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Central banks are killing our currency to protect the already-rich

In our recent article It’s Time To Position For The Endgame, Chris Martenson explained how the US Federal Reserve and its sister central banks around the world have been engaged in the largest and most egregious wealth transfer in all of history — one that has been drastically exacerbated by the covid-19 pandemic.

The official response, tremendous monetary stimulus by the central banks paired with massive fiscal stimulus from national legislatures, has been pitched as “saving the system”.

Yet, in reality, it has merely served to accelerate the transfer of capital from the public into the pockets of the already-rich.

Anyone with eyes can see how the central banks have abandoned all pretense of monetary fiduciary responsibility and have simply cranked their printing presses up to “maximum”:

In concert with this surge of liquidity, national legislatures have added their own emergency measures. In the US alone, the CARES Act pushed nearly $3 trillion in fiscal stimulus into the system, and will highly likely soon be followed by another $1-3 trillion depending on which party’s bill gets passed.

Despite these staggering sums, the amount of money trickling into the average US household has been meager and is drying up.

Instead, these $trillions are mostly finding their way into the coffers and share prices of corporations. We have seen the fastest and most extreme V-shaped recovery in the history of the financial markets since the March swoon. The major indices are now back to record all-time-highs, despite the major carnage covid-19 has wreaked on the global economy.

So who benefits from that? Oh yeah, the people who own those companies. The already-rich.

Remember: 84% of all stocks are owned by the top 10% of households.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Positive Power of Emergencies

August 27, 2020

The Positive Power of Emergencies

Seth Klein discusses his new book on tackling the climate crisis like we’ve fought wars — and now the pandemic.

Called to the new fight. ‘What seemed politically impossible… can be quickly embraced,’ says Seth Klein, author of *A Good War: Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency*, which will be published on Sept. 1. Image credits: Joseph Sydney Hallam (left); Meital Smith (right).

Seth Klein spends a lot of time thinking about emergencies. Earlier this spring, the former director of the B.C. office of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives had just finished writing a book drawing lessons for fighting climate change from the country’s Second World War experience when the coronavirus hit. “Talk about awkward timing,” Klein recalls in A Good War: Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency, which will be published on Sept. 1.

But Klein quickly realized that the global pandemic made his book’s central argument more relevant than ever. Whether it’s a war against Nazi aggression, a deadly and infectious virus or a climate emergency irreversibly changing our country, collective dangers require swift and transformative action. They are opportunities to overhaul conventional wisdom.

“Once emergencies are truly recognized,” Klein writes, “what seemed politically impossible and economically off-limits can be quickly embraced.”

In a recent interview with The Tyee about his forthcoming book, which is currently available for pre-order, Klein expands on that argument, explaining how Canada’s $250-billion response to COVID-19 has shattered mainstream conceptions about what’s feasible for climate action. He discusses what the Second World War can teach us about reducing social inequality in the face of a crisis, and the crucial role Indigenous people have played in both our wartime efforts and our current battles on climate change.

Geoff Dembicki: Where does the interest in WWII come from? Because it doesn’t seem like you’re that much of a war person.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Peter Schiff: Government Tries to Replace the Economy With a Printing Press

August 25, 2020

Peter Schiff: Government Tries to Replace the Economy With a Printing Press

Peter Schiff recently spoke at the “virtual” Los Vegas Money Show and explained why we are near the endgame for the dollar.

Peter opened up his talk speculating that the Money Show could be close to the end of its run.

I think the money that most people have, or at least what they think is money isn’t going to be money much longer.”

What in the world is he talking about?

The looming dollar crisis.

The dollar is going to fall through the floor and inflation is going to ravish the United States. What’s about to happen is that the world is going to go off the dollar standard and go back to the gold standard. That is where we are headed.”

Peter warned that we’re about to see a loss of wealth on an unprecedented scale.

He reiterated that this isn’t about COVID-19. We were already on the cusp of a crisis. The coronavirus simply made it worse.

It’s one of many problems, but it’s not why we’re about to go through this massive economic collapse. But it is the monetary and fiscal policy response to COVID-19. The government’s cure is what’s going to kill the economy.”

In fact, the problems started long before the pandemic. As Peter reminds us, interest rate cuts and QE were already ongoing before the government shutdowns started last March. In fact, it goes back much further than that.

Everything the US government did in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis was a mistake. All the monetary policy was wrong. All the fiscal policy was wrong. As a consequence, we never actually recovered from that crisis.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

A Danish Journalist Arrived to Cover the TMX Pipeline. The Guard at YVR Decided to Deport Him

August 23, 2020

A Danish Journalist Arrived to Cover the TMX Pipeline. The Guard at YVR Decided to Deport Him

Kristian Lindhardt says Canada’s laws stifle press freedom afforded ‘during every crisis.’

Danish documentary-maker Kristian Lindhardt works with his country’s version of the CBC and has visited BC many times working on his documentary about the the Tsleil Waututh First Nation’s opposition to the TMX pipeline expansion. Photo: Supplied

When Danish journalist Kristian Lindhardt arrived at the Vancouver airport on Friday, he knew he would face additional levels of border scrutiny because of the coronavirus. Lindhardt wasn’t too concerned, though, because he has international press credentials from Denmark’s version of CBC and a statement from Chief Reuben George of the Tsleil-Waututh First Nation explaining that Lindhardt is here to report on the Trans Mountain pipeline. Lindhardt had also made all the necessary arrangements for a 14-day quarantine in Vancouver.

But just as Lindhardt was about to get through customs a border guard pulled him aside. The guard questioned him for hours and made him sign a document promising to fly back to Denmark today. “I asked what happens if I don’t sign them,” Lindhardt told The Tyee over the phone Saturday morning, just hours before his flight back to Europe was set to depart. “And he said he would detain me in a jail cell.”

The B.C. government currently deems “newspapers, television, radio, call centres, online news outlets and other media services” as essential work. But there is no direction from the federal government saying journalists must be let into the country, according to Green Party MP and former leader of the party Elizabeth May, who has looked into the issue. At the end of the day, it’s up to individual border guards to decide who can enter and who can’t.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Panic in Real Estate

August 21, 2020

Panic in Real Estate

COMMENT: I live in central West Texas, I am passing on to you the fact that there is a “rush” of sales in rural property’s. Houses with small amounts of land attached are “flying off of the shelves” so to speak. This is occurring throughout all of West Texas and in the Panhandle. The effort to getting out of the cities. Even cities as small as 25,000 is in full swing! People are well aware of the potential of what is in the near future and are not sitting around wondering what they should do.

They are acting!

REPLY: There is a massive exodus from California and New York in particular. Even in North New Jersey, houses are selling in just days and over asking prices for cash. People are bailing out of New York City in herds. Here in Florida, condos are selling as fast as they can get them up in St Petersbourg. These lockdowns and COVID restrictions that are insane in the major cities have set in motion a massive exodus that these authoritarians never anticipated. As they flex their muscles to try to make this so draconian over nothing, they are complete the cycle which has been pointing to the collapse of urbanization, and the rich will flee.

One of my favorite stories of the Sovereign Debt Crisis is the City of Mainz, in Germany, around 1440. The goldsmith Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press, which began the Printing Revolution that enabled the Renaissance to flourish with the printing press which could produce up to 3,600 pages per workday compared to the hand-copying by scribes which would produce only about 40 pages per day. The printing press then spread within several decades to over two hundred cities in a dozen European countries.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

What Kind of a World do We Want? (…really?)

August 18, 2020

What Kind of a World do We Want? (…really?)

Although this question is both enduring and familiar, its present urgency is fully accentuated in a typically brilliant, but viscerally terrifying, exposition by Noam Chomsky on the current frangible condition of the world, and its near-term prognosis. However, I am also reminded of the strapline from the International Permaculture Conference, held in London in 2015, offering the intention and perhaps the means for “Designing the world we want.”

Chomsky never pulls a punch, as he strikes at layer on peeling layer of mendacity and fragility, from a prevailing framework whose groans, under the cumulative stresses of “growth”, should be heard as cries of threatening systemic collapse. The intermeshing quality of the world’s many woes has been conveyed by the term “changing climate” (i.e. climate change per se being just one item on the list), and amid a morass of such magnitude, positives are apt to remain obscured and muffled. Thus acknowledged, there could hardly be a better time than now, for a recasting of the world, having decided how we want it to be, in the broadest context, while there is still sufficient residual integrity to the whole that change might yet be managed, and full collapse is not yet inevitable, or already crumbling out of our hands.

It is no surprise that Covid-19 is a principal feature on the current global stage, and is probably the major focus of our concerns and attentions just now. While we cannot know how exactly everything will pan out, it is likely that the virus will be with us for some time, and we are entering a period of “recalibration” rather than a Post-Covid “back to normal”. Hence, focussing more on local and community resilience increasingly seems to make sense. We will certainly need to share support with our family, neighbours and friends, in the time to come.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Lockdown Restrictions Are A Test To See How Much Tyranny Americans Will Accept

August 13, 2020

Lockdown Restrictions Are A Test To See How Much Tyranny Americans Will Accept

The pandemic lockdowns are a complicated issue, and that is absolutely deliberate. The point of 4^th Generation psychological warfare is to present the target individual or population with a hard choice – a no-win scenario. You are damned if you do and damned if you don’t. I often equate this to the key moves in a difficult chess game; your primary goal is to create a dual threat and force your opponent to sacrifice one piece over another in order to escape with the least amount of damage. Do this a few times and you have won the long game.

There are multiple aspects to the global pandemic which seem engineered to push our society to make “sacrificial decisions”. We can choose to sacrifice the lives of those that are susceptible to the virus, sacrifice our economy, or sacrifice many of our freedoms with the promise that the economy and lives will be protected. The easiest choice is always to give away a little more freedom. We’ll get it all back eventually…right?

Of course, we don’t actually get to “choose” anything when we play along with this game. 4^th Gen warfare is meant to eventually take IT ALL from the target population while making people think it was their choice to give those things away.

To be clear, it’s not only the pandemic being exploited as leverage to conjure these situations. The leftist riots are another example of a bought and paid for crisis that is being used in an attempt to convince half of Americans that breaking constitutional principles and instituting unprecedented government power is somehow an acceptable sacrifice. The riots and the virus response work hand-in-hand; one is created to get leftists to demand totalitarianism in the name of public safety, the other is created to get conservatives to demand totalitarianism in the name of public safety.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Never Before Has So Much Stimulus Been Injected In The Economy In A Single Quarter

July 21, 2020

Never Before Has So Much Stimulus Been Injected In The Economy In A Single Quarter

Pandemic-Driven Recession Is Not Over

Back-to-back strong monthly gains in retail sales in May and June and a powerful rebound in the equity markets in Q2 create the impression the recession is over. But the recessionary environment is only delayed, hidden by the record amount of fiscal and monetary stimulus that has postponed layoffs, spending cutbacks, bankruptcies, and business failures and operating losses.

The pandemic crisis is unique in that it involves public health, finance, and economics. An all-out policy package of fiscal and monetary stimulus helped finance recover and the economy to rebound. However, a pandemic-driven recession runs on its own timeline and is unaffected by the scale of stimulus. The new wave of COVID cases could quickly trigger a shift in investor sentiment from optimism to pessimism as the rebound in corporate earnings is postponed.

Record Output Loss & Record Stimulus

According to the latest GDP NOW report from the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, Q2 GDP is estimated to have declined 35% at an annualized rate. That would be 4x times larger than the prior record decline of 8.4% annualized in Q4 2008.

Quarterly dollar estimates of GDP are reported on an annual rate basis. So assuming the GDP NOW estimate is close to the mark, Q2 Nominal GDP would fall below the $20 trillion (or $ 5 trillion for the quarter), a level last seen in 2017.

$5 trillion in nominal output (and income) in Q2 would essentially match the record amount of fiscal and monetary stimulus that hit the economy in the period.

According to my estimates, the combination of federal stimulus payments to individuals (i.e., stimulus checks to individuals, additional unemployment benefits to a broader range of workers never before eligible and other programs) plus the expansion of Federal Reserve Balance sheet amounted to an increase of approximately $5 trillion in aggregate fiscal and monetary stimulus over the three months ending in June (see chart).

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Too Much Faith in Models

July 16, 2020

Too Much Faith in Models

Source: AP Photo/Jae C. Hong

Between 2 million and 3 million Americans will die!

That was the prediction from “experts” at London’s Imperial College when COVID-19 began. They did also say if there was “social distancing of the whole population,” the death toll could be cut in half, but 1.1 million to 1.46 million Americans would still die by this summer.

Our actual death toll has been about one-tenth of that.

Nevertheless, Imperial College’s model was extremely influential.

Politicians issued stay-at-home orders. They said we must trust the “experts.”

“Follow the science. Listen to the experts. Do what they tell you,” said Joe Biden, laughing at what he considered an obvious truth.

But “there is no such thing as “the science!” replies science reporter Matt Ridley in my new video about “expert” predictions. “Science consists of people disagreeing with each other!”

The lockdowns, he adds, were “quite dangerously wrong.”

Because Imperial’s model predicted that COVID-19 would overwhelm hospitals, patients were moved to nursing homes. The coronavirus then spread in nursing homes.CARTOONS | STEVE BREEN VIEW CARTOON

Ordering almost every worker to stay home led to an economic collapse that may have killed people, too.

“The main interventions that helped prevent people dying were stopping large gatherings, people washing their hands and wearing face masks, general social distancing — not forcing people to stay home,” says Ridley.

Even New York Governor Andrew Cuomo now admits: “We all failed at that business. All the early national experts: ‘Here’s my projection model.’ They were all wrong.”

If he and other politicians had just done just a little research, then they would have known that Imperial College researchers repeatedly predict great disasters that don’t happen. Their model predicted 65,000 deaths from swine flu, 136,000 from mad cow disease, and 200 million from bird flu.

The real numbers were in the hundreds.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

As coronavirus surges in Hong Kong, mysterious pneumonia hits Kazakhstan – is this a new pandemic?

July 12, 2020

As coronavirus surges in Hong Kong, mysterious pneumonia hits Kazakhstan – is this a new pandemic?

(Natural News) Even as one of Asia’s major financial hubs braces for a resurgence of Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) cases, a potential new threat looms as a deadly new pneumonia has broken out in the center of the continent.

In Hong Kong, authorities have closed schools and tightened social distancing requirements after a new surge of coronavirus cases struck the territory. According to education secretary Kevin Yeung, the decision was taken due to “the exponential growth of confirmed COVID-19 local cases over the past two days.”

While Hong Kong is grappling with its new surge, Chinese officials have also warned that a new, “unknown pneumonia,” has broken out in Kazakhstan – one that apparently has a higher death rate than COVID-19).

Hong Kong experiences its largest outbreak yet

Hong Kong’s latest outbreak of 147 new COVID-19 cases is small compared to outbreaks in the U.S. or Europe. For a territory that has largely kept its infection rate low, however, it represents one of the largest spikes since the pandemic began. (Related: Air travelers hiding coronavirus infections to get into Hong Kong highlight reopening risks.)

In response, Hong Kong’s Education Bureau has ordered the closure of secondary and primary schools as well as kindergartens, starting on Monday. Meanwhile, the Food and Health Bureau announced new social distancing measures for bars and restaurants. The new measures included limiting customers per table to eight and four, respectively.

“As society needs to resume some economic and social activities to a limited extent, it is inevitable that new local cases will appear,” Sophia Chan, secretary for food and health, said.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Our conversation with a coronavirus

July 8, 2020

Our conversation with a coronavirus

We have all been flummoxed by the way in which the coronavirus called COVID-19 has behaved as if it has agency in the world. We say it “moves,” “adapts,” “evades,” and “tricks us.” We attribute an intelligence to it. We marvel at its ability to manifest itself in so many ways. And everywhere we read COVID-19 is an enemy, an invader, and a killer, one that uses stealth to spread itself. We must defeat it, wipe it out, and eradicate it.

Many places on the internet we are implored to understand COVID-19 in order to stay safe—but only until such time as we vanquish this foe of humankind with a vaccine.

It occurs to very few people that we might be in a conversation with this coronavirus which is transmitting information to us by its actions and responding to our actions with its own reactions.

The rise of antibiotic resistance is another reminder that we are, in fact, in dialogue with the natural world. Everywhere—after centuries of practicing an ideology that claims we humans can control nature and with the right tools always and everywhere bend it to our will—we are being reminded that we are part of nature, that we are, in fact, organisms in an environment.

The modern environmental movement reintroduced the idea that we humans must align ourselves with the natural world or perish. But much of that movement is now focused on technical fixes such as electric cars designed to enable humans to live pretty much as they have been in the recent past.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The epidemic in the US: a comment by the virologist Guido Silvestri

July 1, 2020

The epidemic in the US: a comment by the virologist Guido Silvestri

Many have noted the spike in the number of coronavirus cases observed in the United States. The fear is, obviously, that this increase will result in a corresponding spike in the number of deaths after some delay. The virologist Guido Silvestri wrote a comment in Italian on Facebook about the situation and I thought it was interesting to translate it in its entirety and post it here. This translation is made by smoothing a Google-translated text and it remains rough, but I verified that it maintains the meaning of the original. This text was written a few days ago and, so far, we saw no large changes in the trends of cases and deaths in the US. But, as Dr. Silvestri himself says, we need to wait a few more days in order to see if the spike will continue and result in an increase in the number of victims. On this subject, see also this post by Chuck Pezhensky.

COVID-19: SITUATION IN AMERICABy Guido Silvestri
June 28 at 7:51 AM

Many ask me to talk about the situation of the COVID-19 epidemic in the US. I try in these lines to start from the data, without making political considerations. Science, always science, and very strongly science, as you and I like it 🙂

First of all, I would start from the curve that you see in the graph, above. Today (28 June), it was the second-highest day in terms of number of cases (yesterday was the highest ever). So it is clear that we are in full pandemic with many new cases diagnosed, especially in the large southern states (CA, TX, AR, FL, GA etc). Not that it is a subject not discussed at length, but it is good to start from these data.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Nature’s antivirals: Top 5 antiviral agents that help boost immune health

June 21, 2020

Nature’s antivirals: Top 5 antiviral agents that help boost immune health

(Natural News) Scientists are scrambling to fast-track a cure for COVID-19, the highly infectious respiratory disease that’s still currently spreading throughout the globe.

In fact, the World Health Organization (WHO) has been conducting clinical trials for a potential COVID-19 drug since April, but to no effect.

Based on recent reports, the international clinical trial team tasked to develop an effective treatment for COVID-19 has stopped conducting tests on hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), a drug used to treat malaria. This development came about after scientists found that HCQ failed to reduce the mortality rate in hospitalized COVID-19 patients.

Natural antiviral agents

The infectious disease may still be at large, but according to recent reports from the online statistics portal Statista, more than 4.5 million people of the 8.58 million confirmed global cases had recovered from the disease as of June 19.

This astounding figure indicates that it’s possible to recover from the disease despite the lack of a specialized drug or vaccine. For the most part, recovery can be attributed to a strong immune response to infection and disease.

Studies suggest that immune health is largely influenced by diet. For instance, eating foods rich in essential nutrients and potent plant compounds can help enhance immune health. But some do a better job of boosting immune functions and fighting off pathogens than others.

Here are some of the most potent all-natural immune boosters that can help protect against infection and disease:

Vitamin C

Vitamin C is hailed for its immune-boosting properties. Considered a potent antioxidant, this micronutrient has been found to strengthen cells and tissues against pathogens and to stimulate the production of disease-fighting antibodies and immune cells.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Pandemic, Economic Collapse, Full Societal Breakdown

June 6, 2020

Pandemic, Economic Collapse, Full Societal Breakdown

“And the will of Zeus was moving towards its end.” – Homer

Symbiotic Disharmony

The recline and flail of western civilization beats on. Pandemic, economic collapse, full societal breakdown. The sequence grooves from one to the next with the symbiotic disharmony of a minor pentatonic scale.

Peaceful protests devolved to rioting, looting, and structure fires in our own lowly hamlet last Sunday. The Long Beach police couldn’t stop the vandals. So the National Guard was summoned to quell the ransacking. Some Guardsmen even stuck around to help out with the cleanup effort the following day.

The refrain – pandemic, economic collapse, full societal breakdown – has been repeated in many cities across the country. For each: The time is now. The place is here.

The progression from government pandemic lockdown orders to government curfew orders has been as natural as day to night and back again. The difference between the two is subtle; like the difference between ketchup and catsup. The main variance is the local authorities, in what must be an act of public service, now spam our mobile phone each afternoon with warnings to not venture out past curfew.

The events of the last weeks and months have been well covered. We’ll leave the ongoing documentation tasks to those better qualified. Instead, we’ll take a step back and look around. Our aim today is to better understand what’s going on…so we may better anticipate – and plan for – what’s next.

Where to begin?

Human Stampedes

The mass impulse of a cattle stampede can be triggered by something as innocuous as a blowing tumbleweed. A sudden startle, or a perceived threat, is all it takes to setoff this mass uncontrolled running. Once the herd collectively begins charging in one direction it’ll eliminate everything in its path.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Understanding Our Pandemic – Economy Predicament

May 14, 2020

Understanding Our Pandemic – Economy Predicament

The world’s number one problem today is that the world’s population is too large for its resource base. Some people have called this situation overshoot. The world economy is ripe for a major change, such as the current pandemic, to bring the situation into balance. The change doesn’t necessarily come from the coronavirus itself. Instead, it is likely to come from a whole chain reaction that has been started by the coronavirus and the response of governments around the world to the coronavirus.

Let me explain more about what is happening.

[1] The world economy is reaching Limits to Growth, as described in the book with a similar title.

One way of seeing the predicament we are in is the modeling of resource consumption and population growth described in the 1972 book, The Limits to Growth, by Donella Meadows et al. Its base scenario seems to suggest that the world will reach limits about now. Chart 1 shows the base forecast from that book, together with a line I added giving my impression of where the economy really was in 2019, relative to resource availability.

Figure 1. Base scenario from 1972 Limits to Growth, printed using today’s graphics by Charles Hall and John Day in “Revisiting Limits to Growth After Peak Oil,” with dotted line added corresponding to where the world economy seems to be have been in 2019.

In 2019, the world economy seemed to be very close to starting a downhill trajectory. Now, it appears to me that we have reached the turning point and are on our way down. The pandemic is the catalyst for this change to a downward trend. It certainly is not the whole cause of the change. If the underlying dynamics had not been in place, the impact of the virus would likely have been much less.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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