Category Archives: Economics

Is It Joe Biden’s New World Order?

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By Iain Davis

Source: In This Together

Speaking at a White House business convention on 21st March 2022 the US President, Joe Biden, said:

We are at an inflection point, I believe, in the world economy [. . .] it occurs every three of four generations. [. . .] Now is a time when things are shifting, there’s going to be a new world order out there, and we’ve got to lead it and we’ve got to unite the rest of the free world in doing it.

This caused a bit of a storm because Biden, once again, used the term “New World Order” (NWO). We are told that there is no identifiable globalist project called the NWO. Apparently, the only people who think such a project exists are “conspiracy theorists.” These people are all antesemites, can’t be trusted and absolutely must not be heard, or something like that.

In his 1992 article for the Wall Street Journal titled, How I Learned To Love The New World Order, Biden spoke about “America’s proper role in the new world order.” His latest statement indicates that his concern lingers, on this occasion with good reason. The US position as nominal leaders of the NWO is under threat from Russia and China.

Politicians, oligarchs and other alleged “leading voices” keep talking about the NWO. Every time they mention it the mainstream media (MSM) immediately spring into action, eager to “dispel the myths” or “set the record straight”, defining the term for us. Why do they feel the need to keep doing this? Why are the establishment and their media so sensitive about the term “new world order?”

The NWO Is Not an Antisemitic Trope

The “new world order” is a phrase that gets flung around by all sorts of people for a variety of reasons. It is occasionally expressed in distinctly antisemitic terms.

Some people believe that the NWO is a “Jewish plot to enslave humanity.” Very few people, who have researched and studied the NWO, share this view. It is not supported by the evidence.

Nonetheless, the false allegations of antisemitism applied to anyone who talks about the NWO provides a very useful canard which “debunkers” consistently deploy. As the historian Prof. Antony C. Sutton pointed out in his exploration of Wall Street and The Bolshevik Revolution:

The persistence with which the Jewish-conspiracy myth has been pushed suggests that it may well be a deliberate device to divert attention from the real issues and the real causes. [. . .] What better way to divert attention from the real operators than by the medieval bogeyman of anti-Semitism?

The mainstream media (MSM) role is to confuse and mislead the public. They do not want the people to know what the NWO really is. They hide its history and generally deny its existence, but if that fails they will exploit the Holocaust to bolster their disinformation.

Antisemitism means “hostility to or prejudice against Jewish people.” That hostility and prejudice led to the Holocaust. Falsely accusing people of antisemitism, simply to undermine their arguments, dilutes its true meaning. Doing so shows a lack of respect for the victims of the Holocaust and a casual disregard for Jewish people and their history.

The MSM insist that when US Presidents talk about the NWO they are simply referring to changes in the behavioural norms, regulations and laws that broadly shape international relations. This may be the case, but that doesn’t alter the fact that the NWO has a precise historical meaning.

Given that it is a heavily charged term, is it likely that senior politicians, foreign policy strategists and national leaders would routinely use it unwittingly, without understanding what it means? Perhaps so in some cases but not in all. It is clear than many presidents, prime ministers and geoplitical experts have referred to the NWO in its proper context.

The Term “New World Order” As Propaganda

In a typical example of MSM disinformation, the UK’s Independent newspaper attempted to cover up Biden’s slip by trotting-out the usual denials and obfuscations. They claimed that Biden was simply referring to the “shifting sands of geopolitical relations.”

The Independent did not divulge the reality of the NWO to their readers. Instead it relied upon the tired slurs and allegations traditionally used to discredit those who discuss the NWO. The Independent alleged:

[P]ost-war paranoia tapped into much more ancient social anxieties about the possibility of shadowy secret covens engaging in evil [. . .] The Illuminati, the model for all subsequent sinister behind-closed-doors cabals feared by conspiracy theorist [. . .] traces its origins to the German Enlightenment of the 18th century. Belief in such a group plotting insurrection to realise its “new world order” first gained real prominence in the US among anti-government extremists in the 1990s. [. . .] The movement brings together American right-wing militant instincts with Christian fundamentalist doom prophecies [. . .] and has exploded over the last three decades in tandem with the growth of the internet. [. . .] Conspiracy theories have now become a form of mass entertainment on social media. [. . .] [Z]ealots, bored in lockdown during the pandemic, blended ancient anti-Semitic smears with quest narrative mythologies and pop cultural borrowings to worrying ends.

The so-called “newspaper” followed all of the state approved propaganda to the letter. Mixing genuine history—yes, the Illuminati really did exist—with total gibberish—there is no “movement” of NWO-exposing “extremists”—the Independent managed to fuse “conspiracy theory” with “right-wing” extremism and antisemitism. This is the standard approach to NWO denialism.

By linking the whole hodgepodge together, in a word-salad of misdirection and innuendo, the Independent were able to deliver their essential message: people who talk about the NWO do not trust government and questioning government can only lead to “worrying ends.”

The Independent didn’t offer any evidence to substantiate its conclusion, but informing readers wasn’t the point of the article. Claiming that NWO investigators are all antisemites who believe in “lizard men” allows the reader to safely discount the historians and geopolitical analysts, who have published NWO research, as crazy people.

According to the Independent, no one would even bother talking about the NWO were it not for the Internet. By claiming that questioning government policy online is “extremism,” the Independent offered its support for the government’s proposed censorship of the Internet.

Ironically, the best NWO historians published their work long before the Internet was invented. As pointed out, in one of the many contradictions in the Independent’s article, the NWO was a hot topic of conversation decades before we took to our keyboards and devices.

Introducing The New World Order

Contrary to the opinions of propagandists and debunkers, the NWO is a defined globalist project. The objective is to establish global governance. It was inaugurated more than 100 years ago and it has undergone numerous changes over subsequent generations.

While it wields immense political influence it is not “all powerful.” The NWO is tyrannical and oppressive by nature, hence the need for subterfuge and concealment. Its architects cannot simply enforce their dictatorship and expect to get away with it. We would resist, and if we did so in sufficient numbers there’s not much the NWO could do about it.

Therefore we need to be controlled by other means. Education, society, culture, economics, party politics, finance, applied psychology, behaviour modification, censorship, propaganda, war and crisis management are all used to manoeuvre us into accepting the NWO’s policy agendas. We persistently fall into this trap because we imagine our “elected” leaders are making the ‘big’ decisions: they’re not.

The New World Order (NWO) is an idea that was first proposed by Cecil Rhodes’ Round Table Movement. It was envisaged as a secret system of global governance led by an anglo trans-Atlantic alliance. It didn’t stay “secret” for very long.

Not only have politicians and the leaders of industry, commerce and finance frequently spoken about it, it has also been thoroughly exposed by historians and researchers. Perhaps most notably by Professors Carroll Quigley and Antony C. Sutton.

Even in the early 20th Century, when it was first devised, the concept of the NWO wasn’t a particularly novel idea. It was simply an attempt, by a Western hegemonic power-bloc, to establish global dominion. It is an extension of the age-old game of empires.

Rhodes’ NWO project was itself built upon pre-existing global power structures. The Venetian bankers and the other private enterprises, such as the British East India Company, had already surpassed nation states in terms of their resources, wealth and global political control. Rhodes’ vision was to convert this private financial power, which he possessed in abundance, into one, cohesive system of global rule.

The NWO model, which emerged after Rhodes’ death in 1902, immediately came unstuck. Rhodes was a British imperialist who, alongside his fellow Brits, bemoaned the loss of “their” American colony. The NWO was supposed to re-assert British control in the US, with the city of London ruling Wall Street. This is not how the US contingent viewed the burgeoning trans-Atlantic alliance and it is they who would soon come to the fore. Internecine struggles have been a consistent feature of the NWO throughout its history.

The NWO that Rhodes and his subsequent movement proposed was a hierarchical, compartmentalised, authoritarian structure. It was designed as a system of rings-within-rings.

It was led from the centre by “the Society of the Elect” who would oversee, and be protected, by the first ring of power called “the Association of Helpers.” Consecutive rings were then established, affording NWO control of financial institutions, multinational corporations, governments, intelligence agencies and militaries, etc.

Only the members of the “Society” and the “Association” had a full grasp of the entire NWO project. Conceptualisation of the whole system, among the members of each subsequent ring, progressively diminished as their positions moved away from the centre of power. NWO controlled assets, placed in key administrative, academic, military, media or political roles, only knew enough to be able to perform their required tasks and report accurately back to their handlers.

There’s Nothing “New” about the NWO

Tyrants have always sought to impose their authority upon as many people as possible. Just like Sumerian kings or Roman emperors, the leaders of the NWO sought exactly the same despotism, though on a grander scale. As technology has advanced the goal of centralised authority over a global governance structure has become more attainable.

While the manipulation and control techniques have advanced, the goal hasn’t changed. This ambition is as old as civilisation itself. There have always been people who wish to rule and many more who are content to be ruled.

Our collective obedience to authority guarantees tyranny. The NWO is by no means the first kleptocracy to have cultivated and exploited our compliance.

Like all the empires that preceded it, from its inception the proposed NWO was designed to take the form of a public-private partnership between government and an immensely wealthy “Superclass.” Often these individuals and family dynasties came from the world of international finance or banking, but leading industrialists and media moguls were also prominent.

They formed the hand behind the throne. As Prof. Quigley noted in 1966:

There really is a “world system of financial control in private hands” that is “able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world.” [. . .] They now control every major international institution, every major multinational and transnational corporation both public and private, every major domestic and international banking institution, every central bank, every nation-state on earth, the natural resources on every continent and the people around the world through complicated inter-locking networks that resemble giant spider webs. [. . .] They were responsible for World War I, World War II, [. . .] They have created periods of inflation and deflation in order to confiscate and consolidate the wealth of the world. [. . .] This wealth is now being used to construct and maintain the World Empire that is in the last stages of development. [. . .] The chief architects of this new World Empire are planning another war—World War III—to eliminate any vestiges of political, economic or religious freedom from the face of the earth. They will then completely control the earth and its natural resources.

Elected politicians, and the governments they formed, were always the junior partners in this network. Many were hand picked for their malleability, predisposition to corruption or loyalty to the NWO project. With the intelligence and security agencies thoroughly co-opted, the deep state—the “state within the state” or “shadow state”—flourished.

The Party Political system was permitted because it ensured that electorates could never derail the NWO project. They could be placated with a misplaced sense of democratic oversight. Party politics also kept the masses occupied and distracted, leaving the NWO to get on with business unhindered .

Policy agendas were set and then political puppets were installed to sell the desired policies to the people, no matter who they voted for. Quigley explained the NWO’s approach to party based, representative democracy:

The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is [. . .] a foolish idea acceptable only to the doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so the American people can ‘throw the rascals out’ at any election without leading to any profound or extreme shifts in policy.

The Leaders of the New World Order

The self-proclaimed leaders of the NWO are drawn from the so-called “Superclass.” Their only distinguishing attributes are immense private wealth, a ruthless willingness to act and an unshakeable belief in their divine right to rule.

The “old money” dynasties, sometimes referred to as the Black Nobility, have maintained their financial and monetary control for nearly a thousand years. They have been joined, in recent centuries, by banking families, industrialists and latterly the “new money” from the post WWII entrepreneurial, billionaire set.

The notion of a “Superclass” was proposed by Prof. David Rothkopf. As a member of the deep state think-tanks the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP), among others, Rothkopf was well positioned to be personally acquainted with the robber barons he eulogised:

We’re not looking at just the wealthy; we’re looking at power. And so, the definition that we used was people who influence the lives of millions across borders on a regular basis. [. . .] It’s a tiny, tiny fraction of the people of the planet Earth. [. . .] [T]he really defining characteristics of this group is the nature of the networks, that networking is the force multiplier in any kind of power structure[.]

The “people who influence the lives of millions across borders on a regular basis” have gone by many names. “The Rhodes Crowd,” “All Souls Group,” “the Cliveden set,” “the Pilgrims” and many more. Today we often refer to them as oligarchs, thought leaders or stakeholders. No one elected Rothkopf’s “Superclass” to power.

Their wealth is often inherited from their forefathers’ war profits, often it’s the product of nepotism or profits accrued from more recent military interventions. Others have enriched themsleves from the exploitation of slave labour, rigged markets, resource theft, the drug trade, financial crime or usury, etc. The “parasite class” is a more accurate description.

The New World Order Today

It isn’t clear if the “Society of the Elect” or the “Association of Helpers” still remain. What can be said is that the current global management network is a compartmentalised, authoritarian structures. Everything first proposed by Rhodes’ pilgrims remains on track and appears to be nearing completion.

The NWO has been through several iterations and has been re-marketed in different forms. The COVID-19 pseudopandemic has seen the World Economic Forum’s Great Reset come to public attention. This is simply a new brand for the NWO as the WEF makes its bid to be the central pillar of the Global Public-Private-Partnership (G3P). The G3P represents the current management structure of the NWO.

The proposed operating system for NWO global governance is Technocracy. There are a number of key elements which, once installed, will end the last vestiges of human freedom and place the world’s population under the totalitarian control of the technocrats. In turn, the technocrats will serve the interests of the parasite class, not humanity.

Democracy will continue in name only, reassuring the masses for a while, in the form of a communitarian “civil society.” Government, working in partnership with private corporations, will encourage civil society groups to “debate” policies. Every single one of those policies will be pre-selected by the technocratic state (Technate). The apparent political choice will remain an illusion.

The global economy is currently being transformed as new markets are created. As outlined in the 1992 UN Agenda 21 document (section 8.41), the “basis for action” has already been established. A global accountancy system for all business will use stakeholder capitalism metrics to rate assets, ensuring “the integration of sustainability into economic management.”

The rating mechanisms, such as environmental, social and governance ratings (ESG’s), will enable centralised global economic planning. It will determine which ventures receive or do not receive investment. Favoured corporate partners within the G3P will do very well, as long as they promote G3P goals. Those who don’t will go bankrupt without question.

The ratings system provides a “better measurement of the crucial role of the environment as a source of natural capital.” Natural Asset Companies will transform forests into ‘carbon sequestration services’ and natural water sources into ‘human settlement resource services,’ or some such thing.

By claiming that they own nature, the G3P will create new markets worth a projected $4 quadrillion. Thereby removing oil, as the base commodity of value, and replacing it with nature (natural assets). This transformation is called “sustainable development.” It has nothing to do with environmentalism or combatting “climate change.”

The notion of uniting all of humanity to work together to solve the “climate crisis” is a contrivance to facilitate global governance. It was fabricated in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s by the globalist think-tanks that set the world’s policy agendas.

The Club of Rome, the think-tank which greatly influenced the nascent WEF, took credit for imagining the perfect global crisis. In their 1991 publications The First Global Revolution, on page 75 under the heading “the common enemy of humanity is Man,” the Club of Rome wrote:

In searching for a common enemy against whom we can unite, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like, would fit the bill. [. . .] All these dangers are caused by human intervention in natural processes, and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome. The real enemy then is humanity itself.

This statement expresses two of the parasite class’ core beliefs. The assumed legitimacy of their claim to rule, which enables them to imagine they have the right to “designate” a global enemy, and their shared commitment to population control. They herd us like cattle, as they decide how to change our attitudes and behaviour to suit their objectives.

The International Monetary and Financial System (IMFS) has also undergone a transformation. With the introduction of Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) it will be revolutionised. CBDC currency will be issued by central banks as their liability. They are solely responsible for that liability. CBDC will always be their money.

CBDC is electronic money, it is therefore programmable money. This means the central banks will have complete control over every unit of CBDC currency. Whether it is in your wallet or not, it is the central bank’s money and they will permit or deny every transaction you make with it.

For example, the decisions you currently make about where you travel have already been restricted by the global policy response to a fake pandemic. If CBDC is fully adopted, you will no longer have any choice at all.

CBDC will enable your central bank’s AI algorithm to decide where you can go and when. If CBDC becomes the only form of currency available to us, none of us, no matter how much money we think we have, will have any financial freedom.

In order for Technocracy to operate, every citizen must be continually surveilled and controlled by the state (Technate). The technology capable of doing this is already being distributed globally as part of the so-called Fourth Industrial Revolution (4ID).

The Internet of Things (IoT) will see every device that we use report that use back to the Technate’s data centres. The Internet of Bodies (IoB) will enhance the Technates ability to monitor us in real time. Combined with the Digital-ID, that every nation is rushing towards, the surveillance and control of every individual “global citizen” will be centrally managed at the global governance level.

The New World Order, under the current management structure of the Global Public-Private Partnership, is nearing completion. It is a truly global system of governance. There are no leading governments anywhere on Earth opposed to it. All are racing ahead to adopt it with equal enthusiasm.

The Way Forward For The NWO

With Russia’s recent military operation in Ukraine, it has been suggested by some that the Russian and Chinese governments are not prepared to accept the imposition of the NWO. We can only be guided by their major policy statements and their actions. If these are anything to go by, both governments are fully on-board with the NWO agenda.

Both Russia and China are absolutely committed to sustainable development, Digital ID, 4ID, COVID biosecurity and vaccine-passports. Russia is ahead of most Western nations with regards to CBDC and China has surpassed Russia, having already started to use CBDC on a significant scale.

On 4th February Presidents Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping issued a joint statement on the future relationship between Russia and China. It read, in part:

Today, the world is going through momentous changes, and humanity is entering a new era of rapid development and profound transformation. [. . .] of the global governance architecture and world order. [. . .] The ongoing pandemic of the new coronavirus infection poses a serious challenge to the fulfilment of the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. [. . .] In order to accelerate the implementation of the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the sides call on the international community to take practical steps in key areas of cooperation such as poverty reduction, food security, vaccines and epidemics control, financing for development, climate change, sustainable development, including green development, industrialization, digital economy, and infrastructure connectivity. [. . .] [We] will further increase cooperation in the development and manufacture of vaccines. [. . .] Russia and China intend to encourage interaction in the fields of public health, digital economy, science, innovation and technology, including artificial intelligence technologies [. . .] Particular emphasis will be placed on the fight against the novel coronavirus infection pandemic and economic recovery, digitalization of a wide range of different spheres of life.

There is no evidence to suggest that either Russia or China wish to derail the objectives of the WEF’s Great Reset. On the contrary, the evidence points towards Russia and China as perhaps the most enthusiastic and aggressive advocates for the NWO agenda. China is the world’s first Technate and Russia is a major WEF partner, most notably on cybersecurity.

Much has been made of the WEF’s decision to distance itself from Russia and sanctioned individuals. Notably this is a “temporary” freeze and smacks more of political expediency and PR, rather than any genuine severance.

There is no aspect of the NWO, G3P managed agenda that either Russia or China stand against. Their joint statement read like a Great Reset checklist.

Perhaps this is all a cunning deception. Part of a “secret plot” by Russia and China to fight the NWO. However, it looks far more like a pact between two powers bidding for political leadership of the NWO.

There is no doubt that the NWO was conceived as a project of Western based oligarchs. In the post WWII era it has bared its teeth on the geopolitical stage as the “international rules-based order.” This unipolar order, centred around the G7 group of nations, with the US led NATO alliance providing the muscle, has been dominant within the Global Public-Private Partnership (G3P).

Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine, and the G7/NATO alliance response to it, appears to be a watershed moment. Together, Russia and China are challenging the G7 clique with a BRICS based, G20 focused, multipolar model. It seems they are determined to seize primacy within the G3P management structure.

As a paid spokesperson for the G7 rules-based order, Joe Biden anxiously observed “there’s going to be a new world order out there, and we’ve got to lead it.” The US-led alliance’s problem is that Russia and China, in league with their BRICS partners, are pursuing exactly the same objective.

World War III Has Already Started, And It’s An Economic War

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By Brandon Smith

Source: Alt-Market.us

In an article I published in April of 2018, titled World War III Will Be An Economic War, I outlined a number of factors that portend a large scale conflict between East and West and why this war would be mainly economic in nature. I investigated how this conflict would actually benefit globalists and globalist institutions seeking to bring down multiple nations’ economies while hiding the engineered crisis behind a wall of geopolitical chaos and noise.

The goal? To convince the masses that national sovereignty is a plague that only leads to widespread death, and that the “solution” is a one-world system – conveniently managed by the globalists, of course. That is to say, more centralization is always offered as the solution to every problem.

Furthermore, the war itself acts as cover for the inflationary collapse that our central bank and government has created. We are already seeing fraud propagandists like White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki attempting to mislead the public into believing all our current inflation problems stem from the Ukraine war. This claim requires some impressive mental gymnastics and an epic level of ignorance, but Psaki seems to have no shame about her role as a soulless Goebbels-like figure.

One issue which I used to get a lot of arguments over was the idea that countries like Russia and China would end up so closely aligned. People claimed there were too many disparities and that the countries would ultimately turn on each other in the middle of a financial crisis.

Well, it’s four years later and now we’re going to see if that is true or not. So far, it looks like I was correct.

My position has long been that certain nations have been preparing for a collapse of the U.S. dollar as the world reserve currency (the primary currency used in the majority of trade around the world). My belief is that America’s top economic position is actually an incredible weakness; the dollar’s hegemony is not a strength, but an Achilles heel. If the dollar was to lose reserve status, the whole of the U.S. economy and parts of the global economy would implode, leaving behind only those who prepared – those who saw the writing on the wall and planned ahead.

The Dollar Crash Coalition

There are four nations that have been actively positioning for the crash of the dollar and they include: China, Russia, India, Brazil (five if you count the limited involvement of part South Africa). These countries are also known as the BRICS. The BRICS are rarely mentioned in the mainstream media anymore, but there was a time around a decade ago when they were discussed regularly.

My fascination with the BRICS back then was primarily due to their odd trade behaviors. Specifically, their bilateral agreements which cut out the dollar as the reserve currency, and the fact that they were stockpiling tons upon tons of gold.

It was as if they had some kind of inside information that an economic conflict or disaster was coming, and they were getting ready to decouple from the dollar and the global supply chain.

Today, as the Ukraine war rages, there is constant hype about the union of nations opposed to Russia’s invasion to the point that the narrative has become bizarre. There is an incredible level of cultism in the mainstream media right now encouraging a mindless mob response. They have been trying to drum up something very similar to a behavioral vortex that many of us in conservative circles have seen thousands of times in the past few years: Western media is weaponizing cancel culture against Russia.

It’s not just a general admonition of the Kremlin or of Putin, that would be normal. Rather, it’s an outright dismissal of anything remotely related to Russia, from bar owning dummies throwing away all their vodka (even though most of it is not made in Russia), to the International Cat Federation banning certain cats from competitions because they are Russian bred.

This is pure childish insanity, but again, we’ve seen this before with cancel culture in the US.

The thinking is utterly collectivist and goes a little something like this:

“We shall shun them from the hive and isolate them. We will erase their existence and rewrite their identity and history. Then we will punish them by taking away their ability to survive economically until they submit and conform to the directives of the gatekeepers, who shall remain nameless.”

That said, as most conservatives know, cancel culture is a failed strategy. Despite the international push to cancel Russia and media claims that Russia is now “completely isolated and alone,” the narrative is apparently designed more to con the masses, not intimidate the Kremlin. They are, in fact, not isolated at all. And, guess which countries are staunchly refusing to support actions and sanctions against the Ukraine invasion?

That’s right, the other members of the BRICS.

China has outright refused to accommodate any sanctions and is directly working with Russia to alleviate trade issues. As I’ve been pointing out for ten years, they’ve been preparing for this moment. Hell, if the rest of the world doesn’t want Russian exports and oil, China will certainly buy them.

India is eerily silent on Ukraine, despite endless pressure from the U.S.

Both Brazil and South Africa have taken neutral stances on Ukraine and continue to trade with Russia. It would appear that the cancellation of Russia has already failed before it really began.

The narrative only serves a purpose in that it gives the western public two false impressions:

  1. It makes the people think that cancel culture on an international scale is working and that Russia will soon fold when the opposite is true.
  2. It tricks people into thinking that all the risk is on the Russian side when, in reality, most of the risk is on the western side. This will make the inevitable economic disaster all the more frightening when it occurs.

Personally, I don’t have any affinity for either side of the Ukraine conflict. I feel empathy for the Ukrainian people, but certainly not the Ukrainian government and their globalist partners. I also have no love for Putin and his many friends in the globalist World Economic Forum.

That said, even if you think one side is right and the other side is wrong, one cannot deny that the cancel culture mentality of the west is going to lead to an epic disaster. What people don’t seem to understand is that this calamity will hurt the U.S. and Europe just as much as it hurts Russia, if not more so.

The Economic Weaponry Of Fortress Asia

The close economic relationship between Russia and China is fast building towards a “Fortress Asia” which guarantees a certain amount of insulation from global instability.

Russia exports a surprising number of raw materials that many countries rely on, from fertilizers to industrial metals like nickel and aluminum. But, their biggest export by far is energy in the form of oil and natural gas. Europe in particular is utterly dependent on Russia for between 40% to 50% of its heating and electricity. Cuts to Russian energy exports would devastate Europe in a year’s time and it’s unlikely other exporters would be able to fill the void in the near term, at least not without huge price increases.

According to the IEA, Russia is the third largest oil producer in the world behind Saudi Arabia and the U.S. and it is the largest exporter to global markets. Sanctions on Russian oil would mean a massive shift in supply and multiple markets rushing to fill the gap.

Just the threat of cuts to Russian oil  caused large overnight price spikes in gasoline in the U.S. and Europe. Brent crude prices skyrocketed from $90 a barrel to $130 a barrel in a matter of a couple weeks.

I don’t think it will stop there, either. I expect crude prices to climb into the $200 per barrel range and gas prices to jump to around $7 a gallon before increased U.S. shale pumping helps balance out the supply (and this is a best case scenario). Some of the price will be due to speculation, but ultimately without Russian oil prices will remain high even if the war in Ukraine ends.

And here is where we get to a key aspect of this scenario which I don’t think many people are taking into account. It does not matter if Russia pulls out of Ukraine, and it certainly doesn’t matter if Ukraine surrenders. The economic side of the war will continue, and it will only escalate.

Retaliation In Economic Warfare

Beyond oil and energy the combined influence of the BRICS has the power to dramatically disrupt the U.S. dollar’s world reserve status. China alone holds trillions in dollars and U.S. treasuries which it can dump on the market anytime it pleases. China is the world’s largest exporter and most nations including the U.S. rely on Chinese manufacturing. This is why China’s draconian Covid shutdowns have caused a constant strain on the global supply chain. Around 20% of imports to the US come from China, including over 97% of our antibiotics.

The BRICS in combination control a vast swath of the export and manufacturing markets. They don’t even need to dump the dollar in trade, all they have to do is say they prefer a basket of currencies like the International Monetary Fund (IMF)’s Special Drawing Rights. The dollar’s value would collapse, and that would be in the midst of already rising inflation.

Another interesting development from the economic war is the increasing calls for crypto and digital currency solutions. I would note that it’s not just the BRICS who are refusing to go against Russia; there is also the matter of globalist institutions like the IMF and the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). Not surprisingly, Russia’s membership in these world banking platforms remains secure. Russia continues to hold billions in IMF SDRs. Both institutions have been calling for the implementation of a global digital currency system (which obviously they would control).

If the world economic war continues at its current trajectory, it is only a matter of time before trade sanctions turn into currency attacks. This is where the U.S. will be hurt the most.

It is perhaps not so coincidental that the globalists have staged themselves to benefit. With no world reserve currency established and an inflationary crisis raging, they will attempt to swoop in to “save the day” and assert that they have the perfect solution: A global digital currency system based on blockchain technology but tied to the IMF’s SDR basket system and administered by them.

In other words, with all the inflation present in national currencies, the IMF will offer the public a digital currency or cryptocurrency that promises them more stability. The inflationary crisis in confidence will be used to push people into a digital system which has no privacy and can be used to control them by denying them access on a whim, much like how the Chinese social credit system operates.

Ukraine is only the first domino in a long chain that is meant to lead to a one-world economic system centralized into the hands of the money elites.

There are ways to disrupt it, and the plan may not succeed at all, but there’s no avoiding the economic pain that will be caused in the meantime. All that we can do is accept that World War III is upon us and the weapons will be economic rather than nuclear.

The American Empire self-destructs.

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By Michael Hudson

Source: Michael-Hudson.com

But nobody thought that it would happen this fast.

Empires often follow the course of a Greek tragedy, bringing about precisely the fate that they sought to avoid. That certainly is the case with the American Empire as it dismantles itself in not-so-slow motion.

The basic assumption of economic and diplomatic forecasting is that every country will act in its own self-interest. Such reasoning is of no help in today’s world. Observers across the political spectrum are using phrases like “shooting themselves in their own foot” to describe U.S. diplomatic confrontation with Russia and allies alike.

For more than a generation the most prominent U.S. diplomats have warned about what they thought would represent the ultimate external threat: an alliance of Russia and China dominating Eurasia. America’s economic sanctions and military confrontation has driven them together, and is driving other countries into their emerging Eurasian orbit.

American economic and financial power was expected to avert this fate. During the half-century since the United States went off gold in 1971, the world’s central banks have operated on the Dollar Standard, holding their international monetary reserves in the form of U.S. Treasury securities, U.S. bank deposits and U.S. stocks and bonds. The resulting Treasury-bill Standard has enabled America to finance its foreign military spending and investment takeover of other countries simply by creating dollar IOUs. U.S. balance-of-payments deficits end up in the central banks of payments-surplus countries as their reserves, while Global South debtors need dollars to pay their bondholders and conduct their foreign trade.

This monetary privilege – dollar seignorage – has enabled U.S. diplomacy to impose neoliberal policies on the rest of the world, without having to use much military force of its own except to grab Near Eastern oil.

The recent escalation U.S. sanctions blocking Europe, Asia and other countries from trade and investment with Russia, Iran and China has imposed enormous opportunity costs – the cost of lost opportunities – on U.S. allies. And the recent confiscation of the gold and foreign reserves of Venezuela, Afghanistan and now Russia, along the targeted grabbing of bank accounts of wealthy foreigners (hoping to win their hearts and minds, along with recovery of their sequestered accounts), has ended the idea that dollar holdings or those in its sterling and euro NATO satellites are a safe investment haven when world economic conditions become shaky.

So I am somewhat chagrined as I watch the speed at which this U.S.-centered financialized system has de-dollarized over the span of just a year or two. The basic theme of my Super Imperialism has been how, for the past fifty years, the U.S. Treasury-bill standard has channeled foreign savings to U.S. financial markets and banks, giving Dollar Diplomacy a free ride. I thought that de-dollarization would be led by China and Russia moving to take control of their economies to avoid the kind of financial polarization that is imposing austerity on the United States. But U.S. officials are forcing them to overcome whatever hesitancy they had to de-dollarize.

I had expected that the end of the dollarized imperial economy would come about by other countries breaking away. But that is not what has happened. U.S. diplomats have chosen to end international dollarization themselves, while helping Russia build up its own means of self-reliant agricultural and industrial production. This global fracture process actually has been going on for some years now, starting with the sanctions blocking America’s NATO allies and other economic satellites from trading with Russia.For Russia, these sanctions had the same effect that protective tariffs would have had.

Russia had remained too enthralled by free-market ideology to take steps to protect its own agriculture or industry. The United States provided the help that was needed by imposing domestic self-reliance on Russia (via sanctions). When the Baltic states lost the Russian market for cheese and other farm products, Russia quickly created its own cheese and dairy sector – while becoming the world’s leading grain exporter.

Russia is discovering (or is on the verge of discovering) that it does not need U.S. dollars as backing for the ruble’s exchange rate. Its central bank can create the rubles needed to pay domestic wages and finance capital formation. The U.S. confiscations thus may finally lead Russia to end neoliberal monetary philosophy, as Sergei Glaziev has long been advocating in favor of MMT.

The same dynamic undercutting ostensible U.S aims has occurred with U.S. sanctions against the leading Russian billionaires. The neoliberal shock therapy and privatizations of the 1990s left Russian kleptocrats with only one way to cash out on the assets they had grabbed from the public domain. That was to incorporate their takings and sell their shares in London and New York. Domestic savings had been wiped out, and U.S. advisors persuaded Russia’s central bank not to create its own ruble money.

The result was that Russia’s national oil, gas and mineral patrimony was not used to finance a rationalization of Russian industry and housing. Instead of the revenue from privatization being invested to create new Russian means of protection, it was burned up on nouveau-riche acquisitions of luxury British real estate, yachts and other global flight-capital assets. But the effect of making the Russian dollar, sterling and euro holdings hostage has been to make the City of London too risky a venue in which to hold their assets. By imposing sanctions on the richest Russians closest to Putin, U.S. officials hoped to induce them to oppose his breakaway from the West, and thus to serve effectively as NATO agents-of-influence. But for Russian billionaires, their own country is starting to look safest.

For many decades now, the Federal Reserve and Treasury have fought against gold recovering its role in international reserves. But how will India and Saudi Arabia view their dollar holdings as Biden and Blinken try to strong-arm them into following the U.S. “rules-based order” instead of their own national self-interest? The recent U.S. dictates have left little alternative but to start protecting their own political autonomy by converting dollar and euro holdings into gold as an asset free of political liability of being held hostage to the increasingly costly and disruptive U.S. demands.

U.S. diplomacy has rubbed Europe’s nose in its abject subservience by telling its governments to have their companies dump the Russian assets for pennies on the dollar after Russia’s foreign reserves were blocked and the ruble’s exchange rate plunged. Blackstone, Goldman Sachs and other U.S. investors moved quickly to buy up what Shell Oil and other foreign companies were unloading.

Nobody thought that the postwar 1945-2020 world order would give way this fast. A truly new international economic order is emerging, although it is not yet clear just what form it will take. But “prodding the Bear” with the U.S./NATO confrontation with Russia has passed critical-mass level. It no longer is just about Ukraine. That is merely the trigger, a catalyst for driving much of the world away from the US/NATO orbit.

The next showdown may come within Europe itself. Nationalist politicians could seek to lead a break-away from the over-reaching U.S. power-grab over its European and other Allies, trying in vain to keep them dependent on U.S.-based trade and investment. The price of their continuing obedience is to impose cost-inflation on their industry while relinquishing their democratic electoral politics in subordination to America’s NATO proconsuls.

These consequences cannot really be deemed “unintended.” Too many observers have pointed out exactly what would happen – headed by President Putin and Foreign Secretary Lavrov explaining just what their response would be if NATO insisted in backing them into a corner while attacking Eastern Ukrainian Russian-speakers and moving heavy weaponry to Russia’s Western border. The consequences were anticipated. The neocons in control of U.S. foreign policy simply didn’t care. Recognizing its concerns was deemed to make one a Putinversteher.

European officials did not feel uncomfortable in telling the world about their worries that Donald Trump was crazy and upsetting the apple cart of international diplomacy. But they seem to have been blindsided at the Biden Administration’s resurgence of visceral Russia-hatred by Secretary of State Blinken and Victoria Nuland-Kagan. Trump’s mode of expression and mannerisms may have been uncouth, but America’s neocon gang has much more globally threatening confrontation obsessions. For them, it was a question of whose reality would emerge victorious: the “reality” that they believed they could make, or economic reality outside of U.S. control.

What foreign countries have not done for themselves – replacing the IMF, World Bank and other arms of U.S. diplomacy – American politicians are forcing them to do. Instead of European, Near Eastern and Global South countries breaking away out of their own calculation of their long-term economic interests, America is driving them away, as it has done with Russia and China. More politicians are seeking voter support by asking whether they would be better served by new monetary arrangements to replace dollarized trade, investment and even foreign debt service.

The energy and food price squeeze is hitting Global South countries especially hard, coinciding with their own Covid-19 problems and the looming dollarized debt service coming due. Something must give. How long will these countries impose austerity to pay foreign bondholders?

How will the U.S. and European economies cope in the face of their sanctions against imports of Russian gas and oil, cobalt, aluminum, palladium and other basic materials? American diplomats have made a list of raw materials that their economy desperately needs and which therefore are exempt from the trade sanctions being imposed. This provides Mr. Putin a handy list of pressure points to use in reshaping world diplomacy, in the process helping European and other countries break away from the Iron Curtain that America has imposed to lock its satellites into dependence on high-priced U.S. supplies.

But the final breakaway from NATO’s adventurism must come from within the United States itself. As this year’s midterm elections approach, politicians will find a fertile ground in showing U.S. voters that the price inflation led by gasoline and energy is a policy byproduct of the Biden administration blocking Russian oil and gas exports. Gas is needed not only for heating and energy production, but to make fertilizer, of which there already is a world shortage. This is exacerbated by blocking Russian and Ukrainian grain exports, sending U.S. and European food prices soaring.

Trying to force Russia to respond militarily and thereby looking bad to the rest of the world is turning out to be a stunt aimed simply at demonstrating Europe’s need to contribute more to NATO, buy more U.S. military hardware and lock itself deeper into trade and monetary dependence on the United States. The instability that this has caused is turning out to have the effect of making the United States look as threatening as Russia.

Duplicitous Biden Regime Mission to Venezuela

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By Stephen Lendman

Source: StephenLendman.org

Last weekend, a Biden regime delegation met with 

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and other Bolivarian officials in Caracas.

The aim of the first diplomatic contact between both nations since the Trump regime closed the US Caracas embassy in 2019, officially broke with Venezuela’s legitimate government, and illegally designed Juan Guido as president flopped.

More on this below.

Hegemon USA has been a mortal enemy of Bolivarian social democracy since Hugo Chavez took office as president in February 1999, following his December 1998 election — a near-generation ago.

Count the ways.

1. The aborted two-day April 2002 attempt to oust Chavez. Failure to get Venezuelan military support and popular resistance foiled it.

2. The 2002 – 03 general strike and oil management lockout, causing severe economic disruption and billions of dollars in losses.

3. The August 2004 national recall referendum, Hugo Chavez winning overwhelmingly with a 59% majority, thwarting the US-orchestrated attempt to remove him.

4. US sanctions war on Venezuela, begun by the Bush/Cheney regime in 2006 — for so-called non-cooperation in combatting international terrorism that hegemon USA fosters. 

War on the Bolivarian Republic by other means continued under the Obama/Biden regime.

Greatly escalated by Trump regime hardliners, high-level Venezuelan officials and the country’s enterprises were targeted.

US policy tried to block Venezuelan access to financial markets, as well as maximally reduce its oil exports.

Annually since 2006, the State Department falsely accused Venezuela of not “cooperating fully with US anti-terrorism efforts” – pursuant to Section 40A of the Arms Export Control Act (22 USC 2781).

5. In 2005, the Bush/Cheney regime falsely accused the Bolivarian Republic of non-cooperation against narco-trafficking that the US actively supports worldwide, notably the CIA.

Annually since then, Washington falsely claimed Venezuela hadn’t fulfilled its obligations under international narcotics agreements. 

6. In 2008, the Bush/Cheney regime imposed asset freezes and prohibitions on financial transactions, targeting designated Venezuelan nationals and enterprises.

7. The Obama/Biden regime killed Hugo Chavez.

US dark forces poisoned or infected him with deadly cancer causing substances, a coup by other means, eliminating him — while Chavismo has remained resilient.

8. The Obama/Biden regime’s March 2015 executive order falsely declared Venezuela to be an “unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the US.” 

At the time, a fake ‘national emergency’ was declared to “confront” a nonexistent threat.

9. Violent made-in-the-USA street protests staged to destabilize the country with regime change in mind were responsible for scores of deaths and hundreds of injuries.

10. The August 2017 CIA-orchestrated terrorist attack on Fort Paramacay in Carabobo state was another foiled coup attempt.

11. The August 2018 attack on Maduro by drones armed with C-4 explosives attempted to kill him.

12. Trump regime hardliners waged war on Venezuela by other means, including propaganda, economic, financial, and electricity war, along with other attacks on the country’s infrastructure.

The aim was to inflict maximum harm on ordinary Venezuelans, falsely believing they’d blame Maduro for US criminal actions.

Chavez knew that the US marked him for elimination. Fidel Castro warned him to be wary and careful. 

Maduro is targeted in similar fashion. He and other senior Venezuelan officials remain vulnerable to removal by coup d’etat or assassination.

It’s just a matter of time before another regime change attempt occurs — to replace Venezuelan social democracy with US-controlled fascist tyranny. 

Biden regime officials showing up in Caracas last weekend made unacceptable demands.

Reportedly they unacceptably called for a new presidential election.

There’s none scheduled until 2024 for a six-year term beginning on January 10, 2025.

In 2018, Maduro won another six-year term overwhelmingly by a two-thirds majority.

His main adversary, Chavista turncoat Henri Falcon, fared much poorer than predicted with around 21% of the vote. 

Other unacceptable Biden regime demands reportedly included the following:

Greater US/Western foreign private investment in Venezuela — mainly for maximum control of the country’s vast oil reserves, the world’s largest, including its heavy oil.

Maduro splitting from Russia by siding with the US-dominated West against Vladimir Putin’s demilitarization and deNazification of Ukraine.

In return, Biden regime official offered hollow promises to be breached at hegemon USA’s discretion.

Maduro and Vice President Delcy Rodriguez demanded sanctions relief and return of confiscated Venezuelan assets, mainly oil related.

For most of the past 23 years, US regimes waged war on Venezuela by other means — because of its independence and democratic governance the way it should be.

Venezuelans have the real thing — in stark contrast to fantasy versions throughout the West.

Russia is a valued Venezuelan ally.

According to Russia’s Foreign Ministry, Vladimir Putin and Maduro spoke by phone last week.

Venezuela’s leader expressed “firm support” for the Russian Federation.

Condemning US-dominated NATO’s destabilization activities, Maduro stressed his intention to maintain political and economic relations with Russia.

Follow the Money – How Russia Will Bypass Western Economic Warfare

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(Image by orangebuddhas from flickr)
 

By Pepe Escobar

Source: OpEdNews.com

So a congregation of NATO’s top brass ensconced in their echo chambers target the Russian Central Bank with sanctions and expect what? Cookies?

What they got instead was Russia’s deterrence forces bumped up to “a special regime of duty” – which means the Northern and Pacific fleets, the Long-Range Aviation Command, strategic bombers, and the entire Russian nuclear apparatus on maximum alert.

One Pentagon general very quickly did the basic math on that, and mere minutes later, a Ukrainian delegation was dispatched to conduct negotiations with Russia in an undisclosed location in Gomel, Belarus.

Meanwhile, in the vassal realms, the German government was busy “setting limits to warmongers like Putin” – quite a rich undertaking considering that Berlin never set any such limits for western warmongers who bombed Yugoslavia, invaded Iraq, or destroyed Libya, in complete violation of international law.

While openly proclaiming their desire to “stop the development of Russian industry,” damage its economy, and “ruin Russia” – echoing American edicts on Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, Cuba, Venezuela and others in the Global South – the Germans could not possibly recognize a new categorical imperative.

They were finally liberated from their WWII culpability complex by none other than Russian President Vladimir Putin. Germany is finally free to support and weaponize neo-Nazis out in the open all over again – now of the Ukrainian Azov battalion variety.

To get the hang of how these NATO sanctions will “ruin Russia,” I asked for the succinct analysis of one of the most competent economic minds on the planet, Michael Hudson, author, among others, of a revised edition of the must-read Super-Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire.

Hudson remarked how he is “simply numbed over the near-atomic escalation of the US.” On the confiscation of Russian foreign reserves and cut-off from SWIFT, the main point is “it will take some time for Russia to put in a new system with China. The result will end dollarization for good, as countries threatened with ‘democracy’ or displaying diplomatic independence will be afraid to use US banks.”

This, Hudson says, leads us to “the great question – whether Europe and the Dollar Bloc can buy Russian raw materials – cobalt, palladium, etc, and whether China will join Russia in a minerals boycott.”

Hudson is adamant that “Russia’s Central Bank, of course, has foreign bank assets in order to intervene in exchange markets to defend its currency from fluctuations. The ruble has plunged. There will be new exchange rates. Yet it’s up to Russia to decide whether to sell its wheat to West Asia, that needs it; or to stop selling gas to Europe via Ukraine, now that the US can grab it.”

About the possible introduction of a new Russia-China payment system – bypassing SWIFT and combining the Russian SPFS (System for Transfer of Financial Messages) with the Chinese CIPS (Cross-Border Interbank Payment System) – Hudson has no doubts, “the Russian-China system will be implemented. The Global South will seek to join and at the same time keep SWIFT – moving their reserves into the new system.”

I’m going to de-dollarize myself

So the US itself, in another massive strategic blunder, will speed up de-dollarization. As the managing director of Bocom International Hong Hao told the Global Times, with energy trade between Europe and Russia de-dollarized, “that will be the beginning of the disintegration of dollar hegemony.”

It’s a refrain the US administration was quietly hearing last week from some of its own largest multinational banks, including notables like JPMorgan and Citigroup.

A Bloomberg article sums up their collective fears:

“Booting Russia from the critical global system – which handles 42 million messages a day and serves as a lifeline to some of the world’s biggest financial institutions – could backfire, sending inflation higher, pushing Russia closer to China, and shielding financial transactions from scrutiny by the west. It might also encourage the development of a SWIFT alternative that could eventually damage the supremacy of the US dollar.”

Those with IQs over 50 in the European Union (EU) must have understood that Russia simply could not be totally excluded from SWIFT, but maybe only a few of its banks: after all, European traders depend on Russian energy.

From Moscow’s point of view, that’s a minor issue. A number of Russian banks are already connected to China’s CIPS system. For instance, if someone wants to buy Russian oil and gas with CIPS, payment must be in the Chinese yuan currency. CIPS is independent of SWIFT.

Additionally, Moscow already linked its SPFS payment system not only to China but also to India and member nations of the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU). SPFS already links to approximately 400 banks.

With more Russian companies using SPFS and CIPS, even before they merge, and other maneuvers to bypass SWIFT, such as barter trade – largely used by sanctioned Iran – and agent banks, Russia could make up for at least 50 percent in trade losses.

The key fact is that the flight from the US-dominated western financial system is now irreversible across Eurasia and that will proceed in tandem with the internationalization of the yuan.

Russia has its own bag of tricks

Meanwhile, we’re not even talking yet about Russian retaliation for these sanctions. Former President Dmitry Medvedev already gave a hint – everything, from exiting all nuclear arms deals with the US, to freezing the assets of western companies in Russia, is on the table.

So what does the “Empire of Lies” want? – Putin terminology, on Monday’s meeting in Moscow to discuss the response to sanctions.

In an essay published this morning, deliciously titled America Defeats Germany for the Third Time in a Century: the MIC, OGAM and FIRE conquer NATO, Michael Hudson makes a series of crucial points, starting with how “NATO has become Europe’s foreign policy-making body, even to the point of dominating domestic economic interests.”

He outlines the three oligarchies in control of US foreign policy:

First is the military-industrial complex, which Ray McGovern memorably coined as MICIMATT (military industrial Congressional intelligence media academia think tank).

Hudson defines their economy base as “monopoly rent, obtained above all from its arms sales to NATO, to West Asian oil exporters, and to other countries with a balance-of-payments surplus.”

Second is the oil and gas sector, joined by mining (OGAM). Their aim is “to maximize the price of energy and raw materials so as to maximize natural resource rent.

Monopolizing the Dollar Area’s oil market and isolating it from Russian oil and gas has been a major US priority for over a year now, as the Nord Stream 2 pipeline from Russia to Germany threatened to link the western European and Russian economies together.”

Third is the “symbiotic” Finance, Insurance and Real Estate (FIRE) sector, which Hudson defines as “the counterpart to Europe’s old post-feudal landed aristocracy living by land rents.”

As he describes these three rentier sectors that completely dominate post-industrial finance capitalism at the heart of the western system, Hudson notes how “Wall Street always has been closely merged with the oil and gas industry namely, the Citigroup, and Chase Manhattan banking conglomerates.”

Hudson shows how “the most pressing US strategic aim of NATO confrontation with Russia is soaring oil and gas prices. In addition to creating profits and stock market gains for US companies, higher energy prices will take much of the steam out of the German economy.”

He warns how food prices will rise “headed by wheat” – Russia and Ukraine account for 25 percent of world wheat exports. From a Global South perspective, that’s a disaster: “This will squeeze many West Asian and Global South food-deficient countries, worsening their balance of payments, and threatening foreign debt defaults.”

As for blocking Russian raw materials exports, “this threatens to cause breaks in supply chains for key materials, including cobalt, palladium, nickel, aluminum.”

And that leads us, once again, to the heart of the matter – “The long-term dream of the US new Cold Warriors is to break up Russia, or at least to restore its managerial kleptocracy seeking to cash in their privatizations in western stock markets.”

That’s not going to happen. Hudson clearly sees how “the most enormous unintended consequence of US foreign policy has been to drive Russia and China together, along with Iran, Central Asia, and countries along the Belt and Road initiative.”

Let’s confiscate some technology

Now compare all of the above with the perspective of a central European business tycoon with vast interests, east and west, and who treasures his discretion.

In an email exchange, the business tycoon posed serious questions about the Russian Central Bank support for its national currency, the ruble, “which according to US planning is being destroyed by the west through sanctions and currency wolf packs who are exposing themselves by selling rubles short. There is really almost no amount of money that can beat the dollar manipulators against the ruble. A 20 percent interest rate will kill the Russian economy unnecessarily.”

The businessman argues that the chief effect of the rate hike “would be to support imports that should not be imported. The fall of the ruble is thus favorable to Russia in terms of self-sufficiency. As import prices rise, these goods should start to be produced domestically. I would just let the ruble fall to find its own level which will for a while be lower than natural forces would permit as the US will be driving it lower through sanctions and short selling manipulation in this form of economic war against Russia.”

But that seems to tell only part of the story. Arguably, the lethal weapon in Russia’s arsenal of responses has been identified by the head of the Center for Economic Research of the Institute of Globalization and Social Movements (IGSO), Vasily Koltashov – the key is to confiscate technology – as in Russia ceasing to recognize US rights to patents.

In what he qualifies as “liberating American intellectual property,” Koltashov calls for passing a Russian law on “friendly and unfriendly states. If a country turns out to be on the unfriendly list, then we can start copying its technologies in pharmaceuticals, industry, manufacturing, electronics, medicine. It can be anything – from simple details to chemical compositions.” This would require amendments to the Russian constitution.

Koltashov maintains that “one of the foundations of success of American industry was copying of foreign patents for inventions.” Now, Russia could use “China’s extensive know-how with its latest technological production processes for copying western products: the release of American intellectual property will cause damage to the United States to the amount of $10 trillion, only in the first stage. It will be a disaster for them.”

As it stands, the strategic stupidity of the EU beggars belief. China is ready to grab all Russian natural resources with Europe left as a pitiful hostage of the oceans and of wild speculators.

It looks like a total EU-Russia split is ahead – with little trade left and zero diplomacy.

Now listen to the sound of champagne popping all across the MICIMATT.

Creating New Enemies

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SHANGHAI, CHINA – MAY 20: Russian President Vladimir Putin (L) and Chinese President Xi Jingping (R) attend a welcoming ceremony on May 20, 2014 in Shanghai, China. Putin is on a two day visit to China (Photo by Sasha Mordovets/Getty Images)

By Philip Giraldi

Source: The Unz Review

It should come as no surprise that many observers, from various political perspectives, are beginning to note that there is something seriously disconnected in the fumbling foreign policy of the United States. The evacuation failure in Afghanistan shattered the already waning self-confidence of the American political elite and the continuing on-again off-again negotiations that were by design intended to go nowhere with Iran and Russia provide no evidence that anyone in the White House is really focused on protecting American interests. Now we have an actual shooting war in Ukraine as a result, a conflict that might easily escalate if Washington continues to send the wrong signals to Moscow.

To cite only one example of how outside influences distort policy, in a phone call on February 9th, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett advised President Joe Biden not to enter into any non-proliferation agreement with Iran. Biden was non-committal even though it is an actual American interest to come to an agreement, but instead he indicated that as far as the US is concerned, Israel could exercise “freedom of action” when dealing with the Iranians. With that concession has ended in all probability the only possible diplomatic success that the Administration might have been able to point to.

The Biden Administration’s by default global security policy is currently reduced to what some critics have described as “encirclement and containment.” That is why an overstretched US military is being tasked with creating ever more bases worldwide in an effort to counter perceived “enemies” who often are only exercising their own national sovereignty and right to security within their own zones of influence. Ironically, when nations balk at submitting to Washington’s control, they are frequently described as “aggressors” and “anti-democratic,” the language that has most particularly been used relating to Russia. The Biden policy, such as it actually exists, appears to be a throwback to the playing field in 1991-2 when the Soviet empire collapsed. It is all about maintaining the old American dream of complete global dominance coupled with liberal interventionism, but this time around the US lacks both the resources and the national will to continue in the effort. Hopefully the White House will understand that to do nothing is better than to make empty threats.

Meanwhile, as the situation continues to erode, it is becoming more and more obvious that the twin crises that have been developing over Ukraine and Taiwan are “Made in Washington” and are somewhat inexplicable as the US does not have a compelling national interest that would justify threats to “leave on the table” military options as a possible response. The Administration has yet again responded to Russian moves by initiating devastating sanctions. But Russia also has unconventional weapons in its arsenal. It can, for starters, shift focus away from Ukraine by intervening much more actively in support of Syria and Iran in the Middle East, disrupting feeble American attempts to manage that region to benefit Israel.

According to economists, Russia has also been effectively sanction-proofing its economy and is capable of selective reverse-sanctioning of countries that support an American initiative with any enthusiasm. Such a response would likely hurt the Europeans much more than it would damage the leadership in the Kremlin. Barring Russian gas from Europe by shutting down Nord Stream 2 would, for example, permit increased sales to China and elsewhere in Asia and would inflict more pain on the Europeans than on Moscow. Shipping US supplied liquid gas to Europe would, for example, cost more than twice the going rate being offered by the Kremlin and would also be less reliable. The European NATO members are clearly nervous and not fully behind the US agenda on Ukraine, largely because there is the legitimate concern that any and possibly all options being considered by Washington could easily produce missteps that would escalate into a nuclear exchange that would be catastrophic for all parties involved.

Apart from the real immediate danger to be derived from the fighting currently taking place in Ukraine, the real long-term damage is strategic. The Joe Biden Administration has adroitly maneuvered itself into a corner while America’s two principal adversaries Russia and China have drawn closer together to form something like a defensive as well as economic relationship that will be dedicated to reducing and eventually eliminating Washington’s assumed role as the global hegemon and rules enforcer.

In a recent article in the New Yorker foreign affairs commentator Robin Wright, who might reasonably described as a “hawk,” declares the new development to be “Russia and China Unveil[ing] a Pact Against America and the West.” And she is not alone in ringing the alarm bell, with former Donald Trump National Security Council (NSC) Russia watcher Anita Hill warning that the Kremlin’s intention is to force the United States out of Europe while former NSC Ukrainian expert Alexander Vindman is advising that military force be used to deter Russia now before it is too late.

Wright provides the most serious analysis of the new developments. She argues that “Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, the two most powerful autocrats, challenge the current political and military order.” She describes how, in a meeting between the two leaders before the Beijing Olympics, they cited an “agreement that also challenges the United States as a global power, NATO as a cornerstone of international security, and liberal democracy as a model for the world.” They pledged that there would be “No ‘forbidden’ areas of cooperation” and a written statement that was subsequently produced declared that “Russia and China stand against attempts by external forces to undermine security and stability in their common adjacent regions, intend to counter interference by outside forces in the internal affairs of sovereign countries under any pretext, oppose color revolutions, and will increase cooperation.” Wright notes that there is considerable strength behind the agreement, “As two nuclear-armed countries that span Europe and Asia, the more muscular alignment between Russia and China could be a game changer militarily and diplomatically.” One might add that China now has the world’s largest economy and Russia has a highly developed military deploying new hypersonic missiles that would give it the advantage in any conflict with NATO and the US. Both Russia and China, if attacked, would also benefit because they would be fighting close to their bases on interior lines.

And, of course, not everyone agrees that nudging the United States out of its self-proclaimed hegemonic role would be a bad thing. Former British diplomat Alastair Crooke argues that there will be perpetual state of crisis in the international order until a new system emerges from the status quo that ended the Cold War, and it would be minus the United States as the semi-official transnational rules maker and arbiter. He observes that “The crux of Russia’s complaints about its eroding security have little to do with Ukraine per se but are rooted in the Washington hawks’ obsession with Russia, and their desire to cut Putin (and Russia) down to size – an aim which has been the hallmark of US policy since the Yeltsin years. The Victoria Nuland clique could never accept Russia rising to become a significant power in Europe – possibly eclipsing the US control over Europe.”

What is happening in Europe and Asia should all come down to a very simple realization about the limits of power: America has no business in risking a nuclear war with Russia over Ukraine or with China over Taiwan. The United States has been fighting much of the world for over two decades, impoverishing itself and killing millions in avoidable wars starting with Iraq and Afghanistan. The US government is cynically exploiting memories of old Cold War enemy Russia to create a false narrative that goes something like this: “If we don’t stop them over there, they will be in New Jersey next week.” It is all nonsense. And besides, who made the US the sole arbiter of international relations? It is past time Americans started asking what kind of international order is it that lets the United States determine what other nations can and cannot do.

Worst of all, the bloodshed in Ukraine has all been unnecessary. A little real diplomacy with honest negotiators weighing up real interests could easily have come to acceptable solutions for all parties involved. It is indeed ironic that the burning desire to go to war with Russia demonstrated in the New York Times and Washington Post as well as on Capitol Hill has in fact created a real formidable enemy, tying Russia and China together in an alliance due to their frustration at dealing with a Biden Administration that never seems to know what it is doing or where it wants to go.

Global Technocrat Cabal Exposed Through Network Analysis

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“…A very small group of criminal collaborators are at the top of the Great Panic of 2020. Using disciplined network analysis, the players and patterns emerge right before your eyes…According to the anonymous IT specialist who created the document, the core of this “COVID criminal network,” around whom most everything revolves, is no larger than 20 or 30 people”

By Patrick Wood

Source: Technocracy News and Trends

The video above is in German. Click on “Settings” to change the subtitles to English via auto-translate feature.

STORY AT-A-GLANCE

> The German Club of Clear Words takes a deep dive into the network of individuals and organizations responsible for the COVID scam

> Whether blatantly visible or not, you can identify just about any network by connecting dots between individuals and organizations. Who’s working with whom, where, and why? Who’s paying whom? And once you’ve done that, you can more clearly identify the motivations behind various decisions

> The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation appears to be near the top, or the center, of this COVID plandemic network. Gates is also a major funder of mainstream media, and his network extends into global food and climate change policy

> The Gates Foundation, through its funding of the WEF, also plays an important role in The Great Reset, which was officially unveiled during a WEF summit in May 2020

> Every conceivable aspect of life and society is scheduled to be “reset” according to their plan. Ultimately, that’s where this criminal COVID enterprise is trying to take us

The video above, by the German Club Der Klaren Worte, or the Club of Clear Words, takes a deep dive into the network of individuals and organizations responsible for the COVID scam. The audio is in German but there is a captioned translation at the bottom of the video.

The review is led by journalist and filmmaker Markus Langemann. As noted by Langemann, it’s not necessarily the people with the best ideas who win in life. Rather, the winners are those who are in the “right” network — a network with people in the right places. Never underestimate the power of a network.

Some networks are visible. One example would be an alumni network that you can join and use to promote your career. Other networks are more hidden, secretive and exclusive, and can only be entered into by select invitation by another member.

Whether blatantly visible or not, you can identify just about any network by connecting dots between individuals and organizations. Who’s working with whom, where, and why? Who’s paying whom? And once you’ve done that, you can more clearly identify the motivations behind various decisions.

A Global Network Revealed

In this video, Langemann presents “a network document that is unique in the world and which for the first time shows you the complex network of relationships, from non-governmental organizations (NGOs), companies, documents and people.”

The 170-page document details more than 7,200 links between 6,500 entities and objects, including payment flows and investments.

“In the case of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, already on page 4 of the document, you see that this foundation spent $43 billion [note that is billion with a “b”] in the U.S. alone in the period from 1994 to 2001, and distributed around half a billion dollars in Germany during this period,” Langemann says.

You can review and download the document here.1 The document is mostly in English. It’s incredibly comprehensive in scope, detailing a global network that is working behind the scenes to influence global health, finance and governance.

Download Network Analysis Document

As an interesting aside, the document was actually created using software that investigators and detectives use to help them identify hidden connections between potential suspects. All of the data points, documents, payment data and so on, are publicly available.

Red arrows are used throughout the document to indicate money flows, such as grants, donations and other payments. As one example, as shown on page 3 of the document, at least 21 U.S. universities are financed by and through just three key organizations:

  1. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
  2. The Open Philanthropy project, a research and grantmaking foundation, which is linked to the WEF
  3. The Wellcome Trust, the world’s second-largest health foundation, located in the U.K.

A Small Tight-Knit Group

According to the anonymous IT specialist who created the document, the core of this “COVID criminal network,” around whom most everything revolves, is no larger than 20 or 30 people. Several of them appear on page 36.

They got together May 8, 2019, at a CDU/CSU event where they discussed how to strengthen global health and implement the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. The CDU/CSU is a political alliance of two German political parties, the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) and the Christian Social Union in Bavaria (CSU). Attendees included:

Hermann Gröhe, Christian Democration Union (CDU) member and former Minister of Health
Ralph Brinkhaus, Parliamentary leader of the CDU
Dr. Angela Merkel, former Chancellor of Germany and a CDU member
Ilona Kickbush, Ph.D., Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the WHO
Dr. Christian Drosten, a German virologist who in early 2020 created the COVID PCR test
Dr. Clarissa Prazeres da Costa, microbiologist and infectious disease specialist
Joe Cerrell, managing director for Europe, the Middle East and East Asia for The Gates Foundation
Professor Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust
Dr. Georg Kippels, CDU member
Jens Spahn, CDU member and a former Minister of Health

From that May 2019 meeting onward, these individuals are found again and again, in overlapping working groups. You also find them rubbing elbows in the past.

For example, Farrar, Drosten and Kickbush were all present at a February 14, 2019, tabletop exercise on International Response to Deliberate Biological Events, held at the Munich Security Conference, as shown on page 124. Individuals from the Robert Koch Institute, the Chinese CDC and the Gates Foundation were also present.

In 2017 and 2018, Kickbush, Drosten and Farrar were added as members to the International Advisory Board on Global Health. Farrar and Kickbush also joined the Global Preparedness Monitoring Board, a joint arm of the WHO and the World Bank, formally launched in May 2018. (Dr. Anthony Fauci is another member of this board.) Two other key persons within this network are:

  • Dr. Chris Elias, president of the Global Development Program at the Gates Foundation. He too is on both the Global Preparedness Monitoring Board and the International Advisory Board on Global Health, together with Kickbush, Drosten and Farrar.
  • Dr. Peter Piot, a Belgian-British microbiologist known for his research into Ebola and AIDS, a professor of global health, director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, a senior fellow with the Gates Foundation’s Global Health Program, and former undersecretary-general with the United Nations.

Key Organizations

Due to the complexity of the network connections, there’s really no easy way to summarize them here. You simply have to go through the document, page by page. That said, key organizations, whose networking connections are detailed, include:

The Bill & Melinda Gates FoundationThe Wellcome Trust, an organization funded by and strategically linked to GlaxoSmithKline (a vaccine maker in which Bill Gates is financially invested)
The World Health OrganizationThe Rockefeller Foundation
The World Bank GroupThe World Economic Forum (WEF)
GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance, founded by the Gates FoundationCoalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), founded by the governments of Norway and India, the Gates Foundation, the Wellcome Trust and WEF
The Global FundForum of Young Global Leaders, founded by WEF in 2004
FIND, the global alliance for diagnostics, seeks to ensure equitable access to reliable diagnosis around the worldBig Pharma
Johns Hopkins UniversityCharité, Universitätsmedizin Berlin
The Robert Koch InstituteThe European Commission
The European Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA)The Swiss Agency for Therapeutic Products
The German Global Health Hub

Of these, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation appears to be near the top, or the center, of this criminal network, depending on how you visualize it. Gates is also a major funder of mainstream media which, of course, is important if you want to ensure one-sidedly good press.

Gates’ Media Control

In the past, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation funded the placement of “educational” messages in popular TV shows such as “ER,” “Law & Order: SVU” and “Private Practice,” including topics such as HIV prevention, surgical safety and the spread of infectious diseases, i.e., vaccinations.2 But that was only the beginning.

Via more than 30,000 grants, Gates has contributed at least $319 million to the media, including CNN, NBC, NPR, PBS, The Atlantic, Texas Tribune (U.S.), the BBC, The Guardian, The Financial Times, The Daily Telegraph (U.K.), Le Monde (France), Der Spiegel (Germany), El País (Spain) and global broadcasters like Al-Jazeera.3

More than $38 million of Gates’ money has also been funneled to investigative journalism centers. The majority of that money has gone into developing and expanding media in Africa.4 As you might suspect, Gates’ donations come with strings attached. As reported by Columbia Journalism Review:5

“When Gates gives money to newsrooms, it restricts how the money is used — often for topics, like global health and education, on which the foundation works — which can help elevate its agenda in the news media.

For example, in 2015 Gates gave $383,000 to the Poynter Institute, a widely-cited authority on journalism ethics … earmarking the funds ‘to improve the accuracy in worldwide media of claims related to global health and development.’ Poynter senior vice president Kelly McBride said Gates’s money was passed on to media fact-checking sites …

Since 2000, the Gates Foundation has given NPR $17.5 million [now up to $24.6 million6] through 10 charitable grants — all of them earmarked for coverage of global health and education, specific issues on which Gates works.”

Who Else Controls the Media?

Gates’ power over the media is immense, but he’s a not a sole actor. Other players in media control include BlackRock and the Vanguard Group, the two largest asset management firms in the world, which also control Big Pharma.7 They’re at the top of a pyramid that controls basically everything, but you don’t hear about their terrifying monopoly because they also own the media. As noted in the video, “The Puppet Masters Portfolios,” Vanguard and Blackrock:8

“… own the news that’s been created, they own the distribution of the news that’s been created, they own the lives of the reporters that are reporting the news that’s being distributed that’s being created on your TV screen. CBS, FOX, ABC, it doesn’t matter which you’re watching.”

As it stands, it’s important to be aware that conventional media are under the control of powerful influences — be it Bill Gates, BlackRock or Vanguard — and their primary intent isn’t to give you objective information but, rather, to further the agendas of those influences.

Who Really Owns the World?

BlackRock and Vanguard also own shares in an impossibly long list of virtually every major company in the world. Aside from world media, the companies controlled by Blackrock and Vanguard span everything from entertainment and airlines to social media and communications9 — quite literally everything you can think of, and much that you can’t.

Together, they form a hidden monopoly on global asset holdings, and through their influence over our centralized media, they have the power to manipulate and control a great deal of the world’s economy and events, and how the world views it all.

In all, BlackRock and Vanguard have ownership in some 1,600 American firms, which in 2015 had combined revenues of $9.1 trillion. When you add in the third-largest global owner, State Street, their combined ownership encompasses nearly 90% of all S&P 500 firms.10

Interestingly, Vanguard also holds a large share of Blackrock. In turn, Blackrock has been called the “fourth branch of government” by Bloomberg as they are the only private firm that has financial agreements to lend money to the central banking system.11

Owners and stockholders of Vanguard include Rothschild Investment Corp,12 Edmond De Rothschild Holding,13 the Italian Orsini family, the American Bush family, the British Royal family, and the du Pont family, the Morgan, Vanderbilt and Rockefeller families.14,15

Gates Dictates Global Food Policy Too

In addition to his grip on global health and media, Bill Gates’ network also includes global food and agricultural policy. He’s even one of the largest farmland owners in the U.S.16 Were Gates a proponent of organics, his land ownership would probably be seen as a good thing, but he’s anything but.

On the contrary, not only is he a longtime proponent of GMOs and toxic agricultural chemicals, he’s also gone on record urging Western nations to switch to 100% synthetic lab-grown imitation beef, and has railed against legislative attempts to make sure fake meats are properly labeled, since that will slow down public acceptance.17

Not surprisingly, Gates is financially invested in most of his proposed “solutions” to the world’s problems, be it hunger, disease, viral pandemics or climate change.18

It’s these kinds of self-serving endeavors that have earned Gates the unofficial title of the most dangerous philanthropist in the world. As noted by AGRA Watch,19 Vandana Shiva, Ph.D., and others, Gates’ philanthropy creates several new problems for each one he promises to solve, and can best be described as “philanthrocapitalism.”

Again and again, Gates’ globalist approach to farming has had devastating consequences for food and environmental sustainability in general and local food security in particular. It is profitable for Gates and his corporate allies, though, and furthers the technocratic plan to control the world by owning all the world’s resources.

The WEF, founded by technocrat figurehead Klaus Schwab, is just one of the global nongovernmental agencies that help promote Gates’ destructive agricultural and fake food agenda.

The Great Reset of Life as We Know It

The Gates Foundation, through its funding of the WEF, also plays an important role in The Great Reset, which was officially unveiled during a WEF summit in May 2020. As reported by The Defender, the Great Reset:20

“… is a vision for transferring the world into a totalitarian and authoritarian surveillance state manipulated by technocrats to manage traumatized populations, to shift wealth upward, and serve the interests of elite billionaire oligarchs.”

Every conceivable aspect of life and society is scheduled to be “reset” according to their plan — including global food policies. Leading that specific charge is an organization called the EAT Forum, cofounded by the Wellcome Trust, which describes itself as the “Davos for food.”

The EAT Forum’s largest initiative is called FReSH, which aims to transform the food system as a whole. Project partners in this venture include Bayer, Cargill, Syngenta, Unilever and Google. EAT also collaborates with nearly 40 city governments in Europe, Africa, Asia, North America, South America and Australia, and helps the Gates-funded United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) create updated dietary guidelines.

As you can see, no matter what network you’re looking at, be it global health, finance, media, environmental policy or food, the Gates Foundation, WEF and Wellcome Trust are there, and tying it all together is The Great Reset plan, with its Fourth Industrial Revolution (another Schwab concoction), which is the transformation of humanity itself into internet-connected cyborgs.

Ultimately, that’s where this criminal COVID enterprise is trying to take us. To prevent that dystopian nightmare from becoming our lot, we need to see the hidden networks working behind the scenes.

We need to recognize that decisions are not made by chance. There’s a plan, and decisions in seemingly disparate areas actually have the identical aim. You can’t see that if you’re thinking that people, organizations and even countries are working independently.

They are in fact networked, which is what makes them so powerful. The thing that can interrupt or break that power is public insight into these networks, and understanding that the ultimate goal of all of them is to “reset” and “rebuild” civilization (“Build Back Better”) into one of their own making.

Sources and References

1 Club Klaren Worte, Public-Private Partnership (PDF)

2 Philanthropy News Digest April 3, 2009

3, 4, 6 MintPress News November 15, 2021

5 Columbia Journalism Review August 21, 2020

7, 11 Humans Are Free May 5, 2021

8, 9 The Puppet Masters Portfolios July 31, 2021

10 The Conversation May 10, 2017

12 Fintel Rothschild

13 Fintel Edmond De Rothschild

14 SGT Report May 6, 2021

15 Lew Rockwell April 21, 2021

16 New York Post February 27, 2021

17 Technology Review February 15, 2021

18, 20 The Defender February 4, 2021

19 Third World Network, Philanthrocapitalism: The Gates Foundation’s African Programs Are Not Charity

Patrick Wood is a leading and critical expert on Sustainable Development, Green Economy, Agenda 21, 2030 Agenda and historic Technocracy. He is the author of Technocracy Rising: The Trojan Horse of Global Transformation (2015) and co-author of Trilaterals Over Washington, Volumes I and II (1978-1980) with the late Antony C. Sutton.

Our Financial System Is Optimized for Sociopaths and Exploitation

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By Charles Hugh Smith

Source: Of Two Minds

We live in a peculiar juncture of history in which truth has been banished as a threat to the maximization of private gain, i.e. the hyper-pursuit of self-interest. Evidence that supports a causal chain has been replaced by cherry-picked data that supports a self-serving narrative: both the evidence and narrative are manufactured to serve the interests of the few at the expense of the many.

In this juncture of history, evidence is easily disputed because the process of manufacturing self-serving evidence has been perfected. Indeed, self-serving evidence is now a commodity which can be purchased wholesale: rig the sample size, massage the data statistically, conjure up a context that serves to frame the evidence in a slippery self-interested fashion, omit disinterested evidence and contexts, top with arcane math and voila, evidence and narrative are presented as “facts” rather than what they really are, an elaborate, well-staged con designed to maximize the private gains of the few by exploiting the many.

Organizing the entire system to serve the pathological greed of the few is best served by devaluing truth to mere opinion and causal chains to mere narratives. In this juncture of history, truth has been revealed as a chimera; there is only opinion, and all opinions are equal. Opinions are beliefs, and all beliefs are equal. All narratives are equal. All questions boil down to values: values are all equally detached, free-floating and of the same value: zero.

This con has reached perfection in our financial system, which is now optimized for exploitation and sociopaths. As Nassim Taleb has explained (referencing Adam Smith), markets only function if there are rules which are imposed equally on all participants. In our financial system, there are two sets of rules: one which we can summarize as anything goes for the super-wealthy and the well-connected, and another set for everyone else.

Shear the sheep of billions, pay a modest fine–and if all your bets go bad, get bailed out because you’re too important to fail. Sneak a few thousand out of the credit union, go to prison. Sell a financial product that’s designed to go bust as low-risk, oh well, buyer beware, haha, that’s just the free market at work. Sell a nickel bag of drugs, get a tenner in the Gulag.

Two sets of rules: one simulacrum of rules for the rich–just another con, really–and punitive rules for everyone else.

Since evidence, causal chains and values have all been devalued, there is no longer any recognition that the desire for gain–greed–can be either exploitive or beneficial to the many. If your greed drives you to make a product that is faster, better, cheaper, more durable and efficient than what’s currently available, your gain is the result of an advance that serves the interests of the many.

If your desire for gain leads you to misrepresent a shoddy product designed to fail (subprime mortgages, Landfill Economy products) or you raise the price because you can, your greed serves your interests at the expense of the many. This is the acme of exploitation. Kleptocrats and sociopaths, rejoice!

This system is optimized for exploitation, as the exploiters can exploit the many without the many even recognizing they’ve been stripmined. We no longer have the means to differentiate fraud from fact or exploitation from rules-based markets.

This landscape of wide-open exploitation and debauchery is Heaven on Earth for sociopaths who not only do not see any difference between gains skimmed at others’ expense and gains earned by providing a superior product / service, they revel in exploiting the system and every participant: employees, partners, suppliers, depositors, borrowers and customers.

But in this desert of exploitation and the supremacy of self-interest, some things remain true and others remain false. Some truths remain self-evident. As I have shown here many times, we can look at the hourly wages and cost of essentials in 1980, 1990, 2000, 2010 and the present and calculate how many hours of labor it took to pay for essentials such as rent, property taxes, healthcare, childcare, taxes, education, etc. These calculations reveal that the purchasing power of wages has declined for decades. This evidence cannot be made to vanish by declaring it opinion, belief or a “different set of values”–it is fact.

If we measure prosperity by how much labor can buy, all but the top few wage earners are less prosperous today. The evidence and causal chain are self-evident. The self-interested few who have reaped the vast majority of the economy’s gains can hire shills to argue that since TVs now require fewer hours of labor to buy, we’re all better off, but these obfuscations are nothing more than distractions designed to divert our attention from the mechanisms of exploitation that are operating 24/7 beneath the ceaseless churn of “news” and “market action.”

Let’s call this financial system what it really is: the MetaPerverse, a conjured world of self-serving cons that is optimized for exploitation, the perversion of justice, infinite inequality and the stripmining of the many to the benefit of the few, all securely protected by a cloud of confusion in which everything is equally valueless and truth no longer exists. All that remains is a babble of competing cons.