to gold or silver coins.

On April 14, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln signed legislation establishing the Secret Service to combat counterfeit money—the non-government type, that is. Later that same day, Lincoln was assassinated, and he died on April 15.

From 1865 to 1901, the Secret Service’s main mission was to bust private counterfeiting operations. In 1881, President James Garfield was assassinated—interestingly, not too long after publicly advocating for a return to the gold standard.

Then, in 1901, with the assassination of President William McKinley, and under the new presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, the Secret Service was given the additional task of defending US presidents. (McKinley's assassination occurred a year after he signed the Gold Standard Act of 1900, which halted bimetallism by diminishing the monetary role of silver.)

The Secret Service grew from its original role of helping to ramrod a new fiat currency standard into a much larger police force that also protects the US presidents.

A full 50 years before the Christmas Eve passage of the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, Congress had already set in motion a plan to rob our nation’s monetary system of its gold and silver, slip a fiat currency into circulation, promote fractional reserve banking, stamp out state and private banknotes, strengthen the IRS, and spawn the Secret Service to help enforce it all.

The solution is to return to a free market for money—a system of competition where gold and silver are permitted to circulate alongside other forms of payment—and to remove government force from the equation.

May the best currency win.

Farewell…For Now

  Recently I re-read this superb article written almost 4 years ago by Michael Krieger of Liberty Blitzkrieg, a blog I was following at the time, and realized I shared the exact thinking trajectory and feelings.

  Like him, slowly I have seen the subjects of my blog drift from what I intended originally, a data driven analysis of current events, i.e. looking at statistics to corroborate or contradict news to an almost permanent outflow of negative energy and shrill warning of what's coming. 

  But likewise, I was also horrified to witness the rapid weaponization of information and to realize that what I had seen implemented in China was being rolled out in the West with almost no opposition. 

  Well, so be it then. In 2024, our world, the one we have known in Western countries for the last 70 years is about to crash. This is the very predictable result of a long term credit cycle which cannot be undone at this stage. The indicators on which I base this prediction are public information issued by the IMF and other central banks, and governments just as controlling bodies in the shadow such as the WEF can easily draw the same conclusions. 

 Consequently, it is very likely that they will do "something" in the coming months to throw the whole game up in the air and regain the initiative. This is THE event of 2024 that many pundits on the Internet are warning us about. Will it be a complete disruption of the Internet or a major war? No one can tell. My personal guess is that it depends. I do not believe there is a "plan" for these things. The real conspiracy is far more insidious and flexible than most conspiracy theorists believe. There are plans A, B, C on the shelves which can be implemented as the opportunities arise. The "plans" of the elites are long term, almost transparent in their goals since these are openly discussed in think tanks and forums. The only things which are not openly discussed are the "Shock Doctrines" used to accelerate their implementation.    

 Once you understand this, then what's the point of discussing these issues with people who by and large do not grasp what is happening and maybe could not understand most of it if they were reading it in a history book 100 years after the facts?

 An so, from now on, like Michael Krieger, I will spend less time on the Internet to enjoy the few months, (hopefully years but I doubt it!) of relative freedom left to us. 

  Soon, very soon now, the sun will set on our civilization. It won't be the end of the world, but it will be the end of OUR world. More than an event, it will be a process with a series of events, some of them shocking which slowly but relentlessly will mark the advent of a very different world. As I see it, a second Middle Age. Very different from the first one since the technological level will be different, but a similar age of technological, economic and social stagnation. Probably a dystopian age of AI surveillance and control if the current elites have it their way. But maybe not, I just don't know. At this stage, the future is truly unknowable. 

  What is certain is that the disruption of trade and society will necessarily engender a far more simple life for most people where almost everything we have known for the past 50 years will soon be old memories. 

  I wish I was wrong but I know I'm not. In 1972 the Club of Rome made a very crude simulation (Computers were simpler then!) with very few basic but important variables which predicted that the world economy would peak per capita (energy, food and land) in 2020. This is almost exactly what we have seen. Since, their successors at the World Economic Forum have had 50 years to refine their models. Although more data is not necessarily useful for such models, what was useful was the time. Now they could see how things developed in the recent past and with Bayesian adjusted models could certainly predict more accurately the coming years. Not the black swans, wars and pestilences although most will be man-made, but certainly the resources available which do constrain the choices.  

  In this context, I will probably post from time to time interesting texts and interviews, but I won't try to "warn" people anymore. It is a useless and thankless task. Most people are in any case completely passive and are not interested by oracles, especially if they predict doom and gloom which are outside their immediate field of view and often beyond their intellectual grasp. How many people truly understand Money, the economy or even events provided the complexity is not visible which is almost always the case? And then among the very few that could, how many have the time to really think about it to grasp the consequences? More than I think? Maybe. But still not enough to make a difference. 

 So as my mother who is now 94 and had a good life would say: Inch'Allah!

July 9, 2020 by Michael Krieger

Remember: Matter. How tiny your share of it.
Time. How brief and fleeting your allotment of it.
Fate. How small a role you play in it.

– Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

For the past ten years, I’ve spent most of my waking hours learning how the systems we live under function and how wealth and power operate and consolidate in the U.S. as well as globally. I’ve learned a lot and I’ve shared a lot. If I could go back and do it all over again, I would.

I dedicated all that time and energy to writing and engaging on the big issues of our era for two main reasons. First, I felt there was a window of opportunity to turn the ship around and reform the system to avoid needless additional widespread suffering and upheaval, which to me was guaranteed given the destructive path to which our ruling class was obstinately committed. Second, my decade on Wall Street offered some valuable insight into the inner workings of financial feudalism and how it systematically and intentionally enriches certain small segments of the populace while enslaving the masses via perpetual colossal debt issuance coupled with reoccurring central bank bailouts for the creditor and financial asset speculator class. This wasn’t widely appreciated when I first started writing about it, so it became a personal mission to inform as many people as possible.

For a decade straight, I wrote incessantly about oligarchy, empire, endless war, an erosion of civil liberties, Wall Street criminality, unaccountable central bank power and much more. I figured if enough people understood how real power functions we could rein in its perniciousness. Sometimes I got it right, sometimes I got it wrong, but I always put forth my best effort. I’m proud of the work I did and the overall mission, but the unfortunate truth is it didn’t have the impact I had hoped for. Although I certainly helped and inspired people along the way, the macro situation we find ourselves in today is even more unstable and dangerous than it was a decade ago.

Despite fleeting moments of awareness when it appeared large numbers were waking up to how the ruling class actually rules, such waves of inspired energy were almost always quickly repurposed and redirected by mass media, dishonest pundits and others into typical red/blue manufactured political squabbles generally centered around the “culture war.” The imperial oligarchy wants us fighting amongst each other about race, geography, abortion, gendered bathrooms, sports team names, two hundred year old statues, or any other similar issue they don’t really care about.

As long as we’re fighting about that stuff instead of focusing on their wealth, power and criminality, they win. I’ve seen this sort of thing happen countless times over the past decade, and the general public seems to fall for it every time. If mass media wants to distract or make some ridiculous narrative the center of our attention, it’s a trivial task provided it triggers the culture war hysteria switch embedded in so many across the ideological spectrum.

After watching the first half of 2020 play out, I’ve finally seen enough. I’ve concluded and admitted to myself that the general public is simply unwilling or unable to put aside petty differences to unite and effectively challenge the ruling class on the really big issues of the day. If it didn’t happen this year, it’s not going to — or more accurately — time has probably run out at this point for grassroots movements to coalesce and force this decadent and destructive paradigm to fundamentally transform. Rather, it seems far more likely that the social and economic fabric we live under will simply collapse under the weight of its own corruption, depravity, violence and sociopathic greed before “the people” at a national level do anything particularly productive.

As such, continuing to write articles about what’s happening and how power, empire and oligarchy function has started to feel pointless. I feel like I’ve said nearly everything I wanted to say on these subjects and I’d just be repeating myself by carrying on. I’m simply not inspired to keep engaging and creating content in the same way, so I’m not going to.

Over the past ten years of public writing, I’ve undergone many changes, both in how I see the world and in my personal circumstances. When my emailed notes first started appearing on Zerohedge in early 2010 before I even had a blog, I was still single and living in New York City. I’m now married with three children in Colorado. Ten years ago, I had perhaps taken care of one tomato plant in my entire life, yet these days I’m spending several hours per day in our garden learning how to grow food. The things I’m passionate about and love most are different today than they were, and my work needs to reflect this change.

Going forward, I want to interact with readers in a distinct way than I have previously. I want more philosophy in my life, and less outrage. I want my words and my message to inspire rather than discourage. I want to promote resiliency and wisdom in the face of uncertainty and craziness. I want to increasingly focus on the things I love and the things I can control, rather than the things I despise and cannot easily influence.

Liberty Blitzkrieg has been an important part of my life and a useful medium, but it’s now time for a different canvas. I’ve had the idea of starting a new website with a distinct kind of mission and perspective for several years, and it finally feels like the right time to dive in. As such, I’ll be taking the next several months off from writing as I get some projects done around the house and think about exactly how I want to proceed.

I do know there will be a new website and that my writing will be going in a more expansive direction. In the meantime, I will continue to be active on Twitter in my usual way commenting on all sorts of issues, and if for some reason I become particularly inspired to publish a post in the interim, I won’t hesitate to come out of hibernation. I will continue to put together and distribute my weekly “Liberty Links” post to those who support my work during the transition. Liberty Blitzkrieg and all of its posts will remain online and available as a resource for those who are interested, or may become curious in the future.

Thanks for coming along on this journey thus far, and I look forward to reconnecting again on the other side.

Michael Krieger

"The Death Toll Of A Global War": Bret Weinstein And Tucker Discuss COVID Vaccine, WHO's Authoritarian Plans For Humanity

  Here's another link to the stunning video of Bret Weinstein.

  Humanity is truly in danger but will enough people hear these warnings to make a difference? 

 

Tucker Carlson sat down with evolutionary biologist Bret Weinstein (brother of Eric Weinstein), where the two dissected the intricate web of narratives surrounding COVID-19, the pharmaceutical industry, and global shifts in governance and public health policy.

According to Weinstein, opposition to the 'official' COVID narratives is like taking on Goliath - with competent and courageous experts in various fields being aggressively censored during the pandemic. This led to the formation of a "Dream Team" of dissenters.

"I call the force that we're up against Goliath. Goliath made a terrible mistake and made it most egregiously during COVID, which is it took all of the competent people, all of the courageous people, and it shoved them out of the institutions where they were hanging on. And it created in so doing, the Dream Team. It created every player you could possibly want on your team to fight some historic battle against a terrible evil," he said, suggesting that the Dream Team is uniquely qualified to fight against those who botched the pandemic response with deadly consequences.

Weinstein also discussed the demonization of alternative treatments such as hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, and suggested that there have been 17 million deaths from the COVID-19 vaccine.

"So I’m not a math genius, but one in eight hundred shots times billions is a lot of people…..17 million deaths from the COVID vaccine?" asked Tucker. "Just for perspective. I mean, that’s like the death toll of a global war."

To which Weinstein replied: "Yes, absolutely. This is a great tragedy of history. So that proportion. And amazingly there is no way in which it’s over. I mean, we are still apparently recommending these things for healthy children."

Weinstein and Carlson also discussed what they perceive as a global power shift orchestrated through public health policies. They discussed the World Health Organization's (WHO) proposed pandemic preparedness plan, expressing concerns over potential overreach and infringement on national sovereignty. Weinstein warned of a "turnkey totalitarian planet," with the WHO positioned to dictate unprecedented controls over nations and their citizens.

Watch the entire segment on the WHO below...

And subscribers to Tuckercarlson.com can watch the entire one hour interview here.

Reflections on the Bret Weinstein Interview

  You can follow the link to the interview of Bret Weinstein on X by Tucker Carlson if you haven't listened to it yet.

  Probably the best indictment of the Covid "vaccine" by a biologist to date.

Reflections on the Bret Weinstein Interview

Guest Post by Jeffrey Tucker

Tucker Carlson has conducted a brilliant interview with biologist and podcaster Bret Weinstein, who has been on the Covid case for a very long time. Weinstein speaks with erudition, expertise, and great precision about a number of features of the Covid response. Mercifully, Tucker lets him speak. I urge you to take an hour and watch the entire episode. The transcript is below my commentary.

The value added from this interview is truly incalculable. It’s not only the reach, which quickly passed three million a day after its release. That’s a vast number of influencers who now know what’s what. We’ve been striving for nearly four years to get the word out on that scale, so congratulations to Tucker and to Weinstein.

More important is the fundamental message.

The Day The Dollar Dies?

  The good part of this article is "How we got there." The rest is wishful thinking. There is no road out of "there". It won't be instantaneous unless we get into a full scale world war. Rather, it will be a slow process as the non-dollar infrastructure has to be built. The process can be slowed down or accelerated but it can't be stopped. We are still at a very early stage so most countries are trying to trade with their own currencies but soon guaranties will be asked. Replacing a fiat currency by another won't cut it. Gold and other natural resources will be needed...

Authored by J.G.Collins via The Epoch Times,

Since roughly the last year of World War II, the U.S. dollar has enjoyed what one-time French finance minister Valéry Giscard d’Estaing once called the “exorbitant privilege” of being the world’s reserve currency. It’s had that position since roughly 1944, when it seized the role of the world’s currency hegemon from the British pound sterling.

But now, that standing is threatened by a whole variety of U.S. policies and assaults by our foreign adversaries. And the results for the dollar—and the people of the United States—could be catastrophic.

How We Got Here

By July 1944, it had become clear that allied advances over the Nazis in Europe all but ensured the Allies, and particularly the United States, would dominate the postwar world. It was then that 730 delegates from 44 countries convened at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, to reestablish the postwar global monetary order.

Together, they agreed to a multinational system whereby global currencies would be convertible to the U.S. dollar at fixed exchange rates that could be modified, if necessary, within a very narrow band. The dollar, in turn, would be convertible to gold at $35 an ounce. It was left to the United States to ensure that the dollar/gold exchange rate remained stable.

But by 1971, social welfare spending on Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society,’’ the Vietnam War, and dollar investment in overseas businesses, factories, and other assets, as well as balance of payments deficits resulting from imports from more fully recovered Japan and Europe, had greatly expanded the amount of dollars in global circulation. U.S. officials recognized the nation’s gold reserves were insufficient to honor its commitment to convert dollar into gold at $35 an ounce. That year, Europeans started converting small amounts of their dollar for gold. Then, the British asked for a “guarantee” of the dollars they held in reserve.

A currency crisis was brewing. And the United States needed to circumvent it before it happened.

So in August 1971, President Richard Nixon, at the urging of his advisers, convened a secret meeting at Camp David over three days, concluding on Aug. 15, a Sunday. That evening, the president announced to the world in a nationally telecast statement a purported “temporary” closing of the gold window—prohibiting conversion of dollar to gold—to stop any run on U.S. gold reserves. That “temporary” closing lasted until 1975, when a meeting of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), another legacy of Bretton Woods, approved a “managed” or “dirty float” of currencies at a conference in Jamaica. The IMF was to operate to maintain stability via some ambiguous “guardrails,” at least nominally, but central banks—including the U.S. Federal Reserve, the Bank of England, Bank of Japan, et al.—were able to intervene to support their respective currencies.

The dollar was—finally and officially—off the gold standard and was now a “fiat currency”—meaning the dollar had value in the United States simply because the government said it did.

But in other countries, after President Nixon closed the gold window, the U.S. dollar became, with other currencies, essentially a commodity. If you wanted to buy U.S. property or securities, or acquire U.S. products, you needed to obtain dollars to pay for them. Since the dollar had been overvalued by its link to gold, closing the gold window caused the dollar’s value to decline and inflation to increase.

To ameliorate some of the decline, President Nixon’s Treasury Secretary, William Simon, made a secret deal with Saudi Arabia in 1974 whereby the United States agreed to sell arms and give protection to the House of Saud in exchange for the Saudis investing their U.S. dollar reserves from oil sales in U.S. Treasurys instead of some other “hard” asset.

Oil had been traded in U.S. dollars almost everywhere since the Lucas Gusher at the Spindletop oil field in east Texas was discovered in 1901. The Saudis explicitly guaranteed to maintain the pricing of their oil sales in U.S. dollars. The 1974 arrangement with the Saudis helped the United States to run government budget deficits, and to improve its balance of payments deficit, as well as to maintain the global demand for the dollar, termed “petrodollars” after the Saudi deal, because any country that wanted to buy oil had to buy U.S. dollars to buy it.

Where We Are Today

In 1974, when Secretary Simon arranged his deal with the Saudis to avoid a “dollar crisis,” our national debt was roughly 32 percent of GDP. We were winding down our decades-long involvement in Vietnam and Southeast Asia and had secured a detente with Cold War adversaries China and the Soviet Union.

Today, the United States is over $34 trillion in debt, around 120 percent of our GDP—more than it was even during World War II. A bit over $7 trillion of that—the value of the entire U.S. annual budget—is held by foreigners. We are on our way to $1 trillion a year in debt service, more than our defense budget. And the $10 your grandmother stuck in your birthday card that was lost in the commotion of your birthday party in 1971 would, if found today, be worth $1.20.

And in the world, the United States is engaged in escalating conflicts with two powerful, nuclear-armed, adversaries, China and Russia, as well as the war Iran’s terrorist proxy, Hamas, is waging on our ally, Israel.

• Citing three current and former U.S. officials, NBC News reported that China’s leader Xi Jinping boldly told the U.S. president that he intends to acquire Taiwan, a vital interest of the United States. Not only do we (and the rest of the world) get most of our chips from Taiwan, but 50 percent of the world’s maritime container traffic passes through the Taiwan Strait.

• The Ukraine-Russia war continues and has escalated in the last few days with no end in sight. In a conflict where U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin has pledged American prestige by asserting in October that we will “deliver what it takes, for as long as it takes, so that Ukraine can live in freedom.” But just last month, President Biden seemingly walked back his commitment by saying the United States will back Ukraine “as long as we can.”

• U.S. Navy forces deployed to the Red Sea to protect shipping and deter Iranian belligerence against Israel were attacked by Iranian-backed Houthi militants in Yemen. Scores of U.S. armed services members have been injured in Iraq and Syria in similar attacks.

Within our own borders, violent protests that went unchecked after the death of George Floyd, the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, and the Marxist-inspired pro-Hamas protests have rattled the sense of American stability among foreigners more than at any time since the Vietnam War.

Given all that, it should not be a surprise that other countries are moving to de-dollarize their holdings. The world has growing concerns about the stability of the United States and our ability to meet our debt obligations. The Saudis, whom we have relied upon for 50 years to help maintain demand for the U.S. dollar as the world’s global reserve currency, had announced that they are joining the BRICS, the international coalition of Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa. Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates joined the same day.

Were that not enough, now the Biden administration is contemplating a policy that cannot help but exacerbate de-dollarization. According to the Financial Times, the United States and the G-7 “are actively exploring ways to seize Russian central bank assets” in their countries to fund Ukraine because political opposition to continuing Ukraine support in the United States and Europe threaten the flow of money that has kept Ukraine afloat. The paper reported it had seen a document written by the United States that said, under international law, “G7 members and other specially affected states could seize Russian sovereign assets as a countermeasure to induce Russia to end its aggression.”

Robert Schiller, the Nobel Prize-winning Yale economist, reportedly told Italian news outlet La Repubblica in an interview published Sunday that he warned against the tactic. “[T]his will be confirmation for the Russian leader that what is happening in Ukraine is a proxy war [and] it could paradoxically turn against America and the entire West,” Mr. Schiller said. He warned it could create “a cataclysm for the current dollar-dominated economic system” because it would sow doubt among other countries that their investments in U.S. Treasurys, markets, and financial institutions could be seized by the United States in a political dispute.

America’s “exorbitant privilege” has allowed us to roll up extraordinary levels of debt in exchange for, basically, IOUs we’ve given to our creditors. And given our level of debt, and particularly our debt-to-GDP ratio, our trading partners are now questioning our ability to repay it, the same as any other creditor.

In addition to this fiscal environment, malicious actors from foreign countries seeking to undermine the United States for their own geopolitical advantage, particularly China, are actively pursuing efforts to subvert the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency. Part of their strategy is to close trade in their own currencies.

Summary

The U.S. dollar is under assault by the global market. While we continue to enjoy the largest, most transparent, and best regulated capital markets in the free world, and the largest per capita consumer market, the other elements of dollar supremacy are eroding. Its status as the world’s reserve currency—its “exorbitant privilege”—is unlikely to last into the next decade. That will have enormous negative consequences for American citizens for the latter decades of this century. Interest rates needed to fund our debt will soar, closing out other alternative, productive investments in businesses and innovation.

Congress must absolutely get a handle on our spending to make vigorous, real, reductions and have the courage to raise taxes principally on its own donor class so that we get to a balanced budget no later than 2030. To grow our way out of debt as we did our World War II debt, we must make our nation more productive and more resilient. That means graduating more chemical engineers and computer scientists and fewer social workers and grievance studies graduates. It means fiercely protecting our technology and re-shoring high value-added manufacturing. It means making smart policy choices, across the board, to keep our people healthier, our children far better educated and much more physically fit to reduce healthcare costs. And we need to ensure our family structures and institutions are more resilient so that charities and families—not governments—support our most challenged citizens.

If we don’t, we will come to the day the dollar dies—and with it, the republic.

Finally the truth about Covid! (The Death of Science by Professor Angus Dalgleish - Video - 73mn)

  Finally the truth about Covid! - An amazing video!

  The virus WAS man-made and Doctor Fauci lied.

  Readers of this blog have known this for over 4 years now as immediately I highlighted a very serious research paper from India which clearly stated that HIV inserts were made into the Corona Virus and that the chance this was natural was nil. (This scientific study was soon after retracted under pressure. It doesn't tell you anything about its validity but a lot about the political pressure at the time.) 

  Once you understand and accept this (A lot of my friends and colleagues still do not since it would completely change their world view.) you begin to grasp what happened later on and why this led to the world we now live in.

  I also do believe, and I am not speaking lightly, that science is dead. We have replaced the scientific process by a top down authoritarian system which can be summarized as one of the European parliamentarian said: (From now on,) "WE are THE science!" 

 Well, let's see where this leads but I am afraid we'll be staring at the abyss soon enough!