Jul 232023
 


Andy Warhol Ingrid Bergman 1983

 

Zelensky Carries Out ‘Polonization’ Of Ukraine – Duma Speaker (TASS)
Russia on the Grain Deal at the UN Security Council (Combate)
Kiev Used Grain Deal To Stock Up On Military Supplies – Russia (RT)
West Driven By “Impotent Rage” – Moscow (RT)
China Overtaking US – Orban (RT)
Western Firms Reluctant To Pull Out Of Russia Despite Sanctions – Orban (TASS)
Washington Becoming Weary of Zelensky’s Never-Ending Demands For Aid (Sp.)
Japan Doesn’t Want to Fight for Taiwan and Neither Do Other US Allies (Sp.)
Lockheed Martin Predicts Strong Profits as Global Instability Rises (LI)
Hunter Biden Expected To Face Up To 10 Criminal Referrals (ZH)
New BRICS Currency Boosts Gold & Destroys Dollar – Jim Rickards (USAW)
Tyranny of the Minority (Turley)
The Downfall of Blobism (Kunstler)

 

 

 

 

Running out

 

 

Ted Nugent
https://twitter.com/i/status/1682755010566803457

 

 

 

 

He says $200 Billion.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1682824375056187393

 

 

Kolakusic
https://twitter.com/i/status/1682649222607261697

 

 

 

 

No Sane Person Goes to War against Russia (Military Textbook Ch. 1 Par. 1) | Dmitry Orlov

 

 

Macgregor: NATO is an Appendage of Globalist Foreign Policy

 

 

 

 

Will he give it away before they come take it?

Zelensky Carries Out ‘Polonization’ Of Ukraine – Duma Speaker (TASS)

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky is carrying out “polonization” of Ukraine in hopes that this would allow him to stay in power for longer, Russian State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin said on his Telegram channel. “Zelensky is carrying out a process of polonization [capture of Ukraine by Poland – TASS] of his country, hoping that, in return, his masters [Washington and Brussels – TASS] will allow him to stay in power for longer,” he said. To that extent, a law was adopted that effectively equals Poles to Ukrainians, providing them with the same set of rights – stay without permission, employment, education, medical service and even some allowances, the official added.

According to Volodin, Ukrainians are being expelled from their homes in Sumy and Chernigov regions, which border Russia, as the authorities seek to replace them with Polish migrants, loyal to the neo-Nazi regime. Ukrainian citizens are also being forced to use Polish language instead of Russian; orthodox Christianity is being persecuted, with Ukrainians being converted to Catholicism, the Duma Speaker underscored. “Meanwhile, a 25-thousand military force comprised mostly of Polish and Lithuanian armed soldiers, ready to occupy Western Ukraine, has been established. The Poles want to take back what they consider their historic lands – the Eastern Borderlands. They do not need Ukrainian citizens on these territories,” Volodin noted.

He stated that, according to the ideology of Washington and Brussels, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian people must die at the frontline (with growing amounts of weapons being shipped to Ukraine to that extent), while the rest must lose their national identity. In order to meet this goal, “Poland’s imperial ambitions” are being used. “Washington and Brussels will continue waging the war until the last Ukrainian,” Volodin concluded.

Read more …

Twitter thread. More land given away:

“..the owners of a significant part of Ukrainian arable land (more than 17 million hectares) are Western corporations Cargill, DuPont and Monsanto.”

Did they pay Zelensky personally?

Russia on the Grain Deal at the UN Security Council (Combate)

“Most of you expressed, in one way or another, disappointment at the termination of the so-called grain deal that provided for exports of Ukrainian grain to global markets. I have a question to you. What was it that you expected? From the very start, we have been drawing everyone’s attention to the fact that the initiative did not meet the initially proclaimed goal and was gaining a well-defined commercial nature. In fact, from the very beginning, developed countries have taken the lead among those buying food from Ukraine. However, no steps were taken to remedy this trend. During the Black Sea Initiative, a total of 32.8 million tonnes of cargo was exported, of which more than 70% went to high- and upper-middle-income countries, including the European Union. The poorest states, notably Ethiopia, Yemen, Afghanistan, Sudan, and Somalia, accounted for less than 3%…


Such geography and commercialization of an initially humanitarian initiative is easily explained by the fact that the owners of a significant part of Ukrainian arable land (more than 17 million hectares) are Western corporations Cargill, DuPont and Monsanto. They bought up Ukrainian land after Kiev lifted a 20-year moratorium on its sale at the request of the IMF and became the main beneficiaries of Ukrainian grain exports. On the other hand, the Europeans who buy Ukrainian food at dumping prices then process it at home and resell as ready-to-consume goods with high added value. In other words, they earn twice. What does this have to do with the task of getting food delivered to the poorest countries, about which we have heard again today?”

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“A large number of Ukrainian soldiers and foreign mercenaries have also been stationed in the areas protected under the deal..”

Kiev Used Grain Deal To Stock Up On Military Supplies – Russia (RT)

Ukraine has used the Black Sea grain deal to accumulate sizable military and fuel supplies, Russian Deputy Ambassador to the UN Dmitry Polyansky told the organization’s Security Council (UNSC) on Friday. EU nations have also exploited the agreement to reap profits from cheap Ukrainian food products, he said. Since the UN-facilitated deal was introduced a year ago, “the Kiev regime has built up significant military and industrial [supplies], as well as fuel… storage capacities in the areas near its Black Sea ports,” the diplomat said during a UNSC meeting convened after Russia’s decision to withdraw from the agreement.

A large number of Ukrainian soldiers and foreign mercenaries have also been stationed in the areas protected under the deal, he said, adding that Russia could “remedy this situation” now that it has left the deal. The Ukrainian military did not hesitate to use the humanitarian corridors reserved for the grain shipments to launch attacks on the Russian military and civilian targets, Polyansky said, adding that neither the UN nor Western nations had reacted to such attacks in any way. “Do you just want us to put up with it?” asked the envoy. The Russian military repeatedly reported on Ukrainian attempts to strike targets in Crimea with both aerial and naval drones, which were mostly thwarted by Russian defense systems.

In May, Moscow stated that the Ukrainian forces had taken advantage of the grain corridors to stage attacks on Crimea. The deal itself, which was initially touted as a humanitarian initiative aimed at helping the poorest nations to avoid a food crisis, was ultimately “commercialized” by the West, Polyansky said. “Europeans, who buy Ukrainian food products at give-away prices, then process them and re-sell them as manufactured goods with high added value,” he continued, adding that EU nations are “benefiting twice” from the deal. “Tell me, where is the goal of providing the poorest nations with food here?” he asked.

Moscow has repeatedly stressed that only a tiny percentage of the grain exported from Ukraine as part of the agreement has been shipped to such nations, while the bulk of it has ended up in Europe. On Friday, Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto also stated that “95% of exported Ukrainian grain does not go to Africa.” He blamed this for rising food prices on the continent, which were “destabilizing regions that are already in difficulty.” The US Department of Agriculture also said in its July report that almost half of all Ukrainian wheat exports ended up in the EU after the grain deal was struck. Türkiye imported almost a quarter of Ukraine’s wheat over the same period, and only roughly one-fifth went to the “rest of the world,” the report showed.

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“Western leaders are suffering from “megalomania and inferiority complex” at the same time, which is a “dangerous mix..”

West Driven By “Impotent Rage” – Moscow (RT)

The geopolitical decisions of the US and its allies are being dictated by “impotent rage” over the West’s dwindling influence on the global stage, Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov has stated. Following his meeting with members of the Alexander Gorchakov Public Diplomacy Fund in Moscow on Friday, Ryabkov was asked to comment on this week’s hearing at the US House Committee on Foreign Affairs, during which some participants suggested that the strengthening of Russia’s ties with Africa was a result of mistakes committed by Washington. In response, the deputy foreign minister broadly criticized the policies pursued by the US and its allies on the international arena, suggesting that the Western countries have been “making one mistake after another.”


“Their path over the past few years is a path of mistakes and suffering – suffering from their own deficiency in international affairs – from their inability to combine their ambitions, their high expectations that everybody around should obey them, with what they see in reality,” he argued. Ryabkov went on to describe the West’s behavior on the international stage as being driven by “impotent rage.” The diplomat said he senses “deep geopolitical volatility and offendedness” in the decisions made by the US and its allies. Western leaders are suffering from “megalomania and inferiority complex” at the same time, which is a “dangerous mix,” Ryabkov stressed.

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“..today, instead of American dominance, there are two suns in the sky..”

China Overtaking US – Orban (RT)

The world is facing the biggest power shift in decades, with the US poised to lose its leading position to China, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Saturday. This could result in a major conflict between Washington and Beijing unless the US accepts that it cannot be the “winner” forever, he warned. “[China] has become a manufacturing powerhouse and is now overtaking America,” Orban said in his annual speech in the town of Baile Tusnad in Romania’s Eastern Transylvania. In just 30 years, China has undergone the industrial revolution that took the West around three centuries, the Hungarian prime minister said, adding that America is about to say ‘goodbye’ to its status as the world’s only superpower.

Beijing is also challenging the values Washington seeks to portray as universal, Orban said. China considers American values to be a “hostile ideology,” he said, adding that “there is some truth in it.” Such a development would certainly not sit well with Washington, which will want to remain “on top of the world” forever, Orban warned. He said attempts to challenge existing hegemony had led to major conflict on multiple occasions in human history. “There are no eternal winners and eternal losers,” he added. A conflict between the two great powers is likely but not unavoidable, the Hungarian leader believes. The world needs to find a new balance, and the two opposing parties should recognize each other as equals, he said.

Major nations have to “accept that, today, instead of American dominance, there are two suns in the sky,” Orban added. He also painted a grim picture of Europe’s future by saying it’s about to lose its dominant position in the global economy. Orban blamed the West’s anti-Russian policies for this development. The EU is already “rich but weak,” he said, adding that it would further lose its competitive advantages as a result of its determination to impose sanctions on Russia. The idea that Russia can be separated from the world economy through various restrictions is an “illusion,” he warned. The EU has already witnessed the results of its erroneous decisions, Orban said, adding that “others buy Russian energy instead of us, and we pay more for energy than ever before.”

According to Orban, the UK and Italy would drop out of the world’s top ten economies, and Germany would fall to 10th place, down from its current fourth position. A significant part of the European economy is still linked to Russia despite all the rhetoric about sanctions, he said. Hungary has emerged as one of the major critics of Western policies amid the ongoing conflict between Moscow and Kiev. Budapest has repeatedly called for a ceasefire and peace deal in Ukraine, and has criticized the EU for sending arms to Kiev. In June, Orban told the German tabloid Bild that a Ukrainian victory on the battlefield was “impossible.” Hungary has also insisted that anti-Russia sanctions are hurting Europe more than they hurt Russia.

Read more …

“..the European Union countries had annually paid about 300 billion euros for oil and gas, whereas they paid 653 billion euros last year..”

Western Firms Reluctant To Pull Out Of Russia Despite Sanctions – Orban (TASS)

Western companies are not willing to leave Russia despite the sanctions, as they understand that Russia’s economy will still remain part of the global one, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Saturday in his speech at the Free University and the summer student camp in the Romanian town of Baile Tusnad (Harghita County) in Transylvania. The prime minister said that, according to his information, 88% of pharmaceutical, 79% of mining, 70% of energy and 77% of other European industrial companies that were operating in Russia at the beginning of 2022 were still staying in the country. “Of the 1,400 major Western companies, only 8.5% have left Russia,” said Orban, whose speech was aired by Hungarian television channel M1. According to the prime minister, foreign companies paid $3.5 billion to the Russian budget in 2022.


The prime minister said that there is an attempt to “disconnect Russia” from the European economy through sanctions in order to exert political pressure on Moscow. However, he is convinced that this will not have the desired effect, since Russia’s economy is intertwined with the rest of the world, including in the energy sector. “Somebody else is buying Russian raw materials, while we are suffering from military inflation and losing our competitiveness,” he said. Orban pointed out that before sanctions were imposed on Russia, the European Union countries had annually paid about 300 billion euros for oil and gas, whereas they paid 653 billion euros last year. Europe will not be able to compete with the rest of the world as long as energy supplies are twice as expensive as they used to be, Orban believes.

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“..while also deciding to view Zelensky at ground level instead atop a pedestal.”

Washington Becoming Weary of Zelensky’s Never-Ending Demands For Aid (Sp.)

American officials are growing tired of the demands that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky continues to make with regard to Western support for Kiev, Douglas MacKinnon, a former special assistant for policy and communications at the Pentagon, wrote in an opinion piece for a US media outlet. MacKinnon pointed out in his Saturday article for The Hill, citing sources, that US President Joe Biden “lashed out” at Zelensky in June 2022, yelling that the Ukrainian leader “should be showing more gratitude for the billions in aid he was getting from the United States via the American people.” Asked about Zelensky’s never-ending demands for US aid, a former high-level Pentagon official told MacKinnon that Western support is not infinite.

“Zelensky is acting like a spoiled, petulant child who gets everything he wants and it’s still not enough. Many in the U.S. government and many of our citizens are growing tired of his act. I can assure you he is burning bridges in Europe as well. There is only so much money and good will to go around,” the former Pentagon official said. MacKinnon emphasized that more and more Americans are becoming unsupportive of the continued US aid to Kiev and this trend is likely to grow, “as the American people take a harder look at the horrific consequences of the war while also deciding to view Zelensky at ground level instead atop a pedestal.”

Earlier this week, media reported that Washington was planning to announce a new package of military assistance for Ukraine worth up to $400 million. The new package, which could be announced as early as next week, could include artillery munitions, air defense missiles and ground vehicles for Ukraine’s ongoing counteroffensive. Earlier this month, the US Defense Department announced a new security assistance package to Kiev worth $1.3 billion that for the first time included 155mm cluster artillery rounds.

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Japan risks becoming both the rock and the hard place.

Japan Doesn’t Want to Fight for Taiwan and Neither Do Other US Allies (Sp.)

Despite Japan bolstering its military capabilities under the nation’s new Defense Buildup Program, it appears to have zero appetite to engage in direct confrontation with China over Taiwan, Western media and think tanks say. US military facilities in Okinawa, Japan, might play a central role in any Taiwan crisis, according to the Western press. Moreover, American military analysts have almost unanimously agreed that Japan is “the most likely US ally to contribute troops” in a potential US conflict with China over the island. Back in October 2021, War on the Rocks, a US online media outlet, quoted a Japanese poll which appeared to indicate that 74% of respondents would support their government’s military engagement in the Taiwan Strait against China.

The report further speculated about the possibilities of circumventing the country’s Constitution, which limits Japan’s ability to participate in conflicts. Bold statements made by some Japanese officials also seemed to confirm Tokyo’s resolve. One of them, former Minister of Defense Yasuhide Nakayama, insisted in June 2021 that Taiwan is a “red line” and that “we have to protect Taiwan as a democratic country.” Japan and Taiwan are geographically close and any possible military actions over the island could potentially affect Japan’s Okinawa prefecture, Nakayama argued at the time. The People’s Republic of China, which considers Taiwan its inalienable part, has repeatedly stated that it is going to reunite with the island peacefully, referring to years of fruitful collaboration with the former Taiwanese government formed by members of Kuomintang Party.

The Kuomintang can make a spectacular comeback during the Taiwanese general elections, scheduled for January 2024. The party’s victory could nip the fuss around Taiwan’s secessionism and potential conflict in the bud. Even US lawmakers admit it, considering the Kuomintang’s win a potential “threat” to Washington’s plans in the Asia-Pacific. [..] The unfolding situation has apparently given shivers to the Japanese leadership. The Wall Street Journal broke on Monday that the Japanese government is ready to give permission to the US to use bases in Japan in the case of conflict over Taiwan, but Tokyo’s own participation is unlikely. Per the report, Washington invited Tokyo to consider using its Self-Defense Forces, especially the Maritime Self-Defense Force for hunting for Chinese submarines around the island of Taiwan and for other military missions.

Read more …

What Ukraine is really about.

Lockheed Martin Predicts Strong Profits as Global Instability Rises (LI)

Lockheed Martin believes global instability is driving demand and sees an increase in annual profits. Washington’s proxy war in Ukraine has caused an increase in arms spending among NATO members, boosting weapons makers’ stock prices. On Tuesday, Lockheed raised its annual profit and sales outlook on strong demand for military equipment. After making the announcement, the company’s stock price increased by one percent. Reuters reports, “[Lockheed] expects full-year net sales to be between $66.25 billion and $66.75 billion, up from its earlier forecast of $65 billion to $66 billion.”

The billions in profit are driven by sales of big-ticket systems like the F-35. However, Lockheed has struggled to produce F-35s that can perform its promised abilities. In May, the government found the planes’ engines have a serious problem dealing with heat. “The F-35’s engine lacks the ability to properly manage the heat generated by the aircraft’s systems,” POGO reported. “That increases the engine’s wear, and auditors now estimate the extra maintenance will add $38 billion to the program’s life-cycle costs.” The arms maker has additionally experienced a boost in demand for smaller systems, like the Javelin anti-tank missile. The White House has shipped thousands of Javelin systems to Kiev since Joe Biden took office.

As well as predicting future success, Lockheed announced it beat expectations regarding quarterly sales. According to Reuters, “Quarterly net sales rose 8.1% to $16.69 billion, beating expectations of $15.92 billion.” Last year, Ian Bond, director of foreign policy at the Centre for European Reform, described the surge in the market for weapons as the highest since the Cold War. “This is certainly the biggest increase in defense spending in Europe since the end of the Cold War,” he said. Prior to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Lockheed’s stock price traded below $340 a share, the price increased to over $450 within a few months. On Thursday, Lockheed’s stock was valued at $456 per sale.

Read more …

How do you keep Joe out of the story?

Hunter Biden Expected To Face Up To 10 Criminal Referrals (ZH)

The Chairman of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, James Comer (R-KY), says he plans to file “between six and 10 criminal referrals” against Hunter Biden once his committee finishes its investigation into the Biden family’s business dealings. According to the NY Post, the charges would include sex trafficking a woman across state lines for prostitution. “The Democrats kept saying, ‘Oh, we don’t have any evidence. You don’t have any evidence.’ Well, [Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene] showed them evidence,” Comer told Fox Business in an interview, referring to a sexually graphic image printed on a poster from Hunter Biden’s laptop, in which he’s stuffing his manhood into a prostitute’s mouth who was allegedly paid for with company funds.

“She showed them evidence of the president’s son committing a crime, violating the Mann Act,” said Comer, adding “She showed the plane tickets, she showed the pictures, she showed the evidence. You know, there’s no question he violated it. That’s another thing that he could have been charged with.” Comer also said that the referrals could include violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). “He was money laundering,” said Comer. “He was racketeering. He committed wire fraud. He violated the Mann Act. The list goes on and on and on.”

Meanwhile, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) on Thursday released an unclassified FBI document in which a confidential human source lays out an alleged bribery scheme involving Joe and Hunter Biden, in which a Ukrainian gas giant, Burisma, hired Hunter to gain access to his then-VP father. “The House Oversight Committee previously issued a subpoena to obtain the document, with which FBI Director Christopher Wray did not comply. Though he ultimately permitted the committee members to view the FD-1023 in a secure location, the contents remained unpublished until Grassley’s Thursday release. The document shows that the bureau had a trusted source privy to Burisma’s efforts to quash a probe from then-Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin and its plans to expand to the U.S. and secure a company for IPO purposes. -Just the News

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“You don’t need dollars and you don’t need gold. You just need to be smart enough to anchor your currency to gold..”

New BRICS Currency Boosts Gold & Destroys Dollar – Jim Rickards (USAW)

Seven-time, best-selling financial author James Rickards predicted in his most recent best-seller called “Sold Out” why broken supply chains would cause big inflation. He was right, and he still contends, “Supply chain problems and inflation are not over.” For an example of the supply chain still being in fragile shape, look no further than the failed grain deal between Ukraine and Russia last week. Rickards points out, “Putin has been very patient about this. He had a deal. Ukraine was not living up to their end of the deal. Putin says we are the ones getting attacked, so, screw the deal. What’s that going to do to the price of grain? It’s going to send grain prices up, and it’s already up 10% just in a matter of days.”

This brings us the new BRICS gold-weighted currency (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) that might be announced in the middle to the end of next month. Rickards calls one unit of currency a “BRIC.” This is a competitor to the U.S. dollar, but Rickards says, “It’s not a reserve currency. . . .I think it may be 8 grams of gold to one “BRIC” (currency), but I don’t know. What I do know is it does not matter. What does matter is they are going to anchor it to a weight of gold. . . . It’s NOT redeemable in gold, it is anchored to it. . . . Let’s says a “BRIC” is worth one ounce of gold. Today that is $1,970 per ounce, except the “BRIC” is NOT anchored to the dollar. It is anchored to gold, which stands in the middle of this equation.

So, the dollar price of gold is going to be going up and down all the time, which means the dollar/“BRIC” exchange rate is going to be going up and down all the time. They don’t have to defend the “BRIC.” They have gold, but they don’t have to back it up with gold. . . . They actually don’t need any gold. . . . If you have made your currency anchored to gold . . . do you want the price to go up or down? You want the price of gold to go up because that means the “BRIC” is worth more dollars, and the dollar is crashing. It’s a way to destroy the dollar. You don’t need dollars and you don’t need gold. You just need to be smart enough to anchor your currency to gold, and when dollar inflation starts to go up, your currency is going to be worth more because of how you pegged it, not to dollars, but how you pegged it to gold.”

Rickards goes on to say, “So, if I were a BRICS member, and I were Russia in particular, and I had this currency tied to gold, and I wanted my currency to be more valuable and your currency (U.S. dollar) less valuable, one of the ways to do that is mess with the supply chain and drive up the price of oil, gasoline, grain . . . which drives up pork prices and chicken prices, and the list goes on. That’s one way to do it.” Rickards also talks about deflation this year and big inflation coming after that. Rickards is predicting big inflation coming for people using dollars, and with his track record, you would be a fool to bet against his analysis.

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“I shall resist any illegal federal court order.”

Tyranny of the Minority (Turley)

“I shall resist any illegal federal court order.” When “the Court’s interpretation of the Constitution is egregiously wrong,” the president should refuse to follow it. Those two statements were made roughly 60 years apart. The first is from segregationist Alabama Gov. George Wallace (D). The second was made by two liberal professors this month. In one of the most chilling developments in our history, the left has come to embrace the authoritarian language and logic of segregationists in calling for defiance and radical measures against the Supreme Court. In a recent open letter, Harvard law professor Mark Tushnet and University of San Francisco political scientist Aaron Belkin called upon President Joe Biden to defy rulings of the Supreme Court that he considers “mistaken” in the name of “popular constitutionalism.”

Thus, in light of the court’s bar on the use of race in college admissions, they argue that Biden should just continue to follow his own constitutional interpretation. The use of the affirmative action case is ironic, since polls have consistently shown that the majority of the public does not support the use of race in college admissions. Indeed, even in the most liberal states, such as California, voters have repeatedly rejected affirmative action in college admissions. Polls further show that a majority support the Supreme Court’s recent decisions. So despite referenda and polls showing majority support for barring race in admissions, academics are pushing to impose their own values, regardless of the views of the public or of the courts.

However, even if these measures were popular, it would not make them right. It is precisely what segregationists such as Sen. James Eastland (D-Miss.) argued, that “all the people of the South are in favor of segregation. And Supreme Court or no Supreme Court, we are going to maintain segregated schools.” Tushnet and Belkin cite with approval Biden’s declaration that this is “not a normal Supreme Court.” Biden’s view of normalcy appears to be a court that agrees with his fluid view of constitutional law, by which he can forgive roughly a half of trillion dollars in loans or impose a national eviction moratorium without a vote of Congress.

Tushnet and Belkin know their audience. Biden has previously evinced little respect for the Constitution or the courts. Take the eviction case. In an earlier decision, a majority of justices had declared that Biden’s actions were unconstitutional, confirming what many of us had said for months. Even after the majority declared it unconstitutional, Biden wanted to reissue the national moratorium. White House counsel and most scholars told him the move would be blatantly unconstitutional and defy the express ruling of the court. Instead, he consulted the only law professor willing to tell him what he wanted to hear and did it anyway. It was quickly again declared unconstitutional.

Read more …

Good point:

“..who would even want to win the support of such vile creatures as Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Jerrold Nadler, and Adam Schiff, let alone be associated with them in the same club?”

The Downfall of Blobism (Kunstler)

You might not know it these lazy, hazy, muggy days of midsummer, but things are getting pretty wildly out-of-hand in our republic. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. blew up the Democratic Party yesterday in the House Subcommittee on Weaponization of Government hearing, acting like a normal human while being set upon by a flock of harpies desperately screeching “Russia, Russia, Russia,” as if that means anything anymore. He branded them as worse than the McCarthyites of the 1950s, rebuked their insane scurrilities supporting censorship, and left them in a state of exhausted disgrace.

It happens that he is running for the nomination of that very party knocking itself out to destroy him. To win that prize he would have to put a thousand top Democrats through some grueling act of repentance and contrition — and then you’ve got to ask yourself: who would even want to win the support of such vile creatures as Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Jerrold Nadler, and Adam Schiff, let alone be associated with them in the same club?

Elsewhere around the scene this week, we have the ever more degenerate antics of the FBI on view as whistleblowers pour out of the woodwork disclosing the rot behind Director Chris Wray and his boss AG Merrick Garland. This Deep State Blob of turpitude has been growing and festering with so many overlapping cover-ups that they’ve run out of rugs to sweep their crimes under. The massive moneygrubbing misdeeds of Hillary Clinton from Skolkovo and Uranium One beat a direct path through the Ukraine coup of 2014, to RussiaGate, to the Biden Family’s global influence-peddling operation and every mendacious act in-between including the FISA falsehoods, the J-6 entrapment caper, hundreds of malicious and deceitful prosecutions, the Covid-19 fraud, the censorship and medical tyranny, and God-knows how many ensuing deaths from a poisonous vaccine… and now, a brain-dead government trifling with nuclear war.

And whose brilliant idea was it, anyway, to install this disgusting and incompetent grifter, “Joe Biden,” as our head-of-state? They surely knew well before 2019 that his bag-man son was rooting out bribes in Ukraine, China, and elsewhere, at the same time he was consorting with whores and trafficked children while destroying his brain with crack and downing a fifth of vodka a day. And you’re telling me that the CIA and FBI did not know about any of this, even before October 2019 when Hunter’s laptop stuffed with graphic evidence fell into their hands? If they didn’t know any of this, then what’s the point of having an intel community?

My guess is that it was Barack Obama’s idea to stick “Joe Biden” in the White House in the vain effort to use this captive criminal to stave off any accounting for the aforesaid villainies that occurred during Mr. Obama’s two terms. The mission was originally Hillary Clinton’s — she had plenty at stake herself — but she botched the job in 2016 and allowed the Golden Golem of Greatness to slip into power. It is amazing to look back and see how the mighty Blob congealed after that election — like a giant rogue macrophage — to surround and eliminate Mr. Trump, who apparently did not know for many months what he was up against: the entire permanent bureaucracy.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Burton

 

 

 

 

Russ/Gore

 

 

Nanny cam

 

 


saharan dust, a mineral dust from the sahara desert, under the microscope. the dust particles contain sodium, manganese, aluminum, silicon, iron, cobalt, copper, potassium, sulfur and calcium. saharan dust provides marine bacteria and phytoplankton with important nutrients.

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Jun 142020
 


Gustave Dore Dante and Virgil among the gluttons 1868

 

China Reports 57 New Confirmed, 9 Asymptomatic COVID-19 Cases For June 13 (R.)
Clusters of Coronavirus Disease in Communities, Japan, January–April 2020 (CDC)
The Greatest Science Policy Failure For A Generation – Lancer Editor (G.)
Nadler: ‘Eliminating’ Private Insurance Could Pay For ‘Medicare For All’ (JTN)
Congress Spent $3.06 Million On Failed Impeachment Probe (JTN)
How Beijing Cultivated Wall Street’s Giants (SMH)
The Truth About The May Jobs Report (Axios)
Twitter Reinstates Zerohedge After Admitting It Made An “Error” (ZH)
Finishing Touches Being Put On 10 New Criminal Referrals in Russia Probe (JTN)
Julian Assange Just Called (Varoufakis)

 

 

Worldometer reports new cases for June 9 (midnight to midnight GMT+0) at + 132,786 (yesterday was updated to 141,973).

My count from about 6 am EDT to 6 am EDT is + 131,902 cases. Remember: it’s weekend.

 

 

 

 

New cases past 24 hours in:

• US + 28,487
• Brazil + 23,468
• Russia + 8,835
• India + 12,360
• Pakistan + 6,825
• Chile + 6,509

 

 

Cases 7,895,777 (+ 131,902 from yesterday’s 7,763,875)

Deaths 432,882 (+ 4,148 from yesterday’s 428,734)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

From Worldometer yesterday evening -before their day’s close-:

 

 

From Worldometer:

 

 

From COVID19Info.live:

 

 

 

 

..a new outbreak has been linked to a meat and vegetable market in south Beijing..

China Reports 57 New Confirmed, 9 Asymptomatic COVID-19 Cases For June 13 (R.)

China reported 57 new confirmed COVID-19 cases for June 13, the highest since April 13, according to data released by the national health authority on Sunday. The National Health Commission said in a statement that 38 of the new confirmed cases were locally transmitted, with 36 of them in Beijing. This is the highest daily infection count for China’s capital since authorities started releasing data. Beijing recorded a jump in new confirmed cases, up from six a day earlier, after it started doing mass-testing at the Xinfadi market in the city’s southwestern Fengtai district.


The district has put itself on a “wartime” footing and the capital banned tourism and sports events on Saturday, sparking fears of a new wave of COVID-19. Nineteen of the new confirmed cases were so-called imported cases involving travellers from overseas, with 17 of them arriving in Guangdong. China also reported nine asymptomatic cases, one new suspected case and no new deaths from COVID-19 for June 13. The total number of COVID-19 cases in mainland China now stands at 83,132, while the death toll remained unchanged at 4,634. China does not count asymptomatic patients, who are infected with the virus but do not display symptoms, as confirmed cases.

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https://twitter.com/DrEricDing/status/1271988040169328641

Clusters of Coronavirus Disease in Communities, Japan, January–April 2020 (CDC)

We investigated clusters of COVID-19 cases and probable primary cases in Japan during January 15–April 4, 2020. We found that healthcare facilities, such as hospitals, and care facilities, such as nursing homes, were the primary sources of clusters, some of which had >100 cases. Japan experienced 2 waves of imported COVID-19 cases, after which local transmission occurred and the epidemic grew (8). Of note, clusters of COVID-19 cases at healthcare and care facilities predominated at epidemiologic weeks 11 (March 9–15) and 14 (March 30–April 4), which corresponds to ≈3 weeks after the 2 waves of imported cases (Figure 1, panel C). Healthcare and care facilities might be located at the end of the local transmission chain because clusters in those facilities only became evident several weeks after community transmission persisted.

We noted many COVID-19 clusters were associated with heavy breathing in close proximity, such as singing at karaoke parties, cheering at clubs, having conversations in bars, and exercising in gymnasiums. Other studies have noted such activities can facilitate clusters of infection (9,10). Japan’s Prime Minister’s Office and the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare announced 3 situations that could increase the risk for COVID-19 cases and advised the population to avoid the “Three Cs”: closed spaces with poor ventilation, crowded places, and close-contact settings (11).

Among the probable primary COVID-19 cases we identified from non-nosocomial clusters, half (11/22) were 20–39 years of age, which is younger than the age distribution of all COVID-19 cases in Japan (Figure 2, panel A). We do not know whether social, biological, or both factors play a role in the difference in transmission patterns between the younger and older persons. We also noted probable primary COVID-19 case-patients appear to transmit the virus and generate clusters even in the absence of apparent respiratory symptoms, such as cough.


Figure 2. Analysis of probable primary cases of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) among 22 clusters in communities, Japan. A) Age ranges of probable primary COVID-19 cases in clusters. Age distribution among all COVID-19 cases in Japan is provided as reference. B) Proportions of symptoms among probable primary cases of COVID-19 clusters at transmission (n = 16) and among at laboratory confirmed diagnosis (n = 22). 1, Asymptomatic; 2, fever; 3, fatigue; 4, cough; 5, sore throat; 6, headache; 7, arthralgia or myalgia; 8, runny nose; 9, diarrhea; 10, difficulty breathing. C) Distribution of probable primary cases of COVID-19 clusters by time of transmission compared with illness onset by age groups (n = 16). Six cases were excluded because the time of transmission was undetermined.

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Richard Horton’s problem today is of course, apart from his bout with cancer, that he was responsible for the entirely fake report on HCQ the Lancet published.

The Greatest Science Policy Failure For A Generation – Lancer Editor (G.)

There is a school of thought that says now is not the time to criticise the government and its scientific advisers about the way they have handled the Covid-19 pandemic. Wait until all the facts are known and the crisis has subsided, goes this thinking, and then we can analyse the performance of those involved. It’s safe to say that Richard Horton, the editor of the influential medical journal the Lancet, is not part of this school. An outspoken critic of what he sees as the medical science establishment’s acquiescence to government, he has written a book that he calls a “reckoning” for the “missed opportunities and appalling misjudgments” here and abroad that have led to “the avoidable deaths of tens of thousands of citizens”.

The Covid-19 Catastrophe: What’s Gone Wrong and How to Stop It Happening Again is a short polemical book, building on a series of excoriating columns Horton has written in the Lancet over the past few months. He lambasts the management of the virus as “the greatest science policy failure for a generation”, attacks the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) for becoming “the public relations wing of a government that had failed its people”, calls out the medical Royal Colleges, the Academy of Medical Sciences, the British Medical Association (BMA) and Public Health England (PHE) for not reinforcing the WHO’s public health emergency warning back in February, and damns the UK’s response as “slow, complacent and flat-footed”, revealing a “glaringly unprepared” government and a “broken system of obsequious politico-scientific complicity”.

On the page, Horton can sound strident, even arrogant, but that’s not his manner in person at all, at least not in our long Zoom conversation. He’s charming, open, self-critical and full of easy laughter. I suggest that, as bad as things look at the moment, surely people like the chief medical officer, Chris Whitty, and the chief scientific officer, Patrick Vallance, have been doing their best. “Individually, they’re great people,” he says. “I’m not criticising individuals, but the system was a catastrophic failure.” As editor of the Lancet, he’s particularly aggrieved that the series of five academic papers the journal published in late January first describing the novel coronavirus in disturbing detail went unheeded. “In several of the papers they talked about the importance of personal protective equipment,” he reminds me.

“And the importance of testing, the importance of avoiding mass gatherings, the importance of considering school closure, the importance of lockdowns. All of the things that have happened in the last three months here, they’re all in those five papers.” He still can’t understand why the government’s scientific advisers didn’t consult their counterparts in China. The world of medicine is a small one, he says, and everyone knows the people responsible for coordinating the Chinese government’s response. “These are people they could have literally sent an email to, or picked the phone up to, and said, ‘Hey, we read your paper in the Lancet, can it really be as bad as that? What is going on in Wuhan?’ And if they’d done that they would have found out that this was indeed as bad as described.”

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Whereas Jerry Nadler’s problem is that his candidate, Joe Biden, has spoken out against Medicare For All. Wait, Nadler knows that; is he trying to embarrass Biden?

Nadler: ‘Eliminating’ Private Insurance Could Pay For ‘Medicare For All’ (JTN)

Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, suggested Friday that Congress could pay for a “Medicare for all” health care system without raising taxes by eliminating private insurance entirely. During a discussion with the Medicare for All Caucus, Nadler repeated some of the objections that critics of single-payer health care have raised including, “How are we going to pay for it?” and “We’re gonna have to raise taxes and all.” Nadler recommended that Democrats stop engaging in the tax increase debate.

“The entire mechanism, half a trillion dollars a year of private insurance, and not only the money for the profits, but the money for the markets segmenting; the money for the entire administration that all the insurance companies do; the money that all the hospitals and the doctors have to spend to deal with the bureaucracy of insurance companies – that’s half a trillion dollars a year, all of which could be spent on medical care, instead of being spent on either profits or just administrative costs,” Nader said during the discussion.

“It’s a huge amount of money and we could institute a Medicare for all system without increasing taxes. I mean, that’s not a discussion we have to get into because the cost savings from just eliminating the private insurance leech on the system would pay for all of Medicare for all, all the services, everything we’re talking about and when we get to debating this on a political level, again, we ought to be emphasizing that,” he added. Nadler urged Democrats to begin making his argument in favor of Medicare for all on the campaign trail in this election cycle. “I don’t understand why we didn’t point this out enough and we must in the future,” he said. Such an argument will continue to face strong opposition from the country’s estimated $900 billion private insurance industry and those opposed to a completely government-run health care system.

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More Nadler. He and Schiff will simply say they had every right to do the probe, and lost only because the Senate is partisan. Just like Congress is, but for the other party.

Congress Spent $3.06 Million On Failed Impeachment Probe (JTN)

The Golden Horseshoe is a weekly designation from Just the News intended to highlight egregious examples of wasteful taxpayer spending by the government. The award is named for the horseshoe-shaped toilet seats for military airplanes that cost the Pentagon a whopping $640 each back in the 1980s. This week, our award is going to the the United States Congress for spending $3.06 million in taxpayer dollars between September and December 2019 on the failed impeachment of President Trump. The recently released openthebooks.com report entitled “Congressional Membership Has Its Privileges: Salaries, Pensions, Travel & Other Taxpayer-Funded Perks” breaks down some of the exorbitant annual costs of the nation’s legislative branch.

The oversight report, which is published annually under the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006, was initially sponsored by the late Senator Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) and then-Senator Barack Obama. According to this year’s analysis, during the period between Sept. 24 2019, when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi declared an impeachment inquiry, and Dec. 13, 2019, when the House Judiciary Committee sent two articles of impeachment to the Senate, the lower chamber ran up a bill to taxpayers of over $3 million. That price tag included the salaries of more than 100 congressional staffers and employees who, for those four months, essentially worked full-time on the impeachment proceedings.

It also factors in the hourly fees of the six attorneys who were hired as lawyers of record for witnesses who made appearances during hearings, and acted as impeachment counsel for the House Democratic impeachment managers throughout the trial. The high cost of the impeachment effort is primarily due to the House’s decision to use congressional staffers to investigate the president for potentially impeachable crimes. For reference, during the impeachment of President Clinton 1998, the majority of the fact-finding was done by Independent Counsel Ken Starr’s staff. For President Nixon’s impeachment inquiry, the bulk of the investigating was handled by special prosecutors Archibald Cox and Leon Jaworski, in addition to a Senate select committee.

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Nutshell: the Fed hands Goldman Sachs buckets full of billions to aid it in selling off the US to China for profit.

How Beijing Cultivated Wall Street’s Giants (SMH)

In November 2018 Peter Navarro, the White House trade adviser who at the time was intimately involved in President Trump’s trade war with Beijing, launched a scathing attack on what he called the “globalist billionaires” of Wall Street. He accused the “self-appointed group of Wall Street bankers and hedge fund managers” of engaging in their own “shuttle diplomacy” with the Chinese side and attempting to sabotage US trade negotiations by putting enormous pressure on the White House to give way to Beijing. Navarro further accused the financial elite of being “unregistered foreign agents” acting as part of Beijing’s influence operations in Washington. It was strong stuff, but was there any foundation to it?

Beijing has been working on Wall Street for a long time. When Prime Minister Zhu Rongji visited the United States in 1999, he holed up in New York’s Astoria Hotel and spent days in back-to-back meetings with business leaders. “Zhu seems never to tire of courting Corporate America,” reported The New York Times. The titans of US finance have for decades been guiding the nation’s China policy. Whenever presidents Clinton, Bush or Obama threatened to take a tougher stance on China’s trade protectionism, currency manipulation or technology theft, Wall Street chiefs used their influence to persuade them to back off. And it was pressure from Wall Street that proved decisive in the Clinton White House’s decision to support China’s admission to the World Trade Organisation, despite China’s serial violation of trade rules.

Twenty years later, The New York Times was writing: “In Washington, on Wall Street and in corporate boardrooms, Beijing has used the country’s size and promise for decades to quell opposition and reward those who helped its rise.” Financial institutions have been Beijing’s most powerful advocates in Washington. The finance sector – the big banks, hedge funds and investment vehicles – is thus in the centre of the map of power in the US, and occupying pride of place is Goldman Sachs. No organisation has been more important to the CCP’s campaign to penetrate US elites, or more willing. For the CCP, titans of finance are easy targets, as there’s a concordance of interests.

Wall Street executives, anticipating an Eldorado when Beijing opens up its vast finance markets to foreigners, have been advising Chinese companies about which American companies to buy and lending them the money to do it, taking a cut from the sales. In the words of a senior White House official, “people who like making deals really like the Chinese Communist Party”. The CCP is pushing on an open door. But the alignment of interests may not be long term, as it’s Beijing’s intention to eventually make Shanghai the financial capital of the world, displacing New York and the City of London. As Lenin reputedly said: “The capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.”

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The markets gain a trillion on the responses to a few questions of 41,000 Americans. You get what you deserve.

The Truth About The May Jobs Report (Axios)

The responses of fewer than 41,000 people were used to determine a major part of last month’s U.S. unemployment rate, the Bureau of Labor Statistics tells Axios. That’s the lowest number in modern history and is one of many unusual developments in government data collection that have affected important readings for months. The surprises in May’s nonfarm payrolls report, which found there were only 21 million unemployed while 30 million Americans were collecting unemployment insurance benefits, were largely the result of oddities in data collection. A portion of the jobs report is determined by a household survey in which government workers interview people at their homes and determine whether any person over the age of 16 is “employed, unemployed, or not in the labor force” — the only three possible designations.

The coronavirus pandemic has “depressed” survey responses since March, as BLS stopped conducting in-person meetings, restricting its ability to reach new households, Julie Hatch Maxfield, BLS associate commissioner for employment and unemployment statistics, tells Axios. “The first month of the sample we get a lot of information and that sets up the whole thing going forward,” she says. This has taken the response rate from 82% in January to 73% in March to 67% in May. “Response rates probably will be depressed even when interviewers go back into the field,” Maxfield notes. In May, BLS identified 9 million people who had lost their jobs but were counted as “not in the labor force” rather than unemployed because they hadn’t been searching for a job in the last four weeks due to the pandemic.

If those people were considered unemployed it would have taken the unemployment rate to 17.9%. A similar calculation would have put the unemployment rate at 19.8% in April and 7.5% in March, BLS says in a report about the coronavirus pandemic’s impact on its data. A separate “misclassification error” categorized millions of workers who had been absent and likely lost their jobs as employed. Additionally, workers who were paid by their employer for any part of the pay period including the 12th of the month were counted as employed, even if they weren’t actually at their jobs.

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Too much power. Take it away.

Twitter Reinstates Zerohedge After Admitting It Made An “Error” (ZH)

133 days after Twitter “permanently” banned Zero Hedge on January 31, the social network has reinstated us after admitting it made an error. As a reminder, what happened in late January was confusing. Shortly after we asked if “This [Is] The Man Behind The Global Coronavirus Pandemic”, referring to Wuhan Institute Of Virology scientist Peng Zhou (who three months later was being investigated by western spy agencies for his role in creating Covid) and some low-grade “reporter” from Buzzfeed decided to report us to Twitter for “doxxing” Zhou using publicly available information, Twitter told us that the account had been suspended for “violating Twitter rules against abuse and harassment”, which was false as we neither incited abuse nor harrassment, but merely asked questions.

But the confusing part is that at the same time, Twitter fabricated an entirely different explanation for its decision when speaking to outside media, telling them the suspension was due to “platform manipulation” – whatever that means. An odd mix of conflicting explanations but in any case, neither was true as we said at the time, and as we further told Bloomberg, the suspension was “unjustified, and likely motivated by reasons other than the stated ones” adding that “we are confident that we did not violate any of the stated Twitter terms: we neither incited harassment, nor did we ‘dox’ the public official, whose contact information is as of this moment listed on the Wuhan institute’s website.”

Fast forward to late Friday night, when unexpectedly we received a brief email from Twitter Support informing us that “we made an error in our enforcement action” as a result of which “we have unsuspended your account.” Speaking to Bloomberg, a Twitter spokesperson said that “we made an error in our enforcement action in this case. Based on additional context from the account holder in appeal, we have reinstated the account. We have a dedicated appeals process for all account holders.” Funny how mistakes happen when you ban first and ask questions later (and only when prompted to do so). In any case, no bad blood right – honest mistake? Well, not really: before all this happened, none other than Twitter’s CEO was following us.

Not anymore. The @zerohedge account also remains highly shadow banned (try searching for the actual zerohedge account on twitter, good luck), perhaps as an innocuous consequence of the “error.” That’s OK though, we never expected an apology. We are just glad that we will be able to share facts and perspectives with our now 700K Twitter followers, a number which has spiked by more than 30K in just the past few hours since the suspension was overturned.

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The Flynn hearing ended in a delay, but these wheels will churn on.

Finishing Touches Being Put On 10 New Criminal Referrals in Russia Probe (JTN)

Congressional Republicans are putting the finishing touches on as many as 10 new criminal referrals asking the Justice Department to investigate key figures in the Russia probe for misconduct ranging from perjury to illegal leaking of classified information, officials told Just the News. The referrals have been spurred by recently declassified evidence that provided explosive new revelations about the conduct of investigators in the now-disproven Russia collusion case, including documents showing FBI agents planned to shut down their investigation of former Trump National Security Adviser Michael Flynn for lack of evidence in January 2017 before they were overruled by superiors.

Other newly released evidence showed numerous Obama administration officials engaged in unmasking Flynn’s name in secret intelligence intercepts during the transition period after the 2016 election and uncovered conflicts in testimonies previously given by former top FBI and intelligence community officials. “Congress is days away from making multiple criminal referrals to DOJ related to conspiracies against Michael Flynn, crimes committed during the conduct of Crossfire Hurricane, false testimony to Congress by top Obama officials, and criminal leaks of classified information from the top rung of the IC,” said a source with direct knowledge of the referrals. The planned referrals come as the Justice Department has expanded its own criminal investigation into the conduct of current and former employees during the Russia probe.

Attorney General William Barr said this week the investigation is looking at why the FBI tried so aggressively to open and sustain an investigation into Trump’s campaign before the 2016 election when it lacked the sort of evidence to justify it, and whether those efforts amounted to conspiracy to defraud the courts or violate the rights of some of the Americans that were targeted. “I think before the election I think we were concerned about the motive, the force behind the very aggressive investigation that was launched into the Trump Campaign without — you know, with a very thin, slender reed as a basis for it,” Barr told Fox News. “It seemed that the Bureau was sort of spring-loaded at the end of July to drive in there and investigate a campaign. And they — there really wasn’t much there to do that on.”

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Julian is not completely shut off from the world. Good.

Julian Assange Just Called (Varoufakis)

Julian called me a little earlier on, at 14.22 London time to be precise. From Belmarsh High Security Prison of course. This is not the first time but, as you can imagine, every time I hear his voice I feel honoured and moved that he should dial my number when he has such few and far between opportunities to place calls. “I want a perspective on world developments out there – I have none in here”, he said. Which, of course, placed a considerable burden on me to articulate thoughts on capitalism’s fate during this pandemic and the repercussions of it all on politics, geopolitics etc. The knowledge that Her Majesty’s Prison authorities would discontinue our discussion at any moment made the task harder.

In a feeble attempt to paint a picture for him on as broad a canvass as possible, I shared with Julian my main thought of the last weeks: Never before has the world of money (i.e. the money markets, that include the share markets) been so decoupled from the world of real people, real stuff – from the real economy. We watch in awe as GDP, personal incomes, wages, company revenues, businesses small and large, collapse while the stock market is staying relatively unscathed. The other day, Hertz declared bankruptcy. When a company does this, its share price goes to zero. Not now. In fact, Hertz is about to issue $1 billion worth of new shares. Why would anyone buy shares of an officially bankrupt company?

The answer is: Because central banks print mountain ranges of money and give it for almost free to financiers to buy any piece of junk floating around the stock exchange. “Complete zombification of the corporations”, is how I put it to Julian. Julian commented that this proves that governments and central banks can keep corporations afloat even when they sell next to nothing at the marketplace. I agreed. But, I also pointed out a major conundrum that capitalism faces for the first time. It is this: Central bank money printing keeps asset prices very high while the price of ‘stuff’ and wages fall. This disconnect can go on growing.

But, when Hertz, British Airways etc. can survive in this manner, they have no reason not to fire half the workforce and to cut the wages of the other half. This creates more deflation/depression in the real economy. Which means that the Central Banks must print more and more to keep asset and share prices high. At some point, the masses out there will rebel and governments will be under pressure to divert some income to them. But this will deflate asset prices. At that point, because these assets are used by corporations as collateral for all the loans they take out to stay afloat, they will lose access to liquidity. A sequence of corporate failures will commence under circumstances of stagnation. “I don’t think capitalism can easily survive, at least not without huge social and geopolitical conflicts, this conundrum”, was my conclusion.

Julian thought about this for a moment and asked me: “How important is consumption to capitalism? What percentage of GDP is at stake if consumption does not recover? Do the corporations need workers or customers?” I answered that it was high enough to make this conundrum real. Yes, Central Banks and robots can keep the corporations going without customers or workers. But, robots cannot buy the stuff they produce. So, this is not a stable equilibrium. The losses in people’s incomes will accelerate, thus generating pivotal discontent.

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