Category Archives: Corporate Crime

Western Liberal Media Attacks Tanzania’s President John Magufuli For Exposing Covid-19 Tests and Population Control in Africa

Posted on by
Reply

By Timothy Alexander Guzman

Source: Silent Crow News

From the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, Tanzania’s President John ‘The Bulldozer’ Magufuli exposed the fraud behind the Covid-19 testing kits and criticized the mass hysteria in regards to the virus. Several mainstream media networks including Bloomberg News led an attack against Magufuli’s actions regarding how his government has responded to the pandemic. Bloomberg News reporter Antony Sguazzin published ‘Africa’s ‘Bulldozer’ Runs Into Covid-19, Claims God on His Side’, the title itself already mocks Magufuli for mentioning God when it comes to Covid-19, but Sguazzin conveniently bypasses what Magufuli actually said in his article and criticizes him to the point of hostility:

Tanzania’s maverick President John Magufuli has used his strong personality to cow corrupt civil servants and force foreign mining companies to pay millions of dollars in outstanding tax. The coronavirus may be less responsive

What a way for Antony Sguazzin to begin his propaganda piece by calling him the “maverick President”:

Last week, he became the first African leader to declare victory over the virus, even though health data haven’t been released for more than a month. He’s criticized the national laboratory for exaggerating the number of infections, dismissed health experts and discouraged the wearing of masks, all the while saying God will protect Tanzania. Restrictions on social gatherings such as weddings will be lifted from June 29, when schools can reopen

As Squazzin continued his attack by claiming that there were deaths and nighttime burials by health officials in a video published by Al Jazeera that neither confirms or denies the accusations. The video could have been filmed anywhere in the African continent where outbreaks like Ebola and other health crisis have emerged in the past. The US embassy had warned that contracting Covid-19 was “extremely high” in the main city of Dar es Salaam and that hospitals were overwhelmed despite the number of cases being reported by the Tanzanian government at 509 cases and with more than 21 deaths:

But the president’s optimism is belied by reports of deaths and nighttime burials by health officials wearing personal protective equipment. Dozens of Tanzanian truck drivers who had to undergo screening at border posts have tested positive. The U.S. Embassy warned last month that the risk of contracting the virus in the main city, Dar es Salaam, male was “extremely high” and that hospitals were overwhelmed

Sguazzin said that Magufuli’s response to activists who were detained because of their criticism towards his government of how he was handling Covid-19 pandemic was by intimidating the public:

Nicknamed “the bulldozer” for his no-nonsense approach when he was minister of works, Magufuli has made intimidation and bravado a feature of his presidency since assuming office in 2015. His campaign to fight graft — he often fired people while cameras were rolling — earned him widespread praise and elevated his authority within the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi party.

Crackdowns on the media and those who poke fun at the government mean that criticism of how Magufuli is handling the outbreak is mostly restricted to social media. Official information is limited and tightly controlled. At least 13 journalists, students and politicians have been detained since March 23 for distributing information about the virus, Tanzania’s Legal and Human Rights Centre said

The 13 journalists, students and politicians who are being held for distributing information about Covid-19 is a human rights issue and extreme to go that far if all allegations are true. Magufuli’s government’s stance on the LGBTQ community is also extreme since they jail people up to 30 years in prison if you are convicted, but unfortunately that’s happens all over Africa and many countries around the world including in the most brutal dictatorship on the planet who is also a friend to the US is Saudi Arabia, where they execute people from the LGBTQ community but that is rarely mentioned in the mainstream media.  Since Magufuli was elected, he has slashed his own salary from $15,000 a month to $4,000 and reduced his government from 30 to 11 ministries. He also cut excessive government spending in various areas including foreign travel by government officials and canceling the World’s AIDs Day in Tanzania and decided to use the funds for AIDS medications. Magufuli also suspended Independence Day in 2015 to declare a national cleanup day to reduce the spread of cholera and to improve the health system in the country. To increase domestic production, it was reported in 2017 that Tanzania banned exporting unprocessed ores for domestic smelting purposes.  Magufuli also amended laws to renegotiate mining contracts or even terminate them if fraud is suspected. It’s apparent that Magufuli is a nationalist. Magufuli has done some bad, but he also has done some good, especially when he exposed Covid-19 testing kits as a fraud. Now the Mainstream media is attacking his policies and what he says concerning the Covid-19 consensus. What angered the West and the mainstream media is not what Magufuli  is claiming about God, it is what he did to prove that the Covid-19 test kits were inaccurate and that’s what Sguazzin forgot to mention.  Magufuli has proved to the world that the covid-19 test kits are a fraud and what the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) claims are on the dangers of the virus is basically false.  Magufuli explains how he tested the test takers by instructing his country’s security services to send various samples to the Covid-19 testing labs that were not human:

We took samples from goats, we took samples from sheeps, we took samples from Pawpaws, we even took samples from car oil and we took samples from other different things and we took samples to the laboratory without them knowing and we even named all the samples, like the sample from the car oil, we named it Jabil Hamza, 30 years old, male, the results came back negative. When we took the sample from a jackfruit (durian), we named it Sara Samuel, 45 years old, female. the results came back unconclusive. When we took the samples from a Pawpaw, we named it

Elizabeth Ane, 26 years, female, the results from the Pawpaw came back positive, that it has corona. That means the liquid from the pawpaw is positive.” We took samples from (a bird type) called Kware, the results came back positive. We took samples from a rabbit, the results came back undeterminent. We took samples from a goat and the results came back positive. We took samples from a sheep and it came back negative and so on and so on

This is where Magufuli made his point:

So now when you see this, you have taken the samples and say they are humans and the results come back positive that they have corona, that means all the pawpaws should be in isolation also and when you take goat samples and they are also positive, that means all the goats that we have here by assumption or maybe the goat with the sample which was taken should also should also be in isolation. and when you take jackfruit (durian) and it’s also positive that liquid from the jackfruit (durian) which we named it Elizabeth, meaning Elizabeth the Jackfruit (Durian) that means all the Jackfruits (Durian) should be in isolation also so when you notice something like this, you must know there is a dirty game played in these tests

Magufuli also said that the people who work in the laboratories are most likely bought and paid for by special interests:

That there unbelievable things happening in this country, either the laboratory workers in there are bought by people with money, either they are not well educated which isn’t true because this laboratory is used for other diseases, either the samples which are brought in because even the reagents are imported, because even the swambs are also imported, so it’s a must that something is actually going on

Magufuli earned instant criticism from US and European media networks on his leadership with allegations of corruption and human rights abuses considering the imprisonment of journalists, students and politicians who criticized his government. Whether corruption in the Tanzanian government is true or not, many countries in Africa are corrupt with dictatorships. There was also regime change operations backed by Western powers including the US when they gave the CIA the green light to set up the assassination of Zaire’s President Patrice Lamumba in 1961 and in 1966, the CIA overthrew Ghana’s first president under its new independence, Kwame Nkrumah, a pan-Africanist and an anti-imperialist who authored a book titled ‘Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism’. We must also take into account the centuries old European colonialism since the Portuguese built its trading posts in the late 15th century, followed up by US interventions in Africa during the Cold War leading up to the United States Africa Command (AFRICOM) which was created under the George W. Bush regime in 2007.  The US military and intelligence apparatus currently have numerous military bases all over Africa in efforts to stop Chinese and Russian influence and to control the natural resources which has basically put the African continent at a disadvantage in comparison to the rest of the world.  In this case, Magufuli has actually stood up to the powers that be and took a stand for his people.

Western Imperialism Did Not End: Population Control, Birth Control to Experimenting with Dangerous Vaccines

In 2018, liberal media network, CNN headlined with ‘Don’t Use Birth Control, ‘Tanzania’s President Tells Women In The Country’ said that “Tanzania’s President John Magufuli has told women in the East African nation to stop taking birth control pills because the country needs more people, according to local media reports.” Magufuli was quoted in a local newspaper called The Citizen in a public rally saying that “those going for family planning are lazy … they are afraid they will not be able to feed their children. They do not want to work hard to feed a large family and that is why they opt for birth controls and end up with one or two children only.” According to CNN, “he was quoted in a local newspaper, The Citizen, as saying that those advocating for birth control were foreign and had sinister motives.” Which by all means is true.

Magufuli’s understands how the depopulation agenda works. CNN mentions Jacqueline Mahon the representative for Tanzania for the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) who was present at the time at least according to The Citizen quoted Magufuli saying that “I have traveled to Europe and I have seen the effects of birth control. In some countries they are now struggling with declining population. They have no labor force.” Then of course, in an old propaganda tactic which CNN loves to use, they criticized the President on other various issues including his stance on how women lawmakers should dress:

In another development, the speaker of the Tanzanian parliament banned female lawmakers from wearing fake nails and eyelashes in parliament.  “With the powers vested in me by the Constitution of the United Republic of Tanzania, I now ban all MPs with false eyelashes and false finger nails from stepping into Parliament,” Job Ndugai said, a day after Magufuli’s comments.  The new rules also ban women MPs from wearing short dresses and jeans. Female visitors to parliament are also expected to adhere to the dress code

In September 2018, the World Economic Forum (WEF) website headlined with ‘Bill Gates has a warning about population growth’ it began with “rapid population growth in some of Africa’s poorest countries could put at risk future progress towards reducing global poverty and improving health, according to a report by the philanthropic foundation of Bill Gates.” The site quoted what Gates had told reporters  “population growth in Africa is a challenge.” WEF article mentioned what the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation’s own report had discovered in their research and it “found that poverty in Africa is increasingly concentrated in a few countries, which also have among the fastest-growing populations in the world.” The report claimed that “by 2050, it projected, more than 40 percent of world’s extremely poor people will live in just two countries: Democratic Republic of the Congo and Nigeria.” Gates was asked about growing populations and an increase of poverty in Africa and he said that access to birth control combined with investments in health and education for the younger generation was necessary. Gates said that “the biggest things are the modern tools of contraception” and “If you have those things available then people have more control over being able to space their children.”

Forbes magazine recently published ‘Bill And Melinda Gates Have Sharp Words For U.S.’ Lack Of Leadership Role In Fighting Pandemic’ on a virtual Forbes philanthropy summit with the genocidal power couple, Melinda Gates spoke on who should get the vaccines first, and they are black and the indigenous people:

There are 60 million healthcare workers [around the world]. They deserve to get the vaccine first, they’re the ones dealing with this on the front lines, trying to keep us all safe. And then you have to start to tier from there, based on the countries and the populations. Here in the United States, it’s going to be Black people who really should get it first and many indigenous people, as well as people with underlying symptoms, and then elderly people 

In other words, black and the indigenous people will be guinea pigs once again. Forbes also reported that “The couple, whose Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has committed more than $350 million to fight the coronavirus, plans to utilize two nonprofits—The Global Fund To Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance—to help equitably distribute therapeutics and vaccines to developing countries.”  There is good news in regards to Africa as Fox news reported about the Covid-19 vaccine trials in South Africa ‘Protest versus Africa’s 1st COVID-19 vaccine test shows fear’ said that “Protesters against Africa’s first COVID-19 vaccine trial burned their face masks Wednesday as experts note a worrying level of resistance and misinformation around testing on the continent” and that the “Anti-vaccine sentiment in Africa is “the worst I’ve ever seen,” the CEO of the GAVI vaccine alliance, Seth Berkley, told an African Union vaccine conference last week.” The Fox news report explains why the African people is concerned:

But the small band of demonstrators who gathered Wednesday at the University of the Witwatersrand, where the trial is based, reflect long-running fears among some in Africa over testing drugs on people who don’t understand the risks.

“The people chosen as volunteers for the vaccination, they look as if they’re from poor backgrounds, not qualified enough to understand” protest organizer Phapano Phasha told The Associated Press ahead of the event. “We believe they are manipulating the vulnerable”

The report also mentioned the controversial French doctor, Jean-Paul Mira, head of intensive care at Cochin hospital in Paris said “If I can be provocative, shouldn’t we be doing this study in Africa, where there are no masks, no treatments, no resuscitation?” comparing the corona virus to previous AIDS studies: “In prostitutes, we try things because we know that they are highly exposed and that they do not protect themselves.” The imperial mentality by the west to control Africa’s population growth and to test Africans with vaccines has been proven time and time again to be dangerous and problematic for the African people.  Tanzania’s president John Magufuli has helped expose Western intentions in Africa especially when it comes to the Covid-19 testing kits giving false positive results.  The mainstream media quickly criticizes those who do not follow Western instituted depopulation programs from the US and Europe such as Magufuli who actually did something right in the face of Covid-19 hysteria. Magufuli is now the subject of Western media criticism and mockery not because he mentioned God, it’s because he is not following the program, it’s pretty obvious at this point.

Remdesivir for Covid-19: $1.6 Billion for a “Modestly Beneficial” Drug?

Posted on by
Reply

By Elizabeth Woodworth

Source: Global Research

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has recently “bought” all of Gilead Science’s Remdesivir for $1.6 billion. “500,000 doses at $3,200 per patient – to be available to American hospitals but not for other countries”[6] 

That’s $1.6 billion tax dollars for a virtually untested drug showing only marginal efficacy in the hospital setting.

How could such a thing happen?

Introduction

If you believe an urgent call from the Yale School of Public Health that was recently published in the American Journal of Epidemiology— the top epidemiology journal in America — hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) + azithromycin is the quickest and most effective way to halt the Covid-19 pandemic.[1]

According to this Yale statement, hydroxychloroquine – a cheap, natural anti-malarial tree-bark known as quinine for 400 years – is highly effective during Phase 1 of Covid-19, while the virus is loading into the body.

As the first line of defense, it should be immediately, freely, and widely available to symptomatic high-risk patients – through doctors’ offices, outpatient clinics, and hospitals across the land.

Indeed, under the directorship of Dr. Anthony Fauci, a National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) a clinical trial had been launched on May 14 to look into it.[2]

The HCQ + azithromycin protocol is being used successfully by France’s top, award-winning microbiologist, Dr. Didier Raoult.  He is director of the Infectious and Tropical Emergent Diseases Research Unit in Marseille (Institut Hospitalo-Universitaire) (IHU), with 200 staff.  Raoult, now almost a celebrity in France, has recently published his protocol and results, showing an overall 1.1% case fatality rate.[3]

The same protocol has also been highly successful in China, India, Senegal, and Brazil.[4]

So why suddenly is the U.S. government and the media ignoring recommendations from these top specialists,[5] and waiting, instead, until people get very sick and hospitalized to treat them with the relatively untested drug, Remdesivir, which is administered intravenously?

Why has the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services just bought up all the Remdesivir it could order – 500,000 doses at $3,200 per patient – to be available to American hospitals but not for other countries?[6]

To put Remdesivir’s cost in perspective, the CDC reports that the flu vaccine costs from $12-$18 a dose.[7]

The government, in order to justify its mind-boggling price, would need to show exceptional efficacy in saving lives. Efficacy, that is, once the disease has been allowed, through failure to use the HCQ + azithromycinearly preventive approach, to advance to Phase 2 (the dangerous inflammatory period) and Phase 3 (ICU ventilator intubation, often leading to death).[8]

What do studies say about the efficacy of remdesivir?

There are three main studies that have examined remdesivir as a treatment for Covid-19:

  1. The first, a study of seriously ill patients, was originally reported in the New England Journal of Medicine on April 10, 2020. Treated with “compassionate-use” remdesivir, clinical improvement was observed in 36 of 53 patients (68%).

The article was co-authored by 56 people, some of whom were on the staff of remdesivir’s producer, Gilead Sciences.[9] The study was funded by Gilead, and writing assistance was provided by David McNeel, also of Gilead.[10]

The following day, April 11, the Science Media Centre published expert reactions to the compassionate study from five British university professors. These assessments were not encouraging: “the research doesn’t prove anything at this point;” “the data is almost uninterpretable;” the research should be treated “with extreme caution.”[11]

  1. A Wuhan, China randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial of 237 patients was accidentally leaked by the World Health Organization and published in The Lancet. It showed no statistically significant clinical benefits from remdesivir:

“The antiviral medicine remdesivir from Gilead Sciences failed to speed the improvement of patients with Covid-19 or prevent them from dying, according to results from a long-awaited clinical trial conducted in China.” [12]

This Lancet study also found that some 14% of patients in the treatment group died after 28 days, compared to 13% in the group that did not receive the treatment.

And it further reported that “remdesivir was stopped early because of adverse events in 18 (12%) patients versus four (5%) patients who stopped placebo early.”[13]

  1. The preliminary results of a NIAID remdesivir trial of 1063 patients showed a “modest” benefit in a controlled clinical trial:

“The infected people who received remdesivir, an experimental drug made by Gilead Sciences that cripples an enzyme several viruses use to copy their RNA, recovered in an average of 11 days versus 15 in patients who received a placebo. ‘Although a 31% improvement doesn’t seem like a knockout, 100% [success], it is a very important proof of concept,’ said Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).”[14]

Health Policy Watch reported that “the death rate was 8% in the group that received remdesivir compared to 11.6% in the control group, although this result was not statistically significant.” Dr. Fauci told reporters that “what [this trial] has proven is that a drug can block the virus.”[15]

The excerpt below from a June 24 article in the British Medical Journal assesses the problems in the foregoing studies. (One of the four co-authors, Fiona Godlee, is the editor-in-chief of the BMJ):

“A serious imbalance in covid-19 research strongly favours the study of drug treatments over non-drug interventions, with many studies too small or too weak to produce reliable results.  Equally concerning is the release of partial or preliminary findings before peer review—often through commercial press releases—that is distorting public perceptions, ongoing evaluations efforts, and political responses to the pandemic.

Remdesivir is a key example. The antiviral drug, made by US company Gilead, was unapproved at the start of the pandemic, but in early April the New England Journal of Medicine published a small descriptive study of a compassionate use scheme for patients with covid-19. Gilead funded the study, a third of the authors were Gilead employees, and Gilead’s press release reported “clinical improvement in 68% of patients in this limited dataset.”  Despite being a non-randomised, uncontrolled, company funded study of just 53 patients, media headlines described “hopeful” signs and reported “two thirds” of patients showing improvement.[16]

Two weeks later, the Lancet published a randomised placebo controlled trial of remdesivir from China, finding no statistically significant clinical benefit in the primary outcome of time to clinical improvement. Twelve per cent of participants taking remdesivir stopped treatment early because of adverse events, compared with 5% taking placebo. The trial was stopped before meeting recruitment targets.”[17]

To summarize, the only study demonstrating even marginal efficacy for remdesivir shows it to reduce hospital recovery times 31%, from 15 days to 11 days.

What is the justification for spending $3,200 tax dollars per Covid-19 patient to save four days in hospital, unless it is to shorten hospital stays, thereby saving the average U.S. bed cost of approximately $2000 per day, while delaying hospital saturation that could leave some people untreated to die?

Leaving people untreated to die could cause civil unrest, which may be the covert political reason for spending the $1.6 billion.

None of the studies mention side effects of the drug. In the China study, kidney injury led to discontinuation for one patient, and in its use for ebola, liver risks were identified.[18]

How much does it cost to produce remdesivir?

The Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER) is a non-profit organization seeking to improve healthcare value through clinical and cost-effective analyses.[19]

In a May 1, 2020 study, the ICER calculated that the cost of producing the remdesivir “final finished product,” including the pharmaceutical ingredients, formulation, packaging, and a small profit margin, was $9.32 US for a 10-day course of treatment.  They rounded this up to $10.[20]

Dr. Fauci’s NIAID Clinical Trial Evaluating Hydroxychloroquine and Azithromycin Closes Early

On June 20, 2020, nine days before the Department of Health and Human Services announced its $1.6 billion purchase of remdesivir on June 29, its NIAID branch closed a clinical trial that had been launched May 14 to investigate whether the inexpensive combination, hydroxychloroquine plus azithromycin, might be an effective treatment when given early in the course of the disease.[21]

The Department of Health and Human Services knew that hydroxychloroquine (aka chloroquine) was effective against coronavirus because chloroquine was tested against the SARS-1 virus during the outbreak in 2002. This work was written up in 2005, under the auspices of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, which reports to the Department of Human Health and Services.[22]

Truth, as the saying goes, is stranger than fiction.

Who was responsible for this debacle?

Dr. Fauci has served in the National Institutes of Health under six presidents.

Were these bizarre decisions carried out under his authority? Or were they forced upon him from higher up?  Or has he become a victim of regulatory capture[23] by the drug industry?

Whatever the answer, this unprecedented fleecing of the American public should have been shouted from the rooftops, had there been a functioning US media.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Notes

[1] Harvey A. Risch, “Early Outpatient Treatment of Symptomatic, High-Risk Covid-19 Patients that Should be Ramped-Up Immediately as Key to the Pandemic Crisis,” Amer. J. Epid, 27 May 2020 (https://academic.oup.com/aje/advance-article/doi/10.1093/aje/kwaa093/5847586). Risch is Professor at the Yale Schools of both Medicine and Public Health.

[2] National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, “NIH Begins Clinical Trial of Hydroxychloroquine and Azithromycin to Treat COVID-19,” 14 May 2020 (https://www.niaid.nih.gov/news-events/nih-begins-clinical-trial-hydroxychloroquine-and-azithromycin-treat-covid-19).

[3] Jean-Christophe Lagier, et al, “Outcomes of 3,737 COVID-19 patients treated with hydroxychloroquine/azithromycin and other regimens in Marseille, France: A retrospective analysis,” Travel Medicine and Infectious Disease, 25 June 2020 (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1477893920302817). Rault has 2,300 indexed medical journals in print.

[4] The group “COVEXIT.com – News About Hydroxychloroquine & Other COVID-19 Treatments,” was founded March 29, 2020 by Jean-Pierre Kiekens. It keeps daily track of successful Covid treatments worldwide (https://www.facebook.com/groups/covexit)

[5] Elizabeth Woodworth, “The Media Sabotage of Hydroxychloroquine Use for COVID-19: Doctors Worldwide Protest the Disaster,” Global Research, 30 June 2020 (https://www.globalresearch.ca/media-sabotage-hydroxychloroquine-covid-19-doctors-worldwide-protest-disaster/5717382).

[6] US Department of Health and Human Services, “Trump Administration Secures New Supplies of Remdesivir for the United States,” June 29, 2010 (https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2020/06/29/trump-administration-secures-new-supplies-remdesivir-united-states.html).

[7] Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Vaccines for Children Program, “CDC Vaccine Price List,” updated 1 July 2020 (https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/programs/vfc/awardees/vaccine-management/price-list/index.html#adflu).

[8] Dr. Raoult identified the three stages of Covid-19 while treating 3,737 patients with HCQ+azithromycin at his own clinic: “At the first viral stage, one must give medicines against the virus, in the second inflammatory phase, one needs to give medications against that [inflammatory] reaction, and then in the third phase, it’s work to be done in intensive care units.” Summarized from Didier Raoult, at: “The Marx Brothers are Doing Science: the Example of RECOVERY,” 9 June 2020 (http://covexit.com/professor-raoult-compares-the-oxford-recovery-trial-academics-to-the-marx-brothers/).

[9] Jonathan Grein, and 55 other authors, “Compassionate Use of Remdesivir for Patients with Severe Covid-19,” New England Journal of Medicine, 11 June 2020 (https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2007016), “Editor’s Note: This article was published on April 10, 2020, at NEJM.org.”

[10] Jason D. Goldman, et al., “Remdesivir for 5 or 10 days in Patients with Severe Covid,” New England Journal of Medicine, no date in header (https://www.nejm.org/doi/pdf/10.1056/NEJMoa2015301?articleTools=true). Sidebar:“This article was published on May 27, 2020, at NEJM.org.”

[11] Prof. Duncan Richards et al., “Expert reaction to a study about compassionate use of remdesivir for patients with severe COVID-19,” Science Media Centre, 11 April 2020 (https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-reaction-to-a-study-about-compassionate-use-of-remdesivir-for-patients-with-severe-covid-19/).

[12] Ed Silverman, et al, “New data on Gilead’s remdesivir, released by accident, show no benefit for coronavirus patients. Company still sees reason for hope,” StatNews, 23 April 2020 (https://www.statnews.com/2020/04/23/data-on-gileads-remdesivir-released-by-accident-show-no-benefit-for-coronavirus-patients/).

[13] Yeming Wang, et al., “Remdesivir in adults with severe COVID-19: a randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled, multicentre trial,” The Lancet, 16 May 2020 (original online publication 29 April 2020) (https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)31022-9/fulltext).

[14] Jon Cohen, “Large trial yields strongest evidence yet that antiviral drug can help COVID-19 patients,” Science, 29 April 2020 (https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/04/large-trial-yields-strongest-evidence-yet-antiviral-drug-can-help-covid-19-patients).

[15] Grace Ren, “Conflicting Remdesivir Trial Results Released; Experts Urge More Research,” Health Policy Watch, 29 April 2020 (https://healthpolicy-watch.news/first-remdesivir-rct-shows-no-significant-clinical-benefit-for-severe-covid-19-patients-but-experts-urge-for-more-research/).

[16] Christopher Rowland, “Gilead’s experimental drug remdesivir shows ‘hopeful’ signs in small group of coronavirus patients,” Washington Post, 10 April 2020 (https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/04/10/gileads-experimental-drug-remdesivir-shows-hopeful-signs-small-group-coronavirus-patients/).

[17] Ray Moynihan et al.,“Commercial influence and covid-19,” BMJ2020;369:m2456 (Published 24 June 2020) (https://www.bmj.com/content/369/bmj.m2456).

[18] Crystal Phend, “Remdesivir Safety Forecast: Watch the Liver, Kidneys,” Medpage Today, 19 May 2020 (https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/covid19/86582).

[19] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_for_Clinical_and_Economic_Review

[20] Melanie D. Whittington and Jonathan B. Campbell, “Alternative Pricing Models for Remdesivir and Other Potential Treatments for COVID-19,” Institute for Clinical and Economic Review, 1 May 2020 (https://icer-review.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/ICER-COVID_Initial_Abstract_05012020-3.pdf).

[21] National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, “BULLETIN—NIH Clinical Trial Evaluating Hydroxychloroquine and Azithromycin for COVID-19 Closes Early,” 20 June 2020 (https://www.niaid.nih.gov/news-events/bulletin-nih-clinical-trial-evaluating-hydroxychloroquine-and-azithromycin-covid-19).

[22] Martin J. Vincent et al., “Chloroquine is a potent inhibitor of SARS coronavirus infection and spread,” Journal of Virology, 22 August 2005 (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1232869/).

[23] “Regulatory capture is a theory that regulatory agencies may be dominated by the interests they regulate and not by the public interest.” In: Will Kenton, “Regulatory Capture,” Investopedia, 23 October 2019 (https://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/regulatory-capture.asp).

In An Insane World, Madness Looks Moderate And Sanity Looks Radical

Posted on by
Reply

By Caitlin Johnstone

Source: CaitlinJohnstone.com

There are no moderate, mainstream centrists in the US-centralized empire. They do not exist.

It’s not that moderate, mainstream centrism is an inherently impossible position. In a healthy world, that’s exactly what the predominant worldview would be. But we do not live in a healthy world.

There are no moderate, mainstream centrists anywhere in the tight alliance of nations which function as a single empire on foreign policy, because that functional empire is built upon murder, terrorism, exploitation, oppression, ecocide and the stockpiling of armageddon weapons.

People who support the status quo of this empire are called “moderates”, but, just like the so-called “moderate rebels” of Syria, they are in fact violent extremists.

This is the reality of living in a world that is profoundly psychologically unhealthy. If you make a career out of facilitating wars which cause explosives to be dropped from the sky on top of innocent human beings causing their bodies to be ripped to shreds and buried in rubble, then you are treated as an exemplar of ideal leadership and rewarded with prestigious positions in politics, punditry, book publishing and think tankery. If you oppose those same wars, you are marginalized and smeared as at best an extremist whack job and at worst a literal traitor conducting psyops for a foreign government.

Because the plutocratic class owns the political class which advances depraved plutocratic agendas and the media class which normalizes and justifies those agendas, a mainstream consensus has been forcibly manufactured that maintaining the oppressive, exploitative, omnicidal, ecocidal status quo is a good and sane thing to do. Voices which point out that this is bat shit crazy are marginalized and ignored when possible and smeared and demonized when necessary.

The ability of our plutocratic rulers and their lackeys to do this is the only reason why defenders of the status quo get to call themselves “centrists” and “moderates”. It’s not because their position is middle-of-the-road in any way whatsoever, it’s because they stand in alignment with the consensus that has been deliberately artificially manufactured and shoved into the mainstream by sheer force of narrative control.

This consensus manufacturing is then carried home by a glitch in human cognition known as status quo bias, which causes us to tend toward holding to the familiar as a default preference and perceive the risk of losing what we have as far less favorable than the reward gaining something better. Psychology Today explains:

Research from Kahneman and Tversky suggests that losses are twice as psychologically harmful as gains are beneficial. In other words, individuals feel twice as much psychological pain from losing $100 as pleasure from gaining $100. One interpretation is that in order for an individual to change course from their current state of affairs is that the alternative must be perceived as twice as beneficial. This highlights the challenges we may face when considering a change to our usual way of doing things.

When military members are considering their choices as their contract comes to an end, many consider re-enlisting simply because they are unaware of the many opportunities that exist for them. Even when we understand our current path is no longer beneficial or no longer makes us happy, we must still overcome the natural urge to stay on the path unless the alternative is sufficiently attractive. In order for us to readily pursue an alternate path, we must believe that the alternative is clearly superior to the current state of affairs.

The status quo effect is pervasive in both inconsequential and major decisions. Oftentimes we are held back by what we believe to be the safe option, simply because it is the default. Bearing in mind our natural propensity for the status quo will enable us to recognize the allure of inertia and more effectively overcome it.

Status quo bias is further exacerbated in our current predicament by the fact that so many people are now so close to the brink of financial ruin and so terrified of what can happen to them if things change in a sudden and unpredictable way. The result of this is that now you’ve got the majority of people in the most dominant country on earth supporting the “slow incremental change” philosophy of so-called centrism, which in practice has always ended up meaning no change whatsoever. Meanwhile our ecosystem is dying and the US is escalating nuclear tensions with Russia and China and everyone’s getting more and more crazy and miserable under the oppressive and exploitative status quo.

Did you ever climb a tree when you were a kid and get stuck because you were afraid to climb down? It’s a common experience for a lot of us. You get lost in the joy of the climb and so pleased with yourself in how well you’re doing, then suddenly you notice that the branches are getting a lot thinner and the wind is starting to sway you back and forth, and suddenly you look down and get terrified.

Maybe you called out for your mother and she came out and told you to climb down, calling up “Well you can’t stay up there!” And you knew she was right, but in that moment the idea of looking down and letting go of the thin branches you were clinging to felt so much scarier than just staying put in your precarious and unsustainable position.

That’s exactly where we’re at right now with status quo bias in our current predicament. People know things need to change, but they’re in such a precarious position that the risk of change feels far too scary to take the leap and force a deviation from our trajectory toward disaster.

But that is our only choice if we are to survive as a species. We know we were able to climb down from whatever trees we got stuck in as kids, and we know that our mother was as right then as that small inner voice inside us is now: we can’t stay here. We’ve got to wake up from the status quo narrative management and find a way to get down from our precarious and unsustainable position to the stable ground of sanity.

 

Is Data Our New False Religion?

Posted on by
1

By Charles Hugh Smith

Source: Of Two Minds

Here’s how every modern con starts: let’s look at the data. Every modern con starts with an earnest appeal to look at the data because the con artist has assembled the data to grease the slides of the con.

We have been indoctrinated into a new and false religion, the faith of data. We’ve been relentlessly indoctrinated with the quasi-religious belief that “data doesn’t lie,” when the reality is that data consistently misleads us because that is the intent.

Nobody in the False Religion of Data ever looks at what we don’t measure because that would uncover disruptive truths. My latest book Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World looks at everything consequential that we don’t measure, and since we don’t measure it, we assume it doesn’t exist. That’s the end-game of the False Religion of Data: what’s actually important isn’t measured and therefore it doesn’t exist, while what is measured is artfully packaged to support a narrative that enriches those behind the screen of “objective data-based science.”

The data-based con can be constructed in any number of ways. A few data points can be cleverly extrapolated to “prove” some self-serving claim, a bit of data can be conjured into a model that just so happens to support the most profitable policy option, inconvenient data points can be covertly deleted via “filtering out the outliers,” statistical trickery can be invoked (with a wave of this magic wand…) to declare semi-random data “statistically significant,” and so on, in an almost endless stream of tricks.

Exhibit #1: the official rate of inflation. Here is the data con elevated to artistry. As I explained in Burrito Index Update: Burrito Cost Triples, Official Inflation Up 43% from 2001 (May 31, 2018), apples-to-apples unmanipulated data shows inflation is dramatically reducing the purchasing power of wages, a dynamic that is unevenly distributed: Inflation Isn’t Evenly Distributed: The Protected Are Fine, the Unprotected Are Impoverished Debt-Serfs (May 25, 2017).

While the official statistics on inflation claim an annual rate of 2.5%, unmanipulated estimates (the Chapwood Index for example) find inflation is north of 10% in major U.S. urban areas.

The official data soothsayers’ bag of tricks include completely bogus, made-up “hedonic adjustments” which magically lower the price of real-world goods and services. Autos are supposedly “cheaper” now because they’re so much safer and reliable. Perhaps, but can we be honest and admit they cost a lot more than they did a generation ago?

No, Autos Are Not “Cheaper Now” (June 28, 2019)

The poor fools giving hundreds of millions of dollars to the con artists of Big Data Marketing apparently don’t understand the flimsiness of the “science.” As Mark, Jesse and I discuss in our latest Salon, Algorithmic Guerrilla Warfare, a few purposefully misleading data points turn the entire Big Data Marketing “science” into the familar “garbage in, garbage out.”

And so here we are in the midst of a pandemic, and the battles over “what the data tells us” sound more like religious wars than science. Everybody’s in such a hurry to conjure up a profitable con or make grandiose claims for their narrative that what we aren’t measuring is ignored.

Here’s the raw data I’d like to see collected:

1. What percentage of people under the age of 50 who do not have chronic health conditions who test positive end up with severe symptoms that incapacitate them for weeks or months?

2. What percentage of these younger, healthier people who exhibit severe symptoms have organ damage that doesn’t heal in a few months?

3. What percentage of people who had antibodies for the virus end up coming down with the illness again a few months later?

Collecting this data is non-trivial, and so it may never be collected–partly because the results might not support the approved narratives: whatever data we don’t collect doesn’t exist and can’t disrupt our models, profit centers, narratives, policies, etc.

In the false religion of data, heresy is asking for data that is not being collected because it might reveal unpalatably unprofitable realities. Much safer to burn heretics at the stake than let them question the cons.

Meet BlackRock, the New Great Vampire Squid

Posted on by
Reply

By Ellen Brown

Source: Web of Debt

BlackRock is a global financial giant with customers in 100 countries and its tentacles in major asset classes all over the world; and it now manages the spigots to trillions of bailout dollars from the Federal Reserve. The fate of a large portion of the country’s corporations has been put in the hands of a megalithic private entity with the private capitalist mandate to make as much money as possible for its owners and investors; and that is what it has proceeded to do.

To most people, if they are familiar with it at all, BlackRock is an asset manager that helps pension funds and retirees manage their savings through “passive” investments that track the stock market. But working behind the scenes, it is much more than that. BlackRock has been called “the most powerful institution in the financial system,” “the most powerful company in the world” and the “secret power.” It is the world’s largest asset manager and “shadow bank,” larger than the world’s largest bank (which is in China), with over $7 trillion in assets under direct management  and another $20 trillion managed through its Aladdin risk-monitoring software. BlackRock has also been called “the fourth branch of government” and “almost a shadow government”, but no part of it actually belongs to the government. Despite its size and global power, BlackRock is not even regulated as a “Systemically Important Financial Institution” under the Dodd-Frank Act, thanks to pressure from its CEO Larry Fink, who has long had “cozy” relationships with government officials.

BlackRock’s strategic importance and political weight were evident when four BlackRock executives, led by former Swiss National Bank head Philipp Hildebrand, presented a proposal at the annual meeting of central bankers in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, in August 2019 for an economic reset that was actually put into effect in March 2020. Acknowledging that central bankers were running out of ammunition for controlling the money supply and the economy, the BlackRock group argued that it was time for the central bank to abandon its long-vaunted independence and join monetary policy (the usual province of the central bank) with fiscal policy (the usual province of the legislature). They proposed that the central bank maintain a “Standing Emergency Fiscal Facility” that would be activated when interest rate manipulation was no longer working to avoid deflation. The Facility would be deployed by an “independent expert” appointed by the central bank.

The COVID-19 crisis presented the perfect opportunity to execute this proposal in the US, with BlackRock itself appointed to administer it. In March 2020, it was awarded a no-bid contract under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act) to deploy a $454 billion slush fund established by the Treasury in partnership with the Federal Reserve. This fund in turn could be leveraged to provide over $4 trillion in Federal Reserve credit. While the public was distracted with protests, riots and lockdowns, BlackRock suddenly emerged from the shadows to become the “fourth branch of government,” managing the controls to the central bank’s print-on-demand fiat money. How did that happen and what are the implications?

Rising from the Shadows

BlackRock was founded in 1988 in partnership with the Blackstone Group, a multinational private equity management firm that would become notorious after the 2008-09 banking crisis for snatching up foreclosed homes at firesale prices and renting them at inflated prices. BlackRock first grew its balance sheet in the 1990s and 2000s by promoting the mortgage-backed securities (MBS) that brought down the economy in 2008. Knowing the MBS business from the inside, it was then put in charge of the Federal Reserve’s “Maiden Lane” facilities. Called “special purpose vehicles,” these were used to buy “toxic” assets (largely unmarketable MBS) from Bear Stearns and American Insurance Group (AIG), something the Fed was not legally allowed to do itself.

BlackRock really made its fortunes, however, in “exchange traded funds” (ETFs). It gained trillions in investable assets after it acquired the iShares series of ETFs in a takeover of Barclays Global Investors in 2009. By 2020, the wildly successful iShares series included over 800 funds and $1.9 trillion in assets under management.

Exchange traded funds are bought and sold like shares but operate as index-tracking funds, passively following specific indices such as the S&P 500, the benchmark index of America’s largest corporations and the index in which most people invest. Today the fast-growing ETF sector controls nearly half of all investments in US stocks, and it is highly concentrated. The sector is dominated by just three giant American asset managers – BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street, the “Big Three” – with BlackRock the clear global leader. By 2017, the Big Three together had become the largest shareholder in almost 90% of S&P 500 firms, including Apple, Microsoft, ExxonMobil, General Electric and Coca-Cola. BlackRock also owns major interests in nearly every mega-bank and in major media.

In March 2020, based on its expertise with the Maiden Lane facilities and its sophisticated Aladdin risk-monitoring software, BlackRock got the job of dispensing Federal Reserve funds through eleven “special purpose vehicles” authorized under the CARES Act. Like the Maiden Lane facilities, these vehicles were designed to allow the Fed, which is legally limited to purchasing safe federally-guaranteed assets, to finance the purchase of riskier assets in the market.

Blackrock Bails Itself Out

The national lockdown left states, cities and local businesses in desperate need of federal government aid. But according to David Dayen in The American Prospect, as of May 30 (the Fed’s last monthly report), the only purchases made under the Fed’s new BlackRock-administered SPVs were ETFs, mainly owned by BlackRock itself. Between May 14 and May 20, about $1.58 billion in ETFs were bought through the Secondary Market Corporate Credit Facility (SMCCF), of which $746 million or about 47% came from BlackRock ETFs. The Fed continued to buy more ETFs after May 20, and investors piled in behind, resulting in huge inflows into BlackRock’s corporate bond ETFs.

In fact, these ETFs needed a bailout; and BlackRock used its very favorable position with the government to get one. The complicated mechanisms and risks underlying ETFs are explained in an April 3 article by business law professor Ryan Clements, who begins his post:

Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs) are at the heart of the COVID-19 financial crisis. Over forty percent of the trading volume during the mid-March selloff was in ETFs ….

The ETFs were trading well below the value of their underlying bonds, which were dropping like a rock. Some ETFs were failing altogether. The problem was something critics had long warned of: while ETFs are very liquid, trading on demand like stocks, the assets that make up their portfolios are not. When the market drops and investors flee, the ETFs can have trouble coming up with the funds to settle up without trading at a deep discount; and that is what was happening in March.

According to a May 3 article in The National, “The sector was ultimately saved by the US Federal Reserve’s pledge on March 23 to buy investment-grade credit and certain ETFs. This provided the liquidity needed to rescue bonds that had been floundering in a market with no buyers.”

Prof. Clements states that if the Fed had not stepped in, “a ‘doom loop’ could have materialized where continued selling pressure in the ETF market exacerbated a fire-sale in the underlying [bonds], and again vice-versa, in a procyclical pile-on with devastating consequences.” He observes:

There’s an unsettling form of market alchemy that takes place when illiquid, over-the-counter bonds are transformed into instantly liquid ETFs. ETF “liquidity transformation” is now being supported by the government, just like liquidity transformation in mortgage backed securities and shadow banking was supported in 2008.

Working for Whom?

BlackRock got a bailout with no debate in Congress, no “penalty” interest rate of the sort imposed on states and cities borrowing in the Fed’s Municipal Liquidity Facility, no complicated paperwork or waiting in line for scarce Small Business Administration loans, no strings attached. It just quietly bailed itself out.

It might be argued that this bailout was good and necessary, since the market was saved from a disastrous “doom loop,” and so were the pension funds and the savings of millions of investors. Although BlackRock has a controlling interest in all the major corporations in the S&P 500, it professes not to “own” the funds. It just acts as a kind of “custodian” for its investors — or so it claims. But BlackRock and the other Big 3 ETFs vote the corporations’ shares; so from the point of view of management, they are the owners. And as observed in a 2017 article from the University of Amsterdam titled “These Three Firms Own Corporate America,” they vote 90% of the time in favor of management. That means they tend to vote against shareholder initiatives, against labor, and against the public interest. BlackRock is not actually working for us, although we the American people have now become its largest client base.

In a 2018 review titled “Blackrock – The Company That Owns the World”, a multinational research group called Investigate Europe concluded that BlackRock “undermines competition through owning shares in competing companies, blurs boundaries between private capital and government affairs by working closely with regulators, and advocates for privatization of pension schemes in order to channel savings capital into its own funds.”

Daniela Gabor, Professor of Macroeconomics at the University of Western England in Bristol, concluded after following a number of regulatory debates in Brussels that it was no longer the banks that wielded the financial power; it was the asset managers. She said:

We are often told that a manager is there to invest our money for our old age. But it’s much more than that. In my opinion, BlackRock reflects the renunciation of the welfare state. Its rise in power goes hand-in-hand with ongoing structural changes; in finance, but also in the nature of the social contract that unites the citizen and the state.

That these structural changes are planned and deliberate is evident in BlackRock’s August 2019 white paper laying out an economic reset that has now been implemented with BlackRock at the helm.

Public policy is made today in ways that favor the stock market, which is considered the barometer of the economy, although it has little to do with the strength of the real, productive economy. Giant pension and other investment funds largely control the stock market, and the asset managers control the funds. That effectively puts BlackRock, the largest and most influential asset manager, in the driver’s seat in controlling the economy.

As Peter Ewart notes in a May 14 article on BlackRock titled “Foxes in the Henhouse,” today the economic system “is not classical capitalism but rather state monopoly capitalism, where giant enterprises are regularly backstopped with public funds and the boundaries between the state and the financial oligarchy are virtually non-existent.”

If the corporate oligarchs are too big and strategically important to be broken up under the antitrust laws, rather than bailing them out they should be nationalized and put directly into the service of the public. At the very least, BlackRock should be regulated as a too-big-to-fail Systemically Important Financial Institution. Better yet would be to regulate it as a public utility. No private, unelected entity should have the power over the economy that BlackRock has, without a legally enforceable fiduciary duty to wield it in the public interest.

Trust No One

Posted on by
Reply

By Michael Krieger

Source: Liberty Blitzkrieg

The title of today’s post is not meant to be taken literally. I trust plenty of people. I trust friends who’ve demonstrated their trustworthiness over the years. I trust my family. Having people in my life I love and trust makes everything far more meaningful and pleasant. I hope people reading this likewise have a circle of trust they’ve built over the years.

On the other hand, you should never trust anyone or anything that hasn’t given you good reason to do so, and if someone or something gives you good reason not to trust them, you should never forget that. The more power a person or institution has in society, the less trustworthy they tend to be. I don’t say this because it’s fun to be cynical, I say this because my life experience has demonstrated its accuracy.

In the 21st century alone, I’ve been given good reason to distrust all sorts of things around me, including the U.S. government (all governments really), intelligence agencies, politicians, mass media, Wall Street and Silicon Valley, to name a few. These power centers make up “society” as we know it in 2020, which is really just massive concentrations of lawless financial and political power obfuscating rampant criminality behind the cover of various ostensibly venerable institutions. What’s most remarkable is how many people still maintain trust in so many of these provably untrustworthy organizations and industries, which speaks to the power of propaganda as well as the comfort of denial.

That said, the ground is clearly beginning to shift on this front. As more and more people recognize that the system’s designed to work against them, increased numbers will reject conventional wisdom and search for an alternative framework. Unfortunately, this next step can be equally treacherous and it’s important not to jump from the frying pan into the fire.

This is where social media comes into play. It offers an endless array of opinions and analysis that you don’t get from mass media, but it’s also filled with bad actors, professional propagandists and con artists. At this point, everyone knows that social media is the new information battleground, so every character or institution with malicious intent is aggressively playing in this arena and often with boatloads of money. The charlatans at MSNBC will have you believe it’s just the Russians or Chinese, but every government and every single special interest on the planet is now involved. They’re all on social media in one form or another, trying to push you in a specific direction that’s usually not in your best interests.

It took me a while, but I’ve finally recognized how unthoughtful and treacherous social media is whenever some big news event hits. Important arguments quickly lose all nuance and devolve into binary talking points and agendas. People split into teams in a way that feels very much akin to the traditional, and now largely discredited, red/blue political theater. For covid-19, it felt like half of Twitter thought it was an extinction-level event, while the other half was convinced the whole thing was a hoax. In the aftermath of George Floyd, you were either cheering on the civil unrest, or wanted to send in the military. Increasingly, if you aren’t in one of two manufactured camps on any issue you’ll be shouted down and ostracized.  That’s not the kind of discussion I’m here for.

As someone who’s found great value in Twitter over the years, I’ve become far more careful in how I use it and where to direct my attention and energy. It reminds me of Mos Eisley in Star Wars, a wretched hive of scum and villainy, but simultaneously a place you can connect with Han Solo and get a spaceship.

As we move forward, it’s going to feel like the world’s ending, and in some ways it will be. No the world isn’t literally ending, but a specific kind of world is ending, and it’ll be extremely difficult for many people to tell the difference as it’s happening. This will likely lead to many more episodes of mass insanity as professional manipulators take advantage of millions upon millions of disoriented people. Priority number one should be to stand guard at the gate of your mind during this time so as not to become a victim.

The best thing you can do from here on out is use your time and energy as productively as possible. We’re going to need builders, creators and inventors more than ever before, because we’re past the point of putting this thing back together. We’ll need to recreate, reimagine and rebuild, and all of this must spring from a point of consciousness in order to bring forth something that is both better and sustainable. Become more beautiful and resilient as others become ugly and unhinged. Focus on what’s within your capacity to control and always remember to resist the crazy.

The financialization of the end of the world

Posted on by
1

By Kurt Cobb

Source: resilience

For those who are fans of cartoons from The New Yorker magazine and consistent readers of this blog, you might be able to guess my two favorite cartoons. In the first one, a man in a coat and tie stands at a podium and tells his unseen audience the following: “And so, while the end-of-the-world scenario will be rife with unimaginable horrors, we believe that the pre-end period will be filled with unprecedented opportunities for profit.”

In the second, a man in a tattered suit sits cross-legged near a campfire with three children listening to him intently as he says this: “Yes, the planet got destroyed. But for a beautiful moment in time we created a lot of value for shareholders.”

Now, in the you-can’t-make-this-stuff-up category, financial writer Paul Farrell used the caption from the first cartoon in a 2015 piece for MarketWatch entitled: “Your No. 1 end-of-the-world investing strategy.” The subheading is: “How to pick stocks for the near term when long-term trends say collapse is near.” The subhead actually seems like it might be another caption from a New Yorker cartoon (or possibly one from The Onion). Why exactly would you invest in stocks—as opposed to seeds of food crops and sturdy garden implements—”when long-term trends say collapse is near”? But I’ll put that down to bad headline writing.

In Farrell’s defense, he frequently used his column in MarketWatch to warn his readers of the coming collapse of modern civilization if we don’t change our ways. He was obliged to give investment advice, of course, because that’s what the column was for.

Few other investment gurus are as intellectually honest as Farrell. Among prominent investment managers, only Jeremy Grantham comes close to understanding the scope of the challenges we face. Grantham wrote a piece in 2013 called “The Race of Our Lives” that outlines the myriad challenges humans face. He starts with a discussion of the fall of civilizations. (He updated his views in 2018.)

One would think that the coronavirus pandemic would allow for some sober reflection among those in the financial community as the pandemic-induced crash of the economy and the markets has called into question the stability of practically all the arrangements of modern civilization. Instead, the focus is on how stock markets could be back at or near all-times highs at the beginning of what is arguably the next Great Depression.

The New Yorker cartoons linked above appropriately characterize the madness that grips late-stage civilizations as their pillars begin to fall. Instead of attempting to adapt to new realities, every attempt is made to maintain the current fragile system. The trillions of dollars pumped into the world financial system by central banks and governments in the wake of the pandemic have done little except stoke renewed financial bubbles in practically all financial markets (and thereby bailed out the mostly wealthy owners of financial assets).

The disconnect is hard to miss. The latest reading of the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta’s GDPNow indicator, which is frequently updated as new data becomes available, now predicts that U.S. GDP will contract by 45.5 percent in the current quarter. (The number is annualized and seasonally adjusted.)

Even so the NASDAQ Composite Index hit a new all-time high earlier this month just three months after the recent trough reached during the crash. The S&P 500 is now very close to a new all-time high. Neither development makes sense in the middle of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. For comparison, it took more than two years for the NASDAQ Composite from the bottom in 2009 during the Great Financial Crisis to regain its 2007 highs. It took the S&P 500 more than four years.

Of course, the financialization of everything continues. Vaccine makers are in line for government funds. Naturally, it takes money to develop a vaccine. But drug makers aren’t in the business of keeping people healthy. They are in the business of making money. In the United States at least they are helped by the fact that they aren’t liable if their vaccine kills or injuries someone. And, executives in one money-losing pharmaceutical firm cashed in stock right after their company goosed the shares significantly higher with a very preliminary announcement about the company’s coronavirus vaccine research.

When it comes to real estate, it used to be that people bought it for income and as a store of value. Now firms buy real estate mostly with borrowed money and try to make gains mostly through property price appreciation. Often the real estate loans are packaged into securities that are sold and resold as part of the giant Wall Street and worldwide financial casino.

One of the surest signs of the financialization of everything and the growing disconnect of finance from reality is the credit default swap (CDS). The CDS is essentially insurance for loans and bonds. The buyer pays the seller a premium every month. If the instrument insured defaults, the seller provides a predetermined payment to reimburse the CDS buyer. Now here’s the weird thing: An investor doesn’t even have to own the loan or bond to insure it. It’s like me taking out an insurance policy on your home against fire when I have no ownership or interest in the home. In fact, I have every incentive to make sure your house burns down. Do you see any problem with that?

For normal insurance, the buyer must have an insurable interest. Typically, this means the buyer must actually own the thing he or she is insuring. The CDS, on the other hand, is an ideal instrument for those who want to bring on a financial end-of-the-world scenario. The buyers have every reason to want the economy to go down the drain as their payments may be 10 or even 20 times their initial investment.

Many wealthy people fear and even believe an end-of-the-world scenario is possible or probable. Some think they can hold up in luxury bunkers until the dust clears. But what if, when the dust clears, their wealth is gone and the financial world they used to inhabit has vanished.

Perhaps they will sit around campfires telling their grandchildren about the old days when finance was king and the real economy of goods and services was just a place where rubes got their daily bread—while, of course, simultaneously providing an outsized portion to the rich.

Globalists Reveal That The “Great Economic Reset” Is Coming In 2021

Posted on by
1

By Brandon Smith

Source: Alt-Market.com

For those not familiar with the phrase “global economic reset”, it is one that has been used ever increasingly by elitists in the central banking world for several years. I first heard it referenced by Christine Lagarde, the head of the IMF at the time, in 2014. The reset is often mentioned in the same breath as ideas like “the New Multilateralism” or “the Multipolar World Order” or “the New World Order”. All of these phrases mean essentially the same thing.

The reset is promoted as a solution to the ongoing economic crisis which was triggered in 2008. This same financial crash is still with us today, but now, after a decade of central bank money printing and debt creation, the bubble is even bigger than it was before. As always, the central bank “cure” is far worse than the disease, and the renewed crash we face today is far more deadly than what would have happened in 2008 if we had simply taken our medicine and refused to prop up weak parts of the economy artificially.

Many alternative economists often wrongly attribute the Fed’s habit of making things worse to “hubris” or “ignorance”. They think the Fed actually wants to save the financial system or “protect the golden goose”, but this is not reality. The truth is, the Fed is not a bumbling maintenance man, the Fed is a saboteur, a suicide bomber that is willing to destroy even itself as an institution in order to explode the US economy and clear the path for a new globally centralized one world system. Hence, the “Global Reset”.

In 2015 in my article ‘The Global Economic Reset Has Begun’, I stated:

“The global reset is not a “response” to the process of collapse we are trapped in today. No, the global reset as implemented by central banks and the BIS/IMF is the cause of the collapse. The collapse is a tool, a flamethrower burning a great hole in the forest to make way for the foundations of the globalist Ziggurat to be built….economic disaster serves the interests of elitists.”

Now in 2020 we see the globalist plan coming to fruition, with the elites revealing what appears to be their intent to launch their reset in 2021. The World Economic Forum officially announced the Great Reset initiative as part of their Covid Action Platform last week, and a summit is scheduled in January 2021 to discuss their plans more openly with the world and the mainstream media.

The WEF also posted a rather bizarre video on the Reset, which consists of a series of images of the world falling apart (and images of factories releasing harmless carbon emission into the air which I suppose is meant to scare us with notions of global warming). The destruction is then “reset” at the push of a button, with everything reversing back to a pristine human-less world of nature and the words “Join Us”.

The reset, according to discussions by the IMF, is basically the next stage in the formation of a one-world economic system and potential global government. This seems to fall in line with the solutions offered during the Event 201 pandemic simulation; a simulation of a coronavirus pandemic that was held by the Bill And Melinda Gates Foundation and the World Economic Forum only two months before the REAL THING happened at the beginning of 2020. Event 201 suggested that one of the top solutions to a pandemic would be the institution of a centralized global economic body that could handle the financial response to the coronavirus.

Is it not convenient that the events of the real coronavirus pandemic fall exactly in line with the Event 201 simulation, as well as directly in line with the global reset plans of the IMF and the World Economic Forum? As they say, let no crisis go to waste, or, as is the motto of the globalists “Order Out Of Chaos”.

With civil unrest about to become a way of life for many parts of the world including the US, and the pandemic set for a resurgence of infections after the “reopening”, creating a rationale for a second wave of lockdowns probably in July, the economy as we know it is being destroyed. The last vestiges of the system, hanging by a thin thread after the crash of 2008, are now being cut.

The goal is rather obvious – Terrify the population with poverty, internal conflicts and a broken supply chain until they lobby the establishment for help.  Then, offer the “solution” of medical tyranny, immunity passports, martial law, a global economic system based on a cashless digital society in which privacy in trade is erased, and then slowly but surely form a faceless “multilateral” global government which answers to no one and does whatever it pleases.

I remember back in 2014 when Christine Lagarde first began talking about the reset. That same year she also made a very strange speech to the National Press Club in which she started rambling gleefully about numerology and the “magic number 7”. Many within the club laughed, as there was apparently an inside joke that the rest of us were not privy to. Well, I would point out that the World Economic Forum meeting on the global reset in 2021 will be held exactly 7 years after Lagarde gave that speech. Just another interesting coincidence I suppose…

The new world order, the global reset, is a long running scheme to centralize power, but in a way that is meant to be sustained for centuries to come. The elites know that it is not enough to achieve global governance by force alone; such an attempt would only lead to resistance and eternal rebellion. No, what the elites want is for the public to ASK, even beg for global governance. If the public is tricked into demanding it as a way to save them from the horrors of global chaos, then they are far less likely to rebel against it later. Problem – reaction – solution.

The pandemic is not going away anytime soon. Everyone should expect that state governments and the federal government will call for renewed lockdowns. With these new lockdowns, the US economy in particular will be finished. With 40 million people losing their jobs during the last lockdowns, many states only partially reopened, and only 13% to 18% of small businesses receiving bailout loans to survive, the next two months are going to be a devastating wake-up call.

The real solution will be for people to form more self reliant communities free of the mainstream economy. The real solution should be decentralization and independence, not centralization and slavery. The globalists will seek to interfere with any effort to break from the program. That said, they can do very little if millions of people enact localization efforts at the same time. If people aren’t reliant on the system, then they cannot be controlled by the system.

The real test will come with the final collapse of the existing economy. When stagflation spikes even harder than it is right now and prices of necessities double or triple yet again, and joblessness skyrockets even further, how many people will clamor for the globalist solution and how many will build their own systems? How many will be bowing in submission and how many will be ready to fight back. It is a question I still don’t have an answer to even after 14 years of analysis on the issue.

What I suspect is that many people will fight back. Not as many as we might hope for, but enough to defend the cause of liberty. Maybe this is overly optimistic, but I believe the globalists are destined to lose this war in the long run.