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Unconventional War

May 24, 2024

Unconventional War

At home and abroad

War isn’t limited to tanks, aircraft carriers, and drones. Much of war is fought by unconventional means. Looking at last week’s headlines, it’s easy to conclude that war is already upon us and ramping up.

Consider what’s happening both at home and abroad, then look at the summary of unconventional warfare tactics below…

Some news from just the last week…

In Economic terms; “This is WW3”

In Kunstler’s latest Podcast episode, his guest, Jeff Rubin says,

“In economic terms this is World War 3. In 1960 4% of global GDP was subject to sanctions. Today, it’s almost 40% and at the rate we’re going it’ll soon be 50%.”

Europe Agrees to Give Russia’s Billions to Ukraine (msn.com)

  • The European Union on Tuesday approved a plan to hand Ukraine the profits generated by frozen Russian central bank assets.
  • “We have approved in the EU using revenues from Russia’s central bank’s frozen assets to help Ukraine,” wrote Lipavsky on X, formerly Twitter. “Up to €3B only this year, 90% goes for Ukraine’s military. Russia must pay for its war damages.”

Gold and sIlver prices continue record high runs (yahoo.com)

Alliances, Assassinations, Coup attempts, and color revolutions:

Putin Goes to China. Major takeaways

  1. “New Era” Partnership:
    • In a joint statement, Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged a “new era” of partnership between the two powerful rivals of the U.S.
    • They cast the U.S. as an aggressive Cold War hegemon sowing chaos worldwide.
    • Their shared opposition to the U.S. extends to security issues, Taiwan, Ukraine, North Korea, and cooperation on nuclear technologies and finance1.
  2. Signaling Priorities:
    • By choosing China for his first foreign trip after being sworn in for another six-year term, Putin emphasizes his priorities.
    • The red carpet welcome and personal ties with Xi underscore the strength of their partnership2.
  3. Grievances Against the U.S.:
  • Russia and China expressed concerns about U.S. actions:

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

What Would a New Civil War Look Like?

April 20, 2024

What Would a New Civil War Look Like?

Not Like the One You Learned In School

Editor’s Note: Today’s essay comes from Doug Casey’s longtime friend, Chris Weber. You might recognize his name because we often discuss his excellent newsletter during our podcasts. You can catch Doug and me discussing the latest issue here. And in the past here, here, and here. We love it.

Each issue of The Weber Report is filled with market insights you simply will not find anywhere else. Plus, it comes packed with historical insights, just like the article below, which Chris graciously allowed us to share with you.

For us, The Weber Report is a must read. To get a three-month introductory subscription, click here.

From Chris Weber in The Weber Report:

A new movie opened this past weekend in the U.S. called “Civil War”, it tries to show what would happen if a new civil war broke out in the U.S. This is not at all a far-fetched idea: at least 40% of Americans believe there will be one within the next decade. Clearly the groundwork has been laid for it over these past several years.

In America these days you hear a lot about people who once were friends but now hate each other. Or were families that now don’t speak except to yell. It’s like walking through a minefield, except for one thing: neither side knows very much. At least not much about facts concerning past civil wars.  To start with, they think we’ve only had one civil war before, and on this they couldn’t be more wrong.

Those many people who are so sure we’re going to have another civil war, they rarely have hard facts at their hand.  Ask them people what they actually know about the “Civil War”, and they’ll tell you some facts —mostly untrue— about the only civil war they know about.

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

Intentional Destruction

December 16, 2023

Intentional Destruction

First Covid, Now Comes “The Great Taking”

The Great Depression was a well-executed plan to seize assets, impoverish the population, and remake society. What comes next is worse..

A recent book by David Webb sheds new light on exactly what happened during the Great Depression. In Webb’s view, it was a set up.

Webb is a successful former investment banker and hedge fund manager with experience at the highest levels of the financial system. He published The Great Taking a few months ago, and recently supplemented it with a video documentary. Thorough, concise, comprehensible and FREE. Why? Because he wants everyone to understand what’s being done.

The Great Taking describes the roadmap to collapse the system, suppress the people, and seize all your assets. And it includes the receipts.

You Already Own Nothing

Webb’s book illustrates, among other things, how changes in the Uniform Commercial Code converted asset ownership into a security entitlement. The “entitlement” designation made personal property a mere contractual claim. The “entitled” person is a “beneficial” owner, but not the legal one.

In the event a financial institution is insolvent, the legal owner is the “entity that controls the security with a security interest.” In essence, client assets belong to the banks. But it’s much worse than that. This isn’t simply a matter of losing your cash to a bank bail-in. The entire financial system has been wired for a controlled demolition.

Webb describes in detail how the trap was set, and how the Great Depression provides precedent. In 1933, FDR declared a “Bank Holiday.” By executive order, banks were closed. Later, only those approved by the Fed were allowed to reopen.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

Russia’s Oil Output Could Peak In 2023

January 30, 2022

Russia’s Oil Output Could Peak In 2023

  • There are growing doubts as to whether Russia can grow petroleum production to the volumes forecast by Moscow.
  • The world’s third-largest oil producer’s output will continue growing, peaking at 12.2 million barrels per day by mid-2023, according to Rystad Energy.
  • A combination of extreme climate, rising depletion rates and U.S. sanctions potentially blocking access to investment is weighing on the development of hydrocarbon projects.

Russia, the world’s third-largest oil producer, has long been an unknown when it comes to the OPEC+ production agreement which caps the petroleum output of participants to support higher prices. It was Moscow’s spat with Saudi Arabia over production quotas in early 2020 which, combined with the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, caused crude oil prices to plunge into negative territory for the first time ever. The North American benchmark West Texas Intermediate plunged to minus $37.63 per barrel before recovering, while Brent did not enter negative territory the international benchmark, plunged to an intraday low of less than $15 per barrel. During that time Moscow, Riyadh and other OPEC+ signatories were finally able to agree on production quotas. However, Moscow’s economic ambitions remain a threat to the agreement’s firmness, particularly with Washington threatening further sanctions. With OPEC gradually expanding production quotas set out in the agreement confirmed at the 19th ministerial meeting, there is considerable speculation as to how much global petroleum supply will expand and how that will affect crude oil prices. A key point of conjecture is whether Russia can grow its crude oil output as planned and allowed by its OPEC+ quota, with it speculated that the world’s third-largest oil producer is operating at or near capacity. For December 2021 Russia, according to the Ministry of Energy, pumped an average of 10.903 million barrels of crude oil and gas condensate daily…

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

The End Of Venezuela’s Oil Era

November 20, 2021

The End Of Venezuela’s Oil Era

Venezuela, once Latin America’s largest oil producer and a founding member of OPEC, has seen its economically vital oil industry collapse triggering one of the worst economic and humanitarian crises of the century. The pain is far from over for Venezuela’s people and the country’s failing economy. Before 1920, Venezuela was a poor agricultural country facing many of the developmental issues plaguing Latin America. The country’s journey to becoming a crude oil superpower, leading petroleum state, and founding OPEC member began in 1914 with the drilling of the Zumaque well in the Mene Grande field on the eastern shores of Lake Maracaibo. This was Venezuela’s first commercial oil well and it launched a monumental oil boom that transformed the country and by 1950 saw it become the world’s fourth wealthiest nation per capita. Venezuela was not only heralded as Latin America’s richest nation but also its most developed. By the 1970s, the country, which is now a socialist dictatorship, was lauded as Latin America’s most stable democracy at a time when most nations in the region were ruled by military dictatorships. By the 1980s, Venezuela’s democracy was unraveling because of a global recession and sharply weaker oil prices. These events weighed heavily on the economy, and government spending, causing the country to spiral into debt. By the late-1980s Caracas had turned to the International Monetary Fund for help. The IMF recommended market-oriented neoliberal economic reforms including savage budget cuts, primarily impacting social programs such as public health and education. When these reforms were implemented by Caracas, they triggered considerable civil unrest. The reforms also sparked runaway inflation which only worsened the suffering of every-day Venezuelans. Those events illustrated the substantial dependence of Venezuela’s economy on oil and the country’s vulnerability to weaker prices…

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

U.S. Shale Companies Are Ready To Expand

February 11, 2018

U.S. Shale Companies Are Ready To Expand

Pipeline gauge

The latest oil rally, which sees crude trading at close to its highest point in three years, is sufficient to garner considerable attention from market pundits, industry insiders and investors alike. It has raised the ugly specter of a sharp uptick in U.S. oil production driven by the much-anticipated shale oil boom.

Yet, there are signs that the potential for U.S. shale oil companies to rapidly expand production and return to the boom years witnessed before the prolonged oil slump appears overblown.

There are a range of constraints poised to prevent the rapid production growth many mainstream analysts had been predicting.

It was only in early December last year that an MIT study was released concluding that the U.S. vastly overstates oil production forecasts and that the EIA has been exaggerating the effect of fracking technology on well productivity.

According to MIT research, the EIA assumes that regular improvements in drilling technology and well design are boosting output at new wells by around 10 percent, yet their own research shows that it is closer to 6.5 percent. That, along with the EIA’s own monthly production data, which shows that U.S. oil output between January and November 2017 grew at a far more modest monthly average of 1.3 percent, indicates that the EIA’s weekly forecasts could very well be overstating U.S. oil production.

In the past, the optimistic figures provided by the EIA have suppressed the price of West Texas Intermediate or WTI, and this in part has been one of the contributing factors to the significant premium that has existed between WTI and Brent.

Nevertheless, that premium is closing, having fallen from over $6 per barrel at the start of 2018 to less than $4 for the last week of January 2018 amid falling U.S. inventories.

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

Olduvai IV: Courage
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Olduvai II: Exodus
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