Money Flow Trading Method along with Risk Management

https://wolfstreet.com/2022/03/27/wo...le-in-history/

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitic...aine-proxy-war


Greenwald: Biden's Reckless Words Underscore Dangers Of US Using Ukraine For Proxy War

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BY TYLER DURDEN

MONDAY, MAR 28, 2022 - 06:30 AM

Authored by Glenn Greenwald via greenwald.substack.com,

The central question for Americans from the start of the war in Ukraine was what role if any, should the U.S. government play in that war? A necessarily related question: if the U.S. is going to involve itself in this war, what objectives should drive that involvement?
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Three long-range cruise missiles are launched from a Russian submarine in the Black Sea on Saturday, striking targets near the Ukrainian border with Poland, following President Biden's apparent declaration of regime change on Saturday (Credit: 7NEWS Melbourne, Twitter)


Prior to the U.S.'s jumping directly into this war, those questions were never meaningfully considered. Instead, the emotions deliberately stoked by the relentless media attention to the horrors of this war — horrors which, contrary to the West's media propaganda, are common to all wars, including its own — left little to no space for public discussion of those questions. The only acceptable modes of expression in U.S. discourse were to pronounce that the Russian invasion was unjustified, and, using parlance that the 2011 version of Chris Hayes correctly dismissed as adolescent, that Putin is a “bad guy.” Those denunciation rituals, no matter how cathartic and applause-inducing, supplied no useful information about what actions the U.S. should or should not take when it came to this increasingly dangerous conflict.

That was the purpose of so severely restricting discourse to those simple moral claims: to allow policymakers in Washington free rein to do whatever they wanted in the name of stopping Putin without being questioned. Indeed, as so often happens when war breaks out, anyone questioning U.S. political leaders instantly had their patriotism and loyalty impugned (unless one was complaining that the U.S. should become more involved in the conflict than it already was, a form of pro-war "dissent” that is always permissible in American discourse).

With these discourse rules firmly implanted, those who attempted to invoke former President Obama's own arguments about a conflict between Russia and Ukraine — namely, that “Ukraine is a core Russian interest but not an American one” and therefore the U.S. should not risk confrontation with Moscow over it — were widely maligned as Kremlin assets if not agents. Others who urged the U.S. to try to avert war through diplomacy — by, for instance, formally vowing that NATO membership would not be offered to Ukraine and that Kyiv would remain neutral in the new Cold War pursued by the West with Moscow — faced the same set of accusations about their loyalty and patriotism.

Most taboo of all was any discussion of the heavy involvement of the U.S. in Ukraine beginning in 2014 up to the invasion: from micro-managing Ukrainian politics to arming its military, to placing military advisers and intelligence officers on the ground to train its soldiers on how to fight (something Biden announced he was considering last November) — all of which amounted to a form of de facto NATO expansion without the formal membership. And that leaves to the side the still-unanswered yet supremely repressed question of what Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland referred to as the Ukrainians’ "biological research facilities” so dangerous and beyond current Russian bio-research capabilities that she gravely feared they would "fall into Russian hands.”

As a result of the media's embracing of moral righteousness in lieu of debating these crucial geopolitical questions, the U.S. government has consistently and aggressively escalated its participation in this war with barely any questioning let alone opposition. U.S. officials are boastfully leading the effort to collapse the Russian economy. Along with its NATO allies, the U.S. has flooded Ukraine with billions of dollars of sophisticated weaponry, with at least some of those arms ending up in the hands of actual neo-Nazi battalions integrated into the Ukrainian government and military. It is providing surveillance technology in the form of drones and its own intelligence to enable Ukrainian targeting of Russian forces. President Biden threatened Russia with a response “in-kind” if Russia were to use chemical weapons. Meanwhile, reports The New York Times, “C.I.A. officers are helping to ensure that crates of weapons are delivered into the hands of vetted Ukrainian military units."

The U.S. is, by definition, waging a proxy war against Russia, using Ukrainians as their instrument, with the goal of not ending the war but prolonging it. So obvious is this fact about U.S. objectives that even The New York Times last Sunday explicitly reported that the Biden administration “seeks to help Ukraine lock Russia in a quagmire” (albeit with care not to escalate into a nuclear exchange). Indeed, even “some American officials assert that as a matter of international law, the provision of weaponry and intelligence to the Ukrainian Army has made the United States a cobelligerent,” though this is “an argument that some legal experts dispute.” Surveying all this evidence as well as discussions with his own U.S. and British sources, Niall Ferguson, writing in Bloomberg, proclaimed: “I conclude that the U.S. intends to keep this war going.” UK officials similarly told him that “the U.K.’s No. 1 option is for the conflict to be extended and thereby bleed Putin.”
In sum, the Biden administration is doing exactly what former President Obama warned in 2016 should never be done: risking war between the world's two largest nuclear powers over Ukraine. Yet if any pathology defines the last five years of U.S. mainstream discourse, it is that any claim that undercuts the interests of U.S. liberal elites — no matter how true — is dismissed as "Russian disinformation.”

As we witnessed most vividly in the run-up to the 2020 election — when that label was unquestioningly yet falsely applied by the union of the CIA, corporate media, and Big Tech to the laptop archive revealing Joe Biden's political and financial activities in Ukraine and China — any facts which establishment power centers want to demonize or suppress are reflexively labeled “Russian disinformation.” Hence, the DNC propaganda arm Media Matters now lists as “pro-Russian propaganda” the indisputable fact that the U.S. is not defending Ukraine but rather exploiting and sacrificing it to fight a proxy war with Moscow. The more true a claim is, the more likely it is to receive this designation in U.S. establishment discourse.

That there are few if any risks graver or more reckless than a direct U.S./Russia military confrontation should be too obvious to require explanation. Yet that seems to have been completely forgotten in the zeal, arousal, purpose, and excitement that war always triggers. It takes little to no effort to recognize the current emergence of the dynamic about which Adam Smith so fervently warned 244 years ago in Wealth of Nations:

In great empires the people who live in the capital, and in the provinces remote from the scene of action, feel, many of them scarce any inconveniency from the war; but enjoy, at their ease, the amusement of reading in the newspapers the exploits of their own fleets and armies. To them, this amusement compensates for the small difference between the taxes which they pay on account of the war and those which they had been accustomed to paying in time of peace. They are commonly dissatisfied with the return of peace, which puts an end to their amusement, and to a thousand visionary hopes of conquest and national glory, from a longer continuance of the war.

The grave dangers of the world's two largest nuclear-armed powers acting on opposite sides of a hot war extend far beyond any intention by the U.S. to deliberately engage Russia directly. Such a war, even with the U.S. waging it “only” through its proxies, severely escalates tensions, distrust, hostilities, and a climate of paranoia. That is particularly true given that — ever since Democrats decided to blame Putin for Hillary's 2016 loss — at least half of Americans have been feeding on a non-stop, the toxic diet of anti-Russian hatred under the guise of “Russiagate.” As recently as 2018, 2/3 of Democrats believed that Russia hacked into voting machines and altered the 2016 vote count to help Trump win. This cultivation of extreme anti-Russian animus in Washington has been made even more dangerous by the virtual prohibition on dialogue with Russian officials, which during Russiagate was deemed inherently suspect if not criminal.

And all of those preexisting dangers are, in turn, severely exacerbated by an American president who so often is too age-addled to speak clearly or predictably. That condition is inherently dangerous, made all the more so by the fact that it leaves him vulnerable to manipulation by the Democratic Party's national security advisers who will never forget 2016 and seem more intent than ever on finally attaining vengeance against Putin, no matter the risks. Speaking to U.S. troops in Poland on Friday, a visibly exhausted and rambling President Biden — after extensive travel, time-zone hopping, protracted meetings, and speeches — appeared to tell U.S. troops that they were on their way to see first-hand the resistance of Ukrainians, meaning they were headed into Ukraine:

It seems clear that this was not some planned decision to have the U.S. president casually announce his intention to send U.S. troops to fight Russians in Ukraine. This was, instead, an old man, more tired, unpredictable, and incoherent than usual due to intense overseas travel, accidentally mumbling out various phrases that could be and almost certainly were highly alarming to Moscow and other countries.

But accidental or unintentional escalation — from misperception or miscommunication — is always at least as serious danger for war as the deliberate intention to directly engage militarily. In January of this year, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists announced that its so-called "doomsday clock” was set to 100 seconds before midnight, the metaphorical time they used to signify an extinction-level event for humanity. They warned that the prospect of a cataclysmic nuclear exchange among the U.S., Russia, and/or China was dangerously possible, and specifically warned: “Ukraine remains a potential flashpoint, and Russian troop deployments to the Ukrainian border heighten day-to-day tensions.”

In 2018, when the clock was “only” two minutes before midnight, they emphasized tensions between Russia and the U.S. as one of the primary causes: “The United States and Russia remained at odds, continuing military exercises along the borders of NATO, undermining the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), upgrading their nuclear arsenals, and eschewing arms control negotiations.” They urged recognition of this specific danger: “Major nuclear actors are on the cusp of a new arms race, one that will be very expensive and will increase the likelihood of accidents and misperceptions.”

That Biden's "gaffe” about U.S. troops headed into Ukraine could generate exactly this sort of "misperception” seems self-evident. So do the grave dangers from Biden's sudden yet emphatic declaration on Saturday that Putin "cannot remain in power” — the classic language of declared U.S. policy of regime change:

That clear declaration of regime change as the U.S. goal for Putin was quickly walked back by Biden's aides, who absurdly claimed he only meant that Putin cannot remain in power in Ukraine and other parts of Eastern Europe, not that he can no longer govern Russia. But this episode marked at least the third time in the past couple of weeks that White House officials had to walk back Biden's comments, following his clear decree that U.S. troops would soon be back in Ukraine and his prior warning that the U.S. would use chemical weapons against Russia if they used them first.

That Biden seems to be stumbling and bumbling rather than following scripted recklessness seems likely in some of these cases but not all. The White House's vehement denial, in the wake of Biden's speech, that regime change in Russia is its goal was contradicted by Ferguson's reporting in Bloomberg last week:

Reading this carefully, I conclude that the U.S. intends to keep this war going….I have evidence from other sources to corroborate this. “The only end game now,” a senior administration official was heard to say at a private event earlier this month, “is the end of the Putin regime"…..I gather that senior British figures are talking in similar terms. There is a belief that “the U.K.’s No. 1 option is for the conflict to be extended and thereby bleed Putin.” Again and again, I hear such language. It helps explain, among other things, the lack of any diplomatic effort by the U.S. to secure a cease-fire. It also explains the readiness of President Joe Biden to call Putin a war criminal.

Whether deliberate or unintentional, these escalatory statements — particularly when combined with the U.S.’s escalatory actions — are dangerous beyond what can be described. As an Australian news outlet reported on Sunday, “Russia has launched a missile strike near Poland in what appears to be a deadly warning to the United States.” The accompanying video (see lead photo above) shows at least three long-range cruise missiles, launched from a Russian submarine in the Black Sea, precisely striking targets in western Ukraine, near to where Biden was in Poland. That missile launch, the outlet reasonably concluded, “appears to be a deadly warning to the United States.”

Whatever else is true, the U.S. and Russia are now in waters uncharted since the Cuban missile crisis. Even the savage US/USSR proxy wars of the 1980s in Latin America and Afghanistan did not entail these sorts of rapidly escalating threats. A Russian president who, validly or not, feels threatened by NATO expansion in the region and driven by questions of his legacy, on the other side of a U.S. president with a long record of hawkishness and war fever which is now hobbled by the carelessness and infirmities of old age, is a remarkably volatile combination. As former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis put it on Saturday: “A U.S. President who, during an atrocious war, does not mean what he says on matters of War and Peace, and must be corrected by his hyperventilating staff, is a clear and present danger to all.”

Hovering above all of these grave dangers is the question of why? What interests does the U.S. have in Ukraine that are sufficiently vital or substantial to justify trifling with risks of this magnitude? Why did the U.S. not do more to try to diplomatically avert this horrific war, instead seemingly opting for the opposite: namely, discouraging Ukrainian President Zelensky from pursuing such talks on the alleged grounds of futility and rewarding Russian aggression, and not even exploring whether a vow of non-NATO-membership for Ukraine would suffice? How does growing U.S. involvement in this war benefit the people of the United States, particularly as they were already — before this war — weighed down by the dual burdens of pandemic-based economic depravations and rapidly escalating inflation?
These are precisely the questions that a healthy nation discusses and examines before jumping head-first into a major war. But these were precisely the questions declared to be unpatriotic, proof of one's status as a traitor or pro-Russia propagandist, as the hallmark of being pro-Putin. These are the standard tactics used to quash dissent or questioning when war breaks out. That neocon, who perfected these smear tactics, are back in the saddle as discourse and policy leaders — due to their six-year project of ingratiating themselves back into American liberalism with performative anti-Trump agitprop — makes it inevitable that such sleazy attacks will prevail.

As a result, the U.S. now finds itself more deeply enmeshed than ever in the most dangerous war it has fought in years if not decades. It may be too late for those questions to be meaningfully examined. But given the stakes, this is as clear a case of better late than never as one will ever encounter.

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Hunter Biden’s Laptop – Funding Bioweapons in Ukraine

Blog/Corruption

Posted Mar 28, 2022, by Martin Armstrong


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Hunter Biden’s Laptop is the gift that keeps giving. It has now surfaced that Hunter did help finance a US military ‘bioweapons’ research program in Ukraine. This is confirming that Putin’s allegations are in fact not totally propaganda. This is being confirmed even by the London Daily Mail. Little by little the truth ALWAYS surfaces. We also have info that is NOT yet verified by some of the same actors who pulled false flags with chemical weapons in Syria that may be present in Ukraine.

There have been concerns that Biden has been pushing the war agenda in hopes of preventing a washout for the Democrats in November. Even AOC says that Biden has lost the support of Progressives. Anyone who thinks that the Government, either party, really cares about them is delusional. I have worked with governments around the world and they are all the same – they are ONLY concerned about the next election and their own self-interests. I have worked behind the scenes and in front even testifying before the House Ways & Means Committee. Politicians LOVE crisis, for that is when they exercise power. Nobody will vote for them on claims like they saved your job, you just didn’t know you were going to lose it. I was naive in the ’80s thinking I could make a difference, and you quickly learn, it is not a swamp – it is a cesspool the size of the ocean.
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I reported yesterday that there was a battle raging between the Pentagon and the State Department and the Pentagon won. The Neocons have been putting out total BS that Putin was losing and on the ropes in hope that they could muster support for a NATO invasion. Blinken had his wrists smacked with a club and read the riot act – what the hell do you think you are doing calling Putin a Butcher and insisting on regime change?
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The Pentagon warned that this is NOT a battle that will be easily won and there will be no NY left to have a ticker-tape parade. Do not expect the overthrow of Putin claiming he is just an autocrat when in fact the very same structure stands in Europe. The head of Europe also never stands for election and is appointed by the party. What is the difference between that and Russia or China? On top of that, Biden has declared world war III in the financial markets WITHOUT consulting the Pentagon or Congress. That is outrageous for under the Constitution only Congress can issue a declaration of war.

There is so much hypocrisy and lies coming from the State Departments they are now forced to backtrack. Be careful before you wrap yourself in the flag and die for Neocons who have lied about every war – not just the weapons of mass destruction. Nearly 60,000 kids lost their lives fighting another created war by the Neocons in Vietnam.


Categories: Corruption, War
« The Doomsday Jet

https://goldswitzerland.com/how-the-...erve-currency/

How the West Was Lost: A Faltering World Reserve Currency
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By Matthew Piepenburg
March 30, 2022

The Western financial system and world reserve currency is now in open decline.

From Rigged to Fail to Just Plain Failing

Just two years ago, I wrote a book warning that Western markets in general, and US markets in particular, were Rigged to Fail.

Well, now, in real-time, they are failing.

This hard reality has less to do with COVID or the war in Ukraine and more to do with one simple force, which euphoric markets and clueless leaders have been ignoring for decades, namely: Debt.

As I wrote then and will repeat now: Debt destroys nations, financial systems, markets, and currencies.

Always and every time.
As we see below, the inflationary financial system is now failing because its debt levels have rendered it impotent to grow economically, react sensibly, or sustain its chronic debt addictions naturally.

The evidence of this is literally everywhere, from the Fed to the Petrodollar and the bond market to the gold price.

Let’s dig in.
The Fed: No Best-Case Scenarios Left

The Fed has driven itself, and hence the U.S. markets and economy, into an all-too-predictable corner and historically dangerous crossroads.

If it turns to the left (i.e., more money printing/liquidity) to protect a record-breaking risk asset bubble, it faces an inflationary flood; if it turns to the right (and raises rates or tapers UST purchases), it faces a market inferno.

How did we get to this crossroads?
Easy: Decades of artificially suppressed rates, cheap credit, and a $30T sovereign debt pile of unprecedented (and unsustainable) proportions.

The Dying Bond Bull
With so much of this unloved debt on its national back, no one but the Fed will buy Uncle Sam’s IOUs.
As a result, long-dated Treasuries are falling in price and rising in yield as Bloomberg reminds us of the worst drawdown for global bonds in 20 years.
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In short, the central-bank-created bond bull of the last 40-something years is now falling to its knees.

Ironically, the only path to more demand for otherwise unloved bonds is if the stock market fully tanks and stock investors flee blindly back into bonds like passengers looking for lifeboats on the Titanic.

Bonds & Stocks—They Can Fall Together Unless Saved by Debased Dollars
But as the “Covid crash” of March 2020 painfully reminded us, in a world of central-bank-driven bubbles, historically over-valued stocks and bonds can and will fall together unless the Fed creates yet another multi-trillion-dollar QE lifeboat, which just kills the inherent strength of the dollar in your wallet.

Hence and again: There are no good options left. It’s either inflation or a market implosion.

Fantasy & Dishonesty—The New Policy
But this never stops the Fed from pretending otherwise or using words rather than growth to cover its monetary sins.
Despite almost a year of deliberately lying about “transitory inflation,” the Fed has swallowed what little pride it has left and admitted to a real inflationary problem at home.

In short, and as bond legend Mohamed El-Erian recently observed, the increasingly discredited Fed has no “best case” scenarios left.
The Fed, along with its economically clue-less politicians, have essentially devolved the once-great US of A from a developed country into one that resembles a developing country.

In other words, the “American dream” as well as American exceptionalism, is being downgraded into a kind of tragi-comedy in real-time—i.e., right now.

Nevertheless, the always double-speaking Powell is doubling down on more fantasy (lies) about rising US labor participation and growth to help “produce” the USA out of the debt and inflationary hole which the Greenspan shovel initiated many “exuberant” years ago.
But once again, Powell is wrong.

Labor Participation—The Latest Fantasy
Based on simple demographics, lack of love for US IOUs, growing trade deficits (alongside rising deficit spending), and an over-priced USD, the US labor force participation will not be going up in time for the land of the world’s reserve currency to grow itself out of the 122% debt to GDP corner which the Fed has driven into (after decades of low-rate drunk driving).

Without increased labor force participation, the only DC option left to fight inflation is to either 1) raise rates to induce a killer recession (and market implosion) or else 2) slash government deficits by at least 10%.

Unfortunately, cutting deficits by 10% will also kill GDP by at least an equivalent amount, which weakens tax receipts and thus make it nearly impossible for Uncle Sam to pay even the interest alone on his national bar tab, as we’ve shown elsewhere.

Addicts Are Predictable Creatures
So, what will this cornered and debt-drunk Fed do?
Well, what all addicts do—keep drinking—i.e., printing ever-more increasingly debased USD’s—which just creates more tailwinds for, you guessed it: Gold. (But also hard asset commodities in general, industrial equities, and agricultural real estate.)

In the meantime, the Fed, the US Government, and its corporate-owned propaganda arms in the U.S. media will blame all this new money printing and continued deficit spending on Putin rather than decades of financial mismanagement out of DC.

No shocker there.

But Putin, even if you hate him, sees things the headlines are omitting.

De-Dollarization and Petrodollar Rumblings—Uh Oh?
There are increasing signs of “uh-oh” in the world of the once-mighty Petrodollar.

From Trigger Happy to Shot in the Foot
As we’ve been warning in our most recent reports, Western financial sanctions in response to the war in Ukraine have a way of doing as much damage to the trigger-puller as to the intended target.

In simplest terms, freezing one county’s FX reserves and SWIFT transactions has a way of frightening other counter-parties, and not just the intended targets.
Imagine, for example, if your bank accounts were frozen for any reason. Would you then trust the bank that froze your accounts down the road once the issue was resolved? Would you recommend that bank to others?

Well, the world has been watching Western powers effectively freeze Putin’s assets, and regardless of whether you agree or disagree with such measures, other countries (not all of which are “bad actors”) are thinking about switching banks—or at least dollars…

If so, the US has just shot itself in the foot while aiming for Putin.

As previously warned, the Western sanctions are simply pushing Russia and China further together and further away from US Dollars and US Treasuries.

Such shifts have massive ripple effects which Biden’s financial team appears to have ignored.
And as everyone from Jamie Dimon to Barack Obama has previously warned, that’s not a good thing and is causing the broader world to re-think US financial leadership and US Dollar hegemony as a world reserve currency.

Saudi Arabia: Re-Thinking the Petro-Dollar?
Take that not-so-democratic “ally” of the US, Saudi Arabia, who Biden had called a “Pariah State” in 2020…
As of March, the news out of Saudi is hinting that they would consider purchases of oil in CNY as opposed to USD, which would signal the slow end to the Petrodollar and only add more inflationary tailwinds to Americans suffering at home.

One simply cannot underestimate (nor over-state enough) the profound significance of a weakening Petrodollar world.

It would have devastating consequences for the USD and inflation and would be an absolute boon for gold.

Already, Xi is making plans to negotiate with Saudi Arabia, which is China’s top oil supplier. Meanwhile, Aramco is reaching out to China as well.
What Can Saudi Do with Chinese Money?

Some are arguing that the Saudis can’t purchase much with CNY. After all, the USD has more appeal, right?
Hmmm.

Considering the fact that US Treasuries offer zero to negative real yields, perhaps “all things American” just aren’t what they used to be…

Saudis have now seen that the US is willing to seize US Treasuries as a form of financial warfare.

Saudis (like many other nations—i.e., India and China) are certainly asking themselves if a similar move could be made against them in the future.

Thus, it’s no coincidence that they too are looking East rather than West for future deals, and Russia could use its new Chinese currencies to buy everything from nuclear plants to gold bars in Shanghai—just saying…

Oil Matters
Meanwhile, and despite the media’s attempt to paint Putin as Hitler 2.0, the Russian leader knows something the headlines are ignoring, namely: The world needs his oil.

Without Russian oil, the global energy, and the economic system implodes, because the system has too much debt to suddenly go it alone and/or fight back.
See how sovereign debt cripples options and changes the global stage?

Meanwhile, Russia, which doesn’t have the same debt to GDP chains around its ankle as the EU and US, can start demanding payment for its oil in RUB rather than USD.

As of this writing, Arab states are in private discussions with China, Russia, and France to stop selling oil in USD.

Such moves would weaken USD demand and strength, adding more inflationary fuel to a growing inflationary fire from Malibu to Manhattan.

I wonder if Biden, Harris, or anyone in their circle of “experts” thought that part through?

Given their strength in optics vs. their weakness in math, geography, and history, it’s quite clear they did not and could not…

Not to Worry?
Meanwhile, of course, the WSJ and other Western political news organizations are assuring the world not to worry, as USD FX trading volumes dwarf those of Chinese (Russian) and other currencies.
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Fair enough.
But for how long?

Again, what many politicians and most journalists don’t understand (besides basic math), is basic history.
Their myopic policies and smooth-tongued forecasts are based on the notion that if it’s not raining today, it can’t rain tomorrow.

But it’s already raining on the US as well as US global financial leadership.

Meanwhile, Russia’s central bank is now in motion to increase gold purchases with all the new RUBs (not USDs) it will be receiving from its oil sales.
Investors must track these macro events very carefully in the coming weeks and months.

A Multi-Currency New World
The bottom line, however, is that the world is slowly moving away from a one-world-reserve-currency era to an increasingly multi-currency system.
Once the sanction and financial war genie is out of the bottle, it’s hard to put back. Trust in the West, and its USD-led currency system is changing.

By taking the chest-puffing decision to freeze Russian FX reserves, sanction Russian IMF SDR’s and remove its access to SWIFT payments systems, the US garnered short-term headlines to appear “tough” but ushered a path toward longer-term consequences which will make it (and its Dollar) weaker.

As multi-currency oil becomes the new setting, the inflationary winners will, again, be commodities, industrials, and certain real estate plays.

Gold Matters
As for gold, it remains the only true neutral reserve asset of global central bank balance sheets and is poised to benefit the most over time as a non-USD denominated energy market slowly emerges.

Furthermore, Russia is allowing payments in gold for its natural gas.
And for those (i.e., Wall Street) who still argue gold is a “pet rock” and “barbarous relic” of the past, it may be time to rethink.

After all, why has the Treasury Department included an entire section in its Russian sanction handbook on gold?

The answer is as obvious as it is ignored.
Chinese banks (with Russian currency swap lines) can act as intermediaries to help Russia use the gold market to “launder” its sanctioned money.
That is, Russia can and will continue to trade globally (Eurasia, Brazil, India, China…) in what boils down to a truly free market of “gold for commodities” which not even those thieves at the COMEX can artificially price fix—something not seen in decades.

De-Globalization
Stated simply: The mighty dollar and “globalization” dreams of the West are slowly witnessing an emerging era of inflationary de-globalization as each country now does what is required and best for itself rather than Klaus Schwab’s megalomaniacal fantasies.

The cornered US, of course, will likely try to sanction gold transactions with Russia, but this would require fully choking Russia's energy sales to the EU, which the EU economy (and citizens) simply can’t afford.

In the meantime, a desperate French president is considering stimulus checks for gas and food. That, by the way, is inflationary…

History Repeating Itself
Again, the debt-soaked, energy-dependent West is not as strong as the headlines would have you believe, which means gold, as it has done for thousands of years, will rise as failed leaders, debt-soaked nations, and world reserve currencies fall.

History, alas, is as important as math, price discovery, and supply and demand. Sadly, the vast majority of modern leaders know almost nothing of these forces or topics.

If gold could speak in words, it would simply say: “Shame on them.”

But gold does speak in value, and it’s getting the last laugh on the currencies now weakening in our wallets and the debt-drunk leaders now squawking in our headlines.

 

Egon von Greyerz
Founder and Managing Partner
Matterhorn Asset Management
Zurich, Switzerland
Phone: +41 44 213 62 45

Matterhorn Asset Management’s global client base strategically stores an important part of their wealth in Switzerland in physical gold and silver outside the banking system. Matterhorn Asset Management is pleased to deliver a unique and exceptional service to our highly esteemed wealth preservation clientele in over 80 countries.

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https://goldswitzerland.com/how-the-...erve-currency/

How the West Was Lost: A Faltering World Reserve Currency
https://goldswitzerland.com/wp-conte...piepenburg.jpg
By Matthew Piepenburg
March 30, 2022

The Western financial system and world reserve currency are now in open decline.

From Rigged to Fail to Just Plain Failing
Just two years ago, I wrote a book warning that Western markets in general, and US markets in particular, were Rigged to Fail.
Well, now, in real-time, they are failing.

This hard reality has less to do with COVID or the war in Ukraine and more to do with one simple force, which euphoric markets and clueless leaders have been ignoring for decades, namely: Debt.

As I wrote then and will repeat now: Debt destroys nations, financial systems, markets, and currencies.
Always and every time.

As we see below, the inflationary financial system is now failing because its debt levels have rendered it impotent to grow economically, react sensibly, or sustain its chronic debt addictions naturally.

The evidence of this is literally everywhere, from the Fed to the Petrodollar and the bond market to the gold price.

Let’s dig in.
The Fed: No Best-Case Scenarios Left

The Fed has driven itself, and hence the U.S. markets and economy, into an all-too-predictable corner and historically dangerous crossroads.
If it turns to the left (i.e., more money printing/liquidity) to protect a record-breaking risk asset bubble, it faces an inflationary flood; if it turns to the right (and raises rates or tapers UST purchases), it faces a market inferno.

How did we get to this crossroads?
Easy: Decades of artificially suppressed rates, cheap credit, and a $30T sovereign debt pile of unprecedented (and unsustainable) proportions.

The Dying Bond Bull
With so much of this unloved debt on its national back, no one but the Fed will buy Uncle Sam’s IOUs.
As a result, long-dated Treasuries are falling in price and rising in yield as Bloomberg reminds us of the worst drawdown for global bonds in 20 years.
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In short, the central-bank-created bond bull of the last 40-something years is now falling to its knees.

Ironically, the only path to more demand for otherwise unloved bonds is if the stock market fully tanks and stock investors flee blindly back into bonds like passengers looking for lifeboats on the Titanic.

Bonds & Stocks—They Can Fall Together Unless Saved by Debased Dollars
But as the “Covid crash” of March 2020 painfully reminded us, in a world of central-bank-driven bubbles, historically over-valued stocks and bonds can and will fall together unless the Fed creates yet another multi-trillion-dollar QE lifeboat, which just kills the inherent strength of the dollar in your wallet.
Hence and again: There are no good options left. It’s either inflation or a market implosion.

Fantasy & Dishonesty—The New Policy
But this never stops the Fed from pretending otherwise or using words rather than growth to cover its monetary sins.

Despite almost a year of deliberately lying about “transitory inflation,” the Fed has swallowed what little pride it has left and admitted to a real inflationary problem at home.

In short, and as bond legend Mohamed El-Erian recently observed, the increasingly discredited Fed has no “best case” scenarios left.

The Fed, along with its economically clue-less politicians, have essentially devolved the once-great US of A from a developed country into one that resembles a developing country.

In other words, the “American dream” as well as American exceptionalism, is being downgraded into a kind of tragi-comedy in real-time—i.e., right now.

Nevertheless, the always double-speaking Powell is doubling down on more fantasy (lies) about rising US labor participation and growth to help “produce” the USA out of the debt and inflationary hole which the Greenspan shovel initiated many “exuberant” years ago.
But once again, Powell is wrong.

Labor Participation—The Latest Fantasy
Based on simple demographics, lack of love for US IOUs, growing trade deficits (alongside rising deficit spending), and an over-priced USD, the US labor force participation will not be going up in time for the land of the world’s reserve currency to grow itself out of the 122% debt to GDP corner which the Fed has driven into (after decades of low-rate drunk driving).

Without increased labor force participation, the only DC option left to fight inflation is to either 1) raise rates to induce a killer recession (and market implosion) or else 2) slash government deficits by at least 10%.

Unfortunately, cutting deficits by 10% will also kill GDP by at least an equivalent amount, which weakens tax receipts and thus make it nearly impossible for Uncle Sam to pay even the interest alone on his national bar tab, as we’ve shown elsewhere.

Addicts Are Predictable Creatures
So, what will this cornered and debt-drunk Fed do?
Well, what all addicts do—keep drinking—i.e., printing ever-more increasingly debased USD’s—which just creates more tailwinds for, you guessed it: Gold. (But also hard asset commodities in general, industrial equities, and agricultural real estate.)

In the meantime, the Fed, the US Government, and its corporate-owned propaganda arms in the U.S. media will blame all this new money printing and continued deficit spending on Putin rather than decades of financial mismanagement out of DC.
No shocker there.

But Putin, even if you hate him, sees things the headlines are omitting.

De-Dollarization and Petrodollar Rumblings—Uh Oh?
There are increasing signs of “uh-oh” in the world of the once-mighty Petrodollar.

From Trigger Happy to Shot in the Foot
As we’ve been warning in our most recent reports, Western financial sanctions in response to the war in Ukraine have a way of doing as much damage to the trigger-puller as to the intended target.

In simplest terms, freezing one county’s FX reserves and SWIFT transactions has a way of frightening other counter-parties, and not just the intended targets.
Imagine, for example, if your bank accounts were frozen for any reason. Would you then trust the bank that froze your accounts down the road once the issue was resolved? Would you recommend that bank to others?

Well, the world has been watching Western powers effectively freeze Putin’s assets, and regardless of whether you agree or disagree with such measures, other countries (not all of which are “bad actors”) are thinking about switching banks—or at least dollars…

If so, the US has just shot itself in the foot while aiming for Putin.

As previously warned, the Western sanctions are simply pushing Russia and China further together and further away from US Dollars and US Treasuries.
Such shifts have massive ripple effects which Biden’s financial team appears to have ignored.

And as everyone from Jamie Dimon to Barack Obama has previously warned, that’s not a good thing and is causing the broader world to re-think US financial leadership and US Dollar hegemony as a world reserve currency.

Saudi Arabia: Re-Thinking the Petro-Dollar?
Take that not-so-democratic “ally” of the US, Saudi Arabia, who Biden had called a “Pariah State” in 2020…
As of March, the news out of Saudi is hinting that they would consider purchases of oil in CNY as opposed to USD, which would signal the slow end to the Petrodollar and only add more inflationary tailwinds to Americans suffering at home.

One simply cannot underestimate (nor over-state enough) the profound significance of a weakening Petrodollar world.

It would have devastating consequences for the USD and inflation and would be an absolute boon for gold.

Already, Xi is making plans to negotiate with Saudi Arabia, which is China’s top oil supplier. Meanwhile, Aramco is reaching out to China as well.

What Can Saudi Do with Chinese Money?
Some are arguing that the Saudis can’t purchase much with CNY. After all, the USD has more appeal, right?

Hmmm.
Considering the fact that US Treasuries offer zero to negative real yields, perhaps “all things American” just aren’t what they used to be…

Saudis have now seen that the US is willing to seize US Treasuries as a form of financial warfare.
Saudis (like many other nations—i.e., India and China) are certainly asking themselves if a similar move could be made against them in the future.
Thus, it’s no coincidence that they too are looking East rather than West for future deals, and Russia could use its new Chinese currencies to buy everything from nuclear plants to gold bars in Shanghai—just saying…

Oil Matters
Meanwhile, and despite the media’s attempt to paint Putin as Hitler 2.0, the Russian leader knows something the headlines are ignoring, namely: The world needs his oil.

Without Russian oil, the global energy, and the economic system implodes, because the system has too much debt to suddenly go it alone and/or fight back.
See how sovereign debt cripples options and changes the global stage?

Meanwhile, Russia, which doesn’t have the same debt to GDP chains around its ankle as the EU and US, can start demanding payment for its oil in RUB rather than USD.

As of this writing, Arab states are in private discussions with China, Russia, and France to stop selling oil in USD.
Such moves would weaken USD demand and strength, adding more inflationary fuel to a growing inflationary fire from Malibu to Manhattan.

I wonder if Biden, Harris, or anyone in their circle of “experts” thought that part through?

Given their strength in optics vs. their weakness in math, geography, and history, it’s quite clear they did not and could not…

Not to Worry?

Meanwhile, of course, the WSJ and other Western political news organizations are assuring the world not to worry, as USD FX trading volumes dwarf those of Chinese (Russian) and other currencies.
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Fair enough.

But for how long?
Again, what many politicians and most journalists don’t understand (besides basic math), is basic history.

Their myopic policies and smooth-tongued forecasts are based on the notion that if it’s not raining today, it can’t rain tomorrow.
But it’s already raining on the US as well as US global financial leadership.

Meanwhile, Russia’s central bank is now in motion to increase gold purchases with all the new RUBs (not USDs) it will be receiving from its oil sales.
Investors must track these macro events very carefully in the coming weeks and months.

A Multi-Currency New World
The bottom line, however, is that the world is slowly moving away from a one-world-reserve-currency era to an increasingly multi-currency system.
Once the sanction and financial war genie are out of the bottle, it’s hard to put back. Trust in the West, and its USD-led currency system is changing.

By taking the chest-puffing decision to freeze Russian FX reserves, sanction Russian IMF SDR’s and remove its access to SWIFT payments systems, the US garnered short-term headlines to appear “tough” but ushered a path toward longer-term consequences which will make it (and its Dollar) weaker.
As multi-currency oil becomes the new setting, the inflationary winners will, again, be commodities, industrials, and certain real estate plays.

Gold Matters
As for gold, it remains the only true neutral reserve asset of global central bank balance sheets and is poised to benefit the most over time as a non-USD denominated energy market slowly emerges.

Furthermore, Russia is allowing payments in gold for its natural gas.
And for those (i.e., Wall Street) who still argue gold is a “pet rock” and “barbarous relic” of the past, it may be time to rethink.

After all, why has the Treasury Department included an entire section in its Russian sanction handbook on gold?
The answer is as obvious as it is ignored.

Chinese banks (with Russian currency swap lines) can act as intermediaries to help Russia use the gold market to “launder” its sanctioned money.
That is, Russia can and will continue to trade globally (Eurasia, Brazil, India, China…) in what boils down to a truly free market of “gold for commodities” which not even those thieves at the COMEX can artificially price fix—something not seen in decades.

De-Globalization
Stated simply: The mighty dollar and “globalization” dreams of the West are slowly witnessing an emerging era of inflationary de-globalization as each country now does what is required and best for itself rather than Klaus Schwab’s megalomaniacal fantasies.

The cornered US, of course, will likely try to sanction gold transactions with Russia, but this would require fully choking Russia's energy sales to the EU, which the EU economy (and citizens) simply can’t afford.

In the meantime, a desperate French president is considering stimulus checks for gas and food. That, by the way, is inflationary…

History Repeating Itself
Again, the debt-soaked, energy-dependent West is not as strong as the headlines would have you believe, which means gold, as it has done for thousands of years, will rise as failed leaders, debt-soaked nations, and world reserve currencies fall.

History, alas, is as important as math, price discovery, and supply and demand. Sadly, the vast majority of modern leaders know almost nothing of these forces or topics.

If gold could speak in words, it would simply say: “Shame on them.”
But gold does speak in value, and it’s getting the last laugh on the currencies now weakening in our wallets and the debt-drunk leaders now squawking in our headlines.

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Commentators are trying to make sense of Russian moves. However, there is a back story that differs from much of the speculation, that this article addresses.

The Russians have not put the rouble on some sort of gold standard. Instead, they have repeated the Nixon/Kissinger strategy which created the petrodollar in 1973 by getting the Saudis to agree to accept only dollars for oil. This time, nations deemed by Russia to be unfriendly will be forced to buy roubles – roughly 2 trillion by the EU alone based on last year’s natural gas and oil imports from Russia — driving up the exchange rate. The rouble has now doubled against the dollar from its low point of RUB 150 to RUB 75 yesterday in just over three weeks. The Russian Central Bank will soon be able to normalize the domestic economy by reducing interest rates and removing exchange controls

The Russians and Chinese will be acutely aware that Western currencies, particularly the yen and euro, are likely to be undermined by recent developments. The financial war, which has always been in the background, is emerging into plain sight and becoming a battlefield between fiat currencies, and it is full-on.

The winner by default is almost certainly gold, now the only reliable reserve asset for those not aligned with Russia’s “unfriendlies”. But it is still a long way from backing any currency.

Putin is losing the battle for Ukraine

President Putin is embattled. His army has let him down — it turns out that his generals lack the necessary leadership qualities, the squaddies are suffering from a lack of food, fuel, and are suffering from frostbite. It is reported that one brigade commander, Colonel Yuri Medvedev, was deliberately run down by one of his own men in a tank, a measure of the chaos at the front line. And Putin is not the first national leader to have misplaced his confidence in military forces.

Conventional wisdom (from Carl von Clausewitz, no less) suggested Putin might win the battle for Ukraine but would be unable to hold the territory. That requires the willingness of the population to accept defeat, and a lesson the Soviets had learned in Afghanistan, with the same experience repeated by America and the UK. But Putin has not even won the battle and word from the Kremlin is of accepting a face-saving fall-back position, perhaps taking Donetsk and the coast of the Sea of Azov to join it up with Crimea.

There was little doubt that if Putin came under pressure militarily, he would probably step up the commodity and financial war. This he has now done by insisting on payments in roubles. The mistake made in the West was to believe that Russia must sell commodities, and even though sanctions harm the West greatly, the strategy is to put maximum pressure on the Russian economy for a quick resolution. It is obviously flawed because Russia can still trade with China, India, and other significant economies. And thanks to rising commodity prices the Russian economy is not in the bad place the West believed either.

Besides nations representing 84% of the world’s population standing aside from the Western alliance’s sanctions and with some like India sorely tempted to buy discounted Russian oil, we would profit from paying attention to some very basic factors. Russia can certainly afford to sell oil at significant discounts to market prices, and there are buyers willing to break the American-led embargoes. The non-Western world is no longer automatically on-side with American hegemony; that is a rotting hulk that the Americans are desperately trying to keep afloat. Observing this, the Kremlin seems relaxed and has said that it is willing to accept currencies from its friends, but Western enemies (the “unfriendlies”) would have to pay for oil in roubles or, it has also been suggested, in gold.

On 23 March the Kremlin drew up a list of these unfriendly countries, which includes the 27 EU members, Switzerland, Norway, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and South Korea.

Payment in roubles is easy to understand. We can assume that all oil and natural gas long-term supply contracts with the unfriendlies have force majeure clauses because that is normal practice. In the light of sanctions, the Russians are entitled to claim different payment terms. And it is this that the Russians are relying upon for insisting on payment in roubles.

Germany, for example, would have to buy roubles on the foreign exchanges to pay for her gas. Buying roubles supports the currency, and this was the tactic that created the petrodollar in 1973 when Nixon and Kissinger persuaded the Saudis to take nothing else but dollars for oil. It was that single move that more than anything confirmed the dollar as the world’s international and reserve currency in the aftermath of the temporary suspension of the Bretton Woods Agreement. That’s not quite the objective here; it is to not only underwrite the rouble but to drive it higher relative to other currencies. The immediate effect has been clear, as the chart from Trading Economics below shows.

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Having halved in value against the dollar on 7 March, all the rouble’s fall has been recovered. And that’s even before Germany et al buy roubles on the foreign exchanges to pay for Russian energy.

The gold issue is more complex. The West has banned not only Russian transactions settling in their currencies but also from settling in gold. The assumption is that gold is the only liquid asset Russia has left to trade with. But just as ahead of the end of the cold war Western intelligence completely misread the Soviet economy, it could be making a mistake again. This time, intel seems to be misled by full-on Keynesian macro analysis, suggesting the Russian economy is vulnerable when it is inherently stronger in a currency shoot-out than even the dollar. There is no need for Russia to sell any gold at all.

The Russian economy has a broadly non-interventionist government, a flat rate of income tax of 13%, and a government debt of 20% of GDP. There are flaws in the Russian economy, particularly in the lack of respect for property rights and the pervasive problem of the Russian Mafia. But in many respects, Russia’s economy is like that of the US before 1916, when the highest income tax rate was 15%.

An important difference is that the Russian government gets substantial revenues from energy and commodity exports, taking its income up to over 40% of GDP. While export volumes of energy and other commodities are being hit by sanctions, their prices have risen substantially. But it remains to be seen what form of money or currency for future payments will be used for over $550bn equivalent of exports, while $297bn of imports will be substantially reduced by sanctions, widening Russia’s trade surplus considerably. Euros, yen, dollars, and sterling are ruled out, worthless in the hands of the Central Bank. That leaves the Chinese renminbi, Indian rupees, weakening Turkish lira and that’s about it. It’s hardly surprising that Russia is prepared to accept gold. Putin’s view on the subject is shown in Figure 1 of stills taken from a Tik Tok video released last weekend.

https://www.goldmoney.com/images/med.../standard2.pngFurthermore, Russia’s official reserves are only a small part of the story. Simon Hunt of Simon Hunt Strategic Services, who I have found to be consistently well informed in these matters, is convinced based on his information that Russia’s gold reserves are significantly higher than reported — he thinks 12,000 tonnes is closer to the mark.

The payment choice for those on Russia’s unfriendly list, if we rule out gold, is effectively only one — buy roubles to pay for Russian energy. By sanctioning the world’s largest energy exporter, the effect on energy prices in dollars is likely to drive them far higher yet. Additionally, market liquidity for roubles is likely to be restricted, and the likelihood of a bear squeeze on any shorts is therefore high. The question is how high?

Last year, the EU imported 155 billion cubic meters of natural gas from Russia, valued at about $180bn at current volatile prices. Oil exports from Russia to the EU were about 2.3 million barrels per day, worth an additional $105bn for a combined total of $285bn, which at the current exchange rate of RUB 75.5 is RUB 2.15 trillion. EU Gas consumption is likely to fall as spring approaches, but payments in roubles will still drive the exchange rate significantly higher. And attempts to obtain alternative sources of LNG will take time, be insufficient, and serve to drive natural gas prices from other suppliers even higher.

For now, we should dismiss ideas of overpayments to the Russians in gold. The Russian gold story, initially at least, is a domestic issue. Though it might spill over into international markets.

On 25 March, Russia’s central bank announced it will buy gold from credit institutions at a fixed rate of 5,000 roubles per gram starting this week and through to 30 June.[i] The press release stated that it will enable “a stable supply of gold and smooth functioning of the gold mining industry.” In other words, it allows banks to continue to lend money to gold mining and related activities, particularly for financing new gold mining developments. Meanwhile, the state will continue to accumulate bullion which, as discussed above, it has no need to spend on imports.

When the RCB’s announcement was made the rouble was considerably weaker and the price offered by the central bank was about 20% below the market price. But that has now changed. Based on last night’s exchange rate of 75.5 roubles to the dollar (30 March) and with gold at $1935, the price offered by the central bank is at a premium of 7.2% to the market. Whether this opens the situation up to arbitrage from overseas bullion markets is an intriguing question. And we can assume that Russian banks will find ways of acquiring and deploying the dollars to do so through their offshore facilities, until, under the cover of a strong rouble, the RCB removes exchange controls.

There is nothing in the RCB’s statement to prevent a Russian bank sourcing gold from, say, Dubai, to sell to the central bank. Guidance notes to which we cannot be privy may address this issue but let us assume this arbitrage will be permitted because it might be difficult to stop. And if Russia does have undeclared bullion reserves more than those allegedly held by the US Treasury, then given that the real war is essentially financial, it is in Russia’s interest to see the gold price rise in dollars.

Not only would Eurozone banks be scrambling to obtain roubles, but the entire Western banking system, which takes the short side of derivative transactions in gold will find itself in increasing difficulties. Normally, bullion banks rely on central banks and the Bank for International Settlements to backstop the market with physical liquidity through leases and swaps. But the unfortunate message from the West to every central bank not on Russia’s unfriendly list is that London’s or New York’s respect for ownership rights to their nation’s gold cannot be relied upon. Not only will lease and swap liquidity dries up, but it is likely that requests will be made for earmarked gold in these centers to be repatriated.

In short, Russia appears to be initiating a squeeze on gold derivatives in Western capital markets by exploiting diminishing faith in Western institutions and their cavalier treatment of foreign property rights. By forcing the unfriendlies into buying roubles, the RCB will shortly be able to reduce interest rates back to previous policy levels and remove exchange controls. At the same time, the inflation problems faced by the West will be ameliorated by a strong rouble.

It ties in with the politics for Putin’s survival. Together with the economic benefits of an improving exchange rate for the rouble and the relatively minor inconvenience of not being able to buy imports from the West (alternatives from China and India will still be available) Putin can retreat from his disastrous Ukrainian campaign. Senior figures in the Russian army will be disciplined, imprisoned, or disappear accused of incompetence and misleading Putin into thinking his “special operation” would be quickly achieved. Putin will absolve himself of any blame and dissenters can expect even greater clampdowns on protests.

Russia’s moves are likely to have been thought out in advance. The move to support the rouble is evidence it is so, giving the central bank the opportunity to reverse the interest rate hike to 20% to protect the rouble. Foreign exchange controls on Russians can shortly be lifted. Almost certainly the consequences for Western currencies were discussed. The conclusion would surely have been that higher energy and other Russian commodity prices would persist, driving Western price inflation higher and for longer than discounted in financial markets. Western economies face soaring interest rates and a slump. And depending on their central bank’s actions, Japan and the Eurozone with negative interest rates are almost certainly most vulnerable to a financial, currency, and economic crisis.

The impact of Russia’s new policy of only accepting roubles was, perhaps, the inevitable consequence of the West’s policies of self-immolation. From Russia’s failure in Ukraine, Putin appears to have had little option but to go on the offensive and escalate the financial, or commodity-currency war to cover his retreat. We can only speculate about the effect of a strong rouble on the international gold price, but if Russian banks can indeed buy bullion from non-Russian sources to sell to the RCB, it would mark a very aggressive move in the ongoing financial war.

China’s position

China will be learning unpalatable lessons about its ambition to invade Taiwan, and Taiwan will be encouraged mightily by Ukraine’s success at repelling an unwelcome invader. A 100-mile channel is an enormous obstacle for a Chinese invasion that Russia didn’t have to navigate before Ukrainian locals exploited defensive tactics to repel the invader. There can now be little doubt of the outcome if China tried the same tactics against Taiwan. President Xi would be sensible not to make the same mistake as Putin and tone down the anti-Taiwan rhetoric and try the softer approach of friendly relations and economic integration to reunite Chinese interests.

That has been a costless lesson for China, but another consideration is the continuing relationship with Russia. The earlier Chinese description of it made sense: “We are not allies, but we are partners”. What this means is that China would abstain rather than support Russia in the various supranational forums where the world’s leaders gather. But she would continue to trade with Russia as normal, even engaging in currency swaps to facilitate it.

More recently, a small crack has appeared in this relationship, with China concerned that US and EU sanctions might be extended to Chinese entities in joint ventures with Russian businesses linked to sanctioned oligarchs and Putin supporters. The highest-profile example has been the suspension of a joint project to build a petrochemical plant in Russia involving Sinopec, because of the involvement of Gennady Timchenko, a close ally of Putin. But according to a report from Nikkei Asia, Sinopec has confirmed it will continue to buy Russian crude oil and gas.

As always with its geopolitics, we can expect China to play its hand with great care. China was prepared for the consequences of US monetary policy in March 2020 when the Fed reduced its fund rate to zero and instituted quantitative easing of $120bn every month. By its actions, it judged these moves to be very inflationary and began stockpiling commodities ahead of dollar price rises, including energy and grains to project its own people. The yuan has risen against the dollar by about 11%, which with moderate credit policies has kept annualized domestic price inflation subdued to about 1% currently, while consumer price inflation in the West is soaring out of control.

China is not therefore in the weak financial position of Russia’s “unfriendlies”; the highly indebted governments whose finances and economies are likely to be destabilized by rising energy prices and interest rates. But it does have a potential economic crisis on its hands in the form of a collapsing property market. In February, its response was to ease the credit restrictions imposed following the initial pandemic recovery in 2021, which had included attempts to deleverage the property sector.

Property aside, we can assume that China will not want to destabilize the West by her own actions. The West is doing that very effectively without China’s assistance. But having demonstrated an understanding of why the West is sliding into an inflation crisis of its own making China will be keen not to make the same mistakes. Her partnership with Russia, as a joint leader in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, is central to detaching herself from what its Maoist economists forecast as the inevitable collapse of imperial capitalism. Having set itself up in the image of that imperialism, it must now become independent from it to avoid the same fate.

Gold’s wider role in China, Russia, and the SCO

Gold has always been central to China’s fallback position. I estimated that before permitting its own people to buy gold in 2002, the state had acquired as much as 20,000 tonnes. Subsequently, through the Shanghai Gold Exchange, the Chinese public has taken delivery of a further 20,000 tonnes, mainly through imports from outside China. No gold escapes China, and the Chinese government is likely to have added to its hoard over the last twenty years. The government maintains a monopoly on refining and has stimulated the mining industry to become the largest national producer. Together with its understanding of the West’s inflationary policies, the evidence is clear: China is prepared for a world of sound money with gold replacing the dollar’s hegemony, and it now dominates the world’s physical market with that in mind.

These plans are shared with Russia, and the members, dialog partners, and associates of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation — almost all of which have been accumulating gold reserves. Mine output from these countries is estimated by the US Geological Survey at 830 tonnes, 27% of the global total.

The move away from pure fiat was confirmed recently by some half-baked plans for the Eurasian Economic Union and China to escape from Western fiat by setting up a new currency for cross-border trade backed partly by commodities, including gold.

The extent of “off-balance-sheet” bullion is a critical issue because at some stage they are likely to be declared. In this context, the Russian position is important, because if Simon Hunt, quoted above, is correct Russia could have more gold than the US’s 8,130 tonnes, which is widely thought to overstate the latter’s true position. Furthermore, Western central banks routinely lease and swap their gold reserves, leading to double-counting, which almost certainly reduces their actual position in aggregate. And if fiat currencies continue to decline we could find that the two ringmasters for the SCO have more monetary gold than all the other central banks put together — something like 30,000-40,000 tonnes for Chinese and Russian governments, compared with perhaps less than 20,000 tonnes for Russia’s adversaries (officially, the unfriendlies own about 24,000 tonnes, but we can assume that at least 5,000 of that is double-counted or does not exist due to leasing and swaps).

The endgame for the yen and the euro

Without a doubt, the terrible twins in the major fiat currencies are the yen and the euro. They share much in common: negative interest rates, major commercial banks highly leveraged with asset to equity ratios averaging over twenty times, and central bank balance sheets overloaded with bonds that are collapsing in value. They now face rising interest rates spiraling beyond their control, the consequences of the ECB and Bank of Japan being trapped under the zero bound and being in denial over falling purchasing power for their currencies.

Consequently, we are seeing capital flight, which has accelerated dramatically this month for the yen, but in truth follows on from relative weakness for both currencies since the middle of 2021 when global bond yields began rising. Statistically, we can therefore link the collapse of both currencies on the foreign exchanges with rising bond yields. And given that rising interest rates and bond yields are in their early stages, there is considerable currency weakness yet to come.

Japan and its yen

The Bank of Japan has publicly stated it would buy an unlimited amount of 10-year Japanese Government Bonds at a 0.25% yield to contain the bond sell-off. A higher yield would be more than embarrassing for the BOJ, already requiring a recapitalization, presumably with its heavily indebted government stumping up the money. Figure 2 shows that the 10-year JGB yield is already testing the 0.25% yield level (charts from Trading Economics).

https://www.goldmoney.com/images/med.../standard3.png

As avid Keynesians, the BOJ is following similar policies to that of John Law in 1720's France. Law issued fresh livres which he used to prop up the Mississippi venture by buying shares in the market. The bubble popped, the venture survived, but the livre was destroyed.

Today, the BOJ is issuing yen to prop up the Japanese government bond market. As the issuer of the currency, the BOJ is by any yardstick bankrupt and in desperate need of new capital. Since it commenced QE in 2000, it has accumulated so much government and corporate debt, and even equities bundled into ETFs, that the falling value of the BOJ’s holdings makes its liabilities significantly greater than its assets, currently to the tune of about ¥4 trillion ($3.3bn).

Ignoring the cynic’s definition of madness, the BOJ is doubling down on its commitment, announcing on Monday further unlimited purchases of 10-year JGBs at a fixed yield of 0.25%. In other words, it is supporting bond prices from falling further, echoing Mario Draghi’s “whatever it takes” and confirming its John Law policy. Last Tuesday’s Summary of Opinions at the Monetary Policy Meeting on March 17 and 18 had this gem:

“Heightened geopolitical risks due to the situation surrounding Ukraine have caused price rises of energy and other items, and this will push down domestic demand while raising the CPI. Under the circumstances, it is necessary to improve labor market conditions and provide stronger support for wage increases, and therefore it is increasingly important that the bank persistently continues with the current monetary easing.”

No, this is not satire. In other words, the BOJ’s deposit rate will remain negative. And the following was added by Government Representatives at the same meeting:

“The budget for fiscal 2022 aims to realise a new form of capitalism through a virtual circle of growth and distribution and the government has been making efforts to swiftly obtain the Diet’s approval.”

A virtuous circle of growth? It seems like an intensified intervention. Meanwhile, Japan’s major banks with asset to equity ratios of over twenty times are too highly geared to survive rising interest rates without a bank credit crisis threatening to take them down. It is hardly surprising that international capital is fleeing the yen, realizing that it will be sacrificed by the BOJ in the vain hope that it can continue to maintain bond prices far above where they should be.

The euro system and its euro

The euro system and the euro share similar characteristics to the BOJ and the yen: interest rates trapped under the zero bound, Eurozone G-SIBs with asset to equity ratios of over 20 times, and market realities forcing interest rates and bond yields higher, as Figure 3 shows. Furthermore, Eurozone banks are heavily exposed to Russian and Ukrainian debt due to their geographic proximity.

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There are two additional problems for the Eurosystem not faced by the BOJ and the yen. The ECB’s shareholders are the national central banks in the euro system, which in turn have balance sheet liabilities more than their assets. The structure of the euro system means that in recapitalizing itself the ECB does not have a government to which it can issue credit and receive equity capital in return, the normal way in which a central bank would refinance its balance sheet by turning credit into equity. Instead, it will have to refinance itself through the national central banks which being insolvent themselves in turn would have to refinance themselves through their governments.

The second problem is a further complication. The euro system’s TARGET2 settlement system reflects enormous imbalances which complicate resolving a funding crisis. For example, on the last figures (end-February), Germany’s Bundesbank was owed €1,150 billion through TARGET2, while Italy owed €568 billion. It would be in the interests of a recapitalization for the Italian government to want its central bank to write off this amount, while the Bundesbank is already in negative equity without writing off TARGET2 balances. Germany’s politicians might demand the balances owed to the Bundesbank be secured. This problem is not insoluble perhaps, but one can see that political and public wrangling over these imbalances will only serve to draw attention to the fragility of the whole system and undermine public trust in the currency.

With Germany’s CPI now rising at 7.6% and Spain’s at 9.8%, negative deposit rates are wildly inappropriate. When the system breaks it can be expected to be sudden, violent and a shock to those in thrall to the euro system.

Conclusion

For decades, a showdown between an Asian partnership and hegemonic America has been building. We can date this back to 1983 when China began to accumulate physical gold having appointed the Peoples’ Bank for the purpose. That act was the first indication that China felt the need to protect itself from others as it ventured into capitalism. China has navigated itself through increasing American assertion of its hegemony and attempts to destabilize Hong Kong. It has faced obstacles to its lucrative export trade through tariffs. It has been cut off from Western markets for its advanced technology. China has resented having to use the dollar.

After Russia’s ill-advised invasion of Ukraine, it now appears that the invisible war over global financial resources and control is intensifying. The fuse has been lit and events are taking over. The destabilization of the yen and the euro are now as certain as can be. While the yen is the victim of John Law-like market-rigging policies and likely to go the same way as France’s livre, perhaps the greater danger is for the euro. The contradictions in its set-up and the destruction of Germany’s sound money principles in favor of the inflationism of the PIGS were always going to be finite. The ECB has got itself into a ridiculous position, and no amount of conjuring and cajoling of financial institutions can resolve the ECB’s own insolvency and that of all its shareholders.

History shows that there are two groups involved in a currency collapse. International holders take fright and sell for other currencies and assets they believe to be more secure. They drive the exchange rate lower. The second group is the public in a nation, those who use the currency for transactions. If they lose confidence in it, the currency can rapidly descend into worthlessness as ordinary people accelerate its disposal for anything tangible in a final crack-up boom.

In the past, an alternative currency was always the sounder one, one backed by and exchangeable for gold coin. That is so long ago that we in the West have mostly forgotten the difference between money, that is gold and silver, and unbacked fiat currencies. The great unknown has been how much abuse of money and credit it would take for the public to relearn the difference. Cryptocurrencies have alerted us, but they are not a widely accepted medium of exchange and don’t have the legal standing of gold and gold substitutes.

War is to be our wake-up call — financial rather than physical in character. Western central banks and their governments have been fiddling with the books, telling us that currency debasement is good for us. That debasement has accelerated in recent years. But by upping the ante against Russia with sanctions that end up undermining the purchasing power of all the West’s major currencies, our leaders have called an end to the reign of fiat.




[i] Bank of Russia Press Release 25 March



The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not reflect those of Goldmoney unless expressly stated. The article is for general information purposes only and does not constitute either Goldmoney or the author(s) providing you with legal, financial, tax, investment, or accounting advice. You should not act or rely on any information contained in the article without first seeking independent professional advice. Care has been taken to ensure that the information in the article is reliable; however, Goldmoney does not represent that it is accurate, complete, up-to-date, and/or to be taken as an indication of future results and it should not be relied upon as such. Goldmoney will not be held responsible for any claim, loss, damage, or inconvenience caused as a result of any information or opinion contained in this article and any action taken as a result of the opinions and information contained in this article is at your own risk.

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitic...tern-sanctions

Is Russia The Real Target Of Western Sanctions?
https://zh-prod-1cc738ca-7d3b-4a72-b.../picture-5.jpg


BY TYLER DURDEN
THURSDAY, MAR 31, 2022 - 11:40 PM
Authored by Kit Knightly via Off-Guardian.org,

Soaring oil prices, energy and food crises on the horizon...is it possible the REAL target of this economic war is us?
https://assets.zerohedge.com/s3fs-pu...?itok=42GyHH1v

The first tweet I saw when I checked my timeline this morning was from foreign policy analyst Clint Ehlirch, pointing out that the Russian ruble has already started recovering from the dip created by Western sanctions, and is almost at pre-war levels:
The Russian Ruble is nearing its pre-invasion value.

Sanctions were designed to collapse its value. They failed. pic.twitter.com/OLmVIsS34E
— Clint Ehrlich (@ClintEhrlich) March 29, 2022
Ehrlich states, “sanctions were designed to collapse the value of the Ruble, they have failed”.
…to which I can only respond, well “were they?”
…and perhaps more importantly, “have they?”
Because it doesn’t really look like it, does it?

If anything, the sanctions seem to be at best rather impotent, and at worst amazingly counterproductive.
It’s not like the US/EU/NATO don’t know how to cripple economies. They have had years of practice starving the people of Cuba, Iraq, Venezuela, and too many others to list.

Now, you could argue that Russia is a larger, more developed economy than those countries, and that’s true, but the US and its allies have previously managed to hurt the Russian economy quite drastically.

As recently as 2014, following the “annexation” of Crimea, Western sanctions were tame compared to the recent unprecedented measures, but crucially the US massively increased its own oil production, then later that year (following a visit by US Secretary of State John Kerry) Saudi Arabia did the same.
Despite objections from other members of OPEC – Venezuela and Iran chiefly – the Saudis flooded the market with oil.

The result of these moves was the biggest fall in oil prices for decades – collapsing from $109 a barrel, in June 2014, to $44 by January 2015.
This kicked Russia into a full recession and saw Russia’s GDP shrink for the first time under Putin’s leadership.

Again, just two years ago, allegedly as part of competing with Russia for a share of the oil market, Saudi Arabia once more flooded the market with cheap oil.
So, the West does know how to hurt Russia if it really wants to – by increasing oil production, flooding the market, and tanking the price.
But has the US increased its oil production this time around? Have they lent on their Gulf allies to do the same?

Not at all.
In fact, in a point of beautiful narrative synchronicity, the US claims it’s “unable” to increase its oil production due to “staff shortages” caused by that gift that keeps on giving – Covid.

Similarly, Saudi Arabia is not tanking the oil market, but deliberately increasing prices.

Yes, right now, with the Western allies locked in an alleged economic war with Russia the price of oil is soaring and may continue to do so.
This is good news for the Russian economy, to the point it may even make up for the damage done by the brutal sanctions.

The high price of oil and the need “not to rely on Putin’s gas” or “de-Russify” our energy supply will doubtless result in millions being poured into “green” technology.

Those Western sanctions are targeting other Russian exports too, including grains and food in general.
Russia is a net exporter of food, meaning they export more food than they import. Conversely, many countries in Western Europe rely on imported food, including the UK which imports over 48% of its food supply.

If Europe refuses to buy Russian food, the net effect is that Russia has food…and the West doesn’t.
And, just as with oil, increasing food prices will help rather than hinder the Russian economy.

Take wheat for example, of which Russia is the biggest exporter in the world. The vast majority of this wheat is not even sold to Western countries – but instead to China, Kazakhstan, Egypt, Nigeria, and Pakistan – and so is not even subject to sanctions.

Nevertheless, the sanctions, and the war, have actually driven the price of wheat up almost 30%.
This is good for the Russian economy.

Meanwhile, according to CNN, the US is likely to enter a full-blown recession by 2023, France is considering food vouchers, and countries all over the world are expected to begin rationing fuel.

So, the sweeping sanctions imposed against Russia by the West, allegedly in response to the invasion of Ukraine, are not having their stated aim – tanking the Russian economy – but they are driving up the price of oil, creating potential energy and food shortages in the West and exacerbating the “cost of living” crisis created by the “pandemic”.

You should always be wary of anybody – individual or institution – whose actions accidentally achieve the exact opposite of their stated aim. That’s a simple rule to live by.
Remember how Orwell described the evolution of the concept of war in 1984:
War, it will be seen, is now a purely internal affair. In the past, the ruling groups of all countries, although they might recognize their common interest and therefore limit the destructiveness of war, did fight against one another, and the victor always plundered the vanquished. In our own day they are not fighting against one another at all. The war is waged by each ruling group against its own subjects, and the object of the war is not to make or prevent conquests of territory, but to keep the structure of society intact.

Recall that “the worst food shortages for fifty years” were predicted as a result of Covid. But they never materialized.
Likewise, we were due to experience Covid-related energy disruptions and power cuts. Short of the UK’s damp squib of a “petrol crisis”, they never really arrived.
But now they are heading our way after all – because of war and sanctions

Increased food prices, decreased use of fossil fuels, lowering standards of living, public money poured into “renewables”. This is all part of a very familiar agenda, isn’t it?
Regardless of what you feel about Putin, Zelensky, the war in general or Ukrainian Nazis, it’s time to confront the elephant in room.
We need to be asking: What exactly is the real aim of these sanctions? And how come they align so perfectly with the great reset?

https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/a...m_campaign=RSS

Hope for Humanity

Blog/ECM

Posted Apr 1, 2022, by Martin Armstrong

Spread the love

https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/w...r-Humanity.png

QUESTION: Is there any hope for the future? Between war, digital currency, authoritarianism, and financial collapse, it doesn’t seem like there is much hope for our children. Please let us know what Socrates says, is everyone doomed? Is there anywhere our children can go to escape this madness?
B
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/w...oint-1-PNG.png

ANSWER: Yes! I know this can sound depressing, but this grand scheme to alter the world will fail. What lies ahead is not all dark and gloom. The clouds will part and the sun will shine. This is not the END of civilization, it is the next cycle of civilization. It will be up to us to reshape society for we will see all these Republican forms of government collapse just as the Roman Republic collapsed. Our computer has never been wong in these broad political forecasts.

This current wave began with the Plaza Accord and the formation of the G5 – not G20 in August 1985. Tokyo Crashed on the first wave in 1989, SE Asia peaked in 1994, then Russia crashed in 1998, 2002 began the real estate rally that peaked in 2007, 2011 marked the high in gold, and 2015.75 was the very day Russia came to the aid of Syra. Trump was sworn in on the precise day of Pi, and 2020.05 marked the start of the COVID scheme, the rise in civil unrest globally, and the commodity boom as we head into 2024. Putin’s term will be up in 2024 and it is propaganda that he is the threat – he is the only one with common sense. Remove Putin and you will find the Russian Neocons who could come to power and that would bring direct confrontation into 2028.
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/w...rruption-2.jpg

It will be up to us to create not a new Bretton Woods as Schwab wants to hand all power to the United Nations, but to push for a real direct Democracy and end these corrupt Republics. These people in government call themselves Honorable when in fact they use their families for all the corruption as is surfacing from the Laptop from Hell. A Congressman cannot be on the board of a private company, so their spouse or children do that like Hunter Biden. They create their Foundations like the Clintons and John McCain and tell people to pour millions into there and then they live off of the perks. They also get to keep all money donated to them for elections that they did not spend – tax-free. I have been to political “dinners” where everything is there but as long as we stand, it is not a “dinner” for it is illegal to buy a politician dinner. It is always a dog & pony show.

In the end, no government has EVER survived. This is our turn to become the Founding Fathers for generations to follow.

Categories: ECM
« The ECM & March 14th

https://www.zerohedge.com/crypto/19-...why-it-matters


The 19 Millionth Bitcoin Has Been Mined: Why It Matters

https://zh-prod-1cc738ca-7d3b-4a72-b.../picture-5.jpgBY TYLER DURDEN

SATURDAY, APR 02, 2022 - 03:30 PM

Authored by 'NAMCIOS' via BitcoinMagazine.com,

With less than two million bitcoin left to be mined, Bitcoin’s limited supply has just gotten even more limited...
https://assets.zerohedge.com/s3fs-pu...?itok=wlCY09Df


The 19 millionth bitcoin has just been mined, data from Bitbo shows, leaving less than two million BTC remaining for miners to put in circulation as the Bitcoin network tick-tocks its way through a fixed issuance schedule until it reaches the 21 million supply limit and doesn’t create any new bitcoin ever again.
The milestone demonstrates how Bitcoin’s creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, was able to join together decades of research in different areas of computer science to achieve scarcity in the digital realm, a unique feature central to Bitcoin’s value proposition.

Before Bitcoin, digital cash suffered from the flaw of double-spending. Until its creation, the only way to ensure a party wouldn’t spend money twice was through a central authority that had to keep track of coins being sent and received thereby updating users’ balances – much like the traditional financial system. However, Nakamoto’s invention, through the usage of the Proof-of-Work (PoW) mechanism in a distributed ledger, enabled computers running a piece of software to enforce strict spending conditions that prevented a digital representation of value to be spent twice for the first time – or at least made it prohibitively expensive to do so.
While miners and nodes together work through the issuance and enforcement of bitcoin, investors interested in acquiring ever-more scarce BTC have to bid their way through the limited supply of the asset. Historically, miners used to offload their freshly minted bitcoin on the market to cover operating expenses in U.S. dollars, however, nowadays it has become commonplace to see mining companies add their produced coins to their balance sheet and issue bitcoin-backed loans as needed. As a result, Bitcoin has gotten even more scarce as a larger percentage of the total bitcoin supply gets locked up long term.

Currently, a miner earns 6.25 BTC per block mined. The block reward, as it is called, has been cut in half every 210,000 blocks – roughly every four years – ever since Nakamoto mined the first one which yielded a 50 BTC reward. Now, ever fewer new bitcoin are distributed each epoch, further increasing the scarcity of the asset. Therefore, even though it has taken roughly a dozen years to mine 19 million bitcoin, the remaining 2 million won’t be minted until 2140 if the protocol remains as is today.

Curiously, the 21 million supply cap of the Bitcoin protocol isn’t written in its white paper or its code. Rather, it is the ever-decreasing number of bitcoin rewarded by each block in conjunction with the decentralized network of computers enforcing that reward that allows the network to implicitly prevent the issuance of bitcoin above the limit.

“Bitcoin implementations control new issuance by checking that each new block does not create more than the allowed block subsidy,” cypherpunk and Casa co-founder and CTO, Jameson Lopp, wrote in a blog post.

By ensuring that bitcoin cannot be spent twice and that the block reward does not yield more than it should a
t any given time, the distributed network of Bitcoin nodes can indirectly enforce the supply limit as the block reward trends towards zero over the next century.
In addition to bringing scarcity to the digital realm, Bitcoin therefore also enables a predictable monetary policy scheduled ahead of time, which breaks away from the current monetary system where governments and policymakers can increase the issuance of money as we’ve tangibly experienced over the past couple of years. As a result, currency debasement is not possible in Bitcoin and its users’ purchasing power is protected.

This image plots the trajectory of Bitcoin’s total supply (blue) against its rate of monetary inflation (yellow). Notably, Bitcoin’s inflation rate is known ahead of time through a software protocol enforced by thousands of computers scattered around the globe. As the block reward trends to zero until the next century, new bitcoins will not be issued and miners would reap only the fees of transactions on the Bitcoin blockchain. Image source: BashCo.

In addition to protecting people’s purchasing power, with its predictable policy Bitcoin enables planning for the future as users can rest assured that nobody will debase their money. Important developments in society are arguably enabled by a strong commitment to long-term work and investment, rather than short-term bets.

But given the paramount scarcity of BTC, why has its price been trading in a range between $30,000 and $60,000 over the past year?
The Bitcoin price in U.S. dollars can be thought of as a lagging indicator of humanity’s understanding of the technology and its innovative value proposition. Currently, only a small percentage of the world’s population truly grasp the unique concepts of programmatically decentralized and scarce money, so while the Bitcoin price might trend to infinity over the long term, that won’t likely become a reality until most of the global population – or most of the world’s capital – starts understanding that. When they do, a sharp supply shock might ensue as an unlimited amount of money flows into a limited amount of bitcoin.

https://goldswitzerland.com/there-is...orld-disorder/


THERE IS GOING TO BE A NEW WORLD DISORDER
https://goldswitzerland.com/wp-conte...mam_2415-1.jpg

By Egon von Greyerz
April 5, 2022

“There is gonna be a new world order out there and we’ve gotta lead it!

And we gotta unite the rest of the world in doing it!”

That is what Biden proclaimed in a recent speech.

But since Biden has a tendency to get his speeches wrong, what he meant to say was:
“There is gonna be a new world DIS-order out there and we’ve gotta lead it!

Sadly, as the world has heard in many speeches by the US president, he hasn’t got a clue that his “empire” is collapsing around him.
But regrettably for Biden, the US isn’t an empire at all but a bankrupt nation without leadership. But even worse, the US has just in a final act of desperation not just shot itself in the foot but in the head.

CONSEQUENCES
Very few, if any, of today’s world leaders understand the consequences of their actions and clearly not Biden.

As the world is experiencing the end of an economic era, we are getting the leaders that we deserve and thus the appropriate ones to take the world to Armageddon.

So the world is now entering the final battle, a battle with totally incompetent heads of state which will lead to everyone losing.
The route to Armageddon will be disastrous for the world. Distressed leaders will take calamitous actions, exacerbating not only their own country’s problem but also the rest of the world’s.

And that is exactly what we are seeing now with the worst possible concoction of debt deficits, currency debasement and decadence. The consequences were of course always predictable based on history. But no leader in the current era is a real student of history. And that is why the world is in such a mess.

HYPERINFLATION FOLLOWED BY A DEFLATIONARY DEPRESSION
I have in many articles outlined the course of events that I see from here – inflation, hyperinflation, debt collapse, asset collapse, leading to economic misery, and eventually to a deflationary depression. “All Hell Will Break Loose for Humanity” as I wrote in a recent article.

There will be continued migration, but probably to a lesser extent since there will be no promised lands that will offer the migrants a better life. There will be isolationism and many countries will try to close their borders.

Sadly there will also be wars, cyber, civil, and even major military wars. Mankind has never for any longer period stayed away from wars and especially not in periods of economic depression and high debts. Wars are such a wonderful excuse for poor leaders both to print more money and blame for the misery that the people suffer.

Western dominated media and propaganda are naturally blaming Putin for the war. And many leaders including Biden want him gone.

WARS HAVE BUILT THE WORLD
Wars are of course terrible whoever starts them but as I just said, the history of the world is very much based on wars and empire building whether we talk about Persian, Roman, Han, Mongol, Ottoman, Spanish, Russian, or British empires.

Many of these empires have been revered for what they achieved and still are today whilst some like the Mongol left very little positive traces for posterity.
The British Empire for example was remarkable. A small island created the biggest empire in history lasting for over 300 years and covering 26% of the world. The cultural and language influence is still significant.

Very few voices are heard today requiring that the kings or emperors of those eras be convicted for war crimes posthumously.

The US never created an empire but unprovoked attacked countries like Vietnam, Iraq, Libya, and Syria. Over 300,000 civilians have been killed in these wars led by the US.

Whilst virtually the whole Western world considers Putin to be a war criminal, we have not heard similar attacks on the US, UK, or French leaders who were involved in the above recent wars.

Without intending to take sides, why should we have different rules or laws for different war criminals? There is clearly not a level playing field.

CORNERING A RUSSIAN BEAR HAS CONSEQUENCES
Coming back to consequences, any intelligent Western leader could have predicted Russia’s recent actions since the Maidan Revolution in Ukraine in 2014. This was when a US and Western led coup ousted the elected Ukrainian leader and government and installed a Western friendly leadership.
This coup, combined with new Nato members surrounding Russia, was such a clear threat to Russia that Putin’s reaction was obvious. Cornering a Russian bear is very dangerous.
https://goldswitzerland.com/wp-conte...22/04/nato.png

A strong Western leader and Statesman would have foreseen this and taken up negotiations with Russia. But Western leaders totally ignored all the warnings from Putin and Russia and that is why the world is not just in a mess but in a situation that is geopolitically very dangerous.
Some observers argue that the current situation has been engineered by US Neocons in order to start a conflict/war with Russia.

SANCTIONS HAVE CONSEQUENCES
The Roman Empire prospered for centuries due to free trade within and outside. But to sanction a country like Russia which has the world’s greatest natural resources to the extent of $75 trillion is total madness. Even worse when this sanctioned country supplies the energy of almost half of Europe, this is not just shooting yourself in the foot but in the head. See my article “A Global Monetary Inferno of Nuclear proportions”.

This will not just lead to energy and food shortages in the West but also a massive decline in world trade as well as GDP.

The CEO of BASF, the world’s largest chemical producer, said recently:
“Cutting off energy from Russia will spiral Germany into its most “catastrophic economic crisis going back to the end of WWII!”

But this should not come as a surprise for students of history. At the end of major economic cycles, countries get the abysmal leaders they deserve and these leaders will show a total lack of both intelligence and statesmanship. So sadly there is not even one leader who is capable of negotiating with Putin.

As a matter of fact, the US doesn’t seem to have a leader at all. And Germany’s new leader Scholz had hardly got his feet under the table before he was landed with the small problem that his country gets 55% of its natural gas from its enemy Russia. How inconvenient.

Germany clearly never learned the expression “Don’t bite off the hand that feeds you”.
Both Britain’s Boris “Partygate” Johnson and France’s “Manu” Macron can count themselves lucky that the war took the attention away from their domestic problems.
https://goldswitzerland.com/wp-conte...22/04/tank.png

THE US FINANCIAL EMPIRE ON THE ROAD TO PERDITION
The US used to be a financial empire but sadly now the country is on the road to perdition.
As I have pointed out many times, with the following abysmal figures the US can neither be an economic nor a moral leader of the world:

1. Federal debt & deficit growing every year since 1930 (with 4 minor exceptions)
2. Since 1971 Federal debt is up 60X from $500billion to $30 trillion
3. Total country debt up 53X since 1971 to $90 trillion with GDP up only 22X
4. Balance of payment in deficit since early 1970s

https://goldswitzerland.com/wp-conte...22/04/debt.png

It is really astounding that the rest of the world accepts being dictated to by a country that is way past its sell-by date and can only generate false growth by printing endless amounts of worthless money. Before the 1970s the US had a strong economy with a respected currency. But since Nixon closed the gold window in 1971, the US has been on a slippery slope with debt exploding and the currency collapsing.

As the chart below shows, the dollar has lost 88% in real terms (gold) since 1999 and 98% since 1971 (not shown).
https://goldswitzerland.com/wp-conte...4/Picture6.png

The fall to ZERO is guaranteed since all currencies, without exception, have become extinct throughout history.
But have we ever heard a central bank head or a president telling their people that the currency is going to become worthless due to their reckless actions?
No, of course not. Firstly they don’t understand or study history and secondly, no elected politician can ever tell the truth because if they did, they would never be elected.

Just remember “Tricky Dick” Nixon:
https://goldswitzerland.com/wp-conte...2022/04/gm.png

Clearly, Nixon had no understanding of what happens to the money when debt backs the currency rather than gold. Or did he just lie as he had the custom of doing?
Regardless, he orchestrated a dollar fall (off the Matterhorn as illustrated above) of 98% with the remaining couple of percent loss down to a 100% happening in the next few years.

Biden has with his current disastrous actions created the perfect climate for achieving the final 2% fall of the dollar. But remember that is a 100% fall from here.

FREEZING ASSETS HAS CONSEQUENCES
By demonstrating to world central banks that the US can freeze any country’s foreign exchange reserves held outside their country, the world financial system and central bankers have learnt a lesson that will permanently change the way they do business.

No sane country will ever hold its reserves in US dollars or other currencies at a bank that the US government can directly or indirectly control.
Nor will countries trust the Swift system which the US can unilaterally manipulate.

The flight from the US dollar will not happen overnight but it will be more rapid than anyone can imagine.

No judicious central bank chief will ever consider handing their forex reserves to the US, a bankrupt nation, with a collapsing currency that at a whim can confiscate other countries’ reserves.

But not only that, who would ever put their money into US treasuries. Investors would not only lose their total investment on the falling value of the dollar but also on the US as a dodgy debtor which could easily default by debasing the currency to ZERO or extinguish the debt.

Russia saw this coming already some years ago and thus liquidated all their US treasuries. Instead, they wisely bought gold.
US debt is now entering the Pass The Parcel Game with NO investor wanting to be left holding the parcel.

Consequences our US friends, Consequences! Do you now see that your government has not just shot you in the foot but has inflicted your country with a lethal head wound?

The collateral damage will clearly lead to distrust not only in the US but in all governments and all currencies. Globalism is now turning into isolationism.
AND THE OBVIOUS CONSEQUENCE OF THAT WILL BE A FLIGHT TO COMMODITIES AND ESPECIALLY PHYSICAL GOLD AND SILVER HELD IN A VERY SAFE PLACE.

 

1. ]Egon von Greyerz[

Founder and Managing Partner
Matterhorn Asset Management
Zurich, Switzerland
Phone: +41 44 213 62 45

Matterhorn Asset Management’s global client base strategically stores an important part of their wealth in Switzerland in physical gold and silver outside the banking system. Matterhorn Asset Management is pleased to deliver a unique and exceptional service to our highly esteemed wealth preservation clientele in over 80 countries.

GoldSwitzerland.com

https://www.whatdoesitmean.com/index3880.htm



What You Aren’t Being Told About The World You Live In
How The “Conspiracy Theory” Label Was Conceived To Derail The Truth Movement
How Covert American Agents Infiltrate the Internet to Manipulate, Deceive and Destroy Reputations

Other reports in this series include:
Russia Accused Of “Magic Massacre” After Pro-Putin Parties Win Avalanche Victories In Europe


April 5, 2022
Ukraine Slams “Negro-Love” And Vows To “Lead The White Races Of The World In Final Crusade”
By: Sorcha Faal, and as reported to her Western Subscribers

A thought-provoking new Security Council (SC) report circulating in the Kremlin today first notes Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov stating about the fake news “Magic Massacre” in Bucha-Ukraine: “Russian servicemen left this city on 30 March, on 31 March the mayor of the city solemnly said that everything was in order, and two days later we saw how that very performance was organized on the streets, which they are now trying to use for anti-Russian purposes”, says Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev also pointed to the spread of Nazi ideology among the Ukrainian military, stressing that in almost every Ukrainian Army unit seized by Russian troops, Nazi banners, literature, and posters had been found, and stated: “This is not a game of fascist aesthetics as the Westerners are trying to prove to us…This is an ideology”.

After Britain blocked the United Nations Security Council from holding an emergency meeting to investigate this fake news “Magic Massacre”, this report notes, Russian Ambassador to the United Nations Vassily Nebenzia declared: “This thing that happened, that is something that is unbelievable and unprecedented in the history of the United Nations”, then factually stated: “There are no reports of the atrocities which are accredited to the Russian military in Bucha, which happened before the Ukrainian army took the control of the city...Four days after the Russian military left the city of Bucha, there was not a single sign of atrocities, not a single reference to it anywhere...During the time when the town was under the control of the Russian armed forces not a single local resident has suffered from any violent action”—a statement of fact joined by State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin saying that the situation in the Ukrainian city of Bucha is a false flag to discredit Russia and justify Western sanctions, and a genuine investigation into what happened is not something that NATO countries seek, with him stating: “There are no facts, just lies…The Ukrainian media had to delete the photo evidence posted by them since the information is not confirmed…But no one cares about all this anymore…The accusations have been made”.

After Russian military forces pulled out of Bucha on 30 March, this report details, the Ukraine Defense Ministry immediately reported it had recaptured all of the Kyiv Oblast, namely the war-torn towns of Bucha, Hostomel, and Irpin northwest of the capital—after touring his town of Bucha on 31 March, it saw Mayor Anatolii Fedoruk posting a video gleefully proclaiming it had been liberated from “Russian orcs” and everything was fine—then the following day, on 1 April, it saw Fox News host Brett Baier interviewing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy—an interview, however, whose most critical part of was edited out to keep the American people from seeing, but to his credit saw Fox News host Baier posting it himself, wherein the shocking exchange was revealed:
Fox News host Brett Baier: I wanted to have you clear something up for us. This is: these reports about the Azov Battalion, which is said to be a Nazi-affiliated organization operating as a militia in your country, said to be committing their own atrocities. What should Americans know about that unit, about those reports?

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky: So, Azov was one of those many battalions. They are what they are, they were defending our country. And later, I want to explain to you, that everything from all the components of those volunteer battalions later were incorporated into the military of Ukraine. Those Azov fighters are no longer a self-established group, they are a component of the Ukrainian military.

Left unexplained to the American people, this report continues, was why the Nazi forces of the Azov Battalion had to be incorporated into the military of Ukraine—which was entirely due to powerful Democrat Party lawmaker United States Congressman John Conyers Jr., the leader of the Congressional Black Caucus, who sponsored and passed a bill forbidding the Pentagon from selling and/or providing weapons to the Nazi forces of the Azov Battalion—an action slammed by the Azov Battalion’s political branch National Corps leader Andriy Biletsky, who proclaimed: “So why the “Negro-love” on a legislative level?... They want to break everyone who has risen to defend themselves, their family, and their right to be masters of their own land!...They want to destroy the Nation’s biological resistance to everything alien and do to us what happened to Old Europe, where the immigrant hordes are a nightmare for the French, Germans, and Belgians, where cities are “blackening” fast and crime and the drug trade are invading even the remotest corners”—in the just-published CNN article “A Far-Right Battalion Has A Key Role In Ukraine's Resistance. It's Neo-Nazi History Has Been Exploited By Putin” it notes Andriy Biletsky vowing that the Azov Nazi force's goal is to “lead the White races of the world in a final crusade”—and on 2 April, these Ukrainian Nazi forces entered into the town of Bucha to cleanse it of anyone they suspected of aiding the Russian military forces that had already withdrawn earlier in the week, and whose exact message posted on Facebook said: “Today, on 2 April, in the liberated city of Bucha, Kiev region, special units of the Ukrainian National Police began clearing the area of saboteurs and accomplices of Russian troops”.

Once the Nazi forces of the Azov Battalion were incorporated into the military of Ukraine, this report concludes, both the Pentagon and NATO were able to ignore the law put into force by Congressional Black Caucus leader US Congressman Conyers, Jr. and flood them with weapons, which necessitated the “Special De-Nazification Operation” ordered by President Putin to liberate Ukraine—a special operation that today sees the militia of the Donetsk People's Republic having seized control over downtown Mariupol, and whose port and industrial zone are still to be cleared—today sees the Russian flag flying over the center of Mariupol—today sees Russian Chechnya forces posting videos of them obliterating Ukraine Nazi fighters at their Azovstal Steel Plant stronghold in Mariupol—today sees videos released of 264 Ukraine Nazi fighters surrendering to Russian forces in Mariupol—today sees Russian military forces protecting the baby tigers and bears at the Mariupol Zoo before these Ukraine Nazi demons can kill them—and among whose latest urgent war bulletins issued by the Ministry of Defense (MoD), sees them including:
“Ukrainian nationalists continue to hold 6,501 foreign citizens from 16 countries hostage, using them as "human shields"…Besides, more than 60 foreign vessels continue to be blocked in Ukrainian ports…The threat of shelling and high mine danger in Ukrainian internal waters and territorial sea, which was created by the official Kiev, does not allow ships to go safely to the open sea”.

“According to confirmed information, on the evening of 4 April in the village of Moshchun, 23 kilometers north-west of Kiev, the military personnel of the 72nd Ukrainian main center of psychological operations conducted another staged filming of civilians allegedly killed by the violent actions of the Russian Armed Forces for subsequent distribution through the western media”.

“Russia's National Guard servicemen rescued local residents in the Kiev region who were trying to evacuate when they came under fire from nationalists”.

“Within the framework of the special military operation, the Russian armed forces carried out another strike with smart weapons against Ukraine’s military infrastructure...Seven Kalibr cruise missiles were fired from a ship in the Black Sea against the designated targets on Ukraine’s territory”.
“During the night, the Russian tactical aviation and missile forces hit 134 Ukrainian military facilities, among them eight command posts, a fire control/illumination and guidance radar of the S-300 anti-aircraft missile system, the Tochka-U missile system, six ammunition, and two fuel depots, as well as 85 strongholds and a military equipment concentration area”.

“In total, since the beginning of the special military operation, 125 aircraft, 91 helicopters, 398 unmanned aerial vehicles, 226 anti-aircraft missile systems, 1,969 tanks and other armored combat vehicles, 214 multiple rocket launchers, 852 field artillery vehicles, and mortars, as well as 1,873 special military vehicles of the Ukraine military have been destroyed by Russian military forces”.

[Note: Some words and/or phrases appearing in quotes in this report are English language approximations of Russian words/phrases having no exact counterpart.]

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April 5, 2022, EU and the US all rights reserved. Permission to use this report in its entirety is granted under the condition it is linked to its original source at WhatDoesItMean.Com. Freebase content is licensed under CC-BY and GFDL.

[Note: Many governments and their intelligence services actively campaign against the information found in these reports so as not to alarm their citizens about the many catastrophic Earth changes and events to come, a stance that the Sisters of Sorcha Faal strongly disagree with in believing that it is every human being’s right to know the truth. Due to our mission’s conflicts with that of those governments, the responses of their ‘agents’ have been a longstanding

misinformation/misdirection campaign designed to discredit us, and others like us, that is exampled in numerous places, including HERE.]

[Note: The WhatDoesItMean.com website was created for and donated to the Sisters of Sorcha Faal in 2003 by a small group of American computer experts led by the late global technology guru Wayne Green (1922-2013) to counter the propaganda being used by the West to promote their illegal 2003 invasion of Iraq.]
[Note: The word Kremlin (fortress inside a city) as used in this report refers to Russian citadels, including in Moscow, having cathedrals wherein female Schema monks (Orthodox nuns) reside, many of whom are devoted to the mission of the Sisters of Sorcha Faal.]
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Apologizes if it’s the wrong thing to post it here,
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https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/vo...world-disorder

Von Greyerz: "There Is Going To Be A New World Disorder"
https://zh-prod-1cc738ca-7d3b-4a72-b.../picture-5.jpg


BY TYLER DURDEN

THURSDAY, APR 07, 2022 - 06:30 AM

Authored by Egon von Greyerz via GoldSwitzerland.com,

“There is gonna be a new world order out there and we’ve gotta lead it!
And we gotta unite the rest of the world in doing it!”

That is what Biden proclaimed in a recent speech.


But since Biden has a tendency to get his speeches wrong, what he meant to say was:
“There is gonna be a new world DIS-order out there and we’ve gotta lead it!

Sadly, as the world has heard in many speeches by the US president, he hasn’t got a clue that his “empire” is collapsing around him.

But regrettably, for Biden, the US isn’t an empire at all but a bankrupt nation without leadership. But even worse, the US has just in a final act of desperation not just shot itself in the foot but in the head.

CONSEQUENCES
Very few, if any, of today’s world leaders understand the consequences of their actions, and clearly not Biden.

As the world is experiencing the end of an economic era, we are getting the leaders that we deserve and thus the appropriate ones to take the world to Armageddon.

So the world is now entering the final battle, a battle with totally incompetent heads of state which will lead to everyone losing.
The route to Armageddon will be disastrous for the world. Distressed leaders will take calamitous actions, exacerbating not only their own country’s problem but also the rest of the world’s.

And that is exactly what we are seeing now with the worst possible concoction of debt deficits, currency debasement, and decadence. The consequences were of course always predictable based on history. But no leader in the current era is a real student of history. And that is why the world is such a mess.

HYPERINFLATION FOLLOWED BY A DEFLATIONARY DEPRESSION
I have in many articles outlined the course of events that I see from here – inflation, hyperinflation, debt collapse, asset collapse, leading to economic misery, and eventually to a deflationary depression. “All Hell Will Break Loose for Humanity” as I wrote in a recent article.

There will be continued migration, but probably to a lesser extent since there will be no promised lands that will offer the migrants a better life. There will be isolationism and many countries will try to close their borders.

Sadly there will also be wars, cyber, civil, and even major military wars. Mankind has never for any longer period stayed away from wars and especially not in periods of economic depression and high debts. Wars are such a wonderful excuse for poor leaders both to print more money and blame for the misery that the people suffer.

Western-dominated media and propaganda are naturally blaming Putin for the war. And many leaders including Biden want him gone.

WARS HAVE BUILT THE WORLD
Wars are of course terrible whoever starts them but as I just said, the history of the world is very much based on wars and empire-building whether we talk about Persian, Roman, Han, Mongol, Ottoman, Spanish, Russian, or British empires.

Many of these empires have been revered for what they achieved and still are today whilst some like the Mongols left very few positive traces for posterity.

The British Empire for example was remarkable. A small island created the biggest empire in history lasting for over 300 years and covering 26% of the world. The cultural and language influence is still significant.

Very few voices are heard today requiring that the kings or emperors of those eras to be convicted for war crimes posthumously.

The US never created an empire but unprovoked attacked countries like Vietnam, Iraq, Libya, and Syria. Over 300,000 civilians have been killed in these wars led by the US.

Whilst virtually the whole Western world considers Putin to be a war criminal, we have not heard similar attacks on the US, UK, or French leaders who were involved in the above recent wars.

Without intending to take sides, why should we have different rules or laws for different war criminals? There is clearly not a level playing field.

CORNERING A RUSSIAN BEAR HAS CONSEQUENCES
Coming back to consequences, any intelligent Western leader could have predicted Russia’s recent actions since the Maidan Revolution in Ukraine in 2014. This was when a US and Western-led coup ousted the elected Ukrainian leader and government and installed a Western-friendly leadership.

This coup, combined with new Nato members surrounding Russia, was such a clear threat to Russia that Putin’s reaction was obvious. Cornering a Russian bear is very dangerous.
https://assets.zerohedge.com/s3fs-pu...?itok=eTewDAqy


A strong Western leader and Statesman would have foreseen this and taken up negotiations with Russia. But Western leaders totally ignored all the warnings from Putin and Russia and that is why the world is not just in a mess but in a situation that is geopolitically very dangerous.
Some observers argue that the current situation has been engineered by US Neocons in order to start a conflict/war with Russia.

SANCTIONS HAVE CONSEQUENCES
The Roman Empire prospered for centuries due to free trade within and outside. But to sanction a country like Russia which has the world’s greatest natural resources to the extent of $75 trillion is total madness. Even worse when this sanctioned country supplies the energy of almost half of Europe, this is not just shooting yourself in the foot but in the head. See my article “A Global Monetary Inferno of Nuclear proportions”.

This will not just lead to energy and food shortages in the West but also a massive decline in world trade as well as GDP.
The CEO of BASF, the world’s largest chemical producer, said recently:
“Cutting off energy from Russia will spiral Germany into its most “catastrophic economic crisis going back to the end of WWII!”

But this should not come as a surprise for students of history. At the end of major economic cycles, countries get the abysmal leaders they deserve and these leaders will show a total lack of both intelligence and statesmanship. So sadly there is not even one leader who is capable of negotiating with Putin.

As a matter of fact, the US doesn’t seem to have a leader at all. And Germany’s new leader Scholz had hardly got his feet under the table before he was landed with the small problem that his country gets 55% of its natural gas from its enemy Russia. How inconvenient.

Germany clearly never learned the expression “Don’t bite off the hand that feeds you”.
Both Britain’s Boris “Partygate” Johnson and France’s “Manu” Macron can count themselves lucky that the war took the attention away from their domestic problems.
https://assets.zerohedge.com/s3fs-pu...?itok=GVagOHaT

THE US FINANCIAL EMPIRE ON THE ROAD TO PERDITION
The US used to be a financial empire but sadly now the country is on the road to perdition.
As I have pointed out many times, with the following abysmal figures the US can neither be an economic nor a moral leader of the world:

1. Federal debt & deficit growing every year since 1930 (with 4 minor exceptions)
2. Since 1971 Federal debt is up to 60X from $500billion to $30 trillion
3. Total country debt is up to 53X since 1971 to $90 trillion with GDP up only 22X
4. Balance of payment in deficit since the early 1970s

https://assets.zerohedge.com/s3fs-pu...?itok=nCsFpjfB

It is really astounding that the rest of the world accepts being dictated to by a country that is way past its sell-by date and can only generate false growth by printing endless amounts of worthless money. Before the 1970s the US had a strong economy with a respected currency. But since Nixon closed the gold window in 1971, the US has been on a slippery slope with debt exploding and the currency collapsing.

As the chart below shows, the dollar has lost 88% in real terms (gold) since 1999 and 98% since 1971 (not shown).
https://assets.zerohedge.com/s3fs-pu...?itok=uO4Cm6k4

The fall to ZERO is guaranteed since all currencies, without exception, have become extinct throughout history.

But have we ever heard a central bank head or a president telling their people that the currency is going to become worthless due to their reckless actions?

No, of course not. Firstly they don’t understand or study history and secondly, no elected politician can ever tell the truth because if they did, they would never be elected.
Just remember “Tricky Dick” Nixon:
https://assets.zerohedge.com/s3fs-pu...?itok=AJQJlHvs

Clearly, Nixon had no understanding of what happens to the money when debt backs the currency rather than gold. Or did he just lie as he had the custom of doing?

Regardless, he orchestrated a dollar fall (as illustrated above) of 98% with a remaining couple of percent loss down to 100% happening in the next few years.

Biden has with his current disastrous actions created the perfect climate for achieving the final 2% fall of the dollar. But remember that is a 100% fall from here.

FREEZING ASSETS HAS CONSEQUENCES
By demonstrating to world central banks that the US can freeze any country’s foreign exchange reserves held outside their country, the world financial system and central bankers have learned a lesson that will permanently change the way they do business.

No sane country will ever hold its reserves in US dollars or other currencies at a bank that the US government can directly or indirectly control.
Nor will countries trust the Swift system which the US can unilaterally manipulate.

The flight from the US dollar will not happen overnight but it will be more rapid than anyone can imagine.

No judicious central bank chief will ever consider handing their forex reserves to the US, a bankrupt nation, with a collapsing currency that at a whim can confiscate other countries’ reserves.

But not only that, who would ever put their money into US treasuries. Investors would not only lose their total investment on the falling value of the dollar but also on the US as a dodgy debtor which could easily default by debasing the currency to ZERO or extinguish the debt.

Russia saw this coming already some years ago and thus liquidated all their US treasuries. Instead, they wisely bought gold.

US debt is now entering the Pass The Parcel Game with NO investor wanting to be left holding the parcel.
Consequences our US friends, Consequences! Do you now see that your government has not just shot you in the foot but has inflicted your country with a lethal head wound?

The collateral damage will clearly lead to distrust not only in the US but in all governments and all currencies. Globalism is now turning into isolationism.

AND THE OBVIOUS CONSEQUENCE OF THAT WILL BE A FLIGHT TO COMMODITIES AND ESPECIALLY PHYSICAL GOLD AND SILVER HELD IN A VERY SAFE PLACE.

Good day...

Please send me an Email at [email protected]

Thanks

I am interested in working with you


Bruce

https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/i...m_campaign=RSS

Canada Begins Eugenics Program

Blog/Canada

Posted Apr 7, 2022, by Martin Armstrong

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https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/w...au-300x192.png
While people always point to Nazi, Germany, Canada is no stranger to eugenics. The Sexual Sterilization Act of 1928 forced Indigenous women to undergo sterilizations to diminish their population. Canada provided these women with a skewed “mental deficiency” test in an attempt to prove they were unfit to reproduce. The practice was widespread until the 1970s, although numerous women have reported being coerced into the practice in recent times.
Justin Trudeau’s dad, Pierre Elliot Trudeau, supported eugenics and population “cleansing.” The Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation provided the initial foundation for the practice by highlighting the scientific achievement of genome sequencing and combining it with the potential for “reducing the burden of disease on themselves and on society as a whole.”

An excerpt on “Technology and Ethics” can be found on the Trudeau Foundation website:
"For some analysts, genetic tests, along with the 'genetic understanding of health' that they shape, reflect our society's focus on individual responsibility and productivity. In the words of Roxanne Mykitiuk, 'with genetic tests marketed as a kind of health-risk kit, individuals are being called upon to undertake self-surveillance in the name of reducing the burden of disease on themselves and on society as a whole,' and in doing so to maintain a 'disciplined order of productive citizens.'”

This thinking is identical to other current and past forms of governments that have actively sought to eliminate those who are not considered “productive citizens.” The aforementioned report concluded:
"One of the most significant and pervasive issues is the risk that these new technologies will give rise to new forms of discrimination, inequality, and violations of human dignities, such as discrimination on the basis of genetic characteristics or unequal access to genetic enhancements. Other potential adverse effects include irreparable damage to the environment and to human health and the human genome."
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/w...cs-300x237.jpg

Justin Trudeau is now following in his dad’s footsteps. Beginning in March 2023, Canada will expand its Medical Aid in Dying, or MAID, for people “whose sole underlying condition is depression, bipolar disorder, personality disorders, schizophrenia, PTSD or any other mental affliction.” There is no denying that mental disorders cause suffering – but do they call for government-aided suicide? This means that a vulnerable person suffering from a mental disorder, who may not be able to make a decision on their own, could be persuaded by a doctor to end their life. The measure also notes that “any other mental affliction” could be grounds for death by the government, which is more dystopian than anything George Orwell could have imagined.

Mental health providers stress that suicide is never an option. This bill is about voluntary eugenics, encouraged by healthcare providers, rather than public health.
Conveniently, Canada is implementing this measure after its COVID restrictions sent the nation into a mental health tailspin. Young Global Leader Trudeau is pushing forward the Great Reset and will likely call for universal healthcare. He considers these people a “burden” to his socialistic dreams as psychiatric conditions usually require lifelong care.

This is one of the evilest measures implemented by Justin Trudeau. He is persuading vulnerable Canadians to end their lives to create Schwab’s (Justin Trudeau does not have original ideas) dream Utopia where everyone will “be happy.”

Categories: Canada, Ethics
Tags: Canada, eugenics, Great Reset, MAID, suicide, The Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation, Trudeau
« Ketanji Brown Jackson is Neither a Biologist nor Fit for the Supreme Court

https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/i...m_campaign=RSS

Democrats Now Also Poking China The Covert Destruction Ahead

Blog/Politics

Posted Apr 7, 2022, by Martin Armstrong

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https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/w...ncy-Pelosi.jpg

China has bluntly warned that it would take strong measures if U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan. They have warned that such a visit would severely impact Chinese-U.S. relations. There is a strategy here to undermine BOTH Russia and China. Their three obstacles were Trump, Putin, and Xi. Trump was removed and now they are turning to Russia and China. They need to conquer both to reach their goal of a New World Order which they have boldly put forth at the 2022 World Government Summit.
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/w...wn-Nothing.jpg

Let me make this VERY clear. The Western Keynesian Economic Model is collapsing. Schwab’s claim that “You’ll own nothing. And you’ll be happy” is not a communist sales pitch. It is far more serious than that. Because the European Central Bank moved to negative interest rates back in 2014 and there has been NO stimulation ever achieved, they have kept European governments on life-support and wiped out all the pension funds that by law had to hold a portion of government bonds.
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/w...ankenstein.png

Governments will have NO choice but to default but if they do so, millions will be storming their castles with pitchforks. Schwab is pulling the LIFE Insurance scam. They sell fire insurance, accident insurance, flood insurance, and earthquake insurance, but they could not sell DEATH insurance so they then called it LIFE instead. Schwab is clever in saying we will eliminate all your debt makes it sound they are doing this for you when in fact they need to default.
These people are manufacturing WAR for two purposes: (1) they need war to impose more restrictions from digital currencies to IDs claiming vaccines, and (2) they actually think they can force Russia and China to comply with their Great Reset including climate change if not surrender sovereignty to the United Nations.
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/w...orts-lines.png

Let us make no mistake here, the Neocons have laid out the plan of using Ukraine to poke the Bear for two reasons. First, they really do think they can conquer Russia and they know that Putin is NOT the madman and is far more reasonable. They are counting on that assuming he will NOT turn to nuclear weapons and they will take over Russia and then turn on China. Second, this is also about ending energy flowing from Russia to Europe for the pipelines flow through Ukraine.
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/w...ent_Summit.png

At the Dubai 2022 World Government Summit, they included a panel discussion that included what energy would look like POST-Ukraine Crisis. They also had a panel entitled: Is the World Ready for a Future Beyond Oil? This is all intentional and we must understand that they are manufacturing war and this is all about creating the vision of a New World Order and they really do want to push the world into chaos. The plan is that then the United Nations will appear to be the Great Peace Maker to save humanity. But the herd is culled, tagged, and controlled. We all have our digital IDs, and there is no currency other than a government-controlled digital currency so they can eliminate all crime and any underground economy.
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/w...-Democracy.jpg

So while Biden is screaming this is a battle between Democracy & Authoritarianism, again it is propaganda for the end goal here is to eliminate our right to vote because they see us as TOO stupid to vote. The fact this is all bullshit since there is no democracy – we all live in a Republic with no right to vote on anything other than a person pretending to represent the people. This New World Order will eliminate any pretense of Democracy and we will not even have Constitutional Rights. War is needed to end our forms of human rights and Germany is about to pass MANDATORY vaccines for anyone 60 or older or you will be starved to death unable to ever leave your home – just die thank you!

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So now Pelosi was to go to Taiwan and stir up revolution as John McCain did in Ukraine promising America stands behind them. She was to deliver the same speech that Americans will defend Taiwan against China. They want another Proxy War to start now against China as Pelosi is crossing into the camp of Neocons like Hillary.



Categories: Politics
« Political Corruption – House of Cards
Pelosi Suddenly Tests COVID Positive Conv

https://www.reuters.com/business/rus...ce-2022-04-07/

https://www.forexfactory.com/thread/...ement?page=400

What's all this about?Does anyone read this crap?What are you selling?