Mar 122022
 
 March 12, 2022  Posted by at 9:48 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,


René Magritte The victory 1939

 

A Global Monetary & Commodity Inferno Of Nuclear Proportions (Von Greyerz)
Inflation: SMOKING (Denninger)
Crashin’ and Burnin’ (Kunstler)
‘A New Page in the Art of War’ (Escobar)
On a Knife’s Edge in Ukraine (Lauria)
Russia Allows Chinese Banks To Buy Oil Without Letters Of Credit (ZH)
In Praise of “Whataboutism” (Kimberley)
Are You SURE This Is A Good Idea? (Denninger)
One Ukrainian Billionaire Funded Hunter Biden, Zelensky, Azov Battalion (Koa)
Pfizer Vaccine Accumulates In Ovaries; Ovarian Cancer At All Time High (DE)
Forget About Covid, They Say (Tucker)
Some Australians Face A Fourth Covid Booster Shot – And One Every Year (DM)
Google Ministry of Information Announces Zero Tolerance Policy (CTH)
Restaurants Now Requiring Proof Of Ukraine Support (BBee)

 

 

Inflation while money doesn’t move?

 

 

Tucker rule of law

 

 

Jen Psaki tells the Tik-Tok influencers in her briefing that Russia “of course hacked our election here” in 2016.

 

 

Von Greyerz has good analyses.

A Global Monetary & Commodity Inferno Of Nuclear Proportions (Von Greyerz)

Russia has the biggest natural resource reserves in the world which include coal, natural gas, oil, gold, timber, rare earth metals etc. In Rubles these reserves will obviously appreciate substantially with the falling currency. In total, the Russian natural resource reserves are estimated at $75 trillion. That is 66% higher than the second country USA and more than twice as much as Saudi Arabia and Canada. Even if the total Russian supply is not lost to the world, it is clear that the West is determined to punish Russia to the furthest extent possible. Therefore, as we have already seen in the major escalation of oil and gas prices, the shortages will put insufferable pressure on the prices of natural resources.

The global market for grains, vegetable oil and fertilisers was already extremely tight before Russia’s attack. What is happening now is a commodity black swan across both energy and agricultural resources. The World Food Programme warned of a catastrophic scarcity for several hundred million people last November. What is happening now will make this exponentially worse. “Everything is going up vertically. The whole production chain is under pressure from every side,” said UN’s ex-head of agricultural markets. Energy and agricultural products are interlinked. Gas is feedstock for fertiliser production in Europe. Russia and Belarus together account for 1/3 of the world’s potash exports.Around 33% of world exports of barley come from Russia and Ukraine together, 30% of wheat, 20% of maize and 80% of sunflower oil. The consequences are unforeseeable.

Goldman Sachs Commodity Index is up 3X since April 2020. The exponential phase of the move has just started. UN’s Food and Agricultural Organisation (FOA) are reporting a 43% increase in food price since 2020. And remember, this was before the real problems had started. I have for quite a few years warned about the coming inflation, leading to hyperinflation, based on unlimited money printing. But the dynamite of a global commodity crisis and shortages thrown into the already catastrophic debt and global monetary fire will create an inferno of nuclear proportions. If a miracle doesn’t stop this war very quickly (which is extremely unlikely), the world will soon be entering a hyperinflationary commodity explosion (think both energy, metals and food) combined with a cataclysmic deflationary asset implosion (think debt, stocks and property).

The world will be experiencing totally unknown consequences without the ability to solve any of them for a very long time. All the above would most likely happen even without a global war. But if the war spreads outside Russia and Ukraine, then all bets are off. At this point I am not going to speculate about such an outcome since what is standing in front of us currently certainly is bad enough.

Read more …

Well, yes, prices are rising.

Inflation: SMOKING (Denninger)

The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) increased 0.8 percent in February on a seasonally adjusted basis after rising 0.6 percent in January, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Over the last 12 months, the all items index increased 7.9 percent before seasonal adjustment. Gasoline was only up 6.6% in the February index. Most of the damage had not yet been taken; that’s in the last two weeks and will be in the next report. Groceries were up 1.4% on the month which annualizes to 18%, a figure that is worse than the early 1980s inflation and will flat-out ruin lower and middle-income Americans. Shelter was the largest non-food and fuel increase, which also monkey-hammers modest-income persons.

Prices for used vehicles dropped, no doubt due to the insanity of large trucks which of course are fuel pigs and most people buy them because they like them, not because they tow or haul something. When the pump shuts off at $100 before the tank is full they suddenly get a lot less attractive, don’t they? The fiction of “owners-equivalent rent” continues. Actual house prices have risen astronomically yet OER is only up 4.3%. Anyone who believes that figure is nuts. Incidentally this intentional distortion was part and parcel of the housing crash in 2008 and why we’ll have another one; rentals have been priced exclusive of capital cost recovery for quite some time and that’s a problem because the owners have thought they’d be “ok” due to capital appreciation in the asset value.

Then Covid hit, the moratoriums came and the rocket-shot in price that “rescued” what was otherwise a flat-out disaster that would have bankrupted basically everyone who owned and rented out single-family residences. The problem is that as with last time this “asset value” addition is a mirage; liquidity will be forced to tighten as when you can’t buy food you riot and a burned house is worth zero. You can’t print chickens, cows, wheat and corn — you have to grow them and when the input costs go up so does the price in the store. Thus these intentional (but transparent and fully-visible) lies in the CPI table, specifically OER, which I’ve outlined for over a decade as the cause of much of bad policy by both The Fed and Government, but which was intentionally put into the computation by the government itself, is going to lead to the same sort of bad outcome.

Insurance is going to take off too. Unfortunately that’s a “sunk cost” for virtually everyone in some form or fashion. If you think car insurance is going to get nasty health insurance was up 1.9% on the month which annualizes to 25.3%. Every single employed person either pays this directly (e.g. Obamacare) or it is a direct deduction from their wage and salary offer if the employer is forced to provide it for him or her with it commonly being $500 a month — so this is $100 per month, or over $1,000 a year that is going to come directly in the form of less money in your pocket or even firings if you no longer are worth the extra $100 a month to the employer! The annualized change in price for goods, both durables and non-durables, are all up double-digits with durable goods approaching 20%.

Read more …

“America has gazed into the abyss and apparently decided to sign a lease and move in.”

Crashin’ and Burnin’ (Kunstler)

Yes, life in the early twenty-first century looks more and more like a bad horror movie. And now the critics are moving in, savaging the production. “A massive murderous fraud,” many are saying of the Covid-19 extravaganza, and the audience, once back out in the blinding, clarifying daylight, are saying to themselves, Yeah, kinda seems like it was. Fraud vitiates liability protection. It is a well-known principle among the artisans of law. Moderna stock is down 70 percent and Pfizer more than 20. Wall Street has sniffed out a motherlode of rot, according to Mr. Edward Dowd, BlackRock investment advisor emeritus, who is saying it loudly over the alt-streams, making a whole lot of public health officials and doctors nervous as roaches when the lights flash on.

Mom impersonator Rochelle Walensky, chief of the CDC, has concealed much dire information about the number of “vaccine” injuries and fatalities of the past year, while still importuning everybody to vaxx-up and boost-up, knowing they might be harmed by it. Does she just skate on that? And then, of course, there is Dr. Fauci, missing in action lately. (Anybody look for him down in Paraguay?) The clock is ticking on when the millions of lawsuits might commence along with prosecutions for crimes against humanity.

Cue “Joe Biden,” then, to crash the global economy and give folks other things to think about — like, how am I going to keep driving sixty miles each way to work with gasoline at $8 a gallon? How, indeed, is anything like an advanced economy going to stagger forward now that nobody in the world will sell each other anything? Well, it probably just won’t. All that’s left is the sound of money being shot out of cannons, and nobody seems to notice that it gets shredded in the process. America has gazed into the abyss and apparently decided to sign a lease and move in.

Read more …

“The whole world will be interested to know what exactly the American bio-laboratories in Ukraine were doing.”

‘A New Page in the Art of War’ (Escobar)

By now what we may call a Triple Threat has been established as the catalyst anticipating the launch of Operation Z. • Ukraine developing nuclear weapons. Zelensky himself hinted at it in the Munich Security Conference. • U.S. bioweapons labs in Ukraine. Confirmed, tersely, by none other than the Sinister Cookie Distributor neocon wife in the uber-neocon Kaganate of Nulands, who described them as “biological research facilities”. ” • An imminent attack on Donbass with massive civilian deaths. It could have been in March, according to documents seized by the Russian Ministry of Defense. Or even in late February, according to SVR intelligence, which was monitoring the line of contact on a minute-by-minute basis. This is what eventually prompted Operation Z as a Russian version of R2P (“Responsibility to Protect”).

So after years of CIA-instigated shouts of “conspiracy theory!” and less than zero “fact checkers” activity, it turns out “it was all happening in Ukraine”, as divine messenger Maria Zakharova once again pointed out: “We have found your own products. We have found your biological material.” The first-class investigative work of Dilyana Gaytandzhieva on Pentagon bioweapons was fully vindicated. Based on documents received from Ukrainian biolab employees, the Russian ModD revealed that research with samples of bat coronavirus, among other experiments, were conducted in a Pentagon-funded biolab.

The purpose of all this research – which included another Pentagon project to study the transfer of pathogens by wild birds migrating between Ukraine and Russia and other neighboring countries – was “to create a mechanism for the covert spread of deadly pathogens.” In trademark pysop mode, everything was turned upside down by the United States government: those evil Russkies could take control of biological samples, so any “accident” involving biological and chemical weapons in Ukraine would have to be blamed on Russia. The White House, in yet another flagrant display of unredeemable stupidity, accused Russia of “false claims” and China of “endorsing this propaganda”. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov came up with the adult perspective: “The whole world will be interested to know what exactly the American bio-laboratories in Ukraine were doing.”

Read more …

“Keep in mind the U.S. hadn’t uttered a word about Russia using bio or chemical weapons in Ukraine until Nuland opened her mouth.”

On a Knife’s Edge in Ukraine (Lauria)

Nuland’s answer under oath to Sen. Marco Rubio on Tuesday appeared to confirm the U.S. has biological weapons in Ukrainian labs. Rubio asked her point blank whether Ukraine had biological or chemical weapons. A very uncomfortable Nuland answered that Ukraine was conducting “biological research” and the U.S. was worried “materials” would fall into Russian hands. It is hard to imagine she was worried about Russia seizing experimental vaccines or blood samples. She may be referring to gain-of-function research on pathogens that National Institutes of Health Director Anthony Fauci testified could have a “dual use” purpose — both civilian and military. Here was Nuland apparently twice spilling the beans: the first time speaking on an unsecured telephone about U.S. plans for the 2014 coup in Kiev. And now about U.S.-funded bio research in Ukraine.

Damage control was clearly in order. First the White House scrambled to say Russian charges that the U.S. was running bioweapons research near the Russian border was “absurd” and “preposterous.” Then the Pentagon explained that these may be leftover pathogens from Soviet days and were part of a U.S. program begun 30 years ago to destroy WMD in former Soviet republics. That was the explanation of Robert Pope, the director of the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. He said: “Scientists being scientists, it wouldn’t surprise me if some of these strain collections in some of these laboratories still have pathogen strains that go all the way back to the origins of that program.”

But documents on the website of the U.S. embassy in Kiev show the U.S. paid for and opened new labs in Ukraine as late as 2019. Now the U.S. reaction to Nuland’s revelations has turned more sinister. Keep in mind the U.S. hadn’t uttered a word about Russia using bio or chemical weapons in Ukraine until Nuland opened her mouth. Now the U.S. is putting out the word that these Soviet-era pathogens may be used by Russia in the current conflict. Rubio set that ball rolling when he asked Nuland that if these weapons would be used, was there any doubt Russia would be the side using them. (It was a backhanded admission the U.S. and Ukraine have them too). She said: “There’s no doubt in my mind” it would be Russia.”

Read more …

That’s pretty unique. And risky.

Russia Allows Chinese Banks To Buy Oil Without Letters Of Credit (ZH)

One week ago, Shell quietly purchased Russian seaborne crude (at a record discount of $28.50) amid a self-imposed boycott by most other Western purchasers of Russian energy products, only to spark widespread populist outrage over its indirect funding of the Putin regime and prompting a vow from the largest European energy company to not purchase Russian crude any more. As a result, Moscow has found itself in the crippling position where despite carve outs for its oil exports (Europe has vocally refused to join the US ban of Russian energy exports), not a single western major is willing to buy Russian oil over fears of public backlash, while Chinese banks are reportedly on the fence when it comes to providing letters of credit to shippers seeking to purchase Russian oil, in the process freezing Russia’s entire seaborne oil exporting industry.

So fast forward to today, when in hopes of short circuiting the Chinese quasi-ban, Russian oil giant Surgutneftegaz (Surgut) has allowed Chinese buyers to receive oil without providing guarantees known as letters of credit (LC) in order to bypass Western sanctions, Reuters reported citing three people with knowledge of the matter said. A letter of credit, which allows 30 days for payment and is backed by a bank, is seen as the strongest guarantee for both sides. The change in terms will allow Surgutneftegaz – which will now face a direct monetary risk that “something might happen” to the uninsured cargo but since it has no other choices it will gladly take it – to continue to sell ESPO Blend crude from the port of Kozmino in Russia’s Far East to China, the world’s top oil importer.

As a reminder, Russian ESPO crude exports – of around 750,000 barrels per day in normal times – provide China’s biggest source of spot crude. While China has repeatedly voiced opposition to the sanctions, calling them ineffective and insisting it will maintain normal economic and trade exchanges with Russia, Bloomberg recently reported that Chinese state banks had restricted purchases of Russian commodities and stopped issuing U.S. dollar-denominated letters of credit for purchases of physical Russian commodities ready for export, perhaps out of fear of being seen as violating western sanctions. To get round the restrictions, Chinese companies are using open accounts that allow the customer to buy goods on a deferred payment basis, with a requirement to pay in full up to three days after the cargo is loaded. It was not immediately clear which banks were involved.

Read more …

“Why shouldn’t George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden be called war criminals too?”

In Praise of “Whataboutism” (Kimberley)

The word “whataboutism” is used to silence and insult opponents of U.S. imperialism. It should be embraced as a means of revealing what is too often kept hidden. Anyone who speaks out against imperialism, capitalism, or racism with concrete examples of the terrible harm they do, can expect to be charged with the dreaded term “whataboutism.” Like clockwork, the act of revealing American crimes will result in an accusation that is used to silence dissent. When war propaganda prevails regarding Ukraine or any other place where the hegemon is doing its dirty work, it is reasonable to ask probing questions. Why are the deaths of 14,000 people killed by Ukraine’s civil war swept under the rug? Why is it forbidden to ask about the U.S. destruction of Libya? But once having asked a good question, one will be told that raising the topic is proof of the whataboutism sin.

The word whataboutism is in the dictionary and is defined as, “the act or practice of responding to an accusation of wrongdoing by claiming that an offense committed by another is similar or worse.” That meaning is accurate and also completely defensible. The charge is meant to censor the speaker, excuse U.S. actions, and defend its human rights violations. The denials and apologies are exactly why whataboutism should be defended. It is terrible when lies and crimes are not countered with verifiable information exposing them. The term has gained popularity in part because there is so much hypocrisy to point out and there are so many adherents to American exceptionalism who defend what they should condemn.

When the International Criminal Court (ICC) announced that it would begin investigating “the Situation in Ukraine” corporate media and their political partners gloated and pointed fingers at Russia. They didn’t point out that the U.S., like Russia, is not a signatory of the Treaty of Rome which brought the ICC into existence. Not only is the U.S. not a member state, but in 2002 Congress passed the American Service Members Protection Act , popularly known as the Hague Invasion Act. It gives the U.S. the right to extract any American held at the court in the Hague. The removal part isn’t even necessary because the act prohibits the extradition of Americans to the ICC. The chest thumping about the investigation into Ukraine should surely be followed by a discussion of U.S. hostility to the ICC. It is a clear example of when and how whataboutism should be practiced.

Not mentioning the U.S. relationship or rather lack of relationship with the ICC would be an indication of agreement with exceptionalist doctrine. If Vladimir Putin is described as a war criminal, thug, dictator, and a modern day Hitler, it is appropriate and indeed necessary to ask about American presidents. For brevity’s sake consider only those American presidents who served since 2001. U.S. invasions and interventions in western Asia, North Africa, central Asia and the Horn of Africa have displaced more than 37 million people since the “war on terror” began. Why shouldn’t George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden be called war criminals too? Silence in the face of their criminality gives license and approval to U.S. aggressions.

Read more …

Blow up the internet to save propaganda.

Are You SURE This Is A Good Idea? (Denninger)

What could possibly go wrong with setting an example like this? “Cogent Communications will pull the plug on its connectivity to customers in Russia in response to President Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. The US-based biz is one of the planet’s largest internet backbones – the freeways of the internet – and says it carries roughly a quarter of global ‘net traffic.” Modern-day “aggregators”, of which Cogent is one, often are the source of address delegations as well. Cogent has confirmed they’re canceling IP addresses delegated out; when you are using an aggregator you don’t actually “own” any delegations you may have as for routing purposes the aggregator has the registration on those. For residential users this is not a major issue, but for commercial places where reverse mapping is a factor it can be at least a moderate hassle.

Much-more ominous, however, is this: “ICANN on Wednesday rebuffed a request from Mykhailo Fedorov, First Vice Prime Minister of Ukraine, to revoke all Russian web domains, shut down Russian DNS root servers, and invalidate associated TLS/SSL certificates in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.” First, ICANN has no ownership of DNS root servers; they’re privately owned and operated. What they could do is remove “undesirable ones” from the “hints” file that is publicly distributed. Actually getting ISPs around the globe to change their hint files is quite-possibly another matter. Again, this is a distributed data set and what is distributed in terms of the root hints are suggestions, not commands. Could ICANN revoke the .RU top-level domain? Yes, but doing so risks a schism. Again there is nothing that can be done to enforce upon ISPs (or for that matter anyone willing to run their own local resolver, such as I do here at my home) what top-level domains exist and who is the delegated authority for them.

[..] ICANN wisely told Ukraine to go blow goats, but what also concerns me is that the people in Ukraine who made the request do not understand how this all works because in addition to asking for imposition of a deliberate schism they also asked for all Russian TLS/SSL certificates to be revoked. ICANN does not issue said certificates nor does it control the issuers, directly or indirectly, that people use as the “root of trust” for said certificates. As just one example ICANN has no operational control over Verisign which is one of the many firms that issues end-entity certificates. If you go to PayPal’s web page their certificate is issued by DigiCert and they, and only they, are the ones who validate that indeed they issued it and PayPal owns it.

The various operating system firms distribute a base “trusted root” list and there’s a consortium that agrees (most of the time) on what goes in and is removed from there; for example Google (Chrome) and Mozilla (Firefox) both have such a list and are part of the consortium that makes such decisions, as does Microsoft, the various Linux distributions, Apple and FreeBSD. Attempts to tamper with this for political reasons are extremely unwise because while they may indeed be a “weapon” that can be used to inflict pain on various entities for political purpose any abuse of this sort risks a schism on the Internet as a whole and evasion of the sanction, if undertaken and it will be by the targeted parties, wildly increases the risk of compromise of the entire trust structure on which secure transactions rest. The impact of such an event will not be localized to the sanctioned parties; by definition if you do that the impact is likely to be global.

Read more …

Hunter and Azov.

One Ukrainian Billionaire Funded Hunter Biden, Zelensky, Azov Battalion (Koa)

The real person who was the benefactor to, and the boss of, Vice President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, at the Ukrainian gas company Burisma Holdings, was not the CEO of Burisma Holdings, Mykola Zlochevsky, but it was instead Ihor Kolomoysky, who was part of the newly installed Ukrainian Government, which the Obama Administration itself had actually just installed in Ukraine, in what the head of the “private CIA” firm Stratfor correctly called “the most blatant coup in history.” Shortly after the Obama Administration’s Ukrainian coup, on March 2, 2014, Kolomoysky, who supported Yanukovych’s overthrow, was appointed the governor of Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine. Hunter Biden, with no experience in the industry or region, would join Kolomoysky’s Burisma Holdings two months later on May 12, 2014.

A 2012 study of Burisma Holdings done in Ukraine by the AntiCorruption Action Centre (ANTAC), an investigative nonprofit co-funded by American billionaire George Soros and the U.S. State Department, found that the true owner of Burisma Holdings was none other than Ukrainian billionaire-oligarch Ihor Kolomoysky. The study, which was funded to dig up corruption on the Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, instead found that Ihor Kolomoysky “managed to seize the largest reserves of natural gas in Ukraine”. Burisma Holdings changed owners in 2011 when it was taken over by an off-shore Cyprus enterprise called Brociti Investments Ltd, and subsequently, moved addresses under the same roof as Ukrnaftoburinnya and Esko-Pivnich, two Ukrainian gas companies which happened to be also owned by Kolomoysky through off-shore entities in the British Virgin Islands.

Oleh Kanivets, who worked as CEO of Ukrnaftoburinnya, confirmed Kolomoysky as the owner of Burisma Holding in the 2012 report saying, “The Privat Group is the immediate owner. This company was founded by Mykola Zlochevsky some time ago, but he later sold his shares to the Privat Group.” In other words, Hunter Biden’s boss and benefactor at Burisma Holdings is the same Ukrainian billionaire-oligarch who also claimed the position of boss and benefactor over Volodymyr Zelensky before he became Ukraine’s president.

Read more …

“1.34ml after 1 hour, 2.34ml after 4 hours, and then 12.3ml after 48 hours.”

Pfizer Vaccine Accumulates In Ovaries; Ovarian Cancer At All Time High (DE)

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has been forced by court order to publish all confidential documents sent to them by Pfizer in regard to emergency use approval of the Pfizer Covid-19 injection. The latest round of documents were published 1st March 22, and one of the documents confirms that the Pfizer Covid-19 injection accumulates in the ovaries over time. What are the consequences of this? Well official UK data shows that cases of Ovarian cancer in 2021 were at an all time high, and the UK Medicine Regulator received over 40,000 reports relating to reproductive and menstrual disorders suspected as adverse reactions to the Covid-19 injections in 2021 alone. The study, which can be found in the long list of confidential Pfizer documents that the FDA have been forced to publish via a court order here, was carried out on Wistar Han rats, 21 of which were female and 21 of which were male.


Each rat received a single intramuscular dose of the Pfizer Covid-19 injection and then the content and concentration of total radioactivity in blood, plasma and tissues were determined at pre-defined points following administration. In other words, the scientists conducting the study measured how much of the Covid-19 injection has spread to other parts of the body such as the skin, liver, spleen, heart etc. But one of the most concerning findings from the study is the fact that the Pfizer injection accumulates in the ovaries over time. An ‘ovary’ is one of a pair of female glands in which the eggs form and the female hormones oestrogen and progesterone are made. In the first 15 minutes following injection of the Pfizer jab, researchers found that the total lipid concentration in the ovaries measured 0.104ml. This then increased to 1.34ml after 1 hour, 2.34ml after 4 hours, and then 12.3ml after 48 hours.

Ed Dowd

Read more …

“Forget how health bureaucracies headed by political appointees took over the task of regulating nearly the whole of life, while messaging the country that freedom just doesn’t matter much anymore!”

Forget About Covid, They Say (Tucker)

Earlier this year, a phrase was trending because Bari Weiss used it on a talk show: “I’m done with Covid.” Many people cheered simply because the subject has been the source of vast oppression for billions of people for two years. There are two ways to be over Covid. One way is to do what the memo from the consultants of the Democratic National Committee suggested: declare the war won and move on. For political reasons. Deaths attributed to Covid nationally are higher now than they were in the summer of 2020 when the whole country was locked down. They are also higher now than during the election of November the same year. But today we are just supposed to treat it for what it is: a seasonal virus with a disparate impact on the aged and frail.

Rationality is back! In that sense, it’s good to forget about Covid if it means living life normally and behaving with clarity about what does and does not work to mitigate a virus. The Democrats decided that the hyper-restrictionist ways were risking political fortunes. Hence, the line and the talking points needed to change. Another way to get over Covid is to forget completely about the last two years, especially the astonishing failures of compulsory pandemic controls. Forget about the school closures that cost a generation two years of learning. Forget that the hospitals were largely closed to people without a Covid-related malady. Forget about the preventable nursing-home deaths. Forget that dentistry was practically abolished for a few months, or that one could not even get a haircut.

Forget the stay-at-home orders, the church and business closures, the playground and gym closures, the bankruptcies, the travel restrictions, the firings, the crazed advice for everyone to mask up and physically separate, the record drug-related deaths, the mass depression, the segregation, the brutalization of small business, the labor-force dropouts, the forced stoppages of art and culture, and the capacity limits on venues that forced weddings and funerals to be on Zoom. Forget about a closer look at the bogus mathematical models, vaccine trials, the circumstances behind the Emergency Use Authorizations, the adverse effects, the inaccuracies of the PCR test, and misclassification of deaths, the billions and trillions of misdirected funds, the division of all workers between essential and nonessential, and the millions who were forced to get jabs they did not want.

Forget about the possibility of a lab leak, the role of China, the deadly use of ventilators, the neglect of therapeutics, the near-banning of all talk of natural immunity, the overselling of the vaccine, the lost religious holidays, the lonely deaths due to the blocking of loved ones from hospitals, the censorship of science, the manipulated and hidden CDC data, the payments to the major media, the symbiotic relationship between government and Big Tech, the demonization of dissent, and the abuse of emergency powers. Forget how health bureaucracies headed by political appointees took over the task of regulating nearly the whole of life, while messaging the country that freedom just doesn’t matter much anymore!

Who precisely benefits from this method of being “over Covid?” The unrepentant hegemon that gave us this disaster to begin with. They want to be in the clear. They don’t just desire to be exonerated; they don’t want to be judged at all. They want to be unaccountable. The best path toward that end is to foster public amnesia.

Read more …

No knowledge whatsoever of adverse events?!

Some Australians Face A Fourth Covid Booster Shot – And One Every Year (DM)

Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt has flagged that older Australians may get a new Covid vaccine booster shot every year. Mr Hunt said the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (ATAGI) has been looking into a potential fourth vaccine shot for weeks. After some significant research he said ATAGI will potentially be ‘going to recommend a second booster’ for people aged 65 and over, and an annual jab is being considered. Mr Hunt said it could be a matter of weeks before older Australians known they can have a second Covid booster Mr Hunt said advice from the nation’s leading vaccine advisory group could come through by the end of the month on whether a fourth dose would be recommended.

So, Australians could find out in a matter of weeks whether they need to receive a second COVID-19 vaccine booster ahead of a predicted winter surge in infections. Mr Hunt said it was more likely than not a fourth dose will be the course of action for some groups ahead of winter, when a spike in both COVID and flu infections is forecast. ‘I can’t pre-empt the decision but … they are potentially going to recommend a second booster, which would be potentially the start of an annual program for people 65 and above,’ Mr Hunt told reporters in Canberra. ‘We’re expecting that advice from ATAGI within the next three weeks, if not earlier.’

The fourth dose plan will be a major topic of discussion when Prime Minister Scott Morrison meets with state and territory leaders at Friday’s national cabinet meeting. It comes as the government announced $2.1 billion to prepare for the months ahead. The plan will involve $1.2 billion to help protect residential aged care and disability care sectors, $356 million to protect vulnerable population groups and a further $571 million for vaccines.

Electronic pill

Read more …

“The Ministry of Information thanks you for your good citizenship as we battle against Vladimir Putin’s inflation and gas prices.”

Google Ministry of Information Announces Zero Tolerance Policy (CTH)

Comrade citizens, after success with the Ministry of Information controlling efforts surrounding the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic and public health vaccinations, The Division of Correct Thinking has announced they will also not tolerate any information against their war efforts in Ukraine. All good global citizens will appreciate the Ministry’s effort to protect you from bad Russian influences. Only the approved truth must remain visible to combat any Russian efforts to influence our thinking. The only horrors approved for review must be approved by the compliance division within the Google Ministry of Information. Comrade citizens, as our experience with COVID and the heroic vaccination program has shown us, the Ministry always looks out for our physical and mental health.

The inherent dangers of wrong thoughts could lead to misplaced sympathies, lack of necessary motivation and questions about the altruism within the Ministry for Peace. Further guidance continues…. Comrades, we must also be on guard for dissident agent provocateurs who may surface with unapproved information. The Ministry anticipates subversive efforts against the health of our state that may involve messages from non-reliable sources. The state fact-checking operations have been activated to level red status in anticipation of this problem. Help do your part. If you are concerned you may have been influenced by any information that could potentially be defined as friendly toward the Russian government, you must help deprogram your wrong thoughts by watching replays of Rocky IV or Red Dawn.


These are historically accurate documentaries, provided by brilliant Hollywood research teams, and they outline prior efforts of the Russian government to attack our nation. Any comrade citizen who wishes to donate their monthly chocolate or gasoline ration to the brave Ukranian people should contact their local re-education office using the Tik Tok code: GOOD CITIZEN. You may also text your good citizenship status to 1-800-YesWeCan, and you will receive a link to download a QR code providing you access to the full YouTube library of approved reference material. In the approved library, you will find quality content highlighting the glorious efforts of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the patriotic resistance of the Ukrainian military. The Ministry of Information thanks you for your good citizenship as we battle against Vladimir Putin’s inflation and gas prices.

Read more …

“We need to support Ukraine as it is the latest thing we are supposed to support..”

Restaurants Now Requiring Proof Of Ukraine Support (BBee)

As the war between Russia and Ukraine rages on, restaurants across the country are now requiring proof of Ukraine support in order to eat in their restaurants. Patrons are being asked to produce a photo ID and open up their social media profiles to prove they have been adequately supporting Ukraine by posting flags and sharing the latest wartime propaganda. “We need to support Ukraine as it is the latest thing we are supposed to support,” said the manager of one NYC cafe. “If you aren’t adequately supporting the thing that everyone says we are supposed to be supporting at this time, you don’t deserve to eat in my store!” When asked about whether he would still require vaccine cards due to the pandemic, he stared blankly and said: “The what? I’m not sure what you’re talking about.” Patrons who don’t have adequate evidence of Ukraine support will then have to show adequate evidence of Russia hatred before entering.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tom and Jerry

 

 

 

Support the Automatic Earth in virustime with Paypal, Bitcoin and Patreon.

 

 

 

Home Forums Debt Rattle March 12 2022

Viewing 33 posts - 41 through 73 (of 73 total)
  • Author
    Posts
  • #104072
    Fattigmann
    Participant

    Formerly T-Bear, I already gave an historic example of the growth of the money supply linked to the exploitation of natural resources: viz. the gold rush of the 19th century. This process continued unabated until after WWII, when EROEI coeffecients finally proved unsustainable and more traditional checks on the money supply were almost entirely abandoned for fiat currency.. I agree that I wouldn’t be able to heat my house without unbacked paper securities. I am not arguing this with you. My point is simply that infinite growth on an finite planet is unsustainable. Infinite growth of the money supply with increasingly more costly and rare resources is likewise unsustainable. You are missing my point as evident in your hostile tone.

    #104073
    userzeroid
    Participant

    I’m still reeling from Nuland’s “admission”.

    Smarter people than I have looked at this staged exchange between Rubio and Nuland. It’s looking like a repeat of Syria except we are knee deep in mRNA psyop, psychotic trump-hating, anti-Russian, foaming-at-the-mouth madness. At least seen through the desperate behaviour of seemingly “normal” people (I had assumed family members, collegues and random stangers passed for this) Not so. If you do not hate Russians then I WILL GET MAD and accuse one of not caring about the innocent children being slaughtered. I’m left scratching my head wondering when I became an inmate to the psycho ward.

    They don’t even need a prompt it seems. Is performative art a latent natural talent to a percentage of the population? We seem to be surrounded by aspiring actors in a play called “Lost The Plot” . It comes straight out of a bargain basement sale bucket next to slasher flicks and b-movies with actors you never heard of.

    I had given humanity more credit in its ability to tell right from wrong, truth from lie but we are dumber than we look (and that is saying something for a hairless, upright ape with prominent probocis)

    #104074
    Oroboros
    Participant

    Lincoln wanted to issue money directly without any banks being involved. So did Jackson and Kennedy.

    James Garfield is seldom mentioned on this subject.

    James A. Garfield became president in 1881, and he was a staunch opponent of the banking powers.

    In 1881 he said the following:

    “Whoever controls the volume of money in our country is absolute master of all industry and commerce…and when you realize that the entire system is very easily controlled, one way or another, by a few powerful men at the top, you will not have to be told how periods of inflation and depression originate.”

    Well, things didn’t go all that well for him.

    “He who controls the money supply of a nation controls the nation.”

    ~President James A. Garfield

    President Garfield was shot about two weeks later after saying that by Charles J. Guiteau on July 2nd, 1881. He died from medical complications on September 19th, 1881.

    Don’t be sad,it was just a coincidence!

    “…well Mrs Lincoln, other than that, how did you like the play?”

    #104075
    Veracious Poet
    Participant

    Live by the psychopath, die by the pyschopath.

    #104076
    zerosum
    Participant

    At the beginning of the Evacuation, we saw/were shown day long traffic jams of cars trying to cross the borders.
    Now, we only see/are shown crowds of people trying to evacuate.

    I want to see/be shown images of the parking lots of cars that are being stored for the return of their owners.

    #104077
    Formerly T-Bear
    Participant

    @ John Day at # 104071
    My bad, the eyesight missed that. Fully agree Keynesians, particularly of the North American sort mostly missed understanding what Keynes had written. Some troubling stories on how Keynes’ teachings arrived to Harvard to be compounded by later economic advocates who had not understood him themselves but taught their opinions of what Keynesianism was. An economic cluster f**k, beginning to end. N. America never experienced (academically) anything Keynes. I would recommend finding Keynes’ reports and letters regarding the establishment of his ‘World Bank’ and ‘International Monetary Fund’ as it was proposed and not the form emerging from Breton Woods. It would be an eye opener. Probably the source for Churchill’s “Americans get things right, after they’ve tried everything else”
    Keynes’ first book reports on currency flows as related to production in India – “Indian Currency and Finance” (1913)when he worked India Office inWhitehall, predating Hudson nearly half a century with similar observations as you report.
    Thanks for the interesting conversation.

    #104078
    Oroboros
    Participant

    @Fattigmann

    “My point is simply that infinite growth on an finite planet is unsustainable”

    I still have my original copy of Howard Odum’s Environment, Power, and Society (January 1, 1970)

    Nothing’s been learned, nothing’s been done in 52 years regarding infinite growth psychosis.

    It’s a Kult.

    Infinite growth is the model of a cancer cell.

    A blivet is a term for ten pounds of shit in the five pound bag.

    That is humanity and the late great planet earth at this point in a nut shell. The Kult of Progress is a blivet.

    Lot’s of pie hole flapping and chin music about it, not much actual progress in five decades.

    Years ago while hiking high in the Rockies in New Mexico, and I came across the half rotted carcasses of over a hundred elk, decomposing in this mountain meadow. I was with a local guy, a native American, who explained that they had probably got trapped in this high pass by an avalanche blocking the way down just before they could make it to their lower winter grazing areas.

    Not enough fat on them or graze left up there to last the winter, so they all died together, male female and babies. It was quite a sight.

    That is where we are today, in a very high mountain pass with an avalanche poised at the Pass.

    The Global Pathocracy seems the think the solution is just to get rid of the majority of ‘consumers’ to reset and resume Infinite Growth, so there will be plenty to go around for the few who are left.

    Pretty straight forward problem solving for growth on a finite planet. It least it will buy some time for the Chosen Few.

    The current flush of sanctions on fertilizer and energy will give everyone a sneak peek at coming attractions and how ecological economics works for any who have forgotten the obvious lessons of Odum’s Environment, Power, and Society.

    #104079
    Veracious Poet
    Participant

    If you like your Pathocracy, you can keep your Pathocracy.

    #104080
    WES
    Participant

    Dr. John Day & Formerly T-Bear:

    WW2 was a direct result of Keynes negotiations at the end of WW1. He helped abolished bill of lading financial transactions widely in use before WW1 to cripple Germany as a manufacturer going forward, no doubt to our current masters great advantage.

    So one could say he was a brilliant bastard. And we have paid the price and suffered ever since for his brilliant stupidity.

    Another thing to keep in the back of your mind, is one of the likely intended but secondary results, of FDR banning private US gold ownership and then re-pegging gold from $20.67 USD to $35 USD. Besides the obvious of increasing the value of gold reserves 69% allowing for the printing of more USD by the Fed, the secondary issue was of rising concern by bankers of a coming war in Europe.

    The concern by the bankers were the very large gold reserves held by many European banks that could potentially fall into German hands. By raising the USD price of gold to $35, this addressed this concern by attracting most of these large gold reserves into the US. That is how US gold reserves swelled to over 28,000 tons so quickly.

    After WW2, as Europe recovered, these gold flows reversed, returning to their original owners, causing US gold reserves to fall back to 8,000 tons. I think this was the plan but Vietnam kind of put a monkey wrench into the plan. Instead of the gold flow stopping after 8,000 tons, the Vietnam War money printing instead drove those holding fiat USD to wanting to take it all the way to zero!

    You know the best plans of mice and men! Besides most of the original 1934 bankers were probably dead by the 1960s! They probably never imagined the Fed would print unbacked USDs either. How stupid of them to “assume” so!

    Just something you never see written in history books.

    #104081
    John Day
    Participant

    There’s a picture of Jenny in the garden with fresh spinach. I’ll try not to put up Saker links that won’t post. God knows if RT links will take. This may take awhile…
    https://drjohnsblog.substack.com/p/divulging-secrets?s=w

    Israeli PM Bennett Pushed Zelensky To “Surrender” To Russia: Ukraine Official
    ​ ​Sources breaking this news from Ukraine stated that Bennett initiated the phone call with Zelensky in which he pleaded for him, saying “If I were you, would think about the lives of my people and take the offer.”​ [“The offer” is to recognize Crimea as Russian, recognize statehood of Donetsk and Luhansk, and to strictly codify and enforce Ukrainian neutrality. The ​refusal​ to accept “the offer” means that Ukraine will be​come​ a landlocked country.​ Zelensky is actually not free to accept, and would be killed if he tried.​]
    https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/israeli-pm-bennett-advises-ukraines-zelensky-surrender-russia

    ​This is close to Poland, territory that was once Polish, the most hard-core anti-Russian area.
    Some say it is “a signal”. It also takes out military infrastructure that serves NATO interests.​
    (Lots of links from GASP! RT today…)
    Moscow confirms airstrikes in western Ukraine
    Over the course of 24 hours, Russian warplanes destroyed 107 military sites of the Ukrainian Armed Forces…
    Turkish-made Baykar Bayraktar TB2 attack drones were the primary target for Russian air defense forces on Thursday, according to the briefing. A total of eight such aircraft were taken down by Russian troops, in addition to three Ukrainian Mil Mi-24 helicopters, Konashenkov said.
    https://www.rt.com/russia/551673-russia-defense-ministry-update/

    ​ Lots of shoulder fired anti-aircraft weapons are flooding into Ukraine from the west. These are much better at shooting down civilian aircraft than military aircraft, and are much sought on the black market. The control of these weapons is an ongoing problem in the world. Russia has interdicted a shipment to Ukraine of 1970s Soviet heat-seeking “manpads”​ and is checking serial numbers to see who last possessed them.
    ​ ​The system is still in service with a number of Eastern European states which are now members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), including Bulgaria, Hungary, Slovenia and Slovakia. None of these states have publicly acknowledged sending MANPADs of this type to Ukrainian forces.

    Russia Is Working To Determine The Supplier Of Igla MANPADS Captured From Ukrainian Forces (Video)

    #104082
    John Day
    Participant

    FOREIGN MILITANTS FIGHTING IN UKRAINE ON BOTH SIDES OF BARRICADES (PHOTOS, VIDEOS)

    Foreign Militants Fighting In Ukraine On Both Sides Of Barricades (Photos, Videos)

    US hackers hijacked computers in China to attack Russia​ (RT​, Xinhua​)
    ​ ​Hackers operating predominantly from American soil have been taking control of computers in China, using them to carry out cyberattacks against targets in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, China’s Xinhua News Agency reported on Friday.
    ​ ​The news outlet claims that China’s internet authority began detecting such malicious activity in late February. According to the report, the country’s internet has been under “constant” attack from abroad ever since.
    ​ ​The news agency, citing officials, revealed that the majority of cyberattacks had been traced back to the US, with 10 such addresses in New York State alone. Chinese computers have reportedly also been targeted from Germany, the Netherlands, and several other countries.
    ​ ​According to figures cited in the Chinese media, some 87% of all cyberattacks carried out via computers in China had Russia as their prime target.
    https://www.rt.com/news/551675-hackers-hijack-chinese-computers-target-russia/

    Amid Ukraine War, Russia “Ready” To Resume Strategic Arms Reduction Talks With US​
    ​Ryabkov in his fresh Saturday comments blamed the US for the prior halt in dialogue: “We have not withdrawn from the US strategic stability dialogue. It has been suspended by Washington, apparently under the illusion that we need this dialogue more than Washington. Absolutely not.”
    https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/russia-says-its-ready-resume-strategic-arms-reduction-treaty-talks-us

    The EU has used up all of the possible restrictive measures against Russia in response to the ongoing war in Ukraine, the bloc’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell said, in an interview with Franceinfo on Thursday.
    “Of course, one can always go further, but we have already reached the limits of what we can do. We have done everything we could,” he said.
    https://www.rt.com/business/551610-eu-financial-sanctions-russia/

    #104083
    zerosum
    Participant

    With a grain of salt
    https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/03/12/world/ukraine-russia-war#melitopol-ukraine-mayor-russia

    LVIV, Ukraine — The mayor of Melitopol is the kind of person Russian soldiers might have believed would have welcomed them with open arms and flowers.

    Ivan Fyodorov, as his name suggests, is an ethnic Russian in a southern Ukrainian city where Russian is commonly spoken and where ties to Russia run deep.

    On Friday evening, Mr. Fyodorov had a bag thrown over his head and was dragged from a government office building by armed Russian soldiers, according to Ukrainian officials. Video filmed in Melitopol’s Victory Square appears to show someone being escorted out of a government building by soldiers. The Times cannot verify the identity of the people in the video.

    Since Russian forces captured his city in the first days of the war, he had encouraged resistance, earning him the support of the public and the ire of the occupying army.

    On Saturday, hundreds of his townspeople poured out into the streets in an expression of outrage and defiance, despite the presence of troops on their streets.

    “Return the mayor!” they shouted, witnesses said and videos showed. “Free the mayor!”

    But nearly as soon as people gathered, the Russians moved to shut them down, arresting a woman who they said had organized the demonstration, according to two witnesses and the woman’s Facebook account.

    The episode is part of what Ukrainian officials say is a pattern of intimidation and repression that is growing more brutal. It also illustrates a problem that Russia is likely to face even if it manages to pummel cities and towns into submission: In at least some of the few cities and towns that Russia has managed to seize — mostly in the south and east — they are facing popular unrest and revolt.

    For anyone who believed the Kremlin propaganda that Russia was on a mission to save Ukraine from drug addled neo-Nazis, Melitopol was the kind of city, run by the kind of mayor, that should have viewed the Russian troops as liberators.

    President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said that the kidnapping of the mayor demonstrated the falsehood underlying the Russian invasion.

    “For years they have been lying to themselves that people in Ukraine were supposedly waiting for Russia to come,” he said. “They did not find collaborators who would hand over the city and the power to the invaders.”

    And he sought to tap into public rage in two videotaped speeches released on Saturday.

    “The whole country saw that Melitopol did not surrender to the invaders,” he said. “Just as Kherson, Berdyansk and other cities where Russian troops managed to enter didn’t — temporarily managed to enter. And this will not be changed by putting pressure on mayors or kidnapping mayors.”

    After people took to the streets, he praised their courage and suggested the war lacked popular support among Russians.

    “Do you hear it, Moscow?” he asked. “If 2,000 people are protesting against the occupation in Melitopol, how many people should be in Moscow against the war?”

    Mr. Zelelnsky said he had raised the fate of the mayor in calls with the leaders of Germany and France.

    “We expect them, the world leaders, to show how they can influence the situation,” he said. “How they can do a simple thing — free one person, a person who represents the entire Melitopol community, Ukrainians who do not give up.”

    Melitopol lies only a short distance from Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014. The city came under fierce assault on the first day of the war, Feb. 24, and Russian soldiers entered only days later. While the city fell, Mr. Fyodorov remained defiant.

    “We are not cooperating with the Russians in any way,” he said.

    As resistance has grown more brazen, the Russian tactics have grown more brutal, according to the Ukrainian government and witnesses. The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said on Friday that Russian soldiers were committing robberies, taking hostages and executing civilians. The reports of executions and hostage taking could not be independently verified, but there have been multiple witness accounts, often recorded on video, of Russian soldiers looting stores and homes.

    Mr. Zelensky said the kidnapping of the mayor was part of a broader shift in tactics. “They have switched to a new stage of terror, when they are trying to physically eliminate representatives of the legitimate local Ukrainian authorities,” he said.

    Last weekend, people waving the blue and gold of the Ukrainian flag took to the streets of Melitopol and other occupied cities.

    For the most part, Russian soldiers stood aside, even as protesters commandeered a Russian armored vehicle in one town and drove it through the streets.

    Mr. Fyodorov encouraged the demonstration. In his most recent post on Facebook, he thanked business leaders who were helping the community in the moment of strife. “Together we will overcome anything!” he wrote.

    His location is now unknown.

    Muyi Xiao and Dmitriy Khavin contributed reporting.

    #104084
    Veracious Poet
    Participant

    Mass psychosis you can believe in!

    #104085
    WES
    Participant

    Oroboros:

    Which side of the Great Divide path were you on in New Mexico?

    Did you run into Yosemite Sam, the tuffess rooting tooting cowboy this side of the Great Divide?

    P.S. I spent several winters working near Window Rock, Arizona, while living in Gallope, New Mexico. Dr. John Day also once worked on the Navajo reservation too!

    #104086
    John Day
    Participant

    ​Charles Hugh Smith (This means “Do it yourself”.)
    The Only Non-Totalitarian Solution to Resource Scarcity: Decentralized Degrowth
    Totalitarian imposed inequality is the only possible path of centralized Degrowth: 10,000 for me, one for you, unless you disobey, and then you get zero.
    ​ ​The fantasy is that everything will soon be super-abundant and cheap again because creating money out of thin air creates demand out of thin air and supply will always magically appear if there is demand. The reality is super-abundant and cheap is gone for good. Demand doesn’t create new supply by magic; if the supply is gone, then demand has no magical power to conjure supply out of thin air.
    http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2022/03/the-only-non-totalitarian-solution-to.html

    ​That’s not a bug; it’s a feature…
    Confidential Pfizer Docs. reveal the Covid-19 Vaccine accumulates in the Ovaries; & now Official UK Data shows cases of Ovarian Cancer are at an all time high

    Confidential Pfizer Docs. reveal the Covid-19 Vaccine accumulates in the Ovaries; & now Official UK Data shows cases of Ovarian Cancer are at an all time high

    ​5g communications use microwaves to transmit higher density of information.​
    5G Radiation Causes ‘Microwave Syndrome’ Symptoms, Study Finds
    ​ ​In the first study of its kind, Swedish researchers found 5G radiation causes typical symptoms indicative of “microwave syndrome.” The study, published in the journal Medicinsk Access, also confirmed that non-ionizing radiation — well below levels allowed by authorities — can cause health problems.
    https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/5g-radiation-microwave-syndrome-symptoms/

    #104087
    Fattigmann
    Participant

    @Ororborus on point. Great notes

    #104088
    John Day
    Participant

    Thanks WES for the information.
    Yes, Keynes was a financial Warrior of the British Empire. There are tales of his exploits breaking the Bank of Italy.. George Soros can’t even compare.

    “WW2 was a direct result of Keynes negotiations at the end of WW1. He helped abolished bill of lading financial transactions widely in use before WW1 to cripple Germany as a manufacturer going forward, no doubt to our current masters great advantage.

    So one could say he was a brilliant bastard. And we have paid the price and suffered ever since for his brilliant stupidity.

    Another thing to keep in the back of your mind, is one of the likely intended but secondary results, of FDR banning private US gold ownership and then re-pegging gold from $20.67 USD to $35 USD. Besides the obvious of increasing the value of gold reserves 69% allowing for the printing of more USD by the Fed, the secondary issue was of rising concern by bankers of a coming war in Europe.

    The concern by the bankers were the very large gold reserves held by many European banks that could potentially fall into German hands. By raising the USD price of gold to $35, this addressed this concern by attracting most of these large gold reserves into the US. That is how US gold reserves swelled to over 28,000 tons so quickly.”

    #104089
    Oroboros
    Participant

    North Central NM, northwest of Cimarron.

    #104090
    John Day
    Participant

    @Oroboros, about the dead elk.
    Yeah.
    Exactly.
    Now what do WE do?

    #104091
    zerosum
    Participant

    What does the mayor know?
    https://www.bignewsnetwork.com/news/272383703/zelenskyy-seeks-israel-help-for-release-of-melitopol-mayor

    Zelenskyy seeks Israel’s help for release of Melitopol mayor

    Kyiv [Ukraine], March 13 (ANI): Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy discussed the war situation in Ukraine with Israel Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and sought his help for the release of the Melitopol mayor.

    Taking to Twitter, Zelenskyy wrote, “Continued dialogue with Israel PM @naftalibennett. We talked about Russian aggression and the prospects for peace talks. We must stop repressions against civilians: asked to assist in the release of the captive mayor of Melitopol and local public figures.”Earlier, Zelenskyy also spoke with the German chancellor Olaf Scholz and the French president Emmanuel Macron for their help in the release of Melitopol mayor, Ivan Fedorov.

    “I spoke with @OlafScholz, @EmmanuelMacron. We discussed countering the aggressor, RF crimes against civilians. I ask my partners to help in releasing the captive mayor of Melitopol. Prospects for peace talks were also discussed. We must stop the aggressor together,” Zelenskyy tweeted.

    On Saturday, Zelenskyy said that a total of 1,300 soldiers were killed by Russia. This is the first time he President mentioned Ukraine’s estimated military casualties, The Kyiv Independent reported.

    Notably, Ukraine’s armed forces estimate Russian casualties to be over 12,000.

    Meanwhile, western countries have imposed comprehensive sanctions on Moscow.

    On February 24, Russia launched a military operation in Ukraine after the Donetsk and Luhansk people’s republic requested help in defending themselves.

    The Russian Defense Ministry said the special operation is targeting Ukrainian military infrastructure only and the civilian population is not in danger.

    The West however denies these claims by the Russians and in response, Western nations have imposed comprehensive sanctions on Moscow. In addition, they introduced sanctions on Belarus for supporting Russia’s operation in Ukraine. (ANI)

    #104092
    John Day
    Participant

    @Oroboros, about Cimarron:

    #104093
    Oroboros
    Participant

    love that song!

    #104094
    zerosum
    Participant

    Reality check
    Ukraine did not pay Russia for what is burning/bombed storage.

    #104095
    zerosum
    Participant

    Warning

    If you send a convoy of military supplies. Its fair game for attack. – Russia

    #104096
    WES
    Participant

    Oroboros:

    Did you know Cimarron was the scene of the Colfax County War that killed over 200 people in the 1870s to 1880s?
    Yeah, a real wild west lawless town!
    Land owners verses settlers!
    The fastest six gun wins!
    Shoot out in front of court house!
    Not many western towns can say that!
    Gotta wonder if they ever made a movie about it?

    #104097
    Henry
    Participant

    @orobus love the McD portrait.

    #104098
    those darned kids
    Participant

    #104099
    chooch
    Participant

    Noirette,

    From yesterday, this observation of yours peaked my why/what if thought process.

    “What we have seen since the Bid-election is that the US is disengaging from its hegemonic role.

    It abandoned Afghanistan and is no longer rah-rah about Syria, as regime change there failed (care of Russia) and it doesn’t play any real (?) role in Lybia.”

    What if we (USA) gamed the likelihood of Putin wanting to make Russia great again by invading the Ukraine and decided to pull back our hegemonic footprint and prepare for the eventuality of conflict with Russia and any Allies that get drawn into this.

    #104100
    aspnaz
    Participant

    @Dr D said …

    The key to inflation is PERCEPTION, which cannot be predicted. This is true of gold and dollar replacements.

    Gold as a currency is deflationary and is not in the slightest dependent on perception. That is why fiat was introduced in the first place, so that the rich can get richer and continuously fleece the poor who’s wealth is mostly in currency. The problem with gold as a currency is that growth that out-performs the supply of new gold will result in your gold coin being worth more next year than it is this year: so stuffing gold under the bed is a good way to save for your pension as is saving rather than investing – growth is therefore limited to only very profitable enterprises and debt is almost unaffordable for most of us. Banks don’t like people who stuff gold under their beds, not only does it increase deflationary pressure but it also means that poor people get to keep their money. Not good. Mining, of course, compensates and so there is a balance of sorts. Growth and debt service are today’s goals, gold as currency is way too egalitarian.

    #104101
    zerosum
    Participant

    https://www.rt.com/russia/551754-ukraine-helicopter-strike-drones/
    Russian military releases footage of helicopter attack on Ukrainian convoy (VIDEO)
    More than 1,100 Ukrainian tanks and APCs have been destroyed since the start of the offensive, according to Moscow
    Early on Saturday, Russian long-range strikes with high-precision weapons rendered inoperable a military airfield in the town of Vasilkov and a radio surveillance center in Brovary, both in the Kiev region, Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said during a briefing.

    Over the past 24 hours, five Ukrainian UAVs were shot out of the sky, including two Turkish-made Bayraktar TB-2 drones. A total of 145 military facilities were targeted by Russian aviation, with three Buk M1 missile systems, eight command centers, and five arms depots among them, according to the spokesman.

    The forces of the breakaway republics of Donetsk and Lugansk have continued their offensive with fire support from the Russian forces, capturing several more towns and villages in the east of the country, Konashenkov added.
    Since the start of what Moscow calls a “special operation” in Ukraine on February 24, the Russian military has destroyed 3,491 of Kiev’s military facilities, 1,127 tanks and APCs, and 123 drones, the spokesman pointed out.

    According to Russia, sending its troops to Ukraine was the only way to “demilitarize” and “denazify” the neighboring country, and to hold accountable those responsible for what Moscow has called the “genocide” of civilians in Donetsk and Lugansk. Other demands by the Kremlin induce neutral status for Ukraine, which would prevent it from joining the US-led NATO bloc, and recognition of Crimea by Kiev as part of Russia and of the aforementioned republics as independent states.

    The Ukrainian authorities have rejected Moscow’s justification for the incursion, blaming Russia for waging an unprovoked war against the country and rallying for international support.

    #104102
    Bill Roope
    Participant

    I really suggest looking at the translated video by Iurii Poliaka in Vineyard of the Saker blog for March 12. He talks about how the sanctions will in the end help Russia and seriously hurt the west. He says something like “We have entered a new world. It’s goods-money-goods, goods-money-goods with no add-ons. If you don’t want to buy, go away. And, the courts and regulations now have no jurisdiction.”
    I hope more of his videos are translated.

    No international banks, brokerages or insurance companies taking their cut.) It’s only 7 minutes and really easy to understand. Is there an easy way to transcribe subtitles?

    #104103
    chris_gee
    Participant

    @ Bill Roope above.
    Iurii Poliaka in Vineyard of the Saker . Agree he seems a very bright cookie. I know I don’t grasp the implications of it all, but get this is a battle between the US and Russia which puts me above the pack. Usually one imposes sanctions to hurt the relatively weak or at least those less able to hit back. This time – doesn’t look good, until all realise this is not getting what they want. Then one only has to look at domestic disputes to see rationality is not always trumps.

    #104115
    Formerly T-Bear
    Participant

    It is probably a sign of the indoctrination passed off as MBA Econ 101 that forms the slander regarding everything John Maynard Keynes that the commentariat seem driven to use. JMK was the great master of economic theory of his era. There were only about six such masters in western economic history; this generation seems hell bent on demeaning, destroying in its entirety what was produced by the master in response to HIS era AS HE LIVED IT, and in doing so destroys a significant part of economic history and the doorway of understanding our own economic era and any possibility of rectifying what is amiss. If you do not actually know your history, you will never know where you have been, where you are now and how you got there or ever have the capacity to plot your future course. Keep to your YT, twits, FB’s and conspiracy theories and as the saying concludes: ‘… or open your mouth and remove all doubt’. If Michael Hudson and Steve Keen ,with their superior abilities, can only orbit MBA Econ 101, your capacity could hardly produce a ballistic trajectory in economics, you have not had an original economic thought of your own and parrot drivel you have been fed. For the most part conversing economics with you is rarely worth the candle. (/rant)

Viewing 33 posts - 41 through 73 (of 73 total)
  • You must be logged in to reply to this topic.