My book “The Financial Jigsaw” has now been accepted and published at my academic network. Scroll down and Hit: ‘View Full Text’ button for the complete book: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/358117070_THE_FINANCIAL_JIGSAW_-_PART_1_-_4th_Edition_2020 I will be pleased to email a free PDF on request to: [email protected].
THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK: What causes Wokeness?
Jesus warned his disciples against such playacting: “Take good care not to practice your righteousness in front of men in order to be observed by them; otherwise you will have no reward with your Father who is in the heavens.”—Matthew 6:1. https://summit.news/2022/07/22/john-cleese-blasts-wokeness-as-the-death-of-creativity/
And nothing is more illustrative of our current ‘snowflake- victim’ culture than this mournful cringe from Nicky Campbell who revealed the abuse he had suffered at his public school – he did so in an interview recently with Alex Renton. Yes Nicky, the real world is not fair (whoever said it was), it is abusive and ‘red in tooth and claw’ – get used to it.
I went to boarding school, enjoyed every minute and took the beatings, but I am not about to squeal like a stuck pig over long-passed injustices. And it seems Rishi Sunak has come to a similar conclusion: “With Liz Truss the firm favourite ahead of a critical few days in the leadership contest, and ballot papers set to be received by Conservative party members from Monday, Sunak gives a speech attacking “woke nonsense”.
However the ‘woke’ promoters, fuelled by Millennials and Gen Z, will soon to get a nasty dose of reality: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jul/29/rishi-sunak-liz-truss-culture-war-woke-nonsense
AND furthermore our enlightened Attorney General, Suella Braverman, says that diversity zealots have created a dangerous new religion – we must get serious about taking them on: https://www.mailplus.co.uk/edition/news/news-comment/208578/suella-braverman-diversity-zealots-have-created-a-dangerous-new-religion-we-must-get-serious-about-taking-them-on
BREAKING BAD NEWS: This autumn we could see ‘interesting times’ as the Chinese saying has it. Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan this week prodded the sleeping Dragon. China has announced missile tests and military drills in response to US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s arrival in Taiwan on Tuesday night. Not content to poke two fingers into Putin’s eyes, the US is looking to take on all Eastasia. As an unprecedented four days of Chinese drills begin, Taiwan’s military says it is “preparing for war without seeking war”. And to many in the region, the visit was a diplomatic misstep with unknowable consequences from the start.
Caitlin Johnson says: “There will be political pressure in Beijing to escalate tensions with the US so as not to look weak, and the intensity of the new cold war has certainly been ratcheted up a notch, but when it comes to hot war it looks like humanity’s better angels have prevailed for now. None of this makes it acceptable for the world’s most powerful government to send a politician whose brains are leaking out her ears to try to stir up hostilities under cover of its military forces.” https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2022/08/03/the-us-military-was-just-used-to-help-a-dementia-patient-try-to-start-ww3/
There have been continual wars for the past 50 years and USNATO have failed in all of them. “The fall of Saigon was followed by the loss of Laos and Cambodia to communism, the overthrow of the shah, the Iranian hostage crisis, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the strategic transfer of Ethiopia, Angola, Mozambique, Nicaragua and Grenada to the Soviet bloc, and the rise of Euro-communism on the Old Continent.” Not to mention the failures in Iraq, Yemen, Yugoslavia, Syria, and Libya all left with continued simmering discontent together with sundry belligerents in West Africa. If this should lead to a U.S.-China war, what would we be fighting for? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qPUJhy0Dz4
And what would victory look like anyway? Would it be a restoration of the status quo ante? Could it be permanent independence for Taiwan, which would require a new and permanent war guarantee by the U.S. and a new U.S.-Taiwan defence pact? Would a permanent commitment fighting to defend Taiwan from China be acceptable to an American people weary of internal division and ‘poxy’ wars? My generation had many protests and powerful music finally putting an end to the Vietnam disaster. Maybe the slumbering young generations of today will awaken before it’s too late and our geriatric Boomers lead us into yet more conflicts. Pat Buchanan asks: “Is Taiwan’s independence worth war?https://buchanan.org/blog/is-taiwans-independence-worth-war-159549
HOWEVER THE GOOD NEWS comes in a story from America which gladdens my heart, having lived on a boat for some years in the past, I celebrate the indomitable human spirit in our ability, at least at sea, to cooperate, innovate and adapt to prevailing conditions:
“Taylor explained that when she and her husband lost their jobs during the pandemic — renting a $1,100 single-family home became unaffordable. The couple has reduced monthly expenses from $2,000 to $400. “Since we moved into the shed, we’ve become really financially stable, and we’re getting close to being debt-free,” Taylor added. Their excess savings allowed them to expand the shed’s footprint.”
“More and more people are breaking free from the mind-set that you have to have the big expensive, fancy house to feel like they’re making it,” said Taylor, adding, “there’s value in living modestly. We can spend more time together gardening and enjoying nature rather than working to afford lavish accommodations.” [Spoiler alert: American ‘sheds’ are BIG not what is defined as a ‘shed’ in Britain]: https://www.zerohedge.com/personal-finance/family-six-moves-toolshed-escape-inflation-storm Lessons and guidance for 2023?
BRITAIN’S POLITICAL PLAYGROUND of shouting and jeering continues ad nauseam; the protagonists resemble a pair of fighting cocks as some watch the feathers fly. Bloody and wounded as they are, especially Rishi Sunak – losing in the polls. The former chancellor’s wealth was the focus of attacks this week with his taste for pricey bespoke tailoring and fancy footwear. I can now only sift through the debris and leave you with my passing thoughts until the 5th September decision announces the winner.
The battle scars remain tender from earlier in the year when it was revealed that Sunak’s wife used non-domicile status to minimise her tax bill. That was not a good optics for any chancellor, and his peevish reaction misread the national mood. Around the same time, it emerged that he had a Green Card, bestowing a right to settle in the US in case his ambitions to conquer British politics should falter. I have a feeling there is a hidden agenda backed by the banking mafia. It isn’t news that Tory cabinet ministers are rich. The party members who will elect a new leader are not traditionally hostile to the idea that moneyed people have nice stuff.
But Sunak’s political vulnerability on this front is more subtle. The attack is more insidious; the implied offence is not being rich, but belonging to an elite – and not just any elite: a global financial elite; an intercontinental first-class lounge elite; a Davos-man, WEF elite; a Remainer elite – a “citizen of nowhere”, to borrow a poisonous phrase from Theresa May.
The fact that Sunak voted to leave the EU is irrelevant to this insinuation, just as it matters not one whit that Truss campaigned for Remain, as Sunak was eager to remind the audience of both facts at every opportunity.
The toxic division in the Tory party, on full display at the hustings, is exemplified by Truss’s refusal to speak ill of Johnson. Pressed on the reasons for the incumbent Prime Minister’s resignation, she voiced almost as much sorrow about it as he plainly feels for himself wherever he’s hiding.
That is a tactical appeal to those Johnson loyalists who see Sunak’s resignation as the most treacherous of all the ministerial blows that felled their champion. What is left of the old Tory party is backing the assassin. Sunak appealed directly to that faction by lamenting Truss’s departure from prudence as a misguided promise that “we can have our cake and eat it” – in Johnson’s favourite parlance.
“We are having a really serious discussion,” Truss said at one point, which is the sort of thing that only needs asserting when the opposite is true. It is not a real debate. This is not a safe way to choose a Prime Minister; neither is it a healthy way to run a country.
STAGFLATION – Do I see a RECESSION or not? Well, if you’re Joe Biden you can always change the definition – bingo – there’s no recession in sight; but does it really matter what economists say? In common with climate ‘scientists’ and health ‘experts’, they have their own agenda and they are not about to let you know the truth.
All the actors involved in governing the British economy and its lack of fiscal discipline have failed in every way over many years and have merely obscured the final destination. It cannot be denied that our rulers have lost control and even the central financial guru offers no solutions, just the same old playbook which hasn’t ever worked in the past. Here is the disaster in detail: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11080611/Bank-England-hikes-rates-1-75.html
BUT Philip Pilkington says it doesn’t matter because there are bigger changes afoot. “What is going on? Simply put, the West is getting poorer. We are seeing two things at once. First of all, policymakers have lost the plot and started intervening heavily into the economy with lockdowns and various other policies that destroy the supply-side of the economy.
Secondly, we are seeing an enormous geopolitical shift centered around the war in Ukraine. The old model where the rich West runs large trade deficits with the poorer developing countries in exchange for worthless paper is coming to an end. We are exacerbating this transition by engaging in self-destructive sanctions policies that interfere with markets in everything from energy to fertiliser.
In a few words: the West is in decline and our leaders are greatly accelerating and exacerbating this decline. They can cover this up with redundant arguments about what is and isn’t a recession for so long. But at some point either the inflation will get worse — perhaps by gas shortages in Europe this winter — and/or the unemployment rate will spike. At that point, the underlying dynamics will become too obvious to ignore; for politicians and the general public anyway. Economists will likely find some other redundant nuance to debate and distract.” https://macrocosm.substack.com/p/is-this-or-is-this-not-a-recession?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
INFLATION WATCH: It’s going to get worse before it gets better. The Bank of England had really bad news on Thursday. It’s unusual for a central bank to be this blatant about forecasts, so I fear it’s probably worse than they are saying. Stagflation (rising inflation with falling growth) is the worst of all worlds and very difficult to correct.
“The Bank of England has raised the base rate to 1.75% as predicted – the sixth consecutive rise – taking it to the highest level since the global financial crisis. CPI inflation is expected to rise more than forecast in the May Report, from 9.4% in June to just over 13% in 2022 Q4, and to remain at very elevated levels throughout much of 2023, before falling to the 2% target two years ahead.” And by ‘two years ahead’ it might finally be called a depression as noted below: https://www.yourmoney.com/saving-banking/billpayers-face-financial-catastrophe-as-base-rate-rises-to-1-75/
COLLAPSE MONITOR: The coming Great Depression II is a natural process (not an event) as I have often explained: https://austrianpeter.substack.com/p/the-financial-jigsaw-part-2-the-end?s=w
AND Gail Tverberg agrees that energy is the life-blood of the global economy, offering a further in-depth description about what and why it is happening today. She opens with these paragraphs: “It is my view that when energy supply falls, it falls not because reserves “run out.” It falls because economies around the world cannot afford to purchase goods and services made with energy products and using energy products in their operation. It is really a price problem. Prices cannot be simultaneously high enough for oil producers (such as Russia and Saudi Arabia) to ramp up production and remain low enough for consumers around the world to buy the goods and services that they are accustomed to buying.
We are now in a period of price conflict. Oil and other energy prices have remained too low for producers since at least mid-2014. At the same time, depletion of fossil fuels has led to higher costs of extraction. Often, the tax needs of governments of oil exporting countries are higher as well, leading to even higher required prices for producers if they are to continue to produce oil and raise their production. Thus, producers truly require higher prices.
Governments of countries affected by this inflation in price are quite disturbed: Higher prices for energy products mean higher prices for all goods and services. This makes citizens very unhappy because wages do not rise to compensate for this inflation. Prices today are high enough to cause significant inflation (about $107 per barrel for Brent oil (Europe) and $97 for WTI (US)), but still not high enough to satisfy the high-price needs of energy producers.
It is my expectation that these and other issues will lead to a very strangely behaving world economy in the months and years ahead. The world economy we know today is, in fact, a self-organizing system operating under the laws of physics. With less energy, it will start “coming apart.” World trade will increasingly falter. Fossil fuel prices will be volatile, but not necessarily very high. In this post, I will try to explain some of the issues I see.” Here is Gail’s essay in full: https://ourfiniteworld.com/2022/07/28/the-worlds-self-organizing-economy-can-be-expected-to-act-strangely-as-energy-supplies-deplete/
HOWEVER, the progress of economic decline could have been gradual allowing time for humanity to adapt to a new economic and global financial paradigm. Regrettably this will not be the case now because the globalist elites, who have command and control over our systems, will not allow it – they are accelerating the transition in order to secure and maintain their own privileged status quo through UN AGENDA 2030 and associated WEF, WHO, WTO, IMF, World Bank, et al programmes networked with global corporations, NGOs and government institutions.
At the beginning of the 20th century the oil cartel found a way to control the U.S. financial system by the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913 (It is neither Federal nor a Reserve; it is privately owned by the cartel). The Rockefeller and Rothschild families have been powerbrokers in the banking industry ever since.
They are now consolidating control over the global food supply, using philanthropy as their cover. The Rockefeller Foundation funded the ‘Green Revolution’ which quickly transformed agriculture, both in the U.S. and worldwide. They also funded the “gene revolution” offering patentable genetically modified seeds. The Rockefeller Foundation is part of The Great Reset agenda, which seeks to gain total control over every person in the world — financially, medically, physically and psychologically.
Many people remain unaware of The Great Reset and what it actually entails. The concept of “mass formation hypnosis” as a credible explanation for the Lockstep insanity we saw during the first two years of the scamdemic, with 30% of the population completely hypnotized and unable to see or accept the truth. Around 30% never fell for the propaganda, with the remainder undecided, which go along to get along, and stay blissfully ignorant of the danger.
Here is the ROCKEFELLER LOCKSTEP 2010 plan in summary but note that it contains an inherent weakness,: ‘the need for our compliance’, and they are off-track at present because of our growing resistance and non-compliance.
THE NARRATIVE BATTLE: I see the WHO is not giving up without a fight. It has appointed arch-doom-monger, and fully paid-up Communist, Susan Michie (she’s not a doctor), who did so much to promote widespread fear during COVID-19, to chair its psychological nudge unit (a.k.a. the Technical Advisory Group for Behavioural Insights and Science for Health). The problem with Prof. Michie is that she is not a public health expert, she is not medically trained, and she is not and never has been a scientist. She is a psychologist and the type of research she has been involved in is wholly unscientific. From a year ago, in hindsight listen to the BS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ouxvup-2Cic
A PLEA FOR PEACE IN THE WORLD: “IF I DON’T KNOW – I CAN’T ACT” – Information and knowledge should be free to everyone. Those less fortunate, who are unable to pay, are often those most in need. MAKING A DONATION will spread knowledge and understanding far and wide and empower humanity to keep the peace: https://www.gofundme.com/f/fnahvp-free-book
UNTIL NEXT WEEK: Tell Your Truth– Gently; Don’t Comply – Gently: Laugh At Them – Gently: SPREAD THE WORD: YOUR DAILY COVID NEWS (cmnnews.org)
