Israel is Destroying America (Video - 16mn)

  It is now time to take a stand: Netanyahu is a dangerous man who represents a danger for Israel and the world. He must be removed!

 

Is Netanyahu a war criminal? This Is What They’re NOT Telling You by Russell Brand (Video - 11mn)

  Who indeed are the real criminals? When the empire makers are accusing you to be a war criminal, isn't it a travesty of justice? (The first 5mn cover the issue.)

Central Bank Digital Currency CBDC is Coming (Video - 32mn)

  It is unfortunate that Ed Dowd is so difficult to follow because what he is saying is very interesting. Banks insolvency in the US may indeed precipitate the adoption of CBDC. Hopefully people will resist but what if the shock is big enough?  

 

Will Trump Survive This?

  As most foreigners, I find it difficult to chose between two geriatric candidates. The problem is that both have been president so we know their policies. Trump is more theatrical but he will support Israel with the risk of a conflict with Iran, even if he could slightly lower tensions in Ukraine. 

 As for the economy, we are heading into a recession. The only question left is before or after the election. The Deep State will do its very best to delay, knowing that a recession will endanger Biden but do they have this power? The currency market is showing signs of cracks and it's by far the largest... 

  But in the long term, the concern in the US is not the market but the rule of law. And in that respect, what we are seeing is extremely concerning. The DOJ and the administration are truly out of control. Freedom is under attack from almost every angle. And unfortunately if the US falls then the rest of the West will follow suit.

  Will 2024 turn out as the most important year in our lives? It very much could.

Authored by James Rickards via the Daily Reckoning,

This is a highly consequential election year, to say the least. The policy differences between Biden and Trump are enormous. Whether it’s taxes, regulation, borders, energy or foreign policy, the differences couldn’t be clearer.

And though I prefer to focus my analysis on markets alone, I can’t. These days especially, politics plays too great a role in how markets behave.

But this year’s election is about far more than policy.

In the past, the D.C. establishment could live with a typical Republican or Democrat. They knew neither candidate would rock the boat too much if he got elected. Both candidates were cut from the same basic cloth and played by the accepted rules.

But all that goes out the window with Trump.

He’s the most polarizing political figure we’ve seen in our lifetimes. You’d probably have to go back to Andrew Jackson to find a parallel.

And it’s clear that Trump’s political enemies will stop at nothing to keep him out of the White House this time.

Lawfare 

“Lawfare” is their primary tactic. They just want to get Trump convicted of a felony before the election so they can brand him a criminal, believing that the American public won’t elect a convicted felon.

They don’t care if the conviction is subsequently overturned by a higher court. The damage will already be done. And if it trashes the Constitution, Trump’s political enemies are prepared to live with that.

They’re convinced that Trump is the equivalent of Hitler and that he’ll destroy democracy if he’s elected. So in their minds, the ends justify the means. They’ll justify any action, legal or illegal, to ensure his defeat.

They don’t seem to realize that the harder they go after Trump with bogus charges, the more popular he becomes.

I’m not here to defend Trump or oppose him. No doubt, he’s a deeply flawed character with personality traits that alienate many people. But voters don’t expect a billionaire real estate magnate from New York City to be a saint. They vote for him because they think he can get things done.

And under honest democratic elections, the administrative state, or deep state, whatever you want to call it, stays out of it. But that’s not the system we have today.

And that should concern every American, regardless of his or her political affiliation.

Again, it doesn’t matter if you love Trump or hate him. But in a democracy, the people rule. Not the bureaucrats. And if the people elect Trump, then he should be allowed to enact the policies that got him elected. That didn’t happen when he won in 2016.

Stop Trump!

The first two years of his administration were hobbled by the fake Russian collusion hoax and the numerous investigations that resulted. Those investigations showed that there was no collusion between Trump and Russia, but Trump’s enemies didn’t care (and certainly did not apologize).

They just moved on to the next fake scandal, which was the first impeachment over a brief phone call to Ukrainian President Zelenskyy asking about Biden family corruption. It turns out that Biden family corruption was rampant in Ukraine, but that didn’t stop phony “whistleblowers” (actually lawbreakers) like Eric Ciaramella from leaking classified transcripts to Adam Schiff to get the impeachment process going.

Trump was acquitted by the Senate. Then came the second impeachment where Trump was also acquitted. Since leaving office, Trump has been hit with federal criminal charges relating to Jan. 6 and the Mar-a-Lago raid, as well as state criminal charges in New York and Georgia.

Trump’s enemies never quit. They’re also going after Trump’s advisers and confidants. It’s meant to isolate Trump because anyone who advises him will fear they’ll be hauled into court on some bogus charge and have to spend a fortune on lawyers, win or lose.

The latest lawfare tactic has been unveiled against Trump attorney John Eastman. It’s called “debanking.”

Good Luck Living Without a Bank

In Eastman’s case, it started with Bank of America closing his bank accounts for no good reason and with no recourse. Then he turned to his accounts at USAA, which specializes in accounts for military veterans and their families. Shortly thereafter, USAA also closed Eastman’s bank accounts.

We tend to take banking services for granted and don’t think much about what would happen if we were shut out of the banking system. No checks, no savings accounts, no wire transfers, no ATMs, no bank-issued credit cards, no lines of credit or mortgages, etc.

It’s like trying to survive without food or water. It’s impossible. And that’s the whole point. It’s designed to make the victim’s life miserable.

The same thing happened in the U.K. when NatWest and Coutts debanked Nigel Farage, leader of the Brexit movement. Farage fought back and the CEO of NatWest was eventually fired over the incident. But it was a brutal fight and a tough transition for Farage when he suddenly found himself debanked.

Unfortunately, debanking is just an extension of the “woke” cancel culture that’s taken root in much of the West.

Shut up, Bigot!

When we look around at places like New Zealand and Scotland, there seems to be a bizarre competition to see which country can pass the most fascist laws and imitate George Orwell’s dystopia in Nineteen Eighty-Four in the least amount of time.

Scotland has imposed so-called hate crime laws that subject you to imprisonment for exercising free speech if it happens to offend a long list of protected parties. No actual violence or physical act is needed. If you simply say the wrong thing, you can be arrested, fined and imprisoned for “inciting hate.”

A similar law has just passed in Ireland. The Polish government wants to pass a law that makes it a crime to “defame” members of the LBGT community. Of course, the term “defame” is ill-defined and is in the eye of the beholder. Any choice of words, even if derogatory or hurtful by some standard, should be protected by free speech provisions. But in Poland, it may soon land you in jail.

I’ve never understood hate crime laws anyway (and I’m a lawyer). If you murder someone, it’s murder. If you assault someone, it’s assault. Subject to due process of law, you should go to jail if convicted or perhaps face capital punishment.

Prosecutors have to show intent, but what does “hate” have to do with it? The perpetrator may, in fact, hate the victim but that’s not the crime. The crime is assault or murder. Those crimes have been considered crimes for millennia.

Nineteen Eighty-Four Was Supposed to Be Fiction

Adding hate to the definition just blurs the line between thought and action in ways that make it easier for fascist governments to target political enemies with flimsy allegations of “hate” when no actions were involved.

The most egregious example of this trend toward thought crimes is Canada. The chief neo-fascist there is Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. He has proposed a law called the Online Harms Act that expands the definition of “discrimination” to include online speech “likely to foment detestation or vilification of an individual or group.”

What exactly does this law mean by “foment”? Who defines “vilification” or “detestation”? What’s the definition of “group”?

All of these questions will be answered by a new Digital Safety Commission, which will not be bound by “any technical or legal rules of evidence.” If accused, you can be ordered to pay $20,000 to any “victim” and $50,000 to the state with no limit on how many victims might crawl out of the woodwork.

This is practically an invitation for grifters and activists to attack political enemies with fake claims of having been subject to “detestation.” It gets worse. If a court believes you are likely to commit a “hate crime” under this law, you can be placed under house arrest and held in isolation.

In other words, just thinking the wrong thing as imagined by an unaccountable magistrate is enough to put you under house arrest. This is actually worse than what the Thought Police did in Orwell’s novel.

You can expect censorship in the U.S. to increase as we get closer to the November election. Get ready for it.

Nineteen Eighty-Four was supposed to be fiction. Unfortunately, it’s becoming reality.

Japan's Warning For America

 Just on cue, the markets are starting to break in early May. This indicator more than anything else is telling you that something is about to happen...

Authored by Michael Wilkerson via The Epoch Times,

Last week, Japan saw its currency, the yen, rapidly depreciate against the U.S. dollar and other world currencies to near record low levels. This drew the attention of financial markets and other observers, and—in some quarters—led to panic. There was concern that Japan, a formerly great nation now increasingly viewed as the “sick man of Asia,” was on the brink of a currency and financial markets crisis.

It wasn’t so long ago that Japan was the envy of the world. Japan’s postwar recovery and subsequent economic miracle produced by the 1980s the world’s second-largest economy after the United States. Numerous Japanese multinational corporations were admired by the business world as a result of their growth, efficiency, and managerial discipline. The state and big business were closely aligned in what appeared an unstoppable formula. Flush with cash and confidence, Japanese companies and investors were aggressively expansionist, acquiring market share, trophy properties, resources, and businesses in the United States and elsewhere. Much like concerns about China today, fears then abounded that Japan would overtake the United States as the global economic leader.

These fears were unfounded. “Japan Inc.” was a house built on a faulty foundation. Overly accommodative easy money, along with high leverage throughout the financial and corporate sectors, facilitated a massive stock market and real estate bubble, which eventually burst in 1990. The crash led to a depression from which Japan has never recovered, even after three decades. The question is, why not? Herein lies a lesson for the United States.

Repeated government bailouts of failing financial and industrial companies have perpetuated Japan’s crisis. Japan’s leaders and policies have repeatedly blocked the process of creative destruction, which—if allowed to run its course and cleanse the system—would have been a massive stimulus to entrepreneurship and economic vitality. However, rather than allow capitalism to work, the Japanese system doomed the country to a generation of stagnation.

As a result, Japan has endured three “lost decades” of weak economic growth, diminished purchasing power, lower and lower standards of living, loss of prestige and influence in the global community, and an aging population that the island nation’s resources are straining to support.

Japan now has the world’s highest government debt-to-GDP ratio, at 264 percent. Japan’s banks are walking zombies, unable to grow or lend because they have never restructured their balance sheets to clean up massive piles of debt left over from excesses of previous decades. The Bank of Japan (BOJ) holds government bonds and other assets equal to 127 percent of Japan’s GDP, the highest ratio of any central bank in the world. This portfolio resulted in over $70 billion in unrealized losses for the BOJ in six months of 2023 alone.

The Japanese yen has devalued against the U.S. dollar by more than 30 percent in just three years since 2021. Since the global financial crisis 2008–09, the yen has lost 75 percent of its value against gold. Because of Japan’s high reliance on imports, this loss of purchasing power has translated directly into a substantially lower standard of living for the Japanese people. In theory, Japan could support the yen by raising interest rates, but this is a political, monetary, and fiscal impossibility.

Decades of easy money policies are a central culprit and cause of this slow-moving trainwreck.

The Bank of Japan only began raising interest rates this March, some three years after the United States and the European Union brought their own easy money policies to an end. This was the first time the BOJ has raised rates since 2007, a move that pulled the official rate out of negative territory. Nonetheless, with inflation now approaching 2 percent, a short-term policy rate of zero to 0.1 percent means that real rates remain around negative 2 percent. This serves as an additional tax on Japanese households and an intended stimulus to spend today rather than save for tomorrow.

Money essentially is free in Japan, but no one can afford to borrow it, even if the banks can manage to lend it. The BOJ and the entire banking system stand in the penumbra of insolvency. Only Japan’s decade-long zero interest-rate policy has allowed Japan’s decrepit financial system to continue to stand following the 2008 financial crisis and the effects of COVID economic shutdowns. Japan cannot afford to raise interest rates to support its currency more than nominally above the zero bound without substantially raising debt service costs and exploding losses. This would bring the entire rickety system to the ground.

A growing economy might help ease the burden, but Japan’s economy is moribund. This is not surprising, as meaningful growth is impossible under mountains of debt. GDP shrank by 0.8 percent in the third quarter and eked out 0.1 percent growth in the fourth quarter. While the country thus barely escaped technical recession (two consecutive quarters of GDP decline), Japan hasn’t posted GDP growth above 2 percent in more than 20 years, save for two rebound quarters after the global shocks of the financial crisis and COVID.

Japan represents a slow-moving demographic disaster. Japan has the oldest median population of any major country in the world and the lowest fertility rate at 1.37. Japan’s fertility rate has been below the minimum population replacement rate (2.1) for 40 years, meaning that the country is both aging and losing economic productivity, and it is probably too late to reverse it.

This all represents a grave warning to the United States.

The U.S. government is chasing Japan for the ignoble title of most indebted nation. Overly indebted nations cannot grow. With federal government debt to GDP of 129 percent, a ratio which is increasing rapidly, the United States is now the fourth most indebted country in the world. Debt is growing more quickly now because the federal government refuses to wean itself off of deficit spending, including an additional $1.7 trillion in 2023, which must be funded by new debt, as must over $1 trillion in interest expense. This debt—and the cost to service it—acts as a drag on our economy. Deficit spending and the borrowing required to support it crowds out private market investment and financings.

Rather than let more insolvent banks and unprofitable firms fail, U.S. monetary policy since at least the 2008 financial crisis has propped up bad business models—and the asset values of otherwise worthless investments—by subsidizing the cost of capital well below the natural rate of interest. In a nation that has been the standard bearer and exporter of capitalism for more than two centuries, socialistic government policies are preventing capitalism from working at home. This will eventually catch up with our financial markets and economy, just as it did for Japan.

It is not just shortsighted monetary and financial policy that threatens U.S. competitiveness.

If Americans’ worsening attitudes toward the importance of marriage and children do not reverse course dramatically, the United States will face the same demographic fate as Japan. The fertility rate in the United States has been in decline since at least 2008, and reached a record low of 1.62 in 2023. This is well below the replacement rate, and thus unsustainable.

Progressives point to declining fertility rates and aging populations to justify mass illegal immigration, but this is a red herring. Bringing tens of millions of unskilled, uneducated, and culturally unassimilated migrants into the nation is not a benefit but rather an untenable burden on social infrastructure, an enervating drain on economic productivity, and an unbearable tax on legal citizens.

At least Japan got that part right.

"It Was Brutal": 2nd Boeing-Linked Whistleblower Dies

  Will Boeing ever build a new plane? The chances are 50/50 but if they do, be certain that the price tag will be X10 and the problems too numerous to count. 

  Not that there will be too many whistle blowers to do the counting since their mortality rate seems to be rising fast. Attentive observers would wonder why it is so unhealthy to say the wrong things in America and why statistics obey strange laws regarding these people. (But who is "attentive" nowadays when the next "news" is already being pushed to our sceens?)

  In the end the obfuscation of the truth, if that's what it is. won't save the system. Early intervention is always better than kicking the can down the road. Unless of course the problems are systemic in which case there is little you can do.

"It Was Brutal": 2nd Boeing-Linked Whistleblower Dies

A whistleblower at Boeing supplier Spirit AeroSystems died Tuesday morning following a struggle with a 'sudden, fast-spreading infection,' the Seattle Times reports.

45-year-old Joshua Dean, a former mechanical engineer and quality auditor from Wichita, Kansas, alleged that Spirit leadership ignored manufacturing defects on the 737 MAX, including 'mechanics improperly drilling holes in the aft pressure bulkhead of the MAX.' When he brought this up with management, he said that nothing was done about it. So he filed a safety complaint with the FAA - and said that Spirit had used him as a scapegoat while they lied to the agency about the defects.

"After I was fired, Spirit AeroSystems [initially] did nothing to inform the FAA, and the public" regarding the bulkhead defects, said Dean in his complaint.

In November, the FAA suggested to Dean in a letter that his claims had merit, writing "The investigation determined that your allegations were appropriately addressed under an FAA-approved safety program," adding "However, due to the privacy provisions of those programs, specific details cannot be released."

Dean also gave a deposition in a Spirit shareholder lawsuit.

The shareholder lawsuit alleging that Spirit management withheld information on the quality flaws and harmed stockholders was filed in December. Supporting the suit, Dean provided a deposition detailing his allegations.

After a panel blew off a Boeing 737 MAX plane in January, bringing new attention to the quality lapses at Spirit, one of Dean’s former Spirit colleagues confirmed some of Dean’s allegations. -Seattle Times

He had been in good health, and 'was noted for having a healthy lifestyle,' according to the report.

He had been in critical condition for two weeks, according to his aunt Carol Parsons, who said he became ill and went to the hospital due to breathing difficulties. He was intubated, after which he developed pneumonia and then MRSA, a serious bacterial infection.

His condition deteriorated rapidly, and he was airlifted from Wichita to a hospital in Oklahoma City, Parsons said. There he was put on an ECMO machine, which circulates and oxygenates a patient’s blood outside the body, taking over heart and lung function when a patient’s organs don’t work on their own. -Seattle Times

Doctors had considered amputating both hands and both feet.

"It was brutal what he went through," said Parsons. "Heartbreaking."

Dean was fired in April 2023, after which he filed a complaint with the Department of Labor, alleging he had been terminated in retaliation for blowing the whistle.

He was represented by the South Carolina law firm that represented Boeing whistleblower John "Mitch" Barnett, who was found dead in an 'apparent suicide' in March in Charleston.

Barnett was in the middle of giving depositions suggesting that Boeing retaliated against him over complaints related to quality issues when he was found dead from a gunshot wound.

The Charleston County Coroner’s Office reported Barnett’s death appeared to be “from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.” Almost two months later, the police investigation into his death is still ongoing. -Seattle Times

"Whistleblowers are needed. They bring to light wrongdoing and corruption in the interests of society. It takes a lot of courage to stand up," said Brian Knowles, one of Dean's lawyers. "It’s a difficult set of circumstances. Our thoughts now are with John’s family and Josh’s family."

In March, Boeing was rumored to be in talks to buy Spirit, as both companies have come under increasing pressure from airline customers and federal regulators to shore up quality issues following a January 5th incident in which a door plug blew out mid-flight on a 737 MAX 9.

Four days later, United Airlines found "loose bolts" on 737 MAX doors following an emergency inspection.

IT’S STARTING - Russia Just Issued A DEVASTATING Warning To The West (Video - 10mn)

  Russell brand is sometimes difficult to follow being more entertainment in his style than true information. (But I guess he wouldn't be allowed online otherwise.) Still, he tends to push the right buttons on the right issues.

 We are truly on hedge in Ukraine. The country may be existential for the credibility of Europe but it is likewise existential for the security of Russia. Sending troops from NATO there may be a step too far. Can we walk back from the brink?

 

Saudi Arabia’s Catastrophic “Everything” Problem (Video - 52mn)

  A stunning and superbly instructive video about Saudi Arabia and their geo-strategic predicament. (Must watch!)

 

It's The End Of The Foreign Exchange Reserves As We Know It... Don't Feel Fine About It by Tom Luongo

  Tom Luongo is partisan to say the least but that doesn't make his analysis wrong.

  America just like Rome will not be conquered from the outside but will crumble from its own mistakes. And what worse mistake can you do than show the world that your money cannot be trusted? Absolutely everybody from Xi Jinping to the most remote war lord lost in a jungle in Africa gets the message loud and clear: Now is the time to get away from the dollar! (I feel some "deja vu" about this sentence!) Are the Americans mad or imbeciles? For short term gains, they are shooting themselves in the foot. The damage will be immense and can truly harm their "exorbitant advantage" according to the words of Charles de Gaulle. Madness!

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

“Birthday party, cheesecake, jelly bean, Boom!”
— R.E.M.

The world we’ve known is over. The US Congress finally pushed the big red button. When the West froze around $300 billion of Russia’s foreign exchange reserves in March 2022 it was the first step in breaking down the system of foreign exchange reserves that makes up the global economy.

Freezing assets of countries they are mad at isn’t new behavior from the locusts that run the G-7 countries. We still have to listen to conservatards whine about Obama giving Iran back “pallets of cash” for signing the JCPOA (Iran Nuclear Deal) in 2015, when all he did was unfreeze assets we’d frozen in 1979…

… 1979, folks. Seriously. Get a grip on reality. Obama gave Iran back their money. I’m no Obama fan, far from it, but as payments go, it was really nothing.

Freezing assets, however, isn’t really theft, it’s just the tip.

The money frozen in 2022 was supposed to operate the same way. It was supposed to pressure Russian President Vladimir Putin into ending the war in Ukraine. The theory being that the oligarchs whose money that represented would push Putin out of power to get that money back.

Theories, by the way, speaking as a scientist, mostly suck.

Putin used this to his advantage, rallying the world around him and to the burgeoning BRICS Alliance. It worked a treat and here we are with $90 per barrel oil, raging inflation and a shattered Ukraine.

Typically, the British call this, “money well spent.”

Overall, it was a statement by the G-7 that no one’s money is safe. Look, no offense to Iran (or Venezuela or anyone else who previously ran into this problem), but cutting them out of the global economy was an effective piece of intimidation of everyone else.

It had it’s limits, however. And the increasingly common usage of sanctions while possibly effective in enforcing the rules based order demanded by the G-7, only decreased the cost/benefit analysis of playing by those rules in the future. Eventually someone would turn what was supposed to be a weakness into a strength.

No self-proclaimed ‘serious person’ in DC, London and/or Brussels thought that doing something so arrogant (and stupid) to one of the most important commodity-producing countries in the world would backfire on them. When you stop to think about it we’re talking about a country, Russia, that in 2023 exported more wheat than the 3rd largest producer (the US) harvested — approx. 60 million tonnes exported (RUS) vs. 47 million tonnes produced (US).

So, like the hubristic morons they are, our leadership thought this would work. It didn’t.

Or was their plan even dumber?

Because the recent actions by the US vis a vis Russia and China is so dumb it defies description. Congress has authorized President Joah Bii-DEN! to seize Russia’s foreign exchange reserves as they have threatened to do for the past six months and hand the money to Ukraine.

This isn’t the tip anymore, this is just outright theft.

And they call this #winning.

Leaving aside the inconsolable butthurt this move implies, it really signifies that this may have actually been the plan all along.

In their April 26th livestream, the Alexes at The Duran brought up the brilliant point that the real target of this move to seize Russia’s forex reserves wasn’t Russia, but China. (START AT the 3:00)

By all accounts the US has frozen a small portion of the $300 billion of Russia’s money sitting around now collecting interest because of Jerome Powell. But in the Age of Bii-Den! no foreign policy blunder is too small, no shakedown attempt to brazen, and no act of diplomatic vandalism too destructive.

Sec. of State Antony Blinken’s ‘performance’ in Beijing was nothing short of a declaration of war, as Alex Mercouris put it, and he’s absolutely right. It’s good to see both of them come to the same conclusion I reached during the first days of the Bii-Denn! Junta…

… that they are trying to destroy the United States.

So, all in all, the threat hangs out there that the G-7 stands ready to seize Russia’s forex reserves, which is an implicit threat to China that the US will cancel all outstanding debts owed to China because we are at war with them.

Because this is exactly where this leads.

Russia famously sold all of their US Treasury reserves in 2021 in preparation for war with NATO over Ukraine. There were no CUSIPs to cancel unilaterally by the US. As always, Vlad is one step ahead of the predictably brutish neocons at the US Dept. of State.

Even though Vicky the Hutt is gone and the US is offering a few fig leaves to Russia here and there to simulate attempts at opening up a diplomatic end to Ukraine, Russia is looking at Blinken, David Cameron (UK), Josep Borrell (EU) and the rest of the Gang that Can’t Sanction Straight and calmly saying, “Nyet. Fuck you, pay me.”

And, by all accounts, the EU is paying Russia while Bii-Denn! tries to open up global oil markets in a desperate bid to bring oil prices down because “Our Money, Your Problem” is now “Our Commodities, Your Political Unrest” or something like that.

This speaks to the heart of this matter, there is no trust left between these ‘combatants’ and, by extension, the rest of the world. Global trade rests on trust. Trust that if you do business in one country, what you’ve personally earned is considered your property. If that trust is broken it’s not likely not coming back anytime soon.

Seizing those assets is simply spitting in the eye of the very ideas on which Pax Americana was built. You can say it was always a lie and that’s your prerogative, but the key to continuing any good racket is not to shake down the mark to the point where he sees the grift.

I guess they no longer teach that at Globalist Central.

The saddest part about this is that, truly, the target of this insanity isn’t even China or Russia or Iran… the real target is us, the people who are responsible for the debt their inanity represents. The real problem is that they are broke, are about to break all of the promises of the past two generations, and want you to believe it was Russia and China’s fault.

But these people are simple, garden variety narcissistic abusers, who sit there in their ivory towers nursing the holes where their hearts are supposed to be, screaming, “Why are you making me beat you like this!”

Why indeed?

BOOM!

I was contacted by Sputnik News for comments on this issue which were far more professional than those I just typed. As always, in the interests of transparency, I publish the full comments for your confirmation of whatever you think of me. :)

The US House passed legislation that would give Biden the legal authority to confiscate frozen Russian financial assets and transfer to them to Ukraine. 

1. If the US really does pull the trigger and confiscates Russia’s financial assets, what are some of the potential consequences for the hegemony of the US dollar and financial system? 

I could write a book on this issue, to be honest. But, in short, nothing good.  What this would do is ensure the US is no longer a place where trade and business are protected by law.  Congress is literally throwing the entire concept of foreign exchange into the trash can and lighting it on fire by giving President Biden this power, which no one should have.

This isn’t about Russia or anyone’s opinion about what they are doing in Ukraine.  This is about the US as a bastion for the rule of law as it pertains to business and banking.  Now, we’ve been trending towards this moment for the past two decades, but this would be a move from which the current US government cannot and will not recover from.

It will signal to the rest of the world that their money is no longer safe from confiscation if it is held in US banks.  That at any time if someone in Congress has a grudge against you, they can just seize it and move on.  We Americans have lived under the spectre of ‘asset forfeiture’ laws for years as a consequence of our “War on Drugs” during the Reagan administration.  The corruption it created is legendary. 

Every country looking to do business with the US in the future now lives with that.  This one act is what signals the end of the modern era of finance and trade.  From here the world will fracture and the US will lose trillions in future trade.  This confirms my argument that US leadership are vandals intent on the collapse of the US rather than having any allegiance whatsoever to the people or what’s left of the ideals on which the country was founded. 

2. How are other countries likely to react to such a move? Are there any other alternatives to the US dollar and financial system that they could turn to?

This move will not have immediate effects that we’ll see play out in capital markets beyond accelerating trends already in place.  As of right now there is no alternative to the US dollar because of its primacy in settling global trade.  The euro gave up that potential role when they went to negative interest rates last decade.

The Chinese yuan is not ready for this role either.  But with this move by the US, it will now gain momentum towards fulfilling that role. And, believe me, the Chinese government is fully aware of this.

In the short run, paradoxically, it will cause a run into the US dollar, as people who need them to service debt will hoard them, but with the intention of paying those debts off.  This will put upward pressure on the dollar making our sovereign debt that much harder to service.  The vandals of the Biden administration are fully aware of this, and if anything, are cheering it on. 

But once trust is broken it is nearly impossible to regain it.  Capital flows to where it is treated best.  This was the US’s real super-power for all of these years.  We treated capital well.  It’s what drove our banking dominance.  That dominance will fade and the world, in the short term, will turn to gold until a new system emerges.

3. US lawmakers are constantly saying that giving more money to the US military industrial complex via Ukraine spending is great for the economy, creates jobs. Is that actually the case?

Yes, most of the money isn’t actually going to Ukraine.  I suspect that most of it is going to replace what we’ve already stripped from ours and the rest of NATO’s stores.  This money is just ensuring that the war wanted so desperately by the people who stand behind our politicians is fully funded.

War is not good for the economy, it diverts precious capital from productive innovation into weapons and bombs.  As always, all they sell us on is the stuff that is seen, the jobs for making bombs.  What they ignore are the costs to that, the unseen things we didn’t build with that same money that would alleviate future needs.  It’s just pathetic grandstanding and it’s why representative Republics always fail the same way. 

Creating jobs is a politician’s priority, but it isn’t in the people’s priority.  What the people want is to not be looted and create their own opportunities. But that implies we don’t need the politicians, which we don’t, and we can’t have that gaining traction, now can we?

Government Breaks Silence: Strange Encounters | UFO's Investigating the Unknown (Video - 42mn)

   I have always been fascinated by UFOs. What are they? Where do they come from? And as many other controversial subjects, we've been told dutifully that they were mostly illusions, a trick of the mind, weaker people falling prey to their inner demons and beliefs. Nothing to see there, then?

   But see they kept doing, military and civil pilots, people trained to make the difference between flying toasters and their imagination, most of the time sober and not prone to fly of fancy. And the descriptions kept piling up, diverse, surprising, often original and unlikely. What to make of it?

  Here's an interesting, recent and original investigation from National Geographic below. 

  Personally, I have come to believe the following:

  1 - The Universe is infinite and is pregnant with life. Life must therefore be everywhere. (We can only observe a 35 billion light-years sphere in a 13.7 billion light-years old Universe, an interesting paradox in itself but the whole Universe must be much larger than that. Probably infinite.)

  2 - Still, I do believe in the "rare Earth" hypothesis. Life is complex and therefore rare. It requires exceptional circumstances to emerge as our own solar system proves. Likewise most stars cannot generate life: Too short lived, too much radiations, too little "metallicity" (any atom except hydrogen and helium is a metal by definition generated by a star explosion. Nova or super-nova.) So a goldlilock planet around a rare sun in a special zone of the galaxy is required.

3 - The "zoo hypothesis" is the right one. Advanced civilizations, if they exist, do not interfere with less advanced ones as interference always end up in destruction. We will never be contacted, as long as we are in our "human" condition. It would destroy us one way or another. This is probably a known rule respected by all life forms.

4 - You do not "discover" advanced civilizations. They are for our purpose perfectly invisible. Using technologies we do not fathom for purposes we do not understand. Our own world in a few decades in unknowable. More advanced civilizations are unthinkable. Forever beyond our intellectual horizon, AI included.

5 - For that reason, Area 51 and "debris " from alien crafts are bogus beliefs. Advanced beings do not cross the Universe to end up somehow crashing on our shores. Reverse engineering of alien technology is likewise meaningless. What could Rome's most brilliant minds would have done with a micro-processor? (Without understanding mater, electricity, waves, relativity, without a microscope to observe it, without anything really!) And that's just a mere 2,000 years of technological progress! 

What then, do nothing? Not quite. We can still learn with more observations, statistical tools and modelization. We'll probably never know anything exact about "them", (as for physics and the uncertainty principle where you cannot know exactly location and other properties of a particle at the same time.) but we will understand more and more until we become what they are if evolution is convergent which is likely.

 In the meantime, enjoy the mystery.