Not Dead Yet,
Ellen Brown has been reading and thinking about the same fall-of-the-petrobuck issues as I have, and reading a lot of the same essays and authors. Thanks Dan.
(Do keep a lookout for anything by Sergei Glazyev, Russia’s foremost independent economist and former advisor to V. Putin.)
I leap to her conclusion that the $US losing global reserve currency status (we assume) is a blessing in disguise for the real American economy, and it will be, but not for Americans who live on limited and fixed incomes, like retirees. The $US must lose about 75% of its current buying power to re-equilibrate, and to pay off the 120% of GDP that the federal government now owes.
How will people live if their Social Security check is worth half of what it is now?
The cost-of-living-adjustments are designed to not-keep-up with inflation, as we know.
I will point out , as does Ms. Brown, that moving away from the for-private-profit "Federal Reserve" banking system, to a national central bank, not for profit, and representing national economic interests, would greatly soften that blow. (Digital currency is the threat to individual free choice.)
Exorbitant Privilege or Exorbitant Burden?
If that (global commodity linked reserve currency) system succeeds, what will the effect be on the U.S. economy? Investment strategist Lynn Alden writes in a detailed analysis titled “The Fraying of the US Global Currency Reserve System” that there will be short-term pain, but, in the long run, it will benefit the U.S. economy. The subject is complicated, but the bottom line is that reserve currency dominance has resulted in the destruction of our manufacturing base and the buildup of a massive federal debt. Sharing the reserve currency load would have the effect that sanctions are having on the Russian economy – nurturing domestic industries as a tariff would, allowing the American manufacturing base to be rebuilt.
Other commentators also say that being the sole global reserve currency is less an exorbitant privilege than an exorbitant burden. Losing that status would not end the importance of the U.S. dollar, which is too heavily embedded in global finance to be dislodged. But it could well mean the end of the petrodollar as sole global reserve currency, and the end of the devastating petroleum wars it has funded to maintain its dominance.
The Russian Ruble is still weaker against the $US than it was before the (still present) 2014 sanctions, but stronger thanit was 5 months ago..
Despite sanctions the ruble is stronger than before the war. Why?
Graph of Ruble to Dollar over time:
Michael Hudson closes his most recent currency WW-3 analysis with this (and yes, what will support the Euro going forward?):
From its planning stages, U.S. diplomatic strategists viewed the looming World War III as a war of economic systems. What side will countries choose: their own economic interest and social cohesion, or submission to local political leaders installed by U.S. meddling like the $5 billion that Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland bragged of having invested in Ukraine’s neo-Nazi parties eight years ago to initiate the fighting that has erupted into today’s war?
In the face of all this political meddling and media propaganda, how long will it take the rest of the world to realize that there’s a global war underway, with World War III on the horizon? The real problem is that by the time the world understands what is going on, the global fracture will already have enabled Russia, China and Eurasia to create a real non-neoliberal New World Order that does not need NATO countries and which has lost trust and hope for mutual economic gains with them.
Boycott Russia! ,,, Look, It's a Squirrel!
In the past week, the US administration has increased its imports of Russian oil by 43%, reaching 100,000 barrels a day. To really beat PUTIN you must starve, freeze, and never drive or fly. Pepe Escobar has some details.
Vast swathes of NATOstan have been corralled into behaving like a Russophobic lynch mob. No dissent is tolerated. The full psyops has de facto upgraded the Empire of Lies to the status of Empire of Hate in a Total War – hybrid and otherwise – to cancel Russia... “Europe has chosen its fate. And chose fate for Russia. What you are seeing now is the death of Europe. Even if it does not come to nuclear strikes on industrial centers, Europe is doomed. In a situation where European industry is left without cheap Russian energy sources and raw materials – and China will begin to receive these same energy carriers and raw materials at a discount, there can be no talk of any real competition with China from Europe. As a result, literally everything will collapse there – after industry, agriculture will collapse, welfare and social security will collapse, hunger, banditry and chaos will begin.”... Bucha allowed the disappearance of Pentagon bioweapon labs from the Western mediasphere, complete with its ramifications: evidence of a concerted American drive to ultimately deploy real weapons of mass destruction against Russia...
[This is WW-3 between 2 global economic models. May the better model "win" for awhile.]
What may be seriously in dispute is whether the U.S., after “the economic conquest of Europe”, will be able to “lock in African, South American and Asian countries”. The Eurasia integration process, rolling in earnest for 10 years now, conducted by the Russia-China strategic partnership and expanding to most of the Global South, will go no holds barred to prevent it.
Moon of Alabama has the story of a Ukrainian army missile, fired from Ukrainian held territory, that killed a lot of people at a train station, and is blamed on Russia, which has not had any of these outdated missiles for years. Parts 1 and 2. Lots of clear details, maps and photographs.
Ukrainian Tochka-U Missile Killed Dozens At Kramatorsk Train Station
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2022/04/a-ukrainian-tochka-u-missile-killed-dozens-at-kramatorsk-train-station.html#more
The publicly available evidence shows that the Ukrainian military must have fired the missile that killed some 50 Ukrainian civilians in Kramatorsk.
The only purpose of the attack I can think of was to create propaganda that, when distributed as 'Russian attack' through 'western' media, will create more military support for Ukraine.
Everyone who urges to give more arms to the Ukraine or who eggs it on to continue this war is guilty of creating impetus for more incidents like the one seen in Kramatorsk.
Russian military won't answer the phone these days, but it's ok, this news video from yesterday proves that General Cloutier was safely in Turkey and not captured in Mariupol, so there's really nothing to talk about, anyway. (The commenters are unkind to the nice young man who proves Cloutier is OK in Turkey.)
Veterans Today is sticking with the story that General Cloutier has not been produced in the flesh by the Pentagon, so presumably remains a Russian Prisoner Of (not)War:
On US relations with Pakistan over the decades, and recent attempts to unseat the recently elected nationalist Prime Minister:
“To be an enemy of America can be dangerous, but to be a friend is fatal.” — Henry Kissinger... The irony is that the US does not want to be a friend of Pakistan, nor does it allow any other country to be friendly with Pakistan. To understand American mentality, the above-quoted saying of Henry Kissinger is a perfect example. The US might succeed in punishing Prime Minister Imran Khan, but the narrative he has left among the youth of this nation will remain alive. Pakistan will not bow to any foreign power and will resist any pressure and coercion. The US has been exposed and lost its credibility as a sincere friend. The US is neither friend nor well-wisher of any country or nation.
Jim Kunstler with perspective from the unhealthy core of empire:
Why ... is the head of the CDC, one Rochelle Walensky, still telling the public to vaxx-up and boost when the number of really grave adverse events associated with said vaxxes is so out-of-this-world, compared with previous vaxxes, that liability lawyers from sea to shining sea could be magnificently employed piercing Big Pharma’s EUA shield with fraud charges until the next ice age?
The VAERS program is front-and-center in Ms. Walensky’s CDC purview. Does she not cop a glance at it now and again? It will be fascinating to hear her testify in the Nuremberg-style proceedings that ought to come for America’s public health officialdom. Are they running scared at CDC, FDA, and Dr. Fauci’s NIAID? The waiting must be the hardest part. So much is ominously unknown. But despite official suppression and obfuscation of patient outcome data from the compromised medical establishment, all-causes death numbers are wafting out of the life insurance industry like the Furies from the cosmic darkness.
Is it true, as is hotly rumored now, that the mRNA shots lead uniformly to autoimmune deficiency syndrome? Ditto the alarming rise in cancer cases among the vaxxed… ditto heart damage, organ damage, grievous neurological damage? We’ll know a lot more about this in May and June, and it’s hard to imagine what the collective emotional reaction will be if all that turns out to be true. Never in history will so many face the prospect of an untimely death, and at the hands of such banal bureaucratic villainy. Will they just compliantly check out of this world, the same way they lined up for their vaxxes and boosters, or finally rage against that machine?
The latest venture in unreality these days spills out of Russia’s operation in Ukraine. The mind-fuckery over it sure seems advantageously amplified here as a cover for the tragic developments in the Covid-19 vaxx melodrama and other domestic torments. All the evidence suggests that our country’s leadership wanted this war to happen in the worst way. We set up the provocations in Donbas and let’er rip. Now we posture on the sidelines, crying crocodile tears, pretending to help while sabotaging peace talks.
Remember, High school athletes have always died of heart attacks while playing soccer, forever...
833 Athlete Cardiac Arrests and Serious Issues, 540 Dead, Following Covid Injection
Horowitz: What did Pfizer know and when? 3 important findings from recent document releases It’s no longer OK for elected officials to mindlessly repeat the bromide “safe and effective” without any reflection about the mass injury we’ve witnessed, along with the waning and the negative efficacy, in itself, engendering calls for endless boosters. We have so much information that raises serious questions, not the least of which is from Pfizer’s own documents, now ordered released by a federal judge...
(They sure did have to hire a lot of new people to write down all of the deaths and injuries...)
Meryl Nass MD, from last August, when the "vaccines" were already known to kill people and weaken their immune systems.
2 Things Mainstream Media Didn’t Tell You About FDA’s Approval of Pfizer Vaccine
Data points to Increased Mortality of the Vaccinated: Canada and Israel Are Suffering from “A Pandemic of the Fully Vaccinated”https://www.globalresearch.ca/data-canada-israel-suffering-from-pandemic-fully-vaccinated/5776870
"Amyloidosis" is a collagen vascular disease, which can be caused by the mRNA "vaccines". How?
It looks like the "amyloid" clogging up the blood vessels and organ tissues is Spike Protein.
When they made the mRNA "vaccines" they were worried that the body would not make enough spike protein, or for long enough, to get a good immune response, so they made sure that the mRNA in the cells, coding to make spike protein, would last longer than the Energizer Bunny, sometimes months... Ooops.
Jack Maxey is in Switzerland for health reasons after an American General thanked him for forwarding the military security access codes from Hunter Biden's laptop, and informed him that he was a target of the deep state by that same virtue.
He's working on a further release of hard drive findings, including many "deletions", still contained in the hard drive.
Maxey tried to get the DoD to address the issue without success, until he found a direct conduit to a two-star general who took the certificate codes, deactivated the access and thanked him for his diligence.
Unfortunately, that same general then told Maxey he needed to focus on securing the safety of himself and his family, as the full weight of the U.S. interests, including the intelligence apparatus and defense apparatus, will likely target him. https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2022/04/08/primary-witness-to-material-within-hunter-biden-laptop-says-active-two-star-general-has-warned-him-about-pending-u-s-government-retaliation/
Political appointees matter, voted party lines...U.S. Court Reinstates Biden’s Covid-19 Vaccine Mandate for All Federal Employees https://palexander.substack.com/p/breaking-and-stunning-us-court-reinstates?s=w
(Hereditary) Economist Pipa Malmgren speaks at the World Government Summit in Dubai, mentioning that her father was an economic advisor to Richard Nixon when Nixon took the US/world off the gold standard, giving her insights into how things work. She predicts the near-term end of "money as we have known it", to be replaced by national blockchain digital currencies, which would record every transaction. She foresees a need to legislate human rights guarantees into this new system, which is inherently biased against individual humans. (I hope that works out, but I'd rather not trust that it will.) https://www.globalresearch.ca/bombshell-video-economist-world-government-summit-says-new-financial-world-order-about-shift-dramatic-new-direction/5776919
Next Saturday, April 16, we will have a pre-Easter garden party at the Yoakum homestead, with local beer from the only real Texas brewery and veggies with zero-food-miles. We sent out invites, but if you read this, and want to attend, ask me for details. It's noonish at 202 Hefferman Street. Park on the dirt if it's dry. Bring something you cooked or prepared. We'll cook plenty of beans and rice.
Prepper (pictured with some fresh carrots)
You are awesome John. I wish I could come. Have a great time. Den
ReplyDeleteThanks Dennis,
DeleteI also wish you could make it, but it is a long way from where you live.
Thanks for the kind words.
(I'm less than awesome, really... Jenny will attest.)