The West with a broken EU economy is still going to be powerful. The US has endless potential to rob hard assets, commodities and financial wealth from most of the lesser nations, just as she robs from Germany or any of the EU poodles.
If Russia is defeated (impossible, but let’s for the argument think they lose) then India, Turkey and many nations, (all the new African friends and clients of Russia)will fall in step like the beaten down EU colonies.
Plus, a defeated Russia will mean the RF is broken and its energy supplies will be taken by the US.
China will fall to a second tier with maybe Iran and maybe India. But there will be a Hegemon running the globe.
So, the US wins if Russia loses. Doesn’t matter about dollars, interest payments or inflation.
The NATO countries will supply the US’s occupation-police-security forces to keep the world in chains.
That’s the US plan if you play it out.
Therefore, Russia must win, must not lose anything, and NATO-the West has to be broken and defeated.
Realistically Russia cannot lose. It has the quiet but solid backing of China. There is more integrity and creative intelligence being applied to this new global anti-imperialist struggle than is visible to the surface bound eye.
I agree with Gonzalo with regard to his major point. It is both wise and realistic for Russia to drag out the conflict in Ukraine, sufficient to stimulate ongoing transformation in the global alignments. The military process serves the wider transformational purpose. This is really the key to Russian success. The integrity visible in the Russia Chinese combined approach invites us to look beyond the visible storm and fire of open war.
Optimism regarding the longer term is quite realistic. The Western establishment can be imagined as a dog that is dying of its collective sicknesses. As it internalizes the fact that it is facing its death it does what it can only do. It gathers its last remaining sick strength and lunges forth at its imagined enemy. This is all it knows how to do. Attempt to forestal its own death by attacking. However in so lusting forward in desperate aggression in order to fight off its pending mortality, what it actually does is exhaust its little remaining strength, expose its terminal decay to all other living forms, and most importantly hasten its own death. Rather than die quietly Western Capitalism has chosen to die in a most spectacular and flamboyant fashion.
But a spectacular self inflicted mortality for Western capitalism does offer enormously valuable consciousness raising fodder for all of us. Best to not allow ourselves to be overly entangled in the raw drama of a sick dog’s final useless fight. Let the dog die and we can discover our real lives.
I agree, Snow Leopard
This is a hybrid war. The SMO is politics by other means.
Three things are set to happen this year:
-Russia will establish a Moscow Precious Metals Exchange, and prices will be set according to physical delivery. Putin has stated this
-Russia will begin selling commodities on the blockchain. Putin has stated this also.
-Saudi Arabia will sell oil for gold-backed yuan. Both Xi and MBS have stated this.
Because of these three things, we can postulate a fourth: western financial collapse.
I think of the SMO as a cage. It’s a container; it is not meant to annihilate the enemy but rather, safely contain the enemy’s most lethal aspects. So I fully appreciate Snow Leopard’s analogy. The SMO is geopolitics by other means, it creates a container that gives Eurasia the opportunity to safely provoke western financial collapse. The hybrid war will be won by collapsing the dollar.
Reality isn’t as simple yet it is quite straightforward. The Banksters anticipated the dollar would be felled and have been preparing. BoE’s Mark Carney at Aug 2019 Jackson Hole called for transition to CBDCs, mere weeks before pandemic appeared. So de-dollarization and disinvestment from the west will be insufficient as their tentacles spread elsewhere too.
Most are craven and follow the lead piper, so it has always been.. It also informs why the crazies, Technocrats, generals, and other Imperial functionaries place all their eggs on the Ukie hill on which they go to die. They have the measure of the Rest of Mankind.. for 1,000 years the only firebreak has been Russia. So they will keep at her with all they got until they use up all the eggs.
Russia is our final earthen levee. “Hills of forest green where the mountains touch the sky.” God bless her
Empires desperate plan was to destroy Russia and then take on China.
It was a last ditch effort to save Empire, before China become to strong to challenge (less than a decade).
The consequences of their actions is that they have destroyed their financial supremacy, the military supremacy allready gone. It was the last nail in the coffin. Bankrupcy looms. Budgets suddenly needs to be balanced.
The loss of the Petrodollar is the loss of the global reserve currency. Nobody needs it anymore for oil trade.
The risk of asset theft leads to reduced interesst in buying Tresuries, i.e. US debt. Limiting US borrowing.
Russia’s current plan of prolonging the Ukraine war is to allow China enough times to mobilize for the reunification with Taiwan. The US has anticipated this long ago but they won’t directly intervene but throwing South Korea and Japan against China.
I predict that the war in Taiwan will occur around this year or next year. China must reunite with Taiwan before the US fortifies the Pacific Ocean into a fortress against China. Russia has been sending naval fleets with Chinese fleets to deter the US navy in past months for this exact reason.
Short term or long term, the US still lost. I am seeing that many elites in the West are contemplating to adopt the Marxist-Leninist models of China-Russia. They probably figured out that Lenin was right after all, while their models of mixed economy (Trotskyism is neoliberalism/neoconservatism) are dead!
Most people in West have no idea how the zone B was 70-100 years back. Then they also have no idea how much has changed in zone B in last 10-15 years.
They absolutely have no idea of the scale of changes.
They look at GDP figures, pockets of widespread poverty etc and assume that not much has changed over last 80 years.
Russian win will speed things up. A loss might be a slight to medium setback but in the long run things have changed radically. Mainly because the West is a net debtor, the east can manufacturer 95% of all the things it needs. Now china is the biggest market then Asean and thrid is the West. China is the biggest trade partner for almost all countries in the world and many key countries don’t even have US or Europe as the second largest trade partner.
Do you realise what that means? I don’t think you do. And this was before the pandemic before SMO, before the West was no longer a safe haven for investments and parking of reserves. You will feel the effects of this change in next five years the process has already started. Business and rich have option of seeing their money confiscated in the West or look for less profits or small loss by investing in their own countries or nearby countries .
Essentially a decoupling is happening and the West can’t do anything about it because you can’t force a person to feel safe. The consequences of this will be huge for the West which had an perpetual conveyer belt running for transfer of wealth from zone B to itself.
Europe is going down the tubes in 2023/24. Even if next winter is as clement, the gas simply won’t be there. They won’t be able to refill their storage this summer.
The USA will go down a bit later. Shale is declining fast. Even if they make a deal with Venezuela, they won’t have spare gas to send to Europe.
would it be possible that Russia will dumb oil on the market and drive price down below US$30/bbl to “kill” the shale fracking in USA?
Europe will be placed between a rock and a hard place!
Venezuela won’t make a deal with the US for 50 years, unless they are completely stupid. Chavez offered to supply oil for 50 USD/barrel, long-term contracts, the USers said no.
It is true that all this destructive,wasteful accumulation/ destruction of Western weapons in Ukraine cannot lead to any “win” for the West unless it could really break Russia into pieces and take over and use Russia’s resources as they tried so hard to do in the 1990s and nearly succeeded. Vladimir Putin stopped them then, and even if he were replaced the country is NOT a one-man show with an evil dictator, as NATOSTAN as its puppets like to pretend, and cannot be defeated.
“The risk of over-tightening by the European Central Bank is nothing less than catastrophic” says Prof Kenneth Rogoff .
At Davos he also said:
“Italy is extremely vulnerable. But this could pop anywhere. Global debt has gone up massively since the pandemic: public debt, corporate debt, everything.”
Rogoff believes that it is a miracle that the world averted a financial crisis in 2022, but the odds of a major accident are shortening as the delayed effects of past tightening feed through.
As Rogoff said:
“We were very fortunate that we didn’t have a global systemic event in 2022, and we can count our blessings for that, but rates are still going higher and the risk keeps rising.”
But lurking in the murkiness is also the global financial assets/liabilities which is almost $500 trillion including the shadow banking system at 46% of the total. The shadow banking sector includes pension funds, hedge funds and other financial institutions which are largely unregulated.
Shadow banking is not subject to the normal mark-to-market rules. Thus no one knows what the real position or losses are. This means that central banks are in the dark when it comes to evaluation of the real risks of the system.
Clearly, I am not the only one harping on about the catastrophic global debt/liability situation.
And no one knows the extent of total global derivatives. But if they have grown in line with debt and also with the shadow banking system, they could easily be in excess of $3 quadrillion. Cultures don’t die overnight, but the US has been in decline since at least the Vietnam war in the 1960s. Interestingly, the US has not had a real Budget surplus since the early 1930s with a handful of years of exception.
But when you, like the US, live on borrowed time and borrowed money, it becomes increasingly difficult to keep up appearances. In 1971, the pressures on the US economy and currency became too great. Thus Nixon closed the Gold Window with the dollar having lost over 98% in real terms since then. This is of course a total catastrophe and a guarantee that the remaining 2% fall to ZERO will come in the near term future, whether it takes 5 or 10 years for the dollar to reach oblivion. Remember that the final 2% is 100% from today!
The US, EU and Japan have now reached the stage when no one wants their debt. So sovereign debt of these nations is no longer a question of “passing the parcel” but keeping the parcel. When every third party holder of these debts is a seller, who will buy? These three countries will end up holding their own debt. Japan already holds over 50% of its debt. Before the Western Ponzi scheme comes to an end, these three nations will virtually hold 100% of their own debt. At that point, the bonds will be worthless and interest rates will have reached infinity. Not a pretty prospect!
A part of Rokoff’s deliberations found on a website: “The fact that the world did not experience a systemic financial crisis in 2022 is a minor miracle, given the surge in inflation and interest rates…..”
We’ve never heard of Rokoff, but it needs to be pointed out that he worked within The Federal Reserve, in other segments of the US System.. Using his quote, he argues that because of the “surge in inflation and interest rates” it’s a miracle the whole system didn’t collapse.
Sorry Mr. Rokoff, you need to go all the way back to 2009 AFTER the FED provided immediate financial aid of $10TRILLION to its chief patrons: the Super Wealthy. Multi-millionaires became Billionaires, especially because The FED kept interest rates very low which increased the profits of the 5% Wealthiest of us. Those trillions also righted the Big Banks and gave carte blanche for the Financial Wizards in hedging their bets with billions of derivatives and credit default swaps. Wall Street Markets grew wildly for almost 10 years. THEN, because of this intense GREED on the part of the Very Wealthy, all that stopped.
Covid then kicked in with thousands of small US stores going bankrupt. Reduced shopping, reduced trading worldwide with millions forced into lockdown mode…….Following Covid, the FED PURPOSELY increased Interest Rates while inflation started to increase with steep inclines. JUST as FED Chairman Volcker did back in the 1980s; he to purposely raised Interest Rates to incredible heights. This purposely destroy millions of jobs allowing the wealthy carte blanche without all those pesky “labor costs.”
As the only truly honest economist in the West: Dr. Michael Hudson has observed how The FED is purposely raising interest rates/inflation to further destroy 10% more jobs enabling the Super Wealthy get themselves out of their mess.
Skip 59 adds, “…lurking in the murkiness is also the global financial assets/liabilities which is almost $500 trillion including the shadow banking system at 46% of the total. The shadow banking sector includes pension funds, hedge funds and other financial institutions which are largely unregulated.
Very true, but we can thank institutions such as Black Rock and all the others who feasted on the Fed’s $10 trillion using financial instruments including derivatives/credit default swaps to make profits. Being highly sensitive such “hedges” apparently all that immense greed hasn’t worked out as predicted. . It wouldn’t surprise us if Larry Fink decides to sweep up trillions of $$s in pension/ retirement funds, leaving millions without the ability to even feed themselves. This is the level of abject greed that we are seeing.
Skip 59 goes on to say, “The US, EU and Japan have now reached the stage when no one wants their debt. So sovereign debt of these nations is no longer a question of “passing the parcel” but keeping the parcel.”
Please listen to Dr. Hudson. He has said, repeatedly, that the US will never, under any circumstances pay off it’s DEBT. Simply because the System was set up for to secure the wealth of thousands in The System.
I would also argue that this ongoing Great Depression 2.0 (which started in 2020 with the pandemic and has never ended) will also ravage the rich elites in the West.
In fact, the upper middle class of tech workers is being destroyed by job cuts, while venture capital are getting destroyed by the FED rate hike. No more free money, so most of the elites (noveau rich) will be decimated because they borrowed massively and won’t pay back. The old rich will survive but they will have to cut their expenses massively.
The elites in the East (Eurasia to Africa) will rise and become more powerful. Prince MBS of Saudi Arabia personally predicted that Middle East will be the new “Europe” for this exact reason. Southeast Asia will be richer than the European Union, while Japan and South Korea will economically collapse if China reunites with Taiwan soon.
No sovereign country should have to go into debt to private banks to create their own money supply. The Federal Reserve Act of 1913 was the biggest financial scam the world has ever known, to give privately owned commercial banks such as Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley Chase et cetera the exclusive right to create money ex nihilo as interest bearing debt. In other words the money does not exist before the loans are granted, usually against physical collateral such as real estate. In the US monetary system, no debts = no money
The US Treasury could in fact just as easily create US Treasury Notes of equal value to Federal Reserve notes that we call US dollars.
I am impressed by how patient and smart the Russians have been in this. Countries around the world are now rushing from the dollar and towards the BRICS.
Why would anyone trust the US, who breaks every agreement they make, going back to the native Americans? Stealing Russia’s dollars scared the crap out of everyone.
I agree with Lira, the west has already lost. Its lost on all levels with the biggest loss being the Russian people themselves.
All other things aside, look at the optics of Nazi German tanks rolling across the fields again in Ukraine. You would have to be Russian to trully appreciate what this does to the Russian psyche, if it wasnt awakened prior, surely German tanks has awakened it now.
I believe project Ukraine was always about the dollar hegemony. The US knew all the way back in the early 2000s it was on borrowed time with regards its abilty to use the dollar as a battering ram against countries.
The 2008 financial crisis was the wake up call, the US knew things needed to be done before they missed their moment, hence the 2014 coupe in Ukraine. Merkel and Hollande have already admitted they never intended to adhere to the Minsk accords, so their intention all along was to destroy Russia.
Russia knows this, so the slow and steady approach is working to their advantage as frustating as it can be.
The west on the other hand can only print so much and gaslight their populations so much before the whole thing blows up and collapses.
Once the dollar really falls through the floor we are going to witness events globally even the awakened will find hard to believe could happen in the west.
It has been awhile since I watched Gonzalo, if I am not mistaken, he used to pretend smoke, now he has light up again for real. I don’t miss the cost or the wheezing but I sure do miss the serotonin hit.
China must mobilize its troops to reunite Taiwan back to China! Russia is dragging out the Ukraine war, so China can have a chance before the US fortifies the Pacific Ocean.
China likely will not invade Taiwan now without risking the ire of the rest of the world because the world needs Taiwan’s microchips. It may be possible after 2025 after the TSCM’s, Intel’s and AMD’s microchip factories in USA are commissioned.
I would have thought that Taiwan is probably getting ready to detonate a fissile material, if it had not already done so, just to safeguard its own “independence”?
Excellent piece by Gonzalo!
In my book “End Game: The Coming Geopolitical Realignments” published in 2015 (written in 2007), I predicted the following events:
1. Russia will invade former USSR states, including Ukraine. In this conflict Russia will prevail
2. Consequently from this scenario EU will bifurcate (into two parts) – Euroland (dominated by France, Germany and eastern Europe) and peripheral Europe (Greek, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, UK, Iceland and Scandanvia)
3. Peripheral Europe will merge with USA, Canada and possibly Mexico to form a North Atlantic supranational entity
4. Russia emerges into the pole position dominating the EurAsian Union (with China, India and the contiguous Asian landmass, possibly including Middle East and Levant (minus Israel) under the aegis of the SCO, BRICS+ and EAEU
5. Euroland will pivot to EurAsian Union because of access to energy and raw materials (but on Russia’s terms and conditions)
6. Vitality shifts to EurAsia and we enter a multi-polar world.
We are living in exciting times and Gonzalo is right here – The West Has Already Lost! The ramifications will be the coming bifurcation in Europe.
The day to day details of this war in Ukraine will take different shapes and forms and twists before we get to the final end point I just described above.
Thanks GL, always enjoy reading your writings and videos.
Greetings from Papua New Guinea.
The US thinks that money is the answer to everything. In God We Trust. They don’t trust God, let alone believe in him, but believe in the money. To remedy education, they just throw money at it. And did it work out? Schools are the worst it has ever been. To remedy our roads, bridges and infrastructure, they also throw money at it. Has it worked out? It’s gotten worse and getting worse by the day. Domestic or internationally they throw money out like it’ll never get out of style. And now they find themselves in a pickle because of all these remedies they apply which are not working. And are desperate to keep the racket going. Reminds me of an article I read that they are prospecting using pensions 12 trillion dollars nationwide to put into “green” economy. It’s more like a Viking style sacking of the hard earned money of its own citizens. Which at the end of the day, they really don’t give a hoot about.
The West with a broken EU economy is still going to be powerful. The US has endless potential to rob hard assets, commodities and financial wealth from most of the lesser nations, just as she robs from Germany or any of the EU poodles.
If Russia is defeated (impossible, but let’s for the argument think they lose) then India, Turkey and many nations, (all the new African friends and clients of Russia)will fall in step like the beaten down EU colonies.
Plus, a defeated Russia will mean the RF is broken and its energy supplies will be taken by the US.
China will fall to a second tier with maybe Iran and maybe India. But there will be a Hegemon running the globe.
So, the US wins if Russia loses. Doesn’t matter about dollars, interest payments or inflation.
The NATO countries will supply the US’s occupation-police-security forces to keep the world in chains.
That’s the US plan if you play it out.
Therefore, Russia must win, must not lose anything, and NATO-the West has to be broken and defeated.
That is Russia’s plan.
Realistically Russia cannot lose. It has the quiet but solid backing of China. There is more integrity and creative intelligence being applied to this new global anti-imperialist struggle than is visible to the surface bound eye.
I agree with Gonzalo with regard to his major point. It is both wise and realistic for Russia to drag out the conflict in Ukraine, sufficient to stimulate ongoing transformation in the global alignments. The military process serves the wider transformational purpose. This is really the key to Russian success. The integrity visible in the Russia Chinese combined approach invites us to look beyond the visible storm and fire of open war.
Optimism regarding the longer term is quite realistic. The Western establishment can be imagined as a dog that is dying of its collective sicknesses. As it internalizes the fact that it is facing its death it does what it can only do. It gathers its last remaining sick strength and lunges forth at its imagined enemy. This is all it knows how to do. Attempt to forestal its own death by attacking. However in so lusting forward in desperate aggression in order to fight off its pending mortality, what it actually does is exhaust its little remaining strength, expose its terminal decay to all other living forms, and most importantly hasten its own death. Rather than die quietly Western Capitalism has chosen to die in a most spectacular and flamboyant fashion.
But a spectacular self inflicted mortality for Western capitalism does offer enormously valuable consciousness raising fodder for all of us. Best to not allow ourselves to be overly entangled in the raw drama of a sick dog’s final useless fight. Let the dog die and we can discover our real lives.
Well put Snowy.
The short-term prospects are terrible, with all sorts of dangers lurking, but the long-term prospects are wonderful, exciting, epoch-changing.
I agree, Snow Leopard
This is a hybrid war. The SMO is politics by other means.
Three things are set to happen this year:
-Russia will establish a Moscow Precious Metals Exchange, and prices will be set according to physical delivery. Putin has stated this
-Russia will begin selling commodities on the blockchain. Putin has stated this also.
-Saudi Arabia will sell oil for gold-backed yuan. Both Xi and MBS have stated this.
Because of these three things, we can postulate a fourth: western financial collapse.
I think of the SMO as a cage. It’s a container; it is not meant to annihilate the enemy but rather, safely contain the enemy’s most lethal aspects. So I fully appreciate Snow Leopard’s analogy. The SMO is geopolitics by other means, it creates a container that gives Eurasia the opportunity to safely provoke western financial collapse. The hybrid war will be won by collapsing the dollar.
Well put Larch! I couldn’t say it better.
Reality isn’t as simple yet it is quite straightforward. The Banksters anticipated the dollar would be felled and have been preparing. BoE’s Mark Carney at Aug 2019 Jackson Hole called for transition to CBDCs, mere weeks before pandemic appeared. So de-dollarization and disinvestment from the west will be insufficient as their tentacles spread elsewhere too.
Most are craven and follow the lead piper, so it has always been.. It also informs why the crazies, Technocrats, generals, and other Imperial functionaries place all their eggs on the Ukie hill on which they go to die. They have the measure of the Rest of Mankind.. for 1,000 years the only firebreak has been Russia. So they will keep at her with all they got until they use up all the eggs.
Russia is our final earthen levee. “Hills of forest green where the mountains touch the sky.” God bless her
Empires desperate plan was to destroy Russia and then take on China.
It was a last ditch effort to save Empire, before China become to strong to challenge (less than a decade).
The consequences of their actions is that they have destroyed their financial supremacy, the military supremacy allready gone. It was the last nail in the coffin. Bankrupcy looms. Budgets suddenly needs to be balanced.
The loss of the Petrodollar is the loss of the global reserve currency. Nobody needs it anymore for oil trade.
The risk of asset theft leads to reduced interesst in buying Tresuries, i.e. US debt. Limiting US borrowing.
You lost me at “she”, the rest was good though.
Russia’s current plan of prolonging the Ukraine war is to allow China enough times to mobilize for the reunification with Taiwan. The US has anticipated this long ago but they won’t directly intervene but throwing South Korea and Japan against China.
I predict that the war in Taiwan will occur around this year or next year. China must reunite with Taiwan before the US fortifies the Pacific Ocean into a fortress against China. Russia has been sending naval fleets with Chinese fleets to deter the US navy in past months for this exact reason.
Short term or long term, the US still lost. I am seeing that many elites in the West are contemplating to adopt the Marxist-Leninist models of China-Russia. They probably figured out that Lenin was right after all, while their models of mixed economy (Trotskyism is neoliberalism/neoconservatism) are dead!
Most people in West have no idea how the zone B was 70-100 years back. Then they also have no idea how much has changed in zone B in last 10-15 years.
They absolutely have no idea of the scale of changes.
They look at GDP figures, pockets of widespread poverty etc and assume that not much has changed over last 80 years.
Russian win will speed things up. A loss might be a slight to medium setback but in the long run things have changed radically. Mainly because the West is a net debtor, the east can manufacturer 95% of all the things it needs. Now china is the biggest market then Asean and thrid is the West. China is the biggest trade partner for almost all countries in the world and many key countries don’t even have US or Europe as the second largest trade partner.
Do you realise what that means? I don’t think you do. And this was before the pandemic before SMO, before the West was no longer a safe haven for investments and parking of reserves. You will feel the effects of this change in next five years the process has already started. Business and rich have option of seeing their money confiscated in the West or look for less profits or small loss by investing in their own countries or nearby countries .
Essentially a decoupling is happening and the West can’t do anything about it because you can’t force a person to feel safe. The consequences of this will be huge for the West which had an perpetual conveyer belt running for transfer of wealth from zone B to itself.
Excellent analysis.
Europe is going down the tubes in 2023/24. Even if next winter is as clement, the gas simply won’t be there. They won’t be able to refill their storage this summer.
The USA will go down a bit later. Shale is declining fast. Even if they make a deal with Venezuela, they won’t have spare gas to send to Europe.
would it be possible that Russia will dumb oil on the market and drive price down below US$30/bbl to “kill” the shale fracking in USA?
Europe will be placed between a rock and a hard place!
Venezuela won’t make a deal with the US for 50 years, unless they are completely stupid. Chavez offered to supply oil for 50 USD/barrel, long-term contracts, the USers said no.
It is true that all this destructive,wasteful accumulation/ destruction of Western weapons in Ukraine cannot lead to any “win” for the West unless it could really break Russia into pieces and take over and use Russia’s resources as they tried so hard to do in the 1990s and nearly succeeded. Vladimir Putin stopped them then, and even if he were replaced the country is NOT a one-man show with an evil dictator, as NATOSTAN as its puppets like to pretend, and cannot be defeated.
“The risk of over-tightening by the European Central Bank is nothing less than catastrophic” says Prof Kenneth Rogoff .
At Davos he also said:
“Italy is extremely vulnerable. But this could pop anywhere. Global debt has gone up massively since the pandemic: public debt, corporate debt, everything.”
Rogoff believes that it is a miracle that the world averted a financial crisis in 2022, but the odds of a major accident are shortening as the delayed effects of past tightening feed through.
As Rogoff said:
“We were very fortunate that we didn’t have a global systemic event in 2022, and we can count our blessings for that, but rates are still going higher and the risk keeps rising.”
But lurking in the murkiness is also the global financial assets/liabilities which is almost $500 trillion including the shadow banking system at 46% of the total. The shadow banking sector includes pension funds, hedge funds and other financial institutions which are largely unregulated.
Shadow banking is not subject to the normal mark-to-market rules. Thus no one knows what the real position or losses are. This means that central banks are in the dark when it comes to evaluation of the real risks of the system.
Clearly, I am not the only one harping on about the catastrophic global debt/liability situation.
And no one knows the extent of total global derivatives. But if they have grown in line with debt and also with the shadow banking system, they could easily be in excess of $3 quadrillion. Cultures don’t die overnight, but the US has been in decline since at least the Vietnam war in the 1960s. Interestingly, the US has not had a real Budget surplus since the early 1930s with a handful of years of exception.
But when you, like the US, live on borrowed time and borrowed money, it becomes increasingly difficult to keep up appearances. In 1971, the pressures on the US economy and currency became too great. Thus Nixon closed the Gold Window with the dollar having lost over 98% in real terms since then. This is of course a total catastrophe and a guarantee that the remaining 2% fall to ZERO will come in the near term future, whether it takes 5 or 10 years for the dollar to reach oblivion. Remember that the final 2% is 100% from today!
The US, EU and Japan have now reached the stage when no one wants their debt. So sovereign debt of these nations is no longer a question of “passing the parcel” but keeping the parcel. When every third party holder of these debts is a seller, who will buy? These three countries will end up holding their own debt. Japan already holds over 50% of its debt. Before the Western Ponzi scheme comes to an end, these three nations will virtually hold 100% of their own debt. At that point, the bonds will be worthless and interest rates will have reached infinity. Not a pretty prospect!
A part of Rokoff’s deliberations found on a website: “The fact that the world did not experience a systemic financial crisis in 2022 is a minor miracle, given the surge in inflation and interest rates…..”
We’ve never heard of Rokoff, but it needs to be pointed out that he worked within The Federal Reserve, in other segments of the US System.. Using his quote, he argues that because of the “surge in inflation and interest rates” it’s a miracle the whole system didn’t collapse.
Sorry Mr. Rokoff, you need to go all the way back to 2009 AFTER the FED provided immediate financial aid of $10TRILLION to its chief patrons: the Super Wealthy. Multi-millionaires became Billionaires, especially because The FED kept interest rates very low which increased the profits of the 5% Wealthiest of us. Those trillions also righted the Big Banks and gave carte blanche for the Financial Wizards in hedging their bets with billions of derivatives and credit default swaps. Wall Street Markets grew wildly for almost 10 years. THEN, because of this intense GREED on the part of the Very Wealthy, all that stopped.
Covid then kicked in with thousands of small US stores going bankrupt. Reduced shopping, reduced trading worldwide with millions forced into lockdown mode…….Following Covid, the FED PURPOSELY increased Interest Rates while inflation started to increase with steep inclines. JUST as FED Chairman Volcker did back in the 1980s; he to purposely raised Interest Rates to incredible heights. This purposely destroy millions of jobs allowing the wealthy carte blanche without all those pesky “labor costs.”
As the only truly honest economist in the West: Dr. Michael Hudson has observed how The FED is purposely raising interest rates/inflation to further destroy 10% more jobs enabling the Super Wealthy get themselves out of their mess.
Skip 59 adds, “…lurking in the murkiness is also the global financial assets/liabilities which is almost $500 trillion including the shadow banking system at 46% of the total. The shadow banking sector includes pension funds, hedge funds and other financial institutions which are largely unregulated.
Very true, but we can thank institutions such as Black Rock and all the others who feasted on the Fed’s $10 trillion using financial instruments including derivatives/credit default swaps to make profits. Being highly sensitive such “hedges” apparently all that immense greed hasn’t worked out as predicted. . It wouldn’t surprise us if Larry Fink decides to sweep up trillions of $$s in pension/ retirement funds, leaving millions without the ability to even feed themselves. This is the level of abject greed that we are seeing.
Skip 59 goes on to say, “The US, EU and Japan have now reached the stage when no one wants their debt. So sovereign debt of these nations is no longer a question of “passing the parcel” but keeping the parcel.”
Please listen to Dr. Hudson. He has said, repeatedly, that the US will never, under any circumstances pay off it’s DEBT. Simply because the System was set up for to secure the wealth of thousands in The System.
I would also argue that this ongoing Great Depression 2.0 (which started in 2020 with the pandemic and has never ended) will also ravage the rich elites in the West.
In fact, the upper middle class of tech workers is being destroyed by job cuts, while venture capital are getting destroyed by the FED rate hike. No more free money, so most of the elites (noveau rich) will be decimated because they borrowed massively and won’t pay back. The old rich will survive but they will have to cut their expenses massively.
The elites in the East (Eurasia to Africa) will rise and become more powerful. Prince MBS of Saudi Arabia personally predicted that Middle East will be the new “Europe” for this exact reason. Southeast Asia will be richer than the European Union, while Japan and South Korea will economically collapse if China reunites with Taiwan soon.
No sovereign country should have to go into debt to private banks to create their own money supply. The Federal Reserve Act of 1913 was the biggest financial scam the world has ever known, to give privately owned commercial banks such as Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley Chase et cetera the exclusive right to create money ex nihilo as interest bearing debt. In other words the money does not exist before the loans are granted, usually against physical collateral such as real estate. In the US monetary system, no debts = no money
The US Treasury could in fact just as easily create US Treasury Notes of equal value to Federal Reserve notes that we call US dollars.
I belive the latest fancy term for money printing is : “Inflation Reduction Act” :)
I am impressed by how patient and smart the Russians have been in this. Countries around the world are now rushing from the dollar and towards the BRICS.
Why would anyone trust the US, who breaks every agreement they make, going back to the native Americans? Stealing Russia’s dollars scared the crap out of everyone.
@Why would anyone trust the US
Dollar debt, in God they trusted dollars, and in turn, they get trusted to repay them weather they like it or not.
I agree with Lira, the west has already lost. Its lost on all levels with the biggest loss being the Russian people themselves.
All other things aside, look at the optics of Nazi German tanks rolling across the fields again in Ukraine. You would have to be Russian to trully appreciate what this does to the Russian psyche, if it wasnt awakened prior, surely German tanks has awakened it now.
I believe project Ukraine was always about the dollar hegemony. The US knew all the way back in the early 2000s it was on borrowed time with regards its abilty to use the dollar as a battering ram against countries.
The 2008 financial crisis was the wake up call, the US knew things needed to be done before they missed their moment, hence the 2014 coupe in Ukraine. Merkel and Hollande have already admitted they never intended to adhere to the Minsk accords, so their intention all along was to destroy Russia.
Russia knows this, so the slow and steady approach is working to their advantage as frustating as it can be.
The west on the other hand can only print so much and gaslight their populations so much before the whole thing blows up and collapses.
Once the dollar really falls through the floor we are going to witness events globally even the awakened will find hard to believe could happen in the west.
It has been awhile since I watched Gonzalo, if I am not mistaken, he used to pretend smoke, now he has light up again for real. I don’t miss the cost or the wheezing but I sure do miss the serotonin hit.
China must mobilize its troops to reunite Taiwan back to China! Russia is dragging out the Ukraine war, so China can have a chance before the US fortifies the Pacific Ocean.
The U. S. and Taiwan can do nothing to stop PRC from taking control of the island .
China likely will not invade Taiwan now without risking the ire of the rest of the world because the world needs Taiwan’s microchips. It may be possible after 2025 after the TSCM’s, Intel’s and AMD’s microchip factories in USA are commissioned.
I would have thought that Taiwan is probably getting ready to detonate a fissile material, if it had not already done so, just to safeguard its own “independence”?
Thank goodness for the NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB, NASCAR, etc. in the U.S. and Football in rest of the World ! Colorful opiates for the masses!
Excellent piece by Gonzalo!
In my book “End Game: The Coming Geopolitical Realignments” published in 2015 (written in 2007), I predicted the following events:
1. Russia will invade former USSR states, including Ukraine. In this conflict Russia will prevail
2. Consequently from this scenario EU will bifurcate (into two parts) – Euroland (dominated by France, Germany and eastern Europe) and peripheral Europe (Greek, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, UK, Iceland and Scandanvia)
3. Peripheral Europe will merge with USA, Canada and possibly Mexico to form a North Atlantic supranational entity
4. Russia emerges into the pole position dominating the EurAsian Union (with China, India and the contiguous Asian landmass, possibly including Middle East and Levant (minus Israel) under the aegis of the SCO, BRICS+ and EAEU
5. Euroland will pivot to EurAsian Union because of access to energy and raw materials (but on Russia’s terms and conditions)
6. Vitality shifts to EurAsia and we enter a multi-polar world.
We are living in exciting times and Gonzalo is right here – The West Has Already Lost! The ramifications will be the coming bifurcation in Europe.
The day to day details of this war in Ukraine will take different shapes and forms and twists before we get to the final end point I just described above.
Thanks GL, always enjoy reading your writings and videos.
Greetings from Papua New Guinea.
The US thinks that money is the answer to everything. In God We Trust. They don’t trust God, let alone believe in him, but believe in the money. To remedy education, they just throw money at it. And did it work out? Schools are the worst it has ever been. To remedy our roads, bridges and infrastructure, they also throw money at it. Has it worked out? It’s gotten worse and getting worse by the day. Domestic or internationally they throw money out like it’ll never get out of style. And now they find themselves in a pickle because of all these remedies they apply which are not working. And are desperate to keep the racket going. Reminds me of an article I read that they are prospecting using pensions 12 trillion dollars nationwide to put into “green” economy. It’s more like a Viking style sacking of the hard earned money of its own citizens. Which at the end of the day, they really don’t give a hoot about.
Gonzalo,
Suggest you read the Tweet today by Retsev Levi regarding mRNA vaccines.
Best wishes, K