The sole remaining reservoirs of trust in American life are personal networks, local enterprises and local institutions.
It’s not exactly news that social trust has declined significantly in the United States. Surveys find that public trust in institutions and the professional classes that dominate those institutions has cratered. (see chart below) Social trust–our confidence that other people are trustworthy–has also fallen to multi-decade lows.
This was not the case in decades past. Americans maintained high levels of trust in their institutions, government and fellow citizens. The decline in social trust is across the entire spectrum: our trust in institutions, professional elites and our fellow Americans has declined precipitously.
The causes of this decay of social trust can be debated endlessly, but several factors are obvious:
1. Institutions forfeited the trust of the citizenry by withholding / editing realities to serve the interests of hidden agendas and insiders’ careers. The Vietnam War was pursued on fabrications, as was the second Gulf War to topple Saddam. Watergate eroded trust on multiple levels, as did the Church Committee’s investigation of America’s security agencies’ domestic spying / over-reach.
2. The managerial / professional elites at the top of the nation’s institutions no longer put the citizenry’s interests above their own. The public’s trust has eroded as institutions are primarily viewed as vehicles for self-enrichment and career advancement: healthcare CEOs pay themselves millions, higher education is bloated with layers of non-teaching administration, defense contractors and the Pentagon have greased the revolving door to the benefit of incumbents and insiders, and so on, in an endless parade of self-serving cloaked with smirking PR claims of “serving the public.”
The shift from a high-trust society to a low-trust society is consequential economically, politically and socially. Low-trust societies have stagnant economies, as nobody trusts anyone they don’t know personally or through personally trusted networks, and nobody trust institutions to function effectively or fulfill their stated mission to serve the public good.
Faced with incompetent, unaccountable, corrupt bureaucracies and a culture overflowing with scams, frauds, imposters and get-rich-quick schemes, people give up and drop out. Rather than start a business and accept all the risks just to get dumped on or ripped off, they don’t even try to start a business. Given the financial insecurity that is now the norm, they decide not to get married or have children.
The vast trading networks of the Roman Empire were based on personal trusted networks and trust in Rome’s functionaries / institutions. The owners of trading ships dealt with trusted captains and merchants, who then paid duties to Roman functionaries in Alexandria and other major trading ports.
In other words, tightly bound personal trusted networks work well as long as the state institutions that bind the entire economy are trusted as fair and reliable–not perfect, of course, but efficient and “good enough.”
But when public institutions are viewed as unfair, unreliable, corrupt or incompetent, the entire economy decays. Even personal trusted networks cannot survive in an economy of unfair, unreliable, corrupt or incompetent state bureaucracies and private institutions.
The American economy is now dominated by enormous privately owned and managed monopolies and cartels that are the private-sector equivalent of self-serving state bureaucracies. Big Tech, Big Pharma, Big Healthcare, Big Ag, Big Finance, etc., are even worse than state bureaucracies because there are no legal requirements for transparency or recourse. Try getting a response from a Big Tech corporation when you’ve been shadow-banned or sent to Digital Siberia.
The sole remaining reservoirs of trust in American life are personal networks, local enterprises and local institutions. These are not guaranteed, of course; in many locales, even these reservoirs have been drained. But in other locales, enterprises and institutions such as the county water utility, the local newspaper, the local community college, etc. continue to earn the trust of the public by performing the services they exist to provide effectively and at a reasonable cost.
The larger the institution and the greater its wealth and power, the lower the social trust–for good reasons. The greater the influence of the managerial elites, the greater the disconnect from the everyday experiences of the citizenry and customers, and the more extreme the self-serving PR.
Sure, I trust Big Tech, Big Pharma, Big Healthcare, Big Finance–to rip me off, profiteer, send me obfuscating bills, jack up junk fees, make it impossible to contact them, and send me to Digital Siberia if I complain.
The divide between the elites and the commoners should prompt us to examine the low-trust path we’re sliding down:
In a society in which everything is phony, low quality or fraudulent, you’re taking a chance trusting anyone you don’t know personally–and even that can be risky now that self-aggrandizing flim-flam is the last remaining path to financial security for non-elites.
A low-trust society is an impoverished society, economically stagnant and socially threadbare. That’s where we are now, and the more fragmented, greedy, self-serving, desperate and deranged we become, the lower the odds that we’ll find the means to rebuild trust.
Sadly, we already know that anyone claiming to “rebuild trust” is spouting PR designed to mask self-enrichment. We also know that the vast army of well-paid flacks, factotums, enforcers, happy-story apologists, lackeys, toadies and sell-out minions are declaring “everything’s great!”
Just mumble, “Uh, sure” and continue to Tune in (to degrowth), drop out (of hyper-consumerism and debt-serfdom) and turn on (to self-reliance and relocalizing capital and agency).
The food transition, the energy transition, net-zero ideology, programmable central bank digital currencies, the censorship of free speech and clampdowns on protest. What’s it all about? To understand these processes, we need to first locate what is essentially a social and economic reset within the context of a collapsing financial system.
Writer Ted Reece notes that the general rate of profit has trended downwards from an estimated 43% in the 1870s to 17% in the 2000s. By late 2019, many companies could not generate enough profit. Falling turnover, squeezed margins, limited cashflows and highly leveraged balance sheets were prevalent.
Professor Fabio Vighi of Cardiff University has described how closing down the global economy in early 2020 under the guise of fighting a supposedly new and novel pathogen allowed the US Federal Reserve to flood collapsing financial markets (COVID relief) with freshly printed money without causing hyperinflation. Lockdowns curtailed economic activity, thereby removing demand for the newly printed money (credit) in the physical economy and preventing ‘contagion’.
According to investigative journalist Michael Byrant, €1.5 trillion was needed to deal with the crisis in Europe alone. The financial collapse staring European central bankers in the face came to a head in 2019. The appearance of a ‘novel virus’ provided a convenient cover story.
The European Central Bank agreed to a €1.31 trillion bailout of banks followed by the EU agreeing to a €750 billion recovery fund for European states and corporations. This package of long-term, ultra-cheap credit to hundreds of banks was sold to the public as a necessary programme to cushion the impact of the pandemic on businesses and workers.
In response to a collapsing neoliberalism, we are now seeing the rollout of an authoritarian great reset — an agenda that intends to reshape the economy and change how we live.
SHIFT TO AUTHORITARIANISM
The new economy is to be dominated by a handful of tech giants, global conglomerates and e-commerce platforms, and new markets will also be created through the financialisation of nature, which is to be colonised, commodified and traded under the notion of protecting the environment.
In recent years, we have witnessed an overaccumulation of capital, and the creation of such markets will provide fresh investment opportunities (including dodgy carbon offsetting Ponzi schemes) for the super-rich to park their wealth and prosper.
This great reset envisages a transformation of Western societies, resulting in permanent restrictions on fundamental liberties and mass surveillance. Being rolled out under the benign term of a ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’, the World Economic Forum (WEF) says the public will eventually ‘rent’ everything they require (remember the WEF video ‘you will own nothing and be happy’?): stripping the right of ownership under the guise of a ‘green economy’ and underpinned by the rhetoric of ‘sustainable consumption’ and ‘climate emergency’.
Climate alarmism and the mantra of sustainability are about promoting money-making schemes. But they also serve another purpose: social control.
Neoliberalism has run its course, resulting in the impoverishment of large sections of the population. But to dampen dissent and lower expectations, the levels of personal freedom we have been used to will not be tolerated. This means that the wider population will be subjected to the discipline of an emerging surveillance state.
To push back against any dissent, ordinary people are being told that they must sacrifice personal liberty in order to protect public health, societal security (those terrible Russians, Islamic extremists or that Sunak-designated bogeyman George Galloway) or the climate. Unlike in the old normal of neoliberalism, an ideological shift is occurring whereby personal freedoms are increasingly depicted as being dangerous because they run counter to the collective good.
The real reason for this ideological shift is to ensure that the masses get used to lower living standards and accept them. Consider, for instance, the Bank of England’s chief economist Huw Pill saying that people should ‘accept’ being poorer. And then there is Rob Kapito of the world’s biggest asset management firm BlackRock, who says that a “very entitled” generation must deal with scarcity for the first time in their lives.
At the same time, to muddy the waters, the message is that lower living standards are the result of the conflict in Ukraine and supply shocks that both the war and ‘the virus’ have caused.
The net-zero carbon emissions agenda will help legitimise lower living standards (reducing your carbon footprint) while reinforcing the notion that our rights must be sacrificed for the greater good. You will own nothing, not because the rich and their neoliberal agenda made you poor but because you will be instructed to stop being irresponsible and must act to protect the planet.
NET-ZERO AGENDA
But what of this shift towards net-zero greenhouse gas emissions and the plan to slash our carbon footprints? Is it even feasible or necessary?
Gordon Hughes, a former World Bank economist and current professor of economics at the University of Edinburgh, says in a new report that current UK and European net-zero policies will likely lead to further economic ruin.
Apparently, the only viable way to raise the cash for sufficient new capital expenditure (on wind and solar infrastructure) would be a two decades-long reduction in private consumption of up to 10 per cent. Such a shock has never occurred in the last century outside war; even then, never for more than a decade.
But this agenda will also cause serious environmental degradation. So says Andrew Nikiforuk in the article The Rising Chorus of Renewable Energy Skeptics, which outlines how the green techno-dream is vastly destructive.
He lists the devastating environmental impacts of an even more mineral-intensive system based on renewables and warns:
“The whole process of replacing a declining system with a more complex mining-based enterprise is now supposed to take place with a fragile banking system, dysfunctional democracies, broken supply chains, critical mineral shortages and hostile geopolitics.”
All of this assumes that global warming is real and anthropogenic. Not everyone agrees. In the article Global warming and the confrontation between the West and the rest of the world, journalist Thierry Meyssan argues that net zero is based on political ideology rather than science. But to state such things has become heresy in the Western countries and shouted down with accusations of ‘climate science denial’.
Regardless of such concerns, the march towards net zero continues, and key to this is the United Nations Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development Goals.
Today, almost every business or corporate report, website or brochure includes a multitude of references to ‘carbon footprints’, ‘sustainability’, ‘net zero’ or ‘climate neutrality’ and how a company or organisation intends to achieve its sustainability targets. Green profiling, green bonds and green investments go hand in hand with displaying ‘green’ credentials and ambitions wherever and whenever possible.
It seems anyone and everyone in business is planting their corporate flag on the summit of sustainability. Take Sainsbury’s, for instance. It is one of the ‘big six’ food retail supermarkets in the UK and has a vision for the future of food that it published in 2019.
Here’s a quote from it:
“Personalised Optimisation is a trend that could see people chipped and connected like never before. A significant step on from wearable tech used today, the advent of personal microchips and neural laces has the potential to see all of our genetic, health and situational data recorded, stored and analysed by algorithms which could work out exactly what we need to support us at a particular time in our life. Retailers, such as Sainsbury’s could play a critical role to support this, arranging delivery of the needed food within thirty minutes — perhaps by drone.”
Tracked, traced and chipped — for your own benefit. Corporations accessing all of our personal data, right down to our DNA. The report is littered with references to sustainability and the climate or environment, and it is difficult not to get the impression that it is written so as to leave the reader awestruck by the technological possibilities.
However, the promotion of a brave new world of technological innovation that has nothing to say about power — who determines policies that have led to massive inequalities, poverty, malnutrition, food insecurity and hunger and who is responsible for the degradation of the environment in the first place — is nothing new.
The essence of power is conveniently glossed over, not least because those behind the prevailing food regime are also shaping the techno-utopian fairytale where everyone lives happily ever after eating bugs and synthetic food while living in a digital panopticon.
FAKE GREEN
The type of ‘green’ agenda being pushed is a multi-trillion market opportunity for lining the pockets of rich investors and subsidy-sucking green infrastructure firms and also part of a strategy required to secure compliance required for the ‘new normal’.
It is, furthermore, a type of green that plans to cover much of the countryside with wind farms and solar panels with most farmers no longer farming. A recipe for food insecurity.
Those investing in the ‘green’ agenda care first and foremost about profit. The supremely influential BlackRock invests in the current food system that is responsible for polluted waterways, degraded soils, the displacement of smallholder farmers, a spiralling public health crisis, malnutrition and much more.
It also invests in healthcare — an industry that thrives on the illnesses and conditions created by eating the substandard food that the current system produces. Did Larry Fink, the top man at BlackRock, suddenly develop a conscience and become an environmentalist who cares about the planet and ordinary people? Of course not.
Any serious deliberations on the future of food would surely consider issues like food sovereignty, the role of agroecology and the strengthening of family farms — the backbone of current global food production.
The aforementioned article by Andrew Nikiforuk concludes that, if we are really serious about our impacts on the environment, we must scale back our needs and simplify society.
In terms of food, the solution rests on a low-input approach that strengthens rural communities and local markets and prioritises smallholder farms and small independent enterprises and retailers, localised democratic food systems and a concept of food sovereignty based on self-sufficiency, agroecological principles and regenerative agriculture.
It would involve facilitating the right to culturally appropriate food that is nutritionally dense due to diverse cropping patterns and free from toxic chemicals while ensuring local ownership and stewardship of common resources like land, water, soil and seeds.
That’s where genuine environmentalism and the future of food begins.
One of my favorite false narratives floating around corporate media platforms has been the argument that the American people “just don’t seem to understand how good the economy really is right now.” If only they would look at the stats, they would realize that we are in the middle of a financial renaissance, right? It must be that people have been brainwashed by negative press from conservative sources…
I have to laugh at this claim because it’s a very common one throughout history – It’s an assertion made by almost every single political regime right before a major collapse. These people always say the same things, and when you study economics as long as I have you can’t help but throw up your hands and marvel at their dedication to the propaganda.
One example that comes to mind immediately is the delusional optimism of the “roaring” 1920s and the lead up to the Great Depression. At the time around 60% of the US population was living in poverty conditions (according to the metrics of the decade) earning less than $2000 a year. However, in the years after WWI ravaged Europe, America’s economic power was considered unrivaled.
The 1920s was an era of mass production and rampant consumerism but it was all fueled by easy access to debt, a condition which had not really existed before in America. It was this illusion of prosperity created by the unchecked application of credit that eventually led to the massive stock market bubble and the crash of 1929. This implosion, along with the Federal Reserve’s policy of raising interest rates into economic weakness, created a black hole in the US financial system for over a decade.
There are two primary tools that various failing regimes will always use to distort the true conditions of the economy: Debt and inflation. In the case of America today, we are experiencing BOTH problems simultaneously and this has made certain economic indicators appear healthy when they are, in fact, highly unstable. The average American knows this is the case because they see the effects daily. They see the damage to their wallets, to their buying power, in the jobs market and in their quality of life. This is why public faith in the economy has been stuck in the dregs since 2021.
The establishment can shove out-of-context stats in people’s faces, but they can’t force the populace to see a recovery that simply does not exist. Let’s go through a short list of the most faulty indicators and the real reasons why the fiscal picture is not as rosy as the media would like us to believe…
The “Miracle” Labor Market Recovery
In the case of the US labor market, we have a clear example of distortion through inflation. The $8 trillion+ dropped on the economy in the first 18 months of the pandemic response sent the system over the edge into stagflation land. Helicopter money has a habit of doing two things very well: Blowing up a bubble in stock markets and blowing up a bubble in retail. Hence, the massive rush by Americans to go out and buy, followed by the sudden labor shortage and the race to hire (mostly for low wage part-time jobs).
The problem with this “miracle” is that inflation leads to price explosions, which we have already experienced. The average American is spending around 30% more for goods, services and housing compared to what they were spending in 2020. This is what happens when you have too much fiat money chasing too few goods and limited production.
The jobs market looks great on paper, but the majority of jobs generated in the past few years are jobs that returned after the covid lockdowns ended (the same lockdowns Democrats tried to keep in place perpetually). The rest are jobs created through monetary stimulus, and then there is the issue of “immigrant jobs” and data that is revised to the negative months later. I suspect we won’t ever hear the real stats unless Trump enters office in 2025. Then the media discussion will focus intently on how terrible the labor market really is.
Part time low wage service sector jobs are not going to keep the country rolling for very long in a stagflation environment. The question is, what happens now that the stimulus punch bowl has been removed?
Just as we witnessed in the 1920s, Americans have turned to debt to make up for higher prices and stagnant wages by maxing out their credit cards to historic levels. With the central bank keeping interest rates high, the credit safety net will soon falter. This condition also goes for businesses; businesses that will soon jump headlong into mass layoffs when they realize the party is over. It happened during the Great Depression and it will happen again today.
Stock Market Bonanza
We saw cracks in in the armor of the financial structure in 2023 with the spring banking crisis, and without the abrupt Federal Reserve backstop many more small and medium banks would have dropped dead. The weakness of US banks is offset by the relative strength of the US dollar, which lures in foreign investors hoping to protect their wealth using dollar denominated assets.
But something is amiss. Gold and Bitcoin have rocketed higher along with stocks and the dollar. This is the opposite of what’s supposed to happen. Gold and BC are supposed to be hedges against a weak dollar and weak equities, right? If global faith in the dollar and in stocks is so high, why are investors diving into protective assets like gold?
Again, as noted above, inflation distorts everything. Tens of trillions of extra dollars printed by the Fed are floating around and it’s no surprise that much of that cash is flooding into the stock market which simply pushes higher right along with prices on the shelf. But, gold and BC are telling us a more nuanced story about what’s really happening.
Right now, the US government is adding around $1 Trillion every 100 days to the national debt as the Fed holds rates higher to fight inflation. Higher interest means exponential debt conditions, and this debt is going to crush America’s financial standing for global investors who will eventually ask HOW the US is going to handle that growing millstone? As I predicted years ago, the Fed has created a perfect Catch-22 scenario in which the US must either return to rampant inflation, or, face a debt breakdown. In either case, US dollar denominated assets will lose their appeal and stock markets will ultimately plummet.
Beyond this reality, stocks are not a leading indicator of anything, let alone the stability of the financial system. Stocks are a trailing indicator; they crash well after all the other warning signals have made it obvious that something is wrong. Average Americans, for good reason, do not care what stock markets have to say.
Healthy GDP Is A Complete Farce
Beyond the stock market, GDP is the most common out-of-context stat used by governments to convince the citizenry that all is well. It is yet another stat that is entirely manipulated by inflation. It is also manipulated by the way in which modern governments define “production and market value.”
GDP is primarily driven by spending. Meaning, the higher inflation goes, the higher prices go, and the higher GDP climbs (to a point). Eventually prices go too high, credit cards tap out and spending ceases. But, for a short time inflation makes GDP (as well as retail) look good.
Another factor that creates a bubble is the reality that government spending is actually included in the calculation of GDP. That’s right, every dollar of your tax money that the government wastes helps the establishment by propping up GDP numbers. This is why government spending increases will never stop – It’s too valuable for them to spend as a way to make the economy appear healthier than it is.
The Real Economy Is Eclipsing The Fake Economy
The bottom line is that Americans used to be able to ignore the warning signs because their bank accounts were not being directly affected. This is over. Now, every person in the country is dealing with a massive decline in buying power and higher prices across the board in all assets. Even the wealthy are seeing a compression to their profits and many are struggling to keep their businesses in the black.
The unfortunate truth is that the elections of 2024 will probably be the turning point at which the whole edifice comes tumbling down. Even if the public votes for change, the system is already broken and cannot be repaired without a complete overhaul. We have consistently avoided taking our medicine and our weaknesses have only accumulated.
People have lost faith in the economy because they have not faced this kind of uncertainty since the 1930s. Even the stagflation crisis of the 1970s will likely pale in comparison to what is about to happen. On the bright side, at least a large number of Americans are aware of the threat, as opposed to the 1920s when the vast majority of people were utterly conned by the government, the banks and the media into thinking all was well. Knowing is the first step to preparing.
Last time I wrote about the increasing mental health crisis happening around the world. I didn’t write it to bring about negativity but more so to bring awareness to the reality of our current moment. Awareness is the first step toward any change.
Tied in with both of those subjects is the decade-over-decade increase in the difficulty of surviving financially in our modern world.
More and more younger people have been struggling to buy a home and make ends meet due to the high cost of living and stagnating wages. For many, affording necessities in life has become difficult despite working 40-60 hours per week.
This reality recently drove a viral TikTok video that highlights the frustration younger generations feel and the misconceptions associated with their position.
Before you watch it, conversations I have with people about this issue don’t just exist in the Gen Z and Millenial age group. I’ve spoken to people in their 50s and 60s who have also become completely disenfranchised about the state of work.
Also, Quiet Quitting is a trend on the rise. Simply put, people are going to work and doing the bare minimum to stay employed at greater and greater rates. Gallup estimates that in the US 50% of employees have Quiet Quit and that it’s an increasing crisis. In Japan, 94% of employees report being disengaged at work.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Gallup blames the trend on poor management. This is where humans really have to start waking up and thinking bigger in my opinion, more on this shortly.
Alright, let’s get to the video.
She makes many good points, and if we take her words to heart, clearly she isn’t lazy and trying to ‘not work.’ She is passionate about her work but sees the gap between salary and the reality of living a comfortable life. She also sees the value in work… just not like how it is today.
Not surprisingly, many have agreed with her while many have attacked her. Let’s explore why she might feel this way about life and work. (Note: There is an element that sometimes people can judge, hate, and avoid work so much that it’s a self sabotage situation, I talk about that here.)
She and the generation she represents, even people like her from other generations, are just lazy or may even grow out of this idea.
She’s lying about enjoying her job and if she were to quit and do something she likes she’d find just enough satisfaction to not care about the fact that she can’t afford to do anything beyond eat, have shelter, and enjoy a few things.
Maybe she’s just permanently unhappy and therefore no matter what she does, she will find a way to frame it as negative and bad.
From a position of common sense and orienting to our current environment, this girl realizes the losing game she is part of and is making the observation that this isn’t a reasonable game to play.
As an extension to number 4, the fact that multiple generations of people not only realize how rigged the game is, don’t want to play the game AND are saying something about it provides an evolutionary pressure for society to address it.
The key is, can we listen vs. sitting in judgment?
Oddly, reaction videos are all the craze on YouTube these days. When people make videos like hers or when something happens, creators turn on their cameras and watch the video while simultaneously reacting to it.
Usually, creators reacting to videos like this from Gen Z’ers are well off themselves or conservatives. Their career often stems around having a ‘hot take,’ creating polarity, and leaning into drama so their content can get a lot of views and thus pay their bills.
Sadly, this dynamic in content creation is often missed by the user, not realizing that the host of the video says what they say primarily because they know it will make them money even if it’s not entirely what they think.
Further, we never get to the bottom of what people bring forth because we are skipping the step of coming to the table in good faith and empathizing with each other’s position. Instead, we get a culture stuck in a debating/debunking/warring mindset. Good luck getting good faith conversation to go viral when most out there are focused on hi-jacking your attention.
Sensing Beyond The Surface
Sensing Beyond The Surface
‘Working’ is Important – Being part of something, contributing to something, living in a community and having a role, all add meaning and purpose to life.
Being a creative, productive person is a necessity for human well-being, even if only for a few hours a day. No one is saying let’s sit around and do nothing all day. But should we have to work 40 or 50 hours a week to simply survive? No, that is the result of poor system design. We have advanced our technology incredibly to provide the necessities of life yet we work more than we ever have. Doesn’t something seem wrong there? Our cultural idea of needing to work 40 hours a week for most of our lives ‘just to be a contributor’ is rather warped. Many cultures have thrived working a few hours a day, yet look at us – working constantly yet experiencing mental illness, poor health, and meaninglessness at massive rates. It would benefit us to have a deeper look at WHY our society is currently producing results no one wants all while destroying our environment and people. Too many discussions about this topic think small and are limited to lazy questions from system protectors or political ideologies. This won’t get us to the root of the issue and why people feel the way they do.
Cost of Living is Too High, But Why? – I’m 36, when my parents were my age one worked a mid-level job in corporate and the other a grocery store. They made enough to buy a fairly big house near Toronto, pay off the mortgage by 40 and raise two kids. These days, they’d need to make $100,000+ each just to buy the same house, and forget about paying off the mortgage by 40. Even when interest rates were 22% back then, things were a lot easier.
Often, when I talk about mortgage rates with older generations, and how it is becoming hard to afford homes, they say “Back in my day rates were 18% – 22%.” The sense that people aren’t listening to what is being said is palatable. We’re not thinking clearly. In 1945 a US citizen dedicated on average 25% of his salary to pay rent/mortgage. In 2019 it was 47%. It’s higher now. And of course in that time interest rates have come down dramatically. Plain and simple, the cost of living has risen incredibly and wages didn’t climb at anywhere near the same rate.
This is a losing game, and only set to get worse given the path we’re on. That said, this is what anyone should expect in a system driven by fractional reserve banking. When we understand the design of our system, we understand this isn’t about one political view or another, it’s about bad system design. We have to think deeper.
Evolutionary Pressure – As our society declines more and more, younger people who look ahead to their future see something undesirable. The life their parents lived is no longer possible and they see the game is rigged. They aren’t lazy, they are demoralized. A left hemisphere reductionist and othering view, who sees humans as cogs in a system might say “Nah, people are lazy. Grow up. Things are fine.” Yet when we take a step back and include a sense of something sacred, our entire perspective changes. Why are we seeing life and merely working to uphold a rigged economy? Is this really all we are capable of? Why are we always trying to protect societal design producing results we don’t like? Do we realize we made all this up and it can be different? Sure, there are aspects of younger generations that I think are immature too, we’ve all been through it, but at the same time, younger people are not buying the rigged game and thus are not dying to play it. They are right. They are smart to speak up. And to tie things back to meaninglessness and mental health issues, I think we’re seeing now how this all ties into our current moment. People don’t thrive playing a losing game where basic needs are gated behind 100 foot walls.
Movements toward system redesign have been around for many many decades. It’s not a new idea to discuss how rigged, limiting, and problematic our existing societal design is, but more people are waking up to it now. When I spoke about this stuff in 2009 and 2010, most people laughed at me thinking I was nuts. Now, they mostly agree with me. We’re on fertile ground for something new. For a while, we’ll likely live feeling and sensing the possibility of a new society while living in the old. Feeling that we’re not sure we quite belong to a visible society entirely. This is the Metacrisis. This is the shift in consciousness as I’ve always called it. It’s an evolutionary pressure that begs us to look deeper than political ideology and hot takes on why someone we don’t agree with is wrong. It begs us to re-taste the sacred. To examine what it means to be human and why we’re here. I believe the speed at which it unfolds is intimately connected to the quality of our attention, consciousness and state of being. The more capacity we have to steward a better world, the more it will unfold. Change starts within.
One of my favorite false narratives floating around corporate media platforms has been the argument that the American people “just don’t seem to understand how good the economy really is right now.” If only they would look at the stats, they would realize that we are in the middle of a financial renaissance, right? It must be that people have been brainwashed by negative press from conservative sources…
I have to laugh at this notion because it’s a very common one throughout history – it’s an assertion made by almost every single political regime right before a major collapse. These people always say the same things, and when you study economics as long as I have you can’t help but throw up your hands and marvel at their dedication to the propaganda.
One example that comes to mind immediately is the delusional optimism of the “roaring” 1920s and the lead up to the Great Depression. At the time around 60% of the U.S. population was living in poverty conditions (according to the metrics of the decade) earning less than $2000 a year. However, in the years after WWI ravaged Europe, America’s economic power was considered unrivaled.
The 1920s was an era of mass production and rampant consumerism but it was all fueled by easy access to debt, a condition which had not really existed before in America. It was this illusion of prosperity created by the unchecked application of credit that eventually led to the massive stock market bubble and the crash of 1929. This implosion, along with the Federal Reserve’s policy of raising interest rates into economic weakness, created a black hole in the U.S. financial system for over a decade.
There are two primary tools that various failing regimes will often use to distort the true conditions of the economy: Debt and inflation. In the case of America today, we are experiencing BOTH problems simultaneously and this has made certain economic indicators appear healthy when they are, in fact, highly unstable. The average American knows this is the case because they see the effects everyday. They see the damage to their wallets, to their buying power, in the jobs market and in their quality of life. This is why public faith in the economy has been stuck in the dregs since 2021.
The establishment can flash out-of-context stats in people’s faces, but they can’t force the populace to see a recovery that simply does not exist. Let’s go through a short list of the most faulty indicators and the real reasons why the fiscal picture is not a rosy as the media would like us to believe…
The “miracle” labor market recovery
In the case of the U.S. labor market, we have a clear example of distortion through inflation. The $8 trillion+ dropped on the economy in the first 18 months of the pandemic response sent the system over the edge into stagflation land. Helicopter money has a habit of doing two things very well: Blowing up a bubble in stock markets and blowing up a bubble in retail. Hence, the massive rush by Americans to go out and buy, followed by the sudden labor shortage and the race to hire (mostly for low wage part-time jobs).
The problem with this “miracle” is that inflation leads to price explosions, which we have already experienced. The average American is spending around 30% more for goods, services and housing compared to what they were spending in 2020. This is what happens when you have too much money chasing too few goods and limited production.
The jobs market looks great on paper, but the majority of jobs generated in the past few years are jobs that returned after the covid lockdowns ended. The rest are jobs created through monetary stimulus and the artificial retail rush. Part time low wage service sector jobs are not going to keep the country rolling for very long in a stagflation environment. The question is, what happens now that the stimulus punch bowl has been removed?
Just as we witnessed in the 1920s, Americans have turned to debt to make up for higher prices and stagnant wages by maxing out their credit cards. With the central bank keeping interest rates high, the credit safety net will soon falter. This condition also goes for businesses; the same businesses that will jump headlong into mass layoffs when they realize the party is over. It happened during the Great Depression and it will happen again today.
Cracks in the foundation
We saw cracks in the narrative of the financial structure in 2023 with the banking crisis, and without the Federal Reserve backstop policy many more small and medium banks would have dropped dead. The weakness of U.S. banks is offset by the relative strength of the U.S. dollar, which lures in foreign investors hoping to protect their wealth using dollar denominated assets.
But something is amiss. Gold and bitcoin have rocketed higher along with economically sensitive assets and the dollar. This is the opposite of what’s supposed to happen. Gold and BTC are supposed to be hedges against a weak dollar and a weak economy, right? If global faith in the dollar and in the U.S. economy is so high, why are investors diving into protective assets like gold?
Again, as noted above, inflation distorts everything.
Tens of trillions of extra dollars printed by the Fed are floating around and it’s no surprise that much of that cash is flooding into the economy which simply pushes higher right along with prices on the shelf. But, gold and bitcoin are telling us a more honest story about what’s really happening.
Right now, the U.S. government is adding around $600 billion per month to the national debt as the Fed holds rates higher to fight inflation. This debt is going to crush America’s financial standing for global investors who will eventually ask HOW the U.S. is going to handle that growing millstone? As I predicted years ago, the Fed has created a perfect Catch-22 scenario in which the U.S. must either return to rampant inflation, or, face a debt crisis. In either case, U.S. dollar-denominated assets will lose their appeal and their prices will plummet.
“Healthy” GDP is a complete farce
GDP is the most common out-of-context stat used by governments to convince the citizenry that all is well. It is yet another stat that is entirely manipulated by inflation. It is also manipulated by the way in which modern governments define “economic activity.”
GDP is primarily driven by spending. Meaning, the higher inflation goes, the higher prices go, and the higher GDP climbs (to a point). Eventually prices go too high, credit cards tap out and spending ceases. But, for a short time inflation makes GDP (as well as retail sales) look good.
Another factor that creates a bubble is the fact that government spending is actually included in the calculation of GDP. That’s right, every dollar of your tax money that the government wastes helps the establishment by propping up GDP numbers. This is why government spending increases will never stop – It’s too valuable for them to spend as a way to make the economy appear healthier than it is.
The REAL economy is eclipsing the fake economy
The bottom line is that Americans used to be able to ignore the warning signs because their bank accounts were not being directly affected. This is over. Now, every person in the country is dealing with a massive decline in buying power and higher prices across the board on everything – from food and fuel to housing and financial assets alike. Even the wealthy are seeing a compression to their profit and many are struggling to keep their businesses in the black.
The unfortunate truth is that the elections of 2024 will probably be the turning point at which the whole edifice comes tumbling down. Even if the public votes for change, the system is already broken and cannot be repaired without a complete overhaul.
We have consistently avoided taking our medicine and our disease has gotten worse and worse.
People have lost faith in the economy because they have not faced this kind of uncertainty since the 1930s. Even the stagflation crisis of the 1970s will likely pale in comparison to what is about to happen. On the bright side, at least a large number of Americans are aware of the threat, as opposed to the 1920s when the vast majority of people were utterly conned by the government, the banks and the media into thinking all was well. Knowing is the first step to preparing.
The second step is securing your own financial future – that’s where physical precious metals can play a role. Diversifying your savings with inflation-resistant, uninflatable assets whose intrinsic value doesn’t rely on a counterparty’s promise to pay adds resilience to your savings. That’s the main reason physical gold and silver have been the safe haven store-of-value assets of choice for centuries (among both the elite and the everyday citizen).
“Who Owns the World” is the title of an extraordinary documentary, describing how Big-Big Money controls not only every aspect of your life, but has a stranglehold on every government, the political UN body, as well as every UN agency, and all industries and services of this globe.
These largest investors are BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street.
These same investment groups also control over 90% of the world’s major media. Even Rupert Murdoch’s media empire is majority owned by BlackRock / Vanguard. It is therefore no miracle that hardly any news penetrates the walls of secrecy about these major shareholders of every aspect of human life and life-related activities and businesses.
It is a monopoly that can literally not be opposed by traditional means. They have also invented the “rules-based order” — overruling every international and national law at their will. They know no limits, no ethics and adhere to no human or human rights standard. POWER is them.
The two most powerful investors and investment managers are BlackRock and Vanguard. They are closely linked, to the point where their management is largely inter-changeable. Vanguard is BlackRock’s largest shareholder, meaning that they control BlackRock.
Though Vanguard is not transparent about its own shareholders, Vanguard is owned by the richest families on earth. Vanguard has been created to hide their investments and money transactions.
Through non-profit organizations, like the Rockefeller Foundation, Gates Foundation, Rothschild Foundation, JPMorgan Foundation, Clinton Foundation, Bush Foundation, Albert DuPont Charity Trust – and so on, billions of “donation” money is transferred – tax-free – to Vanguard, a shield for their potentially criminal transactions and funding.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is the largest funder of WHO. It also controls GAVI, the vaxx-alliance – and is therefore the most influential organization over human health – and death.
These same people, alias Foundations, also own Blackrock – which is why BlackRock and Vanguard are interchangeable or can act as one, if it is to their advantage.
According to Bloomberg, by 2028, the two will own / manage some 20 trillion dollars – about a fifth of the current world GDP.
If joined by State Street, as is often the case, the world’s fourth largest investment manager, you may add another US$ 3 to US$ 4 trillion of managed assets. Sometimes they are joined by Berkshire Hathaway, City Bank, Bank of America, Chase & Co, Goldman Sachs… adding another few trillion of managed assets to their pie.
However, these second or third ranking financial institutions, in turn, are also owned by BlackRock and Vanguard. One might call it an omnipotent vicious circle from which it is almost impossible to escape.
With that power they can leverage every country in the world, every institution, and every corporation – as they are the largest shareholders of the industrial, military, service and infrastructure investment machine that makes the world turn.
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Please allow just a little detour to Gaza, where the Zionist racist massacre of an entire population has been going on as today for 141 days. Some 30,000 Palestinian have been killed; 70% children and women. Children and women are the prime targets, because children are the next generation and women are the bearer of the next generation – they must be eliminated by the supremacist Zionists.
The horror and inhumanity have no words, cannot be appropriately described with our human vocabulary: Bombs have liquidated an entire family. The mutilated body of a seven-year-old girl, Sidra, is hanging from a wall. Hind, a six-year-old girl, was mercilessly killed by Israeli armed forces, as she was begging for help from an ambulance, surrounded by the cadavers of her killed family. As illustrated by “Hildebrandt”, a Peruvian, renowned non-mainstream news media (23 February 2024).
Tell me, please, are these all-powerful financial conglomerates not powerful enough to stop this massacre at once? They hold entire nations hostage to do their bidding, but they cannot stop Israel, the Zionists behind the State of Israel, from their merciless atrocious killing, murder, massacre of an entire population?
Are they powerful enough to preventing the United States, their Anglosaxon and European puppet governments from halting their money, weapon, and “moral” support of the Zionist onslaught? – Or is their power behind the US veto breaking the UN Security Council’s quest for a Ceasefire in Gaza?
In any case, by not using their power to stop the Zionist war against Palestine, to stop any war, any killing in the world, are they not complicit in the mass-murders in Gaza and around the world by not ending them?
They could. Why are they not doing it?
They are drunk with Power – and as we know, power and money have been derailing humanity for a long time – but now the extent of shame and barbarism has reached a level, where our civilization risks to disappear; and where there is no way to escape – not the traditional ways.
BlackRock / Vanguard are also major shareholders in the secondary and tertiary asset management and banking institutions. So, they control the managed investments of, say, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, City, Chase, Morgan-Stanley – you name it.
If you invest, for example, in a food conglomerate, like Nestlé, Unilever, PepsiCo, most have no idea that they invest in BlackRock / Vanguard, major shareholders of these food corporations, and by doing so, they also invest in the worldwide military industrial (killing) complex which is too is controlled by BlackRock / Vanguard.
BlackRock / Vanguard / State Street are also the powers behind the power – most often invisible. For example, BlackRock has close links with many Central Banks, especially with the Federal Reserve.
They lend money to the FED – and are a principal adviser to the FED and most likely to other central banks, including they advise on computer systems they use and which connects them.
BlackRock, is by far the largest influencer and donor, or “partner”, as they prefer to call themselves, therefore, also “commander”, of the World Economic Forum (WEF), the entire UN system, its political arm, as well as its sub-agencies – and by proxy, also the World Health Organization (WHO) – and not to forget GAVI, the Vaccination Association, physically located just next door to WHO – and by further extension, Big-Pharma, the pharma industry.
Together with their faithful think-alike executer of WEF’s mandates, Mr. Klaus Schwab, as well as the multibillionaires, such as the Gates, Rockefellers, Soros’ of this world, one can easily deduct – they – BlackRock and Co. – control our lives – health and death.
Through their world-domineering ownership of all that moves, shakes, and produces, they are globalists, eugenists and “green-agenda” eccentrics – pushing the climate change lie – come hell or high water. Costs in money and lives do not matter.
Were these financial monsters behind the covid-plandemic idea? What a question!
Their agenda – eugenist, destruction of current economic structures to rebuild according to this small elite’s criteria – is clearly spelled out by the Club of Rome’s (CoR) “Limits to Growth” (1972), and the follow-on Report “The First Global Revolution” (1991) which claims early on in its text that annihilation of the current system is a MUST, to rebuild, bringing the fundamental changes in favor of the elite – with eugenics and absolute control always in the fore.
Is the CoR at the service of the global financial empire? After all, the same powers are behind both.
Not by coincidence, the Rockefeller Group is the inventor of the Club of Rome, today comfortably seated, tax free and with full diplomatic immunity, in Switzerland.
The fake Covid plandemic is the first building block for this all-destructive mechanism, the “corner stone’ of destruction, so to speak. The lockdowns, the inhuman, totally invalid PCR tests, the fear-mongering – the invented covid-death rates – were very effective in manipulating people, but also in laying the groundwork for the overall annihilation of our society and even civilization, in shifting assets from the bottom to the top – and in abolishing the world economy that carries our civilization.
Once the people were shivering from fear, the deadly “vaxxes” were introduced. Lo and behold, by now, despite ever-louder opposition – about 5.7 billion people – out of the world’s 8 billion (more than 70%) have received at least one jab – and most got 2 or 3 injections.
These poisonous injections are in the human bodies and may most likely react sooner or later. According to Mike Yeadon, former VP and Chief scientist of Pfizer – over the next three to ten years, the death-toll will increase probably drastically, but most people will not link it to the “vaxxes” — either because they have been indoctrinated that deaths are due to long or late covid, or because they suffer from and live in cognitive dissonance.
WEF’s Chairman, Klaus Schwab’s top advisor, Israeli Professor, Yuval Noah Harari, asks openly what to do with the “useless eaters” when their “raison d’être” has ben replaced by Artificial Intelligence (AI). Giving them a base salary for (temporary) survival, getting them hooked on violent video games to prep them for the future, and to let them gradually “disappear”? —–
In addition to severe human injuries and death, the vaxxes also reduce male and female fertility, cause miscarriages, highly aggressive and lethal turbo-cancers, and if course, myocardities and sudden deaths.
Overall excess mortality in the west is as high as 20% in some countries. In the UK, where excess deaths are alarming the common public, they have started modifying statistics to erase surplus mortality.
In parallel, mostly funded by the Soros Open Society Foundation, the Woke movement is ravaging the western world, with promotion of sex changes – and the infamous “multi-letter” agenda – LGBTQIA+ = Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, and Asexual. WOW! – This is promoted in schools, in some countries with strict bans of parents’ interference in their children’s, as young as 11 years, wishes for sex-change.
This agenda reduces birth rates further.
Endless wars – create chaos, confusion, desperation and, of course, also deaths.
The Money Masters have succeeded in creating the first building blocks. WHO may soon become the most powerful health (life and death) tyranny on earth, if the infamous Pandemic Treaty and the harshly modified International Health Regulations (IHR) are approved at the upcoming World Health Assembly (WHA) in May 2024.
Knowing who is in possession and control of WHO and the WHA, the world is called upon to exit WHO. Internationally renowned Dr Peter McCullough testified in the European Parliament in Strasbourg, about the social and economic consequences of covid vaxxes, as well as the potentially impending WHO tyranny – concluding with a call on the EU and the US – and the rest of the world to exit WHO.
To retake the world, by We the People, leaving BlackRock, Vanguard & Co. behind, exiting the UN system and WHO – would be the next step. Most important, and possibly the only way defeating this money power, is withdrawing from the current societal system and start afresh.
Small communal economies – as far away as possible from any digitization – with a dynamic cooperation among themselves, evolving naturally and on a higher spiritual level than the low vibrating one which is typical for our material world and the present strive for ever more material goods.
“Only when we are divided, can the elite retain its power over us.”
“The Wound is the Place, where the Light enters You”. By the great Sufi poet, Rumi
Their weapons are blackmail and fear.
WE MUST NOT FEAR.
We are the 99%.
We can do it.
And we MUST do it for survival of humanity.
Peter Koenig is a geopolitical analyst and a former Senior Economist at the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO), where he worked for over 30 years around the world. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed; and co-author of Cynthia McKinney’s book “When China Sneezes: From the Coronavirus Lockdown to the Global Politico-Economic Crisis” (Clarity Press – November 1, 2020) Peter is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). He is also a non-resident Senior Fellow of the Chongyang Institute of Renmin University, Beijing.
Politicians and corporate managers have an enviable record of self-enrichment but very little to show in terms of putting the long-term interests of the citizenry above their own short-term gains.
This week’s focus is on self-reliance, a topic of increasing relevance than is more complex that it may seem.
Sociologists differentiate between high-trust and low-trust societies: in high-trust social orders, citizens tend to trust institutions and each other to conform to social norms, enabling strangers to trust a vast circle of transactions and socio-economic ties. Low-trust societies are plagued with distrust of authority and institutions and fear of getting taken advantage of by strangers, so the circles of trust are small, inhibiting social mobility and economic growth.
Economies and political systems can also be understood as high-trust or low-trust. If the political system excels at rewarding insiders and incumbents while leaving critical problems unsolved, citizens have little reason to trust the system.
The same is true of economies that greatly enrich insiders and incumbents at the expense of the citizenry via monopoly/cartel price-gouging, shrinkflation, degrading the quality of goods and services and the immiseration of standard services, forcing customers to “upgrade” from wretched to merely dismal.
Conventional pundits and economists are constantly whining that Americans “just don’t get it”: they tout our soaring per capita wealth, i.e. we’re getting richer, so everyone should be delighted, yet only 20% of the public are “satisfied with the way things are going.”
What the well-compensated pundits and economists are ignoring (or are paid to ignore) is the decay of the U.S. from a high-trust-functional to a low-trust-dysfunctional society and economy: Americans will still go out of their way to aid strangers, but their trust in institutions has plummeted to lows, as has their trust in the political-corporate elites’ leadership: politicians and corporate managers have an enviable record of self-enrichment but very little to show in terms of putting the long-term interests of the citizenry above their own short-term gains.
People understand the name of the game now is to spout all the expected optimistic PR of “innovation” and “serving the public” while maximizing their private gain at the expense of the nation. Offshoring America’s essential industrial supply chains wasn’t done to serve the nation; it was done to maximize profits, 90% of which flow to the top 10%. Pushing us into debt servitude is highly profitable, but it isn’t benefiting us or the nation.
Americans were told to trust long, hyper-globalized single-source supply chains as “efficient” (i.e. profitable) and trustworthy, yet they’ve discovered these supply chains are vulnerable and fragile. Americans were told that corporate monopolies were selling them “innovations” when in fact they were being sold highly addictive (and therefore highly profitable) goods and services.
Americans were told that their financial security was increasing even as the U.S. economy became increasingly dependent on hyper-financialized asset bubbles and central bank bailouts, the precise opposite of stability. Rather than producing more financial security for the bottom 80%, these “innovations” greatly expanded the gulf between the wealthy and the increasingly precarious bottom 80%.
Americans were told to trust that the hyper-centralization of political and financial power would benefit them, when the evidence is piling up that this hyper-centralization has increased the dysfunction of core institutions and the fragility of essential systems.
Doesn’t it ring hollow to glorify our soaring wealth while households declare bankruptcy due to medical bills, college students sign up for a lifetime of debt servitude to pay tuition and inflation has destroyed 20% of every wage earner’s paycheck just since January 2020? All that “soaring wealth” is asymmetrically distributed, but let’s not talk about that, let’s talk about statistics that mask that asymmetry.
What the well-compensated pundits and economists are paid to ignore is the concentration of the vast majority of all this new wealth and income in the top 10%. Soaring wealth only widens wealth inequality; it doesn’t benefit the nation, it weakens its foundations by accelerating the decay of trust in core institutions and systems.
What happens when high-trust decays to low-trust is the circle of reliable, trustworthy sources and people shrinks to the local, decentralized level. Rather than trust Big Ag, Big Fast-Food and supply chains of highly processed glop to feed us, we start turning to local sources of real food.
In the same way, we rediscover the value of thinking for ourselves rather than accepting self-serving memes-of-the-day. We rediscover the value of what Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote about in his 1841 essay Self-Reliance (free text, Project Gutenberg).
Emerson counsels us to “be our best selves,” and not to count property wealth above all else. (“They measure their esteem of each other by what each has, and not by what each is.”)
Emerson understood that the values of a society are the foundation of its economic order. A system lacking any principles and values other than greed and self-enrichment is a rotten structure doomed to collapse. It is not just the larger socio-economic order that needs a rock-solid value system; each individual must ground their choices and actions in a value system they have embraced on their own. (“Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.”)
What Emerson is espousing is self-reliance, in thought, in values, and in economic and financial matters. In today’s world of crumbling hyper-globalization, self-reliance extends to the practical world of where our essential goods and services are coming from.
We discuss how the American economy has changed over the past 40 years, to the detriment of the nation’s values and the security of its citizenry, and what self-reliance means today– the topic of my book Self-Reliance in the 21st Century. (Read the first chapter for free.)
How can we best navigate our low-trust, increasingly dysfunctional society and economy? By strengthening our own self-reliance.
The modern food system is being shaped by the capitalist imperative for profit. Aside from losing their land to global investors and big agribusiness concerns, people are being sickened by corporations and a system that thrives on the promotion of ‘junk’ (ultra-processed) food laced with harmful chemicals and cultivated with the use of toxic agrochemicals.
It’s a highly profitable situation for investment firms like BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street, Fidelity and Capital Group and the food and agribusiness conglomerates they invest in. But BlackRock and others are not just heavily invested in the food industry. They also profit from illnesses and diseases resulting from the food system by having stakes in the pharmaceuticals sector as well. For them, it’s a win-win situation.
Lobbying by agrifood corporations and their well-placed, well-funded front groups ensures this situation prevails. They continue to capture policy-making and regulatory space at international and national levels and promote the (false) narrative that without their products the world would starve.
They are now also pushing a fake-green, ecomodernist agenda and rolling out their new proprietary technologies in order to further entrench their grip on a global food system that produces poor food, illness, environmental degradation, dependency and dispossession.
The prevailing globalised agrifood model is built on unjust trade policies, the leveraging of sovereign debt to benefit powerful interests, population displacement and land dispossession. It fuels export-oriented commodity monocropping and regional food insecurity.
This model is responsible for increasing rates of illness, nutrient-deficient diets, a narrowing of the range of food crops, chemical runoffs, increasing levels of farmer indebtedness and the eradication of biodiversity. And it relies on a policy paradigm that privileges urbanisation, global markets and agrifood corporations’ needs ahead of rural communities, local markets, on-farm resources and food sovereignty.
In addition, there are also the broader geopolitical aspects of food and agriculture in a post-COVID world characterised by food inflation, hardship and multi-trillion-dollar global debt.
There are huge environmental, political, social and health issues that stem from how much of our food is currently produced and consumed. A paradigm shift is required.
That book contains substantial sections on the agrarian crisis in India and issues affecting the agriculture sector. Aruna Rodrigues — prominent campaigner and lead petitioner in the GMO Mustard Public Interest Litigation in the Supreme Court of India — stated the following about the book:
This is graphic, a detailed horror tale in the making for India, an exposé on what is planned, to hand over Indian sovereignty and food security to big business.”
‘Sickening Profits’ continues in a similar vein. By describing situations in Ukraine, India, the Netherlands and elsewhere, it is another graphic horror tale in the making that is being intensified across the globe. The question is: Can it be stopped?
After the Crash 