Don’t Trust the Government with Your Privacy, Property or Your Freedoms

By John & Nisha Whitehead

Source: The Rutherford Institute

How do you trust a government that continuously sidesteps the Constitution and undermines our rights? You can’t.

When you consider all the ways “we the people” are being bullied, beaten, bamboozled, targeted, tracked, repressed, robbed, impoverished, imprisoned and killed by the government, one can only conclude that you shouldn’t trust the government with your privacy, your property, your life, or your freedoms.

Consider for yourself.

Don’t trust the government with your privacy, digital or otherwise. In the two decades since 9/11, the military-security industrial complex has operated under a permanent state of emergency that, in turn, has given rise to a digital prison that grows more confining and inescapable by the day. Wall-to wall surveillance, monitored by AI software and fed to a growing network of fusion centers, render the twin concepts of privacy and anonymity almost void. By conspiring with corporations, the Department of Homeland Security “fueled a massive influx of money into surveillance and policing in our cities, under a banner of emergency response and counterterrorism.” For instance, all across the country, police are installing Flock Safety license plate readers as part of a public-private partnership program between police and the surveillance industry. These cameras, which upload data in real time to fusion crime centers, signal a turning point in the transition from a police state to a police-driven surveillance state.

Don’t trust the government with your property. In yet another effort to legitimize warrantless searches, police are employing “hit-and-hold” tactics in which police enter a home, carry out an initial sweep of the property, handcuff the occupants, then wait for official search warrants to be secured and applied retroactively. In the meantime, police have managed to bypass the Fourth Amendment. The rationale, to prevent possible destruction of evidence, is the same one used to deadly effect with no-knock raids. If government agents can invade your home, break down your doors, kill your dog, damage your furnishings and terrorize your family, your property is no longer private and secure—it belongs to the government. Hard-working Americans are having their bank accounts, homes, cars electronics and cash seized by police under the assumption that they have allegedly been associated with some criminal scheme.

Don’t trust the government with your finances. The U.S. government—and that includes the current administration—is spending money it doesn’t have on programs it can’t afford, and “we the taxpayers” are being forced to foot the bill for the government’s fiscal insanity. The national debt is $31.3 trillion and growing, and we’re paying more than $300 billion in interest every year on that public debt, yet there seems to be no end in sight when it comes to the government’s fiscal insanity. According to Forbes, Congress has raised, extended or revised the definition of the debt limit 78 times since 1960 in order to allow the government to essentially fund its existence with a credit card.

Don’t trust the government with your health. For all intents and purposes, “we the people” have become lab rats in the government’s secret experiments, which include MKULTRA and the U.S. military’s secret race-based testing of mustard gas on more than 60,000 enlisted men. Indeed, you don’t have to dig very deep or go very back in the nation’s history to uncover numerous cases in which the government deliberately conducted secret experiments on an unsuspecting populace—citizens and noncitizens alike—making healthy people sick by spraying them with chemicals, injecting them with infectious diseases and exposing them to airborne toxins. Unfortunately, the public has become so easily distracted by the political spectacle out of Washington, DC, that they are altogether oblivious to the grisly experiments, barbaric behavior and inhumane conditions that have become synonymous with the U.S. government, which has meted out untold horrors against humans and animals alike.

Don’t trust the government with your life: At a time when growing numbers of unarmed people have been shot and killed for just standing a certain way, or moving a certain way, or holding something—anything—that police could misinterpret to be a gun, or igniting some trigger-centric fear in a police officer’s mind that has nothing to do with an actual threat to their safety, even the most benign encounters with police can have fatal consequences. The number of Americans killed by police continues to grow, with the majority of those killed as a result of police encounters having been suspected of a non-violent offense or no crime at all, or during a traffic violation. According a report by Mapping Police Violence, police killed more people in 2022 than any other year within the past decade. In 98% of those killings, police were not charged with a crime.

Don’t trust the government with your freedoms. For years now, the government has been playing a cat-and-mouse game with the American people, letting us enjoy just enough freedom to think we are free but not enough to actually allow us to live as a free people. Freedom no longer means what it once did. This holds true whether you’re talking about the right to criticize the government in word or deed, the right to be free from government surveillance, the right to not have your person or your property subjected to warrantless searches by government agents, the right to due process, the right to be safe from militarized police invading your home, the right to be innocent until proven guilty and every other right that once reinforced the founders’ belief that this would be “a government of the people, by the people and for the people.” On paper, we may be technically free, but in reality, we are only as free as a government official may allow.

Whatever else it may be—a danger, a menace, a threat—the U.S. government is certainly not looking out for our best interests, nor is it in any way a friend to freedom.

Remember the purpose of a good government is to protect the lives and liberties of its people.

Unfortunately, what we have been saddled with is, in almost every regard, the exact opposite of an institution dedicated to protecting the lives and liberties of its people.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, “we the people” should have learned early on that a government that repeatedly lies, cheats, steals, spies, kills, maims, enslaves, breaks the laws, overreaches its authority, and abuses its power at almost every turn can’t be trusted.

ABOUT JOHN W. WHITEHEAD

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His most recent books are the best-selling Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the award-winning A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, and a debut dystopian fiction novel, The Erik Blair Diaries. Whitehead can be contacted at staff@rutherford.org. Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.

3 QUESTIONS YOU’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO ASK ABOUT LIFE IN A SICK SOCIETY

By Dylan Charles

Source: Waking Times

In a society this controlling, it’s no wonder so many people can’t let go of their grip on false realities, and pressure others to conform to their point of view. In my work as a self-mastery coach I help people see what false realities they’ve made for themselves, and help them let go of their grip on useless beliefs.  ~Dylan Charles

“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” ~J. Krishnamurti

Society is directed by a never-ending mainstream narrative which is always evolving, and always reaching new dramatic peaks in sensationalism and hype. They fill your mind with topics they select, they keep your attention on these topics, and they invite and encourage you to argue amongst each other about these topics. In this way our collective attention is permanently commandeered, preventing us from diving too deeply into matters which have more than a superficial impact on day-today life.

Free-thinking is the ability and willingness to explore of ideas and areas of the mind which are yet undiscovered or are off-limits. It is a vanishing art that is deliberately being stamped out by a control system which demands conformity, acquiescence and obedience of body, mind, and spirit.

For your consideration, here are three questions you’re not supposed to ask about life in our profoundly sick society.

1. Who owns the money supply, and the world’s debt?

Pretty much the entire world is in financial debt, an insidious form of slavery which enables the exploitation of human beings and of all things in nature. It’s maddening when you think about it. The United States alone supposedly owes some $20 trillion, while the world at large owes a shocking $215 trillion?

But to whom, precisely?

Money is just a medium of exchange which facilitates transactions between people. In and of itself it has no intrinsic value as we could just as easily use sea shells instead of dollar bills and still be able to get things done. But today’s money is the property of private third-parties who rent it out to national governments, who then use the labor of their citizens as collateral against these loans. This is a highly refined form of slavery, which has already put future unborn generations of human beings in debt.

But who, exactly does the human race owe? Who are our debt-slave masters?

2. Who owns your body?

Ownership means having the explicit right to use, control and dispose of something in the manner of your choosing. The one thing you are born with that you take with you to your death is your own body, but do you own it? If not you, then who does own your body?

If this question were already settled in our society then there wouldn’t be ever-increasing pressure on those who choose to refuse vaccines. Children battling cancer and other serious illnesses wouldn’t be forced to take chemo and radiation under penalty of law and under threat of being taken from their parents. Water wouldn’t be fluoridated without our consent. Natural medicines wouldn’t be outlawed under threat of fines and prison time.

We are rapidly approaching a time when people will be required by law to take psychotropic medications as citizens were in Aldous Huxley’s dystopian classic, Brave New World.

Do you own your body, or does it belong to the state?

3.  Why is the exploration of consciousness restricted and illegal?

The most effective prisons are not material, but are constructed inside the mind. Perception, opinion and understanding are all dynamic concepts, not at all static. These can all change in the blink of an eye just because a new idea or experience resonates with you in a special way. Our evolution depends on our ability to expand the frontiers of what’s possible, and when the mind is held in confinement by an entrenched system and powerful cultural paradigm, progress, even happiness, is stunted.

In this societal trap you are given free rein to debase your consciousness and your spirit with alcohol, dangerous drugs, pharmaceuticals, television, pornography, theatrical violence, and then some, yet many natural medicines which elevate consciousness and provide a window into the soul are illegal.

“This is the way freedom is hijacked—not all at once, out in the open, but stealthily, little by little, behind closed doors, and with our own agreement. How will we be able to resist when so many of us have already willingly handed over the keys to our own consciousness to the state and accepted without protest that it is OK to be told what we may and may not do, what we may and may not explore, even what we may and may not experience, with this most precious, sapient, unique, and individual part of ourselves?

If we are willing to accept that then we can be persuaded to accept anything.” ~Graham Hancock

THE WEF AND WHO – ARE THEY RUNNING A DEATH CULT?

By Peter Koenig

Source: The 4th Media

A falling tree makes more noise than a growing forest
A Tibetan proverb
Let’s hope the silently growing forest represents a mass-awakening.
—-

From the looks and evidence – ever more visible to even the ignorant – we are living in a Death Cult – a Cabal-driven Death Cult, with a key objective to do away with – eliminate – a large segment, if not the majority of the world population.

Who is executing this Death Cult? And on behalf of whom?
Three entities come to mind.

  1. The World Economic Forum (WEF), is a Cologny (lush suburb of Geneva, Switzerland)-registered NGO; a never-voted-for “influencer” organization, that has amassed power and money in the hundreds of millions of dollars, like no other NGO around the word. Its founder and eternal Chairman, Klaus Schwab (84), is an engineer cum economist, with origins linked to the former Third Reich Nazi-leadership.By the way – the WEF is holding their annual Davos conference from 16-20 January 2023. The pathology of this outfit and of those elitist billionaires and corporate honchos attending, is reflected in this year even more dystopian agenda. Have a look at the official program https://www.weforum.org/events/world-economic-forum-annual-meeting-2023/about/meeting-overview?gclid=CjwKCAiA8OmdBhAgEiwAShr402rG_ShAgll-Pwx4MjDBTbmhgZDg29ii18ztf-yKlsvgQqdSrVerIBoCCvIQAvD_BwE

This is only the visible agenda. None of us, the commons, know what’s going on behind closed doors in special secretive sessions. We feed on leakages, and as Globalism is fading, they become ever more abundant.

  1. The World Health Organization – WHO – goes as a specialized UN Agency – which in reality it isn’t. It was founded in 1948 by Rockefeller, a eugenist and obsessed globalist, who was (and still is) aiming at controlling the world population through health (and death), and who is hellbent to make the Mother Earth a better place through a One World Order. WHO was then “bought” into the UN system.

At that time, Rockefeller with Standard Oil, had also a monopoly on petrol. He decided that pharmaceuticals, up to the 1950’s, mostly based on plants and plant chemistry – could be made from petro-chemicals.

WHO, according to its bylaws, a disease-preventive health organizationbecame, thus, largely a curative pharma-based and pharma-pushing organization.

While the bulk of the budget from other UN agencies stems from member countries’ contribution, WHO is funded at least to two thirds or more by the private sector, mostly the pharma industry, as well as the Bill Gates Foundation.

A conflict of interest is more than evident. WHO should not be a UN agency.

WHO – against its scientific staff’s better knowledge, has declared Covid as a deadly pandemic, spreading fear, imposing lockdowns, face masks, social distancing – and more human-denigrating measures.

Eventually, WHO, strongly nudged by the WEF (and the powers behind the WEF), was coercing governments to “vaccinate” their populations with never-before tested genetically modifying mRNA injections, of which nobody but the producing pharma-industry knows the composition – contents that has turned out deadly for tens of millions of people – and mounting.

By the end of 2022, excess mortality in western countries amounts to between 15% and 25% – in some countries even higher.

All of the western used so-called vaccines are, in fact, bioweapons.

This horrendous Vaxx-fraud was also a multi-billion, if not trillion, bonanza for the pharmaceuticals.

The covid jabs also contain sterilization agents for both men and women, resulting already by now in drastically falling birth rates in western countries.

The term “Western Countries” means all of Europe and the worldwide Anglosaxonia. So far, all fits well within the Rockefeller, Gates, Soros et al – eugenist agenda.

WHO is truth censuring through social platforms – NewsGuard, an organization of “True Journalism”, tracking credibility of news and information websites and online misinformation, provides WHO regularly with lists of the most important “influencers” of “misinformation” in matters of health, alias conspiracy theorists; people who do not conform with the official narrative.

WHO forwards this list to the different Social Media Platforms, requesting them to block the accounts of the “perpetrators”, or to clandestinely hide or limit their social media inputs. This is called “shadow banning”.

WHO works closely with the International Fact Checking Network (IFCN) at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, a non-profit journalism school and research organization in St. Petersburg, Florida. The IFCN has a databank with more than 10,000 “fact-checked false information”, most of them related to WHO dictates.

IFCN is mainly funded by the US State Department, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Soros Open Society Foundation, Google and Facebook. Coincidentally, the Gates Foundation and the US Government are also the biggest donors of WHO.

This WHO censuring information can be read in full in German, under Point 5 of https://www.nachdenkseiten.de/?p=92120#h05 .

To top it all off, WHO is currently preparing a so-called Pandemic Treaty. Under this Treaty, if approved, WHO’s DG would have the power to declare worldwide pandemics as he, alias the ruling class, sees fit to control the masses.

Compulsory vaccinations could be military enforced. This would be an authority above each of the member countries’ National Constitution. So far trial votations have not succeeded, as several country blocks, for example, in Africa, do not agree.

But the beat goes on with coercing and potentially bribing of country delegates. A final vote should take place in the course of 2023. If approved, the lawless Pandemic Treaty rule should enter into effect at the beginning of 2024.

If so, this is a call on each WHO member to leave WHO.

  1. NATO – the North Atlantic Treaty Organization – has long ceased being a defense alliance of North Atlantic countries. It has become a worldwide war machine with access and use of some 850 US military bases around the world.

NATO is not only a multi-billion-dollar income generator largely for the US Military Industrial Complex (MIC), but it is also an important US GDP engine, contributing an estimated 30% of the US GDP, counting all NATO-related and dependent industries and services.

NATO is the provoker, funder and main executer of the Ukraine-Russia war – the US – Russia proxy-war. Its expansionism has become a monster octopus, stretching its tentacles completely and all-controlling around Mother Earth.

Other than non-stop provoking Russia, NATO also fulfills a role in the Great Reset / UN Agenda 2030 eugenist agenda, as killing is one of its chief purposes.

NATO enters any territory where the “conventional” media lie-machine, and social engineering are failing or not completing their people-ordaining goals fast enough.

Russia, by far the largest and resources-richest country of our planet, was in the US hegemon’s cross-hairs for over a century. The 2014 Maidan Coup, engineered by EU / NATO, was a planned prelude to a war with Russia.

The without scruples NATO war machine would not shy from a hot WWIII – which could easily turn nuclear, all-destructive – and – all-killing.

Playing with Russian ethics, knowing that President Putin has no intention to annihilate a country that up to recently and for over 300 years in the past was an integral part of the Russian Empire, then the Soviet Union. Ukraine is inherently, and historically a part of Russia, even as an ally after it became independent in 1991.

Ukraine was forcefully and viciously detached from Russia by western aggression for greed and pathological grandeur.

Now western aggressions may backfire, as President Putin may soon have no other choice than to obliterate what’s left of Ukraine, to finally stop the war – and the senseless killing, the misery of the hapless and suffering population.

Be aware, NATO is ready for weaponized interference wherever a “human-conflict” cannot be resolved by the WEF / WHO oppressive tyrannical means.

——-
We, the People, of the world have largely only little or no saying in how our world, our countries, even our communities are run. And this already for

In the last three years the common People’s exclusion form what is still sold as a democratic process, has reached a pinnacle. With the onset of a fake plandemic at the beginning of 2020 – the beginning of an agenda long ago planned – the UN Agenda 2030 – the beginning of the larger Agenda 21 (all of the 21st Century), officially decided at the UN Environment Conference in Rio in June 1992 – the so-called United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), also known as the ‘Earth Summit‘.

The long-haul precursor to his was the 1968 Rockefeller founded Club of Rome’s book “Limits to Growth” (LTG) of 1972. The concepts and principles of this book, LTG, are the blueprint for what is currently – and probably at least for the coming ten to fifty years – being implemented.

LTG is the basis for the Great Reset, the 4th Industrial Revolution — and the UN Agenda 2030, also called WHO’s Decade of Vaccination. Following are the main life-curtailing threats we are facing today – listed not necessarily in order of priority. Remember, they are all inter-linked and inter-acting.

  • Population reduction, a massive genocide, through fake covid “vaxxes” – that are carefully engineered as gene-modifying mRNA killer-injections.
  • The US / EU / NATO provoked war between Russia and Ukraine; a US – Russia proxy-war, pumped up to the tune of about 155 billion dollars-worth of western weaponry and “budget-support” money in less than a year – more than Ukraine’s entire GDP for 2020 ($151 billion).
    Some US$112 billion from the US, the rest from Europe and other western countries.

Most of the money flows right back into the western, mostly US, Military Industrial Complex (MIC), and into the pockets of corrupt politicians (see this interview with Col. Doug Macgregor https://rumble.com/v21yohy-real-america-dan-ball-w-col.-doug-macgregor-zelensky-begs-congress-for-more.html

  • It is about fake “climate change”, fake biodiversity See this https://www.globalresearch.ca/big-hoax-from-climate-change-to-biodiversity/5803442 .
  • Manipulated energy shortages, a proven combined manipulation of “sanctions” on Russia, and the worst western government sponsored terror sabotage act in recent history, the torpedoed Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines under the Baltic Sea from Russia to Germany. Russian hydrocarbons, mostly gas, provided at least 40% of all of Europe’s energy uses.
  • Engineered food shortages, leading to famine – and a new artificial toxic way of food production; geoengineered crop destroying weather catastrophes; food staple speculations; forced supply-chain disruptions and more are responsible for “food shortages”. The world can produce enough food for at least ten billion people, see this https://www.google.com/search?q=fao%3A+there+is+enough+food+in+the+world+to+aliment+12+billion+people&oq=fao%3A+there+is+enough+food+in+the+world+to+aliment+12+billion+people&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i58.18476j0j15&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8; it’s a mere question of banning speculation and introducing a just food distribution system;
  • Compromised banker’s engineered hyper-inflation, leading more rapidly to poverty; crisis after crisis caused demolition of the western economy, bankruptcies, unemployment, poverty, unaffordable food and / or housing, disease and death – genocidal death.
  • Worldwide network of 5G microwaves – and would you believe, and soon to come all-controlling, potentially deadly Sixth Generation – 6G, whose target date is coverage of the entire planet by 2030.
  • Absolute control – via the all-invasive QR-code. See this https://www.globalresearch.ca/beware-qr-code-remember-agenda-id2020/5769266
  • Digitization of everything, the objective of Klaus Schwab’s designed 4th Industrial Revolution (see this https://www.amazon.com/Fourth-Industrial-Revolution-Klaus-Schwab/dp/1524758868 ), including
  • Digitization of money – may result in turn-on, turn-off money, expiring money, blocked or canceled money for misbehavior, potentially resulting in lack of sustenance for non-behaviors, no food, no energy, no housing – disease – death
  • Digitization of your brain – transhumanization, robotization – social engineering of the masses, as well as the individual (see Daniel Estulin’s “Tavistock Institute – Social Engineering of the Masses”https://www.amazon.com/Tavistock-Institute-Social-Engineering-Masses/dp/163424043X )
  • Universal Basic Income – (UBI) – can be controlled and is slated to become “You own nothing but are happy” – Klaus Schwab’s glorious ending of the Great Reset, and finally
  • A WHO / pharma controlled worldwide tyrannical “health system” (sic), through a so-called Pandemic Treatywhich – if approved by the World Health Assembly – would overreach every UN / WHO member country’s Constitution, putting the Director General of WHO in charge of health (and death) issues worldwide, in each country.
    It might amount to compulsory vaccination, enforced by the military, for whatever WHO decides is or might be a worldwide threat to health. Even the common flu.

If approved in 2023, the Pandemic Treaty would become effective at the beginning of 2024.

This would be an absolutely lawless rule against the will of ALL PEOPLE OF THE WORLD.

If the Pandemic Treaty is approved – and even if it is not approved – this is a call on all nations to EXIT WHO,which has become a biased pharma-led eugenist-funded terror organization.


The world is faced with a multi-disaster scenario caused by ultra-rich neo-Nazi multi-billionaire elitists and the international data / IT and finance system that controls some 25 to 30 trillion-dollar equivalent of the world’s assets, maybe more – and can leverage every country of this planet to do their bidding.

These are the dark Cult Masters, acting from the shadows of supra-governments, like the US and the European Union, mainly via their well-funded executive, or implementing, instruments – WEF, WHO, NATO.

This is what happened at the beginning of the 2020 covid hoax. The 2010 Rockefeller Report called this first phase – The Lockstep Scenario – see thishttps://www.nommeraadio.ee/meedia/pdf/RRS/Rockefeller%20Foundation.pdf

Indeed, in unison, all 193 UN member countries (194 WHO members) – their corrupted leaders and media blasted the same fear-imposing message – lockdown, obligatory people-demeaning face masks, social distancing, working from home – so you would lose personal contact with your friends and colleagues.

Today, all these above-mentioned Limits to Growth measures are wrapped in a constant and permanent fear campaign, to demoralize and subjugate people into submission. A fear campaign carried out by mainstream media, all owned by 13 media conglomerates who own 90% of the media worldwide.

In unison they slam down these fear messages in lockstep 24 / 7 / 52 on the world populations. See this https://www.google.com/search?q=13+intenatonal+media+corprations+control+90%25+of+western+world+news&sxsrf=AJOqlzUv_RLeZ5NCjDRAsGdFNNl80bU9AA%3A1673310255329&ei=L7C8Y4rWE4bs1sQPj_G-6AI&ved=0ahUKEwjKqfi63rv8AhUGtpUCHY-4Dy0Q4dUDCA8&oq=13+intenatonal+media+corprations+control+90%25+of+western+world+news&gs_lcp=Cgxnd3Mtd2l6LXNlcnAQDDoKCAAQRxDWBBCwA0oECEEYAEoECEYYAFCqClihC2CFIWgBcAF4AIABjAKIAaEDkgEFMC4xLjGYAQCgAQHIAQjAAQE&sclient=gws-wiz-serp

These corrupt media moguls are paid billions of dollars to comply with the power-money psychopaths’ request, to spread the world with lies – with deadly lies. They are party to the mass-murderers, as they know what they are doing. Their management must face the laws of justice.

Just as a parenthesis, looking at what these US Treasury generated dollars really are: They are worthless, unbacked money – dollars that are simple debt for the US Treasury; debt that is never paid back.

Or as the former FED Chairman Alan Greenspan said in 2011, “The United States can pay any debt it has because we can always print money to do that”. See this  https://www.google.com/search?sxsrf=AJOqlzVj6Us4MQ0TkbEiXYVK4DJ_Yg09Ew:1673221297413&q=greenspan+to+a+journalist:+we+will+never+pay+back+our+debt.+we+will+just+print+new+money&spell=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi8gMCIk7n8AhW1HLkGHRJsAC4QBSgAegQIBxAB&biw=877&bih=412&dpr=2.19#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:7d32db1c,vid:Ck3FuTzZvhI

Therefore, money dished out to corrupt organization is worthless for the “spender”- the creator of the money, the US of A, but they buy the world for the recipients.

We are living in the midst of a Cabal-directed Death Cult.

The majority of the people haven’t noticed yet.

But the awakening has begun.

Remember the Tibetan Proverb of the silently growing forest. And as trees connect with each other, so do humans by their spirituality – not transhumans, but humans what we still are.

And let us never an abject power-hungry non-elected criminal like Klaus Schwab, with his roots in the Third Reich, and his by nobody desired NGO, the World Economic Forum – WEF – dominate humanity.

May the forest grow to a critical mass – that can by its sheer solidarity, togetherness of thought and will power overcome the pathological objectives of the psychopaths wish for power and money dominance.

Peter Koenig is a geopolitical analyst and a former Senior Economist at the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO), where he worked for over 30 years around the world. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for online journals and is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed; and  co-author of Cynthia McKinney’s book “When China Sneezes: From the Coronavirus Lockdown to the Global Politico-Economic Crisis” (Clarity Press – November 1, 2020) Peter is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). He is also is a non-resident Senior Fellow of the Chongyang Institute of Renmin University, Beijing.

De-Dollarization Accelerates: The Beginning of the End for US Dollar Hegemony in Southeast Asia?

By Timothy Alexander Guzman

Source: Silent Crow News

The US is facing major moves by the global community to de-dollarize their economies.  The reserve status of the US dollar will eventually come to an end, maybe not anytime soon, but sometime in the future as it is facing numerous challenges not only from major powers such as Russia and China who are actively trying to rid themselves of the toxic currency, but also countries with smaller economies who are based in the Southeast Asian region which includes Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Cambodia, Thailand, and Laos.  The globalist think tank, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP) published an article on August 22nd, 2022, on the US dollar’s waning influence in Southeast Asia titled ‘Southeast Asia’s Growing Interest in Non-dollar Financial Channels—and the Renminbi’s Potential Role’ stated what was taking place between China and several Southeast Asian countries:

China’s central bank—announced the launch of a new emergency liquidity arrangement that can be funded using renminbi and tapped by participating central banks during times of market stress. Three of the five participating central banks are Singapore’s, Malaysia’s, and Indonesia’s, which each recently renewed agreements with the PBOC implicitly aimed at reducing dollar usage in cross-border payments. This follows policymakers in ThailandLaosCambodia, and Myanmar all announcing efforts to reduce dollar usage, as well as comments by Indonesia’s central bank head that consumers across five of Southeast Asia’s largest economies will soon be able to make intra-regional cross-border payments via linkages that avoid using the dollar as an intermediary, as is currently often the case

Interestingly, The CEIP listed several reasons why Southeast Asian countries want to dramatically reduce the use of US dollars are as follows:

Several factors are behind the various efforts aimed at reducing dollar usage in Southeast Asia. To begin with, many officials are concerned about the potential economic impacts of U.S. monetary policy tightening on the region given its high usage of the dollar; accordingly, some are seeking to reduce usage of the dollar in intra-regional trade payments as a means of curbing dollar reliance more broadly. Recent sanctions may also be spurring demand for alternative financial channels—for example, Myanmar’s military government is actively exploring how to circumvent EU and U.S. sanctions to transact with Russia

According to an article published by almayadeen.net ‘Bank Indonesia calls against payments in US Dollars’ who translated the report by an Indonesian news portal called Tempo.net on what Nugroho Joko Prastowo of the Solo Bank Indonesia Representative Office said regarding Indonesian businesses using national currencies to reduce its reliance on the US dollar:

Bank Indonesia has urged importers and exporters to use national currencies in international payments in order to reduce Indonesian financial markets’ reliance on the US dollar, according to Tempo.co, an Indonesian news portal.  “About 90% of export-import payments are conducted in US dollars, while the share of Indonesian direct exports to the US is estimated at only 10%, and US imports account for 5%”

The report also mentioned that “China, Japan, Thailand, and Malaysia have already agreed to use the two-way payment mechanism, with Singapore and the Philippines planning to join the system, according to the economist.”  

Another article published by the globaltimes.cn on December 15th, 2021, ‘GT Exclusive: Myanmar accepts yuan as official settlement currency for border trade with China’ said that Myanmar’s usage of Chinese yuan will help break the US dollar dominance in the long term:

The yuan was included in the list of Myanmar’s official settlement currencies in January 2019. The move at that time was more symbolic, as all contracts and trade were still not settled in the Chinese currency.  Zhou said that the move, in the long term, will help break the monopoly of the US dollar in Myanmar’s foreign currency reserves.  The US has been abusing the dollar’s dominant status to impose arbitrary sanctions on other countries, and the yuan’s further expansion in Myanmar’s trade settlements may provide a shield against such a potential weapon, analysts said

Cambodia is on Board Dumping US Dollars

Why Cambodia with a population of close to 17 million people and a much smaller economic impact on the world’s economy is willing to drop US dollars is an important development.  The Diplomat, a current-affairs magazine based on analysis and commentaries from various authors on developments throughout Asia and the rest of the world published an article by Luke Hunt on the case of Cambodia’s attempt to stop using US dollars titled ‘Cambodia Reduces its Dependency on the US Dollar’ lays out the mood of the Cambodian government.  “Ever since United Nations peacekeepers arrived in war-torn Cambodia to oversee elections held in 1993, the U.S. dollar has been a mainstay of the local economy with a dual currency system providing steady exchange rates in a volatile place” but there is a monumental shift taking place when the National Bank of Cambodia (NBC) announced that it “would phase-out small-denominated U.S. dollar bills – $1, $2, and $5 notes – following negotiations with banks and micro-finance institutions (MFIs).”  Naturally it’s a step to reduce the dependency of the US dollar according to the NBC “Cambodia has to encourage the use of its riel, more. So, allowing the circulation of small U.S. bills is an obstacle in urging the use of the riel.”

There are several reasons for Cambodia’s move, one of them is to allow the use of digital currencies to “give the central bank more control over the Cambodian economy and bolster the local riel currency, which for decades suffered from a lack of confidence due to negative sentiment stemming from a 30-year war” in addition it will allow the central bank “control over monetary policy and interest rate settings and reduced costs in handling the sheer volume of $1 dollar notes circulating through the economy.”  Hunt mentions the dark period of Cambodian history with the US-backed Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge who destroyed Cambodia and it’s traditions and started a new revolution with a new culture that would begin on Year Zero, therefore everything before would be deemed irrelevant, “It’s a far cry from the late 1970s, when Khmer Rouge rule abandoned money, banks were abolished, and the NBC blown-up as Pol Pot tried to create a utopian, agrarian society that led to the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians.”  One of the darkest times in world history indeed.  It is a positive development that the NBC is encouraging the use of the Cambodian Riel for its economy, so the future seems promising.  NBC Governor Chea Chanto spoke at the 40th Anniversary of the re-establishment of the Riel “he said demand for the currency had increased by an average of 16 percent a year for the last 20 years amid annual average growth rates of 7.8 percent and inflation at around 2.5 percent.”  Chanto said that “I firmly believe all ministries, institutions, companies, enterprises, and those who actively participate in the process of developing the banking system promote the use of the riel, which is our national currency.” According to an unidentified analyst “It’s also a matter of sovereignty and pride. It’s their country and they are entitled to have their own currency like anywhere else.”

Transitioning from the US dollar to the Cambodian Riel won’t be an easy task according to Michael Finn of the Khmer Times who authored ‘De-dollarisation: Views from Asia, US and Europe’ claims that “Any reduction in the use of the dollar needs to be handled carefully, according to foreign chambers of commerce in Cambodia. They say the central bank is unlikely to fully phase-out the US currency and any sudden moves to end reliance on the dollar would be bad for business.”  European Chamber of Commerce Advocacy Manager Noe Schellinck said that “To a certain extent, the dollarisation now can be ascribed to the success of the Cambodian economy, with a great influx of Foreign Direct Investment, compared to the historic context of when the dollarization came about.” But the Indonesian Chamber of Commerce President Dalton Wong disagrees with Schellinck’s assessment:

De-dollarisation is not a bad thing as it is a re-balancing of the fiscal and monetary policy tools. It is certainly not a complete displacement and substitution of the US dollar in favour of the Khmer Riel in trade and investment, which some observers and analysts seem to mischievously suggest, which is not so helpful. In fact, promoting a greater use of the Khmer riel will give greater monetary policy tools to the Cambodian author 

The collapse of the US dollar is becoming a reality as China and Russia continue to buy gold and trade with their own currencies at an accelerated pace with many more countries around the world who are also racing to de-dollarize their economies.  As we already know, several countries in Southeast Asia will soon make its move to rid itself of the toxic currency, but there are also other countries who are also making moves including India, Iran, South Africa, Syria, and Venezuela who are all motivated to drop the US dollar.  One of the main reasons for these countries to move forward by eliminating the use of US dollar is because Washington uses its currency status as a weapon to impose harsh sanctions on countries they deem as enemies.  

African countries are also starting to look for alternatives to the US dollar including Ghana according to a report published by Reuters on November 24th, 2022, ‘Ghana plans to buy oil with gold instead of U.S. dollars’ said that “Ghana’s government is working on a new policy to buy oil products with gold rather than U.S. dollar reserves” Ghana’s reason slightly differs from other countries since “The move is meant to tackle dwindling foreign currency reserves coupled with demand for dollars by oil importers, which is weakening the local cedi and increasing living costs.”  This means that the US dollar is causing inflation.  The move is expected to take place in the first quarter of 2023 as Ghana’s Vice-President Mahamudu Bawumia said that the new policy “will fundamentally change our balance of payments and significantly reduce the persistent depreciation of our currency” as he explained that “using gold would prevent the exchange rate from directly impacting fuel or utility prices as domestic sellers would no longer need foreign exchange to import oil products.”  Libya was one of the first countries in Africa to propose the idea of creating an alternative currency to bypass the US dollar called the African Dinar which would have been gold-backed but the Obama regime supported a violent coup to overthrow its president who suggested the idea, Muammar Ghaddafi who was tortured and then killed in the process making Libya a hotbed for terrorism and at the same time, re-creating the centuries-old industry of slavery.   

The bottom line is that US dollar’s dominance in the global market will come to an end sometime in the foreseeable future.  No one has a crystal ball of when it will happen, but it is certain.  The world will experience an alternative economic reality that will change the dynamics of the US and its Western powers dominating the World’s economy with an outdated and flawed currency that will eventually have the same value as toilet paper.  

An Inconvenient Revolution

By Charles Hugh Smith

Source: Of Two Minds

Convenience isn’t just about small appliances. It’s also about ruling nations. Let’s start with the semantics of ruling nations. Some labels might be viewed as somewhat inflammatory (Kleptocracy, anyone?), so let’s stick with the neutral Ruling Order.

Some things have been extraordinarily convenient for the Ruling Order. Take the life and death of one Jeffrey Epstein, an intel “asset” who assembled a veritable goldmine of dirt on an astounding collection of bigwigs, and then became, well, inconvenient.

Very conveniently, the security camera in his cell failed, the guards dozed off and he hung himself in this fortuitous interlude. This was the acme of convenience.

Extending the Surveillance State into Big Tech’s planetary-wide social media networks was also convenient, and a bargain to boot. Instead of all that expensive stuff the Communist State in China had to pay for, America’s Ruling Order just put the squeeze on Big Tech and saved a bundle.

The Surveillance State assumes that any revolt / revolution can either be nipped in the bud by identifying foreign influences / domestic extremists, or crushed by foreknowledge of the storming of the barricades.

In conventional times, these are pretty safe assumptions. But the times are no longer conventional, and so the Ruling Order is in effect investing its treasure and confidence in fighting the last war.

It’s convenient if rebelling citizens organize themselves in visible networks and concentrate into groups that can be crushed by force. It’s inconvenient if the revolution is not neatly organized and crushable but an invisible revolution of not showing up.

In other words, a revolution of getting fed up and opting out, of finding some other way to live rather than spending 10 years paying down the student loans and another 30 years paying down the mortgage and the last few years of one’s life watching the tides of financial excess erode the sand castles of pensions and retirement.

There’s a consequential asymmetry to the inconvenience caused by people getting fed up and opting out. The average worker not showing up is consequential but not catastrophic. But when the managerial class thins out, and those doing the dirty work thin out, there are no replacements, and the system breaks down.

Few are willing to make the beds, empty the bedpans and work in slaughterhouses. When those willing to do the work nobody else wants to do quit, the system collapses. Those with higher expectations will not volunteer to do the dirty work, and many are unable to do the work even if they are willing. It’s too hard and too physically punishing. (Says a guy who’s carried stupid amounts of lumber up hillsides where no forklift could go.)

Despite what many of us may think, the majority of workers lack the experience and tools to manage complex operations. (Those of us who try soon reach our limits.) Many lack a deep enough knowledge to fix major breakdowns. When the critical operational and managerial people retire, quit, or find some other way to live, the system breaks down.

All the surveillance and all the force that the Ruling Order depends on to maintain its dominance is useless when people get fed up and quit supporting the system with their labor and their borrowing / spending. All the surveillance and facial recognition software is worthless, all the monitoring of kitten and puppy photos on social media, all the tracking of foreign influence–none of it matters any more.

It’s inconvenient when those whose sacrifices are essential to the system get fed up and find some other way to live. Yet this is the inevitable consequence of a system hopelessly corrupted by fraud, inequality and unfairness, a system rigged to benefit the few at the expense of the many. People eventually get fed up and opt out.

They don’t throw themselves on the gears of an odious system, they simply stop greasing the gears with their time, effort, experience, debt and money. It doesn’t take many opting out to trigger decay and collapse. The Pareto Distribution applies. The system can adjust to the first 4% opting out, but those consequential few trigger the decay of the commitment of the next 20%, and the system cannot survive when the 20% find some other way to live. The 80% can still be willing to grease the gears but that’s no longer enough to maintain the coherence of the system.

The asymmetry of decay and collapse is inconvenient.

The Americans Started the US War with Russia

Photograph Source: The White House – Public Domain

By Robert Urie

Source: CounterPunch

The ongoing US war against Russia has elevated American-allied Nazis to the international stage as ‘freedom fighters,’ resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilians, raised the risk of nuclear war, ended any effective international cooperation on environmental issues through rekindling energy geopolitics, assured Europe of one or more Great Depression type winters with limited heating fuel, and more probably than not will soon produce the total annihilation of Ukraine as a modern state by the Russians.

The ‘American view’ towards the war, informed domestically by an absence of the political violence that the US so regularly visits upon innocents around the globe, rank ideology, state propaganda, ignorance of world history, and the narrow economic interests of American oligarchs, imagines that it is fighting Frankenstein’s monster when it is that monster. What is the strategic interest of Ukraine to the US? More importantly, is it worth a potentially world-ending war?

In recent history, the US could have abided by the 1991 promise made by the George H.W. Bush administration to keep NATO away from Russia’s border. The US could have negotiated a security agreement with the Russians— as they have regularly requested over the last three decades. The US could have made Ukraine abide by the Minsk Accord(s) to which the Ukrainians and Russians had in principle agreed. There have been so many requests from the Russians to negotiate a lasting peace with the US that there is no convincing argument that the US didn’t want this war.

And yet the American anti-war left continues to insist, with decades of evidence to the contrary, that German and French guardians of the oligarchs (Scholz, Macron) would / could have overridden the (Joe) Biden administration’s drive to war when, as I predicted here in 2019, Biden was brought to power by the national security state to launch a war against Russia. Biden was up to his eyeballs in the US-led coup in Ukraine in 2014, was subsequently appointed to be the American prefect in Ukraine; and began preparing for war the day he entered office.

The reason why the US wants a war with Russia is first and foremost that the poor policy choices of the US political leadership over the last five decades ended American economic and political dominance somewhere around 2008. Starting in the 1970s, market fundamentalist ideology became the American tool of choice for extracting wealth from poor and working people and nations around the globe. The political class, acting at the behest of industrialists and Wall Street, believed its own fantasy that ‘nature,’ and not imperialist looting, had made rich Americans rich.

The result since the 1970s has been a shift from political leaders governing to the ideological use of government to serve business interests. The logic is that business makes ‘us’ rich, despite the fact that most of ‘us’ aren’t rich. The insight that emerged from the Great Depression— that unhindered capitalism was both unstable and destabilizing, was flipped to the disproven logic that it is government that destabilizes capitalism. In economic terms, this shift placed American liberals well to the political right of the historical American political right.

The response from power was to redefine left and right in terms that flattered power. Capitalism could be made ‘just’ by making it fairer, went the new political project of the liberal – left. This, despite half-a-millennium of capitalism causing the very illiberalism that it is now expected to ameliorate. This imagined flat society, where one ‘equal’ earns a few billion dollars a year scamming widows and orphans while another ‘equal’ begs for money on a highway off-ramp, defines the political project of this new left.

To the social democracy that young liberals eternally call for, the US had that in the 1970s, just before it was abandoned by liberals. The (Ronald) Reaganite effort to shift resources, and with it, power, from the public sphere to the private was matched by liberals using an ideological market fundamentalism to accomplish similarly motivated outcomes from a better-hidden position. Wall Street and the largely privatized US military were re-elevated to be the economic bludgeon / capital allocation device of militarized capitalist-imperialism.

More to the point, social-democratic governments have been the vanguard of neoliberalism since the 1970s. Recall, the Biden administration was going to broaden economic distribution through raising the minimum wage, govern on the side of labor, enact environmental programs that might actually stabilize, or even reverse, environmental decline, and it was going to keep the US out of forever wars. While Democrats may need another twenty or thirty years to acquaint themselves with their actual policies, the other 80% of the country has already come to different conclusions.

In the meantime, the US has two political parties to represent the interests of capital and the radical right, but none to support the interests of ‘the people’ more broadly considered. Quickly, what are the metrics by which quasi-privatized public schools (Charter Schools) are measured? Well, most have been exempted from having to demonstrate that they are successfully educating students for a decade or more. How about healthcare? Since the ACA was implemented in 2015, 3 – 5 million Americans have died who wouldn’t have if the US had a functioning healthcare system.

The point is that, as these metrics suggest, raising profits for ‘American’ corporations has been the singular goal of social-democratic policies in the US, and similarly in Europe. The easiest way to sell ruling class interests as those of ‘the people’ is to claim that they are for the people— while setting them up to benefit only executives and oligarchs. Question: if Americans understood that the American war against Ukraine was provoked by the Americans, would they still support it? If so, why are the Biden administration and the state-affiliated press (NYT, WP) continuing to lie about the causes of the war?

With Ukraine being supplied with weapons by the US; being central to American oil geopolitics in Europe; and key to the neo-colonial wealth extraction from Ukraine that the US imagines it will exert after the conflict ends, US arms and materiel makers started shopping for larger houses the day that Joe Biden was elected president. But again, the cost is being paid by others. Russians and Ukrainians (and Poles, etc.) are dying to raise profits for ‘American’ corporations. And the Ukrainians that manage to survive the war will rue the day that they handed control of Ukraine to the Americans.

An historical analogy: during WWII the OUN-B (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists- Bandera) had Ukrainian nationalists join with the German Nazis to commit racist / antisemitic atrocities across Eastern Europe and ultimately, to attack the Soviets. These Banderites—followers of Ukrainian nationalist and enthusiastic Nazi Stepan Bandera, imagined that Adolf Hitler would want like-minded Nazis to rule Ukraine as a racialized Nazi state. Surprise: Hitler was using the Banderites to further the Nazi goal of defeating the Soviets. The German Nazis reportedly shot OUN-B leaders when they dared to suggest that they be allowed to rule Ukraine.

This brings us to the current geopolitical predicament. The American war against Russia comes as the US political leadership tries to recover a functioning economy using the same logic and institutions that produced the dysfunction in the first place. Deindustrialization? Check. Financialization? Check. Militarization? Check. The American economic and political leadership spent five decades ending what it was that America ‘does’ without any apparent plan to address the (predictable) consequences that are now upon us.

The American war against Russia has been framed by the Americans in terms of oil geopolitics and humanitarian intervention. A seven-year-old with a map of the world could see easily enough that geography favors the Russians in terms of both prosecuting a major war in Europe and providing oil and gas to Europeans and to European industry. The effort by the American political and military leadership to cleave Europe from Russia faces this insurmountable problem of geography. Add 4,000 miles of supply lines, the distance from the US to Germany, to the Nazi Siege of Leningrad for insight into the nature of the problem.

Moreover, the American plan reeks of desperation. The explanation given by the Biden administration, by CIA linked commercial news outlets like the New York Times, and by what is claimed to be a dissident left in the US, depends on a stopping point in history that few outside of the US find plausible. The Russians were rebuffed by the Americans for three decades as they tried to negotiate security guarantees, including immediately prior to the launch of Russia’s SMO (Special Military Operation) and again in April 2022, when UK PM Boris Johnson told the Ukrainian political leadership that the Americans had refused any negotiations.

(Here is a background history of the US – Russia conflict that I wrote a couple of weeks after the conflict started. Here is where I correctly predicted in 2019 that Joe Biden would be brought to power by the national security state to launch a war against Russia. And here is a history of the American alliance with German and Ukrainian Nazis for purposes of enticing them to commit terrorist attacks against the Soviets, now the Russians, since the mid-1940s).

(Here is American historian and Cold Warrior George Kennan explaining US President Woodrow Wilson’s use of the American Expeditionary Force in 1919 to launch a stealth American war against the Bolsheviks with the goal of reversing the October Revolution. As ideologically and constitutionally inconvenient as this might be for American liberals and ‘the left,’ there is history to the US – Russia relationship that preceded the launch of Russia’s SMO (Special Military Operation) in 2022.

Likewise, American claims of Ukrainian sovereignty are almost too stupid to countenance. Starting in 2013, the US State Department, likely with direct or indirect assistance from the CIA and its stealth cut-outs like NED (National Endowment for Democracy), stoked a burgeoning uprising by the Ukrainian people to turn it into an American regime change operation. Around this same time Ukrainian Nazis from Right Sector and Svoboda committed suspiciously well-timed atrocities against Ukrainian citizens that de-legitimated the democratically elected president of Ukraine to install a government chosen by the American State Department.

The ‘American view’ has it that the Ukrainian people ousted the Ukrainian President, after which Ukraine returned to being the liberal democracy that it never was. In fact, an early act by the US was to retain predatory and potentially extractive loans from the IMF for Ukraine that the Ukrainian people are on the hook to repay. From 2014 forward the US was arming, supplying, and training Ukrainian militias, including significant contingents of self-described Nazis, to fight in the civil war that the US instigated.

At the time of the launch of Russia’s SMO, US-armed Nazis had surrounded Russian ethnic enclaves in Eastern Ukraine and were preparing to ethnically-cleanse Russian-speaking Ukrainians from Eastern Ukraine. This followed eight-years of civil war where the Americans supplied, armed, and trained Ukrainian Nazis to do exactly that. Why Russia’s SMO doesn’t qualify as ‘humanitarian intervention’ in the American view, while far more destructive American interventions in Syria, Serbia, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, etc. do, would be a puzzle if it were a puzzle.

For those who missed it, here is the infamous ‘fuck the EU’ call from 2014 where former US Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs, Victoria Nuland, lays out US plans to install a US-allied puppet government to run Ukraine following the US-led coup there. To my knowledge, this (link above) is the only clip that includes mention of Joe Biden’s future role as the American prefect in Ukraine. Recall: the first Trump impeachment was over Trump halting weapons shipments that the US was sending to Ukraine to commit terrorist attacks against Russia with.

While Joe Biden appears to have played largely a figure-head role in the coup and subsequent CIA / Nazi civil war against Russian-speaking Ukrainians, what he represents to not-Americans is the persistence of an adversarial foreign policy towards Russia that re-emerged when US President Bill Clinton reneged on the George H.W. Bush administration’s promise to keep NATO away from Russia’s border. Biden’s response has been to censor press accounts that contradict the official storyline while using state propaganda to convince gullible liberals that Nazis doing the bidding of American capital are ‘freedom fighters.’

The question for most of us is: why? What possible interest does American capital have in destroying Ukraine? Well, there is the means— weapons and materiel ‘lent’ to the Ukrainian-Nazi leadership by the Americans that they (the Ukrainians) will spend the next several decades paying for. There is the replacement of Russian oil and gas with more expensive and environmentally-destructive-to-transport ‘American’ oil and gas. There is the rebuilding of Ukraine by American corporations at Ukrainian expense after it has been destroyed. And there is the regional control over Europe currently imagined to accrue to the Americans from the war.

But how realistic is this? If the Americans can blow up the Nord Stream pipeline supplying Russian LNG to Europe, why can’t the Russians blow up LNG transport ships crossing the Atlantic Ocean to deliver ‘American’ oil and gas to Europe? More to the point, how will European industry be affected by rising energy prices that disproportionately affect it? Reminder: Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany in 1933, the pit of the Great Depression. Is another Great Depression in Europe really what the Americans want?

The Wall Street meltdown of 2008 raised very basic questions regarding the future role of the US in the world. The child-like / aggressively implausible stage of neoliberal capitalism (1980s – today), where the US abandoned its industrial policy while deindustrializing the nation in order to foster money-manager capitalism where bankers allocate capital— mostly to themselves, raises the question of what it is that Americans ‘do?’ In history, the trajectory ran from manufacturing to service jobs to gig jobs.

Joe Biden has been a part of every bad policy decision that the American political leadership has made from the 1970s to today. The neoliberal turn? Check. Resources wars for ‘American’ business interests? Check. Repressive social policies to create the largest carceral population in world history? Check. Promoting George W. Bush’s lie that Iraq possessed WMDs? Check. Privatizing and cutting Social Security? Check. Funding executive bonus pools under the guise of solving environmental problems? Check.

Biden was elected to start a war with Russia. If you follow the history, he has been in place at critical junctures to do just that. That he was a right-wing, neoliberal, war hawk for forty-eight of his fifty years of public self-service— until he ran for president in 2020, should have been a clue that he was the wrong politician for this time. And while the warm embrace of American liberals with self-described Nazis is no surprise here, the broader political context suggests that those interested in political solutions should stop calling each other names and end the war.

This written, the US is in a bad way. And it will remain so no matter who is president. These problems will be intractable until the existing distribution of wealth and power has been reconsidered (redistributed). As long as Lockheed Martin, Goldman Sachs, and Amazon rule the nation, ‘public’ policies will be for their benefit, not ours. Younger readers don’t have twenty or thirty years to figure this out. The problem with low and mid-level conflicts that persist is that they can escalate in the blink of an eye. This war has to be ended quickly. The Americans need to end the bullshit and negotiate a peace.

Ransacking the World Economy until ‘You’ll Own Nothing’ (Part 2)

The Coup de Grâce–>The Great Reset

By Robert J. Burrowes

Building on millennia of learning how to structure and manage an economy to accumulate and consolidate control and wealth in particular hands, as explained in Part 1 of this investigation, the Global Elite launched its final coup in January 2020 under cover of the fake Covid-19 ‘pandemic’. Using the health threat supposedly implied by the existence of a pathogenic ‘virus’, the bulk of the world population was terrorized into submitting to an onerous series of violations of their human rights which was tantamount to a declaration of martial law. See ‘The Final Battle For Humanity: It Is “Now or Never” In The Long War Against Homo Sapiens’.

Under a barrage of propaganda delivered by Elite agents – including organizations such as the World Economic Forum, the United Nations, the World Health Organisation, governments, the pharmaceutical industry and corporate media as well as individuals such as Klaus Schwab, Yuval Noah Harari and Bill Gates – people were compelled to wear masks, use QR codes, stay locked down in their homes and, later, submit to a series of experimental but involuntary gene-altering bioweapons to acquire a ‘vaccine passport’, among other measures.

Particularly importantly, these restrictions effectively shut down the mainstream economy with vast sectors of industry either closed outright or unable to function in the absence of locked-down or, later, bioweapon-injured or bioweapon-killed staff. For just one discussion of the vast evidence available of Covid-19 ‘vaccine’ injuries and deaths, watch ‘3.5 BILLION could be injured or killed by the jab. Are YOU ready?’ which is briefly discussed here: ‘Dr. David Martin blasts health authorities for turning roughly 4 billion people into “bioweapons factories”’.

This inevitably adversely impacted the entire supply chain: That is, the process that connects the production of raw materials, such as food grown on farms and minerals mined from the Earth, to factories that produce everything from canned food to computers, and then to outlets that sell these products to the public. All components of this chain were either shut down completely at one or more times, as part of the imposed restrictions or other policy measures – watch, for example, ‘Biden pays farms to STOPEU out of FeedMeat taxes & Chicken permitsUp to you to GROW FOOD!’ – or just substantially curtailed by the unavailability of essential inputs, ranging from replacement parts to competent labour.

To exacerbate matters, the transport industry (trucking, railroads, shipping, airlines) was also effectively shut down, containers became unavailable (because they were in the wrong places) and logistics corporations (that organize the movement of trade goods) were disabled, including by cyber attacks. The airline and tourist industries were just two industries that were profoundly disrupted. But so was much of small business, with many businesses destroyed. As a result, hundreds of millions of people lost employment, many permanently, throughout the industrial economies and millions more were starved to death in Africa, Asia and Central/South America because the day-to-day economy, by which many survive, was shuttered and any ameliorative measures by governments and international organizations were, deliberately, woefully inadequate (or were siphoned into elite wallets). See ‘The Global Elite’s “Kill and Control” Agenda: Destroying Our Food Security’.

But ‘behind the (obvious) scenes’ outlined above, there has been a great deal more going on that has been deliberately concealed from public view, and this has been considered and discussed by some fine analysts.

According to Catherine Austin Fitts, using ‘national security’ as the justification, the U.S. National Security Act 1947 and the CIA Act 1949 were the basis of a series of Acts and Executive Orders that ‘created a secrecy machinery’ which essentially meant that ‘the most powerful financial interests in the world can keep a whole bunch of money secret’, thus creating a secret black budget. And, starting in 1998, according to US federal government documentation, huge sums of money were not accounted for while private equity firms began exploding and, despite having no capacity to raise such amounts, were suddenly investing huge sums of money in emerging markets. According to Fitts ‘we are now missing over $US21 trillion’, which she calls a ‘financial coup d’etat’ that is clearly in ‘massive violation’ of the US constitution. The financial value of what has transpired under the Covid-19 narrative is that the ‘magic virus’ can be used to explain, for example, why there is no money for healthcare or pension funds cannot pay on retirement those who paid into them throughout their lives. Watch ‘We Need to Talk about Mr Global – Part Two’ with a simple summary here: ‘The Real Game of Missing Money’.

But if $US21 trillion missing already sounds like a lot, it doesn’t end there, as Fitt’s recent discussion with Professor Mark Skidmore makes perfectly clear in ‘The Financial Coup: More Missing Money & FASAB Standard 56’. Fitts observes:

‘We are now over $US100 trillion of undocumentable adjustments if we use their most recent figures and so I would say we are describing a financial system which is completely and utterly out of control…. If any of the allegations about financial fraud in the 2020 [US Presidential] election are true, and I believe that many of them are, we’ve now delinked both the election system and the finances [from] the constitution and the law so we are are now operating both in terms of who governs and how they spend the money completely outside of the law and completely outside of any democratic process. So this is a coup.’

To which Professor Skidmore responds:

‘The reason that I really struggled… watching what was going on during the last financial crisis, [was that] I thought ‘Wow we don’t have the rule of law’. It was so obvious that we didn’t ten years ago and it’s like it’s devolving even more and so I am not sure how much further we can go before we are just completely devoid of the rule of law at least for a subset of the very powerful.’

As an aside, while genuinely appreciative of the research of Fitts and Skidmore, as outlined earlier in this article and previously demonstrated, democracy has always been a sham and the Elite has always operated beyond the rule of law, routinely corrupting national political processes in pursuit of Elite ends. See ‘The Elite Coup to Kill or Enslave Us: Why Can’t Governments, Legal Actions and Protests Stop Them?’ All we are seeing in the current context is Elite corruption being flaunted in a way that reflects the sure knowledge that it can act corruptly, on a global scale, with impunity.

But to return to the subject at hand: In 2019, the central bankers of the G7 countries met for their regular conference at Jackson Hole, Wyoming and agreed to the ‘Going Direct Reset’, a plan devised (and later orchestrated) by BlackRock – see ‘Dealing with the next downturn’ – and, as explained by John Titus, the fundamental purpose of this ‘Reset’ was to orchestrate the largest asset transfer in history under cover of the forthcoming Covid-19 ‘pandemic’. Watch ‘Larry & Carstens’ Excellent Pandemic’ with a summary here: ‘Summary – Going Direct Reset’.

In the words of Titus: ‘In a nutshell, the arrival of the 2020 pandemic was about as accidental as an assassination. The pandemic narrative is nothing but a cover story to conceal from the public what in reality is the biggest asset transfer ever.’ See Summary – Going Direct Reset.

While you can learn the mechanics of how this was conducted in the excellent documents and videos immediately above, as Fitts points out in relation to the central banks: ‘Controlling and having access to data on fiscal and monetary policy is the basis of huge fortunes.’ And, combined with the secrecy that has protected their manipulations from public view – ‘if you look at all the technology and assets that have been transferred, by questionable means, into private and corporate hands, the liability is over the top’ – it has engendered the view that their only way forward is ‘complete, total central control’.

Central Bank Digital Currencies

How will this ‘total control’ be achieved? One key element will be the introduction of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs). According to Fitts: The fundamental value of digitized systems, from the elite perspective, is that they enable centralized control. So, by creating CBDCs the financial transaction control grid becomes the means by which you enable centralized control; that is, slavery. Watch ‘We Need to Talk about Mr Global – Part Two’.

How does this work? CBDCs allow the Central Bank to determine exactly what products and services your digital currency can be spent on, when it can spent and where it can be spent. It also allows the issuing authority to freeze, reduce or empty your bank account, and to alter its functionality with the latest ‘update’, based on your ‘social credit score’, political allegiance or if you do not comply with certain directives. But it goes beyond this.

According to the Bank for International Settlements:

‘The G20 has made enhancing cross-border payments a global priority and has identified CBDC as a potential way forward to improving such payments. A “holy grail” solution for cross-border payments is one which allows such payments to be immediate, cheap, universally accessible and settled in a secure settlement medium. For wholesale payments, central bank money is the preferred medium for financial

market infrastructures. A multi-CBDC platform upon which multiple central banks can issue and exchange their respective CBDCs is a particularly promising solution for achieving this vision, and mBridge is a wholesale multi-CBDC project that aims to advance towards this goal. It builds on previous work…. Project mBridge tests the hypothesis that an efficient, low-cost, real-time and scalable cross-border multi-CBDC arrangement can provide a network of direct central bank and commercial participant connectivity and greatly increase the potential for international trade flows and cross-border business at large…. All the while safeguarding currency sovereignty and monetary and financial stability by appropriately integrating policy, regulatory and legal compliance, and privacy considerations.’ See ‘Project mBridge: Connecting economies through CBDC’.

Apart from the fact that the G20 governments are distinctly unrepresentative of the world’s people, these words are typical of the type usually chosen when the Elite is intent on sugarcoating their lies to conceal their true agenda.

Fortunately, Agustin Carstens of the Bank for International Settlements has been more forthcoming: ‘We don’t know, for example, who’s using a $100 bill today, we don’t know who is using a 1,000 peso bill today. The key difference with the CBDC is the central bank will have absolute control on the rules and regulations that will determine the use of that expression of central bank liability, and also we will have the technology to enforce that.’ Watch ‘Cross-Border Payments: A Vision for the Future’. And here is the Bank of England advising government ministers in the UK on the issue of programming CBDCs: ‘Bank of England tells ministers to intervene on digital currency “programming”’. For a more detailed explanation, see ‘What Is Programmable Money?’ And for an update on progress in your country, see ‘CBDC: A Country-by-Country Guide’.

Before proceeding, however, it is worthwhile noting the conflict that is going on between the central banks and the commercial banks (the traditional actors in the retail banking sector, that is, the part of banking where people interact directly with a bank), as well as that between the commercial banks and the big tech companies, such as PayPal, Alipay, Facebook and Amazon that have developed or are developing their own digital currencies and/or payments systems outside the traditional financial system. While non-bank financial institutions long-ago overtook commercial banks in lending, bank influence generally continues to decline and is accelerating in the face of the competition from the technology giants. Why the conflict? Because a CBDC risks collapsing the commercial banking sector completely by eliminating retail banking and thus destabilizing the long-standing financial system. For some discussion of this, watch Alice Fulwood’s presentation ‘Could digital currencies put banks out of business?’ There is no doubt, of course, that this conflict will be resolved and that it will not be in our favour.

In any case, CBDCs are just one feature of their planned technocracy which includes digitizing your identity, issuing you a social credit score, geofencing you in one of the Elite’s ‘smart cities’ and feeding you insects and processed trash, among many other elements. See ‘Digitizing Your Identity is the Fast-Track to Slavery: How Can You Defend Your Freedom?’ and ‘Digital Currency: The Fed Moves toward Monetary Totalitarianism’.

And to elaborate the significance of imprisoning you in a ‘smart’ city, Patrick Wood points out the evidence both in the literature and in practice: The intention is to force us off the land, as is already happening in China, and at gunpoint if necessary, so that ‘vacated farm land’ can be combined ‘into giant factory farms to be operated by advanced technology such as agricultural robots and automated tractors’. Once relocated into the ‘smart’ city of the government’s choice, everyone will be subject to 24 hour surveillance using a plethora of ‘smart’ technologies such as biometric facial scanning, geospatial tracking and CBDCs, forced onto public transport which will not include the option of leaving the city, and confined to those work and other activities approved by the relevant technocrats. See ‘Day 9: Technocracy And Smart Cities’.

The bottom line, in simple language however, is the same as it has always been: Endlessly acting to consolidate their control over the rest of us, our money is being stolen by the Elite for their own ends and they are not required to report it and they cannot be held accountable, legally or otherwise. The only difference to what has happened historically is that now even the pretense of some form of equity, the rule of law and even the notion of democracy are being abandoned in the final rush to techno-totalitarianism and wealth concentration.

Beyond this, however, other components of the elite program are designed to play a part in destroying human society and the global economy. For a summary of these, see ‘Killing Off Humanity: How The Global Elite Is Using Eugenics And Transhumanism To Shape Our Future’.

Collapsing the Global Economy

Not content with these measures, however, the war in central Asia was precipitated by the Elite to advance key elements of their program. Superficially portrayed by most politicians and corporate media as a war between Russia and Ukraine, many thoughtful analysts perceive some of the deeper strands of what has occurred: Since the collapse of the Soviet Union and NATO commitments made at the end of the Cold War, NATO has consistently violated those commitments and there has been routine Ukrainian attacks on Donetsk and Luhansk over the past eight years. These and other events have ensured a long but steady ‘lead time’ in the final build up to the war, precipitating the military response of Russia, as intended. For just four thoughtful analyses, see ‘Understanding The Great Game in Ukraine’, ‘Ukraine, Russia, and the New World Order’, ‘Some of Us Don’t Think the Russian Invasion Was “Aggression.” Here’s Why.’ and ‘The U.S. Is Leading the World Into the Abyss’.

Obscured by the war, however, the leaderships of both Russia and Ukraine are heavily involved in the World Economic Forum and both have been heavily committed to imposing the elite agenda on their populations. In short, the Russia-Ukraine war serves elite purposes well with consequences including even greater disruption of food and fuel supply chains than the ‘Great Reset’ was able to achieve alone. See ‘The War in Ukraine: Understanding and Resisting the Global Elite’s Deeper Agenda’.

Similarly, the sabotage of the Nord Stream 1 & 2 gas pipelines – see ‘Ukraine War: New Developments’  – might be seen through various lenses but, again, it serves elite purposes well. As Tom Luongo noted: ‘The important thing I keep trying to point out [is] that thinking in terms of “country” is ultimately the wrong lens to view these people’s actions. Factions are the better lens. Factions cross political borders.’ See ‘The Curious Whodunit of Nordstreams 1 and 2’. Given that the sabotage of these two pipelines is seriously exacerbating the energy crisis in Europe, while displacing people’s anger onto one or other parties in the war, as always the elite forces driving destruction of the world economy escape scrutiny.

Beyond this, on 7 October 2022 the Biden Administration dealt a ‘nuclear’ strike to the hi-tech industry by imposing onerous new export rules that cut off supply of essential technology (advanced semiconductors, chip-making equipment and supercomputer components) to China, immediately and adversely impacting Chinese production. See ‘Implementation of Additional Export Controls: Certain Advanced Computing and Semiconductor Manufacturing Items’. But whatever pain this will inflict on the Chinese, it will inflict far more pain on ordinary people who will be required to deal with the outcomes of this latest supply-chain disruption: higher prices, more battered household budgets and fewer families able to scrape by on shrinking wages. See ‘Biden’s Tech-War Goes Nuclear’ and ‘US Economic War on China Threatens Global Microchip Industry’.

In any case, the ongoing destruction of the global economy will continue even while, apparently, considerable effort is being made to restructure key elements of it, such as those in relation to trade relations, trade routes, currencies and international banking being undertaken in various international fora. For one discussion of these ongoing efforts, see ‘Russia, India, China, Iran: the Quad that really matters’.

But, again, how serious are these efforts when all governments are collaborating closely on the fundamental Elite program? At one of these meetings, recently concluded, the G20 Summit in Bali – see ‘G20 Bali Leaders’ Declaration’ – Moscow, Beijing, Washington and all other governments present, agreed to ‘the creation of a global health-preserving Pandemic Fund sponsored by the WHO, the World Bank, Bill Gates, and the Rockefeller Foundation. The fund will ensure there is plenty of money for experimental genetic vaccines in the weeks, months, and decades ahead.’ Beyond this, however, the Declaration contains ‘purple prose’ about ‘digital transformation’, ‘interoperability of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) for cross-border payments’, and other elements of the Elite’s technocratic program. As Riley Waggaman observed: ‘It’s truly heart-warming that even amidst ceaseless geopolitical squabbling, Moscow and the Collective West can sit down at the negotiating table, break bread, and agree to cattle-tag the entire world.’ See ‘World leaders agree to cattle-tag the planet’.

And while a recent World Economic Forum report, based on the views of 50 chief economists from around the world, sanitized economic prospects by simply referring to a likely forthcoming ‘recession’ either in 2022 or 2023, spokesperson Saadia Zahidi couldn’t avoid mentioning the heavy consensus that real wages will decline, poverty will increase and ‘social unrest is expected to continue to rise’ in response to rises in the cost of living, particularly due to production and supply chain disruptions in fuel and food supplies. See ‘Special Agenda Dialogue on the Future of the Global Economy’.

Taking a similarly ‘moderate’ stance, in its recent ‘World Economic Outlook’, the International Monetary Fund warned that ‘More than a third of the global economy will contract this year or next, while the three largest economies – the United States, the European Union, and China – will continue to stall. In short, the worst is yet to come, and for many people 2023 will feel like a recession.’ See ‘World Economic Outlook – Countering the Cost-of-Living Crisis’. At the media briefing to launch the report, the Director of the IMF’s Research Department, Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, noted that ‘the global economy is headed for stormy waters’ and ‘Too many low-income countries are close to or are already in debt distress. Progress toward orderly debt restructuring… is urgently needed to avert a wave of sovereign debt crises. Time may soon run out.’ See ‘WEO Press Briefing Annual Meetings 2022’.

But other reports suggest something far worse.

Summarizing his own extensive research on the subject over the past three years, in a recent interview Professor Michel Chossudovsky simply explains what triggered the economic collapse, referring to the origin of the crisis with decisions made in early 2020: ‘This is really Economics 101:… the announcement of the lockdown… implies the confinement of the labor force on the one hand and the freezing of the workplace on the other…. What happens? The answer is obvious: Collapse! Economic and social collapse on an unprecedented basis because it was implemented simultaneously in 190 countries.’ Watch ‘The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity’.

Noting the complete failure of authorities to hold even one corporate executive to account for the financial collapse they caused in 2008 – when banking institutions intentionally sold securities they knew were bad to defraud customers and increase their own profits, as carefully reported in a ‘Frontline’ documentary in 2013 – Dr Joseph Mercola argues that the ‘same criminal bankers are now intentionally destroying the global financial system in order to replace it with something even worse – social credit scores, digital identity and Central Banking Digital Currencies (CBDCs), which will give them the ability to control not only your individual finances but also everything else in your life’. Apparently unaware of the extensive lead time on what is happening, he goes on to observe that ‘We’re now at the point where banksters have self-selected themselves to rule the whole world, tossing notions of democracy, freedom and human dignity in the waste bin along the way.’ See ‘Who Is Behind the Economic Collapse?’

As explained above, these ‘banksters’ operate beyond the rule of law too.

According to the Irish economist Philip Pilkington: ‘The Western world today faces a serious risk of slipping into another Great Depression. This risk has arisen… due to global economic relations deteriorating to the point of all out warfare.’ Noting the critical importance of the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines, leaving Europe with ‘insufficient access to energy, the price of energy in Europe will remain extremely high for years to come. European industry, for which energy is a key input, will become uncompetitive.’ See ‘The next Great Depression? Economic warfare has severe implications’.

According to former BlackRock manager, Edward Dowd, the outcome of what has been happening, which is being accelerated by the corruption that has plagued Wall Street since the 1990s, is that the forthcoming financial collapse is a ‘mathematical certainty’ and will occur within the next six to 24 months. Watch ‘Ex-BlackRock Manager: Global Financial Collapse a “Mathematical Certainty”’.

Or, in the words of strategic risk consultant William Engdahl: What is coming in the months ahead, barring a dramatic policy reversal, ‘is the worst economic depression in history to date’. See ‘Global Planned Financial Tsunami Has Just Begun’.

After listing a sequence of industry shutdowns and other measures in Europe because of energy shortages, Michael Snyder simply observes that ‘This is what an economic collapse looks like’, notes the prospect (also predicted by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and, as we saw above, the World Economic Forum) of ‘civil unrest’ and warns that ‘Europe is going to descend into “the new Dark Ages” this winter, and the entire world will experience extreme pain as a result.’ See ‘This Winter, Europe Plunges Into “The New Dark Ages”’.

According to Irina Slav, countries of the European Union have suffered a consistent decline in gas and electricity consumption this year amid record-breaking prices. Businesses are shutting down factories, downsizing or relocating, while production of such basic products as steel, zinc, aluminium, chemicals, plastics and ceramics has been cut substantially, if not slashed dramatically. Observing that the European Union is heading for a recession that is ‘quite clear to anyone watching the indicators’ she goes on to state that ‘Europe may well be on the way to deindustrialization’. See ‘Europe May See Forced De-Industrialization As Result Of Energy Crisis’.

Dr. Seshadri Kumar agrees. He has offered an intensively detailed critique of the economic fallout from the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war and events such as the sanctions against Russia and the sabotage of the Nord Stream 1 & 2 gas pipelines. Following his careful analysis, he notes a series of conclusions including that ‘The scarcity of oil and gas, combined with the scarcity of commodities, will lead to the De-Industrialization of Europe in short order.’

‘Europe needs what Russia has (and what China has). It cannot do without those things. But Russia (and China) can do without what Europe has. They are self-sufficient. The financial impact of European sanctions on Russia is minimal. Therefore, economic sanctions against Russia (or China) will never work. But, because of the overwhelming dependence of Europe on Russian (and Chinese) goods, sanctions on Russia (or China) will utterly destroy Europe. The only hope for Europe to prevent a total economic catastrophe is to achieve an agreement with Russia that ends the current destructive sanctions as soon as possible, and at whatever political cost, including the abandonment of Ukraine and cession of Ukrainian territory to Russia. The longer this is postponed, the more extensive the permanent economic damage to Europe will be….

‘A New World Order is taking birth before our eyes….

‘The sanctions on Russia will be seen in hindsight as Europe’s Stalingrad as well as its Waterloo.’ See ‘The Coming European Economic Apocalypse’.

Commenting on the banking system, precious metals businessman Stefan Gleason warns that ‘The global fractional-reserve banking system is teetering on the brink of failure. Financial strains are exposing major banks as under-capitalized and ill prepared to weather additional strains from high inflation, rising interest rates, and a weakening economy. Banks operating outside the United States are presently most vulnerable. A spike in interest rates concomitant with a spike in the exchange rate of the Federal Reserve note “dollar” is wreaking havoc in global debt markets and driving capital flight. Many analysts fear bank runs are coming. They are already hitting developing countries.’ See ‘Banks on the Brink: Is Your Money Safe?’

Noting that imposition of technologies associated with the fourth industrial revolution and the war in Ukraine are impacting the labor force, among a wide variety of other impacts on society as a whole, ‘Winter Oak’ observes that while anticipating future employment trends is not easy, ‘the combined threat of pandemics and wars means the labour force is on the brink of an unprecedented reshuffle with technology reshaping logistics, potentially threatening hundreds of millions of blue and white collar jobs, resulting in the greatest and fastest displacement of jobs in history and foreshadowing a labour market shift which was previously inconceivable.’

Furthermore: the nation state model is being upended ‘by a global technocracy, consisting of an unelected consortium of leaders of industry, central banking oligarchs and private financial institutions, most of which are predominantly non-state corporate actors attempting to restructure global governance and enlist themselves in the global decision-making process.’ See ‘The Great Reset Phase 2: War’.

James Corbett simply observes that ‘the financial order we have known our whole lives is slated for destruction’. The demolition of the economy provides cover to conceal implementation of other key elements of the elite plan in which all fit neatly together: ‘vaccine passports introduce the digital ID. The digital ID provides the infrastructure for the CBDCs. The CBDCs provide a mechanism for enforcement of a social credit system.’ As Corbett notes: ‘To see these events as separate events unfolding haphazardly and coincidentally is to miss the entire point.’ See ‘The Controlled Demolition of the Economy’.

And, according to a source cited by Anviksha Patel, executives at the giant hedge-fund firm Elliott Management Corp. recently sent a letter to investors advising that the world is ‘on the path to hyperinflation’ which could lead to ‘global societal collapse and civil or international strife’. See ‘Hedge-fund giant Elliott warns looming hyperinflation could lead to “global societal collapse”’.

Among many other commentaries offering insight into one or more aspects of what is happening, Oxfam documents the fact that ‘billionaires in the food and energy sectors are increasing their fortunes by $1 billion dollars every two days’ and that a new billionaire is being created every 30 hours while nearly a million people are being pushed into extreme poverty at nearly the same rate. See ‘Pandemic creates new billionaire every 30 hours – now a million people could fall into extreme poverty at same rate in 2022’.

But perhaps the most evocative account of what is transpiring is offered by Egon von Greyerz, founder and managing partner of Matterhorn Asset Management in Switzerland, a company that has ‘always held a deep respect for analysing and managing risk’: By the end of the 1990s, it was clear ‘that global [financial] risk was growing increasingly apparent as debts and derivative levels rapidly rose’. See Matterhorn Asset Management: History.

Noting that laws governing the functioning of modern economies ensure that ‘No banker, no company management or business owner ever has to take the loss personally if he makes a mistake. Losses are socialised and profits are capitalised. Heads I win, Tails I don’t lose!’ Greyerz goes on to note that ‘there are honourable exceptions.’ Some Swiss banks still operate in accordance with the principle of unlimited personal liability for the partners/owners which clearly encourages a responsible, ethical approach to the conduct of business.

He observes: ‘If the global financial system and governments applied that principle, imagine how different the world would look not just financially but also ethically.’ If we had such a system, he contends, then human values would come before adoration of ‘the golden calf’. And evaluation of an investment proposal or a loan would be based on a judgment about its soundness economically and ethically, as well as a judgment that the risk of loss was minimal, rather than just the size of the personal profit it might return.

Instead, since 1971 (when President Nixon unilaterally terminated convertibility of the US dollar into gold, effectively ending the 1944 Bretton Woods system) ‘governments and central banks have contributed to the creation of almost $300 trillion of new money plus quasi money in the form of unfunded liabilities and derivatives [‘the most dangerous and aggressive financial instrument of destruction’] of $2.2 quadrillion making $2.5 [quadrillion] in total. As debt explodes, the world could easily face a debt burden of $3 quadrillion by 2025-2030.’ At the same time, ‘Central banks around the world hold $2 trillion [in gold reserves].’

The outcome is inevitable: ‘with over $2 quadrillion (2 and 15 zeros) of debt and liabilities resting on a foundation of $2 trillion of government-owned gold that makes a gold coverage of 0.1% or a leverage of 1000X!… an inverse pyramid with a very weak foundation.’ Noting that a sound financial system ‘needs a very solid foundation of real money’ it is simply the case that quadrillions of debt and liabilities ‘can not survive resting on this feeble amount of gold. So the $2 quadrillion financial weapon of mass destruction is now on the way to totally destroy the system. This is a global house of cards that will collapse at some point in the not too distant future…. No government and no central bank can solve the problem that they have created. More of the same just won’t work.’ See ‘$2 Quadrillion Debt Precariously Resting on $2 Trillion Gold’.

The most likely outcome, according to Greyerz: ‘The dollar will go to ZERO and the US will default. The same will happen to most countries.’ See ‘In the End the $ Goes to Zero and the US Defaults’.

The fundamental summary then, according to Greyerz, is this: ‘This system will start to implode.’… ‘The whole banking system is rotten. With the problems in Europe now it is actually a critical situation…. We have a two tier economy:… the rich are still rich but the poor are really poor. And you see that in every country in the world now… People haven’t got enough money to live…. This is going to be a human disaster of major proportions: it’s so sad and governments will not have any chance of doing anything about it.’ In the US outside the metropolitan areas, ‘the poverty is incredibly high and people live in boxes… poverty is everywhere and sadly, we are only seeing the beginning and there is no solution…. From a human point of view, we are looking at a major disaster.’ Watch ‘$2.5 Quadrillion Disaster Waiting to Happen’.

Will action be taken to halt the collapse? According to alternative economist Brandon Smith, it won’t. Consider this: ‘What if the goal of the Fed is the destruction of the middle class?… What if they are luring investors into markets with rumors of a pivot, tricking those investors into pumping money back into markets and then triggering losses yet again with more rate hikes and hawkish language? What if this is a wealth destruction steam valve? What if it’s a trap? I present this idea because we have seen this before in the US, from 1929 through the 1930s during the Great Depression. The Fed used very similar tactics to systematically destroy middle class wealth and consolidate power for the international banking elites.’

Smith’s conclusion? ‘This is an engineered crash, not an accidental crash.’ See ‘Markets Are Expecting The Federal Reserve To Save Them – It’s Not Going To Happen’.

And that, of course, is the point: the crash has been engineered. Why?

In summarizing the ongoing collapse of European infrastructure and industry, and energy shortages in the USA, Mike Adams notes that the ‘globalists are decimating the pillars of civilization in order to cause collapse and depopulation…. The overarching goal is to exterminate the vast majority of the human population, then enslave the survivors.’ See ‘Dark Times: Industry and infrastructure collapsing by the day across Europe and the USA’.

But this is no surprise. All that any thoughtful observer needs to do is consider history, listen to what the Global Elite is telling us they are doing, observe them doing it, and then simply inform people what is at hand: The destruction of the global economy, as part of the fundamental reshaping of world order.

After all, the Elite has been crystal clear. It’s fundamental aim is to kill off a substantial proportion of the human population and reduce those humans and transhumans left alive to slavery while confined in their technocratic prison; even wealth concentration is anciliary to that, although a product of it. See ‘The Elite Coup to Kill or Enslave Us: Why Can’t Governments, Legal Actions and Protests Stop Them?’ And if you crash the global economy denying people regular food, energy to stay warm and the capacity to communicate effectively, most of those left alive will be inclined to submit to whatever conditions they are offered in order to survive. How bad does your technocratic prison sound now? Even if you are eating insects?

So, to reiterate a vital point, the Elite agenda in relation to the economy is intimately related to its wider agenda in relation to eugenics and technocracy.

In an interview about her recently published book – see One Nation Under Blackmail: The sordid union between Intelligence and Organized Crime that gave rise to Jeffrey Epstein – Whitney Webb simply observes that ‘we are being herded into a technofeudalism, slavery… there’s a lot of different names for it going around but it’s not good and it’s organized crime running the show’…. Elaborating, Webb explained that ‘They’re looking at feudalism and how do you create a class of slaves that cannot even cognitively rebel ever again.’ Watch ‘How Elites Will Create a New Class of Slaves’.

How will this happen? While it will obviously require several of the range of measures being introduced, particularly including the deployment of 5G, the digitization of your identity and the utilization of a range of other technologies such as artificial intelligence and geofencing, here is what Clive Thompson, retired Managing Director of Union Bancaire Privée in Switzerland, believes might happen:

‘I think its quite likely that the CBDC will arrive and it will also be the subject of the currency reset at the same time. At some point the world is going to go into a crisis or a country is going to go into a crisis…. When that happens I think they will close the banks, you will wake up on a Sunday morning and hear the news that they’ve shut the banks, they’re not going to open on Monday. Then by Monday evening or Tuesday you’ll get the announcement that we’re having a new currency – the CBDC – and don’t worry it will be one-to-one against the old currency but there will be some restrictions on your ability to convert your old money into the new money.

‘So if you’re poor and you have a small bank account it will be converted one-to-one straight away, and you’ll probably even find that you get a free gift from the government to kickstart the system, maybe three or five thousand pounds will be given to every citizen gratuitiously to kickstart the new system to the new CBDC. But if you have a hundred thousand or a million in the bank you’re going to be told ‘Yes, it’s one-to-one but you’re going to have to wait to convert it to the new currency.’ Now “wait” means “never”, we all know that. But they won’t tell you that. They’ll say it’s a temporary suspension because we’re in the middle of a crisis, the people are rioting in the street, we need to calm the system so ‘Here’s some free money everybody, go and enjoy yourselves.’…

‘So I think the CBDC will arrive as a consequence of a crisis and when that happens there will be a limitation on how much of your old currency you can convert, at one-to-one, with the new one…. But the advantage of this, from the government’s point of view, is it’s to all intents and purposes wiping the slate clean because all their liabilities will be denominated in a currency that nobody can use, nobody can spend.’ Watch ‘The Currency Reset Will Wipe Out Creditors and Usher in CBDCs. Part 1’.

In preparing to cope with the disruption this must inevitably cause, among other assets that would be critically useful while retaining value, such as open-pollinated (non-hybrid) seeds, Thompson suggests gold and silver (including gold and silver coins), land, property, equities, collectibles (such as art and rarer coins), machine and other tools, electricity generators, useful items, animals, firewood, washing powder, canned food and house extensions. See ‘The Currency Reset Will Wipe Out Creditors and Usher in CBDCs. Part 2.’

Of course, Thompson might be wrong in his prediction of precisely how the technocratic state will ultimately be imposed. But imposed it will be, one way or another, unless we are effectively resisting the foundational components of the Elite program.

Is cryptocurrency part of the answer?

Many people are suggesting cryptocurrencies as one way around some of the problems we face. However, the very basis of sound economy for any world that is unfolding is self-reliance, particularly in relation to essential needs around food, water, clothing, shelter and energy, within a local, sustainable community that is as self-sufficient as possible, and able to nonviolently defend itself.

Complemented by use of local markets and trading schemes – whether using local currencies or goods and services directly – this will maximise economic survival prospects for those participating (and no doubt some others besides).

Anything that is internet-based will become increasingly vulnerable, and there are definitely plans to shut down some/all of it, depending on the scenario. Cyber Polygon makes that crystal clear. See ‘Taking Control by Destroying Cash: Beware Cyber Polygon as Part of the Elite Coup’.

And unless a currency is backed by something with genuine value – as currencies were backed by gold or other metals in earlier eras – or there is widespread confidence in a currency for another reason (as currencies around the world have been backed by their governments until now), it can become valueless very quickly.

Moreover, the big banks are heavily invested in cryptocurrencies: Another reason to be wary. See ‘3 Banks That Have Big Plans for Blockchain and Cryptocurrency’.

But for an extremely succinct warning against crypto, check out this brief statement from Catherine Austin Fitts: ‘If you move to crypto, and I just want to really underscore this, crypto is not a currency, it is a control system.’ See ‘The Dangers Of Cryptocurrencies’.

And, perhaps, the recent bankruptcy of the FTX Group is worth considering. See ‘“This Is Unprecedented”: Enron Liquidator Overseeing FTX Bankruptcy Speechless: “I Have Never Seen Anything Like This”’.

For another of the many critiques of crypto, see retired corporate accountant Lawrence A. Stellato’s ‘The Dangers of Cryptocurrencies’.

Crypto has a high environmental cost too, given the technology it uses and the energy it needs to run.

In essence: Just not part of the future we must work together to build.

The Rothschilds and Transhumanism

Before concluding this investigation, it is worth returning to consideration of the Rothschild family in relation to one final issue: Transhumanism.

Why is this important?

Throughout this investigation, I have endeavoured to document a few basic facts: The Global Elite is intent on reshaping world order by killing off a substantial proportion of the human population and enslaving those left alive as transhuman slaves imprisoned in ‘smart’ cities. As part of achieving this outcome, the global economy is being ransacked and destroyed: This is intended to deprive people of the sustenance necessary to resist the entire Elite program that, among other outcomes, will concentrate virtually all remaining wealth in Elite hands.

This program has been planned in detail by elite agents in organizations like the World Economic Forum and the World Health Organization and is being implemented by relevant international organizations and multinational corporations (particularly those in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries, and the corporate media), as well as national governments and medical organizations.

But, as I have pointed out, every organization, corporation and government is composed of individual human beings who make decisions (consciously or unconsciously) about what they do in any given circumstance. And while structural power is not something that can be ignored, individuals do have agency.

To illustrate this point, I have used the House of Rothschild as one example of a family of individuals who make decisions about how to act in the world and how the decisions of this family exercise enormous influence over world events. Consider another brief example of the decisions made by Rothschild family members and what has transpired as a result.

The Rothschild influence over world banking and the global economy, and thus political systems, is heavily documented and illustrated above. So, given the current Elite push to substantially reduce the human population and introduce a technocratic state populated by transhuman slaves, one question that inevitably suggests itself as worthy of further investigation concerns the possible involvement of the Rothschilds in the research and development of the technologies and biotechnologies that make this all possible.

An investigation soon reveals that Nathaniel Mayer Victor Rothschild, the 3rd Baron Rothschild, was born in 1910 and attended Trinity College, Cambridge, where he read physiology, later gaining a PhD. After working for MI5 during World War II, ‘he joined the zoology department at Cambridge University from 1950 to 1970. He served as chairman of the Agricultural Research Council from 1948 to 1958 and as worldwide head of research at Royal Dutch/Shell [as noted above, a family business] from 1963 to 1970.’ See ‘Victor Rothschild, 3rd Baron Rothschild’.

Beyond this, however, articles in ‘The Financial Times’ in 1982-1983 reveal that N.M. Rothschild, of which the biologist Lord Rothschild was head, had established a venture capital fund called Biotechnology Investments in 1981 to attract £25m investments for biotechnology research. However, the fund, registered in the tax haven of Guernsey, had such exacting scientific and financial standards that it was having trouble identifying companies that could meet those standards despite the rapidly growing field. According to one news report in 1982: ‘City [of London] estimates put the number of new technology companies established in the last five years at about 150, mostly in North America. At least 70 are practising genetic engineering.’ See ‘Newsclippings re. Biotechnology Investments Limited (BIL) owned by N.M. Rothschild Asset Management’.

But lest you are concerned that the Rothschilds failed to establish a firm foothold in this fledgling industry, you might be reassured, but no wiser, to read the entry on the CHSL Archives Repository (that focuses on ‘Preserving and promoting the history of molecular biology’) titled ‘Rothschild Asset Management – Rothschild, Lord Victor’.

You will be no wiser because the archive is marked ‘Closed until Jan 2045 – Suppress all images for 60 years’.

As it turns out, however, the Rothschilds, whose business acumen is never questioned, are still raising funds and investing heavily in biotechnology. See ‘Edmond de Rothschild private equity unit to invest in biotech’. It’s just that, as usual, while you are hearing from elite agents (such as Klaus Schwab, Yuval Noah Harari and Elon Musk) who publicly promote transhumanist endeavours, you are hearing very little from those, like the Rothschilds, who prefer control and profit to publicity.

Consequently, the Rothschilds are playing a key role both in the ongoing ransacking of the global economy and in profiting from the control they are helping to make possible through introduction of transhumanist technologies. It goes without saying that the family has heavy investments in many other technologies too, including those that will be critical to the success of the imminent technocratic world order, such as the Internet of Things. See, for example, Rothschild Technology Limited.

Of course, the Rothschilds and other Elite families with whom they are interconnected in various ways are also heavily involved through investments in major asset management corporations such as Vanguard and BlackRock. But again, it is not just about wealth concentration; it is about control and depopulation too. So, for example, the Rockefellers, another family closely connected to the Rothschilds, are also well-known for their longstanding involvement in social engineering and eugenics. See ‘Where Did this “New World Order” Coup Come From? The Rockefeller’s “Social Engineering Project”’ and ‘Killing Off Humanity: How the Global Elite is using Eugenics and Transhumanism to Shape Our Future’.

So What Can We Do about This?

Because it controls the political, economic, financial, technological, medical, educational, media and other important levers of society, the Elite profits hugely from daily human activity. But it can also precipitate an ‘extreme event’ (or the delusion of one) – a war, financial crisis (including depression), revolution, ‘natural disaster’, ‘pandemic’ (if you think that the Covid-19 scam was the last of its kind, see ‘Who’s Driving the Pandemic Express?’ and watch the plan for the next one, already available: ‘Catastrophic Contagion’) – and use its control of the political, economic, technological and other levers mentioned to manage how events unfold while simultaneously managing the narrative about what is taking place so that the truth is concealed.

This means that the Elite’s killing and exploitation of the human population at large is hidden behind whatever ‘enemy’ (human or otherwise) that Elite agents in government and the media direct the attention of the public towards at any given time.

It doesn’t matter whether we all end up blaming Hitler, Saddam or ‘the Russians’, ‘the capitalists’ or ‘Wall Street’, ‘the government’, ‘the climate’ or ‘the virus’, we never blame the Elite. So we never take action that is focused on stopping those individuals and their corporations and institutions that are fundamentally responsible for inflicting unending harm on us all, as well as the Earth and all of its other creatures too.

Fortunately, while the Elite is adept at devising an ever-expanding range of tools that can be used to manipulate events while simultaneously concealing this behind a barrage of propaganda, there is still just enough time to finally recognize what is happening and to end it. Otherwise, just as in the board game ‘Monopoly’, where one player finally owns everything and the other players have been forced out of the game, the Elite will win the ‘final battle’ against humanity, capture all wealth and reduce those humans and transhumans left alive to the status of slaves. See ‘The Final Battle for Humanity: It is “Now or Never” in the Long War Against Homo Sapiens’.

Does this sound insane to you? Of course it is. Do you think the Elite is insane? Of course it is. See ‘The Global Elite is Insane Revisited’ with further detail in ‘Why Violence?’ and ‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice’.

But just because someone is insane and their plan is insane, it doesn’t mean they cannot succeed. Remember Adolf Hitler? Idi Amin in Uganda? Pol Pot in Cambodia? Insane violence of unspeakable magnitude can succeed if too many people either cannot perceive the insanity, are afraid of it or simply believe it is too preposterous – ‘It can’t be true.’ – and do nothing about it. Or, in the cases just mentioned, not until it was too late to prevent vast killing.

So here is the summary: Humanity faces the gravest threat in our history. But because our opponent – the Global Elite – is insane, we cannot rely on reason or thoughtfulness alone to get us out of this mess: You cannot reason with insanity. And because the Global Elite controls international and national political processes, the global economy and legal systems, efforts to seek redress through those channels must fail. See ‘The Elite Coup to Kill or Enslave Us: Why Can’t Governments, Legal Actions and Protests Stop Them?’

Hence, if we are going to defeat this long-planned, complex and multifaceted threat, we must defeat its foundational components, not delude ourselves that we can defeat it one threat at a time or even by choosing those threats we think are the worst and addressing those first.

This is because the elite program, whatever its flaws and inconsistencies, as well as its potential for technological failure at times, is deeply integrated so we must direct our efforts at preventing or halting those foundational components of it that make everything else possible. This is why random acts of resistance will achieve nothing. Effective resistance requires the focused exercise of our power. In simple terms, we must be ‘strategic’.

If you are interested in being strategic in your resistance to the ‘Great Reset’ and its related agendas, you are welcome to participate in the ‘We Are Human, We Are Free’ campaign which identifies a list of 30 strategic goals for doing so.

In addition and more simply, you can download the one-page flyer that identifies a short series of crucial nonviolent actions that anyone can take. This flyer, recently updated and now available in 23 languages (Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Malay, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Spanish, Slovak and Turkish) with several more languages in the pipeline, can be downloaded from here: ‘One-page Flyer’.

If this strategic resistance to the ‘Great Reset’ (and related agendas) appeals to you, consider joining the ‘We Are Human, We Are Free’ Telegram group (with a link accessible from the website).

And if you want to organize a mass mobilization, such as a rally, at least make sure that one or more of any team of organizers and/or speakers is responsible for inviting people to participate in this campaign and that some people at the event are designated to hand out the one-page flyer about the campaign.

If you like, you can also watch, share and/or organize to show, a short video about the campaign here: ‘We Are Human, We Are Free’ video.

In parallel with our resistance, we must create the political, economic and social structures that serve our needs, not those of the Elite. That is why long-standing efforts to encourage and support people to grow their own food, participate in local trading schemes (involving the exchange of knowledge, skills, services and products with or without a local medium of exchange) and develop structures for cooperation, governance, nonviolent defence and networking with other communities are so important. Of course, indigenous peoples still have many of these capacities – lost to vast numbers of humans as civilization has expanded over the past five millennia – but many people are now engaged in renewed efforts to create local communities, such as ecovillages, and local trading schemes, such as Community Exchange Systems. Obviously, we must initiate/expand these forms of individual and community engagement in city neighbourhoods too.

Moreover, as Catherine Austin Fitts reminds us, if we choose that option, there is nothing to stop us having our own decentralised money system, starting with our own local community central bank and our own local community currency. Watch ‘We Need to Talk about Mr Global – Part Two’.

Finally, as noted by Professor Carroll Quigley in the very last words of his nearly-1,000 page epic Tragedy & Hope:

‘Some things we clearly do not yet know, including the most important of all, which is how to bring up children to form them into mature, responsible adults.’ See Tragedy & Hope: A History of the World in Our Time, p. 947.

Fortunately, the passage of time since Quigley wrote these words has revealed an answer to this challenge. So, if you want to raise children who are powerfully able to investigate, analyze and act, you are welcome to make ‘My Promise to Children’.

Conclusion

Since the dawn of human civilization 5,000 years ago, in one context after another, some people who are more terrified than others in their immediate vicinity have sought what they perceived to be increased personal ‘security’ by gaining and exercising greater control over the people and resources around them.

Progressively, over time, this serious psychological dysfunctionality has been compounding until, today, the degree of ‘security’ and control that some people require includes all of us and all of the world’s resources. For want of a better term, we might call them the ‘Global Elite’ but it is important to understand that they are insane, criminal and ruthlessly violent.

This takeover of all of us and everything on Planet Earth is currently being attempted by this Elite through the ‘Great Reset’ and its related fourth industrial revolution, eugenicist and transhumanist agendas.

In essence, the intention is to kill off a substantial proportion of us, as is now happening, enclose the commons forever (and force those who live in regional areas off the land) while imprisoning those left alive as transhuman slaves in their technocratic ‘smart cities’ where we will ‘own nothing’ but provide the compliant workforce necessary to serve Elite ends.

Whether wars or financial crises (including depressions), ‘natural disasters’, revolutions or ‘pandemics’, great events are contrived by the Elite to distract attention from and facilitate profound changes in world order and obscure vast transfers of wealth from ordinary people to this Elite.

And this is done with the active complicity of Elite agents – including international organizations such as the United Nations, national governments and legal systems – which is why redress cannot be found through mainstream political or legal channels.

However, distracted by an endless stream of irrelevant ‘news’, superficial debates such as capitalism vs. socialism, monarchy vs. democracy, this political party vs. that political party, or even which football team is better, virtually all people are oblivious to how the world really works and who is orchestrating how history will be written by elite agents.

Is there conflict between individuals, families and groups within the Elite? Of course! But unlike the conflicts they endlessly throw in our faces to distract and manipulate us, the unifying agenda to which they all subscribe is to perpetually restructure world order to expand Elite control and extract more wealth for Elites. 5,000 years of human history categorically demonstrates that point.

Hence, if humanity is to defeat this Elite program, we must do it ourselves.

And if you want your resistance to this carefully-planned Elite technocratic takeover to be effective, then it must be strategic. Otherwise, your death or technocratic enslavement is now imminent.

I thank Anita McKone for thoughtful suggestions to improve the original draft of this investigation.

Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of ‘Why Violence?’ His email address is flametree@riseup.net and his website is here. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Major Economic Contraction Coming In 2023 – Followed By Even More Inflation

By Brandon Smith

Source: Investment Watch

The signs are already present and obvious, but the overall economic picture probably won’t be acknowledged in the mainstream until the situation becomes much worse (as if it’s not bad enough). It’s a problem that arises at the onset of every historic financial crisis – Mainstream economists and commentators lie to the public about the chances of recovery, constantly giving false reassurances and lulling people back to sleep. Even now with price inflation pummeling the average consumer they tell us that there is nothing to worry about. The Federal Reserve’s “soft landing” is on the way.

I remember in 2007 right before the epic derivatives collapse when media pundits were applauding the US housing market and predicting even greater highs in sales and in valuations. I had only been writing economic analysis for about a year, but I remember thinking that the overt display of optimism felt like compensation for something. It seemed as if they were trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the public in the hopes that if people just believed hard enough that all was well then the fantasy could be manifested into reality. Unfortunately, that’s not how economics works.

Supply and demand, debt and deficit, money velocity and inflation; these things cannot be ignored. If the system is out of balance, collapse will set its ugly foot down somewhere and there’s nothing anyone including central banks can do about it. In fact, there are times when they deliberately ENGINEER collapse.

This is the situation we are currently in today as 2022 comes to a close. The Fed is in the midst of a rather aggressive rate hike program in a “fight” against the stagflationary crisis that they created through years of fiat stimulus measures. The problem is that the higher interest rates are not bringing prices down, nor are they really slowing stock market speculation. Easy money has been too entrenched for far too long, which means a hard landing is the most likely scenario.

In the early 2000s the Fed had been engaged in artificially low interest rates which inflated the housing and derivatives bubble. In 2004, they shifted into a tightening process. Rates in 2004 were at 1% and by 2006 they rose to over 5%. This is when cracks began to appear in the credit structure, with 4.5% – 5.5% being the magic cutoff point before debt became too expensive for the system to continue the charade. By 2007/2008 the nation witnessed an exponential implosion of credit, setting off the biggest money printing bonanza in US history in order to save the banking sector, at least for a time.

Since nothing was actually fixed by the Fed back then, I will continue to use the 5% funds rate as a marker for when we will see another major contraction. The difference this time is that the central bank does not have the option to flood the economy with more fiat, at least not without immediately triggering a larger stagflationary spiral. I am also operating on the premise that the Fed WANTS a crash at this time.

As I noted in my article ‘The Fed Is Taking The Punch Bowl Away – But The Inflation Crisis Will Continue To Grow’, published in May:

Mainstream financial commentators want to believe the Fed will capitulate because they desperately want the party in stock markets to continue, but the party is over. Sure, there will be moments when the markets rally based on nothing more than a word or two from a Fed official planting false hopes, but this will become rare. Ultimately, the Fed has taken away the punch bowl and it’s not coming back. They have the perfect excuse to kill the economy and kill markets in the form of a stagflationary disaster THEY CAUSED. Why would they reverse course now?”